Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked
Song of the hour: Trying to drown out juke-box-drivel with
Lonely Soul by Unkle, via Youtube b/c my itunes is screwed up. again.
Where to begin? I’ve written so many papers lately I feel like I need to blog in essay format. Score 1 for higher education.
School: I’ve finished all my finals but one, and the one left (american lit) I’m actually looking forward to. How Hermione-sick is that? Looking forward to a final? that’s just obscene. My math final was stupid-easy. My final for psych was a lab report on an experiment I ran, and it about killed me. My 16th century lit final, the worst of the bunch, was atrocious and I’m sure I did atrociously but right after the final we took our professor out for drinks and that made everything ok. I’ve never hung out with such cool undergrads for such a long period of time. And drunk, talking about Moby Dick when no one can quite say "Queequeg" properly will go down as one of the highlights of my college life. Hopefully I’ll find my grades out soon before I pull what’s left of my hair out. My Invisible Paper has me anxious– I didn’t tackle Ellison to the best of my ability.Anyway.
More importantly, Brian, Joss and I saw Spiderman 3 last night and screw the critics, I loved it. I knew it was going to be darker than the others, and that it was 2 and a half hours, and I worried about Joss– but he loved it and sat through it like a trooper. I understand why it got a lot of bad reviews, but the varied look at vengeance and forgiveness on such a psychological level made up for the weak plot points. I give it a thumb up.
[Oh, and cuteness: During the credits, I said to Brian, "Did you notice that the Venom suit was way more powerful on Brock than it was on Parker? What's with that?" and before Brian could even say much of anything, Joss piped in "That's because Spiderman was still trying to be a little bit good. The other guy wasn't fighting it, he wanted to be bad, so he was stronger." And you know, I completely hadn't thought of that. And for Joss comprehension, it was astounding. Seriously, astounding. My little baby bit is growing up. ]
I had a moment during the movie, that when I thought about it later helped me to verbalize a lot of my political issues. So, NYC is throwing a parade for Spiderman, and there’s a camera shot that has him posed against a gianormous american flag; he lands, and somewhere soon after it cuts to a shot of cheering NYC firemen. I rolled my eyes, and I couldn’t stop laughing at the ridiculousness of it.
Now, I realize that of course there would be firemen and such at a parade. It makes perfect sense. Nevertheless, it aggravated the shit out of me. Every time I see a NYC fireman/policeman with a flag, it makes me violent. I’ve been very perturbed by this aspect of myself, because I couldn’t understand why I had such a violent gut reaction to it. Baseball, apple pie, mom, the american flag, and firemen– it goes together, right? But the only other thing, well, two things, that make me have that reaction are Jesus Camp style fundamentalists, and the Bush administration. Being perfectly honest, the word "hero" (or "patriotic") has had a similar effect on me. I hear the word on the news and my jaw clenches. I can’t help it. And it’s bothered me immensely. The WTC travesty, and the risks and sacrifices the fire/policemen endured justify the term by definition. So why the violence?
Later last night it clicked. 
I think of the 9/11 aftermath, and the government agencies and spin machine, and how amazingly quickly the whole clean-up operation was subsumed by the administration, and you know what it is? Classical Fucking Conditioning. I know this is probably obvious to everyone else, but I was too angry to even formulate it, so I just got angry and then mad at myself in an endless cycle and never bothered to work out my exact feelings. It’s the way the Administration swept in like a pack of goddamn vultures to claim any "noble deed" done by any citizen as their own, and made sure that every single publicity operation they concocted was contrived to put every victim and every victim’s family as being in full support of the administration, so that to question the administration was to insult the grieving. I think we all realize this. it’s the exact same shit as what they’re doing with the "heroes" of Iraq. But my distaste for the administration was so strong it just ended up working the other way– my disgust with the Bush admin. was transferred to every other citizen in a 5 foot radius of a flag. Heroes, patriots, soldiers, firemen, policemen, New Yorkers in general, all got sullied with the Bush taint. And that’s not fair, and I knew it; and then to exacerbate the situation, everyone bought the conditioning bullshit, enough to reelect him at least, so I got even angrier at everyone.
Writing this out, I feel like I’m explaining an elementary school multiplication table. I guess what I’m getting at, is that I got had. Feeling hostility towards anyone I have no experience with is ridiculous, and demonstrates how I fell just as much to this conditioning bullshit as the people that voted for him– I just fell the other way. This makes me horribly ashamed of myself, and I’m trying desperately not to react violently to these "power words" created by the media monkeys and spin machines. I keep seeing Wag the Dog and "old shoe" every time I think about it. To be fair, I think the whole contrivance of such icons and bullshit manipulation techniques is enough to justify some amount of hostility, but I hate that I do it so automatically… like I’m drooling at the sound of a bell. Because that’s what it’s like.
Ok, this is long enough and embarrassing enough for now. Thanks for enduring. Please let me know if you think I’m crazy or if I’ve offended your sensibilities. This is a learning experience, and I welcome insight.
On a side note, I wanted to compliment everyone’s high school albums list. Beautiful stuff, and Amanda I hate you and your imagery and I hope your thighs inflate until you’re stuck in a wheelchair (ok, so maybe a little jealous…).
I’m glad you guys remembers all the things I’ve forgotten. 
For those that haven’t done them, I wish you would.
May 6th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
Two things
I saw Spiderman 3 today and my main gripe about it is that it refused to choose whether to be “ironically self aware” (i.e. those painful “ladies man” walking scenes and the bit with the dancing (is that what he was doing? Why else woiuld all those people be paying attention to him? )) or if, in fact, it was a major Hollywood summer blockbuter movie that wouldn’t have to apologize for plot lines like MJ’s somewhat inexplicable fall from Broadway star to waitress/ singer at a jazz restaurant. (Does that job exist? Really? That reminds me of this phenomenon that used to happen when I was waiting tables. After I read off thie list of available soda choices about 10% of people insisted on asking if we had “caffeine-free diet Dr. Peeper”. Not only was this baffling and enraging b/c I had already read them the soda options, hello, but b/c who the hell carries caffeine-free diet Dr. Pepper? I mean really? Well it turns out someone really does carry it, It’s Chik-fil-a, those freaks, what with the bible stories free with kid meals and bizarre soda options. THe point being, I was wrong before, I suppose that a waitress/singing job could exist.) I mean, wasn’t she a model before the Broadway thing? So anyway, Jos is clearly a genius, the progeny which sprang forth from your furrowed brow, no doubt. Thanks for the kind words, on this post btw.