why i don't listen to the radio any more and only watch tv on the internet, OR, why the youth are starting to change

i got home from work today and, exhausted from bickering with administration about some sketchy misdeeds they are trying to pull on one of my special ed students, sat down in front of my computer to unwind, eat cake, and read some blogs.

i went to TigerBeatdown and started reading the first article up, something about Miley Cyrus and the "search for a feminist pop star."

um. ok. what?

i was unaware we were collectively searching for a feminist pop star. and i was confused about the parameters; have "feminist" and "pop" ever gone together? when was the last feminist "pop star?"* none come to mind.

still, i continued reading, interested to see where this was going. as it turns out, i guess Miley has recently released a new single and with it, a new music video. the article glosses over the use of tired metaphors and symbols: birds, cages, wings on ladies. you get the idea. and pretty soon, i was tired of reading. but i skipped over to youtube and quickly ran a search of Miley's video.


now, admittedly, i am so out of touch with popular youth culture these days. i find my career as an educator has made me more averse to children than understanding of their behaviors and interests. when i sit down at my computer to look up the latest top 40s or to read an article about Justin Bieber's hair, i consider it "research" for my work, rather than pleasure reading.

but here i am, on a thursday afternoon, researching and talking about Miley Cyrus. surely there are better ways of spending my, and your, time.

well, after watching the first minute of the video (and believe me, that was about all i could stomach) i continued reading the aforementioned article, and found i couldn't get far in that either before i had to write a little rant of my own. because the article, and, it seems, a lot of feminist bloggers out there, seem to be discussing the video, and Miley's career, for that matter, in these terms, and these terms only:
1) the rampant sexuality, and whether it detracts from the potential "feminism" present in the music and the act of her, a 17-year-old girl, being a successful "musician." (i use those quotation marks with a generous helping of skepticism, since, as far as i am aware, Miley does not produce any music of her own.)
2) her lyrics are "empowering," thus, she is a feminist because her music speaks to young girls. (again, the quotations around empowering.)

oh... the rant that is about to unfold!

as far as the blogosphere is concerned, Miley is either a feminist if you just focus on the words and the music, or a hypocrite if you look at her flapping those Victoria's Secret wings in the video. my adamant and vocal disagreement is: SHE IS NEITHER!

i agree with my blogger sisters that she can't be a feminist and a sex kitten. but not because i believe sex and beauty can't be empowering (because they can). i have a problem with the whole Disney virgin/pop princess image Miley tries to evoke, alongside the over-sexed performer she tries to be. madonna/whore dichotomy anyone!? i understand young women can be confused, because the patriarchal culture has us thinking we want to be so many things it's hard to choose sometimes, but you cannot evoke whatever persona whenever you want and call it "show business." (whore!)

that brings me to my problem with the "search" in the first place. because pop stars, almost by definition, sell sex, and use sex to sell more sex, under the guise of "making music." it's not music that's on display, it is Miley's precocious boobs and sultry legs. did Tracy Chapman ever prance around in a cage, half-clad in a leather corset and knee-high boots? no, because she was too busy writing music and winnin' Grammies! shoo...

a pop star can never make empowering music, because empowerment is not what sells albums or makes a trashy music video, or gets throngs of tweeny girls to go to your concert (oh, but if it were!) empowerment isn't about hyping up celebrity culture, nor is it about self-worship and hubris, it is about feeling confident enough to take agency and do something for yourself and others around you.

but what is being called "empowerment" in Miley's case, is actually a strong case of entitlement. here's a sampling of the lyrics from the newly released "Can't Be Tamed," the song some people are lauding as a "kick-ass girl power anthem":

For those who don't know me, I can get a bit crazy
Have to get my way, 24 hours a day
'Cause I'm hot like that
Every guy everywhere just gives me mad attention
Like I'm under inspection, I always get the 10s
'Cause I'm built like that

I go through guys like money flyin' out their hands
They try to change me but they realize they can't
And every tomorrow is a day I never planned
If you're gonna be my man, understand

[Chorus]
I can't be tamed, I can't be saved
I can't be blamed, I can't, can't
I can't be tamed, I can't be changed

in one of Miley's first singles, the chorus goes "blah blah blah... she's just being Miley."** see a pattern? don't let the erratic dance moves confuse you, Miley's not trying to empower anyone, she just wants a nicer, more lyrical way of saying, "I'M A HOT, ENTITLED, POP STAR BRAT. I DO WHAT I WANT!"

now, this wouldn't be such a mondo problem if it just stopped there. i wouldn't be writing this long-winded blog post if just a few smart, well-spoken ladies believed Miley (or Christina Aguilera, or Madonna, or Tina Fey, or etc.) was doing a really innovative and daring thing by singing about her selfish wanton desires, and confused her entitlement anthems for empowerment anthems. but, because pop culture and pop music is so pervasive, everyone starts to think these things, and this kind of thinking becomes ingrained into our daily lives, becomes practiced by real-life tweens on the street, becomes a chronic problem of irreverence and disregard among our young people.

you see, as a teacher in South Central Los Angeles, it is almost a daily topic of conversation and source of wonderment among the teachers, as we walk to our cars at the end of each day, "what is wrong with the kids these days!?" i never thought i would say it, and i guess it's a sign i'm getting old, but the behaviors of children these days is perpetually perplexing, befuddling, and bewildering. students cursing off adults who are trying to teach them, students pushing or touching teachers, students standing in the way of a teacher refusing to move, huffing and puffing as if they are engaged in some prelude to fighting ritual. my aide says, every time we have this conversation, "kids have more rights than adults to these days" and though i was hesitant to concur, i believe she may be right. there are no consequences strong enough to make an impression on a student in my school, so many will push their limits until they eventually are escorted out in handcuffs and served with fines. students come to school wearing whatever they want and argue with principals about the uniform, and sit in class looking cute but not learning anything. one of my students is doing math at a pre-kindergarten level (she cannot add without assistance and frequently doesn't know how to count past ten) and comes late to school each day because she spends her mornings straightening her hair and putting on her mascara. she got her nails done the other day and refused to use a pencil for fear of snapping a nail off.

my point is, maybe if our culture didn't glorify material self-worship, we wouldn't have young women walking around in high heels, booty shorts and low-cut tops, mouthing off to adults and carrying themselves with arrogance, thinking that they are being strong, confident females. maybe if we gave them role models with some sense and sensibility, we'd have some more respect and self-respect among our youth. it is so pathetic how starved of feminist idols we are that we will jump at the opportunity to call someone so clearly wrong a "feminist."

-stephan!e


*some might argue Lady GaGa, and as much as i love her performances and vision, never once considered her a feminist. an artist, sure (which is more than i can say about Miley) but not a feminist in the way Betty Friedan was a feminist. end of story.
** disclaimer: i only know this song because i work out at the gym a lot.

oh, The Internet. how i love thee.

in the span of thirty minutes i went from reading this article complaining about Lost, to reading about Original Sin, to reading about The Fall and then learned that...

"The term 'prelapsarian' refers to the sin-free state of humanity prior to the Fall. It is sometimes used in reference to sentimental recollections of a past time when conditions stood in sharp contrast to the present; this situation is called nostalgia." [source]

huh! i am learning so much about Star Wars and pop culture and human nature, according to the Old and New Testaments.

thanks, Internet.

alligators in the sewers

i know, it's been a long time since i've posted, and shame on me for letting this fall by the wayside. before i forget, HAPPY 2010!(it's going to rock so much harder than 2009, don't you agree?) and also, a recollection of a dream i had last night:

my friend Dave who incidentally goes to grad school at UCLA (but who i haven't seen in months despite living just blocks away from each other) asked me to come over to check out this crazy-looking condo he was thinking about renting for him and his new girlfriend, who may or may not have been pregnant. when i got there, my immediate thoughts, i remember, were "sweet dang! how much money does a grad student at UCLA make?!" – because the place featured impressive (albeit confusing) post-modern architecture and, the real point of interest for me, an expansive lagoon/swamp/"koi pond" underneath the deck. this is what i felt most obligated to check out for my friend. i tip-toed closer to the water, and observed the alien-looking marine plant life, as well as some strange movements on the surface. i saw some kind of mechanical alligator head, which looked like a wind-up toy, but then i couldn't be sure, so i got creeped out and discouraged from venturing a toe into the water. i searched the depths, murky and deceptively deep, looking for fish and now, alligators.* i informed my friend that i believed water of unknown depths to be dangerous.

we moved further along the deck and i observed fins skimming the water. i looked on closely, tensely, awaiting dolphins or sharks. first, dolphins, and i thought about friendly swims with porpoises. but shortly after, sharks emerged too, and i thought of thrashing water and sharp bites on the ankles. i delicately lowered a shoe'd toe beyond the level of the deck, offering it up to the depths below to see how eager and hungry the marine ecosystem below me was, but Dave snatched me up before the sharks and alligators did.

we moved inside as my friend told me how much his new investment was going to be, "$500, 000 for rent." rent?!! i gasped. you can buy a house in kentucky for that much! ah yes, but he reasoned that he really wanted a nice place for his gf and "baby?" to live, and i concurred that, despite the potentially dangerous lagoon in his backyard, living with danger and a body of water nearby could be a pretty satisfying experience, albeit a uniquely LA one (and already attainable, at a much cheaper price – ah, the glories of private property ownership!)

we moved inside to his artfully minimalist living room and sat on his firm couch, and his dog came up to me and wrestled with my leg. i then remarked on how impressively wide and large his dog's head was, and told him what he had here wasn't a dog, but a polar bear. i cautiously played with it, then watched as the dog and another animal my friend seemed to be domesticating (an otter? a fox? a bear cub? i don't know, just that it had a red body and a furry face) started making out.

---

in the dream before that, i believe i was wandering around the city of chicago, looking for a place to stay while i was there for a conference. i had a map, but the lines showing streets were gone or faded and all i could see were the names of streets floating on a page, guessing at their intersections. my parents came and met me at a corner bakery where we talked to some business man in a suit and tie about staying in one of his many properties in the city but he seemed unconvinced i shouldn't just be homeless and continue wandering the city for the entire weekend.

---

earlier this week (or last week, as today is monday) i had another dream where my family was trying to swim across a river. i made it across and was looking down into the water, watching alligators swimming up to the shore, bellies up and skimming the surface, then flipping off the bank and catching things in their arms and legs. my dad was the last to swim across the river and i watched as he got closer to the bank of the river, at the same time an alligator came near enough to flip off the bank and onto my dad, its body sinking him into the water and swimming away with him. i woke up terrified and gasping, as if i too had been drug under water.

---

i looked up the symbolism of alligators in dreams, and Bella, "the voice of women" writes:

alligators and crocodiles in dreams can signify 'hidden danger'--a situation that you are aware of on an intuitive level but are not acknowledging in your conscious mind. This can be a simmering situation at work, a untrustworthy person, or sadly, anything that you can't really see coming but which strikes out of the blue and without mercy.

i don't listen too much to psychoanalysts, even tho i once wanted to be one. i don't read too much into my dreams either (i have a record of outlandish, vivid dreams that are more exhilarating than they are revelatory) – i have at least one intensely vivid dream a night (that i can remember).

that is to say, i don't write about this for any truth-seeking reason, but merely as an exercise in recording. and, writing. and also: because they are fun to remember. (but, since i mentioned it: stressed thinking about school (applying, attending, working at) and possible future lives, the dwindling winter break and how much i miss being home and particularly in this house, with my family, and the fragility of life and how delicate each moment is but how destructive we can be with each other in spite of life's fragile moments...)

much to think about, and it's almost time to sleep.
-stef


*once when i was very young (maybe 10?) my family went to vacation in south carolina. my dad, recently returned from a business trip to florida, brought me and my brother matching mickey mouse hats (my brother's was blue and green, and mine was red) and we wore them out onto this long wooden deck where the locals dangled pieces of chicken meat on metal hooks, in order to catch crabs. crabbing was an intricate process, from skewering the chicken bits just so on the hook so that the skin and fat would dangle off the bone enough to dance enticingly in the water, to sensing the slightest bit of tension on the rope, signifying the crab's eager tugging on the bait (you had to time it just right so that the crabs had enough of a taste to want more, and then slowly hoist them out of the water so you could slip a net under them), and we enjoyed it for hours on that wooden deck. until suddenly, i felt a sharp tug on my line, and looking down, ready to bring my catch up, realized i had baited an alligator. it was thrashing and tossing its head around, the rope coming out from between its teeth and leading up to the deck, where i had tied it just in front of me. terrified, i yelled for my dad, who came rushing to my rescue to wrestle the rope still enough so he could cut it. i remember feeling like the whole deck was going to come crashing down into those alligator-infested waters. in the excitement, my hat got knocked off my head, and i watched in horror as it fell down into the water.
that night, lying in bed, feeling i had just survived an alligator attack/ avoided an alligator eating, i imagined my hat, the hat my dad gave me, lying at the bottom of the swamp, alligators swimming around it, mickey mouse winking up at the surface, forever suspended in time.

hope

"you cannot live on hope alone,

but without it, life is not worth living."
- Harvey Milk

i have got to give it up for this video:

great graphic design and editing, highlighting excerpts from Harvey Milk's speech "You Cannot Live On Hope Alone" (1978). i got chills just watching it, and an itch to take to the streets and fight for something, fight for everyone's right to love whoever we want.

---

another speech that will absolutely move you to tears: Dustin Lance Black's Oscar acceptance speech for his original screenplay for the film MILK (2008).

Dustin Lance Black's moving Oscar Acceptance Speech
by ohlalaparis

what a senseless world we live in if beautiful people like these must be told they are anything less by our government and corporatized media.

---

finally: if you haven't seen it yet, you should definitely watch The Life and Times of Harvey Milk (the original documentary on which, i'm assuming, Milk was based, and Hulu has it for free!) i watched this as a sophomore in college, in a gender and sexuality in literature class, and remember crying for hours after, wondering how i'd gone my whole life without knowing about Harvey Milk, and feeling so sad that people like this, brave and beautiful ppl, are taken from us before they can do all the good they can.

lonesome cowboy

On August 23, 1973, Jan Erik Olsson, on leave from prison, walked into Kreditbanken at Norrmalmstorg, central Stockholm and attempted to hold up the bank. Swedish police were called in immediately, two of them went inside, and Olsson opened fire, injuring one policeman.

The other was ordered to sit in a chair and "sing something."

He started singing "Lonesome Cowboy."


-----

Olofsson was a repeat offender who had committed several armed robberies and acts of violence, the first committed at the age of 16.

He walked around in the vault singing Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly".




(from the Wikipedia article about the Norrmalmstorg robbery, which originated the theory on Stockholm Syndrome)

surviving middle school (again)

teaching has been fun! i started this wednesday, and tho was stressed and more than reluctant to go the first day, since then i've been getting the hang of it and i love it.

fun things i did with the kids today:
-had our first Fun Friday (the kids voted unanimously to play Heads Up 7 Up. we even did a lightning round!)
-kids were excited to play MATH RACE! (see, math can be fun!)
-taught them how to say hello in turkish! ("merhaba"...?) they LOVED that. they were walking around all day saying "merhaba, merhaba, merhaba" back and forth.
-my homeroom kids were really sad not to have me twice in one day today. they say they love coming here to unwind and they like talking to me about their day. that made me feel good.
-today is "scrub day" (the 8th graders - i guess - pick on the younger kids and stick their heads in the toilets and "scrub" them with it) so my 6th graders said they were scared to be bullied. i let them know that Ms. Lee has a zero tolerance policy and that if i ever saw them bullying or being bullied i would make sure to stop it. i also told them my no violence policy and told them the bravest thing to do is walk away. i also taught them the meaning of "escalate" and connected it to "escalator" which was a particularly clever and spontaneous teaching moment, if i do say so myself. :-)
-i also told my students that if they ever felt scared or worried, to feel free to come to my room (207) and that they could stay in my room and eat lunch or hang out and play games. i told them my room would always be a safe space for them. at nutrition and at lunch, my students Orlando and Enrique came by to play tic-tac-toe and to play with playdough and bouncy balls. we listened to music while i got my next class ready, and they shared some of their music interests with me. i have them written down to research later (tho i was really surprised to hear the kids are still listening to Slipknot and the Offspring these days. those were bands I listened to in middle school!)
-had a tough time with my SDC special ed class today. they were being rowdy, calling each other names and being generally disruptive. the entire class stayed after 4th period during lunch for detention, in which they were not allowed to talk and had to practice being quiet. i held a few even longer for being tardy, and then had 2 additional students stay even longer for being disruptive and disrespectful to the teacher and the aide.

= so far so good. i'm being a hard ass when i have to, and having fun when i can.

also: hearing the kids say "bye Ms. Lee!" at the end of class or "hi Ms. Lee" when i pass them in the hall is still one of the things that makes me inexplicably glad.

more later. must clean and plan before i leave school. and i'm really REALLY tired, wanting a nap...

-"Ms. Lee"

way w k

(say it out loud: "way w k" = w'A W K = WAY AWKWARD!)

my initiation into LA denizenry:
moved into new apartment without a refrigerator (apparently all LA housing comes sans fridge. what do you crazy CA ppl do? why are you all so possessive of your huge ass kitchen appliances? if we could all just agree to leave those things behind, we could all have fridges in our new housing.)

sitting in apartment, roommate left to go to work an hour away, taking the car and the only working set of keys with him. thus, i cannot leave the apt to walk down the street to buy food from the store. working all night and all morning on my grad class's papers, i'm getting light-headed from lack of nourishment. between yesterday at 3 pm and today at 2 pm, i've only had one apple and a small box of raisins.

i look online for food that comes to me. i try Green Truck first (environmentally friendly organic gourmet food service based in Culver City! how delightful!) – BUT, they don't deliver on Mondays! bummer mother. so i try the next thing i can think of: Pizza Hut (haha, total 180).

so i'm on the phone with Pizza Hut. i give the guy my name and phone number and address. he makes some unintelligible joke about my name –
guy: "Stephanie Lee? Are you related to *mumble mumble* Lee?"
me: "what?"
guy: "mumble mumble"
me: no response
guy: "nevermind."

so i'm trying to get the cheapest pizza i can. i ask the guy on the phone if there are any specials, any $5 pizza deals or anything that will save my hard-earned (and quickly depleting) money. he asks if i have any coupons and i explain that no, i don't eat a lot of pizza and i just moved here, so no coupons or anything of the like. he asks me where i'm from, i say KY. he asks if i'm here for school and i say no, "i'm here to teach." he says he's surprised b/c i sound so young and at that point i'm wondering how the focus has turned away from the pizza and onto me.

i redirect: "so, how about that pizza?" and he says he'll give me the discount anyway and i wrap up my order. i don't feel good about giving him my credit card number and was really defensive when he asked for the expiration date. i'm thinking i don't want him to steal my identity after i reject him for a date. he tells me the order total and i say "great, thanks."

he asks me if i like going to concerts and i say yes as a knee-jerk (i'd just finished ordering tickets to a show at the Troubadour, so i have concerts on my mind). he says his friends are dj's and it'd be cool if i wanted to go to one of their parties some time. i tell him that'd be cool, my friend Tara is a dj too and she'd probably like to meet other ppl in the business. he gives me his phone number (which i write down without thinking but now keep so i know which call not to answer) and then tells me he'll call me some time. i tell him not to call after 10pm (thinking that a pretty unreasonable time), "because i teach in the mornings" (even though i don't start for almost another month). he says he'll only call on fridays. great...

i hang up the phone. i'm not even hungry any more. now i'm worried about this guy having my phone # and my address, knowing way too much about me without me really volunteering the information. i feel like my privacy has been violated. i feel sad, confused, overwhelmed. memories of a horrible experience in an airport hotel resurface. i feel guilty. i think about my boyfriend and how i miss him right now. i try to devise plans to diffuse the situation and avoid any further awkward exchanges. i swear off pizza delivery from now on (next time, i'll just wait until Tuesday and order the healthy stuff!)

Ben is coming to visit in just 11 more days! my family comes in only 3! i think i can be resourceful and clever enough to hold off any creepy advances from Pizza Boy until my family is in town (my mom just broke her foot. = fiberglass cast to groin anyone?). and then, if he is still persistent enough to call, i will take him up on the party offer, and bring Ben along. that should take care of things.

20 minutes later, the pizza came. i hid behind a wall while my roommate Michael picked it up. the delivery person was a cute little old lady. i asked her if the tip money went to her or the company. she said the company. i gave her a tip in cash, put it in her hands, and then told her to have a great day. she scampered away (thank god she didn't try to hit on me – i wasn't her type).

and the pizza? too salty.

-stef

+ smells!

in continuation of my Venice Beach post, i was delighted to find in one upscale boutique a display of Chris Brosius's I Hate Perfume collection. i thought CB's scent philosophy was so fascinating, i always resented the fact that Brooklyn was such a far distance to travel, or that modern technology hadn't discovered a way to transport scent across the internet.
my favorite was Winter 1972, maybe more the concept than the scent. i love the idea and the way the smell kinda helps me put that memory in mind. that's all i really want in a bottle of expensive scent, anyway. i'm not buying the commodity, i'm buying the memory...

the interesting thing about CB's perfume is that, despite how much i love the concept, i have absolutely no desire to buy it for myself. and, i think, ppl who do, totally misunderstand CB's perfume philosophy. to them, it's still a perfume; those memories aren't their own.

i wish instead that CB specialized in bottling those scents we wish to keep, and that you could commission him to travel to your home and sit in that closet with you, taking deep breaths, and he'd write in his notebook the ingredients he'd need to distill this place into a scent: aged fur, your mother's leather purse, the silk scarves from Spain yr father bought yr mother when they were dating. the smell of untouched old clothing and what you've always supposed is the smell of moth balls but still aren't quite sure. the smell of tarnished metal jewelry and belt buckles, the smell of soft light sifting thru plastic garment bags and winding thru sleeves, a sliver of light shining on your face as you sit on the floor of your parents' closet, your arms around your knees, pulling yourself in tight and feeling hugged by all your parents' clothing, hanging down around you like a willow tree. (we'd call this one "In My Parent's Closet, 1990-2000").

if i could, i would create scents named after particular instances in my life, like "April 2007-Spring is Almost Here" and "May 2008-The Summer is Almost Over." and they would remind me of love and precious, urgent friendship, the smell of humidity and muggy Oxford air, the swan pond and sunsets on the roof, sunlight thru tree leaves in the woods and the sweet warm smell of cottonwood blooms lining the streets of Oxford and the smell of sprinkler dew lingering on the grass at night. and i would create another: "Every Summer Before This" and that would smell like sunlight shining in thru curtains and blinds in my room at home in Lexington, old dusty books and wood wax, sweat and pool chlorine and my mother's homemade lemonade and the smell of gas grilled steaks and crisp romaine in a wooden bowl with blueberries and freshly cut apples. and lightning bug luminescence after a summer evening rain, bare feet on soft carpet, VHS tapes, tennis balls and tennis shoe rubber, sunscreen and sun-exposed skin after a cold shower, and my bed at home. the smell of softness and peace.

and there'd be others i'd want bottled too, like "The Windate Writing Center - At Night" and "Serious Relationship #2". and there'd be another called "A Hug", which would be the smell of someone you love holding you tight, your face buried in their chest or your cheek against their neck, and the smell of their laundry and their hair and the warmth of their skin thru their shirt. and there'd be another called "Bike Ride - Spring/Summer/Fall/Winter & Lexington/Oxford/Suburbs/Woods/Chicago" which would remind me of open air and my hair blowing around my face, and the excitement and anticipation of adventure. clean, crisp air filling your lungs and your hair, billowing your clothes like a parachute around your body.

with fond memories and olfactory sensations,
stephanie

sites/sights and sounds!

that's right.

my friend Inka and i went out to Venice Beach on saturday to partake in EcoFest 2008. she described Venice to me in a way that made me think of it as a small fragment of San Francisco, crumbled off from the whole and dropped onto the sandy beaches of L.A.

and though i'm not too familiar with San Fran (i only go like every 5 years to visit my grandmother, and we only go to her house and the airport, so i don't have a holistic understanding of the city), if you believe the stereotypes (that it's a city of hippies, beatniks, and homeless ppl) then yeah, i guess Venice fits that description pretty well.

here, pictures and video from our fest-ing experience:

the Venice boardwalk.

Inka, in a really design-y boutique that sold ergonomic kitchen/housewares

pro-peace drum circle protesters. (made me a little sick for home and Oxford peace rallies...)

anti-war signs + art

sand art.

man with companion (note matching hats and glasses - and demeanors!)

and "tongue whistling"!


so, this is L.A. ...
-stephanie

dessicating + de-sexing

from the pages of a notebook, which i sought to represent as closely to the original hand-written version:

i've noticed a weird vibe about the ppl here. i'm struck by how attractive everyone is:

tall, leggy blondes; thin, well-spoken women with perfect bone structure in skirts and stilettos all the time

but what's remarkable about it is there is nothing really attracting about any of them.
none! and it occurs to me: they're too perfect, they're almost eery

it reminds me of Vonnegut's short story "Welcome to the Monkey House" and the suicide mistresses (/waitresses?) and how they were required to dress in skin tight body stockings and knee-hi boots, but no one was attracted to them & they weren't sexual beings themselves b/c ppl were doped up on these numbing pills [that made them lose all sexual urges]

and it seems to me it's the same way with [the women here]. everyone is so obsessively focused on [a] "mission" that they're blind, deprived of their basic humanism, dried up and numb

i feel like since i got here i'm feeling myself become... a prude/ dried up/ sapped of sexual urgency/ desire or spontaneity or fervor... it's hard to say

but you get closer to what i'm thinking if you think about it this way: sex as a ferile desire/ need/ a wild passion/ an urgency/ an animal veracity/ferocity that grips you, right? something a little depraved, perhaps a little messy, a little too animal and a little too human

= too much reality and rawness for this environment, which is drying up all our sexual/human urges

i think of corporate suckers, how those poor bastards spend so much goddamn time in suits, in meetings, in these glass facade buildings [spending all day repressing their human needs and desires] so that all they wanna do when they get back to their posh hotel rooms is don a pair of lady's stockings and fuck each other doggy style.

or, i think of school teachers we've all had, those crusty old spinsters who we pitied on some level as kids b/c we knew they were [probly] terribly alone and had probably never known a night of real passion in their lives.

and i wonder: is that what i'm getting into?

-stephanie

(as i wrote this i listened to "the twist" by Frightened Rabbit, off their album Midnight Organ Fight and one quote kept recurring at exactly the right moments: "i need human heat."

i need human heat. i need human heat. i need human heat. i need human heat. i need human heat. i need human heat. i need human heat. i need human heat. i need human heat. i need human heat. ...)

a-twitter: life in the digital age

i'm amazed by all the means by which the internet helps ppl keep in touch these days. does anyone even remember how to use a phone or make a house call?

i think technology is seriously incapacitating us. i remember before i even got a cell phone how different my personal interactions and relationships were. i mean, i remember having to plan ahead and set times to meet people - wow, can you imagine?! if i was meeting a friend for a date, it was a specific time and place, no if's, and's, or but's about it. you actually had to keep your obligations and commitments, you couldn't just call them at the last minute and cancel or say you were running late.

i'm sensitive to these things lately because of the amalgam of online applications i have recently started using (what i have come to collectively term my "e-life" applications). first, i finally caved and joined facebook. this was a huge personal defeat for me, since i had held off on joining for the entirety of my college career, because i found the idea of online social networking to be shallow and ridiculous. i had better ways to waste my time on the internet, and, as i constantly reminded others, there are other ways of keeping in touch with people.

but, over the years, as more and more people joined facebook, and i continued to refuse, i noticed i was getting left out of what appeared to be a digital modification - no, transformation - of modern life. my friend Robert likes to talk about transhumanism, and i think that now i finally understand what that term (and its philosophy and associated ideas) means. could it be that humans are really adapting themselves, overcoming "undesirable aspects of the human condition," by plugging ourselves in, and loading ourselves up?

i've discussed before my belief that humans are becoming increasingly technology-dependent. let's think about this: life support. "pulling the plug." we liquefy our lives, distill the essence into digital data, and upload it from any port in the world, as long as we have high speed internet access and an outlet. this process of uploading, of instant publication, of visibility, transparency, inescapability... it's invigorating. makes you feel alive, makes you feel real, makes you feel like you've got an audience and what you're doing matters (because it matters what you're doing). "overcoming involuntary death" - everyone a 15-second internet celebrity, everyone an immortal, everyone inhabiting a webspace. my life was contained in the microchips of a small whirring piece of hardware, until it decided to die. when that happened, i felt like it was i who had been erased. so what did i do? i turned to my virtual self and recovered what i could from the internet. life doubling up on itself: all the music i originally found on the internet, recovered again via my own past posts.

the digitalization of our lives has other impliations as well. facebook is not so much a way of keeping in touch with people as it is about keeping track of people. ah ha! - surveillance! yes, it seems that what we're all really doing is keeping tabs on one another. is there any other way to justify or explain the news feeds? we watch for changes in biographical information, relationship statuses, we track the lives of our friends as if our lives were online dramas being played out for entertainment.

now, a shameful admission: i don't necessarily dislike the idea of being able to track every change in every person's life. i actually rather like seeing what people are up to. example: i love using gmail. the chat feature is one of my favorite tech tools of recent memory because it allows me to see when my friends are online and what they might be up to:

i never used AIM as a kid, even when it was all the rage and all my friends used it to keep in touch. i preferred calling people on the phone or riding my bike to their house to say hi (it seems being behind the technological times has always been a proclivity of mine.) the same is true now: i could easily call someone and get a response just as quickly as i could if i sent them a chat. but, i wouldn't get the luxury of a status message for context. it's sometimes nice to strike up a chat with a friend who, by the look of their status, is feeling down, stressed, or lonely. and i'm sure lots of people would agree that it's a great window for expressing emotions without feeling like you're unloading or being extremely desperate, of putting yourself out there without having to risk anything, because the audience you want is there, in that little sidebar, and if they want to talk to you, they will. and you get the benefit of feeling a slight sense of relief and catharsis, without having to wear your heart on your sleeve, so to speak.

it's also a great way to share a link you like, a clever thought or quip, or even your latest poetry: one of my friends wrote a series of sonnets using the gchat status message as a creative medium (he found the character limit to be an interesting creative feature). i used to document away messages, finding them to be fantastic narratives (that document has since been lost in the death of external harddrive, boooo.)

but, as much as i love status narratives, twitter has taken this to a completely new level. holy shit, man, this thing is madness!!


here is a sight [sic] where you can upload away messages, as if it were a blog, and it stores them for you, as a narrative! and, you can "follow" people you know, or people you hardly know at all! (right now i am following Achewood and a Miami professor who i never took classes with, just talked to occasionally about living wage issues).

the striking thing about twitter is that, unlike gchat or facebook, it doesn't aspire or pretend to be anything other than a news feed for your personal life. there is no use for it beyond occasionally reminding people "yes, i am in fact, alive." in a digital age where we are constantly connected and plugged in, i find it fascinating that our everyday actions can find outlet and audience in cyberspace. ("i am typing... i am thinking... i am breathing... i am living...")

now, that said, YOU SHOULD BE MY FRIEND AND FOLLOWER ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER!!

;-)
-stef lee

p.s. speaking of narratives, a twitter conversation unfolded on the 'net this (6/6/08) morning:

BE LIKE THE BUFFALO

just goes to show that we can always challenge the existing relationships of power and domination, even those we assume to be "natural."

-stephan!e

celebrating the '90s

my friends and i were chatting at dinner. making plans for the summer and all the fun, wild and wonderful things we need to squeeze into these last 7 weeks of school before graduation and splitting ways.

the big screen TV was on in the dining hall, per usual, but it was on VH1 today and it was showing one of those "best 100 songs of the '90s" specials and all our "childhood songs" were blasting full force, like a freight train of memories, and we were transported back to the times of middle school dances and summer camps and that nebulous time of your life called adolescence.

we were reflecting on the proto-emo music of the time, laughing as we could recall almost word for word the lyrics to Goo Goo Dolls songs ("when everything feels like the movies, you bleed just to know you're alive/ AND I DON'T WANT THE WORLD TO SEE ME, CUZ I DON'T THINK THAT THEY'D UNDERSTAAAAAND!") and how angst-y we must have been as teens to have loved that song as much as everyone else our age did.

and, in reflecting on how super dramatic and emo (before "emo" was a genre) that song was, i remarked how it would be so funny to do a dramatic reading of all our favorite '90s songs. and from this, an idea for a poetry reading of sorts, a collaborative performance for the sake of nothing but fun times and nostalgia with some good friends, was born.

the place i imagine is Bachelor Hall's courtyard, on a breezy spring evening, entry and exit music consisting of a playlist of all the read pieces, and definitely some wine.

now, i'm trying to think of material. any suggestions? i went through my '90s music on my computer (sadly lacking, i've lost a lot of those old favorites in the process of transitioning to different computers) and only thought of a few enticing reads:

K-Ci & Jo Jo's "All My Life" (probly a much better song than a poem, but a guilty pleasure nonetheless. i especially love how the first line of verse is "Baby (11x)" ha!)

Everything But The Girl's "Missing" ("like the deserts miss the rain")

Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U" (oh man, this might be "it"!)

Boyz II Men's "I'll Make Love To You" (this would be so uncomfortable to read: "girl relax, let's go slow, i ain't got nowhere to go/ throw your clothes on the floor, i'm gonna take my clothes off too")

other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

x's

-stef

the panopticon: Cebu Prison, Philippines and the role of YouTube in society

readers,

have you seen the prison dance tapes from Cebu Prison in the Philippines? they're quickly becoming huge hits on the web, and for good reason. they're amazing! seriously, i haven't seen musical theatre this good since i saw Les Miz on Broadway!

to be sure, just check out these meticulous recreations of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and "I Will Follow Him" from Sister Act:





now i'm not sure if this is considered cruel and unusual punishment in the Philippines, but it makes damn good watching on Youtube. which makes me wonder: is the Filipino prison taking the panopticon to new extremes?

consider the function of the panopticon, and these observations regarding these bemusing videos:
-the costumes (a balding, pony-tailed, made-up male inmate, wearing a halter top with falsies portraying MJ's steady girlfriend as she is mobbed by zombies)

-the music (are they singing? is there a band? is the music being piped thru the prison loudspeakers? or is the music dubbed over the original soundtrack? if the latter, what are the prisoners dancing to in real-time? a Filipino version of "Thriller"/"I will follow Him"?)

-the choreography (the spot on renditions make me think they had someone teaching them. how does one teach 1000+ prisoners intricate dance moves from the 80s with success? and that someone must have sat and analyzed the music video for weeks to figure out the whole routine. that's quite a commitment to the spirit of dance.)

-the filming (who's holding the camera? and what makes them suspect the performance they caught on tape is merely a practice round, as they say, and not the real thing? is it a guard? a tourist? are they ushering tourists thru the prison grounds and charging them admittance fees? and doesn't this bring Titicut Follies to mind?)

AND, when one searches for the "Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center," the reputed site of these performances, one can find nothing written about the actual Center itself, its prisoners, or its practices, other than the recent buzz on the blogs about - that's right - the very dances that brought you to search for the Prison in the first place. isn't there something a little bemusing, a little existentially tautological about that?

finally, consider all this in relation to the medium:
-we're watching these videos on YouTube, a site that has grown into somewhat of a phenomenon, injecting the daily monotony of the average person to the same level of consciousness as ground-breaking news and celebrity sightings. you can find as many videos of average people ranting about Britney Spears as you can find actual video of Britney Spears.

-Youtube, unlike network news, is always on and always available. = someone is always watching.

considering this in light of these prison videos is incredibly revelatory of the current role Youtube might be playing in our society: the media, always influencing us in the most surreptitious ways, when placed in our own hands, has the ability to make us repeat itself to our own detriment.

take a look at any Youtube video and you will see what i mean. genres are making and perpetuating themselves everyday. the vlog rant. the celebrity satire. the video journal. there's a degree of comfort in seeing "average" people "just like us" on Youtube, while at the same time, comments like "shut up you f*in whore, you ugly faced b*tch" proliferate on every Youtube channel.

while a sense of democracy and control is bolstered by the success of Youtube, we can't help but feel the media's ability to enforce certain standards of appearance and form and style is not altogether eliminated in the process.

thus the panopticon. always watched = always controlled.

-stefan!e

the naming of things + 80's popculture + Chinese culture

[written 7/9/07, ~2 am]

my mother and i go for a walk in our neighborhood. it's just after 9, and on this mid-summer evening, the sun has only just set. everywhere, tinted blue and violet, but the humid stickiness of the July heat lingers in the air.

we walk in silence. i'm cranky with sleep, my jet lag and summer restlessness manifesting itself as unjustified moodiness, worsened by my frustration at the lack of conversation. my mother walks briskly, bumping into me on the awkwardly narrow sidewalk as we try to walk abreast of one another, the overgrown bushes nudging us into each other every twenty paces.

the tension is thicker than the summer humidity. i watch her bite her nails, wondering too why she can't carry on a conversation with her own daughter.

so tonight, i ask my mother about names, and how she and my father chose mine.

while the name i intend is actually my english name [Stephanie], my mother jumps immediately to my Mandarin name - Hsiao Jing (this disparity makes me flush slightly), explaining that my paternal grandmother chose my name. she then explains the Chinese naming process, a kind of "poetry."

she describes a poem, epically wrapping back in time, mapping generations and tracing family trees by stanzas and refrains. each branch of family history signaled by a line of poetry. i imagine an endless scroll, unwinding to reveal the flash of character that is my name.

"American names," she says, "are easy."

"They're just sounds. You just pick what sounds best."

my American name: purely 80's. my parents were deciding between 2 names - Connie and Stephanie. why those names? "because Connie Chung was well-known at that time," my mother explains, "everyone knew who Connie Chung was." and Stephanie? "after Princess Stephanie" (of Monaco). finally, they chose Stephanie because "Stephanie Lee" sounded better than "Connie Lee" (and thank heavens they did).

my brother's name is a similar story. Kevin was a popular name at the time (i can't help but wonder if this is at all a credit to Kevin Bacon's 80s fame), and Calvin Klein was hitting it big in the 80s. they thought Calvin Lee sounded better (little did they know that as a kid my brother would go around introducing himself as "Calvin, as in Calvin and Hobbes").

my mom then goes back to a day long before i was born, she is a beautiful young school teacher, accompanying my father as they move to Kentucky for his new job at the university. i imagine her face in the passenger seat window, gazing out, pondering names during the long drive before she arrives at the new home, stepping out of the car, suddenly "Angela" (b/c Americans never pronounce her given name with the beauty and delicacy it requires: Hsiao Hwa, like a fragile flower. it has the effect of dissociation, disconnect: "I never know if they're talking to me or not").

she goes back further still, to a day long before she married my father, she is a beautiful young university student, studying German, and she goes by Sabrina, Karinne, Sonya. a different name for every teacher.

as we come up to our driveway, i try Sabrina on my tongue, and try to remember the feeling of it, to store it in my mind in case i ever have a daughter... Sabrina.

---
memories like mohair sweaters,
Stephanie Lee / Li Hsiao Jing

enjoying Spring into Summer

listening to some experimental sound poetry*
+ reading Dharma Bums by Kerouac (my favorite book from a past summer)

= it's already summer in my head.

sayonara,
stephan!e

---

*on Michael Snow's "Sinoms" [mp3 for download]:
"In the 50-minute Sinoms, Snow has multi-tracked some 20 voices, with as many different French and English accents, reading a complete list of the mayors of Quebec City, at some points making a simple juxtaposition of pronunciation and at others creating the effect of a choir." - U B U W E B

i was first familiar with Michael Snow and his work Wavelength, an experimental non-narrative film. but i learnt today that he was first and foremost a jazz musician, in addition to a photographer, a sculptor, an artist.

some of his photographic work, quite compelling and filmic:

Authorization (1969) - currently my laptop desktop

Venetian Blind (1970)

my take on the kuleshov experiment, with gnomes

i spoke with my media aesthetics professor today and she said i could try creating an internal conflict. this, rather than an explicit narrative arc, is more appealing, but also more difficult. i'm not interested in crafting a dialogue, but am more concerned with providing the images that will elicit the dialogue themselves. i'm fairly laissez-faire in my own affairs, why not be that way with my art?


i'm so picky. is that the sign of an artiste? or mis-direction?

---

i've decided this gnome project could take a Lev Kuleshov historical turn. for those who don't know, the Kuleshov experiment took the same shot of a man with a neutral expression and juxtaposed it with images of different things: food, a woman, a funeral, and found that ppl read different emotions into his expression, based on their own associations.

see a short clip from the experiment here:

since i am working with a non-expressive, fixed/static subject (geoff), the responsibility for emotive effect lies solely on me and my ability to manipulate the images in just the right way.

only instead of intercutting images, i'm using lighting and camera angle to create my effects.

you see what i mean?

the nature and nurture of blogging

school's been getting me down lately, because they (the administration, the bureaucracy, "them" who are not "me" or "us") won't let me take the classes i want and need to research my thesis.

basically, the line they give me has been some variation on "So... it sounds like you're interested in X. I recommend studying X before you write your thesis. But we don't have classes in X, and the ones that are necessary we won't let you take, so you'll have to independently work on it yourself. But you shouldn't work by yourself, because you could get lost. But I don't have time to help you. But you should study..."

since school can be so depressing, let's not think about it, and turn our attentions instead to an informal institution of education, the internet...

i've been asked by many friends and professors for my opinion on what i see blogs doing for democracy. on the one hand, we have (for us with internet access) unlimited opportunity to self-publish and voice our opinion. we have as much freedom and place in the great digital mesh of voices as big corporations and established news zines for our own work. this has potential for revolutions and subversions of established publishing powers and authorities. unfortunately, the blog has increasingly become less a medium of value and dependable journalism, and more a cheap and instant way to distribute porn, spam, and the mundane stories of extra ordinary individuals in their endearing self-assumed importance.

and don't get me wrong, i saw myself falling into the latter category too. that's why i dropped the other blogs and have been working hard to keep this blog about "significant" things (i.e. not my personal life or my day to day activities, but about breakthrus, however minor they may be, or nuances for my senior project).

= i'm a serious blogger now.

and rather than bore u with too many rantings about my institution of higher "learning," i shall wax philosophical about personal communication and the internet.

i've had too many relationships depend on email. i meet many ppl who insist on emailing as our only form of communication. which is fine, b/c i hate the phone, and there's a certain comfortable familiarity with our computers that i think enables us to email/IM/text one another so easily. in fact, most of my most meaningful relationships have been through email (i can think of at least 5 really good friends who i got to know and continue to know thru email).

is this not in a way sad? why are we so interpersonally starved that we must maintain barriers of metal and wires between us? why are we so comfortable to talk about ourselves to a nameless anonymous void called the blogosphere when we could easily step next door and sit down with a friend and talk face-to-face instead?

b/c we're scared of being intellectuals, of being thinking, feeling humans. we're robots, don't you know? and horrible exhibitionists. everyone's vying for a piece of that 15 minutes. even me. and a blog is such a quick dirty way to do it.

here's a conversation i had with my friend matt a while ago. we discussed this theory over, what else, an online chatting service. i think we came to some pretty revealing conclusions.

beep beep
blah blah
-stephan!e

---> he has some thoughts on myspaciness too!

12:37 AM Matt: wow, you're pretty prolific with your blogging

me: how's that now?

12:38 AM Matt: you write a lot

me: oh. i guess.

12:39 AM i thot you were referring to my many blogs

i have like 5 now...

i have commitment issues
[...]

you want the perfect url name

and then maybe you don't like the username you chose or something

it's pretty ridiculous

12:44 AM Matt: it's like the slightly more mature older sibling of livejournal

me: i know

12:45 AM but i have more respect for bloggers than livejournalists

i mean, that's just so obviously narcissistic

Matt: true

me: this way we can at least be subtle egoists

Matt: haha, yeah

12:46 AM that's what's so great about it, you can write about yourself without feeling like you're forcing yourself on anyone, since its voluntary

me: exactly

and it's like being semi-published

12:47 AM there's at least some validity to it

12:50 AM Matt: there's something about this whole idea of personal blogging that's so interesting... the idea that you put your personal thoughts out there for the entire internet to see

me: yeah definitely

Matt: stuff that you wouldn't tell the people around you

me: i mean, you wouldnt' publish your diary, right?

i know1

12:51 AM Matt: you'd think not... but apparently we do

or would

me: i'm more honest on my blog than i am to my friends and family in person

exactly

what is it about the perceived anonymity of the internet that allows us to abandon our inhibitions

perhaps it's because we feel no one is watching and reading

but isn't that sad?

we're a generation that assumes no one cares

12:52 AM Matt: but on one hand, i think i kinda want someone to be reading

me: yeah but does anyone?

Matt: just someone i dont know

me: we all crave audiences, few of us get any

Matt: an anonymous admirer

me: yup

Matt: yeah, there's probably not

me: it's so narcissistic

Matt: but there could be

you never know

that's the genius of it, i guess

me: what self-absorbed bastards all of us are

12:53 AM Matt: haha, what else is there

me: right right

i think a lot of it is seeking validation too

you feel more real and alive when you see other ppl noticing you

Matt: yeah, definitely

12:54 AM me: how else are you sure you're not living a dream?

12:55 AM Matt: yeah, how else can you form/maintain a self-image

me: i know, we have to rely on others to help us shape our selves

how sad and pathetic we all are

Matt: i'd like to think it's at least endearing sad and pathetic

12:56 AM me: haha i guess it is

Matt: *endearingly

me: you have to work for the endearing tho
[...]

we've grown up not believing anyone cares about us

so what do we become?

whiny emo exhibitionists armed with liejournals and myspace accounts

or blogs and facebooks, if you're classy.

;-)

1:00 AM Matt: ha, exactly