This gun's for hire

We made a video to win Springsteen tickets, and it's pretty much cinematic genius:

And in case you haven't had a chance to see it at any point during the last. . .25 years, here is the original.

There's another photo shoot happening at my house

. . .what else is new?

This is just me being a creep off to the side; I'm sure the finished photos will be wildly superior. This photographer girl even speaks better French than I do. Damn.

Also, Erica should wear this outfit out sometime.

The leaves have turned

view from the porch

from Chapter 8

When in the house of Saturn there are things an EMF member must do, instructions that were given to us, drawn up under roofs of lead. Things to be done if one is ever lucky enough to be in proximity to the enemy. The carnation knife must be pulled out of the waistband and then put to the throat of Saturn, dragging the blade across the skin and stubble of his neck, letting his ink drip. Because if that is what he wants, to write, let him write his own blood letter on the cloth and foam of his mattress. A dense, warm prose that stains the floors and always reappears six coats of paint later. Something that will remain longer than any novel will.

At the very least, if rushed, steal the plot lines and the hundred and five pages that have been written. Leave nothing behind but the title page and table of contents, on which you write, "you are not so powerful."

But I left my carnation knife in my pocket and was careful not to touch anything. Sabotaged nothing, simply waited for Saturn to rise and walk into the living room.

Even if I believed in Federico de la Fe's cause and in the fall of Saturn, there is an etiquette that must be followed, even in war. You cannot kill or steal from a man while he is asleep and heartbroken. While it is said that everything is fair in love and war, the dictum is nullified when both love and war occur simultaneously; then, the rules of battle become more stringent. The politics that lead to war can always be argued, but there is an undeniable sympathy that must be extended when a woman leaves a man. Saturn waited ten years from the time Merced left Federico de la Fe before he decided to invade the privacy of Federico de la Fe. I would only be extending the same courtesy.

from The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia, pp. 104-105

SMILEY

I never told de la Fe. I unbuttoned my shirt, shaking it until all the bits of sky were emptied from its pockets. At night, from my porch I could see the gap in the sky. The unpatched hole, twinkling as the light from Saturn's bedroom was turned on and off.

"Smiley, do you think Saturn is gone?" Froggy asked.

"It is just sad," I said.

"Planets cannot be sad," he said.

"What about Pluto?" I asked.

"Yes, but that is a very small planet."

Froggy was of the belief, grounded in ancient philosophy, that after a certain amount of accumulated mass, sadness ends. And so he cited:

Saint Nicholas

Don Ho

Winston Churchill

Sir John Falstaff

All fat and jolly people. Though jolliness was the saddest form of happiness, it was a happiness nonetheless.

But Froggy did not mention the nights when Don Ho wept on Hawaiian sands, not rising until long after the tiki lamps had been extinguished. or the hours Saint Nicholas spent pulling splinters from his fingers and sniffing turpentine. He never even mentioned the sadness of the Elder Elvis. Or the saddest of them all: Don Francisco, always tangled in velvet with hired women while commercial jingles played in the background, ditties for soap and mops. The women were not the prettiest, but they all resembled his first love, and he asked them if they would not mind very much if he could call them "Porfedia."

from The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia, p. 151

Let the wild rumpus begin!

In honor of  Where the Wild Things Are, I made some shirts. My roommates and I are fersher going to be the coolest kids at the theater.

hand-stenciled using Jacquard Textile Colors in Black, Yellow, and Flourescent [sic] Pink and an old cutout I made a million years ago for a guy I was dating at the time

They're kinda cheesy, but didn't turn out too bad, considering how hungover I've been all day.

If you want one, just give me a jingle or a text or an email or a tweet or a facebook message or say something when you run into me at a bar or something. And give me a light-colored t-shirt. As Paypal has dropped my debit card for not updating my info, I am currently accepting payment in the form of booze, cigarettes, or sexual favors.

Another female Nobel laureate!

Congratulations to Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University for taking (okay, sharing, but it's still the first time a woman's ever gotten it) the prize in Economics!

Cupcakes are like so 2007 anyway

Two major announcements on the Oh Hey Guys Women Are People Too agenda:

First, the bad news: Misogynist anti-abortion loonjobs have decided that today is National Pro-Life Cupcake Day. Seriously. I'm not nearly creative enough to be making this shit up. As if it isn't bad enough that some people consider the rights of my hypothetical lima bean to be more important than my own as an adult citizen and fully-integrated member of society, they wanted to drag sweet, innocent cupcakes into it. My friends and I are considering starting our own pastry-related celebration of feminism and rational thought, but it will be far superior because it will celebrate our right to choose from a wide variety of delicious baked goods.

And now for the good news: though eclipsed by the buzz surrounding Obama winning the Triwizard Cup or whatever, this has been a record year for female Nobel laureates. Americans Elizabeth Blackburn (also kind of a badass for standing up for stem-cell research, which lead to her controversial dismissal from Bush's President's Council on Bioethics [oxymoron??]) and Carol Greider took the prize in medicine for genetics research including the discovery of telomerase. Israeli Ada Yonath took the prize for chemistry, which has not been awarded to a woman since 1964. Finally, Romanian Herta Mueller won the prize for literature. Congratulations, ladies!

Models in Photo May Be Fatter Than They Actually Appear

My sincere apologies for the lack of amateur XXX food pictures, but I've been quite poor and busy as of late, which has meant a lot of pasta and eggs and freezer pizza. I also recently sustained some pretty dramatic mouth injuries, which has meant soup. And this lamesauce is not organic.

Our good friend Dan, however, has pointed me to this fascinating site steaming with culinary impropriety, created by the writer of this particularly indulgent and well-written food blog that has been occupying the majority of my procrastination time over the past twelve hours or so. Mm. I am typing left-handed (because I found some leftover freezer pizza, you sick bastard).

***

On the other side of the topic of food is an issue that I've been kicking around as a possible thesis topic for next semester: in an effort to combat the spread of eating disorders like anorexia, lawmakers in the U.K. and France have been pushing to require that retouched pictures in advertisements and fashion editorials come with a sort of disclaimer that they have been Photoshopped . Here is the first article I read on the subject [note: sorry, it's in French, but the Google translator does a pretty decent job for those of the non-francophone persuasion], and here is another one (in English).

This is a fantastic idea. Sure, there are a few issues with it, including the fact that pretty much all published photographs are retouched in some way or another (I like the idea of a 'ratings' system, as proposed at the end of the second article), but if French women get any skinnier, they're actually going to disappear completely.

Seriously, though. Consider the prevalence of websites that promote eating disorders with tips on how to lose weight, how to hide such unhealthy habits from friends and family, and 'thinspiration' (simply do a Google search on 'pro-ana' and prepare to be shocked and saddened). While the idealization of a specific female body type is as old as civilization itself, the contemporary shift of media consumption has enabled a fetishism of disorders like anorexia and bulimia that is beyond upsetting. What's even worse is how young some of these girls are.

It's great that people are looking to change this overseas, but will it ever make its way to America? I'm not feeling optimistic. Back in April, French Elle ran editorials photographed by Peter Lindbergh featuring Eva Herzigova, Monica Bellucci, and Sophie Marceau sans maquillages et sans retouches. Obviously, good photography, flattering lighting, and, y'know, being a friggin' supermodel all ensure the fact that the models still look absolutely stunning, but this isn't about hating on the pretty people. It's about being at least a little realistic about our standards of beauty. Will American magazines ever run something like this? Fat chance (groan).

I leave you now with a video you may remember from a few years ago from an old Dove campaign that I think (and my mother agrees) every prepubescent girl should be required to watch:

Why? Pourquoi pas?

What's the best thing to do on a Tuesday night when money is tight, you're busy, and you have to wake up early on Wednesday morning? Pick up some PBRs and go to the Union to see the band Why?, obviously. And then go to the 'Dise to drink more. And then walk two miles home to make food, miss the pan, and end up frying an egg directly on the burner.

Drunkasaurus Rex for the win! Raaaargh!

The show was pretty good, despite not being able to see the band, due in part to the fact that Der Rathskellar was surprisingly crowded for a Tuesday night, partly because Yoni Wolf is a man of truly diminutive stature. I forgot how much I enjoy Why?. When Alopecia came out, I think I had it in constant rotation for an entire month. Guess that's my usual approach to music, which is why my acquisition of an iPod is like the most considerate thing I've ever done for my friends. 

You're welcome.

Okay, back to the proverbial grindstone. If you find yourself unhappy on this gorgeous day (savor it, we're not going to see another one for a while), here's something completely charming to cheer you up: