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Entries for August, 2008

August 5th, 2008

cultural art style--a rant

I find a weird reading of the gender of charachter/human figure in art, depending on the viewer's culture of origin.

In a magazine I picked up a couple weeks ago, there was an interview/review of a japanese artist's work (And I'd find the details, but after hell!semester, my apartment looks like it was hit by a hurricane. Or a bomb. Or a hurricane of bombs. Anyway, I can't find the book.) where in the review section they describe her art as full of "mysterious girls and the occasional androngynous male figure". But when I flipped to the page with an example of that figure? Clearly male, and not androngynous at all. He pretty much looked like how a lot of Asian guys look, if idealized.

I just don't see it, and it makes me wonder what cues we're reading differently. Is it a body-language thing, or an art-language thing? (Like how girls' manga often draws men suuuuupeer feminized, but it's readers know whos what right away because of genre cues.)

I admit I find it a little annoying sometimes, especially if a figure isn't actually androgynous, but pretty obviously just working from a different cultural aestetic.

Hello people, American gender markers and images =/= the world.

rurounibug ; 08:30 PM|2 replies

August 6th, 2008

QUICK! Someone tell me what to do!

Summer classes ended today. I will miss my acting-for-animators class peeps. ;___; They was a rockin' bunch.

But now I don't know what to do. Without deadlines hanging over my head, I feel at a loss. Nothing seems fun when it's not procrastination. Woe!

I HAVE NO PURPOSE!

rurounibug ; 11:22 PM|2 replies

August 7th, 2008

in which I suspect I am becoming my father

I'm watching this Oprah where they're comparing an inner city school and its closest suburban counterpart, and going, "The inner city school . . ." *dun dun dun* "has a worn out weights room."

OMG, YOU GUYS! EVEN THE POOR SCHOOLS IN AMERICA HAVE A WEIGHTS ROOM! AND INDOOR WOODEN BASKETBALL HALLS!!

Oprah: The school is so poor . . . its weight room has old equipment and the ceiling has a leak.
Me: *fall over*

rurounibug ; 04:37 PM|4 replies

August 9th, 2008

boo~

With finals and stuff, I totally forgot to sign up for the All-US kendo summer camp. You have to do it by snail mail, so I don't think it would make it by Monday, even if I sent it supah fast mail tomorrow.

I'm a little dissapointed, because I sort of did want to go, but whatever. I mean, I didn't want to go *that* badly. It's just that people have been going, "It's so RARE that it's held THIS CLOSE to us. It probably won't be again for like TEN YEARS."

My kendo is reaaaalllyyy bad recently, and worse by the practice. Maybe it's the lack of sleep from hell!semester or something, but I am super clumbsy and uncoordinated.

And on top of that, I'm developing some kind of weird twitchiness because of big new guys ramming full body into me. I attack, and then don't look where I'm going, because I'm fucking bracing for impact.

There's littler people than me that can manage not to be a wuss and a spaz, but apparently the one thing I excell at is wussy spazziness.

I feel discouraged.

rurounibug ; 12:10 AM|4 replies

August 9th, 2008

kids, come home

eL is back in all it's weird, off-topic, back-stabbing, self-pimping, attention-whoring, smiley addicted, language-wrecking, kampung geek glory.

I'd say we all owe Datsu a beer, but he did (apparently) forget to pay the hosting. -______-

And it's not even Valentine's.

rurounibug ; 04:10 PM|1 replies

August 12th, 2008

it's all lies

V8Fusion promised I'd only taste the fruit, but I swear to god there's an aura of celery in there. I taste something green. x____x


And now to completely leap topics; It just occured to me that when you run into hapas in fiction, they are more often than not AsianxBlack, when thats not exactly the most common mix out there, although probably more common than, say, EskimoxAsian. Then again, you never know.

Anyway, now I have this sneaking suspicion that it's just some cheap attempt to double up the angst (Because Asian people supposedly dislike Black people. I don't know.) or the exotixness. Or both.

It's kind of creepy in the way Angelina Jolie's multi-racial child collection is creepy: On the one hand, you can't say giving orphans a home is a bad thing, but on the other, when she spouts off about how she wants "One child of every race" like they're pokemon (Gotta catch 'em all!) it's a little weird.

Likewise, I can't say that discussion of interracial and/or intercultural issues isn't a good thing, but when the hapas are ALWAYS AsianxBlack* people who are 'sexy in a unique way' when IRL most hapas are AsianxWhite, or AsianxAsian (and sometimes tragic-looking) it makes me leery of people's motives.

That's right, white people writing books. AsianXAsian. I know, I know, "But that would just make them Asian, right?"

. . . I feel like someone might decide to read this post as "more white boys pls", but it's really more "I want my issues to be represented in media in a realistic, non-fetishic way. There is more to someone being mixed than 'ZOMG my aunt hates my parent's marriage' and 'sexeh tropical orkidz ahdo ashdlash', and I suspect that's really all you're after."



*Extra points if they villainize the Asian half of the extended family as racist jerks. I can't actually say that's a mischarachterization (Although in my own experience, I find the Asian half of the family to be more blissfully ignorant in their small-mindedness than they are OMGRACISTHATERZ), but way to choose sides, white American writer dudes.

rurounibug ; 01:15 AM|2 replies

August 12th, 2008

Bahaha~

News crawl: "Chinese national anthem lip synched--real singer considered not cute enough."

I loled.

And to make it even more bizarre, the news on the crawl before and after it was about people dying in a car accident, and someone being killed in the city. I thought there was a guy who, like, grouped crawl headlines into categories or something, but if not then they really need to invent that job.

rurounibug ; 05:43 PM|fine, ignore me

August 12th, 2008

More weird TV moments

I skipped practice and instead watched one of those "Wow! Look at this person's bizarre and grousomely extensive growth/tumor/condition!!" shows on TLC (Episode: Face Eating Tumor) where Chinese doctors rebuild the face of a 5 year old child.

Before he's dischaged, the doctors and volunteers throw him a goodbye/goodluck party, and the TLC voice over goes, "They throw him a farewell party, complete with a cake decorated with a picture of his new face."

The face on the cake? Shinchan!

Me: /swt /swt

It's kind of awful, because Shinchan is like the most lopsided faced charachter ever. And thats not just my observation. When it came out, everyone was like, "It's drawn so lumpy, but it's still funny, ya?"

Thats not a dig at whoever got the cake or anything. There were Shinchan comics all over that kid's room, so it was probably a "Kid likes Shinchan" thing. But for whoever wrote the voice-over to look at that cake and go, "Lumpy faced charachter . . . must be a picture of the kid." Dude, that's weird and fucked up.

rurounibug ; 09:33 PM|fine, ignore me

August 14th, 2008

raining men

Those gymnasts are falling over liek whoah, wth? In the last hour of live coverage* I have seen a guy come entirely off the rings, a vaulter land halfway off the mat, then get bounced off, a floor routine guy go for a flip and land on his back, and a half dozen more who landed on their feet, but either barely, or badly.

I'm kind of afraid to keep watching. O____O


*This includes cutting to the swimming, for even more talk about Phelps. I am so sick of him. I swear to god.

rurounibug ; 01:12 AM|fine, ignore me

August 14th, 2008

project runway--not spoilery

I hate Blaine. He's trying way too hard with his -licious -licious crap. You can tell he wants a unique catchphrase sound bite, like Christian from last season, but the -licious thing is just stupid. And it comes off forced and awkward most of the time. Everytime he says it, I wish someone would slap him.

I'm also pretty sure he's on drugs. He seems to always be picking at himself or tweaking or something. Actually, he reminds me of Gollum. A badly tanned, neon-wearing Gollum.


Stella's pretty bad, too. Every challenge, she's like, "If this was rock"; "I wish the guest judge wa Ozzie, yu-huh. ROCK!"; "I'm so so rock" but she says it all in this whiny, un-rock voice. Aw, Stella, you're so pseudo-oppressed because every challange isn't about leather. My heart bleeds for you.

She also keeps mentioning how people need to help her with stuff, like with her camera. I thought to be rock you had to be at least marginally up to date or something. I mean, isn't it supposed to be young spirited music or something? But she's like my mom, if my mom wore leather pants--"Don't make me an email on google, I want to be able to mail to your yahoo."

rurounibug ; 09:27 PM|fine, ignore me

August 15th, 2008

watching you watch the olympics

All the fuss going on about how young the Chinese gymnastics team looks is hilarious. But hilarious in that way that makes me want to smack people. Now, I'm not saying that there isn't something weird going on, because ESPN was talking about some documentation issues, but I changed the channel, because I think it's kind of bratty to call "Because your Dad's the ump!" as soon as things don't go your way. (And tonight one of the Chinese girls got scored higher than the announcers would have liked, at which they started puffing suspicion about that, too.)

And hello, the US team looks young, too. Gymnasts tend to. Add to that that Americans always think Asian people look way younger than they are, and there ya go. And yes, sometimes Asians are four foot seven, even at sixteen. I know a few girls (in Jakarta) who are around nineteen but look about thirteen. Or twelve. And if you're actively screening for tiny bendy people, hell yeah you could end up with a whole troop of girls like that.

rurounibug ; 12:54 AM|fine, ignore me

August 20th, 2008

I don't only watch TV

I'm reading Julia Serano's Whipping Girl. So far I'm finding it both interesting and obnoxious. Some of her new jargon is a little too much, especially when she recasts existing vocabulary and replaces it with what she would prefer. Sometimes I'm like, "Well, we already used X word for Y, but now X means B and A means Y? What the crap?"

And then theres arguements that seem forced, or where she only views and interprets an issue from one standpoint, and one that often seems to be setting up a hierarchy of oppression. For example, she states that MTF transexuals are considered a more serious threat to the value of masculinity over femininity, while FTM transexuals support it, and thats why effiminate boys and MTF transexuals are the subject of so much more medical and physchological research.

While I would argue that a sexist, transphobic establishment probably isn't respecting anyone's gender identity, and therefore isn't even framing male femininity in terms of femininity, but instead as failed masculinity. That male femininity isn't more interesting to researchers because femininity is more upsetting or threatening, but because men are almost always more interesting to the establishment than women, and thats how they're classifying people, despite anyone's actual indetity. They aren't seeing it as a femininity issue, but rather as male pathology. It's still mysogyny, except I think it's applied more to bodies than to expression.

I should probably say that I follow where most of the argument goes--it's just that I don't think the oppresion dice bounce quite the way she insists they do, even if they come up with the same number.

So to speak.

And then theres stuff thats just kind of weird. Like where she critizes 'gatekeepers' for valueing a small number of cissexuals over a large number of transexuals when they want to ensure someone coming to them for transition isn't suffering from some sort of delusion or other mental illness.

Although I would not argue against any of her experiences, how is any given doctor supposed to know shit about any given patient who comes to him? It's not a valueing of one population over the other, when the person in question cannot tell which population a patient is actually a part of yet.

It's just sort of weird the way she makes a big us vs. them situation out of an instance where it's actually more of a "any given trans identifying person is more likely to be trans than to be delusional", but just imagine the lawsuits if diagnoses based on odds? I've been watching these TLC awful worst case disease shows (well, I stumble across them, then can't look away) and everytime people are all, "OMG WTF, how could the doctors think it was just a cold just because it's a cold 95% of the time? OMG WTF?"

Now imagine if you let someone take hormones and get surgery, and it was one of those %5 times? Even over-the-counter topical drugs warn you test them on a small area first, just on the off chance of allergy or bad reaction. Or, hey, how about, "I gave him the anaestetic without checking allergies first, because most people are okay." or "OMG, you're valueing the small number of people with bad liver function over a healthy majority by making me get tests before handing over the drugs!"

I'm just saying.

While I don't doubt at all that medical proffesionals can have their own agendas and probably often implement them in ways that are detrimental, especially in the context of gender issues, I can't get on board with an argument that doesn't address what I think are obvious counter-arguments, or only follows the route that supports their own argument, in spite of other possible reasoning. Even if I'm on the book's side, it makes me think the author might not have a refutation. Or that she has her rant-blinkers on, which is sort of worse.

Actually, I probably shouldn't say anything, because she has sources and a bibliography and a scientific education, and I have a knee jerk reaction and can't spell. I'm also only halfway through the book, and she may be only pages away from pulling it together in way that wins me completely over. Who the crap knows.



In other news, Lucky's has awesome junk food. I have german chocolate cake mini cupcakes. I did not know such wonders existed in this world until Lucky's! Nobody ever told me!

rurounibug ; 12:25 AM|5 replies

August 21st, 2008

beautiful

Guys, I think I totally need a bedazzler. I could, like, bedazzle my bogu bag!

I don't know what else I could use it on, though.

I guess it would be a waste to get one just to sparkle up one bag.

Dang.

Joy to sad in two minutes.

rurounibug ; 04:26 AM|fine, ignore me

August 21st, 2008

onoz!

The tabulas user cp has changed! And the opt out link is gone! It still seems to be working as the simple editor (you know, where you have to type your own html tags and stuff) But now it has a "post as html" check box like you get when replying to entries. This might take me a bit to figure out.

I also can't find how to access the advanced editor, because while I hate it, it does (or used to, at least) preserve the indents when posting stories copy-pasted from MSword.

test:

itallics
bold
strikethrough

rurounibug ; 11:28 PM|fine, ignore me

August 30th, 2008

I hate this new cp

The simple editor is gone.

I hate this new editor, with it's buttons and annoying formating and auto-spacing and what not.

Hate it.

rurounibug ; 04:23 PM|fine, ignore me

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