IS YOUR BODY READY?

I present the time-waster of the day: The Homolust Challenge Generator.

Really, it's what the name says. Hit the generate button and see what scenario comes out. I think it's a bad sign when "A [sic] actor fucks a clumsy serial killer under a bridge. They are strangers. It must involve penance and frottage" is one of the more normal results.

All thinks considered, I ought to be veg.

Today mom and dad bought some crab to go with our weird-ass Chinese-meets-Middle-American Thanksgiving dinner. The crabs were kept live in a brown paper bag in the sink outside. Later my dad dismembered them and removed the parts that we weren't going to eat.

When I was a kid, mom would buy fish from the Chinese supermarket. Chinese supermarkets, for those not in the know, generally have a live seafood section where you can pick the fish you want and have the option of taking it home and killing it there. As the fish would be fresher if you cook it soon after killing, my parents would opt to buy the fish live. On the drive home I would have a fish in a bag flopping and dying next to me. Upon reaching home, I would go to my bedroom so that I wouldn't have to hear my mom whack the fish's head off. One day, my mom showed me the fish's headless body in the fridge; the nerves were still active, so the body made breathing motions as it had before death.

Yet the only reason I didn't want to eat fish was because I didn't like the taste. Now I enjoy fish. I suspect that I plain don't have any illusions about the dead animals I'm eating.

Fleur's Dress

So today, I caught up with the rest of the world and saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 1). And being me, what really stood out to me?



Totally looks like it came from the Alexander McQueen Winter 2008 collection.



I gotta wonder: is that a modified version of the dress, did costume designer Jany Temime get permission to use the look, or did she plagiarise it? Now there would be some drama.

Images from rockthetrend.

It Happened One Day

In the school I'm studying at and the surrounding area, there's a general understanding the the students and people are much friendlier than the more densely populated parts of California (ie the Bay Area and So Cal). People say hello to strangers and strike up friendly conversation.

I thought I could avoid this, but I hadn't, clearly this blog post wouldn't exist.

After conversing with a girl with a distinctive button (lips stitched shut--drawn by my friend Dian and the main reason I wanted to speak with the girl) on the bus, I was approached by another student. The subject of our conversation was not terribly interesting, mostly about my cheap pilates mat, the midnight showing of Harry Potter, and Thanksgiving break, but the entire time I wondered to myself where I had seen her.

We were both heading to the PE building, where the class for our campus literary magazine was, and as I don't know many of the people were, I wondered if she attended that class as well. As it turns out, she didn't. And as she said goodbye to me, I realised that I too, after almost four years, had been drawn into the web of congeniality surrounding our school.

Throne of Blood and General Nohbuki

A few weeks ago, I heard that there was a stage adaptation of Kurosawa's film Throne of Blood. The play made its debut at the Ashland Shakespeare Festival, which is fitting since Throne of Blood is based off of King Lear.



Being the pretentious arthouse douchebag I am, this sent me into a rage for videos of Noh and Kabuki theater.

Last summer, I saw a collection of Mishima's Noh plays at City Lights. His Noh plays are closer to short Western plays than Noh and he even intended for them to be easily adaptable into other (Western) modes of theater. I should have bought them when I had the chance (I say as if there aren't numerous copies all over the place).



I just wanted to post this one because it's pretty.



Ditto this one. I got to say, I really like the combination of white and red. It makes me think of virginity and death at the same time. Always a winning combination.

In Which I Avoid Writing My Research Paper

I have never attempted a NaNoWriMo.

Growing up, my formative teenage years were spent not writing fanfiction like healthier children. Rather, I read websites that gleefully savaged bad writing, professional or otherwise. This just so happened to include lots and lots of fanfiction. So I never wrote. All my attempts to write were clumsy and awkward.

It wasn't until last year that I started writing even for fun. My studies in English required me to take at least one writing class. I took a creative writing class in fiction because my life isn't all that interesting, as evidenced by the infrequency that this blog updates (incidentally, that class taught me that just because people want to write doesn't mean they can).

What is the point of this entry? I'm not quite sure. I guess I'm just saying to myself that my writing generally doesn't have enough in it to extend past short-story length. And, not to praise myself too much, that studying literature has probably been more helpful to me than all the writing classes my school has to offer.

Cannot unsee.

There are worse things in life than resembling a Takeshi Murakami art piece.

Seeing M. Butterfly: A Drama in Three Scenes.

Scene one: the costume shop at a small university. Between a barely-started Beijing Opera dress and a kimono stand ME and FRIEND.

Me: What's this all about?

Friend: We're doing M. Butterfly.

Me: Really? I love M. Butterfly! We should see it together.

ME turns to the rack. The sections are divided according to character, with the actor's name beneath. ME reads the name for Song.

Me: Huh. That name doesn't sound Asian. Maybe it's like my last name and it got Anglicised when it came over here.

Scene two: a month later. ME is walking by the theater building on his way to the library. Hearing music, he looks over, not slowing, and sees some actors. One is wearing the Beijing Opera dress.

Me: Hm. Is that the actor playing Song? He looks like he might be half-Asian.

Scene three: a few weeks later. ME is sitting in front of the computer; in the last week he has spread word of M. Butterfly's production, and he is now checking the school website.

Me: Oh, they've announced M. Butterfly, and there's a picture.

ME clicks on the link and sees that the role of Song is played by a young white male.

Me: We're gonna have a problem here.

Fin

Seriously, are there no competent Asian students in our acting program? I might still see the play since a hundred free seats are reserved for students, but if I don't get one of those, I'm probably not going to pay. Honestly, it sort of defeats the purpose of M. Butterfly to cast someone who isn't of Asian descent in the role of Song.

Spiders again

I had a dream last night. I dreamt that I saved a spider and decided to raise it as a pet. Within a week it had grown to the size of a small orange and its legs had become very hairy.

I kept it in the garage where it walked around and spun webs. One day I opened the garage door and the breeze was so strong that the spider was buffeted in the wind and blown directly into my mouth. It didn't go in. It was a bit too big for that. Instead, it sat between my lips like a cork.

I spat it out but knew that it was dead.

While in the library

I've been spending the last four hours of so working on my statements of purpose for grad school (by which I mean I've been getting only the pre-writing done). And I've been listening to this for almost the entire time:

Besides the trance caused by monotony and repetition, listening to this piece made me consider throwing caution in the wind and trying my hand at costume design.

But that really isn't who I am. Maybe ten years from now.

Leg of mutton

The next time someone tells me they like Victorian fashion, I'm bringing this out.

Image from the Chateau.

A fabulous nightmare

I hope that I see this exact thing on the day I get cosmetic liposuction to trick myself into loving my body. And of course I don't watch a promotional video until more than a year after it comes out. Lack of cable makes it difficult to keep up with pop culture.

Speaking of pop culture, I think it's funny that my dad watches True Blood and Dexter while I watch Mad Men. It just seems like we've got our demographics switched up.

Ants and spiders

This morning, while getting ready to take my shower, I saw a spider in the tub. I've never really understood why spiders crawl into tubs or sinks. They can't get out and they inevitably drown unless the user is feeling particularly merciful that day.

Anyways, the spider drowned as soon as I started my shower--I tried to get it out, but it didn't want to grab onto my plastic flower. At the end, I reached over to get the conditioner and the bottle fell right on top of the drain, upending a huge amount of hair and the dead spider.

I left it alone and went on with my morning, figuring I'd deal with the cleaning some other time. Later that night, I noticed a huge number of ants on the rim of the tub. After killing them with Raid, I looked into the tub.

The spider had disappeared, but there were a few of its legs here and there.

I suppose that this could be karma. I prefer to think of it as more proof that nature is ugly and horrible.

Black Swan

I'm shallow enough to admit that my interest in this movie is mostly because of Rodarte's hand in designing the costumes. Sort of like how I'm desperately searching for Le silence est d'or because, well, Victorian costumes designed by Christian Dior himself.

Can't get away / Tarots of our lives part the second

This morning, I fell asleep at 2AM and woke up at 7AM. Thinking I could go back to sleep, I went onto the computer to check some stuff. Two hours later and I was wide awake. I decided to put some music on and plugged in my earbuds. But then the strangest thing happened. I could hear someone saying my name. I assumed it wasn't for me and went on my merry way.

I heard my name again. I wondered if it was my roommate. I looked outside the windows; not seeing anything, I went back upstairs.

About a half hour later I went down to get breakfast. I could still hear the calling.

Looking outside, I saw an old neighbor from my previous apartment.

It really is a small world (town), isn't it? I had thought I had left everything from the old place, terrible, dirty kitchen and all.

And now for a sudden segue: the second part of my tarot thing. Continuing off of the previous post, here's another set of video game tarots, this time from Persona 2. Since there were about six years between the two games, that gave them enough time to revamp much of the art style and design, and this meant that they brought a very different style to their tarot cards. The heavy use of gold and black give the cards an appearance of shadow puppets bred with Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Images from rpgclassics.

Ah! Ich habe deinen Mund geküsst, Jochanaan

I can't believe someone made this video before I.

Last minutes

It's the day before school and I'm blasting through four days worth of backlogged webcomics and blogs via the library internet. This will be the last of my lazy summer days. I'll be entering my last year of college and will be applying to grad schools. I'll also be helping TA a class, an experience I've only had once way back in my last year of high school. I'll be one of several TAs, but I'm also, as far as I can tell, the only one not working towards a career in education. We'll see how that goes.

Dior Fall 2000 Couture

It's almost impossible for me to find anything about this show except for a few scattered images, reports, and one short clip. And it pains me so much because this show is almost made for me. Galliano took his inspiration from Freud, Jung, fetishism, and sadomasochism, the clothes reflecting the sexual secrets, fantasies, and childhood nightmares of an Edwardian, probably Austrian, family.

Some lovely images here and there.

The Rejected

I haven't done any Mad Men posts because there really isn't anything I can say that no one else has. So have some pictures with pithy comments.

Somehow, right from the get-go, I knew Joyce would be crushing on Peggy Sappho-style. I think it's the hair and the eyebrows and the suit and the styling; all of it screams lesbian.

Dorothy is my new favorite secretary-who-appears-for-one-episode. It's the hair. Maybe she'll come back? Why not? I barely remember any of Allison's scenes before season four, and she got her own mini-arc, which seems to have come to an unhappy conclusion in this episode.

Ceiling Peggy is watching you destroy your life.

MW

Osamu Tezuka. You generally associate him with Astro Boy and, less frequently, Kimba the White Lion. So it often comes as a surprise to find out that he did more than kid-friendly fare (I got that experience when I was a teenager and picked up one of his more dramatic works titled Adolf; it's about Nazis).

MW pretty much sounds like the prototype for Naoki Urusawa's Monster: pretty boy sociopath strings along an idealistic man, only MW has more gay sex. And women getting killed through poison-injected orgasms.

The real reason for this post: I was flipping through a copy and saw a pastiche of Aubrey Beardsley's art (well, pastiche would imply that he didn't nearly completely copy the images). And since Aubrey Beardsley is one of my favorite artists, I knew I had to do a post.

I think it's more than a little depressing that I can name most of the works referenced except one. From left to right, up to down: panel border from Le Morte d'Arthur and curtains from The Rape of the Lock, the ambassadors from The Lysistrata, Salome and Iokanaan's head from Salome/J'ai baisé ta bouche, Iokanaan, an illustration I can't place, probably from Bon Mots or Lucian's A True History, and finally the famous Peacock Skirt from Salome.

The things we pass

Today I visited my grandparents.

When I was young, I used to spend a week out of the summer at my grandparents (back then, I wasn't nearly as easily distracted as I am now, so I could handle spending a week without internet and decent television). There used to be a boy who lived way down the hall. For whatever reason, we became friends and he helped me pass the time.

I thought he was super cool, especially since he had a SNES, a magical console I didn't have that had all sorts of magical, legendary games on it. We'd (sit and I'd watch him) play Ghosts 'n Goblins, the game that solidified my fear of haunted houses and my hatred of games that require reflexes.

I remember that we'd hang out a few more times afterwards, but I eventually stopped going to my grandparents' every summer and we never saw or talked to each other again.

I wonder how many experiences like that we have; meeting people, forming brief connections, and then parting, neither harmed nor enriched by the experience.

"I'm just one stomach flu away from my goal weight."

Just got back from LA. I visited a few museums and hope to post some of my shitty, low quality, awkwardly angled pictures later. But for now, let's chronicle my favorite part of the trip: my inability to eat.

On the first day, I should have known what was going to happen. The uncle I was staying with wanted to treat me to homemade sushi and I, in my cravings for cuisine of the Far East, was very excited and ate much sushi and sashimi. This was a mistake.

The next morning it felt like someone had sewn a baby into my belly.

We had been invited to dim sum at the horrible early hours of 8AM. Wanting to get at least some food in, I had a few dumplings. This was another mistake.

By the end of the second day I decided I would only eat a little bit and would avoid as much rice and rice-products as possible under the assumption that my stomach problems were caused by the rice part of the sushi.

By the third day I was feeling pretty constipated. No amount of eating as little as possible and drinking lots of water was helping me. But by some miracle, I became well again on the fourth and penultimate day.

Thinking about it now, I wonder if my stomach problems weren't caused by LA pollution. The Bay Area has generally good weather and air, and several years of living in Northern California, with its trees and close proximity to the ocean, has probably cleaned at least some of my system. I wouldn't be surprised if LA's smog was the cause of this. I hate almost everything else about LA, anyways; why not add the air to my list?

I said I became well near the end of our trip, but that's not quite true. My stomach stopped hurting so much, but my appetite hadn't quite returned. In fact, it still hasn't fully recovered.For now, I'm going to look on the bright side. If this means that I can be satisfied by eating kids' sized meals, maybe I'll slim down a bit.

And really, nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.

So...

...is it a bad thing that I now really want to see Burlesque?

Hurricane Venus

Caution: song may cause spontaneous dancing and autotune poisoning.

Tarots of our lives

I've had this post in my mind for some time, but I don't have much to say about tarot cards, so let's just skip to the pretty.

This first set includes a few images of the Persona 3 tarot. Something about the bold, primary colors, lack of shading, and stylisation gives the cards a distinctly 21st century pop feel, but they're not exactly minimalist; the faces on the heavenly body cards (Star, Moon, and Sun) look like they'd fit right into a medieval picture.







High res images from Alexander Kuzimski.

Fan Bingbing

I look like shit when I fall asleep. Clearly, I need personal trainers, the right set of genes, and photoshop.

Picture from cfensi.

Miuccia Prada and the Mulleavy Sisters

I think of these ladies as my heroes and icons (as creepy as that sounds). The Mulleavy sisters, the founders of the Rodarte fashion brand, are both graduates of UC Berkeley. Kate studied art history and Laura studied English literature.

Sometimes I wish I could be like them. They studied artsy stuff (like I am) and they started a successful and quickly growing fashion company (I'd rather go into costuming, but the similarities are there).

But then I remember that I don't have creative talent.

Miuccia Prada I have grown fond of because she's just a little weird. She took over the company in 1979, has a degree in political science, apparently studied to be a mime, was a former member of the Communist Party (according to her, every rich young person back then was), kinda feminist (I'm not quite sure what's going on here, but let's bring this conversation back from the brink of politicking), and, of course, designs for a high fashion company.

But the main reason I like her so much is the way she views sexuality. Prada "has an eye for the perverse. Her work is about inversion and parody, making otherwise dowdy garments desirable, while simultaneously taking the sex out of sexy." One needs only to look at her Fall 2008 collection: what ought to be little-girl fare becomes severe, funereal, church-like sexiness. Fetishistic chastity. Decadent virginity, if you will.

And I'm all about the teasing and not about the pleasing.

When the World was Young

Snatched from the Chateau. Absolutely beautiful.

Shirts

Oh balls. I bought a bunch of shirts and, because I momentarily forgot how fat I am, they're a size smaller than what I should wear.

I guess I'll be burning some eyeballs when I try them on.

Shiina Ringo x Saito Neko - Gamble

Pretty damn awesome. I prefer the remix for Sakuran, but that movie never had an official soundtrack. Woeface.

Queen

I should probably do something about the fact that my favorite type of music is the kind that slowly kills brain cells.

Today I went to the San Jose Museum of Art

See title.

There were a few pieces I was greatly enamored with. First, this very cute stop-motion clip titled "A Wolf Loves Pork."



Next up the Listening Post. The video doesn't do justice to the installation: the entire room echoes with the nonsensical voices, and entire separate bits of posts move across each monitor, making it almost impossible to follow a single one.



Then there were the paintings. These next two were by Sandow Birk, and the computer quality is pretty shitty. These paintings are so much bigger and more impressive in person, especially Purgatorio. The last one is Painting #3 from Themes for the Fin de Siecle, meant to accompany a text written in 1940. The beautiful iron gate works well with the foreboding atmosphere of the piece. In person, it's very glossy, almost like a book cover. Beauty in fear and war. I like.

Suspiria

Today, I watched Suspiria, one of the most weirder movies I've seen.

Made in 1977 by Dario Argento, Suspiria takes place at a dance academy. Suzy Bannion, a new student, arrives the same night another student is murdered. As she stays, she is not comforted by the unusual staff, her sudden fatigue, or the continuing murders. When she discovers the school's past as a place of witchcraft, she decides to uncover the mystery behind the school.

Sound familiar? I'm pretty sure Suspiria was at least partial inspiration for The Woods.

Suspiria is an interesting film. The story is rather weak (actually rather fairy tale-like, which makes sense as Snow White was one of Argento's inspirations; given that understanding, the somewhat simplistic story becomes easier to accept) and for a horror film, there is never really any fear or terror. Suspiria is an experience, a beautiful and unusual vision. It won't make much sense, but it stays with you.

And now for the real reason I watched the film: the sets. I need that office like oxygen.

Ape - A Poem by Russel Edson

Something about this poem seems like it would lend itself well to an ecofeminist critique (Is there a vegan-centered school of literary criticism? I feel like the should be.) But I just like it because it's kind of gross, perversely funny, and has a very weird view of sexuality. Sort of like me.

You haven't finished your ape, said mother to father,
who had monkey hair and blood on his whiskers.

I've had enough monkey, cried father.

You didn't eat the hands, and I went to all the
trouble to make onion rings for its fingers, said mother.

I'll just nibble on its forehead, and then I've had enough,
said father.

I stuffed its nose with garlic, just like you like it, said
mother.

Why don't you have the butcher cut these apes up? You lay
the whole thing on the table every night; the same fractured
skull, the same singed fur; like someone who died horribly. These
aren't dinners, these are post-mortem dissections.

Try a piece of its gum, I've stuffed its mouth with bread,
said mother.

Ugh, it looks like a mouth full of vomit. How can I bite into
its cheek with bread spilling out of its mouth? cried father.

Break one of the ears off, they're so crispy, said mother.

I wish to hell you'd put underpants on these apes; even a
jockstrap, screamed father.

Father, how dare you insinuate that I see the ape as anything
more thn simple meat, screamed mother.

Well what's with this ribbon tied in a bow on its privates?
screamed father.

Are you saying that I am in love with this vicious creature?
That I would submit my female opening to this brute? That after
we had love on the kitchen floor I would put him in the oven, after
breaking his head with a frying pan; and then serve him to my husband,
that my husband might eat the evidence of my infidelity . . . ?

I'm just saying that I'm damn sick of ape every night,
cried father.

Marcus Behmer's Salome

For a while now I've been a fan of Aubrey Beardsley, and that developed into a liking of Salome, probably his most famous set of illustrations. So of course I end up devouring as much Salome-related artwork as possible. Imagine my delight when I happened across a set of illustrations for a 1903 German translation of Wilde's play. The artwork clearly is inspired by Beardsley's work, but where Beardsley's art was positively dripping in Orientalism, Behmer's illustrations are indebted to Germanic folklore.












Images from Re-(en)visioning Salome: The Salomes of Hedwig Lachmann, Marcus Behmer, and Richard Strauss by Norma Chapple.