Coming Across a Feminist

While typing my paper this week, I came across an interesting book, written by Alice Walker.

A self-acclaimed feminist and womanist, Walker won a Pulitzer Prize for her work on the fictional writing, The Color Purple.

The book I picked up at Borders was, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983)

It is a series of essasys similar to Douglas' book, Where the Girls Are. However, the only difference is that Walker's book goes into detail about women's sufferage, feminisim and the civil rights movement on the African American female side.

It was good to see the other side of spectrum. While Susan Douglas' explained her life as white female growing up during feminist movement of the past 50 years, Walker explained the African American side of growing up female the past 50 years.

Walker is an avid poet, who installs some poetry into the, In Search of Our Monthers' Gardens: Womanist Prose.

If interested I added a clip of one of Walker's poems....called "Not with a bang. But with a whimper," from her speech at the Evening of Conscience in San Fransisco, October 2, 2006...

Click on the link bellow and enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGe-UsFcKNI

Sick at home, talking about last class...

With the recent Chimp mauling in Connecticut, in which the owner of the chimpanzee and her friend were brutally attacked. The chimp was shot twice by police officers, who showed up at the scene.





A cartoonist from the New York Post, decided to run with the age-old idea of comparing a chimp to an African American.


The cartoon shows two police officers standing over the chimp's body: "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill," one officer says.

Referring to President Obama, this cartoon has struck anger and hatred from all races of the Upper East Coast calling for the jobs of several men at the New York Post...

My question is:

Why after all these years, is a cartoon portraying a chimp to a black person still happening?

and

Should the cartoonist & editors of the New York Post get fired?

My awnser is the whole chimp thing-comparing it to a black person, should stop! & should have stoped along time ago!

and

Yes, the staff that okay'd it to be printed should be fired...including the cartoonist...

After this cartoon was published, several well-known businesses in the New York area, pulled their advertisements from the paper, expressing protest.

Advertising for a TV Show????

This week we talked about advertisements and how they influence us to buy stuff!

Whats tough about this is I have come across something that kinda irritates me...

Tonight I read an article about the famous lady, "OctoMom"

Nadya Suleman, famous for pumping out 8 little individuals this past week has been heavily under fire for her remarks she made on a national TV broadcast and her new website...

Whats surprising is her appetite for the spotlight...Having no money & no job, she has created a website to make money (donations) to help support her and her now 14 children...

There's been talk, her aim is to be on TV...What's sad and wrong is she's using all this publicity to form a pilot, in which she hopes to get her and her own children a TV show...

Whats even more shocking, she is unemployed and has used the government to help support her allready large family... With just days after her pregnancy, there is global wonderment on how she will pay for the medical bills?

Through Our Donations!

There has been amazment circulating about her lips...Considering famous large family mother/actress, Angelina Jolie as her idol...After the sixth child, from her previous births...she decided to get cosmetic surgery and put collagen fat put into her lips...

Sad!

Through artificially insemination, Nadya has been on record for saying, "I consider having more babies."

However, I consider she should get a job first!

The Bra...& Watcing it Burn!

Our discussion this week about Douglas' book struck me as somewhat interesting...

In the past few days, I have recently seen several instances of burning of the bra's...

The other day I was waiting in line at Harmon's buying some needful things *laundry detergent, Diet Pepsi & toothpaste*

A lady had 3 kids on her cart...In all honesty, it looked exactly like a truck full of militants/Islamic militia men from Palestine...One was hanging out the side....the other was sitting in the child seat facing the mother...and the other was jumping up and down on the random stuff in the cart, itself...

She had her hands full...With a deep breath and her eye's bulging out of her head...She stared at the groceries slowly moving on the conveyer belt, in which she was about to purchase...

The register lady had to chuckle...She asked one simple question, "How do you keep up?"

The lady replied, "It's a marathon when your a single mother!"

She then chuckled out loud and said, "These three I can handle, but my ex-husband heck-no!"

The register lady jokingly said, "I know your feeling!"

& they both talked excessively about their ex-husbands by agreeing, they are better off without them...

Another instance was on Monday....I was hanging out with my daughter and I called her my baby...

She responded, "No I am not a baby, I am a woman"

I wonder....because throughout my life, I could understand woman and why they rebell to either be free from men or their past...but what I didn't know is how it all came to start...

In Douglas' book I have come to understand the beginnings of the woman's movement...While some people I know in class hate this book....I find it rather enjoying...to understand the hardships and struggles of women the past 50 years....

The Adventures of Chris & Savannah Sky

I will admit, as a dad Iam a dofuss...

Many people can tell you why I am, but overall I'll admit it to you first...

I watch cartoons with my daughter...I let my daughter paint my nails...ha which I held back today in class! We color mustaches on every character in her Cinderella coloring books...eat chicken nuggets and party at the zoo!

I am a dofuss...and that's why my daughter loves me!

I come from a different background then most people in Utah...My story is unique and quite an extraordinary tale...

It all goes back to a warm spring day, where a catholic-college-boy from New York, decides to go to Florida for Spring Break 2003...


Two planes depart...One from JFK, in NYC and the other from SLC, Utah...


On the SLC flight, there was a young, tall, blonde, college swimmer from BYU...

They meet... sparks fly...yadda yadda yadda...a special little girl was created :)



I moved from New York, to Utah...just to watch her grow...


& here I am today...writing this blog...



Today she is 4 and in her words, mostly influenced by me...she will tell you... "I Love to party!" I know what your thinking, so how does this involve you being a dofuss-of-a-dad and why does your 4 year old daughter "Love to party?" It is mostly because, I teach her the same things my mom taught me when I grew up!

Now I'm not saying, my mom was a dofuss...or that she's a party animal...

Heck No...

I'm actually saying the reason why...is because I like my daughter to enjoy life through the world of seeing it...understanding the humor in everything and most of all enjoying the adventures, that everyday brings...

There are several definitions of partying...or celebrating...some people commemorate others by praising...some get drunk and pass out...while others look back at their lives and think of how great it truly is by honoring it!

I honor my daughter by taking her out and showing her what the world is...we joke...we cry...we both eat cotton candy and drink soda :)

Overall, what I'm trying to get at is...I am a Dofuss of a Father and I love it! I love make my daughter laugh...and along the way teach her to be RESPONSIBLE, but most of all be CAREFREE!

Understanding Women

With the Sundance Film Festival almost over and 123 hours worked in 10 days...I can finally come back to the awesomeness that is Mass Comm 2010 Blogging *cheers*

While on breaks, I had the blessing of reading Douglas' book, "Where the Girls Are."

Being single and reading a book titled, "Where the Girls Are," in a bar full of Utah Valley drunkards/Film Festival goers from all over the world...I received alot of spectacular comments...Some funny....Some uncanny...but most downright annoying!

Tired of the jokes, I decided to take the initiative...The bar in my explanation is "Adult Day Care" and in the land of Day Care stories are always welcome! So I decided to teach my fellow patrons the world through Susan Douglas' eyes...

I explained the Introduction, Fractured Fairy Tales, including the reference to Disney... With strong reviews (and one boneheaded one from a guy from Payson, UT) many men and women commented on their views...

My favorite line was, "Anytime when you can learn about the opposite sex, you've already gone a step above yourself!"

But the most influential person to comment was a lady from New York...

Cindy was from the mean streets of Manhattan...She came to Sundance for a getaway from her daily grind on Wall Street, in which she is a stockbroker....

A single middle-aged women she has no trouble not having any kids...

no trouble not being married...

and really has no trouble depending on any man in general...

She was very interested in the book and borrowed it from me for a few minutes before she went to her 6 o'clock movie showing...

She read the same chapters I read and proceeded to give her two cents...

She pointed out the time when the Cold War was a race, not only for nuclear weapons and space exploration, but a race for women to be as equal as men!

At the time of the Cold War, Cindy was a little girl. Growing up in Upstate New York, her mother baked and made homemade meals from scratch. Her father worked in a factory making pipe fittings for ships... Growing up she commented on how her father was distraught about how women should not be involved in "Man's work." Remembering vividly, she commented on the times of racial segregation and how the times were changing.

Looking back she connected with Douglas', Intro and Fractured Fairy Tales and insisted that, "Woman are Powerful enough to hang with the boys!"

While holding an expensive glass of wine in one hand and my book in the other, she turned and smiled, "But every women deserves a Prince Charming."

I asked her, "Who is a great example of a pioneering lady who battled men for equality before 1920?"

She said, "Famous Sharpshooter, Annie Oakley"..."every man respected her, no man wanted to mess with her!"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Oakley

Stereotypes Amongst Us...in Life...in Media...

Stereotypes have always been amongst us. In fact, the first ever cases of human prejudice date back to the cave paintings between Homosapieans and Homoneanderthals (Neanderthals) over 30,000 years ago....

Aimed towards "separating" an individual...Stereotypes play a major role on how we view one other with a negative or positive label.

A great negative example happened at the famous corner of Lavell Edwards Stadium and University Ave....known as either "Gamers Corner" or "Apples to Apples corner." (where you can purchase various family board games and discount prices.)....A volunteer for the Obama campaign decided to put up his donation stand the day of the BYU vs. New Mexico game at that same exact spot...

I remember like it was yesterday....It was the end of last September and I drove a fellow co-worker to Sundance...The traffic was brutal, bumper to bumper...While waiting for the light I noticed the Obama stand with only one person at it...We both looked at each other and decided to stop...

Me and my collegue, Tavia walked up to the stand...We noticed a gentleman and a lady in the shade folding shirts...The gentleman was of Indian descent (from India, not Native American)...While talking to him about his stand a car of six-screaming-male BYU fans, faces painted blue...pulled up screaming, "Don't vote for N******...Vote for the White Guy!"

Little did they know that the lady in the shade, folding the t-shirts was African American and the wife of the Indian gentleman.

A moment of silence occured on that corner...I quickly felt remorse for the unkind stereotype, that my only response was to break the silence by extending my apologies.

The Indian gentleman smirked and said you don't have to say your sorry, we've been hearing it all day.

Before that car, I was set to donate $15 to the Obama campaign....

After the car, I donated $100 dollars total...

I donated based on my beliefs and principles, in hopes that...if just one dollar of that 100 could change the world just a bit...maybe an event like this wont happen in the future!

It's kind of "Old Hat" or "Old News," but Obama brokedown many barriers to become the very first African-American President of the United States. With 5 days left until is Inauguration, Barrack Obama has been the talk on every tv show, news show across the world, based mostly on his color of his skin.

To this day people in the media still play the race card. Just a few weeks ago on Bill O'Reilly, Dennis Miller still has trouble beliving that our next President is going to be African American, that he used a lyric from George Clinton's Paraliment Phunkadelic hit song, Chocolate City, "That the White House is only temporary C.C." Referring to the song, Miller finished the lyric by saying, "As soon as Obama gets into office it will be known as the Black House."