she did it all

I hate the dark, it makes me think about death, life and forever

2010-10-01T11:20:00.000-07:00

I usually hate the dark, it makes me think too much. Now the question is sometimes I think, why anthropology? Why not something else to give meaning to my life? Why not philosophy? or Archaeology so I can muse on the questions of life or death and probably along the way see what it is actually like to exist. these things, these questions have been around since the dawn of time. How long ago that dawn of time, nobody actually knows. I saw recent photographs of bison drawings in a cave in France, and I thought, well, it is 32,000 years old and it looks perfectly new. The details and the colours on the bison, while I do not pretend to be an artist but an amateur enthusiast once in awhile, the drawings to me were perfect. The ones in the Niah Caves are only 1200 years old, 200 years after the death of the Moslem prophet Muhammad s.a.w., and those in Perak, Malaysia are 2000 years old, about the time of Christ. History, then, is duplicitous, indicating times and spaces that are so relatively different from one section of the world to another. At one point, the barbaric and the 'savage noblesse' of South East Asia 1200 years ago and another, the Angkor Wat built in and around the same time.

The thing that strikes me most about the passage of time is the fact that humans have existed, they will exist after this and they will exist maybe some more after that. They have, fro 32,000 years or more, if we could find the evidence for it anyway. How long have we been here? And how long more will we be here? Is there a God? And if there is, what happens to us after we die? Religion has been one of the most fundamental breakthroughs of man, giving them hope to advance, to be creative, to exist. Any religion, from the Mayans, to the Zoroastrians, to the old Celtic religions, from Islam, to Buddhism, to Christianity. Each with their own version of how to exist, when to exist, what to expect in life and what to expect in death and ironically no matter what, there is no proof for any either one of them to be completely true, and that is the anthropologists' explanation. The only way to do so is to take philosophy in one's own hands and leap as Kirkegaard commends. That faith and religion n actuality is irrational and there is no system of thought in the world that could justify faith and religion, it is a matter of irrationality. And now we have come into a new chapter of anthropology. One that requires leaping as well. We have come to exist on this planet and in a multitude and variety of ways we try to exist in it. The Chinese and the Indians making incense, to pray at sunset or sundown, to chase spirits from a house, to wrap a dead person with cloth, to pay homage to our ancestors, to worship our ancestors, to file our teeth, to scar our bodies, to tattoo our adventures, to participate in exchange, to trade, to make boats, to canoe, to travel between different islands, to be married, to fall in love, to be beautiful, to be young, to be old, to be wise, to purchase and buy, to be urban, to dress and style oneself, to cover our bodies, to expose our bodies, to heighten our bodies, to stretch to lie, to bury our dead, to burn our dead, to everything. And each and everyone of our actions, our beliefs, our thoughts, our cosmology, at one point or another might or might not matter because life on earth of man have been going on for thousands of years, perhaps millions. The only thing and benefit that we gain is the acquisition of wisdom and the knowing that when we die, life on earth continues as if we do not exist.

Rationality and Irrationality

2010-09-14T12:38:00.000-07:00

I wrote a very long letter/message in response to a very good friend of mine, I have a tendency to seriously forget things that I have put in my head and my system of thought and I thought the letter in it self is very good in trying to clarify whats in my head. I also have a tendency to not be able to think when I'm angry, kind of neanderthal in my part - I think after this post I would like to kick Levi Strauss' ass for being such a white Frenchman, just as much as I want to kick Xavier Sandner's ass for being such a white Frenchman.

Cap'n Liyana Tassim Septembarrr 14 roundabouts 11:07 in the evenin'
Okay one thing I admit, I don't work well under pressure buuut
let's start off with one thing, I also remembered that there was a concept that I was utilizing and it was far more useful than clear cut questions of 'What is kinship?', If kinship was not necessisated by blood and that to inherit or receive money/land/goods/etc. was by way of what? So the concept I used was Carsten's degrees of relatedness. That I thought was an excellent idea, for one, if I used degrees as the main theory compass to explain the process of how people received inheritance/rights/positions, therefore, there was more validity to and truthfulness to the concept than not. So there were as you say positions but such positions does not necessarily (or as you say, categories of positions) entail specific rights, negotiation yes, is by way of one - but, what is salient in this feature? Degrees of relatedness, investment for one is both (in)tangible and I have detailed or (ofcourse I need to iron) the course in which people CAN negotiate their positions this was the feature that demarcates from fixed patriarchal patrilineal matriarchal matrilineal societies, the existence of PREFERENCE. If for instance other societies these rules are set or fixed and there is no way to go about it in bilineal societies this is not the case, therefore other means or ways are needed to explain said phenomenon.

On the question of rationality and irrationality, now I remember, I wrote a paper when I was doing political sociology between the English legal system and the Islamic legal system, one was highly rational and the other considered to be irrational - however, rationality does not imply that it is a 'good' thing rather, the system was built in such a way that it is difficult for people to be judged, waiting years in line to be brought to the court of law, this is because the system is highly rational and highly bureaucratic, on the other hand the Kadi judicial system was irrational and was subject to case by case basis, ofcourse this is traced by historical junction ala Michel Foucault. Irrationality therefore as I have found out does not necessarily mean that the system is bad, au contraire, irrationality is in fact in this cultural system is more beneficial especially when we are dealing with numerous cases quickly and effectively. Therefore, I do not agree that rationality is completely and wholesomely the best way to go about in judging people or a cultural state of mind so to speak. Btw, how sick are you mi amor? This I think forms my system of thought, I suppose it is different for yours. Well, now I am thinking straight - adieu

Dr. Laura Schlessinger

2010-08-25T08:31:00.000-07:00

Now when I heard the latest controversy concerning the infamous talk show host, I thought, obviously nothing could justify her actions in this rain weather storm/shit. However, I also looked into several of her publications although nothing would induce me to read one and be appropriately gagged throughout. Ofcourse the advice she gives out is simple enough, you give in order to receive without needing to analyze the actual implications of those men's actions towards their wives. The examination ofcourse is done in part of the women whereby if they act a certain way, certain prescribed/proscribed ways that signifies what a 'REAL' woman is and therefore they will receive the amount of attention and affection that they want. But the question is, only as a devil's advocate because of course they have every right to receive the happiness that they wish to have and the kind of structure that they wish to present/portray/exist in their lives. But honestly, going far back and talking about the first season of Desperate Housewives, Gabriel goes back and realizes that what she wanted was all the wrong things that she really needed. Although the whole point was for her to have marital bliss and have a baby and all that. But what does a woman want? And why does society have to point it out what they want? Can it be examined further that what you want is not really what you REALLY REALLY want but a product of what you think you SHOULD want?

Congratulations Australia!

2010-06-23T23:50:00.000-07:00

Here

Notice that they mention her marital status, well to be fair, male prime ministers and presidents who are not married are also criticized by right wingers, it makes no difference. However, as a politician one cannot help but have multiple skills in making everyone calm down. Sigh, the trials and tribulations of involving oneself in politics. But then, there you go, you're a politician the truth is you're landlocked and you have every worst obstacle about yourself in every way. In addition to that every other body part of your self is often scrutinized, whether your Hillary Clinton running for office, how ugly John Howard is, etc. Not everyone is as good looking as Barack Obama and get yourself hoodwinked. On other news...

A recent msn article by a certain idiot bio-sociologist, I couldn't find the article but apparently if you google 'taken men attractive' you'll find absolute loads. She argues that the reason why taken men seem attractive is because in the so-called period as neanderthals this would mean that our cave man/woman/insert here mentality would find that men who are taken are dependable etc. But honestly? It would seem like a tactic men might use as a means of screwing other women on the side. Apparently it also meant that they were great protectors yadda2, now my question is this, plain and simple. How the fuck does she know all this? I assume this is because she was recently unfrozen from a block of ice and ofcourse she automatically became an expert at cavemen mentality 'love'. The truth is ofcourse even bleaker than that, it has nothing to do with biology, what it does though is the fact that patriarchy enforces ideas on women that taken men are more sexually and emotionally viable than single men. Ofcourse, this also works vice versa with milfs and gilfs ahoy! It also works by the principle that the grass is greener on the other side...who after all does not want to imagine such things of what wonders that the forbidden fruit can offer?
Ironically...the forbidden fruit also brought suffering. Maybe, humans are sado-masochists, why not? La Douleur Exquise!

Another Rainy Day

2010-06-06T04:14:00.000-07:00

Things have gone a bad turn for me, thankfully I'm getting off unscathed (I think). I'm getting divorced and I don't talk to my mother. I hope things go out well. Other than that, on other issues around the world, I haven't taken the time to talk about the recent fiasco with British Petroleum. So far at SeizeBP.org which I recommend everyone take the time to read, the oil spill is still ongoing. Obviously mentions by government filled newspapers and any other forms of media, the situation is supposedly 'under control' What with the things that are going around on earth right now, with the huge crack somewhere in South America, I would have hoped that people would change their actions and ways. I am still on a semi-carbon diet, I don't ask for plastic bags anymore, I vehemently refuse if someone tries to give me a plastic spoon or fork although I think I should take this a little bit further by taking my own stuff when I want to take away food, like a container or something. I can't live without my computer off, hmm, that doesn't sound so promising although I did set it off to low performance. What astounds me still in the Beunri media is that they only tell people to turn off their water heaters when it's not in use. Hell, are we Rockefellers or something?! Shit, even Rockefeller was an extremely stingy person, so much so he installed a public coin phone at home so that his family, friends and workers couldn't call as they liked. But really, what have they been doing? Leaving it on all day long? People take what? one or two showers a day? Why is that thing on the whole day?!I cannot conceive of the things that we constantly do. And all this fuel for what? I took part as a volunteer for a Green Debate in my university as a water carrier LOL. Interestingly although the whole issue was 'Green' water bottles were used everywhere, what's wrong with water jugs or tap water? Although the issues were there it was hardly green, God knows why. Obviously it was a gimmick in part of shell, I'm not saying it's a bad thing, in fact it could be a good thing. Or am I too extreme? We need some green advisers that's for sure.

Cultural Hegemony?

2010-05-10T22:28:00.000-07:00

looking back towards Antonio Gramsci's Cultural Hegemony made me wonder. There are loads of examples that support this theory and very much influences a lot of people. It has also been known that cultural hegemony has the ability to uproot localized cultures and deem them as 'bigoted', 'other', part of the 'lower' etc. when there is absolutely no evidence to support that 'their' way of doing things are better. For instance, protocol, often you see that you're giving loads of movements or even wasting a lot of materials - for what? For what exactly? Sure humans have the need to celebrate or worship/meet the queen but is it necessary to use much waste in the process? Doesn't things like this actually cost much more and difficult to boot? It's like going to the opera house, sure it's for culture, definitely I don't see the wrong in that however, I do see a problem when it utilizes much waste. Wastefulness indeed, like JLos watches or Beyonce's million dollars' worth of wigs. Gramsci has a serious point and I would like to say that I'm wrong but honestly in more ways than one, he's right. Buttress this claim against the French dude who says that certain people make it because of 'Cultural Capital'.

My dear stars

2010-05-09T07:35:00.000-07:00

My dear stars,
where ever you are,
under the blanket of dark,
and your little pointy mark.

Fascinating me until I just stare and stare,
It's not like anyone cares,
But I'm okay I think,
I just want to wait and let it sink-
in

I'm kinda lost and my dreams get stranger and stranger,
I'm not in any real danger,
just dreaming again on and off on and off,
then I wake up wishing I was asleep again

The grass is close to my feet.
It's rather cold - no heat.
I wonder what you're doing there,
untouched by this dirty earth,
And all the blood that we didn't spare,
heaven and earth heaven and earth.

The trouble with packed foods

2010-03-26T22:05:00.000-07:00

Now lately this has been bothering me and I rewatched The Story of Stuff again. Think about it, you want to eat some biscuits then you go buy some old-fashioned Khong Guan biscuits. The new Khong Guan biscuits now come individually packed while the old ones are only once packed, this time one pack has mini packs! You eat one or two mini packs then you throw it away in a few seconds...how is that fair? It comes with the package, I always refuse plastic spoons or forks for the plain reason that they get thrown away afterwards, for what? For a single use of a thing that biodegrades in 300 fucking years! Ditto for our sanitary pads and kids diapers. Why in the world is it so difficult to be sustainable? I need to go on a carbon diet.

I wonder if I'm a racist?

2010-03-15T15:18:00.000-07:00

I wonder if I'm a racist when it comes to finding men who are attractive, if I am spot me out here's the list:-

How often do you see positive images of women in movies?

2010-02-22T08:07:00.000-08:00

Granted that the most recent movie I watched with a positive image of a woman was Sigourney Weaver in Avatar (and she's not even the hero) a lot of movies I have watched seems just to limit women and womenhood in general. Sigourney Weaver is a good example of an actress who have jumped the boundaries and is able to become the hero (woohoo~!). Seriously how often do you that to be the exception and not the norm? My GOD!

You, Me and Dupree
- Kate Hudson is a schoolteacher

Bride Wars
- Kate Hudson is a successful lawyer but sort of breaks down in the middle of her meeting just because she has blue hair, and all because of something as 'frilly' as a wedding. Oh she's also portrayed as a 'bitchy' woman.
- Her bestfriend Anne Hathaway is ...gasp, a schoolteacher.

Glee
- I like Glee and the actress Jane Lynch was great in it...just sayin ha3

and the list goes on and on

successful women = bitchy = need love and affirmation of some hot hunk
middle class women who are teachers = smarmy and mousy ( I'm soo not against teachers even though I hated a lot of them during high school, the point is, one of them was a great teacher and she was a woman, never had a great male teacher, nuff said).

When is the next female character the hero again like Aliens? I haven't seen one in ages, when Sigourney Weaver (as a 9 year old kid I watching it) was carrying her large guns I have never felt that 'this looks wrong', au contraire, I was rooting for her, looking at her kill those effing aliens. When was there a positive image of a woman holding a gun looks so right? (not saying that I'm promoting violence either) Well, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one although not my favourite, but Xena was and she was my favourite (kick ass Xena! She was even wayyy better than that show Hercules she spawned out of).Where are the female heroines? Good God I think we need a fifth wave of feminism...

The fragmentation of Nationhood

2010-02-08T19:58:00.000-08:00

I think as everyone might be aware of the comings and goings of Malaysi a similar trajectory can be seen with what is happening elsewhere around the world. The existence of minority communities. What we are truly living in at the moment is a post-nationalist world. The nationalist world while still in full effect elsewhere is becoming increasingly fragmented. Sure, Malaysia has had its problems and yes they have for these past few decades created racial riots severe enough to see that they cannot be together and they cannot be apart. It's like the Malay saying, 'Talan mati bapa, luah mati mama' (To swallow your father will die, to spit your mother will die). Malaysia definitely cannot exist if for instance it decides to fragment itself (which it would very improbably won't). The thought rose to me when I was reading Thomas Friedman's 'From Beirut to Jerusalem'. The Lebanese which saw the multiplying minority becoming a majority and like Malaysia too the Malays saw the extreme increasing number of the Chinese right before their eyes. Neither of these countries could exist without the other (well, that is their logic) but in a post-nationalist world where every country is fragmented in terms of race could be very well underhanded. These are wars of identity and ethnicity. Something in truth, very well historically engineered to exist. I wonder what is going on, honestly I am beginning to be suspicious that this is the work of creating non-fluid identities but a more marginalized ethnicity and country without regard to how much it forces people to become uniform. Whatever the arguments proposed for unity and sameness, I think could be summed up by the experiences of the untouchables of India and now I found out, the 'burakumin' of Japan.

limited access to education

2010-01-20T09:24:00.000-08:00

I just realized something painful about so-called 'wonder' stories about people dropping college and becoming the richest (or wealthiest) man in the world (Bill Gates) and every other 'beautiful' stories about people 'making it'. The only truest rags to riches story I believe would come from the entertainment industry. Now that's a hodge podge of some who were born to act and went to prestigious art schools for music or the stage, OR those who struggled relatively really struggled with poverty to become rich and famous. Oh, I also extend this rags to riches to those who do sports or modeling. The rest? Not so. Sure there are, it is impossible that there aren't considering that there are 6 billion people on this planet, the odds are mind-boggling of course. And out of this 6 billion many will, from the lowest rung of poverty 'make it' through working class, or middle class and hey if you're even luckier, upper class. But the majority of people aren't and I noticed that all of these reasons are simple. Access to education and knowledge. Sure, everyone says, there are public libraries, proponents of such and such would argue, they would go on to say that it is dependent upon their laziness that they do not wish or want to get above themselves. But what if you spent your life thinking that you're not able to read a single book? Too long? Too tiring? Not enough interest or imagination to pull it off? Hey, it's common here in Brunei, a majority of the middle and upper classes do get off books, they prey on it, but the rest? Fat chance, in this small country of 180 thousand locals and more than half made up of expatriates, the truth is there are only three actual living breathing working bookstores while the rest are actually magazine newsstands mimicking as bookstores or text book stores (which make a lot of money actually, a LOT). The access to knowledge is very limited, lack of transportation is a good way of citing it, then there is the fact that the children will grow up seeing that their parents do not read and therefore they don't read (although I have heard stories that the children do read and end up being the better for it), even parents who 'fear' their children reading due to superstition or local stigma. I have seen it before, it is regardless if you're Moslem, their only answer is that the Koran is the only one worth reading. Fair enough for those religious zealots out there, why not? The problem is this a majority who do read it don't understand a single thing about it! Amazing! Many scholars, anthropologists and sociologists have found out that this is quite strange especially among Southeast Asian Moslems. Why? If the Muslims in the West (including the Middle East) have managed to read it upside down inside out then interpreting it, understanding it and actually reading it!! (iqra bismirrabikalazi khalak)The Moslems in Southeast Asia rarely do understand what they are reading. It has in a certain way become so deified that they fear understanding it, that they would sin in understanding it without proper guidance (which they never bother to find in the first place). The Jews and the Christians, the Hindus and Buddhists have had a long intellectual history, even the Moslems. But often I see here is a stagnation that cannot marry both intellectual progress (which ever you wanna understand it, even in terms of Sahlins' the original affluent society) and religion at the same time. That, I think is their prerogative, I'm sorry to say despite the extreme oppression faced by Iranians on a daily basis they still do and have intellectual histories, the study of even fine arts (!!) and yes of course, the so-called Mr. Burnsesque nuclear power-plant.

This limited access to education ofcourse is consolidated with the idea of power and of course money. Limited means to gain education, I mean think about this, I started off with Bill Gates and I might as well end with a bitter note (not that bitter, people should, can and will try) he had a score of 1590 out of 1600 in his SATS, he was highly intelligent, comes from an UPPER MIDDLE CLASS family. Inherited 50,000 dollars to play with, a huge sum in those days, not that he didn't work hard, he did ofcourse. So did Warren Buffet who also came from a 'business' oriented family, they worked hard, they persevered, they didn't spend so much money. But it's easy to see that despite the fact that sociologists accuse the working class as being crass and 'immediately seeking gratification' squandering off their money for enjoyment. You have to understand, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates had lived and enjoyed since their childhood, they have never felt the pain of poverty and therefore were comfortable enough to not need 'immediate gratification' for their hard work.

Problems of Malaysia creating enmity elsewhere

2010-01-19T07:36:00.000-08:00

Malaysia's problems were serious the first time around. It's depth began during the British administration, dividing the Malays, Chinese and Indians into different actual ethnicities, separating them and causing a very great divide. In addition to those problems are also religious and cultural (ironically Malay culture is derived from Indian culture whatever one wants to make of it and parts of Indian culture are transfused by thousands of years of contact with the Middle East, the West and everywhere else) religiously parts of Indians are also Muslims (not to mention Chinese too in China! Millions of em!). The problems became more apparent through the media after Mahathir Mohamed stepped down, sure enough there's a likelihood chance with political drama that the whole Anwar Ibrahim was a fiasco after all and to distract Malaysians from their growing enmity problems.

So here goes, I received an email whether doctored or not of an appeal letter from an Indian who goes and insults Malays and Islam at the same time. However, I would not take sides on this, clearly not all Malays are lazy (i.e. many of the entrepreneurs as well as the rich politicians are Malays after all) and clearly not all Indians and Chinese are successful they are all three equally the same (almost equally anyway considering population discrepancies). The thing is this Malays in the Malaysian media have had a history of making fun of Hinduism as well as other religions, something politically I think is inadvisable but potently espoused by the likes of American right wingers. Anyway, the email just incited this deep hatred towards Indians and Chinese in general. Honestly, being so-called nationality wise Bruneian and called Malay (which I disagree by the way I prefer to be called 'orang Brunei'), there's this deep xenophobia that is going on in Malaysia and they're definitely spreading elsewhere into Brunei. Bruneians citing themselves as Malay believe that Indians and Chinese are the root to their problems and of course they fear that they will usurp them (in a 'Malay' country) both politically and economically. The fears I think are at some point quite founded, both Chinese and Indians being immigrant forces are very likely more intellectually prominent or economically more sufficient the reason for this is because of their ability to take risk. In addition to that their exposure to knowledge is not far off in known history, if ever Malays were prominent historically it is definitely downgraded because of the inability to cite so-called 'great' backgrounds to appeal to the 'spirit' of Malay-ness (which ofcourse is socially constructed). I cite these reasons because at the root of it is people like me. My great grandfather travelled all the way from Madras to Brunei and married my Kampong Ayer great grandmother. Then incidentally some Portuguese guy decides to impregnate a Chinese Mukah lady whose my great great grandmother. On my father's side I'm Mukah Chinese, how am I supposed to survive when ethnically I'm bound 'Malay', look very Chinese and have some Indian blood?

The xenophobia that is created in Malaysia clearly is being reflected elsewhere around in Brunei and I suppose to some extent too in Indonesia (where Malaysia and Indonesia have been at it for years). Then recently there's that thing with the word Allah, a term meaning God which Christians and Jews in the Middle East use freely as well as the word obviously means nothing else but an Arabic word of God. I agree uneducated people in Malaysia and Brunei would definitely disagree with the word Allah being used by other religions even Christianity and Judaism (which is ironic considering that all three are semitic religions and belong to the same root)and those who are intellectually and academically rooted would definitely do not care either way knowing that the word after all has been used EVEN BEFORE Muslims themselves have used it. And yet, they are bickering over it like a group of children, as if one has exclusivity over the other? I suppose the meaning of the Koran citing not Muslim, Jews or Christians or other religions but actually begins with 'Orang-orang beriman' (or those who have faith) does not mean much to those fighting over the word. Or even more, xenophobia.

How easy their reply

2010-01-07T00:02:00.000-08:00

The easiest reply that I have heard so far against feminism and feminist women are

'Because you're ugly that's why you're jealous'
- If I'm ugly and fat so what? What kind of an argument is that? We're pointing the obvious, sexism and the peddling of sexist and patriarchal agenda. What is so hard to chew on about that? What if we're not jealous? What if we honestly and truly mean what we say? Have you considered all these avenues? Why should we be jealous? What's the point? We're trying to protect womenhood from being controlled and oppressed.

- If a person who is disabled or coloured made the same argument for feminism and if they were male, would you tell them that they're jealous? Why not? A male could have aspirations to become beautiful too and if they're transgendered even more so.

'SHUT UP BITCH!'
- This is the dumbest reply, most likely made by some underaged/immature/ignorant person(s). Rather than argue back they retort violently without any meaning to their argument.

'Women know nothing'
- I rest my case.

Yours sincerely,
L.T.

The fleeting taste of the first

2009-12-21T07:28:00.000-08:00

XXX

There is no shortage in science and the internet on how to explain what love is. Biological? Astrological? Spiritual?

One thing for sure that cannot be beaten is the first taste of falling in love, over and over again. Sometimes, some people just fall in love over and over again, leaving a whole truckload of a dumping ground. The taste? Sweet, like a local fruit that you savour on your tongue lilting its flesh underneath your teeth. At times it is like a dark chocolate melting slowly pushing you to orgasmic pleasure. Then comes the kids and then the romance wanes and is replaced by friendship. When they say there's no such thing as love - it's true.

But I ain't tellin you that, you gotta find it out for yourself. And then there's the idea of love, my idea of love is definitely not like yours. My idea of it is full of passion and romance and it's cliches. I love it, my fantasies end until the point where he tells me he's madly in love with me, then my fantasy ends. When it ends I'll make up a new one, a new man in my head comprising of any guy that catches my fancy, good enough only for me.

But friendship is also love, more valuable than the passion and the romance. It is after all fleeting. The love you get after the children are around I suppose is the most worth of anything else. But other than that I'll keep my fantasies and my pillow boyfriends ;)

xoxo

Liyana

Stay at home mothers - I salute

2009-12-17T01:18:00.000-08:00

Given that in the West ideas of motherhood are relatively different than here in the East (I have a full-time nanny, and a housemaid, also full-time)I'd like to expound on my own academic thesis concerning the family process. In the West especially among middle-class white families, to live in the same house as their parents is unheard of, here in the East I stay with my large family in a relatively middle class environment, my parents are divorced and the people living in my house is my three kids, my husband, my father, my three siblings, my cousin and my maids. It's pretty noisy, sometimes there are moments of privacy of course but something that is quite different than that in the West's conception of the home and the house.

Now returning on the problems of the stay at home mothers, there are quite a few in my society, not many because women usually work outside the house and they have a barrage of nannies and maids to keep the house running full-time. the extended family is not something to be frowned upon, people save a lot of money staying in one house with large spaces (each of us have our own bedrooms except for smaller children, parents usually sleep with smaller children, sex is when you kick them out of the bedroom and lock the door at any other times they wish, night, afternoon, morning). Now things here are very easy compared to the West, there is no frowning if a large family stays in one large house, it's not unheard of, it's welcoming to older parents who wish to be close to their children and their children's families. I've even heard of cases whereby until the parents feel that they wish to move out because of familial reasons (fighting between siblings, extreme lack of space and privacy for instance) and they eventually do - or they don't. Ever. Pooling resources between siblings to buy large tracts of land and build their houses next door to each other (I've seen a whole block of terraces/ semi-detached houses owned by one large extended family too).

The stay at home mother, a phenomenon I do not disagree with especially in some cases done by wealthier women with a secure financial background at times by working class families who do not have the resources to afford nannies or maids. Now the idea of the stay at home mother is an anathema of Asian culture. when women imply they are stay at home mothers or suri-rumahtangga the idea should not be misconstrued in westernized terms, that they do not contribute financially or physically to the well-being of the occupants of a house. Women that I have met who do claim themselves as 'housewives' (such a degenerative term) had their own businesses, worked in the fields or grew crops for sale or house consumption. How does this make the 'suri-rumahtangga' unviable? This is ridiculous. Women do not stay at home, families are interdependent and children are raised together by whole villages at times, by siblings and the relationship between parent and child although something of a 'bond' idea etched by hallmark is something equally fluid in Southeast Asian societies. Sure, a sibling may raise a sister's child if the sister does not have enough resources and the other sister (or relative) do not have any children. The children's loyalties lie with those who raised them not to those who are their biological parents.

So what is this 'stay at home mothers are looked down upon' idea? Sure there has been some stand-offs between Asian/Black feminists versus Western/White feminists. But this is not a culture than can be easily translated - patriarchal. The words and the arguments of patriarchy are the same and yet women enjoy more freedom in terms of who they are than they do in material/sexual culture of the West. Even in Egypt where the stay at home mother is under the thumb of the oppressive patriarchy there are ways in which these women negotiate their existence, the same can be said in extremely patriarchal Indian or Chinese culture. It's simple, sons loyalties plus money go to mother. Not a single cent goes to the father. When the father stops becoming financially viable it is the mother that holds the reins of the houses' finances. To add to this there were also numerous studies concerning Malay culture whereby the wife and the mother holds the husband's purse, leaving him some money for spending on their comforts such as cigarettes or coffee shop trips. And honestly, I too hold my husband's money and when he needs some money he just asks me.

To put it into some perspective concerning highly patriarchal 'Islamic' societies read Fatima Mernissi, that should put some kick in the schlong.

Ma Jian's 'The Noodle Maker' and Antonia Fraser's 'Marie Antoinette - The Journey'

2009-12-10T00:24:00.000-08:00

I found Ma Jian's The Noodle Maker in the bargain section of Booker for $8.50 (I'm not surprised since I found an early Pramoedya Ananta Toer book there too) And I bought another book by a guy called Bolano (nyo on the n, I don't know how to find spanish letters here) but I haven't gone past a few pages. here's what I have to say about Ma Jian.

I found out that it was written after the Tiananmen Massacre and things are on the brink of change in China as new reforms and attempts towards modernisation are being made. I'm not sure but reading too much feminist blogs have provided me a better insight as to how women and womanhood are perceived towards literature shedding a good light on what is wrong with 'presumptuous culture' (a phrase I think I would like to coin myself).

An excerpt from page 52 of a character called Su Yun.

"They invaded every part of me", she wrote, 'They wanted my chastity, but they didn't respect it. I wanted their love, but they just pulled out their dicks and squirted their sperm over me. They destroyed all my dreams. where can I hope to find love now?...Just because they have stolen my innocence from me, does that mean I must lay myself bare and expose every part of myself to them? Men are no better than dogs. They believe that when they lift their legs to piss, the ground beneath them becomes their territory. If I don't conceal my true nature, how can I satisfy their desire for feminine restraint and refinement?"

And another pg.64

"...what do women matter? they just want a man to lean on, they don't mind who he is. Only friends care about a man's quality. Women are products of their environment. They want to pity the unfortunate and sponge off the rich."

It seemed to me at some point that female characters were sort of two dimensional while male characters were hahaha three dimensional figures capable of feeling and logic at a balanced pose whereas women were driven by their emotional state altogether. Sound familiar? Dumb much?

the proverbial wise male and driven woman is throughout this novel. Although I have to admit that at some point it did provided an insight that well, men are sort of trash but the conversations between the blood donor and the state writer even though both were what in modern standards we could define as 'losers' seem to demean womanhood and women even further under the guise of dark comedy, intellect and wisdom. Seriously?

The other book was about Marie Antoinette, although it did shed much light on her maltreatment by the 'Reign of Terror' by the likes of the Girondins and those guys Marat and Robespierre and the animal mob of Paris and Versailles it did not hint the actual suffering of the people compared to the court. Yes, she was a good royal figure, a symbol or emblem of sovereignty but it seemed to make light of the actual suffering going through by regular people. Well her suffering is nothing short of the shit that went throughout France during that time. Yes, she was a scapegoat but for all the good things she has experienced the common french people had absolutely nothing, what she didn't realize is the extreme feelings that went on among the people in their poverty that made them act like they did. It is a bit royalist propaganda in my head for all its majesty. It was not a bad read, it was allright. The court of Versailles and the Royals were all animals it seemed. Spending without a thought and leaving the people extremely destitute and poor. It didn't even mention the horrors of 'seigneuralism'. Although it had made some valid points, revolution at times rarely helped for the good of the people (except in the case of Thailand's great bloodless revolutions) but I wonder if death and destitution is the answer for change? Surely there are better examples? the French Revolution of course, on the other hand should be a must read for everyone and anyone who has half a brain.

"

Evil Slutopia - I like!

2009-11-19T07:48:00.000-08:00

SO I found a hidden gem of a blog allright - its at http://evilslutopia.com/ - read and weep bitches! Another site I think people should read is this http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/ . So the lady at Evil Slutopia had taught her daughter to become a feminist, congratulations to her, I hope I can aspire that my own daughter can become like that too. The other problem is that some male idiots just can't SEE that young girls as young as 9 should be taught to SEE that there exists and lurks EVIL in the form of MEN. That MEN are EVIL (not all...MOST).

He thinks that the child is looking at skewed eyes, with a world where women are worshipped for their beauty and NEVER for their brains, where SEXISM is ABOUND AND where young MALE and FEMALE children are being kidnapped, raped, molested and murdered as young as an infant, what kind of an idiot mother would not show her child the HORROR of this world? To PROTECT them. Ridiculous, if you're not a mother just SHUT THE FUCK UP lah

I wish we don't have to wear high-heels

2009-10-31T07:01:00.000-07:00

I absolutely detest high heels.

Give it five minutes and walk, they're painful they ruin everything and they're effing scary when you're walking down or up steep stairs imagine falling on your head, breaking your front teeth, etc. I made my husband wear a pair I have that's only an inch high, apparently quite short for women's standards, I made him stand on it for only a minute and try walking. He said these things are unstable and dangerous. I agree.

And yet, high heels are like so a must for porn, either men actually like seeing women in pain to see power OR they're engendered to see women in such a light.

Then I'm thinking about fashion, sure fashion can be pretty empowering for women in the upper echelons, i.e. Anna Wintour, but they're very oppressive as you run down to the bottom.

In short, NO MORE HIGH HEELS!

p/s the red shoes is actually a sculpture but that's the closest picture I could find that was similar to a porn actress. Other than that try watching free porn on xvideos.com, LOL.

Meet The Natives

2009-10-24T08:07:00.000-07:00

Although this show was made in 2007 it was only recently that it came to Discovery Asia, it plays on Sundays at 11pm due to the 'nudity' that Asians extremely despise (???). Anyway, despite the hullaballoo of criticism I would have to admit that it had generated more positive comments and criticisms that it did not. Other than that you could watch it on youtube and subscribe to the uploader, one of the guys who actually went to the trip, his username is VanuatuVeritas. I have to admit that the show was very good, very enlightening, very kind, I suppose some editing has been done to cut off chunks of the show as they never showed the process of translation as the chief said things to the people so we don't know although at some point it was translated literally to the English middle class farmers that they considered Prince Phillip as the son of God. This runs on the same theme with another show on Discovery about displacing western families in very localized situations but on the reverse. I was glad about the chiefs' reaction to the pig farming and the insensitivity of artificial insemination disregarding the sexual pleasure of animals (I wonder if PETA thought of that hmm?). Much as the Wests' disgust of so-called 'natives' eating dogs so too the Vanuatu people's disgust of artificial insemination. A very very good show, hopefully somebody watches it lol.

Sita sings the Blues

2009-10-10T10:28:00.000-07:00

I watched this film the other day - Sita sings the Blues, sung by Annette Hanshaw and produced by Creative Commons, drawn by NINA PALEY. And the best part is - you're free to pirate it!!! Yes, you are, and not just that, you can remix the music, as she said, the culture belongs to us all. Of all independent cartoon films I've watched, this takes the top prize. I did love Dreaming Awake, or was it Awake? It was about a boy who gets into some sort psychotic dreams meeting philosophy professors and celebrities explaining to him about how we perceive the world. Anyway, not that Sita herself is a female protagnist, I did have a rankling about the female shadow puppet which was actually Sita making a lot of mistakes explaining the story in the beginning but later on the female shadow puppet which was Sita becomes the better narrator than the Hanuman or Rama shadow puppet. Not to degrade the Hindu religion, I did a whole course with Prof. Walker to know that!!! As the avatara of Lakshmi, Sita was on earth to show diligence and uber-patience and good. Even though it might seem sexist but the three female goddesses are complementary to the three male gods. They are one and the same together.

Yes, it did break my heart when Sita gets swallowed by BumiDhevi. BUT, she was free from being in love with Rama at last. Interspersed with the storyline was the life of the artist, Nina Paley and how she broke up with her boyfriend. We can all relate to being dumped - honestly it seems that ALL women are dumped, they play the cards not us. Rarely do women get to play the cards and win - and dump them. They might say oh, yeah that's what you want, but the truth is? Anyway, my kids all three of them sat down quietly to watch it from beginning to end, then dragged the movie thing at the bottom of WMPlayer and watched it again. An adult movie that appeals to a 5 year old, a 4 year old and a 2 year old? Must watch. Like Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle and Princess Mononoke. By the way, my kids watched five minutes of Transformers 2 and walked away. I agree - dumb movie, even a 2 year old can identify that.

The other thing that I watched was DOUBT
and I didn't know that it was a play before this. Amazing superb performance, I especially liked the climax during the conversation between the boy's mother and Sister Aloysius. It's one of those movies that keeps you guessing what? Like The Banquet - what?

I thought I had to...

2009-10-03T21:14:00.000-07:00

I thought this was a nice comparison...

Dear Caster Semenya

2009-09-22T11:04:00.000-07:00

Even if this post never reaches you, which I doubt will, I would like to share a story. Once upon a time, a child was born, as intersexed as you, in a country called Malaysia. She was registered as a boy and her name was Zulkifli Ahmad. In a world where homophobia and xenophobia exists, she became a beacon of hope. She, like you, too identified herself as a woman.

A lot of stupid, heartless people liked to make fun of her, they liked to hurt her, but she did not care and she went on to make a lot of films that showed the problems in which the Malaysian society faced. Recently, she had passed away, leaving a large spot for people to fill in, which is almost impossible. Not a lot of people understood her vision and yet she became one of the most celebrated icons of her time, and her name was Yasmin Ahmad.

So you don't NEED to feel inadequate for who you are. What you need to do is raise your feet to this hostile world and give them a BIG FAT FUCK YOU.

Love,

Liyana T

Abandoned

2009-09-09T15:17:00.000-07:00

An abandoned baby was found - at least, alive . Not that I'm surprised. Most likely in this case it's an underaged mother afraid of persecution, or was raped, etc. etc. Unfortunately, cases of baby abandonment is even more rampant in highly patriarchal/conservative communities. In this case, the Middle East (all Abrahamic faiths), Greek islands, Russia, heck, anywhere where patriarchy can be found. In Brunei too, in a year there are about two or three abandoned infants. What I don't get is this, why in the world would it be better to kill an innocent infant in comparison to what other people say? Why do YOU think that being criticized by other people who do not care nor feed nor wish you well is important? Is it some sort of sociological conditioning component? An instilled fear of others' judgements? Sigh.

3 a.m.

2009-09-04T12:38:00.000-07:00

sitting here made me realize something. My husband's family are working class people, most of which actually work as infantrymen in the army. Last year when my senior class graduated, some of my friends (I'm proud to say WOMEN and men) joined the army and automatically became lieutenants, this was in lieu (pardon the pun) with the fact that they owned bachelor degrees. Hearing them talk I also realized that they would not be the ones who wold be battling in the fields. They would be, if there was war, within closed quarters under air-conditioning, as consultants as to how best they could win the war. They would not be involved in the trenches, dying. They are considered the 'educated few' whose values and resources are much prized over other people'. But knowing this bothers me. I look at these infantry men, they work hard, they suffer more. Stories supplanted to me by my friends who quit the military showcase that they as leaders were forced to instill discipline and in the course of doing so, break their own souls. They quit because they did not have the heart nor the soul to punish people over something trivial all in the name of discipline. They are people, whose worth I'm sorry to say if it upsets the middle and upper class, equally as worth in life, in death. And yet from the evidence we know this not to be true. The middle and upper echelons will always be protected. Their lives more cushioned and satisfactory, than those below. Their knowledge, albeit fucked up as it were is considered as gold.

There is something wrong with all of us.

Over-capitalism

2009-08-20T02:50:00.000-07:00

A very good article that I've found talking about how much of the stuff that we buy we don't really need or use at all. All that excess and waste. I'm not a religious person myself but I think I would have to agree with the pope that excessive wealth is a sin. Not just spiritually but financially, emotionally, psychologically and everything else in that bandwagon.

Dibo the Gift Dragon

2009-08-17T20:14:00.000-07:00

Given that I have the opportunity to watch closely how children are socialized and I believe at some points and some parts I almost have the power to control what the children think and feel at this point. It becomes obvious that gender assignation between femininity and masculinity in childhood is so strongly reinforced, thus producing children with the ability to see the world in those said eyes. Although the world of children are not made up entirely of television, nevertheless they contain bits and pieces of the mechanism that helps children to 'understand' the world. Added to that formula, the prejudices of teachers and parents too make up a child's perception. However, this could work on the opposite case for instance myself and a friend of mine who had a mother and an aunt respectively who were extremely prejudiced (my mother prejudiced and sexist, her aunt xenophobic) whereas herself and myself turned out exactly the opposite, and its not even about 'revenge' at all or 'acting out' (its possible as well to assign such symptoms to women, this is because in the Asian and Muslim world women are considered half of a man, or an incomplete man).

In this case I wanted to talk about Dibo the Gift Dragon. Fascinatingly, there are only two female characters in Dibo the Gift Dragon, Annie and Bunny. Annie in the theme song was 'I'm Annie, I'm kind and I love to cook'. The 'other' female was Bunny, she is the archetypal 'bitchy woman' who stands up for herself and love to make herself pretty, on the other hand Annie (who incidentally is the only human rag doll) only wishes to help others and is very well-liked. For one thing, Bunny is a pink doll, I'm not sure why she is not any other color but its obvious that pink is associated with frivolous womanhood whereas in Annie's case she wears a chef top hat (constantly) and an apron and is constantly cleaning up for everyone else including Bunny (the rest of the cast is an all male cast). In addition to that the clever and the stupid characters are male. Even in this childrens' show it seems that there is already a delineation of the sexes and apparently the spectrum of womanhood is only two, the bitchy Bunny and the subservient Annie.

Chopping up female body parts

2009-08-17T09:40:00.000-07:00

What makes youth equal to beauty? Has anyone ever wondered that?
I had a cousin who thought that he hates Fergie because for him she looks old and wrinkly. In my opinion I thought Fergie was smashing. He explained (not to stereotype gay men) that gay men generally believe that looking wrinkly is OUT OF THE QUESTION!Why is there an obsession of youth and equalizing it with beauty? What happens when women and men become older? Are they less attractive? Do they not deserve sexual or emotional gratification? The odd thing with this is that there is a new market for the 'Slutty granny' and the 'Dirty Old Bastard' type of fetish pornography. This in turn sexualizes mainly older women rather than old men (but in turn shows that they are ahem virile).

Lets look at a few examples from North America (the U.S.) and Europe.

Note that Dame Judi Dench and Maggie Smith kept their wrinkles whereas I assume Cher would be in the same age group as Judi Dench is sans wrinkles, so is Goldie Hawn who looks fifty rather than sixty.

Including this parody of womenhood in a anti-WYSIWYG kind of tagline

And also,

Is it noticeable that the object of focus is womenhood MUST = to BEAUTY. Whereas Older Women are considered 'Stale' 'Uninviting', "Not Sexually Appealing'. And yet Judi Dench was hailed as sexually appealing by Adam Brody.

But why stop there?

Why is it necessary for womenhood to be equivalent to sexuality? Whenever womenhood are bereft of it (Note: The Hottie and the Nottie) it is considered a social stopper. Why? Is it possible that this form of thinking (thank you radical feminists) have somewhat stopped women from becoming wholly and completely in an equal standing with men?

I rest my case

Futurama Forever

2009-08-10T09:31:00.000-07:00

Why do I like Futurama?

Simple. Its stupid. Its crazy. Its extremely intelligent. I let my kids watch it. After the death of the Simpsons Matt Groening created Futurama. To compare either one of them I would of course, much to the consternation of the world around me. Vote for Futurama.

Why?

Well, The Simpsons could get a bit dry from time to time. Marge can get annoying. Homer the dumb redneck whose not even a redneck, the emblem of what's wrong with America and yet time and again he shocks his viewers with his kindness, etc. etc. Then there's Bart, what's there to say about Bart? Of course I love Lisa, she and I share a lot of traits excepting the fact that she's concentrated with science rather than social sciences. We both like Jazz. Then there's Maggie suckling on her pacifier and the fact that Marge can just leave Maggie alone (weird, as a Mom, weird). And the denizens of Springfield. Who would have thought that Skinner is not the real Skinner? (which I admit was one of the most shocking facts of The Simpsons). Sigh.

But Futurama?

I don't know. There's spaceships, stupidity, a female captain, a drunkard/bastard robot, a dumb Fry, the insane professor, the rastafarian bureaucrat, zap brannigan, the extremely wealthy asian, the jewish crab (Go Zoidberg!). Plus it boggled my brains out when earth got sucked into itself repeatedly.

why do you haunt me so?

2009-08-01T23:14:00.000-07:00

Honestly, and most truthfully, if a man who looks like this passed me by. I would literally shut down keep quiet, act stupid and fall madly erratically in love and get my heart broken at the same time. Why is it so acceptable for a man to sing songs of love for a woman whom he does not know and does not understand and yet when a woman does so she is scorned to pieces? And why is it so wrong for a woman to pursue a man and yet when a man does so it is perfectly allright? These I suppose are one of the many discrepancies that haunt the Muslim world, and by proxy the whole world thereafter. Fatimah Az Zahra asked for the hand of Ali ibn Talib. Khadijah for the hand of Muhammad s.a.w. And yet today, ask any Muslim woman if she intends to chase for her lover. I suppose not. And yet this one tugs my heartstrings. If only if only ;). Yutaka Takenouchi if you read this and if by some chance miracle (hahaha!) you are worthy of emotional, physical and psychological worship. I suppose when God made this one They made sure that he looked like providence. And honest to God, it I think this one 'mandi bunga'lah!

One Fifth Avenue by Candace Bushnell

2009-07-29T08:17:00.000-07:00

I had read Sex and the City years ago when I got really really interested in the TV series. I had always loved the way that the story was made to make fun of the ladies. At some point they were shallow, stupid, mean, rude like all New Yorkers (supposedly I suppose) are and they are also kind, sweet, nice, loving towards one another. The book on the other hand was far more edgier than the TV series which tried to gloss things over to make it seem a 'little' better.

To get to the point I bought One Fifth Avenue expecting and hoping that it was as edgy as Sex and the City. At first, the story got too long and droned and after awhile, about exactly halfway it started to take one a life of its own. The details were endless and I think a bit meaningless, it was a version of chicklit but in this version the writer is not some hopeful or hoping female feeding the masses and masses of women images of a romance, a career and havin it all (i.e. Shopaholics Anonymous, Little Black Books???) as a girl makes their way into the big city. No, like her I do love the cynicism and the put down, I love the sound of dreams crushing under the heels of shoes either high or low. Well here it is, and I think despite its slowness and those hopeful and hoping for a good romantic ending, there is but it doesn't even matter,the whole point is this. This is a story of women who try to play by the rules of men and living in a man's man's world. It is not a radical feminist story BUT, as these women, the late Mrs Houghton, the gossip columnist Enid Merle, Schiffer Diamond, Mindy Gooch and ofcourse, Annalisa Rice are women made of steel, unencumbered like Lola Fabrikant, experienced, hard as nails and are pretty damn sure that there is no such thing as true love.

The stupid hymen

2009-07-14T15:41:00.000-07:00

In most countries in SouthEast Asia if you want a rich husband, please do not hesitate by claiming yourself a virgin, buy some poor girls' hymen and paste it on yourself. The problem with the hymen is this, only 43% of women actually report bleeding occurring when the hymen is opened during first sexual intercourse, found here and an interesting article pointed out in sociological images, here . This is the reason why a lot of cultures in the East actually discourage young women to be working (especially if they could afford it, poor girls, please start working and peel the garlic skins!) Or have any vigorous work done, all in the name of protecting a non-existent flap of skin which amazingly still exists even after you give birth, and for some people has the ability to heal and re-attach itself thus become re-virginized. Oh for the sake of humanity's stupidity, hope you idiots go 'f' yourselves :)

Just to show how easily the wind of the media sways

2009-07-13T13:10:00.000-07:00

I added a guy a few months back who was a member of A.N.S.W.E.R (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism) on my facebook. Despite all thta has been going on around the world, war-torn Urumqi which I just found out about and a beauty contest --> here

Then about this guy, Michael Prysners' tireless effort in trying so hard to help war victims in Palestine. Ironically, after the siege in Gaza a few weeks later so short it was the human memory span and everyone started talking about Michael Jackson again, the damned swine flu (which I think I already had.... I suppose this was what the Israeli government counted on, for heavens' sake we can always rely on the media can't we? Sure the numerous countless things that everybody said during the siege earlier this year. It was all hype, hip and cool. Now that things are still going on 'over there' people seem to forget the whole thing altogether. And when someone of authority comes along (a.k.a THE Sultan) everyone scampers like dogs when a lot of people behind the scenes have been trying to countlessly remind people over and over again. The memory span of a regular average human being? - fifteen seconds

oh btw, please donate ;) cos shit hell if ever I was in a war sick destitute and dying I hope against hope that someone out there would hand out some money to help my family and friends.

Gone With the Wind

2009-07-07T08:46:00.000-07:00

After years and years it has passed me by never bothering to check out what it was I was reading the UK's BBC top 100 reading list. One of them was Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, a 1000 page reading fiesta full of well. So there I went and bought Gone With the Wind and I have to say it was amazing, satisfying, interesting and rendering read. I have never for once looked in and out at something and realized what a fantastic read it was, of course it was a far cry from the movie starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh (which I liked and did not like at the same time, if only I was given the opportunity to remake it!). The book had its characters in a deeper light than did anything else. There it was the image of the South, I have to admit, racist, prejudiced, sexist and everything else permissible during when it was written (1936) and the setting of the book during the late 18th century American Civil War. What I found amazing are the characters of Uncle Peter and Mammy who actually 'owned' their masters and mistresses. Just as Scarlett's other, Ellen remarked that they should treat darkies like children, so did they Mammy and Uncle Peter considered their masters and mistresses their children that they have to take care of. Mammy's constant caring and cringing of Scarlett and Ellen while Uncle Peter's protecting of Aunt PittyPat. They were free blacks taking care of their weak masters and vice versa. One part of the movie which I loved was when Scarlet was driving around with Uncle Peter and meeting the Yankees wives. One of them asking where she could find a nanny, Scarlett saying that they could pick any darkies. The Yankee wife exclaiming hotly that she would never ever put her child with a 'nigger'. Uncle Peter, hurt and pained while Scarlett defending him by saying he was family. Either way slavery or freedom both contained connotations of pain for either side of people. In the book, the Southerners feared one day that a darkie will lead their nation (hahahahaha!!! They should reprint the book again in commemoration of Barrack Obama's presidency earlier this year). Things have greatly changed, since then but change will always come with pain, now I'm remembering the movie Luther when he revolutionized Christianity with his own sect. But either way, I liked Ashley although he was an idiot, and Scarlett who for me was kind of evil but impressive woman (any person who would rather either of their children to die in replacement of one dead child scares me), I admired Rhett for his kindness towards Wade Hamilton which was nonexistent in the movie. And Melanie I really liked for her soft exterior and extremely strong interior. And I loved the ending when Scarlett was pained by the death of Melanie. I think the racists today from the KKK are those hanging on to the past of wealth and cotton fields and romance with wealth deriving from slaves. Whatever the case it showed one side of the story, to balance it out one should read The Color Purple and Beloved.

Who would have thought?

2009-07-02T11:30:00.000-07:00

---> http://www.evanstone.com/bio_main.htm

As usual I was surfing hot men, and of course porn stars do not escape my scrutiny. In the porn industry business I have heard extremely negative as well as extremely positive and everything else in between about pornography. In this case, Evan Stone seems to specialize in the genre where he looks like a Greek sexgod and it also seems that he has graced many a romance novel cover as a model. Reading his partial biography made me rethink some aspects concerning the fight against pornography, despite the actions that were displayed by pornography what is apparent is the fact that the whole wide world attaches deeply towards the actions of pornography. In the case of the American porn industry, they are highly specialized actors and actresses who spend a large portion of their money and time to look extremely good, at times comical and of course extremely made up with make-up. The odd thing is that the wide world has attached meanings to the actions displayed by the porn industry. Meanings of women as being seductresses and cheap. Meanings of the sexual stallion. But the biography given attest differently, he didn't sound sexist (amazing!) in fact he kind of sounded respectful about women and honestly he sounded ...human. Pornography in more ways than one, especially female pornstars of course would milk everything they could to display an image of alluring sexuality its their job. The sad thing is the stereotypical idea by regular men is that they think this should be the norm or the ideal and that these women actually enjoy being fucked. Watching some documentaries on pornography could make people think otherwise. Some do enjoy their jobs, others just think of it as a job like any other. If only more and more porn actors and actresses would display their human side. Like the fact that they wake up caked up with eye crusts with bad breath. They fart, smell and everything else in between everyone else does.

Fat Girl Syndrome

2009-07-02T04:15:00.000-07:00

When I did a course on sociology of the body I realized something. Females in patriarchal communities look at themselves through the eyes of males. Their judgement of their value and self-worth is through what they can do for men and their sexuality. Ironically, the male yardstick measures itself via other men's eyes and not through what women might think of them. The male gaze since then has been a heated subject of debate that showcases how bent women are and how much social construction has ingrained themselves in HER brain. I wonder whether radical feminism was not right when they fought for the emancipation of women. What is true however, is the fact that women are (and probably to some extent men too) and do have, the fat girl syndrome. Their judgement is over themselves and their shame, the hag, the crone, the bitch, the slut, these are swear words adjusted especially for women. What do men get? prick? motherfucker? son of a bitch? jerk? (honestly what does jerk mean? does it mean beef jerky? like what small dick or something?) and the word prick, what's so bad to be called a prick anyway? A prick, repeat after me, prick as in prick your finger. Bastard, also a swear word connoted with its role with women, motherfucker (duh). Gay men criticize women, wome criticize women men criticize women. I hope this was thought provoking :P

Kate & 8

2009-06-27T01:31:00.000-07:00

see ---> http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20286839,00.html

Actually, I've never liked Jon ever since I saw him. I thought he was a jerk to his wife the way he dropped sexist comments to her all the time. But seeing the world is a sexist world, all I see is that they highlight Kate's anger towards her husband and that she 'pushed' her husband to cheating (my GOD, he pushes her around with sexist comments you don't see HER cheating). I thought the way they displayed Kate was extremely unfair. I am a mother too with three small children and I too married young. And honestly, there are days where I feel like hitting my children just because to make them tougher. And people being people seem to like to blame mothers for everything. In the 50s they blamed mothers for making their sons homosexuals if they're too close to them (so what?).

They showed her as a selfish mother, she's not. Look she had eight kids so what? They said the same thing sending death threats to the OctoMom. They say wasting taxpayers' money, for what? For sixteen citizens? Don't you check facts? I'm not American and even I know that only a WHOPPING 5 PERCENT of taxpayers' money goes to welfare, you really want to get angry? Although I wold have to admit a lot of that anger stems from parents who might have lost their love ones through the unfair health system in America. But to blame Kate and OctoMom is a pretty easy way out. What they're angry and this is very obvious towards single mothers everywhere in America, is the fact that they're SINGLE MOTHERS. They're blamed because they didn't manage to hold on to MEN who are WORTHLESS except for their sperm in the FIRST PLACE.

I see the children, sure I 'kesian' (not a direct translation of the word pity haa), but that's that, one day they'll grow up and they'll be fine.

Why women in this world are violently raped and treated

2009-06-24T10:34:00.000-07:00

Late last year an article in Malaysia's Berita Harian (which the link disappeared!) talked about a couple with four children whose husband requested his wife undergo vaginoplasty. She commented that she felt hurt but she did go through with it. What wasn't told was that vaginoplasty actually minimizes a woman's sexual pleasure, so there, her husband gets to go heigh-ho on her while she just lies there with no feeling whatsoever. He 'neutered' her and took away any sexual desire that she may have. HE made her into an animal. And you're telling this story off hand as if they don't mean anything.

see this ---> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/08/g-shots-for-g-s/

and this ---> http://jezebel.com/gossip/top/pimp-my-vadge-a-womans-opinion-264835.php

and you tell me if a woman is not considered human at all? These are days when I feel so bad about how much social pressure a woman has to go through to exist. If only and I hope to God, somebody would listen and realize that they're being taken advantage of, that they are actually RAPED (within which the person thinks it was consensual when actually it was not)that we have created a world in which we subjugate women to the role of animals that it has become normal.

Then and Now - What's the Difference?

2009-06-22T04:24:00.000-07:00

In the 1950s there were books on women's etiquette. It was the years of Talcott Parsons, of fundamentalist theories of structuralism. These books often highlight the proper way in which to be a good wife. One of the tips if I could properly remember was about after cleaning up the house, making dinner and doing everything else in between the mother (and wife) should bathe the children and keep them in clean and smart clothes. They were after all 'jewels' and he should come home to see his 'perfect' family. Other things included 'don't nag, he has already had a hard time at work without you needing to prod and nag him, pick other times to speak of difficult subjects'. Think, Mona Lisa Smile (2003) where ladies most of them don't go off finishing their university degrees.

Beastly? Sexist? Outdated and Old-Fashioned? LOL, I found these TODAY on my MSN News

http://lifestyle.msn.com/relationships/staticslideshowcosmo.aspx?cp-documentid=20153796&imageindex=5

I quote one line 'Leaving Stuff Behind at His Place - Do This: "Forget" your necklace.
Leave behind a pretty, delicate piece of jewelry (such as a little gold necklace) and he'll think of you in similar terms every time he sees it.

Leaving Stuff at His Place

Not That: Leave a toothbrush in his bathroom.
An unsolicited toothbrush or other toiletry will give him the impression you're moving too fast — and may freak him out.'

Sounds familiar? I don't see anything from the AskMen.com section, let's see

doc love's answer
Hi Payn,

I’m sorry to hear about your past dating disasters. Let me explain something to you. Two things happen in a relationship: Like my cousin Fast Eddie Love from East L.A. says: “Either you break up, or worse, you get married.” Whoever gets out of the relationship first suffers less. So when you tell me that you went down in flames in your previous relationships, that indicates to me that you didn’t get rid of these girls -- they got rid of you. So what a guy should do is look at all of his relationships over the past two or three years -- all 10, 15 or 20 women he went out with -- and ask himself how many he dropped and how many times he was dropped. If you dumped all those women, or 18 out of the 20, then you don’t need my coaching.

When it comes to women, pushing too hard too early is the biggest problem that 90% of all the men out there have. Rather than relax and just enjoy themselves and let the woman set the pace, they push. They push themselves right out of the picture. To you Psych majors, when you invade a female’s comfort level, she feels pressured and she gets turned off. That’s when you hear those horrible words from her: “I need space!” At that point, of course, it’s already too late.

Either way, I feel like puking. Look at his advice, pull out quickly! dump as many as you like, They're THE ENEMY. Look at the women's messages - coax, be covert, subtlety, be subservient.

Oh btw, Cosmopolitan also says ' What to do in the event his penis fractures during sex'. AMAZING. How does a soft muscle tissue fracture like a bone exactly? I wonder where both these men and women go to school? The fuck and sex great school majoring in idiocy and stupidity? Congratulations MSN Dating and AskMen.com's dating and sex is in the top ten of dumbass :)

Our limited Choices

2009-06-17T10:39:00.000-07:00

I was joining my aunt's YoVille,a game on facebook. I realized one thing. Isn't it obvious that the choices in which we have to pick ourselves male or female is limited? Hair for instance or eyes, face. What about body? What if people did not want to be thin? (there was only one choice, duh). Or short, or tall? Ofcourse its just a game. But a GAME that can be read as a text, a discourse. As cultural pointers of human expectations. We exist in a world that has its own taboos idiosyncracies. These taboos be it 'natural' as in being born with a challenge (definitely the idea of it as a challenge or not is subjective) or socially pushed has its effects on all of us. Our reality our perceptions everything, has been pulled down already every author every writer in the academic circles has talked about this. Derrida himself, who deconstructs absolutely everything has made it extremely difficult for our lives. And yet how is it that we have a problem reaching to the masses? Dear Anthropologists and Sociologists, no matter how hard we try to make people see every side of the coin. It seems at times that it is futile and painful. But (sigh) it has to be done, we have to reach the masses after all.

conceiving sexuality

2009-06-09T11:54:00.000-07:00

Now that I have a bit of time to blog. I want to talk about Lori L. Heise's essay in the edited book conceiving sexuality. I would have to say, it was very good work. She asked the question it is not that we should be talking about 'manliness' or 'womanliness' and all that these things are rooted in biology. Or that 'boys will be boys' but rather to ask the questions, 'what causes masculine behaviour'? And what social constructions that have allowed them to behave like so? It is amazing when we work past and I understand this is all due to postmodernist discourse (by not taking it too far, yeah Dr. M, I get it ). I am just perpetually amazed at how simple and easy everything is. And it equally saddens me that we actually allow such actions to be construed meaninglessly. Get back to the drawing board and think more :) Btw, is it possible to look at masculinity via the way we train children? I know Kimball did excellent although I find sadly unfinished work concerning it.

The last point

2009-05-03T00:16:00.000-07:00

I found something interesting, an article written for a singles online column, and I thought, my God there must be something wrong here ---->

http://uk.match.yahoo.net/matchscene/article.aspx?articleid=10326&TrackingID=523899&BannerID=568690

I wouldnt be surprised if the authors of this article are daft and stupid which I'm so painfully aware of (one of them thought that Japan is in Europe and its all in one land mass, talk about being smart), and covering it up by pretending to be intellectual with men The aim is simple, to look for a man, for what exactly?

Two days ago a stepfather was committed for raping his two year old stepdaughter, now 4, and abused along with his wife, a toddler the news called Baby P who sustained such horrific injuries that the child passed away.

I don't think its a high time to look for men, this just leads towards the dependency of women towards men. Point said.

I just wanted to talk about Cinta Indah

2009-04-20T03:38:00.000-07:00

At least, in Brunei or anywhere around Southeast Asia, a female writer with opinions will not be harrassed with hatemail, although I am not sure how long this will continue considering the fact that men are getting more and more patriarchal. Who would have thought that the West places so much pressure so much censorship on women. I was browing in the Daily Mail, I know it was complete crap but I just wanted to read what was so interesting that made people clamor over it. First and foremost, the articles are judgemental and show only a one sided view. Secondly, believe it or not, extremely sexist, honestly as bad as Malay Asia is with its ideas of 'No matter how high a woman may go, the kitchen is where she will end up in...', I don't think that applies to the upper middle class nor the upper class, say as they like. I cannot imagine living in such pressure bombarded and supported with something as flippant as 'biological fact'. Ignoring the implications of interpreting such data to their favour. Okay, this was what the article was about, who is healthier? Women or men? They concluded men because, 'Although women live longer, men enjoy better health because they have lesser pain,'. Not to mention the fact that society kind of pushes women into high heeled shoes to become presentable or edgy at work, not to be made fun of, suffer from back and hip pain because of. What's the difference exactly from Old China's bounded feet girls? I mean the pain is translatable, the reality is that. No matter how hard they want to push the agenda of the 'other' as being completely volatile towards women, the Occident treats women as badly and just as worst. No plus or minus about that.

Anyway, I wanted to talk about Cinta Indah, what with my amahs throwing things at the television set and getting angry about a woman named Indah in Astro Aruna. She suffers continuously and life is a complete bitch for her, and she's so patient, and when push comes to shove she just sits on the floor and cries. In reality, Indonesian women, even my maids, get pissed off over this girls' inability to counteract and survive. The maids come from rural or suburban areas, they knew how to survive in this world and they try hard to negotiate with it, along comes this weakling named Indah who just cries if shit happens. The representation the media then cannot be taken as the full reality. They are a separate reality altogether, duh.

Just to push the last point on the white standard of beauty

2009-04-03T09:16:00.000-07:00

As I said, there are not much black or Asian models, further proof that says no matter how hard you work for something, you'll never cut it, people like to tell you lies :)

(Although, some things are worth fighting for)

although I have to say much of the criticism comes from black models who have made it I find it hard for Asian women to 'make' it, they have a larger audience that scrutinizes them harder, often if an Asian woman is considered beautiful like Lucy Liu, some Chinese lady would say, if she's in Singapore she wouldn't even be considered attractive (which is true considering they like white skin and Caucasian features, not all mind you). Asian women do have a harder time considering that most are shorter than Caucasians and Blacks.

Seriously - The FACE of Relationships?

2009-03-24T11:13:00.000-07:00

I notice I often talk about Western type relationships more often than other types, but this is because it pervades our culture more readily than say, a relationship between two Sharanahua people. See the jump? Good. Honestly, if these links are the face of relationships, I don't want to be on, in, over, above, and/or below it. :-

http://lifestyle.msn.com/relationships/articleoprahmatch.aspx?cp-documentid=18651861&page=2

http://iamsorceress.wordpress.com/2007/09/09/top-five-mistakes-women-make-in-relationships/

http://www.gettinghimback.com/

See my point? I've seen feminists raving mad angry, honestly I would be raving mad angry, in fact I am raving mad angry. Its about women getting men back, women doing the RIGHT thing in relationships, WOMEN WOMEN WOMEN WOMEN WOMEN WOMEN WOMEN. Makes me sick to the stomach, makes me fucking frustrated. Are there a lot of sites on how men try to get their ex-wives back? No. Are there sites on men bitching about how difficult women are? No. Are there bla3s of men's mistakes with women? No. There are none of these things, honestfuckingtruthfully, the double standard still stands, despite the so-called new age guy who is fighting off sexism, in one post he starts ranting about his neighbour who looks like a slut, btw he calls himself the open mind. The truth is new age men are sexists, just in a different shade, different mask. Just as there are different masks for justifying prejudice, race hate, ethnic bashing, over terms such as 'religion' justification, 'biological men vs. women' justification. Honestly ladies, you know that kind of man you call 'loser' you've seen them, you hate them, you make more money than them, you can change the lightbulb yourself thank you, fix the electricity, pump the gas, fill the air tyres, change the fucking tyres, you can do all of these things. Is it wrong for me to blame this on the essence of colonialism just as Ann Stoller? I wonder. If you're better than some men, isn't it obvious that people are created differently and thus equally dumb or equally intelligent? Amananta of Screaming Into the Void made an excellent article post is here

http://amananta.wordpress.com/2009/01/22/more-evo-psycho-bullshit/

I mean honestly, there's no biological justification, no scientific fact, people have discredited that, have fought that back, have given numerous countless examples and still some idiot just says - its an evolutionary/biological fact, if that is so, its more than not easier to treat other races than white as animals, why? Because it is thought that the Australopithecus and the Neanderthalensis are two different distinct species, see? Australopithecus, ancestor of the Australian aborigines , the Melanesians, Negroids, Polynesians, etc etc, Neanderthalensis, ancestor of the Caucasian species, the Middle Easterners, the Europeans lalala and a host of other 'white' skin versus us, dark skinned. Honestly if this was true the intermarriage between the white and the dark would be a transgression of nature, an interspecies mistake. Like that between the Horse and the Donkey, or the Wolf, the Fox and the Dog, oh wait, or like the Cat mating with the Lion or the Tiger. I'm getting sick and tired of this relationship shit they keep feeding us with.

The big beautiful world

2009-03-15T12:09:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, its easy to forget that the world is not as small as it is in our heads. That the world out there is so expansive and large that everything under the sun is so amazing. These series of Times photographs on spiritual healing can attest to that, http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1878443_1842226,00.html

The world of zelda

2009-02-20T21:29:00.000-08:00

I was watching my brother play legend of zela on the wii, and I thought the Faron forest especially the Southern part looked absolutely beautiful. I wonder, is there any place on earth that still looks like that? Untouched, unraped? Soon, the rest of the Bornean forest will be gone. Its thick beautiful wild jungles will be lost forever, for what? For a measly few hundred thousand dollars that once you spend will be gone in a second. MNCs and the super extreme billionaires are standing on the corpses of our nature. Sure, they give and support charity, but the amount that has made them wealthy is not equivalent to what they have done to the environment, I am sure at some level they understand and know what they are doing to the earth. I think us 'small' people are able to change the world, we don't need to play by their rules, we are the majority, don't let yourself be bought.

the white standard of beauty

2009-02-17T05:43:00.000-08:00

So I was tralalaing with my two weeks previous extreme food poisoning, the assault at the parking lot, don't worry my husband and I immediately called the police, then now I'm dealing with a flu I caught from my colleague (well using classmate didn't seem appropriate at this university level...), which in turn spread to my kids and my kid's nanny and my siblings. Aside from all these things I had a good rest and I could read blogs! Yayy!

So I want you people to check out this
http://www.racialicious.com/2007/02/21/real-women-of-color-have-curves/
http://stuffwhitepeopledo.blogspot.com/2008/04/impose-their-beauty-standards-on-others.html
http://parablemania.ektopos.com/archives/2005/05/interracial_cou.html

Before I begin I have to say that blogging has become a new forefront for appropriate academic research especially through articles and human experiences, some I might add reflect a reality not showcased enough within academic research even.

Let me explain one thing before I continue, I have a sister who is 7 years younger than me, this year she's turning 18 and I'm turning 24. Ever since we were children I was always overweight and my sister, even for my mother was alarmingly thin. Honestly, both of us eat about the same amount, we don't eat much, but I think she eats more than me but I this is because she's growing or her metabolism is faster. We both have the same genetic information, we are after all sisters. We have the same body typeface (nice use of the word haa?) A thicker skin on our back (if there was more it would look like a hump :)), we're the same height, my breasts are bigger than hers, twice bigger, I'm a D and she's a B, we both do not possess curvy bottoms, some malay women actually do possess this, my daughter has this but from my mothers side we dont have this, so it would seem buttockless. There is a tendency to worship fairer skinned malay girls, with chinese eyes but more often than not Malay men do not often date chinese women, they prefer Malay girls with Chinese features or extremely fair skin, knowing that the Chinese in Brunei especially local Chinese hail from the Southern part of China they're more tanned than the Malays in Brunei (the Malay category in Brunei is different from Malaysian Malays and Indonesian Malays, Bruneian Malays have a tendency to be lightskinned). Now the remaining question is this, because of the emulation of thin girls, from Chinese light skin worship, thin girls are considered beautiful, but because of things like female stetophygia or as Malays call it, jubur tunggi, or bottom that looks like a duck's bottom, how will the other Malays who are darker skinned (which is also equally common), with female stetophygia, are bigger in body fare in this society? I would also like to point out that some Malay men do have a thing for bigger women though, and yes I think big men and big women are the world over so that does not matter, but are we represented well?

I made this research a while ago, there is a lesser tendency for black women and asian men to be represented in Western media as being sexually attractive. I aint talking about those half white half black ladies who look a lot like white to me like Mariah Carey, may I add Beyonce, and Halle Berry who has a white parent, I'm talking about real dark-skinned women, and real Asian men, not your run of the mill may I say it cos I'm quarter Chinese? 'chingchong' chinaman, but Asian men who are bereft of glasses, with tall statures, they exist you know, I wonder if you've seen them! oh yeah before I go on, I wonder where Indians are in the picture, you know as models in the international arena? They're the right size, the 'right looks', where are they? Honestly, there is a standard for beauty and that standard is white. White women do not realize this, even in feminist discourses, they are at the top of the food chain, while the rest of us are at the bottom of the barrel, barely scraping, we do not need men to justify our existence and we do not need men to justify our sexuality, it should not be them who decide whether or not we are beautiful.

The theory of religion - Freud's Totems and Taboo

2009-02-05T18:11:00.000-08:00

Despite the fact that I suspect a lot of people find my columns boring or difficult (I have to add, I find Michel Foucault difficult, I find the language of philosophers tedious, I understand), nevertheless I need to talk about something, I scribbled fast and furiously just as my lecturer was talking. I could not help at that moment to present my criticisms against Sigmund Freud's Totems and Taboo. To begin with, he's a humanist evolutionist, I have nothing against humanism nor evolutionism per se, but it becomes problematic when you label an Australian Aborigine then during the late 19th century as being a backward peoples. First and foremost is the injunction of labelling aboriginal or pre-literate societies/communities and placing them on the evolutionary scale. What basis do you have of placing communities as part of the evolutionary process then proclaiming that Westernized science is at the end of that scale? This is just the same problem as those idiots who say that they don't live on trees in Borneo, sure no community on this island live on trees, people do squid fish using technology either simple or complex, I have never heard of an 'Orang Ulu' [sic] of ever living on a tree. This is just the comparison of placing man, a homo sapien sapien man with that of an ape or a monkey, not that apes or monkeys do not deserve any respect either. But the problem here alongside this group of Borneans who say they do not live on trees is the fact that there exists this 'looking down' this 'condescending' of other communities and cultures. There is no justification for placing communities within the evolutionary scale, culture cannot be explained through science. Leave culture to trained social anthropologists and sociologists, let not so-called scientists who are not even trained properly with even proper terminology let alone biased ideas of ethnocentrism be giving comments and leaving after their dead, their theories to be 'scientific' and the 'truth'. Haven't you people learned? Science, is changeable, its malleable, everyday new facts are unearthed to replace older ones, they do not stay static. It is continuously challenged and tested.

The other thing you psychologists must explain to me is the idea of the 'Primordial father', one cannot ignore the idea that Freud's original analaysis of the mind is definitely sexist in agenda. Why do I have penis envy? Sure I am hostile to my mother at times but I am also as equally as hostile to my father at times, I do not envy the penis! You think that I envy the penis, but the truth remains hidden, womanhood is a conception created within one's own community and society, there exist other conceptions of womanhood of different societies who treat sexuality differently. If that is so how is it conceivable to place them within that evolutionary scale? Of 'blablabla at the beginning...backward tribes worship the Mother Goddess..', then according to evolutionists..'where then they ascribe anthropomorphic images of the Primordial Father, the Mother Goddess becomes obsolete and only practiced by backward peoples...' then and now, 'religion becomes obsolete as man will no longer aspire to need a God/Goddess/Deity/Whatever, and will come to depend on themselves for spiritual fulfilment..'.

The explanations of why people need God and religion vary, some say because of hard times that need explaining, some say because of the original ancestor worship, others like Freud say it is a necessary tool to keep the chaos within ourselves in an ordered fashion. I do not agree nor disagree with any of these propositions, what becomes disagreeable however, is the sexist agenda that is apparent in Freud's conception of womenhood. It is as if women are but passive players in this world built by men, when in reality this is far from the truth. Religious history such as that by the time of the Prophet Muhammad s.a.w, are patterned with lives of women and men who help shape religion, religion was not the work by one agent, Muhammad, but rather multiple agents such as Aisyah and the 'Affair of the Necklace', Khadijah, the prophet's first wife played an important role in the conception of Islam, in a conjectural analysis of religion as played out by patriarchal ideas, like the one displayed by Sigmund Freud assumes that women do not play a role at all. We are but passive observers to be passed on from man to man, how does he know this?

What I wish to see in the realm of the trained intelligentsia, instead of feminists bickering with one another, is their powerful deconstruction of all this patriarchal agenda that is oh so apparent and being used as 'normal academia'. Deconstruction was the hallmark of feminism, where is it now? It should pervade not only Women and Gender studies but rather the whole picture of academia.

The Arrivals - A review

2009-02-03T00:08:00.000-08:00

As a training sociologist/anthropologist, it is not my job to value religion or philosophy, that is the work of the theologian and the work of the philosopher, most of the time my job is to see how changes in the world (that is constantly changing anyway) affect people. In this instance, the work done by these two guys, noreagaa and achernahr had produced a few series that although on one side is actually highly heavy with conspiracy theory, on the other hand was, thankfully, and fortunately very much in line with what I believe in. I have been talking about these issues for a long long time now, the double standard that is and has always been very apparent in regard to trade relationships, treaties and protocols have been one-sided. In guise they appear to benefit all, but this is not the case, they only benefit those within the system that champion one side of the argument. I have always talked about this, development is not a crime, but a development that is handled in a way where only ONE type of development is allowed is not freedom. The freedom that they talk of is THEIR freedom and not freedom of the rest of the world. The series depicted by noreagaa and achernahr are appealing because they are looking for a way to set the world of chaos in to right, they are opening minds in which scholars will have difficulty in trying to open up and try. They talk of materialism as being the bane of desire,excessive materialism IS the bane of existence, they are the poison in which distorts the reality in which we live in. Scholars and trained intelligentsia have long tried to expose these discrepancies, Sahlins wrote Stone Age Economics, there exists societies outside of globalization. This is the truth, activists have been talking about this and protesting, we do NOT NEED their money, as Zimbabwe has shown. If need be, and the times dire, we can make our own money, set up our own system, systems are not necessary patented, they exist to help society not control or oppress it. What I am proud of the producers is their ability to show that Islam is not the only light, in fact Islam has long been infiltrated (see part 39 on the 12 Imams, watch it first don't judge it yet), whatever that we are practicing today, our blatant disregard for the environment, our abuse of women and the violent images that are being depicted about Muslims in general have to some extent stereotyped us, influenced us, we have become mad by our own hands. We have lost our way, definitely, even writers like Reza Aslan has talked of this, Islam has a multitude of problems, it has become sectarian and we have built as Aslan puts it, 'churches of Islam'. It is not united, it is divided, each one claiming to have a 'better', 'purer' Islam than the other. We concentrate on the small issues, ignoring 'faith' or 'love', 'familyhood', 'unity'. We should not learn to become ethnocentric, we should stand just as the Jews Against Israel, we are a small voice of Islam against terrorism, Islam against Violence. But do they hear us? Do they put us on the media? Do they listen? They do NOT, the rest of us has become ignorant. I am not a fan of conspiracy theories myself, but as a feminist, and to quote the most popular, we are being 'bombarded' by the images in the media of what a WOMAN SHOULD BE, of WHAT MEN SHOULD BE, and WHAT LIFE SHOULD BE. There is no right and wrong, what is right and is wrong is subjective to the culture affected, what the West considers bestial, and inappropriate, is not the same with what the East considers. Overcontrolling parents, overcontrol because they love, anyone can walk out of their situation, if they choose so, if they are old enough, if they could. But some of them do not want to, why? Because they love their family too. Universal rights and laws do not help, they become the gray areas in which many things become so bad for the 'greater good'. One lecturer once said to us, the problems that the world is having is because they think that it is 'for your own good'. It sounds exactly as Bush points it out, 'for your own good'. 'Good' is subjective, they change from time to time and from place to place. It is time we should accept all forms of life, all walks of it, from the deepest jungle, we should be humble with whatever they could teach us. From the highest mountains, where they have secluded themselves from the rest of the world. Manifestations of beauty should not be accepted at face value, question everything you see and hear, question yourself. And as Kent Brockman says in season 18 episode 22, 'Buy Nothing, Hug Your Children and Love the One You're With.'

Everything on TV

2009-01-25T23:07:00.000-08:00

Link is here ---> http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20090125/ten-art-mogul-saatchi-joins-tv-search-fo-a56114e.html

While its all and great to find talent through television shows but it seems because its a fast paced world everything becomes a quickie. And now art has become a quickie too. I wonder if its all and good...but then again there's always others who could beat it out I suppose and make it. Well gone are the days of Gauguin and their long long periods of living in exotic places for inspiration

The wrong premise for prostitution

2009-01-22T19:23:00.001-08:00

While I am all for freedom of sexuality, I have to say that the pros of promoting prostitution begins with awful premises. ---> http://www.sexwork.com/coalition/15reasons.html

1) Sure, but what about sexual gratification OF women? This is a very double standard statement, the author claims that he is not attracted with women his own age and he dislikes overweight women, the problem lies with him as a person. Why should women strive for 'sexual attractivity'? The other problem is that sexual preference varies from culture to culture, from individual to individual. The problem is obvious, he leans on what is construed as within his own society as sexually attractive ignoring the fact that women are human beings too who also need sexual gratification.

2) Why is the bible dragged into this?! HAHAHAHA So you need religious confirmation to justify your actions? Why quote religion? Seriously, there is no need for religious confirmation to justify one's actions unless it is a religion clearly painted by the patriarch.

3) Prostitution does not make the world safer for women. In fact, rapists and incest rapists also visit prostitutes, this does nothing to abate their sexual satisfaction. Sex and rape cannot be equated, they are two different phenomenon manifesting through action. It does not make it healthy for men either, many get STDs, what he doesn't realize is that there is a large number of human trafficking that is going on in this world. Women and children are FORCED into prostitution and many do not do so by their own will.

4) Not necessarily, as a training anthropologist/sociologist, I have never heard of a prostitute actually sexually satisfied with a customer/client.

5) It is a profession that should be respected, but with different premises. A premise that should recognize that they are human beings too and are no different than your wives, daughters, sisters, mothers and friends.

6) Marriage is sometimes an institution which is equal to prostitution, only in the longer run.

7) It could be and it could not be at the same time. They also get abused. What should be is to make laws like the EU where sexworkers do not get criminalized but clients and customers should get criminalized. The demand is ALWAYS there, it does not take a triad leader to quickly realize that. You should look into and also research human trafficking that have cost hundreds and thousands of women and children who are sold into prostitution. Prostitution for the love of feminism is rare.

8) You cannot equate all men into your category. Just because they have not learned to know it elsewhere does not mean that they should continue to behave so. You're misusing sociology and juxtaposing it into a situation that is so abberated that it becomes a fallacy.

9) Refer to point 7

10) Yes it does provide a better alternative to starving and stealing but you're just allowing women and seeing them as sex objects that have no brains to get out there and make it on their own without any connection to servicing men. This just means that there is a serious lack of institutions that provide for the welfare of women that they have to resort to prostitution.

11) Okay, you're right there. But why this obsession with sex?

12) Fun, construed in a very limited way. As if people cannot have fun doing other things?

13) Hmm, good for your mental health not the mental health of the prostitute herself. Imagine being in a situation where the most intimate of their lives is forced to be on display on command, to be paid. How do you feel inside? Maybe prostitutes need to charge extra for therapy.

14) Prostitution does not cure problems, please return to point 7

15) Sex work can be empowering, for FAT women, for THIN women, for OLD women, and yet on point one you say you want slim women between their 20s-30s. What does that say? My dear, you don't want to push that point because that point would be the day where women as old as your mother, your wife, as fat as your family members will become prostitutes.

I would be happy to give you references on human trafficking, on sexual abuse on prostitutes on AIDS, and anything else that provide actual at least stable and reliable data. Not flippant excuses on the internet.

May I interject?

2009-01-19T03:20:00.001-08:00

I am sick and tired of the really bad song lists for making love. I don't normally do this but I think a lot of people will be glad to get rid of that wanderlist list.

1) Let's Get It On - Marvin Gaye
2) If I Have My Way - Chrisette Michele
3) My Cherie Amour - Stevie Wonder
4) Selimut Hati - Dewa
5) Seribu Tahun - Imran Ajmain
6) Lost Without You - Robin Thicke
7) Loving You Is Easy (Cos Your Beautiful) - Minnie Riperton
8) The Sweetest Love - Robin Thicke
9) Menghujam Jantungku - Tompi
10) Don't Sleep Away the Night - Glenn Fredly
11) Crazy For You - Adele
12) Luv - Janet Jackson
13) Feel Like Making Love - Roberta Flack
14) Kangen -Chrisye
15) Kasih Tercipta - Faizal Tahir
16) I'm a Slave 4 U - Britney Spears
17) Buttons - PussyCat Dolls
18) I Heard Love is Blind - Amy Winehouse
19) Something About Us - Daft Punk
20) Why I Love You - B2K
21) Turn Your Lights Down Low - Bob Marley feat. Lauryn Hill

I'm not going to list my whole playlist...but these are good enough for a few rounds

The Discourse on the Female Body

2009-01-18T22:54:00.000-08:00

---> I'm not sure if you could read Indonesian, if you do well, read on.

There has been some very interesting developments on lesbianism on display especially through the Indonesian film industry. More recently however, a movie done by James Lee a popular children's author equivalent to R.L. Stine, Histeria made it to the top of my list when it showcased (although irrelevant, or relevant to the plot?) a lesbian kiss between two schoolgirls. It could be some perverted fantasy via pornography and pop movies, on the other hand, some 'rebellious' movies such as Berbagi Suami (Sharing Husband), do also display a lesbian relationship between two women who shared a husband. Lesbianism, contrary to the male fantasy via pornography, almost always at least shows what is interesting for men, not women, although in most cases I have been told that lesbian pornography garners more female viewers than male viewers. I have this itching feeling that it could possibly be because it showcases two women who embody the perfection that male sexuality craves (really?). It is youthful, well-breasted, no droopies here (which in reality is actually impossible without a talented plastic surgeon), and 'attractive' with long beautiful hair (wow, it is kind of rare to find a boyish haired porn star unless you count Bella something, I don't remember her name, it has something to do with nightshade?). To find a lesbian relationship, a mutually loving and exclusive lesbian relationship with all the trappings of actual realistic femalehood in pornography is almost impossible. Where then do we find such existence? Only through 'breakthrough' filming which showcases the different.

On the other hand, we have realistic depictions of womanhood but still with the regular dreams of marriage, love, bla3. Now I want to talk about the ever popular My Lovely Sam Soon, a Korean television series. Sam Soon, a woman whose above marriageable age, almost 'expired' (puhlease, how does it get this way?), mannish, funny, not exactly pretty for men, gets the man of her dreams. She got her way allright but she had to go through the rites necessary that labels her as the female body. A body that can be controlled on, a body that belongs to society itself. I'm not saying that the male body is not controlled by society, in probability even more so there exists a rigid existence for manhood (women can wear pants and skirts, men can never wear skirts/or a skort without being labelled as a sissy/fag/queer). In fact, I could suppose that men are repressed beings that exert control over others because they have no control over themselves.

The female body is constantly controlled, not by men, nay! It is continuously controlled by women, or gay men. They set the bar as to what is attractive and what is not. Gay men do have that control over womanhood and this is through their extensive involvement with haute couture.

Sure who ever said evolution was the truth?

2009-01-18T07:26:00.000-08:00

So check the above link out. I do agree with her on the evolutionary thing but to address anthropologists as being social-biologists are a whole other thing. I don't remember any anthropologist in living history who has not distanced themselves from ranging human behaviour with that of the animal kingdom...in fact its ludicrous! Its the first rule of sociology/anthropology that nurture is stronger than nature, that's why its called anthropology/sociology in the first place. Because there's no such thing as nature, natural does not exist, culture is a man made phenomenon, there is nothing natural about man (which craps the hell out of philosophers who have to start somewhere), who knows what divinity is, there were a couple of social anthropologists who said such and such in and about during the Pacific War and they were influenced by American policy makers and theorists by the way, and they were in China, I doubt that their work could reach America. And I'm kinda sick and tired of people who are actually paleoanthropologists or biological anthropologists getting mixed up with social biologists, its just like saying I'm a Muslim therefore I am a 'T' (sooo can't say it, its sooo NOT P.C.).

Other than that, there are no explanations as to why humanity behaves the way they do, that is what anthropology is trying to show (in all probability her definition of an anthropologist could be so american that I don't get it) with its myriad of cultures, when someone says something, there is always always some society out there which can show otherwise. In fact I have a new theoretical line I'm thinking about and I hope people can look in to it and wonder with me.

Culturally and financially, females are usually at a lower position and rank than males, that is the first point, on a second note, financial power rests on the hand of the patriarch. The question or situation that I would like to posit is this, often, when a husband who has more financial stability than the wife would leave the wife with the money (commodity/land/etc.) and remarry with another woman whereby in turn she would make sure that the commodity be passed on her own offspring (which could be either male or female, most likely male). Isn't it more likely (because dumbass males have a way of explaining everything without the approval of females hehehe) that power among women rests between women themselves? The more nubile females versus the 'less' attractive females. God. Now I remember that discovery episode on attraction saying that older females are not sexually attractive because biologically they are reaching menopause. IN all probability this is because certain societies have shown too much television programs or the earlier bias and prejudice that tilt towards younger women. Stories, popular legends, and the definition of beauty itself varies from place to place. I give up, the answer is soo frickin obvious.

Praise Rabbi Yisroel Weiss

2009-01-13T09:21:00.001-08:00

In a world where Jews like Muslims also face extreme pressure of anti-semitism, I am amazed at how much this community is able to face the shame and embarassment that has been lauded upon them. Even I myself shun and disassociate myself with Islamic orthodoxy, I am too, a product of continuous repression of my identity even though I do not support terrorism, I believe in an Islam which is between myself and God, I fight for equality and feminism and yet I, being born a Muslim is blamed for all the wrongdoings of others.

Gaza

2009-01-12T08:39:00.000-08:00

I know that I have said to my friends that I was too heartsick to be bothered with what is going on in the Gaza strip. It has been so long that these two sides, the Jews and the Arabs and the Christians screwing each other. And us as an outsider viewing what is going on inside as if we understand. I have had numerous e-mails spewing Anti-Semitic messages, without realizing that Jewish children are also getting killed. This is not about religion, this is about politics, about another polity making itself extremely felt on another polity. No doubt that both these sides have felt enmity towards each other for hundreds of years, but this does not mean that they have never lived side by side. The scale in which we are seeing right now are extremely severe, toxic weapons are being thrown to civilian homes, children maimed and burned, crushed under the rubble of stupidity in part of the Americans and the Israelis. For what? For who? Muslims must begin to understand especially Islamic fundamentalists that what is going on is not a protest against the Muslim religion, far from it. Those who are suffering are ALL, and not just the Muslims, Muslims MUST begin to realize and UNDERSTAND, to be inside other people's shoes, to unlearn our religio-centric tendencies. We as humans cannot at this time start to look at one another on the basis of what we believe in, not on the basis of our colour, creed or gender, this is a time where we should serve the most basic of our existence, that of peace, NOT chaos. I have, for a while been very sad and upset with the way things were going within Islamic fundamentalism and the issues that they like to deal with, but this is a time where Islam must show its banner as PEACE and not WAR. We cannot fight fire with fire, it is foolish, it has been said over and over again (and why the hell do people not listen?) stop and extinguish the fire. The solution could be simple, the solution could be easy, but it seems that the harder more painful path is much more comforting when we wallow in our own sadness. Right now is not the time for individualism, it is a time for community work and community peace efforts. For America, as always as has many critics have said, what they are allowing would only exacerbate the condition. Why are you allowing human beings to be extinguished just like that? For a country that speaks of peace, of freedom and human liberty, it is allowing oppression, pain, suffering and slavery in others. It seems as if at this point, the 'freedom' and 'wealth' that some Americans are experiencing is at the expense of the pain and suffering of others. There should be more transparency, people should be given all the information they have at their expense and not just one side of the conversation. I think it is appropriate that I should say as the first word of the Quran, 'Iqra', Read. Speak. Our voices should be loud enough so that everyone could hear.

The Shuffler Game

2009-01-11T10:05:00.000-08:00

Note: I suspect the reason why some of the songs could match the questions and reflect who you are because, duh, it is your playlist.

Anyway, I know I'm always serious so for my friends who read my blog and get bored to moffing tears, I'm playing the Shuffler Game as evidenced by Ayop and Kartina's blog:-

You put your playlist songs on shuffle on winamp, windows media player bla3 and write down the answers no matter how funny.

1) Are you male or female?

I Know Where I've Been - Queen Latifah (I don't get that, sounds like I've been around :P)

2) Describe Yourself!

Across the Universe - Fiona Apple (what like just because I like anthropology and sociology so now I traverse the universe lah ah?)

3)What do people feel when they're around you?

Lollipop - Mika (I hope they're not asking me to do it...)

4) Describe your current relationship.

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger - Daft Punk (Woohoo!!!)

5)Where would you like to be right now?

I Heard Love is Blind - Amy Winehouse (eh?)

6) How Do You Feel About Love?

Keda enyei einak - Amr Diab (apparently it means 'Just Like This, Eye to Eye, I guess equal I suppose?)

7) What's Your Life Like?

Sweet Love - Anita Baker (Wow, I must be lucky)

8) What would you ask for if you had one wish?

I Need You - Lee Ann Rimes (Aduh, wtf? why does this sound like Kartina's list???)

9) Say Something Wise:

Hotel California - NOFX (Wow, how wise am I?)

10) If Someone Says' Is this okay? you say...?)

Akhir Cerita Cinta - Flenn Fredly (Abis! Jiwang! Awut)

11) How would you desrcibe yourself?

Cinta Mati - Ahmad Dhani feat. Agnes Monica (KAR!!! THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG HERE!!!)

12) What do you like in a guy/girl?

So Simple - Stacie Orrico (very appropriate)

13) How Do You feel Today?

Come Rain or Come Shine - Billie Holiday (Nice.)

14) What is Your Life Purpose?

I'd Rather Dance With You - Kings of Convenience (I don't know why but this list makes me sound like I'm a Romantic or something...)

15)What is your motto?

Fantasy (remix) - Mariah Carey (woohoo! I sound like a bimbo)

16) What do your friends think of you?

I Say a Little Prayer for You - Dionne Warwick (Aww, I love you guys too)

17) What do you think of your parents?

Love Is No Big Truth - Kings of Convenience (wow, that's perfect timing)

18) What Do You think About very often?

Seribu Tahun - Imran Ajmain (mataiii tayaaa jiwang!!!)

19) What is 2+2?

Love is a Losing Game - Amy Winehouse (??)

20) What do you think of your bestfriend(s)?

The Sweetest Love - Robin Thicke (;))

21) What do you think of the person you like?

D.A.N.C.E - Justice (jadinya Kakana mau ia menari?)

22) What is your life story?

Loving You Is Easy (cos your beautiful) - Minnie Riperton (I knew it)

23) What do you want to be when you grow up?

King Without a Crown - Matisyahu (Jesus!)

24) What do you think of when you see the person you like?

Rasa Cinta - Bunglon (aduh mas, bener dong)

25) What will you dance to at your wedding?

Larut - Dewa (banar kali...jiwang kali aku ani)

26) What will they play at your funeral?

Everlong (Acoustic) - Foo Fighters (That's very appropriate)

27) What is your hobby/interest?

Feedback - Janet Jackson (Banar! HAHAHAHAH)

28) What is your biggest fear?

Ironic - Alanis Morisette (wow, isn't that ironic?)

29) What is your biggest fear?

Kissing a Fool - Michael Buble (See, I said it, semuanya ngam2)

An extension of yesterday's commentary; I am Woman

2009-01-08T02:51:00.000-08:00

I feel a little bogged down remembering the issues I dealt with and read yesterday. There are times when I feel like I am trapped in this vaccuum where I do not wish to be and yet society forces me to be in. For one thing, I realized that the representation of women as sexual beings will never end, the only way in which such things could be stopped is by portraying the male species as equally as erotic manifestations. Women are so ingrained into their psyche as these 'weak', 'less-intelligent' and whatever crap they can bulldoze up to make it seem as if men are the 'protectors' and 'maintainers' of women. Who the fuck 'maintained' and 'protected' them when they were young? You want to quote biology? The mother wolf protects her cubs from harm, the hen is close to her nest and her chicks, if women are not strong how do you explain the countless human beings that grace this earth protected and maintained by women? Too much of the mass media invades our cultural and social space, too much invades into the ideas of biology and science, too much of it is easily deconstructed with even a small amount of evidence to break the whole thing apart. And yet, again and again and again, we remain true to such said misconceptions of our reality as women. History has been graced with only the presence of men and not women, and yet we know such history has been selective, the access of religion and education has been denied to women these past few centuries leaving us 'weak' in mind and body and not in our spirit. I am angry, yes I am, very much. The man walks this earth not knowing and not understanding the presence of Woman. They represented our images with fake ones, dealt with our hair, our skin, our faces and our bodies just so that they can feel masculine and REAL. To remember a quote from Amistad, men have survived and became great through their manipulation and exploitation of women, by disallowing us from everything and keeping us within the fringes and therefore their power will never end or be threatened. Islam on the one hand had said that whatever property that a woman owns is hers to own and to distribute, and yet, there are several cases one can quote from memory concerning the family's wish for the woman's decision on her property be overturned, changed, for a million and one reasons. Where is the justice? It does not exist, and I ask my sisters, when will the change be? When will the change come? The change has to come now, the fight must continue, and I will until the last of my dying breath, at least hope, that I could open just some eyes.

Reviewing Tagged versus Facebook

2009-01-07T11:39:00.000-08:00

I thought that Tagged should know how dumb they are. :)

This is my review of Tagged. It is clearly a dating site which allows people to keep their privacy to the utmost degree, what the problem is http://www.tagged.com/mypage.html?uid=5403358017 , its sad if you could browse through the photos, I was playing Meet Me and I noticed how dumb men and women could be. This by the way was not displayed as banned content but mine was and you want to know what I put in?

'Don't leave any women behind'

a quote from Abigail Adams, and my dream was quashing the patriarch. Tell me Tagged, what is so offensive of my said content? You allow sexist images and stereotypes of women and yet you do not allow any commentary that are a least bit REAL. Therefore I am withdrawing from Tagged.com, and for all you girls out there, if you have any respect for yourselves, just delete your Tagged profile.

On a second note, Facebooks attempt to ban breastfeeding women whilst allowing half naked women in their profile pictures I find really distasteful. Sure you say, why should women flaunt themselves breastfeeding on facebook, but the world has already too many problems with allowing the patriarch from stopping women from breastfeeding, for more information read Milk, Money and Madness by Naomi Baumslag et al. It is not strange to look at a child being fed using a bottle and yet what is natural is considered offensive content, more exposure should be given to breastfeeding, it is not that these women are 'attention seekers' rather they are trying to create a culture of breastfeeding that allows such images to be NATURAL, and REAL. Breasts become sexual tools rather than its original purpose, and I find it disgusting and distasteful that people find breastfeeding offensive instead.

Yours sincerely,
Liyana Tassim

The payment gap in gender

2009-01-07T09:59:00.000-08:00

Before I start I would like to thank David Santos, never realized there were people out there who liked what I was saying, and I would like to thank everybody else too who has commented in my blog and gave their own two cents', three cents', worth. I would like to refer to a recent article that I was reading, in fact about several, one is this http://entertainment.sg.msn.com/features/article.aspx?cp-documentid=1832836 and the other one is this http://amananta.wordpress.com/2008/12/22/the-latest-false-woman-dividing-dichotomy/ , which I thought was a very well-written commentary. I never realized or knew that women were still lagging on payment behind men even up to the entertainment industry, and this I thought, was offensive. It meant that the strides of womanhood was still limited, and ofcourse the value of women's work is globally considered as being second to that of men's work. But this as the lady of 'Screaming the Void' adds, is a result of the dichotomy between women themselves and I cannot help but agree with her. This is definitely true wherever the sphere of existence rules us, it has been with us since the dawn of time and that was what I found so deeply disturbing. But on a tackling note of historians and historiography we could apply the deconstruction of history itself, the most, history was recorded during the Renaissance, which in more ways than one, could have been a selective process resulting from Christianity and their commitment to putting males ahead. History is selective it pulls together what it wants to depict and nothing could be more true than the history that we live with up until today. The world is viewed through the eyes of men and not women, the women have remained silent and they have remained locked behind doors unable to commit themselves to a better situation. Feminism has its points when it claims that women are being divided into different spheres in order for us to be divided and not united. There are several implications of class that constitute themselves within the 'act' of gender. When I say 'act' I mean to say that gender itself has become an act and not merely a term we use as a description. No longer is gender deconstructed but rather, gender is constructed continously and repeatedly through the way we view the world from our social interactions and (an easy scapegoat) the media. Women are being continously bombarded and disfigured to fit the preconceptions of what womenhood should be through male eyes.

Stiglitz and Matisyahu

2009-01-04T10:27:00.000-08:00

A very weird converging point, one a nobel prize winning economist and the other an interfaith reggae singer, I assume though that Stiglitz is a Jew through his name I could be wrong, and if that was true then both of them have some common ground. Anyway, back to my point, I was reading Stiglitz's 'Making Globalization Work', the problem is clear, and the IMF is a jerkwad, of course tra lala, Washington Consensus bla3, but the thing is this, why is it necessary to push developing countries into a course that have marked and shaped industrialized societies? Local businesses and local handmade products are a beacon for trading with the outside world but they have no value amongst the Louis Vuitton and Prada bags. Both are handmade, what is the difference then? Both too could produce quality, but how is it one could cost 50$ (which less than a third would probably reach the maker, the raw material supplier and most pocketed by the seller) and the other, $5000? We live in a world of supply and demand, but it is missing a lot of things in between, the idea of man needing all of these things, these useless useless things that surround us daily in our lives. Consumerism is not deep down in your heart, its not as many economic anthropologists have argued, necessity (read Sahlins' classic), they are made up of the most useless, asinine things that man could think of, and yet living in this world I myself cannot help that they have been so ingrained to me that I find them indispensable (like the fact that I go out to lunch every single day and dinner too). Man is made up of different components of culture society, they are definitely shaped by it and there is no doubt of it, it grounds deep down to the way we see biology and science itself. A friend of mine was quite surprised that doing anthropology I understood some biological 'stuff' that was supposed to be her domain, she was surprised to know that the colour of water was subjective for example, through the eyes of culture that sees it and not through the actuality in itself. Like Philosophy, it seems that we return to the beginning of the question that we have posed, and not out of it.

On another note I would like to commend Matisyahu for his efforts on religion. At some point of my life, I thought that it could be the answer for all the social ills that were going around me, but now, disoriented and broken hearted from the ravages of what 'religion' and humanity bring, I want to break free of it. Other than that, Matisyahu, you rock ;)

Kinship and Love

2009-01-01T01:16:00.000-08:00

At times, sociologists ignore the root of the matter, I know its all about looking at the big picture, but sometimes, these kinds of topics are fit for psychologists to interpret. For a long time now, what humanity does is never a cause for concern, people just seemed to look at things as if they are there and take it for granted, they never realize how important it is and how much it could shape the whole of society together. There have been two proponents that argued how society was shaped, the first is of course Radcliffe-Browne with his structuralist functionalism, everything happens because they're meant to be, and the second which at times I wonder if he's right, by Malinowski's psychological functionalism. Marxists think that the world is controlled by money and the economy, both are actually arguing about the same thing, and we could go back to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. The basic needs of man will inturn lead to higher things, and when man becomes base, they take into action their basic desires.

How about Love?
:)

Sometimes people say that their lust is love, but its not true, I dont know what the flying fuck I'm talking about

This one's an old one, I should say it too - Haruki Murakami's After Dark

2008-12-30T09:58:00.000-08:00

Not as good as his other works, there I said it.

I just remembered what I wanted to say - review of Orhan Pamuk's My name is Red

2008-12-30T09:37:00.000-08:00

While my labours are not entirely fruitless I managed to get around to finishing this book, despite its label, Nobel Prize Winner, you could have lied to me! Okay, you want my honest opinion? This book, sucks, not entirely but somewhat about half the book is bad while the other half is not that bad. Probably, the cause is the LOST in Translation part, it was tedious and long with winding stories that none other reminded me of the translation of the One Thousand and One Nights, stories within stories, the problem was...it did not fascinate me. It had a tendency to repeat itself without any magic accompanying it. Answer me this, why is it that Pramoedya Ananta Toer is a Nobel Prize laureate but this guy wins the whole thing? Let me describe and ruin it for you, the image that was depicted of women for example, in the case of Shekure is too...fantastic. Although the erotica was good but I could say better of Haruki Murakami's works (more after this I'm going to review one of them as well). I disliked Shekure, for every reason in the book that Mary Daly and Shulamith Firestone could think of. For one thing, she's a dreamer, okay that doesn't sound so bad, no, she's a dreamer who wants to be gilded like a princess because of her looks. That is a character I find repulsive. If Pamuk could crack a pretty woman's head and show me what's in it, none of them bear any of the sensitivities that Pamuk displays, they are imaginary depictions of what women are. This is one of the more disconcerting things that I find about the Nobel Prize, they portray what the masses think and what it ought to be. The only people I like amongst that list is Pearl S. Buck, Wole Soyinka and Toni Morisson. The year they decided to nominate Orhan Pamuk was a bad year I think! Sure, at least he tries to connect the West and the East, but the writing...is fit for I don't know, a book called Tokaido that I read a few years back. It wasn't engaging, it didn't rack my soul like Ben Okri, it didn't leave me dazzled like Naguib Mahfouz and it didn't make me laugh like V.S. Naipaul. The characters were shallow, I cannot see inside them, why is that? They show me themselves but not inside their hearts, is that what it's supposed to be, another style of writing? I suppose the only person who could write whodunit novels is and always will be Agatha Christie, any takers on that one? I disliked Black, the only character I found engaging was oddly enough Shekure's dead father, Enishte Effendi. Spare me the book, just chuck it in the bin.

I've got two questions

2008-12-30T07:07:00.000-08:00

I've got two simple questions, and shit I forgot about what the fuck I was gonna say.

Abortion/Love/Disabilities

2008-12-21T11:35:00.000-08:00

I have three children and all three of these kids, for myself, I don't care. I've always loved children and I always will but when I had my first child I was eighteen, I thought and I thought. I was already engaged, I finished my diploma, I was somewhat responsible. But was my parents ready for a child? I asked and I wondered, should I get an abortion? It seemed easy back then, you have never met the person that you were going to carry, they were only seeds of flesh. But I didn't go through with it, then after my second child, six months after Ezra I was pregnant again. I thought, what the hell? I can't go through with this again, what will people say? And, is it safe? After being so close to another caesarean? So I asked around, Edward too was being considered for the drop. But it was okay, they were all extremely healthy children, they inherited some of my allergies, actually both my husband and I, thankfully very mild rashes and fever asthma. Considering I smoked when I was pregnant too, they were all above three kilograms with regular sized brains, perfect lungs perfect heart, hey I don't know how I did it but I did it! It happens in my family, people do smoke when they're pregnant, not too much just once in awhile. But we're all healthy and happy, and then I thouht some people who try so hard with their pregnancies and they have to deal with more, so I feel sorry. Now this is where I'm going to hit the right note, if a woman, has a higher chance of having a child with a disability, will she abort it? Even for small things like a cleft palate or a webbed foot? Or something more difficult like Down's syndrome? I've read about Down's syndrome, there are many who become successful, many who can live alone, have a job, get married and have kids. Focus, and learn (honestly, there are people on this earth with no disability whatsoever but they are far more dependent and sorry to say idiotic than a person with down's syndrome or autism). So what's the problem? Why are many more women aborting imperfections? Sometimes, a human being's worth on this earth is a lot more than you think, who knows they might save someone's life one day, they might be useful to a community. They might not, but you can take the same gamble on a normal kid who might end up as a serial killer/rapist/pedophile/politician. I'm not sure about abortions, for myself it's a case by case thing. it's not something for everyone, so I'm not advocating nor am I rejecting it. There are cases of incest rape, and maybe the person just doesn't want their child to be hurt. There are limits and unfortunately limits differ from person to person. But if you're pregnant and your child might have a disability, aren't the odds when you add up teenagehood, tween, college drunkfest or whatever is nasty, just the same?

What's wrong with people living on trees in Brunei?

2008-12-14T00:44:00.000-08:00

I know the allegation, people think Borneans and Bruneians are a bunch of savages living on trees, meaning that we aren't even up on the evolutionary scale, not even Homo Sapien, unlike them Homo Sapien Sapien, not even close to Homo Habilis. Cos, we live on trees. But doing a lot of readings on Borneo, I realized that all this time Bruneians have a problem in the way they treat other races except themselves. Of course the given will always be true, those in power, those with wealth that can be translated to power, will always necessarily be able to wield enough to maintain that their positions will be higher than that of others. But the question is this, what's wrong with Borneans and Bruneians living on trees? I know they're a group on facebook, defying that Bruneians don't live on trees, but what is so wrong with that? What is so wrong being different? Why is everyone running after prestige so badly that they need to have a fricking mansion/flatscreen tv/study in UK/US/Oz/drive an expensive car. Last night I was talking to this lady I was hennaing and she was from Singapore, she said she felt a little bit relaxed because people were not so driven by materialistic culture, but...really? Bruneians are a bit materialistic, not to the extent of Singaporeans but we're getting there. Not just that they're prestige crazy. Everything is just as fake everywhere around the world. The views of Borneans and Bruneians living on trees only reflect the perspective of Orientalism. Where's the Occidentalism? As one white guy once pointed out to me (albeit he's a fricking idiot), it's been 50 years since independence, why do they all sound like they want to kiss the Western perspective?

Sex and disability

2008-12-09T09:48:00.000-08:00

I just realized something very2 strong. All this time I only thought about myself being oveweight and all and having challenges concerning sexuality. Well there I'm completely wrong and something is fucking wrong with the world we live in today. Have we ever realized that sex and body types should not be one-sided? Why is there only one representation of sexuality minus the rest? Sex is white, barbie doll and massive cocked Ken, it's not Asian male, or Black women, sure these two do exist but they are not the central pornographic mainstream. And not just that, where is the disabled sex? Why are there no sex involving people on a wheelchair? People who are blind? Why does tv show only sex and love of two 'normal' (trust me everyone is so not normal) man and woman? And the gay men and women, fucking hell, they all look good, where is the reality in that? Not all gay men are good looking and not all gay women are good looking and good looking is questionable. I think I have come to feel quite surprised at the way society embodies humanity, they are either the tools of capitalism or the mass media but those are just simple explanations that skim the true surface. Humanity makes humanity, society perpetuates society, one girl once told me its not that she doesnt want to date this guy who she thinks was unattractive, it was because she wanted to wake up next to someone who wouldnt freak her out, well you cant teach an old dog new tricks, that's true, and therefore she can leave it at that, but what about teaching our next generation to be more realistic and open and humane about their sexuality? How about teaching people the fact that one way or another a so called 'good looking guy' can wake up next to you and scare the shit out of you, they can be disabled, they can be disfigured badly, is that the worth of your love? Then it must be shallow.

Girls Beware!

2008-12-04T11:57:00.000-08:00

Interesting sexist and prejudiced videos from America in the 50s.
Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fAKo-i4jpQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGqT_Z50w5c&feature=related

My exams are over but my thesis is not and atheists versus fanatics

2008-12-04T10:45:00.000-08:00

So, I panicked a few weeks ago when I found out I had an F once because I decided to drop logic and thinking (why do you need to prove arguments using maths again?), and my lecturer told me that it could affect my honours. Hah! It doesn't thank God. Why does it matter? You know, like in the words of that guy Robert T. Kiyosaki, your accountant won't look at your school grades, bla3, but I think it takes a certain amount of gumption, tirelessness and hardwork to make a good business work.
Aside from that, I want to talk about my thesis, this will be my first time conducting fieldwork among the Kedayans of Bukit Panggal. Scared? Shit hell I am. I never realized to be the bottom of things and collecting all this data would hurt. Your effing nervous, you meet new people and you need to turn on your charms. This is what I realized, if all of those people who are gathering all this data that I have been using for my research all this time and to supplement my arguments in this blog and I think, well, that is difficult, and how do you do that? I've been reading and re-reading about the Penan till my eyes hurt (its just a part of my essay work), and honestly, if I was to live in the frickin jungle interior for a year or two I'd go mad, or maybe not if there was a hot guy involved (trust me, when it comes to the basic drive, anything will work, and I will work harder mind you, I got straight As when I was a kid because I liked this guy in my class so I went to school often). So that jumps me down to Malinowski and his psychological functionalism, I cannot help but think that he is smarter than Radcliffe-Brown, his contemporary and rival. Why? As much as it hurts to admit this, everyone is fricking selfish, everyone will sacrifice their needs only if that sacrifice will bring some sort of benefit in the end. People are good because they believe there's a heaven, they know they will be rewarded, if people didn't believe in heaven, and I hope some atheist could supplant me with this because I need to know some data, would anyone bother to be kind? And I'm not even talking about the run of the mill atheist with good morals, because that shows that they believe in 'something' be that it may metaphysical or abstract. I'm talking about hard core atheists who believe in nothing, not even one fucking iota, but I suppose and ironically also, :) corresponds directly to extreme religious fanatics, doesn't it? I'm showing you my thought process, people are not kind because they believe in something, people are not kind because they don't believe in anything (most often these people are just mean to themselves if I'm not mistaken...) . Well go figure, we're back on square one. The point being, society is made up of individuals who want to reach their goals, or desires, I'm not even going to say basic needs, but I do suppose that the dance of sex and life is as old as time itself. Something, the woman who is badly treated by her partner wants something in the end, Revenge? I'm trying to prove my hypothesis here...there must be something she wants and this cannot be said to be a basic desire. I mean I know some dumb frick psychologists of the ancient whatnots have claimed women to be masochistic and sadistic. Survival? Wtf? Society and its trappings? The truth is also, I have to add another dimension here, an abused woman won't be able to think outside of the box as to why she's not leaving an abusive partner, she just allows it to happen. Hmm, interesting, I'll get back to you people when I have the answer. Oh btw, one guy once told me, there's no answer to anything, that everything is just IS, well that is one dumb motherfucker I can tell you that. And please3, read Reza Aslan's No God But God, it's pretty good aside from all the dumb Islamic publications that I have read that are too sexist, too racist, too prejudiced.

The world is a-changing and I'm right in the middle of it

2008-11-15T11:33:00.000-08:00

Hell, gone were the days when the words hell and damn were considered rude (lol) but that doesn't mean gone are the days when people are fighting so hard and trying so damn much to put it right back to its place. Right now I'm sitting in a country where its neighbours issued a fatwa to ban against yoga (hahahahaha how intelligent can you be? Issuing a fatwa like that when there are about 2 billion Moslems who are frickin broke and need your help? Wow great blinder there!) As is with most political systems it is obvious that the whole course behind such said actions are ofcourse Malaysia's fear for UMNOs potency. UMNO has lost its potency and it needs Viagra (read PAS and the fatwa issuers) to maintain ahigh rate of votes. Just as Obama and McCain fought in the swing territories over the most orthodox Christians of the South the Malaysians are doing the same tactic as Bush, win em over with religion. Having to depend on a large vote from Sabah and Sarawak to win the recent elections it doesn't come to much surprise that it needs to boost sales in the Malay Muslim department. Tomboys? Cut hair and pants? I'm a mother of three, I'm 23 years old and I married early (I'm such a frickin slut but who doesn't love fucking?) I have never had long hair, why? It makes me look fat besides my husband liked me because of my short hair. I like to wear pants, but sometimes I like to wear skirts, I like lesbian porn, does that count? But in reality I turn my head around if there's a guy I think is hot I don't turn around if there's a hot woman I'd probably have a tendency to stab her face over envy. therefore, the argument does not hold. Besides, haven't all of us Muslims ever learned from history at all? Fatwas change and they change over time, over different spaces and over different regions, to fit any political agenda that they needed to justify. The Muftis know this more than anyone else (if not why send them to Al-Azhar?) They're committed to know this fact and they come back to shove it with power. What comes with the fatwa? Money. Prestige. And all that jazz. They don't do it for God (hahahahahahaha!) they don't do it for women. They do it for themselves to enlarge the pool of sexual must-haves, and money and political prestige and blablabla. Its as simple as that, people never ask why such and such is being said. But problems occur and people would want to know why, such said Muslims for example never ask why such and such women prefer women than men look at the demographics a high percentage of divorce, a low percentage of rights, yadda yadda yadda. Who in their right mind would want a position within the social structure so subservient? Interpretations have been challenged, women have education (one of the reasons why the Taliban won't allow women to go to school, I suppose if they're right then Muhammad the prophet must be lying about everyone should get an education) and with education comes power. And that is what is feared by the said Islamic sections (not all mind you), they go about and declare everyone irreligious and apostate as they like as if they alone own religion as if they alone control the voice of God, and they alone can interpret the words of the Lord. Doesn't this sound familiar? It has passed for the Christians, only the priests had had access to the Lord, to forgive to live, to be religious. And the reason why they hated Muslims was because Islam cut out the middleman so that every person could reach God (protestants did the same thing) and over time the strength of the Islamic church grows stronger and stronger. What we need is some sort of Protestant Islam, we need to cut out the middle man, but it would take too much time, too much bloodshed. And I wonder why, why is this all necessary, to fight for ones faith over God? Shouldn't God be a private matter? After all doesn't one die alone? My answer is yes, you do - die alone.

McCain vs. Obama - again 'why the fuck does McCain scare me'

2008-10-17T12:09:00.000-07:00

Here ---> http://www.alternet.org/election08/103387/the_10_biggest_differences_between_obama_and_mccain_that_will_affect_your_daily_life/?page=1

I don't and won't understand at all if the Americans do decide to vote for McCain and label Obama with very flimsy excuses such as 'Muslim' (what's wrong with that I thought America was a liberal country :P), Black (woohoo, often on forums I see, 'I'm not being racist or anything but he's a liar) a liar of what exactly? And McCain is an honest person? HAHAHAHHAHA He sounds like the candidate from Hell, I've said it once and I'll say it again, if McCain becomes America's next president (I don't think this is impossible, oddly the Thais can outseat their Prime Minister with a bloodless coup but Americans don't do that do they? So smart rite? In addition, Bush did it come on it'll happen again!). I'm being pessimistic and sad about this actually I could cry because true enough if McCain is president its the end of America as anyone knows it.

Out with the old in with the new

2008-10-11T01:12:00.000-07:00

Reading around reading around and I felt a snagging push towards being extremely angry at something, I don't remember what that something was but it definitely had something to do with my idiot husband (I know, I know you think I'm an idiot too, jeez). Oh yes, he said that feminists want to control everything. (HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA this coming from the sex that's full of crap and controls almost all of the world and has done nothing but evil) I think what he meant was, stop criticizing my sex, we know we're stupid. I'm glad.

The Does and Don'ts between pornography and feminism

2008-09-18T13:28:00.000-07:00

I spent a hours reading articles from this feministlawprofs.law.sc.edu, this www.avclub.com, and a blog called feministing.
You guys should check it out I read it from end to end.
Now aside from all this I was reading on the dancing dance (hahaha) between feminism and pornography, as is the fact feminists are so divided about this, one article (just google feminism and pornography and one with the author being wendy mcelroy) I deemed really interesting. Pornography has always been the issue that it objectifies women as being sexual objects (McElroy argues that this is subjective, why not? she asks, good question) and I thought about it, patriarchy always deemed women as being lower, yes, and on the other hand they demand that the women that they 'own' should be demure and ofcourse according to Hindu law the concern is largely to protect caste purity and therefore cross caste marriage (note: marriage not extramarital r'ships haa) is frowned upon between a man of higher caste and a woman of lower caste and one hundred percent unforgivable for a woman of higher caste and a man of lower caste (cf. Andre Beteille). And from my own experience with men they all say this : (this is quite common for Muslim men but I think the virus is bigger than that ;) - thus applies to a LOT of men) there are two types of women - women you fuck and women you marry. The ones that are married are kept sacred and pure (to avoid him from having to care for another man's child as well as to keep property strictly within his own family sphere, this is a good example to link patriarchy and capitalism btw). Now, if ALL women were to deign pornography as acceptable and participate in it, I wonder whether this is sexually liberating or not? In my head I thought that if this was possible then the cards would all be on women's tables. No longer are there women available for so-called purity and subservience, because definitely the women that men can fuck, are always deemed to be OUT OF THEIR CONTROL and therefore out of their jurisdiction, no longer will they be docile animals under the care of the all heavenly father/husband/brother/boyfriend/lover/friend. Note the irony of the argument above, the one that says to avoid him and to keep property within his own sphere, doesn't the idiot realize that his pumping activities may well spread a gallon more of his so-called seeds to twenty different women each producing more children there would be more distribution of his so-called property, I don't understand why they're so frigging stupid, sons loyalties are towards their mothers and the families of their mothers, up to a point they will comply with their patrilineage but sooner or later after the death of the fathers allegiances change (cf. The Lugbara of Uganda). :)

The trick is in the eyes

2008-08-17T03:19:00.000-07:00

The ugly ones are REAL women and the beautiful ones are the LADYBOYS

I was scourging for bodyshapers, don't ask me why I thought it might help me with my thrice operated mommy tummy. I felt sorry for myself I thought but what we women don't realize is the fact that there are billions of women surrounding us who are just like us, who have the same problems no matter how fat or how thin they are, they will never ever become as beautiful as Thailand's ladyboys. I think at that point you could understand how powerful it is to become a lesbian woman, but sadly this is not the case for non-politically correct NY, USA depictions of lesbian harmony. You still have to contend with the fact about butch women + femme = regular heterosexual couple (for this we have to refer to even Asian levels of social roles and its expectations etc etc.), what women do NEED is a great sense of humour. I have heard all the stories of men being extremely prejudiced and sexist against women, they're stories that are like staple food for women. Sure sure Ive had people telling me I shouldn't focus much on labels, labels mean nothing and I'm sure they're right because I believe so too sometimes, it could be our conditioning of reality that we perceive the way we want to perceive it (or the things that they taught us to want). what's sad was the fact that women feel so alone, so unwanted while men? I don't know some people say they should be pitied more because they are socially conditioned to believe that they do not need support? Not feel wanted? What pushes us women to WANT to be wanted and loved anyway in the first place? Look, my point is men look better than women when they're women they look better than women, I vote for us women to make our own country and tell the fuckers to fuck off ( :) ) and if they want to fuck fuck each other, that's what men are made for ;)

The consequences of the lower position of women in Islam

2008-07-23T21:29:00.000-07:00

Here is a question and I have been stressing this repeatedly for a long time now. In orthodox Islam, the position of a woman is considered less valuable than that of a man, religiously and economically. What happens then when Muslims lower the bar on their women that women become a little more better than animals? (as quoted by Imam Al-Ghazali).

I've been ruminating it for awhile and I realized that Islam is pretty difficult to conjoin with different modes of society to function economically and socially. For example, in orthodox Islam women are not even allowed to go out of their homes without the permission of their husbands or to work for it is Makruh ( Not encouraged for Mazhab Syafiee, but I have heard that it becomes Haram (or forbidden) for certain Mazhabs, I need to research more on this). Now what happens when this happens in an agrarian society. As many of you are aware, at the moment there IS a food shortage and ofcourse in addition a labour shortage that can be supplemented by women's work in the fields, now how do you amalgamate these two beliefs? Secondly, the fact that Islam is an urban based religion hinders any society that lives in the jungle like the Orang Asli (or natives). Previously, it is thought that living in urban centres was better than living in rural or forested areas for Muslims but what many Muslims ignore is the protection of the ecosystem and there has been some recent studies made that the natives or the Orang Asli, CONSERVES the ecosystem through their way of life, therefore if all of humanity actually refuses to live in the jungle all knowledge of ecosystems will be LOST. As you all know, the Orang Asli cannot live in the jungles wearing habits or headscarves, they aren't able to wear thick clothes to cover all parts of their body, if they do so, they might die and become dehumidifed, there has been some reconciliations on the part in Islam whereby it is stated that man is free from the call to prayers (religion?) when they are not within the compounds of society.

The lowly economic position of women coupled with orthodoxy that disables them from fully functioning as people has its deep embedded consequences much as many people refuse to acknowledge. Women's work has become limited and poverty is lauded only towards women and women's work. Say as I have cited above in modern contemporary times, a woman is not allowed to work. Say she has three children and her husband has left her for another woman, she is divorced and not paid alimony or child custody (therefore in the part of the husband he is sinning but rarely is this punished, it is only the women who are punished, often by women themselves) how will she survive and keep her religious orthodoxy intact?

The next problem is the value of women, now she is stripped of ANY economic benefits, now this becomes similar to a Hindu problem. She is economically dependent and becomes a burden especially in terms of dowry (which at least as property bought and paid for by the husband she retains a small amount of economic standing), this burden usually results in undercare for female children, leaving female kids a lesser amount to eat (cf; Girl Child in India). And thus, for developing third world countries which view women as lower in economic status it becomes like India and China, female foetuses are aborted. Although this has not been the case in the Middle East, but it has been in Pakistan and to a lesser degree Afghanistan (often the foetuses are buried alive).

(To a larger extent, China and India exhibit a higher degree of male preference within their religion and social construct that female children are worst off treated, and both these societies strictly forbid the betterment of social status for women, it doesn't exist only within Islamic orthodoxy.)

when i see you

2008-07-19T10:23:00.000-07:00

WHEN I see you
My blood rushes from my heart to my loins
that THUMP THUMP makes me feel like i'm in Love
I want it to burn me and my loins
forever me forever you forever love

WHEN I see you
You! grab me between my legs
It drips drips drips crying and crying
Every woman wants You and begs
can't you see me babe? it feels like im dying

when I see YOU
Oh my heart between my breasts
it sighs and wanes and rises
it seems there is no rest or for the best
truth is the others end up as lices

YOU don't see me
I've been hatching spells on YOU
Maybe one day I'm not sure
I hope you'll like me so...
I'll see you around

The race for the next P.U.S.A (President of USA)

2008-06-18T09:21:00.000-07:00

I was reading Times and Newsweek, littered this June for the upcoming race between Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barrack Obama. Once (McCain) seemed like the presidential candidate from H.E.L.L. The thing about politics is that he makes it sound so nice, so innocent so gullible that many people actually overlook his 'evil'. One of the writers mentioned something about why Iran themselves would wish someone like McCain to be the next PUSA, he seems evil, he sounds evil, hell, he even looks evil (think Nixon, Bush, Reagan, Clinton - don't they seem evil to you? You can say the same thing about Lenin, Stalin and Hitler too! Republicans on the general though do have the tendency to look evil... like Skeletor) Why? Well then the Iranians could go on bombing themselves out of frustrations, look! points the mullahs (who also look evil btw) evil PUSA! bomb yourselves! If Barrack wins, a PUSA who listens, understands, no drama here, quietly sit on the table negotiate, talk, resolve problems (although I also read that Barrack won't negotiate but nevertheless, he has the image of negotiable), the Iranians could start looking at themselves and realize the deep shit that they are in, so does Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine who are all on the same boat (problems problems, drama drama). I notice one thing that was a common thread for the USA and these areas in the middle east (drop in Lebanon and Syria in there too!), the constant need for drama. I mean look at the youtube presidential race ads, they sound like the BurgerKing versus McDonalds ads - DRAMA! I knwo something about drama, my family itself is riddled with the constant need for drama, I am left bewildered and thinking- probably realizing. Do these people actually believe what they are saying when they say all those horrible things that they believe in? Why do they constantly have an addiction towards ethnocentrism and whats the other phrase? Holier than Thou attitude.
High horse, higher horse.
I'll tell you something about the Muslim attitude, from an ethnographic perspective, there is a division of understanding between the middle class attitude (take this in I said middle class attitude and education - middle class is aplenty in Brunei but this doesn't necessarily coincide with better education - ref. Americanos) and that of the regular attitude. Just as the American politicians scare the Born Again Christian Americans the equal amount can be seen, not through regular Islamic state controlled education but rather the vernacular common belief people say. Take the late Saddam Hussein, sure he was a Muslim, but he gassed Kurds, killed Sunnis aplenty and altogether not a nice guy, but because of the label, 'Muslim' other Muslims think of him as some sort of a 'hero' for standing up to the big man of PUSA (on the contrary, SH has received support from PUSA before George Bush Sr. got pissed at him for using his arms elsewhere rather than exclusively gassing Kurds and Sunnis (hahaha this is so funny!) The same can be said about the rest of the so-called Muslim leaders who always always automatically label you as 'murtad' or excommunicated for realizing 'hey, this doesn't sound islamic-ish...why ah?'. Their role as religious leaders + secular politicians = complete control of power because they control the realm of the spiritual guidance as well as the realm outside of religion. E-mails are sent left and right thinking that this is the right thing to do, the right thing to say (photos of Palestinians who are maimed and murdered - mind you, Palestinians are Muslims, Christian AND Jews, the same goes for the Israelis, this is not a religious struggle as many Muslims would say but rather a political struggle, who gets the most gets the more power). Sure, the Palestinians need to be protected but they also need the equal awareness that this is a political struggle, not a religious one. Leave religion out of this, isn't it enough that you have it spiritually? Must you maim murder others for religion even children? There you go the Holier than Thou attitude, thinking already they have one foot in Paradiso.

Drama drama. Could it possibly be because there's too many dramas on TV that people are acting as the dramas themselves? It's like stereotyping from hell, the crazy PUSA, the mullah driven only for his own interests, the less educated mindset following like robots?

Aside from that and personally, I would like Sen. Barrack Obama to win, why? Because he will be the most good looking PUSA America has ever had.

Capitalism, you break my heart

2008-06-07T10:14:00.000-07:00

As is with the hundreds of activists and environmentalists who have called upon repeatedly with the questions we have raised then come along also with it the other hand that pulls it. I will repeat a question that comes again and again and repeatedly unquestioned. Or probably I am not looking for an answer but rather a statement. Why? Why is free trade ok for higher levels of capitalism and NOT ok for the lower ones? I suppose it becomes necessary for companies such as Glaxo-SmithKline, to name a few, the BodyShop, L'Oreal and the rest with their army of legal jargonists and definitely not for the other arm of small-time business men and women trying to scrape a living. Take piracy for example, sure of course small time piracy have caused problems, who does not know the consequences of untraceable companies who produce fake baby formula that have killed babies, cosmetics that contain mercury such as in places like Africa and China but we do not see the other side of it. There are lawsuits against companies such as PhillipMorris (tobacco) and McDonalds that have made it through, and yet both these companies are soaring higher than ever. Many upper end brands, trusted have also failed to comply to set standards and not only that they have provided also, times when they have made mistakes. Brands that you trust too much? Ofcourse. I am sitting here using a Hewlett-Packard PC with their largest screen and sipping British/Malaysian Ribena for my so-called cold. Cases have arisen and there is a scramble for patents and products just as there has been a scramble for colonial lands not to long ago. The difference is no everyone can have it, the other end is majority of those who benefit are still WHITE. I'm not a racist, I am stating a pure fact, despite the freedom and 'goodness' of capitalism pockets of poverty excepting Eastern Europe exist in as Bush has called 'the African nation' (hahaha!)
Then there's the question of internet piracy. Why hasn't upper end movie companies EVER made the leap into allowing the SALE of their movies through TORRENTS for a few dollars or cents? Why haven't they sold their DVDS for less like many of the piraters are apt to do? It's simple and it's easy, they want to get rich QUICK. Here's a newsflash, you compete with the piraters instead of spending billions of dollars catching them with the arm of the law, using the law for your own benefit and ruining a host of people's lives? Sure, we're poor its easy for you to throw us into jail while you sit in your lovely home like The Sims2, make it as posh as you can. Then you waste taxpayers money for jailing them use them for bonded labour and like cotton slaves, you have new LEGAL cotton slaves. You with your billions of starbucks that you can find in each radius with your delicious coffee that costs an arm and a leg while your workers work for only less than a thousand dollars a month. Enjoy, I pray and pray that your death will be long and painful. Probably that's why I still believe in God, hoping even Nietszche couldn't blame me for that, that to remain sane I need to know that justice can be served, not only for rich people.

The Atheist

2008-05-24T09:46:00.000-07:00

I have not logged for a long time, since April and I want to make up for it. A little bit anyway. I was thinking and thinking and sometimes I notice that it became necessary to speak in terms of another language but this as I have said I talked about in deconstructing semanticity. At certain points of my life I start to think about things and I do realize that we as humans are constantly in control by governments surrounding us. We are in absolute terms of thought despite individual share of means in our heads and in our hearts. When we propose to believe in something else we are accused of atheism of straying the wrong path. For what? For why? I think often that there are reasons behind certain actions and I tell you this. Always, always examine their purposes and what they gain. There must be something that they will gain by, they say they believe in God but is this true? What is it that they're after? And why are they controlling people's lives? From the moment of our birth to the day we die, they want something from you, and I will tell you what. First of all, they want power, it is a very basic and base thing to desire. Then it is about money and wealth, things that could buy you power, it can be translated and it can be useful not only for those holding that wealth but others who surround it. And thirdly, the most simple is ofcourse, desire. Desire for all of these things. I'm still thinking about that meaning of desire and why. Simpler explanations exude cultural and social factors are the cause. But I think I must go deeper than that. Laters then.

Globalization Costs/ Consumer Culture

2008-04-07T20:33:00.000-07:00

Dear everyone,

As you must know food prices are rising very high. I would like to point out that activism has done its fair share of protecting the environment but at the cost of how it's going it has at the same time ruined those whom it intended to protect, namely poor people. The greener environment is always an issue that most Muslims shrug and push away, they intend that because they believe the end of the world is near that there need not be anymore responsibilities on their behalf concerning the environment. Remember, Muhammad s.a.w once said that even if Qiamat was drawing near and a seed of life is in your hands, plant it. We have an obligation towards God and the earth, God has mentioned in the Koran that he has made earth in all its splendour, do not think you can destroy it freely. We are among the luckier ones and have lived on this part of a planet called Brunei with only less than 300,000 people with a large part being foreigners who work here. We are blessed and yet we are the worst inhabitants on earth. We ahve decided to rape the earth for all it's worth and ignore everything else that God has given us. In the face of such calamity of shortages of water, fuel and food we blaspheme by talking about others, worrying about people and our social context forgetting our own. I hope khutbahs from now on will mention the destruction that is being done in the name of extreme capitalism and extreme consumer culture. It is nice to purchase things and that provides growth in our economy but at the same time it produces a double sided edge whereby our actions also pushes us to pervert the system. We are being fooled by wealth, we are being fooled by prestige and markers of prestige and most of all, we are greedy and full of desire. We worship the new God called money, forgetting the real God of love and compassion. We change cars repeatedly to gain the prestige of our peers but forgetting that their awe is lost in a second of envy.
The price of rice is gaining momentum as droughts appear on earth, previously before the price of wheat and flour had skyrocketed affecting flour based products such as cakes and chappatis, bread and noodles. The next generation shall live, we may say they may not but who are we to say what happens when? If we even ever leave this earth let it be that we have left it in all of the Supreme Being's splendour. We abuse water by washing our cars daily, for what? It is a sign of prestige in our society, not a sign of cleanliness. Signs of cleanliness show when we start using our toilets responsibly, when our parents have started to tell us to wash after ourselves cleanly and to leave toilets behind us, for other people to use. Our complete disregard for letting toilets become dirty has become an analogy of our behaviour towards our next generation, we do not want the best for our children. We will let them ravel around their dirt and dirtiness. Companies MUST participate. We MUST start thinking environmentally even if at a smaller scale. It IS do-able. We can start pooling cars, everyday we see tens and thousands of Bruneians going home from work with only them in ONE car. Imagine if we pooled those who lived nearby each other and by rote the drivers change daily, and if we fear aurat, isn't it as simple as pooling women workers with women workers and men workers with men? Teenagers and young adults do it all the time, they pick up their friends one by one thereby saving energy. W shouldn't focus on the small things only, we should focus on the big things as well. Once we live in a world with more understanding, less prejudice and ignorance, more multiculturalism and compassion I believe that all the lesser problems touted such as the breakdown of the family can be amended. The world is no longer globalizing, It IS Global.

I have always disliked the haute couture industry although once inawhile I let myself be drawn into the smaller things. But lately I have been kicking myself for even allowing such things to happen. My sister have fallen victim to the desire of wanting to be like everyone else and thus abusing herself as well as those around her with her whining. We are victimes of the consumer culture whether we like t or not, I wouldn't mind if the consumer culture was involved in the helping of poor countries or struggling countries. What with the hypocrisy of AID organizations and their so-called expensive administrative costs that only leave blankets in the middle of Ethiopia. But that is not the case, haute couture is not ethically responsible for the plight of others, every other MAJOR CORPORATION in the world is DEFINITELY EXPLOITING LABOUR. It pressures people into believing in obesity, it pressures people in to believing in health, it pressures people into believing that products can make your LIFE better, when it cannot.

Simulacra and Simulation

2008-03-27T08:54:00.000-07:00

It seems to me, re-watching the Matrix trilogy, something was amiss when I read a couple of blog posts that Baudrillard and Christianity are strange bedfellows. I couldn't disagree more, perception that is argued by Baudrillard has become hallmark of postmodernist theory clearly apparent in modern thought, deconstruct, annihilate. Although it has some of its uses, but as I said, it relates to the previous post of deconstructing semanticity, and as they say there is nothing new under the sun. What I need to touch between the hallmark of philosophy on the one hand and reality on the other, is the lack of relativity. This is the language of the literati, the elite, the knowledged ones. But they are not, as I echo today's lecture by Prof. Walker, in relation whatsoever to the heterodox, homogenous common belief of every human being on this planet. So much for revealed truths, the simulacrum is true. If so - what? It does not benefit the lower masses, it does not touch the edges of society. You tell a poor man, woman or child, you don't need this, this is futile whatever signs that you make is useless and needless. Do you think they care to believe you? Desire is a more potent answer to all these things. The desire to seek the truth, the desire to acquire something new, the desire to own, to master, to have power. They are sporadic existences of humanity that have managed to attain their so-called Nirvana, they are free from those chains - but the rest? They are still chained by desire, however strongly we could always look towards asceticism and the abandon of the world, I could say modern nihilism has much to do with past nihilism, just because you prepare different labels for it does not necessarily mean that its totally and completely different. And if you take Baudrillard's word for it, it doesn't mean anything, you attach those meanings to it. Although I could agree, that with the power of without the need of attaching meaning you could definitely see the world at a different view in fact a more peaceful, almost giving view. Thanks Jun for this new line of thought to be explored - Juburmu Itam :)

Deconstructing semanticity

2008-01-29T01:46:00.001-08:00

A long time ago I read Rene Descartes in this cute book called Sophie's World, from them on at the age of twelve I began a journey of philosophical understanding that boggles my mind to this day. I've always been fascinated with how Rene Descartes arrived on his conclusions regarding the blank slate and his maxim - Cogito Ergo Sum, I think therefore I am and sometimes, I think therefore I exist. Many people take for granted how they assumed this world and at the next point of understanding is that when they do learn of such things they fail to realize how much impact if only the regular layman had easier access to the resources available to those who read. Do not take it for granted either that everybody should read if they wanted to learn. There are numerous possibilities as to how everyone can begin learning and even until one's own death can learning can never be complete. The Universe of God is too vast, too wide that I fail to understand, even on this green earth not everyone can comprehend the vastness and multiplicity that is available for constant wonder.

When we think of Rene Descartes we think, why should I wipe my mind clean of everything that I have thus so far assumed as FACT? Fact is ofcourse (but don't take my word for it), a series of deconstructed ideas that have managed to push us into situations that make us believe certain things and reject others. For example, when some people believe that women are weaker than men, while this is biologically true to some extent, but it could be noted that there exists exceptionally strong women who are stronger than most men. And when someone describes fact, they are always in doubt - what is fact? Fact is as most people believe it to be, a series of biological and scientific truths. Doctors cannot but must accept that all truths are driven from fact. Although scientific study is not a bad thing and I am not saying it is, but due to the lack of knowledge in our part and even the semantic knowledge of our part, we fail to understand the due importance of biology and even 'natural' biology. In order to operate and save lives, doctors must take these medical arrivals which are the norm (Note: Norms exist however, according to Hume one must always keep a possibility that there is something against the Norm - Always). For example, doctors take note that everyone must have a collar bone, but in the case of the Cape Malays, there are cases of anomalies that people exist without the collarbone. And as we're talking about Norms, we perceive that everyone has ten toes but there are certain tribes even after intermarriage, still occurs groups of people born with only three large toes. Are they an anomaly? If so, how is it that there are many of them? A group of people cannot be considered an anomaly, an anomaly only exists of a Many Norm against a One Anomaly. It is the same with skin, our eyes, our hair colour and our height, it is the same with every aspect of our body. What is the Norm?

When people like Rene Descartes begins to question everything that they see, and they have good reason to question whatever it is that they see (for example, according to our mind's eye scientists have measured that retinas and such make objects seem larger than they actually are - don't ask me how they do it, one of these days I'll quote the study for you). You cannot trust the material world - in fact whatever it is that you have described as fact, something you use to believe in every day life is not true, then you are lost, your mind a Blank Slate. How does one trust anything now that everything is wrong? questionable? Then Descartes thought and thought, and then it was right in front of his mind, His Thought. His rational brain had questioned all around him. And because of this questioning it was all that remained of the empty slate. It was then that Descartes realized, I think therefore I am. I actually exist even if in my head, you cannot trust the physical world, they are made of fakes but you can trust your head even if it may lead you to paths unknown. Fear of paths unknown will create new avenues that make people understand better, be less prejudiced, be more kind. Isn't that the whole purpose of existence? Or should we deconstruct that too?

Mass Media - The other skin

2008-01-27T09:00:00.000-08:00

Following representations in the mass media, it is surprising that society has made no notice of how television influences a lot of people's lives - why? Like Dove with it's the image of beauty campaign they used the idea of how reality is distorted into block images of what should be acceptable in television and other images - ELSEWHERE. Let's for example bring up WHITE television which is pervasive in many categories of our lives. It's not that the fault is the fact that the mass media IS white, in WHITE America but the workers are well - not. Most are either of Latin, Asian, African, Semitic origin. Like Monk, why is Monk portrayed like a white person when the actual personal character of Tony Shaloub is that of a Lebanese Arab? Semitic actors are made to act Christian and celebrate Christmas, some - like Seinfeld. Are Jewish, so why aren't people or audiences attracted to other visions aside from the healthy white Christian wholesome image? Not everyone is white that's for granted, and not everyone is Christian - excuse me. And Friends? David Schwimmer is rumoured to ONLY date Jewish girls. What about Jennifer Aniston? or Anastassakis as her real name is, a Greek orthodox girl reminiscent of my Big Fat Greek Wedding, and yet she represents this wholesome white American/Irish/German immigrant image. Not to mention that there is a SERIOUS lack of racial representation in white television/comics/any media platform. Is it because other cultures show a penchant for the weird? The UNAmerican? Like being fat? Or having sharp teeth? Or having rings around your neck? Or some people getting pregnant and getting married at an unapproved age? Is there such a thing as a universal value such as keeping in check everyone? I do agree, you shouldn't maim, hurt, torture people. But sometimes American images of what torture is so different than that of the rest of the world, and they don't get it, and Americans don't get it either. Although if you're Jewish I doubt that they don't get it - being UNwhite and UNAmerican. Black models, I mean you can cite BLONDE, TALL and THIN models off of your head easy. Black models? I know Tyra Banks, Naomi Campbell and that girl with short tight curls with a tall body, that's all. Seriously. And I suspect they recruited these girls not because they're beautiful but to mask the racist fashion industry that worships only tall, thin, blonde and white models. I mean they could have easily recruited as many black models as they wanted, question is why not? As far as I'm concerned the only movie I saw most recently that broke the chain of racism was John Tucker must Die as Ashanti became a head cheerleader in a white school - how? I don't know. How often do we see bi-racial families or cross racial actors? Or families other than white? Heroes other than white, or in P.S. I Love You, a Black couple instead of a white couple? Or even an Asian couple? Sure we should all see more foreign films. In Brunei it isn't such a hard task, everyone's hooked on whatever Asia has to offer. But America, being a melting pot - what's the problem? Even British television or advertising - come on! Indians left and right and all you've got to offer is Life is Not All HaHaHeHe and The Kumars at No.42 Gang?

The problems of Africa

2008-01-14T06:17:00.000-08:00

In terms of resource, Africa has a huge army of labour, that is easily exploited in due fact because of the lower exchange rate. The other factor is that Africa as a continent, is filled with almost all the valuable resources exchanged daily. To name a few, the metal ores in Africa are used to supplement Playstations (all types), electricity, computers, conductors. Gold, a very common jewelry fixture and the Blood Diamonds. According to planetark.com, Africa's way to fighting poverty is right under their feet. Their natural wealth is enough to sustain the whole of Africa itself if it didn't bother itself with their petty wars (which is often the rule of the rich over the poor). The case of exploitation in Africa is very very strong. They are exploited for every single facet by their own people who in turn think of themselves like white. The South African government which allowed apartheid for decades is no better. Racism exists in South Africa where unfortunately the wealthy are often white and the poor often black. A growing black middle class is still not helping towards the development of Africa. As I have said before, Africa needs not mimic the development of the West. Brick houses do not mean wealth. Economists who the Africans life depends on their speculation categorize specific GNP as the only key resource to wealth. Economists are becoming stereotypical as to their judgement of wealth, so-called experts being used are nothing but a mere calling to a false premise and invalid argument. Such examinations are often peppered with such Appeal to Authority that they are attributing a false cause towards a real problem. If they have solved it in the first place how is it that repeatedly after all the money being sent to Africa people there are still in famine? Do you think Bush's sanctions on Sudanese economy is because they feel bad for the Sudanese people? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Sorry, as Reagan and Nixon, he's in it for the money he can make. Here I was sitting here thinking about how lousy my life is, I think it's because I am surrounded by a lot of people who do not recognize the value of living and of life.

Star Wars

2008-01-11T00:25:00.000-08:00

The holidays are coming to an end and therefore it must be filled with watching good movies. Now, the last time I watched something it was The Matrix. The Matrix 2 and 3 are fucked up. I don't get it, do you get it? I don't it was fucked. The first one was good, very good but the Wachowski brothers ruined a classic. I think it was hastily put...the first Matrix that should ever be released should have shown more people that have been released from the Matrix. Okay with that said now we go on to more very important business...The One Love...Star Wars.

Once in awhile I do enjoy the Star Trek book but I have never touched a Star Wars book, there is fear lurking beneath me for that reason I don't want to know. But after watching for two days in a row, from the Ist to the VIth, I want more. Not more episodes I mean they SHOULD remake Star Wars 4-6. I understand that purists will be mad at me, but after seeing the fighting scenes from 1 & 2, you would be mad not to make 4-6 wonderful. We're not destroying the older Star Wars, NO - FAR from it. In the old days, many artists would do the same play but built in their own fashion within that play. If Star Wars was a Space Opera ( I hate Kill Bill I don't know why, I love Pulp Fiction a lot though) then shouldn't remakes be made so that the audience can enjoy it one more time?

Dear Mr. Lucas,

You, are a fucking genius. Please, remake 4-6. Use the suggestions from the millions of Star Wars fans and I guarantee you have a major box office that would give you BILLIONS of dollars, BIGGER than the stupid Titanic movie. We LOVE Star Wars, we do, VERY MUCH. Please Mr. Lucas, if only we could all parade in front of your office/house and show how much we all will support a Star Wars remake.

Yours sincerely,

Liyana T.

Racism again

2008-01-09T22:17:00.000-08:00

I was reading around and I came across a very interesting issue which has not been resolved. I am sure the world is still reeling over the death of Benazir Bhutto, corrupt or not, it at least serves as proof that Muslims in general are not the enemies of whatever entity. It just so happens that some Muslims believe that they should go with terrorism, albeit how stupid they seem that is their business. Some Christian communities ask why are not many Muslims protesting against this? I protest this all the time, many authors have protested against terrorism, racism, prejudice, sexism. But these are after all voices in the dark compared to the higher stronger voices of hatred that are prevalent within the society of man. I wonder why weren't there many Christians protesting and helping the Irish Protestants a few years back? Instead the American government actually supported Northern Ireland's sanctions. Well, that is your issue to contend. Back to the racism that I wanted to talk about.

I read a couple few backdated newspapers and was quite surprised that the racism in South Africa is still largely prevalent. I did a paper on Malaysian racism but it wasn't as seriously as rampant as the one evident in South Africa. My question is this, I have no wonder why both sides of black and white have been swindling and hurting each other. There have been many black people who have attacked white people and white people hurting black people left, right and centre. So I think it should be fair. What I don't think is fair is the fact that both these sides hate each other and in the act of retaliation, serve to continually perpetuate the initial hatred. I lie in a world full of hate I admit. Is there anyway that we can keep racism at bay? The Chinese initially had disregard for any lands besides their own while British forces FORCED their way in to China. And when we read The Great Gatsby, Tom remarks that he all other races should be kept below the white man. I do realize that the form of language I have used is the voice of that the conqueror who hates. But my own mother tongue is the tongue of slaves of those who enslaved others and have no regards for its actions. Where am I left then? Except to use this language because this is the one I am most comfortable with and the easiest to reach those who believe in the same things that I do. It seems, both sides of the coin, both revolution and the given can bring no benefit. To fight would mean the death of many, and to lie low, a slow death. How can we fight racism then? I shake my head because as yet I do not have the solution. Liberte`, equalite`, fraternite`

The incentive of religion

2008-01-04T18:51:00.000-08:00

Has anybody of a right mind realized that religion is a great incentive for men but not for women? Let's take Christianity for example, do you realize that women are born into this world tainted with sin? Maybe that is why I never made that cross towards Christianity, because God sure knows if I did, automatically I'd be paying for the sins of Eve. And for the other start I think Islamic rationality has been perpetrated by Christian theology and St. Augustine, so much so that it's beginning to sound a bit like Jahiliyyah. So much, that it seems having a female child is a burden than a blessing. How many Islamic theologists expound it like so? Even Imam Al Ghazali was not lost from the raptures when he mentioned women are like animals shrouded with the face of humanity so as men could copulate with them. Let me explain to you, I was born into this world without a choice. I was not given that choice to become male or female. Why are certain things so-called 'forbidden' for me, but allright for men? I did not make this choice, God chose it for me. Why are you treating my sex like animals? Answer me, why am I subjected into this second gender slavery? I eat, I cry, I feel pain and I also have joy. Then why am I lesser than a human being?? Why are men the highest of the high? I thought God was fair, but maybe God is fair that is why He has placed me among you idiots. You use God as a tool inciting him to bring fear as if he is always at your side. Have you not thought for once, that He is my God too? I'm fucking pissed. Anyway, I want a potluck party next week, be warned girls

The science of economics

2007-12-29T09:32:00.000-08:00

Okay, once in a while I like to dabble with economics, and especially I have been reading Freakonomics. But more especially so, I did a course on economy and society which I like to add, has been beneficial despite my current C results (wah3!). Often I would read about the economy as a glimpse, like that great article about the Goldilocks economy between the US, the UK and China (which by the way made me seriously think about buying property in London...more expensive rentals than Brunei I suppose and I found a nice little house in West London costs as much as my house here. pipe dream probably). Now, as you may have heard, the Great British Pound Sterling has dropped from its steely 1 pound = to 3 $Singaporean/Bruneian Dollars to a mere 1 pound = 2.80 $Singaporean/Bruneian. Now I don't have to add that this is a crucial factor for most people what with I hear UKers running to and fro to buy bohemian houses in Bulgaria (I don't know why though cos I'm not British). I know I read haphazardly and I don't necessarily have read the most utterly recent books because I don't have the worry of foreigners and white Americans because they have read the reviews and whatnot. I am simply in a blissful bubble of utter ignorance due to the fact that nobody I know reads regularly so I wouldn't at any rate be caught knowing the surprise intended for me by the book. So, quite happy here. Now, I know it seems a bit sociological with Levitt but of course as an economist (but, ofcourse~~) he ignores many factors whilst measuring his data concerning unwanted children often would become criminals. It is a fact. But it isn't necessarily the truth. He admits this because he made a comparison between a black economist who has 'made' it and a crazy Unabomber with high I.Q. Another one of his quotes that I think is extremely a blunder was that he said something about I.Q. being strongly hereditary. Hereditary in which factor? Is it nutrition that presupposes I.Q.? I know for a fact that despite I was smoking whilst being pregnant (not much, mind you) all of my children are above the average birthweight for an Asian child, almost to the average of a white child but it could be that nowadays Asian children have the same bodies and heights as Caucasian children (given this is also true because of food globalization impacts). No longer do Asian children depend on rice and noodles which actually has been called inferior to millet, oats and wheat, a Caucasian staple. My children themselves eat both rice and bread daily. He also pointed out about youth pregnancy and young mothers resulting in criminal children. I did have my daughter when I was 19, and thankfully unlike most people which I can understand, can afford expensive things for my children. It could also be the fact that I am an exception to the norm because a) I am from a middle class family and b) my husband makes 40,000 a year and c) I have inherited money at some unknown level (Gifts, a house). While the rest of youth pregnancies results from an unwanted union whereas mine was a wanted union. It is also a known fact that when couples establish themselves at an earlier level over the fact that many people are still beginning their careers and jobs and therefore have lower pay than those at the other end of seniority. The other factor then is that they often come from working class families. So what? Lesser knowledge of birth control? I don't want to say that I.Q. is hereditary, many known child prodigies have sprung out of single mothers and one of them became the president of the United States (doesn't make him smart though), Bill Clinton. They are not exception to the norms, norms are after all a copycat of each other. What these women are able to do however is that they are opposite to the norms themselves initially. As Levitt would point it out which he failed to do, these are 'indicators' of the social problem NOT the cause of it. Many parts of the world do practice youth marriages and childbirth and many actually thrive, why? It's the cultural condition of the situation. As a sociologist and an anthropologist, the social situation of America makes it difficult for a single mother to survive because they are on their own. This is unlike Asian societies where family is everything. The social network of family protects the financial institution therefore, more family control, less spending more money pooling and no wastage. Food is after all, after a couple of days would become bland and thrown away. In a household like mine where there are many teenagers (3) and children (3) and adults (5) it constitutes no waste. Everyone would eat it, leftovers are gone in a matter of minutes. And another imperative question what is I.Q. anyway? I've taken an I.Q. test and I got a high intelligence score but that only indicated that I was well versed with English that I knew these answers. One of the questions was I think concerning Albert Einstein and his E=mc2. Now my question is this, is a person who have been educated in a village setting concerning very important matters such as the growing of rice and the technique of irrigation, something Western academics know very little about is lesser intelligent than I am? But what of Albert Einstein, I will never use E=mc2, for one thing it isn't anymore valid and for another why would I want to ponder on the theory of relativity in application of my daily life? I have never used it past my physics class back in HighSchool and that was a very long time ago (6-7 years ago). But the growing of rice and irrigation is an important factor in life, many of the rice grown would be sold overseas supporting the livelihood of many a people. The quality of intelligence does not support the quantity of life. I.Q. is more likely Western knowledge versus Practical knowledge. Most people who are simple and are not academically well tuitioned are very street smart. They know the art of living and they have ground it to a T. They have limited resources and yet they make the most of it, and most of all they never need to be pained and concerned with other issues outside of their vernacular sphere. They know they will never be wealthy, but this does not mean they are not content. It also does not mean that the Western lifestyle is easily equatable with a DESIRED lifestyle. Most people assume that the highest of the high Western lifestyle is the most desirable most sought for lifestyle. Although in some cases this is true, but then again its because people are taught that they are true. There are still many wise hunters and gatherers out there who do not make the decision and leap towards wanting to become like the West as shown by the rich Kayapo. Western knowledge has been utilized but not necessarily wanted. Sure, there were many loopholes in Freakonomics, that's why they're economists and we're anthropologists and sociologists.

Crime Novels

2007-12-22T23:58:00.000-08:00

What with all the children and everything and needing at least a dozen eyes to keep an eye on them, I have made it through and this is my list for the few days I have been reading them around. 1) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Illustrated Collection of Sherlock Holmes (included Hound ofthe Baskervills and Sign of Four) 2) Agatha Christie - And then There Were None 3) Agatha Christie - Clocks (Hercule Poirot) 4) Patrick Neate - City of Tiny Lights. Ok they're not in order of the best to worst but it is a fantastic comparison between 3 different generations of thriller writers. One thing for sure, all were English so I suppose the English authors have an aptitude for crime novels much because Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had started it, and I very much applaud them for that. This could include, Roald Dahl's more morbid collection of horror stories
.Allright, I though Clocks was far better than And Then There Were None, Clocks being one of her more uncelebrated books while And Then There Were None has managed to single its way out into video games and TV movies. Hercule Poirot in this imagery was special, for one thing, Poirot was not around most of the time, in fact he played a minor character while the other two, Hardcastle and Lamb played the major parts. Ironically, it was frankly reminiscent of a book I read a few months back, Jo Nesbo's The Devil's Star, surprisingly. Or maybe not so surprisingly considering that many crime novelists take their cue from old novelists. I actually appreciated the fact that Christie made Poirot as if on his last notes, using patterns of old authors to solve new crimes, and it made it enough realistic as soon as he quotes a song from Lewis Caroll's Through The Looking Glass (Alice in Wonderland for you and me) and citing several patterns in crime novels obvious to the untrained eye blablabla. I suppose characters like Poirot then I parallel with the likes of Patrick Neate's Tommy Akhtar are both private investigators. Both have born the brunt of a life that cannot surprise them anymore. Poirot as an ex Belgian copper and Tommy as an ex mujahideen who has been in a pointless war. What strikes me as wonderful though is that Neate was able to bring in fresh air towards something that has gone stale. I congratulate you there Neate, you're not Muslim but you make the experience seem so real. As if such a character actually exists...knowing authors, he probably does. A shady Ugandan-Indian Paki (Hahaha) I mean it was brilliant. It was easier for them because they were outside the brunt of the law, they weren't coppers. Coppers have to work inside the mainframe of institution. Private eyes on the other hand don't. That is why the successful character in Jo Nesbo's the Devil's Star, although was a cop but a shady one at that, used to breaking rules left,right and centre. And then to the original Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Although I have to admit that his formula seems to be repetetive, but him as like Poirot are both vain people and I suppose Poirot actually identified himself better with Watson, image I suppose. I do reckon one thing though, if anyone was murdered right here in Brunei and had the superior knowledge of CSI as well as the rest of the crime novels, they could get away scot free. Just like that Indian doctor who was killed a few years back in the 90s by some foolish petty thief in Kiarong. I think it's probably an accident because frankly, Malay people although quite stupid at the most...are very soft-hearted people.. Not as hard-hearted as the rest of the people in this world. We haven't seen much suffering in this world and quite frankly often it is a suffering made out of our own hands. And even then not as purely pathetic and depressing as in the rest of the world. World War? Nothing much, a bunch of Chinese people getting killed by the Japs. Chinese people on the other hand have that feeling, I don't know why, somehow they have felt more of the brunt than we have and I'm not quite sure why. There have been horrible accidents involving Malay people but honestly it doesn't haunt the Malay psyche, it's probably due to the fact to Malay axioms of not mourning the dead, and letting go with a normal philosophy of accepting everything be it cruel or kind. We call it the Qadha and Qadar. Ironically, although it exists in most Muslim societies, only this part of the Malay world has taken that adage seriously. Awful world? Accept. Bad parents? Accept. Raped? Marry the rapist. Other people in the other parts of the world are unlike that, they don't accept, bad things happen they must change it to become better. I'm not sure why, is it because it's rooted? Well, I for one isn't like that. Probably, it is a newer generation kind of thing.It's got much to do with the wars in Tommy Akhtar's world, in Hercule Poirot's pattern synthesis. In the colonial world lived by Sherlock Holmes and Watson in the Sign of Four. It also exists in the immigrant prejudice in Nesbo's world as well. People have evolved to the extent that they are free. But to put it right, Man is not cursed to be free as said by the French philosopher (can't put out his name right now, can't remember it). Man is a product of his society. How can he be free? Often if he is, like Tommy Akhtar, even he himself is bound to social stigma rules of operation.

The Madness of Religion

2007-12-18T07:53:00.000-08:00

Don't get me wrong. I'm a religious person myself. And awful awful, I am a Muslim and yes, I do believe in a God. But it seems as if lately everyone has gone mad? Not just Muslims, Christians and Jews. Have you people gone insane? What is all this about the Imam Mahdi similar to the AntiChrist, a Jewish Messiah, Jesus will come down announce the end of time. History has always been bloody and it always will. We have speculated too much on something we do not know. And often religions have always been as one very intelligent lecturer put it, a victim of history. And yes, all these three Abrahamic faiths have been the victim of history and all three are a bit crazy in the brain. Why am I not allowed to criticize my own religion? I love God, it sounds crazy but I do. Why? Because I need Him. He keeps me sane in an insane world and as crazy as it may sound but often when I pray for a solution he gives it to me. A lot of people have accused God to be missing, I don't care if you don't believe in God, I don't believe people who don't believe in God will go to hell, it sounds too ridiculous to me. Like when someone says the people who are hunters and gatherers have no religion and therefore they will go to hell - I DISAGREE strongly. So if they are not aware they should be punished? The fuck is wrong witchu? Where's your ijtihad? Your common sense? What I am sorry to see is all these three faiths are head on tails hating one another. That's sad. What's sad is they don't care and no matter how much I say this, no matter how much I preach and preach of why those who are suffering need too be helped. It's like a lost cause, all of you have turned deaf on me. It's like when my friends think that all Jews will go to hell, what do you think Jesus is made out of? Mediterranean Asian? And all Jews thinking that they are the Chosen People, what about us, are we all going to hell because I checked I'm not Jewish. And what of Christians who think that babies who are not baptized will end up in limbo? You do not have the choice of life. None of us do. We are born not understanding this world, slowly as we grow those who have lived before us tell us how this world works. We do not have a choice on the colour of our skin. We do not have a choice on how much money we have. Nor do we have the choice to be born of what gender, what sexual preferences we should have. None of these are our choices, they are given to us. Often, society shapes us into a mold that they think is the right mold. Sometimes, these molds are wrong and should not be taken so seriously. I am a mother, I wonder why people have lost that feeling of holding a newborn child in their arms and realize that these children have no choice as to what happens to them. They are new, clean white sheets from heaven who do not understand please remember that the key of religion is compassion, love.

Sex and Circumcision

2007-12-17T13:45:00.001-08:00

Woohoo! Got a great topic for you boys and girls today. I've had enough being told left, right and center by the media how circumcision is BAAD for you. I was circumcised. But female circumcision for girls is more of a symbolic act, and a very painless tiny amount was taken off. Do I have bad sex than uncircumcised girls? as far as I'm concerned, I don't think so...I do have wonderful sex. I rarely need to fake it and my husband was not medically circumcised but actually kampong (village) circumcised, no anaesthesia, so also I think lesser foreskin is removed than most people. I've never had sex with an uncircumcized person so I don't know if its nice or not, I know a guy told me once he liked uncircumcized girls' pussy flaps, you know the one that hangs like a tongue. So I'm not sure. Personally, I liked that I was circumcized, its aesthetic, for me. Don't tell me the aesthetic is homogenous, for example, a lot of girls like Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt or Patrick Dempsey. I don't. Are you gonna force me to like Patrick Dempsey? Personally, I also liked my husband is circumcized and he cums, a LOT, so no problem there, he's 30 by the way, although I've heard men around their mid-twenties are beginning to feel as if their moms have taken away their plaything and they're not happy that its gone. I know for sure that some circumcision practices for women especially in Ethiopia are very dangerous and extreme, removing the labia altogether. Now that's crazy. I do think that it was developed as a method of child control, lesser sensitivity if the argument is true does involve lesser sex = lesser children. So I think that pre-modern societies use it as a form of birth control. Also, the guy who mentioned that he re-grew his penis said that he could achieve orgasm now as soon as you know, missionary position. Could it be, that men are circumcized so that they could satisfy us women more? Cos, men are lazy fuckers and I hear all the time on American TV that their women often fake their orgasms and that sex is not pleasurable for them. I'm wondering have they y'know use traditional aphrodisiacs that I have mentioned? Like Kacip Fatimah for women and Maa'jun for men? There's a reason we Malays and Indonesians use em you know. I know for a fact that old ladies here do get 'somethin somethin' with their male partners too. Ofcourse as women have children their vaginas become more distended making sex unenjoyable as well as having a dry vagina, although probably its because I depend on these herbs that rarely my vagina is dry during sex, except maybe he was turning me off? My husband has no trouble cumming as is most of my male friends and family members tell me too, at its quickest, around 10-20 minutes of sexual intercourse and at its longest probably 30-50 minutes or an hour of sex. Repeated sex is otherwise. Is that bad? I mean how quick do you want it to be? Cos honestly as a woman, I need to reach an orgasm around 10-20 minutes, at worst and if he's being good, well even a minute I could cum, its happened, it has happened that I get twice in a row. Damn, I'm lucky to be a girl. Whatever it is, it could be that circumcision works for you, or not. Some men feel as if that they are sexually inadequate because they are not circumcised and cannot perform. Some men are circumcised and think the same way too. I tell you what boys, it all sounds like 'he's got a better pecker than me! he's having better sex!' do not covet your neighbour kind of thing. If you are circumcized and do regret it, I suggest finding ways that makes your sex life better, the other if you are not circumcized, do the same thing, find ways to make it better. Now they wanna sue us parents just because we want to circumcize our kids? WTF?! You're a bad parent if you do this, you're a bad parent if you do that. For white people, you don't beat your kids well that's fine with me, but that is how I handle my kids. I don't hurt them but enough to scare them. For Fuck's sake I don't judge you for not spanking your kids, don't judge me because I do. It's the war of the cultures and everyday in anthropology this remains the case in point. Its all about feeling ethnocentric. What's right? What's wrong? Is there a universal right? Is there a universal wrong? There isn't and Russell Peters is a great example to show how true that could be.

The Tan

2007-12-16T23:12:00.000-08:00

White people go crazy for our skin. True true, they wouldn't be bothered to tan themselves so much and yet, our culture drives women to make themselves fucking white. White is the worshipped colour. Now, I'm bored with all this white talk. White people are nice, but they're too nice, not enough passion, not enough anger. They can be mean too when they're in the KKK. But, aside from the racism. I want to celebrate black and brown. No WHITE. Tired of half white people,No, I'm not being racist okay, I was also descended from white, so NO I'm not being racist. Half black, half white people are admittedly very very yummy. Like Julian Marley, who's the son of the late Bob Marley and Lucy Pound. Actually, a little too white for me but what the heck. I noticed though...I often don't go for white people? Am I racist? Sexually? I was reading Catherine Alliott's The Old Girl Network. I was laughing like mad because she was so honest, just as her character Polly rejects a Chinese man earlier in the story...she was playing a mind game with herself who she would sleep while in the tube and said he was a little too Chinesey...and she wasn't being racist, she was being a 'Toothist!' cos apparently he's got buck teeth. I couldn't help but remember that I liked that Japanese cook Tanaka and my husband who's actually a Malay...both parents, don't be mistaken for his face almost all Bruneian Malays look like that we really look like Chinese people I don't know why (or Arabic, or Indian, the truth is most of us are mixed...we just rarely mention it for the sake of MIB). Good God, I'm still hungover that frickin cook, I wonder why... as Amy Winehouse puts it, 'I'm not cheating cos you were always on my mind..yeah he looked like you, but I heard love is blind'. Well, honestly I wouldn't care if my husband has a million ladies if I just have that one cook :) . Where was I? Oh yeah white men...actually no, I'm not racist. There is this white older man that sometimes I slip into daydreams...honestly, if he was a little younger and we were both single...I would. So, no I don't think I'm racist I think I look for certain things in some people that signal their attractiveness to me. How can people be racist? Often sometimes there is a little something something that cross racially have, certain type of image everyone can fit into, eyes, nose, missing teeth (who knows!), obesity, slimness, hair, body, skills, intellect, humour. Something we're looking for in love. It's definitely not the skin, although sometimes it is about the skin but really? If people are NATURALLY racist, how is it I find something attractive about someone regardless of their skin colour? Originally, well...I like well-endowed men. And Malay men, because they are as one friend of mine actually contemptuously puts it, of black origin, often they are very well endowed. Nice stick you got there. And Sinitic men...well I've seen enough porn to know and Japanese women who tell, that it's kinda tiny although I'm sure it's powerful considering they managed like a billion people. And then I met this prostitute (fucking hell where do I get these people?!) she told me white men's dicks are soft although this is just a general picture, I'm very sure there are many who are opposite this view. But ladies, really? One friend told me, sometimes it's not how big it is, its how they use it. Which is true, and to help this course (because all men are stupid and want their cocks to be the biggest in the world) I advise you ladies to pick up some Indonesian Jamu, its herbs made into a pill to help with the vagina contracting, it's not to help the men silly girl, its for you. I use Mimi Lan Mintuno but there are others as well from Sariayu like Rapet Anak Dara I think? The tighter it is, the more sensitivity you feel down there and the more orgasms you get. I use it often so I can cum like crazy :) Plus exercise those kegel muscles MOVE it. Your vagina is superior to the male penis, SUPERIOR wayyy. It can push children out, it can withstand blows from a penis (yeah right, as if its that great), some girl asked me once...she said isn't it that old ladies can't have sex anymore? Ridiculous I say, it's men who can't have sex. We can have sex ANYTIME. The reason I think why many women reject their spouses as they age is because the sex is probably frustrating, NOT fun. Boring. Oh God...my dichotomy is coming again. I hate men LOL. Sometimes I wish I was a lesbian, too late. Lesbians, run you are probably having the best sex in the whole wide world...I wonder do gay men have as much fun as lesbians? Looks like they're having fun though. Heterosexual sex will never reach the heights of homosexual sex. It occurred to me, is it because gay people are more honest than straight people about sex is that why they get the better end of the stick? And yeah I do daydream about sex a lot, I swear I was supposed to be born a gay man.

The truth

2007-12-16T09:45:00.000-08:00

The truth is nothing is MOVING. People are behaving well because Christmas is coming up and nobody wants to spend time in jail. By the way I was admiring a certain blog was called, The Assimilated Negro. Love it, this guy lives in NY and he's black well let him do the story talking. I think his blog is edging on artistic. I love this guy, if you haven't read him, you should, you're almost sinning not to read him. Anyway, back to reality, by the way I lost that fucking metal mole. Just so you know,I'm not planning to pierce myself anytime soon, so prolly gonna do that...when I feel like it. Slowly weaning Edward off the breast so mummy can go clubbing when she gets to Miri. Good God, I'm reliving those days when we took Edward to the Niah caves, This is just a photo of Edward and my husband at the mouth of the caves. Funny, I don't talk about it that often, it was fucking freaky. I'm thinking how am I supposed to do anthropological work like this? Although my husband said I easily chatted up the Iban women, there's hope for me yet. I can't wait to go clubbing actually, haven't done it in years so I'm crossing my fingers and hoping its nice. Maybe next year will be a year for travelling. I feel like it, I want to travel all over the place. Today is what, December the 17th, 2007. It's been a year since my last child and I'm only 22, and I can't have anymore children. It's both good and bad for me. I wanna smack my husband's bum, maybe both of us should get some exercise or something. Something. Ella starts school next year, handles the pc very well. Ezra seems to have a penchant for cooking and food (?). Edward well, he won't walk. I haven't done anything of note except getting a swiss full body massage from a Filipino lady, if you subscribe to Fifi's blog, she was in the next room while I screamed from pain. What else should I tie? Good books read this year especially Reza Aslan's No God but God. Loved Mariam's course on Political Sociology, comparative law. Although at times I admit it was a bit dry, but sometimes the realm of ideas is often dry. I think I find myself sinking into Islam a little too much this semester, what with Iik's class and Mariam's class. Next year will be more. I think the holidays were pretty short, but I don't think I can stand it too long either, it was getting too boring. I hope I got some As and Bs this semester...I admit I studied the night before the exam, and sometimes I don't know what the hell I'm talking about and often I just use whatever example I really2 know and recycle it...like five folds. I hope to God (I do believe in a God..Well!) that next year he will pour me the good happiness he has poured on to me this year. Sometimes, life feels its getting harder and harder every year. But sometimes, it feels fucking damn good.

Happy New Year, Merry Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukah, Selamat Tahun Baru, Moga Dirahmati Oleh Tuhan, and enjoy.

Yours with love,
xoxo

Liyana T

The Whopee Effect

2007-12-15T07:34:00.000-08:00

A thought has occurred to me, had to write it down. I know it sounds lame, its one of those if men can do it well women can do it to. Frankly, women can do a lot of things men can do, in fact almost everything while men cannot do one thing that we all can do, and what's fun is, we can do it without a guy! Except his sperm of course. Unless we've found a way to encode DNA settings and impregnate an ovum without a man. Kind of reminds me of Malaysia's issue concerning single women who are adopting children avoiding all the process of marriage and childbearing, the whole of Malaysia's so-called 'Ultra-religious' were against the idea saying that it would be detrimental to the child. The child who was initially abandoned on the side of the road only to be left in orphanages without single caring love of a mother? Sometimes it makes me angry that religious people act so called religious but they forget the essence of religion, let me repeat this for you you idiots, LOVE, CARE, DEVOTION and KINDNESS. That is the essence of Islamic religion or have you fat asses forgotten and just sat down due to the fact that your asses are so fully stuffed with dirty money. For more references on how fricking angry I was on Malaysia's so-called women's protection refer to the archives, it pissed me to the high heavens. Silly girls, FIGHT BACK, stop criticizing other women, you are all being divided like a butcher divides his lambs so that they don't rampage together.

Okay, getting carried away. I was thinking about men again. Gosh, such beautiful sexual objects. Now, girls listen to me carefully. Men, get weak knees thinking about other beautiful women, now ladies just think about all the beautiful men, imagine their beautiful thighs and their nice lovely chests and arms. Then look at your husband/boyfriend/fuck buddy/crush and compare the two. How sad is it that they're ugly compared to the beautiful men on display; please concentrate. Instead of men treating women as sexual objects, women should start thinking of men as sexual objects. In a book written by Fatima Mernissi concerning the hijab of women, Men, need to be 'protected' from their vice that is why women are covered from head to toe. The question is, if men are the ones who need to be 'protected' as Mernissi argues, why shouldn't we hijab men? Instead of them grabbing us, why can't we grab them? Often even in the West, scantily clad ladies going to the bars and pubs for a great night out would always find themselves being grabbed by drunken boys and men. Next time, grab them. See their reaction. GRAB them. Grab hard by the way, they like it that way especially on the balls, squeeze tight, don't let go. If the effect is similar to a human being being roasted on a spit of fire, keep squeezing. Men are taught to be victims of their sexual desire, I ask then why aren't women raised to become victims of their sexual desire? and b) why does a can of nasty always spill when it comes to sexually open ladies? and thirdly, society DOES encourage women to become shy, quiet, traditional, virgins, docile and domestic. I'm wondering if women act opposite of these expectations, would that be really bad? The truth is, women can have all of these things if only, they are strong enough in their convictions concerning it. I remember a young man telling me, the reason why he was dating a 13 year old (he was 16) was because he wanted to catch them young and 'train' them so that they would be 'merati', or understand, a term of understand used for animals, a trained cat 'merati' to poop in the special litter bin and a 'merati' woman is trained to be instructed. What of he? I said to him, 'well, that sounds awful, what do you think she is, an animal?' then he goes on to say ' Bini-bini ani, mun inda diajar awal2 babal, nda merati gauk,' 'females, if not taught from the beginning, will be stupid, don't understand anything, wild.', kind of like me, a 'wild' person, dirty and blablabla. When I explained to him several things he just kept quiet and shrugged. Well, that is the Malay Male attitude. Not all Malay men, just generic behaviour among their clan of men. Men are then encouraged to become wild, free and roam, while women are taught to be domestic and docile. The truth is when both have reached their forties and fifties they have become equals, both men and women. Increasingly, the woman nags and hates her husband while the husband just walks off, doing something else. A pattern so common in Malay households that my parents themselves developed prior to their divorce. Now, I don't think divorce is a bad thing. It's okay, a part of life cycle one must accept. It is this behaviour from both men and women initially even in the West that has created the separation of men and women. Why can't we learn from the Gerai? The Gerai instead of believing men and women are completely at odds, believe that men and women are complimentary towards each other. In their society some men, to pacify their crying babies would offer their nipples to be suckled on, they also have an incidence of male breastfeeding, although not as much as female breastfeeding. Is it so wrong that people can cross boundaries? Or have we become so completely foolish that we cannot see it for ourselves?

The Mating Ritual (II)

2007-12-14T22:23:00.000-08:00

I had some guests over so I had to stop, went out and bought a lovely knife which accidentally I slit my finger open with because I thought it would act the same way as my other blunt knives. No, not suicidal, just chopping onions, big red indian onions.

Where was I? I was talking about sex and the mating ritual. The limit of property actually goes further than that. Mercantile societies such as the Indian and the Chinese or may I add, the Arab. Are more apt at building property and capital. As I said, they limited property didn't I? Well according to Marx, property build up capital is one of the reasons why some people are continuously rich and some continuously poor. Consider the foods that rich people eat, foie gras bla bla bla, grapes whatnot, consider what poor people eat, some foods are known to build children's brains in pregnant mothers. Take Vandana Shiva, this was her line of argument, take an undernourished girl who will become a mother, during pregnancy she was also undernourished and the child is born undernourished thus affecting the child's intelligence. Isn't it that intelligence perpetuates itself line after line as well as stupidity and poverty? Can you see how unfair the world is to begin with? But sometimes miracles do exist, poverty is a two way street that one cannot fathom even when Shiva has argued. The ascetic is wise and does not eat, what is it then that pushes humanity to become what it is? Its desire. Simple and plain desire. The desire to become poor will be rewarded as the desire will become rich, either way when an individual has seen the key that they can remain a certain way it will either perpetuate itself or remain only at that point. We are locked within a society filled with desire and this desire culminates itself in the mating ritual. Sex is always and often between two people of the same class and race and when these two intersect and cross class cross race sex is performed it is insinuated as rape. We fall in love with our own class who identifies with what we identify with, rarely do two different classes fall in love with each other, they are an anomaly that are represented in stories such as the Great Gatsby and Antara Dua Darjat. Love like that don't work. Like the rich beautiful middle class girl would fall in love with the hick who wants to grow up to be a common policeman? They won't and it won't happen, if they do intend to marry it would end with divorce because both are within a social standing that are in opposite forms with each other. Let's talk sex and the city, Miranda and Steve broke up because Steve was JUST a bartender, the social roles cannot connect therefore it ended. But as soon as Steve stops becoming JUST a bartender and opens his own bar he stops becoming the working class and as a capital owner, a bourgeoisie. Hence, Miranda's falling back in love with him and ends up marrying him, now their social standing does not differ they are both middle class people. It pops up in fairy stories as well mind you, Cinderella was a fallen bourgeoisie with her stepmother and stepsisters disguising the fact that she is as well, middle class. Fairy stories are littered with this, why the fuck is it necessary that a prince can only marry a princess? Or a girl who is disguised as being so poor but has come from a rich lineage. It's like the Da Vinci Code all over again, I hate that book. Absolutely positively hate the prose, although he does make a point and put it in a thriller. Jesus was a carpenter who was born from a lineage of Kings. Kinda reminds me of Kevin Smith's Dogma and Chris Rock was the black half-brother of Jesus. That was funny, what if Jesus was black? Or mediterranean, or Good God NO, Jewish :) . Oh back to the mating ritual, maybe its time to consider that cross-cultural cross-class marriages SHOULD take place and aside from the fact that both are between poverty and wealth, hey wealth isn't everything and if you want wealth why can't you do it yourself?

The Mating Ritual

2007-12-14T01:45:00.000-08:00

In this world of unmitigated sex, and obviously one cannot run away from sex anyway. And I ended up talking about it with a good friend of mine, she says she doesn't enjoy sex sometimes with her paramour. Whatever it is, I could elicit that yes, sex is overrated especially in pornography. Seriously, nobody has tits like that and nobody has dicks like that, it just doesn't make any sense. I could be a feature of lampooning, after all anime has been gone on and on with teenagers buying images of large breasted girls and something about Yayoi sex? Gay sex with one of the partners looking like some sort of hot animal while the other a male but evidently with strong female features. I know, well the thing is most young women who don't fit into the mold of large breasted girls or extremely feminine girls for that matter always define themselves as being that mold of overly feminine looking man. Well, its not surprising considering a lot of women when they were younger often opt for men who look like Tom Cruise or Leonardo DiCaprio, the choice remains women often look for softer features when opting sexual choice and mating. I know its ugly that I boil down the whole issue of sex into a sort of mating ritual. But it is, isn't it? The dance of emotions during our prime begins with searching for potential partners who would become good agents for parenthood, and at least ample time for the child to grow up and soon multiply themselves in turn. Monogamy as I see it, (against those idiotic bio-sociologists) is just a trained social behaviour, to limit and control the spread of property. One wife will definitely guarantee only the right of one lineage of offspring. But what happens with two, three or four wives like in Muslim communities? Would that not limit the spread of wealth? Patrilineal societies that avoid altogether and even if they do practice polygamous marriages like the Chinese often are monogamous or hierarchical therefore a distinct differentiation of who gets what. It would often fall then that Islamic marriages are actually more egalitarian, despite what one may hear. If for example, there are four women to contend with, how can the will of one man defeat that of four women? For the love of God, if he beats one wife, they can always unite and beat him up in return, there's nothing in Islamic law that prohibits a woman from hitting their husbands, au contraire. See, ladies, do you get what I mean? There are always ways for women to get around the situation we should just start thinking like men just as Rosseau advised. Start raising girls like men and they will have less power over us. Instead, women have to fall into a series of deceit and deception. I often do give a little white lie to my husband often, actually I would then I would tell the truth. I'm not really a good liar. Where was I? I was talking about sex, wasn't I? Well...I'll leave that to part 2, I have some guests

The dialectic of sex

2007-12-13T09:40:00.000-08:00

I know, sounding off feminist now. Well, luckily one of the jobs I was doing involved reading up on Margaret Fuller and honestly, I was surprised at how interesting that got. Oh by the way I also read up on two literary novels which I never had the chance to get around to, the all American classics, the Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird. I know, actually I'm not a big fan of American literature, its a bit too southern for me, or am I just crazy? It was when I was pregnant with Ezra and I was reading on John Steinbeck, its just that the Southern heat its almost I could feel it the hot air breeze and the racism I could taste it. Now getting back to Harper Lee and F.Scott Fitzgerald. I actually was very angry when I finished reading the Great Gatsbv, how was it possible that Fitzgerald could create a character so pathetic in Gatsby that your heart could almost fall apart remembering his fate. I know it was something similar to an old P.Ramlee movie, Antara Dua Darjat between the rich and the poor but who would have thought that Gatsby's wealth didn't become an equalizer, while Daisy, well, I suppose I can understand her...somewhat. Tom was her confidante, regardless if he had another woman, they were the same class, the same social status whereas Gatsby, he was noveau riche. To Kill A Mockingbird on the other hand was satisfying but not as satisfying as Uncle Tom's Cabin. Ironically, written by a Quaker woman. Reminded me of how was it that Charlotte Bronte an isolated woman was able to write Wuthering Heights. Anyway those two things out of the way let me get back to Margaret Fuller. Whilst reading on Fuller and her wonderful wonderful prose, I cannot help but think while Fuller was on her topmost breath screaming for women, Candace Bushnell in her Sex and the City book was the product of that freedom. When will women be satisfied? (Hehehe making it sound like Carrie Bradshaw now) Women sucked back then and they sucked now. Maybe, its because - listen to this, WE WOMEN ARE SELF-CRITICAL. have you ever heard of a man who is self-critical? ALL MEN are VAIN. Well, except men who are like women. But that is the sad truth, women are foolish because they criticize themselves too much while men fucking foolish because they don't. Then there's Gertrude Stein with Alice Toklas. Stein herself never promoted equality of the sexes for women. A quote was attributed to her, that even if women were given the freedom to do whatever they liked, they would still remain oppressed slaves of men. Viva La Femme.

stormy weather

2007-12-12T05:43:00.000-08:00

I'm getting the love bug. My sister says I get it very frequently. Often I would fantasize for hours while listening to Billie Holiday. The thing is, I love it, I obsess about love, as strange as that sounds I actually dislike any representations of love on a more 'pop' level, and yet I desire love very much? Or maybe I desire lust :)

Aside from those feelings of anxiety, recently Bali and islanders of the Trobriands and Papua New Guinea have launched an extensive effort to either maintain and conserve the earth's resources and start thinking about climate refugees. Their estimated flood would be in 2070, I would be 85 in 2070. Assuming long lives run in my mother's family albeit the fact that they are all mad. I think obviously Brunei, too will be flooded. Its the smallest island, if Bangkok was to be flooded what more Brunei? Well not the smallest island, Borneo is the second biggest island in the world, but an island nonetheless, we live so close to Huxley's line the deepest line of the oceans. Not oly that as more and more bio-fuel resources are being explored I cannot help but think this transient wealth that is in Brunei will soon be swept away, what's sad is, Bruneians aren't even that rich or still well-informed enough to survive in this harsh world. Too much bumiputera policies like in Malaysia I suppose have left us Malays weak. What are we fit for anyway? None of our race are pioneers, or have made it great to superstardom, the world is still conquered by others who are more capable than us. That being said, I must remember Anthony Burgess when he mentions the 'Malays are a lazy, handsome race.' The next time I'm concerned about is the 'Next Depression.' If the 1920s were anything to go by is that no matter how great something looks, it could crash. It's also the end of the Goldilocks economy for the UK and the US. See, so many problems so little time. And life it seems could be as futile as ever, but man its worth living it.

Love,

Liyana T