Sometimes you just got to do it not because you think you can or hope you can, but because you have to. I did it. I’m done. This semester has been the hardest semester out of all my time at Smith. But I did it because I had to, not because I thought I could. I have neither the time nor the money to flip the shit and take a semester off. To take a semester off means more money. I don’t have the 여유 to do that (idk how to say this in english but it means something along the lines of not having the space in your heart/mind or the privilege to do xyz). But I’m done and now I can go home, where I feel safer than here.
More reunion rants..
Older alums. Very interesting. A lot more sense of entitlement. A lot more money. Old money, new money while no money me be sittin’ behind the info desk hurting my face from smiling. Wtv. At least I can sit now instead of standing 6-7 hours to clean up rooms, including ones that alums trashed and threw up in.. I can’t believe people have to do this 5 days a week so they can survive. And their wages keep getting cut? -_______- Let’s see y’all clean houses and bathrooms and people’s vomit 5-days a week then get your wages cut. Wonder what you’d do.
I was having a conversation with a friend and we were both commenting on how interesting it was to see who actually comes back to reunion. She was like it’s a chance for the 1% of the college to come back and mingle with each other, or something along those lines. Which is true. And then the more recent graduates come and trash the rooms that students and facilities work so hard to clean for them..at least, from my experience. Oh the flames of fury, how they burn inside my soouuuul. Ok, that was me being melodramatic. I’m practicing so I can star in a korean drama…after my pants size goes down to 0..
Can’t wait to go home in two days. It’s almost all over. Never again…
Hmmm…
I wonder why an alum felt the need to share with me - a 2nd gen. Korean American - a story about how when she was in China, a young person would lose face when the elder person would not let him/her help with the elder person’s luggage. Therefore, her friend should let me help her with her luggage. My yellow face transcends national borders I suppose..
Truth is my Compass, & Wisdom my Helm.: Dear Obama
Today is a glorious day for the Queers. For the first time in history, a President of Amerika has supported same-sex love. It must be a brave new world because just forty years ago this very population was institutionalized for unnatural behavior. Society is progressing mighty quickly these days. Slaves waited at least a few centuries before they were considered humans. This is all cause for great celebration.
Maybe Matthew Shepherd and Harvey Milk would look upon this day as a success; similar to how Martin Luther King and Harriet Tubman would have looked upon your inauguration.
As a queer Nigerian-Amerikan woman, I’d be foolish to not wonder what provoked this sudden epiphany of yours. Did you come across a Luther Vandross album? Did you realize no nation is a god? Or, did you find yourself running for reelection and thought to appeal to the gay population?
I wonder because I suddenly found myself discussing your support for queers with my fellow queer black women on Facebook. These soon to be engaged black women were very grateful. Two votes come November. I, ironically, have no faith in this country or its democracy. As stated above, the color of my skin rendered me property once upon a time. As for my womanhood, it too, was and will always be subject to patriarchy and misogyny. So, to now have my sexuality approved by the USA feels a bit anti-climatic.
Furthermore, I was surprised to find myself in disagreement with my fellow queer black women. Obama, I don’t really care what you think about who I marry. I would prefer to hear what you think about Fracking. Do you think that oil corporations should have the right to contaminate groundwater. Should citizens feel safe knowing that their air and water may be polluted beyond rectification? What should Amerikan citizens think if they knew that the chemicals used to obtain natural gas through fracking is considered a trade secret? Meaning, people may never know what’s killing them. Even better, the Environmental Protection Agency seems uncannily nonchalant about the plentiful animals that are dying in lakes and rivers of unknown causes.
I would love to know why you reinstated the Patriot-Act?! Any thinking human being knows that 9/11 was a covert CIA Hollywood operation that leaped into real-time. I suppose we are living in the movies now and I want to know why the director, you Obama, have not called STOP.
Can you please tell me why Amerikans can be detained without trial or jury for an indefinite period of time, according to the National Defense Authorization Act??? This is rather un-Amerikan.
Okay, what’s up with the un-maned drones killing innocent people in Pakistan and Afghanistan? The world is not a video game, the usage of drones is inhumane.
I am very curious about all these threats you and your administration are making to Iran. I can’t believe you put sanctions on their nation. Seriously? Who made you the ring the master of Nuclear energy and weapons? I am also very confused as to why you and your administration continue to fund the illegal settlement of Israel. Are you planning to nuke Iran? I ask because you were supposed to get Amerikan troops out of the Middle-East, but we’ve somehow spread so far out we’re now in Africa as well. You are not an honest man.
I understand the gay issue of the US is one you inherited, and since you have been open to discussion, I would love to know your thoughts on: our fiat currency; bank bailouts; genetically modified food; fluoride in our water supply (along with other contaminants); the privatization of prisons; why fifty percent of the US budget goes to the Department of Defense; why pharmaceutical companies can kill people; how come a private corporation, the Federal Reserve, has been printing the US dollar since the Bank manipulated economic recession of 1913, which led to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913; and why are corporations considered people under the eyes of our legal system.
If you’re going to talk, let’s talk about something that pertains to the health and sustenance of this nation and our planet.
You see, my fellow queer black women from Facebook accused me of being a self-righteous armchair activist. They were pleased to feel better included in the Amerikan pie and to get a tax discount. Trimming that second-class citizenship and another inch towards the Amerikan Dream.
Isn’t that funny? Cancer, obesity and diabetes are rising along with poverty and debt, but I should celebrate your realization that Queer love is a human right.
I am desperate to see the world in five years. Will there be more prisons than schools? Will people be able to drink water from their faucets? Will the world be at war for the third time? Will cancer or diabetes rival heart disease as the leading cause of death? Will there be a constitution to refer to when civil liberties are violated? Will this country be recognizable?
But I don’t want to piss on the Queer Marriage Party. As long as Amerika gives it’s marginalized populations a crumb from its delusional dream, Amerika can ransack the world and still believe itself to be Great and Just.
Go Obama! Go Obama! You the man!
Oppressors always expect the oppressed to extend to them the understanding so lacking in themselves
—
Audre Lorde, ‘Sexism: An American Disease in Blackface’, in Sister/Outsider, p. 63. (via feministquotes)
ugh this. ”why cant you be NICER to me”
(via queerhairyvag)
(via jchowski)
Rants during reunion work
1. Sick of all this hierarchy at work.
2. Just because south Korea is in Asia does not mean that it is generally a “tea-drinking country.” People drink other things there too. So asking questions like, “do Korean people even drink coffee?” is stupid. Please don’t generalize and stereotype.
3. The reason why coffee is so expensive ($7-$12 per 12oz) in Korea is because it should be that expensive. The only reason why coffee is not that expensive in the States is because U.S. corporations and government have colonized the smaller nations through contracts like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The U.S. took over plantations and farms that grew food that people can eat and replaced them with coffee bean industry so they can sell it in the United States. They also pay shit to the workers and that’s why they are able to down the price of a 12 oz. cup of coffee in the States. South Korea, however, does not have contracts with other countries like the U.S., where they have the upper hand and the other country has the lower. (This is not to say that south Korea does not exploit other countries and peoples..cus they do). This is why coffee is more expensive in south Korea than the United States. I’m sure there are other reasons, and I’m sure I left out information but this is the general gist of things.
4. Please stop giving me that knowing look when you find out that I’m an east asian studies major and I went abroad to south Korea. That’s not the reason why I went to south Korea. It’s because I wanted to study the language that I have been forced to forget.
5. Stop saying that by the time alums come back for their reunion they should be able to afford the price to participate. It costs $2000 to come back for reunion at Smith for an extended weekend (not including travel fees..at least from what I’ve heard) and not everyone can afford that.
6. Stop crying over the “fear” of not having an income by the time you’re 25 and say that you have the option of going back to your parents and living with them, because not everyone has that option.
7. Why are you talking. Let’s think about that for a second..
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Happy Mother’s Day!!! Even though Mother’s Day was constructed by a capitalist society that values making profit over human lives, happy mother’s day anyway!
Happy Mother’s Day!
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EXCEPT. The 13th Amendment. A student pointed this out to me yesterday while we were at a basketball court in LES. It was taped to a poll.
Watch the PBS Documentary, “Slavery By Another Name”.
It is the collective responsibility of the citizens in a modern state to ensure by all means necessary that its government adheres to the rule of law, not just domestically but internationally. There are no bystanders. No one is entitled to an “apolitical” exemption from such obligation. Where default occurs, either by citizen endorsement of official criminality or by the failure of citizens to effectively oppose it, liability is incurred by all. Although degrees of onus may be assigned along a continuum traversing the distance from those who most actively embraced the crime to those who most actively opposed it, none are “innocent.
— From Ward Churchill’s On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality.
