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DESKTOP CLEAROUT II
Really great hypnogogic moments on Skype
I became super confused while watching this informative video about Pasifika education in New Zealand when a picture of New Zealand's favourite historical figure Vladimir ""You cannot make a revolution in white gloves" Illych Lenin popped up behind the children, benevolently watching over their learning. When was this acceptable in New Zealand classrooms?
Look at lil Lenin. What happened to this lil guy? Why does he, even as a child, look like he is going to defiantly cause a revolution and kill the kulaks, even the little children, in their sleep in little dank homes in. Seriously, look at the lingering evil in his eyes. What happened to innocence Vladimir?
Took this brooding screenshot during the film "Moneyball" which was the eighth film about baseball I have seen, baseball film classics in my past include - Matt Le Blanc's poorly executed foray onto the silver screen "Ed" is one of the worst films featuring chimpanzees about baseball, "Eight Men Out" I tried to watch when I was eleven and was unbelievably bored, "Angels in the Outfield"- but not the sequel "Angels in the Infield", "Airbud: Seventh Innings Fetch" - probably one of the least convincing of the Air Bud series; "A League of their Own" - featuring Madonna in easily her best film role and Tom Hanks in what is probably a middling Hanks role; "Bull Durham" and "Field of Dreams" which sort of ridiculously are only two of the five boxed set of Kevin Costner baseball films, the Air Bud series makes considerably more sense as there is a dog who can play a range of sports, as opposed to Kevin Costner who we already know can play Baseball and is "mentioned in Lil Cory's "Ballin' Remix" from the mixtape Da Return." Pretty poignant that this is the only known pop culture reference to Kevin Costner on the wikipedia page. Brad Pitt looks like Kathy Bates in this shot. "Moneyball" was really good, not at "Angels in the Outfield" level but I mean its pretty hard to beat literal angels helping out a struggling baseball team as a plot device.
Series of photographs from Google Earth of Christchurch that might get demolished. I felt this obligation to save them for posterity, as you would not believe the complete complacency toward seventies-nineties architecture in the "Garden City". Inside this early nineties arcade building was a pretty good Korean food/snack shop where the guy working behind the counter on nights was always really bored and had this cool guy attitude, often relaxing on the counter while listening to Korean rap and having an equally bored girlfriend with sort of gingery coloured hair wishing she was somewhere else. The shop had a really small clothing section for no reason.
I watched this documentary about Miles Warren, and he described this building as the "Orange Roughy". It was voted at the time of its construction as one of the ugliest buildings in Christchurch, which was saying quite a lot considering the context. It has this sort of postmodern palladian motif employed and maintains the same receding window treatment of his earlier office blocks but that is basically all you can say about it. I just enjoyed the massive public outcry this building had when it was constructed, because it is ultimately a pretty inoffensive building and basically follows the same pattern as other office buildings in the city, it even has a lil attic level - such a thoughtful touch. That Miles Warren, a real thoughtful guy. Other important details revealed in the documentary was that Miles Warren never married and lived with his sister and her husband. This was never explored in the documentary even though it probably should have been the centerpiece, the big reveal.
These buildings are probably goners.
My parents are probably moving again in Auckland and I was looking for the "dream house" for them, because I am a dutiful son or something. Anyway, found these two options in Franklin, or Sandringham. Helpful hints when selling your tiny dining area. Maybe don't keep the seats up on top of the table like some sort of sculptural installation. How hard would it be to put the chairs down? Not very hard. People are so confusing. Also note the bland wall art on the walls, and way that they painted over the ceiling beams in an Arts and Crafts bungalow, little features that really get me disappointed in house owners and people. Probably would storm out of a dinner party in this house, or at least make some bitter muttered comment about the ceiling. Cause some awkward silence in the dinner party conversation and the assorted middle class dinner parties guests might try to laugh it off and I would chose that moment to walk out. Also make some comment about it being really hard to sit at the table because all the seats were on top of the table.
This house was okay but really confused by all the mess in the bathroom. Aside from the three flannels on the towel rack - its called a towel rack not a flannel rack. The toilet cleaning products are all well and good in your day to day dealings in the household but not when you are selling the house. Also a massive pile of Purex brand toilet paper might seem like a really great idea when it is on special at the supermarket and you pile it up in your shopping trolley, even though when you consider the area that toilet paper would take up in an average sized shopping trolley would mean you could probably only get four toilet paper twelve packs inside the shopping trolley and maybe some New Zealand Woman's Weeklys or something slid down the side. Sometimes they have "The Economist" at supermarkets. Again, having heaps of toilet paper in a photograph used to sell your house is maybe not the best idea. Sends out some questionable imagery. Also not crazy about the shower, feels like that type of shower will date really soon.
Don't really know why this was on my desktop. It looks really tender though.
Faye Dunaway's Depressing Career
I spend so many days at the moment thinking about Faye Dunaway's depressing life, her cold lifeless eyes.
Seriously what the hell happened to Faye Dunaways career? One minute she was making "Chinatown" with Polanski, that film "Bonnie and Clyde" and the movie "Network", and by minute I really mean decade even though "Bonnie and Clyde" was made in 1967 and was set in the thirties it feels like the seventies, and then her career all went to hell. No photo encapsulates this sense of mid career slump like Dunaway in neglige crouching by a bar heater while holding some indeterminate white thing in her hand and looking more troubled than she really should. The bar heater is a pretty bleak detail in the picture, the wall also has a sort of faux tuscan/lower east side junkie chic thing. It only took five years for Dunaway to slip from winning an Academy award to being in one of the worst movies of 1981, Mommie Dearest. Now she looks sort of like the following picture, but as if she took that picture to a platic surgeon in 1995 and was like "do your best" and the plastic surgeon took a long hard look in the mirror in the adjoining room after Faye Dunaway left and was seriously questioning whether he had the technical ability, let alone technological ability to be up to the task and when the operation occurred was sitting up in his office afterwards not overly pleased, not stressing out about it, but certainly wishing he had another chance.
In a way his predicament sort of mirrors that of Faye Dunaway, except presumably Faye Dunaway was more attractive at her peak. In Network Faye Dunway's character, in some frank disclosure, reveals to the extremely middle aged man she is having an affair with - an affair which is explained by stating that since college she had a massive crush on the guy who looks like Gregory Peck in his seventies, that she "has a masculine temperament. I arouse quickly, consummate prematurely, and can't wait to get my clothes back on and get out of that bedroom." This is followed, not immediately, but after some digression and a trip to Montauk by a really uncomfortably contracted old spice scented sex scene with cragged, network producer which is short even by those of a "masculine temperament". It lasts all of ten seconds, which would be a poor showing by anyone's standards. I don't really know why she has this character flaw, it shows up again except with erectile disfunction in "Bonnie and Clyde". Its as if her whole career is defined by really bad sex. As if the audience isn't allowed to enjoy the concept of a beautiful intelligent woman who also has great sex, as if sex has to always be her achilles heel. Fortunately for Faye Dunaway in real life her Achilles heel is her crappy career post 1980.
So disappointed in you Faye Dunaway. Felt real human emotion in three films she was in when she had a good career.
cicada hell
Seriously, cicadas are the worst insect. I have taken to waking up at ungodly hours, real satanic six o clock wake usp where everything has that blueish misery and disconcerting silence, because during the day the noise from cicadas is unbelievable. The noise from their constant sexual aggression, their incessant need for companionship is fine and all. I am not begrudging them their need for romance in this cruel world. But I really hate them. I hate them for their over large form, the way they leave behind full body casings lying around casually as if to say "I am a disgusting horrible insect and I leave my body around just to spite the world" - notice the way that cicadas do this, also snakes - related because both are really disliked all around the world, this unholy alliance of skin casings. I find it really bewildering, as if I went to sleep in my bed and woke up in a different country where everything was unclear and out of focus and everyone walked around in this hazy blur, that some people have no issue with cicadas. I have expressed my contempt to some people and they have gone to the extent of playing devils advocate for cicadas. But no one could genuinely love the cicada. They are to life, what the devil is to God. They are a plague upon the late summer. They are the end of the world, screaming while Rome burns. They lie outside the window of my room, they rest on the trees in my garden. They will die soon, as all insects do. It is my only consolation every morning.
I tried to find a beautiful painting of the cicada, but they do not exist. This is the closest you can get, as you can see it is not really about cicadas. Even though it is called "the cicada" it is about the violation of late summer and the deep malaise within contemporary life. Look at her face, the abject misery. Not even wearing a pretty red dress makes this a happy time, her face has a yellowish hue - don't really know what this means, but it is "loaded" with meaning. The unrelentingly bleak background, as if Corot was implying the deep horror of cicadas, suggests so much. Apparently this painting wasn't a big deal at the time as Corot was a landscape man and no one wanted to understand why he started doing character studies. And the Salon was a much bigger deal then than it is now, so I guess Corot was hurting that no-one understood what he was suggesting in this painting and his other character works. How the silvery and atmospheric landscape is "perhaps" a comment on his own diminishing returns from landscapes, how elusive life can be. But it is the ambiguity of this painting, it doesn't really give much away except some overwhelming melancholy that is so evocative. Or maybe not. It really doesn't have much to do with cicadas as I suggested. They are the bane of modern life.
B L E A K T R A D E M E
Also really into this depressing print of skull trepanning in Incan society. Pretty sure the picture is during the operation, which you know really helps give a sense of what it was like - relaxing by the sea under some raggedy sheet. The greater issue of why this picture exists and why it is so attractively framed remains unclear.
Really confused by this. Makes me feel really cold inside.
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