cathexes

please help me beat this stupid Jennifer person in the color contest semi-finals!

she is ahead of me, with her gauzy curtains and wussy pastels -- right now, it's 138 to 87 -- and I am not happy about that. I think it is still possible to pull ahead but it is going to take some serious help from you all!

please please check out -- and vote for!! -- my living room in the Apartment Therapy "Room for Color" contest!

tell your friends!



It's thumbs-up-able for the next 48 hours...

thanks; xo!

If so, you are in luck!!

----

age:
location:
occupation:

do you identify as:
male / female / other
gay / straight / bi / other

do you think of yourself as someone who:
a. is totally neutral about fashion
b. doesn't know/care about fashion, but feels generally positive about it
c. doesn't know/care much about fashion, but feels generally negative about it
d. knows a lot about fashion and loves it, because _____________________
e. knows a lot about fashion and hates it, because _____________________
f. other ______________

I. What is your reaction to this statement: "Most male fashion designers are gay."
a. yes, that's true
b. no, that's a stereotype
c. well...that's a stereotype, but also probably true
d. what? why would you say that?
e. other ______________


-Why do you think that this is true?

and/or

-Why do you think that other people would believe that this is true?


II. What is your reaction to this statement: "Many major fashion designers of the last hundred years have been gay men."

a. that's definitely true, and I can name some of them: ___________________
b. that's definitely true, but I can't name any
c. that's probably true, but I'm not sure
d. I have no idea if that's true or false
e. that's probably false, but I'm not sure
f. that's definitely false
g. other ___________________


Do you have any thoughts on the effects, positive or negative, of the prominence (past or present) of gay men in fashion design?

and/or

Do you have any thoughts on the effects, positive or negative, of the perception that gay men are (or have been) prominent in fashion design?




Do you know who this man is?
Is he gay?

Instructions:
Take a picture of yourself right now.
Don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair - just take a picture.
Post that picture with NO editing.
Post these instructions with the picture.



um, thanks to this meme I found out that my macbook's Photo Booth is broken! When I open it, I get an error msg that says: "Photo Booth cannot open because no camera is attached or the camera is in use by another application. Make sure your digital video camera is properly attached and turned on. If you are using the camera with another application, close that application before trying to open Photo Booth again." It says this even when there are NO other applications at all open. I'm not trying to attach a digital video camera; just to use the iSight camera, the little lights of which do not come on. I tried restarting twice. I googled the error message and it seems to have happened to other people but I haven't yet found any useful suggestions for fixing it...any mac geniuses out there with suggestions?

several months ago I set up an etsy shop to (try to) sell prints of my drawings...and now I have stolen from lapsedmodernist the brilliant idea of actually telling people that it exists.

so...if you like any of my art (or just like me!), please check it out...



hopefully there will be more stuff available soon...including, perhaps, one of these days, actual clothes rather than just drawings of them...

and! for a LIMITED TIME ONLY, I will very happily give anyone on my LJ friendslist a very reduced price, in exchange for some positive feedback on the site...because I believe that might enhance my chances of someday selling something to someone who doesn't know me... ;-)

there's an awesome video (which for some reason is un-embeddable) of Bowie-as-Ziggy performing "Starman" in 1972...and it has the following comment thread:


DBowie59 (3 weeks ago): hahah! this I was at this! It was so funny cause EVERYONE danced!

steffe689 (1 week ago): Wow you are retarded.. You cant go see ziggy stardust hes from space you idiot...

challde (3 weeks ago): its not ziggy stardust its david bowie u dumbass ziggy stardust was one of his songs

mikeockurts (2 weeks ago): take a valium

MumsNewcomputer (2 weeks ago): ziggy stardust was a persona... andyeah... take 2 sodding valium

sreyesfajardo (1 week ago): youre right the name of a song was ziggy stardust, he is david bowie.
ziggy stardust was as well the album.

ok, why have ads for some weird Japanese bidet/toilet combo thingy taken over the internet? seriously. I have seen these on like five sites over the past few days including Salon and Gawker (it's there right now! go look quickly!) and maybe the fucking New York Times.

This product is called Washlet and it is made by a company called Toto that is apparently Japan's largest manufacturer of flush toilets. I once read about a popular Japanese toilet that makes some weird noise or plays music while you're using it so that no one can hear you pee (I can actually see the appeal of that one), so I guess it's not surprising that there's also one that automatically sprays hot water and blows hot air on your ass while you're one it...maybe that would be nice, I don't know. It probably would be!

But this does not answer the question of what is up with their ads! Every time I go to a website that features them and I see this fancy flash thingy with alternating butts with smiley faces drawn on them I get really confused and weirded out. At first I thought they were ads for one of those Dove Real Beauty products, because at first I thought that all of the butts were of that genre of women who are not fat but not exactly thin either, who qualify as "curvy" but definitely not as "toned," and thus (apparently) are as "real" - as in look, real women,not models!! Then I realized it wasn't Dove - does Dove show actual buttocks in their ads? Isn't that, like, illegal? wtf happened to censorship! - but rather was this Japanese butt-cleaning toilet, and then I wondered: why do only women - and, moreover, only "real" women - need this product? Why do only women with "curvy" butts and thighs need extra ass-washing? and need to be told that "Clean is Happy"? (thus, implicitly, that they, as people who do not have this product but should, are probably UNclean and UNhappy, even if they don't know it yet.)



Then I realized that one one of the most commonly featured butts on the ads is in fact meant to be read as that of a man, specifically a black man, and - interestingly! - this is a black man who is toned and muscular and slender. Precisely what the (white) women are NOT. So the target audience here is white women with less-than-ideal (under our current gender-and-body regimes, etc, obvs) bodies (and also with extremely long hair) and black men with hyperideal bodies (and with no hair, like no head hair and also no body hair)?

Like, if you go with the implied narratives here, 30-to-40-something (probably suburban) mothers who don't work out a lot and thus feel a little - or more than a little - bad about their butts and also feel exhausted and put-upon all the time and also think a lot about cleaning, and will be excited about a product that claims that "clean is happy" and promises, also, luxury and relaxation and insinuates the total disappearance of body hair? And then 20-to-30-something (probably urban) guys who do work out a lot and probably feel really good but also always slightly anxious about their butts, and also will be excited by a product that claims that "clean is happy" and promises luxury and relaxation and insinuates the total disappearance of body hair? That is, the gays (and/or, to employ an outdated and annoying term, "metrosexuals").

SO, somewhat degraded heterosexual women - and I mean women, heavily other- and self-identified as such - and the gays. I suppose this makes sense because these are the groups that, for one reason or another, are most likely to be most concerned about their butts. And perhaps the cleanliness thereof. (I dunno, do women like this have a lot of anal sex? Do they want to have more anal sex? Do their husbands want anal sex but they are embarrassed because they are worried about their asses being unclean? I guess this is not unlikely.)

Still, why only white women and black gays? (I know if you go to the site there are more kinds of people featured but these are the most prevalent ones in the ads, I swear.) And I don't think that this kind of mash-up thing of these two target audiences is all that great an idea, because the gays are going to be like, "eww, fat ladies" and the women are going to be like "ooh, a hot gay, now I feel even worse about myself/my husband's life/butt/body" (but not in a way that's going to make them want the thing, because it kills the whole identification/validation vibe).

Also, why are they taking over the internets and would they please go away!?

Not that I post very much here, but as of now, this journal is going friends-only.

but I do, so I'm just going to go for it.



(stolen from gypcpoet)

A-- Age you got your first kiss: 18. I know, it’s really sad.
B-- Band listening to right now: Antony and the Johnsons
C-- Crush: hmmm...probably still Thomas.
D-- Dad's name: Bill
E-- Easiest person to talk to: Naomi. And my mom but only when we're both in the right mood. (eg, not the conversation we just had, which began with the out-of-nowhere query, "Are you doing anything fun tonight?" and ended with her telling me not to go away this summer because I would run out of money and me screaming that I wasn't asking her for advice about it and to leave me the fuck alone.)
F-- Favorite band at the moment: The Decemberists
G-- Gummy worms or Gummy bears? Worms. Actually I really love those things.
H-- Hometown: Wellesley, MA
I-- Instruments: um...I played the piano for nine years but I always pretty much sucked.
J-- Joints smoked: Plenty. I've recently developed a kind of hysterical terror about pot. But still I like joints better than other methods of smoking.
K-- Kids: Some days I can't wait to have them, other days I never ever want them.
L-- Longest car ride ever: Used to have to endure the 10-plus hour drive to Ottawa or Toronto twice a year.
M-- Mom's name: Sigrid
N-- Nicknames: Abs, Bigs, Biggles. Abi, but only in France. Not Abby.
O-- One wish: that I could sing.
P-- Phobias: fish, being stoned (see J)
Q-- Quote: Currently I'm deeply amused by the end of the Sherlock Holmes novel The Sign of Four (Watson is speaking):
"’The division seems rather unfair,’ I remarked. ‘You have done all the work in this business. I get a wife out of it. Jones gets the credit; pray what remains for you?’
‘For me,’ said Sherlock Holmes, ‘there still remains the cocaine-bottle.’ And he stretched his long, white hand up for it.”
R-- Reason to smile: Plans to go to Buenos Aires with Mike this summer! The view from my roof. And warm weather.
S-- Song you sang last: I don't sing (see O)...but last fall some friends and a lot of cocaine convinced me to perform "I'm Just a Girl Who Can't Say No" at a gay karaoke place in Queens.
T-- Time you woke up today: 9:30am. That’s the earliest I’ve woken up in at least two weeks.
U-- Unknown fact about me: I kind of hate poetry.
V-- Vegetable you hate: cooked tomatoes
W-- Worst habits: Cigarettes, alcohol, stimulants. Wasting too much time IMing and reading random shit on the internet (and filling out narcissistic surveys). And also a tendency in my work to locate inherent “productivity” in “destabilization” much too easily.
X-- X-rays you've had: Only my teeth.
Y-- Yummy food: dumplings, calamari, Chinese vegetables, eggs, fried plantains, sausage, creme brulee, raspberries (especially in combination with chocolate or in tarts from Parisian patisseries), mangoes, Cheetos
Z-- Zodiac sign: Aquarius.

cyberspace is love
brought to you by the isLove Generator

ecstasy is love
brought to you by the isLove Generator

foucault is love
brought to you by the isLove Generator

Ok, it took me getting the ones above as well as "george eliot is love," "discourse is love," and "voyeurism is love," before I figured out that this thing is not some kind of supernatural mind reader, but rather grabs random words from your interests list.

The first one really should have given it away. I mean, George Eliot?

In the grad student lounge this afternoon, a fellow first-year comes up to me: "You're Abigail, right? At lunch today, we were talking about robots. I heard that you're a real expert on robots."

Could this, perhaps, be the most untrue thing that has ever been said about me?

In some strange academia version of telephone, it seems, a vague comment I made about being interested in "monsters" and another about being interested in "the Internet" have been conflated and exaggerated and I have emerged as the Columbia English department's resident robot expert.

Life sure is strange.

This is hilarious.

It makes me think that, if I had been in the proper frame of mind, I could have come up with a much more create way to deal with that annoying Republican last night than simply to refuse to go out with him and then abruptly stop talking to him. I could have, for example, gone out with him, gone home with him, then cut things off at some appropriate moment, leaving him alone to consider the effects of his conservative bravado on his masculinity.

Hmm...anyone for a "Lysistrata"-style sex-strike against Republicans? Not that it would do much good with the likes of those crazy old Texans invading Madison Square Garden with their nasty cowboy hats; but it might get that other kind, the ones like this law student of mine who claim usually to befriend, date, and sleep with liberals (because, obviously, they have a hard time finding fellow conservatives to fuck around here), to do some re-thinking. Don't let them get away with this, "Oh, haha, I'm a Republican, isn't that cute, let me buy you a beer" bullshit...at least until after the election.

Then again, the other option would be for me to have slept with this guy as a dirty, shameful, perverse way to explore masochism more profoundly than ever before. But, again...certainly not until after the election.

makes me want to kill myself.

After six hours at the hell-in-primary-colors that is the Ikea store, six more hours putting crappy Ikea furniture together and trying to fit all of my crap into a bedroom about the size of Naomi's closet in Somerville, and two days with my dad, I think I'm more exhausted that I've ever been, yet I cannot fall asleep. I wish I had some xanax or something nice like that.

I am homesick for Dane St. already.

But: I have already had amazing Ethiopian food and Greek food, both within five minutes walk of my apartment; and from the roof, which is one flight up on the fire escape from my living room window, there's a really amazing view of the city; and I had three different chat requests within ten minutes of changing my location to New York City on my nerve.com profile. Maybe, just maybe, in this city, there will actually be some people who want to sleep with me...

I've been having this sort of visceral urge to get my nose pierced. I'm not sure what it's about, although I guess that masochism, boredom, rebellion against my increasingly annoying mother, and resistance to impending "adulthood" might be good guesses. I feel like, post-college, this shouldn't be something I need to do anymore; after all, my sister, whose issues with performative teen rebellion we've all heard about, is simultaneously considering a tongue piercing. Moreover, my nose is infamously large (just ask Juan the "I like women with big noses" DJ from Barcelona!), and I fear that therefore a piercing would be drastically unflattering. Nonetheless, I find myself very attracted to pierced noses, and every time I think about it I very nearly run right down to the Garage (ugh!) and do it. In fact, I may do it tomorrow. With my sister.

In other news, I'm moving to New York on Wednesday, and feel not at all ready to get all my shit together, to leave Boston/Cambridge/Somerville, to live in a closet-sized apartment, or to take a four hour car trip with my dad. However, I am also very, very excited about the whole thing.

Sometime last year I got called for Jury Duty. The date was inconvenient so I rescheduled for July 1, 2004. I don't know where I got the idea that that date would be convenient; of course, it wasn't, and when I was planning my trip I had to call and reschedule again for August 16. So I was all set to be at the Quincy courthouse at 8:30am this morning and try to convince them to let me go by claiming either to be moving or to be an anarchist (both of which might be true, though one certainly more true than the other).

But I didn't get the chance because, somehow, when I woke up it was 9:30am, the clock thought it was 3:30am, and the alarm had been mysteriously deactivated. The story I'm going with is that "the power went off." In truth I have absolutely no idea what happened - but I do know that I am now a Delinquent Juror and now all that stands between me and a warrant for my arrest are a few letters. With my luck, they'll get lost in the mail, and I'll end up with a $2000 fine, community service, and a criminal record.

The other night, I can't remember with whom (I think it was at Dedo...), I came up with this idea for a line of t-shirts:

"Abuse drugs, not children"

"Shoot heroin, not people"

"Blow coke, don't blow up Iraq"

"Drop acid, not bombs"

and Naomi's addition: "Drown your sorrows, not puppies"

Contact me to order yours!

As my move to the Big City approaches, and I begin to feel every day more pathetically unqualified for it, hope comes in the form of gawker pointing out an article in the Village Voice claiming that the latest NYC trend is the white girl with the big ass. That, and the "elegant detachment" that Kara's friend Paul insisted about five times that I epitomized during her birthday party last weekend (during which I really wasn't feeling detached at all), and I might have a chance of survival - at least until the unavoidable backlash against the big ass two months from now.

On a related note - I've been asked to submit a bio for some kind of grad student yearbook by tomorrow: "Nothing huge expected, just write a short paragraph with info on your academic and non-academic vices and virtues, plus photo." Although I'm trying my best not to get caught up in this kind of concern, I can't help but feel that this is my first chance to either impress or make a fool of myself in front of my classmates-to-be. Summing myself up in a few witty, quirky lines has never been something at which I felt particularly adept (witness my pathetic attempts in every theater program ever), and it's of course worse when the audience consists of lit grad students rather than ancient Gilbert & Sullivan fans. So, virtues, vices - I can think of plenty of each (though more of the latter at moment) - but how to wrap them up into a pithy little package, with a photo? I'm not sure.

Maybe I should just provide textual evidence of my huge ass, which is getting bigger by the day, I swear.

While walking the dogs this morning, at 8am, this being the second morning that I have woken up at 7 after falling asleep at 11 (which was a disappointment, because I was actually really into watching the Democratic National Convention - Theresa Heinz Kerry is really fucking cool):

Sigrid (without any provocation from me whatsoever): So do people just drink these days, or are there other, uh, kinds of entertainment:
Me: What?
Sigrid: Do they use drugs and drink?
Me: Uh, I guess that would depend what "people" you're talking about. Different scenes do different things.
Sigrid: Right, but what I mean is, do people do drugs while they're drinking, at the same time?
Me: Oh, well, um, I guess that would depend what drug you're talking about.
Sigrid: I don't know what drugs they do these days, when I was in that scene it was mostly just marijuana and hash. I mean, there were certain people who did other things, or who had done other things, but I didn't know many of them.
Me: Right. Well, people definitely drink while they're doing coke. (I refrain from saying that it's the only way to drink.)
And they drink while smoking pot.
Sigrid (mishearing me, I guess): No, I wouldn't think so.
Me: No, they do drink.
Sigrid: Oh.
Me: But you don't drink when you're taking Ecstasy. That's a bad combination.
Sigrid: Huh.
Me: I still don't know anyone who does heroin, so don't even ask me about it.
Sigrid: What?
Me: Remember, you've told me seven times about the epidemic of cheap heroin in Boston?
Sigrid: Well, I was just so shocked by it. It's not only in Boston now.
Me: Well, I don't know anything about it.
Sigrid: That's because you hang out with a different crowd.

Silence for a few minutes.

Sigrid: Did you read that article in the New York Times Magazine, I don't know whether it was when you were away, about teenage dating trends?
Me: The one about hooking up or whatever? I read that.
Sigrid: Friends with benefits, or something. It was so depressing. These kids having sex, just completely empty of everything.
Me: Yeah, it seemed like they were a little young for that stuff.
Sigrid: It's so sad. That kind of thing is so harmful.
Me: Well, I wouldn't universally condemn everyone who has casual sex. There are plenty of people who have uncommitted sexual relationships that are fun and mutually fulfilling or whatever.
Sigrid: It didn't sound like these things are mutual, ever. It's really still just the boys getting what they want. I read about this thing where these boys line up and a girl gives them all blowjobs.
Me: Yikes.
Sigrid: Some of these girls, they'll never recover from this. You know, they do it because they're already scarred from something. Someone who has a good self-image doesn't do that.

Silence.

Sigrid: You'd never believe, or I guess actually you would, the stuff that goes on with girls in the Latino community. Rape, abuse, pregnancy...
Me: That's awful.
Sigrid: These girls feel like they can't say no. And the boys, they get off absolutely scott-free. Everyone rallies around the sons.
Me: Hm.
Sigrid: It's why the fathers are so fanatically protective of their girls. Really bad things happen.

Silence.

Sigrid: I had the most depressing conversation with my friend from Bampf, Lynn. She called me up and said, "I'm so lost right now. I had an affair with this guy, and he said he loved me, and then he went back to his wife."
Me: Is she married?
Sigrid: She's married, her husband is just this perfect guy...he's the sweetest guy you could imagine, and cute, and rich now.
Me: Hmm.
Sigrid: I think she has a bit of manic depression. She's always either up or down.
Me: Right.
Sigrid: I mean, she just has everything you could want, she's had a lot of success in business, a beautiful daughter, her husband just puts up with all of these swings. And she said, she just can't even leave the house. I think she's really depressed.
Me: Sounds like it.
Sigrid: I told her, Lynn, you have to get some help right away.
Me: I'm hungry.

It's always hard to come home after being away, even harder after being away for a relatively long time, and even harder when you have to come home to a house constantly filled with the noise of family members arguing, yelling, even just talking. My mother has, quite literally, not stopped talking to me since the moment I walked in the door, except when I was asleep (but that was only until 7am - damn jetlag), and the subjects are fairly predictable: her recent trip to Nicaragua with the volunteer organization she helps run, and the general incompetence of everyone involved with it except herself, and the colonialist implications of tourism (but with an absolute refusal to recognize the colonialist implications of sending rich American teenagers to Central America for two weeks to teach people about healthcare with absolutely no qualifications); the mental and physical health problems of my sister, my dad, my aunt, my grandmother, my cousins, and assorted friends; the divorces and deaths and estrangements and other family drama/tragedies of various people we know.

She says, for about the tenth time in an hour: "It's pretty clear that [x person] suffers from some kind of serious depression. Some kind of chemical imbalance." Which is her explanation for just about any problem any person she knows is ever having.

I say: "Wow, well, I guess people aren't very happy in this world, are they?" And that gets me a lengthy speech on the couples she knows that are very happy with each other and everything else in their lives. Well, at least there's variety there. And at least she hasn't yelled at me yet about spending too much money. I'm sure that's coming soon.

So I'm sitting here on the couch, watching "Awesomely Bad Girls" on VH1 with my sister (good to be back to the trash TV, that's for sure!), and trying to figure out how to create some sort of livejournal documentation of my trip, mostly because I find myself already forgetting just about everything that happened. More to come.

I keep saying "I need to go home," meaning to Dane Street, which upsets my dad, and also upsets me when I realize that Dane Street is not my home anymore. Still, I can't wait to get back there, even if only as a visitor.

Does anyone have a suggestion of where I should go for the three days before I return to Boston? The only requirements are that I must be able to get there by train from Prague and then get a cheap flight fro there to London. Oh and that it is aesthetically pleasing and has good slutty nightlife: the two requirements for cool cities.

I got to Prague from Vienna late yesterday afternoon, and it's very nice to be reuinited with Mike, back to our old habits of making fun of Let's Go Eastern Europe (among many other things) and going on pilgrimages to gay establishments that may or may not actually exist. Prague is even more beautiful than I expected, even if it is, as they say, a bit overtouristed. I've been thinking a lot lately about this concept of "touristy" places, and have realized how cities, or at least ones that a fair number of people visit, really exist on two separate levels, the one of the places (museums, monuments, famous streets) that are mostly populated by tourists and then the places that are mostly populated by non-tourists; and often the locals rarely if ever go to the places that are the biggest draws for the tourists...not meaning necessarily cheesy attractions, but often great museums and historically interesting places and the like. For example, I met a number of Romans who said, "Oh, I've never been to the Colosseum," and of course there are many such places in Boston where I've never been...but that's sort of sad because they are really cool places to see, some of the coolest places in the world. And then you have this weird dichotomy that's established between the "touristy" areas of a city and the "authentic" ones, and people like self-consciously hip backpackers and Let's Go writers tend to value the latter and degrade the former, even though it often means essentially implying that you should stay away from the major sights; and meanwhile the other kind of tourist, the stereotypical fat American with the fanny pack (and that sure is a stereotype that holds up in reality!), who never ventures beyond the two main streets of a city. Well, I'm not quite sure what I'm saying, but basically that it's nice to find some kind of balance while traveling through these cities, and also that I'm sick, paradoxically perhaps, both of tourists and of tourists (such as myself) who complain incessantly about other tourists.

Well. Tonight, hopefully, we will find ourselves in some delightfully degraded Czech clubs and have the kind of disastrous night that I haven't had in quite a long time, complete with some Eurotrash friends and some trashy Europop...