Безам, ва безам, хьаьган массо хьо кара1амо.
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April 14th, 2008
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| Watched Sokurov's Mother and Son last night. His similar work Father and Son is one of my favorite movies, so I thought I'd like this one, and sure, it's a masterpiece, but five minutes into it I realized that I personally was not going to be able to enjoy this film and was dying for it to be over. Really the idea of mothers makes my skin crawl. I find something menacing in all mothers. It didn't help that this mother babbled on like a mental patient and had these frightening attacks. I did not have an even remotely positive relationship with my mother and did not even remotely want one. Whereas it's same with my father (who, may I remark parenthetically, punched me in the throat this weekend) but I myself would like to be a father someday. ( On fatherhood, and other subjects ) | ||||||||
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drunkApril 3rd, 2008
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| I'm bored, so here's the sappiest thing I've ever read in any language. That includes bad fluff fanfiction. I would like to mention right off the bat that everyone in this story is sixteen, but we don't find that out until the last page. Of course, by then, we already feel like pedophiles, so I'm telling you right away so you can get turned on without guilt. But since this is so sappy - get turned on if you feel like it, but the idea here is to warm the heart and not the prick. ( Original Russian by Gennady Trifonov, translation by I don't know who ... excerpt from a longer novel that I don't have any information about ... ) | ||||||||
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predatoryMarch 23rd, 2008
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| Hokay, I'm supposed to write about what I find cute in response to the meme down below. But, eh. I could pontificate, but I think I'll just spam this post with pictures of hot guys and adorable little animals. ( Fucking hedgehogs, yo! ) | ||||||||
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indifferentMarch 15th, 2008
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| Meme. (i.e. damn it I need to use this thing more) Everyone has things they blog about. Everyone has things they don't blog about. Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't blog about, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll write attempt to write a post about it. Ask for anything: latest movie watched, last book read, political leanings, thoughts on yaoi, favorite type of underwear, graphic techniques, etc. Repost in your own journal if you are so inclined. | ||||
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March 13th, 2008
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| Have decided that I NEED to read the book that the movie I saw the other day was based off of. Unfortunately, said book is a short queer novel written in Swiss German in the seventies and apparently never translated. I have formed a plan. 1. Learn Swiss German 2. Be in Switzerland 3. Find book 4. Read book 5. ??? 6. Profit! (Do not doubt for a MINUTE that I wouldn't do all of this for that stupid motherfucking book, either.) So, I found the first chapter, at least, on the author's website. Here it is. Huh. Swiss German is the fuckingest language. It looks beautiful, however ... Ah, well, I'll figure it out somehow ... This is how it always goes down with me, I decide I need to read something immediately (alternatively, that I want to read something in the original language - I learned French for Rimbaud and Camus), and I realize that it would take me only a few months or years to learn a language, whereas it might be decades if I just sat around waiting for somebody to translate it. A big time-saver, eh?! *sigh* It almost makes sense the way I explain it, doesn't it. Anyway I have nothing better to do. I need a job. Or a hobby. You know, it should not be so difficult to find in Switzerland? I think I'm right in understanding that it's a staple text of Swiss German university students, and that there was discussion of the book and film, it even attracted a bit of Christian study ... hm, well, it is sort of the Au hasard Balthazar of films about gay Swiss rock musicians in the seventies, as I told Sashka. Poor Beni. I hate moments like this in which I have a sudden realization of how distant I am from the things that move me. There is nothing here that touches my heart. I should write about that film later, maybe. Damn, you listen to Korol i Shut ONCE and your recommendations get all messed up last.fm wise. I want to listen to so little Russian power metal I could scream. | ||||||||||
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listlessFebruary 29th, 2008
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| Testimonial meme has been imported from LJ, it seems. Here is me. | ||||||||
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February 18th, 2008
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| I decided to watch the film Au hasard Balthazar last night, which is one of the greatest movies ever made (conceivably the greatest). It's one of my personal favorites, because I see it as an overwhelmingly hopeful film. To me the principal characters weren't Marie and Balthazar, but Arnold and Gerard, who at each turn receive gifts (money in several scenes, and in Gerard's case, love) and chances for redemption. That they refuse to take them is, I think, immaterial ... although I can't really explain why. This is also hard to put into words: I don't like to think about goodness as a system where it eventually leads to reward ... even when discussing religion we can't ignore the fact that we live in an indifferent world where evil is sometimes not punished and good is sometimes not rewarded. The film is redemptive because it reminds us that it is possible at any time to be good or to become good. The gifts of Arnold and Gerard (including Balthazar and/or Marie's relationships with them) represent primarily the forgiveness and love of God and Christ (if they can be said to exist), which are ever present, and secondarily the forgiveness and love of others, which is also ever present in its own way ... Sometimes particular relationships are ruined beyond all hope of repair, but everyone is capable of being loved in some way. Murderers are often loved. Oh, here we go: it's not important that Arnold and Gerard did not take their chances for redemption and goodness, because in life we often don't take them. What's important is that they're there. | ||||||||||
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contemplativeFebruary 9th, 2008
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| I really love poking around YouTube. I don't care for funny videos or anything, but I like to look at the home videos from places like Kyrgyzstan where you wouldn't normally get glimpses into everyday life. Fact: if you have more than three Chechen men in the same room, they will all eventually begin to dance Lezghinka. The purpose of the internet is to have something to do with the video that the fourth Chechen recorded on his cell phone. The thing I like the most about Chechens is that the men, they dance like maniacs. (Akhmedka, Lanka, we will smoke together and dance one more time before going on to the Paradise insha'allah ... ) Also a lot of Chechen pop music that I miss. This is my favorite song "Нохчийчоь" by Ali Dimaev When I sleep, I dream of nothing but cameras and film stock, of finding professional cameras for cheap in yard sales or thrown into a ditch on the side of the road. I wake up and the fact that I'm not in Moscow or Grozny has me genuinely bewildered and quite put off. It makes no sense to be here! It's a shock to my system when I wake up here, because I do not know how to separate means and desire. When something happens for someone who deserves it, I see the link between desire and accomplishment, but I do not see the link between accomplishment and money. So, first there are things I must do. Hard work. I went on for a bit the other day over in the journal of ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} seraphicideals about this film that I'm hellbent on making (hey, she asked) and looking at what I wrote then is interesting to me, so I'm sticking it here so I can look back at it later and remember my idealism, for when the going gets rough ...( rant ) | ||||||||
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February 6th, 2008
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| Korol' i Shut is another one of those bands that I really like to listen to on occasion, but can't quite reconcile with my sense of aesthetics. I think I just like them because they seem like they're having a lot of fun. *goes off to download Dingsi's mix* Fuck. I'm pissed off all the goddamn time now. Sasha. My boyfriend. I don't love him. I don't like him. I don't respect him. I don't even get along with him. I want to leave him with every fiber of my being, but ... well, he's good-looking, I don't want to have to recalibrate myself to another man's disgusting fantasies (I have enough trouble handling regular sex) and - this is the big and right here - he's the only person who can get me out of this ghetto. I mean, in theory. I want to go back to Europe, I need to go back. I hate this country and everyone in it, and as for these "opportunities" or "freedoms" that Americans keep telling me about, well, capitalism has done me no favors. I know full well that if I had stayed in Ukraine or Russia, or anywhere, I would have been able to go to school, probably become intelligentsia. Here I'm stuck with absolutely no prospects because I have absolutely no money. Why is everyone in the United States of America laboring under the impression that their country is the freest on Earth, economically, politically, socially? Face it, Americans, if you're not born middle class here you're dead in water. That's not what I'd call freedom. And where the hell am I going to find anyone else unhappy enough in their new country that they actually want to go back? Anyone with the means, anyway. Everyone here is some rich intellectual Jew, of course they're happy in America. Fuck, you know, the way I figure I can suck dick in my home country, or I can suck dick in hostile territory surrounded by the people that I hate. Sasha reminds me of all the tricks I have to deal with day in and day out. I honestly don't think there's much difference between my relationship with the johns I handle and my relationship with him, other than that he doesn't pay me. On top of that, I just met a great guy, and it opened my eyes. There's nothing normal about the way Sasha's been treating me. He keeps telling me "This is what sex is like in real life, this is what relationships are like, get used to it" but it's not and I don't have to put up with this shit. I don't have to put up with some guy who abandoned me to fend for myself in the ghetto around St. Raph's or out on the highway when I hurt my leg and he didn't feel like coming to get me, I don't have to put up with someone who never once fulfilled any of the promises he made me, who dates women behind my back, who I can't talk to, who's dead inside, whose entire being is some black hole that devours all of my sympathy and compassion. But at the same time, if I got rid of Sasha, I'd lose the faintest glimmer of hope in ever getting out of America, and if I can't have that, I'd simply die. I would kill myself and that would be the end of it. My whole life, my whole work, is waiting for me in Russia. I can't live here at all. I couldn't even live in Brighton Beach, or some other Russian community, I need to go home. I have never in my life stopped believing that, and these past few months it's all I can think about from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed again at night. Or in the morning, as it were ... | ||||||||
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angryJanuary 31st, 2008
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| Someone asked me the other day, "if you could live inside any work of fiction, what would it be?" "A fiction with a benevolent genie. I want a camera, a visa to Chechnya, and three actors. Then I will make my first film," I replied. "Actually, I am not in the least bit worried about the money and the law. It's the actors that keep me up at night." ( Read more... ) Anyway, seeing Fitzcarraldo again ... I never thought I'd be happy that a perfect stranger came down with amoebic dysentery twenty-five years ago, but there you go. I'm sure Jason Robards is a fine actor and Mick Jagger is a fine ... musician, but damn, that movie would have been nothing without Kinski. | ||||
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January 29th, 2008
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| So I got bored and was like, "I think I will look up my boyfriend's uncle, who is apparently some movie actor or something." (five seconds later) Dude! You never told me your uncle was that Igor Kostolevsky. And you look exactly alike, too! Goddamn! I'm totally tapping a young Igor Kostolevsky. I am king of sexual partners. (This guy.) | ||||||
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chipperJanuary 26th, 2008
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| Oh, thank God, I managed to write something in time for the deadline - my prompts were "a blue vase" and "greed." The deadline is in four hours and I did this in something like two hours. Bah. You know, I tend to write a lot about the rain in Russia - because it really is an interesting phenomenon ... Also, one of these days I'm going to have to write something that doesn't feel all Soviet-era-y, I think. ( story tiem nao ) | ||||||||||
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January 21st, 2008
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| This is a lovely painting. So much life and expression. I wonder who made it? Probably someone whose name has been lost to history, sadly. Swear I will make a proper long post about ... whatever's on my pea brain lately, I suppose. Haven't felt like pontificating much lately. And that's probably the first time I've said that in years. | ||||||
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January 18th, 2008
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| Today, after a lot of soul-searching, I finally made my decision. You are now talking to a full-fledged member of the Communist Party of the United States of America. | ||||
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January 15th, 2008
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| I have to be in just the right mood for it - a mood that comes something like every two years, apparently - but every once in a while I like listening to Linkin Park. There, I said it. I'm not saying that they're good! Only that for some reason I like to listen to them sometimes. (Pretentiously or not, I will quickly reassert my dignity by stating that for the most part I listen to vaguely obscure classical composers and Russian rock music, both of which are almost objectively decent, goddamn it. And Chechen music, which must be good, because practically nobody on the planet listens to it! Not even the Chechens.) Of course, I can only listen to one or two tracks, because all of their songs sound exactly alike (EXACTLY alike) and also I can't watch their awful music videos. Firstly, because the singer guy looks like a douchebag. I don't know what it is, I just ... I just want to smack him. Christ, even in the videos where he's a cartoon and a 3D render (respectively) he still looks like a douche. That's spectacular. A talented vocalist, yes, but I bet he's gotten more of his fair share of beatings. Secondly, because the music videos are ridiculous. Look at Numb. No wonder they're the laughingstock of American pop culture. These men have got to be in their thirties, and they're making videos about the WANGST of getting caught doodling in class and their parents yelling at them at the table? Damn, it's infantile. Impossible to take seriously. Not to mention all that Wapanese stuff. Lord. The Wapanese stuff, well, there's no accounting for taste. I quite like Japanese literature myself, and learned the language fluently as a preteen. I grew out of anime and manga years ago, however. It was the coolest thing ever when I was thirteen, natch, and the art style was passably fascinating into my teen years, but I just couldn't stand how unrealistic most of it was. There were a few exceptions, but they were too few and far between. (I remember there was one amazing manga short I read once, written by a gay comic artist, that said more in three pages about the genuine LGBT experience than the entire body of work produced by the yaoi and yuri genres combined. If I still have it in English somewhere, I'll post it.) I also quite dislike the Japanese language now - and have forgotten most of it, although I could probably still find my way around Tokyo if I needed to - remind me to write about my disillusionment with the language sometime. Although, I know that learning the language and reading the literature impacted my writing style and the way I think for the better, and I'm grateful for that. Anyway. The Wapanese stuff is a bit silly, but okay, it's their hobby, I'll leave them alone on that (yes, I'm still talking about Linkin Park *g*) - only, it's hard to buy the idea of men their age with teenage problems. It's artificial, and therefore it's repugnant and it makes us laugh. I'm wary of the aspect of American culture that tends to promote superficiality and shallowness as desired states, that doesn't accept suffering at all - that instead sees it as either a sign of weakness or a problem that needs to be eradicated immediately at all costs. (Got into a long discussion about this with Sasha the other day about the differences between suffering in Western and Eastern cultures. - also, I just said "the other day" about a discussion that I had back in March. Lord.) So I hate it when people go around like attacking anything emotional, sneering at it and calling it emo, but ... damn, Linkin Park is emo. Or at least overshot when they aimed for the teen demographic. Speaking of which. Sasha. Sasha came over today. ( I hadn't seen him in eight months, and ... ) | ||||||||
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January 14th, 2008
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| Okay. I'm not turning straight or anything, don't get me wrong. But I have a Thing for this chick. (Somebody hit me so I stop staring at the first picture. D:) | ||||||||
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| Over in my Livejournal is my face. Hello, face. I look emotionally exhausted in all of those photographs. I am. When I look back on my life, I can't believe all the bad things that have happened to me. Even just one thing would be a whole lifetime's worth of trauma. There's just so much of it I can hardly believe any of it ever happened. I'm a totally unbelievable character. *laugh* That's my problem for the month. Over on another LJ community, the prompt this month is to write a fictional autobiography. Goddamn, I could Nabokov that shit if I could make up a protagonist, only no, it's got to be me, doing something that never happened to me. But I really couldn't put in all of that stuff, I'd come off like a particularly bad Mary Sue. Moreover, I'm not sure what I'd be like if I weren't here, if I weren't tormented like every damn second of the day. I think I define myself by my suffering. That's messed up. Also, it is very weird listening to Tatu in English now. The past few weeks I've been listening to 200 Po Vstrechnoi nonstop. I used to hate them on principle because they had that lesbian stage persona, which I thought was very exploitative, but in interviews I've read they seem to regret it. They honestly didn't mean to offend, and they've been very supportive of their queer fans and the queer community at large, coming out in favor of gay rights, protesting, that sort of thing. Which is brave of them, considering how bad the LGBT rights situation is in Russia. If there's one thing I don't mind about living in America now, it's that I have comparatively more rights. Whereas in Russia ... well, between opushchennye and Article 121 and all kinds of shit ... I've heard some stories that would make your jaw drop. A lot of people write into the Russian queer magazines with horror stories that just go on and on and on. Maybe I'll type up some of them later. Whenever they try to have a protest or a pride parade over there a government official intervenes. Or worse, it ends up breaking out in a riot. And I can't believe that until the mid-nineties they were actually putting gay men in prison! The support for gay marriage is at something like 10-15 percent ... ... on the other hand, however, Russian men are something else ... man, if you go to Moscow, every five minutes a guy walks by who anyone would risk getting a beating for ... The other positive is that, for whatever reason, gay authors writing about their experiences are read in Russia. Or, this was true during Soviet times, anyway: everybody with access to the samizdat had read Kharitonov, and when he was rehabilitated he sold well (damn, I think there's an addition of Pod domashnim arestom out there annotated by Slava Mogutin, I have got to get my hands on that). And then there's Kuzmin, Esenin ... Oh, and not many people know this, but Gogol was gay, and Tolstoy, Lermontov and Pushkin wrote some poems in that vein, I think Dostoevsky had an unfinished lesbian novel ... probably some other examples I'm forgetting, too. It bothers me that there's this LGBT fiction ghetto here, like our experiences can only be read and understood by people within the community. The same people who read Crime & Punishment and Lolita won't read queer lit - damn, are axe murderers and pedophiles easier to relate to than gay men? More human somehow, because they fuck girls? Damn. | ||||||||||
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distressedJanuary 1st, 2008
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| Been in the car a lot lately. I like car rides, although I don't myself know how to drive. I can look out the window and listen to songs on my iPod. All I do is ride in cars, and I can't ever get any farther than that. Right now Sasha's in a plane over Barbados. For some reason it pisses me off that he has the money to do things so ... so casually. So casually, he has the money to travel here and there, to buy and sell hundreds of dollars worth of electronic equipment. Whereas I struggle just to buy a new book every month. Why are they so expensive in America? In Russia you can buy books for something like five American dollars, whereas I was surprised to find The Fall by Albert Camus today for only twice that. I might not even set foot outside America again for as long as I live (and you know how much I hate being in this country!), and without even thinking about it he goes on winter holidays to Barbados. And in summer he'll go to all sorts of places, to Finland and my long-lost motherland ... (I'm probably the last person on Earth who uses the word "motherland" seriously. Ay, Odessa Mama!) Today I was at one of those huge American sporting goods stores - the kind filled with dioramas of stuffed animals and all kinds of poshlosty rustic touches, like the casinos in that area of the state. I was inside the gun library, which is full of beautiful rifles, and old or antique guns, so it's a little more quiet and elegant. They had a few nice pistols with pearl handles and engraved barrels on sale for four hundred or five hundred dollars. Whenever I see something at about that price, I start thinking that Sasha could just whip out his credit card and buy it like it was nothing, whereas this would be an unattainable dream for me if I wanted it. Although I like guns as much as any other 19-year-old boy, they were dueling pistols - probably from the time when dueling was legal - and I doubt I'd want to own something that might have been used to kill somebody. (God, what a thing to say. A month ago, after Akhmedka got murdered, I would have chopped Kadyrov's head off myself.) I know it's not good of me, but I really hate him sometimes for his money and freedom. It's petty, jealous hatred, but still ... I never liked owning anything. I own almost nothing besides the clothes on my back, the books on my shelf, and the ikons on my wall. I'm not a materialistic person. But I think of how much better my life would be if I had just a few hundred dollars more each month, that Sasha wastes so easily on buying and selling electronics and crap on eBay. Without a single thought about my desperate need for money, but that's okay, because I'd be too ashamed to take it from him if he offered. With just some of that money I could finally get my cavities filled, I could buy the papers that I need to work at the factory, I could get a driver's license and a GED ... all sorts of things ... I don't know what I'm going to do this year if I can't get a job. Просто получилось так – Я теперь твой враг. За какое преступленье? Просто получилось так – Я теперь твой враг. Я не попрошу прощенья... ETA: Speaking of me and guns and how awesome I am, my kid brother Aleksander just checked the stats from when we played Halo 3 on legendary, and I got 310 headshots. I > ALL. | ||||||||
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gloomy
December 19th, 2007
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| привет мир. Я игнорировал это журнал. >> Я не знаю читает русского однако - не Саша. Саша. екх. Жизнь слишком длина для одной любви. Yes, it is I, Sevastian! I have not died! I swear I will actually use this journal in the future. *facepalm* And in English, yes. | ||||
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August 18th, 2007
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| Yes, more opining in English, because I don't use this journal enough and I don't feel like translating all of this into Russian and back. ( tl;dr II: Orson Scott Card and Homophobia ) | ||||||||
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Безам, ва безам, хьаьган массо хьо кара1амо.
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