A Grim Trend

There seems to be an awful lot of death around me lately. Last November, my grandmother passed away. I had to fly to the States for a bit of a memorial gathering. I haven’t seen my grandmother for many years prior to her passing, and in at least a couple of scares, our family had to mentally prepare ourselves for her passing. And when she finally passed away, it was more like seeing the long inevitable, acting in a scene long rehearsed.

Not long after, my godfather passed away. I don’t have much of a relationship with him, but he was close with my father and I do love my cousins. His health has been in a decline for many years now. And while it was a surprise for me that he passed away, I had a feeling that it was to be expected. He wasn’t getting any healthier. A few weeks after his passing, another uncle passed away. Like my godfather, his health was in a decline as well. It’s a bit of a coincidence that he was really close with my godfather and that they both died within weeks of each other’s passing. It’s almost like what they say about old couples dying.

Just now, my landlord just passed away. He’s not a relative, but being my landlord, he’s physically the one closest to me. His death hasn’t hit me as much as my grandmother’s death did, but the fact that I just saw him smiling with his family gathered all around him on a Sunday afternoon a few days ago makes me feel really uneasy. He was a good guy who was kind and generous enough to let me stay at his place for so many years even though he wasn’t particularly fond of the way I decorated and furnished my apartment. I just hope he makes a straight beeline to heaven and not linger around to make his complaints about my living space known.

Oddly enough, we are planning to move to a different place sometime this year. Having my good landlord finally pass away seems to make that decision even more pertinent. Here’s hoping we find a reasonable place in this currently ridiculous Seoul real estate market.

I don’t know if there’s really a point to my writing this week. There have been a lot of people dying lately. It feels quite uneasy.  I really would like to shake it off.

Be kind to people while they are still around. One of my biggest regret in life is not being there with my mother in her last years. I could’ve found another job. I could’ve made arrangements around my life to make it possible for me to be there with her, but I didn’t. I was lazy, unimaginative, selfish, and unkind. I kinda shut it all out. I pretended everything was going to be fine, and in the process, I missed out on so much from a woman who was nothing but a saint to everyone in the family. Be kind to people while they around, because when they’re gone, you might end up writing blog entries about it repeatedly and getting reminded of your mistakes every time another person dies.

They are just kids… racist kids.

Kids will be kids, and 17 year-old young men are still children. Nevertheless, it is disheartening how so many people in the media are bending over backwards telling everyone that what we saw those Covington kids do was not racist at all.

It was racist. Anyone who’s been on the receiving end of any sort of bigotry will recognize the smug smile on Nicholas Sandmann’s face. It’s the smile that says among many other things, “I’m going to get away with this.”

I don’t want to dissect everything that happened. There are videos and different analyses about the event. It doesn’t have to be treated like a Zapruder film. Everyone’s actions are as plain as day.

First off, a Catholic school decided to bus a group of young men for political purposes. It was for the March for Life, an annual rally protesting the legality of abortion. Again, a Catholic school (which is not supposed to be political) decided to bus a group of young men (who will never, EVER, be pregnant) to protest the legality of abortion (participating in a political event, a very adult thing to do). The school organizers and their parents decided it was okay to have young men, voice their opinions on political issues, but the minute they get into racist shenanigans, they are immediately reverted back to innocent young children who have no idea how racist their actions were.

Also, prior to the viral video, there’s already evidence of the boys harassing young women with vile remarks. These are not the innocent actors that the Sandmann’s PR firm would have you believe. These boys are not the type who would freeze up and nervously pray silently when they see an old Native American man play a peace drum. They were loud, obnoxious, and combative.

What annoys me however is how quickly people in the media quickly turned from condemning their actions to making excuses for them after a PR firm got to them. So many articles and people online would try to convince you that the boys weren’t being vile, that there was a bigger story from a different angle. There isn’t. The boys were racists and misogynists. Their school and their parents are equally racists and misogynists.  If anything, the bigger story here is how easy it is to dupe the players in the media, and how yet again, attacks against Native Americans are so engrained in society that people easily ignore them. Tomahawk chops? That’s just something they learned through football! Mocking dance? Well, they were just moving to the beat of the drum! Native Americans experience racism regularly but you don’t nearly see much outrage about it. If anything, injustice against Native Americans is often seen with hopeless familiarity, “here we go again.”

It would be interesting to see how the media would react if the same actions the boys took were done by a group of a different color or gender.  I’m guessing more colorful language would be used to describe them, “a gang” if they’re black or brown men, and the word “hysterical” if it was a group of women. And you wouldn’t really see too many people quickly giving them interviews over the Today Show. Then discussions regarding crime, drugs, or rampant feminism would follow.

Ironically, Donald Trump has invited the Covington boy to the White House after saying they were victims of fake news. Donald Trump famously tried to get the Central Park Five, a group of black teens, executed despite being innocent of a crime. There are many differences between the Covington boys and the Central Park Five, but we all know which one matters the most.

And unfortunately, it’s not only Trump that has this bias. It’s so many people in the media as well.

Canadian Trouble

Saudi Arabia is not in good terms with Canada at the moment. It’s been sour for months now, not long since MLB took power. I wrote about the tension started by concerns regarding the arrest of Samar Badawi last year. Canada has largely been alone in its dispute against the Saudis, even as the kingdom threatened to pull out its medical students from Canada, sell off its Canadian assets to damage the dollar, and have its propaganda arm spread disinformation about the country. Luckily, there hasn’t been much damage to Canada after all of these months. And Canada hasn’t stopped helping people in the Middle East, particularly those seeking asylum.

Saudi Arabia continues to be a horrible country. Its guardianship system is a prison for women. They exploit women as much as they exploit slave-like labor from other countries. As much as we hear US propaganda about the evils of Iran, it is Saudi Arabia who has financed the 9/11 terrorists and continues to terrorize its neighbors, particularly Yemen. The more independent Canada is from Saudi Arabia, the better off we are.

Unfortunately, Saudi Arabia is not alone. There have been growing tensions between Canada and China stemming from the arrest of Huawei’s founder’s daughter at the behest of US law enforcement. China in return has arrested two Canadians and violated diplomatic protocols by their interrogation. China will also now be executing a Canadian arrested for drug trafficking even after he was previously sentenced only for five years. The amendment to his sentence was considered only after a few hours. There have been back and forth jabs between Trudeau and Chinese politicians, but ironically, Huawei’s founder thanks the Canadian justice system for treating his daughter well and also says that the US has a great president.

It’s a good thing however tensions haven’t risen so much that China and Canada are taking economic actions against one another. China is still the number one growing economy in the world. And despite its occasional abrupt dictatorial tendencies, it still hasn’t pulled economic actions against the Canada the same way it did with South Korea two years ago.

Russia is also getting in on the anti-Canada wagon. Recently, Russian state propaganda aired news that Canada was being controlled by a secret cabal of Ukrainians. This was undoubtedly an issue aimed to rile up support during the elections and to try to damage both Ukraine and Canada, on of Ukraine’s strongest ally. In any case, “a secret cabal of Ukrainians” controlling the country is so outlandish that it is more akin to Alex Jones conspiracy theories, not something you would normally see on primetime. Who would believe in this stuff?

All this, and the US still has a tariff war against Canada.

Franklin Roosevelt was quoted saying, “I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.” There seems to be tough times for Canada ahead, but at least when it comes to international politics, we appear to be doing good.

Playing to an Audience

I haven’t seen Green Book yet. I work, I study, and I have Red Dead Redemption 2 on my PS4. Time is at a premium. Just yesterday, I finished watching the R. Kelly documentary series, a few days after everyone was talking about it. So yeah, I’m often late or find myself catching up on things. Anyway, I was ready to watch the Green Book sometime this upcoming weekend when I learned that the Green Book’s celebrated writer, Nick Vallelonga, supported Donald Trump’s infamous 9/11 lie that he remembers seeing Muslims celebrate on the rooftops of New York when they saw the Twin Towers in flames. This is a lie that he floated around to rally support from his racist base as well as to justify his Muslim Ban. Nick Vallelonga on Twitter supported Trump’s claims, saying that he too saw Muslims celebrating on New York rooftops.

After the Golden Globes and people discovering his questionable tweet, Nick Vallelonga has deleted his account. His PR representative, as of this moment, has said that since the account was deleted, there is not much to say about it. Why do people pretend that things on the Internet don’t stay on the Internet forever?

The film is about the unlikely friendship between a black jazz pianist, Don Shirley, and an Italian-American bouncer turned driver, Frank Vallelonga, Nick Vallelonga’s father. It’s the story of life during segregation and it has received acclaim, especially due to the performance of Mahershala Ali who portrayed Don Shirley. With Ali being a Muslim, I can only imagine how uncomfortable it must be for him to have worked on film with someone who is obviously prejudiced against Muslims. It’s already controversial with many of Shirley’s living relatives contested many details of the film, saying that the friendship between the two main characters is fictional and that scenes were created to play up black stereotypes. With the writer appearing to be a bigot, it would seem that the Shirley’s accusation that the makers of the film were more interested in making money than anything is growing to be more accurate.

This is not the first time I’ve seen someone change their politics or pander to the opposite site of the political spectrum in order to get a buck. Despite Nick Vallelonga presumably being a bigot or having some bigoted tendencies, that doesn’t stop him from seeing and crafting a good story that people would like to see. That doesn’t stop him from making art that people of opposite beliefs would appreciate. Knowing the background story however makes me not want to see the film, it is after all mostly a work of fiction. But it’s sad that all of this baggage is affecting performers who otherwise did well on the film.

Tomi Lahren, a conservative commentator pretending to speak for young people started out as a liberal. When that didn’t work for her, she became a conservative talked. With her bleach blonde looks and crazy talking points, conservatives were all too willing to give her the attention she wanted. Her African-American equivalent is Candace Owens. Same beginnings, started out as anti-Trump but is now a conservative talker. Follow the money. See what the audience likes, give it to them = profit. I think Louis CK is sorta trying to do the same thing, too. Before he was outed as a predator, his materials were raunchy and offensive, but tended to lean on the progressive side. But hearing his leaked materials, I see him courting the same men’s rights dude bros that he used to make fun of. He’s even making fun of students who were victims of school shootings despite having two kids of his own. It was the voice of a man aggrieved which is all too common with the alt-right types who claim that Gamergate was about games journalism. There is an audience for this, a very easy to entertain audience. Perhaps he’s just following the money. Maybe if he says “cuck” more often, I would be more convinced.

I don’t see how people do this though. I would never know how it feels because I never really earned a fortune through my art, but how does one make art or do work that is disingenuous to your true self? How does one spout of conservative nonsense when they are truly much smarter than that? How does Louis CK pander to a rather mean-spirited audience with his awful jokes? Or maybe that’s the real Louis CK all along. If so, how does one fake being a progressive when deep inside your soul is as black as Gavin Mcginnes’? How does one make a film shining the light on racial inequality and work with Muslim artists when deep down they would rather make a wall around the country to keep out all the dark minorities? Is it just the money? That must be an awful lot of money. That amount must be so big that you could hug it and at the same time feel its warmth surround you, giving you the most comfortable sleep at night. An amount of money that replicates the joy of making love, the comfort of being in a loving womb, and the taste of having sweet chocolate in your mouth (Am I describing cocaine?). What a wonderful amount that must be.

So yeah, maybe Nick Vallelonga is a bigot who doesn’t much care for the actual lives and values of the people who would most appreciate his story. I’m sure Green Book is a good movie, but other shows and movies have suddenly become more of a priority for me. I hear Bird Box is interesting.

 

Rainbows

I have not used color in my works for a long time. I’ve just made images in black and white, continually working with tentacles for almost over three years now. I’m still at it; I’m still going to continue with my current trend of works. Nothing has really compelled me to shift directions or to work on an entirely different set of works.

And no, the color is just there to shift both the mood of the image as well as my mood. I don’t think I’ll be incorporating much color to my future drawings. As I’ve mentioned about my works before, they are both visual diaries as well as a form of therapy for me. That’s probably the reason why I’m not too concerned about selling pieces. I’ve already derived some good out of them in the act of creating them. They’ve simply made the day more tolerable. And in this case, the rainbow is a nice little experiment. Seeing a rainbow makes people forget their problems and depression for a second. Just like Christmas, it’s like we’re all pre-conditioned to states of childhood innocence whenever we see an actual rainbow. It’s almost like a universal symbol of happiness and good that has yet to be corrupted. Even homophobes cannot fully divorce themselves from the joy of seeing a rainbow despite the rainbow flag being adopted by the gay community.

Colors and rainbows are simply good. Stare at the rainbow and you won’t notice the poor soul being waterboarded in the corner.