Tag Archives: society

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Cracked.com, You Did It Again

Okay, I have a reason for not posting Tuesday, a really good reason actually. I had a strange and short bout of food poisoning Monday night and early Tuesday. At one point on Monday night, I was leaning on the bathroom wall crying and falling asleep. Sexy, I know. So I was asleep almost all of Tuesday day, until I realized I wasn’t going to die Tuesday evening. YaY for not dying.

I had no idea what I was going to write today until Sara linked a Cracked.com article. This one was as mortally offensive as the first one I wrote about, I don’t think anyway. I do have delayed rage reactions sometimes. It really did focus in somethings that have been floating in my head, but I have been hesitant to write about. Screw it, I talked about food poisoning, dating is far less icky.

four douchebags in a row

Unless I was dating one of these dudes. Dating these guys is ickier than food poison any day.

The idea of playing hard to get pisses me all the way off. I agree with Gladstone here on this.

You know what most of the precepts of modern dating pisses me the fuck off. I know, I know, I don’t have the success rating to warrant having any sort of viable opinion, but honestly, I am pretty okay with being single. I would rather live a battery powered love life than do a lot of the bullshit that goes with the dating dances. I’m not talking about shaving and high heels, I am talking about the games.

Dating for normal people is like urban-fucking-warfare. There are rules and tactics and weapons. Woman huddle together and have strategy meetings and try to figure out the psychology of the enemy (the guys they are dating).

Hard to get can kiss my ass. I know I am “blessed” with traits that make it hard for me in the romance department. I have an … impressive… stature. I am loud, opinionated, smart, funny, and apparently possess intimidating confidence. (My own father told me that my confidence intimidates people, after he asked me if I didn’t scare away the guy I am dating after the first date. I think he was joking about the scaring away part. Probably.) I have come to realize that these things are not always bonuses. So, what am I supposed to do?  Pretend I am not these things until a man is comfortable enough to “overlook” these qualities in me. Okay, yeah, fuck that.

I am flawed, crazy,emotional, and weird, but I am also amazing. If someone else can’t handle it, then they are not right for me. I am a bit of an expert on trying to fit myself into a shape that would work with someone not right for me, and I know it never works. I always end up losing bits of myself in the process.

I don’t believe in playing it cool. If I like someone, I want to be able to tell them. I’m not saying I think it is a good idea to gush to a man how much you want to have their babies after the first date. My guess is that emotion is something you should examine awhile before sharing, but if I feel a real connection with someone, I am going to tell them. I would want them to do the same with me. It helps calm insecurities that would be normal on both sides.

Also, societal pressure about sex is pissing me off. I don’t know how much men feel but women have it from all sides and it is crazy. We are bombarded with all of these messages from everywhere with what we do with our ladybits. If we give it up too soon, we are giving away a valuable chip, but if we don’t give it up quickly enough either the guy will get frustrated and go find an easier mark, or we are letting down our feminist sisters by caving to patriarchal chastity demands.

Straight up. Do what feels most comfortable to you. Fuck societal pressures. If you want to sleep with a guy on the first date, do it. If he thinks you are a slut, then he is a juice noodle that you don’t need. If people tell you that you are trading away a chip (Kathleen gave me this brilliant analogy, she has some amazing thoughts on this I wish she would write down and publish) and leaving him with nothing else to look forward to, then point out to them he can look forward to more sex with you.

I am on the other end of the spectrum, I am a snail’s pace sort of gal. I can’t separate sex from emotions, and I have always known any attempts to do so would just leave me hurt. I don’t think sex is dirty or wrong, I am just not interested in it without emotional attachments. This makes me a bit of a unicorn, but that is okay. Believe it or not, some of the strangest pressure against my attitude is from other women. I’m not moving at a snails pace for patriarchal ideas that my value lies in the lack of mileage on my lady garden or to hold a power over a man. I move at my own pace for my own reasons, and the only one who has any say is the man I am with.

Another part of the dating warfare is women analyze everything. We analyze EVERYTHING. This is part of a conversation I with the Viking I am dating (another Kathleen-ism) is men don’t think about things nearly as much as we do. We think ourselves into craziness. Good men say what they think and mean it, and if they are playing games, then they are assholes, and you can’t accommodate for assholes.

Women weigh everything. We turn conversations over and over like stones in our hands until they are worn smooth. We do this to other women unintentionally. A friend harmlessly asked me about the hug at the end of a date, trying to explain what three different hugs have been scientifically proven to mean, my brain imploded, and I panicked like a damn deer in the woods. She didn’t mean it to happen, like all of the other women in the world, but we, by nature, overload ourselves.

I made the decision that I am too damn old for worrying about all of this shit. I am not the urban dating warfare type, and most advice doesn’t apply to me. If I screw things up with the incredible Viking, I am screwing them up on my own terms. This way at least I know I blew them up by being me and not trying to be something else. Also, I might drive myself less crazy.

Yeah, I meant this to be a response to the article, mostly it ended up being a rant about dating.

 
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Exhausted

So, here is the deal, Cats and Kittens, I am flipping exhausted. Last night I started writing the first draft of my next book (even though I haven’t finished the second draft of the first one), and I have upped my exercise. I have been pouring myself into everything I do, well, not housework. Tonight, I am tired.

I am also exhausted because of so many things I see going on right now. I see so much going on that I wish we would change.

We have developed this sneering attitude towards idealism. We cling to our pragmatic natures because it is so much easier to do things the way they have always been done than to do them right. Any time anyone points to something that isn’t right and tries to fix it, we scoff at them because only a fool believes they can fix thing.

Here is a simple truth: We are broken.

Our values are broken, our faith is broken, our politics are broken, our medical system is broken, and we are too afraid of what it would mean to admit our brokenness  and actually to try to fix it.

Our young women are getting dumber and less ambitious than previous generations. It is our fault. We have thrown our hands up and let them believe it is more important to be pleasing to men than to be full people. We are breaking our girls. We need to fix it. Teach them that it is more important to be smart, funny, respected than to be pretty, men pleasing girls. We also need to teach them that their values extend beyond their reproductive organs and their surgically enhanced breasts.

We are breaking our men. We teach them that Don Draper is the ultimate man. That it is more important to screw lots of women and bully others to get a head in the world, than to be a good person. We need to start holding up men who fight hard for their families and what is right, instead of this bullshit ideal that few men can reach, and, quite frankly, I don’t think we should want them to achieve. This is OUR FAULT.

We made a society were it is more important to have than to be. Some how we now believe that it is more important to look a certain way and own the right things than to be a good person or try to make things better. We are so trained to buy and spend that we don’t know value anymore. I love technology as much as the next person, and if I could afford a smartphone I would have one, but buying a new smartphone does not somehow make you a better person than you were before.

We have accepted that if someone is ruthless enough to screw over, hurt, or steal to get something it is okay. If we see someone take a television, we consider the action theft and, therefore, wrong. If a powerful business man finds away to exploit unethically the system for money, no matter who it hurts, we believe that they are just savvy business men and envy their suits.

Am I the only one who feels it is wrong to value ruthlessness in a person over the desire to make people’s lives better? Am I just that crazy?  Why don’t we value being a good person anymore?

Okay, our political system is just a big bag of screwed the fuck up. What is wrong with us when we consider a politician who is openly bought is the lesser of two evils? What happened to trying to fight greed and corruption? Why have we just rolled over and accepted that this is the way the world is, and we best make due?

Our faith. Oh, lord, our faith is hurting so bad right now. Even our religious culture is eaten through with our maligned values. We are so afraid,alienated from the world, and desperate to be right that we allow our beliefs to be destroyed by corruption and used like a dirty needle in politics. Stop letting people use your faith to lead you around. We should be stronger in our faith than to let it be used to lead us.

I know all of this seems so insurmountable, but it really isn’t. All we need to do is stop. It is simple as that. We need to stop pushing so hard for this image we are told to strive for. We are told if we are all of these things we will be happy, but we won’t. We believe that what we are is so singularly wrong that we have to push to be something else, and in the end, we are unhappy, stressed, fake shadows of ourselves.

Stop it. Just stop. Step away from all of the fake values and images we have forced upon ourselves and strive to be happy. Stop striving to fit in and strive to be kind. Instead of clawing your way towards a better car, more money, bigger tits, a better suit, try to make things better. Smile at strangers and compliment them. Let someone in front of you in traffic.

If we accepted ourselves and stopped pushing ourselves to fit some fucked up ideal, our world would be better. We would be less insecure and less angry. If we accepted that we are only so much and that we can only do our best, we would feel more compassion towards others and be more willing to accept others faults.

If we found ourselves and righted our values, we would stop letting jack asses in government lie, cheat and steal, while we blindly accept it as business as usual. If we told our politicians that we value honesty and hard work over image and greed, and voted out any politician that didn’t meet our values, our country would be in a much better place. If we looked at our government honestly and realized that the government is here to work for us, not the other way around, then we would have a much healthier country.

We can fix this. I believe we want to fix this. We just need to stop accepting it, and start fixing it.

Ugh, sorry for the massive rant.

 
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Out of Nowhere

Sometimes things come out of nowhere and effect you. My interwebz surfing generally centers around funny stuff. I have a few sites I go to on a regular basis including the Scrw Media sites. This site started as an attempt to be cool enough to contribute to urlybits.com (where I got this video.)  I have been lucky enough to be friends with the founders Paul and Sara O’Flaherty for a year now. Anyway, I was cruising around because they have the best of the funny and the cool when I stopped to watch this video that Paul posted:

I cried like an emo little girl. I watched it three times and cried all three times. I will probably watch it again after I post this and cry again.

Okay, I know that I am apparently a dirty hippie, and I believe in happiness and rainbows and kindness and crap. I used to believe I was a misanthropic misfit that hated all thing pop culture and all of that bullshit. Truth is I have always been a bit of one those crazy people who have always been positive in spite of myself. So, of course this made me cry. I have the strangest set of biases ever.

I have thought all afternoon about why this video effected me so much. I think I have figured out some of it.

My most superficial reaction is: “Who the hell wouldn’t be a bit weird-ed out by someone standing in the middle of the street wanting hugs. That is so Pedobear.” (If you don’t know who pedobear is then you fail at the interwebz. Here, educate yourself.)

I hate this reaction. I hate that I had it.

I have this strange habit of giving total strangers compliments. I will go out of my way to tell someone that I like something they have or have done and I always try to tell parents if their kids are cute or well-behaved, normally in front of the child.  I have embarrassed the hell out of some my friends and family by doing this. Honestly, I don’t care. I believe in telling people good things. I know how a compliment can make a day better or make someone walk taller. I know giving someone a compliment can make them a little happier. So what if I look like an ass?

The thing that stuck with me after the girl got raped in the parking lot of my old work place is that she was obviously in distress for a long time, and I did nothing to help her until she came to us. I felt low, very very low, that I let a child be in pain and did not help until she came to me, and then only after I saw the blood and it became real. It was this societal taboo on interference in strangers lives that kept me from walking over to her and asking her if she was okay. I decided that I was going to ignore that societal idea of non-interference and try to do what was right whenever I could.

Still.

My first thoughts were negative and ugly. I retreated back to that bullshit mindset of total self-involvement and mistrust of anyone willing to be open to the world.

Then that young big guy breaks from his group of friends and goes up and hugs the bear. That was an everyday act of bravery; he did something even though no one else would. (This is where the tears started to pour.)

Enter the video of all of the hugs. It was this simple and beautiful act of hugging someone and meaning it. I cried because all of these people were made so happy by this unexpected connection with another person. These people were doing something that I might not have had the courage to be open to. (For the record, I get why the parents were hesitant to let their kids walk up to a stranger in a teddy bear costume.)

What really hit me, though, is the end. The man took off the mask, and the tag line popped up, and I felt like such a douche cannon. The tagline is true. Honestly, I think most people would have been hesitant to hug anyone not in a costume, and the costume makes it easier it break through that barrier, but I KNOW most people (myself included) would have never hugged a stranger that had a visible disability.

That man brought so much joy to so many people simply by dressing up in a suit and hugging them. Without the suit, no one would have stopped, and they would have missed out on that joy.

It wasn’t just the disability. It is the strange aversion we have to openness because we might get hurt or something bad might happen.

I need to do better. I need to be braver. There is a lot of good that can come from being open and I don’t want to miss it from fear of the bad.

Tomorrow compliment strangers, you will see what I mean.

 

 

 
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Long, Strange Journey

Crappy Paint Cake

I made a cake for the occasion!

Welcome, Gentle Readers, to my 100th blog post! Anyone who has stuck with me from the beginning knows I love me some retrospect and reflection. What better time to think about the progression of my site than the 100th post?

This blog started out as a place to host my Thematic Experiment blog. Thematic Experiment was an idea cooked up with Tina to showcase my ability to write about anything repeatedly on a regular schedule to show potential employers.

It started on a normal free WordPress blog site until I was picked to contribute for the fantastic Urlybits.com (then dailyshite.com) and I decided I needed to have my own site too. I have been incredibly slack contributing to Urlybits but I owe so much to Sara and Paul O’Flaherty. I learned a lot from working with them and I got some great friends out of the deal.

Anyway, I bought the domain name for the site and set off on this odyssey. I found a few surprises a long the way. I realized I really enjoy building WordPress sites. I also realized that I do not know nearly enough about them. I still live in fear when I decide to make changes to my site. Second, I found that not only could I write on a schedule about a specific theme but I was actually pretty good at it. I am not going to pretend that all of my stuff was gold but I was expecting far worse. Third, and by far the biggest surprise, people read it.

I wrote six full-ish months off theme blogs until (through some prodding by Sara) I decided to go to my more personal blog. I think those six months were very important. I had to prove something to myself and I think I did. Something happened with April and beyond though and I actually started to put myself into my blogs.

In reality, I am a simple creature. I am a pain in the ass and I am crazy but my motivations are pretty simple. I like making people happy, I like praise and attention, and I like to think that I am special. (Tyler Durden be damned.) I think do varying degrees we are all motivated by these things. Some social pundits call blogging narcissism and look down on it as self aggrandizement. (I know I talk funny damnit. Stop making fun of me.) On the surface these people are right. It is narcissistic that I write thing about myself and those around me and expect people to care. I do get a feeling of gratification for the praise I get. It does make me feel good to think that what I write might matter to someone else. So, in some ways they are absolutely right, but in the important ways, they are very very wrong.

Most humans need connections to be whole. We need to feel like people care about us and to care about others. We need to know that there are other people who are like us or who have gone through the same things we have. Nothing is more terrifying and awful than to feel like you are the only one. (Go watch that Brene Brown video on TED.com if you haven’t. Just do it, okay and stop arguing, I am right about this.)

It is hard in a society of false faces to feel these connections. So much of our society is obsessed with appearances (I do not just mean purely looks) that we have become so disingenuous that it is hard to feel connected to people. Some people can not even truly connect to the people closest to us because we are so concerned with appearance and being correct that we just do not open up. We worry about privacy. We worry about what happens if people find out. We worry what people will think. We start to judge, and forget to try to understand, and it becomes so hard to allow ourselves to be truly open with anyone that it becomes almost a heroic feat to tell the truth about some human experiences. Screw that. I hate this silence and disconnect, it breeds shame and shame is generally the most useless and destructive emotion we humans have.

That is why we read and write blogs. We get to share. We get to talk about our kids, our food, our pets, or anything else that matters. We feel connected to people when we read people’s blogs about experiences like ours. It does not matter if it is unimportant or inconsequential, it is genuine sharing. We get to have those connections we need and we feel less alone.

The blog post Strong Woman changed everything for me. I had harbored so much pain, shame, and confusion deep inside myself that was eating at me. I wrote something of myself for the first time and put it out naked and raw.  I was terrified. It was the most liberating thing I have ever done. The response was overwhelming and life changing for me.

I like praise and I like being good at things but this went so much deeper than that. I realized how hungry we all are for honest, genuine human truth. I realized that I was not alone in all those emotions that went along with the abuse.  I realized I liked the honest me that I put into the rawness there and in posts after that. Also, I always knew that my friends are incredible and my friends who read this site are invaluable to me but after that, I realized that you guys are more amazing than I ever thought.

I started writing this blog in November for Tina. I kept writing in the beginning to prove to myself that I could. I found that now I write it because I believe in it. I don’t have delusions that my writing will ever bring change or effect the world. I write now because I hate our world of polite society and polite conversation. Now, I don’t think we should run through life telling everyone we meet every detail of everything that has ever happened to us. I just think it stupid that we are afraid to be open even when we should be. I think it is stupid that we have let ourselves be so isolated and shamed that we lock ourselves into boxes. I am done with it. Fear of being judged or ridiculed sucks. I do not think it is worth giving up the chance to truly connect with those around us though. I have been advised that it would be smart of me to unlist my blog or stop writing my blog because it could hurt my chances of finding a job. It is brilliant advice that would be smart for me to take. I am not known for doing things the easy way that makes sense.

I absolutely did not mean this blog to become a big ass rant about blogging and openness. Tangents happen. I do want to say one last thing though.

Thank you.

 
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Y R U So Srs?

I have been on a serious, well, serious streak as of late. I looked back at my recent blog posts and they are either about being too hot or being frustrated with society in general. Where the hell did my funny go? I am blaming the CNN and the MSN. I think it is important to be aware of what is going on in the world and to seriously think about the state of things, not just accepting what we are told as fact. I believe with all of my heart that it is vital to take responsibility for your place in the world. I can be okay with the fact that I have an increasingly feminist voice to my writing. Dood, seriously though, I need to lighten up every once in awhile.

So this weekend Oklahoma City helping Tina with stuff. Saturday morning we went to Wal-mart to pick up a metric ton of stuff she had ordered. I looked like major crap. I had an old t-shirt on and my hair was back in a hasty bun. One of the guys that was helping Tina with her stuff was flirting with me big time and, damn, it was awesome. I honestly believe my worth has nothing to do with my attractiveness and all that jazz I have been writing. I am not going to lie, though, it was nice to be chatted up by a really good looking guy while I felt I looked like crap. Sometimes I just need reassurance I did lose all of my geeky charm even if I have no plans to use it anytime soon. What can I say, I guess I am human.

MSN has a picture of a woman getting a snake massage and it is really freaking me out. No, I mean it is really.freeaking.me.out.

I bet some women out there pay a lot of money to lay on a table and have someone put snakes on their backs. Rich people are nuts.

A big news item is the new warnings on cigarette packs. This is almost as dumb as snake massages. All smokers know smoking is bad for them, they just choose to do it anyway like people who eat too many carbs and don’t wear sunscreen. People make the life decisions they make no matter facts and logic. Just look at the state of politics. Just saying.

Eeeew snakes crawling all over your back. ON PURPOSE.

I was about to talk about the latest bad behavior from some beautiful Hollywood starlet *Ahem*MeganFox*Ahem* but I realized that I should feel sorry for her. She may be beautiful and rich and possibly not completely stupid (just makes bad life decisions and doesn’t understand when to STFU) but I bet she is hungry. I bet she would be much happier and less of a caustic bitch if someone fed her some bacon or chocolate, maybe both at the same time.

Why do you supposed all of the Jacksons got the same terrible nose job? Did they not see it on their siblings and go “oh that just looks wrong?” Or did they decide that if they all got it they could pass it off as some strange hereditary disease that morphed into something that looks like it belongs on a cheap barbie doll rip off?

One last thing

STFU – shut the fornication up- please be quiet immediately.

 
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What the Hell is Wrong with You?

One of my Facebook friends linked this article by Lisa Bloom on her page and it really got my blood boiling.

I need to look at the actual survey and methodology and blah blah blah but what Ms. Bloom mentions blew my little mind.

Twenty-five percent of young American women would rather win America’s Next Top Model than the Nobel Peace Prize. Twenty-three percent would rather lose their ability to read than their figures.

I stole these fact directly from her thus the indent.

Seriously. What the hell is wrong with women and society in general that almost one quarter of our women would rather not be able to read than be fat? What did we do to ourselves?

Let get this out of the way, I know it is dangerous and costly to be overweight. I know it is a serious national health problem and I know I need to fix myself. I got that, okay. Don’t be that douche that points it out. First, we all know that it bad for you to be fat. It is like telling a smoker that smoking is bad for them. Saying something does not inform people, it just makes you seem like a self-righteous, pretentious ass. The women who would rather be illiterate than fat are not concerned about their health, in fact they probably tan, they are being shallow.

I am ashamed for us women. What are we allowing? What are we teaching our daughters? What are we teaching our sons? I think women all over the country should be outraged that so many of us consider our only real asset is our looks. How can anyone be okay with that?

Its okay that you are dumb sweetie as long as you stay hot as long as you can and make sure that when you start to “lose your looks” your husband is willing to pay you good alimony.

Are you freaking kidding me?

When I think of all of the women that have struggled in the generations before us so we could be more then just beings made for our reproductive organs and the ego boost our owners get from having us. This article makes me so sad for those women’s rights crusaders who have to see it.

This is no longer the man keeping us down. This is us. We are allowing ourselves to be judged purely on our looks and we are refusing to stand up for ourselves. We buy into the mindset that a women cannot do well in corporate America unless she looks a certain way. (It is just the way of the world…. BULLSHIT! Stand up and rage against it.) Feminist has become a dirty word. We think it means some crazy woman who hates men and wants to destroy our femininity. I felt the same way. This article changed this for me.

Screw it.

My name is Selina Scott and I am a feminist. I believe I have the right to breed as much or as little as I want. I have the right to be paid as much as an equal male counterpart. I believe that I am not the weaker sex, I believe I just have different strengths than men. I believe that my value is not in my looks but in my brains and my heart. I believe women have a responsibility to their world to make it judge them on their actual value. I believe we have a responsibility to think. I believe we have to stand up in big and small ways and shake our fists at injustices. I believe we should stop shunning and judging and start caring and supporting. I believe we need to love ourselves for ourselves and surround ourselves with people that love us for who we are and not what our jacked up society thinks we should be.

Stand up. Get mad. Tell your daughters, nieces, younger female friends to have self-respect and to demand respect in return.

My name is Selina Scott and I am a feminist. I am fat. I am smart and funny and caring and loyal and hopeful and when I smile the world smiles back at me. I believe my value has nothing to do with my looks. If you cannot get past the outside, then I cannot help you.

 
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