ideas, trends, and open dialogue
Archive for June, 2010
Dance for Forgiveness
Jun 30th
These days, everytime I go to CVS, there’s a new magazine cover documenting the latest celebrity scandal. I can’t help but wonder, “Why should I care?” I mean, I’d much rather worry over my own problems than how Lindsay Lohan may or may not be able to get out of her anklet. However, I’ve recently had a revelation: in some strange way, we SHOULD care because, as members of our society, we need to hold them accountable for their offenses and treat them accordingly.
How did I come to this conlusion? This whole thing started Sunday night when, every four seconds, someone in my news feed on Facebook was updating about the BET Awards. For a while, I monitored the status updates without really caring what was going on, but when people started posting about Chris Brown, I started paying attention. People’s statuses ranged from commending him on his tribute to Michael Jackson to how he’s making a great comeback.
Uh…HELLO PEOPLE?! Was it not just a year ago he was going through major fallout about abusing a woman, and not just any woman, a woman that has quite a bit of status in the entertainment world. I’m surprised at how easy it’s been for him to just slide back into his former life as if he didn’t commit a serious crime. Yeah, he got punished: probation and community service. Jail time? Don’t bet on it. To add insult to injury, he’d been quoted saying, having come from a home where his own mother was abused, that he hated any person that disrespected or mistreated a woman. Really?
Where is the accountability? Why do young girls continue to fawn over a person that has admittedly committed one of the more sensitive crimes against women? Better yet, why are their parents not telling them that it is NOT okay to support his music? Just because he happens to know his way around the dance floor and can record catchy songs, he can just skate by on picking up trash on the side of the road and issuing a hardly believable apology online? Everybody wants to end Tiger Woods’ career because he cheated on his wife, but Chris Brown abuses Rihanna, and we welcome him back with open arms?! I don’t understand the scale here.
All that being said, do I think he’s not endured backlash and had to deal with his own personal demons since the incident? No. I certainly think that he’s suffered both publicly and privately for what he’s done. However, I don’t know that we’ve really let him have it, to put it frankly. What is an appropriate response and how long should we stonewall? Has he suffered enough? Should I buy his new CD (the answer to this is a resounding NO. I’ve never been a big fan)? I can’t answer these questions because it’s a sticky, tangled up mess of a situation. All I know is that one Michael Jackson does not equal exoneration of any kind.
Cooking with Chemistry
Jun 29th
There are few things in the world better than good food (as Martina will tell you). Any college student who has lived in the dorms and eaten dining hall food knows that nothing compares to a home cooked meal. There’s nothing like the creamy goodness of Mom’s macaroni and cheese, Dad’s shrimp and calamari or Grandma’s baklava. When I finally moved off campus and had access to my first real kitchen, I started cooking every night, first basic meals and then my family’s recipe book. After a few burned meals and a lot of practice, I got good and haven’t been hungry since.
Regardless of how large someone’s cookbook is, there is always space for new recipes. In search for new flavors for my palette, I turned to the Food Network and the Internet to help expand my horizons. Always an Iron Chef America fan, my first introduction to Alton Brown was his position as a color commentator on the show. I later learned that his genius went far beyond witty remarks, 
extending to the kitchen and even the laboratory.
What caught my eye with Brown’s show Good Eats was his use reverence for chemistry in his cooking practices. Always worried about the acidity in whatever solution he adds milk to in order to ensure no protein degradation, Brown brings my loathed Organic Chemistry class into a relevant and useful aspect of my life. Chemistry actually seemed to matter in a non-academic aspect of my life. How, disappointing…
Searching The Skies
Jun 28th
What is fulfillment? What does it take for anyone to be able to feel full, to feel content? What is it that drives us to always want more? Why are we never satisfied with what we have? How can I stop looking at a glass as half full or half empty, but merely at it as a glass with the right amount of water in it? When do my questions end and my answers begin?
It's too close to tell.
I have an odd ritual of sorts that I’ve been doing, consciously at least, since the summer began. Whenever I get home from work late at night, I park the car in the garage and rather than going inside immediately, like I would think most people would do, I go out in my driveway and stare at the sky. Cloudy, clear, humid, or dry, it doesn’t matter. I don’t do it for any real reason I can think of aside from the fact that I don’t feel complete.
Am I looking to the heavens for answers? Will the massive and radiant moon that bathes the quiet night in light give me a sign? The odds of my friends showing up at the moment are a zillion to none and honestly; all it gives me is a chance to catch my breath and wonder. I wonder, why must my day end? Is this it? What else could I have done to be happier? My mind races back and forth, back and forth, and yet, I am still. The slight breeze reminds me that I am awake and yet the stars have me dreaming.
What makes one feel whole? When does the emptiness become filled? There are any number of things that may fill the void that I’ve yet to experience. Love, a purpose, success, independence, any of the above and a thousand billion more that I could list. Life is, as cliché as it sounds, a great mystery with more questions than Lost could ever fit into ten seasons (Though I’m sure they’d try to prove me wrong).
I, all to often, realize I am very young. Hell, I’m not even 19 yet (though that may not be true by the time this is posted, so I apologize if this is inaccurate and oh hey, happy birthday to me) but I act as though my time is short. One could argue that life is long and full of ups and downs, while others could argue that life is merely a fleeting speck of nothingness in the grand scheme of things, that there is something beyond our mortality. As I’m sure you’ve gathered so far, I don’t have the answers, perhaps I never will.
That's not something you'll see in Boston.
So we’re back to where we started, all questions and no answers. Perhaps this hole in my being will never be filled. Perhaps it will be filled tomorrow. Maybe this all to familiar vacancy is merely what it means to be human. I do not know, no one may ever know, but hey, that won’t stop me from looking at the sky each night.
BP Bulls***
Jun 25th
Today I came across the most hypocritical ad I have ever seen: “The Gulf Spill: we’re here when you need us.” -BP
I could not contain my anger. I was beyond incredulous. THEY CAUSED THE SPILL. ARE THEY SERIOUS WITH THIS AD CAMPAIGN?!
Take a look at this video. And while you do, take a moment to peruse through some of my thoughts:
“The Gulf Spill is a tragedy that never should have happened.”…. “You’re a tragedy that never should have happened.”
“We’ve helped organized the largest envirtonmental response in this country’s history”….”You’ve helped cause the largest environmental disaster in this country’s history.”
-Notice that all the planes and boats they’re using to clean up the spill are powered by OIL.
-Notice that the many volunteers helping clean up the spill are not even being given the proper protection from all the chemicals they’re inhaling.
“And our clean-up efforts will not come at any cost to tax payers.” …Remind me who pays for the military?
Look at his face when he says he’s “deeply sorry”. So utterly fake. I’m not one for public profanity that will follow me in virtual space for the rest of my career, but here it is:
SCREW YOU BP. I HOPE YOU GET WHAT YOU DESERVE. I’m still kicking and screaming, so don’t think you’ve won us over with your facade.
The Kids are Not Alright
Jun 24th
Not everyone in Boston rocks this hat. Photo from zazzle.com
On behalf of the haggard and seething non-collegiate inhabitants of Boston and her neighborhoods, I will reiterate the message to the college readers in the audience: “Stop acting like spoiled kids.”
Although it may surprise some of those who never leave their central campus, but there are actually people who live in Collegetown, U.S.A. Residents who wake up at ungodly hours of 6 or 7 in the morning to get their kids up and get them to school before dashing to the 9-to-5 job, only to face the prolonged commute home in rush hour traffic. Woe to the neighbors of college students then, according to the Metro’s comprehensive June 1st front-page article and the Boston Phoenix‘s recent headline over the battle of Mission Hill, a neighborhood popular with Northeastern students.
According to the statistics in the Metro article, during the summer season 461 complaints poured in from neighbors in Brookline ranging from noise to littering beer cans to public urination-on their homes. Ordinances on noise and increased police presence seems reasonable to people who fear going out at night because of twenty-something savages.
Why has it come to political activitists taking on college students? Do we not live peacefully side-by-side throughout the rest of the year? Yes and no, for the number of parties tend to soar with the temperatures and the amount of free time. An activist for Mission Hill residents blames Northeastern for not providing enough housing. While housing availability is not the issue at BU; it’s predominately costs that drive students off campus in search of cheaper alternatives. The price gouging affects homeowners too as prices are hiking out of reach for both students and residents. Taxes too fall into this pattern, as increases drive even more locals from the area. The damage has been done, local committees, and pitchforks at the ready-and College kids are determined to stay and party on.
Heed this warning: if relations are not improved between college kids and locals, we are going to be the ones to pay. Increased insurance taxes, ordinances against noise starting at even earlier hours, and a cop-led crackdown on minors who drink maybe just the beginning. Why not coexist with your neighbor-not war with them? Turn down the volume from your speakers; remind your party pals that people are trying to get some sleep, stop screaming like it’s a Red Sox Riot. I never believed that the rowdiness of unruly drunks were excusable. If they hit and kill a pedestrian while driving, they are still held accountable. No exception to that logic: if they destroy or disrespect in public, they should be still held accountable. Purge those folks from the get-together before they hit the party killing Godzilla Stage. Because if people do not sober up about how they treat their neighbors, we’re not only going to screw up our chances of living in Boston but also the next generations of students after us. I’m not exactly at peace with forcing people, including local commuters, to live in dorms if they would prefer to live in the city. We should have the option to choose where we live, and that includes making friends with the neighbors we chose.
The Scale of it All
Jun 23rd
As I continue my summer, I find myself having more and more free time on my hands. As I’ve spent the last month of my summer working and studying for grad-school exams, I decided to take a well deserved trip to Orlando to visit a friend. On the flight to Florida I had a lay-over in Newark, New Jersey. On the final approach, I couldn’t help but feel a sense 
of wonder as the buildings and objects on the ground slowly enlarged and came closer to me.
What struck me as we were landing was one of the most confounding aspects of human history: Scale. You see, in the realm of things, scale will always defeat us as human beings. Regardless of how long we live or the accomplishments each of us makes in our lives, there is a certain point where the scale of not just the world but the universe defeats us. The scale of whatever you are measuring or observing slowly reduces the significance of whatever is being observed as one zooms out, as one stops looking at just the one and tries to comprehend the nature of the many, of the entirety of existence. In the scale of the universe, just as a single molecule of oxygen has little meaning or effect on me as a human, we are insignificant.
To me, this knowledge is truly empowering and comforting. This may be counterintuitive to some, but stay with me a minute. In the realm of things, if we’re all insignificant in some way, each of us has to re-evaluate our position in the world. In the light of this knowledge, things we value, be it money, power, knowledge or general human happiness, really may not be that important. There is no society or system of beliefs that has it all right, but in the infinity of the universe, existence, and possibilities, it is what we each individually value that determines the import, however minute, of our lives. If there is no greater purpose or meaning to our lives, then questions of justice and existential import become wholly constructs for only the one.
The past three years of college, and all of the years of education leading up to them has left me feeling jaded. For the majority of my life, I’ve been forced to look into the future and make plans so that I can be happy at that arbitrary point. Realizing how truly little, on the scale of things, everything I’ve been clenching my sphincter about really is unimportant. The pursuit of an academic career has let me feeling bitter, and that the system itself is just meant to subjugate the people in it. Now that I actually get to relax a little bit into my senior year, there’s a freedom and a sense that everything will be ok. Plus, Netflix has every season of the X-files streaming on demand, so i get to enjoy gnarly 90′s television I otherwise missed for various reasons. By the way, life lesson from x-files, sometimes you just have to chill and go with whats in front of you and stop over thinking.
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