If I Were A Zombie, I Wouldn't Eat Your Brain

Daisy Ad and Summer Hail Storm

2008-06-16T14:05:00.002-04:00

The creater of the infamous daisy ad, Tony Schwartz for Lyndon B. Johnson's campaign in 1964 died at the age of 84.

This ad is really simplistic and just a great representation of the fears during that time. Coincidently, I'm taking a class about JFK's assassination right now and we spend a lot of time talking about the dynamics of the cold war. After JFK's death, Vietnam literally fell into LBJ's lap.

In addition to this, a torrent of hail just came to a stop. There were very ominous looking clouds outside for a while, slowly overtaking the sunshine. The anticipation killed me see as I had to go to the library, but on the entire walk to campus not a drop of rain. In all my nervousness, I made it here dry but I have never witnessed hail such as I did a couple of minutes ago. It seems the weather channel was right for once.

you ain't ARTSY!

2008-06-04T12:59:00.000-04:00

i want to be a SHARK!

2008-05-26T14:42:00.004-04:00

2008-05-21T20:39:00.004-04:00

this is for being ready for sun, a boy from long island, nyc, and missing flosstradamus @ studio b.

Hmong Hip Hop

2008-05-15T13:57:00.002-04:00

I remember a while back, probably when I was still in high school and had the ability to stay up until strange hours and still function the next day, I saw a PBS program on the Hmong. It was around 1 or 2 in the morning and it was narrated by a young Hmong girl who lived in a suburb in middle America. She talked about their traditions and about the shamans within their culture. Although I really can't recall any specific details, it involved trances and perhaps chickens. At the advice of the boy I had a crush on in my history seminar last semester, I picked up The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman. The book talks about the clash between Hmong culture and American medicinal practices over a child with a severe form of epilepsy. So with all these things said, I found this at NYTimes.com. I think what I really find interesting about the Hmong people is their dedication to keeping traditions very closely bound to their people. Of course, there are outside factors that affect this, but indirectly touches on remaining close with the traditions in any culture.

ART TALK! with Barry McGee

2008-04-23T15:07:00.000-04:00

2008-03-09T21:57:00.002-04:00

This was a letter I wrote to my instructor last semester for History 395: 1920s in Europe. Forgive any strange wording, it was a translated draft that I wrote a while ago.

Dear Instructor Scaglia,

I am writing to you just as an informal way of expressing my thoughts. I have a class before yours and I can never make it to office hours, and you have been holding conferences [for papers] lately. I wanted to let you know that I was very impressed by the readings this week. The section by Falasca-Zamponi was really interesting. What I was most impressed by was Mussolini's attention to detail and minutia that built up to this great vision of Fascist Italy. From mannerisms to the specifics of the imagery placed on coins. His idea of a strong body really transcended into the ideals and visions he had for a strong state. The aspect that really interested me was how he saw the Bourgeoisie as fat and living lives of leisure and comfort. I have spoken to you before about how I see the body of an individual as almost a parallel to the state of a population as a whole. More and more, from the readings in your class, I have noticed that forms of government and thought have crossed over into the realms of biology. In the "Sparticist Manifesto," one of the most striking statements I found was, "Germany is pregnant with the social revolution, Socialism can only be realized by the proletariat of the world." Remarks like this are throughout this text and it has provoked me to think that perhaps there are bigger reasons for such analogies and imagery. Perhaps the reason why these analogies work and have come to power is because one can relate so well to the health of their bodies.

One of the very profound things I felt when I was reading Falasca-Zamponi's text was this sense of imagery. I could almost imagine the state of Italy at the time. These ideologies want to become closer to the empathy of man and maybe the closest we can get is in terms of ourselves. The visions of Mussolini are transcribed into rich imagery found in this party he built. Both art and science are part of my interests and although might be frowned upon, but I felt an admiration for such a succinct plan put into action. However, what perplexes me the most is how such aesthetic could be used in a negative way. The body itself is a piece of art, but I guess for me, I also see it as indicative of our own history. How one chooses to deal with our health, our own methods of conducting life are much like our own physiological systems. I hope that you will make comments on what I have written because I would like to explore more of these topics in detail. Thank you.

- Christina

It runs in the family

2008-01-28T20:31:00.001-05:00

This was featured in the NYTimes Style section. Large breastplate necklaces that convey political messages made by Kali Arulpragasam, sister of Maya "M.I.A." Arulpragasam.

Visit superfertile.com to see the rest of her jewelry.

Jeremy Fish Studio Visit

2008-01-18T20:59:00.000-05:00

i just found this at fecal face and its pretty bitchin'. i really admire mr. fish and he's one of my favorite artists of all time. this is his new studio and it is truly awesome. go to fecalface.com for more pictures and other interviews with jeremy fish.

Cause there's no place like home...

2008-01-16T20:55:00.000-05:00

the borough of QUEENS!

The Plague is Back!

2008-01-15T21:29:00.000-05:00

...and Columbus brought you the syph.

According to yahoo news:
Plague a growing but overlooked threat: study
By Michael Kahn
Tue Jan 15, 10:45 AM ET
Plague, the disease that devastated medieval Europe, is re-emerging worldwide and poses a growing but overlooked threat, researchers warned on Tuesday.

While it has only killed some 100 to 200 people annually over the past 20 years, plague has appeared in new countries in recent decades and is now shifting into Africa, Michael Begon, an ecologist at the University of Liverpool and colleagues said.

A bacterium known as Yersinia pestis causes bubonic plague, known in medieval times as the Black Death when it was spread by infected fleas, and the more dangerous pneumonic plague, spread from one person to another through coughing or sneezing.

"Although the number of human cases of plague is relatively low, it would be a mistake to overlook its threat to humanity, because of the disease's inherent communicability, rapid spread, rapid clinical course, and high mortality if left untreated," they wrote in the journal Public Library of Science journal PloS Medicine.

Rodents carry plague, which is virtually impossible to wipe out and moves through the animal world as a constant threat to humans, Begon said. Both forms can kill within days if not treated with antibiotics.

"You can't realistically get rid of all the rodents in the world," he said in a telephone interview. "Plague appears to be on the increase, and for the first time there have been major outbreaks in Africa."

Globally the World Health Organization reports about 1,000 to 3,000 plague cases each year, with most in the last five years occurring in Madagascar, Tanzania, Mozambique, Malawi, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The United States sees about 10 to 20 cases each year.

More worrying are outbreaks seem on the rise after years of relative inactivity in the 20th century, Begon said. The most recent large pneumonic outbreak comprised hundreds of suspected cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2006.

Bubonic plague, called the Black Death because of black bumps that sometimes develop on victims' bodies, causes severe vomiting and high fever. Victims of pneumonic plague have similar symptoms but not the black bumps.

Begon and his colleagues called for more research into better ways to prevent plague from striking areas where people lack access to life-saving drugs and to defend against the disease if used as a weapon.

"We should not overlook the fact that plague has been weaponized throughout history, from catapulting corpses over city walls, to dropping infected fleas from airplanes, to refined modern aerosol formulation," the researchers wrote. (Reporting by Michael Kahn; Editing by Maggie Fox and Ibon Villelabeitia)

Copyright © 2008 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.

In the Science Section of the NY Times:
Genetic Study Bolsters Columbus Link to Syphilis

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: January 15, 2008
Columbus, it seems, made another discovery of something that he was not looking for.

Annotations and Discussion
In a comprehensive genetic study, scientists have found what they say is the strongest evidence yet linking the first European explorers of the New World to the origin of sexually transmitted syphilis.

The research, they say, supports the hypothesis that returning explorers introduced organisms leading, in probably modified forms, to the first recorded syphilis epidemic, beginning in Europe in 1493.

The so-called Columbus hypothesis had previously rested on circumstantial evidence, mainly the timing of the epidemic. It was further noted that earlier traces of syphilis or related diseases had been few and inconclusive in Europe. Yet nonvenereal forms of the diseases were widespread in the American tropics.

Leaders of the new study said the most telling results were that the bacterium causing sexually transmitted syphilis arose relatively recently in humans and was closely related to a strain responsible for the nonvenereal infection known as yaws. The similarity was especially evident, the researchers said, in a variation of the yaws pathogen isolated recently among afflicted children in a remote region of Guyana in South America.

Researchers who conducted the study and others familiar with it said the findings suggested Columbus and his men could have carried the nonvenereal tropical bacteria home, where the organisms may have mutated into a more deadly form in the different conditions of Europe.

In the New World, the infecting organisms for nonvenereal syphilis, known as bejel, and yaws were transmitted by skin-to-skin and oral contact, more often in children. The symptoms are lesions primarily on the legs, not on or near the genitals.

Kristin N. Harper, a researcher in molecular genetics at Emory University who was the principal investigator in the study, said the findings supported “the hypothesis that syphilis, or some progenitor, came from the New World.”

The examination of the evolutionary relatedness of organisms associated with syphilis was reported on Monday in the online journal Public Library of Science/Neglected Tropical Diseases.

Ms. Harper, a doctoral student in the Emory department of population biology, ecology and evolution, was the lead author. Her co-authors included George J. Armelagos, an Emory anthropologist who has studied the origins of syphilis for more than 30 years, and Dr. Michael S. Silverman, a Canadian infectious diseases physician who collected and tested specimens from yaws lesions in Guyana, the only known site today of yaws infections in the Western Hemisphere.

The researchers said their study “represents the first attempt to address the problem of the origin of syphilis using molecular genetics, as well as the first source of information regarding the genetic makeup of nonvenereal strains from the Western Hemisphere.”

They applied phylogenetics, the study of evolutionary relationships between organisms, in examining 26 geographically disparate strains in the family of Treponema bacteria. Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum is the agent for the scourge of venereal syphilis. The subspecies endemicum causes bejel, usually in hot, arid climates, and pertenue spreads yaws in hot, humid places.

Della Collins Cook, a paleopathologist at Indiana University who did not participate in the study but specializes in treponemal diseases, praised the research as a “very, very interesting step” advancing understanding of syphilis. “They have looked at a wider range of the genome” of these bacteria, Dr. Cook said, “and have scared up some new samples from parts of the world and the group of related diseases that hadn’t been available to researchers before.”

But she recommended an even broader investigation of the natural history of these diseases, making an effort to find more people with active treponemal cases where they probably still exist in parts of South America. Cases of yaws in Africa and Asia are periodically reported.

John W. Verano, an anthropologist at Tulane, said the findings would “probably not settle the debate” over the origins of venereal syphilis, though most scientists had become convinced that the disease was not transmitted sexually before Europeans made contact with the New World.

Donald J. Ortner, an anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution, questioned whether the organisms causing the first European epidemic were actually distinct from others in the treponemal family. “What we are seeing is an organism with a long history, and it is very adaptable to different modes of transmission that produce different manifestations,” Dr. Ortner said.

Three medical scientists, responding to the new study, pointed out what they considered shortcomings in its methods and interpretations.

In a critique also published by the online journal, Connie J. Mulligan of the University of Florida, Steven J. Norris of the University of Texas at Houston and Sheila A. Lukehart of the University of Washington wrote that caution “must be used in drawing conclusions about the evolution of ‘subspecies’ that may represent a biological continuum, rather than discrete agents.”

“Firm conclusions should not be based,” for example, on the two samples from one location in Guyana, they added.

But scientists generally agreed that the molecular approach would overcome some limitations of other investigations.

Paleopathologists like Dr. Cook have for years analyzed skeletons for the bone scars from lesions produced by treponemal diseases, except for the mild form called pinta. In this way, they traced the existence of these infections in the New World back at least 7,000 years. But it has often been difficult to determine the age of the bones and distinguish the different diseases that share symptoms but have different modes of transmission.

Dr. Cook said the skeletal evidence for treponemal disease in pre-Columbian Europe and Africa was sketchy and even more ambiguous than in the New World. In the 1990s, scientists reported finding bones in Italy and England, from before Columbus’s return, that bore lesion scars that they said appeared to have been caused by venereal syphilis.

Scientists remain skeptical of this interpretation. If highly contagious venereal syphilis had existed in Europe in antiquity, said Dr. Armelagos, the Emory anthropologist, there should be more supporting epidemiological evidence than two or three skeletons bearing suggestive scars.

In her investigation, Ms. Harper studied 22 human Treponemal pallidum strains. The DNA in their genes was sequenced in nearly all cases, examined for changes and eventually used in constructing phylogenetic trees incorporating all variations in the strains.

An Old World yaws subspecies was found to occupy the base of the tree, indicating its ancestral position in the treponemal family, she said. The terminal position of the venereal syphilis subspecies on the tree showed it had diverged most recently from the rest of the bacterial family.

Specimens from two Guyana yaws cases were included in the study, after they were collected and processed by Dr. Silverman. Genetic analysis showed that this yaws strain was the closest known relative to venereal syphilis.

Ms. Harper’s team concluded that New World yaws belonged to a group distinct from Old World strains, thus occupying the place on the tree more likely to be intermediate between the nonvenereal strains previously existing in Europe and the one for modern syphilis.

If this seemed to solidify the Columbus hypothesis, the researchers cautioned that a “transfer agent between humans and nonhuman primates cannot be ruled out using the available genetic data.”

Dr. Armelagos said research into the origins of syphilis would continue, because “understanding its evolution is important not just for biology, but for understanding social and political history.”

Noting that the disease was a major killer in Renaissance Europe, he said, “It could be argued that syphilis is one of the important early examples of globalization and disease, and globalization remains an important factor in emerging diseases.”

happy 2008 - oohhhh.

2008-01-03T14:53:00.000-05:00

another brooklyn party. i danced with a nice asian boy who goes to ucla, whom i will never see again. ever think about the people you will never see or talk to again and how sad that is? well, just don't tell my boyfriend.

lieeeee to my faceeee

2007-12-17T19:34:00.000-05:00

queens of the stone age - 3's and 7's.
because tits and fast cars never cease to satisfy.

hello, again.

2007-12-01T01:33:00.000-05:00

i've been desperately avoiding you. i realize that theres lots of back posting and old news that everyone in internet land probably already knows about, but i promise (fingers crossed) that all of it will be up in short time. but today, just for amusements sake, i rustled around the internet for some updates and soul-uplifting. so, i will just leave you with the trailer for beautiful losers. its a documentary by aaron rose and if you're familiar with the book of the same title, you should be excited. its scheduled to be released sometime in spring 2008.

2007-10-08T23:46:00.000-04:00

yo, i just wanna feel good again.
like, nyc good.

i miss that fucking place. its only when youre not there that it feels so good to be nostalgic.

s.s. quilted northern

2007-10-02T21:57:00.000-04:00

we can save our asses with quilted toilet paper, but it won't make our shit go down any easier.

s.o.t. - Save Our Toilet.

send non-personal checks, cash, credit/debit card.
its a reasonable cause - i swear.

2007-09-25T22:01:00.000-04:00

did you know my grandmother can say "mooncake" with impecable accuracy. no accent at all.

I'm Trying To Help With Aesop Rock

2007-09-11T22:24:00.000-04:00

ok, ok, so i have been putting up a lot of aesop rock stuff lately because his new album just came out. but contrary to all my school girl squealing, i have not personally listened to it. why? you ask. well, simply put, im not going to pirate it off the network at school just so i have it in my itunes. i want to hear it in its entirety with it physically in my hands.

in addition to this, aes' has been getting a lot of attention from mtv. he recently did a string of videos for their "overdrive" section of mtv.com, which includes blockhead as a co-host and a monkey named charlotte. you can view it at mtv.com. as for other footage, you'll probably have to watch it the old fashioned way - through an actual tv.

in response to this however, blockhead has shared a nice little post on his own myspace with his thoughts about the mtv exposure. its a pretty accurate summation of those who have been disillusioned by mtv, (myself included), long ago, but still believe artists like aesop rock need to feed the fam at the end of the day.

MTv , integrity and and bullshit backlash

ok, so, as you may know, aesop has been featured at the mtv artist of the week. all week he is being featured between the shows and pretty much getting more press then ever imagined. so, when he got offered this he was obviously torn. for one, it would be more exposure then he's ever gotten but on the other hand, it's also mtv and we all know mtv isn't exactly killing it in terms of musical quality (or music at all). after considering it and getting the terms right (not financial terms but actual control over how it would all go down) he decided to do it.
now, when i heard, i was amped. as bad as mtv can be , i'd be full of shit if i said i hated it. i watch it and make fun of it...but i also know the power it has. he then asked me to join his as his sidekick on some comedy relief shit so i was definitely down. i was super hyped about that cause, well....shit, it sounded like fun. so we did it. it went great. the mtv people were mad cool and totally accomodating. they gave aesop full control and he had input on everything that went down.
so, today, it gets put on tv. i'm amped. aes is excited. little did we know the shit storm that would kick up from it.
we get on the internet today and people are losing their shit like it's the end of the fucking world.
so, that long winded explanation is really there just so i can say this:
chill the fuck out
no one has sold out. no one is changing.
let me explain something. if, as an artist, you do whatever you do as you would like to do it, there is no selling out. is aesop's new album a pop album? of course not. is he rapping about doing the fucking soldja boy dance? is he rapping about cars and clothes? not at all. in fact, he pretty much made the most personal album he's ever made. pretty much the opposite of selling out.
another hunk of shit i've been hearing is people saying "when the teeny boppers get a hold of his music it'll get played out!". here's a huge problem with underground music. everyone wants to have the underground musicians as their own little secret. something only they're up on and no one else truly understands. but the problem with that is when that artist gets some light, all of sudden motherfuckers act like they're selling out or falling off. this is bullshit. sure, coincidentally, some do fall off or sell out when they're faced with fame..but it's not a rule. let the music be the judge. holler at me when aesop does a song with jermaine dupri about his rims. the point of making music is expressing yourself. when people pick up on what you're doing it's an amazing thing. weather that attention grows or stays stagnant isn't really in the artists hands. it's in your hands. if you love aesop, don't let the thought of someone you don't approve of liking him sway your opinion. that is trulely some bitch shit.
on another tip, all you complaining about MTV only playing shitty music and thinking that will somehow effect aesop or his music.. you ever think for a moment, perhaps, this is a step in the right direction? them recognizing an artist like aesop is pretty crazy. maybe, if this continues, it won't be all fall out boy and hey bay bay and they'll actually get back to what the station was intended for. exposing people to good music.
all i'm saying is judge the artist by his music. never forget, we are musicians for a career. this is how we cloth and feed ourselves. if we are still able to do that without compromising our music, then you should all be happy about it. turning down major exposure like that is pretty much self defeating no matter how you slice it. it's our job to make good music. it's your job to enjoy it. let all the middleman stuff happen and start complaining when you no longer like the artists music. there has been no intergrity tarnished. i promise you, aesop has the most musical integrity of any artist i've ever met. he wouldn't change the way he does things for a million dollars. in fact, he's made a career on doing what he wanted to do. if anything, it's that intergrity that got him on mtv. so calm down and enjoy the good music. it's not going anywhere.
thanks.

St. Apollonia

2007-09-09T18:32:00.000-04:00

today is the start of football season. a big deal for buffalo. if only their team didnt suck.

today is also when aesop rock will be playing irving plaza.
its rainy and dismal. maybe this is why i dont feel well. things seem very grim.
a day meant for coffee inside and reading, or even jotting down silly thoughts.
a day for watching tv and eating ice cream on your boyfriend's bed in your underwear.

Spank Rock and Benny Blanco are...

2007-09-09T00:30:00.001-04:00

Spank Rock and DJ Benny Blanco are putting out an 2 Live Crew inspired EP that places ass, tits and pussy in your face. Although vulgar to the extreme at times, spank rock's rhymes are undeniably good and catchy. Feeling a little bit of guilt just comes with the territory. However, is there a line that is drawn between this album and mainstream hip hop? Probably not. Although there are differences, it is an album that should be taken with a grain of salt. The lyrics seem so extreme at times, they seem completely fictionalized and romanticized. While, mainstream hip hop completely legitimates cheating and objectification of women. What I've always liked about Amanda Blank is her ability to rap about her own sensuality and femininity in the same fashion a man would talk about his penis. She appears on one of the tracks on the album (as well as other collaborations with spank rock, m.i.a, etc) and provides that juxtaposition that perhaps, isn't seen in a lot of hip hop nowadays (except for maybe khia).
This is really an informal rambling, but I am a lover of spank rock and if you are too, you should definitely give it a listen.

hello freshmen.

2007-09-07T15:59:00.000-04:00

while i was unpacking the random crap box (yes, i'm sadly still unpacking), i found a drafted letter to my freshman RA. it was a complaint letter about the noise upstairs. notice the high volume of grammatical errors and sarcasm due to being enraged and sleep deprivated.

october 25, 2005
dear patrice,
without fail, almost EVERYDAY, at 1am, people come out of their rooms and the noise level rises dramatically. i'm not sure at what exactly is the cause of this, but this happens almost everyday. i do not mind this on the weekends, but on weekdays it is highly intolerable. i would like and hope that every person that comes to this academic institution is literate, in which they would be able to read the signs telling them the exact times of "quiet hours". if they do not understand, i would be happy to explain it to them. not only are walls paper thin in this dormatory, but there is an extremely loud echo in my particular room. this would lead me to address the noise level upstairs as well. although this is momentarily muted or muffled due to the large volume of complaints lately, the fourth floor will surely wake me up again.

clearly, this letter was an unfinished one that i never slipped under the door or gave to my RA.
after reading this actually, i have come to wonder just how i got an A in english that year.
i look at the new freshmen and scoff, just as i had last year. how silly we were (and drunk, mostly). how young and almost too carefree to realize that we were stupid. or in my case, how small and scared i looked. inside i felt and knew i wasnt that person, but it seemed as if my insecurities were transparent. i look at the new freshmen now and wonder if i looked the same as they do in someone else's eyes.

oh, by the way, listen to mad decent radio. its quite ill. podcast yourself.

aes-to-tha-rizzle.

2007-08-28T01:44:00.000-04:00

due to some confusion or even perhaps, some lazy people at definitive jux, i do not have the new aesop rock album, none shall pass at the moment. reviews, soul crushing tears of pain because i cant take not being able to go to his show, or praises of his mind-numbing genius soon. in the meantime...

the whisperer - sleepmurmuring, again.

2007-08-27T01:53:00.000-04:00

By Peter Scheck - Generation Magazine, October 10, 2006

There’s a smell called chimney that murmurs of smoke and cold at the same time and you can only smell it for the first few minutes that you’re outside. Then you start complaining.

Some people are affected by seasons a lot more than others. I think there’s something called seasonal depression that a friend of mine used to get, and I get it too.

In Buffalo this hits harder than a bullet.

When I first got to Buffalo three years ago (my father refers to this as abandoning me) my parents let me hop out of the car myself. It wasn’t especially ceremonious. Moving here looked terrible, and it was worse.

That was the last time I was able to cry on my own. I lived on the eighth floor of a brick tower with a tile floor. I remember vomiting out of the window onto the tunnel below, its dark orange light reminding me of a book my father and I used to read.

That book was about chickens trying to break out of captivity. I think. I remember them walking along a road and nearly being eaten by a fox. I really looked forward to my father reading that part of the book, and then I screamed because I didn’t like foxes. Before long, the chickens came to a factory and I’ll never forget the illustration in this book, as orange as a hellish sun. A feeling of fear echoed through my head every time I stepped foot in that tunnel.

I had a great view of the University Inn, though, even if I had no idea in which direction it was from the front door of my dorm. It had a giant red florescent light. I wonder if anyone ever stays there.

Pretty much every day I ate pretzels and drank soda. I was really concerned with downloading TV shows onto my computer and staying up all night to watch them. My favorite nights of the year were the ones when it snowed a lot because I could open my window and still be warm. Free heat is a feature I will forever miss.

The Ellicott dorms, when they were made in 1974, were created to be riot-proof. You already know that. That’s why they’re really long and confusing and it’s impossible to meet anybody anywhere. If I learned one simple tip it is to never move in anywhere without a front door.

That was the end of that era, I guess. And what’s more, it worked. The idea of a riot seems ludicrous to me. Anything could happen on this campus, with no student concern.

I can’t believe parents can drop their kids off at a place like the Ellicott Complex with a clear conscience. The place is called a complex; if that’s not enough, it’s located in the middle of what used to be a swamp. Now it’s a swamp with a bunch of repulsive buildings on it.

Anyway.

I didn’t join any clubs, preferring to sit around my room and listen to music. I played the piano a lot and generally screwed around. I also got a lot of tattoos that I now borderline regret.

Then, before I knew it, it was time to go back home to my folks. I told them I was never going back to school, and they said that was okay. I stayed home all summer and worked at a nursery, selling trees to old folks. That was exciting.

A week before school started, I decided to come back. UB didn’t have any housing left, so I came up and found an apartment to move into, bought a dog, and kept going to school. I kind of liked it.

Buffalo has a way of being colder than anyplace on Earth, not so much because of the snow or even the wind, but because the sky is so big. It feels like this city never ends, it just goes on until you can’t see anymore. That’s a cold feeling.

The seasons last longer in Buffalo than anywhere else.

Then came my job at a record store which I was pretty quickly fired from. I kind of sucked at selling records, but it made the time go by.

My apartment was on the bottom floor, and for the first time, I was above the city.

Generation is an SBI publication at the University at Buffalo - Generation.buffalo.edu

Introducing...Nico II

2007-08-23T18:47:00.000-04:00

she came to me in a dream.
she isnt a replacement for Nico I because she ran away, but rather, a fun crafty "chicken pillow" for someone who really misses the real Nico.

those aren't mosquito bites as my aunt called them, its her heart.

"pies para que los quiero si tengo alas para volar." - frida kahlo

feet what do i have them for i have wings to fly.

what can i get for a ten dolla?

2007-07-26T00:11:00.000-04:00

apparently, a cab ride. cause thats exactly how much it cost me to get home at 3 in the morning on a wednesday night.
perhaps she wanted to be a diva, or maybe she wanted to reassert the validity of her name, but m.i.a. kept me waiting for 3 hours and i deserve my 10 dollars back or some other type of compensation, but it was a good show nonetheless.

low budget from hollertronix

and she dances!

Sirenfest 2007

2007-07-22T00:13:00.000-04:00

i was pretty upset at sirenfest this year. quite honestly, it will never top siren #1 (our first year of siren). it was the longest train ride of my life. all to eat some pizza and watch m.i.a. and the new york dolls.
tom!
choi choi!

coney island!

trifecta <3

quadrilateral

m.i.a.

new york dolls

you + me = nyc

2007-07-20T17:26:00.000-04:00

this morning, after i took a shower, the breeze was good. it brushed up against me, luring me to go outside. the sun helped too. it was so inviting that spending the day with myself in the city streets was only appropriate. i took the day off from volunteering at the hospital, which i both despise and somewhat enjoy. i desperately need the hours, but from the way it looked through the windows, it seemed like i had made the right decision. i havent been doing any recreational travels into the urban island that i frequent simply because my monetary situation is nothing short of insufficient and dead. i can barely afford metrocards and/or food. i have finally held in my pride and stubborn tendencies to ask for money, (which i will hear about - i am sure of). oh the woes of being a 20 year old girl who lives in the city and loves to shop, hmm? despite knowing and wanting to purchase items of cloth, buttons, stitching and thread i bypassed it all. i drifted in and out of stores. tried on a pair of sneakers, ones i have been wanting, but for some reason didn't seem to agree with me at that moment. being at union square always makes me want to lie in the grass, have a bite and drink coffee while reading a good book. today was especially inviting because i'm reading the virgin suicides and i am well on my way to finishing it. the great flowing air made me want to wear a dress, freeing my legs from enclosing jeans, and flip flops so that my toes could wiggle in the sunlight. instead, i was wearing my grey v-neck shirt from american apparel (which i love, even if i will always disagree with the pricing of their products - such ridiculousness!) the air lifted my hair, twirling it, as if there were invisible fingers playing with childhood dolls. the fingers permeated my thin shirt and whirled dirt and dust from the streets entangling them among my being. i listened to a new flosstradamus mix i found through some blogs and the new song from the virgins on repeat. the handkerchief i tied to my bag with the polka dots and anchors flapped about in the wind and my bag grew heavy from new literature i had picked up. free little zines scattered about, in stores and street corners, in bright plastic bins. the only thing i purchased today was an espresso milkshake from think coffee bar on mercer street. its creamy blended mixture negated its price, but i took note that i was not to have it too often, as it was pricey and probably fattening as well. it lasted only a couple blocks, but provided bliss for the most part. i wasnt particularly tired, but i guess i grew weary, (which is strange) of shopping, or in actuality, window-shopping. i got back on the train to head for home. across from me on the 6 train sat a chinese couple. i stared for long moments as if no one would notice or care to think that my behavior was odd. they didnt remind me of my grandparents but of a young couple. the man had salt and pepper hair, while the woman wore pistachio green. when they spoke to each other their heads came close to each other, listening intently, but not too closely like when a secret was passed through the airwaves. they held bags full of groceries that reminded me of my grandmother because they were the same. it was picturesque to me because of its simplicity, because it was how i envisioned me and my lover. to carry on day to day in such a simple manner would make me placidly content. shopping for groceries and traveling in underground veins, connecting us to other organs of the city, bringing us home. i only hoped to live such a reverie. i read the copy of the village voice i had picked up while getting coffee. m.i.a. was on the cover and it made me even more excited for sirenfest and dancing to her music in a coney island street on a summer night. i continued onto the 7 train and as we exited the tunnel, it exposed snaking metal containers full of people traveling into queens. our release felt like an exhale of a large sigh. i thought about having sex with my boyfriend though i didnt have a large urge to be with him today. it just made me content to think of him and his tumescent exposed nature when we made love. i scanned the buildings and forms that have been etched into my mind through constant travels on the subway system. i breathed heavily because of the newly erected apartments and condos that rose to overshadow old and tired buildings surrounding it, whispering gentrification all about the words long island city. i continued my book until i arrived home.

dear this is soo high school

2007-07-12T11:09:00.000-04:00

today i got on the bus after class and as soon as it pulled away from the curb, the cute boy in my calculus class appeared.
i was going to wait for the other bus because it was a little crowded, but i didnt.
you stupid, stupid girl.

sincerely,
the girl with a boyfriend who's already good at calculus

got her toes done up with them finger nails matchin'

2007-07-09T16:33:00.000-04:00

fun at Studio b
July 6th - Chromeo, Flosstradamus and Kid Sister

j2k aka young josh from flosstradamus and real sister, kid sister. i swear, she's much cuter in person.

chromeo

not so good pictures of flosstradamus dj-ing

very tired dunks.

by far, this was one of the best shows/clubs ive been to*.
i really loved kid sister and flosstradamus. they really killed it. i didnt want to leave.
chromeo was great too, but flosstradamus was what i was super excited for. i was in shock the whole weekend because their set was so amazing.
so, j2k and dj autobot, i would like to have your children.

*so, the show and everything was great, but bedford on a saturday night messes with my senses. i cant tell a real hipster from a fake one. on that note, remember when you were in elementary school and they told you pushing was bad? well, its still bad, even when youre older. be nice.

coney island

2007-07-08T16:59:00.000-04:00

will you be the same come the same time next year coney island?
[all photos courtesy of Mr. Daniel Donato]

oh. my. gawd.

2007-07-06T12:54:00.000-04:00

none shall pass drops august 28th.

freedom, hooray!!!

2007-07-04T20:39:00.000-04:00

hooray for throwbacks on hot 97.
yippie for digging in crates.
yeahhh for unfathomable sales at urban outfitters.
and hurrah for freedom.

im suppose to say something patriotic right now considering im a history student, but im going to say:
what a crappy day for a fourth of july.
its usually my favorite holiday, but without the usual accroutrements of a barbeque or a really sunny day its just a day off.
but thank you chinese people for fireworks. yessss!!!

WAKE UP!!! - up ya wake

2007-06-27T20:15:00.000-04:00

"Today's weather. HOT." - Mister Senor Love Daddy

did you feel the burn today nyc?

i was sweating out of every orifice and in some other places where i didnt even know had sweat glands.

...and that's the truth Ruth.

{The Classic}

2007-06-23T20:37:00.000-04:00

as always, at 3rd ward in brooklyn.

quite an awesome dj

oh she's such a cute stiltwalker.

Bomb It - Director's Statement

2007-06-19T21:27:00.000-04:00

{ The Return of Danger }

2007-06-14T23:27:00.000-04:00

This is just a tease.

Saturday July Seventh
The Righteous & The Wicked : Danger Takes Manhattan

For your illicit pleasure we've taken over a massive new
venue within the city of dreams. Prepare yourself for the
Righteous & the Wicked - an all night explosion of fallen
angels, public scandal and performance perfected.
Featuring music, spectacle and seditious surprises
saturating a maze like complex of dark rooms and massive
sound. On this night the island of commerce rediscovers
its decadent soul. This is just a tease - full details
will be released soon.

The party above is a fundraiser for the event below.
(You've waited a year for this.)

Saturday July Fourteenth
One Night of Fire : The Return of the Renegade Parade

This is the story of the battle for Brooklyn.

Our city is slipping. We can feel it in our blood and in
the eyes of the once inspired. True moments of grandeur
are fading into pleasant memory. Even at our most
cynical, we still crave reckless explorations of the
anything-is-possible. Last year two thousand of you took
the Brooklyn Bridge, the trains and the boardwalk at Coney
Island and mashed into a lurid cabal of un-permitted bliss.
On July 14th expect much more.

This event is revelry spiked with risk.

Free is a simple thing and this night is saturated with it.
Expect freeform performance and free communal booze plus
renegade acts of art and kindness fermented within the
liberated streets of Brooklyn at night. Together we can
be one stark flame set against the ashes of a failed nation.

Saturday, July 14th we offer you one night of hope &
desperation - of liberation & fire. This is the best we
have to offer, our third and final street event.

More details will be posted soon. If you are willing, we
want you to participate. A call for collaborators will be
released next week.

i'll sleep when you're dead tour 2007

2007-06-13T21:06:00.000-04:00

el-p, yak ballz, hangar 18, and slow suicide stimulus @ irving plaza - june 9th
yak ballz and c chan

el-p and the mighty quin

hangar 18 was really cool and el-p was the shit. i felt the sets were a little short, but maybe i just wanted the show to be longer. the crowd seemed different than when i went to bowery ballroom to see mr. lif and cage. it could just be a different fanbase, but they weren't that crazy - which i appreciated. its nice not to get elbowed in the face sometimes, but it was really laid back and the crowd didn't seem as amazed. i dont know. im also going to venture out and say that cage and yak ballz fans are a bit more "outgoing."
anyways, some guy was amazed that i was at a hip hop show alone.

"you like hip hop so much, you came to a show by yourself?"

"yes?"

i see a lot of my male counterparts do the same thing, but very few, if any at all, females. i figured i shouldnt let good shows go unattended just because no one wants to go with me.

Queens of the Stone Age - "Sick, Sick, Sick"

2007-06-06T19:16:00.000-04:00

josh homme has great plaid shirts and a better - shorter haircut.
the new album is called era vulgaris and will be out june 12th.

booked! @ abc no rio

2007-06-02T23:08:00.000-04:00

booked! runs from may 31-june 22
stop by abc no rio and check it out.

siren 2007 line up !!!

2007-05-23T23:37:00.000-04:00

village voice <3

we not dead...

2007-05-19T23:32:00.000-04:00

...we were just on a break. i'll fill in those voids later. in the meantime:

golden skans

2007-05-17T19:36:00.000-04:00

i thought about all the men in my life today. all the ones that i care(d) about. i thought about what they wouldve said to me in light of my educational pursuits.

my daniel from the past wouldve told me flat out i wasnt built for it. that i wouldnt've been able to make it despite how much he wanted to believe in me.

the last daniel wouldve probably never believed in me. he probably wouldnt have anything to say to me. we would hurt each other on purpose just to make sure we were human.

the daniel i have now is the optimist i could never be. no matter how many words of encouragement he gives me, they will always feel empty because he never cared enough about himself to fully care about me.

my father - despite what he says and what i think of the things he says to me, they are still my fathers words. i could never doubt why he said them or where they came from.

tom - the man whom, if i disembowelled myself, wouldnt be surprised at the things he saw, because hes seen them all already. i know he would never tell me i couldnt do it, and for that reason, he is a man that im sure i would give a vital organ for.

the only person whom i could not figure out was my grandfather. im not sure what he would say to me. maybe because ive forgotten most of the things hes said, or maybe because i was too young to remember if he was ever proud of me. i will always wonder, because he was the one person i wanted most to make proud.

Mesmerism Schesmerism

2007-05-02T18:19:00.000-04:00

Robert Darnton - I would like to pick your brain apart.

Robert Darnton's Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France is a book about a semi-quack new age-y science during the end of the Enlightenment. Drawing parallels with the political sentiment at this time, it somehow influenced the French Revolution. Mesmerism is the bathing of the invisible fluid which surrounds us, with the ability to restore our health through magnetized poles. Quite naturally, I'm skeptical, especially of this Darnton guy. Honestly, look at what he's trying to convince us of here: some weird, hollistic, hippie (17th century hippie) elitist belief has the ability to vitalize life - AND provide the political undertones necessary for a revolution. Really, one of the biggest crocks of crap I can stand to believe, but after writing my paper on it and scouring the book for serious links between this proposterous science and the French Revolution, it seemed feasible. A little out there, but feasible. So, overall, I will say, the book is written quite well, and if you have the free time, or want to read something that is credible and intellectual - give this book a chance. I will also say that, Robert Darnton is a highly esteemed historian and can practically blow you out of the water with his accolades, both nationally and internationally.

From the beginning my Early Modern Europe history class was pretty reading intensive. I, really didn't do much of it. However, I still really enjoyed the class. I think particularly because of my professor, Jonathan Dewald. He's a distinguished professor at UB but he's not stuffy, really approachable and laid back. He was super cool about late papers and it was in his class that I really began to stay behind after class was over to converse with my professors. Although I had begun to pursue pre-med before I took his course it was after reading this book that things really began to click.

biggie, biggie, biggie, can't you see?

2007-05-01T16:03:00.000-04:00

while watching the dj khaled video for "we takin' over" (which i happen to like very much), the first thing that came to mind was how similar it was to this:

yes, thats right, notorious b.i.g.'s "hypnotize" video.
the part where rick ross is cruising in reverse running away from whomever may be chasing him, all while rapping into the camera - yeah. totally reminded me of the biggie video. this came to me completely randomly too. nonetheless, similar themes, sequences, etc - minus the swimming mer-women in the tank.

i'm completely for the theories that:

a. biggie will never really die

b. hip hop has definate typicality

c. the cycle of hip hop is coming back (hopefully to kill off shitty music)

maybe im just seeing things?

sophomore

2007-05-01T01:03:00.000-04:00

"sophomore so different that you're just the same
sophomore address your parents by their first name
sophomore such an ugly caricature
sophomore keep up the good effort
your father says to put your shoulder to the wheel
and you reply that his proverbs sound archaic
a skeptic, a cynic, with jurisdiction of good art
boasting you're a stoic is such a paradox
you turn all rooms into gymnasiums
be careful, your ego floods a stadium
i don't intend to become an obstacle
for every victory in this fresh struggle
everybody tells you to put your shoulder to the wheel
and you reply that they sound like your father
a skeptic, a cynic, with jurisdiction of good art
boasting you're a stoic, you've led us all lost" - Lemuria

its over sophomore. next year, you will be 21. next year, you will be a junior. next year you will need to apply to grad school (god willing). you will need to take the mcats.

today felt like a normal day for me, despite it being the last day of classes for everyone else. the bus was filled with drunk freshmen ready to celebrate. soon, i will pack away college in plastic bins to be stored away for the summer. i guess im a bit somber around this time of year because its when i look back at the entire year.

did i do all the things i wanted? all the things i should've?

when youre a sophomore, youre always in the middle. you know better than the freshman, but you aren't as mature as a junior. its something ive consistently grappled with. where do i belong? i fear always feeling like a sophomore.

im not excited to go home because it means all that ive done is done. permanent. grades, hopes, fears, friends, these two semesters - done. but i long to sleep in my own bed. smelling sheets that will always smell like me. being with the city. being in the city. being with people i care about, being comfortable in my own skin.

and it just kept growing...

Our Love To Admire - Interpol's third album

2007-04-29T19:41:00.001-04:00

ahhhh, interpol. the love i have for these four suited new york-tastic musically talented men cannot be surpassed by much on this earth.

as august will arrive, so will a third album - of which, i have heard one song from.

its still very up in the air right now, i cant say that its the same as antics but i cant say that its a large deviation from it either. nothing can ever top turn on the bright lights and i dont think interpol is planning on making another album like that again. i guess we'll have to wait it out and see. in the meantime, enjoy a picture of the new carlos d. and tracklisting.

Our Love to Admire:
1. Pioneer to the Falls
2. No I in Threesome
3. The Scale
4. The Heinrich Maneuver
5. Mammoth
6. Pace Is the Trick
7. All Fired Up
8. Rest My Chemistry
9. Who Do You Think
10. Wrecking Ball
11. The Lighthouse

An Open Letter to Oprah - from Saul Williams

2007-04-26T19:43:00.000-04:00

A little lengthy, but a good and important read.

Dear Ms. Winfrey,

It is with the greatest respect and adoration of your loving spirit that I write you. As a young child, I would sit beside my mother everyday and watch your program. As a young adult, with children of my own, I spend much less time in front of the television, but I am ever thankful for the positive effect that you continue to have on our nation, history and culture. The example that you have set as someone unafraid to answer their calling, even when the reality of that calling insists that one self-actualize beyond the point of any given example, is humbling, and serves as the cornerstone of the greatest faith. You, love, are a pioneer.

I am a poet.

Growing up in Newburgh, NY, with a father as a minister and a mother as a school teacher, at a time when we fought for our heroes to be nationally recognized, I certainly was exposed to the great names and voices of our past. I took great pride in competing in my churches Black History Quiz Bowl and the countless events my mother organized in hopes of fostering a generation of youth well versed in the greatness as well as the horrors of our history. Yet, even in a household where I had the privilege of personally interacting with some of the most outspoken and courageous luminaries of our times, I must admit that the voices that resonated the most within me and made me want to speak up were those of my peers, and these peers were emcees. Rappers.
.
Yes, Ms. Winfrey, I am what my generation would call "a Hip Hop head." Hip Hop has served as one of the greatest aspects of my self-definition. Lucky for me, I grew up in the 80's when groups like Public Enemy, Rakim, The jungle Brothers, Queen Latifah, and many more realized the power of their voices within the artform and chose to create music aimed at the upliftment of our generation.

As a student at Morehouse College where I studied Philosophy and Drama I was forced to venture across the street to Spelman College for all of my Drama classes, since Morehouse had no theater department of its own. I had few complaints. The performing arts scholarship awarded me by Michael Jackson had promised me a practically free ride to my dream school, which now had opened the doors to another campus that could make even the most focused of young boys dreamy, Spelman. One of my first theater professors, Pearle Cleage, shook me from my adolescent dream state. It was the year that Dr. Dre's "The Chronic" was released and our introduction to Snoop Dogg as he sang catchy hooks like "Bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks…" Although, it was a playwriting class, what seemed to take precedence was Ms. Cleages political ideology, which had recently been pressed and bound in her 1st book, Mad at Miles. As, you know, in this book she spoke of how she could not listen to the music of Miles Davis and his muted trumpet without hearing the muted screams of the women that he was outspoken about "man-handling". It was my first exposure to the idea of an artist being held accountable for their actions outside of their art. It was the first time I had ever heard the word, "misogyny". And as Ms. Cleage would walk into the classroom fuming over the women she would pass on campus, blasting those Snoop lyrics from their cars and jeeps, we, her students, would be privy to many freestyle rants and raves on the dangers of nodding our heads to a music that could serve as our own demise.

Her words, coupled with the words of the young women I found myself interacting with forever changed how I listened to Hip Hop and quite frankly ruined what would have been a number of good songs for me. I had now been burdened with a level of awareness that made it impossible for me to enjoy what the growing masses were ushering into the mainstream. I was now becoming what many Hip Hop heads would call "a Backpacker", a person who chooses to associate themselves with the more "conscious" or politically astute artists of the Hip Hop community. What we termed as "conscious" Hip Hop became our preference for dance and booming systems. Groups like X-Clan, A Tribe Called Quest, Brand Nubian, Arrested Development, Gangstarr and others became the prevailing music of our circle. We also enjoyed the more playful Hip Hop of De La Soul, Heiroglyphics, Das FX, Organized Konfusion. Digable Planets, The Fugees, and more. We had more than enough positivity to fixate on. Hip Hop was diverse.

I had not yet begun writing poetry. Most of my friends hardly knew that I had been an emcee in high school. I no longer cared to identify myself as an emcee and my love of oratory seemed misplaced at Morehouse where most orators were actually preachers in training, speaking with the Southern drawl of Dr. King although they were 19 and from the North. I spent my time doing countless plays and school performances. I was in line to become what I thought would be the next Robeson, Sidney, Ossie, Denzel, Snipes… It wasn't until I was in graduate school for acting at NYU that I was invited to a poetry reading in Manhattan where I heard Asha Bandele, Sapphire, Carl Hancock Rux, Reggie Gaines, Jessica Care Moore, and many others read poems that sometimes felt like monologues that my newly acquired journal started taking the form of a young poets'. Yet, I still noticed that I was a bit different from these poets who listed names like: Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Sekou Sundiata etc, when asked why they began to write poetry. I knew that I had been inspired to write because of emcees like Rakim, Chuck D, LL, Run DMC… Hip Hop had informed my love of poetry as much or even more than my theater background which had exposed me to Shakespeare, Baraka, Fugard, Genet, Hansberry and countless others. In those days, just a mere decade ago, I started writing to fill the void between what I was hearing and what I wished I was hearing. It was not enough for me to critique the voices I heard blasting through the walls of my Brooklyn brownstone. I needed to create examples of where Hip Hop, particularly its lyricism, could go. I ventured to poetry readings with my friends and neighbors, Dante Smith (now Mos Def), Talib Kwele, Erycka Badu, Jessica Care Moore, Mums the Schemer, Beau Sia, Suheir Hammad…all poets that frequented the open mics and poetry slams that we commonly saw as "the other direction" when Hip hop reached that fork in the road as you discussed on your show this past week. On your show you asked the question, "Are all rappers poets?" Nice. I wanted to take the opportunity to answer this question for you.

The genius, as far as the marketability, of Hip Hop is in its competitiveness. Its roots are as much in the dignified aspects of our oral tradition as it is in the tradition of "the dozens" or "signifying". In Hip Hop, every emcee is automatically pitted against every other emcee, sort of like characters with super powers in comic books. No one wants to listen to a rapper unless they claim to be the best or the greatest. This sort of braggadocio leads to all sorts of tirades, showdowns, battles, and sometimes even deaths. In all cases, confidence is the ruling card. Because of the competitive stance that all emcees are prone to take, they, like soldiers begin to believe that they can show no sign of vulnerability. Thus, the most popular emcees of our age are often those that claim to be heartless or show no feelings or signs of emotion. The poet, on the other hand, is the one who realizes that their vulnerability is their power. Like you, unafraid to shed tears on countless shows, the poet finds strength in exposing their humanity, their vulnerability, thus making it possible for us to find connection and strength through their work. Many emcees have been poets. But, no, Ms. Winfrey, not all emcees are poets. Many choose gangsterism and business over the emotional terrain through which true artistry will lead. But they are not to blame. I would now like to address your question of leadership.

You may recall that in immediate response to the attacks of September 11th, our president took the national stage to say to the American public and the world that we would "…show no sign of vulnerability". Here is the same word that distinguishes poets from rappers, but in its history, more accurately, women from men. To make such a statement is to align oneself with the ideology that instills in us a sense of vulnerability meaning "weakness". And these meanings all take their place under the heading of what we consciously or subconsciously characterize as traits of the feminine. The weapon of mass destruction is the one that asserts that a holy trinity would be a father, a male child, and a ghost when common sense tells us that the holiest of trinities would be a mother, a father, and a child: Family. The vulnerability that we see as weakness is the saving grace of the drunken driver who because of their drunken/vulnerable state survives the fatal accident that kills the passengers in the approaching vehicle who tighten their grip and show no physical vulnerability in the face of their fear. Vulnerability is also the saving grace of the skate boarder who attempts a trick and remembers to stay loose and not tense during their fall. Likewise, vulnerability has been the saving grace of the African American struggle as we have been whipped, jailed, spat upon, called names, and killed, yet continue to strive forward mostly non-violently towards our highest goals. But today we are at a crossroads, because the institutions that have sold us the crosses we wear around our necks are the most overt in the denigration of women and thus humanity. That is why I write you today, Ms. Winfrey. We cannot address the root of what plagues Hip Hop without addressing the root of what plagues today's society and the world.

You see, Ms. Winfrey, at it's worse; Hip Hop is simply a reflection of the society that birthed it. Our love affair with gangsterism and the denigration of women is not rooted in Hip Hop; rather it is rooted in the very core of our personal faith and religions. The gangsters that rule Hip Hop are the same gangsters that rule our nation. 50 Cent and George Bush have the same birthday (July 6th). For a Hip Hop artist to say "I do what I wanna do/Don't care if I get caught/The DA could play this mothaf@kin tape in court/I'll kill you/ I ain't playin'" epitomizes the confidence and braggadocio we expect an admire from a rapper who claims to represent the lowest denominator. When a world leader with the spirit of a cowboy (the true original gangster of the West: raping, stealing land, and pillaging, as we clapped and cheered.) takes the position of doing what he wants to do, regardless of whether the UN or American public would take him to court, then we have witnessed true gangsterism and violent negligence. Yet, there is nothing more negligent than attempting to address a problem one finds on a branch by censoring the leaves.

Name calling, racist generalizations, sexist perceptions, are all rooted in something much deeper than an uncensored music. Like the rest of the world, I watched footage on AOL of you dancing mindlessly to 50 Cent on your fiftieth birthday as he proclaimed, "I got the ex/if you're into taking drugs/ I'm into having sex/ I ain't into making love" and you looked like you were having a great time. No judgment. I like that song too. Just as I do, James Brown's Sex Machine or Grand Master Flashes "White Lines". Sex, drugs, and rock and roll is how the story goes. Censorship will never solve our problems. It will only foster the sub-cultures of the underground, which inevitably inhabit the mainstream. There is nothing more mainstream than the denigration of women as projected through religious doctrine. Please understand, I am by no means opposing the teachings of Jesus, by example (he wasn't Christian), but rather the men that have used his teachings to control and manipulate the masses. Hip Hop, like Rock and Roll, like the media, and the government, all reflect an idea of power that labels vulnerability as weakness. I can only imagine the non-emotive hardness that you have had to show in order to secure your empire from the grips of those that once stood in your way: the old guard. You reflect our changing times. As time progresses we sometimes outgrow what may have served us along the way. This time, what we have outgrown, is not hip hop, rather it is the festering remnants of a God depicted as an angry and jealous male, by men who were angry and jealous over the minute role that they played in the everyday story of creation. I am sure that you have covered ideas such as these on your show, but we must make a connection before our disconnect proves fatal.

We are a nation at war. What we fail to see is that we are fighting ourselves. There is no true hatred of women in Hip Hop. At the root of our nature we inherently worship the feminine. Our overall attention to the nurturing guidance of our mothers and grandmothers as well as our ideas of what is sexy and beautiful all support this. But when the idea of the feminine is taken out of the idea of what is divine or sacred then that worship becomes objectification. When our governed morality asserts that a woman is either a virgin or a whore, then our understanding of sexuality becomes warped. Note the dangling platinum crosses over the bare asses being smacked in the videos. The emcees of my generation are the ministers of my father's generation. They too had a warped perspective of the feminine. Censoring songs, sermons, or the tirades of radio personalities will change nothing except the format of our discussion. If we are to sincerely address the change we are praying for then we must first address to whom we are praying.

Thank you, Ms. Winfrey, for your forum, your heart, and your vision. May you find the strength and support to bring about the changes you wish to see in ways that do more than perpetuate the myth of enmity.

In loving kindness,

Saul Williams

[courtesy of Erika Cardona]

Go Sabres

2007-04-21T14:41:00.000-04:00

sabretooth - the official buffalo sabres mascot.
he's wearing the old jersey, but its cool. i actually like the new ones.
dont stare too hard at the kid on the left, it might freak you out a bit.
on that note, yes, we kicked islanders ass.

Vintage Sex

2007-04-19T23:55:00.000-04:00

Hot summer nights, old toys, new tricks. A coming-of-age memoir.
By: Noemi Lopinto [maisonneuve.org]
March 21, 2007

The summer I was seventeen I would climb down from my third floor apartment onto the roof of the neighbouring fruit-and-vegetable store to go dancing. I’d wear my sexiest summer dress, a little black number with a corset in the back, and do a series of flips, spins and cartwheels on the sticky tar.
The roof also happened to be even with the second-floor windows of the fire station across the street. The firemen would gather at the windows to watch me. They lived together at the station in fourteen-day shifts, and the atmosphere there was like a heavily pressurized can of sexual tension, sealed with blue serge. But then again, it was summer in Montreal—everyone was on the make. Or so it seemed.
I was at the stage where I innocently but desperately needed male attention, and the combination attracted all kinds of weirdos. Another one of my neighbours—a fat, hairy welfare bum—liked to spend days stretched out in a ragged La-Z-Boy with a beer in his paw, watching me. One day as I was prancing around on my roof he was expressing his approval the best way he knew how—by standing on his roof in his off-white undershirt and paisley boxer shorts, pumping away at his little dick. I was thrilled, offended, attracted and repelled all at once.
My mother’s reaction was less nuanced. Enraged, she called the police. For my own survival I had to feign horror and a kind of bland innocence. (“What’s he doing, Mom?”) That was the end of rooftop interpretive dancing for a little while.
My mother and I had the misfortune of hitting hormonal milestones at the same time. She was experiencing menopause while I was being rocked by the last contractions of puberty. Other girls I knew had figured out their developing bodies a long time ago. While I had the usual schoolgirl crushes up to then, I hadn’t felt that violent, nameless hunger that is sexual frustration. I only knew I was suddenly, inexorably drawn to the firemen next door, who used to spill out onto the sidewalk on hot summer nights, waiting laconically for tragedy to strike. I used to walk over to read them my depressing poetry, translating it into halting French; I was a sitting duck, waiting to be plucked.
If my mother had been able to think of the opposite sex with anything other than fear and horror, I might have been able to talk to her about boys, and she might have been able to talk to me about men. Mom’s “sex talk” consisted of a stilted speech on the pleasures of intercourse, adding for balance that while she herself had never enjoyed it, there were some who said it wasn’t all bad.
Her only other approach to puberty was to hand me books with goofy, well-meaning titles like What Is Happening to Me? Another book (about reproduction) showed a yellow male canary riding a female, wings a-flapping. Very illuminating. But nothing explained why I couldn’t sleep at night; why the heat was driving me nuts; why I was so fascinated with my body. The only book that conceivably could have helped would have been a graphic novel called Why Am I Driven to Dancing on a Roof in a Skimpy Black Flamenco Dress in Broad Daylight and a High Wind?
So there was a wall there but, like in most families, until it showed itself you didn’t notice it. My mother was a baby boomer, born the middle child in a desperately unhappy Jewish family in Missouri. She came of age during the fifties in the American South, watching Joseph McCarthy and Martin Luther King duke it out on black and white television. She had few friends. She was hyperintelligent, socially isolated and utterly smothered by my grandparents’ bitter marriage. She escaped to Canada as a young married woman, but brought her fear of intimacy and her prudery with her.
Over time, she channelled both into a kind of political stance, where any form of communication with males was harmful. And then, just when her sexual imperative was ebbing away, her daughter started dancing like a honeybee on the neighbouring roof. If puberty was a drag, I can just imagine menopause. My mother was always examining her face in the mirror, spreading her cheeks back towards her ears until her eyes bulged, and pulling her forehead back towards her scalp so the new lines disappeared—over and over again—while I was in my room trying to entice the cat into licking one of my nipples to see if it would feel good.
My mother was repressed and self-obsessed, but she wasn’t stupid. She could see something was driving me. So she turned to McCarthyism’s old standbys: fearmongering, blackmail and repression. She tried to extract a promise of celibacy from me, frightened me with rape stories, hissed at every man who gave me a sidelong look on the street, bought blinds and thick curtains for every room in the house. She set up a barrier to the outside world and tried to lock me inside. It was totally counterproductive and drove me outside to read even more bad poetry to firemen.
Paranoia takes a lot of sustained effort, though, and eventually Mom got tired of it. So she formulated another plan. While I would have happily slept “tuchus aloft” well into the afternoon, my mother was a morning person, and even on weekends woke up inspired to change the world (or at least the curtains) somewhere around six a.m. She would putz around the house until seven and by eight it was time for me to listen to her in all her glorious verbiage. She would pad into my room in her nightgown, sit on the edge of my bed and launch a thousand ships. She would hop from one topic to another with virtually no link between, and I would fitfully sleep on, dreaming of newspaper obituaries, department store sales, rude bus drivers, makeover plans for the house, the bitch landlady downstairs, intended career shifts, the state of the economy, Midwestern childhood memories and breakfast plans. I was helpless to stop her. Mercifully, she would just run out of wind.
One morning my mother woke me early and ushered me into our grey, unheated “guest” room. (It goes without saying we never had any guests.) She sat opposite me in a wooden rocking chair that screeched with every movement. She began, inexplicably and without preamble, to detail her sexual failures. She spoke in a singsong, “oh, how painful a topic sex is for me” voice. She traced the beginnings of her battles with depression, then listed with confessional relish every nasty encounter with men and every mistaken therapeutic diagnosis she’d ever had. She trotted out my grandfather and my father and made them dance, like puppets in an unending play about marital misery. Finally, after hammering me into the ground with the weight of all these familial disasters, she got to her point: masturbation. She wanted me to do it. She brought out a dusty white cardboard box and handed me a vibrator that, had it contained all the proper pieces, could conceivably have possessed historical value for the Antiques Road Show. I sat there, mouth agape, wishing I could fold inward like origami and disappear into a crack in the floor.
“I have brought you a vibrator,” Mom said. “I used it a few times, but it hurt me too much. Marta gave it to me a few years ago.”
Marta was a three-hundred-pound German lady and mother of two who lived down the street from us more than seven years prior. So not only was it old, it was third-hand. The vibrator looked like a small pocket hairdryer with an empty nozzle at the top for a rubber head. Two such applicators waited in the case: one looked like a strawberry, the other an octopus. The instruction manual featured sketches of a naked, long-haired and bearded man holding hands with a woman whose hair was parted down the middle. They both had hairy pits.
“I don’t want you to be dependent on a man for sexual pleasure,” my mother said. “You’ve got to learn to pleasure yourself.”
Even if I had wanted to, the electric cord was ridiculously short—about the length of a toaster’s. I would have had to sit right next to the electrical outlet with my legs half up the wall just to use the thing at all. Worst of all, in the case was a long, empty, phallus-shaped cavity. There once was a dildo here; now it was missing. Maybe it was still in Marta.
I remember saying “you’re kidding, right?” I even had the presence of mind to laugh a little bit. But Mom pushed me into my room on strict orders not to come out until I had learned how. I did nothing of the kind; I briefly considered jumping out the window. I hid the vibrator under my bed, where it seemed to give off a sickly heat.
But my mother was dogged. I would come home from school to find the vibrator box open on my bed, the hippie couple staring up mutely at me as if begging for release from the sixties. I would shut the box tight and hide it somewhere in our apartment. The next day it would be back, opened on my desk. Once, I hid it in a closet underneath a carpet covered in cat shit. She found it, and left it open on my bed the next day. She seemed to see herself as a wily guerilla fighter on a mission to relieve me from the burden of dependence on men. For months after that morning, a ferocious battle of enforced non-masturbation ensued. I was not going to touch myself, not if my life depended on it. Exactly contrary to my mother’s wishes, I was going to find a man to have sex with. (I broke off my relationship with the cat). I moved out that fall, leaving the vibrator behind, as well-hidden as possible. I made a conscious effort to forget about it. I never wanted to see that dusty box or its tainted contents ever again. And, eventually, I did have sex.
In my mother’s defence, she probably read a book that counselled an open discussion of masturbation with your child as an antidote to teenage pregnancy, STDs and world hunger. But something got lost in translation. Forcing a used, thirty-year-old vibrator with missing parts on me was actually an attack on my sexuality and on my capacity to accept and understand it. There may have been some concern and good intentions in there somewhere, but on their way to outward expression they were consumed by her inner monsters.
A few months later on my eighteenth birthday, my mother dropped off the vibrator at the pizza joint I worked at, which was owned by Iranian immigrants. She cleverly concealed it among a few other presents, and I came within centimetres of opening it in front of my new Muslim boss. But by giving it to me unconditionally, she gave me the opportunity to get rid of it once and for all. I took it home and called the Salvation Army. When the pick up arrived, I blithely handed over my unwanted clothes, a few sticks of furniture…and a dusty white box. The Sally Ann seemed a fitting place for a stray vibrator—perhaps the missing dildo was already there, like a lost pet still waiting to be reunited with its owner.

[courtesy of Mr. Jordan Novet]

John B. Simpson Addresses Campus Safety at the University at Buffalo

2007-04-17T19:55:00.000-04:00

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- University at Buffalo President John B. Simpson today issued the following statement addressing campus safety at UB in the wake of the shootings yesterday at Virginia Tech:

"In the days ahead, our campus community will continue to reflect on the tragedy at Virginia Tech. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims of Monday's shootings, their families and the entire Virginia Tech community, as well as to those who have ties to that university.

Yesterday's shootings are a stark reminder that our world can be a violent place. Sadly, institutions of higher education are not immune from this violence when individuals are determined to harm others.

But I would like to assure students, parents, faculty and staff that the University at Buffalo places the highest priority on making our campus a safe place to study, live and work. Some of you will have questions about the ways that the University at Buffalo has prepared for such an unlikely event on our campus.

The responsibility for making UB a safe place lies foremost with the university administration and campus police, but also with each individual member of the community. Together, we have responsibility for making our campuses both open places, as well as secure places for all members of the community and visitors alike.

All UB residence halls and apartments are accessible only by swipe card from evening until morning hours. Further, all incoming students and students living in residence halls and apartments are instructed on safety procedures for doors, and are asked to report any suspicious behavior via our campus emergency phone numbers, 645-2222 and 829-2222.

UB has emergency plans in place for acts of violence on campus. And while what happened at Virginia Tech appears to be an isolated incident, like every university across the country, we will be reviewing these plans and looking for areas to strengthen them further.

While the university works closely with law enforcement agencies at the local, state and federal level, the lynchpin in our emergency plans is the UB Police Department and its 61 police officers, many of whom have specialized training as first responders to events such as those that occurred yesterday.

In such instances, UB's officers would be the first responders. The Town of Amherst Police Department and the Buffalo Police Department, with which the university has memorandums of understanding, also would be called in for assistance in such a situation.

I would be remiss not to note that there are steps we all must take to ensure personal safety and maintain our campus community as a safe environment. As individuals, we should not place ourselves in dangerous situations, and we should always be acutely aware of our surroundings.

Any suspicious behavior should be reported immediately to the UB Police Department at 645-2222 or 829-2222 or by using blue-light phones located at key locations on the North and South campuses. For specific building and office security tips, see the Police Department's Web site at http://www.public-safety.buffalo.edu/campustips.shtml."

Again, the tragedy at Virginia Tech touches all of us, and in the days ahead I will continue to communicate with you on matters related to it.

{The Beautiful Era (Is Over)}

2007-04-12T20:18:00.000-04:00

Perhaps it was an impossible dream. Over the past several
years there have been dozens of events outside the blight
of the super-club mainstream but recently our ranks are
thinning. The goal is simple, we want nights of
exultation, conversation and reckless engagement - to live
the wild life this city deserves. But in the end, this
scene struggles to survive because of over zealous
authorities, pious neighbors and the party crowd itself.

For those that don't know, most of the problems with
events lately from Rubulad to 3rd Ward to the new (and
over) Danger Space have been caused by a few inconsiderate
souls. To those who piss on the street in view of the
cops, to those who climb on our sprinkler pipes, to the
few who go out of your way to annoy the neighbors, it is
you who are killing the scene. The good news is, those
mentioned above are few and far-between. But it only
takes one inconsiderate soul to ruin an event, and over
the past couple months many parties have been shutdown,
flooded out and evicted because of it.

This beautiful era is over.

Three weeks ago, during the infamous Lightning Bolt show
at 3rd Ward, the cops gave the space its final warning
because of Indyrockers raising raucous in the streets.
That same weekend we were evicted from our new space a
block away. These events don't make enough money to even
sustain themselves, it's a labor of love and self-delusion
- and it's slowly dying.

But the end is not-so-near. This Friday you are invited
to the final event in the raw space at 3rd Ward Brooklyn.
This space has seen a thousand revelers, fire-spinners,
artistic creations, brilliant conversations, major acts
and minor follies through dozens nights of splendor,
serenity and everything in between. But even the raw
beautiful things die.

This is it. This is the end. This beautiful era is over.

____________________________________

Friday, April 13th
you are invited to:

This Beautiful Era...
11:27pm through morning.

One last night of indelicate celebration across the
massive third floor loft at 3rd Ward Brooklyn, featuring:
the tightest DJ's in the east, immaculate moments of
performance, wild acts of engagement, brief glimpses of
nudity, kisses from strangers, manna from heaven and all
the of the best you expect from this space, one last time.

thedanger

no one was ever irresponsible or skeevy for the most part. we were just a couple of people that loved to have fun and dance. now, its over because there are a few who didnt want to respect those ideas. another good thing is lost.

2007-04-11T15:32:00.000-04:00

wed. 4/18 - southpaw, brooklyn, $15.
$3 miller lights all night.
18+ kiddies - save the date.

a night with hip hop sa

2007-04-10T22:54:00.000-04:00

i was resistant at first to actually attend a hip-hop sa meeting despite seeing flyers every so often for panel discussions that seemed pretty interesting. honestly, what does a small asian girl from flushing know about hip hop?

it kept biting at me though, simply because i really wanted to see the guest speaker, who is a part-time african-american studies professor at UB. it turned out really well and i really enjoyed myself. all of the issues that he raised were really on point with some of the themes and ideas that ive been trying to explore and hash out myself. it was pretty chill and the professor was extremely cool. he curses like a sailor but is a fifth grade social studies teacher. that gives him brownie points in my book, in addition to his pop and lock skills. so now, im definately going to try and take his course, "hip hop and social issues". exciting.

this brings me to another issue. ive been watching the hip-hop section at the radio station go to shit and its been bothering me. it feels almost like a personal insult simply because i care a lot about that section. lack-luster reviews that consist sometimes of maybe 5 words and a sad display of selection really brings me down. i really want that job next year. i am planning a coup to overthrow the hip hop director. i would do it on bastille day to make it a bit more symbolic, but that isnt during the school year. nonetheless, the day will come. im so close i can taste it. yum.

Marry Me Ms. Pacman

2007-04-09T02:33:00.000-04:00

the go! team - "junior kickstart"
sometimes i feel like the go! team is sonic youth on antidepressants and weed with a horn section.

Yes, Mommie Dearest.

2007-04-07T00:15:00.000-04:00

before:

after:

oh shit. yeah.
four swiffers and some comet cleaner later, all the pubes were gone from the toilet and the leftover disposable contact lens was actually disposed of.
i really dont know where that giant amoeba shaped dirt spot came from, but it grew over time. i also have a suspicion that my suitemate's boyfriend cannot aim very well.
my suitemate is digusting. - i dont talk trash. its just not my fault youre a douchebag and no one likes you on this floor.

"Helga, I'm not mad at you. I'm mad at the dirt." - Joan Crawford

like a rickshaw being pulled around by another rickshaw...

2007-03-26T23:00:00.000-04:00

how can one care about another when they dont care enough about themselves?

louis that, gucci this...

2007-03-24T13:10:00.000-04:00

no, justin timberlake - i wont bring sexy back

2007-03-18T09:16:00.001-04:00

this weekend, hot 97 had a justin timberlake weekend where they were able to win a pair of tickets to his concert.

so a couple of things:

a. no, justin. im not going to bring sexy back, because frankly, im not quite sure when it left.
b. hot 97 is a hip-hop station and i really dont care if he's your favorite "white boy" he doesnt belong on your airwaves
c. any production by timbaland doesnt make you hip-hop/rap. will it make you an instant hit and club banger, probably.

with all those things said, i am in no way telling people to stop listening to justin timberlake or that we shouldnt be diverse in our musical taste. he is very catchy, and for a member (if not a former member) of a boy band, he has done well for himself. a flourishing solo career minus bald britney. great.

however, what i am saying is, for a hip-hop station that influential and so well known, they are choosing to play "sexy back" (which along with his other songs have been played out on every popular music station), instead of embracing new and better hip-hop/rap music. honestly, how can someone like MIMZ, (whose song is very catchy and addictive) become a chart topping song, with lyrics like, "this is why im hot/ this is why im hot/ you aint cause you not"

um, sorry, but i think thats a circular argument. i just dont know how hot you can be MIMZ. i guess im just not as hot as you are.

once again, im going to point out that a radio station has its priorities. it has to take into account its listenership, fanbase, politics, etc, etc. however, im putting it out there, that new york has been the hub of hip-hop/rap since the beginning. we are the beginning. it started in the bronx and grew out of the fire of the housing projects, but we also have understand that this music has grown and contorted into a shape that no one could've forseen. with that, new aspects of hip-hop/rap need to be embraced. southern styles are completely in the shadows despite having a few popular artists from that area. the brits have also been overlooked, except for maybe dizzy rascal, who to some is still too outlandish.

im not trying to be onery in any way, and im just as guilty as the next. i know the words to the MIMZ song, but i also know the sampled track in the very beginning of jay-z's "show me what you got." i listen to hot 97 and power 105 because i have faith that these radio stations will provide me with good music and entertainment. i go to sleep with the stereo on hot 97 and if thats not devotion, i dont know what is. i just think the inner politics and higher uppers of management at these radio stations need to rethink how they want to go about playing music and capturing the public.

so, let's bring hip-hop back.

hockey is for lovers

2007-03-08T02:16:00.000-05:00

i dream of longer days and breezy summer strolls at dusk as i write my history midterm.

i came back to my room today and my roommate left on the sabres game for me even though she wasnt in the room.
its like a good husband who waits for you to come home so we can watch the game together. <3

its a yiblee!

2007-03-06T19:32:00.000-05:00

my love for my choi is unmatched.
yo soy veinte anos, fuckers.

take it easy, easy does it.

do you have the bird flu?

2007-02-28T18:35:00.000-05:00

...cause i do!

honestly, whats not bitchin about watching kids with oversized flashy shirts and gang-like hankerchiefs covering their faces, promoting m.i.a.?

seriously though, ive had a digusting cough for a while now, and its not that i actually have the bird flu or that im refusing medical attention (because i should be reaping those benefits while i can), but its because i hate michael hall (my former residence) and because i just cant fit it in my schedule.

today is the first day of spring.
no, not really, geologially, geographically or even meteorologically, but because if you smell the air, its here.
soon, it will be just a sweatshirt covering your arms at the bus stop and familiar sounds of little italy ringing in my ears - just to reminisce.

scared to turn 20

2007-02-26T19:32:00.000-05:00

...hell yes.

i mean, i guess im excited - to an extent. the big 2-0. thats one year closer to graduating and one year closer to being 21, the only birthday worth celebrating. but thats also one year closer to having to pay for your own health insurance and going to grad school (pray hard and dont get sick).

i dont even feel much of anything for my birthday anymore. it was like when i lost my virginity. im not excited, nor do i care. how immensely sad?

dont go after my fucking star player biotch

2007-02-24T22:17:00.000-05:00

its hockey season baby. the sabres are the best thing that ever happened to this town and i fucking love it.

in the absence (or presence) of love

2007-02-14T19:29:00.000-05:00

happy valentines day.

rickrubinrickrubinrickrubin

2007-02-07T13:41:00.000-05:00

i woke up this morning with blood on my pillow.
not a lot, dont fret.

rick rubin just got offered a position at def jam. whoa.
educate and wikipedia yourself now.

nytimes.

hey!

2007-02-04T23:22:00.000-05:00

chalkartheart: i think
chalkartheart: that
chalkartheart: you should
chalkartheart: become
chalkartheart: a radio station manager
chalkartheart: for realz.
ricebananas: ?
ricebananas: why
chalkartheart: i can see you managing hot 97
ricebananas: hahahahaha

yes, i pop that collaaarrrr. (figuratively, of course).

for lovers and chopped onions

2007-02-03T19:23:00.000-05:00

sometimes when i get sad, i listen to my mix cds, look at artwork from kurt halsey and try not to get a stomach ache.

so heres a mix that was made just for this purpose.

hopefully it will make you sad in the beginning, make you realize that you are hurt, that you will always feel resentful, then maybe realize that youre ready to move on, and that finally you want and deserve more.

named for my favorite little columbian girl - cardonizzle is for lovers:

1. "I am Trying To Break Your Heart" - Wilco
2. "Cross My Mind" - Jill Scott
3. "When You Really Love Someone" - Alicia Keys
4. "Untangle" - Four Tet
5. "Fidelity" - Regina Spektor
6. "Here (In Your Arms)" - Hellogoodbye
7. "Smile" - Lily Allen
8. "Pieces Of The People We Love" - The Rapture
9. "Oh Yoko" - John Lennon
10. "T.O.J." - El-P
11. "Mistakes & Regrets" - ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead
12. "My Sweet Fracture" - Saves The Day
13. "Clair De Lune" - ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead
14. "Tidal Wave" - Longwave
15. "Overdue" - The Get Up Kids
16. "Where Does The Good Go" - Tegan and Sara
17. "Retour A Vega" The Stills
18. "Pink Bullets" The Shins
19. "'03 Bonnie & Clyde f/Beyonce" - Jay-Z
20. "Real Love" - Mary J. Blige
21. "Love & Appreciate" Murs & 9th Wonder
22. "Enough Cryin'" - Mary J. Blige
23. "Every Thug Need A Lady - Alkaline Trio
24. "Tulips" - Bloc Party
25. "Quizas, Quizas, Quizas" - Nat King Cole
26. "One Day" - RJD2

theres a giant cold front coming. keep warm kiddies. <3

phenom to the mental

2007-02-03T14:16:00.000-05:00

okay, seriously this shit has been out there for a while, but i figured i would compile it into one nice big post. first off, aesop rock's new album is called none shall pass. the entire package and album cover is going to be done by jeremy fish. i swear to you, i almost cried when i found out. its going to drop sometime during the first half of this year. normal stuff, blockhead, el-p, and aes' own cuts. the none shall pass snippet sounds really awesome on myspace. go and check it out.

the def jux roster is really unleashing hell this year.

el-p - march 20th: i'll sleep when youre dead. rumors of really great stuff on it - including cat power (whom i love).

cage is on tour with cupcake. so is lif.

other artists that i think are pretty good off jux include yak ballz and despot and new stuff should be coming out soon.

surprisingly, rjd2 is no long on definitive jux. hes going in a new direction, with his own vocals - or so i hear, and im pretty sure i hear correctly. im a little nervous cause his old stuff was pretty amazing. we'll see though.

other things to look forward to:

modest mouse
interpol
nuclear family
bloc party

plus, if you havent already, go check this out at staybattlin.com

bijules nyc

2007-02-01T20:12:00.000-05:00

bijules x mama

i think these are the most bitchin' things ever.

horoscopes

2007-01-27T02:19:00.000-05:00

The L Magazine - January 17-30, 2007
by Laps Trinity
Pisces:

Springtime in Paris, autumn in New York, winter in Madrid, summer in Berlin...Is it possible to live the life of our dreams Pisces? Yes and no. Ok, to be more specific, no. Sorry. The dreamlife is nothing more than a flimsy gauze of pink spun candy that melts at the first sign of a little rain. And seriously, winter in Madrid? C'mon dude, its way too windy.

Buffalo's Artvoice - January 25-31, 2007
by Rob Brezsny

In her book Frankenstein, Mary Shelley created a monster who was smart and sensitive. He felt empathetic pain for suffering of Native Americans. He desperately wanted a mate. He read Milton's Paradise Lost and felt a grieving kinship with the struggles of Adam depicted therein. In accordance with current astrological omens, Pisces, I encourage you to acknowledge and express love for your inner Frankenstein monster-the tormented, disfigured yet powerful part of your psyche that needs your compassion. I'm sure that this will prevent it from doing what Shelley's fictional character ultimately did, which was to go on a rampage-and will maybe even set it on a course to become a force for good.

in light of my horoscopes for this week or so, i have to mention that all this astrological malarkey might coincide with two specific events:

i was offered the position as programming director of wrub, the radio station at my school. despite not having much experience yet, i was realtively confident in my abilities. nonetheless, after the informal interview, i was turned down for the job. this can be construed as both good and bad. needless to say, im a little bummed, but in the words of cam'ron and kanye west, "i'm down, but not out."

there was a student visual arts organization show in the basement gallery of our center for the arts. i submitted a couple of things and i went to the show opening for 10 minutes right before class. although the president of svao had a minor mishap with my pieces, i plan on going back to check for them this weekend. i saw some really cool stuff and im pretty happy with the fact that i actually gave in some of my work. in fact, im even surprised i dabbled with new things in my sketchbook over vacation. i usually end up putting it off for so long that my paints have gone stagnant and most pages in my notebooks are blank, but im trying, and right now, im a little proud of myself.

Q-borough stand up!!

2007-01-26T17:27:00.000-05:00

this article was in the nytimes today.
im trying to find some inner connection with my borough. (and yes, a borough - not a town or township. we have 5 of them). ever since i went away for college, ive had a deeper appreciation for home, but its still not as intense as it should be, being that i'm a native member of queens. i was born there, but ive always been raised out in chinatown and the city. when i was little, i never wanted to leave my grandparents' apartment on mott street. so every time i go back home i try and take in the borough of queens as much as possible. simply put, we are great. queens, ny biatches.

high definition boobies!

2007-01-24T20:48:00.000-05:00

watch your porn in HD now.

*im sorry theres no clever image for this post that isnt full out porn.

the mold on your ham, cheese and bread

2007-01-23T12:13:00.000-05:00

im in an odd state right now. i had to scrape the mold off my bread again.
im trying to get back into rhythm but it doesnt help when your roommate doesnt do anything. all day.

is there such a thing as second-hand laziness without pot?

its depressing. add this to the sun that hardly ever shines and the cold wind. all the time.
then of course, theres world peace, war, president bush and kids that think facebook is the most important thing on planet earth but will one day run the country. you know, things of trite nature.

"don't let the man get you down."

yes, school of rock is full of life mantras. but im sorry, im just not feelin' it today.

2007-01-22T21:46:00.000-05:00

im not feeling really clever right now.
i just miss feeling nyc concrete.

2007-01-19T13:24:00.000-05:00

pssst! the dream is ALIVE. yup, that's right. oh you sweet sweet dunks. thank you ebay.

ed templeton's cul de sac sounds delicious.

i wish it were summer. sirenfest, shorts and cons.

if i need to make zig zags while walking in the snow just so i can amuse myself for two seconds out of my day, i will.
vans make fun waffle footprints.
dont be a hater.

neck face.

...and now i hollerr!

welcome back to the LO

2007-01-16T20:37:00.000-05:00

the home of the ugg wearing:

cab driver: do you like UB?
me: it's alright.
cab driver: don't lie.
me: hah.

he also told me some amusing stories of his son and pot.

i got back to my room at 1am. my flight was cancelled twice and delayed at least three times. the weather in nyc is in the high 30s. in buffalo, it is currently 14 degrees with snow. today was the first day of class and i wore my nuk fam shirt because i wanted to feel close to home. all i can listen to is cool calm pete and intelekt and dirty digits. my history classes seem good so far. i'm exited. its always akward for me during the first day. i'm not sure who will be sitting next to me and who will being passing me the syllabus. trite and elementary school-ish, i know, but i've always been this way. anxiety has always been one of my closest companions. its a little intimidating when you are one of the few females there and even more so when youre the only minority. its almost impossible not to notice me. i went back to my room during my break to unpack my things and i ended up reorganizing all my drawers. this always happens. im always trying to fit myself correctly into a spot at this school, but my clothing and property seem to be the only tangible things i can shelve and put into their own place.

my first day back is always strange. my sense of orientation is a little off. i tend to forget things and it makes me almost dizzy sometimes. however, i hope to make this semester better than the last. with the inspiration of my friend erika, im going to try and be the awesome christina that iam - both personally and academically. i suppose last semester was the purging of the crap i really needed to let out. this time around i hope my system is rid of the puke and has been thoroughly sawdusted. previously ive always thought that buffalo just couldnt handle the awesome that is me, but, "its not our fault that we're awesome."

nahmean?

embedded @ mercury lounge

2007-01-14T20:53:00.000-05:00

friday night: loer velocity/bisc1/intelekt and dirty digits/psyche origami/cool calm pete/junk science, iller than theirs, nuclear family

i dont have any pictures of loer velocity or bisc1, which im a little sorry for.

intelekt and dirty digits

psyche origami

nuclear family

cool calm pete

win a date with nuk fam!
so seriously, i was one number away from getting this.

i have videos but because i cant figure out how to embed them on blogger and because im too lazy to start up a youtube account, you will all have to live with the fact that you didnt go to a really bitchin' show.

i scored some pretty great stuff, including a t-shirt that i got for cheaper cause im, "just that cute."
lesson learnt? flirt at the merch table ladies. if you cant be a cute asian girl, dont be a slut.

sincerest apologies blog

2007-01-10T18:51:00.000-05:00

i lied. yeah, im sorry. you know when i said i should spend less time reading books and doing things in my sketchbook? well, its been the complete opposite. forgive me, but sometimes, youre like eating rice pudding. youre good for 2 seconds, but if i dont take a break, i might gag. except this time, its not your milky, ricey-ness, but the pretentiousness of blogging my life away.

i promise to be back soon. in the meantime, entertain yourselves.

books? no, its crailtap motherfuckers.

2007-01-03T19:14:00.000-05:00

i just spent my entire afternoon watching skate videos from the great and re-established love, crailtap. (* considering my day started at 2 pm, this doesnt account for much). havent been there in a while but since i spent my night watching yeah right! i suppose that was only appropriate. countless hours later, im stumbling upon mishka, aNYthing, and dave's quality meats. i - am very upset with myself. not only did i not know that KUDU was playing friday night, but that reason made a slew of magnets and were handing them out downtown new years eve.

you know what this means? im obviously spending a little too much time reading books and watching porn and not enough time scouting the internet for useless shit. whoa. seriously.

alright, alright. lets get right down to the pulp of the matter. dqm totally has the dunks ive been desperately searching for in my size (6! mensss! well, hopefully they have my size). the last time i was this close, that motherfucker on ebay copped out cause he was a douche. whateverrr. ferreal. i saw them on some kids feet walking down broadway. you bet yer ass i was drooling up buckets. that bright orange glow of a nike emblem. oh baby, my pants are getting tight.

so, the juice of this carton of goodness? im totally feelin' mishka right now. their shirts are pretty cool. 10 DEEP has also got some good stuff, especially this one. yes, i would rock that shit all the time.

2007-01-03T16:39:00.000-05:00

chan marshall is on this month's magnet. go cop that.
yeah right! is sweet. spike jonze did some pretty cool stuff.
diary is almost too scary to handle.
that sketchbook only has one thing in it and its great, but no one will ever see it.
im a little disappointed by kim's mondo. i think im going to have to go to fatbeats.

new artwork for a new year

2007-01-01T23:19:00.000-05:00

more to come soon, i promise.

i spent my new years in brooklyn with crazy dancing and lots of champagne.
i ate 12 grapes at midnight, making wishes as i popped them in my mouth.
i really cant remember what all 12 of them were, but i know the important ones, and i hope they come true.
i climbed into bed this morning, into sheets that were cool and smelled familiar. my pillows were comfortable and soft, unlike when im at school, and i like that.
i woke up to the taste of champagne, dunkin donuts hot chocolate and a cigarette in my mouth.

look! grapes in my cup!

erika making wishes from her list

this bitch is going to have my babies

the infamous piece of bootay that is choi

i aint the bitch to be flashin' my tits but your little broke bling looks ridiculoussss!!!!

2006-12-31T15:43:00.000-05:00

new year's eve playlist:
spank rock
m.i.a.
diplo
yeah yeah yeahs [pre-show your bones]
lcd soundsystem
cassie!!
nuk fam
short stories

im ready for 2007 just cause 2006 was kinda shitty.
so, in efforts to cleanse oneself of a shitty year i got rid of most text messages and some of my magnet poetry around the room.

every year, i play "the new year" by death cab for cutie cause i always feel the same. its a new year, so what does that mean? am i suppose to feel different? whateverfuckthat. yes, those are my exact thoughts every year come 12 am january 1st. well, this year, ive decided that this shit has got to stop. yeah, 2006 - fuck you.

mmm...this time around, christina cahn is trying to work on herself and her grades. shes going to try and be less angry (hah - but seriously, ive been working on it). shes trying to be a better person in general, maybe then she will be happier with herself.

werd to yo momma, fuckersss.

2006-12-30T23:59:00.000-05:00

hey me,
cheer up kiddo. hopefully this will help.
<3,
me.

happy incidents @ barnes and noble!

2006-12-28T23:17:00.000-05:00

what a fortunate event happened today!
i was wandering cramped aisles at the bay terrace barnes and noble and came across my old high school english teacher.
shes great. i miss her very much. she has the ability to change lives.
she went to buffalo and heeds warnings of dormatories every time she speaks to me.
shes getting married to her boyfriend on friday the 13th (what a krista a berg thing to do) and shes going to get her doctorate.

i remember her class so well. it was one of the best classes ive ever had to sit through. it was the 45 minutes in the day that would never fail to keep me interested and engaged. it was almost like home, how comfortable it became. junior year might have been the best year of my high school career. senior year was such shit.

her class brought people together and ive never missed something like i missed her lessons or herself in general. its so funny how sometimes i can just miss her. then to look back and see how things are changing and how we are growing.
each time i see her she tells me she misses my class. i tell her i miss our class too. she calls me sweetiepie.
im getting fucking old.

happy christmas

2006-12-25T23:57:00.000-05:00

...before its over

in the spirit of christmas...

2006-12-24T18:36:00.000-05:00

donate to the christina needs a pair of lucky jeans/new pair of dunks/sidekick3 fund.

contact: me.

une lettre

2006-12-24T01:17:00.000-05:00

A summation:

Dearest Kyoko,

This semester went by really fast. Sometimes its hard to see how quickly we are going to be juniors, or even seniors. College is flying by. This semester was really different for me. I declared my major and took on a lot of extra curriculars. I don't regret it, but it definately made life a bit more stressful. I want to explain some things before the year ends and a new semester begins. My Kyoko, I appreciate you always being there for me. I like the fact that our friendship is different than others. There are things that we share that others don't. I'm glad that we got to know each other better this year, but I'm also sorry that some things I've done may have confused you. I never meant to make you feel like you couldn't rely on me, or that I no longer wanted to be your friend. As the semester went on I became really unhappy with myself. I was feeling unbelievably lonely because of a boy I should let go of but have yet to and my grades weren't what I wanted them to be despite studying as much as possible.

I decided to stop drinking because after it all, when I woke up the next morning, I always felt the same. Drinking didn't solve any of my problems, so I decided that I should just focus on myself for a while. I guess everyone mistook this. Drunken photos on facebook were really the least of my concerns. I felt like there were more important things in my life to concentrate on. I'm sorry if people thought that I had suddenly lost interest in them, or that I was being petty, but those were my reasons. Everything this semester has been either hectic or depressing, and I don't mean to come across as unemotional or disinterested. Sometimes I have a hard time sharing things with people, and I apologize for not telling you earlier. I want to start the new year by being a better person, for myself. I'm tired of being unhappy. I hope that you want the same things for yourself. I get worried when you drink and get upset, or when you are stressed out about things you can't help. I love you and I don't want you to die. But really, I wish you a restful and stress-free break. I'll see you when we get back.

Love,
Christina aka Chan-man

r.i.p. carl blaze

2006-12-23T20:57:00.000-05:00

you know, i was feeling so good about hip hop today. i was on the 7 train, pulling into queensborough plaza, listening to my nas podcast with funkmaster flex, the empire state building was lit in red and green. i felt so good about the city. i had one of those moments when you get goosebumps and its great.

i come home and i turn on the radio and find out that dj carl blaze passed away this morning.
he was shot in an apartment lobby in washington heights.
i dont know, but i wanted to cry. its so surreal. you listen to the radio and you hear this person all the time, they kind of become your neighbor. someone that you are personal with despite never ever knowing them and probably never being able to meet them. then all of a sudden, theyre no longer here. its crazy.
some people have said that he is now resting in peace, with those that he admired so much, like pac and biggie.
but that cant be right. this person had so much life to live and none of those people deserved to die the way they did.
it just doesnt make sense. hip hop shouldnt be like this. right?

babymakers

2006-12-22T17:22:00.000-05:00

holleerrrrr!!!

"you ruined christmas"

2006-12-20T23:29:00.000-05:00

so today, while christmas shopping, i felt it.
i started to hate christmas. not a lot. just a little bit and that makes me really sad.
i havent been listening to any christmas songs as i usually would around this time, but instead, ive been avoiding them. i guess because almost all of them are about feeling lonely on what is supposed to be a joyous season.
i find myself disliking children and the parents that bring them around to see the city. hating the tourists at rockerfeller center, gazing upon a large tree. hating shopping! (of all things).
it doesnt feel like christmas at all. the weather is too warm and snow doesnt fall when its suppose to for me anymore.
life would be a whole lot simpler if it were like a charlie brown christmas special.
i can run and walk down many city blocks, but i can never hide from feeling lonely.
i guess this is why so many people hate it. almost everyone at the radio station had the same response when i asked them to do holiday carts.
i used to be excited for every holiday that had a history. i mean holidays with costumes and fat people coming down your imaginary chimney. not ones where we remember our dead uncle from war such and such and go out shopping because of massive sales.
i mean, i really got upset over things not going according to tradition or fulfilling some type of "specialness" that holidays are suppose to have somehow, like pixie dust.
you know how in cartoon specials, theres always that one character that loses faith and magically gains in back within a 45 minute holiday special? well, maybe i need something like that. i need to believe again. believe - what the fuck does that mean? whatever.

me and you and everyone we know

2006-12-19T00:25:00.000-05:00

the first time i watched this movie i was a freshman in my first semester of college. i remember lying in bed, falling asleep to miranda july clasping john hawkes body intertwined in the branches of trees. i remember her telling the whole world to "fuck peace" in her car, writing it on her dashboard impulsively with a sharpie. i recently just saw it again on televison, but i miss it. it makes me want to write "me" and "you" on my shoes and dance.

i highly recommend this movie when youre feeling a little indie movie-ish, sad but dont want to be sappy, and when youre just in that mood.

2006-12-18T22:33:00.000-05:00

this is me trying to sleep, while listening to sufjan stevens.

fuck y'all i'm from new york

2006-12-16T01:39:00.000-05:00

first night back in nyc and its cherry valley and an sob.
that's the fucking life.
werd.

metal heart

2006-12-15T10:14:00.000-05:00

dear failed relationships,

i appreciated what we have, but now, its time to let go. i dont blame you for everything and im not calling you an asshole (even though everyone seems to be thinking it). maybe the waters were just too cold, you know? i never got used to what we had, so i was too scared to actually go in the pool. but now that its gone, i sure do miss it. sometimes i cry, but dont tell anyone.

i mean it. at first i was angry, but now, im just tired. im tired of thinking about how things didnt work out. so, its not you, its me. lets stop contacting each other. no? my sorrows havent stopped you from moving on, so just let me do the same. i really did like you, but i cant hold on any longer, and theres nothing that can be done about that now. dont facebook message me saying you want to be pen pals. dont come to buffalo. dont come back to nyc. and if you do, its okay to delete my number. i wont be hurt. in fact, ive deleted you guys a long time ago. there is no need to dwell. i loved you once - perhaps secretly, forever, but i wont ever admit it.

one day, maybe we will sit and talk about your life and then about mine. how things are nice. fine. maybe listen to sufjan stevens. whatever.

- christina

"you let go and i'll let go too" - lauryn hill

dear chemistry

2006-12-14T21:22:00.000-05:00

i fucking hate you. you were never my friend even though you pretended to be.
i hope you go to hell. i'll meet you there in a couple of years and we'll duke it out.
in the meantime, you can suck my imaginary cock.
- c chan

girls gone wild turbo

2006-12-13T19:43:00.000-05:00

every night, when time comes round, comedy central runs girls gone wild commericals every five to ten minutes. i get a disclaimer telling me that there may be material that is not suitable for viewers under the age of 18. i watch girls in exotic locales of beaches, on vacation, spring break perhaps - flashing me their tits.
i dont want to be all preachy and feminist-y but girls ask for respect but shove their breasts in your face. girls willingly degrading themselves. i feel ashamed to be female sometimes.

so, if i had a dick, would i be that dickless?
would i actually sit around and watch girls being borderline harassed into showing me their ass or the fact that their pussy no longer has hair?
think what you want, but i downloaded it and watched it. i was mulling around some ideas about sex and gender roles for a while and i thought this might answer some questions. but after i watched it, i felt like i needed to shower because i felt very unclean. i was pretty appalled.
girls that are clearly drunk are flashing a camera for a tank top (with the girls gone wild logo on it no less). there was one scene in which there was a girl in a crowd of men chanting, "show your tits." other great scenes included girls at bars with their ass hanging out of their skirts and their tops lowered while guys groped them.

how do guys sit and watch this? im getting kinda lightheaded just thinking about it.
there was also a less popular version of ggw called "guys gone wild" which was marketed mainly for homosexual males and heterosexual females. this was pretty short lived to my knowledge. the ggw franchise has grown to include girls in all types of places and settings to suit your needs. one i find pretty great is the "first timers" edition. ive personally never seen this video, but im pretty sure they're not "first timers." dont fight me on this please.

why do women stand to be objectified that way? ive never felt the need to justify my femininity, to explain why women act the way they do or that they shouldnt be treated a certain way, but all of a sudden im really concerned about where i belong as a female. im not talking about climbing the corporate ladder or glass ceilings and such, but women and sex. why are there things i cant do but men can - from a purely logical standpoint. so, i guess i can really just boil this down to double standards.

maybe im posing too many questions. i havent thoroughly thought about this, but its something i think needs a great deal of research - which i think would be kind of fun. i mean, what could be wrong with watching porn and having sex all day?

lets make love and listen to death from above

2006-12-06T01:15:00.000-05:00

i want to make you a map that will lead you to your place of work.
along it i want to take you to places that will show you how you make me feel.
i want to make you a map that will lead you back home.
along it i want you to see that that is my favorite time of day.
when you get home, i want to lead you to my heart and show you how much i love you.

Heavy Metal - Bisc 1

2006-12-05T02:20:00.000-05:00

ive been listening to this song and its pretty awesome. i think its pretty strange how hip hop continues to "rep the hood" when in reality, hip hop has most definately moved beyond that. we have rappers starting shit over who can rep the hood more or who still has ties, but a line is crossed and blurred when you enter the industry. i think the whole embedded roster has got a really different feel than a lot of the music out there right now. its not as flashy, not as crazy - egotistical, more common man, which i think is a needed change sometimes. if anything, i think heavy metal is a better representation of the hood than i've heard in a while. its proof that some things dont change in the hood and something needs to be done. social conciousness is a part of that and at the very core, is what hip hop is about, or what is was. go check out embedded for more bisc 1 stuff. theres also a pretty sweet show called noho's bored that aired 10-25-06 with cool calm pete, junk science and bisc 1 up at east village radio on podcast. go peep that sheettt now.

h-o-v-a

2006-12-04T01:19:00.000-05:00

happy birthday jay-z.
the 40/40 club is doing well i hear and so is beyonce.
i know theres been some beef going down with jim jones, but dont sweat it. i got your back.
pleaasssseeeeee. he aint got nothing on you - NOTHING.
anyways, dont get too crazy cause the new album is probably going to need a tour and def jam needs to promote NAS!
crazy shit. anyways, enjoy yourself old man.
hollerrrr.

Dear Scabby McScabbystein

2006-11-28T01:55:00.000-05:00

you were the price i paid for beauty. if i have to look like a mutant, i should at least embody the powers of one as a fair trade off.
i hate you.
love always,
c. chan

ps. i want to pick you so badly, but i was already berated. i shall try not to feel you up as much as possible.