Hey, so, it's been a long time. I just figured I'd leave a brief update for anyone coming in to see if I'm still alive (answer: yes) and what's up with me.

Updates are below the cut, but be forewarned that there's some heavier mental health shit there. If you don't think you can handle it, that's fine. We probably haven't talked in ages. See the above re: my current existence (reminder: I am alive. Heart beating. Neurons firing. Et cetera.) and take peace in that, then keep your own health in mind.

( Updates here.Collapse )

There seems to be an issue with my employer's online portal that is fucking up only my schedule. I have repeatedly resubmitted my schedule - six in the morning to eleven at night every day except Thursday, sometimes with a startong time of five on weekends - only to have it eventually reset itself to a five to eleven schedule, except four thirty to eleven on Thursdays.

The result is rescheduling appointments, since I can't really afford to just drop hours. So now my therapist appointment for this Thursday is happening at the end of the month instead.

And wouldn't you know, I suddenly feel like I really need to talk to her. I have a situation I don't know how to deal with at all that is driving me fucking crazy.

Once again I'm sitting here wishing I was less of a total fuck-up so I could live somewhere where I'm not a burden, and where I could feel some modicum of control. It might not be freedom from the constant anxiety, but at least I wouldn't feel guilty all the time.

Of course, that involves both getting a better job - and how the hell can I convince anyone to hire me? - and learning to drive, and just thinking about that makes me scared shitless.

AND right now I am fucking depressed about the life I have lead. I'm not lonely, not really, but the chances of me ever having a family of my own are looking increasingly slim.

And I wish people around me would stop asking questions they don't really want answers to. I used to pride myself on not lying and now I do it way too often, because telling the truth is just too exhausting.

I also realized today that I am pretty much always angrier at other people than they are at me. I'm pretty good at placating people I'm furious with, but really shitty at getting them to ever care that I'm angry or want ti compromise or fix problems. I feel like all I ever do is give up and then resent people for it. I have basically no backbone. I think it ultimately comes back to the control thing, and how my life hinges so much on making other people not want to get rid of me - in my life, my home, everything. And it makes me a dull person, too.

I'm a boring leech and I'm scared of everything. I wish I hadn't rescheduled that appointment, but I need to keep my vacation hours for my brother's wedding. That's definitely the only thing I feel I have to look forward to right now.

There is a Tumblr I found recently that I wish I had had on hand a few years ago, when I was having an argument about why feminism is necessary with an old classmate.

Shit People Say to Women Directors & Other Women in Film

See, I had it pretty decent, on a personal level, at Tisch, where I studied with this guy. I had a lot of female classmates, a good number of female teachers (two sound teachers, three writing teachers including a comedy teacher, a few teachers of general film terminology, criticism, and concepts, et cetera), and supportive male classmates who never reduced my abilities to my gender. Which is great! It really is! I never had anyone tell me I couldn't do this or that in film because it was a man's job, even when I did poorly at comedy or couldn't lift something. I even had one teacher take a moment to celebrate a female director's success as a notable step for women in film, and in that same class I had classmates examining gender roles in their works and not being questioned on it. Even my own sloppy role reversal work never got criticised for the role reversal part.

But I knew that was a good space. I knew, even then, that in the professional world things were different. Women are vastly under-represented in a lot of areas of film, particularly in writing, directing, and producing - and that's behind the scenes.

The problem was that without my own easy-to-identify experiences, it was hard to get people to take me seriously when I brought up things like this. Hell, it probably would have been plenty hard even with my own experiences, since it's easy for people to dismiss an individual woman's stories of misogyny as overreacting or some other bullshit.

So this blog, even though it is a depressing window into what many women in the industry face, is awesome. It gives MANY women a voice and holds a mirror up to the world of film. It's harder for people to deny this many experiences, and it can chase away that "but maybe I AM overreacting" feeling.

It's weirdly heartening, and it could have been so easy to point to it and go, THIS. This thing, right here, is why we need feminism, even just in our own field.

But successes! They exist. Orphan Black continues to be awesome and feminist even with the addition of more male characters; Pitch Perfect 2 was a great low-impact, feel-good comedy all about women (sometimes explicitly about women in the context if feminism, sometimes just about women as people), directed by Elizabeth Banks, whose website is pretty great and feminist itself; iZombie features a great female lead with her femaleness affecting but not defining her story; female motherfucking Ghostbusters and even the men involved in them mocking the assholes who have a problem with the very concept of that.

There are good things happening. I have to hope for more.

You ever feel like the things you've believed in all your life have just become too tiring to speak about? I feel that way a LOT lately about feminism. It's not that I don't believe in it, it's that it shapes and bleeds into a lot of what I think about, and yet I have to edit and censor it so heavily when talking to other people it actually feels like it takes a physical toll.

It's tiring when there are so many inter-feminist arguments about how feminism should be handled, down to nitpicking details, that it feels like nothing can get done and all that we can universally agree on is that problems exist.

It's tiring when you have family members casually criticising women's bodies in a broad and uncomfortable way, but if you say anything about it they accuse you of just trying to start a fight.

It's tiring when you have friends who don't seem to realize how critical they are of women and how forgiving they are of men, and you don't know how to point it out without alienating them. Or when your friends make blanket statements about gender that have value implications and you realize they don't even recognize that they're putting YOU with the "bad" group.

It's tiring when issues about gender cross into other issues and it STILL feels like women are being pushed to the bottom rung. It's tiring when you realize that this doesn't seem to happen when discussing issues that don't cross with feminism. Everyone else gets to be the loudest in their own space, but women take a back seat in feminism if they don't have something to add besides their womanhood. It's tiring because you realize that it's important to be inclusive, but it so often comes around to feeling not so much different from misogyny.

[And now I'm going to get specific.]So there's this discussion on FFA that's about how it's exclusive and alienating for any woman to talk about vaginas in terms of their womanhood or femininity. How it's so much more inclusive to say "woman" (or apparently make direct reference to femininity or I guess call yourself a babe or something). People are quibbling about it being off topic and calling it ignorant to imply that there's any connection at all between biological sex and gender.

It's not even a phrase I would ever think to use myself ("hand in my vagina card"). People are saying it makes them feel dysphoric, and I believe them. But it makes a lot of women who, for better or worse, have had their gender identity societally shaped by their body once again feel like it's not their own to discuss. And the best some can offer is "I'm sorry it makes you feel like your identity and body are being policed, but you're a cis woman and there are plenty of places you can go to talk about tour vagina".

Except there aren't? No, really. Because the conversation as a whole condemned that in any context if you connect it to womanhood. And even in practice, I don't exactly have a lot of places at my disposal where I can casually refer to my vagina without people being grossed out, even if the conversation has allowed for discussion of penises. Hell, even if breasts come up! And being allowed to talk about it doesn't mean we're implying that it's universal, any more than talking about any other experience many women face. When women talk periods*, they aren't excluding trans women any more than they're excluding pre- or post-menopausal women or any other women who don't have periods. It's actually truly important, and not on a Tumblr-esque "THIS IS SO IMPORTANT" kind of way, for women to be allowed to talk about these things without getting shut down constantly for not being totally, completely, one hundred percent explicitly inclusive of every type of woman to exist.

Talking about women driving in countries where it's illegal doesn't imply that the existence of women, in those countries or elsewhere, who have disabilities that prevent them from driving are lesser. Talking about experiences in the film industry that effect women doesn't invalidate the experiences of working class women. Talking about a woman's choice to have children doesn't make that woman more important than women who are childfree, and vice versa. Referring to your breasts as a part of your body, your femininty, your female experience, your womanhood, and how you are perceived as female does NOT imply that women without breasts are nkt female.

I feel like this comes from the same attitude that causes many women to wholeheartedly reject feminism: the attitude that because they live a socially acceptable feminine lifestyle and are not bothered personally by whatever misogyny may be in their lives, no one should be, because everyone should think of THEIR experience first and feel the same way they do.

I don't feel that way. Even about this issue. I want trans women, black women, disabled women, religious women, and all kinds of women to be able to think of and discuss their own experiences, gender, and bodies without constantly being reminded of how they have to filter it for all other women first.

It's especially frustrating because this particular discussion ALWAYS falls on women. I guess it doesn't have as much opportunity to fall on men, but it stands out a lot as a result because no one even seems to bring it up. No one says men have to stop talking about their dicks because they might alienate transmen if they define their manhood that way. Fuck, no one is even openly critical of the fact that "manhood" is common and accepted slang for dicks. No one expects men to accommodate. And women have to pick up the slack on both sides, protecting men with vaginas and women without them.

It is so, so tiring. And it's not like I don't think there are more ways female-oriented spaces can be inclusive, but I hate this word policing and how misogyny gets put on the backburner over and over again.

But it's almost not worth arguing about. It's just so fucking exhausting. I am literally physically tired from this. It makes me feel like this shit isn't worth it. Sure, let's let other people determine how I talk about my gender, my body, my experiences. Let's stop caring, self. Let's give up and give in.

In a lot of ways I have. I let other people do the talking. Outside of this mostly dead blog I talk more about racism and LGBT rights, even though neither affect me directly. I don't even feel like it's worth examining my own position with my gender and sexuality sometimes. I get too much anxiety about how other people would judge me or find me unworthy.

*which, yes, is a wholly separate discussion from vaginas. Truthfully, vaginas in the specific almost never come up in period talks.



...my next post is going to be a more positive discussion of feminism in media, to make up for this feelingspew.

Okay. So. I'm an asshole. (I said that already, right?)

Long story short: I thought about my last post, and yes, nine out of ten things I said there were FUCKING STUPID. I'm an asshole, I'm wrong, and I'm sorry.

I mean, I still stand by my position that it's unfair to say the trans consultant on Transparent is the "wrong" kind of trans. I could sort of understand if they were disappointed because it was a nonbinary, or even AFAB, trans person and they wanted more focus specifically on the main trans character's life — I wouldn't necessarily agree, but I could understand. I could also understand if the complaint was about her not being involved enough (being a consultant instead of an actual writer). I just don't think it's right to say that because she transitioned in a different environment, she's the wrong person to choose. It's limiting, it's offensive to the wrong people, and it sends a bad message. For whatever other fuckups the people working on Transparent may have made, actually getting a trans person to improve those issues is NOT one of them, especially not when the complaint is that she's too well-known.

That still bothers me. I don't know. Maybe there's another way to read that complaint, but I'm struggling to find any possible interpretation that doesn't make me angry. That doesn't excuse the rest of my stupid screed, but the rest of my stupid screed also doesn't excuse that.

I'm not going to delete it, because I was a fucking idiot and I don't really deserve to pretend it didn't happen. I just... might not ever look at it again. You are free to tell me how stupid I am for it in the comments to this post, though.

(Unrelated, but I am constantly baffled by this new LJ layout. It's not nonintuitive, it's... more that the last one was, and so I still expect it to be that way? How long has it been this way? Clearly I don't get on LJ often enough anymore.)

I find this Mary Sue article really disheartening for a number of reasons. I haven't even watched much of Transparent (I think I got to episode three? I agree with a lot of commenters about the kids being hard to watch), but the implications of a lot of this for someone who wants to be an ally come across as less... I don't know how to put it. Less critical, I guess, and more possessive.

( Cut for a long, long bit of writing that's basically me putting my nose where it doesn't belong.Collapse )

Here's how behind I am on my TV watching: back in May (May, it's September now you guys) I recorded two episodes of a show I happened to scroll past, knowing nothing about it except what the one-line episode summary was for those two episodes. Just now, as I was going through my list of recorded shows and trying to slim it down, I ran across it way down at the bottom again. I thought I'd watch a few minutes just to determine if it would be worth saving to watch at a later time, or if I could delete it without remorse.

So now I've already fallen madly in love with Please Like Me. My only other experience with Australian television was the pilot of Wilfred, the original version of which was so surreal it was impossible to absorb, kind of like DEBS in a way (although I could, and did, absorb DEBS, at least to the extent that I watched, understood, and on some level enjoyed the whole thing; I did not attempt to watch another episode of the original Wilfred series). I definitely feel like there is an Australia-sized hole in my television viewing experience now, which is a problem, because I have so many other shows to watch still (Brooklyn 99! Parks and Rec! Orange is the New Black! Friday Night Dinner! Help me, I'm drowning in television!)

I know I'm going to gorge myself on this series now. It's got this feel like if The Inbetweeners was actually really sweet and sometimes sad (aside from that one time ### got his dog put down). I'm also pretty sure there's no way for this show to bite me in this ass; at worst it might get slightly disappointing and I'll lose interest. This is very good news to me right now.

Okay, this is a stupid thing to get frustrated over, but I am anyway:

I am tired of seeing people say that anyone who names their child Ariana/Arianna must be a racist. The fact that the amount of times I've seen this amounts anything over one is astonishing. At this point I have to assume they're either trolling, being willfully ignorant (it's not an uncommon name), and/or pronouncing it or Aryan incorrectly. I'm at the point of wanting to ask them if they also think the titular character from The Little Mermaid is a racist, or if her father is — or any other name that starts with A-R-I.

I know people just generally tend to be fucking judgmental idiots about names, but the "you must be a racist" thing is just above and beyond that.

EDIT: And now I've passed Go, collected my two hundred dollars, and have found myself loving a name the more other people are vitriolically against it. I suppose it's just as well, because I really love the name Thessalonike...

This started with me just looking up names for characters, man.

So it turns out my Kindle has this voice recording thing that transcribes what you say
Does it pretty accurately so I'm not editing this at all that probably means we'll have no punctuation Anneli 1N her but Chano I'm just gonna leave it as is because it amuses me so

Okay I guess it's not as I can talk Fritze record which is kind of you're doing but make sense can't go on for too long on some interesting typos in there/errors/whatever don't know how Ranelli got in there or one and Chano Sprazzo to separate things though interesting

[Out of it got the/in there but it came with Sprazzo what is Sprazzo okay so maybe I just need to say. Enter

I have to speak my punctuation! Oh my god. That is ridiculous.

I guess that means I can talk about my period? I have to call my "time of the month "…

How does it or?!?!?! I think I mispronouncing in their Soakimi interesting to see how that turns out this is really weird and super cool I'm having a lot of fun night now

Alright, I'm going to try and make this somewhat coherent now by speaking very clearly and saying my punctuation when necessary. Let's see how this turns out. I'm a little annoyed it makes alright into one word. Also I'm not skipping I'm too
's now for new recordings. That should be kind of obvious. That was mines not's don't know what happened there. Website forgot my punctuation. No, lines not mines. I've I feel like I am arguing with my Kindle now. Also old brick like I'm giving someone a telegraph message to send via Morse code. No, Alittle like … Why did it make a little into one word? It's really hard to remember to do" like this. Whoops. I am talking fairly slowly and not normally at all so let's see how it goes when I do talk in my normal tone somewhat normal anyway. That went pretty well except for how I've got to do the punctuation again.

So this probably won't be fun for anyone to read except me but I am having a blast. I guess I should've been! I'm getting used to saying. At the end of every sentence. Shoot I Creeklea Meskada I just can't laugh when I'm talking to this thing that was supposed to say" I really messed that up".

This could be super useful for taking notes I'll have to remember that the functions available. Although I wish there was someway to easily save text things on my Kindle…

I probably sound like an idiot to anyone who is listening to this. And I guess I should go to bed.

So that's it then I guess. The end!!!

I am so close to just being done with any and all internet communities that focus on actual conversation. I'm so sick of 99% of the crap on FFA right now, but, you know, pretty much everywhere else is just as full of it.

So I guess I'm looking for somewhere where I don't have to talk to anybody or read anybody else's thoughts. Just pictures, videos, and fiction, with no room for responses.

Kimba clawed Mickey in the eye. Well, it doesn't look like he actually got her eyeball, but like he caught her lid; it's bleeding a bit and swollen. I'm pretty pissed — there have been fights and all since he came in, but they've been minor cuts at worst — but mostly I'm just upset because I don't know what to do for her. Obviously she'll be going to the vet as soon as possible, but there's nothing I can do for her now, at this time of night. She won't even stick around long enough for me to get a real good look at it; she's hiding in the basement. (Kimba has been removed to the space we put him in at night, to separate them and keep the peace.)

Part of me really, really wants to be pissed off about this. Kimba has caused problems from the first day he got here. On the other hand, my mother loves him, and he was my grandmother's cat and we absolutely cannot give him up to a shelter. I don't think giving him away is an option for her, either, but my parents have really done nothing about the issue except say, "Well, that's just how they are, so we'll have to let them work it out." Yeah, that worked real well.

But fuck, I don't even have the energy to be that mad, because I just really want to cry for Mickey and I wish our vet was open right now. Thankfully they always have time slots available when we need them on short notice.

Last night I dreamt that I suddenly discovered that I liked Lady Gaga and Kanye West when I went to their concerts for free. (I actually do like Lady Gaga, though.) The concerts were super-empty and yet I still had to sit way in the back, but I was all about it anyway.

I went to a second Kanye concert, which I had to pay for and which was even more dead than the first one (with something like twenty people where there was seating for 1000+). It was so low-tech it would make non-dream!Kanye weep, but I was there cheering my ass off. Then, SUDDENLY, the lights went out, and when they came back on Kanye was gone. We all sat around for a few minutes, thinking it must be some kind of performance piece there, but he didn't come back, so we all went up to the stage (there was no security, and apparently no musicians or... anything except Kanye at all). We quickly found a back hallway that lead to this small yard, where there was a big part of a brick wall busted out with a cavern inside. We crossed a rope bridge and there we found Kanye, surrounded by tall people in loinclothes and stuff. They said they needed to sacrifice him to preserve their space between worlds. Which worlds? Earth and the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender, of course!

And all of those people present at the concert, myself included, were people who existed on both worlds. We were all benders, even! I think I was a waterbender. Anyway, Kanye only existed on Earth, but he HAD existed in the other world, as a firebender, and for some reason that was why they needed to sacrifice him, specifically. One of the concertgoers suggested they take one of us instead, because, since we were each cross-dimensional twins, at least one version of us would keep on living, but the between-worlds people insisted that it really, really had to be Kanye.

Kanye woke up briefly and said he was okay with it, and he didn't want the between-worlds people to suffer just so he could live. He then left me all his pets in his not-actually-physically-existent will, because he didn't trust Kim to care about them. I wound up with a horse, a litter each of puppies and kittens, two giant rabbits, and a terrible fucking spider that laid thousands of eggs that I had to care for at least until they hatched.

Mostly I'm just amused that Kanye was a selfless firebender (and yet there were zero pyrotechnics at the concert).

Sometimes I feel like that whole big SJW part of Tumblr would think I am just fucking awful for not being more active in austism awareness or whatever. Because I don't jump at every opportunity to point out how awful this or that possibly ASD character is, or how offensive I find so many representations of characters with Asperger's, or try to find ways to "prove" that a character has a form of autism.

Because if you don't strain to force yourself into your niche of lesser privilege, you fail at Tumblr. Or something.

So very little of it at times seems to have anything to do with anything useful. It's bred into this poisonous air where exclusion is complained about, while in the same turn any form of inclusion that is provided by groups not 100% made up of those formerly excluded is torn to bits. There's little interest in providing real information or celebrating victories. It's just about anger, anger, anger.

Not that that all isn't useful. Not that those points shouldn't be made. But that shouldn't be all that is done. It shouldn't have to be that it's not enough for a character to be gay (if they're not written by a gay person) or female (if they're not also some other minority) or disabled (at all, because if they rely on help from others it's demoralizing, and if they don't they might as well not be disabled, or some shit like that).

Are there no victories to be had? Must these people be so completely, adamantly insistent that no progress has ever been made on social issues? And when they can't argue that, somehow, it gets veered into something basically unrelated, and oh my god I just wanted all the fun gifs and comics and art.

I know, really, I do, that it's mostly just that that's the stuff that gets spread around. People are more interested in distributing the angry person's rant than a thoughtful look at progress with a side-helping of knowledge. If they get angry, they want to pass it on. If they're just kind of pleased and a little more knowledgeable, it doesn't seem as important. It's just kind of the way people are.

Still. This is why on my newer account I don't follow anyone's personal blogs. Official or group/single topic blogs are the only thing I can manage, now.

I have such a love/hate relationship with Tumblr, really.

My coworker and I decided that our store should do all its advertising — in-store at least — with the cast of The Room, and in particular Tommy Wiseau.

You see, there's this weird ad that seems just a bit off, and begins with a woman saying, "Hi, pear!" Because yes, she is talking to a pear.

It should instead be, "Oh hi, pear!" as said by Tommy Wiseau.

And all the other ads should start with, "Oh hi, shoppers!"

Also:

"You should buy the chicken. No water or salt added. It's good! Ah-ha. CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP."

"I got the results back. It's official: I definitely saved money on my groceries with (store card)."

"I owe him some money!"
"WHAT KIND OF MONEY?"
"For groceries!"
"WHAT KIND OF GROCERIES?!"
"What does it matter?"
"It matters a great deal! You could have saved at (store)!"

"I am tired of these high prices!"

"There are no high prices. I just said that to make it interesting."

"Do you want me to make a pizza?"
"Whatever, I don't care."
"I'm already making a pizza."
"You think about everything, (store). Ha ha."

"You don't understand anything, man. Leave your stupid savings in your pocket!"
"That's the idea!"

Yes, I do realize that these don't match up quite right. TOO BAD.

Tommy Wiseau, you wanna do some ads for a regional grocery store chain?

As a link to another gift I am getting for some of my friends, I set my sights today on two books: Knight Moves by Jamaica Layne and The King's Men by Christian Fall. They are both frequently reported on as just fucking terrible erotic romance, which would have made them perfect Christmas gifts, obviously.

Unfortunately, Knight Moves is out of print (or was never in print), and I'm not paying for it as an ebook. That one I had no intention of buying in any manner other than preowned, but alas, my plans for giving it to my friend with a red pen are simply not to be. (This book contains, among other things, a vagina making a "disappointed queeb sound" and surprise fisting, and that hardly even touches on the awful.)

The King's Men is also out of print, but there are copies available. They're just, you know, available for $80 or £50 MINIMUM. This is pretty understandable, since it's pretty well known just who "Christian Fall" is. (Hint: He's famous!) But that means my dreams of getting to tell my friend she was holding in her hands male-male erotic romance written by a dude that is worse than most fanfiction are dashed.

I considered trying to find other romance novels with a similar level of awful, but now I just don't want to bother. What could match the penis-chewing of The King's Men, or the acrobatic spinning-on-a-penis sex from Knight Moves? And it would be more difficult, with less popular options, to know if it was hilarious bad or just bad.

Oh, well.

Once upon a time, a bootlegger, apparently too lazy or unable to provide subtitles for their DVDs, decided to simply take the subtitles from another film — Detention — and use them for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

And it was glorious.

I may be a bit obsessed with Buzzfeed lately, even if it does have arguments with my computer. I think it started when my brother suggested I look at 26 Dogs Who Forgot How to Dog.

There's a lot of crap, but there's also dogs who forgot how to dog, and this:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/hnigatu/comics-that-capture-the-frustrations-of-depression

It's really good just to read stuff from people who understand, sometimes.

Edit/Also also also!/avoiding making yet another post today: You know, it would be really nice if my parents would stop saying, "Hey, you should request time off for this!" a week away from the thing they want me to request time off for. How many times do I need to say that I need more than two weeks' notice and that management has been awful and stingy with scheduling before they get it?

No, wait, they're never going to get it, because apparently concerns about my work are just not important enough. No, no, wait, I'm just not important enough to be informed of things in advance, ever. And I never have been. I have always been the very last person to know about important things in our family, and I have always been told off for not knowing things I had no way of knowing.

This is so tiring and disheartening.

I keep bouncing between "NO I CAN DO THIS I CAN CHANGE MY LIFE" and "fuck it, my life is over anyway." WHICH WILL WIN IN THE END?

There's a little sidebar on the right side of the LJ homepage, and I get the impression that it's meant to be showing me updates from communities/users I might have visited recently, but I am not sure when I visited this one that's showing up. I don't even like that pairing. Hm.

I've been visiting an anon meme pretty regularly lately, and when I started it seemed like a decent place. Sure, there were arguments and wank and whatnot, but generally it was easy to get past the stuff (especially when a lot of the arguments were about things on the same level of importance as how to properly change a tire).

All of a sudden it's like every third post is a troll trying to hard or someone being the world's biggest dick over fucking nothing. And then they gloat about it, because apparently we're meant to be impressed by the fact that they can be a terrible person and find it funny. I thought people were exaggerating at first when they said there were the sort of people who encourage suicidal people to kill themselves there.

I wish some people could just be banned from the internet all together. I can enjoy the anon atmosphere otherwise, but it's just getting tiring and kind of boring now. At the same time, I feel like that's letting them win, but man, I'm not sure I have the energy for this.

Of course, that's how I feel about most social interactions.

I miss having an internet safe space. :/

Sometimes I type up huge diatribes about how self-defeating so many SJW arguments are and then I stare at it and wind up deleting it all because most of the time, there doesn't really seem to be any way to make these people see when they're being actually pretty racist/sexist/other kind of *ist with their ideas. It's sad; I thought of social justice as something that was supposed to open the world up and connect people to each other, but a lot of times it just seems like a mockery of that, now.

It seems like so many people struggle to be the most extreme version of a social justice warrior they can, and it's kind of scary how many of those people have driven themselves right into corners. Suddenly all cultural exchange is appropriation, and people stop realizing when they're using the word "native" in an almost condescending and certainly quite racist way, or when they've gone right back around to promoting sexism. Taking an interest in a foreign culture is appropriation/fetishizing that culture, full stop, no matter how you go about it, because clearly what we need in this world is for nobody to ever cross borders ever again. Sure, some people do get weird, obsessive, and even fetishistic about other cultures, but sometimes somebody just wants to go to fucking Belgium and experience a different way of life for a bit. Admiring the beauty of religious architecture isn't some grave ill just because you aren't a part of that religion or culture.

It's just ridiculous when I feel there's more that's uncomfortably racist about a supposed SJW's rant than about the people they're ranting about.

At least I can laugh when some of those people go too far and wind up directly insulting someone from a different culture with their rants (like the people who say it's offensive to say "people of color" only to find out that they're talking to a POC, or someone who whines about the appropriation of tea house culture to someone who was visiting their own family's tea house). On the other hand, it's really painful when they work themselves into a corner and don't get it. There's having a difference of opinion, and there's complaining about racism against one race while simultaneously being incredibly racist to another, or complaining about sexism while telling other women off for being "sluts" or what have you.

And I don't even know what to say about the folks who keep trying to assign disabilities, alternate sexualities, etc to real people that they don't actually know just because they think they're cool. Guys. It is okay to think a straight, white cis dude is attractive and talented. You don't need to try and make him be something else. You don't lose your Decent Human Being cred just because you have friends/admire celebrities who aren't a part of a struggling minority. Be open.

The last minute or so of "Stand On the Horizon" by Franz Ferdinand is amazing; it rolls over my arteries and veins like gravel. It makes me feel like I'm vibrating from the inside out. I can't stop listening to it.

I like all the other songs on the new album but that one drives me crazy in the best of ways.

(Although what the hell is up with Bullet? I am having a hard time making sense of the "let the mouse go down on you" lines. Unless that's a complicated way of saying something about cybersex. Please let it be that, and not a reference, metaphorical or otherwise, to bestiality. D:)

I counted everything today, during my break. We sell one hundred thirty-seven different products (for slicing), including twenty-one turkeys, fifteen hams (not including spiced hams, hot hams, prosciutto, etc), and forty kinds of cheese.

One of these days, I'm going to say as much to one of those customers who keeps coming in and asking for "a pound of ham, a pound of turkey, and a pound of cheese" and then getting belligerent when I try to wheedle specifics out of them.

Today, thankfully, I only had "I need a half a pound of turkey" but still. When I tried to get her to give me any information on what kind she might like, she said, "Well, I don't want turkey roll."

Well, that's fantastic! We don't carry that, so you don't have to worry. I still need to know what you do want, though.

Oh, and there are seven different roast beef items, five of which are "regular" roast beef (in other words, not Italian style). Specifying "regular roast beef" doesn't cut it.

And on the subject of different styles of meats and cheeses, there are four regular oven roasted turkeys if you don't count the low sodium options (if you do, it's seven), three smoked turkeys (plus two if you count low sodium and pepper-smoked), four cooked hams (plus one more low sodium), three plain baked hams (that's not counting honey, Virginia brand, or all natural options), three each of Genoa and hard salamis, three types of prosciutto, ten kinds of bologna (six regular, three beef, and one low sodium, plus a Lebanon bologna if you want to count that), three Buffalo chicken breasts, three liverwursts, three plain, mild white American cheeses (plus two sharp whites, two sharp yellows, three mild yellows, a low sodium white, a low fat white, and a white with peppers in it), seven Swiss cheeses (one domestic, one sharp imported, two lights, two laceys, and a baby), five provolones (one slightly smoked, one very sharp, the rest more or less normal), four regular cheddars (plus a peppadew, a horseradish, and a garlic cheddar), and two or three options for a number of other items.

It's okay to not know what you want, but I need somewhere to start. You can ask questions or try samples, if that works for you, or you can just decide you want the cheapest option or whatever's on sale, or whatever you like. Just... something.

For the sake of being thorough, items that we only have one of include: spiced ham, Canadian bacon, pancetta, cooked salami, olive loaf, P&P loaf, pepper loaf, dutch loaf, pork roll, head cheese, gouda, havarti, mozzarella, monterey jack, and pepperjack. A few flavors work as easy specifics too (though we have two maple and honey items, so at least finish with "ham" or "turkey"): rosemary ham, cajun turkey, chipotle turkey, brown sugar ham, honey barbecue chicken, di Parma prosciutto, and turkey ham.

(Yes, I have done a lot of counting today.)

( This is really long and kind of therapeutic for me.Collapse )



On a note not specifically related to the deli: only service dogs are allowed in the store. There are a number of reasons for this. This rule applies to everyone. I love dogs, but I hate you, because for some reason you decided that the rule didn't apply to you, and you brought in a non-service dog who wasn't even housebroken. Thanks a lot, asshole; I got to see the aftermath, and it looked like half a dozen people stepped in it and wheeled their carts through it. You're awful, please do not come back.

Dude! Apparently last year the guys who did the 40 Worst Rob Liefeld Drawings list wrote a follow-up! Score!

Can we just please talk about how in #24 some invisible force is pushing those women's breasts apart? Like into their armpits, it looks like. It's not impossible, but why would you draw them like that? Ever? It's not sexy, it's not comfortable, and it's not very well likely, even in a really tight outfit (which generally just causes flattening). It's particularly bad on the woman in front, who really looks like someone is just pressing those babies apart to see if there's a prize in the middle; at least on the lady in back one breast (the noticeably smaller one; at least that's a thing that actually happens in real life) is in the right place, with just her right boob getting pushed way the fuck off to the side.

I'd say Rob Liefeld has never seen a woman in real life, but he's been to at least one Comic Con and there were definitely women there. So clearly, this is his idea of the IDEAL woman. Breasts way the fuck apart is what ol' Robbie likes. That, and a clearly outlined vagina so he doesn't get lost, along with a lack of spine, because fuck spines.

And #16. It looks like he just had to draw something around her thighs, but got tired of pouches. So what is that shit? Crowns of thorns? Jesus fuck, WHY? She lost them in #14 but it looks like one of them cut her up pretty bad.

I'm pretty sure that in #7 that dude's face is caving in on itself at the nose. I'm also pretty sure that in #5, he meant to draw the guy on the left's chin a whole lot bigger, and drew his beard first.

+10 points for the Kate Beaton reference, by the way. Except she draws better than that.