and so?

I'd suck a cock for you
If you asked me to
I'd do that for you
and won't even need
to know why

I know you'd have a reason
for me to go testicle-teasin'
Though if there is no reason
For this different birds n' beesin'
If you just find it pleasin'
i'm your guy

Whatever hurt you need me to know
Whatever party you want to throw
Half the world could be disgusted
Half might say - and so?

Maybe you want two husbands and a wife
Maybe you just dream of a life
where everyone will say
and so?

smouldering

I came to this Gulf of Mexico island ten months ago, with smoke wafting out of my ears.
Figurative smoke, anyway.
Wounded. Bloodied. Raw. After a journey of several years that had left most of my emotional defenses disabled, i'd become so sensitive to all the fear, loneliness, and aggression in the world around us, that normal exposure to those things left me sickened in my stomach. I'd grown so accustomed to that feeling, that i couldn't doubt i was on my way to ulcers and worse. I had also become an occasional insomniac who almost never slept straight through the night (as had always been my habit previously).
The reasons for all this were spiritual, with a side of writerly dedication. I wanted to experience emotions more directly. We all carry a mind-bogglingly complex construction inside us called "self-identity". We're perpetually creating this construct every day, and through it we process ALL our cognitive inputs. Most of our emotional/intellectual responses feel natural or unconscious - this is because we've spent a lifetime training ourself in how "we" feel and think about everything.
So i wished to deconstruct my own identity, to better understand myself and others. Whether i actually succeeded, or just engaged in an enormous intellectual conceit, is perhaps neither here nor there. Focus determines reality, and mine became extremely attuned to the inner life of everyone around me, including my own.
The result? I willingly walked right into mild clinical depression.
People in this society exist in an ongoing state of isolation and misery, made livable only by powerful coping mechanisms. Hardly a revelation...but perhaps you think life's not so bad? That might be because you've spent your life subconsciously maintaining intricate rationalizations, or engaging in perpetual escapist behavior (or both, maybe). Like all animals, we have the ability to endure the seemingly unendurable. Nothing is more powerful than the compulsion to survive. There are single mothers out there working 100-hour weeks, with no sex life or similar release at all...yet most of them somehow endure!
Becoming more attuned to my own pains and joys, i can tell you that highly self-aware, unbuffered loneliness (combined with the touch-deprivation endemic to this society) is the most crippling feeling i've ever known. This is not how humans are meant to live...yet i know that what i'm tapping into is just the state we're all in, minus a few layers of denial or drugs.
So i came to...this island! For healing. Partly in pursuit of a truer friendship than i'd ever known, and partly because tropical warmth and water had always been purely joyful to me.
How's it all turning out?
The friendship part has been a disaster. The warmth/water part, a slow salvation. I haven't been consciously aware of my stomach hurting, for many months. My insomnia is gone, and i sometimes sleep through the night. Helping this process is the fact that an atypically large bankroll (for me, that is) has taken away any need to work. I've worked some, but mostly just helping others, and largely on my own schedule. I can't recall whether i even have an alarm clock.
I've been more of a hermit than i might have wanted, but perhaps in some ways that's helped, not hurt (though i know the deepest healing can only come through being loved). I'm occasionally reminded that my depression isn't gone, the most obvious manifestation of which is anti-social tendencies. I still also occasionally feel depression's inertia - i took a nap the other day, and when i awoke i just wanted to not move. And i understand now better than ever, one particular drug that humans in repressed pain turn to - food (particularly the kind that really bang on the brain's pleasure centers: fats, salt, and sweets). Once or twice, i have put a HURTING on a bag of chips in one sitting. Once or twice, i've felt like i was returning to my youth, when good, white-bread folk had sugary sweets as a part of every dinner(!) For a human in distress, food is the cheapest, most non-stigmatized drug there is...so what does it say about America that we're the fattest country in the world?
As good as i've become at understanding (and trying to fulfill) my psychological needs, there is still an unhealthy streak of protestant work ethic in me. Some well-indoctrinated rat-racer might want to scream that i'm doing nothing, but my life is often humorously reminiscent of the Hugh Grant character in ABOUT A BOY - days broken down into time units (60 units of music, 60 units of reading, 60 units of beach yogasthenics/swimming, 150 units of eating, 180 units of masturbation...just kidding, it's often only 120). Aside from the fact that i myself don't consciously think of time in terms of units, the parallel holds up. And of course much of my time, often hours a day, is devoted to writing. But the point is that even in my devotion to healthy leisure, i'm almost always moving from one activity to the next. I rarely experience stillness with no sense of forward momentum...a stillness i need to open myself to more.
And it's funny too, how so many of our attitudes, even "scientific" ones, are based upon assumptions that have no basis in reality. For example, the inertia that psychologists ascribe to depression...how much of that is simply the desire to escape from a modern life that's staggeringly unnatural? People are depressed after years of doing the same thing forty hours a week? Be amazed that more of us aren't just killing ourselves outright (though those numbers certainly are trending up). Current science shows that the natural state of humans, for around 99% of our history (before we became hunter/farmers), was a life of 2-3 hours work each day. The rest of the time? Farting around, presumably. The notion that humanity's lot improved after the agricultural revolution, is the second-greatest mistunderstanding ever (after that monogamy thing). Seen in that light, clinical inertia should be the assumed state for any homo sapiens attempting a forty-hour workweek.
Anyway...
It's beautiful here.
Feel free to join me.
Take that any way you wish.

commodified

Nine months before you were born
you was commodified
Daddy, Mommy, Gram and Gramps too
didn't measure what was in it for you

Every friend who let you in
you was commodified
Calculating how it would appear
having you close, having you near

Each lover who made you sigh
you was commodified
Ever looking you over to see
"What's in this for me?"

Once you figured out the game
('round the age of two)
The world gained one more
commodifier - guess who?

But the worst day you ever knew
your whole barbaric life through
came the day you bought the depravity
The day you commodifed YOU

seeds

Why aren't you published?
Chasing a golden ring
Covering your ass
Didn't we teach you a thing?

I'm after bigger ass than you know
It's not ME i'm here to sow
It's not about greed
Not about deeds
We're here to spread seeds
Fruits, flowers, and seeds
What this world needs
Fruits, flowers, and seeds

free hugs?

Want some truth?
It don't come free
Need some justice?
A hefty legal fee
Even freedom don't come free
Not free

Happiness, happiness!
Don't come free
Rich folk are happy!
(well, more than you and me)
Happiness dropping from a tree?
Not free

Peace of mind, contentment
Nowhere do we see
Yes, those folks are laughing
in that lap of luxury
Laughing but afraid of we
Not free

How 'bout sex? How 'bout love?
Got some M-O-N-E-E?
Or pay in sweat and stress and tears
Lose your health and lose your years
Give it away, they'll crucify thee
Not free

Dogs, babies, and tycoons
Mostly get love for free
But tycoons are used, babies abused
Dogs put to S-L-E-E-P
Misery begatting misery
That's free!

"Supergirl"

-directed by Jeannot Sczwarc
1984
Welcome to the movie that was born to be tortured. Purely in self-defense, that is - if you don't torture it, it will do far worse to you. In a minute, i'm going to try to lay the plot on you in a single sentence, and there's a good chance you'll think i'm making it up. If you managed to live through the 80s without seeing it, you should either cherish your ignorance forever, or watch it with a group of friends whose sense of mockery is keen. Alone, you'll be capable only of muttering "why..." or "how...", unable to believe that there was any semblance of intelligent intent, or that it was connected in any way to the Christopher Reeve franchise (though admittedly, i haven't seen 3 or 4). Yet the irrefutable evidence will be staring you in the face - Marc McClure (SUPERMAN 1-4, BACK TO THE FUTURE 1&3) as Jimmy Olsen. SUPERMAN was admittedly no MY DINNER WITH ANDRE, but you'll be unable to reconcile the obvious fact that SUPERGIRL was intended for adults (or teens, at least). Vaccaro's presence can ONLY be accounted for by Dunaway's insistence that she have a friend on-set for all those long days of shooting. Perhaps the greatest mystery of all is how the film lost only twenty million dollars.
Okay, here goes (innnnnnnnnnhale)! A kryptonian city survives in an alternate dimension, powered by a spinning ball which Peter O'Toole (LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, VENUS) loses, forcing Helen Slater (CITY SLICKERS, THE LEGEND OF BILLIE JEAN) to leave her mother Mia Farrow (ROSEMARY'S BABY, HANNAH AND HER SISTERS) and chase it into our dimension where it lands on Earth and gets picked up by Faye Dunaway (BONNIE AND CLYDE, NETWORK), a second-rate con artist who drives a Cadillac and lives in an abandoned amusement park with socialite Brenda Vaccaro (MIDNIGHT COWBOY) and warlock Peter Cook (BEYOND THE FRINGE, THE PRINCESS BRIDE), who realizes her plans for world domination can finally be achieved, and sets to work doing so by putting a love spell on a hunky gardener, while Helen becomes Supergirl and enrolls at a girls' school where she has a shower, then the gardener sees Helen first, then Jimmy Olsen visits her roommate Lucy Lane (never mind that she's sixteen), but their face-sucking is interrupted by the invisible demons and construction equipment Faye sends to get the hunky gardener back and destroy Supergirl, who are sucking face on a beach even though her home city is about to be destroyed, then she's thrown into a dimension where she loses her powers and Peter (O'Toole, not Cook) is waiting to die, never mind that he knows how to get out, then Helen pops back onto Earth, where Faye sends more demons, who turn on their master and everybody goes home!
Phew. And the dvd actually has a director commentary track...with a historian too, to provide, um...lots of perspective, one would hope.

"Space Rangers"

1993-1994
Space-action eye candy that didn't aspire to be more. Second-rate, but with enough charm and potential to make its first-season cancellation a shame. It follows the adventures of a starship crew of Rangers on the fringes of the known galaxy, where resources are stretched thin. Jeff Kaake (VIPER) plays the cranky captain with a heart of gold. Marjorie Monaghan (BABYLON 5) is the tough-as-nails pilot. Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (LICENCE TO KILL) is the non-human enforcer/pilgrim who uses a collar to dampen his aggression. Clint Howard (THE JUNGLE BOOK, APOLLO 13) is the clumsy base doctor. Linda Hunt (DUNE, KINDERGARTEN COP) is the base commander who takes the heat for her overeager rangers. The only indelible episode is "To Be...Or Not to Be", starring Buddy Hackett(!) as a down-on-his-luck comedian who crash lands on a prison planet.

"The BUST Guide to the New Girl Order"

-edited by marcelle karp & debbie stoller
1999
Bust is a girl-power feminist magazine, born in the early 90s and still going strong. It's mostly wonderful! Even though third-wave feminism itself isn't as brainy and empowered as the waves that came before, its best thinkers give cause for hope and pride. Bust happily outs female outlets like Cosmo, Glamour, and the Lifetime Channel, as idiot's paradises (but also gives permission for any woman to occasionally indulge, as a guilty pleasure). The articles in this anthology may leave you laughing or fist-raising. A few might make you sad, as you realize how trapped and unevolved even many of the smartest women still are, when it comes to sex and romance. The subtext in those articles feels like nothing so much as "I'm so damaged i don't know up from down...it's all so horrible i don't even have the first clue as to WHY all this happened, WHAT i actually need from life, and HOW i might begin to find it." The worst example is "Don'ts for Boys" - it starts off feeling smart and honest, but soon descends into a depressing morass from which the obvious stupidity of Vogue would be a welcome release. But the far, far greater portion of the book is devoted to wonderful, smart articles on bodies, beauty, sex, men, childhood, motherhood, and celebrities. Has Bust changed me? Indeed. With corroborated testimony that the best cunnilingus may be coming from another species altogether (woman's best friend?), there may be some upcoming modifications in my technique. Get the book, get the magazine...for your friends, your children, your men, and yourself.

hide the kids...it's disney!!!

It's arguable that Disney deserves no attention - not even the (mostly) negative kind i'm about to bestow upon it. With moral failing this monumental, it's generally best to shut your mouth and walk away. The game-ender, of course, is misogyny. The Disney canon is so steeped in it, that shunning the entire mess is eminently justified (plus, anything about a princess or prince is almost inevitably a commercial for the privileged class). But...somehow, somehow, somehow Disney created THE JUNGLE BOOK - despite a couple flaws, one of the pinnacles of human achievement! If you wish to enrich a child for a lifetime, sit them down with Baloo, Louie, and the vultures. So in the spirit of overgenerous open-mindedness, i explored the oeuvre more fully, to answer the question, "Are there any (other) Disney animated films appropriate for young children?" I didn't watch every single one, mostly just those with cultural resonance. If i've missed any gems, let me know.
How did Walt (and Roy) do it? How did Disney become DISNEY - shrine to greed and serial gobbler of rival creative entities? All i know is this. If you want the adulation of millions (and therapy doesn't dissuade you), you'll be well on your way if you can figure out how to simultaneously piss off both fundamentalists and the intellectual elite.
Some notes on the following key..."beautyism" is equating ugliness with badness, and beauty with goodness. Beautyism often incorporates ageism (again, particularly for women). "Unnatural sexuality" is repressive sexual shame, or untruths about sexual nature (and there's no lie more pernicious than "happily ever after"). "Superstitious ignorance" is a slippery thing - greek gods or magic usually don't count, because our culture treats those as fantasy. "Animal abuse" includes the obvious, plus ingestion/enslavement. Nor is the appearance of one of these elements necessarily a prohibitive thing, if shown in an honest and instructive way, like the animal abuse in LILO or BAMBI. I don't always list every single negative element; sometimes when one or two things are particularly grievous, that's all that need be mentioned (plus, no self-respecting writer could resist the low-hanging, fruity wordplay that extra letters might have messed up).
KEY
S - sexism
R - racism
C - classism
B - beautyism
A - animal abuse
D - recreational drugs
V - gratuitous or glamorous violence
I - superstitious ignorance
U - unnatural sexuality
W - it's a white, white world
M - it's a man's, man's world
italics = inappropriate for young children

SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS - S,I,U,W,A,R
Is this film the reason why generations of men and women have been incapable of having a functional romance? And why men have felt entitled to sit on their asses while women work? Nope - it just seems that way. Adults should watch this, for cultural understanding and one timeless song.
PINOCCHIO - M,I
The message? "Be good for the sake of reward, not for the sake of being good."
FANTASIA - D,I,S,M
What, what, what to do with FANTASIA, a commercial flop that Walt might have been justified in believing was his masterpiece? It starts off soporifically, and the second act is a miasma of material inappropriate for any child, but i almost urge you to share the first act with children. Except...it's the only classic to feature ol' Mickey himself - the face of the franchise, and all the wrongdoing that represents.
DUMBO - R,U,A
Racist sequences (roustabouts and crows) spoil an otherwise charming effort.
BAMBI - A,C,U
One wants very much to celebrate the bejeezus out of this one, as it's arguably the most significant historical catalyst to the animal rights movement. Well done, Walt. But the fast and loose portrayal of sexuality, in either anthropomorphization or deer (half-siblings getting it on - shocking!) comes to a depressing head when the film teaches that boys must destroy other boys, with girls as the prize. Forest royalty? Noxious, too.
CINDERELLA - S,U,C
A film that inspired its own psychological complex. Ground zero for the blind, poopy journey of the worm at Disney's core.
ALICE IN WONDERLAND - W,A,D
Enchanting, if you don't mind a long hookah interlude, some egg/butter animal exploitation, and shades of beautyism. But pretty much enchanting. Share it with a mature, informed child you love.
PETER PAN - S,M,R,W
Woman, thou art catty and jealous! Plus the most appalling bit of native american racism ever?
LADY AND THE TRAMP - A,M,U
Bitches be from Venus! Studs from Mars. Sigh.
SLEEPING BEAUTY - B,S,W,I,M
The absolute nadir of all things Disney - a woman literally lifeless without a man. Um...didn't we already go down this rabbit hellhole in SNOW WHITE? If her name were "Sleeping Average" or "Sleeping Ugly", would she still be asleep?
101 DALMATIANS - I,W,B,A,D
A schizophrenic swirl. On the one hand, children who watched this grew up to create PETA. On the other, Cruella De Vil epitomizes Disney misogyny. She's single! She's successful! She's...UGGGGGGGGGLY!
THE SWORD IN THE STONE - S,M,A,C,B,V,D,I,U,W
A Disney decafecta of infamy! What, they couldn't squeeze in a little racism? And by the way, Walt - squirrels? Not actually monogamous (nor humans, as it turns out).
THE JUNGLE BOOK - M,S,C
The pinnacle of Disney moviemaking, music, and magic. A lightning strike of writers, illustrators, and performers. When everything goes amazingly right, even an appalling ending becomes somehow perfect. Walt's last major work. How much healthier might western civilization be if they'd shuttered the studio for good? Ironically, that's exactly what might have happened had the film not been a hit. Talk about a faustian dilemma - you can have a world where all the Disney atrocities of the following decades never existed. The price? A mediocre JUNGLE BOOK. Hmm. Give me a minute...
THE ARISTOCATS - A,S,C,R,U,D
Phil Harris and Sterling Holloway (Baloo and Kaa) are back! A fine effort, but for gaping moral failings - one only need look at the title to realize something unfortunate is about to happen. And indeed, the violence inherent in a classist society is in full, horrific bloom. Curiously, in anthropomorphizing cats, Disney paints a picture of romance that is true to neither feline NOR human.
ROBIN HOOD - I,C,W,M
Stealing okay! End justifies means! Civil disobedience! Phew, heady stuff. It's a shame the film is dripping with classist and religious trappings.
THE MANY ADVENTURES OF WINNIE THE POOH - A,M
The anti-animal messages of Disney often come wrapped in a seemingly pro-animal package - beneath this wildlife love-in are casual consumptive exploitation, and a positive portrayal of mounting dead animal heads as trophies.
PETE'S DRAGON - D,U,M,B
I know, i know...no one places this in the Disney animated canon. Well, i do! For is the dragon Elliot not one of the most adorable animated characters ever? The fact that the rest of the film is live action, is neither here nor there. Plus, i have misty, sweet memories of this, as the only Disney film i saw in a theater as a child. More importantly though, this film is the overlooked, historic convergence of Disney and...Helen Reddy! Surely the presence of the "I am woman, hear me roar" songstress will shelve all the usual misogynistic nonsense, no? Well...no. One is hopeful for a bit, but...no.
THE RESCUERS - B,A,D,I
In the most unintentionally ironic Disney moment ever, the show opens with a female choir singing "Who Will Rescue Me?" Oy. Plus an arch-ugly villainess and a forlorn orphan girl being assured she's "pretty enough" to be adopted.
THE FOX AND THE HOUND - M,A,W,V
A hopeful parable for racial struggles, plus another bambiesque blow against hunters. If you don't mind a little violent mansworldism, share this one with a mature child.
THE BLACK CAULDRON - V,W,M
A surprisingly dark occult tale, of passing interest to Tolkien fans.
THE LITTLE MERMAID - S,C,U,M,B
Insipidly infuriating. You might want to hate this with every fiber of your being - and you should. If the Alan Menken songs weren't so infernally irresistible, might Disney finally have slid into oblivion? Share the soundtrack.
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST - W,A,M,B,I
Disney's anti-sexism baby steps, clothed in a self-defeating product. In trying to deliver a non-beautyist message, they trip over their own feet...ah, the enchantress isn't REALLY ugly, ah, Beast isn't REALLY ugly!
ALADDIN - R,V,M,S,C
The formulaic prototype for modern children's animated movies - visuals and story for kids, plus snarky jokes only adults will get. Am i the ONLY one who finds this approach patronizing? The only Disney film in which racism is integral, not merely incidental.
THE LION KING - S,C,U,M,I
I've never so hated any other film i'd never even seen, as the poster crystallized all that was unforgivably amiss in the Magic Kingdom. At the center is a male, heroically looking destiny in the eye. Off to the side and below, is a subservient female in awe of his amazingness. The first Disney film to consciously leave behind Walt's unspoken judeo-christian-muslim ethics. While this may be progress, reincarnation is hardly an improvement over resurrection...and with a heavenly shaft of light beaming down on a newly anointed "prince", it's arguably a regression. Plus, another hero gets it on with his half-sister - not unnatural, just amusing!
POCAHONTAS - V,A,I,M
A more human portrayal of a woman...yet why does the first montage of her frolicking in nature feel a little like, um...indian porn? Is it just me? Kudos for a non-patronizing view of native americans (better late than never). Yet the feel-good ending feels like a betrayal of history. And the "new" Disney spiritualism steps farther over the line than the old. Talking to trees, and having them respond? Okay, there might be some merit there. Using the power of "faith" to have two people unfamiliar with each other's language, suddenly able to converse perfectly...can that be good to teach children?
THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME - C,R,U,M,S,I,V
The first Disney to make religion its subject matter. Sexual repression, genocide, divine homicidal intervention...of course! Call the kiddies!
HERCULES - I,M,V
The first Disney based entirely on "mythology" (what religions become when people stop believing). A child is born divine, lives as a mortal, inspires the love of a fallen woman, dies, is resurrected, then returns to Earth. Sound familiar? Of course, it's Hercules! A cloak of mythology doesn't earn a "get out of superstitious ignorance" card.
MULAN - S,M,V,I
It takes about six minutes to hate this film with a passion. The flaw in showing a woman succeed in a man's world, is that you have to first teach children that the world belongs to men - save that dose of reality for older children. And gosh, if you gut it out longer than six minutes, you can hear a man disparage other men by calling them women!
TARZAN - W,U,M,V
Um...why is he the only ape wearing a loincloth? And how can it be a white, white world in...Africa??
FANTASIA 2000 - A,U,I
Really? I mean...really? A Noah's Ark sequence? No joke? Is this how far the carriers of the flame have strayed? As catastrophically flawed as Walt was, the core of his vision was about providing children with a gift of magic, in which no one would be left behind or made to feel unwelcome. All the vision needed was some tender tweaking. Instead, for each step forward, his inheritors always manage one step back and three to the side. The other sequences are charming. One even starts to hope that for once Disney got almost everything right. And then...a segment constructed to make 20 million non-jewish/christian american children squirm. To say nothing of the billion-plus alienated worldwide. Shame, Mr. Eisner. Your vanity shames us all.
THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE - I,C,B,M,S
Look! An ugly older woman hiking her skirt! The men are petrified! Oh, she's just getting a dagger...
ATLANTIS: THE LOST EMPIRE - M,V,S,A,D
Violence makes it inappropriate for children. Misogyny makes it inappropriate for anyone. A shame too, as it's the only Disney film to address America's capitalistic rape of the world.
LILO AND STITCH - I,A
A fantastic film spoiled by an appeal to an invisible, all-powerful being. Take that away, and the magic is more alive than you ever would have imagined it could be forty years post-Walt.
THE JUNGLE BOOK 2 - M
Given Disney's record, fans of the original are amply justified for avoiding this like the plague. Yet...come watch a minor miracle. It's good. On par with the original? Not within within a kazillion kilometers. But incontestably...good.
BROTHER BEAR - I
THE SWORD IN THE STONE showed us a child transformed into animals...through the magic of an amusing magician. Children understood it was fantasy. Here, a child is transformed into a bear, though...nature? God? Will this confuse a child's perception of reality? Maybe not - but that's an answer not nearly sufficient to the responsibility at hand.
THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG - D,U,M,B,I,C,A
Disney offers a love note...to itself! Everybody should want to be a princess, and everyone should wish upon that star. The first african-american Disney princess is notable for being...the first african-american Disney princess. A love note to the american dream, as the plucky, underprivileged heroine happily works two jobs (Of course! Nothing unromantic or unfair there! Leisure time? A social life? For fools!). And a love note to "happily ever after", of course. Sigh. Can you FEEL that love tonight?

(Much gratitude to Mark Pinsky's "The Gospel According to Disney", for inspiring and shaping this article. Pinsky's book is brilliant, not least of all for keeping the reader almost perpetually stumped as to the author's own biases. Not one writer in a thousand is so impartial, i suspect.)

unlearn

Our longings for love
Our desires to be free
Never will we find
No, never will we see

Til' we unlearn a question
Til' we recant our plea
Til' we forget how to ask
What's in it for me?