Pad, originally uploaded by colmfox.

This is my place in Jakarta. I’ve been here for almost a month and a half and it’s flown by. The apartment is nice and centrally located in Menteng, though it’s a bit pricey. Anyway, it’s good for now. Most likely I’ll be living cheaper in North Sumatra. Plan to head there soon. Just waiting on my research visa.

I’m trying to figure out if I like these ambient sound recordings or not…but I keep listening

http://www.quietamerican.org/index.html

Went to Black Angels gig on Sunday. I was looking forward to it as I had been listening to them for a bit – they sound like something out of 1965 – old school rock’n'roll but with a Doors/Velvet Underground supervise feel to them. Unfortunately, they didn’t come off great live – possibly the singer was not altogether there. Overall it was so-so. The first support band however really rocked – a local DC band called Tone. I’d like to see them again – they got that Mogwai vibe going on, purely instrumental and with two drummers.

Never go to art school. Never go to New York. Never rent a loft. Dump your font folder. Forget symmetry and colour coordination. Stop taking text from editorial that you don’t read and packaging it in eye-catching ways. Walk away from your computer. Then take off. Go to India, rural China, Rio, Caracas, Belize. Mingel with the filthy rich and the dirt poor. Dig up all of the roots of terror. Make hunger, disease, cruelty, lust, greed, self-preservation and genocide your roomates. Then, when you run out of money and can’t take it anymore, fly back home. Look in the mirror. Face your fears, your weaknesses, strengths, your imminent demise. Then, when all of this begins to get into a master narrative in front of your eyes, go get a job.”

From Design Anarchy by Kalle Lasn.

This made me laugh. Communist Mutants from Space was a video game made for the Atari 2600. It is a classic Space Invaders type shoot’em up game from 1982. Your mission is to shoot all the communist mutants and the mother creature. A remake was made in 2005 and the opening sequence is hilarious,

“In the year 3000, Earth is in the terrifying grips of the Space Cold War with the Union of Mutant Socialist Planets, a communist group which has been inflicting terror on peaceful, democratic, freedom-loving planets and turning their inhabitants into COMMUNIST MUTANTS! Their leader is the Mother Creature, a mutant who has been driven insane from years of consuming irradiated vodka. As Captain Harry McCarthy of Earth’s Anti-Communist Force, your task is clear: destroy the Mother Creature and the Communist Mutants before Earth falls victim to their evil, gift-economy ways!”

Do they still make games like this? Well apparently they were thinking of it. In 2000 a game was developed for the Sega Dreamcast. The story went…it’s 3050, the space cold war is over. With the collapse of the Union of Mutant Socialist Planets the 4 Super Capitalist Planets have won and they convene to plan reconstruction and restore order. However, they are unaware that the collapse of the Union of Mutant Sociaists Planets was a trick. With the help of the Mutant Peoples Republic of Chizna they plan to attack and destroy the capitalists once and for all. This time you get to decide who’s side you are on – the Anti-Communist forces of earth or the Glorious Peoples Army of Rooskee!

Since the summer is here, I’ve decided to begin brushing up on my Indonesian. Apart from a week or two of review during brief visits to Indonesia over the last two summers, I haven’t studied it for two years. I feel like I’ve forgotten so much so I’ve begun to try and quickly review my Indonesian books. At the same time I’m trying to finish up a paper on the massacre of over half a million suspected Communists in Indonesia between 1965 and 1967. This massacre brought to power Suharto and over three decades of authoritarian rule.

In jumping back and forth between research on the massacre and the language books I’m struck by the inegalitarian tone of the language lessons. I’m learning more than just a new language. Suspecting that it was an old language book, I was even more surprised to read that the date of publish was 1997. Here is just one example from Book 1 — a conversation on buying a house,

Ibu: Ada enam kamar tidur, empat kamar mandi, dua dapur, dan satu kamar tamu.
Umar: Lalu, pembantu akan tidur di mana?
Ayah: Di kamar pembantu. Ada dua Kamar pembantu.
Tia: Di mana mereka akan mandi? Pasti tidak di kamar mandi saya, dong?
Ibu: Tentu tidak, ada satu kamar mandi pembantu.
Ayah: Dan, ada satu lagi.
Melati: Apa itu?
Ayah: Ada kolam renang dan lapangan tenis?

Mother: There are six bedrooms, four bathrooms, two kitchens, and one guest room.
Umar: Then, where will the servant sleep?
Father: In the servants room. There are two servants rooms.
Tia: Where will they wash? Surely not in my bathroom?
Mother: Certainly not, there is a servants bathroom.
Father: And there is one more thing.
Melati: What is that?
Father: There is a swimming pool and a tennis court!

The books I’m referring to are Lancar Berbahasa Indonesia Book 1 and Book 2 written by Vladimir Arnost and Novy Kusumastuty.

Interesting quote I came across, from Illuminations (1969) by Walter Benjamin. In looking at a painting by Paul Klee, Benjamin saw

“an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees a single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angle would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistible propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This story is what we call progress”

Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, p. 257 – 258.

I know he’s very well known in London, but I’ve just come across him now. While he is very popular amongst celebrities his identity still appears to be somewhat elusive. There are some photos on the net, but it’s hard to know if it’s him.

There are a bunch of interesting photos of his graffiti on his site Banksy.co.uk. From an aesthetic point of view I like the whimsical nature of some of his work and how he blends his stencil graffiti images with the environment. Also, what adds interest to his work is that it is politically driven – with a leftist and anti-consumerist slant. Aside from the images, the manifesto segment is very strange and chilling.

Also, there is a Banksy Group on Flickr which has a load more urban art.

Apartment #1
Location: Boston, Mattapan.
From: August 28th 1994 to November 1994.
Housemates: Three Irish security guards, plus an Irish construction worker.
Jobs: Security guard, Construction Worker, and Furniture Mover.

On my first day on the job as a security guard I was assigned to the Boston Garden arena – home to Boston’s basketball team the Boston Celtics. I was luckily enough to be stationed courtside. However, my shift started at 12 am and ended at 8 am, so I never actually got to watch a game. They had just repainted the hallowed court and my job was to make sure that no one broke into the arena in the middle of the night and run all over the court. No one did – at least for the 4 hours of my shift that I actually managed to stay awake. On occasion I would wake up, high on the varnish fumes. I had just finished my undergraduate degree and this was my first day of work in the real world – I was watching paint dry.

Over the next two months I was stationed at the construction site of the The Shawmont Center. This would be the new basketball arena for the Boston Celtics, as they were going to tear down the Boston Garden. I sat at one end of the imposing, gray, cavernous building. My job was to make sure no one walked onto the site. No one ever did. The only person I would see was my fellow security guard. A nice Nigerian guy veering upwards towards seven feet, he would arrive at the same time as me and promptly enclose himself in the workman’s shed, bed himself down, and snooze away the next eight hours.

Very often I would pull a double shift. The boss would call up and ask me to go to a new location because someone didn’t turn up. I would usually do it for the time-and-a-half-pay. However, this meant that by the time I got home and back, I could only squeeze in about three hours sleep. At one point I sat in the Ashmont station after a 6th consecutive double shift. I was waiting for the trolley to take me out to Mattapan and I stared at the small colored tiles on the platform. I was so tired; my mind was beginning to short-circuit. Suddenly the little tiles began to move. The red ones formed into an elephant, it’s large trunk swinging wildly. The green ones became a giraffe, tall and elegant. The yellow formed into a tiger. Soon I had a whole wildlife park before me – all jumping, running, and frolicking together. I snapped out of it with the screech of the trolley.

As September blended through October and into November it got progressively colder on my night shift. During those long nighttime hours, much time was spent reading. Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, by Douglas Coupland, was one notable book. I was at the tail end of the so-called Generation X – a generation that came to adulthood in the late 80s and early 90s. It was a generation that was overshadowed by the Boomer generation. We had too much education, but we had become apathetic and disillusioned with our commercialized culture. The future offered only hopelessness and struggle and we wanted out. Considering Nirvana’s disaffected Smells Like Teen Spirit had been the anthem for my college years, I could identify. While the book’s characters struggled by, I sat in the cold and read on. They worked in the service sector, and over time all their ambition was slowly being drained away.

Today is the “Neyepi”, or the Day of Silence in Bali. It is the day that ushers in the Hindu New Year. Over the past few days there have been cleansing ceremonies and parades throughout the Indonesian island, culminating in the burning of effigies before sunrise. This symbolizes evil leaving the island.

Today, all businesses close down, no one is allowed to travel, to be on the street, to do work of any kind, to speak, to make noise, to turn on lights or televisions, or to start fires. Young men patrol the villages, and make sure the restrictions are being observed. If you are caught with a flashlight or sneaking a look at a movie you will be told to stop. Even in the hotels, tourists are not allowed to leave, although I think they can use electricity and watch tv.

What you are meant to do, is sit in silence and reflect on your life, the past year, and the future. It sounds like a nice idea. However, a day can be a long time and maybe too much reflection is not always a good thing.

Still, I think I’d like to give it a try sometime, if just for a day. The New Year will begin soon. At 6.00 am the year will be 1929 according to Bali’s Hindu calendar.