God & Guns & Gays, oh my

I am a hypocritical moron. I did something the other day that I am incredibly angry at myself over – something that other people do to me all the time, and that I hate.

I’m a Christian Jewish liberal gun-hating pro-choice pro-gay rights evolutionist creationist. I sympathize with both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict and I think anarchy, democracy, and communism are all pretty nifty ideas. I think legalizing marijuana makes a lot of sense but I don’t touch caffeine. I trust lawyers over doctors and I’m a feminist who adores guys. And I hate when people assume that since I’m a smartsy liberal I’m an atheist; or that since I love Jesus I hate gays and the Clintons. Any time I want to discuss my views I have to explain or excuse them first, and this is beyond frustrating to me. I feel like I have to prove myself by preaching to the choir before I can make any points. The things listed above shouldn’t have to be contradictions – beliefs and views do not come as a one-size-fits-all bargain bundle pack – but people think they are because they’ve been presented that way.

So I was thoroughly ashamed when the other day I (wrongly) assumed that a libertarian-leaning atheist was rabidly pro-choice. Turns out that the question of human life and its origins, rights and value isn’t religious or political, but personal – and I knew that, I really did, but I allowed myself to be brainwashed by the blue vs. red mentality we have going on, and I jammed my foot into my mouth quite uncomfortably.

This is why I get so annoyed at the democracy of personalities we have constructed in America. No one human is a perfect package, and the way we have the system set up, it doesn’t exactly lend itself to finding the best candidate for the job as president. We don’t have Executive Branch scouts out finding and auditioning the best and brightest minds – we have mostly rich kids from privileged families rising to the top. The way I see it, there’s more of an equal selection process to cast the next star of Final Destination 908 – and they aren’t expected to write, direct, or produce; but a presidential candidate is expected to hold balanced and “complementary” views on economics, military actions, social policies, etc.

When we force all these decisions to fall to one or a few human beings, we cheat ourselves out of democracy. True democracy votes for ideas, not people. The focus on Obama’s pastor is a perfect example – instead of squabbling over his influences, his past, his ideals, we need to demand a game plan we can say clearly “yes” or “no” to. I don’t want to sit around and speculate about his inner psyche – he should tell us what exactly he would do in certain situations and we should judge that. It is, of course, then our job to hold candidates to that standard – lying is not nice, and when Bush denies saying something that he’s been filmed on camera saying, there should be more of an outcry. That’s the closest we can realistically get to voting for ideas and decisions over people. Ideally, there would be a neutral Executive who carried out the wishes of the masses: every morning there would be new issues on the table (“Should we declare war: yes or no”) to decide on. This would be true democracy and it would allow people to be more informed and involved. What we have now forces the bundling of ideas I discussed before, which is frustrating. I’d like to be able to vote for a candidate who will carry out true Christian values in office – “purity, understanding, patience, kindness and love” (2 Cor. 6:6) – but I think today those who claim to be furthering God’s agenda are getting it pretty wrong (and they endorse a religion that encourages me to say this: Romans 16:17-18*).

So here’s the real issue: people come in unique packages capable of thinking for themselves, and thinking independently on every separate question. Objectively, owning guns for self-defense has nothing to do with whether or not you support the right to a homosexual marriage and neither has any impact on whether you think the Iraq war is right. This is why politics of personality is dangerous and damaging to democracy.

What we can do about it: refuse to participate. Only engage in discussions about candidate’s relevant political ideologies, and shut down any gossip about “omg Hillary Clinton’s hairdresser has a gay goldfish” (DISCLAIMER: I made that up) by pointing out its irrelevancy. We’re stuck with a system that unfortunately forces personality politics, but supporting legislation that regulates campaign donations/spending is a step in the right direction. And spread the awareness that leaders/ideas don’t get to dictate entire belief sets by refusing to make assumptions and allowing ourselves ideological flexibility, considering separate issues separately.

*"Watch out for people who cause divisions and upset people’s faith by teaching things that are contrary to what you have been taught…Such people are not serving Christ our Lord; they are serving their own personal interests."

Recommended reading:

New York Times: Taking their faith, not their politics, to the people

The Washington Post: Communion denied for supporting pro-choice Obama

Focus on the Family's response to the claim that one can simultaneously be gay and Christian

New York Times: Liberal explains why he's against same-sex marriage

One reporter's take on an unconventional juxtaposition of views

Rescue

State of CI: I've started labelling my posts to keep everything all organized. So far they're all sorted into "essay", "story", "discussion" or "memory". "Story" is a misnomer though, as most of my writings here won't be coherent pieces on their own but the writer's equivalent of doodles.

The first two paragraphs of a new piece that resulted from a weird dream, currently sucks, and has the working title Rescue, which also sucks.

Afterwards, she lay so still in my bed. She had, of course, lost weight, and the fact that she was dressed in a pair of my boxers and one of my t-shirts made her look even tinier than usual, impossibly so, barely a sliver of flesh and girl. I pulled up the comforter and it devoured the sliver like dark clouds over the thinnest moon. Her eyes, both blackened, were closed, and for that I was grateful. The memory was more than enough. I pulled my gaze from her swollen face down to my hands, those terrible instruments I still could only half believe had done this.

My beeper rang. Work. I was off that day, but I knew they’d call me in once they discovered her missing – what would later be referred to as The Incident - since I had been on duty the night before. My watch read 5:00am. We were expected to immediately answer every call, but I couldn’t look too suspicious. I considered leaving her a note in case she woke up before I got back, but by my calculations, she’d be out at least five more hours, and I had no idea what I would say. I changed into a fresh uniform, rubbed my eyes red, and left.

Sex & Power

State of CI: I promise to keep to a Monday-Thursday update schedule, which I know for certain will carry through the summer because I've got a month's worth of scheduled posts ready to publish themselves (yay new features!) on the right days. Also, new banner, yay! Featuring my feet, Monica's, and Nahee's. I'm trying to tweak the layout so it's more comfortable to read, but I'm having a hard time fooling with the html - anyone wanna help me out?

I find the mini-analysis in this blog fascinating for the same reason I like reading movie reviews after I see movies (especially these ones) – I like looking at the world in different ways, and this offers a perspective on the images I see every day that is different than my own. Since I started reading it, I’ve found myself identifying subtle sexual/gender statements in media all around me. But I disagree with a lot of the feminist indignance inherent in a lot of the analysis.

The fact is that the female body is attractive, and both genders like to enjoy this. My girlfriends and I love an excuse to get dressed up, even when anything remotely sexual is not part of the plans – a group of us will primp and prep together, go out to eat, and head back to chill in the hot tub. We know that our bodies are beautiful, and that is fun. Driving a sleek, fast car is a rush even when you are not racing. Women like looking nice, and men like looking at women who look nice. This does not in itself create a power imbalance or exploit women. I wear tank tops and skirts on dates, but this does not objectify me. When women are sexually attractive, that does not strip away the rest of their identity and reduce them to a place to stick it.

There are a lot of recurring problems with the blog, which might produce some later essays, but one thing that really gets me is the fact that is lambasts any visual “inequality” between the genders. This post asks “And is it not possible to just have some images where men and women are equals and no one has to be dominant? Is that out of the question?” Well, yes,  images like that do exist in advertising. The thing is, though, that power plays are deeply sexual, and wherever there is sex, there is almost always going to be some element of dominance. This is why there are different positions and different practices and different costumes and such. For the most part, men are big and women are little, and this immediately makes men more powerful, even when that power isn’t being exercised. But even hinting at the possibility of a power inequality annoys the blog. Here, all it takes is size and position to evoke a power inequality, which the blog claims is only linked to sexuality because it’s been taught that way. I have to disagree. If sexual preferences could be so subtly taught and molded by advertising and what is socially acceptable, everyone would get off on missionary-in-the-dark and we would have no "sexually deviant" cultures (BDSM, furries, what have you), not to mention homosexuals. (They make a similar, equally outrageous claim in this post. Why would ads make extra work for themselves by re-defining sex, then using that to sell? It makes more sense to lean on what already excites people. Ads have no reason to "re-define" sex as more violent or unequal than it always has been.) When you think about it, sex lends itself to “power asymmetry” – you have a person reliant on another person for pleasure; extreme vulnerability; and the, ahem, “mechanics” of it. 

Or you could consider that social stereotypes may help make power plays sexy – the theory goes that since girls are taught that “good girls say no”, being “overtaken” can be sexy because they get to indulge in sex without the guilt of having said yes. Either way, it’s not the way the blog makes it sound – some unnatural, evil construct we have been brainwashed into. True equality is not about who’s bigger or who’s on top, true equality is about respect and understanding. By reducing the issue of equality to who holds who, and how (see this post), it actually trivializes the issue and it pushes sexual freedoms backwards. Let’s make women feel guilty for betraying their gender by engaging in (and maybe even enjoying!) sexual play that may involve them held in a “non-egalitarian” way. I’m a confrontational, self-respecting woman very proud of her X-squared chromosomes, and I am not offended by either of the two advertisements. Things would get pretty boring, awkward and annoying if a couple insisted on maintaining “equal positioning” at all time. This equality is just as stereotyped, hollow and contrived as the unequal gender roles in some of the other ads. (Note how the boy is bending down to make their heights equal, and how the girl has a short, boyish haircut.) Once people stop squabbling about images like the one at the bottom (can you imagine their positions reversed? That doesn’t work – she’s shorter than he is! And note how he’s only holding her hair softly, but she’s got a serious grip on his belt, implying a grip on something else – I honestly see very little inequality in that photo), they can get down to the real issues. Like this - wrong on so many levels.

P.S. I would also like to point out that sex blogger “Girl With A One-Track Mind” (not one I would recommend to everyone – pretty raw and graphic – but fascinating, hilarious, human, intelligent and interesting nonetheless) has been praised, as well as other woman sex bloggers, for advancing feminist causes and empowerment. But she herself describes scenes involving huge power inequalities (both genders), and sings the praises of male dominance in the form of “teasing” – an idea that should deeply offend the writers of Sociological Images, but their comrades in feminism seem to disagree.

IB Finished!

On the agenda for today: a State of CI Address, and then our previously scheduled post.

Obviously a blog about the insanity of the IB program will quickly run out of material once I leave the program, which I did at about 9:00 Thursday morning. But I’m not shutting this down, just closing down the chapter of CI that dealt exclusively with my IB life. I will continue to post here, but it will be a much more broad, random selection of my writings – funny anecdotes about random things, essays I feel like writing, short stories, my photography, and maybe the occasional excerpt of the novel I’m working on or another comic-by-the-hour day. Hopefully by expanding the range of topics here I can keep to a weekly update schedule.

You all have noticed that almost all the stories that involve me enjoying life also involve Roi (Retard on Ice). Roi is my very best friend and without her I would shrivel up like a Tolkien-reading raisin and die. Recently, as the reality of leaving has truly begun to sink in, I’ve noticed more and more the subtle little ways Roi helps me cope with the reality everyone else takes for granted. She can give directions to my house, translate whatever comes out of my mouth into normal-speak for anyone else listening, always say the right thing when I am upset, read my mind, and generally be there for me in whatever way I need. Roi is amazing.

Roi, this is for you. I know declaring it on an obscure internet blog named after an obscure poem by someone who stuck her head in an oven isn’t the most conventionally solid way to tell someone how much they mean to you, but this is what I know best, and I can’t afford much else. Thank you so much for never being afraid to verbally backhand me with the fact that I was being irrational but doing it so gently that it never stung. Thank you so much for being patient with my ramblings and inanities and complete inability to comprehend much beyond my own mind or part my own hair. Thank you for being my translator from Sal-speak to Normalese, for protecting me, for humoring me, for everything.

Thank you for spying on HT with me, for smuggling potatoes on the way to the zoo, for not killing us in your car on Valentine’s day, for looking ridiculous in photographs, for brainstorming the best expression with which to respond to a marriage proposal, for parking pointlessly, being my novia/madre joven homosexual, making copies at Kinko’s with me, enduring the Saturday Night from Hell, preventing me from committing hari-kari in Spanish, stealing anti-alcoholism posters, and creating so many other in-jokes with me that nobody else could keep up.

There are a lot of things I regret about IB. It blew. You would definitely be within your rights to stab me in my sleep for "recommending" it to you in the first place. But after all the screw-overs, Spanish class, Psych IAs, bio-room breakups, etc., the fact that it brought us together (and apart, and together) made it all worth it. 

To the rest of you: Thank you as well. My fellow IB kids have helped me grow and change in so many ways - my first kiss, my finding God, my first relationship, my forgetting of Elvish, my realization that "this is REAL". Here's to all of us - here's to ASU and UofA and NAU and Concordia and Goucher and IIT and Whitworth and Berkeley. Here's to nutty Bulgarians, traitorous Jews on trial, broken chairs, cancelled IAs, dangerous Group 4s, and so many other memories I can't list here. I adore and will deeply miss all of you (and I hope I can stay interesting enough on this thing to warrant you sticking with it and staying in touch.)

Class of '08, we are now the Class of '12! Congrats.

IB Studying

I do have an end-of-IB post planned but it's not for today. Today I have Biomedical physics! Roi got a bunch of IB review packets and decided quickly to give up on biomedical physics, so I helped her study by filling out the packet. It's like 60 pages and most of my answers are random nonsense that I swear are hilarious after an hour of Spanish class (it's like pot, really), but here are some highlights:

Suggest why it is preferable to use this isotope for imaging the thyroid rather than iodine-131: Because it show's off the thyroid's curves better

State a possible cause of the hearing loss:

Frederick: Susanna yelled at him

Susanna: Frederick punched her

State and and explain one situation in which these diagnostic techniques would be used:

X-rays: Superman killing bad guys

Ultrasound: Sonic the hedgehog killing bad guys

Nuclear magnetic resonance: George Bush killing bad guys

Outline two precautions an X-ray machine operator should take to minimize his/her exposure to X-rays: Don't have sex with/in the X-ray machine

State one way in which a B-scan differs from an A-scan: It can't call for help from the A-team

(Explain, with reference to the diagram, why the force P and the compression force S on the spine are much greater than the weight of W on the upper body of the person)

Ah, Spanish class. So excruciating it makes Chuck Norris jokes hilarious.

Tales From The Inside

"we're going to get in trouble"
we are apathetic.
nunu laughs
"if your ead this, we're probably already gone." and probably dead.
or high on caffiene, because we're not in the 6os, and being high isn't cool.
it's for stoners.
we should JUST leave.
rubix is spying on our narrative.
nobody says anything.
sal will NOT work on her novel.
no USB jobber.
gaygaygaygaygay. definitely not beinga ble to spell.
Nunu sucks at arabic computer-style.
the baby's name was tiny tim.
elevator.
beepbeepbeepbeep.
we felt dirty when we were eight and sung the dirty Miss Susie song.
loft...ooooh dirty.
SEXY TIME! in the loft!
pillow boys.
I DID A CALLIGRAPHY.
rubix makeded a drawing.
marijuana. THE INTERWEBS IS BACK!
bye.

[updated from: High School library during workday. in absence of the internet, we were forced to entertain ourselves with Notepad.]

IBy Any Other Name

I find myself constantly irritated at JF (temporary nickname for new player) because he's a well-read student of logic and debate and has a really annoying habit of not letting me say anything remotely unintelligent. He has been told countless times to "stop translating everything I say into stupid!" It's fascinating how a simple re-wording of a situation can make something that sounds very sensical suddenly seem like nonsense. Take, for example, this summation of dreaming. Or the fact that JF refers to Easter as "Zombie Jesus Day". IB is the same way. We unquestionably accept its weirdness until we have to sum it up to an outsider, and then the situation seems utterly ridiculous. Things I've said recently about my IB life (my mother has given up on asking me any variation of "how was your day?" or "what did you learn today?"):

"She can freaking suck it, and then cite her sources."

"I am taking notes on sensory perception and watching two moths try to bang."

"We're sitting in class arguing over what the "bases" are and studying for paper 2."

"I've been trying to convince HT that I didn't break anyone's jaw in two places by kissing them."

"Today I learned that animal crackers are math. So is throwing pens and shouting '9.81!!'".

"And I'm just really upset because the study guides are so easy and nobody ever told me the IB math exam was so easy and I am very angry about how easy the test is!"

"Just sitting in bio, listening to people yell about who isn't pregnant."

"What is ST talking about?"

"Naked indians in loincloths and how Latin Americans have Wal-Mart stores and the College Board can't re-schedule exams, and I think we're supposed to have our grammar books out."

and a straight-faced scolding from Roi to one of the Indians: "Stop humping K into the wrong desk."

All these things were said with completely unironic seriousness. Such are our lives. 

IB Arts and Crafts, Senior Edition

The last half of the third quarter really sucked. School dragged as we scrambled to finish CAS hours, said sad goodbyes to the extracurriculars that got us through the first semester, counted the days until spring break and plodded through massive amounts of homework that felt more and more pointless as the college acceptances, scholarships, orientation invitations, and other finalizations trickled in. We reacted to the misery the same way any group of frustrated, beaten people do: We complained, plotted rebellion, and in the meantime, created art.

These are play-doh superheroes one of my friends made in Spanish class (unfortunately for you guys, any amusing Spanish-class related rants violate my "don't publish negative stuff online" policy. Ah, Spanish class.)

It was my play-doh, which I brought because we were doing some Calc project on cross-sections. It was supposed to look like this:

But everyone agreed, this was the favorite:

Then of course there's the TOK Graffiti wall. We're learning about sociolinguistics in TOK and so we did an 'experiment' in which TOKT put up a big sheet of butcher paper and we were supposed to graffiti on it - anything we wanted. After a week we would analyze the graffiti. It ended up being a perfect self-portrait of IB - seethingly, angrily frustrated but somehow tolerant activism (obvious in the political and religious sentiments); comfortable familiarity and communal love (evident in the inside jokes and homoerotic teasing); and a large amount of pointless comedic non-sequiturs. I can't think of a better summation (barring Dante's Inferno) of what it means to be part of an IB class.

 These are pretty self-explanatory, but the "Make me a sandwhich, woman" was written by Stealth, the lovable pseudo-sexist of the class, but the girls figured his spelling mistake rendered it  the non-sequitur "Make me a sand, which woman?" and added punctuation accordingly.

 That's my "LOVE: we have bombs" (a reference to this). Note someone changed "bombs" to "boobs". The quote in red at the bottom says "nematodes are people too".

This may not be art, but it's a structure with a purpose (architecture?). This is the Contraption we came up with to hold the projector cord at a specific angle to prevent the screen from flashing yellow/red/green/blue/purple tints, after we gave up on using it to turn TOK class into a rave. The Juniors refer to it as the Projector of Doom. It took six of us to put this together (minds of the future, unite!).

SICKO

Blogger STILL won't let me upload photos. So I thought instead I'd try my luck with these word things for a little while.

Roi and I are working on a “framing” social experiment in a few days using some regular freshmen and juniors as our guinea pigs. What I realized from the “social science” unit in TOK is how we live and operate each and every day in a large social experiment code named IB.

Here, published for the first time, are some research results from the good folks over at Stressing IB Classes & Kids Out (SICKO):

Hypothesis: A stressful, “high-stakes” atmosphere will greatly decrease ability of participants to carry out simple tasks.

Procedure:

1. Ask participants to spell their names in capital letters in a space on paper designated “name”.
   
2. Ask participants to perform the same task again, reminding them that “THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT”, “THIS IS GOING TO IB HQ” and “DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES MESS UP!!!!”
   
3.  Record number of times during each trial subjects requested new papers, lost pens, required assistance, shouted in frustration, misspelled their own names, forgot how to write in capital letters, or exhibited other symptoms of distress or incompetence.*
   

Results: When asked to spell their names in capital letters, IB students fail miserably under high-stress conditions.

Hypothesis: Building on previous research (see above), those at SICKO planned to test how other situations affected IB kids’ ability to perform tasks. This experiment sought to investigate the effects of structured classroom environments and guidance on the completion of simple activities.

Procedure: Tell the class that a Socratic Seminar is planned. Request that they move their desks into a large circle.

Observations: Students took over ten minutes and still had not placed their desks into a circle. Observed behavior during the testing period:

•  Constructing a phallic shape out of desks instead of a circle
  
• Creating smaller circles with social isolation as the apparent intention
  
• Laying on the floor
  
• Gentle tugging or pushing on desks so as to move them slightly without offering any assistance whatsoever in the construction of the circle
  
• Loudly commanding peers to move their desks into the circle while not participating in circle construction themselves
  
• Wandering aimlessly
  
• Asking the teacher if turning in make-up work at the time was acceptable
  
• Discussing the inability of peers and themselves to successfully construct the circle
  
• Satirically behaving like misogynists
  
• Loudly complaining about other students’ misogynistic behavior (satirical nature of these complaints is unknown)
  

Results: The students failed to complete the task until the teacher directed specific students to complete the circle (this process itself took approximately five minutes). Researchers at SICKO determined that without strong guidance, IB students are unable to construct geometric shapes (excluding those phallic in nature) out of their desks for the purpose of discussion.

*you think I am exaggerating for comedic value. I am not.

Scraps

So, sorry guys for not posting in so long. My upcoming posts are kinda image-heavy and blogger is doing this neat thing where it decides not to post images. It sucks. So, I figured I'd just put up some little scraps of stuff I threw down with plans to take them sometime from "rough draft" to "coherent and amusing post". Plus a teaser for one of the pieces I'm currently working on. Woo, fun! And hopefully soon blogger will stop failing.

IBOMGWTFBBQ

Who remembers this bit of conversation from this post about IB lunch?

The discussion shifts to my opinion that paying for a sub when we have a student teacher every day is a waste of the school’s money. I comment that “a monkey could sub a class of IB kids”.

Rubix: If a monkey stuck a video in and told me to watch it, I’d watch that movie!

Me: No, Rubix, you’d watch the monkey.

Rubix: True. But if it left, then I’d watch!

Me: Are you joking? I’d follow the talking monkey!

In TOK, we watched a movie called Waking Life. In that movie, there is a scene where a talking monkey shows a video to a class.

I'll say that again.

In TOK class we watched a video of a talking monkey showing a class a video.

After we talked, and I wrote, about being shown a video in TOK class by a talking monkey.

Rubix and I lost it. It was so incredibly perfect and funny. My mind, she is blown!

Unfortunately we freaked out so much over it that TOK Teacher had us explain the cosmic significance to the class and nobody else thought it was nearly as amazing.

A list Roi and I came up with during a specifically excruciating time of stress:

Inane Bureaucracy

Intelligent BS

Imminent Burnout

Impossible Burden

Increasing Bitterness

Invisible Benefits

Impending Breakdown

Idiotic Buzzwords

Immense Books

Infinite Boredom

(readers are encouraged to submit their own!)

From "Juicy" (one-word prompt inspiration from Frenchie)

Juicy. The story spread, delicious on young wet lips, facts luscious and succulent. Words sinfully sweet as drops from the forbidden fruit that cursed the womb of earth, deep red and strange as birth.

Deidre hadn’t meant those words, hadn’t meant for the story to become what it did. But when her best friend Frasier asked her that morning how the appointment had gone, everything moved, sloshed around in her mind, opaque red and sickly. Her hand went to her stomach, flat, eternally dead. The metal of her jeans snap under her thumb, she remembered the doctor’s voice, womanly low, earnest sympathy overtaking her disbelief but not the shame.