The Receptionist: this really gets my goat

Showing posts with label this really gets my goat. Show all posts

Get Mad

A friend of mine posted this on Instagram recently and I thought, "Oh no, please don't."

I get the appeal. Saying, "it is what it is" and then letting it go and moving on is the ultimate in non-attachment right? You'd be a zen little duckling, just letting everything run off your back and living your life.

I guess the problem is that some of the things that make me the most angry are social justice issues and inequalities, and people accepting those for what they are and moving on is exactly what's made all these problems in the first place.

So no, I'm going to keep getting mad.

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The Billionaire Space Race

Thinking about this today.

A rat done bit my sister Nell.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Her face and arms began to swell.
(and Whitey's on the moon)

I can't pay no doctor bill.
(but Whitey's on the moon)
Ten years from now I'll be payin' still.
(while Whitey's on the moon)

The man jus' upped my rent las' night.
('cause Whitey's on the moon)
No hot water, no toilets, no lights.
(but Whitey's on the moon)

I wonder why he's uppi' me?
('cause Whitey's on the moon?)
I was already payin' 'im fifty a week.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Taxes takin' my whole damn check,
Junkies makin' me a nervous wreck,
The price of food is goin' up,
An' as if all that shit wasn't enough

A rat done bit my sister Nell.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Her face an' arm began to swell.
(but Whitey's on the moon)

Was all that money I made las' year
(for Whitey on the moon?)
How come there ain't no money here?
(Hm! Whitey's on the moon)
Y'know I jus' 'bout had my fill
(of Whitey on the moon)
I think I'll sen' these doctor bills,
Airmail special
(to Whitey on the moon)

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Can You Forgive the People Who Were Selfish During COVID?

An animated gif video with a neon sign that says "P.S. I Hate You" with each letter in a different font, blinking in and out at different times

Tyler Resty

Here's something that might fall under the banner of post-pandemic trauma and what are we going to do about it: resenting, or perhaps straight-up hating, the people who did not take the whole thing seriously enough.

The struggle has come up a lot in my circles, but was articulated more directly than I've ever seen by Quinn Norton in their essay We Hate You Now: The Hardest Problem of the Aftertimes.

"There’s going to be a point where this is over, and we’re all going to be in person again. If you didn’t mask, went to crowded spaces, visited friends and family, any of those things, best hide that from me. Because what’s happening right now is your fault: the sickness, exhaustion, deaths, loneliness, isolation, it’s the fault of people who can’t just stay home and mask long enough to let this horrible thing burn itself out."

I am lucky, I guess, that as far as I know, no one in my life was reckless with the pandemic. Yes, some of my friends or family did things they weren't supposed to do, but mostly in ways that illicit small frustrations and eye-rolls, not harsh judgments. (Okay, fine, some very harsh judgments, but not "I hate you now" judgments.)

There's been no international travel, nobody going to illegal apartment nightclubs, no refusals to wear masks or vaccine rejection. Or if there has, they have been hiding it well, for which I am grateful, because I got enough anxiety seeing a friend post that they had a drink inside a restaurant (when this was well within the rules) let alone that they got on a plane for fun. (I shudder at the thought.)

"Unlike any other pandemic in history, our level of scientific knowledge and ability to communicate globally gave us the power to stop this virus. This is humanity’s first self-inflicted pandemic. Or rather, a bunch of people inflicted it on the rest of us because of selfishness, ignorance, or both. If you are one of those people, you have by definition not had to deal with me or my tribe — the ones that took this seriously, the ones who fought this thing tooth and nail, or who stayed home except to do the most needful things. But when we are all back together, this is going to be a new and terrible social problem. If you were out, helping to spread this virus, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s going to be a long time before I know how to forgive you.

You should probably just lie about it for the rest of your life."

It's ridiculously harsh and also not wrong

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I Don't Know Who Needs to Hear This, But...

... if you "spiritually open yourself up" to COVID and then contract the virus, you are not actually engaging in a selfless act that will help humanity nor are you protecting anyone else from it. There is not a finite amount of COVIDs in the world and you used one of them up. In fact, you are hurting us all by further transmitting the dang virus and giving it more opportunities to kill people and mutate. So maybe just close that spiritual door, thank you.

(Yes, this was inspired by an actual conversation I had with an actual human person who thought he "did his part" by getting COVID. I was a little too taken aback in the moment to respond properly. Luckily, that's what blogs are for.)

An animated gif video montage of people facepalming

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Let's Just Get the Men to Debut Their Looks Too and We're All Good

I just started (and then stopped) reading a Vice article about things you can do that aren't "get hot" during the theoretically-waning days of pandemic isolation, and one of them suggested coming up with a new hairstyle and then "rolling it out slowly" over social media "so your friends have time to adjust."

WHHHHHHYYYYYYYYY???????

How do you "slowly roll out" a look over Instagram? You post a photo of it. Bam. It's there. People see the whole thing all at once. So far there's no slow-reveal filter. (Which is actually surprising.)

Are we... worried?... about seeing our friends in-person with new hair for the first time? Will they not recognize us? Will it traumatize them to see their friend with a new hair colour or braids? What exactly do they need to "get used to" before they see us in person? (Assuming we ever get to see one another in person anyways.)

Honestly, this is just making me think of how we discuss famous ladies and their style choices, which is always in terms of an intentional impact on others.

Katie Holmes "shows off her legs" in tight pants instead of just wearing skinny jeans. Adele "debuts" her new body instead of just living inside it and posting a photo because it's her birthday.

Yes, we do sometimes dress for others or "debut" a new look with an in-person or online "ta-da!" moment. But COME ON. All we're really doing with this language is reinforcing the idea that women's bodies are for public display and consumption.

Y'know why? Because I have never seen a caption that says, "Matt Damon shows off his arms in t-shirt," or "Idris Alba debuts his new body in Instagram photo." No one suggests that men "slowly roll out" a new look online so their friends "get used to it." IT'S NOT A THING.

A video gif of Steve Harvey in a suit. He awkwardly opens his arms up in a "ta-da" motion, as if he's showing something off, with the words "ta-da" on the bottom of the screen.

Steve Harvey TV

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Today I Am Done With

Keeping my face passive while people talk at me about things that we have discussed several times over and I actually just asked you to confirm one piece of information with me not rehash your side of our previous conversation(s) thanks.

Paying attention to what time it is before I drink more caffeine.

Keeping my face passive on Zoom meetings while a people wax poetic about how people are dying to get back into the theatre and everything will be okay and everyone shouldn't worry and sure everything will be okay, eventually, in one way or another but guess what? We still have to make 15 contingency plans in the meantime for all the unknown variables and that's still a lot of work.

Getting pangs of fear whenever I find out a routine expense is increasing.

Conservative politicians claiming that a carbon tax takes away people's right to put food on their tables while Bill Gates wants to save us from climate change by filling the sky with chalk to dim the sun.

Watching COVID restrictions expand and contract with very little rhyme or reason while my age group gets blamed for things going wrong.

Watching people snipe online about things that I think are inconsequential and yes I realize one could argue that I'm doing that right now, snipe snip snipe.

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Should You Tell Your Friend That Their Innocuous Action Made You Think of Sex? A Guide

Here's something that is CASE IN POINT for PART OF THE PROBLEM when it comes to women being sexualized at every turn, no matter what we do:

A friend of mine posted a photo the other day. It's a classic "pensive" shot, where you see the back of her head and her shoulders as she looks out at the ocean. In the caption, she shared about some of the challenges she's been facing. It was personal and vulnerable and the photo reflected the thoughtful nature of her post.

The first comment?

A male friend (or "friend," I don't know) of hers comments on how hot her shoulders look and says "I've always been a shoulders guy... also kneecaps."

I'm sorry, WHAT? Is that really a thought you needed to share? With someone who is being vulnerable about their emotionally challenging week? Do you think it will make her feel better to suddenly find herself being sexualized right now? "Sorry you're sad but I thought you should know that your shoulders make me think of sex." READ THE ROOM, BRAD.

Here's the thing: I don't care what your thoughts are doing. If you look at my shoulders and think of sex, whatever. That's a "you" thing. Unless we are in a sex-related situation, you definitely don't need to share that thought. (Also, just because you had a sexual thought doesn't mean a situation is sexual!!!!)

Excuse me, I need to go primal scream.

Broad City

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If Debt Forgiveness Has Got Your Goat, Remember Who the Real Enemy Is

It's natural to feel a bit ripped off if you've worked hard and sacrificed for something that just gets handed out the next minute for free.

But remember: the enemy is not the "handout", it's the capitalism, complacency, scarcity, and greed that kept your sweet hands handout-free in the first place.

When I was an apprentice at a theatre company, I got paid a measly $600/month stipend. Two years later (when I was on staff), the apprentice stipend got increased to $1,000/month, just because someone who they really wanted asked for an increase.

I felt two things: happy for the new apprentices who would make closer to a decent amount of money and also upset that I'd had to live off much less and now it was going to increase to what was practically a lavish wage to me at the time. (Oh what teensy tiny expectations I had.)

What really got me wasn't the fact that the increase was happening, it was how easily the wage changed and the knowledge that I had not been valued in the same way.

Because that's all it takes to increase a wage or forgive a debt: a decision. A little bit of will. One person to value the work or life of another.

The problem isn't that someone eventually might make that decision, the problem is that a bunch of people spent so long maintaining the opposite decision--the one that kept you in debt or at an inhumanly low wage.

So feel your rage, if you've got it, just send it in the right direction.

An animated gif from The Hunger Games - a man stands in a jungle at night calling back towards the camera, "remember who the enemy is"

Kate Tumblr

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I Am Writing This Instead of Yelling At Twitter

(NOTE: The author of the tweet in question has made their entire account private since I wrote this post! Sorry you can't go through and see the whole thread.)

I read a Twitter thread and it really annoyed me and so I am going to unpack it here.

This is the first tweet:

Not having children is a form of privilege, and it's one we don't talk about nearly enough.
— isaacs (@izs) June 26, 2020

He goes on, over way too many tweets that I am kind of embarrassed I took the time to read and then review for the sake of a rebuttal that he will never see nor care about but I need to get off my chest, to describe how the job of parenting is a burden and people who don't have kids get to live in blissful ignorance to this and yet children are needed for society to continue so... privilege.

Here's where he has a point:

1) Raising kids is really hard work, and seems to have gotten harder as the years go on and we learn more and more about the 'best' ways to raise kids. Also, parents often feel alone, isolated, and unsupported in this hard work and that's a very real problem.

2) The patriarchy means that this work still mostly goes to women. This is also a very real problem.

3) We may feel a love for our pets that seems akin to love for children, but ultimately, pets are not children.

4) Just because people often choose parenting doesn't make it easier.

Great. That's out of the way.

Here's where he is effing ANNOYING:

1) The whole choice thing. Yes, procreation is necessary to the furthering of our species, and on an innate, evolutionary level that's probably a big part of your drive to have kids, but really, you wanted kids because you had strong feeeeeelllllliiiiiiiings. (I realize that many people don't feel they have a choice in the matter. This is a problem, for sure.)

2) I don't think privilege generally is a thing you can opt into our out of.

3) Speaking of choice, there are people who can't have kids (by birth or adoption) for a number of reasons who desperately want them. They may have more free time, but they may also live in deep hearbreak. Where does their privilege lie?

4) Parents are, indeed, less happy than their childless/childfree counterparts while their children are young, but then once their kids are adults they are actually much happier than others. So I guess parents with adult children are the ones with privilege???

CLICK TO READ MORE »

Let's Fill Our Hearts With Impotent Rage, Big Oil Edition

Do you feel like you haven't had a reason to fume lately? How about the fact that oil companies knew and hid climate change forty years ago?

Giphy

I'm pretty sure there isn't enough anger in the world right now, so here's something to get mad about: the oil companies actually knew about climate change and their industry's impact on it 30-40 years ago. They just quashed the info in favour of profit.

It's true! New reports released show that Exxon figured out what was happening climate change-wise in the 70's, before the public became aware, and spent millions on misinformation campaigns and by 1988 Shell was onto the same game.

Guys, this is why I get pretty cynical about our ability to turn this whole climate change thing around. Humanity as a long and storied history of putting money before our own well-being and I don't know that I see that changing anytime soon. I mean, it's not even really a surprise, it's just a confirmation of something we all knew deep down in our hearts all along.

Thankfully, other people are still trying! For us Canadians, there's Shake Up the Establishment, which will follow the climate platforms of all major political parties leading up to our election this fall, and I don't know about you guys, but I have seen more and more protest happening in my fair city.

Now should we take some kind of legal action against these oil companies for literally choosing to kill their great-grandkids so that they could increase their profit shares? Reckless endangerment? (You can tell I don't know anything about the law, but I do know that a group of high school students are suing the US government for their role in climate change.)

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Just One More Thing for Women Who Want to Have Babies to Worry About

There are so many things women are supposed to think about when they want to have babies.

Photo by Melanie Brown.

I just came across this article, called How to Time Your Next Pregnancy to Reduce Health Risks, and my first thought was, "oh for pete's sake! Can we just let women who want to have babies take five seconds without feeling pressure to do it perfectly???"

If you want to have a baby, you're already supposed to stop drinking before you've even gotten pregnant, get fit, avoid stress, eat and sleep well, and take prenatal supplements. You should also have money and a job and a stable relationship, be happy and full of love, hopeful for the future, and feel like a life-giving goddess. You need to know exactly what is going to happen with said job and be prepared for the judgement you will inevitably receive no matter what your choice is.

Then there is the timing. The TIMING! Did you know that if your baby is born in January they will probably do better in school? Is your work seasonal and therefore you should ideally be starting maternity leave at a particular time of year? Do you have other life events to work this pregnancy around? How old are you? Are you too young or too old? Trick question! You are both! At the same time!

And now, into the mix: the timing of your subsequent children.

I don't know, guys. Can we just chill?

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Bots to auto-like your friends' posts: giving social media a bad name

Image Source: RawPixel

Okay okay okay, I realize that social media doesn't need external help in dragging its name through the mud. What with its algorithms that induce silos and hide meaningful information in favour of the sensational and reinforce our moods and perspectives, it's pretty muddy on its own.

But here is something just insane: a bot that auto-likes your friends' posts on Instagram.

It was invented by a guy so that he could like his girlfriend's posts without having to put the effort into actually looking at them.

The weirdest thing is not that this exists, but that I came across it in an article about how useful it is.

Do I even need to say why this is terrible? Okay, I will:

One: It is patronizing. It assumes that you need to appease someone by liking all their posts.

Two: It is manipulative. It tricks someone into thinking you like their posts, why? So that they will like you more? So that they will think you like them more?

Three: It is deceptive. You don't actually like all their posts, nor do you like this person enough to a) bother looking at their posts or b) respect them and not trick them.

Four: It feeds into narcissism. If your friend/partner really does need to be appeased by having all their posts liked, it just feeds into that insanity. If someone is really asking you why you didn't like every single one of their posts, they have a problem, not you.

Five: It sets you up to look stupid. What if you like a post about their dog dying? Or where they say something like "if you like this, that means you agree with _____"?, which I wouldn't put past the type of person who demands all their posts be liked. What if they say something in reference to the post you liked and you have no idea what they're talking about because you didn't actually see it?

Six: Just stop it. Stop it. No. Put it down. Stop.

Image Source: Giphy

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If depression and anxiety are gifts, they are the worst gifts ever

Image by Emma Darvick.

I have been reading a lot of things lately about anxiety and depression and how maybe they can be seen as a blessing in disguise or a gift, and, well, I have a reaction to that.

ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION ARE NOT FUCKING GIFTS.

(Sorry, mom and dad. I feel very strongly about this one.)

If someone asks me whether my depression was a gift, I just sit back and wonder what I could have done with myself if I hadn't been smothered in darkness for most of my life.

Depression is a dark, horrible pit of emptiness and self-loathing. Anxiety is a swirling fire of never-ending, fear-driven questions. They both leave you feeling entirely cut off from the rest of the world. These are not blessings.

Just like overcoming any hardship, learning how to manage depression and anxiety might result in something positive: I may have more compassion and drive to follow dreams as a result of my efforts, but it could have just as easily gone the other way. Depression's expertise, after all, is selfishness, detachment, and meaninglessness, not compassion and dreamy hope.

Any blessings that can be attributed to depression or anxiety are just strengths people already had that emerged during the struggle. It's like the ending to The Wizard of Oz, where everyone learned that they had heart, brains, and courage all along. Sure, they discovered it thanks to this journey, but any number of circumstances could have brought them out.

Listen, I get it. It sucks to be depressed and it can feel good to reframe it as at least partially positive. That's fine if it helps you as an individual. Just be careful when you talk about it publicly - imagine being told that depression is a gift while you were living in the bottom of that pit. Would it give you hope? It sure didn't for me.

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This Really Gets My Goat: The high school edition

A high school in Florida has segregated its eating privileges by scholastic achievement.

Students who get a GPA of over 2.0 get a WRISTBAND and that wristband gives them access to the privilege of going outside for lunch.

Can we just NOT with the segregation? Let's all use this as an inspiration of what not to do.

I think I'm just going to leave this here and if you don't recognize why this is a terrible idea on your own, let me know and I'll rant at you.

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Blade Runner then and now: still sexist

Photo credit: Jonathas Scott via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

This summer, I watched Blade Runner for the first time. Now I have seen Blade Runner 2049.

First of all, if you're a huge Blade Runner fan, you can just write me off now: I didn't think the first movie was very good. Before your hackles get completely raised, YES the visuals were beautiful. I understand that they were some kind of advancement for the time. The look and feel of the world was quite something to behold.

It was also a little heavy-handed if you ask me. They really sacrificed storytelling in favour of sweeping imagery.

The movie also includes a straight-up rape that's passed off as seduction and that REALLY sucks. (He tries to kiss her, she resists and tries to leave, he stops her, pushes her against a wall so she can't move and makes her ask for a kiss and tells her to kiss him back like she means it before having sex with her. DING DING DING! That's a rape. Oh, but then she convinces herself that it was actually love and stays with him, as rape victims sometimes do to avoid facing the horrible thing that just happened to them, and so it's okay? NOPE.)

Blade Runner 2049 has some improvements.

The story is much much better. It actually makes sense! The acting is good! It deepens the question of what it means to be human in interesting ways.

The visual world is just as stunningly crafted, and since it uses modern special effects, is quite slick. They also manage the impossible task of having beautiful visuals while still moving the narrative forward. Progress!

The female characters even get to do some interesting things besides get raped. They have some element of agency. (Not too much though, don't worry!)

The background imagery of the world, though, is so objectifying of women it's just tiring. Most sweeping shots of the city include holographic ads for Coca-Cola and for some kind of sex service with a fully naked woman. Travel to another city and find giant statues of naked women. It's nipples, nipples everywhere! And why?

One could argue, perhaps, that the objectification is just a part of the dystopian nature of this future. Except that this "dystopian" future is basically our present, but without our prudishness towards nipples. This leads me to believe that the nearly all-male creator team simply wanted to throw some more boobs into the mix.

Also, I am a bit disappointed in my guy Ryan for perpetuating the narrative that the original movie's rape was part of a meant-to-be love story. I know you didn't write it, Ry Ry, but I still expected better of you.

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Hey look! It's an ad that is shaming people for being perfectly reasonable humans!

This ad just came up in my Facebook feed.

First of all, just because I am a female over thirty doesn't mean I am in the target market for mom stuff! Get with the program!

Second, are these people seriously serious? Not about their product, it's fine or whatever. A photo books app seems like a perfectly reasonable product idea. Go forth. It's the first 10 seconds of this ad that got my hackles up.

Are we seriously in a time now where printing one photo book for a year is PATHETIC? REALLY? Not to go all "back in my day" on you, but BACK IN MY DAY, we filled our photo albums over the course of YEARS. That's right. One album often contained YEARS worth of photos. You want to know why? Mostly because every photo you took cost money, so we would only take photos of actual important events. We didn't photograph every single freaking moment of our lives.

I get that we now take and share a bazillion photos because it's free and easy and if you don't claim your social media existence at least once a day you quite literally disappear into oblivion and nobody can find you ever again. But having printed copies? Of EVERYTHING? In books that you'll show your friend once and then put on a shelf and then you have so many stupid photo books on your shelf and you can't throw them out, because they are precious photos of your family, but you are running out of SPACE. All because this stupid ad made you feel bad for having "only" one photo book made in the year.

ONE PHOTO BOOK A YEAR IS PLENTY, YOU JERKS. STOP MAKING PEOPLE FEEL BAD FOR LIVING THEIR LIVES IN A PERFECTLY REASONABLE WAY.

(I mean, the mom in their ads is quite funny. I inadvertently went down a rabbit hole of watching their videos and she's pretty great. But just because she hilariously captures the joy of stress eating in a pantry doesn't mean she's RIGHT.)

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Guys! Something not very realistic happened - on a TV SHOW!

If you like to watch TV shows about supernatural things, like, say, Buffy, you may have noticed a weird trend.

On these shows, wherein the world at large does NOT recognize the presence of supernatural beings, regular people who feel they aren't getting enough wealth, dates, or medals, quickly turn to summoning demons.

Really?

I mean, I realize that these shows aren't exactly paragons of verisimilitude (oooooh, look at that fancy word I just pulled out!), but really? A regular person is unsatisfied with their life, finds a dusty old library book with ceremonies for summoning demons, and says, "sure, why not?"

And then, naturally, they have no problem sacrificing other humans to that demon in order to get their wealth/dates/medals. Because any person will shrug their shoulders at that when presented the opportunity.

(I have nothing else to say here, the entire point of this post is pointing out that something unrealistic happened on Buffy. The show where, not only do vampires et al. exist, but every generation chooses one teenage girl to fight them, and then I guess the rest of the world where she doesn't live suffers quite a bit with unchecked evil. Oh, and secret government organizations put chips in vampires heads to keep them from being violent and gypsies curse other vampires to have a soul that they'll only lose if they are really happy which comes from having sex with a vampire slayer and thousand year-old demons are afraid of bunnies.)

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Get your eyes rolling with Cynical Cindy

I am generally pretty optimistic and into seeing beauty and spiritual connections everywhere. Other times, I am a Cynical Cindy. Nothing gets my eyes rolling like meaningless platitudes.

I recently came across this quote:

“If you’re brave enough to say goodbye.
Life will reward you with a new hello.”
– Paulo Coelho

Sometimes you just need to be a little bit cynical.

Ugh. Nope. Sorry. I don't think so. Not how that works.

Sometimes you say goodbye and are left with nothing but an empty hole in your guts, because that's just reality.

You might argue that, in this case, the "hello" the universe is rewarding you with is yourself. That mayyyyyybe there was no external hello, but the act of bravely saying goodbye introduces you to a new side of yourself that you are delighted to meet. Sure, if that happens that's nice. It also doesn't always happen and it's not really the same thing.

Ugh! Ugh! Ugh! Come on! Cynical Cindy is rolling her eyes SO MUCH!

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I'm not sure how I feel about this: Dove's "real body" bottles

Dove, champion of making money off of body positivity and commercialized feminism, has taken a step in making the fact that women have differently-shaped bodies more tangible (beyond, you know, the tangibility of actual women's bodies). They have made bottles in six different curvy shapes.

The real question here: do the bottles all have different names so we can all start to categorize ourselves based on what kind of bottle we represent, or do we still all have to compare our bodies to fruit? Where are the articles where you pick your body bottle and then get told the best bikini for your body bottle shape? Should I be aspirational in my bottle choice, or realistic?

PS: After writing this I turned to the google and found that - oh look - the internet beat me to this article a month ago when the bottles were announced, and they were way funnier about it on Twitter. WELL TOO BAD, GUYS! I am behind the times and you'll just have to deal with that!

Photo Source: Mashable.com

Also, Dove responded in the typical "we hear you, but really you misunderstood us so it's all your fault and we're great" way:

Source: @Dove

Uggggghhhhh... Corporate non-apologies are so BORING.

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