former apartment

in light of recent circumstances i've been looking through the mess that is my digital file system, culling snapshots here and there for a portfolio. this is from the vault, when i first moved to los angeles, and when i still believed in using film but had nowhere to print it.

blech

the music industry has been floundering lately, and as a result i lost my job yesterday. the big groan in my stomach was followed by a brief flash of empowerment at being in full control of my own time again. oh 9-to-5 schedules, how you make us long for summer vacation. i'll be using my severance pay to take this month off and reorganize my life, but if you know anyone who may be interested in melancholic line drawings and/or print design, send them my way?

my father the communist

i was in san francisco this weekend visiting my uc berkeley-bound brother. while window shopping in chinatown, my mother disclosed to me that, as a teen, there was nothing my post-cultural revolution father wanted more than a maoist red cap. as a person who thinks way too much about radicalism and liberationist movements, i always find it interesting how one culture's norms can become another culture's revolution. my father has more in common with american capitalism than with pseudo-marxist college students. he probably just wanted to look cool.

the slip

friday diptych day

when i'm not thinking about the everyday, i'm most likely thinking about vagrancy and hermeticism and space et al.

pop quiz

i've been thinking about the 90s lately and how much of them will come back in the 2010s, as trends tend to cycle through a 20 year period. i started by assessing my personal sense of 90s-ocity with this list from 90swoman. my answers are bolded.

by the way, i am so ready to emerge from a bush-induced economic crisis into the heyday of the clinton years.

You might be a 90s Woman if…

• Any of the following changed your life: Bikini Kill, Nirvana, 7 Year Bitch, Hole, Babes in Toyland, Sinead O’Connor, Lisa Carver, Tank Girl, Sister Spit, Liz Phair.
• You have had a crush on any of the following: Paul Rudd, James Spader, Brittany Murphy, Winona Ryder, Johnny Depp (21 Jump Street era).
• You’ve read Sassy.
• When you heard Billy Corgan and Jessica Simpson were dating you got upset.
• You’ve made a mix tape on an actual tape.
• You know lines from Clueless.
• You’ve marched for abortion rights, against the first Iraq War, or for Take Back the Night.
• You have ever been into Wicca, eco-feminism, or liberation theology.
• You have a speech ready whenever any of the following come up: Camille Paglia (RAVING PSYCHO!), WAM, Katie Roiphe, or the Michigan Womyn’s Festival.
• You think any of the following items of clothing are hot: thigh-highs, plaid shirts, work boots with dresses, cat-eye glasses, chunky heels, baby-doll dresses, overalls, plaid, flannel, bra straps showing, barrettes.
• You’ve dyed your hair a color not found in nature, ideally with Manic Panic.
• You are all over your birth control responsibilities.
• It would never occur to you that women wouldn’t work or that men wouldn’t clean the house.
• You have self-identified as bisexual (even if you’re gay or straight).
• You can do a feminist analysis of your favorite pop culture.
• You started—or at least read—a zine. Now it’s a blog or tumblr.
• You are both ironic and sentimental. But for real, not like that “like rain on a wedding day” Alannis Morissette irony song, which you have mocked but know all the words to.

photography is the construction of fiction, not fact

being in the photo pit for the silversun pickups last friday was probably one of the more fun experiences i've had courtesy of the workplace. and now i am saddled with avoiding photo editing and the sad fact that i need a new lens... anyone, anyone?

photo editing awaits me in my personal projects as well. BLECHHHHHH!!!! THAT'S HOW MONDAYS MAKE ME FEEELLLLL!

en foco

diptych of the photos that occur when setting up my camera, 2010

another window

a good quote

"one doesn't live in a country, one lives in a language." — emil cioran

shame and fortune

"...my mother once traumatized me at age 5 by chopping off ALL MY HAIR from the ears down. My id has never been the same again. (She also once did this secretly to my sister by sneaking up to her from behind, gently stroking her locks, and then SNIP!)"
—the chicktionary


—victo ngai

the two images really speak to me. let's just say i've been on the receiving end of a cut or two.

every day is nostalgia day

life change happens so suddenly and subtly that you forget who you were one year ago until the memory seems so far away. you recall the warmth of the sun and the smell of your ginger saffron candle which would come to be the envelope in which everything else is stored - a smell that yoked together the sensations soft and spicy, blue and warm, cream and cold all at the same time.

nighttime story 2

my book from the sketchbook project came in! i'll be sending it back to new york city in january, where it will go on display in the brooklyn library and some lucky fool or two will be able to check out and read my musings on the theme 'nighttime stories'. the book will be a graphic documentation of my dreams a la carl jung (or carol yun as she's known in these quarters). of course my first order of business was to hand-letter the cover.

nighttime story

NEW OBSESSION

this is what your awkward gothic teenage self would sound like if she grew up to be an accomplished, thoughtful young woman.