Moving Eventually

I’ve created a blog on my domain, and I’m planning on moving over to it soon. For now, however, I’m hanging out here and just using the domain for my Advanced Web Design class. Check it out if you like, but I promise you I’m still trying to think of new things to post.

One is Free: BFA Thesis Exhibition

So this self-portraiture project I’ve been working on since before I started this blog is finally coming to an end. (Sort of.) It will hang in all its glory in less than a month. Awesome? Yes. Nerve wracking? Yes. Still ridiculously awesome? Most definitely.

Here’s what my postcard looks like on the front:

that's right, I designed the postcard

And check out my website for all the details. Yay!

Imagine This

Today I thought “Hmm. I’ve been so busy with preparing for school that I haven’t had time to even think about another blogpost.” But I found something in the final hours of the day. I read another article on human trafficking at Change.org, but this time it was an apology to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for our lack of progress. As much as I usually enjoy Amanda Kloer’s articles, I found this one particularly useless and painful to read. Yes, there are many who believe racism is dead in the US because now we have a black president. Yes, the Golden Globes were a clear example of our seemingly frivolous ways of spending money here while many besides Haiti across the world suffer. And yes, this article in the San Jose Mercury News may be a feel good piece about teens making a difference in the Bay Area.

But these are not things to apologize for.

As Hard As I Try

Recently I commented on this post at Change.org about making divorce illegal in Oklahoma. This morning I was thinking about my mom and her somewhat recent denouncement of her faith. And in all of these thoughts, I have, once again, come to realize why I took a vow of celibacy, why I don’t think I want to marry, and ultimately why I find it so terribly and painfully urgent to encourage beauty and love in education. As I’ve quoted before from one of my favorite books Still Life with Woodpecker:

…yes, to make sexual love so secure and same and sanitary, so slick and frolicsome, so casual that it is not a manifestation of love at all, but a near anonymous, near autonomous, hedonistic scratching of a bunny itch, an itch far removed from any direct relation to the feverish enigmas of Life and Death, and a scratching programmed so that it would in no way interfere with the real purpose of human beings in a capitalistic, puritanical society, which is to produce goods and consume them?

Love and beauty are taken so lightly in this country (in this century, even), that marriage seems like the ultimate expression of love. And when people lose that lovin’ feeling, they end it like it was just a bad dream. With all the pressure to be married and to have children, people will settle for less because they think it’s the right thing to do.

It seems people do not value love and beauty like they value science and economics. Without appreciation for love and beauty, social structures and individual worth deteriorate. Maybe if we focused a little more on being human, the world may be in better shape. Though I guess that’s a rather large statement to say that love and beauty are human, instead of science and math and economics and politics and other whatnot.

I guess to be fair I’ll end on another quote from Woodpecker:

Humans are the most advanced of mammals – although a case could be made for dolphins – because they seldom grow up….Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.

In conclusion, my thoughts are over the place. I just needed to say these few things. Maybe I need a nap.

Someday You Will Find Me

My internship gives me a lot to think about. I’m constantly researching films, filmmakers, hot topics, youth organizations, and anything else you could think of pertaining to human rights and media. Today I watched a number of youth films about immigration rights. They all touch upon the fact that the United States’s economy depends on immigrant labor, and that families should not be separated.

I enjoyed watching these movies because I felt changed. I didn’t feel as if they repeated my own sentiments. For a while I’ve felt torn on the issue of immigration. My grandfather bought a name and passport and came here illegally, but at the same time, I believe in the law. With that said, it doesn’t mean that the law shouldn’t change. I listen to the arguments about immigrants taking jobs from Americans, to which I reply “do you want those jobs? Will you take those jobs?”

Last time I checked, everyone wants the American dream. More and more people are going to college and applying for white collar jobs. Have you heard about an explosion in the agricultural job market? Are there hundreds of thousands of Americans trying to work on farms or clean houses or do restaurant work? I think not. So what jobs are immigrants taking from “real” Americans?

Those who are not accepted as real Americans almost always do the hardest, ugliest work. And I am a product of two of those groups – my mother’s Irish side and my father’s Chinese side. So how can I deny immigrants their human rights? Just because I’m a natural-born American citizen? How can we deny people reasonable working conditions and minimum wage? Anyway, just some things I was thinking about today.

3rd Stone from the Sun

Recently I read this post about why white people make movies like Avatar. I found this amusing because I was wondering the exact same things while I was watching. The actress who plays Neytiri is black. The actor who plays her father is Native American, and the actor who plays her love interest is also black. The main character is white. I’m sure Cameron didn’t overlook these details. I loved Avatar. But really, why couldn’t the Na’vi people be played by white actors?

If You Ever Thought My Reasons for Disliking Macs Wasn’t Justified…

Hope you had a great holiday. Most likely you got a gift or two, and there’s also a good chance one of your gifts may have been an Apple product. My dad got me an iTunes gift card. It was sweet, but I have a problem with it. Not a moral or ethical problem. A legitimate this won’t work problem.

iTunes kept bugging me to download the new version, and I kept putting it off. Eventually I decided “Fine. I’ll download you, even though you probably aren’t much different from the version I have now.” Boy, was I wrong. After it installed, a message popped up to say that I can’t use the new iTunes store because I don’t have the new version of Safari. So I clicked the little link to download the new Safari, and then another error message popped up to say that I couldn’t download the new version of Safari because I don’t have the new OS leopard.

Why the FUCK would Apple have me download the new version of iTunes and NOT write a simple program to detect my platform BEFORE I download the new iTunes? It didn’t even have a disclaimer to say that I would need Leopard in order to use the iTunes store. You’re just asking me to torrent music, Apple. It’s not a difficult problem to solve. If your software can tell me I don’t have the write operating system, you can easily write a program that can figure that out before I download it. Don’t be such a fucking dumbass and write a fucking program that can determine a computer’s platform before installing your software. Idiots.

Found Myself Some Culprits

I know, I know. I’m crazy for thinking that abortion should be covered by a public option. But I recently came across Bart Stupak’s Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, and it just makes me angry again. I understand that you don’t think it’s anything different or new – abortion already isn’t covered by federal tax dollars. But if it isn’t anything new, then why did you feel a need to do it?

I agree with abortion rights supporters who say “the amendment was the biggest setback to their cause in decades.” I just don’t see a reason for it. I don’t understand why the U.S. does not recognize public access to safe abortions as a woman’s right, a health right, and an economic right. I guess because the U.S. hasn’t been good at recognizing any of those forms of human rights.

AND another thing: why is anyone who earns less than $100,000/year a republican? Why are people denying themselves their own rights? I believe that ethics and morals apply to economic, social, and political issues, but seriously. And don’t you remember this bill by Tim Ryan and Rosa DeLauro? What happened to good teamwork?

Bird in a Cage

Two things I want to talk about. First, if you’re interested in being an art student, here is my critical piece of advice: stick to your guns and fight for your work. Today we were supposed to have a final showing of our thesis work before the winter break. It was emphasized that the work should be as final as possible. But when we arrived and displayed, the professors (one in particular) seemed to treat it as another crit.

After all the work we’ve put into this project, you expect us to make such drastic changes that you’re suggesting? I realized that this was (unintentionally) a real challenge to our art. Can we defend it? Can we stand by it? Because everyone’s a critic. Everyone has an idea of what direction your work should take, and how it speaks to an audience. In the end, you can’t make everyone happy, and you can’t change your work based on multiple opinions. I wish someone had hammered this into my brain when I started art school. And that’s my two cents.

My second bit is about my desire to leave NYC and be my own woman. I feel this has come into question more often because of my impending graduation. I have loved NYC with all my heart, but it’s time for me to move on. New York has stopped inspiring me. I want to do so many things and go so many places, and I can’t have anything or anyone hold me down. I can’t have someone or something tell me where to go or who to be or what to do. I want to live in Seattle. Maybe I want to try living in Canada, too. I want to work with numerous organizations and film festivals. I want to live in the Bay Area again.

But there are so many people I love here. I have connections here. I have a sweet apartment here. And if I leave, I can never have any of it again. NYC will replace me and forget me like yesterday’s headlines. There are so many people who want what I have, and I can’t decide if I’m willing to let it go.

But I’m tired of feeling like I can’t be who I want to be. If NYC doesn’t like me, it’ll chew me up and tear me apart. There are times here when I feel I can’t be an activist and an educator and a photographer and a baker and anything else I want to be. And it is at those times that I realize again that I can be all of those things, but New York will not let me happy that way. And I know there are people who are all of those things and more here. But NYC wants me to be a New Yorker or get the fuck out, and that’s not who I am. I don’t want to be a New Yorker. I want to be me, and most importantly, I want to be happy.

Decisions, decisions. I have to make dinner now.

Save It For A Rainy Day

Originally I was going to post about abortion and the public option, but I realized I ranted about that a couple posts ago. Instead I want to talk about a conversation I had with a manfriend of mine.

He goes to West Point and studies economics, so already this is a difficult argument for me to have. (Really smart people get me every time.) We were talking about public school funding, and I asked why doesn’t the government put money into schools in middle- and low-income areas, instead of prisons. His response, while he says he doesn’t necessarily agree with it, was that there is a greater return on schools in high-income areas and building the prisons.

That makes me physically ill. That can’t possibly be true. Is it really more sustainable to put people in prison rather than educate them? I’ve heard the arguments about education being a “white” thing; people in middle- and low-income areas don’t value education as much; and money that has been invested in middle- and low-income schools has not had a great return.

I say it’s a load of crap. It’s like people who argue that human rights are a “Western” idea. You don’t think non-Western people have a concept of what is right and what is wrong? Saying that not investing in some people is economical is wrong. It just can’t be true. I can’t believe that putting money into prisons is better in the long run than investing in schools.

And to be completely honest, can someone please show me studies on this? I want to know how people justify this.