BLOCK PERSON: How facebook imitates life

There is a sort of ethereal thrill in un-friending and blocking folks on facebook. 

I just blocked several people who, for various reasons, no longer please me. 

It is weird how facebook imitates life. If I'm not facebook friends with someone, it's often a good indication of how deeply I feel about our real-life friendship. And if I un-friend or (even worse) block you... That means that I am erasing you from my memory altogether. 

Yes, it's a bad thing when modern technology becomes so imbedded in our everyday lives. No, real friendships shouldn't be qualified by ties on facebook. BUT thank you facebook. Thank you kindly for allowing me to entirely forget people who upset me.

Among my favorite American films is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The film was somewhat didactic about the issue of forgetting loved ones-- how memories are precious. Part of me is a little anxious about the un-friend/block features, the wholesale end to a friendship. But at the same time, I feel empowered when I make the choice to no longer connect with the people I find offensive. 

When I was in China, people often told me 你想太多 (You think too much). But I would be terribly unhappy in a world where facebook's un-friend and block features had no emotional or social significance. 

(Cheers to my first blog without profanity~ How adult I've become writing this blog for no one.)

M!

On the right (and by right, I mean left) side of politics

I love Obama. I really do. But I'm not shouting it from the rooftops like every other mother fucker in LA.

At the onset of the 2008 presidential election, a house around the corner planted an Obama For President sign on their front lawn. Months after the inauguration, that sign is still there. After the great proponent of change and media darling was elected, a small piece of paper amended the for: Obama IS president. 

Really folks? Really? What compensation do these neighbors expect for having been on the right side of politics? Why the incredible urge for the PDP (public displays of partisanship)? I find myself disenchanted with the extremely vocal pseudo-liberals wearing Obama like the latest fashion. I find that the loud Obama-loving Los Angelenos are not unlike the illiterate Harry Potter fans of yesteryear (I trust that my phantom readers will understand and appreciate that analogy without any explanation). 

And yet for all my griping, I too have shouted a few political sentiments. It is my own experience protesting the Iraq War that turned me off to overt displays of political partisanship. 

I was present at several anti-war rallies in the greater Los Angeles area, most of which received conveniently little press. One campus walk-out almost resulted in expulsion from my high school and a rally in Hollywood on Oscar night almost resulted in an arrest. 

But listening to the loud, inaudible voices that one hears at protests, I found nothing useful or effective. In my highly-regimented life of class to class to lunch to class to home to dinner to studies to bed, I was choked by the disorder. At a typical rally (yes, I've wasted enough time at rallies to know), there are a million different groups airing their grievances. At the Iraq rallies, anti-Iraq war posters and chants were drowned out by the other interest groups: The Free Palestiners, Free Tibeters, Labor Righters, etc..

Maybe Fox News didn't feature much of the protests because they were short on footage of relevant signs/chants? I kid... But I refuse to believe in or attend protests until unified messages are presented in a more organized and effective manner. Government interference in national elections brought the pro-democracy camp to the streets in Egypt in the past few years. With the multitude of issues plaguing the region, somehow the Egyptians managed to focus. Only in unity will the media be forced to cover the unavoidable truth of public sentiment. 

Unity aside, the few conversations that I had with my fellow protesters also revealed that they lacked any profound insight into the plight of the bombed Iraqi citizens and countless soldiers sacrificed. Few protesters seemed to know anything about Iraq or the Middle East. At the time, I myself was also somewhat misinformed (not that I'm a fucking expert now). 

Why then? Why protest a War in Iraq without understanding Iraq or the gravity of the situation? 

One sad answer is: The cool factor. Many of the pseudo-liberals that form an almost-religious presence at these rallies are involved in vast social networks. For these folks, it seems that liberalism is little more than a dinner party or a quilting bee. I won't name names, because I know some people who I don't want to offend. But allow me to paint you a picture:

They are vegans. Because so many of them are vegans. They collect money door-to-door to fund the tofu they occasionally serve the homeless. I sometimes wonder how much of that money really goes to tofu, but questions are seldom answered (funny how the pseudo-liberals themselves can be totalitarian). They believe in socialist principle and praise some of the most warped examples of socialism to plague the 20th century. BUT MOSTLY, they sit around drinking fair-trade beer, watching clever Michael Moore docudramas.

I'm not using any concrete information to support this claim. You have no reason to believe me. AND I must admit that my signature bitterness has made me a little unfair. But this is a blog. Go to a newspaper, phantom reader. 

In retrospect, maybe a large part of contemporary conflict in the Middle East would have been prevented if the average American, pro or anti-war, knew something of pan-Arab or international government and society. Even today, years after Americans started uttering their first Arabic words (Hamas and hummus), I find that Americans know relatively little about the Middle East for a world power. 

But so many of us talk about it like we know the Middle East quite well. It's just a lot of Ali Babas and kebobs, right? 

We are a culture of pins and t-shirts. We are a culture of Free Tibet stickers, because Richard Gere said so. 

And yet despite all my complaints about the United States and our general lack of substantial political consciousness, my travels have taught me that I would never live anywhere else. Like most every foreign country, I have the habit of complaining about this country and preferring it to all the alternatives. 

I just want some people take down their fucking yard signs. It's like Christmas decorations in July. 

M!

HUIS CLOS: The irony of this blog...

... is that no one is reading this. 

BUT I have such an incredible desire to say inappropriate things to a large audience. Maybe this is an inappropriate forum. Or maybe I just don't know how to market my bullshit take on the world. 

I once read a line of the Jean-Paul Sartre parable Huis Clos (L'enfer c'est les autres<-- that one) that pleased me. Estelle, a hooker-ish character in the play, says: "Je ne peux pas supporter qu'on attende quelque chose de moi. Ça me donne tout de suite envie de faire le contraire." My translation: "I fucking hate it when people want something from me. I am immediately moved to do the exact opposite." 

I feel this way about political correctness. Propriety. And culture.

I have a friend who is incredibly well-versed in political correctness. I feel as though I'm never in the right--- I can't say fuck because it trivializes sex. I can't say bitch because it's insulting to women. I am not particularly prone to using racial epithets, but I can only imagine the lecture...

In the workplace, political correctness makes sense. We build walls around ourselves to protect society from self-discrimination-- to allow the woman to compete equally in the workplace. If the word bitch somehow makes her feel lesser and prevents her from competing, then I will forfeit a piece of my freedom of speech for her. But I will inevitably think the word bitch in the comfort of my own home. AND I will say it. Not because I'm a shit-starter, but because it's a word in the English language, and I won't be censored by society to the point of not even being able to utter a perfectly eligible English word. I hate being silenced. I have a strong distaste for this friend and their pseudo-liberalism. This sort of behavior is not only wrong because it is incredibly pedantic and patronizing: 

A high school professor and mentor once said that in an extremely liberal society, where political correctness becomes a rule and not a choice, we forget why it's wrong to say some things. Offensive things. Diminutive things. We must allow for the word bitch in society so that people can make a choice to say or not say the word. People must be able to make choices between right and wrong, lest we forget why the wrong is wrong. Right?

I am a big fan of Sarah Silverman. And her jokes about racism. Or I was before her material started getting a little old. She uses inappropriate words to remind us how horrible it is to use them. But so many blind followers of the cult of the all-important PC have criticized her because even the mention of racism is considered profane. I think what she does (or did) is of great cultural significance-- we must be reminded of what is wrong with certain words as opposed to blindly shutting-up. That's just quietude. 

Are people ready for freedom of speech? I doubt that there's a place on Earth where people are truly ready to hear everything that can be said. We fear it. I'm afraid of being called some things. So are you. You know you are. Yes, yes you do. 

There are some things that I probably won't say, because I believe in playing fair-- I don't particularly like or hate any one race or gender. BUT I rather make a choice not to say certain words, at least after the age of eight. 

I hope to use this blog to say things about society. Things I encounter. Things that piss me off. If you read this, that's tight. Because I am sick of people shutting me up, and I only have enough balls when my bullshit is written under the pseudonym M!

Until next time, bitches. 

M!

hardcore something: thinking about a theme for this blog

I've read another blogger, 木子美（Muzi Mei), a Chinese journalist who wrote about her sexual affairs and angered some confucian grandmas in the 90s. While in China, she was something like a hero to me-- because she started something of a sexual revolution that is still on-going in China's larger cities. 

I printed out her picture and hung it on my cubicle at a progressive Chinese newspaper (not government-owned, thank you very much) where I was an intern. The ridicule I faced! Even as radical as my colleagues were, I found that they were still very conservative about sex. 

To be fair, re-reading some of 木子美's works, I now realize that she was not as concerned with inspiring a culture of sexual openness as she was with being rich and famous. So what? If sexual revolution comes as a by-product of one woman's struggle to make a buck in a cut-throat economy, then fuck the moralists. 

YES- FUCK the moralists. Fuck the moralists who have made my life more difficult. They are everywhere. Confucians in the East and religious zealots in the West. I cordially invite myself to shit on your culture and beliefs.

I suppose I'll never be able to say this in a newspaper... Maybe this blog will be about sex, and I'll make lots of money describing the lighting in my bedroom. Maybe this blog will be about how I fucking hate everyone with a dogma, a culture, or a cultivation. 

M!

Monsieur Bovary

My name is M! I am currently finishing up my last few months at UCLA. In general, I am bored and impatient. 

I studied abroad for a year in China. While I was there, I conducted several journalism internships and consequently decided to become a journalist. In China, I encountered a variety of interesting people and situations. I will try not to reminisce-- I realize that's not entertaining to anyone but myself. Suffice it to say, I was a boy before China. And after interviewing service staff, janitors, security guards, prostitutes, lamas, and rich bitches, I learned a little more about life. 

I am still plagued with wanderlust. I expect that, if you are older than me, you are thinking something like: 1) Your anxiety will calm with age. 2) I was like you at your age, 3) Silly rabbit, trix are for kids, 4) Maybe you need an anti-depressant. With all do respect, fuck you...

I find that my discomfort is like that of Mme. Bovary- albeit slightly less sexual. I am a petit bourgeois, stuck in a mediocre moment, in a mediocre city. But I aspire to so much more-- to excitement and heroism. And in a time of recession and the swine flu. Yes, I am a Monsieur Bovary, with the same breathtaking anxiety of my literary predecessor. 

I've visited blogs of great importance. Maybe you, dear reader, should be at one of those blogs, enriching yourself. Like http://misrdigital.blogspirit.com/ --- I suggest that if you are interested in the future of democracy in Egypt and the Middle East, you visit it. I contacted Wael Abbas, who is in charge of the blog, hoping to make an important journalism contact, but I had nothing to say but can we be friends so that I can interview you in the future. Needless to say, we aren't pen pals. 

I wish I knew how to schmooze. So useful. Any tips for striking conversations with important people? Email mjh8755@hotmail.com. It would be greatly appreciated, because I find that I've only ever had a good conversation with poor people. And when I'm bored with a conversation, I damn it all to hell and say the stupidest shit :(

Until next time... Hopefully I'll have something to say or a theme or something...

M!