Creating Dreams Like Palaces

RAWWWRRRGH poor journalism

2011-10-21T14:21:00.002-05:00

My school paper printed an editorial, labeled "Our View," in its most recent edition, published the 19th of October. Its title was "Don't Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Capitol Hill."

This is a fine sentiment, I suppose? I read it, of course, because I'm fascinated by editorials. It started off deeply problematic and got worse from there.

I understand that this is a school paper and that I shouldn't judge it too harshly, but the journalists writing for it are already adults and will probably soon be out in the world writing things that people will take at face value and believe because people in media are assumed to have researched things at the most basic level and understand at least partially what they are preaching against.

And yet! Whoever wrote it is... well, let's say they have a limited field of vision? After a short summary of the movement, the author writes, "The one thing that protests around the world seem to have in common is their frustration and dissatisfaction with the economic status of the majority of citizens. The problem with this is that anger toward the wealthiest in the nation will do nothing to solve the economic crisis."

Aside from being poorly written... what? Angry poor people have done quite a lot throughout history, in fact. They are called "revolutions" (sometimes modified by the adjective "bloody") and they created, um, America, to start with, and France, and really pretty much every independent country now that doesn't have a monarchy. And even those have been touched by revolutions. These are a normal part of growing up and nothing to be ashamed of. So yeah, anger toward the wealthiest will do something, it just might have to involve some beheadings too.

The author goes on to say, "If protestors really want to get to the wealthiest one percent of the nation, they should propose legislation to tax them and put that money toward fixing the country's economy." AHAHAHAHAAAAA. Really? We're just going to march up to all wealthy people and demand that they succumb to taxation, and they're going to say "Well, okay then, you've made a good point"? Really? A number of people have tried to convince extraordinarily wealthy people to allow more taxation! And you know what?

They said no.

They are allowed to do this because they extraordinarily wealthy. They own the corporations that are paying for legislators' campaigns, and presidents' campaigns, and do you really think those same politicians are going to say "Sorry, people who got me where I am today and are supplying my flights and apartments and cars, but I'm going to have to side with poor people who cannot give me anything!" No, because they are human beings. Human beings in seats of power, which kind of automatically means corruption. Did you think about this at all before writing it?

Which is why

"Protests should be held outside the offices of lawmakers, not the offices of business people. Legislators are the ones who have the power to change how the economy operates. Instead of fighting the system, Americans should use their legislators as they were intended: to be their voice."

made me laugh even harder. In a sad sarcastic way.

Yes, naive college student, legislators are intended to be the voice of the people. That is certainly how our original legislators took it (when they weren't taking money from people too, because let's face it, human nature was not better in 1776). But the people legislators listen to now is wealthy people. This is why sites like we are the 99 percent are absolutely full to the brim of people losing their homes, their educations, their livelihoods and their families.

Because no one in power cares. And Occupy Wall Street is at least trying to do something about that, even if, yeah, it probably won't work. It's a start. What are you doing for the poor, pray tell?

2011-04-30T19:54:00.002-05:00

I know everyone has a theory about love, and why everyone is so taken up with themselves, and Kids These Days. I'd say "but here's a theory that rises above all the rest," but it is just basically regular.

For whatever reason, whether it be a culture of instant gratification or Disney movies and their princes or what have you, people have decided that if the relationship they are in right now is not headed toward marriage and happily-ever-after they're doing something wrong. Not even the person they are with, but the particular time and place and setting have to be that exactly-right headed-toward-a-diamond moment. If the person you're passionately in love with is dating someone else, it is assumed that they are going to get married (posthaste) and you will be left alone. If you have not yet found The One, it is not because you're too focused on that, it's because something is wrong with them. And so on.

I have not met anyone that, post-1935, met and married and lived happily ever after. I'm just unsure why we as a society are stuck in such a relationship rut. Here is the archetypal relationship:
1. Meet, preferably at something you can mention charmingly at your wedding reception.
2. Fall instantly in love.
3. Know that you both want to get married -- immediately. The clock's ticking!
4. Wait for the appropriate time while both parties, most typically the man, settle their concerns about married life. While waiting, worry about whether you should be waiting. Consult magazines. Talk to your friends about it at bars.
5. Get engaged. Preferably in a mind-blowingly original fashion. Preferably with diamonds.
6. Begin the year-long getting-married process. Ladies, think about dresses and engagement pictures and seating arrangements and nothing else. Men, work so that you can provide for the lucky lady, Women, What Can You Do
7. Get married. It is the best day the universe has ever had, and nothing goes wrong.
8. Enjoy a wildly expensive honeymoon.
[9. Stay fairly happy the first year, divorce within 3-6 years]

Can we please get to the point where it is okay if you're friends with someone for ever and ever and then you fall in love? Or you're on-again off-again forever? Or you never get married, and instead you have dogs, and it's not pathetic, you're doing exactly what you want to? Or you get married for the first time when you're 60? Even Harry and Sally took twelve years!

It just frustrates me so much to see people upset because their relationships aren't going as perfectly or as quickly as they'd like for them to be. Nothing's going to become perfect when you get married, or when you have children, or when you retire. Life is kind of hard. Being around people you care about is the nicest part -- when you're not spending that time worrying about when they'll propose to you.

In summary (and this is what I always say), please relax.

Ignorance vs. Just Being A Huge Asshole

2011-02-23T19:59:00.003-06:00

There's this guy in my American Experience class - translated from college-speak, that basically means history, but with a focus on minority groups - who seems to be determined to irritate everyone. I'm not sure how else to explain what he does.

First day of class, to our pregnant professor: "You're huge! Are you having twins?"

"...Uh, no. Just one."

"Are you SURE?"

On the question of America's status as "the best country in the world ever": "Of course it is. Economically-"

Professor: "Actually, statistics show that it isn't-"

"ECONOMICALLY-"

On Anglicization: "My name is Javier, but I introduce myself as Xavier, because everyone should know I'm from America."

On Texans: "My friend said the girls in Texas are way, way more attractive. So..."

On stereotypes about men vs. women: "Guys act exactly like the guys on Friends. They don't talk about sex, and if they do it's a passing thing. And girls ARE emotional and irrational. It's pretty true-to-life."

On male teachers: "Well, it's been proven that male teachers for young children are either pedophiles or have gender confusion."

Professor: "Uh, do you mean sexual orientation?"

"I know what I mean."

And then today, we talked about women's rights and the problem of difference between the sexes, and whether equality can ever be attained. I brought up the fact that men are much less likely to express ideas or feelings typically thought of as feminine, because they will be perceived as gay. And then the professor made several good points about homophobia in a row. And then this guy - I refer to him as Pre-Law Asshole - piped up, and I looked back at one of my similarly liberal friends, who rolled his eyes at me.

(We are both restraining ourselves the entire class period, every class, from strangling PLA. Radical feminist + LGBT rights activist + extremely conservative practically ODD kid = a really volatile classroom)

And PLA launched into this three- or four-minute explanation of homophobia, which is basically that men are afraid of penetration by other men, whereas lesbians aren't threatening... or something? He used "penetration" at least ten times during his monologue. I still have no idea what he was getting at.

But then the professor responded to him, diplomatically, and then moved the conversation along to utopian/egalitarian societies, and whether equality in pay was possible. The way she said it sounded like she thought pay was equal now, and I was about to say something, and then PLA says "Except that women still get paid 75 cents to MY dollar." My friend and I both rose out of our seats a little.

It's so not worth it. PLA then went on, of course, to say that this utopian society was totally possible if only people would convince themselves that everyone was equal. Everyone that couldn't was clearly just not as evolved as he, PLA, is. He is a paragon of social equality. He is what all men should aspire to. (He then went on to advocate for men's rights, btw)

I mean, how is someone with my strength of feelings on all these issues supposed to respond to him? I can't stab him in the neck or anything, I don't think, no matter how much I want to. A debate wouldn't convince him, because he isn't that kind of person. What exactly am I supposed to say?

Please, someone tell me it's okay to stab him.

Skipping out on technology

2011-02-07T14:36:00.004-06:00

I deactivated my facebook last night while having a panic attack, because for some reason that seemed appropriate. And now, post-panic, it actually seems like the best thing I've ever done. This may be the first time that sequence of events has ever occurred! Normally it's just like "hey, I should cut my own hair!" or something, which always ends so happily.

Top ten reasons to deactivate your facebook account:

Less temptation to sit in front of the computer eating chips. Why are those things connected?
So much less drama. I don't know how facebook cultivates such a high school attitude in groups of people, but oh, it does.
Time posted an unintentionally amusing article that basically says if you're on facebook a bunch, you will probably fail. Not, of course, that they're saying that: "Maybe [Facebook users] are just prone to distraction. Maybe they are just procrastinators." Either way, it's your own fault, although Mark Zuckerberg might be contributing.
The Hobbit comes out next year. Are you prepared? Start reading! You have approximately 16 times to go through it before you catch up with my 12-year-old self!
You no longer have to see friends that make you sad seeing them. You know that ex that dumped you four years ago, and those pictures showcasing how cute they are with their new SO? Nope! Out of your life! (Also are you still stalking them? Girl. No. I would never)
Maybe this means you'll make new fr- no. No, probably not. But, uh, maybe you'll go take a walk occasionally?
More time to spend online looking for a pirated copy of the Sherlock mini-series. Martin Freeman and I are getting married, and there is nothing you can say about it.
Less stress in general. With less stress, you are more likely to lose weight, less likely to get cancer, have better hair growth, improve your memory, help with your aches and pains and a whole bunch more. Seriously. Go google it. I'll wait.
You will worry less about your profile picture and what you are going to say in your status. If you have particularly witty things to say, you can say them on twitter, which is far less likely to create dramz and also has Eli Roth on it. I bet you weren't friends with Eli Roth on facebook, now were you?
Freckles. You don't get them from the glow of your computer.

Consider it. Vive la Revolución!

(Plus you can always go back if you miss all of those things. I don't know why you would, but I bet within a week I will totally miss those awful ex photos. Yes, hello, I am part of the whippersnappers' generation, and yes, social masochism is freaking awesome)

Things I've made:

2011-02-01T20:14:00.006-06:00

This was/is(?) for typography class, in which we had to design something to represent a word, using Futura Bold and the word only... no representative objects. Which sucks, because my original idea was a suspension bridge made up of "suspension." Maybe I'll do that later.

This is just my logo. I like it. The end.

Nice legs, Daisy Dukes, makes a man go - no, this is unacceptable

2011-02-01T17:04:00.005-06:00

Last Friday before leaving for home I was making the trek back to my dorm. As I got up to the door, a car drove by - a nice white Lexus. A couple of older guys were in it, and they were attractive. The driver shouted at me "I'd hit that," and winked. They drove away.

Before Thanksgiving break last semester I was making the same exact walk, and nearly the same thing happened. Except neither boy was attractive, and the driver shouted "Get out of here, grenade!" *

I liked the first one. I was crushed by the second one. Why is this?

Both are forms of harassment. Neither is intended to do anything other than provoke a reaction and make the catcaller feel powerful. But for some reason attractive dudes shouting an affirmation of my own attractiveness is acceptable?

Dodai of Jezebel recently posted an article about the globalization of Hollaback, the site where users can post incidents of groping, assault and other forms of harassment, including comments like the ones I got. A lot of the comments on the post were based on people's confusion between levels of harassment, as in "But they mean well! It was a nice comment! It's not something that needs to be reported!"

DepecheNode had the best that I saw:

It always amazes me how many people here and at other sites defend streets calls and "compliments."

In many cases, any kind of compliment is harassment, not to mention entirely pointless. As a man, I have never felt the need to yell, shout or comment anything to a woman walking down the street because, well, what's the point? She isn't going to hear what I said and think "Oh my, he's right! My ass is bangin'! Well, I'm gonna blow him right now!" I just don't get it.

But if I'm at a party or club, that's kind of the point isn't it? But that's flirting. And there's a difference between me going up to a woman and complimenting her after introducing myself and me going "shake it baby!"

As for glaring or staring...I think everyone does that to a degree, but shit, if you can't check someone out without looking like a perv you're totally doing it wrong.

Hollaback isn't going after men who politely flirt in appropriate settings (for the most part) they're going after pigs who think women are their own personal playthings.

Speaking of pigs, the most egregious case of this recently was when some random teenage kids in a truck drove by my mother - my mother - and called her a number of particularly nasty things. Now, really? If you catcall a girl your age you can explain it away. You can say you thought she was hot, or that you knew her. But this situation makes it incredibly clear what street harassment is about: power.

Guess what else is entirely about power that people explain away with discussions of attraction and the victim deserving it because of what they wore? OH THAT'S RIGHT. It's rape.

*Grenade: n. Created by Mike Sorrentino on Jersey Shore, an abomination of a television show. It means "The ugly and/or fat girl who goes out with a group of attractive, skinny girls, whom someone will have to hook up with in order to ensure his friends get laid." Yes. Really.

2010-11-04T19:41:00.002-05:00

This is going to be a totally research-free post, so if that turns you off, uh, you should probably not be on the internet.

But okay. I've been thinking about the impact of the internet on my life. In my rhetoric and composition class we read an essay that was about the (incorrect) presumption that older people have about young people on the internet. That is, kids these days never read or write voluntarily and are criminally uninformed because of it. And the author made a good point that the internet is voluntary reading and writing, much more than people were doing before blogs and wikipedia.

So, true confessions time: when I was little, I was incredibly, insanely conservative. Not just like "I'm going to be in the College Republicans [ed.: ahahahahaha] one day" but like "Homosexuality is WRONG it says so in the BIBLE LOOK AT THIS VERSE," down to actually designing t-shirts with that Leviticus verse about the mandatory stonings on them. I was scary. And I remember going over to a (rare) liberal friend's house when I was about ten, and having this discussion. And he said, "my God wouldn't support that kind of idea. That's hatred of people because of something they can't help, for something he created himself." Of course I got incredibly angry and never spoke to him again, and it never even resonated with me at all.

And then when I was fifteen, I got a computer of my very own. Of course, in the beginning I spent all my time on Myspace and various forums and chatrooms and Lord of the Rings websites. And then for some reason I started following some blog that occasionally linked to something liberal - I don't even remember what. So I sort of was exposed inadvertently to other ideas. My friends at the time were not big fans of any other ideas that our parents didn't espouse, particularly things like "it's not nice to call people fags." And then I started reading Feministing, and my mind was freaking blown. There were other people out there that might share these same exact opinions! Some people liked equality! And then I read Full-Frontal Feminism, and then Female Chauvinist Pigs, and I think we all know how this turned out: I went from full-on right-wing conservative to slightly apathetic hippie to full-on too-liberal-for-the-Democratic-party liberal.

I certainly didn't have friends that believed any of these things. Among the people from The Woodlands, that number is still pretty small. And I have to wonder if I'd even be in Austin right now if it weren't for that influence (when I was little, the idea was more along the lines of "those liberal tea-sippers in Austin have no idea of what the common man wants, blah blah, RINO, blah blah").

On the other hand, some really scary times in my life have been directly influenced by the internet, too. I wouldn't have picked up Godless if I hadn't read about it online, which started a really angry, destructive period of atheism in which I almost lost quite a lot of friends. And odds that it would've occurred to me to try to kill myself via alcohol poisoning: not high.

I'm pretty sure those things can't be blamed on the internet as an entity, though. The opening up of my mind to new ideas, yes. Exposure to those new ideas, yes. But discernment between good ideas and bad ones is something that can't be taught with parental controls or even by good role models. This sort of thing, like it or not, has to be learned through experience. Which is something the internet can certainly give.

2010-10-13T15:11:00.003-05:00

David Oliver Relin (co-author of Three Cups of Tea) came to speak at our campus last night. I took seven pages of notes, and even that was only an overview of what he said. What he's reporting on is so profound that one would need hours to document it -- or, of course, a full-length book.

My school's Class of 2014 (and I still cringe every time I read that) theme is "Our Global Community." And Relin captured that in his speech quite well. He said that when he graduated from college, his parents' graduation gift to him was a plane ticket to anywhere in the world. He took it and went to India, and almost immediately spent most of his money on a motorcycle. Not a good motorcycle, mind you, but a terrible one which things fell off of about every fifty miles. Consequently, he was constantly breaking down in front of people's homes. And they would come out and tie together the bits of his bike again with a bit of twine or a piece of duct tape, and then they'd invite him in for tea. And this is when he decided what he wanted to do with his life: travel, and be a journalist.

So he went back to New York to get started on his sure-to-be illustrious journalism career, but every time he pitched a story in which he would drive a motorcycle across Africa and talk to people about AIDS, he was given a story about a movie star or an athlete. His first freelance job was an article for Reader's Digest on how to refinish wood flooring. Needless to say, he was feeling a little unfulfilled. And then he went to see Grace Paley speak. She said many things, among which were "stop taking yourself so seriously," "get engaged," and his favorite, "I believe it's the duty of the writer to listen to the stories of the powerless and tell those stories to the powerful." And thus he got the push he needed to really freelance.

He started soon after the September 11th attacks, when he was beginning to get frustrated with how Muslims were being treated in the US. Muslims do not equal terrorists, he says, and their lives were routinely turned upside down by extremists too. Relin says terrorism is only the symptom, but the real disease is poverty and ignorance. And this was when he got involved with Greg Mortenson and the Central Asia Institute.

While talking about this, he got caught up in a bunny trail that I thought was one of the most important parts of his speech. He went to Vietnam to report on landmines in the early years of his journalism career. He said that there were more bombs and munitions dropped during that war than any other time in history, and because of that children are still losing limbs to those bombs. Because of the time I've spent in Croatia, where the war was so recent, I'm fairly aware of attempts to clean up the landmines. But it's unbelievable to me that thirty-five years later no one is capable of going through and cleaning up the mess we made.

In any case, he went on to say that he went to Mount Everest (and we all know I perked up immediately when I heard that, allergies or no) to do a story on Apa Sherpa and Lhakpa Gelu Sherpa, who set the records for number of times summitted (20) and speed of ascent (10 hours and 47 minutes) respectively.

While there, he ran into Dr. Geoff Tabin. Tabin attended Yale, Harvard medical school, and Oxford, climbed the last unclimbed face of Everest, was the fourth man to climb the Seven Summits, and invented bungee jumping. Oh, and basically because he was bored, he decided to cure preventable blindness.

There are about 100 million people around the world who are blind and don't have to be - the only problem is the cost. Tabin cut the cost down to $15 a patient, and the length of the surgery to six minutes. Every day, people flock to the village that he's working in that day. They come in totally blind, and the next day they leave with 20/20 vision. For $15 a person.

He said a lot more that I'll cover later, probably, but I thought that was so powerful. And I don't know why people aren't focusing on things like this, and like Mortenson's Central Asia Institute, and like preventing children from getting their limbs blown off by landmines. We get so worked up about politics and money and things that don't matter - my favorite twitter hashtag is #firstworldproblems. I know that I'm part of the problem, going to an expensive school in an expensive town wearing expensive clothes and eating organic food, but I'm trying to help. I'm donating money. I'm donating clothes. I have made some impassioned speeches. And there are so many people that aren't doing anything. And I just don't understand that.

2010-10-09T13:45:00.002-05:00

It's always frustrated me that ageism doesn't seem to apply when talking about people younger than 25. I am certainly not saying that youth is more important than age, or that young people are better. But there's an inherent implication in everything that's said about college and high school students that they're still searching. They don't know what they want. They get taken up in silly philosophical questions. They're convinced that their love will last.

As if just because the person in question is twenty rather than forty means that their love won't last, or their philosophical ideas aren't fully formed and rational, or their sexuality is necessarily more fluid.

Of course I don't think college students are the smartest people I've ever met. A lot of people make really stupid decisions. A lot of people can't seem to figure out how to use commas, for God's sake. But those decisions aren't inherently less important. People that are forty and eighty make equally stupid decisions, except that it's assumed there's some sort of reasoning behind it - or, of course, that they're senile.

There is certainly ageism on both sides. But please consider what you're doing before the next time you roll your eyes and say, "well, they're 'in love,' of course, but they're freshmen, so..." Love is what you think it is at the time. Philosophy is what is important to you at the time. Decisions always matter, now matter how old you are when you make them.

the HELL?

2010-08-29T13:45:00.004-05:00

This is...

Whatever your opinions on Glenn Beck, can we all agree that a comparison between the Tea Party and the 60s-era civil rights movement is not only batshit insane but insulting and antagonizing?

"Beck said on the air that he 'wouldn’t be surprised if in our lifetime dogs and fire hoses are released or opened on us. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of us get a billy club to the head. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of us go to jail — just like Martin Luther King did — on trumped-up charges. Tough times are coming.'"

WHAT.

Okay, Glenn Beck. Look, I loathe you. I am vehemently anti-violence, but you make me want to destroy things. Preferably you. But I'm trying to be open-minded.

But when you say shit like this it is not conducive to impartial dialogues. I'm really torn between thinking you're incredibly evil, and thinking you're incredibly stupid.

If you're stupid, you actually don't realize that you are insane. You think that your calls for lower taxes and a smaller government are actually as important as basic civil rights for an entire group of people (I'm not even going to go into the groups that are still around that don't have basic civil rights). You know what? There are other people in this world than you. You don't matter. None of us do individually. But if we make things better for entire groups of people, generations and generations, that matters. You could be using your platform to actually do good, and instead you're fear-mongering among privileged people who, like you, can't see beyond their nuclear family. What the terrifying progressives (and by the way, with the way you use that word, I feel confident that you haven't ever looked up what it actually means) want to do is make things better for everyone.

Martin Luther King, by the way, was a progressive.

If you're evil, then you realize what you're doing. That you're dividing the country, that you're inciting hatred in people, that you're putting thoughts into ignorant people's heads that won't only hurt marginalized people groups but those ignorant people themselves. That you're demonizing people who are only trying to do the right thing. That you're venerating people who are small-minded and hateful. That you're obscuring the truth.

I want to believe you're stupid.

(P.S. since I've stopped even trying to be impartial, this is great)

2010-08-16T18:59:00.002-05:00

I realized today that headbands are my personal symbol of freedom. There was a whole period of time where I avoided them ferociously because one of my exes told me he didn't like them, and I should stop wearing them (they got in the way, apparently).

I'm wearing a headband today.

Screw you, The Man!

2010-06-29T18:45:00.002-05:00

Today I decided that instead of working on French I would watch movies. This is clearly a great idea, with no bad consequences at all, because it's summer and that's what you do. So I found the stack of movies I've borrowed from Ben (...not that that's a big stack or anything) and watched the first half of Moulin Rouge (because the last half is depressing) and then started on The Last King of Scotland because it has James McAvoy in it, and it's about Africa, and, I don't know, educational value, or something? Mostly because of James McAvoy.

I would just like to recommend now that you never, ever watch that movie.

I'm not saying I'm a great fan of gore or anything, but I loved 300 and I tend to really like zombie flicks, and, you know, those aren't exactly short of blood. But apparently things that involve blood and gore that are based on a true story just make me want to vomit all over the place. Maybe if I had read what the movie was about might have helped (uh, yes, he killed 300,000 people probably, so that's... not short of gore either is it) but anyway it's going along fine and you're thinking "sweet, James McAvoy in 70s suits, and... okay, I'm not totally happy with the white-man-as-savior vibe I'm getting here, or the fact that the only woman able to resist his considerable sexual wiles was white, but... this is fine!" and then people start getting shot, and that's sort of okay because you don't actually see anything, and then all of a sudden there are dismembered people and people hung from the ceiling by their skin, and now it is time to vomit, but you're too invested in the story to stop watching.

The moral of the story here is to stop watching movies where people get shot but that seems sort of simplistic, since that covers a lot of movies, including... most of James McAvoy's other movies, now that I think about it. I suppose it is edgy or something. I have always been determined not to be prudish in terms of movies, and my only hard-and-fast rule before now had been that I didn't watch things where suicide was a main plot point. But yeah, I'm not sure that I can really handle people getting hurt at all. Especially things that actually happened, or are so close to reality that it's hard to separate them. Because I am becoming more and more of a pacifist, and I can't think of a reason that people need to be killed in movies for our entertainment. Things like Robin Hood where it's armies fighting and there are definitely people killed, but no one seems particularly happy about that fact - that's allowed. People shooting other people point-blank and then laughing is not okay with me. Especially when drunk assholes in the theater start laughing when people are killed. Even in something stylized like Kick-Ass it is still not okay to laugh when people die. And I'm confused how this seems to escape people.

Sorry for the wall of text.

Anyway, in an effort to cheer myself up I set StumbleUpon to only look through wedding-related things (I'm a sucker for wedding photography) and I've decided my eventual wedding colors (in no less than ten years, don't get excited) are teal and red. So. Something good came out of this, right?

2010-05-24T02:37:00.001-05:00

Weight discrimination is 100% legal in the vast majority of the country. Size is a protected class in San Francisco, CA; Santa Cruz, CA; Birmingham, NY; Madison, WI; Urbana, IL; Washington D.C. and the state of Michigan. Everywhere else: fat people can be fired explicitly for being fat with no legal recourse.

I'm sorry, but that's insane.

2009-11-10T13:44:00.002-06:00

Ben and I had a discussion last night about the insanity of what's been happening recently with what people term as "women's issues." There are two major points that came up: the recent gang-rape of a girl in California, and how the Democratic party has totally thrown women under the bus. Neither of these things has really been reported, and probably won't be.

First thing's first.

Essentially, a fifteen-year-old from Richmond, California, went to a homecoming dance. Later, a boy she knew asked if she wanted to get a drink (this was still on campus). She said yes. She ended up being raped, robbed and beaten over a two-hour period. She had to be airlifted to a hospital. And here's the thing. The original report talked about "as many as a dozen" people who stood and watched, doing nothing; later reports upped the number to closer to 20. Do I need to repeat that? Twenty people stood and watched someone being raped. Several of them joined in.

The other major point? From a New York Times piece on the community's response:

As Richmond High School tried to absorb the wrenching reality of a gang rape of a student on school grounds, the predominant reactions — horror or sympathy or even fear — were understood by the school’s principal, Julio Franco.

But there was another reaction that Mr. Franco has difficulty processing: sentiments like those voiced by Fonz Leon, a junior, as he stood in the school parking lot one recent afternoon: “She got drunk one time and messed with the wrong crowd and provoked some dude and got raped, that’s it.”

Mr. Franco said: “Even girls said this was O.K. because she went on her own. I tell them, ‘What if this was your sister? What if this was your mom?’ Then they realize, ‘Oh.’ ” (Emphasis mine)

You've probably heard of rape culture. You've heard of blaming the victim. You've heard of "she was asking for it." But really? She provoked some dude? She got raped? It was okay? It never really hits home that people think women deserve to be raped until you read something like this.

Oh, and just as a sideline ridiculous thing:

"This dance itself was a successful event."
--West Contra Costa Unified School District spokesman Marin Trujillo

Rape culture is a real thing, that we really need to combat. It's not that it shouldn't be okay that 20 people watch a rape and don't report it, or that it shouldn't be okay that people think the victim deserved it. Or that people shouldn't comment on fat women's blogs and tell them they should be grateful someone raped them. Or that people shouldn't consider it okay, ever, to violate someone in any way. It's that it shouldn't occur to them.

There was a great Jezebel article about the rape, and one of the comments was the best thing I've ever seen: "BTW, world. I'm totes b'gotes a human! I think and feel. The only person entitled to my holes is me. So fuck off and don't tell me to lighten up."

I'm not sure what to say in order to fix this. I don't think me saying "okay, guys, don't rape people" is going to do anything. Because what we need is a massive overhaul in what people are being taught. We can't seem to get past the abstinence argument enough to see that what needs to be taught in sex ed is the concept of enthusiastic consent - without that, there shouldn't even be a discussion. Because you know what? I'm tired of hearing that women need to be careful. And that if you go of by yourself, you deserve to be raped. And if you drink, or you're wearing a short skirt, or you've ever had sex before in your life, you were asking for it. I'm tired of carrying my keys in my fist in empty parking lots. It's always our responsibility. Like birth control is our responsibility. Like everything regarding sexuality is our responsibility. That's unfair to women, and it's really unfair to men, too. I don't think men are just incapable of controlling themselves, and that any flash of skin is like a red flag to a bull. We all have brains. We can all think. Give yourself enough credit for that, at least.

More to come on this later.

2009-08-18T21:39:00.002-05:00

How can people get so worked up over things that don't matter and skim over huge things that matter more than anything because they don't care?

I'm arguing with someone right now about intelligent design. And I'm kind of sad I'm even involved in that. Because you know what? It doesn't matter. This stuff that everyone gets so upset over, and the stuff that churches break apart over - it's pointless, and stupid. What matters is that right now Christianity is banned in fifty-one countries. Restricted nations: 40. Hostile areas: 11. That's what isn't fair. That's what needs to be changed. And people remain so caught up in which person has offended them personally by existing within the church. And in whether their church is selling doughnuts, and therefore violating Jesus's views on moneychangers. And in what one person has said from a pulpit. Why do we even care? Why do we care who's joining the church in terms of labels when we're forgetting that they are individuals who need salvation, just like we do?

Jesus, and by that I mean the actual Jesus who existed and is documented in the Bible, was not about excluding people. Because he loves everyone. The tax collectors, and the people who commit awful sins, and the lepers, and all the outcasts from society. The only people he actually pointedly disliked were the people who got too caught up in the law and traditions of the church.

Oh wait! Wait, that's us.

There is such a huge number of people that can't gather and worship. They can't sing out loud. They can't publicly own a Bible. And we're worried about a misspelled word?

Where is the passion for Jesus? Being on fire for him and expanding his kingdom and being really, truly concerned about other people? If we really believe in Jesus being the only way shouldn't that count for something? Shouldn't we be passionate about changing people to save them? Don't we care about anyone else but ourselves?

2009-08-09T13:24:00.002-05:00

I've always hated Paul. I know that's awful, but from what I've read about him - note that I had not, myself, actually read really anything he wrote - he was totally against women and everything in the Bible is against women and how can I be a Christian when Christians believe this.

I think this is interesting: there's this whole passage in 1 Corinthians about propriety in worship. And the verses I've always seen quoted from that are:
"A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. For this reason, and because of the angels, the woman ought to have a sign of authority on her head."
Right? Which sounds, definitely, pretty awful. Even if you justify it by saying "it was a different time," or whatever. But here's the next part of that verse:
"In the Lord, however, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God."

I definitely don't agree with everything Paul wrote. But I don't think I have to. Paul was human, like anyone else.
And I'm finding that I like reading what he's written. He says earlier in 1 Corinthians that "the wife's body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife." I like that. There's a lot more talk about equality in Christ than everyone thinks. And a lot more about the whole point being faith, hope and love.

No, of course the entire New Testament is not fluff and glitter. But I think true faith and love aren't either. Have you ever met a missionary who is full of faith and fire and zeal and talks about puppies and angels and hugging? No. There's a need for God in this world. A desperate need. And people who are truly on fire for that mission don't display faith and love as the world sees them: limp and weak and crutches for those people who aren't strong enough to do things on their own. Love for other people shouldn't be just a half-hearted attempt at affection and maybe giving a quarter to a man on the street. Love should move you. Love should change you. You should be passionate and over-the-top. You should be extending yourself beyond where you think you can go emotionally and physically and financially. People that are around you should be able to tell that you have something different, that you care about them more deeply than most people do. Something in you should be radically different from those around you. Because once you've accepted Jesus it's no longer you that's represented. You have been crucified with Christ, and you no longer live, but Christ lives in you.

"Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up."

Seriously, get off your computer right now and go read 2 Corinthians and Galatians. There's way too much that's good there for me to get through in one blog post, especially because I'm so excited about this. My life is changing. And it's hard. And I love it.

I don't know how people aren't furious.

2009-06-17T19:53:00.003-05:00

First of all, this clip.

Look, we all know Pat Robertson is a douche. Really, we do. But that doesn't mean this kind of shit is somehow okay. And so many people think like this. Everyone's grandparents (bar some really open-minded ones) think that gay people (or "The Gays") are all going to hell, they're the reason for the way this country is, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, etc.

They're always saying that their parents raised them right, and that they wouldn't act how Kids These Days act. Well you know what? You know how their parents didn't fucking raise them? To hate people. To hate a whole group of people so much that not only do you deny them basic human rights, you refuse to accept that they exist. You think that with a few shock treatments, or some real down-to-basics Bible readings, you could change them and make them like you.

Yes, Pat Robertson, they have pride. They have pride about the way they were born, and you know why they have to? Because of people like you who tell them day after day that they're not okay. They're not acceptable. We don't want them. Ever. Anywhere.

Look. I'm sorry I'm so angry all the time, and that my posts are so full of vitriol. But you know why that is? People aren't only ignorant. They're mean, and hateful, and they believe that their way is the only way. And these people are celebrities. People listen to them. Thousands, millions of people watch Fox News. And I'm not saying all those people are bad, or that they all believe what Sean Hannity says is gospel. But some of them do. And some of those people believe everything that they hear that they agree with. And they end up killing people like Dr. Tiller.

There are SO MANY things to be angry about. And no one listens, because they're "women's issues" or "gays' issues" and they don't affect them. But these issues end up affecting everyone.

Read this. Or this. Or this. Or THIS.

Are you furious yet?

And you know what? You should be. We should all be furious. If no one listens, and if no one does anything, and if no one says anything, people are going to continue to literally lose their lives over these issues.

People get so angry about so many little things! People write long, angry blog posts about Adam Lambert losing American Idol or how their children don't want to eat their vegetables or how there are potholes on their street. This is what used to get my mom worked up when she was on the city council - people only care about themselves. They're given the opportunity to do something great for everyone, and they spend all their time calling their congressman about the mosquitoes in their backyard. And for what? Who are they fucking helping? No one. Not even themselves.

Take a second. Sign a petition. Befriend someone who needs it. Do something. Because so, so many people are consciously trying not to help anyone but themselves.

Augh.

2009-05-18T23:00:00.001-05:00

This. And not because of the main point of the article, but because of this:

"Earlier this week, underwear firm Triumph International showed off their new bra offering, which boasted a ticking clock on the front.

The bra is designed for women who are looking for a husband, and the only way to stop the clock counting down is to slip an engagement ring into the mechanism.

When the jewellery is put in place, the clock halts and Felix Mendelssohn's 'The Wedding March' begins to play."

Augh. AUGH.

Be careful who you call plus-size.

2009-05-14T15:20:00.005-05:00

I really should stop reading things I know will make me angry. But: Perez Hilton posted recently about Mia Tyler "looking like... well, a plus-size model." Not necessarily as bigoted as his commenters made it out to be, and she is a plus-size model. My quarrel is with the concept of "plus-size" and who considers who to be fat.

I've posted about Beth Ditto. I think she's beautiful. She's over the recommended weight for her height, too. Which is all overweight means. It doesn't mean she isn't pretty. It doesn't mean she's going to die earlier. If it makes her happy why does it matter what we think or anyone thinks?

Meanwhile, there's Mia Tyler, who apparently wears somewhere from a 12 to a 16. Who by the way is gorgeous. Can we pause a second for some Mia love?

Yeah, she's hot. I'm pretty sure we can all agree here. And are we shocked? She's LIV TYLER'S SISTER.

The average American woman, need I remind you, is 5'4" and wears a size fourteen. Yes, the average model is much smaller. But what right do we really have to call Mia Tyler, out of anyone, plus-size? Especially since she's the same size we are?

Or is this a self-hatred thing? We aren't what we think we should be, we don't look how we think we should look, but damn it we know how people should look and that's not it.

I don't know. I'm not sure what to think about this. What I'm sure about is the fact that we need, as a society, to reconsider "fat."

Top Ten.

2009-05-13T00:56:00.003-05:00

Top ten things I have always wanted:

1. Blue eyes
2. A cat
3. Not actually always, but for a long period I wanted to BE a cat
4. Some way of perpetually having warm waffles delivered to me
5. An indoor slide
6. A castle, or some castle-like building with turrets and secret compartments and spiral staircases and maybe some mysterious clues occasionally
7. A Great Dane
8. To be able to un-see things
9. A wolf (which I now have, to an extent, so check for me)
10. To be good at any sport at all

Top ten things I wish I could do:

1. Climb Everest without dying
2. Help teenage girls understand that they're really, really not fat, and that complaining about being fat constantly isn't winning them any friends
3. Go back and give my ten-year-old self a hug
4. Control more things
5. Control fewer things without freaking out
6. Go to the grocery store without buying something totally idiotic that I will never eat just because the wrapper makes it look like the best thing since sliced bread, especially since I already like sliced bread so much
7. Learn things just by reading the instructional booklets on them
8. Start thinking more like the badass I've always wanted to be and less like the wimp I actually am
9. Be an activist and call my congressman about rape victims being forced to pay for rape kits and petition for equal pay and equal marriage and equal rights for everyone and not just get outraged about things but really do something about them
10. Go to sleep

Miss California and Christianity

2009-05-06T15:22:00.003-05:00

A lot has been made of Carrie Prejean's topless ("scandalous") photos, the breast implants that were paid for by the California Pageant Association, and, of course, her comments about gay marriage. There's been a lot of discussion about religious persecution, about intolerance, and a lot of discussion about Christianity.

There was a comment made on Feministing's coverage of the controversy that I liked:

"Well, let's define Christianity. Christianity is the belief that Christ, the son of God, fulfilled God's law by sacrificing his life. And what is God's law? It is the Torah, or Pentateuch -- the first five books of the Bible, one of which you quote from. Much of the Torah, in fact most of it, deals with the practical law of day to day life 2,000 years ago -- which should bring in to focus why, yeah...it might not be a good idea to eat pork and circumcise a boy child.

So the banning of flesh from cloven-hoofed animals, eating scaled animals, sowing mixed seeds, weaving mixed fibers, the bathing rituals for menstruating women, hair length -- not required of Christians by definition of their faith. Following the Bible to a T? Jews do (have to). Christians don't (have to). Blunt, but that's the nutshell.

Even your own ignorance of what the Bible means to Christians undercuts a fabulous point that could be made from the "cherry picking" argument. There is not a lot said about homosexuality in the New Testament. So little is said, in fact, that defending homophobia from a Christian perspective is almost indefensible -- because the focus must, from a Christian perspective, be made from the New Testament and not the Old."

I may not be among the majority here - in fact, I know I'm not - but I really agree with this. I truly believe that a lot of the things fundamentalist Christians believe are wrong - and not only wrong, but I feel like God dislikes those beliefs. Being against an entire group of people, for example, is not really what God is for. And if He was, I wouldn't be Christian. Because I don't believe anyone should be persecuted for their beliefs. It doesn't matter what they believe.

Which is a lot of why there's been so much conversation about Miss California - she's challenging people's standards of things they can accept. If we approve of free speech, then necessarily we must accept her freedom to say things we disagree with. We also can't resort to slut-shaming - putting her down because she's been in topless photos or had breast implants - to discredit her arguments.

Read:
Feministing's article on slut-shaming Carrie Prejean
and the comments I liked most from that article:
here and here

Theme of the day: implied consent.

2009-04-28T13:09:00.003-05:00

Another one of my favorite books is called Yes Means Yes, which is a compilation of essays talking about rape, the prevention of rape, and basically about consent. The major theme throughout the book is that implied consent isn't good enough. If you're on a date, and the person seems really into you, and you start making out and you end up on their bed and you don't hear yes, it means no. Always. Every time. It doesn't matter if you've had sex before. It doesn't matter if you're both naked. It doesn't matter if you're married. What matters is an enthusiastic "yes."

If you have sex with someone who said no, it's rape. That's clear enough. But so is sex without anyone saying anything. No one asked, no one agreed, it just happened and now it's done. How are you supposed to know if someone is uncomfortable at that point? You don't, and there's a very large opportunity that someone's going to end up feeling hurt and used. You cannot just go along with it.

The point with "yes means yes" rather than "no means no" is that people should always feel able to say yes. Starting off sex-ed with NO MEANS NO seems - is - very negative. Sex is something to be enjoyed. It should never make you feel bad about yourself later because the point is that it's so much damn fun. And the focus shouldn't be on just protecting yourself, but enjoying yourself.

Check out:
Yes Means Yes, by Jessica Valenti and Jaclyn Friedman
http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/ (the blog associated with the book)
this essay, which was published in Yes Means Yes

Also, remember that this isn't a male-to-female based thing. Having sex with your boyfriend if he hasn't agreed to it is still rape. There's rape within the lesbian community, and the gay community, and with white men and black women, and with older women and younger men. Rapists aren't only older white guys jumping out of bushes.

Always, always get a "yes."

Beth Ditto and things I don't understand.

2009-04-27T16:23:00.004-05:00

I was on Perez Hilton (horrifying, but occasionally I too am bored) and came upon a post about The Gossip and how they're back together and how great they sound. Which they do! And there was a picture up with it, which included Beth Ditto. I then looked her up, because she is kind of gorgeous.

Exhibit A:
Yeah, she's pretty, right? And she's a feminist and openly queer and kind of fantastic. Several designers are fans of hers, and everyone agrees that her voice is amazing.

But the BIG THING about her, apparently, is that she doesn't shave her armpits and she doesn't wear deodorant. That's all. That's everything anyone chooses to notice. Oh, and that she's fat and disgusting. The coverage from progressive media outlets is adoring, and everyone else spends all their time saying things like "Ditto, who’s already hideous enough without adding body hair to the equation, has expressed her adoration for the unshaved and natural look."

One site says "Beth Ditto wants Kate Moss to lead an Anti-Shaving Campaign. No, I’m not joking. The Big front woman has seen the Supermodel potential, and she said Kate is a perfect model to encourage women to stop removing their body hair. Ditto thinks the natural look is sexy, you know, with all the body hair (??) and she’s sure that La Moss is perfect to change women’s attitude to shaving. OMG! This is disgusting. But Kate is too, so I think she’s perfect for this campaign."

Another says "Ditto’s idea is definitely weird and seems to be inspired by the hippie era. And if this was for the sake of publicity, the lady should have resorted to something better."

Why is not shaving automatically disgusting? Seriously. I don't understand. Yeah, not wearing deodorant is a little far from the social norms we're all used to. A lot of things are. But not shaving doesn't go straight to "smells bad" or "doesn't care about oneself" or anything like that. It just goes to "is slightly hairier."

It truly doesn't mean that women who shave less - or not at all - aren't sexy. In fact, shaving your body hair off desensitizes you to a lot of things. Shaving has a part in desexualizing you. Most women's body hair is pretty fine, and for white people it's usually blond. And since we can all agree that white people are the most likely to get all up in arms about this... what? What is the problem here?

Yes, models are waxed and airbrushed and Photoshopped and closeups on actresses in magazines never show any facial hair and there's a booming industry based on hair removal. But that's the thing: it's an industry. The companies that make hair-removal products wouldn't make money if they didn't reinforce the idea, over and over, that being hairy is bad and you're ugly if you have any hair but the stuff on top of your head. Hair is a thing we all have. It's a beautiful, natural thing. And I don't understand how the only important thing about someone can be that they have too much of it.

Hey, shock: this is a thing that frustrates me!

2009-04-26T22:49:00.002-05:00

At night I tend to drift in to sit with my mom, who scratches my head while I read. It's an idyllic setting. I feel as though I should be living in 1954. Anyway, tonight I was reading Full Frontal Feminism and a broadcast from Lakewood (the mega-church headed by ultra-creepy Barbie and Ken Learn To Preach couple Joel and Victoria Osteen) was blaring on the television. I don't know if that is some sort of lethal combination, or if earlier conversations today about feminism and the unspoken truth brought it out, but I became furious listening to them preach, or what they call preaching.

Victoria started off with a declaration that they were going to focus on the family this weekend (no, really. I thought you couldn't speak that phrase aloud without the (TM) and perhaps a grimace, but apparently James Dobson really can't ascend from the fiery pits of hell to smite you for it. I guess he isn't actually dead. Whatever.) and that focusing on the family was all about love and acceptance and loving everyone no matter whether it was popular or your Aunt Betty agreed with it, because family is about love. Which is great! I love that. Except, of course, she didn't stop there.

She started into several minutes of talking about how a friend of hers felt so broken because her son had "embraced an alternative lifestyle" (here's a hint: this delicately phrased euphemism does not mean "he's started doing a lot of yoga and talks about Buddha's teachings a lot" or "he's taken up listening to polka and liking it" but rather "he's one of them homosexuals." I know! I was shocked too!) and she didn't know how to handle it and she knew that God didn't like it and everything was RUINED FOREVER.

And Victoria told this friend to believe in what God could do to change her son, and that good things come of bad times, and just because you love them doesn't mean you're condoning the offending behavior.

This makes me want to hit someone.

If family is about love and acceptance, the first thing you do when you hear of a change in someone's life is to learn about whatever they've gotten into. If you disagree with it on principle (which I understand that some people do, even if they know good people who are taking part in the villianous behavior, have done objective research and seen the good and bad sides of it all) then above all you accept them. You don't have to accept the thing they're into, no. But you continue loving that person and you don't spend all your time trying to think of how you can change them.

Especially frustrating to me is how many people form opinions based on the opinions around them without doing research or even attempting to learn the facts about the subject. And they then stick with that opinion come hell or high water, and anyone who disagrees with them is just sadly, sadly misinformed. I'm thinking of all the kids I know who are having to write pro-choice or pro-equal marriage or anti-war papers for debate classes right now, who preface everything with BUT YOU GUYS THIS ISN'T WHAT I REALLY THINK BECAUSE THAT WOULD CLEARLY BE SILLY AM I RIGHT.

I recently watched a clip from the Today Show in which they allegedly interviewed Jessica Valenti (author of Full Frontal Feminism, The Purity Myth, and several other feminist books I really, really like). The other side of the debate - which is what this turned out to be - was a woman who was intensely into abstinence. She had apparently waited for thirty-something years until she got married, which I have no problem with, depending on her reasoning, but... anyway. The interviewers started the segment off with an incredibly biased statement ("It's a lot easier to give it away than to keep it, a ha ha! What do YOU think, author on this subject and randomly chosen abstinence advocate? WHO WILL AGREE WITH US") and from then on they barely let Jessica talk at all. Clearly, talk shows are not the best venue for your equal chance to talk anyway, but they kept directing all their questions toward the TLW advocate, and eventually the entire thing became the interviewers making (awkward) sex jokes with her.

She actually compared Jessica's sources on abstinence to members of the KKK studying black achievement.

Anyway, what's infuriating is the way that no one listens. No one tries to listen. People decide that they have this opinion and it is RIGHT and they protest and they demonstrate and they never try to learn. So the people who need to hear it most never do. The people who needed to see Milk never did, because they were opposed to the idea on principle. The people who need to read books like The Purity Myth never will. Because people become so stubborn, especially when they're backed by such a huge amount of people who believe what they do.

Here's my opinion:

The point of the Bible is to teach us not to let anything get so big in our field of vision that we lose sight of God. It's when things start taking over our lives that it's a problem with God. But if you focus on losing your heart in Him, and you honestly try but you know that you can't without help, and so you lean even more on God, and you love him as much as you can possibly imagine loving anyone and that shows and without even having to try to convert anyone people start getting closer to God through your presence (and therefore His) in their lives... I feel like that's the point. I don't think he's concerned about your birth control choices or whether you wear your hair long or whether there's some ankle showing, because all that pales in comparison to the huge, huge things that you are and will be doing for His children and His Kingdom. And I don't think the big thing to Him is who you choose to love, because love is the important thing.

I don't know. I'm trying to stay open-minded.

Oh, homeschooling parents.

2009-02-09T10:05:00.004-06:00

Growing up homeschooled quite generally means that by the time you get out into the real world, you're totally unprepared. You've been sheltered your whole life by everyone around you, regarding everything. This is especially true for the bubble in which I live. Most kids here are sheltered. The homeschooled kids are whatever's on the farthest side of sheltered - hermits, possibly?

These homeschooled kids then go straight to college, for which they are completely unprepared. They become overwhelmed by the choices and the people and it's all too much. They then do one of two things: they buckle down like the good homeschoolers that they are and get their work done and major in biochemistry and graduate at the top of their class, or they suddenly realize they never had chances like these before and drink until they can no longer stand up.

Maybe I'm weird. I don't know. But I feel like there's a time in high school when your parents should let go enough that you can see some things for yourself. Too many homeschool parents seem to think that they went through everything you can in high school, got hurt themselves, and won't let their children get hurt the same way. Which is great, in theory. But you have to learn things for yourself, or everything's going to be tempting all the time. When you're five and learning to ride a bike, your parents keep you on training wheels for a while and then take them off, with the condition that you ride slowly and be careful on turns. But they know you won't, and you inevitably take off full-tilt one day, hit a bump and end up with some really interesting scars. And you learn to be careful, but you also learn that you can go full-tilt sometimes - you just have to watch for that particular bump.

(I'm stretching a metaphor here, but stick with me.)

Stupid things happen and you get hurt. Your parents probably did they same thing when they were learning to ride their bikes. But that doesn't mean they can just tell you about it, and then keep you away from bikes altogether. Some things have to be learned on your own, and you do eventually have to grow up.

Not everything needs to be tried full-tilt, and I'm not implying it should be. But the way to raise normal, balanced kids is not to keep them from doing absolutely anything their friends want to. Sometimes you have to learn not to stay out until 2 AM the night before a test by doing really poorly on that test. Sometimes you have to learn not to get drunk around people you don't know by seeing pictures of yourself posted on Facebook, and being made fun of for the next two weeks. Sometimes you have to get yourself out of problematic situations. It's part of growing up, and it should be done while you still have the support of being at home and being able to go home and cry and have your mom fix you ice cream.

I'm not saying parents should supply alcohol, or that they should be okay with anything their kid comes up with. But there's a point when you have to accept that your kids are essentially good kids, and that sometimes you have to let go.

Ballots! Voting! CIVIC DUTY-O-RAMA

2008-11-04T20:17:00.003-06:00

In an effort to avoid my mother's wrath, I did my civic duty and not only voted but helped in the polling place - I was very sophisticated and did something that involved pushing two buttons and tearing off a ballot number, smiling, and handing said number to the voter. Hijinks ensued, and I'm not even sure how, but I will try to enumerate the ways in which it did so.

1) People are very easily confused by pieces of paper.
Once I handed off the strip of paper with the number (hereafter referred to as the strip, for reasons unknown) people almost always stared at me in a confused fashion. I tried to tell them things I thought they might like to know or would not figure out on their own, such as the fact that the school election isn't covered under a straight-party ticket or, you know, where the booths were. Most people followed this with a blank stare and a "...where do I go?"

Um. Ma'am. There are booths there to your left. There are people voting at them. Maybe that should be a hint.

(In my head I alternated between that response and "actually, you're going to need to take this strip and head on up to Conroe with it. They'll take care of you from there. OOPS, it's 6:55. Oh well!")

Also confusing were the numbers on the strip. The ballot number is four digits long. People inevitably thought that was the booth number. How many booths do you think we have? And as an addendum to that, did you not notice the numbers on the booth? There are eight. There are not 4308. The wall does not extend, that wall is not mirrored and there are no magic portals. We are in a rec center and there are people playing volleyball outside.

2) There are only four types of businessmen.
We arrived at the polling place at 6 AM. The line outside consisted mostly of businessmen on their way to work, and within that first hour of voting I kept having the same men appear over and over.
The first is the large, red-faced Stereotypical Businessman with the overstretched polo/button-down and a large hairstyle. These men always have red hands, usually covered in band-aids (paper cuts? fights with chainsaws? who knows), scars and pockmarks. Everything about them can be described as "meaty." (Oh god, some twelve-year-old boy is going to read that and laugh for years.) They're typically lovely people, just a little loud sometimes. These men clearly golf on the weekend and are married to the ladies who play tennis at the country club.
The second is the tall, skinny, uncomfortable Should-Have-Been-In-Geek-Squad Businessman in clothes too big for him. His hands are smooth, his shoes are shiny and he mumbles uncontrollably. His shirts are usually striped, and his pants are always too short. His company nametag is always on a lanyard.
The third is the most common here - the Woodlands Businessman. They're a little too happy to see you. They're usually tall, their shoes are European in style and sleek and black, their suits are tailored and they're brash and obnoxious. They will not turn off any electronic device in their possession even if it's a misdemeanor not to do so. They always have a cup of Starbucks and a big, flashy watch. Bluetooth headsets are passe amongst them, so instead they just talk more loudly into their phones.
The last is the uncomfortably overweight, permanently rumpled Washed-Up Businessman. His Bluetooth is always present, his shirt is always stained and his hair is always dull. He smells vaguely of smoke and if a beard is present it's the unpleasant kind that looks as though a hedgehog is trying to emerge through his chin. He's genuinely happy to see you, though, and will gladly lean down and in to hear you better (and not at all subtly look at your chest).

None of these types take direction at all.

As an aside, there was one man who looked like an expensively dressed hobo that came in to vote wearing an iPod. Which he wore the whole time.

...the hell.

3) People are astonishingly easily distracted.
We had our breakfast and lunch catered in. I cannot tell you how many people wandered over to the table (halfway hidden behind the empty voting machine caddy) and stared wistfully at the food before selecting a grape and eating it, then walking away. Sometimes these people did not actually vote.

Later in the afternoon when I was considering joining the bellydancing class next door out of sheer boredom, I resorted to reading a book. If you know me, you will not be surprised to hear that this book was Killer Angels. And I swear to god I got into six seperate discussions of the Civil War (War of Northern Aggression) and how much Reconstruction sucked for the South.

...Yeah, but take the damn strip and vote, man.

4) Working for the government is a nightmare.
In order to sign in, the voter had to have at least their voter registration card or their driver's license, and sometimes they had both. They then signed the book, and the election worker gave them an official slip of paper on which was written the precinct number. This slip was then walked over three feet to me, where I immediately recycled it. I then gave them the ballot number. They then walked to the booth and voted, usually while trying to put everything away. Add a few infants hanging off their legs and maybe a cup of coffee and you've got the average voter.

Other idea: swipe your driver's license at the booth. Vote. Leave.

WOAH I AM SUCH A REVOLUTIONARY.

Also apparently some people didn't know what a voter registration card was and somehow thought I needed to keep theirs. Permanently.

5) If you got up at 4:30, by the end of the day everything either sucks or is the most hilarious thing in the history of mankind.
My mom was telling stories of my dad's taxidermy days. These stories involved a bloated frog leaking cotton eternally playing a tiny drum, a bird with a broken neck that was stuffed that way (my dad tried to fix it by putting the bird on a branch that slanted) and a raccoon that shed fur and was posed in a permanent state of surprise. My dad apparently hid behind the chairs occasionally when my parents first married and leapt out at the dogs wielding the raccoon and shouting. My mom has never been the same.

You have no idea how funny this is to me right now, and especially how funny it was right before closing. The fencing people actually asked us to close the door because we were laughing so hard.

In closing:

everyone should always early vote.

Music scares people.

2008-10-06T13:07:00.002-05:00

People are scarce on Mondays in my office - only those devoted to work, obsessed with work, or working with publications come in today. Because of this, I usually go to lunch on my own on Mondays. Today I went to one of my favorite places, simply because I could, and had broccoli cheese soup for similar reasons. My friends tend to get tired of my monotonous diet.

Anyway, because I was alone, I ended up on Wikipedia via my phone. I had been thinking on the way to work about composing and how fascinating it would be to compose scores for symphonies - being able to think in music and understand how it works so completely that it flows out of your head onto paper and it's coherent and people can play it for hundreds of years in the future, each one giving it their own twist. I can't imagine anything more lasting, other than writing.

(There's a quote that I love about that: "People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some, there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write, they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.")

I continued to read, and as we all know, Wikipedia is likely to suck you in and it did so to me. I started reading about the classical period of music, and while doing so came upon a word I didn't know - "polyphony." I kept reading, but eventually I had to go back up and click on it, as there cannot be things I don't know just floating around in the universe.

Here's what I learned: there are three basic kinds of music. Monophony is where there's just the one melody, without any harmonies at all. Homophony is what we're used to in modern music, and indeed in most music from 1800 on - a dominant melody and a subordinate harmony. Polyphony is a little more difficult to explain, but it's where there's at least two melodies. Wikipedia describes it as a texture.

Obviously the earliest forms of music were monophonic. Chants and similar sacred music were all there was in the middle ages. But then came the 1600s and 1700s, and the Baroque period, and suddenly there were more secular songs and more instruments played together. Orchestras began to be popular. But the interesting thing is that, like most things, the organized church hated polyphony on sight (or... hearing. you know what I mean.) and banished it.

Wikipedia says: "It was not merely polyphony that offended the medieval ears, but the notion of secular music merging with the sacred and making its way into the papal court. It gave church music more of a jocular performance quality removing the solemn worship they were accustomed to. The use of and attitude toward polyphony varied widely in the Avignon court from the beginning to the end of its religious importance in the fourteenth century. Harmony was not only considered frivolous, impious, and lascivious, but an obstruction to the audibility of the words. Instruments, as well as certain modes, were actually forbidden in the church because of their association with secular music and pagan rites. Dissonant clashes of notes give a creepy feeling that was labeled as evil, fueling their argument against polyphony as being the devil’s music. After banishing polyphony from the Liturgy in 1322, Pope John XXII spoke in his 1324 Bull Docta Sanctorum Patrum warning against the unbecoming elements of this musical innovation." [emphasis mine]

Can you imagine that now? The church actually banning harmonies? But then I thought about it. There was a huge repulse of rock music in the fifties within the church. Certain straight-line conservatives still believe that rock-inspired worship songs aren't as holy as hymns are.

Music shouldn't be this big a deal. So why is it?
Because music affects people. A really good harmonic part in a song gives you goosebumps; a bouncy Aretha Franklin song cheers you up from whatever weird mood you're in; that song from 2003 when you were so obsessed with that really attractive boy who bumped into you once in the hallway takes you back immediately, and you blush and get nervous all over again. That's an established fact.

My question is: why is the church so wholly concerned by popular music?

Intermission: A Chance Encounter

2008-07-22T23:53:00.001-05:00

I tiptoed up to the dock, holding my breath and hoping the wind wouldn't gust unexpectedly. Around me boats sailed and children shouted and dogs barked, but for now this part of the lake was still, barring the lapping of the water against the bank. A sudden breeze made my skirt flap around my legs and I winced inwardly, but the duck in front of me turned away and quacked quietly again, seemingly unperturbed.
I had come to the lake after work to warm up and calm down, goals that don't usually go hand in hand but you would understand if you worked there. Well, you would understand if you worked there and were me. I'd been wrapped in a blanket all day, but I still felt chilled to the bone after I stepped out into the hot summer weather and so I had set off to find something to do. Something warm to do, and something that did not involve blushing, as every day at work involves too much blushing for my own comfort.
I won't go into that.
I had actually planned to drive home, but in order to go home I have to cross a bridge. This bridge goes over a lake, the biggest lake in the area, and part of a park. And I was suddenly intrigued, and so I stopped and grabbed a magazine and my keys (I purposely left the phone) and went to sit on a dock. My feet had warmed up considerably by the time I reached the banks of the lake -- I hate shoes -- but I still felt a chill, like the one that you get when you first wake up no matter what time of the year it is. The wooden dock seemed the most welcoming, partially because I like things that are not made of plastic, but mostly because there were boaters on the plastic docks and they were shouting and I did not want to have to deal with poor attempts at flirting while I was reading The Philosopher's Magazine. This is because I'm going to end up a spinster aunt (it doesn't matter that I don't have siblings) with nine cats. But that really isn't the point, because when I reached the dock I noticed a mallard duck standing on the end, preening and surveying the waves.
My goal, because I have to have goals, was to sit down without disturbing the duck. I assumed he would fly off, of course, but it would be a nice story to tell if he didn't. So I approached the dock, and took a step on, and another, until I realized that of course he wouldn't be scared. None of those ducks are, they think humans have bread.
This was disappointing, but not for long. Because the duck (I feel like he should be The Duck by now) stood perfectly still as I walked the length of the dock, only turning his head when I got within three feet of him. I sat down at that point and tucked my skirt under me, as it has an annoying habit of flying up at inconvenient times, and opened my magazine. After a few minutes The Duck, too, seemed to become comfortable, and he sat down as well, quacking all the while at the banks. After a few minutes I finally realized what he was muttering about and felt very clever, because of course dozens of ducklings paddled away into the deep water and the mothers floated nearby in a protective circle. The Duck seemed to be a sentinel -- he flew off a few times, and whenever he did the ducklings were herded quickly back to the waiting rocks on the shore.
I don't really know why I'm telling this story. The Duck did come back to stay, and brought three of the females with him, and they hopped up onto the dock awkwardly and shook their whole bodies and preened every bit of themselves, but it wasn't particularly exciting. The wind was blowing and the water was cool, but it wasn't spectacular. The sun was a little too hot and my feet fell asleep. But the ducks swayed to the same lapping of the waves that I did, and never seemed bothered. On the way back a golden retriever, still wet from the lake, came up beside me and leaned his head on my thigh as I watched the wind flap the sails of the boats around in jerky patterns. I felt very accepted and a little more like I was whole than I had before.
My best friend told me recently that it's interesting how affected I am by my surroundings -- not by what people think of me, but just by the attitudes of the people who happen to be in line in front of me at Chick-fil-A, or how the barista treats me at Starbucks, or even by the weather. I don't know that I'd ever thought about that before. But I'm starting to think it might be a good thing.

The next time you're tempted to make a comment about teenagers - don't.

2008-03-17T18:12:00.000-05:00

People complain so often about racism, and sexism, discrimination against people simply because of what they look like or how they were born. Maybe discrimination against disabled people, or discrimination against older people.

How often does society as a whole address discrimination against people who are younger than thirty, because they're too young, they're "MTV-weaned, attention-deficit-prone," and who wants that kind of person amirite? Because of the way this new generation has been brought up they're not capable of the kind of thinking older generations are. They don't even try. You know, my friend's daughter had the option to be a pre-med student and what did she do? Major in modern dance. My god. That's the problem with the world these days - no motivation.

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaking as one who is unabashedly part of this new generation, I'm forced to say that there are people who are unmotivated in every society, every social status, every race and every generation. The need for constant entertainment is, indeed, a problem that we have to deal with, but that started years ago, not specifically when the internet was created.

No, the world is not doomed because of these silly young people who can't think, or speak properly, or say yes ma'am when talking to their elders. Even if every single person under the age of thirty acted like that (which, needless to say, isn't the case) the world would not be at all in danger. History flows its own way, and a large number of stupid people probably isn't going to slow down how the world is going. It certainly didn't with all the generations of stupid people before us.

There are a number of thinkers in this generation, brilliant arithmeticians, people who are absolutely incredible in science and language and art and anything else one can conceive of. What has changed with the inception of this method of constant communication called the internet is not the intelligence of the youth, but the number of stupid people who are able to make a grab for the spotlight.