Over two months. How Often I have briefly glanced at you, my blog, but only had a moment to reflect, not even a minute to update.
This has been a hectic time for me. My Job as Assistant Clubhouse Coordinator at Grandstreet Settlement ends tomorrow. My roommate, Graham, has moved out and moved in with his girlfriend, Gineen. Christian has continued to only show up once a month to pay bills, and no one really objects. My new roommate, Safahri, finally was able to get his stuff here from The Bronx. On Monday I received an e-mail from the folks at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival in Australia. They apparently really liked Exquisite Corpse and have it programmed to show on the 17th of July.
This news is very exciting to me and I am considering traveling out to Melbourne for a week for the festival, if I can afford it.
I went to the MUFF V website last night and was taken back quite a bit by their promotional images. I e-mailed the festival director asking him to explain. Here is what he had to say:
“The image this year is meant to be a little shocking I guess and convey ceratain ideas about our theme. Then again it is meant to stand on its own and mean nothing on another level. Last year we had image of Gilles Peress of an IRA terrorist for our politics theme. This year our theme is violence so we have a hyper real shot of woman spanking her own ass. There is censorship laws here that forbid any kind of S&M imagery so we are pushing that envelope sure down under. But we are also saying. Is this violence? I think not. What is sexual violence then? All these kind of things come from the image. If people don’t like it, they should ask why, what moral hang ups make this image a problem? We like that here at MUFF and deliberately provoke with our catalogue and program. At MUFF we believe in freedom of speech, thought and are quite amoral, we play hard core pornography alongside traditional underground and avant guard work. We make no value judgement between underground film, exploitation cinema, pornography and erotica, indepedent film, genre film and B movies; to us they are all interesting and worthy of examination and viewing.”
I think I agree with some of that. But I have questions about some of it too–which is what they are looking for.
I received a disturbing e-mail today form my friend Leah, warning people that NYC has news that there will be a terrorist attack on 6/11. (The Madrid train was 3/11 and the WTC was 9/11–in case you have been out of it for the past 3 years) A lot of what the e-mail said was rather frightening but made some sense. The e-mail had a point about scheduling Friday as the day to honor Ronald Reagan so that many people (conservatives mostly) would not be at work and would not take the train. If there is a terrorist attack tomorrow, it would be pretty fucked up that they just let it happen, in order to prevent hysteria. The last time they did the same thing, and it just created mass hysteria, which gave the Bush cabinet the elbow room to do what they want.
That is my rant about that e-mail I was in Boston and Providence a couple weekends ago. My first time in either place. Both decent cities. When in Boston I was fortunate to hang out with some members of Socialist Alternative. They were having a nationwide convention out there. Most of the folks I liked, and the literature I have read looks appealing. I am seriously considering joining the organization once I get back from my upcoming trip.
On Saturday I fly to MN for my friend’s wedding. I have known her since I was in elementary school. It is sort of weird when I think about it, but I am super happy for her, and I can’t wait to see her and her family again. I have not seen any of them for about five years, I think.
Well, I have quite a bit of work to get done tonight, so I’d better go.
Happy Birthday Blog, you are One Year Old.
