Saturday, April 10, 2004
schizophrenic tendencies
ok, so the white in me is feeling a little unloved after the last post, and the black, mexican, and native american in me are telling him to quit whining cuz he has it pretty good in this world. i guess i can see where he's coming from, so i will just point out that i wasn't hating on all white people, or even "white" culture (which is still the most nebulous and undefineable term i've heard in a looooong time). i was simply trying to make the point that "white" culture is not the source of all things cool and not all "non-white" cultures draw their essence from aspects of "white" culture. all cultures borrow from each other, that's a natural byproduct of interaction and information exchange, and "white" culture is no different from any other in that regard.
to recap: i don't hate white people, "white" culture, or anything else, just because it's associated with caucasians (which is good, cuz then i'd have to hate myself, which is never fun). i think cultural exchange is a good thing, a positive thing, a knowledge expanding experience. "white" culture borrows from others just as much as any non-white culture borrows from it. i can't get over how poor a term "white" culture is....does this bother anyone else near as much as it does me? i mean really, there are so many social, linguistic, norm, cultural & other categorical differences just among the human population that is grouped into the white/caucasian category that the term just really doesn't form a clear picture or definition in my mind when i hear it. i honestly do wonder what it means be culturally white, beyond the woefully insufficient stereotypical definitions that we all (including myself) thrown around an a half-joking manner (i think). sadly, reb's prof hasn't proved that the last episode was due to a brain fart, there's more where that came from (april 9).
the white in me would like to apologize for being genetically linked to the great white oppression that secretly and continuously oppresses all members of non-white cultural groups for the sake of world domination and satisfying our collective inferiority complex.
the black in me says that's not enough, and it will never be enough to make up for 255 years of state sanctioned slavery and another 109 years of jim crow laws. and y'all are my friends, but i wont hesitate to take you out when the revolution comes. rise up!
the mexican in me is quietly plotting a civilian uprising that will return texas and everything west of the rockies back to the motherland (that would be mexico) where it rightly belongs. have you noticed the hispanic population growth in california over the past 10 years? yes, he is using the white man's own tactics against him, how ironic!
the native american in me wants to know why small pox and tuberculosis aren't considered germ warfare. he wants to know why the other minorities are complaining since he definitely got the worst deal of all (let's be honest, semi-autonomous reservations in the wastelands of south dakota and oklahoma don't exactly fall into the "high demand" category. and casinos don't even come close to making up for it). also, what the hell happened to all the buffalo?
finally, my collective being would like to point out that i already know it must be weird that i've divided myself by heritage, almost as if there are four separate beings/voices in my mental structure. i can assure that is not the case, there are way more than four, hehehe. the joy and wonder of being a person with mixed heritage. hopefully you figured out that the last few sections were satirical/sarcastic in nature. if you laughed, good. if you're laughing now that you know i was only joking and not serious about taking you out during the revolution, that's cool too. if you're offended, i guess you can stop reading this? i don't know what else to tell you.
ok, i dont know what the post time is going to say, but i'm finishing this at like 3 in the morning after galavanting around buenos aires all day, so you'll have to excuse me while i regenerate my mental funcionality for a few hours. outtie 5k.
symphonic melodies: ben folds - fired
brain eats: can man live without God: anguish and influence by ravi zacharias
ok, so the white in me is feeling a little unloved after the last post, and the black, mexican, and native american in me are telling him to quit whining cuz he has it pretty good in this world. i guess i can see where he's coming from, so i will just point out that i wasn't hating on all white people, or even "white" culture (which is still the most nebulous and undefineable term i've heard in a looooong time). i was simply trying to make the point that "white" culture is not the source of all things cool and not all "non-white" cultures draw their essence from aspects of "white" culture. all cultures borrow from each other, that's a natural byproduct of interaction and information exchange, and "white" culture is no different from any other in that regard.
to recap: i don't hate white people, "white" culture, or anything else, just because it's associated with caucasians (which is good, cuz then i'd have to hate myself, which is never fun). i think cultural exchange is a good thing, a positive thing, a knowledge expanding experience. "white" culture borrows from others just as much as any non-white culture borrows from it. i can't get over how poor a term "white" culture is....does this bother anyone else near as much as it does me? i mean really, there are so many social, linguistic, norm, cultural & other categorical differences just among the human population that is grouped into the white/caucasian category that the term just really doesn't form a clear picture or definition in my mind when i hear it. i honestly do wonder what it means be culturally white, beyond the woefully insufficient stereotypical definitions that we all (including myself) thrown around an a half-joking manner (i think). sadly, reb's prof hasn't proved that the last episode was due to a brain fart, there's more where that came from (april 9).
the white in me would like to apologize for being genetically linked to the great white oppression that secretly and continuously oppresses all members of non-white cultural groups for the sake of world domination and satisfying our collective inferiority complex.
the black in me says that's not enough, and it will never be enough to make up for 255 years of state sanctioned slavery and another 109 years of jim crow laws. and y'all are my friends, but i wont hesitate to take you out when the revolution comes. rise up!
the mexican in me is quietly plotting a civilian uprising that will return texas and everything west of the rockies back to the motherland (that would be mexico) where it rightly belongs. have you noticed the hispanic population growth in california over the past 10 years? yes, he is using the white man's own tactics against him, how ironic!
the native american in me wants to know why small pox and tuberculosis aren't considered germ warfare. he wants to know why the other minorities are complaining since he definitely got the worst deal of all (let's be honest, semi-autonomous reservations in the wastelands of south dakota and oklahoma don't exactly fall into the "high demand" category. and casinos don't even come close to making up for it). also, what the hell happened to all the buffalo?
finally, my collective being would like to point out that i already know it must be weird that i've divided myself by heritage, almost as if there are four separate beings/voices in my mental structure. i can assure that is not the case, there are way more than four, hehehe. the joy and wonder of being a person with mixed heritage. hopefully you figured out that the last few sections were satirical/sarcastic in nature. if you laughed, good. if you're laughing now that you know i was only joking and not serious about taking you out during the revolution, that's cool too. if you're offended, i guess you can stop reading this? i don't know what else to tell you.
ok, i dont know what the post time is going to say, but i'm finishing this at like 3 in the morning after galavanting around buenos aires all day, so you'll have to excuse me while i regenerate my mental funcionality for a few hours. outtie 5k.
symphonic melodies: ben folds - fired
brain eats: can man live without God: anguish and influence by ravi zacharias
Thursday, April 08, 2004
i can't resist
this is in reb's profile (and check her april 5 entry):
Help out a girl with journalist's block!
I'm trying to do an article on Asian American youth culture -- specifically as it relates to azns and the Internet, but any variety will do. My Park Avenue-residing wealthy Jewish female professor thinks AA culture is just white culture (or, occasionally, an imitation of black culture). What do you guys think? Sound off! Give me an angle for this story -- I need specifics to convince her.
next, you gotta go read kat's april 7 entry/response to all this foolishness...
and now, for a few of my thoughts.....
well, kat did a good job listing a number of things off the top of her head, and being that the one thing i'm not is asian, i don't know that i can add too much to it in my current state. i'm just gonna supply the auca indians from ecuador (they're a fairly un-westernized people who killed a group of missionaries, including jim eliot, in 1955) as another example for her list of indigenous people groups that have yet to become wholly inundated by western culture, whatever that is. and i'm only going to claim credit for adding the info on opium so that, in the off chance that reb ever reads this, she will know that i too contributed to the deconstruction of said professor's extremely flawed cultural understanding (or lack thereof). gotta stand by my girl, especially since she's right.
all that is to say that kat is correct in her basic thesis that there is no culture, outside of the aforementioned isolated populations, that has not had contact with and borrowed ideas and customs from another. there is a positive (unscientific) corrolation between how modern and mainstream said culture is and how much it comes into contact with other cultures & borrows from them. looking again at "white" america (in the terms of our professor NOT-friend), there are tons of modern instances where the dominant white culture has borrowed and assimilated aspects of other people groups into it's own. kat's list is much more extensive, and i'm sure that's partly due to the fact that her wheels are spinning much faster out of indignation, but i can think of two salient, continuous and contemporary examples of borrowing from the african-american culture:
1) music - this can really be developed into several subgroups, one for each type of music (jazz, blues, rock & roll, and more recently r&b and hip hop). from the black creole culture in new orleans to original jazz greats such as thelonius monk, duke ellington and miles davis, from jimi hendrix's innovative experimentation with the waa pedal that lead to modern distortion techniques among mainstream hard rock and grunge bands, from kool & the gang, the sugar hill gang, nwa, run dmc, and countless other inventors of rap to eminem (props) and wannabes (remember vanilla ice? snow? don't front like you don't know what i'm talking about...informer). even pop, the mainstream of mainstream white america, would not be what it is today without who? michael jackson. and no matter what he looks like now, he was black back in the 70s when it all started. so britney, n'sync, westlife, and all the rest of you suckers can thank him if you can catch him between reconstructive surgeries.
2) or we could mention white suburbia being filled with teenagers walking around in fubu, rocawear, sean john, and other hip hop clothing lines. the general style of baggy clothing, while not originated by any single group, was definitely brought back in style by the hip hop/gansta/ex-con (they didn't have belts in prison for hopefully obvious reasons). when i was in middle school, baggy clothes were the sign of drug dealers and generally delinquent behavior. now it's considered abnormal among the cast of 7th heaven if your pants don't hang halfway off your butt.
i don't like to assume (cuz that only makes an ass outta u & me) but i'd be willing to bet that this professor is some over-educated liberal thinker. this is what happens when you spend all your time reading, writing, and being intellectual....you lose touch with reality, start living in a fantasy and dream up all these ridiculous and illogical ideas and 'ways of living' that don't function in the real world. people like her are the ones who come with with darwinism, modernism, post-modernism/relativism, existentialism, yada yada yada, blah blah blah, and whatever other crap philosphy you can think of. they don't work. and man, there is nothing that irks me more than someone who thinks they have a handle on reality and know what's going on when really, they have no clue. seems like the upper east side has made someone a little too comfortable.
what i would really like to know is, what does this prof think "white" culture is? is it "mainstream" america (which, i think we all know, is really an amalgam of cultures from around the entire world)? is it england? france? spain? france? germany? russia? any number of eastern or southern european cultures? is it europe as a whole? i sure hope not, cuz that would be one fractured, divisive, and self-hating culture. no way that definition would fly among cultural anthropologists, i'm sure. i'd be interested in hearing her definition, if for nothing else to confirm my suspicions that there's really no logical basis for her original comments.
i realize half of this addresses the original topic and the other half became a pseudo-summary of what i think about the philosophical basis of modern secular society (it's garbage, in case you need a refresher). i also realize this has done little to nothing in regard to answering the original question of finding a topic that the prof might accept, but i would contend that white culture cant stand up to the nebulous definition the prof has provided, so there's no way she can deny reb the opportunity to write about asian (or is it white? or black? i'm so confused....) culture.
symphonic melodies: the fugees - fu-gee-la
brain eats: i'm tired of thinking right now
this is in reb's profile (and check her april 5 entry):
Help out a girl with journalist's block!
I'm trying to do an article on Asian American youth culture -- specifically as it relates to azns and the Internet, but any variety will do. My Park Avenue-residing wealthy Jewish female professor thinks AA culture is just white culture (or, occasionally, an imitation of black culture). What do you guys think? Sound off! Give me an angle for this story -- I need specifics to convince her.
next, you gotta go read kat's april 7 entry/response to all this foolishness...
and now, for a few of my thoughts.....
well, kat did a good job listing a number of things off the top of her head, and being that the one thing i'm not is asian, i don't know that i can add too much to it in my current state. i'm just gonna supply the auca indians from ecuador (they're a fairly un-westernized people who killed a group of missionaries, including jim eliot, in 1955) as another example for her list of indigenous people groups that have yet to become wholly inundated by western culture, whatever that is. and i'm only going to claim credit for adding the info on opium so that, in the off chance that reb ever reads this, she will know that i too contributed to the deconstruction of said professor's extremely flawed cultural understanding (or lack thereof). gotta stand by my girl, especially since she's right.
all that is to say that kat is correct in her basic thesis that there is no culture, outside of the aforementioned isolated populations, that has not had contact with and borrowed ideas and customs from another. there is a positive (unscientific) corrolation between how modern and mainstream said culture is and how much it comes into contact with other cultures & borrows from them. looking again at "white" america (in the terms of our professor NOT-friend), there are tons of modern instances where the dominant white culture has borrowed and assimilated aspects of other people groups into it's own. kat's list is much more extensive, and i'm sure that's partly due to the fact that her wheels are spinning much faster out of indignation, but i can think of two salient, continuous and contemporary examples of borrowing from the african-american culture:
1) music - this can really be developed into several subgroups, one for each type of music (jazz, blues, rock & roll, and more recently r&b and hip hop). from the black creole culture in new orleans to original jazz greats such as thelonius monk, duke ellington and miles davis, from jimi hendrix's innovative experimentation with the waa pedal that lead to modern distortion techniques among mainstream hard rock and grunge bands, from kool & the gang, the sugar hill gang, nwa, run dmc, and countless other inventors of rap to eminem (props) and wannabes (remember vanilla ice? snow? don't front like you don't know what i'm talking about...informer). even pop, the mainstream of mainstream white america, would not be what it is today without who? michael jackson. and no matter what he looks like now, he was black back in the 70s when it all started. so britney, n'sync, westlife, and all the rest of you suckers can thank him if you can catch him between reconstructive surgeries.
2) or we could mention white suburbia being filled with teenagers walking around in fubu, rocawear, sean john, and other hip hop clothing lines. the general style of baggy clothing, while not originated by any single group, was definitely brought back in style by the hip hop/gansta/ex-con (they didn't have belts in prison for hopefully obvious reasons). when i was in middle school, baggy clothes were the sign of drug dealers and generally delinquent behavior. now it's considered abnormal among the cast of 7th heaven if your pants don't hang halfway off your butt.
i don't like to assume (cuz that only makes an ass outta u & me) but i'd be willing to bet that this professor is some over-educated liberal thinker. this is what happens when you spend all your time reading, writing, and being intellectual....you lose touch with reality, start living in a fantasy and dream up all these ridiculous and illogical ideas and 'ways of living' that don't function in the real world. people like her are the ones who come with with darwinism, modernism, post-modernism/relativism, existentialism, yada yada yada, blah blah blah, and whatever other crap philosphy you can think of. they don't work. and man, there is nothing that irks me more than someone who thinks they have a handle on reality and know what's going on when really, they have no clue. seems like the upper east side has made someone a little too comfortable.
what i would really like to know is, what does this prof think "white" culture is? is it "mainstream" america (which, i think we all know, is really an amalgam of cultures from around the entire world)? is it england? france? spain? france? germany? russia? any number of eastern or southern european cultures? is it europe as a whole? i sure hope not, cuz that would be one fractured, divisive, and self-hating culture. no way that definition would fly among cultural anthropologists, i'm sure. i'd be interested in hearing her definition, if for nothing else to confirm my suspicions that there's really no logical basis for her original comments.
i realize half of this addresses the original topic and the other half became a pseudo-summary of what i think about the philosophical basis of modern secular society (it's garbage, in case you need a refresher). i also realize this has done little to nothing in regard to answering the original question of finding a topic that the prof might accept, but i would contend that white culture cant stand up to the nebulous definition the prof has provided, so there's no way she can deny reb the opportunity to write about asian (or is it white? or black? i'm so confused....) culture.
symphonic melodies: the fugees - fu-gee-la
brain eats: i'm tired of thinking right now
Wednesday, April 07, 2004
as if we needed another reason...
making my daily rounds through the news services, i found a more than a little interesting article about sex and prostate cancer. the study apparently leads to the belief that, contrary to past thinking, high levels of sexual activity (and thus orgasms) do not lead to a greater risk of prostate cancer, but may actually reduce the risk of developing the second most deadly form of cancer among american males. while they didn't have enough men with the requisite high level of activity involved with this particular study, i'm sure they'll have no problem finding volunteers for the next one. and sorry guys, but i can assure you it will be a byob (bring your own babe) deal. no freebies.
on a completely unrelated note, zoolander has got to be one of the greatest movies ever. i just watched it again the other night and laughed so hard i cried.
symphonic melodies: the postal service - such great heights
brain eats: my 2004 tax returns (hopefully the irs will cut me some slack for being on another continent)
making my daily rounds through the news services, i found a more than a little interesting article about sex and prostate cancer. the study apparently leads to the belief that, contrary to past thinking, high levels of sexual activity (and thus orgasms) do not lead to a greater risk of prostate cancer, but may actually reduce the risk of developing the second most deadly form of cancer among american males. while they didn't have enough men with the requisite high level of activity involved with this particular study, i'm sure they'll have no problem finding volunteers for the next one. and sorry guys, but i can assure you it will be a byob (bring your own babe) deal. no freebies.
on a completely unrelated note, zoolander has got to be one of the greatest movies ever. i just watched it again the other night and laughed so hard i cried.
symphonic melodies: the postal service - such great heights
brain eats: my 2004 tax returns (hopefully the irs will cut me some slack for being on another continent)
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
why being a history major rules
because you have classes with crazy ass professors like john french who get arrested for growing and selling pot in their spare time (in his house, no less). for some reason i find this not only to be amusing but kinda cool in a really twisted sense. i mean really, can you imagine an engineering, chemistry (i guess they can mix their own little coctails), or poli-sci prof doing something like that? maybe someone from the philosophy deptartment, but that's about the only other place i can think of. it's a fun major. it's a chill major. you will never be brought to the edge of insanity by undetectable coding errors or incalculable molarities. and the profs tend not to have any large inanimate objects metaphorically stuck up their cracks (though i managed to find one or two that did). these are only a few reasons why history is awesome.
the best part of all this is that prof. french was my advisor for the two years i was in the history department. i dont know why they assigned me to him, seeing as how our areas of specialty were in no way related, but it doesn't really matter since he never really advised me on anything (maybe he was hittin the bong too hard?). by that time i was no longer a helpless little freshman who needed someone to create my class schedule for me, so i just went to him to get my registration code and that was about it. i would make a comment about his office being disheveled and that being a clue, but if you know anything about history profs, it's that the ones who have a neat office are the freaks.
anyway, i thought that was funny. first jayson blair, and now this. i'm starting to wonder if i'm a harbinger of future ethical/legal trouble.
symphonic melodies: incubus - i miss you
brain eats: can man live without God? by ravi zacharias
because you have classes with crazy ass professors like john french who get arrested for growing and selling pot in their spare time (in his house, no less). for some reason i find this not only to be amusing but kinda cool in a really twisted sense. i mean really, can you imagine an engineering, chemistry (i guess they can mix their own little coctails), or poli-sci prof doing something like that? maybe someone from the philosophy deptartment, but that's about the only other place i can think of. it's a fun major. it's a chill major. you will never be brought to the edge of insanity by undetectable coding errors or incalculable molarities. and the profs tend not to have any large inanimate objects metaphorically stuck up their cracks (though i managed to find one or two that did). these are only a few reasons why history is awesome.
the best part of all this is that prof. french was my advisor for the two years i was in the history department. i dont know why they assigned me to him, seeing as how our areas of specialty were in no way related, but it doesn't really matter since he never really advised me on anything (maybe he was hittin the bong too hard?). by that time i was no longer a helpless little freshman who needed someone to create my class schedule for me, so i just went to him to get my registration code and that was about it. i would make a comment about his office being disheveled and that being a clue, but if you know anything about history profs, it's that the ones who have a neat office are the freaks.
anyway, i thought that was funny. first jayson blair, and now this. i'm starting to wonder if i'm a harbinger of future ethical/legal trouble.
symphonic melodies: incubus - i miss you
brain eats: can man live without God? by ravi zacharias
Sunday, April 04, 2004
MY ROOMATE GOT [his foot] PLASTERED LAST NIGHT!!!
the insinuation would probably work better if i changed some font sizes, but i'm definitely way too lazy to mess with that right now, plus it's 5:30 am. i dont even know why i'm up right now, other than the fact that i feel the need for some conversation and kat happens to be online right now, thanks to the 5 hour time difference between argentina and the west coast. back to the roomate. poor, poor fabian fractured a bone in his foot. we were at the volleyball court yesterday for our traditional friday afternoon volleyball/frisbee session with some other vida estudiantil peoples, but i was feeling really out of it (this oppressive heat is kicking my butt) so i didn't really play. just kinda laid there on the shady asphalt, waiting to go back home. pathetic, i know, and it doesn't even have anything to do with the injury, so moving on....
i didn't actually see what happened, i just happened to look over and i saw him in the crab walk position with a pained expression on his face. i thought maybe there was something wrong with his butt, though for the life of my i couldn't figure out how he injured it playing frisbee, but it turns out he landed on his foot at an odd angle while running/jumping for the frisbee. the on site medical professional (this is right next to the physical education department) thought it was just a bad sprain with the possibility of a torn tendon, but hospital x-rays confirmed a fracture, and he came home with this huge plaster of paris wrap from his toes to about 3/4 of the way up to his knee. and they didn't even give him some crutches, so he has to hop around the apartment on one foot using a broomstick as a ghetto cane.
switching gears....i saw the passion of christ tonight. actually, we did this huge outreach, buying 150 tickets for the students to give to non-christian friends, but this was my first time seeing the movie as well. to be honest, i don't know what i think of it yet. i'm tempted to write more, but i think i'll just wait, do some reading and processing, and try to be a bit more coherent at another time. it is, after all, 5:30 in the freaking morning, and i should really be getting some sleep.
symphonic melodies: rooney - sorry sorry
brain eats: it's 5:30, give me a break
the insinuation would probably work better if i changed some font sizes, but i'm definitely way too lazy to mess with that right now, plus it's 5:30 am. i dont even know why i'm up right now, other than the fact that i feel the need for some conversation and kat happens to be online right now, thanks to the 5 hour time difference between argentina and the west coast. back to the roomate. poor, poor fabian fractured a bone in his foot. we were at the volleyball court yesterday for our traditional friday afternoon volleyball/frisbee session with some other vida estudiantil peoples, but i was feeling really out of it (this oppressive heat is kicking my butt) so i didn't really play. just kinda laid there on the shady asphalt, waiting to go back home. pathetic, i know, and it doesn't even have anything to do with the injury, so moving on....
i didn't actually see what happened, i just happened to look over and i saw him in the crab walk position with a pained expression on his face. i thought maybe there was something wrong with his butt, though for the life of my i couldn't figure out how he injured it playing frisbee, but it turns out he landed on his foot at an odd angle while running/jumping for the frisbee. the on site medical professional (this is right next to the physical education department) thought it was just a bad sprain with the possibility of a torn tendon, but hospital x-rays confirmed a fracture, and he came home with this huge plaster of paris wrap from his toes to about 3/4 of the way up to his knee. and they didn't even give him some crutches, so he has to hop around the apartment on one foot using a broomstick as a ghetto cane.
switching gears....i saw the passion of christ tonight. actually, we did this huge outreach, buying 150 tickets for the students to give to non-christian friends, but this was my first time seeing the movie as well. to be honest, i don't know what i think of it yet. i'm tempted to write more, but i think i'll just wait, do some reading and processing, and try to be a bit more coherent at another time. it is, after all, 5:30 in the freaking morning, and i should really be getting some sleep.
symphonic melodies: rooney - sorry sorry
brain eats: it's 5:30, give me a break
