Heyhey, it’s another year, and that means it’s another Christmas. These things just won’t go away, will they?!
Instead of wallowing in self-pity this year, I’ve decided to vent my holiday frustrations by, what else, ranting! Instead of spending time with my family or friends, I’m spending the day watching TV so I can bring you the greatest gift of all: lowbrow bitching about things you know and love!
Maybe I have too short a fuse, maybe I shouldn’t take commercials so seriously, or maybe I watch way too much tv (what else is there to do while I’m playing 10 hrs straight of video games?), or maybe our society is full of materialistic, shallow, greedy assholes, but just about every commercial I’ve seen this year was horrible. Not horribly done, every commercial gave off that money-wasting mainstream stench, but horrible in content and message. It’s not about family or even Jesus, it’s about getting every single thing you want, exactly what you want, getting the most presents, being able to show off to your shallow friends the next day, and it’s pretty damn infuriating.
So here, for your reading enjoyment as you count down the hours until Santa comes and fulfills your every greedy desire, is the Christmas Commercial Rant Extravaganza!
I’ve ranted about Burlington Coat Factory before, the one with the little girl I wanna slap every time I hear say “I believe in Cashmere,” but they have another gem that starts with a family opening their gifts. The woman says “Wise men bring gifts,” and the announcer says something about “really wise men know where to buy them”. Then later the man declares that if “you give a woman high heels she can conquer the world.” Do I really need to say anything? Every single commercial these people come out with is shallow and ignorant, targeting the snobs that shop in their stores. I’ve had the unfortunate pleasure of going to one, and it’s definitely not intended for people like me. What I especially love is when this commercial plays opposite the one where Burlington talks about giving coats to charity, because I can just see the pathetic people who love their commercials welling up with philanthropic pride at their generosity in giving the poor, pathetic down-and-outs their old coats.
Another awesome one is for cookies, I can’t even remember the brand because it pisses me off so much, in which a little kid comes out to see his father eating cookies off the plate for Santa. “What are you doing?! Those were for Santa! He’s gonna leave!! He’s gonna leave he’s gonna leave he’s gonna leave!!111one1!” he screams hysterically, and the father rushes to the rescue, “ok, let’s fix it,” by making more cookies. I’ll tell you how to “fix it,” slap your fucking kid and send him to bed without presents until he learns not to be a selfish little bastard.
Then there’s one for Old Navy (any commercial by Old Navy sucks ass IMO) with a really annoying singer with lyrics like “you’ve got yours and I’ve got mine,” which I’m not quite sure what the hell that means, but the song sucks on all levels. As it’s neared Christmas, more versions with longer parts of the song have sprouted up, earning it a place of honor here just for the annoyance factor. The commercial itself features a group of pretty-people friends in their fancy clothes all having a present-wrapping party of some sort and it’s just completely unrealistic. This commercial tells me nothing about Old Navy, other than the fact that evidently you have to be a model to shop there.
Another commercial for phones or service or some shit like that features claymation gingerbread men voiced by celebrities/impersonators, I’m not sure. Animation can’t dull the sting of self-serving, inconsiderate kids as the child tells his dad he wants a new phone, while his friends completely ignore everything around them as they text on theirs. The dad tells his son he wants people to stop eating his house (haha, how clevaaaaar!) and then laughs and gives his son the phone anyway. And what does the kid do? Rides away on his bike, the ungrateful little ass.
On that topic, small sidetrack here. I was playing FFXI last night, like I usually do, because what else is there to do on Christmas Eve? Around midnight EST the kid in my party says “brb! Presents! Xbox time~!” and goes away from keyboard for all of 20 minutes before returning and shouting Merry Christmas to the entire zone because he got a Wii. If my kid was playing video games all night, and only came down to open his presents, and went right back to playing video games after, I do believe I would kick his ass, smash his computer, and probably put him up for adoption straight away.
Anyway.
Topping my list is every single diamond ring, earring, and bracelet commercial. Yes, we women love shiny objects, and if you buy us a big one, we’ll love you unconditionally until the end of time. The one that particularly annoys me has a great romantic song playing as a man and woman are stopped at a light. He takes her hand and she looks down to find a diamond necklace in it. Awwwwwwww. They kiss, and it cuts to show the light has turned green and they’re still sitting there as the cabs behind them have to pull around them. CONGRATUFUCKINGLATIONS, you’re in love. You’re not the only people in the world, move your stupid fucking car out of the way and go home to make out. Stop blocking up traffic, you rich assholes. Couples that think they’re the only people in the world make me want to slap them. Anybody that thinks they’re the only person in the world needs a slaptastic wakeup call.
So, you ask, what kind of commercials should there be for Christmas? None, to be honest. But that’s not going to happen. So how about commercials that promote family, giving to those in need? Instead of giving your brat nieces, cousins, half-brothers, and every relative that you hardly know extravagant gifts, why not go down to one of those wishing trees and buy a brokeass family’s kid a present? I know I’m anti-commercialism, but poor kids never had shit to begin with and it’s not greedy or selfish for them to want something resembling normalcy, like a fucking shirt bought at a real store instead of a torn up hand-me-down. If that’s too much for you to handle, why not help out at a shelter, donate food, shovel the old lady next door’s sidewalk, do something besides think of yourself? Let’s see some commercials with THAT spirit.
Merry Fucking Christmas.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Thursday, November 29, 2007
cha-cha-cha-charmin!
What the hell do bears have to do with wiping your ass?
All I see are these retarded toilet paper commercials involving cartoon bears, puppy dogs, and wise-cracking angels. I understand that taking a shit is a dirty, evil thing and people that do it are sinners, but come on. I want to see a commercial where they put a big, sweaty guy like Fat Bastard on a toilet, let him do his thing, and show how the toilet paper fares. Take that, polite society!
____
Artandchaos blog is taking a vacation from valid, meaningful, angry-at-school ranting. Well, okay, a break from valid, meaningful anything. Well...okay, it never really HAD anything valid or meaningful. >.>
All I see are these retarded toilet paper commercials involving cartoon bears, puppy dogs, and wise-cracking angels. I understand that taking a shit is a dirty, evil thing and people that do it are sinners, but come on. I want to see a commercial where they put a big, sweaty guy like Fat Bastard on a toilet, let him do his thing, and show how the toilet paper fares. Take that, polite society!
____
Artandchaos blog is taking a vacation from valid, meaningful, angry-at-school ranting. Well, okay, a break from valid, meaningful anything. Well...okay, it never really HAD anything valid or meaningful. >.>
Sunday, November 11, 2007
how to flunk out of college...
So I finally got my papers back for WGS to find that they were both failing grades (go figure), and that I probably won't pass the class because I haven't bothered to show up to discussion section (big surprise). Apparently I set off the ohshitschoolshooting sort of alarm bells, because upon checking my email I found not only emails from the teacher, but from the health/counseling center expressing their concern. My favorite email is the one the teacher wrote:
Dear Jennifer,
I am writing in regards to your work in Women's and Gender Studies 101. After reading your last two papers, your GTF passed them along to me to check her assessment. At this point it is necessary for me to let you know that both papers 2 and 3 are not passing papers. First and foremost your papers are not passing because you are not doing the assignments. In paper number 2, "Heteronormative Body Politics" you do not follow the instructions and you do not engage in the course materials. That paper received zero points. In paper number 3, "The Cost of Living: Women, Wages, and Welfare" you provide a partial attempt to address the assignment as instructed, and thus I have given you 5 points out of fifteen.
It also has come to my attention that you have only attended one discussion section meeting. Thus, as of now, 40 percent of your grade is not passing. (15% x 2 for each paper, and 10% of your attendance grade). You do have several options at this point. You could withdraw from the course. Or, you could continue with the course, but would have to show significant improvement to reach a passing grade.
On another note, t he content of your papers also suggests that you are feeling quite angry. If that extends beyond the class and you think counseling might help, you can call: 346-3227. If you think it might help to get some guidance on the appropriate parameters for content in an academic paper, perhaps you might consider calling academic advising at 346-3211.
To check my response and recommendations regarding your performance in the course, I have shared your papers with our program director. We agree that you clearly are not doing what the assignments are asking, and we encourage you to meet with me/us if you would like to improve your work. If you would like to meet, please let me know and we can set up an appointment.
Sincerely, Professor Fujiwara
____
I like where she tells me about the counseling center, because I couldn't possibly just be angry at her class, I must be angry at the world. Well, okay, I am, but that's neither here nor there. I really like where she tells me I can't write a paper, despite my first one being asskissingly on topic. I like how it's taken me this many years to take a class like this and--academically--snap. Sorry, had to throw that academically in there, god forbid someone read something like that and get scared and upset that life isn't happy fucking rainbows.
Dear Jennifer,
I am writing in regards to your work in Women's and Gender Studies 101. After reading your last two papers, your GTF passed them along to me to check her assessment. At this point it is necessary for me to let you know that both papers 2 and 3 are not passing papers. First and foremost your papers are not passing because you are not doing the assignments. In paper number 2, "Heteronormative Body Politics" you do not follow the instructions and you do not engage in the course materials. That paper received zero points. In paper number 3, "The Cost of Living: Women, Wages, and Welfare" you provide a partial attempt to address the assignment as instructed, and thus I have given you 5 points out of fifteen.
It also has come to my attention that you have only attended one discussion section meeting. Thus, as of now, 40 percent of your grade is not passing. (15% x 2 for each paper, and 10% of your attendance grade). You do have several options at this point. You could withdraw from the course. Or, you could continue with the course, but would have to show significant improvement to reach a passing grade.
On another note, t he content of your papers also suggests that you are feeling quite angry. If that extends beyond the class and you think counseling might help, you can call: 346-3227. If you think it might help to get some guidance on the appropriate parameters for content in an academic paper, perhaps you might consider calling academic advising at 346-3211.
To check my response and recommendations regarding your performance in the course, I have shared your papers with our program director. We agree that you clearly are not doing what the assignments are asking, and we encourage you to meet with me/us if you would like to improve your work. If you would like to meet, please let me know and we can set up an appointment.
Sincerely, Professor Fujiwara
____
I like where she tells me about the counseling center, because I couldn't possibly just be angry at her class, I must be angry at the world. Well, okay, I am, but that's neither here nor there. I really like where she tells me I can't write a paper, despite my first one being asskissingly on topic. I like how it's taken me this many years to take a class like this and--academically--snap. Sorry, had to throw that academically in there, god forbid someone read something like that and get scared and upset that life isn't happy fucking rainbows.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
another one bites the dust!
Paper 3 for Women Whining class.
Haven't gotten the other one back yet, maybe tomorrow.
This latest one was to talk about our budget, and then compare it with a single welfare/TANF mother's $669/month budget, then talk about how she could fix her craptacular life.
All I know is that I put this off for a week and decided to work on it at the last minute after Halloween festivities, and it's nearly 3 am now, which makes for "interesting papers". At this point, even if I fail this class, the knowledge that some poor sap had to grade my horrible papers is compensation enough.
________
“Wow, I never knew I spent so much of my—parents’—money on lattes, designer sunglasses, and booze for my drunken sorority’s parties! I take everything from my brand new car to my spacious apartment in the nice part of town for granted! The rest of the people in the world, especially women, sure have hard lives! I’m going to vote pro-women in every election and organize some marches!”
If this is the sort of revelation you’re expecting from me for this paper, it isn’t going to happen. While I may be living in the best conditions I’ve ever seen in my life, I know what it’s like to be poor, and the price of the debt I’m incurring for a worthless degree guarantees me my life will only go downhill come graduation day. I know exactly what it’s like to have a welfare Xmas and a food bank Thanksgiving, and it has nothing to do with my, or one of my parents, being a female.
But for the sake of a what I hope to be a passing grade, I’ll humor whoever has the misfortune of having to read my paper; however, as much as I enjoy sharing my personal embarrassment with strangers, I’m going to run a bit light on the details of my individual budget.
I don’t work outside of the forced slavery that is work study (this term, as least) so all of my budget comes from grants and loans. I learned the hard way that working full time while going to school not only makes it difficult to pass/stay awake in classes, but it also penalizes you in the eyes of financial aid.
Since everything is loans and grants, school costs are automatically deducted from my award, and I get what is left over to budget for 3.5 months, which works out to be about what I’d make if I worked a peon job full time. Almost fifty percent of this monthly budget goes to my ridiculous apartment rent. It was about $150 less last year, when I lived in a converted basement of a house, but the emotional stress of having to call in the city building inspectors and a lawyer to make it liveable cost me more in the long run. This year I’m in a decent apartment complex where I have luxuries like consistently running plumbing, and heat that works. I don’t pay water, sewer, or garbage, power is negligible when I wear 15 sweaters and carry a cat around instead of turning on the heat, and television is cheap for another 4 months, when my introductory rate runs out and I will disconnect it. Internet is also reasonable, considering it is a must-have for school nowadays.
I don’t spend money on clothes more than once a year when everything is falling apart. I ride the bus to school, which wastes an hour and a half of my time—time I could be working—waiting on transfers and travel time, because I can’t afford a parking pass. Laundry is $2.25 a week, every other week when possible. For food, often a large part of a budget, I try to stick to $5 a day, which works fairly well as long as I sit in my house rather than going out with friends. I don’t have children, which means I don’t have healthcare, but I save on their expenses, and miscellaneous items and activities eat up the rest of my money every month.
The only thing I consistently budget for is my Dance Dance Revolution budget to play at the local arcade, because the combined socialization and endorphin high from the exercise is generally the only thing that keeps me from shooting myself in the head some weeks.
The only reason I don’t is that I realize I have it pretty good. Without the support of family and friends, it’s hard for even a single person with no dependants to make it.
The second half of this assignment asks us to make a lot of assumptions in order to view it the way our instructor wants us to. It leaves us with a lot of questions—how old are the kids, does she have any friends or family, what is her education?
The main problem in any budget is housing. If having two children makes finding an apartment anywhere near as hard as finding one with two cats, living with friends or family will be her only option. However, this would also solve the other budget problem, which would be childcare. Living with family or friends provides many potential babysitters.
The second largest chunk of a budget is usually food. Once again, family and friends would be an immense help. Warehouse/co-op shopping saves money, as well as group meal preparations. Beans, rice, very little meat, and water instead of soda are by no means depriving her or the children of adequate nutrition.
As far as getting out of her hole and off the support of the state, the only way to do this is to get a decent job, or enroll in school and get financial aid. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and say she’s educated enough to net an office job. The oppressive male force won’t stop her from this job, as office work is usually relegated to woment anyway. Office jobs generally offer excellent benefits such as healthcare and childcare. If her children aren’t old enough to be the public school system’s problem for 8 hours of the day, she can use work’s childcare until they are.
“But what if she doesn’t have a mother, what if she doesn’t have friends, what if she has no degree or diploma, what if this, what if that?” These are questions the instructor would be certain to ask if this were an open to discussion class rather than a pulpit, in an attempt to box us into seeing things from her point of view. I realize I’m oversimplifying the situation, but it’s a basic assignment trying to open our eyes and make us think about the world. We have to take some liberties and make some assumptions to do this in a reasonable amount of paper.
My final suggestion, barring the viability of any of the other solutions I’ve offered and assuming that she is the white-trash stereotype that I’m sure the instructor wants us to picture her as, is that she take out a large insurance policy in the name of her children and throw herself off a bridge. She saves herself a life of mental illness and an eventual meth addiction, and her children are taken into custody of the state and ultimately end up with a foster family who will spend enough money trying to win their love to erase the mental scars of a mother’s suicide.
“Wow, that paper really spoke to me, maybe this was a biased and silly assignment after all! I think I’m going to give extra credit to this kid and frame the paper on my wall!”
Maybe eye-openers aren’t so bad after all….
Haven't gotten the other one back yet, maybe tomorrow.
This latest one was to talk about our budget, and then compare it with a single welfare/TANF mother's $669/month budget, then talk about how she could fix her craptacular life.
All I know is that I put this off for a week and decided to work on it at the last minute after Halloween festivities, and it's nearly 3 am now, which makes for "interesting papers". At this point, even if I fail this class, the knowledge that some poor sap had to grade my horrible papers is compensation enough.
________
“Wow, I never knew I spent so much of my—parents’—money on lattes, designer sunglasses, and booze for my drunken sorority’s parties! I take everything from my brand new car to my spacious apartment in the nice part of town for granted! The rest of the people in the world, especially women, sure have hard lives! I’m going to vote pro-women in every election and organize some marches!”
If this is the sort of revelation you’re expecting from me for this paper, it isn’t going to happen. While I may be living in the best conditions I’ve ever seen in my life, I know what it’s like to be poor, and the price of the debt I’m incurring for a worthless degree guarantees me my life will only go downhill come graduation day. I know exactly what it’s like to have a welfare Xmas and a food bank Thanksgiving, and it has nothing to do with my, or one of my parents, being a female.
But for the sake of a what I hope to be a passing grade, I’ll humor whoever has the misfortune of having to read my paper; however, as much as I enjoy sharing my personal embarrassment with strangers, I’m going to run a bit light on the details of my individual budget.
I don’t work outside of the forced slavery that is work study (this term, as least) so all of my budget comes from grants and loans. I learned the hard way that working full time while going to school not only makes it difficult to pass/stay awake in classes, but it also penalizes you in the eyes of financial aid.
Since everything is loans and grants, school costs are automatically deducted from my award, and I get what is left over to budget for 3.5 months, which works out to be about what I’d make if I worked a peon job full time. Almost fifty percent of this monthly budget goes to my ridiculous apartment rent. It was about $150 less last year, when I lived in a converted basement of a house, but the emotional stress of having to call in the city building inspectors and a lawyer to make it liveable cost me more in the long run. This year I’m in a decent apartment complex where I have luxuries like consistently running plumbing, and heat that works. I don’t pay water, sewer, or garbage, power is negligible when I wear 15 sweaters and carry a cat around instead of turning on the heat, and television is cheap for another 4 months, when my introductory rate runs out and I will disconnect it. Internet is also reasonable, considering it is a must-have for school nowadays.
I don’t spend money on clothes more than once a year when everything is falling apart. I ride the bus to school, which wastes an hour and a half of my time—time I could be working—waiting on transfers and travel time, because I can’t afford a parking pass. Laundry is $2.25 a week, every other week when possible. For food, often a large part of a budget, I try to stick to $5 a day, which works fairly well as long as I sit in my house rather than going out with friends. I don’t have children, which means I don’t have healthcare, but I save on their expenses, and miscellaneous items and activities eat up the rest of my money every month.
The only thing I consistently budget for is my Dance Dance Revolution budget to play at the local arcade, because the combined socialization and endorphin high from the exercise is generally the only thing that keeps me from shooting myself in the head some weeks.
The only reason I don’t is that I realize I have it pretty good. Without the support of family and friends, it’s hard for even a single person with no dependants to make it.
The second half of this assignment asks us to make a lot of assumptions in order to view it the way our instructor wants us to. It leaves us with a lot of questions—how old are the kids, does she have any friends or family, what is her education?
The main problem in any budget is housing. If having two children makes finding an apartment anywhere near as hard as finding one with two cats, living with friends or family will be her only option. However, this would also solve the other budget problem, which would be childcare. Living with family or friends provides many potential babysitters.
The second largest chunk of a budget is usually food. Once again, family and friends would be an immense help. Warehouse/co-op shopping saves money, as well as group meal preparations. Beans, rice, very little meat, and water instead of soda are by no means depriving her or the children of adequate nutrition.
As far as getting out of her hole and off the support of the state, the only way to do this is to get a decent job, or enroll in school and get financial aid. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and say she’s educated enough to net an office job. The oppressive male force won’t stop her from this job, as office work is usually relegated to woment anyway. Office jobs generally offer excellent benefits such as healthcare and childcare. If her children aren’t old enough to be the public school system’s problem for 8 hours of the day, she can use work’s childcare until they are.
“But what if she doesn’t have a mother, what if she doesn’t have friends, what if she has no degree or diploma, what if this, what if that?” These are questions the instructor would be certain to ask if this were an open to discussion class rather than a pulpit, in an attempt to box us into seeing things from her point of view. I realize I’m oversimplifying the situation, but it’s a basic assignment trying to open our eyes and make us think about the world. We have to take some liberties and make some assumptions to do this in a reasonable amount of paper.
My final suggestion, barring the viability of any of the other solutions I’ve offered and assuming that she is the white-trash stereotype that I’m sure the instructor wants us to picture her as, is that she take out a large insurance policy in the name of her children and throw herself off a bridge. She saves herself a life of mental illness and an eventual meth addiction, and her children are taken into custody of the state and ultimately end up with a foster family who will spend enough money trying to win their love to erase the mental scars of a mother’s suicide.
“Wow, that paper really spoke to me, maybe this was a biased and silly assignment after all! I think I’m going to give extra credit to this kid and frame the paper on my wall!”
Maybe eye-openers aren’t so bad after all….
Monday, October 29, 2007
I'M GAY TO THE MAX!
| Are you GAY |
 you are gay to the MAX you like men so realize the truth |
| How do you compare? Take this test! from Testriffic |
*falls out of chair laughing*
I laugh because I'm tired of crying...and well, this one was pretty funny. In a horrible, horrible way.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
why i gave up on a journalism degree
"Don't use your phone in a public restroom. That's just gross." is only one of the great quotes I found in this wonderful article on msn.
http://tech.msn.com/products/articlecnet.aspx?cp-documentid=5569792&page=1
And I thought I wrote shitty rants! This piece of work sounds like it was written by a 12-year-old, the grammar is terrible, it's ridiculous, and the worst part of it all is the guy is a fucking senior editor. Which only furthers my belief that getting a college degree is a waste of time.
http://tech.msn.com/products/articlecnet.aspx?cp-documentid=5569792&page=1
And I thought I wrote shitty rants! This piece of work sounds like it was written by a 12-year-old, the grammar is terrible, it's ridiculous, and the worst part of it all is the guy is a fucking senior editor. Which only furthers my belief that getting a college degree is a waste of time.
Monday, October 22, 2007
fuzzy math: last minute paper + booze + stress + lack of sleep + = ?
Win. At least til the booze wears off.
So here's the next in a series of horrible papers, although the first one got an A. I think everyone that turned in something that looked like coherentish english got the full points, so I'm not too proud of it.
This lovely assignment was basically to talk about how Brandon Teena, a girl who dressed and lived as a male, ultimately met her end because of society's compulsory heterosexuality. I'll post the whole stupidass assignment next time I feel like typing a bunch of bullshit. Besides this paper, I mean.
________________
It’s a beautiful night. I’m walking along the side of the road in the crisp night air and gazing up at the stars, lost in thought. The road is empty and the world is blissfully quiet. At this hour, even the city lights seem to have fewer numbers, and the stillness is comforting. All of a sudden a police car comes whizzing down the road and flashes his lights to stop me. The officer pulls alongside me and proceeds to give me a hard time, asks where I’m coming from and what I’m doing out in the middle of the night, runs my ID while shooting me suspicious looks, and finally lets me go about my business after wasting my time and making me stand around embarrassed in the cold.
I’m a night person. If I could sleep when and how I wanted to, my schedule would run from 2 pm to 6 am, with sleep during the “normal” active hours of 6 am to 2 pm. A walk at 4 am is perfectly normal behavior as far as I’m concerned. Getting up at the ungodly hour of 9 am to attend classes all day requires far more effort of me than most people.
What does this have to do with homosexuality and Brandon Teena? A lot, actually. Was I pulled over and harassed because I was out in the middle of the night and society forces us to follow the typical common schedule of the “daytime people”? Or were there other reasons behind this? I’m not the only person like this; in fact, there are a lot of people who run on an opposite schedule as the “rest of the country”. Should I write my congressman and demand myself the rights that I’m denied because I can’t follow the hours of the general public? Should I demand that school excuse my absences created by my inability to get up in the morning? Should I and the people like me revolt and have parades until everything in the country runs 24 hours to accommodate us?
Compulsory heterosexuality, compulsory biorhythms, compulsory acceptance, compulsory anything. At which point does it become so utterly ridiculous that people stop listening? Our world is already so PC (politically correct) that we can’t say anything anymore without offending someone or being an insensitive bigot, regardless of our intentions. I’m going to refer Brandon Teena as “she” for this paper. Why? Let’s say I’m holding a small, round, orange-colored fruit. Slicing it open reveals a circular array of sections with pulpy fruit inside. The flavor is sweet and tangy. You probably know what it is, most people can identify it. But I’m going to call this fruit a pear, because I like the word pear and that’s what I think it looks like, for whatever reason.
Calling an orange a pear does not make it a pear. Teena Brandon/Brandon Teena was, by all the physical information presented to us in class, a female. I don’t know what childhood experiences altered her perception of self or what mental processes were at work, but the internal psychological idea of gender is not what we go by in society. Considering myself the Queen of England does not, and should not, encourage everyone in my presence to refer to me as “Your Highness”. Therefore I will refer to her as a she.
If I look at someone and I honestly can’t tell if it’s a male or a female, and I ask them what they are (assuming I throw aside all of the rules of proper and polite behavior), I will call them whatever they inform me. I will not, however, take secondhand words from someone else and use them merely because I’m told to. Watching a 25 minute section of a video, which even in its entirety is only a window into a person’s entire life, and reading writings by women completely out of context, is not going to provide us with any type of tools or any right to write a paper analyzing an individual or society’s effect on them.
We know nothing of her previous relationships with her assailants, nothing of her mental state, when she started to dress as a male, no details of her life other than the snippet of the documentary. All we know is that she dressed and attempted to pass herself off as a male, and as a direct or indirect result of this, was raped and ultimately killed.
A “regular” girl gets raped and killed and there is no long investigation, no uproar from the community, no documentary or candlelight vigil or class studying the event years later. It happens ALL the time, and the only reason that this case stands out is because the victim was aberrant. And it IS aberrant.
The concept of socially constructed gender is another paper in itself, but for the sake of brevity, I’m sticking to biologically and socially accepted definitions. Reducing humans to the basic levels, a male has a penis and XY chromosomes, a female has a vagina and XX chromosomes. A male and a female mate to produce offspring. This is, by nature, “normal behavior”. There are physical deviances from the norm, whether they are due to birth defects, evolution, or just a line of DNA that got misplaced. And then there are psychological deviances, for a myriad of reasons, which lead males and females to deviate from the typical behavior pattern.
So what we’re supposed to be talking about is how society’s forced heterosexuality caused these events to occur. But examining the issue with that narrow-minded focus causes us to see things the way we want to and close our minds to other possibilities.
The second-rate, poorly done documentary speaks more about compulsory heterosexuality than any of the events we saw. What this low-budget production tells us is that homosexuality and transsexuals are issues relegated to public access channels, private groups, and mandatory college classes that no one wants to take.
One line that stood out to me was “I have a sexual identity crisis.” It’s the only thing she said clearly in the entire interview with the police officer, and then when she was asked for elaboration on this bold statement, she stated: “I don’t want to talk about it.” It feels like a cop-out answer, an escape rather than a response.
I have a social disorder…but I don’t want to talk about it. I must be mentally ill in some way or another. There’s a name for everything, a pill for everything, an excuse for any and every ill that we may or may not truly have. Compulsory acceptance opens up more questions, doubts and fears in children’s and society’s (who as a group has the same mental faculties as a child) minds. Start forcing compulsory acceptance on them, teach them from a young age all about lesbianism, transgenders, bisexuals, or whatever the current hot button issue is, and they become uncertain and paranoid. “I think my best friend is pretty, that must make me a lesbian…” First grade children, too young to understand any type of sexual feelings, are coming to these conclusions.
It is fine to be a lesbian, it is fine to be gender confused, it is just dandy to do whatever you want on your own, but when you start forcing your views on everyone else, how long before it becomes compulsory to be on the other side of things? Homosexuals couldn’t speak out in class for fear of being outed or hated before? Now heterosexuals can’t say anything for fear of being looked at like intolerant, insensitive heathens. Political correctness makes us mince words, call our boyfriends and girlfriends “partner” instead of their names to spare everyone’s feelings. People can’t speak up in class because anything contrary to the instructor’s opinions is shot down immediately. Why can’t we coexist without having a dominancy struggle? Why do we have to jump to blame tragic events on the scapegoat of intolerance?
“The way she was treated by the sheriff”? It’s called an investigation, a cross-examination, it’s called a police officer doing his job. When you interview a suspect or victim, you don’t play nice, you have to gather all of the facts. It doesn’t matter if it’s your best friend, a police officer has to take the hard line and throw out his emotions. In a small Podunk town where a police officer has done nothing more than save a cat stuck up a tree, lesbians and transsexuals and rape are things from the big scary wide world, and anyone with some intuition or interpersonal reading skills could tell he didn’t know how to handle it.
The fatal shooting incident, which not only involved not only Brandon Teena but two other people and a child (spared probably because of its innocence)? If these two men were intending to destroy evidence or the person to testify against them, wouldn’t they have planned a little better than to have to kill an entire house full of people? There were other factors at play that we will never know about and we can’t begin to understand.
What happened in the minds of the men when she was outed as a female? A person that kills another is generally deemed to have psychological issues. Was the shock from the deception enough to push a deranged person over the edge? We can’t answer these questions.
When we sit around and try to overanalyze our world, we end up applying our own set of beliefs and standards instead of looking at things with an open mind. I can’t deny that Brandon Teena’s life was affected by society’s standards of gender roles and heterosexuality. But at the same time, I can’t attribute everything that happened to these factors.
Although this may just be because society is imposing its compulsory biorhythms on me, forcing me to write this at 3 pm…the middle of my night.
So here's the next in a series of horrible papers, although the first one got an A. I think everyone that turned in something that looked like coherentish english got the full points, so I'm not too proud of it.
This lovely assignment was basically to talk about how Brandon Teena, a girl who dressed and lived as a male, ultimately met her end because of society's compulsory heterosexuality. I'll post the whole stupidass assignment next time I feel like typing a bunch of bullshit. Besides this paper, I mean.
________________
It’s a beautiful night. I’m walking along the side of the road in the crisp night air and gazing up at the stars, lost in thought. The road is empty and the world is blissfully quiet. At this hour, even the city lights seem to have fewer numbers, and the stillness is comforting. All of a sudden a police car comes whizzing down the road and flashes his lights to stop me. The officer pulls alongside me and proceeds to give me a hard time, asks where I’m coming from and what I’m doing out in the middle of the night, runs my ID while shooting me suspicious looks, and finally lets me go about my business after wasting my time and making me stand around embarrassed in the cold.
I’m a night person. If I could sleep when and how I wanted to, my schedule would run from 2 pm to 6 am, with sleep during the “normal” active hours of 6 am to 2 pm. A walk at 4 am is perfectly normal behavior as far as I’m concerned. Getting up at the ungodly hour of 9 am to attend classes all day requires far more effort of me than most people.
What does this have to do with homosexuality and Brandon Teena? A lot, actually. Was I pulled over and harassed because I was out in the middle of the night and society forces us to follow the typical common schedule of the “daytime people”? Or were there other reasons behind this? I’m not the only person like this; in fact, there are a lot of people who run on an opposite schedule as the “rest of the country”. Should I write my congressman and demand myself the rights that I’m denied because I can’t follow the hours of the general public? Should I demand that school excuse my absences created by my inability to get up in the morning? Should I and the people like me revolt and have parades until everything in the country runs 24 hours to accommodate us?
Compulsory heterosexuality, compulsory biorhythms, compulsory acceptance, compulsory anything. At which point does it become so utterly ridiculous that people stop listening? Our world is already so PC (politically correct) that we can’t say anything anymore without offending someone or being an insensitive bigot, regardless of our intentions. I’m going to refer Brandon Teena as “she” for this paper. Why? Let’s say I’m holding a small, round, orange-colored fruit. Slicing it open reveals a circular array of sections with pulpy fruit inside. The flavor is sweet and tangy. You probably know what it is, most people can identify it. But I’m going to call this fruit a pear, because I like the word pear and that’s what I think it looks like, for whatever reason.
Calling an orange a pear does not make it a pear. Teena Brandon/Brandon Teena was, by all the physical information presented to us in class, a female. I don’t know what childhood experiences altered her perception of self or what mental processes were at work, but the internal psychological idea of gender is not what we go by in society. Considering myself the Queen of England does not, and should not, encourage everyone in my presence to refer to me as “Your Highness”. Therefore I will refer to her as a she.
If I look at someone and I honestly can’t tell if it’s a male or a female, and I ask them what they are (assuming I throw aside all of the rules of proper and polite behavior), I will call them whatever they inform me. I will not, however, take secondhand words from someone else and use them merely because I’m told to. Watching a 25 minute section of a video, which even in its entirety is only a window into a person’s entire life, and reading writings by women completely out of context, is not going to provide us with any type of tools or any right to write a paper analyzing an individual or society’s effect on them.
We know nothing of her previous relationships with her assailants, nothing of her mental state, when she started to dress as a male, no details of her life other than the snippet of the documentary. All we know is that she dressed and attempted to pass herself off as a male, and as a direct or indirect result of this, was raped and ultimately killed.
A “regular” girl gets raped and killed and there is no long investigation, no uproar from the community, no documentary or candlelight vigil or class studying the event years later. It happens ALL the time, and the only reason that this case stands out is because the victim was aberrant. And it IS aberrant.
The concept of socially constructed gender is another paper in itself, but for the sake of brevity, I’m sticking to biologically and socially accepted definitions. Reducing humans to the basic levels, a male has a penis and XY chromosomes, a female has a vagina and XX chromosomes. A male and a female mate to produce offspring. This is, by nature, “normal behavior”. There are physical deviances from the norm, whether they are due to birth defects, evolution, or just a line of DNA that got misplaced. And then there are psychological deviances, for a myriad of reasons, which lead males and females to deviate from the typical behavior pattern.
So what we’re supposed to be talking about is how society’s forced heterosexuality caused these events to occur. But examining the issue with that narrow-minded focus causes us to see things the way we want to and close our minds to other possibilities.
The second-rate, poorly done documentary speaks more about compulsory heterosexuality than any of the events we saw. What this low-budget production tells us is that homosexuality and transsexuals are issues relegated to public access channels, private groups, and mandatory college classes that no one wants to take.
One line that stood out to me was “I have a sexual identity crisis.” It’s the only thing she said clearly in the entire interview with the police officer, and then when she was asked for elaboration on this bold statement, she stated: “I don’t want to talk about it.” It feels like a cop-out answer, an escape rather than a response.
I have a social disorder…but I don’t want to talk about it. I must be mentally ill in some way or another. There’s a name for everything, a pill for everything, an excuse for any and every ill that we may or may not truly have. Compulsory acceptance opens up more questions, doubts and fears in children’s and society’s (who as a group has the same mental faculties as a child) minds. Start forcing compulsory acceptance on them, teach them from a young age all about lesbianism, transgenders, bisexuals, or whatever the current hot button issue is, and they become uncertain and paranoid. “I think my best friend is pretty, that must make me a lesbian…” First grade children, too young to understand any type of sexual feelings, are coming to these conclusions.
It is fine to be a lesbian, it is fine to be gender confused, it is just dandy to do whatever you want on your own, but when you start forcing your views on everyone else, how long before it becomes compulsory to be on the other side of things? Homosexuals couldn’t speak out in class for fear of being outed or hated before? Now heterosexuals can’t say anything for fear of being looked at like intolerant, insensitive heathens. Political correctness makes us mince words, call our boyfriends and girlfriends “partner” instead of their names to spare everyone’s feelings. People can’t speak up in class because anything contrary to the instructor’s opinions is shot down immediately. Why can’t we coexist without having a dominancy struggle? Why do we have to jump to blame tragic events on the scapegoat of intolerance?
“The way she was treated by the sheriff”? It’s called an investigation, a cross-examination, it’s called a police officer doing his job. When you interview a suspect or victim, you don’t play nice, you have to gather all of the facts. It doesn’t matter if it’s your best friend, a police officer has to take the hard line and throw out his emotions. In a small Podunk town where a police officer has done nothing more than save a cat stuck up a tree, lesbians and transsexuals and rape are things from the big scary wide world, and anyone with some intuition or interpersonal reading skills could tell he didn’t know how to handle it.
The fatal shooting incident, which not only involved not only Brandon Teena but two other people and a child (spared probably because of its innocence)? If these two men were intending to destroy evidence or the person to testify against them, wouldn’t they have planned a little better than to have to kill an entire house full of people? There were other factors at play that we will never know about and we can’t begin to understand.
What happened in the minds of the men when she was outed as a female? A person that kills another is generally deemed to have psychological issues. Was the shock from the deception enough to push a deranged person over the edge? We can’t answer these questions.
When we sit around and try to overanalyze our world, we end up applying our own set of beliefs and standards instead of looking at things with an open mind. I can’t deny that Brandon Teena’s life was affected by society’s standards of gender roles and heterosexuality. But at the same time, I can’t attribute everything that happened to these factors.
Although this may just be because society is imposing its compulsory biorhythms on me, forcing me to write this at 3 pm…the middle of my night.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
msn with a decent article? zomg
"This isn't true for most people: Sexual signals usually zip right past the rational brain, because as Rodgers puts it, if two people 'immediately considered all the possible risks and vulnerabilities they might face if they mated or had children, they'd run screaming from the room.' Now, that I can understand. To actually have sex, I must be not only in love but also in full legal possession of the other party's medical records. The advantage of this approach is that what you miss in casual thrills, you gain in long-term compatibility. That initial spark of interest leads not to the nearest motel room but to the prolonged scrutiny you would give an unrecognizable substance before deciding to include it in a cake. "
from http://lifestyle.msn.com/relationships/loveandromance/articleOPRAH.aspx?cp-documentid=5536985&page=1
from http://lifestyle.msn.com/relationships/loveandromance/articleOPRAH.aspx?cp-documentid=5536985&page=1
Sunday, October 14, 2007
OMG SWEAT
Antiperspirants...really now. I'm tired of stupid commercials.
"Did you know one in 4 men worry that they sweat too much?" They just WORRY that they do, they don't actually... meaning that the sweat disorders we hear about aren't nearly that common.
"3 times more protection than required!" Meaning that it's overpowered and guarenteed to give you cancer 3 times faster!
There's a similar commercial for women, equally as stupid and poorly written, much like this blog.
Hey, I think I found myself a new career path!
"Did you know one in 4 men worry that they sweat too much?" They just WORRY that they do, they don't actually... meaning that the sweat disorders we hear about aren't nearly that common.
"3 times more protection than required!" Meaning that it's overpowered and guarenteed to give you cancer 3 times faster!
There's a similar commercial for women, equally as stupid and poorly written, much like this blog.
Hey, I think I found myself a new career path!
Friday, October 12, 2007
next time it's netflix
I'm never renting another movie again. It's a pain in the ass to return them.
I started my debacle of an afternoon/evening by forgetting to bring the movies that I was going to return. Of course I didn't realize this until I was stuck halfway across the bridge in a traffic jam courtesy of one of the local asshole cabbies and a motorcycle. There wasn't even any wreckage or dead bodies, but as with every accident, the entire police force and a compliment of fire trucks were there to block up the lanes.
20-some mins later I ended up at the mall, planning to kill some time while the inept authorities cleaned up the mess. I wandered into the Tilt to play DDR and was greeted with horrendous BO, wafting from 4 grossly obese kids playing what must have been an exhausting game of air hockey.
Trashing that idea before I threw up, I decided to brave the traffic again and head back to get the movies, which went roughly the same as the first time, only this trip I got to have my heater on full blast the whole way because my car was about to overheat.
I finally got home, was greeted with the same obnoxious neighbors blasting their tv (now I know they're a bleach blond and some ethnic boyfriend, what an original pairing), and headed back for the third fun trip across the bridge of doom, which STILL wasn't cleared out.
I returned my movie without further diress, and went about my shopping, where I realized that I'm a cat-lady-in-training as I filled my shopping cart with tea, cat litter, cat food, and canned vegetables. I'm not sure if this pissed me off or made me sad, because at this point I was pretty well done with my day.
It seriously can't be just me.
I started my debacle of an afternoon/evening by forgetting to bring the movies that I was going to return. Of course I didn't realize this until I was stuck halfway across the bridge in a traffic jam courtesy of one of the local asshole cabbies and a motorcycle. There wasn't even any wreckage or dead bodies, but as with every accident, the entire police force and a compliment of fire trucks were there to block up the lanes.
20-some mins later I ended up at the mall, planning to kill some time while the inept authorities cleaned up the mess. I wandered into the Tilt to play DDR and was greeted with horrendous BO, wafting from 4 grossly obese kids playing what must have been an exhausting game of air hockey.
Trashing that idea before I threw up, I decided to brave the traffic again and head back to get the movies, which went roughly the same as the first time, only this trip I got to have my heater on full blast the whole way because my car was about to overheat.
I finally got home, was greeted with the same obnoxious neighbors blasting their tv (now I know they're a bleach blond and some ethnic boyfriend, what an original pairing), and headed back for the third fun trip across the bridge of doom, which STILL wasn't cleared out.
I returned my movie without further diress, and went about my shopping, where I realized that I'm a cat-lady-in-training as I filled my shopping cart with tea, cat litter, cat food, and canned vegetables. I'm not sure if this pissed me off or made me sad, because at this point I was pretty well done with my day.
It seriously can't be just me.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
the MAN is keeping me down
I'm fucking pissed off.
You wanna know why?
Cause I hate men.
What, you wanna know why again? You're a good listener! Have YOU taken this class too?!
I hate men because they and their patriarchal society forced me to believe that heterosexuality is the norm, and lesbianism is abberrant, when really, lesbianism is perfectly normal and natural, and everyone should do it! Not only should we all be lesbians, we should all celebrate it openly, and bash the normal, heterosexual people! Ha, haha! Irony! I mean, it's so terrible that "Coming Out Day" today was off the main stage area of the EMU in less than a couple hours because no one gave a shit, errr, nobody cared... err... anyway, it was replaced by some stupid jockocracy game show.
I'm so glad we have classes like "Women, Difference and Power" or whatever the fuck it's called to keep my opinions in order! If we didn't have classes like this, I'd still be thinking that being fat was unhealthy (it's NOT, in fact it's actually healthier to be 400 pounds "overweight," the MAN has just told us that fat is bad because he likes looking at thin bodies!). I'd still be thinking that mascots such as Indians were okay because they were cartoonish parodies! God forbid!
And speaking of God, I sure hope we get to talking about Him in class, because I know it will be so enlightening that I'll want to shoot myself in the head!
You wanna know why?
Cause I hate men.
What, you wanna know why again? You're a good listener! Have YOU taken this class too?!
I hate men because they and their patriarchal society forced me to believe that heterosexuality is the norm, and lesbianism is abberrant, when really, lesbianism is perfectly normal and natural, and everyone should do it! Not only should we all be lesbians, we should all celebrate it openly, and bash the normal, heterosexual people! Ha, haha! Irony! I mean, it's so terrible that "Coming Out Day" today was off the main stage area of the EMU in less than a couple hours because no one gave a shit, errr, nobody cared... err... anyway, it was replaced by some stupid jockocracy game show.
I'm so glad we have classes like "Women, Difference and Power" or whatever the fuck it's called to keep my opinions in order! If we didn't have classes like this, I'd still be thinking that being fat was unhealthy (it's NOT, in fact it's actually healthier to be 400 pounds "overweight," the MAN has just told us that fat is bad because he likes looking at thin bodies!). I'd still be thinking that mascots such as Indians were okay because they were cartoonish parodies! God forbid!
And speaking of God, I sure hope we get to talking about Him in class, because I know it will be so enlightening that I'll want to shoot myself in the head!
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
the art of the 3 hour paper
It's due tomorrow, and I could give a fuck about this class. It's a 2-for-1 deal, fulfilling two stupid requirements in one class, which is the only reason I'm still in it. We have an assload of mini-papers, thankfully requiring no research or actual reference to the book that I don't have.
For this assignment we had to analyze gender roles and talk about how something in our lives shaped our opinion of gender. Pretty fucking gay. Ooops, I said gay in a negative way.
Anyway.
Presenting: shitty paper #1!
The image of the Barbie doll stuck swinging on the power line, though more than a decade ago, is still fresh in my mind. I have fond memories of that power-line Barbie, a doll that managed, on one fall back to earth after being repeatedly flung into the air on a space trip or some other adventure, to hook her arm around the line and hang for a week before finally blowing down.
I’m 23 years old, and I’ve never been the all-pink, high-voiced, weak, half-clothed, makeup-obsessed girl that everyone in our society seems to love and encourage. Then again, I didn’t become the bulky, low-voiced, sleeveless plaid shirt-wearing, rough-and-tumble opposite, either. I ended up happily in the middle, able to cynically and sarcastically observe and analyze everything around me, although that usually doesn’t leave me happy.
A lot of who I became has to do with my immediate family and surroundings. I have a younger brother who was born when I was 5. When he got to the age of being less of an annoyance and more of a friend, we were constant playpals. We thought it was fun to make miniature houses and then destroy them Godzilla-style, we liked to draw mustaches and unibrows on Rainbow Brite’s oversized plastic head, and it was always a better idea to drag Barbie’s Jeep behind the bikes than cruise her around the living room. Our parents never stereotyped our toys; we had Legos on the same playtable as pretend jewelry, and there were no admonitions of “don’t play with that, it’s for boys/girls!” Both of us played Barbie dolls, but our Barbies were paratroopers, police, and commandos more often than they were homemakers.
Another factor was the class of society we belonged to, and the type of people I was around from a young age. My father is a lapidary, which meant that I spent much of my childhood being trucked from one corner of the country to the other, digging rocks and setting up tables at rock and gem shows. I was home schooled up to middle school, and my brother until late grade school, which I believe played a huge part in both of our gender roles. For me especially, I wasn’t in the mainstream. I didn’t spend my day constantly assaulted and pressured by my peers to become like the images they saw on TV and in magazines.
Instead of my peer group, I spent most of my time with the rock and gem crowd, which is usually middle aged or older men, sometimes couples. They’re a close-knit band of classic rock enthusiasts and social pot smokers who miss the good old days when society was less complicated. They’re a hard-working group, because there’s no room for whiners or slackers on a digging trip. One of the most important childhood lessons I learned from these people is that women can get respect from being strong, more than they’d get from being pretty, dumb and helpless. My mother and the other rockhound wives weren’t left at home making lunches, they were right there with the men, getting dirty shoveling dirt, hiking up hills, and hauling digging tools and buckets of rock around.
Although I’m not around that circle of people anymore, much of my childhood is echoed in my behavior today. I’m sensitive to the gender games people play, and I don’t let stereotypes and cultural or gender roles stop me from doing things I enjoy.
One example of this is Dance Dance Revolution (DDR), an arcade dancing game. I’ve played this game for 5 years. The object of the game is to step on the arrows as they scroll up the screen, which is fairly easy at the basic level, and a lot of effort at the higher end. It’s flashing lights, peppy music, and multi-colored arrows in a brightly colored cabinet. This and the fact that it’s dancing, most people would think this would be a girl-dominated game; however you rarely see girls playing at anywhere near the level of the male players, who seem to be the main audience for the game.
As a female player who can generally play at the same, or better, level as the males that dominate the game, I get a lot of boys that won’t play with me, or even after me, because they don’t want to be beaten or shown up by a girl. Our society says that men should be tougher and better than girls at, apparently, everything that they perceive as masculine. Since DDR is a physically demanding game, it’s fallen into the category of something males should be good at. Girls who could be, or already are, good at the game often won’t play just to avoid alienating the boys. (I also see girls getting into DDR for the sole purpose of attracting boys. They play the easiest difficulty, wear low cut shirts, and jump around a lot for attention.)
Another thing I’ve observed is that the girls that do play are often not very good because they don’t want to get sweaty or red-faced, which inevitably happens when playing difficult songs. They don’t want to trip up and look bad when they’re still learning to play. It’s okay for the boys to mess up and smell bad, but women are supposed to be graceful and pretty, and apparently free of sweat-glands. The types of girls that could become good but can’t get past their fear of being out of the norm end up filling the role of the pretty, smiling girlfriend. Instead of playing DDR, they hang behind the machine, holding their boyfriends’ coats and clapping supportively every time their men finish a song.
What always annoys me when I watch this playing out is that every one of those girls has the potential to be as good, if not better, than the boys that they’re holding back for. Because of the way they were brought up and the rules they feel obligated to follow, they’re missing out on many things they want to do.
There’s a psychological experiment where girls were given monster trucks and traditional ‘boy toys’ to see if they would play in the traditional boy manner or as girls. They turned around and played house with them, making “mommy trucks” and “baby trucks”. They were very young girls, so students generally take this to mean that girls are inherently girls; that gender is more nature than nurture.
What people ignore is the fact that those girls were stereotyped by society from before the day they were born, from the songs their mothers sang while they were in the womb to their rainbow pony nurseries to the pink booties they were dressed in to the way people treated them the very moment they knew the babies were girls.
While I’m sure there is a nature-based component to who we ultimately become, my personal experiences and observations of gender lead me to believe that it is strongly rooted in nurture and especially our places in society. I have no doubts that had I been raised in a more traditional manner, baking cakes with my mother and painting my nails, I might be one of those bleach-blondes with “HOTTIE” emblazoned on the back of my pink sweatpants, shaking my head at the memory of the power-line Barbie as another silly stunt of an annoying little brother.
For this assignment we had to analyze gender roles and talk about how something in our lives shaped our opinion of gender. Pretty fucking gay. Ooops, I said gay in a negative way.
Anyway.
Presenting: shitty paper #1!
The image of the Barbie doll stuck swinging on the power line, though more than a decade ago, is still fresh in my mind. I have fond memories of that power-line Barbie, a doll that managed, on one fall back to earth after being repeatedly flung into the air on a space trip or some other adventure, to hook her arm around the line and hang for a week before finally blowing down.
I’m 23 years old, and I’ve never been the all-pink, high-voiced, weak, half-clothed, makeup-obsessed girl that everyone in our society seems to love and encourage. Then again, I didn’t become the bulky, low-voiced, sleeveless plaid shirt-wearing, rough-and-tumble opposite, either. I ended up happily in the middle, able to cynically and sarcastically observe and analyze everything around me, although that usually doesn’t leave me happy.
A lot of who I became has to do with my immediate family and surroundings. I have a younger brother who was born when I was 5. When he got to the age of being less of an annoyance and more of a friend, we were constant playpals. We thought it was fun to make miniature houses and then destroy them Godzilla-style, we liked to draw mustaches and unibrows on Rainbow Brite’s oversized plastic head, and it was always a better idea to drag Barbie’s Jeep behind the bikes than cruise her around the living room. Our parents never stereotyped our toys; we had Legos on the same playtable as pretend jewelry, and there were no admonitions of “don’t play with that, it’s for boys/girls!” Both of us played Barbie dolls, but our Barbies were paratroopers, police, and commandos more often than they were homemakers.
Another factor was the class of society we belonged to, and the type of people I was around from a young age. My father is a lapidary, which meant that I spent much of my childhood being trucked from one corner of the country to the other, digging rocks and setting up tables at rock and gem shows. I was home schooled up to middle school, and my brother until late grade school, which I believe played a huge part in both of our gender roles. For me especially, I wasn’t in the mainstream. I didn’t spend my day constantly assaulted and pressured by my peers to become like the images they saw on TV and in magazines.
Instead of my peer group, I spent most of my time with the rock and gem crowd, which is usually middle aged or older men, sometimes couples. They’re a close-knit band of classic rock enthusiasts and social pot smokers who miss the good old days when society was less complicated. They’re a hard-working group, because there’s no room for whiners or slackers on a digging trip. One of the most important childhood lessons I learned from these people is that women can get respect from being strong, more than they’d get from being pretty, dumb and helpless. My mother and the other rockhound wives weren’t left at home making lunches, they were right there with the men, getting dirty shoveling dirt, hiking up hills, and hauling digging tools and buckets of rock around.
Although I’m not around that circle of people anymore, much of my childhood is echoed in my behavior today. I’m sensitive to the gender games people play, and I don’t let stereotypes and cultural or gender roles stop me from doing things I enjoy.
One example of this is Dance Dance Revolution (DDR), an arcade dancing game. I’ve played this game for 5 years. The object of the game is to step on the arrows as they scroll up the screen, which is fairly easy at the basic level, and a lot of effort at the higher end. It’s flashing lights, peppy music, and multi-colored arrows in a brightly colored cabinet. This and the fact that it’s dancing, most people would think this would be a girl-dominated game; however you rarely see girls playing at anywhere near the level of the male players, who seem to be the main audience for the game.
As a female player who can generally play at the same, or better, level as the males that dominate the game, I get a lot of boys that won’t play with me, or even after me, because they don’t want to be beaten or shown up by a girl. Our society says that men should be tougher and better than girls at, apparently, everything that they perceive as masculine. Since DDR is a physically demanding game, it’s fallen into the category of something males should be good at. Girls who could be, or already are, good at the game often won’t play just to avoid alienating the boys. (I also see girls getting into DDR for the sole purpose of attracting boys. They play the easiest difficulty, wear low cut shirts, and jump around a lot for attention.)
Another thing I’ve observed is that the girls that do play are often not very good because they don’t want to get sweaty or red-faced, which inevitably happens when playing difficult songs. They don’t want to trip up and look bad when they’re still learning to play. It’s okay for the boys to mess up and smell bad, but women are supposed to be graceful and pretty, and apparently free of sweat-glands. The types of girls that could become good but can’t get past their fear of being out of the norm end up filling the role of the pretty, smiling girlfriend. Instead of playing DDR, they hang behind the machine, holding their boyfriends’ coats and clapping supportively every time their men finish a song.
What always annoys me when I watch this playing out is that every one of those girls has the potential to be as good, if not better, than the boys that they’re holding back for. Because of the way they were brought up and the rules they feel obligated to follow, they’re missing out on many things they want to do.
There’s a psychological experiment where girls were given monster trucks and traditional ‘boy toys’ to see if they would play in the traditional boy manner or as girls. They turned around and played house with them, making “mommy trucks” and “baby trucks”. They were very young girls, so students generally take this to mean that girls are inherently girls; that gender is more nature than nurture.
What people ignore is the fact that those girls were stereotyped by society from before the day they were born, from the songs their mothers sang while they were in the womb to their rainbow pony nurseries to the pink booties they were dressed in to the way people treated them the very moment they knew the babies were girls.
While I’m sure there is a nature-based component to who we ultimately become, my personal experiences and observations of gender lead me to believe that it is strongly rooted in nurture and especially our places in society. I have no doubts that had I been raised in a more traditional manner, baking cakes with my mother and painting my nails, I might be one of those bleach-blondes with “HOTTIE” emblazoned on the back of my pink sweatpants, shaking my head at the memory of the power-line Barbie as another silly stunt of an annoying little brother.
the wheels on the bus go round and round
I fucking hate the bus.
Standing for 20 mins in the cold/rain/wind/hail/snow/typhoon/shit Eugene weather, smelling cigarettes in the non-smoking terminal (even better when it's the fucking bus driver doing it), getting on and listening to everyone around me hack and cough that phlegmy, diseased cough, knowing that I'm probably going to get a disease from that or the seats/windows/railings, listening to screaming babies, raving lunatics, idiot punk conversations, cell phones ringing at max volume, conversations in spanish, smelling whatever nasty, foul lunches that people are eating like they're not supposed to be, jesus fucking christ.
Wanna know why nobody wants to fund public transportation? Take a ride and guess. This is fucking why. Once they ride the bus one time and experience the joy that is public transportation, the rich kids all pay for parking and drive to school. The poor people don't have the money to do shit, so nothing ever changes.
But really, money isn't going to do shit anyway. Like everything else in the world, it's the fucking people that ruin it.
Standing for 20 mins in the cold/rain/wind/hail/snow/typhoon/shit Eugene weather, smelling cigarettes in the non-smoking terminal (even better when it's the fucking bus driver doing it), getting on and listening to everyone around me hack and cough that phlegmy, diseased cough, knowing that I'm probably going to get a disease from that or the seats/windows/railings, listening to screaming babies, raving lunatics, idiot punk conversations, cell phones ringing at max volume, conversations in spanish, smelling whatever nasty, foul lunches that people are eating like they're not supposed to be, jesus fucking christ.
Wanna know why nobody wants to fund public transportation? Take a ride and guess. This is fucking why. Once they ride the bus one time and experience the joy that is public transportation, the rich kids all pay for parking and drive to school. The poor people don't have the money to do shit, so nothing ever changes.
But really, money isn't going to do shit anyway. Like everything else in the world, it's the fucking people that ruin it.
Friday, September 28, 2007
/salute
Whoever flashed their headlights at the traffic, warning us that there were cops ahead (and a lot of them) heading to the school zone made my day. There's something about an underground collectively raising a middle finger to the man that puts a smile on my face.
That said, it put a bigger smile on my face when I saw all the punks getting pulled over as I rolled on by.
That said, it put a bigger smile on my face when I saw all the punks getting pulled over as I rolled on by.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
hahah
Carlos Mencia, stereotype olypics. XD
Funny enough to make me forget my neighbors have been blasting their music all day.
Funny enough to make me forget my neighbors have been blasting their music all day.
Monday, September 24, 2007
jesus fucking christ
Did I say I was glad summer was over last night?
WTF was I smoking....
I get up this morning and try to squeeze in a couple of snooze button mashings before I drag myself out of bed. The cat decides he's going to try to get in the window and destroys my ghetto bedside table in the process, knocking my phone down into the box itself (yeah, my bedside table is a fucking fan box). Now that I'm more awake I'm able to hear my idiot neighbors blasting their music and vacuuming while their kids scream in the doorway...at 9 in the fucking morning, so I decide to take a nice long shower.
Thinking I'm doing well and being on time, I hit the bus stop at 10:03, 4 mins too late for the bus which for the ONE TIME OF THE YEAR was on time, and find out that the next one won't show for another half an hour. I was trying to get to school early to buy the packet for Japanese, which ALWAYS uses it the first day. So that was out of the question. I end up driving to school, having to go around the block behind morons in a uhaul, a tree trimming truck, and retards strolling around like it's their first day of school and everything is sunshine and rainbows (which, being that they're idiot freshmen, probably rings true). I spend 3.00 to park for ONE FUCKING CLASS, and still have to walk all the way across the campus.
Stepping into the JPN classroom, I thought, finally, woot. The room was spacious, nice desks and chairs, the board wasn't perma-stained from the whiteboard markers, and I got a nice spot to sit in. 5 mins later the teacher wanders in and tells us all to move to a room down the hall, because this is the JPN301 room. FUCK YOU THIRD YEAR. Of course the new room is the same shitass too-crowded room that ALL my classes are, and of course I end up in the middle of everything with a dipshit jock smacking gum behind me and a girl with too much perfume in front of me.
The class itself is terrible, mostly because it reminds me how much I forgot over the summer (everything), partly because I'm looking around and seeing every moron that scraped by last term with a pass/no pass option and not a single friendly face.
After all that, I have to run to the bookstore to buy the packet, and am greeted with the most hidiously painted Harry Potter mural I've ever seen in my life. I'm fucking serious, it makes me want to break in there and whitewash the whole wall some night.
My two packets cost 40 fucking dollars for $5.00 worth of paper and a shitty homemade dvd that we'll probably never use, and then I have to walk all the way across campus to move my car.
Comfortably at home, I decide to try out my new Karaoke Revolution game, the one that took a week and a half to arrive via 3-day shipping, only to find that the mic doesn't work. FFS.
More annoyed, if that was possible, I head for the bus stop again to go back for my other class, and find that once again that I could probably walk to school faster than waiting for the fucking bus. Hungry, I decide to grab something to eat from the conveniently located store right behind the bus stop. Being Eugene, of course it's a fucking health food store, and no, there is NOTHING to eat. Overpriced chips, bizarre combinations of inedible grains, cheeses I can't pronounce. Even the deli, which should have something palateable, is devoid of anything that qualifies as food. I wander back and forth hopelessly before finding a bagel rack and settling on an overpriced cinnamon-raisen bagel, which ends up tasting like a garlic-cinnamon-raisen bagel.
The bus finally comes, and it's too full as usual. It smells like BO, the people across from me seem to be short bus special (normally I could give a shit, but they're talking about sex??), and it takes way too long to get to the transfer station. From there I definately could have walked faster than riding the bus, because we get stuck in the traffic jam of morons driving unneccesarily down the main street through the school. 5 mins to get to class on time, I wander around and finally find it, down in the basement of some building I've never heard of. It's an overcrowded, hot room with ZOMGFUCKINGMACS. I fucking hate macs, I hate the morons that use them, I hate being forced to use them. The teacher is a GTF as usual, a photography major that doesn't know shit about digital arts. "You can use Photoshop on PCs too can't you?" The rest of the class is undeclared kiddies trying to get into the digital arts program, with the exception of the snooty bitch that has to clarify that she is ALREADY a graphic designer and is just here to keep her skills sharp. The GTF runs through the same "welcome to school, kids" speech that they all do, tells us to buy expensive memory cards that I'll never be able to afford, then guides us through setting up a folder on the server, which half of us can't do because the shitty macs are having some kind of connection issue. Then he gives us a "photoshop proficiency test" to see where everyone is at...except half of us can't do it because we can't get the files on the server nor save them. I end up walking out before improving the mac I'm on by driving my foot through it.
I swing by the EMU computer lab to print out the art I need for my art application (that's due by friday), which I emailed to myself the night before. Of course, the password has become inactive. Tell me if this logic follows: "let's send notices to people that the passwords need to be updated, but let's send it to the email that you need the password for. Then, let's make people use the password that expired to change their passwords! Then, when that doesn't work, let's force them to come into our office to print out a form and then fax it to us!"
FUCK YOU MORONS.
You're right, my fucking email IS more secure when I stop using it completely because I have to go through this bullshit.
Thinking some DDR might make me feel better, I head over to the arcade to find out that the entire arcade has been removed and replaced with a fucking pingpong table and a row of lockers. WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!?!?
Too pissed off to run by the library to check on the job that I need but don't want, I decide to ask the theatre arts teacher that barely knows me for a recommendation for the art program. She can't remember a thing I did (yeah ok it WAS last year), and I end up essentially saying never mind, I'll just use the letter from the advisor that doesn't know me whatsoever. God knows what she bs'd about me.
Completely sick of school, I head for the bus area to try to figure out how the hell to get home, and end up running into the ex-bf who didn't so much as email me the entire summer. Of course he's chipper. Bantering for a bit gives me the energy to take round 2 of the Eugene bus system, and I head out. In the time it takes for me to read the station board, I miss the bus I need. Rather than wait 30 mins for the next one, I end up walking the 25 blocks home, where I crank up the music (fuck you neighbors), and settle in, hoping to work up the energy to do it all again tomorrow.
WTF was I smoking....
I get up this morning and try to squeeze in a couple of snooze button mashings before I drag myself out of bed. The cat decides he's going to try to get in the window and destroys my ghetto bedside table in the process, knocking my phone down into the box itself (yeah, my bedside table is a fucking fan box). Now that I'm more awake I'm able to hear my idiot neighbors blasting their music and vacuuming while their kids scream in the doorway...at 9 in the fucking morning, so I decide to take a nice long shower.
Thinking I'm doing well and being on time, I hit the bus stop at 10:03, 4 mins too late for the bus which for the ONE TIME OF THE YEAR was on time, and find out that the next one won't show for another half an hour. I was trying to get to school early to buy the packet for Japanese, which ALWAYS uses it the first day. So that was out of the question. I end up driving to school, having to go around the block behind morons in a uhaul, a tree trimming truck, and retards strolling around like it's their first day of school and everything is sunshine and rainbows (which, being that they're idiot freshmen, probably rings true). I spend 3.00 to park for ONE FUCKING CLASS, and still have to walk all the way across the campus.
Stepping into the JPN classroom, I thought, finally, woot. The room was spacious, nice desks and chairs, the board wasn't perma-stained from the whiteboard markers, and I got a nice spot to sit in. 5 mins later the teacher wanders in and tells us all to move to a room down the hall, because this is the JPN301 room. FUCK YOU THIRD YEAR. Of course the new room is the same shitass too-crowded room that ALL my classes are, and of course I end up in the middle of everything with a dipshit jock smacking gum behind me and a girl with too much perfume in front of me.
The class itself is terrible, mostly because it reminds me how much I forgot over the summer (everything), partly because I'm looking around and seeing every moron that scraped by last term with a pass/no pass option and not a single friendly face.
After all that, I have to run to the bookstore to buy the packet, and am greeted with the most hidiously painted Harry Potter mural I've ever seen in my life. I'm fucking serious, it makes me want to break in there and whitewash the whole wall some night.
My two packets cost 40 fucking dollars for $5.00 worth of paper and a shitty homemade dvd that we'll probably never use, and then I have to walk all the way across campus to move my car.
Comfortably at home, I decide to try out my new Karaoke Revolution game, the one that took a week and a half to arrive via 3-day shipping, only to find that the mic doesn't work. FFS.
More annoyed, if that was possible, I head for the bus stop again to go back for my other class, and find that once again that I could probably walk to school faster than waiting for the fucking bus. Hungry, I decide to grab something to eat from the conveniently located store right behind the bus stop. Being Eugene, of course it's a fucking health food store, and no, there is NOTHING to eat. Overpriced chips, bizarre combinations of inedible grains, cheeses I can't pronounce. Even the deli, which should have something palateable, is devoid of anything that qualifies as food. I wander back and forth hopelessly before finding a bagel rack and settling on an overpriced cinnamon-raisen bagel, which ends up tasting like a garlic-cinnamon-raisen bagel.
The bus finally comes, and it's too full as usual. It smells like BO, the people across from me seem to be short bus special (normally I could give a shit, but they're talking about sex??), and it takes way too long to get to the transfer station. From there I definately could have walked faster than riding the bus, because we get stuck in the traffic jam of morons driving unneccesarily down the main street through the school. 5 mins to get to class on time, I wander around and finally find it, down in the basement of some building I've never heard of. It's an overcrowded, hot room with ZOMGFUCKINGMACS. I fucking hate macs, I hate the morons that use them, I hate being forced to use them. The teacher is a GTF as usual, a photography major that doesn't know shit about digital arts. "You can use Photoshop on PCs too can't you?" The rest of the class is undeclared kiddies trying to get into the digital arts program, with the exception of the snooty bitch that has to clarify that she is ALREADY a graphic designer and is just here to keep her skills sharp. The GTF runs through the same "welcome to school, kids" speech that they all do, tells us to buy expensive memory cards that I'll never be able to afford, then guides us through setting up a folder on the server, which half of us can't do because the shitty macs are having some kind of connection issue. Then he gives us a "photoshop proficiency test" to see where everyone is at...except half of us can't do it because we can't get the files on the server nor save them. I end up walking out before improving the mac I'm on by driving my foot through it.
I swing by the EMU computer lab to print out the art I need for my art application (that's due by friday), which I emailed to myself the night before. Of course, the password has become inactive. Tell me if this logic follows: "let's send notices to people that the passwords need to be updated, but let's send it to the email that you need the password for. Then, let's make people use the password that expired to change their passwords! Then, when that doesn't work, let's force them to come into our office to print out a form and then fax it to us!"
FUCK YOU MORONS.
You're right, my fucking email IS more secure when I stop using it completely because I have to go through this bullshit.
Thinking some DDR might make me feel better, I head over to the arcade to find out that the entire arcade has been removed and replaced with a fucking pingpong table and a row of lockers. WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!?!?
Too pissed off to run by the library to check on the job that I need but don't want, I decide to ask the theatre arts teacher that barely knows me for a recommendation for the art program. She can't remember a thing I did (yeah ok it WAS last year), and I end up essentially saying never mind, I'll just use the letter from the advisor that doesn't know me whatsoever. God knows what she bs'd about me.
Completely sick of school, I head for the bus area to try to figure out how the hell to get home, and end up running into the ex-bf who didn't so much as email me the entire summer. Of course he's chipper. Bantering for a bit gives me the energy to take round 2 of the Eugene bus system, and I head out. In the time it takes for me to read the station board, I miss the bus I need. Rather than wait 30 mins for the next one, I end up walking the 25 blocks home, where I crank up the music (fuck you neighbors), and settle in, hoping to work up the energy to do it all again tomorrow.
Friday, May 18, 2007
LAWL I made a blog
Why? I dunno.
Because it's easier than making up a whole new artandchaos page when I want to rant for 20 mins off the top of my head in a poorly written manner.
Enjoy.
Because it's easier than making up a whole new artandchaos page when I want to rant for 20 mins off the top of my head in a poorly written manner.
Enjoy.
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