Archive for July, 2006
totally superflously - eric stoltz as marty mcfly?
like, imagine if we went back in time and implanted eric instead of michael, and how would that change the course of history? all john hughes movies would end up with the geeky soft underdog getting the girl, not in just some kind of wonderful. wisecracking would be a less favoured character trait. maybe the bttf series might have been only one movie.
spies tell me you can still see eric in some of the driving scenes.
i wish it’d stop raining today and being so windy. very uncomfortable walk into town if i could be bothered to put on my big heavy peacoat and go out. i want some decent food instead of eating the whole packet of tim tams.
last night was my last late shift for a while, since i’d been covering wednesdays for the past year while somebody was on compo for a work-related injury. i will not miss crazy people outside yelling at people inside the library and throwing his breadsticks at the glass doors. but i liked spending a few hours doing work and anything else i wanted inbetween and speaking my mind without the manager around.
i’m not sure if being straightforward is a byproduct of being a bad liar or being opinionated or social awkwardness (because sometimes it feels like i’m just parading versions of myself, and i don’t want to hide).
when i’m very quiet at work people wonder if i’m alright, when it’s just that i’m bored and preoccupied with things other than work.
anyway, last night a man turned up, maybe 50-something, sandy blond floppy hair and white pinstripe jacket, and deep lines in his face leading up to his cheekbones. first name jules, last name the same as a certain english movie star. total charmer, down to “rachael, that’s a nice name” (how ordinary) and “what languages do you speak? i can speak seven languages” and some terrible approximation of something in chinese or cantonese or shanghainese or whatever he said he spoke, which left me in giggles.
deb whispered in my ear, “that ’s the guy that tried to chat up odette. creepy, isn’t he?”
” very smooth,” i said, “ugh.”
i might giggle, but still, you would know that he’d done this many times before. i figured he was the most old fashioned kind, as when i looked up a lonely planet book on the ukraine on the catalogue, he asked, “do you know how to spell it?” god, how dare you. and once i picked the book off the shelf for him, he handed me the other in his hand to reshelve. condescending down to a stereotype. very much a film character.
alright, there’s some smugness there when i know i’m wearing a particular style that is not popular amongst the kids right now, or possibly ever (ie. not tight jeans and flats and hairband and long stretchy top either striped or polka dotted in neon colours with bug eyed sunglasses).
with an interest in the analysis of choices of clothing, following on from these observations, i am trying to getting through roland barthes’ the language of fashion. it is a bit of a hard slog for my unacademically occupied mind at times, but goddammit, i’m going to get something out of it!
even if it’s only this:
… only unfashionable is a mode of distinction; in other words, in terms of the masses Fashion is only ever percieved via its opposite: Fashion is health, it is a moral code of which the unfashionable is nothing but illness or perversion.
Fashion (capital F here) has paradoxically killed individualism (even though it acknowledges that there is some space for individualisation of outfits in women’s clothing from the range that fashion allows). follow the group, if you know what’s good for ya, and don’t want the right people staring at you wrongly.
anyway, the aim of this entry was to use the word unfashionable again, and to emphasise that one can dress as they please and with attention to detail, but still remain gladly unfashionable. a constructive part of being unfashionable could involve rejecting materialism, and rejecting purchasing unecessary clothes on a whim. a person might choose instead to wear thrifted clothes, partly on account of individualism, and partly with regards to economies of waste. for example, some of these clothes may have been discarded simply because they are not seen as being up to date.
but if we kept all these clothes, Fashion would also mean that they would return to favour in a matter of years. espadrilles seem to be appearing in shop windows again, after being largely popular in the 70s, and the early-90s. sixties fashion recycles in even shorter timeframes - this (southern) autumn’s mod fashions are nowhere to be seen in winter. Fashion is only a matter of timing, and everything runs on a cycle (hemlines, jeans waistline).
then should we disregard mass fashion for personal fashion, or as some would call it, style?
“Fashion is born by small facts, trends, or even politics, never by trying to make little pleats and furbelows, by trinkets, by clothes easy to copy, or by the shortening or lengthening of a skirt.”
Elsa Schiaparelli
i am really quite sick of people, since it’s been the school holidays, and there seems to be even more people than usual in and out the doors. last saturday was a mess. our door counter stats will confirm our hunches, i guess. thank god i’m off work today, and maybe can squeeze in a viewing of the winterbottom ‘tristam shandy’ film…
here are a few exasperated points:
1. please take your medication regularly.
2. don’t all rush the library at once to sign up, say twenty of you
3. we are here to help, not offend you
4. buying a “replacement” copy of a book or cd does not mean that everything is right in the universe now and you won’t have to pay for it. remember that piece of paper you signed when you got your card? it says that you are responsible for items. we charge you because state library charges us for damaged books that we return. we are not swimming in money either.
5. a bit of noise in the library is fine, no need to hush hush
6. but nobody likes a person talking loudly on their mobile anywhere
7. please control your children
8. a regular shower would be good
9. i don’t want to date you unless you are under 35 and not insane. i probably don’t want to date you anyway because you are a dropkick who needs to hang around the library all hours
10. if you are stalking me, you can fuck off
11. the opacs suck because i.t. doesn’t have the cash for new hardware, or we are low priority, and as such, we have to grin and bear it more than you do
that’s it for now.
