Grooming update

I cut myself shaving today. 43 times.
(I guess this sort of message is what Twitter is for.)

Japan announces final level complete, boss fight imminent

Okay, so I don't usually use my blog as a point of dissemination for all the stupid shit I find online, but in this case I have to make an exception.

"Shall we muscle?" It's so full of excellent little details, e.g. the way the speech bubbles come out of characters' noses, rather than their mouths. Also, I think it might just have depleted the world supply of Japanese-ness, which means that there'll be no more animes, JRPGs, adult women who look like 12-year-old girls and second homes for bad rock bands. What will the Internet do without them?

In the interest of following that tossed-off post title to its logical conclusion, I wonder if the release of this game (and, you know, the END OF JAPAN) will involve some sort of cataclysm, presumably in the form of a giant robot battle. In ANOTHER break from tradition, I hereby invite "you" to post ideas for JAPAN WORLD END BATTLE FINALE 2009.

(Do NOT leave me hanging on this; I will be hella raged.)

Listening

You need to be listening to music for this. I could tell you what music I’m listening to, but I don’t think it matters. Something upbeat, anyway. And you need to read fast. Don’t let your attention settle for so much as an instant; just glide on through. Like something the poet Tony Hoagland once wrote (I paraphrase): “I’ve been reading a book about pleasure/How you have to glide through it without grasping/Like an arrow/Passing through its target.” That’s a credo if ever I heard one. (If you must know, then, I’m streaming the new Wilco album off their website FOR ONE DAY ONLY. It sounds good.) Oh, but that little parenthesis cost me: now I’ve lost momentum. Or maybe I’d already lost it and the parenthesis was a way of prolonging the momentum for a few more seconds. Who knows? The important thing is that we’re back on track now. Keep moving. Keep close to the ground. This song is slower, but we all knew that was going to happen sooner or later; we can compensate. All is well. The important thing is to maintain focus. To keep the aperture of your thoughts at a constant size, so that they aren’t impeded or prematurely ejaculated. Because then where would we go? What would we do? If I was a disciplined man, I would set myself the task of writing until the album ends. I’m not, as you know; I can already feel my motivation ebbing away. Three songs in? Four? I’m now resigned to falling short. Perhaps because I’m interrogating my intentions. I want to mean something; I want to write something to be pondered. That wasn’t my initial intention, I don’t think. Pass through without grasping. Impossible. What sort of person could do that? Only an animal could. Our perception (true/false) of our capacity to ration experiences—to organise our environment to our benefit—is the BIG thing about us. Probably. Or perhaps that’s more of a western thing? I’m far too western to know about that. One more song down. What are you listening to?

Brainwave

All those times when women took me back to their rooms to drink wine and "listen to this great Woody Allen tape I have" (or, you know, whatever) were actually opportunities to have sex. Duh!

Storie

This begins with a woman walking. Not a man (too liable to lapse into some sort of male-narcissist fantasy). She’s walking through…what? An airport? It’s generic, sure, but maybe that’s okay—modern, antiseptic, public and vacant at the same time. Anonymous. Don’t worry about it; change it later if necessary. What matters is the woman. Tall, slim (maybe even skinny). Not some standard beauty…why are 90% of women in books beautiful, or is it just that the reader assumes that they are? I’m thinking something like Bob Dylan as played by that very famous Australian actress whose name I’ve somehow forgotten. Kate? No…Cate. Cate Blanchett. She’s dressed like Patti Smith on the front cover of Horses. Or how I think Patti Smith is dressed on the front cover of Horses: jeans, white shirt, black waistcoat. And dark glasses, too. She looks chic—a little bit intimidating…unapproachable. She’s just walking through an arrivals lounge, having recently disembarked. She’s going to collect her luggage. Actually, she’s already collected her luggage (don’t want to have to think of metaphors to describe those conveyor belt things). She has some stylish-looking bag on wheels. Or is that lame? It doesn’t matter. Here’s an idea: the bag isn’t really hers—it’s been swapped, without her knowing, for a look-alike. And all the things in it have been replaced with identical replicas. Not sure what the significance of that is, but it’ll come to light later. Maybe she has some sort of scar. That might be good; make her seem tough, but with an undercurrent of vulnerability. How about if she has a brother who’s schizophrenic, and one day, when she was about fifteen, she woke up in the middle of the night to find that he was trying to cut off her lips with a pair of kitchen scissors. Because he loved her—he had some sort of fantasy that her mouth was this beautiful flower that he couldn’t be without. So, he made the first cut and she woke up and fought him off, and now she has this strange scar on her upper lip—it’s twisted slightly because it didn’t heal back quite right. Or would she just have got cosmetic surgery? Maybe it was too expensive? Or maybe she just didn’t want it. Yeah, that’s good: the scar is a reminder of something. It doesn’t matter what; that’ll come later. God, now I want to meet this woman. Could I put myself in the story? Some sort of meta-fiction thing? Or maybe conceal myself; I could use an assumed name: my dad’s first name and my mum’s maiden name. So, does the woman make contact? Why would I approach her? That’s not something I’d ever do. Maybe she sees me and remarks on something…I could be wearing something. But what? A Nazi armband? That would attract attention, but wouldn’t someone else have picked me up on that already? There’s no way I would’ve got into an airport wearing a Nazi armband. Okay, so maybe we know each other from the past: she sees me, browsing a magazine (the New Statesman or something), and says “Geraint? Geraint Howard?” And maybe I don’t remember her. Or is that self-indulgent? No, there could be a good reason for it; it could be symbolic in a really meaningful way. Maybe this is happening in Africa. Not a war-torn part; perhaps Botswana…I think that’s pretty civilised (remember to try not to be racist). She’s probably doing something charitable. Maybe she’s a doctor. I’m just passing through. One thing’s for sure: there will be intrigue. Possibly I will sleep with her. Or maybe that’s tacky…then again, I could go ahead and sleep with her, but do it in an ironic way. Maybe I could sleep with a whole lot of women in an ironic way. In fact, that could be the premise: I go around Africa having sarcastic sex with women and they all get pregnant with babies that don’t believe in themselves. They just lie there—all indifferent. And then maybe I have to euthanise them, but in a way that makes me look really heroic. I could shed a single tear for each one, and collect them (the tears) in a crystal decanter, which I fire into space at the end. So the final scene consists of me shooting my tears into space and pointedly not crying; the closing line will be “His eyes followed the rocket’s triumphant ascent [+some more visual details]; this time, they were dry.” And then “The Man in Me” by Bob Dylan will start playing and the screen will fade to black. Except it’s not a movie. Maybe I’ll just write that that stuff happens. In italics.

Word of the Day

Autogynephilia (pronounced /ˌɔːtoʊˌɡaɪnəˈfɪliə/) (from Greek “αὐτό-” (self), “γῦνή” (woman, though the stem is actually “γυναικ-”, so that “autogynephilia” is ill-formed) and “φῖλία” (love) — "love of oneself as a woman") is the term coined in 1989 by Ray Blanchard to refer to "a man's paraphilic tendency to be sexually aroused by the thought or image of himself as a woman."

Thanks Wikipedia!

I eat flies like you for breakfast

I killed a fly today. I did it without thinking. The vacuum cleaner nozzle was in my hand, the fly was on the floor; I engineered a convergence. It was just another crumb; the urge to CLEAN took over.

I wouldn’t ordinarily do this. I’ve never been a swatter; in fact, I usually find myself slightly aggravated by people who feel compelled to crush whatever tiny, buzzing creature falls within their sphere of influence. Particularly because they often take such satisfaction in it—it’s as though they’ve achieved some sort of moral victory over the faceless external forces that conspire to upset and distract them at every turn. They’ve asserted themselves: This is me! In the battle ‘twixt man and bug, it is I who prevail!