Unseen. Unheard.

by B.J. on 4/28/2008 10:03:00 PM 0 comments Print this post

Unseen. Unheard.

Unseen. Unheard. High School.

Only acknowledged when you do something wrong.

Otherwise ignored and meaningless.

Trapped in a state of being ignored and meaningless. "Trapped" meaning you cannot go anywhere else but. We're individuals too, we have our own choices to make, our own individual skills, but why does it feel like we still aren't achieving anything?

Maybe because the meanings of our culture aren't acknowledged at large.

Speak up, Filipino. Why is it that you can only get along with people your own circles, but when you stand up to a white guy you back the fuck down? Why you gotta act the way that human beings with no third legs or very small ones act like?

Perhaps sometimes being acknowledged, even if it is considered bad, matters much more than doing the right thing. The opportunity to be acknowledged for doing bad is much easier.

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You Betta Recognize.

by B.J. on 4/06/2008 11:35:00 PM 0 comments Print this post

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.

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Happiness Is...

by B.J. on 1/13/2008 04:39:00 PM 0 comments Print this post

...Wild N' Crazy Kids and that episode where the kids ride the Colossus rollercoaster while trying to keep as much water as possible in their cups

...Swimming in the Colorado River during a Laughlin, NV summer

...talking up in the College 10 dining hall with Roy, Daniel, Desiree, and with Roy and Daniel, being antisocial observants and critics of the members of the opposite sex. Then finishing up a meal, only to retreat to Roy's for NFL Street or my room for NBA Street.

...Science as Cultural Practice lectures and session in the heart of the forest. The Physics student in the wheelchair with an obvious disdain for social sciences and humanities, Josh, coming in 30 minutes late in a 50 minute section, knocking everything over, and temporarily delaying class.

...random pickup basketball at Wilson with Harly Wachi

...Semiotics and Bladerunner in my Narratives of Popular Culture class. Bladerunner, the analysis you could pull out of it, and seeing LA in a way I had never seen before via the snippet from Mike Davis' City of Quartz.

...the Santa Cruz smoke with Joel, especially the first day. None of us knew what to do.

...Camille's 16th birthday and everyone that mattered in LA just chillin' at my apartamento right before classes started at UC.

...the divinity of the Santa Cruz trees near Social Sciences 1 in my Anthropology of Religion class on a balmy February day in the late Tuesday afternoon

...Driving the UCLA van after dropping off the SEND participants

...Wallyball on some weekday SC nights

...balling (if you want to call it that) in that decrepit Santa Cruz b-ball court complete with some kind of non-flexible steel rims and shoddy wood.

...breakdancing events in Long Beach with Ms. Company Flow inviting.

...the 26th mile of the 2007 LA Marathon with the cadence of We Will Rock You pounding in the background, me bumping my shirt, and the crowd rocking back

...the semi-self-important busy, indifferent culture of the Ackerman Coop with CNN bumping on the big screen.

...trip back to LA and Santa Cruz and San Diego with Ms. Company Flow. Very much good fun.

...spitting sessions with EZ, Dom, n the boys

...La Chica del apartmento 512? That's what I thought when I would come across this one female in my Real Estate class at ELAC.

...the female hip-hop dance troupe leader during the year in which I was a participant in PCC.

...Only in Dreams...by Weezer.

...the rooftop with the Native Guns right before my graduation. It's cool feeling like you know and are down with most of the folks at a gathering.

...Saturday debut practices at Sunny Heights

...the last night in Santa Cruz with Daniel and Desiree. One word: Tim!

...the gathering with LA Voice on the issue of Affordable Housing in Hollywood and explaining LA politics to my 2nd grade and 5th grade teacher.

...Blue Scholars in Historic Filipinotown with Gaby and Desiree.

...the Saturday night where I decided to play DJ at a party, that is invade someone's computer and start downloading and playing classic hits.

...Gaby's birthday in Pasadena. Ha-ha!

...Zion I and Ozomatli rockin' the quarry.

...Heck even Goapele NOT rocking the quarry.

...that last day at Venice Beach with person, Bull-inda, and Keith before I went to college for the first time.

...Text messages asking me if I "wanna come over." Of course you know I do.

...Social Knowledge and Power. Every Lecture. Every Section. And the Deconstructionists' Handbook that came out of it.

...NBA on NBC with the Chicago Bulls on either Saturday mornings or Sunday afternoons.

...the deconstruction of the language used by the officers who beat Rodney King. It was still a boring class though. But I still learned a grip.

...Buying $15 running shoes from a 6th street vendor and using them as we speak. No, seriously, I am wearing them right now.

...George, Beverly, and I enjoying a set from the Ill Again and Gift of Gab set at the Tofu Fest.

...The luxurious bowling alley in Torrance as my intro to the CDC with the wings, the pizza, all while watching the Bulls beat down the Heat

...Chali 2Na, Saul Williams, Mos Def at USC con Bull-inda and waiting it out till the very end.

...Soulja Boy at the 'Litos on Two Separate Occasions. Once at the end of Summer outside with the Power 106 DJs. Then indoors during Thanksgiving.

...Hyphy in my White Tee Party with Dom, and the homies. LOL.

...Giving everyone the hookup while at FPAC. It feels good to be associated with something big, pretending you know people, and then hooking folks up. An exercise in social validation!

...ballin' at the YMCA, the random high school in Canoga Park, and on Sunday afternoons at Marshall with such characters as Manny, a Latino guy who always brought his kids and had, still has a one-handed shot (and still plays there!) and some Armenian kid who was 3 years younger than me and was about my height. We'd play weak, strong competition, it didn't matter.

...Field Days in elementary school cause it meant that it was the end of school and we'd have In-N-Out Burgers.

...High school senior service project at Children's Hospital and eating lunches consisting of...waffle french fries.

...playing basketball every morning on my small indoor court with real wooden floors at our old house in Hollydale

...the senior lunch truck from what used to be across the street near that one hall. Loyola bought up some properties and there is no need for a crosswalk anymore. Boo.

...The underground bar with the jazzy jazz, the kickback coach, and the cool vibe in Lil Tok con Bull-inda and Trina

...basketball and other assorted fun at Thomas' house after school. It beat daycare, in fact, it took daycare by the neck and guillotine submissioned it.

...Lorenzana foods after Karate or Swimming Classes at LACC

...The original American Gladiators at Cheryl's old apartment on Saturday or Sunday nights

...Exploring the Arts District with Shar, Bel, Daniel, and Daniel's friend Brian

...Seeing the Belmont Art Park for the last time with Joybif.

...Seeing East LA murals with Berverly

...Sunday mornings and afternoons with the fam at either Que Que's, Tony Roma's, Max's, Ichiban

...The jazzy-hip-hop they play across the street from my tenement when the Junction Festival invades the 'hood.

...Hodori after FPAC with person, before the show in Chinatown

...The kick-back with KmB in Chinatown with 'Ree, Bull, Shar, and their friend Gabby. The only time I could pretend I was a pimp.

...Tamales with Zocalo at the LA Public Library after their symposium with some gangs expert. Tamales! The next time I got a chance to sit next to that Life and Times anchor Val Zavala! My next thoughts that will go unannounced have to do with me being young, dumb, and full of cum, yes even for a 50+ woman.

...Standing atop the observatory looking at LA after a 1-mile uphill run.

...the opening of a Toys R Us in LA. That's where I got Madden 97 and my first and second Playstation.

...Ingenue at the Union Station on a rainy day and my 8th grade graduation night party while I was dancing with someone whom I thought was the prettiest female ever

...the first time I got involved in Cultural Dancing and meeting this fine-looking dark-skinned tall Filipina woman with wide eyes named Rosalyn. She showed me how to dance and I was hooked...for life. I thought of the song by UB40 "I can't help falling in love". Of course I was only 10.

...Being taken to Coldstones on my 16th birthday and listening to trance music by Cheryl.

...2003 Family Christmas when everything was just funny and I had jokes. 2005 Family Christmas too when at about midnight I had a stripper dancing on top of me.

...visiting New Jersey, the only immediate cousins we have in the United States, and seeing actual suburbs with white people. Well, that last part made me happy the time.

...1st place in the Long Jump on my very last meet on my very last jump which wasn't very good, but I won anyway!

...Parking on Gayley at about 10:35 and waiting there till 11:00 so I wouldn't get a ticket

...my third-hand red 89 celica and its lack of air conditioning.

...the Look of Love by Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66

...Viramundo and e ladrao.

...Photo books of old Los Angeles at Barnes or Borders.

...Old photos of HACLA housing at the Social Studies Library of Southern California

...lunch room Latina females and one loud Thai. LOL. It wouldn't have been my first job experience without them.

...

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by B.J. on 12/22/2005 08:37:00 PM 2 comments Print this post

Straight from and thru the Chest

Let me shoot this arrow straight from my chest.

Then: 5'7, 123 lbs, short hair, white-washed, moderate liberal, intp, Silver Lake, Dilemma/Just a Friend/Welcome to Atlanta home-made computer, old red 89' Toyota Celica, Banana Slug, proposed history major thinking of legal studies, white sandos and dark blue shorts, Vector salesman, law school aspirations

Now: 5'7, 140 lbs, long hair, Filipino as ever, che-like radical, intp, Silver Lake, Debaser/Ladykiller/Move on Up Dell, new black '04 Toyota Corolla, Bruin, anthropology with linguistic concentration major and history of science and medicine minor collared shirts and gray pants, Bayanihan project director, law school/museum studies /writing book/professor aspirations

The only reason I keep this blog is because it has all the links to the websites I frequent.

Otherwise it would've been dead a while ago.

Now it'll just be an archive page documenting about 1/100,000 of the happenings of the years 2002 - 2005 in the life of yours truly, B.J.D.A. I've grown a lot just from expressing my thoughts and detailing my world on this one random fabricated spot in the internet. It'll be only a matter time before I anthropologize my own shit and try to pass it off as some kind of academic work. However, for the time being, I've decided that it's time to be a man, now, and cut the blogging from this mother.

I don't know if there's anything interesting I have to say anymore because it's probably been said somewhere on the internet. Fark.com, most likely or basketballboards.net. And I usually lurk around their message boards and even post on there. There are many times I want to publish something on this blog but I just don't because I ain't diggin' what I write and rarely does the material represent in full what I want to say. I also don't want to talk about my personal feelings (at least directly) because I don't want to be some charity case for people to start caring out of pity for my pathetic feelings. I think I've given so much sense that I've begun to lose my own.

I started out posting all my "random" thoughts trying to make a splash and gradually as I've grown up these past three years, I've come to realize that nothing is really all that "random." We only use that term to describe things we don't really understand. We don't understand how or why those things came about. And so this last post will probably still remain random.

I'll be writing somewhere anywhere there's a piece of paper/computer and a writing utensil, but not here anymore.

Welp, that arrow's boomerangin' back. And it's coming right here, straight through. It's my time.

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by B.J. on 8/04/2005 07:43:00 PM 0 comments Print this post

Blast from the Past: Taking Aim to Maim But Not Naming Names So Wherever Whenever This Applies Its All the Same

This post will be the strand I hold in my hand when I need to take a stand.

I know what I am capable of. I've mused it over and over, and I'm trying to not let people abuse it.

I have been distancing myself from this school culture of LA that I just got into arguably just this past quarter.

I believe that when you get too much into or invest too much into a culture, you're just going to end up being some fabricated self-important divisive ghetto superstar product who can only speak a local discourse rather than a uniting universal all-encompassing discourse.

You can't forget that this is about the people not the process.

So stop the pathology, screw the methodology, get with the ontology.

Context and perspective. . .

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If Culture was a Person. . .

by B.J. on 6/12/2005 09:30:00 PM 0 comments Print this post

It would be a mall rat chick that looks fine at first but eventually nags you. Once it nags you, you want to break free.

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.

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by B.J. on 4/22/2005 12:02:00 AM 0 comments Print this post

Habitat

You were supposed to take me home.

But you can't do that if you've already left.
Let-down ?! Heh, maybe slammed down.

I guess I did not want to prove myself right.
But I knew you wouldn't hold up.

Now what ? Well, I'm stuck.

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by B.J. on 4/05/2005 03:21:00 AM 0 comments Print this post

Last Moment

I wanted to throw it all away
Like I would throw myself off a cliff
And let myself fall and see if I could live

If I was alive, it was meant to be, if not, well

But at the last moment at the edge
I realized that maybe I'm not ready for this test
I didn't want to give up all that I had left

Cuz if I had none, I would've already been dead

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by B.J. on 3/18/2005 05:23:00 AM 0 comments Print this post

*I Just Fucking Hate Being A Supporting Character to Some Fuckhead's "Leadership"

I'm a Schemer Not a Performer, I can make you fly or crouch down and eat a big fat weiner
I'll bring you up or tear you down like Terrell Owens did with an 8 x 5 banner and I'll do it in a sickass manner
that you'll turn back
and say what the fuck
you won't know
what the fuck hit you
Hitman coming at you
In a 4 by 4 truck
What you do now dog
You run out of luck
Could've avoided this
If you really knew miz
But that's the biz
It's too bad you'll
never see your own kids

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by B.J. on 2/26/2005 06:19:00 PM 0 comments Print this post

Arrow to Your Circle


This here's an arrow to the cycle
Penetrating even the narrow dry icicles
The screw thrown into the bicycle

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by B.J. on 2/06/2005 07:30:00 PM 0 comments Print this post

I Hate the Patriots

Very fitting that they have been the Super Bowl winners of the past 3 of the past 4 years. Fuck I hate them now with a passion. It's like, you've had your fun, and you were a great symbol especially after 9/11, but it's getting old and we need new champions.

But the Eagles were wack anyway. Horrible clock management especially during the last drive when they had about minute left and they did not stop the clock with an incomplete pass --- that kind of disregard for time just killed this team. What's even worse is that according to Ron Jaworski, Matt Ware, (former Loyola Cub and UCLA Bruin representing wahhhhhhhhh !!!), got exploited heavily. I didn't know even notice Matt was in the game.

Man, all the teams I root for, suck.

The one positive thing about this game is that at least Deion Branch and not Tom Brady (he always gets the credit) won Super Bowl MVP for his 11 receptions and 100+ yards. But that probably won't stop reporters from getting the ultimate and last opinions from him because only white people can be leaders and have the most credible voices.

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by B.J. on 9/10/2004 04:27:00 PM 0 comments Print this post

The Party That No One Could Get Into

Back when he was a kid, there was a party he threw but no one came to. He being excited had set up all day with his mom and dad. But hidden at the back of his mind was this doubt that they would come. And from the back of his mind, this thought came out and jacked his reality.

He never threw a party intended for anyone again.

Except for himself.

You'd be lucky to get in, eh.

The hell, I shouldn't have even told you that there was a party.

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by B.J. on 9/09/2004 08:46:00 PM 0 comments Print this post

The Party No One Came To

Nope, no popular kid threw this party.
It was the work of a complete loner.

He was friendly to other kids, and it was
Just that he didn't say much to them

Because he didn't know what to say
But he considered these people friends

When the friends didn't really know him
They heard of his party, but it wasn't that serious

Anyway, yes, they would come to his party
He thought, imagining the fun to be had

So he helped buy the food the drinks for the party
He along with his lethargic mom and dad spent the day. . .

. . .setting up. . .

. . .for this party that no one came to.

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by B.J. on 8/22/2004 10:24:00 PM 0 comments Print this post

The Egomaniac

And from out of nowhere in resistance to what he's seen in his mind, the slitherin sluin dashes in slashing the curtains from out to within and manages to Edward Scissorhands and weave the velvet red curtains into a tornado-shape exposing who's really behind this production.

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by B.J. on 7/28/2004 08:35:00 PM 0 comments Print this post

The Day that Curiosity Almost Killed a Cat
 
It was a gloomy afternoon and El kiddo was about 7 or 8 years old sitting buckled up tight in the back of the red caravan that was cruising Sunset and Fountain when el kiddo asked out of nowhere "why are there wipers in the back ?"  No response from the driver nor his daughter.  El kiddo, sensing that they didn't hear him speak asked again "why are there wipers in the back ?"  After a while, El kiddo got the fuckin' hint.

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by B.J. on 5/28/2004 01:19:00 PM 0 comments Print this post

More Time-Wasting

All I have to do is one 10-15 page paper on the Eskimos. It's not that much, but I have yet to fail in avoiding to do it. Key in this success has been internet surfing. And here are two of the most interesting sites in those travels.

Grow !

The Element of Women (from big Des on the low low's Website herself)

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by B.J. on 4/18/2004 09:33:00 AM 0 comments Print this post

It's Gonna be a Showdown

Rather than bulking up like the hulk, I'd rather learn to fight with so much might that I sulk, in general like FDR shaking off the parasite that was the depression. Trust me fighting is more useful than a mindless weightlifting session because its not about appearance you stupid chum westerner always trying to get the best of her saying your not a fighter but a lover. But ultimately its what you got inside ready to be released when you hold up your pride when you collide with your opposing side and you try to survive. Reproduce vamanoos but not with bitches who are loose and not about the fam, which is a muse and stress of its own, but I digress, back to you bitchass lover of ass and breast. Lover trick you only work according to definition, someone else's standards not your own intuition, climbing up the stairs and celebrating thinking something's come to fruition rather than fighting the endless hills which whack you till you feel it in your dentition. You're really a trick buster, no matter how much you try and smooth it, I got you figured trick, I can prove it. You learn about you when you go with into the undefined, either body or mind, and see how far you go, battling not anything in the form of a bro or ho, but rather a foe that surprisingly lives in your soul daggered in there like a pole. The undefinition you run into like a Wintu then prepares you to dismantle and handle anyone or anything be it the bulldog that is Joe Viray or a big fat bay that blocks your way from Santa Cruz to San Jose.

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by B.J. on 1/26/2004 09:55:00 PM 0 comments Print this post

Electric

A chaotic redwood-tree natural force full of nitro, hydro, slash various other cool-millennium-cutthroat sounding chemicals et cetra shoots like lightning all over my anatomy from vein to neuron to thigh to ischial callosities. The feeling's tingly tingly tingly sparkly wiggly, yet ready to focrush like a beer can and melt the biggest indefatigable enemy it has seen. Gawd him/herself would have trouble slowing this fluid chaos down.

This force shoots out so strongly that it bends the word force, chucks and bawls it fluidly into 'FOWACE!' and scoops my whole anatomy as I mentioned earlier that I could break-run through a crowd of big, swinging slamming brave hammers and still be standing while carrying a baby.

The fowace can even be transcending and all-encompassing (which people can't relate to nor really understand which is why its described second) I could even do calculus without my fruggin' hippie frodo baggin head turning itself into a soggy Auntie Anne's almond pretzel dipped in caramel.

Frick, I could even grow my hair to an afro, wear a basketball headband on my head, pound the ground like I'm making an earthquake and yell and call myself raw as if I grew up blunt force trauma-ed on the streets !

While this fowace goes all ways, any way, it never goes all day. I think cause its finite created by something of might to remind you that no matter what height you temporarily reach you are just another living thing grounded and trudging in the human plight.

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by B.J. on 1/24/2004 11:33:00 AM 0 comments Print this post

Weaknessez

- I don't drive in full-speed when it's 5 on 5 full court; I don't wish to take responsibility for my actions in that regard

- I'm short

- I pick my nose and ears

- I like to get high off my socks and my feet after I take off my socks

- I have my hopes hopelessly tied to one girl

- I don't shower until I really get dirty (which is about 5 days to a week)

- I'm almost 20 years old, I don't have a job (except studenting) and still rely on my parents

- I whack off way too much

- I hate people

Any questions ?

: )

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by B.J. on 1/18/2004 02:38:00 AM 0 comments Print this post

2 Forces

Em ot kcab emoc.
No, got the heart of a rock.

Diov siht llif ot ouy deen I
No, me just been denied.

Dnim ym ni, daeh ym ni.
My whim da Hi-hi-hAy-C.

Hgih yraropmet eht evah I erus
Where then do I take my deep muse ?

Taht kcuf on dneirf a ot ?
Don't know anymore, no plot.

Ecalp rey ekat reve lliw eon on.
But know what I am where I've gone,

Ereh ouy rof tops a eb syawla.
C-zza the impreza, the race car, not the impala

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