derrida: good for lunch, but better off dead

There was a time in my life when I wanted to make a t-shirt with Jacques Derrida's face on it and the words "Fuck you, Derrida!" But I think making him protect my peanut butter and honey sandwiches is a way more fitting task for the deceased man's image. Its says: "Do not eat my cookies or the ghost of Jacque Derrida will haunt you!"

Interestingly, the source of this image is the archives of a Catholic blog, Times Against Humanity (charming play on words, eh?), from a post on the occassion of Derrida's death in October 2004. And guess what? These Catholics apparently really hate Derrida. Or at least his ideas. Quoting an article by James Heartfield, the entry sums up its distate for Derrida thusly:

Thus, we conclude with Heartfield:

There is little doubt that Derrida was an erudite and learned philosopher, but his erudition was bent towards a destructive aim. In him the unreason of the age found its cunning articulator. The pernicious influence of Derrida's philosophy, underpinned by the confusion of the times, persists after his death.

May it, unlike its creator, be buried forever.

In the terms of this blog's interpretation of Catholocism, apparently Derrida's thinking is bad because logocentrism is good. Because, like, destroying language is destroying stuff. And that's bad. Like masturbation.

But I guess I won't have to worry about any hardcore Catholics stealing shit from that lunchbox.

woman, knit me a sweater!

A couple days ago I heard a story on BBC World Service about a new law soon to be introduced in Spain that will require men to do 50% of household chores and family care. As strongly as I generally feel about gender inequality, the concept of legally requiring an equal distribution of household labor leaves me a bit perplexed. Certainly, statistics show Spanish society is still has entrenched cultural ideas enforcing gender inequality, where a study showed Spanish fathers spent an average of 13 minutes a day looking after their children. Anecdotally, one woman interviewed by the BBC said her husband refused to iron his own shirts (and it seems she actually puts up with it). I imagine this happens in the U.S. also, but I prefer to let my mind imagine happy things, like a world full of puppies and mango-chile popsicles.

Part of me wants to tell the women of Spain to get some balls and learn to tell any man that refuses to iron his own shirt to fuck off. Personally, I don't want a law to take away the sort of satisfaction that comes from standing up to your garden variety sexist pig or unassuming misogynist.

Then, the part of me that likes to take things to their logical/absurd extent wants even more laws like this to appear, like a law that requires men to give their wives as many orgasms as they get.

This law also brings up a sort of vague notion I've had for some time that although Western Europe is, generally, more politically and socially liberal than the U.S., cultural gender inequality remains prevalent. Never having spent any significant amount of time in Europe or having done research on the topic, I can't say I know much about continental sexism. Smoking trends in Spain are one interesting indication, however. I first heard about this when a female college classmate from Spain bemoaned the increase in smoking among Spanish women and attributed it to a strong, prevailing cultural attitude that smoking is sexy. This article says smoking among Spanish women has double over the last twenty-five years, whereas smoking among Spanish men has actually decreased 24%.

large and absurd project!

club detail, grayscale w/ "stained glass"
Originally uploaded by elsacapuntas.

As previously mentioned, Asshat Of All Asshats, aka our landlord/owner of the house I live in, wants his house back and is making my housemates and I leave at the end of July. After a couple weeks of housing-search stress, I have signed a lease on a place only a few blocks from where I'm living now.

One web site I stumbled upon while searching for advice on making a couch slipcover suggested creating a "focal point" for a boxy room, like the rooms in most houses built between 1920 and 1950 in this country, before the rectangle was discovered. This is the sort of place I will be moving into.

Thus, I have undertaken the task of creating a "focal point." My "focal point" is to be a large piece of wall art based on a Slovenian beehive painting (a type of traditional folk art from Slovenia, the homeland of the maternal side of my family) of two women jousting on cows with a club and a pitchfork.



I'm not sure what the story is behind this, but it seems like everyday Slovenian fun to me.

The first steps involved using Photoshop and time I should have been doing work at work enlarging the image to 60"x32" and converting it to grayscale and applying the "stained glass" photoshop filter (I really wanted to make it look like a dot matrix, but I couldn't figure out how and got impatient, choosing the stained glass thing as the closest approximation). Since it's unlikely printing an image that size will be easy or cheap, I divided the big image into a grid of 24 10"x8" rectangles and saved them as separate files. So, I can print out 24 sheets of normal sized paper. Easy and cheap!

This is where things get a little fuzzy. In the end I want to somehow make the picture colorful and adhere it to a large piece of lightweight wood or wood product, then shellac it or decoupage it or otherwise make it so liquids that may be tossed at eye-level will not instantly ruin it. Ah, and I don't particularly have any painting skills or experience with any of this. Only an assumption that my innate craftiness will yield a satisfactory final product.

Stay tuned for updates on progress, or the lack thereof. Hopefully this will go much better than my recent attempts at carving boobs into a potato (note to anyone attempting this in the future: the nipples break very easily).

'seven samurai' vs. 'magnificent seven'

Last night, as part of the Father's Day festivities I participated in with my dear Dadoo, we watched Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" (awesome thing #22 about Dadoo: love of Japanese samurai movies). I've seen it before, but that was a few years ago and I remember having trouble getting through the full three and a half hour lenght of it. This time, however, I thoroughly enjoyed every minute. I need not waste your time elaborating on the wonderousness of Akira Kurosawa. But I was really struck this time in how "Seven Samurai" is far better than it's American re-make, "The Magnificent Seven." Now this may seem obvious, but "The Magnificent Seven" isn't a bad piece of 1960's Technicolor Hollywood output - I mean, Yul Brynner, Steven McQueen, and Charles Bronson together in a cowboy movie is enough for me.

A few reasons "Seven Samurai" is way better:
- In "Magnificent Seven" the battle lasts, oh, fifteen minutes or so. You know, "Let's show some fake-looking shooting with as little blood as possible and make sure we finish up before the womenfolk start fainting on us." "Seven Samurai"'s lasts three days or so, ending in the final battle with the farmers and bandits slogging around in torrential rain.
-Kyuzo, aka the Bad Motherfucker. Kyuzo, quiet, somber, physically unimposing, but "dedicated only to improving his skill" and ready to kick the shit out of anyone in three seconds, is the fucking shit. No character in "Magnificent Seven" comes close.
-Kikuchiyo and Shino rolling around in the hay. The obnoxious 16-year-old and the whiny mexican chick are about as real as a plastic wedding-cake topper.
-People die, and it sucks. Every death of a major good-guy character in "Magnificent Seven" is somehow twisted so that you're hit over the head with the thought that the character is much better off dying. Like, "Oh, how nice, he has a little Mexican boy to cry over his grave. If I had a little Mexican boy whose pure stupidity caused my death, but who also promised to cry over my grave, why, I'd pray for death right now!"
-The song-coordinated rice planting. Strangely similar to the Electric Slide...
-Granny taking out the first bandit with a pitchfork. Even the most noble of the samurai won't stand in the way of an elderly lady seeking revenge with a dull gardening tool.

Sort of a side note is the sheer amount of agonized wailing that occurs in "Seven Samurai." I'd like to edit together all of the melodramatic screams into a fun little film.

sea creatures make elsa happy

This weekend myself and Companion took advantage of one of Southern Private University's benefits, the Un-Holiday of Your Choice. Last Friday was selected as Un-Holiday, and off the the beach we went. On recommendation from my Boss Hoss we headed past the touristy beaches to seek out Fort Fisher State Recreation Area, a lovely natural beach with dunes, weathered live oaks, a reasonably-priced snack bar (with "the best deal on a bottle of water," said the security guard), and an on-site aquarium. Another great thing about Fort Fisher is it seems to be an enclave of diversity in the blindingly white beach area. You know, the kind of white that fits confederate flags onto every possible item of beach parephenalia, including flip-flops and sunglasses.

Anyone who prefers seeing dunes and open sky to hotels and million-dollar beachhouses from their beach blanket should definitely check out this beach, arguably the closest lovely beach habitat to Small Southern City. And if you're a once-would-be student of environmental policy as I am, you can have the knowledge that you're sitting on a beach that is actually likely to exist in twenty years, since beaches without the dunes, grasses and tress that extend beyond the sandcastle building area don't have the ability to replenish themselves naturally.

However, you will not be able to resist a fit of highly American consumerist behavior at the aquarium gift shop after seeing the amazingly wonderful creatures on display. All of the aquarium visitors seemed to be under the same money-spending spell, compulsively grabbing the extraordinarily cute stuffed animals of snapping turtles and octopi (I am now the proud owner of a fuzzy pink squid named Fred) and other animal emblemed products. All of the gift shop money supports the aquarium, so it's as close to feeling good about compulsive spending as you can probably get. One of the funniest things is that many of the items in the shop featured animals that you couldn't see at the aquarium (which features creatures from the region's aquatic habitats). I put together a gift package for my sister including a candy tube with plastic giggling dolphin cap, highly adorable sea otter socks, and a colorful little plastic poison dart frog - none of which can actually be seen on exhibit.