05.31.09
Posted in life at 12:21 am by kyrias
So my parents have friends staying in their house in Shanghai and running their alternative healing practice out of it.
I like said friends and I don’t think they’re quacks. Caesura might beg to differ — but I’ve used their services before and it’s helped.
That said, the fact that there’s people I don’t want to deal with traipsing in and out of the house at all time; that I can’t just loll around on the living room couch and watch TV if I want to; that I can’t just wander around looking like a crazy bitch from hell that just woke up because I did indeed just wake up; that I have three adults watching over my every move instead of just one; that the entire decor of the fucking house itself is different; that I’m expected to be nice to people who are fucking taking over my living space because the friggin’ internet is only accesible in the living room — I’m fucking going crazy.
I think what’s especially frustrating about this situation is that everyone else except me seems to be fucking ok with this situation. Which I think is probably fair because it isn’t my fucking house to be frustrated over.
….*runs screaming into the hills*
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Posted in Blog admin tagged blog-things at 12:21 am by kyrias
First of all, I actually forgot to activate Akismet on my other blog — which is why I had to manually catch and delete spam. That was stupid of me because somehow it’s getting more and more spam regardless of the fact that I haven’t been really updating it and it’s a pain to do it all manually.
Second of all, I do have a second blog and right now it’s going to be mostly fics, memoir bits, and perhaps what I’m thinking when I’m mentally fapping onto a screen. Or perhaps I’ll burden you all here with what goes through my brain when I’m dealing with Estyria. I haven’t decided yet, you can feel free to discuss it in the comments. 
Thirdly, I’m slightly contemplating the possibility of moving back onto a free-hosted website because the amount of traffic I’m getting is incredible. Sadly, about 99% of said traffic is spammers and I’m more than a bit tired of paying for bandwidth for spammers. That said, it’d be a pain to move all my posts back to my wordpress account and I’m not sure that cutting my nose off to spite my face is a good idea. However, once hosting fees get insane, I might change my tune.
For some measure of what I’m talking about, here’s a screencap of my Akismet stats:
So. 680 bits of spam in May. 107 bits of ham.
Urgh.
That said, considering that I’m not getting as many visitors on my blog stats page as I’m getting spam perhaps I’m not paying for it?
Is very confused. Tech-savvy people, please explain if you please.
The thing is though, my hosting fees have gone up drastically, which is rather worrisome.
Lastly: Wordpress is very much more win than any other platform I’ve used. It boggles my brain that there is no quick-link to post images to wordpress from photobucket when Xanga is an option. Or perhaps that’s just my bias because I don’t know or read any blogs hosted off of Xanga.
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05.30.09
Posted in Reviews tagged Acer at 12:39 am by kyrias
So. I mentioned a while back that my laptop borked, right?
So, what happened was that the screen cracked from the middle of the top, somewhere very close to where the built in web cam usually is. There were two cracks running in such a way that I had a triangle of white with rainbows in it that took up almost half the screen.
What happened that day was this:
I went out, leaving my laptop on the couch in my aunt’s office.
I come back, the screen is fine.
I pick it up and bring it to the desk I was going to use it at, and when I push at the screen to get it to tilt back further, the screen just cracks in front of my very eyes.
So… after much going nuts on my part because of how my computer has just incredibly broke itself in front of me, we figured out that because it was still under warranty and because Acer has a global warranty in place, we could take it somewhere and get it fixed.
When we went to the fix it place the next day, the woman at the desk said: “This will be NT 16,000 to fix.” At that point the exchange rate was 33:1 and so it would have been around USD 485.
Boggled, we said that it was supposed to be under warranty.
She said: “No, this is a crack on the screen, which is only possible if there was incorrectly applied outside force. Therefore the warranty is void.”
I told her that I had been very careful with it and I didn’t do anything to crack the screen. She shrugged and responded that there was no other possible reason the screen could have broke. Mom asked her how much force would be required to break the screen, so that we could know in the future because we hasn’t done anything that we could see as sufficient force to crack the screen. The woman shrugged again and said that she wouldn’t know, the technician would. So, my mother asked to see the technician. The technician came out and said that we must’ve applied a lot of force to the screen from the outside to make it crack that much. I retorted that if there was as much force as he was implying then there should be some sort of scratch or otherwise physical mark on the computer itself. He shrugged and kept repeating that there was no other way.
“Maybe something happened when you left the room. After all, it’s not possible that it would have just cracked in front of your eyes.
Infuriated at this point, I snapped back that, yes, indeed, that was exactly what happened. Still, he kept asserting that perhaps we had done something to it to lessen the integrity of the screen. Obviously, we weren’t going anywhere.
Finally, my mom asked them to call out the manager.
The manager took one look at the screen and said that we must have applied force to the inside of the screen. I looked at the place he pointed out as the point of pressure and admitted that it was the place my thumb would usually rest when I opened the laptop from the middle.
He said with quiet satisfaction, “Well then. You’re not supposed to open the laptop from the middle. You’re supposed to open the screen with both hands.”
My mom retorted with: “If your company’s computer screens break unless they’re opened with both hands — then maybe you should post a warning on your laptops so customers will know before they buy them. Is that what you really want to tell your customers worldwide?”
Then my mother pointed out that the bottom of the laptop would tilt up with the top if she tried to open the laptop with both hands, thus requiring a third hand to hold the base down.
The manager started to say something, hesitated, then finally said: “I’ll send this to the manufactorer and see what they say.”
—one week later –
The manager said that they would give us an answer on the 26th, and that they were negotiating with –someone.
Mom and I had a conversation and we pretty much agreed there was no way we were paying to have that screen fixed. It would cost $484 or so when the entire thing cost about $900 eight months ago. Not to mention that it really had just mysteriously gone down the drain like that.
–almost a month later –
We called them up and they said for us to come over and pick it up. When we arrived, the screen was fixed.
I’m not quite sure how exactly I feel about the entire situation. Whereas, on one hand, I’m pretty happy they fixed the screen, I’m still not positive that it’s not going to just break on me again. Really, it breaks from exerting the pressure needed to open the laptop on one point? I don’t think I’ll be buying from Acer again in the future.
Besides which, I’m almost positive that if this didn’t happen in Taiwan but in the US, I’d be up shit creek without a paddle. After all, Acer is based out of Taiwan and being able to go directly to them and “persuade” them that it really isn’t something we did probably factored a lot into their ultimate decision to fix it for us for free. If I were in the US I’d probably be stuck with mailing it into some central processing unit and having someone decide that it was caused by external forces and thus voiding the warranty. I remember the last time my computer broke when the power source just stopped working, they refused to do anything about that because the screen was cracked, even though theroretically I’m not sure what one has to do with the other.
Meh.
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05.29.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 12:25 am by kyrias
I’m flying from Taiwan to China today.
Whereupon I will stay here until 6/18/2009 and then fly back to the US.
YEY!
The reason this post exists is to explain why I might not post from 5/28 - 6/18.
Great Firewall of China.
Need I really say more?
If unfortunate, I’ll see you all when I’m back in the US or if my brilliant boyfriend finds me a proxy that works. Ta for now.
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05.28.09
Posted in culture tagged Chinese festivals, suicide at 12:27 am by kyrias
So, today we eat zongzi.
This is because a great number of years ago a loyal officer, Qu Yuan, to the king at the time was banished because the evil, evil people at the time had power and hated him for being loyal and upright. He then proceeded to get depressed about the state of affairs and then commited suicide when he heard his beloved country was overrun. By evil. Evil!
Sorry. I find it really hard to be sympathetic to someone who clearly was very smart and then decided to kill himself instead of doing something to help matters.
Really, killing self never helps anything ,especially not if you’re depressed over the zomg degenerate age.
The villagers tried to save him, but failed. 
Although they threw rice into the river to keep away the fishes, Qu Yuan’s spirit apparently later appeared to them and told them the river dragon had gotten him. Therefore they were supposed to wrap rice in silken triangular packages to ward the dragon off.
Now, the Duan Wu festival commemorates him with zong zi, which are now wrapped in reeds, not silk and dragon boat races. The boat races are to remember the villagers who went out in boats to try and save Qu Yuan.
Now, I’m all for a good festival and national holiday — but I’m not quite sure why some dead person killed himself a long time ago is a good reason to have one.
Especially someone who demonstrated such amazing lack of self-discipline, self-love, and foward thinking as to kill himself.
That’s right, people. We Chinese hold festivals in honor of people who commit suicide — but only when they have a good reason!
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05.27.09
Posted in Reviews tagged bank at 12:16 am by kyrias
I have to say, I can’t say anything good about this bank.
My mother had an account with them, and close it due to their incompetency. She had ordered checks and they hadn’t arrived for the longest time, say about a month or so. So she went to re-order them because she had an urgent need for them. The person, let’s call her L, told her that they could waive the fee for her, but she had to pay if she wanted them expedited.
So my mom was quite understandably upset, because she had arrived from China expecting to be able to use her checks, and not only were they not there when she needed them to buy a car but they wanted to charge her about $22 to have them expedited to her.
L insisted on charging her for them, and mom was really peeved at that point because of what she saw as poor customer service and punishing her for their mistakes…
We talked to someone else later who reversed the fee, but mom still went and took out all her money. 
Anyways, my personal problems with Sovereign:
- No option to do bank-to-bank transfers within their online banking interface. I feel that this is an option that should be pretty universal and the fact that they don’t have it is pretty irritating. I think that if I pulled money from Sovereign, I would get charged a fee. Pretty sure it happened last time, but I’m not certain if getting bought by Santander changed things.
- Their online banking system is the faultiest system I have ever used. Often I will try to log in and it will tell me “Your transaction cannot be processes at this point”. I cannot even begin to explain how frustrating that is, when I want to check my balance before I write a check for rent or pay my credit card bills, to have it tell me that it’s not doable. This frustration is further compounded when I’m not in the country.
- The interest rate sucks. I’m aware that most banks have bad interest rates, but I’m just annoyed that Sovereign isn’t even trying to make up for its lack in other areas.
Meh. I shall be hunting for a place with good interest rates that is also reasonably close to where I live. I don’t think I plan on staying with Sovereign for much longer. Inertia would keep me there if they only allowed bank-to-bank transfers so I can fund my emergency cushion somewhere else that actually gives me a decent APY — but they don’t. I think I’ll stay until my checks run out, and that’s about it.
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05.26.09
Posted in Crafts, Ethics and morality, Writing tagged Add new tag, mammothfail09, racefail09 at 12:18 am by kyrias
For those who want to wade through the entire puddle of fail, here’s the link.
To start off with, I’m really appalled regarding Patricia C Wrede’s attitude towards The Thirteenth Child.
To quote:
The *plan* is for it to be a “settling the frontier” book, only without Indians (because I really hate both the older Indians-as-savages viewpoint that was common in that sort of book, *and* the modern Indians-as-gentle-ecologists viewpoint that seems to be so popular lately, and this seems the best way of eliminating the problem, plus it’ll let me play with all sorts of cool megafauna). I’m not looking for wildly divergent history, because if it goes too far afield I won’t get the right feel.
Um. Whut?
First of all, I’m appalled that you’re dismissing the portrayal of an entire race of people as a problem. After all, you’re a writer, isn’t portrayal what you do? Secondly, I’m disappointed in you that you’re so casually restricting viewpoints of Native Americans to these two stereotypes — I think you’re a better writer than this and you’re both being dismissive, insulting, and lazy. Lastly, how can you think that an America without Native Americans isn’t wildly divergent? I rather think that’s also insulting.
God, I hope I’m taking that quote entirely out of context, but I honestly don’t know how I can put it in context.
Then, yet another writer I truly admire really lets me down here.
Lois McMaster Bujold actually starts out rather reasonably, in my opinion, by stating that:
The book actually began with a contemplation of the what-if question, “What would happen if the megafauna survived into historic times…?” The theory presently being argued in archeology is that the pre-Columbian settlers wiped out said megafauna, and that’s the one Pat chose to follow up; so if one wants mammoths and short-faced bears and terror birds, the Bering land bridge human immigration needed not to have taken place, 13,000 years back. From that, the rest followed, q.s. to the limits of a necessarily slim volume.
Alright. So we’re talking an either Native Americans or megafauna scene here, ok. I can buy that. I do wish that she had admitted that the premise could have been interpreted badly, but I’m not horribly upset by her treatment.
Then she starts venturing downhill by not directly addressing the question but asking for the function of fiction:
Which begs a larger question: what is the function of fiction? Social engineering? Propaganda, sermon? Or something else? Windows? Mirrors?
People who come down on the social-engineering side do tend to value a book by how well it serves some agenda outside of itself. I see that as a slippery slope, myself.
What, by the way, is a “moral writer”, in your lexicon? Just for my orientation. That almost slipped past as an undefined term, there.
The problem with her question is that the point is the premise bothers people because it literally erases people who have historically faced genocide. The function of fiction as mirror or window or entertainment isn’t the point. And her question of the definition of moral writer is phrased rather patronizingly, I thought.
It only gets worse:
You know, I thought you were making a few interesting points, till you came to this:
“I’ve come to the conclusion that based on the shadow cast by white supremacist colonization and the ongoing genocide of the original inhabitants of the Americas, I can’t– in good conscience– read the Thirteenth Child. It’s not so much recoiling from a shadow cast by a distortion in my head but disgust with a trope that holds that even when they’re strangers in a strange land, all white people need in order to prosper is whiteness.”
My mother — born in 1912 — used to have a phrase for this: “My mind is made up. Don’t confuse me with the facts.”
A stance of moral superiority really cannot be floated over an abyss of ignorance. (Though I admit, people routinely try.) It’s especially not a sound footing for this book which, within the limits of its scope, actually does some very interesting things with subverting assumed Avyrupan dominances.
I will stop recommending you read it, however. The book deserves better than to be pored over by an inquisitor only seeking evidence for a conviction already decided upon.
See, I expected more from Bujold than that. The fact that Skywardprodigal made good points isn’t obscured by her inability to read the book. Also, I thought her tone was definitely patronizing in this post and it seemed that she wasn’t so much interested in discussing the subject, again, as being confrontational. Very disappointing. Not that I think that the others are being brilliant paragons of humanity, but I really did expect more from Bujold.
And the dissenters haven’t even gotten really inflammatory yet.
Then there’s Avalon’s Willow of the Elizabeth Bear kerfuffle fame. I will come out on a limb and freely admit that I cannot agree with this person. She’s abrasive and insulting, not to mention often patronizing. I can see her point, but her presentation turns me off like nothing else:
Don’t you know the Coaltion of White Female SF Authors passed out a memo that states they categorically cannot be thought to hold racist thoughts cause they decided so?
Then Elizabeth Bear told them how all they had to do to interact with PoC was lie to them and belittle them cause it would raise book sales and they all agreed that willful blindness was the new hotness.
What are you doing bringing *HISTORY* and *LOGIC* and *CONTEXT* into conversation? How dare you introduce Post-Colonial Ideology. White people don’t know what that is, it involves brown people. How dare we assume they’d pay attention.
Also? This is Tor’s site. TOR, Skyward. T. O. R - THE ORIGINAL RACISTS. You seriously should know better.
Meanwhile, yet another fantasy novel that glosses over the ugly realities of colonialist narrative by disappearing the native brutally conquered tribes in order to have white people skipping merrily towards Manifest Destiny?
Colour me unsurprised.
You and I, however, know that if it weren’t for grave robbing thus discovering signs of another civilization, stealing of the corn set aside by the natives for their next season’s harvest, and lying in wait for someone to return to claim it; the colonists would have starved to death.
But yeah, who needs Tisquantum. They have Mammoths! And hey, at least no one in this book’s universe will ever bust out with the typical. “But my great great grandmother was a Cherokee Princess!”
I’m going to ignore that shot at Elizabeth Bear and how Avalon’s Willow thinks Bear thinks the coalition of white female SF authors should treat POCs. That remark that implied history and context and logic has no place in this conversation because it involves whites? The one about calling TOR the original racists? I can’t hold with calling an entire company the “original racists”. Feel free to call one person or two people or three or even twenty names — but an entire boatful of people?
Then there’s Kynn who thinks that the theory which says that the Native Americans contributed to the extinction of megafauna is insulting. When challenged, she says:
Whether or not you think it SHOULD be insulting, it definitely IS insulting. (I’m not an American Indian, but I can see the insulting components of this type of worldbuilding.)
Personally I think that humans have caused animal extinction many, many times, and I really can’t see how it’s insulting. You can say it is a faulty theory, but to insist it’s racist?
Bujold steps back with some more fail:
OK, I’ve gone away and thought about this for a few days. Let’s try again. (Also resolved: do not make blog posts after midnight, or after consuming a sleeping pill that isn’t working.)
I have no argument with the larger issues of cultural/racial erasures and historical crimes in the real world; these are real and harrowing (and universal, the more you know about everywhere. _Carthago delenda est_ and all that. But 20,000 wrongs don’t make a right, merely a trend.) Ditto on-going local oppressions; despite the fact that Native Americans are over two million strong, voting citizens, fellow exiles in the 21st century, and many are educated, articulate, and perfectly able to speak for themselves (most of the major tribes have websites now, a thought both hopeful and boggling) poverty and discrimination do still fall disproportionately upon many others. Back to this in a moment.
I still have a profound problem with any argument that leaps from hearsay to condemnation without any intervening stop at “evidence”. It doesn’t matter *what* the subject is, the *form* is wrong, even if the conclusion after examining the evidence bears out the initial belief. And it’s just as wrong in a court of public discourse as it would be in a court of law. Worse, someone making this leap throws every other assertion they may make into doubt — were they all arrived at as casually and cheaply? Don’t do this, people, and don’t let others get away with it, either — because someday, your own life or happiness may depend upon just such due process.
But I also believe that a person who holds admirable opinions, yet does nothing, is scarcely distinguishable from a person who holds execrable opinions, and does nothing. Virtual virtue doesn’t count. Talk is cheap (especially on the Internet.) As Stephen Leacock swears he heard two Scottish Calvinists arguing on a train, on whether damnation is achieved through good works or grace alone, I’m on the good works side, myself.
The past is beyond anyone’s reach, and history is fractal — one sperm over, and we would all have been our siblings, and our own self-centered universes would never have sprung into being at all — so what can an ordinary person do right-here-right-now about any given hurt in the world? The two standard answers are money and time — well, and blood, but I don’t direct where that goes. And “start anywhere” is usually pretty good advice, when one is spoiled for choice.
So I asked my friend who knows about such things, and she supplied these, her favorites — more could perhaps be added:
“Oglala Lakota College — www.olc.edu (They always need contributions to help students pay their loans, without which they can’t graduate.)
Lakota Funds (making mini loans for economic development and training people to run their own businesses) http://www.lakotafunds.org/
Soaring Eagle — not Lakota, but Cheyenne is a neighboring tribe; this is a residential home for elderly Cheyenne started by their long-term priest, Father Emmett Hoffmann, to help elderly folks who needed care (and keep them from being sent off to Denver, away from family and anyone who spoke their language): www.soaringeagle.org/
Also, Running Strong for American Indian Youth — not limited to Lakota, but does do neat things there — organic gardens, etc.”
Didn’t take me long to choose, as I’m always for education — which reminds me that I need to contribute to the engineering scholarship fund in my Dad’s name back at OSU — but to make it extra easy –
https://www.thedatabank.com/dpg/6/donate.asp?formid=DonateOLC
It’s as much of a snap as Amazon.com, I found.
And you may at least congratulate yourselves for tipping me over from “I really ought to do that one of these days,” to “There! Done!”
Full disclosure: It was I who invited Pat over, a few years back, to watch a fascinating BBC documentary DVD titled “Walking with Prehistoric Beasts”, which started the cascade of interests that resulted in the book you aren’t reading. So, while the first rule for avoiding Internet insanity is still “do not feed the energy monster”, I really cannot tiptoe away from this. Even though it would be *infinitely* smarter to do so.
Um, Bujold, grats. You just non-apologized, if I’m reading that sentence about posting after midnight with a sleeping pill that isn’t working properly. You also still didn’t address everyone else who has been trying to convince you that “Yes, there kinda is a problem with this premise.” You also, I’m hoping unintentionally, told people to just shut up and actually do something about the issue, like throwing money at it, in a very patronizing way. I really do like you as a writer, but I feel like you’re slamming your foot in your mouth at supersonic speed. Especially with your addition of boggling when referencing Native American tribe websites. May I ask what exactly is boggling about that? I also note that you never respond to comments that ask you that question either.
At post 121, she still doesn’t address the issue. That’s ok. Whatevs. I give up at this point at your trainwreck of a post.
Lastly, how everyone jumped all over Hapax’s comments regarding how she regards books is illuminating. I love how “white privilege” is slung around casually, constantly.
The way I interpreted what she’s been trying to say this entire time is that she feels there is something to be gained from every book — therefore she’s against censorship, even when it’s as innocuous as people saying “I cannot in good conscience read this book”. Although, once you really get down to it, isn’t someone saying that they couldn’t in good conscience do something sometimes pretty compelling reason to follow suit and not do it?
I simply love how she’s lambasted:
Newsflash, minorities, you need to read poisonous literature for your edification. Because if you don’t buy it, well, the poor white writers and readers will just keel over and die without your pained support, right after pillorying you for refusing to give their racist and othering work ‘a chance’. Because none of this is about your feelings. It is about changing the world! By buying and consuming the work of, again, racist white writers.
I’m honestly not quite sure how “almost everything has worth in my eyes” is translated to “you must zomg buy all books by all authors, especially the poisonous ones and read them!”
Then there’s Kynn:
Also, hapax, your privilege is really dripping all over the place in ways that may prove too caustic for many people to want to engage you, especially if they are people of color who have been subject to oppressions you have not had to face. You are very glib and white and privileged, and I wince (as a white person) at many of the things you are saying.
I don’t think it’s an accident that only white people (such as Bruce, who has been excellent on this thread) are willing to engage you. You seemingly just don’t realize how repellent your words are.
Really, I think the worst one can accuse Hapax of is derailing the subject. I don’t think she’s saying that criticism of books isn’t allowed or that there’s some sort of golden rule for how one chooses to decide what they read. I think she makes that pretty clear by saying that she doesn’t hold anyone else to the priorities she holds herself to. I don’t know what lenses these other people are viewing her words through, at all.
Lastly, I note that Patricia Wrede has still managed not to come and even try to explain, despite a couple hundred comments. That is full of more fail.
What a massive load of fail, all of it. In the end, I’ve lost faith in two authors I used to love and I’m again reminded of how ugly people can be when confronted with a viewpoint they do not share.
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05.25.09
Posted in Ethics and morality, Sexuality tagged wow at 12:17 am by kyrias
So. I think that little picture is rather self-explanatory, isn’t it?
My reaction?
If you know that it’s illegal for someone who is underage to engage with someone who is of age in that particular manner, than you should damn well stop because you are putting them in a position of potentially being sent to jail and being required to register as a sex offender whereever they live hereafter.
You have the right to fap, to wank, to participate in any exploratory sessions you may desire so long as you’re not adversely interfering with someone else’s life.
At a certain point it isn’t about draconian laws regarding who may fuck who or arbitrary laws and whatnot. It’s about you not having the right to put someone in jail because you wanted to get your rocks off.
This is based, of course, on the presumption that the other person doesn’t know. If s/he is a pedo, then things do get somewhat different.
I remember vaguely when I was guild master of a guild in World Of Warcraft. I distinctly remember that same “FUCK YOU” response when I learned that one of my guild officers was having ”pornographic interactions” with one of my underage members.
Of course, the way I learned was when the irate parent of said underage teen logged onto her account and started cross-examining me about whether I knew about this entire debacle. I was not amused.
I was pissed at the teen who I had previously knew to have no compunctions disregarding age limitations because of her unimaginable stupidity regarding said age limitations. I knew that she didn’t respect limitations because she filled out my survey on gaming behavior despite my having said that you must be 18 to participate. The thing is, those things are there for a reason, not just for LOLs and it irked me immeasurably that she would take things into her own hands without finding out the why and wherefores.
I was even more pissed at the guild officer because he essentially abused his postion, and he took advantage of a young girl whilst knowing that she was underage. I can’t decide if I’m happy that I didn’t know of this beforehand or if I felt betrayed that I wasn’t told what exactly was going on until I got slammed with threats of a police investigation into the “going ons of this guild”.
Just, not cool. Not cool at all. Play your games if you must, but leave me and my reputation out of it.
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05.23.09
Posted in life tagged teh intarwebz at 12:14 am by kyrias
In reaction to “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog Chinese“.
This blog started out pretty aggresively x-netural. Gender neutral, race neutral, politics neutral. Or at least I tried not to actively broadcast my affiliations.
I sought to be sought after for my views, my personality as distilled through prose, alone.
Of course, I killed that in short order. Best laid plans and all that.
First I told my “real life” TM friends of this blog, because I’m a horribly lazy person who wishes to broadcast her views to as many people via as effortless a route possible.
Then I started letting drop hints of my race, my gender, my location. Not intentionally, it’s just what happens when I started not being as aggressively careful about each and every single word.
The next thing you know, I’ll be branding myself as a “politics”/”personal finance”/”feminist” blog.
Back to the plans.
Personally, I think there’s nothing worse for a blog than to be tarred as a x-blog.
SEO-sycophants would disagree and they’d have a point. After all, how else do you build a fan base when often your readers are looking for a very specific thing? I think I read somewhere that studies show that often Googlers hit up a site for an answer to a very specific question. I know I do the same thing myself, and it’s very rare that someone will write someone that brings me back to their site again and again. Part of what draws someone back is if they’re dealing with subjects you’re interested in and doing it well.
However, I’d like to argue that after being pegged for a certain sort of writer with a certain agenda, it’s much harder for you to preach to people who are not of the choir, so to speak. After someone has decided that they know exactly where you’re coming from, it’s less likely that they’ll have an open mind towards what you say. After all, Psychology 101 says that we’re influenced the most by people we think are like us and who we wish to emulate.
Thus, I didn’t want to peg my blog as any particular thing. It helps that I’m a ravening bitch who bites on both sides of the fence, I guess. Or maybe it doesn’t, and I merely offend both sides equally and am therefore shunned equally. Who knows?
Although I suppose logic does tell me that no ones likes the devil’s advocate. Or perhaps that’s flattering myself. I think the ravening bitch who bites without discrimination might be more apt after all.
On that note, I’d dearly love to know how I’m perceived on teh intarwebz.
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05.22.09
Posted in culture tagged culture appropriation, drama-ilama at 12:56 am by kyrias
I just recently read bossymarmalade’s “thank you, come again” or “sita pays her dues”.
My question is, where is the line between appropriating someone’s culture and simply appreciating it?
I have wanted a Vietnamese ao dai for ages, but I haven’t quite moved past wanting to actually trying to procure one because I’m afraid of what the Vietnamese people I encounter might think.
Is it deception, since I’m Chinese and therefore could theoretically pass myself off as Vietnamese? Is it disrespect or some form of imperialism, considering China’s stance towards other “lesser” countries back when it was a major power? Or perhaps, even more recently, would it be seen as another sort of patronizing aggression much like Deng’s supposed “punishment for unruly little children“?
On that note, what if I decide that I like having a dog named “karma”? I’m not particularly being abrasive on purpose, but considering that the Chinese also have the concept of reincarnation and karma — is it ok because my culture also has that concept? On the other hand, I’m not quite sure how it’s insulting to have a dog named “karma”, as it’s not quite like women naming themselves “Kali” or, god forbid, naming their dog “Kali”. On the other foot, is it still disrespectful if that person comes from a culture where naming yourself after deities is seen as normal? If I remember correctly, I think the Greeks do that? And let’s not forget the Mexican (?) name Jesus although admittedly pronounced differently.
To stretch the question further, does it make me a weeaboo if I adore Japanese food? Is it culture appropriation if I make sushi on a regular basis that doesn’t have the traditional sushi innards and make it part of my life?
Then there’s the sensitive parts — religion and myth.
Icecreampress says that she found the appropriation by Nina Paley with her “Sita sings the blues” narcissistic and full of hubris on top of the appropriation-rage. S/he further states that any attempt to graft a personal story onto a major epic distasteful — even when the person doing said grafting is native to the culture that spawned the story. I’m not quite sure why. Story, after all, is the retelling of truth and life is about truth. So if you’re telling your story, or your truth, by framing it in another story which is perhaps a better formed truth — how is that bad? Note that I’m not saying that I like “Sita sings the blues” because I had entirely different issues with it. Just speaking in terms of (there goes that word again) relative truth.
On a tangent, someone mentioned Chinese versus Japanese kanji. So — um… *spreads hands* Should I be dancing in place in rage because an entire country took my culture and appropriated it? Or I seem to remember that the Koreans did some appropriating also… So about that rage, peeps.
Again, where is that damn line?
Where to even begin with religion? Crusades have been fought over it, entire cultures built up around it, countless rivers of blood and tears flowed for it — how does one even try to open that can of worms? Regardless, I tend to get my panties in a twist when people start claiming deities not from their native culture and when people start jumping all over people who have done so.
In my opinion, if you’ve read up on the history of the deity and you really know what you’re tangling with — then by all means go for it. The god chooses their follower, not the other way around. For example, if someone who is deeply religious and happened to be homosexual or androgynous decided that his/her patron god was Guan Yin because of one of the stories which portrays Guan Yin as having a male form — if you’ve got your facts right, whatevs.
On the other hand, fluffy bunnies who do things because they sound cool can just go shove it.
So answer me this, people. Where is that damn line?
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