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let the picture speak for itself.
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damn i love my job.
what you see above is excellence incarnated.
i call it, "Floating Canto Bust." does it rival
"Soulflavor?" you be the judge. anyhow, i wish i had a
bench like they do in art galleries where you can sit your big, fat
butt and stare at this beautiful portrait all day, absorb the
uncontrollable glee that this pleasant individual expresses, and savor
the moment. i wish i could go into analysis here, but not
this time, cause i'm too tired. all i can say, in short, (and
this is really deathly important) is that this portrait makes me think
of picnics outside on the grass with baskets full of roasted turkey
sandwiches cut diagonally under a fresh rainbow where wrinkly puppy dogs
run together and the orange leaves rustle in the misty air all beneath a
radiant sun with sunglasses on its face and two scoops of raisins in its hands...it just gives you that
warm warm feeling inside. aah...
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| I didn't think it was possible, but yesterday, it happened. I
reached the pinnacle of my portrait-taking skills. And it was
simply...breathtaking.
For the past few months, I've been working as a
photographer, shooting
school portraits from the wee hours of the morning until the ungodly
bottom of the afternoon. Sure, it's exhausting, being that I feel
overworked and underpaid and that at my job, I am quite often the
target of wayward adolescents, but despite it all, my
experience has been unquestionably worth it...because yesterday, I took
a damn fine picture. We will examine it below and discuss the
fine points of this masterpiece I call, "Soulflavor."
Aside from technicalities such as centered head
within the frame, head tilt, congruous nose and eye direction, this
portrait demonstrates a subject with a level of expression that, to
date, is inimitable. First, the closed eyes represent a
dreamer. Although this individual strolls through a bustling,
activity-filled, and populous Harvest Fair, she manages to shut her eyes for a moment and imagine another
utopia, another Neverland, somewhere far away from this fair, where her dreams and fantasies would come alive and
where closing her eyes for one second would mean the demise of her own
existence because she would be missing what life is all about.
Second, yawning is another accessory in her escaping to
utopia, and it pulls the viewer in too. Through the means of attaining
extra oxygen, the yawn relaxes the body and prepares it for the
transition between the states of wake and sleep. The
subject, here, takes advantage of that fact and uses it as her portal into dreamland. Also, as part of a
mysterious biological mechanism, the yawn infects those who view it, making them
yawn too. Undoubtedly, the individual wants to influence those
around her; otherwise, she could have simply covered her mouth and concealed the yawn.
Last and of the most importance are the
nostrils.
They are wide open and for one reason only - to show her soul.
Clearly, the two orifices are so amazingly large that they are capable
of showing us the exactly what type of character this person is
inside (they are so big that, for goodness sakes, you could
almost reach in there with both hands and pull out her brain!). It is said
that "the eyes are the window to the soul;"
however, here it is undeniably the nose. Through the
nostrils down
into the depths of this subject to where the heart lies, each person
who looks
closely, hard enough, and for long enough will discover
for himself what the soul of this individual means to him. When
I took the journey down into the abyss of "Soulflavor," I had a sudden
craving for Popeye's Chicken. Don't ask me why. Shit
happens. Yet, is it not beautiful that I discovered more about myself by looking at someone else's soul?
There you have it. The zenith of my photographic skills. Had I not
prepared for this instantaneous moment of expression that the subject
exhibited, this portrait would not have been possible. I owe it all to working as a school portrait photographer.
On a broader scope, if
there is anything you can do to help me advance my career, the beauty
of man, and art, it would be to spread my work in any possible way you
can. Thank you.
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| unedited, uncensored, spontaneous rant:
what follows is a superfluous vent
but i have something to get off my chest about asian parents IN AMERICA that
forbodes an ominous future for me (and probably the rest of other asian
american males too)
so i invite you to read but i'm just warning you it's gonna be disorganized and wack shit
i, like all the rest of my 2nd generation asian american friends, have
insatiable libidos. if youre an asian american and normal, you
probably have an amazing sex drive motivating your life
too. this is incontrovertible; i mean, it's common
knowledge. if you don't believe so, youre probably been locked up
too much.
but hey, let's get deeper, shall we?
let me ask you about this: if you are a 2nd
generation asian, look at your 1st gen parents and ask YOURSELF "do my
parents make love? is a sex life completely absent from their
lives?"
see the thing i don't understand is that everyone
asian american that i know cannot confirm the existence of any sexual
element or PDA in their parents relationship? in fact, they're
pretty inveterate that one does not and has not existed for a while
since their parents entered middle age. what is this? waht
does this mean? why does it seem like this is
missing? i mean it goes so far as parents sleeping in
separate beds...so the big question i'm asking is this: IS THERE
A CORRELATION B/W 1st GNERATION ASIANS AND LOSING THEIR LIBIDO ALL
TOGETHER (or preferring an alternative or deviant sexual lifestyle just
completely hidden from view) AT MIDLIFE, say around yoru 40s?
the reason why this depresses my and my friends is because how can you
imagine a life devoid of a sex life after 40+? it just depresses
and clashes the natural libido within all of us young asian american
professionals, collegians and teenagers.
I mean it seems like it is limited to 1st
generation asians, and it's possible that i've been brainwashed by the
media, watching midlife married white black and animated cartoon
couples (no not anime porn) getting frisky on TV and in movies.
almost never have i seen an old established asian couple getting busy
on screen. maybe i havent' watched enough asian movies, but
certainly i feel like it's missing here in america. but the sole
evidence that i believe that it is constrained to 1st generation asian
parents is by th e fact that every single friend i ask whether their
parents make love says, "no, they don't."
So why don't they? some people might be irate with
what i'm going to say, but unless they prove otherwise, they're going
to be indignant with what they see as an injustice and prejudice.
i assure you it's not neither, and not supposed to be, but i'm just
saying what i see with the evidence i have.
Who and what i believe are responsible for PART of the
loss of libido b/w 1st gen asian couples are THE ASIAN WOMEN and "THE
ASIAN MOM LOOK" (which will now be referred to as "The Look"). of
most importance, to set the matter straight, i need to make the
disclaimer that I LOVE ASIAN WOMEN. I think they are THE
MOST BEAUTIFUL TYPE of WOMEN ON THE PLANET. do you not
agree? and moreover, I AM NOT BASHING ASIAN MOMS. I LOVE MY
MOM. BUT I"m JUST ADDRESSING A LARGER ISSUE. kind of how
people may love certain friends but not the fraternity/sorority they
are in. Lastly, I am NOTobjectifying women. I am merely
discussing the topic of sex which can easily and understandbly be
confused with various types of objectification. so yea, rest
assurred. Moving on, the real deal is i cannot help but flip to
the
real estate section of the chinese newspaper to which my parents
subscribe and see a PLETHORA of pictures of real estate agents, cindy
chaos,
mandy wus, candy lins...et cetera, ALL clones of each other, middle
aged women with The
Look.
there are several features about The Look.
first of all, as we've been saying, it is exclusive to asian moms and
perhaps, to those abnormal asian girls who've never seen the sun and
maybe only seen the light from the lamp that sits atop of their mounds
of math workbooks. i notice
that as asian mothers age, their hair brittles, and they somehow just
unexpectedly go to a salon, chop up all their hair, and/or perm it,
with a gigantic fro, and i mean GIGANTIC, and then come home and
pretened like nothing happened. meanwhile youre standing their
with your jaw on the floor. I mean that's only one characteristic
of The Look - the tomboy short or permed fro - and remembr this
starting around 40yrs to 50 old. what i think this is though, in
a deeper sense, is a profound symbolism. Cutting off ones h air
at midlife, as drastic a decision as it is, represents cutting off "the
tubes." in short, for an asian girl, choping off your sexy long
black hair into a permed brittle beehive means "i'm terminating my sex
life, and you aint gettin no mo."
second of all, their glasses not only thicken, their area and
circumference augments to the size of a coaster for each lens.
they're like goggles. i don't know whether this is a style or not but it clearly exists among moms.
third of all, and somewhat of a subtle nature of you don't keep
an eye out, and certainly i don't until someone made light of it for
me, is the ICONIC ASIAN MOM BUTT. for some reason, they all tend
to be long, flat, and bony. and when the pants fit, they rise up
to the middle of their torso, and either that accentuates the
characteristic ass or it realistically contours it. i don't
know. but look at your young asian girl behinds. a good
majority are perky. no doubt, in your life i'm sure you've come
across plenty of nubile asian girl butts to know that some are responsive to
manual collision. they are resilient asses, okay? HOWEVER, I have yet to ever, EVER, in all the asian
parent
conferences i've beeen to, seen a perky asian mom butt. if
you have, please come forward
so anyways, i think this Look is waht think is responsible for asian
men losing their sex drive. It APPEARS futile to fight t his, cause it
seems like brittle asian hair is inevitable when it comes to middle
age, and The Look seems to cascade over the sexual "victim" bit by bit, consuming the
appearance of the former beautiful asian woman like a fat green blob over a toothpick.
perhaps one can attribute this loss of sexiness to
culture? is it possible that 1st generations consider sex so much
a taboo that it actually CAUSES The Look? are 1st generation
females programmed not to have sex after a certain time because of who
they are? my Taiwanese family almost never talksa bout sex.
the only time we would mention sex, genitals, the sort is when we're
talking about medicine or my dad is threatening my brother and me that
he'll cut our boys off. not unusual in an asian american family i'm
sure. is intercourse reserved solely for the creation of progeny and
nothing else? or was it recreational all the until the birth of
the last child? in any case, if sex were a utilitarian device, culture
had an impact (vestiges of one child policy and other population
controls in china, or just the fact that sex is BAD, women dry their
men up of their Qi, WHATEVER), and if this is true, if the loss of
libido is due to
culture, then clearly here we would have a
role reversal of the Look that I just delineated for you - instead of
hair brittling to cause the Look and thus the loss of sexual passion,
we have a brittling of sexual passion that cause The Look AND the loss
of libido. but
WAIT...if this is NOT true, is it biology that
ultimately has the final say over
whether The Look manifests, thus banishing sex forever? I believe
it's the latter.
if it were culture that made sex extinct in midlife 1st
generationers, it could and should easily be reversed or prevented if
those 1st generationers
were or became well americanized. however, from each one of
my friends
whose parents work in an environment where english is highly demanded
and americanization is essential, none of htem have confirmed a hot
passionate sexual love life b/w their parents. thus, evidence for
a culture responsible for the loss of libido is scarce. its
fallacy remains unproven, for absence of evidence isn't evidecne of
absence. but there is evidence of what's left...the
aging asian process left. this is not to say the two are mutually
exclusive, for in fact, they oculd both coexist, but the former lacks
evidence, and the latter boasts it. therefore, we can only
solidly conclude that the aging process is indeed a vital factor that
directly INFLUENCES The LOOK
so, i believe that in order to combat this loss of
sexuality, asian women close to menopausal stage MUST FIGHT THE AGING
PROCESS AT ALL COSTS to preserve a great sex life. sure you may
look younger than a white girl, black girl when youre in your twenties,
but for some reason it seems like the rate of sexual degeneration
exceeds the former two by an inordinate and utterly distressing
amoutn. fight it damn it! this means i guess, more
make up? cover up some stuff? take some stuff off? maintain hair
length and have it treated
with a straightening iron? i mean think aobut it, would you
rather jump in bed with a girl who's 50yrs old but has the sex appeal
of a 24 yr old, or a 40 yr old with the persona of a 50, 60 yr
old (and possibly the exposed, undoctored wrinkliness too)? it's
not THAT hard a decision
ask yourself one last time, do you want to be 40, 50, 60,
without a sex life? guys: if you can maintain an erection until
your 80 or 90, don't you want to make sure that energy it doesn't jsut
go to waste? if you value one of the most enjoyable let alone
sacred acts of being human and being in a relationship, then you have
to safeguard your sexlife. and that means rising up and
vanquishing The Look.
now if there is a middle aged Asian Male Look, I want to hear about
it. no doubt, i probably have some facts a little awry or even
erroneous so bring to light whatever exasperates you
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| Okay, so I've seen some pretty ugly things in my life. Girls, long-legged centipedes, giant fifteen lbs cheeseburgers. This, however, has got to be one of the worst...that's alive and doesn't move. Or maybe it used to move, and Taiwanese people put it in a pot. You might think it looks like a dead carcass. Plant version of a Chewbacca. Belly button lint blown up to size maybe. I don't know. Unfortunately, I didn't ask what kind of plant it was or what it does, but I'm pretty sure you don't have to be an aestheticist to know that this is one hideous mother. All I knew was this - it was for sale at the Taipei flower market. But who in their right mind would want to buy a big crunchy wad of Chinese dried shredded pork stuck in a pot?
I can only think of three reasons. First, maybe you bought one because you have a simple infatuation with big hairy knots. Okay.
Second and more likely, it's a conversation piece. Just strategically place it in your apartment, and when you and your date or whoever youre with have nothing to say to (or do with) each other, just lead her over to it, and you'll get something along the lines of a "what tha fuck is this?"
The last reason and most important of all, this thing serves as a self-esteem booster. Say you (hypothetically) have insecurities about your own physique. No one wants to look at your face. You don't even want to look at your own face. And, unfortunately, all your ugly friends are on ugly vacation and all your good-looking friends are all coming over to your ugly apartment...what do you do?!? Do you freak out!? No way!!! Girl, just whip out Chewbacca and stand proudly next to it...and push out that hot chest of yours! Its unsightliness will accentuate your better-than-unsightliness! You know you want to look good.
Well, that's all I can think of for now. Any more hypotheses, please enlighten... | | |
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