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Sunday, November 11, 2012

Taken Out to the Wash


Taken Out to the Wash
A Critique of the short film “The Laundromat” by Timothy Melville
By Davin Kimble

“The Laundromat” by Timothy Melville is an interesting take on the “guy gets duped by a pretty woman” story. Men are fallible. We focus sometimes on what we want or what we expect to happen to us instead of seeing what’s right in front of our faces. At least once in our lives a beautiful woman takes us all for a ride, and if we are lucky we’ll get the chance to take that trip more than once. In this story a normal human interaction that can often take months to play out is a lesson told in a few short minutes. Don’t trust a big butt and a smile.

The scene is a Laundromat. The players, an attractive young lady, an attractive young man and an oblivious dude in the background; the snow globe is a gun. The gun changes everything, the gun twists the plot and gives our antagonist some sense of power over her victim; her poor dumbstruck tango. Here we have a woman, standing in a place one might expect a woman to be standing, reading a magazine you might expect any woman doing her wash to be reading, in a place you’d expect a woman to be. The setup is perfect, the visuals in place. We are all thinking, “romantic moment ahead”, grab your tissues or heartstrings or whatever you pull out during these boy meets girl movie moments. But the gun, now the gun changes everything.

It’s a brilliant if dangerous scheme but it works on this guy. But why wouldn’t it? I would be thinking, “There is no way I am handing this gun over to this chick. It’s obvious she put it there”. I would have at the very least unloaded it first. But this guy … this guy is seeing what he wants to see. All he is thinking is, “this is a chance to get to know a beautiful woman” to his detriment. The story stresses this. He continues to do what she asks thinking she is flirting with him. He dances, unsure of himself. He hands over his wallet and makes excuses for the value of his watch, unsure of himself. He has no weapons, no power. Even had I made the mistake of handing over the gun I would have, I believe, come out of that situation a whole lot better, or dead, but I wouldn’t have danced to her tune. She would have had to dance to mine … or kill me. Women love a man with a gun after all but what this guy missed is that he didn’t have the gun anymore, she did and he had no other weapons to work with.

In a way this is a very empowering feminist tale of the balance of power. This woman, slight of build, seemingly soft and potentially vulnerable has balls bigger than a chimpanzee. Buy itself being ballsy is a hell of a leg up, but having a gun to boot, now there is a tipping point in the balance of power that cannot be denied. But she continues to play coy, sweet, teasing him along with a promise that only he believes is real. She holds all of the cards and she is the only one who realizes it. How easily he hands over his wallet, his watch and his heart if he had been given another half a chance. He even offers to go along with her as a hostage, handing her all of his cards, his “guns”, knives and his dignity. He had no guns left. He’s lucky she left him his manhood. Her position and his desire set him up to be robbed in a public Laundromat.

I think that there are lessons in this tale that speak to the human condition. For instance, what about the guy reading the paper in the back? Did he not even hear the word gun? Why on earth did he not look around now and then? Who sits there never once taking in their environment? Too many people is the answer. This guy is the representation of the ignorant bliss so many walk around in. He witnessed a brazen robbery but the sad part is he will never know it. The robbed man witnessed an brilliant scheme but he will never recognize it. I can hear him telling the story. I can see him thinking on it wistfully, wondering if he’ll ever see her again, longing for it, masturbating to it. She was right. Woman love a man with a gun. They love a man with confidence, a sense of brazen fearlessness, a depth of focus and an innate awareness. This film showed me how you can visually realize a depth of emotion, character and sense of story in a very short frame of time. You can leave your audience wondering what came before and what might come after. You can teach them to wonder who these people are and encourage them to create the rest of the story to their little hearts contentment.

Monday, August 27, 2012

Love Actually

This is a comment to an article I read in The Atlantic some years ago Read the article here.
The Response follows.
There is a huge deep and dark hole in this whole discussion. There is a balance that no one really seems to care to talk much about. In this article, and it would seem this book, everyone is focusing on the plight and woes of teenage girls. No one considers the other side of that dynamic, the teenage boys. And that, is truly a bigger part of the problem than all of your nincompoop about these girls.
But, since you brought it up, allow me to address the young ladies. On the whole they have completely discarded the FRIEND part of the boyfriend experience. They want a boy who will fall into all of the fantasies of the boyfriend idea. Twilight teaches our young girls that the angry, loner cute weird guy with a whole family of issues is the one that you should skip school for, the one you should chase all over the northern territories, the one you should place yourself in mortal peril, even commit suicide for because nothing is more important than love. These girls all expect some tall, dark and handsome to wrap them up in this fantasy. The truth is, that guy is usually the one who cajoles, seduces and threatens your daughters into those locker rooms in the first place. He is the prime beef cake and the girls are expected to compete for his attention. Hollywood teaches them this. The very tales you cite in your piece as bringing our young womens head out of the gutter are social lies that give them no more freedom from attachment to a man than the 1950's did. And with attachment to a man comes sex.
And the boys are entirely rounded up in sex as a thought. At 12-15 years old our young men have less than no guidance when it comes to relationship issues. Things are handled, in boy world, with violence of action whether it be fighting or fucking; the most direct route to conflict resolution is a physical one. Maybe if the angst ridden vampire boy in Twilight had received some communications classes he could have just told the stupid mortal girl what the deal was in the first place. Instead he moaned, and whined and enticed her and led her on. And people completely missed that he's a VAMPIRE, and evil being bent on human destruction. On one hand boys are still taught to respect a women and treat them with kindness and care; but on the other we are also taught that there are things a woman can't handle and you should keep them out. The real sticker is, and it begins around junior high when the girls "harass the boys with their endless flirtations" is that the women control the whole game. Just because it may seem to you that we didn't notice, or care, we did. Those of us you shoved aside in high school so you could go blow Donny rock star in the bathroom. Even if you had no intention of blowing him, why did you follow him in there in the first place? It's unseemly. But they did, we watched the girls do these things. What the boys are taught, by these ceaseless images of masculine attractiveness is that unless you are one of these guys, hot, rich, sexy, you will never be happy. And as one of those guys, the girls are going to expect you virile.
There was a time in my middle and early high school years when I believed that the only way to have a girlfriend was to make a friend first. I made a lot of friends but I never had a girlfriend. I was told that you had to woo a woman. I was told you had to do little things to let her know how much you cared. It would be a long time before I had a girlfriend. I watched the other guys, the guys I knew were jackasses, get the girls. Being a friend to females got you nothing and I soon learned that making them desire YOU changed the game. I became the desirable man and I believed I had it all together, and I was still in high school. During those years we had a lot of sex with a lot of girls and not one moment of it was forced or coerced. There was little conversation from our parents about sex at all so what we learned we learned from experimenting, and in my generation we experimented all the time, every weekend and twice during school if we could. But it was all to learn the please the ladies, who were coming for the sex anyway.
There is something in this idea that these girls are the only ones deluded here, that the fantasy is all theirs and when they stray from it they become victims. It is also the burden of the boy who doesn't know what to do with the information he's given any more than she does. Think of that kid who stood by and watched the girl he loved throw herself into the midst of those wolves in the first place. Maybe he tried to talk to her, but would she have heard him? Her message is follow the meat, his message is lure the girl. No wonder they come to some physical head, for good or worse, and it's usually worse.
The voice of the boy is a mute one, shrouded in violence and secrecy. yet we are held responsible for the state of the girls that ignore us. Because there is a sex culture that borders on the destructive, it does not mean that the onus lies with the male. For every bald faced jerk out there, there is a man just struggling to figure out what the hell women really want. And for every woman that makes a male friend there is one who simply wants to spend some time naked in a locker room.
The boys, and we all know boys, are putting it where they can put it and they are not thinking about it because no one told them they should. They have no control over it because no one told them how. The boys aren't to blame here, the boys, like the girls, are lost in the same sea of emotion and misinformation we were lost in. And those candid conversations about sex they are so upset by are the ones we need to be having with them. We have to step in where everyone else is failing and talk to our kids about the realities of sex and relationships. I promise you, the "Boyfriend" culture isn't going to fly just because women are having a change of heart. No one thought to ask the boys if they wanted to engage in a new sort of game? What if we want to focus on education, physical fitness, skills, talents, and power that you'll some to suck up when we're thirty.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

4th in Photo's

Hey ya'll. I hope your 4th of July has been a great one. Before I give you my little bit of my day I want to ask you to do something for me. Read this. Remember why we celebrate this day.


And now without further delay. Enjoy a bit of small town celebration.

I am Ready to go.
All the Fire Departments from 4 counties were in attendance.
So glad we have them. Hate to ever have to call them.
Thanks guys for all you do.
The prerequisite band.
These guys were pretty good.

And the Flag Corps!
Our local Motorcycle Club.
These guys rock.
This guy REALLY ROCKS!
I salute you sir!
Dublin Represent!
American History right there.
Remember where where we came from.
Tiny milk truck.
This is Dairy Country!
USA! Who was this?
Damn my camera sucks.
Support Local Roller Derby!
You'd better, or I'll come after you!
My baby celebrating.
Celebrate baby!
The Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy. 
It is a part of our history ... sigh, like it or not.
Horsies!
Happy Independence Day!

Friday, May 25, 2012

Timeless Lost and Utter Stagnation

When people talk about the moments in their lives they often relate the success or failures of those moments to timing. They bemoan the fact that this or that missed opportunity came down to poor timing. Timing is relative. When it comes to human relationships and timing,time is nothing more than a construct that depends on too many variables to be … well depended on. Humans have survived on instinct, and loyalty and love, not the timing of it all. We stuck, and stick, together because in order to survive we had to. Timing is irrelevant to the whole thing. We forget that in our self centered drive for our distant desires. Down the timeline is where our heads are but the rest of us is still right here, right now, disconnected from ourselves.

If I wanted you in my life I would take you right now, as you are lock stock and barrel and I would walk with you, and I would love you with my whole heart because my instinct tells me you are worthy. Timing? Bah! This is the time. It's the only time we have because the next second exists just as much as the last second does. Only as constructs in our muddled minds. I could be dead by morning. What does time mean then? Nothing except to those I've left behind me. Before this time I was there. And after this time I wasn’t. But it still means nothing to the right now. That's how I see it. I have always seen time that way and thereby live lost in the linear. I live in a linear world because it's the world forced upon me. If I could just live and write. Time would mean nothing.

I could go on having crazy conversations over the mad strains of Duke Ellington about the irrelevance of time, the frustrations of love and the fact that in my mind I am smaller than I have any right to be, but in the minds of others I am bigger than I deserve to be. Wanted by so many. Needed by so many. Understood by so few. Forced in this Xian world to compromise and dance and live in a linear circular meaningless cycle of 8 hour days. Forced into the human constructs of the past and the future. Time and space and money and politics and hope. Not just live in the right now. Not just live in love and passion and need. Why? For what they call survival. So we can afford to buy twenty dollar meals that are bigger than we should ever eat. So we can discard more than we ever deserved to have in the fucking first place. Survival they call it. So we can fill a house that’s bigger than we need it to be full of shit we never use. Survival is a pile of discarded junk on a street corner mouldering in the summer sun. Even the home free man passing it as he pushes his cart squeaking and clanking with aluminum cans knows that pile has no value. It never had any value. It was always misdirection. Even he refuses to dig through the refuse of your nugatory, trifling lives. His survival depends on more important things.

Survival has itself become a corporation that bleeds us as sure as a jugular slice. We dance on the strings of greed and needless needs. We follow the folly and work for pennies better left strewn in the streets. We are addicted to our addictions. We are led by our bullrings. Piercings that we inflicted upon ourselves. Masks that we wear and fucking chastity belts we locked and threw away the keys to before we even knew the importance of what we were doing to ourselves. Killing ourselves, destroying ourselves and doing it gladly for what we term a “Higher Moral Cause”.  Fucking ourselves up the ass with a rigid corporate cock. Moaning in delight as we make them rich off our own blind desire for more. More corporate cock, give us more, we insatiable greedy whores. And doing it gladly for the next steaming pile of discarded junk. Dancing on our puppet strings, we our own puppeteers. Dancing not to the unholy Devils tune, or to the holy strains of some fucks forsaken God above, but dancing to the discordant tune we have created and modified and ruined in our mad dash for uselessness. A cacophony of lost souls screaming in the fires heedless desire. What shit music they make.

But they don’t understand. They don’t see while they walk the streets the work that’s being done in the minds of mad poets. They don’t see the that infusion of thought fed to them came from the tip of a rigid shaft bleeding onto the page. Screaming in your fucking faces. Choice is a lie! Free will is an illusion! You are conditioned, instinctive creatures. You are dirty groveling animals simply trying not to fucking die and trying not to miss a chance to fucking fuck so you can make more dirty groveling animals. Look at your beloved histories and see the men and women who truly changed the worlds we live in. They are your gods. They are the lasting forevers of human history. The lifted you and have kept you from the morass and they continue to do so. Rest on your dried up bloody laurels you worthless mass. Weep for yourselves for you are stagnant and in stagnation every species is doomed.

Friday, April 27, 2012

The Stand

I wrote this some time ago for my short lived radio program. It seems to me just as relevant to me now as it did then. If you missed it the first time around now is your chance. So ... Enjoy.
 
I don’t believe I’ve ever struggled so hard over a piece of writing. For days I’ve pondered the approach. Should I be light hearted, or should I come straight down the chute? I started, and then stopped again. One attempt began something like:


“36 years and some months ago I came into this world Kicking and screaming.”

Really? I thought as I read that disaster over. You cannot begin that way. And by the time I read:

“I didn’t see the humor in it then, wide open mouth granting entry between the thighs of the laughing fat lady.” I’d decided I had to begin again.

I knew I wanted to say something that would catch and hold your attention. I knew that I wanted to thrust you into, and leave you deep in thought. I knew I wanted to surprise and stun you and leave you wanting more. I was aware that my delivery had to be eloquent and articulate and that my voice had to be deep and strong and it had to resonate out over the airwaves and touch your ears like a gentle whisper, and be pleasing.

I considered writing this in the rhythmic staccato of the spoken word poem. A delivery method I am familiar with and good at. I could say something like:

Words are like air to me
Everywhere and possessing all things with meaning
Giving the day a name and making death a pain
Words are like air to me.

But, I’m not a real poet to begin with and it all sounded so forced. I decided at one point to take the easiest road and give you an hour of my music art and stories. I thought to regale and entertain you with my greatness, talent and skill. Live raps, and stories and poems, all wrapped up in the silky sheet of my voice. Internet radio as a shameless vehicle of self promotion.  And don’t doubt that selfish self promotion will play a part here, over time, never fear. All good things in small doses I told myself as I crawled back into my humble pie.

 I struggled with how to tell you who I am and with how to make this a moment you remember and long to return to week after week. I want you to love me, I want you to tell your friends about me and why they should love me too. Stories about my childhood I decided were trite, boring and only relevant from the perspective of who I am today. And who I am today is your humble host D.K. Renaissance man, friend, lover, and father. What I am today is a man with a radio show. What I was yesterday was a man with a radio show to write. What I will be tomorrow we can only wait to see. That is truly in your hands.

This show is not just about me; this show is also about you. This show is about dialogue and discovery. This show is about exploring the boundaries of reality and truth as we know it and should we find them lacking, tearing them down and casting them aside. This show is about bringing the things that affect our lives out into the harsh light of day. And in this world, vampires don’t sparkle. The minutes following this dialogue are where you, get a chance to find your voice, to state your viewpoint, to shout out at those things that frustrate you. Everyday we are surrounded by so many lies, half truths and misleading leaders there is a feeling that no one can be believed. Our jobs are lies, our coworkers are lies, our television is a lie, or politicians, teachers, police, judges and ministers are lies. This is the time when your moral compass must be your guide and this is the place to stage your war. I ask of you only this in the end:

Stand together with me! Raise your voice so that they might hear our cries and understand. WE WILL NOT GO EASILY INTO THE DARKNESS!  

Monday, April 2, 2012

The Compleat Libertine

Clearing up the Libertine Confusion

I am a Libertine. Not because I’ve read much of the famous Libertines, not because I am a fan of the likes of John Wilmot or the Marqui de Sade, or the 2nd Earl of Rochester. Not because I love the movie “The Libertine” starring Johnny Depp. I am a Libertine because that’s what I am. I choose to live a life free of the social and moral constraints that cause us to fear and doubt and question the one thing we should never hold in doubt … ourselves.

Now I know that many of you are shaking your heads at the thought of having no moral constraints. Well that’s why I am here to help clear the fog from your heads. Being a Libertine is not about having a LACK of constraints, it’s about NOT subscribing to the social and religious moral constraints that make no sense. But, before I get into why I am a Libertine let’s look at just what a Libertine is.

Libertine as defined by dictionary dot com::

noun
1. a person who is morally or sexually unrestrained, especially a dissolute man; a profligate; rake.

2. a freethinker in religious matters.

3. a person freed from slavery in ancient Rome.

adjective
4. free of moral, especially sexual, restraint; dissolute;licentious.

5. freethinking in religious matters.

6. Archaic . unrestrained; uncontrolled.

Synonyms
1.  rouĂ©, debauchee, lecher, sensualist, amoral, sensual, lascivious, lewd.

This translates to me as FREE.

Free to live my life as I see fit. As an example: For you, dear reader, the idea of having more than one sexual partner or love interest may be immoral or indeed amoral. For me it’s a natural course of human existence. We are social creatures and, especially in this age of super connectivity, our lives are largely defined by the social connections we make. The people we keep in our lives speak as much to who we are as the people we dismiss from our lives do. For me those people are important and I am not one to hinder the growth of the relationships in my life based on some ideal of morality dictated to me by the church or the state. Instead my morality says, “Make, and strive to keep, friends. And if you get the chance to fuck one, do it”. “Where is the morality in that, “you may be asking yourself? I prefer to earn and retain friendships based on the people involved and not based on their personal lives. Just as I am free to live as I please so too are you. I will never judge or hinder you in your existence because no one but you can live it. Where is my right to judge you or ask you to change so that I can feel justified, or justify to the nay sayers in my life, knowing you? That wouldn’t be fair to me or to you.

So, what are Libertines really like? Let’s break it down shall we?

Libertine Morality

Dare I continue along this slippery, rocky, narrow, steep grade? Yes, why not? Let’s begin by definition.

mo·ral·i·ty
   [muh-ral-i-tee, maw-]
noun, plural -ties for 4–6.

1. conformity to the rules of right conduct; moral  or virtuous conduct.

2. moral  quality or character.

3. virtue in sexual matters; chastity.

4. a doctrine or system of morals.

5. moral  instruction; a moral  lesson, precept, discourse, or utterance.

The definition itself is a moral stricture. Words like virtuous and chastity are used to describe something that comes down to holding a personal stance. Maybe your stance is virtuous, maybe it isn’t. Maybe you are chaste and maybe you are not but sliding into debauchery does not make you an immoral person. The so called “rules of right conduct” are dictated by those who hold to certain values and so those values dictate morality. I say pah, pshaw, and humbug. Morality is a personal thing that begins with one idea:

And ye harm none do as thou wilt; let that be the whole of the law.

Morality is a personal stance. Personally I would never place any moral stricture on another person. That alone, to me, is a moral stance. Some people wield the rod against their children, committing violence against a being that has no hope of recourse or retribution. To me that is reprehensible and worthy of a like punishment and so completely immoral. Some feel that it’s their god given, and state given, right to harass, harangue, and abuse people for the choices they’ve made in their lives. Some feel that subjecting their families to years of missionary work and closing them off from society at large is a perfectly moral thing to do. I call it social abuse. None of us will ever agree completely on what is right and what is wrong. Right in my world boils down to leaving people to live as they please accepting them, or not, for who they are and leaving the rest to the tests of time. I expect the same in return. If you are going to be a part of my life then the fact that I can be a rapscallion and a lothario are just part of the package.

You live yours, Let me live mine.

Libertine Sexuality

Sex. We all do it we all love it. Sex is a natural part of human existence yet somehow it’s become a complicated morass of emotion, morality and plain foolishness. Some seem to think that sex and sexuality should exist in one dimension. For these people sex is one man, one woman, missionary in a bed in the dark for the purpose of procreation only. Now, tell yourselves the truth, while this happens now and then, how many of you do this every time you have sex? Only this and nothing else? The crickets are chiming in. I can hear them but not a single hand is going up. Why?

Because sex is an experience. It’s designed to be enjoyable and full of feeling and pleasure and to bring people closer together. What better way to get into someone's soul than getting into their pants? When your bodies are intertwined, skin on skin, flesh slapping in a staccato rhythm, your breath in each others ears, and faces, sweat mingling and pooling beneath you as you work yourselves into a frothy climax … whew, that’s getting me hot. The sight, the sounds, the smells of sex are intoxicating, invigorating and familiar to us all. While designed to be pleasurable so that we propagate the human race, they are decidedly NOT there for that reason alone.

We should engage one another in the act of mutual pleasure and we should do it as often as possible. We should do it in many different ways, in many different positions and with many different people. We should engage in fantasies and fulfill them for one another. We should spank and bite and scratch and go hard and deep. Sex is an experience not to be missed or taken lightly. Like all things we are discussing here however there should be no harm done to unwilling parties. This isn’t about throwing all morality, personal responsibility, and caution to the wind. This is about experiencing your life, in the now, as you please and avoiding all delusion and self deception.

Libertine Lifestyle

Some of you might be thinking, “who is he to say what a Libertine Lifestyle” is? Good question. I am a self professed life long Libertine to begin. I’ve lived in the now and for the pleasures of life since I first reached down and realized touching my dick was fun. Fighting was fun. Fucking was fun. Drinking, smoking, dancing, driving, chasing women, were, and are, all fun. These things and more are what life is all about and the Libertine Lifestyle is about indulging yourself and others.

Some may say that life is all about the pursuit of a higher spiritual state or the relentless drive for material wealth or the passion for higher ideals and they would be right. Life is also about the things you do in between the spiritual, the material and the idealistic. It takes all of these things to live a truly fulfilled life and one piece of life shouldn’t be neglected for another. No one way of living should supersede another. To hinder and restrict yourself in this way is to lose in life, to miss much of what life has to offer.

There is a saying that goes something like, “slide into your grave sweaty, panting and apologizing for being late”. The thought is appealing to me. Not that I necessarily live my life hard and fast, well not THAT hard and fast, but I do tend to take the bull by the horns and drag that fucker into the dust, cut his throat chop him up, throw him on the grill and invite people over for a Barbeque, B.Y.O.B. of course.

Libertine Thought

The thought? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. You’ve heard that before right? We live as free people, or we like to delude ourselves that freedom is a real thing. Either way freedom is ours to believe or disbelieve as we see fit. You may be a Liberal. You may be a Democrat or a Conservative. You might be a Christian or a Commie Bastard ( I love saying that). Gay, Straight, Unsure it’s all your right to be or not to be. This is my life, or in your case it’s your life, and individually we are the only ones who can live it, or them (the lives I mean). We are the masters of our own fate and the captains of our every moment. I can’t dictate the morality you should live by and you should not dictate morality to me, if you know what’s good for you. I am a Libertine and to the best of my knowledge that doesn’t affect you one bit. And I am not the only one. We are legion and we are amongst you. Educate yourselves and learn to accept it. We aren’t going anywhere.