Japanese Alice First Release: PACIFIC BLUSH!

Stop Press! Cancel Flights!
Call in Sick! Fluff the Pillow!
Drain the Tub!
Roll Your Socks Together!




YES!! It's the inaugural release from Japanese Alice, the tiny virtual label of Matt and I. And, BOY! It's a killer. Please go there and check it out, download and rock this awesome wave that will have your cheeks turning red across the Atlantic.

Really, it's a wonderful album.

Floating World, Floating Uterus

The idea of a floating uterus, a wandering womb, goes back to Egypt. Even the supposed great thinking Plato wrote about it, it could even kill.



Ukiyo-e print via noisedup

5. hysteria

once termed to be a disorder of only women (thus the root words being hyster, as it was originally thought that the uterus was a free floating object in a woman's body, and when lost would cause her to be hysterical), the original cure was for the doctor to masturbate the woman.

via urbandictionary.

Thus also the term 'hysterectomy'. Why hasn't that been renamed? Answer: lack of medical naming activism.

See also the short film 'Hysterica & the Wandering Womb...'

bluebird's box iii

WOOL 100%

Lesson: アミナオシ (knit-again)

Screen via Mai Tominaga's Wool 100%

It's true/µuo

by GU! (via ponyXpress - specifically here)

bluebird's box 2

bluebird box

Faye Wong (王菲) Plist

picture via here

"I'm lazy, only manage to jog for 2 days. I smoke, an act of damaging health. I'm a straightforward person, therefore offending someone becomes part of everyday life. I love to throw my temper around, not knowing how to control them. I'm an impatient person; especially to things that does not interest me. I'm confident yet feel inferior, very contradicting. Facing my fans, I'll feel embarrass. I'm not motivated, always thinking of holidays. I'm not an obedient person, even my mum can't change this fact. I'm not an idol, please don't treat me as one. Thanks to all who loves me. Hope that I'll reach my definition of perfection one day; you'll still be proud of me."

- Faye Wong as quoted on a l l a b o u t f a y e (wongfaye.org)

from Chungking Express (1994) via CinemaSounds

off the hook 2

Q: Anything interesting out there?
A: The Spiral Jetty.




As is probably obvious by now, I quite like the band Destroyer, especially their song 'what road' off the Your Blues album, a quote from which I used to open my expository essay: 'How To Lose Shin'. Anyway, there's a line in the song, in the verse after the one I quoted in that essay, that I found myself singing, but not really knowing what I was saying. Destroyer's songs often reference many things with an emphasis on women (or simply female characters), other songs (including other Destroyer songs), cities and so on. Dan Bejar, who simply burned a golden bridge, has his own metaphorical vocabulary as well that he's developed over the course of seven or so album. His lyrics have been referred to as hyper-literate. The lines I found myself singing were,

Able, willing, ready!
Fuck the Spiral Jetty!
Tonight we work large! We aim high! Pillars stare at a sky
Designed to come down upon
Everyone at once...

The piece which seemed to evoke a space that I couldn't specifically visualize was in the second line, spiral jetty. I know what a jetty is but wasn't quite sure if this was a metaphor, or what. So one night while browsing the Destroyer wiki I found that exact phrase hyperlinked in the lyrics (as anything referential is apt to be) and clicked it. It turned out that the Spiral Jetty is a land art sculpture by the artist Robert Smithson which is an actual spiral jetty off the shore and into the Great Salt Lake. It was completed in 1970.

Whether Dan Bejar is really saying fuck that piece of art, as in let's not be weighed down by this or let it rot, or not, is delightfully up for debate. However, I was thinking he meant it like to hell with it, while at the same time conversely drawing attention to it.

I clicked on and read the article on the Spiral Jetty at Wikipedia, where I saw two photos of the work and was frankly wowed by this thing. It's exactly what it sounds like, a plane curve tracing a point to its center. It's gorgeous, amazing, inspiring, and other hyperbolic terms – however in this case those words are pretty much right on the money. Or were at the time. Smithson died three years after the work was finished, and shortly thereafter the water levels rose and the piece was covered until 1999. It's expected that the work will go back under and eventually be ruined unless it's preserved. Currently it's owned by some art gallery in New York. I'm not sure if it's open to the public, though apparently you can walk to a location where the jetty is visible from. I hope I can go see it before it becomes more of an underwater adventure, and hopefully run out and walk to it's center.

I'm sure it'll be something, because, god, it's sublime. Will I say, fuck you? Probably. It will be at least half meant endearingly. To respond to the lyrics, well I think they're great. Inspiring, even vaguely revolutionary in a fatalistic socialist way or whatever. Fuck that, the lyrics are poetic, political only in envisioning some cloud like dream where we rise up. Maybe it's a scene from a play. Or god, what do I know?

For more: What Road and Smithson's Spiral Jetty

Athena Nike Adjusting Her Sandal

Athena Nike Adjusting Her Sandal, marble relief from the Temple of Athena Nike, Acropolis, Athens (now destroyed). 410-470 BCE. 1.07 m. Acropolis Museum, Athens.

One of my favorite pieces of erotic art. Intelligence, independent action, the beauty of her body, look at her feet. Her legs, her breasts, her fingers, her shoulder as the drapery falls.

Zombie Joke

"Me hungry long time."

via Matt from scratchdilemma while watching Night Of the Living Dead

Louis Wain's "Cat in the Flowers"

'I've bided my time for many a day
And passed by many fine cats
But the finest of all, the one I love the most
Is elsewhere worrying about rats.'

As quoted in Louis Wain's Edwardian Cats

picture via Catland

St. Teresa of Ávila

St Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) as a Young Woman (detail) by François Gerard (1827) via earlywomenmasters.


"1. What I shall now speak of was, I believe, the beginning of great harm to me. I often think how wrong it is of parents not to be very careful that their children should always, and in every way, see only that which is good; for though my mother was, as I have just said, so good herself, nevertheless I, when I came to the use of reason, did not derive so much good from her as I ought to have done--almost none at all; and the evil I learned did me much harm. She was very fond of books of chivalry; but this pastime did not hurt her so much as it hurt me, because she never wasted her time on them; only we, her children, were left at liberty to read them; and perhaps she did this to distract her thoughts from her great sufferings, and occupy her children, that they might not go astray in other ways. It annoyed my father so much, that we had to be careful he never saw us. I contracted a habit of reading these books; and this little fault which I observed in my mother was the beginning of lukewarmness in my good desires, and the occasion of my falling away in other respects. I thought there was no harm in it when I wasted many hours night and day in so vain an occupation, even when I kept it a secret from my father. So completely was I mastered by this passion, that I thought I could never be happy without a new book."

From The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus, by Teresa of Avila (here)