Mee mee mee mee...

I might, just might, take this an alternative for my dream to have a day as a musical.

I apologize for not having more substantive entries. It's just been one of those weeks.

How you gonna fix it... fix it... fix it...

I hate it when I have songs stuck in my head because it takes a lot of effort to get them un-stuck.
I hate it even more when they're terrible songs like Danity Kane's "Fix it" (or whatever it's called) because I made the mistake of listening to KIIS instead of KPCC.


Because I'm distracted today, while making significant progress on my work (draft of letter written + on tab 5 of the enormous workshop book + responding to emails in a timely fashion), I figured writing here while at work wouldn't be a bad idea.

I secretly hope that no one at my placements ever checks my Internet usage, because I will be embarassed to find how much time I spend on random blogs and useless websites. It will kill my reputation that I am always on task :\

Either ways, in the attempt to distract you as well, I give you these... the Spin-Offs of the ever-so-beloved "Stuff White People Like"
In no particular order of preference:

1. Stuff Educated Black People Like
2. Stuff Black People Like
3. Stuff Asian People Like
4. Stuff Latin People Like
5. Stuff Straight People Like
6. Stuff Queer People Like
7. Stuff Desi People Like

I have yet to find one for Arabs, Native Americans, Indigenous Peoples... the list goes on and on, so if you find any, let me know.

Here I am and I stand so tall, just the way I'm supposed to be.

There's this episode from Sex and the City when Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker's character) meets her to-be-boyfriend-in-the-coming-episodes Jack Berger (played by the fabulous Ron Livingston). He collects found playing cards, noting that once you find one you can't help but notice the rest of them.

Simple idea-- having your awareness grow and then suddenly feeling like what you became aware of is just everywhere.


I was one of those people who hasn't had a lot of people pass away in his/her lifetime. The only person I was close to was my grandfather and he and I didn't really have much of a relationship. He passed away when I was seven years old and while I didn't quite understand what was happening, I knew that I was supposed to be upset and quiet. I have a vague memory of seeing my mom sobbing from behind the door, although I didn't understand why because as a father-in-law, he wasn't particularly welcoming to her.

But, between the ages of 7-22 death kept its distance from my life.

Now, in 2008, it's the only thing that I can notice.
A few days before my birthday I got a call early in the morning telling me a classmate of mine from college had died early in the morning. There were few details and no one really knew, so I was stuck with a piece of information that was unconfirmed and just... there.
Last week I called another friend to make plans for dinner only to find out that his grandmother had passed away the day before.
The last week of March marked the anniversary of the Iraq War, as well as the 4,000th American death of the war.
This week, East Los Angeles has been rocked by a series of homicides that appear unrelated and just utterly tragic.


And what I realize from all of this is that I haven't really been taught to deal with any of this. Mourning for people I barely know feels inappropriate. But, continuing without thinking about their life (whether I knew about it or not) also feels disrespectful. I couldn't help but feel like I was spitting on the face of the people who passed away, as I got up, got ready, and laughed my way through the day.

Where does the balance lie?


For the first time in a long time, I want to stop and just think. I want everything to wash over me and I want to deal with it. But, of course, this is also the time when I don't have the luxury of stopping. Coro will end in a month and a half and I will be set upon the city of Los Angeles to do what I will. And, as they say, life goes on and we need to go with it...

So, where does the balance lie?


These all feel like such elementary questions and thoughts, but I don't know of many people who have a solid response to any of it...

You make me complete / You make me completely miserable...

The boo's are audible...


In other news, Texas was declared for Obama.
The superdelegate count is evening out, with only a 32-vote difference between Clinton and Obama (Clinton still has the lead there).

And Easter candy is on MAD sale at Target. So, make sure to hit it up!

I think I'm turning Japanese / I really think so...

Granted, not the most political of posts (I have some thoughts floating around in my head, so they're coming), but definitely interesting.

http://supacat.livejournal.com/111072.html

I believe that it speaks to more than just Japanese cultural differences-- I think it's true for Koreans as well, but then again, I might be confusing my Korean roots for my Japanese-laden childhood.

Either ways, I think it explains a lot.

(as for the song lyrics, I think the song is hilarious, but simultaneously horrifying. Does this make me a bad person?)

... I don't even know where to begin with this one ...

I don't even know where to start with this one. Granted, I understand there are people who would not warm up to the ideas surrounding race that Barack Obama spoke of, but... seriously? Pat Buchanan's ultimate question is, "Where's the gratitude?"

(?!?!?!)

If anyone ever needed an example of implicit racism... well, here folks, HERE IT IS.

For your reading (dis)pleasure:

PJB: A Brief for Whitey
By Patrick J. Buchanan

How would he pull it off? I wondered.

How would Barack explain to his press groupies why he sat silent in a pew for 20 years as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright delivered racist rants against white America for our maligning of Fidel and Gadhafi, and inventing AIDS to infect and kill black people?

How would he justify not walking out as Wright spewed his venom about “the U.S. of K.K.K. America,” and howled, “God damn America!”

My hunch was right. Barack would turn the tables.

Yes, Barack agreed, Wright’s statements were “controversial,” and “divisive,” and “racially charged,” reflecting a “distorted view of America.”

But we must understand the man in full and the black experience out of which the Rev. Wright came: 350 years of slavery and segregation.

Barack then listed black grievances and informed us what white America must do to close the racial divide and heal the country.

The “white community,” said Barack, must start “acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination — and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past — are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds … .”

And what deeds must we perform to heal ourselves and our country?

The “white community” must invest more money in black schools and communities, enforce civil rights laws, ensure fairness in the criminal justice system and provide this generation of blacks with “ladders of opportunity” that were “unavailable” to Barack’s and the Rev. Wright’s generations.

What is wrong with Barack’s prognosis and Barack’s cure?

Only this. It is the same old con, the same old shakedown that black hustlers have been running since the Kerner Commission blamed the riots in Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and a hundred other cities on, as Nixon put it, “everybody but the rioters themselves.”

Was “white racism” really responsible for those black men looting auto dealerships and liquor stories, and burning down their own communities, as Otto Kerner said — that liberal icon until the feds put him away for bribery.

Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America.

Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.

This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these:

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ’60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream. Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks — with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas — to advance black applicants over white applicants.

Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.

We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?

Barack talks about new “ladders of opportunity” for blacks.

Let him go to Altoona and Johnstown, and ask the white kids in Catholic schools how many were visited lately by Ivy League recruiters handing out scholarships for “deserving” white kids.
Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America? Is it really white America’s fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent?

Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself?
As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?

Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?

We have all heard ad nauseam from the Rev. Al about Tawana Brawley, the Duke rape case and Jena. And all turned out to be hoaxes. But about the epidemic of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.

Sorry, Barack, some of us have heard it all before, about 40 years and 40 trillion tax dollars ago.

Don't speak / I know what you're thinking

Speak
Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Speak – your lips are free
Speak – your tongue is still yours.
This magnificent body
Is still yours
Speak – your life is still yours.
Look inside the smithy –
Leaping flames, red-hot iron.
Padlocks open wide
Their jaws.
Chains disintegrate.
Speak – there is little time
But little though it is
It is enough.
Time enough
Before the body perishes –
Before the tongue atrophies.
Speak – truth still lives.
Say what you have
To say.