A World of Cheese, For your Pleasure

Leaving comments

I am sorry about the comments system. I know that I must fix it. Just know that even though you might get an error message, I will still get your comment and approve it unless you are a bot.

In other news, I have received 2500 pieces of comment spam since April 12.

Coke habits of lovers

It seems that I have over 40 entries in Draft status that I never got around to finishing. I'll see if I can fix this. The first, from March 28, 2004, is about what I call the coke habits of lovers. This article suggests that when people fall in love, the feeling is similar to the high you get through cocaine or other illicit drugs. Observe. Or rather, read:

Parts of the brain that are love-bitten include the one responsible for gut feelings, and the ones which generate the euphoria induced by drugs such as cocaine. So the brains of people deeply in love do not look like those of people experiencing strong emotions, but instead like those of people snorting coke. Love, in other words, uses the neural mechanisms that are activated during the process of addiction. "We are literally addicted to love," Dr Young observes.

I suppose that this is acceptable drug-induced behaviour. But is this normal? There is debate about whether humans are, for the most part, naturally inclined to be included in the 3% of mammals that mate for life. If we are, then are those that do not feel this way around certain people defective, like autistic people? (I say this because I think that they are definitely one of the last groups where it is acceptable to consider them to be defective people. This says nothing about whether or not they actually are.) Should they be considered as having problems forming attachments with people? Should they be treated?

I think that one thing in favour of such a theory is there is an article which suggests that the more that we are in front of computers dealing with non-human problems, the more we are likely to find cases of autism, Asperger's syndrome and similar relationship-forming dysfunctions. It seems that Silicon Valley has one of the highest rates of this type of disorder than anywhere else. I wonder how much "true love" blossoms there compared to other places.

Sandra Laing

I've just added a new category: race. I think that I will be making many a post about it as long as I am reading and listening to Ethnorotica, Addicted to Race, Mixed Media Watch and others.

First off, I'd like for you to read an account of what life can be like for those that live in places where racial politics is legislated into daily life. Or even non-daily life. The sickening story of apartheid in the life of Sandra Laing makes you realize just how crazy the idea of race can be. (I apologize for the fact that this article is so old.) You see, Sandra Laing was an apparently black girl born to cracker-white parents in South Africa in 1955. People were classified along racial lines, and obviously their lives were determined according to this classification. I cannot imagine what that household must have been life for Sandra. Her parents, particularly her father, were born-and-bred bigots. Now they have a black daughter. Forgetting about the seemingly "impure" genetics at least one of them probably has, they must have been very ashamed of their daughter, while fighting every day for people to recognize her as their own "white" child. And of course, this is absolutely nothing compared to the shame and confusion of little Sandra.

To sum up, when Sandra was 10, she was kicked out of her wonderful (white) school, and had no education for the following two years (although I can't verify that, she may have been home-schooled). Not only that, but parents and school officials spent three years trying to make this happen. When she was 16 and had a child with a black man, she was asked never to return home. She hasn't seen her parents since then. This was 1973. She found out from her cousin that her father had died in 1988. She is still trying to find her white biological family. And of course there are the normal accounts of blatant racism rampant in such a divisive society.

I can see why the family finally got rid of her. The realities of apartheid would never have touched them if it weren't for her. They were subject to being kicked out of schools, embarassed in public, refused service. Such things are reserved for non-whites; the impure. The lesser. But not them. Instead of fighting to end the regime, I guess it was easier to abandon their daughter to the system (or to the animals, I would say) than to fight for her, to fight for their family. If I had some divine power, these people would rot, but in all likelihood, they prospered.

I Googled Sandra Laing, and the articles I found seemed rather unflattering and racist. Here's an example:

Nature had played a trick (emphasis mine). Abraham and Sannie Laing were white, their parents, grandparents and great grandparents were white, yet their daughter was dark.

Another:

A person who marries a partner with negligible to no non-white ancestry cannot produce a throwback. But if both have enough non-white ancestry on both sides, for meiosis to take place, a throw back is possible! This is the case with Sandra Laing's parents. Negligible non-white ancestry DOES NOT result in throw backs!

While I realize that I am stretching a little in the first link (it's the "trick" part that gets me, (like nasty, cruel trick) and yes I might be more sensitive than usual in this matter), clearly I am not in the second article, written by a racist on a racist website, even though technically speaking the term "throwback" does not mean "unexpectedly black". (On a slightly closer examination of the website, I wonder if it's not actually a satirical site poking fun at purist bigotry.)

Obviously this is an example of the larger issue of race, being biracial, white fears, black fears, the Man and so on. These issues are not within the scope of this entry, though. I see the issue as comparable to an arms race. The literature out there is often loaded like weapons in the Cold War. It potentially incites negative action, and this being on all sides of the issue (I wouldn't be so naîve as to suggest that there are only two sides). I would encourage you to discuss some of your own racial/racist/multiracial stories either here or in your own blogs. There are four of you in particular that I would ask, but I'll do that away from this entry in case you don't want to.

In closing, I would like to revisit an entry I made a year ago, introducing my niece. Throwbacks, indeed.

UPDATE: It seems that six years ago, Sandra found her mother in a tearful reunion. As of then, her right-wing brothers still avoid contact with her.

Man runs over five, killing one toddler

This is one of those cases that makes you shake your damn head and ask, "Why?" A man in Covington, GA deliberately ran over two women and their three small children, smiling the whole time. Since he's had depression for most of his life, so they'll probably work that angle. But I don't know. I personally don't care how mentally ill he was. I can't see this guy ever "coming to" and have remorse, and even if he did, how does that help these people and their shattered lives? I'd like to run him over.

If it is a mental health issue, then we are left to wonder once again what to do with such people. Where are the statistics of those that do such horrendous things to other people (or themselves)? How many are there? What's the rate of recividism? He probably got it into his head that they were responsible for whatever bad thing he identified, whether it be the bad circumstances of his life, or the war in Iraq. Who the hell knows? If that's the case, then he must have been quite satisfied that he was doing the world a favour by running them over. I wonder if he targeted those specific people, or if it could have been anyone in the wrong place at the wrong time.

How to Get a Better Butt (Possibly NSFW)

It seems that you can have surgery to improve almost anything in your body these days, including your ass. I'd never heard of Buttocks Augmentation by Microfat Grafting™ before, this site, aptly called BetterButtocks.com, talks all about the different kinds of assal plastic surgery you can have to get that shelf ass you always dreamed of. Of course, I have no need of such surgery.

African American woman requesting very Full Buttocks "with a shelf": This 31 year old patient requested a "shelf" to make the upper half of her buttocks really prominent.

You should really go and see the before and after photos. The difference is quite stunning.

Guy vs Guy

There's even a black one and a white one. And the black Guy has a bigger one than the white Guy. I'm talking about the size of their respective Wikipedia articles, people.

Taxi driver Guy Goma was mistaken for Guy Kewney during a BBC interview. I could explain the silliness, but it so well documented, you might as well take a look at it here (from Mr. Kewney's point of view), or better yet, catch the video, or just go to the Guy Goma website. This is a how-to lesson in keeping your cool, but the first five seconds when he realizes that he's in a bit of shit, then recovers amazingly, are spectacular. The Toronto Star had a very good article about it. Apparently there's a relevant Canadian perspective. Mr. Goma, hats off to you.

Sadly, as a result of this, he is likely to be deported back to the Congo, as he overstayed his visitors permit. Personally, as sad as it is, I don't think he should be allowed to stay because he made millions of people laugh once. but that's just me. If you disagree, sign the petition. I'm sure there's one somewhere.

So, what ARE you, anyway?

It seems as though Indian women are the hot minority in the US right now. Actually, I got this from (where else) Ethnorotica where he asks why there is such a constant focus on what the white man finds attractive. I originally found it a little bit useless from my point of view, but apparently it DOES matter to me, or at least it should. If the Man decides that he wants black women, for example, then I should worry, or something, since black women are what I should want, and I could be threatened.

Once again white men decide what is desirable and beautiful. If you fall outside that vision, then you are "other" or simply unattractive. Sure, each of us individually can say that we are attracted to people that are pretty, handsome, sensitive, etc., and that this overarching white male view doesn't affect you (whether you be red, yellow, black, white, straight, gay or whatever) but it probably does, even if you belong to a closely-knit ethnic community. I'm talking about the dominant (white male) view of what you are. From the Telegraph article cited in the link above:

It may have taken a light-eyed Indian beauty to capture the hearts and minds of American men, but when Rai took the Miss World crown in 1994, it raised the profile of south Asian women outside their own region.

In other words, white men saw her as a symbol of beauty, and now that he has, she has been legitimized as beautiful. I wonder what the Man thought of her before that. Reading about all this type of thing can make one sensitive to what should probably be rather benign words. Right now, the word "exotic" seems annoying. According to Merriam-Webster, it means "strikingly, excitingly, or mysteriously different or unusual", which is the active definition here. It once again makes me realize how defined and legitimized I am by the Man.

But then, if the Man doesn't define me, who will? Me? Easier said than done. When people ask me where I'm from, more than half the time the answer "Montreal" will not satisfy them. Neither will "Ontario" (where I was born) or "Canada". White people want to classify my otherness, and non-white people seem to want to share some kind of non-white solidarity, which is alternately comforting and annoying. When I resist the labelling, they simply think that I am being difficult, which is true. Resistance creates difficulties. But damnit, I do get sick and tired of it sometimes. Here are the types of questions and comments I get:

• "No, but, where are you from?"
• "Oh, I didn't know you were black. (This can happen when someone meets me after having spoken to me on the phone. My landlady is the most notable such case.)
• "So, what ARE you, anyway?"

What am I, indeed. What in the holy name of flying sheep do you think I am? 150 years ago the big brains of the day weren't even sure. Many weren't certain that we should be classified with whites as humans in the same sense that they are.

Now, some people might say that if they go to a country where they are the visible minority, then they might get asked similar questions. They might have certain assumptions made about them and be defined by the Man of that part of the world. They might say that this sort of thing is human nature, not racism. This may be true, and I wouldn't necessarily say that it is racist (although I might in certain circumstances), but these people will likely never be in the position I am in in North America. They will never be othered and defined by some other group of people. It is too easy for them to say these things, like it's just "Oh, well, that's just the way it is." I would recommend that they ask a white woman who has spent time in the Middle East how it feels. Or even a white woman who has spent time with young Middle Eastern men coming to North America for school, expecting all white women to fuck them since they're all sluts anyway. This is just for starters.

Have you ever met a person that is dating an Arab/black person/white person/Native person, instead of a person? They fall in love with the diversity that they are encountering, the "rich culture" and all the expectations of being with that Other, but the relationship fails because the Other realizes that it wasn't they who were loved, but the racial exoticness that the Man thought was fashionable at the time. Meanwhile, the first person, figures that Arabs/black people/white people/Native people aren't worth dating because the cultures are too different, or that they are too sensitive or something like that. This is simply pathetic when it happens.

I would like anyone reading this to really question what they think of how beauty is presented. We've heard a lot of the outrage of the so-called plus-size women and how their beauty is not well-represented. I think that they aren't the only ones.

P.S.: I know a couple of half-Indian women. Maybe they could collaborate and weigh in on what an Indian woman thinks about the Telegraph article. (Hey, I can be an ignorant dweeb, too.) In particular, the following reminds me of zura:

Still, she has found that Indian men look down upon her American-side, while American men fail to understand her Indian-ness.

Broadway: a real showstopper

This is fucking pathetic. A NY-area high school has been ordered to halt production of Broadway musical Chicago because of fucking copyright laws. I'm really sick of the copyright shit that goes on, I really am.

I got yer anti-depressant right here...

Semen as anti-depressant. I can't believe that they expect us to swallow that. Heh.

Wisdom from Kobe Bryant

"You just put it behind you. There’s nothing you can do about it … After you go to the bathroom, you don’t stand there and look at what you just dropped in there. At some point, you gotta flush it, man."

When I read this, I thought that he was talking about that rape thing from years ago instead of a bad game six. Enlightening, nonetheless.

Happiness

It isn't new that people have been trying to measure happiness, or that governments could be measured, at least partly, on how happy they make its citizens (which is not something that I agree with any more than the government validating my relationship). It is interesting to see some of the notable, albeit vague, things that they have observed. (Here's how I stack up against the major checklist.)

In one study, the life span of people identified as happy is nine years longer than depressed people. That's 50% more of a difference than that between non-smokers and heavy smokers. Question: What if smoking makes you happy? Actually, does happiness get measured in terms of lasting effects, or transient ones? For example, if smoking makes me happy, then could that be a point in my favour if I were a long-term smoker?

They say that marriage is a huge factor as well. Firstly, define marriage. Does that mean making and keeping a long-term commitment to one person, or could it include other arrangements such as polyamourous lifestyles (which I think is already starting to make a mainstream push, and no, I'm not into it) Do they only study people that have been married by some governmental or legally-recognized religious authority? And wouldn't the loss of a spouse counteract the effect of the added happiness and therefore lifespan? I think that this has been fairly well-documented.

Similarly, I need their definition of friendship. In this age, it's relatively common for people to find deep friendships or more with people they have never met. I have a good friend in Toronto who I have met exactly twice in nine years. Does this count? Do drinking buddies count? Acquaintances through work or sports?

What's intriguing is that I could ditch all my friends for £50,000 and be just as happy. I admit, £50,000 is a lot of money, but I couldn't live with myself if I got rid of my friends for money. I know that's not what they said, but it does beg the scenario. It's a neat exercise to count up your friends and then figure that they are worth $X each.

They seem to stress that happiness is what counts, but there's so many kinds of happiness from so many sources. If collective happiness is the sum total of individual happinesses (so not a word) then doesn't this further stress the happiness of the individual as paramount? Doesn't the world need less of that? The idea would become, "As long as I am happy, that's all that matters. I'm doing my part." Hopefully we would realize that making other people happy will ultimately make society, and therefore yourself happy. That's how it should work. Not getting happy by making others unhappy. And that ideally would mean people living on the other side of the planet. But that's another post.

Would you do interracial?

(Warning: some of the links here are NSFW.)

First off, I would like to say that I would like to see Tristan Taormino's House of Ass (HoA), if only for the interview with Mr. Marcus where he discusses racism in the porn industry. I've heard so much about this work as groundbreaking that I am compelled to rent it, skip the sex bits and listen to the interviews, like Susie Bright did. Susie and her commenters make a few points that I would like to discuss here.

HoA is a porn flick/reality show where, as Taormino says "people stop being polite and start getting naked". Joanna Angel seems taken aback when she was asked if she would do interracial. She said no, because she hadn't done it in her real life. Fair enough, but then it [almost immediately] occurred to me: Is fucking a black person (if you're white at least) on the same level as assfucking? Just another kink? Is having sex with a <lame> cock-asian </lame> person a sexual practice or a sexual preference? In particular, it seems to me that sex performers, as those in front of the porn camera actually are, would be concerned about things such as how many cocks they can fit inside themselves rather than skin colour. Think of it this way: A skater wants to be in the Ice Capades. She should probably think about whether or not she can pull off that triple-triple than about whether or not her co-skaters are black. Or Scandinavian, for that matter. At least, it should be much more of a concern.

Now I realize that that this is sex and not skating, and that people have their own tastes that greatly influence who they have sex with. However, Angel gave the lame excuse that since she hadn't done it in real life, she didn't want to do it on screen. She wasn't asked whether or not her coworkers were of German origin, Canadians or Slovaks, though, and I doubt that she's fucked ALL Caucasoids, and even if she has, did she know that this guy was Armenian and that girl Czech? So why, even in the apparently sexual free-for-all known as the American porn industry does it matter whether or not a performer, particularly a male one, is black?

More broadly, are white people that date black people seen as a) progressive; b) kinky; c) racist; or d) traitors (another brand of racism)? All of the above and more I imagine, depending on where you are from, what your socio-economic class is and other factors. I can tell you from experience (although my humility and other less noble traits force me to deny it; that's a whole other post) that there is a definite, largely unwarranted and undeserved kinky curiosity that arises from many white women towards black men.

I would like to know what Mr. Marcus' experiences are in the industry, as well as what the performers think about what they are doing and to whom they are peddling when they appear in movie series such as the "Blackzilla" series. I would like to hear from the producers and directors, and even the consumers as well. I would guess that most of these people don't really think about the racist overtones in porn any more than they do in any other entertainment medium* or any aspect of life. They probably think that interracial porn is cool because hand-picked big dicks (there's a tagline) slamming into small white bodies is seen as intense, which it is when you consider the casting a direction of there movies. Don't forget, though, that the porn industry is simply much more honest about how it views minorities than the rest of society. I doubt that it is a whole lot different outside. I bet that mainstream actresses get asked about doing sex scenes with black men. That reminds me, where would I find mainstream interracial sex scenes? And are there any black porn directors?

Well, until we stop seeing everything through a white lens, I suppose this type of thing has to continue.