Butterfly Stories

pitchfork: Presented without comment: Juicy J drops a verse on...

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 00:17:35 -0500

pitchfork:

Presented without comment: Juicy J drops a verse on Passion Pit’s “Constant Conversations”.

Peace out 30 Rock

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 19:13:48 -0500

Peace out 30 Rock

Photo

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 19:59:11 -0500

The angle of narcissism

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 14:05:11 -0400

I’ve spent the last year trying to come up with a word that would describe the downward angled self-portrait that defines our epoch of cameraeverywhere and all the time sharing constantly sharing. Couldn’t do it.

The chair was telling the truth

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 13:56:11 -0400

I, I don't see how that's a party...

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 20:49:30 -0400

Today we enter the fray

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 13:12:30 -0400

Ursa Major

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 13:12:25 -0400

#longread

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 17:35:02 -0400

Turkle leads the chorus that insists that taking time out is becoming dangerously difficult and that we need to follow their lead and log off.

This refrain is repeated just about any time someone is forced to detether from a digital appendage. Forgetting one’s phone causes a sort of existential crisis. Having to navigate without a maps app, eating a delicious lunch and not being able to post a photograph, having a witty thought without being able to tweet forces reflection on how different our modern lives really are. To spend a moment of boredom without a glowing screen, perhaps while waiting in line at the grocery store, can propel people into a This American Life–worthy self-exploration about how profound the experience was.

…..The current obsession with the analog, the vintage, and the retro has everything to do with this fetishization of the offline. The rise of the mp3 has been coupled with a resurgence in vinyl. Vintage cameras and typewriters dot the apartments of Millennials. Digital photos are cast with the soft glow, paper borders, and scratches of Instagram’s faux-vintage filters. The ease and speed of the digital photo resists itself, creating a new appreciation for slow film photography. “Decay porn” has become a thing. (Dig it)

I wanna talk to those doctors

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 01:37:13 -0400

(via)

Manchurain Suburbs

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 17:26:31 -0400

Upon returning from a trip around the country, the complaint my friends had was that so many places were so similar. Sure places had their quirks, and the bumper stickers were Awesome (or Awe-full), but for the most part, the same stores were everywhere. Everyplace looked like downtown Santa Rosa, which, if you haven’t been, is one endless drag of chain dining - TGI McCrapapplebee’s! -and big box superstores, (surrounded by lush and verdant trailer parks).

Well this may be worse.

When Blue Bottle, Mission Chinese, Rosamunde, (and to a lesser extent 826 Valencia) open up in Brooklyn and Austin, (and Detroit? Capitol Hill?, U Street?)- it creates a parallel urban universe of hip sameness. And worse, it means there is no more reason to travel. Why go to Billy’sburg or Red Hook if i’m just going to see the same bands, eat the same food, drink the same coffee, and be surrounded by graduates of the same 30 institutions, that I am when I’m in Lower Noe (aka Hayes Valley East aka the Mission)?

Thing is all of these people have read Pollan and fully bought into monoculture w/r/t farming, so why not carry that idea further. If NYC gets decent burritos or SF gets a decent pastrami sandwich, then what’s the point? The high line is cool, I guess, but it’s just a pathway. Sorry guys, Momofuke West just opened up on Valencia so maybe let’s just skype each other instead?

What a time you chose to be born

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 15:34:17 -0400

Two things:

1. This commercial is obviously about double penetration. That. Is. Fucked. Up. Why do they think women will go for this? What do they know that I apparently remain in the dark about?

2. I read an actual funny youtube comment: “This is a lot tamer than the commercial for Drano Bukkake!”

They both concern salads

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 13:27:18 -0400

3.5 Inches of amazing

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 19:28:36 -0400

I followed a link on Twitter and immediately my screen filled up with so much gloriousness I almost couldn’t handle it.
First of all that ad: Who is the Her I can spy on? Any - her? Really? This is creepy. Also, this was on the Onion mobile site soooooooo, they’re in league with stalkers.
Secondly: Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J, American Heroes and ur-Juggalos. I’ve spilled enough digital ink about them.

Thirdly: The actually story I came to read. It was actually a let down. Although one of the people arrested was being held for being a deadbeat Dad, so at least it confirmed my bias.
But still, that ad.

We can fly a spaceship to mars and land it but ....

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 02:32:49 -0400

….something something tired ass MUNI joke.

…so retrograde… so shallow

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 01:07:48 -0400

One of my favorite scenes in one of my favorite movies. In that the part just before this she is an adoring pupil and the switch happens so beautifully.. .and that shot, he just holds her… she was a proto Scarlett Johansen….

ladymisskate: Go fuck yourself.

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 00:25:13 -0400

ladymisskate:

Go fuck yourself.

But he seemed busy

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 19:05:50 -0400

I am Charlotte Simmons was terribad though

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 14:21:12 -0400

“I couldn’t tell you in any analytical fashion, but I assume I realized instinctively that if I were going to write vignettes of contemporary life, which is what I was doing constantly forNew York, I wanted all the sounds, the looks, the feel of whatever place I was writing about to be in this vignette. Brand names, tastes in clothes and furniture, manners, the way people treat children, servants, or their superiors, are important clues to an individual’s expectations. This is something else that I am criticized for, mocked for, ridiculed for. I take some solace in the fact that the leading critic of Balzac’s day, Sainte-Beuve, used to say the same thing about Balzac’s fixation on furniture. You can learn the names of more arcane pieces of furniture reading Balzac than you can reading a Sotheby’s catalogue. Sainte-Beuve said, If this little man is so obsessed with furniture why doesn’t he open up a shop and spare us these so-called novels of his? So I take solace in this. After all, we are in a brand-name culture.”

-Tom Wolf interviewed by George Plimpton, Paris Review - (natch).

The Usual

Wed, 18 Jul 2012 13:43:09 -0400

(image link)

When I first read that white Americans feel like they’re more discriminated against than black Americans, I laughed. Then I went full Kubler-Ross cycling through all the stages. Fine I thought. It still doesn’t make it true.

But I have a curious mind and a lot of time, so I went back and re-read the articles and saw that the key lay in one phrase. ”[W]hites see racism as a zero-sum game that they are now losing.“

That sound you’re hearing is the echo of the argument that took place in America about affirmative action.

But I’m sure (as you are, dear reader) that the people surveyed were not the moneyed elite with children enrolled at prestigious colleges. Obviously Lloyd Blankfein, or Stephen Schwarzman* don’t feel like they’re on the business end of entrenched institutional racism, but as you journey down the pay scale, I’m sure it starts to crop up. After all It’s a hackneyed trope that gets played for laughs in sitcoms that the white guy will get the job unless one of the other applicants is black. Because in order to not be seen as racist, or to promote so-called “diversity” (that cerberus-headed monster) the company HAS to choose the black person.

(But even if that were true, wouldn’t that just be a IRL version of Trading Places? And by the way, taking away someone’s favored status and giving it to someone else doesn’t yet rise to the magnitude of Jim Crow or segregation since either of those applicants could do the job. It just sucks.) (Another parenthetical. I’ve seen Trading Places so many times and I still don’t know what it means to “corner the market” on something.)

More likely the (white) people surveyed were of the turbulent working classes, no longer protected by unions (who’s fault is that?), or even the place of their birth, and forced to compete in the open global market and not having an easy go it, like their parents before them. Their parents who lived in postwar segregated America**.

So in the end we’re really just substituting race for class, like we always do.

*Peter Thiel might. I would totally not be surprised if Peter Thiel opined from atop his pile of money, that white people did have it worse than blacks.

**Europe was destroyed by war, Asia by war and atomic bombs, women and blacks were subjugated, and the government paid for their college via the (Socialist- transfer of wealth, whatever) GI bill. Of course those gritty white men were able to succeed in that environment. They truly were the Greatest Generation.