intellectual properties

wanderlust: quenching scheduled

several months ago i created a savings account with the login ‘wanderlust’.  since then, i’ve been squirreling away money. i’ve written before how my desire to travel has been almost painful at times, and i decided earlier this year that i wouldn’t let it torture me anymore, economic bubbles bursting or not.  a bunch of my friends took off for europe last week, and that pretty much made my pent up wanderlust overflow. it has been more than 6 years since jay and i have taken any kind of extended vacation, and we both really need it. i am blessed to have a well-paying job and flexible boss so that i can now report that some long-awaited adventures have been booked.

this weekend, i purchased 2 sets of plane tickets.  first, to Puerto Vallerta, Mexico in mid-August, to join my parents on their first ever get-on-a-plane-and-go-somewhere vacation. just a long weekend, but still exciting.  i might get to swim with dolphins!

and just now, i purchased two tickets to europe for mid-september to mid-october, during which time i will celebrate my 33rd birthday.  1 month.  sfo->amsterdam->berlin, germany->prague, czech republic->vienna, austria->budapest, hungary->amsterdam->sfo. to say i am excited is a severe understatement.

shameless plug: vote for me : SF fashion awards

i know i’ve been slacking on the blog posts lately, but please forgive me long enough to VOTE FOR ME in the SF Fashion Awards for Best Blogger. note that when you fill out the poll, you have to hit EACH ORANGE BUTTON. then it shows you the current results!

i also want to plug my dear friends Miranda Caroligne (fashion), Miss Velvet Cream (fashion), Bad Unkl Sista (costumes), Kyle Hailey (photog), Sequoia&Gita (fashion/photog), Missing Piece (fashion show/event producer), Jodie Adele (jewelry), K.Holden (blogger@sflovestory) and most especially, DEL GERONIMO (event producer/photog), who produces this event and i can only assume added my name to the list.

SF Fashion Awards, originally uploaded by wetribe.

live large

~via

\m/ in baghdad

one day after work last week jason picked me up and we went to the berkeley marina for a walk. toward the end, he asked a question to the effect of “so why do you think people care so much about what is going on in Iran?”. there are democratic atrocities happening all over the world, every day, that Americans ignore.

my answer was two part:

1. we had an election stolen from us. we know how it feels. we are still angry. there is empathy.

2. throughout the GW years there was always the threat of war with Iran, and i think even though the Obama administration is less warlike, that threat is not gone. in most American minds, it is the next war. so now that the country is imploding, if this does not come out well, if the conservatives succeed in stealing this, is it not evident that there will be a call to war on the part of those in the American government who believe that is the right action? while Amercians support “democracy” and “freedom” and human rights for everyone, everywhere, and we are all grieving for the loss of these things in Iran right now, we cannot deny that, collectively, a large part of the attention right now is selfish: we do not want ourselves another war.

.::.

last night we watched the documentary “Heavy Metal in Baghdad“, about perhaps the only heavy metal Iraqi band ever, and what happened to the members once the war started. it’s a humanitarian piece, and not even really political. a well done docu, a totally unbiased look at the effect of our war on Iraqi people just like you and me. listening to them yearn for their homeland, saying that they’d rather die in Baghdad than live in “less than zero” refugee status in Syria where they have nothing and no one, seeing them struggle to even survive, let alone be musicians and artists, as we in America have the freedom to be, is heartbreaking. i think the most popular reviewer on netflix summed it up best: “I never gave a sh!t about the war until I saw this. This documentary really shows the human condition there and not the crap you see in the news.”

metalhead or not, watching this while sh!t is going down in Iran gives it a lot of current meaning. will Iran end up like Iraq? is that where this is headed? please, gods, do not let it be so.

a poem from the rooftops of Iran

with a heavy sigh on this beautiful sunny sunday here in oakland, as i pray for iran in the only way i know how, i am so grateful for my life.

the princess tales continue

earlier this year i read “Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister“, a retelling of the Cinderella story that is extremely well written and engaging and not at all what you think it’s going to be (same author as the very popular story of the Wizard of Oz witches, Wicked. i liked this one much more than Wicked.). i learned a lot about 17th century life in Holland and Dutch art, for example. honestly, i don’t read too many books these days, as i find it harder and harder to find novels that hold my attention. i start a lot of books. i don’t finish many. this one, i read pretty much cover to cover. i kept meaning to recommend the book here, and it wasn’t until i came across two items about princess stories yesterday that i remembered. again: highly recommended.

so the two princess sites: first, “Fallen Princesses“, a photo essay:

As a young girl, growing up abroad, I was not exposed to Fairy tales. These new discoveries lead to my fascination with the origins of Fairy tales. I explored the original brothers Grimm’s stories and found that they have very dark and sometimes gruesome aspects, many of which were changed by Disney. I began to imagine Disney’s perfect Princesses juxtaposed with real issues that were affecting women around me, such as illness, addiction and self-image issues.

then, NPR points out that Pixar’s 13th movie finally has a female heroine, and guess what. SHE’S A PRINCESS.

Of the ten movies you’ve released so far, ten of them have central characters who are boys or men, or who are anthropomorphized animals or robots or bugs who are voiced by and imagined as boys or men. These movies feature women and girls to varying degrees — The Incredibles, in particular — but the story is never “a girl and the things that happen to her,” the way it’s “a boy and what happens to him.”

I want so much for girls to have a movie like Up that is about someone they can dress up as for Halloween, as Anika Noni Rose said about starring as the voice in The Princess And The Frog. Not a girl who’s a side dish, but a girl who’s the big draw.

And I’d really, really like it not to be a princess….don’t the Disney princesses pretty much have us covered? If we had to wait for your thirteenth movie for you to make one with a girl at the center, couldn’t you have chosen something — something — for her to be that could compete with plucky robots and adventurous space toys?

the whole “princess” phenomenon is one of the reasons i can’t stand Disney to no end, and i think it’s sad that Pixar has followed its leader in this regard. not only that, but the premise is sort of vomit-inducing:

In Scotland, Merida (Reese Witherspoon), a member of the royal family, decides to give up her family name for her dream of becoming an archer. Merida makes reckless choices, resulting in the destruction of her father’s kingdom and her mother’s life. Merida then struggles to set things right.

so the girl decides to break out of her assigned gender role, which results in everything getting all fucked up?

oh, Pixar. you almost had me at UP.

something to chew on

.

I have an old dead friend named Linda who was waist deep in loving Jesus and she used to tell me that it would be perfectly evident when I was living God’s Will for me because life would feel effortless and joy would abound. — BHJ

this orbital ball

i’ve listened to it several times now, and this is really the only song i like off of Tori’s new album:

Flavor (listen)

Battle of the minds
cries Below cries Above
You must pick a side
Will you choose fear?
Will you choose love? What does it look like,
this orbital ball from the fringes of The Milky Way?
What does it feel like,
this orbital ball on the fringes of the Milky Way?

i hate to say this but i’m skipping this tour.  i haven’t been into her new music in years, and every performance seems to be so much paler than the previous. i’d love to see just her and her piano again someday, in a small place. i would pay a lot for that.

the lost generation?

this is awesome and inspiring, especially for those of us in gens X and Y who are constantly being told we’re hopeless.

please watch.

based on this Argentinian political advertisement.

QOTD

The only way out is through.

–@brittneyg