736 fashion tips

Does anyone really care about the 736 fashion tips for spring--the tips you see shouting from the cover of fashion magazines in every newsdealer’s window? Who reads this stuff? Who lines up to find out exactly what they MUST have for the coming season? And who needs 736 of them?

These are serious questions. I am the material girl, after all, a Taurus who lives to own and cultivate and touch and feel. I’m the sort who has matched my scooter and scooter helmet to my 27-speed road bike--a bike purchased especially for the hills of Palo Alto (the center of Silicon Valley, for those not in the know), a bike that I didn’t ride much in the South of France where I was exiled for 5 years recently, hoping in vain to escape the excess (even for me) of 6 Hummers in every 6 square blocks during the startup follies. I am serious...

Anyway (bref, we say in French), this is all leading to something quite serious. I haven’t written a blog for a very long time and I am somewhat embarrassed to admit to the challenges I am trying to overcome for fear of being laughed at (that is part of my superficial nature speaking, the side of the brain that I would like to erase but that is stronger than me and not curable by any self help program). My serious side wants to dig all the way down, to understand everything and to be understood. The other side just wants to be pretty and appreciated. Back to the blog.

I can’t understand how thousands of Russians, or at least 736 of their avatars, can focus all of their attention on bringing down a little blog site like mine, just out of pure spite. I would like to think that it is a grand conspiracy, that I said some things that really rocked the world’s status quo, but alas, my serious side appreciates the fact that there are those better and brighter than me who have not been virtually assassinated. And if I were brighter I would have been better prepared. I am, after all, a highly vocal critic of everyone else’s site and have the audacity to launch my own (very soon, I promise). But I have learned many things in the process--and isn’t learning what it’s all about?

Form over substance. That is how I think of myself fundamentally. I am not as good as I thought at compromise. I’ve spent weeks and weeks evaluating the look and feel, and in particular, the user interface, of our soon-to-be-launched site. And not so surprisingly (at least to me, Miss Superficiality), I have been unable to release our little site with design bugs (I refer to them as design vermin, because they are just that disgusting to me). I am humbled by the success of others, less superficial, who have been able to live with their own personal style without consulting the arbiters of style, the tabloid style magazine ablaze with the 736 fashion tips.

For the moment, I must admit I am powerless over those Russian robots who have nothing better to do than attack baby blog sites. They are forcing me to grow up. Now we’re in the process of having armor-protected servers capable of withstanding, at a minimum, sticks and stones and nasty words, if not denial of service attacks. I wish this were not necessary. I cannot change the code warriors who do not understand the advice of those lovely magazines with such beautiful colors and styles, those that seek perfection in all things façade. I am working hard on going with the flow, pushing myself to let go of my serious side, letting the inner child run riot with something that is fun, if not fully formed. Have patience. We are a site in construction. We hope that all of this digging down and inner angst will harvest some very lovely diamonds in the rough, and not the blood diamonds the music industry is in the habit of cultivating.

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Posted at 01:06PM Jan 02, 2008 by Shelley Taylor in Music  |