starry-eyed-cynicism - Tumblr blog

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Things we've learned in 2021

1. A single subreddit made of trolls can break the US economy

2. A single ship and a storm can break international trade

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Birds of Prey (2020)

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i love cats

you have long cat (serval)

ear cat (sand cat)

small evil cat (black footed cat)

spherical cat (pallas cat)

cat who probably watches makeup tutorials on youtube (caracal)

very round cat (leopardus guigna)

water cat (fishing cat)

cat with socks (leopardus colocolo)

grayscale cat (geoffroy’s cat)

and let’s not forget revolver cat (ocelot)

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Venom/Flubber Mash-Up by Nerdist.

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Your daughters do not exist to give you grandchildren

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Me: *Speaks in one language*

Also me: *forgets words in it and switches to another*

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#same. Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)

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fuck it until you make it

gather round, folks, that i may pass down the tale of Fuck-It Jonn, because that dude is just the GREATEST FUCKING CONMAN in the WORLD, and he WASN’T EVEN TRYING. he absolutely fucking STUMBLED ON ACCIDENT into THE SCAM THAT WOULD DEFINE HIS ENTIRE LIFE. the lie that transformed his ENTIRE EXISTENCE out of SHEER RANDOM BULLSHIT.

and his sole motivation was to EAT FINGER FOOD.

consider:

in the Wayback Days™ before i was born, the people who would later become my parents had this friend named… yeah, let’s say jonn. i’d rather not say his real name. bitches not snitches, and all that.

so. france in the late 80s. jonn and my parents had just finished school and all found jobs in computer engineering. (not that they STUDIED computer engineering, mind you. no, they were all studying how to become fish farmers or some shit. but those were simpler times, when knowing how to turn the fucking screen on got you a comfortable salary at the ripe old age of 24 years old.)

except that jonn, who was a chill hippie kind of dude, was bored to death by his desk job. so bored that he decided to just up and quit. “fuck it”, was basically jonn’s motto. fuck it, he’d find something better! fuck it, and things would work out! EXCEPT (as you may have guessed) THEY DIDN’T. for months and months he didn’t find another job. and so he ended up depressed, struggling, and eating dinner at my future-parents’ tiny apartment, three times a week, so he wouldn’t literally starve.

time went by. jonn was still unemployed. so before his resources hit rock bottom, jonn did the only logical, reasonable thing. what’s that, you ask? begged for his old job back? went back to school? crawled home to his parents? ha ha! obviously you do not share jonn’s ADVENTUROUS AND ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT. and also you lack his BIZARRE LOGIC AND PLAIN WEIRD APPROACH TO LIFE.

what jonn did was: say “fuck it” (again) and leave for thailand.

because you see, thailand was cheap by french standards. so cheap that even a penniless dude on unemployment could live there for weeks on end, spending much less than he would have in france, as long as he didn’t mind roughing it. and jonn didn’t mind! “fuck it”, he’d said. and by god, he would stand by his words!

so jonn gamely scrounged up the money for the plane ticket and then… yeah. basically bummed it out in thailand. for two months. seeing the sights. sleeping on the street. making new friends.

and one of these news friends turned out to be very adept at FORGING PAPERS.

huh, jonn said to himself (probably high at the time) this sounds not at all shifty and more like a ONCE IN A LIFETIME OPPORTUNITY; what could POSSIBLY GO WRONG. my new thai best friend is even offering me a FAMILY DISCOUNT. for fake papers. fuck it! let’s have some!

as far as i can tell, jonn… didn’t even need fake papers?? like, he was literally just trying not to pass up on an opportunity here. so he smoked some more weed (i can only assume) and got A BRILLIANT IDEA. fake ID card? LAME. fake driver’s licence? HACKNEYED. fake medical degree? PEDESTRIAN. no! jonn got himself a fake press card.

but why??

well, OBVIOUSLY, just so he could get into cultural events for free - conferences, art premieres, etc - and eat all the finger food. that was his grand plan. stroll into press-only events, wave his poorly-made card around, and gorge himself on canapés. no more going hungry! ever! jonn would live off tiny slices of toasted foie gras and flutes of cheap champagne for the rest of his life!

so now jonn, Very Obviously Fake Journalist™, is back in france and he’s DOING THE THING. and guess what? this was before google. before facebook. before linkedin. impersonating a journalist was very easy. if people asked where you worked you just said you were freelance, then steered the conversation to current politics and stealthily devoured the entire buffet while everybody was busy debating.

and so. this is what jonn is doing. his monumentally stupid plan is actually working. this is how he eats. with thai-made fake papers and sheer fucking confidence. and of course people start noticing him eventually! jonn is always fucking there! at all and any events in paris! because, again, THIS IS HOW HE EATS! but it’s always the same people running around in these circles, anyway. so nobody’s surprised to see the same dudes popping up over and over again. jonn blends in! and jonn is very good at making friends. and changing the subject. and eating canapés.

and then ONE DAY

one of jonn’s newfangled journalist friends (a REAL journalist, mind you, who has NO IDEA that jonn isn’t What He Seems) basically goes: “dude i’m so swamped rn. everyone wants everything all at once. fuck. shit. are you swamped too?”

“oh, for sure,” jonn says through a mouthful of his twenty-ninth serving of canapés that night. “not a second to myself”

“god. fuck. tell me about it. shit. i’m just so damn swamped.” Real Journalist shakes his head. “if i could only find someone to cover for me on this one article.”

now, i know i said before that jonn was smoking weed. but i must confess now i said it for humorous effect. i have no idea if jonn’s ever been within five hundred yards of a blunt his whole life. but what you must understand is that jonn is Chill™ on like. a soul-deep level. his whole mind is one long exhale of smoke followed by the words “fuck it”. this is a man who left his job for no reason, lived in thailand on a tourist’s visa for two months, got fake papers there for the lol of it all, and is now living off press-only events in paris. jonn was BORN HIGH.

SO. when RJ asks him: “dude. jonn. you said you were working freelance. i know you’re busy but don’t you think you could maybe cover for me? just this once?”

jonn NATURALLY answers: “fuck it. sure”

then goes to an unemployment center and applies for one of their free one-week classes. on journalism. jonn spends ALL OF ONE WEEK learning How To Write An Article Like A Real Journalist With A Real Press Card. then writes the article. basically bullshitting his way through that thing. half-assing the life out of it. faking his heart out. because why not? FUCK IT.

i have NO IDEA if he actually did a good job or not. but it was in fact good enough for RJ who really must have been truly swamped, and was so truly grateful that he told all of their mutual journalists friends. who were ALL SWAMPED. i’m given to understand it’s the natural state of the journalist in the wild.

and so jonn is now REGULARLY COVERING FOR ALL SORTS OF JOURNALISTS.

not making much money i assume. but still, not bad for a dude who studied journalism for five whole days.

and well, it’s kinda fun! better than moping around at home waiting for the next free canapé press-only premiere. so jonn keeps at it. and eventually it occurs to him that hey! he spent two months in thailand. why not make an article out of that? so he writes himself a lil paper, retelling his Bumtastic Adventures in the Land of Thai People, Cheap Living and Forged Papers (That Last One Having Nothing to Do With Him Personally of Course). and he’s kinda proud of it. so much that he gives it to his journalist friends. can they maybe pass it around? see if anybody would be interested in publishing it? for a modest fee and some more canapés?

and yeah. someone was in fact interested in publishing it. and that someone was:

THE

NATIONAL

GEOGRAPHIC

(french edition.)

so jonn got a REAL press card. got a FULL-TIME JOB at the national geographic. and spent the REST OF HIS WORK LIFE traveling abroad for six months, then going back to paris the rest of the year to write about his wacky journeys. he’s retired now, having published several books full of his articles and photographs. he’s bought a b&b in the french countryside with all his money. and continues to say “fuck it” to any problem that comes his way like the absolute fucking legend he is.

as far as i know, none of his journalist buddies nor his boss ever found out about any of this.

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Linda McCartney Remembers Jim Morrison

“I first photographed The Doors at a small New York club, close to the 59th Street Bridge, called Ondine’s, which was a favorite place for out of town bands to come and play residencies. It was the winter of 1966 and I was down there with some friends to see a Los Angeles band that Elektra Records had recently signed. I had my camera with me and started taking pictures of them as they played. No one in New York had heard of The Doors. They had never performed outside of Los Angeles and hadn’t released any records. Because they were unknown and the club was so intimate I had the unique opportunity of being able to get up really close as they played. It wasn’t Jim Morrison’s looks that struck me first about him. It was the poetry of his songs and the way he would get completely lost in the music. He had this habit of cupping his hand behind his ear so the he could hear his vocals the way the traditional folk singers did. I thought the whole band was great; Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore were all very creative musicans. Word about the band soon spread, I even remember one night Paul Newman came down to the Scene Club. I learned later that he was checking Jim out for a film role. He sat there watching everything he did with a really intense look. I never found out what film I was, but it obviously didn’t materialize. They returned to Ondine’s in March 1967 by which time their debut album The Doors and their first single “Break On Through” had been released, and they were getting national attention. In May they played their last residency in New York – three weeks at Steve Paul’s Scene Club. Because they were from out of town I spent a lot of time just hanging out with them. We’d maybe go down to Chinatown to eat, we’d look around bookstores or they would simply come back to my apartment. I got to know Jim Morrison particularly well during this time. He had been at the UCLA film school with the keyboard player Ray Manzarek, so we shared a common love of visual images. The Doors had made some short experimental promotional film for their singles. One I remember showed Jim on the beach tied to a stake with flames dancing around him. Even though they were primitive they were very effective. Jim was a very thoughtful person and we became very deep friends. A lot of that was due to the photography connection. The image of Jim as a Christ-figure that is now being handed down to us is pathetic, I find it unbelievable. Jim would have hated it. You can tell that by the way he deliberately allowed himself to grow fat and grow a beard toward the end of his life. He wanted to be respected as a poet and a musician, and he believed that this image of him as a sex god was interfering with people’s perception of him as a true artist. It really all came about through a great looking picture that Joel Brodsky took of him where he was stripped to the waist and wearing black leather jeans. That brought him a lot of attention. I think Jim was encouraged by it at first. He started to read what people were saying about and then tried to live up to what was being said. There were certain aspects of success that he really enjoyed. But at the same time he resented it. I can remember him coming to me one day in a very disturbed state. He told me all about his background as the son of a Rear Admiral in the US Navy and how much he hated everything that it represented. He also told me that he’d grown up as a fat kid that no one wanted to know and that this had caused him a lot of emotional pain. Then he explained what had brought it all to the surface. Apparently he had been walking around Greenwich Village that morning and a girl who he knew as a child had spotted him and started going crazy over him. That bothered him because he sensed the hypocrisy of it all. When he was a fat military brat these people had rejected and ignored him but now, because of his new public image, they were fawning over him. Jim was essentially a shy person. He never thought of himself as resembling the glamorous image that made him appear so confident. Like most of us, he had hang-ups. May be felt deprived of real meaningful love. Some performers experience rejection in their childhood and they perform to win the love they feel they’ve been denied. But what kind of love is it that you get in this way? Who really wants the love of strangers who you neither respect nor admire? It’s a vicious circle. Many then reject this admiration as shallow and hypocritical and , with Jim, that’s where the drugs and drink began to take over. When I was taking pictures of Jim with The Doors I never thought I was photographing a rock idol. To me he was an unknown singer with an interesting mind who shared my love of the visual arts. In return I think he saw me as someone who could capture him as he really was, rather than a showbiz person who would add to the glamour surrounding him. In a funny way this frightened him too. Jim wanted to bare himself in his art and he wanted to be real, but he was unsure as the whether people would love what he revealed. Maybe people would reject his deepest feelings as expressed in his poetry just as they had rejected his overweight body as a boy. When he first came to my apartment he looked through all my work and he told me to take pictures of him because he could see that I really captured the characters in my subjects. My approach was to take personal, casual shots. I never intruded. I would never set up false situations. I was just there recording what happened. I became like a band member shoes chosen instrument was the camera. The last pictures I took of Jim were in March 1968 when The Doors played the Fillmore East. Life magazine was planning a front cover story and wanted me to take color shots of him. I took him to the Cloister, a monastery outside New York, which was a place I liked to hang out in when I felt pressured by Manhattan. It was pouring rain and so we stayed inside, and Jim sat in a window and the light from the courtyard lit his face. The pictures were beautifully poignant. Martin Luther King was killed two weeks later so Jim never made the front cover.

Link: http://newdoorstalk.proboards.com/thread/978/jim-morrison-linda-mccartney-relationship

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me: *mocks parents for not understanding technology*

me: *has to google how to cook an egg*

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we warned you about that anime shit

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