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Visual artist Chino Otsuka has created composite images of her past and present selves, like a digital time machine. This is so good. Otsuka’s work has restored my faith in humanity, which was pulverized a couple of days ago by the news that Ashton Kutcher has a million followers on Twitter.

I have a rule of thumb about art and artists: If a normal person has no hope of seeing the point of your work without an accompanying explanation about you and your artistic “theory” — you suck.

I look at Otsuka’s photos and with no words at all I’m immediately transported, I’m weeping with joy at the possibilities of life . . .

If,
again
I have a chance to meet,
there is so much I want to ask
and so much I want to tell.

— Chino Otsuka

If you could go back and meet yourself as a child, what would you say?

When I look at photographs of myself as a boy, I see someone whose parents were not cut out to be parents, who, when they turned their attention to the boy at all, it was to tell him how disappointing and inadequate he was.

I see a boy who has taken that to heart, and will grow up with it, and even though as an adult he’ll eventually learn to compensate and in some cases overcompensate for it, will always know in his heart that he’s inadequate because his parents taught him that he was.

I’d like to go back and meet that boy and tell him that I love him. That’s all.

• Chivalry is dead — literally: http://twurl.nl/xctutr #

A man has died after catching his girlfriend as she jumped from the seventh floor of an apartment block in China.

The young Chinese man, identified only by the surname Wang, held out his arms to break the woman’s fall as she plummeted from their apartment in Quanzhou in south-eastern China.

Mr Wang was killed by the impact of his girlfriend landing on top of him, while the woman suffered bone fractures and other serious injuries but was not in critical condition.

— PerthNow

Here’s conundrum of fame, as I see it: It’s always said that if you want to be famous, you must endure criticism. The fabled “trade off”…

…But the whole reason people want to be famous is to be loved. They’re love-addicts. Hating a celeb is like kicking a hemophiliac.

Like I bet Tom Hanks internalizes a shitty remark way more than, say, the HR lady in your office. He’s needy. That’s why he’s Tom Hanks.

All right, enough Psych 101. My Chihuahua looks like Billy Crystal and my Shepherd is Gheorghe Muresan. They need a development deal.

— Diablo Cody

Who knew Carrie Fisher has a blog? –

I happen to be the possessor of a very big personality . . .

When I date someone, I generally have about three months of a personality available and then I finally come to the end of it. I need to refuel, I short-circuit. And then whoever I’m with shows up, and a lot of the times I don’t like him so much.

Now wait, I just got a little quieter and what’d you just say? You didn’t read this? You’ve never seen that? You don’t know who that is? You really think that about me? He bothers me – not that I’m so great, but the enchantment wears off, and then the sleeping giant wakes up and says, “Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of someone dumb.”

Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,
Till she cry “Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
I must have you!”

— Thomas Parke D’Invilliers

This is the epigraph to The Great Gatsby, which my son is reading for school. So beautiful, so sad . . .

(Thomas Parke D’Invilliers is a character in Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise, used by him here as a nom de plume.)

From xkcd:

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

— W.H. Auden, “Lullaby”

I stop the car to let a man and woman cross the parking lot in front of us.

The man is fat and hairy. The woman is rubbing his neck affectionately.

I say to my son, “That’s what I need is a woman who worships me, even if I’m a fat, hairy slob. Which I’m not, so I should get twice as much neck rubbing.”

On Nov. 4, my fellow Californians and I will vote on Proposition 8, an initiative to ban same-sex marriages, which were made legal by a state Supreme Court ruling in May.

I know a guy — let’s call him Trog . . . Trog seems to have emerged from the mists of time untouched by human evolution.

Not surprisingly, Trog supports Proposition 8 and he feels strongly enough about it that if you stop by his office, you’ll see a fair amount of Yes on 8 campaign material.

Now I have to say that the idea of two people of the same sex getting married and making out with each other — provided they’re female and hot — does far less to tarnish my view on the sanctity of marriage than does the thought of some woman allowing this mouth-breathing ape to clamber on top of her and deposit his seed.

The fact that same-sex couples even want to get married is a stunning triumph of hope over experience. I honestly can’t think of a single heterosexual couple I’d describe as happily married — not one!

In fact, I’ve come to think of marriage as having very little to do with love, which I no longer believe in, and a lot to do with having someone other than yourself to blame for everything that’s wrong with your life.

To couples — gay or otherwise — I say don’t confuse “I love you” with “I want to marry you.”

On love, on grief, on every human thing,
Time sprinkles Lethe’s water with his wing.

— Walter Savage Landor

[Lethe is the river of forgetfulness. — Ed.]

From Michelle “There is no safety net for anybody” Obama’s DNC speech:

You know, what struck me when I first met Barack was that even though he had this funny name, even though he’d grown up all the way across the continent in Hawaii, his family was so much like mine. He was raised by grandparents who were working class folks just like my parents, and by a single mother who struggled to pay the bills just like we did.

Well . . . if you take all that at face value — and why wouldn’t you? — it only goes to show how shallow I am, because what struck me when I first met my wife was what a nice ass she had.

Hubba hubba!

Why it’s great: Love makes you hot, cold, dizzy, happy, mad . . . I can’t explain it . . .

Got a feeling inside (Can’t explain)
It’s a certain kind (Can’t explain)
I feel hot and cold (Can’t explain)
Yeah, down in my soul, yeah (Can’t explain)

I said … (Can’t explain)
I’m feeling good now, yeah, but (Can’t explain)

Dizzy in the head and I’m feeling blue
The things you’ve said, well, maybe they’re true
I’m gettin’ funny dreams again and again
I know what it means, but …

Can’t explain
I think it’s love
Try to say it to you
When I feel blue

But I can’t explain (Can’t explain)
Yeah, hear what I’m saying, girl (Can’t explain)

Dizzy in the head and I’m feeling bad
The things you’ve said have got me real mad
I’m gettin’ funny dreams again and again
I know what it means but

Can’t explain
I think it’s love
Try to say it to you
When I feel blue

But I can’t explain (Can’t explain)
Forgive me one more time, now (Can’t explain)

I said I can’t explain, yeah
You drive me out of my mind
Yeah, I’m the worrying kind, babe
I said I can’t explain

— The Who

‘Now it might be a very romantic sight to some chaps, a light burning in a tower window. I knew a poem about a thing like that once. Forgot it now, though. I was no end of a one for poetry when I was a kid — love and all that. Castle towers came in quite a lot. Funny how one grows out of that kind of thing.’

— Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall

Make your man feel capable . . .

Good: “You are so strong!” “You are so smart!“
Bad: “Are you sure you know where you’re going?”

These are just examples, but you get the idea . . .

We’re on a budget . . . maybe I’ll write my love a poem. Seriously though, some flowers for sure . . . I’ll take her for dinner if she wants to, but we really are trying to cut back on the spending a bit.

Reality vs. romance . . .

I fell in love with a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel at the Irvine dog park last night. I kept showing off, trying to get her to play with me, but she just wanted to sit by her owner. When they left, I sat and stared out at the parking lot for a while . . .

P.S. I’m over it now though.

— Lightning

Let’s begin this typical courtship process, shall we?

In the old days, greed and covetousness were seen as sinful; now they are encouraged. Jack Welch’s Winning sets the tone. The author grins manically from the cover – despite the silver hair, manicured nails and perfect teeth, he looks like Beelzebub incarnate.

But why is “winning” so great? Because, says Welch, it enables people to make lots of money which . . . erm . . . enables them to “get better healthcare, buy vacation homes, and secure a comfortable retirement”. That’s it. Those are the three goals of our mortal existence, otherwise known as more pills, more mortgages and more burglar alarms. Whatever happened to joy, pleasure, brotherhood? Whatever happened to enjoying life? Whatever happened to creativity? Whatever happened to love?

— Tom Hodgkinson

WINNIPEG, Manitoba — A Los Angeles man who sneaked into Canada in February to see his Internet girlfriend will be deported — minus all his fingers and some of his toes, the Winnipeg Sun newspaper reported Tuesday.

Continue reading Love Hurts — So Does Frostbite