YOU SUCK!!!!

Jell-O. And they’re little Temptations pudding advertising. See, the idea is that it’s not like their other desserts (somehow). I mean, it probably still contains the exact same ingredients. But somehow this one isn’t for kids. They’re not only saying so. They’re forbidding kids from getting free samples of it through fancy machines!

The current offer is for Temptations by Jell-O, the brand’s first product designed specifically for adults. The machine is equipped with technology to determine the age of the person requesting a sample. If the machine senses a child, a panel lights up with the words, “Sorry, kid. You’re too young to experience indulgence like this. Please step away so the adults can get their free treat.”

You’re too young to experience indulgence like this? Even if I weren’t outraged on youth rights grounds, I’d want to smack the person who came up with this. Are they actually implying eating this particular pudding constitutes sex?

We’ve been discussing this a bit on the NYRA board e-mail list, and Eric Goldstein suggested the restriction could be for liability purposes. And he’s probably right. Except if that were all it is, you’d think they could at least try to be respectful about it. Having a machine say the equivalent of “ha ha, you can’t have this!” pretty much shows there’s more to it than that.

Unless it’s 50% vodka, there’s nothing “adult” about Temptations, no matter how much Kraft tries to implicitly sexualize it. No, they are very obviously taking the alcohol and cigarette tactic of using age restrictions to boost youth desire for the product. To make them want to be “adult”. As well as making adults want to use the product because it’s not for kids, so they can quench their adult insecurity by indulging in what might be usually pegged a kids’ dessert but not feel young doing it because kids can’t have it.

We see this with so many products, that kids can’t have or can’t have fully usually under the guise of safety. But that’s an excuse. I’ll bet more adults support the drinking age not so much becase of desire to keep youth healthy, but because they see youth as “other”, as inferior, and that they have some right to be superior to them and to have things those inferior others can’t have. And this makes them feel good and triumphant, that they’ve won over those evil youth, who’ve committed the horrible sin of existing when they haven’t existed long enough. Hell, I’ve seen ads for parental controls on things that promote it not to keep kids safe but to be able to block them and say/think “haha, you’re blocked, you stupid kid!” It’s a dangerous combination to set something where one group can feel super privileged and superior over the other, all with the excuse of “safety”. Safety, my ass!

And youth aren’t the only ones victim to this method, though they fall victim to it perhaps most severely. Dr Pepper Ten ads are promoting themselves explicitly that “It’s Not For Women!” Why? Because the idea is men don’t want to drink Diet Dr Pepper because “oh noes, diet soda is for women!” So they have this product that’s pretty much identical, just with added sweetener and caffeine, that’s not only marketed to men but supposedly only men. Because nothing kills manliness like using the same product women use. Men can’t be women!

And so we have Temptations, despite containing nothing uniquely harmful to youth (any more than any other sweet dessert anyway), promoting itself as “just for adults” so adults don’t have to feel degraded by eating the same product kids eat. Men don’t want to be women. Adults don’t want to be children. That’s the idea that is being promoted here to sell products.

Maybe we all need to get over our insecurities, and loudly, and make clear this kind of advertising doesn’t appeal to us. Because you don’t need to tell me a product will make me feel more adult. I don’t need something to do that for me, and I’m not stupid enough to think your product will do that.

How about this?

The whole site is in Verdana, but maybe I’ll switch the whole thing to this.

Or I’ll switch the whole thing to this.

Decisions! Decisions! Decisions!

Which one shall I pick?

Contrary to popular and inexplicable opinion…

Neither one is really all that bad!

This has its uses.

As does this.

Yet there are some who recoil at the mere sight of this!

They recoil at this, too!

What is wrong with these people?

Maybe they should get a life.

If they are so offended…

Down to their very souls…

Over
some
fucking
fonts!

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.

For one, stop showing a twin brother and sister as “identical”. Identical twins are also identical sexes because of that whole identical DNA thing. They’ll look sort of alike anyway just from being siblings, but they are still fraternal twins as they came from separate eggs and sperm. But you get brother-sister twins being shown looking exactly the same except maybe one hair or facial feature so that you know the sister is female. Or Phil and Lil from Rugrats looking completely identical, and occasionally being mixed up, except for Lil wearing a dress, though that still is basically the same outfit Phil wears. Seriously, writers, stop that shit!

And this isn’t the sort of thing only biology majors or whatever know. It’s almost common knowledge.

Then comes the other annoyance. You get shows or movies that are about conjoined twins… who aren’t identical. Conjoined twins are always identical. They didn’t just get hooked together at some point. They, like all identical twins, were initially one fertilized egg that then split into two identical ones. But for conjoined twins, didn’t finish splitting, so they’re stuck together. And still identical. I mean, I’d give Oblongs leeway since on that show the family is basically all mutants anyway, but you get other shows and movies showing conjoined twins with entirely different features and trying to pretend this is how they normally are. Again, writers, stop that shit!

It takes like no time to look this shit up. You’ll save so many brain cells!

Christmas Present takes Scrooge to the Cratchits’ house where Scrooge is informed that sweet lad Tiny Tim is going to die from some unnamed illness that can apparently be cured in 1845 England with enough money at least but money the Cratchits of course don’t have. Then they have their meal and Mrs. Cratchit brings out the dessert, this round chocolate cake thing.

She sets it down nervously in front of her husband, and he takes several severe looks at her while scooping some onto a fork, then he takes a bite, and now is smiling and says “another triumph, my dear!” Followed by invisible-to-them Scrooge saying “what a relief for Mrs. Cratchit!”

Is it just my imagination, or does all that imply that if she screwed up the cake, he’d have slapped her?

I mean, okay, okay, maybe it was just playing around, that she was being a perfectionist and he was quietly teasing her about it.

But then later, during the Christmas Future sequence, after Tiny Tim is six feet under, Mrs. Cratchit is sewing and remarks the color thread she’s using hurts her eyes, then after a minute she says it’s better now. Then she remarks to her remaining children she doesn’t want their father to see her with red eyes when he gets home. Because, as a wife, she’s supposed to completely put away her own feelings or emotions and stick to serving her husband’s every whim. Selfish woman! How dare she be sad that… her son died!

Though that’s not the most disturbing part of the movie. Christmas Present does open his robe at one point to reveal two shriveled waist-high children standing there for some reason…

Real men are supposed to like beer!

Despite the fact that, well, aren’t there plenty of men out there who don’t like beer, or any alcoholic beverage for that matter. Yet… aren’t they still men?

Real men are supposed to ogle scantily clad women!

Despite the fact that, well, said scantily clad women might not be some men’s type or they probably aren’t into leering? Yet… aren’t they still men? Aren’t gay men still men?

Real men are supposed to like steak!

Despite the fact that sometimes they just prefer chicken. Or they are vegetarian or vegan. They might actually – gasp! – prefer salad! Yet… aren’t they still men?

Real men aren’t supposed to want to be teachers or nurses or stay-at-home parents!

Despite the fact that, well, many men excel in these jobs and are great with patients and children! Yet… aren’t they still men?

Real men are supposed to like… action movies!

According to that stupid Dr Pepper Ten commercial anyway. Despite the fact that men like all kinds of movies, even – gasp! – romantic comedies! Yet… aren’t they still men?

Real men are supposed to like… sports!

And of course women aren’t supposed to. Despite the fact that many men aren’t interested. Yet… aren’t they still men? (And aren’t the interested women still women?)

Real men are supposed to be… tough!

Despite the fact that, well, lots of men aren’t tough and have no desire to be tough nor violent. Yet… aren’t they still men?

Real men are supposed to want sex and lots of it and all the time!

Despite the fact that their sex drives don’t actually work that way, can still be “not in the mood”, and this myth perpetuates a lot of sexual misconduct towards men. Yet… aren’t they still men?

There’s this culture surrounding some ideal of manhood, some ridiculous culture. And, as I’m not a man, it seems obvious that I’d find issue with it! After all, I’m a chick, so aren’t I supposed to not understand men and just be a pain in their ass who should shut up and fuck them? Heh, well, I don’t claim to understand men as a whole, but then again I can’t say I understand other women as a whole either. People are mysterious regardless of gender, and any two people whether of same gender or not are differently mysterious.

But I also don’t see how any of the above makes one more worthy of the title “man” than one missing these traits. Or, as is often the case, you find a guy to claims himself to be a “real man” for fitting most of the above, but one he might not fit he’ll complain “why do I need to like that/be that way to be a man?” Um, good question, but that also applies to the things that do describe you!

This gender role rigidity hurts men and women! Why cling to it? There’s nothing to gain.

Let’s just say men are “them things with penises” (give or take, let’s not forget our trans friends!) and be done with it! Sheesh!

Got a reminder of it yesterday when an anti-corporal punishment article was posted to NYRA’s Facebook page. Seriously, click through that and check out all the comments.

Some people are all “WTF? I thought NYRA was only against corporal punishment in schools?!”

*facepalm*

Do they really think our opposition to corporal punishment is about WHO is hitting the kids rather than, you know, the idea of them being hit at all? Or, in general, did they not catch that we’re a “youth rights” organization?

Hell, in 2009, when our opposition to school paddling was added to our Education position paper, someone at the annual meeting out and asked me “this is just for schools, right? so if I had kids, I could still smack them?” I gave him a dirty look that made him recoil a bit and answered plainly “just for schools” and my look that seemed to add “but go fuck yourself”. I mentioned this to Alex later, since that guy was a friend of his, but Alex insisted the guy was joking. Eh, maybe.

Speaking of Alex, as seen further down that comment thread, he just had to chime in with his usual “oh dont worry, people who like beating children! NYRA doesn’t have a position against parents hitting kids!” Honestly, this is what annoys everyone about him, particularly these days. I know he’s against corporal punishment just like the rest of us. But our newer members don’t know that. Since in the past couple years, he’s been quieting his own youth rights views in favor of being more diplomatic and “moderate” because he’s afraid of NYRA seeming too fringe. As a result, he’s more interested in pleasing “potential” supporters than us sticking to our guns, or at least that is strongly implied. I don’t fault him for the diplomacy attempt, but he could at least stand with us more on the issue!

It’s sort of like MLK’s famous line that what we remember most is not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. It is in fact more disheartening for known supporters to prefer to keep quiet and thus not stand with us, than it is to hear anything our opponents have to say. We know we’re outnumbered. We know the world is against us. As such, all we have is each other. But when some of our own prefer to avoid offending opponents with disagreement than to join our precious few in standing up for what we’re about, it’s incredibly discouraging. Even more so when it’s a deliberate withdrawal rather than an accidental oversight.

Actually, maybe this answers my question. Maybe this is why many people don’t totally understand what NYRA is. There are some who don’t want NYRA to actually “be” anything, at least nothing too specific. But the trouble is, that leads to people completely not understanding why we do what we do. And, as such, we have people coming to our organization and being surprised that we… support youth rights. Our identity is unclear, and to some, deliberately so.

Though even identity issues don’t totally excuse these people. While the words “youth rights” can make people think all kinds of different things, many of which way off what we do, you’d think freedom from assault that’s called “discipline” would be obvious. I wonder if these same people join or follow an LGBT org and are surprised they are for same-sex marriage. I wonder if they join or follow an animal rights org and are surprised they are against fur.

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.

1. Everybody already knows trees, wreaths, holly, and other symbols had Pagan roots. This isn’t new information. Do you also go to Italian restaurants and remind people there that the Chinese invented spaghetti and the Italians “stole” it?

2. So what?

3. There’s a pretty good chance these “blessed” traditions of yours that the Christians apparently sullied were already someone else’s before YOU “stole” them.

4. The word “Pagan” is a blanket term for just plain anyone who doesn’t follow an Abrahamic religion. By combining this complaint of stolen traditions, the specific people who had them originally are still being erased even by those claiming to defend them. Saturnalia, holly, evergreen trees, and Mithras each came from DIFFERENT cultures.

5. Also, how exactly is anything “stolen”? As in #3, cultures’ icons and celebrations mix and match all the time. These things evolve over time. While Christians were certainly trying to make some of the icons about Jesus so to encourage or force conversions, this is hardly specific to Christians, and just because the Christians are trying to say the shamrock is the holy trinity or the holly represents Jesus’s crucifixion somehow doesn’t mean it has to mean that to you. Which brings me to…

6. Go ahead and celebrate Saturnalia or Yule or whatever. No one is stopping you. In fact, I highly encourage it. Have a party. Invite people. Do traditional things for whichever culture’s Winter Solstice celebration you’re having. And you know what? It’s a fun, unique, and even educational experience that does a way better job of reminding people of the “real” origins of some of these things than does whining that Christmas “stole” it from you. More fitting for the season, too.

7. And this I say to Pagans AND Christians and anyone else… quit worrying about how OTHER people celebrate during the holiday season and worry about how you are.

Anyway, the sun starts heading back this way in about 11 days. Get celebrating. However you want.

Or, actually, I’ll let xkcd explain the person I mean. Here: http://xkcd.com/479/

Yeah, that’s where he brags that despite his imperfect life, at least his cell phone makes a “ringing” sound.

I’ve known several people who’ve made that exact complaint.

I wonder if these same people also eschew alarm clock radios.

Because, like phones, alarm clocks are a thing that once could only sound their alarm through ringing a bell. Then alarm clock radios became a thing, so you could wake up to an annoying buzzer or to the (even more annoying depending on station) radio coming on.

I mean, yeah, we associate a ringing phone with a bell-like ringing sound because that’s really the only sound phones made for the longest time. Even when phones didn’t have so much a bell, but still made a tone that mimicked ringing. Then phones decided, screw it, we’re not bound by a bell anymore, so instead of a bell sound we’ll play “Oops I Did It Again” when someone calls.

Which, of course, scared some people. “Oh noes, phones aren’t making a ringing sound like they’re supposed to, run for your lives! ahhh!”

So… yeah.