'it's no wonder you're looking thin...'

Another posting hiatus is probably on the way, due to a repeat performance of this delightful operation; so here are a few links and things to keep me and/or you going, as the blogs have been in fine form lately:

A suddenly Barthesian Fantastic Journal on design and commodity fetishism - quite brilliant, from the 'ladies' pipe' to the amusing attempts by Gillette and their ilk to make shavers, shampoo, deodorant and such things into car-like machines ('turbos, injections, triple super pro action') to Gaultier's more literal body-shaped bottles; its eventual conclusions on the uselessness of design should be read alongside this hysterical post at Petite Sophist on The Fountainhead, surely the model for all Parametricists.

Ads without Products and the I.T Girl, both brilliant on video games, war, work and compulsory physical jerks, making some very insightful points on a too-little-discussed area;

The ongoing debate over music, identity, fidelity at Blissblog and the Impostume. I've felt the pull of both the 'identity' approach to music and the self-abnegating search for new thrills at various points, and I wonder exactly how exclusive they actually are. They're both fairly obsessive ways of relating to music, but more to the point one can actually define one's relation to music by the latter. For instance I used to deliberately avoid certain records because I knew I would like them, but that it was all just too easy. So when I was 19 or 20 I would try not to listen to, say, Hefner or Belle & Sebastian, despite enjoying the lyrics, the self-contained world they would seem to inhabit, etc - because, like most indie pop, it seemed to constitute a slightly smug little outpost away from the technologies and attendant dubious moralities of contemporary society. So eg listening to Jay-Z was an experiment with not being tied to an identity as a pale, thin socially inept indie boy (although the music made it's own case, I never had to force myself to like it). Which is of course an identity-formation all of its own, and as an irksomely argumentative student I would end up making a moral case for Ginuwine over the Gentle Waves (i.e, if you listen to the latter you are a luddite/nostalgic/racist etc). Not an especially noble position, but at least proving that fidelity to whatever one was first moved by as a teenager isn't the only way of maintaining an obsession and an identity...



All this is given an intriguingly rum spin at Aloof from Inspiration, asking the question of whether carnal inclinations are formed at a young age by musical fixations; not necessarily the 'sexual politics' of a particular lyric or scene, but the actual acts made attractive to the impressionable mind and libido by music. I'm in the comments box there making a Pulp-related confession that will surprise nobody, reminding me that I keep meaning to write at least 10,000 words on Separations, Intro and His & Hers, largely for this reason. If there's anyone from Continuum who thinks any of these need a 33 1/3 book...