The Lone Gazer

vicemag:

BULLSHIT ROMANCE: LIES EVERYONE TELLS ON DATING SITES - by Brian Moylan

Romantic relationships are just a litany of lies. “Sure, I’d love to see a Katherine Heigl movie.” “No, it’s not creepy at all that your dad touched my thigh like that.” “I swear I never fucked that chick. We’re just, like, you know, friends.” But before you shack up with a partner and the pants are really on fire, we have to get through that festering sore of omissions, obfuscations, half-truths, and fabrications that is the online dating profile.

Everyone’s dating profile—whether it’s on Match.com, OKCupid, Manhunt, Grindr, Craigslist (which is for people who are either looking to date hookers or find new futons for their dingy apartments), JDate, eHarmony, or even the bulletin board at your grandmother’s church—is full of fucking shit. Everyone is so scared that if they tell the world about eating peanut butter right out of the jar with chocolate Teddy Grahams while watchingReal Sex reruns at 2 AM, no one will meet them for cheap Pad Thai and cheaper conversations about what school they went toand how many siblings they have.

Unfortunately, if you do somehow manage to trick another human into meeting you IRL, your failings will be readily apparent. The cat will be out of the proverbial bag, and no one will be getting any pussy (or dick, as the case may be). To make life easier, I’m going to break down the biggest lies that everyone tells on their profiles. You’ve been warned.

Pictures

Everyone’s pictures are absolute bullshit. But, like unhappy families, they’re all bullshit in their own way. There are a lot like this one, which is so vague and washed out that the girl’s face might as well be a blank Etch-a-Sketch (that’s not gonna turn anyone’s knobs), and then there are the guys whose photos only contain hats and cut off right before the hairline (bald), the ones with woefully out of date clothing (old), the girl who only shoots herself from the tits up (fat), and the pictures that look like they’re reproductions of screen grabs from a Geocities site circa 1998 (bald/old/fat/serial killer). Everyone is trying to look their best, so they’re editing pictures that will present some ideal version of themselves that either never existed or is long gone. Only believe the nastiest picture in the profile, and multiply that picture by a factor of two in terms of ugliness. That’s what will show up at your front door.

Music

More people think that their musical preferences are what others will reference when deciding if they are cool, educated, expansive, and generally with it. Therefore, filling out the musical interests section on dating sites is like making a mix-tape for a deaf person, because it is all a pack of lies. The only people really into jazz are old black men, so if someone lists that on their profile they’re just trying to be like that dude in that episode ofSex in the City who fucks Carrie real good and then gets dumped. And if they say, like this guy, that they ‘like everything,’ then they are the blandest, most milquetoast motherfucker imaginable who won’t cop to his complete collection of Eminem singles and Dave Matthews bootlegs (also, he’s probably a premature ejaculator). Seriously, when is the last time this guy listened to Mozart when he wasn’t riding in an elevator or sitting on hold? And there is no way one person likes every hip band. They don’t all go together.

Weight

This one is a bit tricky, because some sites don’t require members to list their weight in actual pounds. Instead, they let them play with reality by picking ‘slender,’ ‘full-figured,’ ‘must be removed from apartment by crane’ or some other silly adjective from a pull-down menu. These are all subjective. Just because a guy lists his body as ‘athletic’ and then shows up with a gut the size of the Japanese GDP doesn’t mean he was lying. After all, sumo wrestling is a sport. Look at this girl, she lists herself as ‘slender’ but doesn’t show a picture of herself below the neck. Danger, danger Will Robinson!  She might have been slender when those pictures were taken five years ago. Without anything to verify that she is indeed a size 2, just go ahead and assume she’s gonna show up with a FUPA. That’s what you’re signing up for.

CONTINUE

vicemag:

Haruki Murakami

I knew I should have shaved. I fucking knew it. This motherfucker best stop staring at my chin. Fast, if he knows what’s good for him. I feel a rage inside me to the power of 100,000 cats. I am Cat God, motherfucker. Hehe. At least my arms look nice. My beautiful typing arms. I want to touch me. BOOM! I sizzle. This is so good. I wonder if they’d let me do the cover with my shirt off. I can’t think of anybody with a shirtless author photo offhand. Seems different, but not too different. Just different enough.

—Famous Authors’ Thoughts While Being Photographed

buddyheadtk:

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

fuckyeahcourtneylove:

And she’s not even pretty.

beyondneptune:

Ten-Minute Art School Course

School of Paris

by James Voorhies, Department of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

From 1900 until about 1940, Paris was a thriving center of artistic activity that provided unparalleled conditions for the exchange of creative ideas. A wave of artists of all nationalities gravitated to the French capital and fostered an inspiring climate of imaginative cross-fertilization. Because of the enormous influx of non-French artists living and working in Paris, a loosely defined affiliation developed referred to as the School of Paris. The international activity associated with this group in Paris was initially concentrated in Montmartre, but subsequently moved to Montparnasse in the early 1910s. Focusing on conventional subjects such as portraiture, figure studies, landscapes, cityscapes, and still lifes, artists of the School of Paris employed a diversity of styles and techniques including the bold, dynamic colors of Fauvism, the revolutionary methods of Cubism, the animated qualities of Expressionism, and the private worlds of Symbolism.

A leading figure of the School of Paris, the Spaniard Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) moved to France in 1904. Picasso’s variety of creative styles are representative of the kind of cross-fertilization that transcends the works of the School of Paris artists. His groundbreaking collaboration with the Frenchman Georges Braque (1882–1963), which began in 1907, fostered the development of Cubism. Subsequently associated with the Surrealist artists working in Paris in the early 1920s (although never an official member of the movement), Picasso’s use of Surrealist imagery is evident in Nude Standing by the Sea (1996.403.4). His morphed and organic forms are comparable to Joan Miró (1893–1983), another Spaniard living in Paris and a pioneer of the Surrealist movement. The influential Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) also resided in Paris (1911–15 and again in the 1920s) and is considered a precursor to the magical realism among the Surrealists, as exemplified in his ominous, dreamlike composition Ariadne (1996.403.10) of 1913.

Other artists within the School of Paris who exchanged styles and ideas about painting and sculpture include the Italian Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920), who moved to Paris in 1906. Initially working alongside the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi (1876–1957), who had been in Paris since 1904, Modigliani made, from about 1909 to 1915, a series of sculptures, such as Woman’s Head (1997.149.10), with elongated features, oval heads, and thinly incised eyes that show the definitive influence of Brancusi as well as of African sculpture. In Reclining Nude (1997.149.9) from 1917, Modigliani used these stylistic elements, for example the almond-shaped eyes, in his distorted depiction of a nude figure. Another artist whose work exemplifies the exchange of ideas and styles among artists living and working in Paris is the expatriate and friend of Modigliani, the Lithuanian artist Chaim Soutine (1893–1943). Soutine arrived in Paris in 1913 and created pictures imbued with torment and personal expression. In his portrait Madeleine Castaing (67.187.107) from 1929, he alters the figure’s facial features just enough to create a psychological intensity and agitation comparable to works by Austrian Expressionists Oscar Kokoschka (1886–1980) and Egon Schiele (1890–1918).

A prominent figure in the School of Paris, the Russian artist Marc Chagall (1887–1985) initially lived in Paris from 1910 to 1914. Moving into a studio in Montparnasse adjacent to Modigliani and near the Frenchman Fernand Léger (1881–1955) and Soutine, Chagall quickly absorbed the stylistic influences of the avant-garde working in Paris. Chagall’s The Betrothed (2002.456.8) of 1911 elicits charm and luminescence characteristic of his work at this time. In The Marketplace, Vitebsk (1984.433.6), painted in 1917 after his return to Russia, Chagall’s use of unrealistic perspective, sharply defined contours, and figures in various scale show the influence of the French artist Robert Delaunay (1885–1941). Chagall became a leading artist of the School of Paris during the 1920s and ’30s after his exile from the Soviet Union in 1923.

The unprecedented migration to Paris of foreign artists who worked in tandem with French luminaries such as Henri Matisse (1869–1954), André Derain (1880–1954), Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947), and Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985) came to an end with the outbreak of World War II (1939–45). Many artists fled to New York or returned to their homeland and the frenzied activity experienced by members of the School of Paris concluded.

[via]

thefluffingtonpost:

Area Kitty Upset by Mainstream Media Portrayal of Cats

Pickle, a local cat, is furious by the mainstream media’s negative portrayal of his species.  ”Cats are often depicted by the media as poor spellers, many times engaged in an activity with some sort of invisible friend, tool or instrument,” said Larry Owens, the cat’s lawyer.  ”Pickle feels that he speaks for cats everywhere when he says that he is sick of this damaging stereotype and how it is constantly reinforced by the mainstream press.”

Pickle is seeking a formal acknowledgement of the issue from the Society of Professional Journalists and plans to put together an educational packet entitled “The Rich History of Cats: No LOLing Matter” to be released this fall.

Via Steven2005.

(Source: thefashionfile)