advertizing parenting

Last week, while driving around in Gilroy for work, I passed a couple billboards which said things like: “It’s my kitchen, my rules” and “It’s my TV, my rules.”

Why is the world advertising parenting techniques? Is it because people, sitting on their couches or driving around in their SUVs, are paying attention, though they apparently don’t pay much attention to their children rummaging through cupboards or flipping through television networks? Is it because people really need manipulation into caring?

Why do some people have kids? If people don’t want to parent, shouldn’t they not have kids? Ugh.

Things of interest to me today:

Obama's Kill List

Not My Life, a documentary on Human Trafficking. I just watched 2 documentaries on trafficking this weekend. One was put together by our government, one was called Not For Sale and was put together by a campaign of the same name. I just ordered Not My Life, which I am sure I will watch soon.

I just deleted a rant on how terrible and non-historical History Channel documentaries are, but oh well, I guess that will have to be for another day.

bride wars: why men are scared of women

This is old (obviously), since this movie hasn't been in theatres for a while.

Once upon a time, my friend and I went to go see Bride Wars. That seemed like a movie I didn’t want to see, but thinking the company of my friend and the hour and a half of entertainment would be better than more sitting around in my room, I put on a pair of boots and a coat and found myself watching one of the scariest movies I’ve ever seen.

Yes, the idea of these two friends competing over a wedding venue had its comical moments. Oh, what petty pranks they played on each other (ie: oh, how shallow their friendship is if they can possibly fathom engaging in such cruel acts). The movie, however silly and ridiculous it may have been, was not the scary part. I wasn’t most irritated that I’d wasted my $10, I was horrified that the movie got made. Not because it was inherently horrible, but because there exist a multitude of women who on some level identify with the characters in that movie. That’s how that movie got made.

I, like many other girls, had play weddings when I was little. I also had play forts (even though I’m not planning on going into the military), operated a play grocery store (even though I’ll probably never be a business owner), and pretended to be a variety of animals (and manage not to have some identity crisis). I played wedding and I played house, but I don’t think I’m insane.

Someday I’ll want to be married. I’ll probably want to have children and own a house and crap like that. I’m fairly certain I’ll be a good wife and a good mother. Those are things I want for my life, but I'm not planning them out because guesswhat, I’m not there yet.

For one thing, planning a wedding without a partner seems like a bad plan. Say I get my heart set on a church wedding and I ended up with a person of a different faith? What if I wanted to get married on a beach and my partner hates beaches? What if I wanted a small wedding and my partner wants a huge wedding? Thinking about this stuff before having someone to think about it with just seems like a bad plan.

That said, what the heck is the big deal with weddings? I mean, I’ll have a wedding but why are they such a big deal? I mean, really. A couple wants to commit themselves to each other and have a family. Oh… kay… With or without the ritual, that would probably be the case. It’s “hey, Mom and Dad, this person is now so close to me that I want them to be a member of this family, I want to be a member of theirs, and I want to possibly create more family with them.” Dang, that’s pretty heavy. Huh, maybe something that heavy needs a ritual. But(!) it probably doesn’t need everyoneinthecity to be there. I mean, isn’t that a really personal, heart-heavy decision? Isn’t that something that you share with the people really close to you, not your brother’s uncle’s best friend?

I just don’t get the big deal with weddings. It seems like they are just a big party to celebrate the fact that you love someone so much you can’t ever picture breaking up with them. Well, that’s nice, but why do you need to spend thousands on a cake that will be gone in an hour or on overpriced invitations? Your lives will be the same the day after the marriage as they were the day before, but you’ll be out a whole bunch of money and have 6 toasters to return.

I don't know.  I want a nice wedding and a nice dress in my nice church, but I feel like some people spend terrible amounts of money on the fleeting experience.  I know it's an experience we will cherish for our entire lives, but aren't our entire lives more important than that experience?  Anyway, shouldn't a sacred event be met with more humility?  Shouldn't a wedding reflect the people it is uniting and their future together, not fantastical childhood fantasies?  If my partner wanted me to re-enact the war games or alien invasions he played as a child (and expected me to pay thousands of dollars to make it realistic), I think I'd be a little weirded out.

Bleh.

Anyway, women obsessed with weddings are crazy. No wonder men are scared of marriage. If men were like that about marriage, I wouldn’t want to marry one, either.

god in the image of man

"Man created God in his own image." Imagine that you are Durkheim and explain briefly what this statement would mean for you.

Durkheim saw religion as being the product of men and society. Durkheim believed that a society projected its values onto a God, making those values sacred. Worshipping their god was essentially worshipping the values of their society. It gave their values more meaning and provided justification for enforcing their rules and values.

In this way, man created God (or gods...) in his image. Man projected values onto God(/s) and worshipped the god and thusly their values.

quotation

“The paradox which wrecks so many promising theories of education is that the training which produces skill is so very apt to stifle imaginative zest. Skill demands repetition, and imaginative zest is tinged with impulse. Up to a certain point each gain in skill opens new paths for the imagination. But in each individual formal training has its limit of usefulness. Beyond that limit there is degeneration: ‘The lilies of the field toil not, neither do they spin.’”
--Alfred North Whitehead, from Process and Reality

cancer is my new boogeyman

This is old, but I like it:

Today I was reading Harper’s (because I still read stuff on paper, like an 80-year-old woman). I’m a bit behind in my subscription, so I was reading an article from an older issue on the evolution of cancer, as is evident in the cancer “epidemic” of Tasmanian Devils. I say “epidemic” because the cancer is contagious and may bring the population to extinction in 25 years.

So now, here I am, sitting on the bus, illogically terrified at the prospect of cancer swarming over humanity like a plague of locusts. I’m imagining cancer chunking on my arm like feta cheese. If I thought about this long enough, I could probably get myself to faint.

As someone who’s witnessed how cancer can transform a healthy person into a state of pathetic helplessness, completely robbing one of their agency in just about every aspect of life, the prospect of cancer becoming as easily transmittable as Herpes or a bacterial infection has me pondering a reality where I effectively flip off environmentalism and buy a lifetime supply of latex gloves in a paranoid attempt to protect myself from feta cheese arms.

While the threat of terrorism seems too improbable to bother worrying about, since, as an American, I seem to be protected from such evils by being on the side of the most terror-fying nation, the threat of cancer seems an entirely probable imposition on my future. Cancer cannot be bombed, tortured, threatened, or converted. Cancer recognizes not the privilege of my white middle class status when it attacks my system.

While it’s improbable that I’ll die of a gunshot wound or in a car crash, dying of cancer is an entirely likely option. As cancer becomes fitter as an acting force in this world, staying out of the sun and away from chemicals in my food may not be enough to rescue me from a horrible, slow death by feta cheese arms.

Cancer is coming for me and Obamacare cannot save me.

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I’m sort of kidding. You can decide about which parts.

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Percentage of all income gains during the Bush Administration that have gone to the top 1 percent of earners: 75
--according to Emmanuel Saez, University of California, Berkeley

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transiently useful

“Each new epoch enters upon its career by waging unrelenting war upon the aesthetic gods of its immediate predecessor. Yet the culminating fact is conscious, rational life refuses to conceive itself as a transient enjoyment, transiently useful. In the order of the physical world its role is defined by its introduction of novelty.”
--Alfred North Whitehead, from Process and Reality

Harper's Weekly Review

ridiculous consumerism

What's stupider that spending a ridiculous amount of money on a luxury car? Spending a ridiculous amount of money on a luxury car that's hot pink.

If you'd like to see part 1 of ridiculous consumerism, follow the link.

useful terms: emic and etic

Contrast the meaning of "emic" and "etic" perspectives.

"Emic" is looking at the religious group from the perspective of someone within the group. They practice the religion, believe in its theology, participate in its rituals, and are a member of its community. They tend not to look at their religion scientifically and experience the religion uniquely and personally.

The "etic" perspective is the perspective of an outside observer. Their approach is generally more scientific and objective. This can lead in many ways to a better understanding of the religion, but it also limits them in many ways. Their experience is very different from that of the "emic" because they are not a part of the religious community. One needs both "emic" and "etic" perspectives to best understand a religious tradition.

Things of interest to me today:

Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity, Vol. XVIII

all or nothing

“Either your experience is of no content, of no change, or it is of a perceptible amount of content or change. Your acquaintance with reality grows literally by buds or drops of perception. Intellectually and on reflection you can divide these into components, but as immediately given, they come totally or not at all.”
--William James

Things of interest to me today:

Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity: Vol. XVII

role reversal and the FUTURE OF BLOGGING

So I am working out doing a beauty product blog with my internet celebrity friend, Flo. I say that, but we were besties before she was an internet celebrity, I promise. Flo and I met my sophmore year of college through our ex boyfriends. We have been good friends ever since and at one point we lived together in SF. Now we just hang out all the time. She works for MacLife Magazine as a tech journalist and I maintain cemeteries, so we are basically the same.

Cosmetic Critiques