Excuses

Raisin Toast has some exams on soon. So a little break has, and continues to be in order. But to keep you entertained, here's a song about criminal procedure (not like it hasn't circulated enough on fb already)
Rasin Toast vs. Coldplay
And this is a description of me being post-modern: "I just became a Bhuddist... No wait, now I'm a Catholic. Now I am screaming... Now I am silen... no I'm screaming again. Now I'm calling my Grandma whilst sustaining the scream. I will hang up shortly after she picks up. Nobody would suspect that- least of all my Grandma."

War and Bloody Ancient Greece

For Hitler, Aryan culture was something perfected thousands of years ago by the ancient Greeks and Romans, and he set the goal of returning to the purity once attained by these great european empires. Hitler's New Germany would mirror the art and architecture of the ancients. At the same time, Hitler labelled modern-art, any illustration where the sky wasn't an accurate blue, "degenerative". In 1938 he commissioned an exhibition called "Entartete Kunst" which was a collection of forcibly confiscated modern-art, displayed in a ramshackle way with derogatory captions. Millions saw the exhibition.

This (and my arts degree) got me thinking about what modernity and progress actually are. This mini-mini historical, fictiony story, about the Entartete Kunst exhibition, provides one perspective.   
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It was April 1937, and the tips of Heidi’s face were red with cold. She was waiting for the first delivery of paintings, standing below a banner that read “ENTARTETE KUNST (Degenerate Art), Open’s July 19^th”. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_art) . Across the road, the commuting workers walked like toy soldiers past Hitler’s Haus der Deutschen Kunst (Image of Haus der Deutschen Kunst). It was a new museum, the latest masterpiece to drop from Hitler’s dreams onto the streets of Munich. Looking at it, you could tell what it was that Hitler dreamt of for Germany. The museum had enormous concrete pillars and classical open steps: It was a dream about a purity that once existed.  With every new towering monument raised in its name, and with every new athletic male that was born, the German’s would return to the Aryan purity of the ancients. To Heidi, the museum looked like an old Greek ruin, but it had Nazi flags waiving either side of it- at least that was something new.

A tall green truck groaned to a halt, hanging over the gutter. Two soldiers dropped out, one laughing “Why didn’t you break his hands? Then he wouldn’t have been able to paint that shit again”. The other soldier asked for Heidi’s papers, and pointed her to the back of the truck. When she opened the door, a painting fell onto the snowed foot-path. She picked it up, and the snow underneath was left with a line of red; there was blood on the canvas-frame. It was a Kirchner, titled Brandenburger Tor (Image of Brandenburger Tor, Kirchner).   It showed a classical monumental building, just like the Haus der Kunst across the road, but it was bent and slipping down the canvas, in warm orange and blue. Its great pillars were buckled and out-of-place in Kirchner’s new world. Heidi took the Kirchner into the exhibition building, shaking her head and mouthing the words: “i’m sorry”.

The curator of Entartete Kunst, Zeigler, told Heidi to take the painting off the frame, and hang it at knee height in the next room. Eugen, who was working with Heidi, was in the second room, painting a sign on the wall. Heidi walked up behind him to read it: “which of these three drawings is the work of an inmate of a lunatic asylum?”. Heidi dropped the Kirchner, and fell to the ground with it.

Eugen turned from his ladder “Heidi?”. He jumped down, and knelt next to her. She was crying. “what’s wrong Heidi?”

Heidi gattle-gunned a sentence

“This is wrong. Its wrong but its still happening”

Eugen placed his hand on her back, she was shaking. She said

“Progress is just crap. You know I thought it was backward to steal paintings from people, to persecute people, but apparently that’s progress.”

“I know” said Eugen

Heidi looked back to the Kirchner on the ground “Forwards has nothing to do with progress, with what’s right. Everywhere, anywhere is forwards. War and Bloody ancient Greece are forwards from here.”

OneRepublic reading challenge!

Some advice on reading this post: Read, until you get to the link. When you get to the link (which is a youtube song), open it in a seperate window (by holding Ctrl and then clicking on the link) and then leave the song playing in the background whilst you immediately return to the story and read the rest of it!

and hopefully the song syncs up slightly with the story =D
how frustratingly complex =D

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The Gym was packed on a Saturday night, mostly with young men and women, getting into shape so that, had they gone out that Saturday night, they would have attracted more attention on the dance-floor or wherever. The Gym never changed its CD’s, so all the regulars knew the songs off by heart. This one came on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU0iWWOKpn4&feature=fvsr

David, who was at the punching bag, knew these first few chords. He widened his stance and puffed at the floor, leaning against the bag, gritting his teeth. He began to act as though he was on a stage, and the whole world was watching. David, rocking back and forth, clicked when he heard these first few words...

He gave the punching bag two quick swings then leant his head against it, squeezing it harder and harder. . Most people in that room setup a “dart-board” version of someone in their minds. David had a person on his mind- on the very front of his mind. David shoved the punching bag forwards, raised his fist and charged on his back-foot. Everyone grabbed a weight, or dropped onto their hands. The chorus came:

David fired on the bag, on the person on his mind, everything she ever said. His mind told his body to do everything it could, and his fists flew. Each punch was for the lies, THUMP, for haunting him ,THUMP THUMP, for not caring, THUMP, for being so damn unfair, for wasting his time. And each punch said that she wont waste any more of his time, that HE DIDNT CARE!.  

The chorus ended... and David fell back onto a bench, like a desperate version of “The Thinker”.

He looked up to the mirror from his bent-over pose. He was tired, baring his teeth, bobbing with his breathes. But the song didn’t let up, and it began again to stir that recklessness in him. He watched his own eyes, got lost in them. He pulled himself up in denial of his exhaustion, in denial of gravity, in purposeful ignorance of anything that resisted his will. He walked back to the bag, to her just in time. He waited, his silence lying about his intentions. And his vision lost focus as the chorus came, and he let go for the last time. Every muscle in his body screamed with the lyrics:

What next?

Funny Jamie (FJ): what should we write next?

Serious Jamie (SJ): I have a few ideas...

FJ: ok, spill

SJ: I was thinking of writing a short story about a man who is a reverse-hunchback.

FJ: Oh shit

SJ: No! It could be good

FJ: What is a reverse hunchback?

SJ: well this guy’s back is bent over backwards, so he’s always looking at the sky

FJ: Hhahaha, What?!

SJ: Screw you. It’s a good idea. His medical condition would be a good device for exploring the “human tunnel-vision”. The reverse hunch-back would be constantly thinking of what is in space, and the universe and stuff because he’s looking at the sky the whole time. Meanwhile everyone else, who just look forwards, is only concerned with... are you ok?

FJ: yeah, why?

SJ: nothing, its just you let me get three sentences into my story there.

FJ: no, im interested

SJ: No you aren’t. What was that?

FJ:...

SJ: what was your idea for a post?

FJ: I’m recording this conversation

SJ: Oh...

FJ: ...

SJ: Screw you

FJ: yeah that’s it

SJ: Fuck this, I’m leaving

FJ: Genius!! Keep going

Door slams.

Raisin Toast tries to study

If the video player doesn't appear below, or its slow, just watch it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTnV0Jw9izM

Listen to the music link on the side-bar also! It's called "contact high" and ITS  AWESOME!

Raisin Toast sings a dramatic song

I, for one, have never been employed, so I have never been able to "leave a job". But whenever people tell me that they have left their job, I always ask them whether they had left "dramatically". Well they always say that they didn't, and I think that this is a shame. In fact I think that leaving your job should be an incredibly dramatic experience, so I got the old recording equiptment going and wrote a melodramatic song about Tom, who is an overworked junior employee.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

Facebook Photos

The party was dying a bit, but then Carla took out her camera. Where-ever she pointed it, people suddenly animated with crazy faces and gattle-gun laughs. The camera was like a spot light that revealed the ridiculously crazy fun that was going on in a parallel universe. Jess, Taylor and Sam lined up for a photo. The camera blipped red and Taylor blinked just before the flash. He felt like he might have had his eyes closed for the photo, and he wanted Carla to take another, but he didn’t say so. Jess had one cheek on Taylor's shoulder, and the other facing the ceiling, so she was going for the safe “side smile”. The side-smile was a safe bet for Jess. Sam went for a half-smile, like she was quietly proud of something.  Sam’s bigger smiles didn’t come out that well in photos, she didn’t think, but sometimes when she went for this half-smile it worked really well. So Sam did that, but after the flash, she felt as though her eyes were too serious and out of sync with her mouth.

Everyone went home early, and the photo hit facebook at 11pm. Sam saw it first, and it was just as she expected. She leant on her elbow and put her hand over the computer-screen, covering her mouth, so she could just see her serious eyes. She whispered to herself “pycho-killer”. Then she put her hand over her eyes so she could just see her mouth. She whispered to herself  “one half of your best photo”. Jess and Taylor looked fine, they looked like Jess and Taylor. Sam wished sometimes that she could just have some good photos of herself... but like really good ones. Anyway, she’d leave this one for a few weeks and then untag it.

Taylor saw the photo on his Wall soon after Sam. Taylor’s eyes weren’t shut as such, in the photo, but he swore that he was either at the very-start or the very-end of a blink. Whatever it was, he looked cheesy. The other two looked fine. Taylor walked over to his mirror and tried some smiles. He could get it right in the mirror. He didn’t untag himself, because he was standing in between two pretty girls, and the photos before this one (in his “photo’s” gallery) were some of his best, so it was ok to have an average one here and there.

Jess found the photo the next morning. She was happy enough with her side-smile. But she thought Sam looked prettier. Jess flicked back through a few of her own photos and she was side-smiling in almost every one.  The next photo that she was in, she was going to have a normal “face-on” smile like Sam. Taylor just looked like Taylor, he looked nice.