Scribblings

Everyday food harrassment

2012-01-07T21:42:00.001-08:00

Everyday Food, the Martha Stewart magazine, is harrassing me. I haven't renewed my subscription for the coming year. Their way of dealing with this unfortunate fact is to send me childish and insulting veiled threats in the form of an "invoice".

Forget friendly reminders to renew, or cute you're "missing out letters". Instead they've resorted to scare tactics, threats and Bullying. If you dont pay we'll be forced to cancel your subscription for the coming year! And ... And take you off our preferred customers list. This is only the second such letter I've received; I'm sure theyre saving the heavy artillery for a third letter: where I'm summarily removed from the best friends forever list and they want their other half of their heart charm back.

Everyday Food - just drop it. Bullying went out of fashion after the braces came off. And really, you were never that cool. I just feel bad for all the people that are actually threatened by their bs. Time to take this to the better business bureau?

But don't just take it from me. Check out their letter for yourself.

Slapdash Mexican casserole

2011-12-01T20:15:00.001-08:00

The idea for this came to me when a friend mentioned he had breakfast casserole.

1 can black beans
1 can corn
1/2 can crushed tomatoes
1/2 jar salsa, any flavor or spiciness. Though I'm not sure how well mango salsa would taste.
Small bag of corn tortillas
8 oz bag of shredded yellow cheese - I like Colby
Green onions or cilantro as garnish
4 eggs
Cayenne pallet and chili powder to taste

Preheat oven to 375.

In a bowl, beat eggs and mix in salsa. In a larger bowl, combine corn, beans, and half the tomato can. Mix in the egg and salsa mixture. Add chili powder and cayenne pepper, if desired. I put about taespoon cayenne and a half tablespoon chili.

In an 8x8 pan, cover the bottom with a layer of tortillas. Pour 1/3 of the mixture on top. Cover liberally with cheese. Sprinkle on chopped greens. Repeat layering until pan is full ending on a cheese and greens layer.

Bake for forty five minutes covered with foil, or until egg solidifies.

Ole!

TSA

2011-11-28T21:32:00.001-08:00

Pronounced ZAH. Like the zah in Huzzah (huh? - ZAH). Or the zah in tsar.

Otherwise known as The Sadistic Aircops.

(bah-tsinga)

Oil, on canvas

2011-11-26T17:38:00.001-08:00

She had her paint box out again. She had left the easel in the closet though; I doubt that it had ever been used. Instead, she often painted her masterpieces on the floor, polished mahogany with a dark stain, a color approaching burnt fuchsia.

Purple was her favourite colour. She used it on her dolls hair and her mother's toe nails. Her brother John's sense of appreciation met, chaotically, his just as equal sense of indignation when her creative talents turned themselves onto his bike seat.

Today's color was black. Canvas abandoned on the table, she instead applied her paintbrush to every living thing within her reach.

The pet terrier, Jake the yardman, Melissa her friend from fourth grade, Dennis who messaged her on Facebook yesterday, Elizabeth her mother, Dad, Robert the boy from school with the corduroy jeans.

From afar, they blended in to the background hues of charcoal gray, but up close you could see the whites of their eyes, their gleaming, sharp, teeth, displayed between tight, glossy black lips.

It would be her masterpiece.

Seguranca de nada

2011-11-11T23:15:00.001-08:00

Sempre pensei que algum dia alguém teria que me amar. Que eu nao teria opcao, que cairia em amor sem dar assento. Que para cair no amor voce so precisava existir. E seria bastante.

Mas aprendi que a existencia nao necesita o amor. Que e possivel existir, respirar, ser -- sem um outro que te ama. E que nada vai garantizar que o amor vem para voce.

Nessa existencia, temos a seguranca de nada, meu. Nada vem, meu, nada vem.

Amazon shipping

2011-10-28T04:49:00.001-07:00

Small secret - amazon's free shipping is about as fast as Amazon prime.

Of the past 4 orders from Amazon over the last four months, nothing has taken longer than three days to arrive.

My latest order will be here in less than two days.

Yes, for xmas, its probably better to get the guarantee, but just for general shipping, you can't do better than free.

Best chips ever.

2011-10-18T19:28:00.001-07:00

I found what I'm giving away for Halloween! Maybe. If I can keep my hands off them.

Ginger and Scrambled Eggs

2011-10-17T18:25:00.001-07:00

By far, the hands down favorite added ingredient in eggs. When I'm being super lazy and don't want to add anything (it even renders that pinch of salt less than mandatory).

Per tonight's experimentation, ANY (really I mean any) amount of ginger tastes delicious.

Though honestly, you'll probably have to lean on the heavier side to be able to taste it.

SO recipe:

- eggs. 2 if large, 3 if medium/grass-fed organic raised

- ginger (1/2 to 2 tsp)

- butter (about 3/4 tbs)

- salt (if desired, pinch/sprinkle)

Crack eggs in bowl. Beat with fork until are one yellow color (not patchy, unless you like it that way).

Turn on stovetop to high, medium-high.

Add ginger and salt to eggs. Beat until mixed (ish. The ginger tends to clump. This is fine.)

Pan should be hot now. Add butter, swishing around in the pan as it melts to coat the entire bottom.

Add eggs.

Serve.

Note, eggs should quick super quickly. This makes them fluffier. (Thanks Julia!)

Ramen, Version 2.4

2011-10-09T20:04:00.000-07:00

I'm not anti-recipe, but I've definitely moved away from using them as of late.
Here's one of my latest concoctions. Main credit goes to Meizi Mao, my roommate at Wal-Mart during the summer of 2010, who introduced me to my first variation on ramen. A recent discovery that Siracha sauce has sugar as the second ingredient had me getting creative with the spices. Tonight's version was definitely my favorite so far, as the lime added a nice fresh kick.

Spicy chicken ramen with lime

a handful of fresh spinach leaves, washed and de-stemmed
chicken flavored ramen (the block shaped stuff that comes in an orange package)
half a lime
cayenne pepper
chili pepper flakes
2 large eggs or 3 small ones (this time I put in 3 smaller ones)

Bring about 1cup and a half of water to a boil. (We're talking about two inches of water in a medium/small pot).Add ramen noodles, saving the packet of chicken flavoring for later.Add the washed and de-stemmed spinach leavesCrack the eggs into the pot.
Cook for about three minutes, boiling.
Squeeze in the juice from half the lime, add about 3/4 teaspoon cayenne powder, and a couple of shakes of the red chili pepper flakes.
Add in half to 3/4 of the chicken flavoring packet.
Stir carefully, so as not to break up the eggs. For best results, don't stir until you've got to about this point (at the end of cooking).
Enjoy! I serve my first bowl over a few pieces of ice, but I'm impatient.

Writing is a waste of time

2011-09-11T19:06:00.000-07:00

How often is it just a meditation? How much of it is an exposition, a PR show?

How do you find the bottom of a sphere? By weight, by length, by bounce?

There is nothing interesting in self-explanation. Even psychologists, who's profession is that of self-explaining, make you pay for the privilege of divulging yourself.

Let's play a game. It's called conversation. I'll say a word, and then you say one that's related. And then I'll say one that's unrelated. Then you say one that's related to the the first relation. Then I'll repeat the iteration of relation. Then you relate the iteration to the nonrelation. And we'll iterate that iteration until the iterated iteration is completely unrelated to the game concatentation.

I hate games. Games are for players. I play the piano. The game can't be played by non-players. I hate games. Playing the piano is an odious game.

okEros

2011-06-18T19:15:00.000-07:00

i write riveting messages to potential mates:

i read you smoke cigars. i smoked a cigar for the first time with my grandpa last week. i picked the smallest one he had - it was still too much tobacco. but i finished it, like a champ. i didn't want him to think he had a wimp for a granddaughter.

Things I Learned While in College

2011-05-18T00:21:00.000-07:00

A uncomprehensive list:

- How to pull an all nighter (PHL 610QB, Smith)
- How to bake the best chocolate chip cookies known to mankind (J. Feldman)
- How to roll a cigarette (F. Pernet & M. Wenzel)
- How to eat like a vegetarian (A. Upstill)
- Dancing (still a work in progress)
- When to stop drinking (Emily)
- Good paperwork is key to making a success of a failed project (MIS 374)
- The difference between coding and thinking you know how to code (aka Computer Science vs. MIS)
- How to write bullet lists (BA 324)
- Other people's interest levels in personal projects is exceedingly variable. Usually positive. Use with care. (Hosteling Int'l)
- Craigslist is the one stop shop for all housing and furnishing needs
- People don't care what you got on the SAT, your class rank upon graduation, how many yoga positions you can *almost* nail, how fast you've ran a mile, what the make of your first car was, how old you were when you got your letter jacket, the number of times you've been asked on a date, the number of dates you've been on, how many people are in your family, how old you are

Things I wished I had learned in college:
- Being good at school is just a skill.
- Laughing.

Riding in Trains with Brazilians

2011-04-28T08:16:00.000-07:00

One can tell where they are in the São Paulo's Metrô (techincally Metrô and CPTM, but for simplicity's sake let's stick with just calling the entire 12 line system the Metrô) based loosely on the content of the PSAs being broadcast over the public announcement system. On the core Metrô lines, those that run along Paulista and into downtown São Paulo, announcements urge passengers to give the right of way to the elderly, be civilized in the boarding process, not to block the doors, allow others to board the train if you're not taking this one, or stand to the correct side so that those in a hurry can get past you. The focus is speed, courtesy for your fellow passengers, and respect for the boarding rules.
On the other hand, the trains (alright, CPTMs) that provide access to the further out suburbs and São Paulo's Vida Loka offerings, the content of the messages change. The focus on speed and allowing others to reach their destinations on time seems to be lost - no one that's riding these trains has business that is that urgently important. Instead, it's don't leave a mess in the cars, don't sit on the floor, don't play your music speakers too loudly - it disturbs the other passengers. CPTM riders, like rowdy school children, are provided a list of "don'ts". The outer Metrô messages give an instructions on how to become civilized subway riders - clean, quiet, and out of the way of others.
Admittedly, the central metro lines are more crowded, and you're less likely to run into someone playing their pint sized boom box on these lines. The messages make sense for the problems that each of the respective lines have. However, the tonal difference between the two sets of messages, to me, is a larger reflection of the hierarchy of Brazilian society. The attitude towards the lower classes is that they're "uneducated, uncivilized", and need to be instructed as to how to conduct themselves in a clean and polite manner. The attitude towards the upper classes is one of social cohesion and respect - let's all work together to make this city function smoothly. Real Brazilian citizens ride the inner city Metrô - São Paulo is proud of these classy subway riders. Whereas the outskirts of the city are home to the masses, the faceless crowds that need to be herded from place to place within the city, that should keep the trains clean and ready for the next boxful of riders, heading to work and keeping the city, en masse, moving forward.

NOTE: To date, I've ridden on 10 of the 11 lines. They are numbered from 1 to 12, but in reality there are only 11 lines - there is no line 6.

America's God's Army?

2011-04-27T09:38:00.000-07:00

As a, although lazy, professedly atheist American, it's a tad disconcerting to realize that at least 70% of our armed forces are Christians. (As per this New York Times article.) Who said the Holy Wars were over? Better yet, why did I think they were? No one did, it's just assumed when you study history that the things you're discussing belong in the past.

I realize I'm super late to the party, but suddenly the Iraqi war has an entirely different look to it. And you can make a far more compelling story out of it. I can almost read the textbook explanation, a hundred years from now: the USA, like all religious oligarchies, created a holy war on a trumped up 'threat', and allowed the government to extend it's control over the citizenry to a level not seen since the McCarthy era, or possibly never before, what with the proliferation of electronic tracking capabilities. Combined with the greatest economic decline since the Great Depression of 1929, this marked the end of the US's dominance in world politics, as the powerful elites and corporations in the US concentrated on building their personal wealth and spheres of influence within the states, largely leaving a power vacuum in the greater world political scene. During this period, US political corruption raised to the highest levels seen since the era of the Robber Barons. The loss of the US ethical corporate culture lead to a worldwide rise in corruption, particularly in the US's main trade partners. The two decades following, before the Middle Eastern democracies (MEds) rose to power and reimposed a level ethics in world trade, rolled back two centuries of progress in poverty reduction and human equity. They are also considered the most dangerous period in civilized history since the invention of the steam engine.

Praça do Papa Photoshoot

2011-04-23T22:50:00.000-07:00

Some of the best photos that I took at Praça do Papa with Gabi in late March 2011.

Marx, meet Niemeyer

2011-04-01T12:20:00.000-07:00

I had a long conversation with my Brazilian roommate this week about Marx and the definition of alienation. It was spurred in large part by a debate I got into with his social economics professor. The idea of alienation has been on my mind ever since.

I really want to discuss how landscapes can alienate, and show some examples from a museum here in São Paulo, the Museu de América Latina (Latin American Museum), but first I need to write through my misunderstandings and doubts that I have with regards to Marx's concept of alienation.

Based on the conversation that I had with my roommate and the debate that I entered into with his professor, I understand alienation to be the tendnecy humans have to see other human beings as objects instead of as fully realized human individuals. In other words, when you look at me, all you see is the skirt I'm wearing, the fact that I'm probably North American or Western European, that I've got dandruff on my shoulders, that the shoes I'm wearing are last year's Blue Light special, and that I'm hopelessly lost. What you don't, necessarily, see is the inside color of my soul (it's deep fuschia, fyi), the fact that I decided and then promptly undecided ten times this morning to get out of bed, the fact that I enjoy watching other people. In order to understand me on this level, without taking any of my physcial appearance or culturally imposed mannerisms (I said hello when I saw you, how polite! But I didn't hold the door, how rude!) into account, you would successfully be seeing me in an unalienated manner.

My objection to this criticism is that yes, we're all shallow creatures, we read what you're wearing for social clues. But it wasn't capitalism that made us this way - kings and princes have always worn crowns, monkeys have silverbacks, peacocks have rainbow plumes. Marx successfully points out how our human instincts correspond with the animal world - we make judgements on first sight. But Marx goes further to insist that we should be able to eventually overcome these limiting instincts and be able to understand each and every human, to recognize and acknowledge each's individual desires, the essential nature of every human being.

Marx, one question: what if the guy I just met yesterday, the one who's smelly breath and greasy shirt gave me shudders, at his essential nature, wants to eat me for dinner? This view there is enough space in the world for each and every man to achieve his own desires, that is that the desires of an individual exist in a vacuum. Or in other words, that I can express and enact my essential nature without limiting or infringing upon the expression and enaction of another's essential nature.

Unfortunately for Marx, human being desires and "essences" are often based in and around other human beings - the same relationships that we all have with one another are the underlying cause for our fetishism with objects, our need to display wealth and power. Someone is always going to want to be a Bonaparte, a Cesar Agustus, a Barak Obama - to have power over others. The essential nature of people is to want and desire things of other people, be it power, love, understanding, atention - and we use objects, our money, storytelling, our personalities to do so.

Let's return for the moment to my classroom debate with the professor on Tuesday. His point was that we cannot overcome alienation. So let's say that I decided that the essence of my being was such that I desired, desperately, to never wear shirts. So I remove my shirt in the middle of class. In this hypothetical situation, let's say that the site of a shirtless girl in the middle of his classroom greatly disturbs the professor, to the point where he is no longer able to conduct class. He has a great desire... to have me put my shirt back on so that he may finish his lecture. In this situation there is a conflict of desires, of essential natures. I don't want to give up my ablity to air off my torso; my professor wants to finish his class. A third student comes up with a compromise: the professor will pay me $50 to put my shirt back on. I'm trading my desire to remain shirtless for $50.

Desires, these essential natures of ourselves, are an expression of our personal power or force of will. We use the desires of others to get what we want - money often acting as the intermediary. In the above example, the student traded her power over the sentiments of the professor (a form of sexual power) for cold hard cash (economic power). Without monetary power ($50), the professor would have been unable to get what he wanted - finishing his class on time.

To conclude, the assertion that alienation is a product of a capitalist system is bull. Marx couldn't figure out how to manipulate his human desires and connections into actual power that would get him what he wanted - so he called everyone that was aware of these powers of desires and successfully (or unsuccessfully) used them "alienated". From this perspective, Marx's alienated individuals are in fact wiser than Marx himself: instead of writing a long critique of human nature, they used their knowledge of the very same human nature to accomplish what they wanted. (or at least tried to).

Marx's personal life aside, alienation as an emotion exists: at times we feel distant, isolated, cut off from all emotional contact and acknowledgement. Landscapes, often our surroundings, can be the greatest provocatuer of alienated feelings. Being the last car in an empty Wal-Mart parking lot on a Tuesday afternoon. Walking alone down a badly lit business district in the depths of a Sunday night. Or, in my case this week, visiting the Latin American Museum in São Paulo.

Designed by Oscar Niemeyer, Brazil's most notable Modern architect, the musuem is another classic example of the architect that influenced the design of Brazilian buildings to this day.

This was not my first Niemeyer - I had made it my goal while in São Paulo to track down as many of his works in the city as possible. I've already visited his famous church at Pampulha in Belo, seen the eastern most building in Brazil (also his) in João Pessoa. I've seen pictures of Brasília.

Oscar Niemeyer makes alienation palpible. White and arching, cement and steel structures - Niemeyer's style comes straight from Disney's Tomorrowland. Perhaps a tomorrow that, like Marx's definition of human essence, makes a better ideal than practical reality.

Niemeyer's sweeping curves of concrete, vast empty plazas, and glass arches must be beautiful on paper. And within the first few weeks of completed construction. But the wear and tear that acid rain and grass runners wreak on these ideals is often less than desireable.

The plaza for the MAL felt like an abandonded parking lot. A few, unoccupied concrete benches were the only thing filling the vacant space; they looked misplaced, as though the truck on the way to the neighborhood park had forgotten where it had left them. The buildings white exteriors were marred with greenish
streaks - eiher algae growth or acid rain stains. The fountain around the Sala das Artes had a faint organic smell wafting off of it. There were no trees, no shrubs, no foliage except the weeds growing at the bases of the benches and in the cracks between the enormous concrete slabs that formed the plaza. There was a passarela (walkway), an out of place grandiose curl of concrete, unused since the Phantom Tollbooth closed its doors.

Niemeyer, perhaps not unlike Marx, designed and planned his ideal buildings in a world without nature. On paper, arches stay white and plazas always have that Modern couple on heading towards a packed auditorium. In drawings, you have perspective on the building, on the space. In reality, you must confront these spaces as an individual, on two feet, consciously aware of every solitary instant that you cross a weed-edged plaza. Ironically, perhaps it's here that Marx's "unalienated" individuals would feel most at home.

Degas' Obsession - MASP II

2011-03-27T10:30:00.000-07:00

Edgar Degas was obsessed with the female form. This much was obvious just from the few works that they had from him at MASP. I would go further and say that more specifically, Edgar Degas was obsessed with the form of the female back.

Bending, leaning women fill Degas' frames, each one showing off a brilliant, muscular back. The focal point, they are often offset by heavy outlines, low cut ballerina leotards, or illuminated by bright colors. The faces of his subjects are often positioned away from the artist, with unfocused gazes or looking into the distance. Like all men with obsessions, he's not interested in the personailities of his subjects, but merely the object of his obsession: the various forms that a female back can take.

Some of his paintings do not show a woman's back, but her bosom. Though in these images the women are typically in the act of bending over or down, thrusting out their chests as they do. One could use these to question my hypothesis, claiming that he was just as obsessed with bosoms, as when a chest is thrust out in this manner it shows off these assets as well, so to speak. I acknowledge this interpretation, but would suggest that the manner in which the women are pushing out their bosoms and leaning down is, in fact, the best way to display a human back, adding muscle definition as you extend out the spinal column. It's a lot like bending over in a yoga sun saluation - you're extending and working out your back muscles by pushing your scapula forward and pulling your shoulder blades back. Degas paints women in this manner because it's merely another perspective of a woman's back - that from the front. Like a burlesque dancer that merely hints at what's under her corset, Degas' front facing subjects are seductive suggestions of what they would look like from behind.

So why ballerinas and bathing women? Because ballerinas and women in the act of bending over to wash are the few or only examples in Degas' time that you would have of women in the act of displaying their backs. Ballerinas, like modern yogis, bend and extend their backs, displaying them in leotards with low cut backs that would have been hard to find in other situations. Similarly, women who are seated and washing their feet are the best exposition of a woman's naked back.

No one at MASP seems to have figured this out - in their exhibition on Obsessão da Forma, his sculpture of woman bathing was positioned so that we could see her front bent over a wash basin: her detailed, perfectly scuplted back was facing away from the viewer, towards the center of the collection of sculptures.

What do you think?

The Art of Portraiture - Olhar e Ser Visto - MASP I (Or how you'll never want to have your picture taken ever again Or Facebook is Evil Infotoate)

2011-03-27T08:34:00.000-07:00

Tuesday is free day at the MASP (Museu de Arte de São Paulo). So I went.

The MASP building is impressive but compact, which makes sense for a building that's on Paulista, home to some of the skinniest office buildings I've ever seen. The building itself is a huge concrete block that rests on four large red concrete posts. Currently, the outside of the block is covered with a cloudscape, a work of art called Tramazul. The ground floor level is open, a plaza that at night serves home to several of the street-wanderers. Sundays, it's an antique market.

The museum itself has four actual floors, but only 3 of art exhibitions. The top two floors, that reside in the concrete block above the plaza, hold paintings, sculptures, and prints of the current permanent and temporary exhibitions. The top floor (2) holds the permanent exhibitions, currently Olhar e Ser Visto, Romanticismo, and Arte do Sagrado. The first floor (one up from street level) holds a tribute to Brazilian print art, Papeis Brasileiros. The first subterranean level holds a café, library, and gift shop. The second subterranean level: a por-kilo restaurant (must come back to try this out!) and the last exhibit in the museum: a collection of statues showing "Obsession with Form" (Obsessão da Forma).

Hands down favorite was definitely the exhibition on portraiture, Olhar e Ser Visto. In this exhibit, the curators had divided the portraits that they had on hand into several different categories, demonstrating the rise of portaits in the 13th century, mostly busts or full length photos of the wealthiest class of European cities. The exhibit then moves from these full length portraits with no background to, gasp, full length portraits with backgrounds and scenery. From there, the exhibit jumps forward to more modern portraits: two or three of Modigliani's women, a couple of Van Gogh's, Picasso's Athelete.

The idea of the entire exhibit was to demonstrate how art went from representing reality to representing an idea or an image. Using portraits to show this contrast was clever, but I disagree with the premise that the original portraits, from the 13th to 15th century, were necessarily attempting to "reflect reality" more or less than the portraits that they had on display by Picasso, Van Gogh, or Modigliani.

Based on my observations, the portraits from the 13th century only attempted to be an accurate representation of a person's face - more specifically their eyes, brow, nose, and perhaps mouth. Anything outside of these four key facial features was left to the discretion of the artist and/or patron who was paying for the picture. In other words, the only actual portion of the photo that was "depicting reality" was the face - it had to actually look like the person that it was attempting to replicate. But only their facial features - beyond the face was the realm of the imagination. This contrast was easily seen in many of the portraits: the brush strokes used for facial characteristics were small and concise. These parts of the portraits looked the most real, had the most life out of any of the canvas. The rest of the work of art was often painted in with larger brush strokes, unclear lines. Buttons that lack shine, hems painted on in broad strokes, bushes that fade away on the edges. The most obvious indication of a facial focus: necks bent at strange angles, noses and eyes that appear to float above and off of the face that they're supposedly attached to.

This same detail to facial features persisted throughout the paintings, regardless if they were modern or older. Let's call this the "Can you see me now?" game. In the older form of portriature, "Can you see me now?" was done in order to please the patrons - failure to accurately represent the facial features of your boss most likely would result in starvation and the end to a relatively short lived artistic career. In the modern age, "Can you see me now" became an attempt to depict a person through the lens of an artist - rather how badly can I distort a person and you still see that person? In other words, how far would reality bend before you lost all connection to reality entirely? Modigliani's portraits of women are impressive in this regard: even with the vacant eye expressions, and the childish coloring job that looks as though it could have been done by a two year old with crayons, you can still get a feeling for the subject's personality and attitude.

The portrait that best expresses this idea of "Can you see me now?", Modern Edition, was the Athelete by Picasso (see above). Following the tradition of older portraits, the face is the focal point in the painting - that is to say that the background and even the torso of the man have been neglected with respect to the detail of the strokes and the accuracy of representation. The face of the man, however, appears to be made steel planes and plates, fused together with human flesh - the first Terminator, perhaps? This fusion STILL MANAGES TO MAINTAIN the essence of the man himself: he's old, he's tired. This athelete has seen better days. Picasso has taken a man, distorted him with metal plates and cubist looks, but has still maintained the agony of age and the weathering of years on his face.

So what is a portrait? A piece of art modeled after a person that attempts to reflect their presence and personality, both as felt by themselves as by the people in the world around them. A portrait must be recognizable both to the subject and to those that are familiar with the subject. As such, portraits are fascinating revelations both of who we see ourselves as and how others perceive us.

Thinking beyond the portraits at MASP, my realization of what a portrait attempts to capture led me back to my current relationship with photographs of myself - I'm largely unhappy with them.

(CAUTION: If you're currently a fairly happy, non-introspective individual with a good relationship with your personal Facebook page and who likes to have their picture taken with and by friends, proceed with caution. The following might forever alter how you view yourself and your relationships with others.)

Cameras and photography bring an interesting angle into the question posited by the MASP curators: does art reflect reality or merely our interpretaion of it? By design, cameras can only reflect reality. They make impressions and record what actually happened: that facial expression would not exist in that photo if you at some point had not been making it. That happy grin, those angry eyes, that sleepy expression: all of them at some point flashed across your facial features.

So my discomfort with photos of myself is in fact a larger discomfort with the face that I present to the world. It's not the photos that I dislike but the self-portrait that comes back through them: I'm dissatisfied with the depiction of my personality, of my attitude, of the face that I give to others to see and perceive. So I've stopped taking as many photos of myself (though it's hard not to want to see, from time to time, what it is that I'm reflecting into reality. I'm curious by nature).

Though this discussion of obsession with photos of the self leads me to a deeper debate that I've been having with myself: how much of the expression and self that I show to a camera is a reflection of who I am in that moment, and what part of it is a reflection of my current relationship with, as a proxy, cameras and, by extension, myself? That is to say, knowing what I do about a camera's ability to display reality, to what extent to I show my loathing for that ability in my expressions that I give to a camera? Cameras make me nervous - I feel as though I must perform for them so that they will capture that which I wish to see myself as. I'm using them as a way to mold my understanding of myself, thus controlling and actively shaping how I define myself. It's like taking a badly written personality test - you don't end up finding out anything new about yourself but only a rough outline of what you want yourself to be like.

My problem with photographs is that I am unable to fake being what I want to be, at least for the camera.

Further mind-fuckage: for those of us who are not as deeply obsessed with their self-relationship as I am (when someone takes my picture, I'm largely focused on my future self that will be looking at the photo and attempting to represent for her the face that I think that she would most want to see in that situation, as opposed to being focused on the moment or on who's taking the picture), imagine what portraits tell us about the relationship between the person making the portrait and the person being represented.

There was an interesting notation on one of the portraits at MASP about the diversity of portraits, especially whether or not the subject was staring off into the distance or looking directly at the artist. Of course, part of this has to do with the person in the portrait: are they a person that tends to look others directly in the eyes, or someone that, on average, tends to avoid the eyes of others? Are they more introverted or extroverted, more of a dreamer or a practical person oriented person? Do they enjoy social interactions or do they avoid them?

But taken further, what kind of person is the artist? Is he or she someone that most people are used to looking at, the sort of person who draws attention from others and is comfortable with it? Are they used to calling attention to themselves?

And finally, what is the relationship between the artist and their subject? Is the subject able to relax around the person that is depicting them, are they comfortable looking at the artist in the face, are they willing to show who they are to the artist?

Now go look at your Facebook photos. Find the ones where you look the happiest, where you look the most relaxed. Who were you with? Who was taking the photo? How much of your expression, your revelation of who you are is affected by that other person? Now look at the photo's that you've taken of other people. Do they look relaxed and happy to see you? Are they looking you in the eye or looking away? Do they seem nervous or uncomfortable? How much of this is you and how much of it is them? Well, that's an easy question to answer: go look at their other Facebook photos. Are they always comfortable in photos? Who else makes them look the way that they look in the photos that you took togehter? What is their relationship like with that person?

So I'm shying away from cameras for the moment. I've turned off Facebook so that I no longer have access to that repository of photos of myself (all in various stages of understanding the power of a photo to reveal your personality! "Wow, look at this one from 200x, I was super happy then, just wait until I figured out what photographs can say about you" ... "Here it is! The first showing of that angry, suspicious expression, yup late 200x, just as I suspected...What a great 'Die Camera, Die' face!.. Man I was super unhappy at that party, look how much I wanted to be taken seriously...")

And thus, Facebook is Evil Infotoate.

Brilliant Misconceptions

2011-02-26T15:40:00.000-08:00

I had always thought that my brains were the ticket, the legs, the whole hog of the operation, that they would take me wherever I needed/wanted to go with. There was nothing that I needed to do - they would do it all. I was just along for the ride.

I realized today that my brains lack rocket fuel. There is nothing in and of intelligence itself that will TAKE you anywhere. Brilliance is merely a key that opens doors - it is nothing without the feet that bring you to the door, nor will it walk you through the door.

Life's rocket fuel is passion, desire, vision, creativity.

Power on. :)

Geography

2010-12-04T12:27:00.000-08:00

I often find myself at the top of some egotistical intellectual bluff, looking out upon the masses of humanity that (I imagine) inhabit the world. I often flatter myself that the position I have assumed is new, that I am a frontierswoman, as you could call it, enjoying for herself a new view, never seen before by the eyes of others. I want to call out what I see, describe it at length to the nearest passerby, a frenzy of exalted revelation.

It is in moments such as this that I find it helpful to think of it rather as a view that all have always known the existence of, that they were born with the view from this particular bluff in their eyes. They have then, no need to acknowledge, to triumph over, to exalt the existence of this view, of this bluff, because they have built their lives upon the expectation of its existence.

I'm just the fool who was born with shut eyes.

Destiny

2010-11-28T21:46:00.000-08:00

It was seven AM. Early by some standards, but late by others. Her alarm clock was going off - same as it had been in regular five minute intervals for the past hour and a half.

It was the first cold day of the fall season, late in September, early in the year for Texas. Destiny awoke with a gasp - the fresh air filling her lungs as her brain slowly latched onto consciousness. Papers spilled off her lap, Swedish fish wrappers, acquired freely from a walk to campus, twirled to the ground.

She reached over, smothering the squawks from her phone. Another five minutes of silence.

Something was different today. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, not yet. But certainly five more minutes of slumber would solve her unease.

...

Deep in slumber, Destiny suddenly, knew what was different. Destiny had thought, for as long as she could remember, that life was composed of all that you could hold onto. Like grasping at threads in a forest of ragged edged hems. Like attempting to hold onto all the water, at once, in the fountain at Littlefield. It was larger than your efforts, there was always more than could fit within her ten fingers (two thumbs, eight fingers, plus several square inchage of palm to be more precise). But if you wanted something, all Destiny would have to do is reach out and grasp it. Hold on for dear life, perhaps, but she had only to put her hands around it and it - life! - would be hers.

So many options can be daunting. Even so to someone with the name of Destiny - you would think that she would be more prepared for the eventual coming of life. Or at least have bigger, stronger hands.

But Destiny realized that life was not, in fact, all that you could grasp in your hands. It was, in fact, just (no more no less) that that would fit within her hands. In other words, life is not all the rocks that fall within your grasp, but only those that fit, snugly, in your palm.

...

Destiny awoke to the sound of alarms. Groggily, she came to slowly. Students were fleeing to the elevators, chaos reigned near the stairs. It was all happening slowly, behind her, above her, some different plane entirely. Her plane was separate - the corner of the library, where she usually sat so she could watch the sun come up over the capital. Austin was never as beautiful as when orange sunlight broke over the golden dome. As it did every fall morning. Do we call them miracles if they happen on a schedule?

By the time Destiny had come out of her sleepy reprieve, the sixth floor of the PCL was empty. Deserted, but noisy. There were sirens blaring out non-sense. Something about armed gunmen and lock downs. Just another piece of life to be grasped onto - it slipped away.

A man appeared in front of her. Or rather, a boy dressed as a man appeared in front of her. Ski mask in one hand, AK-47 in the other.

His eyes were fearsome, angry, loathing, scared. At first glance. At second glance, he locked eyes with her. With Destiny. And something in his face changed. It went from scared and angry, to calm, peaceful. It was like watching a hand grasping at a ledge, suddenly lose its grip and grasp nothing but air.

He knew, in that moment, what his destiny was.

...

Destiny tried to close her eyes, but the image of blood splattering against the books, catching the first rays of the fall sun, would stay with her forever. As she turned, lifting her hand to protect her face from the splash, a few flecks of blood landed, calmly, without fanfare, in her palm.

fraudulent

2010-09-06T08:05:00.000-07:00

we spend, you and i, so much time trying to define who we could be if we were x, y, z. what if we spoke with that accent, you know, the real southern belle one that you wear when you're really trying to say that you're ready for anything. or that accent you picked up during those few months that you were in boston, the one that you use when you want to get away with being a real jerk without anyone questioning your authority on the subject of assholery. and let's not forget your falsetto british play-mate deep throaty ACT-scent that you put on when you're really just trying to say that you're angry that i haven't paid attention to a word that you said.

you know, the american education system really is in need of reform. i heard you start the subject, but goodness gracious have you seen my schedule for tuesday? sheer idiocy.

you know that i'm just as transparent as you. you wear your accents (the brits really know how to breathe words, that's for certain) the same way that i try on costumes down on south congress. sometimes i wear skinny jeans and baggy plaid and wander in and out of record stores just to see how long i can keep up the façade.

the world's got a secret, you know. no, i can't tell you about it. it'd ruin you. you put so much stock into those tirades of yours, so much importance in your ability to drop your vocal register into your chest at will, to become 'charming' in an exhale.

well alright. it's just that, in all the record stores i've been in, no one's once questioned my presence. nope, not once. sometimes i even let the costume slip a bit, try and give them a hint as to what's really going on underneath. i wear the wrong kind of shoes, you know those big fugly skater shoes whose tongues are actually quite useful for staying on your board (or so i've been reassured). use the glasses i normally save for the bookstore routine.

you put too much faith in other people's curiosity. there. now you know. alright so perhaps my costumes aren't as obvious as your "accents". or perhaps you're just better at feigning interesting. still, admit it, the reaction you get never meets your expectations. excessive expectations - we're both guilty, as expected.

no, i don't think you're a fool. no, really, your accents are quite good when you're not self conscious about them. when you're not aware of the role that you're playing, when you just are. when it's not really just a façade, but when you too believe that you're a latin american salsa dancer who's come to the states in search of her long lost brother in law that shot your sister and ran away with the maid.

(i hate you too)

frauds? who said anything about defrauding someone else? an act of fraud requires injury of another, you have to gain an advantage through your deception for it to qualify. classification, actual dictionary definition, is important. i'm surprised i have to tell you this.

how else would we know what anyone is for certain?

myths, circa 2010

2010-09-05T19:17:00.000-07:00

A lot of scientific epistemology or historiography focus on the methodology of discovery, the paradigm shifts of humans and the viability and/or rationality for accepting such shifts - and the varying conclusions as the whether or not we were correct to accept these (and what proof we should demand in the future for the acceptance of scientific 'theories').

All of this can be reduced back to the impact of "myth" on our understanding of the world - the majority of the populace believes what they're told.

If we're told that apples fall because God commanded it; if we're told that it's because of some 'force'(gravitational) - none of this materially changes what we've experienced or what our experiences have conditioned us to expect - apples fall to the ground. All that scientific discourse has done, at least in the mundane sense, is rob us of our ability to appreciate experiences as unique and 'mystical'and given them, instead, the cold skepticism of Rationality.

Thus we are all skeptics. But to what end?

clarice

2010-09-05T18:59:00.000-07:00

Clarice Lispector, I am certain, did not write for an audience. Although she aimed at clarity, at expressing thoughts coherently (at times) the process of writing was for her a meditation, a journey to discovery of meaning, of language, of emotion. She wrote to dispel thoughts, cast them out like ugly demons so that the world could too understand them; or rather that through the world's lens she could see them more clearly. Her audience was the mystery of herself - that hidden piece that she did not understand, that came to her through the written word. Her stories, her characters - they're nothing more than second skins, other lives she might have led, her trying on different identities, different hats or Gods or constructions of herself - it's hard to live in the real world when you're constantly desiring some other life - more sordid, more lucid, more real than that which you already inhibit. She longed for the mystery that life and existence held out as possible - the animalistic, the unconscious - but that which a mundane life forced her to wear. So she wrote, she escaped, she hid on self-journeys in her loneliness and solitude and safety of the journey that was all her own.

why i suck at writing papers

2010-09-05T18:03:00.000-07:00

my govt 312L professor and i have been at odds over my ability to write a thesis statement. admittedly, i'm not the best writer to ever poise pen over paper, but i feel as though my alleged 'inability' to sum up what all i'm going to be saying in one sentence should not be a determining factor in my success or failure to convey a point or answer a question.

who started this thesis statement bs anyways? sure, writing a thesis statement gives a defined structure to your paper, illustrates that you've carefully thought out where you're going and assures, to an extent, that the professor can tell whether or not you've reread your essay. but is a thesis statement necessary to ensure the conveyance of your thoughts?

i like to think of my style as more editorial. i'm a story teller, and what good bard gives away the outline of his story at the beginning. they do call the first paragraph the 'introduction' after all - shouldn't this section be saved for the 'once upon a time' - setting, characters, and background? or maybe it's a flashback paper, where you start in the middle of the action and then flashback midway to some discussion that predates your own, only to continue onward in a swashbuckling fashion to the riotous conclusion where AIDS can be cured! and cancer stopped in its tracks! and peace for the world is around the corner!

let's be honest, a conclusion that is little more than a rehashed version of your thesis is hardly worthy of the title. 'conclusion'- you've got to save your good, solid points for that baby. it's the bang at the end of the long courtship, the holy revelation at the end of the pilgrimage. you, the reader, have wound through the twists of logic and the side discussions, to reach it, the grand finale - the final so WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN at the END of the paper. not the beginning.

so, dear GOV 312L professor, please understand that my style of writing is different. what i'm asking you to sacrifice in immediate clarity and understanding i promise to make up to you in excitement and suspense. that feeling of confusion and uncertainty - that's all just a part of the effect. it's the mark of a successful paper - not, in fact, a lack of scholarship or clarity. you've got to work for my meaning - but that just makes it all the more exciting, if you, get what i mean.

why i love jsm

2010-08-31T15:41:00.000-07:00

- he's got a thing for the ladies' rights
- true, justified belief in the good of mankind
- he suffered for suffrage
- he's an expert with utility
- he was a truly enlightened enlightentist - esp after his depressive rut

oh jsm, you are the greater good....- Harriet Taylor

Humans repeat themselves

2010-08-09T21:19:00.001-07:00

It's true. We're not as original as we like to think that we are. This fact pursues me constantly, often with debilitating effects.

Understanding that it is something that I am constantly trying to get away from, it should come as no surprise that I saw the theme of repetition in Snow Crash. (Yes, I finally got around to reading it. What one 5 hour search of every bookstore in the Atlanta Airport was unable to satisfy was finally encountered hundreds of miles away in an Arkansas library.)

The 'discovery', however, that I have made about human beings is that we are utterly and inescapably captivated by new technologies. The creation of a new form of expressing or transmitting information is particularly susceptible to inspire new forms of ridiculousness and quasi-religious devotion.

We, humans, believe that knowledge is power. We, as humans, are seduced by anything powerful (or apparently powerful). Therefore, it makes sense that we would be seduced by the means of transmitting information.

What I'm (slowly and grandiosely) getting to, is that the creation of the written language and the religious devotion and veneration that the written alphabet created in humans (in the alphabet's early creation, that is) can be paralleled with our current fascination with the internet and the "collective consciousness" that search engines produce.

What's Snow Crash have to do with any of this? Snow Crash centers on the Sumerians, a culture (tribe, clan?) of people from the BCs that created one of the first alphabets. It wasn't the alphabest, but they managed to communicate any sort of information via clay tablets.

But they didn't just write things down: they wrote on the bricks they used to build, they wrote down incantations that they believed had mystical powers - they believed that words, especially the written word, had some magical power. That words were able to communicate certain things to the brain and to reach some place that other means of conversation (I'm guessing the visual or auditory sort?) were not able.

Couple this Sumerian alphabet-worship with our current fascination with Google or anything "computer intelligent", and my point begins to become clear. (Goodness, i"m bad at laying things out. They should all just be self evident!)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/09/opinion/09lanier.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

What does Sumerian obsession with alphabest and our current day obsession with social media and the hivemind have to do with each other? Nothing, other than the fact that they're merely humans doing what we always do - finding awe in the power of knowledge and our tendency to edify and deify that knowledge just for knowledge's sake.

Weird. Slightly obvious. Still cool.

nuts!

2010-07-21T19:56:00.001-07:00

deciding what to do post graduation suddenly has become very passé. everyone else has already done it, already dealt with it, is onto IT already. it makes my own passing and passage feel much less watched. i like it. it's nice to feel as though my world belongs to me. and yet, the responsibility is almost crushing!

nuts. are hard as rocks. especially the one i'm stuck up against - stuck between a brazil nut and a hard place. the hard place would be that place that i end up after graduation because i didn't think that going to brazil again would be good for my health. (mental or physical or whatever other sort of health you can possibly list (why is it that lists always need three?)) the brazil nut would stand for argentina.

it would stand for argentina, if argentina were the name of brasil. but it's not, so it doesn't. instead it stands for brasil.

i've made a promise to return in 2011. doing anything else will be nothing more than the result of a particularly nasty function. inverse arcsins and tangentiables included, free of charge. the decision is not 'go to brasil or do not go to brasil' - the question is do i break a promise or do i keep one? do i do what i want to do because i want to do it, or do i not do it because i want to do it?

it's an equation without an equals sign - no hope of it balancing out. appositive or the anegative - it's all a-revolution around the same nutty yellow-green sun. and so i hate it unequivocally for feeling so pressured by the gravity of the situation.

do you not understand the gravity of the situation! i'm a function of my past, i'm stuck in a dream, i'm stuck in a memory -- i'm stuck in self-denial.

nuts! yourself is the hardest thing to accept.

populism

2010-07-12T12:50:00.000-07:00

marilyn was what she called herself. others called her monroe. she didn't look a thing in the world like her namesake: dark black hair, with even darker skin. she cut her hair into a bob when she was sixteen. it was a cheap cut, blunt on the edges. blunt, too, were the remarks it received. they were well deserved. with the triangle top, she looked a lot like an alien creature, trying to phone home using a portable head antennae.

what's interesting about marilyn? why is she remarkable? what constituted herself special enough to have someone stop and remark upon her life?

nothing. there was nothing remarkable about marilyn. she worked from seven thirty to five at the corner store. she sold apples and tampons and beef jerky and Vault(C) energy drinks! to the customers that came in after noon. when there was no traffic, she just sat in the corner and did nothing. she'd stare out the window and watch the cars drive by, imagining the lives of the people inside them.

she felt watched. always. the same way that she watched the cars and the lives outside her window, she was eternally conscious of being the potential object of attention to someone else. monroe had decided, at the age of thirteen, that her life did not belong to her. it belonged to all of those with whom she would come in contact in her life. her life was of and for the people.

amor criminoso

2010-06-28T09:14:00.000-07:00

we tell our children lies to protect their innocence.
we lost our own innocence in discovering the nature of a lie.
the crime of love, then, is our own mortality.

Ela e Ela

2010-06-08T22:00:00.000-07:00

As vezes ela se esqueceu em frente do televisão e andou na direcção da piscina. Quando ela não estava, se sentiu o sabor de pepinos, sem sal. Quando ela ficou em frente do televisão, assistindo os jogos de produtores de televisão, comeu pepinos com limão.

Ela queria nadar numa piscina cheia de pepinos e pimentos. Ela gostava de coisas picante. Tinha quemado sua lingua tantas vezes na cafézinho da manhã que não sentiu nada mais que um cherio de picante agora. Ela gostava de cheiros.

Ela adorava o cheiro de plástico velho. Sua sofá era de plástico velho. Sentada em frente da televisão, cheriou o plástico e se sentiu completa.

Ela odeia estar molhada. Gostava de nadar na piscina. Não gostava do momento de mudança entre seca e molhada. O anterior e o posterior colocado tão vividos na memória do pele lhe deixava com nojo. Era, sempre, um nojo de ser viva, de ser um sere que tem memórias.

A memória de um peixe-dourado só dura três segundos. (Os cientistas lembram tudo.)

Ela nadava como um peixe sem aletas. Quando ela nadava, usava um maiô velho. Era azul como azuleiros. Frágil como um azuleiro também. Não o usava em frente do televisão; tinha medo que os diretores de shows de realidade lhe espiariam e ficariam ahorrizados. Ela não entendia que os lentes das máquinas só tem um lado.

Peixes-dourados tem duas lentes, um para cada olho.

Rosa

2010-05-14T10:10:00.000-07:00

Rosa liked to write. Particularly articles for her neighborhood newsletter. Rosa had a secret though. She also liked to forget. Writing was her escape, her way to hide that she forgot. In order to write, you must pretend to know. Rosa liked to forget that she wrote. She also liked to forget that her name was Rosa. When she forgot that her name was Rosa, her name was Sam. When Rosa's name was Sam, she wore trousers. There was nothing wrong with Rosa, nothing to write home about either. When she remembered that she was Rose, she wore floral. Dresses, skirts, bermuda shorts. Big prints and small. She really liked the large prints, especially the ones by Georgia O'Keefe. Rosa didn't forget about floral prints. Not if she could help it.

And she could help it. As far as she could remember, that is. Rosa knew that she liked to forget, but merely liking a thing doesn't make it actually happen. Not always, that is. Rosa just really rather appreciated it when thoughts would disappear. She called them her shrinking violets - they'd turn purple and then grow unnoticeable.

Perhaps the reason Rosa liked forgetting so much was because she herself was rather unforgettable. She was six foot two, size twelve feet. She usually wore size elevens - it helped her remember what big feet felt like. When she wrote her articles for the city newspaper, she often wrote by hand. The size of her hand surprised her sometimes, most of all when she remembered it was hers. Forgetting, she would remember everytime she realized that the blue pen in the tawny hand was writing at her whim, has its distinct disadvantages. She had learned to avoid such shocks of unexpected recognition - she used large pens. When she remembered to.

Ros'as secret hobby had its downsides. Other people didn't share her secret. If Rosa had been more forgettable, she might not have had her secret hobby either.

Rose liked plaid. Tartan, Burberry. Especially the McEar family clan plaid. She wore it on her socks, almost everyday. It looked swell under her trousers. Rosa took pictures, for the school yearbook. She had a real sweet camera, an SRL. A Canon, last year's model. I think. She liked to wear brown Oxfords under her Tartan plaid socks. When she wore Oxfords her name was Ben.

Or was it Beatrice?

Book Review: Predictably Irrational

2010-05-10T00:48:00.000-07:00

Definitely a must read for anyone interested in buying a house, starting a bank, creating a pricing scheme for a product set, or just understanding the idiocy of our current economic dogma. Dan Ariely explains in everyday (if not too everyday sometimes) language how and why we as consumers are NOT in fact rational consumers that obey Adam Smith's invisible hand, but rather irrational beings that merely like to think that we are logical. The rational model of economics is, really, nothing more than an optimists view of reality: the actual rules of reality, Ariely shows, are a far cry from what we would have ourselves believe them to be.

Taking the steps to become a savvy consumer begins with reading this book, not to mention taking a few extra steps towards learning how to understand yourself. Most of his points will have you nodding along in agreement, and you'll wonder why this wasn't something you could have written yourself. In fact, as with most social science, it sometimes takes someone with a PhD to prove that which we already know through our own intuition.

Although this book definitely fits into my definition of pop psychology, there are several very important gems for understanding ourselves and our complex relationship to money and expectations that is important for becoming a more savvy consumer. Though, the majority of the book's points could have been condensed into a 30 to 50 page pamphlet; the $30 300+ page monstrosity that it is in current form is merely a testament to the current tendency in the publishing industry to print large and overcharge.

Recommendation: Borrow or Kindle it. My copy is definitely up for grabs.

-SPOILER-
The only example of Ariely's that I would disagree with is his close examination of pricing and valuing mechanisms with an experiment on Duke basketball tickets. While I do agree with his conclusion that owners tend to over-price their belongings, his experiment was inherently flawed. By using a group of students that had both "worked" to earn tickets, some randomly who received them, some who didn't. Those who received tickets valued them 20 times over those who did not. Ariely uses this as an example for how those who possess objects tend to overvalue them without taking into account the following: students who received tickets and were putting them up for sale wanted to be compensated for their entire involvement in getting the ticket: the ticket wasn't just for the game, but for the entire ordeal that they went through to get the ticket. On the other hand, the students that went through the same ordeal but that didn't receive the tickets and were asked how much they would pay for them; they were being asked to pay for the tickets in addition to the work they already invested in waiting for the ticket. In essence, they were being asked what more they would invest for a ticket, whereas the group that received the tickets were being asked how much they valued all of the investment that they already put in. An unfair question and an interesting look at how people value luck and work, but not a very clear cut comparison for owners versus non-owners.

If Ifs Were Skiffs, We'd All Be Afloat

2010-05-04T01:20:00.000-07:00

If i had a flavor, I would be dulce-amarga. With a hint of earl grey. And a dash of irresistible. If I had my headphones, I would be listening to DJ Shadow - Organ Donor. If I was an animal, I'd be an albatross. Or a grackle. If I could be anyone, I'd be Davy. If I could be a day, i'd be mid-October cloudy skies. No rain, just wind. Or a mid-July Gulf Coast thunderstorm. Rolling in, roiling sky, soaking earth, shattering eardrums. They smell good. I hope Arkansas smells that good.

Float on.

Found on Facebook

2010-04-28T16:01:00.000-07:00

Found this as a comment on a photo in the album Wall Photos from Facebook's official Facebook page.

Arte Solino HOLA, SOY GABRIEL SOLINO, Y QUISIERA SABER POR QUÉ ME CERRARON MI CUENTA SI YO NO LA UTILICÉ DE MANERA INDEBIDA.
AL CONTRARIO, LA UTILICÉ SOLO PARA TENER CONTACTOS CON AMIGOS Y CONOCIDOS Y MANTUVE SIEMPRE LOS TERMINOS QUE
LA EMPRESA REQUIERE. DESEARÍA QUE ME RESPONDAN Y TAMBIÉN SABER SI ESPOSIBLE RECUPERAR MI CUENTA, DADO QUE REITERO
NO VEO QUE YO LA HAYA UTILIZADO INDEBIDAMENTE. Y SI ES UN PROBLEMA DE SUPLANTACIÓN DE IDENTIDAD, VIRUS O ALGO SIMILAR,
VER SI SE PUEDE SOLUCIONAR. MUCHAS GRACIAS... GABRIEL SOLINO

HELLO, I AM GABRIEL SOLINO, AND IT(HE,SHE) WANTED TO KNOW WHY THEY CLOSED MY ACCOUNT(BILL) IF I DID NOT USE IT IN AN UNDUE WAY.
ON THE CONTRARY, I USED IT ONLY TO HAVE CONTACTS WITH FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES AND SUPPORTED ALWAYS THE TERMS(ENDS) THAT
THE COMPANY NEEDS. HE(SHE) WOULD WISH TO ANSWER ME AND ALSO TO KNOW IF ESPOSIBLE TO RECOVER MY ACCOUNT(BILL), PROVIDED THAT I REPEAT
I DO NOT SEE THAT I HAVE USED UNDULY. And IF IT IS A PROBLEM OF SUPPLANTING IDENTITY, VIRUS OR SOMETHING SIMILAR,
TO SEE IF IT IS POSSIBLE TO SOLVE. THANK YOU VERY MUCH... GABRIEL SOLINO

Hmm. What are your digital rights? (I'm not just for your right handed digits.) Who are the Facebook police? The MySpace Police? The Google Police? Where are their courts? Who is the judge?

While Researching Violence for Portuguese Class...

2010-04-27T02:56:00.000-07:00

Article here: http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/stable/pdfplus/3791797.pdf?cookieSet=1 (might require UTEID).

While understanding the violence-sex/gender-power construct is important, I would say that most readers would find the explanation self evident (although it is nice to have it spelled out so clearly. And with empirical evidence to boot!). For me, the most novel information is the call for a multi-disciplinary investigation of these power dynamics:

"Along with breadth of experience, we need breadth of method. ... content analysis of archival documents, personality research surveys, theoretical models of international relations, laboratory studies, and literary scholarship."

To paraphrase: Knowledge silos and useless hypothesizing, begone! Let's be proactive and find some real interesting solutions to these power constructs!

Also interesting: Maturity and Wisdom as the solution to the Power Complex. Yet again, Siddhartha's lessons surface at another juncture. All we need to know we is already contained within our cultural lore - why did we ever stop believing fairy tales?

Cars Don't Sleep

2010-04-25T03:22:00.000-07:00

Strange but true. Cars don't sleep. Cars don't have beds. There is no place that a car can go at night. They sit wherever we leave them, waiting until we have slept, we have rested, we have need of them again.

Obviously self evident, I merely find it remarkable in that cars are our representation of our selves in the world. Twenty-four seven. HOWEVER, I am usually only consciously aware of my car when I am in it, when I am using it. Even then, I cannot see myself in my car, I rarely to never ride in my car as a passenger: my car is my representative to the world of travel, to all the anonymous others that I come in contact with during my commutes, my car is what I AM on the road, how I am judged, how I interact with others.

Thus I find it strange that this BEING, this OTHER SELF exists, and continues to exist even when I am not consciously aware of its existence.

In contrast to the un-conscious existence of the self-representation of a car, consider the conscious self-representation of a Facebook profile: you are aware of other beings coming into contact with your Facebook representation at any moment of the day. You are aware that your digital self can be seen and accessed by a (depending on privacy settings (or where you parked!)) varying groups of anonymous others. This is not disconcerting.

We know that Facebook is sleepless. We are concerned with it on a more perpetual basis. Cars, cars however are usually within our consciousness when we are using them.

But they don't sleep. They always exist. Now admittedly, they aren't as linkable to ourselves when we're not in them as digital selves are. But it's still weird to think that I've got a piece of myself that is so physically available and tangible on such a constant basis.

I think that this blog post is tangible proof of my need to stop reading critical feminist & literary theory and head to sleep myself. Night Self. Night Car. Night Digital Self-Representations. Until waking. :)

Response to Habermas (via Fish)

2010-04-19T22:06:00.000-07:00

Sadly, I could not comment on this article via the NYT website because I read it too late. Thank goodness for blogs though!

Reading through reader's responses to Habermas' arguments, it appears that a wide variety of readers would argue against Habermas' proposition that reason alone does not give adequate substance for motivations and goals.

I would merely like to remark that I believe Habermas is speaking from a larger, societal based ideal of goals and motivations, and that on a whole the readership's response has been from a merely personal perspective.

There is no greater uniter of human drive than religion and faith. Reason alone can rarely drive us to unite to a single cause. The idea that each of us having individual motivation and goals derived from reason is not invalid, however it has been demonstrated that the leap from the individual to the collective is very vast and difficult. Especially in an environment (aka the US current sociopolitical discourse) where tolerance and political correctness and apparent equity remain as the reigning modus operandi. In such an 'environment' (or culture, I suppose) to accept a single goal or motivation for an entire population would require the acknowledgement of possible negation of others' goals: something that would not be acceptable. Even if every single member in the 'room', so to speak, were to privately be motivated by, for example, the desire to fully understand other people, the reluctance of individuals to impose a personal thought or belief onto the common 'tolerant' understanding would keep these individuals from revealing or attempting to persuade the collective of the rationality or validity of their position. Even if admitted and agreed upon in corners of the room, the prevailing mindset would prevent anyone from putting forth such a 'radical' idea. Minorities have a way of silencing themselves.

I'm not explaining this as well as my communication text book does. The point is that Habermas' conclusion that reason lacks the ability to unite nations of people under collective goals and motivations is valid. Reader comments to the contrary merely demonstrate that you cannot necessarily refute generalized generalizations from personal experience alone.

Rationalists - 1; Empiricists - 0

Ruby Slippers

2010-04-18T19:07:00.000-07:00

I can't stop thinking about the shoes I wore on my tour of a Brazilian meat packing plant. Black flats, woven black leather that was slowly giving up, releasing its weave. You could make an argument that, perhaps, the blue plastic booties, showercaps for your feet, were more important in this instance than shoes, in the sense that they kept the actual blood and slime of death from soiling my shoes. But it was the shoes themselves and their cardboard-thin soles that I remember, fondly. Hiding my feet from the horrors through which they trod, not quite thick enough to quite block out sensation entirely. The tiles were uneven. And freezing, like the walls where blood and bone particulates crystallized, the same gruesome texture beneath my feet.

A few weeks later the weaving gave out entirely. They refused the bronzed-staples half-measure and the last ditch superglue attempt. Enough, they said.

I imagine them in a Brazilian trash-heap, waiting patiently in their ignorance (volto? sei lá), casting off a reddish-gold hue in the summer heat. There is no place like home.

Solitário de Amor: Reflexiones sobre la critica de Gossy

2010-04-10T09:52:00.000-07:00

Escrito en respuesta de una discussión de classe sobre el libro de Cristina Peri Rossi, Solitario de Amor:

Tenía un pensamiento después de la classe de jueves. Tengo una otra respuesta a la sugestión de Sra. Gossy, specificamente a la idéa que el narrador es un "butch-femme".

Las pruebas de Sra. Gossy son la falta de una erección, de un orgasmo (del narrador), de un eyeculación, y de un bigote, rasgos de un sere masculino. Admito que Sra. Gossy tiene razón: el cuento le falta estas pruebas de masculinidad. Pero ella está equivocada con su conclusión.

La falta de rasgos de masculinidad, en mi opinión, son un aspecto de ser una obra erótica escrita por un mujer. Como mujer, ella no tenía experiencia con estes aspectos de ser hombre, entonces los dejó fuera del cuento. Ella, como lésbica, entendería el aspecto de eroticismo por la mujer, y entonce lo representó con una claridad que resuena con sus lectores masculinos.

Además, en la escena donde el narrador se presentó al ex-marido de Aída, el narrador provoca a Hugo responder para defender su identidad masculina: "Me gusta de mujeres". Es decir, Hugo, tener no entendido bien el propósito del narrador en presentarse a él, quería que el narrador supiera que Hugo no es gay, ni interessado por hombres. Esta reacción de Hugo nos mostra que el narrador, en la mente de la autora, era un hombre.

Observación: La crítica de una obra literária ha passado de las formas y símbolos de la obra al análisis psicológico del autor (ou autora). Es decir, para mejor entender la obra, tenemos que entender también la vida y las experiencias del escritor. En este sentido, la obra de Rossi - una mujer escribiendo de la perspectiva de un hombre - es una mirada interesante al eroticismo desde la perspectiva, a pesar de que seja lésbica, feminina.

Innovation in Language and the Implication of Data Structures in Digital Communications

2010-03-26T16:47:00.000-07:00

Deconstruction and creation of language is important to our ability to create new forms and ideas of thought. the rise of a codified, regulated standard for language, while increasingly facilitating the transmission of pre-codified (ie agreed upon) messages, does nothing but stifle the innovation of new forms of thought and expressions of meaning.

Language was, first and foremost, a verbal mechanism designed to transmit thought. Codification and standardization are necessary (and inherent) to the creation of a language, in that it must be understood across a normative common to all speakers. However, in order for new ideas to be expressed (outside of the normative common, as a manner of expanding this so called 'norm') a language must be flexible enough to encompass the creation of new words and turns of phrase.

It should be possible, therefore, to trace innovation through language and the emergence of terms associated with a new concept. One such example of this would be the rise of the term Passive - Aggressive as an aspect of self-consciousness and self-identification (or identification in general of others) via the use of the term. Previous to the coinage of such a phrase, a person would not be able to express the concept or idea of being "passive-aggressive" because such a concept did not exist, neither in our vocabulary nor in our social collective of "norms" (accepting the definition of a language being a verbal and written codification of normatized collective thought). Passive-aggression as an interpretation of human behavior is thus the innovation of psychology, adapted and transmitted through language, and finally used contextually to shape our personal and collective understanding of ourselves and each other.

I should probably note that my use of the words "passive-aggressive", is in and of itself an interpretation of the idea. In this discussion, I am more referring to the colloquial use of the word to describe a person or the actions of a person, usually in reference to something that this person has done or what how they are thinking towards another. In all actuality, I have little to no idea how the term originated (Wikipedia tells me that it was coined in or around the 1950s), but am merely reporting back from my experiences with the word, both personally as I have applied to to myself and through relations of others to convey the idea or thought of how another person defines their own actions. To stretch to the realms of ethonography, I would relate the story of sometime during my freshman or sophomore year in college (by years, not hours), when I first came across the term. A friend used it to describe the way that she interacted with others, in that she was not very good at being able to be openly aggressive towards others, but instead allowed a sort of repressed anger to be expressed not through physical or verbal means, but instead via subversive actions meant to humiliate or in some other manner humiliate the object of this "passive" aggression. Since this explanation, I did no personal research on the term, but have since been personally responsible for propagating this concept using the term as I have such understood it.

Without the adoption of a term to illustrate this phenomenon (the act of being or feeling passive aggressive), we (a collective here meaning the English speaking population) would not have the tools necessary to define or describe this particular aspect of action or thought.

Examples of how language innovation can lead to a new understanding or identification aside, an interesting application of this understanding of the flexibility of language can be drawn to the transmission and use of data structures in the digital realm. Specifically, early data structures (specifically HTML), had problems with their flexibility because of the vast amount of codification (or specifications... I think technically these are called RFC or Requests For Comments and are nothing more than a "grammar book" of an internet 'language' or standard for a particular method of expression. In the case of HTML, this is an 'expression' of web pages) required in order to express or pass new information.

I feel that a brief explanation of the entire ML or "markup language" is in order. In a ML, concepts are digitally understood (digitally here meaning by a machine and not human recipient) via the use of "tags", a demarcation surrounding a body of text. The language is entirely text based, with these tags marking how each piece or body of text should be interpreted. For example, BOLD would create a bolded piece of text. In fact, just in the attempt to create an example, my word has been bolded thanks to the machine reader. Here's a spaced out attempt (hark! digital subterfuge!) < b >BOLD< / b >.

HTML was wildly and widely accepted and is still the defacto language for creating and sharing content via the 'webpage' format. However, the use of HTML for the transmission of other types and forms of language was and is impeded by the strict codification required to express changes. If I created a new way of highlighting text, for example, one that was more impactful and better conveyed my message than a simple bolding, I would need to also create a new set of tags that could then be used to surround the text that I wanted to appear with this new "highlight" method. Of course, as in other languages in both the digital and spoken world, it's possible to patch together various means to highlight words, however, there is no simple and straightforward tag that could be used to do so. The language is not flexible enough to allow this.

Enter XML, or eXtensible Markup Language. Now, admittedly, I would not profess to being proficient at the use and exact 'data structures' that XML schema and the like employ, however, my understanding of them is that XML has a flexible schema that allows you to create and publish a new language "norm" any time that you want. Instead of having to change the well codified and vetted "norm" that governs HTML, you only have to change your own personal standard. New tags can be created at whim, innovation is allowed to flourish throughout the internets!

I'm leaving this discussion for now, but not without giving mention to the fact that XML has, of course, given rise to new "languages" that used by various industries and organizations on the internet in order to share data by a common standard, where tags are standardized for a given set of information, for example airline flight information. Thus a airline can publish information digitally that can be read and retrieved by various online ticket search engines, travel agents, competing flights, their own internal systems, etc. But the sheer flexibility (by variable tagging and nesting, which was not mentioned in this post) of XML has allowed for it to become the "lingua franca" of machine to machine communication.

Advice from a friend

2010-03-22T21:21:00.000-07:00

biggest advice: give and expect nothing in return, reciprocate joy at meeting people, share anecdotes and experiences not generalities, go nuts pull up your sleeves and learn something.

sexual parity, Tucker Max and the deconstruction of the social myth

2010-03-05T23:03:00.000-08:00

i have recently become mildly obsessed with gender roles and sexuality. my favorite book to date on the issue: tucker max's i hope they serve beer in hell. definitely a great first-hand account of the male perspective of sexual relationships in the twenty first century.

some explanation of the tucker max character is in order. tucker max bangs chicks. tucker max does not bang the most beautiful chicks (or usually not, from what i can tell). tucker max tries, at all costs, to avoid 'ugly' chicks. tucker max gets drunk a lot. tucker max is known by his friends for his comedic aptitude, typically which is created by being the loudest, most aggressive person involved in a conversation. or yelling match, take your pick. tucker max considers himself to pertain to the top 5% of intellectuals. in the book, no exact numbers are given, but tucker max thinks that tucker max is one smart cookie. (note: this commentary on tucker max's intellectual prowess is not intended to make a judgement or assessment of the actual intellect of tucker max, in fact i would argue that actual intellect is of far less import than the perception of our own intelligence that we hold. merely, i hope only to illustrate the 'mental model', so to speak, of the Mr. Max persona, specifically as he views himself.) from what i can gather, tucker max has a retinue of girls who consider him to be available for 'sexual' adventures whenever.

tucker max would call himself a macho. mysogynist, i don't know. nor do i really care. point is, tucker max is a male who enjoys sex with women.

so it's funny, when he comes to the realization at one point that one of the girls from his regular 'retinue' (my word, not his), could in fact be doing the same thing he does with girls. what does he do when discovers the potential for double dealing with women? what tucker max does: gets drunk. but the drunk mess that tucker max describes in this passage is not the tucker max of reckless abandon, but a man who is struggling to deal with the implications of gender equity. women may use men as much as they use us. it's a fair trade. and this realization, for tucker max, renders him incapable of enjoying it. to quote the man himself: "My worldview was immediately and permanently altered. It was like the first time you turn on a black light in a hotel room and see cum stains covering every surface: for better or for worse, your world is never the same."

this experience officially, from my analysis, marks the creation a jaded being. meaning, specifically, that the pleasure and excitement tucker found in conquering the unknown women he met in bars became less of a pleasure and more of a self-serving habit. not that his previous actions were not in the least self-serving, but they weren't a habit. they were an adventure, a tryst. "[W]omen were doing the same thing to me that I was doing to them, except I didn't even know they were doing it. For the entirety of my life up to that point I thought I had the upper hand, that I was the player and not the playee when in fact, I was possibly just another chump. The illusion of control was shattered." Knowing that he was just in actor in a game, being acted upon as well as acting upon others, took away the mystery of the hunt.

feminine equality destroys the myth of the chase. and as tucker max can attest to, the loss of that "illusion of control" is devastating to the male psyche, at least in matters of sexual games.

is there a road out of this world of equity that is equitable? can we reinstate mystery without reinstating gender roles? were gender roles ever such a thing to be banished in the first place, or was it necessary to deconstruct them before we could have mutual respect at a societal level? or is what tucker max experienced something that every man and woman will eventually have to come to accept?

tucker doesn't seem to think that it should. in the post script to his realization, he urges his fellow male readers not to dwell on this. "Don't think about this for too long fellas. ... Just move on." Not that Tucker can return to his innocence, but he wishes that he can bury it under the rug. [One could argue with Tucker as to the wisdom of sharing this revelation with his readers (why destroy the illusion of others?), but concealing this story would stray from tucker max's tell all philosophy of revealing the gritty details of his life to his audience.] To hear him tell it, it seems that he is recommending we all return to the state of ignorant bliss. But can we ever really return back to a point of unknowing?

the conclusion that i draw from tucker max's experience is that the sexual freedom of women has, via the destruction of the masculine myth of control, increased the occurrence of jadedness in our culture.

we know what pleasure is. we are aware of pain. we are aware that we are only one out of millions, that the women that we pursue (or men) are using us as much as we are using them. thanks to the internet, advances in microbiology, neuroscience, and physics, and the increasing permissiveness of our society, we are slowly destroying the mystery that remains for us to uncover. our destruction of myths, not only in the realms of gender, but in all aspects of our construction of reality.

i keep flashing back to a book i read while in 7th grade about a young brain damaged girl that is transferred into the body of a monkey. (i can't find it on google). rendered a spectator to the fate of her species, she watches as human civilization breaks down and destroys itself. in final acts of desperation, droves of humans would link hands and walk into the sea. eventually, the protagonist's mother joins one of these sea-faring expeditions.

is jaded merely the first stop on our train to societal despair? what kind of extremism becomes permissible when the mystery is gone? what is our quest to destroy mystery and myths doing to our psyche? how does this affect our ability to find satisfaction in our daily lives?

M.D.

2009-12-18T17:58:00.000-08:00

there are times when i feel like an irrevocable untamed wildly hot mess of a person that doesn't even know which way is up and which way goes down. i want to break wide open and spill all the contents onto the operating table so that all things good bad ugly messy and broken can be observed one by one in a painfully distant manner. while you watch and critique and feel and i get some sort of satisfaction at knowing that what i was feeling and doing and being was ok, because you understand, because you're licensed and you've got the pedigree and you can give not ok the ok.

sometimes i do it anyways, without the operating table or the audience, on top of the broken glass behind the dumpster where i last emptied my guts friday night two months ago.

oniony

2009-11-18T19:07:00.000-08:00

why hello, onion rag-stand. i didn't expect to see you there. i didn't expect to see anything there. at all. a potted plant stand wouldn't have been alarming, but you, staring back at me from across the road; you were unexpected.

you look lonely, onion. who could blame you. you've been left in the most inconvenient of places. the median between the UT stadium and the music building is far out of most student's walking ranges. but i'd bet that lack of foot traffic isn't the only thing making you so stoic and solitaire.

let's be honest onion. no one really cares to pay you much attention nowadays. you were hot stuff, way back when the dow was at 130000 points and there was a full out white house party to mock, all-day and all-night.

you've lost all that now, even us, your accomplices of those hey-days. the recycling rhetoric and inherent laziness of the species causes us to avoid most unnecessary, disposable, physical objects. especially those objects that manifest themselves as collections of hand-blackening paper. once picked up, our moral obligations oblige us to assume the responsibility of ensuring that you and all your skins are disposed of in a non-ecosystem disruptive manner.

and let's face it. you're no longer necessary. your rhetorical niche has been lost. who needs parody of the system, when the system, in the most responsible manner of all, does its own parodying? Fox News parodies News. CNN parodies an unbiased perspective. Liberals parody a liberal application of self-understanding and inclusiveness. Republicans parody a party of unbiased racists, protectors of all lifeforms (particularly those of the unborn), and, what may be their most farcical to date, representatives of the common man.

i understand, onion. it's hard to see what layers there are left to unwrap.

you stand naked, unskinned. eyeing me, vacantly, agenda-less, neither compelling me to read your attempts at repackaged cultural refuse nor attempting to disconcert me with an accusatory gaze. you're beyond cajoling, beyond blame: you've lost all hope. you've given up on your self.

now, you watch me.

you watch and wait to see, where i'll go, what i'll do. you've no self interest left in the game. you tried so hard to be something, that you've, at last, nothing to do but watch a someone, a person, a real entity without parody, without pretend, without grandstanding, without politicking... just be.

so i am.

The one and only

2009-11-11T10:47:00.000-08:00

I made the mistake of looking before leaping just now. I had planned to jump back into blogging, pointy fingernails clacking out an inspired post. Instead, I got caught back up into the previous posts I had written, curious to see what it was that brought me here the last time. And the time before that. And the time before that.

I hate getting a phone call or a text from someone that I know, that I'm quite close to, but feeling, for some reason or another, as if I don't know them. As if they're an alien species, a pseudo stranger, made psuedo by the fact that I do know them and stranger by the fact that I feel strange being in contact with a person that I don't feel like I know. Call it social amnesia, call it misanthropic tendencies, call it unfriendly, calloused, or just plain rude. At least we're calling like it is.

Reading over a my own blog feels the same way. There's the element of surprise, the disbelief and the unwillingness to admit that maybe, just maybe, you know exactly what they're talking about. It's like finding an ally at a dreaded luncheon. You're expecting to bored, to feel uneasy about being in a large group of half-hostile people, when suddenly someone laughs the right way, mtalkakes a comment about a pair of shoes, or comes at you with some random background fact that you share in common. You've found someone that understands you! You have *fill in random thiing!* in common, and now you know that there's someone else in the world who understands.

Oh blog. How did you know I love talking about my neurosis? You always know how to say exactly what I needed to hear. You know how to boost my confidence, if not in myself, then in my ability to debase my own confidence. Thanks blog. It's good to hear from you too.

picking up the pen again

2009-09-15T20:16:00.000-07:00

I feel like I haven't been very productive as of late. Strange, considering the actual amount of things that Ive been getting through. The problem is that this "actual amount of things" aren't things that make me feel productive. Which is strange and begs the question: what is it that I really want to be doing?

Graduation is soon. The time to make some decisions is coming. Soon.

There's Money in Poetry... or Poetry in Money?

2009-04-24T14:23:00.000-07:00

Nothing is a better reminder of what it means to be a 'somewhat' liberal arts major in the business school than an email about a Financial conference that waxes poetic on the current financial crisis. I don't sympathize with the Financial majors at this university; I disagree with the culture that they buy (bought?) into and attempt(ed) to recreate. So it strikes me as particularly poignant when they start finding outlets to express their angst and frustration about their losses (a career, a corporation, a culture). (Though I swear if I see one more person use the term "Main street" when talking about this crisis, I'm going to stop reading anything news related in English.).

As the economy transitioned from the subprime mortgage crisis to a full-fledged recession jeopardizing the entire financial system with it, we now find ourselves in an unfamiliar economic landscape. One that is both fragile and unpredictable. The effects of the downturn have indeed been catastrophic both on Wall Street and Main Street shaking the very foundations of the economy with tremors that brutally tested the ecosystem on which the edifice of this country lays. But inspite the enormity of the prolonged carnage that has engulfed our financial markets and characterized the defining downturn of this era, we’re finally beginning to see signs of scattered optimism and promise. The financial system and the broader economy it seems are beginning to digest recent developments enroute to rebuilding an appetite for growth and enterprise.

And it is with this preface of economic fragility and scattered optimism that we present to you, the Texas Investment Conference 2009: Navigating the Road to Recovery. The purpose of this conference, which brings together notable industry literates and professionals, couldn’t have been served at a time more crucial than the one we’re in. An increasingly globalized playing field demands a firm understanding of how tight credit markets have impacted the economy, financial markets, and corporate environment. Rather than focusing on one aspect of finance and the economy, the Conference will combine leading industry expertise and renowned academic research to look at current trends and issues that are shaping our financial world with the hope of mapping out the Road to Recovery. Furthermore, the event will provide an opportunity to meet and discuss critical topics with industry professionals and faculty members. Featuring a networking meal, the Conference will serve as a perfect platform for healthy interaction and intellectual discourse between students, corporate representatives, and academia alike.

How do humans get through loss? How do we cope with the pressures that we've created for ourselves and the loss of a dream? Good questions. The answer, I believe, is going to be a rise in modes of self expression. We're looking at the cusp of the next great wave of creative output. Right now is a time when humans are reevaluating their values, reinvigorating their emotions. Complacency is more difficult to come across, strife and disillisionment is rampant. It's been a while since we've churned out a Steinbeck or a Hemingway; that's going to change. Experience is the fuel of creativity, and no experience is more unique or capture-worthy than suffering.

Need an example? Just look south. Latin American literature during the 70s and 80s is, in my opinion, most recent innovative and expressive writing that we have. Political coups, depressions, economic crises, kidnappings, drug wars: these experiences generated a body of moving fictional and visual works. A literary movement and style was created from the political show rooms and horrors of day to day life under a despot.

Not to say that a political coup or a financial crisis is a necessary requisite for a literary movement. But history shows that they go nicely hand in hand.

Selves are not as escapable as we would have them

2009-04-18T22:26:00.000-07:00

I really wanted this blog to be something different from my last one. I was quite proud of myself when I shut the last blog down; I thought that I was finally making some steps away from emotional, melodramatic, self-pitying posts. The last blog wasn't much of an attempt at chronicling or story-telling: it was more of a poster board for teenage angst and frustration.

I'd thought that this blog would be different. I thought that I had moved past that bitter-edged self-hate that motivated and tormented the last blogger me. I find, however, that though I may be older, more experienced, well-traveled, I still suffer under the same nameless, blameless angst, still mope through brightly lit days, still frown at smiles, and write in abstract melodramatic sweeps. I generalize more than I explain. I theorize about the world more than I take the time to actually enjoy the day to day moments of it. I daydream more than I dream.

I thought this blog, this me, would be different. I had grand hopes of writing about important issues and ideas that were important to me. Maybe something dry and scientific almost. I hoped that there would be a lack of emotion, a lack of misdirection. I was wrong.

I haven't written on this blog because I wanted it to be different. I thought that if I held off, things would change. I thought that I could change myself, the way I think, the way I react to things, the way my brain fills itself with sappy self. I was wrong. My pride kept me from writing here. It wanted, among so many other things, for this not to be the truth. For me not to be so egotistical and self-centered. For me not be so pointlessly unhappy. I've swallowed my pride, and put it down on paper: I haven't changed as much as I had hoped. I haven't learned to like myself. I haven't learned to accept myself for who I am. I haven't learned how to be present in the moment, to appreciate people for who they are, to not let tomorrows deadlines be the stresses of today. I am still trapped in the same self-pitying box that I've constructed for myself.

And so this blog is what it is. Me. Myself. Uncensored, yet flat. Personally unpersonal. Practically a bore. Nothing of interest than that that is interesting to myself. Nothing that speaks to anyone other than those who only speak to themselves. Dressed up pretty, spewing ugly. Yuck self, yuck.

Hello again

2009-04-02T14:23:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've blogged. Finding myself increasingly frustrated, however, with my current outlets for self expression, I find that I need a blog again. There's only so much that you can put in a conversation, a phone call, a text message, an email. And even less that you actually want to say specifically to a directed, addressed audience. Blogs are nice for their anonymity. So what if no one ever reads this. At the very least, I've got a nice road map of thoughts and opinions that I'll be able to look back on later.

I'm a collector. I like the feeling of accomplishment and fulfillment that I get from having a big pile of 'things'. No matter how invaluable or inconsequential that pile of 'things' may be. I love the way that blogs collect thoughts and opinions and moods, for me to pour back over at any one point in time.

Ideally, I'd like this blog to offer thought-provoking perspectives on technological and societal issues. What it actually turns into will have to be seen. What's important though, is that I get my ideas and monologues out on the web so that I can stop talking in circles to external (non-blog) audiences.

What you won't (in all likelihood) find on this blog: links to popular culture or rants about my daily life, what's going on in my social spectrum. If you want to find out about that sort of thing, you're going to have to talk to me.

I hope you enjoy!