Fashioning the Body: Versions of the Citizen, the Self, and the Subject

I am an object that has been separtated from something. There's a space for another object to interact with me. I could be some kind of weightlifting equipment. After all, I fit in the hand quite nicely. I spin well-maybe I'm some kind of pointer. I could conform to different parts of the bpody but I don't which ones. Maybe I'm a "personal" massager. I am incomplete. I feel useless without the other part of me as if I had no purpose without it. What will happen to me  if I'm continued to be separated from the other part of me. Will I wither away and die? I feel so lonely...

A hodgepodge, a conglameration, a wondrous body created out of many things. But most importantly, a body that was created from objects, the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.A body like no other.

Is this a body built by or for a BMW lover? Do they think of a woman's body like the automobile version of the BMW, curvy, fast and designed to envelop a person in its interior? Or do they think of a woman's body like the motorcycle version of the BMW, meant to be rode upon?

My Cell Phone.

My Computer.

The Playstation.

The Microwave.

The MP3 Player.

The Television.

At first, these things were part of him and only came into my life when he came to briefly invade. Then his brief invasions became a full scale occupation. The technology that I had once avoided was now all around me. Once I would have welcomed a near Luddite existence. Now, I embraced the buffer that the mp3 player gave me in public spaces. I spent hours engrossed in the world that was Diablo 2. I told myself that the time that I spent playing games on the Playstation improved my hand-eye coordination. The microwave made it easier to make larger quantities of food and reheat it later. The cell phone just made it easier to stay in touch. After all, I was at school or on the bus so much it was hard to catch me at home. The television was nice because because I couldn't read all the time. Then one day I woke up and realized that I had fallen in love with all the technology that I had once considered to be unnecessary. 

Superstar-The Karen Carpenter Story

It's a montage.

No, it's a black and white movie.

No, it's puppets.

No,it's a docudrama.

Whatever it is, it's kind of strange.

Full disclosure- I grew up in a Carpenters loving family. One of the few things my mom and grandma could agree on was the fact that Karen Carpenter had an amazing voice. That being said I can continue now.

On one hand, I think it's brilliant to use Barbies to recreate a story about a person who suffered from eating disorders. And using the made for television movie as a guideline for that movie is just a stroke of genius. However, I find that it's interesting to note what was considered important enough to be included in Superstar. It seemed to me that there was an emphasis placed on the effect that Karen's family had on her eating disorder. But there was little mention of the pressure of being in the media spotlight had on her. It's not a big suprise to me that she felt this pressure when you take into account the emphasis that the entertainment industry places on physical appearance.

Here's a really great video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUTJQIBI1oA

Here it is- I need to revise before the end of the quarter.

The Pyrex Measuring Cup

????-?????

I don't when the measuring cup was created; all I knew was that it had been in my family for a long time. It was a victim of my pre-coffee clumsiness when I knocked it off the counter to shatter into pieces on the floor. The measuring cup had done its job well and will be mised by me and its many coworkers.

Civilized and Barbaric Dress

(Australian voice speaks) Observe now the wily frock as it hunts its prey, the perfect pair of shoes.This frock will spend most of the day hunting for the perfect accessories and at night will sort through them rejecting most in a fit of capriciousness. This is in complete contrast to the domesticated frock, the more sedate counterpart of the wild frock. It has no need to hunt for its accessories as they are brought to it by its loving owners.

Civilazation has done little more for human passion of personal adornment than extend, by its progress in the arts, the means of gratifying its barbaric caprices.

(Voice Continues) No civilized person would hunt the wild frock; it is too untamed for their tastes. To wear such a frock could and would lead to the impression that the wearer was a rabble rouser, with no respect for taste and good decorum.

It is a canon of good taste in dress, as well in all other things, to avoid extremes. A person of taste will take care not to be the last to leave an old, or the first to assume a new fashion.

(Voice Continues) The wild frock has some unusual mating habits. There are some that are monogamous, some who have sexual relations with every frock that they can. There are still others who only recieve pleasure from watching other frocks have sexual relations. Again this is in direct contrast to the domesticated frock whose mating habits are controlled and often mirror the mating habits of their owner.

The fact that porn, like weepies, thrillers and low comedy is realized in/through the body has given it low status in our culture.

(Voice Continues) The wild frocks that recieve their sexual gratification from from watching others are shunned by the other frocks.If two or more frocks discover that another frock has been watching them having sexual relations, they will attack it, punishing it for its transgressions, tearing it apart and destroying its plumage. It is not unusual for an attacked frock to end its life after such an attack.

My life as a theatrical moment would be a game on the Internet, audience sitting in front of the computers, interacting with the action, becoming the action, almost never content to passively sit and watch.We assume the roles of heroes as we wish or become villains. It all depends on our mood because we know that the only difference between heroism and villainy is how you see the acts being performed. For example, if you were poor, Robin Hood would have been your hero. If you were rich, he would have been a villain.We play together, not just playing a game but showing each other are personalities while we're distracted in an imaginary world.In this alternate universe, we're friends. We tell each other our problem and celebrate each other's victories in and out of game. But in the "real" world, we might not have looked twice at each other.

The first thought that I had while watching this was that this movie was a prequel to reality telelevision. Even though it was supposed to be "real" it was edited to emphasize aspects of the contestants personalities that best fit into the "plot". I suspect that at the time, it was created to be a commercial of sorts for women's sports. It's really interesting to think about the effect that this movie had when it was released. In case anybody was curious, here's a link to Bev Francis' webpage.

http://www.bevfrancis.com/

And to be fair here's one about Rachel McLish.

http://www.legendaryfitness.com/rachel_mclish.htm

 

There were a few events that happened over the last month that made me realize that these three things actually have a lot in common. I broke a tooth and had to go to the dentist. We had to shop for a new computer and my SO started learning about Linux or open source software. The commonality is that we as consumers are not supposed to question what the doctor or dentist tells us or consider the possibility that we don't have to buy the latest shiny new object to make us happy. We're supposed to believe that if we take the right pills or buy the right stuff, happiness and good health will follow.

The first of these events that happened was breaking my tooth. First rant- when you call a dentist's office, tell them you need an emergency appointment and they offer to get you in next month. When I finally get an appointment, the dentist tells me that my tooth is broken. Somehow I get the impression that he expects me to be surprised by this information. He also tells me that I need to go to an oral surgeon to get it pulled. When I ask him what I should do to take care of myself while I'm waiting to see the other dentist, he gives me a prescription for codeine, tells me not to bite down hard on the broken tooth. He also told me not to worry because the other dentist would take care of me. I walked out the office wondering what was strange about me wanting to participate in my own personal care. I was supposed to accept that swallowing this pill could make me all better and I shouldn't have questioned the authority of the dentist.

When one of our computers died, we started looking into buying a new one. I have come to the belief that when you start thinking about changing your operating system it's almost like changing your religion. When we started looking at different websites for computers there usually were two choices for operating systems and they were both Microsoft products. I noticed that on every website that we looked at there weren't any other options to Windows. It could be said that the reason I didn't find any Mac results is because I wasn't searching for Mac. However, it seemed that when I searched for a guide on how to buy a new computer it would contain advice on which Microsoft product was best suited for specific user needs. It felt like I wasn't supposed to question whether or not I needed Windows just which version would work best for me.