let the less-loving one be me
and also what’s up with those vegans who would take a bullet for a pig but don’t care about the fate of their own species? every pair of sneakers you own was made by thai child slaves but you won’t drink milk because the cows were mistreated
July 2012
“The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. “Wouldn’t you say,” she asked, “that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?” No, I said, I wouldn’t say that. “But what about Basketball Diaries?” she asked. “Doesn’t that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun?” The obscure 1995 Leonardo Di Caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office (it grossed only $2.5 million), and it’s unlikely the Columbine killers saw it. The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. “Events like this,” I said, “if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn’t have messed with me. I’ll go out in a blaze of glory.”
In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of “explaining” them. I commended the policy at the Sun-Times, where our editor said the paper would no longer feature school killings on Page 1. The reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. Of course the interview was never used. They found plenty of talking heads to condemn violent movies, and everybody was happy.” —Roger Ebert (via vaginawoolf)
In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of “explaining” them. I commended the policy at the Sun-Times, where our editor said the paper would no longer feature school killings on Page 1. The reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. Of course the interview was never used. They found plenty of talking heads to condemn violent movies, and everybody was happy.” —Roger Ebert (via vaginawoolf)
Sagittarius! (have you answered this already? if so, then INSERT RANDOM ONE YOU HAVE YET TO ANSWER HERE)
THE SIMS. I have taken to hiding the discs away to stop the temptation but I always find them anyway, and it’s like, whoops! There goes another six hours of my life that I could have been productive! I don’t even like the game that much; it frustrates me to no end and frankly I think it’s kinda boring? But once I start I can’t stop.
Why I Love My Mother
- Politician at door: (blah blah blah)...and my strong commitment to traditional family values, as my wife of 28 years will attest.
- Shade's mom: Sir, I don't care if you have orgies every Tuesday night so long as you get your job done.
- Politician: ...
- Shade's mom: Also, if "traditional family values" is a sneaky way of saying "anti-gay marriage stance," you should know that my daughter is bisexual, and if I never get to cry at her wedding because some law you passed made her wedding illegal, I will personally see that your wife of 28 years has a lesbian awakening in time for you to discover the virtues of traditional divorce.
- Politician: ...you have yourself a nice day, m'am.
Capricorn, pls
This is a really tough one. If I’d been asked this two months ago, I’d have said my job; I worked at a preschool for a year and a half as an assistant teacher, and I was really good at it. I’ve had parents come to me and say that they trusted me with their children more than they did the lead teachers, that they would rather go to me for advice about their kids than anyone else, and that made me feel awesome about myself. Actually I was thinking about getting my CDA this summer, that way if my other outlandish plans for my future fell through, I could always come back and work with the kids, you know? Then my boss fired me because I called her out for discriminating against a Muslim family at our center.
And while I guess I could still claim that as an achievement—the job went away but the experience didn’t, after all—I’ve been putting a lot of distance between myself and it lately, so I don’t feel comfortable being proud of my time there, at least not right now. So, I guess I’ll say something slightly less deep and say this costume I’m working on! I’m not a cosplayer AT ALL and I’m definitely not a crafty person, but I really wanted to be Stephanie Brown!Robin for Halloween this year, and they don’t make a costume for her, so I was like, what the hell? I’ve got the time, I’ll make it myself. It’s kind of a wreck, right now, and it’s not even close to being done, but I’ve put so much work into it and it’s just so satisfying to me! Aside from my writing (and baking, occasionally, but I don’t bake a lot anymore), I’ve never really done anything where I could put my name to it and say, “look what I did!” It might not be the best-crafted costume in the world but I feel like a million bucks every time I make progress on it.
Leo!
At the moment, my most ambitious dream is kind of my life? I ended up going to my safety school to make my family happy, since it’s closer to home, but in return I decided to major in what I love learning about and throwing all future job security to the wind. So right now I’m double majoring in Classics and Anthropology, and the plan is to go to UChicago for grad school, and become a feminist archaeologist with an emphasis in Greek cult! We’ll see how that goes.
Other than that, I guess the dream I’ve harbored longest is being a writer, but logistically—I don’t know. I love to write, natch, and I don’t think I’m terrible. But I don’t trust myself to create my own worlds, my own situations. I like fanfiction because it’s less frustrating to me to play in other people’s sandboxes; I don’t worry so much about perfection, but whenever I think about doing any original writing, every idea I have I toss out almost immediately, because I ultimately only want to write things that I would enjoy reading, and my standards are ridiculous. I also really have a problem with my brain going too fast for the rest of me to keep up. I’m one of those people who have random bursts of creativity but by the time I catch up with myself, I’ve forgotten whatever it is that made me want to write in the first place. I’ve got at least four WIPs right now gathering dust because there was something I wanted to do with them but it got away from me. I’m not saying that writing is something I’ll never pursue, because I know that I’m still really young and things will change as I live more and experience more, but as of right now it’s just a pipe dream!
