H’okay!

With the end of the semester and all its time-consuming activities, I’ve been stressed out and unable to find time/energy to exercise. I feel pretty blah, and for the past week have been trying to combat the issue by eating healthier options. I’ve concluded that this is not the solution for me. Instead of having what I really want– a big honking bar of chocolate– I’ll end up having (over the course of a couple hours) a salad, a banana, a pot pie, crackers, and coffee. Ridiculous! Along with not getting what I really want, that’s approximately 2x the calories. I’m not a calorie-counter or anything, but there’s a vague awareness of such things that looms over me when I’m not getting regular exercise.

The way I worked my sweet teeth in high school was to walk to the nearest grocery store. If I felt ambitious or the weather was nice, I’d go to the second or third-nearest. This worked excellently, and perhaps on a Pavlovian level paired exercise with tasty items.

So as soon as this crunch is over, I’m getting back to that system. It made me feel healthy and I got to eat whatever I craved without guilt. Because I’m that indoctrinated in the thin culture, it’s true.

logical fallacies

I spend time deducing the causes of my actions and feelings, and find it imperative to divorce two seemingly intertwined ethical standards– what I would do and what everyone else should do. To avoid holes in my argument here, I should preface this all with the opinion that everyone should strive to be critically self aware and to construct a logically sound moral and philosophical system.

The Yale girl came up in class between myself and two other girls. For reasons that become obvious, I shall call the first girl “White,” the other “Gray,” leaving black for myself. White opined that the piece wasn’t even art, and tried to imply that it mattered at this point whether the girl actually had the miscarriages or not. Can you really get to the second year of art school and be so dense about conceptual art? I told her that this (and the dog fiasco) are the most successful works of art in years– we’re talking about them nation-wide, probably world-wide. She then equated first-month miscarriages to murder, and said that the girl should be thrown in jail if the piece was factual. She said that no one should ever abort, ever, and that she felt so strongly because she had nearly been aborted a month before her own birth. I suppose terror of the void overcame her rational facilities, because she went on to state that humans fundamentally know that murder is wrong. Fundamentally. In the basis of our reality.

To borrow a line, my brain nearly exploded. I pointed out to her that morality was culture-based and absolutely subjective, and that the US as a whole operates from a christian-based morality, in which she seemed entirely invested. The response? Outrage! Nooo, she’s not christian at all, how dare I make assumptions about her. This, to me, is like telling someone who has just said, “Send all those niggers back to Africa where they can’t steal our jobs and women any more,” that they are a racist and subsequently listening to an adamant disavowal of any sort of racial discrimination whatsoever.

She wailed against the separation of art and ethics, two realms of thought that have held a dialogue– but existed as separate entities– since the days of Plato. I can’t even get started on that misconception.

Throughout the discussion, Gray held the middle-ground between my radical stance of individual choice and her strict blanket morality. She said, “I think that abortion should be avoided at all costs, because I do feel that it is wrong, but if I had a fifteen-year-old daughter and she got pregnant, I would talk to her about it as an option.” White’s eyes practically bugged out, and she asserted that, “Old enough to spread your legs is old enough to raise a child.”

Damn. I tried later in the period to mend fences by telling White that I wasn’t trying to argue with her convictions or change her mind, but just point out the logical fallacies in her argument. “What holes? I don’t have any holes, I’m right!”

I give up. There will probably be more on similar topics later.

eaten life

School and my scanty social scene have eaten my life– I have had few thoughts worth sharing and even less time to share them. Expect a comeback in the next week or two.

disjoint

Today is Drummer’s birthday, making him 125% of my age. Happy birthday to him! In honor of the day, a real conversation, paraphrased:

Drummer: “You’ll meet my friend tomorrow and we’re basically the same person– sometimes we go off on nerd tangents.”
unlegion: “Technological singularity nerd tangents or video game nerd tangents?”
Drummer: “Oh, don’t worry, you’ll be able to follow our conversation.”
unlegion: “No, I mean, I’ll be able to contribute to the singularity. Video games, I’ll be completely lost.”

Perhaps that seems funnier to me than it possibly could to anyone else.

body ownership

So the girl who artificially inseminated herself at Yale and proceeded to herbally abort any possible pregnancy? Good for her. Although she’s going about it a bit brashly or with a lack of finesse, the issues she’s raised are amazing. If it really did happen and is not staged performance art (which is every bit as legitimate in the art world– stfu mainstream media) I am concerned about her health. Herbal abortions are just toxins and work through giving you low-level poisoning, so I hope she had good advice on that front. It was her own body, either way. The sperm was theoretically gotten from men who knew its destination. No harm, no foul. And the great big mystery of whether she ever was or wasn’t pregnant? Delicious and relevant.

I am surprised that people get so wrapped up in the way they think other people should be living their lives. When rape is discussed, there’s usually a subtext about whether the girl was asking for it– was she living a life we would not condone? George Clooney’s girlfriend– if she got raped at a party, would we pay attention? Only long enough to tell her to stop being a whore on the dance floor. Are we so wrapped up in a mob mentality that we need to force others into our mode of living in order to feel comfortable with ourselves?

Here’s some other things in the art world that are close to that topic. Damien Hirst’s works, like the shark or the mating cow and bull, depict dead animals. These were not accidental deaths or found-object skeletons– these animals were killed specifically for the piece of art. I’m not going to put a moral judgment on that, simply follow a train of thought (as the pieces were hopefully designed to do). Enter Guillermo Vargas, who allegedly (the humane society says differently) chained a stray dog in a salon and starved it to death. Alright. If Hirst’s work is acceptable, in which the moment of death is an abstract (the title of the shark piece is “The Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”, Vargas had hit a vein with the reality of death.

I’ve completely lost track of where I’m going with this and need to go to studio. So, expect refinement later.

sousveillance

I’m intrigued by the idea of sousveillance. Firefox apparently doesn’t even recognize it as a word. Surveillance for the watching from above; equiveillance for mutual watching; sousveillance for watching from below. I’d like to structure some art pieces around this, and the ways people submit to watching when it’s done from a position of authority (traffic cams, etc.) but rebel when equiveilled (a college brat on the street with a video camera). There’s something pithy there.

On the topic of traffic cams, the last time I was back in my home town I witnessed for the first time the cameras that flash and take a picture when someone goes through a red light. As far as I could perceive, it misfired three times while I waited at the light– right turn reds in my state are legal unless otherwise posted. A number of studies show that these highly distracting flashes actually increased the number of crashes or had no effect on driving safety at all. Bah humbug, and what a waste of money.

I have obtained the first light sunburn of the year, and tomorrow I’ll be seeing Drummer again, if only for a few minutes. It’s official– he’s my boyfriendperson. This is an excellent turn of events, and I look forward to living closer to him, as the current commute is harsh on my finals-approaching eighteen-credit self. This summer may be fabulous.

this boy

He mused, “So this is what chemistry is,” last night. The eternal foot-in-the-mouther, I replied that it was beautiful, but bittersweet– with it came the realization that every previous intimacy and romance had in some form been forced. Talked this morning to a friend about the boy– I suppose he needs a nickname, and I dub him uninventively Drummer. “Why, you’re smitten!” exclaimed the friend. Yes. I want to tell everyone I know about him, but am half-way restraining it like a secret.

This is scary and amazing.

lightbulb

Radical feminism has the same problems as fascism. The thought just struck me, and it’s not something I can go around proving at this point. Over the past few months I’ve become increasingly invested in exploring the feminist blogosphere and developing a critical awareness of gender role fulfillment, among other societal issues.

A perfect world is impossible, kids.

initial convolutions

Last night I came back to a thought first introduced by a teacher last year. Under him we didn’t just learn about proportions of shading– he also amateurishly psycho-analyzed every one of us. At mid-term reviews, more than a year ago, he told me we used to be the same. He, too, pared down his personality, restrained his urges, and tamed his tongue, until all that was left met his parents’ high standards and gleaned their approval. I cried, because that was a cruel truth. The paring-down process was an unhealthy pattern, and I’d continued it in other close relationships.

Well. I’m out on my own, now. I am my own woman, and the form of who I want that woman to be is more clear every day. I don’t know if my parents would like her, but they’ll have to love her.

I still seek approval. Actually, it’s not difficult for me to obtain. I’m kind, supposedly intelligent, don’t yammer on for hours. I have an interesting life and can tell entertaining anecdotes from the art-school lifestyle. I don’t go out of my way to seek approval because right now there seems to be an over-flowing bounty of it– rather, I seek not to disappoint. I follow through on things. So when he asked if I felt romantic possibilities, I said yes. When he said he thought we could have fun together, I agreed. When he told me I was making a decision too early, that I didn’t even know him well enough to judge his intensity, I said perhaps. And then I gained disapproval and shucked something away that I full well know could have been fantastic.

I don’t like the feeling.

But the other fellow seems so right, so good, I don’t even question it right now. I can’t already sense how it would end. I don’t think I’ll get unhealthily wrapped up in him and he seems to have excellent boundaries. There’s a lack of the risk-taking danger that I think people often confuse with eroticism or passion. I don’t feel like I’ll need to pare anything away to always meet his approval, and that’s the way it should be.