International 17 Jean Valjeans "Les Misérables"

4theriders.com - AFM Banquet 2010

Truth!

***QUESTION***

Greetings,

I'm considering investing in your program, but I
have a question for you before I do. Essentially,
I'm no longer looking to hook up with women left
and right. In fact, I think I've met "the one,"
but I'm having trouble making her realize this.
I've been pursuing her for about five months
(during part of which time she was away at school,
but we kept in regular contact, at first through
e-mail and, later, over the phone), and I get the
sense that she's very guarded about relationships.
She's *very* goal oriented (which is one of the
many things I love about her, BTW), and therefore
very busy, and - I suspect - she's been burned in
the past, relationship wise. At any rate, on a
couple of occasions, it felt to me as if things
were moving forward, and then she backpedaled;
perhaps she "got spooked," and took a big step
back to protect herself. Most recently, we were
out for the first time since she finished school,
and - insofar as I was able to determine, I was
getting the green light all night: at a movie, I
slipped my arm around her and she leaned in,
resting her head on my shoulder; later, we were at
a club for a band, and when we were ready to
leave, she reached across the table and held my
hand for a while; on the way back to the car, it
was pretty chilly, and when she complained about
the chill, I stepped over and hugged her. She
responded by stepping into it: she pressed her
face hard into my shoulder, and stepped into full
body to body contact - hip to hip, shoulder to
shoulder and everything in between. When we got
back to her place, I moved to kiss her and she
shied away such that it would have been
*extremely* awkward for me to actually do so.

At any rate, we've gotten together since (in fact,
I offered to cook dinner for her, and she somehow
maneuvered it around such that I was *her* guest,
and she cooked for me) and we talked a while. As I
said above, I think she got a little spooked. She
specifically said that she thought the
relationship could've evolved into something
romantic, but that it hasn't, and she wasn't sure
why. At this moment, she says she doesn't believe
it will. We remain *very* close friends, but I
still believe she's the one, and I've told her
that I'm still going to pursue this, and she's
keen on still spending time together (for her, for
now, as close friends).

My question is this: do you believe your program
can aid me in turning her around on this? If so,
why?

Thanks,

B.

>>>MY COMMENTS:

OK, sit down for this.

Hold on to something tight, because I'm going
to yell at you for your own damn good...

YOU ARE TOTALLY MISSING WHAT'S GOING ON!

THIS WOMAN ACTUALLY LIKES YOU, AND YOU'RE
SCREWING IT ALL UP BY ACTING LIKE A NEEDY WUSS
BAG!

If you were closer, I'd slap you myself.

DUH!

Whew. Let me calm myself. As you know, I don't
usually get so worked up. That makes three
exclamation marks in one email, and I haven't even
started lambasting you proper yet. (What is
lambasting, anyway? And is that how you spell it?
It's such a great word. I really should look and
find out.)

OK, I'm calm.

NOW, let's have a little talk here...

The reason why this kind of situation bothers
me is at least twofold:

1) Because I've been in it myself about a
bazillion and a half times, and it sucks to be
screwing something up and not even realize that
you're doing it.

2) I can tell from your email that you actually
like this girl A LOT, and that she's probably a
fantastic woman... and I hate to see you working
so hard against yourself... and screwing this up
when it's right there in front of you for the
taking.

Before I tell you all the reasons why you most
DEFINITELY should invest in my Advanced Dating
Techniques program, let me give you a few pointers
that might help you STOP screwing this up in the
meantime.

OK, back to the basics.

Let's take this from the top...

At the very beginning of your email, you said
something that basically telegraphed EXACTLY what
was going on here...

You said "...I think I've met "the one," but
I'm having trouble making her realize this. I've
been pursuing her for about five months..."

You're having trouble making her REALIZE this?

You've been PURSUING her?

Do you assume that at some point within the
NEXT five months that she's going to wake up one
day and feel a powerful ATTRACTION for you because
you like to chase her around and tell her how you
feel about her?

Normally I'd make fun of you here, and tell you
that you don't get it... blah blah blah.

But for some reason I feel like I just have to
lay things out for you directly.

Look, man... the reason why she's telling you
that she "doesn't know why it hasn't evolved into
something romantic" is that she doesn't FEEL IT.

She doesn't FEEL IT.

Get it?

SHE DOESN'T FEEL IT!

She doesn't feel ATTRACTION for you.

And you can't CONVINCE her to feel it by
chasing her around and telling her how you "feel"
about her.

Attraction, as I always say, ISN'T A CHOICE.

You need to go and get yourself an IN-DEPTH
education on the topic of creating ATTRACTION.
Go read my new online eBook "Attraction Isn't A
Choice".

This book will take you "behind the scenes" and
show you how to communicate with women in a way
that TRIGGERS the attraction... instead of trying
to be a "nice guy" and CONVINCE her to feel it for
you.

You can download it right now, and be reading
it within a few minutes. Go download it here:

http://www.DoubleYourDates.com/AttractionBook/

Now, you're acting like most guys who think things
like: "If she only knew how I felt about her,
she'd feel the same way" and "If I keep pursuing
her, she'll eventually see how much I love her"
etc.

Well guess what?

AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN, HOMEY.

Right now you are playing what is referred to
as a "losing game".

Think of it this way. If you stop on the way
home from work every day and buy a lottery ticket,
you'll win once in awhile. Hell, you might even be
lucky one day and win big.

But your chances SUCK.

You're probably going to lose a LOT more than
you win over time.

Like I said, you COULD win big. There is a
chance. But you probably won't. And I mean
probably with a BIG P.

I refer to the way that you're acting as "Being
a Wussy" (that's the technical term... made it up
myself).

When you act like a Wussy, you do things like:

-Pursue

-Cling

-Share "feelings"

-Act submissive

-Seek approval

-Pine away

This is WUSSY behavior.

It's distinctly FEMININE in nature.

When guys act like this, they're getting in
touch with their inner little girl (and she needs
a spanking in the worst way).

And are you ready for the WORST, WORST part?

When you act like this around a woman (and
ESPECIALLY a "goal oriented" woman who's probably
smart and powerful like yours) they CANNOT feel
the emotion of ATTRACTION towards you.

Women aren't attracted to Wussies.

This is a UNIVERSAL truth.

And by the way that you describe your
relationship with this woman, SHE REALLY WANTS TO
BE ATTRACTED TO YOU!

She's trying, man.

And she probably KNOWS that you'd be a great
guy to be in a relationship with... but she just
doesn't FEEL IT... so she holds back. I'm sure she
WISHES that she could be attracted to you. I'll
bet you money.

Look, you need to STOP acting like a nice
friend guy Wuss IMMEDIATELY if you want this to
turn into something.

You're probably beyond help with this
particular woman, but I'm going to give you a few
ideas JUST IN CASE...

1) Stop calling her all the time (if you do),
and stop spending so much time with her.

2) Start dating other women IMMEDIATELY, and
make sure she knows about it.

3) Stop being all lovey with her, and don't
tell her how you "feel about her" anymore. Stop it.

4) Accept that you will probably be friends
with her forever, and start acting that way.

5) Don't try to kiss her or be physical with
her at ALL anymore until you understand what you're
doing.

Remember, what you're doing ISN'T WORKING.

If you do these things that I've described, you
will probably have the best chance of turning this
around.

NOW, the next thing you need to do is what you
asked me about in your email... GET MY ADVANCED
DATING TECHNIQUES PROGRAM.

You need a new perspective on this entire
situation. And you need a new perspective on
women.

You're obviously a smart guy, and once you
begin to understand how ATTRACTION works for
women, you'll change how you behave COMPLETELY.

Total transformation.

And the best part is that you won't be changing
how you act and just "faking it". You'll change
how you act because you GET IT.

It's really fantastic to HELP a woman feel that
magical ATTRACTION for you that she REALLY WANTS
TO FEEL.

And it's also amazing to know exactly how to
get physical with a woman without having to deal
with the awkward "shy away from the kiss"
situation that you described in your email.

I guarantee that when you listen to and/or
watch my "Advanced Dating Techniques" program,
it will FOREVER CHANGE how you think about and
act around women. Period, end of story.

Here, let me give you the hard- sell...

I had to learn all of this stuff the hard way.
I've been right where you are many, many, MANY
times in my life. It sucks. I know it does.

The reason why my program will be good for you
is because it was good FOR ME FIRST. I teach what
I do.

And because I also believe that you should only
have to pay for something that you find value in,
I'll send it to you:

-At my risk.

-In a plain package so your mom doesn't know
what's inside.

-Free for you to try for a MONTH.

I'm betting that once you have it in your hot
little hands that I couldn't pry it away from you
with a crowbar.

I'm serious.

OK, enough of me trying to convince you of
something you already know. Go watch the newest
video preview clips and get it here:

http://www.DoubleYourDates.com/AdvancedSeries/

Now repeat after me: I WILL NEVER ACT LIKE
A WUSSY AGAIN!

If you want to make your dating life a whole
lot better and easier, then stop and think about
your behavior... and resolve right now to stop
acting like a WUSS for the rest of your life.

Being "nice" and "accommodating" and
"understanding" is great for friendships and
social relationships, but it's HORRIBLE for
ATTRACTION.

An interesting, attractive woman doesn't want a
guy that she can push around. She doesn't want a
guy who does what she wants him to do. She doesn't
want a little boy that she can train and raise.

An interesting, attractive woman wants a MAN.

This doesn't make LOGICAL sense, I know. But
it's the truth. These submissive qualities will
only work in attracting a woman IF SHE LIKES
DRESSING UP IN LEATHER AND WHIPPING HER MAN... AND
CHARGING $400.00 AN HOUR!

And my guess is that this isn't the kind of
woman that you're looking for.

If you want to stop ACTING like a WUSSY you
need to eliminate your INNER WUSS for good and
build a rock-solid confidence level that is
NATURALLY attractive to women. So you also
need to take a look at my "Deep Inner Game" program.

This program will eliminate inner challenges
like insecurity, fear and anxiety that are holding
you back from TRUE success with women. And as long
as you have those kinds of fears you're gonna
continue acting like a needy wussbag.

So go take a look at some of the video clips
from this program here:

http://www.DoubleYourDates.com/DeepInnerGame/

Now I've explained some of the important
qualities that you need to cultivate in yourself
if you want to attract women... and keep them
attracted. Now get out there and start working
on it.

...and if you're reading this right now and you
haven't yet downloaded your copy of my online
eBook "Double Your Dating", I have something to
tell you...

My eBook is the foundation for EVERYTHING that
I teach in these newsletters, my Advanced Dating
Techniques, and other programs.

And you need to read my Double Your Dating
ebook, because it contains a lot of valuable
material that sets the stage for everything else.
It's here, so go download it now:

http://www.DoubleYourDates.com/eBook/


Like I said, if you're just starting out, my
ebooks and programs will show you things that
you've never seen or heard before. You'll
get a completely new perspective on what it
takes to be successful with women and dating.

If you're already successful, my programs
will make you BETTER. There are a lot of very
advanced concepts included... and you'll get
to hear me interview guys who are AMAZING
with women in my Advanced Series. In other
words, no matter where you are with women,
you'll improve.

I'll talk to you again soon.

Your Friend,

David D.

P.S. Do NOT forget to add me to your email
whitelist. It's the best way to make sure you
get my dating tips each week. You don't want
to miss out on learning the secrets to attraction,
approaching women, and more.

Google Demo Slam: Epic Docs Animation

See the presentation at http://goo.gl/6MJwH

From The Economist: The disposable academic - Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time (True or False, you decide)

ON THE evening before All Saints’ Day in 1517, Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg. In those days a thesis was simply a position one wanted to argue. Luther, an Augustinian friar, asserted that Christians could not buy their way to heaven. Today a doctoral thesis is both an idea and an account of a period of original research. Writing one is the aim of the hundreds of thousands of students who embark on a doctorate of philosophy (PhD) every year.


In most countries a PhD is a basic requirement for a career in academia. It is an introduction to the world of independent research—a kind of intellectual masterpiece, created by an apprentice in close collaboration with a supervisor. The requirements to complete one vary enormously between countries, universities and even subjects. Some students will first have to spend two years working on a master’s degree or diploma. Some will receive a stipend; others will pay their own way. Some PhDs involve only research, some require classes and examinations and some require the student to teach undergraduates. A thesis can be dozens of pages in mathematics, or many hundreds in history. As a result, newly minted PhDs can be as young as their early 20s or world-weary forty-somethings.


One thing many PhD students have in common is dissatisfaction. Some describe their work as “slave labour”. Seven-day weeks, ten-hour days, low pay and uncertain prospects are widespread. You know you are a graduate student, goes one quip, when your office is better decorated than your home and you have a favourite flavour of instant noodle. “It isn’t graduate school itself that is discouraging,” says one student, who confesses to rather enjoying the hunt for free pizza. “What’s discouraging is realising the end point has been yanked out of reach.”


Whining PhD students are nothing new, but there seem to be genuine problems with the system that produces research doctorates (the practical “professional doctorates” in fields such as law, business and medicine have a more obvious value). There is an oversupply of PhDs. Although a doctorate is designed as training for a job in academia, the number of PhD positions is unrelated to the number of job openings. Meanwhile, business leaders complain about shortages of high-level skills, suggesting PhDs are not teaching the right things. The fiercest critics compare research doctorates to Ponzi or pyramid schemes.




Rich pickings

For most of history even a first degree at a university was the privilege of a rich few, and many academic staff did not hold doctorates. But as higher education expanded after the second world war, so did the expectation that lecturers would hold advanced degrees. American universities geared up first: by 1970 America was producing just under a third of the world’s university students and half of its science and technology PhDs (at that time it had only 6% of the global population). Since then America’s annual output of PhDs has doubled, to 64,000.


Other countries are catching up. Between 1998 and 2006 the number of doctorates handed out in all OECD countries grew by 40%, compared with 22% for America. PhD production sped up most dramatically in Mexico, Portugal, Italy and Slovakia. Even Japan, where the number of young people is shrinking, churned out about 46% more PhDs. Part of that growth reflects the expansion of university education outside America. Richard Freeman, a labour economist at Harvard University, says that by 2006 America was enrolling just 12% of the world’s students.


But universities have discovered that PhD students are cheap, highly motivated and disposable labour. With more PhD students they can do more research, and in some countries more teaching, with less money. A graduate assistant at Yale might earn $20,000 a year for nine months of teaching. The average pay of full professors in America was $109,000 in 2009—higher than the average for judges and magistrates.


Indeed, the production of PhDs has far outstripped demand for university lecturers. In a recent book, Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, an academic and a journalist, report that America produced more than 100,000 doctoral degrees between 2005 and 2009. In the same period there were just 16,000 new professorships. Using PhD students to do much of the undergraduate teaching cuts the number of full-time jobs. Even in Canada, where the output of PhD graduates has grown relatively modestly, universities conferred 4,800 doctorate degrees in 2007 but hired just 2,616 new full-time professors. Only a few fast-developing countries, such as Brazil and China, now seem short of PhDs.




A short course in supply and demand

In research the story is similar. PhD students and contract staff known as “postdocs”, described by one student as “the ugly underbelly of academia”, do much of the research these days. There is a glut of postdocs too. Dr Freeman concluded from pre-2000 data that if American faculty jobs in the life sciences were increasing at 5% a year, just 20% of students would land one. In Canada 80% of postdocs earn $38,600 or less per year before tax—the average salary of a construction worker. The rise of the postdoc has created another obstacle on the way to an academic post. In some areas five years as a postdoc is now a prerequisite for landing a secure full-time job.


These armies of low-paid PhD researchers and postdocs boost universities’, and therefore countries’, research capacity. Yet that is not always a good thing. Brilliant, well-trained minds can go to waste when fashions change. The post-Sputnik era drove the rapid growth in PhD physicists that came to an abrupt halt as the Vietnam war drained the science budget. Brian Schwartz, a professor of physics at the City University of New York, says that in the 1970s as many as 5,000 physicists had to find jobs in other areas.


In America the rise of PhD teachers’ unions reflects the breakdown of an implicit contract between universities and PhD students: crummy pay now for a good academic job later. Student teachers in public universities such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison formed unions as early as the 1960s, but the pace of unionisation has increased recently. Unions are now spreading to private universities; though Yale and Cornell, where university administrators and some faculty argue that PhD students who teach are not workers but apprentices, have resisted union drives. In 2002 New York University was the first private university to recognise a PhD teachers’ union, but stopped negotiating with it three years later.


In some countries, such as Britain and America, poor pay and job prospects are reflected in the number of foreign-born PhD students. Dr Freeman estimates that in 1966 only 23% of science and engineering PhDs in America were awarded to students born outside the country. By 2006 that proportion had increased to 48%. Foreign students tend to tolerate poorer working conditions, and the supply of cheap, brilliant, foreign labour also keeps wages down.


Proponents of the PhD argue that it is worthwhile even if it does not lead to permanent academic employment. Not every student embarks on a PhD wanting a university career and many move successfully into private-sector jobs in, for instance, industrial research. That is true; but drop-out rates suggest that many students become dispirited. In America only 57% of doctoral students will have a PhD ten years after their first date of enrolment. In the humanities, where most students pay for their own PhDs, the figure is 49%. Worse still, whereas in other subject areas students tend to jump ship in the early years, in the humanities they cling like limpets before eventually falling off. And these students started out as the academic cream of the nation. Research at one American university found that those who finish are no cleverer than those who do not. Poor supervision, bad job prospects or lack of money cause them to run out of steam.


Even graduates who find work outside universities may not fare all that well. PhD courses are so specialised that university careers offices struggle to assist graduates looking for jobs, and supervisors tend to have little interest in students who are leaving academia. One OECD study shows that five years after receiving their degrees, more than 60% of PhDs in Slovakia and more than 45% in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany and Spain were still on temporary contracts. Many were postdocs. About one-third of Austria’s PhD graduates take jobs unrelated to their degrees. In Germany 13% of all PhD graduates end up in lowly occupations. In the Netherlands the proportion is 21%.




A very slim premium

PhD graduates do at least earn more than those with a bachelor’s degree. A study in the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management by Bernard Casey shows that British men with a bachelor’s degree earn 14% more than those who could have gone to university but chose not to. The earnings premium for a PhD is 26%. But the premium for a master’s degree, which can be accomplished in as little as one year, is almost as high, at 23%. In some subjects the premium for a PhD vanishes entirely. PhDs in maths and computing, social sciences and languages earn no more than those with master’s degrees. The premium for a PhD is actually smaller than for a master’s degree in engineering and technology, architecture and education. Only in medicine, other sciences, and business and financial studies is it high enough to be worthwhile. Over all subjects, a PhD commands only a 3% premium over a master’s degree.


Dr Schwartz, the New York physicist, says the skills learned in the course of a PhD can be readily acquired through much shorter courses. Thirty years ago, he says, Wall Street firms realised that some physicists could work out differential equations and recruited them to become “quants”, analysts and traders. Today several short courses offer the advanced maths useful for finance. “A PhD physicist with one course on differential equations is not competitive,” says Dr Schwartz.


Many students say they are pursuing their subject out of love, and that education is an end in itself. Some give little thought to where the qualification might lead. In one study of British PhD graduates, about a third admitted that they were doing their doctorate partly to go on being a student, or put off job hunting. Nearly half of engineering students admitted to this. Scientists can easily get stipends, and therefore drift into doing a PhD. But there are penalties, as well as benefits, to staying at university. Workers with “surplus schooling”—more education than a job requires—are likely to be less satisfied, less productive and more likely to say they are going to leave their jobs.


Academics tend to regard asking whether a PhD is worthwhile as analogous to wondering whether there is too much art or culture in the world. They believe that knowledge spills from universities into society, making it more productive and healthier. That may well be true; but doing a PhD may still be a bad choice for an individual.


The interests of academics and universities on the one hand and PhD students on the other are not well aligned. The more bright students stay at universities, the better it is for academics. Postgraduate students bring in grants and beef up their supervisors’ publication records. Academics pick bright undergraduate students and groom them as potential graduate students. It isn’t in their interests to turn the smart kids away, at least at the beginning. One female student spoke of being told of glowing opportunities at the outset, but after seven years of hard slog she was fobbed off with a joke about finding a rich husband.


Monica Harris, a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky, is a rare exception. She believes that too many PhDs are being produced, and has stopped admitting them. But such unilateral academic birth control is rare. One Ivy-League president, asked recently about PhD oversupply, said that if the top universities cut back others will step in to offer them instead.




Noble pursuits

Many of the drawbacks of doing a PhD are well known. Your correspondent was aware of them over a decade ago while she slogged through a largely pointless PhD in theoretical ecology. As Europeans try to harmonise higher education, some institutions are pushing the more structured learning that comes with an American PhD.


The organisations that pay for research have realised that many PhDs find it tough to transfer their skills into the job market. Writing lab reports, giving academic presentations and conducting six-month literature reviews can be surprisingly unhelpful in a world where technical knowledge has to be assimilated quickly and presented simply to a wide audience. Some universities are now offering their PhD students training in soft skills such as communication and teamwork that may be useful in the labour market. In Britain a four-year NewRoutePhD claims to develop just such skills in graduates.


Measurements and incentives might be changed, too. Some university departments and academics regard numbers of PhD graduates as an indicator of success and compete to produce more. For the students, a measure of how quickly those students get a permanent job, and what they earn, would be more useful. Where penalties are levied on academics who allow PhDs to overrun, the number of students who complete rises abruptly, suggesting that students were previously allowed to fester.


Many of those who embark on a PhD are the smartest in their class and will have been the best at everything they have done. They will have amassed awards and prizes. As this year’s new crop of graduate students bounce into their research, few will be willing to accept that the system they are entering could be designed for the benefit of others, that even hard work and brilliance may well not be enough to succeed, and that they would be better off doing something else. They might use their research skills to look harder at the lot of the disposable academic. Someone should write a thesis about that.

http://www.economist.com/node/17723223

I Just Had Sex

Amazing Satellite Images Of The Ghost Cities Of China

he hottest market in the hottest economy in the world is Chinese real estate. The big question is how vulnerable is this market to a crash.

One red flag is the vast number of vacant homes spread through China, by some estimates up to 64 million vacant homes.

We've tracked down satellite photos of these unnerving places, based on a report from Forensic Asia Limited. They call it a clear sign of a bubble: "There’s city after city full of empty streets and vast government buildings, some in the most inhospitable locations. It is the modern equivalent of building pyramids. With 20 new cities being built every year, we hope to be able to expand our list going forward."

View the photos and Source at - http://www.businessinsider.com/pictures-chinese-ghost-cities-2010-12?slop=1

Point Black @ NYP TEP Award!

Call Of Duty: Black Ops - LEGO style

Slip Of The Tongue

SLIP OF THE TONGUE by Adriel Luis

My glares burn through her.
And I’m sure that such actions aren’t foreign to her
because the essence of her beauty is, well, the essence of beauty.

And in the presence of this higher being,
the weakness of my masculinity kicks in,
causing me to personify my wannabe big-baller, shot-caller,
God’s gift to the female species with shiny suit wrapping rapping like,
“Yo, what’s crackin shorty how you livin’ what’s your sign what’s your size I dig your style, yo.”

Now, this girl was no fool.
She gives me a dirty look with the quickness like,
“Boy, you must be stupid.”
so I’m looking at myself,
“Boy, you must be stupid.”
But looking upon her I am kinda feelin’ her style.

So I try again.
But, instead of addressing her properly,
I blurt out one of my fake-ass playalistic lines like,
“Gurl, you must be a traffic ticket cuz you got fine written all over you.”
Now, she’s trying to leave and I’m trying to keep her here.
So at a final attempt, I utter,
“Gurl, what is your ethnic makeup?”

At this point, her glare was scorching through me,
and somehow she manages to make her brown eyes
resemble some kinda brown fire or something,
but there’s no snap or head moement,
no palm to face, click of tongue, middle finger,
roll of eyes, twist of lips, or girl power chant.
She just glares through me with these burning eyes
and her gaze grabs you by the throat.

She says, “Ethnic makeup?”
She says, “First of all, makeup’s just an anglicized, colonized, commodified utility
that my sisters have been programmed to consume,
forcing them to cover up their natural state
in order to imitate what another sister looks like in her natural state
because people keep telling her
that the other sister’s natural state is more beautiful
than the first sister’s natural state.
At the same time,
the other sister isn’t even in her natural state,
because she’s trying to imitate yet another sister,
so in actuality, the natural state that the first sister’s trying to imitate
wasn’t even natural in the first place.”

Now I’m thinking, “Damn, this girl’s kicking knowledge!”
But, meanwhile, she keeps spitting on it like
“Fine. I’ll tell you bout my ‘ethnic makeup.’
I wear foundation,
not that powdery shit,
I wear the foundation laid by my indigenous people.
It’s that foundation that makes it so that past being globalized,
I can still vocalize with confidence that i know where my roots are.
I wear this foundation not upon my face, but within my soul,
and I take this from my ancestors
because I’ll be damned if I’d ever let an American or European corporation
tell me what my foundation
should look like.”

I wear lipstick,
for my lips stick to the ears of men,
so they can experience in surround sound my screams of agony
with each lash of rulers, measuring tape, and scales,
as if my waistline and weight are inversely propotional to my value as a human being.
See my lips, they stick, but not together.
Rather, they flail open with flames to burn down this culture that once kept them shut.
Now, I mess with eye shadow,
but my eyes shadow over this time where you’ve gone at ends to keep me blind.
But you can’t cover my eyes, look into them.
My eyes foreshadow change.
My eyes foreshadow light.
and I’m not into hair dyeing.
but I’m here, dying, because this oppression won’t get out of my hair.
I have these highlights.
They are highlights of my past atrocities,
they form this oppression I can’t wash off.
It tangles around my mind and twists and braids me in layers,
this oppression manifests,
it’s stressing me so that even though I don’t color my hair,
in a couple of years it’ll look like I dyed it gray.
So what’s my ethnic makeup ?
I don’t have any.
Because your ethnicity isn’t something you can just make up.
And as for that crap my sisters paint on their faces, that’s not makeup, it’s make-believe.”

I can’t seem to look up at her.
and I’m sure that such actions aren’t foreign to her
because the expression on her face
shows that she knows that my mind is in a trance.

As her footsteps fade, my ego is left in crutches.
And rejection never sounded so sweet.