SMOKE (VAPOR) & MIRRORS

back when the news broke onto buzzfeed my high school collectively uncurled their juul-clenching fists for a brief moment's reflection: does it really make sense that this is "better for you" than weed? or does it fundamentally violate our eternal undisputed millenial qualifier of healthiness: organic-ness?

and look at how "NEWS"-- in a different (serif!) font, no less-- has been conveniently added to the trusty buzzfeed logo to affirm its status. what's next VICE becoming legit and producing important, respectable journalism? i miss the good old days when their all-star team churned out classics like "Inside The Horrible Life of Amsterdam's Wealthiest But Most Irritating PCP-Addicted Child Porn Star" or "We Found The Most Emo Farmer in the Himalayas and Gave Him Peyote" or "5 Guys With Moderate Erectile Dysfunction Reveal The Most Upsetting Porn They've Accidentally Stumbled Across, But High". I'm kind of joking but
also

Joseph G. Allen:
Who invited him?
And doesn't he have any cheese
or grapes on that paper plate?

mostly
not.

anyway, as per usual, the old foagies at the New York Times have finally caught up to this juul & e-cig pandemonium and published a thorough review of this troubling information. already in the 4th paragraph, valiant knight and oddly-insincere-gay-man-at-your-wedding Joseph G. Allen is exposing the scandalous corruption of previous e-cig journalism, citing shady conflicts of interest and asserting himself as the Mueller of e-cig tyranny. maybe this article will at last prompt the men who wear those long coat-tailed blazers and stand outside cafes to finally relinquish their cig pens and vape canisters. maybe.

happy passover, in other news. we're good family friends with my rabbi, and while i'm sure he didn't know i was redwinedrunk after 1 glass, he still exercised great patience in leading my vertigo-plagued body through the Modern-Day Seder. AS IT TURNS OUT we have similar issues w/ passover and its situational irony:

DID YOU KNOW? in the 18th century, American Jews would wax mournful of their ancient days enslaved, until the slaves they kept downstairs took too long to bring up the parsley, which is when we'd yell and demand and then thank God for our newly-instated Whiteness. yes, jews owned slaves! "off-white" has been used to describe the Jewish-American experience (i prefer "egg-shell," or "creme") throughout the 20th-century, but now? (a lot of this is discussed in this book i'd like to read but haven't bought, ironically due its price tag & my jewishness.)
my family accepted our certificate of whiteness with honors, and stamped it with beautiful symbolism when my great-grandfather changed his name from Weisman to White.

have a nice day!!!!! dont forget to drink water!!!!!!! i often feel like the gravity is shifting in parts of my body, or that my center of balance is being drawn upwards as if by a large magnet, when i am not drinking enough water. it is psychosomatic i am sure (i am not chronically dehydrated or anything, just hugely neurotic) but it reminds me of internals sands that indicate what i need!! so it is important to nourish and re-nourish, even if it is only a gesture.

browser dj set 3.04.18

browser djing is the technique invented by me and soon-to-be-former art teacher Bill Simos in which the dj must only use their browser opened to mostly non-streaming sites (no spotify web player / grooveshark / bandcamp, soundcloud is fine for some reason) to engineer a creative, cohesive, and engaging dj set. its blurs the line between musique-concrete, middle-schooler girl talk, & post-internet hyper-referentiality. its really serious.
here's my set, with overlays / fade-ins noted for your feeble attempts at recreating the swift elegance and mastery with which i led the empty art room (+ sporadic appearances of mr simos) through the waves of sound:

1. start things off w/ a chopped-and-screwed version of Teardrop w a lurching beat to provide a stable ground
2. at 0:52 add goat sounds as some scintillating rhythmic interplay
3. at about 1:20 into teardrop some tonal tension and atmosphere w/ police sirens
4. ride it out, let it play, and then SMASH IN this driving filter tune
5. NOTE: keep this pretty racist website open to drop troubling and brash soundbites on the downbeats every so often.
6. as that amps up, bring in the opening guitar twang of Can You Get To That by funkadelic, which i've cordially looped for you:
7. let that play on its own for a little. ride it out. occasionally, threaten to bring in... the second verse of NIN's Perfect Drug, but don't ever fully integrate. just dangle it there.
8. eventually, bring in this video of a news report in a florida bridge collapsing
9. and when the man begins to choke back tears, add both fireworks and Wandering Star. at this point you are set. let all 3 videos play & admire your set.
10. when wandering star ends you'll have 9 hours and 56 minutes left of fireworks, which is the perfect comedown for a set of such intensity.

picture me in my element going rogue, from this very set (NOTE: the edm drop is for advanced browser djs only!!! there is a reason it has been omitted from the above instructions!!!!)

wood hooks and bird bells

here in evanston where the air is damp and rich in the march months, and the smell of mcdonalds curls around warm gentle gusts of spring, we will for a fleeting moment catch a small bird frantically twitching its acorn head before rapidly penetrating a tree like a little drill, with an intensity that i would dare to call erotic if it not for the bestiality witch-hunt that the recent oscar win has spurred.

these birds are gorgeous and so potent with frenetic energy it can also give you a migraine if you're not careful. there is a boy (?) in my art class who wears camouflage baseball caps and glasses with the geriatric strap who reads and draws and talks incessantly about local birds, and he's more suited to writing about this than i am, but these Downy woodpeckers, as they are called, deserve a spotlight.

they are petite fellas who work a mile a minute. i've found that searching any term on eBay is a great way to discover surprising facets of your topic, objects in orbit of whatever you're searching bound by practical usage, aspects of your topic that you wouldn't find on wikipedia or a quick google search. ultimately you get a more intimate and personal understanding of your given topic. for example, i would never fully comprehend just how illegible governmental scripts could be were I to have simply wikipedia'd Ronald Reagan. instead, i found the 1981 inauguration invitation. 

did you know that gargoyle-like decoy owls are used to deter woodpeckers from your trees?

soggy art class all-american bird boy would never get the opportunity to buy this for $18 on ebay just by reading those silly books.

on amazon.com you can also find more psychedelic decoy owls for your conservative, silent-generation-era woodpeckers. 

SPEAKING OF POLITICS!!!!!!!

read bell hooks's criticism on potentially life-altering documentary Paris is Burning.

first of all, i should clarify that in case you've forgotten i'm an 18 yr old white girl in evanston.

so my stance here isn't particularly crucial to feminist discourse. i'm also a huge bell hooks fan.

however: this essay is Plain Silly as Fuck.

we already know she has some grandmotherly tendencies. but i mostly chalk those up to her fundamental opinion that any violence, or depiction of violence, is unproductive. but this dignified standard can reach some dangerously respectability-like requests, like for the oppressed to thoughtfully reject the media of the oppressor— in a nonviolent and measured, but also no-bullshit and constructive way.

but go after Paris is Burning?????? come on!!!!!!

for bell hooks to ask homeless black trans women with no proper education to construct their own "alternative femininity" that exists entirely on their own terms without any tethers to whiteness demonstrates that she's missing the point... these people are recycling and reclaiming the values they have been taught. they are not given any "alternative femininities" to expand upon— yes, it's a nightmare but american pop culture does in fact revolve around icons of whiteness. this group fights for their identity every day. to scorn a disenfranchised group for modeling themselves after this, yearning for this sense of glamour and power (however fallacious and destructive it may be) is silly. they've been robbed of their identity. they can't attend your new school lectures.

whatever ms. hooks. i still love you.