The rest of this post after the fold is going to be heavy on spoilers, so it goes after the fold.

The movie starts out much as the trailer does. Before the opening credits, we see the main character (as yet unnamed character) lose her mother to some unknown disease. The main character cries while her little sister clings to her and her Stepfather smiles, implying somewhat that the mother’s death was his fault, or, at the very least, he didn’t care about the mother as much as the mother’s money. After the funeral, the girls try to sleep, while the stepfather opens up the will and discovers that the mother left everything to her daughters. Enraged, he goes to the girls, and it heavily implies that he is going to assault the main character, because he rips open her pajamas. She scratches him back, and the stepfather realizes that she might not be so easy to abuse, so he instead decides to hurt her by locking her in her room and going after her little sister. The little sister, demonstrating the fact that both of these girls probably never trusted the stepfather in the first place, flees to the closet while the stepfather tries to break down the door. The main character climbs out the window, and walks along a narrow ledge in the rain. She grabs the stepfather’s gun in the library as the camera goes to the stepfather breaking down the door. The main character aims the gun at the stepfather, while he begs her not to shoot. The little sister is behind the stepfather, lying on the ground. The main character shoots, and since she has more than likely never fired a gun before, misses by a mile and hits the light in the closet. The stepfather leaves, as the main character realizes that her little sister is dead (killed possibly by the ricochet, but it’s ambiguous if the girl was dead before). She then stalks off to find the stepfather, points the gun at his head, but then puts it down sobbing. The stepfather takes her to Lennox House, a mental institute. Then the title card comes up. This whole beginning is done with minimal dialog.

At the Lennox House, an orderly says that for money, they will give her a lobotomy so that the Stepfather doesn’t have to worry about any pointed questions from any detectives. After passing through the security at Lennox House, the main character is introduced to the “theatre” where the girls act out their abuses. The orderly says it is “very intense” with a creepy smile on his face. We are said that the main character will get a lobotomy in a week, and we are then treated to watching her get strapped in. Suddenly, the girl in the chair yells stop and it is an entirely different character strapped to a chair at a lavish (in a bordello sort of way) theatre. This character is called Sweetpea and she says that lobotomies aren’t sexy, and that this play needs to be re-written because “She’s the star of this show”. The choreographer is the same person who played the psychiatrist in the Lennox house scenes. The main character is now an orphan being brought in by a Father (played by the same actor as the stepfather) so that a “high roller” can be brought in to enjoy the new blood. She spits in his face, and the orderly is now the owner of the brothel and goes by the name of Blue. After being shown around by Rocket, Sweatpea’s little sister, the main character is brought in to dance. At first she doesn’t want to, but after the choreographer basically tells her she either dances or she’ll be killed. She starts to dance, and is transported to a temple where she is introduced to a mentor and told that if she wants to escape she needs five items: a map, fire, a knife, a key, and a mystery. She is then given weapons and told to defend herself against three giant samurai warriors.

Back in the “real world” of the brothel, people applaud her dancing and nickname her “Babydoll”. She is then sent to wash a hallway, and in doing so, here’s Rocket getting attacked by the chef. Babydoll goes and puts a knife to the chef’s throat and rescues Rocket. Later that night, in their bed, she says she’s going to escape before the high rollers can get there, and with Rocket’s advocacy, convinces Sweetpea, Amber, and Blondie to help her. Babydoll will dance to distract whomever they’re taking the item from, while the other girls get the four items. Sweetpea agrees, but only with the stipulation that everyone will stop when she says so.

In the interest of brevity, I will skip each of their escapades, but suffice it to say they get the map and fire (in the form of a lighter) without too much trouble, represented by them going up in a Steampunk-esque World War II scenario and then against a dragon. But Blue gets suspicious and gives the girls a speech about how he’s on to them and they should stop if they don’t want to get killed. Sweetpea wants to pull the plug, but Rocket won’t stop, which leads to a some tense moments, especially since it’s revealed that Rocket ran away and Sweetpea is the one who followed her. Babydoll says that they are going to continue the plan, and they need to get a knife from the Chef. Blondie is supposed to bring in the recording equipment, but the stress of the situation causes her to break down. The choreographer hears her, and asks her what’s wrong. Blondie is about to spill the beans when Blue comes walking around the corner.

Babydoll, Rocket, and Amber decide that they can no longer wait for Blondie and decide to use a radio with a short in it instead. At the last minute, Sweetpea comes in, saying that this is for Rocket and not for Babydoll. We’re treated to another fictional universe fight, this time in a cyberpunk world, but something goes wrong. The radio shorts out and the Chef becomes distracted and throws Rocket to the ground. Sweetpea comes to steal the knife, but the Chef stabs toward her. Rocket jumps in the way and the knife goes into her gut while the one that Sweetpea wanted goes clattering to the feet of a terrified Amber. Rocket tells Sweetpea to get out and to tell their folks that she’s sorry. At this time, Blue and his guards break down the doors, and start beating up the Chef; showing no sympathy for Rocket, just made that he has damaged one of the goods. He drags Sweetpea away for some time in the “closet” and tells Blondie, Amber, and Babydoll to get ready for tonight’s performance.

Everyone gets ready, and Blue comes in all smiles and clapping, while everyone else (including the choreographer) jumps around like kittens wandering around the 38th parallel. Finally, Blue calls everyone in, and the evil “I loved you so much and you betrayed me” evil villain speech starts. He kills Amber, and Blondie, and sends everyone else except Babydoll out. The choreographer tries to protect Babydoll, but to no avail. He tells her that he’d kill her, except that she’s too valuable, and then begins to sexual assault her. Unluckily for him, he chooses to do that right over the hiding spot where she has her knife. He stabs Blue in the shoulder, and runs to grab Sweetpea and starts a fire in a broom closet. But, as they go outside, the realize that the group of men that they were supposed to “entertain” are milling around. Babydoll realizes that this was the “mystery” she had to do, and told Sweetpea she was going to distract them while Sweetpea escaped. Sweetpea resists, but Babydoll says “This has always been your story”. Babydoll goes right up to the “Highroller” and kicks him in the groin, while Sweetpea slips out of the place and runs to the bus station. She makes it to the bus station, but just before she gets on, a cop grabs her shoulder and wants to ask her some questions. The bus driver (played by the same actor who plays the mentor) tells the cops that he has a schedule to keep, and lies and says Sweetpea has been on the bus for at least an hour. Sweetpea gratefully gets on the bus, and as the door slams, we’re brought back to Babydoll.

Babydoll has just had the lobotomy, and the lobotomist, played by the Jon Hamm, the highroller, looks shocked as he tells Dr. Gorski (the choreographer) that in the end, it looked like she had wanted him to do the lobotomy, and he asks about why Dr. Gorski recommended the procedure as the orderly takes Babydoll out. Dr. Gorski says she never recommended to procedure, and when the lobotomist shows her the forged signature, she realizes that something is up. The orderly, and two other guards, take Babydoll to a disgusting bathroom, where there is a stained mattress. The two guards make a token resistance to the orderly, but he tells them that he’ll have them fired and arrested if they don’t leave. They give up, and the orderly kisses Babydoll to no response. He gets enraged by her lack of response, but then the door is busted down with Dr. Gorski bringing the cops in to arrest the orderly. We end with Babydoll smiling a completely blank smile as the cops shine a flashlight on her face.

This is a complicated movie, and I still don’t really know how I feel about it. When it was good, it was really, really good. The soundtrack is probably the most awesome thing I’ve heard all year and I hope it gets awards next year. The fight scenes are awesome- tight, full of good action, and strong tense moments. The acting is superb- I did not recognize the actress as any of their former rolls at all. It passes the Mo Movie Measure with flying colors, and the visuals are stunning, and I really felt that the transitions between worlds were seamless.

Of course, when it was bad, it was pretty bad. The characters never seem to have a chance to be characters. I had to look up the names of Blondie and Amber six times writing this post because they felt so interchangeable to me, which is sad because the characters look nothing alike. The Stepfather/ Father character never gets a single redeeming characteristic, and Blue/ Orderly is a little over-the-top for villainy. The characters are more like stereotypes- the innocent finding inner strength, the bond between sisters, the weak character breaking down, et cetera. They don’t really have a ton of depth, yet, for some reason the characters of Babydoll, Sweetpea, and the choreographer still had a lot of emotional resonance for me. The movie also felt truncated somehow. It was already two hours long, so my guess is that there’s a director’s cut floating around out-there, and that might explain some of the lack of characterization.

And the complicated is really complicated. I put a trigger warning on, something I don’t normally do, because this movie triggered ME, something I didn’t know was possible. The assault scenes are mild by most movie standards- there is some unwanted touching and kissing, but it doesn’t show any real skin or actual rape. But they are terrifying and intense. They do not come off as titillating at all (or, at least not to my husband and I) and I think the director goes out of his way to make them terrifying. For instance, the sexual assault scenes do not come after moments where they think the person is “sexy” but rather after moments where the male characters want to assert power. The Stepfather did not pursue Babydoll because she was attractive- they in fact go out of the way to make her look childish and she is wearing completely unsexy pjs- he assaults her because he’s mad at the fact that he’s not getting any money. When Sweetpea stops the lobotomy play on stage, she even flatly states “How is this sexy? I understand the school girl thing, I even understand the trapped and vulnerable in the mental institute, but how is a lobotomy sexy?” It almost feels like she is asking this of the audience instead of the choreographer. It is almost as if it is challenging the audience to think about how scenes that are normally portrayed as “sexy” are actually horrifying when taking to their logical extension. When Blue assaults Babydoll in the end, it is not after one of the times that she dances, when in theory she is the most sexual, but after she defies him, again making the point that the assault is not about sex at all, but about power. In fact, one of the scenes I didn’t describe is the choreographer telling Blue that Babydoll wasn’t ready for a performance, and Blue starts kissing her and telling her what her place is- under him, so it isn’t just the dancers that get put in their place with sexual control. Even when the characters are dressed in “sexy” attire in versions of “reality” there is really very little arousing about the dancers- we feel their despair even underneath their supposed sexiness. I also think it was a really smart idea to never show Babydoll or any of the other characters dancing: the dancing is just for themselves, not for the audience. On the other hand, they characters are complete gun bunnies in their alternate world. While it was a lot better than a lot of comic-book writers I’ve seen (*cough* Frank Miller *cough*) these parts were portrayed as being enticing. But the enticement was supposed to come out of them kicking ass and taking names, not just looking hot. But it is still very much a “male gaze” portrayal.

Is this a feminist movie? Kind of. I find it very interesting that the only male character to actually be helpful is almost never there in the “real world”, that of the mentor. All of the other males are actively or passively damaging to the women- even when they make a token defense it is quickly cut down. The other interesting thing is how Blue describes himself- he is a terrible person that abuses and profits off of the rape of women, but he puts himself up as a protector, and in some weird ways, he kind of is. He “protects” his property against the Chef, and the orderly counterpart describes himself as “protecting” Babydoll against her Stepfather. He sees himself as a savior of these lowly creatures, only getting his due, as opposed to the monster the audience sees him as. It was also interesting that the choreographer describes her role as “protecting” these girls- teaching them to be enticing with their sexuality- but ultimately does not protect anyone. In the end, it was the girls banding together and protecting each other, and would have worked even better if they could have kept the up the charade. But ultimately, Sweetpea was saved by one guy not really putting himself at much risk but doing an action that without Sweetpea would have been screwed.

I think I might have to watch this movie again, now that I’m prepared for how intense it is. Thoughts? Anyone else see it?

If only 70 million more had followed my lead.

I, for one, despise internet memes. Don’t you? You come across a video on some obscure blog of a young Governator sexually harassing women in Rio or a Russian dude expertly singing on “Oo ya ya ya ya ya”, and you think, “Whoah. I found this. This is mine. I have discovered a secret treasure of the internet!” Proud of your triumph, you forward it to everybody and their brother, you feature it on your blog, you help your grandmother set up internet access just so she can watch it, and she’s all like, “Meh. I saw this three years ago.” Oof. Like a punch to the gut, it is.

There is one glorious exception. The video I saw last week. I don’t care if you already saw it two weeks ago. Watch it again, and cry tears of joy anew.

I know there is no god. But Dear God: I’ll take back all those things I said about You if You just make sure this gets made into a real movie. Please?

I first saw this over here at the Onion A.V. Club. At the time I saw it, literally the first 10 comments were all folks saying, “His was the first concert I ever went to.”

Funny thing. His was the first concert I ever went to, too. Put on a helluva show, too.

I’m sure many of you are thinking to yourself, “Weird Al? He’s okay, I guess. Never really saw the appeal.” But for me, and outsider geeks like me (I’m guessing that’s who those 10 comments are from), he was a revelation. Well, okay, I was 10. But to my too-clever, socially awkward, happily creative 10 year old mind, he was a revelation. He was weird, like me! But weird and proud! And, for about two weeks there when “Eat It” came out and hit #12 on the pop charts, weird and proud and popular!

Then– I was in 5th grade– my school held its very first lip synch competition. I entered with “Eat It”. I had a whole routine, unpacking various food from my Snoopy lunch box and throwing it around as the song called for it. (If I recall, my enthusiastic delivery caused a 5 minute delay, as paper towels and cleaning spray were called for.) For the big finale, I slipped on a banana peel, and learned the valuable theatrical lesson that realism and comedy don’t always go together. My fall was too convincing. Despite the fact that it’s quite possibly the oldest comedy cliche known to man, an unbelievably large percentage of people thought it was a genuine accident. I guess it’s because I hadn’t yet learned how to do a stage fall, so even though it was on purpose, I really fell. Then as now, I was ready to suffer for my art. That my suffering was in vain still irks me.

But in the end, it all paid off. I won third prize! A $10 gift certificate to a record shop at the mall! It was the first thing I ever won, or anyhow the first thing I remember winning. True, I probably only won it because another act got disqualified for performing a rap song with naughty lyrics– alarmed teachers stopped it about 30 seconds in. Sure, cool kids might do rap songs. I didn’t need to be cool anymore. I was weird.

The tone I write this with has slipped into the range of affectedly arch now, but honestly, no lie, Weird Al really was a huge influence on my still growing sense of self. I went through a hawaiian shirt phase for more years than I’d like to admit. I only stopped wearing them once they literally fell apart at various points throughout high school career. But I got much more from Weird Al than a nonsensical, girl-repulsing fashion sense. I picked up on the joy he projected in being an outsider, one who relishes and revels in dorkiness so much that it stops being lame and becomes a source of power.

Once I started getting into playing and writing my own music, this perspective became a major part of my creative life. No, I didn’t write song parodies. Just music that tried to explore the realm of “weird” a little, in a way that pleased me.

Just because it’s put me in the mood to share, here’s a piece I wrote for big band in college, entitled, quite appropriately for this occasion, “Blues of the Weird”.

(Download link)

The music composition contained within this recording, entitled Blues of the Weird, by Quin Arbeitman, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

One last anecdote. One of the best presents I’ve ever received: one day, out of nowhere, maybe six months or a year after the lipsynch triumph, what comes in the mail but a package from one Al Yankovic. Like, for real. What? Really? Was it a joke? Inside was an autographed photo of Al in his “In 3d” album pose– probably the original shot, that got reworked for the album cover. Written on it, words of true wisdom: “Dear Quin– Eat your broccoli!”

It turned out that my best friend Nikki– who liked Weird Al fine, but was really more a fan of hipper stuff from that period like Prince and the B-52s– had written to Al, saying “My friend Quin really likes you, so could you send him something?” And Weird Al actually did.

Al Yankovic — one classy guy.

The history here is well known to everyone interested in politics but worth summarizing. For most of the first 190 years of the country’s operation, U.S. Senators would, in unusual circumstances, try to delay a vote on measures they opposed by “filibustering” — talking without limit or using other stalling techniques. For most of those years, the Senate could cut off the filibuster and force a vote by imposing “cloture,” which took a two-thirds majority of those voting (at most 67 of 100 Senators). In 1975, the Senate adopted a rules change to allow cloture with 60 votes, and those are the rules that still prevail.

The significant thing about filibusters through most of U.S. history is that they hardly ever happened…

…as the chart below shows, the huge increase in threatened filibusters came from the Republican minority, after the Democrats took back the Senate in 2007. Since the time covered by this chart, the number of threatened (Republican) filibusters has shot up even more dramatically.

In an interview on MSNBC this morning, newly retiring Sen. Evan Bayh declared the American political system “dysfunctional,” riddled with “brain-dead partisanship” and permanent campaigning.

In this morning’s interview he noted that just two weeks ago, Republicans who had co-sponsored a bill with him to rein in the deficit turned around and voted against their own bill.

The Internet is abuzz with accounts of MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow’s confrontation of Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill) on NBC News’ Meet The Press (MTP), Sunday.

Rachel Maddow, in pointing out that Rep. Aaron Schock criticized Democrats for economic stimulus spending programs, then shows up for ribbon cuttings of facilities funded by those same programs, embarrassed the neophyte GOP congressman from Illinois.

Rachel Maddow said:

…just this week you were at a community college touting a $350,000 green technology education program, talking about how great that was going to be for your district. You voted against the bill that created that grant.

Sarah Palin as GOP nominee in 2012? Don’t laugh it off

After weeks of working the book-promotion circuit, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin seems to be getting down to the serious business of selling herself as a viable presidential nominee for the Republican Party in 2012.

She told Mr. Wallace on the Fox Sunday talk show that “it would be absurd” not to consider a presidential candidacy if the cards fall right for her and her family and that she will not “close the door that perhaps could be open for me in the future.”

“I’m going to put people in my place, so when the history of this administration is written at least there’s an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened.” –George W. Bush, on what he hopes to accomplish with his memoir, as reported by the Associated Press, Calgary, Canada, March 17, 2009

These are the 10 US senators who voted against the Patriot Act Renewal of March 2006. The senators in bold type voted in favor of the Patriot Act in 2001.

NAYs —10
Akaka (D-HI)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Byrd (D-WV)
Feingold (D-WI)
Harkin (D-IA)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Murray (D-WA)
Wyden (D-OR)

Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin was the only senator who voted against the Patriot Act on October 24, of 2001.

U.S. House of Representatives Vote on US Patritot Act 2001 & 2006

House Vote Roll Call for the Patriot Act 2001 of October 24, 2001: Democrats in Italics

—- NAYS 66 —

Baldwin
Barrett
Blumenauer
Bonior
Boucher
Brown (OH)
Capuano
Clayton
Conyers
Coyne
Cummings
Davis (IL)
DeFazio
DeGette
Dingell
Farr
Filner
Frank
Hastings (FL)
Hilliard
Honda
Jackson (IL)
Jackson-Lee (TX)
Johnson, E. B.
Jones (OH)
Kucinich
Lee
Lewis (GA)
McDermott
McGovern
McKinney
Meek (FL)
Miller, George
Mink
Mollohan
Nadler
Ney
Oberstar
Olver
Otter
Owens
Pastor
Paul
Payne
Peterson (MN)
Rahall
Rivers
Rush
Sabo
Sanchez
Sanders
Schakowsky
Scott
Serrano
Stark
Thompson (MS)
Tierney
Udall (CO)
Udall (NM)
Velazquez
Visclosky
Waters
Watson (CA)
Watt (NC)
Woolsey
Wu

House Vote Roll Call on 2006 Patriot Act Renewal on March 7, 2006: Democrats in Italics

—- NAYS 138 —

Abercrombie
Ackerman
Allen
Baca
Baldwin
Bartlett (MD)
Becerra
Berkley
Berman
Bishop (UT)
Blumenauer
Boucher
Brady (PA)
Brown (OH)
Brown, Corrine
Butterfield
Capps
Capuano
Carson
Clay
Cleaver
Clyburn
Conyers
Costello
Crowley
Cummings
Davis (CA)
Davis (IL)
DeFazio
DeGette
Delahunt
DeLauro
Dingell
Doggett
Doyle
Duncan
Engel
Eshoo
Farr
Fattah
Filner
Frank (MA)
Gordon
Green, Al
Grijalva
Hastings (FL)
Hinchey
Holt
Honda
Hooley
Inslee
Jackson (IL)
Jackson-Lee (TX)
Jefferson
Johnson (IL)
Johnson, E. B.
Jones (NC)
Jones (OH)
Kennedy (RI)
Kildee
Kilpatrick (MI)
Kucinich
Lantos
Larson (CT)
Lee
Lewis (GA)
Lofgren, Zoe
Lowey
Lucas
Lynch
Mack
Maloney
Manzullo
Markey
Matsui
McCollum (MN)
McDermott
McGovern
McKinney
McNulty
Meehan
Meek (FL)
Michaud
Millender-McDonald
Miller, George
Mollohan
Moore (WI)
Moran (VA)
Nadler
Napolitano
Neal (MA)
Oberstar
Obey
Olver
Otter
Owens
Oxley
Pallone
Pastor
Paul
Pelosi
Peterson (MN)
Price (NC)
Rahall
Rangel
Rohrabacher
Roybal-Allard
Rush
Ryan (OH)
Sabo
Sánchez, Linda T.
Sanchez, Loretta
Sanders
Schakowsky
Scott (VA)
Serrano
Slaughter
Solis
Stark
Stupak
Tanner
Tauscher
Thompson (CA)
Thompson (MS)
Tierney
Towns
Udall (NM)
Velázquez
Visclosky
Wasserman Schultz
Waters
Watson
Watt
Waxman
Weiner
Woolsey
Wu
Young (AK)

According to Wikipedia, 7 to 10% of the population is lefthanded. Apparently there’s something even more special about PunkAssReaders than we already suspected, because 14% of you are lefthanded, with another 5% being ambidextrous. I read somewhere once that lefties have a higher rate of accidental demise, the world unfortunately not being designed to accomodate their preferred spatial orientation, so take care!

Of the 11% of you who chose “None of the above” when asked what part of your body you washed first, over half of those can’t follow directions. The question specifically excluded hair, face and head, folks–back to grade school for each and every one of you! The rest apparently do not consider their armpits to be either a part of their arm or a part of their torso, but separate entities in of themselves, and either didn’t feel like specifying which side they start on or simultaneously scrub both pits from the get-go, which presents me with an interesting mental image. One of you does, indeed, start on the left armpit specifically though.

77% of our PunkAssReaders are of the lady gender, which is probably all Quin’s fault.

And yes, it is all as that unknown guy on the radio said and much to the ex-spouse’s chagrin–coming in at the big 37%, more of you start on the left arm or shoulder in the shower than anyplace else. The two next-most-common initial scrub locations are the chests or breasts (13%) and the torso or belly (11%). A whopping 6% of you do represent! for starting on the genitals. However, absolutely nobody wants to go anywhere near the butt to start off with (0%). One flexible and nonconformist individual starts with his or her back, which does actually impress me. The remainder divvy it up between neck, right arm or shoulder, or one leg or the other first.

More polls may be forthcoming at random intervals–stay tuned!

There are vampires in the cave under the village, and the villagers have learned to live with their fear, most of the time. If they could, they would pack up their things and go; but the vampires are everywhere now.

Life is certainly not as fun as it could be for the villagers, but they have their happy moments. The vampires also have happy moments. Sometimes, the vampires think “Boy, it sure is lucky we’re vampires. Those poor villagers. They should be happier.” But usually, the vampires don’t really think about the villagers at all, except in the most abstract of ways.

It’s been many, many years since the vampires colonized. There is a small flock of hunters, who only come out at night. But the majority of the vampires always stay down below, and do their favorite thing, which is to light a fire in the middle of the cave and make shadow puppet plays on the wall for each other.

The plays tend to be about the adventures of vampires inside of a cave. Sometimes the vampires even make shadow puppet plays about vampires making shadow puppet plays. Occasionally the plays are about the tragic existence of villagers, and a few of the vampires become sad about the whole state of affairs, and feel they have matured a little bit for having watched this story. They know they are a little better than most other vampires, because they feel a twinge of guilt as they snack on yummy villager viscera.

It’s true that vampires don’t like sunlight. This is because they have spent so many generations in the dark. However, sunlight does not, in fact, kill vampires. It just confuses them, and makes them angry. Which isn’t to say vampires are stupid. They are quite intelligent. They know all about the world, actually. They can tell you all kinds of facts and figures about it. But the number one thing they know is that the world is made of shadows, just like the ones that dance on the wall of their cave. So whenever a vampire happens to be caught out in the light of the sun for some reason, their natural instinct is not to look directly at anything—that way leads to bright shining madness. Rather, they will look behind it, and understand everything they need to know from the shadows.

And if a vampire should see a villager’s shadow, they fancy they can tell everything they need to know about them just from its silhouette.

Once in a long while, and only at night of course, a vampire will become curious about life in the village, and will leave their cave without any intention to kill. For the most part, the villagers will not harm a vampire among them, for fear of the consequences. Often the vampire has a grand time, walking among the villagers and studying their shadows very closely, and experiment at contorting themselves to get their own shadow to make similar shapes. It makes them feel very alive. Sometimes these vampires come back and show their vampire friends how to make these strange and alien shadow shapes, too, and they all have a grand time feeling very alive.

Once, there was a vampire tourist who actually went out in the daylight on purpose. Her friends thought her mad. She stayed out for so long, in fact, that her white, white skin gained just the slightest hint of color, though she didn’t notice. She was still a vampire, though.

She spent weeks practicing, opening her eyes even when the sun was out, and registering the bizarre sensations that resulted. She often heard the villagers talking about strange and alien concepts such as “red” and “blue” and “green” and “yellow”. With great effort, she stopped only watching shadows and started to learn how to interpret these other exotic things which the villagers took for granted.

One day, she met a villager called a “painter”. She was enthralled. What a strange thought! She couldn’t quite even wrap her mind around what the painter did, exactly, but after many days of careful observation—both directly, and via his shadow—she was fairly sure she had a pretty good idea.

The vampire tourist went back to the cave. She felt fulfilled and inspired. The villagers were doing so many interesting things! She even considered that their lives might be as interesting as vampire lives.

She tried to tell her vampire friends about what she had seen. They nodded their heads sagely and said, “Ah yes, we understand.” But she knew they didn’t.

She put on a shadow show, trying to express what she had seen in the language of silhouettes. Her vampire friends applauded at the end, and congratulated her, saying, “Ah yes, now we understand.” But she knew they didn’t.

She went back to the village, and took the painter back with her, to the wall of the cave upon which the shadow shows were traditionally displayed. She asked the terrified painter to paint the wall, and he did. Then she asked her vampire friends if they noticed anything different. “Yes,” they said. “Now we can smell something.”

“I believe it’s called ‘paint’,” said the vampire tourist.

“Is that what this breed is called?” they said. “It smells yummy,” and they grabbed the painter and tore him apart, taking turns spraying his innards into each others’ mouths.

The vampire tourist realized that her friends would never be able to understand what she had seen unless they, too, left the cave and went out in the daylight. She suggested that they should try.

“Maybe someday, but surely there’s no hurry.”

In time, the vampire tourist’s memories of color became fleeting. She began to imagine “red” as somehow the inside of a shadow, but it didn’t make much sense, even to her. Still, she would always treasure her memories of the time she went to the village in the daylight.

This story was written by a vampire.

It’s been a month since I moved from Tokyo to Fukuoka, Japan. My big honking project that I’ve spent the last six months of my life on is over. I wrote about 750 pages of curriculum for the school I work for. That’s nearly a Michener novel. It’s good to be finished!

As for Fukuoka, I like it for many reasons. Probably most important is that it’s not Tokyo. There’s lots of ways I love Tokyo, but it’s good to have a breather. Obviously, there are quite a few fewer people here. I can step on a train without imitating a tinned sardine, and I can ride a bicycle without taking my life in my hands. The people are super friendly here, too. I already have about four local food establishments vying to be my “local” since they’re all staffed by such friendly folk who seem to genuinely enjoy talking to me, even with my limited Japanese. And my living situation rocks. My place is big. I have my own garden and a real piano. At my job, my new position is rewarding and not too terribly time-consuming. In short, life, for me, is good. I’m one of the lucky ones, and I certainly appreciate my good fortune.

On Monday night I finally got internet again. A month ago, I was really jonesing for my series of tubes. My circumstances, between my new job and all the busywork attendant with a big move, made any meaningful connectivity more difficult than it was worth. Then, suddenly, about a week into my cold turkey, it ceased to matter. Life presented itself with other things to fill that void, and nothing felt lost. I was a bit surprised by this development. Part of me was even a bit disappointed when I got hooked up again. (The other part of me, of course, was really grateful to be able to get caught up on “Lost”.) But if technology were to suddenly fail us on a wide scale and all computers and televisions were to stop working, have no fear, we’ll be fine. Thus speaketh me, anyway.

True story: Lisa K, you got me in trouble! While I was living blog-free, there was a brief bit of excitement at my company due to a manager who didn’t like me trying to get me in trouble for this here little blog. Probably foolishly, I include the address to this blog in my e-mail sigs, and as per normal I left my sig on an e-mail which another boss happened to forward to a bunch of teachers. The next day, I get this phone call: “So, Quin, I was just looking at this website– this ‘Punk’ ‘Assblog’…” –(yes, he actually went out of his way to pronounce it as though he’d never heard the work “punkass” before)– “…and well… what’s this about anal sex?” He claimed that one of the teachers was terribly offended by it and had contacted him over it, an assertion I find highly suspect. So terribly offended by an article which hadn’t even been on the main page for, like, three weeks. I later heard that he tried to raise a big fuss at head office over it, and everybody there was just like “whatever”. Eventually the manager above him just called me and asked that I not include the blog address in my sig anymore. No sweat!

Strangely enough, aforementioned prudish manager resigned from the company two weeks later. Or perhaps I should add scare quotes and say “resigned”. (And to think I made that voodoo doll of him as a lark– who knew those things actually worked!)

Despite that piece of fun fun fun, I still haven’t quite gotten caught up to speed on what’s going on in the real world, or even just this blog. I see that our little dysfunctional Punkass family has increased by one. A belated welcome, Jad! Looks like your presence has been stirring the pot a little. Hope that’s a good thing.

Right. I’m going to go try to get to sleep again in a minute. First, though, to celebrate my glorious reappearance here, which will surely change all of your lives forever, I’d like to share another song. When I originally created it (for an electronic music class I once took) it was on a crystal clear impeccably mixed DAT tape, but alas the only version that has survived through the years is from a 2nd generation audio tape copy. Also, it’s saddled with the generic title “Theme Du Jour”. Still, it’s one of those ones that gives me a warm glow to hear every now and then. Hope you like it, too.

(Download link)

Theme Du Jour by Quin Arbeitman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Makiko, who heads my theatre company, just finished directing a local elementary school play in English, an adaptation of four tales from “The Brothers Grimm” for third graders that she’s been putting on there for the past three years. Once upon a time, she finagled me into writing a song for the big finale, wherein Sleeping Beauty’s curse is lifted, and her castle (portrayed by all 75 children in the cast) wakes up. I show up for the last couple of rehearsals each year to play the underscoring and accompinament on a live piano. This year, I must say the show was in fact a stunning success. We may have ruined a few more young lives, tempting them with the siren call of the theatre.

So, for your appreciation, here is the rehearsal version of the big finale, “Fairy Tales Do Come True”. It features cameos by the Brementown Musicians and the witch from Hansel and Gretel. (For the record, I wrote and recorded this well before my recent foray into Muppetophilia. Though of course like most people my age, as a child I certainly was a Muppetophile.)

(Download link)

Fairy Tales Do Come True by Quin Arbeitman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Unrelated personal thoughts about blogging that nobody actually wants to read but probably will anyway though I don’t know why you’re inflicting it on yourself when I gave you fair warning, after the jump.

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It’s funny. I’d sort of quit blogging for a while because, (1) I felt kind of dissatisfied with my own quality as a writer, and (2) I had no time. Or rather, I thought I had no time.

February was quite possibly the busiest month I’ve ever had. If not in actuality, it certainly ranked up there in the top three. And yet, that was when I started blogging again. I guess I finally actually discovered for myself what I’d heard that blogging could be for so many other people: a form of release. It was something that made me feel better in a very stressful time. Of course, I wouldn’t consider anything I’ve written over the last week or so of any great worth; nothing was deeply thought out. I just wrote stuff, and posted it.

I am still going to be very, very busy for the next month and a half. I think I’m going to try a bit more of this “just write and post stuff” technique over that time period. Maybe from mid-April, when things are supposedly going to cool down for me again, I’ll start trying to laboriously write treatises of great importance once more, and get bogged down in the weightiness of it all once more. In the meantime, I think I’ll just have a little fun from time to time.

That said, we have a few rules here to keep the peace. The official PAB banning policy is as follows: banning is done at the discretion of the blogger whose post you are shitting on. The good news is, like most liberals and progressives, we’re a bunch of pussies and rarely do anything so confrontational as banning a complete stranger from our text-kingdom. Banning is also usually preceded by lots and lots and lots of warnings, de-vowelings, pleas for less jackassery, and the like. You will almost never be banned without plenty of notice and justification before hand.

UNLESS you do something like the following:
- Threaten to kill, rape, stalk, or harm people
- Publish personal identifying information about yourself or others
- Be a racist and/or sexist and/or homophobic jerk for the pure glee of being an anti-pc sexist, racist, homophobic jerk
and new for 2009:
- hijack the screennames of regular commenters to be a douche

We are much smaller than Pandagon, and hope to avoid the mandatory registration policy that name-hijackers have driven them to. Please assist us in this and we will continue to allow you to vomit all over our comment threads to the very limit of human endurance.

Thank you.

But at the moment, this here friendly little blog doesn’t appear to have an audience very hungry for our creative works. I dream of a day when an appearance by The Patriarchy gathers a hundred comments, and a brilliant bit of comedy writing can draw in referral links from a dozen other blogs.

Not that I’m seriously expecting that to ever happen, but part of it is that we don’t share often enough. In other words, if people don’t ever start to expect it, they’re not going to come here looking for it. So what the hell, I’ve decided I’m going to try to help us grow an audience that likes us for our creative stuff too, by posting some of my own stuff on a regular basis. If you don’t want to check it out, just don’t click on these posts!

Like most of the stuff I intend to start bringing here, this piece is completely devoid of any political content. It’s a piece I wrote and recorded twelve or thirteen years ago for one of my small college jazz groups. I named it “Pass/Fail”, after a silly rule at UT Austin where I was allowed to take up to three courses without receiving a grade for them, as long as I passed them. Way to incentivize the slackitude, UT! But, I certainly was happy to take advantage of it at the time.

It’s me on piano, by the way. Enjoy!

Download link: Pass-Fail

Pass Fail by Quin Arbeitman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.