Some shitty poetry

An Ode to Beardsley

The Death of Arthur
Your earliest work
And one of your most mainstream
And yet, there are still elements that will come later:
Claustrophobic forests,
Frail, androgynous men,
Women, powerful columns of black,
And that skewed japonisme perspective
That would become more obvious
As you tired of the project.

Salome
Your masterwork
“The ascetic heart of early Christianity
Beats against the sensual throb of Paganism.”
Men and women swathed in Orientalist robes,
Gender indeterminable,
Floating in deserts of blank white sand
As the woman in the moon gazes down
Upon the vengeful princess
Demanding the head of John the Baptist
And kissing his warm, dead lips.
Your perversity was at its absolute height,
Hidden in the technique of your drawings
And that veil makes it that much more grotesque.

The Yellow Book
Women, free from the confines of men
Read
And walk
(Alone
At night)
And love each other
And dress themselves before mirrors
Lit by gaslight lamps.
The implication is clear
And the audience was appalled.

The Savoy
Your most irreverent
Trading the blocks of black and white
For textures of all kinds:
Dotted,
Striped,
Strands of hair,
All suggesting the world of the fin de siecle
Married to the decadence of Versailles,
Of an antiquated Greece that never existed.

The Rape of the Lock
Your contemporary masterpiece,
Of the most delicate of embroidering
And focus not the exploits
Of the Baron's foolish love,
But on the beautiful garden
And muted expressions
And the dresses (in a show of your
Disdain for reality) of a style at least
Fifty years after the poem's writing.

Lysistrata
Your glorious return to Japanese influence
Gauzy lingerie and coiffed hair of Versailles
And swollen elephantine penises of Shunga
Even here, the women do not need the men:
One rips off her dress
And the
Eyes
Travel
Down
The embroidering.

Volpone
Your last project
A move towards neo-classical beauty
Rather than the impudent women of your past.
Light wash on your drawings
Giving them a fuzzy look and perspective.
The blurred visions an unfortunate coincidence
With your death.

Love is the Drug

I think it's truly unfortunate that this music video makes me think of this.

Ye Olde Fashion

If you haven't checked out Ye Olde Fashion, you need to fill that void in your soul right now. After all, anything that regularly features this:

...can't be all bad, can it?

Beautiful things and ugly things

Ugly things: your sister's Newfie taking a wet dump and getting the shit stuck on his ass fur.

Beautiful things: Guo Jingming, Chinese author who writes predominantly YA lit. I'm sure he has plenty of fangirls. If there were an author in America who looked like him, the Twilight fans would have a collective coronary.

Turn it Up

I don't even know.

Oscar De La Renta Resort 2011

If I were a skinny 5'10'' woman, I would totally wear this to the beach. It's from a resort season collection, so that means it's viable sand-water-and-sun wear.

Windows scare me

I know. Not very rational. But there's something unsettling about windows that are a good two feet above the ground. When you're outside, it's no big deal. But when you're inside, you can't tell if someone is crouching beneath the sill, waiting for the best opportunity to come out and shank you to death with a stick.

Many Moons

This week's musician: the incomparable Janelle Monae. I wasn't sold on this song when first heard it, but like Stockholm Syndrome, I fell in love with it after a few more listens. Besides, how could I not love the mildly fucked up music video: a fashion show with androids being sold to the highest bidder. Pretty unsubtle symbolism there.

Tengo libros

For an English major, particularly one of the literary studies kind, I don't read much. I argue that's because I have to pour over books for serious business--why would I want to read in my free time? Now that it's summer, I figure I'll want to catch up on some reading. So here's my summer reading list:

Frankenstein: this is for an internship in the coming semester. I've already read the damn thing twice, so I'll mostly be skimming for a quick refresh and gawking at how gay Henry Clerval and Robert Walton are for Victor Frankenstein.

The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China: the complete collection of stories (each about ten pages in length except for the novella The Real Story of Ah-Q) by Lu Xun, one of China's leading writers. Since they're short, I can read a few a day, but the real reason I got it is to infuse myself in the stagnant, decaying atmosphere of late-Qing China. I have no excuse to not get through this by the end of the summer.

Spring Snow: 1912 Japan, the rising middle class, and misery. Asking me to not read this is like asking me not to breathe.

I Am a Cat: satire of early 20th century Japanese society. Again, how could I not read this?

Only the Ring Finger Knows: pure, unadulterated trash. After reading a few pages, I started craving McDonalds and Dancing With the Stars.

To the negative four people reading this blog: got anything you plan to read this summer?

Unspoken

My sisters and I went to the funeral today.

It was for their mother and their grandmother. I'd never really been told about my dad's first wife, their mother. I gleaned a few things from comments they made: that she and dad were introduced through high school friends; that she was a very modern lady; that she passed away from illness.

When I was younger, I had a bit of a crisis. If my mother wasn't their mother, that made her the wicked step mother (for, let's be honest, how many kids haven't at least heard of that particular fairy tale trope?). My mother didn't really fit the mold: she wasn't a cackling witch, she wasn't vain, and she couldn't be cruel to my sisters even if she tried (at least part of that is because my mom is far from imposing).

When I was helping my older sister clean some stuff out a year or so ago, she told me that in a fit of postpartum depression, my mom told my dad to burn all pictures of his first wife. My sister hadn't found out until almost twenty years later. She had saved one picture.

I never really pry into my dad's past. He tells me what he does, but I just try not to bring up his first wife. Part of me fears that, even over twenty years after her death, he might still mourn her, might love me and my mom a little less.

She died at 32, in 1986. I was born in 1989. He remarried not even three years later.

I wonder how my sisters felt about that. They never do call my mom "mom." She's always "J" or "your mom."

Today we went to the graveyard after walking the dogs at the beach. My oldest sister had gone inside the flower show and my older sister was trying to balance the bag of McDonald's and keep Paddington, her Newfie, from barking at people.

"How did your mom pass away?" I asked.

"She committed suicide."

"Oh."

"Yeah. It was a chemical imbalance in the brain. She had medication, but she wasn't taking it--SHH!" She turned back to shush Paddington.

So that was the illness my dad was talking about.

I think I won't pry into my family's past anymore.

Givenchy Autumn-Winter 1997 Haute Couture

I'm a relatively new fan of the late Alexander McQueen, not having noticed him until his Autumn-Winter 2009 collection. As a result, I don't know very much about McQueen before the 2000s, when the internet made storing and recording images and videos that much easier. So it was a real treat for me to find a full (barring some skips) recording of one of his early shows with Givenchy, and an haute couture show at that!

The show and its history very clearly appeal to my sensibilities:

"...combined the late Victorian costumes... with a series of animated skeletons and muscle men from the sixteenth-century anatomical plates of Andrea Vesalius... the cut of some of the dresses in the collection was influenced by the figures from these anatomical plates in which the skeletons appear to 'vogue' or model their own bodies. The concept behind the show... a fin-de-siècle surgeon and collector who travelled the world collecting exotic objects, textiles, and women, whom he subsequently cut up and reassembled in his laboratory. The 'scenario' of the catwalk show staged the return of these gruesomely murdered women who came back to haunt the living" (Fashion at the edge: spectacle, modernity and deathliness 154).

The show undoubtedly has a late 19th-Century Decadent bent, with its references to prostitution, conflation of death and sexuality, the rampant exoticism and Orientalism, the styling of the women as the dangerously confident and sexual femme fatale. But most of all, it's just pretty. Not so sure about the drag queen hair, though.

Cynophobia

I'm staying with my older sister for the next few weeks; the reason being that she wants me to keep her dogs company while she works from 9 to 7 and because she wants to give dad a break from having to clean up dog hair.

I don't particularly care for dogs. I think they're repulsive creatures, all slobber and fangs and fur and feces. No, I should amend that statement. I don't mind dogs when they're not mine and they're not close to me.

My ideal dog, really, is Jessie; Jessie is my oldest sister's Shih Tzu and he acts nothing like a dog. He's quiet, he doesn't run around much, he doesn't move in the car or stick his head out the window, his mouth isn't big enough to make much drool, he doesn't try to come near me, and he leaves me alone when I'm eating.

All these admirable qualities are completely lacking in my older sister's three dogs. Between the three of them is a combination of everything I hate about dogs: Forrest always thinks I'm going to feed him; Daisy is hyperactive and improperly socialized; and Paddington is a monstrous Newfie, only two years old, barely disciplined and strong.

But then, I suppose I'll be fine. Even if it took me years to finally muster up the courage and strength to push down my gag reflex, I did finally manage to pick up one of Paddington's monster turds. If nothing else, it's fun to watch Forrest think I'm going to feed him.

Music Monday

In an effort to keep this blog afloat, I think I'll try to have at least a few days a week devoted to something. So Mondays will be for music videos or just music I enjoy listening to.

Today we have Jasmine. She's pretty recent on the J-pop scene, having debuted in mid 2009 and released five singles since. No album yet. Probably for the best since I've only enjoyed one of her songs so far. That song is Jealous, a catchy RB tune about a girl telling a guy not to talk about his girlfriend. This video is a pretty good intro to the inside of my head: impractical clothes, shoes, and headpieces, infidelity, and a focus on women in a very George Cukor's The Women way, i.e. men are still the focus, just off-screen.

All the cool kids are doing it.

Way back when I was young (which would make this long before I very suddenly bloated past the 180 lb mark) I had a blog. I abandoned it because my life really isn't all that interesting. But because I exist to make people unhappy (and because, as the title says, everyone else has started a blog), I decided to start another internet diary. Here's what you can expect:

Updates whenever I damn feel like it.

As little politicking as possible. I, unlike some of my peers, was raised properly to not question the dominant culture and structures of oppression. That and I do not trust myself to have very well formed opinions.

Mostly pictures and videos. Probably of fashion and other types of fabulosity. From other people's blogs and websites (I'll credit as often as I can).

If I really hate myself and you all, some of my writing.

That really is all. If you decide that you're actually interested in reading this thing, I hope you enjoy yourself.