To the women out there (or men who feel inclined to reply in a similar capacity, though I suspect that women the recipients of the more injurious and limiting stereotypes) -- I imagine you must deal with some similar issues, given the more or less inherent assumptions that people make about you on the basis of your sex. How do you endure it? And do you think that, in spite of these perhaps inevitable presumptions, it is possible for anyone to judge you as an individual, without considering it -- or is "being a woman" so integral to your self-perception that such appreciation of your (independent) individuality is unnecessary? At any rate, I am deeply saddened by the fact that a few physical features -- here, breasts and genitalia -- seem to make all the difference regarding how people treat one another.

I have been reading about suicide and methods and came across this article as a "disorder" associated with suicidal thought. I found the latter sections of the piece to be especially interesting.

I wanted to see if they could tell me something important about God before I go to meet the Creator, if the Creator does in fact exist. And I made two interesting observations:

1. The apparent communal atmosphere of the church, whether perceived or real. I'm inclined to think that unlike other churches, the attendees of this one were hardly as close-knit as other congregations -- this being a church on a military base and the members being diverse enough in age to lead me to suspect that they're not Bingo buddies -- and yet many of them felt comfortable sharing their difficulties and joys during the part of the service in which persons ask for the prayers of the congregation or submit their own success stories as evidence of the greatness of the Lord. Today, for example, one woman praised God for allowing her husband to return safely to her from Iraq (which struck me as being odd, since he's apparently been back for a year -- does she say the same thing every Sunday?), a child praised God for granting her visiting grandmother safe passage (cute), a man asked the congregation to pray for his ailing wife (definitely understandable), and a family lamented their car troubles and praised God because apparently the latest difficulty is covered by warranty and will therefore be fixed without incurring any additional costs. What? That last one had me scratching my head -- while I can understand the family being glad about that, if it had been me, I'm not sure I would've submitted it after the preceding testimonies and requests, as it seems kinda trivial in comparison. But perhaps the congregation truly wasn't judging or comparing the individual statements, or at least the speakers didn't expect them to. Interesting. (more...)

So here's a brief commentary I wrote last week concerning the tribute to Rosa Parks. I sent it to NPR, but somehow I doubt they'd print/air it!

Last Monday, Rosa Parks was honored for her legendary role in the Civil Rights Movement with a memorial service at the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church and a slew of news segments lauding Parks' seated stand while managing to say surprisingly little about the rest of her 92 year life. And I don't know how others felt as they watched these fawning bits, but the excessively sycophantic nature of these segments and overuse of the same key phrases rang so false to my ears that I was only "moved" to change the channel in disgust. I don't mean to underemphasize Parks' involvement or dedication to the movement, mind you, but a lot of other factors contributed to its success. Not only do I very much doubt that Parks the first person to be arrested for refusing to give up her seat, but her act would hardly have been so effective if Martin Luther King, Jr., hadn't called for the Montgomery Bus Boycott, nor would his merely calling for the boycott have made any waves whatsoever if not for the compliance of the manifold participants. Listening to the tributes to Parks, however, one would think that she single-handedly brought about the end of segregation and ushered America into a new age in which skin color is a moot point and everyone is treated as an individual -- an age which, by the way, is so far from our present that (if the present glorification of racial stereotypes and social ostracism facing persons who don't adhere to them serve as any indication), most people appear to have given up on it.

I also thought it was pretty ghoulish that people were traveling from all over to visit a corpse in the Capital on Halloween (to say nothing of hearing the terrible demon Oprah Winfrey speak), but maybe that's just me.

Has anyone else noticed that child characters in American cartoons often exhibit a maturity far beyond their fictional years? I was just watching Juniper Lee, whom I'd always assumed (based on her interests, friends, attitude, etc.) was somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 or 16 years old, when she commented that she's 11. What? You've got characters like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who are supposed to be teenagers, yet they've not only managed to master a centuries old martial art and lifestyle with extremely limited resources and training, but then you've got Donatello routinely constructing inventions far beyond anything modern science can produce -- and with no formal education or funding whatsoever. The same goes for the Teen Titans (though I think the Titans are funded by Cyborg's wealthy father, and Robin could probably secure additional finances from Batman if necessary) and other kid superhero groups, almost all of which are self-sufficient despite the members' young ages. And sure, the Turtles have Splinter watching over them in a fatherly capacity, but considering that the average lifespan for rats is 2-3 years, with the maximum recorded rat lifespan being 7 years and 4 months, how much older than the Turtles can he really be? (To say nothing of the astonishing notion that he somehow mastered ninjitsu in such a short length of time! Of course, this particular difficulty is absent if we consider the origin story in which Splinter and Hamato Yoshi are one and the same.) And then there are infants like Stewie Griffin ("Family Guy") and Baby Herman (Who Framed Roger Rabbit?), though their exaggerated maturity is employed for comic effect.

Younger characters in anime, on the other hand, more often than not seem an accurate reflection of their ages -- though this may be a function of certain cultural differences, as the humor and artistic style of many animes (the vast majority of which, in my experience, have focused on the adventures of younger characters) seems, to American sensibilities, more illustrative of juvenile attitudes.

If there were graduate programs offering degrees in cartoon scholarship, I'd totally be down.

Oh, and speaking of cartoons, here are my early reviews of the premiere episodes of "The Boondocks" and "MinoriTEAM"... (more...)

I'd like to be sleeping right now, but they've been at it outside with the jackhammers for the last hour. I wonder if what they're doing is part of an intricate scheme to take over the world or otherwise upset the foundation of society. Or is it all in my head? It's giving me a fucking headache. And since I can't really do anything that requires much concentration -- and therefore a certain measure of quiet -- I'm writing another blog entry.

Question for the creative types: How often do you have ideas for projects for which you think, if you were able to complete them (and the public actually paid attention), people would violently attack you and even try to kill you for vocally expressing so contrary a point of view? Because maybe I'm just paranoid, or overestimating the uniqueness of my own ideas, or underestimating the capacity of people to tolerate, understand, and even accept new and differing ideas (as opposed to simply ignoring them; I can't even get people to publish my fiction, with "too didactic" being among the primary reasons cited for the rejection of my work), but I think I have ideas for enterprises like that at least twice a week. (more...)