In the process of doing my reading for class tomorrow, I came up with a quote by H. J. Khandekar. During the Constituent Assembly to create the Constitution of India in the mid-1940s, the issue of whether or not it was necessary to create quotas of government positions for members of lower castes, in order to rectify the disproportional preponderance of members of higher castes in positions of power, was a hot one. In response to the scarcity of "untouchables" to be found in the new administrative services (most were rejected after interviews on the basis that their academic marks were insufficient), Khandekar spoke to the Assembly saying:

Today = DISNEYLAND!

first time disney anything ever. yes.

Which is a good model that more places should seek to emulate.

( Read more... )

Times are so hard for everybody, and a lot of these families are, well, big families. Food prices have risen by, what, 50% lately? 75% in six years, as I read recently? Think how hard that is in a family with two kids - or no kids. And these families, a lot of them have four, or five, or six kids. Or more. And unlike some families, they don't have nifty contracts to be on national TV all the time, either.

WORKBOOK
LESSON 9

I see nothing as it is now.

This idea obviously follows from the two preceding ones. But while you may be able to accept it intellectually, it is unlikely that it will mean anything to you as yet. However, understanding is not necessary at this point. In fact, the recognition that you do not understand is a prerequisite for undoing your false ideas. These exercises are concerned with practice, not with understanding. You do not need to practice what you already understand. It would indeed be circular to aim at understanding, and assume that you have it already.

It is difficult for the untrained mind to believe that what it seems to picture is not there. This idea can be quite disturbing, and may meet with active resistance in any number of forms. Yet that does not preclude applying it. No more than that is required for these or any other exercises. Each small step will clear a little of the darkness away, and understanding will finally come to lighten every corner of the mind that has been cleared of the debris that darkens it.

These exercises, for which three or four practice periods are sufficient, involve looking about you and applying the idea for the day to whatever you see, remembering the need for its indiscriminate application, and the essential rule of excluding nothing. For example:
I do not see this typewriter as it is now.
I do not see this telephone as it is now.
I do not see this arm as it is now.

Begin with things that are nearest you, and then extend the range outward:
I do not see that coat rack as it is now.
I do not see that door as it is now.
I do not see that face as it is now.

It is emphasized again that while complete inclusion should not be attempted, specific exclusion must be avoided. Be sure you are honest with yourself in making this distinction. You may be tempted to obscure it.

-=( Cross-posted to/from InZenity )=-

i was a hilarious teenager.

ALSO:



a couple months ago I decided It was necessary for me to finish Busted Wonder this year.  So that meant that unlike before, I now had to set up a deadline. I asked KG, "hey, when would be a good time for you to have BW finished this year?"  and he laughed scornfully and said well as long as we're dreaming, how about Midsummer's Day?*  and I said, why are you a genius, that's perfect! 

anyway, as you can see from the blurry chart, I am right on schedule - every page has been drawn, inked and scanned into the computer, except for page 80 which I am saving for a bit.  Today after I am done with this entry posting nonsense, it is back to coloring page 53, so I can start putting boxes around my x's,  in a timely manner, so that BUSTED WONDER WILL BE FINISHED AND POSTED COMPLETLEY ON JUNE 24, 2008!!  It is pretty exciting, and I am super looking forward to spending the next handful of weeks coloring up the pages, I think everyone will be pretty happy with how it turns out, I am trying to do a super good job to make it worth everyone's wait. 

anyway, thanks again you guys for all your patience, and I will see you all back here June 24!

* = not actually his words, bless him he has always been so nice about all this mess

ps: the new weezer album is great, you should get it so you can feel some feelings of  joy and awesomeness in your heart

Me: Whose birthday is it?
David: David birthday?
Me: That's right!
David: Daddy birthday?
Me: No, just David.
David: Mommy birthday?
Me: No, only David.
David: Raffi birthday?
Me: No, his birthday is next week. It's ONLY DAVID'S BIRTHDAY.
David: YAY!!!

I would just like to present Exhibit A in the Free Market Doesn't Make Everything Better case.



The consistent quality of British TV, combined with the dreadful, commercialized and catatonic market of the American television industry makes me wish for socialist TV. I have what? Maybe 100 channels and I watch perhaps 3 of them?

Rampant capitalism destroys culture and art. It just does. Brilliance and genius in film, art or craft may be recognized by markets, but they are not effectively promoted, shaped or guided by markets. What you end up with is some miasmatic trough of third-rate products; pared down, cheapened, distilled and economized for maximum profit at a minimum of cost.

What survives? Greatness? No. What survives depends upon some cold, cynical, soulless economic formula that recognizes only earnings on the dollar. Well what if that is what the people want? Fine, I guess. And yet we wonder why we're so soaked in commercial banality, bemoan the lack of true art, and otherwise complain about the shallow morbidity of our leisure pursuits, wistfully pining for some specter of the good old days.

Its called selling your soul.

Our increasingly numb catatonia can only be broken by spastic orgies of charged stimulation- devolving into an increasing spiral of depravity as our stimulant-addled brains require greater and greater heights of putrid vulgarity to shake us from our deadened senses. We're commercial junkies looking for that next hit at any cost. We pump out abortion after abortion of modern art in some sick recognition of our barren state, striving for the greatness we can only barely make out against the haze of our stupefied euphoria.

Grand Theft Auto IV is not the cause of anything; it is a symptom of our cultural poverty, our utter lack of any ideal other than sales. We get used to it like hogs feeding on scraps. We soon forget what once was and content ourselves with tripe, exchanging quality and beauty for quantity and accessibility. We have become fat with slothful works of increasingly cheap and disgusting appeal, resorting to the stench of feces in our desperation for any sense at all.

MissionFish, in partnership with PayPal, is accepting donations for the Burmese Cyclone disaster. I wanted to let anyone know just in case anyone here is like me and lacks a credit card. Be careful when looking for PayPal donation sites. Go only to PayPal and follow the links from there. There is a huge amount of fraud going on with hucksters setting up scams for Myanmar relief via PayPal that "promise to really really truly send the money to Myanmar" however they lack any sort of receipt or verification process.

Donation link.

If anyone is willing to participate, I will commit to matching 50% of donations up to 50 dollars, upon receipt of an e-mail copy of PayPal confirmation forms. Yes of course, feel free to edit everything personal and secure out.

you could put a chair at the end
or push the tables together
but dont bother
This banged-up little restaurant
where you would expect no rules at all
has a firm policy against seating
parties of five
And you know you are
a party of five
It doesn’t matter if one of you
offers to leave or if
you say you could split into
a party of three and a party of two
or if the five of you come back tomorrow
in Richard Nixon masks and try to pretend
that you don’t know each other
It won’t work: You’re a party of five
even if you’re a beloved regular
Even if the place is empty
Even if you bring logic to bear
Even if you’re a tackle for the Chicago Bears
it won’t work
You’re a party of five
You will always be a party of five
A hundred blocks from here
a hundred years from now
you will still be a party of five
and you will never savor the soup
or compare the coffee or
hear the wisdom of the cook
and the wit of the waitress or
get to hum the old-time tunes
among which you will find
no quintets

- Robert Hershon

I guess I didn't think of it, but going from Of Mice and Men to Watership Down betrays an unhealthy and insecure need to make sure the bunnies are alright. If I were to write a cross-over fanfic, it would have Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig and the gang living next to Zombie-Lennie's cave, and would involve excruciatingly long narration detailing Zombie-Lennie's comical attempts to get to know the bunny rabbits.

I'm pretty sure Warner Brother's already did that at some point with Bugs Bunny, but anyway...

My fascination with the animal kingdom is a manifestation of my damaged psyche. I find refuge and solace in the simple logic of animal lives. Humans may be smart, but we make a whole mess of rubbish and foolishness. Our pride is not in our logic, of which we are terribly bereft. Our curse is our intelligence, doomed to devise ever more cunning ways to kill each other in the utter absence of logical survival. At any rate, animals are the most logical beings on the planet.

Not that we aren't animals, just that we're the least logical of the bunch. The smartest, yet the most illogical. It is probably an inherent evolutionary trade-off: you can't be smart and logical for some reason.

In any event, I have a newfound interest in American literature (Watership Down isn't American I know, but it didn't get noticed until America noticed it). I guess I just had to mature into it. I had read Watership Down before, but that was a very long time ago.

Her Water, Breaking

     phlegm, icor and
            sugar

    thick waves of chocolate and gasoline

                and electricity streams
        from my tongue to your thumb

above our raft of cotton sponges,  trees on their heads,
        roots swirling,
passing, cracking, shivering,
            shedding earth and worms

        silver spoons and knives caught
            in root joints, a squirrel skull

the little animals killed
        and lied about

    a velvet speculum
        old wooden machines, still grinding underwater

            the blue ribbons
        our mother stole and tied to twigs
                outside her abbey

            in the heat,
        our hair rises like wings

                a doll's table
    set with glitter and flames,
                turning, dipping

your ivory handcuffs, scrimmed
        with our mother's lost recipes

silk surgeon's scrubs
cinnamon scalpel

        built for our bodies

So, my brother is all enthused about this trip to Colorado.  I'm still on the fence because, seriously, what are we going to do for a week or so together?  I suggested we do a progressive sort of trip - figure out things to do along the way and do those instead of driving straight through to Colorado or Wyoming.  He seems OK with the idea but not, like, super excited.  I'm just not clear on what he's wanting to do on this trip.

I keep trying to pull it out of him and make different suggestions.  He keeps saying, "We'll just figure it out when we're there, you know?"  No, I don't know.  I hate traveling like that.  I would much rather do a bit of homework and compile a list of potential interests and attractions THEN work from there.  That way it's easier to plan day trips, places to stay, places to go, budgeting, and what to pack.  It seems pretty clear cut to me, at least. 

I get this email from him tonight.  He's way excited to go whitewater rafting - which he SHOULD be.  It's a lot of fun.  He found this place in northern Minnesota that does 2.5 hour river trips for pretty cheap and has suggested we go.  I read up a bit on the river - we're looking at a class II, MAYBE class III in high waters river.  Again, I know he's excited to do it and all but I'm so not interested in driving 2.5-3 hours each way to spend $40 on a probably kind of boring rafting trip. 

I'm stressed about this because I love my brother and all, but he makes me tired.  I feel like I always have to be the goofy younger sibling.  I feel like he doesn't listen to me because I'm his younger sibling.  We don't have that much in common; we used to but then he went to Cal and got jaded and is slowly getting more and more conservative.  But I don't think he is genuinely conservative; I think he's just defensive.  He is very much a straight, white male who was born into a loving family who did everything they could to ensure that he could be where he is now - he's almost 26 and has been in school since age 5.  He's smart to the point of being socially awkward sometimes.  He thinks that a lot of people are a waste of time (something that he and I have in common, perhaps surprisingly enough, but I'm slowly learning otherwise).  He says and argues for concepts and ideas that I take quite personally BECAUSE he is arguing white male patriarchy.  I don't really think he realizes or understands the full implications of what he's saying.

You can choose your friends, and I exercise this, but you can't choose your family.  While he sometimes really frustrates me and I think he's a boring tool, the truth of the matter is I would do most anything for him (but I'm really going to get sick of hearing him talk about Ashley). 

So I'm to spend a week or so with him in a couple months.  It's suddenly my role to help him become more adventurous and live a little bit, to see the world from a different perspective.   I planned to take a trip to Boston this summer - I've purchased the ticket and I'm budgeting for that and now I'm supposed to take another week off work about a month later?  I don't have cushy coaching jobs and fellowships like he does - I work a shitting hourly wage job that doesn't have benefits.  July is surely a busy fucking month - how can I afford to take that time from work when I am trying so hard to save up to I can finally get on with my life?  He keep saying it won't cost me much, but I don't understand how he's budgeting.  We're taking about a 1,200 mile (one way) road trip, in addition to hotels, entertainment (rafting isn't cheap, you know), food, and miscellaneous stupid shit.  Gas prices are rising.  July is vacation season.  This isn't going to be a cheap trip. 

How am I going to afford this?  (And this was my parents idea - they know I'm not exactly rolling in the dough right now.)  How am I going to deal with him for a week?  Driving?  In hotels?  Negotiating where to eat or what to do?   Can I actually back out of this?

I feel like I'm stuck in Minneapolis right now.  I feel like I'll never be able to move and get on with my life.  I never wanted to move back here and I'm going on being back for 1.5 years.  I still barely have any money.  I still barely have a job.  I still live with my parents.  I still am in a long distance relationship that isn't looking like it will be short distance anytime soon.  And now I'm scheduled to go on this fucking vacation with my brother that will even further prevent me from saving money. 

That was my fucking plan for this summer - do my thing in Boston.  Come home.  Work.  Do not travel until I can move or unless I have a really great fucking reason.  

But, no.  Now I have to play with my brother because he is heartbroken.



 

1. They played that damnable song at Doc Chey's, so Atlanta's as plagued with meaningless guilt as the northeast.
   
2. The same deme of hipsters who used to work in Tortilla's now work at the Majestic, which now has Wi-Fi for its patrons.
   

All you Emoroid diaspores gotta see this place, its the same, but moreso.

It's been the worse of times and the best of times.
Today has been very eventful, possibly an unforgettable day.
It wasn't a happy day but a lot of things have been uncovered.

On the other side of the world, in Korea it's Buddhist Day. Nothing that I would ever celebrate.
This is what my aunt told me during chat. She said Mother's Day had already passed in Korea it was 5/8.
Actually it was Parent's Day over there (Ubbuyi nal).  (I thought why couldn't she just say thank you and let it be. So stoic of her.)

I wonder about why in Korea they don't have 2 separate days like here, Mother's Day and Father's Day.
I thought maybe it was due to both parents not living long enough (father passing away before mother while the baby is young.)
Or perhaps both mother and father are supposed to stay together forever and ever so you celebrate it for both parents.
It makes sense in some ways but today there are many who get divorced. Korea should make 2 days for each parent like here in the US.

Just a thought. We're already in the middle of May.
How time flies.

When I first started sailing, a guy who took me out on the river for instruction once told me, as I had control of the tiller and didn't have a clue what I was doing, that I was about to go into "a really bad jibe."

Today I found out the meaning of what a "really bad jibe" is during a sudden, really violent gust of wind, when the boat spun out of control and turned so that it was running directly before the wind, the boom swung round so quickly that I didn't have time to even think about crossing to the other side of the boat, and then the entire craft tipped sideways and dumped me into the river. I was ok, if mostly soaked. The boat turned upside down and sank. The dock staff had to fish it out of the bottom of the river.

Do you know what is at the bottom of the Charles River?

If you haven't seen it, you don't want to.

XD

FIVE days till Tokyo!

Christianity is odd in that it is a trinitary system (father, son, and holy spirit), yet it functions in the dualistic sense of humans juxtaposed to some Stronger Other.

As far as numerology is concerned, we know that a trinity is much stronger than some mere dualism.

Where exactly do the Christians get their notions of some all-encompassing, omnipotent, omnipresent creator that's imbued so narrowly with human Laws and Characteristics? This is how far they have strayed from their savor of Jesus, because I know well he would never talk of the Avatar of Love that he spoke of as a "Father" as being what we call this "God" to be.

As Nietzsche stated well, "The last true Christian died on the cross." From hence on, mostly we have degenerated whatever this character of Jesus was into dogma. That we have him, sitting in our rooms, crucified as the martyr he was, and are so oblivious to what he did truly means--that we cannot realize he was a revolutionary of his time, likely called mad for his openness and gentle repose, and was thus killed like John Lennon or JFK--for all suits and purposes, he would come back as anything but that loveful avatar he pervaded.

In fact, it is Hitler who presents the idea that Paul of Tarsus--that hater of the Jew and Christian alike, who so suddenly had his "revelation" and change to a Christian--in fact relegated Jesus to what is the contemporary notion of celebrity, all in the name of Greed and Power. In this sense, we can see where the degeneration of whatever Jesus was began--and we see where its current roots gained stead.

For our Jesus, what is he other than a pacifying figure which keeps us ignorant and weak, pious and docile to the avarice, hatred, and idiocy which pervade our country. What is He become other than the Big Brother of America, the face we all stare at and which comforts us in our supreme weakness and obligatory bowance to the modern day Paul of Tarsus that America has become?

Where do the Catholics get their hatred of homosexuals and blacks, other than from their own biasing of their apparent holy book?

Where did the Crusades emerge, other than out of the War-God of Yahweh inside the Christian "Father"? Where did it emerge other than from ignorance and bias, calling and pushing along these weak monkeys fighting other monkeys?

Where is the world at where it's at right now, other than at weakness, pithyness, piousness, and the falling away from what was truly Human?

What has monotheism given to the world other than an age of martyrs which has swallowed up the true antiquitized honey of the human species?

America is an estranged place, some weak carpentried homage of Rome. The Romans stole the crowning achievements of the Greeks, and took over their land, degenerating the Greeks beyond repair; and as this is true, we took what the Romans and Europeans were, and carried it idiotically with us, despite our calls away from tyranny: this dominator culture, which assimilates, and destroys that which will not assimilate, in the name of its viralic herd collective.

We have been ignorant, and unaware for too long: bred and created to bow down to lines, and to walk on these tight-ropes with the most dim-witted repose of monochroma. We are truly sick, and this is the current human condition. Our ignorance has yielded a neon-lit amusement park full to the brims of alcohole people, emptiness, and hatred. Spirituality lays dead, somewhere in America, with a police officer handcuffing it to a cross, as its third eye bellows dark black nigritudes of death. . .It rests in your hands, the future, the possibilities, the choices. It starts now, when you decide to Open Yourself and see past the lies, and stop feeding this atrocious system bred to take all your Heart and Passion and Brains and hit them futively against the dead plant cells of paper.

It starts in realizing that America does not have to be what it is, and it could in fact be anything its people decide. That is, if its people actually decided to have a say in its government any longer, if they actually decided to think past handed-to-them-lines. . .Do you see your hand now, and its cells, and the wholesome entity that is you, this synchronicity machine, fasted together by smaller organisms, with universes in universes? Do you see how well it functions as an extension of the lovely Earth, and how dastardly and idiotic we as a collective do not? Let the Peace intent in you be the example you shine upon the whole world. We must become, or perhaps it is far, far too late. . .

In honor of Mother's Day, my partner and I have been working on a multimedia project. I'm hoping that it can really grow and expand, and that lots of people will participate. Here are the basics:

While I was out for a run recently, I saw a new ad for Canadian Club Whisky. The campaign is called "Damn Right Your Dad Drank It," and features photos of white men doing manly things circa the Seventies. There are several of these ads. One reads "Your Dad Wasn't A Metrosexual," another reads "Your Mom Wasn't Your Dad's First." The one that really annoyed me was "Your Dad Had Groupies."

( Here are the ads, click on the thumbnails to enlarge: )
I find this campaign offensive on so many levels. First of all, if Canadian Club is attempting to change their image to increase sales, I find it odd that they are being so exclusionary with their re-branding. Apparently, the only people invited to the Canadian Club Club are White Males, Ages 18-30, women and people of color need not apply. It's not that surprising to me that a company is aiming at that small demographic, but the way they're doing it is truly offensive. Basically, they are appealing to men who miss the days (whether or not they were born yet) of grabbing the asses of their secretaries, playing a few rounds at the all-white private golf club, and then going home to their wives, the happy homemakers who would mix them drinks, cook them dinner, and wait on them hand and foot. None of this women's lib, civil rights, limp-wristed liberal bullshit that men are expected to follow these days. No, let's go back to the days of rampant sexual harassment, before women could expect to be seen as equals and before the gays turned all those masculine men into pansies with waxed eyebrows. Let's return to the days when men were men. Please.

Adding insult to injury, visitors to the site are invited to "Put your own dad (or yourself or your friends) into one of our Damn Right ads. It's downright easy to do, and when you're done you can download your ad and send it to your friends." This Ad Maker is where I got the idea for the following project: I was going to remake the ads, but with women. Women who were old enough to be my mom or my grandmother, and with tag lines like "Your Mom Didn't Shave Her Legs" or "Your Grandma Built Fighter Jets." The first one I made was "Your Mom Had Groupies." I included a selection of female musicians that I love, some that were well known, others that were not. ( Here is my version of the Canadian Club Damn Right ad (click the image to see a larger version): )

phoenixchilde and silveraspen!

OH. EM. GEE.

CONSIDER ME PICKED UP.

Terrible dilemma: do I put it up on my wall (WHERE?! WHY NOT EVERYWHERE?), or do I just hold it out in front of me wherever I go and gaze?

In short: THANK YOU. You are wonderful. HOMG.

DEEEEEEEAN!

Me: David, what do you want for your birthday? I already bought you your presents but I want to know if I got the right thing.
Overtired David: Umm... Umm... Oh! Plastic!