THE PART I EDITED OUT

border-studies: Matthew Niederhauser and the greatest-ever...

Tue, 21 May 2013 22:08:11 -0400

Matthew Niederhauser and the greatest-ever Minsk World Photoshop Souvenir -

“But, anyways, I got the photo taken and then I got to sit down with the crack photoshop guy, and if you look at the other examples, maybe they’ll have like one line of troops, or maybe just one helicopter, but I was like, “No, no, no, I want the works” — the tassel, the medals, the epaulets, that’s all photoshopped. I was wearing a white suit, but the collar and tie is theirs. It’s a small little neck thing that only goes as far as there. And the hat, of course, is theirs.

But, yeah, I was directing them like, “Yeah, we need more. More, more, more. I want eight fighter jets in formation, I want helicopters, I want an army, I want more helicopters… and then by the end, the other attendant and the photoshop guy just looked at it: “This is the best one we’ve ever made.”

I said, “You’re damn straight it is. You can print that and put it up in the window”.”

See also this WSJ interview for his travel tips

(via SmartBeijing.com | [Culture Bureau]: Matthew Niederhauser)

This is indeed the best one they’ve ever made.

I am selling a lot of sexy furniture on Craigslist this week....

Mon, 20 May 2013 18:38:00 -0400

I am selling a lot of sexy furniture on Craigslist this week. Most of which I tagged with “retro” “mid-century modern” “vintage” and other net-friendly names for what they are: well-loved pieces, full of character, and collected from local junk-shops and stoop-sales.

Nothing over $50 except the bed.

Text me at 202.302.0733 to swing by and look at them! Anything is price-negotiable. All must be gone by Friday or they go to charity.

Pick-up only for big things! (I can’t deliver most of this stuff in my tiny car!).

MORE INFO:

comfy reading armchair: http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/hnp/fuo/3818036734.html

’50s dining table: http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/hnp/fuo/3818050375.html

end tables / coffee table: http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/hnp/fuo/3818067510.html

awesome retro super-long couch: http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/hnp/fuo/3818085961.html

mid-century dresser w/ twig detail: http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/hnp/fuo/3818096043.html

mid-century modern night table: http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/hnp/fuo/3818105013.html

retro lamps: http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/hnp/fuo/3818120541.html

standard ikea bed w/ 4 awesome deep storage drawers: http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/hnp/fuo/3818136072.html

3 standard ikea beech bookshelves: http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/hnp/fuo/3818024373.html

5am

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:43:15 -0400

kristin-fitzsimmons:

When we got a new mattress, I thought I would get more sleep. But since it coincided with the arrival of summer after a long winter, this was not really the case. My cat Karl started the annoying habit of walking around the apartment, howling at night. I think there’s too much noise and too many smells coming through the windows for him to want to stay inside.

When I was a naturalist , we used to lead campers on a night hike once a week: no flashlights allowed (well, I had one for emergencies but rarely turned it on). The more humidity in the air, the more you can smell the night. We told the kids to lick their index fingers and wet their noses like a bobcat or raccoon or possum and see if they could smell the night any better. I think most of the time you could just smell how bad your breath was.

Like Karl, I’ve started to feel like I can’t go to sleep until the sun comes up.

Read More

Inexplicable photo in UMN grad program

Sun, 19 May 2013 18:28:32 -0400

Inexplicable photo in UMN grad program

IN PRAISE OF TANGENTS

Wed, 15 May 2013 18:32:47 -0400

“The illogicality of its attitude, the arbitrariness of its conclusions, the frequency of the exceptional, should present no difficulty to the student of many grammars …. There is a generosity in its ardour of speech which removes it as far as possible from common loquacity; and it is ever too disconnected to be classed as eloquence.” I adapt these words from the passage near the beginning of [Under Western Eyes] in which the old language teacher speaks of the Russian character and the Russian use of language. He apologizes for the digression, which we should know is not a digression, exactly as we know it is not “idle to inquire” why Razumov should have left his written record. He is telling us (or rather the double is telling us, ventriloquially) that a large part of what he says is precisely what we are not willing to attend to. He, who claims a professional mistrust of words, is talking about the book he is in, the black on white. He is necessary.”

— Frank Kermode, Secrets + Narrative Sequence

Someone in my therapy office is crazier than me… Sugar...

Mon, 13 May 2013 14:05:21 -0400

Someone in my therapy office is crazier than me… Sugar cube placed in “zen garden”:

Bling series draft…

Fri, 10 May 2013 17:58:41 -0400

Bling series draft…

Bling painting draft. Working title: Blood Diamondzzz!!!

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 17:01:10 -0400

Bling painting draft. Working title: Blood Diamondzzz!!!

Emily Hahn on living in NY in 1930 at self-destructive...

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:26:05 -0400

Emily Hahn on living in NY in 1930 at self-destructive headstrong 23. Now tell me anything has ever changed. Fine fine, yes yes… She would have written for VICE today, instead of the NYer.

Purple horse. Trippy.

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 22:48:54 -0400

Purple horse. Trippy.

My cat sits up and turns ears back when TOTO barks!...

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 21:55:15 -0400

My cat sits up and turns ears back when TOTO barks! #judygarlandmarathon

27

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 03:31:05 -0400

I’m sad for the disappearance of the absurd snow mountains

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 01:22:18 -0400

I’m sad for the disappearance of the absurd snow mountains

Thought Catalog: The 10 Ages You'll Have in Your Twenties

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 23:29:09 -0400

sexpigeon:

1. 20

2. 21

3. 22

4. 23

5. 24

6. 25

7. 26

8. 27

9. 28

10. 29

janehu: Moods. My hero

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 23:26:13 -0400

janehu:

Moods.

My hero

Google Translate

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 18:37:47 -0400

Google Translate:

Like all things I have ever compared, between the Netherlands and the United States the American version is the worse and the Dutch version is wonderful!

working on my presentation about the history of sprinkles

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 17:58:00 -0400

“Sprinkles generally require frosting in order to stick to the desired food surface. They can be most commonly found on smaller confections.” … “ and muisjes(“little mice”) in 1860, candy-coated anise seeds traditionally eaten on rusks to celebrate a baby’s birth.”

2.57 a.m.

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 03:57:31 -0400

she would compare its hors d’oeuvres to a party she had been to once, in New York, and compare the attractiveness of its guests to a concert she had seen once, in London. Everything was better somewhere else, for Maxine.

If over my life I have encountered so many travelers who build the present city up as a series of comparisons to what they have left, it must be because such a person has an innate propensity to travel. Just as Maxine could not exist in the present without thinking of the past, she could not exist in the present without dreaming of a future city – where she might finally be happy. Her unhappiness was local. It was the city that was weighing her down: the boulevards too wide, the bars too crowded, the men too shallow. That is the problem. It is not the problem of how she lives in the city like a fly, seeing through a thousand refracting lenses, so that the vision of her life becomes muddled, and in its muddling cannot show her fully a single thing.

I had come to understand that travel is not a search forward for the city of one’s happiness but instead a digging backwards, a giving up over and over, a form of loss. In its distance, each city you leave acquires a halo. Afternoons spent staring at the rain outside of the bad hotel infuse with the loveliness of the white curtains blowing in, or the face he made over the burnt eggs. There is never a place you leave without a reason. But in the new city, you forget why you have come. You see only what is gone. The present is a graveyard, each face a flower or a stone.

old men / props

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 03:28:00 -0400

“I’ll take some of that – some of that, what is it? Smirnoff Ice?”

“It is,” I said, reaching in for the bottles. “We’ve got to drink them here,” I said.

We stood around drinking them, looking at nothing. “Nice microwave,” he said, flipping the microwave door open and closed. “Works well?”

“I guess,” I said. “It’s a microwave.”

“Yeah,” he said. “But they’re getting faster and faster.”

“I guess,” I said.

“This button pop? Or it work like a magnet?” He was looking closely at the microwave door.

“It pops,” I said. Though I was not at all certain.

“Might be a magnet,” he said.

“You probably know best,” I said.

"request moments" f&*& you

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 02:20:54 -0400

… narrating something about Gaugin and Survivor, how they were both the product of a culture’s impulse toward the primal, how those color schemes were echoed in my work. “The primal,” he kept saying, “the primal,” until for the first time I broke the word apart in my head and thought of prime numbers, of animals that were indivisible, of a prim Victorian woman becoming an animal. “Yes,” he was saying. “And it’s true of all great photographers – Bresson, Lilac – the impulse toward the de-nuding of power, the gaze that seeks the purer essence. Do you see what I’m saying? Are you seeking the center of the world? Are you digging past the surface toward the dark truths? Do you see what I’m saying? Are your hands dirty? Do you have mud in your nails? If you don’t, I don’t think you deserve to make surfaces – do you see what I’m saying? If you go to the manicurist, you should also go to the graveyard. If you paint the ceiling, you should also dig up the floor. Do you see what I’m saying? The only surface meant to be created is the one that doesn’t care about the surface. You see? You see what I’m saying?”

“Totally,” I said. I did not know what I meant. But the loft, its airy space, the discussion of the artworks and my photographs, had overtaken me. The vodka had overtaken me. I felt like calling Mikhail and being held, totally, by a man who was a prime number and also an animal.

“I know you see,” he said. “I know you will be a successful young person.”

I laughed. “Sorry,” I said. “It’s just—the words ‘young person’…“ I couldn’t stop laughing.