...erm...

One thing I've noticed, lately, is the phenomenon of white celebrities with East-Indian names. What the fuck is with this? Did their parents think this would be cute? Devendra Banhart, Uma Thurman, Radha Mitchell (whose full name, by the way, is Radha Rani Amber Indigo Anunda Mitchell) this is so offensive, and so potentially destructive it's not even funny. It seems like, wherever I go, everyone has some ass-backwards highly idiosyncratic take on India. Either you have white hipster types talking about how "super spiritual" it is, who wear kurtas, decorate their rooms with Krishna and Buddha statues or batik tapestries, and visit their fucking "gooroos", or, turning away from this in revulsion, people who lash out at India itself to get at these hipsters, making the country itself effectively the battleground for some intellectual proxy war between competing bands of hip urban whites. For example, Matt Cale, the in-house movie critic for the website ruthlessreviews.com, in a review of the Wes Anderson film The Darjeeling Limited once referred to Calcutta as "the world's largest open sewer". Matt Cale is sophisticated man who typically leans to the left, and so this was particularly jarring coming from him. Really, though, his beef wasn't with India, it was with the aforementioned vacant Western pop-Orientalists, desperately seeking meaning in their lives, who turn to India and other eastern
countries to find salvation in the exotic religions of these countries. Instead of saying that, though, he had to talk shit on India. I mean what did India ever do to him? What has India to do with the idiots who blindly embrace it or the bigoted cocksuckers who, just as blindly, shun it.

I mean are we all ready to throw in the towel with this whole cultural-relativism thing? Are we going to start measuring every society by the standards of the West? Has Matt Cale ever considered the fact that the filthy streets of Calcutta are almost identical to the streets of any post-colonial third world country and that maybe, both he and the orientalists he hates so much are more culpable, in a way, than the people who live in that "open sewer"? OF COURSE he fucking has! He's a well-read, educated person, so how the fuck dare he condemn India for the sins of a bunch of confused acid-burnouts and bohemian dipshits? And the worst part, is that there seems to be some mingling between these two categories of wretched fuckers. Recently, I saw hipster-orientalist swine Devendra Banhart's music video for his song "Carmencita", which takes-the-piss at Bollywood films and Indian religious serials, it reinforces all the most offensive religous and cultural stereotypes, and is, in short, Indian minstrelsy.

Even if "Devendra" was an actual Indian, which he's not, this shit would be unforgivably offensive. He'd be betraying his own culture and whoring it out to white audiences for cheap laughs. But as it stands, it's worse! It's fucking racist!

Who does this bastard think he is?

On another note, I see that, since the Democrats need an old-guard, salt-of-the-earth hero to rally behind (particularly one who's dead or dying) to compete with Republican Reagan-worship, that they've decided to suddenly canonize Ted Kennedy. I guess even dudes who let their mistresses drown to death deserve second chances.

Fuck!

...ugh...

So, it's nine a.m and I still haven't slept. Not because I can't, but because I don't want to. See, I don't know for a fact that I can't sleep because I haven't tried yet. Maybe, as soon as I hit the sheets I'll start to doze. Maybe not. As such, it would be inaccurate to say I can't sleep, more precise to say I haven't yet, and don't want to just now. But in either case, I must apologize in advance. I am writing this, again, because it seems to need updating, and not because I have anything to say. This, compounded with my lack of sleep may make for a really sucky piece, so be warned.

Instead of sleeping I watched two documentaries. One about Charles Bukowski, the other about the Bloods. Both Bukowski and the bloods are from Los Angeles. Also, the five men interviewed in the Blood movie seem like essentially good people molded into violent, hard bastards by circumstance. This is equally true of Bukowski.

I found out some interesting things today. First of all, one of rapper Li'l Wayne's favorite bands is Nirvana. Also I learned that Charles Bukowski hated Mickey Mouse, that character being, for him, representative of society's great effort to hide all horror and evil and violence under some artificial, expertly manicured facade. Disney depicted everything in their cartoons: hunger, violence, greed, war etc. but cute. And that sickened him.

I learned that hearing cute girls tell anecdotes about their butts can be very appealing, but I think I already knew this on some level. I learned that seventy-nine percent of people who visit the site Streetgangs.com (at least those who participated in the poll) think that Barack Obama is going to win in November.

I also learned that sometimes, even when you think you can tell a set of twins apart, one from the other, you really can't, and you'd better hope that that doesn't lead to anything awkward.

On another note, a strange thing happened to me at work today. There's this blonde woman who always comes in with a bunch of her friends. She has a really awful facelift and gives off trophy-wifeish vibes, and she's really loud and eccentric and it's hard to deal with because she's friendly and irreverent, but somehow gives the impression that if you take any liberties with her, she might blow her stack and endanger your job. Anyhow, she comes out of a theatre while I'm sweeping up and tells me it's freezing in there, and asks could I put the heat on or turn the air conditioning off? I say sure, and she says

"good cuz, it's so cold in there. See?" and she grabs my wrist. I think maybe she wants me to feel her hands, which would be forward enough, but she bends down and touches my wrist with her nose.

Weird huh? I mean, it didn't bother me. Hey, her nose was cold, she had a reason to be upset, I'll certainly give her that. I wonder if she has any idea that this behavior could be construed as weird, or offensive. I wonder if this was some sort of come on?

I'll let you people mull that over.

...huh...

Well, I guess I screwed the pooch on that one. I really did intend to write a series of thoughtful pieces about my trip to India, little journal-like bits which would catalogue the emotional highlights of this trip and try to evoke, for the American reader, the complex experience of a young NRI as he tries to understand himself in the context of the ancient culture and complicated family he was born into.

This, of course, begs the question: "What American reader?" Who the fuck did I want to write all this for? Probably me. Also, I've been to India before. This was only one of many trips I've taken in the last ten years, so why did I expect this one to bear literary fruit? Well I dunno. In any case, maybe next time I go I'll write a fuckin' book.

My dad is listening to some weepy love song by Gordon Lightfoot. That kind of stuff always makes me a little maudlin. Gordon Lightfoot confuses me, he seems too talented to be so mediocre. Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.

I wonder if I should publish this post. It doesn't seem to be going anywhere, really, and I think I'm only writing it because I haven't updated in a while, and I stubbornly refuse to let go of this blog. The act of writing stuff down and throwing it up on the internet for all the world to see is really the kind of high narcissism which I find addictive. In the months I've had this thing, I don't think I've attracted a single foreign reader. At least judging by the comments, the only fools who've peeped the hectic steez on this rantpage have been people I know. Which is nice, because it means that I have some friends who care enough to check this thing from time to time and read what I write. But, and I'll own up to this, I think at bottom I'm really writing this to get laid. This shouldn't surprise anyone, really. I do lot's of stuff to get laid. Like shower, try to look okay, try to be reasonably functional, I mean, really, almost everything I do is done to either get play, stave off death or unhappiness, or both. This is most likely true of most people.

Okay, cool, so now I'm waxing philosophical. See you never know where these things will go when you start them.

Another quick thing about Lightfoot. I really like that song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald". Many people who know it, don't. It has been variously reamed out by the likes of Seinfeld and Dave Barry, but why? It's not a bad song, and anyway growling out "folk" songs with campy old-time pioneer and maritime imagery is kind of his gig, and so what? More power to him!

Anyhow, on a totally unrelated note, I've been hearing some rumbling to the effect that Barack Obama is too skinny to be President. Now, this could very well be true for all I know. I mean, we all know how much brute strength and sheer physical stamina is neccesary to adequately dispatch the duties of Commander in Chief. For example, when, inevitably, Barack Obama finds that his country needs him to defeat Lex Luthor and Fu Manchu in hand to hand combat or intercept an incoming ICBM in midair and pitch it into the sun, well, then we'll probably all wish we'd elected a more hale and hearty president like the septaugenarian John McCain.

But, yeah, I mean I don't really like Obama that much. I'll vote for him because I actively dislike the opposition, but I'm not a huge fan. I will say this, though: It seems like Obama has been the victim of more fierce mudslinging than I remember ever seeing. It would seem that Obama is a runty, elitist slum lord who hates America and the working man, has a black militant wife, attends a black supremacist church, and wants to piss all over the second amendment so that his friends in Hamas and the Weather Underground can come in and fuck us all up. Huh.

Well friends, I'm sure you're all tired of this bit by now, tune in next time when I'll piss and moan about my job, talk about pears, and try to tie both in with the kennedy assassination or something. Cheers!