Pictures! (Of Vanity and the Golden Ratio Part II)

I figured this place was getting a bit stale so I added pictures! Hurrah.

Before the plastic surgery (the average male contender):

After the plastic surgery, various improvements made to the chin and nose:
Only through artificial means can we achieve an image that is of impeccable androgyny and alien beauty (in this image, the final touches are made as they surgically remove the eyeglasses from the previous image; the cheeks have been tucked and the lips enhanced for a fuller look):
Before Adobe Photoshop:
After Mad Adobe Photoshop Skills (Rogaine?):
Theme: The Deceptive Effects of Digital Manipulation are presented here in painstaking detail. Don't believe what you see!

A Family Reunion Photo at the Beach 1997:


Only through light and photography are we given the privilege to cherish the most tender moments in life. This is a photo taken during the 2004Li family reunion. There's me (A), the former Chemistry Major and now struggling Microbiology Major. I am the epitome of tragic hero and then there's my self absorbed mother (B) dressed in sky blue and adorned with some pebble necklace. I know she purposely obscures me. After my father died she had been sleeping with my younger brother and my step-sister. My step sister (D) is actually in this picture as well but because she is shy and timid, she may be harder to spot. She is in the distance and was not asked to pose for the photo. She got through college with a porn scholarship. Needless to say, father was proud. My distant cousin (B) from Sweden adorns this photo with her well-shaped ass as she stands with that perfectly formed tush conspicuously distracting from the subject of the photo: me. I asked her once to help me make my babies for me and we haven't spoken ever since and hence the word "distant." The lady in red in the center isn't actually family per se, she's my psycho "now" ex-girlfriend Dakota Fanning (C), who went with us on this particular trip to the Hawaiian Coast. The poor soul was addicted to heroin and sucked dick for quarters.
It's sometimes frustrating to live with a family that's so god damn hot. Due to my social upbringing around people of such immense pulchritude, it is understandable that I have no qualms about incest because frankly, cousins are hot. Hot as hell. It's doesn't matter whether a relationship is platonic or physical, all that matters is that the two consenting parties are in love. These words are cliche only because they ring true.
Of all the family photographs we've taken over the years during various bi-annual family reunions, this one was the best.
For those who don't know due the distracting optical illusion, this is a photograph of a beautiful sea shore.
Wallpaper (seriously don't download this)

On being "Meek," "Puppies," "Squirrels," and "Kittens" (Part 2 of 3 of April 1st)

Meek would never be a word I'd use to describe myself. Furthermore, I would never have expected an answer like that from a question like "What if I had HIV?" When I first read the response, I thought of of squirrels, puppies, and kittens and thought to myself, simple high school mnemonic devices should never be underestimated and yet being uncertain of its precise meaning, I followed Charles Harrington Elster's advice and looked up the word in the lexicon. Meek suggests submissiveness, gentleness, and humility. It's meaning seems innocuous but it's connotation especially within the context is negative. A "meek appearance," she said to me suggests homosexuality and then I realized my friend doesn't really think too highly of me...

But preferably she would have used a better word to suggest this line of logic because meek is supposed to have positive connotations (which is disappointing but I know I have become quite anal with words since I realize that I've been using a lot of them incorrectly myself):

Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
Matthew 11:29 (This is what Jesus said....)

Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.
Numbers 12:3

Even more interesting is that I'm not "meek" but I appear to be; here lies the underpinning political correctness that envelopes today's society. My friend told me her pre-installed gaydar picks up "meekness," from people like me who apparently have a meek disposition. I was dumbfounded but the conversation had developed into talk of my sexuality instead of what I had expected before, which was one of two possible outcomes:
a) my ploy dispatched
b) some sympathy for me (I can now attest this is a cruel world)

What does this say about me? What does this say about her? Well one thing is that her gaydar may not be great as she claimed it to be but definitely her straight-dar is completely out of order. How about all of my virile qualities?

In a more serious light, some obvious conclusions come to mind. My perception of myself is largely different than theirs (my peers). Not only is this a prerequisite to understanding how we view each other within our environments, this maybe a prerequisite to understanding how our world views are developed. This will be a recurrent theme within the experiment (this will be how we shall refer to the April Fool's hoax).
What the experiment does not allow me to observe is any hesitation to answer the question or any recognizable facial reactions and vocal discrepancies that may have occurred if the conversation were not mediated through a chat program. I must recognize and acknowledge these as limitations.
Is she judgmental? Am I feminine? Is she crafty? Am I gullible? Another set of assumptions about one another are generated and reevaluated.

Another friend, this one male, replied in the most pragmatic and neutral manner. He is an engineering major unlike the previous life science major. Again, this is one of the April Fools' set-ups that somehow got mangled by myself. Although the answers he came up with seemed to be cold, aloof, and practical, they were all unintentionally funny. "I will still finish school," he says shortly afterwards and then thinks a little and goes on to say, "he'll find job if he were me, he'd go to Hong Kong and live the rest of his years fighting HIV." I half-suspected that he knew my sinister ploy and was playing along. I thought it sadistic. Either you dispatch my ploy or sympathize with me but this is just sadistic, I thought. This wasn't the case, and the greatest line was this: "I guess I wouldn't have sex with you." I wouldn't either but you're good. Too funny. Expect the unexpected. I realized I had so far overestimated my social predictive capabilities.

What does this say about me? The focus is less on solely "me" at this stage in the game. But instead, the situational context comes onto the foreground and becomes an important focus. It seems, one could justifiably reason in the most obvious manner that sometimes realistic people are simultaneously correct in reasoning and hilarious even if unintentionally so. Most comedians are just telling the truth and oftentimes the truth is funny.

This does however delve into a specific "philosophy" of life model which although only marginally related to the subject at hand, I shall discuss briefly. It is inspirational that a life threatening viral infection such as AIDS does not deter my good friend from his other objectives in life which include amongst others getting a job, getting educated, and simply living. What I had realized about myself is somewhat damning if not pathetically so. I suspected and assumed that if I had HIV, I'd go vacationing and try to "live" life instead of work and toil. It is this idea where one capitulates to a "minor" difficulty and uses this difficulty as a rationalization to fail in the other parts of life. Here lies the contrast: practical reasoning triumphs over feckless hedonism.

Is he a man of principal? Is this why he is successful academically? Perhaps I should edify my personal idea of life and incorporate some of these ideas as my own. And what would you do, reader?

Most of the people I had fooled got riled up. These were mostly men. "You little fucking asshole" was a common response. Admittedly these are normal and even predictable responses. Perhaps this is the manly response and I presume getting gulled into believing something that is untrue shows weakness. Vulnerability is perhaps a societal placed "feminine" trait but is unacceptable for men. And even those that I attempted to fool but failed to generally got riled up to some extent except this aggression was tinted with a sense of pride. One Political Science major who handily dispatched my ploy was particularly invective. He was infused with this sense of overarching pride when my plot had been completely dismantled but another one, an Engineering Major took his time in dismantling my clever ploy. In this particular case, he assumed the importance of his "time" but most importantly, replied with clever, calculated retorts. The replies were intellectually elevated which particularly annoyed me. At least, somewhat. Sleight of hand it seems is unpopular even on a holiday.

It's easy to come up with some generalizations related to this phenomena. We are more alike than we are different. As a male, I could predict these responses but because I focus on these very aspects of the responses, particularly "pride," I guess I too am overcome with a sense of pride when I do succeed in fooling someone. Again, I am angry when I fail to convince people to believe my purposeful ploy.

But what of those who believed me? One female, followed a line of questioning and was skeptically curious and only after I revealed that it was all a hoax, she reflected in disbelief, "How could she be so naive?" (this is paraphrasing) Do I think her stupid? No. Gullible? No. Human? Yes. Perhaps the most beautifully elegant response came from a younger male friend. In summary, his genuine care and shock even was translated to text via instant messenger. He was coming up with options for me to live. Asking if I had told my parents yet. Even consoling me of my situation. Does this suggest that he trusts me as a true friend would? He is academically well off, smart fellow but how could he not detect the lie. Does academics have anything to do with it? Perhaps he was too young?

These questions become unimportant. I realize only the youth had the capacity to sympathize. There was no other soul, whether male of female that could sympathize with someone who had HIV and even though it was a hoax, it helps us ask the most important question of all: what does this say about us as humans? That we live in constant doubt? Or that we don't believe our "friends"? Who are our friends? Is there a correct way to live? I am ambivalent in how I should respond. There is little I could say that would benefit you. But there is a fault with simply believing though, because the innocent who simply believe always lose in the end. I believe the female that believed but used a line of questioning says a lot about the important compromise between humanity and reality. Alternately, even literary allusions to symbolic childhood themes make some connection.

It's April 1st

I suppose we sometimes learn by pure accident. Most accidental knowledge is acquired and agglomerated into some nether region of the mind and quickly labeled common sense. Gumption, I suppose, would be a good word to use.
Some history would aide in understanding my, in retrospect, devious plot. Sometimes I pride myself as a writer and perhaps I am somewhat a wizard in literary legerdemain and so yesterday I set out to fool some acquaintances, some peers, some friends into believing that I had been diagnosed with HIV via the modern convenience of online instant messaging. My ploy was meticulously crafted to sound genuine and though my sample size small, I realized that by the end of the day I had actually convinced 3 persons into sympathizing for my life because of the complications arising from the purportedly life threatening viral infection, while 3 persons caught on quickly and dispatched my ploy, and with 2 persons I mangled up the ploy. Surprisingly no matter the result, there was some insight to be captured. Although everything was set in the spirit of lighthearted frivolity, and the learning experience unintended and hardly expected, the implications that arise from the responses, and even my personal and consequential rebuttals, play off one another to generate a synergistic, yet fractured image of the self as viewed by others and me.
I live by the philosophy that no question is inane however I also believe that some questions are more interesting than others. Interesting questions are the questions that give birth to more interesting questions. Therefore we must continuously ask what are the "right questions"? The right questions are the types of questions that the answerer unwittingly answers truthfully revealing character flaws, personal fears and insecurities, their perception and opinion of say the questioner, and sometimes if you are lucky, their worldview. The question I had asked was inadvertently an implicit question, "What if I had HIV?" It is a simple question and yet it gives rise to many more questions such as "What are the man's ethical and moral values?," "How did this happen?," "What would one do with life abridged" and even more surprisingly, "Is this man gay?" Furthermore if we were to extrapolate, "What do these questions say about us?" and "What do these questions say about them?"
By developing these ideas, we realize this is quite an intricate series of ideas but remember all of these ideas arise by mere fabricated contrivance. I have had the academic even pragmatic response "I'd still finish school", the common sense response "did you wear condoms," and even a telling response... whichever the case, these open ended questions rely on context even though they revolve on a simple idea that a man, even a friend, is suddenly thrusted into a world of nightmarish HIV. We not only learn about ourselves but we get to truly "know" our peers. I do not encourage the use of stratagem but to truly understand what others think and believe underneath the facade, sometimes it is best to ask an indirect question and interpret the response. Ever wonder why big companies like Microsoft ask potential employees bizarre questions in their questionnaire? They want an unadulterated, creative, and perhaps truly honest response. This method is nothing original as many have seen in "Borat," Sascha Cohen takes this "implicitly indirect question" in a literal even physical reality. If he had asked "Are you sexually insecure?" or "Do you feel women are inferior to men?" the answer would certainly have been pre-programmed and politically correct. As for a real life anecdote, I have a friend that utilizes answers.yahoo.com to great effect. Just by saying he sleeps with his cousin, he observes a myriad of responses, all similarly siding with the current social norm.
What if I said, I sexually fantasized about my cousin? She's beautiful and has a tight ass....
I had liberated my writing from what I deem taboo and now, I figure I could just write about anything but still I draw a line. My friend, he doesn't...nothing is taboo and sometimes I fear it gets a bit crazy... too much Borat worship.
Never mind, I digress. I will discuss in greater detail the "reactions" to my false HIV diagnosis next time.

Note to self: draft 1, rewrite required.