Saturday, July 30, 2011
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Acceptable vs. Unacceptable Failures
Amy Winehouse dies and everyone has something sassy, weary or shrewd to say. A theatrical expression of addiction is celebrated, taunted and voraciously consumed until the death at which point she is dismissed as having been too weak to embrace her gifts, too corrupted and stupid to even live.
People love the overdose death the same way they love a really fucked up accident on the freeway. Disappointment/relief at the absence of detail, no blood or hand dramatically flung out from some folded metal. They have to love it because I can't otherwise explain the flood of expert commentary.
Expert commentary about a failure at life, coming from those salt of the earth average Americans. People who avoid disaster by the grace of their reason and foresight...that is, disasters other than their home foreclosures, strings of epically failed relationships, colossal debts, obese children, and life expectancies hovering somewhere between 56 and heart attack, not to mention the addicts in their own lives that they doubtless enable as it suits their own personal needs and expectations. Yes, life is just one first prize after the next when you're not as stupid as Amy Winehouse.
Call me dramatic, but I think I might prefer to choke on my own fluids at age 27 than to live that confused, filmy life full of coincidences, "fate," unknown aggressors, completely unanalyzed, feeling like a victim to outside influences always, never quite able to figure out why things never work out, not quite self-aware enough to ever implicate my own behaviors. Too stupid to know that I am stupid.
The self-satisfaction people must feel when they say something like "good riddance" must be like a salve to their own wounds. If I say it first, then you can't say it about me - right?
ETA: It was alcohol poisoning, not drugs. Now how foreign are her problems?
People love the overdose death the same way they love a really fucked up accident on the freeway. Disappointment/relief at the absence of detail, no blood or hand dramatically flung out from some folded metal. They have to love it because I can't otherwise explain the flood of expert commentary.
Expert commentary about a failure at life, coming from those salt of the earth average Americans. People who avoid disaster by the grace of their reason and foresight...that is, disasters other than their home foreclosures, strings of epically failed relationships, colossal debts, obese children, and life expectancies hovering somewhere between 56 and heart attack, not to mention the addicts in their own lives that they doubtless enable as it suits their own personal needs and expectations. Yes, life is just one first prize after the next when you're not as stupid as Amy Winehouse.
Call me dramatic, but I think I might prefer to choke on my own fluids at age 27 than to live that confused, filmy life full of coincidences, "fate," unknown aggressors, completely unanalyzed, feeling like a victim to outside influences always, never quite able to figure out why things never work out, not quite self-aware enough to ever implicate my own behaviors. Too stupid to know that I am stupid.
The self-satisfaction people must feel when they say something like "good riddance" must be like a salve to their own wounds. If I say it first, then you can't say it about me - right?
ETA: It was alcohol poisoning, not drugs. Now how foreign are her problems?
My grandfather and his brother, mid 80s.
My grandpa's belt buckle says "BOB". He still wears it. He probably still wears that shirt. I had to laugh out loud a while back when looking at old photos with my mom. There was a photo of he and I at Christmas when I was a small child. I stabbed the photo with my finger - he had just worn the very same shirt in the picture at a family party. Twenty years, still looks new.
This basically applies to everything about his life. He doesn't change anything until it physically breaks down. He is the most pragmatic, frugal, basic human being I have ever met.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Oh,
Would that it weren't so deathful hot in the lowlying deserts. I should like to take a road-trip in my carre.
God I really need to stop even paying attention to the 16th century.
Anyway, I am currently enrolled in a totally lovely class about Arizona history in which I have learned all manner of fascinating things that I did not know. It made me dig out photos of yore as we discuss various monuments and sites, and these photos made me sigh for multiple reasons, firstly that I haven't gone anywhere in a while and secondly, that I never did fix that Olympus.
Montezuma's Castle, patched in like an ancient wasp's nest. Oh I hope that doesn't set the curse on me. I'm pretty sure there's a curse, not unlike the mummy's curse, in the general spirit of "seriously fuck off you guys!" Anyway, it is a large multiple dwelling built by the Sinaguas. This is as close as anyone gets. There is no rear entrance!
Arizona Sequoias looking like a paint-by-number scene.
Oak Creek Canyon, full of slippery rocks and blackberry brambles. Well not full of, but if you're clever, you can find them, and if you're cleverer, you can make blackberry vanilla vodka with them.
Apple trees at Oak Creek, and a downpour.
Would that it weren't so deathful hot in the lowlying deserts. I should like to take a road-trip in my carre.
God I really need to stop even paying attention to the 16th century.
Anyway, I am currently enrolled in a totally lovely class about Arizona history in which I have learned all manner of fascinating things that I did not know. It made me dig out photos of yore as we discuss various monuments and sites, and these photos made me sigh for multiple reasons, firstly that I haven't gone anywhere in a while and secondly, that I never did fix that Olympus.
Montezuma's Castle, patched in like an ancient wasp's nest. Oh I hope that doesn't set the curse on me. I'm pretty sure there's a curse, not unlike the mummy's curse, in the general spirit of "seriously fuck off you guys!" Anyway, it is a large multiple dwelling built by the Sinaguas. This is as close as anyone gets. There is no rear entrance!
Arizona Sequoias looking like a paint-by-number scene.
Oak Creek Canyon, full of slippery rocks and blackberry brambles. Well not full of, but if you're clever, you can find them, and if you're cleverer, you can make blackberry vanilla vodka with them.
Apple trees at Oak Creek, and a downpour.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Changed my mind.
Totally love Instagram.
Totally washed out, they remind me of old old snapshots, treated poorly, kept tucked in the side of a mirror, exposed to the light and their own age. Disappearing very slowly.
Also, Instagram enables me to keep up on the status of Anita's yard frog on a day by day or hour by hour basis if necessary. I wish I had a yard frog!
My neighbor saw a sidewinder here last week. Rather have a frog. Especially now that I have googled sidewinders. WTF MATE
I don't know why I thought they were harmless before.
Totally washed out, they remind me of old old snapshots, treated poorly, kept tucked in the side of a mirror, exposed to the light and their own age. Disappearing very slowly.
Also, Instagram enables me to keep up on the status of Anita's yard frog on a day by day or hour by hour basis if necessary. I wish I had a yard frog!
My neighbor saw a sidewinder here last week. Rather have a frog. Especially now that I have googled sidewinders. WTF MATE
I don't know why I thought they were harmless before.
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