I walk by this building plastered with “variations” of “The Son of Man” every morning on my way to work. I always wonder whether Rene Magritte would weep about his painting being used to advertise restaurants.
Although he does not strike me as someone who is obsessed with the divide between high and low/pop arts.
Margritte painted The Son of Man as a self-portrait. This I knew. However, I never knew what he said about the painting until I wanted to tell the story of how I took this self-portrait and became curious of the story behind Margritte’s.
At least it hides the face partly. Well, so you have the apparent face, the apple, hiding the visible but hidden, the face of the person. It’s something that happens constantly. Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.
Confession: I am married to a geek. I am probably biased because I am surrounded day in and day out by awesome people who would have been labeled as geeks and dorks, including the three men in my house, my coworkers, and our family friends, but I really do believe that geeks make the best husbands.
My husband LOVED LOVES D&D (Dungeons & Dragons). In fact, introverted as he is, it is amazing to listen to him as DM (Dungeon Master. Not as sexy as the name implies. He’s basically the emcee, the host, the referee of the game. I also see a DM as playing the role of a storyteller whose imagination sets the stage for the characters to come to life on). You could see the actions unfold in front of your mind’s eye as he describes the characters, scenes, dialogues and actions filled with imaginative details that greatly help bring the characters to life.
In my job function, in addition to engineers and programmers, I also work with people on the business side. Not surprisingly, I am often made fun of by those colleagues (all male) for having married to such a nerd and for all the dorky things we do as a family, such as going to Ren Faire (Renaissance Faire), dressed up to go to Ren Faire, having a closetful of costumes, dressed up to go to Medieval Times (or just, simply going to Medieval Times and genuinely having a great time), (still) dressed up for Halloween, obsessing over Doctor Who, and other geekery in general. It does cross my mind that to these coworkers of mine, we are very UN-American, and I cannot help but wonder what they do with their families on the weekend. Watching football? And… watching football?
Of course when Fantasy Football season comes around, it’s all I could do to not snicker and bite my tongue at the frenzy of these men engaging in D&D like behaviors.
If you ever pick up one of the D&D rule books and handbooks, you will notice the big words used. As a parent, I am delighted that my children are learning and using these words. Furthermore, they are also learning composition when they describe their characters’ appearances and actions, often with complete dialogues. As they decide the next step taken by their characters, they are forced to consider the relationship between actions and consequences, something children are not inclined to doing by nature. In addition, they are encouraged to play their characters based on who their characters are, i.e. their characters act and speak according to who they are, and I believe, this is great training for empathizing and learning how to predict how someone who is not you may behave under certain circumstances. Because the play is free form (albeit within a set of parameters and confines), you could use all the imagination and creativity you could conjure up, especially when you are cornered by some monster and you really need to be clever to get yourself out of the bind.
Some have argued, perhaps jokingly, perhaps “kidding on the square”, that D&D is the gateway drug to all things nerdy. I am FINE with nerdy. I adore nerdy. In fact, I am in awe of nerdy.
Geeks like algorithms. We like sets of rules that guide future behavior. But people, normal people, consistently act outside rule sets. People are messy and unpredictable, until you have something like the Dungeons & Dragons character sheet. Once you’ve broken down the elements of an invented personality into numbers generated from dice, paper and pencil, you can do the same for your real self.
For us, the character sheet and the rules for adventuring in an imaginary world became a manual for how people are put together. Life could be lived as a kind of vast, always-on role-playing campaign.
Don’t give me that look. I know I’m not a paladin, and I know I don’t live in the Matrix. But the realization that everyone else was engaged in role-playing all the time gave my universe rules and order.
Adam Rogers, “Geek Love“, New York Times, 9 March 2008.
The best thing about D&D? I have been sitting here listening to the non-stop conversations and laughter from the other room for over an hour and they have not shown any sign of slowing down.
More than that, I am going shopping this afternoon and I don’t think any one of them will be missing or needing me.
Not that Twinkie is on its death bed. If anything, the Twinkie brand is probably the winner in this sad story of labor struggle, failed business and the eventual undoing of the 18,500 underpaid, overworked factory workers.
In the past week Twinkies have been the center of the public reminiscence because Hostess was said to file bankruptcy. I held my breath as the good news that Hostess and its workers were to start earnest negotiations came and then went. Sadly, it was announced an hour ago that Hostess has won the court approval to start selling its assets and more importantly, to start laying off its 18,500 workers.
We have all joked about how “Twinkies are forever”. Well, in this case, because of the sudden surge of attentions being paid to Twinkies, esp. in the social media sphere – now the arbitrator of brand marketability, I do believe that some VC will quickly swoop in and pick up the venerable Twinkie Brand. In contrast, the workers will be left jobless and most likely fall into the life style of sustaining on cheap, unhealthy food such as Twinkies. The irony is alarming.
I was not going to jump on the wagon and eulogizing Twinkies exactly because I do not believe in its imminent demise. It will live. However, I came across this video posted by my good friend Ry…
In the American Pop culture conscious, there is this curious obsession with Twinkies. One of the new exhibits at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago is about Twinkies. Putting our obsession with this oddity on view.
For once, let’s scientifically study the myth that Twinkies will never die. Observe and report. (I will visit MSI later again to check on the Twinkie that is on view there).
Of course, Twinkies are not the only food that are believed to be evil-incarnate. Why such revilement?
My theory is that half of that ill-begotten fame came from the name, Twinkie. What’s in a name? If it were called “Hostess Cream-filled Yellow Cake”, or, let’s say, Snow Puff, it would not have become such a legend, warts and all. Kudos to the marketing team that came up with this name that is now a major part of American pop culture.
Upon further investigation, I learned that the name Twinkie came from a chance encounter with a billboard:
In 1933, James Dewar, a baker at Continental Baking Company in Indiana, was inspired and came up with this name when driving by a billboard advertising shoes from the “Twinkle Toe Shoe Company”.
This is serendipity! In our collective consciousness for food, Twinkies share a significant space with the shoe in Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush… Ok. Maybe it is proven once again that I am easily amused. TOO easily.
Ode to Twinkies
‘Tis but thy name that makes thou irresistible;
Thou art thyself, though not a Twinkie.
What’s Twinkie? it is nor Monoglycerides nor diglycerides
Nor Polysorbate 60, nor Hydrogenated shortening, nor any other part
Belonging to proper CAKE. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? that which we call a Twinkie
By any other name would induce as much grimace??
So Twinkie would, were it not Twinkie call’d,
Retain that dear longevity which it owes
Without that title. Twinkie, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all the cream.
This March (March 2012), I did go back to check on the Twinkie at MSI, and surprise surprise, it has not aged one bit. Sigh. Perhaps we should start putting Twinkie on our faces?
Twinkie on display (since October 2009) at MSI Chicago as of March 2012
Thanks to Tom for sharing this with me. He gets me.
I am going to take a break from my psychotic foaming over Halloween costumes. I am just going to let this picture quietly sink in… You can see my past ranting here.
This pictures says everything and more about Country Music in the 21th century, after Shania Twain, Jewel, Leann Rimes, and of course, Taylor Swift, after all the crossover frenzy, the “Man! I Feel Like a Woman” sung by every Carrie Bradshaw and her hipster buddies.
I do confess: I know nothing about country music other than, like most people I have the (good) fortune to come in contact with, the “crossover” pop singers I mentioned above. So this is more of a gut reaction, a musing-out-loud, upon seeing this picture and listening carefully to the lyrics. And of course, the # hashtag made me chuckle. I am still laughing.
If you want to wrest country music back from the sissiness, how much more could you have done than a song about trucks titled Truck Yeah! What’s more, the music video includes all the tropes associated with Machismo: trucks (of course), men in boots on construction site, etc. None of them were carrying an iPhone though so I am not sure how they are going to tweet or update their Facebook status with #TruckYeah…
After listening to the song and watching the video multiple times, I cannot decide whether Mr. McGraw is singing it straight or tongue in cheek. Ok, he definitely does not mean for this song and the whole performance to be camp. (I wish) And he’s definitely serious about this anthem of trucks, Friday night football, Hillybilly proud.
I could imagine many of his male fans pumping their fists shouting, “Fuck yeah! We have been oppressed for far too long and it is time we bring swagger back, time we take Country back!” Still, I was chuckling throughout the video. It’s all kinds of awesome. For starters, it’s pretty infectious. By the end of the song, I want to run around singing Truck Yeah! like I’ve got some redneck blood in me.
I find the song and video amusing because I chose to read the whole thing ironically. In addition to the overtly heightened machismo, the socio-economic gap between the so-called “rednecks” that this song seemingly glorifies and seeks camaraderie with and Mr. McGraw the millionaire country star is a sad irony. I am trying not to be bothered by the underlying social mores that brought about this song at this juncture in time because over-thinking is a curse.
Truck yeah!
Below is the lyrics for Truck Yeah! So are you one of us?
Got Lil’ Wayne pumpin on my iPod
Pumpin on the subs in the back of my crew cab
Redneck rockin’ like a rockstar
Sling a lil mud off the back, we can do that
Friday night football, Saturday Last Call, Sunday Hallelujah
If you like it up loud and you’re hillbilly proud then you know what I’m talking about
Let me hear you say, Truck Yeah
Wanna get jacked up Yeah
Lets crank it on up Yeah
With a little bit of luck I can find me a girl with a Truck Yeah
We can love it on up Yeah
Till the sun comes up Yeah
If you think this life I love is a little too country
Truck Yeah
I party in the club in a honky tonk downtown
Yeah that’s where I like to hang out
Chillin’ in the back room
Hangin’ with my whole crew
Sippin’ on a cold brew, hey now!
Got a mixed up playlist, DJ play this
Wanna hear a country song
If you like it up loud and you’re hillbilly proud throw your hands up now
Let me hear you shout,
Truck Yeah
Wanna get jacked up Yeah
Lets crank it on up Yeah
With a little bit of luck I can find me a girl with a Truck Yeah
We can love it on up Yeah
Til the sun comes up Yeah
If you think this life I love is a little too country
Truck Yeah
Backwoods country, city Boy
It don’t matter who you are
Got a little fight, got a little love
Got a little redneck in your blood
Are you one of us?
Truck Yeah!
Wanna get jacked up Yeah
Lets crank it on up Yeah
With a little bit of luck I can find me a girl with a Truck Yeah
We can love it on up Yeah
Till the sun comes up Yeah
If you think this life I love is a little too country
You’re right on the money
Truck yeah!
Warning: this post is probably just going to be me rambling on due to severe lack of sleep, even according to my standard…
These past two weeks have been the annual performance period at my company, the time when we have to write our own self ASSessments and to provide peer feedbacks for colleagues who have requested feedbacks from you. Last year I received 12 requests and I did not turn anybody down. I still shudder when I think of the day 12 months ago when i seriously considered jumping out the window to avoid the tasks at hand. I absolutely hate doing this because I find it extremely difficult to “brag about myself”. Sorry for pulling the “Chinese” card, but it’s true: We were brought up to never toot your own horn for when you do that, that’s a sure proof that there is no substance inside. If you are great, people will notice on their own.
Now, how’s that working for you so far?
In the end, I did survive the annual performance review again. And at Midnight on Saturday, September 29, I have been up since 7 am on Thursday with a 3-hour sleep between 4 am to 7 am Friday morning. AND, I did not have any caffeine all day Friday. I figured I have been running on pure adrenaline since I opened my eyes at 7 am. When I marveled at this fact, my teenage boy said, “How are you not dead?”
Mind you, when we had that exchange, I was vacuuming the house after I did the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen.
Sometimes, you just have to stop for a moment and wonder at yourself.
Wow. I am really awesome. I kick ass. I rock.
It’s ok. Nobody else is going to do it for you. And many of these incredible feats you have pulled off with great aplomb are not appropriate answers for questions such as “What’s your claim to fame?” “What is your proudest accomplishment?”
I once cleaned up my son’s explosive diaper inside the airplane lavatory and he slept through the whole thing. And I did not cry.
I once caught the projectile vomit coming out of my son’s mouth just in time and managed to keep most of the vomit inside my blouse so the carpet was saved. And I did not cry.
When I was pregnant, I had a horrible case of morning sickness. I was in a play then. So during intermission I would rush to the backstage to throw up and get back onto the stage. And I did not throw up on stage.
For the first three months of my son’s life, he basically lived on me, like a kangaroo baby. I managed to do everything with one hand, including making pancakes from scratch. And I did not become homicidal.
I once flew with my two children by myself. When I went through the airport, I had the baby in my hip carrier, a roller board in my hand, my 5 year old’s hand in my other hand, while carrying a stroller on my shoulder and a diaper bag on my other shoulder. AND the baby slept through the security check and the boarding.
Although I’d like to see those people who ask those stupid questions try taking on any of the above.
I know you all have done something amazing like these, and I would like to ask that you go into the bathroom right now, look in the mirror, and give yourself a self-assessment of
Flying Global First on United. We are all giddy with excitement. Better than Disneyland. In the back of my mind though, I’m surprised even though I shouldn’t have by the opulence of it. Is this how the riches have been living, day on and day out? After downing two glasses of champaign that the smiling flight attendant handed me right away, I’m somehow feeling kind of… Dirty…
Books. I am talking about books here. Books made with paper (or if you are so inclined, dead trees). Although I do also love the feel and smell of new, crisp, uncirculated bills.
I have been very happy with my Kindle (which I named Marvin) esp. when I was trudging through 1Q84 in all its 944-page glory. It was a blessing to not have to log that book around for several months. (I did say I “trudged through” it…)
But I miss holding an actual paper book in my hand, feeling its heftiness of promisses and anticipation. I miss wandering amongst the library aisles picking up random books because, I confess, the book covers look interesting or the book titles sound intriguing, like a mystery waiting for you to solve.
These are chance encounters of the best kind.
You all know Chuck Palahniuk of Fight Club fan, and I know quite a few are rabid fans. How apropos was that I picked up this book from the shelf as I was pondering the enjoyment of feeling papers between my fingers that no technology can replace. In his re-introduction to the re-publication of Invisible Monsters (now dubbed Remix), he said that he wanted to do this book the right way, the way he envisioned it when he wrote the book a decade ago, inspired by his strange encounter with a Vogue magazine (What? No page numbers? And they make you jump back and forth to finish reading an article?)
I really love what he said about his desire to recreate that feeling of holding a hefty Sears catalogue in your hands, not knowing what’s inside, and every time when you randomly flip through the pages, you find something you’ve not seen yet. Full of surprises, promises of surprises.
Don’t worry my dear readers. I am not imaging this post to be a book review or something. I suck at that. What I am good at though is to MARVEL at the brilliantness of people and things that I encounter, and at the randomness of such discoveries. There was no reason other than serendipity that led me to pick up This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You by Jon McGregor and scanned through the first few pages. Once started, I was compelled to sit down in the comfy chair and read half of the book while in the library.
I don’t know how to describe the book. It suffices to say that Mr. McGregor is stingy when it comes to word count. But what he accomplishes in as few words as possible is unsettling and seething, the most disturbing kind of malice. I am still haunted by a few of the stories, wondering what happens next?
Brevity is the trademark throughout the book. The story, The Remains, is only 3-page long… The repetition of simple phrases brought chills down my spine. I have been wondering how one could visually, as in a film, convey this feeling so succinctly.
And for my stream of thoughts, conveniently, he is also fond of playing with syntax, and more, using the page as his canvas (apology for using such a cliche. I told you I suck at writing reviews…)
Could eBooks faithfully represent pages such as this?
He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage. George Orwell, 1984
Every once in a while, I have to pause and ask myself, “Why bother doing this? Why blog?” IF I am honest when I say, “I don’t really care if anybody reads these words,” why is keeping a journal not enough for me?
For starters, I have never succeeded in keeping a journal. I must have accumulated dozens of journals with scribbles only on the first few pages: my handwriting progressively became sloppier, and the word counts less, until … blank. Blank. Blank.
So am I really that narcissistic, as I like to accuse myself of – getting it out of the way before anybody else points this out.
Intriguingly, the researchers noted a distinction between types of self-disclosure: introspection, or privately thinking about oneself, compared with having the opportunity to share those thoughts with another human being. Again, as expected, while introspection was itself sufficient to light up brain regions associated with reward, the effects were “magnified” when participants believed their thoughts would be communicated to someone else.
In this other article, “Why We Talk About Ourselves: The Brain Likes It“, it was spelled out even more explicitly. Here is the paragraph that I have committed to memory as rebuttal against my imaginary accusers:
We love talking about ourselves, we really do — that’s what a group of Harvard neuroscientists found while testing the theory that we’re big on self-disclosure, anyway. In fact, say the scientists, we love self-disclosure so much because it tickles our core value centers in much the same way as “primary rewards” like food and sex.
The researchers noted that people particularly enjoyed self-disclosure if they knew other people were listening. When people were given a choice to share their responses with others or to keep them private, they gave up 25% of their potential earnings in order to broadcast the personal info. “[The] effects were magnified by knowledge that one’s thoughts would be communicated to another person, suggesting that individuals find opportunities to disclose their own thoughts to others to be especially rewarding,” says the study.
There you have it.
It is in our psychological make-up, part of the evolutionary outcome. How can you fight that? In fact, more people should be doing this –
Blogging. It is good for the soul.
And since it is 100% fat free and at no risk of contracting STD, it is good for the body too.
Accomplishment Unlocked: My hair is the longest it’s ever been, and I finally get to fulfill my childhood dream of wearing pigtails anime-style. At the age of 40+ nonetheless. Yeah. This hair style is not going out of this house. In fact, this hair style is not seeing the daylight.
Accomplishment Unlocked: Did not break down and cry while working through thousands of Excel rows and ten plus Excel tabs for a work project. Nor did I stab anybody while manually adding ~100 comments from one word document to another. (Don’t ask…)
Accomplishment Unlocked: Was told that I am a true wonder. (Shut up!)
Accomplishment Unlocked: Finally finished reading 1Q84 by Murakami Haruki, all 900+ pages.
Accomplishment Unlocked: Shared a passage about erections from a deeply philosophical book about time and space and reality and the power of writing which is also rumored to be a Nobel Prize contender.
Accomplishment Unlocked: Signed up for Weight Watchers and then managed to gain weight. I am allowed to have 26 points worth of food every day. Now let’s see: A bag of ramen is 14 points. A can of my favorite sweet red beans is 24 points. What’s even worse is that 1 oz. of vodka or any grain alcohol is worth 4 points. Seriously?!
Accomplishment Unlocked: Got kids to become obsessed with Doctor Who too.
Accomplishment Unlocked: Watched the Doctor Who episode “The Time of Angels” with the said kids and were so freaked out that we unanimously decided to skip the episode.
Accomplishment Unlocked: Gave birth to a child of awesome who’s been saying “Bow Ties. Bow ties are cool.” without even being told that that IS an actual meme.
Accomplishment Unlocked: Met another Internet friend in real life and did not encounter any moment of awkward silence the whole night.
Accomplishment Unlocked: Had the BEST grilled octopus and the BEST salty caramel gelato in my life without falling off the weird yet comfy chair in the restaurant.
Accomplishment Unlocked: Pulled off “Smart casual”, dress code listed by Open Table for The Drawing Room. I think we did. We were not kicked out.
Accomplishment Unlocked: Saw Aziz Ansari live on stage!
Accomplishment Unlocked: Stayed awake until 5 am so I could do a quick wrap-up because my life is so interesting and I am sure y’all need to hear about what went down in my life.
