Afropologë

well.

2009-07-07T22:07:00.006-04:00

there's this.

...and my current favorite:

oh, and how could i forget...

the motherlode

2009-04-10T09:51:00.007-04:00

i am fully aware i haven't blogged in well over two months. maybe i'm getting better at managing my anger, and have less of a need to blog? heh. well anyways, yesterday i hit the motherlode, if you will, as far as things that make me angry enough to rant about for pages. its called the motherlode blog on the new york times. or more specifically, this post by guess blogger "nicole sprinkle" (more on ludicrous last names in a bit).

so to summarize as briefly as possible. this is an "essay" (scare quotes to indicate that its neither well-written nor well-argued) by a white woman who married a colombian man, had a child, and began to systematically destroy her child's life by filling her with self-loathing. or, to put it in the words of so many of the commenters on the blog, it is a "brave and courageous" essay which takes an "honest" look at race, and should be applauded. apparently now the standard for decency when it comes to race relations is something along the lines of "i'm a huge fucking racist, but as long as i admit it, i'm being progressive." die.

ok i digress. so i was originally planning on just pointing out some of the horrifyingly racist things the author throws out in this essay as though they're no big deal (hoping her child will be just hispanic enough to get a scholarship, exoticizing her american-raised husband by expecting him to speak to their child in only spanish, worrying about the negative effects dominican nannies might have on her child's upper-class development, etc etc etc barf). As i went through the blog listing "things i found terribly offensive," though, the list grew so long i began to suspect i might be there forever. so i'm scratching that, and i'm just going to try to make a very broad point about this essay, and the incredible sadness i feel for this poor, poor child.

the main point of this essay, and the crux of my anger, is the idea that as a wealthy, white, straight parent, you are within your rights to try to mold your child's life to look more like your own to 'protect them' from adversity. Parents want their children to be happy, and for some reason they think the only road to happiness is the one lined with silver spoons which they themselves traveled. I doubt there are any such parents reading this right now, but i'll throw out some advice anyways: your child will never be happy if she knows her parents only love the white part of her, the straight part of her, or whatever other part they might most identify with. This "Sprinkle" woman (henceforth known as Cupcake McWhitey) seems to think that if she micromanages every aspect of her child's development, teaching just enough spanish to be charming and exotic, but not enough that anyone would question her whiteness, not enough that anyone might EVER discriminate against her, her child will have a great life. this is incorrect. if no one ever discriminates against her, that child will have a terrible life because she will grow up to be a person of color who is completely unaware of the racism that permeates the society in which she lives. this is tragic, because it means she won't CARE, and won't contribute to changing society in a positive way. it is also dangerous, because it means she won't be aware of the potential that someone WILL eventually discriminate against her. since of course, despite her mother's best efforts, she will still NOT BE WHITE.

i don't know that many new mothers, but i have known one too many gay friend whose parents rejected their gayness because they don't want their child to have any more hardship in life. parenting fail. in a big way. the moral of the story is, you can't change who your child is, but as a parent it is your responsibility to raise that child not to be the person you wish they were, but to be healthy and happy being the person they are. obviously raising a healthy and happy child is hard work, but if you can't even attempt to do that, you really should not have had children.

marriage is between a man and a woman

2009-02-04T08:01:00.003-05:00

but beyond that, no holds barred. feel free to use your legal privileges as a straight person to launch yourself into reality tv mediocrity. its the american dream.

CBS has just announced their newest reality show, "Arranged Marriage." in the show, four couples, chosen for one another by their families, will actually legally get married and the show will follow those marriages and see how they turn out. what i'm getting out of this? letting gay people get married would pretty much destroy the fabric of our society, cheapen our family values, and bring about the End of Days with some dramatic rains of fire. but straight people should feel free to use marriage as a publicity stunt, a joke, a fun activity in vegas (don't worry, you can always just cancel it when you sober up!) and whatever the f*ck else they want. sounds about right. as long as the people involved are of opposite genders, its a positive addition to American culture, and jesus will in no way be upset. score one more point for reason and rationality.

i'm sorry jessie

2009-01-14T09:50:00.006-05:00

you're right, of course. we have been in no way updating the blog often enough. sometimes i get lazy. so i'm gonna just post something real quick to let the internet know i haven't died, and perhaps i can get this whole 'posting' thing to become a habit again.

the subject today: ignorant people and internet commenting.

so i was reminded today of a long-standing irritation i've had. i went to check some of my blogs i haven't read in a few days, and discovered that sister toldja, who i find to be occasionally hilarious, got herself in a bit of trouble while i wasn't looking. apparently this post got linked on jezebel and, in the eternal words of eddie murphy, white folks lost their motherf*ckin minds. that poor little blog, which usually gets somewhere around 5 comments on a post, suddenly had just about 150, and most of them were mad as hell. if i had to summarize them in just a few words, it would be something along the lines of "you're an ignorant racist bitch, you remind me of hitler, its your fault racism still exists in the world, and as a white person i feel personally attacked and victimized." oh, and about 70% of the comments were posted anonymously. now you see why we don't allow anonymous comments on THIS blog.

so here's the thing thats always bothered me about the internet, and the world of internet commenting:
1) people seem to think its ok to pretend like they don't understand when something's a joke, and then just go off on it like it was an article in the new york times and not a post on a humor blog.
2) people seem to think 'anonymous' means 'i can insult you personally and compare you to hitler.'

and 3, which is the main reason this whole thing fascinated/annoyed me, is that people who (and i'm gonna go out on a limb and make a WILD generalization here) in their daily lives don't give more than a passing thought to issues like racism, homophobia, and social justice in general, who spend their time reading blogs like jezebel and gawker so they can keep up on their celebrity news, but probably don't even know the website for the BBC and certainly don't have any race-themed blogs bookmarked in their browsers suddenly feel the need to get impassioned about something when it happens across their computer screen on their way to some article about natalie portman's latest romance. i'm sorry, but in real life if you came across a group of black people talking about racism, you would keep walking because you would be uncomfortable and uninterested. but on the internet you feel like you have a right to join the conversation? fuck that. this is that brownstoner brooklyn eviction blog post all over again. just because something involving race or class falls into your otherwise wealthy, white, heterosexual internet 'space' doesn't mean you all of a sudden have a stake in that issue. if you spend 98% of your time ignoring issues like that, you frankly have no right to get indignant.

i'm mad late to work so i'm gonna just end this with little to no conclusion, and just leave you with these words of wisdom: the internet is a dangerous place, people. the same person who moves their purse to the other side when you sit down next to them on the train could be getting home, logging on, and trying to make some profound point about race in the comments section of a blog. you would never know.

addition: now that i'm AT work and shouldn't be blogging, i had a great thought and a clarification: i'm not actually mad at jezebel and gawker. both enjoyable websites, and tons of normal and smart people read them. here is my point - if you're going to get righteously indignant about something, you first need to earn some kind of righteousness. so don't pretend to get indignant about something you don't talk about enough to have confidence in your own opinions. express an opinion, sure, but feel free to also recognize you're not the expert.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

2008-12-25T11:43:00.003-05:00

Woot!

If you're going to do something Grinchy, I suggest you tape it, and send it to us here. Because I'm sure it'll be hilarious. Anyways, enjoy! :P

the gays, the blacks, and other random thoughts

2008-12-09T09:09:00.003-05:00

all right...i've had a bit of writers block, but it doesn't seem to be going away so i'm just gonna push on through.

the subject of this post was originally going to be proposition 8, but i feel compelled to make a detour before i even begin: i recently went to see Milk, and i need to give it a quick shout-out. the movie was amazing, sean penn was amazing, and it was so incredibly relevant as to appear almost heavy-handed. but of course, when they were making the movie they couldn't have known Prop 8 would pass. which really makes you think, doesn't it. Just a brief background for those who haven't yet seen it, Milk is the story of the life and death of Harvey Milk, San Francisco Supervisor and the first openly gay public official. A large part of the movie focuses on the fight against proposition 6 in california: a proposition which would have banned gay people from teaching in california schools. watching the celebrations in the movie as prop 6 is defeated against the odds is a pretty grim juxtaposition to our current time. you can't help but think we may be sliding backwards. if, during a time when an openly gay public official lived every day knowing his life was in danger, they could defeat prop 6 but today we couldn't seem to defeat prop 8, what does that say about the direction our country is headed?

i don't actually think, though, that we're sliding so far backwards. prop 8 was a pretty horrendous setback, but i do believe its only a matter of time before gay people have the right to marry and this whole mess is a thing of the past. until then, though, just a couple of thoughts on the whole prop 8 thing:

1) I saw Sean Penn interviewed on Charlie Rose about Milk and various other things, and just wanted to paste a quote that I thought was particularly compelling, and also more eloquent than we've come to expect from our television sets. When asked about prop 8, Penn said,

"When they talk about it, its just a word, and ‘why not leave the traditionalists to their word?’ Well, you know, there’s 13 year old kids still today hanging themselves because the reach to identity is still too far, because they’re homosexual, or whatever the issue is….and we can’t give up a word? To save that kid’s life? It’s a national shame"

aw. Sean Penn.

2) there has been a LOT of talk about the role of black people in passing prop 8, and it just seems like its time for someone not-crazy to weigh in. people have blamed obama for not supporting gay marriage. rightly so. he really did not come through in any way shape or form on that issue. Sure, he opposed prop 8, but as a writer for Salon pointed out, "not so loud that anyone can hear him."

even so, there seems to be this sense that black people, rushing to the polls to vote for obama, tipped the balance towards prop 8. while that theory has since been disproven (it would have passed with or without black help), the fact does remain that 70% of black people surveyed voted in favor of prop 8. thats a lot. but i'm not completely sure why everyone was so d*mn surprised. homophobia in the black community is not a new issue, but everyone seemed to be trying to make it a new issue, to the detriment of logic. example: Charles M. Blow, "visual columnist" for the New York times, and currently trying his hardest to knock bill kristol from his current position as 'kaya's least favorite columnist,' wrote this piece in which he seems to imply that its not homophobia that's the problem. in fact, its not even all black people. no, black WOMEN are the problem because they're so scared of being alone forever that they have to lash out at gays for decreasing the pool of potential mates. um, what? wrong. illogical. also pretty damn sexist. i give that twenty-five fails for charles m. blow.

this type of logic-stretching seems to really be going around, though. so the black community is homophobic. everyone is trying to focus in on one issue that makes it so: maybe its the 'down-low' phenomenon (boo, hiss). maybe its that black women just can't find a man (hiss, boo). maybe it's the church (hmm...). but at the end of the day all of these arguments fail because they're trying to simplify a complex problem into a sound byte. sure, many churches have played a role in the pervasive homophobia in this country (i'm looking at you, mormons). but other churches (what up, episcopalians!) have made serious progress in fighting homophobia. just like white people, black people don't all belong to the same church. "the church" is not the problem. but i guess its not that quotable to say homophobia in the black community is influenced by homophobia in certain religious communities, homophobia in mainstream hip-hop which is, of course, encouraged by wealthy white funders, and a complex history of desexualization and hypersexualization tracing roots back to slavery that creates a lot of baggage around black sexuality and gender identity, among other things. and of course, nowhere in any of these discussions has it even come up that 'black' and 'gay' are not mutually exclusive categories. hm. i know we all want to make our point quickly and get published, but its possible certain issues would result in more productive conversation if we actually engaged with the complexity of the issue at hand rather than trying to fit it into a cute and simple box.

more on this later. i think i'm significantly late to work. i'll just leave you with this:

3) just for your enjoyment:

count it higher!

2008-11-14T16:12:00.001-05:00

stay tuned for a for a fairly long post that's currently in the works, but for now, one of my all-time favorites...

this somehow seems appropriate...

2008-11-07T07:50:00.002-05:00

i was feeling low, i was kind of blue. but that's all gone because of something new!

From the heart

2008-11-06T18:51:00.002-05:00

I'm only 23 years old, and I realize that my short time on this Earth has shielded me from many of the injustices that my people have faced in the U.S. However, as a Black Woman I recognize the rich history that we have- my mother was among the first bused into white schools in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio, my grandmother grew up on the land our family share-cropped in Tennessee and my great great great grandfather fought in the Civil War and, with his brother, used their compensation to buy the land for what became one of the first freed-slave communities in Dickson County, TN.

Even with a past filled with progress and achievement, my family, like many others, deals with many of the issues that plague Black Americans: poverty, drug use, crime, broken homes, etc. I grew up plainly working class with my mother and my sister, and while she did everything she could to give me all that I needed and always let me know that I could do anything if I set my mind to it, I always had a small bit of doubt that I could really make it.

I've had the good fortune, upbringing and support to have achieved some of my own dreams already in life (graduating from college and moving to the city to try to start my career)- but never really knew just how bogged down by doubt and lack of confidence that I was. I never knew how deeply ingrained those feelings of low self-worth and helplessness were in my psyche- until I felt a great deal of them lifted when it was announced that Senator Obama would soon be President Obama.

Four years ago in Cambridge, on Harvard's campus, I sat with my close friends as we waited for the results of the Kerry-Bush election. When all was said and done the room was silent all but for quiet curses and weeping.

Two days ago I cried again, harder and stronger than I did before- but this time they were tears of joy. I was happy that change would come, excited for a leader that could inspire such unity in people all over the world, and most of all HOPEFUL for the future that my little sister, my cousins and my future children will have. They will grow up in a world where anything is possible, they won't have to say "I want to be the first Black President," they can just follow their dreams and a path that has already been set.

Some of my friends and I were talking (i.e. what Kaya mentions below)- and we realize and accept that we have been a pretty cynical generation. We haven't experienced much monumental change for the better in our lifetimes- 9/11, Katrina, the War.. time and time again things have gotten worse and worse. But this is the first time for us that something major has happened. Something amazing has occurred.

This is the first time that we not only have hope- but can believe in it.

Our Defining Moment

2008-11-05T20:03:00.002-05:00

Yesterday afternoon I walked to Whole Foods to pick up a cake, and as I walked through the Financial District in New York everything around me seemed heavy and still, as though the world was on the verge of cracking wide open. Every minute of the day felt somehow momentous, because every minute brought us closer to the moment when everything might change. It sounds so dramatic, and as I was walking to Whole Foods I remember thinking to myself that I needed to calm down, but even as I was talking myself down, I came to a realization: its true that it still remains to be seen how this election will impact the world and our futures, but regardless, this election was, for people my age, the first truly momentous occasion we have ever experienced. Eight years ago, when Bush first came into office, I was in high school. When Bill Clinton was first elected, I was seven. For people around my age, the current dark ages are really all we can remember, and as such my view of the world has largely been shaped by a sense that participation in the political process is meaningless and an ever-diminishing tolerance for patriotism in the face of the United States’ growing list of atrocities and aggressions. The mere thought that a black man could be president, that an intelligent and articulate man could be president, that someone I actually admire could be president, is a new concept to me. The thought that other countries might be inspired by anything America does is something I didn’t expect to see, and the images of people around the world rejoicing in Obama's success have made me feel, to quote Michelle Obama, proud of my country for the first time. The fact is that with the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States, we might not know what’s to come, but suddenly I find myself asked to open my mind to the possibility that it could be something GOOD. The fact that Obama could not only get elected, but could win in Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, and VIRGINIA means that fundamentally, my cynicism when it comes to the intelligence and goodness of people in general may just be wrong. This is the first moment since I first heard a friend say “people are a constant disappointment” that I’ve felt that statement might not be true. And that’s a big fucking deal.

At the same time, I think I’m essentially still in shock. I expected to cry when I saw Barack and Michelle stride into Grant Park as the new president and first lady-elect, but the image so violently clashed with the understanding in my mind that this is not what America looks like, that I don’t think I was even able to fully process the moment. The fact that the new face of America is not white, that the family in the white house will be black, is I think symbolically even more important than we can imagine.

Hm. This is getting quite rambly, no? My final thought is just this: this is the first time in my life that I’ve ever seen so many people celebrate ANYTHING in this country. I stood in Union Square last night and watched a bunch of hipster youth attempting to spread a chant of “U.S.A! U.S.A!” through the massive crowd that had gathered to celebrate, and thought it was probably the first time many of them had ever used that chant, certainly the first time I’d ever enjoyed hearing it, and even if we were experiencing the moment in incredibly different ways and for different reasons, which I expect we were, and even if the coming years prove to be no better or no different, that moment was significant.

BARACK OBAMA IS THE NEW PRESIDENT

2008-11-05T02:07:00.002-05:00

AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING.

I am crying. This is beautiful.

Nov 4th

2008-11-03T18:47:00.004-05:00

ok so i have about 3.5 million things i should be doing right now other than blogging. this will be a short post. but i felt the need to say SOMETHING seeing as how tomorrow is...momentous.

i've been talking with friends, and a lot of us seem to be in the same general mental state: TOTALLY FREAKING OUT.

most of us seem too scared to even voice out loud what everyone else seems to be screaming from the rooftops - that obama is going to win tomorrow. the thought of proclaiming it, letting yourself believe it, and then having your hopes crushed is too terrifying. as many people have already said, liberals in this country have forgotten how to be happy, or even optimistic. the emotions we're generally most familiar with are terror, rage, and despair. so we're feeling all of those right now despite the fact that things are actually looking up. so in the spirit of that, i'm not going to talk about anything happy right now. although hopefully it IS something interesting...

I was reading an article today about who-can-remember-what, and it quoted a woman in North Carolina (I believe) who said she was scared of Obama, and that she worried he was planning on changing the American flag to something else. and for some reason that fairly insane fear, out of all the ones i've heard so far, suddenly made me feel this crazy empathy with this woman. Its so easy to see all those supposed masses of "real america" residents who hate and fear obama and think "man, those people suck." but as I was reading this article it dawned on me that if i were her, i'd probably be scared too. The fear is not of Obama himself, but of the symbolic power shift implied in electing a seemingly liberal black man as president - something is going to change, and a lot of people don't quite know what that something is. I don't think I can say it better than my friend Ann did earlier today, so i'll just quote her here:

"There is something to the fact that many of the people who actually are afraid of barack obama because of his race, or because of his liberalism, or because of both of them combined, are actually not the most secure people in america. Confused white people in western pennsylvania are not high rollers and their jobs aren't that secure. They might have relatives in prison, and relatives in iraq. The people who are against immigration viscerally are people who fear losing their jobs. The people who are afraid of changing sexuality, are also afraid of having their religion become obsolete and becoming culturally irrelevant. The people who are afraid of a black president probably are playing into the same fear that people have been harboring for centuries in this country, (is this really racist against white people to say) but a white sharcropper mentality. Super racist because your position isn't that secure either, because if I don't have whiteness, I have nothing."

I think that we among the 'liberal elite' spend a lot of time wondering why so many people who are relatively poor vote republican, when the republican party clearly does very little for poor people. But I think Ann's hit on something important which is that if you're a powerless minority in this country, you don't have much to lose. but if you're a powerless member of the majority, whether it be your whiteness, your male-ness, your heterosexuality that ties you to the faces of power in this country, you have a real fear that if you lose that one tie to power, you'll have nothing. For a poor white person, seeing another white person in power is as symbolically relevant as i can only hope seeing a black person in power will be for black people. and i just realized this post isn't as short as i intended it to be, so i need to get back to work.

good luck out there tomorrow.

always the professional

2008-10-31T08:36:00.001-04:00

for your viewing pleasure

2008-10-29T22:16:00.001-04:00

obama's 30-minute primetime spot. its good.

a flaw in the model

2008-10-28T19:28:00.003-04:00

in a recent episode of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart mentioned Alan Greenspan's testimony before the House of Representatives that seemed interesting enough to check out. His speech was fairly uneventful - something about an economic tsunami, shock, dismay...you get the drift. what was most interesting was this interaction during the questioning:

Mr. Greenspan: I found a flaw in the model that I perceived is the
critical functioning structure that defines how the world works, so to
speak

Chairman Waxman: In other words, you found that your view of the
world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working.

Mr. Greenspan: Precisely. That's precisely the reason I was shocked,
because I had been going for 40 years or more with very considerable
evidence that it was working exceptionally well.

so now...if i'm understanding this correctly, Alan Greenspan just decided, because of this financial crisis, that free market economics as a concept is just wrong. granted, a lot of us have known that since we were like, 5, and he's 82. but still, this seems like a big deal.

i don't know, though. its a little bit of a let-down. when marx said capitalism was going to self-destruct, i kind of pictured fire, riots, and guerrilla warfare. not just an 82-year-old man getting in front of congress and saying "whoops."

oh well.

dear god

2008-10-27T20:29:00.002-04:00

no words.

where there is life, there is hope.

2008-10-24T08:46:00.001-04:00

you heard it from grover first.

term limits and protests

2008-10-23T19:25:00.003-04:00

so city council voted today to extend term limits so king bloomberg can get a third term. feel free to ponder that, while you also ponder the following: as with any event, major or minor, this elicited a protest outside city hall. but whereas the past few days the park has been filled with black and brown people protesting for better schools and better health care, today was white professionals in suits, still working via blackberry while protesting term-limit legislation. fascinating.

battle for the earth: Hope vs Skepticism

2008-10-21T08:00:00.006-04:00

How many times have i said or heard said among friends that this election really feels like an epic battle between good and evil? The "battle for the earth: heaven vs hell" metaphor seems to really be taking hold as people get more and more concerned about the state of the country, and as the two candidates personalities drift farther to their respective corners (recall tina fey's characterization of barack this week: "when he's talkin' it's like an angel whisperin' in your ear," and barack's joke at the Alfred E. Smith dinner that "contrary to the rumors that you've heard, I was not born in a manger..."). But I think in all the excitement about the battle for the earth, the possibly legitimate fear that john mccain is the modern-day anti-christ, and the overwhelming desire we all seem to have to throw ourselves into this election like it's the only thing that matters, we're accidentally or intentionally overlooking a quieter but in no way less important battle. This battle is also for the earth, but John McCain has nothing to do with it - it's the battle between two Obamas - the one we hope he is, and the one we fear he is.

I like to think of this as the battle between hope and skepticism, or perhaps the battle between great and just 'good.' This article by Mike Davis does a wonderful job summing it up from an economic standpoint, but it's more than just economics: the Barack actually standing in front of us on TV is significantly more conservative, more vague, and less powerful than the Barack we see in our dreams. He promises all of these wonderful things: universal health care, fighting climate change, and a better foreign policy, but we know in our hearts that he has yet to actually make a compelling case for HOW he's going to do these things. We also know in our hearts that he's intelligent, and I think that's the crux of this less thrilling but perhaps more important battle-for-the-earth. We HOPE (and we hope that Obama's message of 'hope' is a wink in our direction) that Obama is so intelligent that he's figured out the system - that his vagueness is his way of getting where he needs to go, and once there he will make the changes we want to see: changes that, if he said them out loud now, would cost him the election. We HOPE that with the possibility of a simultaneous Barack Obama presidency and an overwhelming Democratic majority in the House and Senate, we'll begin to see this country go in an amazing new direction "from day one." But we're also SKEPTICAL because wouldn't that just be too good to be true? We know how American politics work. No one's that good. If Obama's gotten this far, maybe he's not the man we hope he is. Or as Mike Davis put it in the article linked above,

"Am I unduly cynical? Perhaps, but I lived through the Lyndon Johnson years and watched the War on Poverty, the last true New Deal program, destroyed to pay for slaughter in Vietnam."

Is it even possible for Barack Obama to bring us the change he's asking us to hope for? Or are we gearing ourselves up for a slight shift in pace that will in no way actually turn us from the collision course we're currently on with our own demise? It may be impossible to know, but as with all battles for the earth, it's certainly worth thinking about...

colin powell endorses obama

2008-10-19T10:57:00.002-04:00

a bit late in the game, yes, but still.

if you don't watch the whole video, please skip to around minute 4:30 - it makes me mad/sad that so few democrats have been willing to say what powell says here, and i'm glad he said it.

Sorry to interrupt Muppet day

2008-10-17T12:28:00.002-04:00

But this AP report on the Roast that Barack Obama and John McCain attended was just too funny to not post. My favorite part comes from Obama:

"But to name my greatest strength I guess it would be my humility," he grinned.
"Greatest weakness, it's possible that I'm a little too awesome."

friday is muppet day!

2008-10-17T10:01:00.002-04:00

seriously. i think every friday should be muppet day on this blog. every other day of the week is rage, so friday should be complete and total joy.

...enjoy!

I Got a Crush on Obama

2008-10-15T22:53:00.005-04:00

(Subtitle: John Mccain is a Punk-Ass Bitch)

I need to start seeing Barack Obama's therapist.

Seriously. I just finished watching tonight's debate, and of the three debates this one was certainly the most decisive. In the first two, Barack Obama held his own and promoted his policies. In this last one, he shone. My question is how he did that with all of the incredible garbage John Mccain was spewing his direction. If i were him, I would have chewed off my left arm somewhere around the halfway-mark. Even just watching from home, when Mccain started to talk about Roe v. Wade I got so angry my leg went numb. Yet cool-hand Barack never once even fell out of his chair. So yeah, I definitely need some of whatever he's having.

But enough about me. Let's talk about a couple of the more interesting points of the debate. I apologize in advance if at any point I get incoherent or profane.

First, a quick run-down of the candidates themselves:
Obama, as I've already mentioned, maintained his composure in the face of some shit that might have gotten a rise out of Gandhi. Aside from that incredible feat, he also made great eye contact with the camera, maintained at least a semblance of respect for John Mccain, and showed great restraint in refusing to go on the offensive on issues like negative campaigning, while simultaneously standing his ground very well. The result was that he appeared strong, but mature enough to pick his battles, leaving Mccain looking rather childish and petty.

Mccain, as I've just noted, looked childish and petty. He was rude, interrupted constantly, and seemed to be sneering quite a bit of the time. He also rambled on the issues that were really important, only seeming to have a coherent argument when he was on the offensive. The result was that he came off as desperate, and not completely in control. In short, he looked like a punk-ass bitch.

Ok, so on to the issues:

Taxing and Spending: I can only imagine what the comedy shows will be making of John Mccain's new argument in support of his spending freeze idea. Perhaps metaphors were never John Mccain's strong suit, but I've never actually seen a surgeon go in first with a hatchet, and then a scalpel. I'd imagine thats because the result would be instant yet gruesome death. which, incidentally, is probably what would happen to this country if Mccain got elected. But seriously, the Republican notion that taxes are bad, spending is bad, and everything is just going to work out on its own is getting old. Its never worked, no reason why it should start working now. I don't know, for example, how Mccain plans to "reform Head Start" during a spending freeze, but i'd be willing to bet about a million dollars he doesn't know either. Benefits cost money, and people benefit from...benefits. I'm not mad about paying taxes, if it means I get roads, education, social programs, and all that good stuff. And if it meant i got GOOD education, why I might even be willing to pay a little more.

Healthcare: John Mccain clearly practiced his burns before the debate. Most of them were so incredibly petty (I'm looking at you, 'I so admire Senator Obama's eloquence') that I'm surprised he didn't bring Barack's momma into the picture (I hear the only reason your momma graduated high school is ben bernanke said she was 'too big to fail.'*). A lot of those burns backfired. But his healthcare burn was the one that backfired the worst, I think.

"if you like that," he said of Obama's health care plan, "you'll love Canada and England."

Now maybe I'm missing something here, but it's pretty widely known that citizens of Canada and England have access to far superior health care than we do in the United States. So either Mccain doesn't know that, in which case he's even more of a dumbass than I originally thought, or he knows that, but thinks the American public is too dumb to know that. In which case i'm a bit peeved.

Education: McCain REALLY ended on a bad note here. After Obama (to his detriment, I believe) opted out of ripping McCain a new one re: education, and left him with a pretty easy out, McCain refused to take it, insisting on a final snide comment to the effect of (sarcastically) "oh so because there aren't enough vouchers, we shouldn't have a voucher system." ...yes. I think that IS the point, Senator McCain. providing vouchers to a few select people while failing to reform the education system itself is essentially condemning already struggling schools to fail, and with them condemning all the children who did not get vouchers to fail as well. Not really a winning plan. I can't even talk about it more without getting angry.

I know this is getting long, and is not even that terribly coherent, so let me skip over the tirades I was planning on going into re: human rights (and John McCain's newfound disdain for them) and racism (John Mccain's new best friend). I think Obama blew McCain out of the water on the whole "negative campaigning" issue, so I'll let it lie. I will, however, leave you with this thought to ponder:

People have, throughout this long campaign, raised the idea of a cult of personality around Obama more than once. Obama's supporters are referred to as "obamamaniacs," "obamaholics," and "obamacons." Obama himself is jokingly referred to as "the one" (or more recently, THAT one). And I just want to address that issue, because I think it's an interesting one. I think Obama does inspire devotion unlike any politician has in recent history. I found myself looking forward to his closing remarks tonight like a dog looks forward to "time for a walk." Every time he gets two or more uninterrupted minutes to speak, I start getting excited. I expect that his soaring rhetoric will make me weep with joy and longing for what could be. (With respect to that expectation, the closing comments were a bit lackluster, but i assume that's because he's saving the good stuff for his acceptance speech come November.) When he talks, I find myself listening like there is nothing else going on around me. I have a lot of friends who feel the same. But is that a cult of personality? Or rather if it is, what exactly does that mean? I think the truth is that it's so incredibly rare not only in this country but in this world for people to have the opportunity to rally behind someone in a position of power who is intelligent, articulate, and appears to have a basic respect for the intelligence and dignity of 'the common man,' that when such a person does come along, people lose their minds. I don't think anyone thinks Barack Obama is god. People are just legitimately excited by the possibility of a president they can be proud of, who legitimately values human rights, and who might even just have their best interests in mind. Its possible we need to stop thinking about cults of personality, and start thinking about the reasons behind the severe dearth of inspiring "personality" that has shaped our lives since before I can remember.

thats all for now.

*credit to my friend lizz for making up that zinger

another tidbit

2008-10-15T08:44:00.003-04:00

if you haven't yet read frank rich's op-ed about the terrifying new twist the campaign trail has taken, please do. its one of the best op-eds i've read in a while, and simultaneously one of the most chilling.

Stuff White People Like: Gentrifying Harlem.

2008-10-10T11:54:00.004-04:00

Take a look at this post on SWPL, focusing on a September article in the New York Times. It's simultaneously hilarious and incredibly depressing (especially taken in context of the gentrification post Kaya made earlier). An excerpt is below:

White Plans for Harlem
The article goes into some of the plans and hopes that white people have for the neighborhood, and they include the opening of Thai Restaurant, A wine shops, hair salon, and a place that serves gourmet burgers and microbrews (implied).

White people are also hoping to close down things that they do not like, specifically churches. With over 100 houses of worship in the area, white people are concerned. Though the article does not mention why white people are upset at so many churches, it can be implied that they would feel more comfortable if they were to be replaced with condominiums, yoga studios, and white people churches (also known as Whole Foods).

Yet in spite of all these desired changes, white people would still prefer it if other white people did not move into the neighborhood.

One of the new residents says: “Harlem does have a character. I don’t want Harlem to become Union Square any more than anyone else does.”

Conclusion
Harlem had a good run.

Click here to see the rest of the post.

a tiny point

2008-10-08T20:11:00.002-04:00

i'm trying a new tactic: sprinkle in some short one-liners among the way-too-long posts. that way it looks like i'm updating all the time, but i don't have to think that much.

my point for today: how is it ok for mccain/palin to be using "we cant allow another holocaust" as a talking point? palin's said it twice now while i've been watching and mccain once. all of those were in reference to israel, not darfur (an ACTUAL genocide). comparing the conflict in the middle east to the holocaust is wrong both morally and factually.

and newsflash to the mccain team: you're not winning any special points for being anti-genocide. i'm pretty sure obama's not "pro."

Entitlement Gone Wild!!!

2008-10-07T16:01:00.004-04:00

(subtitle: why I can’t live in Park Slope, and why no one should read online comments)

As promised, another blog post within literally days of the last one. Don’t get spoiled, though. You never know when I might get lazy again.

Anyways, let’s start out with some news/bragging: I recently moved out of park slope and into bed-stuy. And I literally couldn’t be happier about it. I’m sure I’m romanticizing the whole situation (it’s still new york, after all), but the fact remains that my first morning at my new place, I walked out the front gate and a passer-by said “good morning” to me. Shocking! Unheard-of! By the end of the week I had been introduced to not one, not two, but SIX of my neighbors. Who smile at me on the street, and sometimes talk to me on the subway. I’m in heaven. Which, of course, brings me to my current topic: hell. AKA park slope, Brooklyn.

I know what you’re going to say – hating on park slope is SO last season. But I say last season’s not all that long ago, and I don’t think the issue was properly addressed back then. Let’s quickly go over the typical reasons people might hate on park slope: it’s overpriced, over-gentrified, and full of self-righteous yuppie parents who want to turn the whole neighborhood into a playground for their entitled little children. It’s full of strollers, puppies, yuppies, and gays, all of whom will judge you on the street for not being one of them. True. But let’s “unpack” that, shall we?

There are a lot of reasons to hate park slope, some legitimate, some not. An example of “not” legitimate would be “I hate puppies.” No one hates puppies. Your argument doesn’t hold water. Similarly, no one hates good food. People do, however, hate overpriced good food. Which leads us to gentrification. The complaints about gentrification, and specifically the complaints about the attitude of park slope residents, get to the heart of the issue I want to discuss here: the false sense of entitlement that seems to permeate every aspect of white middle class culture these days (and not just in park slope. I guess this isn’t just about hating on park slope after all). Trust me, if anyone knows about the sense of entitlement today’s 30-somethings and soon-to-be 30-somethings seem to have, it’s a former Harvard student. I survived that, so now I consider myself to be somewhat of an expert, and in a fine place to talk about it on a larger scale: New York.

A recent Village Voice article prompted me to start thinking about this topic yet again. I of course recommend that you read the whole article (it’s very illuminating), but I’ll summarize it briefly here for your convenience: A well-off young Manhattan couple, with the help of some friends, purchased a building in prospect heights (just north of park slope, for you non-New Yorkers) at a price that was significantly under market value due to the fact that there were several rent-stabilized apartments in the building. They then began evicting, one by one, each of the rent-stabilized tenants (four families, to date) so that they could convert their own dwelling into a 20-room home. Only one of the rent-stabilized tenants remain, and the two parties are currently involved in a legal battle over her eviction. The current tenant, Evelyn Suarez, has been living in the apartment for 28 years and currently shares it with her boyfriend, her son, and two young nieces. She pays $402/mo for an apartment that most likely would rent for somewhere around $1800/mo if it was new to the market today. Various factors have been thrown around as arguments for one party or the other, including the fact that Ms. Suarez is unemployed, the fact that she has colon cancer, and the fact that the apartment is slated to be turned into storage space for the new owners.

Needless to say, the issue has blown up. There was a “block party” to raise awareness about it a while back, and something about a councilwoman speaking out against the landlords. Obviously there was a Village Voice article about it. More interesting, I think, is the reaction on the Brownstoner real estate blog (a blog heavy in park slope readership). I don’t want you to have to go through the painful process I did of reading every single comment, so I’ll just pick out some of the best ones for you (I’m sparing you the comments on the Village Voice website because, frankly, some are too racist to re-print):

“These renters could have purchased property but did not. Tough luck.”

“Why should folks who don't want to work be able to live off welfare in rent controlled privately owned housing? It's frigging nuts!”

“is it immoral to eat as much food as we eat in America while folks in Darfur starve?

everytime you go to grocery store to buy that big steak, the politicians should picket infront of the store so you feel guilty that someone who doesn't have the money to buy the steak can't have any.”

“I bought when I had no money, and did it as a single working class female by(1) saving every cent I otherwise would have paid in rent for eight years when I had a stabilized apt in Manhattan and (2) buying in a neighborhood that none of my friends would visit. I had to fight banks to get a mortgage, since the neighborhood was still redlined. It was called Clinton Hill. My parents wept and my friends said I'd be dead in a year.”

“This is retarded. The problem with long term rent control is it gets people used to living in areas they realistically cannot afford to. Another way of looking at it is rent control removes a major incentive to improve your lot in life through hard work and sacrifice: financial stress.

The guy who lived there for 17 years and didn't bother to learn English...gee, I wonder why he's not rolling in money right now? Must be the rich peoples' fault. They're so cold and heartless.

My view? Don't punish achievers (like the buyers) and don't coddle losers (like at least some of the tenants). Give the tenants their Section 8 housing and be done with it.”

And of course, my favorite:

“The sense of entitlement that is rampant throughout the city has no limits. Why are these people so special that they should prevent someone who has spent tons of hard earned money from using their own space exactly as they wish.

Rent stabilized units are an incredible perk that most of us will never enjoy. Be happy you enjoyed it while it lasted and respect people's rights to their own property!”

I’m going to resist the temptation to point out the myriad flaws in each of those posts individually, but I will point out that I think these posters and I have some disagreement over the meaning of the word “entitlement.” Because my argument is that at the end of the day, that’s exactly what this all comes down to. Entitlement, which dictionary.com unhelpfully defines as “the state of being entitled,” is a word I would define as “a belief that one is deserving of some benefit or advantage.” By definition, then, people who are DISadvantaged (aka people who can’t afford to pay market value for their apartment, perhaps) cannot really exhibit a “sense of entitlement.” People who do have certain social privileges and advantages, though (i.e. wealth), such as the type of person who might spend their free time reading a New York real estate blog, can and do exhibit a “sense of entitlement,” and nowhere is it more apparent than in their reactions to public outcry against injustice.

As you can see from the comments above, posters on the whole reacted in a number of fairly predictable ways, such as attributing all poverty to laziness rather than disadvantage; displaying indignance that anyone might want to deny the landlords the house of their dreams; decrying rent stabilization, welfare, and other forms of social programming as unfair to the hardworking middle class; painting themselves as ‘the victim’ by self-labelling as working class while simultaneously talking about working-class neighborhoods in a way that OBVIOUSLY indicates an unfamiliarity with them; and throwing up their hands with the argument that life is unfair, there’s nothing any individual rich person can do about it. In other words, entitlement. To acknowledge that not everyone has access to the resources necessary to lift themselves out of poverty, much less afford the down payment on a New York home, would be to acknowledge that you, as a New York homeowner, have in some way benefited from an advantage you did not earn. Which would mean you should be feeling guilty, which is not something you do feel/want to feel, so the whole thing must be bullshit. It’s the same reason people don’t like to talk about white privilege, male privilege, or any other types of privilege that generally seem to make our society uncomfortable. No one wants to be the bad guy.

The thing is, we live in a society with a whole long history of oppression, injustice, and general inequality. Which has, of course, led to an uneven distribution of resources and privileges. You can either deny that, and in so doing perpetuate it, or you can acknowledge it and try to change it. The reason I can’t move back to park slope: no one wants to acknowledge it. People who are well-off enough to be able to afford a neighborhood full of no one but their peers get a free pass to stop thinking critically about their place in society, and a sense that they’re entitled to all the comforts they desire, no matter the cost to people less fortunate than themselves. It’s that sense of living among people wholly unaware of their own privilege and content in that fact that makes me so uncomfortable in Park Slope, the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, etc. It’s definitely not the puppies. I love puppies.

Dr. Dumbass, or How we Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Hockey Mom

2008-10-05T22:39:00.003-04:00

Alright, before I get into the post I recognize that I probably owe you some sort of “explanation” for my long absence from blogging. Its like this: as you may know, we started this blog because there’s a lot of really f*cked up shit happening in the world that makes us mad. Hence the tagline “we rage, so you don’t have to.” Blogging is actually a really great way of channeling some of that rage into slightly less negative energy, I’ve found. But recently, what with the presidential campaign heating up and the economy spiraling down the drain, there’s just been so much to rage about its hard to make a coherent sentence. So I’ve been reading a lot, writing…not so much.

BUT good news: I’m back. Time to channel all that rage into something productive again. If things go well, expect this to be the first in a series of blog posts that are NOT weeks apart from each other. And I apologize in advance: they may be lengthy. The topic of this one: well, the title says it all, I think.

Ok so down to business:

The remarkable and terrifying ascent of Sarah Palin to the national stage is so problematic in so many ways that I could probably write quite literally a hundred separate blog posts about it. There’s the sexism, the republicanism, the global warming, the foreign policy, the fucked up campaigning, the terrifying ambition, the cold heartless and oh-so-creepy way in which she responded to gwen iffil’s question about “what if the worst were to happen,” the accent that I think she may be exaggerating…seriously, the list goes on for miles. But today I’d like to focus on just one issue, and this is one that is not entirely Sarah Palin’s fault, although she’s surely not helping. I call it the war on intelligence.

This has been a common theme in politics for frankly as long as I can remember, but now that I’m old enough to care, I have to point out that it’s getting dangerous. The idea that it’s more important for a candidate to sell him/herself as likeable, and “average,” than it is to provide policy recommendations and prove him/herself knowledgeable in areas of domestic and foreign policy is deeply, deeply troubling, and nowhere is it more clear than in the Republican Party's marketing of Gov. Sarah Palin.

As Palin quite literally can’t seem to stop saying, she’s a “Washington outsider,” a “hockey mom,” and all those other run-of-the-mill, joe six-pack type terms that, when overused, can turn a vice presidential debate into a disastrous drinking game. Say it ain’t so, joe! Doggone it, she’s gone just a little overboard trying to be folksy and down-home. But my real problem with this is not how f*cking annoying she gets when she says “you betcha” for the ten millionth time, its that people actually LIKE this shit. People enjoy it when she replaces substance with fake authenticity. And yes, I realize that’s an oxymoron. at least i know what an oxymoron is.

As Barack Obama would say, “let’s be clear:” I understand why people want a president or vice president they can relate to. You want someone who you think you can trust to share your values. You want someone who appears to have respect for people like yourself, because if they don’t respect you, they may not have your best interests in mind. I get that. I agree with it. But that’s no longer what this is about. With Sarah Palin, you’re not getting a politician you can relate to, you’re getting a politician who IS you. And YOU are not qualified to run this country.

I think it was Maureen Dowd, shockingly enough, who verbalized it so well in a mock-conversation (god, she loves those) between Barack Obama and President Bartlett from The West Wing. Bartlett, in Dowd’s column, says, “Elite is a good word, it means well above average. I’d ask them what their problem is with excellence.” That’s just it. What in the name of all that is holy is everyone’s problem with excellence? Relatability is important, but more important, I want the person or persons I elect to office to be intelligent. I want someone capable. I want someone who understands economics better than I do, not someone whose confusion reminds me of my own and evokes my empathy. I want someone whose foreign policy plan would consist of something more than not second-guessing Israel. Sure, I want someone who reads the newspaper often enough to know which newspapers she reads, but that’s setting the bar a little low, no? I’d rather have someone who reads several newspapers and understands the nuance of what she reads. I’d rather have someone who not only understands economics better than I do (another seriously low bar), but understands economics well enough to handle the current crisis. I’d rather have someone excellent.

Running the country is a big job. Its one that I, after four years at an “elite” college, am in no way qualified to do. I would hope that the people who are actually campaigning for the job would have an interest in proving to me that they, in fact, know more than I do. But instead, the Republican Party seems intent on proving that they’re exactly like me. Worse, they seem intent on proving that I, with my Ivy League education, my love for arugula, and my newfound ability to pronounce Ahmadinejad, am “elite,” and that they are even more “average,” which in their twisted world means “better.” *I* recently injured myself trying to hang a picture on my wall. I like to dream that come January, our country will be led by people who pride themselves in being smarter than me.

To be honest, the really troubling part about all of this is the fact that I think we all know by now it’s not just the presidential election. The war on intelligence has permeated most aspects of American life. Being smart is just not cool. Our public education system is terrible, but being a champion of education will not get you terribly far politically. Creativity is excessively undervalued in this country, and, whether it is an accurate representation or not, the image of the “average American” that is being put forward by politicians is one of an unambitious, hard-working, not terribly bright, white man who likes beer and hunting, loves his family, and has no interest in politics outside his home town. My suspicion is that very few people actually relate to that characterization of the “average American.” The idea that white Americans living in small towns across the U.S. care about nothing other than working 9 to 5 and getting health care is frankly insulting: my suspicion, and by all means correct me if I’m wrong, is that people all over America have diverse interests beyond their basic human needs, and that given the opportunity to give their children a better education, no one would turn it down because it’s “elite.” So enough of this nonsense. I say we fight back and say “no” to mediocrity. And while we’re at it, dear god can we please say “no” to Sarah Palin?

Ok, I'll leave you for now, but here are just a few things I feel compelled to share with you, that I couldn't quite work into the post:

a great op-ed in salon on media reactions to palin

and this:

that's all, folks!

Sigh.. seriously?

2008-08-29T11:24:00.002-04:00

On the heels of a particularly moving acceptance speech by Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention, Sen. John McCain has chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate for the upcoming Presidential election.

All I have to say is that I am sick of this entire election/ordeal and am pretty royally pissed. What an underhanded tactic. I only hope that former Hillary supporters that were otherwise unswayed by Obama will not be easy to move to vote for McCain simply because a woman is on his ticket. I am a woman and a feminist myself, but looking at some of Palin's super conservative stances (pro-life?) I don't think that I could be convinced to vote for her, not at all.

Blah. This just goes to say- make sure you're registered, and that you get out and vote.

Review: Trouble the Water

2008-08-26T15:12:00.007-04:00

Friday night I was all ready to settle into some television and a slice of pizza when one of my roommates forced me to get up off my butt and head downtown to the IFC Center to see the opening screening of a film called Trouble The Water. Reluctantly I went (I can be really lazy- I was tired!) but fortunately was incredibly grateful that I did.

The film, executive produced by Danny Glover (who was there! He was standing in my way as I tried to sneak in some outside food lol), follows a trio of Hurricane Katrina survivors who lived through the storm and are attempting to rebuild their lives in its environmental, social and economic aftermath. TTW uses footage taken by the documentary makers, clips from news channels/speeches and home video caught by one of the main subjects of the film, Kimberly Rivers Roberts.

Roberts, her husband, and a friend (encountered during Katrina) return to New Orleans two weeks after the storm to find their homes destroyed. Unlike what you'd expect, TTW doesn't just talk about how much of a failure the infrastructure our government's disaster relief groups were, but it brings life to the fact that the people whose lives were most devastated by the storm were already dealing with life-threatening situations, drug abuse, death and financial instability. Kim's mother died of AIDS, both she and her husband were former drug dealers who were failed by the public education system, their friend Brian is a former addict, they have no bank account and- like so many others- couldn't leave New Orleans because they simply did not have the means.

Trouble The Water not only reminds us of what happened during Katrina (as well as the fact that the US Government cares very little about the impoverished minorities crowded in its urban centers) but brings to light the fact that the sicknesses exacerbated by Katrina in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast (poverty, poor public education, drug use, STIs and STDs, violence, abuse) not only existed before the storm, but are still here and will be here long into the future unless we take some sort of action. If there's only one word I could use to describe this film, it would be:

Real.

I strongly urge you to go if it's playing in your city- click here to find information on screenings and openings.

a bad week

2008-08-10T22:36:00.002-04:00

the bad news just keeps rolling in: RIP isaac hayes, who was pronounced dead this afternoon after his wife found him collapsed next to the treadmill (my new biggest fear). apparently he and bernie mac recently completed a movie called "soul men." sounds like that movie is going to be accidentally depressing.

and word on the street is morgan freeman got in a pretty bad car accident earlier this week. damn.

Rest In Peace

2008-08-09T13:45:00.004-04:00

Bernie Mac passed away this morning due to complications from pneumonia (combined with his sarcoidosis)- he had been hospitalized since August 1 and was expected to have a full recovery.

This is really sad, for obvious reasons. Bernie was not only a great comedic talent (admit it- you cracked up because of at least one of his jokes or performances) but also discussed a lot of very REAL issues like poverty, inner city education and drug abuse in his performances. He was totally real and unashamed of where he came from- and where a lot of his family still was/is.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the McCulloughs and the rest of Bernie's survived family and friends.

Politicians for Ohio

2008-08-05T19:23:00.003-04:00

1.) I know our posting habits have been utterly atrocious, so you know- sorry for that.

2.) I'm visiting my family for a tiny tiny stint here in my beautiful home state of Ohio (I saw a Mommy duck and her baby ducklings crossing a road this morning! Say it with me: Awwwww!) and as I was watching the local channels with my Mom I came to a realization- I have managed to avoid most campaign commercials in NYC. True, I don't often tune into the local news (damn internet generation) but I know that I soak in all sorts of television, news and media.

It wasn't until I was inundated with "Time for a Change" and "No New Taxes" and "I am Barack Obama/John McCain and I approved this message" commercials that I realized just how serious everyone already is about this election in Ohio.

Clearly Ohio is one of the most major swing states and like, a prized jewel for all presidential hopefuls, but geez. The moral of the story is, I'm definitely coming home and casting my vote in person- especially after the "let's not count any absentee ballots" fiasco of 2004- so that I can help dear old Ohio break out of her fucking up elections habit.

Make sure that you're registered to vote, if you aren't already- and whoever you think you'll be casting your vote for, make sure you're at least educated on their stance regarding the issues that most affect you in your day to day life.

a thought

2008-07-23T23:15:00.003-04:00

i'm feeling both guilty about not having blogged in about a millenium, and too lazy to write a post, but i did have a thought today that i thought i'd share with you all...

when i first read about spain's new laws protecting the rights of apes, i was all for it. but then today it dawned on me that technically, when i'm doing the kind of office work i like to call "monkey work," it might actually now be illegal in spain to subject a monkey to my job. aka yes a monkey could do this, but a monkey would never have to stoop so low.

ouch.

Review: Personal Days

2008-07-12T03:16:00.004-04:00

You're young. You're restless, and every day you wake up earlier than you really want to hobble into the strictly-scheduled bathroom and create some semblance of "I'm alert" on your face and give yourself some mental pep-talk for the day ahead while you're washing the lethargy away. All this preparation to go to a job. Probably your first job. Most likely not your last job. And likely not your favorite job. This is what the first year looks like to most undergraduates that find themselves working in an office that isn't quite i-banking/consultancy crazy but also isn't as free-spirited as how you'd imagine the lives of those young reporters and publicists are (although it's probably true that, as you're lathering that Clearasil on your face in the shower, they're mindlessly rubbing a stick of deodorant on, wondering where the weekend went).

It was this general feeling of being stuck in the workplace doldrums that made me notice the interesting cover of the book Personal Days by Ed Park, and it was my own general fed-up-ness with Corporate America that moved me to buy it after reading the little blurb on the back, which I will conveniently lay out for you here:

In an unnamed New York-based company, the employees are getting restless as everything around them unravels. There's Pru, the former grad student turned spreadsheet drone; Laars, the hysteric whose work anxiety stalks him in his tooth-grinding dreams; and Jack II, who gives unwanted back rubs, aka "jackrubs" - to his co-workers.
On a Sunday, one of them is called at home. And the Firings begin.
[Personal Days is] ... a novel for anyone who has ever worked in an office and wondered: "Where does the time go? Where does the life go? And whose banana is in the fridge?"

Before I get into my opinions of the book and what, if anything, it made me felt, let me go ahead and just lay out some of the basics. It's a quick, easy and inexpensive read, taking only $13 out of my wallet and a couple hours of my time (the story only spans about 241 pages of this small paperback). What's more, Ed's interesting use of formatting and storytelling (moving from first person descriptive, to casual, to an intimate confession from one colleague to another) draws you in, and if you've been working in real job for any span beyond the typical internship-commitment, definitely hooks you.

And the story itself? Park does a great job of casually introducing you to each character, giving you a small glimpse into their personalities, dreams and backgrounds but leaving most of their personal development up to your own pure conjecture. You are brought into this unnamed company through water cooler conversation and incomplete memos scrawled on Post-Its, and you are introduced to workers at their most awkward moments, sometimes only very briefly. In essence Park makes you another worker at the office, privy to all the gossip that travels between cubes but not a connoisseur of any particular information- after all, how much do you really even know about the people that you actually work with?

I found the story, the dialog and the way in which Park unfolds his plot completely believable, totally engrossing and altogether endearing. As much as I wanted each character to reveal more about themselves, to succeed in the office, I had an equally strong desire for them to be let go, to be given the opportunity to find that piece of them that invariably went missing while sunning day after day under the florescent lights of the floor. Park creates a completely realistic (at times scarily so) portrait of the workplace that could really be applied to any industry or city, and at once thoroughly captures the essence of this generation's cynicism while simultaneously showcasing our enduring and ironic optimism.

To put it shortly: I completely enjoyed it, and recommend that you check it out.

Black? Help us keep out the Mexicans!

2008-07-04T13:16:00.004-04:00

So I meant to blog about this a WHILE ago (like when I first read the article) but I've had a lot going on an dam a negligent blogger - sorry Kaya! Anyway, according to the New York Times, the US Border Patrol, in an effort to beef up its forces, is now reaching out to young African Americans. You read that right- border patrol is stocking up on Black kids.

Maybe I'm being a bit sensitive, after all I usually get pissed when I hear about one government group or another reaching into a very specific pool of minorities b/c they figure those kids have no other alternatives and little prospect for work outside of government or law enforcement.. but even so this seems severely fucked up. I don't normally like to 'air family business,' but I think it's no secret that Black Americans have a huge and I mean HUGE amount of tension and resentment for ethnically diverse immigrants. Why? Well, outside of the normally American reasons ("they take away our jobs!" "they suck up resources!" "they take space in schools!") many immigrant groups come to America with a messed up view of Black Americans fueled by hip hop videos, violent movies and racist portrayals, and this perception can sometimes manifest itself in feelings of superiority. Not to mention Black Americans are pretty much the lowest caste in American society, and the idea that people can come in from another country, be in America for a few months and already have more social and economic capital than Black Americans (who were the base and foundation of even creating America) is pretty fucked up.

So, even though you know they would never admit this, I think it's pretty obvious that this is definitely helping their recruitment agenda. Kill two birds with one stone- help darken up the group that's trying to keep a country built on immigration "pure" and recruit kids that have a blind resentment (and sometimes hatred) toward a group of people that they have more in common with than they think.

You know, these are the times when my dual status as both a Black American and a first generation latino immigrant make me have all sorts of complicated emotions. It's all just very sad.

review: passing strange

2008-06-26T13:50:00.001-04:00

I finally saw the musical Passing Strange, which I’ve been wanting to see for some time, last night. I thought it was incredible, and without giving anything major away (I hope, but if you really don’t want anything ruined, I’d stop here) will proceed to explain why.

The play is a coming-of-age story about a young black man from L.A., raised somewhat in the Baptist church and played (intentionally?) by an actor who bore somewhat of a resemblance to a young James Baldwin, who flees to Europe to “find himself” as an artist. The writer, co-composer, etc. etc., Stew, is also the narrator and basically co-lead. And if you haven’t figured out by the end of the play that the story is a bit autobiographical, a subtle face-to-face talk between Stew and the young protagonist, wearing almost-identical outfits, will probably clue you in.

Among the plays many strengths were a number of great songs, fantastic wit and humor (I’m looking at you, English phrases translated into 2-3 sentences by new-to-english Europeans), a great many glorious meta-moments (if you don’t know I love those, we’ve probably never met), and phenomenal acting. Among its weaknesses…I’m actually hard-pressed. I think the only thing that really irked me was the occasional sense of self-importance on the part of Stew, but even that grew on me by the time we got to intermission.

The play was extremely intelligent and handled a lot of issues around black identity, black countercultures, class in the black community, and the quintessential conundrum Baldwin lays out so beautifully in his essay “on the discovery of what it means to be american.” To share a scene with you (to the best of my memory), the main character, in his attempt to be legitimized as a true artist and revolutionary, claims all of black american oppression, saying “you don’t know what it’s like to have to hustle for a dime on the streets of South Central L.A.!” cue narrator: “no one in this play knows what it’s like to have to hustle for a dime on the streets of south central L.A.”

The play was full of this type of social commentary that felt light-hearted, got the audience to laugh, and then brought you back within yourself to realize the gravity of the point made so lightly on the stage. As always, it was fascinating to watch the audience and see who was still laughing when it wasn’t really a joke anymore. The narrator interacted with the audience in a very natural way, the cast interacted with the band equally seamlessly, and the result was a pleasantly self-aware, amusing, and thought-provoking production that I highly recommend to anyone who gets the chance to see it. It was great.

a momentous occasion

2008-06-25T10:55:00.004-04:00

you know its big news when i risk being seen blogging at work, but i had to stop everything for this breaking news: maureen dowd has written an op-ed that is completely reasonable, rational, and respectful. i agreed with it, and enjoyed reading it.

seriously. my world is turned upside-down. the big M.D. managed to lay off the liquor, put down the haterade, and sit down at her computer completely sober, as far as i can tell. and the result is a really valid point - what IS with this american aversion to having a president who is actually somewhat intelligent? because of course when they say obama is elitist, they mean intelligent. they can't possibly mean he's the beneficiary of centuries of privilege like every other president we've ever had, so what they mean is he's the beneficiary of years of very recent privilege in the form of an ivy league education. and that he's not trying to pretend like that's not the case. oh, right, and that unlike our current president, he actually made use of that education. i see what they mean. that IS terribly elitist. lets vote in some more of bush's boys. they may be billions of times more privileged than obama, but at least they'll never admit it to our faces. i hate honesty.

the best and the brightest (aka you're not special)

2008-06-24T22:35:00.007-04:00

a recent new york times article sent me on a journey of mental self-discovery - mostly made up of complaining to anyone who would sit still about how pissed off i was about the whole affair. so maybe "self-discovery" is a bit of a stretch. even so.

the topic: a so-called 'elite' education, and what that means to the individuals who go to schools such as harvard and yale. the times article asks the question "why are so many ivy-league graduates going to wall street?" the article fails to really answer that question because, like so many articles in the times of late, it is poorly-researched and has little to no structure. too harsh? suck it, times. teach your writers to use this crazy thing i call a "transition." research would also not hurt, while you're at it. the writers basically selected seemingly at random a handful of harvard seniors whose main similarity seems to have something to do with how much they enjoy hearing themselves talk to, shockingly enough, talk about their struggles to do something different from the hedge funds and i-banking all of their friends are going into. the writers did not, of course, interview anyone from any of the public service organizations on campus. one of the students in the audio slideshow segment actually had, as his plans for the coming year, NOTHING. i think that was supposed to inspire me to be bold like him and not sweat the whole 'job' thing, but i'm guessing he has someone else paying his rent while he does the whole "i'm too deep to be corporate and too rich to get a job like you commoners" thing.

i digress. i'm not actually here to rant about what a shitty job the times does of researching for articles, or the questionable merit of their interview subjects. the basic question still stands, and i think a few other people have done a better job of answering it than the times did, so i'd like to share some thoughts with you.

William Deresiewicz, in a better article (admittedly long, but i think worth it) starts out a bit awkward with an attempt to blame his own lack of social skills on yale, but goes on to turn that uncomfortable anecdote into a pretty interesting analysis. he talks about the constant repetition that you are the best and the brightest, the elitism at every turn, the vast amount of support you get from the institutions, and the notion of "entitled mediocrity." read the article for the nuance, but the main points i think are twofold:

1) entitlement: going to a school like harvard teaches you that you DESERVE to do a shitty job and still get an A, you DESERVE a six-digit starting salary your first year out of college, and you DESERVE all the praise you get. even more, you deserve those things because of something innate within yourself - that you got where you are because you really are the best, and not because of any privileges you may have had along the way. and most people, by the time second semester of freshman year rolls around, have begun to completely take every benefit they get for granted to the point that they would readily argue that an A- in a class they worked hard in proves there is no grade inflation, and that 3-week extension they got on a paper because they got sick is in no way out of the ordinary. by the time you graduate, your grip on reality has a 3.5 year head start, and you'll probably never recapture it.

2) expectations: harvard grads, and the parents of harvard grads, seem to expect not so much the development of the mind, as Deresiewicz puts it, but of the career. specifically, a high-paying corporate career. Deresiewicz calls it a lost opportunity, barack obama calls it a 'poverty of ambition.' it all amounts to the same thing: in a part of the world where you can afford to do pretty much whatever you want and still live a comfortable life, the "best and the brightest" don't consider 'anything you want' to be within the realm of acceptable careers. i know literally one person who did the teaching certification program through harvard, even though i knew tons of people who loved teaching and wanted to teach - my theory: you don't want to look as though you're "wasting" your ivy-league education on something you could have learned for less money. you don't want to look as though you failed to be all you can be. and while you're trying so hard not to fail, you're failing to realize that you're wasting your education instead on a career path that only requires you go through the motions: take test prep classes and AP classes in high school, get into an ivy league school, take uninteresting but easy classes to keep your gpa up, do e-recruiting for a major consulting firm, start in on a career you had never even heard of before you got to college, and that requires absolutely none of the education you had available to you but probably didn't take advantage of in your four years of college. talk about failure.

in the context of this discussion, jk rowling's recent commencement address seems pretty relevant. in her speech, on "the fringe benefits of failure," she explained that if she had not failed to succeed on the path chosen for her by parents, school, etc., she would never have had the courage to try doing what it was she actually wanted to do. and to me, that's the real answer to the question posed by the times. why are so many ivy-leaguers going to wall st? because it's ridiculously easy. you can get an entry-level job at an investment bank or a consulting firm with literally no knowledge at all, they'll train you on the job, and then pay you an absurd amount of money to just continue on the path they've set you on. once you're in, it's difficult to fail. whereas not taking that job forces you to think about what you actually might want to do, and in the process of trying to figure that out, more likely than not you'll realize your harvard education didn't prepare you for it (either that or you wasted your harvard education trying to fit in with future i-bankers and now its too late to go back and take that class at the school of public health), and you're no better-equipped to live your dream than you would be if you had gone to a different school. basically, you're not special, you're young, and you have a lot to learn. and coming hard on the heels of "you're the best and the brightest," "you're not special" just doesn't have that same magical ring. most people don't want to hear it.

so they don't hear it, they go get that i-banking job they've never dreamed of, and if they take the time to read shit like my blog, they get indignant because they have about 25 ready-made rationalizations for why i-banking was the career that made the most sense to them (and strangely enough, everyone they know). poverty of ambition is actually the perfect term for this. if i ever meet barack, i'll have to thank him for that.

anyways, to end this needlessly long post on a happy note, big shout out to all my people who are doing, or in the process of finding, whatever it is they want to do. there's a lot of those people too, and no one ever writes an article about them. dag.

Yeah I know this is old

2008-06-22T11:37:00.003-04:00

But it still pisses me off.

Apparently efforts to repeal this crazy ban have been stalled. Part of me understands the logic behind a ban on HIV-positive visitors- but a very small small silly part. At this point, the way HIV is ravaging communities, I don't think a reverse-quarantine is going to do much difference for anybody aside from being incredibly discriminatory.

Thoughts?

brace yourselves

2008-06-15T23:53:00.005-04:00

i know its been a while. what can i say, i get lazy from time to time.

so after much internal debate, i'll give in and write my first (most likely of many) post about michelle obama. lets start it out on the right foot: the woman is fly as hell. did you SEE that purple dress the other day? damn. she clearly puts the right kind of effort into her wardrobe. i find that although you should never "judge a book by its cover," its always a good thing when someone takes the time to look good. if michelle obama were unshowered, for example, i'd be concerned. but no troubles on that front.

moving on: i can't even (don't even want to) IMAGINE the kinds of racist and sexist shit we are in for between now and november. if i were michelle obama, i would have put my foot down the first time barack mentioned the whole "running for president" idea and said "frankly, i don't feel like it." because god knows she is going to have to go through a world of pain for this. its already started, with the accusations that there's a video out there somewhere that shows her using the word "whitey," and with the heightened media hubbub surrounding the idea of michelle obama in general. i've read about a thousand "who IS michelle obama" articles in the last week. a thousand. and the level to which they invade her privacy is sort of unreal. the kicker for me was the recent piece of news everyone's seemed to grab on to: they've somehow forced the release of michelle's college senior thesis on being black at an ivy league school in the '80s, and everyone is dying to dissect it, to the point where i even read an article today that quotes the "dedications" page of her thesis. think for a moment about how humiliated you would be as a grown-ass successful woman to have the media close-reading something you wrote when you were barely 21. ouch.

but the big thing with michelle obama, the thing i predict will continue to be the biggest issue she'll have to deal with, is obvious even now: white people all across america are trying to decide whether or not she is, in fact, an Angry Black Woman. and they are looking for any reason they can to label her as such. the whole "first time i've been proud of my country" thing was a nice firm start, and paved the way for people to go crazy over the "whitey" video that does not even exist. i can only imagine what's in store for the future. its clear at this point that michelle obama is an intelligent woman who thinks a lot about race, and frankly, thats probably not going to win her any popularity contests. unfortunately for the obamas, america doesn't love it when you're smart enough to understand how fucked up she is. soooo moral of the story: i'll probably be posting soon in outrage about some new shit the media did to michelle obama. brace yourselves, people.

on the plus side, maureen dowd has, for the first time possibly ever, earned my respect by writing this piece. the 12-step program is working, M.D. i'm proud of you. you may turn out to be aiight after all.

Just in time for Father's Day!

2008-06-04T15:34:00.003-04:00

Click here to go to an ebay charity auction for Bill Cosby's sweaters from the great days of Cliff Huxtable. Proceeds benefit Cosby's N.A.S. charity, fixing the hood one ungrateful youth at a time.

If you guessed what N.A.S. stands for +10 points.
If you guessed/said it and aren't Black -2,000,000,000 points.
Sorry, sometimes it beez like that.

"Obama wins nomination, CNN projects"

2008-06-03T21:25:00.003-04:00

I hate projections- they stress me out. Somebody please get me when they get an official word.

democracy's last hurrah

2008-06-01T23:40:00.006-04:00

ok so i stole that title from a friend, and i'm not even going to write about it until later in the week.

right now i really should be getting to bed seeing as how i have to be up mad early in the morning, but i figure if i don't post this now i'll forget, like i do every day.

this is what i've been saying for some time now. except i've been saying it to myself and my roommates. not the new york times. i know speeches aren't going to like, change the world or any shit like that, but hillary still really needs to make one. so kudos to this chick for pointing it out.

and on the subject of politics, stay tuned in a few days after i get some rest and rehydration for me going apeshit about obama quitting his church and the rumblings about this michelle obama video. anger management, here i come.

dear douchebag in my building-

2008-05-31T18:34:00.005-04:00

I really don't like you. In fact, I may actually hate you. I understand that you want to pay cheap rent and still follow your dreams of living in the big city. So you split a bedroom in anapartment with your girlfriend, even though you know you're visibly uncomfortable around all of the 'colored' people surrounding you.

So you come out of your unit and you smile and say " hi, nice to meet ya!" with your douchey square plastic-framed american-apparel-looking glasses and rush down the stairs. But when that old Black woman takes a long time moving her walker up the stairs instead of offering to help her with bag of stuff she's juggling you look annoyed and huff past her, thinking that nobody sees you. But I see you. I know you.

You smile at the women in the building even though we can very clearly hear the big arguments you and your roommate have, and have deduced that you two share a, to say the least, slightly abusive relationship.

So, in short- you suck. I'll be glad to no longer be your neighbor.

so wonderfully exotic

2008-05-24T19:22:00.005-04:00

One thing that I’ve always loved about fashion photography has been the rich colors, unexpected shapes and oftentimes bold composition of each shoot. Since I was 10 years old I remember soaking in the pages of Vogue, Harper’s and Elle, not for the (generally uninspiring) editorials or tips on what was new or in, but in sheer appreciation of the art that I’ve come to love. Of course, I’ve always accepted my love of fashion with a grain of salt- after all, as I’ve stated before, it’s an industry rife with elitism, sexism, racism and exploitation, the proverbial playground of the privileged that, on its upper levels, is all but closed to us plebeians.

So over the years I’ve been an active consumer and a casual fan, never overestimating my love, knowing that while she can be beautiful, creative and provocative, she’s also often petty and manipulative. Which, sadly, I was reminded of while flipping through this month’s Vogue. The June 2008 issue of the fashion industry’s bible was dedicated to SJP and the upcoming SATC movie, but deep in the recesses of its layout is the article “from here to timbuktu... and beyond. Sally Singer travels to the end of the earth for a little night music.” I’m sure you’ve already caught on to what annoyed me about this article. Bright pictures of model Liya Kebede mingling with the Malian locals, sporting “ethnically inspired” fashions in the most ethnic of all places (oh, Africa. Sigh.) If the imagery itself weren’t enough to warrant my defenses popping up, this quote definitely helped spark a bit of anger:

“Which brings me to the true glory of Mali: the wanderers themselves... You see women driving pink 125 cc. bikes in kitten heels, stretch pin-striped pencil skirts, and blonde bobbed wigs. You see schoolgirls in Heidi pinafores and young boys in hip hop gear, pastoral floral dresses. Above all, you see the world as if exfoliated of the dead layers of Western trends, norms, preconceptions. It’s a visual and auditory jolt that makes this sandbox at the end of the earth feel like the most privileged of all playgrounds.”

Yes, you read correctly. Now, stripping away some of the most immediately annoying parts of this article (“this sandbox at the end of the earth,” right.. how exactly is Mali at the end of the earth? If I’m not mistaken California could easily be qualified as the “end of the earth” to this white woman fashion news editor, but come ON how completely cliche and colonial) the most frustrating part was how this woman continued the theme of “oh how quaint, look at how luxuriously I can live in this dust bucket of a country! This is so deliciously different from my every day life!”

Oh, and the comment about Mali being stripped “of Western trends, norms [and] preconceptions?” PLEASE. Oh goodness, that right there almost made me want to vomit. I’m no expert on Mali or Timbuktu, but I seriously doubt that the eclectic hodgepodge of outfits seen on the streets of this city has much to do with a collective fashion statement by the people as much as it has to do with a myriad of economic issues and access to certain resources.

And okay, I get it, if you’re an American who has never been to Mali (which I never have) I’m sure that the change from Western culture and amenities would be really jarring, and would inspire you to have a different appreciation both for your home and your new surroundings. But, in this day and age of hyper-sensitivity to global issues you think that she’d at least once bring up something about the environment and its condition that had at least a tiny ounce of social relevancy (aside from immediately mentioning and dismissing her non-status as an anthropologist, economist or tourist) but, no, of course she did not.

So we get to the point- when the hell IS it someone’s job to have cultural sensitivity? Surely this can’t only be reserved for us anthropology students and those in academia- I mean, this woman is a lead editor at one of the most highly circulated publications in the business, and she’s continued to support the ignorant stance of appreciating a place only for its superficial merits.

Blah. I just got all aggravated. I’m going to go get a pepsi. To calm me nerves.

smile for the colonizer

2008-05-18T22:55:00.004-04:00

so one of my friends called me today with a story (calm down, this is not just frivolous: i have a point to make here). I am going to relay that story to you. then i'm going to relay a story of my own. then i'm going to bitch about both of them, and if we're all lucky, i'll come to some sort of conclusion. ok, so now that you have an outline, let's begin:

Story 1: two of my friends (both black) were having brunch at a restaurant in harlem. a few tables over was a french couple taking a break from their bike tour of the city, very excited to be in historic harlem! there was no one sitting in between them. In my friend's words,

"a mariah carey song came on. it might have been vision of love. (friend 1) put his hand up in the air, and i started to do a little jig in my chair. next thing you know, this french woman LEAPS out of her chair and snaps a picture of us."

dang. and of course, the french woman thought nothing was wrong, and was THRILLED to have gotten a picture of the harlem natives, celebrating their people's music over sunday brunch.

Story 2: i was recently in India on a work trip (i like this story already because it misleads the reader into thinking i have a job that pays me enough to live in this crazy city). It was just me, my boss, and someone we shall henceforth refer to as "the colonizer," even though technically my boss is british, and she is not. anyways, we were in this like, for lack of a better word, botanic garden (long story. it was made mainly of rocks.), and we had stopped to take pictures by a waterfall. the colonizer took a lot of pictures, we milled around for a while, and then got ready to move on. as we were leaving that particular area, we passed by two indian children splashing in the water. their mother and father were nearby, and the father was trying to get them to hold still for a picture. my boss commented that it was going to be a cute picture, and the colonizer, agreeing and giddy with excitement, ran up and snapped a picture of the children. as the mother turned her shocked face towards the colonizer, i quietly fled the scene and pretended like i was not traveling with anyone that day.

Commence the bitching: ok so here's the thing - what is WRONG with people? and i guess more to the point, what is wrong with Western culture? the whole world doesn't have enough fingers to count the number of pictures Americans and Europeans have snapped of people and children of color while on their travels, thrilled to get a picture that really captures the exotic nature of whatever place they happen to be in. and i can bet you about one bajillion dollars that not a single one of those picture-snappers has ever had the desire to photograph a white stranger eating brunch, standing by a waterfall, or just standing still enough to be secretly photographed. I don't think i need to explain to you why this is a problem. what i do want to know, though, is how can so many people continue to be so incredibly ignorant of their own privilege, and of their constant exoticization and other-ization of anyone who is not white? How can you, an american visitor in another country, go through the whole physical motion of spotting a complete stranger, taking our your camera, aiming, focusing, and shooting without ever thinking "i wonder if what i'm doing might make that person uncomfortable." seriously, how? and for those of you reading this who really enjoy doing that, imagine it happening to you. you're sitting at brunch, and a tourist walks up, snaps a picture of you, and then coos over how positively AMERICAN it is! god. its offensive, degrading, and frankly just shocking that so many people continue to think its just normal.

so i guess the point is, i wish people would learn some respect. i don't photograph you and your children without asking (and frankly, i don't ask, either), and i hope you'll do me the same courtesy. because i'm not a fucking landmark, or a cultural experience, i'm a person who doesn't need you ruining my day by reminding me i'm actually an 'other.' i get reminded of that enough without having a permanent record of it stored on your camera's memory card.

yay

2008-05-17T16:28:00.002-04:00

i can't believe it took me like, over a day to notice this, but now that the gays can marry in california, guess who's getting married?

oh ellen and portia - the only celebrity gossip i just can't quit. of course this means that me and portia probably don't have a chance, but i'll get over it.

you know i once had a dream (like an asleep-dream, not a wish dream) that i was a waitress and ellen and portia came to eat dinner at my restaurant. i think i asked for their autographs. that part is a little fuzzy. point is they ended up giving me a house. possibly as a tip, possibly just because they were charmed by me. to date, that is the best dream i've ever had. ellen, portia, if you're reading this, congrats on your engagement. and if you're looking to give out presents, i don't yet have a house of my own. short of a house, small monetary donations are also accepted.

on a similar note...

2008-05-15T00:49:00.003-04:00

i know, i know, i wrote that other post a while ago so i cant just pick up where i left off as if a week hasn't gone by. wait, yes i can. this is my blog and i do what i want.

so like i mentioned, my "pet peeve" (and by pet peeve, i mean thing that makes me go into a blind rage) is when people are completely lacking self-awareness and/or the desire to think self-critically. one of the areas of life where this seems to be coming out more and more (and thus bothering me more and more) is of course the presidential race.

reading blogs is like, the new fun thing with kids these days, and since i quit celebrity gossip, my attempts to be cool have mainly revolved around various politically-minded blogs. recently, however, i've begun to run out of blogs to read because i've had to delete them from my favorites, one by one, as they become too frustrating to enjoy. here is the conundrum: all of the black people blogs i read support obama and hate clinton to the point where they refuse to acknowledge any sexism in the race, or any flaws in obama's campaign or his politics. the feminist-type blogs i read support clinton and hate obama in a conveniently mirror-image approach.

to anyone who fits one of those descriptions, i would like to pose a question: what the fuck is wrong with your brain? or, in the words of one of my friends from work, "its like a brain trauma ward in here." is it that you just want the other side to see your point SO badly that you exaggerate to the point of untruth? do you think you'll look weak if you admit that they're right on certain points? newsflash: this is not middle school, its real life. racism and sexism both exist. fucking deal with it, get over yourselves, and stop pretending like you have some sort of moral high ground when you KNOW you don't.

or more disturbing: perhaps you really don't know. maybe i'm just reading the opinions of a lot of black men who have never in their lives thought about or cared about the privilege they get from being male, and who have never bothered to notice sexism, and a bunch of white women who've done the same thing with their privileged status in this society as white. possibly the only thing that makes me more angry than a rich white male who is comfortable in his privilege is a minority who thinks that this one thing that makes him/her different from that rich white male is the most important thing in society. which brings me back to my point from my last post: not all of us have that luxury.

anyways, its late and it would be unwise for me to start lecturing you on intersectionality because frankly my spelling is deteriorating as we speak. but my point i guess is this: if the so-called 'liberals' in this country can't even open their eyes wide enough to see each other, we deserve another 8 years of bush.

also i'm expatriating.

Dizzaaammmn

2008-05-07T00:13:00.002-04:00

Best video I've seen in 2008. Most gangster old white man I've ever seen.

Fox Reporter Owned by White Priest

the watchful eyes of others

2008-05-06T10:58:00.003-04:00

This post will be kind of a new direction for me I think, because in general I have way more fun talking shit about other people and why they suck than like, self-reflecting. But what can I say, I’m in a kind of self-reflective mood. and I suddenly realized, after reading a very good blog post last night, that I have a thought other people might actually be interested in hearing.

So first-off, the blog post that inspired this ramble: its called “take my arm, my love,” and is more or less just about what it feels like to be gay in public – to constantly be aware of yourself and to be constantly aware of everyone who can see you in a way that straight people don’t need to be. The author talks about PDA specifically – how she always takes her girlfriend’s arm rather than her hand so that the action could potentially be read as nothing more than friendship, how she “stops, looks, and listens” before doing anything that might give them away as a couple. I’ve been especially aware of this recently because in new york you can’t help but always be in other people’s business, and things like the morning subway ride turn into daily reflections on how much straight people take for granted. I don’t think a morning has gone by in quite some time when I haven’t been on the train near a straight couple riding to work together. They cuddle, they kiss, they stare deep into each others eyes, they hold hands, and I always find myself being excessively repulsed by the whole affair. Which maybe is just because I’m not a huge fan of PDA, but I think more to the point, and what this other blog post was trying to get at, those are all things that I would in no way feel comfortable doing on the train. even little things like the kind of eye contact you make with someone you're dating, or how close you sit next to them on the train are things i'm constantly aware of. Not to say that I wouldn’t do any of those things mentioned above, but just to say that if I did, it would be a conscious, rebellious action – it wouldn’t be about just being madly in love and lost in the glorious wonderland of each other’s company or any bullshit like that, it would be about trying to prove I wasn’t scared of anyone else on that train. Which is kind of fucked up.

This past weekend I went to a friend’s wedding, and was sort of shocked by how many different emotions it made me feel. As some of you may know, I’m not a huge fan of “feelings,” so needless to say it was unsettling. The wedding was beautiful, and everyone was super-happy, and it was just all-around pretty great, but I found myself getting sort of sad at various points, which is weird because I have literally never wanted to get married – not that I actively don’t want to, I just never really thought about it as a kid, and then recently just sort of assumed I wouldn’t. it hasn’t ever been that important to me, but seeing how happy everyone was, how happy the bride and groom’s families were, etc. etc. made me all of a sudden super self-reflective because I was like, “oh dang.” It’s a pretty big deal to be able to get that kind of affirmation from your family and friends. And I don’t think its “necessary,” per se, but having the option is probably a nice feeling, huh?

But actually maybe “nice” is the wrong word. As teh portly dyke points out in her blog post, most straight couples (or single straight people for that matter) would have a horrible time trying to live for even a few days being as conscious of their every move as I usually am. But frankly I’m not jealous of that. I’m MAD about that because I’m just in general irritated by people who are not conscious of their surroundings or their place within those surroundings, but I don’t want that. Sure I want the safety that comes with being straight, or being white, or being a man in a racist, sexist, homophobic society, but thank god I’m not any of those things. And I think not being any of those things has forced me into this kind of hyper-awareness of my surroundings that I really appreciate. Its just not every day that I stop to realize how many people in the world, or even just in my subway car, don’t need to and don’t want to be conscious of the watchful eyes of others.

moral of the story, i guess, is that yes i will hold my girlfriend's hand in public, but no i won't feel completely comfortable (read: safe) doing so. but at the end of the day, i'm cool with that, because the discomfort means that i'm making a conscious choice, and it means i care enough about her and about myself to make that choice. which is a good thing.

running man: so far fetched?

2008-05-05T12:57:00.003-04:00

For those of you who, for some reason, may not remember the movie "The Running Man" I'll do a brief description. In the vein of most 80's & 90's Schwarzenegger movies, Running Man delivers a brand of action laced with brutal violence that you don't see much nowadays. In this poverty-ridden society the government tries to distract its citizens from the sources of their troubles with entertainment, particularly with a show called "Running Man," in which convicts are plucked from Federal Prisons and put on the set of this show where they must run through an American Gladiator-style course (in fact, I'm pretty sure the movie was inspired by the creation of the real Gladiator show in the 80's) while avoiding the show's stars who chase them through the maze attempting to kill them.

You're probably thinking- "Brittany, how the hell is this relevant?" I mean, today's shows and movies, while definitely indulging in gratuitous sex and violence, aren't nearly as bad (surprisingly) as those of the late 80's. I mean, take another look at Robo-Cop and tell me that scene where he's first killed isn't some of the most disturbing shit you've ever seen. So, that being said, while today's violence doesn't seem to be as unnecessary, unfortunately it is based more in reality than in fantasy. Now, I can't speak to whether or not basing violence in a fantastical setting makes a movie's audience more or less connected to it (or if it desensitizes them more) but it definitely seems to me that it creates a culture of acceptance around a lot of the problems that cause the very real violence on which movies like Street Kings are based.

Ok, to get another perspective, let's take movies and the entertainment industry in general out of the equation. Since probably the time of the US-Vietnam War America has created a culture of voyeurism and scintillation around violence. Whether it's the local news discussing a story about a woman stabbing a friend while watching Top Model (no lie, that crazy ish actually happened!) or some guy freaking out and punching someone on The Real World, our obsession with violence seems to verge on the pornographic. And this whole internet culture isn't helping things, either. One can go onto youtube to find actual videos of people being beat, shot, hurt or really KILLED.

So what do you think? Have we as a culture gone too far- is there any going back?

running headlong into the abyss

2008-04-30T21:45:00.006-04:00

so this is going to be a post about Obama and Reverend Wright. how could it not? but i'd like to start out with a quote i was reading today on the train: it's from Jean-Paul Sartre's preface to Fanon's "The Wretched of the Earth." Sartre is talking to the white european audience, explaining the value of listening to what i'm sure today's media would call Fanon's hate speech. He writes:

"Our victims know us by their scars and by their chains, and it is this that makes their evidence irrefutable. It is enough that they show us what we have made of them for us to realize what we have made of ourselves...But, you will say, we live in the mother country, and we disapprove of her excesses...You, who are so liberal and so humane, who have such an exaggerated adoration of culture that it verges on affectation, you pretend to forget that you own colonies and that in them men are massacred in your name. ...Have the courage to read this book, for in the first place it will make you ashamed, and shame, as Marx said, is a revolutionary sentiment."

It is shame, also, that we as a culture and that currently white americans in relation to this reverend wright thing, run from at all costs. we would much rather feel hate than shame, because to feel hate is to find somewhere else to put the blame, but to feel shame is to know you must change. More than anything else, i think this is what is coming out as Jeremiah Wright returns to the media spotlight.

I watched Wright's interview on Bill Moyer's Journal, and I have to say I thought it was actually pretty great. but apparently i'm the only one. the word "narcissism" seems to be ringing from the hilltops, which i think is surprisingly narrow-minded and infantile, even for the new york times. its true that Wright's media fling will probably not do great things for Obama's campaign, but i very much doubt he's throwing Obama to the dogs just to get his 15 minutes of fame. He's going on national television because his belief system, his way of life, and pretty much everything he's ever known is being attacked from all sides, and this is quite possibly the only opportunity he will have to defend it. Like it or not, this campaign is forcing the nation into at least a shallow discussion on race, and that might be the best we're going to get for a while. I don't blame him for trying to add to it.

So here's the deal: Wright is being called a bigot, a hate-monger, and just plain crazy from all sides. Obama is running to get away from him, and is still getting criticism for not running fast enough. The NY times is pointing to Wright's "embracing Louis Farrakhan's anti-semitism" (aka Wright's refusal to right Farrakhan off as nothing but an anti-semite), his "crazy" yet somehow very prevalent notion that the government is CAPABLE based on past and current actions of using AIDS to kill off black people, and his apparently hateful and shocking statement that America's hands are not clean of terror as proof that Wright is everything that is Wrong with black america.

fuck.
that.

I could go point by point, starting with the fact that what Wright actually said was that he may not agree with Farrakhan, but that "when he talks, black people listen" (true), but i'm slowly learning that there's not much point in laying out logical arguments about shit like this, because bottom line, it comes back to what Sartre was saying and why i put that quote at the beginning of this post: it may be cowardly, but its easier to "pretend to forget" than it is to look at yourself through the eyes of your victims. I listened to the longer clips of Wright's sermon about 9-11 and america's chickens coming home to roost, and his "god damn america" sermon, and they were brilliant and beautiful. He makes points about how god blesses people but does not bless the governments who fail them, and about how, in his words, "violence begets violence." I read the transcript of his national press club interview and found it to be quite the opposite of "unhinged" and offensive:" he talked about the need for the United States to apologize for the atrocities we've committed in the past. He talked about reconciliation as if he'd been coached by Desmond Tutu himself. Of Louis Farrakhan he said not "i agree with him" but "he is not my enemy." He refused to stoop to the level of condemning Islam, the only kind of condemnation that everyone still loves to hear. but to admit that there is even a grain of truth in his words would be to admit your own complacence in, and the ways in which you benefit from, the oppression of black people here in the US and the terror visited on poor people across the world as a result of american imperialism and american exceptionalism. to admit he might have a point is to admit that even though Farrakhan "did not put him in chains," you did. and that doesn't look great in the mirror.

this whole argument, i'm starting to feel, is a lost cause. our generation more and more seems to be incapable of self-criticism and self-reflection, and thus incapable of seeing ourselves through anyone's eyes but our own. I think that reverend wright's resurfacing in the media was a chance for people to think critically about the things he's saying that have so offended 'liberal' white america's sensibilities, and to think critically about why some 6,000 people would choose to attend his church if his ideas were so 'radical.' but its much easier to dismiss one man as crazy than it is to confront the reality that there is an entire population within this country that thinks those same thoughts, and that while many of us may not know those people at all, may have no idea what their lives are like or why they believe the things they do, those people know us very well indeed. they "know us by their scars and chains." and they have the ability, if we choose to listen, of helping us to truly know ourselves. but if this controversy has shown anything, its that we do not choose to listen, and we do not want to hear.

"It is not right, my fellow-countrymen, you who know very well all the crimes committed in our name, it's not at all right that you do not breathe a word about them to anyone, not even to your own soul, for fear of having to stand in judgment of yourself." - Jean-Paul Sartre

economics can bite me.

2008-04-16T20:38:00.004-04:00

i'm sure it has its benefits, but at harvard, "economics" means you don't have to learn anything EXCEPT economics. aka you will turn out an idiot with a fancy degree to make you think you're smart.

i'm trying to blog less about harvard because, well, i've moved on. and i think its best if harvard knew that and stopped trying to call. but its sort of difficult to let go completely when harvard just keeps making an ass out of itself. every once in a while i'm inspired (aka someone points me to a crimson article) and i feel compelled to say something about it. this is one of those times.

the subject: "a crack in the glass ceiling" written by, surprise surprise, someone without much experience, knowledge, or writing skill.

ok so as usual i have too much to say. i will try to break it down into a brief summary, followed by bullet points (or maybe numbers. i have yet to decide). that way you can just read the ones you want, but i still get to say everything i feel like saying.

summary: in an attempt to spin the democratic primary race in a new way (admittedly hard to do these days), sophomore brian j. bolduc has written an article which (possibly unintentionally) is really quite racist and sexist. the point he is TRYING to make (i think?) is actually one i kind of agree with: that electing a black man or a white woman president will probably not end racism or sexism. the points he actually manages to make with the body of his article are that jim crow wasn't a big deal, black people are oppressed because they don't get married enough, japanese people have superior work ethic to blacks and whites (but no political will/skills), and women would have equal standing in society if they would just stop having babies.

ah. i love it when people try to make complex arguments without even thinking at all, much less reading anything outside of the ec assignment that clearly inspired the article. it makes my job almost TOO easy. i almost don't even want to argue with this dude. but i will.

ok point 1 (say, i decided to go with numbers!): the pregnancy thing - no duh women have babies. and yes, the fact that they often have to take time off from work to do this contributes to their earning less/getting promoted less/getting fired more. congratulations on figuring this out, i don't think anyone has ever thought of it before. no, no wait, that can't be right. oh yes, its all coming back to me now: turns out there are actually ways to NOT punish a woman for giving birth. there are also ways of allowing the husband or partner of a new mother to participate in the whole "taking care of a baby" process so the woman who physically gave birth is not the only person legally able to take time off work. wow. crazy. i'm not even going to get into the fact that i think this dude referred to procreation as a "lifestyle choice" in his article. i guess i'm just glad that for once he wasn't talking about the gays?

2: for someone who seems so gung-ho about economics and statistics and empirical proof, i feel that this sentence feel somehow a tad short: "Married couples share certain qualities that make them more likely to succeed." ah. so when barack obama says “…many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow,” that's a generalization and a confusing of the facts. but when you say married couples are more likely to succeed, that just makes sense. the consistency literally astounds me. i'm speechless. i need to go lie down.

3: i realize i could go on for days about these little things, so let me address the major problem in the article - its complete incoherence. he's trying to make a distinction between political success and economic success, but is confused. pointing out that the economic situation of blacks improved before civil rights legislation was passed is an interesting factoid, but what does it mean? is he trying to suggest that there is no relationship at all between economic standing and social standing? is he confusing "politics" to mean pretty much anything that is not economics? does he believe that proving two things are not directly correlated proves that they are completely separate? honestly, i'm asking. because nowhere in the article does he make this clear. if i were to guess, i'd say he's trying to say that "political" forces, aka social forces, aka racism, have nothing to do with economics. and in order to prove that fact, he's tried to reduce the complex history of race in this country to an interaction (or lack thereof) of two very narrowly defined forces. obviously there's more going on - education, the economy of the nation, various social and political movements, and changes in the housing economy to name just a few things, but to try and address the interplay of these issues would be impossible in a one-page article. so instead, just write something that makes no sense!

the most irritating thing about this article really, is just that its another in a string of articles for as long as i've been reading the crimson that are just bad: they don't make sense, they're poorly written, and they contain various forms of racism and misogyny lightly veiled as 'science.' i get that its a college newspaper and that people without that much education are writing for it, and i get that learning how to be a journalist is just that - a learning process. but i fail to see how anyone can become a better writer through producing shit like this and having an editor just give it the green light with no criticism. the crimson needs to really start holding its writers to higher standards - the paper would improve, and the writers would actually learn something. which, clearly, they're not doing in class. so it may be their only hope.

ttfn

2008-04-05T13:35:00.002-04:00

i know i don't actually post regularly enough for you to even notice when i'm gone, but for some reason i feel the need anyways to announce that i'm going out of town, so no posts from me for another 8 days at least.

on the plus side, you still have brittany! i could have just commented this on your last post, but as long as im already here, yeah. that video was like, not really funny. and if someone was actually doing that on the subway i was on, i would get REALLY mad. people around here have a nasty habit of turning anything they don't understand into a joke. but some things are actually not that funny. like homelessness.

another pet peeve: those ads on the subway telling you not to give money to homeless people, and to instead donate to an organization that provides homeless services. makes perfect sense, right? people who are begging for money on the subway COULD be getting great services elsewhere but they're just too lazy. and they're on drugs. so don't waste your money on them. because of course it makes PERFECT sense that a homeless person, given the choice between begging you for money and going to get what they need in a less humiliating and degrading way, they'd choose begging you. how about whoever made that ad campaign tries accessing some of those services, finds out there aren't actually enough, and then shuts the fuck up? jesus.

anyways, peace out. see y'all in about a week.

How am I supposed to feel?

2008-04-01T21:08:00.002-04:00

So, if you pay any attention at all to what Kaya and I say, you'll have noticed that we both live in New York City and, as people not from the East Coast (Midwest, what-what!) we sometimes have an interesting, or at least different perspective on things that seem to be just the norm around here.

One of those things is the very visible presence of the impoverished and the homeless in the city. Sitting on corners, shaking cups or performing for bits of money, it's easy to see that not only are this city's apartment buildings and projects overflooded, but also the homeless shelters and mental illness facilities. Those of us living and working in the city are all too familiar with the occasional (and on some lines regular) subway begger or performer, coming through the crowded aisles and telling their story, singing a song, doing a dance or in some cases just flat out crying in order to get a bit of change or the grand prize of some actual paper money. And let's be real, I bet on more than one occasion you've stifled a laugh during a particularly crazy/funny/strange performance or tried not to be too obvious while rolling your eyes during a repeat performance of your local train woman's story (I swear this one girl had her speech down pact, word for word weekdays on the downtown 2 train).

So yeah, we all have our thoughts, jokes, annoyances, whatever with these situations, but now someone has actually created a video as a reaction. Take a look below.

So when I first saw this I'll be plainly honest, I thought it was kind of funny. No, more like pretty hilarious. I mean come on, satire is always good fun- and if you get into the layered nature of this joke you could make all sorts of comments on those in power taking money from the middle class workers, the suffocatingly crowded yet simultaneously painfully isolating nature of the subway and the at times ludicrous accounts given by people in order to shame tourists into pulling their quarters and dollars out of their pockets/purses. But, like all good things, this enjoyment of mine while watching this video abruptly came to an end about 10 or 15 seconds into it, turning into a strong annoyance, then a quiet, bubbling rage and finally solidifying into a sinking pit of shame in my stomach when the actual homeless man comes into the cab singing a song and the actor claims that he "can sing better than him."

I'm all for conversations on these sort of awkard and depressing social phenomena, but jokes like this, while generally amusing, don't seem to do much more than providing a cathartic release- not for the people suffering from poverty but for those "suffering" from having to look at them.

And that, my friends, is pretty problematic. :/

i like you, but i'm not ready to bond.

2008-03-31T23:22:00.003-04:00

like a moth to the flame (is this phrase a little out-of-date? can we start saying halogen lamp yet?), i seem to be perpetually drawn against my will to news about harvard and the various types of people that reside there (read: the various types of people i dislike). The latest bit of news is this new york times magazine article about the new leadership of my favorite club: True Love Revolution. sidenote: thats not actually sarcasm, they really are my favorite. just not maybe for the reasons they'd want.

anyways, this article led me to have two thoughts, which i will share with you now:

1) i know i may have asked this question before, but is there seriously NO other news? its one thing to publish an article about a 12-member club at an undergraduate college, its another, even more ridiculously sad for your publication, thing to publish more than one. don't think i didn't already read the article last summer about TLR. i read it. i thought it was absurd. i thought, "at least now that i've read it, i probably won't have to read it again." wrong. it just leaves you wondering what the big fascination is. word on the street is scientists are developing a machine that could accidentally implode the earth. but i guess the philosophical (not religious! i swear!) musings of a 21 year old virgin are also news.

2) while reading the article (LOST is in re-runs until april 24th, so the last few pages where leo confesses his secret sexy thoughts about janie were great monday night entertainment for me), it dawned on me that i think these people are a little confused. ok, i already knew they were a little confused, but you probably know all my old stale reasons. like "rational thought." here is my new one: this girl's whole argument is that she doesn't want to have sex with her boyfriend because that will release oxytocin (ahhh! run away!) and cause her to bond with him. which will then make her irrational, and will cause her to be heartbroken when they inevitably break up. To be safe, she's going to wait til she's married to take a hit off the oxytocin everyone's been getting so damn high off of. Here's the thing: if she's not basing her marriage off some sort of intimacy, "bonding," we might call it, how exactly IS she deciding who to marry? apparently her current boyfriend is cool and respects her and all that, but she doesn't want to get too attached. she could walk away at any moment. which is great if bonding is what you're trying to avoid, but then maybe they should change the name to "true like revolution." because i'm not feelin the love.

moral of the story: the whole claim that sex causes intimacy (which leads to disaster!) is probably true (ish). but if you're not having sex with your boyfriend, you're not particularly 'bonded' with him, and you could walk away whenever you felt like, chances are your lack of intimacy is about a bit more than lack of sex. so its probably not going to be a great discovery for you when you get married, have sex, and realize the oxytocin wasn't quite a big enough boost to make your relationship a functional one. luckily, you've also got oxytocin's hip older brother, oxycontin, to get you through the hard times.

as an additional aside, because i just can't help myself, i especially enjoyed the part where they say they're not homophobic because they haven't come out (chuckle) and said explicitly that gays aren't welcome. right. I recently had a conversation with someone on a different subject where they said the presidential race hasn't been racist at all because no one has called barack obama the N word, and no hecklers have yelled at him to "shine their shoes." I think its pretty much time for people to learn that you don't get a gold star for managing to not express your bigotry in the most blatant way possible. I'm thinking of starting a support group. It will be called "i hate you, but i had no idea you were smart enough to notice." just 12 steps and you, too, will be able to interact with minorities without making them want slap you upside your head. sign up today!

for your listening (and viewing) pleasure.

2008-03-30T21:39:00.001-04:00

I like this song and video. It has nothing to do with politics or society or any of the stuff this blog is about, I just wanted to post it. Huzzah!

in other news...

2008-03-28T20:09:00.002-04:00

So i meant to blog about this a while ago (like when it actually came out) but one thing led to another and i just didn't. deal with it. moving on, the new york times magazine "recently" featured an article entitled "when girls will be boys," about transmen at women's colleges. I read it kind of expecting it to be terrible, and was pleasantly surprised. Aside from the typical title and an awkward usage of the word "razzed" (who says that anymore?), the article was actually pretty good. of course it had its issues, which i'll lay out below as i love to do, but on the whole i'd recommend reading it. It seemed like the author tried pretty hard to write an interesting and honest article.

There was not too much mention of transwomen in the article, which isn't necessarily a problem since it was pretty specifically an article about transmen, but it did sort of make me wonder whether a similar article about transwomen would go over as easily (hint: probs not). which got me thinking all sorts of thoughts about gender and life, but i'll spare you.

So the one beef i had with the article was this: there was NO kind of mention of class anywhere in it, and the author talks about the "possibility of needing extra insurance," and casually mentions Rey's payment for testosterone and top surgery out-of-pocket as if its no thing. Now i'm no expert on "money" (god knows i'm no expert on money) but i'm pretty sure those things are pretty expensive. and i'm almost positive that MY insurance doesn't cover them. and my insurance covers a whole hell of a lot. the whole article is sort of written as if the only people who go through any sort of transition re: gender identity are wealthy (white) well-educated, "artsy" type hipsters and gays. and there are definitely those people, but ignoring all the poor people and the people of color within the transgender/genderqueer community seems to do a pretty big disservice all around in that it erases their stories, and kind of de-legitimizes the experiences of those well-to-do people, making their transition seem more like a fad than a legit experience.

Other than that though, good article. I encourage you to read it, and leave you to ponder the main point of the article: transmen at women's colleges - how do we feel? are they intruders? i mean i'd say sort of obviously no because as anyone who's study gender theory for one second or less would know, our society's gender issues can't be simplified into "man versus woman." so talking about transmen as boys trying to infiltrate a space for women is sort of like saying biracial students are just white people trying to infiltrate HBCUs. and on the subject of HBCUs, is it actually even legal to tell transmen they can't go to women's colleges? maybe i'm wrong about this, but i thought white people COULD go to HBCUs, just usually don't. wouldn't the same kind of rule apply re: gender?

anyways, ponder it. i especially liked the line about women's colleges serving simultaneously as "finishing schools and as incubators of American feminism." what a conundrum!

its a metaphor (aka "get over it")

2008-03-26T22:00:00.004-04:00

disclaimer: if you're like me and watch shows like the wire on dvd a year late because you can't afford HBO, this post might spoil season 3 for you. then again, season 3 was like, 3 years ago so if thats the case you need to step up your dvd-watching game. on to the post:

I don't know what's more disturbing: the article I read in the new york times today or the fact that said article has mysteriously vanished from the website. i'll have to do this from memory. If i recall, it said that about how 28% of Clinton supporters would vote for McCain over Obama, and 19% of Obama supporters would vote Mccain over Clinton.

(ok i took a short break from writing this to overcome my laziness and just google it, and of course the first link was to the new york times. like it was there all along. i see your evil tricks, internet. it was hard to find before.)

aaanyways, like i said, disturbing. i mean get that people get really invested in "their" candidate. you watch them on tv and on youtube, you get super passionate about the promise the future holds, you make t-shirts and signs and in general act like college students at a division III football game. i get it. its fun. ish. and i mean don't get me wrong, i totally get invested in things on occasion too. and when shit doesn't go my way on the television, i've been known to hold a grudge. For example, when (spoiler alert!) stringer bell got shot dead on the wire i was mad as hell for like, a week. i just walked around complaining about it to anyone who would sit still and feel to guilty to get up and leave. and for a week after that i didn't want anything to do with omar
and couldn't bring myself to start season 4. but i got over it and continued on to enjoy season 4. why? first of all its a tv show, and you need to let that shit go, and second of all because i had heard season 4 was the best one. but most importantly, omar is one of the best characters on the show, and if stringer is dead you need to just move on and watch the show for the characters you like who are still alive. i think you get my point. lets say your candidate's campaign were to "die." it wouldn't even be as dramatic and fucked up as it was with stringer. they'd probably just put it to sleep quietly in a press conference. but you'd have to be pretty much a complete idiot to carry the resentment about that straight through to november and vote for mccain instead of the democratic candidate. because lets face it: the wire is a tv show, but even though it LOOKS like a tv show, the presidential race is actually a contest that will apparently determine who our president will be for the next 4 years. so its like, a bit more of a big deal.

this was a very roundabout way of me saying this: people treat politics in this country like some sort of big game. which it is, in tons of ways, and we can get into that at a later date. but the part thats not really a game is the part about how the president's political interests affect national policy for 4 years. so if people actually care about shit like health care and education and aren't just registered as democrats because everyone else in their yoga class is, they might want to get over the bullshit and try not to hand over the election to john mccain.

oh, and also, wouldn't it be such a shame if the year we had a black man and a white woman as presidential hopefuls, they managed to tear each other down and give the presidency to a white man? yeah. that'd be a great one for the history books. jesus.

penalty on the court

2008-03-24T20:54:00.002-04:00

Damn. I'm not even going to begin to comment, this article says it all. Please read and comment what you think.

LeBron James first Black man to pose for cover of Vogue magazine. Find out why this is ass after clicking the link.

movie review: be kind rewind

2008-03-22T12:54:00.009-04:00

So before I really get into writing all of this, I'll preface my post by admitting that this is probably my first review, at least on here, and that I'm going to be decidedly unapologetic about my opinions. Moral of the story? If you disagree with me, I guess you can say something about it, but your time might be better served going somewhere else. Anyway..

I'll start right off by saying I loved this movie. Loved it. I'd pay to see it twice- in fact, I actually did (Kaya don't say I never did nothing fo' yo' ass). It was an excellent mix of funny, sweet, genuine, down to earth and sombre, all things that make a movie go from good to great. For those of you not familiar with the general concept of the film, I'll go ahead break it down for you:

Be Kind Rewind is a story following a lovably awkward group of misfit characters caught in the monotony of their everyday lives in the unbearably static yet ominously evolving community of Passaic, New Jersey. Mike (Mos Def) is a young man living with and working for his adoptive father figure Mr. Fletcher in 'Be Kind Rewind,' a slightly archaic (their only medium is the already obsolete video cassette) video store and community mainstay whose claim to fame is "1 day 1 dollar" rentals. When Mike's best friend, a neurotic mechanic named Jerry (Jack Black), hatches a plan to foil "the power plant" that is secretly "controlling" everyone in their community, he accidently creates an intense magnetic field around himself, and, in so doing, erases all of the tapes in 'Be Kind Rewind' on his next visit. After this a bunch of hilarity ensues as Mike and Jerry try to cover their asses by re-filming hobo'd, 20-minute versions of the films in the store, which surprisingly become a hit in the community.

What you won't see in the previews for Be Kind is the elephant-in-the-room issue of gentrification and the racial segmentation of communities. What you quickly learn as the film takes off, is that 'Be Kind Rewind' is in very real danger- the Housing and Zoning department of Passaic wants to demolish the building to make way for new condominiums, "improving the life of the people in this community." So, what once began as an attempt to stay out of trouble becomes a desperate and hurried mission to save the store from demolition and its inhabitants from having to relocate to the projects.

Normally for a movie like this I'd be all moved by the messages and have the humor as an added bonus, but Gondry doesn't do that. The film carries like a billion different messages (just read the reviews out there that discuss pop-culture consumption, the creation and ownership of art, race relations and creating community) but is able to refrain from really preaching any one of them. He doesn't make anyone the clear "bad guy" (lol, well, maybe nobody but Sigourney Weaver, who also has a cameo toward the end of the film) and won't give the audience a corny, cookie-cutter set-up or ending. It seems like it would be annoying, but what it really ends up being is very open and honest- you are let into these people's lives, and while your moment of voyeurism might be during a particularly comedic and turbulent time for them, there is no move made on their part to make you comfortable or pleased, they just exist, and I personally think that they, and the film, are better for it.

So yeah, this was kind of rambly, and didn't' say everything I felt (I don't want to give anything away) but suffice it to say that this was one of the best moviegoing experiences I've had in a long while. Gondry, Black, Glover and Mos Def managed to make me feel a melange of emotions: joy, rage, excitement, sympathy, outrage, nostalgia, and most of all- enjoyment.

[EDIT] And just because he's great, here is a Mos Def video. Mos, if you're reading this, I love you. Even if you do have like 8 baby-mommas... lol.

I went against my better judgment

2008-03-21T18:20:00.001-04:00

And read some internet comments, and remembered how racist everyone is. Sad.

a more perfect union?

2008-03-18T21:48:00.005-04:00

i had no choice. i know i just said like, yesterday that i thought the world was oversaturated with election 2008, but clearly barack's big speech is blowin' up all over the internet and television, so i'd be remiss not to address it...

for those of you who have not yet read the transcript or seen the speech, feel free to take a moment and get back to us.

alright. so this is a long speech, which means it might turn into a long post, but i'll try to be as organized and coherent as possible (take note, maureen dowd!) as i let you know what i thought of barack's big day:

on the whole, i have to say i was impressed. don't get me wrong: i'm not joining the obama camp by any means, nor do i agree with everything he said in his speech. i do, however, think it was extremely well-written and well-delivered. i also think it was fairly politically astute (more on that in a moment), and i do think that he did as good a job as he could have of bringing some issues re: race into the public arena that before now haven't been articulated successfully by any public figure. and thats a pretty big deal. well maybe not "issues," but "issue:" the issue of black anger/rage. back in the day we had malcolm X (sidenote, TERRIBLE idea reverend wright, stealing that 'chickens come home to roost' line from malcolm. didn't you heard? word on the street is that got malcolm shot!), stokely carmichael, angela davis, etc. etc. holding it down for rage, but they were never really talking about that rage to white people. nowadays if someone talks like they did, they end up on national television as anti-american and anti-white, and never in all of politics (at least that i know of) has any major politician ever stood up and addressed that rage. why bother? angry black people are a pretty small percentage of the voting population. it doesn't pay to do them any favors. so i do think it's cool that obama addressed the issue of black anger and tried to put it in some historical perspective. at the very least, a lot more people are trying to understand that.

here's where i think he went wrong: and by "wrong," of course, i mean "i disagree," not that i had any sort of expectation he would go "right" (no pun intended). yes he talks about that anger, he makes a bold move in refusing to 'disown' his reverend, but he does throw anger under the bus. in his attempt to maintain credibility as a candidate, he doesn't just disagree with the reverend's 'inflammatory remarks,' he violently disagrees to the point of dishonesty. Here is the quote i'm thinking of:

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

...is it just me, or did he just go a taaad too far? that last sentence has a nicer ring coming out of the mouth of someone like george w. bush than it does out of america's 'man of the world.' but beyond that, this entire quote seems to be catering to the idea that historic injustice is not to blame for current injustice. that the "hateful ideologies of radical islam" are responsible for conflicts in the middle east dismisses quite a bit of imperialist history re: the forming of israel, and the idea of white racism as endemic is abonimable implies that the history of slavery and racism in this country is not as deep-rooted as i think he knows it to be. i don't believe that barack obama even believes these things. but he said them. and that's what worries me.

but like i say, on the whole, it was a good speech. he managed to synthesize 400 years of racism in under an hour, which is no easy feat, and at the same time talk about it in a way that sounds like he's above it (which i don't believe). I think it was very moving and inspirational at times, and i think it was certainly the best it could have been politically - if this doesn't get him nominated, america's just not ready for a black president (don't be shocked, obama fans). However I guess at the end of the day i was left with these two main nagging little problems:

1 - the sacrifices of values this speech seemed to hint at for me made me wonder whether its possible for a black man to get elected president and retain any of the values i would have supported him for. he had to violently denounce the views of someone who has been his "spiritual guide" for 20 years. that seems like a big deal. and it seems like in order to beat mccain, he'll have to do a lot more than that.

2 - i guess this whole "audacity of hope" idea just isn't flying with me. the key point in his speech, i thought, came when he said that the problem with Rev. Wright's various statements is that they were static - that they assume we live in a country that isn't making progress, and that cant change. I think that's a very astute point. if you just call the white man the devil and then just call it a day, you're being neither productive nor insightful. However as Nikki Giovanni once said, the ability to say 'i don't like white people' is a necessary step to being able to truly like them. the key is to take both steps, which i have a hunch the reverend has done. The question is what to do next, and barack's basic idea seems to be "hope for a better future." and i'm sorry, but that just doesn't fly with me. since everyone loves to call out martin luther king's name at a time like this, i'll jump on the bandwagon with an example: sure, he hoped for change. everyone who wants something hopes for it. but he didn't just sit around hoping, and more importantly he didn't ask other people to sit around hoping. He asked them to take action. Barack seems to think that voting for him is action enough. and that, i'm just not buying.

dag, this was long. my b.

"i HATE rap and r&b music"

2008-03-18T11:02:00.001-04:00

Do you ever hear people say that? How often do you think it's because they're secretly racist?

Just something to ponder.

i tried abstinence and ended up with herpes

2008-03-16T19:12:00.003-04:00

so 'the teacher' has kindly pointed out what my conscience has been telling me for some time, which is that i really need to get off my ass and write another blog post. its just that recently the only things in the news have been hillary-obama and spitzer-kristen. and i really can't stand the thought of adding any more to either of those conversations. so i was at a loss. but here is a little thought for you to ponder while i wait for the news to start reporting news again:

a recent new york times article announced that 1 in 4 teenage girls now has an STD. needless to say, that number for black girls is significantly higher - more like 1 in 2. The article quotes Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards as saying that "the national policy of promoting abstinence-only programs is a $1.5 billion failure, and teenage girls are paying the real price." truth. i think when people talk about politics in this country, its almost like they actually legitimately think its a game. who's going to win, and what kind of strategies are they going to use, and what plays are they going to make, etc. etc. except that some of those 'plays' are things like Bush's abstinence-only nonsense. Sure, the next president could (and should) change that, but the damage is done. bad policies have real and serious impacts that can't just be erased, and this one is particularly bad. And of course this article didn't even mention the promotion of abstinence-only based education to countries we give money for AIDS relief to - what kind of damage has THAT done, and how easy will THAT be to fix? when you're talking about things like taxes, one presidential term might not ruin toooo many lives. but when you're talking about public health, it can be a matter of life and death. and thats kind of scary.

so wouldn't it be nice if the newspapers and news channels were spending a little less time talking about spitzer's fuck-up and a little more time talking about the future of his health care agenda? just a thought.

p.s. good to know you're keeping up with us all the way from mississippi. we miss you over here on the east coast.

in keeping with a theme...

2008-03-02T12:55:00.004-05:00

another post about feelings!

so i just finished reading Gloria Naylor's "The Women of Brewster Place," (don't read the editorial reviews at the bottom of the amazon page if you don't want the whole story ruined for you) and first of all i have to strongly recommend that if you read the book, you don't read it in a public place, like the train. that said, it was a really wonderful book, but one quote in particular stood out to me and has sort of been haunting me ever since i finished the book. without giving too much away, two of the women have a fight, and one of them walks out the door. in a couple pages, something really horrible is going to happen to her to make me wish i had not read that chapter. anyways, the narrator says this about the one who stays:

"theresa would live to be a very old woman and would replay those words in her mind a thousand times and then invent a thousand different things she could have said or done to keep the tall yellow woman in the green and black dress from walking out of that door for the last time in her life. but tonight she was a young woman and still in search of answers, and she made the fatal mistake that many young women do of believing that what never existed was just cleverly hidden beyond her reach."

i just wanted to share that, because i didn't want to be the only person feeling extra-depressed about that line. as a young woman still in search of answers, there are about a million things i can think of that i believe are just 'cleverly hidden beyond my reach.' so damn. this chapter of the book was just devastating.

that said, i totally recommend you read the book. the writing was beautiful, and the stories really just speak to a lot of different pieces of you.

extremely on point

2008-02-28T17:09:00.001-05:00

Star Jones own'd Bill O'Reilly.

my armor

2008-02-25T18:04:00.002-05:00

i realized today that i haven't written a post on just ponderings in general in quite some time. it also just so happens that a dude said something today at work that got me to thinking. so...

as brief background information, i work at a non-profit. so we were in a meeting today with this guy who was kind enough to give us some advice on a project we're working on, and he was telling a story about a justice reform he was on a committee for back in the day. he wrote a dissenting opinion to their final recommendations. "of course," he said, "nothing came of the recommendations. or my dissent." he paused for a moment, and then laughed a bit and said, "moral victory is a part of my armor."

now maybe i'm giving him a lot of credit for something that probably just came out of his mouth without a whole lot of thought first, but i thought this was really deep, and also sort of a very interesting and perhaps too-close-to-home insight into the psyche of the typical non-profit/NGO employee. out of that sentence what *I* got was "i've been working in this field all my life and it's even more fucked up now than it was when i set out to try and fix it, but facing that reality is a bit too much for me to try and wrap my head around, so i just try to take a symbolic moral stand. that way, if nothing else, i can say its not my fault."

i don't know, i don't really feel like going into a whole huge "unpacking" of this concept, but i do feel like this is one of the reasons i don't want to stay in non-profit work forever. It just feels a bit like running up against a brick wall over and over again until finally you stop even trying to get past the wall, you just try not to look like an idiot when you hit it.

then again, sometimes if you hit a wall hard enough, you bust through. these are the conundrums we face in life. feel free to ponder and discuss.

reimagining the coloreds

2008-02-25T08:39:00.008-05:00

If you know me then you probably know that I really enjoy fashion, not in the sense of "oh I look so good" but in watching the industry's trends, consumption patterns and news and such (also sometimes I look good ;). I'm not as on top of it as I'd like to be, but I keep up with the generally informed, and sometimes I stay ahead of the game, as I was with one of the season's newest trends- 'ethnic-inspired' prints and silhouettes.
So why am I mentioning this, and why didn't I mention it before? I was trying to not be nit-picky-because you know that's something I tend to do- and just be quiet about it. Let's face it- fashion is one of the most superficial, frivolous industries in existence, and part of why I like it is that it's straight up with that, and has no qualms about not saving lives on a daily basis (although sometimes unique ways to help others are found). But this is where that had to stop, for me.
I'm sure I'm not the only person of color who cringes when the word "ethnic" is used in design- a two-syllable shortcut for piling all the nameless cultures east of the pacific into one amorphous blob. "Chunky bangles," "bold geometric patterns," and "rich colors" are a few of the descriptors used for this, and designers and editors are eating the shizz up. And I know it probably isn't something to really get myself worked up about, but I can't help but be annoyed when designers rip off styles of dress and pattern from people and places that they rarely make an effort to actually see or understand, not to mention the fact that these aesthetics were rarely recognized as universally beautiful before white designers "adapted" them for their own collections. What's more annoying? The fact that the runways filling up with these dresses, accessories and, yes much to our dismay, headdresses, are overwhelmingly filled with lily-white models. Of course it'd be problematic to have only Black/Asian models in only these fashions, but you'd think that the one industry that to this day remains primarily segregated would try a we are the world approach during this particularly colorful season.
I guess you can't give people too much credit, though.

destiny

2008-02-24T16:50:00.003-05:00

So I was up way too late one work night when I saw the video I'm posting below and thought it was so sweet. I told myself I'd remember the name and group so I could watch it later and maybe download it onto my iPod. Of course I forgot and just spent like an hour trying to find this crap on the internet. anyway, watch the video and then I'll come back at you w/some words and such.

So after watching it I was like.. what's the big deal? Why did I want to find this so bad and why did I feel so connected to it? I mean, after all it's just another 'emo' chill out song. And didn't we have enough of that in the 90's between Enya and Dido? But then I paid a little more attention to the video itself and realized that it speaks so much to my feelings in this city sometimes. Not necessarily the romantic voyeurism, but the at times irrational sense of isolation. I know that if you live here, you've probably felt sad about dealing with something you had going on, and wandered the streets, looking at everybody go to wherever they're going with the people they're with and thought "why do I feel lonely right now?" I mean, there are so many things and so many people constantly surrounding us that we have no real right to feel lonely or unoccupied or disconnected. Or maybe it's just me..
Anyway I was thinking about this, and just wondered if anybody else ever felt this way, and if this was just a NYC thing, or a big city thing.. or hell, just a angst-y 20-something thing. Lemme know your thoughts.
Also, enjoy the video. :)

check this out

2008-02-20T12:49:00.003-05:00

If you haven't had the chance, don't know of Quench or don't write for it (which I am convinced that probably 80% of our readership do lol) then PLEASE check this out, an excellent post on a great subject.
For those of you who read this and went to Harvard- and to a more minute level of detail- those who took Ec10, this (Michelle Tea's block quote) is exactly how I felt throughout all the sections on lower class households and public education.

(P.S. Kaya, I just made "hegemony" a tag in our little tag box... can you believe we didn't have that crap on there already? Weirded out.)

a random (and sad) thought

2008-02-19T17:07:00.004-05:00

I was in a cab today coming back from one meeting to go to another, and on Taxi-Vision or Cab-Cube or whatever that taxicab network is, I saw this (or at least something like it) go across the news ticker on the bottom of the screen just below the weather:
"Cab driver commits sex assault on two passengers. Including exotic dancer."
I had two reactions to this.

1) Terrifying. Thanks for that taxi-tv, I am in a cab.
2) Why did you have to mention the profession of one of the victims? Because she was an exotic dancer? Why should that have any bearing on the fact that she was the victim of a very violating crime?

It just makes me so annoyed when people act as though sex crimes are justified when committed on sex workers or those whose occupations deal with the sexual. Why should a sex worker have less rights, access to protection or respect from fellow human beings because of his or her occupation? Not to say that I condone or denounce sex work (I will make no official stance on this blog, my feelings on this are personal and will remain that way) but America is so full of prudes. You'd think for a country/social system that breaks everything else (including the body in some ways, hello patented human DNA strands) we could accept the genitals as property and the acts they can do/services they can provide as real services (arms and hands for massages..?) and respect them as such.
Things are sad.

Oh and for any morons who want to say something stupid like "do you know the situations poor prostitutes have to go through.. unwilling sex workers... blah blah blah" I am aware of this and am not an idiot. Also I know that life is nuanced, but since conservatives like to isolate incidents and situations to discuss and disect, I will do the same for this!

beating a dead horse

2008-02-13T21:42:00.004-05:00

sometimes you beat a dead horse when you don't really have to. sometimes its because you're locked in a room with nothing but a stick and a dead horse. this is kind of how the new york times is making me feel. i don't WANT to post again about the barack-hillary epic duel, but apparently thats the only thing worth printing in the news, so who am i to try and think of something else to blog about?

anyways, maureen dowd had an op-ed about this in the times today. now i don't know if i've mentioned recently that she's not the kind of person i ever want to find myself forced into conversation with, but maybe now's not the time to go into the multitude of reasons maureen dowd and i will never be friends. suffice it to say that although i thought her op-ed was shitty per usual, it had a lot of great quotes. which i will now pick up and use to promote MY opinion instead of hers.

example one:

"Elaine Sirkis, 77, an Obama supporter, confided that she just isn’t sure she’s ready for a woman president. Betty Conway, 83, a Hillary supporter, confided that she just isn’t sure she’s ready for a black president.
As Conway walked away, Sirkis smiled sheepishly. “I’m sorry,” she told Berman sweetly about her friend. 'She’s a bigot.'"

i can't believe someone would use this quote in an op-ed and then not even "unpack that," as i love to say when i'm feeling pretentious. So i feel like this quote basically sums up how i feel about this race, and america in general right now. Its funny because i was always the first to jump up and get mad when people tried to say that its not fair how anytime someone says anything that might be construed as slightly racist, they're a bigot. and now i sort of get what they mean. don't get me wrong. if you say something racist, i still think you're a racist. but how come when you say something sexist, you're not a sexist? thats a bit hypocritical of us "liberals," no? not being ready for a black president is bigoted, but not being ready for a woman is just par for the course? it would be funny if it weren't so ridiculously true.

Dowd writes that "It’s not yet clear which prejudice will infect the presidential contest more — misogyny or racism." Its possible she just needed a nice transition between the previous paragraph and the next one. but if she really meant that, i guess "clarity" is not really her strong point. every day it seems to become more and more clear that misogyny is running away with this race. its almost no contest at this point, as evidenced by a joke she quotes just sentences later saying that february is black history month, and that unfortunately for hillary there's no "white bitch month." and of course there's the hillary nutcracker, and the new axe body spray ad. yeah, you're right maureen. its totally unclear whether sexism or racism is more rampant in this debate. why just last week i heard someone call barack a nigger while purchasing an obama sambo figurine. oh wait... that would not be acceptable behavior, would it?

now just to set the record straight, i'm not trying to say racism is NOT happening. i'm just trying to say people need to wake up from this "obama-mania" and at the very least recognize their own bigotry. it seems like more and more everyone seems to be rallying around obama, condemning any black person that might not support him as a "house negro" (because of course obama is SUCH a field negro, and because of course that metaphor is in no way overplayed), and just generally going buck-wild for obama like he's actually something new. you know, he's aiight. and if he's the nominee, i'll totally vote for him. but when you start to see things like "cult of personality" get thrown around in the papers, you have to start to wonder whether it might be time for everyone to take a deep breath and do some exercises in rational, independent thought. i'm just sayin. in my opinion hillary and barack are pretty dead even as far as policy goes, so i'd vote for either one and be satisfied with neither. but if this race gets any more disrespectful to women OR black people, i at least am going to be pissed. as it is, this entire year is already leaving a bad taste in my mouth. way to go, america. i love you too.

i love upeople

2008-02-03T22:17:00.000-05:00

so last night I went over to Solomon's Porch in bedstuy and saw Hanifah Walidah and Olive Demetrius's documentary, U People. you can check out their website here, if you're so inclined - they also do a fabulous podcast.

the basic premise - while shooting the music video for Hanifah's "Make a Move," they also shot a lot of footage of all the women in the house interacting, talking about life, and just generally getting deep. Then they made that footage into a film.

so this post is not going to be long, I just really wanted to urge people to check out the site and see the movie when it starts going to film festivals. It really felt to me like I was sitting in my own living room, talking to my own friends. I felt like every conversation I saw on that movie was one i've had thousands of times before, but just the experience of seeing it on screen, of hearing those words come out of someone else's mouth, was intensely validating. Hanifah and Olive spoke about how these types of conversations about race, gender, and sexuality are conversations that we as black women and queer black women often have among ourselves, but they are not conversations that often make it into the public sphere. This movie is their attempt to bring some of those conversations out of the living room and into other people's living rooms, and I think that's sort of great. I just wanted to give a shout out to them and to all the beautiful people in their movie. I think its the kind of movie everyone can get something different out of, but for me, it was just great to see myself reflected in so many other people.

so yeah. this post was a bit full of feelings, but that's probably a stunning recommendation for a movie, no? see it. love it. check out their podcast. its great.

spare change?

2008-02-01T11:57:00.000-05:00

So, in case you hadn't heard, the the economy isn't doing so hot. At all. According to the NYT this morning the job market just slimmed down to the tune of 17,000 jobs. This, along with the staggering housing market (now is a good-ass time to refinance your mortgage. But I guess if you're reading this you don't have any sort of mortgage. And if you do, huzzah, we have for reals grown-up readers!) and the lack of consumer confidence (the retail market did pretty sh!tty during this past holiday shopping season, if you hadn't heard) spells one thing very clear-

RECESSION.

Yeah. So here we are, the great big U.S. in a recession. Now, while I'm not an economist, I took one year of Ec10 (which admittedly was one of the worst classes of my entire Harvard career- sorry, Marty) and am pretty much a reasonably smart American, things that make it no surprise to me that the economy always has and, as long as we keep capitalism, probably always will be an ebb and flow of growth and recession. It's just the way things are. What sucks and is slightly new about this is the context in which we're receeding now. For one of the first times in popularly-known history, we are receeding in the midst of a war- you know typically a country going to war was a sure bet for giving the economy a nice little booster shot- industrial jobs here and there, general state of fear that would manifest itself in increased patriotism and sentiments of "buy American" and "support American businesses." Now, however, we're in the middle of a war that half of this country never supported and the other half doesn't even understand, with no real jobs being created to support the efforts and the jobs that COULD be created out-sourced by greedy-ass corporations (thanks, Haliburton). If that weren't enough to knock patriotism and general morale down a few steps, mishaps like Katrina aren't doing much to help.
But it's election year- we'll get a new leader and certainly that will help! Well no, no it won't.
And that part really just sucks to me. The one historical time in American history where it's actually viable for a woman of any race or a Black person (nevermind how flawed their platforms or politics are) has a chance to be a strong contestant and perhaps winner in the race for the presidency and we're facing a potentially large economic crises and some of the biggest, most complex problems this country has had to deal with.
And you know what sucks the most? This lagging economy isn't going to affect anybody as bad as it's going to affect the dying middle class and the burgeoning lower-middle class. But, as they have proved time and time again, they'll vote for someone on socially conservative issues that marginalize half of the people in their own communities before considering the ways in which fiscally conservative politics can (and often do) give the little man the shaft. The rough end of it, too.

in lieu of the substantive

2008-01-22T12:47:00.000-05:00

My top five list of dirty things I saw or had the misfortune of experiencing this week.

5.) A lady pulls her cart up to the check-out of Bed, Bath & Beyond with her puppy in the little part for kids, and the puppy (which is really a dog, a Shih Tzu, I'm pretty sure) is laying on a blanket she has for it, for comfort. A manager comes up, and points to the dog saying "What is this??!?!?!?" and the lady looks confused. I watch and am confused, because this guy loves dogs and is always talking about them (don't ask why I know this). It turns out that the blanket did not belong to the lady, but to the store, and that she intended to put it back when she was done shopping. Needless to say, they made her buy the blanket.

4.) A rat chasing a mouse (or another, smaller rat) on a subway platform. The rat caught the mouse and then bit it. Then they fell into some dirt and scuttled away.

3.) While waiting at the corner of 44th and Broadway I breathed some of the sewer gas that comes out from that manhole all the time. Into my mouth. I tasted sewer for like 3 minutes afterwards.

2.) This little old lady wipe her nose on a shirt in Hamilton Palace. Luckily I was buying a microwave. And it was in a box.

And the number one dirt fact of my week

1.) A guy pick up his dog's poop with his bare hand. No lie. Got an eyefull of that jewel this morning.

Sorry Kaya, I know you're trying to write things that are "meaningful" and "smart" but I thought it would be fun to go "tasteless" and "pointless" since I haven't written in so long. ;)

in response to brother komrade...

2008-01-21T21:58:00.000-05:00

dude commented on my previous post and mentioned that he'd love to see someone talk about this whole presidential race from a more revolutionary perspective. now i'm not going to claim that i've got the revolution planned out or anything like that, but reading through the lines of his comment (and maybe i'm wrong, but this is what i read) maybe he just meant he wishes someone would talk about how fucked up politics is in this country instead of talking about who said what to whom and whether barack or hillary is better. which is a valid point. because i agree, they are both awful. and i've gotten sort of caught up thinking about this whole presidential race because i think the media portrayal of the way race and gender are playing into this is FASCINATING. but that being said, i think its time i made an important distinction: i'm fascinated by the race. i am very, very underwhelmed by all the possible outcomes.

so here is the real question i'm struggling with right now. it's not barack or hillary, it's to vote or not to vote. let me explain:

voting: could be considered a good thing. you're "participating" in democracy and all that great shit. when you talk to a stranger about politics, they can't accuse you of being a hypocrite for criticizing politicians and then not even 'doing anything' about it. when you register to vote, you also usually get jury duty. sometimes that can be fun. you can fuck with the judges and tell them you hate white people, and see whether they keep you on the jury or not. i mean the possibilities are pretty much endless. voting is fun! also a lot of people like to yell "vote or die." and i'm not really ready to die, so maybe i should vote.

but...

not voting: i'm just not really sold. i'm sure i'm not the only one who "suspects" that our electoral system is not completely democratic, and that maaaaybe not everyone's votes are actually getting counted. i'm sure i'm also not the only one who is underwhelmed by the current presidential hopefuls, although maybe i'm in a minority on that. but suffice it to say i AM underwhelmed, and i don't especially want any of them as my president. so that being said, what would i be doing by voting? doing it just so i could say i could? making myself feel like my opinion matters even though its quite likely it doesn't? putting in my vote for the candidate i know won't win just so i can count as one person who supported kucinich? i guess when it comes down to it, i'm just reluctant to do something that sort of feels fundamentally like lying to myself. you know? and as a side note, the whole 'vote or die' campaign really freaks me out. it feels like brainwashing a whole generation into thinking that voting is the only way to make any kind of difference you might want to make. when the reality is voting is not really a way to do much except jury duty. although as i mentioned before, that could be fun.

so that's my story. its not 'revolutionary' or anything like that, but it is how i REALLY feel about this whole nonsense, so in the spirit of honesty, fuck barack obama and fuck hillary clinton. they are both terrible.

the race of the century

2008-01-17T22:42:00.000-05:00

i know, not really tough competition, considering the century just got started. i think what i really meant to say was something along the lines of "the race thats going to feel like it took a century to finish." i mean come on. if the entire new york times appears to be devoted to the presidential race now, feel free to put me out of my misery a good few months before november.

but thats beside the point. what i actually wanted to talk about re: ELECTION 2008!!!!! is the whole "black man" "white woman" thing. actually, maybe we should clarify. because barack seems all about calling himself black but never manages to mention the man. and hillary is equally gung-ho about being a woman but never seems to squeeze in the "white." i'm just pointing this out because i feel like the dialogue surrounding this whole barack v. hillary thing is both completely obsessed with race and gender yet magically and simultaneously completely uncritical. and through the eyes of a black woman, some of the failures of this dialogue seem pretty obvious. for example, hey: did you know that both race AND gender are a part of everyone's identities? shocking. if you liked that one, be sure to stick around for lesson 2: why a mention of past cocaine use is not synonymous with "bringing race into the conversation."

anyways so i don't even have any answers here, but i wanted to leave a couple thoughts for you to ponder as you procrastinate from whatever it is you're actually supposed to be doing. i'm sick of complaining about how the media is racist and sexist, so i'm going to go ahead and ignore all the idiotic things they say and try to spark an actual dialogue about the issues of race and gender in this election. here's some food for thought. in my favorite: an itemized list!

1. i read an interesting op-ed in the new york times the other day arguing that hillary's appeal to the idea of being the first female president is basically "so last year." meaning that even though we've never had a female president, people feel like women are not so badly-off in this society. there are a lot of (white) women in positions of power in this country, whereas minorities (and the columnist argues minority males, although i have to point out that just because black girls are doing better in school than black boys, it doesn't mean they're doing great) are struggling. so barack is more of an inspirational figure because black is a bigger barrier than woman?

2. but if THAT'S the case, then how come the media is all up on hillary, and they can't seem to get enough barack-love? i actually read an op-ed the other day that criticized hillary clinton for wearing a similar outfit to two different interviews. seriously? unless barack wore a suit to one and hammer pants to the next, i'm going to have to assume hillary wasn't the only one who made that faux pas. and i won't get started on the whole "crying" thing, because it will just make me mad. and i'm in my happy place. in fact, to read more on why woman might be a bigger barrier than black, just see my last post. also see the life and times of Shirley Chisholm - that black woman no one ever even knew ran for president.

3. more and more i see/hear black people flocking to obama, saying we have to stick together, getting mad at hillary for one perceived slight or another. i had to stop reading the field negro, which used to be entertaining for me, because it just got too damn sexist. dude was talking about what "the man on the street" thinks, as if there is no woman on the street. talking about how black people need to stick together, calling anyone who defends hillary against barack a house negro. first of all, that metaphor is really getting overplayed. second of all, just because there's no term for a gender "house negro" doesn't mean i owe you shit, black men. so please stop acting like the only thing that matters to black people is their blackness, just because thats the only thing you personally, as a wealthy straight black man, have going on.

4. and i mean, i could go on for days with the thoughts i've been storing up, but i sense that my grammar is not that on point tonight, so i want to wrap it up before i embarrass myself: why is it that "i don't want to bring (race)(gender) into this" is such a hot thing to say in this election? we have a black man and a white woman in the running for the democratic nomination, and people DON'T want to talk about race and gender? i get that as a candidate, you might not want to consistently bring up the thing that makes some people uncomfortable about you, but i also kind of feel like you look like a straight up idiot not talking about it. and beside that, this is sort of a moment in history. there's an opportunity here for our country's fucked up issues around race and gender to become something people actually WANT to discuss. something that's in the news, something that people are talking about and maybe developing a more critical view of. that seems like something you might want to go for, no? and frankly, bottom line, even if americans arent "ready" to talk about race and gender at a higher level than "women cry a lot" or "i don't trust black people," if people aren't ready to talk about it they're probably not ready to have a white woman or a black man as their president. so if hillary and barack are trying to win this thing, they might want to start thinking about ways to talk about their own identities without causing pandemonium. but i guess thats just a thought.

people in sexist houses should not throw stones

2008-01-11T15:03:00.000-05:00

Ok so first things first: I know I haven’t blogged in like, ten years. Its terrible. I’m ashamed. Laziness has reached an all-time high, and I apologize profusely.

But lets not cry over spilled milk. Moving on, I have a blog post in mind that I’ve literally been planning to write for like, a week, but only just now got the energy up to actually start writing. And I feel compelled to make an additional disclaimer that every single source for this entry comes from the new york times. Not because I think it’s a stellar paper or anything. Come on! Didn’t we JUST have a talk about how I’m lazy? Try and keep up. So here goes:

I hate it when forces outside of myself compel me to stand up for someone I don’t even like. It’s like in 2nd grade when everyone made fun of that fat kid who sat in the corner and had a bald spot on his head from where a fan fell on him. You didn’t WANT to say anything because you don’t want people to think you’re friends with him. But when they start throwing rocks, you’re kind of backed into a corner. This is how I feel about Hillary Clinton. She’s way too moderate for me and I don’t think I would love her as a president. But people have started throwing rocks, and now I’m going to have to kick their asses. Playground-style.

After this presidential race is over, I doubt people will even be able to make the argument anymore that race is a bigger deal in America than gender. Barack Obama is sailing along like everyone’s little black wonder-boy, and people clap their hands in glee over how articulate and clean he is. Don’t get me wrong, I get that that’s problematic. But at the end of the day, Barack is a man. Ipso facto, he can totally lead our country. Hillary? The Wiz shoulda had a woman singing that song “you can’t win.” I swear. I continue to be shocked by the lengths to which people will go to discredit this woman, and the lengths they will go to do so without ever touching on a single POLITICAL issue.

Case in point: this latest “crying” fiasco. Now I don’t want to point fingers or call anyone a crybaby, but John Edwards as far as I can tell has been crying himself to sleep every night for the past year, and people think its sweet. I think we all know Hillary can’t do that without getting labeled an emotional woman, incapable of leadership. So she shows a tough face. And people call her unlikeable. And then Barack throws her a bone and calls her “likeable enough.” What a swell guy. So she tears up. TEARS UP. She doesn’t even really cry. And BAM, everyone is all over it. Hillary’s too emotional. Hillary is a calculating bitch who only cried to get sympathy votes. Hillary can’t handle the pressure. Hillary’s desperate. Hillary is still married to a man who cheated on her so we should all think about that instead of her politics. Come. On.

I know this is getting long, but I need to make a special example out of just a few articles. For starters, Maureen Dowd: that woman gets on my last nerves. In her latest op-ed entitled “Can Hillary Cry Her Way to the White House?” she has the audacity to claim that every single one of Hillary Clinton’s political victories was a sympathy vote sparked by a previous embarrassment Hillary had suffered at the hands of a man. Dowd, who I’m certain considers herself SUCH a new-age feminist, seems to believe that not only is Hillary just some woman who would never have gotten ahead on her skills alone, but that the majority of voting-age women are completely incapable of rational thought, and are driven only by their traumatic memories of past wrongs.

Gail Collins seems to feel similarly about the new Hampshire win being a sympathy vote however she does make the astute point that Hillary seems to do best when she’s just speaking her mind, however boring that might be to watch on CNN. She’s not passionate like Barack, but she does have something to say. (unlike Barack? Oh. Snap.)

This is getting long so I guess I’ll end it. If you want to check out a couple other op-eds, I’m sure you’ll find them as fascinating as I did.

http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/us/politics/10women.html?ref=politics
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/us/politics/09moment.html?fta=y

my point? I guess really my main point is just damn. If this is what it’s like to try and be a successful woman in this country, I’m glad I have no ambition. The rampant sexism and subsequent rampant denial that sexism plays any role in this whole campaign is absurd, and it makes me pretty pissed. Oh and don’t even get me started on the whole “you can’t count those 8 years she was living in the white house for shit because she was just a wife” business. If she had been president first (ha!) you can be damn sure everyone would be singing bill’s praises about how well he handled being the first ever first man, and how much he was able to accomplish politically while living with the president. Jesus.

Ok I’m done for real now. Lets all be mad about sexism together. And then a little sad about the state of our world.

Over and out,

kaya

coincidence or power: think about it.

2008-01-02T11:59:00.001-05:00

First off:

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

We here at Afropologe look forward to raging, griping, poking fun and having a generally great time with all of you in 2008. :)

Now to my blog..
Have you ever started your day with something really shitty or annoying happen? Like you wake up, brush your teeth, get in the shower and as you shave you either cut yourself or like bang your elbow? Or on the way to work somebody cuts you off and then the rest of the day seem to just go right down the crapper? I’m assuming you said “yes” and if you didn’t – not because you haven’t experienced these exact occurrences but because you, for some reason, lead a completely happy and worry free life – then you are a weirdo. Well, what if I told you that there are lots of people out there that believe that you’re kinda at fault for the day you’re having, and that if you put a smile on your face all you want (and more!) is right there for you?
Yeah, it sounds pretty crazy stupid to me, too, which is why when my Mom gave me the book “A Complaint Free World: The 21 Day challenge” I rolled my eyes and was pretty annoyed. Ever since that “The Secret” shizz came out a few months ago this whole “power of thought” idea has been picking up steam (and a hell of a lot of revenue) all over the country and world. People are trying to change their thoughts according to the “law of attraction” that says that your thoughts send out some sort of vibrations into the world that attract to you exactly what you’re thinking about; So if you worry about fixing your debt, concentrating on that debt will attract more to you, but if you look forward to and think about being financially stable and successful, you will attract this sort of success to you.
I’m sure that if you read this blog that you know me by know, and you know that I’m gonna have a couple things to say about this idea. First let me start with what’s problematic about it- I mean... can we say hegemonic? If this isn’t hegemony at work then I don’t know what is. Convince a bunch of people that they reap what they sow in their thoughts so if they are unsuccessful or experience injustice they feel that it is, somehow, partially their own fault and are discouraged from action. I mean, in regards to the whole financial standpoint of this- we live in a Capitalist society, and in such a society it’s pretty much impossible for everyone to have financial security and stability. I mean, that’s just how it is, so saying to people that if they think positively they’ll get it isn’t really effective since it’s all a numbers game and you just can’t beat some odds. I mean, there are some situations where getting angry and complaining is absolutely necessary in order to change things or to bring notice to a situation that needs action.
On the other hand, I can see a potential benefit in this. I mean, I don’t think it’s very easy to argue that the world does not need a little less negativity. There’s a lot to be said for taking a conscious step toward bettering the way you approach the world around you, and even if the benefit is only felt by you, it’s still something worth trying. I’m a big believer in kindness having major effects on people without major efforts and I feel like putting less negativity in the world (via being “complaint free”) could possibly help.
So what is the challenge, you ask? It involves tracking your complaining (complaints, criticisms or negative judgments- oh and gossip, too) by using a physical marker- so if you have one of the complaint-free sponsored bracelets then every time you complain you must switch the bracelet from one wrist to the next. The goal, and challenge, is to go 21 consecutive days without switching your bracelet. Each time you switch your bracelet, no matter how far along in the 21 days you’ve gone, you must start over again. In the book (which I read, it was pretty easy and quick to get through) they say that it takes the average person 4-8 months to go the 21 days.
Where does that leave me? Well, I’ve decided to give it a go, and ever since the 26th of December I’ve been making a modest attempt to track my own negativity. I’ll let you know how it goes. Hopefully it won’t take me TOO long. And I’m experiencing a few of the benefits now.

So- what do you think? Does this seem like a nice idea or just a fleeting fad for Oprah addicted Moms?

If you take up the challenge, let me know. We can be strong together!

P.S. The complaints only count for spoken words- not thoughts or written things, so this blog is FREEEE RANGE! Yes! Excellent.

ho ho ho

2007-12-25T17:06:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas! For those of you celebrating, I hope you're with people you love. For those of you not- enjoy the day off! Hellz yeah!

do me a favor...

2007-12-19T19:01:00.000-05:00

two favors, actually:

1- forward this link around: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/view_cause/47176 and donate money if you got some to spare sometime between 3pm thursday and 3pm friday.

2- don't take this to mean i'ma advertise for you, too. this is a one-time deal. ;-)

so basically facebook has this "giving challenge" (i know, facebook is trippin) where they are going to give $1000 to whatever organization can get the most PEOPLE (not the most money) to donate in a 24-hour period. there's also some later prize i think that's more money. point is, if like a million people donate a dollar, you win. whereas if one person donates a million dollars, you lose. although i guess either way you have a million, so its win-win. win.

anyways, MTPC is cool. They are working to make sure that the hate crimes bill protecting gender identity and expression, "An Act Relative to Gender-Based Discrimination and Hate Crimes," HR-1722 will be pass in Massachusetts. You can read about it here:
http://www.masstpc.org/tp/article/23/transgender-legislation-introduced
This legislation would strengthen hate crimes law, and offer legal protection for transgender and gender-variant people in Massachusetts. they need money. hence this post.

you can think of it like a facebook gift. donate a dollar, and then write on my wall (or anyone's wall) saying you did it, and it'll be pretty much exactly like a gift. except you know, a 'gift' is actually just a picture that you pay a dollar for. which is a whole nother reason facebook is trippin. but i digress.

alternatively if you are mad poor, just forward the link to people who aren't as poor as you. i know we all have friends with all kinds of money buying up pictures of josephine baker in france and shit. make them donate dollars. ;-)

alright. just in case you forgot, this is the website, and you have to do it between 3pm thursday and 3pm friday. otherwise you're just not good at following instructions.

thanks and love,

kaya

fuck mtv

2007-12-19T00:30:00.000-05:00

ok so i'll withhold publishing this post until i get approval from my co-blogger to trash a specific company, but it should be ok, right? because everything i blog is just my opinion. and brittany does not control me. i can hate mtv all i want. and i do. here's why:

so this is a spoiler. but chances are if you don't know who won a shot at love with tila tequila already, you didn't care all that much to begin with. tila chose bobby. ok backtrack a moment, and lets look at the two finalists:

dani: i may have mentioned her in an earlier post. SUPER cute, really genuine and sweet (or at least the cameras portrayed her that way), pretty androgynous, dressed fashionably and definitely not femme-y, refused to wear that crazy bikini outfit tila wanted them to wear in that one episode because "its not who she is," pretty much america's new sweetheart. everyone watching the show is in love with dani. tila seems to be in love with dani, but i guess its always hard to know when you're just watching a show.

bobby: fairly cute (for a boy) but puts way too much gel in his hair, does a couple things that would lead you to believe he's gay and then overcompensates by talking about how much he wants to bone tila all the time. pretty sexist, although they start editing that out more and more in the later episodes and assume you're going to forget some of the shit he said earlier in the season. from upstate new york, homophobic family. he himself seems a taaad homophobic but willing to get over it. not so articulate. sweet and funny, but basically just not as cool as dani.

so its this whole dramatic thing, blah blah blah, tila picks bobby. now first of all let me just point out: BOBBY didn't even think bobby was going to win. which leads you to wonder...

ok so maybe tila really did like bobby better. i find it hard to believe, but maybe. but i still have this sneaking suspicion that MTV planned to have a man win all along. i mean dani is great, but what would it do to tila's career as a sex symbol for teenage boys to have her dating a real live not-what-they-see-in-pornos lesbian? what would it do to mtv to have a show in which a woman actually captured another woman's heart?

i know at this point you're probably saying "kaya, chill the fuck out. its a reality tv show." and i'll admit you have a point. BUT i will continue to whine about this because it actually is really upsetting to me. sure, it is a ridiculous reality show, but if dani HAD won, it also would have really been an amazing thing. i think straight people often forget that even though there are certainly plenty of gays out and about now, it's extremely rare to actually see someone like yourself portrayed as a legitimate person on tv if you're gay. especially if you're a gay woman. like maybe black women can feel me on this: you know that feeling you get when you listen to jill scott and she's really saying some shit that you can relate to? i've never had that feeling.

right up until tila chose bobby and pronounced "i chose a man!" followed by "i can be your wifey," dani was that for a lot of people. and maaaybe tila really did "love dani, but was in love with bobby," but i'm stickin to my story and blaming MTV for taking that away from me.

so like i said, fuck mtv.

and before you ask, yes i do realize its not really "mtv" thats to blame for yet another reaffirmation of the superiority of straight white men, its just mtv this time. but still. fuck 'em.

stop trying to punch God!

2007-12-14T14:28:00.000-05:00

Okay, so for those of you who probably got really confused after reading the title of this blog post and subsequently noticing the promotional poster for New Line Cinema's recent release The Golden Compass here is a quick synopsis of 'the deal:'

Okay so basically this movie is based off of the first installment of a set of 3 books written by Phillip Pullman, a great writer, kind of a tool, and an atheist, for those of you who were unaware. Now, for those of you who are somewhat interested in seeing this movie (and the sequels that New Line will no doubt produce) and reading the His Dark Materials books, I will put out the warning now that this blog post will probably contain some sort of story spoilers. So, you know. Be on the lookout for that sort of thing.

Now to get more into the actual substance of this post. I will start by saying that Pullman's novel and the series that it goes with ranks among the top of my all-time favorite books- it's imaginative, well-written and exciting, and I personally think that Pullman does an excellent job of creating fantastical worlds so different from our own and simultaneously linking them all together in a way that allows almost any reader to relate (which is, if you read them, probably a big point). I read the first book when I was about 12 years old and fell in love, but was unable to read the rest for some reason (probably laziness) until this past year, my senior year of college.

So, here comes one of those spoilers for those of you who are beware'ing of them: an interesting and somewhat disturbing feature of the book for me? The fact that they kill God. Or at least the literal figure of God in the worlds of the book. I'll admit that having read the final two books (The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass) as a more mature adult I was able to take this scene for what it was worth- a bit of literary drama dreamt up by an atheist who, when all is said and done, really seems to want people to put a little more thought into their beliefs (since these beliefs can and have driven people to, in some cases, do terrible things). But what are people's reactions?

Well actually, in most cases- absolutely nothing. That's because, even though the books themselves are really great reads, people just don't bother to actually read anything anymore. As a result, although the books were originally published back in 1995 (which means that I read the first one two years after it was published- go me!) now that a film is being made a good 12 years later people have suddenly started getting their underwear in a twist about the basic premise of the film and the books on which it is based.

Catholics are mad because it makes the catholic church look bad. Christians are mad because... it makes the Catholic church look bad, and the whole "killing God" thing at the end really isn't helping matters. But what I find most problematic is that, instead of using this book to better understand the ways of thinking of others and as a tool to strengthen their faith, they immediately have jumped up in arms about it, most probably without even having read two paragraphs of the stories (I'm sure they let their preachers give them the basics of it). I mean.. it's just so.. ignorant.

And don't get me wrong at all- I am Christian myself and am not ashamed or afraid to say that I am a strong believer and have a close personal relationship with God, but that close personal relationship does not allow me to feel threatened by other opinions or shy away from knowledge in fear. It seems to me that if a person is strong and sure in their beliefs then it'd take a lot more than a book and an expensive ass movie to change their minds...

What do you think?

inspiration!!!

2007-12-11T23:31:00.000-05:00

i had been wondering what to blog about and drawing a blank. the world? nah. boring. politics? even worse. but inspiration comes in the most unlikely places. and by "inspiration," i mean really hot girls.

ok so no this post is not "meaningful" per se, but it is a TAD meaningful. i'm here to proclaim my love for dani campbell, one of the last two contestants on MTV's "A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila." for those crazy folks who haven't been rushing to their tvs at 10 or computers (we don't like to pay for cable) at 11 each tuesday to catch the show, the basic premise is that Tila Tequila, of myspace "fame," is bisexual, but no one knew that until episode 2 of her reality show on MTV. so she got like 16 guys and 16 girls there under semi-false pretenses (always a great way to ensure drama!) and then announced she was bisexual, and made them ALL compete for her heart. the show is ridiculous. and by "ridiculous" i mean "so great." everyone on it is totally insane. but i digress. dani.

so of the people who made it into the final like, not a million people, dani was the only even semi-androgynous type girl. tila claims that she usually goes for really feminine girls, but dani is now the only girl remaining on the show, so i guess someone's had a change of heart. thank god. because most of the "feminine" girls on the show were actually more "batshit crazy" than anything else. except amanda. who was "freakishly strange looking." but again, i digress.

my point is this:
a) everyone should watch this show and dani should win because she's great.

b) the reason she's great is she's just a normal-ass person instead of a crazy person. you know, like she's nice, and considerate, and generally doesn't make a fool of herself.

c) its actually kind of cool because now dani has this like, GIGANTIC fan base (even bigger than tilas, according to mtv's website!) which is probably some kind of television first. so this is actually kind of a big deal. regardless of whether she wins or not (she better win), i feel like all of a sudden a lot of people who watch mtv think that butch (or "futch," as dani likes to say) lesbians are cute, instead of weird. so thats some kind of victory.

anyways, thats pretty much all i have to say about that. go ahead and check it out. you know you want to.

over and out.

Theater Review: Yellow Face

2007-12-08T10:34:00.000-05:00

that's right, i'm a city girl now. and that means i can go to the theater and write reviews of it.

ok, maybe thats not the "exact" definition of "city girl" these days, but i think my main point here is that i saw a play the other day and i thought it was good, and i feel like sharing.

so the play was David Henry Hwang's "Yellow Face," which I had not even heard of, seeing as how i never hear about things until someone calls me and tells me about them. but apparently its been getting rave reviews, and i see why. the play was autobiographical/fictional, which is already fun because especially if you're someone like me who didn't know anything about the story until you saw the play, you're always wondering which part is which. the basic premise is that after a controversy (not fiction) in which a white british actor was cast as one of the leading asian roles in Miss Saigon, the main character (who is based on AND named after the playwright) becomes involved in protests of "yellow face." things take an awkward turn for him, though, when he accidentally casts a white man as the leading asian role in his play that is supposed to be a satirical critique of yellow face. he manages to fire the actor, but the play flops anyways and the actor, Marcus, having finally found that feeling of acceptance he's always craved among the asian american community, uses that moment to propel himself into a career as an asian actor. and no one notices that he's white.

thats pretty much the end of the first act, and i have to admit that at that point, i was still confused. i liked the play, but i was having trouble connecting to it. act two really stepped up its game, though. act two brings you into the real-world moment in which wen ho lee was accused of being a spy, and fear of china was "in" ...again. the protagonist's father is being investigated for "suspicious" money transfers to his bank from a bank in beijing, and the white actor now calling himself "Marcus Gee" is at the forefront of asian-american activism protesting it all. the protagonist/playwright has a very powerful stand-off with an unnamed new york times reporter (if i knew more, it would be "obvious" who it was, but alas), and the play ends in a bonanza of meta moments (god i love those) in which the protagonist and marcus discuss their roles in the play.

ok so maybe that summary didn't make THAT much sense. i'm not an actual theater critic. i just wanted to give a summary in case it inspired you to go see it. anyways my point was, i thought this play was amazing. it was one of those things where as you're watching it you just have moment upon moment when all of a sudden you get exactly what the playwright is talking about. like the moment in the stand-off with the reporter in which David Henry Hwang asks why he is criminalizing chinese-americans, claiming that it would be like suspecting the reporter of being un-american and pro-white. "but there is no conflict between being white and being american," the reporter exclaims. bam. brilliant writing.

this play does a wonderful job of taking a number of relatively simple, unsurprising moments and revealing just how ridiculous and shocking they are, and their importance to the fucked-up nature of our society's issues with race. i could pretty much ramble on forever about how i enjoyed it, but the point is it made me think, so you should see it, because it will make you think too.

he's an idiot, but y'all knew that

2007-12-05T23:40:00.000-05:00

da big boss coon, yeah he had to do that...

i hate to even give it publicity, but i saw this on one of my favorite blogs, and i couldn't NOT pass on the info. in fact, i won't even explain it. just watch this:

and this...

i guess he couldn't let flava flav take ALL the coonery. that would just be unequal distribution of coonin'.

in lighter news...

2007-12-04T22:26:00.000-05:00

queen latifah is engaged to her "secret" girlfriend, jeanette jenkins. awww. i mean who was she ever trying to fool, but still. i'm happy not to have to read about it in O.K. magazine anymore. because i'm trying to quit that shit. its unhealthy.

point is, thats fun. power to the people. although the comments sections on some of these gossip blogs might make you a little sad, so be warned.

job'in.

2007-12-03T17:15:00.000-05:00

I know I should do this in comments, but I'd like to point out to everyone that there are definitely employment opportunities that lie somewhere between the realm of public service and finance. They are often called "regular jobs." I have one such mythical job (which I am sitting at right now, oh the wonders of the internet and a reasonably liberal company that doesn't block all fun sites) and I find myself making enough money to live, save, and oh you know, go out from time to time.

Don't let Harvard fool you, you can have all sorts of jobs and futures!

Okay that was my rant. Damn, it's time to go home.

P.S. (To Kaya) Did you know that Virgin Megastore in Times Square has a whole "Gay & Lesbian" section? Food for thought. Guess where your Christmas present is prooobably going to come from..

well? shall we go?

2007-12-02T22:33:00.000-05:00

yes. let's go.

i just thought i'd share this little new york times article with you: its about a production of "waiting for godot" in new orleans. its interesting. give it a read. it got me thinking abstract thoughts. which i'll proceed to share, in a rambling fashion:

its amazing to me, or rather, a bit horrifying, how easy it is for us to forget new orleans, to not be apalled at the fact that rebuilding is at best a dream deferred. and this article really made me think about the mentality a lot of people seem to have towards not only new orleans, but pretty much every atrocious situation in this country: it'll get better. it has to. all i have to do is wait. perhaps we all read "waiting for godot" when we were too long to understand it. maybe i still don't totally "get it," but i think the take-away message is that dude is not planning on showing up. so we might want to get off our asses and get something done for ourselves. a lot of people, especially people of our parents' generation i think, see THIS generation as an apathetic one. and its obvious why, but i really don't think thats precisely whats going on. i almost wish it was apathy - i think its something a lot more like defeat. we're all hoping that things won't get worse, yet they keep getting worse. hurricane katrina happened and we thought, "well this is a wake-up call." but it wasn't, and people in new orleans are still waiting. and the majority of the country is ignoring that and every other problem, or is doing whatever small thing makes us feel like we're helping without having to make any real sacrifices. because we figure eventually something will happen, and we'll be saved.

Vladimir: We'll hang ourselves tomorrow. Unless Godot comes.
Estragon: And if he comes?
Vladimir: We'll be saved.

rationalizing your way to a fortune

2007-12-01T14:06:00.000-05:00

I don't like to blog about harvard TOO much, because i don't like to remember harvard too much. but since the black community lists don't seem to be taking up the issue, i feel like i have to put it SOMEWHERE on the internet...

here's what happened: the Harvard Crimson ran a 3-part series entitled "Living by Harvard's Rules." The series is a focus on now-senior Bryan C. Barnhill, an active member of the black community, and soon-to-be i-banker (or perhaps consultant). I'll do my best to make my summary quick, since 3 articles is a lot to get mad about:

basically the articles are broken down like this:
article 1 talks about how Bryan came from a very poor neighborhood in detroit. harvard gets a quick shout-out for being so financially diverse (can you believe that 1 in every 4 students comes from a family making less than $80,000 a year? wow, i feel normal already!) the article talks about how Barnhill, and many others, feel disoriented when they arrive at harvard. Bryan makes a decision to drop the do-rag and baggy pants, and take up a collared shirt.

article 2: barnhill finally finds a feeling of inclusion in the Harvard Spee (for those who don't know, the spee, and other final clubs are kind of like frats. except way more steeped in racism, sexism, and classism). he doesn't feel tokenized, even though he sometimes can't afford to hang out with the rest of his "brothers." his parents, when they visited, were impressed by the spee's rich history (of rich white men). article 2 ends by noting that people from bryan's neighborhood are not jealous of his success, they're proud.

article 3 (my favorite): is about how bryan came to harvard with a desire to change the world. to "dismantle capitalism," even. but he soon realized that doing good is for crazy people. no, more to the point, its only for rich people apparently. barnhill felt "hoodwinked" by campus liberals who told him he didn't have to be an i-banker. "they didn't seem concerned about their wallets," he said. but bryan (unlike the rest of us) has responsibilities back home. he needs to be able to help his family out, to take them on vacations, to help his brother go to college. for that, he needs i-banking. and he hopes to give back to his community first by becoming a personal success, and then sharing the wealth.

ok, so not a super-short summary. sorry. ANYWAYS, since you know i love bullet points, here are my concerns. and i'd like to note, first, that i'm sorry in advance if any of this comes off as mean. i know bryan, and i like him. but i heartily disagree with his point of view on this matter, and i'm offended that he agreed to let this story be published about him. here goes:

- the most offensive part of this to me was the part where he implies that those of us who go into public sector work do it because we don't need money as much as he does, because our families don't need us, or because we're just rich. if someone could please tell that to my checkbook, that would be great. because i don't see the riches he's implying. i do see a salary i can survive on, and even save a bit to help out family members who might need it, but no - the harvard mantra is to never settle for "fine" when you could be making 80,000 or more a year. like yes, obviously i-banking pays better than public interest. no duh. but i am SO offended by the implication that public interest careers are a privilege that people from working-class backgrounds can't afford. if you really want to help out your community, why don't you go teach their children? no salary in the world is so high that it's going to lift your old community out of poverty, so dont kid yourself into thinking you're "giving back," when you're just "giving a bit." and don't kid yourself into thinking you're doing this for someone else, when you're doing it for yourself. (and like i said, not to be mean. this isn't me yelling at bryan, its me yelling at every single harvard student who uses the same rationalization i'm seeing in this article).

- the article is right, harvard is NOT very welcoming if you don't come from money. joining a final club will not make it more welcoming. sure, you'll have friends. and maybe they really aren't tokenizing you, although i doubt it. but how in the world does that make the situation better for anyone else? again, don't kid yourself into thinking its about someone other than yourself.

i could go on for days, but then you would stop reading. so, in conclusion: this article is a shocking example of the entire reason i was constantly angry when i was at harvard. what bothers me most is a) that its about a member of the black community, and b) that NO ONE IN THE BLACK COMMUNITY IS TALKING ABOUT IT. seriously, for those of you reading this, what the fuck? are you scared people won't like you anymore if you disagree with one of the 'popular' kids in the black community? do you all just agree? or is this just not an issue anyone is even interested in?

this is one of those times i'm so glad to have graduated. even if it does mean having to live in the "real world" on a less than phenomenal public interest salary.

republicans are good for something after all...

2007-11-30T00:33:00.000-05:00

i've been a bit lax on the blog lately, so in a last-ditch effort to inspire myself, i turned to the cnn youtube republican debates. bingo. a veritable goldmine of idiocy and terror. i'm watching them now. or rather, i'm watching whichever questions look especially juicy. as i go, i'll let you know what i think. i'll include the videos for your perusal in case you so desire to judge for yourself. but in case you don't, i'll rain judgment down upon them right below the video:

Taxes:

ok what the fuck? a) why does america love to fear taxes? i mean i get it. no one loves to look at their paycheck and see that it is not much. but you know what i bet a lot of people love? education. and roads that are not going to cave in under your car as you drive. and clean drinking water. and pretty much everything else that your tax dollars help pay for. i mean i'll be the first to agree that taxation is fucked up in this country, but thats not because taxes are bad. its because rich people don't pay nearly as much as they should. cut my taxes if you want. but raise theirs.

Sidenote:
i won't put in this video because i just have a quick comment about it. how come when asked what three federal programs he would cut to save money, the first thing that came to ron paul's mind was "department of education?" are you serious?

Guns:

why are republicans so creepy? duncan hunter got his hunting license at the age of 9? you know killing animals is one of the first signs that your child is a sociopath.

Black-on-black crime:

mitt romney can go die.

Abortion:

mitt romney can go die.

The Bible:

have you noticed the people who ask the questions to the republicans are on the whole a tad creepier than the ones who asked democratic debate questions? also, separation of church and state has clearly flown straight out the window. no one's even trying to pretend anymore.
oh and also, mitt romney can go die.

Torture:

i feel like i'm starting to sound like a broken record, but...
mitt.
romney.
can.
go.
die.
john mccain actually gets points from me on this one. first of all for being against torture, and second of all for really bitch-slapping mitt romney. ouch. although after having watched mccain's answers to a couple of questions, i'm starting to suspect that he has PTSD. now i feel a little sorry for him. not sorry enough to elect him president, but sorry enough to suggest he seek help.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

ok FIRST of all, most of the army is conservative?!?!? yeah, maybe most of those kids who sit down with their families over breakfast and decide they want to serve their country are conservative. but most of the people in the army are not those kids. try poor black and latinos who didn't get an education and had to join the army if they ever wanted to be able to afford one. and i'm sorry, "conduct?!?" so you're saying its ok to be gay in the military, but don't run around all day having sex with anything that moves? oh wait, that doesn't actually happen? well now i'm just confused.
oh and mitt romney: guess what you can go do.

ok well now i'm just tired. so i'll sign off for now. but dear lord, people, i just have to say one last thing: at the rate this country is going downhill, i'm starting to doubt i'll make it to my 30th birthday. i'm seriously frightened. i'd been planning for some time to take off for canada when the going got tough, but now i'm realizing the going's so tough, i don't think canada is far enough. suggestions, please. i want to live.

would an hour by any other number be as useful?

2007-11-25T09:52:00.000-05:00

"The first and great necessity of the present to free labour of this country from capitalist slavery, is the passing of a law by which eight hours shall be the normal working day in all States of the American Union. We are resolved to put forth all our strength until this glorious result is achieved."

Okay. So first off I would like to say- thank you Labor Movement and political pioneers for ensuring that industrial workers had rights that not only included the right to benefits and unionization, but also the eight-hour work day. This was an excellent idea, and a most advantageous step forward for the regular people's cause. All that being said, I feel that an eight hour day in corporate settings is now all but complete bullshit.
While you might think that I am only just recently realizing/learning or feeling this because I know have a regular ole' 9 to 5 but no no no, I realized this back when I was just a lowly intern and S.A. I mean, how do people in a corporate environment usually spend their time? Let me break it down for you in the standard 9-5 work day.

9-9:30 Settle In. This includes turning on one's computer, checking e-mails (and by checking I mean only looking to see that they are of course there, not actually reading them), putting away jackets, coats, etc. and deciding whether or not you are hungry enough to go get something to eat.

9:30-9:40 Still just figuring it out. Are you really hungry? Well damn, it's almost ten, you really ought to get it together.

9:40-10:00 Settle down.. again. So this is the time where our hungry and/or thirsty workers would go grab a cup of coffee or bagel or yogurt or order something. If you are not eating? This time is probably spent saying hello to someone in the office, either someone passing by or someone that you sit within close proximity off. High-wall cubicles are at risk of a 30 minute "settle down again" as their work spaces contribute to people walking by and standing within the otherwise isolated cubicle for a more intimate, and thus longer talk.

10:00-11:45 Get Down On It. Good job, you are really being productive. Answering e-mails, setting up or attending meetings, calling internal and external partners. This is great, this is what working is all about!!!

11:45-12:00 So, is it time to eat again or what? These fifteen minutes are crucial to your stomach, because this is the time that you will decide whether or not you will eat soon. You will also probably use this time to call an office friend or gchat some potential lunch partners. Then you will need to also figure out where you are going. We really should have dedicated 20 minutes to this.

12:00-12:45 Work it Out. So you've decided to push lunch back to one. Good! Now you can productively use this extra hour! You continue to e-mail and call and do other corporate-like work things.

12:45-1:00 Let's Get Ready to Rumble. During this time you call or chat your lunch parter to make sure that they will be ready to go. You establish a meeting place and destination. You check your personal e-mail and then make sure you have your wallet/purse and get your coat if you need it. Getting together these items is essential, you are lucky you can fit this into fifteen minutes.

1:00-2:10 Lunch! The most glorious part of the day. You eat something delicious and have a conversation. Excellent.

2:10-2:20 Settling Some More. Now that you're back at your workspace you have to un-get-ready. That means put away your personal items, say some more hellos to people in your office and look to see if you have voicemails.

2:20-2:40 Voicemail tiiime. Listen and respond to these. This is a very necessary but very boring part of your day.

2:40-3:10 The Internet is Your Friend. Let's not lie to ourselves. You will probably use this time to check your favorite blogs, see who has new pictures on facebook, answer a couple g-mails and/or do something for one of your out-of-the-office ventures.

3:10-3:30 Time for a Snack! This time is used procuring a snack or beverage of some sort. You will run into someone you like along the way and have a conversation either at their desk or in front of the water cooler- proverbial or real.

3:30-4:30 Work work work. Good job, you are back at your desk ready to contribute. You are a rock star at this point and get a bunch of crap done.

4:30-4:40 Lullaby Baby. Okay I'm not going to lie, you don't really do anything during this time. At least you don't really complete anything.

4:40-4:50 Oh Crap! It's almost time to leave, you better do something!

4:50-5:00 Ahhhh. You get something done. Check! Look at your checklist- don't you feel acomplished?

5:00-5:05 Peace Up, A Town Down. Somehow you manage to get ready, say goodbye and get your things in 5 minutes. You peace out until tomorrow.

Okay, so after reading all this, and if my entry-level brethren are completely honest with me and themselves, you can see that during the work day you spend a good 25-30% doing absolutely nothing that contributes to your company's bottom-line. I bet some of you even spend more time than I put on that schedule doing things like checking facebook. Let's see what the actual breakdown was:

240 min. Working
115 min. "Getting Ready"
90 min. Eating
50 min. Personal Internet

Like really, word? The most crazy part? YOU WILL DO THIS AND GET EVERYTHING DONE THAT YOU NEED TO DO ON-TIME OR EVEN EARLY. And be really honest with yourselves and break down your day's work-to-not-work-but-really-crap ratio and see what you come up with. Clearly I cannot speak for my finance and banking people- but if you are honest I am sure that none of you spend 100% of your work day doing things other than working and eating. All this has led me to believe that the eight-hour work day in these sorts of environments has become both null and void and that we need to institute something new. Something daring. Something different. Something like...

THE SIX HOUR WORK DAY.

Oh come on, like you didn't see that coming.
I mean really, I feel like 6 hours would be such a more useful structuring of our time. More time to rest at home so that you are productive at work, less time to dilly-dally around. When you have less time most people have a fire under their ass to do things. I feel like this set-up could potentially really increase productivity ALONG with workforce contentment.

How do you feel?

today is trans day of remembrance

2007-11-20T09:24:00.000-05:00

and our friends over at quench have started a conversation about what that means. I really encourage you to check it out. as always when one of these "days of remembrance" or "history months" rolls around, I'm reminded of how annoying it is that we can't remember EVERY day, or learn everyone's history in school. but trans day of remembrance is kind of special in that I think a lot of people don't even take this ONE day to think about it. so you've been educated - today is trans day of remembrance, and for me that means at the very least taking a moment to realize just how many people, and especially people of color, all over the world have been killed or otherwise victimized because they are transgender. so take that moment. and maybe look around the internet a little bit and learn some more about it.

with inflation, what would 40 acres be today?

2007-11-18T12:45:00.000-05:00

alright so first of all, i recognize that brittany (*cough cough*) and i have been a bit lax in updating. turns out a blog is a lot of work. life can get hectic. sorry. we'll do better.

but back to business: skimming through the "most emailed" section of the new york times, i was delighted to find out that skip gates has an article in the op-ed section. i had been going through severe withdrawal since graduation, and since i've been watching less tv, it seems like "finding oprah's roots" is on less and less too. i refuse to ever admit to "missing harvard," but if i DID miss something about harvard, it would definitely be the af-am department. so when i saw that dr. henry louis gates jr. had written an article called "40 acres and a gap in wealth," i was on it before you could say "doesn't he mean 'mule'?"

ANyways, harvard ramblings aside, i'm pointing it out on the blog for a few reasons:

1 - this way i dont have to email it to anyone, so its almost time-saving in a way
2 - i really needed to update the blog.

but more importantly, 3 - gates is pointing to something i think most of us know about, but for some reason hasn't made it into the canon of "things wrong with black america:" land ownership. the difference between owning property and not is huge, and gates is pointing out that this difference back in the day can be seen in the present (oprah's ancestors owned land. so did whoopi goldberg's). and of course people have all sorts of things to say about that. maybe if black people owned land they'd be more invested in their communities. maybe they'd be more upwardly mobile. etc. etc. the point is, it's clear that property ownership is a big step in the "right direction," and is a step that most black americans either haven't taken, or haven't been able to take.

so in the spirit of a) finding out how many people actually read this blog, and b) friendly conversation (or not-so-friendly argument. either way), i have a question to ask you:

so most people didn't get that 40 acres and a mule they were promised. those who did seem to be significantly better-off than those who didn't. so lets talk about reparations: how does the idea of straight-up land change the reparations debate? what if instead of getting a check, black people got some property? i'm not saying lets do this, because i think we all know it won't happen. but i am asking what you think.

you know how they say...

2007-11-12T19:42:00.001-05:00

"guns don't kill people, people kill people?"

...people kill people WITH guns. its not rocket science.

cups don't drink water, people drink water.

that's all.

i'm making a list

2007-11-09T12:11:00.000-05:00

i might not bother checking it twice. but the list of people who are "dead to me" just grows by the hour.

admittedly today's subject, sarah silverman, has been dead to me for quite some time. ever since i saw her feature-length special...what was it called again? oh yeah, "jesus is magic." anyways, that such a huge waste of life that i wrote her off forever. but lately i've been seeing her face on the train a lot, apparently because she has her own show. now answer me this: why would comedy central devote a whole show to sarah silverman? perhaps equally important, why would they then let her do a whole show in blackface?

yes, you heard right. sarah silverman is doing blackface now. you can check out a clip of it here (even though i hate giving her publicity), or click "older videos" on this list to find all of them.

so i shouldn't even have to say much more than that, but i will say just a couple things:

1 - blackface is never funny. people like sarah silverman and those who watch her show think "oh but dave chappelle did it that one time, so why can't i?" they clearly only watched the preview of chappelle's show, because any time blackface appears in the context of socially context black comedy or film, its not FUNNY. its uncomfortable, and its commentary. when spike lee made "bamboozled," i don't think he wanted you to laugh. when dave chappelle did "whiteface" on his show, he wanted you to think. sarah silverman doesn't even know HOW to think. which is how this show came into being, apparently.

2 - there is like, some kind of epidemic spreading of people doing ridiculous shit on tv and then claiming free speech, or that they didn't mean to offend, or blaming "pc culture" for making them the victim of some kind of "high-tech lynching" (thats right clarence, you get a shout-out). i don't really get that argument. like if you want free speech, take it. but if you say or do something hateful, "free speech" does not mean "no one can get mad." it means "you can't get arrested and thrown in jail for saying that." so congratulations, racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. etc. etc. people: you're not in jail. but your show still fucking sucks. and i'm not going to watch it, and also i hate you.

3 - on a personal level, sarah: you are not funny. ever. obviously this blackface thing wasn't funny, but also you are never funny. how did you get a show? like seriously. anyone who has ever seen her perform for more than like, 30 seconds can probably back me up on this: she must have learned in some class that "incongruous" is a small component of comedy, and then dropped out. so she says and does stupid shit and then looks at you like "isn't it funny that a small white jewish girl said that?" and you're like, "no..." and then she does it again. anyone on the planet could do a better job at comedy than sarah silverman just by getting drunk and standing on a table. she's ridiculous. she's dead to me. oh and sarah, in case you're reading this, in addition to the blackface, i also didn't think your immigrant jokes were funny, and i thought your rape jokes were in poor taste too.

bye bye barack

2007-11-04T15:48:00.000-05:00

you know, i wasn't even gonna post on this mainly because i'm lazy, but a recent trip to the comments section over on the field negro's post inspired me to have my (belated) say.

so you (hopefully) have heard already: Barack Obama fucked up big-time and booked "ex-gay" Donnie McClurkin to share the stage with him on his gospel tour. Needless to say, the gays got upset. among some of McClurkin's more memorable statements have been equating homosexuality to lying (its wrong, but some people just like to do it), and announcing a war between the gays, and the rest of "normal" america. i don't really want to go into the whole thing, so for your convenience i'll just go ahead and link to all the articles on this story over at pam's house blend. read from the bottom.

anyways, i have SEVERAL beefs i really just need to air and be done with it. so it's time for a good old-fashioned number-the-rage:

1. Obama: what the fuck? i mean i know you're not even that cool, and i never liked your face anyways, but this is a low even for mr "let's build a wall to keep the mexicans out." i mean not only did he book the guy, but when there was an outrage, he chose to stand by donnie "i used to be gay and now i'm not because its sinful, please don't interview my lover and blog about it because that would be awkward for me" mcclurkin.

did he expect NOT to lose the gay vote? and does he think he doesn't NEED the gay vote? like aside from being a shitty thing to do, it just seems straight up dumb. the amount of votes he might have gained by having a gospel tour cannot possibly be close to the amount he just lost for this fiasco. whoops.

2. Donnie: also what the fuck? first of all, don't embarrass yourself. you're claiming that you "quit the homosexual lifestyle" circa 2002, yet i just read an interview with a dude who claims to have been sharing your bed from 2001-2004? it just doesn't quite add up. also, i don't like you.

3. EVERYONE ON THE INTERNET: just shut the fuck up, really. i know, i know. don't read the comments on blogs, dont' read the comments on youtube. it will only make you mad. but guess what? i read them. and i'm mad. over on field negro's post, the conversation about obama and mcclurkin quickly did a downward spiral into various people arguing over whether homosexuality is a choice or not, whether boys who play with dolls are gay, how if gayness grosses you out that doesn't make you a homophobe, and of course how most lesbians are totally still attracted to men.

come. on. if you don't know what you're talking about, there's no need to write an essay about it and post it on the internet. just think what the internet would be like if before hitting "post comment" people stopped and said to themselves "i wonder if what i just wrote has any value at all?" and possibly "i wonder if anything in my life has made me knowledgeable on this subject, or whether i'm just talking out of my ass." ugh.

bottom line: if you're homophobic, and apparently most black people still are, maybe there's nothing i can do about that. but don't go bitching all over the internet that we shouldn't be so hard on obama. he, much like yourself, lost my respect a while back. i know black people continue to hold on to him and defend all the stupid-ass shit he does, but this is my announcement: i'm officially over it. obama sucks, and frankly i doubt he'll ever get a chance to prove that. but if by some miracle he does, don't say i didn't tell you so in 2009 when the supreme court cuts down roe v wade and affirmative action in one fell swoop, and obama shrugs his shoulders and goes back to building his wall.

popcorn now, genocide later

2007-11-02T09:52:00.000-04:00

So, one of the cooler parts of working at a media corporation is that sometimes you get cool perks. Sometimes it's a heads up about a party, a cool artist is doing an afternoon performance in your building, sometimes it's that you see John Norris or Sway in the cafeteria, or discounts on Broadway tickets, or maybe that you get a discount on your phone bill (but let's be real, what company isn't giving those away?). Other times you get to see movies- they can be funny, smart, boring, but very rarely political. So when the opportunity came for me to see a *free* advanced screening of the Warner Independent film Darfur Now you know I couldn't pass it up.

For those of you who haven't heard of it- and I'm willing to bet that "people who haven't heard of this movie" makes up about 70% or more of the population- I'll go ahead and give a brief synopsis:

The documentary Darfur Now follows the effect that the genocidal conflict in Sudan has had on six people's lives as they try to affect change in what has been an almost 5-year strong (at least in violence) genocide that has devastated not only the lives of the people living in Darfur, but the land's resources. Pulling on Warner Brother's connections, the movie follows Ocean's 11-13 and Hotel Rwanda star Don Cheadle (and features a good bit of fine-ass George Clooney) in order to get some Hollywood type leverage with the public.

Things I liked about this movie: I feel like they do a pretty good job of giving historical context to the genocide at the beginning of the movie with facts and dates. Most people (read: regular Americans) are just getting up to speed on the fact that something is even happening in Darfur, and of that small percentage of the American population, even less are likely to sit down and dutifully research (read: go on Wikipedia) the history of the conflict. I mean I'll admit, I was one of these people at first, so I can't even act like I'm above that. So yeah, this was definitely a plus for the movie. I also liked that the movie showcased change and action rather than depression and trauma- it is a film that is about moving you to do something other than just feel sad.

While I liked all that about the movie, I will say that this being a production of Time Warner (Warner Independent, we know you are owned by something bigger.. psh) probably made it more likely than not that this was a little watered down. I mean, I can't be mad- if you want to get a message across to people here you have to package it in a certain way. Unfortunately, while making a genocide cinematically appealing (have a good plot line, characters with whom the audience can engage and a visible villain that all can unify against) can really draw in people emotionally and intimately connect them with a theme, it also runs the risk of fictionalizing not only the event in question but the people living in and through it. Once you connect to and internalize a person's struggle through a movie based on real life, I feel like people are apt to illegitmately assume that they understand that person's struggle when really they don't. And when you feel like you understand something you feel like you are living through it. And if you're living through it okay, what's the rush on changing things?

So yeah. I mean, all in all it was a good movie. It gets wide release today, so I encourage those of you who have a local theater where it is playing, and have an extra $20 to spare (I threw some concession $$ in there for you- y'all know I got your backs ;) to go and check it out. It's worth it.

SIDENOTE: The saddest moments of the movie? When the Black Sudanese hoped for help, and encouraged fellow displaced persons that "The white people will come soon, they will bring troops and save us."

Devastating.