Why didn't I think of this?

riled up again!

so i had posted my own personal defense of marriage, of anyone a few days ago right?
so my thoughts are still the same and pretty fresh.
this is when my sisters friend stops by for resume help. mind you he spent all 3 hours playing on her macbook, bashing macs, and not actually fixing or making a resume
he then decided to , make himself further known as richard the dick. he decides hes going to "have a conversation about abortion" " let's talk about politics" meanwhile he spouts very vehemently that hes for obama, but cant vote for a black man, nor does he support pro choice anything, nor should gays marry or adopt, or have "natural" children. (did i mention he was a member of the cicny police force? no? and no one ever thinks cops are biased or racists.....)
and he wants my opinon on these issues, knowing i know a lot about these issues from a historical factor, also, he knows, or my sis has told him im a crazy liberal. i do not in fact consider myself as such. im not liberal about anything but equal rights really.
so my response, i gape at him, tell him to read guns germs and steel, then show him how to reserve a request and hold at the library
also i wont burn him cds.
im pretty sure he thinks im an evil cold hearted bitch. i hope so, maybe then he will stop provoking me and let me be. or better yet not loiter in my house for 4 hours bithcing he dosent want to work anything that involve actual skill or brain power, and payes better than 30 bucks an hour.......... i went to my room, shut the door, put on head phones, grabbed my book and retreated to my happy place, where vampires and werewolves are in love with the same girl...

I dreamed I had woken up without the ability to control my eyes. I couldn't move them to look at what I wanted to see, and I couldn't focus them. It effectively rendered me blind. It was terrifying.

I kind of really like my job?

Which is a really weird thing to say. I guess this is what meaningful employment feels like. I know that I am lucky, and I am trying to be more appreciative of what I have. I'm pretty openly selfish, which I don't consider to be a wholly bad or unusual thing, but I at least want to balance it out.

In the class I am an aide for, every continent is represented except Australia. We have students from Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Costa Rica, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Romania, Sweden, Italy, Turkey, and Iran. I tutor 3 Koreans, 3 Japanese, 1 Chinese, 1 Venezuelan, 1 Turkish, 1 Sudanese, and 1 Vietnamese. My highest level is a medical doctor in his home country here to take master's level classes. My lowest level is a refugee who is illiterate in her native language, can have a conversation in English, but whose only writing consists of putting letters together to make the simplest of words. They're all pretty amazing people, I think. There are more, of course; those are just the people I am in contact with on a weekly basis. It makes me feel privileged to know English.

Also, meaningful employment, in my case, means I get paid not a wage or salary but a "living allowance." It's basically a stipend, meant to be enough for me to survive. And that's all it is. Rather, it should be more than enough for me to survive, but I am still adjusting to the notion that I cannot simply purchase anything I want any moment that I want it. I am starting to notice a few of the absurd American privileges I usually take for granted. It's too early to tell, but I think this is going to be really good for me.

Lonely Days

So today was long. I ended the day at 7:30 because of a goddamned weekly status meeting. I've been sick lately and in the meeting it felt like the whole room was turning into a boiler. Started to freak out midway through, pretty sure I had a mini panic attack. Got a call from a friend that we were all gunna hang out at 8, but that he needed a ride. Told him I wouldn't be back until 8:30. 8:15 rolls around and I realize I'm not going to be able to provide. I HATE going back on plans. I know I know. I make plans sometimes thinking I'll be able to do things that I obviously can't. Anyways...

Stomach is in knots. Parents are out of town and when I came home all I had was Max.

I hate being alone. I'll be getting a place downtown soon. Anyone who can look for a job in Sac should start looking now. I'll post the actual address when it's official. But, I can definitely support people for a while while they look...

HRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

all riled up!

so dave sent me a link....
and things worked out from there in my head all day. now i do not know the person in question, but his post is here on facebook
this is my response
feel free to comment on your own!

Marriage:
-A bond of two people in love, declaring each other for one another alone.
Marriage:
-A contract signed between two parties cementing inheritance , rights and property. A merging of assets in two families.

Which do you think is more important?
It depends on when you lived, or where you live. If you think both are true for the average American family, you are kidding yourself. Love matches, or what we think of when we think white dress wedding bells, is a verymodern idea. Meaning the idea that you can choose your mate, and not only choose, but love them. This was completely unheard of just a few hundred years ago. You cite Judaism as the start of marriage, right area of the world, off by a thousand years. Look to the creation myths of the ancient Sumerians, Enki and Ninhursag, a precursor of the genesis myths. And yes, genesis is a myth, a story, with thousands of variations and interpretations. Meaning, you can’t find the definition of marriage in Adam and Eve. If you do, you’re forgetting Lillith. Marriage as it was known then was contracted selling of one sex to another family. It was never a merger of equals, never a merger of rights, never about love. Sex was often forced. Young girls often as young as 12 were sold off by their families to another, to unite grazing areas, political influence and cash value for dowries.
Using the bible as a scapegoat for marriage is fine, if you are only talking about religion. But this is not the case in modern marriage. This is sanctioned by the church and the state. You need a license from the government as well as a religious ceremony to seal the deal as it were. You can however have a wedding without involving any religion whatsoever. That is the appeal of keeping it simple or having a judge or captain wed two people.
Civil law should have the right to marry two equals, no matter what the laws. Recent marriage laws had to take into the fact that women were not the equal of men. they were “other” “ non-male” why should people who happen to love someone of the same sex be treated any differently under the eyes of the law? Laws change, they are beyond religion and faith of one person, or a group of people. They have the responsibility to hold values for all. Not just Christians. Or if this is purely and economic issue, would you deny marriage to two Buddhist lesbians? Two Shinto gay men? Santeria? Aboriginal? If this is a religion issue, we must avoid the use of ONE religion as the foundation of values. And I do not accept the argument that western culture is Christianity, because it could just as easily be Baal or Juno we worship rather than Yahweh. Thought it would be completely fitting to put this denial of equal rights of some over the comfort of others. That is fitting with the treatment of “non conformists” with the Christian tradition. Burn the heretics, kill the Jews and Muslims, convert and pray. Is this really what we want? Conformity? By denying some the rights of all, it is what we are doing. Pressuring some to conform, or in this case deny who they are in order to receive “fair” treatment.

Architecture for the masses

There is a point I've come to realize in the past few years. When it comes to art or architecture or design in general, one can never know if it will be praised or loathed. what makes a masterpiece is entirely subjective, and usually what the critics like. Rarely is there the Monet or Manet that rises to the point of super stardom after the critics in the time of the releases lampooned them as cheap or low art.
Such is the case with the Chanel Pavilion in Central Park. Despite the overall sense of commercialism, based on the image and concept, one would think it would be praised as much as Christo's Gates a few years back. yet, the author of the review scorns it, saying its a sell out, and not with the ideal of the park.
Maybe its the fact that it is a negative Times review, but i find it refreshing to see someone no oohing and ahhing over the latest ideal of concept architecture.

I was looking through my dad's library and found a 200-year-old book. I think that's pretty cool.

its a cartoon off!

your and mine favorite comic is put to the test!

Nostalgia

Did anyone else read these books when you were younger?















I did. A lot. I checked them out from the school library over and over again, even though they terrified me for the most part. The stories and illustrations still haunt me today. Yesterday I saw all three of them for sale at a thrift store. I almost bought them, but I thought it was probably better to leave them for someone else.

Banksy

I know a lot of people here are fans (or should/would if they could) of Banksy. I've been looking all morning for a print from him for when I move, and everything I see I can identify with in my classical libertarianism/sense of humor. In my searches, I came across a site called "Pictures on Walls." You know a site is big when you see abbreviations for it on other sites (POW) and don't know what it means until you finally find a link. Point being, there's a ton of really great stuff from people other than Banksy on POW and you should all look at it.

However, it looks like this site is sort of a clearing house for these artists, and is kind of perpetually sold out of prints. If you're similarly desirous of a Banksy print, you might have to look elsewhere.

Personal fave: the rats.

Fuck Sarah Palin.

Okay. The other day on (possibly) digg.com I saw an article about a "Sarah Palin porno." My understanding was that someone basically had a casting call for Sarah Palin lookalike porn actors and is planning to make a porn that features a Palin-esque leading lady. I chuckled when I read it. I asked myself: Am I as a feminist offended by this? The answer was no. Although I think pornography as it exists today is, for the most part, anti-feminist in nature, this is overwhelmed by my belief in free speech. It seemed perfectly natural that in 2008, politics have changed along with our culture and political candidates have become celebrities. And that someone would put a character in a porn film with the intention of parodying Mrs. Palin. Because the performance would have been parody.

However, today I was reading about the Sarah Palin sex doll, and I was disgusted. The first bulleted point in the ad is "Sarah Palin makes sexism sexy." I remembered the Palinporn incident and wanted to try to figure out why my reaction to one of these incidents was a shrug and the other so much more severe.

I think it's because I thought of the porn as a parody. I assumed the title would be something about Miss Alaska or have a reference to the vice president in it, but I assumed Sarah Palin's name would be left out. They would have at least made an atrocious pun. (I briefly considered attempting one, but I'll refrain.)

Perhaps a porno featuring a look-alike of a male presidential candidate has never happened (Although Nixon seems like he was begging for it); I haven't done any research on that. But we parody everything in our culture. The parodies of politicial figures of SNL have been going on since the show came on (nearly 30 years ago), and the Clinton sex scandal opened the door for our leaders' sex lives to be talked about openly. (As opposed to Kennedy's sex life, which was an open secret that nobody talked about openly.) The SNL skits about Clinton weren't pornography, but they did tend in sort of the same direction.

The fact that there exists for purchase a Sarah Palin Sex Doll offends me because in our sex-soaked culture that would never happen to a male candidate. If Sarah Palin were a male vice presidential candidate, this would never have happened. I will admit, though, that I think the degree of absurdity and ridiculousness demonstrated by Sarah Palin probably does have something to do with it:


There's talk about whether people's remarks are sexist or not, whether a particular claim made about Clinton or Palin was sexist, but these days people for the most part know to watch what they say when a microphone is in front of their face (with occasional exceptions). You have to look other places for the nebulous remains of sexism. The existence of a sex doll of Sarah Palin, brazenly stating Sarah Palin's name in the title, screams sexism. I'm not saying it should be censored or that they should be stopped or anything. I'm not saying that Sarah Palin sex dolls are the problem, but they are a symptom that the problem is still there.

I think (hope?) this is the closest I will ever get to defending Sarah Palin.

Another One . . .

Wow.

While more terrifying than funny, this article reveals the sheer hypocrisy, double-standards, and opportunistic demagoguery of the McCain-Palin campaign. Not that you had to look very hard anyway.

talk nerdy to me

A theme is emerging.

science is fun

this is really cool. a guy accidentally stuck his head in a particle accelerator and got blasted with protons moving at the speed of sound, apparently. and lived. so this is what would have happened if Tony Shalhoub had gotten stuck inside one.

Sacramento's got a giant vagina

Yes, we do. And, it's more anatomically correct than the one from Korea that I mentioned earlier.

Moving and moving on.

It's raining and I'm taking my second sick day in a row off work.

I love it when it rains in Sacramento. It makes me feel like I'm in front of a hearth, warmed by a fire. Even when I'm not. Inexplicable, right?

Anyways, the real reason I'm posting is because for the first time, I've been looking seriously at apartments. I'm getting paid on Tuesday, and depending on the size of that check, I could move fairly soon. Combinatorial, I'll be getting my first credit card in a few days, which could help with my moving situation too. So, moving has been on my mind. I won't be making a ton of money right out, but just the desire is enough for me to just jump the gun so I can get my own place and not worry about silly things like a couch or dinner table.

The desire is to make my life my own, and that is happening.

I have a good job that I can do decently (well enough to avoid getting fired). It's made me think back to school and how much I hated certain parts of it. How, if it came down to just exams, I'd have failed out.

Every so often, I get the feeling like I'm at a cusp. Graduation oddly didn't feel this way. Going to Miami the first time definitely did, but leaving somehow felt like things didn't end. Maybe because I chose to not walk. Dunno. Back then, it was a shock, and I sent an email to a bunch of people all at once. The only response I got was from my high school French teacher.

But moving out, with the pressure low and the first storm in seemingly over a year in Sacramento looming, does. Realizing that for the most part I'm already financially independent. Realizing that soon, we'll start to fill our living rooms with playpen balls. That soon, we will have what we choose. Not the corporate townhouse with a million plasma tv screens, or the rural cabin with no manner of communication, but our future. Just seems so... foreign.

It reminds me of how many people at my work seem to have such a singular track. I know that when I say I work ten or eleven hours a day, people assume the same from me. I know that there is an expectation from those in my position to push themselves harder and further just from the opportunities to do so.

Anyways, this is just me rambling. I know I have it good and I'm not trying to rub it in anyone's face. I'm trying to preserve the moment so that in six months, I can look back and see how naive i was.