Category: What the hell?

Yeah, seriously, what the hell?

What You Want

April 23, 2012

Now for an ageist, condescending edition of…

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

Anyone who says either “you’re too young to know what you want yet” or “you’re too young to know who you are yet”. Seriously, you just really really need to be shot.

Who the hell are you to say that to anyone? Okay, even if said person-younger-and-therefore-stupider-than-you does in fact not know what he/she wants or whatever, whatever the hell that even means, you know who knows this even less than they do? YOU, dumbass!

It’s a typical silencing and invalidation technique towards young people, an excuse to belittle absolutely any life choices they make by convincing them they are incapable of making sound choices and as such they’ll definitely regret it in like a week. I mean, it’s a terrific way to instill life-halting insecurities and uncertainties into people, making them feel they are never “ready” to do anything, but hey, at least they aren’t making personal decisions that, even though such decisions don’t involve you in any way, make you personally uncomfortable because you just have to pry into their lives, right?
Continue reading “What You Want”

Just the Bullying We Care About

March 29, 2012

There’s a lot of attention toward school bullying these days. Specifically, it’s the bullying of students by other students. Oftentimes, even more specifically, the student-on-student bullying that is because one student is, or presumably is, homosexual.

These kids are definitely suffering. I’m not going to deny that. I was bullied and taunted constantly from grades six through nine (and it was one of the reasons I ended high school early). Yeah, when you have hair like mine, it’s inevitable! That and in 9th grade when I unwittingly admitted I didn’t know what “giving head” meant when someone used that term, the next several weeks consisted of that group of people asking me on a daily basis “do you give head?”

Here’s the interesting part. I can also think of times I was bullied (albeit differently) by teachers and other staff! In fact, I was more worried about that than anything my fellow students did because the students were not in a position of authority over me or my future. In high school particularly, the teachers were decidedly cold, uncaring, and dismissive. Though it didn’t stop them from being excruciatingly controlling and even willing to give you a lower grade simply because they did not like you.

I’ll bet the last two paragraphs would elicit different reactions from most people. The student bullying paragraph would be “OMG bullying is so horrible!!1!!” The one about teacher bullying? Nope, that would my own fault! The bit about the cold teachers would be (and was) treated with “So what? Welcome to high school! Get over it!” And them being controlling and spiteful? “Oh, that’s ridiculous! Teachers wouldn’t do that. You were probably just a bad student.” That’s even if you consider how little information I even gave about the incident, a verdict based entirely on one being a teacher (adult) and one being a student (teenager).
Continue reading “Just the Bullying We Care About”

Mmmm, Candy Hearts 7

February 14, 2012

Happy Valentine’s Day!

And now, for a candy munching, romance crunching edition of…

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

There’s no such thing as the “friend zone”!

It’s called… she’s just not into you romantically/sexually, but you can’t accept that, so you instead misogynistically pathologize it.

It’s the idea that a girl who to chooses to remain platonic friends with a guy has put him in the supposedly dreaded “friend zone”, but he doesn’t want to be her friend because he wants to be her boyfriend, and he hates it oh so much when she dates some other guy or expresses dissatisfaction with said other guy or with prospective romantic partners in general, because how dare she say that when she turned him down!

Come off it. Seriously, girls, just like guys, are just into someone that way right now or not. It’s not more complicated than that. There are no special “zones”. Nor is there something about being someone’s friend that kills the possibility of it being something else later (though that of course depends on the people involved).

We’ve all heard it. The self-proclaimed “nice guy” can’t understand why a girl he’s interested in isn’t interested in him. So instead of just, you know, accepting that it’s not going to happen and moving on with his life, he assumes she’s the one who has some “female problem” and that’s the real reason she’s not into him. Because why else would she turn down such a Nice Guy like you?

But wait, there’s more!
Continue reading “Mmmm, Candy Hearts 7”

Disney Captivity

February 7, 2012

So… I’m thinking of a popular animated Disney movie. Let’s see if you can figure out which one I mean!

Main character passes through a scary night in a strange unknown place, having lost someone. Then main character, upon being discovered by those who live in said strange unknown place, who in real life are inanimate objects but for the movie’s sake they can talk, is now being held prisoner there! Sure, they try to make friends with this imprisoned visitor otherwise, but still, the main character is trapped, unable to leave, forbidden from contacting the outside world.

Those in this strange place are also under some hard times, have been for a while, and are always waiting for a miracle to save them.

Main character does finally escape and gets away faster and faster… only to get caught and returned, imprisoned again.

The main captor offers the main character better place to spend the night than the original prison-like conditions, a move the main character sees as a great kindness despite still being just as senselessly trapped there.

In fact, the main character even begins to fall in love with the captor! Despite still being, you know, a prisoner.

When at long last the main character is liberated… just turns right back around and returns to the place of imprisonment, having fallen in love with the main captor and befriended the former jailers. And in doing so fulfills the miracle they long awaited.

The end.

OMG! Did you see that? Fell in love with the captor and returned even when finally freed? Stockholm Syndrome much, Disney?

So… what movie am I describing?

Yup, you know which one.

The movie I’m describing is…

…
Continue reading “Disney Captivity”

Temptations for Ageism

December 30, 2011

Now for a growed-up, snack-packy edition of…

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.
Continue reading “Temptations for Ageism”

Fontastic!

December 27, 2011

Does this offend you?

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!

Getting Kids Reading

December 26, 2011

Now for a juvenile, literary edition of…

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.

Twin Fail

December 22, 2011

There are two things I want to see movies and TV shows stop doing when they have twin characters.

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!

The Cratchits

December 20, 2011

So I’m watching “A Christmas Carol” (1984 version with George C Scott) on AMC since it’s on pretty constantly and why not.

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… :scared:

Real Men

December 17, 2011

Lots of messages from pop culture as to what it means to be a “real man”. Real men are supposed to only like certain things, do certain things, and above all, maintain this state of being lest they slip and become like a -gasp!- woman!

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?
Continue reading “Real Men”