The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Wild Card => Topic started by: robot_god on July 16, 2010, 08:14:22 am
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I know alotta you guys are gonna shit a brick about this, but the call must be made.
It's officially time to stop using books as decorations, people.
I'm flipping through this modern furniture catalog and apparently some people still think clever bookcases make them hip-as-shit. This ain't grandma's house, guys.
Acceptable: Pristine white room, block white furniture all perfect right angles, not a single decoration except for the macbook and iphone lying on the white coffee table.
Nah, that's just playin', but seriously I visited a friend's apartment and his girlfriend decorated the whole place as if she was possessed by her personality-less mom. I was really appalled, there was a bowl on a side table with some crap in it and on the side table was one of those little pocket-books that they sell next to the registers on line at a bookstore, placed in a very deliberate way on the side table to make it look like it was thrown next to the bowl. OMGGGGGGG that made me so mad. WHO THE FUCK WANTS TO PICK THAT UP AND READ IT? NO ONE NOT EVEN YOU. Of course, bookshelf built into the wall, and since no one in the apartment can really use a computer effectively, an entire wall of DVDs. That's the next thing to go, the new bookshelves: DVD collections. It's 2010, and you can pirate all this shit on your phone while driving. They aren't legitimate decorations anymore.
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Lovely stuff. Where do I sign up? Trouser Deity for Prime Minister
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I just moved and the whole time my dad was complaining about all the books I have and couldn't figure out why I'd ever buy any. I have stopped buying DVDs, at least until I get a Blu-Ray.
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Dude, it's a chick thing. Let 'em have their fun.
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I do not use books as decoration, but I do have a lot of books. Too many books for them to be decoration. I suppose the only solution is to have a library.
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I have a huge book collection, mainly things for which there is no adequate digital substitute (e.g. childhood favorite picture books, obscure books about women's labor history during WWII, a copy of Crime and Punishment with my dad's class notes scrawled in the margins). They are on my built-in bookshelves in the kids' playroom, along with the board games and our meager collection of DVDs. (Except for collector's edition box sets, we chuck the cases and keep them in sleeves in a media box. I think we have maybe 2 dozen grown-up movies; the other 100 or so are for the kids, and most of them were given to us by my brother when his kids outgrew them.)
I had a bunch of those little "gift books" that my Mom has picked up for me over the years. I threw them away. I didn't even bother taking them to a used bookstore or donation center -- they're just trash. (Crazy About My Daughter, which I just recently unearthed, was clearly targeted at teens. I got it for my 30th birthday. Seriously, Mom, did you even open it before you whipped out your credit card? The bit about spending hours in the bathroom primping wasn't even true fifteen years ago.)
Unlike a lot of people, though, I have actually read most of the books on my shelves. Many of them were school assignments, and a lot of them are children's or YA books, but I don't buy books I don't intend to read just because I want to give the impression that I'm the kind of person who would. If you pull a book of my shelf and ask me about it, odds are good that if I haven't read it, Pedro has. Still, I have a lot of books that I've bought and never read, or that were given to me and I never got round to, and every time I run across one, the ghost of Thomas Jefferson appears and gives me a stern look.
I hate that there are books on my shelves that I haven't read. It makes me feel pretentious, even though I do mean to read them all someday. But I wouldn't say they're purely decoration. For one, they're not in a part of my house that a casual visitor would see. For another, they're crammed on the shelves every which way to make them all fit, so they're actually not very decorative at all. Not the way you seen in Pottery Barn catalogs and the like. For a third, a lot of them aren't the kind of books you display if you're trying to look smart. A lot of them are graphic novels and geeky fantasy literature. (Most of the FanLit is Pedro's, actually. Mine are the sci fi and mystery paperbacks.) Not exactly an impressive collection of classical literature.
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I only keep books that I haven't read. The one's I've already read I have no use for.
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I keep mine. I like to loan them out, and I'm something of a re-reader myself. Also, a lot of the books I read are non-fiction, so I like to keep them around for reference.
I have a friend who buys multiple copies of books he's enjoyed just so that he can give/loan them to people he thinks would enjoy them. He just keeps them on his shelf at home until he sees someone who would like it. Just about every time I see him he has a book for me or Pedro. He's a neat guy.
Books he's read and didn't enjoy he sells to a used bookstore. But those are few and far between, because he rarely reads something that hasn't been recommended to him by a reliable source.
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When I lived across from the library I got into the habit of making a snap decision as soon as I finished a book. If I won't read it again it goes into the donation box immediately.
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I like my books. I like picking up a book and being able to start reading it randomly because I've read it before. I do have a few books I haven't read but they tend to be text books from old courses that I kept because I'll need them as a reference any day now.
I suspect I'm going to have to do something with them when I move again though.
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dead animal magazines? who sees those and food magazines as juxtaposition? people who don't recognize how things get from point a to point b
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When I lived across from the library I got into the habit of making a snap decision as soon as I finished a book. If I won't read it again it goes into the donation box immediately.
How can you be so sure you won't read it again? I feel like I have to let them, I don't know, ripen, or something. I go through the shelves when they get too full to fit new books and painfully pick out some to give away, but it's hard to decide immediately after reading.
Like JL, I also hate having books I haven't read. But in my case it's because I'm pissed off that I spent money on a book that sucked so much I couldn't get past the second chapter. That's the pile I should just take immediately to the used bookstore, I suppose.
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How can you be so sure you won't read it again? I feel like I have to let them, I don't know, ripen, or something. I go through the shelves when they get too full to fit new books and painfully pick out some to give away, but it's hard to decide immediately after reading.
I've found I have to do it that way. If I put the book on my shelf then it just sits there for 3 moves until I remember I was never that fond of it to begin with and finally donate it anyhow. And there are quite a few books I kept that I'd like to read again but know I likely won't (The Iliad, I'm looking at you).
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Bah, I wanted a discussion about decor, not book-collecting. This thread is anti-book collecting, guys. You're doing it wrong.
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Bah, I wanted a discussion about decor...
Okay, I'll bite. This is the bookshelf in my main living area (click for bigger):
(http://imgur.com/M46rC.jpg) (http://imgur.com/M46rC.jpg)
I have a lot of art books and some comics there, because those are fun for guests to flip though (though if beverages are spilled heads do roll), The others are my personal favorites that sometimes spawn conversations with other people who love the same book or author. The rest of my books are in boxes in my bedroom. I go through and re-read the Terry Pratchett fairly regularly; the rest I could probably stand to donate/sell.
Above the books you can see the famous wall boobs.
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OK, I'll bite too. Since I have so many books, we finally had to put a bookcase in the living room where it is conspicuous. I only keep what I think are nice looking books there, and they are actually organized - all the comics together, all the Japanese together, all the animal books together, etc. (Unlike the shelves in my office which are two books deep and, while they show the remnants of an attempt at organization, whenever I try to find something I eventually end up moaning that this is why we should go to e-readers - because all our books will be stored in alphabetical order.)
So, maybe you hate me too. But at least I don't have that girly zig-zag thing like Mr Trout. That is a brave thing to admit, there.
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oooh, Wombat's getting snarky!
Isn't this coming from the lady who drives around a bug, the car with a built-in flower vase?
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I'm pretty sure we have bookshelves in every room in the house. Bathrooms included.
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Well, if you count the top of the toilet tank, so do we.
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I have speakers in every room.
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oooh, Wombat's getting snarky!
Isn't this coming from the lady who drives around a bug, the car with a built-in flower vase?
At least it doesn't have built-in bookshelves.
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Above the books you can see the famous wall boobs.
Them wall boobs are creepin me out to the max. Why'd you put that creepy shit up there?
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Because the wall is becoming a lady.
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Are You There, God? It's Me, The Wall.
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Them wall boobs are creepin me out to the max. Why'd you put that creepy shit up there?
They were there when I moved in (I think they used to hold old sconces?) I just left them white when I painted the wall.
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It's 2010, and you can pirate all this shit on your phone while driving.
tee hee.
If the much maligned troll may be allowed to make an honest contribution:
Okay so I don't really understand what you are complaining about exactly *****_god. Is it the use of books as decoration? Yeah, that is likely to come off as pretty lame and pretentious or merely just gauche and artificial and clumsy. But that in general describes a huge segment of the interior decoration industry, doesn't it?
There is what I consider to be a legitimate aspect to interior decoration - that which concerns it's self with function, and with basic universal aesthetics that are somehow hard-wired into the human psyche at a fairly low level... things like beautiful symmetry and asymmetry, and nice color and form... these can be fairly universally agreed upon, at least to the extent that anything can be universally agreed upon.
But then there is that component of interior decoration which veers off into the culturally specific. What's cute and adorable and warm and welcoming for one person might give another the urge to run screaming from the room, or spill kerosene or even white phosphorus all over. What's one person's normal self-expression of culture and personality is another person's prima facie evidence of a shallow and arrogant soul, perhaps one that was raised exclusively on mass-produced pop culture.
My few encounters with the craft of interior decoration have been via our pop culture's mass media, so it is probably not surprising that I haven't liked what I have seen of it.
I dunno, I think my books comprise an excellent component of my interior decoration. A cursory survey of my bookcase reveals a diverse array of subject matter, yet also a troubling level of specificity and depth. As one friend once put it when he visited my house about a decade ago: 'I like what you've done with the place... it's very... very... Unabomberesque.'
With respect to DVDs, and audio CDs... rarely do I keep the liner notes, much less the bulky case. I keep the physical disc, and that's it. This has allowed me to procrastinate the task of sorting through and making a strategic decision of what to keep and what to throw away.
Certainly, I plan to rip all my audio CDs to my computer, but first things first; I'm currently converting several boxes of audio tapes and VHS tapes to digital format. These are the oldest and most bulky, and therefore are the most pressing concerns.
off subject, but here's the pictures (http://midconet.net/achewoodtest/hdhack/) of me fixing one of the hard drives I was sorting through the other day.
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My problem is that we collectively have to face the facts: books are now outdated and unreasonably expensive as well as DVD's too. People kept bookcases because they had books they didn't want to throw away so they say, "Fuck it, it's now my decor, my badge of honor, symbol of credibility." Then the books lied there for eternity until they were covered in cobwebs, pages turned yellow and the person died. The nieces and nephews dumped em in a box next to a thrift shop. The people surrounded themselves in the only information they knew and without realizing they had BUILT THEIR OWN COFFINS.
In my mind these bookcases have become an icon of in-adaptability. And to see a 25 year old woman decorate her dwelling as if she is looking over her shoulder for great-great grandma's approval makes me die a little bit inside. We have the opportunity to treat this age as a whole new world. Tradition can suck my dick. My Asian friends referred to my disregard for pointless tradition saying, "you [being mixed nationality] like don't really have much culture in your life," and I stood up, slammed down my glass and shouted, "my culture is 'THE SHIT I SAY AND DO IS RIGHT'!" They lolled hard, but I was dead fuck*ng serious.
I guess I just am striving to become the most adaptable man in history and I see these bookshelves as hampering that goal. I want spend time living in Japan, Vermont, Sweden, Italy, California, Georgia, France, Manhattan. What good will bookshelves do in accomplishing my goal? I can read these books for free, or maybe three bucks on my phone if I want.
I want to fill my dwelling with those digital picture frames, and they will show no pictures and only my favorite viral videos. I want to have a dining room with a circular table, all the chairs have wheels on them and on every wall is a seperate, reasonable TV so everyone can watch sports or whatever during dinner. I would happily divorce the love of my life for that room. I want to place a beautiful geode in a room, and design all the decor of the entire room around that one simple piece. I want to be a god damn innovator and these old outdated bookshelves ARE AN INSULT TO MY VERY SOUL. WE GOT TO LIVE IN THIS BORING ASS UNIVERSE, LETS AT LEAST MAKE AN ATTEMPT TO MAKE IT INTERESTING AND FUN FOR CHRIST SAKE.
The Japanese get it. Fuck.
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i dont disagree with the sentiment.
at the same time, i really hope youre not losing sleep because you dont like that some people think its ok to display their own books in their own home for any reason. its even sad if it makes you ill at ease.
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I want to fill my dwelling with those digital picture frames, and they will show no pictures and only my favorite viral videos.
If I could ever make myself throw out my old Bob Dylan poster (it took like a decade to talk my friend in to it. He final just said I don't even like Dylan, you can have it.) or the Soviet Cosmonaut propaganda I would decorate my living room with nothing but one huge, empty picture frame. There ain't a god damned thing you can do about it.
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Wow I love you **#** God. I love you. Are you female? Or gay? Or bicurious? We should meet.
I agree 100% with what you said. Except that while it doesn't change the substance of what you said, one can still debate the pros and cons of books in some limited contexts. But yes probably at least 80% of what gets printed on paper could and should very easily be switched to digital format with no loss at all.
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WE GOT TO LIVE IN THIS BORING ASS UNIVERSE, LETS AT LEAST MAKE AN ATTEMPT TO MAKE IT INTERESTING AND FUN FOR CHRIST SAKE.
But... but... that is what books are for.
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how do you crossreference four different books on one kindle at the same time. if you're just talking about novels and biographies okay cool, but what about technical guides and travel indices and cookbooks and the like?
plus i don't want to take a several hundred dollar device to such as a beach and risk losing it (theft, damage) versus a ten buck paperback.
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*****_god, your feelings are ugly and wrong.
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I literally have more books than one room can hold. I have covered the wall space of 1 and 3/4 rooms with bookshelves. I can't even pretend to understand ***** god's irrational hatred of books. What the hell am I supposed to do with all these finance and econ textbooks I've been collecting for most of my life? I have like 6 feet of shelf space populated by Ayn Rand books. And even though I've "moved on" from that period of my life, I can't see just tossing them all in the recycle bin like an old newspaper.
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Look, I mean, I got a bookshelf too I'm sure everyone does, but I'm just sayin' when I move, which will be soon: no books on the wall, no paper, no DVDs, no CDs, no excessive trinkets, none of this clutter/crap I have all over, but especially not the outdated crap turned garbage.
But... but... that is what books are for.
Yes, but they are boring decor!
Wow I love you **#** God. I love you. Are you female? Or gay? Or bicurious? We should meet.
Oh pshaw.
Old video games. Magazines. Sentimental junk. Electronic gadget boxes. Old school materials. A PRINTER THAT I NEVER HOOKED UP ughhh. Old broken electronics. I'm surrounded by garbage right now and it's my own fault. So many of these books I've never read and don't want to. So many of these DVDs I've never opened. So many CDs of BAD BAD music that I would rather be drawn and quartered than ever listen to again. I don't have to be surrounded with crap garbage, and I'm not making this mistake again. At least I hope I'm not.
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I don't hate books! I just want everyone to realize that books, DVDs, and CDs are outdated. You can download a torrent program, go to a torrent website, and download all of those things and they don't become clutter in your life. You can stream movies on like veetle.com or movie2k.com. Does anyone keep their VHS tapes on a shelf anymore? Do you still have your cassettes on display? Everyone must realize that is what's going on!
What I do hate is my ample clutter and decor that says "I settled on the only thing I could think of ^_^"
We don't have to collect garbage anymore, people, be happy about this!!!!
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Books are not like VHS tapes and cassettes. You can't watch or listen to those when your player breaks and it's not worth the bother to buy a new one. But you will always be able to read a book. It will work in a power failure, you don't have to remember to charge it up, it will never crash. If you have all your books on one e-reader, what happens when you leave it on the subway or drop it in the toilet?
I mean, definitely SOME books do not need to stick around (Cort's copy of the Iliad, I'm also looking at you). But it is not an obsolete technology like the things you are comparing it to.
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hey robodog i found a great site for you (http://bookshelfporn.com/)
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I mean, definitely SOME books do not need to stick around (Cort's copy of the Iliad, I'm also looking at you). But it is not an obsolete technology like the things you are comparing it to.
Ouch. What did The Iliad ever do to you?
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Seriously, no one needs a copy of the Iliad. There is one way in which I actually agree with Robo-God. I have seen people who still have their old college books displayed obviously on bookshelves, which really does seem like nothing but some kind of "I went to college" badge. And it's totally dumb, because the books in many cases are like decades out of date - if you actually did need some reference on the topic, they wouldn't be any good anyway. Those are books that need to die an immediate death.
But to conclude from this that no one should have books on bookshelves, man, take a deep breath and calm down.
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Don't you people get it???? I made the call. You are freed! You should be happy about this, the future is now.
Look, the call is made, I knew it would be controversial but... sorry, there is no taking it back now. Put every bookcase in your house on flash drive. No excuses.
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Seriously, no one needs a copy of the Iliad. There is one way in which I actually agree with Robo-God. I have seen people who still have their old college books displayed obviously on bookshelves, which really does seem like nothing but some kind of "I went to college" badge. And it's totally dumb, because the books in many cases are like decades out of date - if you actually did need some reference on the topic, they wouldn't be any good anyway. Those are books that need to die an immediate death.
But to conclude from this that no one should have books on bookshelves, man, take a deep breath and calm down.
I quite enjoyed the Fagles translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey. I recently bought his Aeneid but haven't gotten to it yet. I also got that version of Beowulf that everybody was mad about like 10 years ago but I haven't read it yet, either. I wish I could read faster.
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I'm with the professor on this one.
I'm not a collector or anything, and I don't keep my books displayed prominently - they're not decor. But I prefer reading from pages instead of screens. I've got my great-grandfather's antique bookcase in my office and it's filled with books I love and cherish and regularly use, and I'm not going to apologize for that.
I don't like Owning Things, and if I'm going to engage myself with a piece of fiction or a passing topic of interest, I'd just as soon have it in a digital format so I don't have to store it. But as a writer and a one-time academic, there are a lot of books I need access to at a moment's notice that aren't available as eBooks in any form. I've also got a collection of out-of-print teen mystery books from my childhood that I am saving for my own children because they're not readily available on paper should I decide to chuck them now and re-buy them later. Not everything has a digital equivalent, and some books are irreplaceable.
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I'm somewhere in the middle here.
I love books, I love having some ideas in that particular consumption format, there are certain books I would never get rid of. However, I would basically never display my books prominently in my living space. I do not want to seem like the kind of person who puts books out on display to either push their ideas on everyone in that room and/or I do not ever want to seem like the kind of dude who is putting books out on display to tell everyone that I am smart or something.
I am not saying that is why you guys and girls... or even the majority of people... do this. I am not saying that. I am simply saying that I am afraid of being perceived that way. I will keep my small hoarde of books on shelves in the bedroom or my private workroom or maybe some boxes in the attic/basement.\
ALSO: When the day comes that I am published and/or produced for my writing, I could never be that dude with framed covers/posters/pictures of myself on display.
Doing that in a small way probably isn't that bad in many cases but... again... there are kinds of people who do that wherein I would be totally afraid of getting lumped in with them. Oh man.
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I used to frame covers to send to authors when I worked at a publisher. Every author got one.
Also, http://achewood.com/index.php?date=02182004
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See I think some of the disconnect arises from the bit where you guys are adults that can afford houses. My bedroom fits my bed and a small wardrobe that actually makes it so I can't open and close the door fully. The bookcase is by the front door in the living room/entrance because that is where it fits damnit. I'm not trying to make a statement, I'm trying to keep my books in my house in relative proximity to the chair where I like to read them.
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However, I would basically never display my books prominently in my living space. I do not want to seem like the kind of person who puts books out on display to either push their ideas on everyone in that room and/or I do not ever want to seem like the kind of dude who is putting books out on display to tell everyone that I am smart or something.
Ha, I find that a really good way to solve this problem is never invite anyone over. Really, I need the space for books in the living room more than I need to socialize with people in my house as opposed to somewhere else.
Won't work for everyone, I understand.
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I used to frame covers to send to authors when I worked at a publisher. Every author got one.
That is really weird. What is the point of a framed book cover? I mean, you've got copies of books and they have the cover on them, right?
Anyway, I assume that my books are going to have covers that I hate. I had a traumatic experience when my dissertation was published so I look forward only with dread to seeing what the publishers I am currently working with are going to come up with. Basically I expect it is going to make me cry.
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People LOVE having framed proof of their work in the creative fields around their house and I will never in a million years understand it.
Seems to nail both extreme unhealthy ends of the confidence scale at the same time.
I dunno, maybe I'm wrong.
I never understand why a person would have a picture of their self in their house, either.
I don't like looking myself in the mirror to shave, why would I want a static representation as such?
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I never understand why a person would have a picture of their self in their house, either.
I dated a girl who gave me a framed photograph of herself as a gift. Which may not be all that strange, but it wasn't like she went out and had it taken and framed it. She already had it at her place. And it was kind of big, too. Like, I want to say maybe 8 and 1/2 by 11. Bizarre. Photo of the family, or of oneself and some friends, sure. But just a portrait of you? I agree, kind of weird.
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I mean, if you live in a family with each other and so there's pictures of each other in reciprocity of affection, that's fine.
But... yourself yourself, man. I do not get it.
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I dated a girl who gave me a framed photograph of herself as a gift. Which may not be all that strange, but it wasn't like she went out and had it taken and framed it. She already had it at her place. And it was kind of big, too. Like, I want to say maybe 8 and 1/2 by 11. Bizarre. Photo of the family, or of oneself and some friends, sure. But just a portrait of you? I agree, kind of weird.
For the past 2 weddings I've been to, my gift to the couple has been a framed painting of me. I plan to continue this tradition.
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That's not bad. Were you holding a sword or something?
I've got a wedding coming up in a couple of weeks, I wonder how long it would take to get a portrait together.
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That is, by far, the most Objectivist gift you could possibly ever give, A-CAP.
Except that Ayn Rand would never give a gift to anyone, of course.
The COMMUNISTS who didn't ALLOW HER FAMILY TO BE RICH FOREVER were known to give gifts to each other, you see, so gifts must be evil.
But were they allowed to gifts, oh man. Paintings of themselves. Definitely.
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Once, for the Drunken Santa gift exchange, my brother-in-law included a wrapped, framed 5x7 of himself. In a speedo. Autographed.
Also, I worked with a lady who kept framed photos of herself on her desk. At work. Next to a mirror. She had one photo of her husband with their kids, and two or three pictures of just herself. I found this odd and confusing.
I also worked with a guy who kept a photo of himself in his military uniform, circa 1965, on his desk. He had it angled in such a way that visitors to his office would be sure to see it, I think it was his way of establishing himself as a Person of Authority, even though he was a dude receptionist.
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fuck analog! The Louvre should scan all their paintings, and burn the originals in a furnace to generate electricity for walls and walls of digital picture frames. High resolution picture frames, of course!
This article (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/19/BUN21EFS7H.DTL) makes a compelling case against e-books... that old nagging problem that the people who make user interfaces are, in fact, more often than not... idiots.
"I found that even in a very small font that if the original line is beyond a certain length, they will take the extra word and have it flush left on the screen, so that instead of a three-line stanza you actually have a four-line stanza. And that screws everything up,"
The user interface of a book has a lot to offer over that of any computer program. There are downsides to books of course... you can't search... but if you have both the physical book and an e-book, then this problem is fixed.
Maybe eventually they'll come out with e-paper (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epaper). Imagine... the advantages of a book with thin flexible pages, combined with the advantages of electronics.
Maybe instead of electronic displays, they should develop paper that can simply be re-printed an infinite number of times, kind of like a CD. Then you could have a book that you simply feed into a special printer... wait an hour, and out pops whatever book you want. Then you could have the world's library stored in a crystal cube, yet still read it on a physical 'book.'
Of course, if you really want to get to the nub of the matter, this question goes far beyond books to the problem of people having too many fuck*ng babies. The obvious thing to do would be to continue to print paper books, rather than destroy the earth and ourselves in our insatiable quest for oil (http://www.tomgreen.com/blog/?post=814):
[...] "we all had cars and we burned oil and made computers out of plastic which were made from oil and we just needed so much oil that we eventually couldn’t get enough of it for cheap enough so we started drilling holes into the center of the earth underneath the ocean and one of them erupted that we couldn’t recap and the ocean was destroyed. And since marine plants in the ocean create between 70-80 percent of the earth’s oxygen, we all died. "
But that's the rub ... the Earth is becoming over-populated, so there's no way we can kill enough trees to make books for everyone because there just aren't any more trees to kill, so OBVIOUSLY the solution is to step it up a notch and instead kill the entire planet and the entire ecosystem with petrolatium-based e-books! Problem solved!
As far as pictures of the self are concerned, hey, you should see Africans... specifically, African men. I'm thinking of Nigerians in particular, but this phenomenon is I'm sure by no means restricted to just Nigerians. Go on Facebook, find a Nigerian, and start clicking from one Nigerian Facebook account to another... You will certainly notice that the FB profiles of men feature an inordinate number of pictures of the self.
Here's one random one I've clicked on now... This dude has around 40 pictures of himself, and one that is very telling - a screen capture from some gangster movie titled "Respect The Don." Self-effacing humor or seriousness? It's hard to say...
Again, back to oil. You can imagine what might happen to many cultures including our own... if you take and dump HUGE quantities of wealth into that culture, and no one really has to do anything of value to generate that wealth, other than sign a lease with some oil company. A culture that is already rooted in traditions of pride and prejudice, a culture of extended family where social standing and relationships are historically already incredibly important, as we find in many traditional non-western cultures, and what will that culture do, of course, than turn inwards, and lean on these ways of operating even more, so as to ensure, as much as possible, a distribution as wide as possible of all that oil wealth.
No longer does perception of one's social standing mean the difference between getting the healthy goat or the haggardly goat, now it means the difference between getting a cut of a few billion dollars of oil wealth and an iphone, or starving in the streets and not having electricity (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p007z15t/Business_Daily_Nigeria__business_and_blackouts/) to light a lamp to be able to read your old analog book.
Fuck the gift-wrapped present of a framed picture of one's self, the real gift to give is a framed digital picture frame with several GB worth of pictures of yourself, locked so that it can't be erased, ever!
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Once, for the Drunken Santa gift exchange, my brother-in-law included a wrapped, framed 5x7 of himself. In a speedo. Autographed.
Also, I worked with a lady who kept framed photos of herself on her desk. At work. Next to a mirror. She had one photo of her husband with their kids, and two or three pictures of just herself. I found this odd and confusing.
I also worked with a guy who kept a photo of himself in his military uniform, circa 1965, on his desk. He had it angled in such a way that visitors to his office would be sure to see it, I think it was his way of establishing himself as a Person of Authority, even though he was a dude receptionist.
One time, when I was in my 20's, my mom decided it was time to take down this huge photo of me at 10 years old. There I was with my poofy permed bangs, my ugly 80's turquoise and hot pink dress. It was poster-sized, and for whatever reason, she made me take it. At the time I was sort of managing this art gallery - this art gallery with paintings worth thousands of dollars, with no security on site. So when my employees were being lazy, I snuck into the gallery and swapped one of the paintings with this giant photo of myself as a kid.
As there were two separate gallery buildings, I snuck out into the separate building.
Later that day, I looked out the window, and my staff was holding a mock-memorial service for 10-year-old-me out on the lawn, all flowers and mock-weeping.
I always felt weird about that giant photo, and eventually threw it out. Pictures of yourself a re weird.
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See I think some of the disconnect arises from the bit where you guys are adults that can afford houses. My bedroom fits my bed and a small wardrobe that actually makes it so I can't open and close the door fully. The bookcase is by the front door in the living room/entrance because that is where it fits damnit. I'm not trying to make a statement, I'm trying to keep my books in my house in relative proximity to the chair where I like to read them.
This. Normally when I see bookshelves in someone's house, i think, "oh, this is where they read."
I am unapologetic about having my books semi-prominently displayed. I do not give a shit if you think this is stupid. This will be the one thing in my life I will not overthink.