Dear Friends,

Happy Valentines.

get moody

After a month of warm and bright weather that shamed me for waking up past 11,  I am looking forward to hunkering down a little. More movies, more reading. Hell, let it rain.

And way more DIRTY BEACHES



I love how this one looks and sounds like a David Lynch movie. So affective in the same lonesome,  yearning, and dark-fuzzy way.

He is playing on Wednesday with Dum Dum Girls. If I wasn't busy opening many bottles of pink champagne for other people's (belated) Valentines, I would really like to be my own valentine, pop my own sparkling and go there.

Rest easy, old friend

This was my dog, Gwen. She died today. When I was ten, I picked her out of a stripmall pet store based on her spotted blue coat for $99. She was a fantastic, difficult, and loving companion. Her quality of life had reached a point where it longer seemed reasonable to watch her slip and slide across linoleum floors, loose control of her bladder or be unable to find her food bowl. I didn't make the decision, but I understand it.

She is missed.

Get To That

A recipe for happiness:

Jam this goofy/smooth jam this all day and night.

Hang in a paddleboat with your friend on a sunny day.


Eat roasted butternut squash.

Bay Area - Consent Discussion

This Saturday at the Berkeley Public Library (South Branch) there will be a community discussion about defining and understanding consent. Please come! We need you there!





Feel free to let others know. Email me with concerns and questions!!

START TODAY

New York Times home delivery starts today. 2011: Upping the ante.

Excited for:
CROSSWORDS!
Enraged rants triggered Maureen Dowd and Thomas L. Friedman's misguided faux-left op-eds!
The Ethicist! The Science Times on Tuesday!

Ponzo defined

This is a PONZO ILLUSION. It's the name of my blog and I've never really talked about why I chose that name. Matin Ponzo, an Italian psychologist, came up with the phenomenon when trying to illustrate how an object's size is judged relative to its background. Check it out. These three elephants are all the same size. You can measure them. The converging lines cause them to look different. It is the background that determines our relative perception of an object. It is precisely in that spirit that I began this blog.

Today, when I went to surprise Hannah at work with some tiramisu from Cafe Gratitude, she mentioned that she is rereading Susan Sontag's On Photography. We got really revved up talking about Sontag getting unfairly kicked around the canon since her death, the overemphasis on her relation to Barthes, and other hot topics (the streak!). Hannah mentioned feeling really comforted by the experience of rereading a book that was so vital to our respective intellectual development. I first came to Sontag through a New York Times article about Abu Ghraib, "Regarding the Torture of Others." More that my first introduction to Sontag, it was the first time I had read a deeply philosophic treatment of art and form that was invested in the politics I am committed to. What I mean is, in that article I found a model for a political writing that engaged form. I remember the spring day that I read it at my dad's kitchen table. I brought to high school that following day and talked endlessly about it. I had written a paper a little before then about a popular political poster from the 1960's made by a group called Another Mother for Peace.

At the tender age of 17, I was very frustrated by what I understood to be a weak argument by a group of women who didn't understand the necessity of extremism in the face of violence and war. BAMN. More, I was irritated that a antiwar feminist stance had to be articulated through a concern for children and relied on a sense of the maternal for its pathos -I had just heard about rhetoric. I was offended that the furthest they were willing to go was to suggest war is unhealthy, as if hygiene were more important than clear ethical and moral imperatives not to senselessly murder people. Sontag couldn't have shown up at a better moment. With a fantastically deadpan and methodical argument, her essay calls into question the photographs, the events depicted in them and their reception. And it turns out she hates Dazed and Confused too! Anyway, it was nice to remember a pivotal moment in my development as a thinker. As often happens when recollecting how one's changed, I felt a desire to recommit to the practice I found so inspiring in that article and in the spirit of what I was already doing at 17. I want to think harder about the images and ideas that populate this world. I want to think about them rigorously and with respect to the context and discourse in which they are situated. This is a critical task, but it can also be a fun one and I hope an interesting one.
In thinking about the rise of twitter and tumblr, I've often said that what I hate is the decontextualization. The images on tumblr are stripped of all meaning, context, or way to learn anything about their origin. It is a form that allows as little information as possible so as to be just a slick, floating image. With twitter, ideas are capped before even being able to be formed. It's an echochamber of boring bullshit. That ipad bus ad really nails it.

A bunch of garbage where people can report their minutia without saying a single interesting thing about it. If I am going to participate in the internet at all (pre-wingnut freakout future), I want to at least think about my contributions and what sort of exchanges it engenders. Of course, I still want to creep on my crush's flickr. Of course, I look at something on wikipedia everyday. But, that doesn't mean I have to act like a the precursor to a common weather phenomenon like a rainbow is an event whose specialness needs to be echoed forever. I don't think every sandwich deserves an archive. Say something interesting about that very same thing and I'm fine with it. Generate an idea, offer it to the world in the form of a very small readership and call it a day. But, the idea part is key. Seriously though, I can't believe they put the thing in about the sandwich. It's like I don't even have to make a parody it's so stupid already.


2011: BIG IDEAS, BETTER WRITING
TWO THOUSAND NEXT LEVELIN'


 Not to worry, though, for all this highfaluting talk about theoretical commitments, this blog will still have as many dog photos as ever. Especially since next weekend is the SAN FRANCISCO DOG SHOW.

Nicities

Oh, San Francisco!
Went on a cool vacation to visit buddies across our great nation. It was so great to party with the punks. In Chattanooga, right before New Years, I was so struck by how genuinely nice everyone was. Like, huge smiles and crushing, full-torso hugs are the norm. This warmth was in Athens and -to a lesser extent- Gainesville too. I'm only qualifying the friendliness of Gainesville because I spent most of my time with two fantastic friends who are really grumpy dudes, Daniel and Ryan. (WASSUP GRUMPS? When is Weak Dollar gonna happen?) and this lady was really mean to me at a party for no reason. But, across my trip from Amy and Eric Nelson's hugs in the Pickle Barrel to Sunshine SS giving me a ride to Florida which made their cramped ride certainly less comfortable, I found myself being nicer in response to this punk geniality and goodwill. Is it stupid in 2011 to want to recommit to niceness? Given the shitty state of things, my own justified rage at the political climate, further infringements on basic living, does being nicer make sense? I THINK IT DOES. In an urban environment, alienation abounds. Why make being a man in the crowd worse? At home in SF,  I find myself walking around scowling when I actually feel totally fine. I don't acknowledge other humans on the street, even though I am constantly putting myself in peril staring at babes while biking or crossing the street. I had a great day yesterday. Ate a bahn-mi in the dogpark with Hannah. Wore a tanktop in January. A dude wearing a Minor Threat tee working in a pizza place gave me 'wazzup' eyebrow wiggles. A gray-eyed puppy frantically kissed me on the inside of my mouth. Painted my nails a Carribean-sea turquois. I walked around smiling all day. I tried to be just a little friendlier to the people I spoke to, a little more polite. I left no dangling 'thank you's left unsaid. It feels better, enforces that PMA.

Ironically, being nicer is probably the change I make in 2011 that will effect me the most. I'm trying to take a roll of photos a week and write 500 words a day. You're looking at the outcomes of both right now. I'm trying to have more consistency about normal things like drinking enough water and reading as much as I'd like to. I rearranged my room today to have two separate workspaces. One for art. One for writing. PRODUCTIVITY THRU ARCHITECTURE. I'm the Le Corbosier of my bedroom.

Here's to a new urban friendliness! I don't wanna feel cattiness as I walk down Valencia. WE'RE MORE THAN PIGEONS. There are plenty of flannels for all of us in Thrift Town! Let's make comments in line at Four Barrel. I'll tell you I like your shoes and you mention the weather and we'll all be a pinch happier.


It's like that Times New Viking song "Teenage Lust." A corrective to the MC5 song by the same name, the chorus of the TNV version layers itself with "I don't wanna die in the city alone."  And, if craigslist missed connections are any indication, I think that is a widely held sentiment.

(apologies for this horrendously ugly player)

And I wouldn't want it any other way

FWENDZ

I love the Muppets. A lot. This is one of my favorite scenes in the Muppet Movie. WAY TO RESIST, KERMIT! Who needs money when you don't have friends? Who wants to be a mascot when you can live your life? Why get sponsored when you can live (fancy)free?