gender bending over backwards, part deux

(1) An actual conversation about an actual person:
CB: This man is hysterical.
mikaydee: Like, funny hysterical, or driven insane by a uterus hysterical?
CB: Like totally sobbing.
mikaydee: Ah, so, both.

(2) Revelation:
"You're cute when you're angry" is a really just a thing that men say as an excuse to continue making me angry. Oh, am I pissing you off? Well, it makes you more attractive, so that makes it okay, right? No! Hells no! I'm cute when I'm angry? Am I also sexy when I'm crying? That is totally effed up.

in which our heroine confesses her sins

mikaydee: I often confuse Rose Byrne and Rose McGowan, and then I feel really bad.
RM: oh jesus
RM: taste just rolled over in its grave
mikaydee: In my defense, the context is almost always "What?! Rose McGowan would never be in this piece of--...oh wait, Rose McGowan would."

appropos of nothing

Apparently this is old news to some, but male stripping is somewhat unsettlingly aggressive. I went to a strip show last night for, I assure you, culturally appropriate reasons, and to be honest, it was kind of like being trapped in some strange woman's elaborate gang rape fantasy. That is very much not what I want to happen when I call the police, or the fire department, or the U.S. Navy. At one point I tried to be game and help out a friend who was getting (again I assure you) a culturally appropriate lap dance, and for my troubles I got a lap dance of my own "for helping her out." It honestly felt like I was being punished for doing something nice. Which is supposed to be hot? I guess?

in partial praise of neologisms

Suffixiate, verb: to smother an existing word or word root with suffixes, often "-ate," which add nothing to the word's meaning, but may make the speaker appear smarter or dumber, depending on who is listening, e.g. "conversate," "refudiate."

in which our heroine weighs in

The internet's schadenfreude reflex landed squarely on this girl today, and I can't say I disapprove. Of particular note is this little gem, which still exists in the Australian edition of Gizmodo, unaffected by the author's post hoc, face-saving edit:

"Also, for all you world famous nerds out there: Don’t go after two Gawker Media employees and not expect to have a post written about you. We live for this kind of stuff."

Are you kidding me?

On behalf of all the serious professional women out there, let me say this: gentleman, you absolutely can, you absolutely should go out on dates with women and not just assume that they are going to use you to their professional advantage. Women who do that are evil. Don't touch them; you don't know where they've been.

As I've said elsewhere, there's a word for women who go out on dates for professional, rather than personal reasons.

....

"Whore." The word is "whore."

in which our heroine wishes she were silicon-based

When people ask if some food is "organic," I usually tell them, "Well, it's not inorganic....", 'cause I'm a smart-ass like that. At the airport this week, though, I was listening an episode of This American Life, and I heard maybe the dumbest thing I've heard about organics ever. I don't know if the reporter was trying to seem balanced for the sake of professionalism or if she actually sympathized with the vaccine-o-phile parents in this story, but she actually said there's no such thing as an organic vaccine. No, lady. Just no. There's no such thing as an inorganic vaccine! You know what is organic, though? Whooping cough. Also, polio. Maybe give your kid some of that, instead. All natural, 100%, nature's best.

in which our heroine cuts herself with occam's razor

England is on fire, and no one can explain why. In the absence of any other explanation, I'm gonna look to historical precedent and just assume that Vikings are responsible.

rosencrantz and guildenstern are wizards

Thank MR for this one, since he introduced me to WTF D&D, with which I have been wasting a great deal of my employer's time lately. Hey, state labor law requires that I take at least one break during the day. It would be a dishonor to the memory of all those Pullman Strike people if I didn't goof off for a half-hour every day.

Now, granted, a lot of these monsters logically could not exist. But it's magic, right? Wizards did it. This monster, though, is special, and by special, I mean enraging. It offends me not as a gamer, but as a sentient being. This monster ontologically could not exist, which is a little, you know, beyond. It has roughly human intelligence but no conception of death? WTF, indeed! How can you have self-awareness and not have a conception of death? If you understand that you exist, how does that not also imply the opposite possibility, that you don't necessarily have to exist? You exist, and unless you're YHWH (and if you're reading this and You're YHWH, well, I'm either incredibly flattered or utterly unsurprised), you know you haven't always existed, and so one day a little later maybe you won't exist, and BAM, conception of death, embedded in the conception of life. As far as basic concepts go, you don't get much more basic than that. It's as if you said "this monster is capable of learning to add, but not subtract." Eff you, monster. Eff you and your impossible thoughts. You don't understand death? Here, my +1 scimitar of intellectual fury will teach you....

stray thoughts on bad movies: transformers: dark of the moon edition

(1) If the Decepticons were planning decades in advance for the Autobots arrival on Earth, you'd think they could have avoided the first two movies.
(2) Why does Patrick Dempsey care if the Decepticons take prisoners or not?
(3) Did Optimus Prime just execute someone who was starting to beg for his life? I think he did.

in which our heroine engages in some peer review

I think one thing that separates sane people from insane people is that sane people actually expend some effort to make sure they are not insane; to sane people, being sane matters enough to work on it a little. Insane people couldn't give a shit. I know a woman who is pretty much universally agreed to be a little bit batty. Nevertheless, every time I have an interaction with her, I ask myself, "am I crazy?" I go over the situation one more time. Sometimes, I'll check with others, cross-referencing my sanity. I always come out on top. Today, she said something insane in front of a large group of people. There were two or three seconds of awkward silence before the stifled tittering began and someone tried to piece together some kind of response, and I know what was happening during that pause. People were checking to make sure they were not the crazy ones. And they were right. The crazy woman, however, did not question the awkward silence. She didn't question the befuddled response. She just stood there nodding like everything was normal. Because. She is. Insane.

the persistence of memory

I've been beaten down so long by the corporate bludgeon that is Starbucks that I've forgotten that angrier, eye-rolling-er me who used to ooze resentment all over their faux flagstones and insisted on saying "medium" instead of "grande," verily daring them to pretend they didn't speak my mysterious vulgar cant. NM brought the memories all back earlier this week when she threw up her hands in exasperation and declared "Calm is not a flavor! Refresh is not a flavor! Just tell me what the tea tastes like instead of telling me how to feel!" If she had been a tea, she would have been Rage.

I'd had a little Rage Tea(TM) today when I got to Starbucks for a much-needed post-conference-call sugar shock, and I was reminded of another thing that used to bother a more vibrant, more vital version of me: the Barista Who Thinks You Are Friends. She knows your name! (Well, she knows the Anglo-Frankish version of it.) She remembers that you work in the area! (Or has deduced this from the fact that you're wearing a suit and pumps.) Most of all, she remembers your drink. Except that she doesn't. She has perhaps mixed you up with another person of your gender and ethnicity, but you've never actually ordered that particular proportion of caffeine, sugar syrup, and milk fat that she is currently conjuring onto the side of the white paper cup. So you have to interrupt her tellingly efficient demonstration of intimacy (because really, all this treacle is meant to keep you moving as quickly as possible through the line and out the door before you realize that all this Old World bonhomie is essentially the carcass of a sheep draped grotesquely over the wolf who devoured it). You have to tell her that, in conscious betrayal of all you've been through together, you want to order something else. And for no good reason, you are embarrassed by this. They have tricked you into being ashamed of offering them money in exchange for the thing that you want.

The smartest thing I ever read about Starbucks comes from a Slate.com article by Jacob Weisberg: "The unappreciated business genius of Starbucks is not charging $4 for a latte but rather giving adults permission to drink milkshakes, on the pretext that they are merely tea or coffee." The baristas' drink-memorization gambit reinforces this notion, that an upside-down caramel macchiato with whip cream and chocolate sprinkles is just the way you take your coffee, in the same way that someone else might have it black with two sugars. Rather than a liquified candy snack (presaging a wider movement away from solid food), it is something that you can reasonably be expected to drink every morning and not tire of; it is a 300-calorie part of your routine, and therefore your identity. And changing that, suddenly and without warning, is a betrayal. It's a betrayal of yourself, and a betrayal of your friend, the barista.

aproposition

You don't have to be insane to take a shot at a politician. You just have to honestly believe in your heart what so many people keep saying on the news: that that person is essentially a Nazi who is going to kill your grandmother. This is where the unconscionable state of our political discourse has gotten us.

oxymoronic

So, because I'm only sporadically diligent about blogging, I've decided to become a fully integrated web personage and connect my Twitter feed to my Blogspot* and Facebook* Wall. Now, if I ever need to create a downloadable** version of my personality based on my digital footprint, a la CAPRICA, I will have an easier time of it.

*Apparently Blogspot's spell-check doesn't recognize the word "Blogspot," which, ya know, it coined. Similarly, Facebook's spell-check doesn't recognize the word "Facebook."

**This is really a silly way to recreate someone's personality. Think of all the web applications you share, or all the things you've purchased online for other people. If someone tried to do this to me based on my Amazon and Netflix accounts, they might very well end up with a marathon-running homosexual man who really, really likes children's art supplies.