If you look at my Flickr stream at all you may have noticed the low quality of my pictures.  This is not due to my usual lack of talent, but because my camera is dying and I am now taking most photos with my iSight.  So I need a new camera.  Despite having spent enough time developing my own film to make me sterile, I know little about actual camera things.  Though I have polled friends, they have little to say.  Does anyone have any recommendations?  I don’t want a serious camera–I want one that will make me look like I know what I am doing, is tiny, and withstands my abuse (oddly, much like my list for potential mates).  Also, moderately priced.  Again, like my choice in suitors.

Any rave reviews or complaints would be welcome.

I love postcards.  I always write them when on vacation but I almost never send them.  I am thinking of working on that by sending someone a postcard once a week.  Would you like to get postcards?  If so, send me your address at snailmailpostcards at gmail.  Even if you know I know your address, send it there as a sign up.  Potentially I will be taking pics of the postcards I send.  It’s like the opposite of PostSecret!  PostNotSecret.

On a layover in the Cincinnati airport (which may actually be a bus station that my plane happened to land at), I had about three minutes to pick up a sandwich. I signed my credit card bill with my usual haste (my signature includes 6 letters, tops) and rearranged everything I was carrying. The woman behind the counter stopped me and asked if I was an artist. I replied in the negative and she began listing off other creative occupations. Musician, maybe? I was starved, sleep deprived, and in a hurry so I couldn’t figure out what she was getting at. I wasn’t dressed odd, but I thought to myself, “Maybe I look hip for Cincinnati?”*

Finally she said that my signature is indicative of high levels of creativity. She was sad when I said I do things “with computers (hey, I was tired).” I was interested in this assessment, but when I said something self-deprecating about how messy my handwriting was she said it was so, but in a designed/artistic way.

Take that Queens Board of Elections, who finds my signature too arty to allow me to vote. And now I am sad to have let down an airport newsstand clerk who has an awesome hobby. I didn’t want to tell her I pretty much do the opposite of art, though I do use the whiteboard more than my coworkers.

*Though I spent scant minutes in Cin City, and they were all in the airport, I definitely did get a sense that even boring me was way hipper than your average person coming through the Cincinnati bus station airport.

In etsy’s continuing plan to choke me on material goods, I really now want wooden knuckles.

I am loving the color and subject of this library art. I think the first is my favorite.

When I was a kid, my mom took me to the mall a lot. Outdoor, 70s-type malls that were bigger than 90s strip malls. And a lot of them had public art. The art was pretty contemporary, and “out there” and often, fake paranormal exhibits, or Rube Goldberg machines. I LOVED these things. I remember the day they took the magical moving rock away. You could see the wires left bare, and the magical moving rock sign was still there. It was like finding out there was no Santy Claus.

My favorite art mall was the Cermak Plaza in Berwyn, IL. It had car pelts…..flattened cars hung like bear rugs. It also had this AMAZING landfill commentary sculpture made of old household appliances. It was torn down when I was a kid. But the biggest, most spectacular piece was the car spindle.

You might know it better from Wayne’s World. But it’s really in Berwyn, not Aurora.

The parking lot of where the car spindle is was probably the last place I ever drove a car (in driver’s ed), ironically. I have taken many people there over the years, and the longer it stands, the more I wonder, “Cars were really that big? Why?” The last time I went there, we were in a Honda Civic. It looked miniscule! Using consumer trash and cars for art in the parking lot of a suburban mall is ballsy, and far more meaningful than putting it in a museum.

I love public art. I love contemporary art. I love controversial art. I really dislike cars. I really don’t think our culture (including me) thinks enough about how much technology we throw away needlessly. I can’t help but think that these very core beliefs I hold as an adult had nothing to do with some of my happiest memories as a kid with this art.
And now they are tearing it down.

To build a Walgreens.

There’s already a Walgreens IN THE MALL.

If you live in Chicago you will understand the true irksome nature of this. Chicago has a Walgreens every 5.8 feet. You know, in between the hot dog stands and the banks. Seriously, I have never seen more drug stores than in Chicago. I guess you need a lot of Tums with the hot dogs.

There’s not a lot of current news that I can find, but if we can still do anything, here are some links. My brother saw it up on November 3, and there’s a Flickr photo from Nov. 17. I hope it sticks around another month so I can go see it one last time. Critical mass did a ride to it:

When’s the last time you saw Critical Mass protecting cars?

Anyone “on the ground” have some news?

When in New Orleans, over dinner with friends, one of them mentioned that “there are people who see a fire alarm and have to stop themselves from pulling it, and there are people who never ever think about it.”  Everyone at the table seemed confused, and then he looked at me and said something like “ah see-Jenny knows what I am talking about.”

Oh and I totally do, I had just never thought about it.  I ALWAYS want to do that thing.  I just thought everyone did.  This has come up recently because although I am in NO WAY suicidal, I have to keep myself from throwing myself off the subway platform.  When I think through throwing myself off the subway platform, obviously it seems only unpleasant. But still, I sort of want to.
I really don’t like what I call “unsecured heights.”  IE in a building on the 80th floor is great, on its roof on the 81st with no guardrails is bad.  And I just realized this is because I know how much I will get the feeling to jump off, just because I am there, again, not because I have any interest in killing myself.

So on Friday I went to MOMA and this bizarre compulsion was translated into wanting to touch paintings.   Whenever I am at an art museum I really want to touch paintings.  I have only once (nothing happened!  woo!) and I have gotten close enough to try another time (and was chastized).  But at MOMA I really want to touch the Malevich:

So what does this weird compulsion to lawbreak or dangerous thing in social situations signify?  Anyone care to let me lie down on their couch?