Cratering

August 6, 2012

"Art is like masturbation. It is selfish and introverted and done for you and you alone. Design is like sex. There is someone else involved, their needs are just as important as your own, and if everything goes right, both parties are happy in the end."

—

Colin Wright (via nolagrrlnyc)

I’m neither an artist nor a designer, but I liked this quote.

(via tj)

scholvin: With all the respect I can muster for TJ and Valary—and that’s a lot; I’ve met them both and they are intelligent, lovely people, and it’s important to mention right here that what I am about to say is directed at the quote, not at them—I don’t think I could possibly disagree more strongly with this quote. There is a lot I don’t understand right now, and the current fetishism in my quadrant of the Internets about “design,” whatever that even means, is among the largest mysteries before me. Do I like well-designed things? Sure. Does the shape of my iPad hold the same essential, core place in my soul that art does? Good design is nice, a convenience, and little more.

Meanwhile: is the Sistine Chapel selfish? Beethoven’s Ninth is introverted? Did Shakespeare write Romeo and Juliet for himself alone? What nonsense. Great art, art that lasts, is a direct connection from the heart of the artist to the hearts of the consumers (yes, correct and careful word choice) and it transcends time, values, and in most cases culture and language. Is there stupid, masturbatory art? Of course, but only because we’ve allowed ourselves to dilute the meaning of the word “art” so completely.

Colin Wright sounds like yet another Internet Presence who sniffed around for five minutes, decided he had a handle on the zeitgeist, and began crapping out bits of post-postmodern Millennialized wisdom on a website with too much whitespace. In this quote, he manages to come off as if he’s never seen art or design and never masturbated or had sex.

Fuck you, Colin Wright, if you even know what that means.

(via tj)

6:39pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZEG6ZyQuiEKA
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(Notes: 56)

Filed under: rant

February 6, 2012

(30 plays)

Walk // Foo Fighters

Today sucked, and then I stumbled on some bullshit hipster video that had 68 million views, and then I cracked.

8:15pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZEG6ZyG0TAc5
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(Notes: 20)

Filed under: music rant

November 27, 2011

I have a bad attitude

I know it already and I can’t fix it and I am gonna need help.

I went out and joined a gym this morning. It’s close to my house, cheap, clean, big, associated with a hospital, there’s a pool, it has month-to-month terms, and (best) it’s filled with boring, old suburban people like me who are not looking to hook up. There are no light fixtures powered by odd corners of the periodic table. In these ways, it’s near perfect, based on the other nightmares I looked at. So far, so good.

A guy took me on the tour the other day, so I felt like I knew my way around. I signed up, got my picture taken, went into the locker room, realized I had to go back out to get a key, got one, changed (hey, eyes up, dude), went out into the gym. With no real plan, and just thinking I’d do something, anything, to get started, I climbed up onto a stationary bike, the kind where you pump your arms, too. The computer popped up 24:00, a suggested ride length, and OK, sure, I can do that, right?

Ten minutes later I was ready to throw up, my heart fixing to burst clear out of my chest. The computer said I’d burned the caloric equivalent of a single Reese’s cup. I grabbed a towel and walked a few laps around the indoor track to cool down, drank some water, took a forlorn look at the weight room, passed, and went back into the locker room. Showered, (hey, eyes up, dude, always EYES UP IN HERE, OK?) and am now home still feeling vaguely like barfing, wondering if the leftover Halloween candy would be just the anti-emetic I need.

I am, first and foremost, furious with myself for being this out of shape. I’ll get over that soon enough. Beyond that, as I sit here, I can’t get over the overwhelming feelings of hatred I have for exercise of this nature. I have been down this road before: finally disgusted with a recent trend in the shape of my body, I join a gym. I go for a while, at first religiously, fading to eventually never, because I fucking hate it. White hot hate, murderous, violent hate. Do I hate the way I look more? At the moment I start, as now, yeah, but if the pattern is to repeat, soon enough I’ll just say “fuck it” and buy bigger pants.

I’ve already sworn to do one thing differently this time: I am going to hire a trainer. I’m going to see to that later this week, as there wasn’t anyone around who could answer those questions definitively on a Sunday. I figure that having an appointment to keep that will cost me a bunch of money to miss will force my lazy, hate-filled self to get over there. Maybe that will help, surely it can’t hurt.

But for this to become long-term successful I am going to have to find some way to not hate it. I am quite sure I’m never going to love it, never going to feel endorphin rushes, never going to see this as a hobby or something I’d choose to do over anything else. I am a person engaged by challenges to my mind, and meatheadery is anything but. Maybe there is some sort of game I can convince myself to play, but I don’t really do well with rewards-based stuff and trackers, either. I am an improviser. I feel my way through stuff, and right now, this feels like hell. After a ten minute workout.