[chaos control]

Moving

2008-08-10T17:58:00.004-04:00

This blog has been moved to Wordpress.

Saccharine

2008-08-05T01:19:00.002-04:00

Disgustingly happy!

McFeely

2008-07-29T19:58:00.003-04:00

Mr. Rogers' full name is Fred McFeely Rogers.

Really.

I still love him though, and here are some more reasons why.

Edit: My radar completely missed that yesterday was Marcel Duchamp's birthday! He's another one on my growing List Of Dead Artists/Designers That I Would Give Almost Anything To Stalk (see also: Gropius, Walter; Mackintosh, Charles Rennie).

I Want To Hyakuretsukyaku Them In the Face

2008-07-29T17:29:00.023-04:00

Listen.

And weep.

Part of me finds it odd that the movie will be only about Chun Li and not a more important character like Ryu, but then I remember that Hot Girl = Money, and the fact that heterosexual American men usually get the queasies when presented with half-naked men grunting and groping at each other onscreen, unless American football is involved.

Movies based on video games have a pretty colossal history of sucking (enter: Street Fighter 1994, Mortal Kombat, et al.) and this is easily no exception. But let's suppose for a moment that it won't be a maelstrom of Fail just because it's based on a video game, and turn our attention instead to the movie's individual players.

Wait, someone from American Pie is in this? And someone from the Black Eyed Peas? Wait, and it's directed by the same guy responsible for both Doom and Romeo Must Die?!

Dear lord, someone call Oscar.

Oddly enough, Kristen Kreuk was chosen to play Chun Li, although earlier there had been rumours of a casting that was even worse.

I know three things about Kristin Kreuk:
01 She "acted" in Smallville.
02 She is really beautiful.
03 She is half-Dutch, half-Chinese.

Chun Li is Chinese. Chinese girls do not look Caucasian (the photo is apparently from the Street Fighter movie). It's just a fact.

I don't mean to insinuate that hapas can't identify as Asians because of how "Asian" they may or may not look. Since Kreuk has never made any effort to identify herself as an Asian or half-Asian rather than a Caucasian, let's just assume that superficially she fits the role of Caucasian female, and prefers it that way, in which case her casting is a bit silly since, as aforementioned, Chun Li is Chinese.

Now that's not to say of course that sticking a random Asian girl into that role is right either, because honestly how many Asians - Japanese and otherwise - were completely unfazed by Zhang Ziyi's role in Memoirs Of A Geisha, or Lucy Liu's in Kill Bill? Unfortunately for people casting movies there are, as a general rule, much more noticeable differences between Asians of different ethnicities compared to Caucasians of different European-based backgrounds, not to mention the still-existing hostilities between the various Asian countries, making it easier/more worthwhile (for some) to call out ethnicity differences and perceived cultural snubs.

With the casting of Memoirs Of A Geisha, among others, one can possibly see a bit of the subconscious idea that Asians are all the "same," that no one will notice a difference anyway. And then there are people who castigate people like myself and insist that we're reading too much into it and really need to untwist our knickers because it's not that big a deal.

No matter how "civilised" society pretends to be, there is still Orientalism. That post remains for another day, when I'm feeling a bit more empassioned.

Conclusions:
01 I am not going to see this movie.
02 I suddenly crave rice.
03 I need Street Fighter for PSP.

Silly Rabbit

2008-07-28T03:05:00.008-04:00

Happy birthday today to Beatrix Potter, an amazing watercolourist and author of one of the most influential book series of my childhood. Her cake will have 142 candles this year.

Beatrix Potter is the reason why I know what a tam o'shanter is, and why for the past ten years I've felt guilty about the rabbit fur stole hidden in the back of the closet.

Loser

2008-07-17T20:56:00.012-04:00

I took this test and got a 92/100, along with the title of "Supreme Nerd."

I'm not gonna lie. I'm pretty proud.

Don't

2008-07-17T15:44:00.010-04:00

hide behind your weight. Just because we're "supposed" to accept you body type doesn't mean it's okay to be overweight and ostracise those who are different from yourselves.

In response to this, one of my Flickr contacts decided to write a letter to Dove, essentially outlining my points to see what they would have to say.

Dove's [automated] response runs as follows:

"Hello Lou!
We believe that for too long beauty has been defined by narrow, stifling
stereotypes.
Beauty doesn't always come in a size 2 package. We believe in Real
Beauty - beauty that comes in many shapes, sizes and ages.
The mission of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty is to widen the narrow,
stereotypical view of beauty; and to inspire more women feel beautiful
everyday.

Dove's Firming Campaign features real women with real curves who inspire
us to challenge today's stereotypical view of beauty and take great care
of ourselves.

Kindest regards,
Your friends at Dove"

Nice robot.

Ironic, isn't it, that the "Real Women Have Curves" campaign is geared toward selling firming lotion?

I also received this comment on my photo, which I have since deleted:

"Girls/women looks thousands times attractive in her natural breasts curves without wearing inside dress Bra or anything,But for that girls/women must need firm n healthy breasts, After first sight everybody like to see that curves again and remeber them for long time in our memories.And she have good figure like that. Comment sms at +92 333 3685566"

STFU.

Real Women Have Curves

2008-07-16T16:39:00.005-04:00

I hate Dove's "Real Women Have Curves" slogan with a passion.

I stuffed my bra in seventh grade because of ideas like that, because of society's undying belief that Breasts = Woman.

Wait, what? That's not true?

A few days ago I walked into a store and a fellow shopper didn't hesitate to tell her partner that my body was "gross."

She said this while three or four feet away from me. I assume she wanted me to hear her and feel bad about my alleged eating disorder/unhealthiness/low self esteem, so that I'd go home and cry over some bonbons about my wasted life and listen to Christina Aguilera and discover my inner beauty and suddenly gain thirty pounds so I could be normal like her.

Real women have hearts and blood and bones. They have skin that breaks and nerves that feel the cold. They are made up of carbon and water and constantly renewing cells. They know who they are.

Real women may not have breasts. They may not even have vaginas. They might like girls or boys or a bit of both or neither at all. They may not always consider themselves to be women, or they might have to fight to be called such since no one else believes them.

Find a new slogan, Dove. Thousands of the people you've unwittingly condemned as Not Real Women are waiting.

Enjoy your profits.

Illustration Friday: Foggy

2008-07-11T18:39:00.008-04:00

This week's theme is "foggy," and although I didn't do a very good job of conveying that I'm just glad I was able to draw Maleficent because she is the most badass Disney villain ever. Ever.

Click on image (then zoom in once) for larger view; media: ballpoint pen and photoshop colour. I'm very predictable.

Stinky Hippy

2008-07-11T03:51:00.014-04:00

Disclaimer: Following is an entry pertaining to feminine hygiene. Proceed with care.

Until quite recently I never had my menstrual cycle in mind when thinking of ways to decrease the size of my carbon footprint.

I never thought, for instance, of where all those products were actually going once they'd run their course. I never thought about the fact that all my forgotten tampons were creating little piles of ever-increasing waste building up in our nation's landfills, or that they were being literally flushed out to sea. I never thought about the chemicals used to bleach tampons, and I never thought about the effect that said bleach could have on my internal pH levels. I never thought about the fact that rayon in tampons - along with the product's inherent absorbency - messes with the body's natural cleansing processes and actually creates an ideal environment for the proliferation of nasty Staphylococcus aureus.

Nasty.

So several months ago I decided to be a hippy and invest in a cup (I'll spare the graphic details and let you find out what it is for yourself) rather than relying indefinitely on wasteful disposable products. It actually was one of the goals from 1001 Days but for various reasons (read: I am lazy) I didn't get around to purchasing one until a few weeks ago.

TMI... I've officially been through one cycle with that bad boy, and I am never going back.

It's rather awkward in the beginning, and usage requires much more time and patience than any other methods, but in the long run it will be well worth it. I can't say I've completely gotten over the "icky" factor but I think mild discomfort a few times a month is nothing compared to the feeling of being slightly less wasteful.

As an aside: yes, in this entry's photo I do indeed have a tampon in my mouth. It was freshly opened, I swear.

My only dilemma now is thinking of how to get rid of the half-box of tampons left in the closet.

Hellooooo, craft corner.

Ow, My Stomach Lining

2008-07-10T14:51:00.004-04:00

I recently joined a writing community. I sort of hate it.

Apart from the members being relatively inactive, as well as the site's overwhelming mass of pieces that are full of either cliché college humour or unnecessary masturbatory references, there is also the fact that several people on the site do not know the proper way to give constructive criticism, and one in particular has his head shoved so far up his arse about himself that he seems to think his festering colon could crank out a better piece of writing than anyone else on the site could.

He is a tiny Weaselman and I want to punch him in the throat.

There is an odd breed of human being which thrives on self-conceit, i.e. the propensity toward being a pompous prick. Most intellectuals fall into this stratum at least once in their lives, the arrogance that is so repulsive in Billy Mullet becoming slightly more acceptable if coupled with the ability to solve differential equations and play a mean game of Street Fighter.

I'd rather be friends with an arrogant MacGyver than an arrogant Billy Mullet because MacGyver is more likely to have NES. And he wouldn't smell like burnt hair.

But MacGyver sort of deserves to be a bit arrogant because he's an industrious little beaver and at least has something to be a bit proud of, and Billy Mullet perhaps should be allowed to be arrogant because honestly he doesn't have much of anything worth having anyway.

Little Weaselpeople, however, are worse than both MacGyvers and Billy Mullets because they don't actually have a reason to be pontifical, nor can one make fun of them behind their backs for their monster truck addiction.

Weaselpeople are the lurkers who fancy themselves to be smarter than they actually are, the ones who try loudly to impress people at the office with their regurgitated findings of various obscure writings from the interweb, usually peppered with Cliffnotes reviews of liberal political books that they try to pass off as their own ideas; the ones who skulk about in the organic fruit section at the supermarket yet take forty-minute showers because they are so environmentally aware; the ones who brag about their libido and their superior artistic skillz and their amazing cognisance of thirty-two international cultures and languages, all obscure.

(There is also a subspecies of individuals who pride themselves on listening to bands that don't even exist yet. They wear tiny tee shirts and like to use the word "sell-out.")

When confronted, Weaselpeople often call their stifling superiority "self confidence" or try to play it off as "being ironic" (whatever that means), thinking that their own lofty views of themselves gives them free reign to dismiss anyone else's opinion as asinine.

Weaselman most likely does not understand that everyone hates people like him. He would just chalk it up as "jealousy" or "misunderstanding," or say that he doesn't give a toss about what anyone else says.

News flash, Weaselman: We all dislike you. And you are mediocre at best.

I'm sure he won't discover that for a long time. He's about as intellectually evolved as Homo habilis finally discovering his opposable thumb, and that's being generous.

"Heil" Is Only One Letter Away From "Hell"

2008-07-05T17:43:00.020-04:00

Hitler had the first emo haircut.

And this is awesome.

We all like to rip on Hitler and say that he was the most vile piece of filth to ever have existed, but honestly who of us can claim to have ripped off his head with our own bare hands out of hatred?

I wonder, however, how many people would get upset if the powers that be at Madame Tussauds decided to create wax replicas of, say, Vlad the Impaler or Attila the Hun.

I don't mean to be callous or to undermine Hitler's repugnancy, but quite frankly why is Hitler "worse" than any of the world's various other tyrants, insofar as he becomes the litmus test for another individual's level of Evil? Because he killed Jews? Because he was at the helm of a mass genocide?

If it was merely a matter of chronological currency - i.e. Herr Hitler is fresher in our minds than Genghis Khan - then perhaps we could compare a person's level of Evil to the leaders of the genocide during the Bosnian War (have we all already forgotten?), to the janjaweed currently in the Sudan, or to the Young Turks of the Armenian genocide of the 19-teens that people never learn about. But of course despite all these other players and situations Hitler always comes out as the Face of Evil, despite the fact that the genocides of 1990s Yugoslavia, modern-day Darfur, and early 20th-century Armenia are just as relevant as the World War II Jewish Holocaust.

It can't be that he truly was the "worst," because atrocities to humanity were committed long before he was even a twinkle in his parents' Augen, and although superlatives are subjective I'm confident in saying that even Hitler's methods were not the "worst" or the most "evil." Read up some day on Vlad the Impaler. I'm sure he would be in deeper than Hitler in the Dantean Phlegethon.

If he's the Face of Evil just for killing Jews, then that's just silly. Attempts at ethnic purification have existed in numerous countries. It's something called being a crazy right-wing nationalist.

Although I respect Aforementioned Sir's act of public decapitation (read: I wish I'd been there to witness it firsthand because honestly I think it would have been hilarious to watch), I find it wholly unnecessary, as I'm sure MT was not attempting in any way to glorify Hitler, or to commemorate him in any way other than as historical reference.

Seriously. Don't get your knickers in a twist.

And now for something not-quite-completely different: Cats That Look Like Hitler.

Illustration Friday: Sour

2008-07-04T15:55:00.010-04:00

This week's theme is "sour" (click on image for larger view), and I referenced "The Fox and the Grapes," one of Æsop's fables, because I didn't want to be too literal and just draw lemons or a sour-looking face. I originally wanted to do something either with umeboshi or Renée Zellweger, but neither ended up the way I wanted.

Like with everything else lately, I used ballpoint pen and added colour in Photoshop.

Red Light

2008-07-02T16:52:00.017-04:00

(Today's illustration has nothing to do with today's topic except for the fact that I used red, and today's title has the word "red" in it and is an obscure Siouxsie & the Banshees song about photography (sort of). The subject is Alli Jiang - check out her Flickr stream here - and is ballpoint pen and Sharpie, with colour done in Photoshop.)

My 220 film arrived today!

But I apparently had a brain aneurysm and didn't realise I bought transparency (vs. negative) film, although luckily I didn't end up with Kodachrome that evidently can only be developed in one lab in the entire world - in Kansas, of all places.

I shot my first test roll today and freaked out because something odd was happening. I was pretty sure I was killing something.

It turns out the foam inserts in the Holga can't accommodate the larger diameter of 220 film, so with the first couple rotations I succeeded (unknowingly) in completely ripping out the foam and wedging it between the spool and the first layer of paper. Oy gavalt.

Before I started I pretty much resigned myself to the fact that none of my photos would come out anyway, and now I really know that since there's about a 6mm wedge of foam that's exposing half of my film's edge.

That foam had some intense glue-job going on. I had to Goo Gone that crap for about twenty-five minutes before I made any sort of progress.

I forgot to reinsert the 6x6 mask between cleaning the Holga's insides and loading a fresh roll of film and had to decide between either shooting without the mask and dealing with the problems, or rewinding the roll in a darkbag and reloading it and dealing with the problems.

I did the latter because I was feeling adventurous.

I was a bit stupid today but at least I was dealing with plastic and not dysentery.

So, today's lessons?
01 Read everything about everything when purchasing film, or risk nearly raping yourself in the ear with a bad choice. Although, nearly is still better than actually.
02 Skittish dogs do not like cameras in their faces.
03 Goo Gone is the shit.

Shot Through the Hart

2008-07-02T00:39:00.022-04:00

The past couple days I've been doing some sketching, and for a while everything I touched was utter crap because I've been so negligent for so long. But I had a breakthrough today and actually produced something I didn't want to ram into my left ear... Oh happy day! And happy cochlea.

The line art is ballpoint pen (I don't really believe in pencils and rubbers; I'm dangerous like that), with all the colouring done afterwards in Photoshop because of my lack of a scanner and the colour rape-age that results when I try to photograph and colour-correct any work not strictly black-and-white.

I'm actually rather pleased with this one, although the concept is by no means a new one. The line art is decent, but I'm more proud of the colouring job, because I don't have a mouse for my laptop and thus had to rely solely on the motor skills of my right middle finger (tee hee) for all the colour work. I'm surprised I didn't shoot anyone, actually.

I also added a slight texture because the colours were lying too smooth for my liking, and I wanted it to look a bit less "I'm too cheap to buy sketchbooks with amazing paper and appropriate tooth ratio."

Tooth ratio? Did I just make that up?

Maybe if I keep doing pieces like this I'll get better at video games. One can only hope.

Originality

2008-06-25T23:47:00.009-04:00

What's that?

As stated earlier, this week's theme on Illustration Friday is "Hoard."

It's late and it's not like I have any homework, so I've been blog-stalking, as well as checking up on new IF entries, which explains my discovery:

The one on the left, from neublau | Illustration Berlin, is one of my favourites this week. The one on the right was submitted after the aforementioned and is from Albiona, from a deviantART account.

Uncanny, no? Especially when one imagines the second one flipped 90 degrees clockwise:

I'm not going to make a formal accusation of plagiarism, because one can never be too sure of that with the visual arts considering the fact that different people are often inspired by the same thing. With a forum like Illustration Friday, where there is a specific word or idea, there are bound to be repeats of ideas and symbols since many people think similarly.

I give the creator of the second entry the benefit of the doubt and hope that the startling similarities are mere coincidence, and if I've misunderstood then I do apologize. However, I think the comparison truly speaks for itself, as I can not really explain how nearly identical the two pieces are.

Untitled

2008-06-25T22:48:00.009-04:00

When I was younger my mother encouraged me to be a writer, and she still harbours some desires for me to be a journalist or an english professor. Unfortunately I've already fallen in love with art and with design, leaving the "writer" section of my brain greatly misused and given to rotting away to nothingness.

Sometimes I still attempt words versus looks, although the attempts are much more feeble than I would like. Thus, the following:

My memory is a swirl of quixotic hopes.

For a long time I missed having the definite personal history that others had and I never would. I wanted the blind swollen pride of family, because everyone else had that and I must be missing out. But with the red rust of womanhood came the realisation that I would soon have to grow up and make my own name, and I took to creating my own tree, fantasizing about my past in hopes that I could discover some hidden virtues, some vestiges of a memoir I was never a part of.

I like to think they met in Hahoe, maybe at the mask festival; that he looks at her across the sweating masses and she blushes to virginal pink; that they smalltalk about the weather and the year's tourists over cheap kimbap and melting ice cream. They part ways, still waking up breathless weeks later and feeling in the dark for the warmth that unmercifully is never there. But nothing remains secret in a village and eventually he finds out where she lives, and like an oriental Pyramus and Thisbe they whisper their chrysanthemum secrets through the walls.

She is young and optimistic and odd. Her eyes are slightly crooked, her mouth slightly too small to be considered beautiful. She works in the sun and her skin will never have that treasured ethereal milky whiteness; she moves too much to catch that death pallor. Her hair is cut sharp - one, two, three lines - matching the razor of her jaw and the steel of her back.

Her sister is the beautiful one actually, if beauty means never being able to keep her legs shut because of all the neighbors with their adoration and false promises. But she left Andong months before in pursuit of Seoul's glittering urbanity, leaving the little village house and the mother and father who want to arrange a marriage to the boy with the big head and thick lips.

Mother and Father are old and can no longer hear the telltale rustling in the next room, the sharp intakes of air when the moon and the planets align and the stars burst into bloody supernovae. They think the roses in her cheeks are from the new Chinese tea and don't question when she comes in late from the fields, hanging around outside with the pigs until Mother and Father go to bed so that she can lock the door behind him.

She cries on the day she finds out, cursing the life within her yet forgetting momentarily her own slippery part in the affair; it is always easier to be a victim of fate than to face one's own responsibility. The old woman three gates down tells her about thin metal hooks and phials of mercury which are sure to eliminate the problem, but after a restless night and a bottle of soju she gains her acumen and decides she can not butcher her seed like a pig.

Three months later she tells him and is horrified at the caul covering his expression. "You'll help me?" she asks meekly. She is never meek. His jaw tightens and a gruff agreement unsticks from his throat.

The next day he leaves and she never sees him again.

In my daydreams the face of she is easier for me to visualise, yet I can never imagine him. I stare in the mirror and try to untangle my own features, trying to decipher from whom exactly I come.

Maybe he is Japanese, and remembers as he lies next to her in the afterglow of their late-night fumblings the clear demarcation between their two histories. He fears being seen as a disloyalist by his own and a second-time intruder by hers, yet he can't resist her cinnamon candy murmurs running down his neck and his cheek and his temples.

Maybe he is Chinese and eventually succumbs to the asian hierarchy learnt by rote through his boyhood, the moons in her eyes fading out one night, against his will, to shroud her in the mud of her taught position.

No one country can bear claim to me. I look like no one.

I can never refer to them as my parents. I watch them like a film.

I try to see her as the forgotten, the weak side of an idealistic romantic tragedy. I see him as a pawn, trying to respect thousands of years. It's easier to forgive them that way.

But I know it's a lie.

Fantastic Plastic Machine

2008-06-24T13:30:00.002-04:00

My Holga arrived today! Oh sweet bliss...

Unfortunately because of the idiot bidders on eBay, I haven't been able to procure any 120 film yet. For the past two weeks I've been watching auctions for expired film, but people start bidding on them immediately so that by the time the auction ends, they end up spending a lot more money on them than they should.

After watching three auctions where, within 2.5 days, the highest bid has reached the price it should have reached only after 6.5, I've had the craziest desire to grow a pair, just so I can emasculate myself to get rid of all my pent-up eBay frustration.

All n00bs, the lot of them.

Illustration Friday: Hoard

2008-06-23T23:12:00.008-04:00

This week's word is "hoard" and I've had horrible artist's block trying to come up with something...

I've also come to the realisations that (a) I can not draw birds, and (b) I should never again attempt drawing in solely coloured pencil.

Click on the image for a slightly larger view of my horrible attempt at colour-correction! I need a scanner like whoa.

Cuchi Cuchi

2008-06-22T13:45:00.018-04:00

Ohhh, Charo.

If only you had been able to coax Mrs. Brady into wearing strategically-placed bolero tassels as well, although I'm slightly - ahem - disturbed? to realise that this played on "Retirement Living TV."

I admit that I totally tried doing this. I also may have enjoyed it.

It's the Legally Blonde Bend And Snap 2001 Debacle all over again (now that I think about it, Jennifer Coolidge looks a bit Charo-esque in that screencap), which I ~~also enjoyed at the time, much to my chagrin~~ definitely was not a part of.

Do it. You know you want to.

And Then Our Children Will Form A Family Band

2008-06-19T14:39:00.022-04:00

Last night, my hard drive disappeared.

Yes, disappeared.

I was quietly minding my own business, taking a break from watching episodes of Are You Being Served? (one of my recently rekindled obsessions; and to think, my mom let me watch that when I was maybe twelve) to peruse Flickr (one of my recently discovered obsessions), when some rogue demon decided to infiltrate my poor laptop and steal away my hard drive, which is clearly the only logical explanation as to why, for no apparent reason, my trusty companion could no longer find its close friend and confidante, Macintosh HD.

I freaked out. I became high-strung. I considered selling my soul.

I instead went to sleep and decided to call tech support the next morning.

There are two types of people in the world: PC users and Mac users. There is no traversing between boundaries, no fraternising with the enemy, and absolutely no cupcake-sharing at Timmy's birthday party. Period. It's a technological apartheid, with punishment being a sound smiting by the hairy, mighty arm of Justice (or so I've read in the Apple manual).

I hate to be one of those obsessed Mac fans, at least publicly, and although most people know I'm pretty much all about the Apple empire I've refrained so far from penning any sonnets professing my deep love and devotion.

I understand that, along with burgeoning international technology and the consequent figurative shrinking of the globe, outsourcing is becoming the norm rather than the exception. I don't have a problem with foreign workers doing the jobs Americans can't or won't do, provided they are treated fairly.

But it was so much nicer for me in my delicate state of nerves to call Apple tech support and need only to say "Macbook" and press one button on my handset before I was able to talk to a real live human, who fortunately in my case happened to be a really sweet, patient girl named Kerry with a full grasp on the english language and the ability to actually help me, rather than transfer me or urge me to buy a replacement product or barbecue a tiny, ridiculously cute puppy in order to sate the gods.

My problem was diagnosed within twenty minutes of troubleshooting and my replacement hard drive will arrive, gratis, by Saturday at the latest.

I love Apple and Kerry and I want us all to get married.

Everybody To the Limit

2008-06-18T21:33:00.026-04:00

Today I guess I'll listen to lots of Weezer, because this has me totally pumped.

Here's an IGN interview from this April, in which the Brothers Chaps give a general overview of the game, which is (sweet victory!) available next month! My inner artist especially likes that they're not doing any advertisements for the game apart from directing traffic over to the Telltale Games website. A-like so.

From what I've seen and read about the game so far, it seems that SBCG4AP is staying very loyal to the whole Homestar Runner shtick. And really, what isn't more awesome than the anticipation of being able to personify Strong Bad himself, merely by waving about a magical Wiimote?

On a decidedly more serious note, I'm glad to see that George Takei was able today to receive a marriage license. If being with someone for two decades with no hope of getting married doesn't spell love and devotion, then I don't know what does.

Congrats to George and his partner, as well as countless other people who will finally be able to exercise the same rights as everyone else.

Did You Just Say Polychaete Worms?

2008-06-18T00:31:00.030-04:00

The orange mixed-fruit-flavoured Pedialyte is - excuse my blinding eloquence - the shit.

On Sunday I was "blessed" with being ill with some stealthy ninja virus that crept up in the wee hours of the morn, and although I was a bit put out at first I guess I couldn't complain too much since it was only the second time in about 2.5 years that I've been sick, and the first time in nearly 14 years that I've had to deal with the ol' Wallace and Gromit.

Enter: Willis (I've named him just now), the eternally-smiling friendly-looking bear with the happy eyes and the "Go get 'em, tiger!" attitude on the front of said Pedialyte bottle.

Without Willis I surely would have been a babbling, sniveling little crusty mess huddled in the corner, rather than the relatively content and fully rehydrated person who sits huddled before this computer screen at this very moment. Willis also provided an extremely satisfying aprés-bath fruity Pedialyte cocktail - virgin, yet still swigged out of the bottle since I'm a classy broad, albeit a formerly virus-laden one. I think the good spirits of my pre-bath Pedialyte shots also bucked me up and saved me from the usually inevitable thoughts I have when taking baths as opposed to showers, namely: "Aren't I just marinating in my own filth right now?"

Disturbing.

On another note, why does every fifteen-year-old seem to think that just because she is "interested" in fashion - insofar as Daddy Dearest can pay her tab at Cocytus Hollister so that she can be "individual" with her "unique" distressed jeans and miniskirts that let innocent bystanders in on the fact that, yes, she actually is in menses right now, and omgz did you see the new Cosmo Girl?! - she has the knowledge in her empty hypercephalic being to understand branding and fashion forecasting, enough to go to uni for fashion design ('cause, like, it'll be sooo fun!!!) or, on the lesser end, to start a blog about it? (I won't link it. That's just mean.)

Oh, wait. I know. She'll just regurgitate everything that's she's read in whatever vapid teen magazine she prefers (does YM even exist anymore?) about the proliferation of florals and short skirts and gladiator sandals for spring. Oh, and from... like... seven months ago.

Florals and short skirts and sandals for spring?! Oh, behave.

But honestly, although I understand that fashion design is in the arts and thus is yet another one of those professions that people lump into the "it's not a real job" category (usually when I tell people what I'm studying, they reply with, "Ohhh... that's... nice...?" and then proceed to inch away so they won't catch my Stupid), I can't help but want to bludgeon (for purely educational purposes, of course) every underage girl whose feigned interest in ZOMGZZ FASHUN bastardises the idea of what fashion design is supposed to be about in the first place.

But that's a rant for another day. I'm tired and cranky and I ran out of Pedialyte.

Baby, One More Time

2008-06-14T21:00:00.026-04:00

Ohhh, Wonder Girls.

I know the whole Tell Me thing is pretty much old hat by now (or at least it should be), but it still never fails to amuse me. I can't tell which cop I like more - is it the one on the left, who is obviously into it and probably enjoyed it way too much during practice? The one on the right, who unfortunately has a minimal sense of rhythm yet makes it that much more amazing to me? Or the one in the centre, who does a mean booby shake at 1:29?

For any of you curious folk, here's the original, which is essentially the same except it involves five ridiculously cute (enter: Diabetic Coma, stage left) Korean girls jumping around like the above Korean traffic popo, except a male can look slightly less homosexual whilst watching it at work. Barely.

Tell Me was the first full-length album single for the girls Wonder, sparking the Tell Me phenom - as of this entry, typing "tell me wonder girls" into YouTube will yield 35,900 hits - and even a video from the WG's themselves in which they give a tutorial on the Tell Me dance.

I advise for the sake of your own health and self respect to never watch any Tell Me video more than once within a month or two or five. It'll stick in your head worse than the Numa Numa song.

And then your head explodes.

Splooge

2008-06-14T00:06:00.015-04:00

Excuse the title. I listened to a Tenacious D album tonight.

Soon I'll be the owner of a shiny new plastic Holga 120GN, shipped lovingly from Hong Kong. It ended up being about $15 cheaper than I planned since I opted for the GN rather than the GCFN, because honestly I can't be bothered with batteries right now and when the time is right I'll just invest in a [likewise cheap] external flash unit.

In other news, this made my day. And also the fact that the guy who runs I Can Has Cheezburger has the surname "Huh."

(Today's photo made possible by Flickr's own pamelaklaffke).

Nobel Shmobel

2008-06-13T15:07:00.026-04:00

I don't care that it won a Nobel Prize for Literature.

Don Quixote is overly-long and is quickly threatening to suck out all of my life juices.

Don't get me wrong; it's full of great writing, and the first third (at least) is highly amusing, albeit with long sentences, flowery superfluousness, etc. which I was expecting anyway and which fit both with the contemporary style and the grand illusions of chivalry to which Don Quixote himself prescribes.

The first adventure, involving the windmills, is a promising start.

It all unravels from there.

It's not merely the length, because long books don't phase me as long as they're interesting. Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, while only slightly shorter at around 500 pages depending on edition, is one of my favourite books - despite that unfortunate slowdown in the middle third of the book, and the inevitable and important repeating of names and events.

The edition I'm reading is 627 pages long (with both Volumes I and II, the latter of which some argue to not actually be part of Don Quixote since it was published ten years later), 600 of which are devoted to repeating over and over again Don Quixote's feelings about chivalry and enchantment and his grossly miscalculated perceptions of the world. I don't want to read his explanation about wizards and illusions thirty-two times. I don't want to read about windmills continually being confused for giants and dragons. And I want all the philosophy and disenchantment to come earlier, or else not at all.

On the other hand, there are moments of comic relief and a wit to the language which, understandably, push the novel up in the ranks of classical literature. At least in academia.

But as Volume II progresses, those moments are few and far between and don't save me from wanting to re-enact the Defenestrations of Prague, solo, to save myself from the final 200 pages.

Oh, and Happy Friday 13th. It was so portentous that I forgot about it until just now.

Edit: I've finally finished this accursed book, only to say WTF at the ending?! Six hundred twenty-five pages have been about the delusions of a mentally unstable man, who in the final two pages finally decides, on a whim, "Oh, I guess I'll renounce my senility now that I'm supposed to die"?!

Damn you, Don Quixote. Damn you and your lack of dénouement.

Wish List

2008-06-11T21:55:00.052-04:00

Behold my wish list, which is posted here more for the sake of posterity, i.e. so that I don't forget the particulars (unless one of my two or three readers would like to chip in for no reason at all, in which case, chip away!).

01 A ~~Nikon Coolpix P5100~~, $350, to replace my terribly knackered Sony DSC-L1, which is a bit crap and in dire need of retirement. (Update: I opted for a refurb Canon Rebel XTi, which retails for about $600 - for only the body, not including any lenses - but which I managed to snag here for $391, including a lens kit. Major discount FTW!)

02 A ~~Holga 120N~~, $25-55, plus an eventual 35mm film adaptor kit for the days I want to be more economical/artsy, approx. $11, and spray paint (perhaps pink) for said Holga.

03 An 80GB black iPod Classic, most likely a refurb because getting one for $40 cheaper means being able to buy and subsequently eat $40 worth of groceries, $209. But I'll be waiting on this one for at least a year or so, since I already have another relatively new - albeit extremely tiny - one.

04 Standard US size 08/UK size 12 dress form, $300+.

05 Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max for PSP, approx. $20, because I just can't live up to my potential as an asian without it.

or (because I feel a bit silly wanting two video games),

06 ~~Tekken: Dark Resurrection~~, also for PSP, approx. $20.

07 A flatbed scanner, although I haven't done any research yet to figure out which one, especially considering my planned move to London within the next year and a half - because honestly, how does one pack a scanner?

I can't just be like other girls and lust after Dolce & Gabbana.

La Vie Boheme

2008-06-10T01:31:00.016-04:00

For the past couple months I've had a terrible case of insomnia, resulting in discoveries like this.

I have to preface by explaining that defenestration is one of my favourite words in the English language, partly because the existence of a word for so specific an act is a bit ludicrous and thus highly amusing, and mostly because it sounds noble and more akin to the enjoyment of a fine glass of Cabernet Sauvignon, or at least brandy and a cigar, which when coupled with the true definition is a bit ludicrous and thus highly amusing . Defenestrating with class? Oh yes.

So imagine my pleasure - macabre, but pleasure nonetheless - upon discovering there is an actual historical use for this word (which was coined around the time of the Czech incident), and that there is a page on the Frommer's website titled Czech Tradition of Defenestration. I'm led to assume this tradition is right up there with vepřo-knedlo-zelo and Kde domov můj.

There are some things in life which still need explaining (Must Renée Zellweger's mouth always look like that? Can Paris Hilton ever completely open her left eye?), but fortunately I have one less thing to wonder about.

Oy Gevalt

2008-06-09T23:25:00.015-04:00

Oh dear god.

I've known for quite some time what Sea-Monkeys are, expecting them to just resemble some sort of benign puny little lobster-looking things, because honestly they look sort of cute in an odd Christina Ricci sort of way in all those vintage ads.

They don't.

Apparently they only grow to 1 cm, not that it matters because after I've seen that photo I'm going to have nightmares about ten-inch-long translucent bug-eyed praying-mantis-esque crustacean monsters with big nasty teeth and visible digestive tracts and suspicious-looking sac things full of pink who knows what, getting ready to devour me whole, or at least impregnate me with their demon seed.

Oh, hello there, Sigmund; I didn't see you sitting there.

From the SM (haha) website comes this extremely scientific explanation: "Sea Monkeys are real Time-Travelers asleep in biological time capsules for their strange journey into the future!" Whatever. I'd rather open up a time capsule full of an old grotillated wig than one full of those gross little buggers.

Let me know when the next Acid Test is.

Edit: This just in. The first sentence says it all.

Nothing Is Free

2008-06-08T15:19:00.040-04:00

...except for the newest Nine Inch Nails album.

Go to NIN's The Slip website, provide a valid email address, and download the zip file sent to your mailbox with your choice of format, complete with Creative Commons share-alike license, proper ID3 tags, and album artwork. While you're at it, download Ghosts I, the first part of their instrumental Ghosts I-IV project, for some decent listening.

So far today I've only breezed through the album to get a basic feel and can say that thus far I approve. (Whatever my opinion means.) The Slip is definitely not the best, but with its ambient samples along with a fair mix of the industrial noise for which NIN is known, it still is a relatively satisfying listening experience.

And it was free, and legally so. I just can't argue with that.

In a sort of related vein, I wonder what TR would think of Project Runway Season Two, in which Santino does a rather impressive spoken-word version of Closer as the incomparable Tim Gunn.

Mackin' It

2008-06-07T14:25:00.015-04:00

Happy (140th) birthday today to Charles Rennie Mackintosh, a pivotal figure in both the Arts and Crafts Movement and the spread of Art Nouveau throughout the UK, helping to create "The Glasgow Style," which blended Art Nouveau with Scottish and Japanese art and design. I've lately been getting more into CR Mack, at a rate which threatens to flower into yet another crush on yet another dead designer guy.

Also, Happy Drawing Day 2K8!

And good luck to Big Brown (named after UPS) tonight at the Belmont Stakes! (This just in: I am apparently a sixty-year-old woman. Aside from watching long-antiquated horseraces, I also enjoy knitting, a fine cup of Darjeeling, and watching my fiber intake.)

Illustration Friday: Forgotten

2008-06-06T14:38:00.027-04:00

The theme for this week on Illustration Friday is "Forgotten." (Click image for a larger view.)

Unfortunately I lack a scanner, and thus a poorly-colour-corrected photograph will have to do for now.

Earl forgot his trunk, but ironically I also forgot to draw his ears. And now after staring at this and being confused for about two hours straight about why it looks so odd, I finally realise why Earl so much resembles a manatee.

Oh Noez

2008-06-04T19:46:00.025-04:00

If CNN reports are true and Hillary Clinton does drop out of the race and join Obama's ticket as vice president, then will hardcore Clinton-haters still vote for Obama for fear of her possible proximity to the presidency? And what of that near-fourth of HC supporters who claim to refuse to vote at all if she isn't on the ballot?

Either way, I still think McCain will win the presidency amidst all this Democrat hullabaloo. (Poor Mike Huckabee; no one even remembers his three weeks as a candidate.) Still no decision yet on who I will be voting for this fall, especially considering the possibility of Killary still being in the White House even if she can't be president.

Maybe I should just change my citizenship now, before it's too late.

In other news, Gordon Brown has made it into a Marvel comic book story as a cameo role in Paul Cornell's short work "Captain Britain and MI13," in which space invaders attack and attempt to take over Britain and are repelled by the attempts of PM GB.

Maybe then he'll be as exciting(?) as Watermelon Man, albeit with a [slightly] better hairstyle and less acetic personality.

RIP

2008-06-01T21:17:00.039-04:00

Yves Saint Laurent, visionary and founder of the eponymous French fashion house, died this evening in his home in Paris at the age of 71 due to a long illness.

He was one of the final survivor of golden-age French couturiers (left now is Hubert de Givenchy, a favourite of Audrey Hepburn), and among his legacies are the woman's pantsuit, the entire safari trend for womenswear, and - while at Dior immediately following Christian D's death - the trapeze-line dress, as well as democratising fashion via the institution of ready-to-wear as an acceptable and accessible alternative to haute-couture.

In a very differently yet likewise fashion-y bent, I highly recommend watching Grey Gardens (a task to which I will relegate the rest of my night), a documentary from 1975 depicting the lives of "Big Edie" and "Little Edie" Bouvier Beale, Jackie O.'s aunt and first cousin, who lived as recluses for years in their dilapidated 28-room mansion in East Hampton, New York.

The documentary later inspired the 2006 Tony Award-winning musical of the same name, which one of my fashion professors at uni is hopelessly obsessed with, as evidenced by one of his typical twenty-minute early-morning classtime tangents last fall term in which was outlined the fabulosity of the documentary and subsequent musical lovechild, the creative ingenuity of the Edies, and his (unrelated) affinity toward shoulderpads and sequins. Apparently a film for HBO (starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange) is in the works and set to release sometime this year.

Not surprisingly there are quite a few fans of the whole Grey Gardens story, with an "official" fansite as well as a blog which provides updates and info on "everything that touches Grey Gardens, Edith Bouvier Beale, and her daughter Edie."

By the Beard of Zeus

2008-05-31T15:57:00.008-04:00

If only I were a man blessed with an abundance of styling products and a penchant for follicular art.

I am so glad this is real.

Or Else It Gets the Hose Again

2008-05-30T19:16:00.022-04:00

I am a self-professed pansy and perhaps the only person over the age of seven who is still afraid of the dark.

Several months ago I was perusing YouTube and happened to come across a video of someone reenacting the scene from The Exorcist in which a girl crawls on her hands backwards down a flight of stairs, whilst screaming bloody murder for some reason that I choose to never find out since I will never ever ever ever watch that film, ever, because I know I'll soil myself and then proceed to dig my eyeballs out of my own head.

At any rate, my boyfriend - who already knew how ridiculous I am about things like that because of my lack of ability to even watch Are You Afraid of the Dark? - tried to convince me to watch the actual scene from the movie, to which I replied with tears, a hysterical meltdown, protestations that I was going to die, etc. and which ended in my face being a big blubbery mess and our next activity most likely being the enjoyment of nice, safe Downtown (ダウンタウンのガキの使いやあらへんで!!) hilarity.

I refuse to watch The Grudge, especially the Japanese version, because my imagination is entirely too active and I am too much of a baby to handle it. And even though I have never seen it, I get freaked out even by the thought of the promo poster and nearly shit myself whenever it pops up in my head, so I can only imagine the mess in which I would be if I actually saw the film.

So, I am so incredibly lucky to not be this guy, because honestly if there was a strange old Japanese woman in my closet, that would freak me the hell out and I am pretty positive I would go clinically insane, even if she didn't have red eyeballs and her hair in her face and a dire need for a bag of throat lozenges.

I can not imagine how a stranger could possibly live in a person's house unnoticed for one whole year, yet what shocks me most is that this woman was somehow able to procure a freaking mattress and transport it into her little hovel without anyone seeing her do it, or even noticing it missing! I understand she could take showers while he was at work and whatnot, but how did she use the toilet when he didn't have to work? Did she just hold it for two or three days straight?!

I wonder what the dialogue exchange was between those two once she was finally found.

I'm rewriting the list of things I want in a flat.

Closets large enough to accomodate bodies = out.

Aftermath

2008-05-29T12:06:00.031-04:00

As a result of some misunderstanding from one of my previous posts, I write this in an attempt to clarify a few things.

I was thinking perhaps it would be wiser for the sake of any future visitors to simply edit the original post to make my points more clear and hopefully leave out the possibility for alternate interpretations, but now I think for the sake of honesty I will leave it intact, offer up this one in tandem, and let the two speak for themselves.

I am by no means of the idea that a person can not "know" or help to educate others on what it is like to be another gender, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, etc. simply because he or she does not currently belong to such an enclave. Rather, I encourage and appreciate honest attempts at understanding, because [insert pageant answer here] that is the only way to preserve (perhaps "improve" would be better) humanity as we know it.

So, on to explain my [admittedly] caustic first sentence: "...yet another caucasian man who thinks that all asian women are helpless and vulnerable and adhere strongly to the 'I do xyz, therefore I want to be a white woman' bollocks."...

First, I think some of the misunderstanding comes out of a mistake of reading comprehension (which, in advance, is not meant to belittle anyone since we all make mistakes like that); the point is not to say that all caucasian men think ___, but rather that there is a certain group of people who believe ___, and a constituent of that group happens to be caucasian males. Somehow it was also assumed that I believe the whole "submissive asian woman" thing, to which I answer that my true feeling about that is pretty painfully clear in the rest of my blog, not just in the context of my entries but also the way in which they are written.

The true problem that I have with the linked article, however, is that the author leaves minimal room for any factors other than the perfidy of ever-increasing western media seeping into east Asia. I understand for the sake of tighter writing it may be necessary to drop or skim over a few points ("Brevity is the soul of wit," according to Shakespeare), but to write a rather lengthy and otherwise well-thought-out article about the reasons for human behaviour and have it come down essentially to one point is a bit... lacking. Human thought is never as easy as that.

To say the "white media" is the reason for the increase in procedures among asian women is, sorry to say, cutting off the argument's conclusion before it is even done. To say that women are choosing this because they're "told" to over and over again by the media is to fall short of the complexity of the problem.

What makes media affective and powerful? Why does anyone - regardless of gender, age, ethnicity, etc. - buy into anything that the media says? Is it just because he is "told" to be a certain way, just because he is "forced" to "want" something that otherwise he may not want?

The reason why media is so successful is that it taps into individual desires and feelings. Yes, the constant barrage of "beautiful" white women can be extremely overwhelming to nonwhites. Yes, the lack of nonwhite models helps foster ethnic insecurity in numerous asian women. And yes, the media does have a pivotal role in this entire problem of self-acceptance (ethnic or otherwise). But to address this problem one also needs to address the other reasons why things like plastic surgery are so relevant to asian women now, namely that certain things (cosmetic procedures, etc.) are much more accessible now, and accessibility coupled with an increase in the media's alleged portrayal of "white beauty>anything else" as truth serves only to tap into a previous cultural desire (as outlined briefly in my aforementioned previous post).

To state that the media is the reason for a group's actions is to belittle that group. It is to say that they are essentially lemmings, incapable of making their own choices.

For an anthropologist to understand a people, he must not only understand the contemporary culture, but also the past and how that people came to develop the thought processes, stereotypes, preferences, philosophies, etc. that are so important and so pervasive years later into our present era. It is wise also for the curious to follow this same basic credo.

That's the Smell of Desire

2008-05-28T14:25:00.020-04:00

According to an article on the BBC News website, among the list of 170,000 items lost on London’s transport network within the past twelve months were such brilliant necessities as breast implants, human skulls, and bull sperm.

The breast implants, it turns out, were being transported to a surgeon, a logical yet not nearly as satisfying explanation; I’d rather think of some ridiculously convoluted route á là Amélie Poulain (“Nino is late. Amélie can only see two explanations. One: He didn’t get the photo. Two: Before he could assemble it, a gang of bank robbers took him hostage. The cops gave chase. They got away... but he caused a crash. When he came to, he’d lost his memory. An ex-con picked him up, mistook him for a fugitive, and shipped him to Istanbul. There he met some Afghan raiders who told him to steal some Russian warheads. But their truck hit a mine in Tajikistan. He survived, took to the hills, and became a Mujaheddin. Amélie refuses to get upset for a guy who’ll eat borscht all his life in a hat like a tea cozy.”), but I lack the creativity to write that, although admittedly it is a bit more amusing - and more of a feat of science - to picture borscht being consumed by a breast implant rather than by Mathieu Kassovitz.

The bull sperm, however...

The most interesting thing I have ever carried on my person whilst on the Tube was a corset I was making in one of my classes, but other than that I have only had uninteresting things like glacier mints and Tampax. Riveting, I know. I wasn’t even exciting enough to carry around money. Or the odd bottle of Magners. (Or the even one, for that matter.)

I love that TfL’s Lost Property Office is abbreviated LPO, the same as the London Philharmonic Orchestra, since I can't help but have an immature little giggle out of imagining Kurt Masur being solemnly handed a phial of spermatozoan.

Hello, Mannequin

2008-05-27T20:34:00.029-04:00

(Before I start, the image to the left is a promo poster for 미녀는 괴로워 (200 Pounds Beauty), a movie which regrettably I watched and far too quickly became emotionally invested in. I can never watch it ever again for fear I'll grow attached to it and become some sort of crazy closet watcher for fear of having rocks thrown at me. Repeatedly.)

(It would be The Devil Wears Prada all over again, which for the sake of my dignity needs no repeat.)

Oh em eff gee.

Oh, look, yet another article written by yet another caucasian man who thinks that all asian women are helpless and vulnerable and adhere strongly to the “I do xyz, therefore I want to be a white woman” bollocks.

In his blog introduction he writes that he lives in Busan (or Pusan, depending on your Romanisation) and is married to a Korean, so I hope for the sake of his marriage that he does not actually believe all that submissive asian mishegas (and for the record, I do give him the benefit of the doubt considering my own experiences), but unfortunately this argument about the “Caucasian Ideal” indirectly suggests that, despite thousands of years of cultivation, asians are lemmings following the big white leader over the cliff.

I understand that plastic surgery in east asia has increased exponentially over the past several years – as part of a worldwide trend, I must add – especially with the infamous blepharoplasty procedure, as well as non-surgical skin whitening via kojic acid, mercury, black magic, etc. And I by no means wish to undermine how horribly wrong it is, what with China’s relatively-new Miss Artificial Beauty pageant, and the prevalence in Korea, China, and Japan of graduation/birthday gifts in the form of blepharoplasty, etc. (How do you even begin to giftwrap that?!)

Yet it is always because people like myself want to look caucasian. It is always because we have been brainwashed by white media into thinking that white women are more beautiful, and thus if we have double eyelids/long thin noses/paler skin/thinner faces like them then we will be more beautiful as well.

Yes, I understand that modern media has had an overwhelming impact on beauty standards, asian or otherwise. But here’s a newsflash: all of those aforementioned qualities – the same which are always brought up in articles similar to Mr. Turnbull’s – have been valued in ancient asian civilisations before caucasians had a chance to run in and “influence” them.

In ancient China, it was beautiful for a woman to appear delicate, with fine features (read: a relatively slender nose and small face shape), large eyes, small waist, and fair skin (there is an old Chinese saying that fair skin will cover 1000 uglinesses), and the same goes for Korea and Japan, over which China has had much influence throughout history. And roughly half the east asian population has naturally-occuring eyelid creases (myself included), so it’s not as though the europeans enlightened us all in the 1800s with their magically creased eyes.

As an aside for those who cite skin whitening as a so-called sign of asians unwittingly becoming slaves to the european beauty aesthetic: what of the increasing number of caucasian women who spend time and money tanning? The only asian demographic widely following this aesthetic are either Japanese ganguros (who have more or less died out in the past couple years, and clearly are not trying to look mainstream-caucasian), Lee Hyori, or second-generation Korean-American Hollister girls living in SoCal; otherwise, most asian women still want to be pale.

The root of the matter is not necessarily the insecurity of asian women in an increasingly white world. The fact is, rather, that for thousands of years there has been an extreme emphasis in all the east asian cultures to be the best in every arena – intelligence, decorum, and, yes, looks. So it is, instead, the insecurity of asian women acting out beliefs and ideals that have been a part of their cultural history for thousands of years, far removed from any influence of the western world. It just so happens that now, when the entire world is shrinking because of the easy interconnectivity that modern technology affords, many transfer this insecurity – which has been instilled in them since birth, as with hundreds of generations previous – into a need to fit into the western beauty aesthetic.

It is closeminded and, strangely, a bit arrogant to think that white people have this incredible power and influence and are the sole reason for all this.

And the thing I find most ironic? The people who most vehemently oppose cosmetic procedures in asian women are usually the ones who have a bit of an asian fetish. “Stay the way you are, sweetie,” they say... which sounds nice, but then one realises that he wants you to stay that way so that you can be his exotic little chinadoll. So then what?

Either you’re apparently conforming to a so-called “white” ideal, or you’re conforming to the western ideal of Oriental Commodity.

Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

Quickie

2008-05-24T01:07:00.010-04:00

I just read over an old MySpace blog from 10 February 2005, in which I complained about paying $1.81/gallon for gas.

Ohhh, to be young and naïve.

Ich bin ein Berliner

2008-05-17T22:55:00.031-04:00

Sunday 18 May is the birthday of Walter Gropius (he would be 125 this year), one of the most influential people of modern design and architecture and a man to whom I refer as "the shit" for being the founding father of the Bauhaus, with which I am hopelessly obsessed. I'd probably crush on Dubs G as much as on his design-school lovechild as well if he was still undergoing cellular respiration and was perhaps a bit less... eyebrow-y.

Harder Better Faster Stronger

2008-05-15T17:17:00.045-04:00

I love foreign films.

That is why it incenses me when Hollywood proceeds to buy the rights to every single successful asian movie in order to bastardise it beyond recognition for an American audience that is too ignorant or lazy or impatient to seek out the original and understand the cultural context.

Behold, the list:

1954 (Japan): ゴジラ (Godzilla)
1998 (USA): Godzilla
Okay, so the original Godzilla was campy and by today’s standards was produced horribly. But just let it be. A little bit of camp never hurt anyone.

(Edit: As of 30 May 2008 I have discovered another meaning for "camp" and am much bemused.)

1961 (Japan): 用心棒 (Yojimbo)
1984 (USA): The Warrior and the Sorceress
1996 (USA): Last Man Standing
Yojimbo is a samurai period drama by the amazing Kurosawa Akira. Last Man Standing, however, stars Bruce Willis and is another American cowboy movie set in Texas with lots o’ guns, machismo, etc. Typical.

1983 (Japan): 南極物語 (South Pole Story)
2006 (USA): Eight Below
This example is not as annoying to me since they are both based on the same true story, but what is strange is that South Pole Story is actually set in 1958, the date of the actual Antarctic exploration, whereas Eight Below takes the same story and stages it forty years later, a trick that unfortunately does not save it from blowing.

1988 (Japan): アキラ (Akira)
2009 (USA): Akira, live-action
I doubt this will work at all. I’m sure there will be lots of pretty computer graphics and impressive stunts and bangbangexplosionfire, though.

1996 (Japan): Shall We ダンス? (Shall We Dance?)
2004 (USA): Shall We Dance?
The American version starred Jennifer Lopez. I rest my case.

1998 (Japan): リング (The Ring)
2002 (USA): The Ring
Having seen both versions, I have to say that the Japanese version is far better, in that it does not rely on gratuitous gore or grossness to be scary. As with most asian horror, the fear factor depends largely on superstition and fear of the unknown, whereas most American audiences seem to need a force-fed explanation of the whys and hows.

2000 (S. Korea): 공동경비구역JSA (Joint Security Area)
TBA (USA): TBA
This is the grouping that perhaps bothers me the most. Korea’s JSA is set on the North-South Korean border, while the American version takes place on the border between the USA and Mexico. Wow, Hollywood, way to buy rights to a film that has zero relevance to the US, then turn around and reduce it into a story about a problem that is leagues less important than the story behind the original film. Why not just go one step further and set it somewhere in the Middle East during the war in Iraq so that we as Americans can have yet another overly jingoistic film feeding us the idea that we are God’s Gift To Humanity?

2000 (S. Korea): 시월애 (Il Mare)
2006 (USA): The Lake House
I have yet to see either, but judging by the superb acting skills of Keanu Reeves, I’m sure the Korean version is exponentially better.

2000 (Japan): バトル・ロワイアル (Battle Royale)
TBA (USA): Battle Royale (rumoured)
If there is any good in this world, let this rumour of an American remake of Battle Royale remain just that. I don’t think my little heart could take anything otherwise.

2001 (S. Korea): 엽기적인 그녀 (My Sassy Girl)
2008 (USA): My Sassy Girl
My Sassy Girl remains my favourite Korean movie, and upon rewatching it a couple weeks ago I was horrified by the discovery that it will be released as a US version in the next few months. I was again horrified upon actually seeing the trailer and witnessing the trainwreck. Interestingly enough, Hollywood had to pay $2 million for the rights to My Sassy Girl, twice as much as for The Ring, yet I highly doubt that it will be nearly as successful as The Ring was in the US. It has been reduced to yet another melodramatic romantic “comedy,” with none of the charm or cultural nuances that the Korean version has. The American version will also miss out on the cultural reasoning behind the two main characters; Jun Ji-hyun’s character is not a bitch just for the hell of it, and Gyeon-woo is not just a pushover or a hopeless romantic. Rather, the dynamics behind their relationship are rooted deeply in traditional Korean beliefs regarding family and respect (especially for Gyeon-woo), a history that does not translate over to the American version simply because it does not exist in the US.

2001 (S. Korea): 조폭 마누라 (My Wife Is A Gangster)
TBA (USA)
This film already has had two more sequels in South Korea.

2001 (Japan): 回路 (Kairo)
2006 (USA): The Pulse

2002 (Japan): 仄暗い水の底から (Dark Water)
2005 (USA): Dark Water

2002 (Hong Kong): 见鬼 (The Eye)
2008 (USA): The Eye
The American version is produced by Tom Cruise and stars Jessica Alba (who, oddly enough, looks like a non-asian Lee Hyori), which speaks for itself.

2002 (Hong Kong): 无间道 (Infernal Affairs)
2006 (USA): The Departed
Wait, it’s a Matt Damon movie and it’s set in Boston? Jack Nicholson plays a surly mob boss? Matt Damon is (again) some sort of protégé? No way. That is so unpredictable.

2002 (S. Korea): 중독 (Addicted)
2008 (USA): Possession
Possession will star Sarah Michelle Gellar, just as I was starting to wonder what happened to her.

2003 (S. Korea): 올드보이 (Oldboy)
TBA (USA)
Oldboy won the Grand Prix at Cannes 2004, and Quentin Tarantino apparently loved it and could not convince the rest of the jury to award it the Palme d’Or, which was awarded to (ugh) Fahrenheit 9/11. The American remake is currently on-hold, as the director stepped down after realising that he would not be able to do the original justice.

2003 (S. Korea): 장화, 홍련 (A Tale of Two Sisters)
2008 (USA): The Uninvited
I hate horror movies, yet I thought A Tale of Two Sisters was amazing. The Uninvited (which, coincidentally, takes its name from another K-horror film) is going to be yet another overly-wrought movie, since American audiences apparently think that a horror film is as good as the amount of unnecessary blood and gore, and of course the number of Suzy Hotfaces willing to run around with wet tank tops and expertly-applied eye makeup. Forget the fact that A Tale of Two Sisters is relevant to Koreans in general because it, like most other Korean movies, is hugely based on the tight-knit family relationship so important in that culture – a belief on which the film is greatly based, and a belief that will not be easily transferred over to American audiences since it has been lacking in US culture for decades.

2003 (Japan): 呪怨 (The Grudge)
2004 (USA): The Grudge

2004 (Japan): 着信アリ (One Missed Call)
2008 (USA): One Missed Call
It is interesting that a lot of J-horror uses the same elements – death preceded by ghostly phone calls, strange girls with hair over their faces – yet the rights to those films still get bought by other countries unwilling/unable to create unique plots and villains of their own.

2004 (Thailand): ชัตเตอร์ กดติดวิญญาณ (Shutter)
2008 (USA): Shutter

2005 (S. Korea): 친절한 금자씨 (Sympathy For Lady Vengeance)
TBA (USA)
Sympathy For Lady Vengeance is the last part of a trilogy, to which Oldboy also belongs. No word yet on whether the two projects will be released with any sort of relationship to each other.

2006 (S. Korea): 괴물 (The Host)
TBA (USA)

2006 (Japan): デスノート (Death Note)
TBA (USA)
In my opinion it is a bad idea to make a live-action film based on a pair of live-action films based on an anime based on a manga, especially when the live-action films/anime/manga have already been hugely successful. And I'm not sure it would be quite the same without the leads being mostly girly asian boys; the only Hollywood actor I can think of who looks young enough is perhaps Daniel Radcliffe, and even he performed on stage naked in order to assert himself as a Mature Actor.

2007 (S. Korea): 세븐 데이즈 (Seven Days)
TBA (USA): Seven Days

2008 (S. Korea): 추격자 (The Chaser)
TBA (USA)

I’m sure there are more.

The point is not, however, to bash America (not completely, anyway). What gets me is the fact that film-making in general is an art form based on individuality and creativity, yet moviegoers all over the world – but especially in the US – are paying a billion-dollar industry to give them inferior copies of pieces that already exist.

Some of this is due to ignorance. We all know that The Ring, The Grudge, etc. were originally Japanese films, but few know of the countless other rip-offs until they get bored and write a blog about them.

Ignorance, however, does not explain why foreign films need to be completely redone and repackaged with the English language, American actors, more crashcrashboomboom, etc. The fact is that Americans in general need to have something hit them in the face to notice that it is good, bad, scary, inventive. Most will not pick up on nuances in plot or character development, and they think that dead air and few camera angle changes are boring, without thinking of the reasoning behind it; forget the fact that countries like Japan have had formally ordered civilisation for thousands of years longer than Europeans (who, I may add, were unwashed and still shitting in pots under their beds into the twentieth century), a history that still translates over to modern cinema (i.e. open spaces in the camera frame and long moments of silence directly reflect the traditional Japanese aesthetic for open spaces and harmony).

Language barrier is no excuse. If you are literate and do not have cataracts, subtitles should not be a problem.

Neither should there be the excuse of not understanding the culture. There are these marvelous things called “books” – hell, even the internet – that, when opened and perused, have the magical power of imparting knowledge about things which one does not know. Blimey!

If there is ever an American remake of 싸이보그지만 괜찮아 (I’m a Cyborg, But That’s Okay) then I will most likely have a brain aneurism and go on some sort of shooting rampage in Hollywood, then claim insanity ex post facto. It’s the only way.

Blackbeard's Delight

2008-05-15T15:08:00.032-04:00

After several days of unnecessary laziness I decided to once again revel in the exploits of Don Quixote de la Mancha (which I have apparently and stupidly forgotten to read in my lifetime up until now), an endeavor which resulted in the discovery of a new word and a subsequent silly little connection.

"Ann Hart Coulter (born December 8, 1961) is an American conservative political commentator, syndicated columnist, and best-selling author. She frequently appears on television, radio and as a speaker at public and private events. Known for her controversial and confrontational style, Coulter describes herself as a 'polemicist' who likes to 'stir up the pot' and, unlike 'broadcasters', does not 'pretend to be impartial or balanced'."

"coulter, n. A blade or wheel attached to the beam of a plow that makes vertical cuts in the soil in advance of the plowshare. [Middle English culter, from Old English culter and Old French coltre, both from Latin culter, knife, plowshare.]"

Okay I Believe You, But My Tommy Gun Don't

2008-04-27T17:28:00.027-04:00

Human communication is seriously flawed.

Today I had a disagreement with someone, started first by a rather trivial problem which was exacerbated into a glorious flower of near-war as neither one of us succeeded in doing anything other than making the hole even deeper. It is strange how one's attempts to smooth over a problem only result in the outpouring of deeper vexations, past regrets, underlying resentments, etc. that are never enough of a problem to acknowledge when all is well yet are the first to rear their heads when a struggle appears on the horizon. And those pretty little irritations always invariably get in the way when the aforementioned and I butt heads, serving only to make apologies seem like sarcastic jabs, explanation seem like patronisation. Our fights are like "the little scratch on the roof of your mouth that would heal if only you would stop tonguing it, but you can't."

Situations like this make me suddenly yearn for the chutzpah to practice the art of self-defenestration.

I find it a miracle that, considering the communication problems people have in general, human civilisation has been able to survive thousands and thousands of years (theoretically at least, if you believe the textbooks, which I haven't quite made up my mind about) without completely eradicating mankind.

Lord, what fools these mortals be.

FIFA

2008-04-26T12:55:00.086-04:00

I stole this from my brother’s blog:

The Mission
Complete 101 preset tasks in a period of 1001 days.

The Criteria
Tasks must be specific, i.e. no ambiguity in the wording, with a result that is either measurable or clearly defined. Tasks must also be realistic and stretching, i.e. representing some amount of work on my part.

Why 1001 days?
Many people have created lists in the past, frequently simple goals such as New Year’s resolutions. The key to beating procrastination is to set a deadline that is realistic. 1001 days (approx. 2.75 years) is a better period of time than a year, because it allows you several seasons to complete the tasks, which is better for organising and timing some tasks such as overseas trips or outdoor activities.

Start 26 April 2008
End 22 January 2011

Academics
001 Complete senior collection
002 Graduate uni with Honors
003 Get a 4.0

Finances and Profession
004 Consolidate college loans
~~005 Research international banks~~ (HSBC ftw)
006 Open new bank account
007 Close old bank acount
008 Get a job in London
009 Apply for work visa
~~010 Finish Barbara’s wedding dress~~
011 Finish Lindsay’s wedding dress

Health
012 Eliminate processed sugars and fats
013 Avoid salt
014 Eliminate coffee and soda
~~015 Start using resistance bands~~
016 Drink 2 litres of water per day
017 Eat fewer sweets
018 Run a marathon
019 Learn Pilates

Ecological Footprint
~~020 Take showers in fewer than 10 minutes~~
021 Stop using plastic bags for groceries, etc.
022 Consolidate possessions
023 Donate clothing to charity shops
024 Recycle
025 Plant a tree
026 Grow my own cooking herbs
027 Use fewer paper products
028 Start using handkerchiefs
~~029 Learn to make cleaning products~~
~~030 Invest in a Cup~~

Vanity
031 Grow my hair out
032 Buy glasses
033 Buy no more than 1 magazine per month
034 Use fewer beauty products
~~035 Renew driver’s license~~
036 Buy a smaller gauge lip stud

Intelligence
~~036 Learn Korean~~ (started 20 April 2008)
~~037 Learn Korean history~~ (started 20 April 2008)
038 Learn Mandarin
039 Learn Chinese history
040 Brush up on world history
041 Read 1 new book every 2 months
~~042 Spend fewer than 15 minutes on Facebook per day~~
043 Read the news every day
~~044 Learn how the stock market works~~
045 Join a library
046 Visit a natural history museum
047 Expand my vocabulary
048 Learn Adobe Illustrator

Reading List
~~049 The Prince~~
050 Anna Karenina
051 The Brothers Karamazov
~~052 Don Quixote~~
053 Lolita
054 A Clockwork Orange
055 Jane Eyre
056 Ulysses
057 The Fountainhead
058 Atlas Shrugged
059 The Bell Jar
060 The Canterbury Tales (again)
061 Restart Vanity Fair
062 Nietzsche
063 Proust

Travels
064 Paris
065 Prague
066 Budapest

Experiences
067 Tour a castle
068 Try escargot
069 Attend mass at Westminster Abbey
070 Learn how to judge wine
071 Have a picnic
~~072 Make a quilt~~
073 Go to a football game in Europe
~~074 Order a martini~~
075 Vote in the 2008 election
076 Revisit Caj Chai teahouse in Barcelona
~~077 Buy a pro account on Flickr~~
078 Make a snowman
079 Go ice skating
080 Go to a hip hop battle
081 Go to a classical orchestra concert

Leisure
082 Buy a guitar
083 Learn how to play guitar
084 Finish Loco Roco
~~085 Listen to more classical music~~
086 Buy a keyboard
087 Relearn piano
088 Help Eric learn piano
089 Buy a tea infuser
090 Watch more foreign films
~~091 Rewatch Dr. Strangelove and actually pay attention~~
092 Learn how to play poker
~~093 Maintain a blog~~

Cuisine
094 Make kimchi
095 Make bread
096 Build a gingerbread house
097 Bake a cake
098 Make Chinese dumplings

Miscellany
099 Buy new flip flops
100 Learn to fake a British accent
~~101 Find a reliable ID3-tag editing program~~

Call Me Ishmael

2008-04-25T20:56:00.022-04:00

Although I doubt there are many readers to this tiny excuse for literary entertainment, I suppose an introduction of sorts is in order for those of you who are perhaps closet readers of random poorly-written blogs, at those times of the day when you should be doing more important things like balancing checkbooks or finding the cure for herpes.

This begins more as a way to satiate my overwhelming feelings of boredom as I sit at home in the boonies of southern New Jersey, with the loss of a car and the subsequent lack of employment out-of-doors adding up to me lying around in a puddle of my own drool as I try in vain not to stab myself in the eye with a toothbrush for lack of having anything constructive to do.

This is the last summer I have before I graduate uni and have to really start pretending to be an adult, and so this excess of leisure time isn't really too bad when I think of the bohemian (read: poor, desolate artist's) life I'll be "blessed" with after graduation. That being said, I came to the realisation a few days ago that my brain is probably rotting from months of disuse, and before it starts seeping out of my ears for want of activity I figured I should at least try to air out some of my daily whining and silly observations into relatively organised and intelligible sentences.

I'm a fashion design student at uni in the States, so it goes without saying that there is a severe lack of real conversation when I am with most of my peers. I confess I get caught up in the "omgzzzz liek that is sooooo cute x9248918781927!!!!!?!" much more than I'd actually like to own up to, but I have my fair share of acting the role of Sarcastic Pompous Pedant as well, as I'm sure will be realised multiple times in the lifespan of this blog. And for that I apologise in advance.

Thus, I end with the disclaimer that I am not a writer, but merely a bored Random Person with an affinity toward lolcats, overly-long sentences and a perverse use of semicolons; and although I truly don't know much at all, I will always pretend otherwise.

Me Love You Long Time

2008-04-23T19:47:00.019-04:00

Several days ago, I was accused in a roundabout way of being a racist.

I must be racist, for after all, although I am an asian female of consenting age, I decide to date - gasp! - a caucasian male. I was castigated greatly for this obvious Grievance To My People by an asian guy who is surprisingly the same age as myself and a student at a western university, not some old-school seventy-year-old harabeoji back in the motherland trying to barter me for two hens and a rice paddy. No, this tactful and well-thought-out message brought forth by a future world leader soon developed into a rather inflammatory diatribe about how I must be ashamed of my asian heritage and have been systematically "whitewashed" into believing that asian men are all short, nerdy, submissive, and altogether undesirable (a la William Hung), and that in all circumstances white men>asian men. And of course I've been programmed to believe that all asian men have small genitalia, and that member size is one of the most important factors in the choosing of my mate. It would be silly to think that personality or music preference has anything to do with it, but of course I've drunk the Kool Aid, so what do I know?

It was amusing, because the accuser had, at first, been trying to make a very valid point about racism in the form of asian fetishism in western society, to which I would have agreed wholeheartedly if not for his propensity toward typographical diarrhea. To be an asian female in the west, especially in the States, is a completely unique experience, for no other ethnic group has attached to it such a decisive erotic sexuality that has endured in the public mindset for centuries and remains to do so in our so-called modern times.

But the point of this is not to outline how I as an asian woman have been allegedly and unwittingly made victim to the evil, evil white westerners who want to keep girls like myself in the role of Exotic Commodity. The reason for my contention was the audacity with which this accuser suggested that I am no better than the creepy dragon-obsessed asian fetishist, that I have a "white" fetish brought on both by brainwashing and by the perceived shame I feel toward my ethnic identity, and that there is desperate desire on my part to become caucasian through association.

In a word, it made me angry.

The dangerous thing about bigots is that they seldom ever realise that they are, and the dangerous thing about bigots who happen to be asian - or any minority group, for that matter - is that they use ideas like "Family Honour" and "Ethnic Pride" to disguise the fact that they are no better than your run-of-the-mill radical right-wing nationalists.

I've decided to let this whole situation go, because after arguing for days and not making any headway it is quite obvious that there is nothing more I can do to change this person's mind. On another note, I was, interestingly enough, berated even more for my "white" name, which obviously is an indicator of - yes, you guessed it - my desire to be caucasian (regardless of the fact that I was adopted by an Irish-English-Italian-German-American family when I was four years old).

I can't help feeling a bit crap for ducking out, but at this point in my life all I need to worry about is how I perceive myself, not how some embittered forum troll would like to perceive me in order to use me as fodder for his own badly-organised arguments. Hopefully he'll learn to grow up soon and leave behind his first-level way of thinking; if not, it'll give me yet another reason to leave the country. I'd at least know that he wouldn't be in England.