nice day

The morning was rainy, now it's sunny. See people walking dogs. My own dog is lying on the couch, making the tear in the back cushion bigger by the way she lays on it. Took her on errands with me. It's nice out. I always feel weird when it's this nice out, like I should be out carpe diem-ing. I'll probably clean the apartment a little, fold some laundry, drink some Dr. Pepper, read some Steve Erickson, maybe throw the Kong with the pooch. Work at 5.

fuck teabaggers and the right wing in general

The right wing is a joke. They are protesting tax cuts with signs that say "NO MORE TAXATION." This whole Dick Armey teabagging thing is fucking retarded. Krugman had a good word for it, not sure if it was his, but he called it an "Astroturf" movement, meaning that it's been cheaply made to look grassroots. It's a bunch of old white Republicans organizing a bunch of middle-class white retards to wave placards that say everything from "OBAMA IS A SOCIALIST" to listing all of the Dems they feel should be lynched. Cesca over at HuffPo pointed out that they're protesting in publicly funded (socialist) parks. On that note, none of these folks are allowed to do the following: receive Medicare, go to a library or send their kids to public school, and those are just off the top of my head. These are all socialist institutions. God the fucking retardation of this group just floors me. They live in a complete fantasy world. I get the same feeling watching them as I do with the people who go to Star Trek conventions. They get out of their mom's basement, dress up, surround themselves with people with similar delusions, and pretend with all that they're worth that the world is different than it really is, not because their lives are hard, no, these people, most of them grew up middle-class. They do all of this because their lives are BORING. I don't mean average boring, like, "Man, I wish this class would end," or "Jeez, he just keeps talking," boring, I mean soul-crushingly, existentially, "I wake up every morning and go to the same meaningless job to buy meaningless shit I've been tricked into wanting so that my wife and kids will keep pretending to love me" boring. And if you're American and this great, Cthulu-like demon of Boredom snags you, you will fall into one of three categories. The first is the I AM RICH category. You tour Europe or buy a space station or pay a three-headed transexual hooker to take a dump on your chest. Travel and things and kinks, there is almost no end if you've got cash. This will leave you empty, in the end, but as long as you have money, you may never realize it. The second group are the Teabaggers. You discover or create a villain. Common targets: the government, the self, the Romulans. After you've created this shadowy figure, you rail against it for all you're worth, because if you can kill it and stand over it and breathe the sweet fumes of its charred corpse into your lungs, you will have done something Worthwhile. This will also fail, in the end, because those fumes get carried off by the first strong wind, and then you need a new corpse. The third category is the one that works, and it involves a lot of sitting on a pillow in front of a blank wall. That may sound dumb, but it might work, and even if it didn't, at least you wouldn't be splurging on Thai boys or standing in your front lawn swinging a plastic lightsaber at lawn demons. Speaking of delusions, fuck Glenn Beck and the horse he pretended to ride in on. I saw this adult retard at Wal-Mart today, and he was standing in front of the store trying to shake everyone's hand and saying HELLO really loud with his big melon head, and I got this feeling like I know everyone gets, like, first off, I hope this dude doesn't talk to me, and second, who let him out of his cage? That's kind of how I feel about Glenn Beck.

sagging pants = jail

70% of people in this Florida town voted for a ban on sagging pants, so now it's going to court.

NY Times article

There's a line in the article where the prosecutor mentions that people "Just got fed up with looking at people's bottoms." Well, TOUGH SHIT. You can't make a LAW that tells people how they can dress. Period. Well, David, but, isn't it true that we have indecent exposure laws, and like women can't show their boobs or pussies and men can't show their weiners? I mean, there are STANDARDS, man, there are LAWS, and we need them. In this case, no, we don't. If women want to wear long-sleeve sweaters with the nipples cut out, so be it. Same goes for vag. I see a woman walking down the street with her meat curtains dangling from a slit in her jeans, that is her prerogative. Yeah, sure David, YOU don't mind, but what about MY CHILDREN? I don't care if you're out in public and your kid sees a pussy, or a weiner for that matter. Why? Because fuck your kids, that's why. Seriously, though, if a guy flashes his cock to your kid in private, that's different. That's focused on YOUR child, and it's damaging. If a man wants to somehow velcro his naked penis to his shirt via some ingenious cock-ring apparatus, and your kid gets a peek at this guys dick and balls, the skin of which he's probably thumbtacked into his thighs, I will support that man's right to wear his penis out in public. I certainly wouldn't want a LAW to stop him from doing that. You see, laws like that exist to protect that guy, not your kid. In animal communities, ours included, flashing your junk means war. The wrath the members of this ill-conceived fashion movement would incur through breaking this societal taboo would probably end in murder, and then we'd all be better off for losing the ballskin stretching, dick-velcroing retards. Too many people who would walk about with their cock out in today's society are hindered from doing so by oppressive laws, which have kept them alive long enough to procreate, probably several times, populating the planet with more bungholes.

None of which really has to do with sagging, during which you're still clothed. Think of what this could incur, people. What if I accidentally forget to throw a belt on in the morning? I'm walking to class, or something, and my backpack hikes my shirt up and everyone sees my boxers. BAM, that's a fine. Because some people (cough, old people, cough) are just TIRED of having to look at my bottom.

Well, since we're now getting into the process of making things that old people find aesthetically displeasing illegal, I made a little list of things they should go to jail for:

Smelling like mothballs.
Paying for things with checks.
Drooling.
Staring.
Eating ice cream.
Soiling themselves.
Being adorably sexist/racist.
Being no-fun douchebag party poopers.

date rape in "observe and report"

I watched Observe and Report and figured I'd chime in on the whole "date rape" thing. I spoil this thing like a motherfucker, so watch out. In the movie Seth Rogen's character, Ronnie, takes Anna Faris's Brandi out to dinner and she gets crazy drunk and takes a lot of Ronnie's mood stabilizers, carbamazepine if I remember correctly, which actually lowers alcohol tolerance (and cancels out contraceptives, careful ladies). So yeah, she gets fucked up. They ride home on Ronnie's Honda motorcycle, she fondles his boobs, they park, she vomits, he kisses her, cut to: Ronnie thrusting away at the unconcious girl. He looks over, confused by the fact that she's out cold, and she tells him to keep going, scene ends. Now, a few things. First, you are made to believe that when Ronnie looks over and sees that she's passed out, this is the first time he's noticed. Implying that when they started, she was coherent. None of this makes what happens OKAY, which is what I hear a lot of people saying, that doesn't make it OKAY, etc. etc.

And it doesn't, no. But, here's the thing. In an earlier scene, Ronnie's drunk mom tells him a story about the night she met his father and about fucking him and everything like that. All he seems to know about women he knows from his mother. What we're supposed to get from this scene isn't that Ronnie is taking horrible advantage of a drunk girl, but that there's nothing weird to him about a drop-down, pissed drunk woman, said woman also in a sense telling him that it's normal to have sex with such drunkards.

Again, not that it makes this "okay", but this movie isn't about what's "okay", it's a character study (don't laugh) about a fucked-up individual. Ronnie has delusions of grandeur, bullies people, does coke, pot, helps his partner shoot heroin before beating the fuck out of a bunch of skater kids, hits cops, and shoots a naked man in the chest. Why all of this is funny, I don't know, that's a much bigger post, I think.

But here is a great back and forth, forum-type discussion on consent and date rape that I felt to be pretty eye opening:

Friday Feminist Fuck You: Seth Rogen

However, the actual Feministing article is knee-jerk and stupid. They haven't bothered to watch the film, see everything in context, and have instead decided to brand Seth Rogen and everyone involved as cro-magnon idiots, and that really gets under my skin, because it's exactly what people hate about feminists in the first place. Here are some notable comments that touch on my feelings of Feministing's reaction to this thing:

First up from a poster called "dormouse":

"Quick quiz:
Is this scene...
a) offensive
b) funny
c) both
d) not enough information to tell

Correct Answer: D

We have no idea the context in which this brief clip happens. Relevant questions: How drunk is Rogan's character? What happened when they started having sex? Was Faris's character conscious then? Are there any consequences to this sex? Is Rogan's character so bad at sex that Faris got bored and fell asleep? Is Rogan made to be a hero or a creep in this movie? etc, etc.

Feministing, I love you most of the time, but there is a nasty trend here of jumping to conclusions about things based on incomplete information that don't necessarily warrant such outrage."

And from a poster called "philogelos":

"I believe this kind of attitude runs contrary to the goal of trying to get people to see feminist critiques in a positive light.

For one thing, your claim to have looked at all "available information" is patently false. The movie is about how Rogan's character is the son of an alcoholic who is trying to fulfill his sick protector-fantasies in violent ways, even hindering the police investigation into a flasher at the mall because he's trying to be the one who "saves" Faris's character.

In other words, the movie's POINT is that even good-intentioned paternalistic impulses can be counter-productive, and it showcases his behavior in not at all a "oh chuckle, what a wacky but lovable bro" kind of light.

Ironically enough, that same (good) message would fit very aptly to the attitude you are taking vis-a-vis this movie.

By issuing an uninformed "Fuck You!" (always an interesting choice of terms when responding to someone being insensitive to sexual violence) at the male actor in this scene (who becomes instantly the most responsible party for this scene...why? Because he's the most visible male?), you are encouraging the misperception that feminism is knee-jerkingly strident. The problem is not that people uninterested in feminism have not encountered the message, but rather that they have been fed the notion that making passionate arguments is somehow passe, and the big issues with regards to this have been "solved."

So by flipping out about your (incorrect) perceptions about the potential message a dark comedy movie might transmit...you are really not going to be helping change anyone's minds."

ALSO:

The opening shots of the mall mutants are perfect. The kid screaming at his parents, sure, fat people eating, yeah, but watch the two second clip of the tired old guy, holding his knees for dear life, exhaling, with this huge double chin, slowly lowering down onto a bench. That sealed it for me: this dude understands malls, and he understands why they are so fucking vile. I can't really explain it in words, and won't try to, but that shot communicates everything. To me, at least.

the amazing mutating college degree

Tomorrow I'm going to walk into my adviser's office and get drop slips for two classes: Business Calculus 2 and Macroeconomics. I have been fooling myself for about four years, trying and failing to do things that I'm just not great at. I might as well have gone for a degree in basketball or rocket science. I'm not stupid, but I've made stupid decisions.

Tonight I became massively depressed. It's not pretty, I won't bore you with the details. The cure for this little depression was so mind-numbingly simple I almost cried.

I need to change my major to English. English, of course. Maybe Philosophy, too. Why? Because it's what I'm good at. It's what I was made to do.

You MUST play to your strengths. Anything else is a waste of time.