okayokfine

I’m totally behind the interwebz as of late and only...

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 11:06:07 -0400

I’m totally behind the interwebz as of late and only alerted to the invention of the Ostrich Pillow recently. Designed to resolve all issues associated with impromptu napping.

It will significantly improve my life and I must have it.

Joy by Zadie Smith

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 16:08:00 -0500

Real love came much later. It lay at the end of a long and arduous road, and up to the very last moment I had been convinced it wouldn’t happen. I was so surprised by its arrival, so unprepared, that on the day it arrived I had already arranged for us to visit the Holocaust museum at Auschwitz. You were holding my feet on the train to the bus that would take us there. We were heading toward all that makes life intolerable, feeling the only thing that makes it worthwhile. That was joy. But it’s no good thinking about or discussing it. It has no place next to the furious argument about who cleaned the house or picked up the child. It is irrelevant when sitting peacefully, watching an old movie, or doing an impression of two old ladies in a shop, or as I eat a popsicle while you scowl at me, or when working on different floors of the library. It doesn’t fit with the everyday. The thing no one ever tells you about joy is that it has very little real pleasure in it. And yet if it hadn’t happened at all, at least once, how would we live?

Source

"Gilgamesh, where are you hurrying to? You will never find that life for which you are looking. When..."

Sun, 03 Feb 2013 12:14:21 -0500

“Gilgamesh, where are you hurrying to? You will never find that life for which you are looking. When the gods created man they allotted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping. As for you, Gilgamesh, fill your belly with good things; day and night, night and day, dance and be merry, feast and rejoice. Let your clothes be fresh, bathe yourself in water, cherish the little child that holds your hand, and make your wife happy in your embrace; for this too is the lot of man.”

- The Epic of Gilgamesh

(Lately I’m revisiting the important texts mentioned in 9th grade World History and I have to say the cradles of civilization had it all figured out, even back then, and we are kidding ourselves thinking that we’ve made any difference at all with the invention of anything.)

I fell into a k-hole of Eartha Kitt videos after searching for...

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 23:05:00 -0500

I fell into a k-hole of Eartha Kitt videos after searching for ‘Santa Baby.’ What a voice. I’m not sure what happened to the music industry but I’ll bet that 2000 years later, when some new intelligent life form tries to dissect the remnants of our sadly failed civilization they’re going to wonder how we went from this to Rih Rih (no shade, serious) warbling CAKE CAKE CAKE CAKE CAKE.

"The Uses of Sorrow (In my sleep I dreamed this poem) Someone I loved once gave me a box full of..."

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 00:55:00 -0500

“

The Uses of Sorrow

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

”

- Mary Oliver

Gone Girl is the best beach read, if only for

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 14:36:00 -0500

the thousand word screed that main character Amy goes on about the cult of the ‘cool girl’:

“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.

Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men – friends, coworkers, strangers – giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I’d want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn’t really love chili dogs that much – no one loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version – maybe he’s a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain. (How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: “I like strong women.” If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because “I like strong women” is code for “I hate strong women.”)”

[…]

I waited patiently-years-for the pendulum to swing the other way, for men to start reading Jane Austen, learn how to knit, pretend to love cosmos, organize scrapbook parties, and make out with each other while we leer. And then we’d say, Yeah, he’s a Cool Guy.

But it never happened. Instead, women across the nation colluded in our degradation! Pretty soon Cool Girl became the standard girl. Men believed she existed- she wasn’t just a dreamgirl one in a million. Every girl was supposed to be this girl, even if you weren’t, then something was wrong with you.”

Twerk. P.S.: “President Obama carried 73 percent of the...

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 14:22:00 -0500

Twerk.

P.S.: “President Obama carried 73 percent of the Asian vote on Tuesday, continuing a two-decade-long march of Asian-Americans toward the Democratic Party in presidential politics.

Obama improved his performance among Asian-Americans more than among any other ethnic group between 2008 and 2012, according to exit polling. His support in the community jumped 11 percentage points, from 62 percent in 2008.”

Really though, I think we all love the Big O because because he knows what it’s like to be the smart quiet one. And it doesn’t hurt that his wife has a closet and law degree that every Asian girl would die for.

I support affirmative action (and I'm Asian, biatch).

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 18:01:00 -0400

If conservatives are still seeking proof of the economy’s improvement under the Obama administration, then I encourage them to look no further than Abigail Fisher, the young woman at the center of the recent case against UT Austin. Abigail graduated from Louisiana State University after being denied entrance into UT Austin for being an objectively mediocre student, having failed to place within the top 10% of her class in high school and scoring a 1180 on her SAT. She was hired as a financial analyst upon graduation. Abigail, however, continues to assert that her opportunities would be greater had she been admitted to UT; she would have been privy to a greater “network” and a “better job.”

What could offer more salient indictment of racial entitlement in the US than the seriousness with which society regards this young woman’s case against a school that she failed to objectively meet the admissions criteria for? Published ‘debates’ on the case will often feature the argument that ‘other’ minorities such as Asians are being systematically oppressed by current affirmative action policies. (Of course, the idea of Asians being oppressed is only okay to mention in a forum where the core issue mainly concerns whites.) While it is an unfortunate truth that Asians have to face heightened admissions standards at competitive schools, the reasons behind why Asians inhabit this realm are worth examining. The overwhelming cultural obsession with education, with status, with high-paying jobs: while these concerns are the bane of every Asian-American child’s existence, they are factors that correlate positively with socio-economic ascension. Regardless of whether an Asian student attends Harvard, Berkeley, Baruch, or Queens College, said student is backed by a legacy that takes pride in education and material success. These factors are why Asian-Americans have largely bested the factors that sociologists name as predictive of poor scholastic achievement, such as family income level, school district, and language impairment.

These cultural factors are unique, and at times they transcend racial lines. It is why, for example, that immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean attain greater education achievement than African-Americans; when fueled by immigrant desire and unburdened by the legacy of being second class citizens, achievement becomes possible. Here, however, is where the problems start. As an Asian-American, the stereotype that I am confronted with systematically is one that encourages scholastic achievement. At Stuyvesant, I was terrible at math, but surrounded by a peer group convinced me that my failures came not from intellect but that I did not try hard enough. So I tried harder and got better grades, despite the fact that I clearly did not possess the quantitative aptitude of many of my classmates. The failure I felt was a personal one; and despite being an issue that caused me great personal grief, propelled me to achieve at the level that I needed to in order to gain admittance to the college of my choice. Had the reversed happened – in which I was clearly good at math, but was instead told that my skills were a personal fluke due to negative categorizations of my race, the outcome would be markedly different. (On further reflection - I do face this as a writer, which is why I’ve yet to ever take this hobby professionally as it seems like the only acceptable published Asian writers are of the Amy Tan-ish variety or the disturbing new trend of LulzCHinesePPLZrcraaaZY suck hipster writing, but I digress. Point is, you internalize that shit. Every day.) This is the reality that millions of black and Latinos in the United States face every day, regardless of their personal background, regardless of their upbringing; a trial of guilty until proven innocent with regards to achievement. Affirmative action is but one issue in a litany of racist assertions that black and Latino minorities belong to a lower socioeconomic rung because of personal choice rather than systemic oppression. These roles that we assign to those in society based on color-lines are so entrenched that Abigail Fisher deigns it appropriate to sue a school for a role she perceives as rightfully belonging to her.

Affirmative action is by no means a perfect system, but it is an important step in recognizing and addressing a complex stew of factors that lead to educational disparity amongst US minority groups. I do wish that affirmative action is more inclusive of socio-economic factors, which I believe will not only achieve its goals more efficiently and address particularly vulnerable populations such as the new wave of very low-income, Southeast Asian immigrants. But racial affirmative action remains important as long as black Harvard graduates are denied entrance to clubs, as long as innocent young minority men are systematically criminalized by society and the police, as long as the education gap remains. I also believe that affirmative action works, and as our leadership position diversifies, ALL minorities, including Asians, will benefit from a world in which whites are no longer presumed to be the automatic elite. That we will stop doubting our ability to make partner, managing director, officer, CEO, once we see faces like our own reflected in those board rooms. When I look at Obama, I don’t see a man who could have taken my place at Columbia had we applied the same year. I see inspiration in a man who was a scholarship student, who had a meandering 20’s, who spent a long time navigating through the strange seas of being a minority in America, who overcame all of these things to be the most powerful man in the world. And when I see Abigail, I see nothing but a vacuum of undeserved privilege, a girl that purportedly fights for racial equality but has never, ever known, outside of her personal delusions, how it feels like to be a minority.

I’m loving Solange’s 90’s vibe. I think...

Sun, 07 Oct 2012 18:21:00 -0400

I’m loving Solange’s 90’s vibe. I think she’s around my age and I know there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wish the Z100 was permanently frozen on “sixth grade.” Ace of Base, Aaliyah, Savage Garden, Destiny’s Child….

P.S. Art history fact of the day - while older sis Beyonce references Pieter Hugo’s work in the “Run the World” video (Nollywood and Hyena Men series), Solange’s latest vid has a shoutout to Daniele Tamagni’s Gentlemen of Bacongo, which documents the Le Sapeurs men of the Congo.

Real Talk

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 11:43:00 -0400

Why the eff do people read Fifty Shades of Grey on the train?!?!?! 8 AM in the morning is a little early for poorly written descriptions of anal play, don’t you think?

This. On the Train. At least 5 sightings a day. Q train is worst offender.

Also, this review on Amazon sums it up:

5.0 out of 5 stars Loved it!, September 21, 2012

PK - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fifty Shades of Grey: Book One of the Fifty Shades Trilogy (Paperback)

I loved this trilogy. I don’t normally read, in fact the last book i remember reading because i wanted to was probably Matilda at the age of 10.

Modern Dentistry and Other Existential Ponderings

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 22:06:11 -0400

Every time I get diagnosed with a minor health affliction (impacted wisdom tooth, cavity, kidney infection, strep throat, etc.) easily resolved by a few antibiotic pills or a small drill accompanied by massive amounts of topical painkillers, I wonder about the consequences of these small ailments in another context.

For example - prior to the invention of modern dentistry, did people just die from cavities and impacted wisdom teeth? (SUCK. Also suck: dying from a cold, childbirth, a cut.) Or did they just down a bottle of Boone’s while some dentist with pliers removed them? Or did most people just die before they reached the age where wisdom teeth mattered? Or were they too busy combating things like syphilis, the bubonic plague, smallpox, marauding Huns, the persistent threat of starvation to care?

The other day I took my cat to the vet (a really stupid move, actually, as she doesn’t even live with me any more, but I relented because my parents would never in a million years deem a cat worthy of its own doctor) and after the usual screaming (from the cat) and tut-ting (from the vet assistants - it took 4 and a towel over her head to clip her nails) the vet told me that the cat should get its teeth cleaned next year. A cat dental treatment requires complete anesthesia which carries its own risk, but apparently it is of utmost importance that any cat dental problems be prevented with a thorough cleaning.

When I told my parents, they laughed in my face. Predictably.

So, the question becomes more absurd - prior to the invention of modern cat-dentistry, what did felines around the world do?

One can only wonder.

When editors troll

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 20:30:00 -0400

Every three months, like clockwork, some editor of a NYMag-esque publication geared at the liberal-arts college educated masses throws some trollish piece out to generate page views. (Because really, a race to the bottom - complete with kitten pix and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo gifts - is inevitable when the entire media business model depends on ADD page-views, but I digress.) Usually when said troll-piece involves race, it usually involves some kind of racial phenomenon *cough stereotype* dujour that white people are obsessed with. Like, black women and their bodies. Or, Asian men and their general beta-state. Or Asian women and why they steal white men. The editor then casts a net far and wide to dredge up (and yes, I really do mean dredge) the Bill Cosbies of every shape and color to ‘explain’ away. O, U Mad Bro?

Yes, by all means do. Please tell me why I only date white guys! Wow, I totally understand - it’s because I’m racist? Oh, okay. I have to say, I feel so good that something like this is out there in the world to damage my little Asian brother’s psyche further. The one that said to me a few weeks ago, “I’m glad I’m gay, because I think if I were straight, I’d have a hard time dating girls.” This is coming from an objectively handsome, 5’11 awesome specimen of a human being on his way to a pre-med Yale degree with an ill sneaker collection and a knowledge of the best real estate in the Hamptons.

Of course, I promptly yelled at him and told him that everything he thinks about himself is a prime example of something called internalized racism - that builds up over time with insidious articles like this, with insidious editors in the media world who only want to generate controversy and pander to the deep, ugly racist corners of the American mind. Because at the root of it all, you have to wonder, with all that’s going on in the world and all the things that the media can shed light on (ongoing environmental destruction, the permanent contraction of the American economy, why TLC is still called ‘The Learning Channel’ and other pressing issues I’d like to hear about) - why exactly is everyone so damn curious about why black women are fat - ? I suspect that the answer is that simply, they already think so. And why DO they wonder why Asian men are beta? Again, because already they think so. And why DO they wonder about why Asian women are harpies with their claws in white men? Yep, already think so - but it’d be great if they could find a real live minority to explain away, as that helps them avoid the issue of actually having to interact with one. (No, watching The Help and Gangam Style doesn’t count.)

Suppose I step back and reconsider this phenomenon with ethnic writers willing to Cosby out with the most optimistic mind. Suppose I consider the argument that these writings are not attention-seeking posts meant to generate empathy and unwitting feed into the propaganda of minority inferiority. Suppose that these writers want to generate real talk and discussions on some issues they feel are causing drama within the community. I suppose the inclination to discuss some of these things are here, but I have to wonder: then why NYMag, why XOJane, why Gawker, etc.? Why shout from the mountaintops to an audience predominantly NOT aimed at your brethren, but at the external? And why preach to a choir that’s already convinced of what you have to say before you even open your mouth?

PS. On a more shallow note (because I’m a catty bitch), why is it that Asian chicks that look like that are always mouthing off about their dating life? Most women I know, myself included, have averaged meeting about three people of the opposite sex in the past 10 years that they didn’t want to automatically spray mace on. Now, that’s a phenomenon I want to talk about - call me, editors.

"Family Stuff"

Sat, 08 Sep 2012 17:20:00 -0400

I recently discovered Huang Qingjun’s series of photographs on Chinese family possessions. Not the newest itineration of this type of art - it was brilliantly covered in the 2009 MoMA installation “Waste Not” by Song Dong - but moving nonetheless. There’s a few things that mark a Chinese household - for one, the red washbin thing seems to be ubiquitous across all socio-economic levels from Queens to San Francisco, to Great Neck to Dallas. I also remember in China the daily tear-off calendars with the big green dates. And of course a big, rusty electric fan probably made in 1952 still in use. Huang’s photographs are touching and do a good job of capturing the frugality of most Chinese households.

Michelle Obama is literally the most perfect woman to ever work...

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 11:55:44 -0400

Michelle Obama is literally the most perfect woman to ever work the earth. Hair, check. Custom brocade Tracy Reese, check. Arms, check. Brain, check. Killer speech, check. Check, check, check. 10/10.

This is Water

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 19:42:58 -0400

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship - be it JC or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles - is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things - if they are where you tap real meaning in life - then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already - it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power - you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart - you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.

The insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default settings. They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing. And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the “rat race” - the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.

— David Foster Wallace

My Asian Dad and Mitt Romney's Muffin Tops

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 13:45:22 -0400

Great op-ed from the NYT today by MARIE MYUNG-OK LEE:

Once, during a vacation, we forgot to refrigerate the doggie bag from dinner, and it sat in the warm hotel room overnight. Someone’s move to place the funky bag in the garbage the next morning set off my father’s immigrant mentality inner-motion detector. He wouldn’t listen to our pleading — we were sure he’d be dead of ptomaine poisoning by noon — as he ingested the entire contents of the carton. Annoyed, he chided us kids for our snobbish tastes, called us wasteful.

I can only imagine what he would have had to say about a presidential candidate so heedless he eats only the top off a muffin. No matter how loyal a Republican, my father would likely have declared Mr. Romney a very silly, profligate man — not the kind of man to be trusted with his precious tax money.

Truth by Alexander - obsessed with this song. I’m not...

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 21:02:00 -0400

Truth by Alexander - obsessed with this song. I’m not eighteen any more so I don’t do song lyrics, but these are good: I’ve seen a million numbered doors on the horizon/Now which is the future you choosen before you gone dying./I’ll tell you ‘bout a secret I’ve been underminding/Every little lie in this world come from dividing

"A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."

Sun, 29 Jul 2012 15:46:03 -0400

“A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”

- Thomas Mann (via saveroom4coffee)

"Courage, I seemed to think, comes to us in finite quantities, like an inheritance, and by being..."

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 21:40:01 -0400

“Courage, I seemed to think, comes to us in finite quantities, like an inheritance, and by being frugal and stashing it away and letting it earn interest, we steadily increase our moral capital in preparation for that day when the account must be drawn down. It was a comforting theory. It dispensed with all those bothersome little acts of daily courage; it offered hope and grace to the repetitive coward; it justified the past while amortizing the future.”

- Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried

legit dopest track since lauryn hill went...

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 16:25:46 -0400

legit dopest track since lauryn hill went crazy.

rayrayland:

Frank Ocean - Super Rich Kids (ft. Earl Sweatshirt)

Definitely, my favorite from Channel Orange.

shared from exfm