A Moment of self-abasement Reflection

Who's that guy?

Is that?

Yup.

That's me. 17 years old and all neck - Senior Prom. I just found this picture yesterday rooting through some old stuff in the basement of my familial home, that and 2 boxes of Magic: The Gathering Cards, a gum ball machine and the complete North and South series on VHS. Score.

My date, the lovely and Asian Christina Bianchi, was 15, and if memory serves, a bit of bitch. But i guess you're allowed to be a bitch when your 15, i think we "dated" for about a week; i didn't want her to feel like i was just using her as a prop in one of the most awkward photographs of my life... after that she went onto greener pastures, greener pastures by the name of Reuben. Damn you Reuben....

And just for the sake of comparison, here i am now at 25, 5 minutes before blogging this...

For fuck's sake i'm wearing a ring. I don't remember every wearing a ring. On my index finger no less. *sigh* (nice cleavage Christina...)

I LOL'd

It's Friday. Cool. I thought i'd leave you off with a few smiles, maybe some laughs. I laughed, it felt good.

(from someone who definitely has too much time on their hands)
Whenever I get a package of plain M&Ms, I make it my duty to continue the strength and robustness of the candy as a species. To this end, I hold M&M duels.

Taking two candies between my thumb and forefinger, I apply pressure, squeezing them together until one of them cracks and splinters. That is the "loser," and I eat the inferior one immediately. The winner gets to go another round.

I have found that, in general, the brown and red M&Ms are tougher, and the newer blue ones are genetically inferior. I have hypothesized that the blue M&Ms as a race cannot survive long in the intense theater of competition that is the modern candy and snack-food world.

Occasionally I will get a mutation, a candy that is misshapen, or pointier, or flatter than the rest. Almost invariably this proves to be a weakness, but on very rare occasions it gives the candy extra strength. In this way, the species continues to adapt to its environment.

When I reach the end of the pack, I am left with one M&M, the strongest of the herd. Since it would make no sense to eat this one as well, I pack it neatly in an envelope and send it to M&M Mars, A Division of Mars, Inc., Hackettstown, NJ
17840-1503 U.S.A., along with a 3x5 card reading, "Please use this M&M for breeding purposes."

This week they wrote back to thank me, and sent me a coupon for a free 1/2 pound bag of plain M&Ms. I consider this "grant money." I have set aside the weekend for a grand tournament. From a field of hundreds, we will discover the
True Champion.

There can be only one.

I was perusing the fine-line exhibition that was featured last year at the Adam Baumgold Gallery and came across two pages of comic work by Tom Gauld, regarding his introduction to and interest in the work of Edward Gorey. I thought they were charming... click here and here to view them. Click here to view the whole exhibition. The bunnies over there --> are also from the exhibition.

I call this piece...

"The Deconstruction, consumption and subsequent regurgitation of history by pop culture in post modern, post nuclear America as performed by a Choir of Angelic Sub-mentals w/ bells and shakers."

Gay Mardi GrasPink Bacon!

I'll let the picture do the talking... actually, add your own caption.

Ben's like, "who are these guys.... oh shit, this are me!"
(note the real life bacon hat.)

Then Racoo-oo-ooo-oo-o-000-Ooo-n played. And it was killer.

A pressing issue (... on my bladder.)

So i went into the company Pissour this afternoon, which contains 2 urinals, one normal height one little person height, and one stall. A fellow employee of average to above average height was in the process of using the little one for whatever reason, it's best not to dwell on that - but either way, i decided to do my business in the stall. The thing is, even if neither of the pissers were occupied i'd still opt for the stall, i don't have a problem peeing next to another person, doesn't bother me one bit; i've seen wangs, i've seen people holding onto wangs, i've played varsity hockey.

But as i was standing in the stall peeing i couldn't help but wonder - how this might seem to the dude on the otherside of the stall wall, outside the safety and privacy of my own personal green-zone. Weirdo, can't pee next to another guy, what's he hiding, etc etc... i can imagine what goes through the substance starved mind of a urinating office worker. I mean, this is what goes through mine. It's friday and i'm an hour away from freedom, i haven't done a godam thing for 2 days cause my sites launched on monday.

Here's the thing. Here's the question really. I'd really appreciate some feedback on this; It seems apparent to me that they're a flawed design, unless i'm using them wrong, which could be, but ok, for the sake of clarity, you just point your peter at either the back wall, or somewhere towards the bottom and shoot. It's not rocket science, it seems obvious to me, yet every time i've ever done this, at some point, i get the inevitable splash back. I get sprayed with either a fine mist of my own urine or a solid reflected burst of yellow gold, there's NOTHING i can do, or so it seems. I've tried everything to find that sweetspot, I've calculated all the angles, tried to flush first then go, even standing 4-5 feet away from the wall and banging out a golden arch ( this works sometimes.)

So is it just par for the course? I'd like to know - If that's the case, i guess I'd much rather look like a prudish, insecure man-child who has to retreat to the safety of the stall.

I don't want pee-pee on my jeans.

Hell yeah Helvetica!

Two fonts walk into the bar, and the barman says, "sorry lads, we don't serve your type here".

This week is the 50th birthday of the designer's goto font, Helvetica. If you don't get involved in fonts than don't worry it won't matter to you - but even in the relatively short time I've been involved in design it's often come this (|) close to a fist fight when trying to get all involved parties to agree on a type face for a project. That's where Helvetica comes into play. Most the suits want Arial, or if I'm lucky Verdana, they're plain, easy to real, but frankly boring as fuck and played out, not that Helvetica isn't at this point - but at least it's not so chubby like arial. Helvetica, looks nice. It's nothing fancy, but it's clean very clean - and i can feel alright about endorsing it's use in a project, for that i'm thankful, thank you Helvetica, happy Birthday.

Via BBC news:

We live in a world where we are surrounded 24 hours a day by adverts and corporate communications, many in typefaces chosen to subliminally complement the message.

COMPARE MAJOR FONTS Helvetica and its rivals

Helvetica's message is this: you are going to get to your destination on time; your plane will not crash; your money is safe in our vault; we will not break the package; the paperwork has been filled in; everything is going to be OK.

It is sans serif. There are no wiggly bits at the end of the letters. It has smooth, clean lines, and an unobtrusive geometry that almost suggests it was designed not to stand out.

Lars Mueller is a Helvetica devotee. He has published a book, Helvetica: Homage to a Typeface, and recently donated an original set of lead lettering to a Helvetica exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

"It has a modern attitude which lines up with the aesthetic premises of the 1950s and 60s. Helvetica is a corporate typeface, but on the other hand it's the favourite of hairdressers and kebab shops. It is the butter on the bread."

|The Rest|

Situationism in waking life

The following is an excerpt from an Essay written about the various philosophies touched on in "Waking Life" which I'm sure everyone's seen at some point - although not the deepest nor most resonant of films, lending itself more to stoner philosophy 101 than anything too indepth or exacting, i did find this little essay on the film alot of fun to read while sitting in my isolated little cubicle staring down the entire length of pine street...

Situationism is explicitly referenced in Scene 21, Society is a Fraud, when four young men (including Nicki Katt and Adam Goldberg, Linklater regulars) go on a dérive, eventually visiting "Mr. Debord" (played by Austin shopkeeper and poet Hymie Samuelson - the real Debord committed suicide in 1993). On the way there they exchange situationist-style jargon like wanting to rupture the spell of the ideology of consumer society to open up ourselves to authentic desires, to interrupt the continuum of everyday existence, to pursue intensities of love and hate, to live as if something actually depended on one's actions. One of them proclaims that "society is a fraud so complete and venal that it demands to be destroyed beyond the power of memory to recall its existence." Another wants "an affirmation of freedom so reckless and unqualified, that it amounts to a total denial of every kind of restraint and limitation." The situationism of these four wanderers is uttered with an intense earnestness. Yet Linklater throws in some humour at the end of the scene to lighten the situation: they see an older man stuck up a telephone pole who doesn't know why he's there. One of the situationists comments that just as he's all action and no theory, they are all theory and no action, a chronic problem with the avant-garde Left.

Scene 4, with Kim Krizan, is about how we can overcome alienation through spiritual communion, understanding each other through words like "love." This is evidence of the more poetic, positive side of situationism, of Vaneigem's idea that we could build a cathedral of poetry and love in which to carry out our everyday lives.

Scene 14, Noise and Silence, hints at the roots of situationism in avant-garde artistic movements like Dada, surrealism, and the Lettrist International (the immediate precursor of the Situationist International, from which it emerged in 1957). A chimp pronounces a monologue into a microphone as a series of film clips (including Kurosawa's Dreams and a punk rock performance) play on a screen behind him. He talks about how art can be used to create subversive micro-societies, which open up new possibilities. Anything is still possible the talking chimp tells us, even though the world seems empty and degraded. True communication is the key. In a true situationist gesture, he eats his script at the end.

The difficult path to authenticity is made more specific in Scene 20, The Holy Moment, when filmmaker Caveh Zahedi describes André Bazin's theory that since God is in all reality, films are really attempts to capture God. When Zahedi and poet David Jewell try to have such a moment, they are partially successful; yet Jewell confesses that he slips in and out of the moment, becoming aware of the layers of reality embedded in such an attempt at real communication.

Two scenes in Waking Life speak to the need for direct action to overcome the passivity and isolation of consumer society. In Scene 6, Self-Immolation, journalist J. C. Shakespeare douses himself with gasoline and sets himself on fire, just like a Buddhist monk in Vietnam in 1963 who was protesting the treatment of Buddhists by the Diem government. Before doing so, Shakespeare speaks of how the media uses images of death and destruction to turn us into passive observers, and how the only real freedom we're offered is the purely symbolic act of voting. Human beings want chaos: we want strife, riots, murder, and war. The trick used by the media is to paint a sad face on all these catastrophes, to pretend that they're avoidable tragedies. Yet behind this sad face is an attempt to pacify us, to turn us into puppets of the spectacle. We sit in our living rooms shedding metaphorical tears for the deaths of thousands in Bangladeshi typhoons or massacres in Rwanda, yet ten minutes later drive to the shopping mall for our daily fix of fast food and maybe a shiny new commodity or two.
|The rest of Doug Mann's essay|

Good Music

Saw alot of good music recently - makes me feel lucky to know the people i know, and to be good friends with most of them. Lately I've been feeling more and more like I'm part of a community. I became acutely aware of it the other weekend when i went over to Toby and Sara-Paule's for the afternoon on Sunday and ended up hanging out for a few hours, sitting in the sun, drinking blackberry wheat, and talking about life, and random things, making a little sculpture on the ground out of twigs and leaves.
I've know Sara-Paule for a long time now, i thought, even Toby I've known for a few - alot's gone by in those years, quite a bit - it's amazing how much changing and growing we do, and we never really notice till we get some distance from some self-important signpost. My friends are these signposts for me, and the longer i've been in this town the more of them i find, and the more i'm reminded of who i was, who i am etc... it's all rather fascinating.
Going to shows, and watching people i've played in bands w/ or have known for so long - it's such a great experience - Sometimes, depending on the show it's like I'm just in the garage w/ friends hanging out having some laughs, playing some music. The only difference is how impressed I've been by these people lately.

Matt I've only known for about 6 months or so, i met him through Brodie, and we've all played some music together - but i only just recently got to see him perform as Snake in the Garden. It was awesome - it was one of the first times in recent memory that i heard music coming out of speakers from a local act that, if i closed my eyes i could imagine it coming out of the speakers of any worth-its-salt club in any metroland in the world - it was spot on noise, thoughtful and mindfucking, and not without it's own well played spin on things. It felt real, and individual - and
totally engaging.

Then there was this avant-jazz banjo and cello duo that - not to bad, definitely had their chops, sounded like if The Books weren't so patient and considered, but had all their beats programed by Autechre but then, when they got to the show, realized that they forgot there Macbook...


Then Oak, lovely.

The next night -May day, i got to finally see what my good friend Todd has been cooking up behind closed doors all winter and again, i was floored, true to form and flooding over with sincerity and self-righteousness, he played an outdoor set of hard edged, lo-fi rock. It was the most fitting music i could have imagined for a May day BBQ at "Speaking Volumes"


Tonight i went out with a whole dinning room of friends to Koto's to celebrate my friend Kyle's 27th B-day and again i felt like i knew and had known and been known by so many of the people around me, for a long time. It's funny - while i often times don't like feeling insulated and sort of "known" i think that it's only because i know i am, that it gives me the freedom to think otherwise. I've lived in cities where i was completely alone - and it's thrilling, it teaches you so much about yourself, but at the end of the day, i'd like to know someone, and I'm really glad i know all these people.

On another note - I was eating a granola bar the other morning, and just as i swallowed, i also sneezed, and immediately i felt this congestion in my sinuses, so i started blowing my nose real hard and after a bit all this granola just came shooting out. I thought i got it all, but within an hour my nose was stuffed up and by that night my throat felt tight and scratchy. Now i feel like i've almost got a sinus cold or something... I bet i have granola stuck in my sinuses, can you believe that shit?

Taking inventory...

click to view it fullsize

Hey grey Monday - Our apartment is starting to fall apart - not that it started out whole. The bathroom door nob fell off this weekend, for no apparent reason other than that it' really old. The wall paper in the bathroom is grey streaked w/ black mildew mostly on account that the exhaust fan only sort of works, the one in the kitchen doesn't work at all, and from what i can tell, if it were to work it'd be exhausting into the neighbor's apartment. The oven has a burned out element, so we either cook everything with a careful eye on broil, or on the range where there are only 2 properly functioning burners.
The windows are all from 1950's and open and close using an internal counter-weight system that either doesn't work at all, only sort of does - a couple don't open at all and seem to have been sealed shut. When the wind blows you can feel it, even when they're shut and the storm windows are down.
The front door lock is busted and though it was repaired, within a week, it was broken again. The walls are cracking and the plaster is sagging, the weird wood grain floor laminent is peeling up, and there's a 2 inch hole in the wall between the living room and my bedroom.

All in all though i really love my apartment, it's really comfy and the location is great.

Joyce gets naughty... real friggin' naughty.

So most everyone is familiar with James Joyce, but most people are not familiar with the spunky side of ol' Mr. Joyce. The following is just one of many dirty love letters he exchanged w/ his wife Nora.... And might i just say never i have i read a more well written, filthy good collection of smutty love tellings in my whole life... I had my doubts about this guy until now. He truly is a genius of the written word. enjoy.

My love for you allows me to pray to the spirit of eternal beauty and tenderness mirrored in your eyes or fling you down under me on that softy belly of yours and fuck you up behind, like a hog riding a sow, glorying in the very stink and sweat that rises from your arse, glorying in the open shape of your upturned dress and white girlish drawers and in the confusion of your flushed cheeks and tangled hair. It allows me to burst into tears of pity and love at some slight word, to tremble with love for you at the sounding of some chord or cadence of music or to lie heads and tails with you feeling your fingers fondling and tickling my ballocks or stuck up in me behind and your hot lips sucking off my cock while my head is wedged in between your fat thighs, my hands clutching the round cushions of your bum and my tongue licking ravenously up your rank red cunt. I have taught you almost to swoon at the hearing of my voice singing or murmuring to your soul the passion and sorrow and mystery of life and at the same time have taught you to make filthy signs to me with your lips and tongue, to provoke me by obscene touches and noises, and even to do in my presence the most shameful and filthy act of the body. You remember the day you pulled up your clothes and let me lie under you looking up at you while you did it? Then you were ashamed even to meet my eyes.

You are mine, darling, mine! I love you. All I have written above is only a moment or two of brutal madness. The last drop of seed has hardly been squirted up your cunt before it is over and my true love for you, the love of my verses, the love of my eyes for your strange luring eyes, comes blowing over my soul like a wind of spices. My prick is still hot and stiff and quivering from the last brutal drive it has given you when a faint hymn is heard rising in tender pitiful worship of you from the dim cloisters of my heart.

Nora, my faithful darling, my seet-eyed blackguard schoolgirl, be my whore, my mistress, as much as you like (my little frigging mistress! My little fucking whore!) you are always my beautiful wild flower of the hedges, my dark-blue rain-drenched flower.

JIM

|The Rest|

The Vegetable Orchestra

From their website: The Vegetable Orchestra performs music solely on instruments made of vegetables. Using carrot flutes, pumpkin basses, leek violins, leek-zucchini-vibrators, cucumberophones and celery bongos, the orchestra creates its own extraordinary and vegetabile sound universe. The ensemble overcomes preserved and marinated sound conceptions or tirelessly re-stewed listening habits, putting its focus on expanding the variety of vegetable instruments, developing novel musical ideas and exploring fresh vegetable sound gardens.

Queen Cate Approximately

Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan folks.

Oak The Bird / The Turtle

I was planning on writing this up yesterday - i came home grabbed one of JB's beers, popped in EP1 turned it up, and sat down in front of an open window as the first shakes and strums swam up. Headphones are where i do most my listening, and i forget how nice it is to fill a room with music, while i suppose the headphones, when they're good, offer a certain objectivity - a room lets the sounds breath and spread out, relax even.

Breathing, spreading out, relaxing - I think are important elements when listening to the first half of Oak's new double EP release, and while at first i was curious the reason for releasing two EPs after listening to both, i think anyone would agree it was the right idea... An open space, is essential for EP1, from here out referred to as "The Bird" - wind, a warm breeze preferably, from an open window like mine, with a view, or perhaps if you're prone to the meditative qualities of a solo car ride, a constantly changing vantage.

Regardless of the location though, The Bird invites participation, offering up rhythmic themes built out of shakers and bells, acoustic guitars, Oboe and synth - that repeat and build, sometimes swell, but then as quickly diffuse themselves into new form. Each passage moves almost too quickly into the next leaving me wanting more time to absorb it's particular phrasings or melody. It is in many ways like it's namesake, a bird always flitting from one branch to the next, never staying as long as one would like, yet because of that very restlessness, it feels quite at home with moving landscapes and thoughtful breezes.

I didn't end up writing the review last night, i ended up getting a bit snookered - Toby was there though, so i didn't feel so bad.

I told myself that tonight I'd sit down after Yoga and do this thing - I'm exhausted actually, Jane my Yoga-lady (Jenny's sister.) put me through the wringer - and squeezed every drop of salty sweat i think i have in me, out. Along with that went most of my anxious thoughts, the ones that rattle around in my head all day long, the cyclical ones that I'd like to thing are spiraling up towards some kind of resolution, or at the very least, down and out of my consciousness. I think i'll be good until morning. In the meantime i can sit in my bedroom in these headphones and watcho ut my window at the stillness of pine trees that line the unitarian church. A wonderfully fitting setting for EP2, The Turtle. While i suppose i could come up with another multi layered analogy i think it makes the most sense to state the obvious and most fitting. "Slow and steady wins the race."

The turtle is the inversion of the first EP, dense and ominous, rolling out in beautifully textured washes that while drawing elements from post-rock and various drone/space acts are their own. Drone is so hard to do well; for it to be compelling it has to captivate without the traditional elements of obvious rhythm and melody. So the emphasis is put on pure sonic texture and building and (perhaps?) releasing of tension; skills that even the best musicians don't necessarily have a clue about. And while The Bird displayed superb chops and energy - The Turtle is where Oak really shines - albeit through a cobalt prism.

Each one of the tracks on The Turtle grow and pulse with superbly complex and difficult to pinpoint texture that leaves me almost excited for the next wave to break over my ears - all the while i'm content to be mindless and stare up at the ceiling, or over across the room at JC Penny's as she stares back at me with that, "and..." expression. No, i'm not high... I'm just enjoying this music.



The Bird and The Turtle are excellent compliments to one another. They offer a sort of vague point/counter-point statement - a statement that i feel Oak as a band are as of yet, reluctant to come out and say, or at least define... But with these being their first releases, and having only been together for a short time as a band it seems obvious to me that these two recordings together are akin to watching a bird tentatively sneak towards a breadcrumb, or a heavy summer storm move across the plains.

Casey Rea's review is up at Sevendays |read|

Kiss my ASCII

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Mighty F*ck of the Beyondness

Here's a little Monday morning pick-me-up for all you nerds, and non-nerds alike who enjoys a good RPC (role-playing Cyber) once in a while. You know you do.

bloodninja: Baby, I been havin a tough night so treat me nice aight?
BritneySpears14: Aight.
bloodninja: Slip out of those pants baby, yeah.
BritneySpears14: I slip out of my pants, just for you, bloodninja.
bloodninja: Oh yeah, aight. Aight, I put on my robe and wizard hat.
BritneySpears14: Oh, I like to play dress up.
bloodninja: Me too baby.
BritneySpears14: I kiss you softly on your chest.
bloodninja: I cast Lvl. 3 Eroticism. You turn into a real beautiful woman.
BritneySpears14: Hey...
bloodninja: I meditate to regain my mana, before casting Lvl. 8 chicken of the Infinite.
BritneySpears14: Funny I still don't see it.
bloodninja: I spend my mana reserves to cast Mighty F*ck of the Beyondness.
BritneySpears14: You are the worst cyber partner ever. This is ridiculous.
bloodninja: Don't f*ck with me biatch, I'm the mightiest sorcerer of the lands.
bloodninja: I steal yo soul and cast Lightning Lvl. 1,000,000 Your body explodes into a fine bloody mist, because you are only a Lvl. 2 Druid.
BritneySpears14: Don't ever message me again you piece of ****.
bloodninja: Robots are trying to drill my brain but my lightning shield inflicts DOA attack, leaving the robots as flaming piles of metal.
bloodninja: King Arthur congratulates me for destroying Dr. Robotnik's evil army of Robot Socialist Republics. The cold war ends. Reagan steals my accomplishments and makes like it was cause of him.
bloodninja: You still there baby? I think it's getting hard now.
bloodninja: Baby?
--------------
BritneySpears14: Ok, are you ready?
eminemBNJA: Aight, yeah I'm ready.
BritneySpears14: I like your music Em... Tee hee.
eminemBNJA: huh huh, yeah, I make it for the ladies.
BritneySpears14: Mmm, we like it a lot. Let me show you.
BritneySpears14: I take off your pants, slowly, and massage your muscular physique.
eminemBNJA: Oh I like that Baby. I put on my robe and wizard hat.
BritneySpears14: What the f*ck, I told you not to message me again.
eminemBNJA: Oh ****
BritneySpears14: I swear if you do it one more time I'm gonna report your ISP and say you were sending me kiddie porn you f*ck up.
eminemBNJA: Oh ****
eminemBNJA: damn I gotta write down your names or something

|Bonus nerdlink|

On Pirating, Google, Copyright, Substance, and New Order album covers.

Twenty years ago, the US studios announced that the end of civilization as we know it was at hand; the destructive force was the video-cassette recorder. Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, went before Congress and said that "The growing and dangerous intrusion of this new technology is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman alone." - John Lanchester

Lanchester's phrase, “an amazing variety of beautiful forms,” applies to the best music packaging as much as it does to books. There is an undeniable sense of completeness when music comes with handsome packaging and engaging graphical material. -Adrian Shaughnessy

The corporations have the power, and they are not afraid to use it. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the US considerably extended the range of both criminal and civil offences that could be committed over copyright issues. There is a clause in US film contracts which awards the producers rights "in perpetuity and throughout the universe and for any and all forms of expression whether now existing or hereafter devised". As far as I can tell, the only loophole in that is if you fell through a crack in the space-time fabric of the universe into a parallel one. (In case you're wondering how that bizarre clause came about, it was as a result of a lawsuit between Disney and the singer Peggy Lee over the video-cassette edition of Lady and the Tramp. Her contract was drawn up before the existence of VCRs and she sued on the basis that Disney did not automatically have the right to sell videos without her permission. She won $3.8m, and the "throughout the universe" clause was born, to make sure the studios never went through anything like that again.) - John Lanchester

"..is the determination of the micro labels to continue producing CD and vinyl packaging anything other than the remnants of a fanboy obsession with recorded music common amongst people who grew up in the pre-digital era? Most of the label owners I’ve interviewed for my book have talked about the usual teenage interest in band logos, enduring love affairs with New Order album covers, and fixations with the "smell of records." But are we talking about something deeper here? Does music need some sort of physicality to maintain its intrinsic value? If our favourite music merely exists as a sliver of invisible code on a computer, do we lose something?.." -Adrian Shaughnessy

excerpted from "It's a Steal" in The Guardian Unlimited and "Are JPEGs the new Album Covers?" in Design Observer.

What goes on in your mind?

A Brief History of Designer Jeans

Excerpted from

Dazed and Confused:
The 1970s and the Postmodern Turn

by
Vince Carducci

"Originally created for practical purposes by Levi Strauss & Company in the second half of the nineteenth century, blue-denim jeans were first taken up as fashion items in the 1920s by members of the Santa Fe artist’s colony in New Mexico to express their identity as cultural prospectors of the American Scene. Jeans as anti-fashion emerged after the Second World War to symbolize the rebellious independence of the Beat Generation against the gray-flannel conformity of outer-directed society. In the 1960s, jeans gained broad popularity as quintessentially American, representing a classless society where labor and leisure were equally valued and where material comfort prevailed. The individualistic connotations of blue denim stayed intact in the 1970s, when designer jeans appeared as part of a larger movement in consumption toward what may be termed the democratization of distinction, the birth of what philosopher Jean Baudrillard calls the “commodity-sign.” In addition to the value-added features of other natural fiber clothing, designer jeans carried the premium marker of haute couture branding, but at relatively affordable prices when compared to traditional luxury goods.

The rise of designer jeans was facilitated by the introduction in the 1970s of computer-assisted methods, known as “geodemographic clustering systems,” that could compile and analyze large amounts of data on the location of wealth, the distribution of population by race, age, gender, and educational level, and other indicators of purchasing power and patterns of behavior. These techniques presented information at finer levels of detail than had been previously available to purveyors of the mass market. This enabled clothing manufacturers, among others, to identify and respond more quickly to market opportunities, which low-cost, labor-intensive offshore producers could supply without needing otherwise prohibitive capital investment. The designer jean consumer was upscale (or at least aspired to be), paying double over the average price of a pair of Levi’s. While fewer units were sold, due to the smaller pool of potential buyers, profit margins were far higher than available in the traditional mass-market model.

At the same time that these smaller market segments were being uncovered, the ability to accommodate design changes was enhanced, again due to the economies of low-cost labor engaged in handwork. This served to shorten the fashion cycle, accelerating the process of product obsolescence. During this same period, polyester was pushed down market, relegated to the lower-margin segments of mass consumption. Designer jeans worked alongside the new trademarked running shoes, logo-imprinted t-shirts, and other branded items to help a reconstituted capitalism straddle the globe with renewed vigor. As part of the process, branding became a kind of system of symbolic exchange, a re-enchantment of the world, a mechanism for channeling consumption into new forms. Facilitating the flow between consumer desire and value-added products were other changes that undermined the worldly asceticism traditionally associated with America’s Protestant heritage."

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I think of this because i never wore jeans growing up - they felt uncomfortable to me; a bit to rigid, so I wore slacks, bugle boys, jams, whatever... but after a trip to a vintage shop in Williamsburg about 4 years ago; i found out that i had just been wearing the wrong jeans. Now i almost exclusively wear jeans, they don't have to be vintage, or designer, in fact all my jeans are Levi's usually 501 or 505, boot cut sometimes, relaxed fit others. Mainly it's just a matter of fit, and being of the tall slender variety I've noticed that older "vintage" jeans fit me better.

On another note; this morning while i was getting dressed i accidentally yanked an old pair of work jeans i haven't worn in over a year, i got them... almost 5 years ago, before i really wore jeans, as sort of a test, and because i needed something to do manual labor in. I remember them never fitting right, to baggy in places, a little long, but they did the trick for work, and over the last few years i would pull them out whenever i needed to do some painting, general dirty work, or like a few summers ago, when i was helping Adrienne's father gut their house for remodeling.

I tried them on, and to my surprise they fit like a glove. a very worn, comfortable glove... I thought it was funny how after all these years of own them I'd finally grown into these jeans.

The Blood Puddle Pillow

Cute!

Crying While Eating

You haven't eaten, till you've cried while eating.

Here's a few of the many submissions to the site, that includes what they're eating, why they're crying and a video of them eating and crying. Seriously. Yes it is awesome.

Paul

What he's eating:
Warm soda




What he's crying about:
Everything seems artificial

Anne/Sydney

What they're eating:
Brownie batter




What they're crying about:
They perioded their pants

Jesus

What he's eating:
Potatoes and ketchup




What he's crying about:
The wasted promise of youth

Crying Parties and The Peril of Praise

Since Thomas could walk, he has heard constantly that he’s smart. Not just from his parents but from any adult who has come in contact with this precocious child. When he applied to Anderson for kindergarten, his intelligence was statistically confirmed. The school is reserved for the top one percent of all applicants, and an IQ test is required. Thomas didn’t just score in the top one percent. He scored in the top one percent of the top one percent.

But as Thomas has progressed through school, this self-awareness that he’s smart hasn’t always translated into fearless confidence when attacking his schoolwork. In fact, Thomas’s father noticed just the opposite. “Thomas didn’t want to try things he wouldn’t be successful at,” his father says. “Some things came very quickly to him, but when they didn’t, he gave up almost immediately, concluding, ‘I’m not good at this.’ ” With no more than a glance, Thomas was dividing the world into two—things he was naturally good at and things he wasn’t.

For instance, in the early grades, Thomas wasn’t very good at spelling, so he simply demurred from spelling out loud. When Thomas took his first look at fractions, he balked. The biggest hurdle came in third grade. He was supposed to learn cursive penmanship, but he wouldn’t even try for weeks. By then, his teacher was demanding homework be completed in cursive. Rather than play catch-up on his penmanship, Thomas refused outright. Thomas’s father tried to reason with him. “Look, just because you’re smart doesn’t mean you don’t have to put out some effort.” (Eventually, he mastered cursive, but not without a lot of cajoling from his father.)

Why does this child, who is measurably at the very top of the charts, lack confidence about his ability to tackle routine school challenges? |The Rest @ New York Magazine|

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Forget happiness, the in-crowd is being moved to tears by a new wave of super cool misery clubs, which give visitors (with the help of a pile of chopped onions) the chance to weep away their woes

Against a backdrop of crashing choral music and candlelight, a group of elaborately costumed young women are dabbing their eyes with a handkerchief, their mascara running to form black rivulets down their cheeks.

It is not difficult to see why they are so distressed: in front of them, a mound of pungent onions is being vigorously and elaborately chopped by a serious-looking young man in a tailcoat, and the fumes are overwhelming.

Even the male guests are wiping away the odd tear.

But then that's precisely the point. The 300 people in the crowd at this candlelit 17th-century wine vault, tucked away off a busy London thoroughfare, are here to do just that.

They are celebrating - if that is the right word, under the circumstances - the chance to express their more sorrowful side at a new club night called Loss. |The Rest @ The Daily Mail|

Scenes from a Montreal Bed and Breakfast.

While Jenny and I were in Montreal last weekend we stayed at this lovely little B&B called "Le Petit (i'm gonna try and do this without cheating...) Auberg du Bon Matin, which, translates, loosely to meaning "The Little Alburg of Good Mornings." ....
Ah, what a lovely stay.

The Chandelier above our four post bed...

quaint yet modern lamps and chairs....

Jenny rocking a word find in the 2 person wirlpool jaccuzzi... (word finds are for relaxing.) yes, that's a fireplace in the background. There was another just to the right.

The worlds greatest (and least expensive!) Montreal Smoke Meat sandwiches were had at famous Schwartz's Jewish deli, on good Friday no less. Jesus, eat your heart out.

Chartreuse. Yum.

More Food Porn.

Jenny modelling her stylish 3D-Glasses before the SHARKS! 3D! showing at the IMAX

Our Room from the bed...

Our lovely bedside fireplace...
Bon neut...

Back on the Job

Trying to play around w/ this new flash-based web app called Leafletter; check it out - it might come in handy for any web related tasks you might be doing... Yeah, i'm back at work. The week off was nice; although the weather didn't help out any plans i had to get out and about. On the other hand it did give me a great excuse to stay in, read, game, watch ridiculous amounts of movies, brit com (new season of peep show started!) school and be schooled in Dreamcast Tennis, and generally unwind and relax (or be thrown into an unexpected existential crisis, by watching the "Hope" documentary in the extra features of Children of Men.)

Maniac Mansion speed test!

Anyone who remembers this aweosome and truely weird Lucasarts game has to watch this.

Growing / Sunn, eat your heart out...

via music thing

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.
- Kurt Vonnegut

The Tenant

I took the week off, i thought after about 8 months of working pretty munch non-stop on websites it'd be nice to take a break from it, especially since the last one was such a rush job it left me feeling pretty drained, and general disdainful of certain higher-ups.

Imagine this "We want you to redesign this website that was originally coded by Russians we hired on the cheap, but use AJAX, multiple user levels, and integrate back-end administrator functionality. What? Oh well, yes we said one month, which is completely ridiculous as it is, so we thought instead we'd give you 3 weeks.... (one week later) aaaaaaaactually, 2 weeks. Thanks. What's that? oh no we don't actually have all the features we want ironed out yet, but we'll get them do you when we do..."

So i thought i'd take a week off, just to relax, recoup a bit, clean the house, read some books, take some drives, teach myself some proper javascript / ajax - and watch a bunch of movies since i just got netflix. My first three choices were "A Man for all Seasons" "Paths of Glory" and "Rashomon" so far we've watched Rashomon, a study of the nature of truth, which i found enjoyable, although a bit tedious and long. Today we're gonna watch Paths, and hopefully a man for all seasons, so that later tonight we can go and see "The Host". So many movies.....

Last night Jenny JB and I watched Polanski's "The Tenant" thanks to Jenny's recommendation... What a film. Polanski is one odd duck, and i couldn't love it more. He really knows how to make films like no one else; and to fill those films which such unsettling weirdness, and pervasive dread. This one so far even surpassed Rosemary's Baby in the weird quotient, albeit it, at the expensive of the over-all coherence of the film. Though i get the impression he wants us to wonder what happened by the end of it.

To give an example of one of the MANY explanations of the film here's one from the Wiki page.

From the presence of Egyptian symbols displayed in props in many scenes, a reincarnation theory could be derived : Trelkovsky and Simone are in reality the same person, which would explain the scene where Trelkovsky sees himself in his apartment. It follows, that that the scene where Trelkovsky stares at Simone is the very same scene, subject to a curious time warp. The bathroom represents a funeral chamber (as denoted by the hieroglyphs), which places Simone in this scene as a mummy, because of her appearance.

Interesting isn't it? This was the last in his Apartment Trilogy that includes Rosemary's, and Repulsion, which is next on the list. I should also mention, that i am the Greatest Sega Dreamcast Tennis Y2k player the world has ever known. JB eats dog poop, even if he's playing as Pat(ricia) Rafter, or either of the Williams'... My Monica Celese has the backhand of power!

Gorey goes to Hollywood

According to Reuters, the people responsible for bringing us the glossy soul-less "Narnia" are at it again, this time working with Jim Henson's people to create a film version of the awesome and hilarious "The Doubtful Guest"; The Edward Gorey tale about a stuffy Victorian family that is visited for a number of years by a strange manic depressive creature that behaves in strange ways for no apparent reason. One day he lays much to close to parlor door, blocking access to the room, other days he stands with his long snout facing the wall, and on other days he takes prized possessions and throws them in the pond.

On one hand, I'd like to see what the Hensons do with this, on the other hand i'm not to excited to see another treasured favorite raped and pillaged by the Hollywood system... we'll see...

I don't like RICE!

bonus Youtube: Depeche Mode live on German Television - awesome, young DM are the coolest.

excerpted from the recent Guardian article by Barbara Ehrenreich titled

How we learned to stop having fun

..."One approaches the subject of "deeper, underlying psychological change" with some trepidation, but fortunately, in this case, many respected scholars have already visited this difficult terrain. "Historians of European culture are in substantial agreement," Lionel Trilling wrote in 1972, "that in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, something like a mutation in human nature took place." This change has been called the rise of subjectivity or the discovery of the inner self and since it can be assumed that all people, in all historical periods, have some sense of selfhood and capacity for subjective reflection, we are really talking about an intensification, and a fairly drastic one, of the universal human capacity to face the world as an autonomous "I", separate from, and largely distrustful of, "them"."...

...Historians infer this psychological shift from a number of concrete changes occurring in the early modern period, first and most strikingly among the urban bourgeoisie, or upper middle class. Mirrors in which to examine oneself become popular among those who can afford them, along with self-portraits (Rembrandt painted more than 50 of them) and autobiographies in which to revise and elaborate the image that one has projected to others. In bourgeois homes, public spaces that guests may enter are differentiated, for the first time, from the private spaces - bedrooms, for example - in which one may retire to let down one's guard and truly "be oneself"...

..."Burton suggested many cures for melancholy - study and exercise, for example - but he returned again and again to the same prescription: "Let them use hunting, sports, plays, jests, merry company ... a cup of good drink now and then, hear musick, and have such companions with whom they are especially delighted; merry tales or toys, drinking, singing, dancing, and whatsoever else may procure mirth."...