I feel like abusing Sarah Palin on twitter ("NOTICE HOW GUNS KILL??") but that's not very fair of me, and anyway, the events from this morning should have punctured an adequate hole in her career ("I can see you FAIL from my house!").

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You know what's funny about atheists? How we insist that God can't be real because no loving God would use a flood to kill everything on earth because oops! he didn't make us right the first time. And it also doesn't make sense how he's going to come back a second time and kill off a sizeable portion of the world (all non-believers) again in the Rapture. (It's like we're His beta video game. Haxxors, anyone?). And so we insist that, due to these logical fallacies, God definitely can't be real.

But fuck! What if that's exactly how it is? What if religion is not choice but reality? What if we're just God's playthings, and our only hope is to jump through His holy hoops? What are we going to do, sign a petition? "Man in the sky is really mean! Vote him out in the next election!" You can't logic your way out of His absolute power. Nobody ever said that the world had to make sense. 

I guess this is what Odysseus felt like when he became disillusioned with the gods ("Oh so that's why we read ancient lit").

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Don't listen to Sarah Jaffe while reading activist literature. It's just not a good idea.
I want Giffords to be okay. I feel like Montreal Massacre all over again. 

I feel like I didn't explain myself very well in the video. Obviously, I am not asking anyone to seriously entertain the idea that activists are motivated by power. 

It's just that I'm constantly thinking about oppression, media and minorities, etc. and most of the time I don't even stop to think why. I mean yes, the world is broken and it need to be fixed, but what is it that makes us care? Where does the capacity to care originate? (and I don't want to hear the world "altruism". Don't say that they're doing it for their kids and for future generations, because there's more, there always is)

I remember asking this question when I was very young:

Mom, why do seeds grow?

They grow when they get enough soil and water.

Yes I know, but why does it do that? What tells it to start growing?

Well...no one knows. 
 

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Activists obviously have good intentions. But maybe we aren't totally, entirely altruistic. Do we live out the rest of our lives trying to satisfy the inner childhood desire of world dominance? Does it have anything to do with Darwinism, how we try to convert the world into ideological replicas of ourselves, so that we might have a better chance of survival?

Sorry for mumbling. Late night brain dump doesn't make me very coherent.

Sometimes I sound really good on air. Other times...well.

I think I seem pretty stupid to most people IRL anyway because I'm awkward and slow-witted. So I seem dumb - that is, unless they get to read my writing. Which is funny, because most people seem really smart to me - until I read their writing. 

My friends and I were disagreeing on facebook over a slaughterhouse video I had posted and I noticed that people really suck at arguing - even those who write exceptional poetry, who are passionate and knowledgeable about environmental sciences, who have degrees in history and english. Years of school and/or honing research paper arguments doesn't apparently necessitate that people are able to articulate themselves within a debate.

Make no mistake, my friends are incredibly smart and talented, but being an activist-academic refines your written confrontation skills especially because reading obsessive amounts of news, news analysis and activist theory is just part of the lifestyle. And that familiarizes you with the opposition argument, which forces you to strategize both continually and compulsively. Activism teaches you to know your adversity, and to always be on your guard. 

Luckily for me, we were all working in my domain of expertise (it was, after all, a written argument about slaughterhouses). But it nonetheless reminded me of what [alwaystruggling] once said, "You know, I don't think I would have married a man who didn't know his grammar. When I asked Mike one night what subjunctive mood was, and he knew-- he had my heart."

I mean, it was the catharsis of Lime's words that had me heads over heels. I didn't think Starr was that special until I read his writing. I became disillusioned with Digi when confronted with his lack of literary artistry. My life is a stretching string of words, and I'm looking for someone to write it with.

It's not that I resent hard work; art isn't and shouldn't be easy. But I've already put in the hours. I have sketchbooks upon sketchbooks of work; I spent 3/4 of my life at the piano. And yet, it takes months for me to compose a song, and many wasted pages before I can produce a decent drawing. I've been penning a journal since I was 8, and still it can take up to half a day to write a blog. 

I tried drawing again today and my skills have since gone straight through the floor. Why does talent seem to come so easy and so steady for everyone else? 

I managed at least this drawing that I'm pretty pleased with. Hope you like, and hopefully more to come!

Last year it was urban exploring, and yesterday Mermaids and I were wheat-pasting on a boho street in Vancouver. I think the reason why I love Mermaids is not only because she listens to my compulsive activist critiques, but also because she makes me feel more badass than I can legitly claim to be. 

She posted some truly magnificent works, which upsets me because she gives her art away like it's nothing, and I don't even get any of it! We covered a lot of prime area up and down the street. I stood taller and smiled wider on the way back to the skytrain, not because we had gotten away with our mischief, but because I felt accomplished, like I had made my mark on city history. People like Mermaids are the reason why [boho street] is known as culturally innovative. Standing in a dark alley and looking out for cops with a bottle of wheatpaste in your hand doesn't feel wrong when what we're giving away is artistic creation, esp the kind made by Mermaids (It's funny how my reverence of her art is so severely annoying to her. Self-depreciating artists do not go with well with groupies). 

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Me hosting yesterday's new indie releases show with Mermaids. Podcast below!

http://www.cjsf.ca/vanilla_archives/2010_December_28_15_00.mp3
http://www.cjsf.ca/vanilla_archives/2010_December_28_15_30.mp3

I'm obsessed with the phenomena of Justin Bieber making millions while musicians like Hayate get squiddle. When asked what I wanted to do for a career, I used to say that I wanted to host a CBC music show. Even back then I knew I wanted to support undiscovered, indie art, but working for the public arts wasn't as altruistic as I made it out to be. To talk about and to talk to local musicians for the rest of my life - that's akin to early retirement! What an easy, enjoyable life that would have been. 

But after hosting indie music shows on CJSF 90.1FM, I now know it's not enough to provide underrepresented artists with a broadcasting platform. Even if I forgave the CBC for its hierarchal, corporate structure and for its tendency to neglect the truly undiscovered, it's not enough to simply promote underground art. What we need is a fundamental change in the societal structures that marginalize these artists in the first place.

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CafeLatte, KitKat, Mermaids and I went to see Black Swan yesterday and by the end of the ads and previews I was already mentally numb. The ads were the usual sugar-coated lies (World Wildlife Foundation donations make CocaCola environmentally friendly! New CarBrand will make you a better mom!) and all the trailers promised revolutionary excitement even when the movie was clearly a commonplace cliché.

Junk TV makes you feel as sick as you get from eating junk food, but you can't demand justice and truth from everything because you'll go crazy with frustration. When turning off the tube isn't an option, the only way to deal with large amounts of TV junk is to cease thinking and to accept it as inevitable. In other words, you become desensitized and morally apathetic. You adapt by learning not to expect anything substantial, or by accepting what's given as substantial because BigCorporate says it's so. It makes you question the humanity of people who watch large amounts of MTV.

Black Swan and Requiem for a Dream were directed by the same person (the latter we watched at Kitkat's house before going to the theatres). I'm opposed to violence in general, but that's not why I didn't like those films. I'm a fan of Fight Club, Firefly, Y:The Last Man, etc. because the gore there serves a purpose, either in articulating a message (ie. Fight Club was a critique of the violence generated by capitalist society) or at the least, in forwarding a plot that isn't already obvious. Meaningless violence is a sensationalist assault of the senses. Why are people forever asking to "feel something real" when we willingly subscribe to this yellow filmmaking, this emotional masturbation? 

I came out of the theatre feeling cheated and misled. My heart sank as my friends gushed and cited the most cliché scenes as their favourites. I said nothing until after CafeLatte and KitKat had been dropped off and then I ranted at Mermaids. 

An activist life isn't exactly filled with validation, and I appreciate that I have someone who listens (even if I'm not always right). She agrees most of the time anyway, but enlightened people like Mermaids, Starr and Trumon nonetheless resist activism. I don't understand that. How is it possible to recognize the need for change while continuing on like nothing's wrong? Conversely, why have I self-selected myself as a champion of social justice? Why do I feel it's up to me to do anything at all? 

Again, I hypothesize that they were not instilled with the same sense of responsibility because they're the youngest in their families (maybe that's also why they listen so patiently to a chatterbox like me), but that's not really an adequate answer. I wish to understand the absence, denial and conception of activism because I fear that one day I'll burnout and/or lose my momentum, like the hippies that grew up to become corporate admin. I want to be Generation Why forever.

I thought it'd be funny to have me and Twilight in the same picture. Talk about pulp fiction. 

My homie-girl, [Mint] is a Twihard but she's so darling that I dodn't have the heart to point out to her all the parts that are stupid (trick question). Thus the reason why I read every emo chick vampire book in the series and also the reason why I know every intimate detail about Edward Cullen's sparkly, marble skin. It would logically follow that Stephanie Meyer is a hiding a dick in her pants because no woman should be able to write such anti-feminist drivel. Unfortunately, she and Palin are proof that some of the most misogynistic people are women. 

Mint gave me breaking dawn as a gift and now iuno what to do with it. I do NOT want it running around loose in a library where it can impregnate unsuspecting minds. I don't know how to start a campfire or I'd throw it in, because it's otherwise such a waste to spend resources on recycling the one-pounder book when it should never have been printed in the first place! When I finally go to throw the book away I think of Mint and feel bad so there is a continued Twilight occupation in my living space. 

I think it's safe to say that Meyer is the Bieber of the literary world.

Drawers are shut but I keep the key. Lay siege upon my memories. 

Mind: Fuck this shit

Me: *still Starr-struck*

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Not really feelin' the Christmas this year. I used to be all with the card-and-cookie-making but now I just see consumers and dead turkeys and religious exclusion and awk family dinners. Totally getting invited to parties with that attitude. 

Spending the holidays geekin' out. Finished reading Chew and now I'm on Y: The Last Man. Going to [Mochi's] tomorrow to watch Firefly and also to bash cartoon characters on Xbox. I'm not really into the idea of Christmas but the time with friends part is nice.

I always felt fake and poser back when I was playing classical music. It wasn't just that I was playing songs that had already been played by thousands of others; the songs weren't mine. It wasn't honest of me to play them. They told me I was wrong, of course you're expressing yourself, see how no two people play any song the same? Of course this is what you want; this is you. 

Hayate and I are in the same music club at school and he's one of my favourite singer-songwriters. The other members can play their classical pieces with as much expression as they like, but when you play music that isn't your own, you can only ever hope to inject yourself into the soul of something that isn't yours. Hayate and I write our own music, we sing from the depths of wherever music comes from. The music is us and it validates us. 

I'm so idealistic, I know (that's why you keep reading!). I found that I don't enjoy performing live. I ruin everything when I'm nervous. The jitters go away once I'm into the song, but even then I don't like sharing my music with strangers. I get compliments like "your voice is so pretty", but I what I want to convey is in the song itself, and its message. I don't think they get it and they don't get me - and how can they? They don't know me like the people who've been reading me for years; I feel safe being myself here. 

That's me being selfish and introverted. I don't know how professional musicians can stand to put a dollar sign on their music and to have it posted on myspace for the whole world to hear. They are so infinitely generous to expose themselves to just anyone like that.

I'll still keep performing of course; when it comes to art it's like that tree in the forest - you're not a musician if no one ever hears you. The listener makes the musician. An artist can never belong only to him or herself.

Recording a new song soon! (I'll just keep saying that until it happens).

I met someone from UC Berkeley who's feminist, vegetarian, and well-read. And he's cute ^^ We've since become fast friends, but I think he's taken. baww no homewrecking.

I've kind of given up on facebook. I work with and associate with many activists, but they're more like coworkers than friends. My actual friends are apolitical bandwagoners (I can count the exceptions on one hand). So whenever I feel the need to share a pivotal news story it either hits a wall of indifference or it's met with STFU-damn-activists. It's discouraging, and it really does make you want to STFU because why bother, what's the point? 

It makes me really grateful for Xanga. I'm sure people don't always agree with what I write, but you nonetheless give me this supportive space to be myself. We only need a bit of validation to keep going.

I've decided that Starr wouldn't be a good fit for me after all. He's one of the few who are actually aware about social justice issues but he doesn't seem to want to do anything about it. I don't get that, is he just too lazy? scared? not to be bothered? Does it have anything to do with me being the eldest child and him the youngest, that I feel the need to take responsibility for change and he doesn't?

I'm not bitter; I just need to know I'll have his support. 

I sound harsh and I shouldn't judge, but then we only get the democracy we deserve. If I'm condescending, it's because it helps me cope with the fact that people just don't give a damn. For the most part however, I believe that people do want change, and that they can be made to care once they feel empowered enough to make a difference. And I know I have to be patient and forgiving in order to facilitate its happening.