Mash-up "Swagga Like Us" music video, complete with onscreen dookie for Kanye and Weezy's related references.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai-5r9I4V1s
Not the official, but still creative and damn funny.
15 November 2008
14 November 2008
The Thing About Scholars Is...
Maybe it's only natural to find new ways to critique something rather than new ways of appreciating it once it's been a part of your life for long enough. I'm referring, of course, to the Mass Communications major I had chosen it originally because it allowed me to study visual media and still come out with a more flexible degree than one in film. Bitching about its impracticality is nothing new; what liberal arts field isn't? Still, while we're learning the basis of how public opinion operates, there must be a less cynical approach available.
Never mind that repulsive "symbolic violence" argument that pretty much condoned property destruction as long as it's getting people's attention for the marginalized. Across all of the core courses, there's this mile-wide anti-capitalist streak, bemoaning "corporate oligarchies" that sap our modern media of true democracy and creativity.
Where does scholarly capitalism come from? Sure, a sense of social justice and other idealized beliefs might play a role. But one would venture to guess that of course they would criticize into the ground a system that doesn't work in their favor.
Let's face it: lengthy celebrations of anarchic anti-WTO protesters don't sell. Verbose dress-downs of 1950s pop music doesn't sell. 40-page studies on how this or that demographic is ignored doesn't sell. (well, maybe if it helped market to those poor, marginalized folks.) Ideas sell when they are of use to someone; if they aren't, find a way to make it so they are. So rather than using all that analytical and creative energy to come up with something that does sell, scholar-types perpetuate this narrow mindset by continuing to churn out works that inflate flaws into monstrous injustices.
Get it through your heads, people: socialism doesn't work. At least, without sacrificing to some degree certain freedoms and privileges that have become intrinsic to what we believe this country to be about. Critiques against the inalterable are useful to keep our egos in check, sure. Beyond that, though, what value do they have?
It's time that universities, even public research institutions like this one, put a little usefulness back into their curriculum. Those of us who don't want to be thirtysomething career students would love to be released into the professional world with more than just a head full of Neo-Marxist tracts.
Never mind that repulsive "symbolic violence" argument that pretty much condoned property destruction as long as it's getting people's attention for the marginalized. Across all of the core courses, there's this mile-wide anti-capitalist streak, bemoaning "corporate oligarchies" that sap our modern media of true democracy and creativity.
Where does scholarly capitalism come from? Sure, a sense of social justice and other idealized beliefs might play a role. But one would venture to guess that of course they would criticize into the ground a system that doesn't work in their favor.
Let's face it: lengthy celebrations of anarchic anti-WTO protesters don't sell. Verbose dress-downs of 1950s pop music doesn't sell. 40-page studies on how this or that demographic is ignored doesn't sell. (well, maybe if it helped market to those poor, marginalized folks.) Ideas sell when they are of use to someone; if they aren't, find a way to make it so they are. So rather than using all that analytical and creative energy to come up with something that does sell, scholar-types perpetuate this narrow mindset by continuing to churn out works that inflate flaws into monstrous injustices.
Get it through your heads, people: socialism doesn't work. At least, without sacrificing to some degree certain freedoms and privileges that have become intrinsic to what we believe this country to be about. Critiques against the inalterable are useful to keep our egos in check, sure. Beyond that, though, what value do they have?
It's time that universities, even public research institutions like this one, put a little usefulness back into their curriculum. Those of us who don't want to be thirtysomething career students would love to be released into the professional world with more than just a head full of Neo-Marxist tracts.
08 November 2008
Adventures in Second Person, Pt 2
The family friends' daughters tease you, and you even get into a few fights here and there. You start becoming that guy, the one whom everyone came to see at lunch with their empty history worksheets. But your real friends, all three of them, are into the Pokemon-Playstation-WWF trifecta. A neighborhood girl makes fun of your "tight-ass pants" at the bus stop. A boy on the bus ridicules your lack of understanding of human procreation. You cry too easily from any making-fun of at school. But at least the teachers understand. Looking back, though, it seems rather ridiculous.
Who knows, give it another couple of years and something might have blossomed. Maybe your friends might have evolved some interest in girls and helped you along. But that's not the way it turned out; periodic downturns happened, and your father, after all, couldn't have worked for the petrol corp forever.
Thus were you displaced. You didn't exactly appreciate the idea, but starting over seemed accceptable enough. But you didn't know where to begin. In your first days, you eat alone, you draw alone. At some point you are photographed with oval glasses and a flattop, alone, which is later published for all to see in the yearbook. Oh, and you start wearing Hawaiian shirts.
Come to think of it, things went relatively well during this time. Sure, you couldn't catch a football to save your life, and your closest friends--despite similar interests of wrestling, videogames, filmmaking, and-ahem-pornography--generally treat you sans respect (though they had nice things to say on birthday cards). But there were girl friends, too. And the novelty of Instant Messaging. Basketball games. Other people's drama (come to think of it...there was a lot of that). Racing for mile times. Karaoke in public.Vans sneakers and an ill-fated attempt at skating. Books read: The Contender, maybe part of Shane, (ooh, The Dark Half three years before!) parts of a novel from the school library explicitly describing virginal sex). Here and there you are confused by flirting attempts such as compliments, physical and otherwise. You're already busy being jealous of other guys. Oh, and school goes pretty well, too.
It was not a good way to go. You pick a bad one to start out with; there is zero reciprocation, in spite of a grand gesture involving a handwritten letter and--oh jesus christ--your father's cologne. (The incident is remembered by one and continues to haunt you for years to come.) This marks the start of a familiar pattern: an interest develops, and you hold on and you never act on it for fear of what will happen. Only after months of wasted opportunities later does it dissapate. You do manage a date for the formal that year, though, via hotmail (natch). You rent a classy tux (surprisingly fitted, w/ mandarin collar), buy a corsage, and your parents pick her up. It's all very classic; nevertheless she leaves you for her friends at the end of the evening.
Somehow, you never learn what it meant to "go out". Did that mean your parents drove you out for a night of mini-golf at Funworks? Did that mean holding hands in the courtyard at lunchtime? You don't take the lead to find out, and, of course, no one stops along the way to clarify. There wasn't much mention of such matters among your friends.
"...The world is your oyster!" One teacher writes in your yearbook. (not the same one you purportedly jinxed to death.) You arrive late at graduation, wearing jean shorts, give a speech. You take a picture with the girl you fancied, which you treasure wistfully for years.
You can't help but notice how goddamn awkward you look trying to perch on her shoulder. There must've been a half foot gap between the two of you.
Who knows, give it another couple of years and something might have blossomed. Maybe your friends might have evolved some interest in girls and helped you along. But that's not the way it turned out; periodic downturns happened, and your father, after all, couldn't have worked for the petrol corp forever.
Thus were you displaced. You didn't exactly appreciate the idea, but starting over seemed accceptable enough. But you didn't know where to begin. In your first days, you eat alone, you draw alone. At some point you are photographed with oval glasses and a flattop, alone, which is later published for all to see in the yearbook. Oh, and you start wearing Hawaiian shirts.
Come to think of it, things went relatively well during this time. Sure, you couldn't catch a football to save your life, and your closest friends--despite similar interests of wrestling, videogames, filmmaking, and-ahem-pornography--generally treat you sans respect (though they had nice things to say on birthday cards). But there were girl friends, too. And the novelty of Instant Messaging. Basketball games. Other people's drama (come to think of it...there was a lot of that). Racing for mile times. Karaoke in public.Vans sneakers and an ill-fated attempt at skating. Books read: The Contender, maybe part of Shane, (ooh, The Dark Half three years before!) parts of a novel from the school library explicitly describing virginal sex). Here and there you are confused by flirting attempts such as compliments, physical and otherwise. You're already busy being jealous of other guys. Oh, and school goes pretty well, too.
It was not a good way to go. You pick a bad one to start out with; there is zero reciprocation, in spite of a grand gesture involving a handwritten letter and--oh jesus christ--your father's cologne. (The incident is remembered by one and continues to haunt you for years to come.) This marks the start of a familiar pattern: an interest develops, and you hold on and you never act on it for fear of what will happen. Only after months of wasted opportunities later does it dissapate. You do manage a date for the formal that year, though, via hotmail (natch). You rent a classy tux (surprisingly fitted, w/ mandarin collar), buy a corsage, and your parents pick her up. It's all very classic; nevertheless she leaves you for her friends at the end of the evening.
Somehow, you never learn what it meant to "go out". Did that mean your parents drove you out for a night of mini-golf at Funworks? Did that mean holding hands in the courtyard at lunchtime? You don't take the lead to find out, and, of course, no one stops along the way to clarify. There wasn't much mention of such matters among your friends.
"...The world is your oyster!" One teacher writes in your yearbook. (not the same one you purportedly jinxed to death.) You arrive late at graduation, wearing jean shorts, give a speech. You take a picture with the girl you fancied, which you treasure wistfully for years.
You can't help but notice how goddamn awkward you look trying to perch on her shoulder. There must've been a half foot gap between the two of you.
06 November 2008
Adventure in Second Person
You think back, and wonder.
You think through a haze, peeling back all the layers of the past, unraveling alongside that tangled strand of web, and hoping to spot that sparkle of a dew drop that marks the turning point. What was it like, back in the old country? ...No, it couldn't have happened then. Sure, you got slapped around a few times, mostly for talking back or inappropriate self-discovery, but it was all fine. You were famous among the parents for putting words to paper, and had special tutoring from the art teacher, and got chastised for screwing around in class a few times. You remember a girl with a bob haircut putting you in a chicken wing, but also two others, one with a braid and the other who wore hers in buns, who laughed and chased you through that park with the lake, on the way back to the apartment blocks where you all lived. (Things before this time are kind of hazy, but you remember a latch-key, and snowman-building, and Cracker Jack-like snack with an odd little Japanese prize in it.) It was fine, then.
Then you left it all behind, for California, America. Come to think of it, you never did mail your teacher that postcard of Niagara Falls.
You remember arriving at the new house in a fog; you remember meeting pet dogs for the first time in your life. You remember your youthful incredulity when the folks tell you there's actually a TV channel that plays cartoons all day. So you develop the habit of drawing a villain of each afternoon Fox Kids program, until you're making weekly collages. School's a bit of a change, though. While the other kids do their worksheets, they give you a piece of paper to draw on, since you can't read the words, yet. (Years later you would go on to become the top of the English class, four years straight.) They gawk a little at your pink tracksuit, but somehow you get along okay. There's a cute blond girl, whom you fancy, but as fate would have it a car accident sweeps her away before the year's up.
English comes easier to you after a summer computer class. Steadily you develop a reputation; schoolwork's down pat, no acting up, and you're so quietly composed, so mature, that your parents have no trouble taking you anywhere. In fifth grade there's an instance when you melodramatically compose a handwritten note to what you thought was a romantic rival in jealousy. In some perplexing way that's been lost to time, it's read as hate speech, and you receive a demerit for the first time in a long time. It wasn't much, but it was the worst they could do for your record in fifth grade; frantic, you show up to your music class in tears.
Little did you know, it was the last time you would be honest of your own accord for years to come.
TBC
You think through a haze, peeling back all the layers of the past, unraveling alongside that tangled strand of web, and hoping to spot that sparkle of a dew drop that marks the turning point. What was it like, back in the old country? ...No, it couldn't have happened then. Sure, you got slapped around a few times, mostly for talking back or inappropriate self-discovery, but it was all fine. You were famous among the parents for putting words to paper, and had special tutoring from the art teacher, and got chastised for screwing around in class a few times. You remember a girl with a bob haircut putting you in a chicken wing, but also two others, one with a braid and the other who wore hers in buns, who laughed and chased you through that park with the lake, on the way back to the apartment blocks where you all lived. (Things before this time are kind of hazy, but you remember a latch-key, and snowman-building, and Cracker Jack-like snack with an odd little Japanese prize in it.) It was fine, then.
Then you left it all behind, for California, America. Come to think of it, you never did mail your teacher that postcard of Niagara Falls.
You remember arriving at the new house in a fog; you remember meeting pet dogs for the first time in your life. You remember your youthful incredulity when the folks tell you there's actually a TV channel that plays cartoons all day. So you develop the habit of drawing a villain of each afternoon Fox Kids program, until you're making weekly collages. School's a bit of a change, though. While the other kids do their worksheets, they give you a piece of paper to draw on, since you can't read the words, yet. (Years later you would go on to become the top of the English class, four years straight.) They gawk a little at your pink tracksuit, but somehow you get along okay. There's a cute blond girl, whom you fancy, but as fate would have it a car accident sweeps her away before the year's up.
English comes easier to you after a summer computer class. Steadily you develop a reputation; schoolwork's down pat, no acting up, and you're so quietly composed, so mature, that your parents have no trouble taking you anywhere. In fifth grade there's an instance when you melodramatically compose a handwritten note to what you thought was a romantic rival in jealousy. In some perplexing way that's been lost to time, it's read as hate speech, and you receive a demerit for the first time in a long time. It wasn't much, but it was the worst they could do for your record in fifth grade; frantic, you show up to your music class in tears.
Little did you know, it was the last time you would be honest of your own accord for years to come.
TBC
04 November 2008
Can you even decide?
As I am not a US citizen (but nevertheless a bona-fide, legal immigrant with a green card), I've carried a certain sense of smugness about being uninvolved with civic participation these last few years. There's a mild sense of amusement in feeling above the fray, beyond the reach of the frenzy that's swept up so many of the other college-brats, making them fawn at the every word of a certain junior senator from Illinois, whose face is plastered in gawdy neon colors on the oversized t-shirts of hip-hop types, while sneering with contempt at the very image of the septugenarian Vietnam vet and his pet Alaska governor.
I quite enjoy the feeling, but I think I'm still going to do the citizenship thing for the travelling priviledges.
But here's a conclusion I've come to for a while now: there is no ideal to be found in democracy, or free choice in and of itself. Going further, there is little sense in egalitarian principles being the fundamenal goal of society.
Actually, the latter is a little easier to explain: unless you subscribe to the anarchist philosophy of no governance, a society based on rational-legal principles necessarily involve control, and any form of control is, in some sense, an inequity. While there is some sense of secular morality in humans, laws nevertheless must be backed by the threat of coercion in order to have meaning. All this social-science whining about classes, races, various viewpoints not being heard...doesn't amount to anything. Real life is simpler than theories. You either play the game and get what you want, or you suck it up and accept your place as is.
Possibly more distasteful is this free-choice thing, of doing what feels right for you. Too much choice only serves to confuse, not liberate. Just think of the electorate: there is so much information available out there, so many perspectives, that it's doubtful that anyone has made their choice today with the full range of considerations. Even if a person went out and did the research, there are still long-term, indirect effects of every decision, every policy, that are immune to prediction. Meanwhile, even a partial look at your home page headlines will turn up a study that says one thing today, and another contrasting it tomorrow. Experiments, surveys, other instruments of social-science study only tell us anything about the population involved therein, no more and no less.
At this point...all we really have is our youth. And what should we do with it but be pleasant to everyone; that is, indifferent to everyone.
I quite enjoy the feeling, but I think I'm still going to do the citizenship thing for the travelling priviledges.
But here's a conclusion I've come to for a while now: there is no ideal to be found in democracy, or free choice in and of itself. Going further, there is little sense in egalitarian principles being the fundamenal goal of society.
Actually, the latter is a little easier to explain: unless you subscribe to the anarchist philosophy of no governance, a society based on rational-legal principles necessarily involve control, and any form of control is, in some sense, an inequity. While there is some sense of secular morality in humans, laws nevertheless must be backed by the threat of coercion in order to have meaning. All this social-science whining about classes, races, various viewpoints not being heard...doesn't amount to anything. Real life is simpler than theories. You either play the game and get what you want, or you suck it up and accept your place as is.
Possibly more distasteful is this free-choice thing, of doing what feels right for you. Too much choice only serves to confuse, not liberate. Just think of the electorate: there is so much information available out there, so many perspectives, that it's doubtful that anyone has made their choice today with the full range of considerations. Even if a person went out and did the research, there are still long-term, indirect effects of every decision, every policy, that are immune to prediction. Meanwhile, even a partial look at your home page headlines will turn up a study that says one thing today, and another contrasting it tomorrow. Experiments, surveys, other instruments of social-science study only tell us anything about the population involved therein, no more and no less.
At this point...all we really have is our youth. And what should we do with it but be pleasant to everyone; that is, indifferent to everyone.
03 November 2008
(More) Reasons to be rich in the next five decades
The twentysomething bunch doesn't have a whole lot to look forward to these days. Sure, civic participation is at a very visible high, thanks to the charisma of our pop-culture presidential nominee. But the sinking economy makes it a terrible time to be freshly graduated from college with little meaningful work experience and a general lack of purpose about our existence. (As I found out firsthand today when my sole interview thus far this season was canceled due to a "change in the hiring schedule"--read: we don't have the cash this quarter to pay new employees)
Oh, the joys of the twenty-first century miasma of perpetual existential crisis. :D
If nothing else, perhaps our lifetime will be the one during which we move into the sci-fi age that nerddom has pined for.
TIME's "Best Inventions of the Year"
Among the most Asimov-esque of the contenders:
It goes without saying, though, that should any of these things make it past the conceptual/model stage into actual production--which I'm guessing is going to take the better part of the decade at least--they'll be so exorbitantly expensive that only the top tier of the population holding the majority of the country's increasingly disparate income will be able to get ahold of them.
So for those of you who are still struggling with the classical dilemma of choosing between that which will bring you more income or that will fulfill your vague idea of spirit/goodness...the choice is pretty clear.
Oh, the joys of the twenty-first century miasma of perpetual existential crisis. :D
If nothing else, perhaps our lifetime will be the one during which we move into the sci-fi age that nerddom has pined for.
TIME's "Best Inventions of the Year"
Among the most Asimov-esque of the contenders:
- the Tesla Roadster (the first electric sports car)
- Dubai's Dynamic Tower (the first moving skyscraper)
- bionic contacts (which projects a floating display over the wearer's vision--did someone say Terminator status?)
- the Aptera Electric Car (which looks like it'd popped out of one of Japan's Super Sentai TV shows)
- Baddest of all, the Peraves MonoTracer, which is a little Swiss ditty that essentially amounts to a motorbike with a sleek, minimalist enclosure. This is probably the only way I would ever get on any motorcycle.
It goes without saying, though, that should any of these things make it past the conceptual/model stage into actual production--which I'm guessing is going to take the better part of the decade at least--they'll be so exorbitantly expensive that only the top tier of the population holding the majority of the country's increasingly disparate income will be able to get ahold of them.
So for those of you who are still struggling with the classical dilemma of choosing between that which will bring you more income or that will fulfill your vague idea of spirit/goodness...the choice is pretty clear.
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