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Mermaids
When I was little, I loved mermaids. I loved the illustrations in my book of Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales. I drew pictures of mermaids over and over, draping them in strings of pearls.
Now that I’m addicted to tumblr, I’ve discovered that mermaids are more popular than almost any other image. A mermaid also encompasses two hugely popular tumblr subjects: Tits, and women submerged in water. While tits need no explanation, the drowning women are disturbing. Paintings of Ophelia tend to be lovely and melancholy, but depictions of modern women floating under water or laying dead in bathtubs are reminders that people like to see women in jeopardy (if not actually dead.)
Mermaids are always beautiful and young, so that aspect of their attraction is obvious. In mythology and folklore, Mermaids are sirens who lure sailors to their death. Do men find this danger seductive?
More important, mermaids have no genitals. Do men love them because of this or in spite of it? Does it relieve them of performance anxiety? I’m convinced that the anatomy issue is key somehow.
For me as a child, The Little Mermaid was a beautiful fantasy of a daughter who was loved by her family and showered with jewels. I didn’t really understand why she would leave her home. I wanted a home filled with love and warmth. I didn’t feel good about her deal with the sea witch. The prince seemed kind of dimwitted not to recognize her or to intuit her love for him.
Later on, I remember reading The Little Mermaid to little Max, at bedtime. The book I read to him was an old unabridged translation of the original Hans Christian Anderson stories. It probably took several nights to get to the end, and I was so engrossed in the story that I forgot what was coming. I choked up with tears and tried to think of a way to spare Max the tragic last paragraph: The Little Mermaid threw herself overboard and turned into seafoam, comforted by some angelic sprites who asked her to join them. I think I made something up but I can’t ask Max.
Why do we love a story where the heroine sacrifices everything for love, even suffering constant excruciating pain, and ends up getting nothing but death? Until Disney changed the ending and turned a classic tragedy into a sappy feel-good product to sell other products, it was, for me, an inexplicably melancholy story. It punishes a girl who seeks adventure and romance, so what else makes it such an enduring favorite?
Theories, memories, insults, anyone?
A Big Rock and a Bunch of Idiots
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has acquired, in its wisdom, a 340 ton granite boulder that will form the centerpiece of Michael Heizer‘s massive outdoor sculpture, “Levitated Mass.”
LACMA director Michael Govan points out that the huge rock is “only part of the sculpture,” which requires the construction of a subterranean slot upon which steel rails will support the rock, I mean the sculpture.
“The largest part of the sculpture is the negative space, the channel in the landscape,” he says. “It has its own independent sculptural presence. The marriage of these two forms comprises the sculpture.”
When was the last time you got to hear the term “negative space” used without facetiousness?
Anyway, the logistics of moving this huge rock are a nightmare. A company that moves “extreme objects” has been hired to figure out how to do it. Some utility lines, street lights and stop lights will have to be taken down by the local area’s utility companies as the boulder passes through crowded urban areas, and the route the rock will take can’t be confirmed until permits are cleared.
At a cost of somewhere between $5 and $10 million dollars, this is a coup for LACMA. Michael Heizer, the artist, is best known for “Double Negative,” the 1,500-foot-long land sculpture he cut into a desert mesa in a remote section of southern Nevada.
Breathtaking, isn’t it? To quote Heizer: “There is nothing there, yet it is still a sculpture.” So true.
As we ponder the meaning of art, the suffering of Sisyphus, and the value of ten million dollars, let us not forget that people are idiots.
More is Less
Rag and Bone Moto Pants with Removable Kilt, $695 at shopbop*
“It’s called ‘moto’ because _________________.”
~
*Only 2 let!
All New Houseboys
This is Dimitri Alexandrou. Some of you prefer more rugged, masculine houseboys, so help yourself to the new candidates.
Here’s a hunk of tattooed burning love. Don’t know his name, don’t care. He’ll need to keep his hands off my earrings.
Sylvain Norget looks like he means business. I can imagine him with a vacuum cleaner. I like it.
Daniel is a model and not really my type. But when I look into his eyes, I see him serving drinks and fluffing pillows.
What about this guy? Long hair to play with but enough manly pride to fold laundry with military precision.
Shah Rukh Khan is an Indian movie star ( I think) but I would like to see him lounging around after washing my hair.
I can’t resist a man in a dress. This may actually be my ideal houseboy. He doesn’t look judgemental: a plus!
Houseboy Sasha Marini is kind of sickening on the one hand, yet one might enjoy a scuffle with him as you try to get him to shave. I don’t know. Your call.
Now we’re talking. Francis Lane is the exact combination of youth and androgynous beauty that my house needs. I’d like to see him wearing embroidered satin slippers as he sweeps away the dog hair. I would even get him a feather duster!
Let me know if you found anything you like.
Christians, Curses, and Cannibals
Meet Cindy Jacobs, a self-proclaimed prophet and right-wing supporter of fellow moron Gov. Rick Perry.
Watch her explain how Rick Perry’s Jesuspalooza broke the curse of “Native American Cannibals.”
Cindy and other members of the Apostolic Reformation movement will descend upon Washington, D.C. with “DC 40: Forty Days of Light Over D.C“, to do whatever it is they do.
Laugh, but be afraid.
Bad Mothers
I’m reading a book about addiction that Max read last year. He told me I might like it. I also remember him writing to his girlfriend that the book caused him to review his childhood, which he always thought was “pretty normal.”
The book, by Gabor Maté, a physician and psychiatrist, is extremely compassionate toward the addict. In fact, he explains at great length why the addict never really had a chance: Improper bonding during infancy harms the infant’s brain and sets him up for addiction.
Maté recounts study after study to underscore his thesis. When rats are removed from their mother for only one hour a day, their brains show damage. In human babies, this faulty bonding fucks everything up. The child is forever doomed to suffering and attempts to extinguish the suffering.
I can’t read too much of this book. Someone needs to do a study on my brain, to show how much harm the book has done.
Maté ends the long chapter about the origins of the addict’s malformed brain by assuring us that he’s not saying it’s hopeless! People can be healed, he says, through the indomitable Spirit that lives within all of us.
Meanwhile, I am compelled to look back in time and question everything. I remember loving my baby at first sight. I remember adoring his every expression, every gesture, every hair on his head. I remember nursing him for 14 months. I remember friends coming over just to admire him. I remember dressing him in his little outfits, reading to him, cuddling him, singing to him.
But I was a depressed mother. Depressed mothers ruin the brain as well. I forgot to say that. The baby picks up on the mother’s depression and is irreparably fucked.
I wish I could talk to Max about this. I want to know if he blames me. Or rather, if he forgives me.
His addiction must have been a nightmare for him. So much worse then the nightmare it was for us. It was such a long struggle. I never really felt it was my fault, until now.
My own mother hated me and told me so, but I didn’t want to become a drug addict. There was no comfort anywhere, from anyone, when I was a child. I have my problems but I never wanted to stick a needle in my arm. If everyone with an imperfect or depressed mother needs to escape their pain through opiates, who’s left?
I’m caught in this argument. Depressed people don’t all become addicts. But my son did, and it’s my fault.
I wish it was nobody’s fault. I wish it was a wrong turn that led to more wrong turns. I wish he had been able to overcome his addiction and the pain that caused it. I wish I could comfort him and convince him that he was loved and he was perfect, addicted or not.
Mothers and children, what are your thoughts?
Kill Me
Why did they stop there? Why not add zebra?
This “shoe” makes me want to cry. $469.95 at solestruck.
Fun With Google
I was fucking around with my google account when I scrolled through all the options and came to the word “more.” This brought me to a page with the question below: “What do you love?”
I instinctively (and somewhat drunkenly) typed the word baby, and voila! A whole world of baby-related searches appeared, including this one:
Hahahahaha! Isn’t this awseome? Now I can find babies nearby! Don’t tell their mommies that I’m coming to get them!
Here’s another nice google suggestion:
I could also “Explore Babies in 3D” or “Find Patents about Babies.”
Well, that’s my fun activity for a Saturday night. I recommend trying it. And no, since I’m not ten years old I’m not going to try it with “penis,” unless I have more to drink.