I say, drop the pilot indeed

So I’ve been productive today. As a result, I’m pretty wiped. Which is either impressive or pathetic, since I didn’t really leave the desk chair all day. Still, I was in full-on panicky-adrenaline mode for about six hours, trying to navigate my way through telephone customer support for a client, again for myself, and once more when I called the Detroit consulate. That shit’ll wear you out something quick.

I guess I’m pretty low on accomplishments, for all of it, but I did get two phone calls I was really dreading out of the way. Neither ended up being particularly conclusive, but they’re done now. The consulate did very little to clarify my situation, I’m afraid. A lot of what they had to say amounted to “we can’t answer any of your questions now, the border official will decide when you get here.” [!!!] I don’t see how this approach makes any of our lives easier, but so be it.

I did manage to get my website back online with a new (and infinitely better) hosting company. so my portfolio is now up at stevencochrane.org (in the last two weeks someone snapped up stevencochrane.com! I was put off, let’s just say). New design, a little bit of new content. wreckingball.org is, for the time being, just my design portfolio.

The fun thing is, now that I’m at dreamhost, I have oodles and oodles of new space and a handful of nice new features to work wit–plenty of room to start developing fun things. Problem is, I don’t know what fun new projects I should work on. I’m sure I’ll think of something; in the mean time, I’m open to suggestions.

Unrelatedly, I had my iTunes on shuffle, and some killer keyboard intro comes in, and I’m like, “what is this? it’s fantastic!” and, as it happens, it’s Mandy Moore singing a Joan Armatrading song. And why the hell not? I know you want the mp3. Don’t front.

Jesus fuck

Christ. I was mistaken. There is, in fact, at least one musician that I loathe more than Rufus Wainwright and Devendra Banhart combined.

Getting things rolling

So, after going over the outline of the student visa application process for the umpteenth time, this morning, I finally decided that there was no way in hell that I was just going to wait to submit my application at the border. Because that would be insane. Even if nothing is going to go wrong, why chance it? Also, this way, I don’t have to actually call the consulate to make sure I can submit at the border. Two birds with one stone, double-avoidance.

So I have my application printed out, my acceptance letters copied, and my “passport photos” taken, printed and cut out. Some people might have, I don’t know, washed their hair and/or faces before taking the photos that are going to serve as their primary form of identification for the next two years, but not I. I just didn’t want to risk having the border office think I was using forged documents because my photos showed a nice,  clean, well-kempt, young man, when I’m entirely unlikely to project that kind of image in person. Ever.

Points

• I think I used up my weekly allotment of enthusiasm thinking about that George Baker essay.
• As such, I cannot summon the interest to fully consider what possible significance there might be in having two sexy-airport music videos come out within two weeks of one another (One, Two). 70′s revivalism : yearning for pre-AIDS sexual license : : fantasies of airport debauchery : weariness with/incredulity of the “heightened security” of the last 5 years? Not quite. I know there’s decent analogy for what’s beginning to look like the dominant music-video zeitgeist, coming out of the second quarter (the invisible specter of a lustful Kelly Clarkson’s assaults an unfaithful ex-boyfriend in an airport terminal, airport men’s room in her newest clip, which seemed to have got ganked from YouTube), but I’m too tired to really think about it more.
• Freelance work sucks for more reasons than simply because “freelancing” is a polite way of saying “unemployed.” Web design, from a business perspective, is not something I was cut out for.

Your face, spanned

LAWRENCE WEINER
A River Spanned 1969

I tried, briefly, to find a picture of that particular piece online, for the purposes of this post. While I know he would sign a copy of the text and sell it for $1000, back in the day (and I’m sure those signed copies are mouldering in museum collections and/or being traded on the auction block even as I type this), I’m just going to call his bluff and assume that no photo is actually necessary.

“Each being equal and consistent with the intent of the artist, the decision as to condition rests with…” your mom.

The long and short of it is this: when staying up past one’s bedtime to study for an exam, Conceptualism rapidly passes from “mildly provocative,” to “historically relevant,” on towards “just fucking irritating.” I am positive that, fully rested, I will be more than willing to think about the “location of ‘the work’” in Weiner’s practice, but I am not now. It isn’t difficult: it’s just too much hair-splitting, at this hour, for me to contemplate the “location” of his work as opposed to the “locations” of Kosuth’s, Barry’s, and Baldwin’s. For now, I am crabby enough to snuggle up with Greenbergian modernism for reasons of spite alone. So to you, Lawrence Weiner, I bid good night.