mitt fit

republican nominee, mitt romney believes that "freedom requires religion. just as religion requires freedom." um, no. fuck you mitt.

via onegoodmove.

into the wild

in april 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of mt. mckinley. his name was christopher johnson mccandless. he had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter...

that's what it says on the cover of the book written by jon krakauer. i'm not giving away anything because it's not a story about christopher's life: it's a story about his death and the life that was taken. the film version of into the wild is faithfully directed by sean penn. when i read the book, it quickly became one of my favorite books of all time. even though i knew the outcome, there was so much tension and drama on every page. i was gripped. what's so interesting about the story is christopher mccandless himself. a young man so principled with his own idea of morality. a young man so desperate to experience life.

those who have read the book seem to have two different opinions of him. one group believes he was a selfish, stupid, careless kid who caused his family incredible grief and ultimately committed suicide. another group believes him to be a very smart and intuitive kid who was after something bigger than this life, something higher than material goods and human pettiness, who touched people's lives, and who ultimately made a fatal mistake. i've got a different opinion of him, but i won't say it because the beauty of the book and the way krakauer wrote it, is in the way it leaves it open for your own interpretation.

now, the movie however sort of robs you of that choice. sean penn, if you have heard any of his political rants, is very one-sided and is very vocal about his opinions. and here, he's no different. he directs the movie, a movie he's wanted to make for ten years but couldn't without christopher's family signing off on it, with plenty of passion and love for the subject. the only thing is, he shows christopher off as almost jesus-like, which i think is a mistake. he also does some very heavy-handed things in the end of the film which i think sort of takes away from the power of it. what penn does is focus so completely on what makes christopher great, he doesn't include any of the negative aspects of chris - the selfish kid, the naive kid, the hurtful and spiteful kid. i think if he had, it would have made a much better movie. personally, i love a hero with faults. penn makes christopher's story cut and dry, black and white, and that's a shame. he sort of forces his opinion on you, and i sort of resented the film for that. i also had a general problem with the movie where i felt hardly any emotion. it may be due to the fact that i had just read the book a couple weeks earlier. the book drained me emotionally, which is perhaps why the movie comes off as kind of lacking. the film has been well received by critics and audiences alike, however.

the film also has a great soundtrack by eddie vedder. vedder shows off some great original work as well as some awesome covers.

i must say that all in all, i do identify quite a bit with christopher. i understand his desire to experience something beyond this life. i understand his frustration with his father as well as society. i also understand his wanderlust. as much as i love city life, sometimes i think it will swallow me whole, which is why sometimes solitude and being comfortable with being alone is a good thing. the big different though is that i don't have the fortitude that he has of his principles, and ultimately, despite enjoying solitude, i eventually find my way back. unfortunately for christopher, he couldn't.

the following is the video for the cover "hard sun" as well as "society," a video some fan made with pics of pearl jam. enjoy.

9/11 conspiracy nutters

i am all about questioning everything. you shouldn't just blindly believe something just because someone told you it was so. otherwise, it borders on religion. however, there is a line where logic and reason is drawn, and conspiracy theories often test that. one such conspiracy theory is that the u.s. government purposely destroyed the world trade center towers on 9/11 in a controlled demolition. there are whole internet communities about this online. i've heard their arguments, and normally this is where i'd post a link to one website or another, but really, it's just not worth my time.

bill maher is back on the air with another season. these conspiracy theorists have apparently been getting at maher to bring up this topic on his shows, but he refuses to. it appears a couple of audience members decided they'd throw it in maher's face. what ensues is quite a funny little war of words.

and here is a more civilized discussion. maher interviews garry kasparov, chess grandmaster, and a candidate for president of russia. kasparov speaks with such intelligence and sophistication that it sparks remarks from maher and guests about how great kasparov is. very good interview.

Endings

so i basically have the whole book written out in my head. it's just a matter of getting it down onto paper, which is getting easier and easier as the days go by. it should be, considering i've been meditating on this story for at least a good year and a half. over the past few months, i've managed to put to rest some nagging personal and professional issues that have plagued me for the past year. i think this has allowed me to free up time and thought to finally get this book done. the only real question marks are when will i have it done? (i'm hoping for the end of the year) and which ending will i choose?

endings are tough, because a bad ending can ruin a good story and a strange ending can pervert the whole story. at the same time, you want an ending with some balls. at least i do, especially considering the themes that i will be discussing. the problem is that the ending i have in mind is great, but it borders on foreign art-film type stuff, which usually turns a lot of people off. i have read and seen a lot of stuff lately where the ending would wuss out even though overall it was a good move. i don't want to do that.

that being said, i have three endings in mind, all different variations of each other, but the book will be drastically changed depending on which ending i chose. at this time, my plan is to just write all three endings, and have friends read the book with all three endings and give me feedback, even though most of my friends consider feedback as, "that was good." or maybe I won't release all three endings and I'll just chose the best one and just fuck the audience over. we'll see. it's still a long ways away before i even write them.

rootless tree

Update

brief update as to what i've been up to:

nothing.

however, i am planning for some future activities: it never snows in vancouver except maybe once or twice a year during december. i'm hoping for a bit of snow so i can go take some panoramic photos of the city under snow. i didn't get a chance to do that last year. when it does snow, i'll post some photos on my photo blog. i am also in the hunt for a missing roll of film from my u.s. trip. some great pictures of colorado were on that roll. i'd better find it...

in terms of writing, i've just been biding my time, not trying to force anything. what little i've written has been focused primarily on vancouver and how much i just love this fucking city. i was rollerblading near yew and 5th and there was this steep hill which allows you to see the rest of the city. say what you want, but there's beauty in the city. you just have to know where to look.

one of the things about vancouver that used to bother me so much was the fact that a lot of the buildings in downtown vancouver, especially the newer residential ones, are all the same: they all have that tepid turquoise coloration on the windows. one day as i was going over the granville bridge, on a particular cloudy vancouver day, i realized how gorgeous the city looked with that color. this is the only time when that color looks good. and since vancouver is so cloudy/rainy on a regular basis, i don't mind that color any more.

anyway, here's a snippet i wrote for the book. it took me five minutes to write it literally as i was thinking of a topic to write about on this blog:

Blink. And it’s gone. The love. You can be enamoured with something but give it enough time, it becomes pedestrian, and when it gets pedestrian, you take it for granted. Blink. And it’s gone. The love is something that you really want to try to keep a hold of. When you find it, you grab onto it with both hands. Feverish. And it’s this love that Monty feels, staring up at the lights. He sits on a park bench, wooden, steel framed. Bare-naked trees surround him, strategically placed in the artificial park. Manufactured life standing in for nature, like surrogates, surrounded by brick and steel. There’s a parking garage to one side and an alley to the other reeking of what god knows: Shit, blood and cum. Hanging from the bare branches are strings of blue florescent lights. Decorative. Small, sparkling beacons beneath the pitch black sky. Monty sits alone on the bench, staring up at the lights. He’s been there for almost two hours. The night gets deeper and so does the love: the love of the little peace that he craves. He doesn’t question where he finds it or when: he just accepts. And as this feeling soars, he cannot let go, because it’ll be a long way down.

got balls?

jigsaw

so i've been writing off and on for the past few weeks. i've only been writing separate little scenes, almost like self-enclosed short stories. sometimes i'll jump ahead to a part of the book i feel like writing and then sort of go back and piece things together, move scenes around... sort of like putting together a big jigsaw puzzle. the luxury about writing is that you can do whatever you want. the way you write one book, isn't necessarily how you will write your next book, and so on.

i've finally settled on the fact that the mood and pace of the book cannot be settled in just two parts. i'm just not that talented. instead, it will be three distinct, yet connected parts. think of it as three short stories all including the same characters. the first section will be an exploration of men and their relations to each other and the lasting influence of their fathers. the second section will be the nity gritty political stuff, involving the clash of civilizations. and the third section will be about redemption and proving to be bigger than your physical frame. i'm actually writing a disney screenplay, haha.

my writing is becoming pretty spare and bare bones which is kind of nice. there's a nice aesthetic feel to the work, where it actually just looks better on page. i know this is pretty superficial, but it matters. i find i am just not bothering with too much continuity from scene to scene. a character may act one way in one scene, and in the very next scene, they may act another way. the reason is that i don't find explaining what happened in between very interesting. most people can infer what went on. i just can't be bothered. overall, the book should come in at a very lean 150 to 200 pages. i just don't have the patience to write long books. i find i have to finish a book quickly, before i lose interest, which happens faster and faster these days. as one gets older, one finds they don't have much time for filler.

this book will be less explicit and graphic than my previous work. i am finding more often that with sex and violence, less seems to be more. if done correctly, a two or three line bit of violence can do more for the imagination than a dozen pages of overwrought, dramatized orgy of blood. not that an orgy of blood is bad. sometimes, in the hands of a very skilled writer, it can be quite good. personally, it gets boring to write such things.

i have been doing some research for the book. not a lot, because most of the stuff, especially the political stuff, i'm already really into so i get that stuff on a daily basis (eg: articles on political torture, renditions), but i'm looking into some other things that i'm not really versed with. learning how to accurately describe a gunshot wound by looking at gunshot victims online isn't really very fun, but it helps in the accuracy department. you kind of have to have a strong stomach to look at some of the stuff i've seen. there are some sick fucking things that people will upload or post on their websites. for example, i found a website that showed gunshot victims; detailed, graphic, pre-autopsy photos. the kicker is, the website speaks out against gun control. the point is, the teenage kid you see with the hole in his head could have been alive if he had had a gun to defend himself with. right. in that particular instance, it was his father that shot him. executed him point blank. kinda makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, you think?

meanwhile, i have been reading a lot. in the past couple of months, i finished a couple of books that really aren't worth mentioning. sometimes you have to just try new things, and while somewhat entertaining, these books were pretty much just filler. i do have some better reading coming up (or at least i hope so). i'm waiting for the delivery from amazon.ca. the books are, in no particular order:

civilwarland in bad decline by george saunders.


into the wild by jon krakauer.

the tent by margaret atwood.

vfs

youtube is a bed of copyright infringement, but that doesn't mean you can't get interesting art from it. most of the times it's an excuse to post clips of television shows and movies, but there are people that are using it for what it was meant to be for: broadcast yourself.

the vancouver film school has been posting videos of films made by its students. some of them are interesting, others are just plain weird, but they're all original creations, which makes it kind of fun to watch. below are a few videos that i found to be interesting:

guernica

to the door

piece of mind

kim campbell

kim campbell, former prime minister of canada (the first female canadian prime minister), was on bill maher in 2004 which i missed somehow. anyway, in this clip, michael moore and maher are begging perennial pariah ralph nader to not run in '04. he was seen as the spoiler in the 2000 election that handed george w. bush the victory (which i personally don't think is true).

what is interesting about this clip is that campbell makes a very good argument against nader running. she is right when she says that politics isn't an abstract exercise, that there are real lives on the line, and nader isn't helping anything when he does what he does in this particular situation.

i like ralph nader, and i believe in the principle of what he is doing; the problem is that he is dictated by principle and principle alone on this issue, about bringing in a third party as a significant player into u.s. politics. sometimes he gets so riled up in his principles, that all reason and logic and humanity is forgotten. he claimed there was no difference between the two parties, and it didn't matter who you voted for. well, this is true. but who you vote for does matter: george bush proved this point. there can be someone worse. i cannot recall a president more destructive for his own country, as well as the international community. by 2004 people knew he was no good. he had to be removed. nader knew it, but he didn't care.

now i haven't seen any statistics on nader's effect in the 2004 election, but i do want to back kim campbell's point, that nader has influence, and influence can translate to power and the ability to effect change. he could use his influence to aid one side (in this case it would have been kerry). i'm not saying nader would have had any real effect, all i am saying is that sometimes you have to put aside principle when you have a chance to make immediate and effective change. yes, a third party will only arise if there is real movement and voice, and sometimes you have to break a few eggs to succeed. but this is easily said when those eggs aren't yours. it's easy to be principled when regardless of the outcome, you will be fine.

maybe it's because i'm pretty cynical and i don't think a third party will ever be effective in u.s. politics. but campbell makes a great point here, and it pisses me off that maher interrupts her for the sake of a really lame o.j. simpson joke. campbell was making a real political statement on a show about political discussion. but ultimately maher always has to get the last laugh, and it's a shame. i like maher, but sometimes, he just has to shut the fuck up.

thank you bill

the darjeeling limited

a trip down memory lane: