Art of the Possible

This blog has moved

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel S.) — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 06:45:00 +0000

This blog is now located at http://rachelsetzer.blogspot.com/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here.

For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to
http://rachelsetzer.blogspot.com/atom.xml.

Being depressed makes you stupid

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel S.) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:53:00 +0000

Our nation's daughters are continuing a trend that has prevailed throughout history: they make poor decisions based on what makes them feel good. Now, of course this trend, this habit, is not unique to young women, just about everybody does it, but it is my opinion that young women are especially vulnerable to the destructiveness of this habit.

Recently, I was sitting in a coffee shop and overheard a brother and two moms discussing a young girl and the bad boy who has chosen her as his next victim*. I relate this as an allegory, an instance of a girl making a poor decision because a boy is telling her whatever he has to to make her feel worthy and reward him with exactly what he wants.

I don't know about you, but I do know one thing about myself and my relationship history: it was when I felt the worst about myself that I made my worst relationship decisions. Torn down by depression, eating disorders, disappointment in life, shitty parents with drinking problems; I've made my fair share of mistakes and like 1 in 6 American women have been raped. I'm not saying that my judgment is what cause the rape (in fact, had it not been me, that douche certainly would have raped another woman and probably has -- it seemed to be his modus operandi), but my desire for approval, my need to feel good, feel pretty, and be validated helped me to fall for this bullshit he toted; put up a smoke screen so I couldn't see what was really going on. Every time, my need for validation has lead me into disastrous relationships, taken me on fateful dates, and only lead me deeper into the original problem.

My point here is not that the poor judgment of girls or women is to blame for our misery or the continuation of it. In fact, I mean to point out the opposite. Feeling bad about yourself, your life, your purpose, your body will inevitably lead to poor judgment and bad decisions.

More directly: depression makes you stupid.

Media that is aimed to make women feel badly about themselves makes us stupid. People who belittle women and girls so often that those women and girls believe that bullshit are directly to blame for the poor decisions made by those women and girls especially if belitter is charged with the well-being of that woman or girl -- parents, teachers, spiritual leaders, youth leaders, etc. Negative consequences that are addressed in a negative manner (for instance "you got yourself [pregnant, raped, etc], because you're [stupid, a slut, drink too much, etc]") make it harder for anyone, let alone a teenage girl, to go back to a similar situation and make the right decision.

We need to begin by empowering our young women. Stop belittling them. Enough with the slut-shaming. Enough with promoting beauty over intellect; being pretty over being interesting, or making the two mutually exclusive. Build them up so they not only don't believe the negative bullshit pushed by peers, media, etc, but also so they can dismiss the bullshit of a guy who will (and does) say anything he has to in order to fuck her.

Teach women that they are valuable and that they can make good decisions and exercise good judgment. That way parents and siblings don't have to stage an intervention in order to keep a young girl from being raped by some bad boy who has become her only source of feeling valued.

______________________________

*I say victim because one of the things I overheard was the brother saying that this bad boy had bragged to the girl about having forced other girls to have sex with him.

My fat-shaming scale

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel S.) — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 07:19:00 +0000

Last night at dinner the Schmoogie started telling me about how awesome our scale is because it "uses some electrical measurment to determine your body fat [percentage]", so this morning, I decided to take that little feature for a spin.

I set it to adult, female, 5'7", and weighed myself (192.5, if you're curious). Then came the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 while it calculated my body fat.

42%

That would make me morbidly obese. For those of you who have met me, I am not morbidly obese (not even in a bride's maid dress). My doctor isn't concerned at all about my weight (which if I was morbidly obese, he would be), and I have none of the signs or symptoms of diseases brought on by obesity. (For the record, my cholesterol is too low, my blood pressure is perfect, and I can hold Downward Facing Dog for upwards of 5 mintes.)

According to the internet, bones take up about 15% of ones body weight. My giant breasts take up another 5-10%. And the last time I had my body fat measured, it was somewhere around 30% (this was about 4 years ago, and for the record, I haven't changed pant size). But according to my scale, I am 42% fat. Putting me at somewhere around 10% muscle by my just as accurate calculations.

So, later, the Schmoogie is curious, and tests himself. He inputs male, 6'2.5", and weighs himself. The all knowing electrical current tells him he is 16% fat. Furthering our little experiment, I change my gender in the scale, input the same height, weigh myself and it comes back with -- are you ready for this because it's shocking -- 30%. Now I'm thinking, if it was actually measuring the same body with the same measurments, the gender wouldn't matter. So, I want to know more. We switch the Schmoogie's gender in the scale and measure the same body, and even more shocking, the scale tells a woman who is 6'2.5" and weighs 181 lbs, that she is 34% fat. DOUBLE the Schmoogie's original measurment. That's a pretty freaking huge margin.

Then I get thinking: this machine was programmed not to determine weight and body fat percentage, but to make women feel ashamed of their bodies. A woman with the exact same measurments -- the same body! -- as a man who is pretty much at the "ideal" weight/fat measurments is, according to this machine's calculations obese.

But a woman who was 6'2.5", 181 lbs, with good muscle tone, isn't even obese according to the standard (bullshit) BMI scale.

It's obscene. I'm thinking about getting a different scale that isn't a sexist fucker.

And now for something completely different: A Blog About Something I Hate

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel S.) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 07:28:00 +0000

Hair.

That is, other people's hair. That is, the hair of other people lying around, in drains, on my coat, on the internets, in commercials, drawn into my favorite cartoon. I've never dry heaved at a commercial until Anthony Sullivan began hocking the Turbo Snake on late night tv. I've never come closer to turning off an episode of The Venture Brothers than when Dean picks up and plays with a hair clog from the shower.

In the past, if someone else's hair got on me, I would freak out and look away while making someone else remove it from me. Occasionally, this still happens, but years of working in retail where far more disgusting things (like cash) are handled on a daily basis kind of desensitized me to at least that. But I have a very strong visual/visceral connection, so when I see an image of hair falling to the floor while a guy sits in a barbers chair in an H&R Block commercial and asks if a hair cut is a "job hunting expense", I just about lose my shit. Yeah... it's a problem.

This all started probably when I was 9 or so, and my sister's long black hair was everywhere. Vacuuming wasn't yet part of my chores, but if I had known this would reduce the amount of hair that was, literally, everywhere, I would have taken up the habit a lot sooner. Needless to say, a big deal was made about the mess. Somehow, I internalized this and began avoiding hair. Then, of course, there were all of my friends who had long, frizzy hair in junior high and high school -- I, personally, cut my hair very short at 12 and later at 15, and since haven't ever had it longer than my chin; the shortness, combined with the color (RED!) helps me to not freak out over my own hair.

Of course, all of this is made even more idiosyncratic because I live with a dog and human who each have full heads and backs of hair. Pugs shed more than just about any creature this side of Alpha Centauri; the Schmoogie, thankfully, not so much. And I'm lucky enough that having to clean hair clogs out of drains is a thing of the past -- living with Kia, as bad as that was on its own, was made infinitely worse by the fact that she never bothered to clean anything, let alone hair from the shower drain... I once had to dig a giant, dishwater-blonde hair clog out with a chopstick while wearing nitrile gloves.

Don't mistake me, I don't mind hair that maintains some delusion of continued life -- I suppose you could say that my aversion to hair is similar to the aversion of others to corpses -- and I'm certainly no ~~germaphone~~ germaphobe, I just don't like looking at, touching, being touched by, or having to acknowledge the existence of discarded strands or clumps of hair. (Actually, I don't like being touched by living hair either -- if another girl in a club swings her hair around and touches me with it, I will throw down. You assault me with your uncontrollable hair, I will assault you with my fists. That's how irrational I am about this!)

So, I don't know, would people please stop putting little clumps of hair on the damn tv. It's really starting to get under my skin... ew. Now I'm gonna have nightmares about hair under my skin. Great. Thanks usually harmless colloquialism.

Who the hell are women trying to please?!

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel S.) — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 06:43:00 +0000

Over at Street Carnage, there's a preview of a photo spread from next month's V Magazine where an industry standard sized model (size 0) and a plus sized model (size 12) go head to head in a pose-off. I think this is pretty cool, but at the end of the article we see this picture, plus a nice little post-script.

PS: I thought this picture was boring when I first saw it but I couldn’t stop thinking about it for weeks. The National Average one is irrelevant because midwestern fatsos skew the “figures” but how about the part where women’s ideal is not the male’s ideal? Who are they trying to please?

I'll tell you who: themselves.

Contrary to popular belief, women don't actually exist solely to please men. I know, it sounds crazy, but women see themselves differently than men, and this is going to sound even crazier: a lot of the time, the way a woman dresses, does her hair and/or makeup, and the general effort that she puts into her appearance isn't to please anyone but herself.

"WHAT?! You can't be serious!" shriek the menz and radfems alike. (The radfem admonishment is followed promptly by a call of naievete on my part, letting me know in that radfemsplanation tone that I am simply blinded by a society that seeks to keep me pretty in order to please men. I don't buy it.) I am 100% serious, and I'll give you one reason why: my hair is not naturally red. Most of the people I know wouldn't really care whether my hair was red or brown, and the attractive elements of my personality aren't impacted by the color of my hair. So who in god's name am I trying to please by having red hair? Myself.

There is an element of conditioning going on here too, though. There are a lot of women out there who think that they want to be a size 8 because the media tells them that the only way anyone would ever find them attractive is if their dress size is in the single digits.

Finally, the "national average one" isn't irrelevent. What this image does is show women who are a size 16 what they look like. The size 16 woman in this image isn't ugly or hugely obese. As a woman who is a size 14, I struggle with my body image, but I see this woman (and yes, I know she's been photoshopped), and I think, "oh, I guess I'm not so horribly fat afterall!" and my body image improves. Wow, you mean... wait, could this entire article not have been for the male gaze at all?! Yes, that's exactly what I'm getting at. The "national average one" is, in fact, the most relevant image in the entire spread.

Attn all assholes with guns

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel S.) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 07:09:00 +0000

Stop killing/trying to kill cops. Seriously.

Two more police officers in Pierce Co. WA have been shot.

There is no Messiah until I see some freaking zombies

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel S.) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:34:00 +0000

For the edification of those who are not Talmudic scholars, here's the way I understand the Rabbinic view of life, death, and the after-life:

1. You are born; your life begins when you take your first breath; life begins at birth, not conception so I'm not a murderer by virtue of having continued to have periods after becoming sexually active.
2. You live.
3. You die.
4. When you die, your "soul" leaves your body to go to the great Bingo hall in the sky (or something -- basically your soul does whatever a soul does when not bound to a body), and your body goes into the ground. This is just temporary though. Dante said that the Jews slept in the vestibule of Hell until the Judgment. But Dante was probably an anti-Semite. I'm pretty sure that when Jews die they go play Canasta and MaJohng with other dead people.
5. Then the party is over cause the Messiah has arrived and is all judgmental and whatnot. My Rabbi said that the Messianic times are gonna be "pretty rough", so when he told me that your body and soul get reunited and won't necessarily look the way you looked when you were alive my mind went to one place, and one place only: zombies. It doesn't matter why this happens, (but you can read the Talmud to find out), but just contemplate it for a while. Think about all the things you know about the supposed "end of days" and the [second, if you're a Christian] coming of the Messiah. Dogs and cats sleeping together, crises of biblical proportions, yes? And ZOMBIES. If there's another way bodies and souls can get reunited and still preserve this view that the Messianic times are gonna be as bad as Rabbinic tradition says it will... I'd like to hear about it. Cause I'm really not interested in leaving my MaJohng game to go be a freaking zombie. Messiah or no Messiah.
6. Permanent afterlife - if you were good, you get the good stuff, if you were bad you get burned and turned into ashes that everyone walks on for eternity (which, for the truly evil, I can't imagine a better permanent afterlife than perpetually staining the soles of the righteous). Which is followed by
7. ???
and finally
8. Prophet.

All that being said, I should point out that there is no real consensus among Jews on ~~anything~~ the after life. Whether it exists. What happens. Whether there will be zombies at some point. This is just my take on a centuries-old idea that some Rabbis came up with while studying the Torah. It may or may not have any bearing on what actually happens.

Comment Policy

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel S.) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:43:00 +0000

It occurs to me that I need to make a post about comments.

First of all, please leave me your feedback. Pretty much all comments are published, (exceptions noted below), and I want to foster conversation. It's important that there be other opinions out there aside from mine.

That being said, I have a few guidelines for comments:

*If you compare anyone or anything to Hitler or the Nazis (unless we're having a discussion of Hitler or Nazis), your comment will not be published. As a Jewish person with distant relatives (and a boyfriend whose Polish great-grandad) were exterminated by Hitler and the Nazis, I find it distasteful and insulting to compare anyone, short of an actual mass-murdering fuckhead to someone who attempted to wipe not only my people, but several other peoples from the earth. It's not okay.

*Ad hominem attacks are generally discouraged, unless you do it in a very clever and funny manner that is completely relevant to the topic at hand.

*Flame baiting and flame wars will not be published. I don't tolerate that kind of shit when I have the option to avoid it.

That's pretty much it. So, keep it civil, but lively.

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel S.) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 04:49:00 +0000

You know what would be awesome? If Troy Garity, the guy playing the porn-star/patient on this week's episode of House had actually done porn. Now, maybe he has and it's just not listed (wouldn't be surprised if that's the case), but it would be nice. It would be really cool too. Porn actors are actors too. Especially since the writers just happened to use this as an excuse to make the case that monogamy=commitment. When it doesn't.

Abandoning Objectivism

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel S.) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:40:00 +0000

I read Atlas Shrugged in college with the intention of doing one of those ARI scholarships, but I never managed to write the essay. In fact, it took me 9 months to read the damn book, and I still haven't read all of the John Galt Manifesto. I used it as an example of a manifesto in a class I took Freshman year, but never read the whole thing.

Now, it's really late so I have to be honest here: I loved Atlas. It was so emo. So self-centered and self-important. So much like I was at the time, and the sex scenes were pretty hot too. I also enjoy the way Ayn Rand writes fiction, which is strange because I can't get past page 106 in Master and Margarita or even past the first paragraph of any Dostoevsky. (I can't even read modern fiction from Russia, despite how awesome the Nightwatch movies are.) Rand's style, while traditionally Russian (read: long and overly-detailed, with a slow-moving narrative) allowed the book to take on a life of its own for me. Francisco was played by Antonio Banderas; John Galt by Michael Shanks; Christian Bale was Hank Rearden; and I, at the ripe old age of 19, was Dagny having all that dirty, shame-embracing sex with those older, more successful, more powerful men who really, truly understood what Dagny did not: you have to destroy civilization to really save it.

Ah, what a load of bullshit. It's so funny how this person who was educated in a public system funded by the blood, sweat, and tears of everyone in the country (Rand moved to the United States when she was a kid, mind you, so the majority of her education took place here), emphasized this idea of "every man for himself". It's even funnier how, despite the fact that she claims each of the characters was self-taught in their given field, everyone who reads that book whether they admit it or not knows that the greatness of each of these great characters was won on the backs of poorer, dumber people.

Hank Rearden could never have built his Rearden Metal without people to work in and manage his factory. And someone was managing the money that his wife squandered.

Francisco's fortune was based on exploitation of the noble savages of Central America who, whether they actually count as people or not in Rand's world, built the empire that Francisco inherited rather than earning.

Even John Galt had some form of learning, had some form of acquired knowledge that allowed him to build his amazing motor. Without the contributions of previous scientists, Galt (Tesla) would never have done what he had cause he would have needed to waste his entire life developing 300,000 years worth of human technology. You don't go from fired-clay pots to a sonic lock in one lifetime. It's not possible.

And no matter how much she loved trains and civil engineering (which, on its face defies the entire point of the philosophy espoused in this 1069 page tome -- civil engineering in a "one for all and all for me" society? Preposterous! Figure it out for yourself!), Dagny Taggart couldn't survive without a man. Whether it was Daddy, her brother, Francisco, Hank, or John (hell, she probably banged Ragnar too, but that part got edited out so that Rand could keep the book under 1500 pages), Dagny was never "one for all and all for me" because of her inherent inability to function as an independent person because of that damned uterus. It all comes down to the line about how she knew that she didn't deserve John's affection. Dagny made herself less because she was always trying to live in a way that made a man want her. She fucked up her life, threw away her father's company, and shamed herself into intellectual submission. For what?

Chaos.

Rand doesn't go into what happens when all the lights go out in New York City. She doesn't manage to extrapolate that the completion of her "Objectivist" philosophy is absolute anarchy -- oh wait, actually she does, but it's totally a good thing cause that cuts out the rabble. The idea of a person being paid what they are worth is fine, but most people don't develop any monetary worth on their own. You're either born into wealth (like all of the protagonists in Atlas), or you gain it through schooling, the most effective form of which is through the public school system (and yes, I'll admit that I am over-looking the failings of public school, because that's not my frakking point here). Public school brings the most amount of knowledge to the greatest number of people, and those people will grow into their potential in ways that would be impossible if the only option was private schooling.

Libertarianism is fine for some things like drugs and sex, but the only way to maintain a truly free society is with a social safety net that includes public school and various social programs that keep people from having their potential actively denied them because they had the bad luck not to be born a Taggart. The bottom line is, there's no such thing as a "Self-Made Man". He doesn't exist. Each person in a society is only as free as the least among them. It may not be ideal for someone who likes to think of themselves as being completely independent, but it's true: injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

More to the point here, Objectivism is silly because it pretends to be "objective" when it's really subjective. Promoting selfishness above all else is not objective, because acting solely in your own interest requires a subjective point of view. Utilitarianism is far more objective than "Objectivism", because the reality is (when things are viewed objectively) the needs of the many do outweigh the needs of the few; at least until we get skin color and external versus internal genitals involved. That's why we put people in jail. That's why we go to war with countries that are smaller than us and don't really have nuclear weapons. That's why the Cold War was a cold war, because if it became a hot war everyone on the planet would have died so that some guy in either Moscow or Washington could prove his dick was bigger.

By lacking significant forethought and objectivity, Ayn Rand made a mockery of her own philosophy of selfishness. No one saves the world by building little canals along their front lawn, and even if Dagny did get to live happily ever after in Galt's Gulch everyone there lacked the ability to be objective enough to see beyond their own needs and thus lacked the ability to affect significant change and save the world. They merely sat idly by, fiddling while Rome burned.

Good book though.

Introducing the Post-Modern Chef

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel S.) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 05:58:00 +0000

I've put up a food blog for recipes and such. Post-Modern Chef!

While I possess some impressive skills in the kitchen, all of my chef-training has been in the form of eating. I have a strong sense of taste and smell, and sense-memory, so it's easy for me to put different flavors together in my head before making those flavors into food.

Of course, in my domestic goddess duties, I pretty much can't make many traditional recipes. Most of what I'll post here will be free of gluten, wheat, spelt, eggs, dairy, cane sugar, cranberries, and/or garlic, because those are the dietary restrictions I'm presented with at home. That means that a lot of the recipes here will be helpful for those with these allergies, and some recipes can be modified for those who follow vegan dietary restrictions.

It should also be noted that because I cook by feel, most of the measurments are going to be approximate, and on the low side. Remember, you can always add more, but you can't take stuff out.

Anyway, bon apetit!

In defense of Carrie Prejean

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel S.) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:35:00 +0000

Renee at Womanist Musings is absolutely 100% right and 0% wrong. Shaming Carrie Prejean, beauty queen or not, right-wing-tool or not; for a solo sex tape is hypocritical on the part of the left who are criticizing her.

First of all, by making a video of herself masturbating, Carrie is promoting a health body image for young women in the sense that it's okay to touch your vagina, but is also helping (whether she knows it or not) promote safer sex for teens. Believe it or not, abstinence is only one of the ways to prevent, with 100% certainty, unplanned pregnancies. Mutual masturbation is another method. Especially if you're separated by a video screen.

Is Carrie Prejean a hypocrit on this subject herself? I don't know. The only thing I've heard her moralizing about is gay marriage. I've never heard her say anything about teen sex, or masturbation. Is she a bad person? No. Is she dumb? Maybe. But neither of those are even remotely relevant to this issue here.

We've all been teenagers at some point, and while some of us had better self-control, or different ideas about what was an appropriate exchange between a 17-year-old girl and the object of her affection, it's no one's place to condemn Ms. Prejean for this. It's bad enough that her mom was in the room when the video was shown as a means of getting her to back down. It's even worse that Carrie Prejean's 15 minute fame-timer seems to be stuck on 14:49. But do we, on the left, really need to sink so low as to continue to make this an issue? Not just an issue of shaming an allegedly dumb, allegedly biggoted beauty queen, but an issue of hypocricy.

I make it my mission to enrich the lives of women. Now, keeping her in the news may be enriching Carrie Prejean, but what kind of a message is it sending to young women? Think about that before you go moralizing about this whole incident. And if that doesn't work for you, imagine what you would feel like if something explicit you shared with a boyfriend or girlfriend at the age of 17 was suddenly all over the internet. We've all done something like this, so shut the hell up and get back to running around like your hair is on fire on other issues... like the economy. Carrie Prejean didn't do anything wrong.

Keep digging, Glennykins

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel S.) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:47:00 +0000

Glenn Beck says:

"...It's hard to know what anything is worthy anymore. You have to think like a
German-Jew in 1934 for or, um, maybe 1931."

I face-palm. That's just too offensive for words. Nevermind that he was trying to scare people into supporting his sponsors. Nevermind that he gets a paycheck for saying stuff like that.

This is too funny

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel S.) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:17:00 +0000

I got a comment this morning on an old post. Anonymous writes:

Obama really is a "fascist" and also a believer in one world communism. Also, "feminism" really is a form of Marxism. You can check my claim out for yourself. The proof is all over the internet.

See what I mean? Fucking hilarious. Especially since "proof" and "internet" are kind of mutually exclusive... not unlike fascism and communism.

Keep it up Freepers.

Sparklepony reward motivator

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel S.) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 03:12:00 +0000

I am working on a personal challenge this quarter (in addition to my Star Consultant goal), which involves booking 5 appointments each week of the quarter.

I will go to the Fluevog store and put these shoes on layaway. Each week I do my 5 by Friday, I will put $20 toward my shoes. This means that in 10 weeks I will have my shoes paid off. It just so happens, that there are approximately 10 weeks left in the quarter!

And nice new red shoes for the holiday season!!! I'll be putting a picture of these shoes on my MK board to help motivate me, and in the meantime I'm spreading the word because when you tell people your goals, they become more real and seem easier to reach.

My question for you is: is there a goal you need to set? A prize you want to reward yourself with? Go for it! Share your goal and get to work!

McPostModernism

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel S.) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 22:27:00 +0000

Looks like McDonald's will now be serving patrons at La Louvre. Some art lovers consider this a "sign of the apocalypse", but I disagree. I think McDonald's belongs at La Louvre. An installation piece that, more than anything else represents the culture of today. A "McCulture" if you will. In the tradition of Andy Warhol, McDonald's has taken something great and unique, mass-produced it and made it available to everyone with 99 cents in their pocket. Warhol did this and died a very rich man.

Allow me to break down my theory here.

Pop art was what some might call a "travesty". It elevated something as banal as a soup can to the level of the Mona Lisa and people ate it up. Warhol's cynical genius created a movement that is still going today. He used the skills that he had (marketing) to make people want his work and want him. There's nothing special or interesting about an 8 minute film of a man sleeping. There's nothing original or thought provoking about off-color reproductions of images of Marilyn Monroe. Unless you view it as a commentary on the comodification of our culture.

Now, if you believe as I do, that the purpose of art is to create something that shifts the view of your audience to be more sympathetic to your perspective by showing them exactly what you see, McDonald's is one of the greatest art franchises of the 20th century. McDonald's has created a real-life performance piece about the comodification of our culture. Not only that, in being so ubiquitous within our culture it has created a "McCulture", changing our slang. Kids meals are Happy Meals. Burgers are Big Macs. A teenager's very first job (often in food service, often at McDonald's) is a "mcjob". Giant houses that go up in a matter of weeks are "mcmansions". In a sense, McDonald's has continued the work of Andy Warhol, (and Marcel Duchamp before him), in making an art out of making chumps of everyone around them.

It's impressive and hilarious, but as I've already said, very little exemplifies contemporary culture more than McDonald's. As such, I believe it belongs at La Louvre. Centuries from now, art history students will look back at our culture and, just as we look back at the Renaissance and only see Michaelangelo and Titian; they will see Warhol and McDonald's. They won't know that we didn't think of McDonald's as art, much the same as people of the 17th and 18th centuries didn't really think of the contents of their cathedrals as art. That's not the point. Michaelangelo changed the way the world viewed itself. So did Warhol.

So has, arguably, McDonald's.

Apparently my opposition to Glenn Beck interferes with my objectivity

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel S.) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 18:37:00 +0000

Guess what, America: I am not objective.

Another big surprise: neither are you.

Blogs are not news outlets. Bloggers are not journalists, although sometimes we pretend to be, and bloggers have been known to break big stories. People don't read blogs for news -- at least they shouldn't, that's what newspapers are for -- they read them for commentary, with two purposes in mind:

To agree with it.

To find something wrong with it so you can disagree with it.

No one who reads a blog does so expecting objectivity. Well, maybe some people do, but they haven't been around the internet very long.

Let me tell you a little secret: I know that the frog was fake. I also know that Markfrog is a stuffed animal. Go figure, a stuffed frog would be upset about a fake frog being thrown in a pot of boiling water by an FM shock jock who pretends to cry on camera while trying to make an incoherent point which is only made to incite people. He's a clown, remember?

But apparently, my opposition to Beck makes me a bad reporter because it compromises my objectivity. But, aside from the observation of Yom Kippur, beginning tonight, Glenn Beck and I have something in common.

NEITHER OF US IS OBJECTIVE. Never have been, never claimed to be. Well, maybe he has, but that just makes him a fucking liar on top of everything else.

Glenn Beck is no longer invited to observe Yom Kippur with me

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel S.) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 04:56:00 +0000

I don't think that Markfrog would appreciate me sharing the holiest of the High Holy Days with a frog-murdering, point-blowing douchebag.

Frivolity with a side of Beefcake

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel S.) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 20:12:00 +0000

I podcast the Stephanie Miller show and listen to it during my 3 hour bus commute from home to my Yoga Teacher Training. On today's show, either Hal Sparks or Emmy-award-winng Jim Ward mentioned that President Obama has been overheard saying "Jesus, I wish they'd stop grabbing my ass."

This set me off in a bizzare direction wherein I began trying to figure out which biracial-man-to-whom-I-shouldn't-be-attracted is hotter: Barack Obama, our first not-wholly-white President or the half-human-half-alien who is old enough to have wooed my gran, David Bowie.

Each has his incredible points, and each has something about him that makes me blush. President Obama is, of course, the President and while power is sexy, elected officials aren't supposed to be hot. He's also intelligent, knows how to take and make a joke, and we've all seen those pictures of him on the beach. Hello!

Meanwhile, David Bowie is 62, which means that even by the "half-your-age-plus-7" rule I'm too young for my crush to be okay. But as he ages, Bowie just keeps getting more and more attractive - which is only confirmation that he's not wholly human. Plus, that voice! Generations of women, now have swooned for Bowie, but I am honestly stumped here.

Do I go with the 60-year-old double malt whisky, or the 40-year-old special reserve rum?

What do you think?

Glenn Beck invites followers to partake in Yom Kippur fast

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel S.) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 05:12:00 +0000

This is interesting:

Those of you who have read my blog at all might be able to tell that when I first heard about this I was enraged. Furious. Who does Glenn Beck think he is trying to politicize the highest of the High Holy Days?! The most important holiday in Judaism?! You know, something like this:

But then I got to thinking about it... what is Yom Kippur really about? It's not about excluding people, it's not about giving Glenn Beck another 30 seconds on his 15-minutes-of-fame clock, it's about atonement.

Everyone does things ~~that they aren't necessarily proud of~~ of which they are not necessarily proud; everyone has something inside their heart for which they seek atonement. Even non-Jewish people like Glenn Beck. We Hebrews aren't alone in our need and desire to look within and see what we did in the last year that was fucked up, what needs work; how we can do things better next time. So, with that in mind, and the fact that he will be in the Seattle area this weekend, I would like to invite Glenn Beck to my house to break the fast on Monday. I don't want to talk about the "state of the Republic" or politics at all. If he is really interested in sharing in the experience of Yom Kippur, I invite him to do just that. Come with me on Monday to services at my temple, join me for the breaking of the fast.

After all, it's not like he doesn't politicize important Christian holidays, so why should I be upset when he does to Jews what he does to his fellow Christians? And since I have always been invited into the hearts and homes of other Jews when celebrating the High Holy Days, it would be terrible of me not to extend that very courtesy to someone else.

So, Mr. Beck, Mr. Beck's people. Drop me an email and we'll talk. The only thing I ask is that you don't cry on me.

Get 'em while they're young?

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel S.) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 07:28:00 +0000

Interesting thing happened to me today. I was sexually harassed by a couple of 15-year-old boys while walking my dog. As they were walking up behind me, they started doing the 15-year-old equivalent of cat-calling, which I ignored because it was impotent and unoffensive. However, it was clear that they were trying to get my attention the way male humans attempt to do when they see an attractive female human.

Anyway, my dog stopped to do some dog thing and the boys passed me. As they walked by one of them said of my tits "I bet they're fake anyway." I laughed. "Oh please," I said, "you're like half my age." Then I thought to myself, I wish they were fake. There would be so much less upkeep and I wouldn't have to worry about them sagging down to my knees when I'm old. (It later occurred to me that by the time that starts to happen there will be a Mary Kay product that prevents such things from happening.)

The whole experience got me thinking though, why are accusations of fake-tit-ness considered an insult? I mean, who gives a shit? This isn't my real hair color, (and at the moment it's pretty obvious), but no one would try to insult me by saying "I'll bet that's not your real hair color" (they might point out rudely that my roots are showing, but I already know that thankyouvermuch), especially as retaliation for ignoring his advances. Yet somehow I'm supposed to be insulted by someone who isn't even old enough to drive thinking that my tits are fake? I don't get it.

The implication, of course, is that only slutty bad girls would have fake boobs. And of course, it's not okay to be a slutty bad girl (whatever that means anyway), so it's okay for 15-year-olds to try to hit on you if you look like a slutty bad girl. Had they been a couple of years older, had I not had my dog, they might have been more aggressive (in which case I would have had to take off my Mary Kay pins and defend my honor by busting some skulls and calling the cops).

It's fabulous, really, this thought process that goes on in the minds of some men and boys. You're obviously a slut in a good way so I'm gonna hit on you, but if you ignore me you're a slut in a bad way so I'm gonna tell you what I really think about you. These guys don't understand that we already know what they think of us the moment they start harassing us in the street. We know the second a douche-y little wanna-be gangbanger (and we're talking white kids from the suburbs, so he's more of a wannabe-Shadey than anything else -- which is also amusing for a kid from Lynnwood) starts trying to pick us up in that douche-y little wanna-be way: he thinks that because I'm wearing a skirt, or because I have big tits (that fwiw, are 100% my own fat grown in that part of my body because that's what my genes demanded), I'm a piece of meat.

The funniest thing, though, is that this kid wasn't more than 15. I can see a 25-year-old thinking that he might have a chance so why not say "hey hott stuff" or something inappropriate like that, but 15? Really? First of all, illegal. Second of all, I wouldn't even want to touch him because boys that age have a hair-trigger ifyouknowwhatImeanandIthinkthatyoudo. Third, I'm gonna have to be at least 55 before being half my age will be an acceptable criterion for a guy to whose sexual advances I respond. Finally, where the hell did a 15-year-old work up the chutzpah to hit on a fully-grown woman? Video games? Rap music? Or is it just one more example of the asshattery going on in the world this week? The quadfecta of douche-y diatribes is completed by this little pip-squeak? Well, at least he accomplished something.

Godwin's Law

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel S.) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 06:40:00 +0000

Dear Internet,

You and I have had some problems in the past. Remember that time you hosed up my computer because of that one bug in IE7? Or that time in college when I put up those scandalous photos? Or that other time in college when I put up those other scandalous photos? We've been through a lot, but mostly we've gotten through it for two reasons: feminist blogging, and old episodes of the Muppet show sliced into 9-ish minute segments posted on YouTube.

Lately, though, there's been some things going on that I just have to call you to the floor for. There's been a lot of talk of Nazis lately, and I'm not talking about the actual Nazis who killed 6,000,000 Jews, 2,000,000 Polish people, 3,000,000 Russians, 1,000,000 Gypsies (or Romani), 250,000 mentally and physically disabled people, 15,000 homosexuals, 5,000 Jehovah's Witnesses (as well as lots of German dissidents, socialists, and other people who aren't counted on the handy little chart on the Holocaust Wiki page). No, those Nazis aren't be discussed so much these days, it's more like asshats like this guy, comparing sex workers to Nazis. Or any number of bed-wetting, Glen-Beck-watching Freeper Morons who keep painting Hitler mustaches on pictures of President Barack Hussein Obama. (Just click the link and hit CTRL+F and type in "nazi" and you'll be able to navigate the handily documented Freeper quotes.)

Now, Internet, we both love each other, and if you want to talk about sex workers being horrible people who prop up the patriarchy by engaging in teh secks with teh menz for teh $$$, fine. Let's have a discussion. You can start with how inherently bad money is because it, too, props up the patriarchy since capitalism is essentially one great big game of "who's got the biggest wang!". You may feel free to continue to tell me how engaging in sex for money objectifies all women by proxy because when one woman does something, all women do it -- which, I assume, is where the myth that "all women are bisexual" came from. But the second that you start saying things like "Nazis used to give certain Jews jobs and power over other Jews in the concentration camps, therefore any woman who engages in sex work is just like one of those Jews that betrayed the others to find favor with the Nazis"; your're doing less for the conversation and more for the perception that you are, in fact, an accessory one might wear on one's hind-end.

And if you want to talk about President Obama's policies, feel free. You can say whatever you want about how certain policies of the administration. Hell, if you want, you can say that he's just as bad as George W. Bush for continuing the war in Afghanistan, and not putting pressure on congress to repeal at least some of the more egregious aspects of the Patriot Act. But the next time you utter a string of words that include "Obama" and "Nazi" without the words "calling President a" and "makes no sense"; you are again doing less for the conversation and more for the perception that your sole purpose, Internet, truly is the browsing of porn.

Internet, Godwin's Law is now in effect. Quite simply, "that overuse of Nazi and Hitler comparisons should be avoided, because it robs the valid comparisons of their impact". I'm just as guilty of it as anyone else, and I understand where the desire to demonize one's intellectual opponents comes from -- especially on emotional issues. It's easy, when discussing these topics (sex work, health care, Governor Sanford's continuing governorship), to allow your emotions to run away with you; humans are not logical creatures, we are inherently emotional creatures, so the first place we go is emotion. We seek to get others to our way of thinking by appealing to their emotions. Appealing to their love of their granny, appealing to their hatred of brown people; appealing to their deep-seated instinct to call women who enjoy sex "dirty, dirty whores".

I'm not saying that you can't continue to love your gran, hate the Mexicans in the kitchen of every restaurant you've ever been to, and stroke your mighty internet-cock while insinuating that women who like sex deserve whatever poor treatment they get IRL. I'm not saying that at all. All I'm saying is to edit out the bit about them being Nazis before you post your comment. Barack Obama isn't a Nazi (by the way, fun fact, the Nazis killed people of color too). Sex workers aren't Nazis. The only people who can rightfully be called Nazis are Nazis and neo-Nazis. That's it.

I mean, if you're watching skinhead porn, that's one thing, but Oz has been off the air for 10 years, so it's time you got over it. K?

Love,

Rachel

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel S.) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:35:00 +0000

Apparently Canada is bankrupt (according to a questioner).

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel S.) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:08:00 +0000

Inslee: congress members will use public option.

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel S.) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:07:00 +0000

Questioner: if you oppose a public option, give up your medicare, public schools, and all other gov programs" (and someone behind me keeps screaming "NO WAY!"