Sex is dirt beneath and clouds above; it's shivering and shared heat; it's vulnerability and safety. To cap its joy or assuage its fear is to deny its beauty." --Ethan Imboden, founder of Jimmyjane
"There is some sadness in it-- there has to be, so that the happiness in it will matter." --Elliot Smith
The simple equations of love. Like this: relationships live on time. They devour it in the way that bees feed on pollen or aerobic cells on oxygen: with an unbending singularity of purpose and no possibility of compromise or substitution. Relatedness is a physiologic process that, like digestion or bone growth, admits no plausible acceleration. And so the skill of becoming and remaining attuned to another's emotional rhythm requires a solid investment of years.Americans have grown used to the efficiencies of modern life: microwave ovens, laser price scanners, number-crunching computers, high-speed Internet access. Why should relationships be any different? Shouldn't we be able to compress them into less time than they took in the old days, ten or a hundred or a thousand years ago? The unequivocal limbic no takes our culture by surprise. The modern American is genuinely puzzled when affiliations evaporate from inattention. Every new second of togetherness reestablishes the terms of a relationship. But cultural mythology imbues social ties with the clumsy durability of things-- once attained, always attainable; once established, easy to get back to weeks, months, years later. The truth is only slightly less dire than the words of the playwright Jean Giraudoux: "If two people who love each other let a single instant wedge itself between them, it grows-- is becomes a month, a year, a century; it becomes too late."
Some couples cannot love because the two simply don't spend enough time in each other's presence to allow it. Advances in communication technology foster a false fantasy of togetherness by transmitting the impression of contact--phone calls, faxes, e-mail--without its substance. And when a relationship is ailing from frank time deprivation, both parties often aver that nothing can be done. Every activity they spend time on (besides each other) has been classified as indispensable: cleaning the house, catching the news, balancing the checkbook.
Such an existence is too expensive to beat. When launching a life raft, the prudent survivalist will not toss food overboard while retaining the deck furniture. If somebody must jettison a part of life, time with a mate should be last on the list: he needs that connection to live.
Couples do not receive this advice from friends, colleagues, family--their world. Instead they are encourages to achieve, not attach. American spur one another to accomplish and acquire before anything else--our national dream holds that industry leads to a promised land, and nobody wants to miss out on a share of paradise. When consummating a career does not bring happiness--as it cannot--few pause to reconsider their assumptions; most redouble their efforts. The faster they spin the occupational centrifuge, the most its high-velocity whine drowns out the wiser whisper of their own hearts.
...
Loving is limbically distinct from in love. Loving is mutuality; loving is synchronous attunement and modulation. As such, adult love depends critically upon knowing the other. In love demands only the brief acquaintance necessary to establish an emotional genre but does not demand that the book of the beloved's soul be perused from preface to epilogue. Loving derives from intimacy, the prolonged and detailed surveillance of a foreign soul.
It is said that we are all three different people: the person we think we are (the one we have invented), the person other people think we are (the impression we make) and the person we think other people think we are (the one we fret about). You could say it would be a lifetime's quest to reconcile this battling trinity into a seamless whole. Maybe, but for the time being I am convinced that, in Kurt Vonnegut's words (there I go, quoting again): you are what you pretend to be. (article)
Am I crazy or are people starting to copy my Yelp review style?
Exhibit A: Miette
My review:
If love could be found in a cupcake it would be in theirs.
"If love could be found in a cake it would be in theirs."
I lifted that ; )
The best cake in the neighborhood.
On the dry side of almost perfectly moist.
On the too sweet side of almost perfectly sweet.
Perfectly cute, and perfectly presentable.
Exhibit B: Shu Uemura
My review:
I'm scared of makeup sellers. I have nightmares about overly made-up ladies in lab coats and men with perfect eyebrows and glowing skin turning me into a clown. I'm serious. I don't want strangers attacking my face with pointy things that pinch and poke so they can sell me things I don't really want. Now, considering that my mother was a beautiful and quite elegant lady who wouldn't leave the house without a full face of makeup and almost always wore high heels you would think that I would be able to handle the makeup counters. I'm much more DIY. I go to Sephora where no one hassles me, I've never had a manicure done, and I tweeze my own eyebrows. Having other people do things like that for me is totally foreign.
Well, not until Shu Uemura that is.
I'm crazy for their eyelash curler and I had heard so many positive things about their makeup line that I decided to buck up and check out the store because Sephora doesn't carry their products anymore. If anything, it would be cool to just check out the Ai Yamaguchi mural. So, I go to the store on a weekday afternoon so I don't get scared by the Pac Heights customers and the shop is pretty quiet. I must have looked like a deer in headlights because this very friendly man came over and just hello without any hint of makeup pushing in his voice. He helped me pick out some Basic mascara (anything but basic, really) and a pretty pink Glow On blush. The girl at the cash register packaged up everything very nicely and I was on my way.
Even though it's a small thing to conquer my fear of makeup counters, I think it would make my mom happy to know that I finally did it and that maybe I might be ladylike enough for her.
I have nightmares about monochromatically dressed women who resemble the likes of Mimi from the Drew Carey Show, chasing me down the makeup aisle of a department store insistent that "this new shade of indigo will do wonders to your eyes." But I was in dire need for a new line of cosmetics...something fresh and suitable for my skintone. So I searched on the wonderful world of YELP and discovered that the lovely ladies of San Francisco were raving about Shu Uemura. I decided that I needed to overcome my fear and discovered that this beautiful store was the remedy. Mind you,I spent $100 on three items...but I guess that's the price we women pay along with other guilty pleasures (ie shoes,jeans). Friendly staff and an aesthetically pleasing space...I give this place four stars. (I would've given it five, but I spent the one star on taxes for my items.hehe)
I've only read 8 pages of The Double Flame and it's already throwing beautiful prose at me. (This is written by a poet so it's supposed to be flowery.
Flame: "the most subtle part of the fire, moving upward and raising tiself about in the shape of a pyramid... The original, primordial fire, sexuality, raises the red flame of eroticism, and this in turn raises and feeds another flame, tremulous and blue: the flame of love.""There is a question that all lovers ask each other, and in it the erotic mystery is epitomized: Who are you? A question without an answer..."
"Imagination turns sex into ceremony and rite, language into rhythm and metaphor."
Poety is to language as eroticism is to sexuality.
Rilo Kiley's "Go Ahead"
if you want to find yourself by travelling out west
or if you want to find somebody else that's better
go ahead
go ahead
if you want to buy a brand new fancy automobile
or if you want to build a place up in coldwater canyon
go ahead
go ahead
go ahead
i wish you would
go ahead
if you want to hold your own hand going up that cliff
or if you want to just hold back cause you ain't up to it
go ahead
go ahead
go ahead
be my guest
go ahead
if you want to hold on to the first girl that you meet
or if you want to settle down and plant roses at my feet
go ahead
go ahead
go ahead
i wish you would
go ahead
if you want to have your cake and eat it too
and if you want to have other people watch you while you eat it
go ahead
go ahead
go ahead
be my guest
go ahead
if you want better things
i want you to have them
if you want better things
then i want you to have them
go ahead
go ahead
go ahead
i wish you would
go ahead
go ahead
i wish you would
go ahead
Today I watched Mike Mills' movie, Thumbsucker, whose feeling was similar to Garden State. It went to bad to good and back throughout the entire length of the movie but there were some good lines like this one where one sibling says this to his older brother:
You ever think that maybe you are so busy being weird that I have to step up and be normal.
From M-W.com
pla·gia·rize
Pronunciation: 'plA-j&-"rIz also -jE-&-
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): -rized; -riz·ing
Etymology: plagiary
transitive senses : to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own : use (another's production) without crediting the source
intransitive senses : to commit literary theft : present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source
- pla·gia·riz·er noun
Court Upholds Obscene Yogurt Conviction
Thursday, January 19, 2006
(01-19) 13:11 PST SEOUL, South Korea (AP) --
The Supreme Court has upheld a lower court ruling convicting a dairy executive for an obscene event promoting his company's yogurt, a news report said Thursday.
The court upheld a lower court fine of 5 million won ($5,000) for the executive, identified by his family name Kang, Yonhap news agency reported, citing the top court's ruling.
It also upheld fines of between 500,000 won ($500) and 2 million won ($2,000) on three models for staging a nude performance with the yogurt at a crowded Seoul art gallery in 2003, Yonhap said.
The models, caked in wheat flour, used spray devices to squirt each other with yogurt, which washed off the flour to expose their bodies, Yonhap reported.
According to Yonhap, the court said the performance "was obscene as the event's main purpose was commercial and it went beyond the point necessary to promote the product."
Officials at the Supreme Court could not be reached after hours Thursday.
graduate: Do you feel like an adult yet?
me: not yet
graduate: me neither
Davi wrote this on his blog:
Yesterday I discovered that I am nobody. I have and give nothing. I am pathetic, whiny, immature and needy, and I expect everything in return. I have no hobbies. I never do the one thing I claim I'm passionate about. Well, I do, but the one I give all my time to doesn't have time for it. Can't make time for it. Doesn't care. Here is a pattern in my life. Why do I need people to care? Because I don't do it for myself. Because I am communicating and communication requires more than one party. Because I am human and I need validation, require validation from the one person I'm allowed to require it of. Do I give it in return? I give it in heaps and droves, I dole it out like mashed potatoes at a church dinner for the homeless, I positively scoop the shit out. Do I know how to ask for it? No, I don't. I know how to pout and expect it, but when it comes to spelling out my desires, my intentions, the reasons for my depression and pathetic feelings -- I can't without digging myself in deeper, feeling even lower, lower to the dirt. So I'll just lie down on your bed and expect the world from you as I fall asleep.
We're just a million little gods causing rain storms
turning every good thing to rust.
--Arcade Fire "Wake Up'
"Americans are not idlers and layabouts and feather merchants, we're strivers and pluggers and we welcome adversity, so long as we have coffee. Its bitterness is sweet to us." -- Garrison Keillor
... baby i'm afraid of a lot of things
but i aint scared of loving you
baby i know your afraid of a lot of things
but don't be scared of love cause
people will say all kinds of things
that don't mean a damn to me
cause all i see is what's in front of me
and that's you
well, i've been dragged all over the place
i've taken hits time just don't erase
and baby i can see you've been fucked with too
but that don't mean your loving days are through
cause people will say all kinds of things
that don't mean a damn to me
cause all i see is what's in front of me
and that's you
well i may be just a fool
but i know we're just as cool
and cool kids they belong together
--Yeah Yeah Yeahs hidden track on Fever to Tell
I'm sick of seeing you cry
And wasting all your time
On someone who will never care enough
To make you feel loved
To make you feel safe
I would drop my life to take his place
To show you just how good
Being touched could be
Commit these words to memory
For when you find yourself
Pinned under his demands
I am still an option that you have
So carry me around
Like a picture in your purse
Pull me out when things are at their worst
You can show up at my house
Completely unannounced
We'll have that movie kiss we talked about
Where there are no words
Just a soft and gentle score
Our ears will ring from all the strings
We'll let the screen go black
And watch the credits run
And see the names of every one
Who we ever met
And who we ever missed
Each one had a role in this
It's just another film that won't get made
I'm sick of seeing you cry --Her Space Holiday "Tech Romance"
Sex hungry roaches lured to death Synthetic sex pheromones are being developed as an ingenious way of luring randy cockroaches to their deaths... And cockroaches are very gregarious so they will run back and interact with other members of the colony and they'll pass the pathogen on to them
Gotta love that headline.
I've been out walking
I don't do too much talking
These days, these days.
These days I seem to think a lot
About the things that I forgot to do
And all the times I had the chance to.
I've stopped my rambling,
I don't do too much gambling
These days, these days.
These days I seem to think about
How all the changes came about my ways
And I wonder if I'll see another highway.
I had a lover,
I don't think I'll risk another
These days, these days.
And if I seem to be afraid
To live the life that I have made in song
It's just that I've been losing so long.
La la la la la, la la.
I've stopped my dreaming,
I won't do too much scheming
These days, these days.
These days I sit on corner stones
And count the time in quarter tones to ten.
Please don't confront me with my failures,
I had not forgotten them.
--Nico "These Days"
I know of people who really act like this. Pricks.
"Sensitive Artist"
I am a sensitive artist...
I am a sensitive artist.
Nobody understands me because I am so deep.
In my work I make allusions to books that nobody else has read,
Music that nobody else has heard,
And art that nobody else has seen.
I can't help it
Because I am so much more intelligent
And well-rounded
Than everyone who surrounds me.
I stopped watching tv when I was six months old
Because it was so boring and stupid
And started reading books
And going to recitals
And art galleries.
I don't go to recitals anymore
Because my hearing is too sensitive
And I don't go to art galleries anymore
Because there are people there
And I can't deal with people
Because they don't understand me.
I stay home
Reading books that are beneath me,
And working on my work,
Which no one understands
I am sensitive...
I am a sensitive artist...
--by John S Hall/King Missile
I feel ill. Blehhh...