Every Sunday Morning, a place where various things get thrown out, shot at, cut open, and dissected. Topics of interest: psychological, and medical anthropology, privatization, globalization, excess, language, humor, hip-hop culture, jazz, brain and mind, memory, urban space development, Los Angeles, the Chicago Bulls, UCLA Bruins, FC Barcelona, and mankind.
Thank god that the former 2 things haven't been developed in her consciousness yet. I couldn't be happier.
At this point in her life, before she hits the 2nd decade of life in the Gregorian calendar, my sister decided that this would be the summer that she'd finish something she had always meant to finish.
Instead of a summer sitting down doing bitchwork or working at Jamba Juice, she'd steal what she needed to steal, she'd shoot at who she needed to shoot at, she'd take what she needed to take.
All so that Carl Johnson could reclaim the city of Los Santos.
Ironically, my kidly sister is playing a very adult-themed game. When I was about 11, I had written in some Playstation game fair my idea of the best video game ever. My idea didn't necessarily mean violence, but I wanted a game that integrated elements of someone's life together. I wanted the person to be able to do a variety things rather than just fight, or just shoot or just play basketball, or just drive. I wanted to fight, shoot, play basketball, AND Drive within some kind of progressie storyline.
Enter the Grand Theft Auto series.
Grand Theft Auto San Andreas is the latest rendition and centers around a fictional character named Carl Johnson who's mission is to re-gain prominence on his city block. Its a game I bought because I kinda liked GTA 3. As this fictional character/protagonist, Carl Johnson or "CJ", your "job" is to work for a variety of bosses to progress through the game. Your means of accomplishing missions requires a deal of technical precision fighting, shooting, and driving. You can also simply choose NOT to progress through the game, but you won't be able to access the storyline.
The storyline is loosely based on the Los Angeles Riots of 1992, which was quite scary as an 8-year old. Should you choose to progress in the storyline, you will encounter a city-wide re-enactment of the Riots where everything is on fire, and no one is standing around.
I know that there's a new Grand Theft Auto for the Playstation 3, but I don't really care because I don't have one, and therefore that iteration doesn't exist.
There's a sense of Bladerunner-ish dystopia. It's a land where only the objectified, personality-less Other exists in abundance. It's a world of mysterious, fallen, and disparate adults.
Along with these themes of adulthood, personality-less, disparate Others, I noticed a few other things:
1) No one comes in pairs or groups. It is a world of wandering individuals. There are no families and no kids here unless they are on the satiric talk radio station. Only old men, prostitutes, ambiguous men, tough guys, big shots, prostitutes --- a world built by adults for adults.
People bunched together usually have guns and exist for the dual purposes of aiming poorly and shooting you.
2) Along that line of thinking there are no schools, social services with foundations and muckety muck dinners to infiltrate, playgrounds, no libraries, museums or places of cultural interaction.
3) With no groups of people together, there are no festivals or fairs happening as events in the game. Closest thing you get are street races.
4) It's very quiet in the game, unless you're attacking someone and they're screaming, you're in a fist/gunfight, and/or the police are chasing you.
5) Open and green spaces are places of no space or social interaction. There are no Madame Matisse Hipster joints or beer gardens or dog parks.
6) There are no other animals in the game, other than the humanoid ones. It would be cool if they added roaming cheetahs, monkeys, elephants, camels, deer, tigers, hawks, hippopatami in their next renditions of the game. However, if they added Ecco the dolphin, or Free Willy I'd return the game as soon as the discovery was made.
I wonder....what would PETA do (WWPD)?
7) There are no seasonal or long-term cyclical demarcations. Every day can differ from sunshine and rain, but it's generally all the same. There's no KOST Christmas songs despite the progression of days in the game. There ain't no Easter Bunny, unless in reference to some kind of joke.
8) Without any of these spontaneous things, there is no room for passive consumership. Everything has a purpose within the game whether its the video game arcade or your fashion sense adding to your sex appeal. My sister got really rich in the game, grabbing over 11 million dollars, but
9) There's the economic development maxim that cheap transportation equals economic activity.
Cheap, dispensible, transportation is the key to you making money. The jetpacks, the planes, the motorcycles, firetrucks, garbage trucks, taxis, ambulances, go-carts, the cars are the vehicles needed to help you complete most of your missions from which you earn your money.
This is all transportation that the protagonist takes all by himself. There are no passengers, except when he's stealing taxis or ambulances He's not waiting at a certain time for any subway or bus or train. He moves whenever he needs to move.
The highways, the lakes, the airport runways, the basic two-way streets, are the infrastructure you take. Oddly enough, construction is seen in the game, particularly when you are prevented from going to another city early in the game, but we don't really to get interact with infrastructural maintenance.
10) There are no banks to rob, surprisingly, but you can rob casinos!
11) There are no landfills, or prisons. There is no sense of waste as things simply disappear or are blown up. You don't destroy the green spaces by speeding on it at 90 mph.
12) It's a world of unlimited infinite supplies. You can always get guns. You don't have to gas up or maintain your car, unless you want to take it to the paint shop. There is room for water treatments plant, power plants, or gas stations. You can waste cars as needed, and people will keep buying them and putting them on the road no matter what! The sense of ecology is one where things don't really ever get destroyed, but they simply disappear, and re-appear as part of the mass produced generic products.
What prevents us from seeing all this stark human reality is the obvious cartoon-like feel to the game. The producers try to give an inverted or warped sense of reality from the different puns, metaphors, and commentaries. There are the obvious rip-offs of name brand clothing like Zip posing as an imitator brand for Gap or Caligula's Place as the mock hotel for the world famous Las Vegas hotel Caesar's Palace. There's the satiric societal commentaries on politics and mass media, progressive happenings in the game about drug use, capitalism, etc. You'd have to be a cynic or at least have some cynical sense to really relish and enjoy this game.
These add up to an overall sense of fragmentation in the city-state of San Andreas or the Grand Theft Auto series in general. It is this fragmentation and disconnection which the game exploits to provide a space for the gamer to do what they wouldn't do normally. Other than the people he meets in the mission storyline, CJ's sense of disconnection from people and place is what makes it acceptable to be killing random people, running over the different types of infrastructure. We don't know any of them, we don't know their stories, we aren't sensitized to them, so it's all OK. (However, you might be a little sensitized to that prostitute that you decide to take in your car for a few minutes and choose not to kill her.)
The lesson I take from the fragmented and disconnected virtual Grand Theft Auto city is that in our real cities, perhaps we'd do best to encourage ecological and personal connection. By connect, I usually imply a sense of "play."
One way to encourage a sense of play is in the physical public space along the lines of the Jane Jacobs school of thought. It's hook, line, and sinker within the ideas of walkable cities and taking back the streets. It's about making the streets places to be. It's about building a place where seemingly random connections are likely to be made, where people are not on guard.
One intriguing topic within this stream of thought is the playground within the public space.
It strikes me that effective community-building things usually have an element of play within them. I touched on the Water Pump merry-go-round. Play has a certain randomosity to it, which enables you to make connections in concept and potentially to other people. How many times by instinct could you just kick that soccer ball that comes sailing towards you? Maybe you could've made a new friend?
The play-oriented city is the type that connects people more. The type where people simply seem to do things for no purpose other than fun and enjoyment. What was interesting in the video is that one group of people thought they would take a picture of the fun they were having. It's the kind of stuff that makes the space a place.
Maybe I love my discipline too much, but I think anthropology is the study of what people actually do and say as opposed to than what people say they do, what academics think groups of people do.
by B.J. on 4/06/2008 11:35:00 PM
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In an information overloaded age here in America where what you see on TV, radio is glitz and glam, I think what people of "minority" status whether in race, age, gender, ethnicity, etc. want for their causes is...recognition. Recognition of the obstacles still faced. Recognition of achievements. Recognition of specific in-roads and actions taken by their people. Ultimately, recognition as legit and equal powers.
The opposite of recognition is reductionism. Reduction is oversimplifying. Oversimplifying, which generally doesn't promote connective thinking and understanding. Oversimplifying, putting blood, sweat, and tears into cheap, digestable, words. Oversimplifying, to put in broad blocks without understanding the curves, grooves, and boundaries. Oversimplifying genocide. Think of how easy it is to dismiss the fact that there were over 10 million American Indians in this land before the arrival of Columbus. It's just as easy to say that Indians had it coming to them and it's their fault. What's worse is that it's easier to spread ignorance and hate than it is to think and debate.
It's easy to oversimplify the impact of slavery by saying that you never owned one. Oversimplifying the impact of years of Jim Crow Laws. Oversimplifying the effects of redlining, blockbusting, and steering, taking out the property taxes and slapping down your schools. Oversimplifying race issues to be just the black and the white. Oversimplifying the effects of the Chinese Exclusion Acts of 1905, The Natonal Origins Act of 1924, the Recission Act of 1946, the Immigration Act of 1965. Oversimplifying a group of unified, diverse people to be mono-thinking because its tiring to think of them as actually having opinions.
Cognition is a way of putting something into your consciousness. Recognition implies that you have thought of something before in your consciousness and now acknowledge it. Were at a point where there's been cognition but no recognition for our communities, no acknowledgment. What makes the difference between congition and recognition is that in cognition, you don't smell, see, hear, taste, feel the process, the patterns as you've smelt, seen, heard, and felt before. What everyone outside the communities sees as patterns is the oversimplified, square clean-cut version of history and as people. The problem is that if they only recognize those patterns of oversimplified, square clean-cut history, they expect only oversimplified, square, clean-cut answers. And when they expect only oversimplified answers, they get mad that when you begin to tell your stories of complexity.
...same bizarre feeling of seeing dead people ...same disbelief of whether some things were real or not ...same blank staring at some exhibits and pretending to have a level of sophistication ...same wannabe physiologists talking aloud trying to explain why a body part looks the way it does
This time however, I was particularly struck by the blood flow and its relation to city planning. I think transportation planning can be like blood flowing through the body.
In transportation planning you just hope things can keep running smoothly, just as in your body, you just hope that things can keep running smoothly. However, inevitably there will be traffic, bumps in the road, potholes to hold up traffic, just as there will be little things in your body that will hold up optimal blood flow and probably make you sick.
I'm not sure exactly how that makes sense to anyone in the transportation planning discipline nor the neuroscience discipline, but I see the connection and I wonder what other insights I can glean from such a connection.
Whom should you thank for this insight?
1) a talk in January by a bunch of USC professors about the "expiration date" of cities, who spent the talk making a metaphor between the city and a living organism. 2) my desire to connect my two biggest interests of late: neuroanthropology and city planning.
by B.J. on 12/24/2007 01:26:00 PM
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Listening to KOST Christmas songs, emphasis on Christmas, (which they never fail to subtly inject into your consciousness) it's become custom since 2003 to listen to Soldiers' tributes to and fro.
However, those aren't the only people in situations abroad.
There's also those in the Peace Corps. People who are in a place for 2 years.
I wonder why they don't get to give their greetings abroad to people at home.
Sitting in afteroon LA traffic for about 2 hours on a 15-mile commute seeing lots of one-person cars including myself, I always think about this quote. I read it on some fool's facebook quotes, and I guess I kinda believe it.
As with any societal meme, I like to play with the idea in my head. I like to stretch the meme's limits and see where it rings true and doesn't ring true.
I have this idea to stretch that quote's limitations.
Inspired by a host of generation Y popular movies and memes in the Jetsons, Bladerunner, Rocketeer the sphere ball event in American Gladiators, Flubber, Steve Urkel's bubble car, this one random bank commercial with people traveling with some type of pogo stick springs as shoes, and bumper cars and agitated into action by LA traffic and pollution, I hearby announce that I have officially conceived the idea of...
the magnetically powered flying, jumping, running bubble-shaped cars.
Before something gets used widely, it has to be proven to be 1) safe and dependable, and most importantly, 2) cost-beneficial.
I am sure people have thought that we would've been traveling like the Jetsons or the Cyborgs in Bladerunner by now, but what many of them don't take into account is that assuming that type of technology ever becomes affordable, there would probably be a high number of in-air collisions and accidents.
With flying-only cars of the Jetsons all over the place even in its initial phases of inaffordability, there would still be too much variation in the ways people would be traveling. Wasn't it that way with the car in the early 20th century?
There wouldn't be any gravity to keep them on a singular planar surface. I'd imagine every part of airspace being used to capacity. Such hyper variation is a homemade recipe for trouble.
Safety in my apparatus relies heavily on a truly bubblish design.
Strong enough to keep you in and everything in place like the sphere balls in American gladiator, but a soft enough exterior so it doesn't harm anyone else. Nothing protruding or squared so you don't accidentally stab anyone.
My design would be made out of bumper car rubber with highly flexible yet durable material for the windows like a rubber- plastic-magnetic forcefield synthesis.
In regards to cost-beneficiality in general daily travel, people want the flexibility and speed to be anywhere at any time. This is why there's still a reluctance for people to invest in mass transit...there's no flexibility, you have to walk to a mass transit station, and any of its speed is negated by the fact that it's relatively inconvenient. At the same time however, people want to be able to haul a lot of their shit with them. They want to carry cases full of court briefings and bathroom reading material.
People want to be light and heavy at the same time.
Per my apparatus' cost-beneficiality, that's why the apparatus takes the shape of a classic compact bubble car...a synthesis of a car's storage space to keep your case briefings and bathroom reading magazines, with such flexibility and weightlessness yet durability in material that you could bring your apparatus in your cubicle.
Speed would also be adequately addressed. Being magnetically powered, the flying would be easy to accomplish, and it wouldn't even seem like flying because you're being magnetically attracted to a point. This would account for the speed, thus the reduced travel time, and thus the reason you buy this thing in the first place (with safety concerns being long since addressed).
However, if you feel like being active, you would also have the options of jumping and running, and then activating the magnets whenever you feel like it.
This wide range of activities automatically gives you not only more speed, but more options in your travel.
Think of it as a bunch of rounded gigantic martial arts helmets flying around with magnetic resistance and attraction power to take you to a destination in nanoseconds.
I wonder what new age religion would condemn it, though.
If there were one caveat in terms of cost, we'd probably have to install a city-wide magnetic repelling/attracting system to magnetically repel our apparati off the sidewalks and ground level roads.
The system would be in place to minimize pedestrian incidents.
However, widespread use would eventually pay for everything. The cost to society production would be beneficial. Not as much need for parking lots, car condominiums, and
So with the required 50% of the quote's requirements satisfied, now all someone has to do is achieve it.
P.S. Note to achiever: Let me patent the achievement phase, so that my monetary obligations will not only be healed but will also allow me to indulge in excessive phases of luxuria, gula, avarita, acedia, ira, invidia, and superbia.
by B.J. on 11/22/2007 07:31:00 AM
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"most trends in their earliest form are distinctly . . . they'll never make it outside . . . they need to be altered and have their edges smoothed. They need to be repackaged for the rest of us.
People sometimes act as if you go to the epicenter of cool, the idea comes straight and unchanged from that place and spreads everywhere. It never happens that way. The earliest of the early adopters takes that idea and uses it in a form that the rest of us would never use, because we're not interested in the extreme embodiment of some new idea. We're interested in something that fits much more into our lifestyle." --- Dee Dee Gordon, coolhunter
If I wear my old baggy cargo pants flanked with its share of tatters and worned-outness, someone usually tells me that I'm a slob. A dumb, fashionless, slob.
If I wore some store-bought ripped jeans, I'm at the apex of a trend and somehow I morph into "respectable." If I chose this brand of cotton, somehow women would suddenly want to hop into my equally trendy black steel-framed 12-year old bunk bed and engage in acts meant for kid-making in the apartment that I live in with my parents.
Basically, the ripped cotton I normally wear is somehow not as good as the new ripped cotton they sell you for 32 dollars. Double 'U', Tee, Eff (I won't be surprised if I see this on a trendy T-shirt soon).
I'm amazed at how people buy these mass-produced ripped jeans. Is there something fascinating about the pattern of its rips? Looks about as random as the rips on my real worn out pants. Seems like the mass production makes these rips more palatable for lots of people. Mass production almost makes it a social norm. It gives it a credibility acceptable for "middle-class" consumption. I would imagine that ripped jeans isn't something that some young hoity toity fashion designer who grew up in the OC and went to FIDM thought up.
No, this probably came from poor working people or their kids. Baggy pants, T-shirts, you can bet that it probably came from a working class thing, but of course it wasn't acceptable for people en masse to digest at first. Usually it's some rebellious artist type who picks up on these trends and then adapts them in diametric opposition to what they perceived their life was or against another tide which they feel is strong.
And it doesn't stop at clothes. The cool artists pick up their music (see Jazz, and Hip-hop), pick up their neighborhoods (see Gentrification), and even the way they speak. They pick up everything that the lower class does. Then somehow their usage of something in the lower-class appropriates its mass usage and consumption.
I don't think these artists mean for all these changes to happen, but their presence and influence in a trend then opens the gate to palatability for people en masse. People en masse who pick up on the trends but not necessarily the origins of a trend or what the lower class is about. Those inherent connections to the lower-class are lost in the mass production of things.
Nowadays I see Anti-Bush or Anti-war slogans taking the forms in bumper stickers, T-shirts least from the view here at 34 degrees Latitude and 118 degrees Longitude in the Lake of Silver. The "Make Love Not War" slogan printed is a great way to avoid getting too involved in politics and is available at $15.99 for 16 year old girls everywhere. This was a slogan dating back to Vietnam and now some corporations seized on it and are making a killing on such rhetoric.
But perhaps if we are going to keep consuming for these types of causes, there is some hope. You could look at is a start.
The efforts to green just about everything from the grass you walk on to the food you eat might be a start. I say 'might' because I don't have a grasp on all the greening issues and history has shown that everything that has looked like such a great idea in the past became a bad idea a generation later (see the automobile vs. the horse and the bike and the creation of sprawl).
If advocating against war can achieve a semblance of mass popularity, perhaps someday action towards progressive social justice in the form of the re-humanization of immigrants, reverse deforestation, the engaging education, the re-organization of homelessness can be the same way.
I can't think of any other way I'd like to re-focus our energies, our consumption patterns.
As India Arie says, kindness is timeless and giving someone your love is the freshest thing you can do.
If were going to be continuing consuming something en masse, why not respect for the fellow human?
Piense que ese y tenga un feliz el dia de gracias.
Why do we have to remember marketing pitches from Tony the Tiger or Ronald McDonald? Why can't it be fun to remember stuff like the 1862 Homestead Act or stuff like the eviction of residents from what is now Dodger Stadium? Why can't history be fun?
by B.J. on 11/10/2007 03:58:00 PM
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It's been quite a while since I last ran more than 10 miles.Today I wasn't going to be content just running the typical Sunset to West Hollywood usually through Beverly Hills and to UCLA, or Griffith Park Boulevard to Los Feliz through Glendale, or SilverLake to Fletcher through Eagle Rock route.
Those routes...too routine, and I have a sneaking suspicion that I won't ever be able to run a marathon in 2 hours and 9 minutes.
Instead, today I decided on going to downtown LA, and wherever else the road took me.
Started out gloomy and chilly enough by this Angeleno's Standards, which is why I handily wore my winter headband, which suckered me into believing that I was Rafa Marquez, the Barca defender and Mexican hero.
It was a day, a run where I saw how beautiful everything is...and how ugly things can get.
Ran across buildings that have been here since the emergence of LA as a big city 130 years ago.
Shook my head, mentally, with each and every luxury loft occupying tons of space, with the knowledge that Skid Row is literally a block away.
Ran across the Eastern entrance of FIDM. Wondered if the rich white females there would look at me, catch on to my Rafa Marquez headband. and call it the next big thing.
Visited a cool nonprofit that will and has served as my parking lot when I have to go to the Convention Center and/or Staples Center.
Had to see the old Alvarado terrace. There's a little strip of land, as part of Arnold's Parks act, that serves as a "park" with some authentic cobblestone roads. It's always interesting to see something that old.
Saw the old "S.Hoover Apartments" sign on this one building, that I always see when I drive down to this part of town. I can't make up my mind if the structure was built and the lettering was written around the 1890s or 1920s or somewhere in between or heck maybe even later.
Went through to Westmoreland, thinking how it was an enclave for LA's earliest elite, what they and their ancestors would think of it now.
Parused through the old high school. Or should I say "brand-spanking new" old high school. Seems like all anyone has to do to ruin things is burn down one general section of the school. No more street crossing to get to that building across the street, no more on-ground student center, no more sophomore lockers near Pinney.
One of the women I talked to said that it looks like a college campus. Yes, if you're a fan of the "institutional" look that Porter College at UC Santa Cruz sports, then you too might enjoy the new construction.
After that, I ran across some egregious examples of city planning on what was a route for the high school cross country team. The route stretches from Venice westward bound to La Brea. I never noticed how unwalkable it is. Jesus christ, or Councilperson build a fucking side walk!
In other news, "egregious" is rapidly emerging as one of my favorite vocabulary words to casually inject into normal conversation.I didn't realize how far La Brea actually was and could feel the urge to quit bearing down on me.
But I was so far from home that it would've probably taken a 4 hour walk to just to get back. So once I was up La Brea and crossing 1st street, I eventually gave in...5-6 miles to walk...and at a pace you can only expect after running more than 10 miles for the first time in months...without drinking any water, eating anything beforehand.
I'd have to walk up La Brea and wait for Santa Monica Boule to show up.
This is when the sun started to show up a bit more.
I wondered how and why the hell the surveyors measured La Brea heading West.
I saw orthodox Jewish people attending Saturday morning services. Kept wondering if they spoke English. Perhaps that's how some folks in Montana or South Dakota view Mexicans, Arabs, etc. Wondered if they had a myspace and if they would put a grainy self-taken picture of themselves in those suits. Wow, I am showing tons of ignorance, and I guess I know a bit of what it feels like to be one of those people mocking people of color.
Saw some nice graff work across La Brea.
Women with nice fat ischial collosities wearing pants to a point of tightness and you could see the outline of their little cloth (or possibly silk) coverings.
A frail-looking white homeless man offered to suck my dick.
Noticed a water shop on Santa Monica, and that they had dropped their prices for a gallon from 25 cents to 20 cents. Also noticed that Little Ceasar's was selling crazy bread for 2 bucks. Don't even know if the price has gone up or down, but pizza's only 5 bucks!
Saw a bunch of people in the Medical building where I used to go to the Dentist having some kind of conference breakfast or brunch. Still smelled pretty medical --- a strange enticing mixture of basementy and gassy.
Noticed that they've sandblasted a lot of graffiti in the spot leaning up against an Elementary school.
Along the way, I noticed a bunch of other things:
Lot of people working on a Saturday. Mostly the ice cream pushcart vendors, the fruit pushcart vendors, the day laborers at industrial buildings, the people making the comida at las restaurantes centroamericana, the ditch diggers, mass poster plastering. It's interesting how specialized a people we have become. We all do one thing at a time, hope to get paid well, and buy stuff. Yet, this might be changing given the way information is now sent.
I noticed that the areas had more space, the more West I went. Developers from the 1920s and 1930s at work?
I wondered if there were any straight houses in and around the Pico-Union, Alvarado terrace area. Pretty damn big for just families. This is probably something I could just find out by looking at a zoning map, but that can be a daunting task.
Saw private security guards telling homeless people to vacate the premises on several structures with lots of crap in it, usually with people who use paper to acquire the crap. Very popular around 99 cents stores and convenient stores in and around Hollywood, and soon, coming to a city near you!
Tagging is just through the roof nowadays. The Los Angeles mural painted by cache has a bunch of people trying to scratch on it already, and I think that was a pretty dope mural with some credibility, but some people obviously don't think so. Or perhaps Cache shouldn't dominate every damn wall I see in Echo Park and should integrate more folks in his work. I noticed on an affordable housing project, kids had already began tag-scratching it's doors. And that's been up for maybe only 2-3 years. A mural that is currently in work with a bunch of white people on it on is sure to suffer the same fate.
I built up a craving for sweet bread. Saw it first in Echo Park, saw it on Santa Monica, but nothing reasonably walkable, which sent me to thinking about the economic and demographic development of Silver Lake. Only the ever popular Pupusas, and Tacos...in restaurants allowed. No bakeries? One I see is a restaurant and some Filipino bakery.
I continue to be stunned at how people come here to be rebels or "different" and...shop, shop, shop...for furniture, vintage furniture, vintage clothing, shoes, gelatto, vegan crap, coffee. Shopping...the most undifferent thing you can do. The people in Silver Lake make me mad sometimes.
But all in all the day was pretty damn fun, more food for thought or perhaps a waste of time for some.
The road I took took me down Sunset to the borderline between Chinatown and downtown. From downtown to the Staples Center From the Staples Center to Loyola High school. From the high school to La Brea. And from La Brea to back home. It started out gloomy and chill and ended sunny and chilly. Ran through a mix of enclaves, with the businesses offered in English, Spanish, Korean, Armenian, Jewish, Tagalog. I thought about George Carlin's meme of how we've turned America into a mall. Thought about architecture, urban planning, race relations, personal relations, language, and the physiology of the brain.
In the words of Forrest Gump, I just felt like running.
But not without my Livestrong, Enriching Lives, Justice for Immigrants, and Serve the People wristbands.
Come out to play, come out to play, come out tooooo plaaaay. . .
Bring it on, God and world. I sort of know you won't bring me down, but just to be sure, just throw some more, so I can be sure.
I think I've been decimating all my thinking capabilities by listening to too much music and with that last update.
- Inspired by events that occurred today: To succeed at what you do: You must have a deep, intense sophisticated understanding of every detail you do, and the ability to forget.
- My favorite Elasticity songs, elasticity defiend as songs that really inspire you to keep doing whatcha doin':
Ranked in accordance with what I'm feeling at the moment
1. Damien Marley, Nas - Road to Zion
Roads, Burning, Running --- the 3 most essential words to any songs that try to inspire elasticity in a listener.
2. Kanye West, Jay-Z - Never Let You Down 3. Curtis Mayfield - Move on Up
- UCLA is ranked #5 in the BCS. I wish I could rub that into somebody's face who cared. All I know are UCLA fans and asports people.
- Need to study. I am doing horrible this quarter --- I'm probably going to get my B's in my classes, but I'm not getting as much out of what I learn as I used to.
- Why are people busy but have time to do other things ? I know the answer, but this is why I have such low expectations for people.
Right before an exam (exam is such a Deepak Ram word).
I should just rename all these "Updates on Thinking" to "Bucwild." Cause that's what it is, at least to those of you who might actually read this.
Let the hilarity of Texans riding mechanical bulls while swinging ropes occupy your mind for a quick second as you process that thought in your minds.
Again, I don't really care who reads this or if anyone reads at all or how crazy people think I am. I hate people anyway. No one in particular, though.
But once again here I go like ommmon:
- What if they (they as in some malicious jerk human being) changed Utada Hikaru's first name to "Utanes" ? I think Utada would lay the smack down on "they." Imagine that little 5 '2 Hapon bitchslapping some 5'9 15-dollared sunglassed short blonde hair implanted with a goutee "executive" for making such a stupid "business decision."
- Art is harder than science. It makes everything but money, though. Unless you're good or just weird.
- Been a time of rediscovery what with me updating my blogs and all. But here are some other rediscoveries. I think it's because of my nano bringing back memories:
2) Music in general. The aforementioned Utads Hiks and more especially,
***Ferry Corsten - Solar Stone Seven Cities.*** Spit, Pick up the mic !
It brings a lot of positive thoughts to mind. Running at the break of down to a rock in Elysian Park like Pocahontas, Ninja Turtles the first video game not the high-action Arcade version, NASA and the Challenger disaster of 1986, a sun-filled flight in 1987, flying on TWA in 1987, my Silver Burdett OMGC grade school textbooks that were copyrighted in 1987 and tried so desperately to have a "modern" look to them, Atlantica, the Titanic, the tip of the East Coast at night, the parties at the East Coast at night and not in a 1920s-English accent Great Gatsby kind of way.
2) I've rediscovered the Onion ! And it's still funny as hell. I realize that I can have a job with them especially since I study lings and understand that each and every word plays a role in affecting the way we perceive things. Just need to learn more and refine my skillz.
- NCAA Football 2006. The SOUNDTRACK.
I never really play the game as much as I use it to hear the soundtracks of the game. It rocks the socks like a knick knack paddy wack give a dog a bone.
I don't know if it's bomb because of the associations I make in the game with good moments or if it's cool because it actually "sounds" cool.
It's got:
1) SHOCK ! ANDALUSIA !!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHA !!!
The Debaser Song by the Pixies. Makes me want to smash something, or run.
Sounds like me talking when I'm at home --- all random, all shouting, all laughing, no sense.
AND
2) The Ladykillers song by Lush, which I like to play at the start of each day in my Nano while staring at the crowd of people walking to and fro class. It reminds me of a lot of things: touchdowns, getting touchdowns by being a smooth and fast runner, and when I actually listen to the lyrics it sounds a little like me. I am an ass. Or a piece of it apparently.
AND
3) This is Shangri-LA by Mother Love Bone.
I think of being some big bad ass 6'2, 220-pound running back from Georgia and/or 'Bama not going down and not taking any shit from lesser built stick figures you call cornerbacks. It would be fun to be a "Southern Boy."
This is some music that plays in my head when I do one of those 20 mile runs because it helps me think of what I need to do rather than think of what I lack throughout the run.
- Words that I've made up:
BADASSERY (2001) n. the state of being a badass SHITTAGE (1998) n. the quantified sense of shit
- BTW, Saul Williams is asking in his song, "African (pronounced by Nick Nolte in Hotel Rwanda "Aww-fri-kaan") Student Union", where my niggas at ?
I'll tell you, they ain't at SD. San Diego sucks. Ladinian Tomlinson and Marshall Faulk do not count.
One last thought: Random is a social construction, no ? It's only random if you don't see what elicits the behavior. I'll leave things at that.
But I will say, that right now, my blogstorm is the equivalent of busting a hole in my wall, or ripping that volleyball, or punching one of the leather couches.
- When you are stretched thin, you cannot devote too much time to studying, which makes you more of an ARTISAN, which is NOT the ideal personality type for school and academia. I have a sneaking suspicion that academians, particularly the purely "intellectual" and less radical types who place a premium on cold logics and objectivity were all privileged children who were not stretched thin.
- On practical tips for studying: Making sense of what you study means being able to RE-CREATE a PICTURE of what is being said in your notes/books and explain why the said thing is occurring in a certain time and place.
- You ain't seen bouncin' back ! by Mystikaal.
I believe in KHARMA in this sense: For every bad thing that happens, there is a good. For every good, there is a bad. There's always some kind of tradeoff. It's just when there's a lot of bad, it's difficult to see the good. When you're in the bad, the good you're searching for seems few and far in between.
- UCLA Football, Chi White Sox, this is a great time to be a sports fan. For each team I get this feeling that my teams have nothing to lose. And if they do, there's another shot.
- Speaking of sports, I think message boards will eventually dominate the earth and from watching the Chicago Bulls message boards, I predict that sports fans will be divided along management ideology rather than geographic region.
- I need to escape people. People make me sick.
- Things that seem wrong but can't quite win an argument in because I'm not into useless power struggles: The ongoing war in Iraq.
The only structure is that I will update this weekly, but it'll just be "random" thoughts. I don't care who's reading.
- Us college students with progressive backgrounds, we need to do private high school outreach not in terms of helping poor poor students but in hopes of instilling a sense of civic-mindedness and community leadership. Particularly Catholic high schools. We need them bourgeiosie middle-class kids to buy into what were doing.
- I don't like LINGUISTICS students very much. Like South Campusers, they only have something to add to the class when it's to show off and flex their knowledge.
- I just realized, my dad took my laptop with the porn on it to a real estate meeting. Isn't that going to be interesting if discovered. Oh fucking boy (and girl).
- Organization and creativity. ORGANIZATION AND CREATIVITY. ORGANIZATION and CREATIVITY !
You can't ever be super organized and super creative. That's counterproductive. Try it and you'll probably be upended (or backended if that's how you do, I don't discriminate)
I'm trying to find the mix of both, because I think creativity is bred from disorder and organization is bred from order. It's a mix that I'll probably have to find a way to BALANCE for the rest of my life.
- My favorite FACEBOOK groups in order: 1) What the hell am I doing with my life coalition (UCSC) 2) Michael Fey looks like Sinbad. . .almost a little too much l
1) What the hell am I doing with my life coalition at UCSC:
The name and it brings up images of a drunk and legless Lieutenant Dan pronouncing the word "life", "lafe" in a rough southernish type of way.
2) Michael Fey looks like Sinbad. . .almost a little too much like Sinbad at UCLA
I love the description:
"The guy looks like Sinbad! I mean, Sinbad has played a wide variety of roles throughout his acting career, including his leading role as Sam Simms in Disney's "First Kid," one of the most provocative movies of the 1990s. Released in 1996, "First Kid" shines the spotlight on an aspect of the presidency not so often seen by the general public - assination attempts on the president's children and the burden that they place on the president's family.
After Sinbad's amazing performance in "First Kid," many went on to ask - what next? Many suggested that Sinbad go on to play Mahatma Ghandi, Pope John Paul II, George Washington, or Daniel E. 'Rudy' Ruettiger in a sequiel to Rudy. We suggest that Sinbad take an alternate route by playing a humorous collegiate basketball superstar in "Air Bud VI: Bud Goes to College," the sixth installment in the already successful "Air Bud" series. (For those of you not keeping score, Air Bud, Air Bud: Golden Receiver, Air Bud: World Pup, Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch, and Air Bud: Strikes Back)
But how will Sinbad's aging body handle the physically-draining stunts that Disney producers will throw at him? Hmmm, possibly.... A STUNT DOUBLE. But who can they find that looks like Sinbad? Look no farther than UCLA basketball superstar Michael Fey.
Not only does Michael Fey run, jump, dunk, and gaurd at the level of many current NBA player, but Fey also happens to look EXACTLY LIKE SINBAD.
Possibly too much like Sinbad?
Let's go through the facts. We've seen Sinbad on the silver screen, we've seen Sinbad at Hollywood's hottest parties. We've seen Michael Fey on the court, we've seen Michael Fey on campus, and we've seen Michael Fey at UCLA's hottest parties. But have we ever actually seen them in the same room at the SAME TIME?
No! Notice how they 'cleverly' avoid eachother and make sure never to appear in public together. It's a little too convenient.
Yes, we are suggesting the Michael Fey and Sinbad are, in fact, the EXACT SAME PERSON. Think we're wrong? We challenge you to find Michael Fey AND Sinbad in the SAME PICTURE. That's right! We knew you couldn't find one! That's because Michael Fey and Sinbad are one in the same."
3) Feeling Stupid at UCLA,
I like the description and the position titles:
"The name of this group should be relatively easy to understand even for those of you who are members or feel that you should be. If you feel stupid and go to school here, you are welcome. Come join your peers.
(The stupidness is in reference to academics but, if you just feel stupid in general, that's cool too. We don't judge.)"
They also have the positions of:
General Dumbass, Colonel Dumbass, and Major Dumbass.
I find that very funny because "general" and "major" can have double entendres (there we go with lings) in terms of either connoting military titles or adjectives.
4) Western-European American Culture Awareness Club
"For the rarest of the rare, the American of Western-European descent. Stay true to your roots, fellow WASPs, cause it's not like our culture permeates every aspect of American life or anything.
It's easy in today's minority-saturated America to forget your rich WASP heritage of controlling all of America's politics, business, and media, earning the most money, being the most educated, and having pretty much everything go our way. KEEP THE FLAME ALIVE!!!"
Culture is college, college kids, the Fil-Am community, people in general. At least for me.
They nag so I want to be out, free of their expectations, free of stress, to be able to do what I wooant and create my own cool stuff.
But understand once out of culture, you're lonely and on the outside.
Hopefully, someday, the loneliness won't be too long. Once you find the right one, you don't want to get out no matter how much it tries to push you out.
by B.J. on 2/03/2005 01:23:00 AM
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- the world is a system of balances, not a hierarchy. Balance is the key to lizzife, rizzight ? Ironically, by being the key to life, balance is put on a hierarchical pedestal over imbalance.
- feeling = urgency, thinking = a lot of time - chew on that motherfucker.
- friends are cool, but you can't listen to them all the time. I don't know why people act as if they are the key to life. Shoot yourself now with a loaded 12 gauge [and see yourself (or at least we'll see you) one sucka dead LA Times Front Page, people who think that [of course I say this criticism from an etic, outsider's perspective, the perspective of observers not participants --- that means I am outsider in terms of having friends]
- we are such an individual-based society that likes to isolate its parts and don't focus as much on wholes or functions. It starts in education when your dudley do-nothing, "well-meaning" teacher tells you to put your books away when you are studying a certain subject. If the teacher were all that great, the teacher would notice the interrelatedness of every goddamn thing in the world and entertain the thought of integrating that other subject with what you are learning. Otherwise that teacher is a just another teacher in the mass subject to specialization.
- when you study social sciences for tests [what the hell are we still doing with tests in the social sciences ?], you should try to keep translating things till its on your own terms
- I am a straight-up racist when it comes down to trying to find a way to immediately put down people. For example, if some Latino or Asian dude cuts me off, I yell out "stupido, stupido [rhythmically correct of course though]" and even maniacally yell aZn aZn aZn and do glowstick motions in their stupid-ass faces. Of course I don't think all Mexicans and Asians drive a certain way --- that's what ethnicity they just so happen to be and you have to find the quickest way to put them down. As racist as this all seems, "immediately" is the key word in all this. That means I can still see latent racism everywhere and that's even more wrong than my superficial outbursts. Read again if you don't understand.
- newspapers have all this random news. But to the aspiring agoraphobic writer it seems like there's enough news already. You know what, fuck the news, cause there really isn't anything new in the world, at least if you're discussing patterns.
- I just thought of this: Hanjabi MC. Instead of Panjabi MC. That would be highly insulting to a Panjabi. Hey I guess I can use that next time I encounter an annoying driver who happens to be Indian.
- Just keep on Dengin' = Move on up. Move on up reminds me of Bend it Like Beckham, which is athletics, which is the track pants I always wear.
- Furburgers.
- Shirts that say "College" are getting old. It's not that shocking or "random" anymore. Stop wearing it. Meanwhile, my orange budweiser shirt that says "wazzaaaap" is still in style. Yeah what.
- I like saying the name Praneshtaraya. This has nothing to do with that but since I'm referring to an Indian name, an exotic culture that only comes to my mind, a few times, I like Indian girls. Why don't they have Everyone Loves an Indian girl t-shirts ? Or an Everyone Loves a Black Girl ? I wonder if they have Everyone Loves a Native American Girl t-shirt.
- I still use the word "fuckhead." People down here seem to enjoy that word. Thanks Larsob.
- communication is based on metaphors. You keep trying to connect things.
From a western biological evolutionary historical point of view, it seems as if the weakest of a species have always had to find ways around the dominants to get resources.
Part of finding a way to survive: get away from the dominants. Travel. And migrate !
I mean, as a human, if you were part of a group of dominants and surviving well, why would you ever want to leave your spot and go into barbaric territory unless you were going to conquer it ?
Nowadays there still is this element of migrating to get away from a home territory for better opportunities elsewhere. It seems to have always been a survival mechanism (wow with all this Western reasoning and some definitive affirmative adverbs like "always" I am just opening up a lot of questions for anthropologists to investigate).
However, ever since we've developed technology and gotten super-fast vehicles like trains, travelling is something done not only by the weakest of the species but now mostly by the middle to the upper classes in Western society, arguably the strongest of the species in the sense that they are better able to reproduce and ensure survival for their young. They go everywhere and sometimes may even hold this up as another sign of their affluence.
by B.J. on 8/20/2004 06:17:00 PM
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It's always interesting to see how racist people really are when people from different countries come together. But that's to be expected. It's just naive and innocent and people won't really remember anything. What isn't really expected is when your own country is racist towards you.
Last I checked, racism is defined as a situation when one or more individuals think that there is something inherently wrong with a group of people based on physical characteristics, namely color of skin.
People seem to be (whether intentional or not) blaming the urban culture of hip-hop, dominated by minority races in these Team USA basketball losses. And since the USA team is composed of all people from these minority races, some people see it fitting to associate them with hip-hop. Most people do. I mean, when one thinks of hip-hop, one will most likely think of a black person's face.
People bashing Team USA start out blaming things strongly associated with hip-hop like street basketball, the And 1 Tour (sometimes even mockingly using hip-hop terms). They imply that these aspects associated with hip-hop are what is causing them to be selfish and thus lose. They claim that these players are being selfish as a result of hip-hop/urban.
For example, they'll say things like "it's all about And 1 basketball with these guys. They don't know anything about team basketball or fundamentals."
Yeah, I completely missed the off-the-backboard 360 dunk by Tim Duncan followed by the Emeka Okafor off BOTH Carlos Arroyo's and Carlos Boozer's head dribble all with 4 fingers while keeping his middle finger up at the US flag in the loss to Puerto Rico (two of the most un-hip-hop guys on the team). :roll:
Oh wrong game, I guess I was watching the game where Allen Iverson was actually passing the ball several times instead of carelessly chucking up shots, and the rest of the team caught too much of this fever as well. Or where the team was playing defense that I swear I never saw them play in the NBA. They may have these reputations as selfish players, but that's not what they have shown in the games.
In other words, they are doing the exact opposite of what they have been labeled as.
Racist ? Check with a big fat red, white, and blue mark ! People just immediately placed labels on them based namely on Allen Iverson, negating good citizens Tim Duncan, Carlos Boozer, Lebron James, and wow everyone else, and have romanticized FIBA style basketball. They act as if the whole team should be villified because of Allen Iverson and his negative image when thus far he's been nothing but a team player.
As if it wasn't bad enough that they call the whole team selfish, some have even said that they lacked pride as a result of this selfishness.
Yeah, I got one I got one ! I definitely saw that they lacked pride because they're all too black for us to see their hearts.
Team USA's just one example of how hip-hop and everything associated with it has become such a great goat for white Americans to put all their own bad traits into and kick.
Let's face it, people didn't actually watch the game, they just wanted to be able to blame hip-hop culture, related, and minority elements that don't really affect how they play the game.
Hip-hop, blackness, minoritiness is not to blame because it had absolutely nothing to do with the team USA loss.
If there's anything to blame it's probably how the NBA Rules are structured.
Let's just all ignore the facts that this team was poorly conceived and sorely unadapted to the competition. Sure, they're top players, but first of all, all of them have the same skills and lack the same ones. Immediately, the most important skill they lack is shooting the damn ball.
How is that possible in basketball you ask ?
In the NBA game, these guys are taught to be aggressive and attack the hoop. What faciliates going to the hoop is that there is this 3 second rule in the NBA which prohibits players from staying in the painted area for more than 3 seconds. It was a rule conceived to add more action to the NBA game. International basketball has no such rule and so the strategy for these international teams has been to clog these lanes.
Secondly, a reason USA basketball has slipped is that these international teams don't simply select players from a big pool. There's a tryout process for them. The USA team basically threw together a team composed of young, inexperienced, good players. They're still the most talented team, but unlike the previous Dream Teams in 1992 and 1996, they're not good enough to plow through other teams on just talent alone. They actually need team chemistry. Not fundamentals.
Oh also get a load of how regular Joe Schmo Americans responded when Chinese officials here.
by B.J. on 4/01/2004 12:00:00 AM
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Ever notice that the American conservative notion of beauty revolves around "purity" and "cleanness" whereas the American liberal notion of beauty revolves around "naturalness" ?
Add me to your reading list.
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