EleCivil
-
Posts
838 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
1
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Blogs
Posts posted by EleCivil
-
-
Do me a favor though. When you teach, don't forget Whitman. He really is up your bloodstream.
Ah, I couldn't forget that. Heh. During student teaching, I got into the habit of throwing random poetry quotes into instruction. A lot of Shelley, Hughes, and Dickinson, but Whitman came up a few times.
"That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse....
But don't contribute it right now, because the announcements are on, and we won't be able to hear you."
-
I doubt it. You've always seemed too stable and your poetry is too good to be EMO.
That's because you didn't know me back in my Emo phase. EC circa sixteen? Scene'd up in the worst way. Funny thing is, that's when I thought I was straight. Haha.
Oh Great! Now you made me feel old, what are you talking about???
Heh - this is exactly why my friends know better than to start a conversation about punk subgenres when I'm nearby.
Don't mind me. Just rambling about my newly rekindled appreciation for The N.o.U. -
Any discussion of NoU inevitably comes to rest on their conceptual foundation: a relentlessly provocative (and entertaining) jumble of teenage rock & roll rebellion, leftist radicalism, anarchist punk polemics, and abstract intellectual rambling....In other words, real emo.
-
This thread inspired me to dust off all my old Nation of Ulysses CDs - "13-Point Plan to Destroy America" and "Plays Pretty For Baby." Maaan, "The Sound of Jazz to Come" and "Look Out! Soul is Back!" are both better than I remembered.
Maybe I've got some emo tendencies, after all.
Now, where'd I leave my Cap'n Jazz anthology...?
-
Serious Answer:
"Emo" started out as Emotional Hardcore - a subgenre/movement that began in the DC hardcore/punk scene in the mid-80's, really breaking out during 1985 ("Revolution Summer").
Rather than the generic "I'll kick your ass!", "Fuck the establishment!", "Go vegan/straight edge!", or, occasionally, "Go straightedge, establishment, or I'll kick your ass! Fuck, I'm hardcore!" lyrics that dominated the hardcore genre at the time, Emotional Hardcore dealt more with philosophical questioning of one's self, sometimes in highly abstract terms.
Musically, Emotional Hardcore retained the energy and intensity of hardcore/punk music, but was more experimental, with live performances sometimes becoming almost jazz-like improvisations and shifts between fast, punky chugga-chugga chords and jangly arpeggios, playing with a loud/soft contrast. Same with vocals - bands would switch between whispery spoken-word readings and throat-shredding screams. The screaming was sometimes so intense that the vocalists would burst into tears on stage as their throats gave out and their voices cracked (this led to the stereotype among traditional hardcore kids that emo fans are wusses that cry all the time).
Emotional Hardcore fans did not (and do not) wear makeup. They're typically dancing/moshing so violently that it would smudge into their eyes and blind them, which is a terrible condition to be in when one is surrounded by thrashing, fist-swinging, high-kicking hardcore kids. Traditional "emo" hairstyles include black, greasy "Mr. Spock" style hair and shaved heads with beards.
Contrary to popular belief, Emo has nothing at all to do with...
-Sappy acoustic love songs
-Wuss-rock
-MTV
-The radio
-Malls
-Obsessing over exes
-Self-mutilation
-Fallout Boy/My Chemical Romance/Dashboard Confessional
For some old-school emo, try listening to...
-Rites of Spring
-Moss Icon
-Nation of Ulysses
-Cap'n Jazz
-Embrace
For modern (but authentic) emo, try...
-The Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower
-Die, Emperor! Die!
-Circle Takes the Square
-Vincent Price's Orphan-Powered Death Machine
-Transistor Transistor
Pro-tip: Avoid like hell anything pretending to be "Emo" that is played on the radio or television. It's usually some form of generic pop-rock, dressed up by bloodsucking record execs to exploit a sub-culture that never wanted anything to do with money or fame. Also, it sounds like crap. Kind of like the stuff they call "punk."
For the record: I'm not emo. I listen to some, now and then (mostly Moss Icon and Circle Takes the Square), but I don't dress emo or associate with the scene.
....That said, all you really need to know is the indisputable truth that emo guys are hot as hell. To quote the gay hardcore band, Limp Wrist:
Bi-hawks and studs are really hot.Emo kids whine, but i'll give em a shot.
Tight-pants skinheads with bodies that stack.
This whole damn scene makes my eyes roll back.
(from the song "I Love Hardcore Boys, I Love Boys Hardcore")
-
Potential Kinetic
Built to specs then left to rest among
The Midwest?s rusted cars
I?ll be the brick that will reduce
The Glass City to down to shards
But stones just lie around
Unless they?re lent momentum
So I?m afraid I?ll need your hand
Before I can gain velocity
And change all this potential into
Violent kinetic energy
And smash the church, the state,
The pride, the hate,
The bosses, the cops,
The chains, the locks.
Until I?m thrown I?m left to languish
And my stony surface crumble
As I listen to the language
Of the revolution turn to mumbles.
And I call for compassion
While my own heart?s growing colder
Hear myself preach for community
While I turn my bleeding shoulders
On the game, on the streets, on the world.
A brick just sits until it?s hurled.
-
New Heels
?The road!? Oh, he moaned,
Tracing sidewalk cracks.
?Let me tell you something:
Rubber soles against the road
Is the only honesty left.
Pavement?s the only lover
Worth living for or with,
And damned if my heels
Ever stop kissing her
Blushing concrete cheeks.?
?But what about people??
I contested, ?Even Fearless Leaders
Can fall in love with something
More human than an ideal.?
?People,? He replied,
?Are the ones crowding the streets
With cars and bikes and SUVs.
People are what we walk to escape.
People are what kicked us to the curb
In the first place, don?t you remember??
?But surely, if people sent us here,?
I countered, ?They at least serve the cause,
Because without our lovely exile,
We?d be civilized, and lost.?
?People,? He said again,
?Built the roads, but don?t walk on them.
They spend hours in machines
That do nothing but help them avoid one another.
They blow their horns at us
When we take too long at a crossing
After we?ve been walking for ten hours
And they?ve been driving for ten minutes.?
?But the code!? I argued,
?The code states that we walk for them!?
?For them.? He said. ?From them.?
He extended his hands to his sides.
?And why am I defending myself to you?
New heels, you?re still civilized, besides.?
-
Grinnin' Bedlam
I?ll exist
On the lips of strangers,
Stragglers,
And fools.
I?ll persist
To refute any patterns spotted
Live outside the lines all dotted
Grinnin? bedlam
Smilin? delirium
Falling, laughing in the street
Gripping sides until I fall asleep
Grinnin? bedlam
My head?s its own asylum, see
Without a touch of crazy
I would prob?ly go insane
I will dance
To the songs inside my head
And I?ll still be off-beat
I can?t find
A way to coincide desire
For motion with the need
To get some rest.
Hard pressed
To find a way outside
The mazes in my mind
Constructed
Locked within
Black iron walls
Of preconceived notions
And accepted narratives
?Or, not.
-
It is probably our own personal rebellion against society, our own streak of civil disobedience (sorry EleCivil) that causes us to reject the institution, the idea of marriage as desirable, but it seems to us, in that state of revolt, that we prefer to love together without the overhead of having to seek to justify ourselves, our love for each other in any one else's eyes.
[...]
What we therefore, do see is the necessity for individuals to be able to choose the right to marry, or not, without either state being judged as right or wrong. That should be a primary requirement of any equal access to the state of marriage.
Hey, no apology necessary - feel free to attach my name to that statement. I'm with you. Getting the government involved in matters of love? They can't even get matters of money right, and money's not half as complicated!Of course, as a Discordian pope, I have the authority to marry, bury, and baptize in the Discordian non-tradition. Granted, the government won't recognize my authority, but then again, I don't recognize the government's authority, so it's only fair.
If anyone's in need of someone to officiate a Discordian wedding (same-sex, polyamorous, human-on-inanimate-object, or otherwise), let me know. Just...none of those one-man/one-woman weddings. That's been done to death.
-
A lot of fascinating posts in this thread. Trab, your story definitely strikes a nerve with me.
Well, I'd feel weird reading something like this and not responding, so here goes...
When I was a kid, my only hope - my only real, deep aspiration - was to die. I wasn't suicidal; I was religious. I had been taught from birth to believe three basic principles:
1 - Not only are there demons and evil spirits walking the Earth, out to hurt me, but all of mankind is desperately evil and is out to hurt me, as well.
2 - All activities on Earth - art, entertainment, work, being with friends/family - are only a temporary distraction, and are essentially meaningless.
3 - Life is suffering, but once I'm dead, I'll be happy forever. This is because I've been "chosen"/"saved", unlike the vast majority of mankind, which is evil and is nothing like me.
I never saw a demon or an evil spirit (though my Dad said that he had come under attack by them a few times, fighting them off by speaking The Lord's name). When I started school at age five, the other kids didn't seem evil to me. Still, I was convinced that they were just biding their time. I stayed away from them as best I could. I was terrified of the dark, and would refuse to enter a room unless the lights were on, for fear that a demon could be waiting inside to possess me. To cope, I carried a flashlight everywhere, even during the day, and if I had to venture out of the direct sight of my parents, I would sing hymns under my breath to scare off any demons that might be thinking about sneaking up on me. It also scared off other kids, which also made me feel better, because if they were scared by hymns, they must really be evil, after all. I wasn't like them.
As I grew older, I was still afraid of demons, but even more afraid of humans, especially in groups. Hymns no longer seemed to work for me - I was still afraid. It came to a head when I was around ten or eleven, when I began having panic attacks during church services. Of course, to me, these weren't "panic attacks" to me - they were "demon attacks." I would run into the church basement, the singing of the congregation swelling above me, and slam my head against walls and support pillars while calling out to God, trying to drive out the evil spirits that were oppressing me. Eventually, my Mom found out what I was doing, and after a few years of trying to "work through it," she said that I could stop going to church. I haven't been to a church service since then, and I have not since suffered from a panic attack.
I no longer believe in demons or spirits or gods. I still, however, have trouble thinking of myself as a human. I tend to look at people as strange, complex, terrifying, and beautiful, but above all else, foreign. Something to be studied and cared for, but I don't always understand how they work. I don't really understand what they expect from me, or what to expect from them. I used to find that very frustrating, but now I'm at a point where I can appreciate that confusion, that sense of chaos that creeps in when I'm around them.
Around age seventeen, I began to realize that I was gay, but honestly, that's mostly in theory. I don't know if I could ever truly love a person. I don't know if I can feel things that strongly. I just find it difficult to take people seriously. Ever. My first instinct, upon seeing someone expressing an emotion, is to think that they must be joking around or faking it. It always takes me a second to remember that, no, that's just what I do. That other people really do say things like "Happy birthday" and "I'll miss you" and "I love you" and such, and that a lot of them probably mean it. That they might not just be saying it to fit in and look normal. The only thing I really understand is laughter. It's too hard to fake it, convincingly. It's almost always genuine, and it's something that I can instantly recognize. And you don't have to take it seriously.
I used to hope to fit in with other people. I thought that maybe if I studied them enough, watched how they acted, I could stumble upon some kind of code that I had somehow missed, and act in accordance with that. I don't worry about that, anymore. I know the basics - how to respond when someone says "what's up?" (took me about 19 years to learn), how to properly talk on a phone (took me about 20 years to learn, but to be honest, it still shakes me), how NOT to act when someone appears to be upset (took me about 16 years to learn), etc. - so I can get by well enough to not draw attention. Otherwise, I'm weird as hell, and that's fine by me.
And I know that all of this might sound sort of angsty and depressing, but it's not. Not to me, anyway. I'm happy. I like where I am, I like who I am, and I like what I'm doing. Call me crazy ('cause I totally am, heh), but I think I'm the least depressed person I know.
-
That's kind of weird, unless you're writing first-person autobiographical, like James said, or doing some kind of meta-fiction thing where you're blurring the lines between fiction and reality.
I recall Steven King making some appearances in Steven King's Dark Tower series and interacting with some of his own characters, leading the character Steven King to start believing that he was some kind of god.
Claudio Sanchez, author of The Amory Wars, has stated several times that he seriously regrets naming his main character Claudio. Of course, he also did some meta-fiction stuff, in which he wrote about both Claudio The Writer and Claudio The Character, and how the negative experiences of The Writer in the real (fictional) world affected the way he wrote about the fictional fictional world of The Character. So he kind of wrote himself into the story twice.
Those are the only examples I can think of, and they both worked for me.
-
I must say that I cannot see how one can be impure with some of the topics.
Agreed. I found it kind of funny that you get the same amount of "impurity points" for, say, urinating off of a tall building as you do for screwing a giraffe. Even if you KNOW that there weren't any people down there, and, come on, the restroom was all the way down on the first floor, and...
I think I've said too much.
-
89.6%
Pure as the driven snow!
...but mostly because "Not yet, but now that you mention it..." doesn't count toward your score.
-
Come to think of it, this talk of lettuce-like veggies on pizza reminds me that I've tried both spinach and seaweed on pizza. Both are good, but the seaweed is better.
Of course, seaweed is good with anything.
-
It's a "no frickin' way" for me. Dude, I feel guilty when I swat mosquitoes - to quote another line from the book in my signature, "I apologize to bugs before I kill their asses."
I have no problem killing spiders, however.
So, I guess the answer would really be "I could kill someone in cold blood, but only Peter Parker." (I believe I've got an old blog post about that, actually...yeah, right here. Wow, apparently I've been blogging here for more than two years.)
-
Prior to going vegetarian, I'd always get anchovies on pizza.
Now, if I order a pizza, it's along the lines of:
Feta cheese
Banana peppers
Black olives
Ever notice that when the teen characters of the stories that we read are always eating pizza when it's their choice? Pizza has become an icon of food from America.Blame it on an entire generation being raised by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who taught us that pizza was the food of fun-loving, crime-fighting, sub-terrainian, genetically-altered surfer-dudes. I mean, come on - who wouldn't want to be like them?
(Donatello was my favorite. He studied science and hit people with sticks.)
-
Since the first season of The Simpsons was in 1987, Maggie's got to be at least 21. Perfectly legal. She's just a very short, clumsy, mute 21 year old with a severe case of jaundice. Granted, that's not really my "type", but, hey, who am I to judge?
The problem with this ruling is that it seems to depict fictional characters as "exploitable". This opens the door to applying the rule to written fiction. What's the difference between looking at a fictional underage character and reading about one? What about the case of fan-fiction, in which characters portrayed by underage actors (Harry Potter fan-fictionists, I'm looking in your direction) are described in sexual ways?
Also:
-
"You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair--the sense that you can never completely put on the page what's in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page."?To do a dull thing with style-now THAT'S what I call art.??An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.?"Always be a poet, even in prose."
-
Anyway, I really prefer resolution . I guess I want that 'fuzzy slippers' feeling when I'm done reading.
Me too. That made it tough to write the ending to this (and not just the ending, but the last couple chapters, because I knew what was going to happen). But one thing I wanted to do with this story was to completely tear up the fuzzy slippers - you know, set things up with a bunch of jokes and light-heartedness and some quick "cute" romance scenes...and then pull that rug out from under the readers and leave them feeling uncomfortable (I'll admit, though, the epilogue kind of softened the blow...I guess I'm just not ruthless enough, yet). Which is why...
Still, there's an old principle in fiction that says: if you show a loaded gun hidden in a drawer in chapter 1, that gun better go off by chapter 5 (or sooner). To me, the conflict with the parents is a dangling plot detail that needs to be resolved....I never let the gun go off. Conflict, especially in the form of a knock-down, drag-out fight, is comfortable. We understand it. Even if the hero loses the fight, we can say "Hey, but he tried!"
I didn't want that to happen. I wanted complete and total defeat. The kind of defeat that can only happen when someone's spirit is broken to the point that they don't see the point in fighting in the first place. The kind of defeat that comes from being raised to believe that your life's worth and your potential for happiness are completely at the mercy of another being, be it God or parents or lovers or subculture trendsetters or the scientists blasting you into space.
What are the options if there were a confrontation? Kid gets kicked out? Kid gets clamps put more firmly on him? Sent to one of those horrible reprogramming places? In a way taking the expected route limits your choices.One of my "alternate endings" that I was kicking around went that kind of route, but I decided against it. That kind of an ending would've left the character as some kind of a martyred saint, which isn't what I wanted. The kid had some serious issues, and getting into a relationship with his first almost-boyfriend wasn't going to solve them - in fact, it made his guilt and self-loathing a lot worse, until he finally decided that the pain of self-imposed isolation would be better than the pain of self-directed hatred.
Basically, love couldn't conquer all.
In the end, we all cared enough to comment and that's a substantial amount of praise....And that's why I love you guys. Group hug?
No?
All right. I'll be over here.
(Seriously, this kind of response is awesome. Considering I was setting out to write an ending that made people unhappy and uncomfortable, this doesn't feel like a "pile-on", this feels like a love-in. Heheh.)
I feel a continuation coming, the stage has been set. [...] Seriously though, I've read a few unhappy ending stories and a few stories that just ended. But this one needs completing.Gears are in motion...but these particular gears are slightly misaligned, so don't expect to see anything for quite some time.
-
Let me just clear this up: I am not, nor have I ever been, a member of the Pharmacist party.
Personally, I thought of "pharcist" as "farcist" (as in, one who acts with much farce), in which case it's a perfectly accurate way to describe me.
Seriously, though: No worries, Drewbie - I caught your meaning the first time around.
-
BTW, if you liked King's It, check out Dan Simmons' Summer of Night, which is ten times more intense. One of the most remarkable horror stories I've ever read. King's quote on the back cover says, "I am in awe of Dan Simmons," and he's right.
I read Summer of Night a couple years ago. I didn't really get into it, though. Probably because I'd just come off of my King phase, so I was kind of burnt out on the horror genre as a whole.
I liked most of Laika, but I'm still bummed that you didn't end the story with a climactic confrontation between the religious kid and his parents (and the almost-boyfriend), and I also felt the epilogue was unnecessary.Heh, yeah. To be honest, I wanted the climactic confrontation, too. I just couldn't see those characters doing it. Throughout the whole story, they'd spoken of the parents as a sort of force-of-nature. Whether that was true or not, they saw attempting to reason or fight against them as a lost cause.
Don't get me wrong: I loved much of Laika. I just felt it went 90% of the way, and then stopped abruptly and left me confused, with a lot of loose ends. There's some beautiful writing there, particularly the dialog, along with some quirky plot twists, which make it among the best stories on this site.
I have to agree. As I mentioned in a feedback message to EleCivil, the setting and dialogue are superior to many online stories I have read, better than the vast majority. It takes work and time to express properly the scenes in which a story lives and the words that make sense of it all.Hey, thanks again, Dabeagle. I tried to reply to your email, by the way, but it looks like it bounced - I got a message about our mail servers not agreeing with each other or something.
-
I gave up on King, EleCivil, after the end of The Dark Tower. big fan up until the last book, and I haven't read anything he's written since.
Same here. Except, I did read the Dark Tower: Gunslinger Born comic books. 'Cause, you know, I'm a nerd.
-
Hey, thanks, Dabeagle and Graeme! You made my day.
It's funny you should mention Steven King - I was reading TONS of King when I was writing Leaves and Lunatics. Strip out the supernatural aspects, and stories like IT, Low Men in Yellow Coats, and even chunks of Desperation are great coming-of-age stories, and definitely helped influence L&L.
Also, "whore-master" is one of my favorite swears of all time. Heh.
-
I've heard of cases like this - denial of care based on religious beliefs. I've usually seen it with regards to contraception and Plan B/the Morning After pill.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/Southwest/02/12...macy.firing.ap/
In this case, three pharmacists refused to fill a rape victim's prescription for the morning-after pill, believing that it would result in the termination of her pregnancy, which would go against their religious beliefs. According to this article, one of the pharmacists went to the back to pray and call his pastor before deciding whether or not to give the woman the medicine which her doctor had prescribed. They were fired, as this particular pharmacy's employee guidelines forbade withholding medicine for religious reasons.
This is fairly common at Catholic hospitals - 50% of them refuse to give rape victims the morning-after pill, some of them even refusing to tell the patients that the pill is an option. Based on their personal religious beliefs, these doctors are refusing to provide a legal service to people who have been recently victimized. Rather than allowing the victim to choose their course of action, these doctors enforce their own religious rules on their patients.
-
I remember reading something from a cultural anthropologist/bio-ethical/evolutionary philosopher about the idea of a universal morality.
The gist was that, in order for any society to survive past a few generations, certain standards had to be met, simply because, otherwise, they would die out. These standards became "morals". The three examples he gave were the following:
-Assumption of honesty, rather than constant paranoia. If everyone suspects everyone else of trying to cheat, steal, kill, or otherwise harm them, there would be no real interaction between people, meaning little to no reproduction. No interaction = no sex = no babies = no society.
-Prohibition of murder. Murder must be generally considered to be undesirable. Specifics can change, culturally - what's murder? Can I kill people from another country? Another tribe? Another town? What about putting criminals to death? - but overall, if it is considered completely permissible to off anybody who annoys you, the society's going to wipe itself out.
-Protection of the young. Simply enough, little kids and babies can't take care of themselves, so unless a society places importance on taking care of them, they're going to starve, wander into traffic, get carried off by wolves, etc. No babies = no future adults = no society.
His basic idea was that all long-lasting societies must adhere to at least these three moral views. Those that do not get wiped out. As such, most (if not all) modern cultures follow these basic moral guidelines (or, rather, evolutionary imperatives that have been mystified into moral guidelines).
Hey, no apology necessary - feel free to attach my name to that statement. I'm with you. Getting the government involved in matters of love? They can't even get matters of money right, and money's not half as complicated!
Scan to donate
EMO
in News & Views
Posted