"Every moment of one's life, one is growing into more or retreating into less." - Norman Mailer

Sunday, November 30, 2008

An example of how gender is culturally prescribed

From Hannah Mermelstein, in an email about her recent experiences in Syria, new to her as she's just arrived from Palestine (which is a secret, because Syria is trying to "normalize" relations with Israel):

An addendum from Hannah herself:
Just to clarify, the reason I can't say I have been to Palestine is that Syria does not allow people with Israeli stamps in their passport to enter Syria, and since Israel occupies and controls the borders of the West Bank, there is no distinction in a passport stamp between going to Israel and going to the West Bank.

Sorry for the misrepresentation!

3. Gender. My hair is short. In Palestine, this often causes people to do a double take, or even sometimes to assume at first glance that I'm a man but to change their minds once I give a subtle cough (I do this sometimes when I know that men who are sitting next to me assume that I'm a man, because there is generally far less personal space between men in the Arab world than in the US and far more between men and women). Now, in Syria, I find that people don't even look twice. I am almost consistently perceived as a man – and usually a Syrian man. Incredibly, I've found that even when I speak people often do not change this assumption (if I speak more than a few words, of course, they'll hear my accent and figure out I'm not Syrian, but will still often think I'm a man). It's interesting in many ways, but in such a gendered society it can also be awkward, like when the driver of a shared taxi orders me to squeeze in the front with him and another guy in order to let women get into the body of the car. Or when a man giving me directions puts his arm around me to push me in the right direction, something he clearly would not have done if he thought I was a woman. So I have to decide on a pretty constant basis whether to try to keep passing as male or to make my gender clear…

Friday, November 28, 2008

gringoism: hilaridad. ¿quién sabía? yo, no.

hilaridad
Con frecuencia oímos que tal o cual palabra «no se debe usar» o «no está admitida» porque es un ‘anglicismo’ o un ‘galicismo’, cuando lo cierto es que los diccionarios españoles están repletos de palabras provenientes del francés y de inglés, entre muchas otras lenguas. Es muy frecuente que acaben consagradas por el uso, recogidas a regañadientes en los diccionarios y finalmente se olvide su origen ‘impuro’.
Uno de esos vocablos es hilaridad: desaprobado hacia 1867 como “galicismo” por el filólogo venezolano Rafael María Baralt, primer americano incorporado a la Academia Española, quien recomendaba emplear ‘regocijo’ o ‘risa’ en lugar de hilaridad.
En la realidad, la palabra proviene del latín hilaritas, hilaritatis (alegría, buen humor), pero no permaneció en el romance castellano, sino que llegó a nuestra lengua en la primera mitad siglo XIX, derivada de los vocablos franceses hilare e hilarant (risible, hilarante). Esta historia acabó en 1884, cuando la palabra fue incorporada al Diccionario de la Academia y su origen ‘espurio’ quedó relegado al olvido, como suele ocurrir.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Movie list

So, as you may observe, gentle reader, I have begun yet another widget/list on the side of my blog. I have been considering starting this list for a long time, but have talked myself out of it for an equally long time on the grounds that it's not a worthy list.

Well, I've changed my mind and now regret all those months of talking myself out of a fantastic list which will help intellectually orient myself in a specific place and time when I go back to review something in my blog archives--a practice I engage in periodically when I want to remember the "ambience" of a given point in the timeline of my life. That is the point of a diary, is it not?

So this list is of movies I've watched during the year. Just as I keep a list of the books I've finished, I'll keep a list of the films I finish. I may decide to also put TV series on as well, if I watch an entire season. That, to me, is a cogent piece of small screen artistry on par with a film in terms of plot and productional effort (if "productional" is a word).

The unfortunate thing is to start such a list with only 5 weeks left in the year. Perhaps I'll add in retrospect as my memory permits; for sure I'll have a complete list for 2009. Go, me.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Weirdest

This is the weirdest thing I've seen yet today:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Center,_Kentucky

http://www.city-data.com/city/La-Center-Kentucky.html

La.

Center.



WEIRD. RANDOM.

Friday, November 21, 2008

Shall we riot? cha cha cha

superpoop.com
superpoop.com

GET OVER YOURSELF. STOP BITCHING -- START A REVOLUTION (preferably about something more meaningful than a scone).

In the immortal words of Lou Reed...

Republican M.O. versus Democratic M.O. (AKA, the only time Republican politicians ever get excited):

superpoop.com
superpoop.com

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Blancanieves y los 7 enanos

Just because I couldn't remember como se llaman en español:

Doc, Feliz, Gruñón, Dormilón, Tímido, Tontín y Estornudo. ...
del sitio ProZ.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Hey, Motrin: you missed the mark

This new wave feminist, why-suffer-for-my-child, having-a-baby-is-such-a-drag, excuse for attention view of motherhood is just plain insulting, not to mention outmoded. 21st century moms are WAY beyond this prima donna shit.

Mothers don't want to be associated with selfishness, so they are not going to respond positively to an ad like this. Yes, we understand the importance of taking care of ourselves, too; but "What about me?" is not the cry of a responsible, loving adult. Motrin, back to the drawing board. You just flunked "Communicating on Moms' level 101."


Courtesy of the website Cotton Babies and my cousin, Molly. Thanks, lady!!!

Sunday, November 16, 2008

¿Qué diablos quiere decir 'diagético'?

Todo aquel sonido que está en consonancia con el ambiente que se describe se llama DIEGÉTICO y lo denominamos NO DIEGÉTICO a aquel que no pertenece al ambiente que se está desarrollando en campo. A veces el sonido diagético o no diagético se utiliza para sorprender al espectador, para llamarle la atención, por alguna finalidad narrativa.
de Espai de Cinema

Fascism is not too strong a word

“If this movement were to be given a name, I think it would be most appropriate to call it Christo-Fascism, and if anyone objects to my using the word fascism, because it seems so redolent of the Axis powers, and after all we valiantly defeated fascism once, well understand this about fascism: when it arrives it never shows up in the discarded costume of some other country, and when fascism comes here, it's not going to be wearing a toothbrush mustache with a luger in his belt and go goose-stepping around the mall, because that’s Germany. And it's precisely characteristic of fascism, that it seems absolutely, totally expressive of the homeland; it seems completely familiar, it’s when 150% America puts a flag on its lapel and a cross around its neck and a real folksy way a talkin’. But just because it’s red, white and blue, doesn’t mean it’s American.”
- Mark Crispin Miller, A Patriot Act

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

How poetic!

From WordDictionary.com:
sidereal \sy-DEER-ee-uhl\, adjective:

measured or determined by the daily motion of the stars; of or having to do with the stars or constellations

Just effing groovy, is all.

courtesy of Luxon Blogware

Sunday, November 09, 2008

Yo: interested in ideas and comfortable with complexity

Here is another great op-ed by Nicholas Kristof (again courtesy of Dad). The following is my favourite excerpt. ¡Viva la intelectualidad!
An intellectual is a person interested in ideas and comfortable with complexity. Intellectuals read the classics, even when no one is looking, because they appreciate the lessons of Sophocles and Shakespeare that the world abounds in uncertainties and contradictions, and — President Bush, lend me your ears — that leaders self-destruct when they become too rigid and too intoxicated with the fumes of moral clarity.

(Intellectuals are for real. In contrast, a pedant is a supercilious show-off who drops references to Sophocles and masks his shallowness by using words like “fulgent” and “supercilious.”)

Mr. Obama, unlike most politicians near a microphone, exults in complexity. He doesn’t condescend or oversimplify nearly as much as politicians often do, and he speaks in paragraphs rather than sound bites. Global Language Monitor, which follows linguistic issues, reports that in the final debate, Mr. Obama spoke at a ninth-grade reading level, while John McCain spoke at a seventh-grade level.

Thanks, Dad

So, my dad sent me this beautiful op-ed by Frank Rich from the latte-liberal NY Times this morning. Those crazy socialists. If you have 5 minutes, it's a great summation of why I am hopeful for the first time in my voting life; not so much because Barack Obama is black (a nice plus), but that our country (minus a few Christians who want to have Sean Hannity's babies) has finally rejected the horrible neo-con paradigm of the Republicans. I don't know why it didn't happen in 2004 (unless it did), but at least we can start picking up the pieces now. Even if you don't read the whole op-ed linked above, here is the end, and a sentiment with which I whole-heartedly concur:

The actual real America is everywhere. It is the America that has been in shell shock since the aftermath of 9/11, when our government wielded a brutal attack by terrorists as a club to ratchet up our fears, betray our deepest constitutional values and turn Americans against one another in the name of “patriotism.” What we started to remember the morning after Election Day was what we had forgotten over the past eight years, as our abusive relationship with the Bush administration and its press enablers dragged on: That’s not who we are.

So even as we celebrated our first black president, we looked around and rediscovered the nation that had elected him. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” Obama said in February, and indeed millions of such Americans were here all along, waiting for a leader. This was the week that they reclaimed their country.


And to go along with that idea, here is our national anthem (or what it SHOULD be, rather):

Friday, November 07, 2008

A hundred things

Realize that you are the one responsible for cleaning up your own mess, Clare. If you have left your dirty clothes scattered on the floor and the dishes unwashed, it will be you who has to pay the consequences later on. Take responsibility for your actions. Today is an excellent day to do your laundry and clean the mess in the sink. You will feel better about yourself and your immediate environment when you accomplish your tasks of the day.

Yeah, woman. That goes for homework, too!
List of things to do today (this is more for me than for anyone reading):
- call Elizabeth
- take Thomas' car to get the tire fixed
- put away Halloween things (finally)
- clean off stuff in breezeway
- go for a bike ride
- get sources together for Medina's paper
- go grocery shopping
- maybe change the sheets...

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Laugh at my boner, will you?!

This seems like it would have been a MadLibs type thing where you substitute a mundane word for something awfully hilarious like "boner." But, no--this is from an ACTUAL Batman comic from the 1960s, when apparently a 'boner' meant something veeeeery different. Feel free to click on the image to read the hilarity in all its glorious detail:



Courtesy of Comic Book Girl

Saturday, November 01, 2008

Picking Oranges the Palestinian Way

This is an article by Ray Smith from Live from Lebanon. It's a realistic and depressing look into the lives of a few displaced Palestinians. And, you know, let's keep in mind that these refugees have been displaced for 2 generations now. Since 1948. The original article can be found here on the Electronic Intifada.
The sun has yet to rise at an orange plantation in the hinterland of the southern Lebanese city of Tyre. Muhammad has just transferred ten buckets of oranges into black plastic boxes at the edge of the orange grove. After carrying the empty buckets back to the other workers, he says: "After this work I return home, rest for an hour and leave for my second job as a decorator. Harvesting oranges alone doesn't feed my family."

This morning around half past five, the foreman, whom I will call "Abu G" and his dozen workers drove to the plantation in a blue minivan. One hour later, the men are busily fulfilling their specific tasks. Two balance on ladders and pluck oranges from the top of the trees while Muhammad and some others pick from the lower branches. From time to time, between six and ten buckets are being carried away at once. After sorting the oranges, they are put into boxes which are then loaded on a small truck that takes them to the north of Lebanon, and from there they are exported to other countries in the region. While his workers sweat away, the foreman lays down on a piece of cardboard. Even if the foreman-laborer power disparity is sharp, they all have one thing in common: they are Palestinian refugees living at the Burj al-Shemali refugee camp.

Burj al-Shemali is located at the edge of Tyre and was established in the early 1950s after Zionist forces expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland. Many of Lebanon's initial refugee camps were relocated due to political pressure from the Lebanese state. Some were situated near citrus plantations in the coastal plain and others near the industrial areas of Beirut. Today some 20,000 people live in the quiet, but fenced-in Burj al-Shemali Camp. More than two-thirds of its labor force work at least part-time in agriculture.

Early in the morning, between 5 and 6am, a wave of footsteps and whispering voices can be heard in the camp's narrow alleys. Silence follows and lasts until half past seven, when hundreds of sleepy pupils walk to school. It is in the darkness of the early morning hours that hundreds of day laborers leave their homes, gather in the streets and then head to their work in the fields and plantations of the region. Among them are youth, university graduates and grandparents. Some work in the fields, but most of them harvest oranges, lemons and bananas. Before noon, most of the workers return to the camp. However, it isn't the end of their work day.

Lebanese law treats the more than 400,000 Palestinian refugees in the country as foreigners. Therefore they are not allowed to own land, they are forbidden to work in over 70 white and blue-collar jobs, they aren't guaranteed a minimum wage and they aren't integrated into the Lebanese social and medical insurance system. These various forms of exclusion make them vulnerable in many ways. Many refugees depend on the services and assistance by the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, and on remittances from their relatives abroad. Highly qualified Palestinians like doctors or engineers, who are not allowed to practice their professions in Lebanon, find themselves behind the steering wheels of taxis, in the countless small shops in the refugee camps or as day laborers in construction or agriculture.

Hajja Amne, 65 years old, says that she worked hard in agriculture throughout her whole life, but never received any benefits. Now her health problems prevent her from working. Although pleased by the wage hike that was the result of a strike by Palestinian harvest workers in the beginning of the year, she is disturbed by the fact that men still earn more than women for the same work. She also complains, "If a worker is sick and can't work, she won't get paid." However, the workers aren't only being exploited by the Lebanese landowners and employers, but sometimes also by their own foremen. They often line their pockets with an unjustified amount of the money siphoned from the wages of the laborers. While some foremen themselves participate in the harvest, others limit their activity to commanding the workers and, as in the case of Abu G., resting in the grass.

Efforts have been made towards a collective organization of the Palestinian day laborers in agriculture. The struggle for higher wages in the beginning of this year is one of several indicators. According to Hosni, a foreman who identifies as communist, ideas regarding the establishment of an autonomous insurance system by the workers were discussed. However, nothing has been implemented so far, and barriers to self-organization can be found in the fragmented political landscape in the camps. Even in the extreme case of Nahr al-Bared, the refugee camp in northern Lebanon destroyed by the Lebanese army last year in fighting a Sunni militant group that had occupied part of the camp, the Palestinian parties can hardly manage to put aside their differences to work together toward the collective interest of the refugees.

Meanwhile, Muhammad continues to leave the camp seven days a week in the early morning in order to work in the orange groves. A few years ago, he built another floor on top of his parents' house in the camp and got married. Since then, his wife gave birth to a baby girl. "As a Palestinian you don't learn an occupation and stay in the same business until the end of your life," says Muhammad. "We have different work experiences in various fields and often we work in several places at the same time in order to make money."

This Is Your Nation on White Privilege

No. Not everyone who is planning to vote for John McCain is a racist. And voting for Obama does not make racism a thing of the past.

I think what Obama's candidacy has brought to center stage, more than anything, is not the tradition of racism and dualistic thinking from which this country has suffered for a long time. We already know about this. Obama's candidacy, in other words, has not opened people's eyes to overt discrimination. That is not news in 2008, and in fact I believe the U.S. has made improvements to mitigate discrimination in its raw form since the civil rights era of the 1960s.

Rather, Senator Obama's candidacy has really raised questions about privilege--white privilege, that is: a phenomenon alive and well in this country, albeit officially undiagnosed in many parts. Recognizing that white people take certain things for granted that people of color cannot does not make you a racist; instead, recognizing white privilege makes you simply honest in your attempts to eradicate racism once and for all.

We DON'T all have to look alike; we DON'T all have to be "colorblind" (as if that were possible or desirable). But we DO have to be conscious of structural violence that embeds social inequity and injustice along racial lines throughout our society. And Tim Wise's Sept. 13th article addresses that in relation to this 2008 presidential race better than anyone else I've heard. Please take 6 minutes to read his lucid thoughts on the subject.

los swingers. wtf.

Is this how Europe views the United States? What does it mean that this article appears in Spain's main newspaper the weekend before a US presidential election?

The article starts with the lines (translated by me):
They share their love for guns, rodeos, barbeques, and big familias. They form part of Middle America (traditional/conservative America). They don't seem like Middle America--they are Middle America. A true reflection of the Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Maybe the only diference--who knows--between these good patriots and the Alaskan governor is the passion that they express for the exchange of couples.

(El original dice: "Comparten su entusiasmo por las armas, los rodeos, las barbacoas y las familias numerosas. Forman parte de la misma América profunda. No se parecen a ella. Son como ella. Un fiel reflejo de la candidata republicana a la vicepresidencia de Estados Unidos, Sarah Palin. Quizá la única diferencia -quién sabe- entre estos buenos patriotas y la gobernadora de Alaska sea la pasión que derrochan por el intercambio de parejas.")

THAT'S RIGHT. The newspaper El País is (a) saying that "swinging" is a popular, fairly widespread thing to do in the United States, and (b) its popularity is found mainly in the conservastive, Middle American sector of the population. The article gets a lot of its info from this article printed last year in Newsweek by Gretel Kovach.