Space Nails!!

Tonight Ryan asked me what I wanted to do before heading home from a beer/donut/burrito run. Much to his surprise I replied, “Go to the Chinese dollar store on Clement!!”. Why? DOLLAR TWENTY-FIVE NAIL POLISHES. What girl could resist!?

I found these cheap-o glitter polishes a few months ago and have been dying to go back and snag some. Turns out they are by Kleancolor, which is not the best quality and definitely not 3-Free like most of the polishes I pick up at work. But they are cheap and funky, so I like them!

I picked up some makeup sponges and 5 shades of Kleancolor nail polish for myself and my coworker for $10–not bad, eh? I decided to go for some SPACE NAILS, inspired by the galaxy nails that the adorable Jasmine posted a few months ago. I liked hers but I needed an excuse to buy a star glitter polish, so I added stars.

Part of the way through my first attempt, I realised I had no pink or white polish–but I DID have some fabulous INGLOT shadows! So I scraped a bit of shadow out of the pans, picked it up with a makeup sponge and mixed in a little clear polish to make the right shade. Then I took extreme care in putting the stars on; the Kleancolor polish is a very thick gel sort with many of the great chunky glitter stars stuck near the bottom of the bottle, so this took a while. I managed to get 4 stars on my middle finger and I love it, it looks like the Southern Cross.

Overall, I like the look. It’s not as bright as the look Jasmine did, but it also has way more stars than hers, so uh, I win.

Products used:

• Sally Hansen Hard As Nails Extreme Wear in Black Out
• Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat
• Kleancolor 170 Midnight Seduction
• Kleancolor 31 Silver Star
• little bits of white and pink INGLOT shadows
• aaaand a crappy Chinese brand purple
• makeup sponge for blotting colours

the space nails and tools of the trade: Seche Vite Topcoat, two Kleancolor polishes, and my crappy Sally Hansen Black Out polish

Next time I’ll try to take more time with the colours, and make more of an effort to clean up my lines with acetone before taking pictures, ha! Overall, I dig this look and I hope to try it again soon.

Why I’m Against Kony 2012

I watched the new Invisible Children video last night on my bus home from work. I haven’t watched an IC video since 2007ish when my friend forced me to do so. I have been familiar with the mission of IC, but for some reason it didn’t speak to me. I’ve never donated to them or bought a damn bracelet. But this time around, I had to find out what was making everyone repost it and retweet a 30-minute YouTube video. Suddenly everyone I knew was part of the crusade against Joseph Kony and the atrocities committed by his Lord’s Resistance Army.

What Joseph Kony and the LRA are doing is terrible, and I’m not trying to discount that. But I don’t think that Invisible Children or their crusade is worth my time or money. Their propaganda didn’t work on me in 2007, and it’s not working now. I take issue with a lot of what IC does, how they do what they do, and the fact that they’re more about quantity than quality when it comes to what they produce and propagate. My basic issues with IC are these:

This is a gross oversimplification of many issues.  This type of reductionist thinking serves neither the people IC is trying to help, nor those providing that “help”. Clicking a link, bugging Angelina Jolie on Twitter, and emailing Condoleezza Rice doesn’t solve problems. Especially because, last time I checked, Angelina’s work as a UN Goodwill Ambassador isn’t influenced by what people tell her to do–only the UN does–and her primary work is with refugees. Condi–along with George W. Bush–isn’t currently holding political office. Reaching out to Bill Clinton doesn’t make sense either. (I know he got Lisa Ling’s sister out of North Korea, but his administration has a history of gains in peace talks and relations with NK).

Back in 2009, IC received the ire of Amanda and Kate over at WrongingRights because “organizations like Invisible Children not only take up resources that could be used to fund more intelligent advocacy, they take up rhetorical space that could be used to develop more intelligent advocacy.”

Click a link, share a video, PayPal five bucks is not how to encourage actual innovation and problem-solving.

They’re a Christian organization and they make no mention of that in their big huge video. Until this week, the only people I knew of that were IC supporters were Christians who heard about IC at church. I have no issue with Christianity in general. In fact, I am quite happy that one’s faith can motivate them to do good. But the idea of sending aid to people at their weakest makes them easy victims to proselytizers, and I don’t trust IC to maintain a secular environment or course of action. As victims of a crime, I think they deserve to have a fair and balanced start to recovery.

Invisible Children advocates for military action against Kony. Despite what the latest IC video leads one to believe, Obama allowing the US military to send its personnel to fight against Kony is not unprecedented, only the latest round in a series of efforts.

U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has sent multiple missions to capture or kill Kony over the years. And they’ve failed time and time again, each provoking a ferocious response and increased retaliative slaughter. –Visible Children

I don’t support any military action of the United States in a country that is not a direct physical threat. Also, Kony’s soldiers are children and I cannot find what the Geneva Convention, International Criminal Court, or the United Nations has to say regarding protocol when dealing with child soldiers in direct combat. From what I can tell, they are in violation of the Law of Armed Combat and therefore can be captured, which would free them (in a way) but also make them POWs and that opens a whole new can of worms.

This whole idea that “we”–the average person with an internet connection–can and should stop Joseph Kony reeks heavily of neocolonialism and the idea of the white man’s burden.  The political climate in Uganda–and everywhere else in Africa–is unlike any other in the world. This isn’t a situation where Kony is the only bad guy is running amok whilst everyone else is following the rules: Africa is full of shitty dictators and generals doing terrible things to people. The Ugandan Army itself isn’t exactly trustworthy either. This is, sadly, part of the political and cultural climate of the region. The concept of “peace” in many parts of Africa is relative; what it means you us in the western world is not the same as what it means to a person in Egypt or South Africa or Liberia. To interfere with that and pull one thread from the entire fabric may cause more to unravel than we are prepared to deal with. Which brings me to…

Invisible Children doesn’t really know what they’re doing. Let’s say Kony is caught and “brought to justice”–that always means a “fair” trial and execution, FYI. Assuming all the adults working under Kony are tried too, that leaves an army of brainwashed children. How many of them are mentally ill? How many suffering from Stockholm Syndrome? How many have embraced and become the culture of violence they’ve lived in for years? How are those people rehabilitated (as required by the UN!) and repatriated?  I am ever the advocate for mental health, and I cannot think of any resource with as much manpower, money and ability as would be needed to help those kids.

Americans are dumb. Dumb enough put posters up that are just going to fall off and become litter? (Yes I am THAT granola now). Dumb enough to think Kony is running for office if they saw something like this, and quite possibly, write him in? You betcha!

In the Kony 2012 video, a young man says there are people involved from Canada and Mexico, and “every other state I can think of”… I don’t want to think that he doesn’t know Canada and Mexico are not states, but honestly I have no idea.

Stopping one person is a Bandaid on a bullet wound. Kony has been engaged in war efforts for over twenty years, so I’m sure he has his tactics down. Say he’s aware he’s about to be captured and sends one of his top guys into exile. After capture, new guy takes the reigns and the problem remains unsolved.

It has been said many times over that the best way to build up a culture is to support its medical and education infrastructures. A people, a country cannot exist or thrive without proper health care or an education. Educated people don’t believe everything they hear (like that having sex with a virgin will cure HIV/AIDS), or that a well-meaning campaign is telling the entire truth about a sensationalized topic. Healthy people have the energy to rebuild and make their own successes. Give your support to AMREF, Doctors Without Borders, or other organizations working to do concrete, tangible things for large groups rather than promoting a concept or a pipe dream.

Finally, I don’t trust an organization that’s willing to fly random bloggers across the world, or that handles criticism the way they are, and just seems unstable, self-serving, and sophomoric in every way. I don’t think it’s my job to play savior to anyone, and I am not alone.

I don’t think that the people who endeavor to support these issues are part of the problem; I just encourage them to research what they support before they go all in, or before they RT or Share.

Doe Eye + Kickstarter

My dear Maryam is raising money to record, mix, and master her latest release. I am positive that what she’s working on is amazing, and that she won’t spend any of our money on hookers or blow (she may, however, use it to buy cupcakes but everyone that knows her would agree that cupcakes are a vital part of her creative process).

I am helping to fund this project and I think you should too. Here’s why:

•• Maryam (her superhero name is Doe Eye) is incredibly talented, and is genuinely one of the most gifted musicians I have ever met. She goes to the Berklee College of Music, which for those of you not in the know, is the Stanford of music schools. And she’s paying for it herself with student loans, so if this whole music thing goes tits up, she’ll be eating ramen well into her fifties. The least we can do is help her out with her record.

•• She’s adorable. See above photos.

•• She likes cupcakes. And by “like”, I mean she would probably marry cupcakes if she could.

•• At 20, she played one of my favourite venues in SF, Bottom of the Hill. I have been going to shows at BotH for 12 years, and her show was the first time I saw more than 2 women onstage. In fact, she had 7.

•• The rewards for you as a backer are pretty cool. A love letter? How many of THOSE have you received lately?

•• I know that she is going to do amazing things with her music, and I believe in her. I hope you do too.

Click here to be a backer for the Doe Eye Kickstarter fund: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1766555640/doe-eye-everybody-in-the-world
Click here for amazing Doe Eye sounds: http://soundcloud.com/doeeye

I Should Have Mentioned This Last Month…

…but better late than never, right?

My friend Tori of Crabbily Ever After asked a few fellow bloggers to fill in for her whilst she was on her super awesome Alaskan cruise honeymoon last month. I happily obliged, welcoming the opportunity to discuss a subject I’d previously had little reason to discuss, let alone write about on my own blog: weddings!

Like seriously, weddings? They’re good to get drunk at but that’s pretty much all I thought about them until recently.

Anyway, to read my thoughts on the matter, visit Crabbily Ever After. Be sure to poke around for those honeymoon pics (ALASKA IS GORGEOUS!) and for pretty much the only newlywed stuff that doesn’t make me want die–Tori and Dan are very cute together, and sweet and not annoying at all. Donno how you do it, but bravo, kids!

hockey season is back!

hockey is finally back in san jose! yesterday was the home opener at the shark tank, and you bet your ass i was there, drinkin’ molson and eating hot dogs.

walking in felt like the first day of school to me: i was so nervous but glad to find old favourites and friends. the food choices at the arena have vastly improved (or at least, become more like the mall food court), the beer prices went up 25¢ to a whopping $8.50 per molson, and there are new electronic signs in the walkways around the arena so you can keep an eye on what’s going on. bit laggy, but still a great addition.

boyfran: check. molson canadian: check. new burns shirt: CHECK.

i had to stop counting how many times i said “i miss seto…”, during the game but it really was hard to look at the ice and not see him out there on his old line. he scored a goal for his new team in minny last night, though. i liked how quick brent burns was on the ice; he completely distracted me from pickles, in whom i have zero faith whatsoever. and my new favourite, andrew desjardins, certainly made his charming little mark on everyone. first star and two goals!

and it was good to finally get to go to a hockey game with ryan. he’s never been to home opener before, and we’ve never been to a game together. we have excellent in-person game juju though: the sharks beat the [laughably terrible] coyotes 6-1. so glad we get to play them five more times this season!

why i’ll miss steve jobs: he smiled back

this morning i was awoken by my iPhone alarm. i drove to work listening to my iPod in my car, and when i got to work, i alternated between using a Mac Mini, a G4 PowerMac, and an iMac. i watched a clip of a movie on my coworker’s iPad on my lunch break. before i even heard the news of his death, i had already used five devices that would never have existed without the brilliance and determination of steve jobs.

i cried the whole way home. i avoided driving past infinite loop, even though it is on my way home. i listened to talk radio, to voices of people who worked with steve and were touched by him. looking in my rearview mirror, i saw a huge rainbow stretching across the west valley behind me, right over cupertino. so sappy and hilarious.

i did not officially meet steve jobs–he never knew my name, but i did occasionally get emails from him (along with the 20,000+ other apple employees around the world) and he inspired me long before–and after–i was an apple employee. i have been using apple computers since i was five years old: my elementary school was one of those in the south bay that had received apple computers as a gift from the company. we used them to play math blaster and oregon trail.

and i saw him one day at apple headquarters. i was there for training with a group of coworkers, and i saw steve and jonny ive in caffe macs. as i was walking out of the building, he and jonny were walking in. i looked at steve and smiled (something i do not do–i am not one who smiles in general). steve looked right back at me, and without an ounce of hesitation, grinned back at me widely.

he was a billionaire, the CEO of a company that is worth more than the country where it was founded, but he was still a guy that smiled back when you smiled at him. and he was a gentleman: he held the door for my friend maryam on her first day of work at apple.

he formed the company that makes the machines that all your favourite movies and music are made with. his standards pushed designers and engineers away from what was easy, and to do what was right. and that company that he helped form? they employ the most amazing people i have ever met. i made lifelong friends, had amazing experiences, and had the time of my life at apple.

thank you, steve. you were one of the crazy ones.

new kindle!

when borders announced that they were going out of business, i visited the one near my work on a lunch break and bought a four books: a french-english dictionary, two french workbooks (that i have yet to crack), and a book about one of my biggest obsessions, north korea. this was in either late february or early march. i started taking the book to work in an attempt to read on my breaks (fail) and i carried it in my purse so i’d have something to read when meeting someone on a date so that he’d think i was smart, or at least the type of girl who keeps books around.

last month i complained that i couldn’t find the book i was reading, and the boy i was trying to impress with my ability to read six months prior recalled “wasn’t that the book you were reading when we met?“. busted. i told him i wanted a kindle cos it’s so much easier for me to read on a screen (it is! they keep you up!) and how i kept taking the book out of my purse cos it was so bulky or forgetting in my car before getting on caltrain.

it was a very good book and i highly recommend it. click the image to view the accompanying website

so yeah, i caved and bought a kindle. it’s a uni-tasker: it only does one thing, but it does it so well. and that’s why i like it. you can turn the page with your left hand–this is a huge deal for me, it’s why i hated reading on my iPad. i love reading on it and i love that my purchase coincided perfectly with the start of libraries lending kindle books (most likely through OverDrive; check your library’s website to see if they offer eBooks through that provider, or in the bay area, visit the Northern California Digital Library). 

oh, and i hacked it cos it was so damn easy. i can now install custom fonts (maybe i DO want to read everything in myriad!) and screensavers. which is good, cos there are some creepy-ass default screensavers on the kindle. not that my custom ones aren’t creepy…

top row: london tube map, an ampersand, the habs logo. bottom: BART map, another ampersand, and the creepiest thing i have done...this week.

now that i can read books all the damn time (and on caltrain! finally, something to do besides tweet about weirdos!), i’m going to start writing book reviews again.

and no, i probably won’t buy the new one. i like this one juuuuust fine.