The plight of the white male is something you never really hear about.
Why?
Because it doesn't exist. Any time someone of the white persuasion who happens to be male feels that they are under served, discriminated against, or otherwise beaten down because of their race and sex they are accused of having entitlement issues, or narcissism, or some other such thing.
The truth - as many would have you believe it - is that all white men are part of a deceitful cabal who complain about being passed over for jobs, given worse grades, or not having enough scholarship opportunities as a way to deal with their loss of power in a world rapidly growing more diverse.
I suppose that makes sense, in a way. I mean, if this were still the 1800s.
Listen, I wanted McCain to win over Obama not because one was white and one was black, but because I don't want to be taxed into poverty, nor told what to do. I was pissed off when illegal immigrants were given in-state tuition not because they are Mexican (or Salvadoran, or Ecuadoran, or...) but because I lived here 16 years and yet just because my parents moved I was no longer considered a resident, except when it came to taxing me.
This isn't because these people are all part of a class that I used to be able to grind under my boot heel. I'm a child of the 90's, for Christ's sake. I never knew a world where we had segregation or Jim Crow laws. I went to school with people of all races, ate with people of all races, lived near people of all races. I have no glorious white-dominated past to fall back on. I just happen to have an opinion.
To some people, however, these opinions I hold are considered to be racist. Well sure, the object of my disdain happens to be of a different race, but let's be honest, I hate white people, too!
Zac Effron for instance. Or Stephanie Meyer.
Oh, you say, so you hate the female writer, eh? Because she's a successful independent woman?
No! I shout from my golden mountaintop, because she's a terrible author! I'd hate those books just as much if a man wrote them. And I don't care if she's black or white, either. If she was a black woman I would hate the books just as much as I hate them now! My disdain is equal opportunity!
In fact, as a white male in a society that practices an alarming amount of self-segregation I hate about 20 individual white people for every individual of another race that I hate.
But could I ever try to explain that to someone? No. No I can't. Because as a white male, the only excuse for me thinking that 50 Cent's music is complete tripe is that I am a racist.
Well guess what, I love Miles Davis, the Drifters, and NWA. (I'll take a moment to allow people who know me to recover from the fact that I find NWA enjoyable. Ok, time's up.)
Why is it that we as a society have to worry about our personal opinions being interpreted as racist? Why can't we trust that people will understand that tastes and ideas vary, and sometimes race and sex have nothing to do with it.
I hate Tyler Perry movies. Not because they have a specifically African-American focus, but because I hate watching movies where men don fat suits to pass themselves off as old women. I hate Hannah Montana because... Jesus, do I even have to explain? Moving on...
The problem with racism and sexism in modern America is that it is sort of our modern day witch hunt. Salem played out on a national scale. We were so afraid of witches and the evil that they sowed that if we couldn't find one outright we had to suspect that they are just hiding it very well. So we looked for any small sign and blew it out of proportion. Our fear of the witch was so powerful that our minds created them out of thin air.
The same can be true of most modern day cases of perceived racism and sexism.
I say "perceived" because we do live in a world where a number of people still practice hate professionally (I'm looking at you, Aryan Nation) and those people are disgusting. What "perceived" denotes is racism or sexism without intent. Someone says something and means it one way, but someone thinks it is racist or sexist and suddenly it is.
It's intellectual alchemy. Turning innocuous-banter coal into hate-speech gold.
Like this statement: If women want equal rights, they should have to be called up in the draft, too.
Holy shit, you just said, that's terrible! You're only saying that to scare women and keep them in their place.
I'm not. I am saying that because if we're to believe all this "Equal Opportunity" talk that gets thrown around then that means taking the good with the bad. You don't get paid as much as a world-renowned heart surgeon without having to go through the hell of med school and residency, after all.
If all you're asking for is the same rights and privileges as someone without all the responsibilities that go with it, you're really just asking for special treatment, which is more sexist than getting nothing at all.
"Aww, the little girl wants to make more money and be a CEO. Ok, sweetie, but don't worry, you won't have to fight in the big bad war because we know you don't wanna mess up your makeup."
Sexist.
"Ok, welcome to the club. Here's our list of pros and cons. Read 'em, love 'em, get to work."
Equal.
Yet because of the fact that every self-serving, publicity hungry Equal Rights Activist is looking for a new racist or sexist to burn at the stake, people self-censor to the point of hilariousness. I've heard friends start stories off with, "So I was serving this table of black people, and you know I am not racist, I mean, my best friend is black, and I love Beyonce, so, you know, but anyway..."
Come on. Stories live or die by their details. I don't start a story off with, "So I was chatting up this blond girl, and I mean, you know, I don't have a problem with blonds..." State the details so I can get a clear picture and move on. Stop apologizing.
(Also, just like hating one black person doesn't make you a racist, liking one black person doesn't make you not racist.)
I was a waiter. I hated serving tables of black people because they were, in general, terrible tippers. Now, of course there are always exceptions to every rule, and I have been stiffed by white people too, but on the whole if I had to choose one of two tables, I'd go for whitey any day of the week.
Does that make me racist? No! No it doesn't! It makes me adept at pattern recognition and playing the odds.
In fact, if you look at me and hear something I say and assume its racist, that makes you racist because you are making an assumption of my beliefs based on my skin color.
Which brings me to my original point.
I am currently up for a job working for a man who hires pretty, blond sorority girls. He's got a goddamned harem working in his section. When people heard about me interviewing for this job, they openly stated, "Good luck on that one, man. Maybe you should try growing some tits for the interview."
Now imagine this. I am a black man working for someone who hires white men, and when I tell friends I am going for the job they say to me, "You might wanna ask Michael Jackson how he got so white, because that's your only hope."
You'd have a CNN breaking news story on your hands. You couldn't keep the press away. A person who openly discriminates against black men? Queue up the specialized graphics and theme music.
But if I tried to sue over sexual discrimination I would get laughed out of court. Why? Because I am a white man, and nothing bad ever happens to me. I don't get mad because I feel genuinely discriminated against, I get mad because I can feel my racial and gender supremacy slipping away. I am hopping on the band wagon, acting offended by injustice when really I just wanna get my White Man's Club Card punched one more time.
Bullshit.
You know what? My families' roots in this country begin in the early 20th century and I'm Irish and Italian, two ethnic groups that were treated like shit when they first got here. I mean, the Irish were subjugated by the English for hundreds of years. We weren't even allowed to speak our own language in our homeland!
So I am not some redneck whistling dixie and talking about the good old days when a black man knew his place and a white man couldn't spit on the sidewalk without getting a job offer.
In fact, that statement was heavily racist against southerners, but I bet no one out there got offended.
I am just a man who has ideas that sometimes put me on the opposite side of the idealism-dividing-line from people of other races and genders. I am just a man who can tell when he is being treated unfairly, like any other human can.
What I am saying here, in short, is that equality works in both directions. We're either all equally capable of being victims and perpetrators, or no one is. If I am capable of discriminating, then I am also equally capable of being discriminated against. If you give one group special treatment and more opportunities while shutting out the formerly dominant group, then you aren't being enlightened, you're being condescending.
Put bluntly:
Level the fucking playing field, but don't fix the game.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
When To Give Up (A.K.A. The Balloon and the Cactus)
Far be it from me to say that love will never, in fact, conquer all.
Stranger things have happened in this world; Ball lightening, UFO encounters, successful white rappers, frogs falling from the sky...
Geronimo!But at some point either in the experience or observation of a truly dysfunctional relationship, someone has to ask: At what point should this lame horse be made to headbutt a bullet?
This becomes a rather tricky question. It asks at what point optimistic romanticism becomes meaningless routine. At what point does the "We can work it out" Beatles jingle become the "Remember when I said 'I love you,' well forget it I take it back, I was just a stupid kid back then" Alkaline Trio anthem to idiocy?
I suppose one way to look at it is this: Are you happy?
Seems like a simple enough question. Being with someone either makes you happy or it doesn't. Being without that person either then makes you miserable or it doesn't. To me, at a very basic and quantifiable level, then, someone is worth staying with if you feel better when they are around and feel a little bit worse when they aren't.
Not to say that living without them is intolerable (we call that an obsession, children) but that you honestly look forward to seeing them again.
As such, a significant other is someone whom you like being with and want to see again. A one night stand is someone you felt better being with and hope never to see again. And someone you are miserable with and yet want to see again is commonly referred to as "a bad idea."
Beyond simply being a bad idea, this person can also end up being ultimately destructive.
You are miserable, therefore people don't want to be around you, therefore all you have to cling to is the bad idea, who sooner or later twists you into an unidentifiable shell of your former self that people want to be around even less.
This is what I like to refer to as "The Balloon and the Cactus."
Imagine, if you will, a bright balloon, filled with air and floating happily through the world. It's a playful, kindly balloon. One day Balloon meets Cactus, an aesthetically interesting thing covered in sharp quills that make it impossible to become intimate with (for the purpose of this analogy, imagine I am talking about emotional intimacy).
Yet Balloon is in love with Cactus, and though all of Balloon's friends tell Balloon not to get involved with Cactus, the two strike up a relationship. Balloon believes that love will overcome the obviously Bad Idea that is trying to make it work with Cactus.
Before long, Cactus's quills, which before were just their problem, have pierced Balloon, sapping the poor soul of their former jovial attitude and fun. Balloon is earthbound, drained of the thing's they loved, and Cactus remains unchanged. Cactus remains remote and unapproachable, but now Balloon too is worse for the wear and is trapped with Cactus.
See? Simple. Read that to children when they are growing up and see if the marriage rate doesn't fix itself a little higher in coming generations when people learn that sometimes you really just aren't meant to be together so stop trying and for the love of GOD don't marry them thinking it will change things!
(Author's note: Same thing goes for children and pets. You can't fix what's broken by adding more complicated moving parts.)
So the question then becomes, When do you know he or she is a Cactus? How far should you go before you realize that you aren't nobly fighting for love anymore? When does it make sense to say, No, this isn't working, and to remain with you will only destroy me and my life?
Above: Not someone you take home to mom.
At what point is it responsible to make a call as to whether you have found your future prince/princess, or if you're just going to be kissing a frog for the rest of your life?
Love me!
Time, I think, doesn't even factor into this question. Say I were to put a firm stamp on two months. If after two months we are still making one another miserable, it's all over. What happens when an unforeseen incident crops up two years into a perfectly harmonious union? Jump ship? No, of course not!
Time doesn't matter because a relationship is an ever-evolving organism. It starts off small, eating plankton and what not, then swims around and hunts more wily prey, then grows legs and climbs onto the land and then wings and takes to the air (Charles Darwin hates me right now).So at any given point there will be a problem. First the tides might be working against you, then you might stumble while trying to work those legs, and then you might have trouble finding the right air-speed velocity to keep aloft. These are all parts of the process.
It's when you're still having the same bloody arguments you were having at the single-celled stage while trying to run and flapping your stunted wings then you have problems.
A year in, if you're still arguing about how you never hold hands enough or how you never do what the other person wants to do, you might honestly think about just ending this madness.
Even more egregious - in my opinion - is when one or the other of you flat out refuses to try to forge any common ground with the other. You're not sharing books, you won't give their favorite TV show a chance, she won't let you listen to your music in the car...
That's not a relationship. That's a hostage negotiation, and sooner or later you have to ask what you are getting out of this.
Why are you still in that thing? What is the point? What are you getting out of it? If 95% of the time you are flat-out suicidally depressed and 5% of the time you find yourself saying "Things have been really good recently" then you need to wise up and move on. If you say "They've been having a rough couple of weeks" at least twice a week, then there is a problem. The thing is that you have never found happiness. You have felt happy but you haven't been happy.
Do you know why mankind seems to think of the default of the world as having daylight? Because a majority of our lives are spent in it. That's the norm. If night lasted for 18 hours, then we would think night was the norm.
When your months-to-year-long relationship is still in the sea, and when you think the sun is a novelty, you know its time to GET OUT OF THERE.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Is It Depression or Is It A Terrible Mattress?
The other night was a study in mouth-inflamed terror.
No, that isn't one of my wondrous hyperbole. My mouth hurt like the body of a vampire trapped in the Vatican at high noon.
Since I feel like that involves some background: Wisdom Teeth.
Anyway, so I went to WebMD to see if there was something I could do short of DIY oral surgery to relieve the pain.
Right there on the homepage was a test to determine whether or not you had depression.
Why not, I thought, this seems like a fun waste of time. I was expecting a double-blind 600 question personality test that would examine my psyche like Freud's ghost mixed with some sort of futuristic omnipotent God-machine.
Instead I got myself a 10 question, single page waste of thirty seconds.
The first question asked me if I had trouble sleeping. Well yea, of course I do. I am a recent college graduate with no solid job prospects, mounting debt, and a four-year-old habit of staying up til 5 am funneling whiskey down my throat as fast as I can. If worries don't keep me conscious the niggling feeling that I should really be drunk and listening to Modest Mouse right now will.
Also my mattress sucks. It's a bit too hard and I can't get comfortable and its big enough for two pillows, but I inevitably find myself unable to sleep in the cozy center of the bed because then my head is between the two pillows and therefore lacking cushioning.
Question two: Does your back hurt?
Why yes, yes it does, and that must be because all the aforementioned terrors in my life which keep me awake are starting to actually gain physical weight which rests on my shoulders like a gorilla hypnotized to think it's a parrot and that I am Captain Jack Sparrow.
Also my mattress sucks and therefore I spent the night on a lightly pillowed bed of glass, nails, and scorpions with epilepsy. Which makes it impossible to get comfortable and puts a banjo-styled twinge in my neck and spine. Which keeps me from sleeping.
Question three: Are you lethargic during the day?
Yes, I am, because the overwhelming hopelessness of my life and my lack of a future that doesn't involve slinging dope on a cold street corner for pennies while I watch the world around me decay because of my greed stops me from ever finding the energy to try to achieve anything better.
Also my mattress sucks and I can't sleep because it's so uncomfortable and my back hurts because of it so even my moments of waking rest are devoid of any recuperative properties because I might as well just connect myself to an electric fence that causes my muscles to spasm repeatedly so that every moment of my life feels like I just finished climbing a damn mountain.
Question four: Do you not take join in activities you used to love?
Yes, because what is the point of trying to find happiness when inevitably I will die cold and alone buried in a coffin stitched together from cardboard burger boxes from McDonalds, stuck in the ground with a number on my tombstone because I had to be buried by the state for lack of funds and I pawned my identity to a Bulgarian immigrant two years ago so they didn't even know my name.
Also my mattress sucks and I am too tired and in too much discomfort to be bothered to go to a loud bar or try to write because the moment I sit down to try to write a story all I can think is "Some codeine would really be awesome now" and any moments of freedom and solitude I get are spent wondering if maybe I could fit a nap in because I am exhausted because I can't sleep because my mattress sucks!
The only question that seemed tailored solely to those who might be depressed was the one that asked if I often thought about murdering myself, and really if you can answer yes to that one what was the point of asking the others?
Suicidal Sam: God, I want to off myself and every night I fantasize about that one perfect steak knight and the way it gleams in the moonlight. However, I am sleeping great, doing all the things I love with limitless supplies of energy and never experience any back pain even while carrying my backpack filled with condoms and liquor across Europe, so I must not be really depressed, because even though I really cannot wait to feel the freeing kiss of steel against my wrists I own a really great mattress.
I cannot conceive of a person who dreams of the day when they can cut their wrists and shuffle off this painful mortal coil who isn't depressed, or else a fourteen year old boy who just got stood up at the dance.
And if a person who is suicidal really just needs a good night's sleep to keep from being considered 'depressed' maybe every psychologist in the world should be retrained as a sleep number salesman.
No, that isn't one of my wondrous hyperbole. My mouth hurt like the body of a vampire trapped in the Vatican at high noon.
Since I feel like that involves some background: Wisdom Teeth.
Anyway, so I went to WebMD to see if there was something I could do short of DIY oral surgery to relieve the pain.
Right there on the homepage was a test to determine whether or not you had depression.
Why not, I thought, this seems like a fun waste of time. I was expecting a double-blind 600 question personality test that would examine my psyche like Freud's ghost mixed with some sort of futuristic omnipotent God-machine.
Instead I got myself a 10 question, single page waste of thirty seconds.
The first question asked me if I had trouble sleeping. Well yea, of course I do. I am a recent college graduate with no solid job prospects, mounting debt, and a four-year-old habit of staying up til 5 am funneling whiskey down my throat as fast as I can. If worries don't keep me conscious the niggling feeling that I should really be drunk and listening to Modest Mouse right now will.
Also my mattress sucks. It's a bit too hard and I can't get comfortable and its big enough for two pillows, but I inevitably find myself unable to sleep in the cozy center of the bed because then my head is between the two pillows and therefore lacking cushioning.
Question two: Does your back hurt?
Why yes, yes it does, and that must be because all the aforementioned terrors in my life which keep me awake are starting to actually gain physical weight which rests on my shoulders like a gorilla hypnotized to think it's a parrot and that I am Captain Jack Sparrow.
Also my mattress sucks and therefore I spent the night on a lightly pillowed bed of glass, nails, and scorpions with epilepsy. Which makes it impossible to get comfortable and puts a banjo-styled twinge in my neck and spine. Which keeps me from sleeping.
Question three: Are you lethargic during the day?
Yes, I am, because the overwhelming hopelessness of my life and my lack of a future that doesn't involve slinging dope on a cold street corner for pennies while I watch the world around me decay because of my greed stops me from ever finding the energy to try to achieve anything better.
Also my mattress sucks and I can't sleep because it's so uncomfortable and my back hurts because of it so even my moments of waking rest are devoid of any recuperative properties because I might as well just connect myself to an electric fence that causes my muscles to spasm repeatedly so that every moment of my life feels like I just finished climbing a damn mountain.
Question four: Do you not take join in activities you used to love?
Yes, because what is the point of trying to find happiness when inevitably I will die cold and alone buried in a coffin stitched together from cardboard burger boxes from McDonalds, stuck in the ground with a number on my tombstone because I had to be buried by the state for lack of funds and I pawned my identity to a Bulgarian immigrant two years ago so they didn't even know my name.
Also my mattress sucks and I am too tired and in too much discomfort to be bothered to go to a loud bar or try to write because the moment I sit down to try to write a story all I can think is "Some codeine would really be awesome now" and any moments of freedom and solitude I get are spent wondering if maybe I could fit a nap in because I am exhausted because I can't sleep because my mattress sucks!
The only question that seemed tailored solely to those who might be depressed was the one that asked if I often thought about murdering myself, and really if you can answer yes to that one what was the point of asking the others?
Suicidal Sam: God, I want to off myself and every night I fantasize about that one perfect steak knight and the way it gleams in the moonlight. However, I am sleeping great, doing all the things I love with limitless supplies of energy and never experience any back pain even while carrying my backpack filled with condoms and liquor across Europe, so I must not be really depressed, because even though I really cannot wait to feel the freeing kiss of steel against my wrists I own a really great mattress.
I cannot conceive of a person who dreams of the day when they can cut their wrists and shuffle off this painful mortal coil who isn't depressed, or else a fourteen year old boy who just got stood up at the dance.
And if a person who is suicidal really just needs a good night's sleep to keep from being considered 'depressed' maybe every psychologist in the world should be retrained as a sleep number salesman.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Internet Ads Disturbing Tendency To Depreciate Moms
The story of advertising on the Internet is a long and interesting one. (No hyperlink... seems like a good place for one, though.)
First there were pop-ups that just sprang out of nowhere like a voracious jungle cat waiting to shove its materialistic fangs into your soft, warm, consumerist jugular. Then there were those banner adverts that would flash really brightly and claim you were the millionth person to visit the site and you'd just won a WiiPlayBox360 III and all you had to do was sign up for a subscription to Redbook and forward something to ten other people.
Then things for a little more sophisticated and suddenly we had poorly rendered men, women, aliens, and other human figures doing the cha-cha-shuffle because they were so happy that Mortgage Rates Were At There Lowest Since The Birth Of Christ!
Now we have entered a new golden age of idiot-baiting marketing on the net where we see pictures of yellow teeth juxtaposed against pictures of the same teeth photoshopped to be white. Or some fat, bloated, distended stomach juxtaposed against abs carved of marble. Such stunning results!
So once your eyes have been drawn in by these dramatic transformations you look down to read the tagline:
"Discover the teeth whitening tip discovered by a mom!"
A mom, seriously? Wow, good for her!
"D.C. Mom Loses 47 Lbs. a month by following this 1 Old Rule!"
Another mom, huh? That's pretty impressive...wait, 47 pounds? Is that healthy? And if the rule is so old why don't I know about it? Was it lost to time? Is she Indiana Jones' wife?
"Mom's are making unholy amounts of money using Google!"
...ok, I think the Internet just developed an Oedipal complex.
Now, I can see why this whole approach seems to make sense in a very general sense. I mean, honestly, you listened to your mom when she said all kinds of insane shit to you when you were younger (e.g. "Don't make faces, or your face will freeze that way") so why stop now? Leeches for whiter teeth? If you say so, ma.
Also, the word "mom" makes you think of some kindly old woman sitting at home who chances upon a world-altering discovery. The underdog sticking one to The Man. Well you know what, establishment? Guess who The Man is now! (Hint)
But the problem is this - you're using the idea of a mom to insight in the reader the idea that any idiot with a brain the size of a frog's and two opposable thumbs can do what this person did.
She's a mom! Mom's are pretty worthless, right? Sitting around all day doing nothing, no education. Why else would they marry and have kids? Mom's aren't real people. Real people have titles like "doctor" and "king." I mean, hell, if some tramp who pushed out a kid can lose weight and make money and have a smile as white as a Victorian woman's ankles, you should be able to as well, right? I mean, you actually graduated college, right?
The thing is, I have a mother who was once a teacher and also worked in a doctor's office. She knows more about medicine than many people I know, so if she invented a cure for the common cold I'd be more "Well I saw that coming" than "Holy hell, seriously?"
I just googled this type of thing and found the following quote: "I'm not a dentist, doctor or medical expert, I'm just a mom."
A mom is not someone whose sole purpose in life is to act as a birther and caretaker. These are women who have done great things and who are probably still doing them. They're not sitting at their home everyday eagerly awaiting the moment their kids and husbands get home so that can prostrate themselves before the feet of their masters. The term "just a mom" should never be uttered.
Sarah Connor was "just a mom," and she averted the Apocalypse, for Christ's Sake.
These ads smack of all kinds of thickness on the parts of their makers. A sense of superiority and sexism. They are base, degrading, and vaguely offensive. So screw you, Internet. I'm gonna start drinking coffee and rubbing coal on my gums just so my yellow teeth will stand as testaments against your mom-bashing ways!
And also, these ads usually come in threes. So I am expected to believe three different moms discovered three different amazing or previously forgotten things, and then all went straight to the Internet? That's just bad planning. Really.
First there were pop-ups that just sprang out of nowhere like a voracious jungle cat waiting to shove its materialistic fangs into your soft, warm, consumerist jugular. Then there were those banner adverts that would flash really brightly and claim you were the millionth person to visit the site and you'd just won a WiiPlayBox360 III and all you had to do was sign up for a subscription to Redbook and forward something to ten other people.
Then things for a little more sophisticated and suddenly we had poorly rendered men, women, aliens, and other human figures doing the cha-cha-shuffle because they were so happy that Mortgage Rates Were At There Lowest Since The Birth Of Christ!
Now we have entered a new golden age of idiot-baiting marketing on the net where we see pictures of yellow teeth juxtaposed against pictures of the same teeth photoshopped to be white. Or some fat, bloated, distended stomach juxtaposed against abs carved of marble. Such stunning results!
So once your eyes have been drawn in by these dramatic transformations you look down to read the tagline:
"Discover the teeth whitening tip discovered by a mom!"
A mom, seriously? Wow, good for her!
"D.C. Mom Loses 47 Lbs. a month by following this 1 Old Rule!"
Another mom, huh? That's pretty impressive...wait, 47 pounds? Is that healthy? And if the rule is so old why don't I know about it? Was it lost to time? Is she Indiana Jones' wife?
"Mom's are making unholy amounts of money using Google!"
...ok, I think the Internet just developed an Oedipal complex.
Now, I can see why this whole approach seems to make sense in a very general sense. I mean, honestly, you listened to your mom when she said all kinds of insane shit to you when you were younger (e.g. "Don't make faces, or your face will freeze that way") so why stop now? Leeches for whiter teeth? If you say so, ma.
Also, the word "mom" makes you think of some kindly old woman sitting at home who chances upon a world-altering discovery. The underdog sticking one to The Man. Well you know what, establishment? Guess who The Man is now! (Hint)
But the problem is this - you're using the idea of a mom to insight in the reader the idea that any idiot with a brain the size of a frog's and two opposable thumbs can do what this person did.
She's a mom! Mom's are pretty worthless, right? Sitting around all day doing nothing, no education. Why else would they marry and have kids? Mom's aren't real people. Real people have titles like "doctor" and "king." I mean, hell, if some tramp who pushed out a kid can lose weight and make money and have a smile as white as a Victorian woman's ankles, you should be able to as well, right? I mean, you actually graduated college, right?
I am so offended right now
The thing is, I have a mother who was once a teacher and also worked in a doctor's office. She knows more about medicine than many people I know, so if she invented a cure for the common cold I'd be more "Well I saw that coming" than "Holy hell, seriously?"
I just googled this type of thing and found the following quote: "I'm not a dentist, doctor or medical expert, I'm just a mom."
A mom is not someone whose sole purpose in life is to act as a birther and caretaker. These are women who have done great things and who are probably still doing them. They're not sitting at their home everyday eagerly awaiting the moment their kids and husbands get home so that can prostrate themselves before the feet of their masters. The term "just a mom" should never be uttered.
Sarah Connor was "just a mom," and she averted the Apocalypse, for Christ's Sake.
These ads smack of all kinds of thickness on the parts of their makers. A sense of superiority and sexism. They are base, degrading, and vaguely offensive. So screw you, Internet. I'm gonna start drinking coffee and rubbing coal on my gums just so my yellow teeth will stand as testaments against your mom-bashing ways!
And also, these ads usually come in threes. So I am expected to believe three different moms discovered three different amazing or previously forgotten things, and then all went straight to the Internet? That's just bad planning. Really.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Cinematical Agrees With Me
A recent article on one of my favorite movies blogs would seem to agree with me on my earlier post about movies I don't want to see.
Read it to gain a more credible opinion on the issue (though, as I said, still one that agrees with me).
Read it to gain a more credible opinion on the issue (though, as I said, still one that agrees with me).
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Friday, August 7, 2009
Proof We're All Going To Die A Very Stupid Death
I know this might be beating a dead horse that's already in the third stage of decomp after it's been picked clean by a pack of wild dogs, but goddammit do I get pissed off by the state of the modern publishing industry.
It seems like any novel that's new or interesting or has something important to say immediately gets co-opted by Hollywood and turned into some kind of period piece chick flick that jettisons all pretense of deeper thought in order to "up the sexitude" so that those long strips of celluloid can be transformed through dark alchemy into huge piles of cash.
Heaven forbid you happen to have a simple character drama, or something that has a Sci-Fi or Fantasy theme and yet still adheres to simple practices like plot, spelling, and saying something meaningful outside of "in the future women will totally wear bondage gear and use magick [sic] to entrap men in their web of sexiness." Even if your book does somehow sidestep that fanboy landmine, you'll still end up getting [redacted due to frightening sexual reference] by your publishing company when they put a dragon and two half naked models who took a day off from hocking margarine in order to do the photoshoot for the cover.
"But I don't even have a dragon in this book," you'll say with a note of confusion.
"This'll sell more," they will tell you, tossing you a stack of money which you will nervously put in your pocket as a little piece of your soul shrivels up and falls to the ground, to be consumed later by the publisher when they take their true reptilian form.
I bring this up because last night a friend of mine introduced me to a Web site whose sole purpose it to read and review and talk about romance novels. At least they have to decency to acknowledge in their URL and Web site name that the books are "trashy," and in truth I don't blame them for the jaw-droppingly appalling number of terrible books that get published every year, but this just goes to show a fundamental problem with the world.
Someone with something real and telling to say about the human condition will be told There's No Audience For This while someone who has some girl and some guy who can't have sex until the evil wizard is defeated or something like that will get signed on in a hurry.
You see, when something like Twilight hits the center stage and does an awkward preteen striptease for the world, most people - myself included initially - simply shrug and look away in embarrassment while muttering for it to please stop, you're making a scene.
However, four books, soon to be two movies, and several bleeding eardrums later, it's gotten kind of hard to ignore.
Now, I know what you're going to say, Roan, look, they're young girls and they can use some escapism in their life. When they grow up they will realize the error of their ways and read something better.
Wrong! Wrong for two reasons.
First, let me tackle that "young girls will be idiots" argument. While I readily admit that your youth is a time to do reckless and stupid things, Twilight, unlike, say, a heroin addiction, is something that will severely alienate you from meeting anyone worthwhile. I have met some really cool heroin addicts, junkies who can cook like some kind of Greek deity of culinary wonder and yet also wax philosophical on existentialism and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The only Twilight fans I have ever met are people who can barely be bothered to wonder about whether or not God is, in fact, dead, because omigodedwardissohot. If you have trouble reading that, imagine an entire conversation in which every sentence is pronounced like that is spelled.
Secondly, as this article with a hilarious title points out, they aren't all little girls. Grown women are reading this tripe and eating it up. Women who, for all intents and purposes, are raising other women as we speak, passing this thing down so that soon all we will be able to hear about from any woman from 16 to 89 is omigodedwardissohot.
Ok, wait, just thought of a third argument, what I like to call The Harry Potter Defense.
(Before I begin, let me start off by saying that I have no problem with Harry Potter. It's writing is nothing special, but at least it is not stomach-hemorrhage-inducingly bad, and it's got a good message at its money-pumping heart.)
So this is the argument that says, "Yea, its a terrible book with no real value in the long run, but at least its getting people reading, right?"
Yea. There's a sound argument to take to court with you. "Sure meth will slowly destroy you and lead you to a life of trailer park prostitution, but at least it's got people injecting something, right?"
See, it doesn't matter if the fundamental vessel for transmission is inherently good (books can bestow knowledge, needles can bestow intravenous medicine) if you take the vessel and fill it with detritus.
What's even worse are the people who attempt to defend Twilight by saying that if so many people read it it must be good. Well hell, if so many Nazis thought the Third Reich was awesome, who are we to disagree?
The most grievous of all of these transgressions of logic was when I was talking to a friend of mine about why she liked Twilight.
"It's really well written," she told me over crabs and cold beer (wooo, Maryland!), "and the characters are awesome and it's just a good story." Ok, so far so logical. "I think you would like it," she said, instantly making me wonder if she weren't a pod person sent to kill me. "I mean, I hate books and I like it, so that must mean it's good."
Jesus, I think Aristotle just entered a chess game with God to try and win fifteen minutes back on Earth so he could slap this girl. That's like saying "I hate ballet but this YouTube video of an epileptic spasming on a theater stage is just really awesome!"
Simply because you don't like to take part in a certain form of media doesn't mean that if you actually like something that takes that form it must be awesome. It means you have no leg to stand on and should shut up.
"Books are, like, lame and stuff" has been the bane of my existence since I started reading. And the most galling thing is that people think "He likes books, this is a book, ergo he must like this!"
And the overwhelming popularity of terrible romantic fiction only leads me to believe that at the end of the day there is only a select group of people who are intellectual enough to create and appreciate anything worthwhile.
I pray that when the bombs drop, anyone who ever did more than walk very quickly past the store displays of Twilight and other such trash romance literature for fear of passersby assuming they were interested in it will be given a nice pair of sunglasses and told to enjoy the view while the rest of us huddle in the bunkers and pray that the North Koreans worked out those targeting software problems.
It seems like any novel that's new or interesting or has something important to say immediately gets co-opted by Hollywood and turned into some kind of period piece chick flick that jettisons all pretense of deeper thought in order to "up the sexitude" so that those long strips of celluloid can be transformed through dark alchemy into huge piles of cash.
Heaven forbid you happen to have a simple character drama, or something that has a Sci-Fi or Fantasy theme and yet still adheres to simple practices like plot, spelling, and saying something meaningful outside of "in the future women will totally wear bondage gear and use magick [sic] to entrap men in their web of sexiness." Even if your book does somehow sidestep that fanboy landmine, you'll still end up getting [redacted due to frightening sexual reference] by your publishing company when they put a dragon and two half naked models who took a day off from hocking margarine in order to do the photoshoot for the cover.
"But I don't even have a dragon in this book," you'll say with a note of confusion.
"This'll sell more," they will tell you, tossing you a stack of money which you will nervously put in your pocket as a little piece of your soul shrivels up and falls to the ground, to be consumed later by the publisher when they take their true reptilian form.
I bring this up because last night a friend of mine introduced me to a Web site whose sole purpose it to read and review and talk about romance novels. At least they have to decency to acknowledge in their URL and Web site name that the books are "trashy," and in truth I don't blame them for the jaw-droppingly appalling number of terrible books that get published every year, but this just goes to show a fundamental problem with the world.
Someone with something real and telling to say about the human condition will be told There's No Audience For This while someone who has some girl and some guy who can't have sex until the evil wizard is defeated or something like that will get signed on in a hurry.
You see, when something like Twilight hits the center stage and does an awkward preteen striptease for the world, most people - myself included initially - simply shrug and look away in embarrassment while muttering for it to please stop, you're making a scene.
However, four books, soon to be two movies, and several bleeding eardrums later, it's gotten kind of hard to ignore.
Now, I know what you're going to say, Roan, look, they're young girls and they can use some escapism in their life. When they grow up they will realize the error of their ways and read something better.
Wrong! Wrong for two reasons.
First, let me tackle that "young girls will be idiots" argument. While I readily admit that your youth is a time to do reckless and stupid things, Twilight, unlike, say, a heroin addiction, is something that will severely alienate you from meeting anyone worthwhile. I have met some really cool heroin addicts, junkies who can cook like some kind of Greek deity of culinary wonder and yet also wax philosophical on existentialism and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The only Twilight fans I have ever met are people who can barely be bothered to wonder about whether or not God is, in fact, dead, because omigodedwardissohot. If you have trouble reading that, imagine an entire conversation in which every sentence is pronounced like that is spelled.
Secondly, as this article with a hilarious title points out, they aren't all little girls. Grown women are reading this tripe and eating it up. Women who, for all intents and purposes, are raising other women as we speak, passing this thing down so that soon all we will be able to hear about from any woman from 16 to 89 is omigodedwardissohot.
Ok, wait, just thought of a third argument, what I like to call The Harry Potter Defense.
(Before I begin, let me start off by saying that I have no problem with Harry Potter. It's writing is nothing special, but at least it is not stomach-hemorrhage-inducingly bad, and it's got a good message at its money-pumping heart.)
So this is the argument that says, "Yea, its a terrible book with no real value in the long run, but at least its getting people reading, right?"
Yea. There's a sound argument to take to court with you. "Sure meth will slowly destroy you and lead you to a life of trailer park prostitution, but at least it's got people injecting something, right?"
See, it doesn't matter if the fundamental vessel for transmission is inherently good (books can bestow knowledge, needles can bestow intravenous medicine) if you take the vessel and fill it with detritus.
What's even worse are the people who attempt to defend Twilight by saying that if so many people read it it must be good. Well hell, if so many Nazis thought the Third Reich was awesome, who are we to disagree?
The most grievous of all of these transgressions of logic was when I was talking to a friend of mine about why she liked Twilight.
"It's really well written," she told me over crabs and cold beer (wooo, Maryland!), "and the characters are awesome and it's just a good story." Ok, so far so logical. "I think you would like it," she said, instantly making me wonder if she weren't a pod person sent to kill me. "I mean, I hate books and I like it, so that must mean it's good."
Jesus, I think Aristotle just entered a chess game with God to try and win fifteen minutes back on Earth so he could slap this girl. That's like saying "I hate ballet but this YouTube video of an epileptic spasming on a theater stage is just really awesome!"
Simply because you don't like to take part in a certain form of media doesn't mean that if you actually like something that takes that form it must be awesome. It means you have no leg to stand on and should shut up.
"Books are, like, lame and stuff" has been the bane of my existence since I started reading. And the most galling thing is that people think "He likes books, this is a book, ergo he must like this!"
And the overwhelming popularity of terrible romantic fiction only leads me to believe that at the end of the day there is only a select group of people who are intellectual enough to create and appreciate anything worthwhile.
I pray that when the bombs drop, anyone who ever did more than walk very quickly past the store displays of Twilight and other such trash romance literature for fear of passersby assuming they were interested in it will be given a nice pair of sunglasses and told to enjoy the view while the rest of us huddle in the bunkers and pray that the North Koreans worked out those targeting software problems.
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