The Strength in Sand

This month an artist called Kseniya Simonova beat all in Ukraine's Got Talent (Україна має талант) after depicting Germany's invasion of Ukraine with sand on a projector.

It's an interesting watch, but I don't think we can see it with the intimacy Ukrainians in the audience must have felt. It's their wounds, their history, that appears, disappears and reappears in this most temporal tool -- earth that remembers nothing, not even the footprints that passed across it moments before.

And nothing beats the way Simonova wields her art: with a dignity and a passion that leaps out, unrestrained, as the sound of bombs propel her forward.

Art doesn't last unless you know how to suffer. The value of the human experience resonates exclusively in people; time forgets us, and nature eventually washes us away.*

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*Oh, yeah. This is also a good lesson in how there's a market and a need for your brand of creativity, just be honest with yourself, all you have to do is commit, blah blah blah.

...and the Weird Thing Is, I Can't Think of Any Exceptions to This Rule.

Me: I don't want to grow up and be desperate middle-aged women.

Chelsi: We won't be.
: We can spell!
: It never happens to women who can spell.

Grab a Web Cam, Buy a Sac Dress, BE A STAR!

"I should get you Le Sac."

"Le what?!" When The Man™ talks like this to me, I keep hoping he is referring to exotic sex paraphernalia, but he never is.

He frowns, repulsed by my lack of hip. "That American Apparel dress you can wear in many ways?"

Oh right, Le Sac. In shockingly soothing and non-exploitative fashion, American Apparel is disseminating a series of how-tos on how you -- yes, you -- can turn a shapeless sheath with string into a prized fashion investment. Below are a few variations I like.

The Marilyn:



The Grecian:



The Deepest V:



I'm not optimistic that 10-in-one items of clothing actually yield all the mileage they promise. Have you gone beyond the wrap-it-around, knot-behind-neck phase with your pareo? No? Didn't think so. I also had a four-in-one hat that worked all of one-in-one ways.

But the fresh-faced spawn of YouTube seems determined to make Le Sac work. I don't know if it's the recession or what, but you've got somethin' for the racks and somethin' for the lacks -- all uncomfortably ado,* as the French are wont to say.

Check out the luck plant!

Try not to be distracted by the Dralion.

(The last one's an instant classic. Homegirl's slogan is "not a mirror image and armed with a sac dress." If she plans to pay for college with it, Le Sac better be the magic f*cking lamp of dresses.)

Here's another 7-ways-to-wear-it! video for a different American Apparel dress. I'm posting it because it's somewhat chicer than the previous two and features -- wait for it -- free indie music! Nothing rocks vloggers like an ambient tie-in.



Never mind make-up how-tos. Looks like we've got a new cottage industry. Advertisers: taking notes? It can't be that hard to come up with something -- preferably something cheap -- that people can't figure out how to use on their own.

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* This is slang for "adolescent." It's pretty much used the way you'd say "teen."

Dueling Perspectives on French Productivity

French: The Most Productive People In The World

vs.

Every day's a holiday – if you're French

Subheader to the latter: The mindset of 'work less but gain more' has infected French thinking and created a lazy nation.

Both theses can't be right. Or can they?

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Slightly off-topic: at the beach in Guadeloupe, The Man™ watched thoughtfully as I struggled to shake sand out of a pareo without getting it to blow back into my face. Then he went:

"Hey. Look here."

I turned.

He calmly folded his pareo in half and shook it briskly left to right, dislodging the sand swiftly and neatly. "See this? Side to side."

"Ohhh," I said.

His eyes grew stern. He stopped the vigorous sarong-shaking. "Do you know why I know this? Because I'm French. And I get five weeks' holidays."

"Oh, I'm sorry," I said. "I guess if we weren't so preoccupied with advancing the current state of technology, we might've made time to learn how to shake sand out of blankets."

This naturally led to a fight. Going back on topic though, I do think there's something to the philosophy that knowing how to play contributes to greater efficiency during in-office time. I also think it sucks that as a successfully-conditioned American, the thought of taking a vacation -- even a wee three-day one -- throws me into fits of hysteria-laced anxiety.

Actually It Wasn't Farting Hearts; It Was Farting Lower Carbon Emissions.

We give you Ad banalities!, Tokyo vs. Paris edition.

RB @girlsarestrange.com:


Angela: I like these little containers

Chelsi: in a Japanese advert, those would be pictured alongside an actual banana

A: just in case you don't know

C: and the caption would read: banana juice for my heart on warm summer day
: and then there’d be a little cartoon banana just below it
: dancing a jig
: and then just to the left, an actual Japanese person
: probably some smiling chick
: touching her face
: and then it would be blown up to some ridiculous size and pasted on a building
: or a bus

A: that sounds like the worst thing ever
: although I did see an ad yesterday in which a car appeared to be farting hearts.

'Geometry, Light and a Wee Bit of Magic.'

High hopes for invisibility cloak. And if you seriously, seriously need any other reason to click on that link besides those five words, you should really be ashamed of yourself.*

Guess I should also add that this isn't the one and only time anybody's gotten close (or felt like they got close) to perfecting the invisibility cloak. Some Japanese dudes were working on an invisibility windbreaker-looking thing a few years back, which, if I remember properly (and I probably don't), worked a lot the way a mirror does, except backwards: the front of the jacket is a video screen reflecting what's behind the wearer. Or something.

How Stuff Works explains in more accurate terms the science behind invisibility apparel.

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*Chelsi, you non-link-clicking harlot she-bitch, I'm talking to you.

'He is the Least Interesting Man in the World.'

A depressingly-more-relatable take on Dos Equis' "Most Interesting Man in the World" campaign, which I find kinda epic, mainly because it deluges my auditory orifices with quotes like these:

"His beard alone has experienced more than a lesser man's entire body."

"His blood smells like cologne."

"He can speak French ... in Russian."

Stay thirsty, my friends.

It May Ring Like a Cross Between Constipation and Valium.

But no, it's just a tease for an opera about the star-crossed love between Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears.* Seriously. Apparently.

WE GIVE YOU TIMBERBRIT. And in the event your curiosity hasn't been sated by the audiovisual masterpiece above, here's pretty much everything you need to know about it, courtesy of NPR:

It's a tragic tale that imagines Spears' last concert, in the final hours of her life. Timberlake returns after a long absence to win back Spears' love, but in the end she chooses the audience's love above all else.

[Composer Jacob Cooper] began work on the opera by experimenting with a technique called time-stretching. Using digital audio software, he slowed down Spears' songs — and suddenly the light pop tunes seemed hauntingly tragic. Phrases like "Hit me baby one more time" took on an entirely different and more weighted meaning.

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*This is one of those times you wish ill-fated teen tragedies ended the way they did in the Shakespeare days.

Also...

This made me and Kito cry.

No, I'm Not Dead...

Just on vacation. It's nice here.

Back next week, ladies and gents. In the meantime, consider the merits of Mad Men penetrating Playboy and, uh, dolls that need breastfeeding. (Nice touch with the nipple flowers! -- but I guess this isn't really out-of-the-mold conditioning. Remember how excited you were when Technology™ brought us dolls that could piss?)