the big picture…

its funny when you run into a song that says exactly what you need to hear.
that reinforces the lesson you’re currently learning about yourself
that commiserates with your heartbreak.
i remember hearing this album, “the taller you are, the shorter you get” by My Dad is Dead when i was little. you can listen to the whole thing online here.
my own dad (not dead) always had excellent music taste and this was one of his favorite albums to blast on sunday mornings.
anyway, “the big picture”—extremely relevant chorus…

I could spend my whole life
Thinking about what’s important to me
I could spend my whole life
Thinking about what matters to me
I could spend my whole life
Worrying about what’s going to happen to me
I could waste my whole life
Thinking about just what it is my life means

Sometimes what matters doesn’t really matter at all
Sometimes it doesn’t fit inside the big picture

Sometimes I need to be just where I am
Sometimes I need to know that right here is good enough
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so i finally got a new camera. mine got lost in the move and i never really had the capital to replace it. but now im about to go on a trip cross country with my dad, so fuckit. i got a nikon coolpix s8100 in GOLD cause im an ART ST*R.

so i drove to santa paula to visit my aunt and took a million pictures. what follows are most of my favorites but the entire album is on flickr to peruse.

california is a beautiful place, easy to take artsy snapshots of. however as i started taking pictures, i found myself especially attracted to how human life interacts with this paradise. california’s environment is an entirely forced state of nature. sure, agriculture thrives in a sunny climate, but this place is a desert. water is piped in, gardens are transplanted, bees are shipped in to pollinate fields of monoculture crops. its completely fake. no rain, a temperate mall climate.

this past semester, i haven’t been myself, ive been trying to force myself into a place i don’t want to be. and i think with a lot of these pictures, im thinking about people living places they shouldnt.
plastic mingling with plant life….

to me, the ideal manifestation of that idea of forced habitation, is the shopping cart. a human invention used to aid in consumerism. here in california, theyre often stolen and left in neighborhoods, overturned in gardens, crashed into palm trees. still working on editing these….

when i got to santa ana, we did it all. car show, vintage prop plane show at the airport, indie music fest where i saw REDD KROSS and a bunch of bullshit, and then drove home on the CA 1 along the coast line. here are a couple of my faves, the entire album is on flickflickflickr…..

tomorrow i leave.

summer reading list

i think i want to cut my bangs again
i’ve kinda lost sight of who i want to be///what i want to look like

talking heads:::seen and not seen<—click
He would see faces in movies, on T.V., in magazines, and in books….
He thought that some of these faces might be right for him….And
through the years, by keeing an ideal facial structure fixed in his
mind….Or somewhere in the back of his mind….That he might, by
force of will, cause his face to approach those of his ideal….The
change would be very subtle….It might take ten years or so….
Gradually his face would change its’ shape….A more hooked nose…
Wider, thinner lips….Beady eyes….A larger forehead.

He imagined that this was an ability he shared with most other
people….They had also molded their faced according to some
ideal….Maybe they imagined that their new face would better
suit their personality….Or maybe they imagined that their
personality would be forced to change to fit the new appear-
ance….This is why first impressions are often correct…
Although some people might have made mistakes….They may have
arrived at an appearance that bears no relationship to them….
They may have picked an ideal appearance based on some childish
whim, or momentary impulse….Some may have gotten half-way
there, and then changed their minds.
He wonders if he too might have made a similar mistake.

i wonder if i too might have made a similar mistake…..

………………………………………………………………………….

so yeah reading! first up, i have Peggy Orenstein’s “Cinderella Ate my Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the new Girlie-Girl Culture.”
its got glitter on the cover!
the title pretty much sums up the content of the book.
Orenstein writes that even though educational and professional opportunities are on the rise for today’s girls, American media oriented towards girls still encourages them to “equate identity with image, self-expression with appearance, femininity with performance, pleasure with pleasing, and sexuality with sexualization.”
i’m certainly one to equate identity with image, as demonstrated in the beginning of this very post! :-p
i think that self-expression and appearance and creativity and identity are all linked….but when a girl is taught that their appearance is the only way they can express themselves, thats not ok…
the book is not pure pink bashing though. Orenstein began all this research with the question, is this princess mania a true threat? a “more sinister marketing plot with long-term negative impacts”? or is it just a harmless phase?
the book is heavily research-based and full of information but is written with humor and reads more like an opinion piece than a scholarly article
yayyyyy
all quotes from the always reputable amazon.com
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if that starts feeling a little too educational, i’ve got Thomas Pynchon’s “The Crying of Lot 49” from dear bestie Alex Ebstein of Baltimore’s Nudashank Gallery.
its Pynchon’s shortest novel but the language is still as dense and verbose as “V”.
but its still sexy, poetic non-fiction.
a beach-read
i like Pynchon. to me he reads like the funny, surreal side of Vonnegut + Henry Miller‘s sexy adventuring inner monologue writing style.
………………………………………………………………………….

and theeeen, i want to order Jon Ronson’s “The Psychopath Test”
first off, awesome cover…and then ive always been interested in psycho killersss
in this book, Ronson learns how to administer Robert Hare’s psychopath test and then goes on to interview prisoners, psychologists and criminally insane people.
here, ill let him explain it, hes got the cutest voice :-p