Saturday, March 3, 2001
The design department at my school is fucked up!
I know this isn't something that 99.9% of anyone likely to stumble across this will care about, but I don't care. The situation is bad and people need to know about it.

I'm a double major at this school in English and design. I will be graduating in four years, but this should probably be chalked up to "but for the grace of God go I" or something, because I'm probably the only one who's managed this feat recently, and I may be the last for a long time. When I got into this school, I was an idiot and didn't put myself down as a design major, which ensured I couldn't get any classes beyond Design 1 for a year. I took summer school three times and it helped, and I'm currently cramming every hard class in my division in this year (hence why I HATE school right now when I used to like it) so I'll get out. But my story is a total anomaly here.

Most design majors take MINIMUM five years to get out, without any minor/major. And I'm talking about the people who got into school the year before I did, before the design budget was cut drastically and they got rid of a lot of teachers (ours is not a department this school gives a shit about, because we're not science). Anyone trying to get into this department now is totally screwed and it's only getting worse.

The graphics department basically says these days that nobody is going to get into it any more and you'd better pick another section when applying. If you're already in it, they keep having portfolio reviews of your work in order to try to kick more of you out (what they call "making sure you're in the division that's right for you"), the major cull once a year and another portfolio review for each class you attempt to apply for.

Even if you're not in the hell that is applying for graphics, you can only apply to get into the major once a year (February), and you'd BETTER have a lot of experience in design beforehand because you've gotta come up with a portfolio. They want to raise the admission standards even higher now, too. (I'd won four fashion design competitions in my area and had won second in the state when I applied, and I wonder if I'd get into the major now.) If a freshman tries to get ahead, he/she has to apply before they even find out that they got into the school! Then said freshman will HAVE to take summer school, as they're moving every single lower division class to summer school now.

"Harrison said students can still graduate in four years if they are focused and take at least one summer session." Is she smoking crack? Oh, and I forgot to mention (speaking of adult advisement) that we no longer have any kind of advisor, as our previously wonderful one took a powder at the end of fall quarter. It kinda scares me to hear students going up to the teachers for help and the teachers don't know this stuff either.

In the sequel article, we find out that a guy who's a senior and an athlete (athletes get first day registration here. For comparison, I have second day) STILL can't get into classes!!! And upper division classes aren't any easier to get into because of lower division being moved to the summers. (I suspect people just have an harder time getting into summer classes now than I used to have). They're not offering more sections of any classes. I know Nicole (quoted in the article), and she's in clothing with me. I'm surprised she's still having to wait list since we're in the least filled area.

Saturday, March 3, 2001
The lameness of "All your base..."
”Armies of marketers toiling for years can't figure out how to grab Web-users' attention, and then a flash file with screen-shots from an outdated arcade game accompanied by clumsy subtitles conquers the world.
Is it any wonder no one can figure out how to make money off the Web?
Okay, you've clicked on the link. Seen the video. Ogled the endless slides of photos perfectly doctored to make it look as though "all your base are belong to us" has infiltrated the entire planet. But you're still scratching your head, afraid to utter the phrase that will reveal your ignorance of humor in the new millennium: "I don't get it."
Take heart, you're not alone.
"OK, I'm obviously the dorky kid coming late to the party -- can someone explain this to me?" Asked one brave poster to the message boards at a weblog called metafilter. This was on Feb. 15, before All Your Base hit the big time.
"From what I was told, it's a sort of obsessive/compulsive cult surrounding the poorly translated text from a Japanese video game," said one answer to the query. "This just goes to show, things don't have to make sense to be funny," observed another.”

Saturday, March 3, 2001
The problems of being a youth sports referee.
My cousin is a soccer referee (at the age of 13!), and this sounds about like her stories of doing the job. I really admire her for being able to deal with kicking out insane parents who are screaming in her face at that age. She said that hardly anyone comes back another year and they love her for returning.

Saturday, March 3, 2001
White collar sweatshops
”There's a numbing similarity to most of the individual stories Fraser relates -- tales of stress-related illnesses, 24-hour on-call weeks, shrinking pension plans, Big Brother-style e-mail monitoring, a temporary workforce completely bereft of benefits and upward mobility, and bullying workplace atmospheres, not to mention smaller paychecks and harrowing staff purges.”

Workers are expected to make a round-the-clock commitment. America Online congratulates itself for offering its employees the occasional e-mail-free weekend, as if having Saturday and Sunday off were a perk. Fraser interviewed a marketing executive from Scarsdale, N.Y., who has come to relish the precious moments when her commuter train passes through a tunnel. At least then, she rationalizes, she won't even have the option of checking voice mail and taking calls on her way home.

Talk about feeling hopeless here.
"It's very hard for white-collar people to blame the system. They're not wild radicals; they're working at these companies for a reason. They're not often predisposed to say, "There's something wrong with this company -- I'm moving on."
As one guy who had a midlevel job at a telecommunications company described it, "Why would I leave? Everybody that I talk to on my commute is living through the same thing, so why go someplace else if this is the way the work world is; at least at this place I've put in some time."

Saturday, March 3, 2001
Word power
”And then there's that guy who stopped me on the street one time and asked me to walk with him, and when I ignored him, he stepped on the front of my skirt so I couldn't get away and grabbed my arms and hissed into my face, "You're a fucking bitch." Not just a word that time. A threat, more like. An indictment. It's the same with "faggot." It's the same with "nigger." I hate to type those words. I hate that MS Word doesn't underline them in red and suggest something else. But that's what I mean. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me" just isn't true. I'd take about a thousand sticks over "I don't love you anymore," I'll tell you what, and I'm not African-American, but if I were, I daresay I'd take a damn shower of kindling over hearing "fuck you, nigger" even one time in my life, over knowing that somebody thought so little of me that they'd say something that nasty out loud, to my face, and not feel any shame over it.”

Saturday, March 3, 2001
The dating/friendship conundrum.
”Romance is a terrible foundation for a relationship. Where friendship stabilizes and supports, romance keeps you off balance, wary, mean and defensive. What could be more perverse than donning a hard mask of unattainability to look for the one we can really open up to? When we're courting, we hoard our compliments, enthusiasm, disclosures -- especially women, with our cultural imperative of "mystery." Yet freely sharing that kind of thing is how you make friends.”

Saturday, March 3, 2001
Mentos ads and their lameness.
”We are being targeted by what I like to call "The Banality Aesthetic," meaning people in their twenties--the TV generation--have been exposed to so many commercials and gimmicks that we now become excited by the stupid and mundane. If the sell doesn't appear to be reaching its intended audience, fails a little, or misses the mark entirely, it's almost certain that we will like it. Once described as unreachable by most ordinary advertising means, our generation may have become the easiest sell: make it dumb, insipid, intentionally boring, and the money will flow like diarrhea.” And don’t forget to check out the made up Mentos ad at the bottom- you knew it had to happen someday...

Saturday, March 3, 2001
Netsex musings.
”So, then, if I can excite myself just writing about it, why do I find the whole thing relatively ridiculous, and why do I get off more on fucking with people on the net than playing with them?”

Saturday, March 3, 2001
The Bitch Conundrum solved!
Once upon a time I was reading Bitch and found a section where Elizabeth said that no self help books for men to help them overcome their fears of love, etc. existed, because she’d searched for one for an ex high and low and never found one. Elizabeth, this one’s for you and the next boyfriend.

Saturday, March 3, 2001
Guess the movie!
’Explosions of turds.
A sewer of comedy.
I need a shower.

Please, Schwarzenegger,
let me review your next script.
You'll avoid a bomb.

Catherine Zeta-Jones
in spandex, bending over;
the rest of it sucked.

Please speak more quickly.
I'm sick of waiting for the
Full frontal action.

Poorly sculpted fluff.
A dog humping you for two
hours is not funny.

How can I review
a movie that I can't hear?
Please, shut up your kids!

See Robin Williams
steal supplies for his clinic.
Don't we feel good now.

Forget the movie.
The best show in town is the
crowd waiting outside.

Do not take a Don
hostage and expect to get
more than the finger.

Massive depression
explodes with a massacre.
Think I'll take the bus.

Playthings leave their home,
brave adversity and trucks.
Revenue: millions.

No matter how huge,
a robot spider cannot
save an entire film.

Saturday, March 3, 2001
I always like odd personal ads.

Saturday, March 3, 2001
What it's like to be a pregnant male

Saturday, March 3, 2001
Fearing little girls when you're an adult male
"No matter how innocent my intentions may be, the second I kneel down next to some prepubescent girl I feel like the slimy Molester Guy from one of those after-school specials. The guy in the leather jacket with the husky voice who tries to recruit little kids to sell crack. I might as well offer this poor little kid some candy and expose myself, because if her mother wanders by while I'm trying to be a Boy Scout, I'm likely to get a rock-hard purse to the solar plexus and a spiked heel upside the head.
None of you females understand what I'm talking about. You women will never have to worry about this kind of misplaced parental hostility, because what I'm describing is a stigma attached specifically to men. Let me clue you in on a little Fact Of Life that applies to the 49 percent of the population with testicles: when you're a guy, parents automatically assume that you're a sexual predator capable of despicable acts of perversion. (Well, many of us are capable of despicably perverse acts, but usually only with our girlfriends, and only when they ask us nicely.)
And the worst part is that it's totally understandable. The reason guys get such a bad rap is because the male gender can claim responsibility for most of the misery in the world. Ignore the PC revisionists trying to convince you that gender has no effect on behavior. You can blame it on G.I. Joe or excess testosterone if you want to, but the fact is that men are the ones running around murdering and pillaging and date-raping. No woman ever tried to slip me a Mickey and rob me of my innocence. I should be so lucky.
But, at the risk of stating the obvious, not all guys are twisted perverts. What we have in this world is a very small number of guys doing some very terrible things and screwing up the reputations of a very large majority of very nice boys.
And I hate that. I hate feeling like Chester the Molester just because a bunch of weasely, inbred sickos can't keep their greasy paws off of little kids."

Saturday, March 3, 2001
The dotcom couple. Literally.
It’s not quite how it sounds- they weren’t too thrilled at the tradition of only girl changes name, and decided to use a dot instead of a hyphen to combine the two.

Saturday, February 24, 2001
This explains a lot about these people...
”The Australian Outback group is different also because they saw the first Survivor show, and each has their favorite. For instance, Elisabeth says she was "captivated by Rudy," and Jeff recalls that he "related to Richard immediately."

Here’s some interesting analysis of Kimmi’s vegetarianism. Oh, and those producers are sure tricky. In this interview, Kimmi said that she’d told them she had a pet chicken named Henrietta. Remember when they got the chickens and they were all NAMED? Henrietta II lived again. ”I was like "Alright, you guys are digging deep, playing dirty pool in this one." No frigging wonder she got attached with that kinda manipulation!

For those who saw next week’s preview and went “Holy crap, WHAT WAS THAT?” and immediately found themselves mixed up as to what they showed, someone put up still shots here. Looks like Elisabeth, Rodger and Jeff are in the clear (I hope).

This site has some interview responses from Jerri and Michael. Jerri’s is short and WAY WAY WAY PERKY, so skip it at the top and scroll down. Michael keeps writing in with comments on the food situation. He goes so far as to itemize what they ate each day, and discuss that pig-killin. ”As disgusting as the BUG challenge was, both tribes asked to eat the uneaten stuff after it was over for the protein value. They turned us down and sent us back to camp.”
Michael also says he’s good friends with Jeff. Who woulda thunk that? But here’s where it gets scandalous. I think we can tell who made it into the merger at least by his comments (he seems to have talked to Amber and either Keith, Tina or Colby), but then he tells the dish of the Mitchell ousting and how things switched:
”Keith was all but gone, unbeknownst to him. There was a 5 person alliance and he was the only one not in it. 10 minutes before they arrived at tribal council, Tina approached Mitchell to break the alliance. She felt it was suicide to vote Keith off, he was one of their strongest members. If they voted Keith off, they were sure to lose at least one of the next 2 Immunity Challenges and go into the merger with a disadvantage. If they had 4 and Kucha had 6, she felt we would pick off the Ogakor tribe one by one as they did on Survivor One. So what good was the alliance? Mitchell refused to cooperate. She then went to Colby, 5 minutes prior to getting there. He agreed and they decided Mitchell was the weakest. As they approached tribal council, they approached Keith and told him to vote for Mitchell (he was all set to vote for Jerri). Fortunately for him, he agreed and was spared without a second to spare.”

Survivor Intro Analysis: Someone went through and timed how long each person was shown in the credits from both seasons, and managed to figure out that those shown less were more likely to have been booted early. Ergo, this is how to predict who’ll do better in the show. Surprisingly, it looks right in at least some places for the early-booted ones.

And finally, what I learned from Survivor:
"Percussion was invented as a way of getting fires started faster.It didn't work then and it doesn't work now.
Unlike a bible or a flag, eyeliner is not an excellent item to bring in the Australian Outback.
It's ok to sit in the open door of a plane; you won't actually fall off.
If your choices are "share too much about my sex life" and "don't share at all," always share too much.
Insisting that there is an "i" at the end of your name automatically lowers your IQ by 50 points.
Torches work better when not dunked in water.
Those fish bobbing past your ankles are NOT real. "Fishing" for them is just silly.
Tortillas, made properly, can be used as a method of mind control.
If you don't want to be seen as the leader, just pray about it.
The grasses of Australia look exactly like beef jerky. Who knew?
NEVER chew ANYTHING unless it's been fully approved and authorized by the group.
Don't make rice without first getting unanimous consent from the group.
Give Mitchell a fish, and he'll bitch about how someone else could have cooked it better.
Teach Mitchell to fish, and he'll bitch that you didn't just give him a fish."

Update: I LOVE how Survivor Sucks decided to handle the “who voted for who” section regarding Mike’s injury. The fire, pig, fish, rooster, and GOD voted for him! Animated too. I’m so amused.

Dear Pinthouse Forum, A hilarious description of Jerri’s nasty sex fantasy crap from this week. Farther down, the writer was apparently thinking of the Wizard of Oz as Mike was being hauled out just like I was.

Survivor Cereal: This is so great. My personal favorite is Sad Sacks, which is RIGHT on the money. The box says “You don’t have to eat them. Whatever.” Which is pretty good, but knowing Mitchell, it should have a whine like “Someone should be pouring this cereal for you. Who’d ever want to pour it themselves?”
”Sad Sacks will leave you so emotionally and physically drained, you won't even be able to bring yourself to finish the bowl, much less continue with life. They assault your character and sap your ability to fight back. Chock full of self-esteem depleting goodness!”

Saturday, February 24, 2001
The machinations of Machiabelly
Analysis of Richard’s winning strategy: ”He maintained a coalition with the most popular of the last four survivors (Rudy) to guarantee that he would not be excluded in the penultimate culling of the group. But at the same time he realized that he could not win if he and his coalition partner ended up as the final two competitors (with the choice of winner left to earlier players who had been eliminated in part because of his machinations). Rich couldn’t count on winning the showdown vote with Kelly. In fact, he was somewhat lucky to win the vote of two final ballot casters in addition to the two (Rudy and Kelly’s “enemy” Susan) that he could count on. But he had at least a fighting chance—something he would not have had if Kelly hadn’t emerged as his final competitor. Indeed, one can speculate that Rich knew that he needed to have Kelly win all of her immunity challengers in the last few rounds, so that competitors more popular than she would be eliminated, and as a result made no real effort to win those challenges. But perhaps that is giving him too much credit—at least, until we could see that he was a truly “high Mach.”

To follow up on what Richard's doing now, I checked out his "Survivor Insider" column this week. I so agree- next week Jerri has GOT to go. Incidentally, in every early column he puts that Kimmi is incredibly annoying and must go. Then I went through the interviews…and Kimmi is the only booted Survivor he didn’t interview personally. Hmmm...
Speaking of interviews, I liked Maralyn, but she sounds a little bonkers here to me.
”Richard: So why did they get rid of you?
Maralyn: Probably because I was the only one to wear a real brassiere, you know those white things with hooks, cause my brassiere was certainly obvious.
Richard: What were the other ones wearing?
Maralyn: Ithink most of them were wearing sports bras.

They have this little medical box and it has some useful things in there; I think maybe some tweezers; some medicine; but twelve condoms? I saw twelve condoms in there. I said "What in the blazes do they think we are going to do with twelve condoms?" I turned myself into the prophalactic patrol and I counted them everyday, just to make sure nobody was getting' any if I wasn't. “ Oy. (I think they were all wearing bikini tops, incidentally…)

Saturday, February 24, 2001
For some reason I feel like putting this quote next to the Temptation stuff...
”My husband is a cop, and they are actually warned about this time of year at work. He said more people get committed every few days this time of year than normally get committed in a normal month.”

Saturday, February 24, 2001
Temptation Island Cliffs Notes
and a few other articles:

You big whining baby. ”Andy is the type of guy who probably still doesn't let his friends touch his toys at his own birthday parties.”
“He is such a man that mud treatments threaten him. “

Also, some interviews: "Mandy (Billy's girlfriend): ''We love embarrassing the hell out of each other. There are a lot of boring people in Atlanta. We like to spice things up.'' (FYI: Mandy's staying in Atlanta with all the boring people; Billy's moving to LA to pursue a career as an actor.) (I heard that Billy said they are under contract to continue on as they were before until the final show airs. Yup, they broke up.)
* Billy: ''We went to a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert, and I decided to paint my body gold and just wore pants, no shirt. Mandy wore asterisk symbols in electrical tape over her nipples and nothing else but a skirt.''
Valerie (Kaya's girlfriend) on the show: ''I don't think I am going to see the rest.''
* Kaya: ''I can't wait to watch more.'' Typical of everyone.

For my final Temptation entry (presumably), here's interviews with dream dates Allison and Tom. Allison sounds awfully flaky for a doctor- she finally gets all official, then just “bides her time” waiting to see if she gets into entertainment? Huh? She also commented on why perhaps the Pepsi girls didn’t like Andy. “We never knew what was up with Andy. He wanted people to say or do scandalous things, trying to get us riled up. I never got him.”
Here, however, is proof that Kaya lied the final night when he claimed he didn’t see Valerie waving at him when he was out on his date: “Kaya mentioned Valerie on our first date, especially when he thought he'd seen her. But he really didn't talk about her on our last date. He really focused on me.”

Saturday, February 24, 2001
You gotta love snarky commentary…
”Goofus is shown licking the side of what appears to be a container of coffee creamer. The caption reads, ''Oops. It's dripping.'' Gallant is shown sponging up some whipped cream next to a slice of pie. The caption reads, ''Gallant cleans up spills.'' We are to conclude that Goofus has a disturbing oral fixation and that Gallant will not fuck the pie.”

Howie Dorough: "We had talked about it ... we scoured our brains ... ''Let's do a color for the album title!'' But we wanted a cool color ... we didn't want to go with pink or fuchsia. So when we were standing in front of that blue background wearing black, it was like, oh! Black & Blue! Cool! And it has a lot of hidden meanings. I mean, groups like us, we always get called names like boy band, bubble gum, popcorn -- all those punches because of the type of group that we are. And we thought, we've been through all that, and we're still standing, we're still making music." Sounds like they're trying to be deep to me.

Saturday, February 24, 2001
What it’s like to get punched in the face.
This one will hit you as well. How a guy can just walk in, whale his wife across the face and walk out and be perfectly calm, I don’t know.
” I cannot face the mirror yet, so I turn again into the closet. The dramatic flowered dress will attract too much attention; now I need the opposite. I must wear something nondescript and neutral. My separate and practical brain, the part of me that deals matter-of-factly with this aspect of my life, thinks ahead: maybe 10 days of being marked this time, of wearing my husband's brand.”
God, I hate him. God, I hate that he indulges his flare of temper and then it is over for him. He walks into the bedroom, pops his wife in the face and then gets the kids up for breakfast. He goes about the normal tasks of his day and I, the wife, am left to cope with his indulgence, with his 10-second loss of control. My husband bears no proof of what he has done; it is I who feel the pain and hide the marks, I who duck my head and feel the shame.”
"It is my face," I think, walking down the stairs, holding my small daughter's hand, "the part of me that I must show to everyone, you bastard, you asshole son of a bitch."

Saturday, February 24, 2001
How I wish I'd found this last week when I was looking for it...
In depth analysis of 4 minutes, 33 seconds.

Saturday, February 24, 2001
Hidden Songs
”A hidden, or "ghost", track is a song on an album which is not listed on the album sleeve or jacket. On a CD, usually the song is accessed by playing the final track through then going through a brief moment of silence, usually 4 or 5 minutes.” That’s so cool, and yet really surprising. It turns out that I have one of the CD’s mentioned here and it does have the hidden song at the end of the last track.

Saturday, February 24, 2001
Bad Couples
Polly Esther’s followup to her men and women to avoid series, in which she matches them together.

Saturday, February 24, 2001
Oh my lord, Marvin got reincarnated as a web server…
Even if you never read the Hitchhiker’s series, you may be entertained. At least, it’s the weirdest 404 you’ll have ever seen.

Saturday, February 24, 2001
Tom Tomorrow nails it again.
In the first two panels alone he summarizes my entire feelings on the issue. Salon has an article on this as well.
This one (might as well put all the Bush stuff together this week) is all about how religion’s taken over..

Saturday, February 24, 2001
More weirdness from the Japanese regarding sex and relationships…
”some 10 million young women are enjoying "commitment-free companionship" with Primo Puel, a doll resembling a "small, boyish fairy" that responds to touch and conversation with a 250-word vocabulary, including such endearments as "I’ll miss you" and "Welcome home! But aren’t you too late?" What the HECK???

Saturday, February 24, 2001
Eminem as Hamlet.
She’s so right about this.

Saturday, February 24, 2001
"Are you the REAL David Gallagher?”
I don’t watch 7th Heaven (I’ve had enough of preaching ministers), but apparently there’s a kid on this show with the same name as an Ironminds staffer, who obviously gets mistaken for the other all the time. So one night when yet another fan thinks it’s him, he goes with it. Then gets kinda rude. Then the fan’s reaction is INCREDIBLY bizarre. The Internet attracts all kinds of nuts.

Saturday, February 24, 2001
The Rocky and Bullwinkle Horror Picture Show

Saturday, February 24, 2001
Here’s a surprise…
This article claims that the last name of the “Malcolm in the Middle” family is Wilkerson. I’ve never heard that anywhere before- it’s always “they have no last name” for no discernable reason.
I also like this quote: ” It's as if he feels forced to be Jane Goodall when he really wants to be one of the chimps.”

Saturday, February 24, 2001
Rating the tabloids…
on how they cover Tom and Nicole.
And speaking of Tom and the media, here’s a freaky article about his publicist. She just sounds evil. I’m so glad I don’t work in entertainment reporting so I don’t have to deal with crap like this: ”If Kingsley had her way, she once admitted, profiles of her clients would include almost no information about them. “I don’t like interesting stories,” Kingsley said. “Boring is good. Good reporting and good writing don’t help my client. New information is usually controversial. I don’t need that. People don’t read. The text doesn’t matter.”
Oh, and guess what: Remember a while ago when Tom was being held up as a hero for saving lives? Turns out he didn’t do anything but visit the victims in the hospital. Sheeeeeesh.

Saturday, February 24, 2001
The Harris Experiment
I picked up a copy of Vanity Fair the other day just for shits and giggles, and read all about the utter weirdness of failed dotcommie Josh Harris, who decided for his next trick for attention to start weliveinpublic.com (I haven’t looked at this, nor do I plan to, but I have to mention it for soon-to-be-obvious reasons), in which he and his girlfriend would have cameras EVERYWHERE in their loft for 100 days and have lamers spying on them from across the world commenting on their er, habits. In the VF article it mentions that his girlfriend Tanya is kinda bothered by the whole thing- she won’t pee at home, and they only attempted to have sex once. There’s an incredibly lame posed picture of the two in bed, with Tanya’s bare back only showing and Josh facing her, but staring like a dead lox. It’s quite disturbing.
Anyway, apparently by now Tanya got fed up with the whole thing, moved out, and wrote about it in the above link (she claims more sex than the VF article, incidentally), which later somehow showed up on the Fucked Company forum. The entire saga, with Josh, Tanya, an ex-employee of Josh’s (that he presumably wouldn’t recognize) and other FC readers castigating them all, can be found here. It’s just so bizarre.
In an odd followup, Will Leitch of Ironminds moved into the place for a week after Josh vacated the premises. Living there sounds completely bizarre even if you're a guy.
”Later I am chastised for having the music too loud, for falling asleep on the couch, stealing rum from the liquor cabinet and wearing an ugly sweater. It's like having my mom around, all the time. Until Jessica arrives. Is he going to fuck her?
I ask them if Harris allows people to smoke in the loft. I ask if they know where he and Corrin keep the iron. In one particularly surreal moment, I realize I've lost my keys. I enter the chat room and ask if anybody happened to see where I left them. One guy tells me to check my pockets -- and there they are.”

Monday, February 19, 2001
The campaign against "you guys."
Now I used to think (as I quoted below) that "you guys" is benign. Cynthia Heimel did a column years ago about how she couldn't find a term to describe a group of women that wasn't biased and implying stereotypes. The column ("Names Are Us", from Get Your Tongue Out Of My Mouth, I'm Kissing You Good-bye!) isn't online, but I'm going to quote from it anyway.

"Women are not ladies. The term connotes females who are simultaneously put on a pedestal and patronized.
"Hello, women" sounds really goofy...You want something informal, colloquial.
I've searched my brain and discovered something depressing. There is no word in our entire language to define a woman, or a group of women, that is nonjudgmental.
Walk into a room and say "Hello, girls!" and you're either talking to female people under the age of twenty-one or to plumpish middle-aged housewives in fussy dresses..."Gals" means the same thing, except that if the women are grown-ups they're not wearing dresses, they're wearing Bermuda shorts.
"Babe" implies that a woman is sexually appealing to men..."Slut" used to mean a slovenly woman. Now it means a woman who will go to bed with everyone..."Bitch" means a woman who will go to bed with everyone but you.
I want to know why we have no nonjudgmental words to describe us. I want to know why there are no female equivalents to "guys," "fellows," "dudes."
So I have a proposal. Let's make the word "guy" unisex. Let's everyone call each other "guys" so that everybody can feel equal, like they're one of the gang, like they belong."

The author of the above link, however, has a problem with that. And it's not unreasonable, either. A friend of mine just had to write a paper about how using male terminology such as "mankind" makes (a) men think of men only and (b) women either think of no image at all, or all men, and thus women are rendered invisible in the language. This link fits right in.

"Not that long ago women were being told that "he" and "mankind" included us--but we were skeptical. Feminists--women and men--argued that language matters, that words are the tools of thought, and that erasing women through terms like "mankind" made it easier to treat women as less than persons...Many people began to see that it's a problem when the so-called generic person has a man's face.
Some women tell me that "you guys" is different from "mankind." It's informal. It makes everyone feel included. It's an equalizer. As one woman put it, "It's friendly. It's not like calling us sluts or bitches."
That's what worries me. Too many of us believe "you guys" is benign. But imagine a world--as Douglas Hofstadter did in his 1986 satire on sexist language--where people used generics based on race rather than gender. In that world, people would use "freshwhite," "chairwhite," and yes, "you whiteys." Substituting "white" for "man" makes it easy to see why using "man" for all human beings is wrong.
Perhaps some women believe that being "one of the guys" will protect them from the hazards of being women. "You guys" provides the guise of inclusion in the dominant group. But if women really had equal status with men, we wouldn't have to disappear into their term. After all, can you think of one, just one, instance when a female term has been used to describe a group of women and men? Can you even imagine that happening?
I think about my colleague's five year-old daughter who ran out of the room crying when she heard the teacher say, "What do you guys think?" She thought the teacher didn't care about what she thought. The teacher told her that of course she was included. Her tears stopped, but what was the lesson? She learned that her opinion as a girl counts only when she's a guy. She learned, as most of us have, that men set the standard."

Monday, February 19, 2001
Fantasy television
This one’s a hoot: imagining what other famous TV couples would do if put on Temptation Island. My personal favorite is Hal and Lois of “Malcolm in the Middle.” ” Sadly, their erotic adventures are sidetracked when weary Lois decides to take a two-week-long bubble bath, and Hal, having recently seen Tom Hanks in "Cast Away," becomes obsessed with trying to crack open a pile of coconuts with an ice skate.” That’s so what they would do, particularly Hal!
And speaking of bizarre television ideas, here’s some crossover show ones. ”Niles Crane, WWF Smackdown! star. In the insanely popular wrestling show's most far-fetched plot line yet, wimpy Niles must wrestle the Rock to save his beloved Daphne, last seen being dragged out of Frasier's apartment by her hair. Episode highlight: After training with the Undertaker, Niles actually begins to . . . wait, there's no such thing as a far-fetched WWF plot line.”

Monday, February 19, 2001
Oh, that crack investigation team at Temptation Island...
Taheed has two other kids and a wife. I knew that guy was scum, but man oh man. Okay, so it’s in the Enquirer so chances are high this is wrong, but either way, dammmmmn.

Monday, February 19, 2001
More Survivor commentary
Man, I’m just cracking up with the analysis here. He made a point with Elisabeth’s weirdass headdress- though I gotta say that as a person majoring in design, this is the kind of weird crap my school encourages, but ours are more sophisticated. Last quarter we had to make “autumn headdresses” out of stuff found on the ground. One girl went so far as to have a whole religious “cup of joy” thing complete with dangling cup, another girl made one so wide I don’t know how she got it in the door. Mine was simple and just had a tree coming out of the top…You get the picture, weird as it is. Anyway. Totally amused at the “Jeff as Pamie’s cats” analogy, as well as Iron Chef as Happy Gilmore. And as for Mike, “He's like the firefighter who commits arson so he can be the hero.” Brilliant!

Monday, February 19, 2001
More stuffed animal sex acts...
these two being my very favorite for their surprisingness.

Monday, February 19, 2001
The joy of couples vacationing.
Makes me glad I’m single that I don’t have to negotiate this far…Check this contract: ”2. Once a date has been chosen, Couples shall enter into vacation spot negotiations. The following factors shall be duly considered in the course of site selection:
(a.) Wife A burns if she glances out a window.
(b.) Wife B loves to sprawl out on the beach.
(c.) Husband A considers himself an art aficionado.
(d.) Husband B admires prints of large-eyed tots.” Talk about trouble in the making…

Monday, February 19, 2001
funky program that allows you to draw on your desktop.

Monday, February 19, 2001
Addicted to Clinton
”He evokes emotion, shows his flaws, displays his sex drive, flaunts his ambition. He is a character out of a drama. And as a nation that spends 6 or 7 hours a day watching TV and movies, is it any wonder that what fascinates us in our entertainment fascinates us in our politics?
So Clinton pardons a Swiss-based fugitive, and we see the man skiing the slopes of St. Moritz, and we see Clinton taking a gift from the man's ex-wife, and she is dressed in sequins -- and then we look over at George W. Bush, who is talking about a military policy review and, well, which way is a candy-addicted nation going to turn?” I gotta say that’s the one thing I’m enjoying about the “Bush administration”- that he’s being overshadowed by his predecessor. It wouldn’t be as funny if it was overshadowing Al (big surprise in that case).
Update: “President-For-Life Clinton”.

Monday, February 19, 2001
A follow up (more like prequel...)
If anyone recalls the one happy story I linked to on Valentine’s Day (on the previously archived page, bottom of last entry), this is the story that the author was writing about that she met her future husband on.

Monday, February 19, 2001
An entire Lego clock! Wow!

Monday, February 19, 2001
I’m pretty intrigued by this site…
in which several odd persons do their own weblogs kinda related to their personality/persona. I’m actually tempted to wan to do one of my own like this for them, except well, I already do that here. (On the other hand, I’m not getting paid to do this…hmmmm….) Here’s an example of what they do: a column (this one’s on the impossibility of curing retrovirus diseases) and links following. Man, I think I need to try writing columns sometime. Here’s another column on time travel.

Monday, February 19, 2001
Oooh, a real life hoverboard!
I wanted one of these for years, until I finally realized that being the clod I am with moving vehicles, I’d probably kill myself falling off one.

Monday, February 19, 2001
On self-esteem
I don’t necessarily agree with this guy all the way, but he makes a point that most people don’t: some people shouldn’t have self-esteem. ”Reviewing such a patient's life, it is usually clear that there are many grounds for his lack of self-esteem. Indeed by the end of the history-taking it is clear that he does not think nearly ill enough of himself, that he is far worse than he supposed; that his alleged lack of self-esteem, the problem that he has laid before the doctor, is but a ruse to disguise from himself the extent of his own worthlessness. For by claiming that he lacks self-esteem, he is claiming that he ought, or deserves, to think well of himself. As his biography makes clear, that is far from being the case.”

Monday, February 19, 2001
This writes porn and romance stories for you.
(I’m so not posting the porn one for posterity, though.)

'DECEPTIVELY PACKAGED'
Pussy Galore from Mullingar has a summer job at Outpatients in the local hospital in Temple Bar. Meanwhile, Dr James Bond is a handsome, muscular junior doctor who is 6 feet 8 inches tall, red-eyed and is still getting over the break-up with his second wife in Hawaii. Although James is carefully groomed and swarthy he rejects Pussy's initial clumsy approaches.
'f*ck, ye Mullingar woman ye,' he says.
'Oh f*ck yourself,' Pussy replies.
'Do I actually love him?' Pussy thinks to herself, 'He disgusts me!'
'f*ck'
But finally their eyes meet.
After a bank holiday weekend of passion in Westport, James takes off Pussy's skirt and turning... - his voice suddenly filled with passion... his perfect body... 'Oh Pussy...'
'Oh James ...'
'Wait my love...'
'You are my reason for living!'
Reader, she marries him...
--THE END--

Monday, February 19, 2001
How to determine if a telecommuting job is a scam.

Monday, February 19, 2001
MISCmedia
Here’s another site I need to check out more often. Favorite articles so far: the 64 arts and sciences a modern person should learn; poly (” "Most cupids have a few bows and arrows; some have submachine guns."), the sucky books they make kids read in school, and the plight of the single male. ”To this day, the single male is treated as a social-sexual pariah in many "progressive" and even "alternative" circles, and not just by radical feminists either. Some "sex-positive" authors and journals that advocate women's sexual liberation have a heck of a hard time accepting non-gay men's right to sexual expression (except in the forms of masochism or servility). "Swing" clubs routinely ban femaleless males from attending; the more wholesome nudist movement used to do the same (some nudist camps still do).” That’s shocking to me somehow.

Monday, February 19, 2001
Denial gets us nowhere
” I walk five miles five mornings a week, sometimes just before dawn. Whenever I approach a white woman on a sidewalk at an early hour, I cross to the other side so as not to scare her. I do not have to cross over. But I do so anyway. Why? Because I am not a fool. I know that many white women who are alone are afraid of black men. Not just any men per se. Black men.
Furthermore, I do not lose anything by crossing the street.
As a black man -- a real victim of racism, someone who wants to survive physically, emotionally and psychologically intact -- I am obligated to manage race for myself and for white people.” It's so sad that he has to act this way.

Monday, February 19, 2001
But what's Colin Powell's dress size?
Someone else making the point of “why the heck do they describe the looks of all females in politics, but not the men?” ”There was no mention of Powell's clothing preferences or breakfast choices, not to mention his waist size. It did mention he is black.” She then goes on to give stupid fashion details about men. Heh.

Monday, February 19, 2001
“You’re acting like an idiot"
is one husband’s response after a columnist tries to be a Surrendered Wife.