mintcar

Symbols


+Started naming blog entries.

+Writing prose is us trying to make sense of the subject. Some kind of imposed order, some kind of tentative resolution. I currently have no resolution, and so, my writing here is all bits and pieces, all absence, all ... eh!

+Words on which I've recently been fixated:
Fenestration
Mullion
Chimera
Miasma

+I recently got into a car accident on I-80, and I don't feel like explaining it. Explaining it gives me a headache, but you can know that no one was hurt. One can blame so many things, and in the end, you have to blame yourself. Heavy shit.

+List of shit with "labels on the outside" (in the form of insignias, placards, zipper pulls, whatnot):

Aesthetics, Spiewak, Juicy Couture, James Perce, Custo Barcelona, Burberry, Prada, Earl, Puma, Adidas, Coach, NB, Gola, Converse, Diesel, Gsus, LV, ... cough cough. Gama-go.

Okay, this is getting tiresome. My point (proposal) is, what's with this stuff with words/symbols on it? Total marketing, ease of identification, classification, economic exploitation, I am, I am, I am. Brand loyalty, value added, without adding real value. Symbols of a culture, symbols of a subculture, symbols of an art, symbols of a symbol -- of an icon. The hero designer, the hero design conglomerate, with a good heart(s) and large bankrolls. Re invention, re hashing, re fining, defining a half decade. You make it, you market it, they will pay for it (er, they-you). It's an exciting business of delusions. You're either in it, or you're out (I mean, awareness). There are the yes es and the no s. If you sport the no, you are the no.

It's the definition of a people, who you are, what you make, what you don't make, where you're from (whether you are from it or not), and how much pocket money your parents give you each week. We've got the suburban bits with the sweatshirts, mall wear, and surf wear on a wide, proletariat tier. There are the princes and princesses who are all sex, glitz, and what they watch happen in popular television, music, movies. There are the cleanest, cut bits who are snobby in the "we are old/new money, go clubbing on weekends in our convertibles," ken (there are different levels here as well, from the dappest armanis and the post-bling blingers). There is the nappy counterculture who doesnt give a shit, and there is the counterculture who does and is pretentious about it; they are consciously counter, but because they claim to "think." Or is it because they do think?

You know where you fit. (Or mesh). This sprung forth from driving down Channing, glancing at the new freshmen moving in, watching the new population and their parents walking cross Bancroft. I saw two thin but shapely so cal chicks in matching tight, cropped jeans, flip flops, camis, canvas baguettes, hoop earrings, and trucker hats walking past Jamba Juice, and for some reason, it pulled a tiny nerve in my mind. I counted seven trucker hats on the cross walk, and my heart palpitated (cuz I have a love hate relationship with the oh so ironic symbols of democracy and the blue collar heart of America: trucker hats). I was tired .... oh so tired.


Isn't it so easy to classify? And oh so saddening ... ?