Sophianotloren

Piped
#artinthestreets #moca #2011 #losangeles #california #Magritte #pipe (at MoCA - Downtown LA)

There are somewhat weird arguments liberals make about trade that allows people to easily justify the loss of millions of American jobs because of slight improvements in income for the Vietnamese and Bangladeshi workers who replace them. There are a couple of serious problems with these arguments. First, it is essentially pro-capitalist, reinforcing the idea of employers as “job creators” who ultimately benefit society, as opposed to the profit-seekers who are willing to undermine any nation’s working class for the next quarterly report. Second, it shows shockingly little sophisticated analysis over how this process actually affects their own nation. The rise of Citizens United and the Koch Brothers’ control over American politics is directly linked to the decline of working-class voices in those politics that happened when the industrial unions were crushed. If you like high levels of income inequality and plutocrat control over America, fast track is for you. Third, these arguments allow for a sort of consumer myopia over their own role in the supply chain. By saying that American employers are improving the lives of workers overseas, it means that we don’t really have to worry about the actual conditions of work in these factories–child labor, slave labor, sexual harassment, forced pregnancy tests, beating by supervisors, unsafe working conditions, low wages, buildings collapsing on workers. All of these things are terrible and unnecessary.

Finally, it also undermines a basic fact–that nations need to have an interest in creating good jobs for its own citizens. I’m no believer in old-school protectionism, but unless the nation is creating good jobs for working Americans–moving the emphasis in our job creation from the creative class and highly-educated to average Americans–income inequality will continue to grow, as will societal instability. This is where United Steelworkers president Leo Gerard comes in, telling stories about how fast track hurts his members and working Americans.

They should, for example, pay attention to Kori Sherwood. When she got a job two years ago as a millwright at U.S. Steel’s Minntac facility in the Minnesota Iron Range, it changed her life and that of her young daughter. But in March, U.S. Steel sent layoff notices to 680 of Minntac’s 1,500 workers, citing an international glut of steel. Prices are at a 12-year low as mills in China continue to produce and ship massive amounts of steel and sell it at below market prices made possible by improper government subsidies and support.

Under international trade law, countries can prop up industry with government subsidies when the products are sold internally. Beijing may give its steel industry no-interest loans and free electricity when the rebar or pipe or I-beams are sold for construction projects in China. But international trade law forbids such subsidies when the goods are sold internationally because government aid suppresses product prices in what is supposed to be a free market. Some countries, however, routinely flout the rules. Then American companies that don’t get no-interest government loans or free electricity or other subsidies can’t compete on price.

They shut down mills and lay off workers. Unions and manufacturers are forced to pay millions to petition for import duties on the subsidized foreign goods to level the playing field. To win such a case, industry must prove financial injury and workers must suffer layoffs and lost income.

Kori Sherwood got one of U.S. Steel’s layoff notices and lost her job at Minntac on May 26. China’s violation of international trade rules dashed Sherwood’s hopes and plans. “You finally think you get your life in order – buy a truck, buy a home, and it all falls apart,” she said.

…

Import-adoring lawmakers should talk to tire builders from Tuscaloosa and Gadsden Ala., Findlay, Ohio, and Salem, Va., who have watched with endless anxiety over the past decade as American manufacturers closed plants and cut production because Chinese producers dumped subsidized passenger and light truck tires into the U.S. market.

After the USW petitioned for relief, the U.S. imposed import duties on Chinese tires beginning in 2009 and imports declined significantly. American producers regained market share and invested in American factories. They recalled laid off workers and even hired new ones.

But the second the duties expired, Chinese producers resumed dumping. American companies once again cut production, reduced workers’ hours and furloughed staff. The USW petitioned for trade relief again a year ago, and the U.S. Department of Commerce imposed preliminary duties. Since then, U.S. tire companies have ramped up production and increased workers’ shifts.

In testimony earlier this month before the U.S. International Trade Commission seeking permanent duties, David Hayes, president of the USW local union at Goodyear’s tire plant in Gadsden, talked about how the waves of dumped foreign tires have denied his fellow 1,500 workers job stability as layoffs followed each import surge.

These are actually important issues that liberals need to take seriously. The Kori Sherwood’s of the world need good jobs if we want the United States to be a stable nation in the 21st century that treats its citizens with respect. Supporters of the Trans Pacific Partnership need to articulate what happens to Kori Sherwood. NAFTA supporters used to say that the creative economy would take care of these people. Of course those were delusional statements of true believers in the religion of free trade. Now supporters of the TPP aren’t even trying to answer that question, including President Obama.

If we are going to have these trade agreements, we need to have international rules that protect workers wherever the jobs are located. Out of Sight is my answer to free trade advocates who claim that Americans who want the American working class to have good jobs don’t care about the poor overseas. But I haven’t heard any reasonable articulation of what happens to Kori Sherwood from advocates of the Trans Pacific Partnership. Maybe she can get a job at McDonald’s or work a temp job that never becomes permanent.

GOLEM X MBA

Continuation of project by BK gives life to classical sculptures using projection mapping.

GOLEM is a concept that uses sculpture and video to create an uncanny feeling. The Fine-Arts Museum of Lyon, invited Arnaud Pottier to bring three of their sculptures to life.

More Here

I love the idea of the Russians going full Zimmerman Telegram and actively supporting Texas secessionists. I’m not even sure that stopping this is a bad thing for the rest of the nation.

Haven’t left the house today. Barely left my bed. Haven’t eaten enough (and might go attempt to remedy that in a few minutes) and I’ve been bored and lethargic and stressed out. The neighbor’s dog barking all day — from just after 4am until nearly midnight — hasn’t helped my frazzled nerves, nor did the movie blasting out from the home theater downstairs (directly below my room, naturally, but there’s nowhere in the house that I can escape it.) At one point I went to the bathroom, and in there I could hear more than just the bass and explosions… just in time to catch a screaming match between two angry characters.

On the plus side, I did get a tiny bit more rest than usual, and I connected with a few awesome people that I had really hoped to hear from It’s a nice surprise to actually have someone reach out after the initial “hey, this is me, here’s my contact info” — it happens so rarely that it’s really depressing most of the time. Like, out of 250 cards I give away, I end up with 2 or 3 folks who ever even get in touch. And that holds true even when I’ve given my number to someone who is very flirty, not-even-slightly subtle about it, even when someone has pulled me in and made out, even when there’s been kissing and groping and “let me buy you a drink” and “I’d love to take you to bed with me!” — I rarely hear a word.  So, yeah. When not one but two incredible women got back to me today, I was pleased!

Also my mom stopped by the bank and deposited a little bit of money for me, which should take care of the rest of the cost of my hair coloring. Useful. And I killed some time on tumblr, filling my queue up again and finding a few more blogs to follow. I haven’t written the massive blog post that I have been promising myself to get to for ages now, but I’m not sure how I can make that happen, either, because it’ll require me being in decent shape mentally, emotionally, and physically, plus the ability to write without everything smashing in around me, the noise and craziness that consistently make me want to scream.

I don’t want to sleep alone again tonight, and I don’t want to sleep here tonight, but I really don’t have much choice in the matter. Keeping my heart open, keeping my eyes open, and keeping my legs open — eventually the combination will lead me to where I want to be.  I can do Patience… and of course, I’m sure you know what they say: Patience is a virgin, right? She just kept waiting, patiently? Ah, well. Anyway…

I have a piece up on Anthony Kennedy’s concurrence drawing attention to solitary confinement, contrasting it with Clarence Thomas’s opinions from last Thursday, which were apparently a collage of Michael Savage transcripts and Harry Callahan quotes.

I discuss it briefly, but another of the underlying issues in Davis v. Ayala — the use of peremptory challenges by prosecutors to systematically remove people of color from the jury pool — is also extremely important. The latest in Mark Graber’s recent series on equality and American constitutional law in 2015 is excellent on this point:

The bottom line is that ensuring white-only juries is getting easier and easier. First, you claim trial strategy and exclude defense counsel from the Batson hearing. Then you point to a difference between the answers given by a potential juror of color and a potential white juror. You detected more hesitation when the potential juror of color stated he or she would impose capital punishment. You felt the potential white juror more willing to look you in the eye. If your trial judge believes you, you are home free.

One of my most distinguished colleagues recently said that criminal justice will be the civil rights issue of the future. With all due respect, she is wrong. As the lack of response to the substance of Davis v. Ayala demonstrates, no one cares if the United States is slowly moving back to the days of all-white juries. A Supreme Court that declares a right to same-sex marriage will be lionized and free to do what they want in the criminal justice system. The civil rights issue of the future will concern the concerns of the upper-middle class, not the fate of the Hector Ayala’s of the world.

My only quibble is that I don’t see the causal connection implied in the “free to do what they want in the criminal justice system.” Since all that is required in this case is for them to do nothing, the Court doesn’t need any legitimacy points from a decision legalizing same-sex marriage to (as the casino manager in Owning Mahony instructed his clerk after he told him he “didn’t do nothing” to keep a whale happy) don’t do nothing again. Irrespective of the Court’s general popularity, it’s not going to face a backlash by being too deferential on criminal procedure issues. In addition — as I’m sure Graber would agree — the failure of the Court to stop racially discriminatory jury selection isn’t inherent to its power but is the consequence of the Court’s long-term control by Republicans. It’s worth noting that the most moderate justice appointed by a Democratic president has suggested that because they provide such an easy cover for discrimination peremptory challenges violate the Fourteenth Amendment. Ayala was 5-4, and the dissent written by Sonia Sotomayor, who is assembling a significant body of work on equality issues. Change on this particular issue may be a long time coming, or it may be “just” a change in the median vote away.

I knew that the House Democratic defeat of Trade Adjustment Assistance as a way to undermine fast track for the Trans Pacific Partnership would be short-lived. There was a lot of celebration but I remembered being burned too many times to be any more than cautiously optimistic. Even that was too much as the Senate has passed fast track. Basically the Democrats we thought would not pass fast track without TAA of course would do that very thing, the most predictable thing ever.

I guess we are going to have to just keep documenting the horrors of the global trade system and fight for one that is more fair. Keep fighting for another day. But this is very depressing to me.

By Jennifer Carlson

Since the 1970s, there’s been a major legislative shift in most US states: Americans not only can legally own guns – they can also legally carry them on their persons as they go about their daily lives thanks to new “shall-issue” laws. Over 8 million Americans – the vast majority of them men – are licensed to carry guns concealed, and protection is now the number-one reason Americans give for owning guns, surpassing hunting.

What gives? Overall, crime is down, after all. The other dominant argument – that this is about white men clinging to their waning privilege – doesn’t entirely hold, either. In Metro Detroit, where I researched gun carriers, African Americans are more likely than whites to have a concealed pistol license. What, then, explains the appeal of gun carry to men – and, seemingly, diverse groups of men? What are guns doing for the men who carry them?

I went to Michigan, a historically Blue state that had revamped its concealed carry law in 2001, to find out. I interviewed 60 men who were licensed to carry guns in Michigan, and I spent time at shooting ranges, at pro-gun picnics, in firearms classes and on Internet gun forums to understand what motivates people to make a gun part of their everyday lives. During this fieldwork, I often heard about self-defense – but I also heard about much more. I heard from people like Gerald, an African American gun carrier, who felt it was his duty to be “the man” in a family of “rolling stones.” Or Brad, a white gun carrier, who saw his duties as head-of-household as tied to his ability to provide for his family – and protect them. Carrying a gun, for these men, wasn’t just about standing up for Second Amendment rights (although that is certainly part of it). It was also about stepping up to the plate as men, fathers, and community members as protectors.

Carrying a gun, of course, isn’t the only way to be a man. Sociologist Nicholas Townsend argues (here) that historically, ideals of American manhood have been tied to fatherhood, marriage, employment and home ownership. Interestingly, Michigan helped to create this idealized manhood: Michigan’s prosperity and prominence in labor struggles helped create the structural conditions for the male breadwinner job, which could support a family with good wages, pensions and benefits. But with the unraveling of unions and the welfare state, American society has been increasingly characterized by neoliberal shifts toward privatization, deregulation, and automation. Michigan was the only state with a statewide decline in employment from 1990 to 2009. Union membership rates have decreased from 26 percent in 1989 to 16.6 percent in 2012, a steeper decline than the U.S. average. Meanwhile, Michigan’s median household income has declined 19.2 percent from 2000 to 2012, the largest drop of any state.

Gun carriers offered up nostalgic references to the glory days of Michigan, when industry was booming, breadwinner jobs were plentiful, family dinners organized domestic life, and the streets felt safe. While gun carriers may have viewed Michigan’s past through rose-colored glasses, their words conveyed a sense of loss and despair about what Michigan once was – and could have been. Frankie, a retired African American who came of age in Detroit in the 1960s and 1970s, told me about “back then”: “they were hiring people off the street with zero education, and they could work 20 years, and they could make a living. You can’t do that shit now.” Christopher, a white gun carrier who lived in the suburbs, emphasized the “family unit that’s no longer in existence”: “When I grew up – it was family dinners, it was a lot of family interaction, and there was always family involvement. Now, because of the economy, because of keeping up with the Joneses, you have two parents working one job, 12-14-plus-hour days, five to six days a week.”

What has been lost in Michigan’s socio-economic decline was not just economic security but men’s economic position as breadwinners. An extreme case, Michigan is at the center of a much broader process of economic restructuring that has spelled out – as Hanna Rosin coined it – the “end of men” (here). And while the loss of blue-collar jobs has been felt most acutely in Michigan, the shift from stable, union jobs to more precarious work is a national problem that has undermined men’s access to jobs that once defined them as useful, productive members of their families – and society.

This is where guns come in. In this context of socioeconomic decline, guns provide another “tool” in the gendered “toolbox” for men to assert themselves as useful and relevant men – that is, as protectors. No longer guaranteed the middle-class lifestyles promised to their parents, men use guns not simply to instrumentally address the threat of crime but also to negotiate their own position within a context of socioeconomic decline by emphasizing their role as protector. Thus, gun carry meshes with on-the-ground socioeconomic insecurities to transform Second Amendment politics from an ideological issue to a concrete, everyday practice. And in carrying guns, many Americans are doing much more than just exercising their rights to self-defense – they are also asserting a particular moral politics surrounding what it means to be a good man, a good father, and good community member – through protection.

Jennifer Carlson, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto. Her article “Mourning Mayberry: Guns, Masculinity, and Socioeconomic Decline” is published in the June 2015 issue of Gender & Society.

Page from ‘Vacancy’ by Jen Lee (all images courtesy the artist and Nobrow)

At just 24 pages, each comic in British publisher Nobrow’s 17×23 series is designed to be an accessible gateway for readers to discover emerging authors, and for those authors to create what is often their first print publication.

“Many have been working the zine landscape, or webcomics, with success for years and so are used to the short form narrative, although some have never created more than a two pager,” Nobrow Creative Director Alex Spiro told Hyperallergic. “Ultimately, this is a stepping stone, or gateway to more conventionally published works of greater volume.

Cover of ‘Vacancy’ by Jen Lee

This month Nobrow released one of its newest 17×23 books, with Jen Lee’s Vacancy. Lee is the author and artist of the beautiful online comic Thunderpaw, where GIFs and side-scrolling animate an ongoing post-apocalyptic narrative about two abandoned dogs trying to find home in a world where humans have vanished.

“I’m pretty into animal behavior and the relationships we have with them, and the rest of nature,” Lee explained. “We’ve altered a lot of ecology and have domesticated animals for our own benefits. I love thinking about if critters would have a riot at us not existing anymore, or would some who depended on our luxuries be weeded out?”

Vacancy also delves into the minds of animals. A dog named Simon, left in the backyard after his family fled for some unseen reason, considers going into the wild. As her first print comic, it carries the moody palette and feeling of uneasy movement of her online work.

“The biggest challenge with Vacancy was that I had to get the complete story down first,” she said. “With my webcomic, since it’s ongoing and I’m the only one on it, I get to be pretty whimsical. I don’t know what’s going to be in the next update until I sit down and do my first thumbnails.”

‘Fish’ by Bianca Bagnarelli in the 17×23 series

‘Golemchik’ by William Exley in the 17×23 series

‘The Hunter’ by Joe Sparrow in the 17×23 series

Named for the 17 by 23-centimeter size of its volumes, 17×23 started in 2010, just a couple of years after Nobrow itself, which in 2013 expanded to a New York office. Guarding the press’s detail-oriented approach to high quality paper and color, the price for the 2015 books is just $5.95 for each. The series relaunched last year with Bianca Bagnarelli’s Fish, which brought the Italian author’s pensive work to an English-speaking audience in a story of a boy coming to terms with the death of his parents.

“It had been few years since we did the first batch and we wanted to revisit the experience to find and develop new talent for future Nobrow projects,” Spiro said. “Although the series has never been a money-spinner for us, it has had an excellent track record as a talent incubator, and what’s more important that helping young talent develop the chops to create their greatest work?”

The series is intended to propel authors on to bigger projects, and it has had some success, such as Luke Pearson’s 2010 Hildafolk that’s evolved into its own popular graphic novel series. To give Hyperallergic readers a taste of what to expect, Nobrow shared some preview pages of Vacancy below:

Page from ‘Vacancy’ by Jen Lee

Page from ‘Vacancy’ by Jen Lee

Page from ‘Vacancy’ by Jen Lee

Page from ‘Vacancy’ by Jen Lee

Page from ‘Vacancy’ by Jen Lee

Page from ‘Vacancy’ by Jen Lee

Vacancy by Jen Lee is out now from Nobrow. The complete 17×23 series is listed on their site.

amaditalks:

“I have a dream that one day white peoples will care about black people dying without Jon Stewart telling them they should.” Clint Smith III

The Louvre at night, with the Pyramid censored (altered by 84user from a FOLP photo on Wikimedia)

Restrictions on photographing or filming copyrighted art, architecture, or other objects in public might get stricter in the European Union. On July 9, new copyright provisions from the Legal Affairs Committee go to a vote in the European Parliament.

At stake is the freedom of panorama (FOP), which basically is when a photograph is taken in public, permanent art, structures, advertisements, or even t-shirts that are under copyright can appear without the photographer seeking permission. It’s an attempt to find a medium between the rights of property owners with freedom of visual representation in public space. In the United States, only buildings are exempt from copyright in this context. FOP currently varies from country to country within the EU, and the vote could unify them under this language:

[…] commercial use of photographs, video footage or other images of works which are permanently located in physical public places should always be subject to prior authorisation from the authors or any proxy acting for them […]

A map showing the level of Freedom of Panorama (as seen from a general audience standpoint) in the countries of Europe (King of Hearts/Quibik, via Wikimedia)

It’s unlikely, clickbait titles aside, that the EU would be confiscating tourist photos of the Louvre’s Pyramid or London Eye, but there could be major repercussions for commercial and professional photographers. Julia Reda, a member of the copyright reform-focused Pirate Party Germany and their only member in the European Parliament, made protecting FOP part of her report on changing copyright law. Although this report was adopted by the European Parliament’s Legal Affairs committee, a June 16th amendment altered the FOP proposal. Glyn Moody at Ars Technica reported that Reda explained that the amendment “could threaten the work of documentary filmmakers and the legality of commercial photo-sharing platforms.”

Some of the existing restrictive FOP restrictions aren’t widely enforced, although there are examples like Copenhagen’s statue of the Little Mermaid, which is notorious for the family of the sculptor being aggressive about its copyright and billing media for its use. Other countries also are diligent about such rules. Owen Blacker writes on Medium:

In theory, in Italy, for example, when publishing pictures of “cultural goods” (buildings, sculptures, paintings and so on) for commercial purposes one must obtain authorisation from the Ministry of Arts and Cultural Heritage. Iceland has restricted panorama rights too — there are no pictures of Hallgrímskirkja on Wikimedia Commons, as it is under copyright there until 2021.

Freedom of Panorama around the world as of 2014 (Created by Mardus, via Wikimedia) (click to enlarge)

The Signpost, Wikipedia’s online journal, has details on how EU citizens can contact their MEPs (Members of the European Parliament).

Rachel Dolezal has opened up a big old can of worms. Trans people are suddenly finding themselves caught in some rather transphobic crossfire, as people compare what she has done with what, say, Caitlyn Jenner has done.

I’m white, and therefore not well qualified to speak about race. My understanding of the word “transracial” is that it is a legitimate term, applicable to, for example, black children born or adopted into white families. So we can’t say “it isn’t a thing” but we can say it’s a questionable word to apply to Dolezal.

I don’t want to speculate as to what is going on for Dolezal, I don’t feel it’s my position to judge her but to follow the lead of the black community and accept their feelings about her. Her deceptions don’t sit well with me, but I cannot judge her situation because I am not connected to it. Were I involved in an organisation where something like this happened, I would be deeply concerned, and I would be consulting my black friends as to how to deal with her.

But I want to write about the comparisons being made to the trans community, because a lot has been said about it not being the same thing, but I think something has been missed as to why it isn’t the same thing.

Because the truth is, if Caitlyn Jenner was the first assigned-male person ever to show up claiming to be a woman, the world would rightly be suspicious. If there had not been a history, as long as the history of the human race, and across multiple cultures, of individuals who have similar experiences in relation to their gender, then cautious scepticism would be a fair response.

Maybe, scepticism would even be reasonable in the case of the first half dozen or so cases we encounter, maybe even the first hundred, but there comes a point where people have to adjust their world view and accept that something is a real thing. We are way past the point of this with trans people.

Transgender people exist – there are millions of us. We even have an inkling of how trans people exist, and an understanding that our hormones play a part in what turns out to be the very complex dance of gender. Our hormones influence our gender identity, and gender identity (for all the inadequacies of this term) is a real thing in and of itself, separate from both the socially constructed nature of gender and the biological facts of reproduction and chromosomes.

We have, as yet, no evidence that there is an equivalent phenomenon to this in terms of race. I am open minded, and if one is discovered, I will accept it as a real thing when the evidence is in. But there is no reason to assume that just because a particular phenomenon occurs in relation to gender, which is mediated by hormones as well as social construction, that it would therefore occur in relation to race, which arises from a very different set of historical and social conditions.

For instance, there is not a point, after conception, when an embryo has a chance to be born either black or white, depending on the hormonal journey it takes in the womb. There isn’t a hormone I can take that will switch on some biological coding to make me black, in the same way I can take testosterone and masculinise my body.

They are different things, and that’s all there is to it. And it doesn’t seem that Dolezal is claiming they are the same, but rather claiming a right to “choose” her race. This is where analogies with trans folk really get me steamed up – trans people do not “chose” their gender, the only choice, if choice it is, is how to negotiate their gender in a cissexist world.

The salient discussion is about how we experience gender as something over and above the historical and constructed, and more than just in connection with our reproductive systems. I’m not at all sure that race is experienced in the same way, or that there is evidence of a phenomenon related to race that fully matches what some call gender identity.

Meanwhile, this debate is distracting us all from the issues of racism that matter – the police profiling of trans women of colour, and their frighteningly high presence in statistics for victims of violence and murder; the extraordinary double standards applied in the reporting of crimes committed by and against black people and white people, horribly evidenced by the last week’s US and UK news; and the ongoing, casual white supremacy that every one of us white folks supports, often unconsciously, every day of our lives, just by being so easily distracted from what the real issues are regarding race.

Because making an issue that is entirely about race and racism all about trans issues also gets us off the hook from exploring our racism. It’s a neat distraction, but look how easily when racism comes up we skip off into something else entirely.

via http://supermassiveblackhole.tumblr.com/post/157051409

found on tumblr

I’m not exactly new to the world of internet dating or casual sex hookups. I’m on OKCupid. I’ve been on PlentyofFish, and Match, and Alt, and all the rest of them. Shit, I was kicked off of eHarmony, in part because I had a very different understanding of the watersports question.

Even though I have a lot of experience and typically have had an easy enough time meeting friends through online posts,  I do a terrible job meeting casual sex partners. There’s a lot I have to say and have said in the past about desirable bodies, what people want vs what they’re willing to be witnessed wanting, how it’s acceptable to treat fat people as “desperate”, etc. So there’s a lot of that at play, of course, in who gets responded to and who gets left out. But really, I suspect this is because what I want often comes off as confusing. I know what I want from a casual experience, but it’s not what people normally consider casual.

See, I was told that the reason my queer cruising ad failed was because I was asking for “dating stuff”. In it, I said I was hoping for more like a one month stand than a one nighter, that I wanted something semi-romantic and sweet, that I wanted the kind of person who would buy me roses then beat me with them. Frankly, I want a partner who likes to top but also will tell me I’m pretty and will pet my hair, not just use my cunt and then disappear. Apparently that’s too much like “relationship” stuff for a casual sex ad?

I have to admit, I just don’t understand. Is it impossible to have more of a seduction or even a little romance in a casual fling? If anything I feel like they’re ideal for it- you can just enjoy the moment with no expectations! I love the fluttery feeling of having a crush, but the stone cold reality of building that crush into a relationship takes a lot of energy, trust, desire and work on both sides. I just don’t have space for more of that in my life right now. But that doesn’t mean I can’t still want to be romanced, right? 

It’s also a little bit hurtful. If you ask me, I think it’s kind of more fucked up that it’s totally fine to hook up in a dirty bathroom sort of way but not in a “spank me with a bouquet of roses” sort of way. That seems like some femmephobic bullshittery. It goes along with how I resent the way in my local group of friends and acquaintances, we celebrate Steak and Blowjob Day but scorn Valentine’s Day, like that isn’t, at least in part, gendered.

So fuck it. I think we should make casual romance a Thing if it isn’t already. I wanna see more casual makeout sessions, more hand holding dates, more looking into each others eyes and just giggling, more gifting each other things like flowers or doing small acts of service like a snack tray for a hookup. I resent and reject the idea that because I want these things I just want to date more people.

I feel like in our desire to liberate our sexualities, we haven’t spent a lot of time focusing on liberating our feelings and making space for that. I’ve bemoaned how romance often seems to be calculated or dead, though I’ve learned to see the sweet gesture in things like wrapping my micro usb cord so it won’t get ruined in my purse or getting me a candle that looks like a rococo butt plug. I’ve tried to kill my desire for outward displays of affection and seduction, because I’ve been afraid I don’t deserve it or won’t get it. But fuck that. I do deserve it. I am a lovely person who works really hard to be enjoyable to be around and if I want to be showered in flower petals once in a while I don’t think that’s bad. And I don’t think I should only get to ask for that from people I’m dating long term.

Now yes, not everyone wants casual sex to be anything beyond meeting, fucking, parting ways, maybe even with no names exchanged. I’ve been there, kittens, I get it. I’m just saying that one of the most incredible impulsive once-ever experiences I had involved a lot of kissing and eye contact and giggling and holding hands. We didn’t exchange names. He ejaculated on my chest in a glass elevator and it was hot as hell. But what made it transcendent and memorable for me was that in that moment we just really connected, and cared about each other, and that mutual respect and yeah, little touches like passionately making out in doorways while rain sprinkled down, and how he held an umbrella over my head while we did that, made it go from “hot” to “fiery hot passion”. I feel it was extremely casual, and also romantic, and I want more of that in my life.

So here’s to casual romances, to summer flings and perfect first (and only) dates. The heart wants what it wants, and it is a-ok to want loving and fleeting expressions of affection and being Seen just as it’s ok for your junk to want a good hard pounding in the backseat of your car.

It is thanks to my evening reading alone that I am still more or less sane.

–W. G. Sebald

One night, out of nowhere, he started snoring: laboringly so, the walls bending away from his exhales, so that even the cat crept off to sleep somewhere else. I lay awake reciting the Rime of the Ancient Mariner backward to no avail; try as I could, I couldn’t map my breathing to his.

For nearly ten years I had lain beside him: the snoring was a blow, but, looking back, it was also a necessary portent, an etch in our story, the fuzzy spot on a picture frame you can’t tell is from the photograph aging or a fingerprint that left its caressing mark on the glass. The doctors had no news to give, so instead they gave him pills; and when the pills didn’t help him, I started taking them instead—blacking out in the stairwell of the complex in which we lived; waking suddenly hours or moments later to find myself sitting on the balcony with an ashtray strewn with half a dozen cigarette butts; time moved slowly, when I remembered it, or else sped toward a dawn of some kind. I submitted myself to rigorous questioning to ascertain whether I was asleep or awake, hearing all the while his jagged breathing rock the walls through the open windows, belligerent albatross, always ruining the silence.

They fitted him with a CPAP mask that made him look like an astronaut in a B-movie. We joked about this while awake, but when the lights are out bets are always off. Through the hissing darkness, I would roll over and see a massive shadow with a tentacled snout, my first hazy thought of the boa constrictor swallowing the elephant in The Little Prince; the first few nights this vision scared the fuck out of me, but I’ve slept with such a cast of frightening creatures that I viewed it as an inevitable, inescapable burden.

I can’t recall whose idea it was about to use the spare room. It was either me, frenzied from lack of sleep, angry that his sudden onslaught of snores appeared now, of all times, and kept me conscious, or else it was him, out of guilt or frustration or shame. Or how perhaps one night he went to pee with his mask still on and scared himself half to death, looking like Gregor Samsa in the mirror above the sink.

Whoever’s idea it was, I began sleeping in the spare room. We had lived in the flat for four years, and the spare room housed a jumble of things: its closets filled with items we’d collected from living in three countries, things we couldn’t ever bear to part with for ineffable reasons: dismembered computer parts like a high-tech murder scene at one end of the room, hard drives smashed to shreds with a rusty sledgehammer; a lone single bed for guests we rarely had and which the cat appropriated as her own. And lining each wall were our bookshelves, the sets that didn’t fit against the walls in the living room, stacked up there, in a room that first felt like no place at all to me, lacking the personality or scent or feeling associated with most rooms. For don’t all rooms have their own personalities, even if they’re at variance with our own?

I slept surrounded by books we’d shipped by freighter, and some nights I imagined—my nights were all fantasies; I had escaped the from the epicenter of snores but I must have known we were living out a metaphor—that I could still smell the water on their spines, long-since sloughed away. I would open them when sleep eluded me and see scribblings in the margins from a hand I once used years ago, a hand I no longer recognized as mine. In the bedroom there had been nothing; it was sparsely furnished with a bed, a night table, and a hassock. In the spare room, though, I would spend night after night combing through the books we’d even forgotten we had—and how desperate we had been to rescue them all, thinking that we would always want them—falling finally asleep among such giants, such treasures, that I began to wonder how the constrictions of that bedroom hadn’t done us in earlier. I found I needed to be surrounded by things, especially by words.

So that is how I began to sleep without him, and instead began to sleep with others: Proust, Mann, Borges, Woolf, Akhmatova, Dickinson. If I couldn’t sleep it wasn’t because he was snoring, the great beast that “stamps, and stamps, and stamps” and terrorizes Louis in The Waves, but because some poem was keeping me awake, its rhythms bouncing against the edges of my skull like a electroshock therapy. I thought at the time that sleep was a paltry excuse not to be open to everything, not to be fully conscious; I began to lament the fact that each day must end with its night, and all false dilemmas of that sort. I would pass the bedroom door, which was now his room (although we didn’t start calling it that until later), to go out on the balcony and see stars, jutting out my index finger as if I had an audience toward bodies like Lepus or Orion, continuing to play the words I had sprawled out on what was now my bed with which I was reacquainted myself through my head, finding them always the an exact fit for this that time, this that purple mood of night.

I didn’t know that I would later thank him later for giving me the night, or rather the company of night. In Vertigo, W. G. Sebald confesses: “It is thanks to my evening reading alone that I am still more or less sane.” And he’s right: these books, these words that prompt and prod and provoke me so that my mind is too disturbed, too pleased, to sleep—these were more company than his deadweight, snoring body ever was, perhaps even before the snoring commenced so suddenly, like an attack of hives or a grand mal seizure. Our rhythms had stopped being aligned; he wanted external quiet when the lights were turned out—apart from when we fucked, but, because it was him, that didn’t last long—to cultivate a delusional internal quiet so as not to impede the drift into unconsciousness. It was a ritual with him each and every night, one I took part in only by scooping sleeping tablets from a bottle I wasn’t sure was mine or his and hoping to fall hard into sleep. For years, it was the only way I knew how to sleep.

And this is why the snoring rattled me so much; all the preparations for sleep, the floss and the face creams, made it feel as if night were closing in on us and we were simply readying ourselves passively to meet it. It contributed to the fantasy that we somehow succumb to sleep, like how a man hanging by his fingers at a cliff’s edge succumbs to the valley below—quick, sudden, acquiescent. It also contributed to the fantasy that consciousness was something he and I welcomed, a state we shared because we both carried it intact; there was no need to chart or measure it so long as we were awake together. Instead, sleep became the only thing we had in common: the plummet into the dark continent a refuge, our bodies lying close to but our dream journeys neglecting, erasing the other. Drinking from the waters of Lethe, moon pills beneath my tongue, it seemed I no longer even welcomed dreams of him, of the life that we had shared. I suppose we cherished and ritualized sleep because it was the only way we could cling to each other; his snoring took my only reprieve from wakefulness away from me.

When I began calling the spare room mine, though, I realized that this wasn’t the way one should look at sleep. Viewed in that way, sleep becomes the antithesis of wakefulness, and, given the proper context, its archenemy. But this isn’t true at all. If I prepare for sleep—if I brush my teeth and wash my face and set the alarm and turn toward him to see if he will turn toward me before we turn away toward our respective walls, praying for Hypnos like addicted dreamers—this does not mean that I will sleep. And when I didn’t sleep in the spare room, I found refuge in the books there: not only because they were books, and books meant solace and truth to me from a very early age; but because they were my books, forgotten books offering a treasure if only I could read them properly. They had granted me wisdom before; I had even noted it down, underlining passages, marking pages, dog-earing corners, adding my own commentaries to the one already printed on the page.

In the spare room, while my dwindling lover snored so loudly in the next room I feared he would swallow his tongue, I found myself again in these books: the handwriting might not have registered immediately as my own, but if I suckled at the words once, I could surely do it again. Reading the notes I had written years ago, countries ago, I summoned who I was then; I could feel his breath against mine as we paged through Albertine disparue one August evening when the air indoors was too close and the clematis broke through the window screen to accompany us on our journey. Following along the jottings and scribbled text, I confronted a version of me, who, back then, hadn’t wanted to be confronted, except through words and their fleeting registers. In the spare room, we begin to help one another, clamorously so because we were both certain that we would one day forget.

I learned that instead of clenching your toes and fingers when sleep doesn’t come as if it were an unearned right, you must take refuge in the words, the images, the ghosts you encounter in the shadows, as that is the only time that they appear. At such moments, our paths cross theirs, and theirs ours; those books that have always spoken and will always continue to speak to you are your only creed—you must let them lead you to sleep only when they’re done with you. Words are your ammunition, your Tarot pack, your charm to achieve invincibility. There are still some nights when I wonder whom he’s keeping awake now, but I always circle back to the more pressing fact that I’m awake now—fingering spines, leafing through texts that could once more be mine.

In this extended metaphor, I unearth myself while he snores in a room that used to be mine. I needn’t elaborate here, for any reader will know that this was portentous in how it marked so clearly the beginning of the end. Nights like tonight, as I’m sitting here surrounded by books and unable to sleep, I think back to the spare room, the snores that drove me there in the first place—especially to the revelations I encountered when I read aloud to myself, those two selves somehow merged for the first time ever, his absence causing me to acknowledge that I had been lost. The books were, in many ways and as they always are, the breadcrumbs strewn along the forest floor; the words were the trail, and one trusts the trek forward even if it ends up in a ditch or a quagmire. For even with the supple, potent fact of a breathing body beside us in bed at night, aren’t we all always reading alone?

***

Rumpus original art by Mark Armstrong.

Related Posts:

• The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Reading Don Quijote with My Mother
• The Science of Why You Can’t Read Good Literature
• Just Read All of the Books
• Influence Without Anxiety
• The Emancipation of Digital Reading?

miser: “A wretch covetous to extremity,” according to Samuel Johnson, “who in wealth makes himself miserable by the fear of poverty.”

ninjo: 人情 Japanese for human compassion, as compared with social obligations (see giri).

noblesse oblige: literally, “noble rank entails responsibility.” Earliest use in English, 1837. Honoré de Balzac referred to it in 1836 as “un vieux mot.”

At Lapham’s Quarterly, senior editor Leopold Froehlich created a brief global glossary of philanthropy, using language and culture as the lens through which we understand giving.

Related Posts:

• Young Writers Turn to Hashtags
• R.I.P. Formal Writing
• Shock Us Like This: Miley Cyrus Founds Charity to Help Homeless & LGBT Youth
• Brave New Words
• Curating Life

The post throated sarah vandella appeared first on droolingfemme.

Ice-T Law & Order SVU Part II

bloodmilk:

Tsutomu Kawakami sculpture that @audkawa turned me on to recently. stunning.

actionables:

Because news cameras are apparently only there if looting and protests are mentioned, here are some shots from the march for peace in Charleston yesterday. In case you missed it, thousands marched to Ravenel Bridge, holding hands in prayer and unity. Yet this doesn’t make news, but an interview with the killer’s friend does. all photos from Twitter

A gif by A.L. Crego of stencil art in La Coruña by Erre (image via Tumblr)

A. L. Crego composes playful, bizarre GIFs from other people’s street art. Where lines and shapes were formerly static, eyeballs now move, heads bob, and limbs swing. “It’s a meditative way of watching art,” Crego told Hyperallergic.

The Spanish artist has been taking pictures of urban graffiti and murals and making GIFs for several years, but it was only months ago that he thought of putting the two together. “The result surprised me a lot,” he said. “We’re used to watching motionless photos, and when we see some movement in them, it’s unexpected.”

At first Crego only made GIFs from street art in the Spanish city of La Coruña, where he lives. But since the genre is illegal in Spain, he soon expanded the project to include art from around the world, always asking permission from the artists, which include the likes of Nemo, Sr. X, and David de la Mano. “My work wouldn’t exist without them,” he explained.

The GIFs stands out at a time when street art has begun flooding the web. Not only are artists recording their work on sites like Tumblr, but a seeming surge in popularity has inspired countless news articles on the transient genre, as well as digital databases like Google’s that seek to catalogue the works. Crego gives us one more way to understand them. “In the streets I can’t make [the art] move, but in the virtual space I can give it another meaning,” Crego said. “I think of it as animating the walls of the internet.”

A gif by A.L. Crego of a mural by Sr. X (image via Tumblr)

A gif by A.L. Crego of a mural by Sr. X (image via Tumblr)

A gif by A.L. Crego of a mural by Nemo (image via Tumblr)

A gif by A.L. Crego of a mural by David de la Mano (image via Tumblr)

An gif by A.L. Crego of a mural by Roa (image via Wikimedia)

A gif by A.L. Crego of a mural by Escif (image via Tumblr)

A gif by A.L. Crego of a mural by Zoes (image via Tumblr)

A gif by A.L. Crego of a mural by M-City (image via tumblr)

A gif by A.L. Crego of a mural by Sr. X (image via tumblr)

A gif by A.L. Crego of a mural by Wedo (image via Tumblr)

A gif by A.L. Crego of a mura by Hyuro (image via Tumblr)

A gif by A.L. Credo of a mural by Nemo (image via Tumblr)

Combo’s mural in Paris’s 11th arrondissement, before it was vandalized (photo by Combo, via Instagram)

A mural by the French street artist Combo in Paris has become the target of far-right vandals, including one nationalist blogger who filmed herself tagging the mural with the message, “Antiracism is a codeword for antiwhite.”

Painted on a wall in the 11th arrondissement through the public art organization Le MUR, the mural features a modernized Joan of Arc wearing a motorcycle helmet and brandishing a red banner that reads “Liberté, Égalité, Humanité,” a variation on France’s national motto, “liberty, equality, fraternity.” Alongside the image, Combo stenciled the words “La France aux Français” (France for the French), which is the slogan of the far-right Front National party, crossed them out with red spray paint, and wrote beneath them “Les Françaises aux Africains” (Frenchwomen for Africans). He admitted that the mural was an act of provocation.

“The goal was to make people from the far right react, and it certainly worked,” he told the AFP. “If these militants had ignored me, they would have been smarter than me, but they fell for it.”

And fall they did. Two days after Combo completed the mural on June 13, vandals came and splashed gray paint over the words “Les Françaises aux Africains.” On June 17, nationalist blogger and activist Electre went several steps further, tagging Combo’s mural and using a GoPro camera strapped to her head to record the act of vandalism in a jarring point-of-view video that she subsequently posted on YouTube.

On the Front National–affiliated cultural commentary blog Culture, Libertés, et Créations, blogger Gabriel Robin condemned the mural’s slogan for its “racist and sexist character” and criticized the City of Paris for providing Le MUR’s €17,000 (~$19,300) annual budget.

“Combo aimed to provoke with an ambiguous message and it worked,” Le MUR President Bob Jeudy told the AFP. “I am neither for nor against it.” He added that Combo’s mural is scheduled to be painted over on June 26.

This isn’t Combo’s first run-in with the anti–street art contingent of France’s far-right. In February he claimed to have been beaten by a group of young men in Paris’s 12th arrondissement while he was putting up his distinctive “Coexist” tag — the “C” is an Islamic crescent, the “X” is a Star of David, and the “T” is a crucifix — which he began painting around the city in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre.

“I am not looking for pity because I’m aware of the risks I’m taking with my work,” Combo wrote on Facebook at the time. “But I want to denounce this type of behavior. You can say that my work is provocative, that maybe I was asking for it. But nobody will prevent me from expressing myself, practicing my art, and fighting for my ideas.”

via http://www.tumblr.com/dashboard

micdotcom:

Do you need any more proof of the racist double standard in the media? 

The white shooter in a rampage killing gets a smiling childhood photo and an uncritical look at how his actions were influenced by the Internet. A black man who saved his own mother from a hail of bullets, though, has his “troubled past” highlighted. But wait, the treatment of the black man gets even worse.

This is what systemic racism looks like.

4gifs:

Uh guys. I’m going to have to ask you to land this plane right meow. [video]