You don't vote your pocketbook. You vote someone else's pocketbook. Someone is manipulating you to vote their pocketbook, because they are in fact being paid to do so by corporations who are voting their pocketbooks.

So they tell you something like "we will cut all your taxes!" and they don't tell you "we will also cut all your municipal services"—See what's happening in Colorado Springs, where ultraconservative voters have voted out so many of their own taxes that their city government can no longer provide proper safety in the form of street lights, police helicopters, and "dozens of police and firefighter positions."

Or what's happening right here in Texas: Rick Perry is not only eschewing—but crapping all over education in favor of cutting taxes and expending whatever will advance his campaign (Discolure: the link is an opinion editorial, but one from what I feel is a trustworthy source), not only for another governor's term (which he said he would never seek) but also for president (another thing he claimed he would never do)—all while engaging in one of the ugliest campaigns yet for Texas governor. Now he's seeking endorsements from former president H.W. Bush and planning on campaigning with Sarah Palin—when before he had always declared (and won many a race saying) that he would never become part of the "Washington insiders," who to him were always crooked.

Anyway, that doesn't matter to you. But it should.

In New York City in 1911, the Triangle shirtwaist factory burned down, killing upwards of 200 workers—mostly young female immigrants—in the second-worst workplace disaster in NY after 9-11. At the time, the political machine at place in New York—democratic Tammany Hall—had the power and resources to bury the scandal and move on as if nothing had happened, just as they had been for years. At the time, Tammany Hall worked by guaranteeing votes through favors to their immigrant constituents. If your sister got sick, they'd pay the doctor's bills. If your brother lost his job, they'd hook you up with a Tammany job. They would give presents on Christmas for families who couldn't afford it. All of this in a "I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine" mindset—and those people who Tammany helped appreciated it, and voted for them, keeping them in office and in power. Tammany were also immensely corrupt, swelling government with unnecessary jobs, accepting bribes and kickbacks, and taking much of the money they made for themselves.

However, the Triangle fire marked a watershed in New York politics at the time. More new immigrants were coming than ever before, driven by things like economic collapse in Greece and horrible antisemitic pogroms in Russia, and they demanded more social change than they were being given. Just a few months beforehand, workers had settled one of the largest and most successful strikes in New York at that time. But the movement had been mired by dissent over ideology and questions over what, exactly, they were looking for. They ended up settling short of their demands for a recognition of their union, and in the end it had done nothing for their and their fellow workers' safety when they burned up in the overcrowded, immensely flammable Triangle shirtwaist factory—where the owners had locked most of the exits so workers couldn't sneak out with lace or fabric, and where the fire escape opened up over a long drop to a basement skylight; they were basically imprisoned in a burning death trap, and much like 9-11, many opted to jump out and fall to their death, to the horror of those watching helplessly on the street.

This horrific event galvanized a new demand for reform, and those affected by the fire or its story were voting differently. Charles Murphy—the Tammany boss at the time—knew he had to change in order to keep power.

Long story short, the workers and progressives organized and through their influence in government, they succeeded in changing the dominant political machine in their favor. Murphy and Tammany hall, particularly two Tammany senators, reformed much of the workplace injustices, giving workers new rights and new, better places of employment.

Why do I tell you this story? Because long ago we ceased taking an interest, as a society, in local politics. In fact, it became near-impossible to do so, as we no longer demanded to know what our local politicians were doing, and so politicians obscured their actions.

(While this entire blog has, of course, been an opinion piece, from here on out, I'm going to be making a plea based on my own political stance—I voted for Obama. Feel free to glean from what I say as best you can without feeling you ought to hold my same opinion.)

Now, it's hurting us nationally (and, I would argue, it has been). Our president was elected on a platform of change, something we very desperately needed, and he is insisting on remaining incredibly moderate. This is not the time to be moderate. Obama gave us promises that he is not complying—and who can blame him? We have put him in a situation where those who never liked him continue to blindly hate him no matter what he does, and those who did like him continue blindly extolling him—or blindly defending and rationalizing his actions—no matter what he does. If we want change, we have to demand it.

Obama has said that he'd rather be a one-term president and make a different than be a two-term president and do little to nothing, but for some reason he's fallen to the status quo and is gunning for exactly the latter.

It's time for us to tell Obama why we elected him. End the goddamn war. Repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Reform bloated government and especially cut down the power of the corporations (and fight fight fight against this awful supreme court ruling in favor of corporations). Reform education, reform the food industry. Help the environment and move us toward becoming a more sustainable nation. Fight against injustices and abject poverty in third world countries.

It's time for us to take what he told us he would do and demand it. It's time for us to take a look at what's happening in our own cities and our own districts, and demand change and transparency. It's time to scorn rhetoric and empty ideology and approach politics with a clear head, critical thinking, and practicality.

We've gotten lazy, and who can blame us? Investigative journalism is an endangered species. The news is given to us from corporations who are tied to more corporations. We stopped having an ideal of journalistic integrity, and yet we have continued to believe whatever our anchors have told us as if they were Walter Cronkite. We've allowed religious beliefs to become almost inextricably tied with political ideologies; we have allowed government to become a close, intimate bedfellow of business and corporations. Plato once wrote that if a man of government and a man of money became friends, they ought both be put to death. I don't espouse such drastic endeavors, but the truth of the belief behind that idea has urgency.

We are being governed not by ourselves or even our own elected representatives but by moneyed interests, and it's hurting us. We are being fed chemicals that our bodies were never meant to digest and our food is giving us disease. We are dying of curable sicknesses because we cannot be healed without money. We are indebted to nations that hate us for a substance that makes the air we breathe fumes and the world we live in die. We are raising children who don't know not to make more children because don't want to educate them, or were never educated ourselves. We are hating each other and lauding ourselves because we were taught to do so.

We, as a nation, are long overdue for change—and if we don't demand it, it will be our own faults. Shame on you, Obama, for no longer seeing that. Shame on us, America, for no longer making him see.

H

elvetica, which actually means "the Swiss type," was created in 1957 in Switzerland during which Swiss typography was the hallmark of the modernist movement. Modernism was a period of design during which nearly everyone was following the stylistic manifesto of a guy named LeCorbusier. Basically, he championed a type of very clean, inorganic and frills-less design, emulating the pure functionality of American engineers. He was fond of Nietzsche, thought himself something of an "Übermensch," and believed fervently in the progressive idea that society was moving forwards towards perfection—and indeed was very close. In his book "Towards a New Architecture" he stated that everything—from a chair to a house to a typeface—had a "perfect" state and once that state was reached, that was that. It was the job of the great men of the world—himself one of them, of course—to do their best to find that perfection. I recommend looking him up.

Anyway, this was the "machine age," during which everyone was obsessed with making things look mechanical. To them, this was the new perfection—machines were automating everything, getting rid of the imperfections of human craft. The more mechanical and functional something could look and be, therefore, the better. The early 1900s also had De Stijl, literally "the style," in which artists reacted to the both the war and the abstract expressionists with a complete removal of the artist's touch. You probably know about Mondrian, on of the most famous of these artists.

So, out of all this comes Helvetica—a clean, no-nonsense type in which the negative space is perfectly balancing the positive. Look at the beauty of the petal inside the lower-case a, for example:




Its beauty as well as its clean, sans-serif look and superior readability created a revolution in the typographic world, particularly during a time when form was praised highly above function, and the content of a work was of much more importance than the look. Helvetica was a font that could step aside and allow the words to speak for themselves.

There was, of course, a subsequent reaction to Helvetica, just as there was to modernism. Post-modernists wanted more fire, more chaos, and had no problems with form or ornamentation. Designers began using fonts with more obvious "feels" to them, so to speak, such as handwritten work or grungy fonts.

But then, years later, when Macintosh and then PC made it their default fonts, it grew to become a global font once again. You can still see Helvetica everywhere (particularly in Europe but in America as well): from your highway markers to your furniture stores to your fancy, upscale restaurants to your art galleries and back. In fact, there's a shot in the documentary "Helvetica" of a poster on a community billboard, simple 72-point Helvetica font on a normal, white sheet of paper saying "for crystal meth call angel."

And there's the other side of Helvetica. It grew out of the modernist age, survived post-modernism and all its chaos, and emerged out the other side on two increasingly merging forefronts: globalized business and the new accessibility of print and design.

Nowadays, anyone with a computer can design a poster—and many people choose Helvetica because it is an increasingly easy font, and even nothing more than plain Helvetica type on a white sheet of paper can give you a fairly professional-looking poster. It's familiar, it's everywhere, and yet it's able to morph into different looks and styles to give you totally different "feelings" to your designs.

Think about how American Airline's logo is, American Apparel's logo, and Crate&Barrel's logo. How do they feel too you? To me, American Airlines is very corporate and businesslike; American Apparel's is clean but young and a little cheeky; Crate&Barrel's is very upper-middle-class chic.

Now, look past the cut-tag to see the three logos:

Click to jump

I'm still up for suggestions!

One of my (actual) New Year's resolutions (as always) is to write more. I remember during this blog's heyday (and even more in blogs before this) that I used to post up to three times a day! Now, it's lucky if I post once a month. I want to remedy this, so for one of the few times in my history, I'm asking you,

Xanga, what do you want to hear?

There are billions of interesting blog topics out there. Heck, there's a bunch in my brain, but sometimes one needs an outside perspective recognize all the things bouncing around in one's own head. I could write a myriad of different things just about pop culture, politics, or aesthetics, music, the craft of writing, or even just about how my day went. It's up to you! I'll post about every single suggestion I receive*. That's right. Every comment will be considered (despite my fear that the only thing that will come of this is a troll field day) (then again, I love playing with trolls).

Another resolution this year is to, as far as I can, not say no—to become more well-rounded, and to learn about things I may not currently have any interest in. It'll be a great chance for me to do this, and for you to suggest new things for me that you may personally love, or want to learn about but want me to do all the hard work.

Talk to me, Xanga!



* There is only one caveat to this, and that is if it's a question whose answer may hurt someone or would cause me to violate my Xanga terms of agreement. Questions whose meanings elude me will be ignored if a request for further explanation is not answered.

First of all, my methodology. I took the approach from a friend of mine: art as much as science, with a little bit of bias thrown in.

First, the science. This is a list of popular music albums, not classical composers or anything of that sort. An album couldn't make the list unless I already owned it. So, even if I might even feel an album deserves to be on the list, if I don't have it, it's not on here. It's a way of narrowing things down and keeping it interesting.

Basically, I opened up my iTunes and picked out what I wanted in the running. Then, once I selected what albums I felt were contenders, I began a March Madness-style grouping and ordering so as to find the top 10.

That is, first I put them in the order I sort of felt they deserved to be. If there are multiple albums from one artist, I picked the best and cut the rest of them (unless I felt they were significantly different, in the case of Beck and Radiohead). I also cut out all the reissues, compilation albums, and soundtracks (except Eddie Vedder's "Into the Wild" soundtrack, which was an album in its own right) because that's cheating. Then, I took the list and pit the first two against each other, then the loser with the next guy, and so on (because of this, I am able to also include, after the jump, the runners-up) When I finished this I stopped, because I was never going to be perfectly happy with the order, and left it at that.

This was actually very difficult for me. It turned out to have two Radiohead and two Beck albums in the top 10, which is heavy, but I thought about it and thought about it and didn't feel that it should change, so. That's how the cookie crumbled, I suppose. There was a lot of good music to choose from, and really, Albums 11-20 are nearly as good a list of top 10s as my top 10, but that's how it goes.

Second, the art. Albums need to work as albums to make them great albums, so even if I absolutely love two or three singles, if the rest are bad or simply out of place, they're out. If two albums are neck and neck and one works better as an album, or is more artful, that will be the winner—perhaps even if I, personally, enjoy the other more.

Finally, the bias. Obviously, there's bias just in restricting it to my own music. Furthermore, there is always (as I briefly mentioned above) the push-pull between music that is acclaimed and technically masterful and music I personally consider a favorite. What makes some music your favorite is not often based entirely on how it sounds; no, it has some lyrical significance, or nostalgic attachment (see: my first post in the Albums installment I regrettably never finished)(remind me to do that sometime). I have done my best to make the Top Ten music I love both artfully and personally. I can't say I fully succeeded, but I tried. I know right off the bat that I have an unhealthy adoration for Annie Clark of St. Vincent and a very high respect for Radiohead. There's also a slight bias towards more recent music of the aughts, because I find that more interesting for these purposes and because I have been listening to those more recently.


After all that, this list is still going to confuse or frustrate someone, but that's the beauty of it. There's a saying I grew up with from Brazil which goes "gosto não se discute," or, "taste you do not discuss." That is, at some point, everyone's got their own ideas and their own criteria for what is good and what is bad, and I'm not going to ruin a relationship because of different tastes (I know, considering my history of making a brazen defense of pretension and elitism that this is a funny thing to say, but at the end of the day, I'll make my case for aesthetics/taste/whatever but if you disagree, I will still be your friend).

Feel free to comment what you feel about my list and to make your own—I'll still be your friend! So, with that grand introduction, the list:

Top Ten Albums of the Aughts:

(according to me)


10. 
 Liars—Drum's Not Dead

9.  
Beck—Sea Change

8. 
Grizzly Bear—Veckatimest

7. 
St. Vincent—Actor

6. 
Fleet Foxes—Fleet Foxes

5. 
Animal Collective—
Merriweather Post Pavilion

4. 
Radiohead—In Rainbows

3. 
Beck—Guero

2. 
Sufjan Stevens—
Come On, Feel The Illinoise!

1. 
Radiohead—Kid A

11-43 after the jump!

Alternately titled: Wuv, twuuue wuuv...

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Updated due to a. lack of recent content and b. I'm particularly partial to this blog for some reason.

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I figured since I would be referencing several stupid movies in this text, I should get the dumbest over and done with. Alright then.

My recently featured post was written quickly and without commentary, as I intended to present it to you as entirely without context as I could. I had intended to write a follow-up post the following day, but then I was inundated with comments. So here's my attempt to recall what I was originally trying to say.

Here was my original thesis, but firstly, let me say that I speak from the viewpoint of a heterosexual woman, though I believe many of the things I say apply generally. This is because A. it's easy and B. That is the viewpoint of the majority of chick flicks, which is the topic of my discussion. Onward:

There is a both gender bias and an extremely harmful ideal-system in viewing relationships, reinforced and created by the damaging relational philosophies in media, especially in chick flicks/romantic comedies. Think of every chick flick you know. Any of them in which the girl is not single when she meets the Other Guy—The Notebook, Sweet Home Alabama, Runaway Bride (especially) etc.—she leaves her first guy (through a series of hi-jinks or not), often cheating on him, and no one thinks any more of it. If, on the other hand, the opposite happened in the movies: the heroine loses her boy to a more worthy opponent (at least in his eyes...usually the movies paint her in a terrible light because, duh, we're supposed to hate her), a large part of the movie is taken up with hating on both of them, especially him.

It stems from false ideals espoused by basically every chick flick ever made, beginning with the obvious in Disney but continuing insidiously throughout your life:
One, there is such thing as the "perfect" person for you in every way.
Two, when you find them the only hard part will be giving in to the inevitable—that you are meant for each other. Once that is accepted, it's easy.
Three, that person, once they fall in love with you truly, will never, ever, ever see any of your faults or be anything less than obsessively in love and service to you.
Four, women are meant to live happily ever after with their chosen mate and marriage is the ultimate sealant of happy fates.
Five, there is no need for work in a successful relationship/marriage; the moment of commitment itself is considered an end (as opposed to a beginning).

I'm sure you can think of more along these lines. It's a reinforcement of lies, huge lies, lies that have contributed to the inability of many to remain and to live properly in relationships. I've found myself victim of it myself throughout my life, and keenly—as many of you have as well. It's all over datingish. When you stack yourself and your relationship up to these ideals and fall short, you despair.

But you are not a Disney princess. You are not an easily wrapped-up story, a universal, shallow personality. You are a real person, one of complexity, in a real, even more complex world. This isn't insidious on the part of Hollywood, because romantic movies are meant to be light, and everyone wants to believe in "true love" (even I do, however against my rational judgment), and everyone needs an easily wrapped plot and a relate-able heroine. But when we begin applying the fantasy physics from chick flicks to our own lives, we encounter great pain.

"True love", if it exists, is not the Oh, just find the right person and you will fall into a happy vortex of Easy Buttons kind. It is the this is the person with whom you fit closest, for whom you are most willing to work and compromise and communicate in order to make this work and be lasting kind: this will take work, but it will be worth it—worth pledging my life to it. Sure, emotional connections and the giddiness of love are there, and should be, but those things alone are not hallmarks or indicators of "true love" any more than the fact that he gives you flowers, and those things never, ever stay. They are biochemical reactions (though of course technically everything is). Regardless, what stays is your commitment, the foundations you've laid and the promises you made.

Furthermore, your man was not made to simply mold to you, nor to serve you, nor to be strangely and obsessively devoted to you. Nor were you meant for a similar subservience to him. You are two individuals who (hopefully) connect and complement each other, but do not assimilate each other. This is crucially important to remember.

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Before I go, I do want to say I intend to address your points, because you made many varied and interesting ones. It will take some time, and the majority will be in a follow-up post, but I did want to address this private message from a friend with whom I was discussing my scenarios:

They said: "But, in both circumstances: if a person is dating someone and meets someone else, is it better to squelch the stronger feeling and lie to the originally significant other?"

This is the hardest question in the world. It relies on many factors—and it's certainly not so easy as it seems in chick flicks to realize someone else is your "true love" and thus to justify leaving who you're with: a nice dependable guy but just not The One (fanfare). Since that doesn't exist in real life, it's always a question. Is this person you are with the one, or are you just deluding yourself? Is this new guy the one, or are you just bored? In either situation, to what extent do you fight for your relationship? To what extent do you have a responsibility to loyalty, to trying to make things work, and to what extent should you just let it go, move on for the best of both of you—whether for other people or simply because the relationship has died? And whose fault is it if the relationship dies: is it simply because you're not meant for each other, or because you made mistakes you shouldn't have, or because you didn't try hard enough? I suppose it all lies upon how strong the promises are that you've made to each other.

I believe there are a few lines, based on the severity of commitment you have made; it's a sliding scale. Clearly, most people will have no qualms with moving on to date someone else if they've only gone on a few dates with the person they're with. On the other extreme, no one would ever move on so casually from a 15-year marriage. This is where you take your promises seriously; there is a reason the word "vow" is such an intense one. I believe if you have made a wedding vow, then you are life-bound to stand beside it unless your partner breaks it instead—through cheating, abuse, or etc. Even then, you may choose to see counselors, to do the best of your collective abilities to work it out (depending, of course, on the situation, as dictated by sense). I don't think we give our own word nearly as much thought and importance as we should.

The hardest question is when you're dating seriously, when you're gearing up to make this monumental decision: am I ready, truly ready, to pledge my life to this relationship, to ensuring its life and health? Do you hold out for better (personally, I feel if you have that mindset, don't date), how certain are you of love or of devotion? These are hard questions. Very, very hard.

".... but, is that question just society's self-centered-humanistic-happiness viewpoint justifying what you want or is it a legitimate issue?"