Justin Beiber

At first when I heard him, I was like "who is this annoying little prepubescent teenybopper?"

But I think I'm diggin' his jams. Yes, I endorse this young musician and as many people are like "dude he sounds like he's 12 what a n00b" I actually think he's a breath of fresh air amidst all the vulgar lyrics about "hotel motels" and how "she's all upon me screamin' yeahhhhh".

I mean I've had an up and down relationship w/ rap and hip hop. I love the beats, but the lyrics are just so gross these days it's not easy to listen to it seriously without shaking my head. It's an open-forum most of the time to degrade and oversexualize females.

But w/ Mr. Beiber, even the usual durrrtay-lyriced rap stars featured on his songs are singing very nice and respectful things about females.

You take my breathe away, with every thing
You say. I just wanna be with you my baby,
My baby, ohhh. My miss don’t play no games,
Treats you no other way, that you deserve,
Cause you’re the girl of my dreams.


Now that's pretty cute, yes? :)

Distortion is ugly and the beauty in truth

What do you see in the mirror?

I think the ugly cloud has hovered overhead for nearly as much as I remember. Elementary school I felt short and didn't like how my eyes were so narrow and chinky. Middle school I just felt extremely awkward in anything I wore and hated my hair. Highschool was a magnanimous train wreck of rebellious skin, unfortunate haircuts and a fixation freckles, face and just... everything. Ugly, ugly, ugly.

The really ironic part? I look at pictures of me back then and even of the years I felt the most hideous and visually unimpressive, I look back and I see a beautiful girl. I see long glossy, deep chocolate colored locks in eye-catching hairties. I see an adorable little figure in white tights and a floral print dress fit for any magazine ad. I see a smile that perfectly compliments a romantic springtime garden. That girl had to live those years believing the lie that she was ugly and not worth looking at. What evil lies that skewed what she saw in the mirror and led her to believe it as FACT. What evil, fucking lies led her to lose so much time dwelling, obsessing with not being beautiful. This realization, this unveiling of truth reaches a deep part of me, and the lies that have cut deep and shameful wounds in my self-perception are still being rewritten since looking at those pictures.


Such pain was endured, such self-deprecating pain. I can reluctantly recall being so unhappy with the person I was and looked at and decided to retaliate through restricting -- though I couldn't change my height, bone structure and whatnot, I channeled all my self-hate into changing my weight. What does this mean for me today?

Looking into the mirror is taking a gamble. There are days, sometimes weeks where the lies will creep up and take hold of me, unawares. My eyes pick a part my body like 2 ruthless judges. They will convince my mind of the need to improve and my heart is subsequently ruined for the day with nothing but an insatiable craving for change and improvement.

Then there are those other days. But sometimes I surprise myself with what I see. I see that girl in the pictures of yesteryear, only she's grown up a little, 22 years old actually, and has shorter hair. She compliments the colors in her outfit nicely and has cute freckles and moles that speckle her otherwise milky yellow-hued skin.

Someday, I wish this could be the norm of my days. Where the soilbeds of aligning truth and perception blossom into confidence and knowing I am worthy. Until then I'm fighting, constantly fighting. The army of lies are relentless cockroaches, evolved to resist and adapt. Defeating them is going to take a lot more than halfserious defense tactics. But this is just a day out of the long process of getting there. No matter what happens from this raging internal battle, I am a child of God. And nothing can take that away from me. Not even biggest, ugliest LIE.

What do you see in the mirror?

I'm gonna do it!

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
- Mark Twain

Dear Davis,

I love you so much. You were a place of significant personal growth for me. I've made long-lasting friendships here with the people I've met, and the charming little parks and shops I've gotten to know. I love how you always gave me a place when I needed rest, reflection and an expression of beauty from nature. Your quaint little roads and structures I'll always cherish.

I hope you understand that I have to go soon. Don't worry, Davis, this isn't goodbye forever. You have a permanent place in my heart forever. The thing is, I'm ready for adventure!! No longer am I wistfully dreaming of far away places and unfamiliar climates. I've been saying for the past whateverso years that "I wanna take some time to travel" either in the form of study abroad or taking time after I graduate to do so. But the BUTS kept getting in the way. Big buts, little buts. There will always be something to hold me back from doing what I want to do. Now is the time, you see?

Once it was something that I wanted, but now it is something I am ready for. I am craving an amazing experience outside of the boundaries of my usual neighborhoods and circles. I'm going to get lost and meet strangers. I'm going to be scoffed at by locals for being so dumb, or maybe laughed at endearingly. I'm going to find my way and map out my own adventures. Things will be planned and spontaneous. What me? A relatively shy and naive asian girl with only a bachelor's degree and 21 years of a mellow, comfortable lifestyle to recount? YES ME.

I'm going to do it! I'm going to commit. I'm going to apply for places where I'll be able to work and get housing. I'm going to have multiple backup plans. OH man, backup plans are so great, they make you feel invincible (another post on that later). I'm going to do it.

Let's keep in touch, Davis. Watch out World here I come.

Your friend,
Amber

An hour and a half

1.5 hours of my life slipped elusively through my hands. 1.5 hours that I'll never get back. 1.5 hours was the time it took for me to make a concrete decision to despise something with a burning passion equal, coincidentally, to the burning love many hold for this ....


Twilight.


Awful, despicable, deplorable, BAD. These are the adjectives among a larger list of synonyms I use to describe the series by Stephanie Meyer. I didn't even finish the whole thing. I don't even know where to begin. Oh, I know, how about first with a couple things a good book and movie should have, but this series clearly doesn't: 1) creativity and 2) quality. Really now, I didn't know that a pathetic attempt at a Anne Rice (author of Interview with the Vampire series) fanction can become 2008-now's media obsession. Magazine after magazine feature what's his face that played Cedric Diggory and that pale Kristen something girl and now that Jacob dude. Oh, what? Is Edward supposed to be incredibly good looking and appealing? I'm sorry, I guess I didn't get the memo that pale, broody and expressionless was supposed to woo me into a helpless state of giggles and blushing.

Finally, after avoiding the thing for a year, I decided that I wanted to watch the first Twilight last week with a friend for comical purposes. Oh boy did we get our fair share of laughs.
"Why do they keep staring at each other?" "Yeah, awkward."
"Um, when I moved schools nobody really knew me or where I came from, why do people know everything about her already?"
"Is this acting? Are they supposed to sound like a sleepy robot?"

I am astounded -- ASTOUNDED at what a positive and almost obsessive response this movie has gotten from teenagers to middle-aged women alike. The fact that this movie has had such a following and such a high-drool reaction really stumps me. I mean, is it okay for your a guy to say things like "I want to kill you. I've never wanted a humans blood so much in my life." And then to be all like "..unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him" Is that romantic? Is that legal?

What are we trying to tell females here? This is like propaganda for pro-abusive relationships. It's okay that your boyfriend wants to kill you... yeah, you two have a special trust, connection thing so you should just stay in it with him. Oh, or maybe as long as he is an "attractive" and sparkly vampire, it's okay to have the characteristics of a sadistic creep. Did I mention he's like 600 years old and that he likes a 17 year old? Yeah, that's cool.

Right.

Raw-some?

I am sitting in a raw, vegan cafe right now where things like RAW chocolate smoothies made of cacao powder and raw nut milks are concocted for the handsome price tag of $5.95 a glass. Raw, living food, they call it.

As I'm sipping on my green smoothie that's reminiscent of the Odwalla Superfood and is chock full of greens AND algae (yes spirulina and chlorella), I'm apt to find this type of haute-cuisine quite intriguing, but also just a lil plain strange.

How does one survive off of purely raw foods (foods that haven't been processed over 104 F) and not become starved and silly? Upon further research and exploration, I found that the raw foodists are actually pretty clever and definitely very creative. They've taken the simplest elements of the most basic foods and made them to mimic their conventional cooked counterparts -- raw bread from sprouted grains, nuts and pastes from plant parts to make even things like burritos and "burgres". It's the cuisine of the romanticized caveman, where nuts, seeds and berries made up the staples of the diet.

A friend of mine has been living that lifestyle successfully for already 6 years! She is what I call a sucessful "hippie." Someone who hasn't just bought into a phase of life that lasts only during those cataclysmic college years, but has made it last and worthwhile up to her happy 40's. I have to give her props for that because a life without fresh baked bread and steamed rice is... well ... not a life I can live =)


Amber