Last Big Entry: “Absinthe-Minded”

Sometimes I use Tumblr to post pictures of my cat and all that sort of thing, which is chill. But other times, I use it to post more polished pieces of writing that I actually want people to see. Have a click on up there if you want to read the most recent one.
Have you heard about “Men in Power”? It’s a new student organization at my University. It’s pretty gross for lots of (often self-evident) really good reasons. Maybe because I, thanks to no choice of mine, happen to be a man in power, I kinda couldn’t initially muster the energy to do more than laugh at them. And thus, their first flyer campaign was born. My original plan was to post them around campus, but I’m lazy and afraid of getting yelled at (what with being in the University’s bad graces pretty much all the time). Click through to see the other three I made before a series of ‘conversations’ with boys who thought it was legitimately a great idea soured me on even joking about it for fear of having to seriously explain why men don’t need special rights.1 1 Though they may indeed have special issues that may indeed need to be addressed differently than similar issues would be for ladies. That really simple distinction seems to be lost on the kind of person who doesn’t immediately feel at least a little uncomfortable when he (and sometimes she) reads phrases like “reverse discrimination.” Shudder, motherfuckers. Shudder. Edit: Oh, right. And their logo, my inspiration:

Have you heard about “Men in Power”? It’s a new student organization at my University. It’s pretty gross for lots of (often self-evident) really good reasons.

Maybe because I, thanks to no choice of mine, happen to be a man in power, I kinda couldn’t initially muster the energy to do more than laugh at them. And thus, their first flyer campaign was born. My original plan was to post them around campus, but I’m lazy and afraid of getting yelled at (what with being in the University’s bad graces pretty much all the time).

Click through to see the other three I made before a series of ‘conversations’ with boys who thought it was legitimately a great idea soured me on even joking about it for fear of having to seriously explain why men don’t need special rights.1

1 Though they may indeed have special issues that may indeed need to be addressed differently than similar issues would be for ladies. That really simple distinction seems to be lost on the kind of person who doesn’t immediately feel at least a little uncomfortable when he (and sometimes she) reads phrases like “reverse discrimination.” Shudder, motherfuckers. Shudder.

Edit: Oh, right. And their logo, my inspiration:

“Aww, don’t cry, sweetie! You can still be a doctor!”
My roommate, on seeing an Indian girl lose the Scripps National Spelling Bee

I take exception to this presumption

indefensible:

jakec:

But am I somehow less knowledgeable about film because I liked Superbad more than I liked The Great Escape? I understand why The Godfather is so popular, but personally I thought it was the worst experience I’ve ever had watching a film. Do my tastes make me lesser in the eyes of critics, despite my cinematic knowledge? Because that makes no fucking sense.

If I see you this weekend I am going to punch you in the dick.

In response to the rhetorical question above: Yes. Yes, you are less knowledgeable about film because you prefer Superbad to… well, to anything. Just like I’d be less knowledgeable about literature if I preferred Danielle Steel to Virginia Woolf or less knowledgeable about art if I preferred Dogs Playing Poker to Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Want to know why?

Because some art is good and some art is bad. And the inability to tell the difference represents a deficiency in your knowledge.

Taste and judgment are not immune to criticism.

Edit for spelling. I’m s’goddamned literate I don’t even know how many es Danielle Steel-not-Steele puts in her name.

Twitter Dreams

Will you people please get out of my subconscious?

Dream 1. I’m at the Chicagoland tweetup. For some reason, my brother is there. We’re early, waiting for everyone else. @[REDACTED] shows up. We order drinks, and he lets me sit in his lap.

Dream 2. This one’s a little more fuzzy, but I remember the basics. @gordonshumway and I were enjoying a few hamburgers at a particularly snazzy McDonald’s. One of us may have been wearing a tiara. It may have been me.

Uncomfortable Realizations

Watching WALL•E is fun until it occurs to me that I, too, basically spend most of my time sifting through the detritus of a dying culture while I watch Hello, Dolly!, make a sadface, and every century or so awkwardly hit on something. If that tiny robot carried around enough booze to stun Judy Garland, we’d be twins.

Relativism

indefensible:

I think the main reason that I can’t stomach relativism or relativists is that if you believe there is no right or wrong, then you release yourself from any obligation to do the right thing.

In a way it releases us from agency, and provides good people with an excuse to do nothing.

I tend to enjoy coming across those arguments that make me think, “Oh, right. Obviously.” You know, where someone smarter than I am says something that seems so totally straightforward and self-evident that I feel like an asshole for not saying it first. Which happens to me constantly when I read critics of schizoid, post-everything nth-wave pardon-the-expression ‘theorists.’

Anyway, I remember reading someone—unfortunately, I forget whom—a while ago who pointed out that relativism claims to dismiss moral certainty as impossible and dangerous, but needs to make a totalizing moral judgment in order to do so. It takes an awful lot of ethical certainty to ignore the possibility of ethical certainty.

Or something like that. I’m skipping more than a few steps. I may be a little too tired to be intelligent here.

Wow. "Gaysauce" is a way grosser thing than I meant it to be.

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Sheri Rene Scott, “My Strongest Suit” (from the hilariously execrable Aida)

This is the kind of thing I listen to when I need to get amped to leave the house. GAYSAUCE.

“When that ineffable compound of depression, sadness (these two are not the same), anxiety, self-hatred, sense of failure and fear of the future begins to steal over you, start telling yourself that what you have is a hangover. You have not suffered a minor brain lesion, you are not all that bad at your job, your family and friends are not leagued in a conspiracy of barely maintained silence about what a shit you are, and you have not come at last to see life as it really is.”
Kingsley Amis on the “metaphysical hangover”

Is anyone else irrationally afraid of people who work in clothing stores?

Seriously. I’m afraid to stop moving for longer than it takes to find my size and pull something off the rack. I don’t want to give ‘em a place to land. This can’t be just me, right?

(I do a lot of exchanging.)