What the hell? – Page 11

No Sugar for Students

April 6, 2011

Dear Overzealous Anti-Sugar School Official,

Awww, isn’t that cute? You hear that sugar is evil and want to keep kids away from it. You’ll go to any ridiculous lengths to keep them from buying it themselves!

What’s this? You soooo badly don’t want students drinking anything other than water ever that you’ll bully stores into not selling anything to them? Stores that, I might add, have no connection to your school whatsoever? Oh, well, isn’t that just lovely. I mean, that’s totally justified seeing as the students aren’t people or anything and as their principal, I believe they are officially your own property! Goodness, why stop at dictating food and drink choices? But I digress.

Or, wait a minute. That’s not right. I’d say that students are PEOPLE. And as real individual people, they belong only to themselves. You aren’t even their parent. All you do is act as administrator of the place they’re forced to spend several hours of their day whether they like it or not. Does that make them constitute your property? And doesn’t the idea I even have to ask that question raise concerns over whether you should be teaching or even being near any children ever?

So sugar is just sooooo bad for children that it’s abuse if an adult were to allow a grain of it to touch the child’s lips. Is that what you believe? No, moron, I’ll tell you what’s abuse. The abuse here is dictating the living shit out of every little thing a child does, denying her the choice of what food and drink she consumes, and preventing her from exercising even the tiniest bit of economic autonomy just to buy a goddamn bottle of juice if she wants it!

In short, go die in a fire. Or at least stay away from kids. You’re a thousand times worse for them than sugar ever could be.

Wishing You Great Pain,

Katrina

Sigma Sigma

March 24, 2011

I hereby decree…

Stop using sigmas as Es!

How often do we see this shit?

GRΣΣK

Oh, isn’t that clever? Instead of the letter E they use a sigma (Σ) which totally looks like an E and is totally Greek! LOLOLOL

Just one problem. The Greek letter sigma is not an E. It’s an S. So what is spelled up there is basically “Grssk”.

But hey, I can see your predicament. You want to pretend you’re all smart and making something look Greek in a very half-alpha-sigma-sigma’d way and it’s not like the Greek equivalent to the letter E looks all that much like the Roman E…

Oh wait, this is an epsilon: Ε

*facepalm*

But is that too identical to an E for you? Here’s a lowercase epsilon: ε

And here’s what you were trying to spell: Grεεk

True, by Greek phonetics and whatnot that still isn’t technically correct but at the very least you’re matching up the correct letters!

And speaking of Greek letter gripes, can people quit using a lowercase U when writing the metric denomination “micro”? For example, when they say 1ug (1 microgram)? It’s not a U. It’s supposed to be 1µg. That’s not a lowercase U. That’s a lowercase mu.

Seriously, I told this to this cow I’m friends with for some reason, and she agrees.

It’s Best

March 22, 2011

How can anybody possibly have a problem with breastfeeding?

Every now and then I hear about some mall or museum or whatever that kicked out a mother for feeding her baby in public. Even if that doesn’t happen, there are still other people who flip their lid over it for some reason. “Oh, noes, that horrible woman is exposing her breast and a baby is sucking on it!”

Hey, idiots. What the fuck do you think breasts are FOR? They aren’t sexual organs, outside of exhibiting some sensitivity and reactions to arousal. But then again, so does most of the body. To your stupid self, the mother is exposing a shameful sexual part, but to the baby, she’s allowing him/her access to FOOD. How would you like it if people got pissed at you for eating in public? And, hell, some people’s eating habits are way more gross than breastfeeding could possibly be (not that breastfeeding is disgusting at all, mind you). But you’re not anywhere near as likely to be asked to leave for chewing with your mouth open as a new mother is for nursing her baby. Hell, if you’re eating some nachos near me, I’ll be gagging on the smell of the cheese. That I would find disgusting. Much rather a breastfeeding mom were near me than you. But in that case, I would simply get up and move away to where I can no longer smell the cheese. Like you should do if you’re so bothered by how a little baby is eating.
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Mmmm, Candy Hearts 6

February 14, 2011

*munches candy hearts*

What are they saying? “YOU RULE”. Yes, yes, I know. “HELLO”. Well, hello yourself, little candy heart! “MY CUTIE”. Why, thank you! “SEE YA”. Bye! “GET REAL”. Well, fine, be that way!

Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes, the sixth installment of Mmmm, Candy Hearts, the Sure, Why Not? Valentine’s Day tradition! Where I remark about how people who are in relationships or are dying to be in relationships just utterly fail hard. I don’t claim to be an expert, not that anyone can really make that claim, but sometimes watching the way people handle this hot potato known as love is just intriguing.
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Jokes that Need to Die

February 2, 2011

Now for a pseudo-humorous, stale edition of…

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!”
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Smooth as a…

January 6, 2011

I hereby decree…

Babies aren’t sexy!

Happy Epiphany, everyone! It’s the official last day of the 2010 Christmas season, which in practice mostly just means that tomorrow it’s time to take down the decorations and for me to put my Santa Claus pin away until Thanksgiving. Always sad. But, contrary to my perhaps unsatisfactory posting frequency when it isn’t December, Sure, Why Not? is still here to celebrate the win, the fail, and the lulz.

Now let’s talk about the sexualization of infants…

Is anyone else really creeped out by ads on TV and elsewhere for skin products that seem to place a lot of emphasis on the smoothness of a baby’s skin? There’s that Johnson & Johnson baby oil ad that’s been on a few times where throughout the entire thing, some woman is downright fondling a little baby. It starts off with her kissing him on the lips, and throughout she also kisses his feet and rubs his baby-smooth stomach and arms and face. Why? Because he’s a little baby that makes his skin so smooth and fun to touch and rub! Oh joy!

Also creepy are ads for women’s skin products that at some point show a baby or toddler to point out that this cream will make your skin feel all smooth like theirs! Use this skin cream and your skin will be so soft you’ll feel like a baby! A sexy baby. Or a baby-like woman. Textural attractiveness means your features feeling like you spent most of the past year in a womb, be it the smooth baby skin as dictated by skin creams and moisturizers or soft baby hair as sung by Hall & Oates (though they at least think the eyes should be a woman’s).

Of course, the infantilization of women isn’t exactly new and is something feminists have been battling in several forms for about as long as there have been feminists!

Hey, I’m not saying anything against smooth skin. That’s fine. But when extolling how attractive and hot and sexy smooth soft skin and other features are, think you could, you know, leave the little kids out of that one? We really shouldn’t be encouraging people to find their features attractive and definitely not to feel them up!

And can we get rid of the phrase “smooth as a baby’s behind”? You’re talking about someone’s ass, for God’s sake!

*takes down lights, takes off pin*

Interference

December 29, 2010

Oh, my good God…

Mother Sues McDonald’s for ‘Interfering’ With Kids

Happy Meals just got a little more expensive for McDonald’s: the fast food chain has been sued by California mother Monet Parham for using toys to make her two young daughters want nutritionally unsound Happy Meals…

Parham, mother of a six-year-old and two-year-old, said in a CSPI press release that: “I object to the fact that McDonald’s is getting into my kids’ heads without my permission and actually changing what my kids want to eat… what kids see as a fun toy, I now realize is a sophisticated, high-tech marketing scheme that’s destined to put McDonald’s between me and my daughters… I want McDonald’s to stop interfering with my family.”

Owwwww! My head hurts! Soooo much concentrated stupid!

*clutches head*

*takes ibuprofen*

Sigh. Okay, feel a little better now.
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Stork Sex

December 20, 2010

I admit it. I find myself actually offended at the portrayal of storks being where babies come from. Or any portrayal other than sex and pregnancy.

Thankfully, I was never taught that stork bullshit. Would be a little hard since my sister was born when I was almost four, and I remember Mom being pregnant with her. Of course, it was many years after that before I knew anything about sex being what causes pregnancy. And even though that was more a matter of never being all that curious about it rather than the info being actively kept from me, it still annoys me that I was almost ELEVEN before I knew anything about that pregnancy-causing act.
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#16tovote on the 16th – Myths and Facts

December 16, 2010

Starting this past February, I’ve been running a little Twitter campaign called #16tovote on the 16th, where we tweet about lowering the voting age throughout the 16th of the month. Today is the eleventh run of the event, which has grown a little since it began, though its success varies month to month, hardly a linear progression.

Anyway, the idea is that there are a lot of tweets on this specific day in support of lowering the voting age, and all tweets must use the hashtag #16tovote. This way, I can watch the search results for the hashtag to see who and what has contributed to the event. Fairly simple. Yet even so, I often find myself having to clarify the same things constantly, to bust some myths that don’t want to be busted. Such as…

Myth: The #16tovote hashtag is for use only on the 16th.

Fact: The #16tovote hashtag is for use whenever, for any tweet about lowering the voting age. The event #16tovote on the 16th of course is special in that it specifically uses the hashtag because of the emphasis on voting age tweeting. Sort of how even though Thanksgiving is about eating turkey, we still eat turkey throughout the rest of the year.
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Just Add Alcohol

December 14, 2010

You know what’s annoying about the drinking age? Aside from the fact that it exists? It’s like a go-to excuse for all sorts of other ageism against young people.

There are many hotels out there that will not let you check in if you are under 21. Hell, Holiday Inn Express’s website will even tell you point blank on their hotels’ pages the minimum check-in age. What’s often the little excuse for having this ridiculous rule? “Oh, we don’t want there to be underage drinking parties!”

Well, the logic there crumbles easily. Most parties with alcohol have at least a few people 21 or older around, mostly since they’re the ones who supply the alcohol to begin with. And if they have the 21+ people for that, chances are those people would be the ones checking in. As long as you allow anyone under 21 to stay at your hotel at all, even families, you run the risk of having underage drinking on your premises. Please. These rules don’t attack underage drinking. They attack youth independence.
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