Reflections on RAOK

R.A.O.K. -- also known as Random Acts of Kindness. I promote them. But rarely do I like to talk about my own. Talking about the random acts of kindness you personally do, I believe, can undermine the act itself. What I mean by this is that I feel that by telling others about the moments when you do something kind for someone at random one can easily slide into a moment of hedonism -- a moment of boasting about your perceived innate kindness, rather than an opportunity to inspire others to follow suite. To avoid falling into this self-tooting of one's horn, I prefer to keep these stories to myself. Seeing as how I love to talk and share my life stories (or something that loosely resembles a story, because who am I kidding? I babble a lot), I consciously choose to avoid talking about the RAOK I do. After almost every instance of a RAOK, I find myself falling into an intense state of self-reflexivity. This state I more often than not move into is more than likely the reason I prefer to keep my RAOK to myself. A recent RAOK I did occurred about a month ago, and it has lingered in my mind longer than usual. Therefore, I am momentarily forgoing my habitual ways of not sharing my RAOK. This isn't necessarily to attempt to inspire someone or make someone think about something in a different way -- I am really doing it for more selfish reasons. Writing it out enables me to re-digest it.

Enough with the disclaimer. About a month ago I was crossing Guadalupe, the drag that runs on the Westside of campus directly next to CMA, on a mission for food. Heading north en route to feed my face with something yummy from Spicy Pickle, I was stopped by a girl probably about my age for money to buy something to eat at Jack-in-The-Box -- a common occurrence not only in Austin, but particularly on the drag. When one hungry stomach meets another I sympathize, for I am sure she was much more famished than I. Seeing as how I am a firm believer in seeing the outcome of your investments -- that is to say, I am hesitant to celebrate the act of money donations, I offered to buy her lunch, instead of giving her my spare change. She agreed. And without hesitation, we walked into Jack-in-The-Box. We briefly chatted while in line, and I told her she could order whatever she wanted. When it was our turn to order, she asked for some breakfast tacos and a shake. After some playful banter with the energetic black transgendered woman taking out order, I told the girl that I was going to head out and that I hope she enjoys her meal. After moments of silence from both of us, my social anxiety kicked in, and so I decided to leave. I smiled, said goodbye, and walked out the door. Patting myself on the back, I felt happy to at the very least fill her stomach and at the most give her hope that someone -- even a stranger -- can care about her. And so, I bounded across the street in the direction of the Spicy Pickle. Arriving at my destination hungry and happy, I swung open the door in anticipation to fill my own stomach and immediately the hunger pain shifted to a nauseating sickness. Never before had I experienced so consciously my class position. The scents, sights, and people were significantly different from the space of the Jack-in-The-Box. Instead of a black transgendered woman standing behind the register, it was a straight-edged, white girl taking orders while clean-cut (by Austin standards this means well-maintained facial hair) white dudes preparing the food behind her -- as opposed to the predominantly Hispanic employees at Jack-in-The-Box. I never felt a more overwhelming feeling of guilt. Here I am an upper-to-middle class graduate student at the University of Texas attempting to make someone's day by giving them food and maybe some hope in a greasy paper bag. For someone who spends her days critiquing capitalism and it's spawn: gluttonous consumption and taboo class issues, here I was blatantly participating in it by performing my class identity. Often, I do indeed realize and reflect upon my own privileged position, but words really cannot describe the overwhelming feeling that came over me the moment I walked into Spicy Pickle. I seriously felt physically ill -- a wall of privilege knocked the wind out of me.

So, after replaying this scenario out in my head and reflecting upon my actions and the girl I met that day, I am left in a state of total distraught. One thing this experience did was snap me out of sleepwalking through my life as a privileged individual. Undeniably, I don't think about this everyday nor through every action I make, but I certainly have more moments of awareness because of it. As a woman with an often ambiguously read racial and ethnic identity, I think I can easily slip into a mode of being where I easily and sometimes aggressively point to occurrences in my life experiences that exemplify how I have been easily slotted into a not-so privileged position. It gives people some amount of social capital to talk about how they come from something or somewhere not-so-great to a position of higher privilege, but continue to encounter moments of some kind of -ism (racism, sexism, etc.). Grappling with all of this can be quite exhausting. While this whole experience can easily allow me to say to hell with doing anything like this again, I'd rather not completely disregard my act. Keeping this experience in mind brings a new layer of awareness to anything and everything I decide to do -- particularly when it comes to RAOK. What ever the underlying politics may be from doing such acts, there's something inexplicable and potentially powerful about giving someone your time and, thus, cultivating the opportunity for an exchange of smiles and dialogue (no matter how awkward your social anxiety makes it) to occur between strangers.

Out-of-Commission Dancing Queen

I don't usually wear heels, but both Friday and Saturday night this past weekend I strapped them SOBs on and danced my little booty off...and holy crap am I regretting thinking this was a good idea. As a result of this brilliant idea of mine to go out of my element ands squeeze my fat, wide feet into a pair of ho-gear heels, I have made two new friends! I am displeased to introduce:

Augustus



and Gloop




Yes, I named the two blisters on my pinky toes after the chubby, German kid from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (only one of my favorite Roald Dahl novels!). On top of just enjoying the name Augustus Gloop and my attempts at impersonating his accent with a mouth full of chocolate, I feel his gluttony and size perfectly personify my fragmented, chubby toes. And, yes, I posted pictures of my blistered toes on my blog. I think this coincides with my mantra of owning your ridiculousness.

Anyway, the bottom line is my feet + heels = pain. This is a fact I have known for quite sometime. But because of the special events I had going on this weekend including my birthday party and a fancy, family wedding I felt inclined to go against my better judgment...and now I'm paying for it. Back to the flip flops!

Karaoke, Baked Goods, and Thunderstorms

...in the words of Rufus Wainwright, "these are just a couple of my cravings". Baked goods cravings? Undeniable. Karaoke cravings? Inevitable (especially for me)! But thunderstorm cravings? Perhaps, this is questionable. Nonetheless, these three things have consumed much of my summer life to date.

Let's start with karaoke. I've done karaoke three times since I turned in my papers, and I have come to one major conclusion...karaoke is always better when done with a medium to small- sized group. This way you get to sing more. And anyone who has experienced the vocal stylings of Candice Haddad would agree that this is a good thing... not really. I actually am not that good, but honestly this is why smaller groups are better. Someone in your group always has to go, and if you go with nice people who also suck they don't care that you keep getting up there ruining anything from The Pixies to Queen to Whitney Houston. Don't get me completely wrong, I have experienced the large group dynamics of some karaoke bars to be a lot of fun. But I will say that the experience I had at Metro (a gay bar in Indy) a couple years ago kinda turned me off. The evening involved some pitchers of beer, a guy talking about his physic powers, and me waiting till the end of the night (thus, intaking much of that beer...eh) to sing "Bitch" by Meredith Brooks. Let's just say the only people clapping at the end were the two people I went with and me, but only bc I was still "keeping the beat" and didn't realize "Bitch" had ended. Oh, boy! Did it end. We left soon after I got off the stage...

Enough about my traumatic karaoke past, let's move on to baked goods -- specifically CUPCAKES! I have made three batches of cupcakes in the past month or so. And here they are:


Coconut Lime Cupcakes!


Vanilla Cupcakes with Blackberry and Raspberry toppings


Pineapple Right-Side Up Cupcakes

(Yes, each batch had a mini photo shoot. It's summer vaca! What else do you think I'm doing?)

Thanks to Caitlin, I was inspired to buy this vegan cupcake recipe book she flashed in front of my face over a month ago. A couple weeks later I bought it. And as I am sure you can tell, they have indeed taken over my world. The authors note that one of the reasons you should bake these vegan cupcakes is because they are blogworthy-- particularly more blogworthy than ranting about your love life. And I couldn't agree more! As you can see, I have not made any of the chocolate ones yet... who wants cupcakes?!?!

The last thing I want to mention about my summer life thus far is... you've guessed it! Thunderstorms! This shit has been crazy up here in Indiana, and I'm saying this even after the ridiculous hail storms that have been going on in Austin. Many parts of Indiana have experienced a ton of flooding. One of my most favorite places, Bloomington, was hit with major flooding:



And this is one of my favorite corners in Bloomington...the intersection of Kirkwood and Dunn! So crazy!

Another crazy picture I have is of the orange sky that appeared in the middle of one of the first storms that occurred a day or two after I came into town. Grover, the pug, was hesitant to go out...



I freaking love this stuff. It sucks when devastating things happen to communities, but monsoon rain, orange skies, crazy winds, and freakish lightening are so mesmerizing! It used to scare me shitless when I was young. If I had a quarter for every time my family mentions my Weather Channel addiction in elementary school, I wouldn't have any student loans to pay off (ha! right...). Seriously though, I want to be a tornado chaser when I grow up...

Most Awesome Friend of Honor aka MAFoH

MAFoH-- pronounced exactly how it looks. And it is my new word for what I used to call Maid of Honor or Matron of Honor. NO LONGER! I hereby denounce the title of Maid/ Matron of Honor! Ew to the Ma to the id-- I refuse to be called a maid or a matron.

Pardon the random ranting, but I just sent out the RSVP cards for all THREE weddings I am attending this summer. And during these actions of licking the envelopes, signing my name, check marking "will attend" and then writing a number 1 next to it got me thinking about the title of "Maid of Honor" and how I oh-not-so-pleasantly get to mark it on my list of things I have been called.

After rereading my last sentence I see how this sounds reaaallly bad, and I just want to make clear it is not the actual position of, actions associated with, or my badass BFF who has named me her Maid of Honor that I dislike. I am so happy to be Amos's MAFoH. When else is it socially appropriate to buy a 24 pack of penis straws and hand them out at a party? Crap...who am I kidding? I've done this before! But no seriously, I love my Amos. I have known her since 4th grade, and she is one of the most down-to-earth, trustworthy, best of friends a person could ever ask for. I am truly honored that she asked me to play such a huge part in her wedding. Plus, her and Billy might possibly be the coolest couple ever! It is merely the title of Maid that puts an unwanted ruffle in my ruffled underwear. And I can only imagine the convulsions that would ensue after learning of the historical derivations of such titles. This case of ignorance most definitely is bliss.

I wrote it once and I'll write it again. EW! to the MA to the ID. But I LOVE YOU, AMOS! I love you for many reasons, but now more than ever because you aren't making me wear anything anywhere close to this:



or this:




Actually, I probably would wear the second one. If you, Amy, bought your own penis straws and allowed me to house a TBD man under my skirt for the duration of the ceremony, I'd wear it.

Jimmy Stewart is Not Attractive

He's not --at least to me. In Rear Window I can see the potential for Grace Kelly to find him attractive...maybe. BUT HE DOESN'T MOVE! If he did then I don't think I'd be able to make any excuse for Grace. This isn't supposed to be an "I Hate Jimmy" rant, because I don't hate him. I just don't get "hottie" when I look at him...and don't understand how anyone could/ did.

This may seem to be coming out of nowhere, but nowhere is the land where I live. Nowhere-land filled with Thursday nights, cubes of Cabernet, a shit-ton of Netflixs I need to watch, and celebratory moods (in light of turning in Poco papers!). Needless to say, I watched Vertigo last night. Loved watching it for it had been awhile...but had epiphanies and strong opinions formed in regards to the "hottie" level of Mr. Stewart. I mean it grossed me out watching him and Kim Novak make-out. I'm talking vomit-inducing. Sure, this may be blasphemy to some, but whatevs take Jimmy... just leave me Clarke...



How dapper! How dashing! And he doesn't have a dumb accent.

Own Your Ridiculousness

I do. Or at least I remind myself to everyday.

I mean have you seen my hair? Or my nose?



Or my feet?



Personally, I like my feet and always have...yet I have been told they aren't as cute as I think they are. But this illustrates my point perfectly! It doesn't matter what other people think. You've got to own it!

And I'm not just talking about physical attributes. Actually, I rather not even focus on the physical (contrary to what posting pictures of myself may suggest). What really matters to me is owning everything else. I mean eeeeeeeeeeeveeeeeeeeeeeryyyyything. Ranging from the stupid things you did in high school to the people you've hurt to the people who have hurt you to the words you can't pronounce to the omelettte you can't flip to the colors you've dyed your hair to the curse words that fly out of your mouth, fucking own it. Own it. Love it. And don't apologize for it.

FYI- That is my sister, Samantha, with me in the pic...just showing off the Haddad Schnozz.

Walter Benjamin, Be Still My Heart!

My second time around reading Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" has me sold and swooning over his ideas. Granted he is long gone (and supposedly committed suicide?), I am utterly compelled with this piece and, thus, in love. Given everything one reads has its fair share of criticisms, I just feel like this second time around a lot more clicked and, thus, my level of appreciation rose.

If you know me well, you know I love my highlighters. And if you can judge the impact of a piece on my intellectual enlightenment by the amount of hot pink lines drawn on it, "Work of Art..." is the epitome. I might as well have just soaked the article in hot pink highlighter fluid; I was a highlighting queen while reading it. Yes, I acknowledge I am quite freakish, but whatevs I love reading this and can't wait for the summer so I can read the whole book. If I only could read in German...