M.I.A.--Born Free

So, if you have not seen M.I.A's newest artistic contribution you should check it out, but let me warn you about it first.

M.I.A just recently released her new 9ish minute music video called Born Free at the end of April and the very same day it came out, youtube took it off their site. Now it's back on but it has an age restriction, so you have to sign-in to your account to watch it.

Let's just say it's nothing like Lady Gaga's recent long music video contribution, Telephone. Instead of wearing telephones and cigarettes on her head to strike your "wtf?" button, M.I.A has decided to use gratuitous violence to bring awareness to the issue of ethnic cleansing. You might have to hide your eyes a couple times.

The song itself is eerie and not very pleasing to the ears, but I suppose that's how M.I.A wanted it.

While we are talking about them both, here's what M.I.A has to say about Gaga:

M.I.A on GAGA

Personally, I'm glad someone finally called Lady Gaga out.

More importantly though, I want to know what people think about this video.
Do you think that using violence in art to stop violence in our world works?
How did the video make you feel?

carnival trash

So the other night, I went to the carnival thingy that they have every year at Buchanan Park (in Lancaster) and I was disgusted with the amount of trash was there.

They didn't recycle at all. Each trash barrel was filled to the brim with trash, plastic bottles, cans, and cardboard. Some cans were overflowing all over the ground with this shit. We have to come up with a better way.

How? How can we get on top of issues like this fast enough? Should it be mandatory for all young school students to take at least one field trip to at least one landfill? You know get it into the brainwaves of the youth?

Sometimes I feel like that would help. Where do we think our trash goes? It doesn't just disappear. I think recycling should be mandatory. If I was in charge of school systems, I'd also make sure students were all required to see a handful (more like a cart-full) of documentaries on our world. One that would be on that list of documentaries would be NO IMPACT MAN. If you haven't seen this yet, give it a whirl. He's a hero of mine.

But I suppose it's not just students we need to educate. It's the older generations too. It's me. It's you. We have to take responsibility. We have to remember who we are.

Meanwhile, I ran in the race against racism and they had this amazing outlook on "greening" the race. Instead of passing out all of those plastic deerpark water bottles, they passed out nice YWCA ones that you could keep and re-use again and again and also fill up at designated sinks. It was a great idea! Maybe we could do this at fairs/carnivals in the future?

Love.