I've been obsessing with the M. Ward song 'Chinese Translation' recently. I know bloggers everywhere are shaking their heads in horror- 'but that song has been out for so long? How could you not have fallen in and out of love with it already? Don't you know that These United States are the new M. Ward? Don't you listen to WOXY?'.
Fuck that. I had it on the iPod, listened to it once or twice and was finally grabbed.
Then again, I'm sitting here in zombie make up in the dark blogging. I really have no leg to stand on. At all.
I went to the Smithfield horse fair on Sunday. It was surreal and voyeuristic. Basically, it's a horse market held the first Sunday of every month in Smithfield, an industrial area of Dublin, right next to the Jameson factory. On this pavilion next to these new apartment buildings you have kids showing off the horses they keep in their back gardens and Pavee and horse traders, all showing off and selling and buying. And then you have people like me, stumbling around with their cameras a snapping and then going home and screwing around on Picasa and posting them on their blogs to tell other people to go and stumble around with their cameras and then post their pictures.
Right after snapping this last one, I made eye contact with the boy. It was one thing to take a photo of those eyes on someone else taking a photograph of him, and another to have them turned on you. It's my fault for making eye contact with too many people, trying to see into too much. All I could do was make apologetic eyes and put away my camera.Implicit Associations
I read this in the NY Times today. Immediately I went and took the University of Chicago test mentioned. What frustrated me was that for the first 30 odd images or so, I mixed up the Z and / functions, so I was shooting when I meant to holster. Plus I started over-thinking towards the end and figured out the pattern with the background imagery. Then I started debating my own narcissism while trying to test my racism and probably confused the hell out of my neurons and latent impulses. No wonder my average score was a .615 for an armed black man vs. .665 for an armed white man. I wish the test explained at the end what the averages was, so I could compare myself to the rest of the US/worldish intelligencia out there who saw a test for racism and went 'I'll test that!'. Judging by the results of Mr. Kristoff, I'm not alone in hesitating in shooting white men and holstering for black men.
Nice to know that the researchers interviewed tend to feel that gender is more of a discriminatory factor than race. I am clearly set as a white, American, bleeding-heart, Christian- socialist woman. So set for the nonprofit sector it's not even funny. I'm just like Madonna!
Labels: dublin, musing, ny times, photos, smithfield
posted by Courtney at 4:41 PM