Weekend adventures with Cock and Pussy

  1. Otto von Shirach rocks it harder than Andrew WK ever can or will.
  2. Broadcast are the lead story in Grooves. I feel betrayed. In the past I had trusted Grooves to have far better taste in music, and now they go and put a medicore electropop band on the cover. What will they subject us to next? The wonders of some tripe like Stereolab? \”All disco indie music must end in death.\”
  3. The Renaissance festival is high school meets Midnight plus carnivorous turkey leg eaters, captive elephant rides, and too many grown men dressed as pirates seriously partaking in a fight with other grown folks dressed as fairies, and is nothing but an excuse for \”artisans\” with useless, mass produced so-called medieval products to shove down the trinket hungry consumers who are happy to be robbed of their $750 for a piece of polished wood, $5 for a pewter object on a glass bauble that resembles a fairy only with much imagination, and a predominance of foul tasting \”food.\” Falafel, as far as I can recall from my history reading, was not present at meals in Renaissance era Europe. Nor was cheesecake on a stick, Rolling Rock, or honey dijon sauce in plastic wrapped individual servings.

    At the Renn festival, everyone romanticizes the idea of being gentry, and no thought is given to the massive amounts of underclass that predominated the era. Where were the starving, beaten serfs? Where were the quarantined death cesspools of those with tuberculosis? Where were the countless beggars, highway robbers, thieves, street walking priests warning of the upcoming apocalypse and threatening anyone dumb enough to listen with stories of repentance so as to not spend the rest of eternity burning in hell? Where was the horse, pig, cow, chicken, and human dung littering what passed for streets?

    In an attempt to escape a world where we, the suburbanites who idealize a life that in reality was little better than our own in
    terms of social structure and day to day injustice, we ignore the truth of the past just as we ignore the truth of the present, don our little costumes, drink bad alcohol, and cavort around our fenced-in play area, mindful of the land restrictions and unaware (or uncaring) of the exact correlation between a trip to Renn festival and a trip to a mall where you can carry around plastic cups of over priced booze. Folks who scorn football games going ballyhoo over \”jousting tournaments.\” Parents who look down on belly-showing shirts for their preteens, happily lacing them into bosom accentuating dresses. Yet another brand of escapism, this time for those who think they are a little different, a little better than the rest.

  4. Last Sunday I finished reading the book Dharma Punx by Noah Levine, Stephen Levine\’s son. I was so vehemently annoyed that I wrote my first Amazon.com review, which can be found here, I believe.
  5. Why are the books that are published predominately for women these days such trite, driveling, crap? And what can be done to put an end to this?
  6. Pittsburgh, October 29th through November 2nd with Mark and Will. Any other takers? Will be attending the Schematic Records electronic noise tour, as well as the incomparable Flux: Masquerade Ball, and lifestyle hunting and gathering.
  7. Pittsburgh, PA is approximately eight hours by car to Milwaukee, WI (where it\’s at), seven hours to Chicago, IL (where it\’s also at), two and a half hours to Cleveland (where it is often at), four hours to Baltimore, MD and Washington, DC (where it can sometimes be found), five hours to Philadelphia (where it occasionally happens), nine hours to Montreal, five hours to Toronto, and six hours to New York (no comment).
  8. NYC -> London, December 30 through January 13, $283 on Virgin Atlantic. We are so out of here for the hols.
  9. The new Peaches album is even more obnoxious, contrived, and lacking talent than the first. Fortunately, the word over at Kitty Yo is that the lickable, fuckable, but definitely not cuddable, Gonzales will have a new album out soon to show just who in Berlin really does have innovative electro chops.
  10. Will is going to be out of town for ten days starting Wednesday. When the master\’s away, the monkey will play. And play time, these days, is getting complicated.
  11. The cohabitation situation has become permanent. By 2004 we will have decided whether to stay here in the city and get a bigger apartment, or to get the hell out of Dodge for some place that actually has some artistic merit, not to mention affordable loft space and room for a dog.
  12. I am now giving lessons in HTML in exchange for lessons in German, or whatever else you have to offer. Hit me up. 4.01 straight coded, no Flash, no Dreamweaver, just straight text editing.
  13. According to Cosmo or something, yellow is the new black. Like, hello, that was so two years ago. Who wants to walk around looking like a giant banana, anyway?
  14. Have been hanging out with the more interesting of my ex\’s. Millenium NYE, a group of us actually convened in my flat in Edinburgh. It was alternately miserable and wonderful. Perhaps another cross-continental party is in order. This time, they can pay for their own passports and plane tickets. This time, how about Berlin? Hell freakin yeah yeah yeah.
  15. \”When you find your calling, answer the damn door instead of hiding under the bed.\”