TheRed Orchid

After a long hiatus that I want to call writer’s block, but probably was more the result of laziness & forgetting I had a tumblr in the first place, I just wanted to let everyone know that I’m back.

Firstly, let me start off by saying that as happy as I am to be here, I’ve been a bit busy with school and such.  However, to avoid another extended (extended, extended) hiatus like this one, I am going to make it my duty to come up with a new original post at least every two weeks.  Now that may sound like a lot of time between each post, but (just to make it clear) that’s a maximum.  Hopefully it won’t come to that.

Secondly, I’m going to vary up my posts a little.  I’ll have a politically-oriented post every two (or so) weeks, but I wanted to address different topics like my life and my school, so as to seem that I’m actually human and not some mind-numbing propaganda machine.  

Finally, me writing here is going to help prepare me when I take a stab at a novel soon enough.  Perhaps I’ll post excerpts from that here if I feel the material is good enough, we’ll save that for later though.  In the meantime, I better start coming up with material for my next post.  Or studying for my Natural Sciences test.  Nah I think I’ll come up with new material.  

For those of you who think this is an article on the failures of the penal system or promoting reforms, I am sorry to disappoint you.  This is about something different then the sorry state of prisons in this country: it is about the prison my school has created.

Across from my dorm, the University has constructed, with financial assistance from a major athletic company, ‘The Cube’ (seen here: http://chatterbox.typepad.com/portlandarchitecture/2010/01/a-gleaming-cube-visiting-uos-jaqua-center.html).  No my university has not turned into an annual meeting place for the Borg (for all you Trekies out there), but has instead completed the most visible symbol of social stratification on this campus, if not in this whole damn town.

No problem is not with the architecture, nor really with the fact that in light of a State budget crises my school has not only decided to build this building, but also a new stadium.  My problem is more simple then that: we, as regular students in this university cannot even get to the second floor of the building simply because we’re not athletes.

The university has used my tuition money to construct this building.  Just the same as we cannot be refused in any club that uses university funding, the same should go with non-dorm buildings.  The fact that I have to go to a website to look at pictures inside of a building that sits right across from me makes is beyond upsetting.  So while some may marvel at the Cube’s architecture style, living across from it has shown me what it really is: a prison.

For someone who believes that the system of economics serves to disenfranchise some people for the benefit of others, employment is a very touchy subject for me.  Today, I was invited to an information session about a Summer Internship through a speaker in one of my classes.  At first, as they seem to always do, they made it sound great: make lots of money, get experience, blahblahblahblah.

However, it was only a couple minutes into the presentation that my doubts started to build.  Firstly, there was a recommendation sheet where we were encouraged to write a few of our friends.  This reminded me of my job last summer, working for Cutco, something I will not easily repeat.  Second, it was incredibly noisy as the meeting was in a public place.  If it was such a high-paying company, why weren’t they able to rent their own room or at least run their own offices?  As the presentation went on, I noticed that they never even explained what they sold.  Only until we were nearly done with the presentation, past the incentives and traveling and such, did they explain that our job would be to sell schoolbooks.  This was an instant no.

First, I hate sales job.  One too many days of selling knives, maybe, but more so the fact that I was directly supporting materialism.  People didn’t need new knives, much less schoolbooks, but guilt filled up inside of me from selling them that.  My job was to encourage them to buy products they didn’t need.  I was a direct representative of the materialist culture.  It wasn’t only my distaste of sales job that drove my dislike of the job though, it was the product: when I was younger, my Father wouldn’t allow me to watch TV (we didn’t have cable) or go on the computer for more then an hour or own a video gaming system.  And yes, I do know kids who have or had to deal with that, but when all my other friends didn’t, it did make it a lot worse.  All I could really do was education.  Anything related to education.  Flash cards for Math, educational computer games, the list went on.  And these educational reference textbooks not only served as a representation of my childhood, but, given the opportunity, would be exactly something my Father would buy.

Despite the rather good pay, I just said no and walked away.  There was no way in hell I was going to do that job.  Communication skills?  I’ll go work at a fucking summer camp or a public library.  Getting people to buy something they don’t need is not real communication skills, it’s manipulation.  There’s a difference.

I was never one for formalities, so I’m going to jump right into this. The topic? Oppression. So before I begin my mini-Rant (this won’t be a full-sized rant, I promise), I will provide a little bit of background: several days ago they found a swastika painted on the floor of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT for short) Center at my school. Now today, they had a big rally where they said how they weren’t going to tolerate oppression and they were going to try and root it out and things of the nature.

And you know what I say?

I agree. Let’s root out the oppression. Let’s go after individual acts of it, manifestations of hate. However, the biggest manifestation of injustice and judicial inequality is the State itself. How can we act surprised if people do this when Gays aren’t even given the same rights as everyone else? Yes individual speakers amplify oppression and promote oppressive violence, but until the United States of America rejects the view that it has a duty to make people unequal by systematically taking away their rights, then I cannot look at these Reactionaries and say that they are wrong without looking at the State first and admitting this.

Music: Rage Against the Machines, Renegades Album

Mood: Curious…