Hey Pinocchio! Where do you think YOU'RE going?

If I had to give a plot summary of the movie Food Inc. it would be nasty! But it was also things that I already know.  If i truly wanted to sum it up for you I would break it down this way.

The present day method of how the food industry harvests and kills animals truly is a result from the big boom of horrible for you fast food.  And of course all of these huge companies all have their hands down each other’s pants.  It is rare to start a new fresh company with real standards because these places have been around for so long that even if a new chain is opened it is done by an already existing company. i.e. when McDonald’s opened Chipotle who claims and I do believe but still don’t eat that everything is done right and organic… I think of it like McDonald’s wanted their hands down in both pants.  Because of this and the supply and demand of meat, especially transferred raw meat, has gone completely down hill, because they all want to do it as cheap as possible.  They are all in on it! And get the money and hire chefs! The biggest outfall of this is that the raw foods become very low quality.. so much to the point that they actually have a limit on how many maggots and rat poop can get mashed up into the meat… yes, if you didn’t get that, read it again.. a limit on it.. not a law against it being in there! Just a friggin limit! That’s so nasty. Now think about how much fast food you eat… or meat in general.  Not only are there bugs and poop there are hormones that are injected into the animals, the same animals that are so crammed together they eat their own shit… that’s just the nasty part.  If you’re an animal fan I might add that the “killers” of these animals are sick and twisted and like to sodomize the cows, and poke their eyes out, and watch them suffer. And then to try and fix these problems they use science and technology to come up with better ways around it, which in the end just make it worse.

I love this movie.. but that is no surprise because I have been a vegan for quite some time now.  That means no face! I do not eat any type of face! No eggs, no dairy, no meat, no cheese, no milk.  Not even everyday tomatoes because low and behold they are often injected with milk and fish proteins that contain all the bad things I previously spoke about.  I recommend this movie to everyone to at least understand what it is they put in their bodies.  I don’t want to convert people I just want them to be aware.  I know plenty of people who have seen the movie and still continue to eat the food because they just don’t care and that is their choice and is fine by me.  There is plenty of other information on the web regarding this topic also.  Most people don’t like reading it because it is bias and the person is an animal freak. You make the choice. But I do guarantee you will notice a difference in the way you feel in less than 3 days.

Another event I attended this semester was a lesson on basket weaving!  I must admit I only attended because my wonderful teacher as I like to reference as D-SMALL said it would count as two events.. That was exciting.. BUT, I was also very excited because I wanted to make a basket!  The thought of learning how to start the bottom of the bowl was so intriguing to me I wanted to do it with all my heart.  I had only ever made bowls/baskets our of clay or made those rugs where you take fabric, braid it, and then sew into a circular shape.  Unfortunately once I got there I was very sad to find out that I would not be making my own basket. they totally tricked my little hippie heart!  But it was okay because i was able to witness some very talented youngsters do it themselves!  They were teeny-tiny children and some of them had been doing it for over four years already! They had a big head start on me, which made me kind of glad that I would not be doing it anymore because even though i am very out there with my personality little things often make me the most embarrassed.  I liked this event a lot because I am a very earthy person and it was wonderful to learn about the history of basket-weaving and how not only is learning to make the basket an enduring, hard, but humbling experience, but that one of the hardest parts of it is actually gathering the plants that you use to make them.  You cannot just go out and pick up any random weeds to use.  I wish I could remember the name but they were very very long and sturdy and had lots of strings/hairs that made it sturdy especially if you gathered it the correct way and preserved it correctly.  As much as I am not interested in the history and culture of the Native Americans I must admit I find that i think THAT I AM.  I remember as a child that field trips learning about the Native Americans were always my favorite.  And if I have all of these fields, and reservations surrounding me so closely I should surely be there learning and taking pictures of my most favorite thing ever.. NATURE.  But first I will have to get my drivers license back.

In october I went home and visited my family where I am originally from; the small but beautifully green town of Altadena, CA.  A program they simply called  passed out disposable cameras to willing contestants and told them to portray there view of Altadena.  There were about 50cameras that were passed out.  After all of the cameras had been submitted they were posted onto poster boards and hung in an alley way.  This particular alley had 4 art galleries that were already there that stayed open late on this day.  The whole town came together to walk the streets, look at the pictures, walk through the galleries, drink wine, eat food, and buy shirts that read ALTADENA to support the arts in the town.   I am biased and must say I loved my Papa’s poster the most.  One person simply took pictures of al the times they spent in their yard at their fire pit.  Another person simply went into the hills and took pictures of nature, while another person just took pictures of all the houses they like the best in the town(thankfully they were the rustic houses not any from the left hand side of Lake Ave. that have a housing development for the rich and fancy) While in one of the galleries I found these great little jars, about the size of my thumb that were made out of the ends of copper tubbing and and had a metal cap that had a glass half moon placed flat on top of a pictures.  I bought one and it is honestly one of my favorite things that all i want to do is use it, but can only think of putting pills in it, and i don’t take pills unless they are my raw vegan supplements, which i take too many off to fit in it!  What I also really enjoyed about the event is that they had drawings all over the walls that young children had drawn about what they love most about Altadena.  I love the close-knit family feeling that Altadena has together.  When the hills are on fire we come together and support our fire fighters, when the lights go out from the Santa Ana winds we all check on eachother and wait patiently for Edison to come and fix it and never stress if we are the last block to get power back.. I’ve waited 5 days before!  All in all as much as I want to move away and travel the world I truly believe I will end up back in Beautiful Altadena; just as my license plate frame says.

Today I attended an open event in a classroom at CSUSM.  It was a performance put together by a womens studies class.  All of the creative responses, songs, poems, books, raps, and monologues were all written around the subject matter of gender, race, sex, and age today in society.

The first performance was beautiful.  A girl named Candice sang and played the guitar about a boy she once knew in 2001 who was dying of cancer.  It was called Lovely September and it was amazing.  She had a country sounding voice which is not always my favorite but the chords she played were almost like a slow rock.  She has such a presence and she is merely just sitting in a chair.

The next presentation I enjoyed were sound clips played about sex in the media between things being phallacy or not phallacy.  Basically saying is this sexual or not?  But this one was based around rap music from the 80′s and 90′s.  He actually wrote a song that was hilarious!  He talked about carrots in parking lots not being phallacies or pulling out a magic wand of a hat thinking that it was a penis but it was not. “a phallic is a 20 on a scale of 10″  It is hard to remember everything he said but the entire class was laughing the entire time. I wish I had a copy of the lyrics to post on here.

The other thing i loved the most was the cutest handmade book that a girl brought in that was called “Before I knew I was Gay”.  Each page had to do with the hardships that “the gaze” as they call it go through in the duration of their life.  My favorite page was about a Dad trying to force his son to play football but all he wanted to do was ballet.  Another page had to do with him wanting to help his mom cook instead of help his dad with the car.. or when he was younger as a child always liking to put on high heels instead of ties when he was playing dress-up.  It was colorful, expressive, real, and probably hit home for many people in the class.

Today in class we looked at all of the books.  I must say one of my favorites was The Many Faces of Jason Bates.  I really liked that he gave us a look at all different types of mediums of his artwork.  I loved the painting that said “DECAY” with an arrow pointing down towards a city.  It reminded of a quote I once heard from Joe Rogan about how when you are taking off or departing from LAX the city of Los Angeles looks like a patch of mold on a piece of bread that just keeps on growing.

Made another book on blurb.com and this one is crass.  I like it.  Minus the fact that I kind of don’t want it to be public until I have seen it, but i also want others to look at it now.  I also don’t like that I already thought of other pages to add to it.. But i think I will continue to create pages and save them and just slowly create another book just like this as I go along.. like a SERIES! 

check it out if you please: (although I will post a few pages down below but if you would like to preview the whole book then go thereee)

For my Art and the Computer class at CSUSM I am required to attend three photography museums and blog about them. so here it goes. this is what i found and thought of the Ordover Gallery and MOPA in Balboa Park and finally the Ordover Gallery in Solana Beach.  Which mind you I must say it was hard to have a required visit to museums so far away from where I live especially since I do not have a license.  If it is going to be this far away it should be a field trip, or we shouldn’t have to pay to get in.

Ordover Gallery @ Balboa Park

–Personally, this was my favorite one.  I liked it the best because it was all natural and what seems to be unedited photography.  The tricky part about this is though it is very highly unlikely they did absolutely NO touch ups on the photographs.  Because that is what I find to be the most miraculous obstacle in photography.  I really am all for editing my photos as long as I am altering it enough to where you truly can see that it has been altered.  None of this fake, ooohhh look at this great landscape I got it was such a nice day, so nice of a day that i upped the contrast, exposure, lowered my blue/red levels and raised the green.. you know cuz you CAN do all that and still fool the everyday viewers eye.  That is why I like to train my eyes.  So this museum was a tad bit more enjoyable because I got to see real beauty, but it was still hard to look at because unfortunately I am one of those stubborn people that because this was a forced mandatory visit I really did not get to fully experience it.

MOPA

– I have been to this museum before.  It was four years ago and once again it was mandatory.  This however was an “organized” field trip.  Still hard for me to get there and  showed up a tad bit drunk from the night before.  You can defintely say it was an experience.  This trip, even though was still mandatory, was easier to take on because I wasn’t worrying about falling on the walls/pictures.  But i must say that my favorite exhibit of MOPA this time around was Beloved Daughters by Fazal Sheikh.  I am a portrait freak! i love getting someone ready and taking their picure, and just recently I have really tried to avoid getting them ready.  I like them RAW, UNALTERED, NAKED, FRESH, RUGGID, AU NATURAL.  So this exhibit really appealed to me.  The emotion that came though each and every picture through the individuals eyes was amazing.  I felt as if I could feel exactly what they were thinking as i peered into their eyes that seemed so alive, or in some cases alone and dead.  The black and white really brought out the emotional shadows that even lay gently on their shoulders.  Astounding that you can capture emotion from shadows on a shoulder, absolutely astounding.

Ordover Gallery, Solana Beach: The third and final straw.

Elizabeth Carmel did not seize to amaze me in any of her pictures.  As a looked at all of her photos a theme definitely arose to my mind.  Something along the lines of… the title of that one movie, with Diane Lane. UNDER THE TUSCAN SON.  I don’t know why that comes to my mind, but it does. HEY! I can think whatever I please. I wish I had been possessing my iPod at the moment because very relaxing music playing loudly in my ears would have been nice.  A lot of her photos I could actually see going on those CD’s that you buy at Target, you know, the ones with Celtic music, or Caribbean, or Symphony.. I know a lot of people could see that as me dissing her work but that is just not the case. I really did enjoy all of her photos and I spent the most time at this Gallery than the others.  If I had to pick another artist that was shown I would have to go with the paintings by I think it was Saphire.. with one P. Correct me if I am wrong.  It was nice to see some paintings as well, i found those ones to be very surreal.

boys and girls. girls that are boys. boys that are girls. girls that want to be boys. boys that act like girls. it is neveranding.  but girls that look like boys, they fascinate me. there is something about them that i just cannot stop starring at.  Not in a disgusted way, nor in a physical attraction way.  

But neverthelessssss i loved her photos. because it just captured the whole boy/girl confused essence.

i changed my book. although i do not think i can post it here before i write my disclaimer. which i am finding to be harder than the book itself. 

twisted. could be the books name.. but i think it will be “RAW BEEF”.