Sorry, I know this is not a political piece, but I have to plug my group! (and even if you don’t celebrate the holidays, still support us!) Check our our new, hip shirts on our online store with the link below:

http://www.zazzle.com/lacbc1

I am a part of LACBC, and pass this on to friends-we are in serious crunchtime and are trying to start lots of cool bike programs that serve low-income riders of color, as well as take over the streets for a day (Ciclovia)!!! Check out LACBC’s website: www.la-bike.org for more info or feel free to comment.

Our people have infiltrated the White House-it’s official now.

Wait, you say, isn’t Obama the “Black candidate”?

Exsqueeze me? Fuck no, he’s not. He’s me. Mixed race-messy, ooey gooey, confused, disgruntled, treading multiple waters like a grinning jet skier glancing to the side, fucker, just like me.

Yeaaah-hah-hah-hah!! The President’s Office just got diversified, not cuz of say, Jesse Jackson, or Antonio Villaraigosa, but because it takes a mild-mannered, fed up with the bullshit, too mixed to be nationalistic guy like Obama to do the job!!

Let’s delve, shall we, into Obama’s past, with the Ghost of Racial Past? Woo-ooh!! Scary!

Exhibit A: Obama’s Childhood.

His connection (or opportunity to access) to African/Black culture was all but gone-his dad done ran off. We all know this. BUT- did y’all know he grew up around shitloads of Asians??? Hmmm?! Probably not. From

Asian Nerds WILL Have an Impact on Your Social Development. We Got That Kind of Power.

Hawaii to Indonesia, homie grew up with more Asians around him than I did. No wonder he was so busy studying!

Exhibit B: Ruffian College Years of Rebellion

These are the formulative years of identity creation. This is when I started to get into ethnic politics (growing up as an ignorant, mistaken Mestizo who blended in with all the ethnics around me all these years never gave me any reason to pause to think) just like “Barry” did. Of course, that’s when Barry tried to RAISE THE BLACK FIST! at Occidental, only to get shot down by other Black radicals. Why? For not being Black enough.

Says Obama: “My identity might begin with the fact of my race, but it didn’t, couldn’t, end there.”

Obama-Not Black Enough for You-But Got Mad Muslim Points... WTF?!

Thank god he smelled the coffee (for his own sake), kicked the bucket (he used to drink), and got with being mixed! Ain’t nowhere else to go but up at this point!!!!

Exhibit C: A Black Man Running (And Not From the Police). (Slogan credited to Joseph’s shirt-thx!)

While running for Senate in Illinois, he dared compete against two other Black politicians, one of which had way more respect, as an ex-Panther, from the Ghetto, and was dissed as “the white man in Blackface in our community.” (Donne Trotter, one of his opponents, said this-great link/discussion on http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.african.american/browse_thread/thread/d407fe4a9cf36f06?pli=1)

Whoa. Crazy!!!!

Exhibit D: The “Black Candidate.

Oh My God! Even Tiger Sheds a Tear That The "Black Candidate" Got Elected!!!

Well, now we got old Blacks bursting into tears cause “the Dream” finally happened. Certainly, the status of Obama makes this last Election supa-special and momentous. But it is a modified, different Dream than those dear senior citizens could even imagine.

Mixed race people being accepted in mainstream culture, without needing to say they are one thing or the other. Whoa!! (Imagine my surprise in Wayne and Garth’s White ass voices!)

From accusations of inauthenticity, to claims of transcendence-

Obama surely gave people a run for their money! Props to homie for marrying a Black wife-Good foresight, dawg!! Fo sho, she gave him the street cred he needed to win the old school Blacks over with.

Moral of the story: Obama is the shit ’cause he raised our profile and slipped under the radar simultaneously. Slick!! A mixed race foo has risen like a mosher upon hands, raising hope for us all, even if others interpret him within narrow boxes-he doesn’t. And I am smiling.

No, not really, I’m just kidding. But I’m dying at this goddamned university. I’m so frustrated that we aren’t able to develop awesome, real projects in school to help this fucked up world we live in. What a fucking scam.

I’m suffering a depression of wheezy, woozy privilege. I can afford school (paying out of pocket), and am able to be in school instead of a sweatshop or a field, but I fucking hate it.

How do we get control over the academic institution and require that x amount of projects coming out or funds for research or projects are tied to tangible programs for the community and the environment?

How do we KILL the BEAST???!!!

My homie Andrew (ex-neighbor too) and I were having this great convo about what defines the 20-30 yr. old generation, by accidentally stumbling as we were (like doing the running man on a bed of pine needles), when we decided what our generation are are the conduits, the translators of information archaic and modern, and all too necessary. The past has been defined by, well, hard definitions, and goddamn rules we’re suppose to abide by, with regards to who’s supposed (or not) to know what.

*Fuck that shit. (I’m going to dedicate a whole blog entry to all tha shit that pisses me off, but more later.)*

I think many benign, but oblivious librarians; old skoo acadmeics, and those that hold this information, which is truly the key to our development as people and a culture as a whole; the knowledge of events that have transpired, these very thoughts that inspire even just one person who’s quietly absorbing it on a dusky afternoon;  don’t realize the unspoken seething power of expressing this privy information, like we do, the giddy pirateers who smilingly reach and grab it back and spread it (like manure).

Oh Snaps! Hip to The Beat, But Were All Dancing To It.

Our generation is really defined by fusing wisdom into decentralized, tasty lil bits, easily digested, without necessarily being compromised.

Less hierarchy, couverture, and an awesome freeballin’ attitude is what we bring to the table; in turn, we transform with a resilent, albeit lighthearted inevitability these ivory towers of yore.

Now, they’re Black, Brown, Yellow, Queer, Young, Laughing; they’re stylized, with a nod to a joke we can all be in on; they’re hip in their assuming innocence.

All of this long winded prose is starting to seem very vague for an entry on accessibility and the common man.

But to end gracefully,

This is a call to become historians (it’s in all of us).

Artful History.

We reenvision History with the power of absorbing,

and communicating this precious art of our lives.

While researching for a paper for school, I came across this article. It stirred some of the gender/sexuality ponderings I have had as of late. Take it from the top, Penelope!!! You go Girl: Penelope Eckert in “The Matrix of Language”:

“Gender and gender roles are normatively reciprocal, and although men and women are supposed to be different from each other, this difference is expected to be a source of attraction. it is not a cultural norm for each working class individual to be paired up for life with a member of the middle class or for every Black person to be paired up with a White person. However, our traditional gender ideology dictates just this kind of relationship between men and women.”

Part Un: Dissolution of Your Gender Bullshit You Straight Lifted From Someone Else (You Ain’t Even Original Like That).

I have been thinking really hard about how the sexes relate to each other, gendered worlds, and “queerful”, non-defined worlds. Where is the line drawn between feminism and queerness? They both seek to defy boundaries and categorizations, unduly inflicted upon women, but also men. They seem to be the same thing to me, sometimes, even though there are straight feminists. (Gotta do a quick shout out to my straight, feminist, down ass homies!!)

When queer people, especially feminist, queer people wander out into the world, we have few obvious examples of people rebelling against gender roles, especially in relationships. I’ve seen way too many progressive/punk, queer or straight people who still have gendered relationships, and I’m like, FUHHHHCK THAT!! I’m sooo fucking over that, people! Even the slightest bit of gender role infected interaction makes me sick (with anger or indigested food, I’m not sure of what more yet!!)

Especially with straight boys, it seems like at the end of the day, you are expected to eventually revert back to gender roles once you’ve had your fun of “being equal”. When it’s not novel to insecure fuckers who don’t see it as a lifestyle, or mantra, and see it as a token mental masturbatory thought; when people really believe that these roles are normal; when someone always has to be the bitch, and someone the butch.

Can’t we be more holistic? Sheeit!!

Part Deux: How Am I Attracted To You????

I try to understand how I relate to the male body and how I relate to the female body. To the female mind and heart and the male version of such. It seems like, maybe since I didn’t really come out as early as I should have, or that I have mostly dated boys, that I have this limited, not-hetero-but-with-lots-of-weird-hetero- experience-therefore-quasi-hetero-mentality of how to relate to both sexes.

I don’t understand it-not subscribing to gender roles and all- but it’s not possible to relate to both the same way, even though I’m the same person!!! WTF?!

On the queer side, I have to take much into consideration: Self-consciousness, possible gender expression clashes (not being butch or femme, the right size, or race or the kind of girl someone demands); someone smooth and small and my size. I must understand the powerful nature of U-Haul relationship tendencies in women and how impossible it is to override that, until you find that one queer ho who will break your heart. Women don’t seem to want casual sex with other women. No obvious delineations of who is in charge (cause no one is), or definitive assumptions about what sex is to be had.

And on the straight side, I contend with the fact that boys are easy (which accounts for why I wind up with them more, less of a conscious choice to “lean that way”, more because of availability reasons), are stupid (in bed and in believing that they are “the man” of the relationship, and that I should just fall by the wayside into being some kind of submissive female), and are more rigid and stubborn about what sex they will have. AND they’re rougher AND ganglier, what with hanging appendages and other awkwardness.

I often don’t understand how my body, which I don’t think of as female when I’m alone, somehow transforms into a girl when in contrast to a boy, or just dissipates into wondrously new, but familiar territory with women. Sometimes I’ve been butchy in bed, with girls, mostly, since boys don’t let me do that with them, and I question the moral validity. But then I remember that old adage: “Relax, it’s just sex”.

AND NO-there is no explanation for that or most of why we do what we do sexually (Shoutout to an argument a friend and I had the other day).

So, as I leave work for the day, this humble fable comes to a close, with what?

No satisfaction, no answers, y nada.

¿Comprende?

The number one thing that will reduce traffic, crime, and the lack of parks and public places in LA- Drinking 40’s in the late afternoon sun on our front porches, already.

You’re asking where these porches are.

It’s a new trend to take this super important and obvious element of housing and bring it back, to LA! This amongst other things are going to change LA dramatically over the next decade.

I am excited because the planning movement is exploding with badass innovative ideas, for combating a low quality of life, such as alleyway parks/greenstrips (http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environment/la-me-outthere12-2008sep12,0,3244805.story), parks on top of freeways (http://www.angelenic.com/780/park-101-vision-downtowns-next-big-thing/ and http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/emeraldcity/2008/01/a-green-roof-pa.html), and front porches.

Many of these ideas do not require LA to be completely rebuilt nor seek to create within LA a replica more of an old monied small town, or a New York lite. I’m all for us doing it our way, not simply just replicating, to the T, other cities’ form. New Urbanism, LA style, is all about reclaiming what everyone has written off (for social or environmental reasons), be it a Brownfield, a neighborhood, a small strip of land, or even our whole city-and doing something amazing with it to facilitate a better quality of life.

Synthesis, people, synthesis!! This entire blog relies on that concept!!

While I find a lot of 50’s-80’s era architecture utterly unexciting and ugly, we see what amazing tricks people can do when they’re creative.

Anyways, back to the original subject: Can’t we all just get along (get drunk together)? For the sake of a better city and community-Salud!

My friend Mike Weiss (http://www.myspace.com/mwdonk), who is also hapa (Pogilicious! Rrrr!),  and I had a conversation a few years ago over IM, about what culture means, and I though it would be really cool to post it, since it’s made me (and continues to do so) think really hard. Which is really good.

mweiss@laphil.org says: maybe there is some sense of horror at becoming “american” even when trying to survive in america

mweiss@laphil.org says:
ok thats harsh… I’ve become cynical about “culture”, maybe because I don’t feel any sense of community in my life

mweiss@laphil.org says:
sometimes I think culture is just a diorama in  an exhibit at the mall

mweiss@laphil.org says:
sometimes I would equate being “ethnic” with being “country folk”

mweiss@laphil.org says:
ethnic customs are usuall tribal, traditional and usually not performed and perpatuated by the urbane and educated.  discuss.

allison says:
ok, i think that certainly the most “ethnic” one can get is by being from or of the background of a rural-ass tribal background, yes, a thing that even the urban or “wannabe urban”  immigrants cannot touch….

allison says:
the ones from manila, hong kong, and tokyo, can they really be at the heart of what it truly means to be filipino, chinese or japanese?

allison says:
just living in the city nullifies them a little bit, i think

mweiss@laphil.org says:
ethnicity by degrees may be impossible to measure, but it is possible to be so steeped in locality, so as to be more ethnic, which is not to say backwards necessarily, but more directly impressed upon with a simple sense of right and wrong; a culture

allison says:
yada yada yada culture, i’m starting to think it’s bullshit

allison says:
those people are just taking on what someone else arbitrarily created

allison says:
is that being real?

allison says:
or ethnic?

allison says:
or just doing what someone else told you to do, whether it makes sense or has any sort of good in it?

mweiss@laphil.org says:
I think what I am saying is I don’t know if culture truly exists exept in a vacuum, unless that

mweiss@laphil.org says:
is all you know, unless that is the only culture that exists within reach

allison says:
then that is really what culture is..

allison says:
i don’t know, perhaps it doesn’t matter anymore. the cultural and linguistic mutoids that people like you and i have become-maybe that’s not bad-i mean it’s inevitable, that if you stay somewhere hospitable for a while, like, say, a few generations, assimilation of any kind will occur, right?

mweiss@laphil.org says:
it can’t be bad (to be a godless heathen), but its all very confusing.  especially when being educated in a “culture of diversity”, when I was growing up “ethnicity” was something to be celebrated, while lionizing the stories of all the immigrants, but in diversity the real power of culture, is lost, because the notion of culture is something that happens over there

allison says:
i know that is the paradox of diversity

allison says:
one might think think there was a conspiracy on behalf of the repubs to dilute all immigrant cultures by promoting diversity…

As every queer, or paranoidly insecure straight girl knows, hair length can supposedly determine or differentiate one’s sexuality. It seems stupid that something that evolved merely to maintain body warmth should be so irrevocably attached to gender. We all know society dictates that shit be like this, though.

I have short hair, and am actually not a fan of long hair. Medium’s aiight, short is cool, but long hair tends to distract from one’s face and seems less flattering. Now that we’ve established my aesthetic standards (which everyone surely felt compelled to know), we should further discuss this gendered paradigm.

We are told, as women, that long hair=femme/woman, short hair=butch/boy, and I think enough of us graduated elementary school to realize how lame this is. Problem is, even some queer girls think like this. Yet all of us know giggly fag girls with short hair, and tough ass long haired bitches-so what’s the deal?

I wanted to wait to post this blog with a silly pic of myself contrasted with a long haired girl, but fuck it, I want to get this up and out.

HOWEVER-

Short hair, it’s true, is one of the queer girl’s most efficient tools. I must admit, while I love to narcissistically stroke my own hair after just cutting it (Feels like a Chia Pet!), last summer I also self-consciously realized it would be extremely helpful as a queer mating call. It truly feels like a pimp daddy move, on my part, as well as a guilty pleasure. (The Pitcher also comments on this:http://pitcher.wordpress.com/2008/08/19/the-matter-of-hair/)

Even when a girl is femme and her hair is short, there seems to be a stronger possibility, even though many straight, femme girls look straight and femme still. In this day and age of whatever wave of feminism, queer rights, etc…, we shouldn’t need to rely on stereotypes or antiquated notions of gender to get laid, but we do.

So I’m going to keep cutting my hair short, and not just cause of the LA heat.

Yo, fuck this shit (Go read the article):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7501768.stm

Glad to get that off my chest.

I mean I know that the Olympics are over,  but the I’ve wanted to make an entry of this for a while. I’ve been a vegetarian for 7 years, and I think it’s super fucked up for anyone to impose this kind of cultural imperialism (to use big, juicy, PC kind of vocab.) on my people.

Let them eat dog!!! (They tend to be lactose intolerant, so cake won’t work)

I find those that get moralistic about it, cause they’re animal lovers or whatever, seem to value only one life, that of the dog. My belief is eat ‘em all or none of them. Comments?

So the first mixed race White supremacist has been sentenced to death (for stabbing an Asian-American in Orange County)! Can I say an “amen” to that??! Totally disturbing, though…How do these things happen? Why do people internalize so much racist bullshit that they go and kill other ethnics/their own ethnics? The movie The Believer is a great example of this (Nazi skinhead Jews, who knew?).

This kicks off the next few posts, which will all be studies of different manifestations of the Mestizo, the struggle for identity, and lack of obvious mixed role models. In both ways good and bad, these forged identities aren’t covered in ethnic studies books and warrant conversation. It’s the only way we can prevent people like Lindberg from straying into racist niches if they don’t have a strong mixed race identity or anyone they can relate to…  Next up: Obama-keep posted.

Interestingly enough, the inmate has a request for a pen pal (Not sure who would write to him except other White Supremacists). (http://www.deathrowspeaks.info/inmates/gunnerlindberg.html):

Profile: Gunner Lindberg

“My name is Gunner Jay Lindberg; I’m 29 years old born March 1st, 1975 in Orange County California. I am just looking for people who want to write a good guy who’s been locked up most of his life. Have fun, share experiences, pass the time and get to know one another and who knows, maybe become good friends. J

About myself…I’m ½ German and ½ Indian. I’m 5”11 and 173lbs., great shape as I enjoy working out. Other things I enjoy are reading, drawing, writing letters, good movies, music, sports, chess, and just about any and all challenges.

I’m honest and respectful. I don’t play games or try to use anyone…I’m not looking for any romance. I’m just seeking friendship. I like to think I’m funny and have a lot to share; I’m a great listener and never boring!

I’ve lived all over, such as: Las Vegas, Arizona, Texas, Missouri, Kansas, Florida, Okinawa Japan, and just about all over Southern California. I have a few tattoos as you can see by my photo. So if you think you’re interested in writing, please drop a line or two. J I’m a great pen pal and write regularly. Take care, smile. “

Gunner Lindberg # K-79300
San Quentin State Prison
San Quentin, CA. 94974
USA

If I were you (or me for that matter), I would write to him before he gets put to sleep and tell him what a fucking loser he is!!!