Last entry

It was fun. Pretty much all I can say. I felt humiliated when I got told I had to go to English classes after skipping them since 8^th grade, but I actually enjoyed them quite a lot. They were better than I had expected.

Hope I learnt something, not that I know everything, don’t get me wrong. In fact, I should apologize for acting so pretentious, it was totally unintentionally I swear. I tend to do many things at the same time so that I don’t feel like I’m wasting it, and every time I answered a question while playing on my 3DS or doing something else, I felt quite snob. Maybe (and I hope) nobody even noticed.

I’m going to miss joking around with Emilio, tho we are classmates, we share very little classes together and this was like our perfect excuse to talk sober. And although I think everything was fun, I’m very very glad we missed so many classes due to the strike, I don’t think we are going to have them back, but that’s ok jiji.

I’m a few words away from the 300, but I’ve been writing a lot more than asked in the past entries, so I’m going to allow myself to go to bed now.  I’ll be playing Borderlands 2 ( yep! I got my PS3 <3 ) aaand, in case you want to know, I did actually open up that Facebook shop for rats http://www.facebook.com/larateria if you want to press like I wouldn’t mind at all!

Bye bye

Look at this cute girl, she is Paquita.

I'll even get the dog Mom never let me have!!

I’m  having a hard time thinking what’s going to happen to me after we get back to classes from the strike, so I find almost impossible to think about my future right now.

It will sure be lousy and boring. My boyfriend has been mocking around the idea of me actually becoming a tattoo artist if I fail taller. It was funny a few months ago but now I feel like I should start practicing and drawing, because I see nothing bright about my project for documentary class.

I don’t even have a “dream job” or anything; I just can’t picture myself doing anything apart from being a lazy 12 year old kid playing videogames in an oversized hoodie, eating instant noodles with rats around.  Although, I’ve been wanting to work at a sex shop or something quite like; I love all those kinky toys, the colors, the lightning of the shelves and the hangers with those expensive yet ridiculously small lingerie pieces. Above all, the people who usually hang around those shops are very fun and interesting, is always either young curious couples or old men.

I would also enjoy working at a saloon, I’m a good hairdresser and I like cutting hair off, but both jobs leave very little money left to cover up for my expensive habits such as buying stuff I don’t need, lots of alcohol, cat and rat food and litter, and video games.

Hope things turn to be better than this. I would really love to leave this house as soon as possible. It seems I have no intention of being successful, which is sad, my lack of conviction reminds me of Punpun’s. Which also reminds me, this year the 13^th volume comes out, and it is said it would be the last one.

Back when he was young, he saw the opportunity of winning a huuuge prize money, he knew so little about life then …

I can't wait

I could talk about Pokemon all day long, I’m a very good trainer and I’ve been playing it for so many years and even though a new Pkm game is coming out worldwide on October (and I’m obviously going to buy it) I’m not going to write about it, because I already did it for my first video task.

I’m actually going to buy a PS3 this month, I’ve been starving myself to death in order to save some money for it, and so far so good. In only two months I’ve managed to have 160.000 Chilean pesos, part of it it’s from a few times I’ve worked over night at a bar and the rest is mainly from my new diet.

I’m planning to get Portal 2 and Borderlands 2 as my first two games for the console.  I fell in love with the Borderland series because of its amazing mix between and RPG video game and a FPS one. FPS stands for First Person Shooter,  those are the ones where you are “ behind “ the screen and RPG stands for Role Playing Game, in which you are most likely to follow a story, very similar to a movie and you take part in the game as a third person such as the leader character of the story.

Another great feature of the game it is its visual work. In Borderlands they actually use a very distinctive technique; they combine Cell shading (a way of lighting and shading 3ds volumes) with a digital collage of patterns and textures, which already creates a whole new visual experience, nothing close to reality.

Most FPSs tend to be more visually realistic, so that you feel like it’s actually you inside the game. I personally don’t like the idea of trying to make everything so close to reality and I find those war-games kind of boring. I mean, if you have the possibility to create a whole new world with its own logic, why would you miss the chance by trying to emulate the world we are currently living in?

New platforms and consoles are constantly trying to engage us more fiscally present, in their games, but they seem to be forgetting about creating new stories and new ways of exploring their worlds, but this is something Borderlands is not lacking of. I hope I can buy my ps3 this week, I’m very excited about it and just can’t wait any longer. If you see me gaining weight and skipping classes consider anything said in this post, worth to blame. 

Not as green as my hair.

I don’t know where people get to learn about it, but definitely the internet is one great source of information. There are many stock images that can be related to environmental issues and they have this powerful, visual, instant message, and the viral characteristics of the internet and social networks can be very helpful in terms of spreading an eco-friendly lifestyle.

I used to be very conscious about my carbon footprint back when I was younger; I recycled almost everything, and even go on a hunt for used cans on the street trash deposits. I would only work on recycled paper and very rarely use anything disposable.

 I  don’t like to be in places with too bright lights and my room lights up with candles mostly, they lasts weeks and with two or three I get plenty of light and enough to move around. Tea light candles are great, you never waste the paraffin and the wick lasts a lot, but it also easy to replace.

I don’t know how to ride a bike, but I could totally live without a car, I love going on the subway and arrange meetings with internet people on the stations (at these point I have almost one ex-friend/something/boyfriend/who-knows-what per each station on the Line 1) but riding the bus is what I enjoy the most.

I haven’t joined in any organization related to it, it’s too much compromise, you get to meet great people for sure, but is still too much to take on.

Unfortunately I don’t do as much as I used to and as much as I would like to do, for the environment. My family complained about my habits, they could let the water running for hours, and they left the TVs and lights turned on even during work-hour when no one was at home, but they would get very upset if I tried to do anything about it. It’s hard to take part in something you believe in when the people around you don’t want to commit to it, not even for the money they can be wasting or for the respect to others who want to change things up for the better.

I just drop some plastic bricks at GAM now and then (although it doesn’t solve the problem), still use tea light candles and make sure I don’t spoil myself with electricity, but that’s all I can do for now on, since I share the house with many people.

 

Santiago and pretty much just Chile and Latin America need to change their view on the act or recycling and caring about our planet. We all know the benefits but I’m sure that the problem has more to do with the prejudices most of the people have, towards those who care, rather than not wanting to care. 

I was supposed to talk about movies

I’m getting tired of writing and thinking and talking about movies and filmmaking.  Even though is what I’m studying, I don’t like movies that much, I don’t watch too many movies either and I find boring to now write about it. I’m gloomy today, sorry, bad sleep – bad mood.  Although I have some movies I love on my list, I’ve talked about them so many times that I decided I’m actually going to blog about Oyasumi Punpun, a manga* I’m currently reading. After all, this is my blog, right?

Asano Inio started Oyasumi Punpun in 2007, I first started reading her work when I was 15 years old, but by that time, there were only a few volumes. I decided to resume my reading this year, and it all makes so much sense right now that I’ve been through a lot. The manga is still being published every month.

Asano’s work is very much on the dark side, has a very deep and rather pessimists critique to humanity;  religion, money issues, death, suicide,  social constructions around “love”, relationships,  family structure etc... Asano also came out as a transgender woman this year, which explains a lot of her artwork and the constant references to phallic shaped characters. So I’m glad I had the chance to “read” her artwork while going to college and being a little bit older.

In Oyasumi Punpun, Punpun is a phallo like character that lives with his family in a “broken home”, his mother was a teen mom who is now facing a mid-life crisis and his dad is a male chauvinistic dreamer who desperately wants to get away from his duty as a father. Punpun also has an uncle, who plays a big role in his late childhood.  The manga, surprisingly, goes through all Punpuns life. It starts with him in school, then high school and then college, and we can see how this non-human figure goes through all this different process that make him who he is “at the end”.

To me, this is Asano’s best work so far, I read Solanin (another manga from the author, which was also made into a movie) and it does have many things in common with her late publications. Solanin has only 2 volumes, in which you can see a fully constructed story of a boy a girl, love and relationships, death and suicide, but if I could compare it to Oyasumi Punpun, the most representative aspect of this work last mentioned, is that is still being published, and this means it is in a constant construction. Directly related to what Asano tries to represent in her overall artwork.

Oyasumi Punpun is, visually, a great experience. For those who use to read manga, you can notice its particular cinematography. Manga itself has a very similar structure to movies, in terms of language. Even though it’s drawn, it changes the speed, the mood; you can actually hear music coming out of it.

The uses of perspective are very amusing. The picture above is like the “master” take (what we would call it) and then the second one takes place a few pages later, the same characters are now distant to each other, after a heated conversation, and this is built from the perspective, in the picture itself, the narrative is not being given by what the characters say, but by the image itself is telling us.

It's hard to pick just one thing I like about it, even harder to think about one I don't like. Maybe Asano Inio's work depresses me so much, that I would find hard to say she is my favorite mangaka*, but Oyasumi Punpun is definitely first on my top 10 favs. things of all the world. 

*Manga is like a comic, it’s Japanese and it has a distinctive format.

*Mangaka is the author of the manga

Summary

Triggered by  Nobuyoshi Araki ‘s artwork being shown in London, the article presents a debate about the boundaries and limits between art and pornography,  related to photography and the Japanese culture. Araki’s work has been criticized before, for it’s not so explicit yet loud and even called “degrading” photographs, in a previous show that took place in Australia, in 1992. His views on photography and the controversy  around pornography, reveal  a yet unsolved discussion about the limits of art.

Michael Hoppen, in a review of Araki’s artwork, attempts to find answers for this unsolved discussion, and also, consider the cultural background as a part of Nobuyoshi’s photographs, by linking his artwork to traditional shunga Japanese woodblock prints.  Araki’s work is not as graphic as these traditional prints, but it is clear that by the 1990’s, the sexually explicit pictures and their connection to the representation of the Japanese society and traditions, was shocking enough to bring this discussion out.

Araki states that his artwork is directly related to life itself. He claims his work is a representation of the everyday life, but most important, that the line between pornography and art, is not meant to be settled up.  They are not, necessarily, two different subjects, and art can take any form or matter, and turn it into a piece worth to be seen.

 Araki, although criticized, has been able to make art out of the discussion about art and porn itself, and , in the words of Simon Baker; “t's an incredibly polite, formal society on the surface, [but it] has this hidden underside of sexuality. Araki very effectively works on this relationship."

Seedy yet sophisticated … a shot from Nobuyoshi Araki's book,

 Grand Diary of a Photo-Maniac (1994/2013), published by Taschen.

Article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2013/may/08/nobuyoshi-araki-photography-art-porn

Late is better than never.

I find odd to hear people saying they don't listen to music or that they listen "a little bit of everything", it upsets me a little bit actually, but it's hard to point out a specific genre I like, so sometimes I betray myself and just say "ah I like this and that but..."

Brian Molko being sexy in Paris

I can't remember when I started listening to music in a more meaningful way. I know I danced to Papa Roach when I was like 7 or 8, because my uncle had Infest. So when I listen to Last Resort it brings back something to me, but it is not my kind of music.

I got a cassette I really wanted when I was a child, it had the Pokemon songs from the first season of the series, and I still listen to it, same with the Pokemon's first movie Soundtrack and second movie as well. I got M2M Shades of Purple when I was in Mexico, and that is one of my favourites albums, I learnt the songs in English when I was 7 and I would just shout out loud the lyrics, it's embarrassing to think about it right now but well...

My babies

If I had to point out my favourite bands or artists, it would definitely be Placebo and The Knife, and not just The Knife, but also Karin Dreijer Anderson's work as Fever Ray too.
Placebo has this terrible effect on me, either it makes my day or depresses me to the core, but it's a healthy sadness anyway. I love it I love it I love it, I got Soulmates Never Die live in Paris 2003 (DVD) for Christmas, from a very good friend who knew a lot about me, and I still thank him for that wonderful present.
The Knife is perfect, their songs put me in a trance and they have this peeerfect live show (one of the few) in Sweden 2006, it's called An Audiovisual Experience and it really is, here is one song I like.

There is another band I love, but even more than that, it represents me. I relate to the lyrics SO much and I wish I could live in one of their music videos. It's called Wild Strawberries, and it's been my obsession for about five or more years.
I'm going to stop blogging right now, I don't want to get you guys bored. One last thing, this is the video I would be happy to spend my life in: