When I decided to go to bed, the eclipse was in its first half. After reading a while, I went outside, and it looks like I missed it as it became red. I have always loved lunar eclipses. It makes me look at the sky differently. To me they are quite awe inspiring. it is similar to catching someone in a private act.
Anyhow... I took a sad little picture with my blackberry. It is that little dot in the middle.
Hmmm it looks like I will have to upload the pic tomorrow.
A story on the BBC entitled "Ivory Coast's 'big-bottom' craze" talks about IC's fascination with a new song by DJ Mix and DJ Eloh called "Bobaraba", which a Djoula word for "big bottoms". In and of itself, there's really nothing unusual about this story. After all, this is reminiscent of Sir Mix Alot's "Baby got back", with lines like:
I like big butts and I can not lieThe DJs note that they made the song as a tribute to African women, because they are " defined by the shape of their bottoms."
You other brothers can't deny
That when a girl walks in with an itty bitty waist
And a round thing in your face
You get sprung, wanna pull out your tough
'Cause you notice that butt was stuffed
Deep in the jeans she's wearing
I'm hooked and I can't stop staring
Oh baby, I wanna get with you
And take your picture
...
Tell 'em to shake it! (Shake it!) Shake it! (Shake it!)
Shake that healthy butt!
Baby got back!
I'm not even going to go there.
But, what's curious the story in the Ivory Coast is what women are doing to get these big butts. They're injecting massive amounts of vitamin B12 in their bottoms, and breasts in the hopes that they get bigger (you can't have one without the other?).
I guess B12 is not as harmful as silicone or the ingredients in the "F-cup cookies".
In any case, here's the video of the story. It's actually a very upbeat song, and hard to sit still while listening to it. The video features men, women, and children doing this dance.
I just received a request for papers for an upcoming anthropology conference. The person who sent it is trying to put together a panel on reciprocity in research. The abstract sounds good, and, certainly means well. But it points to the debate about our roles in the field, and our work.
The abstract notes that:
Commitment to working on community issues would establish our credibility as social science collaborators with community leaders and reinvigorate the discipline's commitment to social change.
What bothers me about this statement is that there is still a definition between the "us" and "our informants". We are the authority. We are the ones who are being consulted on THEIR problems. We are the ones who give them a voice.
The dialectical relationship will invariably continue as long as we fail to recognize our "informants'" agency and their own voice. The arrogance of my discipline is starting to get to me.
Yes, Boaz had a lot to do with it, and the recent uproar about anthropologists being embedded with the military in the Human Terrain Team (HTT) just goes to show that we learned nothing from our colonial past, or our involvement with the US internment camps, or physical anthropology's participation in the holocaust. We have a very dark history, and it's unfortunate that as a discipline we have not learned all that much from our past. The more we keep the us/them division, the easier it will be to participate in such atrocities.
I'm having a love/hate relationship with my discipline right now.
I know I'm not the only one who thinks this way. There's plenty of us out there. But, the problem is, there seems to be more debate than active change these days, and I have to deal with the here and now, and the finishing of my dissertation.
When was someone going to tell me about this???
I just discovered them, and I think my ears are bleeding now. DAAMN!!
A whole bunch of their videos here: http://www.last.fm/music/Flogging+Molly/+videos/+1-r9hJBR4UYvI
It's what old Dropkick Murphy's(*) wanted to be, and they sounds a LOT better.
AND, they're going to be playing here on Wednesday! I might just have to go.
* Dropkick Murphy's started going downhill for me, when they got a new lead singer, and their politics got very weird for me.