anonymiz

Dying Happy: Heavenly as it was in the 80s

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 11:14:31 -0400

I’m feelin’ electric tonight
Cruising down the coast goin’ ‘bout 99
Got my bad baby by my heavenly side
I know if I go, I’ll die happy tonight
- Lana Del Rey, “Summertime Sadness” (2012)

And if a double-decker bus
Crashes into us
To die by your side
Is such a heavenly way to die
And if a ten-ton truck kills the both of us
To die by your side, well
The pleasure, the privilege is mine
- The Smiths, “There is a Light That Never Goes Out” (1986)

It's On: Bill Clinton Vs. George Romney 2012

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 11:15:09 -0500

Last night’s dream: It was election night, and the candidates were Bill Clinton and George Romney. Somehow Bill got the democratic nomination over Barack. George Romney is a different Romney, kind of like the Jeb Bush version of Mitt Romney. Except George Romney had a “smelly professor” look to him: rumpled suit, frizzy hair. He was totally gross looking. Anyway, in my dream the “election” starts at a certain time, and then each candidate is shown on either side of a split-screen on your television. Below each candidate there is one of those internet “loading” bars and it fills up as they get more “votes”. Needless to say, George Romney got NOTHING, and Bill Clinton’s loading bar was filled within seconds! Bill’s laugh consumed his half of the screen! Obviously, people want it to be the 90s again, but not in a Newt Gingrich way, in a Bill Clinton way! Every person in the USA except for the Tea Party voted for Bill. Even some Tea Partyers voted for Bill, only because George Romney was such a smelly professor.

So it was a landslide win for Bill, and my dream transplanted me from one scene to another, as dreams are wont to do. I was now watching the Clinton-Romney 2012 election from a classroom that looked like a seminar room. I was sitting around this large, rectangular table with about seven others in my age group, and the TV was mounted on the wall above us. Unfortunately, it was fire safety day. Boo!! No one likes fire safety day. Everyone ignored the fire safety instructor until she became indigant and demanded our attention. At that point, I got on my high horse.

“Look,” I said to the fire safety instructor. “We all really want to watch this. Bill Clinton is important to us. He is the president we all grew up with!” Everyone nodded in support. “He is like one of the most important icons to our generation!” At that point the fire safety instructor bowed out. Stepped off. Fell back. Whichever phrase you prefer. I defeated the fire safety instructor.

Notes:
- In this dream, I care a lot about Bill Clinton. In reality, I don’t care so much about Bill Clinton.
- No one likes fire safety day!!

Phew! Thanks to Tumblr’s odd inflexibility about giving default/admin status to a secondary...

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 01:36:39 -0500

Phew! Thanks to Tumblr’s odd inflexibility about giving default/admin status to a secondary blog, Anonymiz had to undergo a little maintenance! Apologies for the small flood of re-posts. Thanks to Lindsey for the help and 24-hour tech support (excluding requests submitted during the Grammy’s.)

Mean Streets

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 01:23:38 -0500

Why are the streets mean?  
Because the city doesn’t care about you 
If you’re nice to it  It might grace your neck  
With an unassuming breeze  
How coy
Or, it might hijack your coat  
With the wind, unshy cause my  
Skirt’s blown high 
With a few freezing gusts  
The same ones that shiver and sway 
Those off-season Christmas lights 
On Bayard Street. Carrying them 
While they shake above the Chinese sign 
With a neon face 
While vodka looking types just  
Litter the place.
And you’re not sure 
Why you’re going this way 
But the cab is warm 
So it’s like a lover after all

Play-giarizin' and Takin' on Loans

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 01:22:17 -0500

Play-giarizin' and Takin' on Loans:

It’s lucky I poop often, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to sit through New Yorker articles (it’s akin to homework, isn’t it?) But I enjoyed this piece “The Plagiarist’s Tale” by Lizzie Widdicombe. I had no idea about this “spy novel scandal” involving Quentin Rowan’s (a.k.a. Q. R. Markham’s) book Assassin of Secrets (I don’t know how to underline on Tumbly?), mostly due to my indifference to spy novels, I suppose. But anyway, I would imagine that constructing a composite novel of borrowed sentences and themes pulled from various source works would be a hell of a lot more laborious than just writing your own novel, even if it relies heavily on cliché constructs. Kind of like how a tile mosaic of a dog would be a lot harder to execute than, say, a photo or drawing of a dog.

But of course, mosaic is a very legitimate art form that people appreciate, which brings me to another point the article made quite elegantly. We live in a time where artists commonly construct original work by compiling and reinterpreting fragments of existing works. Widdicombe points to Danger Mouse and Girl Talk as examples of people who are embraced as artists but who (technically) share some similarities in their craft with a “typical” plagiarist, assuming such a concept exists. I guess the mediating variable (ha-ha grad school!) here is the question of intention, along with some double-standards that perhaps exist for different art forms (i.e. music albums vs. novels). I haven’t done proper research on the Assassin of Secrets thing. As a matter of taste I’m just not too interested in the scandal itself, just its implications and extensions of it to larger ideas. But it seems that the author wasn’t trying to construct some meta novel or pay cheeky homage to the spy novel convention - because there is some level of transparency that is germane to that kind of postmodern task. This transparency obviously exists when you listen to, say, Girl Talk or DJ Shadow or a hip-hop mixtape.

And about those inherent differences in art forms: According to whatever noobish knowledge I have about music plagiarism, I think there are some limits imposed by intellectual property laws on the length of a sample that can be legally used by another artist. Not too sure about this, but it’s apples and oranges when compared to sentence and prose construction. It seems like the author in question was sort of addicted to the genre and so enamored with the work of others that his own ability to write within that genre got completely stifled by an obsessive need to create something good enough.

I think an important conclusion here is that writing, as an art form, hasn’t really blurred its own definition of authorship, even in creative terms, as much as other types of art in the postmodern realm. I’m a bit old-fashioned about certain things, though, so this concept is kind of comforting to me. I think Quentin whatever-your-real-name-is should be allowed and encouraged to construct a mosaic-like novel, but the capital-N Novel as we know it still necessitates some transparency of intent, lest we’re all just doomed to see this important form flounder in its ability to really impress and inspire people. No doubt, writing is fucking hard and it drives people insane. There are no shortcuts, I’ve found. Originality is a mystery to every artist, because it’s as real as, say, a lion right in front of you, but not everyone has the finesse required to tame it and (even harder) use it to your advantage. Become its master.

But how truly fascinating that our current artistic climate allows for such discussion and debate about a plagiarized novel.

I was curious to see how @AZEALIABANKS is doing on the live...

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 01:18:55 -0500

I was curious to see how @AZEALIABANKS is doing on the live performiez circuit, so I went a-youtubin’ to find out. I think it’s safe to say that Miz Banks will need to work on her performing chops. She is, after all, a new artist. But what does that even mean in terms of sheer ability to perform, i.e., get the job done and showcase yourself? (The lovable twats over at the Gawker comments board actually had an interesting discussion about the nature of an artist’s “readiness” - on a Lana Del Rey post, of course!)

I love Azealia. I’ve been following her rise ever since I was floored by “212” for the first time. She’s got incredible raw talent and such a contagious, real personality. A refreshing kind of artist who seems to really love what she does. I honestly don’t think this girl’s going to go away, but it will be a strange endeavor for her to focus on a style. But possibly not as strange an endeavor as having to lead off your career with live performances of a song like “212”. I think she blew up on the web because the track and video were so awesome, but it’s just not an ideal song for live performing. There’s no cool or interpretive layer that her live performance of that song peels away. But the good news is, her presence is mesmerizing in the stellar “212” video. So yeah, underwhelmed, but I’m rooting for my girl Azealia and I think she’s gonna turn it out.

When Peanut Butter is an Insult

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 01:16:54 -0500

I started this blog ages ago but never wrote in it, but I figured it’s a good time to start it up since this thing happened to me just now involving my gym, some free samples of peanut butter, a really trifling ass front desk person, and my recent stress-induced lack of sleep.

I noticed recently that my New York Sports Club has created a “marketing table” by the front entrance. Usually I whiz right past the enthusiastic salespeople with flyers about whatever they’re selling, or the free samples of (supposedly) health-related things. I was in full whiz-by mode when a strange non-employee who looked a bit like Bob Hoskins in a baseball cap and windbreaker beckoned me back with a “Psst! PSST! Take some free peanut butter!”

I turned around and said, “What?”

“Free peanut butter!” He motioned to the table where little packets were fanned out on display, looking like some birdseed or something.

“That doesn’t look like peanut butter,” I said and continued out the door. It didn’t look like peanut butter. Peanut butter comes in jars, but anyhow, for some reason I felt compelled to turn around and give the front desk guy a piece of my mind.

“Excuse me, I just want to let you know that I don’t appreciate being a target for third-party marketing when I pay $75 a month to belong to this club. I am a member for a while, and I thought a monthly fee could at least ensure that I get the ad-free experience.” I also made some kind of pop-up ad comparison. I don’t know. It pissed me off.

Dude looked completely puzzled. “We are just offering some free stuff to our members,” he said, among some other generic comments.

“That’s not offering me free stuff, that’s marketing to me.”

“Well, sorry for offering you free stuff.”

No: I’m sorry. Passive aggressive counterperson at the business that directly debits $75 per month out of my checking account = “Can I speak to a manager or supervisor, please?”

The manager comes out looking like she couldn’t give a shit if she tried. She was sweet, but I don’t think she really understood why I was going H.A.M. about a free sample of peanut butter. She explained that the corporate office just sends them stuff or sends salespeople over and they just comply with that. Makes sense, of course, so I began to sing the lyrics to the old song called “I Give Up, Corporate System (Do Me Harder)”: “I know it’s not your fault, you’re just doing your job.” So I ended the argument by focusing on the fact that counter boy needs to not take a passive aggressive approach with customers. And I left, shaking mad.

Why did I get so mad?

First of all, I can’t believe that we live in a time where no one can understand the logic that monthly payment should exempt me from receiving ads. Of course, we’ve let the cable companies do this to us for a long time as we sit through commercials despite paying sometimes hundreds of dollars a month for the service. It just isn’t right, and this peanut butter incident was a small-scale example. It should be noted that if Bob Hoskins weren’t loitering (is Bob Hoskins in cahoots with the peanut butter company?!) this probably wouldn’t have happened, because the little packets really wouldn’t have offended me by just their presence; It’s the soliciting that made me angry. Don’t you ever just feel like you want to scream? Like you just want everyone to stop trying to sell you shit? Like you’re no longer a real person, you’re just drowning in a mess of people trying to sell you shit you don’t want or need.

What also upset me was the sad old story of the NYSC staff’s complete alienation from the company they’re representing. My voice as a customer carries absolutely nowhere in this situation, because in order to attempt to reach someone who pretends to care, I’d have to submit something in writing to a distant corporate office. And they, the ones who deserve my anger, wouldn’t truly be receiving it because I’ve already wasted it on people who don’t really represent the actions of the company at all. (Although the inexcusable ‘tude of the counter boy was a separate issue.)

I’m also really bothered by the notion that I should be a happy customer because the nice corporate people are giving me free shit. As I wanted to yell at the manager, but of course didn’t: Free samples from third parties who supplied you with the samples for marketing purposes does not constitute a gift for which I should feel grateful!! Also, as I mentioned above, it wasn’t even real peanut butter! I would appreciate a free jar (even a mini jar, hotel-style!) but a condom-sized dollop of peanut butter is not a gift to me, it’s just the peanut butter company’s attempt to cheaply introduce me to their peanut butter. That don’t impress me much! (I mean, if you’re going to impose on another company’s customers, at least put on your freakum dress - every peanut butter’s got one!)

Now, I don’t have a problem with free samples in the proper context. On some level, I can appreciate the marketing efforts on part of the Bob Hoskins Peanut Butter Company, especially in a suffering economy. But please do not:

a) put some random product in front of a gym where folks are paying monthly membership fees to be able to routinely use the place as an errand, a part of their day. (The gym is not a health food store or an organic market or a local café.)

b) solicit me when I’m speeding to the exit to get on with my day.

c) insult me by suggesting that it’s a gift when I’ve been a member for almost two years and I’ve never seen any kind of appreciation for my loyalty.

Okay I forgot why I was writing this.