Viridis Monster

Location: Vermont, USA

Occupation: mad science brain, lately escaped from a jar, now seeking life of excitement and satisfaction.

~~Also seeking:~~ Found: new jar.

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In the Flesh: The Cultural Politics of Body Modification by Victoria Pitts: fairly self-explanatory, really

"Since I spend my working days studying trends, many of which are downright disgusting, I feel it's my duty after work to encourage the trends I'd like to see catch on, like signaling before you change lanes, and chocolate cheesecake."
--Connie Willis, Bellwether

LAST 10 ENTRIES:

Dizzy in my head

I'm on the hunt I'm after you

No one likes a girl who won't sober up

Why am I able to waste my energy to notice life being so beautiful?

He doesn't see the danger dawning

Reading rainbow

88 lines about 44 women

What in the world ever became of Sweet Jane?

An open letter

Sister, it seems to me you're going to be fine

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June 15, 2006

More talk about books, man ("Books, man")

I realize this is the second entry in a row about books but bear with me. It's that or dogsitting, people.

I've been trying to figure out for a while now why it's so hard to write about books in an interesting way. Leila does it consistently, Hell's Librarian may never have done it in the history of livejournal, and while Bookslut's blog does it every day, the reviews they post in the issues leave me cold. I think a large part of it is that descriptions in the third person ("his is a quirky, off-kilter, enjoyable short story collection that pales in comparison to her latest effort Willful Creatures") are much less interesting than first-person impressions. Maybe it's because in their blog, Bookslut brings readers the best news stories featuring the words "elk balls". Slightly higher eye-pull than "off-kilter and enjoyable". Bonus points for also invoking Broca's aphasia on the same page.

Continuing my hop back and forth between books that rock and those that get chewed on, I blew through two more last night in the latter category:

In the Flesh: The Cultural Politics of Body Modification by Victoria Pitts. Despite the attractive tattooed person wearing a pierced bikini on the front cover, very little of this book seems to be about body modification. Instead the key word here is "politics"; specifically, the author studies groups of white, over-30 body modification enthusiasts who participated in bringing body modification into the mainstream in the early 1990's. Hey, at least Pitts owns up to her bias. But the resulting work reads exactly like the doctoral dissertation of an Art History major who switched to Sociology half way through to "do something real". And as for the subject matter, if you were on rec.arts.bodyart at any point from 1990-1994, you've read this book.

Indigenous: Growing up Californian by Cris Mazza. I have no idea why I thought reading this book would be in any way healthy for me. I was game for a rapprochement with the Golden State, a making of peace with the past, and then three pages into the introduction, the author reminisces about hammering a rabbit's skull in with her father. I'm aiming for less fucking therapy, not more. I plan on leaving this one on the floor of my room a few more nights as a therapy tool for the Princess.

In other news, the Archives page has been disabled because it's pissing me off. I need to take it down, revamp it so that it shows useful things like dates and categories, right after I get done jumping up and down on it. Somehow I have gone from database-driven web development to pleading with Movable Type. My career should be a 90-minute movie on Lifetime, I swear. Maybe I could be played by that actress from "Kate n' Allie"--not the one who cried all the time, but the one who rolled her eyes a lot and hid behind her bangs. That would be a w e s o m e.