John & Belle Have A Blog

Merbil & Zoë Draws Like Mary Blair

So Zoë invented the ultimate cute pet. The merbil. Half fish. Half gerbil.

Also, I bought her several Mary Blair books. (I Can Fly; Cinderella; Art and Flair of Mary Blair.) She's learned a lot from it. The following is actually not a copy of any specific Mary Blair drawing but an independent creation, in the Blair style. I couldn't be prouder if she were drawing like Jack Kirby.

Nasty

Sometimes I read old articles from the National Review and I think, where did that spirit of frank, open racism go? Why must John Derbyshire be restrained by political correctness when he "wraps his silk dressing gown tightly about his withered frame and totters onto the balcony to address the Negro Question"? But along comes sweet, sweet Lisa "Clinton really was running drugs through Mena AK" Schffrin to pour some sugar on me. She's got that old-time religion, friends. I wanted to excerpt but it was too good:

Until I came across this article by Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media, which I regard as factual — with all that that implies [????] — the questions about Obama's background that should have come naturally never quite rose to the surface of my mind. Barack Obama is the new man, of course. His mixed race is a symbol of that. Just like Tiger Woods — as we have read, endlessly. What's to wonder about?

But maybe it's not so simple. Obama and I are roughly the same age. I grew up in liberal circles in New York City — a place to which people who wished to rebel against their upbringings had gravitated for generations. And yet, all of my mixed race, black/white classmates throughout my youth, some of whom I am still in contact with, were the product of very culturally specific unions. They were always the offspring of a white mother, (in my circles, she was usually Jewish, but elsewhere not necessarily) and usually a highly educated black father. And how had these two come together at a time when it was neither natural nor easy for such relationships to flourish? Always through politics. No, not the young Republicans. Usually the Communist Youth League. Or maybe a different arm of the CPUSA. But, for a white woman to marry a black man in 1958, or 60, there was almost inevitably a connection to explicit Communist politics. (During the Clinton Administration we were all introduced to then U. of Pennsylvania Professor Lani Guinier — also a half black/half Jewish, red diaper baby.)

I don't know how Barak Obama's parents met. But the Kincaid article referenced above makes a very convincing case that Obama's family, later, (mid 1970s) in Hawaii, had close relations with a known black Communist intellectual. And, according to what Obama wrote in his first autobiography, the man in question — Frank Marshall Davis — appears to have been Barack's own mentor, and even a father figure. Of course, since the Soviet Union itself no longer exists, it's an open question what it means practically to have been politically mentored by an official Communist. Ideologically, the implications are clearer.

Political correctness was invented precisely to prevent the mainstream liberal media from persuing the questions which might arise about how Senator Obama's mother, from Kansas, came to marry an African graduate student. Love? Sure, why not? But what else was going on around them that made it feasible? Before readers level cheap accusations of racism — let's recall that the very question of interracial marriage only became a big issue later in the 1960s. The notion of a large group of mixed race Americans became an issue during and after the Vietnam War. Even the civil-rights movement kept this culturally explosive matter at arm's distance.

It was, of course, an explicit tactic of the Communist party to stir up discontent among American blacks, with an eye toward using them as the leading edge of the revolution. To be sure, there was much to be discontented about, for black Americans, prior to the civil-rights revolution. To their credit, of course, most black Americans didn't buy the commie line — and showed more faith in the possibilities of democratic change than in radical politics, and the results on display in Moscow.

Time for some investigative journalism about the Obama family's background, now that his chances of being president have increased so much.

The truly beautiful thing about this is that it incoherently wavers between two poles of repulsive slander: is it Communist Negroes having sex with our white women? Or are Communist Jewesses subverting black Americans who, patriotic though modestly ill-treated, would have been able to resist had the party not offered them the tempting fruits of miscegenation? Whatever it is I imagine it's music to WFB's ears. His trembling hand hoists a generous 7:30am brandy and milk to you, Lisa!

Bleg

This is kind of a weird question because it seems like google ought to be able to answer it. I have this online hotel-finding guide I like to use but I can't remember what it's called. I have clicked through to each link on a few pages of results to no avail--it is really annoying me. What it looks like is this: there is an orange section at the almost-top of the page with lots of location names arranged on tabs that look like folder tabs, increasingly crunched at the top. These tabs have, on the bottom row, the names of other cities in the country you're looking in, and then above that the names of other cities and countries. The rest of the page is IIRC dark blue. The good thing about it is that it has all the hotels in a given place (and it really seems like all) arranged by neighborhood and then by price. I think it may be the case that the website address is "location" followed by "mysterious rassafrakin' domain name" rather than "MRDN.com/location", but I'm not 100% on that. HALP!

When Misogynists Put Their Cards On The Table

First, let's just all take a moment to chuckle silently at the fact that noted internet misogynist "Kim du Toit" is named, well, Kim du Toit. I realize that this reaction isn't very fair, or mature, but--oh, frak it: HAHAHAHA. Moving on, from the comments to this post (ably mocked here):

How do we fix it?

How can we restore the social pressure for men to marry and have children?  How do we restore the pressure to be attentive fathers?  If we don’t, our society is doomed.

I don’t think you can.  It’s a Pandora’s Box.  With birth control it became possible to de-couple sex from marriage.  In days past, a couple girls would get pregnant and sent off to the bad girls school, scaring the rest enough to minimize the appeal of single promiscuity and encourage marriage as a safe outlet for the natural desires.  People got married at 18-20 and in the natural course had babies and joined the community. [ahistorical, cruel--he's got it all going on!]

Now men and women engage in serial promiscuity until the women hit their 30s and then, like a switch, the biological clock starts ticking and they demand that men change and form families with them.  Trouble is that for men (1) the biological clock hasn’t hit so they aren’t motivated to change; and (2) the madonna/whore complex is ingrained, so the type of promiscuous woman they wanted to date is not the type of woman they want to marry, and the latter pools has shrunk almost to nothing these days. 

When you throw on top of this an economy that routinely requires people to move (breaking up communities) and a legal system that dramatically raises the costs of marriage for men (no fault divorce), you get what we have today - a sea of individuals with little or no connection to family or society.

The only way to change this would be to make promiscuity “costly” again, especially for females (the gatekeepers of sex).  But there is zero political will to do this, so it will not happen.  In the end, America faces the fate of mythical Atlantis - a great society destroyed because it discovered a power (control over reproduction) it did not have the wisdom to use.

I'd write some snarky thing like "shorter crazy person: PUNISH THE SLUTS!", but it actually just says that, so... It's also important to consider that, setting aside the whole swallowed by the waves thing, Atlantis was pretty awesome. I'm sure I'm due some kind of telekinetic crystals and a unicorn, or a super-intelligent dolphin whose soul is telepathically linked with mine, or something as a bonus on top of the consequences-free sex that everyone who can actually get laid enjoys. The cramped-souled hatred of all that is good in human life required to consider birth control a bad thing is truly staggering.

 

 

"Like That One" Sale

A bit late to be letting you all know, but my friend Cheu and I are having a sale today and tomorrow (15/02 and 16/02) out front of Singapore Management University (60 and 80 Stamford Road, but we are on the Bras Basah Road side). It's some artwork, mirrors with découpaged frames, small hand-painted items like pharmacy jars, trays, and some rehabbed vintage furniture. It's our first try at selling the things, so I'm excited. I would be even more excited if I could go, but unfortunately I am sick, in an astounding, unheard-of manouver on my part. Still, Cheu will be down there, so go check it out. The Chingay parade goes right by there this evening too. Our business is called "like that one". (For the non-Singlish-speaking, "like that one" means, of that sort: "His Singlish very good already!" "Ah, like that one, is it?". There's maybe a hint of "he thinks he's so wonderful" in there.) More pictures under the fold. If non-Singaporean readers are in love with something contact me.

Tray with vintage postcard and cut paper.

Table with cartoonish faux-bois (which I did by hand and it took 1 billion years.)

Not Like Last Time

An acquaintance of mine gave me three Raymond Chandler books today (The Simple Art of Murder, Trouble Is My Business, and Killer in The Rain). I had mentioned to him that I was reading the title essay in The Simple Art of Murder just a few days ago, when I spotted it in his car. This makes the giving of the book mildly silly since he knew I had it, right? But nonetheless, it was thoughtful. He is the kind of person who voraciously reads mystery novels and then just discards them. That this behavior should seem shocking while throwing magazines away is perfectly normal is a cultural peculiarity. Surely the magazines, with their glossy pages, were more expensive to produce?

My friend is a Singaporean in his 50s and was born right around the corner from my house. In those days there were more shophouses on the thin triangle of land between Kampong Java road and Bukit Timah. An adjacent few blocks of them remain behind my place, some already slated for destruction. They will all be replaced by glass towers of condos.

When my friend was young there were really kampongs all along Bukit Timah road by my place; raised walkways running between little huts on stilts, roofs made of corrugated iron or even nipah thatch. He learned to swim in the water of the canal that runs along here. I wouldn't really want to go in it now, although it's clean enough to see to the bottom when there hasn't been much rain, and there are tadpoles and fish in its shallow water. Back then it was filthy, with dead chickens floating past and a good bit of raw sewage in there. He said they were thrilled when the Farrer Road public swimming pool opened. Nowadays he is a well-off engineer with a Mercedes and gold chains. A bit "buaya" but not so bad, lah. (Buaya is Malay for "crocodile"; it means "womanizer.") And who doesn't love free books!

I Just Adore a Penthouse View

Now this is a house. After I, um, marry the Sultan of Brunei or whatever, I'm moving there.

Keep Those Hard Times Away From My Door

On the whole I think that lenders who grievously mispriced their mortgages for short-term gain get what they deserve when the homeowners walk away from a house. If the homeowners owe more on the house than it is worth, that seems a reasonable course, and they will pay a serious price in the form of lost downpayments and wrecked credit. And I don't feel inclined to join a moralizing chorus about how the homebuyers are greedy/irresponsible/whatever. No more so than the dumbasses at the bank who loaned them money with no collateral, right? Still, this strikes me as poor planning...

The struggles of Rebekah and Otto Ao in dealing with a crushing mortgage debt show how deep the problems go.

They bought their first home in 2005, for $269,000. They paid for it using an Option ARM, which allowed them to make a monthly payment of $850, which was less than what they paid for rent in Los Angeles. Only later did they realize that meant that their loan amount would grow over time, not shrink, as would their payments.

"When we saw the payments were so low we decided to buy another house," Rebekah Ao said. "With the market going crazy, we figured we could sell the other house in a couple of years."

They now owe $287,000 on the first one and $320,000 on the new home, which they are renting. Their credit card balances, which they once kept at zero, have ballooned to more than $14,000 as they struggle to make ends meet.

"It hurts to know that you are on a road that leads to a dead end," Rebekah Ao said. The Aos are weighing their limited options. Foreclosure? A sale that takes in less than they owe? "But right now," she said, "we're just throwing our money away every month."

Who just randomly decides to buy a second house? And this, "Only later did they realize that meant that their loan amount would grow over time, not shrink, as would their payments," can that possibly be true? I understand that people were inclined not to look at anything other than the monthly payment when considering what they could afford, but damn, y'all probably should have read the fine print on that one.

UPDATE: According to this Business Week "Map of Misery" like 30% of new and refinanced loans in Southern California were some kind of crazy interest only or negative amortization ARM (in 2006, I think). Who can possibly have thought that was a good idea?

Dear Democratic Primary Voters

Please vote for Obama, oh pretty please with whipped cream and a cherry and sprinkles on top!!1!! I would also like a pony KTHX BYe.

Probably Not Appropriate For an Ontologist, Though

I suck and I never update my blog. Sorry, dudes. Hey, look, it's Halley's Comet in an LA home listing!

Metaphysician's retreat! This emotional, reclaimed Mediterranean style villa is a 1-of-a kind property! Sited on 2 lots with ocean to mountain views, impressive tiled courtyard w/fountain, grand living room with large Palladian style windows, huge kitchen with granite counters, spacious master; large, private penthouse with frplc, bthrm, sunroof access and big views! Pond, gazebo, sun porches, twists & turns, bonus rms, colorful past! Rustic yet polished!

Rustic yet polished--it's like the Alexandrian poetry of houses! As it should be for 1.3 millllion dollars. In other LA-ish news, an acquaintance of ours who is a Film Studies prof told us this weekend that he may be moving temporarily to Winnipeg to film "a cannibal movie." (His wife is...medium on this plan, but I guess it would only be a few months.) He's done one before, apparently, and is a known quantity cannibal movie-wise. He says they do "interesting things with prosthetics". I never really gave much thought to who directs cheesy horror movies before. The idea that it would be a super-smart hipster who knows everything about film amuses me.