Are We Bored?

version

Well-known member
That last part's the real killer, particularly since you can do it without piracy now. I can buy something or just listen to it on YouTube and Spotify for free.
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
the sandwich every time

actually that is a genuine trend of the last decade or so - young people being more invested in interesting food, strange beers, saki, etc etc than culture-culture.

the bohemian food markets are pumping here in LA... the excitement about a new food truck

Portlandia spoofed it with the sketch about people queuing for hours for some new pancake place, the way that people used to camp outside the Virgin megastore all night for the new album by whoever
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Doesn't really seem like much of a spoof.
The thing with food culture is that you can only eat so much at one sitting. I mean don't get me wrong, I love posh food and so on but surely there is a natural limit to it.
 

version

Well-known member
the sandwich every time

actually that is a genuine trend of the last decade or so - young people being more invested in interesting food, strange beers, saki, etc etc than culture-culture.

the bohemian food markets are pumping here in LA... the excitement about a new food truck

Portlandia spoofed it with the sketch about people queuing for hours for some new pancake place, the way that people used to camp outside the Virgin megastore all night for the new album by whoever

The sandwich is our greatest weapon in the fight against dematerialisation.
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
i sometimes think i missed a trick not becoming a food critic. i could have been Jonathan Gold (RIP). He started out as a music writer, for Spin. they made a film about him - there's no rock critic, not even Lester Bangs you can say that about.

actually Gold's interest in LA street food, obscure Asian restaurants with no decor as such, but ferociously authentic, hardcore-spicy, alarming-proteins and bits of the animal body (listed as "intestines" or "blood-cubes" or "gizzards" on the menu, not even some old-timey terms like tripe or chitlins, just straight up clinical 'this is what you be eating' - intestintes, blood ).... it's not unlike my own music aesthetic really
 

version

Well-known member
Blissed Out: The Raptures of Rhubarb.

The Sex Revolts: Gender, Rebellion and Haute cuisine.

Energy Flash: A Journey Through the Kitchen and Restaurant Culture.

Rip It Up and Start Again: The Menu 1978–1984.

Bring The Noise: 20 Years of writing about Restaurants.

Totally Wired: The History of the Electric Oven.

Retromania: Food Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past.

Shock and Awe: Fast Food and Its Legacy, from the Seventies to the Twenty-First Century.
 

entertainment

Well-known member
Watched that Ugly Delicious show on netflix and it much of the food culture talk was analogous to music. Authenticity, appropriation, fast food is formulaic pop, MSG is auto-tune.
 

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
i try always to have things around me that allows me to produce, be it music, or images, or food. the problem though is that when i'm bored nothing comes out of it. can't come up with a drum pattern, two strokes on a canvas and i already conclude it's shit. i can't read books anymore, two pages and i give up, it doesn't resonate, i read the words but i don't really read them. a film i turn off after five minutes. no concentration.

periods like this usually end with alcohol and substance abuse. i wish i had another reflex for it.
 

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
I have yardsticks I use to measure my state. Feedback I can use to determine what needs changing. Dissensus is one. Not just in terms of my own contributions although obviously that is important to me, how much I can do with an idea, how many directions open up, whether I can 'level-change' on an idea, take it up and out of one level onto another, how well I am able to articulate and communicate my ideas, how well I am able to Understand and appreciate the ideas of others and build on them productively, how quickly my mind is moving, how engaged and absorbed I am, how irritable I am, how inclined to pick fights, to be obstructive and obstreperous, contemptuous and impatient, but also how well the forum is functioning as a unit, is everyone happy and productive and intergrated and sharing what they have to share etc etc

If not, can I diagnose the problem? What is getting in the way? How able am I to address it? Have I got trapped in avoidant behaviour, or, at the other end of the spectrum, am I too confrontational and clumsy?

I measure it by whether or not I am able to read at or somewhere near the limit of my ability. I always try to read a book which is hard for me first thing in the morning over coffee. Is that possible today? How quickly does my attention wander? How long can I go before switching on the wifi and distracting myself? What is my attention span like today or how long can I go without needing some reward from outside and some engagement? How self contained am I today? How self sufficient?

I measure it at work. How well am I writing, how fluently, how imaginatively? Am I able to surprise myself or am I working mechanically, repeating old patterns and tropes? How emotionally congruent am I? Can I make contact with the customer? Or am I detached and disinterested? What response am I getting? Are people crying? Wanting to hug and kiss me? Are naive hippy girls sitting at my feet? Or is it all quite perfunctory? Are we not really meeting one another at all but merely conducting a dispassionate transaction?

What is my relationship like with my friends? How are we interacting? Is it niggly and antagonistic? Does it feel false or perfunctory? Which friends am I seeing or speaking too and which ones have fallen off the map? What might that mean?

I measure it by my relationship to booze and drugs. What, if anything, am I taking and crucially, what results am I getting?

I measure it by the amount of control I feel I have over my immediate environment, if the bed is made and the floor swept. I measure it by my conscience. If there are things nagging away at me. Things I know I must do but haven't. What unfinished business is hanging over. What needs apologising for and patching up.

I measure it by how good I look. How much fat I'm carrying. How bright my eyes are. How alive I look. I measure it by how much energy I have available. What speed am I walking at? How inclined to physical and mental activity?

I measure it by the degree to which I notice the world around me. It's possible to go weeks without realising it is there. In a fug which erases the outside entirely. And correspondingly, how aware am I of my own body, it's tensions and its aches. What is my posture like? Am I facing the world square on or am I angling away in eye and feet and shoulders?

Do I feel like I'm getting a clean contact with reality or are my senses dulled? Does it feel like there is a grotty film imposed between me and outside? How vivid and how intense is reality?

some of these things are very recognizable yeh
 

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
what i heard on the radio some weeks ago is that apparently boredom can be good too. some old egyptian invented the sundial on accident when he was bored and stared at the shadow of a stick-like object. noticing it was moving as time past by. i thought it was a nice story but i couldn't verify it.
 

entertainment

Well-known member
It is often said that boredom is healthy but I don't know if they're talking about this kind of boredom. The epistemological vs she ontologial boring. The lack of interesting things around you vs the lack of ability to find anything interesting.
 

firefinga

Well-known member
i sometimes think i missed a trick not becoming a food critic. i could have been Jonathan Gold (RIP). He started out as a music writer, for Spin. they made a film about him - there's no rock critic, not even Lester Bangs you can say that about.

actually Gold's interest in LA street food, obscure Asian restaurants with no decor as such, but ferociously authentic, hardcore-spicy, alarming-proteins and bits of the animal body (listed as "intestines" or "blood-cubes" or "gizzards" on the menu, not even some old-timey terms like tripe or chitlins, just straight up clinical 'this is what you be eating' - intestintes, blood ).... it's not unlike my own music aesthetic really

 

entertainment

Well-known member
With this veritable infinitude of available material, it's easy to understand why people yearn for coherent movements. To make sense of it, to order it and organize the meaning of it. A fragmented totality of raw data flooding in, and flooding out, leaving not much lasting trace on the earth beneath it. No streams forming, no rivers building, only a swamp.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
actually that is a genuine trend of the last decade or so - young people being more invested in interesting food, strange beers, saki, etc etc than culture-culture.
r

But this is culture-culture for the next generation,no? I dont get it, and find it impoverished, but there's an emotional or anti-emotional investment there
 

luka

Well-known member
But this is culture-culture for the next generation,no? I dont get it, and find it impoverished, but there's an emotional or anti-emotional investment there

It's the reason choon of the day has been definitively and permanently supplanted by dinner of the day.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
A lot of you are talking about boredom when you mean depression aren't you? Or at least a boredom that arises from depression. I mean, there is a difference between (what I might call) normal boredom, which is when you have nothing interesting to do but when something comes along that is interesting you will snap it up and it will alleviate that boredom; and the boredom of depression in which you are bored of everything even those things you haven't done or even heard of and nothing will alleviate it, other than the depression itself leaving.
The first is a disappointment with externals, the second is probably internal isn't it?
 
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