On Loving Our Non-Hetero Friends

Things To Occupy You Over Break #2: Online Journalism

Vice Magazine

Please be warned - this is not for everyone. You either love it or you're completely disgusted or offended. The magazine is known for being gritty, filthy, pornographic, and insensitive. That said, it's got some good journalism and some stuff you'll never see in the NYTimes. I've linked it here before, but only articles relevant to my articles and always with a warning. To go through the archives, you can either click "archives" up at the top and browse by issue, or click another link at the top and browse by type of article. You'll learn what life is like as a sex slave in lots of different countries (including Iran and Canada), what drug dealers have to say about their jobs, what the different types of white supremacists have to say to each other, and a lot more you may or may not have needed to know about your fellow humans.

Dissident Voice

They took down my favorite article ("Mental Illness or Social Sickness?") but they're still pretty cool. It has a very leftist slant, so take everything they have to say about capitalist governments with a grain or salt, but it can be an interesting perspective. And I just love the photo in the top banner.

Adbusters

A culturejamming, anti-consumerism site with lots of great reading about today's economy and culture. The equivalent of an ideological hug for people who get bummed about about the state of our world. The little slogany banners that change if you refresh the page were the inspiration for my CSWS culturejamming flyer response slips at my school. 

Zombietime

I've linked it here before too. An independent reporter from California reports on left-wing protests with a right-wing slant. Sometimes the blatant bias can be jarring, but I think it's very valuable for people in the activist scene to be aware of how we're seen from a different perspective so we can avoid a lot of the pitfalls that ZT points out. I also find it refreshing to read journalism that doesn't pretend to be objective - we all know reporters are people, so when they come out and admit it, it's nice. The "zomblog" linked at the top contains more interesting reporting that didn't quite make it to the main page.

Found Magazine

People find stuff and send it in. Found Magazine then publishes it. It's pretty neat. Some of my writing has been inspired by it and I love how it gives a glimpse into other people's lives. The total lack of context makes you realize how self-contained each of our worlds are and it gives your imagination a nice workout. This is under "journalism" instead of "misc." because it's actually a printed magazine as well.

CI Holiday Surprise!

There will be more break filler posts! I drew some doodles about the differences between my life at Goucher and my life here at home and figured I'd share them with you. They'll be posted alternately between the TTOYOB fillers, every four days. Yay! The computer here is conked out, so instead of scanning I had to photograph my drawings (which are about an inch tall and done in pencil) and photoshop them to be darker and readable. I know they look smeary and sketchy, but hey, not everyone can be Randall. 

Here's the first one, "On OK Times For Eating":

Things To Occupy You Over Break #1: Videos

Here are some video serieses (seri?) that I adore. They're all addictive, though, so be prepared to sit glued to your screen for a while.

Target: Women

This is feminist comedy/social commentary that points out, then ridicules, messages from the media that women today are bombarded with. She covers things like the Disney Princesses, cleaning products, car advertisements, and botox. If it sounds heavy-handed, fret not: all of the straight white males I've shown it to laugh just as hard as the girls, and many have expressed the desire to marry the female host.

After watching it, exclamations such as "Happy period control!," "Underpants!" and "she's looking like a chubster!" will make perfect sense, and commercials for cleaning products may either arouse or enrage you.

Jack Danyells

Not to be confused with the, er, beverage, Jack Danyells is a guy who yells about abuses and misuses of the English language. Sometimes he sings. He is funny. His intro is disgustingly catchy. You will never say "very unique" or be able to enjoy the song "Ironic" ever again.

zefrank

Zefrank is an adorably cuddly vlogger who kept a daily vlog for an entire year that covered current events, his own life, and dirty space news. It spawned so many in-jokes among his tight-knit, wiki-connected audience that after watching ten or so episodes, you'll feel like part of an exclusive club (but only if you watch them in order). It's silly, hilarious, and just plain fantastic. You will find yourself greeting people with "sports racers, racing sports!," asking "who likes the little little duckies in the pond?" and referring to Google as "our great and glorious leader." You will also be able to whisper "are the new viewers gone yet?" after every ridiculous thing you do.

Is It Okay To Microwave This?

Pretty self-explanatory. Everything you ever wanted to put into a microwave but had the good sense not to has been put into a microwave and videotaped for your amusement and education. They do glowsticks, fireworks, apples, an etch-a-sketch, an inhaler, an iPod, a rubix cube, a barbie doll, a motherboard, and tons more. If only all of our childhoods had been equipped with a ventilated, aluminum-foiled saferoom for microwaving stuff.

Drinking Out Of Cups

This is not a series but it needs to be here. The audio is a recording of a guy who took some sort of illicit substance (our theories are shrooms or PCP), and the animation is, um, a lizard someone decided was necessary to animate it. My friends think the guiding theme behind his string-of-consciousness nonsense is him saying before getting messed up, "this isn't going to do anything to me, I'm more badass than that," hence his constant exclamations of "that ain't real!" and "no way!" after he addresses his hallucinations. Every single line in it is a potent quotable, but my personal favorites are the walkway bit and "they're like the clocks, I love 'em."

So, about me making promises I don't keep...

Some of my more astute readers may have noticed that I said the blog would resume posting in October, but then it did not. Oops.

If you all have it in your hearts to forgive me, I can make it up to you - promise. The hiatus will continue through winter break (the logic being I'll be where all my readers live, and you'll get your Sal fix anyway) but I have posts already set up to post through MARCH after I get back. Seriously!

Here's what's coming up: as well as the one-weekly essays and prose pieces you're all familiar with, I've now started writing slam poetry to perform at the monthly poetry slams at my school, and that'll go up here after I perform it. Three poems per slam, one slam per month - so every month, I'll put up one of the previous month's poems every week. I also got started making little indexed-style charts about my life one night in the Gopher Hole, so some of those (the ones that aren't Goucher in-jokes) will make it up here as well. That's at least a THRICE WEEKLY update, possibly more if the charts start being superfun.

But wait! There's more! This won't go totally ignored over the holiday break - I know you all need something to waste - er, spend - your time reading, so I'll be posting reviews of online 'zines, webcomics, and other nonsense that I read religiously and think you might enjoy too. These will only be around for the break, though, because some of the stuff will suck you into 7+ years of archives and you'll be doing nothing but reading, and it'd be cruel to tempt you during school time. (But once you've read them, you'll get all the pointless little obscure references I'm always making.)

HAI GUYS

I've been a bad blogger. Separated from my beloved audience and distracted by the glitz and glamour of college life, I quit updating. Sad story. However! I officially declare the hiatus OVER as of October 6. I've got some essays and some creative works started and things should heat up again. I miss you guys!

I should have a letter drive. Sometime in the near future I'll promise something like another hourly comic day IF I get a certain number of letters. (Count yourselves lucky. Most bloggers do drives for money.)

Coming up: Post 9-11 mindsets, "Charts & Graphs: a pivotal moment", a holistic approach to the counseling vs. pills question, an extended metaphor involving melted wax, photography from around my campus, social & gender considerations left out in a Connections show on sexuality & rape, and silly things my friends here said.

"Hold On, We're Morons"

(SoCI: I'm at college! It's awesome! I don't have tons of time to write/edit right now so here's a shorter, rougher essay with too many underdeveloped theses and no focus. To my old readers: I miss you guys! Write me! To my new readers: hope you like this. My goofy IB stories can be found in the archives, if that's what you're here for.)

I know, I know - getting down on Hot Topic for being culturally tone-deaf and generally moronic is about as obnoxiously bottom-of-the-barrel as the rape jokes in Do's&Don'ts. I ought to be going after a more interesting, fresh target - like computational linguistics. But, and I'm sorry guys, the thing that's gotten me angriest this week has yet again been brought to you by everyone's favorite sell-outs.

They're selling t-shirts and magnets with the phrase "hold on, I'm on my hamburger phone," from the movie Juno; described on their site as "the newest pop-culture must-have" (I'm glad I have them to tell me what I must have, otherwise I'd be completely lost.)

The big issue here is the proliferation of "pop-culture references" that are just repeated catchphrases with barely any significance to the topic at hand. It used to be that a piece full of "pop-culture references" meant that it was smart, sharp, and self-aware almost to the point of parody or satire. You had to have background knowledge, and the references had relevance and comedic value on their own (rather than just recalling a funny moment by someone else.) Now, we've got scripts that almost seem written around the idea of potent quotables (sorry, I'm talking about quoting pop culture here, have to do a bit of my own.) I can tell, while watching a movie, which lines are going to end up being repeated constantly - Hollywood knows this, and they're going for it. There have even been instances where the popularity of the catchphrases preceded the opening of the show (Borat, Napoleon Dynamite). I concede that this is a form of brilliant viral marketing and it takes some serious skill to write comedy in such a way that it's appealing even in previews like that - but when every preview and every movie is going for the effect, it gets old.

 The narrower issue here is the specific phrase from the movie. It's NOT a comedic moment at all, and it's in fact the most brilliantly poignant moment of the movie. That scene and that line within the scene encapsulate the main theme of the movie, which is Juno's juxtaposition of very adult choices and situations and her youth and continuing innocence. She calls to make an appointment for an abortion, and must tell the woman from the clinic to "hold on, I'm on my hamburger phone" while she shakes the phone to make it work again. Juno deadpans that line to an adult, not realizing that there is a world outside her young world where it's not just taken for granted that people have barely-working "hamburger phones." The contrast of her acceptance of both situations (the phone and the pregnancy) perfectly, sadly, beautifully sums up the conflict of the movie.

Hot Topic either doesn't have a clue and just sees the shallow slapstick element of the silly phone; or thinks its consumers don't have a clue or are willing to overlook a serious thematic device if the HT head honchos tell them to find it funny and buy it. It's pathetic and sad - we've got such brilliance out there in mainstream media and instead of raising up the people to its level, they're doing their best to drag it down. It's like reading Heart of Darkness as a supermarket horror thriller - sure, the elements are there, but it denies or ignores the true accomplishments of the work.

Unchaperoned

(I wrote this in a hotel room in Albuquerque in the middle of the night.)

What began as an excuse, a sympathetic ruse we constructed to convince our parents to let us, both eighteen, drive unaccompanied from Durango, Colorado to Los Angeles, California, soon became the trip’s true reason, the only force that held the gas pedal down and kept us moving forward.  I was there for “emotional support,” a role that overshadowed my previous position the night before, during our first night alone together. The memory of the shameless, ecstatic night, flashing back as we walked down the hospital’s glowing corridors, stung with guilt that held us to a more sober, grave, adult manner than we had been able to manage then.

At the time we had been dating thirteen months, somewhat casually and sporadically, with far more affection than devotion. That fall his best friend was in an accident in California, a motorcycle collision, and they told us back home he would be fine after a few months in rehab. Nathan sent a few emails, in the optimistic tone of denial all guys adopt during hard times. They discussed sports, the nurses at the hospital, and next year’s professors, all with a too-cheery overtone of confidence that Ben would pull through just fine.

That summer things took a bizarre turn for the worse, courtesy of an undetected injury to the brain that had waited, latent, until the weather cooled. On August twelfth, Ben’s mom called Nathan with the news. On August fourteenth, we announced to our parents that we were taking a road trip up to see Ben. What went unsaid was that it would be for the last time. I barely understood why I was going.  Though both of us vaguely recognized the space in Nathan’s life that was about to empty, that I would be called on to fill, it was the allure of an unchaperoned trip that drew me. It was from this hazy knowledge that we formulated our story, a reason poignant enough to override parental concerns. I knew Ben as well as a girlfriend can know her boyfriend’s best friend – from parties, occasional double dates, stories Nathan would tell about growing up. He was there when Nathan learned to swim at five, when he saw his first dirty movie at eleven, when they got caught smuggling alcohol from Ben’s uncle’s trailer at sixteen. I went not because I felt an obligation to visit Ben but because I felt an obligation to Nathan and to my own young sexuality. Our imminent departures for separate universities whispered another unspoken knowledge - we may never get another chance.

On August sixteenth we were walking back down the hospital’s hallway, having left Ben (Ben having left Ben already), feeling painfully our immature callousness in the exploitation of the situation. The night before, when this shame started to unfurl its barbed arms, Nathan whispered, “Ben would have wanted it.” I went along, imagining the two of them high-fiving the next morning. And so the shame retreated back into the shells of our minds, waiting for its next opening, as we took advantage of its absence and of our hotel room, of its distance from every worried parent and brain-dead friend, of its thick comforter and thicker darkness.

But the guilt returned, and we, having no excuses left, were forced to bear its weight along with the awareness that for both of us, the memories of our first night together and Ben and Nathan’s last day together would be forever entangled. The anonymous, thickly covered hotel bed melted into Ben’s clipboard-adorned, thin hospital bed. Ambient lighting from the streetlight outside our window became the blinding glare of fluorescent lights off white tiling. Our sighs and laughs and gasps gave way to Ben’s fragile breaths moving rhythmically through tubes. Where we stopped moving and rocking together, Nathan was in the arms of Ben’s mother, shaking, leaning. Then, I was “Love,” but the woman who would always be “Mrs. Elaine” to Nathan held him now, with none of the girlish confusion I had behaved with then and felt again, a weak stranger with no place in the scene.

I had never seen Nathan cry before, never seen him lean on anyone with such need and desperation. I realized then that my given role on the trip was both my most important one and one I could never fulfill. He turned from Elaine, straightening up from her shoulder, and I reached for his hand with a pathetic futility. He took it, though – the ineffective seeming otherwise with no other option in sight. 

Give 'Em The Old Razzle-Dazzle (or, what's not unfucked-up about drug marketing)

Being sick is not nice. People who help us not be sick are generally regarded as pretty nice. One of JF's buddies put it very poetically when he said that hospitals work to "unfuck people up".

But not everything about the medical establishment is wonderfully unfucked. Take, for instance, drug marketing, advertising, and PR.

This commercial is absurd. There are four things going on - the visuals with cute girls and bright balloons; the fast catchy music; the words at the bottom; and the voiceover. Try and focus on "serious complications" and "side effects may include" when you're watching pretty colored balloons, reading the words on them/at the bottom of the screen, and humming along to the song.  This commercial is almost a self-parody - admission of ridiculous amounts of risks, then desperate "but maybe you should still buy it anyway!" The extreme visual overload of text is representative of pharmaceutical marketing's three-ring circus of smokescreens, sparkles, and doublespeak masking lies and insatiable greed. In keeping with our theme of co-opted vulgarity, these commercials are what is commonly referred to as a "clusterfuck".

But wait! Not only does drug marketing employ showy, distracting sleight-of-hand, it also stigmatizes! Commercials for Abilify (a drug for bipolar disorder) show sufferers alone until they make the decision to take the drug, at which point they are walking and talking with other people. Because the mentally ill can't have meaningful, fulfilling, healthy relationships without Big Pharma helping them out. I can't find the commercials online, but their site contains this warning: Some medicines can increase suicidal thoughts and behaviors in children, teens, and young adults. Serious mental illnesses are themselves associated with an increase in the risk of suicide. When taking ABILIFY call your doctor right away if you have new or worsening mood symptoms, unusual changes in behavior, or thoughts of suicide. Patients and their caregivers should be especially observant for such symptoms within the first few months of treatment or after a change in dose.

So this could actually do the opposite of what it intends to do, but that's not their fault because these people are already messed up! Note how it says "patients and their caregivers" - not "patients or their caregivers" or "patients and their doctors" - implying that even medicated, bipolar people can't really be trusted to take care of themselves. To compare, the similar warnings on websites for Yaz and Celebrex say only "tell your doctor", with no third-person reference to "patients" or "caregivers", affording users more autonomy, responsibility and dignity. I also like the vague "some medicines" that distances the product from the warning. Soon we should be seeing food packaging saying "some food may contain nuts!" or laws like "some people shouldn't kill some other people."

Also, even with that stated risk, it does not say the drug should not be prescribed to teens/young adults, while both Yaz and Celebrex warn that "people with [condition] should not" take them. I'm not exactly sure what to make of this - is psychiatry not enough of a concrete science for these risks to be valid enough? Do we care less about taking risks with the health of young mentally ill people? Is mental illness seen as a "worse" or "more devastating" condition that makes the risk more worth it? What the fuck?

Pfizer also cares more about money than those silly crazy folk, defending their new lucrative anti-smoking drug Chantix and claiming it can still be prescribed to the mentally ill even though it has been linked to mania/depression. (Research credit Furious Seasons.) This mirrors the longer-running issue hinted at above - legal and medical cases established a link between SSRIs (anti-depression meds) and suicide in young people and yet the drug companies (including Pfizer, who makes Zoloft) didn't stop marketing them for adolescent use. All the FDA did was slap a black-box warning on them, allowing Big Pharma to effectively "fuck over" kids and their families for money.

Recommended reading: 

The Boston Globe: Congress Scrutinizes Drug Ads

New England Journal of Medicine study says drug advertising may lead to "overuse" of the drugs and that the FDA enforces regulatory laws "weakly"

LJ community post full of "vintage" ads for drugs, including whole opium

New York Times: PhD names put on studies really written by PR

Apparently I Think With Lots of Dashes

While packing to leave, I came across one of the many tiny little notebooks I carry around in my purse to write down whatever thought, observation, eavesdropped quote or other notes that need immediate recording. Thought you guys might be interested in the ephemera of me processing the outside world. Also, I'd really like to put off packing for a little while longer and have been too busy to write real stuff for CI. Here are some of the little things I decided to jot down.  

The Spiral Staircase: Karen Armstrong 

Jeremiah 29:22 

The lie that tells a truth 

status: high/low/liquid 

breathing (speech) 

counterpoints; for (left arrow) find (right arrow) 

prismacolor markers

Natalie Goldberg: writing down the bones/wild mind 

raya - purple 

blue crabs - mate once in their life :( 

whisper disks 

"the last time you dressed me up to take me somewhere I ended up with more back-handed compliments than you could think of, and herpes." 

when she is not in love 

glass and brick

the most beautiful world is a world entered through imagination (Helen Keller)

something else 

Godless man-oriented city v. nature - good 

forgot to see the sky

Alice Flaherty

gets caught - "waiting for appointment" - uses name from last building

Sabaduria - knowledge 

pigeons 

camera - herself, flash, city - beeps until love throws away 

ice (cubes) 

Appellate practice for the MD lawyer 

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it (Twain)

"I lied about my age once at airport security and am afraid they have it on file somewhere" 

motivation - confident

black gothic spires (europe)

speaks big, wants longs seeks to be heard, grabs your shoulders and shakes, talks too close to your face

Tao te Ching - #11

thunder heartbeat

backwards/upside-down O

people walking - NOT ants

a cycle of wrongs, everyone gets hurt by the system set in place to help them Switchfoot - Stars - track one 

they came right for you.

Creativity, like human life, begins in darkness (Julia Cameron) 

Non c'e amore piu sincero di quello de cibo 

caffienated kiss 

Erik Erikson Identity

Madagascar 120 million years

leo Nisseras

light - only 1/2 reflection; melts into city

hope is a waking dream (Aristotle)

you can't copy it like rhinestones

can you feel the life in the air where you are?

midnight thoughts demanding