I just looked back at recent blog entries. Too many women's issues. Too much body-image related crap. For things I rarely think about, they make a curious preponderance of my internet spoo.
So here's something really important to me, that I'm pretty concerned about.
I dream about zombies. A lot. More than anyone really should. I dream about zombies more than I dream about my boyfriend. Way more than I dream about sex. More than I dream about flying or falling or losing teeth. More than I dream about anything that some coke-addicted austrian could file under symbols of an Electra complex.
That's not my concern, though. I don't mind dreaming about zombies. They're usually not nightmares, even though, I have to admit, sometimes I think about zombies when I'm awake, and it scares me. Recently, though, right when I got back from vacation, I had a nightmare about zombies. I dreamed they took over my college, at commencement. I dreamed my whole family was there to watch me graduate, and the zombies came. The dream was ridiculously sped up from there on in; scenes were cut with really scary montages that indicated the passage of time. (Note to H.B- watch slightly less TV). We tried to flee to an abandoned lighthouse, up a muddy hill, to no avail. After another really disorienting montage, we were hiding in the basement of a mall in the UK (a place I've never been) that was beset with zombies and zombie dogs. It was upsetting, and I woke up sweating and scared. I was actually worried about the inner door not being locked; what if my neighbors were zombified? I wound up flipping through the channels on my TV, trying to find something to distract me at three am.
What upsets me is not the nightmare (it's a relief to have nightmares, I normally have guiltmares), nor the zombies, but that it was a nightmare about zombies. When I dream about zombies, it's like I'm in on the joke. They're normally semi-lucid dreams, family not involved, where I go around fleeing zombies and gathering survivors and having a great time. Just like the movies, but really pleasant. And well-lit.
I'm really not used to being afraid of zombies when I'm asleep. When I'm awake, like this, I normally think too much about zombies and scare myself. I'm doing it right now. It's worst when I'm opening at work, because everybody knows, in a traditional zombie movie, you first see them the morning of. Like how you know you have a problem with mice. So when I go to work, right around dawn, in the strange green light that (when I was young and vital, not old and decrepit like now) I was used to seeing from the other side, it's really eerie. The light from my back porch doesn't reach to my car, and when I'm parked out front, there's not enough light to keep the hallway from being pitch black (my upstairs neighbors keep stealing our bulb). I should be more scared of skunks and raccoons in the first case and stumbling over my bike in the second, but...the primate brain fears what it fears.
My customers don't always help my fears that the zombies are coming. People who need coffee at five thirty in the morning, and haven't had coffee at five thirty in the morning, do seem a lot like zombies. One morning I was starting to make some ice tea for the day when I looked out the window, and people were beginning to stagger towards the building. When I looked up again, there were twice as many. They were distributed, lit, and clothed perfectly for a zombie movie.
Except there was no obligitory zombie in a bridal gown. What's up with the bride zombie? She's always there. Was she buried in her wedding gown and rose, or gotten during the reception, late the night before, or did she decide, undead or no undead, she's having her wedding and then get turned?
Friday, August 26, 2005
Good Shows
Starved and Weeds.
Finally, after four hundred years or something ridiculous that I don't have the critical thinking to process right now, we're doing tragicomic theater again. And this time, they've got women playing women instead of the director's ephebic catamites playing women. Come to think of it, though, I haven't seen Mary Louise Parker's box, and her breasts are kind of small. I will probably delete that sentence and add some commas to the one above it in the morning. Right now, though, I'm over-caff'd, and (suddenly using commas to excess)not terribly coherent.
Why you should watch Starved: (Even if you don't have a sense of humor) It's the first honest portrayal of eating disorders I've ever seen in my life. I've lived with people with eating disorders; first my sister, and then a multitude of fainting modern dancers, actresses, and one philosophy student in college. I've been virtually simmered in people who've written to Crest demanding to know the caloric content of toothpaste, just in case.
The characters on Starved are completely unsympathetic, worthless, ego-centric, fat-phobic choads. And it's delightful. Since Seinfeld, we've known that assholes are good entertainment. Any protagonist who cares about the big things too little and the little things too much is one who will go far in the current cultural milieu, where nobody cares about anything.
Starved just gets it right. It's on target. It's genuine, even though the characters themselves are anything but. They're wildean in their insincerity.
And if you do have a sense of humor, it's funny. It's hilarious. The male characters weigh their dicks on a scale. The female character responds, not with horror, but with accusations of their homosexuality. The whole exchange rings more true than anything I've seen on network television.
And Weeds is just pretty great, too.
Finally, after four hundred years or something ridiculous that I don't have the critical thinking to process right now, we're doing tragicomic theater again. And this time, they've got women playing women instead of the director's ephebic catamites playing women. Come to think of it, though, I haven't seen Mary Louise Parker's box, and her breasts are kind of small. I will probably delete that sentence and add some commas to the one above it in the morning. Right now, though, I'm over-caff'd, and (suddenly using commas to excess)not terribly coherent.
Why you should watch Starved: (Even if you don't have a sense of humor) It's the first honest portrayal of eating disorders I've ever seen in my life. I've lived with people with eating disorders; first my sister, and then a multitude of fainting modern dancers, actresses, and one philosophy student in college. I've been virtually simmered in people who've written to Crest demanding to know the caloric content of toothpaste, just in case.
The characters on Starved are completely unsympathetic, worthless, ego-centric, fat-phobic choads. And it's delightful. Since Seinfeld, we've known that assholes are good entertainment. Any protagonist who cares about the big things too little and the little things too much is one who will go far in the current cultural milieu, where nobody cares about anything.
Starved just gets it right. It's on target. It's genuine, even though the characters themselves are anything but. They're wildean in their insincerity.
And if you do have a sense of humor, it's funny. It's hilarious. The male characters weigh their dicks on a scale. The female character responds, not with horror, but with accusations of their homosexuality. The whole exchange rings more true than anything I've seen on network television.
And Weeds is just pretty great, too.
Monday, August 22, 2005
Big Booty Bitches...
So nike has this new ad campaign about bodily imperfections. The jist of it is that it's alright to not have the body of a supermodel, as long as you have the body of an athlete. Having back is fine- it just has to be the product of genes and fitness centers, rather than genes and nougatty centers.
This is the problem with being a woman in today's society. It's not that the beauty standards are imposed arbitrarily, elevating one body type above all others; it's that society requires alteration and asceticism as virtue. We abhor indulgence; we prefer consumption.
Products lead to beauty. Dove hocks cellulite cream, promising that with their regime, any body can be made acceptable. Nike hocks sports bras and shoes, promising that the products will change unauthorized curves, those from sensual experiences and refusals of self-denial, into acceptable ones. No one will be held accountable for an ass put through the ringer in spin class three times a week. Thighs rounded from marathon running, instead of shameless ingestion of products containing carbohydrates and butterfat in wanton proportions, can be accepted in our puritanical society.
Fat isn't even the beginning of it, and people pretend that it is. If fat were the only enemy of womankind,the only betrayer of the true saggy, squashy, hairy, smelly, flaky, secret that women are organic creatures; then womens magazines would masquerade as fitness magazines same as men's do. But fat isn't all. Women also need to be hairless. I promise, we don't start out that way. Does this mean that we'll soon have Nair and Surgicream ads, with women singing the praises of their stiff upper lips?
"I've got full lips. I'm proud of them. I never stop running my mouth" A greek, italian or slavic woman purrs at the camera.
Announcer's voice "Nothing goes with outspoken feminism like a hairless upper lip: Nair"
Actually, that's a pretty clumsy and a shitty metaphor. Of course, the issue remains that beauty is becoming more and more the sum of purchased products, applied faithfully, to banish any momentary bodily indiscretions (flaky skin, oily skin, red marks, under-eye circles, stray hairs, flat hair, frizzy hair, cellulite, vaginal odor, bloating, off-white teeth, bushy eyebrows, chapped lips) only noticed by other women. And it's that fact that remains mostly ignored. These girl-power ads are all subterfuge. It's not some cultural imperitive that women do these things to be sexually attractive to men; women buy these products to armor themselves against the criticism of other women. Women buy these products, not to achieve beauty (which these ads nearly acknowledge- the women in them claim to already feel beautiful), but to achieve the impression of normal (flawless) femininity.
This is the problem with being a woman in today's society. It's not that the beauty standards are imposed arbitrarily, elevating one body type above all others; it's that society requires alteration and asceticism as virtue. We abhor indulgence; we prefer consumption.
Products lead to beauty. Dove hocks cellulite cream, promising that with their regime, any body can be made acceptable. Nike hocks sports bras and shoes, promising that the products will change unauthorized curves, those from sensual experiences and refusals of self-denial, into acceptable ones. No one will be held accountable for an ass put through the ringer in spin class three times a week. Thighs rounded from marathon running, instead of shameless ingestion of products containing carbohydrates and butterfat in wanton proportions, can be accepted in our puritanical society.
Fat isn't even the beginning of it, and people pretend that it is. If fat were the only enemy of womankind,the only betrayer of the true saggy, squashy, hairy, smelly, flaky, secret that women are organic creatures; then womens magazines would masquerade as fitness magazines same as men's do. But fat isn't all. Women also need to be hairless. I promise, we don't start out that way. Does this mean that we'll soon have Nair and Surgicream ads, with women singing the praises of their stiff upper lips?
"I've got full lips. I'm proud of them. I never stop running my mouth" A greek, italian or slavic woman purrs at the camera.
Announcer's voice "Nothing goes with outspoken feminism like a hairless upper lip: Nair"
Actually, that's a pretty clumsy and a shitty metaphor. Of course, the issue remains that beauty is becoming more and more the sum of purchased products, applied faithfully, to banish any momentary bodily indiscretions (flaky skin, oily skin, red marks, under-eye circles, stray hairs, flat hair, frizzy hair, cellulite, vaginal odor, bloating, off-white teeth, bushy eyebrows, chapped lips) only noticed by other women. And it's that fact that remains mostly ignored. These girl-power ads are all subterfuge. It's not some cultural imperitive that women do these things to be sexually attractive to men; women buy these products to armor themselves against the criticism of other women. Women buy these products, not to achieve beauty (which these ads nearly acknowledge- the women in them claim to already feel beautiful), but to achieve the impression of normal (flawless) femininity.
Goddamned Yuppie Bitch.
This cunt is what's ruining Boston.
This cunt is what's fucking up the suburbs, too.
This cunt is what's making it impossible for people my age to become adults.
This cunt is a motherfucking real estate speculator. She buys a property, and, as the article so cutely puts it "flips" it. She's soooo anxious about getting in while the market is still "hot".
What's this cunt really doing?
This cunt is taking affordable housing stock, valuable multi-family rental property that communities won't zone for anymore (rentals being oh-so-gauche, oh-so-unpleasant! and the ELEMENT they bring in! Why, they're barely upper-middle-class at all!) adding cheap little touches like countertops and shiny woodwork, condoing it, and taking all the profit back to her tony little McMansion.
This cunt is why I live in a one-bedroom, with a roommate, and consider myself lucky for the privelege. This is why I don't KNOW anyone my age, except for my roommate, who doesn't live with their parents. Well, this cunt, and a bunch of other cunts with other tricks up their sleeves.
How about working mommy cunts, who take all their earnings and use them in bidding wars to drive up housing prices in school districts where little Shamison will get the opportunities she needs to play lacrosse and learn french and score well on the MCAS and never meet any black people.
How about snob zoning cunts, who love to cut up parcels that can only be used for sprawling 5-bed, 4-bath, 3 motherfucking car garage MANOR HOUSES, and refuse to zone any more multi-family housing?
How about all the cunts who condo to keep out college students, all the college student cunts whose mommies and daddies pay absolutely anything in rent to save on room and board, thus pushing the rental market even higher?
How about cunty cities that sleeze out of 40B requirements? How about cunty 40B requirements that don't actually create any affordable housing?
But this cunt...oooooo. This cunt. And this paper. Boston Globe, theoretically a liberal, thoughtful paper, read by nearly everyone in the city, shamelessly congratulating this cunt on getting hers. Yes, she certainly will turn a profit on this. But where does the profit come from? Money always comes from somewhere, cunt. It comes from everyone below her.
It comes from the shameless shlubs who buy the condo, who'd rather buy a house but can't afford it. It comes from the former tenants she probably pushed out of their insufficiently tasteful, but probably sufficiently affordable housing. It comes from everyone who can't find a place to live in a city preyed on by goddamned yuppie cunt speculators.
Lady, listen to me. I don't care that you want to make money. We all want to make money. Some day, I'd like to have some. I'll touch it and stroke it and put it under my pillow. And sure, you like playing the real estate game. And really, the people who buy your condos will get something out of the deal. Maybe they'll even be worthless yuppies like yourself. But there is a way to take advantage of like-minded yuppie trash without degrading affordable housing stock. Sure, it's a little HARDER, and it's a little more TECHNICAL (math make mommies head hurt?), but it doesn't take advantage of a situation that is currently strangling everyone making less than 60,000 a year. See, lady, what you do, is you find some shitty old mill buildings. Then you pump your stainless-steel and knockoff corian into there like it was going out of style (and it will). You make loft condos. You create new housing stock for your worthless, hyperpriveleged n-riche brethren. Draw them into the artful former ghetto.
And leave the falling down-triple deckers to us poor people, cunt.
This cunt is what's fucking up the suburbs, too.
This cunt is what's making it impossible for people my age to become adults.
This cunt is a motherfucking real estate speculator. She buys a property, and, as the article so cutely puts it "flips" it. She's soooo anxious about getting in while the market is still "hot".
What's this cunt really doing?
This cunt is taking affordable housing stock, valuable multi-family rental property that communities won't zone for anymore (rentals being oh-so-gauche, oh-so-unpleasant! and the ELEMENT they bring in! Why, they're barely upper-middle-class at all!) adding cheap little touches like countertops and shiny woodwork, condoing it, and taking all the profit back to her tony little McMansion.
This cunt is why I live in a one-bedroom, with a roommate, and consider myself lucky for the privelege. This is why I don't KNOW anyone my age, except for my roommate, who doesn't live with their parents. Well, this cunt, and a bunch of other cunts with other tricks up their sleeves.
How about working mommy cunts, who take all their earnings and use them in bidding wars to drive up housing prices in school districts where little Shamison will get the opportunities she needs to play lacrosse and learn french and score well on the MCAS and never meet any black people.
How about snob zoning cunts, who love to cut up parcels that can only be used for sprawling 5-bed, 4-bath, 3 motherfucking car garage MANOR HOUSES, and refuse to zone any more multi-family housing?
How about all the cunts who condo to keep out college students, all the college student cunts whose mommies and daddies pay absolutely anything in rent to save on room and board, thus pushing the rental market even higher?
How about cunty cities that sleeze out of 40B requirements? How about cunty 40B requirements that don't actually create any affordable housing?
But this cunt...oooooo. This cunt. And this paper. Boston Globe, theoretically a liberal, thoughtful paper, read by nearly everyone in the city, shamelessly congratulating this cunt on getting hers. Yes, she certainly will turn a profit on this. But where does the profit come from? Money always comes from somewhere, cunt. It comes from everyone below her.
It comes from the shameless shlubs who buy the condo, who'd rather buy a house but can't afford it. It comes from the former tenants she probably pushed out of their insufficiently tasteful, but probably sufficiently affordable housing. It comes from everyone who can't find a place to live in a city preyed on by goddamned yuppie cunt speculators.
Lady, listen to me. I don't care that you want to make money. We all want to make money. Some day, I'd like to have some. I'll touch it and stroke it and put it under my pillow. And sure, you like playing the real estate game. And really, the people who buy your condos will get something out of the deal. Maybe they'll even be worthless yuppies like yourself. But there is a way to take advantage of like-minded yuppie trash without degrading affordable housing stock. Sure, it's a little HARDER, and it's a little more TECHNICAL (math make mommies head hurt?), but it doesn't take advantage of a situation that is currently strangling everyone making less than 60,000 a year. See, lady, what you do, is you find some shitty old mill buildings. Then you pump your stainless-steel and knockoff corian into there like it was going out of style (and it will). You make loft condos. You create new housing stock for your worthless, hyperpriveleged n-riche brethren. Draw them into the artful former ghetto.
And leave the falling down-triple deckers to us poor people, cunt.
Sunday, August 21, 2005
Pictures soon.
Yesterday, I crawled through a 40 foot colon.
I think that's great, for two reasons.
1. Colon cancer awareness is important. Breast cancer gets so much attention these days, with te pink ribbons and celebrity endorsements. You can buy breast cancer awareness mints, breast cancer awareness scarves, breast cancer awareness bathing suits- I'm sure, soon, there will be a breast cancer edition ford explorer. It will be candy pink and have one lumpy tire. If you can't tell the dealer which tire was lumpy at the 6,000 mile check, you lose both front tires. That'll show you.
But there is no brown ribbon for colon cancer. There's no video you can order for free from Lifetime television that encourages you notice changes in your stool and get a colonoscopy when neccessary. Colon cancer just isn't sexy. It's not marketable. Any celebrity that encourages you to get a professional to insert costly electronics into your ass soon finds themselves coasting onto the b-list. (Sorry, Katie Couric- you tried).
2. I crawled through a giant DISEASED colon.
It was at the Mall of Warwick, in Rhode Island. Also in attendance was Eneman. Yes, Eneman. Eneman is the real, actual, not tongue-in-cheek, sincere, genuine, Tobey McGuire earnest, Ronald McDonald charismatic, mascot of Fleet. Eneman is an over-six foot, smiling enema. He wears a cape and would LOVE to shake your hand. (I promise, pictures as SOON as I develop them) He was also giving out small stuffed replicas of himself.
At the same time, at the mall, I saw another memorable celebrity. Miss Rhode Island.
More later.
I think that's great, for two reasons.
1. Colon cancer awareness is important. Breast cancer gets so much attention these days, with te pink ribbons and celebrity endorsements. You can buy breast cancer awareness mints, breast cancer awareness scarves, breast cancer awareness bathing suits- I'm sure, soon, there will be a breast cancer edition ford explorer. It will be candy pink and have one lumpy tire. If you can't tell the dealer which tire was lumpy at the 6,000 mile check, you lose both front tires. That'll show you.
But there is no brown ribbon for colon cancer. There's no video you can order for free from Lifetime television that encourages you notice changes in your stool and get a colonoscopy when neccessary. Colon cancer just isn't sexy. It's not marketable. Any celebrity that encourages you to get a professional to insert costly electronics into your ass soon finds themselves coasting onto the b-list. (Sorry, Katie Couric- you tried).
2. I crawled through a giant DISEASED colon.
It was at the Mall of Warwick, in Rhode Island. Also in attendance was Eneman. Yes, Eneman. Eneman is the real, actual, not tongue-in-cheek, sincere, genuine, Tobey McGuire earnest, Ronald McDonald charismatic, mascot of Fleet. Eneman is an over-six foot, smiling enema. He wears a cape and would LOVE to shake your hand. (I promise, pictures as SOON as I develop them) He was also giving out small stuffed replicas of himself.
At the same time, at the mall, I saw another memorable celebrity. Miss Rhode Island.
More later.
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