journal Archive

On what do you spend too much money?

Books, iced lattes, and gourmet food in general.

(From Consumating)

Sweet or Sour? What’s your favorite thing to suck on?

Got to love those really sour candies that make my tongue bleed if I eat a bunch of them.

(From Consumating)

Your LiveJournal is now connected to your Consumating account. (You can delete this post.)

I am really grateful for all the kind people I know, both in real life and digitally.

I’m mostly over being sick and my hair looks nice, so I guess I have no reason not to go to the convention tonight. I’m probably on my way to hang out with drunken pals and watch half-naked go-go boys and I’m acting like it is a chore. LOL I mean, it is, but it isn’t.

Part of me still wants hot cocoa and a cozy blankie instead.

So Blue Blood finally made it into Wired. I’ve been giving Wired and people who work for Wired comps since approximately 1993. Sometimes because they requested free stuff and sometimes because I was lead to believe they would do coverage of Blue Blood and sometimes just because I really admire their contributor list, which includes William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.

So imagine my excitement when I found out that, after all these years, Blue Blood was on Wired. It was the web site and not the print publication and I told myself it was probably just a small mention, maybe one sentence of press as part of a larger article. I didn’t want to get my hopes up too much. I’d been disappointed in the past, when Wired ran articles where Blue Blood’s existence and accomplishments would have been pertinent, but my stuff was never mentioned. I’ve wracked my brain so much, trying to figure it out, that I even worried that maybe a Bruce Sterling interview I fucked up on in like 1992 or 1993 was a problem. (I doubt it is.)

When I rushed over to Wired to see what they said, my heart just fell through the bottom of my stomach.

So I’m totally depressed now. You can read what ForrestBlack had to say about it, right when we first saw the Wired coverage of Blue Blood, on BlueBlood.net and you can see a screenshot of the article as well.

In my fantasies, a legion of my friends and compatriots march on Wired and on that article and set them straight. All I’m going to ask for, however, is that some of you all give me your impressions and a kind word. I’d like to do a round-up of other people’s impressions, with or without attribution as you all desire.

Sometimes it makes me so crazy, still being the underdog after fifteen years, having large corporations want to hold me back. But, after fifteen years of surviving every dirty trick big business and petty individuals could bring to bear, you’d think that they would all accept that Blue Blood is here to stay and try to make peace.

I don’t want to be sick. I have stuff to do.

I’m really happy with this series because I feel like we really managed to capture some of Voltaire‘s Marilyn Monroe quality, something I’ve wanted to do with her for a long time. You can see NSFW samples on the Blue Blood forums.

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What do you do when you think someone is your friend, but they kinda talk bad about other people pretty often? Especially if some of those other people think they are friends with the person, I know I wonder what that person says about me, when I am not there.

What do you do if you think someone like that is your friend, but you start hearing rumors to the contrary? Do you accept that a person like that just talks trash about their friends, but still likes their friends? Do you write the person off? Do you confront them? What if you confront them and they tell you they are all good with you, but you hear rumors to the contrary?

I just don’t know how to parse out that sort of behavior, when a supposed friend treats me or others that way. I don’t know what to make of it.

by ForrestBlack

I think it’s unfortunate that one of the down sides of living in pretty much any interesting area or city is that, if you are there long enough, the notion that it just isn’t as cool and fun as it used to be is nearly inescapable. It’s really difficult not to fall into a bit of a rut when you see stores you used to enjoy close down, clubs you used to have a great time at are gone, friends that used to be the life of the party have settled down or just become such monumental losers that you don’t want to see them anyway. It’s hard not to feel like you should just uproot yourself and move to greener pastures sometimes. I know I’ve felt like that in a number of areas I’ve lived. Lately, a lot of my Los Angeles friends have been sharing their general ennui on this subject as well. So, I thought I might share one technique that I’ve found that can kind of help shake things up a little. Just pretend you are visiting. Give yourself a week to do all those things you’d only do if you were actually from out of town. Read the local weekly paper and actually go to everything that piques your interest. You’ll be surprised at just how much fun is actually going on right around you.

Just the other day I was feeling kinda bleh and . . .

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Scar 13 doing Superna’s makeup. NSFW samples from series here. Whole set at BlueBlood.com.

( Additional NSFW samples here )

by Amelia G

Over the years, I think Rolling Stone magazine has maintained a higher standard of journalism than most music rags. The majority of music publications are written by writers in the employ of publicists and most rarely have an article on topics other than a performer’s favorite color or fictional creative process. Although their musical tastes and mine are not always precisely the same, Rolling Stone is usually an example of what journalism ought to be.

A week or so ago writer Elizabeth Goodman did a brief piece for Rolling Stone’s online incarnation where she really blasted Trent Reznor. Full disclaimer: The Nine Inch Nails album Pretty Hate Machine pretty much changed my life. When the “Get Down, Make Love” single came out, I drove from DC to Chicago, partly so I could get it from Wax Trax before it was widely available. Some of this is a topic for another article, but I wanted to fully disclose where I’m coming from on this.

In the recent Rolling Stone piece, Elizabeth Goodman chortled about Trent Reznor not being allowed to be giddy with happiness, being goth and all. Reznor apparently confided to Rolling Stone that he had perhaps taken so long between albums because he had sort of lost his confidence and was too worried what people thought of him. The goth-industrial icon went on to explain that . . .

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by Will Judy

Emo has been around long enough that it should have died a natural death by now. But it won’t go away. It hangs around, moping just out of view, like a skinny wuss with a journal in his messenger bag and tears in his eyes. You tell him to fuck off and he skulks away, but you see him following you again the next day. Emo needs that rejection to keep its heart pure, you see. Ugh, so creepy? Can you believe you ever thought there was something special about emo?

It’s over, emo. We’re done with you. It’s been 20 years. Why can’t you just move on?

Most emo kids are dorky enough to know the enshrined canon and history of emo, which starts in DC in ‘85 or so with Embrace and Rites of Spring. This period in history might as well be the Siege of Stalingrad to most of the grumpy larvae who cry along with Dashboard Confessional, and it’s not really accurate anyway. The first band from DC that I ever heard labeled “emo” or “emocore” was Beefeater, whose absence from the canon is mystifying, since their stance was militant vegetarian and their bass player sported the original emo beard. (Note: I grew up in DC and I saw Minor Threat live, okay, so if you’re under 35 and not a Mackaye, do not come at me with a bunch of noise you read on the web somewhere.)

As a further point, just to illustrate the roach-like . . .

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People often like to get me alone and confide that they would really really love to pose nude for me but they are concerned about their future careers. When I lived in Washington, DC, I just took this at face value. I’m proud of how I have lived my life. I was class president in 10th grade. If I felt like running for some community office, I don’t think I would be daunted by my – gasp – association with artistic and activist depictions of naked people. Nonetheless, I understand how someone who aspired to be a beltway insider might be concerned about limiting their career options. But I live in Los Angeles now. These are actors, models, musicians, and celebutantes whispering to me about how they crave to have their bodies in front of my lens. But they can’t, they just can’t. Maybe the conversation is titillating and erotic for some people. I don’t know. It isn’t for me.

Did getting naked on camera hurt the careers of Marilyn Monroe or Sharon Stone? How about Ewan McGregor or Bruce Willis? I’m not even going to take a stab at naming naked models because there are nudes in existence of every single successful high fashion model I can think of. Tyra Banks devotes a whole episode of America’s Next Top Model to getting wannabe models to get naked. Has on-camera nudity hurt the careers of Madonna or Marilyn Manson?

When it comes to entertainment careers, the public’s response to nudes is generally either positive interest and applause or a complete lack of awareness. Except of course for poor beleaguered Fred Durst, but the public’s brutality for him is a subject for another article.

Do you usually watch mainstream pageants? You know, the kind where kinda regular pretty girls walk around in bathing suits and say they want to become veterinarians because they love children? Thinking about it, didn’t posing nude and having the photos run in Penthouse cause one Miss America to be stripped of her crown? Yes, yes, it sure did. That Miss America is Vanessa Williams. To the best of my knowledge, Vanessa Williams is the only Miss America to have a real entertainment career . . .

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