on the existential despair of graduating college

Bah!

Fie unto thee, four years of college and the (useless) degrees that you have given me. Bollocks to you, real world, that would so wantonly smack me in the face with your sheer realitiness. All of my carefully laid defense mechanisms crumble at the feet of your sinister onslaught, and I stand exposed in all my naked indecision, humbly trying to cover the infinitesimalness of my motivation.

I really can't put off looking for a job any longer. Sigh.

today's moment of wtf.

I passed somebody today who had a tattoo.

Of the Nike swoosh.

...

For context, he also had a lot of basketball tattoos. I get that basketball is probably a big part of his identity. Maybe it always will be; I guess that's the risk you take with tattoos. But the swoosh? He's literally brand-named himself.

Ah, well, to each his own.

Thoughts from an imaginary man

I am usually behind on this stuff because it often doesn't bother me until several days later. (I don't know how to do fancy linking things yet. At least not on a Mac.)

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/KevinMcCullough/2007/03/18/why_real_men_confuse_and_anger_liberals

The gist:
Real men are defined by their strength and directness, striking fear into the heart of their opponents (the girly men). Because of feminism, society has become effeminate; occasionally a real man like General Pace rises up to put things right. He said that he would not approve of homosexuality in the military on the basis of its immorality. In doing so he disrupted the girly men and manly women, who in their moral confusion believe only in acting out their impulses.

Let's ignore the fact that only males appear to be capable of acting in either a strong or moral way. Let's also ignore the fact that he reduces all possible moral choices and behaviors onto a single spectrum, ranging from "real" to "girly."

Instead, let's do a syllogism.
-Real men apparently transcend noticing let alone being bothered by the girly men.
-Kevin McCullough, the author, is bothered by the girly men.
-Kevin McCullough is therefore not a ...

General Pace, for that matter, is also bothered by the girly men. In fact, by claiming that real men both vocally defend his particular moral code and are above noticing the lesser people, by definition pretty much no one can be. That makes "real men" a product of his imagination. And that makes me smile.

I feel trite.

It seems like pretty much every essay that I have written in the last two years has been this essay:

S says this.
But S's rhetoric says this.
This contradiction undermines S.

or occasionally, for variety:

P says this.
P's rhetoric also says this.
Isn't that cool?

I've lost all capacity for original thought. Bah!

I was surprised too

I got up at 5:30 this morning, and actually didn't vampirically explode in a swirling cloud of dust. Who knew.

In which I feel lonely

Sometimes I feel like I am the only person in the whole wide world who prefers regular popcorn to kettle corn. Bleh.

In which I wonder whether I was hallucinating

Why a stupid movie like Ghost Rider should stick with me for more than a week after seeing it is beyond me. Maybe I boggle at why Nicolas Cage would do such a dumb flick, or maybe something more visceral comes up. I keep wondering if I made this one outrageously anti-Catholic scene up, or if I am just reading into it too much.

Part of it is that this was, as I saw it, a hyper-conservative flick. Start with a strong, morally conflicted but none-the-less badass male lead, and throw in droves of fans who drool over his manliness. The type of guy who risks his life doing stunts on a freeway to prove his cojones (and show up the female's lackey).

Based on Cage's accent, among other things, I am guessing that this movie was targeted for a Southwestern audience. Which wouldn't matter, except for one tiny part: mysterious-old-wise-man in the movie claims that the demon enemies can't attack on holy ground. About ten mintes later, enter the Big Bad, killing (offscreen) some Catholic priest in a Catholic church. Was this an anti-Catholic dig for a doggedly Protestant audience? I can't seem to find anything to back me up, but I wonder...

It's not torture that bothers me

What bothers me are double standards.

I have the same warm fuzzy liberal bias against torture, but when I think about it, what does torture actually mean? I think prison would probably be torturous, but everyone seems OK with that. Pulling fingernails off of people and burning them with coals, on the other hand, seems a pretty clear no-no. Making people feel like they are drowning is apparently somewhere in between. I don't get the distinction; it seems like there is just an arbitrary amount of suffering that we are willing to inflict on people we don't like.

So fine. We want people to suffer, we want them to suffer. What bugs the crap out of me is that we are willing to make the other guy suffer so much more in the name of national security. I don't think anyone seriously suggested water-boarding Timothy McVeigh after the Oklahoma City bombings, even though he probably deserved it as much as Kahlid Sheikh Mohammed or anyone else with an Islamic-sounding name. The fact that we are OK doing torturous or semi-torturous things to "them" and not to "us" is xenophobic at the least, if not outright racist.

Adventures in Fremont

I went with my boyfriend to Fremont today.

During the car trip there (carnatic music playing)
BF: Oh listen, to what Vani Jayram does with this next scale!
Me: …
BF: Alright, who is this next singer?
Me: …
BF: You are bored by this, aren’t you?
Me: No, I just can’t appreciate it like you can.
BF: … I think we should break up.
Me: Suck it, Trebek.

Walking out of Fry's
BF: Hey, do you know that metal from X-Men? The one Wolverine has?
Me: Um… (pretending to take longer to think about this than I really need) … adamantium.
BF: OK.
Me: Why?
BF: I was talking about this with people the other day. We were wondering who would be geeky enough to actually know that.
Me: …You set me up! What a bitch!

After eating at Indian restaurant:
Me: I want something sweet.
BF: Try this.
Me: Sure. What is it?
BF: It’s leaves wrapped in spices. You chew it and suck out the juices. You may not like it.
Me: (chewing) … It tastes like licorice and toothpaste.
BF: (laughing)
Innocent Shrub: What just spit on me? Grrr! Arg!

Today was a good day.

It's about bloody time

Because, really, the world needs one more voice. A voice of passion. A voice of freedom.
And instead it gets me. Excellent.