Mundane Irritations

1. leaving voicemail messages
2. tampons
3. expired milk
4. toothaches
5. toe blister
6. shower water is only tepid
7. traffic lights
8. acne
9. having to go to the bank
10. hole in socks



Also: food that does not taste as good as it looks or smells, dirty glasses lenses, wet grass (especially if i have already sat down on it), the feeling of needing to brush teeth, wanting, wanting expensive things, condescension.

These things are never pleasant! What's the deal?

Narrative Made Possible by Diazepam (part I)

Portland --> Palm Springs --> Cathedral City --> Palm Desert --> Indian Wells --> Rancho Mirage --> Indio --> Rancho Mirage --> Indian Wells --> Palm Desert --> Cathedral City --> Palm Springs --> San Francisco airport --> Portland


My mom and I went to this crazy place called southern California where there are trees like this.

They are olive trees.

The flowers are this pink;

I tried to disappear into them.

We went to north Palm Springs.


Tried to disappear in the desert, too. It only worked on my legs.

Not a salt lick.

We went to the art museum.

This thing was in the art musuem. 365 bulbs, one for every day of the year.

Art museum portrait with green triangles.

Thursday

I've been working on this paper for so long that it took me several hours to realize that I had written "oracular pathology" rather than "ocular pathology." This would have been a very different argument indeed if the former were correct.



In other news, spring break trip to Palm Desert cancelled.





So that was one of the reasons to finish my paper by tomorrow, as opposed to Saturday or Sunday, the actual due date. That, and never having to write the word "pathology" again. Oh, glum. Today was the first day this semester where I really honestly thought I might not be able to make it at this school. I've been in the library working on this paper for three hours and I'm still not done; I left myself with 1 (one) page to write b4 I went home last night. It is taking me forever to accomplish this. I finished my reading for my afternoon conference right before class. I still had twenty pages of reading for my English class to do when I went to conference, though I participated anyway (said something worthwhile, even).* I am not going to make it. Maybe I'm smart enough (though I doubt that, even), but I'm not efficient enough.




*And I didn't preface each comment in class with "Well, I feel...", "It struck me...", "For me...", "This touched me because..." Have confidence in your ideas, e'erybody! Don't sound so wishy-washy.





Sent texts; no reply; generally, the void

le mot juste

Did you know: the opposite of "consensus" is "dissensus."

The right word is something I have been thinking about a lot while writing this paper on Freud, and I think I have reached a point in my argument (on page eight of nine) wherein I need to begin using the word "symbolic" in an entirely different sense than that in which I have been for the previous seven pages. That is to say, I first adopted "symbolic" when quoting Freud's "symbolic geography of sex" (eloquent), but for the purposes of my argument actually going somewhere and being something I need it in the Lacanian sense. Which I guess is kind of related.

Ok this is boring.


From Steven Marcus' essay “Freud and Dora: Story, History, Case History.”

Also, Bouguereau made another appearance in lecture today (this time as related to cubism):

For some reason Bouguereau always seems to be put up as an exemplar of bad art, but I like Bouguereau. I mean, look at this picture, really look at it. There's a porpoise! Weird cherub angels descending from (ascending?) heaven! Weird centaurs in the ocean with conch shells. Awkwardly held hands. Additional porpoises. It's totally great, don't try to tell me it's not.

should be noted

For the record, I think Charlotte Gainsbourg is the most beautiful person in the world.

For reference

http://www.lacan.com/zizekchro1.htm

Handy!

American

(for Frank)

Originally I made a list of things I would like to do, and things I am doing, in the new year, yew near. In 2010. HOWEVER the only two things I really need to remind myself of are: stop complaining, and stop apologizing. Also, keep thinking about the void.
In the vein of the penultimate, I bought these shoes today:




The relation to "stop apologizing" is such: I was reading a short essay earlier on how girls do this thing where they apologize constantly for the way they look- the way they are dressed, their body, and so forth. This is related to, too, of course, "stop complaining." That I do this, that I am forever whinging about my face, my nose esp., my legs, etc., and that I apologize for looking stupid or looking weird or looking over-dressed or under-dressed or having bad hair or what the fuck ever, it drives me mad. And I think it drives other people crazy too, so I'll stop. And now I've got loafers and I'm going to go to school tomorrow.

Shoes from Stand Up Comedy on Burnside. Pix from the Stand Up website. On sale, too, cool!

More on this later:


This one's from wikipedia. Nymphs and Satyr, Bouguereau (which is apparently pronounced 'Boo-gar-oooo,' but I'm not so sure about that. Jen noted that it sounds like a dance step, à la Lindy Hop and Bouguereau.

Trendy Goblin

Some pretty great 18th- and 19th-century Japanese book titles for your perusal:
New Brothel Girls' Illustrated Encyclopaedia (Shinzo zue), Santo Kyoden
Pushing Trends to Extremes or Useless Vogues (Muda iki), Koikawa Harumachi
Correcting Errors about the Dutch (Ransetsu benwaku), Otsuki Gentaku
Dutch Shadow Pictures: What Fun! (Oranda kage-e otsuriki), Jippensha Ikku
Trendy Goblin (Tengu tsu)

From: Screech, Timon. "Machinery for pictures." Pp. 94-133, 269-274 in The Western Scientific Gaze and Popular Imagery in Later Edo Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Some Big Things

a request was made for "more fashion." thus:

christmas reading

some girls are cooler than others

new coat

from ebay


this is now a FASHION BLOG