I salute this comment

I don't really get comments on this blog, so any one comment is a cause for celebration. A comment like this takes that celebration out of the range of "block party" and into "city-wide riot":

omg when i got this f*cking book from my professor who's a totally asshole i simply thought wtf
i've never ever read a title so stupid and tomorrow is my test so i'm dying fuckkkkk
btw DRUGS ARE MAINSTREAM omfg
adios biatchos

It was left on my review of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, a book which certainly could drive people to hardcore drugs, or, at the very least, 180-proof everclear. As I responded, I only wish I knew who it was that left this thing of beauty on my blog.

adios biatchos

"If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?"

The first post-puberty penis I ever saw in person -- because I'm not counting the times where we were young enough to play naked on the beach and I thought it was called a "peanut" -- was at an intimate dance performance at the Deaf West Theater in North Hollywood. It's a small space with limited stadium-style seating; most of the audience just sits cross-legged on the floor, or at least we did for this performance.

It was my sophomore year of high school. As part of our dance curriculum requirement, we were responsible for seeing one dance performance per semester and writing an essay about it. Our teachers usually got us together for group field-trips for these performances, but if we couldn't make it for whatever reason, we had to find a show on our own. When that was the case, if you're a high-school student with limited disposable income, as I was, your options tend to be limited to whatever the small, independent dance troupe is putting on at the theater around the corner. Often, these shows are really cool; equally often, they're fucking weird.

The show I attended included performances by two troupes, both of whom advertised themselves as "modern." After the performance by the first group, the Nesting Dolls, my friend and I, seated on the floor, were waiting to see the next group, named Steamroller. As this was awhile ago, I don't remember what specific details on the pamphlet had led us to be more excited about this group's work, but for whatever reason, we were particularly anticipating their half of the show.

The lights dimmed, and out walked the penis. More specifically, out walked a naked man, through the audience exit path, to the stage. He couldn't have been taller than about five-foot-two, and as my friend and I were sitting right next to the exit path, I turned my head as he walked out and found myself at eye level to, and sniffing distance from, his flaccid penis.

When he reached the stage, he began dancing. My memory of his actual dancing has been warped by time and by the shock I was experiencing at the time, but I choose to remember it as the kind of avant garde movement that would-be contestants sometimes try on "So You Think You Can Dance," to which the judges respond "I appreciate what you're doing, but it is not right for this show." The track he danced to was some kind of arthouse disco beat with a sample of a male voice saying "If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?" over and over again.

Sometimes you dig up something old from your grade-school days and you think, "Wow, I can't believe I kept this!" On the opposite track, I would give anything to find the essay I wrote on this performance.

Another tick in the "pros" column for self employment

When we talk about things like rape culture, the corollary to telling women that we are responsible for keeping our dress and behavior appropriate, so as to ensure we don't get raped, is that under this logic, men are basically reduced to animals who can't process a rational stream of thought outside of "SHORT SKIRT MUST SEX." Like, if a woman is wearing a short skirt, it's her fault she was raped because the dude just couldn't help himself. This, we must point out, is a pretty awful stereotype of men, no? Men don't like to be stereotyped as potential rapists and deviants, and after all, they remind us, most men are NOT raping women.

The rest of this post isn't going to be about rape, but it is going to be how that whole rape culture attitude trickles down in the rest of our lives. Apparently, the Iowa State Supreme Court issued a decision that allows bosses to fire employees on the grounds of an "irresistible attraction."

In the case at hand, James Knight, a dentist in Iowa, fired one of his female employees, Melissa Nelson, in the interest of saving his marriage. Apparently the good doctor’s wife caught on to the fact that he wanted to fill his assistant’s cavities, and demanded that Nelson be fired immediately. If “filling cavities” is too broad a term for you, we’ll break it down with some factual tidbits taken from the opinion (available in full on the next page):

• Knight complained to Nelson that her clothing was too tight, revealing, and distracting, but Nelson denied that her clothing was in any way inappropriate.
• Nelson was supposed to know that her clothing was too revealing if she caught a glimpse of Knight’s err… dental instrument… standing at attention, and later told her it was a good thing she didn’t wear tight pants, because then he’d “get it coming and going.” Lovely.
• Knight told Nelson that her dull sex life with her husband was bringing him down, noting, “[T]hat’s like having a Lamborghini in the garage and never driving it.” Knight likely had a case of the sads because he was unable to test drive the exotic thing of luxury between Nelson’s legs.
• Knight once asked Nelson how often she orgasmed, because that’s totally appropriate.

So basically, this guy was sexually harassing his employee, but in a bizarre twist of events, he fired her for being too sexy and her termination was validated by the State Supreme Court. The Above the Law blog has a nice, succinct summary, but the full text itself really is full of gems.

And this is why I had that super serious first paragraph about rape culture. No one raped Melissa Nelson, but she lost her job because her male boss (and the male boss's wife) was concerned about the *possibility* that he might not be able to control himself around her. And the court said that was okay. Sorry Iowa ladies! Your employment is not nearly as important as the insatiable pantsfeelings of your male boss. It's your fault you're attractive? What did you expect, trying to go and have a job anyway?

I could keep going with the snark, but really, I don't have to. This is stupid enough on its own without me needing to highlight it with italics and hyperbole.

Really, Spotify?

I was going to call this More Things I Do Not Need, but since both of the things I do not need so far have involved Spotify, I'm just going to be more direct.

I do not need the auditory assault that is the advertisement for Bruno Mars' new album. This alone wouldn't be cause for complaint, since Spotify has so far proven itself to be notoriously bad at targeted advertising, and thus constantly feeds a stream of music-related ads at me that, if it actually paid attention to what I listen to, it would know I do not want.

What makes this egregious is that Bruno Mars, he of the ill-advised grenade catching and insipid crooning about love as best understood by a 14 year old, has decided that the album cover that best represents his swag is some lady's decolletage. And Spotify has decided to make this image HUGE on my computer. Do I need to reiterate:

I AM AT WORK!

Do they not understand how many people use this service at work? And that I'd prefer not to have a huge picture of that on my screen when I go to the app? 
 

For this latest dunderhead move, Spotify gets three out of three exasperated Judge Judys.

Things I was really proud of when I was younger

Maybe as a kid you weren't as competitive as I was, but if you were, you may be able to relate to my experience of turning the dumbest things into a competition. Here are some I was actually proud of "winning" as a youngster:

• Having the fastest WPM on "Mario Teaches Typing"
• Having the biggest shoe size among my girl friends
• Being the "best" girl longjumper in my class (my Olympic dreams were promptly and thoroughly dashed at our first track meet which involved other schools)
• Having the most successful "business" of leasing out my Beanie Babies for the day to sit on the desktops of other students who were not fortunate enough to own their own Beanie Babies -- No shit. I actually did this. There was a sign up sheet on my locker, and for a small fee of whatever-it-was-I-don't-remember I would let classmates rent my Beanie Babies for the day so that they could avoid looking dreadfully uncool by not having them around in class. Other people caught onto what I was doing and tried to replicate it, but I was the original gangsta and no one came close to my entrepreneurship
• Being tall enough to stand in the back row for class pictures
• Building the longest clover chains
• Finding substantial vats of "Indian clay" -- I can't even begin to describe what this could have actually been, but it was what we called the clay-like mud that occasionally could be found underneath our sand pits and the like. So PC of us...
• Being able to withstand Indian burns the longest -- and as long as I'm remembering inappropriate uses of "Indian," here is another dumb accomplishment. Who is actually proud of letting their classmates injure the shit out of their arm skin? I was!

Were you a goofy kid too?

Things I do not need

That Durex ad that has been playing on Spotify for the last few weeks (not gonna link to it because of reasons, and I'm sure you've heard it if you listen to Spotify.)

Why I do not need this:

1. I'm at work
2. I'm disgruntled that a company that purports to specialize in sex, by way of making condoms, engages in tired-ass stereotyping about the kind of sex 'women' vs 'men' like to have
3. I'm at work. Seriously. There are people around.

Speaking up about harassment: a good thing

I recently had a spike in views on my responses to feminist critique post. It looks like I was linked on an Icelandic news site, which isn't the kind of meta-news a legit blog would be excited about, but since I'm just a baby blog I thought it was kind of cool. I have only the most vague idea of the context in which I was linked, since Google's Icelandic-to-English translator is, well, special.

Anyway, since speaking out about online harassment appears to be a hot topic here and elsewhere, I wanted to go ahead and share someone else doing the same. I have followed Anita's videos at Feminist Frequency for a long time, because I appreciate the depth of research she puts into her videos, and I also am generally interested in the topics she chooses to tackle. Recently, Anita requested funding on Kickstarter to complete a video series about sexism in video games. The post I've just linked includes over 100 stomach-turning, awful comments she received in response to her request. Some are much, much worse than others, in terms of violent sexism. Collectively, though, even the more mild ones contribute to an environment that just says "Shut up. Stop talking. How dare you talk about this. Fuck you for having an opinion."

If my summary seems hyperbolic, just please go look at her video. Notice her demeanor. Notice how calm and normal and smart and not angry and not man-hating she seems. Then, read as many of the comments as you can stomach, and imagine receiving those comments on every single thing you post online, and let me know if you still think that I'm exaggerating.

Unsolicited advice

"You have great legs, but you should get a tan."

This is one of those things that guys should keep to themselves. I know I'm pale, and I'm not insulted that he pointed it out, but I'm just not that interested in anyone else's thoughts about my color (or my legs in general, really.)

Thanks for the offer

I've started taking public transportation, thanks to the graduate student government negotiating a fantastic deal with LA Metro that makes our fares insanely cheap during the school year. And, I'm down the street from one of the Red Line stations, so I even get to take the real subway.

Because LA public transit, though, is so disjointed and on a grid, I have to transfer a lot. And sometimes waiting at the bus stops in between transfers takes awhile. This, incidentally, is the worst part of taking the bus. I hear a lot of horror stories about weird people on the bus, and they certainly are there, but with my headphones and book I'm mostly left alone. There was one guy, one time, that asked me to dinner, and when I politely declined, he wondered why "the most powerful man in the world" couldn't even get a date. High comedy! Anyway.

I was sitting at a stop a few weeks ago in my neighborhood from last year, which is neither the best nor the worst of LA neighborhoods. It's had a sketchy past, but it's pretty tame now. And as I'm sitting there, this guy comes up from behind me (poor choice #1) and says

"Excuse me, but do you know this is like, the worst neighborhood imaginable?"

What I should have said: "You don't have much of an imagination, do you?"
What I actually said: "No, it's really not." (REVEL IN MY WIT!)

Then he says, "Well, I just thought I'd offer you a ride so that you don't have to wait here for the bus."

What I said: "Um, no thanks, I'm okay."
What I was thinking: So, the alternative to waiting here, with several other people around, and getting onto a heavily monitored bus, is to get in the car alone with you, an absolute stranger?

I'll pass.

Responses to feminist critique are ANGRY!

Source: http://www.gabbysplayhouse.com/?p=1444

Settle in for a long post.

Public service announcement

Do NOT get a kidney infection.

Okay?

Just don't. They're horrible, painful, life-sucking experiences. There is no comfortable way to exist. You can't sit, you can't lay, you can't stand, you can't walk, you can't pee, and you can't curl up into a ball and cry.

You'll get a fever so high you'll believe you're in Greenland (because you're that delusional and shivering that much.)

So just don't do it. Drink plenty of water and kick your urinary tract to the curb if it starts acting a fool.

You'll thank me for this message!

You suck at puns

Okay, here's something really quick, given my propensity to be ranting about something at any given time:

I see this a lot and it makes me squirm. I know that young progressives hate Fox News, but when you're trying to capture the intellectual upper ground, PLEASE don't go for the low-hanging fruit and call it "Faux News." For one thing, it's so old hat. For another thing, you guys do know how to pronounce "faux," right? It's just not a successful play on words if it requires you to willfully mispronounce the word to get the joke.

This is why America's science education needs to step up its game... NOW

pegd said... I have 4 boys. When I was pregnant with #4 the odds were less than 20% for it to be a boy.

Char said... the chances of having a girl is around 50%. For each pregnancy. No matter how many boys you've had before. (ding ding ding!)

fairylights said... 50% per pregnancy, although there are some, er, natural ways to try and swing the balance in your favor. One of them worked with our third child, but they sure as heck aren't full proof. (?)

Mooshki said... Actually, pegd, if all of your kids have the same father, I think the odds were even better than 50/50 that your fourth would be a boy, because the first three were a sign that he has a genetic predisposition to father sons. (facepalm)

pegd said... Yes Mooshki, you're right, my ob/gyn told me I had less than 20% chance for a girl with the last one (think the actual # was around 15%. My boys have the same father. (Your OB/GYN needs to go back to medical school... or take high school statistics, post haste.)

Day 26 - My week, in great detail

(Last) Wednesday - Went to school, did some experiments, had class. Went home, Lacey came over, she and Emily and I made dinner. Well, Lacey and Emily made dinner and I made parfait. I used a papaya that was no bueno. It needed to be picked out of my otherwise lovely parfait. Boo. We also watched Castle in the Sky - cute, but not my favorite. There were lots of forlorn faces.

Thursday - Went to school (this is a noticeable pattern, no?) and otherwise I really don't remember anything that happened last Thursday. Oh! I started working out at the mini-gym in the building. They don't have a lot of different machines, but they have a bike and an elliptical - which is all I need for cardio - and some other weight machines that mostly seem to focus on the thighs (good) and arms/shoulders/upper back (also good) but for abs, they only have a big ball, and I'm not really sure how to make the most of that so I'll definitely have to supplement with my abs workout with some 8 minute abs at home.

Friday - More school! More class! Worked out again. I'm doing about an hour and 15 minutes when all is said and done.

Saturday - Made an egg scramble in the morning with bell peppers, mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, Italian sausage, and cheese. Went to visit Casper, we hung out and had some chicken corn chowder for lunch. Steak and potatoes for dinner. I watched Die Hard for the first time - I'd never seen it before.

Sunday - Went to visit Tiffany. We were going to go to Venice, but the weather was icky. Instead we hung out and talked, and went to dinner at C & O's Trattoria. I had fettucine in a lemon cream sauce with Italian sausage (okay, I guess I really like that stuff.) She and Steve and I split a pitcher of sangria (tasty) and I also ordered chocolate milk because I'm wholesome like that. Also, that place has a lot of owls.

Monday - Back to school. I wrote about it "great detail" that day, so I'm skipping it here except to mention that after I wrote, I went and got El Tepeyac for dinner.

Tuesday - SURPRISE! More school. Really long lab meeting involving critiquing presentations that are going to be given at the Obesity Society conference this weekend. I'm not going. The meeting ruined my workflow and I didn't get much done for the rest of the day other than set up a PCR. Worked out at the gym again, then went home. Casper came to visit and we watched Quantum of Solace, which I had but had never seen, and then he had to go home so I went to sleep. Exciting!

(Today) Wednesday - So far, I took care of some DNA extractions in lab, and I'm now sitting in class, so you know it's really exciting. I probably should be paying attention because these slides have absolutely no words on them, so I'm not going to have any idea what to take away from them when it comes time to study. Oh well. C'est la vie. I plan to head over to Lacey's later with Emily, where they have some dinner planned (this has been kind of a tradition of theirs that I started piggybacking on last week, so ideally I'll be less of a leech in the future and actually help more in the coming weeks.) I'll probably watch last night's Glee at some point, even though I hated the last episode and am ready to quit this show. Win me back please!

Day 25 - My day, in great detail.

Here begins the end of the 30-day challenge, where the challenge authors ran out of ideas and came up with some pretty boring shit that we're now tasked with writing about.



8:30 - wake up. Get out of bed. Wash face. Apply sunscreen.
8:45 - eat cereal (Quakers Oatmeal Squares, nonfat milk), take vitamins (Daily Multi, Calcium supplement, fish oil)
9:00 - check email. Browse internet (Facebook, AuthenticForum, whatever is on GReader)
9:15 - back to bathroom. Apply makeup. Deodorant (Degree clinical protection: sucks, do not buy.) Clean up dead ants that inhaled too much poison overnight and died on sinktop after (I imagine) writhing around sadly for awhile.
9:45 - leave for class.
10:05 - arrive at school, late. Look for failed meter to park at near classroom. After doing some circles, one is found. Walk to class.
10:15-12:00 - in class. bored.
12:05-12:35 - seminar on stem cell regenerative therapy after MI. Summary: hematopoetic stem cells don't work; embryonic stem cells do. BOOM!
12:40-1:40 - class discussion. Bored.
1:45 - walk to car, move it to different spot to avoid 4hr parking only ticket.
1:55 - Lunch. Food truck on campus: Crepes Bonaparte. It is always this truck and I am tired of it. Nonetheless, I don't feel like walking to the further cafeteria in the rain. Got a bacon, tomato, avocado, and mozzarella crepe with wheat batter. Savory!
2:05 - Inside student center, newly remodeled. Damnit - they opened the Poquito Mas and I already bought this mediocre crepe.
2:15 - I would usually sit outside and wait for my next class, but it's raining. Walk to lecture hall, choose prime seat location in back row next to electrical outlet, plug in laptop, browse internet.
3:00-5:00 - Class. Bored.
5:05 - leave, go home.
5:30 - Traffic is bad (thanks rain!) Just arrived back. Start downloading last night's Mad Men and last week's Community. Browse internet. Find interesting article defending women against ev-psych apes who think women evolved to be shitty at technology.
6:00 - on the phone with Casper, then Mom
6:20 - sit down to write horrifically boring blog entry about the meaningless shit I did today

Day 18 - Whatever Tickles My Fancy

This is going to be a short one - I just wanted to show all of you a small bit of ridiculousness that graced me with its presence on the screen as I was watching last week's "Project Runway."

Apparently it was raining in New York?

Day 15 - a fanfic

I got nothing