contrabanddragons-blog

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Marilyn Monroe in Let’s Make Love.

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(insp.)

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we sang-screamed this on my 21st birthday, sure of the words and each other and sure that we weren’t faking it

Complicated – Avril Lavigne, 2002 Take off all your preppy clothes.

Remember when we were all deeply, passionately concerned about whether Avril Lavigne was punk or not? Someone would say she was, and then someone who was usually a sixteen-year-old guy in an army coat would try to explain to you what real punk music was but he wasn’t actually explaining it so much as screaming to the heavens that he was a man and he understood real music and none of this changed the fact that “Complicated” is just, on its own, a really solid song, built like a little glittering stone with a hook that tumbles over the hills. It never gets old, both in the sense that a roomful of twenty-five-year-olds from twenty-five different cities will all bring their voices together as one to belt ACTING LIKE YA SOME-BO-DY-UH ELSE GETS-UH ME FRUSTRATED the moment this song lights up a bar in the afternoon, and in the sense that it actually stands the test of time pretty well as a vehicle of charming youthful despair, as the first sound of an artist no one knew yet back in 2002, as the start of Avril Lavigne.

There’s a lot to examine in Let Go but the thing that strikes me most immediately now is how young it sounds, which is not an insult; and, following that, how essential it is to Avril’s music to understand how often “young” is meant as an insult. Let Go came out when she was seventeen. It sounds like the diary of a teenager; it is, by turns, clever, funny, absurd, pretentious, and sure. It also, more specifically, sounds like the diary of a teenage girl. Most of the songs are about the faceless and generally nameless creature who haunts female pop music, the creature we may refer to as The Boy. In this instance, he might have been a series of boyfriends, or one particularly turbulent individual, but he is, as is also the case in female pop music, much less important than the songs that have been written about him. So it works to Avril’s advantage that he stays vacant throughout the album, solidifying only in poignant, vengeful, and occasionally hilarious detail (till you chose weed over me / you’re so lame).

“Complicated” is, ostensibly, about The Boy but not in a way that’s familiar or especially sentimental. It’s a circuitous bleat of concern for something I remember vividly being a problem in the aughts: the fear that someone, in some moments even more horribly you yourself, was a poser. There was — there may still be, among children — an earthy snarl that propelled you toward honesty. You were determined to be real. It was essential to begin an understanding of who you were and who you might become, trapped as you were in your sad unearthly body, like the sensation of a small boat leaving the harbor or raising your eyes along a staircase at midnight. It’s a feeling Avril understands. She doesn’t dress like other girls. She runs around the mall with boys. She brings the learned coolness of girls already bred to be unaffected (chill out, whatchya yellin’ for?) to something that does cause her pain, or causes her to imagine the possibility of it. If it is possible to feel pain in so small a world as being young, then it is the shock of pain previously read in books or seen in movies and suddenly given life, the idea of childhood absurdly and abruptly thrusted into memory. Even at seventeen, she’s writing like she’s lost a piece of herself and recalling it, the way we look around us no matter what age we are and think, but back then I knew what I was about and I had it good. “Complicated” has a touch of something unkempt because of this, teetering on the verge of ugly, and it expresses weird longings, dabbling in the unspeakable dumbness of teenage conflict but there isn’t a trace of parody in her voice; she means every word. Life’s like this, she says. Uh huh. That’s the way it is.

It’s a real fear when you’re young, that someone will lie to you or choose the easy pleasure of a notable lunch crowd over the weekends you’ve spent in your room. Tangible viciousness feels truer, laughing louder than you should, how we tested all the ways we could be too much or get hurt. It doesn’t mean anything in the end, of course, but when you’re young there doesn’t seem to be any end: everything is happening for the first time and it’s impossible to imagine a future. What a fervent desire it is, to be real. The joys you do know to be true are more solidified and they are often actions: I like you the way you are / when we’re driving in your car. In those days, the things that were real were the things you could touch and you could count on them to return. The threat of something manufactured, or cultivated without your consent, was the trouble of adults and it endangered what it meant to be a kid, not by raising the stakes or by heightening the hysteria you already felt, but by complicating it — by introducing an element you had not anticipated. This was what we called being fake. It was a phrase I used a lot in 2002, flinching in sixth grade as I watched my neighbor with her beautiful long brown hair sitting slightly further away from me on the bus every day until one day she sat next to another girl with beautiful long brown hair altogether and that was the end of that. She’s so fake, I fumed. I meant: She can adapt in a way I can’t. She’s figuring out the necessary tricks of being an adult. Life’s like this. That’s the way it is.

It means a lot of things to be young, but most of the words we give it come later when we no longer are. A great deal of being young is being voiceless. So parts of “Complicated” are laughable: the presumption of a seventeen-year-old feeling she knew enough to say life’s like anything at all, let alone an anchored blossoming world where everyone rides skateboards, skips school, outruns the cops; but being young is like speaking a language no one else knows and that you forget as you grow older, littered with the untranslatable phrases of a Monday afternoon, a speckled driveway, bodies near and new, an impossible primal togetherness that seems like it might never end.

I was careful with my away messages on AIM back then; it felt crucial to assign importance to my anguish with someone else’s words, but wrong to include specifics. Specifics could get you in trouble, even if the rush you felt when someone confronted you was like nothing else and burst into being all colored over with the recognition of the personhood you were testing, the many voices you were trying on: someone is reading what I write. I gave it a great deal of thought and then I went with: You fall and you crawl and you break and you take what you get and you turn it into honesty, and promise me I’m never gonna find you fake it. It sounded wise. It sounded like something I already understood.

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Katsushika Hokusai Electronic Circuit Board

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What the fucks happening in Ferguson?

Alright, i’m gonna sit down and basically explain the situation in this ask so everyone of my followers knows why i’m so pissed.

Michael Brown, a 17 - 18 year old african american boy was unlawfully shot (8-10 times supposedly) by police in St Louis, Missouri on saturday, august 9th, 2014. He was unarmed, and had done nothing to attract suspicion other than the fact that he was black. His body was left in the street for 4 hours. (EDIT: i’ve discovered that the Brown family wishes for any and all photos of Michael lying in the streets to be removed. please respect this and do so)

There are several claims from witnesses (see: Dorian Johnson’s account and video [HIGHLY RECOMMEND READING UP ON HIS ACCOUNT, ITS VERY SPECIFIC] — Brown’s friend who experienced the situation first hand, La’Toya Cash and Phillip Walker— Ferguson residents nearby the incident),  that fall together in generally close claims. However, the only one who’s claim seems out of place is the police officer’s who shot Brown. Who, by the way, is put off on paid administrative leave AND who’s name remained under anonymity for his safety (However, attorney Benjamin Crump is looking for a way to force release his name). He claims that Brown began to wrestle the officer for his gun and tried attacking him after he told Brown and his friend Dorian Johnson (22) to “get the f*ck on the sidewalk”.

According to Johnson, after a minor confrontation on the officer’s part where he grabbed Brown by the neck and then by the shirt, the officer pulled his gun on Brown and shot him at point blank range on the right side of his body. Brown and Johnson were able to get away briefly and started running. However, Brown was shot in the back, supposedly disabling him from getting very far. He turned around with his arms in the air and said “I don’t have a gun, stop shooting!” By this point, Brown and the officer were face to face as the cop shot him several times in the face and chest until he was finally dead. Johnson ran to his apartment and by the sound of his account, seemingly had some sort of panic attack. Later he emerged from his home to see Brown still laying in the streets. People were gathered with their cellphones, screaming at the police.

According to msnbc, the police refuse to interview Johnson at all, despite his amazing courage to come forward. They didn’t wanna hear it. They only listened to the cop’s account of it all and were vague with the media on what they thought happened. They’ve also refused to commit to a timeline in releasing autopsy results and other investigation information.

Numerous rumors are sweeping around such as Brown stealing candy from a QuickTrip, the store he emerged from calling the cops on him, Brown reaching for a gun, Brown attacking the cop first, ect. But these have all been debunked. (I know a lot of these have been debunked, but im having a hard time finding sources. if anyone could help out and link some legit ones id be SO grateful)

The event in and of itself was terrible, but now it has escalated beyond belief. Around 100 or more people, mostly black, went to the police station to protest peacefully. Things quickly turned bad as martial law got involved and authorities were bringing in K9s, tanks, heavy artillery, ect. The heavy police presence only made things worse as riots began to break out and looting and vandalism started. [ x ] [ x ] [ x ]

Now, as of very recently, the media has been banned from Ferguson. There is also a No-Fly zone above Ferguson for the reason of “ TO PROVIDE A SAFE ENVIRONMENT FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTIVITIES ” as said on the Federal Aviation Commission’s website. Cop cars are lined up on the borders to prevent people from entering/leaving. Media outlets are being threatened with arrest. It completely violates our amendments and everything.

It’s becoming increasingly scary and difficult to find out whats going on over there. I’m afraid this is all the information I have, though. If anybody else knows anything about the situation, please feel free to add on or correct any mistakes i’ve made as i’m no expert on writing these things.

And as a personal favor, i’d really appreciate anyone to give this a reblog in order to spread the word. I think it’s a shame that this is going on in our own country yet so few people know about it. Help me make this topic huge and get this as much attention as possible.

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By copyrighting his property as an artwork, he has prevented oil companies from drilling on it.

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THE FAULT IN OUR STARS

SCREENING. IN LONDON. IN MAY. I'LL BE HERE. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE. 

also, super excited about the dinner scene, I don't know why. Probably the champagne. but also, Ansel Elgort's fudginly cute nose! 

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au where the trojan war is a party menelaus throws to win back his girlfriend who left him for some douchebag and he ropes all his friends into helping him and wacky shenanigans happen and a running gag is that odysseus...

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feels are injured

To the tune of “Do you want to build a snowman” 

Because if this isn’t perfect I don’t understand the levels you need for perfection

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Some more things for this project! The first is from the Monday night stream. Thanks everyone who’s been keeping me company on this.

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to tha wall

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to tha window

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This whole notion of doing only work that you love has always affronted me but I’ve lacked the articulation to be able to explain my objections. Only the top levels of developed world society can really consider that as an option. Almost all of the world has to labor just to survive. It just has always seemed so snobbish to me to think that people should all aspire to having only rewarding work to do to support themselves. I believe in the reward of doing honest work in an honest way—that’s satisfying to me, even if I can’t always say I enjoy it. My work is not significant or important on a global scale, and I know it. But I do it pretty well. I’ve probably told you the story of my wonderful professor, Russ Kelly, in my first year of college. One day he brought in a newspaper article about the wage increase for garbage workers in San Francisco that had recently passed. He pointed out that someday, even if we did well in college, that we may end up doing something like that because it paid well and we needed the money. But he said that a liberal education is for the enrichment of your heart and your brain, and it’s meant to give you something to think about, and a way to think about it, for the rest of your life. And he said that if someday you work as a garbage collector, you can enjoy thinking about Plato. That’s the kind of advice that was actually helpful.

My mom (who is clearly the best) in an email this morning. <3 (via slodwick)

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preach 

I’ve been working on this little tidbit for awhile now. I started writing it because I kept seeing these things on My facebook feed, things that even My FRIENDS in real life were posting. Memes, articles, videos and commentary about “real sex” vs porn sex and then alist of things that to me seem...

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heeehee omg can't stop laughing 

True Love

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Cycling Ensemble

1895-1900

British 

Manchester City Galleries