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pay no attention to the man behind the curtain
re: Leverage. Am I the only person who thinks Parker is just annoying? Like, she's kind of giving off the vibe of the kid who tries to be weird on purpose for the sake of being different and edgy.
re: Avatar. I'm almost done with Season 1 and, hands down, my favorite line so far is, "SOMEONE'S GETTING ATTACKED BY A PLATYPUSBEAR." lololol. It reminds me of this Wondermark strip. The world-building, with the technology and animals and stuff, is AMAZING, holy shit. (Keep in mind I'm coming from Narnia and Merlin, whose idea of world-building is *pulls things out of ass*.)
Okay, here's the first part of the rambling meme. I think the MO is to keep people's prompts together, but I'm going to disregard that and do these three first because they are related.
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mumblemutter: The Philippines
It's one of, what, four Christian-majority countries in Asia? The others are Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea, and I'm blanking on the other one. There is another one, right? I tell people I miss the food most, especially the fruit and seafood, 'cos damn, America, srsly. New England likes to be all, "Yeah, we do seafood," but you ain't got NOTHING, dude, you ain't got SHIT. Well, I guess we do have the advantage of being an archipelago... Anyway, I'm not from the Philippines, but I look like I am, and it kind of makes me feel like an impostor sometimes. People assume I'm from here and they'll talk to me in Tagalog (and I feel like the world's biggest ass because I haven't learned how to speak Tagalog, and that I only sort of understand it), and then I disclaim myself. The Philippines is officially a bilingual country, but English is mainly the language of official government and big business. My driving class was conducted in Tagalog, so it's a good thing he had diagrams, 'cos the next class, I was already driving a car. (My experience learning to drive in the Philippines is lollerskates, maybe I'll tell you about it one day.) The place where I look like everyone else, I sound different. The place where I sound like everyone else, I look different.
This post's icon is a photo of one of the commercial districts near where I live(d) in Manila. The text says 'Pearl of the Orient', which is one of Manila's nicknames.
Frombedlamsbard: acculturation
And to continue from the Philippines ramble: I sound American. When I went to France, they would assume I'm American because my accent is American. And it's funny, because I am from and grew up in NOT AMERICA, and have never even set foot on American soil until I was twelve. The English-speaking school I went to in the Philippines was full of all sorts of accents, and I'm not sure that American was even the dominant one. How did I end up with an American accent?! It's very weird. In all seriousness, I blame Hollywood. English is not the first language I learned to speak, but it is the language I am now most comfortable with, so I'm always befuddled when forms ask me for my 'mother tongue'. 'Cos seriously, what are they REALLY asking? When I speak my so-called mother-tongue, I have the vocabulary and articulation of a six-year-old. And an American accent. My cousins call me 'the English cousin'. I have many we's & us's & heres & theres, and no matter whether I'm flying from the Philippines to the US or from the US to the Philippines, I always use the verb 'return'.
Also, let's talk about fruit. For the first eighteen years of my life, I was spoiled as far fruit goes, 'cos hey, the tropics! We got three jillion types of mangos, six squillion types of bananas, forty-five frillion types of citrus, and okay, you get the picture. And I come here and it's like, apples, great, I guess. But in recent years, more and more 'exotic fruits' are being imported into the States, and what I think is really interesting is how what the fruit come to be called here is dependent on the culture/country that introduces them. Which I guess makes sense when you think about it. But it's interesting cognitive dissonance for me. Apparently, here a calamansi is called a calamondin. Everyone back in the Philippines, even the expats, call it a calamansi. And what I've always known as a bengkuang is apparently a jicama, and I sometimes I get a little proprietary, 'cos it's like, don't tell me what to call the thing I've been eating since I was a kid, English language.
But that's the thing about language. I mean, okay, so I understand and respect the impulse to protect a language and culture - they tend to be the building blocks of identity, after all - but you have to watch out for essentialism. Essentialism in a nutshell is the thinking that Culture X has always been Y and Z, and they have been Y and Z since the dawn of time. But languages change and cultures change, and once they do, you can't just undo them. You can't pretend history didn't happen. (Well, technically, I guess people do that all the time.) Look, I'm not saying "don't even try". Far from it. I'm just saying you should keep in mind that abstraction can bring about false ossification, which is stifling. Let language and culture breathe a little.
Fromzempasuchil: Benedict Anderson
Benedict Anderson is one awesome dude. He used to live in Indonesia, but then got banned from the country for being critical. He speaks Indonesian! I am always like, BLOWN AWAY when a non-Indonesian speaks Indonesian, 'cos it's like, why would you ever?? (My colonial mentality, let me show you it.) It must mean you really care! I skipped my seminar to see him talk last semester, and he talked about how he's working on a biography of a Chinese-Indonesian dissident during Dutch Colonial rule. There was also a short documentary about the 30 September Movement and the corresponding communist purge and I fucking bawled my eyes out, partly because of the atrocities that happened, and partly because oh my god, the things my government keeps from me. I had to wait twenty years and travel halfway across the globe to learn them.
...Okay, that's not true. I knew about the 30 September Movement, though not in detail, and I could've found out more if I wanted to. But I didn't. That's my own fault. But I mean. I'm not sure what I mean. I have a lot of complex feelings about Indonesia. My knee-jerk reaction is that the CIA and MI6 shouldn't have enabled the overthrow of Indonesia's then-communistic government, though in a way it was inevitable ('cos the communism was working out well, and they knew it had to be stopped before it got the chance to work really excellently). But it's not like if Indonesia had remained communist, it would be this perfect country. And I don't think I would choose for Indonesia to go communist again now. You can't Ctrl+Z socioeconomic change. And I, in my position, am definitely benefitting off of the Western neoliberal model that we all love to hate on. I feel both marginalized and privileged, it's pretty weird.
That same week, I was wandering around the stacks of my library and I accidentally came across, like, THREE SHELVES of books about communism in Indonesia. And I was thinking, these have probably been banned in Indonesia. There's something about New York that attracts the exiled and the banned, I'm not sure what it is. It's like everyone else's minority groups come here, and we become this majority of minorities.
Right, I think I was supposed to be rambling about Benedict Anderson. His big thing is coining the term 'imagined community', from his book Imagined Communities, which is about the creation of nationalist identity and the evolution of the concept of the nation-state. The parts that made the biggest impression on me were where he talks about the politics of cartography and the democratizing influence of the printing press.
re: Avatar. I'm almost done with Season 1 and, hands down, my favorite line so far is, "SOMEONE'S GETTING ATTACKED BY A PLATYPUSBEAR." lololol. It reminds me of this Wondermark strip. The world-building, with the technology and animals and stuff, is AMAZING, holy shit. (Keep in mind I'm coming from Narnia and Merlin, whose idea of world-building is *pulls things out of ass*.)
Okay, here's the first part of the rambling meme. I think the MO is to keep people's prompts together, but I'm going to disregard that and do these three first because they are related.
From
mumblemutter: The PhilippinesIt's one of, what, four Christian-majority countries in Asia? The others are Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea, and I'm blanking on the other one. There is another one, right? I tell people I miss the food most, especially the fruit and seafood, 'cos damn, America, srsly. New England likes to be all, "Yeah, we do seafood," but you ain't got NOTHING, dude, you ain't got SHIT. Well, I guess we do have the advantage of being an archipelago... Anyway, I'm not from the Philippines, but I look like I am, and it kind of makes me feel like an impostor sometimes. People assume I'm from here and they'll talk to me in Tagalog (and I feel like the world's biggest ass because I haven't learned how to speak Tagalog, and that I only sort of understand it), and then I disclaim myself. The Philippines is officially a bilingual country, but English is mainly the language of official government and big business. My driving class was conducted in Tagalog, so it's a good thing he had diagrams, 'cos the next class, I was already driving a car. (My experience learning to drive in the Philippines is lollerskates, maybe I'll tell you about it one day.) The place where I look like everyone else, I sound different. The place where I sound like everyone else, I look different.
This post's icon is a photo of one of the commercial districts near where I live(d) in Manila. The text says 'Pearl of the Orient', which is one of Manila's nicknames.
From
bedlamsbard: acculturationAnd to continue from the Philippines ramble: I sound American. When I went to France, they would assume I'm American because my accent is American. And it's funny, because I am from and grew up in NOT AMERICA, and have never even set foot on American soil until I was twelve. The English-speaking school I went to in the Philippines was full of all sorts of accents, and I'm not sure that American was even the dominant one. How did I end up with an American accent?! It's very weird. In all seriousness, I blame Hollywood. English is not the first language I learned to speak, but it is the language I am now most comfortable with, so I'm always befuddled when forms ask me for my 'mother tongue'. 'Cos seriously, what are they REALLY asking? When I speak my so-called mother-tongue, I have the vocabulary and articulation of a six-year-old. And an American accent. My cousins call me 'the English cousin'. I have many we's & us's & heres & theres, and no matter whether I'm flying from the Philippines to the US or from the US to the Philippines, I always use the verb 'return'.
Also, let's talk about fruit. For the first eighteen years of my life, I was spoiled as far fruit goes, 'cos hey, the tropics! We got three jillion types of mangos, six squillion types of bananas, forty-five frillion types of citrus, and okay, you get the picture. And I come here and it's like, apples, great, I guess. But in recent years, more and more 'exotic fruits' are being imported into the States, and what I think is really interesting is how what the fruit come to be called here is dependent on the culture/country that introduces them. Which I guess makes sense when you think about it. But it's interesting cognitive dissonance for me. Apparently, here a calamansi is called a calamondin. Everyone back in the Philippines, even the expats, call it a calamansi. And what I've always known as a bengkuang is apparently a jicama, and I sometimes I get a little proprietary, 'cos it's like, don't tell me what to call the thing I've been eating since I was a kid, English language.
But that's the thing about language. I mean, okay, so I understand and respect the impulse to protect a language and culture - they tend to be the building blocks of identity, after all - but you have to watch out for essentialism. Essentialism in a nutshell is the thinking that Culture X has always been Y and Z, and they have been Y and Z since the dawn of time. But languages change and cultures change, and once they do, you can't just undo them. You can't pretend history didn't happen. (Well, technically, I guess people do that all the time.) Look, I'm not saying "don't even try". Far from it. I'm just saying you should keep in mind that abstraction can bring about false ossification, which is stifling. Let language and culture breathe a little.
From
zempasuchil: Benedict AndersonBenedict Anderson is one awesome dude. He used to live in Indonesia, but then got banned from the country for being critical. He speaks Indonesian! I am always like, BLOWN AWAY when a non-Indonesian speaks Indonesian, 'cos it's like, why would you ever?? (My colonial mentality, let me show you it.) It must mean you really care! I skipped my seminar to see him talk last semester, and he talked about how he's working on a biography of a Chinese-Indonesian dissident during Dutch Colonial rule. There was also a short documentary about the 30 September Movement and the corresponding communist purge and I fucking bawled my eyes out, partly because of the atrocities that happened, and partly because oh my god, the things my government keeps from me. I had to wait twenty years and travel halfway across the globe to learn them.
...Okay, that's not true. I knew about the 30 September Movement, though not in detail, and I could've found out more if I wanted to. But I didn't. That's my own fault. But I mean. I'm not sure what I mean. I have a lot of complex feelings about Indonesia. My knee-jerk reaction is that the CIA and MI6 shouldn't have enabled the overthrow of Indonesia's then-communistic government, though in a way it was inevitable ('cos the communism was working out well, and they knew it had to be stopped before it got the chance to work really excellently). But it's not like if Indonesia had remained communist, it would be this perfect country. And I don't think I would choose for Indonesia to go communist again now. You can't Ctrl+Z socioeconomic change. And I, in my position, am definitely benefitting off of the Western neoliberal model that we all love to hate on. I feel both marginalized and privileged, it's pretty weird.
That same week, I was wandering around the stacks of my library and I accidentally came across, like, THREE SHELVES of books about communism in Indonesia. And I was thinking, these have probably been banned in Indonesia. There's something about New York that attracts the exiled and the banned, I'm not sure what it is. It's like everyone else's minority groups come here, and we become this majority of minorities.
Right, I think I was supposed to be rambling about Benedict Anderson. His big thing is coining the term 'imagined community', from his book Imagined Communities, which is about the creation of nationalist identity and the evolution of the concept of the nation-state. The parts that made the biggest impression on me were where he talks about the politics of cartography and the democratizing influence of the printing press.