Overheard in my Appartment

"it must be really hard to disiplin your child if they have cancer. what are you going to say?"
--Em

My roommates in regard to Emily's dye job:

Emily: The box specifically said "dark brown." Do you see any brown in this? This is black.
Sushi: do you feel like your hair was raped a little bit?
Emily: yeah. I do.

Go here:

http://noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com/

Facebook Diarys! Weeee!

I went to a facebookparty last week. Yeah. I know. Please let me explain.
So a friend of a friend works for facebook. And facebook is trying to promote this new partnership they have with ziddio.com (which is a youtube competitor) and comcast called Facebook diaries. Esentially its vidio blogging. And really is the worst idea ever. No one. I mean no one wants to watch a bunch of whiny college students talk about their problems on their webphone. Which is the reason why it isnt doing so well.
So said friend of a friend talks facebook into giving him $500 dollars for booze and a bunch of free tee shirts on the condition that every one who comes to the party will record a facebook diary.
The topic was "who am I."
Saddly, this did not deter me and I went to the party and recorded a facebook diary and now it will be on the web forever more.
And you can watch it. Because I might as well own the awefulness.
You will notice that I never once address the topic of who am I. Once. Oh well.
Also, I did not come up with that title, just so you know.

From Shakespeare's Sister

"Women aren't raped because they're drunk or dress a certain way, women are raped because they're in the presence of a rapist."
--Shakespeares Sister

What's terrifying is that this seems like a revolutionary statement. And its not. It's common sense.

Giggle giggle SNORT

http://www.gothamist.com/2007/04/24/patch_of_proble.php

Oh NYU, you are so endlessly amusing! As long as I don't think about how much you are costing me.
If I had known student council could be this profitable I might have considered running.

And it starts

I would like to direct your attention to this article in the washington post. In it the writer compares the VT killers video images with John Woo and Park Chan Wook.
(Side note Park Chan Wook directed Old Boy and Lady Vengence and I absolutly adore his films so maybe Im a little touchy. Just a little. But if you haven't seen them you should. I guarentee there is NOTHING else like them out there.)
Because, you know, as an asian he must only watch asian movies. Right?
"Thus "Oldboy" must feature prominently in the discussion, even if no one has yet confirmed that Cho saw it. On the surface, it seems a natural fit, at least in the way it can be presumed that Cho's hyper-fervid brain worked. It's a Korean story -- he would have passed on the subtitles and listened to it in his native language -- of unjust persecution and bloody revenge"
Please agree with me that it goes with out saying that this article is racist?
But aside from the racism this article is just wrong.
I mean yes, ours is the generation of school shootings. And yes this epidemic would not have occurred with out the help of the media. By one person making it okay it is now considered a "valid" form of expression should your desire be to get your self on tv and go out in a blaze of gunfire. And now we have to deal with it for all time. Just like Hezbollah made suicide bombings valid and they soon spread across the world.
And yes, psychopaths often lack imagination and draw on popular culture or myth. That is the reason why copycat killers exist in the first place. People are stupid and unoriginal.
But they need to by psychopaths in the first place. And the world has always had psychopaths.
What seems to bother me most in the VT discourse, is all the talk about trying to stop the next killer. How do you pinpoint the killer next door? What can your school do? Blah blah blah.
Because ultimately there is nothing you can do. We will all eventually die. As Americans the odds are we will die from heart disease as opposed to violence, but there is still the chance of a dramatic end. Because people do horrible things to each other. Every day. All the time. Life is short and cruel and cheap.
And we all live in denial of that fact.
Which may seem horrible and nihilistic of me. But my point is ultimately this: what we should learn from the VT shooting is not that Park Chan Wook's visious and beautiful films cause violence. Or even teach violence. What we should learn is that we should cherish life while we have it. That even though we are so cushy and comfortable we are still fragile creatures. I mean, really, humans can only survive in a very small climate band surrounding the equator (without the assistance of clothes and what not.)
And we should learn to be kind. Because that IS something we can do. We only have power over ourselves. And maybe if made one other person's life a little easier that person would find the power to help themselves. Because ultimatly that is all that can happen. Manditory cousiling doesn't get that far when people are resistant.
So try to be kind? Maybe? Instead of blaming films, or playwrites, or koreans or whatever.
And that's what I took away from Old Boy and Lady Vengeance when I saw them. Even though they are tails of bloody revenge.

Update: this http://www.slate.com/id/2164753?nav=tap3 is a sort of stupid article on the same theme but the last paragraph is perfect.
"In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter a few years ago, Oldboy's director Park said, "My films are the stories of people who place the blame for their actions on others because they refuse to take on the blame themselves." And that's one of the smartest things that anyone's said so far about the motives of Cho Seung-Hui."

Last thing on Imus

So apparently the reason why it is okay for Dave Chapelle, Chris Rock, Edie Murphy and all of gangster rap to use the words "nappy headed" "hos" and "nigger" is because they are black and it is insider humor. Which is totally valid. Reclaiming a word and reappropriating it is a powerful tool.
There is only one problem with this.
Dave Chapelle, Chris Rock, Edie Murphy and all of gangster rap are MEN.
Which means there is nothing "insider" about insulting women. It's just misogyny.

Snoop Dog's reaction to Don Imus

"[Rappers] are not talking about no collegiate basketball girls who have made it to the next level in education and sports. We're talking about ho's that's in the 'hood that ain't doing sh--, that's trying to get a n---a for his money. These are two separate things. First of all, we ain't no old-ass white men that sit up on MSNBC [the cable network home to Imus] going hard on black girls. We are rappers that have these songs coming from our minds and our souls that are relevant to what we feel. I will not let them mutha-----as say we in the same league as him."
dot dot dot
huh?
My roommates think this is hilarious. I'm just huh. It's nice to know that there are rules to insulting women. Can I get the snoop dog hand book to bitches and hos? Cause, you know, I want to know when its okay.

Kurt Vonnegut's rules of fiction

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages. -- Kurt Vonnegut

....

RIP