SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

People who are all like “we’ve got to get kids reading!”

There’s been ads for James Patterson books on TV, and some recent ones start off with “James Patterson gets kids reading!” Because he’s apparently written young adult lit now, so it shows a pre-teen reading from a book about middle school.

Because if there’s anyone who truly knows what middle school is like, it’s authors in their sixties!

But, what, they couldn’t just advertise the book? They have to include some crap about “getting kids reading”?

That takes away the “here’s something you’ll enjoy” factor and turns it into yet another “getting kids to do things adults want them to be doing”. Okay, the implication seems to be “it gets them reading BECAUSE it’s enjoyable”, but it still makes it being enjoyable to the young reader secondary to satisfying some cliched expectation. Because, after all, the world cares nothing for kids’ personal desires and cares entirely for what adults desire for them.

Also, maybe someone should tell these adults that when kids are reading, they’re generally -gasp!- inside and sitting! Oh noes, they’re getting fat! So send them outside to get exercise. Then bitch that they aren’t reading enough.

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

I’m really getting sick of the same canned “complaint” about the younger generation, whether my own or ones after or even a little before, that we expect life to be fair all the time. This is blamed on school and maybe parents that supposedly give out awards just for participating, hoping to squash competition in order to prevent anyone from “feeling bad”. Or occasionally blamed on pop culture telling stories implying nothing seriously bad will ever happen to you.

And that all these messages have supposedly spoiled us and made us think life is perfect or that we’re good at things even when we’re not.

Speaking as someone whose schools and teams and such did have participation awards…

Bull-fucking-shit.

How stupid do you think we are?

We know good and goddamn well that the swim team trophy that’s awarded to anyone who signed up for it that year regardless of participation means little and is just a decoration. We know the Participant ribbons don’t say First Place. We know the others finished the race three whole minutes before we did.

There were times even at school when a C I got for a marking period wasn’t truly a C, and was marked as such only because the teacher figured she’d give me another chance to really get a better grade, that it would otherwise have been an E.

Yes. E. The failing grade. Not that F bullcrap. I like E. It makes more sense. Why go A B C D F? Why are you skipping a fucking letter?! You’re supposed to be an educational establishment yet you’re forgetting the fifth letter of the alphabet and the most common in the English language? Hell no!

Did it make me feel like I’d have life handed to me? Not at all. I was actually trying. And I really did do better the following terms usually.

Maybe instead of looking at these little breaks and superfluous “awards” and assuming we’re not only spoiled and padded from failure and mistakes but that we really think there’s nothing else, you should actually look at our lives.

There are kids in these “spoiled” generations who before the age of 10 had lost a parent, had to battle cancer, suffered a horrible accident and had to lose a leg, or had their home burn down. Yeah, I don’t think any of these people are thinking life is perfect no matter how many Participant ribbons you give them, and it doesn’t help to presume that just because they might have those ribbons means they think so.

And you don’t need to look down on these kids for thinking life is perfect. Life is pretty damn good at making its glaring imperfections known on its own, no matter what the runs per inning limit is on your youth softball team. All the kids on that team have had something bad happen, to varying severities, I guarantee it.

In fact, it’s a typical anti-youth sentiment to assume kids’ lives are always perfect and that everything about their lives is trivial. It’s this assumption of trivial kid lives that makes one totally ignore that the unfairness of life hardly spares kids. You think that little boy is spoiled because he got a Wii for Christmas, but not seeing that he’s being regularly molested by his uncle and is terrified to speak up about it to anyone. Still think his “kid problems” are trivial, asshole?

So no, we don’t need to make kids realize life isn’t fair. Believe me, they know.

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

Okay, today is November 11, 2011, so it’s 11/11/11. And at 11:11am I was watching the clock. Ha. Neat.

And that is the extent to which all the elevens are remotely relevant to anything.

Instead, I’m hearing people having rituals.

I’m hearing concerns about the end of the world.

I’m hearing terrorist concerns.

*facepalm*

Fucking hell, people, ENOUGH! Are you that goddamn thick? You think the universe as a whole cares about all or most of the numbers of the Gregorian date being the same?

Really, we’ve been over this and over this. As you may recall, no, the world did not end on January 1, 2000. Nothing happened this year on May 21 or October 21. Nothing is going to happen next year. The world will continue to exist. There is nothing inherently special about any of these dates.

And what about days when things did happen? Was September 11 of any significance before the attack for which it is now known? Or December 7 before Pearl Harbor was bombed? Or July 4 before the United States? I mean, there are people who might try to trace back through religious texts and try to say there was and we “should have seen it coming” but honestly, you can do that about any date.

You’re not going to find any universal truths or omens by reading too much into how our dates are written, you jackasses. Jesus tapdancing Christ…

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

Really really getting tired of the trope about teens being lazy, always sleeping in on weekends, not wanting to get up for school, etc. Everything from so-called “teen experts” (who are invariably adults who are so astoundingly self-righteous they think they know teens better than teens know themselves and make a career of it) to Windex commercials mocks teens for – gasp! – still being in bed after sunrise.

Are you people really so goddamn thick? EVERYBODY sleeps in! You do, too, unless you’re one of these people who gets up at 5am every morning to jog or something. In which case, you may notice you’re mostly alone when doing this. This is not normal behavior. Sleeping in until you absolutely have to get up for school or work, or sometimes later, is the normal behavior. Sleeping on weekends until your body decides it’s tired of being in bed and wants to try movement again is what is normal. For all ages. When you deride teens for doing this, you’re deriding them for normal behavior. Why?

Oh, right, you’re the adult, so against any logic or awareness of the world outside of your prejudices, you simply must look down on teens and scrutinize them and marginalize them and make damn sure they don’t feel welcome in Your World. You know, because you’re mature apparently.

This has been Day 22 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 11.

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

I consider sense of humor to be perhaps the most important character trait in anyone. Couldn’t very well go through life without it. Funny stuff is fun. However, then you get the jokes that just get repeated over and over, from different people acting like they invented it and that they’re so smart and witty. If they were ever clever, it was lost long ago.

Two very recent examples?

“I don’t understand! How could Tunisia have overthrown their government without me signing a petition or changing my Twitter avatar?”

And…

“The new Starbucks Trenta is larger than the average human stomach! Lulz!”

Alright, so the Tunisia thing was mildly chuckle-worthy when I first saw it tweeted. Then within only a few hours of that I heard a zillion other people say it as if it were their own creation. Heard and read and laughed at by those who either hadn’t heard it yet somehow or those whose memory is so terrible they forgot they saw someone else say it five minutes earlier. With any iota of cleverness washed away in the repetition, I see the stupid joke for what it is. Uh, of course Twitter awareness campaigns and whatnot don’t alone cause national revolutions nor are integral. #16tovote on the 16th is not intended in and of itself to lower the voting age. Online campaigns like that are for raising awareness and solidarity and keeping dialogue going, but obviously it wouldn’t work alone. Nobody thinks that. Don’t be an idiot.

As for the Starbucks drink being bigger than the human stomach… welcome to America! Aren’t you so smart, you learned the volume of the average human stomach! In order to, you know, repeat this Trenta joke over and over as if it’s something you came up with all on your own. But here’s another thing about the human stomach… stuff put into it doesn’t just sit there forever. You know that bathroom place you have to visit a few times a day? Yeah…

Those two are fairly new and topical, so they’ll fade after a bit. To be replaced by the same basic shit before long, of course. There are also the jokes that have lasted for years, perhaps decades, some of which weren’t even funny the first time. I mean stuff like…

“I got so drunk/high that I had to cling to the ground to keep from falling off the earth!”

This one I probably laughed at when I first heard it. Then you get a few different comedians regurgitating it, maybe some humorous drugs or alcohol related lists. And at that point it’s like “okay, you’re intoxicated out of your mind, so much that you can’t come up with a new way to express it.” Yawn.

“I think gay people should be allowed to get married and be miserable like everyone else.”

It was on Family Guy. David Letterman has said it about 500 times. So have a crapload of other supposedly facetious commentators. It’s always said with such authority, that the speaker has come up with this all on his/her own after a lot of thought. “I believe they should be just as miserable as everyone else!” Of course it’s said with such confidence. They saw a ton of other people get laughs off the identical statement, so they know the reception it’ll get. Had they truly invented this statement themselves, they might be a bit more coy.

“I don’t trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn’t die.”

From Mr. Garrison in the South Park movie, plus countless random comedians and other assholes who think they’re being funny and brilliant. Referring of course to us women and the fact that we *gasp!* spew blood out of certain parts for a few days every several weeks. This one is just downright offensive, and not only because it’s misogynistic but because the basis of it is proud willful ignorance. First of all, we don’t “bleed for five days”. It comes out intermittently, starting off heavy and getting steadily lighter until it’s done, and it was all pretty much out of circulation anyway, and not a whole lot is “lost”. Of course, if blood loss is such an issue, how can I trust you when your supposedly gigantic penis fills with blood several times a day and clearly not enough left for your brain? So if we’re monsters and untrustworthy for something that goes on under our clothes once a month that you will not be aware of unless we explicitly tell you, then you aren’t so innocent yourself, Mr. Every Six Seconds.

“Pro-life women are ugly virgins.”
“Pro-choice women are hot sluts.”

Even “great” comedians like Chris Rock and George Carlin (RIP) spew crap like this. It was said in Dogma by Jason Mewes. Plus some lesser comedians have said it. That pro-life women are only pro-life because they aren’t getting laid and have body issues because they are unattractive. That pro-choice women must want abortion legal because they screw everything that moves and want to be able to end the resulting pregnancies. Classic virgin-whore dichotomy. Yeah, sorry, folks, but someone’s stance on abortion is not indicative of their sexual history. Plenty of pro-lifers have gotten laid. Plenty pro-choicers have not. Also, these pro-choice women, who clearly “must be fucking”, would not necessarily want to fuck YOU. What is this, some 1960’s high school? Where if a girl has sex at all, she’ll have sex with anyone? Sorry, guys, but the words “I’m prochoice” do not translate to “I hereby consent to any and all sexual advances and activity”.

There are surely more I’m forgetting. I add them later when/if I remember.

So now you know. So from here on out, try not to be a dumbass. Just try.

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

You know what I’m really getting fucking sick of? Or, at least, that I’m choosing to mention at the moment? Every time the temperature dips a little higher or a little lower than is normal for a given season, you get wingnut assholes deciding this is some definite information about global warming.

You see it from both sides…

“OMG, it’s a 70 degree day in January! Global warming has killed winter!”

“OMG, it’s a 50 degree day in July! Global warming doesn’t exist!”

Uh, hi, I’d like to introduce you both to the Hasty Generalization logical fallacy.

I mean, it’s of course not about expressing any actual scientific knowledge, as those with actual scientific knowledge on this get drowned in partisan propaganda, and many scientific studies even then get performed often by or at least funded by those who want a particular result. No, the entire point is to be a pompous ass to the other side, all like “see? I was right about global warming and you were wrong!” Who cares if the “info” you’re basing this on is even remotely sound when it can be made to fit your gloating needs at a given moment, right?

So, really, STFU both of you. If you think one unseasonably warm or cool day or week or even season totally validates your insistance that global warming is a real threat or just something Al Gore made up, then you don’t have any damn clue what you’re talking about on this issue.

And, just saying… regardless of the truth of global warming… it’s hardly the only reason to be worrying about air pollution.

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

Let’s say you hear a news story, something like this: A man beats his pregnant girlfriend to death because she did not want to have an abortion. Or the perpetrator may not be a boyfriend but a husband or one of her parents or whoever. May not have beaten her to death but raped her or injured her severely in some other way.

And who should shut the hell up? These fucking idiot prolifers who point to this horrible shit and say “see! see! pro-choice people commit violence, too!” Often times the headlines of these articles will identify the assailant as pro-choice or pro-abortion (which a lot of idiots think is just another word for pro-choice, which is bullshit, but more on that in a sec).

*facepalm*

Let’s review some definitions, shall we? Pro-choice means being in favor of having a choice. Imagine that! Choice in the pregnancy options context means it is the sole decision of the one who’s pregnant what becomes of that pregnancy, whether terminating or carrying to term. And that BOTH choices are equally valid! So that if one does not support the pregnant one having the choice for EITHER ONE of those options, no matter which one, then that person is anti-choice.

Therefore, the idiots saying you should not have the option of carrying to term are JUST AS anti-choice as those who say you should not have the option of abortion. Pro-choice and pro-abortion are not the same thing, just as pro-life and anti-choice are not the same thing.

So, no, the above scenario is NOT a matter of pro-choice attacking pro-life. If anything, it’s anti-choice attacking pro-choice.

Or, to drop the useless abortion controversy weight, it’s some asshole injuring or killing a pregnant woman. It’s pretty horrible regardless of motivation.

(Psst… note the date and time this is posted and the subject matter, see what I did there? )

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

No, you can NOT tell whether someone is an optimist or a pessimist or anything like that merely because of whether they say “half full” or “half empty”. I know, I know, you want to look all smart and insightful, to make whomever you’re saying this to start to see you as wise or some shit. I don’t know.

In any case, cut the crap. It means nothing. You sound stupid saying it. It’s mind-numblingly cliché.

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

These anti-Semitic assholes who refer to the Jews as a whole as “Christ killers”. Drives me up the damn wall. They are so-called Christian assholes who hate Jews and want to excuse this feeling as justified because “oh noes, they killed Jesus!” Never mind that Jesus himself was Jewish, as were his mother and disciples! Never mind that it was the Romans who had at least as much a hand in the crucifixion as the Jews did, yet I don’t see anyone referring to Italians as Christ killers.

Of course, feels pointless to say that this is irrational. That’s a given. All hate is irrational.

What’s also wretch-inducingly interesting about these hateful jerks who blame all Jews as a whole for Jesus’s death is that a lot of the time these are the same idiots who don’t like being told they’re responsible for slavery just because they’re white. They’re all “hey, I never owned a slave and you’ve never been one!” Ick. The white Christian privilege is flowing rather heavily.

So basically, it’s not okay for someone to imply you had anything to do with slavery or racism just because of what demographic you happen to be in, even though slavery in this country ended only a century and a half ago, and while racism has been mostly taken down, it still exists and still harms people. But, goodness, don’t anybody dare so much as insinuate you had anything to do with it or are even privileged. After all, it’s not so much important that you aren’t racist and are watching for your own race privilege as it is that *gasp!* nobody suspects you’re racist!

But the Jews? Oh, who cares if it’s been two damn millennia since the supposed crucifixion, about which information is fuzzy anyway? Who cares that absolutely none of the Jews alive today had a goddamn thing to do with it? You heard their distant distant ancestors did something you don’t approve of (while you yourself most likely have no damn clue who your own ancestors were two thousand years ago or what most likely worse shit they were up to) so you use that as carte blanche to hate everyone whose middle school years included a bar or bat mitzvah.

But, hey, whatever makes you look like an innocent little lamb, right? Because you’re Christian, and it’s not like Christians have ever ever done anything bad, right? And if they did, how dare anybody think you had any part in it?

Happy Chanukah!

December 1, 2009: Ignorance Doesn’t Make You Cool
December 1, 2008: Self-Defense
December 1, 2007: Snow Globe
December 1, 2006: Okay, Now It’s Christmastime

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

I’m so fucking sick of hearing about childhood obesity everywhere I look. It’s all “oh noes, kids are fat, kids are unhealthy, aaahhh!”

Alright, some of them might be above a healthy weight. So what do you do about it? Maybe they go play in the park a little longer. Maybe they eat some healthier foods. In any case, maybe the adults so involved with these kids’ lives should give the kids healthier options if they aren’t already. Maybe help them (and set an example by doing it themselves) develop healthier habits in general.

Of course, since when do adults actually take personal responsibility for helping young people do better? In ways other than finger pointing and berating the youth, that is. That’s right, they don’t, so they blame everything else they can. So the blame gets put on what mascots fast food chains are using or even, stupidly enough, whether the cartoons they’re watching depict fat characters! (Not to mention the slimming down of Santas I mentioned a couple years ago.)

Now there are so many ways to go here. One could be, as Matt so awesomely pointed out a couple weeks ago, rapidly diminishing activities available for kids, on top of too short lunch breaks to eat disgusting food, and, as Alex mentioned in the comments there, the cutting back or elimination of recess. So, basically, adults are doing everything they can to keep kids in a lifestyle that makes them unhealthy, and they blame THEM for it!

Or they make this yet another opportunity to attack kids’ choices of entertainment, constantly picking on the characters they like or the video games they play. As if a character having the tiniest bit of potbelly is as bad as the character is smoking. Hey, idiotic adult “logic” says kids will want to smoke if a cartoon is doing it, so it totally means a kid will want to get fat if a cartoon is doing it, right? Because being fat is totally a specific activity as opposed to just how your body looks.

Or there’s the thing about wanting to ban Ronald McDonald or stop airing fast food ads early in the day. Because this makes kids want unhealthy food. You know, if the kids are young enough for something like Ronald McDonald to appeal to them, then they’re young enough that they aren’t exactly going out and buying the Happy Meals themselves. Instead, some ADULT is buying it for them. People are worried about advertising these things to kids, but kids aren’t even the ones making the purchase. Take away the ads, and they’ll still wind up with a Happy Meal because their parents got a craving for Big Macs. And McDonalds is sort of everywhere (I can think of at least five within a couple miles of me), so it’s not like kids would be unaware it exists even if the ads went away.

Not to mention that whether the ads or clown are there, that does nothing about the parents that feed fast food to their kids on a daily basis, whether or not they themselves eat it. Why? Because they’re so afraid if they give kids anything else, they won’t eat. Which ends up a self-fulfilling prophecy, because when that’s all the kids are given, it will be all they’ll eat, since anything else would be foreign to them. Part of the stupid fucking myth that burgers, fries, hot dogs, and pizza are all kids will eat, that they’d rather die than eat a vegetable. Which, if I may go on a tangent for a moment, I always found insulting when I was a kid. The TV shows and ads had kid characters who hated or complained about vegetables, usually broccoli or brussels sprouts, as if this was supposed to appeal to me. It didn’t. I’ve always liked vegetables. And I resented these adult-created media aimed at kids always deciding for me that, as a kid, these are the foods I’m supposed to like and not like.

In fact, that’s part of this, too. Many McDonalds ads aimed at kids. Certain cereals aimed at kids. Kids’ menus containing only unhealthy options. Adults have created an unhealthy culinary culture for kids, telling them that, as kids, these are the sort of foods that are for them. I mean, just stroll down the cereal aisle. The less healthy more sugary cereals are the ones advertised for kids, and the healthier, ultra fortified ones are aimed at adults. Local grocery store used to even label the different sections of the aisle “Kids Cereals” and “Adult Cereals”. Which doesn’t make a lick of sense. Until Crispix comes with a free bottle of Jack Daniels and a Hustler, then you can tell me it’s an adult cereal, but lacking that, I think it’s just food. So, basically, in the ever so pointless division of which foods are for adults and which are for kids, it is kids that get left with and encouraged to eat exclusively the ultra sugary high fat crap. And the adults are blaming the fucking kids for it!

I’m not saying any foods need to be hidden or banned. Well beside the point. But when you give someone a powdered donut, and they eat the donut, don’t call them a pig for eating a donut.

And, of course, there’s one more interesting question here. Why this? Why the concern over childhood obesity at all? I mean, for one, adults have waaaay higher obesity rates than kids. And even some of the people of all ages who get called fat or obese really aren’t all that big. Yet why is kids’ body image suddenly everyone’s concern? Well, there’s of course the fact of an ageist society that kids are considered public property. But there are so many other things out there harming kids. Diabetes. Muscular dystrophy. Cancer. Hell, even tooth decay, which would give insecure adults yet another reason to attack kids’ eating habits (their diet consisting entirely of foods those adults gave them, of course). Why obesity? Well, answer is obvious. You can see it. Literally. Obesity means kids’ appearances aren’t what adults think they should be. So, really, while there are still the health concerns, sure, this all still comes down to child objectification. Fat kids aren’t pleasing to the public eye, so they must be ridiculed and shamed, all under the guise of encouraging good health. Yeah, that’s totally how you make people healthy. Not through assistance with creating a healthier lifestyle, or anything that’s actually respectful. Instead, insult the hell out of them and make them hate themselves. And wonder why they develop eating disorders later. I want to punch you assholes in the face so much.

And, honestly, any adult who thinks kids should be eye candy should instead be expecting an invitation from Chris Hansen to have a seat.

This has been Day 29 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 10.