a cluster of over-generalizations

man, it is really easy to hate people in classes. usually i enjoy a good Pretentious English Major Thought-Joust, but today was nearly unbearable. (tangent: the woman with whom i take issue, to begin with, wears frosted pink lip gloss, every class, at 9:30am. FROSTED. if it were 1999 and she had a lisa frank trapper keeper, i would be absolutely burning in envy, but in 2011, it's sort of sad and misplaced. like girls who regularly wear white eyeliner, or use under-eye concealer that is about eight shades too light for their skin tone.) to promote anonymity, i wont say what class it is exactly but suffice it to say it is a medieval literature class. we'll call this woman "Sasha", because i imagine her mother must have been one of those women who wanted her daughter to be as annoyingly feminine as possible, from the get-go. Sasha is sort of sweet in that she tries hard, but is inarticulate and sort of stupid. i'm an asshole, whatever.

usually only her visage (and infuriatingly high baby-voice that seriously HAS to be a conscious decision, enacted to seem more feminine, even though she just sounds creepily infantilized) bothers me, but today she offended the entire pantheon of English Gods. I already knew I hated whatever she was about to say because she started with "i mean, so like kind of going off that...". that sentence is a precursor to vague, redundant comments, and nothing else. usually sentences beginning with that go a bit like this:

"so like, kind of going off that, i almost feel like Shakespeare like wanted to like make people think about like, maybe Gertrude knew that Claudius killed King Hamlet!"

...

Check out that criticism. You've done it again, Oscar Wilde.

Anyway, that's not what Sasha said today, but something far worse. Basically, she suggested that medieval/early modern literature is sub-par compared to more modern and "relatable" works of literature. I'm paraphrasing here... "like, i just feel like modern literature is just so much more meaningful". Of course you do, Sasha, because you were born in the late 20th century and you are a product of your culture and era, which invariably favors literature it has produced, especially versus literature from other time periods which we perceive as outdated and inaccessible.

After a tangible silent groan, one classmate responded, asking for a specific example of "modern literature" of which she spoke. i was really hoping she'd say something truly horrible, like Stephenie Meyer, but she said something that somehow pissed me off more. She said "Like, Jonathon Safran Foer or something".

It was obvious that Sasha thought she had shut everyone up by citing an author she perceives as the apex of original, modern literature. She preened in a self-satisfied way, proud of herself for sticking it to those uppity other English majors who never dreamed she'd be so intimately knowledgeable of this titan of literature. this makes me mad because she thinks, apparently, that Safran Foer is the T.S. Eliot of the 21st century. i also got excited because i think Safran Foer's novels (Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close) are overly sentimental, suffocatingly nostalgic, excessively detached self-indulgent fodder. i shared this with the class. i went on to share how Safran Foer's writing style is exactly why i don't love modern literature as a whole. it should be noted that when i say modern literature, i actually mean what critics call postmodern literature, which is marked by metafiction, intertextuality, irony, paranoia, etc.

i don't want to attack postmodernism because generally it is awesome. however, there is something going on in literature with that, i-feel-so-alone-in-this-crowded-room, at-least-one-of-my-parents-is-heartless-and-now-i-can't-love, i-can't-reconcile-the-drudgery-of-menial-daily-tasks-with-my-inner-pain, brand of self-indulgence and i think it's boring.

it can be done well, i think (see: American Beauty). but it can also go horribly awry while getting by because it sounds good. and yes, Safran Foer is a good writer; he can turn a phrase and his sentences are beautifully written. i just think the content and latent stylistic narrative is tired.

to exemplify what exactly i hate about this style, i've included a passage of Safran Foer's.

“Her life was a slow realization that the world was not for her and that for whatever reason she would never be happy and honest at the same time. She felt as if she were brimming always producing and hoarding more love inside her. But there was no release. Table ivory elephant charm rainbow onion hairdo violence melodrama honey…None of it moved her. She addressed the world honestly searching for something deserving of the volumes of love she knew she had within her but to each she would have to say, I don’t love you.” –Jonathon Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated.

i mean, yeah, it sounds good. and it makes you go all, omg me too! It's simultaneously understated and overly dramatic. if that makes sense. look, i can do it too!

His lover had only ever known his lie-and when he found himself letting the truth slip through his teeth, he knew she would only hear the music from the parlor. she held onto her naivete as steadfastly as she could, committed to her own airy understandings in life- the understanding that the tea would always be sweeter than she would prefer to take it.

okay, that's horrifying and shitty, but am i even remotely making a point? shakespeare is a bad ass because he literally changes the way your brain works.

Safran Foer, in this instance, is a reflection of the most annoying type of literature (for me at least). literature didn't use to be so annoyingly self-indulgent. i mean, obviously definitions of "self-indulgent" vary. and yeah, my argument is pretty flawed. but really, pink frosted lip gloss?

a poem.

Account

Czeslaw Milosz

The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.

Some would be devoted to acting against consciousness,
Like the flight of a moth which, had it known,
Would have tended nevertheless toward the candle’s flame.

Others would deal with ways to silence anxiety,
The little whisper which, though it is a warning, is ignored.

I would deal separately with satisfaction and pride,
The time when I was among their adherents
Who strut victoriously, unsuspecting.

But all of them would have one subject, desire,
If only my own—but no, not at all; alas,
I was driven because I wanted to be like others.
I was afraid of what was wild and indecent in me.

The history of my stupidity will not be written.
For one thing, it’s late. And the truth is laborious.

Obscure Thought of the Day

Does anyone else think that the relationships in SpongeBob SquarePants are a sort of profound (if latent) argument for the social acceptance of homosexuality, and by proxy, legitimacy of gay marriage?

File Under "Yikes"

1. The LOST series.

before you start chanting that series of truly random numbers that really only arbitrarily pervade the LOST series at me, i would like to let everyone know that I have, in fact, watched the entire series, and seen every episode, some of them twice. there are two things i liked about the show: the beautiful landscape, and how hot some of the actors were. so basically the scenery and the scenery. for me, LOST was a labyrinthine collection of "tortured", moronic characters with amazingly arbitrary and entirely unexplained allusions that quickly became (however abstrusely) redundant and self-indulgent and ultimately offered no actual satisfaction.

2. Governor Scott Walker's "budget repair bill".

i don't want to get too much into this because it's already everywhere but it is truly beyond me that many people don't see what's actually going on. there's a reason most academics are liberal: it's because they are smarter than you. this whole attack on unions is only thinly veiled as "budget repair", and people who don't see through that are stupid. nothing in politics is new, it's the same shit. Walker is masquerading as a civil servant while cashing in from the GOP which has successfully convinced a portion of the middle class that letting the wealthiest 1% of our country do whatever the fuck they want is good for the economy.

3. conservative legislature against Planned Parenthood, abortion, and stem cell research.

all three of these conservative obsessions are the pathetic, modern manifestations of Christianity's rich history of sex-shaming. i know america is all politically correct and God is a beautiful benevolent being and jesus is your savior or whatever, but religion has been systematically ruining everything for just about 3000 years. doesn't our legislative body have anything better to do than worry about women's decisions about whether or not to have a baby? is that seriously priority one? and where in the world do conservatives get off on this ridiculous hatred of stem cell research? stem cells are MICROSCOPIC PLASMA. i don't care what the bible says (almost ever); that is not a baby. maybe if you let the actually intelligent people do the research all these presumptuous american citizens could stop bitching about not having healthcare, or whatever.

4. actors/actresses saying that they are "blessed".

how pretentious is that? just say it, you are SOME combination of talented and lucky. the exact ratio varies.

5. katy perry and rihanna.

these two are fiery, SEXY entertainers (omg!!!!!), but they can't sing their own songs without the help of a recording studio. if you can't hit the notes in a song every time, that means you can't sing that song. Re: "Firework" and "Love the Way You Lie". (subtext: gaga wins*.)

6. Justin Bieber's opinion on Gaga's fashion/aesthetic sensibilities.

as quoted from his appearance on Chelsea Lately, in response to Gaga's entrance to the Grammys, Bieber astutely noted: "People say it's artistic and stuff. I'm just like, 'you're an egg.'"

...

thank god america (& canada?) has minds like Bieber's to sedulously dissect the nuances of modern art.

*for future reference, dear readers, "gaga wins" is always the subtext of my work.

a massive, circuitous shitstorm of misogyny

if you haven't heard, the GOP and Speaker of the House John Boehner are pushing a bill that would only allow federal funding for abortions if they are a product of what they are so eloquently coining as "forcible rape", a term which is an absolute clusterfuck of sexist redundancy.

the GOP & John Boehner want to fix the economy, but first, let's take away some womens rights! before i rock your world with how right i am about how fucking immoral and inherently misogynistic this bill is, it's important to note that i will be NOT be discussing the fiscal ramifications of this bill, but its effect on american's perception of what constitutes "rape", and more importantly, how it takes power away from women who've struggled on a daily basis to feel like they have any power at all.

one would hope that the concept of "rape" is resoundingly clear. in the modern american vernacular, it denotes a sexual act without consent of one of the parties. before our legal understanding of "rape", it entailed, as taken from the Oxford English Dictionary, "The act of taking something by force; esp. the seizure of property by violent means; robbery, plundering".

so obviously robbery doesn't equate "property rape" in our american legal understanding, but the point i'm trying to make is that rape is predicated on force. whether it be violent or emotionally abusive, it semantically HAS to entail an element of force. i know i use a lot of words, so here's something for you math-y science-y people:

sexual act + force (including force of influence, which is at play in statutory rape) = rape. once again for clarification,

sexual act + force = rape

.

mathematically, if you remove "force" from the above equation, rape does not exist. i'm going to argue that the same is true in real life; legislatively, and in respect to the american people's collective and individual conceptions of "rape". if our government continues to qualify the legal definition of "rape" with implicative and arbitrary adjectives like "forcible", our collective public opinion will warp some kinds of rape into lukewarm rapes, or "minor rapes", thereby lessening the severity of "rape".

the relationship between word or term and the semantic concept is incredibly complex; some more than others. if important people in our country continue to qualify "rape", and repackage the term on a continuum of severity, rape will cease to connote the intense, horrible act that it always, always is, whether John Boehner thinks its "forcible" or not. if we allow this bill to pass, we risk diluting and weakening the concept of "rape" in america.

congressional republicans, many of whom are anti-abortion, would be doing a couple heinous things with the passage of this bill. namely, they would only offer federal funding for abortions to women who find themselves pregnant as the result of "forcible rape", which doesn't include statutory or "date" rapes. Boehner is explicitly arguing that there are only some rapes worthy of abortions, and implicitly arguing that he (or his political party) gets to decide where exactly to draw the line. conveniently enough, Boehner and the authors of this piece of shit fail to define "forcible rape" in the bill, which is interesting considering that their fiscal plans are singularly contingent on knowing exactly what "forcible rape" is.

this is such a classic example of how our politicians rhetoric warps american's view of the world. by coining "forcible rape", Boehner is basically saying that there is such a thing as "real rape", because "forcible rape" sounds so much more violent and EVEN MORE WRONGER than regular, boring old rape. Jimmy cracked corn! Boehner is just so over boring rape.

strap yourselves in, because this is where the real fun begins. according to congressional republicans, date rape isn't included in "forcible rape". date rape does not qualify under John Boehner's (and the republicans) conception of real rape because, in their fucked up, misogynistic minds, the act of drugging someone so as to make them vulnerable enough to let them have sex with you isn't "forcible". now, ideally, any sane, rational person would agree that drugging someone without their consent is forcible, BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT THE WORLD "FORCIBLE" FUCKING MEANS.

it's important to identify that date rape doesn't always necessitate GHB. the definition also includes women who were sexually assaulted after losing consciousness/coherence as a result of their own decisions; i.e., they knowingly took a drug/drank a lot, and then were violated. this is an even more fun part, because it's where Boehner implicitly suggests we punish women for passing out at parties.

i am assuming that Boehner wants to separate date rape from "forcible rape" to preclude funded abortions for women became pregnant as a result of a rape that occurred in an instance in which Boehner thinks they should have known better, like a girl who passed out at a party. i mean like, it was like, totally their fault the rape happened because i mean, they are the ones that like chose to drink to begin with, and if a guy happens to walk by a woman's unconscious body, or she is too incoherent to consent, it's like totally her fault if he rapes her because she like knew what she was doing.

this essentially results in women losing government assistance for not anticipating or being able to prevent getting drugged, and for getting too drunk and passing out at parties.

of all the ways to Cut Back Government Spending, honestly. which congressional asshole do you think it was spinning in his big leather chair thinking "you know what is outrageous?? the fact that women can get funding for abortions if they were victims of rape. you only really get to deserve an abortion if it was like, really REALLY brutal."

ALL RAPE IS BRUTAL. the amount of actual physical damage varies. the completely arresting, isolating psychological ramifications are worse than bumps and bruises, and that part doesn't change. the whole point of the legality of abortion is that women have the right to choose, and how dare you dictate that the women who find themselves pregnant under the most despicable condition should be judged within the arena of "rape".

i'm getting too frustrated to articulate my thoughts. this whole situation is fucked.

Linguistic Rebellion & Concepts of "Nothingness" in Shakespeare's King Lear

JUST KIDDING! I won't subject you to that. I still hate Taylor Swift, && 18 days til Gaga's single DROPZ. I just got a twitter and i'm treating it like I treat my college education; I'm not quite sure what to do with it but I know I should have it.

and now, a poem in iambic decapentameter.

I'm going to graduate school and everyone can suck it;

i concede to be in this world but i will not be of it.

also, a fish does not know it is wet until it is forced out of water.

so, this is the new year

i find New Year's Eve/Day to be the mother of all anticlimactic, dull thuds. like the head of a unknown peasant loped off by a guillotine, January 1st falls hard and aimless, rolling about til we've all cried, sighed, and moved on.

most disappointing, the New Year occurs at my region's most depressing time, when all wintry nostalgia has been exhausted with ample family time and exchanging of gifts.

as someone who has been steadily slaloming along on the Sisyphean continuum of naivete and cynicism, "new beginnings" are annoyingly tempting. i, personally, only like to be optimistic when no one is looking.

that said, i feel pretty good about 2011.