I know we’re all about being nice to transgendered people these days, but let’s be real: it wasn’t Chaz Bono’s “knees” that hindered his performance in the quickstep portion of Dancing with the Stars… it was his fucking OBESITY!
Also:
Fuck you, New York Magazine.
Seriously. Fuck you.
“Insofar as ‘image flow’ isn’t going away any time soon, it certainly makes sense to try to harness the powers of YouTube for all kinds of social causes as well as for entertainment. But there are also perils. And one is that in a cultural moment defined (by some, for some) by image flow, the question of what one should look at, along with attendant inquiries into the nature and effect of the images blowing by, has a creepy way of overtaking almost all other questions. This may in fact be part of the so-called image regime’s raison d’etre, rather than a puzzling side effect. In any case, it can lead ot cul-de-sacs, red herrings, or distractions fatal to the primary issue at hand.
For example, in a director’s statement about his Abu Ghraib documentary, Standard Operating Procedure, filmmaker Errol Morris names the principal question posed by his film as, ‘Is it possible for a photograph to change the world?’ But what could the answer to this question –– be it in the negative or the affirmative — really mean? As Sontag puts it in Regarding the Pain of Others, ‘The image as shock and the image as cliche are two aspects of the same presence’ –– a notion that partially explains how the iconic image of the hooded prisoner at Abu Ghraib forced to hold a foreboding wire in each hand could literally sicken one’s stomach when first viewed, then move on to become a much-parodied image (e.g., on the satirical posters that appeared throughout the New York subways not long after the Abu Ghraib story broke, posters that borrowed the distinct design of Apple’s iPod campaign, but substituted the word ‘iRaq’ for ‘iPod,’ and featured the silhouette of hte hooded man in lieu of the iPod’s silhouetted dancer). It isn’t that the photograph played no role in the unfolding of human events –– clearly, it did. But after nearly 200 years of photography, it may be that we are closer than ever to understanding that an image –– be it circulated in a newspaper, on YouTube, or in an art gallery –– is an exceptionally poor platform on which to place the unending, arduous, multifaceted, and circuitous process of ‘changing the world.'”
-– Maggie Nelson, The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning
In case you guys didn’t get a chance to grab a copy of this month’s The Watchtower: Announcing Jehovah’s Kingdom, here’s an excerpt from an article entitled “Taxes: Must You Pay Them?”
Benefits from Following the Bible’s Teaching
You can gain several benefits by following the Bible’s teaching regarding the paying of taxes. You will avoid the punishment for lawbreakers as well as the fear of being caught. (Romans 13:3-5) More important, you will keep a clean conscience before God and honor him by your law-abiding conduct. Even though you may experience some financial loss compared with those who withhold payment or even cheat on their taxes, you can rely on God’s promise to care for his loyal servants. The Bible writer David put it this way: “A young man I used to be, I have also grown old, and yet I have not seen anyone righteous left entirely, nor his offspring looking for bread.” –– Psalm 37:25.
Finally, understanding and following the Bible’s command to pay taxes will give you peace of mind. God does not hold you responsible for all governmental actions supported by your taxes, just as the law does not hold you responsible for what your landlord does with the rent you pay. Before learning Bible truth, a man named Stelvio sought political change for years in southern Europe. Explaining why he abandoned his efforts, he said: ” I had to admit that man is unable to bring justice, peace, and brotherhood into the world. Only God’s Kingdom can truly bring about a different and better society.”
Like Stelvio, if you loyally “pay back God’s things to God” you too can enjoy that assurance. You will see the time when God brings righteous rule to the earth, undoing the damage and injustice brought by human rulership.
——
Hm. Well… hm. A few questions:
1. This Stelvio character… where did he come from? In what country and years did he live? All readers need context.
2. By paying taxes, you support the government, which the Witnesses accept. But… isn’t the very definition of government “human rulership of the world”?
3. An overall analysis of your magazine and doctrine: sheesh, you guys are BOH-RING. I thought cults were filled with baby orgies and mass suicides and LSD as paths to enlightenment. All you people do is hand out magazines and shun birthdays. What gives, Witnesses?
My boss dictates, as I once mentioned, and the other night he dictated a dream of his to a night assistant (all of this is a long story). Here it is:
I had a dream Saturday night of my whole world crashing down on me.
I was in bed with JT, heard a noise, got out of bed, heard a stranger in the house, went downstairs, and found 18 people living there.
I called the police and had them arrested since none knew who they were or how they’d gotten there.
That day, all day, I worried about a party that was coming up with everyone I knew coming.
TG was away, but he had a room there in the house.
After the trespassers had been arrested and left I went up the stairs again but they broke and I hurt myself.
My ex-wife had a small back room in the house, which had a terrace going out from it. In the morning I looked at the wreckage down below done by the trespassers, the place was wrecked and parts of the roof were gone, somehow.
I made a decision to rebuild, including rebuilding many secret areas.
The next day the party took place, it was a sunny Sunday, people showed up and tried to disregard the total mess in my life of which the ruins of the downstairs were a metaphor. However my ex-wife’s section was perfect and increasingly, because the area was so nice, people like my daughter drifted to the my ex-wife’s section of the house. She was there with a boyfriend, sometimes leaving the house and driving around in a little car, laughing.
I remember the downstairs very well, the trespassers had thrown all the paintings off the wall and books were in disarray all over the floor. Where I slept, upstairs—somehow JT wasn’t there—over the bed there was no roof. I decided I would have to fix it.
The furniture was in shambles. And was much to heavy for me to move to one side. I said to myself, “I’m 75 and I will hurt myself moving the furniture.”
JT had quite a few ideas but I told her I’m not interested in them. I said to myself it will take every penny I have to rebuild this house, but I said to myself I would do it.
JT advised me to just walk away, I said I cant I must rebuild, I cant be defeated, even though I knew JT was right. Suddenly my mother appeared and agreed everything JT advised me to do. Suddenly my father appeared and happily he agreed with everything I thought should be done.
The location of the house in this dream was near a country-western nightclub. I’m not quite sure why I went there Sunday night, but I did and Johnny Cash, after doing a couple of sets, came over to me and said he would like me to sing with him.
When I went back to my seat I said I must hire an architect, I said to myself, in September how can this be rebuilt by December. I knew it was impossible.
I decided in the rebuilding I would put in an elevator, but I know I would have to buy the building in order to put one in.
I worried about how to combine my work with day job with the time I would need to supervise the rebuilding.
—–
What? You think it’s sort of unethical that I shared my boss’s dream with everyone? I’m willing to share my own. Last night, his housekeeper, an adorable and loving Ukranian woman, admitted herself to a mental institution for the third time in six months.
“She’s addicted!” my coworker said.
“To what?” I asked.
“To rehab!”
My boss was distraught that she had disappeared without a warning, so in a panic, he wailed to me that we must find her. I listened to his answering machine and there was a message on it from her. There was a lot of static but I made out that she was somewhere upstate in a town called Foxgloves. I knew of the place, and knew, for some reason (here’s where you raise an eyebrow) that the acute unit, where all new admits where housed, required patients to go pants-less. I found the institution’s number, called up and asked for R—–. To my surprise, they put her on the phone quickly. She sounded chipper. I put my boss on the phone and he was so thrilled to hear her voice he welled up with tears. Later on, he wrote her a thank you note, all the while wearing a blissed out smile on his face. My coworker said, “Great. Remember last time when she went away and came back? She was so stern. ‘You are not allowed to bother him in de morning.'”
Now who’s nuts?
NO Manifesto by American dancer and choreographer Yvonne Rainer
No to spectacle.
No to virtuosity.
No to transformations and magic and make-believe.
No to the glamour and transcendency of the star image.
No to the heroic.
No to the anti-heroic.
No to trash imagery.
No to involvement
of performer or spectator.
No to style.
No to camp.
No to seduction of spectator by the wiles of the performer.
No to eccentricity.
No to moving or being moved.
This is a test. This is not a poem.
xo
Lynn Yaeger thinks guillotine, and I tend to agree. Unfortunately, I would drown in this diaphanous poof ball… still, would go down looking goooooood.
Swoon!
are poppin' up all over Edinburgh.
How apropos that I have been assigned to review a book about accessories during fashion week, most of which I have spent strictly wearing solid colors, reading Simone Weil and contemplating the nature of existence (piety is the new black.) The book is infinitely more exciting than the actual coverage of fashion week I have seen (it’s just not wacky enough –– I would tell you my brilliant idea for a photo shoot, but I don’t want to blow up my brother’s and my spot) and, while not a light and happy read about bracelets, does offer some very funny, interesting launchpads to learn about new things. Namely, that the Futurists thought a lot about certain types of accessories:
Futurist Manifesto of the Italian Tie
The painter and sculptor Renato Di Bosso and the poet Ignazio Scurto, assisted by courages young Futurists from the Veneto region, declare an unrelenting, aggressive and ferocious crusade against the noose-like knots of black, gray, and colored ties…
Italians! Abolish knots, bow-ties and all anti-speed, anti-hygienic and anti-optimistic frippery!…
A man’s character is shown by the tie that he wears. Today, in this divine, dynamic, simultaneist motoring age, the character of a man must not be shown by a knot and a piece of material, but by the shine and the purity of metal.
Thus we invite all Italian men to boycott the ordinary tie and wear the Futurist tie, which we launched on March 27th 1933 in Verona.
The Futurist tie, an ANTI-TIE OF HARD-WEARING SHINY LIGHTWEIGHT METAL, is a sign that the wearer possesses flexibility, strength, intelligence, sobriety, solid ideas and an innovative Italian spirit…
The metals used should be between one and two fifths of a millimeter thick and thus be of corresponding minimum weight, while the knot must be completely abolished. It should be a few centimeters in length…
The anti-tie, held in place by a light elastic collar, fully reflects the sun and the blue skies that enrich us as Italians, banishing the melancholy pessimistic look from the breasts of our menfolk.
How ridiculous are those young men and boys who wear ties like diplomats or gloomy notaries. Mothers! Give your sons a bright shiny anti-tie which will inspire them with optimistic original ideas and dreams of light and flight.
Indeed, with the anti-tie, every man, every youth, and every one of our boys will possess that aviator’s look look of which all Italians are worthy.
It is better to be adorned with the sunlit wing of an airplane than with a ridiculous rag…
Futurists! Boycott noose-like knots!
Italians! Dress like virile men and not like those about to be hanged!
——-
Tee hee! How funny is Futurism? I think it’s because while obviously ridiculous, they take themselves so damn seriously!
Another one, for a night time giggle:
The Futurist Manifesto of the Italian Hat
The much-desired and indispensable revolution in Italian men’s clothing began on September 11th 1914 with the great Futurist painter Giacomo Balla’s famous manifesto, “The Anti-neutral suit.”
[It goes on to say…]
1. We condemn the Nordic use of Black and neutral colors, which bring a muddy stagnant melancholy to the rainy, snowy and foggy streets of the city making it look as if there are enormous logs, boulders, and turtles being swept along in a brown deluge.
2. We condemn that traditional, passatist headgear that is so out of touch with the aesthetics, the practicality, and the speed of our great mechanical civilization. For example, the pretentious top hat that prevents fast movement and attracts funerals.
In August, when the Italian streets are full of blinding light and torrid silence, the black or gray hat of the man in the street drifts above, as dreary as dung.
Color! Color is needed to compete with the sun of Italy
3. We propose the Futurist functionality of the hat, which until today has been of little or no use to Man, but which from this day forth must illuminate him, mark him, take care of him, defend him, make him faster, and cheer him etc.
We will create the following types of hat:
1. The velocity hat (for everyday wear); 2. The night hat (for evening wear); 3. The luxury hat (for parades); 4. The aero-sport hat; 5. the sun hat; 6. The rain hat; 7. The mountain hat; 8. The sea hat; 9. The defense hat; 10. The poetic hat; 11. The advertising hat; 12. The simultaneous hat; 13. The plastic hat; 14. The tactile hat; 15. The signal hat; 16. The sound hat; 17. The radio-telephone hat; 18. The therapeutic hat (resin, camphor, or menthol with a band moderating cosmic waves); 19. The automatic greeting hat (with a system of infra-red rays); 20. The intelligent-making hat for idiots who criticize this manifesto.
They will be made of felt, velvet, straw, cork, lightweight metals, glass, celluloid, compounds, hide, sponge, fiber, neon tubing, etc. either separately or combined.
The colorful nature of these hats will bring the flavor of huge dishes of fruit and the luxury of huge jewelry shops to the streets. The streets at night will be perfumed and illuminated by melodious currents which will destroy forever the tired-out sentimentality for moonlight.
—–
Up next, by request: more infant fashion blogging!
Drew a little picture.
Itinerantdaughter's Blog 