The discussion concerning Los Angeles on last night's (Thursday's) new episode of Ace of Cakes worries me. Don't leave Bmore, guys...

I swear, if Food Network ships them out in the middle of the night in a Mayflower truck... HA HA. Not. :|

Towson's theatre company is doing The Crucible. Hopefully Kayleigh & i are going, & will stifle our giggles from every single inside joke ever spawned from that play. "Come down, Mary!" "You're raising up a whore!" And Kate said she did all the bonnets, as well as Ann Putnam's dress.

Was absolutely spacy in Japanese yesterday, & was horrific in German Wednesday. I think i'm worse at German than i ever was at Italian, which is saying a lot. Speaking of Italian, lost my "Ciao!" pin from senior year. No idea where; if it was Philadelphia or the Walters on Sunday. It makes me really sad. Damn pins falling off all the time.

Also went over to the Center for the Arts to look at shows. Stupid me for not going to the Korean one until the third to last day of its showing. Wanjin Kim's work is really, really brilliant; think it's assemblage. She uses a lot of antique things, like antique Korean rice cake stamps. I got close enough to sniff one, which sounds odd, but it smelled really good. In the vein of smells, the smell of Maggie's house followed me all day, i swear. I think it was my pants, which sounds horrifically wrong & laughable, but i couldn't really trace it, even then.

Anyway. I don't think she's on the internet, though, which is the annoying thing about nearly all the shows in the CFA: you see something that makes you essentially go "omg," & then the cards don't have it on them & it's not on the internet anywhere. So yeah. No real way i can show her work, since she has no website. If you put her name into Google, you get someone's Facebook account; if you go to images, it's just pictures of other people with a similar name.

The MFA thesis show & the one in the "Art gallery" (that's its name) changed, & i don't know when that happened, so missed their openings, obviously. The MFA one now is interesting. The one upstairs in the art gallery runs till November 8th; should go see it. It's called Particularities and Abstractions, & features the work of three artists. They're really very amazing.

And, wonder of wonders, at least one of the artists has a website: Christine Gray. Look at Oracle Four; it's amazing. Though moreso in real life. It's so shiny & smooth, probably half because it's on wood & probably half due to whatever medium she used. But seriously, if you can get to the actual show, you should. I kind of stared at all of them. Meanwhile, the girl watchung the gallery was in an argument with someone on the phone concerning the Presidential debate. Forget politics! Look at the smooth art. The other artists, besides Gray, are: WC Richardson, Erling Sjovold (amazing color), & Fiona Ross.

This video & its song keep getting stuck in my head, but they're both really awesome. Does anyone have the song that i could download, maybe? Or Snow Patrol's "Chasing Cars"? Maybe? But yeah, now i keep drawing people with their faces obscured by their hair floating/flying around it. It's just brilliant; wonder how they did it. It gets firmly lodged in my head, like during History when i was falling asleep.

So tagged along with the parents because i needed to buy a new wallet. Have been using an old one from when i was little, with an Asian (Korean?) theme to it, but the wear & tear is really taking its toll. The amount of coins already ripped the zip compartment for them, & now, the outside-- think it's silk?-- is really beginning to fade. So i went to Five Below & got a cheap Gryffindor wallet that just barely holds all those coins. Also got a pack of mechanical pencils, just in case. The cashier didn't pay attention to me; the two of them were discussing her new cell phone.

Had gotten a Best Buy gift card in the mail for filling out a quick little survey ($25), so then went there, since it was right next door, & ended up getting two CDs. Saw In This Moment's new CD ("Dream," i think?), & kind of guilted myself into getting it? Also got Beach House's "Devotion." So i have sixty-something cents left... i'm horrible. Consumer.

So, haven't truly listened to "Dream," but... it feels different from their first CD, & i kind of don't like it. Their first one felt like Metal, & Maria (i think that's her name. Cannot remember names) went back & forth between singing smoothly & grating, gutteral, growling singing, as well as screaming that wasn't shrill, but still growling. On this CD, it feels too light, not as heavy. I skipped through song after song, & finally, on the third to last, found a song with the growling. I was alone in the car, so i went, "Yes!"

I mean, granted, i've yet to listen to it all the way through, but... it just doesn't feel like it has the same "oomph" that the first CD had. I really liked Maria's ability to switch between smooth & gutteral, which seems to not be showcased as much on the newest CD. Just a lot of smooth singing. And the instruments sound lighter, not as Metal-like.

As for the Beach House album, keep listening to the entire thing over & over, now that i've ripped it. They're a Baltimore-based band, so that doubled my interest. They're classified as "Alternative," & maybe one could draw parallels to other bands/singers/&c., or similarities. They make slow, quiet, realxed-sounding music with a airy, soft vocals. Slightly akin to Private Eleanor? A tiny bit like Regina Spektor or Tori Amos at times, vocal-wise? I know it's undesireable to list such parallels, but figure i may as well get there before anyone else does, & says it in a negative way. (Maybe a bit like Cat Power? Almost got one of her CDs, too; don't know why i didn't. Oh well.)

But it's really very nice. It has a nice feel to it, which is reinforced by the art & design of the CD & tiny pamphlet. Kind of reminds me of her work.

Have been keeping DB waiting; very bad of me.

But we who have need
of those huge mysteries
we who can sometimes
draw up from
wellsprings of sadness
rejoicing and progress
how could we exist
without them?

Rainer Maria Rilke. From Duino Elegies, the very first Elegy.So not only are there no jokes in heaven, but i'd assume no art, as well. Unless you like pointless, sappy, pasty, Kinkadean kind of junk. If heaven is supposed to be the aspiration & hope of mankind on earth, then why does it seem more deplorable & pointless than hell?

And read about this today:

Late, but:

He is the one named Sailor Koon.

Third time giving blood; fwee. Into a baggie it goes.

Meanwhile... DeviantArt is mad. Seriously. Someone suggested that maybe there's a group of people just going around reporting Deviations, & i'm inclined to agree, although it'd be nice if the artists were given a moment's notice, maybe to defend their work? Last i checked, we had freedom of fucking speech.

The most recent thing that happened was the deletion of yet another thing that was already under a mature content warning, & marked as sexual. (Question, DA: What's the point of that option if you delete everything with sexual content in?) It was a comic of Calvin & Hobbes, only in the future, with Calvin & Susie making out, & the idea was they were obviously going to do it, but even moreso was that Calvin had obviously lost touch with Hobbes. It was a little disturbing, but really very sad.

Long story short, it got deleted. Now, i understand the whole "minors" thing to an extent, to try & deter pedophiliac freaks, but they get off on a picture of a little girl fully clothed, so. But apparently, one cannot depict a fictional character who never comes of age in the original storyline, or who only does so in the last episode. Which is ridiculous.

Amd let's be honest: the people we consider "minors" are fucking. There it is, blunt & vulgar. Fourteen-year-olds are having sex; wake up. I'm not saying that's completely right or whatever, but far be it from me to police anyone else's life. The fact of the matter is that puberty hits & guess what! That means your body can become sexually active! Imagine that! And when does puberty typically hit? Hm, let's think...

Fine, it makes sense with the pedos. But on the whole, it doesn't make sense in reality. A pedo is going to get off on anything related to their thing, & you can't really police them. There are, apparently, people who get away with posting entirely unartistic photos on genitalia just for the hell of it. Oh, & people who do pictures with masturbation in them that DA doesn't take down, despite their rules. It's like they decide what to ignore or not. Fine, ok, they can't be everywhere; they don't know it exists unless you report that. I know that. My point is, the rash of recent deletions have largely been undeserved. They were tasteful, or not showing anything. The Calvin one-- it was all implied! He wasn't raping her; they were doing it willingly! They looked like high schoolers, & by then, you know, quite a few people have had sex. Older people may still consider someone a child until a certain point, but that doesn't change the fact that, really, by middle school, you're already thinking about certain things, whether you act on them or not. Come puberty, it's largely inevitable that you are going to start thinking about sex, unless you are asexual (& then you don't care).

So really, they're being extremely unrealistic about this whole thing. You can't police the freaks. You can't keep people from having sex. You have to realize that people aren't going to wait till they're "legal" to have sex. Welcome to reality.

And what if someone wants to use it as commentary, how they feel about things? Do they get reported & screwed over (HA) too? Sex & art kind of end up going together; maybe it's just post-Freud thinking, but they're very much intertwined. Not all those nude paintings were pirely artistic; men would buy them & show them to their male friends. Painted porn, essentially. Hence the feministic approach in art of challenging the male gaze. And then there's people who explore that sort of thing, or the nude, & they get screwed over (ie Scott G's senior show), because people can't distinguish, they get up in arms, they can't handle the fact that people do these things. Instead of going after the crude things, they go after the things that really aren't that bad at all.

And yes, i realize that it all comes down to individuals & differences are legion. I still think it's pathetic, childish, & infringes on freedom of speech. To quote Anonymous (they come up with good quotes, don't they :p): "Censorship offends me."

So i've been anxious about this, because am just waiting for someone to report it. And so i probably won't put up Toriko's drawing when i finally send it to her, because of the sexual overtones in that. (My god, it makes us RuFeg shippers seem like such pervs, doesn't it?) Nevermind that it's two consenting adults, it's implied, & you don't see a thing. I could probably put it under a mature content filter & it would still get deleted, & i'd have no opportunity to defend it. Because that's what's been happening. Who cares about the history of art; who cares about it being implied, &c. &c.? Can't take it, don't like it, must censor it, must get rid of it; bad, bad, bad. Pathetic.

come find me
i am very sad


The reply:

I found you.
Please don't be sad anymore.
I am giving you a hug (on paper).


Something like that. :)


....thank you. I wanted to take it with me, but decided against it...

random thoughts

I don't even know what i was thinking of, when my brain wandered over to two rude/raunchy/naughty/whatever words: "dick" & "pussy," as used as insults. And i realized that their usage typifies gender stereotypes.

When you call someone a "dick," you're generally meaning that they're an asshole, that they're rude or mean somehow; when you call someone a "pussy," you're implying that they're weak, wimpy, & pathetic.

Then think of how certain genders are seen. The stereotypical male is generally brash, thoughtless, loud, prone to getting in fights. The stereotypical female is seen as weak, meek. It's society's double standards. A big difference is, though, that the stereotype of the male is generally more acceptable. With females, one can't win. You're reminded of centuries of being seen as wrong & bad somehow.

I was looking through the reader for my History 101 class, & what the Greeks thought of women is extremely venomous. Generally, people look at the ancient Greeks & only look at the better points. The art, for one example. For someone who champions gay/lesbian equality, they might like the fact that ancient Greek males were encouraged to take male lovers. Civilization (whatever that may be) can, apparently, owe a lot to Greece.

But when one looks at the attitudes towards women, this becomes more worrisome. Women in ancient Greece were seen as almost livestock. They were seen as baby machines. While their husband went off with his lover, who he may have loved over her, she was expected to bear children & take care of the house. They believed that the first woman was made by the gods to plague men, & they had all sorts of horrific things to say about women, who were seen as no better than a plague. It becomes confusing, really, when one takes into account the religion & art. They had goddesses; the female form was depicted in their art quite a lot. The Muses are pretty much always depicted as female. It doesn't make any sense.

It's really disturbing how most societies do this sort of thing. People like to base their societies & countries & things off of ancient ones, using their ideas & the like. Unfortunately, it seems that double standards are another thing inherited from most ancient cultures. Anyone who tries to deny that it continues today is blind. I mean, such phrases as, "you throw like a girl" & "scream like a girl" are used to imply that someone is weak & cowardly. They are unmanly, they are not staunch, they don't have what it takes. If someone said, "you throw like a boy," it wouldn't be taken the same way. People talk about "becoming a man" & "take it like a man." No one talks about "becoming a woman," & if no one says "take it like a woman," & if they did, it wouldn't have the same meaning. Women still seem to be seen as inferior & weak. Most creepy males don't think a girl will fight or snap back.

It bleeds over into art. There are times when a female nude isn't as artistic as one tries to make it seem. Such works were often bought by men to show their male friends when they came to visit. They were for their viewing pleasure, porn masquerading under the guise of being "artistic." Hence the idea in modern women's art of challenging the "male gaze."

This doesn't mean that there aren't double standards everywhere, on both sides. It's not as clear cut. The best illustration would be Scott G.'s senior show. A small group of us had stayed behind at school, waiting for the time that the shows were supposed to officially be open, but for some reason we decided to go down to the lobby, where Scott was setting up his show. His work all featured nudes, both male & female. Whatever, right? It's an art high school, & there's Figure classes already; who's going to care?

Mr. G, one of the painting teachers, told Scott that the paintings of the male nudes would either have to be censored or removed. This wasn't Mr. G's personal opinion, this was because of the school being a public county school, & apparently, this means one can show breasts, but no penises. (Random question: why not "peni"?) earlier in the year, a guy named Zach had done female & male sexual parts as a "differences" kind of assignment, & people had acted so immature about it he was forced to take them off the wall. He had seemed more dazed & quiet than anything else when the discussion came up in Studio. Not so with Scott. He fought & fought to keep his paintings up & unmolested by censorship, to the point where, if he wasn't crying, he was close to it. Mr. G just shook his head sadly & said he was sorry, but those were his only options. Scott made the very good point that, by censoring the penises, it would only make it more obvious, but in the end, he opted for the censorship, so they would stay up. I felt so bad for him; he was so upset.

This, therefore, begs the question: Why? Why do you have to censor a nude male but not a nude female? Is it because of the "male gaze," that the nude female should remain so because then people can look at her & objectify her? To make the male seem more restrained by his lack of nudity, and make the female seem sinful, lustful, & unable to control her urges? Or does it imply, in a bizarre twist of society's usual workings, that the male nude is more dirty & wrong than that of the female? (Usually it's the other way around.)

It also doesn't seem to matter how a woman acts. She can act demure & princessy if she likes or act rebellious &, as one would put it, "one of the guys" (because certain traits & actions are linked to males in this culture), & no matter what, she'll still get dumped on. I once caught something on Metal late at night on either MTV or VH1 (my God, they were actually showing something about music, imagine that!), & they had a bit where they talked about women in Metal. They talked to the lead singer of Arch Enemy, whose name i forget, but she is brilliant. She absolutely growls when she sings, so it was odd to hear her speaking in her usual voice. But if i remember aright, she mentioned how, even she has had people calling to her from the audience such things as, "Take your shirt off!" Here she is, a rough & tumble-seeming kind of woman, who can growl with the best of them, & she still gets comments like these. Why? Why is this seen as acceptable?

A girl can't even have her body do what it does every month without getting flak for it. Many cultures & religions see one's menstrual period as being dirty & unclean. Aside from the obvious fact that blood is messy; it's more of the "spiritual" idea, i suppose. For some reason, what your body does naturally makes you dirty & unclean in the eyes of your society & chosen god/s. One may then say, "Well then, why would a god have made someone that could be dirty & prohibited from temples & the like," but that's forgetting people like the ancient Greeks, who thought women were a plague, & those who want to blame Eve for all the world's ills (as if Adam hadn't taken a bite too), & that Lilith was bad & evil because she wanted to be Adam's equal. I was on IM once with an online friend, & she found a Feminist writing that said if males had periods, it would all be the exact opposite: It would be "manly" & ok & not a taboo subject.

Sure, there are a few peoples who have ceremonies for a girl's first period. The ones i know of generally involve chanting & possibly being buried halfway in the ground. Contrast that to the Muslim boy's circumcision day, where he is treated "like a prince" for the day & given presents. Maybe it depends on one's culture, religion, society, values, etc., but really, which option sounds more appealing to most people?

Have there ever really been any societies that have seen the woman as an equal, as being on equal footing? I can only think of people like the Celts, & Anglo-Saxon women had quite a few rights. One's mind immediately goes to Boudicca, who was a warrior queen if ever there was one. The Romans whipped her & raped her daughters; she literally fought back, gathering many people to her cause & wrecking many Roman cities in Britain. They scoffed at her because she was a woman, & the Romans had about as much respect, it sounds like, as the Greeks. Unfortunately, she did end up losing because of Roman battle tactics, & no one knows what her fate was. But she was relentless & unforgiving in her anger, & her people tarried around her. They didn't look at her & say, "Oh, she's a woman; what does she know?"

Then, something i read in a book about the Celts: A woman was kidnapped & raped by a Roman. For some reason, somehow or another, he returned her to her home. She then beheaded him. The woman's husband remarked on this, & she said something to the effect of, "Better only one man who has slept with me."

Of course, double standards are everywhere. If a man doesn't act "manly," then there's something wrong with him. But even that seems to point back to the feminine, back to such derogatory words as "pussy." (And when did slang for genitals become derogatory?) It all goes back to the idea that male=good & female=bad somehow. You're looked down upon if you act girly, you're looked down upon if you act more rough (maybe even seen as either a "fake girl" or "fake boy"?). You can't win. Years of sufferage & feminism still don't seem to have changed much at all. How can such ridiculous ideas be gotten rid of? Will the ever be gotten rid of? As long as there are people who consider women inferior & wrong, & as long as that mentality is passed down to the next generation, nothing will change.

Even my male cousins, who i spent my childhood playing with (as my girl cousins are all fairly older than me), are not immune. At an emergency gathering this past May, i felt the overwhelming desire to kill two of my cousins. They think of sex in such a cavalier fashion; the one said, "I probably have a bunch of kids that I don't know about!" And he laughed. The older of the two of them turned to me & said, "Don't listen to him, he's a bad man." Like i am a child. Inferior. Stupid. I regret not having something to fire back, i regret not snapping & telling them what i fucking thought of their demeaning, misogynistic words & thoughts. I thought that being raised by single mothers would have instilled some sort of respect in them, but i obviously was wrong, as they so stunningly illustrated. I also thought their mother's religiousness would have played into it, but if it did, it was in the way that people suppose Catholic school kids will turn out to be hypersexual from being repressed. But, then: i have absolutely no respect for them; i get so angry that i seriously wish them ill. They absolutely disgust me.

How is it that a male can fuck around & somehow be considered manly, but if a female does the same, she's a slut? How is it that males think they can do things like force themselves on a woman, or that she somehow deserves it because of how she dresses? Why is it ok for a male to oogle a woman? Just because she's wearing a short skirt doesn't mean that she was "asking for it." How come male sexuality is seen as this manly, good thing, but female sexuality is seen as bad, wrong, sinful, lustful, dirty, slutty, desperate? Why are women expected to be meek & demure & submissive; why are assertive, aggressive women seen as negative, when the same traits in males are seen as positive? Why? It makes me so unbelieveably angry. There are supposedly decent guys out there, but sometimes it doesn't seem like it at all.

In other news, it is fifty degrees (F), last i checked. I'll be glad when the daytime gets as cool as this.

Uffa

Non mi piacciono i cretini. La lingua stranieri non uguale illegale. Uffa. Non c'è peggior sordo di chi non vuol sentire.


Tired.