Stuff and Stuff and Stuff
- Last week, I conversed with a female clerk at a seedy sex-toy shop about the bullshit fact that companies can charge more just by gendering sex products. She pointed out a couple tubes of lube to me: a pink bottle was about $1 more than its non-pink counterpart, and THEY'RE THE EXACT SAME THING, just different packaging. I wished momentarily that there was some sort of Toys in Babeland or Tulip in Cleveland that she could work at, because it's not that often you get that sort of insightfulness from a sex-toy clerk at a seedy sex shop, and she would no doubt flourish in a woman-focused sex-toy space. But then I thought, maybe it's better for the universe to have her be working at Seedy McSeederson's Sex Den after all--those are the kind of places that could really use the occasional critical eye and sharp female perspective. Then I thought, Um, no one really gives a fuck WHAT you think really, Lindy Loo.
- On this same trip, I was introduced to the fact that, if you wanted to, you could actually purchase a bi-racial double-ended dildo. One half is white. One half is black. To which N-A mirrored my very thoughts by blurting out, "Ha ha ha ha."
- I feel bad for folks involved in some of the passport horror stories that I've heard in the past (passport never arriving, having to drive hours to get their passport so that they could go on their trip, etc.) because, well, don't tell anyone, but... my passport showed up in 6 business days.
- Last week, some random dude in a pimped-out automobile blew me a kiss as he rounded the corner one night. It was a very Kurt Russell/Quentin Tarantino-esque moment so I couldn't help but grin.
- I was thinking recently about the nature of the "Staged Romantic Moment" photograph.
Surely you know that of which I speak:
or the ones that go something like this:
The Staged Romantic Photograph seems to me to be RIDICULOUSLY deserving of having some sort of critical theory/philosophizing inflicted upon it, ala Roland Barthes or something. Because the act of taking the Staged Romantic Photograph is moreso akin to taking a picture of a picture being taken than it is a capturing of the romantic spontaneity and feeling of the actual moment. And that bothers me.
It's not that there's no real love there. Because perhaps there is. But it's not the love pictured, when it involves a staging. It is essentially a lie, or if not a lie, a falsity and a posturing.
There is an insincerity to ANY self-taken photograph, granted, but there is something MORE insincere about the self-taken ROMANTIC photograph.
The lie: "We are in love, so let us pose in a seemingly spontaneous romantic moment which IS, in actuality, 100% staged. In order to capture this moment, I must first run and set the camera down, turn on the timer, hurriedly run back over to you, grasp you in a staged embrace that is always always always self-consciously aware that there is an eye upon us, and then we will press lips together in this facade of a moment, for the viewers, and to make them believe."
There is something inherently false and distrustful about this. These photographs suffer the same lie as the Hollywood Movie Orgasm, where both lovers orgasm at the exact same time, with no mess of bodily fluids expended, no sagging condom draping off the man's cock. - Next time I decide to wear open-toed dress-shoes to work, I should probably remember to clean all the filth off my toes first.
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