Bulls on Parade

A lot weighing on my mind these days.

1) I was a hot mess this last Wednesday. Rank lists for residency were due that night. The realization that my future career has now been determined by the match algorithm mowed me over like a train. Instead of going out to our class's rank list submission party, I felt physically ill at the thought of having to chat with my classmates about the match and instead stayed home and played the new Zelda game until my eyes were gonna melt in their sockets. A friend of mine texted me to ask why I skipped the party, and I simply left the response at: "I am mentally indisposed."

2) I received my first query rejection last night while I was at a friend's chocolate fondue party. In hindsight, I was not ready to query, and I was half-expecting a rejection at that point. It was a sort of curiosity-provoked act of impulse while I was waiting for residency interviews, because the agent in question was closing for queries around that time and I was all, 'Oh no, what if they never come back?' Still, not gonna lie -- it stung. I am already feeling very much in doubt about everything, and the letter was like another swing at my kneecaps.

3) Serious question I have been pondering... has my temper been shortening with age? Or is it the cumulative stresses of this political climate/medical life that is short-circuiting my ability to clamp down on my ire? I embarrassingly lost my cool at the Person when we were at Krewe of Muses over something really stupid. I snapped at a friend when he kept talking in pseudo-African accent after watching Black Panther.

4) Along a more serious line though, a friend of mine (Skillet) and I were talking last night about how our medical schools need to do more in teaching us how to handle situations when patients say things that are offensive or inappropriate. The one time I almost really lost it with a patient was right around when Charlottesville happened. As a caveat, this patient may have had some sort of hypomania, as he had very pressurized speech. I saw him in clinic with the intent of asking him to enroll in my research study, and so I listened politely as he talked on and on. That is, until he went on to say that "Some people are asking to be run over" in reference to the girl who was killed when a car rammed into the counter-protestors. I was absolutely livid, and after telling him I didn't agree with him, I said I didn't think he was suitable for my study and left the room.

Skillet, who's very openly gay, told me that he had a patient--an older woman who was very sweet and conversational until she found out that he was from Miami. "Miami... all those immigrants... and Cubans," she said with disgust. When the attending came in, she requested that my friend not see her anymore.

These are only some of the more atrocious incidents I have encountered since living in Louisiana. Last night, I shared the story again of how I had a residency interviewer tell me, "I don't speak Chinese, hope English is okay!" While my friends responded in aghast, a classmate's husband interjected, "Oh, I'm sure she was just being friendly."

"Yeah, I'm sure she was trying to be nice, but that doesn't mean it's okay to say that."

"Well you know, our society is so reactionary these days..."

We changed the subject before he could elaborate further. Which was for the best, because let me tell you, I was not in the mood to drop a truth bomb on his head.

This dude does not understand how insulting it is to be told, "Wow you speak really good English," when you have a fucking English major from Duke. This dude has never had to politely field questions about Chinese food from curious patients, until they tell you, "Oh you have to understand, we just don't get a lot of foreigners around these parts." In short, he does not understand what it's like to be constantly seen as a foreigner in the country you were born in.

And all of that's just from my own experiences. My friend, who is of Korean descent, was asked about her opinion of Kim Jong Un at an interview. When we were on our surgery rotation together, an anesthesiologist asked her if she has eaten dog before.

Yes, I am well aware that in all these instances, these were well-meaning people who genuinely were trying to be friendly. And maybe you can call me "reactionary," or whatever that term is supposed to signify. And yes, I know this dude does not understand what it's like for an Asian-American in this country. Maybe I would have done all of us a favor by gently educating him last night.

But is that my responsibility? This is what Skillet and I were talking about last night, before the rest of our classmates arrived. If we stayed in Louisiana to train and practice medicine, perhaps we'd make a difference in helping educate these communities or break their stereotyped ideas of what it means to be a gay man or an Asian-American woman. But for the two of us, at a certain point we just don't want to bear this burden.

The Lighthouse

https://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/heres-the-powerful-letter-the-stanford-victim-read-to-her-ra?utm_term=.xnPr7jy43#.jb38gRnkL

This article has been haunting me since I read it last night. It is an amazing piece of writing that nearly made me cry while I was sitting in Starbucks on rainy Friday afternoon.

"And finally, to girls everywhere, I am with you. On nights when you feel alone, I am with you. When people doubt you or dismiss you, I am with you. I fought everyday for you. So never stop fighting, I believe you. As the author Anne Lamott once wrote, “Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.” Although I can’t save every boat, I hope that by speaking today, you absorbed a small amount of light, a small knowing that you can’t be silenced, a small satisfaction that justice was served, a small assurance that we are getting somewhere, and a big, big knowing that you are important, unquestionably, you are untouchable, you are beautiful, you are to be valued, respected, undeniably, every minute of every day, you are powerful and nobody can take that away from you. To girls everywhere, I am with you. Thank you."

A Short Rant

I'm in the throes of Heme-Onc block, with my next exam fast-approaching on Tuesday. But I couldn't help but read some articles posted on some of my favorite blogs--most notably, the controversy over the white male poet who'd been using a Chinese pen name. Or rather, a name that belonged to a female Taiwanese-American high school classmate of his.

This morning, I came across a very well-written essay by Jenny Zhang, an Asian-American poet, published on Buzzfeed. She detailed exactly why the controversy rankled her so much, including a lot of background about her own experiences as an Asian-American writer. I can't say I've experienced what she went through in those writer's workshops where her peers--mostly privileged and white--would repeatedly lament that they wish they had a more "diverse" or "exotic" background, or comment that Jenny's works would be more likely to be accepted/published because of her race. (It reminds me a lot of a girl whose college essays I edited, who bristled at how people readily downplay her achievements and her Yale acceptance because of her Latina surname, nevermind the fact that she worked her butt off to get where she is now.)

But as Jenny Zhang points out, these people just want the "exotic" name, and not the baggage of being a minority in a country where presidential candidates openly talk about mass deportation of immigrants and derisively talk about "anchor babies." (My parents were in the US with graduate student visas when I was born. Am I an anchor baby? Am I any less "American" than somebody whose parents were born here? If you think you can decide that for me, fuck off.)

Well, when I got to the comments at the bottom of the article, that's when my anger REALLY took off. These were comments I'm now used to at this point, and I see it anytime I read an essay about race and privilege. Basically, they called Jenny Zhang a whiner and why is she complaining, people use pen names all the time, this is bullshit, blah blah blah.

No. NO. You really don't get it, do you?

Which is fine! I don't expect you to fully understand the experience of being Asian-American. What I DON'T understand is why you insist on dismissing someone else's point of view. How hard is it to simply say, "I don't think I can fully understand what it's like to be in your shoes, but I respect and acknowledge that you feel this way." Really, is that too much to ask??

//end rant

ugh

Currently working on Chapter 24, which is already proving to be draining to write.

To build a realistic barrage of cyberbullying that Her Highness receives, I've spent the past hour intentionally looking at articles about Internet flaming. I reread the article I wrote about last year on Emily Gould and Keith Gessen, this post I archived from Curt Schilling's blog about the obscene tweets he got after congratulating his daughter on Twitter, dozens of articles about people like Anita Sarkeesian and prominent female writers receiving hate mail and crap. You can't even make this shit up. I literally feel nauseous from having read this stuff for an hour.

Last year, I briefly touched on the UCSB shooting. This incident hit closer to home for me--one of the victims was my brother's high school classmate. What I didn't write about then was the misogynistic motives behind that shooting. This article gives an inside look at the online community the shooter used to hang around. It is fucking appalling. I want to say that I don't know anyone who spews out the same vitriol about girls being sluts, bemoaning their lack of getting laid because of "shallow" girls, but how do I know if these people I interact with put on a face in public and then unleash all this venom on the Internet? One comment on that article gave me pause:

"these people are sick. on the other hand i'm a straight guy and i can't say i've never felt some of those emotions before. feeling like no one attracted to you and people think you're a creep sucks. and asking someone out sucks too because then they have the power because you're the one who likes them."

Since coming to med school, I've had more close guy friends than I've ever had in my life. And I've definitely heard iterations of this from them. I would like to think my friends are good people who wouldn't flame others online, who may complain about dating culture but not because they think women are hos for not sleeping with them. It takes a disturbed person to resort to mass murder in order to validate some "manifesto." But the lines of reasoning behind it are not unique to the murderous. More than likely, there are people around you who have ugly thoughts--perhaps less hateful, more diluted version--and hopefully, they are not the type of people who will choose to manifest this hatred beyond the confines of their brains.

Edit//

I've been reading articles about the church shooting, Charleston, SC. It's all relevant to this. The news stations are already tossing out "mental condition" and "mental illness" in regards to the shooter, but there are others without murderous intent who harbor the same vein of thoughts as the shooter. In light of the Black Lives Matter movement from this past year, you can't deny that there is an insidious bigotry that is pervasive throughout the country.

I don't know if this is the most appropriate way to reflect on this, but I've thought about what if I were in a similar situation. What if America's fear of China as a superpower suddenly climaxes into a massive sweep of xenophobia, and I start seeing stories in the news about attacks against Asians again and again? Would I feel safe in this country? The plight of blacks and Asians in America are not analogous in historical and socioeconomic context, but it's a starting point for me to understand what the current climate is right now. And really, it's quite disheartening.

Duke and Spirituality

ETA: I just found out that Duke has reversed its decision and decided to hold the call to prayer in the quad instead. I can't say I was particularly pleased with this backtracking, but I have to acknowledge that Christians might not be comfortable with the chapel being used for the Muslim call to prayer. (Though I have to say... the chapel holds a lot of non-Christian events at school, and I have yet to hear any major complaints against those.)

HOWEVER.... what pissed me off more than anything were the comments people left on Duke's Facebook page. Calling Duke a "traitor Muslim school' and all sorts of garbage. I suspect NONE of those people ever studied at Duke in the first place and have NO IDEA what it's like on campus. Those people threatening to never send their kids there -- if your kids are just as close-minded and poisonous with hateful words, then they probably don't belong at Duke either.

---------------
Original Post

I generally don't blog about current events, but there are times when the events intersect strangely with the ongoings in my own life, and I feel compelled to write in order to process my thoughts.

My alma mater, Duke University, recently announced that every Friday, the Muslim call to prayer will ring from the chapel bell tower. This has been gaining particular attention the news, especially in light of the recent events in France with the terrorist act committed at Charlie Hebdo. Some boneheads have been calling upon donors and alum to stop donating to Duke until the policy is reversed, claiming that this encouragement of Islam is a threat to Christianity.

I won't even go into the fact that the influence of Christianity is everywhere at Duke (the insignia, the chapel, the Bibles we all receive upon graduation), and that the idea of Christianity being wiped out from Duke is laughable. But I will talk about how I am indebted to Duke for opening my eyes to religious acceptance and spirituality.

When I entered the school in August 2009, I had no concept of either. I was vaguely aware of the Buddhist influence on my extended family an ocean away, but growing up I had no religious rituals and hardly ever thought about higher powers and whatnot. That changed almost as soon as I started my freshman year, when a high school alum at Duke invited me to join a Christian fellowship's welcome event.

That freshman year was a terrible year, but it made me who I am today. Two things happened coincidentally during that period. My disastrous academic experience hurtled me into a personal crisis of intense self-doubt and loathing. At the same time, I began exploring Christianity -- initially, as a way to make friends who also felt fatigued by the prevalent hook-up culture, but little by little I began attending small groups and large groups, intrigued by the conversations on what it meant to live a good life and be a good person. These were conversations I'd never had growing up, and I read Bible verses and listened to the pastors in curiosity.

At a certain point, however, I reached a dead-end. There were things I liked about Christianity, but there were also things I didn't like, couldn't accept, or just couldn't believe. As I asked more and more questions to my mentors, the answers started to meld into one: "It will make sense if you believe." But I can't believe, I wanted to say, because it doesn't make sense! Gradually, I stopped attending the group events, but the friends that I made remained through the rest of my undergraduate career and beyond. My best friend from Duke is a devout Christian, and if anything, my experience with that Christian fellowship taught me how to be religiously sensitive.

The other major spiritual epiphany happened in my junior year. To get some English major requirements out of the way, I enrolled in a class called "Spiritual Autobiographies." Our first essay assignment was to observe a spiritual or religious event that is not part of our own beliefs and write about the experience. Some classmates went to a mosque, while others went to a Buddhist temple. I went to visit a pagan witch on the night of the full moon.

That night will always be one of my favorite memories, because in many ways it changed me. Not because I started believing in pagan rituals or spirits, but because of certain things the witch said to me that night. One was what she told me when she read my Tarot card. The second was when she said that it's okay to take bits and pieces of what you like in other religions and custom-build your own spirituality, without having to accept all the other baggage that comes with each organized religion.

The light came on. And that's where I am now--spiritual, but not religious.

In medical school, religion becomes especially important when we talk about end of life care and death. During my end-of-life elective class yesterday, we had to act in scenarios with actors in which we were supposed to break the bad news that his/her mother had terminal cancer. We were split into small groups that rotated through four stations, each with a different actor. As soon as my actor asked me, with tears streaming down his face, if I believed in Jesus our Lord and Savior, bells went off in my head.

My friend had to do the same scenario in a different group, and she said her first reaction was panic. I understood -- religion is something we almost never discuss publicly and can become a scary topic to broach. But as I held the actor's arm, I quietly told him that I believed in a higher power, but that my role in his mother's care was not in religion but in medicine. When he suddenly closed his eyes to pray aloud, I let him. I kept my eyes down in respect, just like I'd done all those times I'd had dinner with my Christian friends who said Grace before every meal.

Duke University not only helped me understand my own spiritual beliefs, but also helped me understand how to interact with people of other beliefs, and to respect the positive things that religion can bring--compassion, comfort, and solace. I am proud of my school for leading the way in religious acceptance and grateful for what it has taught me in turn.

The Late Late Show

When it was announced that Stephen Colbert was replacing David Letterman, obviously I was kinda sad. I mean, I still remember the days back in my senior year of high school when I had the luxury to watch The Colbert Report on TV every weeknight. Even now, I still watch clips on his website every so often. But I wasn't terribly upset to hear that the show was ending, because in a way I felt like it was a good time for Colbert to retire the character and move on.

For some reason, I reacted to today's news of Craig Ferguson's departure from The Late Late Show with a lot more sadness. His humor really isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I've spent hours on Youtube just watching his interviews with his celebrity guests. I first discovered him when I stumbled upon a series of interviews in which he and my rock goddess idol Shirley Manson bonded over their Scottish heritage. From there, I've cracked up over countless interviews, such as he and James McAvoy's "Vortex of Scottish Charm."

My favorite clip though is the one I've embedded into this clip, when he explains his past history of alcoholism and why he refuses to make fun of Britney Spears. It's a really impressive balance of humor and gravity about an issue that has always bothered me about celebrity culture. I still remember my mixed feelings about the Internet reaction to Anna Nicole Smith's death, which Craig Ferguson touches on in this monologue.

The Ongoing Battle

When I think of the people that I'd describe as prideful, oftentimes this pride comes hand-in-hand with insecurity. Obviously, there are certain people where the pride comes from the proper source: self-confidence that is impervious to external influence. But more often than not, the prideful ones constantly need validation. It sounds contradictory, but I don't know how else to explain it. The first time I noticed this was my freshman year of college; one friend would often say all sorts of outlandish statements about her beauty and looks, but upon closer inspection, it was clear that her vanity was a coverup for deep-rooted insecurities about her desirability.

The quality I tend to get most pig-headed about? My writing ability. The thing though, is that it's always a constant struggle for me to believe that it's something I'm good at. Even if I try to warm myself up by recalling any compliments I've received in the past, they do little to comfort me in the long run. There's always this fear that my writing has gotten worse over time, or that I may lose this skill at any moment. I don't think this fear is completely unfounded. I coincidentally started making big strides with EP around the same time my roommate and I started an exercise routine. In the beginning I dreaded going to the gym. It wasn't even that bad once I was actually in the gym, but the mental battle of not wanting to go huffing and puffing on the elliptical was the worst. Same thing with writing. Frankly, I was out of shape: words didn't come as naturally as they used to, but the biggest problem was getting over the mental hurdle. I knew the stuff I was churning out was sub-par, and it was more comfortable to just close Word and go watch another episode of City Hunter.

I can be pretty hypercritical about my own writing, but interestingly enough, I am also rather sensitive about others criticizing my writing. One reason why I think my English major was valuable in helping me improve is that the class workshops forced me to get used to sharing my stuff. But even so, I dreaded the days when I'd have to pass out copies of my work and everyone in the room would have a discussion about it. Nobody ever said anything mean to me, but it was always nerve-wracking wondering if people secretly thought my writing was a godawful piece of melodrama stuffed with purple prose.

Similarly, I can get very sensitive about putting myself out there on social media. I rarely ever post Facebook statuses and I generally stay away from writing comments. I see lots of people on my newsfeed who end up relying on social media to validate their self-worth--hence, all the narcissistic posts fishing for "likes" and comments. Even when I change a profile picture, I start paying an exorbitant amount of attention to whether or not people have been "liking" my photo. And I hate behaving like this, so I try to avoid posting anything in the first place.

So when my mother asked me to share a link about the Sunflower Movement (aka the Taiwanese student protests), I knew what I should do, but I was terrified. I wrote a concise explanation of the protest that I asked both my mother and YY to proofread for me, and I decided I'd post the status at noon for maximum exposure. But during the few hours while I was waiting for noon, I was stressed out of my mind. I thought of the FB friends who support the Taiwanese blue party and wondered if they were all going to chew me out publicly. Then I wondered if I would be fruitlessly yelling out into a vacuum, and all I'd get would be one pity "like" from my mother. Mind you, this was before I'd even posted ANYTHING.

Well, 22 hours later, I am happy to report that I got more than just one pity "like" from my mother. Last I checked, there were 43 likes and 7 comments. Quite a number of "likes" were from people I didn't even dream would read my post. To them, it was probably nothing more than a mindless tap on the smartphone screen, but I'm embarrassed to admit how happy it made me feel. Nobody said anything bad; in fact, most of the comments thanked me for sharing and some even complimented me for my well-written analysis. In fact, my favorite English teacher from high school even commented to say so. That literally made my day.

All in all, this episode probably just proves that I am still ridiculously reliant on others to feel good about myself. But I can't deny that it spurred a big boost in writing productivity yesterday. And that's always a WIN in my book.

Potpourri

- I AM SO EXCITED FOR CAPTAIN AMERICA: WINTER SOLDIER. People often say he's boring and goody-goody and whatnot, but he's my favorite Avenger. And the reviews I've read have been awesome so far. Also, I may have read some minor spoilers but there's a heartstrings-tugging scene that I am dying to watch.

- I never got the appeal of Lorde's "Royals," which unfortunately made me write her off as someone who wasn't my cup of tea. Then she started promoting "Team" and I thought, Okay. This is better. Then this weekend S was playing "Glory and Gore" in her car, and when I asked her about the song, she also told me to check out "Tennis Court." Now I'm wondering why they promoted "Royals" so heavily, because I've been hooked on the other songs. Maybe my tastes are just not quite aligned with the general population.

- Dunno if I'll watch it anytime soon (I didn't love the series), but I'm glad Divergent did so well in the box office. Every time a YA-movie adaptation is released, I get all anxious about whether or not it's gonna bomb. Cuz people shit on YA all the time as the lowbrow entertainment of choice for hormonal teenage girls. Also, this bingo card pretty much sums up all the irritating things I see whenever a new article disparaging YA springs out of the ground like a dandelion every other month:

- Yesterday I discovered Tinashe and started listening to "2 On" and "Ecstasy." Her style really reminds me of 2000's R&B--which Sevyn Streeter's "It Won't Stop" and Jhene Aiko also seem to emulate. And while I like this type of music, it also occurred to me that I'm getting to the point that the stuff I grew up with can have trendy "revivals." Yikes. But okay--I like this stuff better than the EDM pop phase, but someone needs to bring back the female rappers from that 2000's era.

- This weekend I learned firsthand just how much conspiracy theorists can drive me up a wall. Long story short, I ended up in a 1 vs 2 argument over a ridiculous, nonsensical theory regarding the missing Malaysian Airlines plane. It almost felt a bit like a debate between evolutionist and a creationist. People will believe what they want to believe. But really, where is the plane??

- Speaking of current events in Asia, I am very confused about what's going on in Taiwan. It's not covered extensively in Western media and I can't really read Chinese news. A Facebook friend of mine (went to high school in Taiwan, went to Duke for college) wrote this FB status-essay-thing about it, and 50 people or so "liked" the status with multiple people left supporting comments. My reaction was a bit different. First, I was confused what his point was, because the beginning seemed something like "Can't we all get along? Why resort to violence by taking over a government building?" and then it suddenly diverged to something about how the rest of the world doesn't even view Taiwan as a country and how there should be doing a goal-oriented protest instead of people being fueled by rage and hormones and jumping to conclusions, and then finally he capped things off by saying that as youths of Taiwan, "instead of being stuck in the past, we should be thinking about how to improve the future." Huh? People kept complimenting him on such a well-written post, and I was like, ummm okay? And your point is that people should stop being angry? How is that any more goal-oriented than the protestors?

Side note: then I scrolled down and saw this kid (must be a mainlander, based on his comment and last name) whose comment about Taiwanese people being arrogant really ticked me off. Which I will explain in a second.

Anyways, so I sent an e-mail to my mom asking her on her opinion, and we had a conversation back and forth about it. Disclaimer: my Taiwanese family has generally been politically green--that is, they believe that Taiwan is independent from China. So naturally, that's the perspective I've been raised in, so I guess I would be considered an "arrogant" Taiwanese-American. Anyways, my mom's explanation (with some grammar edits lol):

The Taiwanese president Ma wants to pass the trade deal with China as a whole package without discussion. That's why people are against it. The procedure of writing the deal is not legally transparent and the consequence is devastating. For example, in the deal, as long as a person in China invests 200K USD, he can bring three people to Taiwan. They will each be granted with legal citizen ID with benefits like national health care, and it means that each of them will have a vote in the future election. Since Taiwan is so small, in this way, China can just BUY Taiwan easily without military force.

The people in Taiwan who already own a lot of properties will benefit from this deal, because China's buying power will buy everything and make them rich. But, if you look at it from the young people's view point, their future is rather grim. China's buying power will make the Taiwanese real estate in high demand and high price, which young people can't afford. The health care and other kinds of social services have been in a gigantic debt and that will be the young generation's burden. Once all the big business are under Chinese investment control and the small business can't survive, it means their bosses will control them all.

China's investments have bought out some of the Taiwan media groups, that's why the news you hear is not two-sided. The volunteers of the student movement are collecting donations and going to buy one-page ad on New York Times. (They collected enough donations in one day.) These students are in their early twenties. In the past 14 years, they've witnessed the rotting process of Taiwan politics. Now they see the older generation is going to hand them an even grimmer future. How can they not be angry?

And yes, I can't deny that I may be biased towards a specific side, even though I know very little about Taiwanese politics. But the grim future is real; I understood it for myself when I saw all the problems with Taiwanese national health care two years ago. Frankly, this is more than just arrogance or rage or hormones. This is about a country that is sliding into the toilet, and the problem lies in a difference in opinion on the best way to turn things around.

Random Pop Thought of the Day, #2

Last month, I wrote about Katy Perry and her culture-appropriation tactics to promote Prism, specifically donning geisha garb for "Unconditionally" and affronting Muslims with an Allah pendant in the Egypt-themed "Dark Horse." Beneath under all that headline-making tomfoolery, however, is the plain fact the songs she's promoted for Prism grate on my nerves. The chorus of "Unconditionally" is a bane to my ears and I found "Dark Horse" tolerable until all the Egypt stuff started going on, and by then I was so done with the Katy Perry machine that I peaced out.

Now, let's talk about a pop song that's gotten me in a bit of a jam, in that I should dislike the song for its lyrical content, but damn it, every time it plays on the radio my roommate and I immediately start bouncing around to the beat.

I'm talking about Jason Derulo's "Talk Dirty."

The first time I heard this song was on the radio in my roommate's car as we were heading home from brunch at a German cafe. My roommate and I have always joked about how Jason Derulo never fails to say his own name somewhere in his song, and usually it's an autotuned sing-songy rendition of "Jasoooon Deruuuuloooo." Except in "Talk Dirty," a woman says his name prissily in heavily accented English at the beginning of the song.

Me: "Wait, is that supposed to be an Asian accent?"

*I'm still not sure what accent it's supposed to be, but there's a reason why I jumped to the conclusion that it was Asian. Back in the golden era of my physical fitness, aka middle school when I played tennis 2.5 hours x 7 days a week, there were two brothers who practiced at the same clinic I went to. Their mother played favorites, and it was very obvious even in the way she'd say their names. With the older brother, his name would usually come out in a ferocious bark. With the younger brother, it'd come out several notches higher in pitch and come out in a sugary, accented lilt: "Jaaaaasonnnn!"

Anyways, the rest of "Talk Dirty' goes on to talk about how Jason is an indiscriminate, international lover of women as sexual objects. If you sit down and actually read the lyrics, they're pretty... um, yeah.

Been around the world, don't speak the language
But your booty don't need explaining
All I really need to understand is
When you talk dirty to me

The rap verses featuring 2 Chainz has even more explicit degrading stuff, so yeah... go look it up yourself. But I do have to admit my ears perked up when I heard the word "Taiwan" in the lyrics. Holy pomelo, is this the first time Taiwan's been mentioned in a Billboard-topping song?

I know what the girl them want,
London to Taiwan
I got lipstick stamps on my passport
I think I need a new one

It's a little disappointing that this is the context of its first major appearance in the lyrical arena, but oh well. Anyways, the song concludes with that same accented maybe-Asian girl who giggles and goes, "Wat? I don undastand!"

So there you have it. The whole song is lyrically a mess. It falls into the usual trap of portraying ethnic women as exotic sexual commodities without a voice--in fact, it's clear that it doesn't matter if they can't be understood, because the only thing we care about is the fact that they can put out.

I should hate this song. But I don't, because THIS SONG IS SO DAMN CATCHY. That saxophone line at the end of each chorus? Whenever it plays on the radio, my roommate and I start dancing every single time.

Damn it Jason Derulo, why couldn't you sing about baby squirrels or doing laundry, or I dunno--something universally harmless--to this song instead?? Then I wouldn't be stuck with this moral/ethical quandary and wondering if I am morally obligated to skip your song on the radio.

ETA: Well, I found a suitable alternative thanks to some Google sleuthing. The melodic line of the saxophone was apparently sampled from "Hermetico" by Balkan Beat Box, so there we go--something I can listen to without feeling guilty:



A remix, I believe, that's also pretty catchy:

Random Pop Thought of the Day

Does the Katy Perry machine purposely piss different cultures off in order to get media attention for her songs? You'd think after all the commotion about her geisha act for "Unconditionally" (a song I really can't stand, by the way), she'd lay low on the culturally-influenced themes for a while and stick to fluffy candy and sugar themes. I just read an article on the BBC about the Allah pendant in the "Dark Horse" video was edited out in a new version on Youtube. I'm guessing nobody in her entourage thought that having a suitor wearing the Allah pendant disintegrate to sand at Katy Perry's touch would maybe offend Muslims? Or maybe they did and thought it'd be good publicity? idk. I read in some TIME article that the Egyptian stuff is supposedly accurate, but since I don't really have any desire to watch the video and I'm not an expert in Egypt, I wouldn't know.

I didn't have any negative feelings about Katy Perry back in her Teenage Dream era. I actually thought some of the songs were pretty catchy. I hated "California Gurls" because I am the farthest thing from "daisy dukes, bikinis on top" as you can get, but everything else I could listen to without immediately changing the radio station. But Prism and all the other drama following Katy Perry this era has pretty much made her the pop star I absolutely can't stand. I was very blah about "Roar" and very ughhhhh about "Unconditionally," but chalk it up to personal taste---I had nothing against her. Then the geisha thing happened, and while I wasn't terribly outraged (more like an internal groan), then she had her GQ interview. All I'm gonna post is this excerpt, because it speaks for itself:

"I was thinking about unconditional love, and I was thinking: Geishas are basically, like, the masters of loving unconditionally." She’s so earnest, I don’t have the heart to point out that in the gamut of human interactions, the courtesan-patron relationship is, um, maybe the most conditional relationship there is?

And with all the other things she's said about John Mayer and feminism and whatnot, I feel like the more I know about her outside of music, the more I start to dislike the Katy Perry public persona. (Gotta make the distinction that I don't know her as a person--only as a public brand.) And all the people who come to her defense with arguments like, "Lighten up! Why do you people always find something to be offended about?" are even worse. They make my blood boil than anything Katy Perry says or does out of ignorance.

Thoughts on Internet Oversharing and Flaming

This has been a topic I've discussed at length with YY recently, and I thought I'd get my thoughts down about it now. Chances are, my opinions might seem outdated as we become more and more reliant on Internet presence and technology, but we'll see.

This blog has always been a paradoxical mixture of the public and private. There's no denying that it's public. Anyone with the URL can access this blog and read all of my published posts. People who don't know me in person can read everything accounted from my sophomore year of high school up until now. On the other hand, there's a reason why I've usually referred to this as my "private" blog. I never use my real, legal name. I never refer to people by their actual names unless I'm writing about a public figure or celebrity. I've only loosely alluded to my hometown in California.Thinking back, there was no concrete reason why I decided to go by Sophelia online. It was a spontaneous decision.

In hindsight, it was an intuitively smart decision to adopt a pseudonym. Prospective employers and Internet stalkers cannot Google my real name and connect me to this blog. But mainly, it meant that from the genesis of this blog, I'd already made a clear distinction to myself that my Internet persona was separate from my real-life persona. I know many people for whom this distinction is very blurry. They could be online celebrities with thousands of followers on Tumblr and pour their hearts out about their lives. In reality, they could be completely lonely. They grow more and more attached to the virtual world and neglect the real world. Is this bad? Today, most of us would say yes. But I think the lines are blurring socially, and one day the real world persona may hardly matter.

Thanks to social media, I've noticed a certain type of character in my network. These are the people who blast out constant status updates and tweets, who post regular photos on Instagram and Facebook detailing their daily lives, who tag themselves at every location they ever go to. Up to a certain point, you can tell who has become so needy and dependent on social media for positive reassurance of self-worth that it has morphed into something like an addiction. When I voluntarily deactivated my Facebook last October, I discovered that despite the lingering withdrawal effects in the first week, it was refreshing to realize that I didn't know what was going on with my 800+ Facebook friends and that I was feeling happier as a result. If there was someone I actually cared about or if someone noticed my disappearance, we would contact each other via text or e-mail and have an actual conversation about our lives, as opposed to passively reading about it on a newsfeed.

Hence, I've probably made my stance clear at this point. This might make me an old fogey in this day and age, but I am not fond of the immediacy and overloading of personal information in online social interactions. I refuse to ever get a Twitter account--what meaningful thing could I possibly need to say in 140 characters? The only reason I returned to Facebook was that it has become my only means of communication with certain people in an age when you tell people "add me on Facebook" instead of asking for their e-mail or phone number.

Back to blogging. I was reading an article that was linked on the BBC called "How Much My Novel Cost Me--Debt Ridden." After reading it, I believe the title is a misnomer. The debt came not from writing a novel. It came from a series of bad financial decisions made after the author received a six-figure advance for an unfinished memoir and only supplemented the money with a part-time as a yoga instructor. Many of these decisions drove me bonkers. She acknowledged that buying bottled water and cappuccinos every day was a habit she should have kicked earlier (invest in a Brita filter and a Camelbak?) and yet writes in present-day: "In retrospect it seems clear that I should never have bought health insurance." Considering how absurdly expensive American health care is, you're better of paying 400 dollars a month than risking the off-chance you develop major health problems and wind up with a debt spiked up thousands of dollars.

Moreover, it was clear in the article that the author wallowed in unproductivity by spending an exorbitant amount of time on Tumblr and Twitter. To give a context of where I'm coming from, two days ago I received a package in the mail from my mother. In it was the book she had written and illustrated, published this past December. From the moment my brother submitted his last college application, my mother jumped on that empty-nest syndrome like a famished beast and, in December 2013, published a book in which she had painstakingly painted, researched, and written about a Confucian temple in her hometown in Tainan. She did this all in two years. Considering how slow my progress with EP has been, I am only in even more awe at my mother's will power. The creative process is not easy. It's a test of endurance. Self-doubt, writer's block, lack of inspiration--these can all be debilitating to the point that people procrastinate, throw their hands up, and quit. The author eventually has the epiphany that I myself had just a few months ago. Social media is a distracting waste of brain energy that could be channeled towards creative pursuits! It took me a few months of trial and error before I learned to install Leechblock and prohibit my laptop access to Facebook from 8pm-12 am on weekdays and 9am-5pm on weekends. I dunno about the timeframe of the author, but at least I wasn't waist-deep in debt before I got my shit together.

I did catch myself thinking, why am I being so hard on someone who's clearly reflecting back on a miserable naive moment of her life? Maybe because the bottom of the page was a very obvious marketing blurb for her new novel. Maybe because I couldn't imagine what I was supposed to take away from this story, except that I really can't handle people's incompetence. Her writing wasn't bad--in fact, it was well-written and engaging--but ohhh did this author and her story irritate the heck out of me. Maybe because her dreams of fame and success were embarrassingly relatable, but likely because there was an inherent thread of self-importance in the article that I could not reconcile with at all.

I decided to Google the author for kicks, and I was surprised to find that not only does she have her own Wikipedia page, but that there have been a whole slew of articles written about her. I guess I was under the impression that the author was a relative unknown and aspiring writer. No, it turns out she was previously a writer for Gawker and was known for some confessional (read: oversharing) styled articles on other platforms. I found this article, "You've Got (Hate) Mail," which recounts a sympathetic portrait of the Internet hate that the author and her boyfriend received. Going back to my whole gripe with Internet personae, I get really angry when I see people leaving all sorts of poisonous comments no one would ever say to a person's face. If I hadn't read the first article, I probably would have been very sympathetic towards the author, because some of those quote comments were atrocious. However... considering how much I disliked the first article when I read it, I had to acknowledge that I could understand where the negative feelings were coming from. As someone was quote saying in the second article:

"Her whole trick was the idea that the whole world revolved around her, and she was not a particularly clever writer, not a particularly clever thinker. So I, rather unfortunately, got caught up in that eddy. I'm not interested in kneecapping her career, but there's a certain amount of bullshit you want to call a person on, and she happens to manufacture quite a bit of it."

There's another interesting bit at the bottom of the article that really caught me. In the 1990s, the writers of the New York scene hailed not from the blogs but from Op-Ed columns in the Wall Street Journal. In one instance, they went after a government official in a series of editorials, who later killed himself and left a note in his briefcase: "WSJ editors lie without consequence." The writer of this article quotes a former lawyer: " There's something called the 'eggshell skull' doctrine. If you bop me lightly on the head and my skull falls apart, well, you didn't know that would happen. But the rule is, when you're dealing with human beings, you take the victim as he comes."

Personally, I think this quote needs to be engraved on every computer in this world. Sure, you're entitled to your opinions. I didn't like that first article about novel debt. Does that mean I need to trash-talk the author in the comments? Can I talk critically about why I didn't like it, instead of telling her to do everyone a favor and get hit by a truck? I'm at the cusp of the Internet age, in that I can still vaguely recall a time in elementary school when I couldn't use the Internet for research projects and had to reserve books from a public library. The Internet has been a nasty place for as long as I can remember, and I wonder if it's actually impossible for us to ever adopt a certain Internet etiquette that would make this online rudeness obsolete rather than the norm.

Dear CS,

You might not remember who I am. In fact, I hardly remember you. I know you played JV on our high school tennis team, but I can't remember if you were two or three years younger than me or whether you added me on Facebook first. What I do know is that your posts show up on my newsfeed fairly regularly, and for the most part I do enjoy clicking on the links you post, including the British Actors Reading Prose and Poetry playlist from last week (Richard Armitage!).

However, your recent posts relating to your new blog about a crazy roommate have made me very tempted to write you a private message about why your blog disturbs me. But considering how unfamiliar we are with each other, I figured I'd rather not provoke you and passively write you a letter on my own blog--one that you'll probably never read.

As of this morning, you've published three posts on this blog about your crazy roommate, CC. All of these posts have been publicly linked on your Facebook, and you commented below one of them that CC has been blocked from viewing any of your posts. My dear, your blog is on a public platform that even I--who could barely remember you--can readily access. One of your hundreds of Facebook friends may easily figure out who CC is referring to and share the link with her. Based on the tone of your posts, I suppose your response to that would be to flip your hair and say, "I don't care! I stand by my words." If you were truly so impervious to how she may think of you, then you would never have bothered to note that you'd blocked her in the first place. But whatever--if you are prepared and willing to face the possibility that she may discover you blog, then that is your prerogative. Instead, I will address why I find the very existence of that blog problematic.

Once upon a time, I was a freshman at Duke. I lived with two other roommates in a room that should have been a double. One was a girl unlike anyone I had ever met. She ran wild during that first semester, bearing a very inflated sense of self that veiled a whole web of insecurities. One day, I wrote a post about her on this very blog sharing how crazy she was. An anonymous commenter wrote to me, saying that instead of talking about her so passive-aggressively on the Internet, I should address my issues with her in person. In a knee-jerk defense, I was livid and lashed out, wondering who knew about the existence of this private blog would write something like that to me. Four years later, I know I would have written the exact same thing to my former self.

Your posts do seem to indicate that you have confronted this girl in person, which is better than what I had done. However, your description of CC's behavior seems to indicate to me that this girl may bear some sort of mental illness. In my four years at Duke, I encountered more friends and acquaintances with mental issues than I'd ever been cognizant of growing up at home. Yes, these friends and acquaintances may be exasperating at times and difficult to live with--I can empathize and sympathize with your situation. But the very nature of you writing this anonymous blog feels as if you are making fun of her behind her back. Yes, it is ridiculous that she retaliates against you and your roommates by letting the shower run for an exorbitant amount of time. (First thought: during this drought crisis in California?? Second thought: That water bill must be egregious.) But to me, your story isn't funny. Instead, I find it incredibly sad. I find it pathetic that CC has been your roommate for three years when it is clear that neither of you like the other. I find it pathetic that you've chosen to vent about your frustrations on such a public blog. You might point at me and pick out all my past posts where I have discussed personal acquaintances--as one might argue that I am doing now. But by merit of you sharing the link on a status update, no less--one thing is clear. You wrote your blog for an audience. You wrote with the intent of having friends and maybe even almost complete strangers like me share your laughter and outrage. There's a maliciousness in this act--akin to pointing and laughing at sideshow "freaks" suffering from physical deformities--that we could all do without.

Best,
Sophelia

On Ships IRL

Sometimes, I've wondered about what will happen if my blog suddenly becomes public knowledge, and all the people I've ever discussed on here over the last seven years will recognize themselves and come after me with pitchforks. But I guess we'll see if that ever happens lol.

It's been snowing majorly in North Carolina these past two days. Actually, this winter has pretty much been ridiculously cold and snowy here. Elsa really 'let it go' this winter, har har har. Lots of snow pictures in my Facebook feed. One of which was this couple I'll just refer to as Battery. (The reasoning behind this name is a dead giveaway to their identities--then again, the story I'm about to divulge will make it way too easy to guess. ANYWAYS.) I'm Facebook friends with both but don't know either of them particularly well. The girl (Plus) is dancer I worked with for the Lunar New Year fashion show a couple years ago, while the guy (Minus) was my neighbor last year. The two are some of the best dancers in this one dance group on campus. Last spring, they started dating and the dance community erupted into a choir of awwwws. Not gonna deny it, it was cute even for an outsider like me. In April, I'd walk around campus and see flyers for their group's dance showcase, and a third of the flyers would have Battery posed in a couple's dance.Which was a little strange for me, because for most of the year I'd been shipping Minus with my friend Cinereus.

This year, my roommate and I had a conversation over dinner one day about the Ron/Hermione bomb that J.K. Rowling dropped, and we started talking about shipping fandoms. I can think of lots of pairings I ship rabidly, fictional (e.g. Anne Shirley/Gilbert Blythe) or otherwise (am I the only one who has some bizarro interest in seeing Drake and Rihanna get back together?). But then we came to the question of whether or not we'd shipped any of our real-life friends or acquaintances. Were there any friends you'd been totally rooting to finally get together, that you'd been keeping up with crazily like a soap opera addict? That's when I remembered Minus and Cinereus, which I'd forgotten I'd dumped far into the back of my brain.

Nothing ever came out of Cinereus and Minus, but I still remember that one glorious moment for this short-lived ship. Cinereus became really sick, so she stayed at home one Saturday while I went out shopping with friends. We were about to eat dinner at a restaurant when we received a text from Cinereus asking us if we could do her a favor and buy Gatorade and some chicken soup from an on-campus eatery. We were at a sit-down restaurant and knew that dinner would take a while, so we hatched a nefarious plan. R called up Minus, who constantly works out at the gym, and explained how Cinereus was sick and asked him to bring back Gatorade for her when he returned to the apartment. Minus agreed and asked what flavor he should bring back. So I texted Cinereus and said we'd be back in a bit and casually asked what flavor she wanted us to buy. Then the rest of us purposely dawdled so we wouldn't be back home before Minus made his appearance.

When we finally made it back, Cinereus made no mention of any appearance by Minus, so I started wondering if we'd majorly screwed up somehow. Finally, I went into the refrigerator and saw two bottles of Powerade. Confronting Cinereus directly about the situation, I asked her if someone had made a "special delivery." This triggered a major response from Cinereus as she began to rant about how could we invite HIM over while she looked like crap. She said she'd been lying feverishly in bed when there was sudden knocking on the door. Thinking I'd forgotten the keys and couldn't get in, she got out of bed and opened the door to find Minus standing at the door. He asked her if she was feeling okay, and then handed her multiple bottles of Powerade and orange juice (which we didn't even ask him to get), telling her, "I didn't know if you liked pulp or no pulp, so I got you both."

GOD. Even as I'm typing that last sentence, I'm still smiling like an idiot at that line.

Of course, that was the pinnacle moment of that little ship. It fell apart pretty quickly afterwards, but there were lots of priceless moments in this tentative pairing in which I greatly enjoyed meddling. Heh heh, yes--I'm that friend. So when Battery happened, I couldn't quite drum up any enthusiasm because damn it, I was still sore about my sunken ship! But today, Plus posted a photo of the two of them with a "snow puppy" they made named Bonaparte. Maybe it's the puppy or the French name, but okayyyyy I finally concede that Battery is kinda adorable.

In other news, OLIVIA just posted that her baby was born today! Atlas Natan Vallis. I am dying of curiosity about Olivia's husband, but I LOVE her baby's name. It totally fits her unique vibe, but not weird enough to be a target of celebrity-baby jokes. Is it weird that I'm oddly happy for someone that I've never met?

RE: Eleanor and Park

http://angrygirlcomics.tumblr.com/post/72519376982/angry-girl-review-eleanor-and-park

I wasn't as outraged in my review of Eleanor and Park--rather, I think I took on a more disappointed approach when it came to how Rainbow Rowell handled Park's race issues in that book. But the review I've linked at the top of this post does an excellent close-reading of all the issues I had with how Rainbow Rowell tackled having an Asian-American male lead. The book has received so much effusive praise in the literary realm that I'd been wondering if I was some oddity who felt rather underwhelmed by it all. Apparently, I'm not. The book seems to strike a different chord for people who are well-aware of the history behind media portrayals of Asian men.

On another note, this is one of those moments where I wish I actually used my tumblr account, but all in all, tumblr doesn't quite suit my blogging style. Not to mention that this blog is over seven years old...

Incinerated Innocence

Must-read article here:

http://www.texasmonthly.com/story/other-side-story?fullpage=1

I wonder how often these illicit teacher-student relationships occur. Considering the number of times this sort of scandal has arisen in my own high school, perhaps it is more common than frequently reported in mass media. When I was in eighth grade, a chemistry teacher from my neighborhood high school was arrested for sexual misconduct with a minor. In my freshman year of high school, a yearbook teacher got in trouble for charges related to child pornography. Three years after I graduated, an assistant principal was arrested for unlawful sexual contact with a minor--a girl who happened to be from my brother's year.

Or perhaps I just grew up in a strange environment, where it seems underneath the haze of upper-middle-class malaise bubbled a darkness that I didn't comprehend at the time. I've always wondered if I experienced a "normal" teenage experience. Was it normal that by my freshman year of high school, I had known three people--all within two years of my age, people that I had interacted personally with in varying degrees--who died? There are people who experienced more traumatic losses at a young age than mine. But there are also luckier people who do not encounter these reminders of mortality until later in their lives.

A piano teacher I admired--who passed away few years ago from a heart attack, he was only in his forties--once asked my teacher if I had experienced a traumatic event as a child. He told her that I connected with sorrowful songs far better than anything else. He was the one who recommended that I learn to play Rachmaninoff's Elegie. My mother and my teacher assured him that I had a fairly tranquil upbringing. But as I thought about this incident over time, I began to wonder if I had subconsciously internalized the jolting awareness of my own mortality as a child. Though she and I were two years apart and not the closest of friends, I think that regardless, learning as a sixth grader that your friend was shot and killed by her own father in a murder-suicide will leave some kind of impact on you.

Going back to the teacher-student relationship addressed in the article, I have always been appalled by how much these sort of affairs are romanticized and fantasized in certain subcultures of fiction. I can't count how many times I've encountered this trope in shoujo manga. As much as I reviled the patronizing condescension I faced when I was a teenager, in retrospect I feel that those years were akin to how I feel under the influence of alcohol. You think you're in total control, but in reality you fumble around and make many questionable decisions. Can a 14-year-old and a 23-year-old actually be in love? Perhaps. But I would hazard to say that most 14-year-old girls are not on the same page mentally or emotionally as 23-year-old men.

But the devil's advocate may ask if my opinion would change if she had been seventeen at the time instead. Just because you legally become an adult at age eighteen doesn't mean you mentally become one, nor does it mean that nobody under the age of eighteen has the ability to make mature rational decisions. Looking back, as an eighteen-year-old I was definitely not mature enough to handle a sexual relationship--and considering the fact that the "teenage hormones" people speak of seemed to have bypassed me completely during high school, everything worked out for the best. But I have friends who were curious at a younger age and who were "ready" by the time they took the plunge. Are things more "okay" if a "ready"16-year-old satiates their curiosity with an immature 17-year-old, versus if they were with, say, a mature 19-year-old who treats them with care?

A college friend and I discovered recently that through a couple of degrees of separation, we both knew of a couple separated by an eight-year age difference. The girl is a high school senior; the boy is a medical student three years older than me, which puts him in his mid-twenties. Supposedly, their parents approve of the relationship. Perhaps we can say they are in love. But is this situation tolerable at least partly because he does not hold a direct authority position over her? Or is it because she's almost, if not already, an adult under the eyes of the law? How on earth can you qualify when someone is "too young to know better"?

Pop Culture Primer: Songstress

Warning: I'm about to get rambly as I sort out my thoughts, so please disregard the forthcoming word vomit that is about to occur.

As most of you probably already know, one of my many useless talents is my incredible ability to retain information on celebrity pop culture. I have yet to meet someone who surpasses my recall ability in this department. I would also say that I maintain a healthy attitude towards the allure of celebrity--that is, I am perfectly aware that the people we see in our magazines and televisions are public "brands" and by no means "real" people. A new blog I found recently (http://www.annehelenpetersen.com/) has some very interesting posts on celebrity culture with an academic spin--take a look if you're interested in this sort of thing. As a starter, there was an interesting one about Miley Cyrus at the VMAs and how a musician's reputation is affected differently than say an actor's.

The analogy I've often used in regards to EP is that I've let it simmer on the back-burner for the last six years, occasionally tossing in a juicy idea or two and letting it stew for a while. Since I've brought it to the forefront of my life these days, I've had to do a lot more mental grinding regarding how I plan to approach things. In particular, one aspect I've been thinking about lately is the idea of celebrity, boiled down to the premise that Rory is placed on this pedestal of stardom within the social sphere of Eden.

The inspiration behind Rory came from many female singers I admired in my teenage years. Her eccentric fashion and physical attributes were markedly inspired by Olivia Lufkin, who in turn has been greatly influenced (and introduced me to) by the legendary Bjork. Her fierceness and forthright personality was inspired by Garbage's Shirley Manson, who never seems to be afraid to say exactly what she means--a quality I desperately wish I had when I was in high school. Her wild charisma and stage presence were inspired by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

These were the women I looked up to as a teenager: unique, confident, powerful. And, I've come to realize something else: none of these women truly relied on their sex appeal to sell records. One quote from Shirley Manson struck me in particular:

"I am not a sexy woman, I'm not beautiful, I'm not a sex kitten, I don't flirt with people, yet I've been tagged more of sex symbol than women who truly are and I that's solely because I don't reveal too much: people are curious."

Something else that Shirley Manson commented on caught my attention. In an interview, she talks about how the female pop singers these days seem declawed and defanged, compared to the female singers that came out in the 90's. I was still in elementary school in the nineties and paid little attention to pop music at the time, but her words got me thinking about the most prominent female pop stars today: Beyonce, Rihanna, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift. How I feel about the public personae of these ladies could take up an entire post on its own, but for the purposes of what I'm trying to do here, I'm going to focus on one person in particular.

 
There's something about Rihanna. Ever since she went all good-girl-gone-bad and chopped her hair for "Umbrella," I haven't been able to look away. It's a strange phenomenon, because I am her polar opposite in so many ways. I have always stubbornly refused to smoke, be it cigarettes or weed. I rather prudish with my personal life and would never be as forthcoming as Rihanna has been about her sexuality. As Hachi once put it, I am the sheep in wolf's clothing--I may look intimidating, but I'm as goody-goody as it gets. Yet despite all this, I've managed to retain a weird fondness for Rihanna. She's cultivated this aura of unapologetic impenetrability that's sharp and wicked in a similar vein to what drew me to Shirley Manson. Yeah, I was dismayed when she reunited with Chris Brown, but I wasn't angry--nor did I lament on her "stupidity" or whatnot. Because what I saw was a young woman just three years older than me, whose brain told her to leave but her heart told her to stay. I can think of all sorts of girls around me who've fallen into this trap--but their choices weren't magnified and dissected in the gossip coliseum. I'll grant that there are things I don't necessarily look positively upon--like her tendency to show up late to her own shows. But hey--I don't know her, and it's none of my business (unless I'm paying a ticket for her show, perhaps).

Anyways. I've been thinking long and hard about how I'm gonna depict Rory's fall. It's kind of awful, in that I feel like I'm purposely throwing one of my children into the path of an incoming vehicle. But I'd already decided a long time ago that Charlotte and Rory's stories take on opposite trajectories. The idea that has been gaining the most traction recently is built on the idea that we have a tendency of building up celebrities and then tearing them down. Some people manage to maintain a veneer of impenetrability--think Shirley or Rihanna. Others become crushed by the weight of stardom--and in this case, exuding that permanent mask of confidence becomes more than Rory can handle. 

Tiger Mom

It feels like everybody has been talking about this article recently about the parenting methods of the Asian mother: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html?KEYWORDS=tiger+mother

This was part of Gene Luen Yang's cartoon response to the whole hullabaloo, which kind of echoes my own sentiments:

I actually showed my mother the article, and she pretty much said exactly what the above cartoon says right there.

I feel like way too much has been said about this already -- perhaps more eloquently then I can at the moment. But really, I'm disgusted by some of the sentiments that are out there. Apparently Amy Chua has received death threats about her parenting. REALLY NOW? Her kid seems perfectly fine and level-headed to me -- and if we're sending death threats to mothers who are actually caring about their kids, why don't people start threatening the mothers who completely neglect their children and play no part in their lives?

The complexities of parenting are no news to me -- having been raised by a mother with her own set of somewhat strict rules, I know my mother disagrees with some of the parenting methods of my peers' parents. But it's not like my mother would march up to their doors and tell the other families they're doing it wrong. It's really none of our business.

I like to joke with my friends that there is no good English translation for the Chinese verb 罵 (ma4). "Scold" and "lecture" are too mild; "yell" isn't quite the same thing; "curse" and "swear" are too vulgar. This is the verb you would use to describe when a parent admonishes her kid, but it's not a "let's-sit-down-and-talk-about-what-you-did-wrong" -- this can usually reach a certain decibel at which your dog realizes it's time to run off to another room until the storm is over. I really think it's a cultural thing -- and much of the backlash against Amy Chua is the problem of not understanding the cultural issues that are inherent in this kind of parenting style.

Honestly, think whatever you think. Personally, I think I turned out fine, though maybe you think otherwise. I think this blog is a testament that my creativity is far from suffocated -- rejecting the argument Chua critics like to make about how her method stifles her children's creativity. I think I've referenced Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers before in this blog, but I still believe in his 10000-Hour Rule. There's no question that some people are born with more talent than others. But that talent doesn't get you anywhere unless you actually hone it with practice. I learned this over and over again in my youth, whether I was practicing for tennis or practicing for piano. I don't think I am particularly talented in either one -- but what made everyone think I was so good at it in high school was simply how much work I put into it. During my three years of middle school, I played 2.5 hours of tennis and 1 hour of piano every day, seven days a week. That makes approximately 2700 hours of tennis and 1100 hours of piano -- and that's only in middle school. I started piano when I was five years old, and I was still doing both tennis and piano in high school.

How does a pre-teen kid develop the persistence and discipline to play 2.5 hours of tennis and sit in front of the piano for an hour every day? Bow down to the Tiger Mom.

Alcohol

Looks pretty, right? Ha-ha.

Though my high school self tended to be more aligned with Charlotte, in college I find myself becoming more and more like the character I've created for Rory. Whether it is subconsciously or intentionally, I do not know -- but let's talk about one instance where my creation and I collide, and that would be in regards to alcohol.

Unlike most of the people I've talked to here, my first drink was not at college. The summer after high school senior year, I was at Kinmen -- an island of Taiwan where the drinking age is 18, so I was legal there. There is a kind of liquor called gaoliang that the island is particularly famous for -- the alcohol content is usually between 38 and 63 percent. Not proof -- American alcoholic proof is twice the alcoholic percentage -- I'm talking percent. Essentially, all of our adult chaperons/mentors/etc. said we shouldn't leave the island without having their most famous liquor, so one night our soldier chaperons bought us a bottle of 38 percent and we sat in the makeshift dining room of our suite. Only one of my six teaching partners had ever had a drink before, so the rest of us were sniffing apprehensively while eying the liquid in our glasses. Then we raised our glasses and cheered.

And that, my friends, was my first introduction to the world of alcohol. 38 percent gaoliang, which another friend of mine aptly named "flaming toilet." It was the most disgusting thing I had ever drunk in my life. We ended up playing Liar Poker afterward, and the cruel punishment was to make the loser drink another shot.

Interestingly, the next day we were invited to a lunch banquet with a bunch of important adults including the Taiwanese Minister of Education. This time, we had a 63 percent bottle of gaoliang and I was amazed by the alcohol tolerance of most of the adults there -- the principal of our school downed at least 20 shots of that stuff.

But anyways. Unlike the eager-eyed freshmen who had never had a drink in high school because they were too busy studying or competing or whatnot, I had very little interest in drinking. The taste of gaoliang was still branded in my head, and I had no desire to relive that experience. As a consequence, by the middle of freshman year I found myself drifting between two groups -- one predominantly composed of Christians who abstained from drinking, and one composed of my dorm-mates, several of whom ended up joining a sorority. In the end, I became closer to my dorm-mates for several reasons, one of which is the fact that I had come to the conclusion that it was extremely unlikely that I would ever convert to Christianity.

As a result, this semester I have been to more parties than I had gone to my entire freshman year. It's still not much though -- I might go out once or twice a month and that would be it. But anyways, back to the topic of alcohol.

While I don't completely abstain from alcohol -- I will usually drink one or two shots -- I do not share any particular fondness for alcohol that many of friends have (who frequently reach their limit, resulting in my job as the designated sober nurse). I choose not to drink, not because it is the law (because I don't see the logic of being steadfast to the rule for the rule's stake, especially as I was openly offered 63 percent gaoliang when I was only 18 in Taiwan), but because of personal reasons. The biggest reason is my fear of losing control. I have no desire to learn what kind of a drunk I am -- as I operate through life with a heavy filter on what I say and what I do, I am afraid to learn of what kind of a creature I become once all my filters are gone.

Other reasons include the fact that I simply don't like the taste of it and the fact that having cleaned up after one too many friends, drinking past a certain limit is not at all classy or cool. I wonder if those who binge drink would have second thoughts if they ever considered the ones who have to take care of them after they indulge.

Long story short, last night one of my friends drank to the point where she vomited multiple times throughout the night -- including on the bus, which led to us getting kicked off the bus back to West Campus. When it reaches that point, there is nothing glamorous about drinking. It is messy, it is disgusting, and it is always somebody else who has to clean up the mess. And usually that somebody is me.

Reflecting more on last night, it has become more apparent to me that my refusal to get drunk is heavily influenced by my grasp of self-identity. Perhaps I am more sharply aware of this than others, but your appearance and behavior shape the way others view you. I have never identified myself as a sorority girl; therefore I ran into some odd issues when my friends tried to (and still try to) convince me to rush for a sorority. Doing so would jeopardize my sense of who I am; nevertheless the fact that my friends are in these sisterhoods makes it very strange dynamic. Similarly, I feel I have a subconscious desire to appear classy and cool. Whatever drunk I may turn out to be -- angry, boisterous, mellow, depressed, happy, sassy -- there is no such thing as a classy or cool drunkard.

Not-so-Cinderella Story

For reasons neither of us remember, today my mother told me the not-quite-Cinderella rags-to-riches story of Wendi Deng, the third wife of Rupert Murdoch -- you know, the guy who basically owns all of US journalism. That's probably why I'd never heard of this story until today.

The story began in China when the teenage Wendi met a guy nearly thirty years older than her, Jake Cherry, who persuaded his wife Joyce to sponsor Wendi so that she could go to college in the States. And so, Wendi attended one of the California State Universities and was at the top of her class -- BUT it turns out she ended up having an affair with Mr. Cherry. The Cherrys divorced, and Wendi and Jake married -- but four months later they separated after Jake Cherry discovered that Wendi was seeing another man in his mid-twenties. Supposedly, Wendi told him that she couldn't see him other than as a father figure, but another article I read speculated that Mr. Cherry's salary couldn't support her through graduate school.

In any case, the divorce wasn't finalized until two years later -- just long enough so that Wendi could get her green card. She ended up going to Yale for business school, and eventually she met some important people who got her a job at one of those news stations under News Corp. Another article mentioned how she'd perfected the role of the innocent Chinese girl and managed to step on her colleagues in order to climb her way up -- and she'd always make herself noticed by the top executives. Inevitably, she caught the attention of Murdoch -- and she ended up being his translator for business deals in Asia. Eventually, Murdoch divorced his wife of 31 years and soon after the divorce was finalized, Murdoch and Wendi were married.

The other thing my mother told me that the articles I'd read this afternoon didn't talk as much about was the fact that Wendi had managed to bear two daughters for Murdoch -- despite their age difference and the fact that Murdoch had contracted prostate cancer about a year before their first daughter was born. Supposedly, each of Deng's daughters will each get a piece of the Murdoch inheritance worth about 100 million dollars.

In any case, you're not going to find this story on Wikipedia. My own journalistic curiosity compelled me to look up Wendi Deng on the Internet, and the Wikipedia article was completely wiped clean of any potentially damaging information. The story I've basically summed up is the result of reading a ton of articles this afternoon -- especially one interesting one that focused on Wikiscanner and how it can track the changes corporations make to Wikipedia entries -- including the entry on Wendi Deng.

As much as I am disgusted by what she's done -- destroyed a marriage, tossed countless people aside in order to reach her own goals -- I am still admittedly awed by how she managed to do it. Don't you worry -- my moral conscience would never let me do anything of that sort, and besides, I'm the last person you'd expect to seduce anybody. But the relentlessness with which she climbed her way to the top is astounding; I can only imagine if she hadn't trampled on so many people along the way, think of what kind of Cinderella story she could have achieved -- one that people everywhere would be hailing as another example of the American dream. Instead, you've got a story that almost nobody has heard of because all major media outlets are afraid of making enemies with Murdoch.

Well. C'est la vie américaine.

On Teenage Stardom

Really now... WTF IS SHE WEARING?

I'm a little baffled by my extreme dislike for this girl.

Though I tend to read sites like thesuperficial.com or gofugyourself.com and chuckle at the snarky comments the bloggers make about celebrities, I am actually rather ambivalent about celebrities. I get pissed off when people write disrespectful comments about celebrities who have passed away (Heath Ledger, Brittany Murphy, etc.), because really? If you don't personally know him or her, you shouldn't be the one to judge. Likewise, people may bash on the Jonas Brothers, but really? I don't know them personally, and so I don't care -- to me, feeling any real emotion towards them, whether love or hate, is acknowledging that they have some sort of impact on my life -- and they honestly don't. And I don't particularly listen to pop music, so you can play as many Jonas Brothers songs to me as you want, and I won't be able to recognize any of them.

But Miley? No such luck. I was doing pretty well at first -- never watched an episode of Hannah Montana, never listened to any of her songs, other than the fact that "The Climb" was mixed into DJ Earworm 2009 Remix.

Then "Party in the USA" entered the scene. Like a plague riding in on infected rats, it entered houses, cars, and dormitories on MP3 players and radio waves until I couldn't walk anywhere on campus without listening to Miley's voice. Even worse, it was one of those songs like Rihanna's "Disturbia" that infest your brain to the point that the tune is stuck in your head for hours, even though you don't particularly like the song at all.

And even then, I didn't hate Miley. I didn't like her song, and that isn't really legitimate grounds to dislike a person. Heck, I even took her side at one point early in her career, with this photograph:


Yes, the infamous Annie Leibovitz portrait. In fact, I am even more amazed by this photograph now that I'm looking at it two years later. This was back when she was still the spotless girl-next-door. People were appalled, claiming it bordered child pornography. I scoffed at that accusation. My aesthetic tastes are much more European than American, and so I thought it was a beautiful photograph of a pretty girl. When I look at it now, that's not all I see anymore. I see the fragility of a girl at the brink of stardom, vulnerable to losing herself and growing up too fast.

I confess: out of curiosity due to all the fervor in the blogosphere, I went to Youtube and watched the music video for "Can't Be Tamed." Oh, how I laughed. I laughed at the hilarity of Miley Cyrus as a giant peacock-like bird-thing that scares off bemused spectators by going into a dancing frenzy. I laughed at the nonsensical and rather juvenile lyrics. But mainly, I laughed at how hard she was trying to prove she had grown up.

Perhaps if I wasn't relatively up-to-date about Hollywood, then maybe I wouldn't even care. I think much of the reason my impression of her is so sour is because of all the stories I have read about her that appall me. In a recent interview, she confessed that she didn't listen to pop music (even though that's her genre of music... disconnect?) and that she can't stand musicals. Here's an excerpt of what she said:

"My 13-year-old self would have beaten up my 17-year-old self because she would be like, 'You're a sellout!' But that's not what it is. It's not dance music that's just about, 'Ooh, I'm in the club and everyone's looking at me.' It means something. I'm not just sitting here trying to sell glitz and glamour...because no one lives that life. A lot of pop songs are super shallow, but this music isn't."

I'm trying my best not to be cynical, but if her songs aren't shallow, how on earth are they deep? "Can't Be Tamed" seemed like an excuse for her to parade around her blossoming sexuality, and the song lyrics weren't exactly enlightening either. As for "Party in the USA", she confessed that she's never even listened to Jay-Z.

There are a lot little things about her that I don't like, but one of the things that bothered me the most also makes me wonder if there's more at work than just cynicism. And that thing is The Last Song.

I haven't watched this movie, and don't particularly intend to. I am not a Nicholas Sparks fan, but that is another story entirely. What really irked me about the production of this movie is what happened behind the scenes. Basically, this movie was written for Miley. Disney, wanting to help her break-out into older audiences, approached Nicholas Sparks and asked him if he had a novel in mind that would work for a film adaptation. So, Sparks ended up writing the screenplay for Miley to star in, and then finished the novel afterwards.

So why does this tick me off so much? There are thousands of young, rising actresses out there waiting for their big break. It is very likely that a handful of them could have nailed the role better than Miley. Obviously, Miley Cyrus has the connections and life isn't fair, so get over it. But the fact that she got this starring role not out of particular acting ability but as a way to further advance her marketability annoys the crap out of me.

In the end, I feel like maybe I don't actually dislike Miley Cyrus, the person. Obviously, I don't particularly admire her decision to skip out on college, but I can kind of understand because logically it makes sense for her to cash in on her stardom while it's still so monstrous. And I feel like if she'd gone to my high school, I wouldn't like her very much. I respect girls like Dakota Fanning and Emma Watson, who still maintain as much of a normal life as they can outside of stardom.

No, I'm starting to think I dislike Miley Cyrus, the product of Hollywood marketing and exploitation.