“Hey, Doc. It hurts when I go like this…”
There is so much stuff out there on the internet. Seriously. It is the curse of access. You can find an example of just about anything in the world you might want to see… or you might never want to see.
Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry is own weight, this is a frightening prospect. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
And as the sages of the ages have taught us, with great freedom comes some responsibility. Or as Homer would say, “Doh!” As one wanders through the World Wide Web, either with awe, obsession, malice, curiosity, desire, appreciation or desperation, one must remember:
If you don’t like what you are seeing, go somewhere else.
Simple solutions are so rare.
You can thank me later.
ps: I’m going to add a caveat here. If you enjoy self-flagellation, or seek things out that you know will piss you off for other reasons, more power to you, and go for it. But if you do that and *complain* about it you really are, a special kind of idiot.
Happy New Year!
It seems impossible to believe that 2010 has come to an end. I remember Gust Proutsos, back in my first year at Procter Hug High School in Reno, told me that I was going to be absolutely blown away at how fast the years would speed by. I was unsure if this was a comment on age, perception, or working in a profession that is so totally locked into a temporal relativity. Regardless, Mr. Proutsos knew what was up. I cannot believe that I started this year in Bali, still a Hong Kong resident, then meandered through Burma and India, then found myself Stateside again in the exact circumstances I had abstractly described as a goal in September of 2009.
It is nothing short of fascinating.
Everywhere I look I am hearing people talk about how they cannot wait for this year to end. They are so over 2010. 2010 was so bad/hard/unfair/miserable… I guess, again, I am an anomaly. Sitting at the Latin American Club last week enjoying a cold beer on a rainy night with a very cute and inappropriate compadre, I was considering things, my life and the like. He looked at me and said, “You are such a positive person. I mean, you love your job, your house, your family. You really love your life.” He kind of chuckled and I smiled.
Yes. Yes, I do.
True Stor- CENSORED!!
Anonymous, but suggestive of... what?
So, maybe there is some benefit to being anonymous in that you can really write whatever you want – consequences be damned. The downside of anonymity is that you don’t get the legit acknowledgment that you are probably after in the first place (and it seems to me that anonymous attention seekers really have no boundaries in terms of the desperate levels to which they go to for attention, so the theory that all of this is a plea for attention seems substantiated.)
The thing is I love to tell stories, about me about adventures, about whatever. I enjoy this simply for the opportunity to be a rocking raconteur. The other thing is, even if you harbor a rom-com inspired fantasy that you may write something and somehow the one person on the planet who is supposed to read it does, and then somehow you live happily ever after because s/he understood/had an epiphany/realized they had been right (or wrong)/saw the light/determined they could not live without you (or would finally live without you)/offered you a movie-book-tv deal… the reality is that the people who “read” you generally have a personal reason to do so; they found you through a friend or friend of a friend, they are your family or your actual friends, they have a common interest that brought them to you (sorry hot stuff, it was your kitty not your pussy that brought them around…) [Note: I am excluding stalkers here, because those people are not reading your shit anyhow, they are tracking you, which is really different; like I have this ugly group from Akron, OH and San Antonio, TX who are constantly tracking me, as well as a very strange individual from KNX, TN, but it is not because they want to read my blog it is because they are freakishly jealous of my life creeps.]
The way I have conducted my on-line life is as simple as my real life is, which of course is not simple. It is, however, authentic and not some fantastical version of what I might wish my life was. I have chosen to write about real shit that happens to me (sometimes pretty fucking embarrassing shit), real shit that happens to people I know (sometimes pretty unbelievable shit) and real people (sometimes seemingly unreal)… because I am real.
This has led to some interesting consequences and outcomes.
When a Martian writes home…
In a slew of personal and pedagogical incarnations I have given serious thought to the notion of what a complete stranger to our human culture would take away from it. [It happens to be a great way to teach metaphors and figurative language in English, perceptual and vernacular regions in Geography, the relative nature of History, as well as sense of place in Geography and Literature, if you were wondering whether this might just be another bloody *reflective* rumination.] I am intrigued by this question not only because I am often bewildered by the shit I see in my daily life (in positive and negative ways) but also because since I was very young, I have regularly considered my actions and behavior in terms of how it would appear as a film; a clear euphemism for “in the eyes of others.” I would not necessarily condone this practice by the way, but hey, we all have our own idiosyncrasies – healthy or not.
IN recent years it seems even more obvious that so much of what human animals do anymore is built around creating this virtual movie montage of our lives and our identities and our significance. I don’t think it can really be just me who does this. And further, according to that same sourcce the blogosphere is booming, if not always blooming (or maybe that should be expressed the other way around?) I spend a great deal of time trying to articulate effective comparisons of my Hong Kong life to my homies in the States, and vice versa. I often turn to photos, but still, the experiential differences are often so much richer, and confoundingly more subtle. How can one gift an experience so removed, to others, who in spite of familial or familiar intimacy, have not seen what you have seen?
There was a minor literary movement in the late Seventies in Britain built on what was/is called Martian Poetry. The primary aim of Martian poetry (incidentally ‘Martianism is an anagram of Martin Amis, one of the key contributors to the movement – I like how these guys operate) was “to make the familiar strange… through the heavy use of curious, exotic and humorous visual metaphors… Martian Poetry aimed to break the grip of ‘the familiar’, by describing ordinary things in unfamiliar ways.” Of this movement, loosely associated with several others including surrealist and metaphysical poetry (about which Samuel Johnson dished one of my current favorite quotations: “the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together”) Martian poets tried to force people to let go of their accepted assumptions of cultural norms regarding behavior and culture both material and abstract. Breaking the grip of the familiar.
Someone needs to get a grip. And by someone I mean: YO.
The type of memories
that turn your bones to glass
turn your bones to glass…
My house is a complete disaster and I have about ten million things to do. So, of course, I am sitting here blogging about it because, wehey! I know how to procrastinate. And what better way to avoid reality than to submerge oneself completely in narcissistic, though cathartic, endeavors? I was thinking about this as I sipped my cappuccino at the Green Cottage in Yung Shue Wan this morning (because I am pretending I have the time and disposable income for these types of things.) I feel like writing about every little detail these past (and last) few days. I look around and reflect. Yeah, how pretentious – I am reflecting. And try as I might, with all intention and seriousness, I cannot stop with this heightened obsession with contemplation.
Every time I get started packing a box, I begin looking through the things I am packing, because, really, I have to – I mean I cannot actually take all this shit with me – and then I am gone. The mental meander is dangerous too because it is apparently infinite. Until you pick up the next item. And so far I have packed exactly two boxes. Yes. Two. That is all. Though, I did manage to bring a few more into the house today, so potential rides again.
And what made it into those two 20kg (ha) boxes? Of all the things I need to pack organize and move… I have thus far filled both cardboard receptacles with: Books. I promised I would go through my library and cull. I have removed exactly seven books from the collection excluding the Asia Lonely Planet library, which I shall bequeath to my friends here because those are simply too heavy and illogical to bring back to the Western Hemisphere. I am not sure how this rates as a packing success, but I take comfort in the words of Briton Sydney Smith (1771-1845): “There is no furniture so charming as books, even if you never open them or read a single word.”
Amen brother. And can you spare a dime to cover the shipping costs?
Wait… if it’s not on MyTwitFlickFaceSpaceBook… did it really happen?
il n’y a pas de hors-texte -OR- post-photo ergo sum
<<you be the judge>>
As has been amply, documented I ceased and desisted my online “profiles” a couple of months ago. This meant saying goodbye to Facebook and MySpace (though I held fast with Twitter and WordPress.) The process was far easier said than done. I wanted to use the Websuicide application, but there were too many requests for assisted suicide and so I would have had to wait for ages, and you all know that in the information age, only a loser will wait for anything. So, I went about deleting myself the old-fashioned way. Eliminating every bit of my profile and then canceling my account. Or at least, attempting to. Both Facebook and Mysapce made this excruciatingly difficult. It was ridiculous. And then, as if I had not suffered enough with innumerable emails confirming that YES, I did want to delete my accounts, and YES, I was quite sure about this decision, and YES, I was aware that I could simply “deactivate” my account, and in spite of all of that YES, I WOULD LIKE TO DELETE THE ACCOUNT… I started to see the side effects of deletion.
It was far more like suicide than I had imagined. Ok, I have no first hand knowledge of suicide, but, suddenly, inviting people to a party, a dinner, whatever, became difficult. Getting invited became awkward, when after not acknowledging (or worse unwittingly not attending) events, people would say, “Where were you?” And I would have to admit that I had no idea what they were talking about and they would say, “Didn’t you look on Facebook? The invite was right there.”
Shit.
As if I hadn’t clearly started to see the virtual writing on the LCD, when asking a friend about her recent trip to Brazil for Carnivale, she said, “The pictures are on Facebook… Oh, I guess you can come to my place and look – at my Facebook.”
Shitshit.
Another friend summed it all up when he said, “You went to Burma? Really? I didn’t see it on Facebook.” Maybe he was really on to what Descartes meant when he said: Dubito ergo cogito ergo sum = I DOUBT –> Therefore I THINK –> Therefore I AM. Had his doubt made his reality more real than my undocumented life?
Shitshitshitshit.
Well, I DID go to Burma and was awesome. And I took some amazing photos. But, due to the journey’s conspicuous absence on Facebook, it gives me pause… did it really happen… or… is it… all… just some figment of my… overactive imagination???
The revolution in “social media” has had a lot of side effects. (Collateral damage? You be the judge.) First of all, it may not be so revolutionary. Though to be fair, I am also not so sure that social media is all hat concerned with its own status. Still:
I remember the age at which photo-documentation of all social activity became mandatory for post weekend validation. I was 15. This led to the creation of countless photo albums, scrapbooks and in my case, an entire cork-board wall covered with the detritus of my adolescence. Truly, the stuff of teenage legend. But no matter your take on that issue the fact remains, our attitudes about the need for documenting everything we do (I mean, yeah, look at me – - Tweeting away and blogging on randomness of which there is no real proof of relevance.) Cameras are everywhere, all the time. Such a precedent has been set that, in fact, if there is no photo album, while we might not be able to say categorically that something did not happen, there is a definite sense of skepticism as to the significance of anything not public-photo-album-worthy. Must. Validate. All. Experiences. Publicly. To. Have. Meaning…
According to Stuart Jeffries’ article in the Guardian regarding this phenomenon, “Leeds-based sociologist Zygmunt Bauman wrote in his book Liquid Love that in a modern world in which those purportedly fixed and durable ties of family, class, religion, marriage have melted away, we look for something else to hold us together. Hence, no doubt, the rise of social networking sites.” [Brought this recent TFLN to mind.] Yeah, okay, that is all well and good, but my initial conundrum still remains (yes, I had a point…): Does an experience have to be shared to make it real/valid/actual? That sounds positively philosophical. I have a friend who says he does not like to do things on his own because it is more meaningful to share experiences. He was unable to go into much detail at all about precisely how meaning is changed in tandem, but when I mentioned that I always travel alone, I was sort of sonned when he said, “Yeah, and what is the first thing you do when you get back?” Errrmm.. Yeah. I blog. [Therefore I am?] I remember calling a “friend” in the States when I first arrived in Hong Kong and telling him how many times a day I thought of him when I saw random shit and how cool it would be if he could see it. But really, that had very little to do with sharing random shit experiences and all to do with wishing he was here with me rather than there with someone else. Not to mention that the shared experience in reality translates way differently in the virtual world. First of all you have corroborating evidence – not always a bonus. Second, for the same reason your creative license is naturally hindered. Third, reality is so… mundane.
I am not sure what any of this really means beyond the fact that I am consistently conflicted about the nature of on-lineness. There is actually a term, facebragging, to describe the habit of posting all sorts of status updates and photos to let everyone know how fabulous your life is and consequently how badly theirs may suck.
Oh, wait a minute, I think I do that.
Is that why I do it? Well, that is the question. Why do blog stats matter? Why do photo comments make them more worthy? Why do friend counts have any significance? Why do Twitter-idiots insist that if they follow you, you must follow them? Why do I have a fake Facebook profile just to have a “Fan Page” for my blog (even typing that made me throw up in my mouth a little.) Why isn’t creating for the sake of creating enough? Why does every business/band/service/charity/school/corporation/association/politician/quasi-politician have a Facebook and/or Twitter link prominently placed on their website?
It could be, according to statistics gathered from Econsultancy.com, because:
- Facebook claims that 50% of active users log into the site each day. This would mean at least 175m users every 24 hours… A considerable increase from the previous 120m.
- Twitter now has 75m user accounts, but only around 15m are active users on a regular basis. It’s still a fair increase from the estimated 6-10m global users from a few months ago.
- Flickr now hosts more than 4bn images. A massive jump from the previous 3.6bn I wrote about.
- Photo uploads to Facebook have increased by more than 100%. Currently, there are around 2.5bn uploads to the site each month – this was around a billion last time I covered this.
- There are more than 70 translations available on Facebook. Last time around, this was only 50.
- There are more than 3.5bn pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, etc.) shared each week on Facebook.
- Towards the end of last year, the average number of tweets per day was over27.3 million.
- The average number of tweets per hour was around 1.3m.
- More than 700,000 local businesses have active Pages on Facebook.
- Purpose-built Facebook pages have created more than 5.3bn fans.
- 15% of bloggers spend 10 or more hours each week blogging, according to Technorati’s new State of the Blogosphere.
- At the current rate, Twitter will process almost 10bn tweets in a single year.
- More than 80,000 websites have implemented Facebook Connect since December 2008 and more than 60m Facebook users engage with it across these external sites each month.
Holy crap. I better get those photos posted before I fade away into the liquid abyss irrelevancy.
Am I more connected because of the internet? Maybe, but I have to agree with one of my favorite bloggers Tremendous News, that the connections are pseudo and for that reason, though they may fill a nice void in some ways… the limits are clear.
I am not sure I need the whole world to be able to see my vacation photos.
But then again, maybe I do….
Online Suicide. [Don't get emo - it is not what you might be thinking.]
I made a decision last week to delete both my MySpace and my Facebook accounts. I had been thinking about it for a while for myriad reasons, but every time I considered it, I came up with a reason not to do it: But, I have all those photos on there… But, how will I know about all those ‘events’… But, what if that ONE person I MUST meet is on there… But, what if I miss something really, really, really cool…
Yeah, right.
I spent a lot of time as an adolescent worrying about missing shit. Like, if you were not somewhere, something amazing might happen. This caused me tremendous stress the one time I was put on “restriction” by my mother for antics that had gone just a few steps too far. My mom decided that I would be on “restriction” and this meant that I had to be home by 9 pm on weekdays (you know, all those nights spent at the Petaluma Public Library – working so hard…) and I could only go out one night on the weekend with a midnight curfew. I thought my life was over. Only one night? What if I picked the wrong one? Oh.My.God. Total devastation. Looking back on this now I have to laugh for a couple of reasons: 1) I lived in freaking Petaluma after all, if it happened on a Friday it was gonna happen again on a Saturday and truth be told, shit rarely ever happened… and 2) The fact that what I just described was restriction is sort of hilarious – my unborn children better hope they never cross the line because I will lock them down – and for the record, after like five months of said “restriction” I asked my mom when – oh when! – would it be over and she went for the total killer blow saying, with complete coolness and appropriate aplomb, “Oh, yeah, I suppose it can be over now.” Talk about fished in. Mom, FTW.
Anyhow, to have this happening in my adult life was becoming too much of a recurring and horrifying déjà vu.
There were some other issues. I am really irritated at how both sites are operating and using our information/photos/etc – regardless of the fact that there are “Terms of Use” and the framework itself may necessitate said operations. The more I read about how they work, the more I don’t like it. Then I checked out the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine and it really made me think. [It is with no small bit of irony that the reason I heard about the Suicide Machine was through a blog I am linked to on Facebook.] But the developers of the concept have a point. Get back into the real world.
Then consider the fact that I have more than 300 “friends” on Facebook, and 150 or so on Myspace. [This after much culling, which has led to all sorts of drama. I have actually received emails asking why people had been deleted. From the people in question as well as other friends. Seriously. And then, someone I know was speaking to another person about me, and person #2 said, "Well, can Amanda be trusted? She deleted me from Facebook." I know you think I must be making this shit up - but I assure you, I am not. ] Who the FUCK has 500 friends? I mean, SERIOUSLY. I have already expounded on Dunbar’s number here, so I will not bore you with that, but SERIOUSLY. And the politics of social network friends. Holy Mother of God. I know there are tons of articles about it already, but it is like people lose their sense of reality when they enter the virtual world of social networking. Perhaps that is the point for some people, but where have the boundaries gone? In real life, you have to have a reason to be someone’s friend, don’t you? Just because you know Person A does not mean you are therefore friends with all of Person A’s friends… or does it? Though, to be sure I have fallen on both sides of this equation as well, as I mentioned here.
“Cats, who’d have ‘em?”
I’ve been thinking about cats a lot lately. Okay, it is not like I don’t think about my cats a lot in general, but lately I have been a little more global in my consideration of cats. I have long worried that I may turn into a “Cat Lady,” and the attendant stigma that goes with that. I am really the perfect candidate: single, approaching middle-age, cat-loving, History/Literature teacher. I mean, they don’t write Cat Ladies better than that. And my cats run me. For instance, right now, I really want to get up and get another cup of coffee but Matilda is on my lap and she is content, and gives me stink-eye when I move, so coffee is more of a contemplation at this point. Eventually, I will get the coffee, but not before considering what a great reason this situation is for having a live-in helper, roommate, even a boyfriend.
When I returned from Bali and I called my parents, I could hear in my mom’s voice right away that something was wrong and there were only a few things that might make her sound this way; as I was okay, it was either going to be gramma or kitteh. It is kitteh. Their 12(?) year old cat is not well, and as is the case with cats, the reasons are ambiguous, but the reality is clear. Taking her to the vet is traumatizing and causes kitteh to really make you feel bad, and so Ella was keeping to the safety of the subregions of the bedroom and not taking food. This cat is Ella Mae, who they adopted, along with another kitty named Callie, from the shelter in their North Idaho town. The adoption of these two cats has a lot of significance to me because I was there and helped my mom pick out the cats. She had been reluctant to get another cat after the death of her most recent furry friend, Celeste. But after enough time had passed she realized that she really missed having cats and had decided to adopt two, so they would have company, and also to select adult cats as everyone always adopts the kittens but the older cats often go overlooked. I happened to be staying with my parents after a very dramatic break up [look at me be understated] with Ex #3. I was not totally myself, but cats always cheer me up. I went to the shelter and we picked out the two (very different) calico kittehs. They were bewildered and everything esle that comes with a total rearrangement of every known detail in ones existence when we brought them back. Callie was the wilder, more adventurous of the two. Smaller and more traditionally calico, she ran around and checked things out. Ella, likely a little older, is a peachy calico – white and grey and peach colored. And she doesn’t like other cats. One night we couldn’t find Callie and every issue that I was dealing with regarding the recent turn of events in my own life totally manifested in a total freak out about her (temporary) disappearance. I totally lost it for a minute.
Then she came back.
Cats.
So, now Ella is getting ready to say her farewells. Callie left them long ago, likely the result of her wandering, she got really sick and gently passed. Ella really came out of her shell at that point and became the Queen of the Manor. And now as she is preparing to go, it is just totally sad all over again.
A chance to get caught up for/on the holidays…
It is strange that somehow, no matter how one tries – there always seems to be a mad dash to get things together for the holidays. And I say this as a person without children and the requisite efforts that adds, far from family and the multiple events that adds, and with all of my needs met, basic and otherwise. There are so many things I have been meaning to do – and though I do not feel particularly stressed out about them, I am aware of them nonetheless.
Today begins three whole days in Hong Kong, without work. This is fabulous and very unusual (not just because of the lack of time off in Hong Kong, but also because I generally leave town whenever I have days off – I might not even leave me little island home today.) I have already spoken with my BFF and parents in the US as they embark on their respective Christmas Eves. I am cooking for Christmas lunch. I gave my first Christmas present yesterday. I wrapped presents last night and am eating cookies for breakfast today. It is about 70°F (22°C) and the humidity has shot up to 90% already. I have an incredibly corpulent and loving dude-cat on my lap. I have three blogs in various stages of completion and photos to edit. (A fun to-do list to be sure.) One of my favorite bloggers has been doing the Holidailies blogging project and I am trying to get caught up with all of her recent posts… they are excellent.
I am very much looking forward to the chance to breathe deeply and prepare for the upcoming Full Moon and New Year. 2009 was such an education in every way, and through the lens of increased awareness 2010 looks to be awe-inspiring.
Merry Merry Merry…. Everything!
“Come on and let it show!”
Unsolved Mysteries.
Neo: I suppose the most obvious question is, how can I trust you?
The Oracle: Bingo. It is a pickle. No doubt about it. The bad news is there’s no way if you can really know whether I’m here to help you or not, so it’s really up to you. You just have to make up your own damned mind to either accept what I’m going to tell you, or reject it.
I am not totally sure about my ideas about heaven or hell or reincarnation or the whole afterlife situation, but I have this recurring fantasy that somehow, perhaps in the transition from one unknown place to another, there will be some moment where all will be revealed.I find it somehow reassuring when I hold it up against the growing number of unknowns that float around in my mind. I have heard that the more you learn the more you realize you don’t know, perhaps that is true and perhaps that is why I feel like the Cold Case files in my brain are getting pretty full.
Of course it could just be that I want what Carl Spackler’s got coming to him:
I have not ever imagined the details of this fantastic mental voyage, like if it will be some giant Oz-like head in the sky dispensing long lost gems of personal curiosity; or perhaps it will be the world’s largest 8-ball just waiting for me to “concentrate harder” to get my requested reply. I hope it is not a Ouija Board; too much work involved there and I still think my friends always cheated when consulted that oracle. Or could it involve a trip to Delphi to consult with Pythia? That would be nice. Maybe it is a list; that would make me very happy – a nice big list with answers to all the questions I have saved up in life. Questions like:
- How did Oswald make it happen?
- What is the deal with the Bog People?
- What was Roxelana‘s secret?
- Where the hell IS Jimmy Hoffa?
- What happened to the Maya, anyhow?
- On that note, what happened to the Americans, anyhow?
- Who thought Elizabeth Berkley could act?
- What happened to Marilyn?
- Who thought this was a good look?
- Is the truth out there?
- Can we handle the truth?
And then there are some other mysteries a little closer to home that I have been wondering about… Most of them to do with the strange oddities of the interwebs. Or of cat behavior. And interpersonal crap, which I fear may always confound me. For instance:
- How can my cat sit and stare at a mouse for six hours and I cannot meditate for 15 minutes?
- How is it possible that someone I met in Hong Kong is FB friends with the girlfriend of someone I know from Penngrove, CA?
- Weirder still, one of my best blog friends is Twitter/actual friends with someone who it turns out is Twitter friends with the declared BFF of the individual who found me on my blog earlier in the year and then stood me up in SF after I flew long haul to be there specifically for said meet up. Is that weird or just how it goes in the world today?
- How is it that two of the three super expensive Pagani Zanda F’s that have crashed met their end in Hong Kong? – Oh, wait, I know the answer to that one.
- Why is it never amyloidosis, sarcoidosis or lupus?
- Will we get all the answers to the great mysteries of our personal dramas? Will we know why people lie? Will we care? Will we even know if the answers we are getting are real and true? And would it matter if they were or not?
There is a proverb that says: The more you know, the less you understand. Perhaps in this way our ignorance can be considered bliss. On the other hand the Aborigines say the more you know, the less you need. That is more like what I was thinking. Still,at this point it all remains a big conundrum for me, though unlikely one I will lose to much sleep over.
But if Norman is still staring at that mouse when I get home I am going to want some answers.
Mao Tse Tung said: “Drought? Whatevs. Make Rain. Oops. Snow.”
On October 1, 2009 there was a big old party in Hong Kong to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. Hong Kong big-ups their Chinese-y-ness for stuff like this. [The same happened during the Olympics when Hong Kongers forgot about their rampant disregard for, disparagement of, and disgust with "Mainlanders" and everyone was "Chinese" for two weeks.] Still, National Day was particularly ironic in my mind. The bastion of Beyond-Free Enterprise that is the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region celebrating 60 years of Communism? What? I suppose it was as good a reason as any for a kick ass fireworks display, but the reality of paying homage to Mao’s October 1, 1949 declaration of the People’s Republic seemed totally transparent. [Like the finest silk, some may say.]
As a result of all the pomp and circumstance I found myself thinking a lot about the PRC and how they view the world. I considered their efficiency and secrecy and thought, “Hey, maybe they are onto something.” I contemplated the “One Country – Two Systems” explanation for the HK-PRC connection, the way that China can make Hong Kong a part of the PRC without “fixing what is not broken.” [It is a tenuous explanation - at best. But one thing I have noticed since I have been in East Asia is that tenuous is good enough for Beijing. Consider the Taiwan issue, or Tibet, if you are not afraid of complete censure. Frankly, based on the arguments China uses for both of those regions, they should also incorporate Mongolia and Vietnam... The thing is China, like most modern governments it seems, firmly believes in and employs the practice that if you say something often enough it will become true. The difference between China and a lot of other places is that they are less concerned with it actually becoming true; saying it is enough. And in that way they seem to have a special kind of integrity.] I thought about how Beijing believes that if they block the internet it is not there. How if they say there is no financial crisis, there is no financial crisis.
And in the whole build up to the 60th Anniversary and in the weeks after, I just kept singing this song:
Mao Tse Tung said change must come
Change must come thru the barrel of a gun
Not thru talkin’ and not through waitin’
And sittin’ around just contemplatin’ the facts
‘Cos we know what they are…
And one thing you have to give Beijing credit for, they are not into sitting around and waiting. They get shit done. In fact they let nothing stand in the way. Not even the weather. Fast forward one month. It is no secret that China has been suffering a drought, (or maybe it is since it could be interpreted as some sort of failure on behalf of China – [mind that Mandate of Heaven, yo... even Mao didn't dis' the Emperors - only the Capitalist Pigs.] Anyhow, drought. It has been pretty bad, and so (though it is probably somehow Mongolia’s fault,) China decided to take action and on or around the 1st of November they seeded the clouds above Beijing. China v. The Weather, Round One. China got the victory.
Then the weather changed.
Doh!
Global Climate Change FTW. And so it seems, even Beijing knows when to acknowledge that the weather may be in China, but like Hong Kong, it is gonna do its own thing.
The actual point here, is that Hong Kong /= China. I have said it before, and I will say it again: HONG KONG and CHINA no son iguales. And so what made me finally sit and write this one more month later? I read a blog by someone I used to know ranting about his current situation. Granted his situation does suck, but when I hear stuff like this:
I feel compelled to answer: If you “live” in Hong Kong, you do NOT live in China. And though it is a complete pain in the ass for Chinese nationals to secure entry to the US, this is completely and totally NOT the case for Hong Kongers – they are from that other system, remember? And I have been away from home longer than this guy and I have never been asked if I am a “terrorist” – I am not even sure how that works, or if that was just hyperbolic for effect.
Mao Tse Tung said a lot of stuff… but in the end, even he had to admit some of it was maybe not the best way forward and so, while lip service would continue to be paid, he did encourage people to please do what was necessary to actually get paid… Not thru talkin’ and not through waitin’, And sittin’ around just contemplatin’ the facts, ‘Cos we know what they are, So let Mao Tse Tung be your guidin’ star… Do what you need to do but please, just do not make a scene.
And life gives you drought, make some rain, er, snow, er… wait, never mind. Blame Mongolia and shop in Hong Kong, it will all work out in the end.
<<DISCLAIMER: This post was just a collection of random thoughts that seemed to somehow go together at 5 a.m. this morning. I am not actually vested in a particularly consistent position regarding Tibet, Taiwan, Mongolia, Communism – “or any -ism for that matter. -Ism’s in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself” – nor am I particularly vexed by anyone’s personal need to rant vent on their blog. I just want to reiterate: HONG KONG IS NOT CHINA. That is all.>>
Awesome.
“I just love the way you’ve appointed yourselves as the moral arbiters of what is posted on ——-, as if you have something significant to contribute. That and your self-satisfied sanctimonious attitude…”
I think that if someone said this about me and my friends I might feel like I could die happy. Like, “Yep, our work here is done.”
It is from a blog offering “a collection of ignorance, narcissism, stupidity, hypocrisy and bad grammar.” I am familiar with several potential sources they could tap if they ever run out of fodder from the BBC’s Have Your Say. In fact FOX News could keep them busy for the next millennium only looking at Hannity’s fan base. Of course, spEak You’re bRanes might not have enough staff to keep up with the FOXiness of that network, so perhaps it is better to leave well enough alone.
Check out spEak You’re bRanes
Top Choice Search – Quantum Blogchanics
This is my 200th post. I am not sure if that is monumental, and it is sort of a lie anyhow since everything I wrote prior to early 2007 I actually migrated from other blog sites (hence no comments… sigh – if you have no feedback, do you exist?)
As I was perusing the WordPress “Blog Stats” and checking out everything they monitor – traffic, comments, posts, etc…. I had to giggle.
The funniest thing was this: the top searches that get people to my blog are:
- Manolo Blahnik
- Pubic hair
- Octopus yacht
- Cracker Jacks
- Lady boys
Seriously. That is hilarious. [Or should I be concerned?]
The most read blogs (in order) are:
- Reason 2,639,093,126,895,470 that Hong Kong is Not China
- Malaysia… I never wrote of you… Sorry la.
- Cracker Jack’s.
- Today I love…
- I was there, now I am here, soon I will be somewhere else
- Bush.
The most common ‘Tag Search’ categories are:
- Life
- Humor
- Urban Dictionary
- Politics
The links that people click the most from my blog are:
- Fmylife.com
The sites that have referred the most people to my blog recently are:
- Myspace
- Get a load of this mierda!
I do not know why it all struck me as funny today, but it did. I suppose, as I always seem to be concluding these days, there really is some inherent value in quantification.
If you can count it, it counts.
Or something equally silly.
Things I wanna do and things I get to do….
Like, duh.
I would like to be able to explain, clearly and articulately, the synchronous nature of life. For example, I am absolutely buried in college essay right now as my students all jockey for position and line themselves up to get into the best schools and programs of study. I am reading and re-reading tales of their trials, tribulations, successes and near failures (can’t really admit to failure when you are talking to Yale, now can you? Of course, Yale took ‘W’ in, so they really owe us all a big one in hindsight.) And as I read these essays I remember what it was like to be thinking about college… and I love it. I am not envious in the sense that I want to go back in time, but it is a really fun thing to experience vicariously. At the very SAME moment that I am surrounded by all of this… I am meeting someone (semi-randomly) who went to UCSD at the same time I did, and who I think I may know, but I am not sure. And it is total college flashback of a different sort. But regardless of those little details… here are some other oddities: He lived in Mexico – so did I and you all know how I feel about Mexico. We lived blocks away from each other in Del Mar. He lived in NYC after UCSD and lived in the SAME building on the Upper West that one of my dearest friends from Petaluma (!) lived in for years… and I was there… passing in the halls? I dunno, but it gives pause. Now he lives in my old stomping ground in SF and travels to HK for work where I will meet him.
I don’t care how cynical you are. That shit is WEIRD.
Something else I want to do is finally finsih my Robbie Williams Space Alien blog. Maybe this weekend. I think it has potential to be awesome (though it is a bit datyed now, I started months ago) but considering it now, it is also evidence of freaky synchronicity.
Maybe it is all because I used to really love that song…
With one breath, with one flow
You will know
Synchronicity
A sleep trance, a dream dance,
A shared romance
SynchronicityA connecting principle
Linked to the invisible
Almost imperceptible
Something inexpressible
Science insusceptible
Logic so inflexible
Causally connectible
Yet nothing is invincibleIf we share this nightmare
Then we can dream
Spiritus mundi
If you act as you think
The missing link
SynchronicityWe know you, they know me
Extrasensory
Synchronicity
A star fall, a phone call
It joins all
SynchronicityIt’s so deep, it’s so wide
You’re inside
Synchronicity
Effect without a cause
Sub-atomic laws, scientific pause
Synchronicity…..
I also want to hit the road again… can’t decide if I should go back to Bali… to Sri Lanka… or to Vietnam. Will haveto decide soon I imagine.
in the midst of all this wanting lie all the things I get to do:
- Read essays
- Yoga
- Drink too much coffee
- Read more essays
- Play with my iPhone (yes, Eden, I do want to marry it)
- Go see silly country music played by stoners dressed like yokels in Wan Chai
- Go to Oktoberfest – Hong Kong style at the horse races….
- Read some more essays
- Do some more yoga
- Sleep – well, actually, I might not get to do that….
No matter, a star fall, a phone call… it joins all.
I am crabby.
I said I was going to try and write everyday and I am sticking to it.
So far anyhow.
It is Day One.
I am super crabby today and I am not sure why as I have no personal reason to be. I have been examining the dark little corners of my brain and regardless of how far I go in there, I find little if anything to be crabby about. Yet here I am.
I saw a guy at the grocery store today wearing a pinstripe suit. I mean, pinstripes like would have been appropriate for Jim Carey in The Mask… Serious zoot suit styling. And this annoyed me.
Why?
My yoga class was annoying today. The teacher had no flow. Or was it me? I am not sure, but that was annoying too.
I also ate my lunch too fast and now I have a stomach ache, which of course is totally annoying.
I have a completely chill work day today and I am annoyed by work. Huh? [Though this could be do to my office's version of The Copy Guy outside my door who never stops with his constant stream of inane and really limited social skills.]
Now I am thinking maybe this is not all about me… *gasp* NOT all about me? How can that be???
Maybe I am crabby about the state of the economy. World politics. George Bush always seems like a good one to blame for stuff. Maybe I am crabby because it is hard to see the sky through the pollution in Hong Kong or because we are destroying more species everyday on this planet than anyone ever thought possible. Or it could be my semi-defeatist attitude about the coming election, btw, I did get a second absentee ballot in the mail… should I vote twice?
Nah… everyone is dealing with the same stuff and they do not seem so annoyed, so I guess in the end, it IS all about me.
I better snap out of it.
And to punctuate the reality that I have no reason to be really crabby here is one of my favorite advertisements from that other little financial crisis we suffered a while back.
Inspiration….
…comes in all sorts of packages.
I got this survey on “Inspiration” the other day and so of course I filled it out as I am compulsively addicted to surveys:
1. When you were five, what inspired you?
a. Finding things… seriously, I was really good at finding lost items for my large and strange and sort of absent-minded household. My Grandpa Barickman. And also cats, horses and ballet-ers. And the Children’s Workshop. Special times.2. When you were ten, what inspired you?
a. Nadia Comaneci, I thought I could be famous like her, then I got tall. My aunts Nancy and Teri. Music started getting to me too… Michael Jackson, Carole King, Donna Summer, the Beatles… I have always been a bit eclectic.3. When you were 18, what inspired you?
a. Mexico and all things Mexican, politics, college, the beach, my mom and step-dad (always on the cutting edge of right-living), Coors Light commercials. The Grateful Dead…4. When you were 25, what inspired you?
a. Dr. Gilda Bloom at SFSU, my students and basketball team at Balboa High School (Rowena, Lakisha, Nikisha, Vavatau, Shanita), Anna Bolla and Jette Sangalang @ Bal. The beauty and fabulousness of San Francisco. Kerry Barlas.5. When you were 30, what inspired you?
a. My family. My work (from Balboa to Hug to Incline and eventually Sparks High Schools… I love what I do.) Victoria Randlett, Gary Hausladen, Paul Starrs. The Incline Lady Highlanders. Life.6. Who was your most inspirational teacher?
a. There have been many… Ellen Slater (Wilson School, Petaluma), Ms. George (Memorial Jr. High, San Diego), Doug Johnson and Frank Martinez (Petaluma HS), David Gutierrez *sigh* (UCSD), Dr. Bloom (SFSU). Victoria Randlett (UNR), Peter, Paul and Gary (UNR). I think I might have to award Mr. Johnson and Paul Starrs with the “most” inspirational… at the very least, most influential.7. Who has been an inspirational friend? Why?
a. SO many… Actually, all of my friends inspire me… but I really first remember being consciously inspired by Willy Oaks. A lot.I am particularly inspired by my female friends at the moment….
8. What famous person inspires you?
a. Hmm… I suppose we should define inspiration here… HST definitely inspired me. Ferris Bueller was a great inspiration, does that count if it is a fictional character? The guy that knocked Dick Fuld out.9. What is something that has inspired you to take political action?
a. I have always been politically active… but I got crazy when I took Sam Popkin’s classes at UCSD and got to meet Al Gore.10. What work of art inspires you?
a. Boticelli’s Birth of Venus – every time. Anything by Keith Haring. Black and white portraiture. Peter Goin’s landscape photography.11. What is a song that always inspires you?
a. Iko-Iko… Let My Love Open the Door… Salt of the Earth.12. Name a place that always inspires you:
a. The ocean. Though, Angkor Wat was pretty damn moving. And the ruins of Knossos on Crete as well as the ancient Acropolis and Theater of Dionysus blew my brains out. Zihuatenejo.13. What do you find inspiring on a regular basis?
a. Sunshine.14. Do you think you have inspired anyone?
a. Well, I guess… I hope so?15. Who/what is the biggest/strongest inspiration in your life?
a. Probably my parental units, though I know that is not particularly original. A clear conscious is pretty inspirational.
It is not all that profound, I know… but it got me thinking about a couple other things that have inspired me lately:
1) Some books I have been reading
2) Synchronous events
3) My old friend David Garber’s blog because he writes everyday – and it is fabulously funny and real and engaging
So, I am going to try to do something for the next few weeks… I am going to try to write everyday. About whatever. Profundity aside.
Who knows, maybe it will be inspirational.
I love LA. Among other things.
I have not been writing much lately.
I am feeling quite bogged down… by a nice variety of things.
I have this blog on Robbie Williams and space aliens that I have been trying to finish for weeks. Should be a piece of cake being as I find both the subjects strangely fascinating, particularly their respective holds over substantial numbers of people. Have not been able to do it.
CANNOT. FOCUS.
But, I walked outside today to get some lunch after a morning spent in a busy office and it smelled like LA. The air had that tangible, almost chewy feel that I remember so well about the LA of my childhood summers. It always seemed so humid there compared to Sonoma County. And warmer. And then there was that smell.
Warm.
Wet.
Dirty, but not in that third-world way, more like a fast food kind of way… somehow still yummy in spite of the yuckiness.
Semi-industrial but with undertones of an embraceable environment… the ocean, hot pavement, sickly-sweet flowers, sweat.
it smelled like that out in Causeway Bay today and it made me think about how much I love LA. How much the Valley is a part of my internal wiring. How grateful I am for all those summers spent with my family; swimming, eating melty ice-cream, trying to figure out what the tickle in the back of my throat was (smog), smiling.
I love LA.
Darling be home soon….
…for the great relief of having you to talk to…
Blogobssession
So, I am relatively new to blogging… like how bloggers do for general consumption and commentary and dialog. In fact I find that I am easily overwhelmed by the whole process and hardly do the authors of my favorite blogs justice with timely and interesting commentary (though, of course, I want everyone to comment on mine…) I started blogging playing around on MySpace back in the day, mostly for my friends and for travel journals. But those days a re long gone… now I have my own blog and I am obsessed.
I wish I could say this obsession was with writing. But no. My obsession is statistical. I am amazed at all of the ways you can analyze your blog. I check religiously to see how many hits I have attracted, comments, pingbacks, etcetera. Being rather new at this I am generally satisfied with any incremental increase, but I fear this bodes ill for the future. What happens if I fall back into the abyss of *gasp* private writing???
Mail (as in, you’ve really got mail, like real mail you can touch)
The advent and maturity of email, texting, on-line photosharing (is that even a real word? Can you have compound verbs?), even blogging, has permanently altered the way we communicate. I don’t condemn these changes by and large, and in fact rely on the modern convenience of them daily to maintain my ties to people near and far. Still there is something really great about receiving real mail.
As part of the Thirty Voices cadre for the past year I was personally introduced to blogging, as well as a really interesting group of women from a lot of interesting places doing a lot of interesting things. I had never really considered having my own blog before, and now… well, now we all know what has happened (a home for my garrulous verbosity!)
As the T.V. project came to an end, one of the originators of the idea had another idea… would it be fun to do a gift swap with the other writers… send something(s), not too extravagant, but somehow meaningful and representative of the friendships forged and the places physically occupied by our on-line community. I thought it was a great idea… and while I have yet to send my package off (I will meet the deadline – that is a promise…) I received mine a week ago, and what a joy to behold!
Amanda
