The best way to f*** yourself over would be to entertain the f***ing labels.

When I was a freshman, my first class was 5 hours long. At least it was supposed to be 5 hours long. It was also supposed to start at 8 am, but nope, the teacher didn’t show up ’til 10:30. 

We were given one handout, possibly from the f***ing 80’s, about design principles, which she “lectured on” by reading aloud. It was barely even a handout, it was a fucking chart. A. F**king. Chart. Which she read aloud, not seeming to realize that, being a chart, it was meant to be understood just by looking at it.

“Vertical, upright lines are masculine. Horizontal lines are feminine. Angular zigzags are aggressive and male. Wavy lines are docile and female.” 

Those words escaped her lips, with little explanation, accompanied only by nightmarish visions in my head of having queued up for hours, taken “talent” tests, and left behind the library that introduced me to John Berger, only to have this woman talk at me in this new fucking course. This. F*cking. Course. There may be valid reasons people say that “Those who can’t do, teach.” And this woman here was all of those valid reasons. All of them. 

Another thought was, “Maybe I should’ve taken the entrance exam for Film (my other choice)…Why did I forget to take the entrance exam for Film?”

Yet another thought was, “Holy shit. I am going to teach the fuck out of this course.”

When I’m done complaining.

I’ve always been aware of how much complaining and shit-talking I do. (A lot.) I’ve also been told that it’s not cool to complain because it gets you nowhere, etc. real women don’t complain, blahblahblah. Bullshit. People complain all the time. Women complain not because they’re women or they’re whiny or they can’t get shit done, but because they’re human inhabitants of the same green earth. And it’s perfectly valid to expect the same out of both, and who the fUCk are you to tell me that I can’t stand upright or have sharp, jagged edges poking out of every side or be one thing and be another as well?” Also, if I don’t teach the shit out of this course, it will be because people like you are still here.

So there, thankfully she no longer is, and I now have a job teaching the shit out of this course. Without all the cussing. At least not in class.

Julia Fullerton-Batten for Status

I write on occasion for Status magazine and this is a proof of the article I did on fine art photographer Julia Fullerton-Batten. It may or may not have already come out, but it’s become clear to me that I have trouble turning down opportunities to write about people of whom I am a fan. I have trouble turning down opportunities to write, period.

This is her work. Article after the jump.

Notes on Battalia Royale

When I was around 15 or 16, I had a friend who was obsessed with (what were then) obscure movies. This was before anyone I knew had their shit figured out over torrents and free access to “culture”, or piracy, whatever you wanted to call it. This friend had a pretty extensive film collection, and an obsession with Takashi Miike, and everything else in the genre of jaded Japanese men fetishizing violence and framing it within overtly-simplistic social situations, in the hopes of getting a better look at the complexity of human relationships–especially within the context of highly-advanced post-industrial Japan. None of it ever sat well with me, but I can’t say these weren’t memorable films. Most of them, at least. I remember Battle Royale being one of the movies we saw together. The thing is I don’t remember Battle Royale at all.

Book a Ticket and Just Leave

via scribnerbooks:

how about it, yeah?

Why the fuck not?

When I was in college, I managed to save up just enough to buy a tiny second-hand VW. And then I didn’t. And then I spent on traveling instead, came home every time with just enough resources and energy to recover for another ticket. My family’s well off, but not so rich that we don’t have to pool our resources from time to time to make ends meet. After everything, we’re left to deal with ourselves as individuals, and rather than deal with bitterness or fear alone, I figured at a certain age that I would rather deal with it broke and ridiculously happy in a city where no one knows me. I don’t know how to maintain a car anyway. Scratch that, I do, but I’m not going to use spending on a car as an excuse for missing out on what I like doing.

There is no such thing here as “I’m planning to…” or “When the universe conspires…” because when “now” arrives (now being a cheap ticket) just book a date and find a cat sitter. If you think about it, the ticket just buys you the flight, and you can sleep through that, which means the most expensive part of of the journey is not necessarily the most significant.