Owe emm gee yessssssssss mapx0r love

[pseydtonne]

If you're a map junky like I am, I worry for you. I mean seriously, my childhood was fuddup by it. I usually didn't feel right unless I was looking at or drawing a map. I was so grateful when I started masturbating because pr0n may be unsafe for work and school but it's plausible to explain staring at something for a half hour by saying "I was lookin' at muff".

While it's socially acceptable to be caught reading a map, you can never be hip or even come off sane when you say "I was staring at the line maps for the New York Subway and dreaming of trips to take". You just get older and declare that you're cool with yourself that you have this miserably unhip need.

I used to creep chaggalagirl out a little when I would fall asleep with a road atlas in my hands. She had serious problems reading maps, so I took a long time helping her to understand how to use one. She had a very hard time with orientation, so I let her feel comfortable with having no clue where she is in the real world and just to get the relative nature of map reading.

I mention this because of a link I got from a collection of wonderful things today. It's The Interstate System as a pure junction set. Rawk! This satisfies my soul in so many ways. I went color-negative on the reds and made it my work desktop.

What is it about maps? It's difficult to answer that. The Freudian interpretation is that it's an anal complex -- paths, ways, specifics. That's especially true of the subway maps I dearly love: a train in a tube. Thinking of it that way used to scare me until I realized "yeah, I do have shit that makes me get anal. Pretending I don't won't help."

I guess it's the feeling of modernity, of progress, of connectivity. Once there are fixed paths from a variety of places to each other, there is a sense of growth and civilization.

That or it's just about dookie. I hope it's not dookie. That's too devolutionary for my scene.

-mmmmmaybe I went too far with this line of reasoning, Dante

Comments

[gravitrue.livejournal.com]

Check Cory Doctrow's fiction, too. Perceptive in the Neal Stephenson vein, but much more about people than things. If you like John Varley, or Tanith Lee's Don't Bite the Sun/Drinking Sapphire Wine you'll like Down and Out in Disneyworld.

Ever seen the products of the Identity Map corp? Building by building maps of Manhattan. I so wish they made these for SF and Boston. Really, all major cities; ever bus and subway station in the world should have a chunk of this sort of map posted. And most of their products were done before you could easily computerize the graphics.

[dimers.livejournal.com]

Okie dookie, Dante. =)

The map is not the territory, but it is still pretty cool

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

There's nothing wrong with having a map obsession. I'd sooner hang out with someone who spent half an hour staring at maps than someone who would spend that time staring at porn. Then again, I am a fellow map-gazer.

[rscott.livejournal.com]

You know, I don't think I thought to brag to you that my little sister just recently became the special assistant to the chair of the dept. of city planning here in NY. She's apparently swimming in maps over there, although she seems to think that they're all boring ones. I somehow doubt you'd agree.

[hfcougar.livejournal.com]

OMG MAPS

There's a piece of 94 missing though.

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

There's a whole lot of missing on that map. Even though this guy went to RISD so he should have his eastern seaboard in order, huge swaths go I-less. There's neither I-86 nor I-88 in New York (I lived in Binghamton for four years so I know these roads) nor the controversial I-99 in Pennsylvania. I suspect 99 will get renumbered after Bud Shuster leaves Congress or the Earth.

I wrote a comment with my proposed fixes. I doubt any of the proposals will be added, as that stench of "I'm an artist" or "I don't wanna be accurate, I want concept" may rise from a RISD grad.

But yeah, it's all good. Nice to hear from you!