October 2007 Archives

Okay, so I have had this huge crush for a while on Sabina Sciubba from the band Brazilian Girls. At a performance in New York, she appeared on stage in one of those rare instances of positive sexuality. Her outfit consisted of a nude colored spaghetti strapped leotard with with black cut outs on her bikini front, butt, across her eyes, and her breasts. Sciubba tore off the chest cut out, revealing a pasted on daggar cut out (it looks like) with a bloody tip pointed at her heart. During the show, Sciubba introduced a song by saying "This next song is called 'Thoughts are Free' which means censorship is crap." She is extremely provocative, but in an "I'm in control", positive way. It is so refreshing. This also may be me being blinded by my love for her, but I still think this is a pretty great example of fem-friendly sexiness.

It's also really interesting that in the vast majority of their performances, Sciubba has her face or at least eyes covered. She's a badass with an opinion and something real to say.

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Hey, everyone. Sorry it has taken so long-- the life of a student can be crazy sometimes! Anywho, let's just get down to it. What is Channel-Surfing the Apocalypse? For starters, it's a really great book by Susan Smith Nash, "a day in the life of the fin-de-millenium mind". I read it a while ago and was completely blown away. It is really a collection of short stories, but after a while you start to realize that they intersect. The same characters start appearing in multiple stories, often in a continuation of what was going on with them a few stories earlier. The short stories are all really just snapshots of people's lives. Nash is channel-surfing these people's stories, catching glimpses of lots of "channels", or lives, and sometimes coming back for another peek at them. Despite the brevity of the narratives, Nash writes each character and story with incredible passion and tenderness.

That's kind of how I feel sometimes. I have a lot of different interests that I am really passionate about, but I can't pay attention to everything at once. Most of my interests involve theory and reading, but I can't multitask those things very well. I focus on one thing at a time but change frequently. I want to channel-surf what's going on in the world, in academia, in the books I'm reading, in my college seminars, and in really great conversations I have with friends (especially when they involve hot chocolate). There is so much stuff going on not only in my personal life, but in the world around me. It is all interesting, but more than that, it is all so important. Everything is connected and the smallest action can have the most profound impact on life.

I am haunted by single lines in books, panels from comics, pictures, and things people say. I want to have a record of it somewhere because you can get so caught up in trying to take everything in that sometimes it is difficult to revist those moments or that really great thought you had. I want to share those moments with others and I want other people to share their own moments, too. It really is those small things that have such enormous consequences for us. It's that single advertisement that makes us scrutinize our bodies, or book that opens a whole new world.

So here it is. A record of my channel-surfing, connected to lots of other people who all have great things to say.