My last post was about a petition I didn't sign, today's is about a petition that I did sign. Because it's only fair to provide balanced non-biased petition coverage. Also because I'm lazy and this was an easy post.
People should sign this! It's a petition asking Facebook to expand the options regarding gender and sexuality in a profile's Basic Info section, to include genders beyond just male and female and to include sexualities beyond just straight, gay or bi. It's important!
I think these two petitions are a pretty good example of something that probably isn't all that helpful and something that is. Well-meaning (though shark-racist) it may be, the dolphin petition doesn't seem like it will be all that useful in the grand scheme of things. I mean, why would the Government of Peru care about some random Canadian lady's opinion on how they enforce their dolphin ban? Or a hundred random Canadian ladies, or a thousand. Basically, the opinions of a few average citizens in another country just aren't that important to foreign governments. I don't pay taxes to Peru, I don't vote there, I don't even think about Peru all that often. But I do use Facebook. I'll go out on a limb and say that most people on the internet use Facebook. Most everybody signing that petition will be a Facebook user. Unlike Peru, Facebook will have a reason to care about the opinions of people signing this petition. If it gets enough signatures it might make them realize that while it seems like a simple thing, it's important to a lot of people and thus something that they should consider changing, to better serve their customers. There are loads of people who are unable to express their gender or sexuality accurately on Facebook, and considering the amount of time people spend online, and how our social interactions are largely taking place on sites like Facebook these days than they are in face-to-face situations, I think it's a pretty big deal that people can properly say who they really are in those situations. And it's not like it would be a lot of work for Facebook, either; unlike Peru, which will have to spend a lot of money sending ships and crews out on regular patrols and then having officials work extra time dealing with the increased numbers of caught offenders, all Facebook has to do is add another button or two to their website. And Facebook changes their website constantly.
So, to compare: the dolphin petition is asking Peru to a) listen to the opinions of a bunch of random foreigners who offer nothing to the country but criticism, and b) spend a ton of money to placate these foreigners (who will probably forget about Peru entirely the second they do). Sure, there are ethical and legal reasons to do what the petition is asking, but those reasons are not actually affected by the petition in any way. The Facebook petition, though, just asks Facebook to a) listen to people who are probably already users as they express a grievance with the service they are being offered directly, which impacts their active use of the site rather than just their polite sensitivities for a situation that they aren't directly involved in at any stage, unlike the Peru one, and b) make a small change to the profile setup that won't affect anybody but the people who are asking for the change, and which can probably be done the next time Facebook does some big huge redesign that everyone will hate like they do two or three times a year. The difference is huge regarding the amount of work the petitions are requesting be done as well as in the direct impact the issues have on the people signing the petitions in the first place. So it's kind of disappointing that the largely impractical, armchair-activist dolphin petition has almost eighteen thousand signatures as of this time while the Facebook petition that has an actual day-to-day effect on a number of Facebook users over a relatively simple issue only has about a hundred.
Also, it never occurred to me to post this Nimona strip on my last post about sharks. So this is to make up for it.
So I was going through the junk folder on my oldest email account, just to see if I was missing anything, and I found this petition: "The Cost of Shark Bait Soup: Dolphins Chopped Up And Skinned Alive." The hysterical summary cries out about the sadful sadness that is the dead dolphins, butchered by those horrible fishermen. They just don't appreciate these amazing creatures! Also something about havoc on the ecosystem. The dolphins, though! The dolphins! Seriously. The first paragraph of the petition's description reads, "Shark fin soup comes with a price. And we're not talking the thousands people pay to eat it — we're talkingthe mass killing of sharks, the disruption of our oceans' ecosystem, and the brutal slaughter of hundreds of thousands of dolphins used by fishermen as shark bait." The other two paragraphs, however, focus exclusively on the fate of the dolphins, and the petition itself is asking the Peruvian government to better enforce the ban on dolphin meat. I didn't sign the petition. Normally, I'm a sucker for petitions. I know they don't actually have any real effect, most of the time, and they are an easy way for someone to pretend to be an "activist" without actually doing any real, meaningful activism. But sadly, I'm guilted into signing them pretty easily. A corporation has done something mean! I must take a stand, or else I am supporting them! An animal is being abused? I must sign this, or else I will be as bad as the people abusing it in the first place! Et cetera, et cetera. But I didn't sign this one. In fact, I was kind of offended by it. For one thing, they don't ever mention which kind of dolphin is usually being slaughtered. It makes me a little suspicious. After all, while there certainly are endangered breeds out there, the bottlenose dolphin, for example, isn't endangered in the slightest. Neither the petition nor the article it links even throws in a sentence like, all dolphins are killed, regardless of endangered status! Also, dolphins are kind of dicks. I admit, I've got a bit of my own personal bias going on too: dolphins are just so universally adored, but I just don't see how they are any cuter or more endearing than another type of animal, and after a lifetime of hearing about how they're so sweet and friendly and spiritual and they have such a connection to us and "My spirit animal is a dolphin because I just love dolphins" I just got kind of annoyed by them. I don't actively dislike dolphins or anything, they just don't register as special to me the way they seem to for everyone else. Which leads me to what is probably the main reason I didn't sign the petition: it was just obsessed with the freaking dolphins, and it completely ignored the worse industry: shark fishing. Even though the petition's page starts out by directly mentioning shark fin soup, which kills a huge amount of sharks annually, it's the freaking dolphins that matter. They're as bad as dolphins, taking an industry that's explicitly about killing sharks in horrible ways and only being concerned with the way it affects the one animal that's popular and cute enough for them to stir up emotions over. It's killing the dolphins that will ruin the ecosystem, folks! The shark killing is just a little side drama to add to this horrible dolphin tragedy! You could probably say that sharks are my dolphins: everyone else seems to think they're just awful, but I love them to pieces, and the shark fishing industry just breaks my heart. The dolphins are getting off easy here. The article the petition links to even says, "the dolphin is hauled on board and almost immediately dies on the deck of the vessel." Bleeding profusely, sure, but at least it dies right away. Compare the poor sharks; a lot of the time, the fishermen don't even kill them before cutting off their fins, and they just toss them back into the water to sink down and die, eaten by predators or drowning without their fins propelling water through their gills. And I can't think of any non-endangered shark breed subjected to finning off the top of my head.* Great whites, endangered. Hammerheads, endangered. Mako sharks, probably endangered, I can't remember. Whale sharks and basking sharks, both endangered and greatly sought after. If the petition really cared about the plight of amazing creatures, it would be objecting to the entire practice of shark finning, not just the way shark finning also includes the death of "cute" animals like dolphins. *Not to say that there aren't any; I can pretty much guarantee that there are plenty I'm not thinking of. Just not off the top of my head, like I could with the dolphin thing. But nope! Hey Peru, get to work on saving those dolphins! Those cutie-patooties are the real victims of the shark finning industry! Assuming this is that magical unicorn petition that actually does have an effect on the real world, what would happen if it worked? Peru would stop people from hunting dolphins, sure. But it wouldn't stop anyone from hunting sharks, or from using a different animal as bait. This petition isn't about animal rights, it's just about dolphins specifically, because people have decided that dolphins alone are worth protecting, but sharks aren't cute enough and "the ecosystem" is too broad and vague to have an emotional impact. Look at Flipper! He's always smiling! Quick, pass a law! Disclaimer: I'd just like to say, for the record, that I'm not an animal rights activist. I strongly disapprove of animal abuse, and I love just about any critter that isn't a bug. I absolutely think there should be laws in place to protect animals, especially endangered ones like the various sharks and dolphins mentioned in this post. But I also approve of keeping animals as pets, and of using them when it's convenient, I approve of animal testing (look, it's sad that animals get hurt over it but I want to know that my makeup and medicine is safe for living things before it starts getting tested on humans!), and I approve of hunting. In fact, I think hunting is more humane than animal farming. At least my moose had the space and freedom to run around and live, and it's not stuffed to the moosey gills with steroids and hormones. Basically, just because I disagree with how limited this petition is, don't lump me in with those Peta freaks. Update: I was on Wikipedia and remembered this article, so I looked up shark finning! Turns out that of the dozen or so species listed on the page as being commonly fished, only about three of them are non-threatened: blacktips, blues, and tigers. Well. They're "near-threatened," so still not great that they are being hunted, but they're still classified as "least concern."
So I went to see Frozen the other day. The Snow Queen (which Frozen is very loosely based on/inspired by, and I am linking it because surprisingly most people I've tried to talk to about the movie have never actually read or even heard of Hans Christian Anderson's longest and one of his most famous stories) has always been my favourite fairy tale, ever since I was a kid. When I found out a few years ago that Disney was making a film based on it I totally geeked out and I've been waiting for it in eager anticipation ever since. At least until I saw the first trailer and lost all hope in a just and fair world. I mean, look at this crap:
Oh joy, obnoxious non-human sidekicks, how original. I can't wait to watch a movie full of that snowman's horrible voice squawk out gag-worthy one-liners while the big dumb caribou tries to eat his nose and they have horrible unfunny slapstick scenes all over the place. The other trailers did equally terrible jobs of selling the film, because I just looked some up and they made it look like utter crap. I'm really glad now that I only saw the one above and not any of the others, because aside from looking awful, they spoil some great jokes and some neat scenes in the film. If this had movie bombed, I'd blame the trailers completely fucking over a good thing, not the movie itself.
Anyway, I went to see it anyway (because there was no way I was passing up any version of The Snow Queen, especially a Disney version, no matter how they butchered it), and was very pleasantly surprised. It was actually pretty fantastic! Not like the trailers at all! There's still some stuff that I think could have been done better, but a lot of it really exceeded my (admittedly low) expectations. I'm probably going to start going into spoilers while I write this, by the way, just in case anybody is worried about that stuff. I forgot to mention it earlier -- sorry! At least I remembered before I actually said any spoilers. Anyway, movie talk. Pleasant surprises! Go!
There's the music, for one. I didn't realize this would be a musical. Well, I figured that as a Disney princess movie there would be a few songs thrown in, but Frozen was a real straight-up musical. How do I know it was a real straight-up musical? Well, it's because musicals are the only movies I can watch once then immediately have to watch again. I downloaded the soundtrack when I got home, but it wasn't really the same because while the songs are still good, it's also a really, fantastically visual movie. For example, when I went looking for that godawful slapstick trailer to post above, I found they'd also posted Idina Menzel's show-stopping number that I felt was really the centrepiece of the film's soundtrack. Listening to it alone on the soundtrack has a very Wicked feel (because duh, Idina Menzel), but I didn't notice it quite so much in theatres because of how fantastic I thought all the snow and ice stuff was, plus I was thinking of her more as the character of Elsa and not as the actress Idina. Watch:
How great is that? It's a good song, I really liked it on its own, but the song paired with the visuals of Elsa blossoming into the Snow Queen, finding the beauty in her powers by sending gorgeous works of snowflake art spinning around, creating a swirling staircase of frost, and raising a massive palace of aurora-gleaming ice from the mountain and the air itself. It's one of my favourite scenes in the movie, because it's just such a spectacle. Mind you, not all the music was great. I found some songs to be a little grating; for example, Anna's first song, where she is asking Elsa if she wants to build a snowman like she did before. It's very cutesy, a bit too much so, and some of the lyrics are rather uninspired and don't make the characters all that impressive; for example, "Do you wanna build a snowman?" "Anna, go away!" "Ooookay byyyyyye." The way the two words were dragged out sounded pretty bland, and it made Anna seem like the least determined person ever. She desperately wants her sister back! But as soon as her sister is all, no go away, she's like gosh ok what else can I do. And growing up with siblings, let me just say I wish it was that easy to get an obnoxious kid to scram.
Another good surprise was the characters. The obnoxious sidekicks from the first trailer aren't obnoxious at all in the film! In fact, they're pretty endearing. The reindeer doesn't do any slapstick bullshit, as far as I remember, and while the snowman -- I think his name is Olaf? Or Oglaf, but I hope it's not, for any google-happy kid's sake -- is goofy, sure, but it's not the grating in-your-face goofy that it was in the trailers, it's more...I dunno, I want to say understated but it's really not. And instead of just being dumb one-liners he's actually got some really funny bits! And a lot of the time he's not supposed to be funny himself, really, but more setting up for someone else's funny. For example, when he's singing his I Want song, the song's a joke, sure, but the real joke in the scene belongs to Kristoff, at the end. I won't spoil it here because I liked it, even though I think one of the trailers might have done already. Neither of them get as much screen time as the trailer I saw seemed to imply, and what time they do spend onscreen they usually act as actual comic relief, bringing a bit of lightness and humour to an otherwise heavy part of the movie. Compare Jar Jar Binks, one of the most famously annoying Adorable Non Human Sidekicks In A Kid's Film characters, who had long scenes of him being unbearably annoying and dragging the film down. No, Frozen did it absolutely right.
Of course, the characters were also one of the things I didn't always agree with. For one thing, the original fairy tale had such good side characters! I was so looking forward to meeting the clever Princess, who has read every book in the world and when she decided it was time to get married, she turned down every suitor until she found someone who was only interested in her mind and knowledge and not her face or her riches or anything. Or the robber girl! She was just so rad, she's basically just the hero of another story; she shows up as a kid with her mother and the rest of their band of thieves to kidnap Greta (the girl in the original story, I'd say she's Anna in this but she kind of isn't, the Disney version is hugely changed), and steals her horse and her clothes and everything, and she's kind of like an anti-hero; she sleeps with a knife and threatens her pet reindeer with it for a laugh, and threatens to kill Greta, but then when she hears Greta's story she's all "Well that sounds like a pretty awesome adventure! You know what, you go and get on with your bad self, go save your boy if you really think he's worth it" and gives her back her fancy warm clothes (but keeps her fancy muff and instead gives Greta her mom's bulky old mittens, because she's amazing and takes what she wants) and lets her reindeer free on the condition that he will help Greta get to the Snow Queen's palace, and off they go. And then at the end of the story she shows up again, riding Greta's stolen horse all grown up with a pair of pistols strapped to her hips because she'd decided to wander the world and find her own way, and she's just like "You did it! You go girl, if I'm ever in your town I'll stop by for a visit" and rides off into the sunset. But I guess the story was so changed in Disney's version that they couldn't fit them in, or didn't think they suited the tone of the movie or whatever, I don't know -- the point is, they weren't there and that makes me sad because I loved them so much when I was younger. The Snow Queen was really just full of awesome ladies, and it bums me out that Disney's version didn't have them. There was a lady for everyone! There was the good but sad magic woman who wanted to keep Greta, so she tricked her into staying in her garden out of loneliness. There was the aforementioned genius Princess and the badass robber girl. There was the Snow Queen herself, who I always loved; she wasn't really a villain, not really. At least I never got a sense of evil from her in the versions I read. She was impossible and otherworldly and had a completely different set of morals; she invited Kay to come with her out of loneliness, I thought, and I don't believe it ever would have occurred to her that it was wrong. After all, she's an ancient and powerful fairy queen who sees mortals live and die in misery all the time, who would miss the little boy who caught her eye? But whatever. The story I remember wasn't the story Disney was telling, and that's okay even if I'm sad I never really saw it, because the original story really was just too religious to go over well now. Let's talk about the character problems that are in the story Disney was actually telling.
For the record, spoilers are going to start here, for reelzies. I really did like all of the characters in the movie, at least for the first half. I didn't have any real problems with the characters themselves. My problem was really where they paired them up or dealt with them at the end. For example, Anna and Hans, her prince. They meet in the beginning of the movie and over the course of an evening fall in love and decide to get engaged. Everybody gives them crap over it, though; Elsa refuses to give her blessing because they'd only just met (which upsets Anna, who grabs her glove off and accidentally reveals her hidden powers to everyone, setting the main drama of the film in motion), and later on Kristoff gives her a hard time over it too and is all, I don't trust your judgment! Who gets engaged to someone they only just met? Well...Disney princesses do. That's why it worked for me. In the context of a Disney film, especially one of this style, meeting cute and falling in love and knowing you are truly Meant To Be is the norm. And Anna and Hans were really adorable; he was a super-cute dude, they had a chemistry-filled song about falling in love with each other, he was responsible and helped her kingdom and tried to save her sister after the whole snow thing went down. So I was really surprised when Hans turned out to be a bad guy in the end. It really felt like more of a cop-out than a twist, not least because it made a lot of his earlier actions not make much sense. For example, his plan all along was to marry Anna and have Elsa die in an accident so he could inherit the throne through Anna. But if that's the case, why try to save Elsa from the Weaseltown dudes when they invaded her palace in the mountains? If he never loved her, where was all that chemistry coming from in their song together? And if he's so brilliant he can just come in and take over the kingdom as easily as he did, why was he so dumb as to leave Anna alive in a locked room in her own castle, just assuming she'll drop dead, then wander out and be all "Oh yes, she died (just don't go to look at her ok) and we totallly got married without any witnesses and I have no proof but that's so totally how it went down you guys, and again she is just so very dead in that locked room over there, no need to check and please ignore all knocking or cries for help." The apparent moral of "you probably aren't really in love with that dude you just met at a royal ball who sang a love duet with you" doesn't really work out very well in a Disney film. It feels like a last minute change they made in order to set up Anna and Kristoff as the main couple, since they spend most of the film together.
And I realize I'm getting into very shippy territory here, but I don't think they really work out all that well together, either. Well, they're cute, I guess, and the romance is very light. But they seemed more like friends for most of the film, with a few ham-handed "he totes has feelings yo" scenes here and there, and I really thought Kristoff would meet and fall for Elsa, the Snow Queen. It makes sense; his immediate reaction to seeing her beautiful ice stairway and palace is to shed a tear, because as he says, ice is his life (he sells it for a living). Of course his reaction would be one of admiration before one of fear; he is very well aware of the beauty of ice and snow, and is struck speechless by it the first time he sees anything she's made. I was really looking forward to them meeting properly for the whole film, and it...it just never really happened. I don't think they had a single conversation. Bummer.
But there was another thing I liked! They kept the shards of ice in the heart/eye from the original story. Well, the original story actually had shards of glass made by the devil to make things ugly, but I've seen the ice version before too so it works out ok. And they didn't keep it completely true, but they had the "ice in heart freezes it" thing, and part of the drama at the end is Anna trying to find an act of true love to thaw her freezing heart. The characters went looking for true love's kiss, and I was sitting in my chair going, "Man, wouldn't it be great if the act of love wasn't romantic? Elsa loves her sister, she could give herself up and risk being locked away and losing her newfound freedom in exchange for a chance at saving Anna." And the movie subverted both itself and my expectations; the act of love came from Anna herself, sacrificing herself at the last minute by running away from kissy Kristoff in order to save Elsa from Hans' blade and turning to solid ice right then, so his sword shatters on her frozen hand. I really liked the idea of the act of love coming from within rather than without, because it shows how powerful love can be. I kind of liked how Anna saved herself, but then I was like, can it really be "she saved herself" if she did it by sacrificing herself? There are a lot of narratives out there about how women need to be loving and self-sacrificing, I'm not sure if this one needs fanfare.
Another problem I had with the films were the character designs. Don't get me wrong, everything was very pretty! But seriously, everyone looks identical. Elsa, Anna and their mom have completely interchangeable faces (which, it has been pointed out to me, look basically like Rapunzel's face in Tangled, because Hollywood is only interested in having pretty white girls around and can't figure out how to make them both pretty and look like individual people at the same time.) and it's kind of dull to look at. If you saw them without the hairstyles or colouring to distinguish them, would you be able to tell them apart?
Courtesy of this tumblr...I think. I really don't understand how tumblr works, tbh
Another thing I regret about the film is how little I feel like I know the characters. Compare other movies; in Beauty and the Beast we know Belle spends all her time reading and being a weirdo with her inventor dad. In The Little Mermaid, Ariel is obsessed with the human world and spends all her time collecting human artifacts and being a weirdo about boys with legs. Tiana in The Princess And The Frog has a hell of a work ethic and spends as much time as she can working and reading cookbooks and being a frog, which is pretty weird. In The Aristocats, the kittens spend their time studying high-class stuff like painting and music, but are still kids and would rather play. The kitten Marie likes to be very feminine and thinks of herself as a lady, while her older brother Toulouse wants to be big and tough like an alley cat. In Lilo and Stitch, Lilo's main character trait is what a weirdo she is, doing strange things like making weird dolls and practicing voodoo, and she loves to hula dance and take photos of random tourists. My point here is that I don't get anything like that from Elsa and Anna. Elsa spent years alone in her room -- what did she do in there all that time, aside from "have magic ice powers"? Anna ran around the castle....talking to paintings, pretty much. She rode her bike down the stairs once. I have no idea what their lives are like or what they do. What are their personalities like, how do they change once they aren't all alone any more?
One thing I really took away from this movie was, I want more. Like I was saying earlier, I'd love to see what Elsa did when she was locked alone in her room most of her life, afraid of herself and of what she could do. Did she become the well-read princess of the original story? I can imagine her room full of shelves upon shelves of books as she tried desperately to lose herself in fact and fiction in order to distract herself from her hellish, lonely life. Or what about Anna? Did she read too, or did she run around bothering the servants all the time? Did she go outside? She must have, because she had a horse when the movie started. Why would she have a horse and know how to ride if she wasn't allowed to leave the castle? Or how about what happened after the film; did Elsa ever tell Anna that the reason she hid her powers was because she hurt her? Did Anna ever remember? How did they deal with suddenly having so many people around; after all, they aren't used to social interaction after being kept shut in for most of their lives. Does Elsa retreat to her ice palace when she's feeling overwhelmed? Did Kristoff ever mention that he saw them that night when they brought Anna to the trolls for help? Basically, I just want all of the fanfic ever, pretty much, because I just didn't get enough character interaction in the movie, and the stuff that I did get was good enough to show me that it would be worth seeing more of. It might be a little early to say this (and I might be jinxing it, considering Disney's past track record with the subject), but I'd like to see a sequel where we get to know everyone more. And maybe Elsa and Kristoff will get together in the next film....ah, I kid, I know that a Disney princess is paired for life. Still though. It'd be neat.
In a fine display of "Who cares about this non-news" reporting, CBC has informed me that "families believe" that the late ex-PM John Diefenbaker was not childless after all, but in fact has two -- that's right, count 'em, two! -- sons. According to CBC, having two kids is enough to count as "leaving progeny scattered across the country" because woah, two children? Such a voracious output of sperm is absolutely unheard of! Neither me nor my two siblings have ever heard of anybody having more than one kid. And the two sons live in different places in Western Canada! Holy cow! Scattered across the country indeed, CBC. I gotta say, I'm really glad somebody is reporting on this truly important breaking news that is the personal life of a guy who died over thirty years ago. Way to be relevant, CBC.
Well, I'm officially done with Christian's, the bar down on George Street. I don't often go downtown, but when I do go it's usually with Ash, and when I do go we usually visit Christian's at least once, mostly because we're just amused by the irony of the name. But it's really not worth it, all things considered. It's a dark, small, crowded bar and everything there is way more expensive than it really ought to be. Including forgetting your credit card, apparently.
But normal bullshit first. For example, when I'm downtown I usually drink sourpuss in pepsi, because it tastes like candy and I am basically a child who is for some reason everyone thinks is an adult. Every other bar on the street charges $5.25 for my usual drink. Or at least I think they do. Every bar I've been to and bought a drink at charges that much, at least. Christian's, on the other hand, charges either $7.25 or $7.50, I can't remember because after the first time they told me the price I didn't buy another drink any time I went there. I also have never used the ATM in the back of the bar, because it turns out they charge you ten fucking dollars to take money out there. I've never seen a store's ATM charge over three dollars on the outside to use their machine, so that's just highway robbery, it's obviously just to take advantage of anyone too drunk or distracted to read the screen as they put their PIN in. Especially since there's an ATM just a few feet from the door outside, not owned by the bar, that charges a perfectly normal small-change amount.
But still. Even considering the complete lack of atmosphere and the naked profiteering, I'd still stop in with my friends now and then just to see if we can find a seat and hang out to talk before hitting another bar when we get thirsty again. But after reading this news article, I'm so grossed out by the place I don't even want to do that any more. Apparently someone left their credit card at the bar one night, and when they came back for it the next morning Christian's straight up robbed and insulted them by putting a 25% "idiot tax" on the card. That bar officially gives zero fucks about their customers; that shit is credit card fraud at the very least, since the owner of the card obviously didn't authorize the charge, and the bar owner doesn't even act like it's a problem. He implies that the multiple people coming forward talking about the 25% charge are lying by claiming it's a (still unauthorized, and thus thieving) 15% charge, never apologizes, and then acts like serving drinks that they pay for is some special service. He goes on about how so many people cancel their cards so he's losing tons of money all the time over it, but like I was pointing out earlier, the bar is overcharging everything to a ridiculous degree (seriously, ten fucking bucks to use the damn atm wtf), and I haven't heard about any of the other bars (who don't act like thieving bastards and seem to get by well enough) complaining about this or charging people to get insulted for making an honest mistake. I even asked a bartender friend whether or not this was a common thing, and he was all "Wtf no way! That's insane, we NEVER do that, Christian's is the only place I've heard of that pulls that type of stunt." If people cancelling their cards is such a huge problem for the bar, there's a pretty simple solution: stop accepting credit cards with open tabs! Either it's worth it and you don't need to rip off innocent people for not pulling that shit, or it's not and why the hell would you do it.
Also dang, it has been like a whole month since my last post. I gotta work on that.
Oh, wait, I figured it out! Clearly, up until now the restaurant hasn't been selling meat made of animals. They've been selling meat that was not made of animals. Beef is not made of cows, it is grown on a farm somewhere, and this seal burger is the first time any animals have ever been made into meat for this restaurant. All the rest they got was made at the supermarket, where as we all know, no animals were harmed. It's the only thing that makes sense, really.
Look at this crap. This guy raped a twelve year old kid and gets off easy because the judge "could not prove the girl did not consent to it." This is directly from CBC's report:
The victim was in Grade 6 when the two began a sexual relationship.
In court, the girl said that Louvelle got her pregnant, and that on four separate occasions he jumped on her stomach in an effort to terminate the pregnancy.
Justice Alan Seaborn wrote in his decision that he believed the girl's claims to be true, but he was unable to find Louvelle guilty of assault because he could not prove the girl did not consent to it.
The kid was TWELVE. A twelve year old child cannot consent to sex with a twenty-one year old man. Full stop, no exceptions. She most certainly can't consent to a grown man jumping on her stomach because he had sex with her and got her knocked up. What the hell is wrong with this fucking dipshit judge if he thinks a little kid can consent to sex and assault? That's not even how the law works! That's statutory rape, even if she said yes she still wasn't consenting because a) a kid doesn't have the knowledge, experience or physical development to fully consent to something like that and b) IT IS AGAINST THE LAW TO HAVE SEX WITH A KID EVEN IF THE KID SAYS YES, BECAUSE KIDS CANNOT CONSENT TO SEX. Also, kids can't consent to getting jumped on to terminate a pregnancy. Jesus fucking christ. I can't fucking believe this fucker is in charge of judge stuff, since he is clearly incompetent. I mean, I could understand if he went down the "we don't have proof it happened" road, but this whole consent bullshit, are you kidding me?
Ok so there are actually loads (and loads and loads and loads) of things about the "straight ally safe place" tumblr, Straight Voices, that piss me off. Like seriously, pretty much every other post has something awful in it somewhere, from concern trolling via the tone argument (if you were just CALM and REASONABLE and NEVER EVER GET UPSET about all the awful bullshit that any sane person would get rightly furious over, everything will be magically better! This is why cis straight people are better at gay rights than gay people!) to appropriating LGBT shit (why can't I have straight pride? You get to be proud of being gay! It's the same thing, isn't it?) to....well, to shit like this. But one of the simpler, stupider things that annoys me is that slogan they have, Straight But Not Narrow, specifically when they are on t-shirts.
There are a few people who posted photos of this shirt, but I chose this person's photo
because I didn't want to steal someone's face-visible photo without permission to use in a critical post.
I think I hotlinked it, so if they choose to take down the photo on their end
it'll disappear here too rather than being up despite what they want.
What is even the point of this shirt? It's not in support of anything. It's not saying, "Hey, I think it's unfair that gay people aren't allowed to get married!" or "The government has no business in someone's bedroom!" or "Maybe transfolk should not get beat up and murdered all the time!" It is not raising awareness or supporting a specific cause (to my knowledge). It's just self-centred and braggy. "Hey, look at me! I don't hate gay people! Me! This straight person! Right here! Isn't it amazing how fantastic I am for not hating gay people, even though I'm straight!? I'm so straight, you guys!" Congratulations, you are not a blatantly hateful homophobe, you have reached the minimum requirements for being a decent human being. Now maybe you should stop making everything about you and what an awesome ally you are even though those darn lgbt's are just so cishetphobic omfg.
I don't use Tumblr. I have one, but I don't use it. I do, however, have friends who use Tumblr, and one of those friends is Wyatt. He made a post about autism that got pretty popular, and I wanted to reblog it but like I said, I don't use Tumblr. So I'm just going to link it here to show my support.
If you can't see the screencap or don't want to click it to make it bigger, this is the text of the post:
"Here, look, I’m just going to sum it up reeeeal simple for anyone who still doesn’t understandIf you see a charity for autism that obsesses even the slightest bit over wanting to “cure” autism in any waystay the fuck away from themI am not an illness"
Hell to the yeah, I could not have worded that any better myself. Not that I have autism or am any kind of expert on the subject, but I have mentioned my ADHD on here before. Not the same, but it's kind of a similar position, where people assume I am broken or flawed just because my brain works differently sometimes and I should be "cured" or "fixed" and become a completely different person. So I just wanted to say, yes, this is excellent and this needs to be repeated as many times as possible until it finally sinks in for everyone who thinks otherwise.
I'm sure most people have heard this dumbass quote before:
Haha so funny! And so true! Right? Well, I hate this quote. Not because I hate pizza (I don't!) or sex (I don't!) or funny quotes (I don't!). I hate it because it's a really blatant example of the "default male" position. Unless something is specifically about a woman, it's probably about a guy instead. It's really obvious that it's a dude who came up with that line, and the woman in the picture is probably laughing at him for it. For guys, sex is always good! Even if it's bad! Because hey, it might not be fantastic, but you still come in the end, right? This quote is completely accurate, for a guy. Ignore how "bad sex" for a woman ranges from feeling unsatisfied in the end or feeling nothing at all the whole time, to feeling a lot of pain and discomfort. Female experiences get ignored because male is the default, so even bad sex is good because guys somehow forget that women also have sex and hey it's totally different for us over here. This next piece of advice from the Actual Advice Mallard meme gives a solid, presumably gender-neutral in practice relationship tip...but uses a female pronoun because it assumes you are a Default Male* dating a woman. *Yes, it could also assume you are a lesbian, but if you argue that then you're just appropriating actual LGBT issues in order to pretend that you're open minded when we all know you were thinking of a heterosexual relationship. LGBT people have serious issues to deal with, and you aren't helping them by hiding behind their language while reinforcing cis-hetero defaults.
Individual examples like the ones I've provided might not seem like very much, and anybody reading this probably thinks I'm making a big deal over nothing. Two little pictures, who cares! But it's not just two pictures. Everywhere you look, men are assumed to be the default. Movies with female protagonists stand out, because almost every film has a male protagonist. It's assumed that a story will be about a man, so it's notable when it isn't. Many women who have heart attacks don't realize that's what they're having, because men and women show different symptoms, because it's the male symptoms that everyone is taught about. Crash test dummies are designed after the average male body, which leads to women being injured or killed more often in accidents because the safety designs are not made with the average female body in mind. Finding out Samus or anybody else is a woman in games or stories is a Huge Twist, because when you didn't have any prior evidence that they were female, you assumed they were male. If a job has different titles for men and women who are doing it, the man's job will be the actual job title (actor, councilman, waiter, etc).
For the most part, these are individual little things that, one-on-one, don't amount to much at all. Like how getting one litte mosquito bite isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things. But when you face an endless barrage of little bites like that, not only is it disheartening, it can be dangerous (see heart attacks, crash test dummies). It really sucks to look everywhere and find that in most places you are the other, the stranger, that whenever something addresses its audience it makes it clear that you, woman, you are not part of this audience. You are not who we are talking to, you are not welcome, you can stick around if you like but we will always remind you that we will ignore your perspective. Also, seriously, the heart attack and crash test things are for realsies dangerous. I started this blog post just to complain about that first pizza quote and the general existance of the "default male" but the more I thought about it and what it included, the shittier I felt. Now I'm afraid to do any sort of research on this topic because I really don't want to find out any other ways that society is basically saying health and safety for women is way too much work if it means we have to try new, less male-exclusive testing methods. I'd rather just live in blissful ignorance, thanks. Maybe if I plug my ears and hum 24/7 I can convince myself that sexism is over. Hmmm hmmm, la la la la, oh look the Advice Mallard is pretending that slut-shaming is advice. Maybe my next post should just be a series of terrible Advice Mallards that I make fun of.
I watched The Help tonight. It's a decent movie, I suppose. I want to like it. But for some reason, I can't really bring myself to. I want to, because I can't quite verbalize what it is that's prickling me so much. There's a lot of awkward "white person saves black people because they just can't do it on their own" stuff that everyone before me has mentioned; honestly I found the whole "Skeeter writing black women's stories for them" somewhat less creepy than the "Celia gives Minny the strength to leave her drunk, physically abusive husband by making her dinner one day" because hey, at least Skeeter gets called out on it once or twice, and the maids had a reason not to tell their stories. It might not have stuck or sounded sincere, but the subject was brought up and the situation was at least believable. Celia's deal was just.....weird. But I've watched the movie a couple of times now to try and figure it out, and all I can say is there's something about it that leaves me feeling not-quite-satisfied. Like it's doing something wrong, but I can't really put my finger on it.
But even the first time I watched the movie, there was one scene in particular that stuck at me. I'd heard about the white-saviour stuff beforehand and so I came in expecting that, but this scene near the end kind of blindsided me. The racist woman who was the main antagonist through the film, Hilly Holbrook, goes to main character Skeeter's house to rat her out to her mother about who wrote the book with all the maids' stories in it. And she's drunk, despite never being seen drinking much at all in the rest of the film. And she's got a cold sore on her lip, for the first time in the entire film. And it's just a really cheap, tacky scene. She's only drunk because it makes her look more pathetic and easily mocked. She's only got the cold sore so Skeeter's mother can trash her appearance, telling her "no husband wants to come home and see that!" and "Get out of here, before we all get one of those disgusting things on our lips!" And since cold sores are a type of herpes, I'm pretty sure it's meant in a slut-shaming way too. It just felt like a really gross scene. I mean, we've seen Hilly's behaviour throughout the rest of the film, we know how terrible she is. And in like one of the very next scenes she gets called out again by Aibileen, only Aibileen uses her behaviour and shit to call her out. Because that's what the problem is, Hilly is a racist turd who's mean and manipulative and generally terrible. That's what she should be called out for, and it's so satisfying when she is called out for it. The scene at Skeeter's just feels unnecessary and contrived, because instead of using her established character flaws they just make cheap cracks at her appearance. This scene also happened in the book; I had to check, because it seemed so far out of left field. The book's kind of worse, because it also points out how she's gotten fatter and that her shirt buttons are gaping open over her belly. Seriously? She's racist and mean and awful, and the best way the book/movie can think of to get at her and make her look bad is.....attack her appearance. It is so vitally important to make her look ugly that it comes before the scene where she's rightfully told off for being a little shit and ends up in tears. Congratulations on making me defend the nasty racist asshole, The Help. I hope that's what you were going for there.
So I'm slowly working my way through Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I'm almost done the second season. I just finished the eighteenth episode, "Up The Long Ladder," and...wow. Just wow.
STAR TREK, WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT. THAT SHIT IS MESSED UP.
So the episode starts off with some dinky little subplot where Worf gets Klingon measles and has tea with the doctor. If that counts as a subplot, because that's pretty much all that happens. It's also the most tolerable part of the episode, so...yeah.
The rest of the episode is about the forgotten human colony they find and rescue from a bad case of splody planet or soemthing, a colony of the most cliche stereotypes of Irish people you can imagine. Complete with Irish accents, despite being isolated from Earth and other humans for three hundred years. They're a bunch of redheaded farmers who don't know anything about computers or science and the men are all portrayed as lazy drunks and the women are sharp-tongued and complain about how they have to do all the work and they've got sheep and pigs and goats and assorted barnyard animals and use equipment like looms and wear homemade peasant-type clothing, and it's basically just a really offensive Irish stereotype and what the hell Star Trek, I thought you were supposed to be progressive. The sharp-tongued redhead daughter who's dad keeps trying to marry her off to random dudes wears a petticoat. A petticoat, for crying out loud.
Then it turns out there's ANOTHER forgotten colony! So they go check that out and it's from the same group who went up, but they're not Irish because they're scientifically advanced! So they speak with normal American accents and have basically the same lifestyle as the crew on the Enterprise. Except they reproduce by cloning! You see, all but five of the original settlers died in a crash or something and the survivors were scientific peoples, so they just started cloning and at first they stopped people from inbreeding through drugs and punitive laws, and "now, after three hundred years the entire concept of sexual reproduction is a little repugnant." Because that's how people work, right? Just put up a bunch of laws and stuff and eventually nobody ever wants sex ever. But blah blah reproductive fading copy of a copy blah blah, and they need new blood! So they're all "Hey you, want to give some dna?" and Riker is all "Oh fuck no, I'm too special!" and Picard is all "Yeah probably everyone's gonna feel like that so I won't ask around or anything." So they steal some DNA from Dr. Crusher and Riker in a really ridiculous, needlessly dramatic scene. And when Crusher and Riker find out they go kill their clones and the clone dude is all "What choice did we have, you wouldn't help! We have a right to survive!" and the show is all "huh maybe they have a weird point here" and I'm like THE FUCK THEY DO. They have a right to exist, they have a right to reproduce themselves, but they do not in any way have a right to impose on other people. Some random dude who wants to make sure his bloodline survives doesn't have the right to force a woman to carry his baby against her will, that's just a more extreme version of what the clone people are trying to pull here.
So the crew goes back to the ship or something and have a meeting and go "What these dudes need is breeding stock....oh! We've got those homeless Irish assholes in the hold! Let's shotgun wedding this shit." Not "Let's present the option to both cultures while informing the rest of the Federation that there's a Class M planet that could use some settlers." Just straight up "bully these homeless people who've just had everything torn away from them into living with these assholes who have no sense of respect for other people and who clearly look down on them, but need them because their society is collapsing due to a lack of a genetically diverse population." Then they go into a private meeting, just the two male leaders and Picard's group, and after a bit of disagreeing they finally settle on WHAT THE FUCK STAR TREK THIS BULLSHIT IS CREEPY AS HELL.
Ahem. Sorry. They settle on a plan where the Irish group settle the clone planet and monogamy is illegal now because we need lots of babies, so every woman, both the poor Irish women who have just had their entire lives ripped up and are thrown into chaos and the clone women who have a culture of finding sexual reproduction absolutely repugnant, have to have at least three kids by three different men. None of these women, who's reproductive future is being decided on by a group of men and one doctor, are present for this meeting or have any say about what's going on. We don't see the reaction of the clone women (who are probably gonna end up rape victims, because none of them actually want sex but they will be pressured into becoming broodmares by the (male) leader of their society), but we see one Irish woman's reaction. She's the one who's had her father try to marry her off to every man he sees. She's understandably furious that her father and Picard went around making all these grand plans without ever asking if the women would be willing to play along, and Picard is all "wtf you said you wanted a new home, here it is!" She goes "Yeah, but I never said I wanted to be Eve!" Because seriously who would willingly sign up for that bullshit. Picard is all "Fine, I'll just take you to the nearest star base so you'll have lost not only your home, but your family and friends and entire culture as well." Because that's not coercive at all. Suddenly she has a complete 180 on her opinion and goes "Wait, that dude looks important. He's rich, isn't he? And I can have three husbands? Ok, that makes up for everything," and wanders off to hit on people.
What the ever-loving fuck is going on here?! Granted, a lot of Star Trek episodes are pretty doofy, but this is the first time I've been literally repulsed by the events of an episode. It's like they tried to think of every possible way to make this episode as creepy as they could, or something. And they put a cheerful comic-relief/happy-ending gloss over it just so you could tell that they gave zero shits about what a bullshit society they just created. I thought Star Trek was supposed to represent some futuristic utopia, but here they throw this super-dark, seriously fucked up situation in our face and pretend it's all sunshine and rainbows. Fuck, show. Don't do that.
I don't have anything new to say about Wendy Davis, her filibuster down in Texas, or the ridiculous anti-abortion law that she's dealing with, that a thousand other people have not already said a thousand times better than I ever could. I just wanted to chime in and say that this woman is a true hero, and she will undoubtedly go down in history for what she's doing tonight. The law that they are trying to pass isn't just ridiculous, it's hateful and inhuman, and everyone who supports it should be ashamed of themselves for being such a miserable failure of a human being.
If I ever meet Wendy Davis, I would be honored for the privilege of shaking her hand and telling her what a true inspiration she is. If I ever meet any of the subhuman slime-crawlers who wrote or supported that bill, it would take more willpower than I have to keep from spitting on them.
Give Jekyll and Hyde a miss. Specifically the David Hasselhoff version, which is the only one I've seen, but I assume they're all varying degrees of terrible. I literally just finished watching it in the past five minutes, and already I can't remember a single tune from it. I watched it thinking, "Okay, so this isn't great, but so far I've been able to find something to enjoy in every musical I've seen. Surely sooner or later I'll hit that one guilty-pleasure song that makes the whole thing worth it, right?" Nope, never happened. Once or twice a song would start with one or two notes that would make me pay attention because hey, that's sort of good! Except then it would immediately go terrible again. The lyrics were really lazy (at one point they rhymed "doorstep" with "your step," how the hell did they get away with that), and the performance was....well. I did enjoy the first transformation scene, but not because it was good. I enjoyed it the same way I enjoy watching clips of The Room on Youtube. Which is not a compliment, to say the least.
I would continue with other vaguely-reviewish-words, but I don't have much else to say. Like I said, I only just finished watching it, so I haven't had time to dwell on anything or come up with fancy reasons why not to like it. Just...it's bad. That's all I got. The Hoff's acting is ridiculous, everybody else is bland, flat and forgettable, the "romance" sub plots between Jekyll, the orange lady and that stripper chick are completely lacking in...everything, really. And I had a really hard time suspending my disbelief. Like, I'm familiar enough with the story, as everyone is, to know that Jekyll's potion thing will work, but while he was petitioning the...medical board, I guess? To let him begin human trials, it sounded so ridiculous that even I was going, what the hell are you on dude, this is not science. I would have agreed with the medical board that he's off his rocker and shouldn't get to do his experiment, but they were all like "You're going against God's will, you're crazy!" instead of "This is the most ridiculous theory I've ever heard, I thought you were a doctor for goodness sakes, what half-rate hotel of a school would give you a medical degree?" I didn't care about any of the characters. Not the stripper lady who got killed at the end, not the bride lady who...didn't? I don't think she did, I was pretty bored by then so I wasn't watching all that closely. Overall, it might have been the worst musical I've ever seen. Even worse than West Side Story. Even that had one or two songs going for it, this thing was just completely forgettable, all the way through.
Well, that's it, that's pretty much all I can think of right now. Maybe in a day or two when I've had a chance to let the experience stew in my brain for a bit I'll have something more clever to say, but it's all I've got for now. Bad musical, did not enjoy, do not recommend.
I was going to write a post about how I've been trying to find a new blog reader ever since Google announced the retirement of Google Reader, and that the one I ended up trying out kinda sucked. But then I realized that most of my complaints seem to be "It's slightly different from the real Google Reader!" and "It doesn't show blog updates as quickly!" The last one might be legitimate, but I vaguely remember reading somewhere that they're working on that. And for the first one, well, it was a dumb way to react to a new site. Of course some things are going to be slightly different, but that doesn't mean those different things are flaws. They're just...different. I need to stop seeing every slight change as the end of the world. You'd think we'd all have learned that from Facebook by now -- they change their site constantly, but everybody manages to get used to it enough that when they change it again they start demanding that Facebook revert to the old new version.
I was going to find a picture mocking new-new facebook, but it's three-thirty in the morning and I can't be bothered. Have a tiny speckled lizard on a tiny golden tricycle instead. It's adorable.
At least one of the things I was going to complain about wasn't even the site's fault, it was me not noticing that I could change that setting. So not only is it dumb to complain just because something is new and different, if you start complaining before you give yourself a chance to get used to the new thing, you might just end up looking like a complete moron.
Basically, I need to work harder on not deciding that things are The Most Awful as soon as I start using them. I gotta learn to give stuff a chance before I turn into a judgy jerkface about it just because it's not exactly the same as the other thing. Again, you'd think I'd have learned this by now with Facebook. I guess I'm just really slow at personal growth.
Okay, yeah, it's pretty shitty that this bill was so massively opposed. Why do people have a problem with the idea that trans people don't deserve to get the shit kicked out of them, literally and figuratively, just because of their gender? Fuck you conservatives. Normally I'm not very political, but when almost an entire party thinks that some people don't deserve equal treatment, that's a pretty big sign that your party is bad and you should feel bad. Not to mention Prime Minister Stephen Harper (may his asshole fester) opposed this bill. Seriously? Why you gotta be a shit, Steve. Nobody likes you. Get outta here.
Canada's supposed to be this super-cool country where everybody is all "hey, do what you want!" We've got gay marriage and unrestricted abortions and free healthcare and all that neat stuff that other countries are jealous of. So why did we have to compromise to get this bill passed by removing the "gender expression" protection from this bill? What, it's only okay to be trans if you stay in the closet and never express your true gender? Not to mention the whole bathroom thing. I gotta say, I don't get why people have a problem with trans women using the ladies room and trans men using the men's room. It can't really be because of pervert-fear. For one thing, there are lots of unisex bathrooms out there that nobody is screeching about, so calm the fuck down. Also, even in gender-segregated bathrooms, a cis women can be just as perverted as a trans women, and non-trans guys dressing as a girl just to get into the ladies' room instead of downloading porn or something is pretty far-fetched. Besides, where's the danger anyway? You don't get undressed right out there in the open (except in the men's room, where you unzip your fly to use the urinals, I guess), you're safely locked in a stall so you can take care of business with some privacy. And it can't be physical safety -- in that case, why have public bathrooms in the first place? Because I can get the shit kicked out of my by a random woman just as easily as by a trans woman, and I'm probably more likely to get beaten up or harassed by a cis chick. I haven't got the stats on me, but I remember reading once that cis women attacking people in the restroom is more common than trans women attacking anybody. And trans women are way more likely to get assaulted than cis women, so if you're trying to protect trans women with this, it seems like they'll be a lot safer using the ladies room than the men's room. A lot of guys are culturally conditioned to be total shits to anybody who challenges male gender roles. That's why being called a fag or a pussy or girly is an insult. There's nothing wrong with being gay or being feminine, unless you are a guy who thinks that women are inferior and that being gay is as bad as being female.
Also, I can't believe I have to point this out, but trans does not mean pervert. Trans women aren't dudes who get off on wearing a skirt and makeup. And they aren't pedophiles. What is it with assuming that anybody who is even slightly different from the "average" person is a pervert or a pedophile? Like people who insist that gay people shouldn't be around kids because pedophilia or trans people shouldn't use the bathroom because pedophilia Nobody worries that a straight cis person is gonna touch your kid in the bathroom. I get the feeling that all of this "for the children!" claptrap is just a cover for "I don't like people who are different from me, so I think there should be a law to make sure they all go away!"
But let's look on the bright side. Despite the depressing opposition and compromises to this bill, it got passed! Yay! Canada is a better place today than it was yesterday!
Saw this on Youtube today. Disney's The Story Of Menstruation. There were a few comments that said something along the lines of, "I remember seeing stuff like this in school, they had a special class for girls and they'd show us this video/a video like this, the boys would go somewhere else."
There are a few reasons this video annoyed me. First, the description calling this a banned cartoon. This was never a banned cartoon. I hate watching old cartoons on Youtube and just about every one is "banned," or claimed to be. People just spread misinformation about cartoons being banned, because calling it banned generates more hits (or they just assume that any given cartoon must have been banned, because OMG LADY PARTS IN AN EDUCATIONAL CARTOON? NOOOOOO!!) Another reason it annoyed me is that the way the lady narrating pronounces "maturing" is so weird. Mahtooooring. The hell.
But the main reason I am annoyed at it is because of those comments, about how girls would have to watch it and the boys would be sent out. Which isn't directly annoyance at the cartoon, more annoyance at how stuff like that has been educated. Why can't boys learn how menstruation works, too? I know most of that sort of stuff happened in Ye Olden Days Of Sexism, but I've heard of it happening in Ye Modern "Post-Sexism" Days* too. I've met so many guys who have absolutely no knowledge of what menstruation is or why/how it happens. Once somebody expressed amazement that women get cramps during their period. Or that menstrual cycles affect hormones and shit even when we aren't bleeding, or that periods may not always be predictable and regular, or that being on your period doesn't automatically make you a RAGING BITCH RAAAAAAAR. Dudes. You are thinking PMS. It stands for premenstrual syndrome. As in, it happens BEFORE your period, and ends when your period starts. So if you claim that any lady who acts irritable when you're being a douche "must be on the rag!" then you sound like a complete idiot. Also, PMS isn't just "ladies hulk out!" There are a lot of symptoms (and it's not universal either, there are plenty of women who don't get PMS at all) and they can include breast tenderness, clumsiness, headache, and any of these other symptoms here. *Post-sexism: not actually a thing.
So why can't guys sit in on this video too? It's not some big secret that ladies sometimes bleed from the crotchal area. Most women do. Most guys realize that most women do. It's pretty hard to get through life without learning this little fact. So why don't people want to teach boys as well as girls how and why it happens, and what to expect? There's nothing wrong with learning about stuff that doesn't directly affect you. And it's a good thing to learn about stuff that directly affects half the people you interact with. Also, it helps you not look like a fucking moron when I mention a basic fact of life and you are utterly confused because "Durr, what does your period have to do with stomach cramps?"
And for the record, when I give you a death glare and/or punch you for making a PMS joke, it's not proof that I've got PMS. It's proof that you've successfully pissed me off, because PMS jokes are one of my pet peeves. How come every time a woman is annoyed or angry it's proof that she's somehow suffering from PMS, even while she's menstruating or has just finished a period? What, men can get pissed off for the sake of being pissed off but whenever a woman is pissed it's because of hormones? Fuck you.
So apparently watching the Oscars is a thing that people do, go figure. I didn't watch it, because seriously, it is the Oscars, who gives a fuck. But apparently a whole bunch of people on my Facebook newsfeed did! And are talking about somebody tripped or something and the host made some sexist or racist jokes?
The host thing is annoying, to me. Not that he made the jokes, not really. But like three or four people on my newsfeed are all up in arms because those damn feminists are making a big deal out of it because geez, it's only a joke, calm down, why are you wasting your time talking about jokes some dude made when there is real oppression to fight and actually hurting people to deal with, GEEEEEEZ.
Well, fuck off. I don't know what jokes this guy made, but if somebody was offended by it then they have the right to express that. If somebody thought what he said was problematic, they have a right to talk about how and why that is. And the fact that there are bigger problems in the world doesn't mean that everybody has to ignore the smaller day to day injustices that they face, and telling someone that they shouldn't talk about something that upsets them because, say, some Muslima has it worse. Guess what, people don't have to devote every second of every day fighting only the very worst oppression in the world until it's all gone before they can start paying attention to the small acts of oppression that happen to them every day and affects their life whether or not people on the outside can see it. Different people have different priorities, and those priorities are always in flux. Objecting to a rape joke today doesn't mean that they weren't advocating for a women's shelter yesterday or aren't picketing for a union tomorrow. And if you really have a problem with how people obsess over what you consider to be minor, ridiculous things instead of the big problems, then actually do something about those problems. Write letters and stage protests and volunteer and prove that you think that it's important to fix them, rather than just using big problems you don't really care about as an excuse to silence people who are fighting different problems that you also don't care about.
Also, is "somebody fell down on camera" really such a big deal that everybody on my news feed has to make jokes about it? Dang, no wonder I don't watch the Oscars if that's considered to be a high point.
I wrote a ridiculously long post complaining about the most recent episode of The Big Bang Theory. I had a big long multi-paragraph rant on how irritating the characters have become and how the romantic pairings are awful and filled with misery and how the jokes are old and un-funny (Howard's mom is fat! Ha! Sheldon is a sexist douche! Ha! Ha! Leonard is clingy and smothering and his relationship with Penny will destroy them both! HA!). Then I realized that obsessing about the show that I watch when I want to turn my brain off is doing it wrong. Also, this show has really gone on for too long, it needs to end already. TV shows are not meant to go on indefinitely. Half of the problems I had with the most recent episode wouldn't have been a problem in the first season before the show had so much history and character development to trip over.
Anyway, I deleted that ridiculously long post, because I realized that it's stupid to try to analyze the characters on a sitcom. No sitcom character can ever be anything less than awful, because early in the show's run awful characters are more fun to watch, and late in the show's run everyone has been Flandarized to hell and they're tripping over so much history and backstory nearly everything they do means they're being a dick. Like Leonard, pulling exactly the same thing on Penny as Stephanie pulled on him in season two, and he doesn't seem to remember at all how uncomfortable that made him -- even saying something along the lines of "If you don't want her to move in why don't you just tell her that" to Sheldon, completely forgetting what a useless wad he was in that episode and how he even tried to beg Penny into telling Stephanie to back off for him. Without that history, Leonard's behaviour is naive and clingy, but not that bad. With that history, he is a complete tool.
Oh jeez, here I go ranting again. This is a hard habit to break, let me tell you. But I really should, because seriously, I'm watching this crap because I want something stupid and funny to make me laugh and to stop me thinking for twenty minutes. If I then spend forty minutes writing a rant, and then another fifteen minutes on a half-rant about not ranting after that? It is clearly not doing it's job. Maybe I should just watch The Walking Dead instead, at least that show is fun to hate.
Okay, this is a stupid rant coming up. I know it's dumb. It's petty, it's nitpicky, it's meaningless in the grand scheme of things. It does not matter to anybody. But I have to get it out -- the word wherefore.
It means why. It does! It does not mean where. I can get why people just looking at the word might think it means where since, you know, where is right there in the word. It does not mean where though. It means why. This was made very clear way back in high school, when everybody had to study Romeo and Juliet -- some unlucky people more than once! And most uses of it seem to pretty obviously mean "why" instead of "where." Why would Juliet be asking where Romeo is? That speech is really obviously about why he is who he is, not where he is at that particular moment. So why does everybody get it wrong? It annoys me so much! And I can't do anything about it, because it's just such a stupid thing to be annoyed by. Nobody even uses wherefore any more, so why should it matter that people don't know what it means? Even though they should? Because it's really not that complicated at all and if you don't get it then I can never respect you as a person?
