Monthly Archives: November 2010

Envy

20 Replies

Of all the Seven Deadly sins, ENVY arguably is the root of all evil, imo.

Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all.       — Joseph Epstein

Kevin Spacey obviously agrees and that’s why his character in Seven saved Envy the Sin for himself…

It is also in the Ten Commandments in the form of the Tenth Commandment:

Thou Shall Not Covet.

Envy is an emotion that occurs when a person lacks another’s (perceived) superior quality, achievement, or possession and either desires it or wishes that the other lacked it. (Wikipedia. What else?)

Most of the strife and many of the abhorrent, cruel, cold acts men committed against fellow men in this world have been caused by envy. To understand Envy, we need to understand the differences between Envy and his close cousin, Jealousy.

“Envy” and “Jealousy” are often used interchangeably, but in correct usage, they stand for two different distinct emotions. In proper usage, jealousy is the fear of losing something that one possesses to another person (a loved one in the prototypical form), while envy is the pain or frustration caused by another person having something that one does not have oneself. Envy typically involves two people, and jealousy typically involves three people.

(Wekipedia. Sigh. Maybe I SHOULD make a donation to Wikipedia after all…)

Or as Aristotle said…

Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base and belongs to the base, for the one makes himself get good things by jealousy, while the other does not allow his neighbour to have them through envy.

In this sense, Jealousy implies that there is a “reason” behind the emotion that human beings should be able to relate to: the fear of losing a loved one to someone with something more desirable, whereas Envy causes you to stand alone with your rage (for the rage “It is not fair” inadvertently comes when one is envious of someone else for something; the rage becomes even more severe when one recognizes that there is nothing unfair about the situation and yet cannot help but feel the tightening of one’s heart)

The emotion used most often to explain the motif (if there HAS TO BE one) for Iago’s actions in Othello is envy. I despise any attempt by modern scholars and especially, theatrical directors to turn his motif from Envy to Jealousy, creating a plausible yet cheapening story of Iago’s potential infatuation with Desdemona or Othello.

Why does Iago’s action have to be interpreted with reason? Envy is irrational, pure and simple. And what makes it the worst of all human emotions: It is isolating, unproductive, and more often than not, destructive. And it lives within all of us.

Here is my confession.

Envy lives within my heart and I cannot ward it off completely, 24/7.

When I marvel at undeserved good fortunes and when I subjectively decide who is or is not worthy of such good fortunes. When I belittle the fashion world and the people living in it. When I complain about my sister-in-law whose husband does all her bidding and whose parents are at the ready to provide long-term free babysitting. When I go out of my way to ignore bloggers whose husbands cannot get enough of them in the bedrooms and, it seems, everywhere else. When I tighten my fists reading about husbands who help around the house after an 8-hour work day. When I make fun of the really wealthy for their frivolous purchases or idiosyncrasies. When I look down at the young for their recklessness and carefree-ness.

I cannot honestly say that I do not feel envious.

When I witness brilliance and genius.

I cannot honestly say that I do not feel Antonio Salieri’s pain, that I do not understand where his hatred of Mozart came from.

Even though I could comfort myself with the understanding and perhaps acceptance that “There is not a passion so strongly rooted in the human heart as envy” (Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the guy who wrote The School for Scandal), I despise and scare myself when I recognize envy in my heart. I look in the mirror and I see ugliness. Embarrassed and ashamed. I close my eyes, shake my head, breathe deeply, willing it to go away by counting my blessings.

I learn to truly recognize and sincerely admire the brilliance and genius in those surrounding me.

This has served me well in blogosphere.

This post is GREEN according to my Blog Advisory System

12 Replies

This is sort of like a repost. I created the Blog Advisory System last December when I realized that my eclectic rambling style may catch people off guard.

.

Blog Advisory System: Don't say I didn't warn you!

.

.

Today is GREEN. Short and sweet.

Welcome to our new edition of HAVE FUN WITH GOOGLE!

.

"Do you feel lucky, punk?"

.

.

Or maybe it should be…

GOOGLE HAS FUN WITH US!

.

For the Dedicated Follower of Fashion

30 Replies

If you are like me, your life, at least the part that is connected to the computer and the Interweb, is interconnected with Google: Google Chrome (which I am using right now). Google search (Duh!). Maps. Directions. gmail. GTalk. Picasa. YouTube. Picnik. google checkout. google translate. Calender. Google analytics. Feedburner. Google Reader. Google Desktop. Google Docs. Google Earth. (Ok ok. I left Blogger for WordPress a while back ago, but still…) and so on.

So if you were google, what’s the next big thing you’d go after?

Would you have said FASHION?

Google launched Google Boutiques yesterday. They did drop the google name and call it simply Boutiques / Boutiques.com. With Boutiques, google aims to revolutionize the way shopping for fashion is done online, with the help of powerful algorithms.

I won’t bore you with the details, New York Times published a detailed review of the website and explanation for how it’s supposed to work.

Anyway, ever the Early Adopter (<– self-deprecating sarcasm) and Fashion Maven (aka I-wear-jeans-and-tshirt 350 days a year), I decided to check it out.

I started out by going through a series of “tests” so the powerful computers could determine what my taste is. Like this:

.

This pair is one of the most "down to earth" in the series of images shown during the "aSSessment/evaluation"

.

.

It turned out to be a long and arduous process of self-loathing…

.

no images were found

.

which proved my point that some of these things are not meant for you if you have trouble seeing the point. In the case of fashion, if you don’t see the point, you are either too poor, too old, or not thin enough. Or all of the above, which I believe applies to 90.5% of the population. 1% is so filthy rich they can look like whatever and people will still be fawning over them. 8% of the rest of the population is simply self-delusional.

.

At the end, a verdict was given, according to the strong and powerful algorithm, my style and taste is…

.

.

I can’t blame Boutiques.com though, after all, I DID hit SKIP too many times and it became depressed and wanted to get away from all of this too…

.

.

… and don’t tell google, but I think I drove it to drink too.

.

.

.

.

.

Coda: Despite the fear and loathing I went through, in the end, I think there are loads of fun that can be had with Boutiques.com. This is online window-shopping and virtual magazine clipping (Think: Tumblr for fashions, fashions that are for sale), and for the competitive amongst us, another place where you can amass followers, this time, with your keen sense of style.

Oh yes he is (oh yes he is), oh yes he is (oh yes he is).
He flits from shop to shop just like a butterfly.
In matters of the cloth he is as fickle as can be,
‘Cause he’s a dedicated follower of fashion.
He’s a dedicated follower of fashion.
He’s a dedicated follower of fashion.

.

In which I talk about “National UnFriend Day” aka NUD but ask you not to Unfriend my sorry ass

18 Replies

Ah Jimmy Kimmel. My favorite Late Night Show host. (Sorry darling Wicked Shawn. I know you have the super hots for the other Jimmy. Although it pangs me to disagree with you, I believe that THIS Jimmy is so much funnier as a talk show host… Well, now we won’t fight and each have our own Jimmy to jimmy with… )

My Jimmy decided to take on Facebook, the giant that just became a behemoth now that Facebook is offering a form of uber-email @Facebook.com that aims to keep all our young hooked on Facebook and never have any reason to go anywhere else. The thing with Facebook is that You and I and Jimmy are not Mark Zuckerberg’s target audience: he went straight to talk to high school students when they were designing Facebook email. This is where social media is like shopping on Rodeo Drive:

If you have to ask WHY, it is not meant for you.

.

Jimmy Kimmel is trying to save Friendship (as we know it) by urging folks to unfriend friends that are not really friends on their Facebook. He calls today, November 17, the National UnFriend Day, aka NUD.

NUD is the international day when all Facebook users shall protect the sacred nature of friendship by cutting out any ‘friend fat’ on their pages occupied by people who are not truly their friends.

[And more importantly] Without guilt or retribution.

In one of his tongue-in-cheek skit, Jimmy suggested this method to see who one’s real friends are: “Update your Facebook status to say, ‘I am moving this Friday and I need movers”; those who that show up are your real friends.”

The fact that I am undercover as far as this blog is concerned, that I have two Facebook accounts and I update one account a lot more often and with more candor, that I maintain two Twitter accounts and I clearly identity with the one where I am not using my real name, points to the other fact that I have a very different definition and interpretation of “friends” from what Jimmy is based on for his new holiday.

Nevertheless, hilarity (has) ensued and I have been enjoying the comedic aspect of it.

From William Shatner (of course!), Danny McBride, Dr. Oz, Lisa Kudrow (“I know friends. I used to be one.”), Wolf Blitzer,

And there is some truth to what Jimmy presented in one of his fake tirades:

All men were not created equal. Some of them are very annoying!

.

The most brilliant, most awesome thing, up until now, that came out of this fake NUD holdiday is the holiday theme song by WAR, called, you guessed it, “Why can’t we UNfriend?”

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vl-kYbgCsI

Mens Size Small

13 Replies

This Sunday I dragged my kids shopping.

I would like to emphasize how unusual this was: I am not crazy. I do not go shopping with them any more because I treasure my sanity and I dislike turning into a banshee inside the store. My secret banshee identity is reserved for inside the house, away from prying eyes. Thank you very much. I shop online. I shop online for everything, including shoes for everybody. But there was a rumor that it would start snowing on Sunday night. And that it would continue to snow the whole week. (Later I checked online and could not find any evidence of such a rumor even existed. I decided to change my radio alarm clock away from the classic music station because Mozart must have given me that piece of false intel when I was still groggy at 6:45 am on a Sunday morning… I was perhaps extremely susceptible to such intel because of 20 Prospect’s pictures of snow-covered MLPS which is only, after all, 7-hour drive away.)

I was on a mission: Winter jackets. Snow shoes. Snow pants. Gloves. Besides, Gap and Old Navy was having the 30% off everything sales.

Like almost all 7th grade boys, my son does not want to be bothered with his outward appearances. T-shirts. Sweat pants. If I ask him to dress up, he wears jeans. He does not own clothes with collars except his band uniform polo shirt. Don’t get me wrong: this coolness towards fashion, I am pretty sure, saves us a lot of money and I am not complaining.

But there was a sale going on at Old Navy! I practically had to beg him to let me buy him some clothes since Christmas is not far away and I prefer not to have to pay regular price for “emergency good clothes” later. As soon as he granted me the permission, I realized that he has outgrown the Boys’ Department.

We are now in Men’s territory. My son, according to the fashion industry and the arbitrary sizing chart, is now a young man.

A rite of passage. Right inside the dressing room at Old Navy. He is now Mens Size Small.

I am not sure whether he saw this as anything significant, but he clearly was energized by the clothes that I brought into the dressing room: Military-inspired Dress shirts (which by the way was $15 plus 30% off. SCORE!). Zip Pullover Cable-Knit Sweaters.

He looked all of a sudden so grown-up in these men’s clothes and he himself noticed it too. For the first time, I watched him “modeling” in front of the mirror, soaking his new image all in, feeling self-assured, proud, and probably a bit cocky too.

He showed me the latest dance moves. (When did he learn these things?) The pop singer hair flip. Then he did what he called an “ab roll” (Huh?) and I realized that my son actually has a six-pack or at least the sign of it and he clearly has developed some nice biceps. When did this happen? Is this the same picky eater who is able to put on and take off his jeans without unbuttoning first? He topped this all with that famous dance move by MJ. (At this, I had to roll my eyes and tried hard not to laugh while giving him the tsk tsk appropriate amount of disapproving look)

He’s growing up so fast. Noooooo. 12 is still a small number in the scheme of things right? Right?

All of a sudden I regretted ever forcing him to look less like a bum. Looking like a bum is fine by me now, really. I swear!

“Do you really think I look good in this?”

“No you look absolutely awful!” I said with exaggeration.

He laughed. “Good. Could I get these please?”

The new shirts and sweaters are now hanging in his closet away from his day-to-day clothes (t-shirts, sweat pants and jeans) which are crammed into his dresser. I wonder how long before he actually remembers the older him that he had a glimpse of and decides to wear the Men’s Clothes we got him this Sunday.

Update:

One tricky thing about parenting boys during the awkward period (say between 12 and 18?) is that you never know which one you are going to get at any given moment, the boy or the man?

My son is sitting here at the kitchen table doing his math homework. I thought I head him humming, “It’s raining men. Hallelujah!”

“What? Are you singing ‘It’s raining men’?” I chuckled.

“Oh yeah. So that’s it. I thought it says ‘It’s raging mad’…”

This is what hope looks like

22 Replies

As a researcher, you hate it when you come across a piece of evidence that proves against the theory/conclusion you are hoping to make. How I wish I could sweep it under the rug. Pretend I’ve never seen it. Plead ignorance. I hate being able to see both sides: Why can’t I just believe in “It Gets Better” and “The kids are more tolerant than before” and shut up?

Before I go off on a tangent, you roll your eyes “Here we go again!” and hit EXIT, please watch this. Just watch this video and we will be comforted to see Glass as Half Full.

THIS. Is what hope looks like.

.

.

I also feel hopeful because for every Clint McCance, the anti-gay, hateful, douche-bag, offensive Arkansas school board member who is in a position to set an example and affect what goes on inside schools yet whose tirade on Facebook ignited a nation-wide outrage in the midst of suicides by gay teens, let’s hope that there is someone like Jay McDowell, a high school teacher in Michigan who asked a student to leave the classroom who walked in on Spirit Day announcing his disapproval of gays, and who subsequently got his hand slapped (one-day suspension without pay) when a parent wrote a complaint letter to the high school.

Psss. Andrea! This kid and this teacher from Ann Arbor, MI, absolutely make up for having to live with NO Costco within an-hour drive.

What Mr. McDowell did was what St. Charles High School in the Chicago area should have done yet was too risk-averse (i.e. BALL-less) when handling their own Spirit Day Controversy. I was still repressing my anger and feeling dejected about what went on at St. Charles High School when Elly sent this video to me. I feel so much better now that I have seen the face of hope and courage itself in such a young person.

.

.

In case you are still wanting to hear some psychotic foaming that I am well-known for: Earlier this month at St. Charles High School, a few students showed up wearing t-shirts with “Straight Pride” on the front in defiance of the school’s participation in Ally Week. Not only that, on the back of those t-shirts were the famed bible verse condemning homosexual individuals to death. With the “first amendment” in mind, the school merely asked the students to cross out the bible verse with a Sharpie and wear a sweatshirt over the t-shirt.

The school congratulated itself on handling the matter well, stating that this was a good thing because it started a conversation.

I am puzzled because the whole “Ally Week” and Anti-bullying messaging thing was not enough to start a conversation on its own, and, based on the whole “it started a conversation” thing, I am assuming that previously it was not known that some students harbor anti-gay sentiments, and therefore their making such a strong statement with the t-shirts was the first time a “conversation” could be started, and that for the first time the students with anti-gay agenda were given the podium to air their points of view, ’cause, you know, what they must have expressed in the hallways, the gym, the cafeteria, the bathrooms, the buses, etc etc, do not really count.

I am also puzzled because, I am going to assume again, that the school has some sort of anti-racist policies in place since it’s going to be a bitch if you attract the attention (and ire) of ACLU by letting little racists off too easily. Imagine if the t-shirts were emblazoned with “White Pride”. Imagine if the students have walked into the school during the assembly commemorating African American History Month, demanding a month to be dedicated to White People “’cause it ain’t fair otherwise.”

Here is what Chicago Tribune columnist Erin Zorn has to say about this incident that unfortunately, imo, has not received enough attention and made enough waves nation-wide state-wide city-wide suburb-wide: (and I am beyond delighted to see someone from Chicago Tribune making a strong stand regarding something that matters!)

“Gay Pride” is an antidote to gay shame — the sense of alienation and otherness in adolescence that prompted writer Dan Savage to start the It Gets Better project to reduce the incidence of suicide among gay teens; kids who kill themselves in part because they’re treated unmercifully by the sorts of peers who would wear shirts to school consigning them to being murdered at the command of an angry God.

And because there is no corresponding concept of straight shame, the expression “Straight Pride” can only be read as a gratuitous and contemptuous response to the suggestion that gay people not be marginalized.

.

This under-reported incident at St. Charles High School found me shocked and dispirited because I have this ill-placed faith in our young people. (Sort of like how I was surprised to learn that there are gay or African American Republicans… What can I say? I am naive…)  I was misled by Pew Research Center‘s executive summary that the new generation is more tolerant than ever.

I forgot that MORE is a relative term.

Here is the reality of today’s teens as reported by Chicago Tribune this week: More tolerant than the older generations yet desensitized.

“The problem is that tolerance doesn’t necessarily mean understanding.”

Growing up with the encouragement to speak your mind, respect relativism, pursue your own truth, they (may) grow up with a false interpretation of First Amendment as “I can say whatever the F I want to say because less than that is not acceptable” and the blind belief that “everybody is entitled to his/her own opinion ergo I don’t have to listen to you because who’s to say your truth is better than mine?”

To this, I would like to give out t-shirts to all high schoolers with these words:

“The right to hold an opinion carries with it the responsibility to defend it*”

* Bible verses do not count as evidence. Thank you.

Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover

15 Replies

I went to an actual Brick-and-Mortar bookstore today. This is a rare occasion ever since Amazon.com was founded in 1995. (I still remember when I first heard about it. “What a stupid name?! Who would buy books online?! And why would I want to buy their stocks?!”)

I do enjoy going to the book stores in real life: I love looking at the book covers, discovering new books via the store displays, getting a taste of what’s garnering the attention of the masses, detecting the harbingers of the next big thing.

Sometimes I simply like to read the clever titles and corresponding designs on the book covers vying for your attention.

“Pick me! Pick me!”

Sometimes I simply enjoy picking them up, caressing the book spines, feeling the weight of words in my hands.

And sometimes I do get a chuckle.

Since I have an iPhone with me now, anything that makes me laugh simply HAS to be photographed. (OK, I admit, having a blog is another reason…)

.

.

.

Actual page from George W. Bush's memoir. Notice that he's using WMD as an excuse to justify going into Iraq?

.

Guess which book is going on my Christmas list?!

.

What is Fascism? "that thing someone else is doing that I disagree with. Not communism. The other one."

.

It takes a comedian to provide the best explanations for communism, socialism and fascism...

.

Raise your hand if you feel like crying because it is Monday? Raise your hand if you could use this book? Raise your hand if you believe that enforcing the said No Asshole Rule requires a good ol' can of Wupass or at least the threat of it?

.

Sigh.

“Mary and Max”

24 Replies

Do you suffer anxiety attack when you attempt to write about something that is dear to your heart? An important childhood memory? An experience in a lifetime? Your favorite book? The most significant events that happened that may have shaped who you are?

Maybe it’s just me. This is why so far I have not been able to write about what happened at BlogHer this summer. Why I did not even mention my going alone to a dive bar in downtown Chicago to watch my favorite band The Boxer Rebellion. It meant too much for me to run the risk of potentially screwing the memory up by attempting to write it down.

Does this even make sense?!

I watched “Mary and Max” tonight. I cried so much over it that by the end there was a pile of Kleenex on the sofa next to me. In my usual fashion, I agonized over talking about it at all: What if you watch it and are disappointed because all my gushing is going to make you go into it with high expectations? But I HAVE TO talk about it. I am still awake because I cannot get Mary and Max out of my head. So welcome to my therapy session, Spill and Be Done with It.

Oh, and if you are going to watch the movie, remember you MAY hate it. There. Now we are safe from disappointment caused by high expectations…

.

.

.

Mary and Max is a feature-length claymation created by Adam Elliot and team (who had won the Academy Award for Animated Short Film in 2003) and premiered on the opening night of the Sundance Film Festival in 2009.  The plot is deceptively simple: Mary Daisy Dinkle (Toni Collette) is an 8-year old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne. Max Jerry Horowitz (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a 44-year-old obese Jewish atheist living in New York who also is later diagnosed to have Aspergers syndrome. Mary is awkward, neglected by her parents, unloved, and friendless. Max is, well, in a similar boat. Their lives intersected when Mary randomly picked Max’s name out of an American phone book to write a letter to. You see, Mary wanted to find out whether in America babies come from the bottom of a beer mug like they do in Australia. For 20 years they wrote and sent each other chocolate, with some interruptions, encouraging and supporting each other oftentimes without consciously doing so.

The movie is consisted to a large extent of the reading of the letters they write each other and of the narrator. Dialogues are kept to a minimum. Some of you will no doubt be delighted to know that the omniscient narrator was voiced by Barry Humphries (whose alter ego is none other than Dame Edna).

There are plenty professional reviews to be found via google search which saves me from total panic attack since I suck at writing reviews which require logics and persuasion. I am better at gushing. It is rather my feeble attempt at keeping what moved me in this movie alive via my remembering the bits and pieces. From the opening lines:

Mary Dinkle’s eyes are the color of muddy puddles. Her birth mark, the color of poop.

To the innocent, “nonsensical” questions Mary asked Max (“Do sheeps shrink when it rains?” “Do gooese get goose bumps?”). To Max’s literal answers to Mary’s questions and his straightforward sharing of his life view (“I like being an Aspie! It would be like trying to change the color of my eyes.”) To the parallel between Mary’s innocent questions and Max’s puzzlement over human behaviors (“He couldn’t understand why he was seen as the odd one while everyone else was considered normal. Humans were endlessly illogically. Why did they throw out food when there’re children starving in India?”)

I want to write down every single piece of these gems.

As in all other stop-motion feature films, Mary and Max is a labor of love. An incredible achievement of art, design, crafts, architecture, photography. More than the visual feast, it is an incredible feat that the story never turned saccharin; I half “expected” the movie to be a formulaic tale of triumph of two outsiders over their difficulties through finding each other in this lonely world. It is not warm and fuzzy.

I am in love with the writing by Adam Elliot. I drank in every word. In my usual crazed obsessive fashion, I envisioned myself swallowing the words whole so as to absorb them directly into my being.

Max: I asked my mother when I was four, and she said they [babies] came from eggs laid by rabbis. If you aren’t Jewish, they’re laid by Catholic nuns. If you’re an atheist, they’re laid by dirty, lonely prostitutes.

Mary: I am sorry to hear that you are fat. Mum says I am fat too and I am growing up to be a heifer… which I think is a type of cow. Maybe you should only eat things which begin with the letter of each day!

Narrator: He agrees with his favorite physicist [Guess who?] that there are only two things infinite: The universe. And men’s stupidity.

Like I said, I had this urge to take out a pen and paper fire up my laptop and jot down the letters word by word. I wanted to remember them. I wished, while I was watching the movie, that Adam Elliot had turned the letters into a book. Because he did not, I kind of panicked as the movie progressed as I could not memorize all the things that touched something deep inside my heart. (I am AWARE of how insane in the membrane this was…)

I still wish he would. Many reviews and blog posts mentioned the epitaph used for the movie:

God gave us our relatives; thank God we can choose our friends.       —– Ethel Mumford

I don’t disagree that this is a major theme threaded throughout the film. However, ultimately the lesson, at least the one that I walked away with, that Max in his unconventional way has taught Mary is this…

Love yourself first.

Remember this.

11 Replies

Screenshot from my new favorite film: Mary and Max, written, designed & directed by Adam Elliot

.

.

“Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.”   — Lucille Ball

“If you don’t love yourself, you cannot love others. You will not be able to love others. If you have no compassion for yourself then you are not able of developing compassion for others.” — Dalai Lama

“NaBloPoMo forces me to change my perspectives on quoting famous people and thus taking an easy way out.” — Lin