Antipriety

Antipriety moving to another location!

2014-01-15T14:42:00.004-05:00

Blogspot is weak. Wordpress is what's up. For the time being (I'm putting AP under massive construction this year in hopes to eventually monetize), here's the new website:

antipriety.wordpress.com

The Discipline of Writing (a poem)

2013-12-29T05:19:00.002-05:00

Leaving Seattle tomorrow. Found this poem I wrote back in 2011 while packing. Enjoy.

###

The Discipline of Writing

by Steven Lo

I woke up the other morning poised to write. (I heard it is in waking up every morning that one becomes a writer.) I didn't get to bed until pretty late, so when the alarm sounded, I was groggier than usual.

But I am a writer, so I woke up anyway. I made a bagel with cream cheese, and honey, and since I was so tired, I made a double-shot latte--I knew I'd need the boost to extract the genius from my fingertips when I'd begin typing.

I started writing the title to my new screenplay. R-E-A-C-H-O-U-T. But my eyes hurt from the glaring screen and I still had sleep in my eyes, so I took a shower. The water hitting my skin helped relieve the hurt from my eyes. "Now I feel refreshed," I said as I dried my face with the towel.

The screensaver was now flashing on my computer. It was a picture of my ex and me. I really miss her. I wish I hadn't seen the picture. Ooh! I thought to myself. Now I can include a relationship about loss and regret in my screenplay,

right after I read old cards and letters she wrote me. This will be gold for the story. So I re-read the letters.

Then I checked the clock. Shit. Astronomy class in an hour and I haven't even studied for the test. So I pulled out my worksheets and browsed over some notes.

Let me tell you. I am really confident in writing this when I say I did really well on the test.

The Problem with Inspiration

2013-12-23T21:40:00.001-05:00

If you know me well then you know I’m all about impulse and inspiration borne from outside catalysts. For example, I hear that it takes 10,000 hours of doing the same craft over and over again to reach mastery. All of a sudden I’m racing home to my computer and punching the keys like a boxer would a bag of dope, and I’m being productive as hell and everything is great and there's that fantastic feeling of unstoppability you only get once every couple years. The problem for me is that all this endures for a few hours only, a day max before the inspirational high depletes and I’m stuck again with the stark reality that the "down" begets, which is that I’m lazy and I don't want to do this anymore. So I pause the thing and either require a new fix to resume it, or I quit completely if the requisite inspiration can't imbue my famished veins.

For discussion's sake, let's say I’m able to acquire the former. That means maybe I stumble upon a moving YouTube video. For example, the "How Bad Do You Want Success" audio paired with various clips of professional athletes in training. Wow, that gets me going. I watch that after waking up in the morning and suddenly I’m this wrecking ball tasked to obliterate every blank page I see. But my eyes are bad and after an hour or so I lose sight of why I was inspired in the first place. Off to the YouTube search bar for my next fix.

But of course I’m busy after the morning passes so whatever it was that impulse propelled me to create gets the broom treatment, and two years fold over before one day I’m opening random files in my Dropbox as a way of procrastinating on my latest project, and that's when I chance upon seeing the from-yore, bastardized document that looks a little too much like Brenda's baby.

By then, I could give a shit less. I’m not gonna revisit this document. Why would I? The original inspiration's already made the obit page. My beliefs have altered so drastically since I first wrote the thing, I don't even believe in the subject matter's stance anymore. I’m juggling 15 other blog ideas and 20 satire pieces, a fiction short and two novels, along with life outside of writing, pondering meaning and purpose while getting upset by things like people using the wrong window wiper speed. With all that, I’m gonna pay mind to a shitty little 100-word document I created two years ago that I forgot about until just now? Fuhgeddaboudit.

And so the vicious cycle is born. I see or hear or discover a thing. I’m inspired. There's an impulse. I create something. I work at it.

Then the inspiration escapes.

The motivation to keep on goes limp.

I stop.

And then I see or hear or discover a new thing.

It's a sick disease, not being able to see a creation through to the finish line. I’m actually fearful right now, wondering if this post will be fated to the same dead end as all my other stillborn projects before it. Because this wasn't premeditated. This post, focusing on impulse and fleeting inspiration, is a product of that very same impulse and fleeting inspiration. At present I’m still inspired; I don't want to let any of the magic go, so I’m still up writing and keeping on, scared shitless that if I put it down for the night, come tomorrow, in some Kafkaesque way, this fucking pen will turn into an anvil harder to pick up than Candace Swanepoel at a billionaires' ball.

But goddamn, I'd like to do it. Get to bed at a reasonable hour, then pick up right where I left off. Right now it's Wednesday December 11, 2:30 a.m. The snow has abated, the ice is freezing over and Wayne, New Jersey is sleeping peacefully. I’m on my Ariel tip, wanting nothing more than to be a part of that world. Close my computer, lay in bed and read Tropic of Capricorn till I doze off for the next eight hours.

###

I ended up doing it. I put the pen down, read Tropic of Capricorn, and then slept… for 50 hours. Not all at once, of course. As I write this now it is Tuesday December 17, which means six days have passed since I touched this document, since inspiration dictated the page margins and I got honest with myself in forefronting a major character hump I can’t get over, that I’m self-debilitating in my ability to finish what I start.

And now it’s Monday, December 23.

Yet another six days have gone by since writing the last paragraph and at this point I’ve got negative gajillion inspiration to persevere with this post. It took all the mental fortitude I could muster just to open the document up and read what I’d so far written. A 100 new ideas are brewing, simmering inside my brain. Even if discipline precludes me from entering the proverbial kitchen so long as I’ve got food on my plate (this post), still I can’t help but get a whiff or 20 of the myriad smells gravitating my way.

That’s not to say they even smell good. They could smell horrible for all I know. These new ideas could all be suffering from that pungent odor you only get by crouching down toward the sidewalk and picking up dog shit. But still I’d be allured for the very simple reason that whatever this new idea, what’s important is that it’s not the one I’m working on now, the one time has gotten me to loathe and despise. Wine with time is still wine; but after just a few days these written words become something sinister: textual mirrors reflecting back a very perverse man who gets his kicks from surfeiting in the fatty, gluttonous swine of laziness and procrastination.

Truth be told, a real man finishes what he starts.

I don’t finish what I start.

I am not a real man.

###

I don’t want to be inspired anymore. I’ve already been down that rabbit hole a million times. I know what’s down there.

No, I just want to be a hard worker. Someone that persists and perseveres and finishes what he starts, shitty little excuses be damned. Starting with this post. And then with every other future post, story, novel, email, Christmas and grocery list I write.

But first I have to clean up the mess I’ve amassed up until now. I have a folder in my Dropbox named “Current Projects” and another called “Limbo.” The former is self-explanatory; the latter is for projects I started but deemed too dumb, too corny, too unsalvageable to round off. What I’m vowing now is to go back and finish every single one of these projects, no matter how long it takes me. I will not start a new project during this time.

My goal is to build and fortify a threshold that will allow me persist in writing while enduring long bouts of being uninspired.

Ultimately this will foment a total personality change, one that begins with hard work and ends with an unyielding confidence to complete any task I start, by whim or by long-thought-out premeditation.

A real man finishes what he starts.

I’m 24 years old right now. It’s time I become a real man.

My birthday and oh, how I love feminism

2013-11-24T15:13:00.002-05:00

I swear I’m not fishing for birthday wishes. Really. That’s not my intent in mentioning that today is, in fact, my birthday. My 24th birthday to be exact. And it’s today. November 25. I won’t even spell it out for you. Or maybe I should in case you don’t know how to spell 25. Twenty-five. That specific day, and it was in November 24 years ago that I changed all of your lives, just by virtue of my being born. Because now you’re all better off having known me personally, or through word-of-mouth, or virtually, through my blog or my weekly anal sex webcam chat. Seriously, I don’t want you to drop me a line that literally takes five seconds of your time that would otherwise be spent scratching your ball sack, or mindlessly taking your phone out of your pocket without external prompting, then hitting the power button on, then off, then immediately putting the phone back in your pocket.

But if you’re one of those people that just has to do it, well, some people are just that steadfast in their convictions and I really don’t know how to sway them otherwise. Because saying those two words—“happy birthday!”—exclamation point or points included, on the corresponding day, which happens just once every 365 day, arouses in me no positive feelings. But if it makes you feel all good and juicy inside, well, I certainly wouldn’t want to impinge on your doing what it takes to feel good and juicy inside. But don’t think for a second that I’m gonna beg you to drop me a line at any of the following:

-via facebook: facebook.com/stevenlo1125

-via email: stevelo1125@gmail.com

-via LINE: sdot25

-via text message or phone call: 0970-374-764

-via Antipriety in the comments section

-via handwritten letter: 一二三亞洲路，台北，台灣 (123 Asian Street, Taipei, Taiwan)

-in person: ShiDa University, MTC building, room 907 from 12:30 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. where I study Chinese everyday in the third seat from the far right

Now, to switch topics…

Life has changed quite a bit and now nothing makes me happier than ~~reading religious and feminists comments on the internet. And not~~ getting birthday wishes.

The person and the persona

2013-10-15T17:02:00.002-04:00

spicy girl only

I'll start with a moment of honesty. Before this I was on Facebook stalking a few unspeakably spicy women I've never met, whom I'm glad I've never met for the simple reason that occupying the same time zone as these goddesses impels in me this irreversible shame and self-loathing; if ever I were to meet them eye-to-eye, then after the week-long anxious shaking and jerking ceased I'd probably climb atop Taipei 101 and dive off the needle's springboard to a chorus of disparaging honks from people in their cars and mopeds who've been momentarily inconvenienced by this very sudden, but profoundly immaterial, splat on the pavement.

In other words, these women are hot. And perusing the mirror for hours on end, I come to the same conclusion every time: I'm not. And that's how I know there's no God.

Anyway, for some odd reason, anytime I think about or see beautiful women, my immediate urge is to write. Not even about them. Just write some shit that will make people say, "This didn't come from a writer. This came from an artist." How lusting for these perfect tens and writing profundity connect, I'm not 100 percent sure, though I do have a theory. I know that based on my various inherited qualities--looks, personality, overall human worth--let's just say the grass is incontrovertibly greener. So writing being art, and a good writer being a good artist, and a good artist being tantalyzingly sexy and desirous in the eyes of beautiful women--that's the link. I mean, it makes sense, right? Supermodels across the world reading these very words right now, overlooking my countless physical deformities, tranced by my ability to write geniusly, getting hot below the waist and fantasizing about being ravaged by a religiously embittered blog writer.

Yeah, makes sense.

###

I concede that the above are not my genuine thoughts. Well, not all of them. It is true that when I chance upon spectacular women, my immediate want is to produce prose that, if comparable, would match the hotness of said provocateurs. The rest, though--my automatically jumping to the conclusion that I need to jump to my life's conclusion, the self-deprecation, etc. etc.--I wrote down because I thought it was funny. The whole thing is an act I stole from my favorite Jews in the whole world: Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David and Woody Allen.

What those three did for me I'll never be able to repay. They taught me about misanthropy, existentialism, nihilism, the absurdity of social decorum, that it's very rarely the "big" events that define life, but more so the itsy bitsy minutiaed jujyfruit added up and collaged, producing a grand and giant mural that, once complete, depicts absolutely nothing. The abovementioned self-deprecation is a part of that. Learning to laugh at and poke fun of yourself, understanding that life is futile and meaningless and don't take yourself so goddamn seriously all the time.

Larry David, self-deprecation embodied

Unfortunately, there was one crucial nugget of information in all this that I failed to pick up until very recently:

Self-deprecation is an art.

Meaning, for years nobody had disabused me of the notion that one can extricate the man from his self-loathing. I thought the two were married, that one simply lived a life putting himself down hundreds of times a day because he was genuine in his belief that deprecating the self is a jolly good time. I thought Seinfeld's misanthropy was genuine life. That LD's self-awareness regarding his desperation with women translated into an actual pick-up attempt. That in his movies WA's signature neurosis was an autobiographical portrayal, that if he got stuck in an elevator in real life in real life his head would actually combust.

So, with all this misinformation, I did would any good student looking to emulate his heroes would do: I too wed the self with the loathing.

For one, I thought it was funny (which it is). But more importantly, I thought that art and life were the same; that, essentially, if you wanted to walk the walk, you had to talk to talk. And so in 2009 I transformed myself into a self-deprecating bastard, the proverbial bass in a cappella groups hitting all the low notes. I began aligning myself with failure because above all I wanted to be funny, and who's ever heard of laughter incited from success? "Be awkward, be incompetent, be ugly" became my mantra. I started purposely making situations uncomfortable for both parties; I embellished social interaction stories so that I came off worser (?) than was actually the case; and of course with women, I felt like I'd grand slammed every time I struck out.

In essence, I was reshaping my personality to match that of an incompetent, unconfident piece of shit.

"Why are you talking like that?" friends would say when hearing me knife myself with insults.

"You don't understand," I'd say back. "It's funny to self-deprecate, and it's funniest if you're aware. Don't worry, I'm okay."

And I was okay. But all this reshaping for the sake of talking the talk to one day produce fine art was gonna eventually catch up to me and do… something. What that something was, I neither knew nor even knew to contemplate. Of course, under the hood of pretense, invisible to the eye was my initial purposeful unconfidence begetting more unconfidence, this time accidental and unanticipated, all the while intractable and supremely lethal in its effects. The piece of shit I was playing for appearances had now submerged itself wholly into me, so that there was no more "playing for appearances." I now 100-percent identified with the moniker preceding it. I was simply Steven Lo, Piece of Shit.

Well, long story short, enduring life when constantly plagued by thoughts of insecurity and inferiority can get tiresome. And hard. And I heard women don't find it that attractive either.

And then one day I learned about this word called "persona." The antithesis to marriage, wedlock, eternal togetherness, all that shit. The ascertaining of which caused me to sink for a moment and berate myself for my immense gullibility and stupidity all these years. I immediately chucked my dated worldview right out the window. (Unfortunately it landed on a biker and he's dead now.)

Let me explain. When Louis CK, Bill Burr, Seinfeld, all those guys do their act on stage, it's just that. An act. They're not really that miserable and misanthropic and douchey in real life. Well… they might be. But not to the extent that their stage selves embellish. They discover what's funny and exploit the hell out of it anytime they're performing or expected to make people laugh.

Ohhh, now I get it. It's a fucking act! A persona! How did I miss that? Jesus Christ, all this time I thought this was just how they were in real life? "You fucking imbecile. Of course it's put on. God, you're such a cunt."

Yeah, I know…

When reading Jay-Z's Decoded earlier this year I learned he too was all about this same kind of persona. A quick cram lesson: rap is unfairly and ignorantly judged all over the world. It's the only genre in which the artist's words are taken at face value. If Nas talks about "sneakin' an uzi on the island in my army jacket linin,'" we more or less expect Nas's conjured image to reflect his real life. In contrast, nobody really pictures Taylor Swift to be shedding tears on her mahogany guitar on Monday, then prancing exaltingly through a field in Victorian attire that same Wednesday.

So with Jay-Z, when breaking down song lyrics in his book, he'd keep referring to the "I" in his songs as a third person. As "him," "that dude," "the narrator," "this nigga," etc. etc. (Akin to a novelist writing in first person.)

For example: in the footnote for the lyric I sold it all from crack to opium, Hov says this: "This is something I do in a lot of my songs--I introduce the narrator with a declaration that lets you know who he is: In this case, he's obviously a boss, someone who 'sold it all' and is speaking from that experience."

The "I" who sold crack and opium is not Jay-Z. It's a fictional chracater, like Harry Potter or God. What Hov is doing is acting through song. He's taking on a persona that may or may not have anything to do with real life.

That's why earlier I said the ability to self-deprecate is an art. Because one simply doesn't take a thousand shots at himself and get his net worth up to half a billion dollars. He has to craft his self-deprecating persona scrupulously, tirelessly. It must be purposeful while at the same time convincing enough so that we, the public, take it for his real personality. It's an art because it has to be created. It has to be made up, because it is not the real thing.

I wish I had known that four years ago. That for one to produce fine art, one needn't put himself through the fire. One can give off the appearance of lacking all sorts of competence and adequacy because it's funny, but in real life still be totally competent and adequate.

Maybe this has given you nothing new to work with. Maybe it's just common sense. But then again, I'm a good-for-nothing, dumb cunt, so try to show a little empathy and bare with me, okay?

Was that person or persona? Life or art?

-Either/and/or OUT!

The hole

2013-07-27T04:48:00.002-04:00

*a break from atheism today, as i write raw (no caps, apostrophes, minimal edits, etc. etc.) about my recent heartbreak.

###

i shouldnt be looking at her facebook. her recent pics, her recent wall posts. that shit will make the hole in my stomach augment till im more space than skin. its only been five days since we broke up and for the most part im doing okay. there are good hours and bad ones, the former i attribute mostly to my being super busy. but its when im sitting in class or laying in bed or walking down the street all alone that the thought of her begins to consume me. to eat me alive. her face, her body, her voice, her smile--combined they shred all vestiges of hope i'd previously clung to, till the only thing i can think about is that im gonna die and everything will be over and in the end its all futile and meaningless and unspeakably miserable. when we were together, she kept my thoughts from plunging to that place. she was like an entertainer, there to make me smile, to laugh, distract me from the overwhelming horrificness the fact of human life embodies. but now shes gone. now shes "gone"--another abc living in the same city as me--and once again ive morphed into a 23-year-old, asian woody allen character, obsessed with, terrified of the Hole.

what i really want to do is call her. no, scratch that. what i really want is to exercise telekenesis and make her call me. im the relationship loser; i cant stoop any lower to make first contact. i gave it everything i had the night we broke up. i said i want to stay with you, that im so madly in love with you its a joke, that its a crime against humanity if you dont stay in my life. all that followed by, "so, what do you think?" and still she said no, that she doesnt love me and that she doesnt want to be with me. ouch. the hole. that fucking hole unrequited love leaves in the heart is interminable. inversely, my pride has shot through to the stars. so ill be caught in pious garb praying to jesus before i make first contact.

but will she reach out to me? is it even a good idea if she does? imagine she texts me or calls me and says she wants to get back together. would i take her back? probably. then thats not the best question to ask. the better question: would it be best to take her back? after the way she treated me--as the ultimate afterthought--why would i do it? all this followed by an a question even more poignant: why am i even dwelling on the hypothetically impossible? im shaking my head right now. shes not gonna call. shes not gonna text. shes not gonna write to me on facebook and say any of the things i want her to say. shes gonna--she is already moving on and if i have any respect for myself i'll do the same.

but i dont want to. not yet. theres still something positive to be derived from camping out in the past--some twisted sense of hope, of happiness from the brief set of memories--that its worth waiting out in the cold, because maybe, just maybe i'll get the invite in, where warmth, love, real happiness reside.

what a load of shit.

Delusion and the by-default atheist

2013-05-26T09:26:00.000-04:00

And God said: "A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed."
-Deuteronomy 22:13-21 from the Bible

And the atheist said: "To say that atheism requires faith is as dim-witted as saying that disbelief in pixies or leprechauns takes faith. Even if Einstein himself told me there was an elf on my shoulder, I would still ask for proof and I wouldn't be wrong to ask.
-Geoff Mather

###

I'll be the first to admit it: I'm not a proud atheist. I'm an atheist by default only, ever since Reason went ahead and carried out the ruthless extermination of all my faith-related inklings. It's an important distinction--proud versus default--because it means I'm not always happy, fulfilled, shits-and-giggles jolly about my non-belief. Truth be told, being an atheist can be a horrible thing, and any non-believer who claims differently is no better than the religious nut basking in the poisonous pool of delusion. That's my one complaint about the non-belief camp: so many of us try converting theists with the promise of greener pastures waiting the moment these non-thinkers switch to Team Reason. When really, all we're doing is selling our own brand of propaganda, ironically wielding the same weapon theists exact on the world when they say with complete and utter conviction, "Yes. There really was a talking snake in the Garden of Eden." Delusion, ladies and gentlemen. The most dangerous weapon on the planet.

So I'm gonna say it like it should be said, exactly how it is. No deluding, no deceiving. No masquerading or airbrushing. No bullshit in all the billion forms bullshit comes in.

Being an atheist is no better than being religious.

Ain't that the truth. There's no more happiness, fulfillment, satisfaction, all that shit in rejecting theism. Often it's worse because when you admit to there being no god, you're forced to hold up the mirror of decay right up to your face. If you really look at it straight without closing your eyes, without imagining or fancying something else, you'll see it clearly: the wrinkles in every crevice of your face that are already starting to belabor you; the black reaper forever shadowing, stalking you from just behind; the incredible futility of life, the almost mocking indifference of the universe; and finally, the pall of non-existence, of fuck-me-in-the-ass death that's as inevitable as taxes or wet socks in Taiwan.

NOW, having said that (Curb reference, anyone?), you should totally become an atheist. Well, I guess I mean it and I don't. On the one hand, you get to think for yourself. On the other hand, you have to think for yourself. What a freedom. What a burden. It's beautiful and at the same time looks like Steve Buscemi's asshole.

I guess what I'm really trying to say is that if we atheists are committed to outing the truth, then this whole "selling" business needs to stop. Because truth is self-evident. It doesn't require pitching or selling or marketing strategies, so whether it's the team at Coca Cola or a team of koala bears, the difference is immaterial so long as the product at hand is authentically true. So enough with the "atheists are happier" and "atheists have better-quality lives" bullshit you keep parading. Stop with the delusions. You're not fulfilled, I'm not fulfilled, Jay-Z isn't fulfilled, even Siddhartha wasn't fulfilled because fulfillment, like god, is imaginary. It's not real. If you want to convert the world to atheism (something I desperately want to do), don't do it with "happy ever after" stories. Stop with the selling. Stop deluding yourself. Just suck it up, grow a pair and be happy being miserable.

-The life of the party OUT!

The non-belief closet

2013-04-18T15:15:00.000-04:00

And the atheist said: "We must questoin the story logic of having an all-knowing and all-powerful God, who creates faulty humans and then blames them for his own mistakes."
-Gene Roddenberry

And God said: "No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the Lord." (For the Lord thy God is not only a jealous God, but gay, too.)
-Deuteronomy 23:1

###

It's been a LONG minute since I wrote a blog post, for various reasons, but I tend to think the bulk of attribution probably forks off into what seems to be 1) an implacable genetic surplus of indolence, and 2) an even more implacable fear of self-indulgence. I'll give the former only these two lines: indolence is rectifiable simply by getting up off your ass, though one has to concede it's not always the easiest thing to do, and in my indolent oasis a nice quotable struck me clean from thin air: "At times it feels like the hardest thing in the world to do is put on a pair of pants." Ain't that the truth. Well, I've finally decided to slip mine on, one leg at a time like everyone else, and voila: I've showed up tonight ready, hungry, tunnel-visioned bent on making some moves, inciting some real thinking from the cozy but dangerous abode of complacent dormancy.

That leaves to be addressed the latter problem, my fear of self-indulging. This seems to be a thematic undercurrent in my blogging/writing continuum as far back as I can remember, and it's probably safe to say that this insecurity is entirely justified: there's no way around it, blogging is self-indulgent. Well, shit. I don't like to be self-indulgent, at least as it appears to the external world. So, what to do? I could take a long vacation as I've done, or hang up the blogging boots completely and be done with it. But then I think about a couple things, namely the subject matter I've been writing about since Antipriety's inception, my militant atheism and the mind-fucking absurdity of religion, and then I think about said relevant news overwhelming the world at present, like the one about the two men visiting Saudi Arabia who got deported the other day, on the grounds of being too good-looking, and therefore too likely of being too irresistible to women at a Saudi festival. Or like the news in Bangladesh, where fanatic Muslims (what's the opposite of an oxymoron, by the way? Are there any two words in the universe more incapable of being separated than "fanatic Muslim"?) are calling for the execution of atheist bloggers. Those are just recent current affairs pieces. How about the daily ubiquitous mentions of His Obvious Man-Madeness, God Almighty? I swear the more militant I become in my atheism, the more my intolerance toward religion swells, the more exponentially proportioned mentions of God I see. Sorry, folks, but I mean this strictly as a pun when I say, He really is fucking everywhere. The never-ending exhausting litany of God mentions starts off as follows:

-Rockets v. Lakers: James Harden, before OT starts, walking toward the scorer's table, all the while shooting either index finger toward the sky multiple times in an obvious invocation to God. (Who, by the way, didn't help J-Hard in this game. The Bearded One shot just 8-25. For crying out loud, give the fucking ball to J-Lin!)

-Macklemore's "Starting Over" song: If there's anything I hate more than false modesty, it's pretentiously false and specious humility. Consider the following lyrics:

I wanna tell her I relapsed but I can't/
I just shake her hand and tell her congrats/
Get back to my car and I think I'm trippin', yeah/
'Cause God wrote "Otherside", that pen was in my hand/
I'm just a flawed man, man, I fucked up...

Mack's right about one thing: he definitely done fucked up. Am I the only one who sees the gaping hole in the rapper's pathetic, ostensible servitude? I refuse to believe it, except that on some level I do. There are two things in this universe I rarely, if ever, give: the first is souvenirs, and the second, the notorious benefit of the doubt. I'm unwilling and unwont with the latter just for the sheer, simple fact that in the 21st century, so far defined by instantaneous access to information unbound, probably some 80-plus percent of human beings still falls knees-first in the face of superstition sloppily disguised as an invisible dude in the sky whose care for trivialities extends as far as your bedroom, your Sunday activities (or lack thereof since it's supposed to be Rest Day), and last but not least of all, your hairdo (Leviticus 19:27: "Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.").

So back to Macklemore: can anyone really take the bolded line as humble writing? "'Cause God wrote 'Otherside', that pen was in my hand." No fucking way! Just the opposite. Think about what he's really saying. Of six-plus billion people on planet Earth God decided to make Ben Haggerty, stage name Macklemore, the conduit from which to showcase His Holy rap skills. The thinly-veiled, unbridled arrogance! And the same goes for anyone shouting out God as the sole reason to why he or she is so awesome at a particular craft: God chose me. Not you. ME. M-E, ME. You fuckin' loser.

-The gay marriage debate, and Piers Morgan v. Michael Reagan on CNN: One thing is certain. Morality has never moved forward BECAUSE of religion. (That is, at least the three predominant monotheistic ones.) Again, just the opposite. Every moral victory humanity has achieved, it has achieved DESPITE religion. God has historically been the biggest, loudest, most obnoxious naysayer to positive change the cosmos have ever seen. He reminds me of naive couples (I'm including myself in this one) saying to each other, "Let's not ever change, okay? Let's stay exactly as we are forever." Which, of course, beyond being bullshit, is literally impossible, except if you become a corpse, and even then your body can't resist braving physical change. Sameness's half-life endures for only so long; change seems to be the lone constant in the universe, unless you count my impassioned desire to forego underwear. But that's what religion tries with all its might and political lobby connects to do. God through man through interpretation through further interpretation said such and such 2,000 years ago, and that's it. We follow blindly. No questioning, no analyzing; just imbecilic adherence to commands made before Hawking, before Darwin, before medicine, when everyone and his/her momma owned a fucking goat.

Such is the case with gay marriage. Again, quoting from what's quickly becoming my favorite Bible book for its raucously entertaining narrative, Leviticus 20:13: "If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads." And so millenia later we come to the gay marriage debate. Yes, it's true that in 40 years everyone opposed to its ratification, specifically the diehard picketers, are going to look like neanderthals. But hindsight is 20/20, and for sure with the blind leading the blind at all times of the hour, future verisimilitudes mean, for right now, jack fucking shit.

Case in point: both Michael Reagan and Piers Morgan on the latter's CNN daily show. The pair, both faith-affirming Catholics, duked it out a couple weeks ago, Morgan for gay marriage, and Reagan (son of president Reagan) against. Hearing both idiots was maddening, to put it mildly, and in a nutshell here's how it went down (I'll be paraphrasing):

MR: Gay marriage is a slippery slope.

PM: Why?

MR: First it's gays who can get married. Then before you know it, there will be polygamy, then incest, then bestiality, etc. etc. It's a slippery slope, to say the least.

PM: So you're against the redefinition of marriage.

MR: That's correct.

PM: But marriage has been redefined before. In the 1960s it was illegal in 16 states for blacks to marry whites. But marriage has since been redefined.

A good point by Morgan. So now put yourself in Reagan's position for a second. How would you respond to Morgan's rebuttal? Remember, you're a fervent Catholic, son to a former bigotted president; you've got enormous connects and a infinitesimal worldview. What do you say? Whatever it is, doesn't matter. Reagan's answer is incalculably worse; it's got to be the single saddest thing to happen to humanity since the picture below:

The following is verbatim:

Morgan: Marriage got redefined by the Supreme Court to allow black people to marry white people. What is your answer to that?

Reagan: Those are laws that were made by man. Man is sinful, as you know. You're Catholic and I'm Catholic. I believe marriage was defined and blessed by God. Two different things. Man is the sinner, Christ just died for our sins and rose again last Sunday for our sins. The fact of the matter: man will always sin and make mistakes. I'm glad the Catholic church has taken a stand and is at least in this--in this day and age of the world in turmoil, they are taking a stand for righteousness...

Nothing more needs to be said.

And a few more to add to the list:

1) #PrayForBoston: What good is your prayer going to do for the parents who lost their 8-year-old?

2) Ray Lewis.

3) And I write this one reluctantly, dejectedly... Jeremy Lin.

4) The precarious and clinically insane Middle East.

And last but certainly not least of all...

5) Obama, half-black, which means half-marred in the intractable, bloody history of slavery, in which whites gave Christianity to blacks exactly as they've given drugs to the destitute... this same man is a proud believer in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.

###

I'm tempted to believe the non-belief closet is chockablock with fear-ridden atheists, agnostics, secularists and the like. But the movement toward a superstitious-free world (see "knocking on wood") is still in a state of inertia, so the encouragement to come out is virtually nil. All the matter. God is popping up every which way you look, and if you haven't noticed by now, I'm sick of it. I'm beginning to reach my personal threshold of tolerance. The list of God sightings and hearings is forever growing, and the pessimist in me thinks that at this point in time it's achieved immortality. Now, I like to be right as much as the next person, but seriously, I'd like to be proven wrong just once. A la Holden Caulfield, "And I really mean it too." Just the one time will suffice.

Any non-believers still hiding in the closet?

The false promise of "true love"

2013-03-05T05:27:00.001-05:00

And God said: "If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads."
-Leviticus 20:13 from the Bible

And the atheist said: "In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point."
-Friedrich Nietzsche

###

The other day one of those Christian recruiters approached me outside my school, and of course I was jubilant. (For whatever reason I get some sick, sadistic pleasure hearing Christians say dumb shit.) Sure enough within the first thirty seconds of our talking the guy spewed the bullshit. I asked him why God is so spiteful and jealous in the Old Testament, and that being the case, how could you possibly worship someone who acts like such an immature asshole all the time. His answer was so beautifully stupid it's only right to grant it its own paragraphical autonomy:

"He's jealous because he loves us. You know when you have a girlfriend or a wife and sometimes you get jealous if she flirts with another guy or something like that? It's because you love her and you want her all to yourself. It's only natural. And it's the same way with God. He loves us so much and He wants us for Himself as well. So He often gets angry or jealous because of that."

Fucking amazing. I gave the guy the "you're not actually buying what you just said" look, and though his face didn't carve or contort into unmistakable culpability, I did see a flash of uncertainty pan across the lines of his face, and that was good enough for me. Pretty sure later when we parted ways he was thinking to himself, "What the fuck was I saying? 'He loves us so much and wants us all to Himself'? What does that even mean?" Unless, of course, the exact opposite is true; unless he sauntered away merrily and thought, "What a great response. And so true too. God doesn't want to share. So sue Him. I think I'm gonna have a sandwich tonight..."

Appallingly moronic as the guy's reasoning was, still it did more than just make my day in terms of entertainment. Unbeknownst to the Christian recruiter, his boyfriend/girlfriend-God analogy revealed buried roots to a concept I've been suffering over for a couple years now: Monogamy. Of course his own attempt at logic missed the mark completely, but in doing so he paved the way for me to arrive at the following hypothesis, that in society's creating one God and one God only (the shift from poly- to monotheism), it brought the reins of "exclusive love" into the forefront of human relationships, and thus monogamy was either established as the societal norm, or was further reinforced to be as such.

Let's take a look at the first three of the 10 Commandments (King James Version):

1) Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

2) Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing... for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God.

3) Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

I have to ask this again: religious folks, is this really the God you worship? He sounds like Chris Brown lecturing Rihanna when they first started going out. Which brings me to my next point. Don't the above commandments have much in common with the unspoken rules of romantic relationships?

Chris Brown's first three Commandments:

1) I will be your only lover, you got that, bitch?

2) Don't even think about another guy, or even think about thinking about another guy. Or I'll fuck you the fuck up.

3) You will refer to me only as CB, baby, or daddy.

What do you think? Could the poly- to monotheistic belief shift transform the scope of intimate relationships for the next 2,000+ years to come?

Next post will actually delve into my own opinions about monogamy. Stay tuned.

S.DOT OUT!

Death and unicorns

2013-02-17T11:18:00.002-05:00

And God said: "But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves: For thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God."

-Exodus 34:13-14 from the Bible

And the atheist said: "If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul."

-Isaac Asimov

###

Preface: If you came here for the unicorns, sorry but there won't be any mention of them in this post. I just thought it juxtaposed "death" nicely and so I put it in the title. BUT, never one to disappoint intentionally, I've gone through the effort to find a picture of this happy unicorn below.

Happiest unicorn ever.

###

It’s no secret I’ve turned to the dark side (see: "Atheism"). But it happened just very recently, and very gradually at that. A years-in-the-making kind of deal. In 2008 I identified as an existentialist/absurdist; this was when, for the very first time in my life, I audibly entertained the notion that life is intrinsically meaningless and without purpose. It hit me like that Mayweather shot to Ortiz; that shit came out of nowhere, and the enormity of such a notion pretty much knocked me out cold. I think that’s inevitable when you’ve been reared since the womb to believe in things like God, higher purpose, and the it’s-all-gonna-be-okay affirmation: “Everything happens for a reason.” All are, of course, human attempts to cope with the uncopeable. That’s essentially the definition of absurdism, the school of thought I owe so much to, all praise to Albert Camus, philosopher and author of The Stranger. The absurd, per Wikipedia, “refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any.” Is that beautiful or is that beautiful?

For the longest time, I thought God was a white dude in the sky, monitoring and judging us all. But, now newly equipped with my absurdist beliefs, I had no choice but to ascribe God an upgraded, better meaning. I won’t go into it too much, but in 2008 moms introduced me to the Conversations with God books, and instantaneously they heaved my mind high to the revolutionary teachings of New Age spirituality. God was no longer a He; God was now a thing I couldn’t quite describe or define, for doing so would limit the immeasurable scope of such perfection and immaculation (whatever that means). Long story short, though I’d officially removed the clamps of Christianity from my beliefs, I was still clinging tightly to the idea of a God; He, or It, just came by way of another vehicle now. (All that being said, I still recommend Conversations with God to everyone; it’s an amazing book with plenty of application in the year 2013, and world peace would probably prevail if everyone owned a copy.)

Then Jerry Seinfeld/Larry David and Woody Allen came along. The former pair nihilistic misanthropes, the latter, a steroided, upgraded megaphone to the tenets of absurdism. I dove deeper, deeper into the darkness. “Everything happens for a reason” became “Things happen... and what's the deal with meat skewers? Can you believe these things?” (Reference to the hilarious video below.) But still I wasn’t able or ready to give up on my updated version of God as the undefinable, that sort of eternal--for lack of a better word--STUFF, residing with, around, about us all. I was, in my own way, still coping with the uncopeable.

Then the landmark moment. My man Richard Dawkins showed up in late 2012 and shut the fucking gym down. Even now I’m shaking my head, awed by the one-in-a-billion fortuitous chance of my coming across his book. I’d torrented a bundle of ebooks at random, maybe 150 or 200 in all. As I was perusing the list, trying to decide which to read first, I saw it sticking out like a rogue boner: The God Delusion. I’d never heard of Dawkins before, but the sheer boldness of his book's title did enough to pique my interest, and as they say, the rest is history. Delusion taught me more about evolution than all my high school science classes combined; I learned that socially, we’ve been programmed to grant unwarranted respect to religion and its respective beliefs, and that needs to change ASAP; and I realized just how blind and brainwashed you have to be to maintain religious beliefs in the 21st "Age of Information" century. But most importantly, most monumentally, Delusion finally gave me the courage to drop God completely from my mind’s steeple. I stood over the cliff, arm outstretched, the Omniscient One suspending pathetically in my clutch and eyeing me for pity like a droopy-eyed dog; the fascist I am, I looked the poor bastard straight in the eyes and LET GO.

I can say it now, 99.99 percent positively: There is no God, whether it be invisible white dude or invisible we-are-all-one spirit. There is no meaning to life. There is no heaven. There is no soul, just a brain liking the idea of one. There probably is the world of the relative (where we reside) and the world of the absolute, but the latter can be felt only in death, and by definition one can’t feel anything in death, so for all intents and purposes there really is no such thing as the world of the absolute. YOWZA! If you think that's a bleak, depressing prospect, well, you’re absolutely right is the problem.

I don't say any of the above with pretension or condescension, like I'm better than the twenty billion percent of the world still clutching to its respective ideas about God. Promise. I'm just consistently time and again blown away by the universe and all its mysteries for whatever reason, and so existential matters pretty much consume every thought I have not related to Jeremy Lin or humpin some hunnies. Finding the truth and getting it across time/space matters to me, and what I've figured out and gotten down to a science is that the old, universal adage that TRUTH HURTS is no bullshit. In fact, it's probably an understatement, best compensated for by Ernest Hemingway, who gave his own grimmer version of the adage, saying "Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know." Jesus fucking Christ. Anyone who says it like that... is it any wonder the man took a shotgun to the face? Outlook on life that irreparably stark, can you blame him?

Of course, I'm being partly facetious. Sure, I don't condemn Hemingway's decision to call it quits, and sure my life outlook reads similarly to his, but please don't think there's any "reading between the lines" to do right now, like I'm trying or even thinking of trying to emulate Hemingway's grand exit. (Although that would technically be honoring the saying that "good writers borrow; great writers steal" [from other writers]). No, I will not be submitting an app to join the NRA just so I can get mines and go out with an emphatic bang. Nor will I hang myself like Madoff's kid or stomach a mouthful of arsenic a la Madame Bovary. Fuckkk thattt. Just the opposite. Knowing death is a finality, I'm doing everything humanly possible to stay as cowardly as possible, such that any potential run-ins with Her Lowness (death) can be avoided. As Woody Allen humorously said, "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve it through not dying."

I'm obsessed with it. Death is a finality. Isn't that fucking insane? It's literally the last thing. T-H-E Last Thing. It's the incomparable behemoth of be-all-end-alls. Salvation is nothing but specks of dirt and ash. When the priest says, "He's with God now," that's just the best way he knows of saying "The end."

I'm sorely and sordidly tempted to just stop right here, but then this might be the most depressing blog post in the history of depressing blog posts. (Actually that's more my being facetious. If I've done my writing job properly then you're not depressed, but somewhat entertained.) Plus, there's a voice telling me that I gotta come with the uplifting denouement; that baiting you into the snow, just to drown not only you but your entire family and all your ancestors and all your ancestors' puppies and kittens in the avalanche of grim death, is generally unacceptable; that I gotta at least come with the shovel and try to dig you up.

But then another voice is telling me, fuck it. What's the point? You're just gonna die anyway.

Reaper fugitive OUT!

Two everyday grammar screw ups

2013-01-15T04:42:00.003-05:00

And God said: "Whoever utters the name of the Lord must be put to death. The whole community must stone him, whether alien or native. If he utters the name, he must be put to death."

-Leviticus 24:16 from the Bible

And the atheist said: "Creationists make it sound like a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night."
-Isaac Asimov

###

The following are two grammatical errors people make every single day. Simple mistakes that require simple fixes.

1) Go J Lin!

What's wrong with the emboldened? It's missing a comma between "Go" and "J Lin!"

Rule: Every single time you call out someone or something directly, you must put a comma before the addressee, no exceptions.

Incorrect: Hey Steven.

Correct: Hey, Steven.

Incorrect: What's good homie?

Correct: What's good, homie?

That doesn't mean, however, that any time you're writing someone's name, you use a comma. Consider the following examples:

Correct: His wife's name is Brenda.

Correct: To Jamie: ...

Correct: Dear Brian: ...

2) The "you and I" fallacy.

Consider the following:

He's taking you and I out tomorrow.

"I" is not correct in this sentence. It should be "you and me." But why is this? Throughout our schooling, teachers always told us that it's "you and I," or "Tim and I," or "them and I," etc. THEY WERE WRONG. Sometimes it is "you and I," sometimes it's not. Knowing when to use which requires being able to recognize the difference between subjects and objects, but that's boring to most people so I won't actually go there. Instead I'll show you a great shortcut that works every time, so you know when to use which.

The shortcut works like this. Remove both pronouns from the sentence, one at a time, and say the new sentence aloud. This will invariably lead you to the correct pronoun.

He's taking you ~~and I~~ out tomorrow.

"You" in this sentence checks out, so that's fine. Now we go to "I":

He's taking ~~you and~~ I out tomorrow.

Now you see the problem? You know instinctively "He's taking I out" doesn't make any sense; that it should me "He's taking me out." Thus, you know "me" is the proper pronoun to use in the sentence, "He's taking you and me out tomorrow."

Another example:

Him and I are going to the movies.

>Him is going to the movies.

>I am going to the movies.

"Him" is obviously wrong. It should be "He is going to the movies." Meanwhile, "I" is correct. So the new sentence will read like this:

He and I are going to the movies.

Last example:

She will pick her and I up.

>She will pick her up.

>She will pick I up.

"Her" is okay, but "I" isn't. It should be "me," and the sentence should read:

She will pick her and me up.

Don't sleep on proper grammar usage. If you don't know the rules to the game, how do you expect to kill it?

Grammar Nazi OUT!

Hooping in Taiwan

2013-01-13T23:12:00.004-05:00

And God said: "If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity."
-Deuteronomy 25: 11-12 from the Bible

And the atheist said: "Not only is there no god, but try getting a plumber on weekends."
-Woody Allen

###

Disclaimer: There's prolly no way around my coming off like the white oppressor in this post, traveling to a foreign land, telling the brown man what it means to be "civilized" like the quoted word is an absolute. But let's face it. The US dominates the hoop world like--piggybacking off the above analogy--the slavemaster dominated the slave. The US being the slavemaster (blacks in this case, ironically but rightly so) and smaller countries like Taiwan being the slave. That's why there's only one Jeremy Lin in the world. That's why I'm writing this post, not to flaunt basketball superiority by virtue of my being American, but to get the point across that if these smaller countries want to up their stock, they gotta change their games 180.

###

I absolutely hate hate hate HATE to say it, but I gotta come clean: most everything I wrote in "Hooping while Asian" has to be taken back. The intractable verdict, after assessing and evaluating six weeks' worth of evidence in the laboratories of both outdoor and indoor courts in Taiwan: Asians can't hoop! We just can't, and it's so sad and I've immense trouble in admitting it. But it's the truth, and most of my (two) readers will know by now that truth is right there at the top of my value priorities; that it must be uncovered, admitted and demonstrated by any means.

The b-ball style of play here is night-and-day from what we've come to take for granted in the US. Wherever you go in Taiwan, you'll see half-court 3-on-3 pickup games, never any other number. But that's fine. The problem isn't in the immutable 3-on-3; it's in the phrasing "half-court," which by itself is misleading. It's more like "paint" 3-on-3 pickup, meaning 95 percent of the action is taking place within 15 feet of the basket. Why this is, I don't know. But it seems to have been written in the genetic codes of every hooper here. The ball is always always checked at the free-throw line, or just above. Shots are thrown up (and for the most part, I mean literally thrown up) at a respective distance. A player who waits at the perimeter wing for a skip pass is rare as the sighting of UFOs, or a rational Christian. Invariably, this "paint" play is problematic for multiple reasons:

1) Spacing. They develop ABOMINABLE spacing habits. It's easier to get around on wheels through Times Square than it is to drive through the clusterfuck paint traffic in a 3-on-3 game here.

2) No reason to develop a perimeter game. Because all the action takes place pre-arc, hoopers here rarely get the chance to work on their outside games. They don't get reps practicing the abovementioned spacing; or L/V cutting; or catching the ball at the wing, pivoting/reverse-pivoting into a triple threat; or finally, shooting from the outside. Essentially they don't get to simulate real game situations, where play is inevitably pushed out farther from the hoop. This would prove, predictably, to be a torrential disaster come pick-up 5-on-5, except my Taiwanese kin have found a loophole to conceal the ugly wound of perimeter inability. That is...

3) No such thing as man-to-man. When finally Taiwanese hoopers decide to play 5-on-5, they do so with an inalterable footnote attached to the game: we play zone at all times, no exceptions. This is without doubt the most frustrating part of playing here. I know you might be able to get me with the cultural relativism on this one, except that you can't. And here's why. Not only do they abandon real game simulation in 3-on-3, but they eliminate that opportunity completely in actual, real games. Which means there's zero chance to develop individually in playing against a pick-up zone. Forever and always it's pass, swing pass, stand in the same spot, shoot. Rinse, lather and repeat.

###

I don't think the preference to play zone is unique to Taiwan; when I studied in the Dominican Republic, they played the same exact way. My guess is that everyone conforms his/her play to fit the FIBA standards, which encourage and promote zone defensive sets.

But here's where I'm confused. It's obvious that everyone here worships the NBA. They've got blown-up Kobe and Bron-Bron billboards in the heart of downtown. On ESPN, NBA highlight segments last forever, while the SBL (Taiwan's pro b-ball league) gets the bastard-child treatment. A good majority of the pick-up hoopers I play against wear NBA jerseys while playing. (This upset my own expectations: hoopers here ain't repping J-Lin like I thought they would be.) And thus, the logical question arises: if they worship the NBA as fervently as they do here, why don't the hoopers here go for imitating the American style of play? Why stay adamant in their 2-3 zones? In 3-on-3, why not extend the action out to the arc? Why the errant dribbling? Why the herky-jerky movements? Why the 90 mph passes coming at your face from three feet away?

I don't get it. I just don't get it.

The other week I saw a male coach teaching his girls how to cut to the hoop; they weren't angling inward from the free-throw line extended; no, they were angling in from the short corner, which gives them very little space to use the backboard for their layups. What was more appalling, the coach was throwing them lead passes a foot from the basket, which meant they couldn't even lay the ball up on the side they were cutting on; they had to take an extra dribble and lay it up on the other side. You think I'm done but of course, there's more: after these girls took their dribble from left side to right side, they turned to their right shoulder and used their right, inward hand to lay the ball up, which sat just below their neck. What this means, gentlemen (I don't imagine any ladies to be reading this post), is that ten times out of ten, they will get blocked.

Needless to say, it starts with the teaching.

Maybe it really is time for me to get my "white colonizer" on and show these primitive peoples the way of the civilized.

S.Dot OUT!

"There is no such thing as a Christian child"

2013-01-04T05:32:00.001-05:00

And God said:

"Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them."
-Surah 4:34 from the Qu'ran

And the atheist said:

"To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious ... But I prefer not to call myself religious because it is misleading. It is destructively misleading because, for the vast majority of people, 'religion' implies 'supernatural'."
-Albert Einstein

###

I'm reading Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion right now, an excellent book for atheists, agnostics and nonreligious folk alike. In it Dawkins says something very poignant, something that speaks to our disillusioned minds about how we ever got to be religious in the first place:

"Just as feminists wince when they hear 'he' rather than 'he or she', or 'man' rather than 'human', I want everybody to flinch whenever we hear a phrase such as 'Catholic child' or 'Muslim child'. Speak of a 'child of Catholic parents' if you like; but if you hear anybody speak of a 'Catholic child', stop them and politely point out that children are too young to know where they stand on such issues, just as they are too young to know where they stand on economics or politics."

Such a crucial distinction this is that Dawkins reiterates the point in plainer, don't-fuck-with-me English:

"That is not a Muslim child, but a child of Muslim parents. That child is too young to know whether it is a Muslim or not. There is no such thing as a Muslim child. There is no such thing as a Christian child."

If only I had had The God Delusion, instead of a much much much different book, bed-side with me at eight years old. Turns out I'm one of the billions they got wrong, who they labeled "Christian child" over and over and over again in my impressionable youth. Stumbling across the above passage the other day, I thought to myself, "Wow. What a sad state of affairs, and how lucky I am to have really seen-seen the booby trap, to renounce that shit and get the hell out of those white robes (figurative and, most unfortunately for me, literal)." I officially became an apostate (a person who abandons his/her religious faith) when I was 16. Only seven years have passed, but in thinking back I'm amazed at how completely disjointed my religious past life feels from present day. Do you ever feel that way about certain things in your own life? Like someone else was steering the brain back then; who or what exactly you have no idea--but you search now and the one-time conductor is nowhere to be found; s/he's prolly been left for dead in a ditch somewhere, and survives only as an occasional, incidental memory of what used to be. Such is 100 percent my case, and if you'd allow me, I'd like to take the stroll to show you just exactly what used to be.

###

When I was a one-year-old little crying Asian shit, my parents separated. We were in Queens, NY, and moms decided a move back to Lansing, MI, where my Lola and Lolo lived, would be an auspicious change of scenery. So we said goodbye and that was that. We moved into my Lola and Lolo's house, and for the next four-plus years the old folks had a tremendous hand in raising me.

As old-school, traditional Filipinos who still to this day believe staunchly in things like courtship, they were paragon Roman Catholics. They raised their nine kids this way, and predictably the lot of them continue practicing their hand-me-down faith today. Just as predictably, they began imparting to their newest tenant the same ways of Jesus Christ immediately. I was a tiny infant, kicking it in my tiny basket, going to church on Sundays; I was two years old bowing my head, locking my hands together, closing my eyes before dinner, saying, "Amen"; I was three years old, clutching my Lola's rosary at her bed, repeating the prayer coming from that immutably gentle, tender, make-you-want-to-melt-it's-that-delicate voice: "Bless my mommy. Bless my daddy. Bless my Lola and my Lolo, etc. etc." What it meant to "bless" these people I had no idea, but there I was in my footie pajamas, parroting my grandma in her bed until I could do the routine all by myself.

Things continued this way till 1995, when my Lolo and Lolo decided the Michigan cold was too much for their arthritic frames; they moved to California, and moms and I said goodbye to them in heartbreaking fashion. Soon after my mom got a job at the-then Red Lion Hotel in Bellevue, WA. (Sometime between 1989 and 1995 I was baptized.) We too packed up and migrated west to a beautiful suburb just east of Seattle that was to be my home for the next 12 years: Kirkland, WA. (425, holla at me!)

We settled into our Forbes Creek apartment nicely; not even two full weeks later and moms found us a new church to attend: Holy Spirit Lutheran, at the bottom of 124th and 100th. I was in 1st grade, only five years old at the time. I remember sitting with the congregation, eyes taking in the overwhelming altar before me, when Pastor Mike called attention to make a special announcement: "I'd like to welcome the newest members to the Holy Spirit Lutheran family. Marita, Steven, if you'll please stand up... Let's give them a warm round of applause!"

And from that day forward, I was no longer a Roman Catholic child, but a Lutheran/Christian child.

Quick side note: amazing how life works. Moms had just moved to a state in which she knew one other person only (my uncle); church was a way to bridge the social gap, lest loneliness or depression infect and spread. So from this reasonable, understandable social desire came our joint faith that was to mold me and my beliefs for the next 10 years. From that circumstancial desire I would proudly identify myself as a "Christian child."

This is when I really started to become religious in my religiosity. Sunday school every week, no exceptions. 15 or so innocent kids and me learning about God, Jesus, Moses, Noah, Adam, Eve, trying our best to get the answers right and please our teacher. I learned the "Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name" prayer, which I can still recite as well as any Nas or Jay song. Soon after it wasn't enough to go to church just one measley time a week. In 2nd grade I started going to LOGOS every Wednesday to learn more about the bible and the ways of our savior. Then I started going to adult mass. At seven years old I even attempted to read the bible cover to cover. I never actually finished, or even got close; but the attempt itself should speak volumes of my commitment to my faith. God was now an inextricable main character in my life.

One day in 3rd grade, I was sitting in Mr. Stauffer's class when a classmate told me he didn't believe in God. VRRRPPPP. PAUSE. SAY WHAT NOW?

"What do you mean you don't believe in God?"

"I just don't."

"But how? Why?"

"I dunno."

"Jesus was crucified so that we could all go to heaven! Don't you want to go to heaven?"

"I don't think heaven is real."

*Head explodes from shock.*

After school I went home and prayed like the pope for that poor bastard. Lola would've been so proud to see me with eyes closed, mumbling fervently for my 3rd grade atheist classmate to one day see the light. This should go without saying, but it was becoming clear (not to me, of course) that Holy Spirit Lutheran was working wonders--miracles, dare I say--on my indoctrination.

The years passed. I was becoming a Nazi Christian. In 7th grade I went to multiple bible camps. In 8th grade I became an acolyte for the church, which means I got to wear the white robes, light the altar candles and sit with the other pastors during service, like a sort of locally pious VIP. Then came communion: I was now at the age where I could participate in the post-sermon ritual of receiving the holy bread and apple juice (no wine for kids) meant to symbolize the body and blood of my main man J-Cry.

But always and inexorably the dawn precedes the night. 9th grade came around and two things happened, unforseeable and totally fortuitous: first, I actually started to grow bored of church. All my accrued years spent worshipping God had finally taken their toll; I would be slouched in my congregational seat on Sunday morning, trying covertly as possible to get some shuteye while the choir belted out tunes of our Lord's awesomeness. What's more, I was at the age where moms no longer cared if I slept over at friends' houses every Friday and Saturday; I was up till 4 or 5 in the morning, recording hit songs for my first solo album with back-up singer Shane and sound engineer David--no doubt having to wake up at 9 that same morning for church seemed like Guantanamo-esque torture. Consequently, my attendance started to falter. I was attending mass once every two, three weeks now. I dropped out of the Confirmation program less than a month into registering. (Funny thing is, they won't let you "fail" church. Although I didn't complete the program, they still let me "graduate" and honored me as "confirmed" a few months later.) I guess the one thing the indoctrinators hadn't anticipated, or couldn't combat, was a teenager's budding weekend social life, which no doubt took precedence over God and eternal salvation.

This was the first domino to be sent tumbling. The second was my formal introduction to underground hip-hop in 10th grade, namely Immortal Technique. (Hi, haters.) Up till then, my musical influence stretched only as far as MTV raps had flown; and judging by the fact that their seemingly ubiquitous mantra was "smoke weed, fuck bitches," I'm gonna say they hadn't flown very far. So to listen to this independent artist named Immortal Technique, who was rapping without censor about topics I'd never really understood--communism, classism, racism, political agendas of mainstream media--was, as trite as this may sound, to be born again. His passion, his conviction, his commitment to positive change in the world incited my own; that same year, of my own accord, I sought out and read The Communist Manifesto and The Autobiography of Malcolm X. This was to be my inception into the intellectual universe, promulgated by free-thinking non-conformists who time and time again gave the finger to appeasement for appeasement's sake.

For the first time in my life, I decided very consciously that conforming to norms wasn't cool. And the ultimate norm that had, up till then, possessed my life? Christianity. Immortal Technique made me see that capitalism, colonization of the West and Christianity are inextricably linked. He deconstructed the inanity of Jesus's being born in the Middle East and being depicted as white (I'll destroy your religion, you stupid bitch// You faker than blue-eyed crackers nailed to a crucifix.). How stupid are we that we can't see through such a glaringly obvious transparent agenda?

It was during this time--and I say this proud as can be--I officially dropped the label "Christianity" that had reared me into unquestioning obedience for the last 10 years. (16 years when you add "Roman Catholicism" into the equation.)

I can finally say it now--and since it's January I'll even say it in MLK fashion: Free at last, free at last. Thank Immortal Technique, we are free at last.

###

I write all this because I think it's necessary that people understand that when I'm religion-bashing, it's not from some vacuum motive and that I have nothing better to do. (Maybe you can dispute the latter.) I'm 23 years old now; what's crazy to think is that I've only been non-religious for seven years--that's not even a third of my life. It didn't get any more "Christian child" than me. They told me to open wide, I obeyed and they forced meal after meal of indoctrination into me, till I could do nothing but shit out bible verses and arranged prayers. BUT, I did it. I escaped. I am, at least in this topical context, a "success story." I don't know the statistic on how many people born into their parents' religion actively renounce, but I'm willing to bet the number is very small.

Quite plainly, my goal is to guide other non-religious folk, or fence-sitting agnostics, to "come out," and to come out proudly. I want them to actively embrace atheism (which literally is the rejection of "theism"), and here's why: It's 20 fucking 13 already. We should be so far beyond superstition, just by measure of how far we've come technologically in the last 100 years. How can anyone still actually believe that an invisible man or spirit monitors your entire life, and then sends you above sky or below ground based on the way you lived? Beside the fact that religion causes wars and murder on a daily basis, I've yet another reason to combat it: it's just flat-out stupid. Superstition should be dead, and I'm doing what I can to see to its eventual execution.

So if you're religious, ideally (and it's a big "ideally") I want you to see that you were never a religious child, but a child of religious parents, and that is the sole reason you continue to be religious today.

If you're non-religious, or if you're a fence-sitting agnostic, my goal is that you publicly declare your atheism to the world. We are a very real minority in the world and we absolutely need you.

###

Thanks for reading. Comments are not just welcomed; they are encouraged and if you've actually made it to the bottom of this page, shame on you if you don't leave at least a few words below.

"I stand for your right to be religious... but please know that you're wrong"

2012-12-21T10:19:00.000-05:00

This post's title is a quote taken from the video below:

And it begins.

###

I can't pinpoint exactly how or when it happened, but very recently my atheism really started to take its true shape. Now it's grown and matured and--I use this word intending all the scientific implications it carries with it--EVOLVED. My atheism now stands upright, bi-pedaled, no longer lying dormant in my king-sized bed of thought, where all the magic of creation is supposed to take place. I'm really truly creating from this bed now, using the evolutionary gift of human rationality--something that religious people seem to want no part in--to think my own real thoughts.

There are those who say it's your right to believe whatever you want to believe; that it's not my place or anyone else's to disabuse you of your notions, no matter how fallacious (euphemistic for the word "stupid") these notions may be. We're supposed to treat beliefs, especially of the religious and spiritual kind, with a certain unspoken respect; it's clear that they're the eggshells of topical conversation we're supposed to tiptoe around. Well, I'll be frank right off the bat: this is absolute nonsense, complete and utter bullshit.

On a personal level I'm all for the truth. If I operated in life like two and two make three, I'd be grateful for the person with ovaries enough to show me otherwise. But that's not the argument I'll use here, since that's simply preference, and too many assholes walking this Earth can't wait to arm themselves with a different preference, namely "Ignorance is bliss," AKA "I'll take 'Being a dumbass on purpose' for $1,000, Alex."

The more readily acceptable argument is as follows, and we've all heard it before, for good reason: how many wars must be waged, how many people must be killed, in the name of God? When religion moves away from the harmless realm--an inevitability with such stupid and sensitive fucking people everywhere you go--that's when we got a real problem. What makes it worse is the inanity of the beliefs from a rationalist's point of view: people are being killed over and over and over and over for a thing that is clearly 100 percent bullshit. And many of these religious assholes aren't wishy-washy or Keatsian in their conceded uncertainty of what's true and what's not; no, it's just the opposite: God exists, god damn it! Heaven exists! The devil exists! If you don't repent for your sins you go to hell! If you were never baptized you go to hell! The 10 Commandments! Jesus died to save you! Noah's ark! Two animals of every kind on a boat! Prayer! (Apologies in advance to Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Satanists, etc. for this post's predominantly subverting Christianity. It's the only religion I'm familiar with to any respectable degree. But feel free to substitute your own religion's ridiculous ideas and beliefs wherever you see fit--I assure you it all works out the same.)

I think a great way to gauge just how advanced a society really is, is to evaluate how it treats the supernatural, meaning the fake, the made up, the superstitious, etc. So long as we're a species that bows its head, locks its hands together and whispers selfish desires to an invisible man in the sky, we're a primitive fucking people. There's no way around it. What amazes me about prayer is the religious person's inability to see the blatant, clear-shot idiocy of his/her rationale. If you pray for something and you get it, you say that God answers prayers. If you pray for something and don't get it, all the same, you've got a tailor-made retort ready at the fingertips: "God works in mysterious ways," or "It's part of His plan." Oh my fucking god. If I hear that type of shit spewed from some fanatic's mouth one more time I think my head's going to explode.

###

Pinpointing human stupidity when it comes to its religious beliefs is so easy to the point that it's just plain unfair, like black guys playing basketball against white guys. (To be clear, I'm the black guys in this scenario.) A long long time ago, human beings didn't have the foresight or the creativity to truly imagine a God who transcends the physical realm. Limited as we were (are and continue to be), we basically made God a man, except that he's in the sky, can't be seen, and he probably has no issues when it comes to getting an erection. He's like Man version 2.0. Proof is littered in every page of the Old Testament. God speaks. Somehow he's without a body, or a brain or a mouth or any organ necessary to emit speech, but he's God and he can do it anyway. He judges. He's a fucking narc. He's more insecure than I was with my first girlfriend when I was seventeen. He's patriarchal. He's all-loving but you say his name in the wrong tone and he'll set a lake of poisonous frogs on you and your entire family. He's vindictive. In a phrase, he's JUST LIKE US. What a coincidence. We couldn't imagine an actual spirit, something that is everything and nothing at the same time because that's too complex, too abstract for the human brain. So we made our Man version 2.0, and in doing so we separated ourselves from him.

I think if I was in charge of birthing or spreading Christianity, that right there was the first Big Mistake: making humankind separate, and therefore inferior, to man-God, who is deemed as everything, but is treated like an entity the size of five or six beluga whales and dwells somewhere above the clouds, conveniently out of reach from human eyesight. Had we not started Christianity or any religion from this angle, life might look night-and-day from its present state. I won't go super in depth, but suffice it to say this: when you're coming from a place of inferiority, separateness, worthlessness with the constant need to prove yourself, you get the heap of bullshit and all that comes with it: hatred, jealousy, intolerance, vindictiveness, to name a few.

People will say, "Okay, I don't literally think God exists in the sky. He's everywhere." But how many times do you see an athlete on TV do something spectacular, only to look up and point with his/her forefinger to the sky? Why up but never down? If God is everything and everywhere, surely he takes up occupancy in just as much one direction as the other. It's obvious: religious people will say one thing, but borne of conditioning, brainwashing, societal pressure, habit, stupidity, etc. they will act completely independent and contradictory to their stated "beliefs." Sure they'll say that God is everywhere but when the appropriate moment comes, they won't be able to help but point upward when thanking "the man UPSTAIRS."

###

If there is a God who judges, who grants and denies wishes based on some celestial metric, my question is this: what the hell was he doing before human beings came into existence? Was he just kicking it on his cloud while the dinosaurs roamed, waiting patiently for them to die out? Or did he rule just as authoritatively, sending t-rexes to hell for eating brontosaurs, condemning pterodactyls for not resting on Sunday (before Sunday was even a real day)? How did the fan mail work? Did he read into the dinosaurs' mechanical brain patterns to excavate their prayers, then respond yes or no case by case?

These are stupid questions but only because the premise is stupid--that God cared one way or the other what dinosaurs got into on a daily basis. But we staunchly believe God cares what we do. So is the Man Upstairs for humans only? By religious definition, that can't be true; God governs the universe and everything in it, including animals and plants on planet Earth. Do you see the inherent problem with God now? He's conveniently stitched and crafted for homo sapiens. He rewards and punishes based on how we behave morally, but we're the only species to even own such a concept like morality. When an animal kills another animal, according to the 10 Commandments, that animal has just outright disobeyed God's moral code. So then what?

The answer, of course, is so then nothing. If an animal kills another animal, there are no supernatural consequences. But here's the twist: you may have forgotten, but human beings are homo sapiens. Homo sapien is a type of primate. Primate is a type of mammal. Mammal is a type of... you guessed it: animal. I'm talking about us! It is so fucking narcissistic to think you're above the animal classification. It's not "humans and then animals"; it's "humans are animals." If we kill, we are not doomed to suffer an eternity in everlasting fire. (Right there you're physicalizing what is supposed to be the spiritual realm, which is supposed to transcend the physical. Pearly gates, my ass.) If we kill, so then nothing. If you get caught by other humans then you'll suffer the consequences of your fellow human judicial systems, but that's it. No wrath. No hell. No nothing.

###

Plain and simple: religious people, stop being so fucking stupid, PLEASE. If God really does exist, it is in no way, shape or form anything like the God you've been reared from birth to conceptualize. Stop pointing to the sky, unless you're pointing out a plane or a cloud or the stars or something that is REAL. Stop bowing your head and asking for shit. Stop touching your forehead, your chest and shoulders in quick succession. And if you're a Jew or a Muslim or whatever, please stop being those things. Make a conscious choice that YOU really own, that YOU really are the source of, just for once.

In God's name we pray. Amen.

"Hooping while Asian"

2012-11-29T02:35:00.001-05:00

Last night, for the first time in a LONG WHILE, I got got. The atrocious offense: Hooping while Asian. (If the term hasn't been coined yet, I got dibs.) What that means in a nutshell: getting discriminant treatment on the basketball court, simply and only because I'm Asian. And don't say that shit is just in our heads. "Hooping while Asian" is real as Darwinian evolution. (Which reminds me: my next post is going to be the implacable slaughter on organized religion. But anyway...) Every single Asian who somewhat hoops knows EXACTLY what I'm talking about.

Now, to be fair, until last night I hadn't blatantly got got in some time. Sure, every now and then when I play at LA Fitness someone who's never played against me won't think I'm about to hoop on him, then he gets real surprised when I can actually play. But that's about it.

I get enough basketball reps in at the gyms I play at to be a recognizable figure in a sea of unrestrained ego and testosterone. Point blank, they know I can hoop. If it sounds like I'm being cocky, well, I probably am being cocky. But it wasn't until second or third year of college that I started to get this way about basketball. And you know what? My play elevated tenfold as a result. Believing you are the best guy on that court--not wanting to believe, but in-your-blood-in-your-soul truly BELIEVING--that changes the game up forever. It's the point of no return. I started to do things I could never EVER, not in a million lifetimes, do in high school. Things like splitting the defense off a pick-and-roll, making off balance flip-in layups consistently, hitting threes in people's faces. Euro stepping! Euro stepping like a fucking G! All because I know like the earth is round that I'm the best player on the court (even when it's clear I'm not).

Of course, it's not always like that. When I'm playing against really good guys I often relinquish that swagger. Not because I'm not just as good as they are, but because I let the mote of self-doubt in even just a tiny bit. A tangible drop in emotion follows, and doubtless my play begins to suffer. All of a sudden the ceiling is feet lower from before; the opportunity to now explode for a breakout game is almost nigh. This was the plague that haunted me in my formative years. Not once in my seven years of playing organized ball did I ever say to myself, "I'm easily the best guy in this gym." Not once did I have that thought. Not once did I even think to think that thought. Instead it was always "When I get in there I just want to play great defense and not mess up on offense." What predictably followed: I became a fantastic defender, one of the best in the league, but offensively I was miserable.

I've done the complete one-eighty. Nowadays I think I'm the best guy in the gym probably nine times out of ten. Last night was one of those nine times.

NYC Urban is supposedly the best intramural basketball league in the city. There are thirty-plus different divisions, based on and separated by sex and skill level. I found the league online; there was to be a tryout for people who weren't already on a team. When I showed up to the gym at 7:00 p.m. there were about fifty other guys there.

The night was supposed to proceed like this:

1) We get split up into random teams of five. That means about ten different groups.

2) The guys in charge announce that WE--not they--are responsible for forming our own teams. (The teams we're on now won't be our intramural teams; they're just for this particular scrimmage.)

3) Two groups play half-court against each other for a couple minutes, while the sidelined groups watch. The idea is that you get to assess the other players, and start "recruiting" for your own team, based on skill level, hustle, demeanor, etc.

4) When you've formed your team, you go to the signup table to finalize registration.

From the moment the tryout started it was awkward. Super awkward. It felt like we were speed dating with shorts and sneakers; after alliances began forming, those still without a team would linger near, hoping to be recruited. It got especially awkward when guys who really sucked asked to join your team. ("Uh... ask that guy.") During the scrimmages, everyone was out to prove he was the fucking shit. This meant no passing whatsoever; just one bad shot after the other. When it was my turn to play I decided on a different route to "wow": don't even look to shoot. Just pass, screen, rebound, and be moving at all times. But when you do get the ball, showcase one or two fancy moves so everyone watching will immediately understand that you can handle the ball.

Boom. Perfect execution.

Afterward I was immediately approached by this guy I had been talking to earlier, who played in college. He asked if I had a team, and if not, did I want to join his team. It seems that busting out that one fancy dribble, for no utilitarian purpose at all, was the way to go.

Within minutes we had a core five guys on our squad. We all agreed in wanting to play in the highest division. Now it was only a matter of finding three or so other players.

"How about that tall ass dude?" One of our core five pointed to a six-sevenish guy standing idle at half court, chatting with Rick, one of the Urban guys in charge of the tryout.

"Yeah," I said. "He played just a second ago. He's good."

"Why don't you ask him if he's got a team?"

"Sure," I said, expelling a small chuckle. "I'll do it but I think you're probably better suited to recruit, you know, appearance-wise."

The unfortunate truth is that my new teammate's a six-three well-built black guy, and I'm five-ten Asian, skinny as shit. But I walked the sidelines to half-court anyway, and went right up to our six-seven prospect, interrupting the conversation he was having with Rick, the Urban guy in charge.

"Excuse me," I said. "I'm wondering if you've got a team already."

"Yeah," said the prospect.

Okay, fair enough.

Rick then interjected, pointing to another big guy currently engaged in the scrimmage. "He [the prospect] is playing with the guy in maroon."

"Okay," I said. "I was gonna see if he wanted to get on our team."

"He's playing in the highest division though," said the assuming Rick, speaking for the prospect like an overprotective agent.

I nodded my head in obvious understanding. "I figured."

"That's where the guys who are most skilled usually play at."

VRRRPPPP. Wait a minute. Wait just one second. Hold the fucking phone.

There was a split-second silence, in which time I let my appall grow and fester to the size of a hot air balloon. I knew exactly what Rick was saying subtextually. His every word in that last bit oozed of condescension. No way I'm letting that shit slide. Rick had seen me play for maybe three minutes--the overwhelming majority of that time in which I was without the ball. In other words, there was no way he could've really assessed my play. Nah. I was getting got, and getting got good. Asian while hooping.

"You don't think I can play, do you?"

The confrontational tone caught Rick off guard. "Oh," he said, an enormous pause ensuing after the word. "No, it's not that. It's just, you know, the best players play in the best division."

I laughed aloud this time. "Yes, you said that already. I understand the concept. What makes you think I'm not gonna play in the best division?"

His face betrayed that unquestionable "give me a break" look.

I repeated myself: "You don't think I can hoop."

He laughed in awkward admission.

"My team's over there," I said, pointing to my four guys standing on the other side of the court. "We'll be playing in the highest division."

"But you have to be really good--"

"I want you to watch for me this season, okay? I'm gonna fucking hoop. Look for me."

And I left.

By the night's end my team hadn't found any other quality players, so we disbanded and agreed to finish recruiting next week, when the second round of tryouts are to transpire. We talked for a tiny bit, about this, about that, about the other. But I wasn't paying much attention. My mind was still with Rick; I was obsessed with our earlier exchange. That smug, superior, condescending way he said, "That's where the guys who are most skilled usually play at."

The gym started to clear out. I changed into my street clothes, then, on my way out I passed Rick, who was now in conversation with a couple other Urban guys. I took a few more strides--then suddenly, another VRRPPPP. I put the breaks on, and without thinking I marched right up to Rick at center court.

"My name," I said to him, extending my hand forward, interrupting him in mid-speech, "is Steven. Steven Lo."

We shook hands. He began to laugh.

"Remember this face."

Another laugh.

"STEVEN-LO," I spelled out a final time, slow and intentional, so that the name would be seered like a TV jingle into his skull. Turning my back, I began to exit, the tune of my every step accompanied by a very real, very honest swagger.

###

In the grand scheme of things Hooping while Asian isn't by itself worth much. "Driving while black" is a hundred times more grave, as it speaks directly to the three-branched oppression African-Americans have to endure daily: political, economical, and social. For Asian-Americans, the plight is almost exclusively social, though you could make the argument that it's political too, being that we have very little representation in U.S. government. But, as we are statistically the most successful minority group in the U.S. (link: Rise of the Tiger Nation), the viewpoint goes that we should have very little to complain about.

Still, oppression is oppression no matter how you slice it. There's a reason behind Jackie Chan's "Rush Hour" character never getting the girl at the end.

Behind a predominantly white cast in "Avatar: The Last Airbender," when clearly the main characters are supposed to be Asian.

Behind the choice to cast the white Jim Sturgess as the star of "21," a movie based on real life, on an Asian MIT student who made hundreds of thousands counting cards in Vegas.

Behind the caricaturized effiminate Asian gangster in "The Hangover."

Behind the unspeakable success of PSY's "Gagnam Style." (Read this article and it will blow your mind: PSY and the Acceptable Asian Man.)

Behind Jeremy Lin's getting passed under the radar at every level of basketball, till the stars aligned and he shone like the fucking sun.

Behind this slap-in-the-face ridiculous picture:

Meet the asexual nerd whose style is so torturously misinformed that he's still rocking his grandpa's glasses from the '80s. What the fuck? We're in the age of the bold hipster frames, and the people in charge of this ad made him wear these? I thought they're promoting Windows 8, not the throwback Windows '95.

My point to all of the above is this: the social oppression is readily apparent. You have to be blind, deaf and living in a cave not to see it. Media shapes society's perception, and in turn society shapes that same media. It is a vicious circle, perpetual and ceaseless up till now. A couple years ago I was talking with a white friend and the question came up, "If you could be any other race, which would you pick?" I asked him facetiously, full well knowing how he would respond, if he would choose Asian. His instantaneous, automatic response: "Fuck no!" And then, realizing I myself am Asian, he tried to cushion the blow: "Sorry, dude. No offense." This is society shaping his perception, shaping his society, shaping his perception again, and so on and so forth.

The key, then, to beat the zone: first, understand that the defense is playing a zone. In another word: AWARENESS. In this case, understand that your beliefs about Asian-Americans didn't spring from a vacuum; they've been informed and sculpted over and over and over again by media affecting society affecting media affecting society affecting media affecting society, ad infinitum.

Second key to beat the zone: deconstruct that motherfucker. Attack the gaps that the zone invariably produces. Which means change your strategy to fit what the defense gives you. Now that you know the other team is playing zone, stop exchanging spots with your teammates for the sake of movement. No doubt that can be effective in man-to-man, but you're best option now is to attack the gaps. Swing the ball quickly, and get it into the high post. Pull back from your stereotyping people. Think intelligently about what it means to live in a consumerist society. Deconstruct the motives that limited Jackie Chan's on-screen sexual involvement to a peck more innocent than you would give to your mother. Change your strategy, your behavior based on your newfound awareness.

That's it. That's the whole game plan.

Now go forth, ye human kinfolk, into the world. (I feel like I'm standing at the pulpit right now, preaching to the congregation.) And the next time you're guarding an Asian on the basketball court, I strongly recommend that you get in that proper defensive stance ASAP.

After all, you don't want to be the guy who gets got by an Asian, do you?

Didn't think so.

P.S. Holla at me, Rick.

Chris Rock: "I have very low self-esteem"

2012-11-21T15:12:00.001-05:00

Watch this 36 second clip:

Amazing that one of the most successful standup comics ever is saying such things about himself. I'm perpetually confounded by Chris Rock's admitting this. I think for every artist trying to do her/his thing in the game, this small clip should be reassuring. Even the best, most successful of us suffer from self-doubt. You are not alone.

One on five: the fallacy of "Kill or be killed"

2012-11-07T16:23:00.002-05:00

I think "pick-up basketball" is the technical term for a group of people (guys mostly) who get together to play free-for-all hoops, but I've found another term that I think works just as well, and may fit the bill even better: I call it "social experiment." That's essentially what the activity is, though none of the people under study ever participate knowingly. When we take to the court we're doing so for any number of reasons: to exercise; socialize; enact Jordan's "For the Love of the Game" clause; and among many others, my personal favorite: to compare, inch-to-inch, who's got the biggest dick. Such reasons are all scattered across the concrete and hardwood surfaces, visible to everyone running from this basket to that basket. But something else lies much deeper, woven invisibly into the fabric connecting all participating players: a metaphor informing the learned nature of the human race. It's no doubt a social experiment, and an extraordinary one at that.

I've been playing basketball for sixteen years now, but it wasn't until this last year, while playing pick-up at a gym in New Jersey, that I became cognizant of the phenomenon. It had been present the whole time, to my mind's neglect, but I finally saw the pattern that emerged each time I laced up the sneaks. I'll explain through a brief situational narrative:

Game 1: It's my turn to partake in the five-on-five pick-up bout; I'm playing with four guys I don't really know that well. The game starts and I'm immediately glad to be on a team comprised of such willing passers, who know how to screen away and move effectively without the ball. If you didn't know any better you'd think we were out there playing in front of a coach who holds the key to each of our minutes. There is no place for Carmelo Anthony on this team: our united fluidity erases any chance for black-holing or ball-deading. The ball is moving constantly, always finding the open man. When one of us scores, we all score. Defensively we are tethered to one another, moving properly depending on where the ball shifts. Our defense feeds on our offense, and vice versa. To nobody's surprise we win that game easily.

Game 2: It's more of the same. The fluidity, the unison, the unselfishness. Oh, maybe once or twice someone will hoist up an ill-advised shot, or dribble for longer than is necessary, but it's nothing we can't handle as a fortified team. And so we win this game too, though by less than the game previously.

Game 3: You're waiting for the turn and here it is. During the third game something palpable shifts in our team chemistry. The seal of unity has been exposed, and unleashed from the envelope are all the things we silently swore against earlier: black-holing, ball-deading, putting up bad shot after bad shot. Suddenly someone's trying to dribble out of a double team rather than pass to the open teammate. When we don't have the ball in our hands we become listless spectators, refusing to move to the open spaces on the floor. Defensively we've really started slacking, taking plays off, not boxing out, not helping when help is required. The invisible tether is languishing. Miraculously we scrape by the other team and live to play another game.

Game 4: "Unity what? How do you spell it?" "U-N-I--" "Sorry, the only letters I'm familiar with are M-E," say each of the five Carmelos battling with one another for rights to whack off with the basketball in hand. It's a solo mission at this point, pathetically disguised as five-on-five basketball. Whoever gets the ball in the backcourt is going to throw it up on the offensive end, no matter if s/he's double or triple-teamed. A pass will occur if and only if it's in the form of a dazzling assist, and insofar as the credit falls upon the passer and not the scorer. We've all taken permanent leave from defense; the other team is scoring at will now. The outcome is predictable: our reign is through; we've been supplanted by a team that looks awfully similar to how we looked three games prior. It's kill or be killed and the basketball gods have seen enough to smite us from their court.

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We're all familiar with "Kill or be killed." It's the maxim that's said to govern the animal kingdom with grim immutability: "If you ain't first you're last"--or worse, a bloody carcass, that which we humans might call "dinner." If the lion doesn't strike against the tiger, well then the tiger will happily do the honors. We've humanized the literal, turning it into a metaphorical guideline by which to live: strike at or be struck at; screw or be screwed. But in many cases we're actually fine with the literal, and we pop someone's head off or bomb an entire village to ode nature's most ruthless maxim.

Well I'll say it flat-out: it is the most outrageously stupid maxim we've come up with in however many thousands of years human beings have been coming up with rules for self-governance. (The 10 Commandments are in close contention for the top spot.) Let me clarify: for the animal kingdom I think "Kill or be killed" is okay. I've got no qualms with animals adhering to this principle. But as much as homo sapien falls under the primate umbrella, which falls under the mammal umbrella, which falls under the animal umbrella, you and I both know we're a different class of animal altogether. We are the pinnacle of evolution, its redoubtable acme, what with our superior bipedalism (the ability to move by means of our two rear legs), opposable thumbs, and most importantly, our ability to conceptualize our own existence. I think there are other animals who possess the latter, but not to the level human beings have attained. We know consciously that we are alive. And we know consciously that we know consciously that we are alive. And we know consciously that we know consciously that we know consciously that we are alive. And... I think you get the picture. (And if you don't, then I'm suspecting whether or not you really or one of us...) In a single word: reason. It is our exquisite ability to reason that separates us from every other organism on the planet. And it is specifically this distinctive, one-of-a-kind ability that should expunge any need to abide by "Kill or be killed." Why? Because we are now past the survival checkpoint in our evolutionary timetable. Reason and rational thinking have delivered us there. The rest of the animal kingdom, however, is still stuck in the mire. They max out at "Live another day." Not us. We have the remarkable capability--OPPORTUNITY--to choose the quality of our lives. Mind you, this is an extraordinary power that we take for granted, without a moment's thought about the uniqueness of it all. The phrase "quality of life" presupposes that we've got (for the most part) survival taken care of. Animals subscribe to "Kill or be killed" because they have no choice. We do! And we exercise this built-in machination of choice all the time: we can eat half our burger and request the other half in a to-go box (not saying that it's easy); we can skip out on parties and bars in favor of studying or saving money; we can hold in our pee and our poop! In short, we can actively go against our own instinct, especially to benefit us in the long run. For this reason we are not eternally subjected to "Kill or be killed." Or, as would be put in Conversations with God, we are until we're not. In other words, until we decide it's time to choose something else. Something that serves us better, like "No more killing," or "Unconditional peace and love," or how about "We are all one"?

Of course, most everyone has consciously or subconsciously already tried chucking "Kill or be killed" out the window. There's just one problem: it's a feisty little shit and boomerangs back into our cell structure no matter how often we try chucking it, no matter how far we try chucking it. The sad reality is that, up until now, the maxim has not left us fully. I think this is why we battle internally with issues like homelessness: helping or neglecting those begging for money on the streets, because they arouse both our natural love (the desire to help) and our learned fear (the safe bet to neglect). I once learned a fantastic acronym for the word "fear": False Evidence Appearing Real. When we shrink into survival mode, it's always fear-based, and nine times out of ten unjustified. It's that false evidence appearing real, so we revert back to instinct: "Me-first"; "Everyone for him/herself"; "Kill or be killed." It's like we're out there on the basketball court with eyes that elect only to see the opponent. We're out there playing one on five.

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All this loops us back to the social experiment of pick-up basketball. What catalyzes the Hyde and Jekel transformation between Game 1 and Game 4? And how do evolution and "Kill or be killed" feature into the experiment? Well, let's have a closer look, shall we?

When five people who don't know each other, or know each other just barely, play on the same team, trust is usually no more trust than it is an exacto knife, or the symbol for Boron. Which makes it all the more remarkable that they'll usually come out of the gates playing like quintuplets in a womb, sharing unselfishly, laving in the glory of the united team. My theory is this: natural law dictates that human beings are unconditionally loving and trusting, when they are ranks above survival mode. When the pick-up game starts, these five individuals are creating from a blank canvas. There is nothing yet to survive; no false evidence appearing real, so they act in accordance with natural law. But this usually doesn't last for very long. At some point one of the five players begins to diminish "us" in favor of "me"--and almost always it's F.E.A.R. fomenting this change in paradigm: someone else taking a bad shot, keeping the ball in his/her possession for too long, erring too much, etc. The descension from "us" to "me" is the descension from boundless living to mere surviving. This person feels endangered, which is, of course, an absurd and fallacious notion. Nevertheless he has achieved metamorphosis from Lebron James (or my main man J-Lin, holla!) to Carmelo Anthony. He has already predetermined to shoot the ball the next time he gets it, no matter what. He does this a couple of times, and how do you think his teammates respond? Voila. Their F.E.A.R. bursts into being. "This guy is being a ball hog," say the other four players. "If he's gonna keep shooting every time he gets the ball, I will too." It's usually a subconscious declaration, and as simple as that the crumbling domino effect has spawned, to the inevitable and ultimate demise of the team.

It always happens like this. If one teammate is ball-deading every time he touches the ball, the other players rarely will continue their marked distributing. Instead they follow suit; the cancer spreads and paralyzes the unselfish movement that had benefitted the team as a whole earlier. "We are all one" is now "Kill or be killed," "Get mine before he gets his."

This is the metaphor I spoke of earlier, informing humanity of its learned nature. F.E.A.R. assails our best intentions, our natural proclivity to love and to share and to live together like muhfuckin' gangstaz. It activates survival mode, causing me-first hatred, jealousy, greed, etc. It makes insects out of natural giants, mortals out of gods and goddesses, and I guarantee you this: it is the single biggest fallacy we continue to believe in on planet Earth. There is no promise in "Kill or be killed" but what we've already got on the table today: war, starvation, poverty, genocide, rape--all stemmed from F.E.A.R. If you play one on five what do you think is going to happen?

It's hard to see in the short term but giving to others from your own stash of possessions is the best thing you can do for yourself. The haves should be giving to the have-nots enough so that everybody has. Hatred is not borne from nothing; I think it's the bitter response from the Self feeling incomplete. If everybody in this world had a home and had enough to eat and could live day-to-day decently (which is entirely possible), don't you think a vast majority of the violence and hatred would cease? If we really got that we are all one, wouldn't the bombs stop dropping in the Middle East? On a smaller scale, wouldn't your own daily problems start to dissipate? I'll quote from Conversations with God directly this time: "Live simply, so that others may simply live."

I think it's possible. Inexorably improbable, no doubt; but humanity has moved mountains before. This one here is the Everest of them all. So what would it take? First is recognition. That is always the first step to ameliorating any problem. If you can't see it, how do you expect to change it? Understand deeply when you're on survival mode, rather than live-like-a-muhfuckin'-g mode; when your mind is being about "Kill or be killed" and not "We are all one"; when you're playing one on five with four teammates listlessly watching while you screw up. Once you can recognize these distinctions you get to do something profound: make a clear and conscious choice at the fork. Do I want to keep living in my narrow shell to just get by, or do I want that planetary experience with all my human kin? Then you act accordingly. Rinse, lather, and repeat. Recognize, choose, act, and repeat. For there to be world peace, the whole world's got to get on the "We are all one" frequency.

It's just like in basketball: it only takes one person playing for him/herself to ruin the team. A virus doesn't need to be significant to spread and infect. All five players have to agree that "We are all one" is the most conducive paradigm to team success to hold court. Only one question remains: can we get everybody to agree? That glass-half-empty voice in my head tells me no. But then another voice says, "Fuck that," and gives me the realness in compelling fashion: "What is there not to agree upon? Who the fuck doesn't want world peace? Who the fuck doesn't want that planetary party where the whole world is poppin' bottles, makin' sweet love and dancin' away the night like there was no tomorrow?"

Who the fuck is right.

Novelists got bars too, part one

2012-10-27T02:06:00.003-04:00

Before I get deep into the post I want to say this first: for the last two weeks now I've been doing all my writing pen to paper (then just transcribing to the computer when necessary). This marks a drastic shift in my writing approach, which, since sixth grade, has featured almost exclusively punching the keyboard (the turquoise, original iMac, way before Apple blew up). Like breaking any habit in one's routine, it's been new and explorative, and doubtless uncomfortable at times. But certainly my writing--voice, style, diction, structure--has undergone one of those one-eighty makeovers. I'm left confused: is this a good thing? The friend who put me up this in the first place recently read two separate pieces of mine, one composed from the keys, the other from ink; she observed the palpable differences in each and said she much prefers my college-ruled literature. "It's much more honest," she wrote to me in a handwritten letter. A couple weeks in this laboratory and I'm starting to think she's right. (It doesn't get more honest than that--I'm usually pulling all the punches in my arsenal to deny that she's ever right--about anything. I guess the longhand method is working on a psychologically therapeutic level too.) But enough about handwriting...

I just finished reading my thirtieth book for the 2012 year. Not to toot my own horn but that really is fucking remarkable. And I mean that in the relative sense, comparing myself now to the Steven of years past, who would read nothing--and I mean nothing--if the name "J.K. Rowling" wasn't stamped across the book jacket. Which is not to say that presently I'm straying away from the Harry Potter books; I re-read all seven of them from August to September consecutively, never spending more than four days on each--the truest page-turning books in the history of the novel. But the fact that every single word in twenty-three OTHER books--all written by OTHER authors--has been heisted properly from my mental, shows an achievement in my personal growth worthy of some mention. So bravo there and then.

Thirty (twenty-three non HP) books later and I know now, confidently as though I were tasked with one-digit addition, the following: authors be spittin' like fuckin' crazy. Punchlines that got you melting, litigating against their creators on account of arson and first-degree burns. It's that serious.

Now I've been enough of a proud hip-hop aficionado since eighth grade--knowing every Nas lyric in his twenty-one year catalogue verbatim, among countless others (in the words of Jay-Z: "ask about me")--that I know classic bars when I hear them:

"Got your ears, all eyes on me;
old school eighties guy, that's me:
hip-hop head. Female rappers givin' me dome and that's just that hip-hop head."
-Celph-Titled in "S.C.O.M."

"I drink Moet with Medusa, gave her shotguns in hell
from the, spliff that I lift and inhale. It ain't hard to tell..."
-Nas in "It Ain't Hard to Tell"

"My game is vicious and cruel; fuckin' chicks is a rule;
if my girl think I'm loyal then that bitch is a fool."
-Big L in "'97 Freestyle"

Bars that got you stepping out from your machinery's auto-piloted plane, to fly freely in the mind's hypethral sky, full only of bright blue and endless possibility. Well, before rappers there were the wordsmiths: poets and novelists, these fine specimen who pioneered the punchline/bar game. Take, for instance, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, my most recent papered conquest:

"I can understand a wrathful God who'd just as soon dangle us all from a hook. And I can understand a tender, unprejudiced Jesus. But I could never quite feature the two of them living in the same house."

"I trusted too long in false reassurances, believing as we [women] want to do when men speak of national interest, that it's also ours. In the end, my lot was cast with the Congo. Poor Congo, barefoot bride of men who took her jewels and promised the Kingdom."

"On that day of the hunt I came to know in the slick center of my bones this one thing: all animals kill to survive, and we are animals. The lion kills the baboon; the baboon kills fat grasshoppers. The elephant tears up living trees, dragging their precious roots from the dirt they love. The hungry antelope's shadow passes over the startled grass. And we, even if we had no meat or even grass to gnaw, still boil our water to kill the invisible creatures that would like to kill us first. And swallow quinine pills. The death of something living is the price of our own survival, and we pay it again and again. We have no choice. It is the one solemn promise every life on earth is born and bound to keep."

"Misunderstanding is my cornerstone. It's everyone's, come to think of it. Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization."

This shit is, fucking ridiculous. Kingsolver coming at you like Eminem in '99, with that killed-straight-out-the-Pacific rawness. And that's just one book, one author. You take a look at Fitzgerald, Nabakov, Golding, etc. and from the cave you begin to see the full spectrum of the color wheel. Momma, poppa: I seen the light! I seen it with my very own! And believe it or not, it's not coming from the screen. Author Philip Roth has said the novel is dying, that in twenty-five years it will be nothing more than a cultic form of entertainment (YouTube: Philip Roth: The Novel Is A Dying Animal). The written word just can't compete with the moving picture, but I say that comparing the two is like comparing Beethoven to the number three--it doesn't make any sense, and you should be slapped across the face for even thinking about thinking about featuring the two in the same clause. Sad truth is, that's a lot of backhands to the cheek, a lot of swelling to the temple. Roth is right: books are hastily becoming an endangered species.

I beg of you: do yourself a favor and vow to read twelve books in the next twelve months. And I'm talking about quality books. I promise that you'll be in a particularly unique position: inevitably the enchantments will bind you, and what's funny is that when finally given the keys to escape, you'll want nothing more than for the judge to give you two hundred years, no parole. You'll be a prisoner living fully and vicariously through the novelists' bars. In a phrase: a life sentence. Whereby, eternity will tick as the individual second does, incomparable to the next, and too quickly for you to realize any time has passed at all.

Good day to all the universes. Part two to come sooner than later...

The last first post, for real-for real this time

2012-10-17T01:44:00.003-04:00

A preface is necessary to begin, I think. These very words you are reading have all been birthed from the pen, NOT the keyboard, the latter being what I use ten times out of ten when writing anything of self-proclaimed importance. I'm only now trying the ancient method because of a fantastic essay I read, in which the writer pretty much denounces the so-called "progress" we think is made exclusively possible by the overwhelming, inexhaustible technological advancements of planet Earth.

"The text on a computer screen," says Mr. Wendell Berry, "and the computer printout too, has a sterile, untouched, factorymade look, like that of a plastic whistle or new car."

In other words, it lacks any semblance of a personality.

He goes on: "The [human] body does not do work like that. The body characterizes everything it touches. What it makes it traces over with the marks of its pulses and breathings, its excitements, hesitations, flaws, and mistakes. On its good work, it leaves the marks of skill, care, and love persisting through hesitations, flaws, and mistakes. And to those of us who love and honor the life of the body in this world, these marks are precious things, necessities of life."

Well I loved this passage so much (and his essay as a whole, whose link I'll post at the Preface's end), I decided to finally give this scribbling business a real try. For the readers' note, my writing alters a hundredfold--structurally, stylistically, you name it--when I alter the physical instrument, as if ownership falls upon two completely separate people. Historically I've pretty much renounced anything I've composed from ink; it's been shoddy and shitty work, to be perfectly frank.

I've much preferred the strokes of my keyboard, and admit to fancying the delete button like it were a lover who is much, much too easy. For you see, on a computer it takes all the will of the galaxy to write a thousand decent words, and absolutely nothing to make them all go away in a single swipe. As a keyboard artist I've been hiding behind my dear Delete, black and opaque that leaves no trace of its prints on any document. That single button is the perfectionist's best friend. Oh, did I mention that with words I'm as perfectionistic as Hitler's army was meticulous?

Which suffices to explain my terror in composing with the pen anything I deem important. Deletion becomes deleterious. Rewriting, which in my case means rewording every single sentence a million times till it reads like God Herself wrote it, is now an impossibility. I simply can't rewrite slight variants of "Which suffices to explain my terror in composing with the pen anything I deem important" a hundred times on paper; on computer I can leave the document a seemingly inexorable mess and like that! Delete! What remains for sight is only the most perfect version of that sentence. You see? I'm constricted by the permanence of ink. Not enough freedom with the college-ruled, and conversely, a sky too much with the computer, to the point that writing anything good enough seems totally beyond my mental capacity.

But, all this being said, here goes. Apologies in advance if you, the readers, find these words ugly, incorrigible, a cause to cringe violently wherever you are. Just know I'm far from my comfort zone here, and that in my very trying to write longhand I'm taking steps to bean the perfectionistic beast from my being once and for all.

(As promised, the link to Wendell Berry's fantastic article entitled "Feminism, the Body, and the Machine": http://www.crosscurrents.org/berryspring2003.htm.)

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How many blogs I've tried to get going to no avail over the years, I really can't say. It's sad really; each is born in the online world breathing anew, full of life and hope and boundless possibility. Then poop. Death by negligence, malnourishment, suffocation, strangulation, what have you. I'm both the father and the murderer of five, maybe ten stillborn blogs. Shouldn't there be some sort of trial for my inoperability? Of course I'm guilty! Arrest me! Lock me up! Punish me in some way, for my own sake as a writer! But alas, no slap on the wrist. Not so much as a temporary holding on my (ad voice) Blogger, powered by Google.com, account. I'm free as anyone else to birth yet another blog. And reckless, promiscuous as I am, that's exactly what I've just done. Antipriety version two, bastard blog to the world's worst blogger in human history.

But before I vow to become a new man, to faithfully nurture and feed APV2, I think what's first necessary is to confront all that has stood in the way of my keeping a successful blog all these years. In other words: my own shit. My own grand, stinking shit. And trust me, there's a lot of it. I'll do my best to compartmentalize the shit into manageable chunks. The reason for all this: I believe that in wholly admitting, then coming to terms with, my own shortcomings as a blogger/writer I'll be able to escape the vicious circle of quick death for good this time, and begin afresh. For real. For real-for real, I say.

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MY CHUNKS OF SHIT:

1) A surplus of laziness, and a deficiency in discipline.
So much of my life has been motivated by impulse. Unfortunately impulse operates almost entirely in spurts, and rarely endures the test of time. The result is an offensive amount of unfinished projects, from blogs to stories to half-rearranged rooms, etc. I tend to feel like a million bucks at a project's inception, then give up immediately once the elation has run its very short course. Laziness invades like a merciless tyrant. It seeks discipline, if only to destroy it so thoroughly, so irreparably that when I eventually find the poor thing lying broken, shattered in the dormant dormitory of my mind's shell, recognition is nigh impossible.

2) Anyone can blog.
As someone who's chosen the hammering of ideas into clear, expressive and luminous words as his calling, I find it bothersome that anyone with internet can publish hir* thoughts online and be called a writer. Don't these people understand how painful the process of REAL WRITING is? That it takes everything you've got, and demands more still? I've been resentful, though at the same time I know I should be anything but; blogging allows for self-expression in ultimate convenience, so that anyone can do it and be successful. As a writer, shouldn't this inspire me? The answer, of course, is that it hasn't. I've been inwardly bitter, reasoning that if anyone can blog, I want nothing to do with it. Say I to myself in the most pompously superior manner, "I'm a REAL WRITER." I told you these chunks of shit were big.

3) Fear of vulnerability.
Writing is something like being naked on stage for all an arena to scrutinize. If you are a good writer, then perhaps you don't mind the exposure. Perhaps you love it. (Actually one can look wonderful naked and still be embarrassed.) But if you're a bad writer, well then those may just be some of the most horribly mortifying moments of your life. In any event, whether you're good or bad, the truth is always the same: a writer is to be exposed, s/he's to be vulnerable, and s/he's to be judged by people who really have no business judging hir work.

To complete my analogy: the first time I saw a naked woman, it was my childhood friend's mom. I was seven. And oh boy, was she beautiful, and was it awesome! Though the entire thing was accidental, and though she covered herself up nanoseconds after, I can still recall the scene quite vividly. Whether my friend's mom knows it or not, she gave a little bit of herself up to me on that day. As with any naked man or woman I've seen in my lifetime, it isn't difficult to recall their nakedness, so long as my working memory permits the occasion. And so they've all given a little bit of themselves to me. And it works vice versa. I say it is very similar with writing, except instead of body, you are letting them see bits of your soul. But to recall such vulnerability one does not need memory, for the words are right there on the paper. All you have to do is desecrate them with the eye.

Doubtless these are scary prospects for any writer, artist, or creator. Which is why so much of my writing has stayed veiled from the external world.

4) A scarcity of topics.
My stillborn blogs all suffered from the same weakness: specialization. They were either designed to focus entirely on my struggles as a writer trying to make it, or on defacing propriety and policy, or on thinking outside the box, etc. They all had a single focus in mind. But as time went on I found myself strapped for content, trying to dig through the shallow ditch that would sink no deeper.

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So there's the shit. I've admitted, acknowledged, and taken responsibility for all of it. And that's that. Now I'm free to create and fulfill on a new promise:

No longer will I let laziness govern my life. I will write--to start out--a blog every two weeks. That is the measuring stick for my discipline. I will stop resenting the fact that anyone can blog, and that it takes little to no talent to be successful. For blogging encourages millions of people to self-express by writing, and that is truly a beautiful thing. I will continue to feel uncomfortable exposing myself--but I shall not let this stop me any longer. If the goal is to become a professional and top-five writer of all time, well then I better accept the fact that for this to happen my work needs to be physically accessible for consumption. And last I will blog about whatever comes to mind: whether it's a complaint of propriety or a book review or the best way to tell if you've got a good sock underfoot (it must slide up your foot and past your ankle smoothly, with no jarring stops). This, dear friends, is The Vow.

I look forward to our time together.

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*Hir: a genderless possessive pronoun, fusing "his" and "her."