Caveat Lector

A brief interlude

2007-07-30T15:57:00.000-04:00

Yes, I came back from France...yes I haven't posted as promised....give me a few more days to settle my life down. For now, I thought this was worth a few laughs. One of the biggest problems with Wikipedia:

Commuted

2007-07-03T13:20:00.000-04:00

Wow...I did not expect him to actually do it. Scotty Libby will now spend no time in jail. I think Keith Olbermann says it best:

Quick update, how fast the time goes

2007-06-28T06:40:00.000-04:00

So, I admit? I am in France now and I have been for a solid month and yet I did not update. Why? Incredibly busy. I promise pictures of chateux and the French countryside when I return. For now, I just wanted to drop a note on here for anyone who actually still reads this thing aplogizing for the silence.

Il faut que je m'en aille!

A quick note:

2007-05-24T02:14:00.000-04:00

Something that's definitely on my 'to read' list: The Gospel of Judas.

I hope this won't be my last post before France. I'm hoping for a longer one. However, I will TRY to blog from France (et en francaise, j'espere).

A new trend in music videos?

2007-05-21T12:54:00.000-04:00

What is it about really terrible bands who make really terrible music making really fantastic music videos. Case in point, Nickleback's 'If Everyone Cared' and Linkin Park's new one 'What I've Done':

American Feminism and Islamic Countries

2007-05-16T14:36:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine sent me a link to a a story in the weekly standard about American Feminism's response (or lack thereof as the author would claim) to the oppression of women in Islamic countries. I suggest reading the entire article, though I'll quote from it here. I'd also ask people to keep in mind that the author of this article is a repeated critic of feminism (often using arguments of gender essentialism like in her book The War against Boys) as well as a harsh critic of psychological therapy (she apparently thinks it makes us 'weak'). So you can imagine how she might not be on my 'favourite person list', but I'll try and approach this with a fresh attitude.

There are various problems that become apparent as one gets further and further along in the article. One that doesn't take too long is a great hostility towards Islam in general (well, it IS a neo-conservative magazine, I don't suppose that should be surprising). For example, the very first thing Sommers says:

The subjection of women in Muslim societies--especially in Arab nations and in Iran--is today very much in the public eye.

I say this is hostile towards Islam because Sommers does not bother with distinctions here. She simple says 'Muslim societies', not 'Muslim theocracies' or 'radical Islamic states', just merely 'Muslim societies' (as though its a general rule that the Islamic faith is anti-woman, anti-freedom, etc). She DOES say 'especially Arab nations and Iran', which makes me wonder which Arab nations she's talking about (and I know why she picked on Iran instead of any other country, as that's the favourite next target for neo-conservatives). If by 'Arab nations' she means places like Pakistan and Afghanistan, this reeks of the neo-conservative tendency to lump all nations in the Middle East into being 'Arab'. The Afghans are not 'Arab'. They are 'Afghani'. It's a little nit-picky of me; but, especially when you are writing an article that addresses aspects of culture, you need to comprehend this distinction.

She goes on to criticize American feminist groups for not rising up and helping women in Islamic countries to become free from the oppression of their state. She blames anti-Americanism, which boggles my mind and seems to come from nowhere. I'm not quite sure what she is trying to say. Even if these women's groups are anti-American, does that immediately make them pro-anti-American-Muslim-theocracies? Sounds like a 'you're with us (in every way shape or form imaginable) or you're with the terrorists' attitude (again, neo-conservative magazine, so not surprising, and probably what she was going for).

There are a few things wrong with this, but let's take some of her article point by point. She says:

It is not that American feminists are indifferent to the predicament of Muslim women. Nor do they completely ignore it. For a brief period before September 11, 2001, many women's groups protested the brutalities of the Taliban. But they have never organized a full-scale mobilization against gender oppression in the Muslim world. The condition of Muslim women may be the most pressing women's issue of our age, but for many contemporary American feminists it is not a high priority. Why not?

A quick mention of 9/11 is standard for this type of magazine (that doesn't really go anywhere or say anything...so are you saying that Sept. 11th made feminists LESS interested in oppression in theocratic Muslim countries? and what are you implying with that statement?). Also, calling the condition of Muslim women 'the most pressing women's issue of our age' is stretching to hyperbole, and it's exactly that sort of rhetoric that makes nothing get done. The explanation (of American feminists not making this a priority) that seems the most logical for me at first is that, well, they are American feminists, and they will probably deal with American issues. We can't exactly 'heal the world' if we still have some bones to mend.

But let's move on to her explanations.

That worldview is--by tendency and sometimes emphatically--antagonistic toward the United States, agnostic about marriage and family, hostile to traditional religion, and wary of femininity. The contrast with Islamic feminism could hardly be greater.

Well, like I said before. I don't know where antagonism towards the US comes in here. But the rest actually seems accurate. Feminists are agnostic about marriage and family because, in the West, both have traditionally been methods of suppressing and oppressing women. The same applies to traditional religion. With femininity, we are wary of it because we recognize that it is socially constructed. This brings up an interesting point, though. You cannot use American feminism in Islamic countries. It just won't work. You need a different method, because the historical and cultural elements that are affecting practices over there are different. In terms of food (I'm hungry at the moment), it's sort of like cooking a soup and a stew the same way. You'll either come out with good soup and bad stew or bad soup and good stew. This goes to a crux of something that is wrong with neo-conservatism, but more on that later.

So when Sommers criticizes the feminist response to Nussbaum's article, she attacks them for ignoring the complaints of her philosophy. However, people like Spivak are correct when they say we have to be careful lest we get into a 'civilizing mission'. The problem comes when we view Islamic countries as pre-modern or 'barbaric' (a term that Sommers uses over and over again, which is interesting when you consider it's history...). We have to avoid the White Man's Burden attitude, this idea that we, by virtue of our high-minded modern ideals, must spread our ideology across the globe. We need to work for feminism that works in an Islamic society (and this is what most feminists on this topic actually suggest). Eventually we might reach a cultural consensus, but until then, proposing all the advances women have in this country to a country like Iran or Saudi Arabia is silly, and simply will not happen. Sommers seems to be advocating that feminism take up the American torch to light freedom across the globe. It's the same sort of misguided ideology that's landed us in Iraq at the moment.

Sommers also criticizes the discourse in western feminism that equates oppressive states. She quotes some passages from articles that might be considered controversial (out of context, of course), so that it seems as though feminists are equating practices in Mid-East and the West. Then she says:

Pollitt casually places "limiting young people's access to accurate information about sex" and opposing abortion on the same plane as throwing acid in women's faces and stoning them to death. Her hostility to the United States renders her incapable of distinguishing between private American groups that stigmatize gays and foreign governments that hang them. She has embraced a feminist philosophy that collapses moral categories in ways that defy logic, common sense, and basic decency.

Well...no. You see, the feminist philosophy that Sommers is referencing here is the idea that these oppressive acts all come from a similar oppressive ideology between the two cultures she's discussing. Limiting the knowledge of sex does tremendous psychological damage to an individual, and it is a very serious thing. Sommers, who obviously disagrees with this point and many of the things that feminists fight for in the US today, is using the 'there are more important things' excuse to deflect attention away from the inequality in our country and to make feminists look like heartless witches at the same time. This is an argument that applies to our most irrational emotions, and her saying that feminist philosophy 'defies logic, common sense, and basic decency' manages at the same time to reverse what is an is not logically sound (as opposed to being driven by pure emotion) and makes a moral pronouncement as fact ('basic decency'). The fact that we have a society that causes women to hate their bodies if they do not match an unattainable ideal is serious, and we should not just ignore such problems because something judged as 'worse' is happening elsewhere. All of these things are horrible, and all should be dealt with, by different groups (which is what seems to be happening...). NOW should not, once again, not give up its fights to pass this 'torch of freedom' on.

The article suffers from a lot of this reasoning, as though the ideology behind women seeking genital surgery does not share its vein with that which forces genital mutilation. Our point is that both need to be stopped, and that we need to realize that, in a lot of ways, we are not 'better' than a society that has brutal practices, because we have our own form of brutality (albeit self-inflicted). Sommers also seems to think that rape is 'rare':

Given her capacity for conceptual confusion, it is perhaps not surprising that Ensler cites "gang rape in a suburban high school parking lot" to show how women in America are menaced. Yes, that is an atrocity. But it happens rarely, and America's allegedly "misogynist" culture reacts to it with revulsion and severe punishments.

Actually, rape is quite common, any University study on the frequency of sexual assault will show you that. Also, rape victims often receive harsher social ostracization than the rapists themselves. Rape victims are still viewed in this country as women who 'deserved' or 'asked' for it. The most common defense in a rape case is a defamation of the victims character that 'proves' that she's a 'whore'. They might not be expected to kill themselves, but it's still horribly wrong and should be fought against. Sommers has this minimizing qualities throughout the article. Like when she discusses NOW's work to educate about and prevent eating disorders:

This is pathetic. To be sure, serious eating disorders afflict a small percentage of women. But much larger numbers suffer because poor eating habits and inactivity render them overweight, even obese. NOW should not be encouraging college girls to indulge themselves in ways detrimental to their well-being. Nor should it be using the language of human rights in discussing the weight problems of American women.

Besides the meaningless pejorative, the idea that 'serious eating disorders afflict a small percentage of women' is in the typical neo-conservative fashion of stating a random idea as though it is a solid fact. She forgets that the commonly quoted numbers are all reported cases of eating disorders (just like reported rapes she talked about earlier and reported domestic violence that she talks about later). Plus, the common way of clinically diagnosing anorexia depends upon a person's body weight (which is particularly awful because it's not based upon the behaviors but the actual success of those behaviors). Sommers would rather repeat the rhetoric that's getting us into the trouble in the first place, talking about 'healthy' eating, a 'higher' rate of obesity, and how indulging every now and again is not OK.

Sommers ends by again criticizing feminists for equating treatment of women in radical Islamic countries with the position of women here in the United States, but this is exactly what she wishes to do when she wants our feminist organizations to champion women's rights in those countries. This goes back to one of the biggest problems of neo-conservatism.

One of the largest tenants of neo-conservatism is this idea that we can somehow spread American democracy and freedom throughout the world. The problem is that these are American ideologies, and they simply do not work outside of the context of American society. One of the main reasons why our 'mission' in Iraq failed was the insistence that somehow democracy would just be this magic pill that turned the country around, when in fact the culture was so rooted in sectarian divisionism that this simple would not happen overnight. It took America one hundred years and a civil war to work out the largest kinks in our republic, and we still haven't perfected it. Likewise, it's taken the feminist movement just as long to get where it is today, and we still have a LOT of things to work on in our country before every feminist group can go to other countries and pass on this 'torch'.

I agree that we SHOULD be doing something within their cultural context to help women in these countries, especially countries like Saudi Arabia. I agree that we should stand up and denounce a country that hangs gay people; however, does that mean I should completely ignore the inequalities I face here? The key is everybody getting involved at different levels. And, on a personal level, I would say that Sommers' use of the plight of women in Islamic theocracies in order to 1) grind her axe with American feminism and 2) promote her 'we must carry the torch' neo-conservative ideology is rather disturbing and even a little shameful. American feminism has a lot of problems; but a focus on the problems in America is not one of them.

More on Going to a Town and Atheism

2007-05-12T00:37:00.000-04:00

So I hope that you go the chance to view Rufus Wainwright's new music video, which I posted below. As is typical of him, the video is visually stunning and the song is deep and gripping. This song is actually more straightforward than we're used to getting from Wainwright (he's said so himself in an audio commentary on his Myspace page). His songs have a tendency to grow on a person after listening to them over and over (it took me several times listening to 'Grey Gardens' before the melody drilled itself into me and I finally started to 'get it'). He also says that 'Going to Town' shouldn't be confused with a diatribe against America. It's 'a break up song'. And I think this is a wonderful way to describe the tone I had perceived throughout it. While there are brave moments which might be considered slaps to the face ('After soaking the body of Jesus Christ in blood...'), listening to them again reveals a very sad tone. Most especially the line 'You took advantage of a world that loved you well' encapsulates a feeling of let-down more than anger. And it really is true. The majority of the world really did/does love America. We're a symbol of freedom, democracy and, most importantly, discourse (or at least we used to be). I get this feeling that we just don't talk anymore.

Which brings me to YouTube, and the surprising amount of discussion I have seen going on there since I finally started exploring the community. It reminds me of the old USENET system (heh heh...the 'old' usenet system...) and the long and surprisingly informative discussions that would occur on there. For all the trolls that prowled, there was a lot of well thought out posts on these message boards.

So, I'd like to take a quick look at one or two of the debates that have caught my eye recently and specifically one of the YouTubers who seems to have a great production quality in his videos as well as well written monologues. These debates centre on two very important philosophical and scientific questions: The existence of God and evolution. Now, I remember growing up in rural Alabama, arguing till I was blue in the face that (1) the theory of evolution presented the most probable account of the origin of life and (2) that evolution and God were not mutually exclusive. I still believed in God at the time, though I still don't find the two as logically opposed. More on that later.

In any case, a YouTuber named Firefly515 posted a video asking Atheists on YouTube to respond to certain questions he had regarding their beliefs. A fresh YouTuber screennamed Albert10110 responded eloquently with his own video. Albert10110 calls himself Al in his videos, and since typing 10110 over and over again will get tedious, I'll just refer to him this way from now on.

So here is Al's video. If you want to see Firefly's original video, follow the link on Al's video's YouTube page. It's just easier that way. I feel that Al's video is important because the arguments that Firefly uses have been used for as long as these discussions have been openly going on. It's refreshing for those of us who have seen Pascal's Wager (among other things) get thrown around time and time again to see them called out in a clear and concise manner.

And again, a few months later, and his most recent video, where he debunks another YouTube user's 'proof' that the Earth is 6,000 years old. Of course, these are the same bodies of 'evidence' that have been floating around the internet in places like Answers in Genesis, which have been swiftly and consistently debunked at one of my favourite sites growing up, Talk.Origins. However, Al takes them on once again, step by step. There's no need to include a link to the original video, as Al uses clips from it in his own video:

Keep an eye out for Al in the future. I'd really like to see him handle some more of the topics surrounding these issues. If you'd like to see the rest of his videos, check out his YouTube site.

That's all for now.

Going to Town

2007-05-10T18:53:00.000-04:00

Because Rufus Wainwright is a god among men, here is his latest single, 'Going to Town', off of his new album 'Release the Stars', which comes out on May 15th. A more in depth analysis of the song to follow, but for now, just enjoy:

Reminders of a compassion

2007-04-17T02:51:00.000-04:00

I won't comment on what happened in VA today. I don't think it's the time to say what will probably need to be said.

Rather, I'll bring you a few exercises in the mentality of individual worth that I was expressing in one of my recent posts. Here are a few examples of posts from the website postsecret, a website where people anonymously send in postcards that reveal a secret of theirs. This simultaneously releases them from the pain of holding it as well as allows others to know that they're not alone with what they're facing in life. Unfortunately, you'll need to follow these links, as I'm having trouble embedding these pictures:

Here

Here

and Here

And finally, a note from Craig Ferguson on the misunderstanding of Alcoholism in the media. Of particular importance is the comment he makes at the end of the clip:

Now I have found this, you can't beat it (alcoholism) with money. If you could beat this wrap with money, rich people wouldn't die. You can't...I have found that the only way I could deal with it is find other people who had similar experiences and talk to them.

Photos in 6 years

2007-03-31T18:22:00.000-04:00

I know I'm late getting to this, but it's interesting when you consider how life changes and such:

I realized that I should explain: This is Noah Kalina, he took a picture of himself everyday for the last 6 years. What you see are the pictures put in order into a video. (He says he only missed 22 days out of all 6 years).

A long time coming

2007-03-25T03:18:00.000-04:00

So, I haven't blogged in a considerable amount of months, contrary to my promises. Chalk that up to graduate school applications. I won't post information regarding my decision here just yet, as I think it would be prudent of me to wait at this moment. Needless to say, my life will change a lot.

So what's on my mind lately? The usual stuff, mostly, also the idea of leaving Penn, which has been my home for the past 5 years. I have a lot of fantastic memories here, and a lot of incredibly awful ones. I guess it goes with the whole 'home' concept, right? I had a conversation with a friend today about these memories, about how difficult it is sometimes to remember the good ones over the bad ones.

I have spent a lot of time in the past two years dealing with depression. I say so here because I am not ashamed to of this, nor should I be. It's something that affects a lot of people of all walks of life for various reasons, and one of the best things we can do as a society is to stamp out the stigma associated with it.

So, how, exactly, do memories invade space, including the space of my mind? One can read the voluminous current scholarship on this, both in the scientific field and the humanities, but I'm thinking in 'general terms' at the moment. Living in such an enclosed space for 5 years just piles memory on top of memory. I suppose it's a symptom of the college campus; but I'm really 'good' at remembering memories (so I like to think anyway). A single sight or sound or reference can bring on the flood, and the thing is, I don't just remember the sensory experiences of the memory, but the emotional ones as well...in full force...and sometimes even stronger than the first time around. When I walk past the place where I first made out with a guy, I remember not only that moment, but the entire history of subsequent moments, some of which are extraordinarily painful. The problem with me is that I never seem to remember good memories right away. My mind always leaves to the pain, the upset, heartache, disappointment.

So where is this going? Well, during my conversation with my friend today, he told me that I need to focus on and remember the lives of people who I have touched during my existence, and just think of the positive impact that I have had on others.

This goes along with the thought I would think just about everybody has had, 'If I die, who would be there mourning me at my funeral?'

What my friend reminded me of, which I had forgotten, is that I used to believe that touching the life of one single individual actually meant something, not so much in a 'grand scheme' as just in a real, emotional, humanistic sort of way. You know, that story about the starfish that probably resides in a 'Chicken Soup' book somewhere?

A man runs across the beach earlier in the morning, and he see that the tide has brought an uncountable number of starfish, which will certainly die in the heat of the coming sun. He then sees a man on the beach bend down, pick up a starfish, and throw it into the water before moving to the next one. Curious, the runner walks up to the man and says, 'Why are you doing this? You can't possibly save them all! What does it matter?' The stranger responds by bending over, picking up another starfish and tossing it in. He looks at the runner and says, 'Mattered to that one.'

And with a collective 'awww' we realize that the moral of the story is that one person can truly make a difference. 'Even the smallest person can change the course of the future', as it were. And even though the story itself is sugary enough to give us tooth decay, it espouses a great principle which I believed at some point, but am not sure when I forgot. This is why I became so involved with political causes, and why fought so vehemently for my fellow Queers even before I came out of the closet. It was from that belief that that one person, that one gay high schooler stuck in Alabama or that man who couldn't see his husband in the hospital mattered.

Now, I feel as though my efforts in this arena were met with scorn and bitterness from the queer-powers-that-be at Penn, but is this an excuse for giving up entirely? I can't really blame it on the failure of the 2004 election, either. There's something deeper involved, a forgetting of beliefs that I have historically held dear, yet because of which I continually feel drawn to too many causes to count, not all of which lie in the political field (my earlier mention of stigma being a prime example). I feel limp, powerless, unable to effect any change whatsoever. 'What can men do against such hate', after all?

But I'm starting to remember the power of the individual, not so much to make changes on such a grand scale (we have been at no loss in humanity for such individuals, although we are at such a loss today), but the power of individuals to be personally affected by one another.

So, on the Q front...I wish that I could close my eyes, wish really hard and open them with all the problems in the gay community just gone. I also wish that days and months and years of fighting against these problems could yield some result, but they won't. The simple fact is, right now, the queer community will be racist, they will be classist, they will be biphobic, they will be so wrapped up in their consumer culture of instant gratification.

I can't fix the problems of the queer community.

But I CAN help a queer person.

I can't heal the wounds of our collective queer society.

But I can help a person heal. If they want it.

And, as has been the case for me historically, I'll need them as much as they need me. And that's OK. We'll get through it together.

And in the end, that's what being human is all about, right?

Thanks for reminding me.

Friends

2006-10-29T01:02:00.000-05:00

Had to say...after this weekend...I feel very loved and appreciated. Joshua, M, Gigi, Rob, Ame, Aussie, David....thank you...more than I can bring myself to say, thank you.

Learned something just now

2006-09-19T20:59:00.000-04:00

Matthew Shepard, if he had lived, would have turned 30 at the beginning of December this year.

Not a good reminder for me to get when I'm losing faith in humanity.

For those of you who don't remember (and be really fucking ashamed), almost 8 years ago (October 7th, 1998), Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered by two men who specifically sought out a gay man in order to assault him. He was beaten almost beyond recognition, tied to a roadside fence, and left for dead. He was alive when he was found the next morning, and never woke up, dying 5 days later in his hospital bed.

Among the many victims of violence against queer people, his attack probably gained the most national attention. The ones who murdered Shepard said they did it because he came on to them. As a result, they flew into a homicidal psychosis...a 'gay panic', they called it. Thankfully, they were found guilty and setenced to life in prison for their crime.

But now what? Now we have a president who vetoes a hate crime bill SOLEY because it contains a clause protecting gays and lesbians...now we slide backwards into something WORSE than invisibility, we slide into COMPLACENCY. Gays have become exactly like the venomous society around them. If you're not a rich, white man, TOO FUCKING BAD...they don't care. It doesn't matter if you live in an area like Alabama or Mississippi and have to wake up every morning afraid because of who you are. They are comfortable. That's all that matters. Can we forget so quickly?

I remember the killing of Matthew Shepard, 8 years ago. I also know the history of ALLIES at Penn, created in response to the killing, so that straight students could stand together with their friends and classmates in a show of support. Hopefully it will become that again one day.

My fellow queer students at Penn...do they remember Matthew Shepard? Somehow I doubt it. Their generation is one full of that complacency, like the one before mine (the one who forgot the horrors of war and leaped headlong into it).

I remember the killing of Matthew Shepard...and I remember the fear. I was a fourteen year old, close to fifteen, who was just beginning to realize that I was different. It scared me out of fucking mind, because I finally realized that it is DANGEROUS to be who I am. Those who are two or three years younger than me, I wonder if they remember. I wonder if they felt that fear, if they knew what it meant. The talk on homophobia we had at a meeting once led me to believe that they don't.

Funny how that generation thing works, huh?

Short update

2006-09-17T08:43:00.000-04:00

I'm back with a short update that might turn into a longer one later:

I've started my post-bac year and it looks like I'll learn a lot this year. I'm starting to realize that becoming proficient in 4 languages is going to rock and look amazing on my applications.

I've also picked up a small tide-me-over job in the city at the Naked Chocolate cafe. It's new, it's swanky, and the co-workers and bosses are GREAT. They treat us all very well (it's a small business) and I actually enjoy being at work most days.

I guess I'll say more later...for real this time.

Once in a lullaby

2006-08-02T03:19:00.000-04:00

Ah, nothing like a news story from the depths of bumblefuck to get your blood boiling.

http://www.towleroad.com/towleroad/2006/07/rainbow_flag_br.html

So, a child brought home a rainbow flag as an innocent symbol of one of his favorite movies and the town goes apeshit when the parents hang it up. Honestly...I was ok, and thought this just another news story indicative of homophobia until:

Local resident, Keith Klassen says the flag is a slap in the face to the conservative community of Meade. “To me it's just like running up a Nazi flag in a Jewish neighborhood. I can't walk into that establishment with that flag flying because to me that's saying that I support what the flag stands for and I don't," says Klassen.

...excuse me...but how fucking DARE you say something like that? You're comparing the fight for gay rights to the Nazi's imprisonment and mass slaughter of the Jews?!

I guess the good Mr. Klassen isn't aware of how many homosexuals were rounded up and murdered by yhe Nazi's in the same fasion simply because they were gay.

These people make me sick...as for the family who put the flag up, I wish that we had more allies like them. Ironic that they're named the Knights, no?

More later

Lance Bass....gay

2006-07-26T17:20:00.000-04:00

I think my roomate said it best: In other news, water is wet!

While this comes as no great shocker for a lot of people, it's still a great step for him. However, I have a small beef with this.

While I am certainly not the person to claim that coming out is somehow some sort of obligation for anybody, I still can't help but feel a tad bit resentful of Bass' decision to stay in the closet so long:

"I knew that I was in this popular band and I had four other guys' careers in my hand, and I knew that if I ever acted on it or even said (that I was gay), it would overpower everything," says Bass, referring to bandmates Joey Fatone, Chris Kirkpatrick, JC Chasez and Justin Timberlake.

"I didn’t know: Could that be the end of ’N Sync? So I had that weight on me of like, ‘Wow, if I ever let anyone know, it's bad.' So I just never did," he says speaking about his sexual orientation for the first time with PEOPLE.

I understand his mentality and his reasons are very valid (not that it's my place to judge them). But, to be honest...we could have used you, Lance. I could have used you. When I was growing up and discovering my sexual orientation, on some levels a very frightened teenager, having a celebrity who I could look to as an inspiration for being OK, someone who was relatively around my age, just old enough to look up to was definitely something that would have soothed me. But, ever the business man, you decided to take the business-like route. This upsets me. I know I have no right to judge you, and I'm actually quite happy for you, as I am happy for all my LGBT brothers and sisters (him, her, or hir) who have made it through the struggle of coming out. It's a very brave thing to do, especially for someone in your situation. But the frightened 15 year old in me just can't feel that way.

I also don't believe you when you say this was an all business decision. You haven't even mentioned if the guys knew. How long did you keep this from yourself? Was this all to keep the band afloat, or were you just as frightened and ashamed as the majority of us? You can't play yourself off as this guy who's always been proud to be gay. It's quite obvious you weren't.

No matter what, I hope that you will join in the fight now. You've put yourself out there, you're on the front lines. Use this attention the media is giving you to do something! And I don't mean making some cheap sitcom. Become a voice for those who can't raise theirs.

You might think this ends your struggle. Like all of us who have come out have learned, it's just the beginning.

Tired

2006-07-17T20:20:00.000-04:00

I'm tired of being used. I'm tired of guys either not being interested in me or being only interested in using me. I'm tired of having no hope for the future of my love life. I'm tired of hearing of a gay couple and feeling longing and impossibility.
I'm tired of people juding me without knowing me or talking to me.

Fuck this, and fuck all of you. I need a new life and to go somewhere where more than 4 people actually understand me (I love you guys, but I'm actually certain you know how I feel here).

I used to wish I were straight because I hated the pain and the shame I felt as a teenager. Now I wish I were straight because the gay men here are spoiled, shallow, selfish assholes. I'm so fed up with this shit.

Explication

2006-06-30T00:02:00.000-04:00

Why do I have months between posts?

Life.

In case you were wondering.
I'll try and write more a later time, but not a month long, I swear.

Incommunicado

2006-05-21T01:01:00.000-04:00

It's been so long...and so much has happened...

First, the most important thing: Graduation. A hundred times more emotional than my high school one...the goodbyes came really quick after the ceremony. People literally had to leave that night to fly to different places, to start their lives. There's this friend of mine...he was actually the first guy I ever allowed myself to fall for. He also happened to be the first person I EVER came out to (when I told him I liked him)...and he's straight...but he was so supportive and awesome about it. I remember just Monday, not even a week ago, giving him a peck on the cheek and holding back tears as I said goodbye. Or giving my last hug to one of my best friends, one of the first people I met here at Penn, and one of my lifelines through one of the toughest moments of my life. I have so many memories invested in this place...in these people. A ridiculous amount of emotion. I can't even comprehend it at the moment. Not sure I want to.

So, I've moved in to my summer sublet and my roomate just made me watch The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy which was pretty awesome and touches nicely on so many elements of the gay world. My mind's sort a mess now, as usual. Perhaps i'll elucidate more later.

Response

2006-04-20T03:40:00.000-04:00

Journal entry written in response to Judith Butler's Violence, Mourning, and Politics for my intro to literary theory class:

At several times throughout reading this chapter out of Judith Butler’s book, I felt like applauding. Many elements within this essay touched me deeply, and reflect how I have been made to feel almost my entire life. I say this so that you might understand how this response is somewhat lengthy, emotionally charged and filled with personal emotional experience.

I (like Butler, it seems) personally find violence deplorable. I always felt as though there was something more within my belief than the simple libertarian viewpoint of the self-owned body that Butler describes.[1] Butler’s argument has given me a new perspective. Our bodies cannot be thought of as completely our own, because our very existence and our language dispose us and our bodies to the outside world. I can never separate myself totally from other human beings. Complete autonomy is, in essence, impossible.[2] Violence, therefore, is a morally reprehensible exploitation of this connection.[3] Society justifies violence through the dehumanization of its targets (after all, the violence cannot be immoral if its target is just an object and not a ‘body that matters’).

It is then that I Butler, through her discussion of how this dehumanization has operated on queer people, added kerosene to the queer rage that I sometimes manage to forget burns inside of me.[4] I have long understood that, as a gay man, there are those in this country (and especially in the small-town Alabama environment I grew up in) who do not consider me to be a human being. This semester I took a class on theories of gender and sexuality which introduced me to texts that, much to my personal emotional relief, justified this thought in print. Butler’s article has done this even more so. This is the silent rhetoric that surrounds opposition to hate crime legislation (often accused of being ‘discriminatory against Christians’); it is the limitation of discourse that does not cause a public outcry when Fred Phelps creates a website entitled ‘God Hates Fags’ that includes an animated picture of Matthew Shepherd in flames; it is the dehumanization that allows those who murder queer people to cry ‘gay-panic’ and receive a lighter sentence.

For my gender and sexuality theory class, I am writing a paper discussing the definition of ‘Queer.’ My definition is one that focuses on ‘Queer’ as an experience. Butler excellently describes an element of this experience, ‘Those who are unreal have, in a sense, already suffered the violence of derealization.’[5] I cannot express how profoundly this idea has manifested itself in my life, yet I also know that it pales in comparison to the experiences of other queers in the past and present. I wonder if the rest of the class knows what goes on and what has gone on. I wonder if they know about the and torture, murder, and rape of queer people throughout the last few decades that the perpetrators have justified (and even moralized!) through our dehumanization. They are acts of violence that are permeated and perpetrated through the discourse of the everyday. As Butler says it is the everyday dehumanization that ‘gives rise to a physical violence’.[6] I am reminded of my sophomore year when a campus group put on a production of The Laramie Project. This docu-drama is not as much about the killing of Matthew Shepherd as it is about its aftermath. During his interview the pastor of the church says something that strikingly illustrates what Butler is saying. Every time someone calls a queer person ‘fag’ or ‘dyke’, it is an act of violence. From Butler’s point of view, it is terms like these that permeate and justify the physical violence done unto queer people. It is a violence that aids in the assumption that our lives mean nothing. How many people in our class will even remember the name Matthew Shepherd or even have heard of Venus Extravaganza? Butler mentions the queer lives that were whisked away by September 11, and how they are summarily ignored in the obituary pages.[7] Can this be more true than in the case of Father Mychal Judge, who is sometimes considered ‘the first victim’ of the attacks? He is the priest who strode into the site in order to give the last rights to fallen firefighters, a great American hero, right? Yet God-forbid the fact be mentioned that he was gay!

This is where my rage comes from. It comes from being violated. From being done violence upon. From being excluded from the human race. I already see that my response is becoming overlong. I will end with saying that I feel this is the perfect text to end class on, as it brings into play many of the most profound authors we have ready, from Plato to Austin to Derrida to Wittig. Hopefully, I’ll be able to pick up this book and read the rest of Butler’s essays surrounding this topic.

[1] 25

[2] That is not to say that individualism is impossible, nor do I think that Butler is saying this; rather, it seems she argues for a new way of perceiving individualism through our relation to others.

[3] 27

[4] Forgive the emotional rhetoric and blame it on the rage.

[5] 33

[6] 34

[7] 35

MySpace

2006-03-29T18:30:00.000-05:00

My new MySpace profile...I sorta went a little nuts...

I'm a senior at the University of Pennsylvania, though that's hardly a definiton of me. I am a student of literature, mostly of the classical persuasion. I love reading, writing, and theory. I engage a text, whether I am reading or writing it, as I would a living, feeling human, with compassion, energy, anger, joy, sadness, and empathy. I focus on classical literature for its veiled beauty rather than for an idea of teleological origin. We are traced to these moments of classical beauty not through a direct line, but through a varied voices floating through time. Genealogy is not a destruction of origin, but a recognition of its multiplicity. By studying classics, I hold a supernatural mirror to our culture that shows not the face of its father, but that of its youth. When I say I write in a classical tradition, I merely recognize the inability to dissemenate ourselves from our past.

I am a FEMINIST because I am a student of HISTORY, and only a FOOL or a CHAUVANIST could deny the existence of of the PATRIARCHY when studying the history of the Western world. I know that the feminist fight and the queer fight are ONE, for their enemies both rest upon the foundation of the idea of the PREFERED GENDER. My gender performance as male says nothing about me beyond the fact that it exists. The fact that my GENDER and my SEX coincide with most of society's expectations is a mere (lucky) coincidence. A GAY MAN who insults his 'flamming' counterpart or ridicules a drag queen is NO BETTER than the chauvenistic pig that degrades women. You insist on others maintaining gender norms because your homosexuality makes you insecure in your manhood. I am not macho, I am not flamming. My personality does NOT come with an easily readable label.

I am an intellectual, more importantly I am a QUEER intellectual. This does not mean that I am obssessed with my being gay, it means that I do not deny that my personal experiences as a gay man influence how I process my intellectualism. My QUEERNESS is NOT an identity. It is an experience that has assisted in the molding and shaping of my SELF. MY identity flows THROUGH my existence as a queer; it is not ruled by it. I say that I am QUEER to describe these experiences. I say that I am GAY because I have a sexual and affectional attraction to my own SEX, and nothing more.

All things considered, I am a nice guy. I enjoy intelligent (and sometimes even inane) conversation and dialogue, and I am thrilled to meet new people. Please feel free to drop me a line, even if it's just to say hi. My AIM is AlexandrBarca.

Oh, and check out my blog if you would like: http://cavelector.blogspot.com

Once again

2006-03-24T15:49:00.000-05:00

Work wraps me up and prevents me from blogging for over a month. I don't really have much to scream and shout about. Could go into a vitriolic tirade over the Daily Pennsylvanian's 'coverage' on the Kinky Karnival last night, but those who have commented on the pictures' page have done so already. How about I just say this...my thesis is done and turned in...and I'll post a better update some time later.

Blogging from the Penn Library

2006-02-16T02:03:00.000-05:00

About to head back to the dorm from Van-Pelt and just thought I would add a blog entry on a few things.

First...Cheney...OK, so it takes him accidently shooting someone on a hunting trip (such hunting accidents happen a lot more often than one would think) in order for the media to ask questions regarding how open and honest this administration has been with the people of the US?

You've got to be kidding me...
I mean, seriously, I know that the fact that they bungled such a small incident, and ran around for 3 days trying to craft lies and spin, evidences said lack of openess and honesty, but why didn't we get this level of interrogation from the press, say, before we went to war? Did it take this long for the press to grow a spine? Or perhaps they're just miffed at the fact that they were deliberately kept out of the loop as to the goings on of this event.

Whatever.

So, grad school hopes are starting to materialize. My year next year as a post-bach is starting to look more and more like a year of growth, introspection, and investigation. Hopefully, I'll be able to use that year to become more widely published, get my hands onto a lot of material as a research assistant to various professors, look into grad schools, and flat out acquire skills and knowledge that will not only be valuable for grad school, but also look frigging HOT on a resume.

As you can tell, I have high hopes.

And, I cannot end this post without asking my friends and readers to consider voting for me in the entry writing contest that I entered. There are some really great entries in any case, and you should check them out.

Windows

2006-02-13T21:55:00.000-05:00

Because I'm interested:

Pick the positive traits you see in me
http://kevan.org/johari?name=AlexP

And then the negative ones:
http://kevan.org/nohari?name=AlexP

Domus, Dulce Domus

2006-02-08T00:41:00.000-05:00

So sweet, they say, is a home that you are drawn inexorably back to it...but then, where is home, what is home? They say also that 'home is where the heart is', to remind us that it is not merely that place where our physical body resides, yet a boring cliche cannot capture the essence of the 'home'. Home, I think, is the indelible metaphysical plain where the soul happens to reside.

For so long, the closet was my home, and though it might sound terribly unoriginal to place that assertion in a gay blogs contest entry, I feel its worth mentioning. We've all been there, have all made it our home, some for longer than others. Let's be honest. Although the closet is a cold, dark place of self-doubt, delusion, and derision, it offers a certain sort of comfort. We portect ourselves with that door, from not only the harsh hatred and bigotry of the outside world, but from the very notions of attraction, desire, and love.

Love (and you can probably see this coming if you've read my old posts) cannot be held back by this door. Either it kicks it down from the outside or sneaks through that small crack beneath, destorying it from within. Our shell of comfort is torn away, willingly or unwillingly, and we are left exposed to the world.

Or is it exposed? Perhaps not. Perhaps we are not so grounded as we might think. The world, as brutal, unfair, and unforgiving as it is, sucks our souls out of this place of comfort and thrusts it into the realities of life, lust, and love. Romantic notions of castles or princes or poems or roses all fight to survive in the tumultous world of reality.

Thus, our soul must find a new home, a home so often seperate, a home that must be seperate from where it grew up, learned to feel, learned to cry...and many times learned to heal. For even though I just said the closet shields us from the realities of life, that is but a farce. It is but a way for the soul to feel as though it has some sort of comfort away from the tragedies of life. Some people (straight and queer) live in a closet of privilage, never exposed to the harsh realities of hatred, injustice, and bigotry. Some never feel the pains of loss, the hungers of poverty, the chilling fires of unwantedness or the violation of assault. Their souls are weak, and their homes glass houses in which they are so often apt to throw stones. When their glass closet shatters, most cannot handle reality, and turn into bitter, hateful people who direct the fallout of their own inadequacies and insecurities at others. They don't seem to know how to deal with it any other way. They will not find a home. They do not seek a home. They are too busy gripping to the memory of that faux security that they lost.

Then there are those among us (and I say 'among us' for I am now considering myself in their number) whose souls continously wander about to find a home. Like sweet Dido, erramus silva in magna, we wander in that great forest of love lost wonder and we wander on searching for a home.

Home...in another man's arms perhaps a sweet home (domus dulce domus) of kindness, love, affection, understanding...home among his arms, among his soul, two souls in one home...one home that we have always been away from, one home that we are continuously searching for...

I used to consider Penn home...I really still do. It is where my soul is, it is where my friends are. As I often say, when I am unable to stand with my friends and protect them in times of danger or comfort them in times of pain, I stand with them still in spirit, for my soul is theirs just as much as it is mine. I am made of them and exist through them. They are my light, my energy, and my salvation. I feel as though they are my home...yet my soul still wanders...wanders for that home...where my soul can go to clense itself...be one, yet two...so am I truly home?

I left the closet...but was I prepared for what I found (or what I didn't)? For the search? For the wandering? For the errores? For my soul to seek and seek and seek?

What does home mean to me?

Not somewhere to lay my head or a wearied body or a soft bed or apple pie or such corporeal things...

It is a soul, a heart, a unit, and a love in which I can finally rest my wandering, romantic soul.

That is what home means to me.

This entry created for a the contest at HomoMojo.com. The winner recieves a 50 dollar donation to the charity of their choice.

Fear

2006-01-28T02:42:00.000-05:00

So afraid.

Everyone I love is so afraid.

Small Sparks

2005-12-29T03:13:00.000-05:00

Fair warning...spoilers for Latter Days and Brokeback Mountain forthcoming.

It's 3 AM in the morning, and after surfing the blogsphere and chatting with friends in an attempt to chase away sleep, I have developed a few thoughts that I should really put down.

First, from that movie with the terrible acting and mostly terrible dialogue that I absolutely love, Latter Days:

Tuesday, 3 A.M.,
Once again I'm wide awake.
Waiting for time to mend this part of me that keeps on breaking....

He thinks I can't hear him cry and I pretend that I don't know,
Or about all the 3 AM's he spends wrestling with your ghost.
I hear him call out to heaven,
I watch him crawl down to Hell,
He still can't get over you,
I know he never will.

I've ranted on Love before on my Xanga...but I think it could stand a few more things at this hour of my night...

Firstly, I made a few mistakes and typos back then. In Memoriam, A.H.H. was written TO A.H.H. (Alfred's dear, departed friend Arthur Henry Hallam) and not BY him...and the second half of Virgil's famous quote, et nos cedamus amori! does not mean 'we all fall in love' but 'let us all yield to love!' I'm not quite sure which one is more damning to Amor.

One of the properties I'd like to add to 'love' it has absolutely no order or system or set of rules by which it plays. It will not conform itself to a simple little planned life, but will instead palce itself in the most complicated of situations possibly imaginable and at THAT point, manifest itself.

Bastard.

I ended a poem once with a superfluous Latin twist...yet as superfluous as it was, it became one of my mantras...because it came from a part of me that I never want to see fade.

Amore spes semper fidesque tene.

'Always hold faith and hope in love.'

So enters the song. I have many friends who are struggling with ghosts...and all of them in situations fit for the finest dramas. When I went to see Brokeback Mountain, I knew that it would end in tragedy...I'd heard so from some of the reviews I'd read. I wasn't certain of the form the tragedy would take...but I knew...

This didn't stop me from weeping openly at the films close...I couldn't control myself...it was simply too powerful. I'm not going to get into a full review of the film...that's not the point of this post. Safe to say, all parties did a wonderful job, including actors Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal were amazing and the skill of director Ang Lee shined through. But what made it so powerful for me was the connection I made not only between myself, but with myself and my friends. I have been fortunate enough that I have not yet experienced true loss...I'm not quite sure I could handle it, especially not to the level some of my friends have. But in the moment where Ennis searches Jack's room and finds their blood stained shirts in Jack's closet...I couldn't contain it, and just...wept. In the closing moments of the film, as Ennis looks on the shirt that now hangs on his own closet door...I completely lost it, and literally had to stop from sobbing to leave the theatre.

The mark of a good film, for me, is how it allows me to connect with the characters. I saw so much of myself in both Ennis and Jack...and of my friends. The reason why this film beats out Latter Days is not only the quality of the acting, or the fact that Latter Days actually cuts the tragedy for a nice 'Hollywood' ending. It was because Brokeback Mountain told the story in shades of grey rather than black and white, whch allowed me to see reality in them.

I'm asking myself now, was the tragedy in the story of Ennis and Jack, a story that is repeated in so many variations in REAL LIFE...is the tragedy the fault of LOVE...or is it the society that creates the environment where such tragedies can happen?

Is it that love is truly cruel, or have we built up a world in which it struggles to survive, clinging to the fragments of our lives? I hesitate to blame fate...I think that's sort of a cop-out. I think we as a society are responsible for creating a world where love is degraded and rebuked, and where compassion and empathy are frowned upon.

How DARE you make fun of me and my friends for weeping at that movie? I'm not referencing anybody in particular, just those that I KNOW laugh and cajole us, or say we are being silly. The reason why we cry is because we connected with the characters, we put ourselves in their shoes, we EMPATHIZED with them.

WHY are we living in a society where EMPATHY is being discouraged?! How the hell did we get this way? Especially in America, where the conservatives who run the place always throw out the name of Jesus Christ as if it were some sort of weapon against progressive thought. 'Love your neighboor as yourself' does not only mean that you show pity or that you donate to charity every now and again, it literally means that you extend your heart and your soul and you make a connection with another person, and attempt to bring them INTO you. That is EMPATHY. It makes me sick that those same conservatives scream bloody murder when someone preposes that we have an ACTUAL national healthcare system.

It makes me even more sick that they toss out the name of the God of Empathy to condemn and surpress me and my fellow LGBT people. How dare you. How dare you use the name of Jesus Christ to prevent people from pledging their love to others. How dare you use his name to prevent a man from seeing his dying partner of 30 YEARS in his last moments in a hospital. How DARE speak his name and then DENY a woman her DYING LOVED ONE'S benefits when she will have NO recourse after her loss? How DARE you use the name of one of the GREATEST LOVERS IN HISTORY in the name of HATE?!

I know how...it's because you do NOT dare empathize...you do not dare to carry yourself outside yourself, to give up something of yourself to those you disdain. I don't know why you lack this ability, or rather choose not to excercize it...I don't think I will ever understand...

And yet, I continuously read stories that, when one would think they sap energy and will and vigor, only add it. Take that of Nathan Christofferson, for instance, a gay man who recently died of 'unknown causes'. His friends try to answer the question 'why?'

In anger, I declared that Nathan had died on his knees because his family had made him crawl – he had been trying to stand and fly and was taken before he’d been able to leave the nest. I cried that his family may not have intentionally killed him, but their torturous judgment and active rejection of who he was had indirectly been the cause of Nathan’s death.

But his own words, an old article of his, can give us a bit of hope...

I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on my life the past several weeks. It’s been a time of soul searching for me…thinking about the present, trying not to dwell too much on the past, but mainly looking towards the future. . . I’m eternally grateful to those older gentlemen that I met it my early years as a young gay man. I believe it was those men that instilled in me the importance of fighting for what I believe is right. Today, I’m an activist for HIV prevention as well as marriage equality. I’m not afraid to protest when we need to, and to speak out against discrimination when appropriate. If you are a member of the LGBT community and you’re reading this, you may feel beaten down, you may feel like your country has turned against you, you may feel a sense of hopelessness…that we’re never going to be treated like “them” (heterosexuals). There is hope, though. Hope and action are all we have. Many have come before us…they have fought hard for equality, have battled prejudice and continue to promote tolerance…all of this so that our community can have such things as gay pride, gay clubs, anti-discrimination laws and the ongoing fight for our civil rights. They have left their legacy, and I plan to leave mine.

This is a spark...

Every now and again, my fires simmer low. My fires of pride, that is. Pride, I say, as a lack of shame, an acknowledgment and love of myself for WHO I AM. I had a conversation with a friend of mine today about pride, and what it should mean. Hearing his fire and his passion...another spark.

And then, I returned to M's blog, knowing what I was searching for. It was this post...which I'll excerpt a bit from, as I have before:

I am fed up that a First Lieutenant in the United States Army who is decorated with a Purple Heart is encouraged to die for her country, but is dishonorably discharged if she displays a photograph of her girlfriend.

I am fed up that a gay man who has lost his husband to cancer after 55 years of faithful marriage cannot collect survivor benefits because the state considers those 55 years of sancitifed love as invalid.

I am fed up that a murderer can receive a reduced sentence by claiming his victim was "a fag, and he was coming on to me".

I am fed up with churches defrocking those people who pledged their lives to serve God simply because they are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

I am fed up with a society where a man feels compelled to beat his child to death so the child will not grow up to be gay.

I am fed up that a 14 year old boy put a bullet through his head because his family told him that it was better that he was dead than gay.

I don't want this job. I want someone else to do this work. I want some fairy to come and wave a magic wand and make all the injustice disappear. I want someone stronger, smarter, and more experienced to right all these wrongs.

The wrongs remain.

And so, I lead.

This...is yet another spark.

These sparks serve not only to alight my fire of pride...to remind me of why I am fighting...but they appear as becons of hope in love...that it really does exist out there somewhere, and that I am catching the sparks from its fire burning in a night that seems so cold and devoid of stars.

And I falter.

I falter when they push us back, I falter when they push us down, I falter every time I hear of a young LGBT person committing suicide because they just can't live with the pain anymore. I falter when life wounds me, when it wounds my friends, and when the darkness seems so engulfing that I cannot imagine a single cinder of it surviving in this universe.

And then...I see my small sparks.
And to myself I say...

Amore spes semper fidesque tene...

Blogging from Alabama

2005-12-25T19:40:00.000-05:00

So, the biggest news I'll jump right into, for those that are intrested.

I came out to my family on Friday.

At dinner, I just up and said 'This might already be expected, but I'm gay,' before I had a chance to chicken out.

The first thing asked was by my brother, 'You're kidding, right?' After saying that, no, I was being completely serious, my mother said that she knew, 'But she'd hoped I'd change my mind on certain things...'

I challenged that...told her that there was really nothing to change...then I was asked if that's why I left home (my response...no...it's because I wanted to make a life for myself).

After that...dead silence, from my dad and my brother especially. My brother made sure everyone knew 'just for the record' that he had girls in his phone (wtf??) and things have been quiet since (they're always quiet, but it seems quieter). My mum told me they love me anyway...which is good to know...and this isn't the worse case senario that I thought might occur, so that's good.

Now that that's over...I dunno...it seems indescribably odd. With that off my mind, my inner dialogue has been going crazy...and there are quite a few things rumbling around. Next semester, my last as an undergraduate, should be a doozy. Hopefully all the stress will actually come just from schoolwork this time.

I feel vegitative right now...which is normal for my Alabama stays. Unlike Philly, I cannot just get up and go and walk somewhere or visit someone in order to chase away my restlessness. Here, I'm boxed inside of a house: No car, no public transportation, nowhere to go and nothing to do. Bloody brilliant.

Perhaps a doleful rant on life later?

Perhaps.

Tarot Card

2005-12-18T21:12:00.000-05:00

You are The Lovers

Motive, power, and action, arising from Inspiration and Impulse.

The Lovers represents intuition and inspiration. Very often a choice needs to be made.

Originally, this card was called just LOVE. And that's actually more apt than "Lovers." Love follows in this sequence of growth and maturity. And, coming after the Emperor, who is about control, it is a radical change in perspective. LOVE is a force that makes you choose and decide for reasons you often can't understand; it makes you surrender control to a higher power. And that is what this card is all about. Finding something or someone who is so much a part of yourself, so perfectly attuned to you and you to them, that you cannot, dare not resist. This card indicates that the you have or will come across a person, career, challenge or thing that you will fall in love with. You will know instinctively that you must have this, even if it means diverging from your chosen path. No matter the difficulties, without it you will never be complete.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

'Bravery' in Hollywood

2005-12-17T16:21:00.000-05:00

I saw Brokeback Mountain last night...The film is positively one of the best I've seen. Perhaps I'll write something when I can compose myself.

I was sent Charles Bouley's Advocate article on the film by a friend of mine...I think the article is well worth reading:

Then the topic again came into view, and craw, with weeks of prerelease coverage of Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, which stars two allegedly straight hunks, Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. Even before the movie was released, the accolades for these two began pouring forth. Gay Goddess Madonna saw the film and told the British magazine Attitude, “They’re really good, those boys, and they did a great job. It’s very brave of them.”

And there’s the problem. The media seem to be running with a recurring theme around this movie: the “bravery” of the actors playing the roles, the “courage” it took them to do it, and the “speculation” about whether America is ready for a “gay cowboy movie.” Certainly not a position a liberal would take, so it befuddles me how the media is labeled “liberal.” Because the media has all but compared these two to war heroes for their portrayal of two closeted cowboys in a story of unrequited love and personal deception.

Say it with me: poppycock.

Read the rest here.

Gauntlets Thrown

2005-11-30T04:33:00.000-05:00

This is not exactly going to be a raving liberal rant, or at least I hope not. Nor will it be entirely militaristic. That being said, I feel as though the gauntlet has been thrown down by the conservative students at the University of Pennsylvania, and it is time for the progressive students to respond in due course, and defend not only our rights, but the very concepts of art and equality as well.

The catalyst for this event: The publication of Quake, Penn's new erotica magazine. Quake released its first full magazine last week, a follow up to the preamble of a pamphlet that the editorial staff put together last semester. Quake has recieved funding from Penn's Student Activity Council (SAC), which is an organization designed to parcel out the 2,500+ dollar activity fee that is part of Penn's tuition. The SAC funding rules prevent, among other things, the funding of a group meant to advocate a particular religious ideology as well as those designed to influence legistlation or support particular candidates for office.

Now, a DP columnist, Andrew Rennekamp has published an article decrying Quake as something that increases the 'problem' of pornography. He claims:

In fact, thanks to Quake, the University's new literary erotica magazine, porn is now both distributed and funded by the University.

Many students seek out porn regularly, and those who don't either consider it harmless or object for religious reasons -- but generally still unable to explain why it is dangerous.

Few recognize that, like heroin, pornography is addictive and has negative consequences. Like a drug, pornography alters the user's perception of reality.

In my comment on the article's webpage, I feel I deal with the most salient mistake in this opinion:

It would seem as though Rennekamp, who preaches 'sexual purity' would also not have the school freely pass out condoms...after all...they encourage sex, no? In his view, we must all be sexual 'pure.' Rather than seeing some of the articles in Quake for what they WERE, mainly people (mostly WOMEN) taking control of their own sexuality, or (one could say) a lesbian couple reclaiming THEIR sexuality from a society that would seek to use them for the arousal of STRAIGHT MEN, Rennekamp focuses on the boobies.

I am, quite obviously, being a little cheeky in my comments, but I feel their basic premise still stands. Rennekamp refuses to acknowledge that there is a difference between 'porn' and 'erotica.' Even Kenny Pearce, one of his supporters, points this out.

It is to Kenny that I now turn my attention. I consider Kenny, if not a friend, than at least a friendly aquaintence. We suffer in Greek together, and I am well aware that Kenny is a conservative Christian. He is, however, also a libertarian, one who (generally) believes the government shouldn't be involved in the private lives of its people.

It disturbs me, then, that Kenny would take the stances he does in his blog. Forgive the length of this quote, but I do think that Kenny's writing (being quite good) is best viewed in all of its context.

The SAC funding policy states, in provisions 1-3, that funding will not be denied to groups based on opinions they express, but groups that support certain religious or political ideologies may not be funded. Chairman Gommels has often suggested in meetings of the SAC executive that it may be improper for SAC to deny funding to religious groups while granting funding to, for instance, LGBT groups which have as part of their purpose the promotion of an ideology (namely the belief that homosexual marriage is acceptable and/or that sexual contact between members of the same gender outside of marriage is acceptable) which is in direct opposition to the traditional forms of all three major western religions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - all of which are well represented on Penn's campus. This would create an extremely one-sided debate were it not for the fact that organizations like Hillel (the Jewish campus ministry) and Campus Crusade for Christ receive substantial contributions from outside the university. (Note that Hillel represents a wide variety of Jewish traditions, including that of Reformed Judaism, which does not necessarily oppose homosexual practice, so it is not necessarily entirely on the other side of the debate from the LGBT groups, although it is certainly the case that many observant Jews - and all orthodox Jews - would consider Penn's LGBT groups to be in opposition to their religion.) It is also worth noting here that Penn has a substantial Muslim Students Association, which in my experience has never had significant publicity (their annual "Islam Awareness Week" aside).

Like the LGBT groups, Quake exists to promote an ideology antithetical to those supported by these religious groups, which are denied funding. Furthermore, Quake does not merely provide arguments (e.g. from psychology) that the "repressed" nature of traditional sexual ethics is wrong, or damaging, or whatever they think it is. Instead, they go so far as to present a medium which uses graphic depictions to increase the difficulty with which those who believe in traditional moral standards live according by them - and this task is already difficult enough! Ethically conservative students, parents, and donors are now paying for a publication designed to systematically undermine their moral values. This must be stopped.

Kenny makes a few key mistakes here that are probably chalked up to a lack of general knowledge regarding the LGBT groups on campus. I draw your attention first to the bolded section, in which he repeates the SAC Chair's claim that LGBT groups are somehow representing a ideology opposed to that of the religions represented on campus. This claim is completely false. LGBT groups such as the Queer Student Alliance (QSA) and ALLIES (Penn's queer-straight alliance) are not designed to oppose any ideology. I quote each one's mission statement, as stated in their constitutions:

The Queer Student Alliance at the University of Pennsylvania is a group of undergraduate students who identify as or are supportive of gender identity or sexual minorities. The Queer Student Alliance strives to support these communities through facilitating social and community-oriented activities. It provides a safe space where students can feel free to be who they are, to freely express their gender and sexual identity and receive support from other students.

ALLIES exists: to raise awareness of, provide education about, and discuss issues of importance to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT), and Allied communities; to make it known that it is okay to be straight and committed to educations about and the advancement of LGBT causes; to inform the greater Penn population that LGBT issues do not exclusively affect the queer community, but are of central importance to all members of the University of Pennsylvania.

We are not fighting a war with you, Kenny, you are fighting a war with us. Penn's non-discrimination policy specifically prohibits discrimination based upon sexual orientation. This is founded upon beliefs regarding freedom and equality of all human beings. If a religious group on campus felt that African Americans were an abomination to God, and that they CHOOSE to be black before entering into this life, would you say that funding to groups that advocate civil rights should be recinded? In essence, you are using Quake as a battlefield on which to fight a war against those who disagree with your particular ideology (including, it seems LGBT groups), but you should realize that it is your ideology that is creating the discrepancy here, not ours.

What, precisely, is so 'wrong' with undermining your mores, Kenny? Isn't education about growth and questioning, and doesn't such questioning require such undermining to proceed? Last year's QPENN (Penn's annual queer pride and awareness week) featured the theme 'Question Everything', with events talored to cause their participants not to cast away their beliefs, but to question them, and to grow from this questioning. It seems as though you and your fellow conservatives are content not to question, and to keep the world as you feel comfortable.

This institution was not designed to make students comfortable. It was not designed to have people come in, learn random facts, and then leave for the jobforce. Coming to University is about learning how to look at your beliefs and those of others critically and draw educated, informed decisions. You cannot draw an informed decision on something when you are averse to even experiencing it (as you are with Quake). As an academic institution, Penn should encourage such questioning, as well as the creation of art, such as Quake, that facilitates it.

For the benefit of my readers, and for your own, Kenny, I will supply a couple of excerpts from Quake so that you can catch but a glimpse of this informed decision. These works are, of course, copyright of their authors:

Allow me
to lay beneath the Olympian soul
of your silver lip-step,
to listen to your midnight footprint,
your ambrosia-driven scent,
overtures led by clarinet bulbs,
step-by-needing step,
inch-by-needing-inch...
---Paul Lomax, 'Lingual Aspirations, Lovingly Voyaged' pg. 29

From an interview with the 'centerfold' (a lesbian couple):
Will: Why did you choose to pose for Quake?
A: We made a date together -- to make love in front of the camera!
S: We're happy about our sexuality and our love. I think too often, people think of lesbians as sex objects for male pleasure, particularly within porn. But the photo shoot was about us as two lesbians in love. It is not porn; it's erotica.
--Convsersation with the Centerfold pg 13

There is absolutely a literary aspect to this magazine, and S. is precisely right. 'It is not porn; it's erotica!'

In direct contrast to Kenny, I ask all of you who support artistic endevours to contact SAC and President Guttman and register your support for Quake:
sac-exec@dolphin.upenn.edu.

President Amy Guttman:

Office of the President
University of Pennsylvania
100 College Hall
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6380
presweb@dolphin.upenn.edu
215-898-7221

What does love mean?

2005-11-27T03:28:00.000-05:00

Children were asked to explain what love meant. Via E tenebris, lux dormiens, who posted it on his blog, here is one little boy's answer:

When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.

A future great poet, I'd say.

Accounts of my death...

2005-11-19T02:38:00.000-05:00

have been greatly exagerated.

It's been a while since I created a post, which is due mainly to my inability to grab a free moment between school, sleep, and social life.

I won't bore anyone with my own personal accounts of the past month, but needless to say, it's full of drama. I think I'll just state a few things I've learned about life and the people in it, perhaps not so much over the month as over the course of my time as an undergrad.

1. There are people in this world who are so shallow that they'll actually completely judge you within 5 seconds of seeing you (much less meeting you). There is an overiding context that, if you are not 'good looking,' you are not only not 'datable' material, but you are also not even worthy to be within the presence of others. Unfortunately, this shallowness seems pervasive, and carries through not only looks, but money as well. Poor people are viewed as worthless because, well, their poor.

2. Anti-intellectualism is rampant. In the institution that should be the cathedral of learning, most of the students are not scholars, but number-crunchers in training. I don't put them down...but I am saddened and frustrated that, because I view myself and carry myself as a scholar and intellectual, I am automatically demonized as being somehow superfluous and arrogant.

3. There are so many people in this world who are broken (I'm one of them). And these broken people--whether in pieces from childhood traumas, horrible loses, constant self-degradation, hiding your true self for so many years, or many other things--somehow seem to attract to one another. It's like we're fucking magnets. And when that happens, we either mend each other or sparks fly. And sometimes, its like a Greek tragedy, where you know the horrible ending before it comes, but are powerless to stop it. My friend described it as an avalanche, and not being able to run away once you see it coming. It builds and builds until it overcomes you. I have so many broken friends, and I'd give anything to mend them.

Interesting lessons, no?

It never ends

2005-11-08T17:18:00.000-05:00

Things have been simply nuts lately. My thesis outline is sucking hours and hours out of my study time. I had a Latin exam today, which I'm not sure how I did on, a book to read for tomorrow, a freshly popped quiz in Greek for Thursday, and I've been asked to help judge the Parle teams tournament on Friday...it just goes on and on...

That should explain why my current novel word count is 0...perhaps this was far to ambitious of me...I don't even have a set plot down yet and I'm already a week down!

I'll post more thoughts (and more eloquent thoughts) once I get a breather, I promise.

Penn's Problems

2005-11-07T02:59:00.000-05:00

I'll rant later on my own views on the problems inherent in Penn's culture. For now, I think that Jaime put it quite eloquently:

I sit here and I am sad. The U of Penn is supposed to be one of the few elite universities in the world, and yet I do not see leaders here. Sure, I see a few, a couple diamonds in the rough, but for the most part I see people who are smart, but are not going to be at the top. We produce bread and butter type people. We produce the number crunchers and the money makers, the managers of the world. We're a sturdy bunch.

I sit here and I fall silent. I want to scream, "Where is your passion? Your innovation? Your individualism..."

Read the rest here.

NanoWriMo

2005-10-25T02:22:00.000-04:00

I am officially taking part in NanoWriMo. That is National Novel Writing Month The object is to write a 50,000 word novel between November 1st and November 30th. This will be a real challenge for me, with classes and my thesis also breathing down my neck; however, I think it's certainly worth a shot. I'll give updates on how things come out.

I might post at a later point during the week about all the things I've been wanting to get off of my chest for a while now, including excitement at a couple of articles in Harper's Magazine, issues within the Univ. of Pennsylvania community, thesis woes, theory rambles, etc. etc. etc.

For now, I'll leave you with this. Because I am a complete language nerd, I was struck by the term 'marshmallow' today and wondered at its origin. I ventured over to the Oxford English Dictionary Online and looked up it's etymology. Turns out, marshmallow's get their name from the plant from which they were first created, literally called a 'marsh mallow' becuase it is a 'mallow' plant, specifically any plant of the Malvaceae family, which grows in marshes.

I am SUCH a dork!

You've got to be kidding me...

2005-10-05T18:54:00.000-04:00

This has been making its rounds across the blogs (The Republic of T. and Feministe among them).

For those of you who don't want to page through copious pdf text, here is a nice summary from Booman Tribune via Suburban Guerrilla:

Republican lawmakers are drafting new legislation that will make marriage a requirement for motherhood in the state of Indiana, including specific criminal penalties for unmarried women who do become pregnant “by means other than sexual intercourse.”

According to a draft of the recommended change in state law, every woman in Indiana seeking to become a mother through assisted reproduction therapy such as in vitro fertilization, sperm donation, and egg donation, must first file for a “petition for parentage” in their local county probate court.

Only women who are married will be considered for the “gestational
certificate” that must be presented to any doctor who facilitates the pregnancy. Further, the “gestational certificate” will only be given to married couples that successfully complete the same screening process currently required by law of adoptive parents.

Besides the obvious subjugation of women this law entails, I'm sure it doesn't take a genius to see the certain kinds of people this law is targeted towards.

I mean, seriously...there's very little I could coherently say that others haven't said already, but can I lament the death of my country. I know this is only Indiana, but how long before other states like Alabama or Mississippi latch on to this? Trust me, I know them. It won't be long. More frightening, how long will it be before some conservative asshat in Congress gets ambitious enough to prepose this as a national law? I can see the political commericals now. 'Call your congressman and tell him you support children and want him to vote yes on the Childbirth Protection Act'

And some people wonder why I'm seriously considering going ex-patriot after school!

Love

2005-10-01T23:29:00.000-04:00

Oxford English Dictionary: Love n. 1. That disposition or state of feeling with regard to a person which (arising from recognition of attractive qualities, from instincts of natural relationship, or from sympathy) manifests itself in solicitude for the welfare of the object, and usually also in delight in his or her presence and desire for his or her approval; warm affection, attachment. Const. of, for, to, towards.

Alex's Dictionary: Love n. 1. The disposition or state of feeling with regard to a person which feels as though you are having your heart torn out and ripped apart by hungry animals and causes deep bouts of sadness, depression and hopelessness on account of not being returned.

2. Something he will never truly have in his life.

Divine Linguistics

2005-09-30T11:04:00.000-04:00

It's quite old, but this post from talk.origins is still hilarious:

Our public schools have turned away from the source of Truth, to teach our children that our sacred English language has descended from other languages. The poor impressionable youngsters are taught AS A FACT that English words have certain "root words", even though this is only a theory. The FACT is, God Almighty created all languages complete when he confused mankind's original language as punishment for our transgression at the tower of Babel. But the atheist/linguists don't want this mentioned in public settings, because it goes against their FAITH, and forces them to face their own accountability. So they have BANNED the teaching of Babelism, because they are afraid that it might expose the weakness of their own linguistic ideas. Is this fair? I don't think so. It goes against all that America stands for.
....
Third, there is NO evidence that transitional languages ever existed. What use is half a language? A noun without verbs conveys no meaning! Sure, there is middle and old- English. But these are ENGLISH! A complete nontransitional language. We do not deny that micro-linguistics can happen, but this process can create only DIALECTS. There is NO EVIDENCE that a series of random micro-linguistic events can create a WHOLE NEW LANGUAGE. I'll believe in Macro-linguistics when I see a video tape of a child growing up in an Eskimo village suddenly become fluent in Armenian! It takes A LOT MORE FAITH to believe in atheistic linguisticism than the truth of Babelism.

Thank you Language Hat for pointing this out to me.

Supporting our troops

2005-09-24T11:53:00.000-04:00

No More Mister Nice Blog reports:

A group of House Republicans have proposed a plan to offset the costs of relief and rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina that includes trimming military quality-of-life programs, including health care....

Service members would be offered cash if they are willing to accept reduced health care benefits for their families.... Reduced health care benefits could save $2.4 billion over 10 years....

I remember growing up in a military family during the years of Bush I. You remember, the one that sent my father to Iraq during the FIRST Gulf War? The Army's "Tricare" medical insurance is worse than the worst of HMO's. Among other things, they chalked up my mother's health problems to mere indigestion and acid relfux when it turned out she had a hernia that now torments her daily. The list of things goes on and on and on. Now they're CUTTING benefits. And what's worse, the offer of cash will be too attractive to those military families struggling on what little pay they get, and they'll actually take this deal.

Supporting the troops my ass.

Notables of the past few days

2005-09-02T18:12:00.000-04:00

I don't really like archive blogging, or for my blog to become a compilation of other people's work, but lately my blogsphere has had extreamly quotable passages of beautiful writing. These are among my favourites:

Margaret Cho:

I am very sad for New Orleans, and for all the communities destroyed by the hurricane. But New Orleans in particular is a painful loss because the city is very special to me. The news coverage has been extensive and predictably racist. When black people steal, it’s looting. When white people steal, it’s because emergency workers are slow to act and they must feed their families.

The Republic of T:

I guess that fits in with the conservative mindset (as described by George Lakoff in Moral Politics). The poor don’t deserve to be saved. I’m paraphrasing here, but it goes something like this. Wealth is a sign of well-being. Well-being is the result of having and acting upon the right values. If people have neither wealth of well-being, then it is probably a consequence of not having the right values. It’s their own fault, and helping them too much might only reinforce the wrong values, etc.

Aanthems:

Wounds to our skin need air to heal. Wounds of our soul need the same. Air, light, and time.

Leadership

2005-08-29T21:57:00.000-04:00

M rocks my socks like WHOA...

So, Erin, Bob and Ninah want me to apply for this Leadership Training Weekend, which seems like it could be fun even though I'm sure I've heard it all before- not because I'm a prideful bitch (which I am, but not in this instance), but because I feel like I have gone to ten thousand of these " Leadership Training Session(s)/Weekend(s)/Week(s)".

Anyways, they asked me to consider it, and I think some of the other students in the OSL (Office of Student Life) could use some sense kicked into them (i.e. learning to not be inefficient). So, I think I will apply. I don't see why I wouldn't be selected (again not being prideful here) since I'm female (women are not a minority, dammit), a leader in the gay community, a leader in the faith community, and a racial minorityto boot, and since they say that they "value" diversity, I think I might have this one in the bag. (That was half sarcastic)

One of the questions on the application, however, made me stop and think for a minute. Well, I actually mis-read the question. It was "what do you consider good leadership"? Somehow, in my twisted mind, I read, "what makes a leader?"

. . .

Now, two years after I left high school, the Horace Greeley Debate Team is going strong. They are regulars at the New York State Championships and at national competitions. Next year, my "little sister" Shaina is expected to go to the Tournament of Champions. And it was because I was fed up with people telling me to give up, to switch to academic challenge or science olympiad, that it was impossible. I was fed up with people saying "No" to me.

The rest, one might say, is history.

As I began to understand my sexuality, my church told me "No". My pastor told me "No" and my friends told me "No". They told me that I could not be gay, that it was something I had to fight, like it was an addiction. They told me to pray to be delivered from this sin. Well, you know what, I got fed up.

Once I was out, my church told me "No" again. They said I couldn't be gay and Christian. They said both were mutually exclusive.

But there was more, I began to realize that sometimes, when someone gets fed up, instead of becoming leaders, they become corpses.

Read the rest at her blog, The Open Window.

Fuck the WB

2005-08-28T13:27:00.000-04:00

Before I vent, I have to say that the new Doom trailer looks awesome and the FPS scenes actually look like they migth work.

That being said...I am still smoldering at the WB for only giving Joss Whedon and the Angel crew 5 episodes' notice before canceling the show...but now my anger has reached new hiegths as I came across the latest internet sensation, the Global Frequency.

Global Frequency is a television show based off of a DC comic in which a secret organization of experts around the world prevents the terrible things the government cannot or refuses to. Unfortunately, the WB, did not pick up the show after viewing the pilot.

I have seen the pilot, and all I can say is:
WHAT THE FUCK IS THE WB THINKING?!?!

This show is absolutely brillaint. The writing...the directing...acting...everything is on par. There are VERY few kinks to work out, and I believe it could have become just as much of a sensation as The X-Files or Buffy: The Vampire Slayer became. But, of course, the WB would rather go with the type of garbage that makes up its fall lineup.

...when will the days of good television return?!?

For more information on Global Frequency, go to the weblog of the show's writer, John Rogers. Neither he, nor I will tell you how to get your hands on the pilot...though I'm sure you're savvy enough to figure that out.

Pat the Assassin

2005-08-25T13:51:00.000-04:00

Everybody, from Americans Are Dumb to Margaret Cho to even Language Log, is commenting on Pat Robertson's suggestion of assassinating Venezuelan President Chavez. I have no love for this guy. 'Gasp!' You say? The ultra-liberal Alex has no love for a communist revolution? Well, as always, its not the simple. Chavez's actions are basically indefensible (lay aside the fact that a communist system, espcially like the one he is attempting, just doesn't work). And having a friend who's been personally violated by his radicalism makes me less sympathetic to his cause. That being said, suggestions that we should assassinate any world leader are ridiculous. I'm sure we have the power to do such things (and certainly would do them) covertly, but for a televangelist to openly say that is...well..dumb. Also, him thinking that a Catholic world leader in a country full of Roman Catholics will somehow 'export Islamic extreamists' makes me wonder if he's up to date on his meds.

Back in Philly

2005-08-22T16:29:00.000-04:00

Back in Philly and already lovin it!

Also, I've decided that my Blogger blog will now become my principle blog, so update your links everyone (if you have them...) http://cavelector.blogspot.com
And remember, you don't need to be a Blogger member to leave comments on this one! :-D

I'm moving into our sweet 4 bedroom suit (oh homophones, how I adore you) tomorrow. At some point this will mean more frequent updates with more interesting materials.

Americans Are Dumb

2005-08-20T00:00:00.000-04:00

Americans Are Dumb

One of the most hilarious and equally depressing political sites I have found in a while.

Highlights from the First Day in Alabma

2005-08-16T15:49:00.000-04:00

* I must endure trivia night at a local bar with my brother, which wouldn't have been bad at all if he did not insist on making homophobic jokes all night.

* I argue about various things with my brother's friend including choice, death penalty, the 'war on drugs', intelligent design theory in schools, and of course Iraq. I owned his ass. I hope he knows that.

* I have to listen to my mother passive-aggressively attempting to have me read this bookshelf full of evangelical christian crap that she has installed in my former room.

* Also have to endure my mother saying "let's move the furniture around" and then proceeding to (rudely) toss away all the ideas my dad threw out. Did I just miss this dynamic for the first 20 years of my life?

* I want to be back in Phily NOW NOW NOW.

2005-08-15T00:53:00.000-04:00

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Switch to Blogger?

2005-08-15T00:34:00.000-04:00

As I get ready to leave for Alabama tomorrow (staying only for a week there), I an drawn into working out my blog stuff and have discovered Blogger truly for the first time. I am seriously considering dropping Xanga and switching over there. Let me know what you guys think of the current layout of my blog.

Advantages of Blogger:

1. WAY more customization options.
2. More connection to the blog sphere
3. Skins that are BETTER than Xanga's WITHOUT having to pay for them.
4. The ability to host trackbacks
5. Oh, and you don't have to be a member to comment on people's sites.

So...thoughts?

Damn Postmodernists

2005-08-15T00:32:00.000-04:00

Reposted from Xanga. Originally posted August 1, 2005:

I was surfing across The Page last night when I came across this article in the Detroit News. Needless to say I am disturbed and rather frighetened by the realities that Foetry has exposed. I was wondering why poetry was in such a wretched state today (as I'll probably rant about at some point) and now I think I've found one of the important clues. These contests are complete malarchy, and the idea that you need to win one of these contests to bust into the poetry publishing world is very disconcerting. Turns out that many of these contests fall victim to nepotism and a sort of quid pro quo nature that really turns my stomach. It's no wonder the art has suffered as much as it has, and the only ones who seem to be published are those touting some sort of post-modern nonsensical approach (literally, it seems as though most published poets today are proud of the fact that their poetry says nothing, does nothing, and means nothing. One wonders what the hell poets like Claire Lockwood are thinking when they seemingly just throw words on a page. Perhaps shes so caught up in her message that she forgot to deliver it. Or perhaps like one of the winner listed on Foetry, Michele Glazer. The poem I linked to creates no thought other than a huge double-u-tee-eff. There seems to be an utter lack of poems that actually deliver something to the reader. (The latest issue of Agni or at least those poems available online, seems to be one of few that actually have substance).

I'm not saying that poems that I surf into, such as this one by Andrew Hudgins are bad because they 'have no message' (on the contrary, i think this poem is saying a few things about childhood understanding and possibly a little about self-censorship. the message, however, is being delivered rather well). What I am saying is that...well, the poems that I pick up from the shelves or that I read online seem more and more to be comprised of the author splattering discombobulated words on a page rather than anything with real thought. And Foetry goes to show why. Not only are poets not being judged in these contests based upon the merits of their poems, but those who control these contests are continuing their own range of thought. By purposefully awarding your students the prize, you are insuring that your 'form' are being preserved (even if its some silly post-modernist idea of throwing away ALL form. It goes to show how terrible things have become when the absence of form isn't even a form anymore). And you know how we know that these awards are truly quid pro quo? Because these contests and their judges refuse to use blind judging! All of this could be solved very simply if the authors' names were detached from their poems before true judging began. They refuse to do this. Makes you wonder why, doesn't it?

So now I've discovered that the problems that face of poetry and poetic appreciation are a multitude rather than a simple puzzle. Not only do we have the general public (and by general public, I do not exactly mean the 'uneducated,' but those who do not produce or read poetry). A while ago a friend of mine claimed that a critique of a poem he wrote was that 'all poems must have rhyme and rhythm, or else they're not poems' and about a week ago another friend of mine was told that he was being 'too direct' in a line of verse and needed to 'use more metaphore.' Both incidents made me want to break something. The notion of sticking to form and fucntion and rhythm and rhyme as a rule of what makes poetry poetry (not that they are bad, they're just not required) makes me want to bang my head on the desk and wonder if people have missed the last two centuries of literature. On the other side of the coin, there are those who want to wontonly through all form and function out the window and turn poetry into some form of abstract art (read: paint splattered on canvas). Have we gone so post-modern that we reduce language to words on a page? Do we really need to throw away all traces of form? Can't we somehow endevour to create our own instead? Isn't that what the absence of form was meant to be in the first place, our own form for our own generation? All I can do is look at the poetry of today and wonder, as I have said before: 'When did the lack of form cease to be a form and become utter random "poetic" tripe?'

Quick things:

2005-08-15T00:30:00.000-04:00

Reposted from Xanga. Originally posted July 31, 2005:

For some reason, I feel high as a kite today. I don't know what it is (or rather, I think I know but I'd rather not name it for fear that it'll shatter) but my mind is incredably at ease today, and it looks as though its going to stay that way for a good while now.

I'm leaving on the 15th to fly to Alabama and shall return a week later on the 22nd. Sorry to my friends and family, but I hate the place you live, and would rather have my toenails pulled out than stay there longer.

This year is going to be a blitz. Senior thesis, shoving in a comp lit minor, hopefully crafting some writing projects that I can publish. I can't believe i got so behind on that last one. I wonder what it was? I have an idea, and I think that'll be a good thing to ramble about later.

Unknown Horizon

2005-08-15T00:28:00.000-04:00

Reposted from Xanga. Originally posted on July 27, 2005:

Sitting in the library up on the second floor Mezanine (which I have just dicovered is a rather relaxing place to work) about to finish up my Warfare paper on Roman imperial grand-strategy so that I can go out and have fun with friends tonight like I so dearly need....well, after I get done with my paper, I'm going to feel obligated to do SOME work for papyrus stuff (considering that I haven't done any this week and am therby risking the health of my pocketbook). In any case, I'll dive back into my paper now without any mindlesss ramblings or intellectual discussions for now, but rest assured that I can feel something coming within the next few days (once again, for better or worse, we shall see).

Mockery

2005-08-15T00:24:00.000-04:00

Reposted from Xanga. Originally Posted on July 24, 2005

Arts and Letters Daily has directed me over to this UK Guardian article which I found interesting. Here is a clip, relevant to what I want to say in reguards to it:

By some perverse twist of intellectual history, the very reason we once read novels - to be liberated from solemnity and absurdity, to be engaged in a merry war with everything around us - is the very reason we won't read novels which perform such a service now. The isolation of comedy from everything else we do is symptomatic of this. We are right to shrink from the very idea of a "funny" book. There should be no such genre. We should expect laughter to be integral to the business of being serious. We are back in a new dark age of the imagination. We read to sleep. Either we refuse the idea of art altogether (something we do with every page of a Dan Brown novel we turn), or we confer integrity on it from outside, allowing it to be art only by virtue of the pre-determined importance of its subject matter, or the acceptability of its attitudes. This is a species of censorship to which we have all acceded.

Some things, we believe, should not be scrutinised or ridiculed. And day by day the list of sacred sites and objects - like one of Gargantua's spiralling menus of excess - gets longer. Soon parliament might even harden our jokelessness into law. A radical confusion between art and action is at the heart of this. What we consider unacceptable in human behaviour, we consider unacceptable in art, forgetting that art exists precisely to say the otherwise unsayable.

Here's where I think the author is kind of missing something. He seems to insist on the placing of a comic element within art, one that somehow "liberates us from solemnity and absurdity." I have never read a Dan Brown novel (I have heard from rather trusted sources that it is complete literary drivel) and while I do not knock entertainment for entertainment's sake (hell, I've spent 35 hours playing Final Fantasy VII so far, haven't I?) I actually do think that novels such as Dan Brown's are chipping away at the artistic element of writing. It's not so much that I don't think these sort of novels should exist as it is that I am appalled that they exist in such large numbers. The author is right to tear them down and question their artistic value. However, I do not think that the elements of solemnity that we see in certain novels (he gives novels on 9/11 as an example, though I actually have never seen such a novel, perhaps I just steer clear of them) of how this 'new trend' is progressing. I only disagree with him in his views insofar as he thinks that art need always be in a mocking form to be art. This is far too outlandish a distinction to make. Not only is laughter or 'funniness' completely unecessary for the existence of comedy (one can be darkly ironic and satiricle without a shred of "funniness"), but I feel that placing an emphasis on comedy is ridiculous. One can critique and challange society and it's insecurities without being 'funny' per se.

Jacobson's final conclusion is a well taken point, and I actually agree with him nearly one hundred percent (he still manages to get wrapped up slightly in this 'comic idea'); however, I feel his point could have been made a lot better by focusing on the modern day's obcession with nursing people's insecurities in art rather than calling them out (with comedy or otherwise). By focusing only on the comic aspect, he weakened his point. "Irresponsible" does not equal 'comic' as he proclaims. Irresponsibility as James seems to speak of it merely means setting yourself outside the limitations of cultural norms and prohibitions in order to challange those very things within art. This is not to say that art is meant to challange these norms! I feel that art at its core is about making people think about themselves, their souls, and the world around them. Apuleius does not write his Metamorphoses (known commonly as The Golden Ass and, argueably, the first true novel in western literature) in order to make us laugh at his ribaldry. While this might have been one of his goals, it seems to me his true goal is to answer the question 'Quis ille?' and all the implications that come along with it. And he doesn't forget the surface reason for the creation and the reading of literature, inserting into it the hidden message of his tradition: Lector intende, Laetaberis.

2005-06-09T02:00:00.000-04:00

Alex's Blog (Xanga)