There's actually some writing here about like, smells and art and stuff. For once, this site is doing what it's meant for, lol. I'm also using this as an opportunity to think about how moving prep is going. To be clear, it's not going as well as I would've hoped, but also I can't pack the way I could if I didn't need to use my car for MORE WORK TRIPS. The way I'm not actually getting paid for this month's trips, anyway. Well, life will be different after I move. Remember that, Alex! Anyway, some part of this process is just mental. I need to make sure everything fits... before it actually goes in there. I also need money to get my car to take me to my eventual destination. It's kind of exciting. My life's going to be different in just a few weeks.

Moving and Evitability

People often talk about parts of their lives as "seasons" of their lives. Sometimes this makes sense, like in the case of getting old. It's a new season in life, and if you don't die, experiencing new seasons is inevitable. Often, though, it isn't. Changing jobs is only as inevitable as any confluence of human decisions, so I could go either way on this one. It probably feels inevitable sometimes. Divorce is not inevitable, so that's a weird one. Sometimes it ought to be inevitable, but it's not, due to The Paperwork. I'm moving, which is sort of like breaking up with my roommates, who I am good friends with. Perhaps too good of friends, because the sense of betrayal is real. I didn't expect to be agreeing to forever when I moved in with other early-twentysomethings when I was an early-twentysomething. Our lives are enmeshed in a way that I think is unusual for people with no relation, but I'm not sure that staying here would be any easier than going through the trouble of leaving. That said, if I failed to leave now and stayed here, it would be seen as inevitable. "Alex inevitably gave up on the unwise decision of failing to go with the flow." I'm really lucky to have something so easy as to seem inevitable to fall back on, aren't I? If it ends up working out better that I left, will it seem inevitable to others? I already pretend like it was always inevitable, but it wasn't. Even if my life is way better, or way easier, or way more natural to me somewhere else. This decision is not an obvious one. I pretend it is inevitable, just like I pretended about all of my unwise decisions about college were obvious when I was younger (I was really good at framing these decisions in a way that would make older adults praise me for being smart when really all my rationale was firmly post-hoc, lol).

Books and More Moving

I'm working on sorting my possessions so I can move HOPEFULLY by Labor Day, but books are a major bottleneck! I want to make sure I can get a digital copy of the books I still want but can't fit in my car. I know to some degree this bottleneck is unnecessary. I will either find the books once again, or I won't. Like yesterday, I've gotten little done all day. Unlike yesterday, I want to commit to going to the used book store to sell my books tomorrow!!

What I've been doing is looking for acceptable digitized copy. I download the smallest PDF version I can find and see if it's suitable. I choose an inefficient filetype because they're easy to view and edit. I think I've gotten an idea of how big a PDF ought to be, though. If a book has like ~300 pages, an unoptomized pdf can be tens of MBs. If it has less, it can get down to the single digits of MBs. If it's image-heavy or textbook-size it can be in the 30-70 MB range, but I can usually optimize down to something smaller. It's unusual if a book is less than 3 MB before I optimize it.

That said, I might have to save that work for after the move. I really can't keep doing this if I want to sort the rest of my clothes that I'm struggling to give up with the same consideration.

At least I've given up the majority of my furniture with little trouble. I intend to keep the following furniture!

Furniture Keepers!

• One set of drawers, either the white drawers or the non-busted blue drawers, depending on what packs what I've got in the end better.
• Bookshelves, likely to cause the chagrin of my future roommates, who told me not to keep them. I'll keep what I can deconstruct and keep track of the screws for (: I've got the instruction books still, and they really don't take up much space when reduced to a bunch of flat planks.
• My metal stool (:
• My mirror
• My lamp
• MAYBE brown end table
• My black alarm clock
• My Jalapeno pepper plant
• Closet infrastructure I guess. Like boxes and these hanging shelves I can put shoes or makeup in. And my file folder, suitcases, box of sunglasses, what have you.
• Intstruments! Guitar, bongos, ukelele, piano (and stand)
• The crate and basket I keep sheet music in.
• I guess the big storage container I also keep sheet music in? I guess I should go through all that and see what to get rid of.

Shit I'm NOT Keeping!

• Two sets of drawers, selected based on what doesn't suit my needs in the end.
• Either of my desks. I do most of my art on the floor anyway lololol

I need to go through my electronics and sell as much as I can next week. And I need to find a way to conveniently pack alllll my papermaking materials. So that means turning shreds to hearts, mostly, but also making whatever paper I can. Mostly, I want to not have any need to cook or blend any paper pulp until I'm done with all of this stock. I'm sure the boys won't like hearing my hand-pulled blender LOL. I might have to get a blender bullet or whatever the fuck it's called to make it quicker, even if it's louder and takes electricity.

I also need to sort through my Toys & Decor & Witchcraft Shit. I want to take it down to just what I'm likely to really display or use. Like Mack from Midwest Magic Cleaning says, if a collection isn't on display, it's just taking up space for no reason. So I'll need to pick display pieces. I'm thinking of designating certain bookshelves for folded up clothes, some for books, some for stationery & art supplies. That way I can sort of see what will fit before I leave. And then I can make sure Display Stuff all fits on top and in extra space?

okok. so.

moving tasks remaining

1. wash clothes & use art supplies daily
2. publish old digital art monthlies every couple days
3. go to hippie store, thrift store so i can see about selling things there
4. go through big plastic tub & get rid of what i don't care about
5. determine which books & other sheet musics i can give up (don't bother downloading or cleaning up the digital copies rn!)
6. sell books on 8/19
7. sort electronics & drawers
8. sell another batch of shit on 8/26
9. continue to sort clothes, books/sheetmusic, supplies, and papers (records and such) down til they all fit on shelves.
10. take bookshelves apart
11. sell another batch of shit on 9/2
12. fit instruments, bookshelves, stool, lamp, mirror, drawer, clothes (in suitcases) into car.
13. see if brown endtable fits
14. pick drawer set based on what fits in them & what fits in car, also.
15. make sure jalapeno and electronics are not Destroyed by the journey

Perfume

I started commenting on a perfume review on youtube, only to recognize that I'd be better off to just post it here.

Here's the adapted comment.

I adore that she gives time to both the sentiment for the art and the big, unforgiving economics. I also love how she uses her body language and tone of voice. the comment section rightfully shows that many appreciate her diction, but the intelligence of her communication is multifaceted. She kept me on board for nearly 50 minutes of a story that she also kept complexity on board for. As she pointed out, the reason has little to do with heroes and villains, but much to do with policy and (a growing quantity/shrinking diversity of) chemicals. I will likely continue watching her videos for the quality of writing and presentation, and I guess I’m happy to learn about perfume as I enjoy that writing. That's probably the purpose of her perfume writing, much like that of a good music critic or food critic. Or so I'd guess.

At this point, edification and distinctness of voice is how I choose which video creators and authors I keep coming back to. For the past year, I feel burnt out by the sameyness of everything everywhere because everything that pushes itself into my face is more samey than ever. This is usually due to massive global economic factors, lol. Regardless of reasons, everywhere I look (and hear and smell and taste and feel) there is more of everything, and yet I acquire a new favorite anything less frequently.

I’ve been irritated by the mysteries of the algorithm, so I turned off watch history & recommendations on my home page. As such, I can tell you that I got this video recommendation while watching a video of a recent operatic performance of Craigslistlieder (a song cycle composed by Gabriel Kahane which is sets real Craigslist ads to music), just above a recommendation for a Bliss Foster video I’ve already seen. Many things, even beyond social media, are turning into slot machines with a narrowing band of possible outputs, but I'm still fond of tracking links from one thing to the next. I guess that's why blogging in this style appeals to me.

Despite my efforts to be less reliant on recommendations and the luck of the draw, it feels like a lucky coincidence that The Perfumed Perspective answered a question that’s been on my mind. My grandpa gave me a bottle of perfume just over 20 years ago, and I could easily go to the mall and find a perfume by the same company with the same name today. I'm sure it'd be in plastic today, rather than a nice glass bottle. It was never a very respectable scent, lol. Still, I have gone looking for it this way before and not found my smell, so I kept the empty perfume bottle. At least the bottle still smells like the perfume, even if I can’t use that scent anymore. I think the most foolish aspect of this nostalgia is that I know full well that my grandpa would buy me the updated scent all the same if he were alive today. Or maybe not. I guess he would have likely preferred to respect my gender and get me something else. Or maybe he'd ask my opinion. Either way, he always seemed to be attempting to respect my clearly rainbow-flavored identity regardless of the fact that I was attempting (poorly) to hide whatever burgeoning notion of an identity I had.

The grandpa who gave me that bottle never was into buying scents for himself, from what I could tell. He didn't need to spend money for his entrance into a room to be noticeable by scent, lol. He was a hiker, and he was always accompanied by his off-leash chocolate lab and a large thermos of peach flavored black tea (always hot, even if it was >100°F out). Predictably, he smelled like hiking, sun-dried wet dog, and his body processing a quantity of hot peach tea that I imagine no other human has ever attempted to consume. Yes, he had kidney stones, many times. This could not overcome his fondness for that tea.

This next statement is completely nostalgia talking I'm sure, but i would pay money for that Classic Grandma Smell now that he’s gone.

I saw a comment where somebody mentioned being asked about their perfume, when really they just work with sheep. The reviewer responded, "Your sheep gave you for nothing what people pay Guerlain a fortune for. Don't tell her. Let her think it's Byredo." I can’t afford antique perfumes, so the lesson I can decide to take from this exchange (and from my grandfather's peach-and-dog signature sweat lol) is that if i want to smell like my unique self i’d better live like my unique self.

Beyond how this pertains to my own life, this video also makes me wonder about paper and ink reviews i’ve seen online. Every paper brand or special ink that people know by reputation eventually is bought or sold or has a big revamp on its own. When the reissue happens, the customers are always disappointed by the new version. The final bottles of the pre-reissue ink, the final sheets of fine paper, these become more expensive all the time as they become rarer. And it does matter to the people using these products! I've seen some video reviews of ink reissues comparing the reissued ink to the original ink, and even with time accounted for, there's no reason it should be THAT different. No reason but for supply lines and economics!

Note to self, I've got to read that book The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy. I was gonna say "I need to read that book about the travels of a t shirt in the global economy," but I decided to google it and it turns out I had the name of the book entirely right on the first go. That's crazy. Anyway.

A Lack of Sensuality

I often go on tumblr to look at fine art and photography. Even after all these years, it's hard to find a site where curators are more rigorous about attribution and where looking back at a curated collection is half as easy. Tumblr, seemingly accidentally, lucked into an archive feature which is irreplaceable among social media. I think this archive feature taken with the tagging feature is what makes it such a good platform for visual content, better than instagram and pinterest. A true #blogger should be familiar with the archive, the mass post editor, and all the posting features that few consumers of tumblr content see any reason to make themselves familiar with, plus all the options that xkit and its various relatives grant tumblr's userbase. Of course, no sane person should want to be a true #blogger.

Most recently, in my frustration at tumblr's ever-worsening "followed tags" feature (which once had a function, if you'd believe it), I've started just manually looking up artists. Often the tag page for an artist won't show work tagged with that artist's name. As such, I've had to become familiar with tumblr's quirky search features. It is a massive chore to try to extract useful results from a site where the staff seems incapable of imagining what one might want to use their website for. Even for all the issues that are baked into the site, there is also the issue of the other people on the site, who are ostensibly generally adults. And yet, the tastes trend juvenile.

My latest exposure to the Other Part of this website has been attempting to explore photographic works from the American Dadaist named Man Ray, who lived from 1890 to 1976. Man Ray's black and white photographic works include intriguing experimental compositions, artistic nudes of both men and women, and occasional shots that lean too far into dadaist tittilation and humor for my own taste. However, overall, the photography strikes me as work done by adults. Fully cooked humans trying to do human activities of creation. And where is that Other Part of Tumblr in all this? Well, as you might know, there is a Spongebob character named Man Ray, and he is buff. Not only do I have the great displeasure of seeing childish spongebob fanart, but a lot of it is done by adults.

i ended up ranting more about this in a handful of tumblr joak poasts

There is something doubly perverse about cartoon porn made by and for thirtysomethings who never grew up, especially if the art isn't particularly good. I'm not sure what it is. There is plenty of fanart out there made by and for adults. It's not the fact that the subject matter is childish, necessarily. It's something else. I guess the artwork I found most haunting was done by someone who posts on a variety of platforms and gets attention on none of them. Maybe what it is is haunting. I'm a small-time artist online, and I've done all kinds of things for cash. Never have I so persisted in doing something hideous for the pleasure of nobody with such a tone of utter desperation. It's not disgusting, like people can do what they want, whatever. It's not even really daring or imaginative enough to be disgusting. It lacks a good deal of what it would take to even be considered porn by most people who haven't spent every year of their life absorbing internet nonsense daily, esp during formative years. I guess that's also what confounds me. I assume this person, my same age, would also have spent their formative years in much the same way. Why are they so broken as to consider their own childish art (infantile in style, content, and subject matter) to be erotic?

There's a lot of this lately that I see among artists my age. Self-infantilization. I suppose being a pop culture nerd is self-infantilizing on a basic level. But even then... Well, maybe it's because people who are my age and nevertheless persist in childish interests instead of trying new things are just... not going to have the same ability to improve or pick up new skills or advertise themselves in an economically useful way for the artwork that they do. I am also confused, mildly, by the fact that these not-so-aspiring artists continue to plug along making works completely ignorant to the workings of real material reality AND the adaptations of the styles which they imitate, completely without even naive charm or any mark of originality, at the same time that image diffusion AI models absorb all the market for the work they would have done. And yet they insist on attempting to monetize all this nothing? What is it? If it was desperation, they'd do better. It seems to be a blindness to purpose. What is the purpose of porn? They don't know. What is the purpose of shilling a store or a tip link? They don't know. Porn and shilling are just what people who draw online seem to do, so they mimic it. I would attribute some internality to this behavior if they gave any sign of it. I think that's what I want from them. A sign of sentience. They have to be in there somewhere, right? Or maybe some indication of purpose. What does the sign of not-quite-naked Rick from Rick and Morty signify? What problem is solved by this image that is supposed to be of "a hand" "touching" "skeletor" in some manner implied by the text on the image (and the tags on the bluesky post) to be sexual in nature?