It's the sled.
It's actually planet Earth.
It's made out of people!
He wrote it on himself knowing it wasn't true.
He wasn't actually a detective, he was a patient.
Everyone dies at the end.
Everyone dies at the end.
He was the dead body in the room the whole time.
He was actually Luke's father.
He was actually a ghost.
They're actually the same person.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Thing you know, I
You know a TV show is going to be crappy when the only ads on the DVD are for movies you've also never heard of.
You know it's not going to be a "down to earth, genuine romp" when someone uses the phrase "designer water."
You know there was a mis-cast when someone in the front credits has the same name as your grandmother, but is not your grandmother.
You know it's not going to be a "down to earth, genuine romp" when someone uses the phrase "designer water."
You know there was a mis-cast when someone in the front credits has the same name as your grandmother, but is not your grandmother.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
PSA: Spam spam spam spam baked beans spam spam spam
In my spam email folder, the funniest spammer ID I've seen in awhile, advertising a "No risk Katy Perry Free trial."
The way I figure it, this must mean either that you can get an NSA one-time hookup with Katy Perry, or that the trial will be "Katy Perry Free," with no risk of her showing up.
I'm not writing back to ask, so reader's choice.
The way I figure it, this must mean either that you can get an NSA one-time hookup with Katy Perry, or that the trial will be "Katy Perry Free," with no risk of her showing up.
I'm not writing back to ask, so reader's choice.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
Blog Fail, re: Failblog
Sorry it's been so long between posts -- I won the Microsoft Email Lottery, which as you must understand was a pretty big deal. Plus, in the interim I've been busy putting up pictures of Japan as my Facebook profile picture to help with the aftermath of the tsunami.
I've also been reading (the entirety of) Failbook. Enjoy.
I've also been reading (the entirety of) Failbook. Enjoy.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Accusations XVIII
People who keep posting the following as their Facebook statuses in response to the earthquake and tidal wave(s) off the coast of Japan:
Sensitive response fail.
Isn't this a bit like wishing a "gas chamber of peace and happiness" would envelop Jews after the atrocities they experienced in the death camps? Using the word "prayer" before the explicit (and illustrated) reminder of the devastating waves washing away Japanese coastal buildings and towns doesn't actually make it okay, dudes.
Sensitive response fail.
Friday, March 11, 2011
PSA: Twitter = new commercial delivery system
Well, today I joined twitter... @ohTHATalicia.
Follow me if you want. But read this warning first, because if you're a late adopter like me, you might expect things well past the beta stage of international acceptance to not suck by the time you get there: Twitter kind of sucks.
Maybe I'll get the hang of all that hash-tagging and @-signing and re-tweeting, and maybe in the future it will be SO FUN, but for now all my twitter feed (if that's even what it's called) looks like to me is a list of all the commercials I've been missing out on over the last few years of watching exclusively DVD'd content. Making each "tweet" 140 characters or less actually makes them worse; imagine if those 30 second spots that used to be so familiar to us TV viewers were crammed into 5 seconds each and you had to watch 30 of them in each commercial break. Yeesh.
Next I'll have to figure out what all this Angry Birds fuss is about.
Follow me if you want. But read this warning first, because if you're a late adopter like me, you might expect things well past the beta stage of international acceptance to not suck by the time you get there: Twitter kind of sucks.
Maybe I'll get the hang of all that hash-tagging and @-signing and re-tweeting, and maybe in the future it will be SO FUN, but for now all my twitter feed (if that's even what it's called) looks like to me is a list of all the commercials I've been missing out on over the last few years of watching exclusively DVD'd content. Making each "tweet" 140 characters or less actually makes them worse; imagine if those 30 second spots that used to be so familiar to us TV viewers were crammed into 5 seconds each and you had to watch 30 of them in each commercial break. Yeesh.
Next I'll have to figure out what all this Angry Birds fuss is about.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
PSA: Zombie Sheen
Last night I had a dream that Charlie Sheen's rantics were the result of a zombie virus. We were all waiting anxiously to see how it would progress and whether it would spread or not.
My dream was probably due in equal parts to the fact that I've got a bad cold, that I've been a pretty anxious person lately, and that I saw part of a zombie movie last night and had the Charlie Sheen "Winning" autotune song stuck in my head when I went to sleep.
It's also interesting considering my views on the fascination with Charlie (in terms of class), and what many scholars have observed about zombies (that they represent the lower class and fear of its uprising). I think it actually sums up my overly long post on this topic pretty well.
This is probably my most successful dream mash-up of ideas, with "Sesame Streets ahead" as a relatively close second.
My dream was probably due in equal parts to the fact that I've got a bad cold, that I've been a pretty anxious person lately, and that I saw part of a zombie movie last night and had the Charlie Sheen "Winning" autotune song stuck in my head when I went to sleep.
It's also interesting considering my views on the fascination with Charlie (in terms of class), and what many scholars have observed about zombies (that they represent the lower class and fear of its uprising). I think it actually sums up my overly long post on this topic pretty well.
This is probably my most successful dream mash-up of ideas, with "Sesame Streets ahead" as a relatively close second.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
New Word: Rantics
n. combination of "ranting" and "antics"; used to describe celebrities or other manic individuals whose strange behaviors include crazy diatribes, i.e. Charlie Sheen circa March 2011
In Defense of Poppery, XV: Why Charlie Sheen's crazy ranting matters to us.
Pop example: Charlie Sheen's crazy ranting, and subsequent media coverage of said ranting
What redeems it: Well, nothing. It's crazy ranting.
Okay, then what makes it important, or why do we want to watch it?:
I've seen two kinds of media coverage of Charlie Sheen's recent claims to being from Mars (a claim John Gray would probably back him up on, though I haven't seen that angle covered), having tiger blood, and doing more cocaine than the human body can handle.
I've seen the actual Charlie-Sheen ranting in highlight reel forms (such as with bunnies or on autotune), and I've seen the semi-ranting meta-coverage of the media and commenters asking us all why we're so interested in the crazy ranting of Charlie Sheen.
It's the second kind of coverage I want to discuss first, and then I'll justify our possible collective interest in the first kind of coverage.
Most people who are upset with Charlie Sheen coverage (we'll call it CSc) claim to have one of two reasons (or both) for annoyance:
1. Charlie Sheen is clearly mentally deranged or ill (either from drugs or a pre-existing condition, such as bipolar disorder), and we need to pity him -- or ignore him. (Odd combination of prescribed responses, but there it is.)
2. Charlie Sheen's crazy ranting is not "real news" because "real news" is hearing about unemployment, the unrest in Libya, etc. Under this umbrella falls also laments that CSc is taking up time that should go to those topics, as well as protests that "it's just TV" and so we shouldn't care.
To the first objection, that Charlie Sheen is mentally deranged/ill, I honestly see no way in which either pitying or ignoring him would actually help Charlie Sheen. Perhaps it's schadenfreude for us to be so fascinated by his rants (though I'll discuss later why I don't believe it is), and perhaps we should "be better than that," but neither pity nor ignoring actually make us "better than that." The fact is that no collective attitude we take toward CS or CSc will improve Charlie's chances of rehabilitating himself or finding an appropriate cocktail of prescribed medications to deal with whatever disorder we've decided he has.
Pity and ignorance don't help people, and pretending that our pity or ignorance is morally better than our fascination is kind of silly.
To the second objection, that CSc is preempting more important coverage of more important events, I would say that the news people wish we would be hearing more about is either boring, difficult to watch, or both. This is the trap that environmental groups and human rights organizations and Tea-partiers all fall into: no sense of humor, and an urgency that implies no time to develop one.
People can't be constantly being reminded that polar bears are about to become extinct without either becoming apathetic or blowing their brains out. You need to give people some down time.
[Tangent 1: The Middle East has not been giving us very much down time in this 24-hour news cycle. We're obviously not living it (making the caring actually a lot more difficult to sustain), but we've been through a change of regime in Egypt, political unrest in several other countries, and (still) the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In other words, if you want us to care about Libya and unemployment and the crushing federal deficit, you need to let us watch Charlie Sheen for awhile to clear our brains.]
To the related objection that "it's only TV," and so we shouldn't care, I say that I agree that Two and a Half Men, as far as I can tell from the few five-second blurbs I've seen while changing channels, is a crappy show. But TV is the touchstone for all generations born since 1950. Saying that it's "only" a TV show is like saying "what's the big deal? He's just a famous person everyone in the realm recognizes and normally pays homage to, the modern equivalent of the king!" or perhaps more pointedly, "what's the big deal? It's just the English language, the mother-tongue through which we understand the world!"
We all speak TV. That's how you know that you wish evening news shows would show what you think of as serious evening news instead of Charlie Sheen rants. You weren't born thinking "the evening news should be about crime, the economy, politics, and other boring serious things, only." You know that because TV taught it to you. Your elitist expectations actually came from TV.
Which brings me, I think, to my observations on the bifurcation of the American mind when it comes to television. We all think it's important, and we all also know that we "shouldn't" think so because other things are "more important." (I mean, when people actually like a TV show, they describe themselves as helpless in relation to it; "I'm addiction to X show" they say. As though TV is a drug that we'd quit if only we had the moral fortitude.)
We watch CSc, and we simultaneously gripe about the fact that we're watching it.
I believe this relates directly to capitalism, since television is one of capitalism's greatest inventions -- a tool of the economic system from the start -- and the way capitalism needs us to be simultaneously consuming a massive amount of product, and also dissatisfied with the products we consume so that as soon as we're "finished" with the first thing, we move on to consume the next one.
[Tangent 2: The fact that TV is so obviously a capitalist tool is what makes it seem "low class." Low class things are characterized by their exposure of/to the mechanics of capitalism: the prototypical lower class people are factory workers, even though farmers may make about the same amount of money (or less). Farmers are portrayed as having "other benefits," ones indigenous to the countryside that disintegrate (literally) the closer they get to the city -- pastoral scenery, simplicity, nutrition, "down home" wisdom, etc. -- and that are viewed as "outside" the capitalist structure and the hurly burly world of money.
"They're poor in money but rich in spirit," we say about farmers. Those who leave the land for mechanized labor are "selling out"; those who stay on the land but begin to use factory-like mechanized labor devices are also "selling out."
How would a factory worker "sell out"? Would it even be possible?
Think about it for a minute. I'll wait.
If you thought of a way a factory worker could sell out, it probably involved some vestige of human bonds, like betraying a union or coworker. But the point is that machines and mechanical labor cannot be "sold out" -- they are the sellout. And so it is with TV.]
The complex structure of our society relies on urban spaces, factories, and television, and it so obviously relies on those things that they become the "low" -- while objects, people, artists and media that appear not to rely on those "low" things give the illusion of "rising above" and managing to be "high class." (In modernism, at least...where cities necessarily also produce the "high class," which is partly defined by its association with human production, standards, and "cultured-ness." If capitalism defines the lower class, so does it define the higher within its own workings, leaving farmers out of the spectrum despite/because of their supposed spiritual riches.)
So here's my long-awaited point: Charlie Sheen is a lunatic. And I think part of the fascination with his particular lunacies is that he has been completely unpredictable in a high/low kind of way.
He is a "low" kind of guy, in that his fame comes mainly from TV and some Oscar-unworthy movies. And he's acting "low," in that he claims to have done a ton and a half of drugs, and in that he is clearly bragging about himself, and in that he may be mentally ill.
But he's refusing to apologize for all those things in the way that "low" things should -- Charlie Sheen doesn't have a bifurcated mind about CSc, loving it and hating it at the same time. He just freaking loves it, as he tells us again and again. And instead of the usual apology, he's saying things that are actually out-of-control, insanely creative. They're far more like poetry than any script of Two and a Half Men.
Tiger blood? Adonis? One-armed children?? Where is he getting this stuff?
That's what everyone wants to know. That's why we keep listening. That's why it seems like such a killjoy when others attempt to diagnose him (again making him "low," controlled, in need of our help), because it seems to explain what's going on when he opens his mouth.
And maybe it does.
But maybe we also see our own possibilities and servitudes exposed in some of the craziness Charlie has been exhibiting. We are, after all, a nation that both polices the world and polices our policing of the world (that watches TV and says "we wish we didn't"). In Charlie Sheen, we see the specter of that hubris if it were unleashed, if we stopped policing ourselves. We see the destruction and creativity unleashed by that kind of arrogance.
I think we see both what we have created as the (semi)omnipotent audience and what we fear we could become as Americans. We are the crazy ranters who never thought we could be taken down, that we were "too big to fail" -- and here we are in a recession. Charlie Sheen stinks of impending disaster because we can smell it on ourselves, not because he's actually faced any disaster...because he's very specifically not facing disaster and is blissful in what we feel must be his ignorance. He's a metaphor for us that we created by our attentions. In a way, the narrative of his "breakdown" proves our power; in a more literal way, our attention to his recent crazy ramblings allowed more crazy ramblings.
And I think we can't look away because both halves of our capitalist minds are attracted to these rantings: reveling in the low, low class obsession with and proximity to bald power, and also the implied freedom in the creative claiming of that power -- without apology, as if Manifest Destiny had come back into vogue. Charlie Sheen seems to be rising above us as he speaks, not in the ways he describes (he's not actually from Mars, he doesn't have only one speed [Go], and he probably doesn't really have any tiger blood), but in his descriptions themselves. He is free from our capitalist anxiety and obsessive self-consciousness (though not our self-obsession).
He makes us wonder what "winning" means. Could he be winning? Could it be that this nut-casery is what we are exhibiting when we say we're winning? In the split seconds between watching a video of CSc and making an amateur diagnosis and dismissal of him as "crazy," Charlie makes us think about what winning is.
And therein lies the value of CSc, I believe.
What redeems it: Well, nothing. It's crazy ranting.
Okay, then what makes it important, or why do we want to watch it?:
I've seen two kinds of media coverage of Charlie Sheen's recent claims to being from Mars (a claim John Gray would probably back him up on, though I haven't seen that angle covered), having tiger blood, and doing more cocaine than the human body can handle.
I've seen the actual Charlie-Sheen ranting in highlight reel forms (such as with bunnies or on autotune), and I've seen the semi-ranting meta-coverage of the media and commenters asking us all why we're so interested in the crazy ranting of Charlie Sheen.
It's the second kind of coverage I want to discuss first, and then I'll justify our possible collective interest in the first kind of coverage.
Most people who are upset with Charlie Sheen coverage (we'll call it CSc) claim to have one of two reasons (or both) for annoyance:
1. Charlie Sheen is clearly mentally deranged or ill (either from drugs or a pre-existing condition, such as bipolar disorder), and we need to pity him -- or ignore him. (Odd combination of prescribed responses, but there it is.)
2. Charlie Sheen's crazy ranting is not "real news" because "real news" is hearing about unemployment, the unrest in Libya, etc. Under this umbrella falls also laments that CSc is taking up time that should go to those topics, as well as protests that "it's just TV" and so we shouldn't care.
To the first objection, that Charlie Sheen is mentally deranged/ill, I honestly see no way in which either pitying or ignoring him would actually help Charlie Sheen. Perhaps it's schadenfreude for us to be so fascinated by his rants (though I'll discuss later why I don't believe it is), and perhaps we should "be better than that," but neither pity nor ignoring actually make us "better than that." The fact is that no collective attitude we take toward CS or CSc will improve Charlie's chances of rehabilitating himself or finding an appropriate cocktail of prescribed medications to deal with whatever disorder we've decided he has.
Pity and ignorance don't help people, and pretending that our pity or ignorance is morally better than our fascination is kind of silly.
To the second objection, that CSc is preempting more important coverage of more important events, I would say that the news people wish we would be hearing more about is either boring, difficult to watch, or both. This is the trap that environmental groups and human rights organizations and Tea-partiers all fall into: no sense of humor, and an urgency that implies no time to develop one.
People can't be constantly being reminded that polar bears are about to become extinct without either becoming apathetic or blowing their brains out. You need to give people some down time.
[Tangent 1: The Middle East has not been giving us very much down time in this 24-hour news cycle. We're obviously not living it (making the caring actually a lot more difficult to sustain), but we've been through a change of regime in Egypt, political unrest in several other countries, and (still) the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In other words, if you want us to care about Libya and unemployment and the crushing federal deficit, you need to let us watch Charlie Sheen for awhile to clear our brains.]
To the related objection that "it's only TV," and so we shouldn't care, I say that I agree that Two and a Half Men, as far as I can tell from the few five-second blurbs I've seen while changing channels, is a crappy show. But TV is the touchstone for all generations born since 1950. Saying that it's "only" a TV show is like saying "what's the big deal? He's just a famous person everyone in the realm recognizes and normally pays homage to, the modern equivalent of the king!" or perhaps more pointedly, "what's the big deal? It's just the English language, the mother-tongue through which we understand the world!"
We all speak TV. That's how you know that you wish evening news shows would show what you think of as serious evening news instead of Charlie Sheen rants. You weren't born thinking "the evening news should be about crime, the economy, politics, and other boring serious things, only." You know that because TV taught it to you. Your elitist expectations actually came from TV.
Which brings me, I think, to my observations on the bifurcation of the American mind when it comes to television. We all think it's important, and we all also know that we "shouldn't" think so because other things are "more important." (I mean, when people actually like a TV show, they describe themselves as helpless in relation to it; "I'm addiction to X show" they say. As though TV is a drug that we'd quit if only we had the moral fortitude.)
We watch CSc, and we simultaneously gripe about the fact that we're watching it.
I believe this relates directly to capitalism, since television is one of capitalism's greatest inventions -- a tool of the economic system from the start -- and the way capitalism needs us to be simultaneously consuming a massive amount of product, and also dissatisfied with the products we consume so that as soon as we're "finished" with the first thing, we move on to consume the next one.
[Tangent 2: The fact that TV is so obviously a capitalist tool is what makes it seem "low class." Low class things are characterized by their exposure of/to the mechanics of capitalism: the prototypical lower class people are factory workers, even though farmers may make about the same amount of money (or less). Farmers are portrayed as having "other benefits," ones indigenous to the countryside that disintegrate (literally) the closer they get to the city -- pastoral scenery, simplicity, nutrition, "down home" wisdom, etc. -- and that are viewed as "outside" the capitalist structure and the hurly burly world of money.
"They're poor in money but rich in spirit," we say about farmers. Those who leave the land for mechanized labor are "selling out"; those who stay on the land but begin to use factory-like mechanized labor devices are also "selling out."
How would a factory worker "sell out"? Would it even be possible?
Think about it for a minute. I'll wait.
If you thought of a way a factory worker could sell out, it probably involved some vestige of human bonds, like betraying a union or coworker. But the point is that machines and mechanical labor cannot be "sold out" -- they are the sellout. And so it is with TV.]
The complex structure of our society relies on urban spaces, factories, and television, and it so obviously relies on those things that they become the "low" -- while objects, people, artists and media that appear not to rely on those "low" things give the illusion of "rising above" and managing to be "high class." (In modernism, at least...where cities necessarily also produce the "high class," which is partly defined by its association with human production, standards, and "cultured-ness." If capitalism defines the lower class, so does it define the higher within its own workings, leaving farmers out of the spectrum despite/because of their supposed spiritual riches.)
So here's my long-awaited point: Charlie Sheen is a lunatic. And I think part of the fascination with his particular lunacies is that he has been completely unpredictable in a high/low kind of way.
He is a "low" kind of guy, in that his fame comes mainly from TV and some Oscar-unworthy movies. And he's acting "low," in that he claims to have done a ton and a half of drugs, and in that he is clearly bragging about himself, and in that he may be mentally ill.
But he's refusing to apologize for all those things in the way that "low" things should -- Charlie Sheen doesn't have a bifurcated mind about CSc, loving it and hating it at the same time. He just freaking loves it, as he tells us again and again. And instead of the usual apology, he's saying things that are actually out-of-control, insanely creative. They're far more like poetry than any script of Two and a Half Men.
Tiger blood? Adonis? One-armed children?? Where is he getting this stuff?
That's what everyone wants to know. That's why we keep listening. That's why it seems like such a killjoy when others attempt to diagnose him (again making him "low," controlled, in need of our help), because it seems to explain what's going on when he opens his mouth.
And maybe it does.
But maybe we also see our own possibilities and servitudes exposed in some of the craziness Charlie has been exhibiting. We are, after all, a nation that both polices the world and polices our policing of the world (that watches TV and says "we wish we didn't"). In Charlie Sheen, we see the specter of that hubris if it were unleashed, if we stopped policing ourselves. We see the destruction and creativity unleashed by that kind of arrogance.
I think we see both what we have created as the (semi)omnipotent audience and what we fear we could become as Americans. We are the crazy ranters who never thought we could be taken down, that we were "too big to fail" -- and here we are in a recession. Charlie Sheen stinks of impending disaster because we can smell it on ourselves, not because he's actually faced any disaster...because he's very specifically not facing disaster and is blissful in what we feel must be his ignorance. He's a metaphor for us that we created by our attentions. In a way, the narrative of his "breakdown" proves our power; in a more literal way, our attention to his recent crazy ramblings allowed more crazy ramblings.
And I think we can't look away because both halves of our capitalist minds are attracted to these rantings: reveling in the low, low class obsession with and proximity to bald power, and also the implied freedom in the creative claiming of that power -- without apology, as if Manifest Destiny had come back into vogue. Charlie Sheen seems to be rising above us as he speaks, not in the ways he describes (he's not actually from Mars, he doesn't have only one speed [Go], and he probably doesn't really have any tiger blood), but in his descriptions themselves. He is free from our capitalist anxiety and obsessive self-consciousness (though not our self-obsession).
He makes us wonder what "winning" means. Could he be winning? Could it be that this nut-casery is what we are exhibiting when we say we're winning? In the split seconds between watching a video of CSc and making an amateur diagnosis and dismissal of him as "crazy," Charlie makes us think about what winning is.
And therein lies the value of CSc, I believe.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Sunday, February 27, 2011
PSA: You're such a tees.
So lately, instead of blogging, I've been obsessing over t-shirts. Not all of them are 100% white-person approved, but most of them are extremely limited-edition, and that adds on a few percents. (Wear them to farmer's markets and I'm sure you can still manage to be the right kind of white person.)
I figure I'll tell you about some of my favorites.
Hands down, I think my best discovery has been Megan Lara's Princess Peach nouveau-style shirt, which can still be purchased here, though I bought mine in a different color from teefury.com. Teefury has a new shirt every day, which then descends into the "gallery" never to return again. While that's pretty awesome, what's even awesomer is getting to see Megan create art nouveau prints of all the fave Nintendo and otherwise-geeky princesses (think Zelda and Samus, and Phoenix and Mystique) on her facebook fan page.
I also love "Wicked Mess," a shirt.woot shirt, which can also no longer be purchased, though shirt.woot keep shirts up for at least a week before they're "reckoned" off the site. (If you're interested in the inspiration for my "Poe's answering machine" post, see the "reckoning" page on shirt.woot and note how long the "Nevermore" shirt has been on the charts...as well as the Poe bird-face shirt, depending on when you read this. Apparently the "Nevermore" shirt has been selling like hotcakes for years now, every single week. I just don't see it, personally.)
I excitedly ordered three random shirts for myself from 6dollarshirts.com, which turned out to be this one, this one, and a "Sabre" logo shirt (haha -- The Office). The first two were actually identical (except in color) to the shirts I ordered as a surprise for P.C. at the same time. I also purposely ordered this one for myself, as an Arrested Development fan. (Note also the Human Centipede shirt, though if you're squeamish, please don't note it.)
And when I left for Baltimire last weekend (typo intended), I issued a challenge to P.C. -- that he purchase me a shirt that I would like, as a surprise.
P.C. being the Prince Certainpersonio that he is, he ended up getting me five. I won't link to all of them, since I don't know where most came from, and most are TV-related (since I heart TV).
But here, finally, is a shirt you can order for yourself -- for now -- and one that I think does an excellent job of being hilarious, poignant, and instantly recognizable all at once.
If only all tees were as good, designations like "white-person approved" would cease to have meaning, and we could all live in cotton-poly blended harmony.
I figure I'll tell you about some of my favorites.
Hands down, I think my best discovery has been Megan Lara's Princess Peach nouveau-style shirt, which can still be purchased here, though I bought mine in a different color from teefury.com. Teefury has a new shirt every day, which then descends into the "gallery" never to return again. While that's pretty awesome, what's even awesomer is getting to see Megan create art nouveau prints of all the fave Nintendo and otherwise-geeky princesses (think Zelda and Samus, and Phoenix and Mystique) on her facebook fan page.
I also love "Wicked Mess," a shirt.woot shirt, which can also no longer be purchased, though shirt.woot keep shirts up for at least a week before they're "reckoned" off the site. (If you're interested in the inspiration for my "Poe's answering machine" post, see the "reckoning" page on shirt.woot and note how long the "Nevermore" shirt has been on the charts...as well as the Poe bird-face shirt, depending on when you read this. Apparently the "Nevermore" shirt has been selling like hotcakes for years now, every single week. I just don't see it, personally.)
I excitedly ordered three random shirts for myself from 6dollarshirts.com, which turned out to be this one, this one, and a "Sabre" logo shirt (haha -- The Office). The first two were actually identical (except in color) to the shirts I ordered as a surprise for P.C. at the same time. I also purposely ordered this one for myself, as an Arrested Development fan. (Note also the Human Centipede shirt, though if you're squeamish, please don't note it.)
And when I left for Baltimire last weekend (typo intended), I issued a challenge to P.C. -- that he purchase me a shirt that I would like, as a surprise.
P.C. being the Prince Certainpersonio that he is, he ended up getting me five. I won't link to all of them, since I don't know where most came from, and most are TV-related (since I heart TV).
But here, finally, is a shirt you can order for yourself -- for now -- and one that I think does an excellent job of being hilarious, poignant, and instantly recognizable all at once.
If only all tees were as good, designations like "white-person approved" would cease to have meaning, and we could all live in cotton-poly blended harmony.
Accusations XVII
Extreme stupidities found in the online training I had to go through to be certified in safety, and prevention of abuse, neglect and exploitation of disabled individuals:
1. the multiple-choice question that asked examees to select
A. [answer]
B. [different answer]
C. both A and B
D. only A
That's right: A is A, and D is also A.
2. the closed captioning for the audio files that didn't work on my computer, which occasionally read "a direct service provider telling about a time when safety was an issue on the job. Preferably someone with an ethnically diverse voice," instead of giving an actual transcript of the selected audio file.
3. the chapters of the training in which the closed captioning actually advised trainees to "listen to the clip below and then go to the next page." In a training for people learning how to interact with those with various physical and mental disabilities, assuming that anyone who needs to use closed captioning to access the test can still hear the voice clip calls into question your right to teach the material.
1. the multiple-choice question that asked examees to select
A. [answer]
B. [different answer]
C. both A and B
D. only A
That's right: A is A, and D is also A.
2. the closed captioning for the audio files that didn't work on my computer, which occasionally read "a direct service provider telling about a time when safety was an issue on the job. Preferably someone with an ethnically diverse voice," instead of giving an actual transcript of the selected audio file.
3. the chapters of the training in which the closed captioning actually advised trainees to "listen to the clip below and then go to the next page." In a training for people learning how to interact with those with various physical and mental disabilities, assuming that anyone who needs to use closed captioning to access the test can still hear the voice clip calls into question your right to teach the material.
Poe's answering machine, 9:30 p.m.
*Beep*
"Hey, it's Lenore. I'm calling at a time I know you're going to be out at the bar to leave this message on your home machine, because I want you to stop calling me. It's over, Ed, and if you show up at my house again, I'm going to call the cops.
I'll come by tomorrow to pick up the volumes of lore I forgot. I'd like you to put them in a box and set them outside your door if you can manage that through the drunken haze, but otherwise just leave your chamber door unlocked when you go out and I'll collect them myself.
Also, if you see Nevil, please just feed him, and I'll get him when I come by, too. He should be fine out there unless the weather's too bad, in which case you should let him in. You know how he loves perching on people's heads, though, so don't complain to me if you've got bird shit in your hair in the morning, because I'm not going to clean it up. I'm done cleaning up your messes.
Seriously, Eddie, don't call me again, and don't be at home tomorrow afternoon when I come to get my lore and pet raven. This is the last you'll hear from me.
Good-bye forever. [Mumbling] Good riddance."
*Click*
"Hey, it's Lenore. I'm calling at a time I know you're going to be out at the bar to leave this message on your home machine, because I want you to stop calling me. It's over, Ed, and if you show up at my house again, I'm going to call the cops.
I'll come by tomorrow to pick up the volumes of lore I forgot. I'd like you to put them in a box and set them outside your door if you can manage that through the drunken haze, but otherwise just leave your chamber door unlocked when you go out and I'll collect them myself.
Also, if you see Nevil, please just feed him, and I'll get him when I come by, too. He should be fine out there unless the weather's too bad, in which case you should let him in. You know how he loves perching on people's heads, though, so don't complain to me if you've got bird shit in your hair in the morning, because I'm not going to clean it up. I'm done cleaning up your messes.
Seriously, Eddie, don't call me again, and don't be at home tomorrow afternoon when I come to get my lore and pet raven. This is the last you'll hear from me.
Good-bye forever. [Mumbling] Good riddance."
*Click*
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Valentimes: Horrorfest 2011, a review
Horrors: Dead Silence, Dawn of the Dead (2003), Subject 2
Reviews: Well, gentle readers, this was by far the best of the three years' worth of horrorfests. Some of you may remember last year's disastrous run-in with a terrible, terrible remake of the 1958 classic House on Haunted Hill. So many of the horror films I've watched in the last year have also been remakes of good films -- ones that should simply have been rewatched rather than redone -- and even ones I didn't know were remakes disappointed me. (Finding out The Collector was a remake, for instance, explained why the plot wasn't as clear as I wished it was, and why there was such a focus on the kind of gore that only modern technology can focus on.)
As a result, I was skeptical about including a remake in the lineup for Monday night. I was also skeptical about including Dead Silence, a movie by the makers of the Saw movies, since it was about (evil) dolls. I was torn on which of these potential disasters to inflict on myself and P.C., but shored up the choice by including Subject Two, a quiet, spare horror film I've seen twice on my own.
So we embarked on the horrorfest early, starting with Dead Silence.
True, it was a movie about evil dolls, but let's face it, dolls are creepy -- and the evil doll subgenre has been well established by Chucky and other shorter horror vignettes. True to the word of the back of the DVD box, this one did end with what I can only assume (because I haven't seen them yet) was a "Saw-like twist." There was some gimmickery, but one expects a certain amount of that in an evil-doll movie, and it really wasn't enough to remove the enjoyment of the twist at the end. It was also cleverly placed directly alongside the twist at the end, so that similar to the "spoonful of sugar" principle, you hardly even had time to groan in recognition of "what they did there" before you were once again enjoying the twistyness.
I also didn't realize until the end that the weird cop character was played by a New Kid on the Block. I'll let you guess which one -- or imdb it.
So Dead Silence was a winner, in comparison to many of the other horrors I've experienced. Even better, it made a nice lead-in to the even more surprisingly solid Dawn of the Dead.
I haven't seen the original Dawn of the Dead, though I am a fan (in the way people can be fans of old films or swimming lessons -- it takes extra prep but once you're in, you enjoy it) of Night of the Living Dead. But not having seen the original in the past has not necessarily prevented me from seeing the gaping errors in a remake; in fact, I suspect that many directors/screenwriters/producers re-making a classic horror film may fall into the trap of assuming the audience knows the story, and then attempting to depart from it to "make their mark" on the story, or to "do something a little different" (which is to say, "make a bad film"). Re-makes should be able to do justice to the original and the genre while still standing alone as good films in their own right.
So while I can't comment on whether Dawn of the Dead is in any way true to the original, I can say that it does stand on its own as a good zombie horror flick. As in the original Romero zombie movies, no one ever uses the word "zombie" -- since before Night of the Living Dead, zombies didn't really exist -- and as in the original Romero movies, there are no explanations of how scientific madness or hubris created this disease (think I Am Legend and 28 Days Later). Those are also modern concerns, but Romero's concern was over consumerism, the anti-individuality of cookie-cutter houses and the cookie-cutter products filling them and the cookie-cutter malls around them, and the way people crumble when faced with even a slow-moving hoard of the undead.
The director of the remake pointed out that remakes were a kind of offense (an attitude I was happy to have him share), that they had attempted to make a significantly different movie with the 2003 version than the original, which he thought was "perfect," and that one of the differences was that in 2003, the war that Romero had placed between people's individuality and agency, and the consumerism and lifestyle represented by the suburban mall, had already been lost. Malls are now a part of the common suburban psyche; it makes sense to us that people would run to a mall for survival. (After all, it's stocked with all kinds of provisions, and it's really one of the only public places left in suburbia.) The question in 2003 is less about whether we will become mindless consumers, defined by merchandise, and more about whether we can escape that label and become something else in addition.
It was a well-done zombie film, with plenty of gore and plenty of plot twists. It had fewer people that you wish would just die than some other recent zombie flicks (though it was not free of them). And more than the typical number of characters were well-defined, yet flexible enough to adapt, which gave them (and in some cases their deaths) more gravitas than, say, the teens in 28 Weeks Later. Yet the writer/director did not give in to the temptation to either keep all the favorites alive or have the "best" character become an obvious Christ-figure. (There is no "best" character, which is the sign of a solid script in this kind of film.)
If you watch this movie, you need to watch it all the way through, including the credits. The ending, for me, was the best connection to Romero's movies, which are purposefully bleak. The end of Night of the Living Dead is unflinchingly cruel, and while the DotD remake flinches, it seems also to offer little asylum to the viewer. There is no "homerun Jesus" for the zombie apocalypse.
And finally, post-apocalypse, P.C. stumbled on to the cold, bleak mountain winter of Subject Two. A reimagining, in my mind, of the Frankenstein story, the gorgeous setting of the film -- a cabin somewhere in a snowy mountain range -- gives the story both an attractive smallness (the characters being stuck in a cabin for warmth most of the time, though there are never snowstorms, and no cabin fever), and a sense of the largeness of the universe and of the scientific pursuits that are changing parts of it forever.
It's difficult to describe this film without giving parts of it away, but I approach it like a meditation: watching every frame, but reflectively rather than with the trepidation of a Nightmare on Elm Street, and allowing the ending to sink in fully. The screenplay is tight and effective, especially in its ending, but the efficiency of the plot is balanced and at times overwhelmed by the setting and the melancholy of the story -- as it should be. The story of Frankenstein's monster, after all, was a melodrama about a single post-human; so it is with Subject Two, minus the cloying Victorian phrases that make you as likely to want to punch the monster as sympathize with him. The snow cools all that off, leaving just the awareness of being alone, acutely and irretrievably alone, in the face of infinity.
So it was an excellent Valentimes, and I would recommend any of these movies to horror fans.
Hope yours was good, too.
Reviews: Well, gentle readers, this was by far the best of the three years' worth of horrorfests. Some of you may remember last year's disastrous run-in with a terrible, terrible remake of the 1958 classic House on Haunted Hill. So many of the horror films I've watched in the last year have also been remakes of good films -- ones that should simply have been rewatched rather than redone -- and even ones I didn't know were remakes disappointed me. (Finding out The Collector was a remake, for instance, explained why the plot wasn't as clear as I wished it was, and why there was such a focus on the kind of gore that only modern technology can focus on.)
As a result, I was skeptical about including a remake in the lineup for Monday night. I was also skeptical about including Dead Silence, a movie by the makers of the Saw movies, since it was about (evil) dolls. I was torn on which of these potential disasters to inflict on myself and P.C., but shored up the choice by including Subject Two, a quiet, spare horror film I've seen twice on my own.
So we embarked on the horrorfest early, starting with Dead Silence.
True, it was a movie about evil dolls, but let's face it, dolls are creepy -- and the evil doll subgenre has been well established by Chucky and other shorter horror vignettes. True to the word of the back of the DVD box, this one did end with what I can only assume (because I haven't seen them yet) was a "Saw-like twist." There was some gimmickery, but one expects a certain amount of that in an evil-doll movie, and it really wasn't enough to remove the enjoyment of the twist at the end. It was also cleverly placed directly alongside the twist at the end, so that similar to the "spoonful of sugar" principle, you hardly even had time to groan in recognition of "what they did there" before you were once again enjoying the twistyness.
I also didn't realize until the end that the weird cop character was played by a New Kid on the Block. I'll let you guess which one -- or imdb it.
So Dead Silence was a winner, in comparison to many of the other horrors I've experienced. Even better, it made a nice lead-in to the even more surprisingly solid Dawn of the Dead.
I haven't seen the original Dawn of the Dead, though I am a fan (in the way people can be fans of old films or swimming lessons -- it takes extra prep but once you're in, you enjoy it) of Night of the Living Dead. But not having seen the original in the past has not necessarily prevented me from seeing the gaping errors in a remake; in fact, I suspect that many directors/screenwriters/producers re-making a classic horror film may fall into the trap of assuming the audience knows the story, and then attempting to depart from it to "make their mark" on the story, or to "do something a little different" (which is to say, "make a bad film"). Re-makes should be able to do justice to the original and the genre while still standing alone as good films in their own right.
So while I can't comment on whether Dawn of the Dead is in any way true to the original, I can say that it does stand on its own as a good zombie horror flick. As in the original Romero zombie movies, no one ever uses the word "zombie" -- since before Night of the Living Dead, zombies didn't really exist -- and as in the original Romero movies, there are no explanations of how scientific madness or hubris created this disease (think I Am Legend and 28 Days Later). Those are also modern concerns, but Romero's concern was over consumerism, the anti-individuality of cookie-cutter houses and the cookie-cutter products filling them and the cookie-cutter malls around them, and the way people crumble when faced with even a slow-moving hoard of the undead.
The director of the remake pointed out that remakes were a kind of offense (an attitude I was happy to have him share), that they had attempted to make a significantly different movie with the 2003 version than the original, which he thought was "perfect," and that one of the differences was that in 2003, the war that Romero had placed between people's individuality and agency, and the consumerism and lifestyle represented by the suburban mall, had already been lost. Malls are now a part of the common suburban psyche; it makes sense to us that people would run to a mall for survival. (After all, it's stocked with all kinds of provisions, and it's really one of the only public places left in suburbia.) The question in 2003 is less about whether we will become mindless consumers, defined by merchandise, and more about whether we can escape that label and become something else in addition.
It was a well-done zombie film, with plenty of gore and plenty of plot twists. It had fewer people that you wish would just die than some other recent zombie flicks (though it was not free of them). And more than the typical number of characters were well-defined, yet flexible enough to adapt, which gave them (and in some cases their deaths) more gravitas than, say, the teens in 28 Weeks Later. Yet the writer/director did not give in to the temptation to either keep all the favorites alive or have the "best" character become an obvious Christ-figure. (There is no "best" character, which is the sign of a solid script in this kind of film.)
If you watch this movie, you need to watch it all the way through, including the credits. The ending, for me, was the best connection to Romero's movies, which are purposefully bleak. The end of Night of the Living Dead is unflinchingly cruel, and while the DotD remake flinches, it seems also to offer little asylum to the viewer. There is no "homerun Jesus" for the zombie apocalypse.
And finally, post-apocalypse, P.C. stumbled on to the cold, bleak mountain winter of Subject Two. A reimagining, in my mind, of the Frankenstein story, the gorgeous setting of the film -- a cabin somewhere in a snowy mountain range -- gives the story both an attractive smallness (the characters being stuck in a cabin for warmth most of the time, though there are never snowstorms, and no cabin fever), and a sense of the largeness of the universe and of the scientific pursuits that are changing parts of it forever.
It's difficult to describe this film without giving parts of it away, but I approach it like a meditation: watching every frame, but reflectively rather than with the trepidation of a Nightmare on Elm Street, and allowing the ending to sink in fully. The screenplay is tight and effective, especially in its ending, but the efficiency of the plot is balanced and at times overwhelmed by the setting and the melancholy of the story -- as it should be. The story of Frankenstein's monster, after all, was a melodrama about a single post-human; so it is with Subject Two, minus the cloying Victorian phrases that make you as likely to want to punch the monster as sympathize with him. The snow cools all that off, leaving just the awareness of being alone, acutely and irretrievably alone, in the face of infinity.
So it was an excellent Valentimes, and I would recommend any of these movies to horror fans.
Hope yours was good, too.
Friday, February 11, 2011
New Words: Evangelically
1. evanhellical: adj. any event, gathering or product, etc., that conjures up an atmosphere in which evangelicalism and beliefs associated with it are painfully inescapable.
2. exangelical: n. a person who used to ascribe to evangelical beliefs but now does not.
3. evangelican't: n. a person who wishes she or he could continue to ascribe to evangelical beliefs, but is no longer capable of doing so.
4. evangelicant: n. the dogma associated with evangelicalism, specifically as it is recited by true believers.
5. evangelicool: adj. any object or person that, despite being evangelical, remains sensible and able to be reasoned with, i.e., does not dismiss theories of evolution out of hand or offer to "pray the gay away" when confronting a homosexual person. *Note: extremely rare
6. evangelicall: n. the process by which a person suddenly becomes a conservative Christian; the compulsion to adhere to fundamentalist or conservative Christian doctrines, despite disbelief or misgivings.
7. emangelical: adj. a satirical twist on the word "evangelical" intended to draw attention to long historical inequalities between men and women in fundamentalist Christian doctrines.
2. exangelical: n. a person who used to ascribe to evangelical beliefs but now does not.
3. evangelican't: n. a person who wishes she or he could continue to ascribe to evangelical beliefs, but is no longer capable of doing so.
4. evangelicant: n. the dogma associated with evangelicalism, specifically as it is recited by true believers.
5. evangelicool: adj. any object or person that, despite being evangelical, remains sensible and able to be reasoned with, i.e., does not dismiss theories of evolution out of hand or offer to "pray the gay away" when confronting a homosexual person. *Note: extremely rare
6. evangelicall: n. the process by which a person suddenly becomes a conservative Christian; the compulsion to adhere to fundamentalist or conservative Christian doctrines, despite disbelief or misgivings.
7. emangelical: adj. a satirical twist on the word "evangelical" intended to draw attention to long historical inequalities between men and women in fundamentalist Christian doctrines.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Accusations XVI
The librarian who kicked me and the girl I work with out of the library last week, for eating -- which it turns out is against the rules, though we were never reprimanded in three years of eating lunches there, and there are no signs posted -- in the most rude and humiliating of tones. If you're being rude, ma'am, you don't get to also be humiliating; you should be ashamed, instead. For frack's sake, you're a LIBRARIAN.
The school bus driver today who took a left turn in front of me, while talking on his cell phone.
Carlos Mencia, for replacing Stella with his unoriginal brand of idiocy.
The school bus driver today who took a left turn in front of me, while talking on his cell phone.
Carlos Mencia, for replacing Stella with his unoriginal brand of idiocy.
Monday, January 31, 2011
In Defense of Poppery, XIV: Bed Intruder song
Pop example: The Autotune the News "Bed Intruder" song, featuring Antoine Dodson, his sister, and the news team and footage from the incident of attempted rape in Huntsville, AL
The issues: Because of some of the popular and critical reception of this song, it seems important to me to address the reasons we might need to defend this song, on at least two levels.
First, it's popular, and pretty much anything popular seems to need a well-rehearsed defense to make people think it might also be significant.
Second, it's a video made by two white boys about a violent incident in an impoverished and largely black community. It practically screams "exploitation."
Some critics have pointed out the exploitative potential of the video -- see the Wikipedia critical reception section for this song -- and its problematic use of Antoine's words and look as a possibly comic aesthetic, without consideration for the actual events that inspired Antoine's passionate speech. Making attempted rape the subject of a popular song is fraught with obvious issues, particularly since this song wasn't confined to its usual "gangsta rap" home.
What redeems it: Some people may be laughing at Antoine Dobson, in which case, some of these critiques are necessary and valid. I furrow my brow to think that two white boys made the video that caused Antoine's words to become the household catchphrases they are now. And it is problematic to make a joke out of attempted rape.
But here's the thing: I don't think people are laughing at Antoine. Anyone laughing at Antoine is completely missing the awesomeness of his speech, which is that Antoine is laughing at and standing up to a potential rapist.
On the one hand, Antoine warns of the pervasiveness of violence in "the projects," implying that rapists are everywhere, and that people should "hide your kids, hide your wife, and hide your husbands cause they're raping everybody out here." But rather than being the histrionic cries of the cartoon white people in Bowling for Columbine (the South-Park style insert on why white people like guns so much), Antoine's warnings come with enough self-possession to continue on, explaining to the intruder how dumb he is.
As alarming as it would be to have someone enter your home and make an attempt to do violence against you, Antoine's reaction to the situation when it happened was similar: he and his sister fought back, and the attempt failed.
Now that is a narrative that we need. Not the all-knowing horror-movie manipulator (a la The Collector), who is already in your bedroom before you even know it, whose whims must be obeyed to the letter, or you die, but the bumbling, stupid criminal who can be thwarted by people willing to take immediate action to stop him.
Not that all criminals can be thwarted by unexpected and immediate action -- but I bet most can be.
And then Antoine, clinching his and his sister's victory over this idiot, gives a television interview in which he repeatedly mocks the potential rapist. "You are so dumb. You are really dumb. For real."
This is how every rapist should be treated. He should be mocked in a national venue.
Obviously, rape is serious, and as a crime it should be taken very, very seriously -- in part because it strips women of power and their choice in an extremely intimate and personal context. So what better response than to do the same to the rapist, exposing him for the idiot he must be? If rape is about power, it seems to me the best response is to forcibly and immediately strip that power away. Antoine's speech and the subsequent video do that extremely effectively.
We're not laughing at Antoine. We're celebrating with him, and admiring his victory, and his attitude toward a situation that could have seriously traumatized his family, and the rest of us if it had happened in our homes.
Now if this victory makes people say to themselves "see? People living in the projects are fine! We don't need to do anything about poverty!" then that is a serious problem.
Maybe Autotune the News and Antoine can make a video mocking those people next.
Note: This defense of poppery refers only to the Autotune the News and Antoine Dobson version of the song. While "researching" this video (that is, listening to it repeatedly and head bopping along), I also found a version done by a choir at Liberty University for their Christmas coffee house. It's entertaining -- particularly at the end, when they sing "you are so dumb" to the tune of "Carol of the Bells" -- but it substitutes the word "taking" for "raping," which I find both inevitable (considering the university context), and offensive (considering the original context).
Subtracting the idea of rape from Antoine's speech completely nullifies the victory I outlined above, making the song into a mere meme instead of a personal and political statement of strength, and I wish someone had problematized this hammy and milquetoast (I might even say cowardly) version of the song before it was performed at Liberty -- but that may be a gripe for a different blog post, perhaps on the exigencies of working at or attending an evangelical institution.
The issues: Because of some of the popular and critical reception of this song, it seems important to me to address the reasons we might need to defend this song, on at least two levels.
First, it's popular, and pretty much anything popular seems to need a well-rehearsed defense to make people think it might also be significant.
Second, it's a video made by two white boys about a violent incident in an impoverished and largely black community. It practically screams "exploitation."
Some critics have pointed out the exploitative potential of the video -- see the Wikipedia critical reception section for this song -- and its problematic use of Antoine's words and look as a possibly comic aesthetic, without consideration for the actual events that inspired Antoine's passionate speech. Making attempted rape the subject of a popular song is fraught with obvious issues, particularly since this song wasn't confined to its usual "gangsta rap" home.
What redeems it: Some people may be laughing at Antoine Dobson, in which case, some of these critiques are necessary and valid. I furrow my brow to think that two white boys made the video that caused Antoine's words to become the household catchphrases they are now. And it is problematic to make a joke out of attempted rape.
But here's the thing: I don't think people are laughing at Antoine. Anyone laughing at Antoine is completely missing the awesomeness of his speech, which is that Antoine is laughing at and standing up to a potential rapist.
On the one hand, Antoine warns of the pervasiveness of violence in "the projects," implying that rapists are everywhere, and that people should "hide your kids, hide your wife, and hide your husbands cause they're raping everybody out here." But rather than being the histrionic cries of the cartoon white people in Bowling for Columbine (the South-Park style insert on why white people like guns so much), Antoine's warnings come with enough self-possession to continue on, explaining to the intruder how dumb he is.
As alarming as it would be to have someone enter your home and make an attempt to do violence against you, Antoine's reaction to the situation when it happened was similar: he and his sister fought back, and the attempt failed.
Now that is a narrative that we need. Not the all-knowing horror-movie manipulator (a la The Collector), who is already in your bedroom before you even know it, whose whims must be obeyed to the letter, or you die, but the bumbling, stupid criminal who can be thwarted by people willing to take immediate action to stop him.
Not that all criminals can be thwarted by unexpected and immediate action -- but I bet most can be.
And then Antoine, clinching his and his sister's victory over this idiot, gives a television interview in which he repeatedly mocks the potential rapist. "You are so dumb. You are really dumb. For real."
This is how every rapist should be treated. He should be mocked in a national venue.
Obviously, rape is serious, and as a crime it should be taken very, very seriously -- in part because it strips women of power and their choice in an extremely intimate and personal context. So what better response than to do the same to the rapist, exposing him for the idiot he must be? If rape is about power, it seems to me the best response is to forcibly and immediately strip that power away. Antoine's speech and the subsequent video do that extremely effectively.
We're not laughing at Antoine. We're celebrating with him, and admiring his victory, and his attitude toward a situation that could have seriously traumatized his family, and the rest of us if it had happened in our homes.
Now if this victory makes people say to themselves "see? People living in the projects are fine! We don't need to do anything about poverty!" then that is a serious problem.
Maybe Autotune the News and Antoine can make a video mocking those people next.
Note: This defense of poppery refers only to the Autotune the News and Antoine Dobson version of the song. While "researching" this video (that is, listening to it repeatedly and head bopping along), I also found a version done by a choir at Liberty University for their Christmas coffee house. It's entertaining -- particularly at the end, when they sing "you are so dumb" to the tune of "Carol of the Bells" -- but it substitutes the word "taking" for "raping," which I find both inevitable (considering the university context), and offensive (considering the original context).
Subtracting the idea of rape from Antoine's speech completely nullifies the victory I outlined above, making the song into a mere meme instead of a personal and political statement of strength, and I wish someone had problematized this hammy and milquetoast (I might even say cowardly) version of the song before it was performed at Liberty -- but that may be a gripe for a different blog post, perhaps on the exigencies of working at or attending an evangelical institution.
Accusations XV
People who let their dogs poop in the middle of the sidewalk chute formed by mountains of snow piled on one side by plows (from the street) and on the other side by yards and the snow removal from the sidewalk -- and then don't clean up their dogs' mess. It is disgusting, and at the very least, it should not be everywhere.
My own ears, which often require me to immediately listen to some song stuck in my brain, or else torture me with phantom music and obsessional thoughts until I'm able to. You're over-zealous; I will get you to a CD player as soon as I can. In the meantime, chill out.
The snow, which will not stop.
My own ears, which often require me to immediately listen to some song stuck in my brain, or else torture me with phantom music and obsessional thoughts until I'm able to. You're over-zealous; I will get you to a CD player as soon as I can. In the meantime, chill out.
The snow, which will not stop.
Friday, January 28, 2011
PSA: The System of the World
The title of this post refers not to the excellent book by Neal Stephenson, in particular (though it also deals with these themes), but to capitalism.
I finally figured it out. The other day, it all came together in my mind, like a perfectly formed sphere made up of infinite vicious cycles. I turned to Prince Certainpersonio and said "I understand it -- I just got it -- what people mean by 'get a real job'."
I'd been thinking about this because I had been reading through my old columns for Local City Paper, and my responses to particular (and particularly insulting) comments made on the Local City Paper website about some of those columns, by an anonymous reader who supposed I must not have accomplished anything in my life, and suspected that it could only be nepotism that got me a weekly column. (He didn't like the column, and didn't find it "useful." [Shrug.])
In reality, of course, I'm not related to anyone working at the paper, except for my 12-year-old self, who had a paper route in Local City.
Also in reality, since I had never posted my resume as one of the weekly columns, this commenter had no real evidence that I had never accomplished anything -- except my admissions, over the year I wrote the column, that I had done volunteer work, in both China and Washington, D.C.
What I couldn't understand the other night was what, exactly, the objection was to my being a full-time volunteer. I'd felt, and still felt, a vague sense of shame over this accusation when I first read it, but I'd never questioned the commenter's perspective in making it. I just took it as a given that "volunteer" meant "not a real job."
But my Cultural Production M.A. leads me to ask what the hell he's talking about, since I actually did work full-time -- as an American ambassador of sorts, in addition to teaching English, and without any government money, in China; and as a full-time teacher and sometime development/marketing, administrative, data-entering assistant, in the U.S. -- for the four years I was technically a volunteer.
So it's not that I was lazy. I'd set the goal of living and working in Asia when I was in middle school (and delivering those papers door-to-door), and I'd accomplished it in the typical single-minded-focused way you'd expect approved-of, goal-oriented people to do. The commenter suggested that there was something wrong with fundraising (for China) and "being on the government dole" (for teaching GED in DC), which is a typical argument. But the fundraising was from individual donors, which is typically how people who argue for "real jobs" would prefer nonprofits and social programs receive ALL their money, so it's hardly fair to call foul on that when it actually happens. And the "government dole" I was on for Americorps in DC was far, far less than the same government would have paid to a "real" teacher for the two years I worked there.
So the issue is not actually "not working hard," or "running from responsibility," which is often how these arguments are framed. The issue is getting paid.
Responsible living in a capitalist society means getting paid. You must get paid. A "real job" means a job that pays.
And it probably means a job that pays more than you need to live on, because of the necessities of capitalism: we must produce more than we need, and then consume more than we need, to keep the economy moving "forward" (that is, to make it larger). People who volunteer full-time and live in communal living situations don't consume enough. They're producing at the same rate -- maybe at a faster rate, since people who volunteer for things tend to do it because they're motivated -- as other civilians, but they aren't consuming at the same rate. It's the same "irresponsibility" of living like a "modern-day hippie" (which the commenter also accused me of being, based, he said, on my "appearance" -- the glasses, maybe?).
I also understand, based on this incredibly obvious and simple observation, why people who get a degree in Cultural Production don't have a career track waiting for them when they get out. I mean, if everyone who went into cultural studies programs came out understanding this principle, they would probably all do what I suspect I will do with the information, which is to specifically choose to remain "irresponsible" -- do what I care about, and earn what I need.
They're all going into Brooklyn co-ops and DIY movements instead of careers. It's probably exhausting, and I believe most of us will fail to live this way our whole lives, but at least I feel like now I know what's at issue. And I understand that I probably can't argue with people who use the phrase "real job"...because those people obviously don't have a background in cultural studies, or they'd be asking me where they could get macrame lessons instead.
I finally figured it out. The other day, it all came together in my mind, like a perfectly formed sphere made up of infinite vicious cycles. I turned to Prince Certainpersonio and said "I understand it -- I just got it -- what people mean by 'get a real job'."
I'd been thinking about this because I had been reading through my old columns for Local City Paper, and my responses to particular (and particularly insulting) comments made on the Local City Paper website about some of those columns, by an anonymous reader who supposed I must not have accomplished anything in my life, and suspected that it could only be nepotism that got me a weekly column. (He didn't like the column, and didn't find it "useful." [Shrug.])
In reality, of course, I'm not related to anyone working at the paper, except for my 12-year-old self, who had a paper route in Local City.
Also in reality, since I had never posted my resume as one of the weekly columns, this commenter had no real evidence that I had never accomplished anything -- except my admissions, over the year I wrote the column, that I had done volunteer work, in both China and Washington, D.C.
What I couldn't understand the other night was what, exactly, the objection was to my being a full-time volunteer. I'd felt, and still felt, a vague sense of shame over this accusation when I first read it, but I'd never questioned the commenter's perspective in making it. I just took it as a given that "volunteer" meant "not a real job."
But my Cultural Production M.A. leads me to ask what the hell he's talking about, since I actually did work full-time -- as an American ambassador of sorts, in addition to teaching English, and without any government money, in China; and as a full-time teacher and sometime development/marketing, administrative, data-entering assistant, in the U.S. -- for the four years I was technically a volunteer.
So it's not that I was lazy. I'd set the goal of living and working in Asia when I was in middle school (and delivering those papers door-to-door), and I'd accomplished it in the typical single-minded-focused way you'd expect approved-of, goal-oriented people to do. The commenter suggested that there was something wrong with fundraising (for China) and "being on the government dole" (for teaching GED in DC), which is a typical argument. But the fundraising was from individual donors, which is typically how people who argue for "real jobs" would prefer nonprofits and social programs receive ALL their money, so it's hardly fair to call foul on that when it actually happens. And the "government dole" I was on for Americorps in DC was far, far less than the same government would have paid to a "real" teacher for the two years I worked there.
So the issue is not actually "not working hard," or "running from responsibility," which is often how these arguments are framed. The issue is getting paid.
Responsible living in a capitalist society means getting paid. You must get paid. A "real job" means a job that pays.
And it probably means a job that pays more than you need to live on, because of the necessities of capitalism: we must produce more than we need, and then consume more than we need, to keep the economy moving "forward" (that is, to make it larger). People who volunteer full-time and live in communal living situations don't consume enough. They're producing at the same rate -- maybe at a faster rate, since people who volunteer for things tend to do it because they're motivated -- as other civilians, but they aren't consuming at the same rate. It's the same "irresponsibility" of living like a "modern-day hippie" (which the commenter also accused me of being, based, he said, on my "appearance" -- the glasses, maybe?).
I also understand, based on this incredibly obvious and simple observation, why people who get a degree in Cultural Production don't have a career track waiting for them when they get out. I mean, if everyone who went into cultural studies programs came out understanding this principle, they would probably all do what I suspect I will do with the information, which is to specifically choose to remain "irresponsible" -- do what I care about, and earn what I need.
They're all going into Brooklyn co-ops and DIY movements instead of careers. It's probably exhausting, and I believe most of us will fail to live this way our whole lives, but at least I feel like now I know what's at issue. And I understand that I probably can't argue with people who use the phrase "real job"...because those people obviously don't have a background in cultural studies, or they'd be asking me where they could get macrame lessons instead.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
20x11: Videos from your PBS childhood.
1. "The Word is No (no no no no no no no)", Sesame Street
2. Monsterpiece Theater ("Me Claudius"), Sesame Street
3. "Teamwork," Reading Rainbow
4. Yeppers ("Old MacDonald Had a Spaceship newsflash"), Sesame Street
5. Reading Rainbow theme
6. "Me Lost Me Cookie at the Disco," Sesame Street
7. Mathman, Square One
8. 3-2-1 Contact theme
9. "Mathematics of Love," Square One
10. Cecile ("Up Down In and Out"), Sesame Street
11. "I Hate Christmas," Christmas Eve on Sesame Street
2. Monsterpiece Theater ("Me Claudius"), Sesame Street
3. "Teamwork," Reading Rainbow
4. Yeppers ("Old MacDonald Had a Spaceship newsflash"), Sesame Street
5. Reading Rainbow theme
6. "Me Lost Me Cookie at the Disco," Sesame Street
7. Mathman, Square One
8. 3-2-1 Contact theme
9. "Mathematics of Love," Square One
10. Cecile ("Up Down In and Out"), Sesame Street
11. "I Hate Christmas," Christmas Eve on Sesame Street
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
PSA: Bored? There's a conference for that.
Proving that we've all gone too far with this irony thing, the end of last year featured a conference called Boring 2010, in London.
Perhaps they required such a conference because, at least in my opinion, London is one of the least boring places on the planet.
Those sorry they missed the conference, take heart: there will be a Boring 2011, and I am betting it will be epic...in its extreme triviality.
(If you can't wait that long for boredom, check out this blog.)
Perhaps they required such a conference because, at least in my opinion, London is one of the least boring places on the planet.
Those sorry they missed the conference, take heart: there will be a Boring 2011, and I am betting it will be epic...in its extreme triviality.
(If you can't wait that long for boredom, check out this blog.)
Sunday, January 9, 2011
20x11: New year, same old idiocies
Inspired by a speech given by New York State Senator Diane Savino in 2009 -- or more accurately, the comments following the speech -- in favor of allowing for same-sex marriages in New York state (which failed in the state senate that day), I'm reiterating some of the more pervasive red herrings in the gay marriage debate in order to have fun arguing against them.
1. "The right for gays to marry is contingent on proving that being homosexual is a biological imperative, not a choice."
Well, as a straight person I've never had to prove that my heterosexuality is a biological imperative, and I gained the right to marry as soon as I turned 18 -- when I was an idiot, and should probably not have been allowed to even think about marriage.
Next idiotic point, please.
2. "The government should stay out of marriage, which is a religious institution and not a political one."
Alright, fair enough. If that's your argument, I'm willing to allow you to define marriage as "only religious" if you're willing to forgo all the legal benefits accrued to you by your marriage.
To deny yourself these legal benefits, you pretty much have to not get legally married. Go ahead and marry each other in churches of your choice -- just don't file the paperwork, and don't expect death benefits, or to be called on in emergencies as next of kin to make life-altering decisions for your partner, or the tax exemptions, or the ability to get a loan in both your names. If your marriage breaks up, don't expect any compensation. If you choose to have kids, don't expect your partner to have to care for them as much as you do; nor should you expect to have equal access to them if your partner wants to have custody.
If you're willing to think of marriage as solely religious after that, I'm fine with your argument. But in that case, the legal trappings of marriage should be extended to gay people as well, since they actually have nothing to do with religious marriage, anyway.
If you're thinking this is unfair and that you need those benefits, then you're already on the side of the same-sex marriage proponents. You need a new protest sign.
3. "It needs to be proven first that gay marriage would be of benefit to society before we change the law."
This is ridiculous. How could we possibly expect gay people to prove that their marriages would benefit society if all we're doing is performing stupid thought experiments about what might possibly happen if we let them get married? Let people get married! Then see if there are benefits.
Or, you know, don't, because hetero marriages don't have follow-up appointments or requirements of beneficiality. No heterosexual couple I know has ever been interviewed by a govt. (or even religious) agent, asking what benefits they've provided society as a result of their commitment. It's even more absurd to imagine that their commitment would be dissolved if they hadn't had enough of a beneficial impact on society.
4. "Societies throughout time have always had the heterosexual family as their basic structural unit."
This person has been watching too much TV, and coming from me, that's saying a lot.
If, on the other hand, they cracked an anthro textbook every now and then, they would see that societies have all manner of bases and kin relationships, with very few "rules" in common. (One is, for instance, that men always try to control or dominate women. Another is the taboo against incest.) Some societies have had elaborate homosexual relationships built into their structure; some have had children remain with birth family members throughout life (only impregnating, or being impregnated by, outsiders -- but raising children together with siblings).
Read Foucault's History of Sexuality and watch less Two and a Half Men.
5. "If gays are allowed to marry, God will destroy our country/bring wrath on us/no longer have America as his [sic] favorite."
I doubt that will be the straw that broke the camel's back. I mean, have you seen Two and a Half Men?
6. "The slippery slope!"
What slippery slope? Is the fear that we'll begin "tolerating" things that are harmful to ourselves and others? What things, exactly?
I've heard polygamy (based usually on strict gender roles that don't allow women many rights -- so, conservative), incest (which we all agree causes birth defects in the long term even with personal consent, and in nuclear families is often abuse perpetrated by the father, which we agree has a terrible impact on children), bestiality (really? These are the same people who refuse to believe we might be related to monkeys, but having a relationship with another human is going to lead automatically to sex with a barnyard animal?? I thought that human/non-human line was hard and fast for non-evolutionists), and other polyamorous relationships.
Well, guess what. Those things exist, with or without gay marriage. With the exception of polyamorous relationships -- which either have a negotiated relationship with marriage (i.e., the "open marriage"), or nothing to do with marriage -- I think we all agree there are major problems with the relationships some are afraid we might "slip into."
I think if you're worried that allowing two other people to marry each other will make your children want to have sex with a cow, you might have other things to worry about.
7. "It threatens marriage."
I'm not sure how this is supposed to work, except as a hodge-podge of slippery slope arguments and repressed homosexual leanings. Are droves of previously straight men and women suddenly going to realize they'd have married gay if they had had the option before?
Is it that children might grow up thinking about whether they're gay or straight, because that might lead some of them to believe they're gay?
What exactly is at stake in allowing others to enter into the institution, except that more of us will be institutionalized, overall? (And isn't that the point of conservativism, that we'll all be "normal"?)
8. "It threatens the family."
This is what's at stake, actually -- the nuclear family as the basic unit of production in capitalism. We have gender roles not because we're born that way -- into a 1950s sitcom -- but because those are the roles assigned to us in modern capitalism. Men go out and work, producing labor for the GDP, and women stay home to spend money and raise the next generation of workers.
When two men love each other, what are they supposed to do in this system? It's CRAZY! They can do anything they WANT TO DO! And that's not what society is FOR...society is for working, and raising a family, and spending the appropriate amount of money on newer and more faddish stuff, so that newer and more faddish stuff needs to be continually produced, so that there's work to be done.
The bottom line to this scary statement of threat to the family is that "family" and "family values" are conceived of as work- and role-related, rather than fun- and freedom-related.
The confusing part is that in asking to be let into the structure of marriage (and possibly children), gay marriage advocates are showing that they would like to be a part of that capitalist structure, too. Asking to be allowed to be married is one of the most conservative things that people in the position of the freedom of marginality (you know, minus the hate crimes and discrimination, if those could be subtracted) can possibly do.
9. "It's just not natural."
Well, neither is NASCAR, but you're allowed to have that.
Setting aside the arguments previously mentioned, of course, that some societies practiced homosexual behaviors, and that what we might characterize as homosexual behavior has been documented in the animal world as well. And also setting aside that any family unit created by capitalism -- which in turn was set in motion by the Industrial Revolution (read: machines) -- cannot really be considered "natural."
10. "It's not normal."
Yeah, that's partly because we're refusing to allow it. If we allowed it, it would be normal. That's how laws and norms work. This is a circular argument.
I think the underlying fear here is actually that it might become normal if we allow it -- so not that we should disallow anything "not normal," but the realization that anything we allow will eventually become fine. It's an argument for restricting normality to exactly what it's defined as now. Think about how that would have worked out for America (or how it did work out) during the Civil Rights movement.
Race and sexuality may not be the same, but the comparison is apt in that the attitudes of conservatives is the same in each case: to conserve. But wanting preserve the current norm or trying to return some lost past norm (like, say, attempting to relate all of modern life directly back to the U.S. Constitution) is not an argument. It's nostalgia, and a dangerous kind that ignores all the experiences of minorities who didn't have such awesome "golden years" with those norms (like, say, the slaves, who were cut out of the recent constitution reading in Congress -- so as not to remind us of how far we've come since then).
This protest should be better expressed "but then it will become normal!" which is the real fear of those saying it.
11. "It's part of the gay agenda."
To...what?
Are gays going to take over the world? Usher in the apocalypse? Raise more gay children? (To what negative effect?) Convert you? Worship their great master Satan and call down demons to plague you? What exactly are gay people going to do to ruin everything?
No one can explain exactly what the gays will ruin by marrying each other, which is why that's not the point of "the gay agenda" argument. It's actually a pretty genius straw man, propping up a bunch of conservative beliefs.
Most likely, if you're saying this, you're white and conservative and probably live near a lot of people who agree with you. If you're a religious fundamentalist, you probably also go to church to hear other people say things like this and to agree with them. If you're all of these things, you probably believe you're being persecuted as a "true Christian" in "America today." Part of the way you're being persecuted is that people keep pointing out your positions of privilege and asking you to define exactly how you're being persecuted, which you can only do in vague spiritual terms that refer to strict interpretations of certain passages of Scripture, most of which you're not actually prepared to defend. People who don't go to your church don't seem to believe you.
In which case, if they gays get to marry, you win.
Then when their Satan-worshiping, child-sexuality-warping, apocalypse-ushering, plague-bringing ways begin to show through (in marriage, for some reason, more than any other institution), you'll not only be able to say "I told you so" -- you may actually be right when you claim to be persecuted.
You'll still be white and conservative, and most likely male and a Protestant, but at least then you'll be able to prove that same-sex couples were out to get you all along.
Or, alternatively, you'll find no change at all in your social power, in which case you can stick to the vague spiritual terms and literal Scripture interpretations and continue to mutter foreboding things about ushering in the end times, until the apocalypse comes or you die, probably peacefully at an old age.
The idea of a gay agenda is a win-win for you headshakers who believe in the decline of society.
Congratulations on thinking it up.
1. "The right for gays to marry is contingent on proving that being homosexual is a biological imperative, not a choice."
Well, as a straight person I've never had to prove that my heterosexuality is a biological imperative, and I gained the right to marry as soon as I turned 18 -- when I was an idiot, and should probably not have been allowed to even think about marriage.
Next idiotic point, please.
2. "The government should stay out of marriage, which is a religious institution and not a political one."
Alright, fair enough. If that's your argument, I'm willing to allow you to define marriage as "only religious" if you're willing to forgo all the legal benefits accrued to you by your marriage.
To deny yourself these legal benefits, you pretty much have to not get legally married. Go ahead and marry each other in churches of your choice -- just don't file the paperwork, and don't expect death benefits, or to be called on in emergencies as next of kin to make life-altering decisions for your partner, or the tax exemptions, or the ability to get a loan in both your names. If your marriage breaks up, don't expect any compensation. If you choose to have kids, don't expect your partner to have to care for them as much as you do; nor should you expect to have equal access to them if your partner wants to have custody.
If you're willing to think of marriage as solely religious after that, I'm fine with your argument. But in that case, the legal trappings of marriage should be extended to gay people as well, since they actually have nothing to do with religious marriage, anyway.
If you're thinking this is unfair and that you need those benefits, then you're already on the side of the same-sex marriage proponents. You need a new protest sign.
3. "It needs to be proven first that gay marriage would be of benefit to society before we change the law."
This is ridiculous. How could we possibly expect gay people to prove that their marriages would benefit society if all we're doing is performing stupid thought experiments about what might possibly happen if we let them get married? Let people get married! Then see if there are benefits.
Or, you know, don't, because hetero marriages don't have follow-up appointments or requirements of beneficiality. No heterosexual couple I know has ever been interviewed by a govt. (or even religious) agent, asking what benefits they've provided society as a result of their commitment. It's even more absurd to imagine that their commitment would be dissolved if they hadn't had enough of a beneficial impact on society.
4. "Societies throughout time have always had the heterosexual family as their basic structural unit."
This person has been watching too much TV, and coming from me, that's saying a lot.
If, on the other hand, they cracked an anthro textbook every now and then, they would see that societies have all manner of bases and kin relationships, with very few "rules" in common. (One is, for instance, that men always try to control or dominate women. Another is the taboo against incest.) Some societies have had elaborate homosexual relationships built into their structure; some have had children remain with birth family members throughout life (only impregnating, or being impregnated by, outsiders -- but raising children together with siblings).
Read Foucault's History of Sexuality and watch less Two and a Half Men.
5. "If gays are allowed to marry, God will destroy our country/bring wrath on us/no longer have America as his [sic] favorite."
I doubt that will be the straw that broke the camel's back. I mean, have you seen Two and a Half Men?
6. "The slippery slope!"
What slippery slope? Is the fear that we'll begin "tolerating" things that are harmful to ourselves and others? What things, exactly?
I've heard polygamy (based usually on strict gender roles that don't allow women many rights -- so, conservative), incest (which we all agree causes birth defects in the long term even with personal consent, and in nuclear families is often abuse perpetrated by the father, which we agree has a terrible impact on children), bestiality (really? These are the same people who refuse to believe we might be related to monkeys, but having a relationship with another human is going to lead automatically to sex with a barnyard animal?? I thought that human/non-human line was hard and fast for non-evolutionists), and other polyamorous relationships.
Well, guess what. Those things exist, with or without gay marriage. With the exception of polyamorous relationships -- which either have a negotiated relationship with marriage (i.e., the "open marriage"), or nothing to do with marriage -- I think we all agree there are major problems with the relationships some are afraid we might "slip into."
I think if you're worried that allowing two other people to marry each other will make your children want to have sex with a cow, you might have other things to worry about.
7. "It threatens marriage."
I'm not sure how this is supposed to work, except as a hodge-podge of slippery slope arguments and repressed homosexual leanings. Are droves of previously straight men and women suddenly going to realize they'd have married gay if they had had the option before?
Is it that children might grow up thinking about whether they're gay or straight, because that might lead some of them to believe they're gay?
What exactly is at stake in allowing others to enter into the institution, except that more of us will be institutionalized, overall? (And isn't that the point of conservativism, that we'll all be "normal"?)
8. "It threatens the family."
This is what's at stake, actually -- the nuclear family as the basic unit of production in capitalism. We have gender roles not because we're born that way -- into a 1950s sitcom -- but because those are the roles assigned to us in modern capitalism. Men go out and work, producing labor for the GDP, and women stay home to spend money and raise the next generation of workers.
When two men love each other, what are they supposed to do in this system? It's CRAZY! They can do anything they WANT TO DO! And that's not what society is FOR...society is for working, and raising a family, and spending the appropriate amount of money on newer and more faddish stuff, so that newer and more faddish stuff needs to be continually produced, so that there's work to be done.
The bottom line to this scary statement of threat to the family is that "family" and "family values" are conceived of as work- and role-related, rather than fun- and freedom-related.
The confusing part is that in asking to be let into the structure of marriage (and possibly children), gay marriage advocates are showing that they would like to be a part of that capitalist structure, too. Asking to be allowed to be married is one of the most conservative things that people in the position of the freedom of marginality (you know, minus the hate crimes and discrimination, if those could be subtracted) can possibly do.
9. "It's just not natural."
Well, neither is NASCAR, but you're allowed to have that.
Setting aside the arguments previously mentioned, of course, that some societies practiced homosexual behaviors, and that what we might characterize as homosexual behavior has been documented in the animal world as well. And also setting aside that any family unit created by capitalism -- which in turn was set in motion by the Industrial Revolution (read: machines) -- cannot really be considered "natural."
10. "It's not normal."
Yeah, that's partly because we're refusing to allow it. If we allowed it, it would be normal. That's how laws and norms work. This is a circular argument.
I think the underlying fear here is actually that it might become normal if we allow it -- so not that we should disallow anything "not normal," but the realization that anything we allow will eventually become fine. It's an argument for restricting normality to exactly what it's defined as now. Think about how that would have worked out for America (or how it did work out) during the Civil Rights movement.
Race and sexuality may not be the same, but the comparison is apt in that the attitudes of conservatives is the same in each case: to conserve. But wanting preserve the current norm or trying to return some lost past norm (like, say, attempting to relate all of modern life directly back to the U.S. Constitution) is not an argument. It's nostalgia, and a dangerous kind that ignores all the experiences of minorities who didn't have such awesome "golden years" with those norms (like, say, the slaves, who were cut out of the recent constitution reading in Congress -- so as not to remind us of how far we've come since then).
This protest should be better expressed "but then it will become normal!" which is the real fear of those saying it.
11. "It's part of the gay agenda."
To...what?
Are gays going to take over the world? Usher in the apocalypse? Raise more gay children? (To what negative effect?) Convert you? Worship their great master Satan and call down demons to plague you? What exactly are gay people going to do to ruin everything?
No one can explain exactly what the gays will ruin by marrying each other, which is why that's not the point of "the gay agenda" argument. It's actually a pretty genius straw man, propping up a bunch of conservative beliefs.
Most likely, if you're saying this, you're white and conservative and probably live near a lot of people who agree with you. If you're a religious fundamentalist, you probably also go to church to hear other people say things like this and to agree with them. If you're all of these things, you probably believe you're being persecuted as a "true Christian" in "America today." Part of the way you're being persecuted is that people keep pointing out your positions of privilege and asking you to define exactly how you're being persecuted, which you can only do in vague spiritual terms that refer to strict interpretations of certain passages of Scripture, most of which you're not actually prepared to defend. People who don't go to your church don't seem to believe you.
In which case, if they gays get to marry, you win.
Then when their Satan-worshiping, child-sexuality-warping, apocalypse-ushering, plague-bringing ways begin to show through (in marriage, for some reason, more than any other institution), you'll not only be able to say "I told you so" -- you may actually be right when you claim to be persecuted.
You'll still be white and conservative, and most likely male and a Protestant, but at least then you'll be able to prove that same-sex couples were out to get you all along.
Or, alternatively, you'll find no change at all in your social power, in which case you can stick to the vague spiritual terms and literal Scripture interpretations and continue to mutter foreboding things about ushering in the end times, until the apocalypse comes or you die, probably peacefully at an old age.
The idea of a gay agenda is a win-win for you headshakers who believe in the decline of society.
Congratulations on thinking it up.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Monday, January 3, 2011
20x11 New Year’s Resolutions:
I will go to at least one live concert this year.
I will complete my Goodwill letterboxing series.
I will give away at least one bookshelf’s worth of books.
I will try to say two positive things for every one negative thing I say.
I will try to sell one purse.
I will watch 52 seasons of TV.
I will have at least two themed parties, for which the themes will be hilarious and clever.
I will embark on at least one DIY project, just in case I ever have to move to Brooklyn.
I will try to find a new job.
I will take at least three significant trips, again.
I will watch one sunrise with P.C., who suggested this resolution and so will now have to watch it with me.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
20x11: Things I don’t like
This list is only half the 20x11, because in general I think it’s a good practice to try to focus on things you like more than on things you don’t like. Besides, anyone who has met me has heard at least 20x5.5 number of things I don’t like and can therefore supplement the list with those complaints.
In completely random order:
Hot seatbelt after the car’s been sitting in the summer sun; missing puzzle pieces; Internet spam; yapping dogs; children crying in that way where their faces turn red and they choke on their own crying; stepping on the bottom of your jeans outside in the rain or snow so they get wet and dirty; William J. Vader II; Alicia Silverstone; people who try to explain predestination by repeating their argument louder instead of saying something different; when something falls in the trash accidentally
Vomiting; reading Agatha Christie novels when I’m not on long train rides; mirrors with shiny silvery metallic frames; mirrors with shiny gold-like metallic frames; people who tell you not to do something and then go and do it themselves, anyway; people who condescend to you; the self-centeredness of making lists of stuff you like on your personal blog; not being able to control the whininess in your voice when you’ve been crying or are upset; when people give away what “Rosebud” means; getting cut off in traffic; being told “you’ll understand when you’re older,” especially since you never do
When the person you’re with is paying more attention to someone else than to you; going to parties where you don’t know anyone; pretzels; cream cheese on anything but a bagel; The Itchy and Scratchy Show; the American flag – aesthetically; “the American flag” – as a rallying point for people who don’t have an actual well-thought-out opinion on issues; Jean-Ralphio on Parks and Recreation; when people use second person to distance themselves from the stuff they’re saying; making errors in spelling; Mike Rappaport
Saurkraut; not understanding German; Screech from Saved By The Bell; the fact that some of the shows I really liked aren’t out on DVD, or that they stopped after releasing the first season or two; that time I had just gotten my training wheels off and fell into the kiddie pool as I rode around the driveway, at the time; living on the third floor or higher; drying clothes on a clothesline, because of the time it takes and how I have to schedule laundry around the weather report; drinking alcohol; spending more than an hour at the aquarium; waiting in line; when I tell someone to stop tickling me and they don’t
Wearing high heels; not having a place to put all the stuff I want to hoard; not knowing everything in the world; touching raw chicken; meat pies; the phrase “humble abode”; having to check the pockets of pants before putting them in the washer; not having a dishwasher; washing the dishes; My Antonia by Willa Cather; burning my tongue on a too-hot beverage even though I blew on it for a long time and it seemed safe to drink
The word “discombobulate”; A Day No Pigs Would Die by a guy whose name I can’t remember; not remembering that guy’s name; cheesy and sweet flavors together; cheesecake; the recent years of Garfield; when people gather in the kitchen at parties even though everything is set up in the other room; troubleshooting lost Internet connections; competing publicly; karaoke; people who immediately begin saying a word that someone just said they hated, as if to test out the hatred of the person who hates that word, or to torture them
Swimming at the YWCA when I was little; my stupid phone battery that dies all the time; potato salad; cranberry sauce with other stuff in it, like celery; celery; having multiple plates and bowls per-person, per-meal, at a home dinner party; orange-scented things; wracking my brain for a movie title on the tip of my tongue and still not being able to think of it; doing my taxes; back pain; any phrase combining a body part and food word, such as “head cheese” or “toe jam”
Carrying a purse that doesn’t go over the shoulder; when DVDs won’t let you skip ahead to the main menu; this weird digital TV signal thing that causes me to not get any channels; giant corporations that are secretly running the world; the Tea Party; Power Bars; the idea of climbing a mountain; imaginary friends, when adults have them and speak to them in public; prices on food at concession stands; Carrot Top; people who never stop complaining
Cursing; the virgin/whore dichotomy; lima beans; AOL; dogs that lick you; “dog-hand” – the smell your hand has after you pet a smelly dog; the fatty edge of ham; cigarette smoke, or the smell of it; when people name their kids stupid names; sharp knives; dickies
Canadian bacon; the way the new Oprah channel is being advertised as if she didn’t already have her own TV network; when people accidentally break my stuff; American cheese; those wheelie shoes; shoes that you have to shine; when people back down just to appease someone else who is wrong; when people back down just to appease someone else who is a jerk; movies where the lead woman is an idiot; movies where the lead man is an idiot; movies where everyone else has to be an idiot to make the lead man look like a normal guy
Shoulder and neck pain; Valentine’s Day clichés; the idea of “figgy pudding”; the rudeness of guests who would demand that you “bring it right here”; dancing; the portions of songs I otherwise like, particularly 80's ballads, where the band "breaks it down" and includes a long musical interlude, often of a saxophone solo (.5)
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