Well, that attempt to blog every day went smoothly. I should have known that my mother doesn’t approve of extensive typing on family vacations. But it’s okay, I’ll make it up to you now that I’m back on land… with an awesome photo summary of the rest of my adventure on the Carnival Pride.

This is me standing on deck for the Safety talk. As you can see, we are not yet in the Bahamas. Even cruise vacations must obey the laws of latitude.

At night the ship is all lit-up, pretty-like. Even the garish colors of the Lido Deck seem bearable in this context. In the far distance you can see the Chesapeake Bay.

Full entry »

Okay, so the title made my day sound a lot more gleefully debauched than it really was. No, I didn’t go on a spree with a wealthy benefactor’s credit line, nor did I actually even buy that many things today. (If you care, I bought four items – a Calphalon wok, a fancy hat, a pair of gloves, and a $50 gift cert to GameStop – can you guess what time of year it is? Oh don’t worry, everyone has already opened their gifts, except for the 2 people who don’t read this blog.) But in any case, today was quite an adventure, one that started at the Prudential Center, took us to one nifty locally-owned hat shop in JP, and eventually ended up here. It gave me a chance to think over some things that I don’t usually think over.

Basically, I learned that my almost-lifelong eschewal of fashionable wearables seems to have met its demise. Which may seem like a terrible thing, if you are of a more practical mind. Or it may rather seem a good thing, if you are more of a staunch cultural enthusiast. Either way, this does not actually mean that you will see the likes of humble little me striding about the Boulevards in knee-high lambskin boots with a Murakami-Vuitton handbag tucked at my side. Far from it. Nope, not even a superlong skinny scarf (too cold right now). I have merely decided that fashion and all of the hubbub surrounding it make both a fascinating study and a worthwhile use of my time and money after all.

For the staunch cultural enthusiasts reading this, you may be wondering, “Dear God, what did fashion ever do to be deserving of an almost-lifelong eschewal?” The answer, my friend, is that fashion razed my crops, ate my cows, and carried off my wife and daughters. The real answer is that when you are(were) young and esconced in the limited world that is a mildly wealthy suburbian public school, fashion is fed to you in all of three ways: 1) mainstream fashion magazines, 2) mainstream television, and 3) the “popular girls” clique. These things, added together, hardly comprise a flattering impression of what fashion is or does to people. Of course, it was possible to go beyond the one-dimensionally glitzy surface if one had the interest for it, and in the process discover much more interesting things, but if the initial impression was repelling, one could hardly blame impressionable young me for taking several steps back before turning and dashing the other way.

So basically in high school, there was no possible way that I could have found out about, much less take an interest in, spiffy things like lopsided handknit scarves, plaid fedoras, fingerless gloves, hand-screened shirts by local artists, super-moral designer labels, biodegradable wallets, hand-forged jewelry, and how all these things relate to the grand scheme of society and how its fantastically complex gears turn.

(Aside: (Boy do I have a lot of these. (Ooh, so meta! (It’s because my brain works funny (not funny ha-ha funny, more like funny tee-hee (Apologies, no more of this tomfoolery))))) I realize that pretty much all the things I just listed off can be thrown into the categorization bucket known as “trendy hipsterism.” Which I am fine with — I realize that no matter what aspects of fashion we are dealing with, there will always be stylistic judgements at hand, meant to both organize and exclude. But in this case, I don’t think the things I have just mentioned should be taken as an exhaustive list of all things fashionable things I currently find enthralling. The list was meant to introduce, not exemplify. I actually entertain an as-yet undisclosed fervor for those LV-Murakami handbags. Oh, nevermind, I just disclosed it; darn. Anyway, back to your regularly schedule topic)

I’m fairly certain that living in the city, going to college to get a joint BA and BFA, studying to become a designer, and meeting Jessica all contributed heavily to this change. It was probably inevitable anyway if I was to become any sort of designer-slash-artist to be reckoned with. So am I happy with this change? All I can say is, I am happy that I have found another source of inspiration and proof of the restlessness of human creativity.

And for the ascetics out there, who would deny that fashion is anything more than a silly waste of effort and cash, I would also say that your view is equally valid. No one is really right on this matter. But I would also say, I am no longer one of you, and that’s kind of just the way things are.

By the way, that site I mentioned up there, MADE-BY.org, is really informative, like an interactive issue of Good. It makes a couple good points:

“Marketing budgets are taken into account in the price of the end product. Consumers therefore personally finance advertisements that encourage them to purchase the relevant goods.”

“Organic cotton is dearer than ordinary cotton. What does that mean for the selling price of a T-shirt? Less than you think. The cotton costs of a garment amount to about five percent. Organic cotton costs roughly twenty to thirty percent more than ordinary cotton. This means that the consumer ultimately pays one to two percent more.”

Signing off nao!

I love weekends like this, where you just kind of go “Hey you wanna drive up to New Hampshire and ride an antique cog train up Mt. Washington?” and then you kidnap the Honda Civic from Yang’s parents and go do it. Except then you don’t ride the antique cog train once you get there because of some timekeeping mishap, but it’s okay. Because there was a lovely walk in the Flume Gorge in the morning and many takings of pictures and delicious mouthfuls of cold mountain air, and loud music in the car both ways. Also, I came very close to finishing an extremely long, extremely skinny, extremely bright green lacey knit scarf.

Anyway, as a result of our unfulfilled mission, we are going again next week. Yes we are. Part of it has to do with the fact that they refuse to give us a refund, but part of it is reveling in the sheer fact that we *can.* I have this distinct feeling that, if we were any other age, and living with any other people, this would have been a “No way, forget it, it’s not worth the effort/time/gas.” But as it were, we are young, unriddled with responsibility (except for grad school applications… ah hah hah hah…), and also slightly giddy with the possibility that we’d get to do something Steven Fry did and thoroughly enjoyed. I’m speaking on Jess’ behalf of course.

So this was basically an awesome Sunday. On days like this, I would just like all of the internets to know just how cool my life is right now, and how possibly it would never be this cool again. So even though we have mice romping through our apartment’s snack supply (a situation hopefully soon remedied with sonic pest repellers), and weird neighbors (some of them birds), and tons of late nights/hard work looming… I’m thankful for this year. So very.

Pictures here.