Tag: 100 Days of Summer

Allstate’s Deficient Brain

May 30, 2010

So you all most likely know about Allstate’s disgustingly ageist teen brain ads, where they repeat all the “teens can’t drive well because they’re missing part of their brains” bullshit, which has been running for like three years now.

So here’s my letter to them. Enjoy!

Dear Allstate,

Recently, I was shopping around for car insurance. I checked several companies, but Allstate was not one of them. Why? Because Allstate feels the need to run magazine ads spreading disgusting lies about teenagers missing parts of their brains. I will not do business with a company like that. As a youth rights advocate, these sort of ad campaigns work against everything my colleagues and I are giving our lives to work for. Spreading these negative stereotypes about teenagers not only doesn’t make your insurance policies or your company look any more appealing even to a neutral observer, but these widespread beliefs cause real harm to young people. Telling people that teenagers can’t think for themselves not only causes teens to be mistrusted and prevented from gaining experience they’ll need to have in adulthood, but also it contributes to them being mentally and physically abused. When you spread the idea that a group of people are mentally inferior, people will treat them that way. By running these “teen brain” ads, Allstate is stating they are fine with teenagers being treated as less than human. As such, as long as the company chooses to promote itself this way and without an apology, I will never buy an Allstate insurance policy and will do all I can to persuade others not to.

Sincerely,
Katrina Moncure
National Youth Rights Association

Do the same. Go here.

This has been Day 7 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 10.

I’m Sick of Hotel California

May 24, 2010

We all get sick of the newest, popular songs get the living shit played out of them on practically every radio station. That new Train song. That Lady Antebellum song. Just about anything by Taylor Swift. And if I hear Kelly Clarkson’s “Already Gone” or whatever it is one more time, I will scratch someone’s eyes out.

But songs don’t have to have come out within the past two weeks for you to get sick of their constant, constant, mindnumbing play. Hell, they don’t even have to have come out in the past two decades.

That’s right, this is about even classic rock songs that radio stations play the living shit out of. While any one of these songs might get fewer plays on a given day than any of the aforementioned brand new pop stuff, it’s also worse in a way because many of the overplayed pop songs will disappear without a trace in a month or so, while Fleetwood Mac’s “Rhiannon” and Steve Miller’s “Joker” and Journey’s “Any Way You Want It” have been getting played sooo much consistently for many many years.
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A Fine Round Nine

August 31, 2009

And… August has come to an end, for today is August 31, which means that once again today is…

DAY
100

Ah, another crazy ass summer full of the usual mixture of lulz and fail. Let’s review.

Got off to a slow start. On Day 7, for the hell of it, drove up to Gettysburg and drove around the battlefield a bit, and climbed on some historically significant rocks.

Day 8 I ate some awesome dumplings.

Day 10, trying to empower and embiggen (yup) the youth rights blogosphere so I started Youth Blog Tuesday on the forums. (I’ll see you in the September 1 installment!)

Day 14, went to the movies and saw Up. Movie about an old widower who somehow makes his house airborne with BALLOONS and flies to Venezuela to visit some waterfall, only for him and the stow-away eight-year-old to get back to the US at the end somehow, though never any mention how he got off the charges of reckless endangerment, crossing international borders illegally, transporting a child across international borders, etc. Cute movie.
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Leave Them Kids Alone

August 26, 2009

Now for another screaming, yelling edition of…

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

This time, I’m talking to the asswipes who think it’s so clever and funny to complain that “oh noes, I’m out in public and I hear a little kid crying, parents need to control their kids!” Next person who says that is getting stabbed in the face (or banned from the forums, LOL).

A couple weeks ago, I was out with my mom and my five-year-old brother. I had to go with them to the zoo because my mom is a severe metro n00b, and the type of n00b who thinks she’s an expert which only makes it so much worse, so for their own good, I went with them and had to practically hold her hand through paying the fare and getting the tickets and pointing her to the right stations to go to. Seriously, look at this map, and considering we were going from Twinbrook to Cleveland Park, which as you can see involves no transfers or anything, it’s all that much sadder.
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Stigma of a Preteen’s Preference

August 18, 2009

So this morning I was driving to work and a song came on the radio that I’d heard a few times. Thought it was a cute song, so when I got to work I went to the radio station’s website to check the list of recently played songs to see what the title and artist were. And for a moment there I felt I had to cleanse myself, repent, confess my sins, and go into shameful exile. For that cute song, I was horrified to discover, is sung by *gasp* Miley Cyrus!

Of course, that horrified dirty feeling lasted all of half a minute before I realized, well, so what? Sure, I, a 26-year-old, am “supposed” to hate everything about her, as well as the Jonas Brothers and Taylor Swift and whoever else. They, along with Twilight, are a favorite thing to mock by everyone from long-time comedians to the contributors at ROFLrazzi. It has long since gotten stale, though, save for ones that are actually cleverly done. But it doesn’t matter because they’re making fun of something everyone already hates so that right there is apparently what passes for comedy.
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English Privilege

July 30, 2009

Now for a monolingual, patriotic edition of…

SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!

What in the hell is with these people who always scream and cry that, oh noes, somebody who is currently in the United States is speaking in a language (gasp!) that is not English? How dare they! This is an English speaking country and must stay that way. And the very good reason for this is… we say so. Yee haw!

Sigh. Here we go again. A bunch of so-called proud Americans have sewn an infallible fabric based entirely on how they were raised by their ignorant families and have decided that and only that is the proper way for all Americans to live and think. The basis for this belief, of course, is just simply that’s how they specifically were raised, and it must have been important because their parents beat the shit out of them if they so much as uttered a word contrary to these beliefs, so all others must obey these rules as well because, shit, their parents couldn’t possibly be wrong, could they? (Another example of how youth rights is always somehow present in just about any situation.)

Of course, I’m speculating, but that’s all I have to go by since I just really don’t understand how anyone can feel so threatened by the presence of non-English speaking people. Perhaps just general fear of anything different from oneself or at least what one is used to, just like the people who fight tooth and nail to maintain Christianity’s dominance, in that it makes no sense in the grand scheme of things but they do it because it is what is familiar and comfortable to them and thus must be enforced. Or perhaps it’s also the irrational fear that if English is not the only acceptable language, then it will be phased out completely and they’ll be forced to speak something else. Which, of course, is pure paranoid bullshit.
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Representing the Demographic

July 16, 2009

Prejudice is alive and well. It survives nicely through plenty of usually well-meaning people whose prejudicial biases fly under their own radar. Perhaps the most prevalent way that racism, sexism, homophobia, and other bigotries still exist is the extra scrutiny the marginalized group often gets, scrutiny that is forgotten for the same issue if someone of a privileged or majority demographic is involved.

We’ve all seen it. If a teen commits a horrible crime, then the question is not about that individual teen but a question and often assumption that this horrible behavior is common in teens. If the perpetrator were 45, that would not be an issue. The 45-year-old would rightly be treated as an individual, and other 45-year-olds would be spared having to carry that person’s guilt just because they were born the same year. Why? Because middle-aged adults are the standard and thus privileged age demographic while youth (and senior citizens for that matter) are marginalized and considered the “non-standard” group, the “other” group.
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More Pure Stupidity

July 9, 2009

Okay, so I was driving home from work today, and I’m behind some pickup truck, and even by pickup truck standards it looked rather rednecky, with pipes and shit in the back. After a bit I notice a printed sign is taped to the back window and when stopped at a stoplight I finally noticed what it said.

Don’t blame me. I voted for the AMERICAN.

:dubious:

Go ahead. Let that sink in for a moment.

I mean, for a minute I wasn’t even sure which candidate it was referring to, until the obvious factors of Obama having been the one who won and that this was, after all, a pickup truck, which I think is only sold to people who would fellate Ronald Reagan if given the opportunity. And it is probably asking too much of any conservative to recognize that Hawaii is part of the United States while Panama is not.

This has been Day 47 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 9.

NYRA vs West Palm Beach

June 24, 2009

And now for a curfew-destroying, voting age-lowering edition of…

Here’s to You!!!!

So I raise my glass and say, “Here’s to you, NYRA of Southeast Florida!”

They’re a chapter so nice I’ve said “Here’s to you!” to them twice! You may recall the first was last September for their super awesome voting age ad that we had aired on Comedy Central in DC in October. Oh, I’m so happy to say that was only the beginning of their sheer untainted awesomeness.

Because just yesterday, NYRA-SEFL filed a lawsuit against the city of West Palm Beach to get their curfew law struck down. They tried reasoning with the city. They tried protesting. City still wanted to be ridiculous and ageist, so NYRA got litigious. So Jeffrey Nadel and company, with the help of attorney Barry Silver, have filed a lawsuit that the curfew violates a host of constitutional rights. They have videos. They have docs. They have Twitter. West Palm Beach, and all curfew cities for that matter, can consider itself owned.

Here’s the news article about it, too. Go vote Yes in the poll and leave supportive comments. Youth rights supporters shall not be silent! :doitnow:

This has been Day 32 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 9.

Couple of Comments

June 9, 2009

Proud of myself today. Commented on two blogs for youth rights, though as of right now, one of them is still in moderation. Lame. Is this how you guys feel when I ignore your comments? Haha.

Anyway, first I commented on the ACLU’s Blog of Rights, where they condemned sentencing juveniles to life without parole. Here’s my comment:

It is sick, especially when you consider how very few rights teens have. Everyone is always talking about how they can’t handle responsibility and that they shouldn’t be voting or driving or outside past a certain hour or whatever other unjust stereotype-based regulation, yet for some reason, if one were commit a heinous crime, then everyone suddenly thinks they’re fully developed and accountable and should get the harshest punishment. Can’t have it both ways, folks. Don’t treat them like kids and punish them like adults. As Dr. Mike Males said in on this subject in one of his books, we treat teens as kids when doing so is convenient for adults, and we treat them like adults when doing so is convenient for adults. Adult convenience and privilege should not be the basis for our justice system.

Awesome.

Then just a bit ago, NYRA-SEFL posted on Twitter an article about how Rochester, NY just got their youth curfew law struck down by the court. Score!

And here’s my comment:

For those who think a curfew is to protect young people from being victims of violence, I have a question. Why are you blaming the victim? If a young person is attacked at night, the REAL question should be “why are your streets so unsafe from violence?” not whether someone under a certain age is out past their bedtime! Arrest the CRIMINALS, not the potential victims! The worst thing you can tell a young victim of a violent crime is that it was her own fault because of her “improper” behavior, and that is exactly what curfews do. Glad to see this one gone and I hope Rochester keeps it gone. Hope all other curfews see an end sometime soon and people wise up and realize we have to treat young person with more respect and to come up with REAL, non-discriminatory ways to control crime.

Mmmm, yeah. (Despite them both containing typos I’m rather pissed about.)

Want to be awesome like me? Or at least as close as you, someone who isn’t me, can get to my astronomical levels of awesomeness? Then go leave a comment yourself! Only thing more annoying than a vocal youth rights opponent is a silent youth rights supporter.

And I totally got this in in time for this week’s Youth Blog Tuesday! Which is chock full of more blog entries you should totally comment on. Power to the Youth Rights Blogosphere! :doitnow:

This has been Day 17 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 9.