intellectual properties

QOTD: M.I.A. on Gaga

“People say we’re similar, that we both mix all these things in the pot and spit them out differently, but she spits it out exactly the same! None of her music’s reflective of how weird she wants to be or thinks she is. She models herself on Grace Jones and Madonna, but the music sounds like 20-year-old Ibiza music, you know? She’s not progressive, but she’s a good mimic.”

—M.I.A. to the NME on April 7, on Lady Gaga.

– Interview Magazine, June 2010

i’m not much into M.I.A.’s music either, but this perfectly sums up why i’m not into Gaga. her costumes? fantastic (but i’m giving a lot of credit to her costume designers there too). her music? horrible, to the point that it annoys me so much that i can’t bear the thought of listening to it just to see the performance art.

lots of other good quotes in there too, such as the opening one:

“I find the new Justin Bieber video more violent and more of an assault to my eyes and senses than what I’ve made.”

—M.I.A. to NME.com on May 12, responding to the furor over the video for her new song “Born Free,” which was yanked from YouTube.

the state of 2010

i’m not one who believes in apocalyptic theories, whether it’s the Second Coming of Jesus Christ Our Lord or 2012: The Mayan Prophesy or even just mundane, secular, Nuclear WWIII.

but the fact that this is 2010 and

1. Arnold Schwarzenegger still holds a very high political office in the USA and

2.To replace him, two of the top winning candidates in yesterday’s CA election are extremely rich white republican WOMEN who were CEOs of HUGE CORPORATIONS (which TK calls the “Girls Gone Wild Senate Race“…ouch! oh, what does this say about the world, especially California, today? the socio-eco-politico-anthro discussion could be endless)

and

3. Ozzy Osbourne is now a health columnist for the Times of London

really sort of freaks me out in a dystopian 1984 kind of way, without even mentioning everything else.

tiny posts that somehow evolved into live-blogging american idol

• there are certain songs that when i hear them on the radio, in my head it gets replaced with the high school marching band/jazz band version (i was in band from grade 6-12, was 1st clarinet and played sax also).  i am not enjoying the HS jazz band version of China Grove in my head right now.

• i still listen to “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley all the time.  that song makes me so happy.

• last night i resuffered the dream that i wasn’t passing calculus again (IRL i got an A), and this time (the nth time) i noted that the lack of achievement in that respect directly correlated to lack of hooking up with the boy i had a crush on, who is also usually in the dream.

• when we were in europe, there was, in Prague, a clash with some local street vendors over a purchase. someone made a deal they shouldn’t have, and then they tried to force jay into paying more for it afterward.  i got very nervous and freaked out and sort of ran away, especially when more appeared out of the shadows and we were obviously outnumbered. i slipped into another shop and then down the street while J&J worked it out.  i was randomly thinking about this last night and in retrospect, i should have probably stood with them, as most men will not do anything to a woman, and the situation probably wouldn’t have escalated and then dragged out the way it did. especially not on a crowded tourist street. if i would have been the one to forcefully say “WE ARE LEAVING RIGHT NOW”, what would they have done? or maybe that’s a stupid idea.  more to the point is the fact that i run away when scared.

• we are going to see Ezra Furman and the Harpoons again soon.  I can’t recommend this band enough. i am way more into Ezra than Lady Gaga (even though this little piece of Gaga reporting is awesome).

• WARNING: i am currently typing this while watching the American Idol finale, so there are going to be tweet-like comments interjected into this otherwise totally cohesive blog post.

• last night i watched the Biggest Loser finale.  i have watched the whole season.  i enjoy this show.  it teaches people things that are hard to learn.  losing weight is hard.  nutrition is not complicated, but it isn’t necessarily intuitive either. i was really rooting for Cheri to win. oh well. footnote: i think Australia’s Biggest Loser is better (which you can, um, find somewhere on the internet), particularly because of the mini-nutrition seminars . and motivating yourself to exercise?  that’s a whole other animal.  i like BHJ’s approach.

• i also watched the last 1/4 of the Dancing with the Stars finale.  i’ve only seen about 1/20th of this season. it’s not that i’m not impressed;  it’s just superfluous.  as is this American Idol thing.

• this AT&T ad with the orange silky looking things is very rip-off of Christo.  oh, wait!  there at the end of the ad there is some fine print that says Christo had nothing to do with it.  interesting.

• who sold David Bowie’s music to Lincoln commercials?  fuck.

• this ad where the girl eats KFC on the bus to help her ignore the loud talking cellphone guy?  i’d be just as annoyed if someone sat next to me eating a bucket of KFC.

• oh, Xtina! hot.
• oh, wait. this is boring.
• where was i?

• ok, so on April 30 i went to the ER with neck/shoulder pain and then on May 4 jay crashed really hard on his mountain bike. we are both currently recovering and doing mostly well, although we do both complain like a couple of senior citizens about aches and pains. i am repeating this as a way to explain all of the television watching referred to above. there’s not a lot to do when you’re on painkillers.

• i really don’t care that Simon Cowell is leaving American Idol.  i’d rather see Billy Idol in his seat anyway.

• tonight we went for momos at the Cafe Tibet on University in Berkeley. and then i had an incredible eggplant dish, although next time i’d rather have the wild rice than that weird cinnabon-textured bread ball thing. never had a momo?  they’re little steamed tibetan dumplings filled with all kinds of delicious things. you’re missing out.

• fruit, vegetables, yogurt, eggs, cheese, beans, lentils, rice, nuts, coffee, wine.  all as organic as possible. moderate: soy/tofu/fake meats, popcorn, tater tots. avoid: bread, pasta, sweets. never: meat or fish. that is basically my diet.

• what is this, YACHT ROCK IDOL??
• this should stop…..

• this dreadlocked Idol finalist reminds me: not long after we first moved to California, i went out in L.A. wearing baby blue corduroys and phish t-shirt in matching baby blue. we got made fun of by some LA bimbo at the door of a club. i was indignant.  do you ever look back at photos or remember versions of yourself and wonder who that person was?

• this Idol finale is watching people sell out in real time.  it’s terribly sad.

• ok i will admit i still have a soft spot for bret michaels.  esp after Apprentice.

• despite being laid up for a couple of weeks, both jay and i have been trying to get back in shape. that’s a weird term, “in shape”, but you know what i mean.  to feel better. to live longer. to look hotter. me, since December, him, the past several months (i don’t know exactly). i haven’t lost much weight (i don’t think i had much to lose, but let’s not discuss that here, ok?) but jay has.  my boyfriend looks hot.  the larger point is that when you start really paying attention to your body it’s fascinating, all the fluctuations in energy,hunger, weight, satiation.  it’s easy to get obsessed.  the funny thing is it’s also easy to fall off the wagon.

• 2 dudes from Foreigner were on a local program last night singing “Feels Like the First Time” acoustic.  i was pretty impressed, actually . it was way better than this Chicago number on Idol.

• oh! yes, jeez i knew i was forgetting something.  saturday night i went on a bus party for a friend’s birthday.  the rest of that story is fairly unpublishable. except at the end we all sang “Don’t Stop Believing” really loud from the shores of Treasure Island while some people did gymnastics in their underwear on a wet lawn. i am not making that up.

• sunday was the 4th annual False Profit “Spring Training” outdoor party-picnic in the oakland hills.  i was there for 9 hours. it was super fun.  neva and i had a great time. aforementioned hot boyfriend also played a killer set.  lucky girl.

• in wanderlust news, i have the following in mind between now and mid-September: Utah, Chicago, Chile, Peru, Burning Man, Bali. we shall see how many come to pass.

• i guess i can just come totally clean now and admit i’ve also been watching the 2010 Giro d’Italia.  i feel like there’s nothing lazier than laying in bed watching other people do sports.  the bike races intrigue me though, and there aren’t tons of really annoying commentators or guys with light pens or beer commercials.  it’s very simple: ride bike fastest.  through incredible scenery. i like that.

• dude, Paula Abdul is totally wasted. i also can’t believe what she is wearing.  who made that atrocity? and it’s like NEON fuschia too.  file under: “i was high when i got dressed”.

• i heard a punk rock version of Billy Joel’s “my life” on KALX yesterday, and it was great. i wish i had looked to see who it was, actually. on the contrary, these group sing-a-longs in Idol make me want to hurl. i can’t believe this isn’t over yet.

• Janet’s surrogate is looking good. except it sounds a lot more like Michael than Janet.

• Obama was here in SF yesterday, and even here in the “bluest city in the nation” there was a whole crowd of protesters, everyone from central valley tea partiers screaming (with good cause) about the state budget debacle to environmentalists wanting to know what Obama was doing fundraising when the entire Gulf Coast is in a state of emergency. retort: you need Dems in office to deal with oil reform. i have no idea who you need in office to fix California.

• some days i feel highly dysfunctional on a lot of levels.  today was one of those days.  this blog post is making me feel better.

• i have no investment into which one of these humans win idol.  oh, wait….well now that it’s announced i guess i was sort of rooting for the girl.

• and that is probably the most i will blog in a while.

the end.

QOTD

God gave you brains so that you could think, and it’s about time you started doing that.

–from an amazing letter written by the mother of a gay child published in a Vermont newspaper, which i highly encourage you to read (@titaniumdreads)

Filed in QOTD, culture and random linkage | Comment (0)

raincheck

i shared this last week, so maybe you’ve already read it, but it tickles me in numerous ways, perhaps because i’ve gone to bed early the last TWO friday and saturday nights, so i’m reposting it here for posterity.

Please can we not go to the party? The reason I ask is because I am not feeling very well. There’s something wrong with my head. Or my stomach. Or my arm. It’s kind of an all over body ache, the sort of thing that probably would not show up on any sort of medical exam, but which I am confident is quite contagious. To be safe, I think we should probably just stay home.

I know you are excited to go to the party. You enjoy getting dressed up and drinking good wine and making conversation with all of our friends, many of whom we have not seen for a long time. They are great people one and all. They are without exception terrific, and I am proud to consider them my friends. At the same time, I do not need to see any of them ever again.

I find that a lot of socializing is simply a way of communicating that we like each other. When we stand around the party sloshing our wine around and catching up with each other, essentially we are just saying “I like you” over and over again. All social conversation can be reduced in this way. You say, “I like you.” I respond, “I like you, too.” Then, after that person is out of earshot, we talk to other people about how much we dislike the first person.

Think about how good staying home will be for the environment…

–Michael Ian Black, for McSweeney’s

and it goes on, brilliantly.

i am only coming through in waves

the approximate scale is 15 to 30:
a nice-looking spectrum in its duplicity,
but there’s a lot of room in the middle.

my right arm is barely alive.
one of my least attractive personality traits
is that when i’m in pain i whine.
how much does it hurt?
i don’t know if i have a low threshold for pain or for complaining.

sailing through the wet-green and foggy-blue,
today is not the first day i wished my bike commute was longer.

clothes maketh the (wo)man

this great piece on the historical and human importance of fashion by author Linda Grant on the Powell’sBooks.blog, contextualized by the odd historical footnote of the effect of sending lipstick to the women of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, simply articulates so many things i haven’t been able to in my defense of fashion (online and off).  some choice excerpts:

It is a commonly held view that fashion and makeup are trivial concerns: Superficial, unnecessary, and concealing by trickery what is held to be ‘real’ beneath. Fashion is surface, fad, transient. Yet time and again one uncovers moments when clothes and makeup become the things that render us human.

…

Our clothes are our identity. They are, whether we like it or not, how we are judged by others. Out in public, they send out numerous messages, about our social status and our sense of ourselves. A flamboyant tie, high-heeled shoes, this season’s shade of purple — all make announcements to the complete strangers we walk past on the street.

…

Clothes are not everything, but you cannot have depths without surfaces. They communicate with what is within; between the two there is always a great dialogue.

via nagutron

brides, baseball, chanting and compost

friday night:  went to ariel’s offbeat bride v2.0 book reading in the upper haight (backstory: we’ve been online friends for years, via hooping, and have met up in-person a few times). i’ll admit that when i arrived i wondered for a second why i was there, actually (outside of seeing Ariel, but i didn’t necessarily have to go to the book reading for that), as i have zero intentions of being a bride (yes, still. please let us not talk about it AGAIN.) and i have already been to see her do this book reading once, when it was first published.  as i listened to the reading and the questions, i flipped through the current issue of sports illustrated swimsuit issue (aside: swimsuit models are so much better to look at than runway models. duh, you might be saying. but i spend most of my time looking at fashion, not men’s magazines.)

it was when Ariel started talking about how the main reason she started and continues her interest with OBB even though her marriage is way past that i perked up, and remembered why i continue to read (ok, SCAN) the OBB website even though i don’t intend to get married.  weddings entail and wrap up so much of our culture, from fashion to what we hold sacred (not that those are totally separate), and the process of planning a wedding isn’t just about where/when/who/whatdoiwear; as many brides and grooms have discovered, really complicated cultural questions can come up (case in point: there is currently a very long live email thread on one of my womens’ lists about changing your last name, sparked by THIS link suggesting doing so could have negative impacts you might not have expected).  weddings are a bit of microcosm of culture, and since i’m super into cultural habits/themes/rituals etc, it makes sense that it interests me. plus, i find out about all the hot underground fashion designers/dressmakers that way (i am not however, reading Offbeat Mama, even though I understand the same thing applies (parenting is a much about culture as it is about offspring), it holds almost no personal interest for me.) the book reading was lively and amusing, and it was great seeing how much people are enjoying the Offbeat Empire and good to see the Electrolicious family in real life again.

saturday morning was an absolutely glorious sunny spring day, jay went mountain biking, and i found myself in another context that you wouldn’t usually find me: a baseball game. it was my longtime friend JB aka Windigo aka The Fox’s birthday, and a bunch of us went to the A’s game to celebrate. the first 8.5 innings were fairly uneventful, game-wise, but the group of 20ish people assembled amused ourselves quite well. and then, in the bottom of the 9th, the A’s pulled it together and somehow managed to load the bases and score 2 runs to win the game. the crowd went wild! it was great.

later that afternoon we went for sushi at Ozumo and then that evening, jay and i donned the only green outfits we had (yes, my wardrobe is fairly monochrome: black) and went off to celebrate the birthdays of 3 of our favorite women in a emerald city themed birthday party that only sort of got busted by the cops. WTF, SoMa? not even midnight on a saturday night and you’re telling us to turn it down? jeesh. sometimes it’s just too hard to party in this city.

yesterday was also glorious, so we headed north to China Camp State Park in marin and jay and the neighbor went mountain biking while i took a leisurely 2-hour/5 mile hike. i found myself doing this thing where i have imaginery conversations with people about things that have not happened, as if i need to prepare a script in case it does. i won’t get into the topic, but at a certain point i literally said to myself “why are you thinking about this and not something good?”, at which point i developed a little chant to try to empty my head and also provide a bit of a rhythm for hiking faster, like a march. it went something like “shoulders back! chin up! irises! green plants! blue sky! sunshine! the hum of the insects. shoulders back! chin up!….” yeah, i know it’s weird maybe, but sometimes chanting is the only way i can stop my brain from going all kinds of directions, and even then i noticed that i was thinking about things while chanting. actively trying to clear your mind is difficult.

we returned and stuffed ourselves silly @ Vik’s chaat, still the best Indian in the bay. they have instituted a 3-part solid waste system of compost-recyclable-trash (THANK YOU, VIK’S!), and it was amusing, sitting next to the waste station, to watch all of the people who looked like they’d never encountered such a complicated system in a restaurant stop, read the signs, and then sort their waste, *usually* correctly. it’s amazing how effective some signage can be, and i’m betting that a number of people learn something new about waste disposal when they go there, and not just greenwashing to make yourselves look better. this is an example of DOING IT RIGHT.

and then went home and watched The Life Aquatic.

life is good. the end.

postmillennial hope

“I give thanks to America, a country insane enough to declare the pursuit of happiness to be an inalienable right.”

i’m reading Susan Sontag’s most excellent book In America: A Novel, about a group of well-to-do Polish people who give up everything - for some of them including fame and wealth - to become farmers/settlers in Southern California around 1876. why would these people, who had everything, give it all up to work as field hands? the book is amazing at expounding on the thoughts/ motivations of the such early immigrants - The Dream of America was *so big* that even those who had everything in their homelands were willing to give it all up for a shot at The Dream. how many of those dreams came true?

relatedly, yesterday i shared on gReader and facebook this piece from Adbusters written by Michael Larson, a philosophy teacher from Pittsburgh:

Postmillennial Tension: Can we be the ones we’ve been waiting for?

some excerpts:

That dominant ideal of modernity is tied to a notion of ever-expanding progress and limitless consumption. The oil crisis of 1973 signaled the onset of the postmodern malaise. “Our future was all of a sudden mortgaged,” writes Bourriaud in Altermodern. So while capital has continued expanding its reach in other areas, there has been a lingering denial – an inability to mourn the lost object and the dream’s impossibility. If this was the death of the dream, then our present reality of global warming, water and food shortages, market collapse and the continued proliferation of violent factionalism make it clear that we had better get on with mourning and confront the sorrow we have been trying to repress. Putting it off has only allowed the problems to grow.

We have had a century of continuity in which the basic operating assumptions of the economic system have been hegemonic. In fact this version of “modernity” was to have closed the book on history: We have reached the best of all possible worlds; there are no alternatives. Proclaiming the end of history intimates that our desires have been satiated and that there is nothing further to strive for.

i don’t read adbusters too much anymore because i think a lot of it IS too hopeless/ armageddonist/depressing, but i still subscribe to the online feed and what caught my eye about this one is that there has been something in my mind for a really long time now with respect to my particular demographic - educated middle class americans with plenty of food, clothing, shelter - that goes something like “WE HAVE EVERYTHING.  WHY AREN’T WE HAPPY?”, which seems simple, but it is all heavy with a million questions about both of the words “everything” and “happy”, and extends way beyond myself and my community to America as a whole, and our self-image of always “the best. america is the best. the best of everything is here. it is yours to take if you work hard enough”.

but it turns out that maybe, just maybe, that isn’t true, that the American Dream was a fallacy, or, even worse: what if the “everything” isn’t enough when you get it? what if, when you get to the top run of the ladder - the house, the yard, the boat, the kids, the degrees, the “everything” - what if then that isn’t enough? it must be really depressing to get to the top and realize it’s not far enough.

my speculation is that, like the early Europeans who came from perfectly good lives with solid communities to risk everything on the American frontier, there is a part of human nature that is utterly insatiable, no matter what you give it, and that the “everything” we want isn’t as physical as we’ve been lead to believe - via consumerism, marketing - the “everything” is something intangible, and possibly unattainable. it’s what drives us as humans to do what we do. if it were attainable, how would we evolve?

my generation (X), and the next (Y) seems to be the first in a few to really FEEL this. we were taught, growing up in the 80s especially, that once certain things were attained, peace and happiness would follow. but all after our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents hard work, building industries and fighting for civil rights and freedom, those of us in the educated middle-class who have access to all the things our forefathers dreamed about, here we are, standing on the top rung of the ladder, and we’re still not happy, and the world - and the rest of the world - it’s even more of a mess than before.

that is why the one sentence that hit me most in this piece was “Jean-Paul Sartre described anguish as the recognition of responsibility and the ensuing need to act without guarantee, without hope.“  as Americans, we have a lot of responsibility in this world, as we consume most of the resources and control a lot of the politics. but what hope can we feel now about it all, when it seems we inherited a wealth of square pegs but none of them fit in what turned out to be round holes?

so then finally, the author asks:

So we find ourselves in this moment of rupture, precariously exposed to risk and perhaps devoid of hope. Can we think of these facts as possibilities? Can we confront our situation and imagine what things might be like otherwise, even without guarantees? The end of history has reached its end. Can we be the ones we have been waiting for?

i also felt a lot of this, but wasn’t able to express it, during Obama’s HOPE campaign, like all of Democratic and minority America felt like everything had been done - all the groundwork was laid out, and now everyone was pinning their future on one man/one moment that was going to seal the deal. HOPE is what Obama tried to sell us, and for the election season, we bought it. but here we are 1+ years later, and people are getting depressed because the whole world didn’t change when Obama took office.

so what about now? we have to stop waiting for the thing that is going to save us. we have to stop standing on the top rung of the ladder, thinking there is no where else to go. we have the tools to build a new future. we are what we have been waiting for.

MLK and the dream

today, remembering that only 50 years ago, white people in this country thought it was just fine to separate people by color, to deny them freedoms and rights and treat them like animals.  may it be so that in 50 years from now, the people who are still fighting for equality in America today (gays, immigrants, among others) will look back at now as a time in history when people fought for change and won.

a few choice quotes from MLK, Jr:

“I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. I believe that even amid today’s mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men. I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive good will proclaim the rule of the land.” - 1964 Nobel peace prize acceptance speech

“Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more than any other word. It is the word “maladjusted.” Now we all should seek to live a well—adjusted life in order to avoid neurotic and schizophrenic personalities. But there are some things within our social order to which I am proud to be maladjusted and to which I call upon you to be maladjusted. I never intend to adjust myself to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to adjust myself to mob rule. I never intend to adjust myself to the tragic effects of the methods of physical violence and to tragic militarism. I call upon you to be maladjusted to such things.”

“…it is no longer the choice between violence and non-violence. it is the choice between non-violence and non-existence.”

Realize the Dream