Reflecting on Mining

            This course came at a point where I was trying to figure out what I wanted to say. The opportunity to attend events... correction, I should say that being required to attend events each week got me to break out of my comfort zone and learn more about the things I was already interested in as well as new things that I had not considered investigating or "didn't have the time." 

            Most of the events I attended were hosted through the OIIR (Office of Inclusion and Intercultural Relations) cultural centers such as the LGBT Resource Center, Bruce D. Nisbit African--American House, or the Women's Resource Center. Some others were hosted by the YMCA or student groups that often deal with social justice issues. A majority of events I attended (or at least the events I remembered) had to deal with LGBT and women's rights, religion, or race. My favorite. :3

           While taking this course I realized more and more how much I would have liked to study religion more. I love to talk about faith with people and especially in an interfaith context. Attending the lecture by Eboo Patel surprised me because I originally thought that I would know what Eboo had to say. I had read his book my freshman year of college and thought that Interfaith dialogue was pretty familiar. But Eboo took a surprise turn and talked about the discrimination against the major religions or at least main sects of Christianity. I had struggled with how those in the majority were viewed and it had found its way constantly into my work. But after this lecture I felt more confident talking about this issue that had been following me for most of my life.

           But as I was often pleasantly surprised by most of the events I was very upset by some events I thought I would learn a lot from. I am interested in sustainability but the webinar I attended during the first week of the semester was less than ideal. I tried to look at the bright side of it, but in retrospect the webinar was awful and it promoted scare tactics and green propaganda which I think hurts more than it helps. I also was excited to attend the screening of Trans because I always want to learn more about the LGBT community that I am unfamiliar with but I ended up knowing more about the issues than the documentary did. I wish I could've spent those hours doing something more productive, but that is the way it works, you win some you lose some.

          I tried to relate the information I encountered in this course to my own life more than most other courses I have taken. I didn't just attend the events and then repeat what was said, I often tried to see how I could see the issues in my own life. I think I didn't just relate it to my life because I felt like I should but because I wanted to. I don't usually want to get too involved with social justice issues, not because I don't care but because I think often people fight for social justice the wrong way. But I think I wanted to use this excuse to attend events as a way to find out what I believed the correct way to be mindful of social equalities and those in the world who are struggling. This exploration has furthered my beliefs that education and open dialogue is the best way to change minds. Cool.

         I was impressed by how many of the lectures I attended were presented by UIUC alums. Heather Ault, Jack Buser, and Eboo Patel work in fields that I am extremely interested in. It gave me hope that I would be able to make an impact in the world. Even if that impact is taking a bitchin' awesome photograph of a shoe.

         I didn't look at many other miner's blogs. I often browsed through their blogs and would skim what I thought was interesting, but many of the one's I thought were interesting I had already attended. I found that I always read through the excerpts because they were often funny and I love funny. But I found that I would talk about events I attended with other miners outside of class. A lot of us see each other outside of class and I would discuss how the course has been going and what future events we were excited about. I also found I talked more with those who weren't in the class (*cough* Samantha Serrano). This course wasn't restricted to those in the class.

         As I said in the beginning, this course came at a point where I was trying to figure out what I wanted to say. I was extremely frustrated with my work and my progress at the end of last semester and at even into the beginning of this semester, but as I started to think more about what I was truly interested in and after being pushed to try something new, I came to a point I really enjoyed that utilized both my curiosity for discussing these issues and being a dork.

        Now I leave this mine and move on to another, to excavate new ideas and apply them to my life.
         

Religious and Historical Developments in Sexual Morality and Gender Roles

*NOTE* I updated last week's post because I found my notes about "what I learned at straight camp" if anyone is interested.

Rev. Dr. Richard McCarty came to our campus this past Thursday and discussed how sexual morality and gender roles have constantly be evolving and developing throughout religious history and how traditionalists wanting to promote the "traditional" ways is not really the tradition.

The Traditionalists' View: hetero is the only moral norms for sexual morality and social order:
            - nature reveals this to be true (parts fit... but, a lot of parts fit)
            - this is the way it has always been (but has it really always been that way?)
     - Traditionalists believe that the single most effective statement to say is "Gays and lesbians have a right to live as they choose, they don't have the right to redefine marriage for all of us." But they never want to say "BAN same-sex marriage" because that turns people away.
     - They also want men to be in the "hard" public world and women in the "soft" private world of homecare, morality, and religion.

Focus on the Family believes that God created sex to help people seek God and what he made us for, not just to make us follow rules. But Gregory of Nyssa (335-395 CE) made everyone believe that sex is the ultimate sin and an absence of sexuality allows for "immortality and incorruptibility."

In the biblical days, women were seen as property to be owned by husbands and sold by fathers. Rape was punished in three ways in the ancient days:

1. If a betrothed woman is raped in town and doesn't scream out, she is killed (because she could've blown her whistle).
2. If she is raped in a field the rapist is killed (because there was no one there to save her).
3. If an un-betrothed virgin is raped the rapist has to pay her father 50 shekels of silver and marry her... because she is damaged goods.

- Deuteronomy 22:25-29

Remember, traditionalists would like to preserve traditions... but is this one they would include? If not, why do we get to pick and choose?

In Judaism, there were a lot of rules that viewed marriage as a religious duty for men. Men also had to please a woman as many times as they could depending on their job (men who worked a lot had to maybe once-twice a month), men who didn't have to work at all needed to please their wives every day. Every wife. So basically they were having sex all the time. That's fun.

In Plato's Symposium there is the "Speech of Aristophanes" which states that there were three beings in the beginning a male/male, female/female, and male/female. The gods were jealous of how happy these beings were so they severed them. Thus, some people are naturally more attracted to the same sex and some to the opposite because they are trying to connect with their original being. This wound is called "love." This was included in the film Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Worth a look. Also, I believe you can read Plato's Symposium online. It isn't very long.

Looking to Rome: they believed in marital monogamy (at least they could only father children with their legitimate wife). Same-sex activity was seen as dominance. Thus, free men penetrated slaves as a sign of aggression and hierarchy.

One of the "original beings" animated for the film
Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

Jesus on the other hand spoke often against marriage. In Luke 20 he says that marriage is dislocated as duty. Some take this as him meaning that sex is bad, some take it as him saying we should be
promiscuis. Jesus also critiqued divorce because he said women owned men just as equally as how men owned women. He was a feminist. Jesus was also silent on same-sex relationships but healed a Roman soldiers male sex-slave and didn't say anything about it. So maybe he didn't really care about it?

Another cute thing, men have physical perfection and women have "necessary deformities" according to many ancients and Christian leaders such as Thomas Aquinas. Women were once men and then a southern wind blew and inverted their penis, duh. Due to this, having sex with a woman is settling with 'less than perfection' but everything that is non-procreative is a sexual vice against nature: contraception, masturbation, same-sex, bestiality, casual sex. Thomas Aquinas helped make everyone freak out about sex, good job T.A.

One of the best parts of his presentation was his relating relationships to the fruits of the spirit. The fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against these there are no laws. So if a relationship is full of these traits then it is a good relationship. It makes sense, if there is abuse it is lacking goodness and kindness.

So in the end, what traditions do the traditionalists want? Rape? Celibacy? Female dominance? Traditions should change over time.

Alejandra took this picture. Look at our cute little rainbow.

The One Where Harrison Goes to EVERYTHING!

And by that I mean like 3 or 4 events...

Ebertfest - Wednesday, April 17 - Days of Heaven

I have been to Ebertfest once in the past, and I met Tilda Swinton that time. I asked her to sign my copy of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button because it is one of my favorite movies. She kind of scoffed, said "I was barely in this," and then signed it anyway. It is no surprise she plays the fucking white witch of Narnia. She's the best kind of bitch.

The organ at the
Virginia Theatre

Anyway, this time I wanted to see the Virginia Theatre in all of its glory while also getting to sit with film nerds who love the most pretentious cinema. Days of Heaven would go in that category for me. The film in its imagery is gorgeous, but does that make it a good film? Did I think about anything from it? ...eh. A majority of the film was shot during the Golden Hour, making the lighting very even and gorgeous across the fields of wheat that the characters are working in. The film was made in the seventies but some lighting elements make the film look much younger and sexier. I loved the look and pretty much all of the acting. I did not like the story. It dragged on and it made the experience boring. I can't look at beautiful imagery if I'm asleep.

Chaz and some other guy.

That night we also watched a short film called I Remember. The film showed a young woman folding clothes, receiving a phone call, finding a note from a lost love (maybe to death), crying and then jumping on the bed. There are some shots of the beach cut into these actions. It was a mundane film and still was deeply moving and emotional. The story seemed very typical, yet it was fresh. I thoroughly enjoyed this short.

The rest of the night was fairly emotional. The festival came shortly after Ebert's death and his wife Chaz hosted the event giving us notes from Robert on why he chose what he did and who he was. There were many touching things said and even some group singing (to the ever-depressing "Those Were the Days").

I skeezed a pass from someone so I didn't have to pay to get in. Even better.

My skeeze face.

Day of Silence - David Yost

This event was pretty decent. David Yost was the blue power ranger, Billy, in the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. He had been struggling with his sexuality and experienced harassment from his producers during his time on the show. He ended up leaving because of this harassment. He then went on to live in Mexico for a year (?) and then come back to come out to everyone, become a producer of several television shows (Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Children's Hospital) and do activism for gay stuff. His talk was decently interesting. He said the famous line, "IT'S MORPHIN' TIME!" So that made it good. I got pictures with him afterwards. I feel as though with these famous guest speakers, it doesn't matter what they say, but more so the fact that they're famous. So many people afterwards were kind of starstruck, and I was excited, but honestly the content of his lecture did not hold much substance for me other than the same ol' same ol'. I'm sure others had a much more meaningful experience than me.

A bunch of us that went. Power rangerin it up!

What I Learned at Straight Camp - Ted Cox

This was great.

The speaker, Ted Cox also had some other fun names for his presentation. Such as, "Undercover Cox" "Cox talks Cocks" and "Cox Goes Deep." But alas, we get the humorous "What I Learned at Straight Camp."

Cox started with an overview history of ex-gay programs in the United States.

1968 - Psychiatric institutions try electric aversion therapy of sexual deviations
1957 - Dr. Evelyn Hookes writes "The Adjustment of the male over homosexual"
1960s/70s - "The Jesus Freaks"The Jesus Movement - Christian Rock, Casual Church (later becomes known as 'Rock Church')
1969 - Stonewall Riots

Because yes, all little gay boys have
big gay uncle's butt-punching them.

1973 - Love in Action is formed (1st ex-gay ministry), same year APA declassifies homosexuality as a mental illness
1975 - "The Third Sex?" is written
1976 - Michael Bussee starts Exodus International
1998 - John Paulk and his wife get married and say they are both ex-gays. Featured on TIME

Ted Cox attended two weekly ex-gay ministries, two weekend conferences, two counseling sessions with a Catholic priest, and a 48-hour retreat.

Cox read from the book "Alfie's Home" Look at this photo -> it is pretty awful. This is the common explanation for why men are gay according to many ex-gay ministries: gay men just were either molested or not paid attention to by their fathers. Their mothers were over-bearing and so they just want to feel the warm embrace of men.

One of the holding positions practiced at
Journey Into Manhood called "the Motorcycle"
Because what better way to become straight than
to have six men grope you?

There are 5 steps to becoming straight:

1. Get right with Jesus (because through the good Lord you can accomplish anything)
2. Grab a workbook (because you need to spend money to be straight)
3. Control your thoughts (because thinking about Hugh Jackman too much might lead to impure thoughts)
4. Get counseling (spend more money)
5. Head off to the woods with 50 other gay dudes because celibacy is the goal

The workshop Cox went to was called "Journey Into Manhood" where fifty men were in the woods holding each other and sharing their intimate moments with each other. One of the worst moments he encountered was a man beating a bag with a baseball bat to represent beating his "old father." The conference was $650 + airfare, a two-day counseling session was $1000. So going straight ain't cheap.

Ted Cox then went into details about how some of these groups have fucked up over their history:

Exodus International's creator comes out and gets married to another man who led the group with him. John Paulk was spotted in a gay bar in Washington D.C. Dr. George Reker who runs a group about family pediatrics is seen with a Rentboy who is basically a male escort. Alan Chambers, who is the current Exodus leader says that he denies what comes to him naturally for Jesus.

99.9% have NOT experienced a change. But Ted Cox says it is a complicated situation because through ex-gay ministries, many gay men finally come to terms with their sexuality after realizing they can't change. They ultimately end up better for it.

He went over some Bible stuff (I kind of zoned out because I have talked about the Bible soooo much). Few women attend these programs, because who cares about women?

But American ex-gay ministries are better than some other country's such as South Africa's "corrective rape" for lesbians, or Malaysia's abolishing of femme boys.

So for more info go to iheartcox.com

:D
       


I also attended a dance recital for the Legend Dance Company. :D

Arctic Polar Expedition Films

Tonight Alejandra and I went to a lecture by a Norwegian researcher and professor, Jan Anders Diesen.

Diesen was from a smaller town in Norway that had a statue of polar explorers in their town square and he became fascinated with them. He started reading up about them when he was nine and has been researching and writing about polar explorers ever since.

What I learned: There were a lot of people trying to get to the North Pole (and the South Pole, but being from Norway, Diesen mainly focused on the north). Anthony Fiala was hired to be a photographer on an expedition in 1901 and then ended up leading a second one in 1905. The funder of this expedition wanted lots of photographs and film footage so that there could be lectures and they could make a ton of money.

There were several others such as Walter Wellman, Frederick Cook, and George Hubert Wilkins who were explorers first and took really poor-quality pictures. Roald Amundsen was one of the last amateurs in 1912 to take a camera to the arctic. He showed his footage to large crowds and earned as much for one lecture as he did for a year of being a professor. He apparently built a large mansion in Norway.

The mass of photos shoved into this one slide is
just a taste of the excitement held at tonight's lecture

In the mid-1920's films started to lose funding, but Richard E Byrd was an American superstar and claimed to fly to and from the North Pole but people were skeptical. His status got him lots of funding. But there was no evidence.

This lecture was very boring and Diesen didn't have his thoughts collected. The films were semi-interesting but were dull scenes of snow. It was hard to stay awake.

He ended his lecture by relating this classic stuff to new explorers such as Borge Ousland, who does a lot of "daredevil" exploring. Such as traveling around the arctic in a little boat in months instead of a year. Or whatever... He left us on the quote "Use old films to tell new stories" but he didn't really go into this.

The lecture was trying to be interested and if I was really fascinated with the history of arctic exploration I would be thrilled by this, but I was not....

Eboo Patel and Isis King

Two great names, right? I wish my name was cool... I guess not a lot of people are named Harrison. One of my acquaintances recently asked what my first name was. I guess she thought I just went by my last name like a big ol' bro. Hmmm....

This was actually when I was leaving... The room was packed.
Probably half the people left during the Q&A.

Anyway, Friday afternoon I attended the YMCA's Friday Forum with guest speaker Eboo Patel. He talked on interfaith cooperation in the attempt to combat prejudice and anti-Muslim sentiment. It was very good.

Eboo was a U of I grad from the Chicago suburbs. He said that growing up in the burbs taught him to try to do everything to be white. But once he came to college he could embrace his Indian culture. But while he was here in the 90s most people were talking about race, ethnic, sexual, and gender identity but not religious identity. He recalled a story where a Muslim friend didn't play around with his food and when asked about it he responded that in his faith food was life and you don't mess around with life. Everybody gave awkward silence while if he said he was from a certain class or country everyone would have opened up with welcoming arms and encouragement.

He also gave us the quote by Michael Walzer, "Fundamentalists rush in where liberals fear to tread." On September 10, 2001 no one was talking about Islam. On September 12, 2001 everyone was talking about Islam and how it was a religion full of terrorists who want to kill all non-Muslims. Eboo mentioned how these religious extremists gave America and poor version of "Islam 101" because religion was something everybody ignored talking about.

And finally, I resonated with Eboo's thoughts on the recent presidential race and an attack on Mitt Romney's Mormon faith. "Things pass as ok if they're against Mormons, Catholics, and Evangelical Christians." I see this all the time. Blasting Christianity is kind of a norm while blasting Judaism is a hate crime. (Although many times it is a hate crime... not trying to equate saying 'I don't believe this' to hate speech).

Odd selfie as I was walking out...

But all of this came together in my mind to relate it to my own identities. Eboo asked, "What if I stopped trying to be so white and actually liked the name Eboo or Indian food and music?" But I relate that to my own identity. "What if I took pride in being white?" I don't believe being white is supreme, but I do like a lot of 'white' things. What if I said that I love hamburgers, and felt a cultural connection to them? This idea has been in the back of my mind a lot more recently (as is apparent in my work). There have been some things said to me basically saying, "White people are xyz. Because white people are a majority they don't need resources and don't really have a 'culture.'" Eh, this is a story for a longer time... but basically I related that experience to Eboo's talk. That's all I'm going to say on that at this time.

Thennnnn.... Tonight I went and saw Isis King who was a contestant on cycles 11 and 17 of America's Next Top Model. She was fun.


She talked a lot about her life experiences and then a bit about her transition from male to woman. Then she talked about ANTM and I gayed out a bit. I don't remember those cycles... but I remember hearing about her.

I think what I liked most about her was the way she handled questions. There were some people in the audience who seemed to just tell anecdotes and Isis handled it well. She turned it around and made their anecdote serve her cause about trans issues and such. She also had some good things to say about how every trans* person has a different end to their journey. Some people want genital reassignment surgery, some just want hormones, some want none that, they just want to be called the gender they identify with. That differed from the Trans movie we saw a few months back.



One thing I didn't like though was how many "secrets of life" Isis seemed to have for us. Like.... seriously every little anecdote ended with a "and this is how to live to be a better person." Some of them I agreed with but some seemed quite generalizing and naive. But that's what these kinds of events are for, to teach us how to live life.... right?

Oh well, she looked fabulous and I can only assume Gino would be her best friend.

I swiped these photos from the sponsoring group's Facebook.

Drag Show and City of Borders

Last Friday I attended the Illini Union Board Drag Show with Alejandra and some other friends. This drag show is probably the best one in the Champaign-Urbana area. There are some classy ladies that come here every year.

I wanted to throw all of my money at them, but I had a limited amount of singles, so I just had to settle for giving them a small tip.

Look at those shiny fake breasts. Oiled them up
just for this occasion.

It was this girl's birthday. She got a ring and something else
from the emcee. I can only assume it is intended to be shoved
up the anus.

Kalexis really stepped up her game this year and is blossoming into a diva. Get it girl.

We decided we needed flash.... I hate flash.

Tonight I attended a screening of the film City of Borders. For a brief synopsis look at its IMDb page. This film, in my opinion, was very well done and quite eye opening to the situation for LGBT people living in Jerusalem.

The film followed the owner of Jerusalem's only gay bar, Shushan, who happens to also be the first (and it seemed to be only) openly gay city councilman in Jerusalem. The film also focused on three other locals who frequented the bar regularly: Samira and her partner Ravit, two lesbians (one who is Israeli and the other who is Arabic/Israeli) who are actively political in LGBT equality and the end to violence. Adam, who was stabbed in the 2005 gay pride parade (by an orthodox Jew) and is openly gay, very political, and an atheist. And Boody, who is from across the border. He is a drag queen, pretty femme gay boy, and Muslim.

Boody does a lot of voice overs and talks a lot, probably because he had the worst time out of all of the interviewees. He said how Jerusalem is a city of borders. There is the obvious border of the walls between various sections of Jerusalem (religious districts, etc) but also there are borders of East vs. West. Secular vs. Orthodox. Gay vs. Straight. Because of this tensions are high and people do violent and hateful things.

While watching this I felt that the situation in Jerusalem is reminiscent of the U.S. in the 1970's. There was a lot of people fighting, there were few gay bars but that was where people from all walks of life joined to feel community. There didn't seem to be the cliquey-catty gayness that we see in today's U.S. gay culture. Mainly because they all helped and supported each other and saw each other as a big community. BUT, we discussed this afterwards and it is easy for us to sit back and say, "Oh look how bad they have it!" But really there is a chance to learn and reflect on the strides made in the U.S. The fact that we aren't imprisoned or stabbed at parades really shows how far we have come.

Some other great things I noticed in the film was the portrayal of Orthodox Jews. Usually we think of Jews as being polite and peaceful, but when homosexuality came into play these Jews in Jerusalem got angry. They yelled slurs and there was even that one man who stabbed three people at the pride parade. We don't get to see "Jewish extremists" much, but I think this would be a close depiction. There were some very saddening things said in the documentary. The bar owner/councilman got phone calls saying that they shouldn't hold a parade for the men who act like beasts and they shouldn't bring sin onto the holy city. There was a moment where he got a letter with white powder in it and he didn't even freak out. He said it happened frequently. There was also an instance where Boody was shot at which spurred him to leave Palestine and move to the U.S. The hate in Jerusalem is very ripe and religious based, but unlike the U.S. where is is primarily Christian opposition, in Jerusalem there are Christians, Muslims and Jews. It was pointed out how the three religions conjoined to oppose and protest the gay pride parade.

At one pride rally, there were several groups protesting their cause. There was one group saying they should tear down the walls separating Jerusalem and another that said "Meat is murder." One of the interviewees, Adam, saw these signs at their gay pride rally and said "THIS ISN'T EVEN A RELATED ISSUE!" I will admit I think the same thing when people come up to me and tell me to protest red meat while I'm at a gay event. Just because I'm gay doesn't mean I should have to also be a vegan who sews all his own clothes.

Also, Tel Aviv is an hour away from Jerusalem (I mapped it... did you know you can get horizontally across the country in an hour. vertically in about five hours... what the heck. It takes like 8 hours to get from Rockford to Cairo and that's just one state. Dammit America) and the two cities differ immensely. Tel Aviv is viewed as the city of freedom and fun and modernity while Jerusalem is the holy city with the orthodox people and violence and hate. It is seen as a better place to live for many Israelis, but many want to stay in Jerusalem where they grew up and want to live. Kind of like living in the Bible Belt.

I forgot to get photo of myself at the event. But here is and older gentleman watching
 Boody cut up a melon. I'm sure this is the only time Boody handles melons.

Building Bridges, Not Walls (Also Random Country Fair?)

I attended a workshop titled "Building Bridges, Not Walls: Exploring Multicultural Friendships."I lead a group called Building Bridges so I thought this would be appropriate.

It was a'ight. It is a program run by counseling center paraprofessionals. They are basically undergrad students who aspire to one day run programming and give advice to youngsters. Our presenters did well, but I felt really old. There were twelve people there and I think they were all freshmen/sophomores. That's cool.

Basically we did an icebreaker with a ball of yarn where we had to throw it to people who share interests with us. I got thrown the ball of yarn multiple times because I like everything. Maybe if I was Alejandra I would be yarn-less. We also did a lot of interactive exercises where we "speed-friended" and role-played.

At the end of the workshop I don't know if I had truly learned anything, but I think that if I was a freshman or sophomore I would definitely have taken some great knowledge from this. It basically discussed how to be a good friend and then how to bring in different cultural background in that relationship. One of the best things covered was how to analyze conflict and address it in a way that is beneficial to both parties.

You must observe the situation at face value, then weigh in the judgments made by people based on their cultural identities. Then you must look at the feelings felt by both parties and the needs they are trying to fulfill based on these feelings. So if your friend John asks if he can bring his boyfriend to your party, but you think your friends will be weirded out by two dudes and you tell him no and then he is mad: analyze what happened (he asked, you said no), what judgments (you felt like there would be homophobia), feelings (John feels confused, hurt, sad, oppressed. you feel conflicted, cautious, anxious), and then needs (John wants acceptance and for people to meet his boyfriend, you want John to be comfortable but also for you homophobic friends to be comfortable). And then you communicate with John and try to figure it out.

It seems like a simple, fairytale approach to conflict resolution, but it's ok to dream sometimes.

I forced them to take a picture of me with the handbook.

ALSO

On my way to this workshop I stumbled upon a World Fair in the Illini Union. They had a lot of world foods (bananas, samosas, danishes... our world is apparently really simple) and booths for different clubs from different countries (Scandanavian Club sounded the best because they had a photo of Robyn up on their board). I stood around and signed up to receive info about volunteering in Israel and then I left because some guys with guitars were playing music from the 90's... poorly.

I then went grocery shopping and ran into Bill Berger.

That video has nothing to do with anything, I just thought I should share the wealth.

Gaming is for Grown-Ups: A View of the Industry

Jack Buser, Sr Designer, PlayStation Digital Programs

I felt like such a geek because I loved this lecture so much!

AND HE DIDN'T EVEN TALK ABOUT ANYTHING GROUND BREAKING!

But it was so cool, because he put up pictures and played trailers for games and he made nerdy jokes that I understood.

Realistic photo-representation of us.

Jack Buser was a U of I grad (apparently 75% of speakers at this university were at some point). He studied computer science (or computer engineering… or both), and started doing his projects and thesis work on audio because that is what he really loved. He got a job at Dolby Digital right out of college and worked on some audio stuff for DVD and then eventually somebody brought in a PlayStation 2 prototype to see how DVD would work on it. He convinced them to put Dolby systems in the gaming system to make the sound of games and movies phenomenal. After a few years he was hired by PlayStation to work on PlayStation Home (which is PlayStation’s virtual world, like Second Life, but on PlayStation). He then was made into the senior designer of Digital Programs and works now on PlayStation Network stuff and their new Mobile services.

Jack went over the different kinds of games which I will summarize because it is necessary to know when looking at the future.

CORE. People’s preconceived notion of ‘games.’ First-person shooters. Heavily graphic games that people get invested in.

CASUAL. “Time wasters” that people can just sit down and play for a bit. Like Rock Band or Guitar Hero.

ANCIENT. Mancala. Games have been and will be around forever.

SOLO. Pac-Man. Single-player games were a product of the 1970s. Before that single-player was basically limited to solitaire.

SOCIAL. Farmville and Facebook games. These games are redefining what it means to be ‘social.’

MASSIVE. World of Warcraft. MMORPG (Multi-Massive Online Role Playing Games). People do not consider these as “Social” games but they are. People meet people online, get into gaming guilds with them, and often consider them close friends or even get married to them.

MOBILE. Phone and handheld games that would be impossible to realize in the living room.

MOTION. Kinect, PlayStation Move (focus on getting the player active). He didn’t mention Wii even though Nintendo changed the industry by focusing on motion.

AR. Augmented Reality is the future. On the Nintendo 3DS, there are games that use the camera to capture the world in real time and then you fight things that are changing in this “world.” Down the road, this could be used for many things. For example, Jack showed a prototype photo of a street view and bubbles popped up displaying reviews for restaurants, common tips, tweets about a place, etc. Completely immersing the user in social media bullshit. Twitter is stupid… but it is still pretty cool.

FUTURE. There was a picture of a cloud? The sky is the limit… maybe?

Aside from that, Jack didn’t really expand on any ideas or breakthroughs in the industry. I did notice that he only mentioned Nintendo once and that was when bragging about how he got sound to be focused on in gaming. Feuding? He also was talking about the digital programs division and how they are re-releasing old games from previous systems so that younger audiences can discover these great games. I find this hard to believe, because my nephew is thirteen and he has no interest in playing old PlayStation games because of the graphics. I want to play them, but I’m a nerd who grew up playing video games.

Jack Buser talking about nerd stuff.

It was hard to focus because the room smelled like terrible BO. You need to shower boys and girl. I thought maybe it was just this instance, but I did some researching and heard personal anecdotes of the ripest of lecture halls. There was also a Homestuck (Homestuck is a web comic that is vastly popular among geeks and nerds on web forums right now) sitting behind us. I didn’t get a picture, but here’s kind of what she looked like (sans horns). 

Jack ended with a trailer for one of my favorite games that was just recently released. The game is so simple but it is gorgeous and was nominated for a Grammy for its soundtrack. Here’s the trailer. Watch its glory.

Tesla Coil Concert

So this was cool...

I was standing too far away to get a decent photo during the performance. 

I had heard of Tesla coils before and had seen David Bowie play Nikola Tesla in The Prestige, so I was pretty interested in this. Let's just say Bowie had some big coils.


It fascinates me the things that science can do. It is fathomable that electricity shot at a certain voltage and frequency could make sound, but making an entire score is incredible.

If you want to understand Tesla coils a little better here is a cool and nerdy explanation I found online: http://www.sciencebrothers.org/how-a-tesla-coil-works/

I was there.

I want to see these suckers used to power everything wirelessly. I like technology but I hate having a ton of cords. Clutter is bad and cords are clutter. But other than my first world problems, these could be great to deliver electricity places during natural disasters or emergencies. I don't really know about them that much, so I can't say that my fantasies could be reality, but in theory if we could deliver electricity wirelessly imagine what we could do! Cool stuff.

Making music with these coils has apparently become a meme on the internet. Although I just thought it was people having fun with science. I guess anything can be considered a meme now if there's enough of it on the internet. Does that mean that dicks and vaginas are memes? Because there are certainly plenty of those online.

A lot of the songs played were sci-fi theme songs (Doctor Who, Star Wars) or video game music (Mario, The Legend of Zelda). They knew how to play to their audience. The crowd loved it.

Here are some cool videos I found online. I was far away from the action on Friday night because there were thousands of people at this concert:

I also went to Engineering Open House, but it was so busy I walked out and left. I saw a 2-liter tornado though. Those are always cool.

This stock photo came from some children's ministry website. Teaching kids how Jesus will rock their bodies like a hurricane since 75AD.

Jovi Radtke

Wooohooo!!!

Jovi Radtke was such a nerdy, silly, queer person. I could dig it.

She identified as a boi, which means she identifies as female, but often expresses her gender more masculine-ly. After a quick research session (wikipedia) I discovered that this term is also used for young boys who like older men, butch lesbians, and by Avril Lavigne.



Jovi Radtke is a spoken word artist, a slam poet, which is just a fancy way of saying rapper without music (is that ignorant? that's just how it felt). I really enjoyed her performance and her poetry.

There are more videos of her stuff on YouTube but I won't just post her videos. She didn't have background guitar/drums at this performance, it was just her.

Most of her poems were about hard-hitting issues like suicide, transgender violence, and any other gay hot topic that all us gays go through. It was true and real and she was good, but I had heard most of it before.

But on that note,  I still want to emphasize that I liked the night and her performance. Just because I'm a sassy bitch and I've heard it all before doesn't mean that it wasn't inspiring or meaningful. And although Jovi's poems were well-worded, funny, and often inspired a rise of action, what hit me the most during the night was hearing her introduce her poem about Brandon Teena.

I was first shocked that people hadn't seen Boys Don't Cry or at least heard about Brandon Teena. But I guess I'm just old. I remember seeing the film at 3am at a slumber party when I was ten. The guys wanted to watch it because they heard you see tits. There are indeed tits, but I focused more on the violence and hate that was focused on. Jovi talked about how she was ten, living in Nebraska when Brandon Teena was murdered (in Nebraska). She remembered seeing stories on the news and thinking that if she ever came out Brandon's story would be her story.

I grew up in a small town that was overwhelmingly strict puritan. Any break in sexuality 'codes' meant discrimination and excommunication. I grew up believing that Jesus was going to come and set me on fire because I thought about naked men from time to time. I then became aware that other people might want to set me on fire because I thought about naked men from time to time. I saw films like Boys Don't Cry and Brokeback Mountain. I heard news stories of violence. People talked about Matthew Sheppard and at that time said, "If you just stay in the closet and do what you want on your own time, no one will want to hurt you."

But that is destructive to the mind. And Jovi talked about that, and I understood it perfectly. That has always guided my work because I want to open about my experiences because I grew up feeling like I needed everything to be a secret.

So the performance was fun. If you want more info about Jovi, you can see some of her performances on her website or just search her name:

www.joviradtke.com

Afrofuturism and "Trans"

Afrofuturism: Black Science Fiction - Nnedi Okorafor

To start off this interesting debacle at the Bruce D. Nesbitt African-American Cultural Center (or as everyone calls is BNAACC or even more commonly Black House), I arrived a few minutes before the talk was supposed to start. There were very few seats left and the space was awkward to maneuver around. This is not BNAACC's fault, we all have shitty facilities and we do what we can with them. But this talk was part of the "Lunch on Us" series. As I said previously, I usually avoid these talks because they often are bad. But the topic of black sci-fi doesn't come up every day so I thought I would check it out.

BNAACC had pb+j's as well as cereal. It is cool in theory, but once you add trying to balance a bowl, milk, sandwich, cup with water, backpack, and coat/notebook/anything else you might be carrying... It was awkward. I spent the first five-ten minutes trying to figure myself out. I had to put the bowl down and take off my coat and then get up and reposition and get water and then sit down and then pick everything up for someone who wanted to get out... I ended up spilling milk on myself and the ground and then had to get up to find a napkin or paper towel... ugh.


If there was any lecturing taking place I would've missed it, but luckily there was ten minutes of announcements... -_- This worked for me because I was figuring my life out (and by life I'm referring to  cereal and pb + j). But if I had decided food was irrelevant and was ready to learn, I would've been waiting and hearing every schmo's two-cents about their upcoming internship opportunity, community vote, and zit they recently popped. I only was focused for about two-three minutes of announcements and I was already done. It was a waste of valuable time.

Anyway... when Nnedi Okorafor actually started to talk, I was impressed. She started off by giving a brief list of black sci-fi authors to look into: Sam Delaney, Octavia Butler, Nalo Hopkinson. She also explained the differences between fantasy (mystical, unexplained) and science fiction (technology, science). Then there was a blurb for an anthology we could look into called AfroSF. It contains sci-fi written by Africans. That would be interesting to investigate.

Nnedi then started to talk about her life. She grew up in South Holland, Illinois and said it was very racist during the 80's. She would go to Nigeria every year and was astounded that race had no significance there (although their big issue was tribalism). She attended UIUC and ran track and then was diagnosed with scoliosis after her freshman year. She had surgery and was supposed to be fine but ended up being paralyzed from the waist down. She had to go through rehab and teach herself how to walk again. While she was going through rehab she had a lot of down time and started to write to escape her bed. Then she kept writing.

What I loved was when Nnedi started discussing the fears that come with being a black writer.

- Fear of being too black. This includes revealing your black name. She said if there is an African name and the audience can't pronounce it, they will probably not read the story. She also related it to J.K. Rowling not revealing her name out of fear that young boys wouldn't read Harry Potter.

- Fear of showing your black picture on the cover. They worry about sales dropping when they see a black person on the book sleeve or inside cover.

- Fear of writing a black planet. This one relates to sci-fi, but the idea that the majority is black or an entire culture is black. She later tied this into her character development and maintaining black characters.

Another interesting anecdote came up when Nnedi discussed the cover art for her novel "The Shadow Speaker." She brought up the point that we assume characters are white until further notified. She knows of this and continually mentions the dark skin of her heroine throughout her story. But when the cover came back to her it showed a white woman in the desert. She was outraged and had them retry. They sent the same cover back but had darkened her skin a bit on Photoshop. She was still outraged and asked for them to re-do it. But they said they had no black people in their stock archives. HA. That was ridiculous to me... but it was not surprising. Anyway, they re-shot a cover with a black girl and Nnedi was still upset because her character was supposed to be bald but decided it was a compromise she could live with.

So I just keep rambling and going but at the end of this all I was intrigued and inspired by black sci-fi. You don't see a lot of it (the same goes with most black media in America) and when you do it often never focuses on Africa (except for Egypt and S. Africa). This recent work I've been doing has been dealing with black and white and Africa hadn't crossed my mind. ...it did, but I don't think it's going to come into play anytime soon in this series of work. I just want to read now...

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Trans Screening ...

This movie sucked ass.

trailer: http://vimeo.com/34482159#

Should I even say more about it? I don't know, maybe I am biased from my history in LGBT issues, but I feel like this film pretended as if it would shine a light onto trans* issues. If it did anything it was teach a very very simplified (in a bad sense) view of transgender people and fed into stereotypes.

First, the cinematography was similar to local downtown shopping adds (it looked like local furniture store quality) and the editing was horrendous. We would suddenly switch back and forth from 6-10 (I lost track) stories of different transgender people and then suddenly someone else would be brought back into the mix and it was a mess of confusion that made me want to leave the room. The music was all royalty-free music that could probably be found on iMovie or Windows Movie Maker. It was horrendous and was used poorly in a way that made these serious topics almost appear a mockery or a joke.

Technical aspects aside, the content was poor too. They only focused on people who felt a full shift from male to female or female to male and relied on stereotypes to reinforce that switch. The little boy who "loves to play with dolls and wear dresses" or the girl who "played with trucks and liked sports." It is a very limiting and generalizing view of transgender.

They didn't mention any other parts of trans* identities. (I found out a few weeks ago that you should put a * after trans to include everyone on the gender spectrum. Always want to be inclusive.) They had males who became females and got vaginas made and they had females who became males and had their breasts removed and looked into penis grafting and such. But what about the females who never get a penis or their breasts removed? What about males who get breasts but keep their penis and still consider themselves trans? What about someone who one day feels like a man and dresses the part and the next day feels like a woman and dresses the part? What about them?

Apparently there is only female to male or male to female.

Eh, at the end of this story I was disappointed and would not recommend this film to anyone ever.

But my teeth look good and Alejandra looks cute.

Lincoln's Legal Career

I made my way over to the Rare Book & Manuscript Library and was astounded by how nice my shoes sounded on the third floor of the Main Library. It must have been from the silence echoing through the deserted hallway. I thought this over for a long while.

As I entered into the room I was impressed by the layout of the conjoining rooms. I assumed that they were viewing rooms. There were large glass windows with empty tables behind them. Being rare books and manuscripts they want to make sure people don't damage them or steal them. Constant surveillance. But it makes for a sexy library.

A man from the library introduced the lecturer, Guy Fraker, and put in a lot of Lincoln humor. "Lincoln's birthday was eight score and six days ago." "Buy this postcard set, it will only set you back a Lincoln (aka $5)." I thought it was funny. Oh yes, it was also President's Day. Everyone in the room was a total Lincoln-phile. President's Day is like their Christmas.

So Guy Fraker (who got a BA and JD at UIUC) started to introduce himself and talked about his admiration for the library at UIUC and how he is a lawyer not a writer so he needed a lot of help writing his book. Eventually he started to talk about Lincoln. Fraker stated that the mission of his book was to give Central Illinois credit for putting Lincoln in the White House.

The rest played out as a very specific history lesson. Let me summarize into the things I found most interesting:

- Lincoln cared about keeping the Union alive and abolishing slavery. When he said Union he meant democracy more so than just a group of states. Also, it is a misconception that Lincoln didn't care about slavery. Lincoln's views on equal rights for all races was a little less equal but he did view the act of owning another person as evil and immoral.

- Lincoln was one of the few lawyers who went on the whole county circuit. Most would hit up one or two counties, but he hit up all 14(?) counties. He would be gone for eleven weeks, twice a year, so twenty-two weeks total. Many thought he did this because he didn't like staying at home with his wife, Mary. She had to raise the kids all on her own. Then she went crazy.

- The county circuit was Springfield - Tazwell - Woodford (where I'm from) - McClean - Lacon - Monticello - Champaign - Danville - Paris - Shelby - Sullivan - Decatur - Taylorville. From this I learned that Champaign County was the second smallest until the railroads and the University were built.

- Also, alcohol was a bigger issue than slavery in Illinois because no one in Illinois owned slaves. Most of his circuiting was for alcohol distribution rights.

- A lot of the people he knew on the circuit court encouraged him and helps get him votes to become President. 

Really this was just a fun little history lesson about Lincoln's time in Illinois. They had cake, but I didn't eat any. I was definitely one of two people that were not librarians, histories, or some other form of high scholar. I made a swift getaway.

They were selling his book. I did not drop any Lincolns for it though...

4000 Years for Choice - Heather Ault

I have been semi-attending the Office of Inclusion and Intercultural Relations "Lunch on Us" series for the past couple of years and what I have generally found is that they are current MFA or PhD candidates giving us a proposal of a theory they have. I generally do not learn much and then end up feeling like I am stealing food from the University. I steer clear of these lunches.

But "4000 Years for Choice" was a lunch and lecture made in heaven. I was so impressed.

The lecture took place in the Women's Resource Center (which is unfortunately hidden by Coco Mero diminishing visibility and access) and when I entered the center the first thing I noticed was they were serving Indian food.

Destiny.

I had walked past Bombay Indian Grill on the way and muttered to myself, "Maybe I should skip this lecture and get Indian food." But I convinced myself to attend, BAM! Life kicked in and rewarded me with naan and eggplant curry.

So anyway.... The lecture was being led by Heather Ault, a local designer who got her MFA in New Media here at U of I. That was pleasant surprise #1. She had also done some classes (maybe got her BFA? it was unclear) at Humboldt State... Luke Batten, lololol. Pleasant surprise #2. Lastly, she wasn't awful and presented sleek, sexy materials that promoted positivity and a re-approaching of the activism movement. And that was all I learned within the first ten minutes.

She talked about how she focused on four segments of pro-choice activism to re-imagine the way people protest for pro-choice organizations. History, Images, Language, and Spaces. I will try to briefly sum that up:

History - can date back at least 4000 years to Ancient Egypt, books in the 30s, Roe v. Wade in 1973, and most people surveyed today think that contraceptives were created within the last 40 years
Images - pro-life and pro-choice campaign photos, historical ads for syringes/sponges/condoms, cartoons, focused on fallopian tubes rather than the fetus image
Language - National Abortion Rights Action League vs 40 Days for Life, looked at emails sent by them, language they used, Battle vs. Story, mobilization vs. persuasion, saw that pro-life emails were more positive
Spaces - transformed posters into signs, professional-looking signs (people thought they were pro-life because of how professional they looked)

Then I had to go to make it to class and missed the last ten minutes.

Ault did not look at the pro-choice movement from the tradition lens of "WE ARE OPPRESSED! WE HAVE NO RIGHTS! WE ARE BEING MARGINALIZED!" but instead from a positive "WE ARE PROUD! WE ARE STRONG! WE ARE GOOD PEOPLE!" This positive we-succeed instead of we-need attitude caught my attention and from researching the "4000 Years for Choice" project other people have noticed too. I want to follow in Ault's footsteps and use my work in a way that is positive about what I am fighting for and not victimizing myself... because honestly people get bored with that and end up resenting the person crying about how their woes are worse than everyone else's.

Me before the lecture

Me after the lecture

I also learned a ton about the sexy history of contraceptives.

;-D win win.