Accismus

I love all of Google’s programs. Gmail is fantastic, I like my igoogle page, I love my Google feed reader, and I love Google Docs (although I think Blogger totally blows). I realize that Google now has complete and total access to pretty much my entire brain, and I have no privacy whatsoever, and all of my writings and emails and searches, and everything I’ve ever bought, and all the books I’ve looked into, and everything I’ve read and thought to save or extract is all retained by Google in an easy-to-retrieve file that can be exposed at any time to anyone, and that I have basically asked for it, having thoughtlessly given Google all of this information because it’s just too easy to do so and rather difficult not to.

I’m ok with all of this.

But what I am not ok with is that Google – as well as it knows me – is absolutely certain that I would like to turn all of my applications into social networking sites. First, Gmail was retooled in such a way that the horrid gchat was featured prominently in a sidebar – even in my igoogle page! – impossible to get rid of. For the longest time (though I will admit this has since been fixed) gchat kept signing me in over and over again, even though I had my settings indicating I never wanted to be signed in.

And can I just take a second here to explain why I despise gchat, AIM and the like? Despite having come of age in the glory days of AIM, I have never used chat, because I think it’s really fucking obnoxious. If I’m browsing online, it’s because that’s what I want to be doing right then. I’m not waiting for someone to pop up in the middle of whatever I’m looking at, and deliver me from my contemplation with small talk. Chatting is what I do when I have the pleasure of someone’s actual company – and preferably, there will also be drinks, or summer sun or some other added sweetener. I put up with occasionally tiresome chatting because it’s nice to be with people. So, why on Earth would I want the chatting without the people? That’s like wanting commercials without programming!

So, anyway, imagine my spitting fury when I signed into my google reader the other day to find that google has added some sort of ’share network’ bullshit in the sidebar that you can sign out of (or just refuse to participate in), but cannot get rid of altogether. Why the hell would anybody want to turn their feed reader into a social sharing site? There are all kinds of places where people can post a running tally of what articles they are reading if they so desire – Twitter, Facebook, their blogs, posting a ‘my feeds’ widget in the sidebar of their blog. Apparently, that’s not enough – some people want other people actually reading over their shoulder at all times! Well, I don’t want people in my feed reader, or in my email inbox, or in my Netflix cue or in my Amazon checkout cart. I don’t care if other people do (although I don’t understand it), but there should at least be some way to completely opt out of all this stuff, and not have it continually coming up.

And now at the top of all my items in my feed reader, there’s a stupid little cartoon face with ‘X-number of people liked this!’ next to it, and if you click on that, it gives you the user names of all x-number of gazillion people who clicked that they liked that particular item. Come on, Google! Do I really fucking care that iceprincess3 liked something Ezra Klein posted? No! No one does! Let me read my feeds in peace.

And let me hasten to add that I love spending quality time with people in the flesh. I love having actual, live conversations with people. I love getting emails from people. I love reading other people’s substantive blog posts, that they’ve put time and effort into, and I love love love it when people get into a dialogue here on my blog, where I post things I actually want to communicate to people, and while my posts may not always be brilliant (or even slightly interesting), no one ever has to come here and read my blog – I don’t pop my posts up in the faces of all of my friends while they’re trying to read the NY Times Op-Ed page or whatever.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I love Google. I use nearly all their tools and have given my reputation entirely into their keeping. I just don’t love these sharing, chat and otherwise pointless features in areas that have absolutely no need to be networking platforms. There are plenty of places to go out and mingle online; I don’t see why some things can’t remain (cosmetically) private.

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Attention, male writers: unless you particularly plan to alienate your readership, try not to cram a bunch of pointless derogatory comments about women into the first ten pages of your book, unless that’s really what you’re all about. I’ve noticed this with a number of books lately – I’ll get all alienated in the first chapter, and decide not to read the rest, and then keep going only to find the entire rest of the book totally devoid of casual misogyny. It’s so weird! I noticed this in Lost Cosmonaut, and now here in David Rakoff’s book of humorous essays, Don’t Get Too Comfortable. In the first essay, “Love It or Leave It,” about applying for citizenship during the latter Bush administration, on page 2, we have:

After twenty-two years, it seemed a little bit coy to still be playing the Canadian card. I felt like the butt of the joke about the proper lady who, when asked if she would have sex with a strange man for a million dollars, allows that yes she would do it. But when asked if she would do the same thing for a can of Schlitz and a plastic sleeve of beer nuts, reels back with an affronted, ‘What do you think I am?’ to which the response is, ‘Madam, we have already established what you are. Now we’re just quibbling about the price.’

On page 7, Barbara Bush the Younger is described (to absolutely no point whatsoever) as “W’s liquor-swilling, Girl Gone Wild, human ashtray of a daughter.” Particularly gratuitous, as Rakoff’s real beef is with Barbara, Sr. (page 8: “Stupid fucking cow.”).

Admittedly, on page 8, we do have a derogatory physical description of a man: “The hairy-knuckled, pinkie-ringed lawyer for a Vietnamese fellow behind me….” No mention of the man’s genitals, of course, or sexual appeal or lack thereof, but still, not exactly a flattering comment. But then on page 9, we’re back to women, describing a “Russian woman in her early forties” who has the misfortune to be standing on line nearby:

She wears painted-on acid-wash jeans, white stilettos, and a tight blouse of sheer leopard-print fabric. The sleeves are designed as a series of irregular tatters clinging to her arms, as if she’s just come from tearing the hide off the back of an actual leopard. A really slutty leopard.

It’s safe to assume that leopard was also female.

But here on page 9, we also have our first woman appear without being described physically, or with any tossed-off, irrelevant sexual slurs attached to her person. This is Agent Morales, who interviews Rakoff for citizenship. Then, by page 11, we’re on to Rakoff’s friend, Sarah (who, based on her introduction as “a self-described civics nerd,” I’m assuming is Sarah Vowell), and nobody describes their friends as pointless and/or distasteful vaginas, so we’re in the clear.

And that’s it, for the rest of the book’s 222 pages: no more offensive comments about women, at least not that reached out of the pages and slapped me, like these first ones. In fact, I really enjoyed the book after page 10. The essays were tart, well-written, observant and entertaining. Why the packed in slurs up front?

So, the moral here is: writers and editors (whether male, female, gay, straight or other): when you have your manuscript all ready for publishing, go through at least the first twenty pages or so, with an eye to how you describe or comment on any women mentioned, as contrasted with how you describe or comment on any men. If you note that every, single woman you bring up is described as a slut, a bitch, a stupid bimbo, a nag, or has been physically detailed for no specific reason (ugly, fat, wart-faced, saggy-boobed, clothes too tight, past her prime, sex on legs, etc.), and that every man is described in terms of his personality traits and actions, then think about whether or not you genuinely want half the population to toss you and your book right out at that point. Because not all readers are as patient as I am. A lot of women won’t make it to page 11. And I’d like to think some men wouldn’t either.

I really don’t direct the above rant particularly at David Rakoff. His is only the most recent book I’ve read to follow this off-putting pattern. But really, Don’t Get Too Comfortable is great otherwise. Rakoff is a sharp and articulate social satirist, and his targets aren’t the easy ones. If there is a unifying theme to these essays, I would say it is what we desire and what we buy, and why, and what we tell ourselves about it, with occasional diversions into the weird and often unpleasant things people like to do for fun. He has drawn a bead on class hypocrisy, and conspicuous consumption. He covers foodies, high fashion, fasting, plastic surgery, cryogenics and Puppetry of the Penis. He goes along on a Playboy shoot, attends a midnight scavenger hunt in Manhattan, forages for edible plants in Prospect Park and works as a pool boy at an upscale resort. He waits outside the Today Show, visits Martha Stewart’s crafts department, and shadows the director of the mystifying Log Cabin Republicans.

Fun stuff, all. With the above-mentioned caveat, I’d recommend it.

Please excuse this little rant about cheek kissing. I am very physical-contact-avoidant. I do not like to be hugged, squeezed, patted or kissed by anyone other than immediate family members or people I am involved with romantically. As an attractive young woman, however, I am subject to a lot of poking and prodding, although, given my general thorniness and seriousness, I probably get a lot less of it than most young women.

I absolutely hate it. I used to rudely rebuff all physical contact, but as I got older, I began to be more sensitive to intent, and gradually grew to tolerate pyramid-shaped hugs of welcome and farewell from friends both close and casual. I still didn’t like it. But I put up with it.

Then, the cheek kissing began. I don’t know if it was an age thing, or a geographic location thing, or a general trend, but it seemed to start up all at once, and now it’s ubiquitous, and I Fucking HATE it! I don’t want to be kissed! And now, horror of horrors, it’s verging into actual, close-mouthed kissing! I have experienced this once or twice, and it’s just awful. I don’t even want to be hugged! Why can’t people respect that without my having to be rude? Why is it assumed that I’m down with being physically touched? Why can’t we just make warm eye contact, which frankly, in my opinion, is more than enough intimacy to be going forward with?

You know, I understand wanting a bit of physical contact to demonstrate affection and personal connection, to distinguish friends who approve of each other from merely tolerated professional acquaintances. And I think that the best form of physical connection is…a solid, gripping squeeze on the upper arm. Seriously. It’s distant, but warm; it enables you to make eye contact; it’s familiar, but not overly so; it’s physical, but not romantic. It doesn’t involve lips, or breasts squashing against each other awkwardly, or chins bashing into each other. You can vary it in intensity and duration according to occasion/level of sentiment to be expressed. It’s perfect.

Can we somehow usher in the upper arm squeeze as the new friendly hello-and-goodbye physical gesture? I’m going to start doing it; hopefully, it will catch on.

The feminist blogosphere is all abuzz over a stupid NY Magazine article clearly published in order to set the feminist blogosphere all abuzz. Apparently, Alex Morris believes feminism has driven women to drink.

Now, don’t that beat all? The very first thing those damn liberated women of olden times did upon receiving the permission to vote was usher in prohibition/destroy the country. Now, 90 years later, they can’t stop hitting the sauce!

Freaking women. Either they’re drunks or prudes or whores or virgins or mothers or businesswomen or feminists or lesbians. But one thing’s for sure: they’re always up to something! If only they’d all pick one, good, amenable identity and conform to it en masse, it sure would make it easier to dismiss them all as individuals. But they just can’t seem to get on the same page.

Feministing:

The thing that pisses me off most about this article. . . is that drinking is a serious problem for young women and men. But instead of serious, nuanced media coverage on what to do about the drinking culture among American youth, we get article after article hawing about the consequences of equality. . . . Seriously – it’s tired. Not to mention incredibly sexist : the underlying message is that gender equality is bad for women.

So if folks are actually concerned about young women and drinking, how about we talk about the consumer culture that markets liquor (something Morris touches on before quickly returning back to feminism) or how drinking is being used to blame women who are raped? 

No joke. How many articles have their been lately about the increasing problem of binge-drinking and date rape on college campuses, and how many of these articles have arrived at the conclusion that the problem is…women being there? Yeah, maybe the problem is women being out and about, and drinking and carrying on like they’re real, live, young people. Or maybe – just maybe – the problem is men who rape women!

And as long as I’m taking the bait, check out this other asshole I ran across:

Forget what feminists, hippies, and liberals have told you in the last half century. They are all lies based on political ideology and conviction, not on science. Contrary to what they may have told you, it is very unlikely that money, promotions, the corner office, social status, and political power will make women happy. Similarly, it is very unlikely that quitting their jobs, dropping out of the rat race, and becoming stay-at-home dads to spend all their times with their children will make men happy.Money, promotions, the corner office, social status, and political power are what make men happy (as long as they win, of course, but then dropping out is by definition a defeat). Spending time with their children is what makes women happy.

You know, Satoshi Kanazawa, I think I know why you’re clearly so unhappy. You may think that you’re meant to be an evolutionary psychologist and author, but you’re lying to yourself and denying your true nature. You are actually evolutionarily designed to run fast, wrangle heavy stuff, and catch and strangle small creatures, and the sooner you admit that to yourself, the sooner you can become a truly satisfied man. I encourage you to quit all this thinking and writing that’s making you so miserable and unfulfilled, and realize your true potential as a welder/firefighter/rabbit-wringer.

Black Friday is a huge embarrassment to all of us at the best of times, but on this past, most pivotal and heavily advertised of Black Fridays, some people actually trampled a man to death in their haste to get inside a Wal-Mart.

Now. Much has been blogged about this horrible incident already, and I doubt even the most heavily retail-seduced among us heard this news without cringing.

But my main reaction was: how could self-aware people display so much unabashed enthusiasm for anything? I went to high school during the 90s, and if there is one value that the experience of being an adolescent during that unenthused decade instilled in me, it is the importance of being too cool. When something tempting comes along, you are not supposed to snatch at it like an eager toddler. You sit back, smirk ironically . . . and then, after a decent enough time has passed that everyone understands that you could take it or leave it, you casually shrug and take it, peering at it the whole time as if it both amuses and perplexes you.

This is the way in which I approach every desirable thing, from jobs to friends to food to new clothes to men. But even leaving aside the studied indifference of my generation, nonchalance is the only appropriate and polite attitude for people living in a land of plenty. If you are sitting at a table, and the person at the head of the table brings out a cake, you do not climb frantically over the people in between you and the cake, screaming and gnashing your teeth, and bury your face in it. You only behave that way if you are starving to death, or two years old. Otherwise, you sit politely, and pass each slice down as it’s cut, until everyone has one, and then you calmly proceed to eat your slice.

Black Friday is an example of one situation in which everyone thinks it’s a good idea to bury their face in the cake. And for this country, that’s especially disgusting behavior, because essentially, most people at the table already have five entire untouched cakes sitting right in front of them.

There’s a general assumption in America that anything worth having (wealth, fame, good parts, book deals, seats on the subway, marriage proposals, property, cheap piles of shit from Wal-Mart) can only be attained by wrestling it away from somebody else. We talk about ‘wanting it (or her or him) enough to fight for it,’ as if that illustrates strength of character. What a desperate, scrabbling way to live! Just because competition is healthy for markets and other living things does not mean that everything need be competed over. Economists of every school agree, the world is not a pie. Really, it seems to me to be more of an endless conveyer belt (even in a recession, at least as far as Wal-Mart goods are concerned).

Gains not ill-gotten can still be sinful, but for a country that brays so loudly about its Christianity, we’ve entirely erased the word ‘greed’ from our vocabulary.

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Also, Bitch Ph.D. has this to say about how tramplings actually happen:

You know how hard it is to work your way backwards through a crowd. Now imagine a crowd that’s *urgently* trying to push forward-it would be impossible. And, given that the crowd was apparently strong enough, en masse, to push down a door and trample a man, then (presumably) any individual-or even several individuals-who tried to push back-to keep the doors from being pushed open, or to keep the man from being trampled-is also going to be overwhelmed and pushed forward. . . .The real problem isn’t the people in the crowd. It’s the policy of creating such crowds, especially in situations without infrastructure and trained security people to manage the crowds properly. . . . The problem is the corporations who deliberately create an unnecessary sense of urgency and scarcity in order to drum up sales.

Well, sure.  Living in NYC, everyone shoves and pushes everyone.  At the grocery store yesterday, an older lady bodily shoved me out of the way of a bread bin (and proceeded to fish around in the bread with her bare hands), and a short time later, a girl shoved in front of me to get on the train, because I paused for half a second to let a guy exit (she shoved him aside, as well).  I can’t imagine shoving anyone to get to merchandise or onto a train, but man, if you get into my personal space for no reason, you’re going to catch an elbow.  And while I can’t imagine pushing and shoving my way into any crowded store, concert, club, parade, tree-lighting ceremony, free food giveaway, etc., I can often be found shoving my way out of them.  I have troubles with crowds, and I try (as best I can in a city like this) to keep to mostly clear spaces.  But here, sometimes you’ll be somewhere that’s totally empty, and randomly somehow before you know it, you find yourself surrounded on all sides by a thick crowd.  At which times, I panic.  I can’t help it.  My heart leaps into my throat and starts pounding, and I feel like I can’t breathe, and I will do absolutely anything – kick, claw, shove, trample – to get out of such a situation.  Which may be why I just can’t get my mind around the desire people have to crush into hot spots, to seek out places where they know there will be pushing, sweltering, thronging crowds of humanity pressing on all sides of them.

Of course, I suppose I’ve done just that by moving to New York.

I am a fan of the singular ‘they,’ but some people get very heated about its use.  They think that it’s incorrect, and that its increasingly widespread acceptance is yet another example of ridiculous PC capitulation to craaazy feminists, etc., etc., and that there’s no real reason that ‘he’ and ‘his’ can’t be used to refer to groups of men and women.  On the other hand, there are also plenty of people who think using ‘they’ is totally legitimate and sometimes necessary, because using the masculine pronouns for mixed groups can be confusing.  I bring all this up because I just came across a sentence in a Richard Bausch short story that completely illustrates why we need the singular they.  The story is about a teenage boy, his mother, and his aunt all spending Christmas together.  Here is the sentence:

They spent the early part of the evening wrapping presents for the morning, each in his own room with his gifts for the others…

Again, this sentence is referring to two grown women and a teenage boy.  How much less confusing and disorienting would be:  ‘…each in their own room with their gifts for the others….’

While reading this story, I enjoyed a Naked juice drink.  Naked juice claims to use a pound of fruit per bottle, and on the side of the label, it lists the fruits included.  This particular bottle lists:  3/4 peach, 1/2 mangosteen, lots of yummy white grapes, 2 3/4 apples & a hint of lemon.  Of course, by “lots of yummy white grapes,” what “they” mean is “this juice is about 98% concentrated grape juice.”  A quick glance at the ingredients list confirms this.  Which is fine – I knew I was drinking juice from concentrate, and this is noted on the front of the label.  But what’s so annoying about the “lots of yummy white grapes” language is how condescending it is.  It’s like the Naked juice people know that the Achilles heel of their all-natural, whole-fruits juice packaging is that there’s concentrated juice in there, but rather than just not emphasize that part of it, they highlight it with a bunch of silly, misleading language.  It’s like when I waited tables, and everything fried was described as “crispy,” which only led to a ton of people getting pissed when fried food came out, and sending it back, making more work for everyone and costing the restaurant money.  People avoid ordering fried foods because they don’t freaking want fried food, so trying to fool them by changing the word is just a ridiculously pointless strategy that is doomed to fail.

So, this is annoying:

Can you still make it from scratch in America? That’s the question that Adam Shepard asked himself in college. On graduation, he took a train to Charleston, South Carolina and started out with nothing but $25 and a backpack. A year later, he had a car, and apartment, and $2500 in the bank. How he did it — and what he learned along the way — is the story of his new book, Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream.

See, the thing is, though, the book really ought to be called “Me; $25; a firm grasp of the English language; a good understanding of appropriate business and social etiquette; a clever brain and healthy and attractive white body [assuming the cover illustration is meant to depict the author]; the self-possession that comes of having been raised by a family that loved me, paid attention to me, and was able to provide for me; the social skills that come from having been brought up in a safe community where I enjoyed a stable support network of friends and family, and a safe and decent school with adequate funding; the freedom of being unaccompanied by any dependent children or ill or disabled relatives; the confidence that comes from knowing if my little low-stakes gambit here fails miserably I can just go back to my nice home; a college degree[!!!]; and the Search for the American Dream, which I have already extensively benefited from, and everybody who meets me immediately knows it, even if I am dressed in a potato sack and boasting proudly of how I have temporarily elected to live like the poor folk do in hopes of scoring a book deal.”

But then, that’s a lot to fit on a book jacket.

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Also, apparently old people don’t particularly like being talked to like they’re babies, even when they’ve totally lost their minds:

“The main task for a person with Alzheimer’s is to maintain a sense of self or personhood,” Dr. Williams said. “If you know you’re losing your cognitive abilities and trying to maintain your personhood, and someone talks to you like a baby, it’s upsetting to you.”

(via Feministing)

I understand that.  I absolutely hate being talked to like I’m a baby. A lot of men like to talk to attractive young women like they’re babies – I seriously can’t count the number of times when some older man I barely know has explained to me (affectionately) that I am such a sweet, sensitive young person. What he clearly means is, ‘You’re pretty, but I know it’s inappropriate for me to be attracted to you, so I’m going to treat you like you’re my precious little daughter.’ Which, besides being presumptuous and offensive, is even more amazing in light of the fact that I am cranky, standoffish and self-absorbed, especially upon first acquaintance. That’s maybe a little hard on myself, but at any rate, I could not possibly be mistaken for a cuddly, approachable people-pleaser…except by men who are bound and determined to believe that all pretty women come prepackaged with Disney princess personalities.

At any rate, if actually becoming cranky old people won’t save us all from being cooed at and patted like we’re puppies, what the hell will? I hope I don’t get dementia, because I’ve already decided that if I make it to my 80s and don’t have anything more I really want to accomplish, I’m going to spend the rest of my days trying every possible kind of super hard-core drug. That will be my Earthly reward for a life full of self-denial and jogging, and I sure hope Alzheimer’s doesn’t rob me of the opportunity, or I’m gonna be pissed.

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Two funny things:

First of all, I think this is my favorite liveblogging of a debate thus far…

…and Chuck Klosterman’s A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century is hilarious, if long (via Kottke).

I never take fliers.  It is very annoying to be walking down a sidewalk and be abruptly clotheslined by somebody shoving a piece of paper into your face.  Who the hell on this green, revolving Earth ever wants a flier?  For anything?  Who ever has followed up on whatever was being advertised on said flier?  Nobody.  When somebody hands somebody else a flier, they are either handing them litter, or a piece of trash to be carried until the receiver finds a trashcan.  Everybody else should do as I do, and decline to take them, so that whatever stupid freaking business owners are still fliering will freaking stop it already.  I.  Hate.  Fliers.

Along the same lines, postcards for shows are a giant waste of money and a thoroughly ineffective marketing tool.  Nobody ever, ever, ever goes to a show they weren’t already planning on going to (because they have a friend involved with it) because of a damn postcard.  Best-case scenario here is that one or even two lonely old people in from out of town might possibly, conceivably go to some show just because they saw a postcard for it, but even if you get three such audience members (which is an improbably high estimate), their admission is not enough to recoup whatever you spent on the postcards.  I hate being handed postcards more than fliers, because I actually have to take the postcards and act interested, and then I have to carry them around until it’s ok to throw them away.  Even if I actually plan on going to the show, I’m going to look in my email inbox (where undoubtedly there are at least fourteen different messages about whatever show it is) to remind myself of the time and place, not paw through my various handbags looking for some torn-up flier I was handed at a party three weeks earlier.

In marketing, it’s like…somebody starts doing something, and everybody just does it forever, whether it’s worth a damn or not.  These measures are not effective, and they are annoying, and they result in a huge build-up of worthless clutter in my purse.  Everybody, just stop it.

Another thing nobody agrees with me about – and I know with the economy in the shitter this is hugely optomistic of me – but can we just be done with change already?  It’s heavy and it’s dirty and it gets everywhere and it makes whatever else is in your purse smell like coins, and I amass pounds of it, and then when I try to actually use it up by counting out exact change when I buy something, it massively pisses off the cashier and everybody behind me.  The only thing you can really do with it is give it to homeless people, but then you have to juggle your bag and root around in it and shake it back in forth, all in a moving subway car, while you totter back and forth, and the homeless person politely waits and also totters back and forth, and everybody in the car stares at you and then you look like a real stingy asshole for not just giving the homeless person a dollar, especially after they stood there while you rooted through your purse for five minutes, and anyway, everybody (including the homeless person) knows you’re just trying to offload your obnoxious coins.  I hate small change, and I can see no good reason for it, and with the way prices are these days, why can’t things just be rounded up or down to the next stupid dollar?  At the very least, get rid of everything but quarters.

So, and but this is pretty funny.  It explains how to shut up a music geek at a party.  I used to kind of do this (make up a fake band) on occasion when some snobby guy at a party asked me what bands I like, but now I just never go to parties where I’m likely to run into any guys like that.  Or maybe it’s just that everyone suddenly realized it’s rude to grill strangers about their musical taste.

I have been so gobsmacked by this whole Palin thing that I’ve been completely unable to write anything about it; all I can do is splutter. I have many objections to Palin, but I suppose that if I am to articulate the one, basic thing that has so deeply angered me about the way in which she was presented to the American people, it’s the massively insulting suggestion that women who were excited about the idea of a Hillary Clinton presidency might be anything other than utterly dismayed by the idea of a Sarah Palin vice presidency (and very possibly, presidency).

I personally define feminism quite broadly, and while some readers of this blog will disagree, I think it is entirely possible for a person to be both a political conservative and a feminist (although I’m unlikely to agree with such a person on the particulars of women’s rights). And these people may very well be thrilled with Sarah Palin (although frankly, I think even they ought to see she is a poor candidate), because she represents (I guess?) their values and their interests. But she does not represent the values or interests of Hillary Clinton supporters, and she does not represent the values or interests of liberal feminists.

Feminism holds that what is between a person’s legs ought not to overrule, or in any way reflect on what is between a person’s ears.  Clearly, Sarah Palin has a neoconservative ideology firmly lodged between her ears, and my opinion about that is not the more favorable because of what she has between her legs.

As for the rest of what’s wrong with Palin, here’s what a lot of much smarter people than me have to say (sorry for the very lengthy quotes, but I don’t think anybody really clicks on the links):

Katha Pollitt:

. . . Palin, who went back to work when Trig was three days old, gets nothing but praise from Phyllis Schlafly, James Dobson and the folks at National Review, who usually blame all the ills of modern America on those neurotic, harried, selfish, frustrated, child-neglecting, husband-castrating working mothers. Even stranger, her five-months-pregnant 17-year-old, Bristol, gets nothing but compassion and respect from Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and others who have spent their careers slut-shaming teens for having sex–and blaming their parents for letting it happen.

If there were an Olympics for hypocrisy, the Republican Party would have more gold medals than Michael Phelps. And Palin would be wearing quite a few of them. It takes chutzpah for a mother to thrust her pregnant teen into the world’s harshest spotlight and then demand the world respect the girl’s privacy. But then it takes chutzpah to support criminalizing abortion and then praise Bristol’s “decision” to have the baby. The right to decide, and privacy, after all, are two of the things Palin wants to deny every other woman, and every other family, in America.

Cintra Wilson:

We’ve been shanghaied. This is sick. We need to slap the face of our bad frat-boy date and walk home from this drive-in movie. Sarah Palin may put out to be popular, but the rest of America’s women don’t need to do the same.

If not, what the hell? John McCain should go the whole Hugh Hefner route and have eight V.P.s that all look exactly like Sarah Palin.

It’s McCain’s world, girls: You’d just live in it.

Ann at Feministing:

. . . Bill Kristol was claiming McCain would pick Palin — and that would prove that Republicans are “much more open to strong women.” Frankly, that’s bullshit. Republicans are more open to a certain type of woman — one who is strongly against things like equal pay, universal health care, and reproductive freedom. In other words, the party is pro-woman-candidates, as long as they enact anti-woman policies.

Rebecca Traister:

In this “Handmaid’s Tale”-inflected universe, in which femininity is worshipped but females will be denied rights, CNBC pundit Donny Deutsch tells us that we’re witnessing “a new creation … of the feminist ideal,” the feminism being so ideal because instead of being voiced by hairy old bats with unattractive ideas about intellect and economy and politics and power, it’s now embodied by a woman who, according to Deutsch, does what Hillary Clinton did not: “put a skirt on.” “I want her watching my kids,” says Deutsch. “I want her laying next to me in bed.”

Welcome to 2008, the year a tough, wonky woman won a primary (lots of them, actually), an inspiring black man secured his party’s nomination for the presidency, and a television talking head felt free to opine that a woman is qualified for executive office because he wants to bed her and have her watch his kids! Stop the election; I want to get off.

Latoya at Feministe compares Palin to Rice:

You can hate someone’s policies and still defend them from ad hominem arguments. I hate when people say that Condoleezza Rice is a sellout and that she isn’t black. That’s a ridiculous assertion to make. However, that does not make Condoleezza Rice a civil rights leader just because she is black and in a position of power.

I hate when people say Sarah Palin is not a woman, or she is a tool of the patriarchy, or any of the other non policy related attacks I’ve seen leveled at her from all kinds of places. But that doesn’t mean you need to start sipping the “this is a victory for women” kool aid. It isn’t. Sarah Palin does not magically become a champion for all women, everywhere, just because she happens to be a woman in a position of power.

Courtney Martin in The American Prospect:

And, in perhaps the most offensive display of her “wimp factor” agenda, she attempted to discredit community organizing by feminizing it. She sarcastically told conventioneering Republicans (along with millions of Americans watching on television), “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.” It was an eerie echo of what oblivious men in positions of traditional power have been saying for centuries: that the work of community building — whether it be child-rearing, elder-caring, teaching, nursing, social work, or, yes, community organizing — isn’t really work at all. That, despite being the backbone of our economy and the heart of our civic life, it doesn’t count because it doesn’t involve power suits and bottom lines. What makes this ridicule of community-building even more ironic is that the GOP is simultaneously glorifying Palin’s role as caregiver of her own sprawling family.

(via Feministing)

Jessica at Feministing, on the various MSM journalists who leapt to praise Palin’s feminism:

Take Wall Street Journal reporter Naomi Schaefer Riley, who writes that progressives should rest easy about Palin’s candidacy because “most American evangelicals have wholeheartedly embraced the idea of women in the workplace.” A radical feminist sentiment if there ever was one! But perhaps one should take Riley with a grain of salt, considering she’s the same reporter who wrote that murdered NY college student Imette St. Guillen should have known better than to be out drinking at 3am. Victim-blamers aren’t exactly bastions of feminist thought.

Similarly, Bitch Ph.D. responds to the WSJ article on why feminists hate Palin:

[The argument] isn’t that Sarah Palin is “too good at having it all.” It’s that Sarah Palin has the same needs other women do, but that she refuses to support policies that would supply them to women who, unlike herself, don’t have large extended families, husbands with good-paying flexible work, jobs of their own that pay well and require very few hours, and lots and lots of money to pay for help if and when those other things aren’t enough.

On the other side, Camille Paglia, bless her, is predictably cuckoo for Palin:

Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.

So, okay, feminists (always excepting Paglia) aren’t wild for her on women’s issues.  But what about the rest of her positions?

Well, there are the scandals. That whole Troopergate thing:

Josh Marshall:

We rely on elected officials not to use the power of their office to pursue personal agendas or vendettas. It’s called an abuse of power. There is ample evidence that Palin used her power as governor to get her ex-brother-in-law fired. When his boss refused to fire him, she fired his boss. She first denied Monegan’s claims of pressure to fire Wooten and then had to amend her story when evidence proved otherwise. The available evidence now suggests that she 1) tried to have an ex-relative fired from his job for personal reasons, something that was clearly inappropriate, and perhaps illegal, though possibly understandable in human terms, 2) fired a state official for not himself acting inappropriately by firing the relative, 3) lied to the public about what happened and 4) continues to lie about what happened.

Also, see this update.

More here at Feministing.

…and the rape kit stuff:

Bitch, Ph.D.:

First, the story breaks that under Palin’s watch, Wasilla women who went to the police saying that they had been sexually assaulted by a man, were charged for the rape kit. In case anyone doesn’t know, a rape kit is an exam done for the purpose of collecting and preserving evidence–it’s not a medical procedure. And yet, despite the fact that it’s similar to collecting fingerprints, taking photos of a crime scene, or doing ballistics analysis, the city of Wasilla insisted on charging women, or their insurance companies, for the kit, rather than using city funds. As of today, neither McCain, Palin, nor anyone on either of their staff teams has commented on this story. What’s the problem-too ridiculous to dignify with a response? Hardly, especially when the former Governor, Tony Knowles, has acknowledged that Wasilla was the only town in Alaska doing it. Prompting the state legislature to pass a law forbidding them from doing so.

Yglesias on both issues.

…and TPM on earmarks.

Juan Cole, on Palin’s religion:

The most noxious belief that Palin shares with Muslim fundamentalists is her conviction that faith is not a private affair of individuals but rather a moral imperative that believers should import into statecraft wherever they have the opportunity to do so. That is the point of her pledge to shape the judiciary. Such a theocratic impulse is incompatible with the Founding Fathers’ commitment to tolerance and democracy, which is why they forbade the government to “establish” or officially support any particular religion or denomination.

Well, and but here’s Christopher Hitchens:

She has inarticulately said that her gubernatorial work would be hampered “if the people of Alaska’s heart isn’t right with god.” Her local shout-and-holler tabernacle apparently believes that Jews can be converted to Jesus and homosexuals can be “cured.” I cannot wait to see Obama and Biden explain how this isn’t the case or how it’s much worse than, and quite different from, Obama’s own raving and ranting pastor in Chicago or Biden’s lifelong allegiance to the most anti-”choice” church on the planet. The difference, if there is one, is that Palin is probably sincere whereas the Democratic team is almost certainly hypocritical. The same is true of the boring contest over who can be the most populist, and of the positively sinister race to see who can be the most demagogically anti-Washington. With this kind of immaturity right across both tickets, it’s insulting to be asked to decide on the basis of experience, let alone “readiness.”

As to the actual issues, there are no pithy quotes to extract, plus she hasn’t done that much yet:

Many liberals are concerned about picking on Palin the person as opposed to attacking Palin the politician. One of the problems with Palin is that her executive resume is so thin there isn’t a whole lot to critique.

…but if you’re interested, here’s a summary of Palin’s views at Firedoglake, which comes to the conclusion that:

Underneath her attractive and youthful exterior, Sarah Palin is no different from the old white guys running the Republican Party. She doesn’t care about good government, she doesn’t believe in science, she wants everyone to live in accordance with her Old Testament Christian values. Basically, she’s Tom Coburn with boobs.

And finally, and most substantively, Lindsay Beyerstein summarizes an in-depth NYT article on everything Palin.

__

In conclusion, I cannot get excited about a woman who plans to use the power she has attained to make it more difficult for other women to follow in her footsteps.  Beyond women’s rights (which is certainly a significant enough issue to stand all on its own, half the population being women and all), I am of course uninterested in a candidate who fully intends to take this country further in a direction which I believe is bad for all of us.

At the end of the day, I guess that’s all I really need to say.

(If you haven’t already seen the Fey & Poehler SNL bit, click here and watch it nowrightnow.)

Those who remove sta-
-ple removers from copy
rooms should be shot dead.

I have mentioned on this blog before that I am a compulsive eater.  One easy way I have found to manage my weight is never to buy and bring home more than I plan to eat at any one sitting.  While this is a more expensive way to eat, it didn’t used to be that unreasonable.  You could generally eat for $5, and there were any number of $.99 snack food items in any drugstore or minimart you happened to pass.

Now, I understand that everything is more expensive now.  I don’t like it, but I am beginning to accept it.  What I don’t understand, however, is why there don’t seem to be single-serve portions of anything anymore anywhere.  I regularly find myself with five minutes to spare before work running into every damn drugstore all up and down the snack aisles, and there are just giant bags of chips, huge cans of nuts, jumbo pouches of trail mix.  What is this?  I don’t want seven servings of a snack.  If I take seven servings of a snack into the office, I will be eating seven servings of a snack.

The only single-serve portions available anywhere now, however, are those 100-calorie pack things, which are just totally worthless.  One hundred calories on an empty stomach just prods it enough to make it furious – you’re better off not eating.  I operate from a continuous base of low-level hunger, and when that hunger kicks from low- into high-level, I want to have just enough food in my purse to knock it back a little.  If I have more than that, I’m going to eat until I’m actually really full, and then I’m going to eat whatever small amount is left after that, because there’s not that much left and I may as well finish it.  And then I’m also still going to eat dinner three hours later anyway, even though I’m totally full, because I was so looking forward to dinner that I can’t bear the disappointment of just going straight from the office to whatever I’m working on that evening without my dinner break.  And there you have it – the Duane Read has just ruined my whole day just because it’s no longer stocking single-serving bags of nuts.

I have this dream that there would be a wonderful grocery store that caters to people like me.  This grocery store would have nothing but inexpensive, single-serving portions of all different kinds of food, and for an added bonus, maybe it could even be healthy food.  And a wide variety.

Well, actually, there is such a place.  It’s called Trader Joe’s, and there’s only one, and if you want to go there, you have to fight your way through a crowd of thousands and wait online for upwards of 45 minutes.  Wouldn’t you think, every other retailer in Manhattan, that, given the immense popularity of TJ’s, there might just be a market there that could stand to be capitalized on???

Single-servings of portable, precooked food items for $5-$6.50 a pop!!  And single-serve snacks for under $2!!!  Available at a great number of convenient locations throughout the five boroughs!!!!

Somebody cater to my specific need, damn it!

–

Oh, and also, if you don’t already read Fafblog, this Sarah Palin post is a great time to start:

As a Jesus-fearing moose-hunting hockey-mom mother of five who hunts moose for Jesus, Sarah Palin is kin to the wild outdoors and appreciates its bountiful splendor as she is gunning it down from her airplane. Sarah Palin understands that America is dangerously addicted to oil, and that the only cure is more oil. . . . Sarah Palin may not know if global warming is man-made. She may not know if global warming is real. She may not know what global warming is. But if global warming is caused by abortions, Sarah Palin will fight it – by banning abortion, just in case the first couple times didn’t take.

Go, read all of it, and then read the entire rest of Fafblog, because it never fails to kick ass.

Crap, I forgot to post all week again.  I keep intending to go back to posting regularly, and I keep not doing it, and I haven’t been able to put my finger on why.  Blogging just has not been as much fun for me lately.  Then, I read this post, and I realized that it perfectly describes how I’ve been feeling.

If you get too invested in things, there’s a point where ‘everyone’s stupid and I think it’s hilarious’ starts to become ‘everyone’s stupid and it MAKES ME FUCKING INSANE!!!!’  And I think I passed that point some time ago.  I keep drafting amusing little rants only to have them turn into vitriolic endless rants, and at some point during their composition, I leave off typing and begin circling my desk, flapping my hands around and shrieking to myself.

I grew up in the South, where nice people consider public displays of enthusiasm unseemly.  It’s understood that one has one’s political opinions, but to get yourself worked up about it is to show a level of involvement with life outside your immediate sphere that reflects poorly on your ability to manage your own affairs.  Likewise, while it’s expected that everyone be religious (in a general way), those who feel sufficiently possessed with the spirit as to go around talking about God all the time and wearing Jesus accessories are at best tacky, and possibly a little touched.  Nobody wants to be without money, but to admit of difficulties concerning it is to drop down a class level – money should simply flow, unseen and unremarked upon, into one’s coffers, as gently and steadily as rain from heaven.

All of this is to say that my blatant interest in this year’s primaries is making it difficult for me to maintain a cool, ironic detachment.  What’s needed is some perspective:

The two parties are, at heart, not very different from each other.  Neither will totally save us, or utterly damn us.  My complete lack of active (or financial) involvement in anything even remotely concerning politics (or other people, or life outside my apartment) makes any pretense of actual concern about the world in general or this country in particular hypocritical beyond all belief.  My own personal life will be unlikely to change in any significant way as a result of anything short of an apocalyptic disaster, or a profound personal attitude adjustment (which are both equally unlikely).  People are stupid, especially me, and it is hilarious.  Ten people read this blog on a good day.  I have many friends who are actually out there working real, positive changes in the world, rather than just sitting around bitching all the time.  And sometimes, it’s a blessing when the internet goes out.

To sum up:  Oh, wait, I forgot – I don’t care again!

There’s been a lot of buzz lately about the possibility (distant and remote) of making Manhattan a pedestrian-only borough.  I agree that this should absolutely happen, and that it makes no sense for people to be driving here (spare me the thing about trucks making deliveries – donkeys work well enough for many pedestrian-only villages atop mountains, and anyway, it’s too expensive to buy things in Manhattan and everyone ought to brown-bag from Brooklyn and Jersey and leave the city itself as one big sort of park, with all last-minute food needs being satisfied by cart vendors; not to mention that if the retail stores couldn’t get their shipments in, tourism would decline by half, and it’s not like anything currently for sale in NYC can’t just be bought on Amazon).  And I know a brilliant way to bring this desired goal about immediately, without petitions or government action or any real process at all:

All the people of New York should just start walking in the streets en masse, so that they become utterly untraversable for vehicles.  Bam!  Pedestrian-only borough.   And we’d all have an inch more elbow-room . . . at least until the next yearly influx of 20,000 generic white kids with new BFAs who all just know in their hearts that God intended for them to be a **STAR** arrive, and everybody goes back to stepping on each other’s heels all day.

Ali Smith’s The Accidental has a freaking form poem flight thing in the middle of it. No book ever has the right to priss about being cute with the layout of text on page – I hate that. If there were a gimmicky little concrete poem in the middle of the greatest book ever written, I’d detest it. Short sentences, run-ons, overlapping dialogue – fine. I love me some DFW footnotes. But any actual text effects belong on motivational posters or in powerpoint presentations, not in the middle of a novel I am trying to read. I can’t stand gimmicks.

I took a poetry class in college wherein the professor went on and on about the way poems looked on the page, the shape of the thing. What were we, calligraphers? If you have something to say and you’re a painter, show it to me visually. But if you’re a writer, freaking write it! Don’t put a precious little fucking flipbook in the middle of your novel, don’t put one word on each page for a time, don’t make the paragraph look like a cat when you turn the book to the side. How trite and cute can you be? I can’t believe real critics have any patience for this kind of nonsense, but sickeningly, it seems to be increasing every year. What’s next? Music boxes that play when you flip the pages? A small hologram? A scavenger hunt? A free toy in a hollowed-out space in the middle? A plush bunny on the cover with a squeak in its tail? Come the fuck on! If you can’t blow my mind with your prose, you won’t make up for it in doodles. And the hell with you for wasting my time.

And yes, I liked House of Leaves (although I don’t consider it revelatory or anything), but it is the exception that proves the rule. And I realize graphic novels are growing in importance and popularity, and eventually there might be bleedover and to enforce a stern boundary between novel-novels and graphic-novels will be pointlessly rigid and fusty. But I’ll adjust my ideas about that when I see it. Meanwhile, I don’t want to read the free verse horridness painters from a decade back were fond of scrawling across their canvasses in metallic gold paint pens, and likewise, I don’t want a toy or a bauble in text form from a writer.

And lest I be misunderstood, my issue with all this is not its novelty, but its meaninglessness.

Ahem. Even beyond the alienating concrete poem bit of stuff in the middle of The Accidental, I didn’t particularly care for the book. I just felt it tread over a lot of really familiar territory without adding anything much. I didn’t take away any truth or insight into the human condition. But apparently, people loved this book. It was short-listed for the Booker and had mostly good reviews.

I did really enjoy the passages in Astrid’s point of view, the family’s 12-year-old girl. The family is staying in a rental house, and at the beginning of the novel, Astrid spends a lot of time trying not to touch any of the surfaces of the house, or anything in it, because she’s disgusted by the idea of all the people who have used the house before them. She arranges a sheet over the bed before lounging on it, she tears bread from the middle of a loaf rather than use a knife and so forth. I can attest to the accuracy of this portrayal; I spent a ton of time in childhood trying not to touch anything. And actually, I never really grew out of it. Even as I backpacked across Asia, I had my rituals.

I was talking to a friend about this the other day. My friend was saying something about hygienic restaurant conditions, or something to do with food. And I said that I have no squeamishness about food and don’t really stress about the conditions in which it was prepared, because, even though I know that people not washing their hands and then handling food transfers diarrhea around (hence traveler’s tummy), and even though that’s disgusting if you actually think about it…well, really, all that happens is you maybe get a little sick for a day.

I said that I really have more worries in the tactile realm – that I don’t like to touch surfaces.

And then I suddenly realized how freaking crazy that is. I mean, I always knew that my obsession over not touching anything wasn’t rooted in any actual germaphobia, and had no real base at all – that it was rather just a general feeling of squirmy discomfort. It’s just that some things you have to touch are gross, the way you find some foods gross – it’s not that you think they’re dangerous; it’s just that you don’t like them. But I never thought about how nuts it is to put any old thing inside my body, but obsess about things touching the outside of my skin. Not to put too fine a point on it, but apparently, I would rather eat feces than sit in them.

Not that the realization did away with my baseless phobia, but I thought it was worth remarking on.

Jose Saramago’s The Double did not annoy me with any gimmicks, and I did walk away from it with, I felt, greater insight into the human condition. It’s commonly advised that, if you’re not “into” a novel by 100 pages in, you should put it down and start another. I have read quite a few books, however, where I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not until I finished the very last page. Perhaps these are books that don’t so much reflect how I see the world, as explain in a complete and compelling way how the world appears to someone else (the author). So, while I don’t hook into them immediately, by the time I come to the end, I feel satisfied. The Double is one of those books for me. And the same books that I can’t figure out if I like them or not until I finish the last words are generally those about which I cannot articulate what I liked, so I have nothing else to say about this.

Bitch Ph.D. explains The Bechdel Rule:

The rule is that movies should have 1) at least two women, 2) who talk to each other, 3) about something other than a man.

. . . Few movies pass the Bechdel test–most of the dialogue happens between men, or between men and one woman. Most movies who have extended conversations between women tend to be under the umbrella of “chick flicks,” or the newly-minted term, “RomComs.” But even those movies don’t pass the Bechdel test; not only are the conversations about men, the movies are driven by what men do or don’t do, what they want or don’t want, even when all the principal characters are women.

Movies, yes, and television, and this rule should also really be applied to plays. I mean, it is just incredible how few women are in anything, and how little they do when they’re there. What they mostly do is (a) be all about the men in the thing, and (b) be the one to blame for everything that goes wrong. Women are almost always the “out” for why there’s a problem – it’s the mom’s fault because she tries to smother everyone because she’s timid, controlling and Puritanical. Or, it’s the girlfriend’s fault because she tries to smother her boyfriend because she’s controlling, domineering, bitchy and usually whorish. Or whatever. When the question is, what’s wrong with this swell male protagonist’s life, the answer is almost always a hysterical, shrewish, controlling woman.

The amazing thing is, you can point this out to men who write or do comedy, and they’ll agree with you and talk about how they are very careful not to do that, and really enjoy writing strong, sympathetic female characters, and then you read their stuff…and the women are all hysterical, shrewish, controlling bitches (I’m sure that the writers of Everybody Loves Raymond fully believe that the characters of Deborah and Marie are sympathetic, whereas to me, that show is a perfect example, among many, of women being horrid, unreasonable, humorless nags for no reason).

Obviously, until women start writing everything, we’re going to be stuck playing unreasonable, stupid, evil bitches on the one hand, or boring, sweet, ever-affectionate straight-men on the other.

I’ve been watching DVDs of ‘It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia’ lately (which is hilarious), and I just watched a special features short where the cast was talking about casting Kaitlin Olson as Sweet D, and what they mostly talk about is how these three guys had written this show, and all the one female character did in it was be like, ‘You guys!’ all the time. And they didn’t like that, and Olson wouldn’t take the part if it was like that. It took them awhile to convince her to take the job. On her final audition, she read a hilarious scene and decided to do it, because she had so much fun at that audition. Except, she found out at the bar later that the scene was actually between two of the male characters – they were all like, ‘oh, well, yeah, we didn’t have anything interesting written for Sweet D to audition you with, so we had you read a guy part. But you won’t be doing that in the actual show.’

Eventually, however, they did make an effort to write that part in a more comedic way – in large part, I’m sure, because it’s obvious Olson is not at all afraid to say what she thinks about things, and she seems to flat out refuse to be pushed into a boring, supporting role, which is awesome. She’s one of my heroes now.

Women are used to being interested in movies, books, plays and so forth that are by men, starring men and all about men. I love all kinds of culture that’s aimed at men and meant to appeal to them. All women can get into dude-flicks or dude-lit (oops, there’s no equivalent condescending term to use), and even patiently overlook the blatant misogyny it almost always contains. But just hint to a guy that he try watching, reading or enjoying anything at all that is written by, staring and/or primarily about women (whether it’s truly silly and superficial on its own merits, or merely automatically dismissed as silly just because it’s concerned with women), and he’ll immediately dismiss it on all levels and call you a fool for liking it yourself.

Because women are niche. Even though we constitute the majority of the population.

–

Oh, and while I’m on this subject Estelle Getty has died.  Here’s Feministe on Golden Girls:

Where else have you seen a popular sitcom (or any show) that revolves around women who actually kind of look like average women, who aren’t young and fabulous and beautiful, who have interests other than finding male companionship, who put their female friendships first, and who have sex after menopause? More to the point, where can you find a TV show or movie that revolves around women like that, and those women aren’t the butt of the joke?

It’s certainly a rarity, and Golden Girls remains a bright spot in TV history. Estelle Getty was a class act.

Get disappointed by someone new, indeed. Everyone’s talking about Obama and FISA. TPM has a good summary of his statements on the matter, and how his position has changed:

Viewing his statements, it’s striking how forcefully he argued in the past that the choice between civil liberties and safety is a false one.

Let the disillusionment begin.

–

Here, the women of Slate discuss the American Girls line of dolls. The general opinion seems to be that the dolls, while promoting consumerism, are at least an improvement on Barbies and other bubble-headed bimbo lines, what with the AG’s emphasis on historical context and self-sufficient and adventurous characters.

Well! Trust me to crap all over that! Frankly, I think anybody who buys their kid a $90 doll ought to be ashamed of themselves. If that’s too rigid an opinion, I’m sorry, but I can’t fathom how anyone could argue it’s a positive thing to purchase this hugely overpriced luxury line of dolls and doll-related items for their kid. I loved looking at the AG catalog when I was little – I wore holes in it. But even back then, I saved my breath about the possibility of actually getting one. My parents bought me all kinds of dolls and undoubtedly spoiled me toy-wise, but even if we had been billionaires, I doubt they’d have entertained the idea of spending $90 on such a thing.

To be fair, my opinion about the AG dolls is entirely colored by a specific episode in my childhood that left me with a very bad impression of both the dolls and the families who value them. I went to an elementary school in a hugely wealthy neighborhood, and in third grade, one of the most well-off girls in my class invited everyone to her birthday party. The party was at the Sequoyah Hills Country Club, and it was an American Girls doll party. Everyone was to bring their American Girls doll. This ignoring the fact that most kids did not, of course, own an American Girls doll. I brought my little baby doll that probably cost around $12, and I went with my best friend, who was one of two black kids in my grade. I mention this because at the time (and possibly still, for all I know) the Sequoyah Hills Country Club, in the grand tradition of country clubs everywhere, did not offer membership to black people. It was, however, staffed by them.

The party had big tables for the kids, and little tables for the dolls. The table settings matched – there were big dishes, and matching doll dishes. There was real-people food, and matching fake doll food. There were big-girl party favors, and matching tiny doll party favors. The girl hosting the party wore a sailor suit that matched her Samantha doll’s sailor suit. I wasn’t really friends with anybody at the party, other than my best friend. And I don’t remember much about it, other than that the (exclusively black) men in butler outfits waiting on us were required to go around and pour air tea for the dolls.

I shit you not.

You know, to each their own and all that, but personally, I don’t want to have anything to do with anybody who is even remotely a part of the world I observed that day. Because of this experience, the AG dolls have become a sort of symbol of extravagance and snobbery to me, and as a result, I don’t think much of them, or mothers who think they’re precious (I’m disappointed Michelle Obama is one of them). Samantha may be promoting a more positive message than Barbie, but it’s entirely possible the little girl who threw that party resembles nobody so much as Barbie in her adulthood. The “message” is lost (because the message is beside the point); the consumerism, however, finds its intended audience.

Massively overpriced consumer items have one purpose, and one purpose only – to create and encourage desire and greed (in part by establishing themselves as status symbols: the enjoyment of having a $90 doll depends upon other girls having $12 ones – how else do you know yours is worth $90?), and to profit from it. Period. I don’t care if the dolls are a line of miniature Susan B. Anthonys and Betty Friedans – there is nothing progressively feminist about encouraging your daughter’s desire for a ridiculously high-priced doll and its accompanying outfits, accessories and furnitures.

Rawr! My daughter will have a flour sack with a face drawn on it for a doll, and she’ll damn well like it!

I’m already bored of Wall-E. I haven’t seen it. I haven’t really heard all that much about it. I’ve seen, I think, one preview. I’ve listened to everybody I’ve talked to in the last couple of weeks assert that it’s really very good, and that I ought to see it right away. And I’ve seen headlines of articles and blog posts about it on every site I visit – I haven’t even read the articles; I’ve just seen the headlines.

And I’m already sick of it. This is what happens to me all the time with whatever culture thing everybody goes nuts for. It’s not that I don’t want to see it, or that I wouldn’t like it on its merits. I’m sure it’s great, and I’m sure I’d love it. But I probably won’t see it, just like I never ended up seeing Juno or, well, really any movie, honestly. I think in the last year, I saw The Orphanage and Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day (both with other people, after all the movies on offer went through the rigorous screening process that is everybody else’s tastes and what they’ve already seen, so you end up left with something random, but by and large unobjectionable like The Orphanage or Miss Pettigrew), and that’s it.

It’s just that, within five minutes of a film being released, it’s freaking everywhere, and I feel like I’ve seen it, not just once, but over and over and over again.

And furthermore, I guess that some people are glad for the next cool thing, but personally (and I know I’m not the only one), I’m always drowning under a cultural backlog of things that I must absolutely see, read, experience, be up on, and whenever someone tells me that I simply must drop everything and see this thing RIGHT NOW, it feels downright rude. I have enough culture to be wading through! I don’t need somebody barging into my little culture-absorber’s library carrel and screaming, “Drop everything! We’re all seeing a movie about a robot RIGHT THIS MINUTE!” What the crap? I’m still working on seeing Juno! Are we done with that already? I still haven’t seen The Godfather. Or Say Anything. Or the first Batman – the one with Christian Bale, not the twelve Batmans before that. And I never saw Brokeback Mountain, either. Not to mention there are oodles of You-Tube videos people simply won’t speak to me until I watch now right now. So, you know what, Wall-E might not get watched right this damn minute, and he’ll just have to wait his turn, won’t he?

I’m feeling stressed just thinking about it. I realize that some people think that films and books and web bits and stand-up comics are things to be enjoyed recreationally, as they come, and need not be amassed like plunder in the various stockpiles of one’s brain. I realize that for some people, word of a new cultural sensation they’d not heard of before is a treat, not a sign of personal failure. But I think these people are of a different species from me entirely.

These are the type of people who say things like, “I’m looking for a good book to read.” A statement which I cannot believe anyone could ever utter in all sincerity. Who are these people?

Here, odd, disinterested space-people: here is my 58-page single-spaced insane book list I’ve been adding to since I was twelve years old, with titles scribbled all up and down the margins and extra Post-It notes covered in chicken scratch stuck on all over. Close your eyes and point to one. You’re welcome.

Meanwhile, I’m off to see Wall-E. I mean, The Dark Knight. I mean, STOP MAKING MUST-SEE MOVIES FOR A LITTLE WHILE, WON’T YOU?

–

Speaking of glut, the 4th of July is the day for one of America’s greatest annual events: Nathan’s Famous 4th of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest, the competitive eating event of the year. I’ve mentioned my obsession with competitive eating several times on this blog, and all the heavies will be at Nathan’s this year: Kobayashi, Joey Chestnut, and my personal favorite, Sonya ‘The Black Widow’ Thomas. Thomas is a 100-lb., 5′5″ Korean woman who has consistently demonstrated an astounding ability to put away large amounts of food:

She swallowed the egg. Then she swallowed 64 more in six minutes and 40 seconds. She could have eaten more but the organizers ran out of eggs. . . . “Eggs are easy to eat,” Thomas explains. “I could eat 80 or 90.”

(My obsession with all this, however, is not so unreasonable that I would actually go down to Coney Island this morning and experience first-hand the crush of humanity crowding around the Nathan’s Famous stand there.)

Speaking of impressive athletes, click here to marvel at the mind-blowing physique of Dara Torres, 41-year-old swimmer who’s attempting to qualify for the 50-meter freestyle in the Olympics this year. If I were to pick a role-model between the two, I think eating 64 eggs in 6 minutes is a slightly more reachable goal for me than looking like Ms. Torres when I’m 40.

It’s probably a good thing all of my goals are in culture consumption.

I stopped reading the Times columnists back when the website started charging for that content, and, since I didn’t miss them at all, I haven’t gone back to reading them.  So, granted, I haven’t read any of the columnists in quite some time, but based on my recollections of when I read them daily (before Kristol was hired, but then, I’m familiar with him), I mostly agree with this assessment:

Unlike David Brooks, another Times conservative, Kristol gives the reader nothing to chew over. Brooks is smart — and usually wrong. But he makes me think and sometimes he gets it just right much as George Will does. One of Kristol’s problems is that he clearly doesn’t believe half the things he writes. . . . He has to pretend he cares about choice and low taxes because he is playing at being a conservative. All that pretending produces seriously bad columns, inept columns. Krauthammer’s columns are crazy but his writing is fine because all the hate energizes him. He loves hating and it shows! Kristol isn’t even a good hater.

I can enjoy reading people with whom I entirely disagree, if they write well and with conviction.  I also adore a good, witty, ranting hater, even if he’s hating on the convictions I hold most dear.  (Incidentally, I have next to no patience for conspiracy theories of any kind, but the closest I come to actually holding one is I kind of think the Times hired Maureen Dowd on purpose to make women look stupid.  Really, is there any other explanation for her?  [And the conspicuous continuing absence of any other women on the Op-Ed page?])

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Speaking of paying for content, I can’t access this New Criterion article without subscribing, but I want to quote the intro:

Sometimes I forget and ask for Tall, Grande, or Venti, but usually I ask, defiantly but with some embarrassment, for small, medium, or large, because I resent being forced into a greater intimacy than I desire with the Starbucks corporate culture. I want to be a customer, not a member of the Starbucks Club who validates his membership along with his entry on the premises by speaking the Starbucks idiolect.

I too resent and avoid the Starbucks pseudo-Italian nomenclature, because using it makes me feel like a tool.  I realize that blogging about my refusal to use it makes me even more of a tool, but I can’t help myself.  Seriously, I don’t understand the whole ‘foreign words sure are classy’ marketing trend to begin with.  Many Americans (including me) only speak English, which is embarrassing enough (especially because they then have the nerve to bitch like all Dickens when somebody else can’t speak it to them), but if that’s the case, we should all just fess up to it.  It’s stupid to try to sprinkle foreign terms we don’t understand and can’t pronounce into our commercial transactions, because the unfamiliar sounds expensive (or authentic, which means authentically expensive).

–

Vogue Italia has realized black women can objectify themselves and glamorize greed just as well as white women:

Having worked at one time with nearly all the models he chose for the black issue — Iman, [Naomi] Campbell, Tyra Banks, Jourdan Dunn, [Liya] Kebede, [Alek] Wek, Pat Cleveland, Karen Alexander — [photographer Steven] Meisel had his own feelings. “I thought, it’s ridiculous, this discrimination,” said Mr. Meisel, speaking by phone from his home in Los Angeles. “It’s so crazy to live in such a narrow, narrow place. Age, weight, sexuality, race — every kind of prejudice.”

(via Kottke)

Hooray for equality.  Meanwhile:

Over at Supreme Dicta there is an amusing, if disturbing, report by a grader for the Advanced Placement exam in US Government of some of the more comical statements made in response to an essay question about the 15th Amendment. . . . such as the statement that: “Strom Thurman [sic] was the first black man in Congress”. . .

Really, I think that’s how Strom ought to be remembered.

–

Yesterday President Bush told President Arroyo that her people sure make good kitchen workers:

I want to tell you how proud I am to be the President of a nation that — in which there’s a lot of Philippine-Americans. They love America and they love their heritage. And I reminded the President that I am reminded of the great talent of the — of our Philippine-Americans when I eat dinner at the White House. (Laughter.)

Meanwhile, Jim Comey explains why he wasn’t quite sure warrantless wiretapping wasn’t legal:

Well, I suppose there’s an argument — as I said, I’m not a presidential scholar — that because the head of the executive branch determined that it was appropriate to do, that that meant for purposes of those in the executive branch it was legal.

(both via Firedoglake)

On McCain’s foreign policy credibility, Representative Brad Miller writes that no President truly knows and understands another country, and what we really ought to evaluate is how willing a candidate is to listen to the people who do:

After World War II, governments that we thought were stable, governments headed by leaders we found impressive for their western qualities, repeatedly fell to revolutions or coups. To avoid unpleasant surprises, we developed expertise in the State Department and our intelligence agencies to understand other nations. We employed analysts who have lived in different nations and have friends who live there still, speak the language fluently, read the newspapers, watch the television, respect the religion, eat the food, and listen to the music. Our analysts stay in touch with the Americans at universities and in business who travel frequently in those countries and know people there.

With the exception of environmental scientists, no one in the federal government has had less to say about our government’s policies in the last seven years than those analysts. . . . The Bush Administration had open scorn for the analysts who argued that Iraq was an intensely nationalistic society that would resent a foreign army on their soil, and that it would be difficult to establish a government that Iraqis would accept as legitimate.

–

I don’t know why I’m suddenly interested in Amtrak:

The number of passengers traveling by train in the US rose significantly in May. Unfortunately, Amtrak is reaching full capacity with no real way to increase the number of trains or routes at its disposal for several years.

I guess just because I really think the age of the personal car is going to eventually end, and I’m curious about how our lives will change when that happens.  I have not had a car since college – I’ve lived in Chicago, and now New York, pretty much the only places in America where you can reasonably live without a vehicle – and honestly, the necessity of getting a car is one huge barrier to my moving elsewhere.  I don’t want to buy one, I don’t want to pay to gas and maintain it, and I don’t want the responsibility of driving.

I wonder:  if public transport becomes more widespread, will inexpensive storage-locker facilities suddenly spring up in all manner of places?  Because that would be good.

I am so very white that when I walk around showing skin in a blazingly sunny area, like the beach, total strangers have at times expressed concern for my welfare. I look like walking kindling. I am constantly worrying about skin cancer, squinting at my moles and wondering if they’ve shifted or expanded slightly since yesterday, and so this was great news to find on my birthday:

Cassian Yee at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle extracted immune cells from the patient and found that a small proportion of them, called CD4 T cells, naturally attacked a protein found on nearly three-quarters of the cancer cells. Using cloning techniques, Yee’s team replicated these cells until they had more than 5bn of them. When the cells were injected into the patient they immediately began attacking the cancer. Intriguingly, the patient’s immune system gradually began a wider offensive, attacking all the cancer cells in the body, according to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine. Two months later medical scans failed to pick up any signs of cancer in the patient.

(via TMN)

And even better, turns out that Bobby Jindal, a possible McCain VP choice, can cure skin cancer with his mind:

Jindal claims that the rite freed his friend Susan of the demon and may even have cured her skin cancer.

I guess I can stop bothering with sunscreen altogether.

–

I’m sorry, I know I touched on this before, but I just have to say it again with more emphasis, because damn near every article I’m looking at today is based around some informal or vague ‘polls’ of voters talking about whether or not they’ll vote for who, and why, and what lost them, and these statements are taken as fact, and I just want to exclaim one more time for the people in the back that people’s answers to any questions posed to them ever are completely meaningless. People LIE. All the time. And not just to other people, but to themselves.

Especially when it comes to voting preferences – most people don’t want to think of themselves as straight ticket voters. They want to think they take each candidate on the strength of that candidate’s platform. But really, who over the age of 23 truly does an honest, fresh reevaluation of their entire world view with each election? Come on. You think what you think for the reasons you think it. I’m not saying that no one ever changes their mind over time (I’ve done a 180 since college, politics-wise), but you certainly can’t just wipe your brain every four years.

When someone says, ‘I don’t like McCain/Obama because [insert vague and personal objection],’ I think they almost always mean ‘I don’t like McCain/Obama because I’m liberal/conservative, but I don’t know how to cram my entire political perspective into a single thought.’ Or, ‘I haven’t thought much about this, but I don’t want to sound stupid in front of myself.’ Or, ‘I freaking hate uppity black guys, but I’ll be damned if I’ll admit that to myself, because I’d rather believe I’m a fair, cool-headed guy who just thinks there’s something shady about that Obama fellow.’

When someone says, ‘I’m voting for McCain, because I think Hillary got a raw deal,’ what they might really mean is, ‘Of course, I’ve never actually made it to the polling station in my entire life, but this year I’m determined to vote, and when I get there, that’s what I’m going to do, unless I change my mind again, or stay out late the night before.’

I sometimes tell strangers that I’m a diplomat. (Psst – I’m totally not a diplomat!!)

–

And here’s an opinion about the many people who ‘just don’t like that wife of his‘:

The Right seems to think that every educated and financially successful Black American (and/or woman, for that matter) should simply walk around thanking White folks, and saying “What, me worry?”

People’s extreme dislike of Michelle Obama has really floored me. I mean, the woman has done everything right – she’s successful in her career, active in her community, she’s smart, she’s confident, she’s a committed wife and mother with a strong marriage, she’s attractive and she made her own money…and yet somehow, it’s still not good enough.

I guess because what she’s supposed to say is: ‘I achieved, and so everybody else can, too, if they’ll just sack up and stop whining.’

And instead, she says: ‘I achieved, but that doesn’t mean that other people in my situation aren’t severely and unfairly hindered by disadvantages and prejudice.’

Which is anti-American.

–

God, I’m an opinionated little bugger today, aren’t I? Maybe because I’m 27 now, and thus know it all.

–

If the world is indeed made of math, there go all my chances of ever understanding any of it:

According to Tegmark, “there is only mathematics; that is all that exists.” In his theory, the mathematical universe hypothesis, he updates quantum physics and cosmology with the concept of many parallel universes inhabiting multiple levels of space and time. By posing his hypothesis at the crossroads of philosophy and physics, Tegmark is harking back to the ancient Greeks with the oldest of the old questions: What is real?

Also, this:

European researchers said on Monday they discovered a batch of three “super-Earths” orbiting a nearby star, and two other solar systems with small planets as well.

(both via TMN)

–

The perfect way to bite it? Laughing at one of your own jokes:

Chrysippus (280-207BC), Perhaps the greatest of the Stoics. . . . after an ass had eaten his figs, he cried out to an old woman, “Now give the ass a drink of pure wine to wash down the figs”. Thereupon, he laughed so heartily that he died.

(via Unfogged)

Just a quick post to say that “People I Am Sick Of Hearing About,” originally posted on this blog awhile back, is published in the new issue of Ducts.org.  Check it out!