I do so solemly swear that I will never post in anger.
I don't feel it would be very healthy to do so. Thinking back to my pathetically tortured attempts at journal keeping in high school, and all associated emo poetry, I just feel I should hold off on writing publicly if I'm angry.
Instead, I'm going to quote an exchange I just had via SMS.
Me: I'll practise my best Miranda Priestly to unleash on them.
A: Miranda Priestly scares me quite a bit.
Me: She's fantastic. Hearing Meryl Streep talk about her is like listening to Jesus talk about god, but better.
A: Hearing Meryl Streep talk about anything is like listening to Jesus talk.
Me: Oh god, does that mean Meryl Streep *is* Jesus?
A: Hmmm
This is, of course, a relevant time to link to The Onion and remind ourselves that Jesus was judged.
Today's blasphemy has been brought to you by Meryl Streep's unparallelled awesomeness.
Wednesday 7 March 2012
Friday 2 March 2012
To which I call bullshit
You've probably already heard about the US hate-group styling itself "One Million Moms" (OMM, for this post). It's an off-shoot of the American Family Association (AFA) that pits Real Mothers against The Homosexualists. They recently got upset that lesbians had invaded JC Penney. Known lesbian and JC Penney spokesperson, Ellen Degeneres, later laid the verbal smackdown on OMM on her show. She is badass in an adorable and non-confrontational way.
Lately, OMM have targetted the much-loved Archie comics because two of their male characters recently married and the comic featuring the wedding would be sold openly at Toys'R'Us.
Apparently:
At this point, I call bullshit. Children are certainly introduced to topics of sexuality at young ages. My younger cousins had "boyfriends" in pre-school. Any time my brother mentioned even talking to a girl in primary school, our father would grin and make teasing comments. Every goddamn fucking fairytale I heard as a child ended with the boy getting the girl. Is this not introducing "issues of this nature"?
Of course not, silly! We're talking about teh gayz, here. Exposing young children to overtly heterosexual narratives is so prevalent because all children are straight, right? We can't let them think being anything other than straight and cis-gendered is normal until they're old enough to decide that being straight and cis-gendered is exactly what they want to be!
The main problem that vexes the pro-queer community is that groups like OMM tend to focus the discussion on what I like to call "gay man buttsex". They hear the word "gay" and immediately think of scandalously immoral acts that take place in the dead of night in a back alley and no one brought a condom*. The entire discussion is drowned out by the very real fear that we want to expose children to sexual acts.
Well, no. Again, bullshit. We don't want to talk about sex. We want to talk about love. We want children to know that if you love someone, it doesn't matter what gender they are. It doesn't matter what they have on their outsides, it doesn't matter what they have on their insides. All that matters is that you love them.
Can we get love on a front page?
*If you like barebacking in dark alleys, more power to you!
Lately, OMM have targetted the much-loved Archie comics because two of their male characters recently married and the comic featuring the wedding would be sold openly at Toys'R'Us.
This is the last place a parent would expect to be confronted with questions from their children on topics that are too complicated for them to understand. Issues of this nature are being introduced too early and too soon, which is becoming extremely common and unnecessary.
At this point, I call bullshit. Children are certainly introduced to topics of sexuality at young ages. My younger cousins had "boyfriends" in pre-school. Any time my brother mentioned even talking to a girl in primary school, our father would grin and make teasing comments. Every goddamn fucking fairytale I heard as a child ended with the boy getting the girl. Is this not introducing "issues of this nature"?
Of course not, silly! We're talking about teh gayz, here. Exposing young children to overtly heterosexual narratives is so prevalent because all children are straight, right? We can't let them think being anything other than straight and cis-gendered is normal until they're old enough to decide that being straight and cis-gendered is exactly what they want to be!
The main problem that vexes the pro-queer community is that groups like OMM tend to focus the discussion on what I like to call "gay man buttsex". They hear the word "gay" and immediately think of scandalously immoral acts that take place in the dead of night in a back alley and no one brought a condom*. The entire discussion is drowned out by the very real fear that we want to expose children to sexual acts.
Well, no. Again, bullshit. We don't want to talk about sex. We want to talk about love. We want children to know that if you love someone, it doesn't matter what gender they are. It doesn't matter what they have on their outsides, it doesn't matter what they have on their insides. All that matters is that you love them.
Can we get love on a front page?
*If you like barebacking in dark alleys, more power to you!
Monday 27 February 2012
Good/Bad things about being an internet tutor
Annonymity. Angry students don't matter, they have no way of exacting revenge.
Students have no way of knowing just how much I swear at them.
Putting on a facade of the "calm, happy-to-help tutor" is exceptionally easy, given the only communication we have is using the written word.
Similarly, students cannot feel my rage at their incompetence.
They also cannot feel my joy at their acheivements.
The nuaunces of the english language are, at times, difficult to convey without tone and expression.
The best part, is they cannot see me cry, if I'm having one of those days. Where every session teeters between regular emotions and extreme emotions. Where I feel ashamed at my inability to vocally keep my cool and just get on with it in silence. Where I feel like it's a failure on my part if they don't understand after several attempts at working through things. Where I inevitably just feel sad at every turn.
I can keep the blind open and have the sunshine stream in. Or close the blind when the sun is too hot.
I can tutor in whatever clothes I feel like wearing.
I can eat whenever I feel like.
If it's a particularly dead time, I can play the PS3. Gaming ftw!
Students have no way of knowing just how much I swear at them.
Putting on a facade of the "calm, happy-to-help tutor" is exceptionally easy, given the only communication we have is using the written word.
Similarly, students cannot feel my rage at their incompetence.
They also cannot feel my joy at their acheivements.
The nuaunces of the english language are, at times, difficult to convey without tone and expression.
The best part, is they cannot see me cry, if I'm having one of those days. Where every session teeters between regular emotions and extreme emotions. Where I feel ashamed at my inability to vocally keep my cool and just get on with it in silence. Where I feel like it's a failure on my part if they don't understand after several attempts at working through things. Where I inevitably just feel sad at every turn.
I can keep the blind open and have the sunshine stream in. Or close the blind when the sun is too hot.
I can tutor in whatever clothes I feel like wearing.
I can eat whenever I feel like.
If it's a particularly dead time, I can play the PS3. Gaming ftw!
Thursday 23 February 2012
Disappointment
A revelation occurred yesterday.
I’ve recently been operating based on the belief that my dips into depression
have definite triggers. That one incident is enough to make the bottom fall out
of my stomach, and that all I need to do is work on being mindful of my
thoughts and feelings and reinforce the notion that I’m allowed to get things
wrong. It’s nice to know that I can falter, I can make mistakes and the walls
won’t come a-tumbling down.
Dramz
Are you following the the leadership "spill" on Twitter? Neither am I! I'm keeping thanks to the hacks I know on facebook.
Do you have any fucks left to give about the University of Sydney cutting funding to the University of Sydney Union, maybe promising to send some of the SSAF their way (if they feel like it), and just generally screwing all of their staff? I gotta say, I'm scraping the bottom of my barrel of fucks. Luckily, I have more barrels in the cellar. Just not enough to care about searching for links to post.
These are the two major issues happening in my general life sphere right now. They are considerably greater than students in year 12 who can't add fractions, but I have to interact with the students (albeit online) on a day-to-day basis, so they tend to annoy me more.
I have no direct influence over the leadership spill, so I'll wait until the next election. Shocking as it seems, I don't have the power to oust most of the University Senate, so there's very little I can do about staff cuts and USU funding. These things are happening, and it's all very upsetting, but they're happening. I feel I'm doing what I can, which is very little.
So yes, it's weird and it's awful and it's awkward and we might have heard enough about it and maybe we need a break from it but screw it. We'll never stop being angry.
Do you have any fucks left to give about the University of Sydney cutting funding to the University of Sydney Union, maybe promising to send some of the SSAF their way (if they feel like it), and just generally screwing all of their staff? I gotta say, I'm scraping the bottom of my barrel of fucks. Luckily, I have more barrels in the cellar. Just not enough to care about searching for links to post.
These are the two major issues happening in my general life sphere right now. They are considerably greater than students in year 12 who can't add fractions, but I have to interact with the students (albeit online) on a day-to-day basis, so they tend to annoy me more.
I have no direct influence over the leadership spill, so I'll wait until the next election. Shocking as it seems, I don't have the power to oust most of the University Senate, so there's very little I can do about staff cuts and USU funding. These things are happening, and it's all very upsetting, but they're happening. I feel I'm doing what I can, which is very little.
So yes, it's weird and it's awful and it's awkward and we might have heard enough about it and maybe we need a break from it but screw it. We'll never stop being angry.
Wednesday 15 February 2012
Belated Happy Something
Yesterday was that glorious feast day of monogamous, mostly-heteronormative love, Valentine's Day. Nicky got me this picture and a love fern:
We will forever rejoice in the love that our love fern provides us, and the tasty, tasty basil. That is, until the love fern dies. Then I suppose we have to destroy the universe.
We will forever rejoice in the love that our love fern provides us, and the tasty, tasty basil. That is, until the love fern dies. Then I suppose we have to destroy the universe.
The team announces another member
This is going around facebook and places today, so it's probably old news already. People over here in Oz are excited about comic actress Magda Szubanski coming out as gay on national television. For those not in the know, the panel show she appeared on is Channel 10's "The Project", a continuation of the highly successful "7pm Project", but in a different timeslot. It features regular pannelists and a variety of local and international guests, and takes a stab at critically and, at times, humorously dissecting the day's news. The allure of the show is as much its light-heartedness as its deviation from what's in the headlines of the actual news programs. Sometimes it works and sometimes it's woeful, as is the nature of any panel show.
Admittedly, I haven't watched the show in almost a year. The perks of only hooking your tv up to a PS3 include avoiding commercial television and all of its, well, commercials. The only reason I know of this clip was because a friend of mine linked to it on facebook.
First off, I'd like to applaud Magda's courage. Coming out is difficult and finding the right words to say to one person is hard enough, let alone however many people have seen this clip. She also totally kicks arse here. Specifically, Steve Price's arse. Steve didn't have much to say throughout the interview, but at a certain point he did pipe up and ask a question. First, he acknowledged that this was not the time nor place to really get into the "heavy" side of the political debate. He then stomped all over that and did it anyway. Something about churches being forced to gay-marry people, I fell asleep to avoid going into a rage. Magda followed Steve's earlier advice and skillfully brought to subject round to people having the face their prejudice.
The best part of the interview was Magda's assertion that if there were a cure for teh gayz, she, "would not take it."
Admittedly, I haven't watched the show in almost a year. The perks of only hooking your tv up to a PS3 include avoiding commercial television and all of its, well, commercials. The only reason I know of this clip was because a friend of mine linked to it on facebook.
First off, I'd like to applaud Magda's courage. Coming out is difficult and finding the right words to say to one person is hard enough, let alone however many people have seen this clip. She also totally kicks arse here. Specifically, Steve Price's arse. Steve didn't have much to say throughout the interview, but at a certain point he did pipe up and ask a question. First, he acknowledged that this was not the time nor place to really get into the "heavy" side of the political debate. He then stomped all over that and did it anyway. Something about churches being forced to gay-marry people, I fell asleep to avoid going into a rage. Magda followed Steve's earlier advice and skillfully brought to subject round to people having the face their prejudice.
The best part of the interview was Magda's assertion that if there were a cure for teh gayz, she, "would not take it."
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