and "atheists were praying full of sarcasm"

He stumbled into faith and thought,
"God, this is all there is?"
The pictures in his mind arose,
And began to breathe.
And all the gods and all the worlds
Began colliding on a
Backdrop of
Blue.

Blue lips,
Blue veins.

He took a step, but then felt tired.
He said, "I'll rest a little while."
But when he tried to walk again,
He wasn't a child.
And all the people hurried fast,
Real fast,
And no one ever smiled.

Blue lips,
Blue veins.
Blue,
The color of our planet from far, far away.

He stumbled into faith and thought,
"God, this is all there is?"
The pictures in his mind arose,
And began to breathe.
And no one saw, and no one heard.
They just followed the lead.
The pictures in his mind arose,
And began to breed.

They started out beneath the knowledge tree.
Then they chopped it down to make white picket fences,
And, marching along the railroad tracks,
They smile real wide for the camera lenses.
They made it past the enemy lines
Just to become enslaved in the assembly lines.

Blue lips,
Blue veins.
Blue,
The color of our planet from far, far away.

Blue,
The most human color.
Blue,
The most human color.
Blue,
The most human color...

Blue lips,
Blue veins.
Blue,
The color of our planet from far, far away.

- Regina Spektor

Part II: taking breaks from thinking

Thinking: Dangerous. Taking breaks from thinking: Dangerous.

First, I end up wasting time on a site that only results in more frustration so I have to write things like this:

On separating feminism and multiculturalism:

I think it was in Toni Morrison’s Bluest Eye when the black woman who was being abused by her husband refused to accept safe shelter with the white woman. The black woman identified more with being Black than with being Woman. This still happens and the point is what you want to do about it. To say that cultures have their ways so let them be makes no sense to me. I believe in understanding processes in which power/knowledge are transmitted and disbursed, and ways in which to resist exploitative power - particularly subtly manifested power - towards the goal of reducing inequality. But understanding feminism and the feminist movement as apart from culture is too reductive. If we separate the two, where would women of color stand? Feminism loses its strength when it makes women choose between their ethnicity and gender.

A woman on the site announces she has a picture of Mao in her living room. My response:

Here I was thinking you were another subscriber to Maoist consumerist culture…so as a Westerner, you are actually engaging in the performative act of ironically misunderstanding the iconic figure behind millions of deaths? Send me your address and I’ll send you a picture of Liu Shaoqi, my hero, second man to Mao who was responsible for Mao not getting in any more sh*t than he already had; who was responsible for much of the “good” ideas that came out of that era.
If I ever meet a cat I’m not allergic to, I’d adopt him and name him Chairman Meow. He’d have to be the laziest, fattest, most womanizing cat - that I’m not allergic to.

Second, I end up going to a tennis match between cross-town rivalries on a day with 40% chance of rain. It rains. And then my immune system is overcome by a viral infection that results in bronchitis complete with malaise and sustained fever of 102. This story has a happy ending!! The fever and my brain are in cahoots, and autopilot for continuous thinking switches on. So this involuntary, uncontrollable thinking mode results in a solution to all of my problems with work. Literally, figuratively, and paradoxically. Literally, the modus operandi for upcoming work is mapped out. Figuratively, to think required a high fever which meant being absent from work. And paradoxically, taking a break from thinking ultimately lead to painful, agonizing thinking.

Moral of the story is that the only pasttimes worth doing are the dangerous ones.

Dangerous Pastime Part I: Thinking

There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist...Mark Twain
I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else...Winston Churchill, when he was an old man.

After another 3-hour class discussion the other day, I commented out loud that this was another round of tearing apart my motivation to help (by way of existing mechanisms) empower the subsistence-level women of the world. A peer, as she was walking out, commented, "Well, you have to think this shit through." And left it at that.


That's all we do in academia is think shit through. Pourquoi? Is it a defensive mechanism - for fear of being proven wrong too easily? To maintain our privileged station as observers? Do we all possess various combinations of narcissistic, schizotypal, borderline, paranoid et al. personality disorders? For me, it's all of the above, plus the primitive desire to live dangerously. Sure, I could try fugu, but the excitement dividend will always be too low when the quotient is stupidly ingesting incorrectly prepared fish. And sushi is a favorite pastime. Previous pastimes included rock climbing, spelunking, snowboarding, blah blah, but now that I have 1.5 dependents (not including dog), it's only responsible to purchase life insurance for these activities. But who can afford the premium, especially whilst supporting one-and-a-half dependents?

So I resort to the dangerous pastime of thinking. Remember the song from Disney's Beauty and the Beast when
Gaston croons: LeFou I'm afraid I've been thinking,
LeFou: A dangerous pastime,
Gaston: I know.

The danger lies in forever being frozen into inaction because of the discovery that every action will result in negative externalities that outweighs and outvalues the original perceived gain. The danger is being hit by a Prius one day because both me, the pedestrian, and she, the driver were busy thinking. The danger is forgetting to pick up the dependent from preschool while blogging...oh shite!

dirt+potting soil+pick axe+shovel+miracle gro + muddy dog

= happiness.

Gandhi said, To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves . I was late to campus today having forgotten myself in the yard.

For years, our back and side yards have been covered in fertile soil that's now hardened at about one inch deep. We welcomed our guests to the backyard by going down a narrow concrete path bordered by lots of dirt. I recently decided to do something about this by using a combination of small bark, 150 lbs of smooth river stones, Emerald Cushions, and perennial flowers. This will also reduce the likelihood of Ocean getting his muddy paws all over my increasingly fewer nice pants.

Other plants we've grown over the years: bougainvilla, flax, wild grass, Mexican sage, rosemary, daisies, star jasmine, 6 queen palm trees, lemon and lime trees, plantain trees that are too hardy and grow like weeds, and mini rose bushes. Our biggest mistake was planting ficus trees. The City is currently hacking away at ficus trees on our cross street whose roots interrupt sewage systems and destroy sidewalks. This was the shadiest street in our neighborhood; you could recognize it instantly atop our closest hill and from satellite maps. Incidentally, half the street was able to avoid the ficus chopping probably because a former mayor lives there.

A racist AsianAm - Project Implicit

The Implicit Association Test spearheaded by professors from U of Virginia, Harvard, and U of Washington has been around since 1998. I just discovered it thanks to G. IAT is a method demonstrating the divergences between speaking one's mind (conscious) and knowing one's mind (unconscious). Several demo tests are offered on their website.

On the one demo I took, I've apparently adopted the same prejudices as the majority of those surveyed according to the result page:

"Thank you for your participation. Just below is a breakdown of the scores generated by others. Most respondents find it easier to associate European American with American and Asian American with Foreign compared to the reverse." Interesting...

But not too surprising because one of the caveats I was able to reveal is that I was basing my responses on personal knowledge of the subject and also on how others view the subject. Even though I consider myself American this study has shown that it is extremely difficult to stop reproducing deeply imbedded cultural prejudices.

iOpium

Many of my friends are well aware of how my phone was stolen recently and I will be paying for calls made to Peru. Not Ecuador, Tom, Peru. As timing would have it, the iPhone 3G just came out and believing the world to be good, I thought I'd visit an Apple store, stand in line for an hour and walk out with eBay's latest cash cow.
On a beautiful Santa Monica morning, I saw a long line of patient Apple consumers. Orange T-Shirt With Jeans and Apple Nametag told me that the wait would be no longer than 3 hours. I knew I would not last that long but like a robot, I methodically made my way past the line grateful to be in baseball cap and dark glasses so as to be unrecognizable to some former students.
Upon taking my place in the back of the line, a distinct thought formed: "Steve Jobs is a brilliant fu$%." He has effectively used all of us in this line as free advertisement. His stores are in the highest per capita income shopping centers in the United States and passersby at these places may be sucked into the hype themselves or think nothing of it. It's better to bank on the first when the success of your business stems from creative marketing. As one who has always refused to wear logos anywhere on my body, I am now a minion in his marketing scheme. I pay with my time standing out here in this line so that I can pay over $200 plus $30 extra each month on my phone bill.
These thoughts I shared with my fellow pawns who agreed that Jobs could have issued us all tickets. But then we would leave the line. He must have enough inventory given the high demand from the first iPhone. But we all had to wait a week for a NEW shipment of iPhones to arrive in Los Angeles. He could have sent these iPhones to my nearest AT&T store. But then I wouldn't be trapped in this capitalist prison of my own choosing.
As three of us left the line 20 minutes later, I remember distinctly, a thought: "Steve Jobs is a brilliant asshole."

An update: I went back the next day at the iCrack of dawn and an hour later, the world is good again.
---
Sent from my iPhone

A list for my nieces and for the giddy tween girl I really am

Because these things sometimes come up in conversation especially with teenage girls in surburbia, here is a list of people we've seen or met in los glamgeles: Gabriel Byrne on Tree People hike. Governor Schwarzenegger and wife with matching orange-y hair color (they must have used the same otc box and if so, I approve) with two beefy body guards all riding beach cruisers in Santa Monica.
Jessica Alba in gym (nice and unassuming). Jessica Simpson with flock of photographers. Angela Bassett, also very nice, cute twins. John Lithgow and dog crossed my path on campus, gave me a funny look (Mr. Lithgow, not the dog). Judy Reyes from Scrubs (how cool is that?!) Diane Keaton - gorgeous smile who, of everyone, looks the most like her image on film.
A Baywatch girl, can't remember which, who changed into wetsuit and asked me to watch her clothes before diving into the ocean. Mira Sorvino, the one actor with whom I could certainly have had a conversation with about Amnesty, Chinese, Children. But no, I quietly tried on clothing, shared a mirror, and shirked away to check out.
Two celebrities had surprisingly large heads. One was Jake Gyllenhaal at a local gymnastics center and the other was Pierce Brosnan. L and I had the occasion of standing in line behind double oh seven at a Sarah Brightman concert.