GAY MARRIAGE IS LEGAL IN CALIFORNIA!!!!

HELL YEAH!!!!!

Gay marriage was legalized by a California Supreme Court ruling of 4-3 today! I'm so happy when I heard I cried! It makes me feel a little bit safer in the world; that there is some sense of justice and equality left.

Although the bittersweet victory is that conservative jerkfaces are trying to get a constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would overturn this ruling. We should hear by the end of June whether or not enough signatures have been collected, but if so, we'll just have to mobilize and get the voters to vote on the side of equality, love, and justice.


HOORAY!!

Feministing

So I recently stumbled onto an awesome blog/news page called Feministing.com. It's a great source of information on what's going on in the world and notes current injustices against women. Sigh. It is super depressing though, as it just reinforces how much I hate our society and the injustices it institutionally perpetuates.

I take it for granted that I'm usually so busy all I have time for is making art, eating, sleeping, and work (and some WoW to relieve the stress), and I sometimes put off reading the news because it just pisses me off so much. But I miss the politically-drenched environment of CZ and Cal in general. My classmates are generally so apathetic I want to strangle them.

Anyway, on a better note, I finished with classes this semester, am starting my new job Monday, and am working on cleaning the apartment. finally. Now, time for life.

Art upload

So these are two pieces I did for my last Illustration 1 assignment. Basically, I could do any illustration I want as long as it has type in it.

Edit: So I figured out why google messes with colors: if your files are CMYK, google completely goes bananas on your colors and you get some crazy-ass stuff. If you convert to RGB, then you're totally fine. You might ask "Why would I try and post something in CMYK in the first place, that's just for printing?" My answer to that would be: "Because I'm lazy and didn't want to have a CMYK version for my printouts and a RGB version for this crappy blog, but I guess I'll have to do that anyway."

I hate Sexism

So I read an article by the Wall Street Journal about why there aren't as many successful (defined as "super rich billionaires") women entrepreneurs out there. The comments section was super disturbing as all sorts of sexist shitheads weighed in.

My response was here:

Why aren’t there more rich women entrepreneurs? It could be because women aren’t risk takers. But if that’s the case, it’s because of hundreds of years of craptastic patriarchal socialization that got them that way.

People talk about affirmative action being detrimental..well if society maybe wasn’t as obviously racist and sexist maybe these underprivileged groups would be able to perform as much as traditionally privileged groups do. If you don’t have to question your place in society on a daily basis, then a lot more effort can go into starting up a business. And please, the world, and the business world in particular, is still sexist and racist. This is not an excuse, this is the truth.

Take some sociology classes. Or some gender studies. Or some ethnic studies. You might learn something.

But instead, you’ve been socialized to think that you’re superior. You’ve totally swallowed the lie that anyone can raise themselves up from their own bootstraps, that it’s a fare race since the laws claim that they’re equal to everyone. Well they aren’t, and the race isn’t fair.

When you’re dealing with institutionalized sexism and racism, the fear of rape, sexual assault, being pulled over because you’re not white, having to prove to others that you’re equal because you’re not a white male, or any of the other daily crap that most minorities have to face (like all these comments making fun of Meg Whitman’s looks, white countries being superior, etc), you wouldn’t have the time to even think about starting up your own business.

In our society, men are socialized to succeed. We are told that we’re supposed to make more money and bring home the bacon. Women are still paid $1 to a man’s $1.20, so there IS still a glass ceiling . When one is socialized to not succeed, I’d think it’s a lot harder to succeed.

Show me the super successful entrepreneur man that is socialized to shut up, to stay at home and cook, to raise some kids, to throw away his dreams, to believe his only value is his looks, and has to endure the constant threat of rape and sexual assault, being underpaid, and doesn’t belong because of his gender, and I’ll buy into your belief that there aren’t more women entrepreneurs because they’re inherently unequal to men.

And thanks for hiding behind anonymous tags, cowards. If you’re going to be racist, sexist, offensive, and all around cowardly, greedy pigs, then why don’t you get out from behind the blanket that’s the internet and post something under your real name.

And by the way, feminism isn’t about bashing men. It’s about the idea that men are overprivileged and if they really had the guts, maybe they’d own up to it.

“Truth” may think that they’re speaking the truth, but I think that’s a little bit blinded by male privilege. Break out of the box and TAKE A RISK and maybe read some Bell Hooks, or something by Inga Muscio and you might learn a thing or two about how the world really works.

I should probably be more specific and articulate, but such greedy fucks make me want to bash these people with common sense sticks and pull their privileged heads out of their asses. Good for you, you're rich at other people's expense! Hooray for being a selfish, uncaring shit-eater! Hooray for being sexist and racist! Jesus fucking christ.

In other news, I stumbled across this blog which is pretty god damn cool and in line with my thinking.

New job

So while I'll still be at Paper Source (although no longer the Invitations Coordinator), I got offered a Design Associate position at Minted.com.

Thus, in two weeks I'll be starting at the little start up (although we're hoping it grows to a huge start-up) doing typesetting, helping customers with their wedding invites, and doing some general design work. Yosh!

Yup, just saying. Now I gotta motivate myself to finish my still life painting....sigh.

Oh, also, Eve and I got a table at the SF Zine Fest! We'll be tabling under the moniker "Monkey + Seal," on July 19-20, so check out the zine fest and stop on by!

Guess who this is?

I think I got the spirit of this guy. And yes, the background is a pretty dead giveaway, if your aren't a nimrod, but whatever. Done for Illustration 1 in photoshop and I didn't have the time to get super creative. Not 100% happy, but eh, maybe I'll work more on it when I come around (to it).

On a more serious note, the values on his face could be worked on a bit more, but alas.

Save the Date

Sooo, 2 things:
1. Save the Dates
As some of you may know, I work in the wedding invite industry, and thus I was informed of a contest on minted.com to design Save the Date photo cards. I thus entered in order to try and win $1000 and have my Save the Date designs sold on their site.


Sooo, here are my two designs. I could talk about the design process, but the basis of this post is to go to http://www.minted.com/vote and create an accout and vote for my designs. Please feel free to vote for the other designs as well, but since you're my friend, vote 5's for mine!

I do realize that mine are a lot simpler than a lot of the others, but I tried to design mine with flexibility in mind. A lot of them are cool, but would they really look good with any photo in them, or just the ones that were provided? Eh, whatevs. I don't really expect to win, but any help is helpful! Thanks much!

2.
So thanks to Diana, I heard about this one woman fighting against the corporate crapface known as Louis Vuitton. She's trying to make a socio-political art campaign to get America to stop following idiots like Paris Hilton and start following huge global crises like the genocide in Darfur. And thus, using a LV-styled bag, she's getting sued. Super.

Thus, with the minted contest going on, and thinking on how sick it is how much money people pay for wedding invitations is, it got me thinking. Well, why don't I start my own wedding invite company that gives a portion of the profits to charity? PS - if some bastard reads this and takes my idea, I'll be sorta pissed, but if you do you had better be giving a shitload of money to charity. Anyway, all sorts of ideas are brewing in my head. Gotta go do some hw and do some research.