Karen Walker is My Life Coach

A few things have happened in the last couple of weeks.  The semester is over.  *Squee* That means two and half blissful months of no papers and reclaiming my two full days off every week.  What will I do with the time?  I know post!  Post ridiculous musings, because I know you all really care what I think about the world.  I really have to make this summer break last because I’m already interviewing for another internship and next semester is my last semester of grad school.  That means starting January 2013 I am on the hunt for new employment.  It means no more folding shirts, worrying about unexpected visits from weights and measures, and no more cleaning pee out of dressing rooms.  Le sigh.  It is too much awesomeness to think about it.

In case you don’t live under a rock, all of us great Americans know that last week our fine and sassy black president came out like a glorious gay-marriage warrior and defended the gays gettin’ hitched. Much like the picture below:

via Jezebel

This came on the heels of old uncle Joe, saying that we all became accustomed to gays via the amazing show Will & Grace.  At first I thought that’s a rather laughable idea.  I mean I always thought gay men were cool. Always. I mean its just old uncle Joe trying to relate to the kids these days.  Then I read this article on NPR about the changing archetype of gay characters and how characters on shows like Will & Grace and Modern Family, and don’t forget Willow on Buffy, have made mainstream America more open to the LGBTQ community. I started to think about my own taste in media and how it has shaped to my love of gay culture.

First and foremost I should start by saying that my best friend and brother from another mother is gay.  He and I have been besties for over ten years.  I love him with all my heart. Secondly I do not identify as a “fag hag.”  I actually really hate the term, because I am in no way a hag and it just sounds vile.  Also I am not someone who is friends with someone just because they identify as queer.  There are plenty of gay people that I have disliked just as much as straight people.  On the other hand I have had a lot of gay friends, I go to PRIDE every year, and I am an ardent gay rights activist.  I have to say though I don’t know if I would be all of those things if it weren’t for Karen Walker.

I think inside of me there is a fabulous gay man waiting to get out.  When I was just a small young thing I used to watch Designing Women and The Golden Girls with my granny. Suzanne Sugarbaker was my hero and I wanted my best friend to be Anthony Bouvier.  I remember being six and wanting to become a fat old pageant queen.  I thought Anthony was the greatest and when I saw him on Saturday mid-morning rerun of Mannequin, I definitely knew our friendship was written in the stars. The Golden Girls were the original Sex in the City, except those ladies had more class and were definitely more stylish.  The fact that I once told my mother she reminded me of Bea Arthur and meant it as a compliment, only tells more about me than words can say. I remember being in middle school some years later and there was a boy in my class that everyone called “gay.”  I didn’t really understand what it meant and I think at times I even gave him crap about it.  The thing is I didn’t do it to bully him; I thought he should embrace it.  Being gay meant he was different, but I always wanted to be different and unique.  It would take me years to realize that I am horribly mediocre. I even had pink hair in high school for Christ’s sake.  Years later he and I are still “friends” via Facebook and he is out and proud.

Now let me return to how Karen Walker changed my life for the better.  When I was in eighth grade two things happened, I saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time and Will & Grace became part of my weekly routine.  I have since grown out of Rocky Horror unless its Halloween and I have nothing better to do.  Still the movie opened up my eyes to a world of androgyny, sex, and the beauty of the rock musical.  I don’t know what my mother was thinking but she let me watch it over and over again, and even took me to a midnight showing.  I was allowed to paint my fingernails blue, wear heavy eye makeup, and shop at Hot Topic when it was still for goths.  At the same time this was happening I fell in love with Karen Walker. She was the anti-Grace.  Grace was dorky, unsure of herself, and in love with a relationship with a gay man that could never be replicated with a heterosexual male.  Karen on the other hand was loud, brash, self-confident, a gold digger, and a boozer.  The best part about Karen is that she also had a nemesis played by the truly awesome Leslie Jordan.  If you don’t know who he is, he’s basically Truman Capote if he had been a comedian.  I wanted a gay man the size of a jockey to be my nemesis.  Lest I forget the enigmatic Jack.   After I saw Karen and Jack, all thoughts of Anthony Bouvier flew out the window.  I knew what I must do, find my Jack.  And I did.  Except now that we’re entering out late twenties I think that we’re more like Will and Grace, rather than Karen and Jack.  He’s going to be a nurse and I will be a librarian.  Our fabulousity is slowly waning.  In our glory days though, we looked like this…

Actually we still act like this but only in private.

Tags: gay marriage, obama, will & grace

Don Draper’s Guide to Looking Haggard as Sh*t

I have never been to the website Rookie before today. It’s actually a pretty amazeballs site and I wish that it had been around in the early 2000s when I was still a teenager, but I think that was Web 1.0 and I still had dial-up.  The shit wouldn’t have worked. Anyway I got to see this fun little video that has been floating around the internet.  I loved this freaking thing.  I didn’t really love it, because Jon Hamm attests to the fact that all people fart and even poop.  I loved it because he looks fucking rough. I looks like he got up after drinking Macallan all night and decided to record himself using Face Time.  I watch this and wonder why they gave Hillary crap for showing up one day without make-up. I also appreciate his insight into telling young women that teenage boys have opinions and sometimes girls, they don’t like your outfits.  Also teenage girls, stop trying to figure teenage boys out because its impossible.  That’s actually sound advice, but he should have put the disclaimer that it carries far into adulthood and actually all the way to infinity.  I think that he should also mention that their future husbands will also look disheveled and hung-over for the rest of their lives, and will show up looking like that to actual functions.  Except their husbands will not be Jon Hamm. Therefore they will most likely be grayer, angrier,  and fatter by the time they are 41; he will not be ruggedly handsome. Kudos to Jon Hamm.  This video was beautiful, don’t ever change.

Tags: dating advice, jon hamm, mad men, rookiemag

girls, girls, girls

Taken from here.

If you tend to keep track of television shows and movies you would know what a big deal Lena Dunham has become in the last couple of years.  Her film Tiny Furniture was a supposed hip and edgy comedy set in New York focusing on an awkward and inept recent affluent college grad. I’m not going to lie; I did not like Tiny Furniture.  It wasn’t because the main character (who Dunham plays herself) was annoying or worthy of getting slapped in the face for being a tool.  It was because it was fucking boring and unfunny.  I didn’t understand the hype.  My brother gave it to me, trying to tell me that it was something I would relate to because I was a recent college grad with few prospects.  Instead I felt like watching the movie was something my brother would like, because he’s ten years older than me and still romanticizes being adrift in his twenties. Which by the way he never really was, he’s been super determined his entire life. Still I thought maybe I was missing something in Tiny Furniture when I read about how awesome Dunham’s new show is and how much broke twenty-somethings will love it.

I really gave it a chance. In all I felt that Girls is Tiny Furniture in a tv show, if Dunham’s main character were broke instead of a child of privilege.  I have no problem with the fact that Dunham comes from money.  That is a fact, but a lot of talented people come from money. The industry is full of nepotism.  My main problem with Girls was simple, it is not relatable and not all that funny. This show is supposed to be for me. A millennial who can’t find a decent job and whose college education is going to waste.  I just couldn’t find a character that spoke to me.  Some would have you believe it is because I don’t like the harsh reality of my spoiled rotten youth gleamed back to me. (Like here.) This is just not the case.  I come from a middle class family, but I worked all through college.  The majority of my friends worked all through college. Some not as hard as others, but for the most part everyone I knew worked even if it was only 15 hours a week at the on campus pub.  Even the friends I know who’s parents helped them after college were not completely bank rolled.  Their parent’s helped pay for their car or gave them extra spending cash, but they had jobs even if they were waitresses.  Also Hannah’s parents (Hannah is the main character played by Dunham) are professors. Her mother points this out in the first scene. Reality check, professors don’t make that much money unless they are from money or they are administrators.  There is no way two professors who are not independently wealthy could bank roll their daughter’s living expenses in New York.  It’s fucking ludicrous. For a show determined to be “real” it seems a little far fetched and off putting.

The realness factor of the show is also why it’s not ideal to a young audience. If say you are a spoiled twenty-something being provided for by mommy and daddy still, you probably don’t want to watch you and your friends be fictional assholes.  If on the other hand you are working, still broke, and hate your job you probably don’t want to watch the tale of a bunch of bougie uppity broke pricks either.  If your life sucks you want to escape into television.  I, and most of my friends, would rather watch Workaholics because in real life we’re working shitty jobs then getting fucked-up whenever humanly possible. **spoiler alert**The one scene that did make me laugh during Girls, no not the awkward sex scene, was the scene where Hannah shows up high to her parent’s hotel room asking for them to pay her to write her memoir. Hannah wasn’t that funny, but her pissed off mother was hilarious. I also like that her parent’s leave her high and dry, because I would have done the same thing to that little brat.  I want to tell Dunham that you can make your characters bad people, like in Seinfeld , but don’t make them so awful you want to reach through the screen and slap them.  I’m nowhere near as talented as Dunham, and I honestly think that when her writing matures it will be fan-fucking-tastic, but it still needs to mature. Remember just because people are narcissistic assholes it doesn’t make them interesting; unless they’re me, of course.

Tags: girls, hbo, lena dunham, opinion, popular

In Defense of the Slut

It does not appear that this year will be the year of the woman.  Everywhere I look I’m reading about the politics of gender.  That for some reason in the year of 2012, the use of birth control is still a controversial issue.  That men of white privilege are still on a mission to subjugate women.  Any person that is moderately well read or finished general education at a local community college, is aware that a woman having control over her own fertility is one of the biggest steps to women’s rights.  Choosing when we have children or to not have children enables women to break the cycle of poverty and become more independent throughout the world.  I personally do not take hormonal birth control.  It does not work well with my body.  It is a personal choice that I have made, and I have a partner who is understanding enough to take the predominant role in our birth control use.  So obviously I am woman who believes in choice, female independence, and that for the most part women can do anything men can do with perhaps some physical limitations.

But what about the sluts.  The word slut has become increasingly caustic and flows freely in today’s political discourse.  I feel bad for the slut. Why do other women slut hate so hard?  Don’t they know the benefits of having a slutty friend?  My entire life since adolescence I have been friends with sluts.  You know why?  Because they are awesome.  Whether it’s been straight or gay, male or female I love a slut.  You know when you get really drunk and make-out with that random dude at the bar, then you feel bad about it.  Well don’t, because if your slutty friend was there with you, she totally banged the wing-man for cab fare. I think we should all take the approach twenty year old undergrads take to the word slut.  Embrace it and make it your own.  If the world is going to treat you a certain way because you like sex and short skirts, then I say fuck it.  I guess some would portray calling yourself or your friend slut is a form of “slut shaming” and older women especially tend to get really mad about this.  I personally have never felt that way.  The more you use a word especially in a different context the less offensive it becomes.  I think that younger women are trying to embrace the word so it no longer hurts.  They are trying to make it their own.  Although sometimes it’s just thoughtless, like my 27-year-old male friend who lives with two twenty-year-old females and they lovingly refer to their apartment as the “slut den” much to his horror.  There is nothing wrong with sleeping with whom you want and when you want.  I, personally, am just not that slutty.  I wish I could be, I think it would be fun, but its just not in my nature.

Like this was probably not the best decision…

Women tend to perceive other women as threats and what better way to deal with a threat than to ostracize that which is the “other.”  If you are comfortable with your relationships, yourself, and your sexuality than you should not be bothered by strip clubs, prostitution, pornography, skimpy clothing, and in the more day-to-day world sluts.  I’m not saying that I am in defense of the sex industry.  I do think that it can easily influence the young and sexually naive into incorrect attitudes toward love and sex.  I also think it can be degrading, but so can hip-hop videos.  But these women choose these careers and who am I to tell them what to do with their bodies.  Also who am I to tell grown adults what they can and cannot watch. If you don’t like it, then don’t engage in it.  Don’t date men who frequent those types of places.  If you don’t like sleeping with multiple partners than don’t, but don’t judge women who do.   I do not want you to think I put women with multiple partners and sex industry workers in the same category. I realize that they are two different things, but in our social construct of sexuality we too frequently judge these individuals as being in league with each other.  For example Rush Limbaugh going from calling Sandra Fluke a slut to a prostitute in the same goddamn sentence.  I mean really, how can Rush Limbaugh hate women and birth control that much? I mean the dude has been married four times and has no kids.  He has to love sluts and hate having kids.

It is time that women unite and come to the defense of our slutty sisters.  They are your friends, classmates, co-workers, and family members.  If you don’t want to use contraceptives that is your own choice, but as right-wing ideologues strive to limit a women’s personal choices about how and when she should raise a family you limit the power of half the population.  For so much espousing of personal freedoms it becomes clear that it is only for people of privilege and that freedom is not meant for women, the poor, or people of color. Women like, Lila Rose, claim to believe in full female equality but then have the nerve to pass judgement on other women. Whether your a virgin, a one man woman, a one woman woman, or a crazy bi-sexual slut bonanza that is your choice and it is your body.  Women need to defend other women’s choices and not always cut each other down.  Remember you need that slut friend for the next time you sleep with your friend’s crush, current/ex-boyfriend, brother or father, because she’s going to sit you down and say, “Oh my God, bitch. That’s nothing. Last time I was in the city I…”

Tags: choice, contraceptives, gender, gop, sluts, women

I’m Puttin’ On My Eatin’ Pants

Ok, America we have to have a talk as one fat bitch to another.  I didn’t say anything when KFC came out with the Double Down.  I am in celebration of most fair food such as: fried Twinkies, fried Oreos, and even fried Kool-Aid.  Like most Americans I have disposable income, love cheap shit, and love anything fried.  I have little to no self-control when you tell me about maple-bacon donuts.  I even want to drink the beer. Still we need to have a talk about the stoners that are working in the test kitchens of America’s heart: the fast food industry.  Sure there is a foodie uprising, and even when I go shopping I usually buy vegetables and organic chicken but I am still influenced by the beauty and the glory of deadly fried foods. I love to watch Adam Richman eat till he’s sick on Man v. Food; it’s like sadistic food porn.  So why should I be surprised by this:

I mean I read about the thing months ago online while it was still only in test markets.  My boyfriend was salivating in anticipation of soon be able to eat such a delicious piece of American ingenuity.  I mean really should this taco bother me?  I used to put crushed up Doritos in my taco salad and I’ve been known to put Nacho Cheese Doritos on a Subway sandwich to make it edible.  Yes, I did try the taco now that it is my state.  How was it? Not as delicious as I was hoping.  I was hoping that the shell would be like a Doritos.  Instead it’s a shitty El Paso taco shell covered in nacho cheese powder.  I guess I am most disappointed in these fatty concoctions, not because they are fatty but because they are not worth the empty calories.  Even though I know this, I still try them.  I need to be saved from myself.  Apparently so does the rest of America.  People always complain about these types of food products, but obviously someone is buying them. I believe that it’s mostly drunk college students.  I mean I used to eat a shit-ton of Taco Bell in college. It was cheap, not as fatty as Carl’s Jr., and open all night.  As an added bonus they are the inventors of the “fourth meal,” which is conveniently placed where sleep used to exist.

I still feel more and more ashamed of the food choices given by the traditional fast-food venues.  I’m not going to demonize fast-food.  It’s cheap, convenient, tastes good, and is a staple of the American landscape.  But now there is little left to defend. Here are some of the modern food choices you can get at fast-food places.

A “secret” menu item.

Pretty sure they are no longer that cheap, but you can still buy that many.

Ummm… six strips of bacon…

Pretty much all of Carl’s Jr. breakfast is terrible for you. Breakfast Burger or Loaded Burrito? Choices, choices…

The list goes on and on.  This is why I have to have this intervention with you America.  Not only are we a bunch of fat fucks, but the rest of the world just kind of stares at us like we have three heads.  This is why we should stick eating like fat fucks only during fat fuck times, i.e. Christmas, family vacations, the county fair, and amusement parks.  Did I mention that a restaurant that sells funnel cakes all year round opened up next to my work?!? Who the fuck needs a funnel cake more than once a year.  I’ll stick to unhealthy Chipotle, thank you very much.

Tags: doritos, fast food, fat, taco bell

1 in 175 million

Most people who know me would say that I’m very pragmatic. I listen to reason, try to not let my emotions get the best of me, and think long and hard about any weighty life decisions. I hate to gamble, because the house always wins and the odds are never in your favor. So two days ago I did something completely out of character for myself. I bought a lotto ticket. I have never bought a lotto ticket in the almost decade I’ve been allowed to call myself a legal adult. I have never bought a lotto ticket before for many reasons: the first being I almost always forget the lotto exists even when it’s $200 million plus, and the second being I would rather spend my dollar on a soda at the Circle K. I never understood why my parents played the lotto or even my brother who probably makes more than ten times my annual income. I never understood why they would waste their money. I guess now that I sit in a one bedroom apartment without enough money to give my car an oil change, I understand. The lotto was always selling them hope.

This guy hopes a lot.

The concept of hope and a different future is a powerful mechanism. I’m not even going pretend that I haven’t had self indulgent fantasies in the last two days. I’m a logical person; I should know that I’m not going to win. My life will be the same on Saturday that it was on Friday. I will still have to go to my shitty job. I will still not be able to afford to fix my car. I will still wake up in a cold sweat when I have nightmares of Sallie Mae chasing me with my graduate diploma. Still I have a flicker of hope. I imagine looking up the my ticket’s numbers on the lotto website, seeing myself as if outside my own body, my eyes widen with every number that matches the ticket. I feel the future numbness that will run through my body as I settle on the mega number. The tingle that will course through my body as I realize I’ve won. Not only that I’ve won, but won big. I didn’t win any measly new boat money, fuck no, I’ve won motherfucking Oprah money. I’ll jump up and down and scream for joy. I have no altruistic intentions in my fantasy. I have no ambitions to make the world a better place. I mean maybe one day down the line I’ll fund an NPR station, but not today. First things first I would do the following: quit my job (they say not to do that, but fuck it I’m Miley Cyrus rich), pay off all my debt, buy my mom a house and let her quit her shitty job, buy my brother a Ferrari  because he’s ridiculous like that, get my dad his eye surgery, take my dad to Patagonia, take my mom to Manchu Picchu, take my dad’s girlfriend to Italy, go on a road trip of the South with Leslie, and my boyfriend and best friend can just buy whatever ridiculous shit they want. Then I’d get a financial planner for the ridiculously wealthy and retire from life and live off the dividends. See in my head it sounded less selfish then when I write it down, because in reality I would probably buy an Hermes bag just to take a crap in it because I could. At the end of this fantasy I start to question what kind of person I really am. Would I really do all these things or would I tell everyone, including those I love, to get fucked?

It’s so much money it is unfathomable to me, what it would be like to really possess it. I’m not sure how it would change me. I just know that as much as I say I don’t need anything it would be really hard for me to give it all away. I like shiny things and bobbles. I say I’d get my PhD, but I would probably not do anything because I wouldn’t have to do anything anymore. I wouldn’t have to pretend, or work hard, or even care. The lotto ticket that sits in my wallet isn’t just hope for a windfall; it’s a hope for a different life entirely.  It is a hope that tomorrow will be different.  It is hope that my social contract will be fulfilled by the America I live in.  I will be wealthy. I will not know need or want. I will receive everything that society promised me by being a decent citizen and a decent human being. I hope.

Pretty sure my bf and I will look like this if I win. Rehab’s for quitters.

Tags: lotto, mega millions, selfishness, windfall, winning

may the odds be ever in your favor

As I’ve commented before, I am terrible at blogging on a regular basis. To be fair I’ve had an extremely rough last couple of months. I started school again and my grandmother died after complications from surgery. The one thing that has brought me constant enjoyment lately has been The Hunger Games, much like every other fan girl in the world I am sweating in anticipation of seeing the epic novels on the big screen. I know there are criticisms against the book, because Suzanne Collins may not be the best writer of all time. Still the story is so enthralling and exhilarating that it makes up for her not being J.K. Rowling.

The reason I love these books so much is not just the fights, the danger, and the romance. I love that Katniss is a strong heroine for girls. I was and still am not a fan of the Twilight series. I think that they are simplistic and shallow. I especially cannot stand Bella Swan. She is so weak. She wants to kill herself when she thinks her boyfriend leaves her. What kind of role model is that for a girl? When someone you love leaves don’t try to pick yourself up and carry on, instead mope around forever and live close to death. Characters like Bella Swan tell women that their worth is defined by men. Yes, Katniss has her own love triangle but she is not defined by the love of Peeta or Gale. The relationships she has make her stronger as she tries desperately to cling to the ones she loves. She also values the love of friendship over romantic love.

Other reasons to love The Hunger Games is of course the harsh lens it points to our own decadent society as we revel in the suffering of others on nightly television. Before I read the books I thought that they would be just a cheap rip off the Japanese dystopian novel, Battle Royale. (One of my favorites.) It was so much more than that as I let the story envelope me. I honestly didn’t find the novel that violent. I remember reading Christopher Pike and Fear Street books as an adolescent and they were far more violent. I remember the first Fear Street I read ended with a girl tied up on the ground trying to cut the rope off hands with a chain saw, on which her would be killer had just fallen upon and died. I’m pretty sure reading Silent Night, influenced my current love of terrible B horror movies. I mean really a Christmas themed murder novel for adolescents… fuckin’-a.

Still The Hunger Games are dark. I think that I liked Mockingjay best in the series, because it was so dark. **Spoiler Alert** I enjoyed the description of Katniss’ addiction to “Morphling” and eventual withdrawals. I also liked the realism in that Katniss never really gets better after going to war and she is just a little fucked up for the rest of her life. I know that a lot of fans do not like her retreat into obscurity, but I can see how a girl who is really sensitive in so many ways can never quite recover from the tragedy of her own life. The last novel leaves the reader questioning the necessity of war and if there reallyis such a thing as a “good war.” Which is also the theme of my favorite Studs Turkel book, The Good War, about WWII and its consequences. I know that most of my friends who read the books did not meditate on The Hunger Games large existential questions, but I’m probably too educated for my own good.  On that note, all I have to say I always tell people I’m not just an idiot who enjoys Toddlers & Tiaras more than any logical adult should.

Tags: movies, the hunger games, violence