#26 10-05-11 16:58:04

richard

Administrator

Registered: 14-03-06

Posts: 3,395

Re: The Naked Female Form

The blue lagoon is one huge tourist nightmare. They've damned the lagoon with rockfill so you can't get in without going through the turnstiles, and it's an 'exit through the gift shop' scenario. You can see the pipes that bring in the steam which is supposed to randomly seep from the rocks and the goop people put on their faces is buried in steel tins beneath a grate, to create the illusion you're ladling it out of fissures in the rocks.  It is very bad for your skin - that's my analysis anyway, judging from the rash.  It was a week before my hair didn't feel like it had been dipped in chalk and my skin didn't feel like sandpaper.  And the worst part of all, nobody is naked except in the communal (segregated) showers that you must use before entering the 'lagoon'. 

They have a beach in Rekjavik, trucked in from somewhere and dumped in a backwater behind the town.  It was about 5 deg C and three girls were standing in the water in bikinis, chatting away like it was tropical.  I put my hand in and it began to ache in a few seconds. There's a 'hotpot' there too, made of concrete.  But at night they drain it and lock it all up.

domC

Member

Registered: 24-02-11

Posts: 88

Re: The Naked Female Form

Wait, you forgot the parts where there's no such thing as Santa Claus and the tooth fairy was something your parents made up and your twenties are more about working shitty jobs on subsistence wages and less about living a fantasy life where you fuck anything that moves and go out every night.  Most of me understands that the reality is very different to the dream, but I still hold on to the dream, hey?  And, honestly, I'd rather wait in a line to see a shitty version of the Blue Lagoon and have my skin burn from the mud than sit in Canberra frightened stiff by the prospect of another empty weekend, until I go back to my mind-numbingly dull job again on Monday to repeat the cycle.  I'm guessing the better parts of Iceland are the isolated areas, anyhow, and I think it goes without saying that, ultimately, that's what I'd be really excited about, you sad-sack.

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richard

Administrator

Registered: 14-03-06

Posts: 3,395

Re: The Naked Female Form

Well that's the part Bobby likes, and it is beautiful, but so are most landscapes you haven't seen before.  Iceland is green and Greenland is just ice.  It's like their name tags got switched.  They have the cutest accents and the mascot of their minimart chain is a pig with a big snout.

There is an old US base next to the main airport at Keflavik, which is being turned into an aparment precinct but there it still some cool old ruins.  The US put a whole lot of money in there for the strategic location during the cold war.

But yeah I'm totally a sad sack.

viva

pretty pretty princess

Registered: 14-05-10

Posts: 4,113

Website

Re: The Naked Female Form

The general theme-parking of the world is actually the great modern tragedy imo. Before the planet succumbs to any aspect of global warming or California breaks off the side of the US like an antique doorknob or any number of other doomsday events occur, I am pretty certain we will have McOasisLand in the middle of the Gobi desert. If we don't already.

But mickey mouse hasn't spread his greasy plastic hands all over absolutely everything just yet and therein lies the challenge and the optimism - not settling for "well at least this is better than Canberra" (although a useful go-to truism) - but actually being in a moment so wild and beautiful you cease to think.

For every Blue Lagoon and Macchu Picchu that someone decided to buy and turn into a soul-deflating tourist trap there are thousands of salars and big sur cuddle trees and somebody's-mamas-house where you can eat something actually authentic, and choquekiraos and golden aspen treechanges and mirror lakes etc etc etc. and these things don't cost anything but you do have to find them. they're not generally big on the internet and its better if we keep it that way.

blissed

Member

From: The bus station of the future

Registered: 17-03-06

Posts: 5,622

Re: The Naked Female Form

Wow there are some amazing landscapes  http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&ie= … o-25300430

I think seeing where people live is interesting too and what passes for normality in what looks to us an extraordinary place. Though it's still entertaining to hear what a shit waste of money the tourist fakery is ha ha

dom take a trip to Melbourne, Though I suppose what's normal to you is extraordinary to me with people living on practically nothing on the dandendong ranges doing chainsaw sculptures all day, You can meet them and then take trip on a steanm train called puffing billy. Lovely.

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blissed

Member

From: The bus station of the future

Registered: 17-03-06

Posts: 5,622

Re: The Naked Female Form

Viva the enemy of theme parking is people making friends across the world online. I know some great places to go here where I live and if you get to meet familiar people (that you might have known online for years) in a strange place where they live that can be extraordinary,

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Last edited by blissed (11-05-11 02:18:17)

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domC

Member

Registered: 24-02-11

Posts: 88

Re: The Naked Female Form

See, that's what I want to hear: cute accents! Pig mascot!

And Viva - that's exactly what I crave when I travel: moments that shock me out of thinking and constantly over-analysing (something I think any overly anxious person secretly longs for) and while I've had those moments travelling in some fairly popular tourist destinations, it's almost always happened doing un-touristy things.  I went to an evensong service at St Paul's Cathedral in London and felt that - as though all of my words and thoughts were momentarily insignificant in the face of that moment.  I've felt it when I've gone to the mountains in Poland and just hiked by myself, too.  I think the sublime, wherever you encounter it, will always be humbling.  And you're right: these moments don't cost anything except your time as you seek them out.

Blissed - I have a love/hate relationship with Melbourne: for me, it's a city of exes.  I swear, every partner I've ever been with somehow ends up there and I'm terrified to walk the streets, scared that my exes will pop up on every street corner and confront me, cat-call me for being a lousy partner, knee-cap me, proposition me - I don't know.  I've had really good moments there, too, though.  I went once on my birthday a couple of years ago and paid to have someone beat me for four hours.  In hindsight: potentially I could have just waited on a street corner until one of my exes saw me and save myself the money.  I'd take the Dandenong Ranges any day and oh my god: especially if Puffing Billy is involved..!  I'm pretty sure "train" is the magic word for me.

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You can find my smut under: Ceto.

viva

pretty pretty princess

Registered: 14-05-10

Posts: 4,113

Website

Re: The Naked Female Form

I think the sublime, wherever you encounter it, will always be humbling.

I really agree with this as the sublime is humbling kind of by definition. but for what were once considered the wonders of the world, I feel like this is no longer the case. After a soul pays to go through a wash of crowds, turnstiles, barriers, guidelines, printed subject matter, pizzas, and bored ticket and trinket sellers, whatever was sublime in a place is dulled totally by the shit spectre of consumerism. True beauty doesn't bend well to being parceled out and sold by little guys in suits. For me it is more valuable to maintain those places in my imagination than to see them polluted by the worst kind of desecration. Instead of inspiring wonder, these places make me feel panicky and anxious. Fortunately as we've noted there is always an alternative tree-encrusted temple or ancient city usually right around the corner and because you have to walk through some mud to get there, you're all alone when you arrive.

But this is all really sad, so here a happy pink unicorn instead!

domC

Member

Registered: 24-02-11

Posts: 88

Re: The Naked Female Form

Think I'm gonna make that unicorn my new Power Animal!

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You can find my smut under: Ceto.