Egotistical Whining

How to Tell You're in a Toni Morrison Novel

2014-07-21T04:01:00.000-07:00

Yes this is a Mallory Ortberg fanpost.

You walk into town. A plague of robins follows you.
You find out your family history by the song the children sing.
You are named after a Bibical character or a random object.
A aura of incest surrounds you.
Ghosts haunt you.

Another PSA

2013-05-22T06:57:00.002-07:00

Employed people: There has been some confusion on what a job lead is. So let's play Goofus and Gallant. Goofus says "Hey! I saw a sign at a fast food place that said it was hiring!" "Gallant says "Hey, my workplace is looking for an office assistant. Here's the manager's number". Goofus thinks our applicant can just show up at a random fast food place and get hired- despite being over/underqualified. Gallant realizes that matching the experience of the friend to the job is important, finds a spot that is actually hiring, and gives his friend the hookup.

Goofus says "Here's some random links I found on the internet!" Gallant says "I told my professional contacts that you were looking.". Goofus thinks his unemployed friend doesn't have the internet and can't use a search engine. Gallant knows that giving material help that the jobseeker couldn't get by just using google is important.

Goofus says "Man, why are you on the internet if you're looking for work?" Gallant says "Let's watch movies at my place." Goofus still believes that pounding the pavement will get you anything other than "apply online." Gallant knows that the process is long and hard- and life can't be put on hold for people who may take months to get back to you. If ever.

What Salt Sugar Fat Reads like

2013-03-09T19:04:00.000-08:00

I read the book Sugar Salt Fat, and it's ripe for parody. Note: while many of the facts in this parody are exaggerated, and all quotes by officials made up, there is such a thing as 'exercise addiction' and a 'runner's high'. The exercise classes are real. The thing about kids 'twerking' also real.

The exercise industry keeps pushing more and more variety to get us hooked. Pi Yo, Soul Cycle, Pole Fitness, Zumba.. ever increasing ways to get us coming back. A member of the exercise industry admits "People don't want the same old class. We need to change it up and keep it fresh". When asked if he himself goes to these classes he says "I'm pretty busy so I don't go as much as I should."

We go to the lab. An important scientist shows me the data. Exercise lights up the same opiate pathways as black tar heroin. Once hooked, the same reward pathways as crack cocaine light up, leaving you wanting ever longer workouts at ever greater intensity. Heavy users have been known to run over a 100 miles a week, putting themselves at risk for lifelong foot problems and death. More and more people have been keeling over from exercise related causes, and many more are undergoing knee replacements and other surgery due to excessive exercise. The pushers in the industry are blase'. "Sure, some people injure themselves exercising. That's why we have labels warning you to consult with your doctor before trying a new regimen.". With that as cover, the carnage goes on.

The industry has even gotten to our children at younger and younger ages. From Pee Wee football to Mommy and Me yoga classes, children are being encouraged to take up exercise. During kid orientated shows such as SpongeBob and My Little Pony - exercise is being pushed by kid friendly characters such as NFL players who suggest exercise is fun, and healthy. The industry is creating child sized equipment such as hula hoops and jump ropes out of cancer causing plastic to hook young consumers. Research suggests children exposed to exercise are more likely to become heavy users as adults and to try more varied regimens. Children have a higher capacity for exercise than adults as any parent who has tried to keep up with a game of running around and screaming for no particular reason knows.

The industry has even infiltrated our schools with 'workout leaders' leading children in 'twerking out'- the better to encourage heavier and heavier use. With every park, tree lined street and school as a site for exercise, things seem bleak. It's a minefield with every turn leading you to biking, dancing and at extremes- fucking around with a giant weighted hula hoop. What can we do? Nothing. The industry is omnipresent. All we can do is cut down on exercise time, and hope.

Provide Your Own Tools

2012-10-30T15:50:00.001-07:00

stuff I was expected to provide for jobs:

My own work ID - a job I had
My own SUV - a job I got turned down for, for that reason.
My own 'reliable transportation' - every job ever
My own laptop - the same job that I was to provide my own work ID for.
My own cell phone - ditto.

I'm glad I'm not a poor person.

Unemployment

2012-09-27T13:33:00.001-07:00

I've been unemployed for nearly a year. Of course I know that it's harder to land a job when you've been out . Personally, I think this is a stupid system. Then again, I don't think you need years of experience to answer phones. Basically, our employment system is horribly inefficient, full of hoops to jump over and is a ridiculous parody of life. I've got nothing useful to say. Just saying.

Bullshit

2012-09-20T06:50:00.000-07:00

In today's employment environment, there's a lot of what I call bullshit. For example, computer applicant screening. We'll have people who can be qualified to say "this is Staples. How may I help you?" or sort through boxes of stuff, but can't get hired because the computer says they live too far away or they can't figure out the right combination of answers- good but not too good, to fool the system. So people are frozen out.

On interns, fuck you, pay me. Why? Because if they can work someone 12 hours per day for free, they won't hire anyone on for a job. So the economy is stifled since you can't buy anything nice on $0/hr, so no jobs are created in other industries, so it's a horrible cycle.

What connects these two? Barriers for otherwise qualified people. It used to be that it wasn't considered 'entitled' to expect to be paid for working like a dog or at least something more to show for it than student loans and credit card bills. It used to be that you could stock shelves without a complicated test on what you'd do if you knew that some other employee was smoking weed. And to be honest, the low level employee shouldn't worry about whether their store makes a profit. They should be concerned about customer service, about making sure everything is done properly, not about the stock options of the guy in the corner office.

The Jobs Project

2012-09-16T21:02:00.000-07:00

Oddly enough, when I lost my job, I stopped blogging. Or maybe it was before. It's difficult for me to remember now but I had so much to say that I had three blogs. Right now, I am obsessed with jobs and work. What others are doing for work, how do they get jobs, how the economy works. I read Hidden America full of the sort of hard working Americans (Ok, and some undocumented workers, but anyway, Americans) who are my opposites. I feel them scoffing at me, saying 'You afraid of a little hard work?" I admit I am. I'm scared of the bright white cubicles. I'm scared of being on my feet twelve hours a day. I'm afraid of doing my best and becoming beaten down and exhausted and thrown out like last week's trash. I'm scared of breaking my health, sacrificing myself for someone else's god who I am not sure I believe in. I would like someday to have my own desk.

Augusten Burroughs Is A Moron: A Series

2012-06-19T21:26:00.000-07:00

"I'm a complete and total fuckup. Why is exactly why I am equipped to write this book and tell you how to live" - Augusten Burroughs.

I enjoyed his series of books about his fucking up and his crazy family, embellished or no, but when he goes out of area, he looks like an idiot. The book starts off fine with an ancedote about that annoying SMILE! BE POSITIVE! person who you always meet (He meets his on an elevator) and how afrimations are bullshit. Basic stuff, but amusing enough. The How to Find Love chapter is amusing as well, but in a more idiotic way. There's a bunch of blather about how most people stay within a six mile radius. I'm not seeing how going to the bank on the other side of town will help me find love. I think that this is a case of assuming that people are all the same as you. When I go to the grocery store on the other end of the city, the same thing happens that happens in the grocery store in my neighborhood- I buy some groceries and go home. I'm sure Augusten strikes up life long friendships, booty calls, and job interviews everywhere he goes. Not being that person, the whole thing confuses me. In fact, I think this whole chapter could be condensed into "I got nothing. Maybe you have weird teeth or need to deeply accept your own soul. Whatever.'

The Fat and Thin chapters are also stupid(you may be noticing a theme here). The fat chapter is stupid in a boring 'You'd be thin if you wanted it enough, and weren't worried about being hotter than your sister" way. Oddly enough, he doesn't talk about brass tack issues such as food is avaliable and delicious and activity is harder to fit in without actual planning leading to fatness. The thin chapter is really stupid, since he speaks directly to anorexics, which is intensely outside of his area, and possibly a bit dangerous.

I'm OK with him dealing out the thinness is really a metaphor for what you truly want in life crap to folks who want to lose ten pounds, but when we get into anorexia, and his theories about it, I want him to sit down, shut up, and realize his claim to fame is being a kid with a fucked up family and being drunk. No matter how much you think anorexia is about control, and are shocked shocked that they are in HOSPITALS with RULES, there's no need for the BS about throwing your anorexic daughter out of the house with only a credit card. I'm not actually afraid that someone will try this (much). It's just the sort of thing that is too stupid even to post on twitter, let alone in a book. The reason I read a book is to read something with better quality control than the crap I read on twitter, OK?

The next chapters will be self pity, confidence and how to fail.

2012-06-11T15:18:00.001-07:00

I'm going to have to require everyone to shut up about participation trophies. First, not everyone under the age of 30 was in a youth soccer league- possibly due to the parents not being able to afford to let their kids participate. And really, who is giving out the trophies? I know the 6 year olds aren't going "Man, I'd play soccer, but I won't get a participation trophy at the end". It's the grown ups not telling their children that they suck at soccer, are failures, and should not even go out on the pitch with such noncompetitive soccer skills. Also, that life sucks, and then you die. Let's get real here. The 6 year olds know who is good at soccer, people. They know who scored the game winning goal , and who couldn't kick the ball if his or her life depended on it.

I think the real cause for their ire is the idea that young folks are enjoying themselves with no whiff of Calvinist dog eat dog. Everyone gets to eat pizza and have a party- the worst player and the best player. There's an equality in that that people who feel that everything is a hierarchy can't understand as anything else but character destroying. But the truth is that most of us won't be the best at anything. And those who can be the best- they love the thing enough to go through the hard parts without external reward. I think people do their best when work becomes real to them. When they feel their efforts are of use. Without meaning to work, people flounder, and with young people, it's easy to say that we lack some essential verve because we're 'soft'. But, maybe people want to bring great customer service to people instead of annoying them with credit card offers. Maybe people want to help children blossom not teach state performance indicators or worry about a child's wellness reducing cash flow. Maybe people want to be able to take pride in their work, and then only way to create pride is to create work that matters. I guess it's easier to complain about trophies.

2012-04-22T20:29:00.002-07:00

I think these three articles from separate magazines form a single story. In Nothing We trust about a man betrayed by capitalism, government, and church. Drawing from the same well, this story has intelligent comments that actually add to the discussion In both of these, they speak about how megachurches have filled in for the institutions we have let decay. Jails for Jesus is the last stage of this. Christian prisoners get special privileges, gays are told to become 'ex gay' and actual therapy is pushed aside for religion. The state subsidizes this. Shame.

2012-01-17T08:24:00.000-08:00

More workers replaced by interns. Big companies are basically taking a shit on everyone(the folk probably still have to pay for the god damn college credit) and we're whining about how they are job creators? Fuck them.

2011-05-22T13:22:00.000-07:00

A huge problem with being sexyfun as this great blog post calls it is that when they branch out beyond their right to be conventionally attractive, and sexually performative, they are going to get the same push back that the rest of us get. It's easy for patriarchal and so called liberal men to be supportive of their feminism when it's about laying back and getting a hummer, but when they hear demands for them to provide childcare, support poor women or hold other men accountable, they may not push back by calling our sexyfun pals hairy(although I think it's silly to base your feminism around fear of being called hairy. Most people in this world are 'hairy' by our beauty standards. Basically, they call us hairy or frigid or whatever not because we are those things, but because we'll shut up and run around trying to prove we're cute and sexually fun if they call us that), but they'll be considered shrill harpies as much as the nonsexyfun.

And contrasting oneself as not like those bad other women who refuse or are unable to take part in the patriarchal sexuality games doesn't seem to be very effective or very feminist, so watch it,folks!

2011-05-17T19:51:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm glad the pendulum is starting to swing back. Years after Seligman's insights, while correct and helpful in their way, were watered down into a list of 'shoulds' about how we 'should' feel, and how we are doomed, doomed, doomed, if we're unhappy. My moods, like many people's, are not completely under my conscious control, and I do resent being morally judged for it.

2011-05-02T18:48:00.000-07:00

I don't think people are just trying to score points. People are truly hurt by our words and by being overlooked. No one's hands are clean, but I think the wounds are real. I'm reading Lost Christianities, and these bruising arguments, these virulent debates on what real Christianity is, went on for centuries, and in fact, are still going on today. I'm not saying feminism is a religion- what I'm saying is that forming an ideology is a painful, emotionally heated thing. We can't all fall in line. Our pains and our qualms, they are real. They aren't just 'scoring points'.

2011-04-17T07:32:00.000-07:00

I learned that people who aren't cheery optimists aren't just thought criminals, we're emotional criminals as well, thanks to this super useful Oprah magazine article.

This is too stupid to parse every single dumb fuck paragraph, but suffice it to say that normal behavior such as wanting emotional support from your sister or having a bad day and snapping at someone is converted into a sign of emotional depravity. If your mom makes a comment about you having to work harder for success- it's a dagger. If your sister is sad and wants support, she's a cannibal. A lady made fun of your speech? She is just like a rapist. (BTW: it's not normal to check your husbands emails. Like wtf?)

Really, I'm going to have to quote the whole damn thing:

. Dementors
The woman who publicly shamed Pamela after her speech was the most destructive kind of emotional mugger, the equivalent of a rapist: someone who gets off on causing pain. In Harry Potter's world, such beings are called dementors. They are endlessly unhappy, addicted to the sense of control they get from violating others. They don't care whom they hurt, as long as they hurt someone.

Emo-Do Defense: If someone attacks with no provocation and seems intent on inflicting maximum harm, you may be dealing with a truly disturbed person. First, eat some chocolate (any Harry Potter fan can tell you that). Then distance yourself in any way you can. This wasn't a problem for Pamela—she was easily able to avoid her attacker—but may be daunting if you've got a dementor in the family or at work. If you can't remove yourself from the relationship, at least keep your emotional distance. Don't trust a dementor with your private thoughts.

Staying away from dementors allows them to socially self-destruct—and they always do. Though onlookers may at first be too horror-stricken to come to your rescue, most people are appalled by dementors' behavior. This is why cruel conversationalists ultimately end up friendless, and—on a much larger scale—why evils like prejudice and discrimination have slowly but surely become less acceptable in almost every human society.

She just doesn't think Pamela's speech is stupid and has a rude way of expressing it- she's endlessly unhappy and addicted to control! That's a lot to read into one instance of dickish behavior. I also like the demonization of unhappiness- people aren't rude because they are rude, they are UNHAPPY- HOW AWFUL.

And of course, how this lady is encouraging people to treat their families. She encourages people to blow off their sisters who are in trouble, and ignore their mom's sensible(although oh noes pessimistic- you know that pessimism is the biggest thought crime!) advice by blowing it off as well. When these self centered happy faces get into real problems and someone blows them off, they'll whine about 'emotional mugging' but who is going to be there to support them?

The self centered emphasis on keeping in a good mood is silly. Oftentimes, life isn't about putting on a happy face. It's about connecting to others even if they are having a hard time. It's about accepting criticism, even if it's rude. It's about accepting that things may be harder than you thought. It may even involve respecting your husband's privacy. By focusing on keeping in a good mood, we can never truly grow up, and learn to work with people as they are and the world as it is.

2011-02-23T09:02:00.000-08:00

I want to laugh at this writer's naive faith in marriage. If only those girls got married, and adhered to my personal mortality... he doesn't exactly tell us what would happen. Would these unfinished boys magically become good fathers or would they still hand their children back to their mothers with cuts on their heads? Would the mothers end up not working nights somehow if they were married?

And I'm not seeing how shame would help at all. Maybe it would make us feel good about ourselves; we're such big and wise adults that we made teenage girls feel bad about themselves. A great feat that only maybe a zit or some brat at their school could do. Yea, that'll show them for having the sex! Oh, you say that shame would keep them from getting pregnant? Shame's not birth control. In fact, it can impede it if you're so ashamed for having sex without marriage that you don't take proper precautions thinking "Oh, we won't go all the way. I'm a good girl." or "I'm a slut anyway for having sex the first time. It's not like I can say no when Sleazy McSleaze wants it again". Shame can cut our teenage girl away from good options from reaching out to trusted adults if say, her sleazy boyfriend is making her uncomfortable and poking holes in the condoms or even from getting a ride someplace where she can get the condoms and the birth control.

And marriage? It's not fricking fucking magic. If we all married the first person we boinked, I get the feeling that the children wouldn't see much benefit after the eventual divorce. Instead of wanking off to fantasies of shaming teenagers into virginity, maybe a little birth control, real sex ed and support for mothers would go a long way? Nah! Better make them write essays! That's real helpful,man.

2011-02-09T09:07:00.000-08:00

I just get the feeling that it's not possible to have a company made completely of top performers. People's performance also shifts from day to day, week to week, year to year. We all say we want only the top people, but I wonder if it might be more effective to rely on a deep bench of people who are average instead of using up the 9s and 10s until they are 1s and 2s.

It also seems like a big waste of people to constantly fire everyone, make their lives hell....

2011-01-30T12:07:00.000-08:00

I admit that I like memoirs of ordinary undistinguished lives. Reading them I feel part of a sisterhood of plain janes. Some have been addicts, and I sympathize with their horrors, some are ordinarily quirky people, and I laugh with their foibles. Yes, the latest "I had a life that was filled with interesting horrors/ amusing detours" book may not shake civilization to its core, but that's not what I read them for. OK, I admit it- to me, they are the written equivalent of television. I read, I'm briefly entertained and I move on.

Not every book has to be a deathless literary feat.

2011-01-22T06:42:00.000-08:00

This article about being an escort is interesting. Whenever a woman is seen trying to achieve something, there always seems to be an added question- is she fuckable? It seems half the criticism of feminists is that we don't try hard enough to be fuckable, since you know, that's what we should worry about most.

2011-01-02T19:35:00.000-08:00

People who say that if you have time to complain, you have time to change things are idiots. Why? It took me 20 seconds to type the first sentence of the post. Now, if I was to tackle a common problem- 'losing ten pounds' or 'being more organized', at least a week would be required. Losing ten pounds would require planning out exercise- "should I wake up at 5:30 to run three miles?", a meal plan (which includes figuring out what exactly is healthy), and then actually doing the cooking and running. This is hours of effort. And of course, this is not easy either- there will be times where I eat tons of delicious foods, and times in which I sleep in. So losing ten pounds may in fact take months, or even a year.

I get the feeling that people who say things like this just don't think about what they are saying, but they should. When people say things like that, they make light of change, which is brutally hard work.

2010-12-31T09:30:00.001-08:00

A huge peeve I have is the idea that there's a minority of people who produce and the rest of us are useless parasites. Many people use social services yet produce a lot of things, such as they stock our groceries, cook and serve our food, and clean our buildings. They pay sales tax, gas tax, and tons of other taxes. Without the workers, without the people who do the making, the shipping, the paperwork, the folks on top wouldn't have any profits to gamble with.

2010-12-27T16:36:00.000-08:00

I don't think marriage will fix an $8000 a year income. At best, you'll have two broke people who can't find gainful employment and their kids. I think that really, focusing on moral stuff like whether so and so believes in 'hard work' is pretty silly. They can work hard all they want, but if there's no jobs or they get sick doing all that labor(and not to mention: if they have no way to monitor their children, the kids may end up in trouble), they're in the same position as they were.

Education is probably a good idea, and we need to improve our educational system to work for the children's needs instead of 'reformer's' pocketbooks. Of course, that's no guaentee- black college grads have an unemployment rate double of white college grades.

BTW: You can get food stamps and work. It's just that your job doesn't pay any money.

2010-12-18T07:52:00.000-08:00

NOW thinks up a clever way to deal with Hooters- if you're a family restaurant, you need to follow laws against sex discrimination, and if you're a titty bar with more clothes, you don't need kids there. Of course in the comments, there's a lot of complaining about how NOW women are BAD and JEALOUS because they aren't CONVENTIONALLY ATTRACTIVE. Personally, I think the best response to that is not to say BUT I'M A SUPER HOTTY! but to notice that it doesn't matter to the argument. It's a legal argument, not a beauty contest.

Also on feminist misquotes, Andrea Dworkin corrects the record in a 1995 interview.

2010-11-18T08:39:00.000-08:00

This comment really captures something that has bothered me for a long time about 'time management' People always say "I just make time!" as if somehow all time is equal. As if a sleepy afternoon hour when you can barely string together two sentences is the same as a peak energy morning hour! I try to put the most energy using tasks at the best times, but on some days, I have no good hours of energy. I have a lot to spend my few hours of energy on, and when I am working, I tend to spend it on work rather than recreational writing.

Of course, the heart of this issue of who surmounts impossible odds to write and who doesn't, is that it doesn't really matter all that much. Sometimes people in fact are just talking. Everyone who says "Oh, I'd like to write a novel someday, when I have time" does not in fact need to be told about how if they just wrote a hundred words a day, they'd have a novel way before retirement or told about how they need to make time to write.

Maybe they just like to think of themselves as creative, a little more interesting than their lives have turned out to be. And that's OK.

We all have little fantasies of ourselves being the sort of person who likes doing things that we really don't like to do. We want to imagine ourselves as the sort of people who travel to exotic locations and have adventures or do volunteer work, but some part of us understands that bugs, heat and exhaustion do not figure into our fantasies.

And so it is with fantasies of being a writer. People don't imagine rereading their words over and over and over to edit it, or being up at 5 am writing that new chapter. And that's fine.

2010-11-11T17:13:00.000-08:00

Advice for people who always complain that others don't heed their advice.

The thing is that the problem is not that people don't heed your advice. The problem is that you get twisted out of shape if people don't heed your advice. Advice is not a legally binding contract. If I tell someone not to buy brand name clothes, that they are all just made by the same sweatshops in China, and then they buy new name brand clothes, getting bent out of shape isn't going to help me at all. They probably heard my advice, and didn't think it worked for them. It's not a moral failing, they just like brand name clothing more than they like saving money.

And that's OK! This is not an epic battle for moral superiority! Giving advice is giving your opinion. Not everyone will agree with your opinion, and even if they do, everything is easier said than done.