Activity, Politics, Pop Culture, Reading

N.Y. Times – Print Happens: Glamor Clowns

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A print misalignment in the The New York Times resulted in blurry faces in a series of glamor photos in the SundayStyles section. I snapped examples:

Glen Close, Lena Dunham, Gwyneth Paltrow, Amanda Seyfried all glamorous, all made clowns by an errant printing process. January Jones also a victim on the page.
Glen Close, Lena Dunham, Gwyneth Paltrow, Amanda Seyfried all glamorous, all made clowns by an errant printing process. January Jones also a victim on the page.

Funny, right? Mistakes happen. January Jones was another victim. Naomi Campbell, on the same page, managed to look even better. Presumably these beautiful people will continue on, undeterred by what happened to a West Coast printing of the NYT. Having canceled by subscription to The Oregonian (its new publisher is an Orange County, California neocon jerk) and choosing the Sunday New York Times has been much more entertaining. Though I miss Doonesbury and the weekly pondering of what life would be like if my only information about the outside world was reading Parade magazine each Sunday (on my bucket list of experiments once I’m wealthy).

The NYT motto: “All the News That’s Fit to Print” is vomitous. Not a boast the NYT has earned, and reminiscent of Sarah Palin’s 2008 answer to which newspapers and magazines she read to stay informed: “All of them.”

It was a funny answer, but I would have LOVED if this vision of Palin, a constantly-churning-information-Braniac-machine, had turned out to be true.

But every weekly opening of the The New York Times I am haunted by two ghosts. I hear Christopher Hitchens moan about the New York Times slogan, and Gore Vidal sneers and spits at the New York Times Sunday Book Review. It held a vendetta against him for decades, and even when it started reviewing his books again he thought it was sloppy and ramshackle. I’m glad to have those voices. They’re good reminders that because something feels information-packed and sophisticated, doesn’t mean it’s true.

Pop Culture, Religion

Christian Mingle ad over/underpromises?

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This ad from Christian Mingle popped up on my Facebook logout screen. It sells the presumed desired final result (marriage, HUGE photo) more than the process of being a couple in courtship, dreamily cast in softened light (teeny photo). Not sure how the magical Facebook targeted ads ended up serving this up to me, heathen, it’s a demographic #FAIL.

Two elements are troubling:

1.) The registered trademark slogan “Find God’s Match for You”. How will couples work things out if both of them think an omniscient power has tethered them together? Okay, that’s most marriages, but won’t that sales pitch work into any future disagreements? “We have to do THIS thing, not YOUR thing because, ehm. the LORD has willed it.”

2.) Jim in this photo may not be 100% behind what’s going on. Lovely as they both are, his attention seems off …

Activity, Poetry, Writing

When you were young

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A meter tracking bike traffic on the Hawthorne Bridge in Portland. Like London Bridge in The Wasteland :
A meter tracking bike traffic on the Hawthorne Bridge in Portland. Like London Bridge in The Wasteland : “so many/I had not thought death had undone so many.” but happier.

Images crawl up
Then are broadcast
For us to see
Into your past
When you were young.

Poses struck while
A camera clicked.
Days passed outside
Past what was snapped
When you were young.

The snaps resurface
Years later with
“Remember?” “Place?”
Sentimental whiffs
When you were young.

Others of us
Bear witness though
Not witnesses
Then, piqued to view
When you were young.

Ripeness, smoothness
And smiles thrown hard.
Warding distress
Like priest or bard
When you were young.

How, who was she.
Outstretch fingers.
If the same age,
Did they linger
When you were young.

You are hiding
Molting beauty
Sun skin honeying.
You were not you
When you were young.

I now hear you,
“I remember”
Sighed to be kind.
Arid nod back to
When you were young.

Dimmer souls swarm
And cling on you.
I’d want to warm
But not love you
When you were young.

I get stuck on
Your life from then
To now and when
You became you from
When you were young.

Did it turn when
Your edge cut through.
Someone heard when
You spoke your truth
When you were young.

The friends in stasis
Are the same but
Slower. Their paths
Clear, even back to
When you were young.

Fact and will changes
Every molecule
Of you. Estranging
Yourself more from
When you were young.

Religion

Celestial dictatorship

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“who wishes that there was a permanent, unalterable celestial despotism
that subjected us to continual surveillance and could convict us of
thought-crime, and who regarded us as its private property even after we
died? How happy we ought to be, at the reflection that there exists not
a shred of respectable evidence to support such a horrible hypothesis.”
– Christopher Hitchens

Activity, Poetry

U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky’s promposal

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Elaborate prom proposals (“promposals”, natch) are a thing. I never asked in a fancy fashion. For my junior prom 27 years ago (mortality! eeek!) the prom obligation with my then-estranged girlfriend lurked for six weeks while we were separate (with great drama) until we were reunited prom night and then rolling again as a couple for almost another year after that. So, rather than a romantic promposal, it was a month or more of stomping around, or wailing, or languidly, anguishedly lamenting/complaining/wishing “Well, I guess we’re not NOT-going-to the prom. So I think we’re still going?” Flopping about, crying, pleading for sympathy from any friends willing to listen.

To the outside world? I was a damned nuisance. Inside? Nature bade me steer my body’s ship to its siren call, pointing the prow to its rocky, turbulent, amoral shore to breed (with protection) and feel at all costs, even to exhaustion and oblivion. And, by golly, my seventeen years of life would not have been in vain to die tossed and broken onto that jagged beach. [final cough] I lived. [expires]

Ridiculous now? Substantially. Are the memories still dear, the perverse, feral, mad, beautiful things that they are? Yes.

U.S. poet Robert Pinsky read a promposal on ‘The Colbert Report’ this week. Not a great poem, but charming:

Promvitation!
by Robert Pinsky

As when, far off, in the middle of the ocean,
A breast-shaped curve of wave begins to whiten
And gathers and gathers until it reaches land
Huge as a mountain, and breaks.
And what was deep comes churning up from the bottom
In mighty swirls of sunken sand and living things
And water.
So in the springtime, every race of people
And all the creatures on earth all rush to charge
Into the fire that burns them. Love moves them all.
And that same wave, and that same fire, move me to dare ask:
“Will you be my date for the prom?”

Religion

Former cult abductee Elizabeth Smart slams abstinence sex ed

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Elizabeth Smart, a Mormon girl who was abducted by a dodgy couple in 2002, becoming their sex slave/wife for nine months starting when she was 14, has been talking in public about her ordeal. She has spoken about being raised under the concept of abstinence-only education, and its psychological harm to her and how it made her even more susceptible to her captors. She was taught that women who engage in premarital sex are like chewed pieces of bum. Once chewed, who wants used gum?

Smart said: “It’s feeling like ‘who would ever want me now? I’m worthless.’ That is what it was for me the first time I was raped”.

Smart’s situation is extreme, but it’s awful to teach girls and young women to put their value on being devoid of sexual experience before marriage. Self esteem for young people is tough under normal circumstances. Telling women they are merchandise that becomes less marketable, or even unmarketable, if they have any sexual experience is rotten. The whole video is worth watching, but jumping to the 8:11 mark is particularly good (there’s a low audio buzz):

Western religion has done quite a lot of damage due to its misogyny such as insistence on “purity” and women-as-property.

Elizabeth Smart Foundation

Activity, Pop Culture

My 43 years (and counting) as Gollum

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A couple of years ago, in a silly mood, I created some fake job entries for my real-life Facebook profile. Who ever snoops around the work entries of a Facebook profile? Weirdos, probably. And weirdos are my constituency. Give ’em a little sumpin’ sumpin’. And confuse the FBI and CIA when (not if) they’re in pursuit.

So I created an entry describing my stint as Gollum from Lord of the Rings, written up like my more-legit entries on Facebook. The company has since made several more format changes, pushing the work entries even further into the background. More space for posts of human spawn, pets, food, good weather, photos of pets or kids with cancer or mentions of Jesus with a bullying demand you “Like” them or else, and peccadilloes (not nearly ENOUGH peccadilloes, people — grossly disappointing — pick up your game!)

Workplace: Gollum
Position: Sméagol
Time period: (I currently work here)
Start date: March 1970

Took a well-deserved and precious birthday present and, exhausted by the jealousy of others, hid inside caves to work in isolation, fish, and cherish my Precious. Upon the thievery of my Precious by the hobbit Baggins, whom I will hate forever, spent time under the management of Sauron, a Maia and the Lord of the Rings of Power who works from his headquarters in Mordor. My duties shifted from working in the main office at Barad-dûr to the field. Later interviewed and networked with Gandalf the Grey and Strider, a Ranger of the North. From that, spent some time in Mirkwood. Later I chose to take in some sightseeing in Moria and Lórien, and even did some river rafting. Eventually found myself back in Mordor (funny how life goes) and recovered my Precious from yet another another wicked, false Baggins (ya, I KNOW, crazy!) and found happiness for consecutive seconds before falling into a volcano.

I also have blended into my Facebook profile a stint as a self-employed gigolo and an extended gig as Batman. To view THOSE, you’ll have to be my real-life online Facebook friend. Most of my friends will advise you that may be too high a price!

I have spent at least 30 seconds contemplating a Sméagol Gollum profile for LinkedIn. Possibly this summer, when the world is in t.v. reruns, these idle hands will become Sauron’s playthings and do just that.

Until then, know that you ALL are my Precious, and we loves you FOREVER!

Activity

Nike+ is for players, only. And other people.

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Six months with Nike+, accruing points on an almost daily basis. Building a history, and a sense of accomplishment. What do the points mean? Still no idea. But still I get a frisson of having done something with my time, something that carries over from one day to the next.

Whether reaching my goal of 3,000 Nike+ Fuel Points a day, or if they were instead 17 Horfenblurts, it would still lead to a strut. 17 Horfenblurts to add to the 15 the day before, and if I’m really active I may escalate to 20 Horfenblurts tomorrow. If feeling charged up, maybe 150 Horfenblurts this week! That how I DO IT, son!

Even posting the screenshot above of my highest overall day, that had a 20K run in the middle of it, gives a little thrill. What is it in our nature that does that?

Poetry

Reading “Who goes with Fergus?”

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Toward the end of April (National Poetry Month) I decided to try reading a poem aloud myself as a post. This gave a chance to see how a new video editor program, external microphone, tripod, and DSLR camera all work together. Normally I just use a smartphone or camcorder. Turns out a tight close-up is very tough to do slowly by hand. Hope this amuses.

I previously posted about William Butler Yeats’ “Who goes with Fergus?”, and nowadays I don’t think it rates in my top 10 of Yeats poems. But I had a visual of tying this poem to a slow zoom-in. Sometimes you got to get the vision out rather than step back and worry about whether it’s representative of a personal state of mind.

I thought of imitating Yeats’ voice with a deeper, quavering, shamanistic chant and Irish inflection. Confidence is solid that I could bring it off, but thought saving that for later would be best.