The Blog of Champions

misplacemyheart @ 2008-08-25T09:46:00

2008-08-25T16:48:08Z

I'm writing this from Tiberias, in the north of Israel. I've hit up Tel Aviv, Megiddo, Nazareth, and Tzippori so far. This country? Is crazy.

I thought I'd upload pictures and blog as I went, but as it turns out, the Internet access in the hotels here is infrequent, slow, and wildly expensive. I'll see y'all when I get back to the States.

Sexism and the Olympics (oh shut up, you knew it was coming sooner or later)

2008-08-22T09:28:14Z

I've spent the past few nights watching the Olympics with Niko and his parents. This is extremely entertaining. Niko's mom makes fun of the way every single athlete looks, and it cracks me up. "Look at his shoulders! Look at the weird grossness!" "She is not a human. She disappears when she turns sideways!" The walking (aka the Olympic Rumba) was the best, coz ain't no one look dignified slurping their wobbly legs around for twenty kilometers.

The walking was also where Niko's dad had his best line: "Hey, her shirt is covering her midriff! Is that even allowed?" You'd never have guessed that it was from looking at the uniforms most of the women were wearing, and, no, it's not just because we like watching the beauty of the body in action. If we're just innocently admiring the human form, then I'm going to need to see a lot more bared male six-packs. The difference in uniforms between men and women was of course the most egregious in beach volleyball; men got loose, comfortable clothing made from breathable fabric while women picked their wedgies between points so that we could all forget about their athletic achievements in favor of their objectified bodies and their faux-lesbian ass-slaps.*

*(That lower-back slap that Bush gave to Misty May-Treanor was in such colossally bad taste that I can barely even comprehend the action, and I don't care that she asked him to smack her ass. Couldn't he just have thrown his hands back and joked it off? This is a man who fights for abstinence-only education and against abortion rights because he thinks it is a sin to have sex before you are married. But apparently it is okay for him to make a sexual gesture to a scantily clad young woman in front of news cameras because he is the president, and if the president does it, it's not hypocrisy.)

It's not just the uniform discrepancies and the heteronormative objectification in which they are based. Watching women's diving, running, and, of course, wobble-walking for the past few nights, I was struck by the amount of times the commentators pointed out women athletes who had children, and the number of children they had.

On one level, it was interesting and even sort of empowering to hear. To have gone through the physical trials of pregnancy and then go on to compete in the Olympics is fucking amazing. I've never been pregnant, but from what I hear, you have to, like, carry a huge living parasite inside of you for nine months and then eject it from your genitals. And then you still have all that baby weight to lose so you can go compete against the best athletes every country in the world has to offer. Hearing that some of these women had done that made me admire and respect them like hell.

But I also kind of wondered: why don't we hear which of the male Olympians are fathers? Granted, they didn't have the bodily insanity of childbearing, but that's not all that was impressive about those Olympic mothers. When you talk about these women's motherhood - some of them have two kids - you're also sort of talking about how impressive it is that they can balance parenting and professional world-class athleticism. They somehow find time to pack brown bag lunches and fling their bodies about while they fall three stories into a pool. And surely there are male Olympians whose sleep is interrupted by screaming babies the night before they have to fling their bodies about while plummeting into bodies of water. Why don't we get to hear about that achievement?

Well, probably because we don't expect them to have to do as much parenting, because they're men. And truth be told, they probably don't do as much parenting, because all other things being equal, the drudgery of diaper-changing and chauffeuring usually falls to women (the men still get their fair share or more of the fun parts of parenting like catch-playing and movie-watching-with). And we as a society seem to really like it when even our least domestic women retain a whiff of domesticity. I'm not saying that female Olympians shouldn't have kids, or that having kids isn't really wonderful and fulfilling for them, or that it isn't totally fucking impressive to balance kids and an Olympic-level athletic career.

I'm just saying, the public would probably think a woman was a little weird and selfish if she focused on her athletic career her entire life and never had kids. And we probably wouldn't question that decision from a man at all.

misplacemyheart @ 2008-08-19T15:55:00

2008-08-19T23:17:24Z

Flapper haircut is go!

I repeat, flapper haircut is go!

Okay, so it didn't really turn out like a flapper haircut, and I'm making a stupid menace face.

I'll distract you by inducing a vivid acid flashback to Charleston.

First, ze aquarium...

Sister: Oh sweet, there's some...some catfish.

Brother: I am having a really awesome time looking at catfish.

Out of the frame is a sign that says, "Use your imagination to pretend we could afford a real alligator instead of this cheap-ass pygmy-ass substitute."

Next, ze Fort Sumter...

Tell us how you really feel.

I am sad because it is hot and sunburny and boring and my pre-teen brother is as tall as I am, what the fuck?

I think my sister is, like, thizzing in front of a wall that got cannonballed?

Why do half our fingers look amputated?

To Fort Sumter's great credit, I was not able to take a picture of my sister and me looking apprehensive in front of the Confederate flag. I did get one where it looked like my brother was gouging out his own eye with his thumb, though. Score one for me.

And last but most, ze museum...

George Washington owned this cup. I assume he filled it with acid and held his opponent's wife's hand in it. At a party.

She'll kick you apart. She'll kick you apart! Ooh! (See eljay icon for more details.)

OMG shoez!

"Christina, let me take a picture of you with the hooks."
"What, why?"
"Coz you're a hooker, duh."

"Lauren, you missed your favorite display!"
"Hm? Which?"
"The hoes!"

I swear we did things at the museum besides make jokes about Internet memes and sexual promiscuity. Like sometimes we did foolish dances and rolled around on the ground like some kind of raccoon.

These great flightless birds went extinct. Which means the moa is no mo-ah. (Ba-doomp-TSCH!)

And that, my friends, is Charleston! Have you forgotten about how bulbous my nose looked in my Haircut Picture? Goooooood.

My boobs are huge!

2008-08-17T09:40:15Z

I got sick of my nether-regions bleeding all the time, so I started taking one of those birth controls where you only have to have your period four times a year, and it made my boobs get huge! All my life I have had the smallest boobs of any post-puberty female who hasn't had a mastectomy, and now all of a sudden they're all sore and growing. They bounce when I walk down the stairs, even when I'm wearing a bra! They bounce when I drive down a badly paved road! They hurt all the time, and they get in the way when I hug people!

Do you know how strange it is to be in the same already-grown body for years, and then all of a sudden, subtle movements and daily actions feel totally different? This was supposed to happen when I was, like, fourteen. Now all I can do is walk around clutching my boobs. I've become completely useless to anyone else except for my breasts, and even they are really tender and probably sick of me pawing at them all the time.

Seriously, you guys, Amy and I were at Target today (with Jon! and his dad!) and the A-cup bras looked only slightly too big! It would be rad if I could get a new bra, as it has come to my attention that my cutesy bubblegum-colored one is now a sort of wan shade of gray.

Queer Music Videos: A How-To Guide

2008-08-14T00:30:49Z

As long as I'm analyzing the dreck I watch on YouTube, I thought I'd rip apart the way t3h gayz get represented in recent pop songs. Therefore, without further ado, I present to you...

DO

"I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You" - Black Kids

What's this? A man singing from a woman's perspective? A lesbian's perspective, even? And not doing it with mocking or rampant stereotypes? I might faint. I might faint!

Even more than that, the song is about a woman in love with a woman who has a boyfriend. This is like one of those "new take on an old classic" deals. This is Sappho you can groove to! Where are my smelling salts seriously I'm going to faint.

DON'T

"I Kissed A Girl" - Katy Perry

When you first hear the song on the radio, all you can pay attention to is the raw pronunciation of the hook: "I kissed a girl, and I liked it." It sounds like she's tossing a big old flipoff in the face of homophobia and heteronormativity, and you just want to hug her (and maybe kiss her; she liked the first girl she kissed, after all!)

Then you start paying attention to the other lyrics. "I kissed a girl just to try it, I hope my boyfriend don't mind it." "Just wanna try you on." "You're my experimental game." Well, that's okay, though. Sure, the mention of the boyfriend seems a bit like a pat reassurance that she's straight, but there is nothing wrong with a straight girl kissing another girl to see if it does anything for her. "It's not what good girls do, not how they should behave." Okay, that seems like a bit of stereotypical titillation, but, look, it is neither the purpose nor the responsibility of art to moralize. A girl growing up in a society in which heterosexuality is deemed "good" and homosexuality "bad" might very genuinely feel that attraction to another girl runs up against her morals, and a song exploring that could be very emotionally complex.

But hold up a tic! How do we reconcile the line "It's not what good girls do" with the line "Ain't no big deal, it's innocent"? Katy Perry, I am beginning to suspect you're implying that you could never actually fall in love with a woman, in a desperate attempt to remind us that you are actually straight! I am beginning to suspect that when you talked about not being a good girl, you weren't grappling with ingrained false morality, but rather marketing yourself to the straight male fantasy of girls who will kiss each other and then go back to their men! Could it be?

Let's go to the tape to find out!

Oh, look, she's surrounded by a harem of skinny white femme girls. Aaaand they're having a pillow fight. Aaaand she's waking up next to her boyfriend, because it was all just a dream. And what's this? She has another song called "Ur So Gay" that's totally fucking homophobic and insulting? She's not flipping off the patriarchy at all! She's just using, like, the oldest male fantasy in the book!

And that, I think, is the main problem I have with this song. In my eyes, it's 100% okay for girls to make out or get it on or whatever in order to turn boys on, but you don't get to act like that's some sort of pioneering edgy act of transgression. How many girls do you know that have gotten drunk and made out with other girls at parties? A thousand? A million? When you sell that in a music video as some sort of thrilling new experimentation, you're implying that women explore their sexuality only for the benefit of sexually pleasing men. And while art may not be required to moralize, I think that it is required to seek the truth. And that ain't the truth.

But it isn't art, either, I suppose. It's pop music.

DO

"Fagette" - Athens Boys Choir

I saved the best for last. There's nothing I can say about it that will do it justice. This video is like when you're at the movie theater and you bite off the ends of your Red Vine and use it as a straw to drink your soda: fuckin' sweet.

I...what?

2008-08-12T22:05:20Z

That's McCain's newest campaign ad. It basically boils down to, "Obama is popular! People are inspired by him and want him to be president!" I don't know which fuckneck on McCain's staff thought it would hurt Obama to point those things out. Obama could run the same ad with a different ending, and it would make more sense.

This video really seems to highlight how much conservative politics are based on jealousy. "Women who want abortions have necessarily had sex. I will mock them and try to punish them for doing something I want to do, so I can feel morally superior instead of jealous! Obama is original, cool, and popular! I will mock him and try to punish him for being something I want to be, so I can feel morally superior instead of jealous!" How else to explain an ad that makes fun of someone for being young and hip that uses a clip from Wayne's World at the end? Do you think McCain is actually a fan of that movie, or do you think he's trying to make himself look like he's hip and with it, after he just spent an entire ad making fun of Obama for being hip and with it?

Yes, Mr. McCain. We all hated the popular kids in high school, because we wanted to be popular, and we weren't. Then we grew up. You're like eleventy bazillion years old. Do you think you'll grow up any time soon?

Melissa McEwan over at Shakesville says, "What the hell is wrong with John McCain? How is this an actual campaign advert?"

Goatface, when we watched this at her house, said, "Does McCain know what country he's in? Americans love popular people. Also, some people went to Taco Bell before they saw Obama speak. Why is that in a campaign ad?"

It is like the John Tucker Must Die of campaign ads: every single detail is wrong.

misplacemyheart @ 2008-08-05T00:38:00

2008-08-05T07:46:06Z

My uncle Chuck passed away last night. He was not actually related to me, but I grew up calling him Uncle Chuck, and I was much closer to him than to any of my biological uncles.

He had been struggling for the past several months with a brain tumor that kept coming back despite numerous surgeries.

I'm heading out to Texas in a few days for the funeral.

If you're the praying type, his wife and two kids could probably use some prayers.

The crisper drawer and other privaleges

2008-08-04T02:48:51Z

(The title of this post is intentionally misspelled. It is a Strong Bad reference. I figured it had been long enough since I made one.)

Well, folks, I made it back to California. My family reunion was bizarre and infuriating, some sort of alternate dimension of racism ("You never know about those Indian and Arab doctors"), sexism ("He's very masculine, thank God"), and heaps and piles and mountains of privilege. Male privilege, white privilege, straight privilege, class privilege - every type of privilege you can think of, on sale today, come on down!

The first time the presence of privilege rather than just racism/sexism (insofar as racism/sexism can be said to exist separately from privilege) became glaringly apparent was at lunch with my grandparents.

My policy for the (loooong) weekend was to try not to rock the boat, but to speak up if I was directly addressed with something that went against my beliefs. I'm telling you this so you know that what happened was really really not my fault, as I was trying my very hardest not to get in any arguments. My grandma brought up Schwarzenegger's proposed minimum wage bullshit for some unknown reason. Somehow my sister and I were overheard disagreeing with the comment that the only people with minimum wage jobs are teenagers or people who will move up the ranks to high-paying managerial positions.

What ensued was a half-hour lecture from my grandparents about how America is a total meritocracy and anyone can pull themselves up by the bootstraps and if you're poor, it's your fault. My grandpa started out as upper working class, and now he is in the top 1% of people in the country in terms of wealth (which I do think is somewhat commendable, in a way), therefore everyone should be able to do the same even though by definition only a very small amount of people can occupy the top 1% and statistics show that upward social mobility is more difficult for people of color than it is for whites. "That's the American dream," said my grandpa. "That's why everyone is trying to get into this country." Yes, and when immigrants get here, they all achieve the American dream and are not stuck doing manual labor for the rest of their lives.

It's all very convenient, isn't it? If you think that a bad socioeconomic situation is completely deserved, you a) don't have to feel true sympathy for anyone less fortunate than you (some condescension about how you were blessed by God while they weren't is usually acceptable), and b) get to feel like you earned your high socioeconomic standing by being better or smarter or more hardworking than others. I'm sure that my grandpa's ascension from poorish small-town Mississippi boy to wealthy Florida retiree took intelligence and hard work. I'm also sure that if he had been born black, the same intelligence and work ethic would not have gotten him this far. There were undoubtedly white girls and black kids of both genders his age in his town who were just as smart as he was, but they didn't get the opportunities he did. The only people my grandpa had to compete with to get to the top were other white males. It's not a very fair competition, really, and not one to be especially proud of winning. But it would be way too big a blow to his ego to come to terms with that privilege, and so I get to sit in a stupid restaurant without a single vegetarian option on the menu and hear about how poor people are lazy.

When we got back from lunch, my dad was reading the paper and showed me this Doonesbury strip. He was saying that it cut both ways, calling McCain boring but inadvertently revealing that Obama is a rock star because he gets more media coverage and not vice versa. At first I thought he was saying that Garry Trudeau meant to insult Obama along with McCain, and I had to have him explain to me what he meant a couple times. Frustrated with my confusion, my dad said, "You know, sometimes I feel like I'm the smartest person in the world, because I can see all these things that other people can't see." This from the man who vehemently insists people choose to be gay*, despite the fact that he has no firsthand experience in the matter (he's straight) and, indeed, no secondhand experience in the matter (he has never talked to a gay person about being gay in his life). No ignorance or faulty thinking there, nosirree, just raw superior intellect.

(*I realize some people do indeed choose to be gay or just to have some gay sexual encounters, and it goes without saying that that's a totally valid form of sexuality, but, by and large, it is just a fact that most gay people are born that way.)

Oh to be rich, white, and male, and to have been raised in such a coddled way as to believe that your small, insignificant insights make you "the smartest person in the world." Look. I've often felt that I was surrounded by idiots, and I've often felt that some people were morons for not understanding concepts that I understand (e.g. there's nothing wrong with being gay), but I have never ever ever felt like "the smartest person in the world." And that's probably just because I was born a female, as it seems pretty clear to me that I'm not any dumber than my dad is. Can you imagine the world my dad and the other good ol' boys live in? Can you imagine feeling so goddamn special all the time?

I am not saying all rich white boys are like this; some are raised by parents who don't teach them they are superior to everyone else, and a few realize that by themselves. I am not saying that I don't have any social privileges. I have almost all the unfair advantages I could have, except for that pesky penis-and-testicles playset I so sorely lack. I realize that the accomplishments I have by now, like attending Stanford, were a mix of some intelligence, some labor, and a lot of boosts from society. I am also not saying that I can fully acknowledge all my privilege. If I were to fully realize the extent to which I personally benefit from the patriarchy via my dad's CEO job, I would probably drop dead on the spot.

But at least I'm trying. My dad got mad at me for being so offended by my grandpa's use of the N-word a few days ago because he wanted me to overlook something that didn't affect me. And yes, I am white (well, technically I am 25% Latina, but I pass and identify as white), and I have the luxury of ignoring that word, because it doesn't dehumanize me, and it doesn't reinforce an attitude against me that will have very real ramifications in both my social and financial lives. But I don't want to use that luxury. Privileges like those help me get ahead in life, but I want to work against getting ahead in life for things I don't deserve. Knowing you triumphed because most of your competition was disqualified just for being born the wrong way is a pretty hollow victory.

Oh my fucking fuck

2008-08-01T19:21:37Z

The first thing that happened in Charleston was that my dad tricked me into going to the aquarium. I'd said earlier that since we had a limited amount of time in the city, I'd rather go to museums and things specific to the area, because we could go to an aquarium anywhere. So my dad told us all we were going to the museum and then drove to the aquarium (my dad is really good about treating me like an adult and letting me make my own decisions).

As it turned out, I was wrong about the whole "we could see an aquarium anywhere" deal. It would be hard to find an aquarium as second-rate as the one in Charleston. There are dolphins in the harbor out here, but that would be far too interesting and beautiful an animal for this aquarium. This is an aquarium that displays catfish. They had one lone puffer fish in a tiny, completely empty tank. It kept ramming itself against the same wall over and over again like it was trying to escape. There was a laminated piece of paper that said "Puffer Fish" stuck with masking tape onto a more permanent display sign that said "Sargassum Fish." Presumably the sargassum fish killed itself, unable to continue its miserable existence for a single agonizing second longer. Then they scooped it out and fed it to the rattlesnake (rattlesnakes do not belong in aquariums!) and plopped a puffer fish in there to slowly unravel its psychology against the glass wall of the barren tank.

Afterward was the family dinner, with all 30 or so of the O'Neal family members in attendance, where we found out that Brazil nuts are referred to as "nigger toes." My sister was telling the story of the C she got in a writing class, and my grandma told her not to worry about it, because she only got a bad grade because the teacher was liberal and pushing her liberal agenda on my sister. Then my grandpa stood up and detailed with pride the exploits of the O'Neal family dating back to the 1700s, when we first arrived here from Ireland. We owned slaves and died for the Confederacy. One of us shot his wife dead around 1900, a fact which elicited hearty laughs from everyone in the room. Oh ho ho, that wife-murderer! Good thing he got the bitch before she nagged him to death!

I leaned over and whispered to my sister, "Dad's going to go on and on about how fascinating this is."

Sure enough, the next day, my dad starts in with the gushing. "Didn't you love those stories about the family? They were so interesting!"

"They were a little shameful, actually," I said. "Our family has done some pretty shameful things."

"No more than any other family."

"Not every family owned slaves," said my sister. "Or fought for the Confederacy."

"All the families in Mississippi did," said my dad.

That was in the car on the way to Fort Sumter, the site of the first battle of the Civil War. Waiting in the stifling heat and humidity to get on the boat to the little island where the fort is located, a fire ant bit me, adding to the collection of swollen red lumps I have developed all over my body as a result of my interaction with the native insects here.

In one of the Fort Sumter museums, we learned about Henry Laurens. His last name is like a bunch of me! He was the president of the Second Continental Congress. He was also a slave trader. My dad: "What do you mean he was a horrible person? He was president of the Second Continental Congress. He was rich!"

Luckily, at that point, my grandma pulled me aside before I could ask my dad if he was really literally saying that it was okay to be a slave trader if it made you rich. She wanted to hear more about my adventures in England.

"They live a very different life there," she said.

"Yeah, kinda. I mean, it's not that different."

"They're much less well off over there than we are." Poor, poor British savages. If only everyone could be lucky enough to live in The Best Country.

"I don't really think that's true."

"Really? None of them have big nice houses like we do here."

"I went into some pretty nice houses while I was there."

"Well, that's good to hear. But their cars are so small! Some of them don't even have cars!" Can you imagine not unnecessarily burning through a limited resource every chance you get? It's positively uncivilized!

"Well, that's because they have a better public transportation system. They don't need cars."

"Hmm, that's true. But they don't have any big supermarkets like we do."

"Uh, I went to a big supermarket every week for groceries."

"Ah, well, it's been a long time since I was there."

Fort Sumter itself was hot and pretty boring overall, and I am waiting for my sunburn to start sprouting up pinkly through my skin. I did learn some fun facts about the Civil War though. The first casualty did not happen in the first battle, but in the surrender ceremony after the first battle, when one of the cannons in the 100-cannon salute misfired. Oh outdated weaponry. How cruel and ironic a mistress you were.

If at this point you are sick of hearing me talk because I have such a bad attitude about everything, then you would probably get along really well with my dad. I got chastised during the car ride back to the hotel for my negative outlook on the situation.

"It isn't my attitude that's making me unhappy," I said. "It's hearing grandma go on about the liberal agenda and hearing grandpa refer to Brazil nuts in an extremely disrespectful way."

"So you just want to surround yourself with people who are exactly like you?" said my dad.

"Not people who are exactly like me, just people who don't refer to Brazil nuts as 'nigger toes.'"

"So what?" said my dad. "Why don't you just cut people some slack and not criticize them?"

If you can't criticize people for using the N-word, I don't really know what you can criticize them for. Laughing at murder? Wait, no, that's cool, too. I am starting to feel like my extended family could actually lynch a black guy and my dad would take their side.

Doing the Charleston

2008-07-31T22:20:06Z

Family Reunion Update: I'm going to slice all the skin off my face and smash my raw head flesh into a pile of gravel repeatedly.

misplacemyheart @ 2008-07-30T00:54:00

2008-07-30T08:00:48Z

In about seven hours, I will be heading out for Charleston, South Carolina. It was where my Irish ancestors landed before the US had even declared independence, and it is where my current family will gather for a reunion.

I am hoping that I won't have to take a bunch of pictures of me and my sister looking uneasy in front of the Confederate flag, but I am afraid that that will be exactly what ends up happening. My family is Southun, y'all, and I'm going to have to spend five days embroiled in a swamp of sub-Mason-Dixon culture. I am pretty sure I'm going to get disowned before this is all done. I hope you are ready for some Flannery O'Connor style eljay entries, coz I can feel 'em comin' on somethin' fierce.

How to keep your uterus from becoming a themterus

2008-07-25T22:32:14Z

If you follow librul politics, or politics at all, you have probably heard about this. The Bush administration wants to keep Planned Parenthood and other similar programs (any that receive aid under federal health programs) from refusing to hire people who are against abortion. And they want to define pregnancy as starting at fertilization, so that birth control could count as abortion.

Why would someone who is against fucking birth control apply to work at Planned Parenthood? To keep people from getting birth control. Which will then lead to more unplanned pregnancies. Which will then lead to abortions. How exactly is anyone supposed to buy that this is okay?

If you want to spend just five minutes or so fighting against this bullshit, Shakesville has a list of three things to do:

1) Vote here.
2) Vote here.
3) Fill out this convenient form to email the White House.

Please do this. For me. I mean, I just started on Seasonique, and I haven't even gotten the thrill of going three months without a period yet. I will be monumentally disappointed if I go to refill the prescription and am told I can't because Christians get freedom of religion, but I don't.

That went by pretty fast!

2008-07-25T01:17:22Z

One year ago today, Niko and I went on our first date.

We had some Thai food and then some ice cream and then some cigarettes. (We didn't eat the cigarettes.)

It all went very well, but I think the real turning point of the night was when he was impressed that I knew sleeping sickness was spread by tsetse flies.

Mary Gaitskill!

2008-07-21T22:38:57Z

My first class with Mary Gaitskill was today! At 54, she is still strikingly attractive. I mean, goddamn. She is also rather prickly and blunt (though not overly harsh) and I am pretty thankful my story already got workshopped. It might have been devastating to my fragile ego to hear an author I so admire ripping my story apart.

That is not to say that I don't admire Howard Norman, the author who actually did workshop my story. I just wasn't familiar with his work before coming here. He was really supportive and complimentary of my story, which swelled the aforementioned fragile ego to previously unimaginable sizes, so I think I am getting the best of both worlds here.

I am still exhausted and hungry, though. By my calculations I have been eating fewer than 1000 calories a day, which makes me wonder why the zipper on my default pair of jeans just totally snapped. Maybe my body is doing some weird thing where, because it is so hungry, it sends all my fat to my ass, so it can store it up for the hard times ahead. Like a camel hump. I refuse to change into another pair of pants. Tonight might be a night where unsuspecting innocents see my unda-wears.

Dieting Tips!

2008-07-18T22:14:15Z

Want to lose weight?

Follow these three easy steps!

1) Live in a dorm room that is at least a five-minute walk away from a dining hall. You will be too lazy to make it over there more than twice a day.

2) Do not have a refrigerator in your dorm room. No snacks for you!

3) Don't sleep. You burn more calories when you're awake, especially if you're collapsing into a pile of sobs from your sleep-deprivation nervous disorder.

I am exhausted and hungry all the time.

PS I am not actually dieting, please do not worry about my little rib bones getting all emaciated and sticking out everywhere!

In which I retreat to the woods in the name of my craft

2008-07-15T02:34:45Z

Let the overpriced but mildly prestigious New York Summer Writers Institute begin!

I am at this point in time semi-comfortably ensconced in a dorm room at Skidmore College, which as far as I can tell is some sort of hippie commune in the remote forests of upstate New York. They are really into Mother Earth here. If they see her at a party, they make her uncomfortable with their innuendo-laced flirtation, and one time they drunk dialed her and it was really embarrassing for everyone involved. When I arrived, they gave me a plastic water bottle with instructions to bring it to all events so that I wouldn't have to use any other cups. Their sweatshirts have one of those three-arrow recycling logos instead of the O in Skidmore. Their trash can situation is the equivalent of abstinence-only sex education; they don't put them in the dorm rooms, because that might give you ideas about throwing things away. As for the eternal restroom debate of paper towels vs. air-blowing hand dryer, they make the point moot by providing neither.

A friend from Stanford is here with me in the same program. His name is Adam Cole. Adam Cole carried his luggage here in a backpack that is taller than I am. I know because I met him at the Albany airport so we could travel together. He had to carry his mandolin in a separate mandolin carrying case. Adam Cole insisted on hiking the two miles from the bus stop to the Skidmore campus while I and some other random writing student took a five-minute cab ride. During his hike, he saw a man in a wifebeater smoking a cigarette outside his house. He asked the man if he knew of any bars in town where they played old timey music, but the man didn't know. Adam Cole wants some hicks in a country bar to teach him hot mandolin licks. I want to get drunk and watch some hicks in a country bar teach Adam Cole hot mandolin licks. It is my greatest aspiration.

I was one of the poor bastards who got my story workshopped on the first day of class. It went over okay! I am the youngest in the class by far. There is one girl who is a year older than I am, and then a bunch of thirtysomethings and fortysomethings and fiftysomethings. Mary Gaitskill does not arrive until next week, so she will not even see my piece. A disappointment and a half, but at least I will get to take a class from her and hear her comments about others' work. That must be worth something. Like maybe five or six dollars, maybe?

What with red-eye flights and bus journeys and nerves and excitement, I have only slept eight hours in over two days. Now I have a sleeping pill in me, which is why this post reads like something Ken Kesey would write if Ken Kesey sold all his talent to the devil in exchange for some LSD. I am going to try to sleep now. I am very tired.

Everything in moderation?

2008-07-10T05:12:31Z

When I made my Fourth of July post and said that patriotism was the exclusive domain of liberals, I was not particularly surprised to see the following comment on it: "Patriotism, in my mind, is the exclusive domain of... of... there ain't no name for it. Middle-of-the-road, logic-based, free thinkers?" Well, I was a little surprised to see it here, seeing as how most of my friends are either twitching with liberalism like I am, don't want to get into it with me any more, or don't give an assfuck about politics. But that particular attitude is not foreign to me at all.

My sister describes herself as being "all about the middle ground" and rolls her eyes equally at my conservative father and at me. Seems like most people I meet fancy themselves socially liberal and economically conservative (and that they are in actuality socially moderate and economically moderate). In fact, I used to be a conservative (and I'd like to write about that some time a la The 1585), but there was a short period of time - a transition phase - when even I was a moderate. So yeah, I have shaken hands and exchanged pleasantries with the moderate point of view.

Why is the middle of the road so appealing?

Well, for one thing moderation is usually, like, just the right amount of money for a ten-gallon jar of happiness. It is more fun to drink some alcohol than it is to drink no alcohol, but if you drink too much you'll do stupid shit and get hungover (and maybe even die!!). It is necessary, and often delicious, to eat, but if you eat too much, you'll get health problems (and maybe even die!!). If you sleep too little you'll run yourself ragged; if you sleep too much you are a coma patient. Theoretically there is an upper limit on sex, too, though I hope to heaven I never run into it. See? Moderation: totally punching your problems in the jawbone.

There's also the fact that people on the extreme right and the extreme left are often obnoxious, due largely to the fact that most of the people on Earth, be they capitalist, communist, or anarchofascistic, are kinda dumb and just kind of believe some shit without questioning it. The religious nuts are like, "You have to believe in Jesus, you're going to burn in the flames of hell, you SINNER," and you're like, "Just chill out and stop forcing your views on me." But then the atheists are like, "How could you believe in God did you drink a bunch of stupid juice one time or something I hear stupidfruit is really in season right now" and you're like, "Just chill out and stop forcing your views on me." Both sides come at you from the same angle, saying that they are unquestionably right, that you'd be a fool not to join them with all the passion you can muster. Both sides employ the regrettable term "sheeple."

And when it comes to subjective things, extremists on any end of any spectrum are annoying. Super annoying. But how much of politics is really subjective? I mean, that whole God thing is kinda subjective; you can disprove a lot of what Christians say, but you can't disprove the existence of God, so when you act like you've proved or disproved God, you're wrong and annoying. But I submit that plenty of basic philosophical concepts are objective truths.

I will preface my elaboration on that submission with a disclaimer. I ain't no Ayn Rand, and I think that most things are purely subjective, or are objective but unknowable. Like, if two people are arguing over which is the best Legendary Bird Pokemon, it is purely a matter of opinion, and they're not going to get anywhere. Okay, maybe that was a bad example, because the best Legendary Bird Pokemon is obviously Articuno, but you catch my drift. If you want to go real theoretical, you can believe we're all in the Matrix, or that everyone exists in your mind or whatever, but the whole time you'll be thinking, "This is a pretty pointless thing for me to believe." You can also decide that morals mean nothing and it is technically okay to murder and rape people, or, on a more realistic scale, you can pursue your own pleasure at the expense of others through lying and cheating and stealing and such, but I hope you will remain with us here in the non-fantasy world, where a basic code of human decency is pretty obvious and objective.

So if we've pushed aside the extremes of solipsism and hedonism and whatever-the-shit-ism, we can pretty much all agree that it is objectively good to be kind and generous and loving and so on to the so forth. And, hey, you know what? It is also objectively true that women have not gained the equality they deserve in virtually any society. It is objectively true that ethnic minorities are disadvantaged, and that we should work to stop that. It is objectively true that judging people by their sexuality is wrong (don't say, "What about pedophiles and rapists?" because you already know I am not talking about pedophiles and rapists, you douchebag).

They are value judgments, but they are true value judgments. They're not like saying, "Blue is a better color than red," which is totally subjective. They're not like saying, "Capitalism is better for society as a whole than socialism," which is a complex matter up for debate, the veracity of which can probably never be ascertained for sure. They're just simple, moral, objective truths. And they're liberal.

From a moderate point of view, this may cause a bit of an ideological itch. "Of course you think those things are objectively true, because you're a liberal," a moderate might say to me right now. "But a conservative is just as sure that their point of view is objectively true and that yours is objectively false." Yeah, well, yesterday my sister and I were arguing about whether Jason Bateman was in the movie Juno or not. I said he was, and she said he wasn't, and we were both equally sure of our stances. But I was the only one who was objectively right. When two people with opposite viewpoints both think they are right and the other is wrong, it is possible for one to be objectively right and one to be objectively wrong.

The way to figure out if you're on the correct side is a little method I like to call Use Your Brain. Liberals strive to be the "logic-based free thinkers" described by my aforementioned commenter, and we mainly do it with Use Your Brain.

Sometimes you can figure out if you're on the correct side with Sciences. This study, for example, gave all its participants the same two academic papers with authors whose names were very obviously male or female. For half the participants, Paper A was by a dude and Paper B was by a chick, but for the other half Paper A was by a chick and Paper B was by a dude. Both participant groups consistently rated the papers with male author names higher on several rubrics, whether it was Paper A or Paper B. Looks like folks have some ingrained sexism rolling around in their minds! Thanks, Sciences!

Sometimes you can figure out if you're on the correct side with Experiences. You can listen to black people talk about how they experienced subtly or not-so-subtly derogatory remarks for having nappy hair instead of straight hair, or "black-sounding" names. Turns out there is kind of a lot of racism galloping around the atmosphere.

Sometimes you can figure out if you're on the correct side just by thinking for two goddamn seconds and realizing that it makes absolutely no fucking difference to you if I sleep with men or women because that just defies basic logic and doesn't make any mothershitting sense.

Of course, sometimes it is hard to figure out if you're on the correct side, which is why liberals do not always have the right answers. I can't think of any at the moment, but I'm sure there are one or two conservative views that trump liberal ones, and probably quite a few moderate views that do the same thing. And most things are either subjective or objective but unknowable. I am certainly not claiming to have all the answers, though I do have a few of the very basic answers. Finding very basic answers just requires being a) smart, and b) open-minded. If you listen to the arguments and examine the data, you will be able to figure out a moral stance (almost always an at least somewhat liberal stance) on most things, unless you are stupid. But if you're stupid, you've definitely stopped reading this piece by now, so I am not talking to you (neener neener).

And here's the thing. Mainstream liberal stances? Are pretty moderate. It is not like it is a kah-razy LSD-trip notion to say that there is a lot of sexism in our society and that we should work to stop that. It's just that oblivious conservatives get too much time in the national discourse, so that when you say slut-shaming is bad, ten fundamentalists leap onto the television and start slut-shaming you. They drag the right end of the spectrum so far right that when you're chilling near the middle, it seems like you're way out in left field.

When I started reading feminist blogs and then started adding some academic feminist theory to the mix, it was very obvious (based on science, experience, and logic) that much of it was objectively true. Then there was a lot of it that subjectively rang true but could apply differently to people in different situations. And a bit of it was objectively false (Dear Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, Porn is not categorically evil, Love, Lauren). I can tell this because I am smart and open-minded. If you are smart and open-minded, you will come to many of the same conclusions I did reading the same texts. I almost certainly got some shit wrong, but if I did, you can tell me all the reasons why, and I will be smart and open-minded enough to be like, "Oh, I see. I will change my mind now based on this new evidence." And if we have two different viewpoints on something, that is all right, too. We can be accepting and non-judgmental about others' views as long as they are not blatantly fucked up. There is a pretty big range of liberal thought, and much of it is very interesting and very subjective.

I do not think that this overly long essay thing I have written here will convince the commenter with whose quote I began to join the Democratic party (and it's not as if the Democratic party is even close to liberal enough for my taste anyway). He cited Obama as an example of leftism that he felt was just as backwards as Bill O'Reilly's rightism, and as far as I can tell, Obama is pretty much as close to moderate as can be, while O'Reilly is basically trying to drag America out into the Atlantic Ocean so it can be further to the right. But hopefully my commenter friend will know that I am trying to employ logic and free-thinking just as rigorously as he is. I apologize for the liberals who spout a bunch of rhetoric without knowing what they are talking about. I know they give the rest of us a bad name, even if I usually agree with the views they happened to be lucky enough to stumble upon unthinkingly.

But us smart and open-minded ones? We know what we're talking about, man. We know what's up.

A day-by-day update since last I wrote

2008-07-08T09:06:28Z

July 4th
Events: Niko and I steal food from Stanford dining at a dorm barbecue (oh, I'm sorry, is my pet peeve showing?). Niko refuses to eat cotton candy because it looks like insulation; I eat enough for both of us. He drinks a lot of beer and I drink a lot of vodka at a Mary-and-Topher shindig. We celebrate our independence from England by taking shots out of Led Zeppelin shot glasses while listening to "When the Levee Breaks" (I don't know how we thought this would be a good way to celebrate parting from England, but I do remember shouting, "Fuck England!" while we were doing it, so our hearts were in the right place). Paul comes over to my apartment sober and graciously does not laugh at Niko and me while we say things like, "Ow, you bit me really hard!" and "I can tell you have corporate taste in music by your shoes."
Niko quote that sums it all up: (in response to Topher asking what kind of music he should put on) "Do you have any whale sounds?"

July 5th
Events: Baby's First Hangover! I spend a half hour trying not to fall asleep on the bathroom floor because I am sure I am going to vomit and it would suck so bad to drown in your own vomit and die (see band referenced above). I do not vomit and by two or so, I am fetching smoothies with 4976 boosts in them to pipe into Niko intravenously. Niko spends the day chugging ibuprofen and losing consciousness intermittently.
Niko quote that sums it all up: "Fuckin drinking fuckin sucks."

July 6th
Events: We go to Starbucks with Kevin. We play a lot of Dino Run and Pokemon Emerald. We watch MST3K. After midnight I suddenly realize I haven't even started packing even though we are leaving the next day and I have to have all my supplies for my upcoming New York trip. I look at the turrets on the Great Wall of Dirty Dishes I have left to do and have a small panic attack in which I cry like a fool and embarrass myself and all my relatives and anyone who's ever known me or casually glanced past me in the street.
Niko quote that sums it all up: "Remember your relaxomophone lessons."

July 7th
Events: I arrive at my parent's house in time for my psychiatrist appointment. I tell my psychiatrist about how I do not like being at home because I get into political fights with my dad. Over dinner, I get into a political fight with my parents (and grandpa!) during which my parents say the following sentences: "This country was built on the backs of corporations, and corporations are what make it the best country in the world," "You think Wal-Mart is an evil corporation, but everyone who works there loves it," "The reason there is diversity in this country is that corporations enforce equal hiring practices." The capitalism fumes make my eyes water (or is it the rage and frustration at the ignorance?), and I say I do not want to disrespect anyone which is what will happen if I continue the conversation. Then I flee to Niko's house.
Niko quote that sums it all up: "Don't talk about economics with your dad anymore."

Dia de Independencia

2008-07-04T22:41:32Z

One of the many things about conservatives that provokes a sort of acidic vomity taste in the back of my throat is the way they have co-opted patriotism. Why is it patriotic to blindly exalt the government even when it does stupid and bad shit? Isn't that exactly what the Founding Fathers were fighting against when they signed this Declaration of Independence thing 232 years ago? Seems like if you paint a crying eagle on your house you can frame homophobia as striving valiantly against the forces of immorality trying to tear apart our country. There's a reason those eagles are always crying, Republicans, and it's not just because you're tacky as fuck with no sense of subtlety. It is because they are sad that you think it is somehow inherently American to legislate female sexuality by valuing the lives of fetuses above the lives of women or to say that blacks need to stop whining about racism because slavery is over.

As far as I can see, patriotism is the exclusive domain of liberals. We're the ones who actually cherish the American melting pot. We're the ones fighting to elect more minorities to end the taxation without representation that is still alive and well in a manner of speaking. We're the ones proud enough of our government to criticize it when it fucks up so that it will become a better, stronger, more just government of which we can be even prouder. I mean which one of us has an eljay icon of George Washington kicking a redcoat apart? (Hint: It is me.)

Boston Tea Party, motherfuckers!

They co-opted morality, too, those dang old conservatives. Not subscribing to a religion (which is neither inherently conservative nor liberal, but tends to be a liberal thing more often) isn't a rejection of the concepts of good and bad. Saying God told you to do something doesn't make it moral. Treating everyone as an equal makes you moral. Trying to eradicate prejudice and poverty makes you moral.

Oh wait.

Wait.

What I meant to say was that building a wall to keep the Mexicans out is what makes you moral. It is extremely immoral to see a Mexican. Even thinking about a Mexican is ethically repugnant. In fact, I have just bankrupted all your values merely by the power of suggestion. That's right. Watch me smearing your mind with the filth of my sombrerocactus imagery. How are you going to enjoy your burnt hot dogs and illegal fireworks now? Hmmmm?

You know what else the conservatives co-opted? Barack Obama. Remember when I said that despite his flaws, at least he was pro-choice? Well, he's, uh...only KINDA pro-choice. (See Melissa McEwan's take on it here and Amanda Marcotte's take on it here.)

And so true patriotism and morality complete another revolution in their whirlpool descent down the drain. Happy Fourth of July, America.

Summer cleaning

2008-07-02T00:10:27Z

Today was a day of cleaning. I swept my apartment, washed my dishes, and sanitized my bathroom (I love scrubbing my sister's boyfriend's piss off the toilet seat! Really, I do!). So I thought it might be a good time to air out a few of my political grievances as well.

I voted for Hillary Clinton in the primary election and supported her until the day she dropped out of the race, but I always liked Obama, too. There was never too much political difference between them; they've had similar stances on almost every issue. When Obama became the nominee, I was just the eensiest bit sad, but happy that we'd finally get to move on from the intra-party bickering (which, by the way, was not Clinton's fault, no matter how many asspundits tell you she was tearing the party apart with her maniacal selfishness). I was ready to wholeheartedly support Obama.

But then some shit started going down.

Obama had promised to stick to public financing, but then he didn't. He's the first candidate to do that since 1976. Obama gaining an unfair advantage over McCain doesn't exactly crack my little heart in two, but it's still unethical in that it reinforces a political system in which the rich are given yet more privileges at the expense of the poor. For some reason, that doesn't kindle a round of song in my soul.

Obama also pledged to vote against the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which would give retroactive immunity to the telecom companies who engaged in warrantless wiretapping. But then, um, he changed his mind. Illegal wiretapping is kind of one of those things you can't let the government do under any circumstances, because, it, you know, violates the Fourth Amendment. Remember that scrap of law about unreasonable search and seizure? One more brick in the ever-receding wall against totalitarianism that the Bush administration seems intent on razing to the ground? I will kind of miss that little brick, Obama.

And it was pretty shitty when he kept two women from sitting behind his podium at an event because they were wearing head scarves. For someone who gets anti-Muslim crap volleyed at his face from every which direction, he was awfully quick to pull some anti-Muslim crap himself. Not that I think Islam is rad (it's just as fucked up as any other religion, as far as I'm concerned), but it shouldn't be a disqualification from being publicly seen with a presidential candidate any more than being a Christian should. You'd think being on the receiving end of bigotry would make you endeavor not to be a bigot yourself, even if the result was some right-wing fuckheads being all like, "Look at the head scarves! Muslim! EVIL!" He's buying right into that framework by disavowing Muslim supporters, when he should be going, "I'm not a Muslim, but so what if I were?"

Don't get me wrong. Obama is the sleeping garments of several felines compared to McCain, and I'll vote for him in November, no question. He's pro-choice and for universal health care, and I think it would be a significantly positive step in our nation's history to have a black president who can bring to the table a firsthand knowledge about discrimination that none of our previous white dudes have been able to bring. That he's lived outside the US and has family in other countries is also exciting, seeing as how our country's recent foreign policy has consisted mainly of putting everyone else in the world at the bottom of a deep pit and gleefully shoveling shit on top of them. I also, for the record, don't think Clinton would have been much better; she could well have gone back on even more promises than Obama has in order to get votes if she had received the nomination, but there's no way for us to know that.

So I'm not condemning Obama outright. I'm just...disappointed. I was starting to buy into all this hope and change stuff everyone's been frothing at the mouth about, and it's sad to know it's not real. Obama is certainly the lesser evil here, but I would like so badly to vote for someone unabashedly progressive, someone who believes strongly enough in equality and justice to really stand up for them. Realizing that that ain't gonna happen in my lifetime, if ever, gives me a big old dose of fatigue in every one of my bones.

misplacemyheart @ 2008-06-30T16:38:00

2008-06-30T23:50:06Z

I'm putzing about in Palo Alto otra vez, unpacking and trying to deal with the fallout of my sister's subpar apartment-sitting skills. Thank you, sister, for dirty dishes stacked up as an offering to the ants. Thank you for the crusted bits of food on the clean dishes, which were not put away, but lay gathering dust. Thanks for not washing either of the sets of sheets, and thanks for piling up twelve empty bottles of bath product in my shower. It is so pleasant to walk barefoot around my own home and have grimy detritus cling to the soles of my feet at every step, and to step out of the shower onto the enormous mud stain on my bathroom floor, so thanks, also, for keeping everything clean.

...At least she sprinkled confetti everywhere to celebrate my re-arrival. Oh nope wait. That's not confetti, it's lighters and caffeine pills. How many lighters do you need, sister? Where does the madness end?

All right, I gotta go buy some food for my barren apartment. If they're out of sourdough batards, I will probably take on the manner of an insane person, leaping and screeching.

RIP George Carlin

2008-06-24T00:04:42Z

George Carlin died, and that is sad.

Though generations of Americans will be everlastingly grateful to Carlin for expounding upon the seven words you can't say on TV, I would like to remember him with a different YouTube clip. (I would also like to point out that we have reached the point in our society where you can pay respectful post-mortem tribute with YouTube clips. This is happening.)

I remember the first time I saw that clip, a huge knot of feminist anger in my chest just sort of untied itself. It was only temporary, of course, since basically everything in this world offends my feminist sensibilities (often George Carlin himself), but for the duration of this video, I felt like everything would turn out okay. When men who are prominent and popular in the media say pro-life is anti-woman, and a crowd cheers, it's like someone handing me a Gotta-Have-It-sized cup of Cold Stone cake batter ice cream with cookie dough as a mix-in and being like, "Also? I washed your car. Have a tiara."

I would also like to point out that when he delivered that line (like a competent obstetrician delivers a healthy baby), I felt a vibrant spike of attraction and arousal, not for the panther-like young Carlin prowling around the stage with his starburst of hair and beard, but for old Carlin, with his sad greasy ponytail slithering down over his hunched shoulders. It matters so little what you look like if you're foul-mouthed and fuck-loving and pro-choice. So let that be a lesson to all you het menz out there, courtesy of George Carlin from beyond the grave: Dudes with feminist views are hot. And who among you doesn't want a piece of this? I mean, come on.

Home-ish

2008-06-20T02:01:48Z

Oh Lawdy.

I have been home in Lafayette for a few days now. California is a much nicer place than England. It is 90 degrees out. I don't even know what they would call that in England, because a) they don't use Fahrenheit to measure temperature, and b) it has never been that hot in the history of England. I am wearing short shorts even though my legs are unshaven, and media-enforced standards of beauty can lick my clit. I've gorged myself on bagels and macaroni & cheese and cous cous and pancakes. Pot stickers and smoothies are next on the list. O California!

It is beautiful and sweet-smelling outside, and the oak trees in Niko's yard instill in me a profound sense of relief and belonging. Unfortunately, I am staying at my family's house, which necessitates screaming and barking dogs and loud bad movies and cussing and guilt trips and oh my God take me back to my apartment in Palo Alto, I just need some goddamn peace and quiet.

If you are interested in photographic accounts of my activities, my last few days in England consisted mainly of

Getting drunk on jynnintonix in The Eagle and Child, where JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis would get together to discuss their work.

Visiting the Rollright Stones, which are not a band dealing exclusively in covers of songs by that guy with the big mouth who's always moaning about not being able to get what he wants, but rather a sort of Diet Stonehenge.

Exchanging my pupils for bigger breasts just in time for Magdalen Formal Hall.

Co-captaining a punt on the Thames.

Giggling about innuendos in a punt on the Thames.

Looking stupid by the English Channel.

And last, but certainly not least, looking stupid while making Assetbar jokes with Internet friends.

England, oh dear England. England, I might miss you for a few seconds at some point in the future.

Things may or may not be under control

2008-06-12T20:00:03Z

Yesterday I turned in my last Eliot paper and spent an hour or so at the pub with my tutor and his other American students. My tutor got drunk and made inappropriately hilarious comments about pornography, testicles, and Richard Dawkins. Definitely my best English pub experience so far.

I have one paper left, due tomorrow, and I'm halfway through it. My tutor asked me what it was about last night at the pub, and I told him it was a feminist critique of British health care. He asked me a little more about it, and I told him one of the things I'd be discussing was access to abortion and birth control.

"You know, it's very difficult to get birth control," he said, "for more than three months at a time."

Mm-hmm. In the States, I get my birth control for two months at a time. Oh, and it's not free.

I have decided I am very for this universal health care stuff they have over here, and not just from a feminist perspective, although the existence of free abortions for up to 24 weeks gives me hope for the future of humanity. I have taken the bus out to Churchill Hospital a few times (Oxford City Bus, Number 15, Girdlestone Road stop, after Lime Walk but before The Slade*) during my stay here, and my experiences have been nothing but positive. The health care system has a lot of flaws and financial problems, naturally, but the bottom line is that everyone gets health care for free or incredibly cheap.

American critics of the British health care system are always going on about waiting lists, but the waiting lists are prioritized by how life-threatening a condition is. So if you need heart surgery, you'll be on a much shorter waiting list than if you need a hip replacement. And yeah, it sucks if you have to gimp around on a bum hip for six to twelve months, which is the waiting time for that particular surgery, but look at it this way: In England, if you have enough money to pay for private health care, you can get a hip replacement in two weeks' time, and if you don't have enough money, it'll happen within a year. In America, if you have enough money to pay for private health care, you can get a hip replacement in two weeks' time, and if you don't have enough money, you're totally fucked.

My dad pays some fatty dollars for my family to have top-notch private health insurance. He might as well just put it into a big national pot and help some poor people out, too. The quality of health care might be slightly lowered for rich whiteys like us, but it'll be immensely raised for folks who currently can't afford it at all. Who would be unwilling to make that trade-off? We gotta get Obama on this shit.

Anyway, I guess my paper-writing break is over now. Maybe next time I take a break, I shouldn't spend it writing extra stuff about my paper topic. Maybe I should just go eat some chocolate or whatever you're supposed to do on breaks. I have four pages left, and then I'm done with my junior year of college. I may or may not be able to get these four pages done on time, and then they may or may not be of sufficient quality to maintain my GPA. But come Monday I will definitely be going home and seeing my boy again, and that is really all I care about at this point.

*It's almost like they want to trick you into thinking the bus stops are entrances to kingdoms from fantasy novels rather than unremarkable suburban streets.

All I want

2008-06-08T18:43:18Z

All I want is to be done with these two papers I have left. One's due Wednesday, one's due Friday, and I'm basically killing myself trying to finish them. I have re-emergent black lung from lack of sleep, and shingles and menstrual spotting from all the stress. Apparently if you stress hard enough, viruses will swoop out of your spine and you will just literally start bleeding from your genitals.

Let me out of this university! I can't handle it and I'm sorry I was ever arrogant enough to think I could! I just want to go hooooooome.

Actually that isn't all I want. The other things I want are as follows:

- tacos
- bagels (I had one in Victoria Station and it was so vile I had to throw half of it away)
- sourdough bread
- smoothies (real ones, not the thin gruelly juice they call smoothies over here)
- Trader Joe's strawberry juice
- Nutter Butters
- McDonald's fries that taste like McDonald's fries should taste

Oh, and a Niko Bakulich. I would like one of those real bad right now.