the internet is a beautiful thing

For some reason today at work I Googled my name. I do this every so often to make sure there are no n00dz of me floating around out there on the internetz (jokes) but I don't think I've ever gone past the first page of search results. Today I scrolled all the way back to page 6 and I found a total gem - my high school baccalaureate speech. I thought it was gone forever since I don't have a copy of it anymore, but alas! The internet truly is a beautiful thing.

This is probably the only thing I want to remember from high school. I'd like to leave teenage angst, shitty family problems, the tramp stamp and my chubby self complete with terrible dyke haircut back in '04. At least I can leave everything in the past but the tramp stamp- that one's with me forever! Without further ado here it is; I tried to think of the nicest way possible to say "peace out mother fuckers!!!"


Bridges

When you think of a bridge, you probably consider a strong structure that connects a gap between two places, like a bridge over water or a bridge over a highway. Well, I consider high school a bridge. It’s a stable structure. It provides shelter and it carries you for four years from one point in your life to another. When you leave high school, you move on and cross many more bridges to create your own path in life.

Over the four years that we spend in high school, we change very much. We become molded into individuals with every choice we make. Throughout our senior year many people remind us of how much we have changed and grown since middle school and even ninth grade. When I first stepped foot into this high school just four years ago, I was a scared and fragile thirteen year old. It seems to me that we were all much different people back then. Before I crossed the bridge over to high school, I hadn’t thought about the path ahead and the next bridge that would take me to college. I didn’t realize how important high school was in the big picture. Going out on the weekends, going to all the football games and making sure I attended all the parties seemed like all that was important to me. However, as the years went on, my priorities changed as I matured and I became wiser in realizing that these things were no longer as important to me. Somewhere along my path, I crossed the bridge from childhood to adulthood. I didn’t care anymore if people liked me. I didn’t care anymore if being smart meant that I wasn’t going to be cool. I aimed my focus towards my studies so that I could take the next step in my life with ease-the bridge to college.

Thinking back, high school was an important bridge that brought us from middle school into the unknown world of adulthood. Crossing this bridge, getting through these past four years, has certainly been an obstacle. For some of us, these past four years of our adolescence will have been the best. For others, like myself, these years could have possibly have been the worst.

For a long time, I was all too eager to burn this bridge we’ve just crossed and forget about high school, as I’m sure many of you would also like to do. It wasn’t until I read a play in English class by Tom Stoppard entitled Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead that I changed my perspective. One of the characters in this play said “We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered”. This quote is extremely significant to us today because as much as we struggled, and however much our eyes watered in these past four years, we learned more. Not just scholastic lessons, but imperative lessons that we will need for the rest of our lives. Whether it be as personal as discovering who you are, or as trivial as perfecting a math equation, we’ve all learned something and grown from it. Through these lessons, the majority of us have even found ourselves becoming adults. Who would’ve thought? I know we’re all sick of being lectured but I just wanted to leave you with this thought. Never burn the bridges that you cross because the people you have met, the lessons you have learned, and the steps you have taken to get from one side to the other have made you who you are today. This bridge has hopefully transformed you from that awkward middle-schooler to a distinguished individual. Congratulations class of 2004 and as Abraham Lincoln once said, “I bid you an affectionate fair well.”

if you build it, they will come.

True story: I date losers.

I realize this and I’m making a promise to myself that it won’t happen again. Just because you look like Tyrese and have an adorable accent that makes it impossible for you to pronounce the word “squirrel” does not mean you’re good enough for me! I know it’s really lame to make a list of what you’re looking for in a partner but I know that once I publish this to the world (or the 3 people that read my blog), I won’t go back on my word.

My next relationship will be with a total babe possessing the following traits:

• Educated. Preferably holding a college degree, but I do recognize that you don’t need college to be smart.
• You got that ambition, baby. Have a goal in life that doesn’t start and end with owning something expensive.
• Amazing tattoos, or at least ones that don’t include your own name. FAIL!
  
• Must love dogs.
• CREDIT. Let’s make that GOOD CREDIT.
• Makes more money than me. Which means you need a (legal) job first.
• Is into fashion, dresses well.
• Smarter than me. I want to learn from a partner, not have to teach everything.
• Reads more than Facebook status updates. Do I ask too much?
• Atheist
• Straight-edge
• Vegan
• Vampire (I keeed, I keed)
  
• This last one is very important - IS NOT an asshole. I never want to have to justify your words or actions to another human being.

If you or anyone you know has any information leading to the whereabouts of a person containing these traits, hook a sister up!

things i love.

So I am constantly saving pictures that I stumble across that I love and want to have in case I might *need* it some day. I decided to put them all together. Right here.


♥ Bettie Page Cartoon


This is actually the cover of Slayer's "Christ Illusion" done by Larry Carroll, who is quite the illusive artist. Try and find any of his other work, it's impossible!


Immodesty Blaize is an amazingly beautiful burlesque star. Her gown is made of newspapers! Love love love!


I'm a huge fan of Mexian art, especially those involving Dia de los Muertos skulls. This is just a part of a mural called Dream of a Sunday in Alameda Park done by Diego Rivera (see Frida & Diego in there) and features La Calavera Catrina in the middle.


This is another Dia de los Muertos inspired piece. I want to be this woman (at least for Halloween!). This is done by 666 Photography.


I don't remember where I found this one, but I love it. It was my desktop background for a while.


This photo is from Ellen Von Unwerth's Revenge. She's probably my favorite photographer. Revenge is an amazingly beautiful and erotic book of vintage-inspired photos. Sadly, I don't have the book, but you can see the rest of the pictures here.


These are three of Los Caprichos, Francisco de Goya's series of 80 drawings. They were made to be a satire of Spanish society in the 1790s. They are so dark and creepy, I'm obsessed! They translate to "They all will fall", "The sleep of reason produces monsters", "Hunting for teeth".


I was doing a Google search for something completely unrelated when I discovered this image. I'm not sure when this was taken. Real or staged- I'll just pretend it's a temperance poster. I'll also pretend all of these rad old ladies are straight edge. Love it!


Lara Stone. My second favorite model - I don't even like blonds but she is so gorgeous and has a real body. Can you imagine some people categorize her as "plus sized"?


My favorite model EVER, Omahyra Mota Garcia, shot by Ellen Von Unwerth from Omahyra and Boyd. Tattooed and androgynous. You may have seen her in Jay-Z's Change Clothes video, Baby Phat ads, and X-Men: The Last Stand.


Who doesn't love baby heads? I do! (stolen from a blog I forget, sorry!)


Dita Von Teese because she is one of my style icons. So glamorous!


This is probably one of the coolest pictures ever. I would love to have my portrait taken like this. I love Katherine Von Drachenberg, she's super hot, an amazing artist and her last name has part of my last name in it. Maybe we're distantly related?


And last (but certainly not least) The GaGa. Fashion icon who comes with ridiculously catchy music. She is openly bisexual and doing amazing things for both the gay community and to empower young women. This is one of my favorite outfits that she's worn.

vegans are pussies

Recently I saw a blog post where the author gave their take on a link between atheism and veganism. Since I am both atheist and vegan, I found this interesting. I know that the two are not mutually inclusive, but I do know that all the vegans I’ve met are also atheists, but unfortunately not the other way around!

The obvious link between the two lies in a rejection of the norm, a higher level of thinking and rallying against indoctrination. Personally, I became a vegan in November ’07 after being a vegetarian of some sort for close to six years because I am seriously disgusted by the thought of eating flesh and hormones, etc. Furthermore, milk is vile, is meant for babies and reminds me of a lactating woman (pregnancy creeps me the fuck out).

Being a vegan had no influence on becoming an atheist for me, but I realize how how the two just make sense together.

As an atheist, I don’t believe in an afterlife. There is no divine power that’s going to save my soul and take me to heaven for all eternity but not my little baby pug. This being said, why should I think of myself as higher than my dog, or any other animal, that I may (directly or indirectly) take their life? By no means am I a radical vegan, but I do not believe that humans are so much more important than animals that we should be able to do what we want with them.

I came to an “ah ha!” moment while reading God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens. He doesn’t talk about the treatment of animals in religion too much, but he does talk about how religion dictates that humans are above all other creatures and downright selfish.

“Religion teaches people to be extremely self-centered and conceited. It assures them that god cares for them individually, and it claims that the cosmos was created with them specifically in mind. This explains the supercilious expression on the faces of those who practice religion ostentatiously: pray excuse my modesty and humility but I happen to be busy on an errand for god. Since human beings are naturally solipsistic, all forms of superstition enjoy what might be called a natural advantage."

Later in the book, he says “Before Monotheism arose, the alters of primitive society reeked of blood, much of it human and some of it infant. The thirst for this, at least in animal form, is still with us.”

Because an undoubted majority of the world is brainwashed by religion, a majority (though lesser) believes in the animal sacrifice and the humans rule all mentality as put forth in religious texts. Specifically, in Genesis, god gives man authority over all animals (and all that was created). It makes sense to me that whether conscious of it or not, people don’t see veganism as a valid way of life because we are told that animals were put here for our benefit.

Jewish Kosher law says that their animals must be “humanely” slaughtered with a razor sharp knife so that there is no suffering. Animals killed with a knife that is not sharp or has a dent or nick cannot be eaten (sold to the gentiles). The Talmud says that "The mistreatment or cruelty towards animals is prohibited only when there is no profit or utility therefrom." So great, they don’t really permit hunting for fun, but you can hunt for pelt.

There’s a whole lot of animal slaughtering in the Old Testament. The annual Passover sacrifice where a lamb or kid is offered. After it’s blood drained, its carcass is distributed according to Jewish law. The righteous will, in fact, dine on whale meat when the messiah arrives, and god drowns all of Egypt's horses and kills the livestock as part of his plan to liberate the Israelites. (Side note: funny how less popular religions are marked satanic for sacrificing animals.)

The bottom line is that for me, it makes sense for someone who openly rejects religious indoctrination as an atheist, to also reject the farming and eating of animals as an idea that comes from god. Yeah, you may think animals taste good, but doesn’t heaven also sound good? Atheists should consider going vegan, if not because you care for the animals, your health, the environment, but because you wanna stick it to the religious peeps. End of story.



Here are a bunch of bible quotes about animal cruelty and human-centrism.

Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you. -Genesis 9:3

¹Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;

²Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;

³Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.

⁴For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: 1 Timothy 4:1-4

Wherein were all manner of fourfooted beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air. And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and eat. - Acts 10:13

One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. Romans 14:2

Now this is that which thou shalt offer upon the altar; two lambs of the first year day by day continually. The one lamb thou shalt offer in the morning; and the other lamb thou shalt offer at even: And with the one lamb a tenth deal of flour mingled with the fourth part of an hin of beaten oil; and the fourth part of an hin of wine for a drink offering. And the other lamb thou shalt offer at even, and shalt do thereto according to the meat offering of the morning, and according to the drink offering thereof, for a sweet savour, an offering made by fire unto the LORD. - Exodus 29:38-41

why i love zami

There is nothing as bittersweet as finishing a really good book. This particular book, I happen to have read before a few years ago and this was my reread because it was just. that. good.

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name is a “biomythography” by Audre Lorde that a friend suggested to me a few summers ago. I flew through it and its impact has stuck with me ever since. I love to read books that hit me like that more than once, so I purchased the book and fell in love with it all over again.

Why I love this book in no particular order:

1. This is a novel written by a poet, so you can image how the words flow and fit together. Each sentence is carefully constructed and purposefully written. For example, throughout the entire book she capitalized the word Black; she does not capitalize america or god or catholic. Sometimes she capitalizes Mother, and sometimes she doesn’t. Additionally, she fits amazing poetry prose into the novel at times in blocks of italic letters.

2. The beginning of the story opens with Audre in her early life in the 30s and 40s growing up in New York City, born to immigrants from Grenada. The early Audre is both hilarious and worthy of sympathy from her naiveté about what it meant to be “colored” during this time, to her stealing dollar bills from her dad’s wallet to pay kids to vote her as class vice-president (class president was reserved for a boy), to how she didn’t buy the BS the nuns in Catholic school were feeding her. She was the smartest one in her class and yet was punished by the nuns because she didn’t follow directions; like writing her whole name when she was told to just write the first letter. I just fell in love with the picture Lorde paints of this little girl!

3. The way that Audre loves the people that come in and out of her life in this book is rare. She loves them entirely and without fault. Whether it’s her adolescent best friend Gennie, who commits suicide, or the love of her life Muriel, it’s inspiring. Likewise, when she understands that a relationship is not healthy for her, she moves to end it. She all but severs contact with her mother, who she continually butts heads with, and moves out on her own when she’s 17. Which leads me to...


4. Audre is a survivor. On her own as a black, gay female in the late 40s - 50s in New York City, she struggles to make ends meet. She knows that living this way is a piece of cake when compared to being suffocated under her mother’s roof. She leaves home immediately after graduating high school, moves to the East Village, finds work, enrolls in Hunter College, and finds happiness. At one point she has a job as an x-ray reader and sneaks the reading crystals into the bathroom in her socks and crushes them with her teeth, just to make a few extra dollars a week.


5. She is true to herself. Audre doesn’t concern herself with fitting into any stereotype of the cultures to which she belongs. In this time, black people lived in Harlem and Audre moved downtown (100 blocks south of where she “should” live). Audre is a woman, but wears jeans and riding pants instead of skirts. Audre is a lesbian but she does not role play; she is neither butch nor femme. Audre wears her hair natural, in an afro “long before the word even existed”. Although she knows how to type (and owns a typewriter) she refuses to take a job as a secretary. Basically, she rocks.


Although I will never be able to relate to being a black woman or a lesbian in the time when Brown vs. the Board of Education was a real issue, there are many things about the protagonist that I can not only relate to, but admire. There are many passages in this book that jumped off the page and spoke to me like I could have written them myself (or at least part of them). I have compiled these and have read them dozens of times. Enjoy!


"You loved people and you came to depend on their being there. But people died or changed or went away and it hurt too much. The only way to avoid that pain was not to love anyone, and not to let anyone get too close or too important. The secret to not being hurt like this again, I decided, was never depending on anyone, never needing, never loving. It is the last dream of children, to be forever untouched."


“As I say, when the sisters think you’re crazy and embarrassing; and the brothers want to break you open to see what makes you work inside; and the white girls look at you like some exotic morsel that has just crawled out of the walls onto their plate (but don’t they love to run their straight skirts up against the edge of your desk in the college literary magazine office after class); and the white boys all talk either money or revolution but can never quite get it up - then it doesn’t really matter too much if you have an Afro long before the word even existed.”


“How meager the sustenance was I gained from the four years I spent in high school yet, how important that sustenance was to my survival. Remembering that time is like watching old pictures of myself in a prison cap picking edible scraps out of the garbage heap, and knowing that without that garbage I might have starved to death. The overwhelming racism of so many of the faculty, including the ones upon whom I had my worst schoolgirl crushes. How little I settled for in the way of human contact, compared to what I was conscious of wanting.

It was in high school that I came to believe that I was different from my white classmates, not because I was Black, but because I was me.”


“It was a while before we came to realize that our place was the very house of difference rather the security of any one particular difference. (And often, we were cowards in our learning.) It was years before we learned to use the strength that daily surviving can bring, years before we learned fear does not have to incapacitate, and that we could appreciate each other on terms not necessarily our own.”


“For if knowing what we knew, and sharing all that we shared, Muriel and I could not make it together, then what two women on earth could? For that matter, what two people on earth could possibly make it together? The heartbreak of holding on seemed preferable to the heartbreak of ever having to try again, of ever again attempting to connect with another human being.“


“All the pains in my life that I have lived and never felt flew around my head like grey bats; they pecked at my eyes and built nests in my throat and under the center of my breastbone.
Eudora, Eudora, what was it you used to say to me?
Waste nothing, Chica, not even pain. Particularly not pain. “


“And don’t I have the scars to prove it,” she sighed. “Makes you tough though, babe, if you don’t go under. And that’s what I like about you; you’re like me. We’re both going to make it because we’re both too tough and crazy not to!” And we held each other and laughed and cried about what we had paid for that toughness, and how hard it was to explain to anyone who didn’t already know it that soft and tough had to be one and the same for either to work at all, like our joy and the tears mingling on the one pillow beneath our heads.


“I lost my sister, Gennie, to my silence and her pain and despair, to both our angers and to a world’s cruelty that destroys its own young in passing-not even as a rebel gesture or sacrifice or hope for another living of the spirit, but out of not noticing or caring about the destruction. I have never been ale to blind myself to that cruelty, which according to one popular definition of mental health, makes me mentally unhealthy.”

death.

In dealing with death, it’s been easy for me to accept that when people die, that’s exactly what they do. I believe dying means not leaving this Earth for another, not sailing up to heaven to be with your other deceased friends and family (and other cool dead people like George Carlin), but nothing. Dying is returning to the nothing, just like before birth.

I’ve known and loved a lot of people that have died, mostly family members over the years. As someone who has been pretty close to death, I have come to accept it as the end of the road. Today I am faced, yet again, with death. Someone that I grew up with since kindergarten died this morning in a tragic house fire. Unlike the others, he wasn’t old, or diseased, or addicted. This one really hit hard; he wasn’t your average person, so full of life, genuine and kind to everyone. He treated everyone with respect and was revered by all who knew him. I definitely wouldn’t say this about just anyone, but the world is definitely worse off without him.

Death is uncomfortable because no one really knows what exists after life. Most people console themselves by believing that life exists after death either with reincarnation, heaven, or some other means of the “soul” passing on. Assigning souls to physical bodies means sure they’ll leave us right now, but they’ll never truly die. It is customary to say Rest in Peace; God has another angel; He’s watching over me, etc.

I think these are the most selfish things people could say in a time of death. Death should be a celebration of life and a time to reflect on what truly matters, a reminder of how fragile we all are. Death should not be a time when people selfishly appease their own fears of dying. All of these sayings put focus on the sayer, which is not what I think death is about.

I have read all of these death appeasements multiple times today through people’s reactions to the tragedy on Facebook. All I can do is shake my head and try to focus on what’s important. People react to death as if they know it’s not final in what I believe is an attempt to calm their fears about their own imminent demise.

Someone once told me that they believe god is the energy of life, what you give out comes back to you because energy is neither created nor destroyed and when you die your energy is expended into the universe. Although not a bad idea, it’s not what I believe. What happened today solidified my belief that god doesn’t exist as energy, as karma, as an omniscient being in the sky, as anything most people believe. A death like the one that hit today, unwarranted by every definition of the word, brings me to feel such complete sadness. The thought that someone so good could have (what I’m guessing was) a painful, agonizing death means we’re all royally fucked.

I so badly want to believe that my friend is up in heaven and looking down on all of us as many of my classmates do. I’ve often tried to picture my mother as someone who will greet me in the afterlife as the woman I knew when I was a little girl. I just can’t do it.

Some would argue that my thoughts on death make life meaningless. If there’s no ultimate reward, what are we living for? Why should I be good if there’s nothing in it for me?

Each person needs to decide what’s important in their life and cherish it. I tend to live life one day at a time, not thinking about the distant future or the ultimate end. I try to be good and kind to others because that is just how we should treat all living things, reward or not. Life is so precious and extremely insignificant and incredibly disposable all at the same time. And this fascinates me to no end.

"Dying is not romantic, and death is not a game which will soon be over...Death is not anything...death is not...It's the absence of presence, nothing more...the endless time of never coming back...a gap you can't see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound..."
-Tom Stoppard

the vegan lament

Since last week was Thanksgiving, and I visited my hometown, the annoyance of being a vegan around die hard meat eaters was constantly eating at my nerves. Around certain people, something as simple as eating means that I have to defend myself and insist that I eat more than lettuce and bread. Around certain people, I have to lay out my diet and tell them from which foods I get which nutrients as if the average meat eater is healthier than I am (doubtful). Being a vegan around some people is really fucking annoying.

Let’s take Thanksgiving dinner for example. My brother insists on making fun of what I eat and basically equates veganism with some type of eating disorder. “God, why don’t you eat anything? Here, eat this. (Throws his water bottle at me). Just give her a plate of lettuce. Go eat a leaf...”

“So, what DO you eat?”
“Anything not from an animal.”
“So, do you drink milk?”
“No. I don’t eat anything from an animal.”
“So, what about eggs?”
“That’s from an animal.”
“But they don’t die, the eggs don’t hurt them. They want you to take them.”
“Nope, nothing from animals.”

One of my friends from New York called me after Thanksgiving and asked, “Did you eat lots of turkey?” I almost lost it. He was joking of course, but it’s not funny and no I did not eat turkey or green bean casserole or even pumpkin pie. IT’S REALLY NOT FUNNY, it’s really fucking annoying.

In addition to dealing with the actual comments, there’s the obstacle of trying to go out to an American restaurant to eat, which is pretty much inevitable in a small town. The very experience is unbearable pain that I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy. My family went out to dinner on Saturday night to a place the brother mentioned above brilliantly chose. At non-vegan restaurants I never ask them to cook me anything because I don’t trust the chef will make a truly vegan meal and worry there will be butter on my food, or they’ll cook it on a meat infested grill, etc.

At this particular restaurant, the only vegan options on the menu were guacamole and chips and their house salad. I ordered both. After eating every last morsel of the guacamole, the house salad came out. It consisted of a huge plate of romaine lettuce, 1 cherry tomato, 2 cucumbers and a small scoop of shredded carrots. I regret not having photographic proof of this insulting meal, but it’s all true. After looking down at my plate and laughing, I asked the waitress for more than 3 veggies for my salad. She kindly returned with about 4 more veggies to add to the heap.

It’s around this time that I just want to scream or run back to NYC where I can comfortably eat my non-animal food products in the comfort of my own business/life and dine at one of many vegan restaurants I know and love. What is the big deal anyway? I definitely feel punished for not wanting to imprison and slaughter animals and drink cow milk when there’s no way in hell any of us would eat human flesh or drink human breast milk. And to me, no, there is no difference.

I’ve been a vegan for over 2 years and I don’t plan on going back to the dark side... ever. Making snide remarks and LOL comments about me eating meat or not being a “real person” (yeah, I’ve gotten that one too) because of my eating habits is something I’ll never understand.

The rant stops here. This post is partially in response to the article in the New York Times called Animal, Vegetable, Miserable, and partially in response to everyone getting on my nerves at Thanksgiving.