touché, productivity nazi

"It’s become the default response when you ask anyone how they’re doing: 'Busy!' 'So busy.' 'Crazy busy.' It is, pretty obviously, a boast disguised as a complaint."

My wise and well-missed friend, Rich, posted this New York Times article The ‘Busy’ Trap by Tim Kreider to the ubiquitous facebook. Like he was reading my mind (or my blog).

"Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets."

Self imposed and unexamined busyness. The Importance of What I Do. The Meaning Endless Meetings provide.

"The Puritans turned work into a virtue, evidently forgetting that God invented it as a punishment." 

This busyness I've recently become immersed in is a mindset that is fundamentally false, a "boast disguised as a complaint." I guess I am not so self-aware that I don't need to be reminded of simple, common-sense things. Thank you.

bibullshit

On the university's fb page our social media person asked the question,
Can you name one book that changed your life?

The comments contained lots of good books (The Picture of Dorian Gray, Sister Carrie, Lord of the Flies, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Fahrenheit 451, The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, etc.), some lame (Alchemist) and most predictably, many listed The Bible (often capitalized BIBLE, in case we missed their piety).

The Bible changed their lives? Liars! Fucking liars. Most of them wouldn't get through a book as convoluted and boring as the Bible without all the pious pressure. What they understand about the Bible is the predigested, completely bullshit version fed to them from the pulpit and vacation Bible school. The Bible itself is full of begats and incest and murder...which should make it somewhat interesting but in fact, does not. It's a poorly told story, choppy and inconsistent. Not to mention offensive and violent and anti-women and pro-slaves, etc. ad nauseum. The Bible changed your lives? Drone-brains.

imbalance

What triggers anger? Fear? Arrogance? Impotence? My anger is a rich blend of all three and something deeper and more primal. No, it's more about my inner child. My history.

Many smart, capable female friends have been posting on Facebook about getting old. And fat. And not being pretty. I see decades of creativity sucked dry by bullshit. And I got angry.

"Why do you waste your energy puling about aging? All you have is time and you're pissing it away. There's a million more fascinating, enriching and amusing things to do out there than moan than something you can't change. I am 53. I don't give a rat's ass about getting older. Get on with your lives and stop this ridiculous, first-world whiny shit.
You are smart and I love you but you are wasting your precious time. The End."

It probably won't make a bit of difference and I'll offend people and make them defensive. I should just block them so I don't have to read it. 

Who do I think I am, telling people that they're full of shit? 
Who do I think I am, telling them I know better than they do? 

This goes back to power. And balance and imbalance. 

Do I have the right? 
Do I have the obligation? 
Do I see clearly?

Well, I guess I think I do. I think I have the right and obligation to say that the Emperor is stark naked. I am pretty sure, however, that it falls on deaf ears and I want to be okay with exorcising cultural demons even if it seems I'm the only one witnessing the act.

her hrc, really?

I've been bitching for years that the HRC (Human Rights Campaign, an national organization fighting for queer rights) has been dominated by wealthy, tux-owning gay men who liked to go to and throw black-tie fundraisers.

Sure, they've raised good money and I figured that even their male-centric efforts helped all queer people to some degree. Every time I received an invite to a $200/plate dinner, I just tossed it. Like we'd drop $400 for a meal, however good the cause.

Well, times are hard. And even the HRC has to broaden its donor base and reach out to the lesbians down here on the ground. I just received this invitation to "Her HRC; A National Night of Celebration for Women." Okay. That's not bad AND they managed to price it for almost everybody: $10.

Now Joe Solomonese (president of HRC) pissed off a lot of people recently with his Democrat bootlicking and lack of criticism of the Obama administration's disappointing inaction on GLBT issues. Yet even in that light, Her HRC seems like a decent gesture.

So, I'm looking at the invite and see that it's sponsored by Tylenol. Tylenol? Oh. It's a woman's event. With women and their womanly parts. And pains. So Tylenol. Sure. The predominant message here is that we need pain relief. That's refreshing.

Then, at the bottom is a plug for a Buying for Equality iPhone application...it starts out with

"Shopping before the event?"

REALLY?

I am well aware that not all lesbians/bisexual women consider khakis their dress-up clothes. Not all lesbians wear ball caps and big ol' plaid shirts. Hell, many of us are not even allergic to nail polish and pumps. But if you are addressing a large group of (large-ish) women who largely do not partake of the girlie-defined world o' shopping, perhaps leading with the next line would be a little less ridiculous "Now you can find companies and products that support equality..."

Shopping before the event...puh-lease.

cyrano deserves vd

I have long been a fan of Cyrano de Bergerac. My high school yearbook quote was attributed to Edmond Rostand's protagonist:

To sing, to laugh, to dream,
To walk in my own way and be alone,
Free, with an eye to see things as they are.

~ Cyrano de Bergerac

Now, I don't know if this is a 100% accurate quote–no Google, no Wikipedia in my senior year–but that is beside the point. Because it symbolized my 17-year old soul crying out for understanding. Of course, I identified with Cyrano. Of course. A high school girl who felt witty and brilliant on the inside (gack) and never quite attractive enough on the outside. Swooning over some boy who couldn't keep his eyes off of the prom queen, pleasant though simple girl that she was. Sweet colicky jesus, I can hardly stand the thought that I was ever like that.

Perhaps it's not fair to dismiss all of the high-drama longings of teenagers. Most of us had to pass through (while many of us stayed) that period of idealistic, egotistic hyperbole. It's kind of like disdaining the fact that I sat in a diaper full of poop as a baby. It was a necessary phase. However, I stopped beshitting myself and grew the fuck up.

One of my love's favorite movies is the Steve Martin knock-off of Cyrano: Roxanne. It's amusing. Fodder for Martin's wit. But the last viewing ended any vestige of affection I had for Rostand's hero.

I'm done with Cyrano, Phantom and Pretty Woman. No romance there for me. Why is it that we're supposed to hurt for the homely, scarred and common when they fix their passion on the very ideal that rejects them (and not incidently, the majority of us)? Why can't Cyrano find beauty in a woman with buckteeth? Why didn't the Phantom fall in love with an obese contralto? How come we don't laud the prostitute who sees beauty in the mechanic? Why is there no big story there?

I know this is mundane and what's-the-big-deal but I see this so often I could retch. If we feel compassion for the "unlovely" and applaud the "success" of landing the "perfect" mate, then we reinforce the bigotry that started it all. I'm tired of seeing the "less attractive" vindicated by landing the "hottie" (a word, by the way, that is wholly reminiscent of middle school idiocy). Or conversely, look askance at the "beauty" who chooses someone so "plain." I am similarly irritated when I hear some smug shithead talk about how two people are "so right" for each other because they're similarly sized, similarly judged unattractive or they both have a limp or something.

So, should "ugly" people only marry/love "ugly" people? Obese with the obese? Big nose with the big nose? No. It doesn't fucking matter how the pairing is "balanced" according to society's capricious rules. That's my point. My idealistic point.

P.S. I know this post is teeming with quotation marks. I just couldn't use all those inane qualifiers without marking them as outside my viewpoint.