Goddamn, there are a lot of thinspo trends/boards popping up on Pinterest. I guess they had to go somewhere after the great Tumblr banishment. What jars me is that the thinspo pins are not even nooked away in some backseat of Pinterest; the generic home page contains several chilling pins of ridiculously thin and taut women. One pin was of a woman in spandex shorts and a sports bra with the text, "Eat for the body you want, not the body you have."
Incidentally, the picture was framed so as to cut off the woman's head.
I have no idea how Pinterest's algorithm selects what content will be viewable to visitors of the site but if it really is as simple as a random sample from the entire pool of pins users have made, and yet there's still this many thinspo pins on the homepage.... then that ratio suggests that there's a shit ton of thinspo pins and boards on Pinterest.
Eventually Pinterest will have to remove themselves from their tight-lipped perch and revise their content policy to address the thinspo boards (among others, especially if the copyright issues get worse) as the community grows. And the thinspo communities will migrate to the next budding social media site.
Wash and rinse. Repeat.
Untitled
Journalists die on an unfortunately regular basis when reporting in violent areas of the world. For some, it's as if they spot a burning house and cannot resist the need to race inside of it.
Celebrated and obscure people alike die in droves every day. Occasionally, though, and without any plausible anchor, I sometimes hear about a person's passing and I cannot stop thinking about it; the news of their deaths harasses me like a tenacious ringing in my ears.
Marie Colvin, RIP
Celebrated and obscure people alike die in droves every day. Occasionally, though, and without any plausible anchor, I sometimes hear about a person's passing and I cannot stop thinking about it; the news of their deaths harasses me like a tenacious ringing in my ears.
You can't get that information without going to places where people are being shot at, and others are shooting at you. The real difficulty is having enough faith in humanity to believe that enough people be they government, military or the man on the street, will care when your file reaches the printed page, the website or the TV screen.
Sad, but true
Important revelation: It's not that the average internet user is such an artard; the problem is, in general, I'm much more intelligent than the average person.
Cretan hop
Every time I eat at a Greek restaurant, the restaurant - it doesn't matter which one or where it is - always plays modern Cretan (?) music. Never fails. So I can't help but think that, sometimes, all those Greek people working there, all they really must want to do is to flip on some CCR or something while they're working.
In other news, I think I want to be a cat-owner again.
In other news, I think I want to be a cat-owner again.
Bird flu brains
I'm a late to say something about this, and in the auto-refresh speed of our news cycle these days I might as well be analyzing the stunning breakthrough of Trohg for grinding the corners off a cube to invent the wheel.
MIA's middle finger at the Super Bowl. My immediate reaction was a juvenile glee, but what I didn't anticipate is how much more I would enjoy her crass act once I got wind of everybody else's reaction. The Stuff Shirts were highly offended, demanding "sanctions" (however the fuck you lay sanctions on something like that), demanding apologies, howling for fines and whateverthefuck else the could extract from an event that offended their delicate sensibilities. For the degree of their outrage, you'd think MIA heaved a molotov cocktail from her vaginal canal onto a replica of the Pietà . Because, as you know, they would never revere someone that gave the finger once.
Then the Cool Kids chimed in, poo-pooing the fact that somebody would be so unoriginal as to give the finger to a camera during a major - the major - sporting event in America. They responded with bland insouciance the way teenagers will hide vain contempt whenever their parents try to sound hip by describing things as "tubular!" and "just awesome!"
All in all, I probably wouldn't have given MIA's short bout of bird-flippin' a second thought once my laughter subsided were it nor for these opposing factions taking equal parts umbrage. Now? I think it's even better because, though she couldn't have anticipated it, MIA managed to piss off everybody: the stiffs and the hipsters. Two affected groups I detest are both angry about the same thing, and that's enough to lull me away into a delightful slumber.
MIA's middle finger at the Super Bowl. My immediate reaction was a juvenile glee, but what I didn't anticipate is how much more I would enjoy her crass act once I got wind of everybody else's reaction. The Stuff Shirts were highly offended, demanding "sanctions" (however the fuck you lay sanctions on something like that), demanding apologies, howling for fines and whateverthefuck else the could extract from an event that offended their delicate sensibilities. For the degree of their outrage, you'd think MIA heaved a molotov cocktail from her vaginal canal onto a replica of the Pietà . Because, as you know, they would never revere someone that gave the finger once.
Then the Cool Kids chimed in, poo-pooing the fact that somebody would be so unoriginal as to give the finger to a camera during a major - the major - sporting event in America. They responded with bland insouciance the way teenagers will hide vain contempt whenever their parents try to sound hip by describing things as "tubular!" and "just awesome!"
All in all, I probably wouldn't have given MIA's short bout of bird-flippin' a second thought once my laughter subsided were it nor for these opposing factions taking equal parts umbrage. Now? I think it's even better because, though she couldn't have anticipated it, MIA managed to piss off everybody: the stiffs and the hipsters. Two affected groups I detest are both angry about the same thing, and that's enough to lull me away into a delightful slumber.
Born free
After talking with a close friend last night, I'm inspired to try to halve my week so as to be a louse for three days and then attempt to be a creative being during the other four days. I was sitting in my car this morning waiting for a traffic light to turn green when my long gaze at a Bob Evans sign across the street led my thoughts into what days will be Productive and what days will be Indulgent.
Productive: Sunday through Wednesday.
Indulgent: Thursday through Saturday.
Productive days shall contain any of the following: writing, reading, gyming, cooking, sleeping, and trying not to drink a shit ton.
Indulgent days shall contain most of the following: sleeping a lot more, watching many things on Netflix, eating less restrictively, writing, reading, and trying not to drink to the point of massive hangovers the following morning.
I make the same New Year's resolution every year and every year I feel like I fail to keep it: read more books. I never feel like I read enough, never have. My home is lined with books, I visit the library regularly, I've recently resumed purchasing books - and yet I feel like I barely read at all. I'm not sure what the watermark looks like against which I'll measure my reading and someday declare, "Oh hey - I'm reading as much as I should." I'm not even sure it's a tangible metric. I dare consider that the incessant urge to always read more be a good thing, as if it's the mark of a keen scholar, but something tells me that such an urge shouldn't also constantly make me feel like I'm failing.
I need to get my mind beyond the linear definition of learning. So far, I look at my life and consider much of the time I didn't spend reading to be a deficit that I must make up before I can actually begin to think that I'm reading as much as I should be. That's not a constructive way to think about it, as life itself isn't a linear trajectory (other than the natural straight line drawn between the biological imperative of birth and death). I need to become a more dynamic learner, someone who can think in more directions than forward or backward, or up and down. The thought process should be less a triangle and more a prism, refracting thoughts into multiple directions with various points of density.
Here's what I've been reading the past couple of weeks:
It's certainly not much.
Productive: Sunday through Wednesday.
Indulgent: Thursday through Saturday.
Productive days shall contain any of the following: writing, reading, gyming, cooking, sleeping, and trying not to drink a shit ton.
Indulgent days shall contain most of the following: sleeping a lot more, watching many things on Netflix, eating less restrictively, writing, reading, and trying not to drink to the point of massive hangovers the following morning.
I make the same New Year's resolution every year and every year I feel like I fail to keep it: read more books. I never feel like I read enough, never have. My home is lined with books, I visit the library regularly, I've recently resumed purchasing books - and yet I feel like I barely read at all. I'm not sure what the watermark looks like against which I'll measure my reading and someday declare, "Oh hey - I'm reading as much as I should." I'm not even sure it's a tangible metric. I dare consider that the incessant urge to always read more be a good thing, as if it's the mark of a keen scholar, but something tells me that such an urge shouldn't also constantly make me feel like I'm failing.
I need to get my mind beyond the linear definition of learning. So far, I look at my life and consider much of the time I didn't spend reading to be a deficit that I must make up before I can actually begin to think that I'm reading as much as I should be. That's not a constructive way to think about it, as life itself isn't a linear trajectory (other than the natural straight line drawn between the biological imperative of birth and death). I need to become a more dynamic learner, someone who can think in more directions than forward or backward, or up and down. The thought process should be less a triangle and more a prism, refracting thoughts into multiple directions with various points of density.
Here's what I've been reading the past couple of weeks:
It's certainly not much.
Randomer Notes
Dr. Drew and Tucker Carlson need to go suck off a chainsaw together. Parasites.
~
America® is the culture that does awesome things and then takes a knee way too fucking early. We're great at taking science to head-splitting heights only to pat ourselves on the back after passing the first milestone and then... that's it. We never go further with it. Nuclear science: we blew something up and then walked away. Moon missions: went to the moon a few times and then walked away. The Internet: we put it into place and then walked away. As great and wondrous as the innernet is, it's extremely limited. For one, it's whole existence depends on my ability to see it. If I go blind - if the majority of people go blind - fuck that place. No more innernet. It's just another bulky product of potential collecting dust in the annals of woulda-couldas in the history of America®. And toilet paper. Fucking toilet paper. Do you know how insane it is that this is 2012, a year when body parts are printed and moon colonization can be planned with at least a modicum of seriousness, and human beings still resort to folding plies of toilet paper to rub against their freshly shat buttholes to clean themselves? And it's not even cleaning, in the sense; it's literally rubbing dingleberries into the flesh of your backside until no more can be wiped away. Toilet paper is a technology that hasn't improved since the 14th Century - and no, Charmin saying they've added thicker plies to their enormo-rolls isn't a goddamn innovation.
~
Since I've been at the Ministry, two people have started working there and then been let go shortly thereafter. They practically get disappeared. No warning, no goodbyes, no sharing of secrets among remaining coworkers the day after. I don't belong to the inner cadre of work goings-on to be privy to the theater of employment, so the only indication that those two were not working at the Ministry anymore was that they simply didn't come in. That was all the notice the rest of us got. And then, as if to stamp a seal of certainty onto the secret affair, someone new comes in the following Monday and sits at their desk. I could ask my superiors about the absent coworker, but it hardly seems like a productive inquiry. I will only be given a boilerplate explanation, which isn't anything more than what I already know. It makes me wonder how close to that fate I am. I hardly get any feedback from the quality of my work at the Ministry so the only confirmation of job security that I have is I'm not told to not come in the next day. That's it. Part of me wants to respect my employer a little more because of that veiled threat of being disappeared like the rest. Another part, though, howls awake and insists that I give less a shit than I did the previous day. It's not like either course of action is going to distance me any further from that apparent sword that constantly dangles over each of our head's.
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