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Dear Comments on the Internet

3 Dec

Dear Comments on the Internet,

I pretty much do not read comments in response to anything.

(Except, of course, comments on this site, because you guys are hysterical and cool and your comments sound like the sweet dulcet tunes of a Whitney Houston ballad.)

There are a couple of reasons for this:

1.  Why would I care what a bunch of random strangers have to say in response to something?  I’m reading the article / blog / post / whatevs for the “expert” opinion of the author.  Or for the joke.  Or for the funny Venn diagram.

2.  Comments take one of two forms.

a.  For humor articles, they consist of this:

LOL!  LOLZZZZ!  AM PEEING MY PANTZ RIGHT NOW LOLZZZ SO EFFING FUNNY GOD YOU”RE GOD YOU”RE SO FUNNY SO GOOD EVEN MY CAT IS LLOL”ZING AND PEEING HER PANTZ ‘CUZ OBVS I MAKE MY CAT WEARS ZE PANTZ ESS A FRIDAY.

(Spelling and grammar don’t exist on Fridays, we all know this.  On the fifth day, God declared: you all shall spell like morons and laugh like hyenas and feel the need to inform people of that laughter via inane internet abbreviations that don’t actually shorten the word and pictures of your cats.  Excuse me, catz.)

b. For news articles, serious pieces, reporting of wonderful activist snarky posters, comments consist of things like this:

DEFUND all taxpayer supported colleges and universities and left them succeed on their own with their hat-filled, biased left-wing trash.

Those tax-funded, liberal, elite universities, so filled with hate….for other white people?  For God?  Man, I never knew…I went to one of those tax-funded, liberal, elite universities, and I mostly felt hate for the squirrels on campus.  So I guess it’s true.  Hate is hate.  And typos are typos.

This is the land of opportunity, not the land of guarantees. If you stupid libs think minorities have not have more help in taking advantage of those opportunities, then you are fools. Try that on someone else.
My family was poor and I grew up poor…I chose to study hard and go to school…I chose NOT to sink into despair and a life of crime. I worked hard and still do…nothing is given to me and I am sick and tired of jerks like you trying to make me feel guilty for my accomplishments.
Everyone has a CHOICE in this country…EVERYONE.

I’m assuming the person who wrote this is white, and that’s why s/he is “made to feel guilty” for their accomplishments.  I’d like to point out a few things.  Classism is a problem in this country.  Yes.  Good.  Ok.  Also.  If this person is white, and s/he has gone to school (albeit not one that taught s/he grammar) and “made good” and is no longer “poor,” then s/he has successfully changed her/his status in American eyes.  No one will ever “know” s/he grew up poor.

Whereas it’s kind of hard to hide your skin color.  And no one should have to hide their sexuality.  My point is: classism is terrible, yes, but changing your class status is possible.

P.S. it’s bullshit that “nothing is given to me”– this is why it’s called “invisible privilege”– because it’s so subtle that for all intents and purposes, it’s hidden.  Nobody said, “Oh, you’re working hard and you’re white so I’ll give you a promotion even though you don’t know how to use verbs.”  You are right, anonymous internet commenter: everyone has a choice.  Including you. Not to post this comment revealing your own ignorance.

P.P.S.  The original poster: “White Privilege: I got into Stanford without having my peers suspect that I only got in because of my race”

Commenter: “If you stupid libs think minorities have not have more help in taking advantage of those opportunities, then you are fools.”

….Whose point are you trying to make?

these kinds of terms are divisive. Why can’t gays and minorities just get along with white people?

GUYS.  Why can’t gays and minorities just get along with white people?

Oh wait…wait!  I know.  It’s like, maybe if slaves just tried to like their lifestyle, they would be happier.

No, that’s unfair of me.  No, wait.  Oh, hell.  Sigh.  These things are just so complicated to figure out.  I might have to think about my own life and how my actions affect other people, and systems and institutions, and the daily, subtle reinforcement of cultural norms and all the different ways that people are made to feel oppressed…  I better just leave a comment on the internet.  Preferably with a typo.    That oughta do it.

This is what I get for reading FOX news online.  Liberal hippie commie elite news media.

One last one:

And this is a “premire” school ? ?…………..You can tell it’s “run” by liberal dolts,…………….. It’s totally “f’ked up”

Who wrote that?  Joey Tribbiani?

My point is I don’t read comments on the internet because they fill me with rage.  Good thing I believe in gun control or I probably would have shot the internet by now.

MM

Dear Airport Toilet Stalls

29 Nov

Dear Airport Toilet Stalls,

How hard is it to figure out that when you’re trying to cram luggage into a tiny little stall along with your body— a stall which must close if you don’t want to get arrested for indecent exposure– THAT THE DOOR SHOULD SWING OUTWARD not inward?

Is that too much to ask?  It is?  Oh.  Ok.  All right, then.  Never mind.

Hey, look!  Airport procedures: you’ve successfully demoralized me into accepting any humiliating and inconvenient process without protestation.  When do the random executions start?  What about the return of feudal overlords?  I’d like to grow potatoes, not turnips, please.

IT IS SO HARD TO TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES WHILE STANDING AND HOLDING ONTO LUGGAGE WITHOUT ANYTHING TO HOLD ONTO FOR BALANCE.  And that’s okay.  I deal with it.  I don’t complain.

But in exchange, I really just want to be able to close the door when I pee.

Cheers,

MM

Dear Neighbor Who Always Leaves His Laundry In the Machine

22 Nov

Dear Neighbor Who Always Leaves His Laundry in the Machine

for SOOOOOO long that I have no choice but to take it out— usually using two fingers and holding it as far away from me as possible— this is just a note to say that I hate you.

You clearly don’t understand the rules of human decency and behavior, and you should be forced to wash your clothes in your tiny bathroom sink for the rest of all time as punishment.  Someone will be coming by to make sure you aren’t using that spacious bathtub.

Also who in their right mind living any kind of normal life needs that many jockstraps.  How can you possibly wear so many jockstraps that they regularly make up HALF of your load of laundry.

You don’t deserve question marks.  I save question marks for people I like and also for questions I actually want to know the answers to.

May your turkey be stuffed with jockstraps in retribution and because clearly that’s what you like and everyone, no matter how much they suck and should have to eat their own jockstraps, should get what they like on holidays,

MM

Dear School

17 Nov

This is very scientific.

Dear School,

You suck. I made this very mathemetical representation of the specific time-space continuum that is a semester in order to show the exact magnitude of how much you suck.  I am now in that little corner of paralysis where the line transitions from the technical phase of  “oh crap…” to the final evolutionary stage of “hell.”

I thought about redrawing this so it’s more clear and actually readable and such.  But I don’t have time.  Because of school.

So. The y axis is labeled “difficulty.”  The x axis is labeled “time (semester).”

The graph starts at “hard but OK.”  This is primarily due to vestiges of summer, an intense longing  for a return to not being in school, and the crippling inability to do anything efficiently.

It then goes to “hey look at me! no hands!”  This is when you have a lot of reading to do, but no real “work.”  And you realize that reading isn’t that hard.  And that you really only have to show up someplace for a couple of hours two days a week, and maybe that is manageable.  You remember how to wear pants.  Plus fall TV will start soon, and that makes you happy.

Then we have “oh crap…”  This would be when, on a space shuttle, the ignition jams and the pilot starts frantically punching at buttons and a red light blinks and the loudspeakers go WOOPdeWOOPdeWOOP YOU’RE ALL GOING TO DIE.

The last four weeks of the semester are “hell.”  No explanation necessary.  We understand that the spiraling rocketship of a line is going to turn around, crash and burn in a fiery implosion of finals, typos, and tears, right?

Have a nice day.

MM

Dear Chick Lit vs. Bitch Lit

28 Jul

Dear Chick Lit vs. Bitch Lit,

Why did Publishers Weekly describe Erica Kennedy’s (author of The Feminista Files) new novel Feminista as “The pioneer of chick lit’s naughty stepsister–bitch lit”?  (And why did her publisher decide to slap that above the title on the paperback edition?)

(But. Let me congratulate PW on managing to fit so many terrible connotations into one short phrase!  Pioneer woman!  Doing what no one else has done before!  (That would be: write a book?)  Naughty!  Oooh sexual overtones!  Possibly of the dangerous/forbidden type!  But more likely just vaguely flirtatious without actually being threatening!  Stepsister!  Cinderella!  Disney!  The mean/ugly one!  Who doesn’t get married, doesn’t become a princess, doesn’t get to have birds braid her hair every morning because she isn’t blonde!)

I’m sorry…are Chick Lit and Bitch Lit really our only two options?

I’m not talking about the actual books themselves.  Not their words, not their plots or characters or anything to do with their authors or their literary merit.  I’m talking genre names.  Chick Lit? Bitch Lit?  Those suck.  They not only carry prescriptions for the words, plots, characters.  They say way too much about the authors– or rather, what we think about the authors.  Or the readers.

Ohhh….chicks read chick lit.  And bitches read bitch lit. Ahhh. It all makes sense.  There are 2 types of women: the soft, cuddly, downy kind that coo and are yellow (whoops, too literal, my bad) and the mean, hard, bitchy kind who wears all black and eats men for breakfast and has ulcers from drinking too much coffee and so can’t have children (because babies grow in the stomach, obvi, and there isn’t room in there between the ulcers and all the men she’s eaten).  The world fits into neat little damaging misogynist stereotypes once again.  Oooh this makes me feel comfortable and comforted.

Or: I’m a chick so I read chick lit. Or: I read bitch lit so I’m a bitch.

…wait…that doesn’t seem right…hrmm.

In fact, let me go you one further: why are there any genre names for books by women?

Do we have Dude Lit?  Asshole Lit?  Bro Lit?  Oh wait, no, we just call those books.

GAH,

MM

PS– I’ll be buying Feminista’s new book today and I fully expect to love it (and yes, I linked the novel title above to Amazon, because I want you to read it too).  But I might have to sharpie out the PW quote on the front cover.

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