how you couldn't really hold down the chords

standardgrey: circumpolarnavigation: towerofsleep:harkavagrantf...

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 21:28:37 -0800

circumpolarnavigation:

towerofsleep:harkavagrantfeed:

Hark, a Vagrant: hipsters two

AutoReblog, natch.

What he said.

click opera - The late, mannerist years of identity politics

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 19:17:00 -0800

click opera - The late, mannerist years of identity politics:

1. Last week, talking about Polish theatre, I referred to a character in Roman Polanski’s film The Tenant as a “tranny”. (In fact, the man, played by Polanski himself, dresses up as the former occupant of his apartment, possessed by her spirit.)

2. Brigitte Godot, a commenter with a blank LiveJournal, informed me yesterday in a comment that this term is offensive to transsexuals and went on to suggest that I’m probably unaware of the multiplicity of genders beyond the male / female binary. As someone who’s had sexual relations with a transsexual, I’m perfectly aware of this multiplicity. Although I’d prefer to say that there’s a fluid identity-continuum between two fixed biological genders rather than a plurality of genders.

…

8. I google to see whether “tranny” is generally considered offensive and find a Boston Herald headline Wife-killing tranny denied electrolysis for time being and a Wikipedia article which says “the transgender community typically use the short form “trans”, or simply “T” as a substitution for the full word “transsexual”, e.g. TS, trans guy, trans dyke, T-folk, trans folk. Some may even use terms that have become controversial to some, such as tranny and/or trans, despite others considering these terms to be offensive. Those who do use these terms claim that they are diminishing the power of the term as an insult…”

etc. etc.

Don’t think I quite grasp the latter points yet; will read the comments eventually. And also, am thinking about offensiveness of slurs re: e.g. “dyke” being preferred by some 1) a la “queer”, i.e. strategy to reclaim the word/identity, but also 2) because of the clinical connotation of “lesbian”. And how people interpret these differently/what saying “I don’t care for being politically correct” implies… ETC.

ANYWAY gonna make me some mint lentil soup now in preparation for an evening of unsuccessfully digesting some Judith Butler! Urgh.

EDIT:

Just read (read: actually tried to understand) the last bit:

14. Adam Curtis’ Century of the Self gives a very valuable account of how the counterculture of the 1960s turned, in the 1970s, into narcissism and schism, both political and personal (EST, in particular, saw many reaching the revelation that the self is both everything and nothing), and how this “self-actualization” led fairly seamlessly into the nihilistic consumer-entrepreneurial ideology of the 1980s.

15. It’s this narcissism which I think underlies the late-period identity politics which pops up in my comment columns so much. It’s not so much “womanist” as “mannerist”, both because it’s a late, decadent development of 1960s radicalism and because it’s obsessed with manners. Identity politics in the 60s and 70s fought for the public visibility of people who were different. In the 80s and 90s — the Reagan/Thatcher years — identity politics flipped polarities and entered its PC phase, becoming a campaign for the invisibility of differences. Late identity politics dovetails with Reagan/Thatcher politics: ban public advocacy of homosexuality, don’t offend people, keep differences invisible, change language, assume and police stigma.

16. I am X, and I am different from Y. Other people are ignorant of the difference between X and Y. They must be educated. People, you must call me X and respect my difference from yourself, and from Y. You must refer to me by the term I have chosen to refer to myself by, and stay tuned for any changes I choose to make in this label, and new terms you must use to describe me — those new terms which the stigma treadmill or reclamation of previously-taboo terms may, from time to time, make it necessary for me to substitute. If you self-define as X, you may participate in the reclamation of previously-taboo terms. If you don’t, you must simply wait for us to tell you it’s okay again to use terms like “queer” or “fag”.

17. It’s not so much “political correctness gone mad” as “rad gone trad”.

18. Thin-sliced, baroque identity politics and the stigma-policing that is its main praxis is as far from a radical progressive politics as it’s possible to get. Two steps forward, six euphemisms back.

!!!

Serif Tote Bag | Little Factory Ooh.

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:59:12 -0800

Serif Tote Bag | Little Factory

Ooh.

OMG, I’m Thankful For: Zac Efron Singing Wuthering Heights...

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 17:41:33 -0800

OMG, I’m Thankful For: Zac Efron Singing Wuthering Heights (via @owenpallett)

I don’t know what to believe in anymore.

The Weight - The Band (from The Last Waltz) (via...

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:32:00 -0800

The Weight - The Band (from The Last Waltz)

(via sometimesagreatnotion)

Have I posted this before? Whatever. I like this song.

Stephen Fry answers questions from a bunch of young people in...

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:29:29 -0800

Stephen Fry answers questions from a bunch of young people in 1989. [Parts 2 & 3]

I know these are prefects and it’s a televised program, but I cannot help but be quite taken by how articulate and thoughtful everyone seems while the conversation manages to remain quite genuine and organic. (That is, as opposed to the weird toastmasters-y/patronizing showiness that seems to plague most similar-type things I have encountered or, indeed, the way I talk.) They remind me of some people I went to school with and/or John from the Up series without the snobbishness.

The content is also quite interesting (hah) and yeah, that’s a very young Krishnan Guru-Murthy (I had to google that).

"Google Wave was built to show younger people how older people feel when they try to use the..."

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:47:31 -0800

“Google Wave was built to show younger people how older people feel when they try to use the internet.”

- adamcoomes (via soupsoup) (via kapi) (via asprettyasasong)

I had exactly this thought when I first used it. I was like “uh-oh, is this going to make sense to 12 year olds and not me?”

(via dalasverdugo)

Political correctness - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:44:30 -0800

Political correctness - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Widespread use of the term “politically correct” and its derivatives began when it was adopted as a pejorative term by the political right in the 1990s, in the context of the Culture Wars. Writing in the New York Times in 1990,^[15]Richard Bernstein noted “The term “politically correct,” with its suggestion of Stalinist orthodoxy, is spoken more with irony and disapproval than with reverence. But across the country the term p.c., as it is commonly abbreviated, is being heard more and more in debates over what should be taught at the universities.” […]

Within a few years, this previously obscure term featured regularly in the lexicon of the conservative social and political challenges against curriculum expansion and progressive teaching methods in US high schools and universities.^[16] In 1991, addressing a graduating class of the University of Michigan, U.S. President George H. W. Bush spoke against “ … a movement [that would] declare certain topics ‘off-limits’, certain expressions ‘off-limits’, even certain gestures ‘off-limits’ ” in allusion to liberal Political Correctness.^[17] The most common usage here is as a pejorative term to refer to excessive deference to particular sensibilities at the expense of other considerations. The converse term “politically incorrect” came into use as an implicit term of self-praise, indicating that the user was not afraid to give offense.

thingsidontunderstandand: Someone added “.blogspot.com” to the end of each graffiti tag on the...

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:41:37 -0800

thingsidontunderstandand:

Someone added “.blogspot.com” to the end of each graffiti tag on the wall around the corner from my house.

Hah!

The sole of my shoe came off as I was walking to class. Contact cement was going to take too long to...

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 13:11:00 -0800

The sole of my shoe came off as I was walking to class. Contact cement was going to take too long to dry; just squeaked (very loudly) my way into art history lecture half an hour late wearing a packaging taped shoe. TAKE THIS, AVANT-GARDE.

edatrix: Sweet potato v. Yam Yams are rarely available in...

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:27:42 -0800

edatrix:

Sweet potato v. Yam

Yams are rarely available in the United States. In the supermarket, you will generally see what is technically a sweet potato labeled as a yam.

click through for complete article.

(via ffffood:paperbowlsnlemons)

Some great terms

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:26:50 -0800

- Massive coronary/heart attack

- Massively multiplayer online game (MMOG)

- Massive astrophysical compact halo object (MACHO)

- Massive crystal habit (!)

blownspeakers: towerofsleep: anniepants:leightsy: Real...

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:33:58 -0800

blownspeakers:

towerofsleep:

anniepants:leightsy:

Real estate mogul Bob Rennie commissioned artist Martin Creed to install his artwork as part of a restoration project. The Wing Sang building is the oldest building in Chinatown. The phrase “Everything is going to be alright” is a reference to the upcoming 2010 Olympic games and a hopeful message to the Downtown Eastside in general.

Easy for Bob Rennie to say. This is a weird case of being both a really good work and a piece of high ideological bastardry. Good paper topic!

Everything is going to be alright! The real estate market is totally going to rebound and all your investment holdings will be fine. It’ll be like this recession never happened, guys. Guys?… Hello?

OH HEY just settlin’ for some french toast w/ chocolate...

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:40:27 -0800

OH HEY just settlin’ for some french toast w/ chocolate shavings and frozen grapes + honey right over here.

Sunday Morning Breakfast Brioche (With Chocolate) (via...

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:54:07 -0800

Sunday Morning Breakfast Brioche (With Chocolate)

(via scout/phuuuuu)

SO HUNGRY.

Photo

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:16:24 -0800

Video

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:49:14 -0800

Learn Your Damn Homophones

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:57:06 -0800

Learn Your Damn Homophones:

Good idea in theory, though tries too hard to be witty at the expense of instructiveness of explanations.

GUILT

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:48:47 -0800

Whenever I get a particularly good or particularly bad cup of coffee now, I think about all those times when I worked at this coffee shop and I maybe tamped the grounds too hard or didn’t get the amount of foam right in the cappuccino, and I would think that maybe customers wouldn’t notice. And I wonder why I didn’t realize how crappy it would feel to be paying >$3 for a not very good cup of coffee. AND THEN I would think about how I was never trained to distinguish what a good cup of coffee should taste like and how my boss didn’t even want us to drink the coffee without paying for it. And then I think about the prevalence of short-term work and deskilling and standardized customer service labour blah blah blah and how fucked up everything is and I feel bad again.

And then I wish I had a chance to do it all over again, just to get it right, despite my obvious inability to cater to people’s needs and thus unsuitability for being a cheery barista.

(Dear potential employers: None of the above is actually true.)

"People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you..."

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:11:00 -0800

“People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are “The Advertisers” and they are laughing at you.

You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.

Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.

You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.

”

- Banksy (via ambivalence) (via wreckandsalvage)

I’ve seen this pop up a few times now. I resisted reposting it, because everyone is reposting it, but it just makes too much sense. Gotta plaster in on my webspace too.

(via boringloser)

I’ve seen it a few times too, and it’s good at getting you riled up, but seems a little naïve to me.

1) Some of the money used from selling ads on public spaces is put to use for your benefit. Not saying that’s a great system, but propose another one instead of just childishly destroying something. (There are cities that have banned advertising in public spaces.)

2) Not everyone has the talent that Banksy has. When you replace an ad with some crappy tagging, you’re just throwing a different kind of rock at my head.

In general, however, I agree that you should not feel like corporations have authority over your life, nor should you let advertising affect your self-image.

(via dalasverdugo)

I guess this isn’t not true, but it makes it sound like these institutions/corporations are so distant and bad, like nobody we know might actually work in one and have to work hard to come up with new ways to take money from you in order to make their own living. And just because someone decides to paint over some advertisement doesn’t mean somehow the business or government or whatever is just going to not scrub it off (or pay somebody minimum wage to) and stop advertising and trying to make money from you. It’s not hard to just re-appropriate the medium right back. We are all part of the system, dude. I’m pretty sure most people are aware of how advertising works and it’s easy to say stuff like this, but how many of us actually stop consuming things according how we perceive we should be by some external standard? I’m all for challenging the authority via nice graffiti art and re-appropriating public space and being subversive and have Angelina Jolie buy your art and be all V for Vendetta-like about it, and I guess it could be powerful symbolically, but at the end of the day maybe doing something like advocating for changing those intellectual rights/copyright laws to take political power away from those big bad guys “leering at you from tall buildings” would be more effective.

…Nothing is going to change! Art will only reaffirm the status quo! Creativity doesn’t exist! Capitalism will prevail in the end! This rain is obviously getting to me, you guys.