WU LYF, 21 March 2012

Went to watch WU LYF at Heaven on Wednesday night and it was so, so so good. Didn't listen to them until Zix asked me to go along for the gig and I think I love them now. I love having friends who have good taste in EVERYTHING!!!

Things like this just happen

You send a text and feel a bit badly that the red light on your Blackberry doesn't go off for the next one and a half hours even though you were glancing at it every 2 minutes or something despite trying not to procrastinate. When you pick up your phone you realize it was on phone calls only and that you have like fifteen new emails, two BBM alerts and that reply you were waiting for actually came an hour and twenty six minutes ago.

Now it is past two in the morning and even though you reply straightaway in massive guilt you know the other person probably thinks you were ignoring the text on purpose and you also know you can't really expect them to reply any sooner than you did... so you just sit around and feel annoyed at yourself for being

1. stupid
2. psychotic
3. sad.

Happy Pills, Barcelona

 
 

Happy pills for cheap thrills

Take me to the candy shop:

Barcelona, Spain

- Acrs 6, 08002
- Aregnteria 70, 08003
- Rambla Catalunya 14, 08007
- Avda. Diagonal 557, 08029

“People always say that it’s harder to heal a wounded heart than a wounded body. Bullshit. It’s exactly the opposite – a wounded body takes much longer to heal. A wounded heart is nothing but ashes of memories. But the body is everything. The body is blood and veins and cells and nerves. A wounded body is when, after leaving a man you’ve lived with for three years, you curl up on your side of the bed as if there’s still somebody beside you. That is a wounded body: a body that feels connected to someone who is no longer there.” 

20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth – Xiaolu Guo

Mid-March

I have been really happy and eating a lot and having mad fun busy weekends every single weekend for the last month plus, but recently I keep feeling a huge gnawing ache from the fact that I haven't made it to any of the exhibitions on my to-do list this year, including Gerhard Richter which is now over.

It really cut me up when I realised that I had missed it. I can't say that I'm an expert or enthusiast about his work, or art in general, but I was looking forward to it for so long and there was nothing stopping me from going except pure laziness and stupid distractions. Being bored = not doing something interesting. Opportunity cost here is not only the time wasted but the possible fun/enrichment gained from doing something interesting. Doing what you want to do.

This feeling of urgency and desire for immediacy is taking over my brain, it runs through everything I do in my life these days. The night before I wrote this down and stuck it to my wall:

INCONTINENCE IS LAME

WHEN YOU DO NOT DO 

WHAT YOU CAN AND 

SHOULD DO THEN 

YOU ARE DEFINITELY 

FUCKED FOR LIFE

With that in mind I am making a list of what I want to and will do this Spring, hopefully in pleasant weather and more importantly with good company

1. Yayoi Kusama @ Tate Modern: Now - 5 June
2. Lucien Freud @ National Portrait Gallery : Now - 27 May
3. David Shrigley, Jeremy Deller @ Hayward Gallery : Until 13 May
4. Horiyoshi III @ Somerset House : 21 Mar - 1 July
5. Hampstead Heath
6. Primrose Hill
7. Burger & Lobster
8. Clean my roof (buy chillchairs)

That's all that I can think of now hopefully will add more in later days.

the power of pms

today so far:

- econ lecture, squinting at the whiteboard. was convinced that lecturer was stoned on weed or tranquilizers, couldn't think of any other way to explain his inability to teach anything useful in a 2 hour session
- sat with jinny in the front row after the break, hopes of new and useful knowledge slowly crushed as the minutes passed and lecturer continued drawing un-useable graphs and beating around general knowledge type of points
- depressing ass class in global justice, feels like philosophical discussion goes nowhere, wish we could talk about solutions or at least something positive, because there will obviously never be a perfect argument or basis for empirical work, but problems are still there, and solutions are not
- after class went to tesco
- found out that normal magnum ice cream bars were out of stock
- came home and started on whisky braised pork
- felt trapped and mildly stressed out cooking prawn noodle soup and braised pork simultaneously for two guilt-motivated meal debts
- peeled potatoes, found green/grey spots in 3 of them, felt depressed about how even the most unethically and inorganically processed groceries are still fucked up
- adding on to 2 dishes started cooking lunch
- overdid tagliatele by a minute, turned out softer than al dente and a bit sticky which I really hate
- went into a restless self-loathing mood, decided to go out for coffee
- chilling at Colville Place severely dampened by discussion of central Africa's problems and how reality crushes ideals
- relatively clean but messy looking man put down a paper bag on the bench next to me then walked to the dustbin
- seemed rather conscientious holding a newspaper, imagined he was disposing of some litter responsibly
- realised he was homeless because his clothes and briefs were falling out of the bag.
- realised he was going through the trash and not actually disposing of some litter responsibly
- walked away and sat in front of a playground that looks awesome but is restricted to children only
- wondered what kind of sick country forbids adults from entering playgrounds
- pedophiles must be really rampant or something here
- went to tesco again
- saw that the price of balhsen leibniz biscuits increased from 75p to 1.69 pounds
- bought 2 boxes anyway, bought some kit kats in the hope that my flatmates and i will eventually overcome our now expensive addiction
- came home to the smell of smoke
- opened kitchen door to a smoke cloud and a pot of burnt pork
- wasted pork broth putting out the heat which only generated more smoke, not to mention the fact that the burnt stew contained all the Jack Daniel's and soy sauce we had left in the house
- felt a bit like crying, thought very briefly about killing myself
- contemplated the incredible stupidity and lameness of crying over burnt pork and how difficult it would be to explain to my friends and family if i died like this

Pogge

Entire house filling up with fumes from boiling prawn heads and shells. Getting depressed from Global Justice and Health readings and the realization that we all harm each other in direct or indirect ways unless we are the ones who are harmed so severely that we lack access to the instruments and institutions that inflict or reinforce harm on others.

How does this all connect to my stupid little life with all its stupid little problems.. 20% of the world lives in abject poverty on less than $1USD a day, 50% on less than $2. It's hard not to feel disgusted with myself and the frivolous crap I think about 99% of the time. And what's the point of being educated if I simply join the institutions and support the world order that has brought about the vast injustices that cause countless deaths daily and ruin entire countries.

I really wish I could think of some sort of resolution or a good way to end this.

fuckin luvit

Guy Fawkes '11

4th November 2011

Everything's Amazing and Nobody's Happy

West End Girls

We are really lucky/lazy girls, spent the entire weekend going up and down Wardour Street in Soho, all over the W1 from Chinatown to Carnaby Street to Charlotte Street... We get around by deciding where to eat.

Ordinary mode of operation within Soho

roughly in order of distance from our flat, south of Oxford Street

ATMs, Tesco on Dean Street

Vietnamese: Cay Tre 

Udon: Koya

Korean: Arirang

Non-mealtime snacks/desserts: Princi

There are no seats in Princi: L'eto Caffe 

Cupcakes: NOT Hummingbird - go to Lola @ Topshop Oxford Circus

Drinks: Kettner's

Taiwanese/Chinese: Leong's Legend

Roast meats: Four Seasons 

Chinese Desserts/Trash Talking: Candy Cafe 

Singapore/Malaysian: C&R Cafe

The list is lame, so Asian but that's how we roll. Noodles and rice = homely comforts. 

Weekends are special, so on Saturday night we went to Wright Brothers' Soho Oyster House.

Dozen oysters, Crab cakes, Pork belly + clams

Surf + Turf: Steak + langoustines

If I were rolling in the deep I would do this more often.. oysters + steak + chocolate dessert (the chocolate praline pot is so magical, like eating Nutella out of the pot but classy). Tummies filled we headed off for the rest of the London night, starting from home and then moving into progressively blurrier space... finally ending with a 4am rickshaw ride back to Charlotte Place and getting tucked into bed by my lovely friends.

Aristotle

The end, then, being what we wish for, the means what we deliberate about and choose, actions concerning means must be according to choice and voluntary. Now the exercise of the virtues is concerned with means. Therefore virtue also is in our own power, and so too vice. For where it is in our power to act it is also in our power not to act, and vice versa; so that, if to act, where this is noble, is in our power, not to act, which will be base, will also be in our power, and if not to act, where this is noble, is in our power, to act, which will be base, will also be in our power. Now if it is in our power to do noble or base acts, and likewise in our power not to do them, and this was what being good or bad meant, then it is in our power to be virtuous or vicious.

The saying that 'no one is voluntarily wicked nor involuntarily happy' seems to be partly false and partly true; for no one is involuntarily happy, but wickedness is voluntary. Or else we shall have to dispute what has just been said, at any rate, and deny that man is a moving principle or begetter of his actions as of children. But if these facts are evident and we cannot refer actions to moving principles other than those in ourselves, the acts whose moving principles are in us must themselves also be in our power and voluntary.

Witness seems to be borne to this both by individuals in their private capacity and by legislators themselves; for these punish and take vengeance on those who do wicked acts (unless they have acted under compulsion or as a result of ignorance for which they are not themselves responsible), while they honour those who do noble acts, as though they meant to encourage the latter and deter the former. But no one is encouraged to do the things that are neither in our power nor voluntary; it is assumed that there is no gain in being persuaded not to be hot or in pain or hungry or the like, since we shall experience these feelings none the less. Indeed, we punish a man for his very ignorance, if he is thought responsible for the ignorance, as when penalties are doubled in the case of drunkenness; for the moving principle is in the man himself, since he had the power of not getting drunk and his getting drunk was the cause of his ignorance. And we punish those who are ignorant of anything in the laws that they ought to know and that is not difficult, and so too in the case of anything else that they are thought to be ignorant of through carelessness; we assume that it is in their power not to be ignorant, since they have the power of taking care.

But perhaps a man is the kind of man not to take care. Still they are themselves by their slack lives responsible for becoming men of that kind, and men make themselves responsible for being unjust or self-indulgent, in the one case by cheating and in the other by spending their time in drinking bouts and the like; for it is activities exercised on particular objects that make the corresponding character. This is plain from the case of people training for any contest or action; they practise the activity the whole time. Now not to know that it is from the exercise of activities on particular objects that states of character are produced is the mark of a thoroughly senseless person. Again, it is irrational to suppose that a man who acts unjustly does not wish to be unjust or a man who acts self-indulgently to be self-indulgent. But if without being ignorant a man does the things which will make him unjust, he will be unjust voluntarily. Yet it does not follow that if he wishes he will cease to be unjust and will be just. For neither does the man who is ill become well on those terms. We may suppose a case in which he is ill voluntarily, through living incontinently and disobeying his doctors. In that case it was then open to him not to be ill, but not now, when he has thrown away his chance, just as when you have let a stone go it is too late to recover it; but yet it was in your power to throw it, since the moving principle was in you. So, too, to the unjust and to the self-indulgent man it was open at the beginning not to become men of this kind, and so they are unjust and selfindulgent voluntarily; but now that they have become so it is not possible for them not to be so.

But not only are the vices of the soul voluntary, but those of the body also for some men, whom we accordingly blame; while no one blames those who are ugly by nature, we blame those who are so owing to want of exercise and care. So it is, too, with respect to weakness and infirmity; no one would reproach a man blind from birth or by disease or from a blow, but rather pity him, while every one would blame a man who was blind from drunkenness or some other form of self-indulgence. Of vices of the body, then, those in our own power are blamed, those not in our power are not. And if this be so, in the other cases also the vices that are blamed must be in our own power.

Now some one may say that all men desire the apparent good, but have no control over the appearance, but the end appears to each man in a form answering to his character. We reply that if each man is somehow responsible for his state of mind, he will also be himself somehow responsible for the appearance; but if not, no one is responsible for his own evildoing, but every one does evil acts through ignorance of the end, thinking that by these he will get what is best, and the aiming at the end is not self-chosen but one must be born with an eye, as it were, by which to judge rightly and choose what is truly good, and he is well endowed by nature who is well endowed with this. For it is what is greatest and most noble, and what we cannot get or learn from another, but must have just such as it was when given us at birth, and to be well and nobly endowed with this will be perfect and true excellence of natural endowment. If this is true, then, how will virtue be more voluntary than vice? To both men alike, the good and the bad, the end appears and is fixed by nature or however it may be, and it is by referring everything else to this that men do whatever they do.

Whether, then, it is not by nature that the end appears to each man such as it does appear, but something also depends on him, or the end is natural but because the good man adopts the means voluntarily virtue is voluntary, vice also will be none the less voluntary; for in the case of the bad man there is equally present that which depends on himself in his actions even if not in his end. If, then, as is asserted, the virtues are voluntary (for we are ourselves somehow partly responsible for our states of character, and it is by being persons of a certain kind that we assume the end to be so and so), the vices also will be voluntary; for the same is true of them.

With regard to the virtues in general we have stated their genus in outline, viz. that they are means and that they are states of character, and that they tend, and by their own nature, to the doing of the acts by which they are produced, and that they are in our power and voluntary, and act as the right rule prescribes. But actions and states of character are not voluntary in the same way; for we are masters of our actions from the beginning right to the end, if we know the particular facts, but though we control the beginning of our states of character the gradual progress is not obvious any more than it is in illnesses; because it was in our power, however, to act in this way or not in this way, therefore the states are voluntary.

- Nicomachean Ethics, Book III.V

I shouldn't have read this while I was young enough to internalize it

"Like, say I tell you I want to eat strawberry shortcake. And you stop everything you’re doing and run out and buy it for me. And you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and hold this strawberry shortcake out to me. And I say I don’t want it anymore and throw it out the window. That’s what I’m looking for.” 

“I’m not sure that has anything to do with love,” I said with some amazement. 

“It does,” she said. “You just don’t know it. There are time in a girl’s life when things like that are incredibly important.” 

“Things like throwing strawberry shortcake out the window?” 

“Exactly. And when I do it, I want the man to apologize to me. “Now I see, Midori. What a fool I have been! I should have known that you would lose your desire for strawberry shortcake. I have all the intelligence and sensitivity of a piece of donkey shit. To make it up to you, I’ll go out and buy you something else. What would you like? Chocolate Mousse? Cheesecake?” 

“So then what?” 

“So then I’d give him all the love he deserves for what he’s done.” 

“Sounds crazy to me.” 

“Well, to me, that’s what love is…”