I'm so tired of being alone

I'm so tired up on my own
won't you help me girl
just as soon as you can?

Everyone and their French mother

owns these Zara boots or something like it. I'm clearly retardataire.


But then again, my last attempts at cool shoes were gold Nike Vandals. Which I happen to like. I was called the Sneaker Queen earlier in the year, sigh. I should either shop or run myself through a paper shredder and buy a bottle of MD 20/20 to complete the look. Then I could hang out by St. Mark's Church all the time.

rejoicing in fatshion

I am regressing in my love of fatshion from rejoicing in big butts, to zaftig women, to now just purely fat chicks. I make no excuses, I learned I just think they're beautiful. It's not even about American body image anymore.

"Fat is lipids out of place," Mary Douglas might have said. And this applies to women I consider fat. Basically, fat is the lipid content that changes your shape from a bottle to a football halfback or a potato. Nothing makes me happier than seeing a well dressed fat chick. One that isn't stuffed into a loose fitting sack or an empire waist pregnancy dress. And I've never seen as many well-dressed fat chicks as I have in Sarah Lawrence, fipsters. The secret to dressing well when fat is creating a waist. A lot of women, even with big shoulders, large ribs or a round, Falstaff belly look great with a cardigan, a dress fitted at the waist that flows outward. The cardigan creates the illusion of a smaller torso and the skirt makes the bottom area larger. I've been looking at the Fatshionista flickr pool and sometimes been joyous about the looks created, other times banged my head against the bed or desk (I procrastinate at night) If only she could have used more color contrast, this girl needs to be bolder! And sometimes, what is she thinking, with such a beautiful face, I wish I was there to help her. I have two favorites, a Parisian girl with a beautiful face and a perfect fipster. Observe the cardigan/dress combo:

The white cardigan goes perfectly with the zany green thrift store dress I would kill for and an interesting take on the three button belt that is so hot right now. This girl is a winner at matching bright colors. In this picture, she hits the nail right on the head on how to match clothes to blond hair. The hair is straightened, you can really see the razor layers. Later on she curls it and has black accents which I don't like as much. The girl is also a mean wearer of skirts that do nothing to hide her rectangular shape. The frilly detailing and cardigan on top and the belt achieve the effect of a waist, it's as if she's wearing one of those fitted high waisted skirts I'm so obsessed with.

More marvelous work on part of my favorite fatshionista.

The Parisian girl's style is more understated and, well, Parisian. She can wear an all black ensemble with the perfect belt. The texture and shine of the leather belt and bag is what makes the outfit work and not look monochrome.

As you can see, I love a cocktail length dress with a cinched waist. Here we can see how a jacket or cardigan narrows the frame. This girl's boobs point somewhat outward and her sleeves are also rather large, so she seems a bit top heavy in the shoulder area. Nonetheless, she rocks this. This girl also rocks something I normally would not suggest, a big loose shirt. She wears it with dark skinny jeans that contrast it, big beads that complement it, and a perfect jacket that narrows her torso. The slight color and texture variation just works.

My favorite outfit from her is when she combines the amazing black dress, the perfect belt, the cinching jacket, and a keffiyeh. The result, a pleasing hourglass shape that narrows her shoulders. And the scarf is a perfect accessory.

Of course I have to add this one.

There is a woman who is not particularly attractive, nor does she have a shape that's easy to work with, she comes out with potato sack looking outfits, then I saw this one and it just surprised me. I thought it was slightly edgier, brighter and more H&M inspired when I first saw it, but it makes a wonderful shape.


It's not, I am fat, but lovely. It's I am fat and I am lovely.

pad thai...Christmas trees..friend squabble..

"You need to look into people, not just listen to them."
was something like the platitude on my fortune cookie when I ate pad thai yesterday in one of those Japanese-Chinese restaurants that don't know how to do either but have no entrees under $9 unless it's noodles (which I obviously ordered). They served it in a tiny wok, which was cool though the noodles had little lime flavor and tasted more like a Barilla package than rice. I liked the blue cracked porcelain saucer they brought out with my one kimchi appetizer that kind of looked like this


and one of those clumsy Christmas tree attempts, dried sprigs in a vase with Christmas lights wound in a nest around them, I find those creative alternatives to Christmas trees in Mexican resorts and when I went to Thailand (which is predominantly Theravada Buddhist), tropical countries that try to make tourists feel comfortable in their hotel lobby even when they don't have access to anything like Christmas trees. They usually put up a metal Christmas tree-shaped frame and wind it with Christmas lights and big, unusual ornaments, it kind of looks modern. I couldn't find any good examples.

I couldn't find any of those high, triangular blue ones I've seen, but you can see a good example of how they tack green foliage in the shape of a Christmas tree on buildings. I think that big ornaments, icicle-like Christmas lights, and a lack of emphasis on earthy colors like green and red is the European approach to Christmas decorating. Though there was more use of actual Christmas trees, I've seen similar decorating in Europe. Like these on Dam Plein, Amsterdam. I was in Amsterdam on New Years, the camera phone picture isn't very good.

Anyway, I ate there after a conversation with an Aquarian friend. She and I have undertones in our relationship that frustrate me. I usually tell her she looks good a lot because she typically does to me. Oftentimes I swallow things she says to me that are off mark or irritating and even at times provide white lies. She's short and plump, but has an hourglass figure and significant waist, is very pretty, and a great dresser. Right now she isn't looking as good because she is gaining weight in her waist. In conversation, I told her, "I always tell you that you look good." She said, "Thanks, I don't look good now." I was foolish enough to tell her the truth and said, "You don't look good now, but you will." She struck out at me pretty hard, hung up the phone. I apologized and decided to lie, telling her I said it out of spite because I thought she claimed I was fat (which she didn't overtly). She called me back later and said something along the lines of, "I shouldn't worry, because you belong in a mental institution anyway." Which was a low, spiteful thing to say patterning what I claimed to do. This goes back to various misunderstandings and covert competition in our friendship. She calls me crazy and thinks I have poor social skills. I also think she is out of touch with people she's talking to, what she should say, and has various illusions of being a grand society lady whereas those who talk to her have a very different opinion. While I was angry about her low blow out of left field, I thought about how I shouldn't have said that while it made sense in my mind when I did. It was unnecessary, I didn't need it as a counterpoint to show that I didn't want to lie to her. Her comment didn't allow me to insert the truth, it didn't mean she was any less sensitive. Plus she called me for kicks. And the fortune cookie was very timely, reminding me to try to see it from her perspective right after she told me I belonged in a mental institution. Which I'm still figuring out while grumbling.

my friend

A passage from Anna Karenina. You ever have a long/intimate conversation with an acquaintance? Or maybe even a friend? It happens a lot in Sarah Lawrence. On the first days, freshmen would be camped out on the new dorms stairs or in the triangle at 4:00 am talking to each other. I met a lot of people that way, stopping them to have a conversation. As I got to know more about their family and past when the conversation exceeded 3 hours, I would often feel sorry for them. They are limited. I would feel like their lifestyle is somehow inferior to mine, or that they are less fancy free especially if their family somehow limits their options. Can't hang out in the city/pay for college because you live with your grandma? I'm sorry. In these conversations, you dig away at and replace the first impression, creating the illusion that you know somebody rather well. Oh, you have a fucked up family? Well, that completely changes my opinion of you. Part of me gets bored or imagines that I've reached the end of their personality, which I have to fight since it's obviously not true. The same way I get bored of being a woman if I think about women long enough, I get bored with femininity or attempts at masculinity. Having a friend gives me the opportunity to repeatedly peel away at what I think I know of her. While I partially get bored of something/someone when I imagine that I've thought my way to the end of them, I think that I don't know anybody. Especially not this friend. I merely have a stereotype of her personality and am always ready for her to surprise me. I don't even know my mom, least of all. Describing her to other people, I feel like I'm stereotyping her.

Right now I have a friend who annoys me and vice versa. It seems like when we get together, we irritate each other for no reason. She's into race issues, feminism, gay activism. So I get the sense she's annoyed because she thinks I have conservative attitudes, am a misogynist racist pessimist. Which isn't necessarily true. It doesn't hurt that she gets offended really easily. I am a feminist in my own way, ridiculously pissed off by American body issues and astonished by ridiculous attitudes that remain. I think her brand of feminism is pedestrian, while claiming to build up/have a positive attitude about women (which I do as well, by the way), she likes to take men down a peg, humiliate them. It's obvious and it annoys me. Race issues with her are essentially truckling with terms, I feel like I have to wear a padlock on my mouth. And being able to relax with a friend is really important to me. I'm not sanctioning slips or bawdy jokes that might come out of my mouth, they might be casual, but they call up huge complex race issues. Nonetheless, perhaps I can joke about "breeders" or bitch about men because they are the "oppressors" apparently. She thinks I make a lot of negative comments about myself, about other people. I happen to think that it isn't too healthy to repress negative comments or self talk, you're just shutting yourself up. Being catty with a friend is supposed to be fun, especially when I don't mean any harm by it. Being so offended by general identity issues, she's managed to offend me incredibly. I'm sensitive like a middle schooler when it comes to secrets about boys. I get really weird and creepy talking about it, not even corny pseudonyms, but I rely on hand gestures or terms like "my friend." Even though it's fun to talk about who you have a crush on, it's damn ridiculous and I get mortified. I asked her not to say someone's name out loud, made her promise something and she said, "Why should I follow your rules? You think I should be obedient like a dog?" She doesn't like the word "don't." I thought that was the most ridiculous shit I ever heard. I'm not the man, you don't gain anything by sticking it to me. The issue is, if she does this, she will hurt and betray me a lot. My little rituals might be ridiculous and I'm not offended on behalf of all the world's Russian Jews, but it would really hurt me if she rebelled against me in honor of the Age of Aquarius. There's a sense that she wants to prove me wrong or stick it to me like she does to men for the sake of some ideals, particularly in insisting that I'm all gay. Haha, you really don't want to be, but you're all gay you big dyke. Most of these perceived offenses are personal, plus my value system is different from hers. For instance, I was complaining that nobody danced with me even when I got dressed up and she suggested online dating. Which drove me up the wall. She doesn't think there's anything weird or offensive about it, but it seems to me most of the female population would find the suggestion an insult. Like, you, a college girl among boys your age, can't find anybody around you and have to go online. Commensurate to saying I'm ugly. Or that I should lower my standards. Ouch, I know I should frown on behalf of the dozen Russian Jewish girls shuddering with me.

What pisses me off the most is an idea expressed in the Anna Karenina quote above. Each one of us thinks that some part of the other's lifestyle is pitiable or a joke. She learned that my parents call me every day and decided that I'm dependent on them. That they smother me. Her parents happen to be screwed up in ways I won't elaborate, distant and selfish. Selfishness in parents drives me out of my head. She'll tell me something abysmal about her parents and then pity me when my mom calls. Most American people assume my parents are smothering or making me dependent when they learn how much my mother calls. They think I'm limited or unfree. It's a complicated situation, I want to say, it's not necessarily the case. I bet she wants to tell me the same. To some extent, it's a failure of the imagination on both our parts. A failure on mine to think I'm freer than other people. Tolstoy was so right about what happens when you encounter difference in friends.

It's weird how I can be so ridiculously mad at a friend who hasn't even done anything to me, probably. Someone who told me, "I like you," who I'm supposed to like. When she said, "I like you," it jolted me out of how I stereotype our friendship. This rant usually happens in my head when I think about being friends with her. She told me about how I sometimes read her wrong (which she does to me a lot grr), how do I know that she thinks the same thing about it? They often say that one of the best ways of quieting someone who's talking shit about someone else is to say, "well she thinks so well of you." "Really? Well, she's not so bad." Flattery makes the crow drop the cheese. Or else reflect a little like I should be doing. About how I shouldn't have it out for my friend. But I'm still pissed.

Man, yesterday I was angry at another friend for being different from me. People might say, why are you friends with them if they make you so angry? Venus opposition Mars, apparently I love my love/hate relationships. But seriously, friendship always contains some degree of annoyance that is part of the pleasure of being friends. Getting along completely would be absolutely bland. According to Tolstoy, it has to do with the extent to which they are different from you, or rather the extent to which they're not you. And this is an important factor in friendship. I don't know if I'd want to be friends with myself, although I do have a lot to say, and I do choose people similar to me in certain ways. Willing to talk a lot, with stories or conversation topics that would interest me. Someone who talks with urgency, which I notice just now that I do a lot. Willing to be emotionally sympathetic with me, willing to talk about superficial stuff like boys. Someone who doesn't fuck with my head (Sagittarian conspiracy theorists), lie to me for the sake of their own amusement (apparently Geminis are supposed to enjoy lying or debating, I don't), or elevate some conversation topics above others (I can think of some boys who perceive themselves as being philosophers who are guilty of this). With my friend I feel a kind of stagnant annoyance, though.

Wow, I really do talk with considerable urgency. Like I'm trying to get what I think out and don't care what it will sound like or look like on paper. Especially if it's for me. And now when I'm angry and annoyed. What's important is getting the whole story. Not leaving out a part of it or the memory will be lost. That's why I don't understand people who want to withhold things because they are worried what other people think or their reputation (Capricorn). Restraint in storytelling annoys me. I want to know all of it. The tidbit you left out might be a really juicy one.
God, everything that annoys me about people that I know is coming back to me, or not everything. I'm annoyed by excessive liberalism and attempts to break boundaries, this becomes predictable, angry, pathetically serious and urgent. There is a way to be truly rebellious by taking neither an extreme conservative or liberal stance. To hover above it in some way, to be above any "gender stereotypes" in your mind. You can be both (a stereotypical family woman/a gender activist), you can be anything. Both '50's family life and pitiful dick-cutting feminism scare me in their predictability. There is a poetic, a literary stance. I can be a woman, a boy, anything. I can walk Van Gogh's streets, both the muse and the poet himself. Although I tend to get bored with the super-feminine, idiotic muse. The muse is truly the ultimate woman stereotype. The adored woman who in being an end from the man loses the opportunity of being an endless possibility one can contemplate. I love to love the poet, the person contemplating an unending reality. It's like looking down an endless street with a person blocking your view. You don't know what's ahead, so it's limitless.

I imagine American sexual relations. Americans are profoundly grossed out by various body fluids and products, yet in sex, poets tell of smearing their lover's fluids on their face. They talk about musky Latin women (I mean Fermina Daza). Rodin sculpts big flabby butts. Yet there are douche advertisements on television.

A dialogue from Amelie when she calls a porn video store unawares:

"Palace vidéo, roi du porno." (voix)
"Bonjour. J'appelle pour l'annonce." (Amélie)
"Vous êtes majeure?" (voix)
"Oui." (Amélie)
"Vous êtes épilée?" (voix)
"Euh... pardon?" (Amélie)
"Bin j'vous demande si vous êtes épilée parce que le tablier de sapeur aujourd'hui ça rebute le client." (voix) (Amélie raccroche, écoeurée.)

Vous etes epilee means "Are you shaved?" Men waffle about how much they want women to shave. I don't understand American contradictory attitudes toward sex. I feel like food, sex, and excrement don't go together unless as a taboo. I can't imagine how people go on food dates, how they eat with one another. Food seems to put people off from sex. Hunger and sexual craving are two different feelings. Sex is promoted on tv (Calvin Klein ads with Natalia Vodianova). Virgins are teased (American Pie). Yet women are called sluts when they have too much of it. Marital sex is perceived to be vanilla and pitiful, but porn is thought to be deviant and disgusting. The honor of sisters is still defended in some places. A man keeps a mistress, but tells his wife during a drunken episode that he wants to perceive her as a pure, untouchable vestal virgin and do all the dirty things to his mistress. An anorexic girl is told to eat a sandwich, a girl with an ass is told to throw up. How can Amelie be quirky, cute, and romantic in the midst of all this? Is there a dividing line between sex and romance? The sex she has is so pristine and sweet, she isn't extremely and dully feminine like a porn star. There is a quality about her that separates her from a feminine porn star or the hyper feminine ideal. I identify with her.

angry post 1 (related to Anna Karenina)

I'm angry, I'm angry. I'm annoyed. At everything I've ever been annoyed at, it seems. Waffling body image expectations in America, men, parents that don't give completely, classmates who refuse to be compassionate when you want them to ("Yeah, you're fucked, I did the work," a pretty ridiculous expectation I know, but some fuckers are exacting, "don't accept human frailty" a la the virgin goddess Tracy Lord of The Philadelphia Story, grr stupid librarian Virgos). And there's a commercial to cover "unsightly freckles." Fuck them. I'm annoyed at Marxist ideas that subordinate human individuality, dignity, and connection to community and material things. Claiming that it's impossible to connect with people/escape alienation because you are so bound up in the capitalist time schedule. I would still have plenty of problems if I were united with the means of production. It could just be me and my tomatoes. Excessively communal life (i.e. the medieval village) limits individuals ridiculously, often women in particular. You have a role in your society (like a cog in a machine, eh?) and damned if you can move up out of it. Travel, personal crises, the stuff of actors and brigands who hang out in the forest. God, I prize social mobility and the recognition that I'm an individual, one person and not another. The human might be a social animal, but as Drew says, his "feelings are secret." No way mental activity can be communal, even if you're a behaviorist. With your will, individual personality, and attempts to connect with other people, you escape the capitalist framework that can't completely govern your free mind and thoughts. That would be stretching it, huh? I'm annoyed at dead prez and their ideas of black power, especially the song They Schools that claims teaching dead white men/European history in public education just brainwashes black people and doesn't teach them what they need to know "like getting crack out the ghetto." Go, my son, and get crack out the ghetto. How do they propose to learn that? They forget how complex black identity is. Black means not only African, but American, and dead prez is entangled in European culture just as America is. The history they are living is also the legacy of European history. Would it kill them to understand it? The questions dead prez brings up are so fucking complex. What is pertinent to black people? What divides "their" history from "mine?" There are some books by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. I need to read to look more into this. Among other things. A girl told me I need to read Bell Hooks. I know shit about race studies right now, a thing that needs to be remedied. I need a more adequate defense of European history, of course, too.

Weird, I'm kind of in the middle, I'm not cool with previous attitudes, yet current academic ideas make me itch to no end. I'm annoyed at notions of gender fluidity and "heteronormativity" /homophobia at the same time. Words like performativity (performing identities) and social construction piss me off, maybe because of the fluidity of categories. When academics juggle these terms or employ feminist or whatever criticism, to me it's looking at what you perceive as real and concrete from so many lenses, deconstructing it until it melts away. Doesn't mean this shouldn't be done, but it has to be and is for the purpose of finding the truth as much as the Zen monk/Derrida laughs or plays with language. Seems like these academics and students are angrily fighting with structure, social and otherwise, I don't know what will come of it. Maybe it's useless. They forget that in flying over your house in an airplane and standing in front of your door, the point is ultimately to learn more about the house. I know a pitiful amount about this, but I'm still scared and annoyed. I hear that microwaves don't simply heat your food, but change it on a molecular level, they jiggle the molecules. I feel like that every time I hear these words thrown around. Like I've been jiggled on a molecular level.
I've refused to have my mind changed several times. Often, when your schema about life change too drastically, you react emotionally by drinking the Kool Aid (Nietzsche readers). The reasons behind this are interesting. A guy I knew clung to Wittgenstein. I could be that very easily and I don't want to be, as "no longer having something to compare it to" means that you're not thinking and questioning anymore. Doesn't mean I am now.

God, I'm annoyed with boredom, (I'm talking to you Emma Bovary who I don't want to be, even though the media I ingest is so much trashier than yours) yet when I imagine something to a certain point, I get bored or scared of it by counting my chickens before they hatch. Like with relationships, of course. I think, maybe it would be nice to find somebody. In which case we would have to spend too much time with each other, adapt, suffer, get bored, cheat, better not. It won't last, I prefer to pretend. In intimate conversations with an acquaintance, sometimes I end up feeling sorry for them because their lifestyle is different than mine. They're limited. You live on a farm and can't hang out in the city because your parents won't let you? I'm sorry. People like my friend who aren't able to do what they want to do. "But you could try this." "No I can't," and then she proves to me why. I feel sorry for her for various reasons, yet she thinks that my life sucks compared to hers because I'm failing school.