technojournee

I already have my courses and the design streams I want to study (branding and identity, advertising, publication, possibly exhibition, information, web-based (keeping my options open)) picked out for my entire degree :))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

Hoping I don’t screwed over by housing and transportation and dining out in New York :)))))))))))))))))))

Hoping I’m safe :)))))))))))))))))))))))))))

Hoping I’m not reminded too much about the tumult of US politics :)))))))))))))))))))))))))

Erin’s Law is named after childhood sexual assault survivor, author, speaker and activist Erin Merryn, who is the founder and President of Erin’s Law, which is registered with the State of Illinois and the IRS as a 501 (c)(4) non-profit social welfare organization. After Erin introduced the legislation in her home state of Illinois, the bill was named “Erin’s Law” after her by legislators and it has caught on nationwide. “Erin’s Law” requires that all public schools in each state implement a prevention-oriented child sexual abuse program. Watch Merryn and actor Julianna Margulies, who is being honored by Identification Discovery and People Mag on Nov 2 for her work with both the Brady Campaign to end Gun Violence and Erin’s Law, take the BUILD stage to discuss this incredibly important law.

Even if this legislature doesn’t pertain to Canadian government, it should most certainly be a universal school mandate, to teach young children how to defend themselves and speak out against sexual predators, when they’re afraid to or don’t fully understand the actions of adults who they love and trust, but are being abused by those very same people. 

mother! (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2017) MINOR SPOILERS

I don’t think I’ve ever been quite as galvanized to write, yet left utterly at a loss for words, inarticulate, and stricken with indiscriminate thoughts racing too fast for my hands to type or my mind to make coherent, than I am now, having seen mother!

It’s this same kind of protracted, grandiloquent language that I’m using now, that Darren Aronofsky employs in mother!, so if you’re weary of my prose now, I can assure you, this same “affectation” will make the film insufferable for you. But while it is undeniably grandiose and indulgent in its symbolism, metaphors, and loose narrative, there’s one thing you should do when you decide to plant yourself into your seat for 121 minutes, which is to suspend all your beliefs about how to watch a movie–this is a fairy tale of sorts; a gruelling, sickening one. Through intense sound, sights, nameless characters, and most of all, trauma after trauma after trauma, Aronofsky tells his own version of a creation myth, or if not quite that, he most certainly evokes profound rumination on the contradictions of pious zealousness, and a misanthropic, pessimistic, reflection on the cruel and selfish, destructive nature of humanity. It’s dividing critics–some call it pretentious, bombastic, and an assault on viewers. But, isn’t that what the world has devolved to? Into madness, violent images, horrific news, videos upon videos of real life trauma and brutality? mother! invokes all the ugliness of ourselves and compacts it, winds it up, binds it in so tightly, that eventually the tension of our existence, of every living, breathing thing, implodes unto itself. It’s an allegorical film, biblical, social, and political, so blunt at times, that it’s a wonder how anyone could walk away from the theatre, confounded, asking each other what the hell happened–how the fuck did the film make you feel? If that isn’t the kind of question you want to ask yourself after seeing a film, then mother! is a futile, masochistic, and deeply unsettling filmic experience, bearing no reward. Otherwise, watch for yourself what happens, and the questions you ask yourself will surprise you.