AND ZEPPELINS BLOT OUT THE SUN

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

BLOGTEMPEST TEN: FAILURE

Blogtempest Two Thousand Nine started as a silent promise from Carmen to inner Carmen that he would have a blog post for each of March's 31 days, partly for himself but mostly for the betterment of the world at large, but it ended up as this pathetic, pile-up of suck. Like water shoes, failure is a tough pill to swallow. Luckily, due to a malfunctioning gag reflex, CP can't swallow pills. So instead he spends his post-fail sulk time considering how out of an infinitely expanding universe a cold rock found its improbable way into the gravitational pull of the tiny star that could and that rock churned with belts of cinder and molten rock for centuries until the fiery lashings cooled and hardened and absorbed the star's miracle rays and gave rise to the only functioning ecosphere in millions of light years in every way and the hollow, bottomless crevices of the world were filled with cool oceans that gushed with life and millions of years of unimaginable animals killing and doing mating dances with each other resulted in organisms so unfathomably complex that their processes laid the foundations for even more complex organisms to arise and kill each other and perform mating dances until a race of insane apes claimed hold of the once charred and ashen world and developed crude tools to fashion dwelling places and atonal instruments for their own petty amusements and then these hairy mammalians made quaint civilizations and bizarre mating rituals and this went on and on until the space rock was so chocked full of insane, mega-apes and crocodiles and computerized music devices that the super apes had nothing better to do but produce negative energies in relation to their failed blogging practices, completely ignoring the trillions upon trillions upon zillions of coincidences that resulted in their simple existence in a vacuum filled only with black, glacial nothing and how every lost second of their fleeting, decomposing being was such an unabated miracle in its own right that getting upset about almost anything is a veritable crotchshot to the thousand upon thousands of forgotten strangers that came together over the mammoth course of history to produce them, a drop kick to the universe at the center of all this and the endless universes locked inside every last blog-bemoaning person, and this isn't even considering non-bloggers. Let's Go Flyers.

Monday, March 30, 2009

BLOGTEMPEST NINE: UUUHHHHH MAYBE WANT

In less than 38 days, Carmen will return to the gilded shores of Funs River, NJ, and upon arrival he will genuflect at the concourse of the Ocean County Mall, reorganize his DVD collection, spend his Coconuts gift cards, and consume this perfect assortment of delectable, regional delicacies:

Breakfast:

1 Bacon, Egg, and Cheese on a Plain Bagel from Manhattan Bagel.

1 Chocolate Milk

Noontime Snack:

1-2 Packets of Tasty Kakes Peanut Butter Kandy Kakes

1 Red Solo Cup of Arizona Lemon Iced Tea

Lunch:

3-4 Slices of Buffalo Chicken Pizza from Tony's Pasta House

1 Cranberry-Raspberry Snapple

Dinner

1 Order Mozzarella Sticks from T.G.I.F. Friday's

1 Order Chicken Fingers with Honey Mustard Dipping Sauce

1 Sprite

Post-Dinner Intake

1 Wawa Submarine Sandwich with Turkey and Mayo

1 Arizona Raspberry Iced Tea (glass bottle)

Dead of Night Snack

1-2 Tony's Microwavable Pizza heated for two minutes in Carmen's very own childhood home microwave.

1 Red Solo Cup of Arizona Lemon Iced Tea

Then Carmen will ride the caloric waves of ecstasy into sweet, radiant dreams that unfurl like scrolls or regal rugs and stretch on and on forever.

Sunday, March 29, 2009

BLOGTEMPEST EIGHT: CATHARTIC SHOEGAZE GLACIERS FROM SATURN

Special Thanks to Josh Chertoff for bringing this by extension to Carmen's attention!

Saturday, March 28, 2009

BLOGTEMPEST SEVEN: NOW YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN YOUR HEART OF HEARTS AND YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO WEAR ON YOUR SLEEVE OF SLEEVES

Recent Audial Absorption on Carmen's Part:

1. The Passenger by Iggy Pop

2. In My Place by Coldplay

3. Same Lo' Road by Dredg

4. Fireworks by Animal Collective

5. Ashes to Ashes by David Bowie

6. The Past Recedes by John Frusciante

7. The Czar by Mastodon

8. Cinder & Smoke by Iron & Wine (Look at all those ampersands!)

9. Mistaken for Strangers by The National

10. Moonchild by M83

BLOGTEMPEST SIX: I AM NOT A GUN.

History's most underrated animated film, The Iron Giant, harkens back to simpler times, when a protagonist could be named Hogarth, and animated movies were actually animated, and hearing Vin Diesel's velveteen voice didn't make one's guidance systems fail. This film pretty much marked the end for hand-drawn features playing to any audience on the big or small screen, which gives CP an empty, staring into the abyss feeling. In retrospect, this makes the already incredible movie that much more endearing, like revisiting memories of this really awesome friend of yours that is pronounced dead because he/she's lost at sea but in your core of cores you know he/she is still out there and you're kind of reluctant to miss but you do just the same.

Set against the backdrop of the Cold War, TIG is as relevant as it ever was, touching on topics such as pacifism, sentience, sacrifice, militarism, anachronism, artistic expression, non-traditional familial schemas, laxatives, Maine, governmental failings, the soul's permanence, and how watching a giant robot blow things up is incredibly rewarding regardless of medium. As per most children's movies, there is some heady, complex stuff going on at all times. Does the Iron Giant assume a patriarchal or friendly relationship in regards to Hogarth? How do possible messianic implications affect this dynamic? Who names their kid Hogarth? Is the Iron Giant in fact a trope for human experience, thrust into a ferocious, chaotic world that works only to destroy what truly makes him human, with internal programs that work solely towards his own undoing, and it takes meeting a nuclear warhead head-on at the cusp of the Earth's atmosphere to achieve any sort of real happiness, freedom, peace both inner and outer, well, does it? Only you can and should decide.

This was also before Jennifer Aniston decided to relinquish any potential acting credibility (i.e. see anything post-The Good Girl), so there's that, too. Ted Hughes, who's children's book, The Iron Man, is the film's source material, heartily approved of movie, on top of directly contributing if not actually murdering Silvia Plath, although Carmen doesn't think Ted would do that no way. Ted Hughes has a really good poem called The Minotaur. It can be Googled.