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We
went to Po Lin monastery today: a colorful buddhist monastery beneath Lantau
peak (~850m). Aside from the beauty of the place and the novelty of the
"largest sitting bronze buddha", I was happy to see the packs of oxen and
feral dogs wandering about free from harm. After walking around the Buddha
with a handful of colleagues and a vegetarian lunch, Dan and I decided to
attempt the trail. Even half-way up the peak looking down on the monastery,
we could still hear the loudspeaker announcements — these couldn't be
very conducive to meditation! While the hike was tiring (think
stair-master!), as we approached the shrouded top I couldn't resist climbing
right into the clouds. When we crested, we were startled to be looking
straight into an abyss of unlimited grey. Lonely Planet noted that on a clear
day you could see all the way to Hong Kong Island; we could see only the grey
and wisps of white. Our brows and hair dripped from dew suspended in the air.
We played with the optical illusions resulting from a 6m visibility (see Dan's movies) then headed back down. As we descended, the
clouds tried to follow, extending tendrils of liquid cotton cascading and
twirling fifty meters behind us. Beautiful.
This is the future. Strangers' bodies are crushed together; squeezed
souls strain to escape through the sieve of Hello-Kitty-cosied cell phones.
Street vendors sell movie VCDs for two dollars and lumps of ginseng for
fifteen thousand. This is a hybrid city: a green and concrete jungle floating
in the polluted harbors of paradise This is the tropical future awaiting all
cities baking under the new greenhouse sun. I'm entranced, addicted even, by
the sticky sweet sweat of human exertion. It's frightful; it's fantasy. It's
cyber-punk manifested: viscerally appealing, though the realities of dull
souls and exploited bodies should offend me. But it's foreign and alien, so
the old ladies emptying garbage into reed baskets, the prostitutes, the crass
consumerism, the gutted pigs, and the police with Uzis and shotguns, these
compel instead of repel.
In the park next to my apartment, the sun rises, the children play, and the swings squeak and squawk, jumping for the morning sun. I wake up.
In the park next to my apartment, the moon rises, I oil their hinges and the swings glide in the cool breeze, running with the silent moon. The children sleep.
Jane Fonda was a multi-faceted stranger to me as a child. "Jane" was the woman with whom my mom did her home aerobics. "Jane Fonda" was a woman that, regardless of how fit she was, had been tainted by accusations of treasonous communism. I can imagine my mom saying, "I like her exercise tapes but I don't like her politics." Fonda was a stranger to me because I never really gave her any thought; she was multi-faceted because I never thought of her in many ways: excercise guru, commie, and once I got to college, the sci-fi sexpot Barbarella.
Recently, I found myself thinking of her and wondered how these distinct characters came to rest in my mind without collision. Given my skepticism of American "commie" propaganda, finding a subcionscious dislike of her based on impressions from my childhood was disorientating. Subsconscience whispered, "Oh, she's a commie traitor." Conscience responded, "What? Wait! I don't buy that sort of crap."
So I went looking and landed in an amazing mess of confusion. From a tripod page with waving flags, flying doves, and spinning crosses beseeching Vets to forgive her since she is a born-again Christian, to a bitter law professor who is peeved he can't get his book published, every personal axe is ground with her name. It's as if she's a catalyst to the whole crappy rainbow of uncritical thought associated with spinning, dripping, and waving flags, crosses, doves, ankhs, stars, skulls, and swastikas.
After spending a couple of hours immersed in the muck, I still don't know what to think. The speech for which she is often criticized is an expression of compassion for people being slaughtered by an immoral foreign policy, and an analysis that was proven in time. Wearing a Viet Cong hat and posing by an artilllery piece was incongruent with a pacifist position and a threat to servicemen, and she's since apologized — though I have not seen an apology for speaking kindly of the Vietnamese people as some of her apologists would have you think. The stories about her ripping up secret notes passed to her by prisoners of war in front of their sadistic captors is an urban-myth warped from the fact that POWs were beaten for refusing to cooperate or meet with Fonda during her visit.
Bush has told the Chinese that America's prayers are with the lost pilot and his family. I presume he knows that there are "dirty little atheists" all over America; I'm one and if I prayed for anything, it'd be that the nationalist fools of either nation don't make the situation worse. However, the real kicker is doesn't he even know that the Chinese are a bunch of godless commies? Perhaps it's a sharp jab on the dull blade of Bush speak: wit masked in fumbling. People wondered if his dad did the same when mispronouncing "Saddam".
But maybe I'm given him too much credit. If not, maybe I'm being unfair.
I logged on to Naptser recently and found this:
Your Napster account has been blocked pursuant to a Notification of Alleged Infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") filed against you by Barbara Orbison Music Company, through its agent, Copyright.net... If you were redirected to this page by the Napster client, the reason is because Napster has received an allegation from or on behalf of a copyright rights holder under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"). The allegation is that material that you have made available through the Napster service is copyrighted and that your making it available infringes the notifier's copyright. In response, we have blocked you from access to your Napster account. Your account will remain blocked unless you provide us with a completed copy of the "Counter Notification" form below to the "Designated Copyright Agent," all as covered by the DMCA law.
I was rather amused as I don't remember intentionally sharing any Orbison songs; they must've been downloaded and subsequently (automatically) shared. Actually, when I saw the notice I was rather excited as I whooped, hollered, and chanted, "I've been busted, I've been busted," while dancing around my apartment. But I only realized it was a rather odd reaction after Nora commented on it. Perhaps the officious notice made things I've been thinking about more real and engaging — previously I could still exchange music despite the daily news stories about Napster's demise and filtering. Or maybe it's that I finally feel a little challenged: RIAA versus Geeks. Of course, RIAA's efforts are a joke. My other napster account is still fine, and I could always create another. Plus, I've since abandoned Napster in favor of the extremely impressive gnotella 0.9 feature set when used on the gnutella network. Maybe a few years from now RIAA will bother to° trace me back to an IP number and demand that my ISP terminate the account, but I doubt it. Lawyers can be a pain, but they need choke-points and chasing down millions of people is hard. Plus, by then, we'll still have anonymous accounts. In CompUsa I saw a CD-ROM with prepaid ISP service for $20! Until then, they will continue with their mp3 bull$hit, and I'll hopefully have found a way to more easily support the artists I like.
Speaking of recording industry bull$shit, do you still listen to commercial radio?
Sources say that the money goes to the stations below-board as well: They say that broadcasters get money in different forms — in vacations at hotels and on cruise lines, and in American Express gift certificates, all of which leave no paper trails. In the end, it's doubtful that even the extraordinary sums the record companies admit they're paying equals the actual amount of money changing hands.
Fighting radio's pay for play. Salon.
The recording industry isn't upset that commercial programming is purchased, they just don't like anyone else taking a cut. Where's the artists' interest, the encouragment of creativity, the technical innovation in this? I don't think I need to answer...
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