laura kipnis. and clothes.

i think i'm in not-love with laura kipnis.

anybody who hasn't read against love, needs to. this is imperative. i am stoked on this book for a few reasons.

a) it justifies my roiling distrust of monogamy, in so many smart, funny, and incisive ways.
b) it is so necessary. the cover blurb pretty much says it all, but isn't it kind of ridiculous that love is the one hegemonic power that can subvert all dissent? and that nobody has even pulled a chomsky and pointed out this fact? until this book, of course. ms. kipnis is the noam chomsky of love.

so yeah, read it. i'm not much of a book-report type, so i don't want to say much else. but do it, for fuck's sakes! if you're a cynical fuck like me, you can feel all tingly and redeemed inside, almost like you're actually capable of love. and if you subscribe to coupledom, well, you deserve a little constructive deconstruction.

moving along. in any case, this book led me onto an interesting train of thought whilst i was riding the bus home the other night.

how many of our neuroses, how many of our trembling whiny little human wants and needs stem from our naked hairlessness, which climate drives us à suppléer avec clothing. maybe alot.

my rationale is rather rambly and manifold. keep in mind that i'm not proposing anything concrete here, just thinking on paper. errr... virtual paper.

in a way, the struggle that is implicit in our clothedness is microcosmal of the greater human struggle. we want to be independent, we want to be self-sufficient, but the harsh realities of temperature mean that we have to repress that which is natural. our nakedness must be clothed in order for us to survive. therefore, from birth, we are dependent. the world is our enemy. we require mediation in order to survive.

note that this requirement enforces itself upon us much more strongly in cold-as-shit places like here en ontario right now. perhaps this is why nordic peoples tend to be more reserved?

even as we try to emancipate ourselves from other-directedness in many ways, we cannot escape this dependence. even as we try to escape dependence on material goods, clothing is a necessity. not for bullshit moral/ethical reasons, but simply because we haven't got a nice layer of blubber or fur to keep us happy and warm without assistance.

so why did this have anything to do with against love? well, i'm not too sure. truth be told, i'm rather disappointed in how lame this post turned out to be. definitely a step up, lameness-wise, from the majority of my lame-assed lameness that i digitally shit all over this fuckin page. it was a really interesting baked tangent that my brain went on while i was on the bus the other day, like i said. and now it's a couple days later, and i'm trying to recapture it without being baked, and it's just not working. but hell, i figured i hadn't written anything on here for a while, so i should just turn out some dreck to keep the ol' neurons firing.

btw, thanks for reading my blog, anyone that does. comment! comment! comment! make fun of me, i don't really care. so long as somebody makes a halfassed attempt to wade through this shit. and tell people about this silly nerdy blog that you know, and how they should come make fun too.

ok, that's enough.