whoosh

taking things to storage always makes me sad. well, a lot of things make me sad, but the seeming dismality of dumping stuff into a storage room is especially gray to me. i think it’s partly because of the motivation i had for getting the storage room in the first place. it was not so much that i needed space, though i kind of did. it was aprt of my response to getting mugged at knifepoint outside my apartment building. the kids got away with my drivers license, which had exact address and apartment # info on it. i don’t think it was too far over the top to fear that the kids might be back for more, breaking in to my place and pillaging. i did not fear that scenario too righteously, but among other necessities of the moment i factored in that fearsome scenario and decided it was best to minimize my points of failure and put some stuff in storage, to avoid the perceived hazards of the day. i’ve since expanded my use of the storage room to serve as offsite storage for hard drives and backup, in the event of an apartment fire or other calamity.

and i imagine that i will shovel stuff into this storage room until i die, and that the scavengers will circle, plundering my precious valuables — my legacy! — for crap they could sell for a few bucks on ebay.

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i could stand to move that stuff somewhere else, but where? i could buy a shack in Delaware, or a house in some flyover state, and leave the stuff there for me to pick through on my rare-if-ever visits. i could possibly stash it in the garage down in Florida, but that garage isn’t really mine, and i don’t think it’s particularly climate-controlled or hospitable to storage of this type of stuff. i need to go back to the storage room again and just throw stuff away. much of it has no need to linger in my life, even in a remote room that i rarely visit.

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i wrote a fairly lengthy essay today, and as i neared the denoument it started to feel familiar. i am pretty certain i wrote almost the exact same essay once before. it concerned VIOLATORS. Violator, when used in publishing, refers to any visual element that disrupts the expected look or feel of somehting like a magazine cover or billboard. i was first introduced to the VIOLATOR when a designer at Time Inc. pointed it out to me. we were looking at a cover for Sports Illustrated, and in the top right corner was an illustration of a cartoon hand peeling away the corner of hte page. this created the illusion that, as the cartoon hand pulled at the corner of the page, behind th epage appeared some kind of promo text, something like “SI Goes To the Beach! See page 44!”

“That,” the designer said with relish, “is a VIOLATOR!”

i think about the Violator when i see receipts that have colored streaks running through their center. colored streaks on receipts are kind of like Cigarette Burns on movie film reels. the receipt streaks signal to the cashier that the end of the thermal receipt paper is near, and the roll should be replaced.

i don’t know of a legitimate or assigned name for this end-of-roll reeipt streak, but i think it could be included as a species of the VIOLATOR. its use is more utilitarian and rugged than the aesthetically sarcastic VIOLATOR of design use, but in the annals of service industry aesthetics it fills the same purpose.

but maybe the analogy is better made between this and the cigarette burns.

who can say?

i think about it ALL THE TIME.

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watching the Jeremy Lin sploogefest, and thinking again how it would be interesting to get a photo essay of the faces of NBA players at the instant they score a basket. tight, taut, righteous, o-face. that is the NBA player in the seconds after he scores a basket and trots down the court.

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aha, so i watched REDS last night, getting within a half hour of the ending before giving up. the story weakens at the knees so badly it’s hard to stomach. Maureen Stapleton as Emma is a highlight, and Jack Nicholson in a rare substantial role is also of interest. George Plimpton annoys by his mere presence, but then what Renaissance man doesn’t?

the movie mostly looks beautiful but the “epic” sweep, the epic “sweep” runs thin through a story that could have made more informed historical statements. the romance is not even that interesting, either. those 2 people hated each other. he was an asshole and she was a cunt. but they lived in interesting times, and she followed his invitations, reminding me of Lady Bird Johnson who, when asked why she stayed with such a pig as LBJ, such a womanizing, cheating, indifferent pig as that, she responded that without him she would have no opportunity to see the things she saw, do the things she did, and go the places she went to. things are different now but in those days it was worth a woman’s dignity for her to ride on the coattails of a successful man.

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