Dance & Drink & Screw

The Raspberry Reich is my first Bruce LaBruce film. LaBruce takes a flimsy story about extreme-left terrorists and adds hardcore porn and historical propaganda. He covers a whole wall with a black & white image of Che Guevara, for example, and gets a young man of ambiguous ethnic background to lean against it and masturbate; or he films two men kissing half-naked in a busy German thoroughfare, catching the insults and shocked looks of unsuspecting passerbys. It's an hour & a half of bad dialogue, slogans left, right & centre ("The Homosexual Intifada", "Revolution is My Boyfriend"), and plenty of situations where the characters put to good use their experience in the gay porn industry.

We watched the softporn version so, while a terrorist gave the rich capitalist kid a blow job, a photo of Tony Blair appeared above the offending genitalia with the slogan "Bliar"; or, as the female leader of the terrorist group rode her boyfriend - "like a horny pony" - one of many George Bush's quotes scrolled over the exposed bits. I wanted to be annoyed but I couldn't get away from its juvenile humour.

Andy Warhol and John Water's influences are there, and Stereo Total's latest album has one song inspired by it, which is why I'm undecided as to the film's merits. On the one hand, it's tame (as tame can be when it comes to porn) and almost sentimental. But it's also playful when it comes to "queer politics", and genuinely funny at times. Plus, it's pornographic, which I should find bad, right? I wish I was able to talk more about it, but I feel like I don't know enough about the history of queer cinema to truly make sense of it. According to LaBruce, Germans are so blasé about porn that many celebrities dabble with it without the press getting hysterical. By portraying porn as a side-effect of a political comedy, and by filming it in a progressive society like Germany, he's dispelling porn of its "scary" status and making it seem like a genuine source of humour. It's not anything new to the porn world (as many film titles can attest - e.g. "Forest Hump", "Tranny and Susannah"), but it's thought-provoking when you think of its implications (and applications) to mainstream cinema.

At least six doctors or medical students are among those in custody over the terror plots in Britain.

Christ, I knew the NHS was in trouble but this is ridiculous.

I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
- from the Hippocratic Oath

A suspected car bomb has been found in downtown London.

I don't know if I feel like using public transport today...

We are only 8 days away from the tube bombings anniversary.

Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, 2003
Azar Nafisi tells the story of her life in Iran before & after the Islamic revolution. She teaches English at the University of Tehran without wearing a veil until she's expelled (though she claims she resigned beforehand). She decides to run an English class in the privacy of her home, every Thursday, for a select group of women, so they can study various novels banned by the Iranian regime. She becomes close to these women, hears their tragic stories, then decides to bugger off to America with her family. The End.

This memoir is part unreliable narrator (which makes the title oh-so-ironic), part intriguing study of a woman's life under strict Islamic law, and part lit criticism on key Western novels (e.g. Lolita, Pride & Prejudice, and Great Gatsby.) It could have done with tighter editing and a more comprehensible chronology; it could have also done with less flights-of-fancy and more objectivity on the part of the author.

A decent introduction to Iran and its regime's nefarious persecution of women.

When I lived in Canada, whenever a topic of conversation went serious - frakenstein food, globalization, destruction of the planet - some of my friends would interrupt by saying "oh, Amazon forest conversation." It was their way of saying the topic was another highly serious one which shouldn't/couldn't affect their lives; or that it was a cliche to talk about something so heavy, overly played out in the media. They would rather think about the latest fashion trend then the consequences of drinking coffee ground by exploited workers.

I wonder if the current bandwagon-jumping on global warming fears is a little too similar to the one two decades ago when people became worried about the Amazon forest disappearing. At the time, Sting went to Brasil and visited the natives in the forest; millions proclaimed that Brasil should stop destroying the world's lung; but then something else went on the front pages and the story slowly disappeared out of view. I would like to believe that the current warnings on global warming will change the world, but who can say how oh-so-predictably-crap-at-hearing-warnings human beings will react? Will the papers be interested in this story by next year?

My feelings tend to go from extreme negativity to positivity. This morning, looking at the weekend newspapers, I'd swear on the Bible that we were heading for deep shit. How could we not? We as a species refuse to memorize our history lessons. In doubt, read Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Many human civilizations have been destroyed before and it wouldn't be impossible for ours to go the same route. If you add up all the stories in the papers - collapsing fisheries, escalating civil wars, disappearing water resourses, etc - it's enough to make you wish Virgin would hurry up with their space flights so you could book yourself on the next one to the Moon. And the majority of news editors and journalists don't help matters by scarying the public with twisted stories on the government's upcoming green taxes.

But this evening, on my gym's treadmill, with The Kooks on the stereo, and all these different people sweating beside me, it became obvious that in some aspects we are no longer like our ancestors, and perhaps we won't commit the same errors they committed. Sure, there's a vast majority of people who don't give a crap and will continue leaving their lights on when they leave their home, but the percentage of people who are not like that is higher than ever before. In the past, civilizations collapsed sometimes due to factors beyond their control (e.g. enemies or viruses) but the vast majority of them suffered because they didn't understand how important their environment was to them. We are no longer like that.

That the shit is going to hit the fan is obvious. Rich countries are going to have to deal with masses of refugees in the future, and probably the rise of extreme right-wing politics as a consequence; but there will also be places where environmentalism will show definite improvements in people's lives, and this will in turn encourage other communities to follow suit. I have to believe things will turn out OK, otherwise I might as well not get out of bed.

"Al Qaeda militants in Iraq have vowed to wage war on the "worshippers of the cross" following the Pope's controversial comments about Islam. The group said it would "break the cross and spill the wine". Pope Benedict XVI caused anger in the Muslim world over the weekend with comments earlier in the week that seemed to endorse a view that Islam was a violent religion." - from here

I don't know if I should cry or laugh when the news begins to sound like something straight out of The Onion.

"Until recently it was being said that what we are confronted with, here, is 'a civil war' within Islam. That's what all this was supposed to be: not a clash of civilisations or anything like that, but a civil war within Islam. Well, the civil war appears to be over. And Islamism won it. The loser, moderate Islam, is always deceptively well-represented on the level of the op-ed page and the public debate; elsewhere, it is supine and inaudible. We are not hearing from moderate Islam. Whereas Islamism, as a mover and shaper of world events, is pretty well all there is.

So, to repeat, we respect Islam - the donor of countless benefits to mankind, and the possessor of a thrilling history. But Islamism? No, we can hardly be asked to respect a creedal wave that calls for our own elimination. More, we regard the Great Leap Backwards as a tragic development in Islam's story, and now in ours. Naturally we respect Islam. But we do not respect Islamism, just as we respect Muhammad and do not respect Muhammad Atta."

Full article here. Best thing I've read this weekend about September 11.

A week from today will mark a year since the attacks on London's trains. I wasn't really thinking about this today but, as I left work, feeling happy and content, I suddenly had a very morbid fantasy play out in my head. I saw the train I was in explode, my body get ripped to pieces. I then saw the repercussion play out: my co-workers finding out that the Bakerloo Tube was hit (and someone remembering that I took that line), the concern, the calls, the news reaching Kevin, the news spreading through out my building.

Did you know him? Do you remember him? I vaguely remember his face. I think I saw him walk down the corridors, but I'm not sure. I never spoke to him. Was he from Brasil? He didn't look it. How is his department doing? They cried. They were really upset. They had just given him a jar of olives and 22 pounds worth of book vouchers because it was his last day in the department. They ate cake and drank wine. They were so happy that day. What a horrible thing to happen.

I have morbid thoughts sometimes. Flights. Train rides. Car rides with drunks behind the wheel. I don't know if it's perverse to imagine a smiling face you just said goodbye cry for you. I think my ego is trying to find some recognition that I'll be missed, that I'm not just a dispensable temp human, that I finally fit in.

But today, regardless of this slight morbid fantasy, has been wonderful. I got a bankdraft to put down for the new apartment (we sign the lease tomorrow); it was someone's birthday at work (and on LJ) and I ate lemon cake and drank red wine (which I also spilled on the floor, causing everyone to cry out that I can't be taken out); London was awash with sunshine and the tourists weren't too bad; I found a bench facing the Thames during my lunch break and edited a short story; went swimming in the morning, wore shorts and t-shirt to work. Now I listen to Saint Etienne and my mood is orgasmic... and Kevin just walked into the bedroom with a plate of pasta!

I bought four cans of beer and I'm watching a great Big Brother episode (I hope.) Seriously, life is good right now.

I told my boss at 14:00 that I was going home due to "personal reasons". She gave me a look that said what's wrong with you? and told me to, erm, take care of myself. I bought food at Sainsbury's and took the Bakerloo line home. It was the most tense train ride of my life. Everyone in my carriage wouldn't blink, and their heads shot mechanically to the doors everytime we stopped at a station. They wanted to know who was coming in and they wanted to guess what was inside their backpacks.

When I got home, I turned on the TV and found out that the police had surrounded Portnall Road, which happens to be the road Kevin and I lived on last year! When I told Kevin, his jaw dropped and he rushed into the TV room. Portnall Road is actually not that far from where we live now. I've been hearing the police cars going up and down Harrow road for the past few hours. I looked out of the kitchen window, expecting to see dodgy men running across the courtyard, but only saw three little girls playing hide and seek.

I called desayuno_ingles and cancelled our meeting tonight. I've also pulled out of going to Optronica - Kevin and his sister are still going though. I just took a long bath in the dark (it seems that Candle died for good). At first, I couldn't see anything, even my body. Then slowly, I got accustomed to the light seeping underneath the door. It gave the bathroom a funereal mood, spilling faint blue light on the bottow tiles while keeping everything else, even my body floating in the water, blacked out. I could hear the boiler humming across the walls as well as the occasional noise from my neighbours travelling through the airvent. When I stood up, my head felt light and I almost fainted. I drank a large glass of cold water afterwards and I'm now feeling better.

We are all ok. Thank you to everyone who has been calling, texting or sending me emails - it's good to know I have so many friends around the world thinking of us. As you can imagine, we are all somewhat shocked about what happened in London today.

I woke up this morning at 7:45, as usual, had breakfast, wrote a little in my journal, and left for the Tube around 9:10. As I entered the train, an announcement came on that there was a problem in the system and the train couldn't go on. A nervous woman walked up the train shouting at us to get out (only later did I understand why she was so nervous.) I called work to tell them I would be late but nobody answered. I walked to Paddington Station, where I found out all the trains into the city were shut down. That's when alarm bells started ringing.

Do you know that scene in Twin Peaks, when the police man walks into the classroom and whispers the bad news to the teacher? All the students begin to look around, to look at the empty desk, then suddenly a girl runs screaming across the school's courtyard. Well, I felt as if something like that was going to happen in Paddington Station: people stared with confusion at the message boards, or spoke in hushed tones into their cellphones. Hundreds of people streamed out of the underground, spilling out into the streets. There was this underlying tension running between the people who knew something was up, and the ones who were still blissfully unaware.

I called Allison to ask her what was going on; ten minutes later she called me back to say I should come home, that blasts had rocked the city and that there was no point going to work today.

Since then, we've been watching the news, calling our parents, talking about our lives in London. Last night, London went to bed celebrating it's successful bid to host the Olympics in 2012. Thousands of people had gone to the streets to cheer, drink and commemorate. Today, it's what you see on the news: chaos, confusion, anger, terror, outrage... everything that should not be part of a celebration.

Anyways, I just wanted to write this quickly, to let you all know that we are ok. I hope all my friends in London are well too, and that nothing has happened to their loved ones.