To God: Not Day

It's over.

Now to pack to the sound of the Pipettes. Luckily, my memories of dancing to Come Out 2Nite and Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me are easily to put into my things, but in my mind, they weigh a ton. There won't be that again. (And I know: I'm looking for permanence where there really is none.)

But by this time Thursday I'll be on a plane back to the States and it feels wrong. I mean, I know these kids now and I have a different…appearance to keep up. I might be coming back to Rome, but it's ancillary: Not with these people. I will meet others, certainly. But this lacks the weight of my college adventures.

I should have gone out last night, but I fucked around too much, or spent my time in the wrong place and the bunch of people I wanted to go with all left to a place that I didn't know where they were going.

And, I'm exhausted now. Just feeling whatever energy I had from the wine at 7:30 leave me and…I'm letting off the whatever the feeling of repressing my tiredness at three months abroad is. Tomorrow is my last full day in Rome. Hopefully, it'll be a long one. The Van Gogh exhibit, the Church made of bones, MAXXIIII, food and then go out drinking for a last night on the town before getting out in the morning. (Plus, I need to take pictures of the places. It's a living.)

Well, it's a lot better, actually. But shhhhhhh.

I didn't go out in the morning. I ended up packing more and oddly enough enjoying myself. I may be coming back to Rome, but that's not up to me anymore. It's up to any number of other people, some of whom like me, others who don't know I exist. But that's life, isn't it? Hopefully, this will make the life more interesting and even if it doesn't work out? I still know people back home and I need to catch up with them.

That's pretty awesome, too.



I'm choosing the Good Left Undone by Rise Against for the reason inherent in the title. I'm a fan of the lyric: "I believe in angels. No, not the kind with wings. No, not the kind with halos. The kind that bring you home." Angels as something human, something that sticks their necks out for you when you need it. In short, angels as people that believed in the heroic and became heroes, through their deeds. (Yes, I'm using Benjamin Disraeli. Blame Crime In Stereo.)

The angelic made corporeal not through divinity but through their unflinching humanity. Yes. This.

Don't Think Too Hard

I was writing about vampires, but that's pushed back to Friday. Here's why. It was moving, but not quickly. I ended up putting that down and do other things. I read two pieces over dinner by students about a) there were no stores that sold music in the American form and b) a girl who really, really needed her cell phone.

It made me shake my head and I felt that I had to write something in response. 45 minutes later, I got this. Rome is Rome, and if I'm going to enjoy it, I can't be thinking about ways to abscond back to the U.S. for other things, I'll miss what's cool about Rome, and post-facto, make the trip worthwhile. Vampires pushed back to Friday.


I'll admit it: It is killing me being in Rome.

Long Island hardcore cultists Crime In Stereo are breaking up and I'm not gonna be at either of their last shows. Planes Mistaken For Stars, a bawdy, feral aphrodisiac of a band, is reuniting for two shows, one of 'em in Chicago. Envy, a transcendent, colossal screamo band that tours America about as often as we elect presidents is coming through with a support bill of three bands, each one good enough to upstage their Japanese benefactors every night.

Batman and Robin, the best Batman comic in 30 years, (think this: the stakes of the Dark Knight, neon-colored in terms of hue and mentality, written by the industry's resident mystic, with art from artists that have long since priced themselves out of anything but covers) is being published right now and there's not a power in the world that can get my hands on those issues. I am living in the middle of a period that will be cited in 20 years using words like historic, game-changing and mind-blowing.

And I'll admit it: I shouldn't be giving a damn about any of it.

This is not why I came to Rome and even if it was, I'd be missing the point. I will miss these things, and if I am to make sure that missing them was worth something, I must act as though I have already missed them and fling myself into the Roman culture headlong. Not that I'm advocating for complete mental transition, mind you. November 10, Bane (the house band of my heart) is rolling through and nothing short of actionable evidence of a chemical attack on Rome's center will keep me from the venue.

I am here, and therefore, not there. In return, I have gotten to go to the Coliseum, the Forum, a lounge based on the one from A Clockwork Orange, seen Rome at 3 a.m. from a well lit bridge, ate gelato meters from the Vatican remarking, yes, this is the dolce vita, slipped into one of Rome's oldest neighborhoods for a drink and god knows that I'm forgetting. (Though, if I do have to give a favorite experience, listening to Slayer in St. Peter's would climb embarrassingly high on the list.)

I haven't yet been robbed or roofied, either, so Rome retains its charm.

The point is this: All the things I miss I will be able to find when I get back. Odds are good both the Crime In Stereo and Planes gigs will be on the internet by the time I return to the troubled stateside, there's already a full set from Envy in NYC uploaded to youtube and I can be certain of an entire day back in the Windy City just catching up with a fellow comic nerd getting me up to speed with the happenings in that hard luck town, Gotham.

And, all those things I've done? They've more or less been in a guidebook. Now that I'm sort of comfortable with the city, who knows what I'm going to find next. Anyway, until I have to go back to my creature comforts and obtuse rock bands, I'll see you on the 990.




I'll admit another thing: I slept on Astronautalis. Hard. I missed him perform at my fucking college coffee house, because I was beefing with the radio station that brought him through. I didn't listen until 2009 when I heard Handmade Handgun on P.O.S.' Never Better. It's a hidden track on the disc, and has some of the best lines on the record. Case in point: "I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't, and be damned if I end up playing Job with God's loving hand on my throat."

Anyway, what's past is prologue. What's now is a mashup of his greatest hits to "top of the pops" kind of stuff and the first track on it (Do You Believe In Life After Thugs) is a full new set of verses, blistering and ready to strip paint. "Rappers miss the subtle stuff, like reading braille with bandaged hands…Baby it's a farce, the indie artsy fable, Warner owns us all, Google ADA label."

Yes, turn this up.

Chrono Roma

Hey: There's going to be talking about places in Chrono Cross, which might be spoilerific, if you haven't played the game yet. Then again, since it came out 11 years ago (gulp), you probably should have by now. If you haven't, get on it. It's $15, with shipping from Amazon, and you probably have a PS1 memory card lying around somewhere.

Insomnia's been hitting a little hard, so I've been putting on the Chrono Cross soundtrack (a behemoth 3 disc OST) as something to give swaths of mental color to the greys, blacks and browns of nighttime. Composed by Japanese musician Yasunori Mitsuda, the first 30 or so tracks are less intense than I remember, with a lot being based on ambient sounds accompanied by minimal acoustic guitar. (That is to say: It is very not rock and roll and the opposite of the bombastic Kingdom Hearts 2 opening.)

Also: Images are from Chrono Cross and Rome. Obv. Less obviously, none of them are mine.

Listening to the songs brings me back to my memories of playing the game, which for the most part are light adventure, with a sense of wonder and awe, which I hope is the right tone to explore a city that's basically unknown to me. Shit, it's not for nothing that I remember Chrono Cross after its story for how wide and deep its color palate is. Listening to the songs, even down side streets, the sense of adventure and awe, (A&A, apparently) leaves me with a strange sense of familiar adventure in an unfamiliar landscape. Were I to guess, I think it's something about the gaslights and the brownish light on the sides of buildings that makes the experience more ethereal and otherworldly. Roma, at least past 10 p.m. in relatively nice areas is made up of those colors, along with a little bit of wear.


I feel a little bit sutpid repeating this, since it might be so obvious to you, dear reader, but Roma is exciting and new and shiny and filled with interesting graffiti, most of it not swastikas. Yeah. Fascists. Last time I paid attention to that sort of thing, it was a H2O cover of the Dead Kennedys "Nazi Punks Fuck Off", but in Europe, shit is real, man. Roma is familiar, but tweaked. Like a city, but with a couple degrees of separation, or more accurately, like a cityscape imbued with magical realism. The real-life elements are still there, Roma's expensive, the metro doesn't run after midnight and drinks are cheaper for girls, but listening to the Chrono Cross OST, the ubiquitous motions of tourists and employees at night becomes fantastical and maybe cosmic.

Yes, I'm filled with stars. So far I haven't been robbed, pick-pocketed, mugged, held up or even threatened or harassed by a drunk. There's still illusion. A feeling, since inaugurated here, is still around. From Chrono Cross, I remember volcanic geysers that could erupt at any moment, the walls surging with red hot magma, sleepy, brightly colored island towns and pristine white halls of forgotten mechanical utopias. These, of course, don't mention the dank sewers that every JRPG seems to have at least one of, marble lined city-scapes and lush jungles (more than one!).

With the exception of the marble cityscape, there's nothing like that kind of color in nighttime Roma. It simply does not exist, and bringing those reams of color to mind, should not work. It should be an aesthetic cacophony, but somehow the two reinforce each other. It's something I never thought would happen, or even really gave it a serious thought until a couple days ago, but now that I know, I'm looking forward to each night I can get away from people who might actually want to be around me and be acceptably anti-social with my headphones, a map and updating a fairly important piece of media for me in a new decade.




Not surprisingly, the music today is coming from the OST. I'm starting you off with the intro to the whole thing (60-ish songs), leaving you with the related videos and letting you go.

Exile And The Downward Kingdom

Today, you're getting Camus and Reznor circa the Downward Spiral, but hopefully not in the way you expect.

It's a sea change, I admit. Camus was a strident anti-nihilist, whereas Reznor (circa Spiral) was a drug addict who'se songs were dense, cacophonic blasts that saw nothing in the world worth anything. Hurt, now famous because of the Johnny Cash cover, was a self-pitying track, written in a rare moment of distance and clarity that was Reznor's lucid plea to himself to get away from the bad influences (read: cocaine).

Somehow, despite most of my friends listening heavily to the disc (at least two ex-girlfriends and two good friends) I never really, truly got into the record. But Monday, I remembered that March of the Pigs existed (Thank you, Pitchfork!) and then put it on and just let the record go on my iPod. The next song Closer, kicked me in the face. Suddenly, almost a decade removed from their experiences with it, I began to see what they saw in it.

And that's when I realized: I am on another continent. I am removed from them.

So I just kept listening, and then I couldn't help it: I tried to place myself in their shoes. I tried to see through their eyes and see what they saw in this record. All except one now are very straight up people that don't...advertise the influence of the record, for lack of a better phrase. By which I mean, they're no longer kids and are angry at the world in an existential way.

At the time when they listened to it, I was scared of the record. I think I saw a Nine Inch Nails video once, and it just looked so disturbed and creepy that I didn't go back. I dove into punk as fast as I could since it was safer and more easily accessible.

(Oh! Quick note: I'm linking you to the remix portion of the Nine Inch Nails website because I like the idea of the music being something that's continually grappled with and lived in, even after the band broke up and the site that hosts remixes from fans across the world does just that. Enjoy!)

But the fear is the important part. It's something like the fear of the main feature in Exile and the Kingdom that I have. I think I bought a book of Shelley's poetry just to get away from it. I bought Shelley because Thomas from Strike Anywhere stole a line in a song and everything else in the English language bookstore was craaaaaaaazy expensive, and for the Philosophy volumes, I'd have to take out a small loan to afford them. (Kids: Philosophy books are a racket. Be aware.)


I don't know how else to relate. I'm afraid of Exile in the abstract. Unlike the Guest (another story in the anthology), I didn't see a context in the introduction that made appealed to me. The Guest was Camus' statement about the Algerian French war, from a person who was both Algerian and French. The Exile sits there, in the book. This shit feels heavy, like it weighs a ton, even when I'm 4 floors below the volume.

I ought to get to it, but I don't. There's homework, or Torchlight. Or Going Out, which is something I actually should do. There are any number of reasons to run from it. Hell, part of the reason why I said Wednesdays are for media was so I would force myself to think critically about something I was consuming and sooner or later, it would have to be books. Operative phrase being sooner or later. I get the feeling Exile will be something that is ongoing, since the story can be broken up into parts.

Yeah. That's the ticket.




This video of March of the Pigs is fun. It's a little bit more punk rock than Reznor is known for, and it sees the performers actually interacting in a way that energy bounces off each other literally and figuratively.

Dryer Sheets As Epistemological ICBM

First: The title. I'm proud and a little embarrassed of it. Then again, if you've read Eleven Names, then you should know, I'm no stranger to stretched military-industrial complex metaphors and conflicting feelings.

Epistemology is the study of knowledge and while philosophy is wide-ranging (and applicable almost everywhere) I never expected that I would be playing Newton and dryer sheets would be my apple.

I'll explain.

I was washing my clothes in a washer and that was going okay. Well, bad. It costs 1.5 Euros to do a load, which comes out to roughly $2, so that's suboptimal and a lot more expensive than I'm used to. I had put both loads in the washers and around the 20 minute mark on the first washer, I realized: I didn't bring dryer sheets with me. The vending machine outside the washing room, which sells detergent (thank God!) does not sell dryer sheets.

I went downstairs (since the washing facilities are on the fourth floor) to ask anyone I could find if they had dryer sheets. They didn't. So, I went further downstairs to ask the helpful security guard who was okay with English if he had any dryer sheets. He pointed me, sincerely to the flyer for the sheet exchange on Tuesday. "No, no," I said, "dryer sheets. The things you put in the dryer with your clothes." He looked at me with a look that said I was describing something alien to him.

I sighed and tried explaining the concept of dryer sheets: "You know, dryer sheets, the little sheets you put in with your clothes that help...uhhhh...with...cling...and...uhhhhh..." That's when it hit me: I have no idea what dryer sheets do. I don't know what I don't know. In other words, I am unaware of what I still need to learn. For example, I know for goodamn sure I don't know Italian, which is something I need to learn. I am aware of this deficiency.

But it wasn't until I needed dryer sheets that I had no idea what dryer sheets did and could not explain what they were to a person who was not fluent in English. He thought I was talking about the sheet exchange. I could not explain why, for God's sake, one would use dryer sheets. I used words like cling, but cling is a bad introduction to the concept to a non-native speaker.

I know I don't know Marx and he's a relatively important thinker these days. But dryer sheets defeated me. Dryer sheets. It's always the stuff that's mundane and not fantastical that gets people. Like how the Brooklyn Dodgers are in Los Angeles for Steve Rogers.

The next question, of course, how do I find out what else I don't know? Looking around the room I'm in, it's filled with kids (like me) all on their computers Skypeing home to their friends or talking about how they're going to a bar sometime next week. Safe to say I probably won't find it here sitting at the computer. But there's few other places to go where the internet access is reliable, so here are all the lovers and the kids who pretend they want to get work done.

And man, I've been playing Torchlight for most of the time that I've been here, with the occasional dalliances into Facebook or Twitter, both of which are data-mining the shit out of everything I write, as does Google every time I want to search for something. I'm as guilty as all of the kids here. It takes work and willingness to be uncomfortable for an un-mediated "authentic" Italian experience.

To add to that, I think it's incredibly self-aggrandizing to continue down this line of thought, since it leads to self-satisfied "I'm adventurous" bullshit, so I'll just say that I'm not as successful as I'd like to be in putting myself in new or interesting or different situations where I feel out of place. I mean, yeah, I've done a couple things, but by and large, I haven't been eating food I'd consider strange or really Gone Out on my own.

That will be this week. A friend of mine who was in Rome before me gave me a list of places and I'll have the time to capitalize on that this week. I need to get uncomfortable again, because it's in that discomfort and unsure feeling that knowledge is transmitted and unceremoniously dropped. Unless something crazy happens, Wednesday will probably be about Camus, again. If things work out, the embryonic D&D game will be on Friday.



Today's song is Comadre's cover of I Think We're Alone Now. Comadre is a punk band that has a muddy, raucous screamo edge and this cover is so loose and fun that it captures the spirit of Comadre really vividly. The guy's voice, even for hardcore punk, is rough, but after 20 or so listens, it's charming. If you need a RIYL for the song, think the Bronx, and that's close enough.

The Stranger And The Traveling And Finally, Music!

The Stranger

SPOILERS. You've been warned.




I finished the Stranger on Monday. It's written in a pretty matter of fact style until the killing happens and then it goes into a more passionate style. It's a bit of unreliable narrator but also nailing understatement. The narrator feels more often than he lets on, which is used to great effect in the beginning of the book when he's watching his so called friend basically entrap and beat up and ex-girlfriend for some imagined crime.

There's a trial and every action that we've seen through the narrator's eyes is warped and twisted by the public and everyone outside him. That maybe, he just doesn't have the words or doesn't feel that badly about his mother's death at the beginning of the novel, as the two people didn't speak for the last 10 years of the mother's life. By the end, the narrator is screaming at a priest about God just before he dies and refuses to accept any kind of last rites or acknowledge divinity on the ledge before his own death.

It's also under 150 pages, which, at least the edition I have, makes it an infuriating size. It's tantalizingly close, almost at the point where it can be stuck in a back pocket, but it's just a little too big to transport that way. He's simply a depressing author to read at the moment. Maybe it's a product of where physical I am. Or, it could be where I am mentally.

Where I am mentally is acclimating to the new place. Classes will help that, give the weeks some definition, but without a working alarm clock, I'm in a kind of "I get up when I get up" schedule, which, considering I have to wake up today to see the Coliseum neither earlier nor later than I'm used to, but instead right in that middle that I haven't hit yet, my life feels like a crapshoot. I walked last night listening to the Chrono Cross soundtrack, in an attempt to do something with my insomnia, and while it was interesting going back and reliving those memories, it made me wonder, ought I to be listening to music I already have a powerful attachment to and visual of when I'm in Rome, or should I be doing everything new, straight?

It's something to chew on. The crapshoot, somehow, remains fun thus far.


Since I didn't put a song when I posted this originally and that was an oversight, I'll fix it post-facto. The corretto (Italian for generic alcohol put in coffee to "correct' it) for this post, is a silly AMV for Reel Big Fish's Hungry Like the Wolf cover to Lupin the III, which is not just a great pairing, but a great way to offset the dead serious Camus. So! Lupin the III and Camus. A match made in, well, here. Enjoy.

The City & The City And Sleeping I Swear

New feature, which hopefully, will appear every week on Wednesday. In my attempt to get a Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule going, I'm dedicating Wednesday to some piece of media I'm finished with, digesting or still trying to figure out.

I read two books since I left for Rome. The first is China Mieville's The City & The City with the second being Camus' (which I learned recently is pronounce Cam-Ooooooh) the Stranger. I'll talk about it more on Friday.

SPOILERS for The City & The City, obviously, follow.



The City & The City

I liked it a lot, despite the fact that I couldn't fully visualize the conceit of the setting, that two cities share the same real estate, but none of the same laws. I think because it focused more on being a detective story than something more science fiction y, I was able to follow it was easier for me to swallow.

Also, I am compelled to admit I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of insider betrayals on the police force. I was waiting, the entire goddamn time for either the partner from Ul Qora to be secretly informing on him for the bad guys or for the female cop back in Besz that he was flirting with to fill that role.

Of course, it ended up being the least likely person (as it always is, and often should be) so, I was still surprised. The detective himself wasn't particularly memorable, he could have just as easily been called Damn The Rules, Lives In A Shitty Apartment, Lawful Good Detective A and that would have covered just about everything. But that's only if you consider strict adherence to a traditional good guy style to be a bad thing.

I haven't read a detective/crime story (that wasn't in a comic) in a while, so in addition to being worth the money on its own, it's a nice preparation for whatever the hell 2666 is bringing my way. Seriously. The thing is a behemoth. I think I put it in my drawer just so I didn't have to be intimidated by its sheer weight and surprising height.

Anyway. Back to The City & The City. The premise is interesting. There's a murder and then it goes out of jurisdiction is a pretty uniform plot, but in a city where there are two populations that literally cannot look at each other, it makes the tension and distrust between those two cities, a lot more pronounced. And, it makes finding and collating evidence, the process of justice, even harder.

The details (like that the Besz cops are still on dial up) are a nice reminder of how not far in the future the story is set. Hell, some of it even involves a college! So yes. I like it and I'd even recommend it to my mother or father. That might not be a compliment for some people, but I think it's a testament to how solidly the story is written.

This song has little and I'd argue nothing to do with the book, but it's what I've been listening to since I could sit down at the internet. I don't know what it's about, but the chorus is to kill for. Enjoy.

My First Day Back In Town

Rome. I'm in its limits. Huh.

The two main issues are mainly the heat and the wi-fi. As complaints go: There's worse. The library's nice and there's a fantastic iced cappuccino available for under $2, so it's hard to complain. Also, there' s a ground based power outlet, which means I can type this. I should talk to the guy who does wifi.

Under 24 hours later, I've got wireless internet, the iced cappuccino is still fantastic.

I ought to explore Rome, which often means making decisions that involve basically ignoring my ingrained desire to have outs of situations. In other words: Say yes to ideas like finding a bar at midnight in a shady part of town, or getting off of a bus before the right stop because everyone else is doing it. (And yes, I did just call Rome a town. It's so Midwest of me. I know.) The ingrained desire is to always have a way home on my own. My safety and autonomy are paramount, back home. Here, I have to learn very carefully to ignore that in favor of something more enjoyable and restrictive.

I know I'm using the prescriptive in that last paragraph. For example, the getting off the bus with a gaggle of other kids I only loosely know, but united in the fact that we're all American did not end well, if the destination was the bar. We never found it, and getting off the bus with the other drunk Americans was the first bad decision that led to other ones. The group split again, between the people who were sure where they were going and the couple (handsy boy and handsy girl) with the map.

They split, with hesitant promises to meet up at the Spanish Steps. I headed with the couple, with whom we braved the roman streets. The cars didn't stop for anything, which meant we dodged cars and ran across hazy cobblestone lanes a lot. It hit me when we got to the river in the middle of the city, (which I'm not looking up because as soon as I get on the internet, I'll never leave) that I was very much not at home.

We skirted the bright, noisy tents of the circus/festival on the banks of the sky and I knew instantly, there is an analogue for this in the City, but nothing really like this feeling of being among friends and being very, very far from home. There was a language spoken I didn't recognize, bright lights and lots of people who did not look like they wanted to rob me. In other words: an air of intoxicating possibility. Shit, there was even a bridge that didn't have some obvious mechanism to raise it. There were lots of these bridges! As far as my eye could see (say, about two either way), bridges carved by hand.

We traipsed up the Spanish Steps, finally. I hummed the chorus to Spanish Bombs,by the Clash for the rest of the night. We split up from the handsy couple (likely to their delight) somehow, and after finding them only after becoming certain we were taking a cab to our next destination, which ended up being the wrong place, and sent us on another adventure.

That another adventure will be on Wednesday. This is a natural stopping point, anyway.

But for now, I'll end with the Clash's Spanish Bombs, since it's

a) a great song
b) germane to both
b i) my state of mind
b ii) the place

More On the Title

Subsidized Sincerity is a title that, hopefully, expresses unease and acknowledges the negotiation and fudging of truth in life, specifically, my own. I mean, that fucking Monetize button. I think it's laughing at me.

It's a title, that I hope, stirs the pot enough to get whiffs of half-truths, lies that are accurate and humorless laughter. I feel comfortable with those behaviors. Maybe it's what I've been reading for the last 10 or so years. Those books are based on compromise, being trapped and forced to make a decision that isn't satisfying but permissible.

Not satisfying but permissible. Wow.

It's about being tainted but still trying to do something. Damnit, something. That actions, even if they are checkered, suspect or not entirely pure still have some kind of value. Doing good when everything's cool and you have superpowers is easy. Doing good when you can taste the blood and vomit mixing between your teeth, the bed is empty and your job drains every milliliter of your energy is much harder and worth so much more.

That's why I chose Subsidized Sincerity.

Oh. I go to Rome (as in Italy) for three months. I leave in three hours. I think the third post will be in Rome, as many of the coming posts will be.

This post's song is by the Long Blondes, as a tip of the hat to a couple of my friends and to the Phonogram comic series generally. It's one of the few Long Blondes songs that I enjoy because it's fun and not depressing. That's all I'll say. See you in dreams.