Sidewinder

So, I'm getting married soon. I like that I'm getting married. What I don't like is that it seems to have become performance art on a large, highly commercial scale. Apparently, it was once necessary for the bridesmaids to dress exactly like the bride to confuse any evil spirits about. While that is no longer true, I wonder if the extreme money-spending aspect of it is a thinly cloaked way of buying happiness and good luck.

But, you see, this is the only way I can look at things. If you have ever taken an english class in college, have had to write the word "unpack" or "hermeneutic" (sic.) more than twice, you will notice that nothing ever goes unexamined or accepted at the outset. I am happy about getting married, but I feel like I've unwittingly pledged a sorority. I am strangely happy to enjoy the lack of irony. And perhaps it is just this lack of irony we can celebrate-- for a day. Perhaps it is a way of paying off all that insincerity and glibness.

The thing about getting married that creeps me out the most is that it seems like the prom, every night you've tarted up to go out dancing, and your baptism, all rolled up into one, as in: "this is the last time people will really look at you."

And as for Karachi, that's the next city I'm going to talk about. From what I understand, Karachi used to be really beautiful and they tore it all down to make it a moon station.

Posted by bella at 12:00 PM | Permalink

Brasilia, Mi Amor!

This page seeks to debunk myths and untruths about the city of Brasilia, capital of Brazil. It does so in an uncomfortably thorough way, so that one is left not knowing which myths or errors are greater than others.

That aside, I will continue my asides with the dose of hubris it takes to write the first in a series of blog entries on synthetic cities.

I can easily recall the shock I felt when I realized that you could get where you needed to go in most midwestern cities simply by knowing what direction you were headed in. As I am a born and raised Pittsburgher, I had long ago resigned myself to a level of navigational fatalism. When you are trying to find your way around Pittsburgh, you must accept, with all the zen-detachment you can muster, that going around the block to retrace your steps might send you on an interstate, a dead end, to someone's above ground pool step ladder, or a wormhole. In the midwest, everything is unassumingly, and in the germanic manner in which it was conceived, constructed without calling attention to itself. No "big ideas" were involved when the civil engineers got together to design Centerville, Normal, or Springfield, Illinois.

Let's now go to the 1960's and 70's which brought forth so many bad urban planning ideas. What was it about the cold war that led us to involve building roads and buildings with such self-regard? Did it make us wish to experience the world as though we were many miles underground and, therefore, safe? Is it that by living in Sector A, Quadrant C, we may fully call ourselves modern?

Posted by bella at 02:22 PM | Permalink

When I first heard of the The Puppy Channel, I wanted to tell everyone about it. I imagined that there would be live feed of puppies somewhere; in someone's living room, on the beach, at an animal shelter. Really, it's set up like a, well, a kind of site that I wouldn't want to tell anyone I'd visited.

Posted by bella at 12:06 AM | Permalink

So, I was looking for a recipe for caramelized peppers and this was what I got: Chili Cooking
This page depicts a guy who really enjoys making chili. He gets to have a beer at 9 a.m. He gets to have nice cars park near his house. I say, "hey sure".

Posted by bella at 10:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I had no choice. It spoke to me:
Presented in Glorious "SOUND-O-VISION"

Posted by bella at 12:23 PM | Permalink

The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004 > The Scene: Rivals Dig In, Draw Blood, Cede Nothing points out that the candidates were both white American Christian male millionaires.

Because I get bored from time to time and because kids do say the darndest things, I asked my friend's seven year old daughter if she was planning on watching the debates last night. She looked at me blankly for a beat or two and said, "No... what are those?"

So I found myself explaining what a vice president does as "he's the president's main helper" and that the other guy who also wants to be the presidents helper will argue on television. She said, "that doesn't sound very good." I had to agree.

An earlier conversation involving favorite colors produced this observation: "Well, I don't like white, but then I do because it blanks out stuff."

Cheney could be the biggest blanker-outer of them all.

Posted by bella at 11:37 AM | Permalink