technology & traditional art

"Currently, at any stage of its creation, any idea or concept is digitally adapted. What will be retained in the future? What will happen to all of these billions of megabytes we stock on computers? In ten years? In five hundred years?" 

- leo caillard

Art Game

a reflection on the problems of our new digital world

by: leo caillard

marc jacobs

 [frida gustavsson shot by juergen teller]

i have so much admiration and respect for marc jacobs

fashion week 2005

Marc Jacobs was born in New York City on April 9, 1963. After graduating from the High School of Art and Design in 1981 he entered Parsons School of Design. As a design student at Parsons, Jacobs was the recipient of some of the schools highest honors including Design Student of the Year. 
[you can stalk marc jacobs life on his website, like i do]

my favorite mans quotes -

"I love to take things that are everyday and comforting and make them into the most luxurious things in the world."

//

"I'd like to believe that the women who wear my clothes are not dressingfor other people, that they're wearing what they like and what suits them. It's not a status thing."

//

"Sometimes there are two very opposite directions, and we go with the stronger one at the end. It's an impulse thing, like, 'Oh, I love both so much, but it's got to be one or the other because the two don't work together."

//

 "I like the sort of 'nothingness' of the jeans and the T-shirt. I feel that's about as close as I can get to the future because it seems like something so old that 

will always be, so I feel it's a safe bet for the future."

"It's a cliché, but when I drank I was taller, funnier, smarter, cooler," Jacobs told New York Magazine in 2005. "I would come into work and fall straight to sleep, and then I would tell everyone to come in on a Saturday because we were behind, and then I wouldn't show up."

[fin]

yummmm...

girl hate

If you see a beautiful girl walking down the street, your first thought is generally not an internal compliment, raving about her voluminous hair or natural waif-like figure. The thoughts swarming around in your head are more likely to be sharp jabs at the beautiful girls non-existant thigh fat, or imagined caterpillar eyebrows. We have all done this at least once in our life - we have all done it probably more than once this week - we may not be sure why at the time, but when we see someone superior to ourselves, we can’t seem to fight the urge to cut them down to size. Smaller than us, to be more exact.

Why is it that when a coworker gets praised for their new and innovative idea, we scoff and mention how they probably got the idea from someone else, instead of just giving them a pat on the back and a vocalized, “job well done!” Why when we see a gorgeous girl with a handsome man, we tell our friends that they’re probably just together because she has an easy reputation, instead of noting how adorable they are. Rather than call the sales attendant rude for getting us the dress in the next size up, why do we not thank her for her honesty, by telling us that the dress we picked out was too small for our hips?

We don’t all call World War Three to action every time someone intelligent or charming gets in our path, and it’s not like we haul out the missiles the second another person receives attention, but if you really take some time to analyze the little moments when other people upset us, you will realize that - whether we assert our disdain internally or externally - there is a pattern in our negative behavior: People are put off by others that exert superiority to them. Whether that predominance be measured in brain-power, sex-allure, beauty, charm, or kindness, it is all the same: If you assume someone is better than you in anyway, the claws are coming out.

Maybe there is some tie to our animal instincts. As a human race, we have evolved from cave men (and women) who spear bears to the - while sometimes questionable - civilized people that we are today. We have that natural, wild instinct. It is innate. So why let it go to waste? Instead of using our animalistic instincts to protect ourselves from wild beasts and keep safe shelter in our slabs of rock, we use them to defend ourselves from our new form of competition: the new girl in school, or the successful law firm down the road from your companies.

Maybe it stems from our wildly instincts, but there is something very naturally and ferociously independent about each of us, even if we have yet to realize it. Our bodies and minds want us to be self-fufilled, and in order for us to be the best that we can be, we must have self-confidence. We won’t get into why so few of us have a genuine confidence in ourselves - the list would go on for days - but many of us do not. In an attempt to fuel us to reach our full potential, we trick ourselves into a false confidence. How do we acquire this false self-confidence? We cut down others that we see as a potential threat. Not very nice, but it gets the job done. With each refueling of this temporary confidence, we allow ourselves to succeed in whatever task we are attempting to accomplish, whether that be writing a work proposal, getting ready for a date, or being charming and adorable while at a family dinner. It’s like a drug. Compare it to abusing adderall to complete your stacks of paperwork, or smoking a cigarette to ward off hunger and lose weight. In the end, we are only harming ourselves. Rather than hopping on a treadmill, or getting our work done in the daylight as opposed to procrastinating, we opt to take the easy way out. It takes much less energy and self-reflection to throw a hurtful name at a girl in a sexy dress, than genuinely believing that we look sexy in a dress of our own.

But abusing cigarettes and adderall will you kill you, eventually. Sure, the paperwork will be done and the weight will be off, but what will you have to show for it, knowing deep inside that your outcome did not come from your own work? Just the same, you will never love yourself so long as you don’t love others. Alternately, you will never love others until you love yourself. Put down the celebrity gossip magazine, and pick up a mirror. Pick up a paper from middle school with an A plus stamped on the front page. Tell yourself you are beautiful. Tell yourself you are intelligent. Ah - and well you’re at it - tell a stranger that today, as well. You’ll soon begin to realize that it’s a cycle. Treat others the way you’d like to be treated, as they say. Pay the positivity forward, and you’ll get it back. Wouldn’t you rather have a stranger approach you, telling you your hair looked nice, instead of noting your imaginary thigh fat?

- Teagan Laurel Alexander

for that melancholy mood

a little boost of sunshine

goodmorning!

good morning beautiful, how was your night?

time to wake up! forget the alarm clock, eye candy wakes me up

dear mister akin

I read something today that really rustled my feathers. Have you heard the word on Mr. Akin and his legitimate rape remarks? 

Well...

From The New York Times, written by John Eligon and Michael Schwirtz:

"In an effort to explain his stance on abortion, Representative Todd Akin, the Republican Senate nominee from Missouri, provoked ire across the political spectrum on Sunday by saying that in instances of what he called “legitimate rape,” women’s bodies somehow blocked an unwanted pregnancy.

Asked in an interview on a St. Louis television station about his views on abortion, Mr. Akin, a six-term member of Congress who is backed by Tea Party conservatives, made it clear that his opposition to the practice was nearly absolute, even in instances of rape.

“It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare,” Mr. Akin said of pregnancies from rape. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something: I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child.”

--------------------------------------

I find Mr.Akins words outrageous, and following in my favorite feminists Eve Enslers footsteps, I am going to write Todd Akin an email, and I encourage all of you to do so, too. 

Click here to contact Mr. Akin

And, here's my letter: 

Mr. Akin, 

I would like you to know it has taken just over two years for my mind, body and spirit to recover from my rape. You can say now (in your retraction statements) that you sympathize to the fullest extent with victims/and/survivors of sexual assault, but your off-the-cuff statements reveal your true feelings towards rape culture. 

It honestly breaks my heart that a (precievably) intelligent individual such as yourself would make a comment so ignorant towards women, and rape culture. 

I - of course - have a personal connection to the issue as I have stated above, but I do not want that connection to make you think any less credible my opinion. If anything, it should strengthen the words I am about to say.

The very words you used (LEGITIMATE RAPE) make me sick to my stomach. There should be no instance when a rape is considered/referred to as not legitimate. By declaring some rapes legitimate, you are automatically saying that some sexual assaults are not legitimate... Do you know how many women a year are told that their rapes were "not legitimate?" Do you have any idea how many women slip into depression, self-medicate, take their own lives, because of ignorant men and women telling them that they weren't "really" raped, that it was their fault, that they were asking for it? 

It goes without being said that victims of sexual assault have experienced a very intense personal trauma, one that has many negative effects — these negative "symptoms" of rape are only increased tenfold when the survivor is blamed by friends, family, the media, etc.

Victims of sexual assault have enough to deal with, without obnoxious anti-abortion snobs taking away their RIGHT to have an abortion, if that is so their choice.

Many sexual assault survivors already have to deal with the torment of many people saying that their rape was not legitimate, that it was their fault, that they were asking for it — now, women who are raped also have to hear that it is their fault that their rapist impregnated them against their will, because their body should have stopped it.

Are you kidding me? Did you hear the words coming out of your mouth?

You have already backtracked your statement, but no amount of back-peddling will ever erase what you said, and I consider that a good thing - I hope people do not let your so-called "politically correct" back-peddling statements ease their minds: You meant what you said, that's why you said it. I hope people never forget your horrible words, and it brings forth positive change in our world.

I hope more than anything that maybe the opposing words you are hearing will sink in, and change your views.

With respect,

Teagan Laurel Alexander