Think Harder

I take back what I said about New York not being an art hub. If you think about it, the population density is what makes it something of an art hub. If, as I previously suggested, it is no more an art center than any other city because art and art production chiefly exists within the minds of a cities occupants, more occupants means a denser more interleaved art community (not necessarily more interconnected). If we want to value a cities artistic merits based upon production and the potential for creative growth then NYC rightfully ranks high. If we want to assign value to the degree of interleaving and interconnection that produces art like a gene pool than NYC likely won't rank nearly as high as smaller cities and that is because smaller cities possessing the critical mass of community participation that makes increasing densities only marginally more appealing or useful to the community of artists then a smaller city would easily rank higher for the simple matter that the weave will have fewer threads and more contacts between the threads that do exist.

Surely the potential exists for a person who specializes in technical writing to meet up with a fashionista and produce something God awful or God sent, but as the population density grows well beyond the critical (and indeterminate) density of creating minds the chances of that meeting shrinks and the potential for compartmentalization and xenophobic design grows. I think that's what I was trying to get at before. NYC is not what I expected because I hadn't considered the difficulties in meeting with other people across the geographic mass (if you laid out every floor of NYC in a two dimensional plane it would probably be half of the size of New York proper) or the difficulties entailed in navigating the purposeful dilution of the contacts being made by those who aren't actual producing artists, but who seek to participate for lesser motives (if personal motivations can be ranked from the pure artist to the profiteer and name plater). And that is what has been a little bit of a let down.

The upshot of this is that the individuals are statistically "out there". I just have to find them. So I'm going to start actively looking through my terrible internet connection. I doubt I will find many in Queens, not as a generalization of the population's abilities, but absolutely as a generalization of the population's visible activities.

I think there was something else. Was there something else? Well, look, I wanted to do the inception poster and I am fed up with thinking about it and knowing that I can't upload it even if I did do it so check this out:

_h

^^^There's your poster. I was going to draw an old school circa 80s architecture chair falling backward into claw foot tub with geometric water and various aging and weathering appliqués and pastel Pantones. Since I'm on a 56kbps connection you'll have to settle for the low low loooow fi version. Bam, done. Well at least now you have the recipe so you can go do it. Stick with reds and grays for the text and a faded yellow tub with seawater colors in the tub or some combination of those colors with a two or three color palette for that really nice low budget mass distribution feel. At least that's what I think about the matter.

Lastly I hate middlemen. I spent some time today trying to think of a fun way to describe them. The hand shakers. The go betweeners. The thing is, middlemen are essential to civilization, but even in "uncivilized" society they serve fairly critical roles. I tried to find an axiom that painted them honestly without coloring the words with my own misgivings and hatred of where I fall in the relationship of middlemen to the greater contingent. I came up with: "Middlemen: Making Life Easier and More Expensive for Everyone Since the Dawn of Time". I think that about sums it up. They let us all be lazier. They give us opportunities to pay for opportunities to pay for things and it's so difficult to be on the paying side of their equation. If you're on the production side, you love middlemen. Middlemen find you purchasers. Middlemen create your demand where none may otherwise exist. They help you find customers and they help customers find products, but for absolutely everyone involved costs go up. American is the land of the middleman and if you produce anything or buy anything your dollar costs just went through the God damned roof of what they ought to be. Your time and energy costs may have gone down, but that's an artificial deflation. A trick of conversion and magical math and the incomprehensibly tangled relationship of the greenback promise note to what it cost you to get that slip of paper. There's a special hell for the middlemen. And wouldn't it be hilarious if it was managed by middle managers who answered to no one.

No, I suppose it wouldn't be hilarious. It would be Six Flags America.

You know how I know we're not in hell yet? Scratch that. I don't know. Added a story to Bits. Suck on that. Or just read it. Is it bad if you go to a job interview and they don't tell you what the job actually entails, but ask you to come back for an all day interview? I hope it's a boiler room orientation and not the beginning of a real life Battle Royale. Both were good movies, but the main reason why I would prefer Boiler Room to Battle Royale is that I still have writing to do and can't really afford to risk death on an Island. Well, no I take even that back. Lots of take backs today. The thing is, if I die, something is bound to be published. And that's all a body can really ask for. That and a spectacular death.

///Pink Floyd - "Shine on you Crazy Diamond VI" It takes a lot of musicianship to hold a listener for 12 solid minutes. The Red Hot Chili Peppers almost nailed something close in their song Californication, but they fell several hooks short and ended up with something you can nod off to after the first minute and wake up to in the last minute. Floyd nailed it. Experience enhancers optional.

...and a shave

the showering thing ive gotten used to. i can accept that as necessary enough. i mean i dont like it when i stink either. it gets annoying. i suspect mostly because im used to being clean at this point in my life and if i did just smell bad all day i would eventually stop noticing, but thats not the point. the point is there is a definite reason for showering. it hurts our olfactory nerves when people dont.

the shitting thing ive gotten used to as well. i can accept that as necessary too. in fact ive come to enjoy flushing my body of, well, shit on a regular basis. better to do it than not do it and wish to god you could. you know. those lonely mornings. youre about to be late for work. you know youve got a 45 minute car or train ride ahead of you. do you do it. do you take the chance. you do. and you regret it. because all you made was a rabbit turd but the pressure is still there isnt it. oh yes it is. youre not going anywhere for the next 15, maybe even 20, minutes. you are going to be late. bet you wish you ate that bran muffin instead of cold triple cheese pizza for breakfast yesterday. bet you wish you had vegetables with your dinner instead of another slice of double thick cream pie. but yeah. ive gotten used to enjoying regular shits.

the shaving thing i have not gotten used to. why does america hate people that dont shave. why do i have to be either A) famous B) infamous C) a pro athlete D) an award winner or E) ridiculously rich to wear a beard??? that makes no god damn sense. who am i hurting by wearing a beard? why is it that the guy with the beard has a worse chance of being hired, befriended, or whatever if he has a beard. i love my beard. i would never stop wearing my beard ever if it wasnt ripped off of my face but ridiculous policies. my beard is awesome. its comfortable, its clean, its groomed. men have hair on their faces! okay america!!! i cant fucking help it!!! i am a guy!!! i grow hair on my body. its part of being manly and awesome. when did that stop being the case. when did it become more manly to shampoo with delicate fragrances and wax your fucking back. what the @#$%@ i hate you america. i hate you so much for that reason. me having a beard doesnt affect how i do my job or how i interact with other people. it doesnt catch food or strain my soups. all it does is make my life a little brighter and you have to fucking take it away from me. hate you. whatever. there's one part of my body that i shave consistently and that is my pubes. the one place where hair is gross cuz it well if you're a guy and you sweat AT ALL and your prick isnt the size of a thimble you know what kind of strange smells and general unpleasantness can accumulate down there. but whatever. fine. ill shave my face. ill fall in line. cuz at the end of the day a job pays me money and my beard doesnt (yet, but if anyone wants to do some old school hairy manly man bangs hot chick with afro pubes on a shag rug with lava lamps in the background and a "huge" 24 inch color tube set in the foreground while her boyfriend calls her on her curly cord rotary phone and it rings and rings cuz answering machines werent within the budget cuz they were fucking expensive back then... we'll see who has the last laugh).

///Air - "Radian" that song you refused to listen to because it sounded like one of those dumb atmospheric "electronica" techno whatever tracks mushroom eating idiots who swear by pink floyd love to listen to when their high or whatever, except you forgot to turn it off and two and a half minutes in the atmosphere broke into some kind of jazz that you love to listen but never told anyone about because you thought they would criticize you for criticizing its functional synonym in a different medium but now you can understand why somebody might like that other stuff you hate but it doesnt really matter cuz youre still going to pretend to hate it anyway for appearances sake.

women with children 03/15/07

Subject : women with children (a.k.a. young'ns)
Posted Date: : Mar 15, 2007 2:32 AM

alright... so walking through the old food court today around 2 in the afternoon after a hard days shopping for some sexy man pants (for myself) and some tighties (for mr. wangthony) and a duffle (for my shotguns) I realized something that other people have probably noticed too: the vitality of younger mothers with their children. I mean seriously... the food court is a pretty shitty place most of the time... especially the one at the mall near my house. Every five to ten seconds someone is thrusting some free sample in your face and the dumb thing is 4 out of the 7 places to eat are all asian food so they basically sell you the same thing at varying price points.

I usually hate it but today was different. really kind of weird in a fun way. instead of the usual dark, dingy, fat people, consumerist, gluttony that usually hangs in the air i felt a kind of lightness... like standing between two statically charged sheets of plastic... or maybe to state that better... like entering a pet store and finding all of the critters had something to say to you about how good you looked. alright well, anyway, the point is, what was different was that the place was full of mothers and their little kids running around and playing with eachother and taking care of eachother. the whole place just effused life.

I always thought pregnant women were pretty hot. yes ive seen pregnant porn... its not very good most of the time. pregnant erotica is more the ticket. but this was on a whole separate level. I think pregnant women are hot because of that feeling i cited before... that sense of utter, glowing, vitality that colors their faces and their voices, even when they're puking or complaining or just feeling awful. It comes out even more when they're in a good mood. It's like walking through a rainy day and suddenly finding yourself in the presence of a sun shower though seconds before everything was cold dark and rotten.

i wanna have kids some day. two of them. a boy and a girl. right now i want to see my girlfriend become my wife and have my kids. i want to see her smile at them and wipe the ice cream off their faces when they decide to use their hands to eat from the bowl instead of their spoons. i want to see her getting rest when she's full with them and taking off from work. i want to cook dinner for her when she cant and change the channel for her when they're born and growing and stealing the tv remotes to use them for space ships.

women with children (inside or outside their bodies) are beautiful. they are beings capable of producing transformative experiences with their mere presence, but to put it differnetly, they are love personified on so many different levels and through so many different relationships and interactions that it would be silly to list them here, so i will shut up and think about my future and hope that it incudes one in a few years. im sure you've probably heard the above before from someone else... so just let this be confirmation to you and stick your snide commentary about "heard it before" up your nose, swirl it around, and when you pull it back out i hope your frontal lobes are dangling from the end of it.

disclaimer - they are not all beautiful. there are some that are frieghtening, repelling, and just plain gross (for reasons that need not be enumerated here). so here's to hoping that the latter (the most recent statement) is //not// in my future... cuz that shit will be difficult to deal with keeping in my mind my dreams and ambitions. sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyit.

on another note... my next and last year of college is shaping up to SUCK ASS. thankyou. that is all.

///pink floyd - "wish you were here" just a lazy, rainy, maryland thursday by the marsh and the train tracks kinda song. i havent thought of the deeper meanings of the lyrics. i havent even heard the song recently, but i keep thinking about that chorus fragment... because well... i wish my country mouse was here right now and i wish i was in pittsburgh and ... im just feeling full of wishiness (sans washy. i dont get washy... i get wistful... jerk).