¶ vacuum

why is the universal dramatic recreation for an old woman’s death

a close-up of a hand clutching a tissue, and then dropping it?

just finished reading ‘girlfriend in a coma’ by douglas coupland, the canadas relatively unsung answer chuck palahnawrotefightclub in both scope and direct line into pop and everyday drudgery. and quite canadianly tamer in subject matter (though the first book i read of his had to do with harvesting brains for drug production and finally cannibalistic consumption, and this one teemed with ‘Leakers’ bodies left to rot until they earned their namesake), and heavy with the morale-at-the-end-of-the-storys. fuck it i like him. 

the chapter titles read like barbara kruger postcards or jenny holzer projections and i thought to record them here separately for posterity:

PART1

• ALL IDEAS ARE TRUE.
• EVERY IDEA IN THE WORLD IS WRONG
• IF IT SLEEPS IT’S ALIVE
• IT’S ALL FAKE
• NO SEX NO MONEY NO FREE WILL
• LONELINESS IS FUN
• THINKING ABOUT THE FUTURE MEANS YOU WANT SOMETHING
• EARTHLY SADNESS
• EVEN MORE REAL THAN YOU
• ONE DAY YOU WILL SPEAK WITH YOURSELF
• DESTINY IS CORNY
• THE FUTURE IS MORE EXTREME THAN YOU THINK
• REJECT EVERY IDEA
• IN THE FUTURE EVERYTHING WILL COST MONEY

PART2

• NO IMPERIAL CHILDREN
• THE FUTURE AND THE AFTERLIFE ARE DIFFERENT THINGS ALTOGETHER
• EVERYBODY’S LYING
• EXTREME BODY FAILURE
• DREAMING EVEN THOUGH YOU’RE WIDE AWAKE
• …AND AFTER AMERICA?
• YOUR DREAMS OF WAR WILL ALARM YOU
• NATION OR ANT COLONY?
• STEEL MINK BEEF MUSIC
• THE PAST IS A BAD IDEA
• 2000 IS SILLY
• PROGRESS IS OVER

PART3

• FUN IS STUPID
• THE FUTURE IS FAKE
• INFINITY IS ARTIFICIAL
• EVERYTHING IS BRAND NEW
• ONE IDEA WILL WIN
• SUPER POWER
• YOUR MESSAGE HERE
• STOP BREATHING
• 3 2 1 ZERO
• THE END

In no conclusion whatsoever, hes one of those cats that just has good flow, though in this particular tome he made more things metaphorically giggle than seemed tasteful but thats just me not liking using the same word twice when you dont have to. if youre going to read one of his books, read this one, or generation A, or read any of them. hes like a time-tested diner pretty much where you dont have to tell your trepidatious white friend ‘whats good’ because whatever theyre gonna get even if you havent had it you know they just do shit right. so there. maybe more than half of them are jeremiads- a word which i learned from the back cover, which wikipedia amusingly defines as: 

a long literary work in which the author bitterly laments the state of society and its morals in a serious tone of sustained invective, and always contains a prophecy of society’s imminent downfall.

-and all of them are entertaining! so there. 

and for everyone who will never read any of his books.. this should be out in you anyway:

“If human beings had suddenly vanished a thousand years ago, the planet would have healed overnight with no damage. Maybe a few lumps where the pyramids stand. One hundred years ago -or even fifty years ago- the world would have healed itself just fine in the absence of people. But not now. We crossed the line. The only thing that can keep the planet turning smoothly now is human free will forged into effort. Nothing else. That’s why the world has seemed so large in the past few years, and time so screwy. It’s because the Earth is totally ours.”

re: that quote i put down at the end of my last post. to have credited would have been too embarassing, too look at me trying to shake a tailfeather or whatever, if i was a dude, the kind of dude who wore cuffed green pants, or talked about thinking about growing a moustache, i most surely would have done it right then and there, but im not. but i will say its the last line of the shortest thing the most famous guy for writing the longest books ever wrote. so if we know it, lets pat our backs, and break our arms doing so.

impossible-tokyo:

新宿BEAMSは６Fにある”B GALLERY“。

昨日まで開催されていた森山大道さんの写真展『PAPERBACK’S／DAIDO MORIYAMA』にぎりぎり駆け込む。

多くの人の手に届きやすいようにと、森山さんが精力的に出版しているペーパーパック写真集の掲載カットをもとに制作したポスターサイズのシルクスクリーン作品を中心に、今回もまたひと味もふた味も深い展示内容。

壁一面に貼られた森山さんの作品は、なんと写真集を出版する際のゲラ。

MORE DAIDO THAN YOU CAN SHAKE A STICK AT AFTER THE JUMP

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barry mcgees dead wife was not that good.