Category: Me Myself&I

Credit photo: Sean Bonner.

L.A. April 2012. Atwater Village, coffee, friend, talking. Click.

Another truth imho is that we all watch too much TV, and that’s what really makes us crazy.

I feel it. I’m completely Breaking Bad’s bitch, jumping and cringing in front of my monitor once a week. I started  the show over just by watching the pilot again.

And it’s violent, I had forgotten about it because I’m sedated like most of you guys. It’s violently “real”, there’s something terrible about the fact that if drugs were legal, there would be no critically acclaimed show (same with Weeds). There would be probably much less violence in Mexico too. I’d be good with that.

Our global society  is not handling well endemic problems (unemployment) and people’s solutions (I’ve been told that dealing drugs is very lucrative). Meanwhile, a TV drama shows us exactly how we can justify death to provide for our families and my family deserves more than yours. It feels plain wrong. Back to Scarface. At the same time we try to be more humans and caring (gay marriage and goose loving and whatnot) but it’s totally against what we value out there with our minds and our pockets: violence, aggressiveness. Dexter, Call of Duty, Steve Jobs, Skrillex. Mad Men is like a new genre I call “Quiet 60s Conservatism Aggression”.

We’re angry too. I understand “getting it out” through violence: sports, playing punk rock or slapping the bass are great activities for that. But this aggression towards others, everyone, wholly and fully against anything for your little clan is a little too primal.

Simply put, we ain’t no fucking wolves no more.

-Courage +Wolf

It’s always good to think about something and see articles echoing my thoughts.

The dangerous gap between those who make software, and those who use it.

I’m a high end user comfortable with anything on a computer, knowing how things work to a ridiculous level. I’m not saying that to brag, I’m saying it by helping my mom on Office 2010 or reading this article above or how some people really still love a decade old XP’s interface and violently express it on the Windows 8 blog.

The truth is we, high end users developers and designers are fighting over stupid shit that 99% of people don’t care about and we live in a masturbatory bubble.

This is what I said about game programmers not listening to what’s going on outside that bubble, what players, users clients whatever you call them, really want. You guys should not just be listening to the hype or what would make your app, service and yourself cool but you should listen to people who are actively expressing some needs even if they seem to suck. Because these people have a problem that you can fix, and might even charge for. You make him happy, you earn some income.

Other echo on my reflections about race, black people and computer games.

We’re not saying that this stuff exists because of some hidden malice or secret industry-wide conspiracy to keep minorities in America down. The much sadder truth is that all this bullshit comes from simple, old-fashioned laziness. There’s no good reason video games can’t be infinitely smarter, more responsible and better than this — it’s just going to take time, thought, hard work and a bit of empathy.

And shit, who has time for that? Game developers have got to get another Callfield: Dutybattle out the door by Q3 or the EA monster will devour their children.

See the pattern? People so into their own power of creating apps and games that they don’t care or respect people at the other end. Seriously, stop this shit and please reconsider your position on this.

Oh you have to watch this 8 minutes Call of Juarez video it’s just… How the hell can they get away with this.

2012, we live in a world where it’s forbidden to post a nude picture on pretty much any social media service but where you can buy assault riffles easily.

I know it will probably not change in my lifetime but you people spawning kids jesus fuck you’d better invert the trend because maybe that’s just me but I’d rather have a 16 year old daughter taking pictures of her body than dead (yeah it’s a stretch to see it this way but that’s nothing compared to more-gun-control-is-reducing-my-freedom people’s insane arguments, nothing).

Screw you, I love my Prius.

My dad has one. He never gave a shit about cars (you wouldn’t believe at how he throws his rusted tools or kick some stuff in the trunk of a brand new car) but after using French cars -yes, PSA- for decades and having problems with them, he thought he would try this new thing and save the world blabla.

He just gave his old Prius to his brother and got a new one. He drives a lot, never had a single problem. Not once.

I’ve been pretty amazed at the design of this car. It’s more than well thought. Every single detail. It doesn’t look that good from the outside but the inside man. Absolutely nothing is left behind, everything has a purpose. That’s beautiful design. The absolute elegance of gliding on electric power, not making any noise but a little electrical hiss? Priceless. Only this felt more amazing.

It’s painful to watch my country not getting it. The car business is massively supported by French taxes and we’re hitting a wall but we still try to not look at the Prius, the Yaris or German cars that are so popular and of course sell much better than our own production. Our competition is better than us and three car manufacturers who can’t export in a small country like France is more than overkill.

But the worst part is that the industry today, the main industry today is not cars. We lost this one (and we’ll probably lose the high speed train one, we never managed to sell our tech despite having a 30 years head start fuck me). The industry today and tomorrow is happening with software, services and all this high tech where we’re getting absolutely fucked too, by a heavy competition and a terrible lack of support from the government compared to the disgusting amount of money injected in the car business lost battle for years.

Tokyo Smash from har0ld on Vimeo.

Beat by me, Tokyo by Japan.

 
Beat by me, MC Lyte by MC Lyte.

It’s very interesting to work on a hip hop beat. There’s much more going on than you would think, there’s a lot of work over details changing absolutely everything because it’s pretty straightforward, kick snare hi hat, bass and chords looping. The whole thing has to punch and feel like you never can have enough. Great challenge, it’s really addicting.

It’s been very good to try out and push limits, practice the best design tools for music : EQ & COMP. I love this snare smashing doors opening up for MC Lyte’s shotgun voice and tone killing everything  in the room.

I wanted somebody rapping something more introspective, kind of looking back on life and how to look up and not give up and stuff. Whatever.

Enjoy, yo.

Cleanness. Ruthlessness. Smartness. Politeness. Giancarlo Esposito’s character in Breaking Bad Gus, is the epitome of that. On Reddit comments show that people dig and are scared of this man at the same time like no other character on TV.

 
*badass poker face*

It seems like when these character traits are of a black man, it triggers simultaneously utter fascination and extreme fear. It creates a sense of scary perfection I think: someone with confidence, who takes no BS and cares about what’s going on, who knows how to behave to any situation with knowledge and experience and who has a lean, firm body that doesn’t age with potentially a big dick or a rounded ass attached to it? Man, that’s scary perfection. Beyond politics, that’s Barack and Michelle. Compared to my French president and his wife it’s not even the same league.

That’s some creepy stuff right here not only for white folks (but mostly), for black people too because somehow it goes beyond these two’s expectations of what being black mean, which simply means to be proud of who you are and do what you want to do like everybody else. It shouldn’t be creepy but thanks to living in a white controlled world (who is still discussing something as irrelevant as knowing where the president was born in 2012? Not people of color), it is.

Take rappers, prominent black figures of today. They have ruthlessness and smartness, they went from nothing to quite a lot doing whatever was needed. But they miss cleanness and politeness so people don’t think of them around them. They’re like clowns on TV. When Jay Z tries to be the casual dude, you don’t believe it.

Now this bad motherfucker right here who -in the show- can talk his way, is loved by everyone and gets what he wants without no one noticing anything but a polite and charming man, now that’s crazy. That could actually happen.  Of course it happens with white dudes everyday but somehow, they’re off the radar. If traders were black, they wouldn’t steal anything as there would be a cop behind them at all time.

This happened to Giancarlo recently:

Days before the interview, Esposito was stopped and frisked by New York police while walking out of a theater where he was rehearsing a play. After several frantic minutes – with him and officers screaming, and their guns drawn – they realized they had the wrong guy. Their suspect had a hoodie, and Esposito was wearing a suit. When it was over, one of the officers recognized him, from his recent turn on ABC’s "Once Upon a Time."

He doesn’t get upset about it, his entire career is based on race. He stays clean, he ruthlessly keeps his pain for himself because it’s a smart thing to do and he probably was very polite to the police. Like bad mofos do. CRSP.

It’s not that everything turns into shit but they kind of do though. The last bastion was family but I guess I see it crack more and more. Some people who were so close don’t see each other anymore and so on. It’s weird. I’m so naive. I want to believe! When I was a kid I remember saying to my parents that we should have a huge BBQ thing with BOTH of my families and that it would be the best thing ever. I remember seeing them smile and tell me that it might not happen, they didn’t say why I just had to grow up witness and understand why I didn’t have to be upset about the “aw that’s cute” vibe they sent. Anyway.

Sigh

So before they did this stupid bike lane, you could park in my street (it’s going to be important later). On the right side we had parking spaces. They decided that it was not useful to have parking spaces so they took them off. Then they put a bike lane. Then they put these green barriers on the right so you can’t park on the sidewalk. Then they put these retarded white HUGE things so that people can’t park on the bike lane (they do anyway, btw) and also can’t maneuver something big like a horse trailer.

So first that picture happens everyday with different configurations of annoyances. Cars use their horns, of course. Did I mention that there’s a bus line too so that if you park slightly off the bike lane the bus can’t go? He uses his big horn too. I’ve seen a bus stopped for 25 minutes, you can imagine the concerto.

Second my building has sewer problems, these days it smells super bad downstairs. Pipes are almost a hundred years old, it had to happen. So it’s clogged as fuck. So we need to pump it out. So we need a truck. So we need to park close: you can’t run a big diameter pipe across the street with cars and buses, obviously.

So now it’s a clusterfuck, I had to call the town hall, we have to get the authorization from the bus line (15 days in advance), move the stops of said bus line for a day, stop cars for a day too and synchronize the company doing the job so that we can literally pump the shit out of my building and pay around $1200 for this.

It’s great.

People most concerned by the problem downstairs don’t do much except complain, my dad already tried to unclog it by himself but it didn’t work long. Too many baby wipes too (guys wipes clog, don’t throw them in the toilet, ever)…

So yeah I don’t know, things turn to shit. Sometimes it’s kind of unavoidable (old pipes) but sometimes it really is because of some fucking moron up there who doesn’t have a foot in reality and fucks a lot of people’s lives over. I don’t have a car, I love bikes but I also know that people move in move out, get stuff delivered, need an intervention like us etc. You don’t just decide that cars are now strictly prohibited just like that.

If you wondered why I so much want and dream about a brand new green passive house pretty far from people, now you know.

We should not ever pay for sex, water and air. I don’t know, these things seem way too precious, too essential to have them monetized. Water largely is and that’s totally wrong and I really wish I hadn’t had to buy bottles (I still drink plenty of tap water, though).

I’m pretty liberal I guess so paying for sex shouldn’t bother me too much, but it does. Because I know that it’s not about sex.

“I’ll suck your tits for 2 credits!” Wait, that’s just wrong.

You see women who need sex, masturbate. Or because it’s obviously easier for them (17 times more contacted than men on OKCupid according to this), they’ll get a dude back home but really, maybe the best is using this vibrator and at the end, women don’t seek to pay for sex. It’s interesting to me that 50% of the population doesn’t seek to pay for sex while the other half overall thinks that it’s OK to do so. There’s something wrong if half of us don’t do it, right? Because it’s not worth it. Because men don’t pay for sex, they pay for something else, something men seek so hard. Power, charisma, or the illusion of having some. It’s very, very old news for feminists.

There’s this pretty amazing interview over the Rumpus with clients and sex workers.

And then the following summer, I wanted some money to buy something (some really cool mod boots that I would never be able to afford on my own) and I thought I could use his lust against him. He came to work way earlier than everybody else, so I showed up early too and told him I could do some of those things for money.

Very important, money. In the US people would do ANYTHING for easy money. Or get ANYTHING for free (this girl on The Soup getting a “slut butt” tattoo because it was free). It’s a disease at this point. So to buy some stupid shit, this young hetero dude is ready to blow some guy’s dick, “using his lust”. That’s fucked up, and that’s how it works for quite a lot of women too who only think about that material shit. I’d rather work a full year to get these boots than executing a pathetic plan like that.

At several points, I had disdain for certain acts, but when I felt trapped or needed rent or wanted those shoes, I crossed those self-imposed boundaries.

It’s important to note how people fuck themselves by getting used to easy money. Auto-coercion. Yes, it’s not only with prostitution.

I tried meeting women on the Internet, but fat, drunk and married does not exactly make for a compelling personals ad. And then one day, about ten years ago, I ran across a personals posting that was clearly an ad from an escort.

It’s incredible to me that men think that it’s normal to be fat drunk, in a relationship and not score pussy. Women do crazy ass shit to be sexy and grab some cocks! It ain’t free, for anyone! So dude grow a pair, divorce, hit the gym drink less and you might get some, for free (drinks not included). Not only it will be better for your entire self, it will cost you less. Men, stop being lazy ass losers with high demands.

The most positive experiences were always ones where there was a real emotional connection, where the sex part of the relationship took a back seat to just talking.

Note people, we’re talking about sex workers but it’s more like take-care-of-me-I’m-such-a-loser-I-have-no-friends workers. It’s NOT about sex. It’s about the power of having someone doing what you want, even just sit here and listen to your tribulations.

I think the thing I am most ashamed of is that I’ve been to Asian massage parlors. These are places with women who are very recent immigrants from China and Southeast Asia, and for a fixed door fee you can get a massage, and for a fixed “tip” you can have sex. On the one hand, it’s convenient; it’s cheaper than a typical escort and you don’t have to make an appointment in advance or have your references screened by the woman. You just show up. On the other hand, the sex is often not that great.

And call me naive, but what I discovered after a couple of trips to these places is that many of these women are victims of sex trafficking.

No shit, Sherlock. You’re naïve, you’re a moron and you don’t know how to use Wikipedia or a search engine for anything else but “escort close by”.

Other than the women in the massage parlors I visited, I honestly don’t believe that most of the women doing this felt degraded. The ones that were escorts who didn’t have pimps, didn’t have drug problems, and weren’t trafficked, I honestly believe that they chose their profession about as much as any of us choose our profession.

What is most when it’s the minority of sex work? Most have pimps, drug problems or are trafficked or all of the above. What is choice when you really need this money right now to pay some debt and not start a homeless life, money that would save your ass and that this thought is very well known by the one trying to hire you? You still have the choice but you know you will do it, for the sake of efficiency. This is how people also “choose” other not-so-great jobs. Duh. But if you demand weren’t there, there would be no supply either. You start this sad business, not sex workers.

Many years after my first blowjob-for-money experience, I went through a bi-curious phase and I guess I have to say now that I’m really a bisexual who leans hetero. Speaking only for myself, if my only two choices were becoming a warehouse picker for Amazon for $10 an hour, or sucking dicks ten times a day for $50 bucks a pop, I’d buy me some kneepads.

So many Americans would do anything for money. Greedy to the bone, to the core. Even on app markets, developers have a “whore mentality” trying to get you with anything with the help of disgustingly bad, sloppy apps. Easy money.

Somebody can point to, say, a fellatio porn scene where the guy is rough on the girl and calls her names, and say that it’s inherently degrading, and my argument would be that it’s only inherently degrading if the girl doesn’t want to do it. I mean, I’ve had it done to me. I thought it was a blast. And I didn’t even get paid.

Of course, everyone can have a blast with that kind of stuff. People can do whatever they want to themselves and partners sexually, it’s all right. It’s when you are paid, when it’s your job, your daily function in this society to be a bucket for cum from guys you wouldn’t bang, doing this not to have fun but to pay bills, your child school and debts that the situation is slightly different. If you can’t see the difference, I don’t know man.

The money changing hands is a way of saying, “This money symbolizes our agreement that this is temporary, a fantasy, it’s just pretend, and at the end of the hour we go our separate ways. Now c’mere and let’s pretend!”

I mean, the “pay and let’s pretend!” is sad to me going to Disneyland so in this case, it’s ridiculous. I don’t know how guys can do it again and again.

Next time you’re in a fast food drive-thru at 2am on the way home from some bar, look through the window at the people in the kitchen, see how they are spending their Friday nights for minimum wage, and think about humiliation. Read about chicken-processing plants, Amazon warehouses. There are a million humiliating ways to make a living in this capitalist world we live in.

So maybe we shouldn’t push people to do anything for money like you do? Maybe we should explain that you can be happy without a 5 bedroom house or crazy car rims or fucking shoes you want? Or that maybe waiting a little longer by working a low income job that doesn’t make you cry your soul out or want to try meth to escape is a better plan? Dignity is not about how much money you have/make, people. It’s about how you sleep at night. People lack education to understand that, but it doesn’t change the fact.

Also, people react very strongly against sex— or at least against sex done in a way that they disapprove of. People are going to say that sex work was created by the patriarchy, to serve the patriarchy, that it commodities women, treats them as objects to be bought and sold. I don’t agree. To believe that, you have to believe that all of these women lack agency, lack any will at all.

But it’s stupid to think it this way. Women try to make easy money and dudes like you are showing up and are ready to pay thousands of dollars. Supply, demand. Yes, it serves the patriarchy and builds up ignorance. Yes, it serves these women who will have all the chances to get fucked up in their future life but fair enough, a lot choose this way for money, attention and fame. Yes, a couple of women who haven’t been fucked up by ultra religious childhoods nor sexually abused, who love the taste of semen might have careers and make more money than what they do now with a “classic” job but it’s like athletes, the career is short and it’s physically hard. These people exist and are for all I can see, a true minority. But yeah, they do exist and they usually have a career plan, save money for their next business/house and disappear asap. They just try to make that dollar and if the situation was inverted, wouldn’t I be interested to do this, save money and invest into things I’d like to do? I would run some numbers and think about it, I have projects and times are rough. I don’t judge. But I damn sure know that that would screw my mind up and be a huge trade, a big mental risk.

We shouldn’t be proud of  a society that values putting ourselves to the very end of the edge to exist. The US are building and sending drones everywhere for security reasons blabla, it’s still wrong and always will be. It’s wrong to facilitate war for security reasons, as it’s dumb to say prostitution is OK because an extremely small minority make this choice and lives it all right, all their lives while we forget about the pandemic problem. Society decided that wealth, bank account health is all you are and it serves men in more ways than one. What about our human health? Maybe legalization would make it better but I’m not so sure legalizing goods like drugs is one thing, legalizing services and human trade is definitely something else.

The only way I can think of being OK with paid sex is through one of these couples running websites and fucking in front of cameras. There is certainly no coercion, not from life or from a pimp, and people genuinely love and craft these videos. You can only be a bit jealous but as soon as more people will run that kind of business, people will not be able to live from that. Back to free sex.

At the very end, the problem lays in our sexual education, which is inexistent, laughable and/or terrible at best. The day our society output young adults who are not afraid of sex, know their bodies well and want to master them even more, the day we stop forcing this idea that we should aim for monogamy despite pretty much everything indicating that this doesn’t work at all, the day we don’t laugh at the dude who really comes hard with a female armpit in his face, then maybe people will be like “what is porn? What is prostitution? People paid for that? lol.”

Yeah I know. It’s far.

Thanks, Tibö! What an inexistent defense, it hurts.

Fine, the French team (EDF in French) has some work to do. But I’m surprised about how people react like the EDF doesn’t represent France. Uh yeah, it does represent it.

Slow, not giving a shit, not caring, not running? That’s the France I know and experience more than often everyday.

Thinking that being in quarter final is good enough? That’s the France I witness in everything.

Getting a check for a bad job and feeling no shame? That’s France in a lots of ways .

Their salaries? Do you know how much money football generates a year? FIFA has a bigger budget than the UN, that’s how much. You know players careers stop at 35 top and that they will still have to live for a long time? I don’t pity them but it really is simple economics, supply/demand stuff that French can’t stop being stupid about. Nasri insults journalists? He talks bad? What are you guys, virgins? You know where he comes from don’t be coy, let’s move on. His job is to score, not to have eloquent discussions about how the team lost. Come on, be smart about that journalists but I guess you can’t, you need to sell your paper and true, we live in a gossip society. Blame the game, not the player (who apologized).

Spotted last weekend (click to enlarge). Dude, we can find the IP. Second, it’s so childish.

Do you know why so many French players do/did so well in England (you need to check out Thierry Henry’s stats at Arsenal, it’s insane) or elsewhere but can’t score in the EDF? Like Trezeguet, third French all-time top goal scorer with great careers in Italy and Argentina. Absolutely fucked by Domenech -the worst coach ever, protected by the French Football Federation, the closest thing from Sicilian mafia with SACEM– and totally ignored by France since he missed THAT penalty in 2006. But he made us European champion with a beautiful shot (perfect left, good god it still is so good) and I’m sure he would have saved us often since then. The one who really messed up at the 2006 world cup is not Trezeguet, it’s Zidane.

He certainly made the team super anxious before the shootouts by getting a red card, he ruined his public image forever and ever, he ruined the celebration we were going to have for him and he enabled everything in people’s minds about stereotypes of how Arabs are violent, can’t control themselves and don’t apologize. Terrible. In one move, he destroyed the beautiful illusion of a  somehow united, multicultural France that he represented. That sad moment and the 2005 fall suburbs riots started white people in France to think that minorities are indeed, a problem (that is minorities became visible, before they were only on CDs).

Obviously minorities are not a problem when they clean up our streets, take care of your kids, suck your cock in Vincennes’ woods or win France a world cup with 2 goals from one dude of Algerian Kabyle descent but as soon as they’re desperate, using bad language as anyone can do from time to time or fighting police harassment or selling cannabis to white people, we condemn them as if they were the worst filth of this Earth.

This is not how integration will work. You can’t have a relationship that alternatively goes by either kisses on the mouth or punches in the face, you know?

And if all these people from minorities or fresh immigration do better, perform better, feel better outside the country they are born in, there’s a problem within the country.