Arr
I've been roused from blog hibernation by a particularly irritating NYT piece, delivered to me, as these things always are, by my mother, accompanied by the forboding warning "I think you'll like it."
I despise this article from the pit of my spleen. It advances the most reactionary and hopeless breed of urban politics (in a time of hopelessness and reaction), the "ahead-of-the-curve" mentality, forever trapped in the horrid contradiction of trying to socially capitalize on a neighborhood's hipness without drawing the "untrendy" masses. Ak. And he lays this all out in embarrassing detail. Even Lockhart Steele was put off, although, of course, not in a way he could really elaborate.
What's even more awful is that behind the text, you can hear the chuckling aloofness the editorial staff of the Times. They don't care that this dolt makes an amateurish hash of urban theory because they have an utter contempt for the entire exercise. They regard street-level culture with hatred. This is why I avoid the Times.
I was brimming with hatred and dispair. Where is the urban revolution to upset the safety those utter shits take for granted, to wipe away the pathetic shuck-and-jive of self-aggrandizement and barely projected self-hatred of characters like the author of the article and Lockhart? Exactly how much garbage are we supposed to eat until we can say we are full?
As I do, I turned to Molly. She said:
"Well, it seems like what you have here are people who feel fundamentally incapable of producing anything that they like, and deal with it by trying to refine their consumptive habits. If you do that, when you move to a neighborhood, you displace all the things you like about it and can't replace them. You are going to run out pretty fucking quick. If you like a gritty atmosphere, but feel unable to produce one, well then..."
Me: "once you breathe that air, it's gone..."
Mol: "...and you can't replace it.
"Not only does there have to be a fusion of the productive and the consumptive, but it has to start from the productive side. Think of the sympathetic inverse, things like My New Filing Technique is Unstoppable, people who are saying 'my entire productive life is being wasted.' This is the point you can start screaming from. Not by trying to refine your consumption. First you have to say 'I'm going to make something I really fucking like.'"
She said some more things too, before and after, which I couldn't type fast enough to get, and they made me feel a little better. Better enough to write this out, at least.
Posted by Sam on
01:50 AM
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geek out
He who makes a geek of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man...
So this winterizing thing has been going slow, but ahead. But slow, and causing much wailing and gnashing of teeth, both on part of self and parents. I've been periodically suffering from White Collar Stress Syndrome -- acid stomach, irritability, hormonal imbalance. Over budget and behind schedule. But I enjoy my life too much not to enjoy even my suffering, after a fashion; in the end I tire out and just keel over and curse god and myself, laughing.
The enclosure is basically finished. I did all the final construction last night, leaving just a few touch-ups before it's ready to be attached. Meanwhile, the lot has frozen over, leaving me with another problem -- how to get the cart out! "You solve the problems," said Andy; so I will.
I've also been disrupting the tension with a series of intense involvements.
Besides constructing the cart hood (a geek enterprise if there ever was one -- how many hours contemplating the minutea of hardware and equipment) I also:
-Beat three Wario games on a Gameboy Emulator.
-Watched the first season of Curb Your Enthusiasm" on DVD (lovely and hilarious from minute one)
-and the fifth of "Sex and the City" (grim and grating from minute one).
-Read a bunch of Sherman Alexie stories.
-Went to dim sum in Chinatown with an unemployed friend and ate some awesome fried sesame balls with lotus paste.
-Did Jury Duty
-Read Lenin's works from 1903 and 1904, when he was theorizing the Bolshevik party, on advice from the pink one.
-Developed a new recipe, and a new variation on an old recipe.
-Studied Kowloon Walled City
Posted by Sam on
01:48 AM
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