"See? You can be messy on the inside, and no one knows."

Step inside a 400-square-foot apartment space, transformed by elaborate built-ins:



The quote I've used for the post title appears about midway and marks the spot where my mood began to shift from delight to despair. What do we think of this man, who is promoting what seems to be a simplified, de-cluttered way of life, but who is, himself, in a business, promoting expensive merchandise, the machinery of compression. Do we want to be compressed thusly? It's one thing to live like this on board a cruise ship, but permanently? For a certain type of person — perhaps this man, or the man he pretends to be — it's a fine, joyful existence. Would he ever really have a dinner party for 10 in this space, as we see enacted at the end? It's not a real party, because it's an on-camera demonstration of the space. Watch closely and notice how the women are responding. There is something they do not love, and it is visible even in this crisply edited production. I felt empathy with these women and resistance to the man's sales pitch. And I remembered the gutted space shown at the beginning of the video, and thought that I could be happy, living in SoHo, in that 400-square-foot space as it looks right then. Just do the kitchen and the bathroom, nice and modern and constrained into a modest space, and let me put in some normal furniture — a good-sized table near the window for my work and eating space (that can be cleared off if anyone needs to come over for dinner) and I'll order a sleeper sofa from Design Within Reach. Spare me all those insane, ever-encroaching built-ins, and those crazy pop-up extra beds for guests. Guests to the city can get a hotel room or sleep on the floor or I'll add sleeper chair. By the end of the video, I felt paranoid that the government had a plan to shift us into smaller and smaller pods with evil corporations getting rich fitting them out with soul crushing storage bins. Mayor Bloomberg! Who fixed your ducts? Huh? Fixed your ducts, all right. I told you before - they fixed themselves. Oh, yeah? Then where did this come from, eh? Out of your nostril? Eh? Nostrils, eh? Central Services. They don't take kindly to sabotage. Sabotage, huh? Jesus, this place is in a terrible state. Just a minute! You're not gonna leave it like this, are you? Why not? All you gotta do is blow your nose and it's fixed, innit?

"Austrian artist... built an installation at a Vienna café that allowed men in the adjacent restroom to see the inside of the ladies room through a two-way mirror."

Alexander Riegler was simply commenting on our "age of social media and omnipresent video surveillance," the “voyeurism and surveillance in everyday life." What philistines are outraged?

Though he has installed a sign alerting customers in the café bathroom that they are being watched, café owner Alexander Khaelssberg remains enthusiastic about the project. You could only see women “while washing or applying makeup,” he said. “95 percent of our clients, whether male or female, find it funny.”

At the Topographic Café...

... get cultivated.

On putting the bathtub in front of a huge window with a great view and deciding not to have blinds or curtains.

When would you do that? Here?

When would you leave off the blinds/curtains next to the tub/shower?
	Never. It wouldn't feel right.
	Only if the surrounding space was my yard and it had a high wall.
	Walled yard or big private yard with plenty of trees/shrubbery.
	That third option or if I'm pretty much in the middle of nowhere.
	Maybe that but also in the city if I'm up so very high that there are no sight lines to my nakedness
	That plus a situation where I'm not completely sure about the sight lines.
	That and also where I know they can see me but I can deny the truth to my guests.
	That except I'd admit I'm doing it for the thrill.
pollcode.com free polls

"When we travel, though, we are asking for hospitality. There’s great vulnerability in this."

"It also requires considerable strength."

To be a good guest — like being a good host — one needs to be secure in one’s own premises: where you stand, who you are... Travel is a search for meaning, not only in our own lives, but also in the lives of others. The humility required for genuine travel is exactly what is missing from its opposite extreme, tourism.

Vulnerability? Humility? And — at the same time — it's supposed to be loftier than mere tourism?

The kind of travel to which we aspire should tolerate uncertainty and discomfort. It isn’t about pain or excessive strain — travel doesn’t need to be an extreme sport — but we need to permit ourselves to be clumsy, inexpert and even a bit lonely.

I used to throw myself out of my own country like that. Buy tickets to somewhere and then have to go. I wished I could back out. I was lonely when I was there. I spent a lot of money. I'm actually not a good tourist at all. It was always some kind of spiritual journey for me, a pilgrimage. So I don't identify with the tourism the linked authors sniff at. But I have become very skeptical of the notion that we are supposed to travel for lofty purposes. Is it humble to believe you're above those other tourists and somehow able to commune with foreign locals?

Somebody in the comments at the link quotes Thoreau: "I have travelled a good deal in Concord." That's what crossed my my mind too. Some years ago, I traveled, alone, to Amsterdam, and the book I read there was "Walden." I felt so lonely, and wrote down the quote: "Why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the Milky Way?"

I got to that first link via Nina, who has traveled a good deal in Europe. She's comparing showers in France, Spain, and Wisconsin. In Spain and France, the public beach showers are out in the open. At Devil's Lake State Park in Wisconsin, they are in the bathroom, and when ladies are in them with the curtain closed, they expect you not to peek, even if they are taking too long.

I thought about this for a minute. Privacy. Our big entitlement. Mine, mine, not anyone else’s. It struck me that if someone screamed at me in this way in, say, France, I’d have to think that there’s pent up anger seething there, among the people....

So I wondered if maybe we are a nation of very angry people. As the media broadcasts our general dissatisfaction (with Congress, with each other), as opportunities for expressing anger flourish (blast away at the person you don’t agree with – it’s your right!), maybe we let it all out at the expense of looking for something less... well, loud?

Wisconsinites do have this sense of entitlement, and they shout in your face about it when they feel righteously angry. Remember the Rotunda. And they do mix up the concept of having rights with the problem of deciding when and how to use them. But privacy is a big one. And women can feel quite vulnerable, especially when taken a shower. There's a reason "Psycho" is judged the scariest movie of all time.

And, by the way... that article? The one promoting "vulnerability" in traveling? It was written by men. Of course. You want to stretch yourself beyond the usual realm of everyday life and what you come up with is vulnerability? Chances are you are not a woman.

Looking for meaning and finding it.

1. "A Texas family says they are getting strength from an image of Jesus they found in the mold growing inside the shower of their home."

2. "The family of a 13-year-old Kansas boy who found a picture of a long-dead uncle inside a camera he bought at a garage sale said it may be a sign from beyond."

(These are the top 2 "Most Popular" stories at UPI.com right now.)

I just adore a penthouse view... through the glass floor of the bathroom...

... down a 15-storey elevator shaft.

"In order to stay competitive, airlines need to keep pace with the rapidly changing demands of corporate travelers..."

Says Nigel Page, Emirates' vice president of commercial operations.

"That's why we consistently invest in refining and enhancing our first-class product." The Dubai-based carrier delivers on its promise—thus far, it's the only airline to offer showers for first-class passengers aboard its fleet of 21 A380 jets.

Showers. In-flight showers...



What other rapidly changing demands are corporate travelers making? Personally, I'd like to see a bowling alley.

"Women/Mens."

A door. Photographed in 2004. I was fooling with these old pics today, getting the coding right for this post and this one, after realizing — reading an article about the Goodman Community Center here in Madison — that it's the old Kupfer Ironworks building where they played "9 Beet Stretch" back in April 2004.

"If your average homeless person spent 30 to 40 dollars a month on a gym membership, they could shave and shower..."

"... keep warm for most of the day, maybe stay fit and like they'd have a good opportunity to look at jobs," said a law student, who chose to go homeless to make life more challenging. Turns out it made life better in some ways: "It saves time... You know, all the little ways we waste time in our homes, watching TV or cleaning. I feel like there's a substantial amount of time I'm saving by not having a place."

Consider the possibility that a gym membership is more useful than an apartment, and quite a bargain. If you join a 24-hour gym, you could be safe and warm indoors — getting fit and cleaning and grooming — during the dark hours, and you can get your sleep — as this law student did — in libraries during the day or evening.

It's interesting to think of strategies for living without a home. It's a predicament that is so bad for many people that it might seem a bit insensitive to imagine doing it in a positive way or to experiment with it as a temporary challenge. But let's overcome our reticence — if any — and talk about it. How would you carry out your own personal adventure in homelessness? Picture yourself doing it well. What would you do?

Massachusetts legislature passes a transgender civil rights bill.

But "it was not a total victory for advocates."

The bill does not include language to protect transgender people in public accommodations, which advocates had sought. They will continue to fight to expand transgender protections to include public accommodations, such as hotels, restaurants, and clubs, she said. Opponents had decried those proposals as “the bathroom bill,’’ arguing that they would enable biological men to demand access to women’s restrooms and locker rooms.

Bathrooms and "the gender norms of their context."

From the Harvard Crimson:

"So many people I know, including many women who are not trans-identified but whose gender presentation to some degree transgresses the gender norms of their context, have had the experience of being asked if they are in the ‘right bathroom’ or told they are in the ‘wrong’ one..."

The current solution is single stalled bathrooms with no gender designation. There are 73 on the Harvard Campus, but there are complaints that it's not enough.

“So many people take it for granted that they can use a public bathroom,” [says Trans Task Force student leader Jia Hui Lee ’12.] “For those who are trans and gender non-conforming, it’s much more difficult to use a bathroom in public.”

Critics of expanding access to gender neutral bathrooms say that they increase the likelihood of sexual assaults in such spaces, but the concept of individuals of different sexes sharing the same restroom is not all that radical, according to Marco Chan ’11, Queer Students and Allies Co-Chair.

“Everyone lives their gender in different ways, so this is everyone’s business,” he says with an uncharacteristic note of anger. Chan is arguably the most prominent face of the gay rights movement on campus, and this media-savvy spokesperson rarely gets angry in interviews. This is an issue, however, of paramount importance to his organization. “We all know people who bring their small children of a different sex into the bathroom, people who have caretakers of a different sex assist them in the bathroom. Gender neutral bathrooms will simplify the way we all live our lives. This is not just transgender or queer people’s business.”

In the early 90s, I visited Harvard Law School and met some women who were extremely concerned about men getting into the women's bathroom. You needed a code to get through the lock on the door. Interesting how these issues cycle around over the years! Thoughts of the likelihood of sexual assaults in such spaces stirred up notes of anger. But now, it seems that what the good people are supposed to believe is that only retrograde women are worried about sharing the bathroom with men.

"[A]ny male at any time will be permitted in girls’ bathrooms, showers and change rooms as long as they have an ‘innate feeling’ of being female..."

That's what opponents say about Bill C-389 would amend the Canadian Human Rights Act to forbid discrimination on the basis of "gender identity" or "gender expression."

The bill probably won't pass, but here's a column favoring it. Excerpt:

Society takes for granted that there are two distinct sexes, with two corresponding ways of expressing gender identity. And we have concocted a range of stereotypes to reinforce the supposed chasms of difference between men and women, boys and girls.
Despite the fact that biologists such as Brown University professor Anne Fausto-Sterling have demonstrated that “nature” itself yields not two distinct sexes but as many as five in a small but still significant number of cases, we still think male or female is something constant and unchanging. Sex is not only something viewed as uncomplicated and self-evident, but masculinity and femininity are tied to one’s birth-assigned sex.

Transsexual and transgendered individuals expose the shortcomings of our narrow categories. Because they trouble this vision of male and female, they have been “socially erased,” to borrow a term from Concordia Professor Viviane Namaste...

As faculty members teaching in the sexual studies minor program at Carleton University, we are not surprised by the comments offered by Charles McVety, president of the Canada Christian College in Toronto in The Globe. [see blog post title, above.] Mr. McVety’s use of the language of pedophilia, and other forms of sexual predation, criminal opportunism and violence within female-specific spaces serves as a perfect example of the pathologization, criminalization and fear-mongering that continues to mark the lives of those within the trans communities.

Pink...

... bathrooms.

The locally owned BP gas station pleads for your love...

... via the door of the ladies' john:

"Why is there ice in the lobby men’s room urinals?" asks the NY Times.

In this (possibly useful) article about (relatively) cheap but (somehow) stylish hotels in New York City. I don't go — no pun intended — in the bathrooms where one finds urinals, but if I were writing that article, I would at the very least Google the phrase "ice in urinals" before leaving it in an article. I would know that some readers would Google "ice in urinals" and I wouldn't want to be embarrassed if the answer was something it would be embarrassing not to know. And once I'd done that, I'd know the answer, because "ice in urinals" gets "about 231,000 results" in Google, beginning with "Why Ice in the Urinals?" in AskMetafilter. You see this right away:

There's a discussion of this in The Straight Dope Tells All. The leading theories are:

• The melting ice acts as a slow, continuous flush
• Ice cools the air around the urinal. Cool air sinks, which serves to contain the smell
• Cold discourages drain flies
• Fun to melt, helps users aim better, compensates for poor male sanitary habits

New York Times, you seem to need a little help, so... let me Google that for you.

Stopping at the Pennsylvania welcome center at the New York end of I-90.

It's eerie late at night...



At the foot of the "Pennsylvania Wineries" column, lies inebriated Santa:



But don't worry....



"You can't make a wrong turn in Pennsylvania."

IN THE COMMENTS: Palladian yells: "FROSTY THE SNOWMAN NOT SANTA." Oh, yeah! Good point. Ha ha. I need to get my American iconography straight. 

"It's like I've been terrorized by this for years."

"I wanted to take them to task. I didn't want to settle and pay them. I told them that they weren't going to get a penny from me. I didn't care if I ended up homeless because of this."

Don't take a shower. Take a bath.

"Levels of Mycobacterium avium were 100 times higher [in shower heads] than those found in typical household water supplies. M. avium forms a biofilm that clings to the inside of the shower head... [This] might explain why there have been more cases of these lung infections in recent years, linked with people tending to take more showers and fewer baths. Water spurting from shower heads can distribute bacteria-filled droplets that suspend themselves in the air and can easily be inhaled into the deepest parts of the lungs..."

On the road. (Yesterday.)

Blogging from the road:



Yes, I always wash my hands, but I also always look everywhere for a fish-eye effect, and I have my camera ready to bring it back to you:



I even did a re-take of this post to... change the focal point.

At the next stop... hey, what do you want? Onion rings? French toast?