My hip has been hurting for a couple of weeks now. You know that feeling when you use a muscle you haven’t used in a while, and afterwards it’s painful and sore? This is kind of the way my hip feels, except it’s really deep in there, right on the side of the bone; it feels like it’s maybe bruised on the bone or something. I don’t know if bones get bruised; it doesn’t feel like a pulled muscle, or a pinched nerve (believe me, I’m all too familiar with that). Anyway, it’s been hurting steadily for a few weeks, especially when I walk down stairs, or lie on that side. I wonder if I should get that looked at.
My desktop background right now is of a sunset scene on a beach in Australia, with cloud-to-cloud lightning in the distance. There’s a little strip of beach along the bottom of my screen, and my two printer icons look like they’ve been thrown off the back of a truck, sitting on the sand, waiting for the tide to come in and pour salt water into their little electronic guts.
So I get this catalog from a store called Design Within Reach. It’s home furnishings and furniture… all very modern… much of it retro/futuristic… all of it designed by famous designers… most of it made of plastic and u-g-l-y… and I’m not exactly sure whose “Reach” they’re referring to but you can buy what looks like a middle school plastic orange chair with metal legs for $200. Oh, excuse me, it’s a Herman Miller Eames chair, how hoity toity. Basically this stuff is supposed to be high end and high design, but it looks like crap you’d find at Eurway, and five times the price. It’s ridiculous. I mean, I’m all for good design, but I’m also all for comfort, good materials, and practicality. Call me lowbrow if you will, but I can’t see the value in a $400 set of plastic orange shelves , a $750 plastic outdoor sofa, or a $7000 white plastic chaise lounge. I am not completely biased, though; I do like the Akari freeform floor lamp (but $750? for fuck’s sake!) and a few other items.
I guess I’m just not a big fan of plastic fantastic, the savior of the 1950s, the modern space age material.
