To All the Victims of Their Youth and Beauty

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As the face of the infamous 90s fashion trend "heroin chic," [Kate] Moss said she felt she often became "the scapegoat for a lot of people's problems."

"I was never anorexic, I never have been... I had never taken heroin," she said. "I was thin because I didn't get fed at shoots or in shows, and I'd always been thin."

So in 2005, when a British tabloid published photos of Moss appearing to take cocaine.

So much for her apocryphal statement, "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels."   

"Getting old is hell," they say, but I think it is the reverse.  Hell is getting old, or so it seems.  All this looking back, all this regret.  Is it the Bible or Milton that tells me the flames of hell are cold, flames that give no heat?  Surely it was Milton, but any old man with a creative mind might have written about the cold flames of regret.  What is most reprehensible, though, is the blame game.  Celebrities, at least, all seem to have been victims of something or somebody.  Duh!  No shit?!?!?  Why do people write?  Being human is conflict enough.  All this careful plotting. . . . 

My regrets are far more subtle.  I wish I had been more learned when I was young and would have been more considerate of my friend's mother.  She was a sad alcoholic.  I don't think I ever gave her a kind word.  

Etc. 

I sent this to some last night with this message:

"Shotgun.  Shoot him ‘fore he runs. Do the dirt, baby.  Do the dirt now!"

Too many people were too young to get the reference, though, so I had to send this.

I got into a bit of music nostalgia last night while working on some images.  I had spent far too long scanning some of the 35mm film I am trying to finish up.  Working on them is difficult for me now that I am enamored with those big negatives.  I got a song lyric stuck in my head.  Just a very short line.  I couldn't shake it.  

"Are you ready?  Yes I'm ready?"

WTF song was that?  Oh, man. . . the Google knows. 

This isn't the version I put on Radio Selavy, but since I went with the t.v. version of "Shotgun," I thought it would be apropos here.  

Both of these songs were released in 1965.  That was the year I met My Own True Love.  To make working on the images bearable, I asked Apple iTunes to play "Hits of 1965."  

Music has changed.  I tried a little "Hits of 2020."  I don't think being human has constancy any more.  Something happened.  Maybe it was CRISPR.  My mother said that Russians are stealing our DNA and are able to kill us.  I asked for clarification but got none.  She told me I could look it up.  

I don't think my mother has a firm grasp of what DNA is.  I do think, though, that the human genome was cooked a little bit at the turn of the century and the nucleotides got baked.  I have no data to support this, but the evidence seems to be everywhere.  Mine is a solid hypothesis.  Can you prove it isn't true?  But you know, they say it was plastic that did it.  Hmm.  

I'm learning new rhetorical strategies at the Trump Republican YMCA I go to.  Deriding people who don't agree seems to be a big part of it.  Sarcastic retorts seem all the evidence you need.  It simplifies things, I must say.  Did you ever try to memorize all the logical fallacies?  Don't bother.  It seems that the legal industry has invented a whole new set of them.  

O.K.  I need to get out of this.  I'm rambling and The Wrecking Crew is coming today.  I will put on some early 60s music and get the house ready for them.