RIP David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace
Originally uploaded by Steve Rhodes.

David Foster Wallace killed himself on September 12, 2008.
He died more than a month ago and I still feel raw and unable to truly verbalize the deep loss I feel. I was and continue to be shocked at my own sense of loss and how large it must be for those who actually felt his personal presence-who knew him, loved him, held him. I never got to hear him speak, I felt I had time, that it would happen at some point.

I have started reading Infinite Jest for a fourth time. I will make this year the year of DFW. I will read/reread all of his fiction, non fiction and speeches. I will pay attention and take what I can and commit it to memory.

I am so deeply saddened at the thought of his pain, at imagining what he must have felt at the end and I am so angry that we suffer so. That still, depression is a disease that is managed by guesses and trials. I hope that he has found peace. That is all he was looking for.

Introducing...The Meatkini!

Seriously now, what the hell were they thinking? The latest episode of America's Top Model apparently consists of a photo challenge of shooting a meat themed series in a meat packing plant. Yes, that is a meatkini she is wearing as well as a meat bandanna. First of all, while I can attempt a nod at the artistic brilliance of the look and the creativity of tailoring, this just grosses me out: Me, who loves steak, loves a good meat plate, who friends have affectionately dubbed "Meat Whore". I would never wear a meatkini. The whole thing is disgusting. This is waste, consumption and materialism at its very strongest and you can't tell me that that was the artistic point. There was no satire or social commentary meant-this is just producers trying to make money and get youtube hits.
Sigh. and here I am giving it all attention. I need a shower.

Feist: finally gets what she deserves

There was a time, back in the dark, dank Repulik nightclub in downtown Calgary, that I wished Leslie Feist would stop screeching and sing some words. More accurately, I wished she would take her hot little punk rock self and go attract punk rock boys somewhere else...like Vancouver, or Greenland. I admit it, I was jealous. Now, however, I count her as my number one favorite Canadian artist, male or female. She is a talented musician, she has a voice that inspires thought, brevity and motion, and she has brought back into fashion the texture and fabric of old sound and voice. She integrates the best of old recording sound and song with new techno and creates something palpably raw and smooth. So, good for her for winning Junos. It is too bad the Americans couldn't see fit to recognize her for what she is.


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How to get your students to tell you to "F off"

NAIT's ANTI "Potty Mouth" Campaign:
As if we need more to shake our head in wonder at, NAIT has just launched the first wave in their new "professionalism" campaign geared towards teaching students the proper way to behave in school. The first in the series focuses on profanity or "potty mouth" as one poster cutely puts it. "dress", "behaviour" and "cleanliness in the cafeteria", are apparently themes to come in the future.

I am not even sure where to start with this: the bad clip art and terrible messaging used for public distribution in an institution with over 70, 000 students; the concept that somehow a lame, insulting and condescending poster campaign is going to seriously cause anything other than an outrage; or that the communications director thinks that this is a really exciting series. Really?


I really hope there are some loud reactions to this. I will keep you posted.

Snow

It has been prohibitively cold for the last week. So cold, that it has distracted me from the significant and wondrous amount of snow covering my world. I hate to be cold, but I love snow.
I love the quiet clean of a snow-laden street at night. I love the black and white of trees and snow in shadow. I love the smell and the sparkle.

To me, snow is the physical manifestation of the sense of rest and renewal I feel in the winter months.

Thursday 7:48 pm
I am also reading a book entitled Snow, by Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature. Orhan, born in Istanbul in 1959, has been under Turkish and Islamic criticism for his writing, although he claims to not really be interested in Politics. Snow, published in 2002, is set in the small city of Kars in northeastern Turkey and tells the story of violence and tension between political Islamists, soldiers, secularists, and Kurdish and Turkish nationalists.
For me, Snow is more about religion and spiritualism then about politics. It seems to be about the human search for identity and meaning. In the book, the main character, an atheist poet name Ka, is struggling with his own views of religion and his place in the universe. It is the snow that continues to fall and cover his home town that continues to stimulate in him some concept of god or spirit. When I see snow, I think of God, he responds throughout the book to various individuals who question him of his faith. It is the only response he uses, as though he does not know what he believes but he cannot deny the absolute perfection and divinity in snow.

As an agnostic struggling with my own spirituality, or at least in defining it, I am drawn to his words. And I am drawn to snow.

Elle and feminism- do they go together?

I read Elle magazine for the articles. Seriously. Not Elle Canada, because it is simply a vapid cataglogue of fashion images, unfortunately. But, for some reason, Elle international has had some kick-ass articles over the last 8 months that I have been reading it. Unfortunately, I have not been able to access or find any archives of past articles. I would love to put up links to the ones that have interested me so far, but the Elle.com site doesn't seem to have any of the actual articles from the magazine.

Now, I do read Elle for the fashion, as well. There is something that I love about sitting on a plane or in the tub and flipping through beautiful images and trends. I have been labeled "fashionista" at work, but I think that I approach fashion as art. It inspires me. Color, texture, form, attitude; they are important to me.

I am also, of course, extremely aware of the conflict between fashion magazines and the integrity of women. Our identity as women is intricately and complexly entwined in the images that we are presented with and we need to start "pushing" images of true women and fashion back to the magazine industry.

In the September 3 2006 Botson Globe, the Ideas section had an interview with Lisa Jervis and Andi Zeisler, founders of Bitch magazine.

I found this segment particularly interesting:

IDEAS: Are there mainstream outlets you think are doing a good job of addressing feminist issues?

ZEISLER: Elle Magazine actually grapples with a lot of the same issues that feminists are grappling with. But in the context of a fashion magazine it's often not really seen as feminism.

IDEAS: How come?
Isn't it just the thinking that counts?

JERVIS: When feminist content is stuck between the pages of how to put on eye shadow and what skirt you need to buy for next season, it can feel really schizophrenic. Feminist values, in my opinion, are in opposition to that kind of consumer-driven ethos.

ZEISLER:
The mainstream media feels the need to define stuff against the word feminism: Is it feminist, is it not feminist, is it antifeminist? A lot of people are still scared of the word. But if we can convey that calling yourself a feminist doesn't mean that you have to stop wearing lipstick or shopping or whatever, that's good. I would rather have fashion magazines acknowledge that there is no perfect idealism and there's always going to be a compromise, but you should still go out and call yourself a feminist anyhow.

Anyway, back to Elle. In every issue I have read, there has been a hard
hitting, well-written, and surprisingly objective journalist article. In the
past two months, they have had a discussion of "feminism" and actually asked the question "are you a feminist" to some prominent young women. I can't find this article online so I will scan it when I get time.

The October issue also has a review of self proclaimed anti-feminist Caitlin
Flanagan, entitled "Who's the fairest wife of all?". This is a well written and critical piece by columnist Laurie Abraham.

I am a feminist and I read Elle.

JARHEAD

I went through all of my reading material the first few days in Africa. I found a worn paperback copy of Jarhead in my room and I haven't been able to put it down since. I am not really a big war book fan, but I have read a few spy books and being in a compound surrounded by burly Texans and Scots felt a lot like a few episodes of M*A*S*H, so it felt appropriate. I really had no idea what I was picking up. I seem to recall some sort of furor about it a few years ago, and from the paperback cover I can see that they made a movie about it (I know, I suck. Apparently I was living in a cave at the time) but that is pretty much all the background I had before starting the first page. By the end of the first chapter it was clear that Anthony Swofford is a shit-hot writer and that I was going to get a glimpse into the raw, fragile psyche of a young man who has not only seen and done some serious shit, but who has also done some serious analysis of himself and of the USMC.

The following paragraph from the first chapter has stuck with me for days. Swofford is talking about how, after getting their orders, his unit goes out and gets every war movie they can find and then they sit and watch and drink and get themselves ready for combat. Swofford talks about the ironic fact that our most famous anti war movies, movies that the general population would list as being commentaries on the cruelty and uselessess of war, are actually fuel that fires the murderous agression in these young military minded men.

Filmic images of carnage and death are pornography for the military man; with film you are stroking his cock, tickling his balls with the pink feather of history, getting him ready for his First Fuck. It doesn't matter how many Mr. and Mrs. Johnsons are antiwar--the actual killers who know how to use the weapons are not.

I wonder how Coppola feels about this.

No miniskirts after 35

What the F_? I was sitting on my bed in a hotel room this weekend with my friend, D, doing what we love best (and never get to do), drinking beer, eating pizza and watching What not to wear. I was casually laughing and throwing in my two cents about "Tomasita's new look" when D pointed out that one of the fashion "road signs" in the show intro said "No miniskirts after 35". I observed this with a laugh and then, after a 30 second delay, one of those classic cartoon "huuh?"s. Were they talking about me? Well shit, I am sitting on the bed wearing a jean miniskirt and am the ripe old age of 35. Nuts. I poo pooed the sign and then the whole show. But I haven't stopped thinking about this whole dressing appropriately thing and where exactly I fit into it all. I googled around today and found that a lot of women have been talking about this.

These blogs had huge discussions

• Postcards from the Mothership
• BBC America Discussions

And there is a good article I found in The Observer.