(no subject)

[lapsedmodernist]

today it's first snow, which always makes me really happy, although going grocery shopping was not the best idea...i decided i wanted to walk around in the snow, and as long as i was out, why not get food, except that i ended up lugging 5 heavy bags on a really slippery sidewalk, then, because i forgot to put my contacts in, and everything was all pretty and blurry and snowy, and i was lost in thought, i turned in the wrong direction on the way back from key foods, walked for 10 minutes, completely certain that i was on my home, saw a building that made me think "huh, that looks a lot like Kellogg's Diner. i never realized there was a building like that right by my house" before realizing that it was, in fact, Kellogg's, and that i had walked about 10 blocks out of the way, at which point i just said fuck it and took the subway.
now i have to catch up on work. i spent the weekend hanging out with andi, which was awesome (andi conjured a bush-bot on the computer, and we talked to it for a while; and also i sang "genie in a bottle" and a lot of alcohol was consumed orally, and even more "buffy" was consumed visually), but now i can no longer ignore the fact that i have 35 (! count'em!) pages due for my "culture and the documentary" class that i don't particularly care for, and i have to struggle to fill up the 35 pages with relevant stuff..oy vey.
also, stupid school email was down all day and all night yesterday, so i guess people sent me emails about stuff i was supposed to do today and they bounced, so now i am missing a bunch of emails and i did not go to this thing i had to do at 12 because i did not get the email reminder.

Comments

Z?!

[vaguerant.livejournal.com]

hey there mister nica

it's good to see you're consuming alcohol orally these days.
i visually consumed my first buffy episode after reading your review a few weeks back. that spike guy is hot.

found a decent Sony camcorder (http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_DisplayProductInformation-Start;sid=XyFLpU9VeGxLiXK6gQtBrgBEOoZRZcMJNy8=?ProductID=YBcKC0%2eNn%2eoAAADxzaG61eQB&Dept=dcc&CatalogCategoryID=pcUKC0%2eNJAMAAADxMyS61eP_) that you might want to check out for your documentary idea. it even comes with a cute dog in the viewfinder, which is quite novel.

1 CCD like all low-end camcorders, but the resolution is decent and most importantly it comes with that i.Link plug, which is necessary if you want to edit on a Sony machine. i.Link is similar to firewire (which might be more universal). i'll check a little on the differences cuz i'm not entirely sure. it's a good camcorder, and you can probably find it cheaper on eBay.

also here's a generic intro (http://www.makingthefilm.com/guide.html#12) to digital filmmaking.

and your catholic-boy guide is quite funny. i think you're right on also. you mentioned a nietzsche-american psycho connection once before, which doesn't fit into my impression of the psychology at work in a catholic-in-denial boy. unless you're saying the nietzschean 'beyond good and evil' call to transcend the limitations of humanist morality is related to the anti-social behavior of christian bayle's character, which becomes an enactment of said boy's overcompensating fantasies for jettisoning morality altogether. to me, american psycho seemed more of an indictment on the repressed sickness of yuppy mysogynist reaganites, rather than any liberating nietzschean freedom.

if i had more time i'd comment on that article in greater detail. ;)
it does seem to have some correlation to my catholic friend, especially in regards to sexual guilt, although a masculine way of dealing with that is likely a bit different.

Re: Z?!

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

thanks for the camera tip! do you know if it has an external mike? (i've been told to make sure they have those). it looks a little above my price range, but not totally out of it, and maybe i could find it used (although i like warranties, hence i am reluctant to buy electronic equipment on ebay)

i think that american psycho totally has to do with repressed yuppieness, but the nietzsche/american psycho connection is not antithetical to that, it's rather like a dialectic: yuppie repression without a strong moral/ontological framework thus lacks the tools of mediating repression usually provided by such framework, results in an all-out return-of-the-alienated-repressed in which the id and the superego fuse together beyond good and evil. the two are really, really correlated, on the shared ground of moral bancrupcy, feeling of entitlement, and completely self-serving logic imported out of it historical context (not that nietzsche was ever sane, but his program for self-actualization should be read differently vis-a-vis the religious/historical discourse he was engaging with and the way he gets applied by overeager overprivileged college students who seize on his soundbites the same way they seize on soundbites from marx's communist manifesto, possibly via cliff's notes, or whatever the equivalent of cliff's notes for "famous philosopher's" is, you know, those cartoon series.

girls' ways of negociating catholic guilt in the romantic/sexual arena is different...it runs more along the lines of saying (in one way or another, but either way semi-consciously but never fully consciously articulating the desire) "i am going to get so drunk that i can do have fun (subtext of fun: (a) have sex b) give a blowjob c)let someone go down on me, etc.)" then get drunk then proceed to do a, b, c, or all of the above, then tearfully say "oh my god, i was so drunk, i didn't know what i was doing, i can't believe i did that, now he will think i am a slut!" looking for reassurances that she is still considered virginal/madonnal/whatever. the more severe the catholicism, the more severe the schism between quiet demure sober girl/completely wild/crazy/desublimated drunk/fucked-up girl. i've had friends like that. they are very annoying. at their worst, they get real drunk so that they can act on their desires and sleep with their friends' boyfriends, and then engage in mascara-smudged morning-after self-flaggelating audo-da-fes.

so you watched buffy? very good! which episode did you see? spike is indeed incredibly hot. the problem is, to really appreciate buffy on all of its levels beyond the plain textual entertainment, it's important to understand the premise, from which the subtext emerges, and some of the mythology. i'm not gonna lay all of it out here, but there is a very good article by a yale professor called "rebels without a god" that's all about buffy and vampire traditions and the french revolution and marx that you should read; if you give me your email address, i will email it to you.