the writings of コー·ヘザー

Thu, 28 Apr 2005 19:28:22 GMT

En113

Questionaire about Self as Writer
Modified from Jenny Spencer

• Where do you usually write? Why?
I usually write by myself in my dorm room with my computer late at night with the lights off and my roommate asleep. I’m something of a nocturnal creature so working at night seems to be the best for me. Sometimes, my brain tends to go into overactive imagination mode during those hours and I love it.

• What’s different about where you wrote last year and where you write this year? Describe
Back in high school I always wrote in my bedroom and during my classes. I was an avid collector of notebooks varying from the very small, to the very large, to the leather bound and handmade (with pictures of family and friends). Now in college I find it more difficult to write in class, and easier to write in my dorm room. I get fewer disruptions. I miss handwriting things, but typing has always been faster. I even used to have a Cybiko handheld computer, in which I learned to become an extremely talented thumb-typer.

• Describe the circumstances that lead to your best writing. What processes and contexts help you?
Out of the blue. My best writing happens when it happens out of the blue. I hate mapping things out and using visual outlines because my best ideas and best arguments happen while I’m writing the introduction. Suddenly pieces of other paragraphs come to me and they get written and I slowly fill in the rest of it. I also write extremely well under pressure. When I have too much time, I tend to dawdle and take my time – therefore, never getting any work done.

• What kinds of writing materials do you use (i.e.: computer, long hand, special pen)? Why?
I use my laptop (affectionately named ‘Ochibi-chan’ meaning the small one) for most of my everyday writing. Though, I tend to enjoy writing in notebooks using my favorite kind of pen – Uniballs .05mm ink… in pink, when I have it. Whenever I write in that kind of hot neon pink, I tend to write my best, or have the best ideas. I haven’t quite figured it out yet… maybe it houses the heart of my muse.

• How do you come up with topics? Or subtopics (paragraphs) from an essay assignment?
Cross my fingers and hope to god something hits me in the face. I’m really not joking. I can spend hours and hours trying to think really hard about a topic, but if I don’t focus at all, suddenly I can have the most genius idea in the entire world. Pure inspiration. Pure!

• How many times do you revise? Why? Describe process of revisions?
I revise twice. Sometimes, when I feel super inspired I’ll revise it once and consider it a masterpiece. I don’t really go through and cut it apart and start all over either. When I revise, it’s to catch the little things – bad grammar, bad punctuation, a sentence that sounds redundant and should belong somewhere else. It’s not anything incredible, and it may even be an insult to writers the ease I take with my papers sometimes…

• What part of the paper do you tend to find most difficult? Why?
… the beginning, the middle and the end. No, wait, that’s a lie. I have a very difficult time with endings. I can’t wrap up things. When I write my fiction, it never seems to have an endings. Endings bother me, I think. I just can’t wrap up anything – I feel a though my idea is incomplete. I hate them. So my conclusions have always been weak, and I’ve always had trouble with them. (I’ve had trouble with my thesis before too…)

• What are your writing rituals? What do you do to get ready to write? Describe.
Sit down, shut up and start typing. It doesn’t matter if I don’t want to, I force myself too… too bad it never really works. Sometimes it does, but as a whole, I have to feel the inspiration, but sometimes it doesn’t come and when a paper’s due in two days, I have to get cracking, sit down and force the neurons to snap and get into business. (oh, but I need to know what I’m writing about first…)

• What do you do when you’re stuck? Describe the processes. Or tell the story.
When I reach that place where nothing will come to me, I take a break. I stop writing. Sometimes I write something different, sometimes I even go for a walk, sing a song, read a book, anything to get my mind off the topic. It’s one thing to sit and write for 6 hours, but after a while it’s like trying to force the last drops of juice out of a bottle. It won’t go no matter how hard to shake it – they’ll cling to the sides of the wall and just sit there. That’s what it’s like. I have an idea of what I need to write, but it won’t go down on paper, no matter how hard I try. So I take a break. Breaks are good. It’s like buying a new bottle of juice.

• What have people said about your writing? Any quotes from others’ comments? How would you respond to these comments about your writing?
People have said a lot. I have had people who absolutely loved my writing, and other people who really hated it. I had some picky English teachers who pecked apart everything I tried to write, and some English teachers to would take my paper and gush over it from the very first word. I’ve had some friends who read my writing (essays and fiction) and tell me it’s the greatest thing they’d ever read, and other friends to reply with a, “Meh, whatever”. The peer review letters in this class have all been really positive, but I feel it might be because we’re all not familiar enough with each other to be so critical. I take compliments very badly. They make me shake my head and protest. Criticisms, I take a little better, because often times they’re picking apart the pieces of my essay that agree are bad and need work. Only once have I ever written an essay I loved to pieces and gotten it back covered in red marker saying that my statement was foolish and no good.

Tue, 26 Apr 2005 19:40:16 GMT

Introduction: expand a bit more on the introduction. Flesh it out and include mention of interviewing various students.

Data: Quotes! Take more quotes, however, try to protect their privacy. I didn't ask permission to use their names in my essay. Include some more information about animation, like Toy Story, I had forgotten than I had begun to mention it and left it hanging in mid air.

Discussion:

Thu, 31 Mar 2005 20:35:05 GMT

A biological homage to mickey mouse

pass: writing

Tue, 29 Mar 2005 20:38:16 GMT

The United States has become a society filled with so many different cultures that there are oftentimes a clash in beliefs and behaviors. It has been compared to something of a "melting pot". Unfortunately, to reflect on a song written by Tom Chapin, the idea of a world being more like a "salad bowl" feels more accurate [---please let me find the lyrics---]. A melting pot can be considered a place where all different cultures can meld together to become one new, unique, special culture, but a salad bowl is a place where many different flavors are able to mix, mingle and maintain their own unique style. You can look down the street and see a family of Chinese immigrants who are still learning to speak english, and next door is a house full of fourth generation Irish Catholics. The lives they lead are so entirely different and unique from each other, and yet they can still live on the same street, in the same town, in the same state, in the same country. Because there is such a difference between those two theoretical families, there is no suprise that such complications and arguments over clashing cultures occurs in the US. McBride's "What Color is Jesus", another essay by the same title written by David Learner, Galdwell's "The Sports Taboo", and Hoberman's "Darwin's Athletes" presents several references and views towarsd the clashing cultures of the united states and how varying thoughts and ideas have affected the way races, cultures and society is viewed today.

Referenced in Learner's "What Color is Jesus" the idea of different cultures is presented in the way of showing how people perceieve the christian religion. The writer mentions that all cultures have been taught to draw or portray Jesus in their own likeness, unless taught otherwise. Meaning, that there is the "Asian" Jesus, or the "White" Jesus or the "Black" Jesus. Avenue Q kindly presents this to us in their song, "Everyone's a little bit Racist"

Princeton: Aww, Christ do I feel good.
Gary: Now there was a fine, upstanding black man...
Princeton: Who?
Gary: Jesus Christ
Kate: But Gary... Jesus was white.
Gary: No, Jesus was black.
Kate: No, Jesus was white.
Gary: No, I'm pretty sure Jesus was black--
Princeton: Guys, guys! Jesus... was Jewish!
All Three: Bahahahahaha!

Gary, being a character based on black child actor Gary Coleman, and Kate Monster being a relatively white monster argued over the race of Jesus, varying from white to black until being told by Princeton, whose character is a college graduate, seems appropriate that he would reference the historical accuracies of Jesus Christ. In turn, someone's whose religion is Judisim can be any rance and have any appearance, leaving the appearance of Jesus a mystery once again.

The text wrestling book's "What Color is Jesus" was written by James McBride, a self proclaimed 'mullato' (son of an African American father, and a Polish mother) asks himself the question, "Am I black or white?". His brother, Richard "decided he was neither black nor white, but green, like the comic book character the Hulk." (McBride 191)

Thu, 24 Mar 2005 20:25:47 GMT

Essay 3

“What color is Jesus”; “The Sports Taboo”; “Darwin’s Athletes”; "Mirrorings"

How/Why do cultures clash within the United States?

-religions
-gender
-sports
-race

expand on each topic with examples and quotes from each essay. provide outside source information...?

"What Color is Jesus"

-When I introduced prayer, I asked them how they would pray... they began to pray in a way that was familiar to them and directed toward the god we all knew and loved

-When I introduced singing, I asked them what songs they would sing. They had non. I gave them none. They were insprired by the Holy Spirit to write their own. It sounded like their music, and it gave glory and honor to god...

etc. these quotes show that there are different ways of worshipping the same god in different cultures. This essay exemplifies the fact that religious figures can be represented differently and yet still have the same kind of meaning.

"The Sports Taboo"

-If we were to decide what to make of the differences between blacks and whites, we first have to decide what to make of the word "difference," which can mean any number of things. A useful case study is to compare the ability of men and women in math. If you give a large, representive sample of the male and female students a standardized math test, their mean scores will come out pretty much the same. But if you look at the margins, at the very best and the very worst students, sharp differences emerge. In the math portion of an acheivement test by Project Talent-...- there were 1.3 boys for ever girl in the top ten percent, 1.5 boys for every girl in the top five percent, and seven boys for every girl in the top one percent

-It's not that offensive, or that it leads to discrimination. It's that, in some sense, it's not a terribly interesting question; "better" promises a tider explaination than can ever be provided.

The United States has become a society filled with so many different cultures that there are often times a clash in beliefs and behaviors. It has oftentimes been compared to something of a “melting pot”. Unfortunately, to reflect on a song written by Tom Chapin, the idea of the world being more like a “salad bowl” feels more accurate. A melting pot can be considered a place where all the different cultures can meld together and become one new, unique special culture, but a salad bowl is a place where many different flavors and mix and mingle and yet maintain their own unique styles that can be viewed separately and completely differently at the same time. It’s easier to look at a tomato and an onion and see two different vegetables, than a pot of cheese and salsa.

The United States is just like that. You can look down the street and see a family of freshly immigrated Chinese, or and then look at their next door neighbors and see 4th generation Irish Catholics. The lives they lead are so entirely different and unique from each other, and yet they can still live on the same street, in the same town, in the same state, in the same country. Because there is that difference between two different families there is no surprise that such complications and arguments even occur in the US.

The clash of culture.

Fantsatically referenced in "What Color is Jesus" the idea of different cultures is presented in the way of showing how people percieve the christian religion.

The writer causally mentions that all cultures have been taught to draw or portray Jesus in their own likeness, unless taught otherwise. Meaning, that there is the "asian" Jesus, or the "white" Jesus, or the "black" Jesus.

Avenque Q kindly presents this to us as well with their song, "everyone's a little bit racist"

Princeton: Aww, Christ do I feel good.
Gary: Now there was a fine, upstanding black man...
Princeton: Who?
Gary: Jesus Christ
Kate: But Gary... Jesus was white.
Gary: No, Jesus was black.
Kate: No, Jesus was white.
Gary: No, I'm pretty sure Jesus was black--
Princeton: Guys, guys! Jesus... was Jewish...
All Three: Bahahahahaha!

Hnnn... something like that.

Wed, 23 Mar 2005 18:49:08 GMT

wave lengths of photons. so cool. excited atoms emit photons and there is a jump in energy levels! whoa, I mean, like, whoa. That photon tends to stimulate the nearby atom to thereby stimulate it's photon. It's like a chain reaction. "A cascade" of emition of the exact same wavelenght of photon. Photons escape cavity through mirror! All photons come from the same energy level. All photons therefore have the same wavelength. LASER = Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission Radiation.

How Stars Form, Angular Momentum

What Causes the collapse?

1) accrection
-clumps collide
-new mass overcomes internal pressure

2) gravity and radiation pressure
-pressure of starlight and gravity overcomes internal pressure

3) supernova blast wave

atoms and molecules in the clump free-fall in the clumps

Tue, 22 Mar 2005 20:39:24 GMT

Essay 3

“What color is Jesus”; “The Sports Taboo”; “Darwin’s Athletes”; ~~"Mirrorings"~~

How/Why do cultures clash within the United States?

-religions
-gender
-sports
-race

expand on each topic with examples and quotes from each essay. provide outside source information...?

"What Color is Jesus"

-When I introduced prayer, I asked them how they would pray... they began to pray in a way that was familiar to them and directed toward the god we all knew and loved

-When I introduced singing, I asked them what songs they would sing. They had non. I gave them none. They were insprired by the Holy Spirit to write their own. It sounded like their music, and it gave glory and honor to god...

etc. these quotes show that there are different ways of worshipping the same god in different cultures. This essay exemplifies the fact that religious figures can be represented differently and yet still have the same kind of meaning.

"The Sports Taboo"

-If we were to decide what to make of the differences between blacks and whites, we first have to decide what to make of the word "difference," which can mean any number of things. A useful case study is to compare the ability of men and women in math. If you give a large, representive sample of the male and female students a standardized math test, their mean scores will come out pretty much the same. But if you look at the margins, at the very best and the very worst students, sharp differences emerge. In the math portion of an acheivement test by Project Talent-...- there were 1.3 boys for ever girl in the top ten percent, 1.5 boys for every girl in the top five percent, and seven boys for every girl in the top one percent

-It's not that offensive, or that it leads to discrimination. It's that, in some sense, it's not a terribly interesting question; "better" promises a tider explaination than can ever be provided.

Thu, 03 Mar 2005 20:28:23 GMT

Proofreading/Revision Checklist

PROCESS

*Proofread OUT LOUD backwards. Then proof OUT LOUD forwards

ESSAY LEVEL:

-Interesting Title?
-Interesting Introduction & Conclusion?
-Main Idea/Thesis stated clearly at the end of Intro?
-Enough paragraphs to support Main Idea/Thesis?
-Perfect Works Cited Page?
-Paragraph Transitions

PARAGRAPH LEVEL:

-One Topic Per Paragraph?
-ENOUGH EXAMPLES AND DETAILS SUPPORTING TOPIC?
~~-Perfect in text MLA citation?~~

SENTENCE LEVEL:

-Any awkward sounding sentences? (Re-build them using a few words.)
*Watch for NAKED WORDS
**WATCH FOR DEAD WORDS (a lot, things, stuff, great, good, bad, got, get…etc)
**WATCH OUT FOR INDEFINATE PRONOUNS (Who are “they”?, What is “that”?, What is “it”?)

Tue, 22 Feb 2005 20:36:02 GMT

You have just entered **the apocalypse is now** chat
randomguy: d00d!! th3 4p0(41p$3 1z I\I0w!! r0xx0rz!! j00 iz 60I\II\I4 I)13!!
hkho: Hey! Try speaking English, will ya?
hkho: No one here can read that kinda freak l337 speech!
randomguy has left the chat
cannotdissent: that guy’s been bothering me for hours. It’s like he’s completely assimilated the nonsense of the internet culture. Just what is that mess of numbers and letters called anyway?
talesfromthefloor: elite speech, or more accurately, “l337” speech. I suppose it is amusing in its own regard.
adsendtheworld has entered the chat
hkho: hey, welcome. ^_^
cannotdissent: they sort of pop in and out, but so far it’s just us.. four is it now?
talesfromthefloor: yes, it does look like four.
talesfromthefloor: one…
talesfromthefloor: two…
talesfromthefloor: three…
cannotdissent: I can count. You don’t have to do it for me!!!
hkho: !!! >_<
hkho: Uhm… maybe you guys can help me? I’m doing a project for school
hkho: and I’ve been really looking around for someone
hkho: who can help me?
adsandtheworld: I just arrived here, but I suppose I can help. What’s your project about?
hkho: the affect of culture and society on the world and the future.
talesfromthefloor: that’s an almost dark and gloomy subject, but, you know, I think I may have a few things to say about that….
adsandtheworld: Advertisments and our lifestyle of “needing” products will lead to the end of the world as we know it.
talesfromthefloor: What are you talking about? The end of the world? I really have to argue with that.
cannotdissent: Advertisements? Well, to be honest, adsandtheworld has a point. I mean… we’re living in a commercial culture. You can’t argue with that.
talesfromthefloor: No… I can’t. hkho, we live in a society that’s built around…
talesfromthefloor: someone help me.
adsandtheworld: the acquirement of products.
hkho: that kind of… isn’t really what I’m looking for…
cannotdissent: Look, kid, all you need to know is
cannotdissent: That life
cannotdissent has left the chat
hkho: ………
hkho: he’s gone!!
talesfromthefloor: Good, he wasn’t saying anything useful anyway.
hkho: I would say that’s mean but…
adsandtheworld: god, can I not go anywhere without seeing an advertisement? Ads are invading our personal lives and they’re not even finding any resistance?
adsandtheworld: I can’t even use a chatroom without being bombarded with advertisements.
adsandtheworld: look a that banner! Like I really need to know that Sprite will quench my thirst?
adsandtheworld: it’s all about the acquirement and production, and selling of goods and products and all this product placement
adsandtheworld: will lead to the end of the world.
talesfromthefloor: Not this again… I knew I recognized your screenname from somewhere!!
adsandtheworld: Human beings are natural world are on a collision course. If not checked, many of our current practices may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner we know.
hkho: Sounds like soylent green. No, wait, wasn’t soylent green also a product of advertisement? In a society where there were no more resources, they began to use humans are resources!
hkho: Oh god, ew… why did I have to think that!? Get those awful images
hkho: Out of my brain!! Please!!! >_<
talesfromthefloor: I don’t have any idea why you’re so hung up on the idea of the end of the world. Commercials are a form of entertainment nowadays.
talesfromthefloor: Don’t you pay attention? People use commercials as entertainment.
hkho: The same way people use reality TV shows as entertainment! I mean… commercials are the exact opposite from entertainment. Right? Like…
hkho: yeah, that one advertisement, where the if you eat skittles, it’ll make them fall from the sky?
hkho: And then reality TV is the exact opposite! Because it’s like… fantasy and reality!
talesfromthefloor: Well, actually…
adsandtheworld: The way to happiness is the accommodation of goods and products. We are practically being instructed to buy things in order to be happy.
talesfromthefloor: Please don’t interrupt me!
cannotdissent has entered the chat
cannotdissent: Today corporate antinomianism is the emphatic message of nearly every new business text, continually escalating the corporate insurrection begun by Peters…
cannotdissent: …what did I miss?
adsandtheworld has left the chat
talesfromthefloor: he’s gone! I can finally talk about what I need. Listen,
talesfromthefloor: one woman’s misery is another man’s pleasure; one man’s pleasure is another man’s crime; one man’s crime is another man’s beat; one man’s beat is another man’s tv show
hkho: Huh?
talesfromthefloor: That’s the premise behind a successful reality TV show.
talesfromthefloor: But! We live in a society, where reality is not enough for entertainment.
talesfromthefloor: What you see on tv is not what you get in the editing room.
hkho: I watched a special on that on VH1 or something. They edit stuff so that it becomes more interesting to the audience. I mean like… it’s either too interesting, or too much reality.
talesfromthefloor: Exactly. I had a brief experience working with a reality television show.
talesfromthefloor: In the logic of the story department, we are to deplore these small-time drug busts not because we are concerned that the big drugs are still on the street but because a small bust means an uninteresting show. A dud.
hkho: So… this is an effect of… I mean… wait… so I hate reality tv show!
adsandtheworld has entered the chat
adsandtheworld: In another hundred years we’ll have exhausted the planet...
adsandtheworld: if we do not change the way we live, we will lead to the destruction of our own world!
hkho: I feel like that’s all you can say for some strange reason…
adsandtheworld: Because it’s true.
talesfromthefloor: You’re too hung up on that end of the world thing. We can’t immediately assume that our lifestyle is just going to simply destroy the world!
hkho: I have faith that we’ll figure out something…
adsandtheworld: Advertising cannot think long term. And your comments are only reinforcing my argument.
adsandtheworld: You aren’t thinking into the future! You don’t realize just what may happen! The destruction of the world is at hand if we don’t do something about it!
hkho: You’re worse than that randomguy from earlier…
hkho has left the chat

alright, now then, let’s evaluate what you managed to write and what you need to fix. First of all, you didn’t talk to frank at all. He was just this random character that babbling meaninglessly in the background. I have to admit, there are people like that in a chatroom, but he’s just a little overdone. I think, for this, I can just remove his character and replace it with a guy in the back of the chat randomly “screaming” stuff. I think the addition of more “randomguy”s will make the chatroom feel that much more real.

Unfortunately, I was cursed to write this. No, I mean, it’s my curse to have chosen to write this because I am a ninny who had forgotten that chatrooms are just so… unlinear, and unscripted. Like, the nonsense that comes out of a chatroom usually ends up being mostly nonsensical. Must. Fix. That.

I mean, I have Frank sorta going, “blah blah blah blah” and Seagal spent a great deal of the essay ignoring both Frank and Jhally, and then Jhally was sort of insane in his mannerisms. They need a lot of work with their characterizations, believe it or not. A lot of work. I can’t believe I’m saying this about an essay! No, wait, I can’t believe and essay is supposed to look like this. That’s enough to blow my mind away, honest to god. And this is AWFUL. I’ve never written so badly before in my entire life. Or, perhaps, but nothing quite so… “random” I think would be the best word.

AND, I don’t talk enough. I’m really muffled. I think that stems from the fact that I don’t talk a lot in chatrooms as it is, so this is highly unusual for me. Mmm… yes, very unusual indeed.

This is going to take A LOT of work to redo, honest to goodness, I swear

A few things:

More direct quotes from Seagal
Make better “transitions” throughout the chatroom setting (even though real chatrooms are not like that at all)
Remove Frank (since he says nothing)
Talk and comment more on what either seagal or jhally have to say.
More interaction between Seagal and Jhally
More structure! (Even though chatrooms really aren’t structured AT ALL)

Oh my god! Genius! I can make it from my point of view! So I can make it like… I can do physical reactions to the conversation BEFORE actually typing in the chatroom!

Chatrooms have always proved to be an interesting source of information and conversation. I never once expected that I would have a run in with some very outspoken people, people who I later learned were actually the infamous Sut Jhally and Debra Seagal. When given the chance to speak about their feeling and reactions about the world, they become extremely passionate. Their feelings towards multimedia and it’s affect on society are both similar and different at the exact same time.

You have just entered **the apocalypse is now** chat
randomguy: a/s/l????
randomguy: lookin fer a good time? Check out my webpage
randomguy: www.asl.checkitout.com/pics
hkho: uhm… ew… >_<
hkho: I can’t believe porn bots made it into chatrooms now too.
randomguy has left the chat

Tue, 22 Feb 2005 18:31:17 GMT

Thu, 17 Feb 2005 20:46:44 GMT

Thu, 17 Feb 2005 19:06:20 GMT

Thomas Frank – “Why Johnny Can’t Dissent”
Debra Seagal – “Tales from the Cutting Room Floor”

Meeting them in a chatroom, with only four people or so, depending really, on the situation and how many people I want to talk to. Or rather, have a conversation with. The conver

Thomas Frank
“The patron saints of the countercultural idea are, of course, the Beats, who’s frenzied style and merry alienation still maintain a powerful grip on the American imagination” (112)
-are they really? I mean, there tends to be quite a bit of influence—but you state that they influence everything else. And some utter nonsense and such, and all that jibber jabber type things that happen in life and etc.

“The most startling revelation to emerge from the Burroughs/Nike partnership is not that coporate America has overwhelmed it’s cultural foes or that Burroughs can somehow remain ‘subversive’ through it all, but the complete lack of dissonance between the two sides.” (115)
-actually, I agree with the words following this statement... with how Burroughs has neither become subversive or submissive, but what’s changed is business.

“Contemporary corporate fantasy imagines a world of ceaseless, turbulent change, of centers that ecstatically fail to hold, of joyous extinction for the craven grey-flannel creature of the past.”
-I wouldn’t know how to feel about this personally, so it’s kind of like… oh, really? I don’t know if business men really put pictures of Eisenhower on their walls and all that good stuff. Isn’t it kind of awkward? I feel that they’d at least be more exciting?

“Our businessmen imagine themselves are rebels, and our rebels sound more and more like ideologists of business”
-this I agree with statement. It seems more realistic, at least, from my own personal observations.

“The problem with cultural dissent in America isn’t that it’s been copied, absorbed or ripped off.”
-he goes on to continue that it’s been all these things, but it’s been so hopelessly susceptible that it’s completely harmless.

“Today corporate antinomianism is the emphatic message of nearly every new business text, continually escalating the corporate insurrection begun by Peters.”
-ah, I don’t really believe that they have such a belief in morals, but I do believe that the idea is there, but not recognized.

Debra Seagal

“In the logic of the story department, we are to deplore these small-time drug busts not because we are concerned that the big drugs are still on the street but because a small bust means an uninteresting show. A dud.”
-very true. No one wants to see some guy get arrested for buying pot in the middle of an empty parking lot. Wow. Excitement. Whoo…whoo.

“Why the national obsession with sort of voyeuristic entertainment?”
-because we’re sick disgusting Americans. Need I say more?

“All the famous cop shows follow the same formula, the same dramatic arc, because this is what viewers and advertisers have come to expect.”
-all the reality tv shows are the same now too.

“Commander brooks will become a gentle persuasive cop who’s keeping our streets safe at night.”
-this in response to what will happen if the footage makes it way into the show, and it shows that like, it’ll be edited for the audience.

“”It was clearly a case of too much reality for a reality based tv show”
-people can’t handle too much reality as entertainment. It’s TV. Tv is entertainment.

“In our office the stories of people like these collect dust on shelves stacked with Hollywood reporters, cast aside because they are too dark, too much like real life.”
-same as above.

“one woman’s misery is another man’s pleasure; one man’s pleasure is another man’s crime; one man’s crime is another man’s beat; one man’s beat is another man’s tv show.”
-anything can be made, if appealing enough, into a drama.

Sut Jhally

“This culture is dominated by a belief in magic from the advertisers. Instant happiness and Gratification.”
-it’s true. By bringing up these images, we pretend that things can really happen if we buy the product.

“Capitalism is a massive affect on society.”
-without money, we’d be goners.

“The way to happiness is the accommodation of goods and products.”
-we live in a society where money and things make people happy.

“In another hundred years we’ll have exhausted the planet”
-we use products so quickly, it’s like… death of the planet.

“Human beings are natural world are on a collision course. If not checked, many of our current practices may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner we know.”
-I can’t argue with this because we’re using up so many products.

“Advertising cannot think long term”
-true, because it’s like, they only care about the now and the money they’ll get shortly from now.

-Advertising constantly looks for shocking images to get our attention. Like SEX!!”
-yeah, it like any emotion that cuts through the clutter is used. Nightmares and dreams. Etc.

“Advertising spreads everywhere so people cannot avoid it.”
-it’s true. It’s EVERYWHERE, it’s like, oh my god. O.O

Thu, 17 Feb 2005 17:41:49 GMT

okay new cast of tenimyu. why do you have to be so cute? why do I have to have some strange attachment to you when I haven't even seen you PERFORM!? do you think it's funny? are you amused at my inability to not love you? I mean, I am supposed to be so dedicated to the old cast and then, BAM, taadaa! it's suddenly cute for you to be so awsome and young, and wonderful. I mean, why do you have to be so talented!? I didn't even like yoh shirota until I saw him as tezuka and it was like, dammit... he's talented. and I don't want him to replace takieiji... but takieiji can't sing, even if he wanted to, and it makes me kind of sad, I mean, honestly... I miss kengo, kengo was the LOVE he rocked so much stuff, it was like the hottest thing ever. I love him sooooooooooo much. I mean like, damn, he's cute and small and awsome and it's like, so many <3333333. Small compared to yoh and takieiji at least.

AND ZUKI!? Zuki! why are you so awsome? Why are you such a dork? Why are you a skinny small version of Tuti in your message? "HI! ZUKI DA YO!" >> And then Asamu? Oh my god, he's so cute. He really looks like eiji... even if Nagayama will ALWAYS be 10000x better. I love him

KOTANI'S FANGS!! I love kotani's fangs. they're like, the best kind of love. His engrish is terrible, but that might part of the appeal. I mean, I totally appreciate him, he's just... he oozes cute outta every angle, it's not even funny. And every time I see him his age changes. He looks old, and then he looks young, and then he looks old, and then he looks young, and then old, young, old, young, old, young, old, young, old young...

Ahh!! And JURI is soooo awsome. he's got that "BUH" expression down pat! I admire his l337 akutsu moves. I mean, it's so like "WHOA"

Like so much WHOA it makes me sooo the happy. <3333

and AHHH!! Araki and Kujirai are the cutest guys EVER. I mean, Araki is sooo hot. he makes the best inui ever. sorry souta... but something about Araki screams "Inui" more than you ever did... you were too... pretty. ;_; Ah, but Souta, you'd make a nice Renji. I always thought Renji was prettier than Inui anyway. At least in the anime. Manga Inui ooozes smex outta every pore.

Tue, 15 Feb 2005 20:35:25 GMT

click here

advertising and the end of the world with sut jhally

In this article I wish to make a simple claim: 20th century advertising is the most powerful and sustained system of propaganda in human history and its cumulative cultural effects, unless quickly checked, will be responsible for destroying the world as we know it. As it achieves this it will be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of non-western peoples and will prevent the peoples of the world from achieving true happiness. Simply stated, our survival as a species is dependent upon minimizing the threat from advertising and the commercial culture that has spawned it. I am stating my claims boldly at the outset so there can be no doubt as to what is at stake in our debates about the media and culture as we enter the new millennium.
Colonizing Culture

Karl Marx, the pre-eminent analyst of 19th century industrial capitalism, wrote in 1867, in the very opening lines of Capital that: "The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an 'immense collection of commodities' ". (Marx 1976, p.125) In seeking to initially distinguish his object of analysis from preceding societies, Marx referred to the way the society showed itself on a surface level and highlighted a quantitative dimension -- the number of objects that humans interacted with in everyday life.

Indeed, no other society in history has been able to match the immense productive output of industrial capitalism. This feature colors the way in which the society presents itself -- the way it appears. Objects are everywhere in capitalism. In this sense, capitalism is truly a revolutionary society, dramatically altering the very landscape of social life, in a way no other form of social organization had been able to achieve in such a short period of time. (In The Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels would coin the famous phrase "all that is solid melts into air" to highlight capitalism's unique dynamism.) It is this that strikes Marx as distinctive as he observes 19th century London. The starting point of his own critique therefore is not what he believes is the dominating agent of the society, capital, nor is it what he believes creates the value and wealth, labor -- instead it is the commodity. From this surface appearance Marx then proceeds to peel away the outer skin of the society and to penetrate to the underlying essential structure that lies in the "hidden abode" of production.

It is not enough of course to only produce the "immense collection of commodities" - they must also be sold, so that further investment in production is feasible. Once produced commodities must go through the circuit of distribution, exchange and consumption, so that profit can be returned to the owners of capital and value can be "realized" again in a money form. If the circuit is not completed the system would collapse into stagnation and depression. Capitalism therefore has to ensure the sale of commodities on pain of death. In that sense the problem of capitalism is not mass production (which has been solved) but is instead the problem of consumption. That is why from the early years of this century it is more accurate to use the label "the consumer culture" to describe the western industrial market societies.

So central is consumption to its survival and growth that at the end of the 19th century industrial capitalism invented a unique new institution - the advertising industry - to ensure that the "immense accumulation of commodities" are converted back into a money form. The function of this new industry would be to recruit the best creative talent of the society and to create a culture in which desire and identity would be fused with commodities - to make the dead world of things come alive with human and social possibilities (what Marx would prophetically call the "fetishism of commodities"). And indeed there has never been a propaganda effort to match the effort of advertising in the 20th century. More thought, effort, creativity, time, and attention to detail has gone into the selling of the immense collection of commodities that any other campaign in human history to change public consciousness. One indication of this is simple the amount of money that has been exponentially expended on this effort. Today, in the United States alone, over $175 billion a year is spent to sell us things. This concentration of effort is unprecedented.

It should not be surprising that something this central and with so much being expended on it should become an important presence in social life. Indeed, commercial interests intent on maximizing the consumption of the immense collection of commodities have colonized more and more of the spaces of our culture. For instance, almost the entire media system (television and print) has been developed as a delivery system for marketers - its prime function is to produce audiences for sale to advertisers. Both the advertisements it carries, as well as the editorial matter that acts as a support for it, celebrate the consumer society. The movie system, at one time outside the direct influence of the broader marketing system, is now fully integrated into it through the strategies of licensing, tie-ins and product placements. The prime function of many Hollywood films today is to aid in the selling of the immense collection of commodities. As public funds are drained from the non-commercial cultural sector, art galleries, museums and symphonies bid for corporate sponsorship. Even those institutions thought to be outside of the market are being sucked in. High schools now sell the sides of their buses, the spaces of their hallways and the classroom time of their students to hawkers of candy bars, soft drinks and jeans. In New York City, sponsors are being sought for public playgrounds. In the contemporary world everything is sponsored by someone. The latest plans of Space Marketing Inc. call for rockets to deliver mile-wide Mylar billboards to compete with the sun and the moon for the attention of the earth's population.

With advertising messages on everything from fruit on supermarket shelves, to urinals, and to literally the space beneath our feet (Bamboo lingerie conducted a spray-paint pavement campaign in Manhattan telling consumers that "from here it looks likes you could use some new underwear"), it should not be surprising that many commentators now identify the realm of culture as simply an adjunct to the system of production and consumption.

Indeed so overwhelming has the commercial colonization of our culture become that it has created its own problems for marketers who now worry about how to ensure that their individual message stands out from the "clutter" and the "noise" of this busy environment. In that sense the main competition for marketers is not simply other brands in their product type, but all the other advertisers who are competing for the attention of an increasingly cynical audience which is doing all it can to avoid ads. In a strange paradox, as advertising takes over more and more space in the culture the job of the individual advertisers becomes much more difficult. Therefore even greater care and resources are poured into the creation of commercial messages --- much greater care than the surrounding editorial matter designed to capture the attention of the audience. Indeed if we wanted to compare national television commercials to something equivalent, it would the biggest budget movie blockbusters. Second by second, it costs more to produce the average network ad than a movie like Jurassic Park.

The twin results of these developments are that advertising is everywhere and huge amounts of money and creativity are expended upon them.

If Marx were writing today I believe that not only would he be struck by the presence of even more objects, but also by the ever-present "discourse through and about objects" that permeates the spaces of our public and private domains. (see Leiss et al 1990 p. 1) This commercial discourse is the ground on which we live, the space in which we learn to think, the lens through which we come to understand the world that surrounds us. In seeking to understand where we are headed as a society, an adequate analysis of this commercial environment is essential.

Seeking this understanding will involve clarifying what we mean by the power and effectiveness of ads, and of being able to pose the right question. For too long debate has been concentrated around the issue of whether ad campaigns create demand for a particular product. If you are Pepsi Cola, or Ford, or Anheuser Busch, then it may be the right question for your interests. But, if you are interested in the social power of advertising - the impact of advertising on society - then that is the wrong question.

The right question would ask about the cultural role of advertising, not its marketing role. Culture is the place and space where a society tells stories about itself, where values are articulated and expressed, where notions of good and evil, of morality and immorality, are defined. In our culture it is the stories of advertising that dominate the spaces that mediate this function. If human beings are essentially a storytelling species, then to study advertising is to examine the central storytelling mechanism of our society. The correct question to ask from this perspective, is not whether particular ads sell the products they are hawking, but what are the consistent stories that advertising spins as a whole about what is important in the world, about how to behave, about what is good and bad. Indeed, it is to ask what values does advertising consistently push.
Happiness

Every society has to tell a story about happiness, about how individuals can satisfy themselves and feel both subjectively and objectively good. The cultural system of advertising gives a very specific answer to that question for our society. The way to happiness and satisfaction is through the consumption of objects through the marketplace. Commodities will make us happy. (Leiss 1976 p. 4) In one very important, sense that is the consistent and explicit message of every single message within the system of market communication.

Neither the fact of advertising's colonization of the horizons of imagination or the pushing of a story about the centrality of goods to human satisfaction should surprise us. The immense collection of goods have to be consumed (and even more goods produced) and the story that is used to ensure this function is to equate goods with happiness. Insiders to the system have recognized this obvious fact for many years. Retail analyst Victor Liebow said, just after the second world war:

Our enormously productive economy... demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and the selling of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction in commodities...We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing rate. (in Durning 1991 p. 153)

So economic growth is justified not simply on the basis that it will provide employment (after all a host of alternative non-productive activities could also provide that) but because it will give us access to more things that will make us happy. This rationale for the existing system of ever-increasing production is told by advertising in the most compelling form possible. In fact it is this story, that human satisfaction is intimately connected to the provisions of the market, to economic growth, that is the major motivating force for social change as we start the 21st century.

The social upheavals of eastern Europe were pushed by this vision. As Gloria Steinhem described the East German transformation: "First we have a revolution then we go shopping." (in Ehrenreich 1990 p.46) The attractions of this vision in the Third World are not difficult to discern. When your reality is empty stomachs and empty shelves, no wonder the marketplace appears as the panacea for your problems. When your reality is hunger and despair it should not be surprising that the seductive images of desire and abundance emanating from the advertising system should be so influential in thinking about social and economic policy. Indeed not only happiness but political freedom itself is made possible by access to the immense collection of commodities. These are very powerful stories that equate happiness and freedom with consumption - and advertising is the main propaganda arm of this view.

The question that we need to pose at this stage (that is almost never asked) is, "Is it true?." Does happiness come from material things? Do we get happier as a society as we get richer, as our standard of living increases, as we have more access to the immense collection of objects? Obviously these are complex issues, but the general answer to these questions is "no." (see Leiss et al 1990 Chapter 10 for a fuller discussion of these issues.)

In a series of surveys conducted in the United States starting in 1945 (labeled "the happiness surveys") researchers sought to examine the link between material wealth and subjective happiness, and concluded that, when examined both cross-culturally as well as historically in one society, there is a very weak correlation. Why should this be so?

When we examine this process more closely the conclusions appear to be less surprising than our intuitive perspective might suggest. In another series of surveys (the "quality of life surveys") people were asked about the kinds of things that are important to them - about what would constitute a good quality of life. The findings of this line of research indicate that if the elements of satisfaction were divided to be up into social values (love, family, friends) and material values (economic security and success) the former outranks the latter in terms of importance. What people say they really want out of life is: autonomy and control of life; good self-esteem; warm family relationships; tension-free leisure time; close and intimate friends; as well as romance and love. This is not to say that material values are not important. They form a necessary component of a good quality of life. But above a certain level of poverty and comfort, material things stop giving us the kind of satisfaction that the magical world of advertising insists they can deliver.

These conclusion point to one of the great ironies of the market system. The market is good at providing those things that can be bought and sold and it pushed us - via advertising - in that direction. But the real sources of happiness - social relationships - are outside the capability of the marketplace to provide. The marketplace cannot provide love, it cannot provide real friendships, it cannot provide sociability. It can provide other material things and services - but they are not what makes us happy.

The advertising industry has known this since at least the 1920s and in fact have stopped trying to sell us things based on their material qualities alone. If we examine the advertising of the end of the 19th and first years of the 20th century, we would see that advertising talked a lot about the properties of commodities - what they did, how well they did it, etc.. But starting in the 1920s advertising shifts to talking about the relationship of objects to the social life of people. It starts to connect commodities (the things they have to sell) with the powerful images of a deeply desired social life that people say they want.

No wonder then that advertising is so attractive to us, so powerful, so seductive. What it offers us are images of the real sources of human happiness - family life, romance and love, sexuality and pleasure, friendship and sociability, leisure and relaxation, independence and control of life. That is why advertising is so powerful, that is what is real about it. The cruel illusion of advertising however is in the way that it links those qualities to a place that by definition cannot provide it - the market and the immense collection of commodities. The falsity of advertising is not in the appeals it makes (which are very real) but in the answers it provides. We want love and friendship and sexuality - and advertising points the way to it through objects.

To reject or criticize advertising as false and manipulative misses the point. Ad executive Jerry Goodis puts it this way: "Advertising doesn't mirror how people are acting but how they are dreaming." (in Nelson 1983) It taps into our real emotions and repackages them back to us connected to the world of things. What advertising really reflects in that sense is the dreamlife of the culture. Even saying this however simplifies a deeper process because advertisers do more than mirror our dreamlife - they help to create it. They translate our desires (for love, for family, for friendship, for adventure, for sex) into our dreams. Advertising is like a fantasy factory, taking our desire for human social contact and reconceiving it, reconceptualizing it, connecting it with the world of commodities and then translating into a form that can be communicated.

The great irony is that as advertising does this it draws us further away from what really has the capacity to satisfy us (meaningful human contact and relationships) to what does not (material things). In that sense advertising reduces our capacity to become happy by pushing us, cajoling us, to carry on in the direction of things. If we really wanted to create a world that reflected our desires then the consumer culture would not be it. It would look very different - a society that stressed and built the institutions that would foster social relationships, rather than endless material accumulation.

Advertising's role in channeling us in these fruitless directions is profound. In one sense, its function is analagous to the drug pusher on the street corner. As we try and break our addiction to things it is there, constantly offering us another "hit." By persistently pushing the idea of the good life being connected to products, and by colonizing every nook and cranny of the culture where alternative ideas could be raised, advertising is an important part of the creation of what Tibor Scitovsky (1976) calls "the joyless economy." The great political challenge that emerges from this analysis is how to connect our real desires to a truly human world, rather than the dead world of the "immense collection of commodities."
"There is no such thing as 'society' "

A culture dominated by commercial messages that tells individuals that the way to happiness is through consuming objects bought in the marketplace gives a very particular answer to the question of "what is society?" - what is it that binds us together in some kind of collective way, what concerns or interests do we share? In fact, Margaret Thatcher, the former conservative British Prime Minister, gave the most succinct answer to this question from the viewpoint of the market. In perhaps her most (in)famous quote she announced: "There is no such thing as 'society'. There are just individuals and their families." According to Mrs. Thatcher, there is nothing solid we can call society - no group values, no collective interests - society is just a bunch of individuals acting on their own.

Indeed this is precisely how advertising talks to us. It addresses us not as members of society talking about collective issues, but as individuals. It talks about our individual needs and desires. It does not talk about those things we have to negotiate collectively, such as poverty, healthcare, housing and the homeless, the environment, etc..

The market appeals to the worst in us (greed, selfishness) and discourages what is the best about us (compassion, caring, and generosity).

Again this should not surprise us. In those societies where the marketplace dominates then what will be stressed is what the marketplace can deliver -- and advertising is the main voice of the marketplace -- so discussions of collective issues are pushed to the margins of the culture. They are not there in the center of the main system of communication that exists in the society. It is no accident that politically the market vision associated with neo-conservatives has come to dominate at exactly that time when advertising has been pushing the same values into every available space in the culture. The widespread disillusionment with "government" (and hence with thinking about issues in a collective manner) has found extremely fertile ground in the fields of commercial culture.

Unfortunately, we are now in a situation, both globally and domestically, where solutions to pressing nuclear and environmental problems will have to take a collective form. The marketplace cannot deal with the problems that face us at the turn of the millennium. For example it cannot deal with the threat of nuclear extermination that is still with us in the post-Cold War age. It cannot deal with global warming, the erosion of the ozone layer, or the depletion of our non-renewable resources. The effects of the way we do "business" are no longer localized, they are now global, and we will have to have international and collective ways of dealing with them. Individual action will not be enough. As the environmentalist slogan puts it "we all live downstream now."

Domestically, how do we find a way to tackle issues such as the nightmares of our inner cities, the ravages of poverty, the neglect of healthcare for the most vulnerable section of the population? How can we find a way to talk realistically and passionately of such problems within a culture where the central message is "don't worry, be happy." As Barbara Ehrenreich says:

Television commercials offer solutions to hundreds of problems we didn't even know we had -- from 'morning mouth' to shampoo build-up -- but nowhere in the consumer culture do we find anyone offering us such mundane necessities as affordable health insurance, childcare, housing, or higher education. The flip side of the consumer spectacle... is the starved and impoverished public sector. We have Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but no way to feed and educate the one- fifth of American children who are growing up in poverty. We have dozens of varieties of breakfast cereal, and no help for the hungry. (Ehrenreich 1990 p.47)

In that sense, advertising systematically relegates discussion of key societal issues to the peripheries of the culture and talks in powerful ways instead of individual desire, fantasy, pleasure and comfort.

Partly this is because of advertising's monopolization of cultural life. There is no space left for different types of discussion, no space at the center of the society where alternative values could be expressed. But it is also connected to the failure of those who care about collective issues to create alternative visions that can compete in any way with the commercial vision. The major alternatives offered to date have been a gray and dismal stateism. This occurred not only in the western societies but also in the former so called "socialist" societies of eastern Europe. These repressive societies never found a way to connect to people in any kind of pleasurable way, relegating issues of pleasure and individual expression to the non-essential and distracting aspects of social life. This indeed was the core of the failure of Communism in Eastern Europe. As Ehrenreich reminds us, not only was it unable to deliver the material goods, but it was unable to create a fully human "ideological retort to the powerful seductive messages of the capitalist consumer culture." (Ehrenreich 1990 p.47) The problems are no less severe domestically.

Everything enticing and appealing is located in the (thoroughly private) consumer spectacle. In contrast, the public sector looms as a realm devoid of erotic promise -- the home of the IRS, the DMV, and other irritating, intrusive bureaucracies. Thus, though everyone wants national health insurance, and parental leave, few are moved to wage political struggles for them. 'Necessity' is not enough; we may have to find a way to glamorize the possibility of an activist public sector, and to glamorize the possibility of public activism. (Ehrenreich 1990 p.47)

The imperative task for those who want to stress a different set of values is to make the struggle for social change fun and sexy. By that I do not mean that we have to use images of sexuality, but that we have to find a way of thinking about the struggle against poverty, against homelessness, for healthcare and child-care, to protect the environment, in terms of pleasure and fun and happiness.

To make this glamorization of collective issues possible will require that the present commercial monopoly of the channels of communication be broken in favor of a more democratic access where difficult discussion of important and relevant issues may be possible. While the situation may appear hopeless we should remind ourselves of how important capitalism deems its monopoly of the imagination to be. The campaigns of successive United States government against the Cuban revolution, and the obsession of our national security state with the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua in the 1980s, demonstrates the importance that capitalism places on smashing the alternative model. Even as the United States government continues to support the most vicious, barbarous, brutal and murderous regimes around the world, it takes explicit aim at those governments that have tried to redistribute wealth to the most needy - who have been prioritized collective values over the values of selfishness and greed. The monopoly of the vision is vital and capitalism knows it.
The End of the World as We Know It

The consumer vision that is pushed by advertising and which is conquering the world is based fundamentally, as I argued before, on a notion of economic growth. Growth requires resources (both raw materials and energy) and there is a broad consensus among environmental scholars that the earth cannot sustain past levels of expansion based upon resource- intensive modes of economic activity, especially as more and more nations struggle to join the feeding trough.

The environmental crisis is complex and multilayered, cutting across both production and consumption issues. For instance just in terms of resource depletion, we know that we are rapidly exhausting what the earth can offer and that if the present growth and consumption trends continued unchecked, the limits to growth on the planet will be reached sometime within the next century. Industrial production uses up resources and energy at a rate that had never before even been imagined. Since 1950 the world's population has used up more of the earth's resources than all the generations that came before. (Durning 1991 p.157) In 50 years we have matched the use of thousands of years. The west and especially Americans have used the most of these resources so we have a special responsibility for the approaching crisis. In another hundred years we will have exhausted the planet.

But even more than that even, we will have done irreparable damage to the environment on which we depend for everything. As environmental activist Barry Commoner says:

The environment makes up a huge, enormously complex living machine that forms a thin dynamic layer on the earth's surface, and every human activity depends on the integrity and proper functioning of this machine...This machine is our biological capital, the basic apparatus on which our total productivity depends. If we destroy it, our most advanced technology will become useless and any economic and political system that depends on it will flounder. The environmental crisis is a signal of the approaching catastrophe. (Commoner 1971 p.16-17)

The clearest indication of the way in which we produce is having an effect on the eco-sphere of the planet is the depletion of the ozone layer, which has dramatically increased the amount of ultraviolet radiation that is damaging or lethal to many life forms on the planet. In 1985 scientists discovered the existence of a huge hole in the ozone layer over the South Pole that is the size of the United States illustrating how the activities of humans are changing the very make-up of the earth. In his book The End of Nature Bill McKibben reminds us that "we have done this ourselves.... by driving our cars, building our factories, cutting down our forests, turning on air conditioners." (1989 p.45) He writes that the history of the world is full of the most incredible events that changed the way we lived, but they are all dwarfed by what we have accomplished in the last 50 years.

Man's efforts, even at their mightiest, were tiny compared with the size of the planet -- the Roman Empire meant nothing to the Artic or the Amazon. But now, the way of life of one part of the world in one half-century is altering every inch and every hour of the globe. (1989 p.46)

The situation is so bad that the scientific community is desperately trying to get the attention of the rest of us to wake up to the danger. The Union of Concerned Scientists (representing 1700 of the world's leading scientists, including a majority of Nobel laureates in the sciences) recently issued this appeal:

Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring.

It is important to avoid the prediction of immediate catastrophe. We have already done a lot of damage but the real environmental crisis will not hit until some time in the middle of the next century. However to avoid that catastrophe we have to take action now. We have to put in place the steps that will save us in 70 years time.

The metaphor that best describes the task before us is of an oil tanker heading for a crash on the shore. Because of its momentum and size, to avoid crashing the oil tanker has to start turning well before it reaches the coast, anticipating it own momentum. If it starts turning too late it will smash into the coast. That is where the consumer society is right now. We have to make fundamental changes in the way we organize ourselves, in what we stress in our economy, if want to avoid the catastrophe in 70 years time. We have to take action now.

In that sense the present generation has a unique responsibility in human history. It is literally up to us to save the world, to make the changes we need to make. If we do not, we will be in barbarism and savagery towards each other in 70 years time. We have to make short-term sacrifices. We have to give up our our non-essential appliances. We especially have to rethink our relationship to the car. We have to make real changes - not just recycling but fundamental changes in how we live and produce. And we cannot do this individually, we have to do it collectively. We have to find the political will somehow to do this - and we may even be dead when its real effects will be felt. The vital issue is "how do we identify with that generation in the next century?" As the political philosopher Robert Heilbroner says:

A crucial problem for the world of the future will be a concern for generations to come. Where will such concern arise?...Contemporary industrial man, his appetite for the present whetted by the values of a high-consumption society and his attitude toward the future influenced by the prevailing canons of self- concern, has but a limited motivation to form such bonds. There are many who would sacrifice much for their children; fewer would do so for their grandchildren. (Heilbroner 1980 p. 134-5)

Forming such bonds will be made even more difficult within our current context that stresses individual (not social) needs and the immediate situation (not the long-term). The advertising system will form the ground on which we think about the future of the human race, and there is nothing there that should give us any hope for the development of such a perspective. The time-frame of advertising is very short-term. It does not encourage us to think beyond the immediacy of present sensual experience. Indeed it may well be the case that as the advertising environment gets more and more crowded, with more and more of what advertisers label as "noise" threatening to drown out individual messages, the appeal will be made to levels of experience that cut through clutter, appealing immediately and deeply to very emotional states. Striking emotional imagery that grabs the "gut" instantly leaves no room for thinking about anything. Sexual imagery, especially in the age of AIDS where sex is being connected to death, will need to become even more powerful and immediate, to overcome any possible negative associations - indeed to remove us from the world of connotation and meaning construed cognitively. The value of a collective social future is one that does not, and will not, find expression within our commercially dominated culture. Indeed the prevailing values provide no incentive to develop bonds with future generations and there is a real sense of nihilism and despair about the future, and a closing of ranks against the outside.
Imagining a Different Future

Over a 100 years ago, Marx observed that there were two directions that capitalism could take: towards a democratic "socialism" or towards a brutal "barbarism". Both long-term and recent evidence would seem to indicate that the latter is where we are headed, unless alternative values quickly come to the fore.

Many people thought that the environmental crisis would be the linchpin for the lessening of international tensions as we recognized our interdependence and our collective security and future. But as the Persian Gulf War made clear, the New World Order will be based upon a struggle for scarce resources. Before the propaganda rationale shifted to the "struggle for freedom and democracy," George Bush reminded the American people that the troops were being dispatched to the Gulf to protect the resources that make possible "our way of life". An automobile culture and commodity-based culture such as ours is reliant upon sources of cheap oil. And if the cost of that is 100,000 dead Iraquis, well so be it. In such a scenario the peoples of the Third World will be seen as enemies who are making unreasonable claims on "our" resources. The future and the Third World can wait. Our commercial dominated cultural discourse reminds us powerfully everyday, we need ours and we need it now. In that sense the Gulf War is a preview of what is to come. As the world runs out of resources, the most powerful military sources will use that might to ensure access.

The destructive aspects of capitalism (its short-term nature, its denial of collective values, its stress on the material life), are starting to be recognized by some people who have made their fortunes through the market. The billionaire turned philanthropist George Soros (1997) talks about what he calls "the capitalist threat" - and culturally speaking, advertising is the main voice of that threat. To the extent that it pushes us towards material things for satisfaction and away from the construction of social relationships, it pushes us down the road to increased economic production that is driving the coming environmental catastrophe. To the extent that it talks about our individual and private needs, it pushes discussion about collective issues to the margins. To the extent that it talks about the present only, it makes thinking about the future difficult. To the extent that it does all these things, then advertising becomes one of the major obstacles to our survival as a species.

Getting out of this situation, coming up with new ways to look at the world, will require enormous work, and one response may just be to enjoy the end of the world - one last great fling, the party to end all parties. The alternative response, to change the situation, to work for humane, collective long-term values, will require an effort of the most immense kind.

And there is evidence to be hopeful about the results of such an attempt. It is important to stress that creating and maintaining the present structure of the consumer culture takes enormous work and effort. The reason consumer ways of looking at the world predominate is because there are billions of dollars being spent on it every single day. The consumer culture is not simply erected and then forgotten. It has to be held in place by the activities of the ad industry, and increasingly the activities of the public relations industry. Capitalism has to try really hard to convince us about the value of the commercial vision. In some senses consumer capitalism is a house of cards, held together in a fragile way by immense effort, and it could just as soon melt away as hold together. It will depend if there are viable alternatives that will motivate people to believe in a different future, if there are other ideas as pleasurable, as powerful, as fun, as passionate with which people can identify.

I am reminded here of the work of Antonio Gramsci who coined the famous phrase, "pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will." "Pessimism of the intellect" means recognizing the reality of our present circumstances, analyzing the vast forces arrayed against us, but insisting on the possibilities and the moral desirability of social change - that is "the optimism of the will," believing in human values that will be the inspiration for us to struggle for our survival

I do not want to be too Pollyannaish about the possibilities of social change. It is not just collective values that need to be struggled for, but collective values that recognize individual rights and individual creativity. There are many repressive collective movements already in existence - from our own home-grown Christian fundamentalists to the Islamic zealots of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The task is not easy. It means balancing and integrating different views of the world. As Ehrenreich writes:

Can we envision a society which values - not "collectivity" with its dreary implications of conformity - but what I can only think to call conviviality, which could, potentially, be built right into the social infrastructure with opportunities, at all levels for rewarding, democratic participation? Can we envision a society that does not dismiss individualism, but truly values individual creative expression - including dissidence, debate, nonconformity, artistic experimentation, and in the larger sense, adventure... the project remains what it has always been: to replace the consumer culture with a genuinely human culture. (Ehrenreich 1990 p.47)

The stakes are simply too high for us not to deal with the real and pressing problems that face us a species -- finding a progressive and humane collective solution to the global crisis and ensuring for our children and future generations a world fit for truly human habitation.

Tue, 15 Feb 2005 18:23:38 GMT

Tue, 15 Feb 2005 17:02:00 GMT

I am hot and cold at the same time. my dorm room tends to make me confused. the problem is that the heater is just way too high, and it makes everything really hot, but the outdoors is really cold, so when the window's open, it's so very cold. So it's kind of like, my top is cold and my bottom is very very hot. like right now. the breeze is making me cold, but the heat of the heater is making me very hot. heater. did it ever occur to you that heater is almost spelt like heather? i remember one time, some guy couldn't read my name so he was reading it, "hector kho." HECTOR it was awful. I felt so stupid, cuz I slowly raised my hand and wiggled my fingers to say, "I'm... HEATHER kho... if that helps any?" I felt just like... well, going around in a circle and bashing my head against the desk for having such BAD handwriting. like, what the hell? why would I have such bad handwriting? oh, because I write too fast and my signature sorta looks like a squiggle. you know what squiggles are, right? it sorta looks like ~~~~ ahhahaha, I should definately improve on that, or else I'll just think I'm stupid. being stupid makes me laugh.

ALOT.

The theatre guild is putting on seussical this semester. I was a whore last semester. it was a good experience... but I didn't bother auditioning. I needed time to study. Especially with japanese being as difficult as it is lately, it's really stressful. I'm getting that weight on my shoulders now, because I feel-- I'm most definately going to fail. Seriously. Fail. FAIL!! *sob* like, waaah, fail. Like, damn, I suck, fail. O.O;;;;

No no, I can't allow myself to think that. That would be like... asking ot be an idtiojn or something, and I really don't want to do that right now, IZ on't want to have to put up wiuth it. lol, I sm SOOO not looking at my screen right now, so this is gonna be like, completely random typing frorm now on I really should freewr ting storeis because they make me feel like I'm at least getitng something donw, but noooo, todauy I feel like writing nonsense, nonsense, nonsense, or something of that sort, because i have no life and it;'s like whooooaaaaa let;s be LOSERS@@ tigether or something.wait, no, totally not sure what I'm writing anymore. pause look back. no, wait, can't. write write write write write... holy hell, I'm going insane.

Tue, 15 Feb 2005 01:00:42 GMT

more free writing, I have to free write every once and a while instead of writing. I mean, I love writing real stuff, but I guess once in a while I outta write something more coherent than... say... me being stupid. LOL, I mean, who seriously wants to read my dumb fanfiction., olook at the bus, wow, the bus is just so cool. I think I'll write for... two FLAME songs? Maybe? That woild be good., or not so good, or something. Or... whatever. I'll think of it later. LOL!!! bahahhahaa, no no, really, I'll work, I swear. I'll work. No, well... I just... I'm so bored. no, I'm avoiding my homework. honest to goodness, avoiding it. I don't mind doing english writing, but after coming from a japanese review, being forced to think in english is just... it sucks. It's difficult, is more like it, and I don't really MEAN to be that bad, honest! I'm just a little "off" in the head, maybe.

Well, off right now. I mean, all i can think of is like, "barabara tsumori desu" and nonsense like that. Help me. honestly. No no, I'm not that bad. Well, right now I am, I mean, blah blah blah blah repeat, repeat, I'd so rather be working on my akutsu and taka valentines fic instead of writing this, but I need to take a break from it or else it'll just end up sounding stupid. Right? Bahahhaha,. I'm so bad.

Whichi s awful I need to stop repeating my self. stop repeating myself stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop. blah blah lbah blah!! augh!!! I can't think today!! WHY!? O.O!!! help meeeeeeeeeee!!!!!

okay, that was totally two songs... I'm done.

Thu, 03 Feb 2005 20:43:25 GMT

Turning the free-writing and drabbling into a letter?

Hey, Feyla, do you remember when we first met? I know it was recently, but the memory is still there. It resonates in my mind. Isn’t that how the memory of all important people reflect in anyone’s mind? You should know. You have all those friends… and they’ve made such an impact in your life.

It was the first day of school. No, it wasn’t even the first day of school, it was definitely moving day for freshman, nearly a week before classes were actually supposed to start. It’s hard not to forget that day, I mean, it’s the first day of going away from the same comfort of our homes to experiencing that dorm living. All those students and their families, saying their tearful goodbyes? The scene was something out of a movie, or a drama or a really, really bad teen sitcom. It was funny; someone just made this random comment, “Hey! There is like this GIANT room on the floor.” And as if we were all driven by this mad force to jealous, we all attacked this one room – conveniently located in the middle of the hallway: right past the kitchen, the bathroom, the RA’s room and the fire doors. Right there. Right in the middle. Your door was wide open. Was it Pilar who opened it like that? I remember walking in there and literally opening my mouth out wide and saying, “Whoa, look at this place. It’s HUGE, you could fit like five mattresses on the floor and STILL have room for more people!” And then, there you were. Doesn’t this sound like a bad love letter or something!? But there you were in all your overly friendly glory. You had that great short hair, auburn and curly. It was a haircut I had had over a year ago. Well, if I wasn’t asian with stick straight, black hair, that’s what my hair would have looked like. You had these warm, welcoming eyes. It was like, you couldn’t help but be kind to every single person that knocked on your door and said, “Whoa! Big room!” I mean, you oozed kindess from every possible pore, and I admired that. Oh, and you had that great warm laugh of yours. I think you found a great deal of amusement in the fact that everyone came by your room and lusted after it. You would laugh and point to the room and make jokes about the size. But, I did recall that you had this perfectly teary, sleepy look in your eyes that I’m sure not many people noticed. Was I the only one that heard you say, “I want to take a nap?” It didn’t seem to deter people from running into your room and once again saying, “Whoa! Huge room!” Sort of like, sad irony? You had to suffer, but for that, I really got the chance to meet you. You only meet someone once. Was I annoying on that day? I apologize if I was. Oh god, and then you told me your major? You were that crazy, super, political something or other and anthropology? That swept me clean off my feet. Here you were, talking like you were the smartest person in the world and then me. Yeah, me. The Japanese major.

We met in chadbourne hall, right? Second floor – the native American floor – and coincidently, in your room? Am I right? I have to be. It was barely half a semester ago.

Tue, 01 Feb 2005 16:25:09 GMT

alright. here I am again, writing. trying to write. attempting to write. seeing how well I can write, managing to write, free write, free write, free write. let the mind flow, go, go at it. let it go. let it flow freely, let it be known the feeling of the moment try to open up the mind in an attempt to manage something. manage something. manage something importqant. something eloquent, something deep something special. mangage something, something, something, something worth reading, something worth spending time with, something that is relfecting of the mind, of the moment, of the time, of the situation at hand, of feelings. be inspired, let things inspire you, let things go, let things flow, let them happen. keep writing, don't stop. no point in stopping, no point in ending. continuing onwards like there's no end. going on. continuing. never ending. go go go go go till the end of time, till the end of existance, till the mind is milked of all its worth, till the sky glows red, till the seas turn black, till the moon falls. let it it go. let it flow. let the world hear your voice. let it happen.

don't fight it.

just let it happen. don't stop. keep writing. there's no need to end. no need to stop. this is life. life is never ending. nothing stops. nothing ends, it is continuous. it is life, it is time, it is the curse of being alive. being alive.

being.... alive.

what's the point of being alive, who will it benefit? who will be the one to succeed? who will be the one to laugh. who will be the one to sing? who will be the one to end? who will... so many questions, so many thoughts, so many things that can happen... don't let it end.

LIFE HAS REACHED THE POINT OF NO RETURN

YOU CAN'T STOP IT!!!!!

IT'S NEVER ENDING!!! IT'S A CURSE!! A CURSE!! A CURSE!!! NO TURNING BACK NOW!!!

you're trapped. what is it like to be trapped? can you handle it? can you understand it? it's like jail. it's like life. it's pain. pain pain pain.

LET GO!!!

go with it. don't fight it. life can't be fought. it's like fighting a wave. you can't do it. you will lose.

Sun, 30 Jan 2005 23:15:28 GMT

...silly me. what am I supposed to think. I mean, just today I decided to watch the last episode to one of the most depressing anime I had ever seen in my entire life. Saikano. Who ever thought that such an innocent looking anime would cause me to burst into tears at the ending? The very idea just tore at my heart, like the girl I am. Girls. Why are we more emotional than men? I blame the estrogen. But... in the end? Chise destroyed the world, but her love for Shuuji forced her to do everything in her power to protect him. Protect him to the point that he was the only one left on earth. The only one. Alone. Just him, with only the memory of the girl he loved in his heart.

「しゅうちゃん．．．ごめん、ね・」

She had a habit of apologizing. Oh my god... and she became nothing more than a voice in his heart, whispering quiet apologizes while Shuuji merely held her soul in his hands.

「しゅうちゃん．．．ごめん、ね・」

Who ever would have thought that words like those would have made me cry? But... I don't know. It's romantic in the saddest kind of way.

"Chise, I kept my promise. I loved you till the very end!" Shuuji cried, as he grasped tightly to what was left of her mechanized body. He could feel it crumbling and fading beneath his fingers. "There's still something left! Chise!" And as he spoke, whatever was left in the world disappeared to dust, leaving him alone in the darkness of the empty universe. Alone in what had once been a great flourshing world of life.

「しゅうちゃん．．．」

What's strange is that.... I'm not the kind of person to watch sad things. I mean, I don't try to. I perfer comedic, happy, bouncy things, but sometimes there are just certain kinds of sad stories that just grab me by the heart and pull, and it pulls heart.

「おおきに．．．」

awww man, that's from Grave of the Firelies I'm starting to make myself sadder and sadder. It's like one of those days, I suppose. I mean, you reach a point of boredom that you'll end up looking back on things, and reflecting on things, and it doesn't help that my ipod is on it's "soothing sounds" playlist, which is essencially all of my favorite ballads. BALLADS. That doesn't make the mood much better. In fact, it makes the mood worse, or rather, it makes the mood I'm in more defiant, more real. That what soundtracks are supposed to do, right? Make a moment feel more real? Like when you watch a movie, and you see the sadness and then you hear the sadness and suddenly... you feel the sadness. Isn't it the same thing?

Jekyll and Hyde the musical really has some of the best ballads. Right now... I'm listening to In His Eyes and that is one of the best love songs. It's so... sad and loving at the exact time.

In his eyes, i see a gentle glow
and that is where I'll be safe, I know.
Safe in his arms
close to his earts
but I don't know quite where to start....

By looking in his eyes, will I see beyond tomorrow?
By looking in his eyes, will I see beyond the sorrow,
that I feel?

Will his eyes reveal to me, promises or lies?
But he can't conceal from me
the love in his eyes...

If I'm wise, I will walk away and glady.
But sadly, I'm not wise
it's hard to tuck away the memory.... that you brought...

love is worth forgiving for
now I realize.
Everything worth living for
is there in his eyes!

Ha.... I guess I'm just in one of those moods. A mood that's inspiring me to write, maybe? My muses are suddenly overwhelmed with emotion. I don't want to write anything sad... and I'm not the kind of person to write romantic things. I guess.. we'll see...

Sun, 30 Jan 2005 22:46:19 GMT

okay, have to catch up on my diary entries. I'm listning to more than limit, so I will apologize in advance for anything that results in me fangirling the incredibly singing styles of Kengo... and Endou. Hahahhaa, oh endou, you are truly the cutest thing ever. Anyway, I really need to be alot more focused and linear when I do this journals, and hopefully after a while, they'll stop being so damn stupid, and actually start sounding like something. you know. like poems, or stories. I mean, it doesnt' help that I'm doing this after doing japanese homework(which half means I'm thinking in another language) and therefore am having a more difficult time at this than I should be. I mean... seriously. Freewriting shouldn't be this difficult.

actually, typing alot hurts too, especially after writing so many characters. 私の日本語はわるいだよ。はあ～。でも、わるくないとおもう。いい？Or something like that. Oh god, do you think the professor will be mad at me for writing in japanese? I don't mean to!! It's just a bad habit. A really bad one. I mean, no... it's good practice, even though it wasn't much of a sentence, now that I think about it. "My japanese is really bad. Haa. But... I don't think it's bad. Good?" LOL, that's the worst sentence ever. I refuse to even consider it real japanese. I gotta go back and look at what I wrote. I need to study more. No. The task at hand! The task at hand is to write in english.

ENGLISH.

No, seriously, I can't seem to get the brain flowing. I mean, I have ideas for things, but it's not like I really feel the drive to... write it. I mean, it's sort of just sitting there in my head, doing what it does best - fermenting and becoming rancid. I don't mean it in a bad way. I just wish it would become alcoholic. Ah! This is all symbolism. Afterall, rancid things are worthless, but at least alcohol has some kind of purpose. Alcohol is the result of bacteria. It's a form of life! I want the ideas in my head to develop a life of their own! Wouldn't that be.... just the cooliest thing ever? I've started so may novels in my time, but none of them have ever gone beyond that place of... nonexistance. They're so lifeless. What is life? I mean, literally. How does JK Rowling put so much life into her characters? Why do people love them so much? I mean, Remus Lupin. We saw him only a few times, and yet everyone loves the character. He's just become so... real. He's developed a life of his own.

How does an author do that? How can there... be... LIFE?

But, sometimes, I'm afraid to think... this is just an english writing class. That means... more essay-like things, right? I'm not an essay writer. I will be the first to admit that. I DO NOT write essays. I do not write essays. I write fiction. At least... I try to. And my essays are always lacking. ALWAYS, they don't feel... I mean, sometimes I just don't say what I want to say. Is that bad? I feel like one of those obnoxious people with tendencies to write books instead of essays. Maybe my thesis will be easy.

but then again... my thesis has to be in japanese.

OUCH!! What the hell? That does NOT bode well. Seriously. It hurts.

you're kidding? this is only a page long? Oh my god. I'm running out of things to say. blah blah blah blah blah blahb lahb aklwehuiroeyotry43w28!!! AUGH.... sometimes I wish i could just curl up in a ball and let life leave me behind. It's the lazy way out of things, but... at least it's comforting to know that I'm not alone in the world. Oh no wait. I would be alone. Ah, look at that. it's my 5th song. I'll stop now. ^_^

Thu, 27 Jan 2005 21:04:27 GMT

for the first time, I stepped into the writing 113 class. of course, all this time I had to wonder, dude, what is so special about this class. I mean, why is it 113 and not 112? I swear, i signed up for it without even knowing exactly what it was. Go figure. it's 112 on computers. I guess that makes things... easier? of course, one of the requirements is a journal. I'm too cheap to buy a real journal, so I'm using an online one. It's just as good, plus I just have to remind myself to print these drabbles out as soon as I'm done. I will admit, the idea is a bit amusing, I mean, I write all the time, but now I'm being... I don't know, forced? to freewrite.

of course, it's not really a bad thing. now, in class, he, being professor gibney, who seems pretty cool, made us write for the duration of one song. NOT long enough in my opinon, so I'm going to shoot for anywhere from two to four... or more, depending on what starts playing on my ipod. I mean, seriously? If tenimyu starts playing, I'm just going to go on and on and on and on, and not pay attention to the fact that I've written WELL over my requirement. Which isn't a BAD thing because I enjoy drabbling. It's one of my hobbies!!

this is why I have so many weird stories... I must go through those.

FLAME!! Yay! Hahhaha, this is my second song. I think I'm making good speed. What do you think? Wait, who am I talking to? Absolutely no one! See, what's fun about these, is that we used to do them back in sophomore year. I LOVED english that year, and we had to have free writing journals too. Oh no, I'm multitasking and talking to people on AIM at the same time. I'm AWFUL!! Hahahhaa

Where was I? Yes, I'll write for as long as I want. The issue I have is that my thinking is circular, so I won't really stop unless I have a reason to, or I reach a place that is considered decent for stopping. And I'm not usually happy until I have close to three pages of writing. Is that a bit much? Nah. Most of my drabbles (read: my short stories) are around three pages long. That's not a bad thing, right? I like it. I mean, it gets my brain working - which, might I add, tends to NOT work.

Anyway, creative_sushi. That's the username for this journal. It's from my most active muse, Kawamura Takashi - who works in a sushi restaurant. Isn't it natural for him to be called "creative_sushi". Can you imagine him with a journal? What kinds of things would he write? And I'm not thinking... like, role playing journals, I mean... seriously. He has such a personality, it almost seems illogical for him to even HAVE a journal.

Inui's another matter, right? Ew. wait, I don't like this song. skipping!

ah, sera myu, now THAT's a song for the ages. I will never stop loving "la soldier". it's classic - for me at least. I mean, I think I've loved this song for close to five years now. That's geniune classic for me. What? AM I seriously talking about music in a freewrite? Aren't I supposed to be able to let my mind wander freely into the greenery of the fields of my dreams and wax peotic nothings onto a journal? Not really. I mean, I'm not like that. If I was... my stories wouldn't be so... the only word I can use is "cracky"

but they really aren't. I mean, if you search deep enough, you'll find alot of meaning in what I write. Kawamura and Akutsu's relationship is alot more complicated than I've made it out to be!! Really!!

blech. fanfiction. that won't fly in an english writing class, huh? I guess that's bad of me.

okay, well, I should stop here, because if I don't, I'll never stop. Hopefully I'll be able to write something more logical next time. ^^;;; you know. something that ISN'T a bunch of nonsense. Bye!