Admitting is the First Step

With this post, I will take a break from yelling about crap I don't enjoy, and instead make a confession to my readers (All six of them.):

I am a comment addict.

On my own stuff, for instance. If I put up a piece of Deviant Art and someone doesn't comment if they favorite it, I twitch a little. If I put up a piece I actually like and nobody comments, I die a little inside. The fact that the maybe six of my friends who say they read this blog have yet to comment on anything here makes my heart hurt. I am very much not well.

Of course, this is to say nothing of comments on things that have a following. It's one thing when my mediocre animoo gets commented on and I dance inside my mind. It is quite another to just HAVE to read all the comments on, say, a blog post that has a devoted following. I must have wasted hours reading comments on a post at Sadly, No! or some hacked object at ModTheSims2. I could likely spend half my time on the internet doing something more constructive if I didn't NEED to know what the masses thought of some post over at BoingBoing.

The thing is, I almost never comment on anything. Something has to particularly strike me for me to give feedback on it. It's more like people-watching than anything else.

I'm not likely to spend much time thinking of a response, but I will stay up until daylight, telling myself, "I will go to bed after reading these comments." Then, of course, I will forget I told myself this, open up a new tab full of comments to read, and begin the sick, depraved process over again.

So it would be really cool if I got some comments on this post? [insert emoticon here]

In Search of The Elusive Lulz

Here is what I am getting sick of hearing: "Feminists have no sense of humor." This is usually said by a male (most often white) in response to a woman, particularly one who has declared herself feminist, not dying of laughter after a rape joke or a domestic violence joke or some kind of "women-as-props-in-men's-lives" joke.

Look. I will say right here I still laugh at the George Carlin bit about how anything can be funny, including rape: Imagine Porky Pig raping Elmer Fudd. Thing is, you pretty much have to be at George Carlin skill-level to pull that shiz off. Porky raping Elmer takes refuge in audacity. Especially when you take into consideration that these are Looney Tunes, and there will likely be cartoonishly deformed facial expressions and ridiculous props pulled from hammerspace and fun with speech impediments. Your so-called "joke" about you, a human being, say, raping another human being to death...well, that isn't funny at all, really. That's more "disturbing and horrible." Unless you're two feet tall and your eyes have been known to jump off your face when someone throws TNT at you, only to be hilariously soot-covered and slightly tattered after the explosion, I don't want to hear about you raping someone. Unless you can find a way to contextualize a rape that rivals George Carlin's one specific joke about it in cleverness. I, personally, won't hole my breath.

I still do get a chuckle out of the old creepy mofo standard, "My favorite pick up line is, 'Does this rag smell like choloroform to you?'." This is mainly because I, a tiny unassuming girl, have worked hard to perpetuate the myth that I am SUPERCRAZY and will KILL you. See, it's funny because it isn't true. (This, incidentally, might help explain why people are more likely to suffer my insanity gladly than that of my friend, who actually might hurt you.) I'm 5'2", about 100 lbs, and mousy. Pretending to be a psycho stalker works for me because it's patently ridiculous. What would I do with a normal-sized human being if I caught one? My noodle arms certainly can't move them anywhere. I'm far too bashful to do anything to anyone I knock out. Where would I even get chloroform? I'm broke all the time! People who know me personally (and thus, the only one I tell jokes about drugging people and having my way with them to) will get the joke.

But when a seemingly average guy (let's say guy, for the sake of arguement) who could concievably drug and rape someone makes a joke about drugging and raping someone, that takes the silliness out of it that, for me, makes it okay to laugh at when I say it. And I'm not going to make that joke to a bunch of people who know nothing about me, or at least not that I'm tiny and crazy and kind of shy.

Clear as mud? Awesome.

My point is that the thing about making jokes that can be totally offensive is that there are a number of factors in play here. You need to think about your audience, yourself, and your skill level. As someone who has been treated as a "less than" because of her chromosomes, a joke treating women as "less than" is, oddly enough, not exactly going to resonate well with me.

Anyway, I leave you with a link to Shakesville on this topic that might make a little more sense.

Semi-Original Content

Crossposted from my aforementioned Deviant Art journal, in which I like to complain about misogyny in commercials.

Okay, so those Twix commercials. Those "Need a moment" ones. I liked them until something occurred to me: Every one of them, without fail (unless I'm forgetting any, in which case tell me and I'll eat my humble pie), has been about men somehow deceiving women so that the women will like them better.

-First one: Wife in hot pink spandex asks if the ridiculous pants makes her butt look big. Husband shoves candy into mouth and mumbles, so wife cannot hear that he totally wants to call her fat. Wife is happy!
-Second one, maybe?: Beavis and Butthead are all grown up and in a bookstore, chuckling over some skeezy book about how to pick up women. Girl one of them knows walks over and says hello. Man eats candy in a freeze frame, and is inspired to pretend to be offended by the book. Girl likes guy!
-Most recent one I've seen: Girl and guy are talking at a party. Girl is discussing politics intelligently. Guy does not listen to a word she says, and goes, "Uhhhhhh, wanna come back to my place?" Girl is rightfully outraged that guy is such an a-hole. Guy eats candy in freeze frame and comes up with some BS story about wanting to blog with her. Girl loves blogging and presumably would LOVE to come back to guy's place!

Puke.


Also, I HATE Girls Gone Wild. Everything about the whole thing. The exploiting possibly-underage, probably-drunk girls, the complaining by many that now that the girls are starting to enjoy it it's "not as good" anymore, the fact that Joe Francis is a skeezy rapist if about a zillion separate accounts are to be believed, the sell-your-dignity-for-a-t-shirt mentality, all of it.

Which is why it hurts me so much that the steel drum music in the background of their disgusting commercials is so catchy that I frequently find myself dancing to it and humming along with it when I'm doing the dishes and watching the Daily Show. *die*

I Caved.

I have accepted that my Deviant Art Journal won't get my feelings out to the internet like I want my feelings out there. So allow me to introduce myself. I am your lovely hostess, L. E. Hairstylist, also known as the Rurouni Idoru. No, neither of these are my actual name. The first is a pun on my actual name, the second is an identity based on an elaborate inside joke from at least four years ago. I'll get to actually using my real name on a real blog when people start caring about it.

I'm a feminist hippie who likes shaving her armpits and fancy soaps. I love bacon, sugary stuff, and tea. I don't like a whole lot of vegetables or fancy foods. I love the Beatles and most of the wives they've had. (Not Heather Mills. Very much Yoko Ono.) I like memes, I hate /b/. (Which I suppose means I do liek Mudkips.) I'm a pacifist who gets violently angry. I'm anti-racist, anti-ableist, anti-fatphobia, anti-homophobia, anti-ageist, and just generally anti-stupid-bigotry. I do try and recognize when my privilege is showing. I'm white, middle class, and despite my best efforts, somehow conform to western beauty standards (apart from being tall and disdaining glasses).

I love cheap fashion, especially great thrift store finds. I love love LOVE art. I want to be Salvador Dali when I grow up, upward-pointing mustache and all. If I had enough money I'd start a wig collection. I don't drive. I like anime but can't really be bothered to look at anything new or really keep up with any of it. I prefer to get my news from the internet and the Daily Show than actual TV news. My heart shattered when George Carlin died. I'm deeply in love with the English language. (This means I like to correct people's grammar. Be warned.)

There's a lot more about me, too. I can only hope my silly blogging will reveal most of it.