cblj_backup | (no subject)

Entry tags:

chicago

(no subject)

So apparently a lot of people don't know about the Pillowcase Trick? Allow me to share.

When cleaning an overhead fan, the best technique is to find a pillowcase you don't care about too much. What you do is open the end of the pillowcase, slide the pillowcase over the fan blade, tighten the end around the fan blade at the far end, and pull it back towards yourself. The dust gets wiped into the pillowcase, which you can shake out and wash later. Easy peasy. And kind of funny to watch.

In other, less domestic news...

One of my favourite parts of writing novels (or fic, for that matter) is the research. I am research-oriented by nature; I love learning and I do a lot of it. When I was writing Felinecor's Land I had quite a time researching how tiger meat tastes (oh, the scandals in Japan over tiger meat!) and the average size and weight of an African elephant, so that I could calculate how many soldiers it would feed for how many days.

I've mentioned I'm reading up on prison life, tattoos, and assorted related issues, which has led me afield to Iraq and Afghanistan, where Chicago gang graffiti is turning up in occupied areas (primarily on tanks and military buildings). I don't know why I find this so intriguing; it's not like I was unaware that we have bangers in our military, especially since recruitment often focuses on low-income neighborhoods and disproportionately on African-American and Latino communities.

Part of it, true, is probably because the graffiti comes from what seems to be predominantly Chicago sources, or at any rate they're the ones getting the attention. This may be because the man who broke the story, Jeffrey Stoleson, is an Army reservist who hails from around these parts. He began documenting the graffiti independent of any news source or military orders, and you can see a photograph of him with some of it here. (Relatedly, his article with the Sun Times, which is now not accessible on their website, stirred up some serious racism in Kuwait when Latino soldiers were forced to strip down and searched for gang tatts.)

I know, intellectually, that there are plenty of what we think of as "American" artefacts on overseas military bases -- I know there are Pizza Huts in Afghanistan, for example -- but graffiti is such an organic thing, corporatised in a different way. There is plenty of indigenous graffiti in these regions, but a gang tag in Afghanistan is an unmistakable marker of presence. The only way a Gangster Disciple tag shows up in Iraq is if a Gangster Disciple out of Chicago puts it there, and the only way a Gangster Disciple makes it to Iraq is on a military transport.

Hidden worlds, the secret cities that live within the surface cities, the coded signs that represent them and cross the boundary, all of this is endlessly interesting to me. Tagging, which can be lovely, is also vandalism and I know that -- but it is a secret and symbolic language and to see it so far from where it arose is fascinating.

Threaded | Flat

YOU MUST READ "The City & the City" by China Mieville. Seriously, Sam. It's your last paragraph writ large. And writ very very well.

The Pillowcase Trick! As someone who has three ceiling fans that she, is, um, lax about cleaning, I absolutely love you for this. I don't know why that never occured to me before.

I am really excited about this upcoming book of yours. Off to buy the current one. (yay for research love. do you find random stuff you've looked up coming up in everyday conversations?)

I love city mysticism, it's fascinating. And no you're not the only one who finds this intriguing, it's just...I don't know, it's just really cool.

Agreed with the above commenter on 'The City and the City,' but I was going to say that you can get Chicago graffiti a long way from Chicago -- I grew up in Eagan, Minnesota, and the two local gangs considered themselves to be junior affiliates of GD and the Vice Lords, and had the same tags.

I am SO sorry, but I read the last line of the 7th paragraph in Winnie the Pooh's voice, and was waiting for it to continue with, "and the only reason for leaing a gang tag that I know of, is so that I can eat it."

Oddly, the thing that always keeps me from FINISHING a damn novel is the research. I get too into it and stop actually writing, heh.

Fascinating about the graffiti. I'm a bit obsessed with body art and markings along those lines, and obviously the two intersect in many instances, particularly where gangs are involved. VERY interesting how native US tags are turning up in new contexts...

That's so interesting with the graffiti! I think I'm going to have to start researching into it too. Worlds within worlds fascinate me.

Also, this secret language of gangs reminds me a ton of the Hobo Code. Totally fascinating way of life those people lead!

*Grabs a pillowcase*

No fan-dust is safe! AAAAAAHHHH!

(This may have changed my life. I used to just let it accumulate until I finally broke down and attempted to clean with a plastic bag and a duster. It...wasn't pretty.)

Everybody knows Tiger meat tastes like chicken. Duh

I am a total graffiti fan. There was a lovely book back in my old college library (which I wish I'd noted the title/author down) that had photos of Elizabethan graffiti, scratched into old pub windows with diamond rings; there were also pics of gladiator's graffiti from Pompei and Herculanum and all sorts of stuff. WONDERFUL book! I kinda wish I'd stolen it, but I didn't, and now I'm racking my brains to recall the title. Oh well...

One thing you see out here in the Wide, Wide West (i.e., Sonoran Desert just above Nogales) is a kind of 3-D graffiti that relates to Hispanic folk-saints. There're all sorts of oddities-- glyphs spray-painted on walls that look remarkably like voodoo veves, odd 'markers' for safe passage like the foil-wrapped bricks dedicated to Jesus Malverde, the patron of drug smugglers (yes, really. No, really), roadside crosses and wreathes marking the places where people died in traffic-accidents... I remember an impromptu shrine popping up in the apartment complex that I lived in back in Las Vegas years ago following the murder of a 6-year-old girl; her body had been found in a dumpster, and within hours there were candles and a piece of plywood painted with the Virgin Mary propped against the dumpster. When sanitation workers tried to remove it, somebody took a shot at them from a nearby balcony, so the shrine was shifted over a few feet away from the dumpster and left in peace. Eventually it got taken down, but the dumpster acquired some interesting scenes painted on it.

It's interesting stuff; mostly the shrines and markers are left alone and eventually weather and fade, but there're a few non-church folk-shrines here in Tucson that've been around for a long time, like the one to La Tiradito downtown (it means 'little outcast'-- he was a guy who committed adultery with his mother-in-law, was murdered and then was buried outside church boundaries for his sins.)

I've never heard of the pillowcase trick, and I was a professional house cleaner for 7 years. (Ah the joys of having a self-employed Mother. I gained all that experience before I graduated from high school.) I'm going to pass that trick to my Mom. :)

Hidden worlds, the secret cities that live within the surface cities, the coded signs that represent them and cross the boundary, all of this is endlessly interesting to me.

Oh, yeah! I'm too tired to be coherent about it at the moment, but I associate these phenomena with things like pop psychogeography and the human desire to believe in conspiracies. I think what first tuned me into them was Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49 and the idea of the Tristero underground postal system. Either that or I loved the Pynchon book because I already had an affinity for such stuff. Hm...

The pillow trick sounds great except that I am 5 ft 3, and my ceiling is 12 ft.
Now having mental image of trying to lasso fans with a pillowcase.

The coolest part of Graffiti for me is how old the impulse to tag something is.

I distinctly remember the first time I went to the Met and saw the Temple of Dendur. After the initial 'woah, there's a whole temple in this room', I went up to actually look at it, and I noticed all of this graffiti mixed in with the hieroglyphics. Some from as early as the 1600's and in a multitude of languages including Latin. I had never before thought to include the context of time in amongst place, meaning, and language when looking at graffiti.

Out of all the incredible things I saw in the Met that day, the graffiti was what I remember the most.

Tagging can be an art form. My icon is a tag that was found ALL over my hometown a few years back. I loved it. And today I passed a building that was tagged with an actual art piece, a silhouette of a little girl blowing flower petals that became butterflies. I'd never noticed it before, and now have to go hunt it down again to get a pic.
There was a fascinating piece back home that was on a bridge, just a series of numbers and then the words 'come back, live life". There's a story there begging to be told.

Fascinating! *wry but appreciative smile*

I swear, it's like your blog is a magic 8 ball only when I ask your blog I can get actual answers. Have you got a video link to my brain or something.

Cases in point:

James: Magic 8 blog, where can I find Calvin and Hobbes fanworks?
Copperbadge: So I was reading this C&H thing, right?

James: Magic 8 blog, I need something new to read.
Copperbadge: Ohi, I have this new book I've written. Wanna buy a copy?

James: Magic 8 blog, how can I explain the pacing issues my cast is having in Importance of Being Earnest.
Copperbadge: Wilde should be like a Lacrosse Match. Also, try these helpful theatre tricks.

James: Oh magic 8 blog, my ceiling fan is filthy and I am being showered in dust while trying to escape the sticky horrible heat of the Australian Summer.
Copperbadege: So there's this pillowcase trick, right?
James: Okay, now you're just playing with me...

I've been wanting to learn more about graffiti since I've started taking more photos of the graffiti I run across here in Okinawa. I'm curious if there's any American bleedover due to the huge military presence...

[also, there is a town here in which, I swear to god, "SAM" is tagged like every 10 feet.]

I love that pillowcase trick! I've just used old socks to dust and then discard but the pillowcase trick would reduce the dust I kick up and inhale. Thanks! The research into gang signs is fascinating to think of the graffiti making it all the way over to Afghanistan. Sometimes I wish I knew what the different signs were just so I could see who's been tagging the neighborhood.

Threaded | Flat