Mortality Blog

It’s worth recognizing that Toby’s apartment and the HoytHouse are now each constant locations featured in my dreams (as The Apartment and The Hill House respectively) - that is, I have recurring dreams that take place in those environments. As with most of my dream locations, they’re only somewhat allegorically related to their real world counterparts.

In my dream last night, I’d already moved away from The Apartment. It’s a small, odly-laid-out space, the result of walling off some living area from the midst of the utilities and support infrastructure that take up the rest of the ground floor of the building. Above is a series of condos, which are accessible via stairwell and elevator - but if you walk past those in the lobby, and through a double doorway, you come to a long dingy hall. There are janitorial supplies and fuse boxes and various other things needed in the upkeep of the building… but there’s also a rickety stairway, built out of two-by-fours. It leads up to what could almost be the ‘one-and-a-halfth-floor’ - a dark collection of rooms that squeeze inbetween the air conditioning and plumbing and electrical lines and whatever else is up there.

And now I find myself in an interesting position - by merit of its relative obscurity, this little living space has become a secret hideout, a haunt, more or less. Technically, I’m squatting - I don’t pay any money for it anymore. When I lived there before, the landlord let me have it cheap, off the books, took money under the table for it - so when he died and a big real estate management company took over, no one really knew that I lived there. I mean, I’m sure people recognized me - I’d walked in alongside much richer looking people in the lobby plenty of times, giving them a friendly smile before walking off up the hall. I guess that they assumed I was part of the help, you know? And the actual ‘help’ probably either assumed the same thing, or didn’t even think to assume in the first place.

So my weird little apartment continued to open to my key, continued to power the refrigerator and the stove and the TV, continued to blow hot and cold air, but ceased to draw money from my account. Even though I now live at The Hill House, I still have The Apartment as a hidden hideaway. I was tempted to occasionally bring people there, but I wanted it to be my little secret. Only Ryan and Andrew, my current house mates, and Toby, my previous one, knew about it.

This was a lot of setup for the action of the dream, which featured three main parts. I headed downtown, parked in the building parking lot, and wandered in through the doors, expecting as usual that this time would be the time that they’d noticed, and that my key would no longer work. But it opened as easily as usual. I strolled through the lobby, around through the maintenance hall, up the stairs, and into The Apartment - I was planning to paint the stairs outside for some reason, in retrospect I’m not sure if it was smart, since keeping a low profile was what was keeping that space available to me. Anyway, I grabbed a drink out of the fridge, peeked out of the dingy curtains and watched the people walking by on the sidewalk (although the rooms were sort of on floor 1.5, as I said, somehow the windows came out at basement level on the sidewalk, so I could see people’s feet and shins as they walked past.)

I picked up the cans of paint I had left by the door, then went about my work, painting the steps bright red, the supporting beams blue, and adding white wherever I felt it was appropriate. Somehow in the midst of that I switched from the brush to just finger painting. And that’s when i came across the little stray cat that had hung around the building, and had occasionally followed me into the lobby and been let into my apartment before. It was dead, a little black cat, lying underneath the stairs. I wasn’t sure what to do… but I knew it needed to be buried, and there didn’t really seem to be any place appropriate around the outside of the building, since it was all urban highrises and stores and whatever - and there was no way I could get away with burying a dead cat in the grass on the sidewalk.

So I called up Andrew, and Matt Allen, both of whom agreed to come with me to my parents’ house  and bury the cat, although this necessitated letting the other Matt in on my secret abode.

… and that’s it. Here’s where I think all this came from. First off, I didn’t get enough sleep the night before, and I went to bed early, then woke up for some reason around 5:30 - so I was still in the midst of dreaming when I started waking up. Earlier in the day I’d seen both Andrew and Ryan, naturally, and Andrew had mentioned talking to Toby and Seth, both of whom I lived with in the real life apartment downtown. Matt Allen was playing XBOX Live, I noticed, as Andrew and his brother were doing some multiplayer Borderlands action earlier. The cat… ah, my aunt and uncle had a cat that just died. My parents’ house is my parents’ house, I don’t think it needs much of an excuse to make an appearance, although it’s worth nothing that it appeared exactly the same as in real life, as far as I remember, probably because conceptually it’s been insurmountably anchored in my mind as looking that way ever since I was born. Not sure where the paint came from.

Part one - the big basketball game. It lasts 3 days, and it’s in a big stadium/amphitheatre that I’ve seen in my dreams before - more like a theatre than a stadium, but somehow it worked. I was there with a bunch of friends who were actually interested in watching basketball - I was just along for fun. Somehow we didn’t get seats, though, and ended up having to just stand court-side, dodging foul balls and trying not to get run over by tall people. At night, we slept outside in tents - interesting parallel to the Sasquatch music festival. At night, while peeking out of my tent, I saw a couple of guys, brothers I assume, since they both looked sort of the same (indian features) arguing. One of them, the older one, kept asking the younger one to go get him some water. The younger one finally agreed, stipulating that it’d be one dollar. The older brother agreed - and I watched as the younger one slid out from their tent, walked over to a water spigot, and filled a glass. He hesitated for a second, then unzipped, and squirted a bit of piss into the water.

“On second thought, the first one is free,” he informed his brother.

I stopped watching at that point.

Part two - the gothic castle! After the weekend of basketball and camping, we were wrapping up by going to a friend’s costume party, in the top of their scary towering castle thing. I decided to be the king - robe, crown, et cetera. We were on our way there, up a winding mountain road, then looked down to the river below - where an ancient looking clock tower was being impossible transported up the river on a boat. The huge clocktower was so tall that it ought to have sank the boat right there - it was at least tall enough to brush the bottom of the bridges that criss-crossed the chasm. Those, at least, obeyed the laws of nature, and crumbled - so in effect, it was destroying the only way to leave. I knew that the clock tower was there for a dark purpose.

… but that’s it. So - basketball and sasquatch, pissing in water glasses, a costume party, and a very castlevania-esque setting. Those all sound like reasonable dream things, right? ha ha.

Apparently my dream-center wasn’t feeling like generating any new content last night - so it mashed up a bunch of old stuff.

I went to CMD, to either drop something off or pick something up, and noticed a big long table sitting outside, which people were beginning to set with food. I went in through the front doors of CMD, and although the decor and the people were the same, the layout was a lot more like another web agency (I forget what it was called) - there was no lobby or elevator, just a stairway going up to an overlooking second-floor, where all the people were currently in a meeting.

I snuck in like a cat, making no sound, only briefly knocking into something with my backpack - above me, someone (I think it was Jeremy) glanced down, noticed me, but grinned and nodded, and didn’t report me - he was on my side. After I did whatever I was there for (don’t remember what) I left. Outside, the parking lot was  like a weird combination of three places: the real CMD parking lot, the playground and field outside of Richmond Elementary (where I went to K-5th) and the Gorge Amphitheater - so a field, some pavement, a fence around the whole thing, except for an entire border made of a huge jagged canyon cliff.

For some reason I noticed that there were a bunch of fence peices in the dumpster - big red slats with points on top, nailed into two cross beams, with posts at either end. I was considering taking them for firewood, or maybe to give to my parents to use in their backyard, but I couldn’t seem to pull them out, and get them on my car. But I kept trying it - I suddenly realized it was dusk, and just starting to get dark.

Behind me, I heard a bunch of people shouting - I turned around, and saw fireworks going off, and a crowd of people gathered around the tables I’d seen earlier. I ran over, and found - ready for this? It was Harry Potter’s birthday party! None of his wizard friends were there - it was just him, a bunch of people more or less my age, and suddenly, I was there too. I don’t know if Harry knew who I was, or actually if he’d noticed that I was there, but I wasn’t told to leave or anything, so I just joined in, eating, talking to the random people around me, occasionally shouting “Happy Birthday” in chorus with my fellow party-goers.

Then, the party started to wrap up - the lights dimmed, people drifted away, and Harry sort of hooked up with a girl that was there - I was spying on them as he convinced her to let him give her a kiss, and I suspect they would’ve done more, except that it was a false ending to the party! The lights suddenly came back on, and dance music was pounding! Some skinny black guy in tight jeans and an open shirt bounded over, and pulled Harry into a little synchronized dance routine, which we all tried to copy. Yay! Dance Party!

… the end. (I had some other facet of this dream that involved an amusement park, which I think I’d dreamt about before, running around between the stalls, the rides, the tents and RVs where the staff lived while they were running it… but I barely remember it.)

Let’s think about what we’ve got here. CMD is where I used to work (and where I’ve been told I’m actually not allowed to b re-hired,) Richmond is my old elementary school, the Gorge Amphitheater in Washington is where I’ve gone for three years now to see the Sasquatch Music Festival. CMD is usually on my mind in some way or another, since I liked working there, and my two roommates (and lots of my friends) still work there. I’m not sure about Richmond, but last night I was looking at the list of acts I’d enjoyed at Sasquatch, so that’s where that’s from.

The big red fence slats that I wanted for my parents back yard were in fact the fence that used to be in their back yard - I remember it as a kid. It was rotting and falling apart. It got torn down, but my parents have been having trouble with the neighbors’ kids coming into their backyard and messing stuff up, so I wanted to put the fence back to stop that. Possibly the reason that I couldn’t get the fence to move is because I couldn’t when I was a kid either - it was too strong to break apart, and I know I played around with doing that back then.

I just had a birthday party, and I was just watching this thing about Harry Potter in a rap battle with Voldemort - see, there he is, and there’s the black guy, and there’s all the people who aren’t his wizard friends, but who like him nonetheless.

So it’s a bunch of random stuff that I had bouncing around in my head, and my brain was like, “I can make a cool remix out of this!” Iiiinteresting.

It’s been a while since I’ve updated this blog - not since sasquatch. I blame my facebook account, which has surplanted myspace as my most commonly visited website. In fact, my myspace is gone now - all that remains is about 20 pages of blog entries that I saved out.

So as I sit here, listening to “Hefty Fine” by the Bloodhound Gang (for the first time) and wonder why it’s somehow worse than “Hooray For Boobies,” I thought I’d take a moment to catch up on where I’m at. I mean, 23 - my well-known traveling plans for my quarter-life-crises looms nearer, but to be realistic, I kind of want to be in a certain place by the time I reach my 25th birthday: specifically, graduated, making good progress on paying off student loans, but otherwise out of debt. I want a full-time job, and I want to quit it in order to travel, more or less. I want to throw my electronics in storage, fix up my car, buy a decent laptop, and freelance from the road. But for now, I’m 23, I’m in debt, I’ve still got plenty of school left, and my job situation is tenuous. Good at the moment - but only for the moment. Next month could be bad as easily as good - I’m at the mercy of my ‘industry contacts’ who are of course at the mercy of their clients, and the economy.

So it’s August 11th, so late Monday night that it’s technically Tuesday morning. I’ve been working on a website for a local construction corporation, which has been going well, despite a few delays. I’m still living in The HoytHouse, which is a good place to live, although we don’t really see a lot of Ryan these days - I’m glad I get along well with everyone, though, as it seems that several friends have bad roomate horror stories to tell.

This is shaping up to be a long rambling “taking notes for my memoir” blog entry.

Anyway, I’ve got to admit, I’ve been having some interesting issues with sitting down and getting stuff done. It’s the same old odd sort of procrastination/aversion that I’ve experienced ever since I was a kid. It doesn’t feel like an inability to concentrate. It’s almost like a lack of… will, maybe? Typically, I stay awake until 5 or 6, when it’s getting light outside, regardless of what I’m doing the next day. As a result, it’s really tough for me to wake up before, say, 2 PM. Even on nights when I try to get to bed earlier, I just toss and turn, or otherwise sleep unsoundly, wake up feeling tired, and go back to sleep until the afternoon anyway.

It’s a weird sort of nearly compulsive justification of procrastination, I guess. If I know I’ve got to be somewhere at 5PM, leaving early never occurs to me. Starting at 2, I’ll wake up, go to the bathroom, then lounge around in my room for several hours, sifting through new emails, new facebook stuff, new artiles and comics that I’m following online, and finally glance over at the clock. 4PM? I ought to get ready to leave - but I don’t. I do anything else other than that. Finally, at 4:45PM, I jump up, take a super quick shower, and leave, only to arrive half and hour late. This sort of thing happens A LOT.

Unfortunately, this has a sort of ‘crying wolf’ effect as well. For the first few minutes after I wake up, especially if I haven’t had enough (nearly 9 hours at this point) sleep, I am a complete zombie animal - I mean, sometimes I literally have no memory of what’s happened. There have been a few times where I can only assume that I’ve woken up to my alarm, flipped it off, and gone right back to sleep - and missed whatever I was trying to wake up early for. Similarily, when I wake up, it’s easy for me to think, “Ah, I’ll just lay here for another fifteen minutes.” What really happens is I go back to sleep until 2PM, right? After a while, I guess I get to be the guy who almost never shows up on time.

Like other things that’d be to my benefit to change about my life, I don’t seem to be able to find the motivation to do this differently.

Let’s say my life is a river. That’s a good metaphor. Earlier, I was waterskiing - and now, even after I’ve let go of the rope, and the boat has sped off, I’m still skimming over the water. But this momentum, wherever it came from (highschool? CMD?) is starting to get killed off by friction, and eventually, I’m going to start sinking, and when I do, I’m going to need to start swimming. What I’m debating is - where am I now? Should I be getting ready to start swimming, or am I already up to my shoulders underwater, and need to start doggy paddling right away?

There’s some sort of weird little priority list in my head that’s got some weird little priorities flipped around regarding the economy of my activities. School takes up a significant amount of my money - you ‘d think I’d pay more attention to it. And work makes me a significant amount of money - you’d think I’d pay more attention to it as well. But somehow lazing around, thinking about Magic Cards and the Internet, staying up late and sleeping in late have all gotten bumped to the top of the list. What does that say about me?

I’m suspicious that this is what I get for being so lucky - throughout my life, just about the time I’ve needed something, I’ve caught a break, and recieved it. Not all the time, not reliably, but enough that I’ve noticed it. I’ve wondered about what causes that - is it pure luck, or am I somehow subconciously putting myself into profitable situations - but I guess it might be worth thinking about the result as well. Am I spoiled? Do I think that I can just not make an effort, and things’ll work out anyway for me? Logically, of course, I don’t think that - that’d be stupid. But then again - why didn’t I go talk to my department director today about my classes in school, after planning to last week? There’s a post-it note right there on my monitor and everything - I literally bought a new pack of notes so I could write it. I spent all day doing nothing productive (until this evening) and glancing at the clock, thinking, “Oh, I don’t have to leave for another hour - another half-hour - another ten minutes - I can be a little late - I’m not going to make it - might as well not go.”

I kind of wish I was at least preocuppied by something constructive. I kind of wonder if I need something constructive to do as a hobby. I really wish I did as much music as I used to - how did I get out of the habit of doing that? It seems like now, whenever I sit down and grab my keyboard, everything sounds boring - nothing’s new, or interesting, and nothing’s worth pursuing. I have some good ideas, but never anything worth finishing.

So like I said - coasting, maybe sinking, need to start swimming soon. Well, if nothing else, writing all this out is a good way to organize my thoughts on the matter.

I also need to work on designing up my little group of blogs (mortalityblog.com, musicblog.mattlohkamp.com, and storyblog.mattlohkamp.com) - as well as adding another site for my music, now that myspace isn’t there to provide an easy host anymore. Should I go back to the old ANDR artist name, or find something new? Hmmm.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. I’ll try to remember to write more often.

Spoiler alert - there will be no psychedelic notebook pages this time around - I took it easy. This year was fun, in a more sedate, sunburned way. Let’s take a look at how my weekend went:

Day One

• The Gaslight Anthem
• Doves
• Passion Pit - I remember not liking them as much as I expected to.
• M. Ward - not really the type of music I listen to, but good music.
• Shearwater - I only heard a little bit of their performance, but I really liked what I heard.
• Tim & Eric - terrible. not funny at all. non-stop scatological and misogynistic jokes just don’t sit well with me, I guess, along with making fun of people that are mentally challenged.
• The Decemberists - good, as always, their set consisted of playing straight through their new album (The Hazards Of Love) in its entirety.
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs - loved these guys, even though it’s probably not something I would generally choose to listen to, the lead singer was spunky and everyone was talented. Also, there was a huge inflated eyeball floating above the players for their entire performance.
• Crystal Castles - disappointing! They sound so good on the album, but live, the female singer’s voice was terrible, just a bunch of screams… the music was otherwise good (if a bit screechy, poorly mixed perhaps) but I expected a lot more from these people.

Day Two

• The Red Wine Boys - I only caught the end, but it was a comedic duo whose performance involved a lot of wine. Also, they get points for lots of audience interaction.
• Aziz Ansari - clever and funny, probably the best comedian I saw, apart from the Whitest Kids on the next day.
• Zach Galifianakis - he’s funny, and he plays piano. what’s not to like?
• TV On The Radio - I only saw the end of this show, and I liked what I heard.
• Nine Inch Nails - Great stuff, although I started getting bored when the songs got less pounding. Trent Reznor continues to know exactly what he’s doing, and it’s always impressive, inspiring even, to watch a master at work. I’m not generally a huge NIN fan (apart from the Year Zero album, which I really liked) but I definitely enjoyed the show.
• Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head - After I left NIN, I headed over to see Deadmau5, and caught the end of NPSH, which has an awesome name, and almost seemed like a jazzy jam band that had thrown in a couple of synthesizers. Good stuff.
• Deadmau5 - certainly the best electronic show I saw this year. Not as good as Ghostland Observatory last year, but easily better then the Crystal Castles. I slipped through the crowd until I was right up front, jumping around and getting pushed in all directions, soaked in sweat, dancing until I was exhausted. It’s kind of a fun experience to be in, but I got tired, the music wasn’t doing it for me, so I left a bit early to go back to camp and eat.

Day Three

• Santigold - I didn’t get to see these people, but I heard them on my way into the venue, and they sounded intriguing, so I’ll have to look them up later.
• Whitest Kids U’Know - just as funny in person as they are in their online sketches.
• Monotonix - This was the most incredible performance I saw this year, period. Basically, it involved three Israeli guys, skinny, mustachioed and hairy, beating the shit out of their instruments, and spending all their time in the audience, not on stage, while still managing to continue playing. Just to give you an idea about the extremes they went to, I arrived at the stage just as the lead singer climbed on top of the bass drum - and the bass drum was being held up by the audience, about a dozen feet away from the stage. And that was nothing. Throughout their set, they had the audience carry them and their instruments all over the grounds, continuing to play - at one point, the lead singer crowd-surfed his way all the way to the opposite end of the field, climbed up on the rigging for the sound booth (about 20 feet up in the air, maybe), and announced to the crowd that he was going to count to 4, and then jump down, and they were going to catch him - and he wasn’t lying. I was incredibly impressed with Monotonix - to be honest, the music wasn’t my favorite, but it didn’t matter.
• Silversun Pickups - talented group, to be sure, but I realize that I don’t like them nearly as much as a lot of other people seem to… there wasn’t really anything unique or appealing to latch onto, they were just a good band.
• Girl Talk - when I first heard Girl Talk, I didn’t know the circumstances behind the creation of his music - that it’s all one big long mashup mix. Now, knowing that, I enjoyed the hell out of the show - there was some great stuff, and the crowd loved it. Speaking of which, he dealt with the issue of watching a single DJ triggering samples on a mixer board being a little boring by populating the stage entirely with party people - people in costume, people shirtless, everyone dancing. At one point, they passed an enormous inflated while out to the crowd - it was about 2/3 the size of the stage itself, which was awesome.
• Tobacco - Cool electronic stuff, although I don’t think I had taken enough drugs to appreciate it properly - other people, however, seemed to have taken exactly (or perhaps more) then enough. The music was pretty interesting, coupled with the visuals - an ongoing video remix of old horror video, apparently from inside an elaborate haunted house event.
• Chromeo - I’m not usually a fan of DJ sets, since it’s kind of like listening to the radio: every once in a while you hear songs you like, but a lot of the time you end up just waiting for the current song to be over so you can get to another one that you like. Chromeo was a good DJ, but I wasn’t very into it.

So in conclusion, I would recommend checking out Girl Talk, Monotonix, Santigold, Shearwater, and The Decemberists.

It took me all day Tuesday to sort of get back up to speed with not camping and not listening to music constantly, but now I’m feeling pretty good. I picked up some aloe vera cream stuff which will probably not have any actual effect on my sunburns, but the psychological reassurance is worth it.

It’s kind of weird how much of my childhood movie-watching experience involved Disney - well, maybe not weird logisticly, but interesting to think about. Wikipedia chronicles the classic ‘cannon’ Disney films, and I thought I’d look through them and pick some favorites, in chronological order, along with the bits that I like the most.

• Pinocchio - The part where they go to Pleasure Island is the best, where they get to do all the stuff that adults would normally try to discourage them from doing - drinking, smoking, gamling, and… wait for it… hanging around playing pool. Their punishment manifests in a somewhat scene of transformation from little boys into donkeys. That’s really the coolest part of the film.
• Fantasia - The last act, Night on Bald Mountain, where the demon thing (whose name is ’Chernabog’) rises from the volcano and summons all the spirits and everything into a big spirtal around him - man that part was cool. The mushroom dance in the nutcracker part is cool too.
• Dumbo - Sure, the crows are totally caricatures and arguably racist depictions, but whatever. That part is still my favortite, and the part where Dumbo actually flies during the performance and puts out fires with his trunk is good.
• Peter Pan - Captain Hook is never not good, and the proximity of his crocodilian stalker never fails to inspire hilarity. The other best part is another scene that’s raised accusations of racism - the ‘What Made The Red Man Red?’ song sequence. Not only is it a great song (another one I’m considering remixing) but it follows the well-known oral tradition of the youth asking the elders questions about their history, and receiving answers in the form of stories that happened in the past, which explain the state of the present.
• Sleeping Beauty - When the witch turns into the huge dragon at the end of the movie. Mom claims that part used to scare me, but I’m not convinced. Also, her raven minion is named Diablo.
• One Hundred and One Dalmations - The standout scene is, of course, the ‘Cruela De Vil’ song - and the fact that the main villain’s name is basicly ‘Cruel Devil’ and her henchmen are the ‘Bad Ones’.
• The Sword in the Stone - Probably one of my top 5 favorite Disney movies. I can’t even pick out any particular good parts - Merlin’s fight with Mim is pretty memorable, though. But the dialouge especially is super standout good.
• The Jungle Book - This is right when Disney died, unfortunately. It’s got its own issues with racist depictions - if you squint and turn your head a little, you’ll see that the monkeys are black jass enthusiasts who dance to jungle rythems and want to become human. There’s some good stuff in there, though - ‘The Bare Necessities’, the afore-mentioned ‘I wanna be like you’, and ‘That’s what friends are for’. Kaa is like a sneak-preview of Hiss, the snake second-in-command from Robin Hood.
• Robin Hood - another one of my top favorites. Okay, okay, it’s totally a furry movie, I know - but that’s more of a credit then a opportunity for modern criticism, that they managed to take a story about humans and anthroporphize animals to assist the process of defining the archetypcal characteristics - the clever one is a fox, the royalty are lions, the snake is sneaky, the hen is motherly, et cetera.
• The Great Mouse Detective - It’s like Sherlock Holmes, except set from the perspective of members of Rodentia. The villain Ratigan’s werewolf-like transformation from mob boss faux-mouse to mostrous sewer rat while sillhoueted against the night sky, perched atop the hands of Big Ben, high above London - that’s epic-scale animation. Of course there are plenty of puns for fans of Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories as well. I kind of want to mark this as a turning point in Disney films - this seems like the start of a new age for the studio, although I don’t really know what to attribute that to.

A large study in Uganda involving 5,534 men found that those who underwent circumcision as adults were 25 percent less likely to become infected with herpes and more than 30 percent less likely to catch human papillomavirus (HPV) than their uncircumcised peers…. Previous research has shown that circumcision reduces a man’s risk of acquiring HIV by as much as 60 percent.

Male Circumcision Cuts Risk of HIV, Herpes, and HP Transmission [blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats]

MALE CIRCUMCISION FENDS OFF THE MOST COMMON STDS [sciencenews.org]

This is an interesting fact to learn - but I won’t be surprised when pro-circumcision groups cite this study as strengthening their argument against foreskin retention. It’s unfortunate, because even if circumcision protected males 100% against HIV, I’d still be very basically against the practice, since it would still fall squarely under preventative surgery. People who have their appendix or tonsils removed at birth have a 0% chance of developing appendicitis or tonsillitis - so why isn’t it common medical practice to have those organs removed at birth, along with the foreskin? You can live without them - but why would you want to, if it’s not necessary? In the case of a man’s foreskin, attention paid to sexual partners and use of contraception can provide 99.99% protection against all kinds of STDs, fluid-transmitted especially. Which is better - to snip off some of the most sensitive skin on a boy’s body at birth, or make sure they’ve got easy access to condoms when they’re teenagers?

I’ve got to admit that a little bit of my incredulity over the implication of the results of this study is the countries that it targets - it wasn’t conducted in the United States, and there are a lot of socio-economic factors that additionally influence infection rates. But even if that weren’t the case, I would feel the same way: that despite the latest revelations about the benefits of this practice, it’s still completely unnecessary, and arguable more harmful then helpful.

Okay, so the whole point of the Mortality Blog is that I have less then 80 years to live, and I think there’s a few things that I’ve run up against in my life that might be good for other people to see my thoughts on.

That said - how do I put this? I experienced an intriguing conflict of interests today. It’s a pretty stellar example of something that I’ve really only had the privilege of being exposed to a few times - a girl more or less explicitly asking me to sleep with her. In this case, it was someone attractive, someone smart and funny and cute and all that, but a girl nonetheless - and despite being comfortable in my relative lack of interest in that sort of thing, I realized that I felt bad, in a ‘I’m letting someone down’ sort of ‘not meeting expectations’ sort of way. Which is total bullshit - how many times have I protested that responsibility can only be accepted, not assigned, and that I feel that I’m under no circumstances obligated to follow cultural conventions regarding romance?

And yet - not saying, “Yes!” felt bad. In my head, I know that it wouldn’t have gone well - it would’ve just been disappointing to both of us. And yet there’s this sort of distinctly masculine cultural responsibility that I found myself aware of, where a guy is supposed to sleep with a girl especially if she really wants it. And I was failing at that duty.

It’s times like this that make some of my gay friend’s humorous accusations that I’m a straight man with a penis fetish seem just a little bit accurate - there are plenty of girls with whom I would gladly flirt if only there wasn’t this more or less inescapable reality of a vagina laying in wait. It seemed like a lot to explain to this particular girl, considering my general reluctance to bring this sort of thing up due to my cultural obligation aversion, but it was striking - how many times do I actually have reason to momentarily regret my sexual tastes? Not very often.

Anyway, it seemed interesting, and like I said, if anyone feels like taking a peek into my head, this is the sort of stuff that tumbles around like a wet load of clothes in a dryer.

It depicts a white protagonist going into an apparently poverty-stricken village (the location is unspecified) and killing throngs of black zombified men and women (see the trailer yourself)…

What was not funny, but sort of interesting, was that there were so many gamers who could not at all see it. Like literally couldn’t see it. So how could you have a conversation with people who don’t understand what you’re talking about and think that you’re sort of seeing race where nothing exists?

- Newsweek’s N’Gai Croal On The ‘Resident Evil 5′ Trailer: ‘This Imagery Has A History’ [multiplayerblog.mtv.com]

Let me help you out, N’Gai Croal - the reason so many gamers can’t see it is because it’s all in your head. It’s totally subjective. The trailer depicts the main character of a zombie killing game, killing zombies. The setting is some sort of impoverished african village. The zombies are zombies. This isn’t racism, it’s a classic zombie situation.

There was stuff like even before the point in the trailer where the crowd turned into zombies. There sort of being, in sort of post-modern parlance, they’re sort of “othered.” They’re hidden in shadows, you can barely see their eyes, and the perspective of the trailer is not even someone who’s coming to help the people. It’s like they’re all dangerous; they all need to be killed. It’s not even like one cute African — or Haitian or Caribbean — child could be saved. They’re all dangerous men, women and children. They all have to be killed.

It’s called ‘foreshadowing’ - the village is full of spooky looking people because they’re going to turn into zombies. No, you can’t spare any of them, because they’re zombies! Lack of redemption and compassion does not make this racist. Let me take a moment to brainstorm situations in which the game would be racist:

1. If the black people became zombies because being black they were too stupid to avoid getting infected
2. If the black people were zombies in the first place because only black people, having inferior physique and poor personal hygiene, are naturally more zombie-infection-prone.
3. If the protagonist called them ‘niggers’ as he was shooting them between the eyes.

Actually, even the last example wouldn’t make the game racist - it’d make the main character racist. It’d make the audience uneasy about their avatar in the game - they’d enjoy the thrill of making him fight his way through waves of zombies, but be a little uncomfortable with his overt bigotry. It could be an important lesson in the grey area of morality.

If it had been me in that situation, I wouldn’t have put out a trailer like that. I think it’s very easy to misunderstand what that game is about based on that trailer.

No kidding.

This is an interesting point, one which I think I agree with… at least for the first two sentences.

” What’s with the label? Gay rights. Do they need seperate rights? Do they need a gay Bill of Rights, and a gay right to vote too? Please. Irony is not the fact that tolerant peoples do not want the legislation passed. Irony is the fact that Gays don’t want to be singled out and labeled, yet they have their own community (gay community), and they want Gay rights. Wow - I am going to start telling people I want White rights…i want a fair share and have people not worry more about minorities than me. I am an individual, just like everyone else. I want equal, white rights, too. Ironic…Don’t you think? ”

Gay-rights advocates press for change in N.D. law [bismarcktribune.com], comment by ‘Dante’s Inferno’

Kind of weird how he (apparently inadvertently) points out that the struggle for ‘gay rights’ is really a struggle for ‘equality’ and ‘civil rights,’ period - but then he immediately makes these sweeping generalizations about the ‘Gays’ (with a capital ‘G’) who ‘want Gay rights’, which he says is as ridiculous as ‘Whites’ wanting ‘White Rights’. Which is right - but he’s not saying it in a very considerate way. I wonder if one of my few concessions to political correctness is attempting to keep generalizations concerning characteristics of ‘groups’ of people to a minimum?