Disobeying my own rules, this post will talk about my current job...

As I had written earlier, finding and keeping a job has it's queer similarities with finding and keeping a lover (surreal revelation XII). But in my situation, the chauvinistic comparison to a relationship without sex comes to a man's mind. It's currently been almost a month since I began working. I took time today to ask my employer a thing or two about when and exactly how I was going to get paid. See, it's rude to ask these things at the very begining. Like asking a girl when and exactly how am I going to get laid. It scares away the recently acquired lover. But as the relationship matures, such subjects can eventualy be brough up. My dear boss seemed uncertain. About a great number of things. About wether he would be able to pay my services at all, about wether the many clients who owe him would pay him so that he could do so and consequently about the exact extent of my employment due to this financial faux pas. I took it all rather well, seeing as though I'm not exactly that desperate for revenues, and the experience in Quark and general advertising practices has been satisfying. But I couldn't help the feeling I was, pardon the language, being fucked, so that he wouldn't be fucked with expenses. So you see, all this "who's fucking who" really does bring that comparison to mind, about the sexless relationship, doesn't it? Yeah, I know, relationships' main objective isn't just sex, but I believe you get my point, non è vero?

The latest on David "Lollipop" Bowie

This is probably old news by now.
Bowie`s last show in Oslo (June 19th) had a comical inconvenient as someone in the audience threw a lollipop on stage and, to David`s despair, it hit him straight in the eye! All I found on the net were these pictures and so far I`m not sure which eye , whether the good one or the one blinded years ago on a fight, was affected by the bizarre incident.

From what I`ve read, Bowie`s original name isn`t Bowie. It's David Jones. He donned the name Bowie after he lost his eye on a fight. Something about a bowie knife... I don`t have any details on that. All I know is he currently has only one functioning eye. Anyway, when he started his singing career, another singer had already used his original name, so he used the one we`ve all come to know. Someone along the internet comically suggested that he change his name to David Lollipop after the latest incident. Not a very intelligent marketing strategy...

Random literature
At times I miss her big mouthed cheeky smile. And the way the black curls would frame that face. I miss her way of usign men's perfumes. I miss the manners and the way she moved. The way she moved... I miss who she was when it all started.

At times I miss her many faces, and the strange connection we used to have. I miss the clear eyes and her way of arousing me with words. I miss the qualities of her skin. I miss her scent mixed with a faint hint of cigarrette smoke that I sometimes feel in the university and begin to recall. I miss having someone to know even the cruellest, sickest aspects of me.

At times I miss the sense of wonder she inspires in me. I miss that adorable childish temper and her poignant sense of justice. I miss having someone so small in my arms, who allows me to feel I'm protecting, and not being protected. I miss the cheerfulness and rarity of her colors. I miss the unique yet fading scent of her. I miss her shy smiles. And those tiny hands with chewed fingernails. I miss counting her birthmarks that I know so well.

I read somewhere about the sadly common scenario of those children who took their dads` hunting guns and opened fire upon their classmates. I was thinking rather morbidly about the power of that act as a form of expression. It`s raw connection to basic feelings of innadequacy, humilliation, low self-esteem. The connection to the world of high-school teens and their social wars. This is an act of someone who`s had it, who`s tired of being pushed around. There was a time when I`d be prone to do that. Reading about it made me think about invading a classroom armed with a paintball gun and making a few "casualties", just for the sake of performance art. But I`m way past the age for teenage social wars and protesting against them. Would be comical, though... The thought of it being a real gun would flash accross the victims` minds before I pulled the trigger. The relief of being hit with plastic paint-filled balls instead of lead bullets would later turn into anger and I`d be in for quite a beating, but it`d be interesting nonetheless. In a time when we have witnessed such visceral forms os expression through violence like the Columbine High shooting and the 9/11 attack, can art produce anything even remotely that powerful and still remain comunicative?

Surreal revelations XIII:

This one tends to sound like some sort of paranoia, but as you know, my perception of things was never common...

On any sunny day, take your favorite book and go outside. Open it and start reading. at first, you`ll feel your eyes being pushed back into their sockets, due to the excess light. In fact, you`ll find you can`t read for very long under the sun. if you turn away and face the world, you`ll find things to be a little more blue than usual. Ok, that`s pretty much the common experience to everyone.

On an apparently unrelated topic, if you take a close look at ashes, you might notice they are composed of tiny black and white particles. Vik Muniz, the brasilian artist, knew this very well when he used ashes to "paint" images of poor children living in shanti towns in Rio.

Anyway, some people are prone to think of pollution in the air as tiny particles of ash, from the burning of fuel. As, as I wrote, is composed of black and white particles. And white particles, under the sun, should create that glare I wrote in the beggining, as if, wherever you looked, you were looking at a white page of a book under the sun.

Conclusions drawn after a day of walking in the park....

Silly, but kinda nice...

How to make a Lion

Ingredients: 3 parts competetiveness 5 parts crazyiness 1 part ego

Method: Stir together in a glass tumbler with a salted rim. Add a little sadness if desired!

Username:

Personality cocktail
From Go-Quiz.com

E há quem diga que só provou o amor
Aquele que conseguiu rimá-lo com a dor.

O resto são pieguices bestas...

Focus

I really hate bitching about life on my blog. I don't think you guys come here to read about one guy's personal problems. The fact is, you want to be entertained. If I can't entertain you, you'll eventually stop reading. I know I stopped reading plenty of blogs for that reason...
But for once I'll make an exception, to see if eventually I can find others sympathetic to my situation.

I spent four years going to two separate universities, doing two separate courses. I guess it's a tendency nowadays. One job doesn`t pay nearly enough, and the ones that do are so competitive that you`re required to have more skills than all the other candidates. It`s called having a differential... So in the end, we`re in a system that favors variety over quality: you are no longer required to be the best at something, but instead, you should be able to do a bit of everything.
As a result, I haven`t the time to spend butt-kissing critics and gallery owners to boost up my art career (which I have recently pronounced dead --or at least comatose...). On the other hand, I`ve wasted enough time trying to start an art career and haven`t studied nearly enough design to be a good art director in an advertising career. You`d think boths things complement each other, but they don`t... So I`m at that point where I need to make a choice. And naturally, to every yes I say, I`m also saying thousands of nos...

Oh, but let`s not get stuck in career issues. The family posts another big source for dilemas. As you feel you`ve had enough of the typical burgeoise family and just want to go to some raves, take some acid, dress weird goth stuff and experiment in sexuality; you also have that inherent need to cater to your parents` expectations, morals and plans. You want to dye your hair white and get a tattoo, but still look like the adorable grandson your grandma is always bragging to her neighbors about. You want to indulge in your own perversions, and still be the businessman your dad wants you to be after paying all those school bills. And I won`t even address the subject of girlfriends: that`d be worth a few hundred lines of text alone...

I`ve always dealt so favorably with all the thousand pairs of opposites my life is always gravitating around, but recently I just feel they haven`t been taking me anywhere. I crave for some focus. I once felt this variety would help me in the future. Now I feel it`s what`s preventing me from moving on.

*Sigh*
It's a pitty to see that after two years, I've narrowed the kinds of posts I allow myself to write to mere book and movie reviews and a few remarks about the facts of life.

I finished reading Oliviero Toscani's Advertising is a Smiling Carcass. The first couple of chapters, which I read from a copy owned by one of Tink's friends, made it seem like a really good book, one that could actually teach me something. So I bought it. But after that, it was all downhill.
Yes, his idea of advertising as a socially responsible thing is quite interesting. To him, and this is a basic marketing concept, if the product is good, it will sell itself. Regardless of the quality of it's ads. See Coca Cola, for instance. They can do anything on those ads. Even completely stupid ads. Coke sales will continue on their level. So, Toscani sugests that advertising be used to comunicate the comapny's ideals. In the specific case of Beneton, the company made internationaly acknowledged by his controversial ads, the idea was to give it an image of an anti-racist label. A company that accepted all races as equals.
On another note, Toscani experimented giving advertising the look of the real world instead of the bright, sunny, happy world of common advertising. He aimed his camera at the common people, the minorities, the ostracized. Not the smiling, blue-eyed, blonde, rosey-cheeked Gerber babies. Because the world isn't entirely made of Gerber babies, top models and Harrison-Ford-lookalike executives. So how could people who are different identify with them? This dissonace only helps create frustration on the people who notice they'll never look like that or have that lifestyle. This view of things is so clearly an artist's point of view... I mean, these arguments were constantly thrown at me in the art course by anyone who eventualy knew I was also studying advertising. They despised advertising for the same reason. But unlike Toscani, they simply chose to avoid it, to call it names, to give it the villain's role. Bad advertising can be a social villain indeed. But not all advertising is bad advertising.
I agree with Toscani on both ideas.
However, his book starts loosing it's grasp on the reader when we notice how rancourous are his remarks about the advertising agencies, the people who criticized him, who denied the publication of his work. Yes, he should hate them, but he doesn't have to write a book about it! He writes like an angry child. He mocks them, shoves his success in their faces. Vengeance. There's nothing to learn there...
Also, he discurs about how he came up with some of the ideas for the ads as if he had no idea they would cause such havoc amidst the more traditional folk. He should write as if he knew perfectly well, and still had the courage to face them. He wants to cause controversy, only not for the reasons people usualy accuse him.
On a strategic point of view, Toscani had the same success as many gifted painters had in their times. They invented a style, and for some reason, it was a huge success. But all others who adopted the same style were hardly ever recognized. It's all a matter of being the first. How many cubist painters existed after Picasso? Many. Aside from Braque, who developed cubism with Picasso, I can't remember a single one right now. The same thing would happen to a company that adopted Beneton's controversial advertising style. At most, it would be remembered as "the company with the Beneton-style ads". And if this really caught on, and hundreds of companies started adopting that style, soon there would be chaos in advertising. After all, Beneton ads never talk about the product. We know they're Beneton ads because nobody else does anything like it. But again, if hundreds of companies began using photos of real life, of moral issues, instead of talking about their products, how could you tell an ad that's supposed to sell tight clothes from an ad that's supposed to sell condoms? It'd be absolute mayhem!
In my opinion, ads should be a bit of both. Trying to sell a product based on an opinion about a controversial issue. Positioning the company's ideas about the world's problems. But still informing you of the advantages, the low prices and where to buy. Complicated, isn't it?