Dispatches from a second story bedroom

YOU LOSE!

 

Your willful suspending of a belief in physics and geometry is essential for not viewing the end of this film as a megalomaniac ensnaring two piteous naifs in a suicide pact. Does that altimeter reading mean they're still 300 stories below sea level? Was this film viewed by a very young, very impressionable Alber Elbaz? So. Many. Questions.

cosmic thang

My RAS has been activated by this photo of Carl Sagan and Viking Mars lander. HELLO UNIVERSE I AM AWAKE. That dude is wearin' my coat! Ugh, I can't be thinking about coats, at a time like this it's 96º right now. Seriously though. I hadn't seen this photo until an hour ago. How did I know to put a space patch on it?

dinosaurus

 

This LL Bean convertible jacket/vest has been haunting my dreams. It's kind of crunchy but in a late 70s slasher film in the woods kind of way. I now have a place for my Grissom patch, on the left shoulder of my new jacket. I can now subtly tell the world how much I love Gus Grissom.  It probably requires me buying a backpack or bike bag. I like these from Urban Outfitters on the men's side. 

 

spy v. spy

I'm not sure what's worse, being a Juggalo or being in a pack of nerds making fun of concert-going ones. To their faces. Or possibly option C: being the one to bring them all together 4 months later.  

Andrew Kuo diagrammed my feelings back in April but the science nerds had to stir shit up again. Your science signage is pretty abysmal. Did you make those on the BART on the way to the show? I know physicists have heard of rulers. I would also wager that more science went into the CGI of "Miracles" than your entire enterprise, but that's just a bitchy guess.  Who makes time for flash mobbing in 2010, people still trolling Craigslist for fun ways to spend a Saturday afternoon? 

Have Love Will Travel

Hey, this documentary is amaze-balls. It's just the thing to watch after all that holiday bullshit. It four hours of proof that we're sheep taught to want things we don't need and justify it for the ego boost it provides. It's makes my brain say "no shit Sherlock," but then there's that lasting nagging dread in my stomach that makes me assess every latte purchase like it was the last 3 bucks in the entire world. If every purchase was put up to that amount of scrutiny then I'd never buy anything. Although it's hard not to feel like you're playing into some giant manipulation for even wanting the latte in the first place even before viewing this. It's too long for anyone to actually sit there and watch it like I did but it puts all the hype about Mad Men in perspective. Mad Men came 40 years too late and wasn't nearly as groundbreaking as we are led to believe by Mr. Weiner. Edward Bernays was Don Draper without the panty-dropper charm. He was molding the public's perception of everything from presidential candidates to soap as early as 1917. Gross. On a similar tip, Dan Ariely wrote a book called Predictably Irrational a couple of years ago about how consumer decisions are made. (It's a quick read, I read it on a plane ride.) This documentary worked in tandem with the book by explaining how the consumer is manipulated and how the consumer in turn manipulates the market with emotionally unpredictable reactions.  I recommend both but I know that you will do neither because there is shit to be bought and photographed for pure pleasurable blogissism!

The documentary faultily credits the hippie movement with being immune to consumer culture but boomers always do that, they always pat themselves on the back for everything they've ever done or not done, whatever the case may be. Keep sucking your own cocks you big bunch of assholes, I can't wait for you all to die.

Seven plus or minus two.

Some of the secret joy in keeping a blahg was the anonymity to say and post whatever with impunity. I have a hard time keeping interested in doing it when it's hot as monkey nuts outside and personal things are keeping me AFK... Y'know? Welcome to life. Also, seeing everyone's summer vacay photos reminds me how boring things are when they aren't happening to you. Like Doug Martsch says, "no one wants to hear what you dreamt about unless you dreamt about them. Don't let that stop you, tell them anyway!" Touché, kids. Touché.

Please listen to Radiolab's episode "Choice". I thought this was a really great program that spun my brain off on a hundred little tangents because it so completely confirmed what I've been thinking for years about what is wrong with us.  I sat in the car with the engine turned off for 10 minutes just to listen to the end of the program. I told people about it, but people are fucking lazy unless you link them, beg them and show 'em your tits for good measure. This program is better than my tits. It's that good.

I ganked this from Jane Seaofshoes' tumblr. I am fuckin' mesmerized by octopus mating? Gross? "Hey that's nature!"  Beautiful. or  D) All of the above.

Art Logarithms

A couple of days ago I found this study that Elizabeth Peyton did of two brothers, one of which keeps a blog.

His name is Alan Rosenberg. I am curious how they know each other or if she worked on commission in 1995. It's beautiful and less precious than most of what I've seen from her. It reminds me of one of Sargent's watercolor sketches of Tommies bathing in WWI. I think it's the slight suggestion of eyes in both paintings.

I took an art history class a very long time ago and read about Fibonacci's Formula and was so intrigued by it that I applied it to one of Sargent's more famous works, The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit. The arrangement of the trio of girls seemed artful at best and I felt at the time would be a good test of this "theory".

Little did I know that his placement of every item in the piece is mathematically determined. I showed my brother the math whiz and it blew his mind too. Like how the human body is 8 heads tall and all that golden ratio shit the Greeks figured out centuries ago but times a hundred. I'm sure it can be applied to anything that is visually appealing.

This afternoon at work I came across Michael Ian Black's end of year list. He listed the anthropic principle as something cool that he discovered in 2008. While I did not know about this specific set of principles that try and prove that god exists or that we live in a multiverse and not a universe, I've always thought that we find meaning in our existence in what we elect to see. Much like the selection bias listed in the wiki article about anthropic principle. More simply put:

We create those connections. Just like I get excited seeing Caroline Bingley as someone's mom. Of course Caroline Bingley speaks fluent French, why wouldn't she? Look at her.