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Rann Aridorn's LiveJournal:
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| Monday, June 29th, 2009 | | 11:20 pm |
You know, back during the Democrat primaries, Day By Day did a comic calling out Obama and Hillary on their respective card-slinging, referring to it as "We'll know who should run the country once we decide who the bigger victim is." Does it seem to anyone else that this is all that the modern, vocal feminist movement does? Every time I see a "feminist" rant about something, against something, it's about how mistreated women still are, how unfair the world is towards them, how everything that's unfair based on sex towards men is actually unfair towards women if you just look at it hard enough, how persecution against women can be found in everything that's written and animated and watched... I mean, didn't this movement used to be about empowering females? Wasn't it about demanding equal rights, equal respect, equal opportunity? Who the fuck can even argue with that? Equality of opportunity and all the rest is peoples' due as human beings, let alone human beings with vaginas, how can you even go against that? But no one talks about that anymore, no one talks about equality and empowerment and respect, they only talk about inequality and disenfranchisement and disrespect, and they'll find them in anything and everything. It stopped being about "We are just as good as you" and became "You make victims of us, all the time, every day, in everything you do, and it's your fault that we let you do it." No one respects the modern feminist movement because it doesn't seem to respect itself, or the people it's supposed to be fighting for. It seems to have stopped being about telling women they can be strong, and confident, and free, and is now all about telling women how they're weak, and conditioned, and powerless, and the solution is to tell everyone about how victimized they are, loudly, and all the time. I mean, seriously, how did the movement that used to be about "I can do just as good as any man if I try, if not better" turn into "When I wear clothes that show off my tits, it's beyond my control because the patriarchy programmed me to do it"? I still don't fucking get that one. Most of the women I know are very strong, confident, wonderful people that I adore and look up to, and I'm sure that at least one of them, if you told her that she dressed sexy not because she chose to but because she was a victim of society's programming her to think all her value was in her appearance, she'd punch you in the face. And god dammit she should, because I still can't get over how fucking insulting and degrading that very concept is let alone that someone had the audacity to post it as a feminist statement, and I have a fucking penis. Anyway. No fucking idea what I'm rambling on about now. Wish I could make myself go to sleep at a reasonable hour, considering how fucking exhausted I am lately. Iesus. | | Friday, June 26th, 2009 | | 5:52 pm |
| | Saturday, May 16th, 2009 | | 2:54 pm |
You know, it occurs to me... back when the leftist media, both new and old, started crawling up into Joe the Plumber's colon trying to find something to smear him with, there was a lot of sneering about McCain bringing him up, snickering "McCain should have vetted this guy first!" Because you totally need to thoroughly investigate and assure the credibility of someone you're just going to mention. And yet Obama picks people for his administration, you know, assigning them to jobs, an activity that typically requires one to actually look into someone's background, without finding out that they're fucking evading taxes. But that's just fine. Like, wow, man. Like wow. An' stuff. | | Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 | | 9:09 pm |
[21:05] ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) arkhaine: (sweatdrops a bit as another player mentions making "vegan" butterscotch chip cookies) [21:05] rann: ..... [21:05] rann: KILL THEM. [21:05] rann: KILL THEM NOW. [21:05] rann: WITH YOUR MIND. [21:06] arkhaine: (snirks) [21:07] arkhaine: She says they turned out "weird." (presses for details as to what makes them vegan) No meat, no dairy. Applesauce for eggs. .....yeesh. [21:07] rann: WITH YOUR MIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIND! | | Friday, May 8th, 2009 | | 2:40 pm |
Heh. "Dijongate". Anti-Obama people are screaming he's an elitist even as he tries to act like a "common man". That's quite possibly true, but trying to make an issue out of it is flat-out dumb. Pro-Obama people, meanwhile, are losing their minds over the anti-Obama people making a big deal out of it. The phrase to use seems to be some variation of "I wasn't even going to mention this, until I saw a SECOND conservative blog mention it, and now I have to write a long post filled with librul raeg". Is Obama elitist? Oh sure. Despite some people I know apparently thinking of him as the quintessential black everyman, I bet he's never had or been to the sort of backyard barbecue you or I would have or go to in his life. I find it easy to believe he never even had literal Kool-Aid until his kids were of an age to ask for it, and maybe not even then. He's just another politician, who has probably spent most of his adult life paying more for a meal than most of the people I know spent on the clothes they're wearing on any given day. There's jack shit that's "everyman" about him. I think his spin team is trying very hard to play up that image of him as an average guy, because I think that the primary focus of his first term in office is probably preparing to try and get him a second term, much as the majority of his time spent in the senate was spent preparing to try and get him into the White House. Do I think it's a big deal or indicative of anything that he asked for dijon mustard on his image-sculpting-on-a-bun? Newp. | | 9:56 am |
On a separate note, the absolute drop-dead funniest thing I think I've seen this week is watching a young-Earth creationist try to use the data we have from tens of thousands and millions of years ago to debunk human-caused climate change. I think the notion of humans causing global warming/climate change/whatever the Goreacle is calling it this week is ridiculous, too. Luckily, I at least have the benefit of not having to try and reconcile our planet's long and rather well-documented history of temperature fluctuation with a belief that the planet's only 5000 years old. tl;dr Young-Earth creationists are teh stupid. And occasionally bring unexpected lulz. | | 9:19 am |
What the... I mean...  Laurell K. Hamilton wrote... a Star Trek: The Next Generation novel? what is this i dont even AGH WTF?!?!?! Someone got their horrible Mary Sue author in my Star Trek! AND THIS IS NOT DELICIOUS LIKE A REESE'S! !!!!!! *spazzes out for awhile, gets tired, curls up for a nap* | | Thursday, May 7th, 2009 | | 6:03 pm |
On another note... Many nights recently, I've logged on City of Heroes to find that Freedom and Virtue were either in yellow or full. Now that they semi-nerfed AE farming missions, I log on and find Freedom barely yellow, Virtue green. So how's that anti-farming stance workin' out for ya, Paragon? | | 5:01 pm |
Okay, this sequence of events requires a bit of a timeline. Last night. I have a couple of full trashbags, and fill-to-partway-fill a few more with various bits of trash I've got laying around. Since some of them have stinky stuff in it, I set it outside my apartment to be dealt with in the morning. Very, very early this morning (in fact, almost 5am on the dot), the people directly above me decide they need to turn on their washing machine or dishwasher or whatever. Which is apparently directly above my bedroom. This lasts for about forty-five minutes off and on. I'm Not Happy. This morning I get up. I'm very tired and very cranky. As I leave I see my trash bags. Fuck. Well, I figure I'll deal with them when I get home. Fucking apartment complex, cutting trash pickup service and with only three dumpsters in a single location on the entire grounds. Well, I get home this afternoon to find a note taped to my door that says they opened my apartment and put the trash bags back inside, and that if I become a "repeat offender" about leaving my trash out I'll be fined $75. What. The. Fuck. When did this little policy get floated? They only fucking stopped trash pickup a month ago and they already have a draconian fee policy over leaving your trash out? For less than a DAY? And apparently the apartment manager busybodies have time to come up to my apartment and open the door and put the trash in and tape up their little fucking note on all sides, but they don't have time to do trash pickup. Well, that's fine. That's fine. Lesson learned. Next time I'll put the trash in front of the door of the fuckers upstairs. Maybe make sure to pour some old milk or soda over it, first. You have truly given me insight, Manager Fuckhead, I salute you. | | Monday, May 4th, 2009 | | 6:33 pm |
stark23x once observed that it's not only okay for a female to have a sex toy, but to openly talk about it, and no one really thinks it's all that weird. In fact, it's viewed as natural and healthy for a woman to have a vibrator. But let a man buy something to wrap around his dick for the purposes of gratification, and he's eternally a sick freak. I've realized at various points this isn't the only thing on which women are allowed to act sexual/open/goofy in a way that if a man did it, it would be considered a sign of creepiness, stupidity, or obsession. Anthropomorphizing, naming, and/or big attachment to their sexual characteristics. I mean, women anthropomorphize their breasts and have forever. At the very most basic level, they're "the girls". Naming them is silly-goofy and cute. If a guy calls his dick by a nickname, we're supposed to roll our eyes about what a dumb-goofy macho dork he is, obsessed with his unit. A guy losing a testicle is pure comedy, and if he reacts at all negatively to the thought of getting his tubes tied, he's just being selfish and needs to Learn a Lesson; a woman having a vasectomy and feeling depressed or sad about it is a deeply emotional issue that requires the utmost sensitivity. Heck, in a lot of shows and movies, it's supposed to be laughworthy if a guy is even worried about losing his penis to injury or disaster or something; actually worrying about losing your dick is somehow a sign of an obsession with machismo and masculinity. Women are allowed to name theirs, we're not even supposed to care about keeping ours. I think the place I first saw this exhibited so starkly was when I actually sat down and watched the majority of The Vagina Monologues. Considered one of the centerpieces of feminist literature/theater/performance/whatever. Pretty much the very first segment involves not only a Lifetime Channel style tale of an evil uncaring man (and an evil uncaring male therapist), but the woman talking about how having a shaven crotch made her feel immature, and caused her in her mortification to speak in a higher voice, like a little girl's. Can you imagine how pathetically a man would be portrayed if he changed his way of speaking and his mannerisms and the way he thought of himself due to a purely aesthetic change in his penis? If it looked bigger and he talked in a deeper voice, he'd be portrayed as a swaggering jerk. If he turned into a completely confidence-lacking dork because it looked smaller, he'd be a loser for thinking the length of his dick was what mattered in interpersonal relationships. Hell, switch the genders here. Imagine if it were a woman begging a guy to trim his pubic hair, and he refused because having a big thick thatch of black hair proved how manly he was? He'd be the insensitive one for not caring about her desires for his attractiveness. Stuff like this has been the subject of any number of sitcom episodes and jokes in movies. And it is an example of sexism, because it's a standard of behaviors women are normal for and we should have sensitivity for, and men are weirdoes for and to be laughed at over. | | Thursday, April 30th, 2009 | | 5:26 pm |
Aaaand now the PS3 is dead. | | 8:53 am |
| | Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 | | 11:27 pm |
You know, I had a thought, maybe harkening back to my earlier post where it was noted that Nightcrawler's primary aesop of "don't judge a book by its cover" is asking a whole helluva lot of people when the cover looks like something that's going to swallow your soul. But the Beast actually illustrates that point much better. Er, not the one whose other name is Hank. I mean the one that played opposite Belle. I mean, the townspeople are portrayed as ignorant, evil bigots for marching on the Beast's castle with pitchforks and torches, and just to make it absolutely and totally clear to everyone what foolish, shallow peasants they are, the lyrics actually have them go ahead and sing "We don't like what we don't understand, in fact it scares us! And this monster is mysterious at least!" This ignores the fact that pretty much everything that Gaston sings about the Beast is pretty much dead-on accurate, and in fact leaves out quite a bit. Gaston was obviously a prick (because pretty doesn't make for good people, which is why the Beast turns pretty as his reward... er, wait), but he actually left out a bunch of shit about the Beast that would have legitimized that angry mob. I mean, hey, you know what, you wanna go with looking past appearances, fine, we'll forget the huge pointy horns, the giant razor-sharp fangs, the killer claws, all that. But what about the hair-trigger temper? The tendency to use every single one of those traits to try and frighten people into obeying him, including his loyal servants? Do you really get to moralize about how people are treating you like a monster when you're so willing to act like one? Oh sure, that's supposed to be part of the aesop of the story. The Beast stops acting like a monster, and at the time when Gaston's stirring everyone up he's all sad and sympathetic. Nevermind that he's sad because he released his hostage. The scene loses some of its moral impact when you recall that the only reason Belle got the chance to get to know the Beast and look past his surface appearance was that he held her hostage in return for allowing her sick father to go free. Her sick father who he had thrown into a cell for no reason other than he felt like being a dick, basically. (Really, Beast? Being a dick to a weary traveler seeking shelter? Isn't that how you got in this situation?) Really, the only thing separating Gaston being a bigot and Gaston being a hero is timing. Had he actually had proof of the Beast's existence and riled up the townspeople to storm the castle immediately after Belle was taken, he would have been like a Disney prince of old, overcoming his earlier prickishness to band together the townsfolk and rescue the fair maiden. But because by the point that he realizes "Oh hey, that giant monstrous creature Belle's father was saying kidnapped her actually exists and really DID kidnap her", Belle's got Stockholm's syndrome and we're supposed to think the Beast is a pretty nice guy. He's sang a few songs in his normal voice by now, we've seen that he'd be all pritty if he was human, he's the hero here. Right? I mean, I get the intended aesop to this story and all, and it's a good one. It just might have been more effective if the Beast had just been made really ugly instead of being turned into some sort of sentient superpredator. Like if he was turned a funny color, or he didn't have any eyelids, or he had a malformed face and a hunch back. (Oh, no, wait, that last one would be grounds for Belle to ditch his ass at the end, according to another Disney flick.) Or if there was less hostage-taking and kidnapping involved. Or less roaring in peoples' faces when they talk back to you. Also, when you think about it, isn't the story really hypocritical? Gaston and the Beast are both equally huge dicks at the start of the movie. In fact, there's not much bad that Gaston does that the Beast doesn't match or exceed. Gaston's evil for trying to take Belle's father hostage to make her marry him, but the Beast's just misunderstood for basically doing the same thing? And basically we're presented with the idea that the Beast learns to be a nicer guy and let out some of his inner gentleness because of Belle's influence. So couldn't she have stayed home and tried to do that? Gaston was a prick who wanted her to stay home, have babies, and rub his feet, but Beast started out wanting to throw her in a cell and let her rot there unless she was useful for breaking his curse. I guess sexism trumps literal imprisonment? Seems like Belle could have just stayed in the village and worked on reforming Gaston, there would have been less of a commute involved. She can train a literally raging, literally snarling, literally monstrous creature who was raised spoiled and whose curse has basically only channeled his being spoiled down a different path, but she can't teach Gaston respect for women? Is this a really narrow set of skills for finding the good in people or what? | | 2:14 am |
It's stories like this that make me wonder if maybe the moral guardians weren't right about all the violence in TV and videogames desensitizing us. The Mortal Kombat players of yesteryear are turning into the empathyless golfers of today, after all. It's not just stuff like this. It's the /b/tards and others who save hundreds of megabytes of the most disgusting images they can find, and happily spend time reposting these, working with them in photoshop, and so on. This deadening to what should be disgusting has to start somewhere. (Of course, for some of us it was /b/tard floods of other places that started this process in the first place.) I dunno, maybe it's just the internet that's more and more often allowing us to see that we as human beings just really don't give a shit about each other a lot of the time. After all, there's many a tale of how little life meant in the wild west. And tales of how then and further back through history, killing someone for making a joke you didn't like was something as casual as stopping to pick up a new toga pin in the impulse buy aisle. Maybe it somehow just seems more petty and callous when we devalue each other to the point where it's not even life and death, but golf that we'll completely dismiss each other's health and well-being for. I guess everyone swaggering about with a gladius or a six-gun seems like one thing, but thinking "I'll aim for the greenskeeper's head" to cut down on your strokes and then demanding he crawl out of your way so that you can put seems vastly more meaningless. ... Look, whatever, all I know is I think the meat I had for dinner may have not been at its freshest and it's making me both queasy and testy as well as keeping me up. x.x | | 12:03 am |
Since livejournal seems to be having its daily mass of WTFups, I'll post this reply I attempted to make to this post here instead, regarding an article supposedly talking about why lesbian women like gay male porn: The article is bullshit. What is more, it is lying bullshit. The article is written from a standpoint not of explaining anything, but attempting to give women a weapon to use in arguments. It is a weapon to be used against straight men, counting on straight men not to have watched very much gay porn. However, I have watched plenty of gay porn, and there is nothing more "humane" about it. If anything, a lot of it is much more focused on degradation than any other kind of porn, if you want to phrase it that way. Probably from a quarter to anywhere up to a third of gay porn actually makes a point (or plot point) out of the actors or characters being "gay for pay", sometimes in the most humiliating ways possible. Much of this centers around some "young straight stud" with a girlfriend hitting bad financial straits and having to appear in gay porn to pay the bills. That's not even getting into concepts like "bait bus". Hell, you don't even have to know about gay porn at all to know the "You can't fake a hardon" section is just a bunch of sexist crap aimed at objectifying men into horny fuckpuppets, eager to thrust into whatever hole's provided. You only have to know enough about porn in general to know about the existence of "fluffers" to know that, yes, sometimes guys do need to be coaxed into performing on camera, rather than leaping into it unable to be held back by a pack of horses, the very thought of getting to fuck someone on camera giving them a hardon like the toughest steel. Again, there is plenty degrading in gay porn. Verbal, physical, psychological. If anything it's much more about forcing the "other" into submission than straight porn has ever been. To claim it's somehow more humane or less degrading when it's two men on screen is basically just a rephrasing of "Well it's okay when it happens to GUYS, who cares about them?" Gay porn sex? No more ACTUAL, REALISTIC HUMANE SEX than an "unrealistic scene where a woman is unmercifully banged by a man who only cares about his pleasure". (Ha, right, sure, I must have imagined the copious amount of straight porn where the guy spends as long, if not longer, engaged in cunnilingus before moving on to the main event. I suppose that's just all about his love of pussy rather than for her benefit, eh?) Anyone who claims otherwise is either uninformed or a liar. | | Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 | | 8:41 pm |
| | 5:27 pm |
I am currently Not A Happy DirecTV Customer. My dish has suffered issues in the last month. Once it fell (or was knocked) over. And now, sometime today, the cable that goes from the dish up to my window has been accidentally (or purposefully) shredded. (Being an ethnic minority in my apartment complex, I'm wondering at what point it's fair to begin to scream "Hate crime!" Considering my melanin deficiency, the answer is probably "Never", so nevermind.) The problem is that when I called in about this issue (having to fight my way past the forced attempts at automated tech support), I am now being given some version of the runaround. Apparently, despite my paying monthly for the protection plan, the cable getting shredded isn't covered, according to the tech. The only thing saving me on that end is that the dish was installed under ninety days ago. (So the protection plan covers the dish, and my receivers, and my remotes... but not the fucking cable that is required so that all of these things work together?) But apparently, because there was a service call not too long ago due to the dish being knocked over, they have to escalate it to someone else, this someone else has to call ME back ("within the next two hours"... probably), I guess to see IF I'm going to get a service call. And if I don't... what? What do they think I'm going to do? Pay to have someone come out? Ahhhh, no. It's going back, and there's no fucking way I'm paying a disconnect fee. I was told the protection plan covered cables, they're going to fucking cover my cables or they're taking it back free of charge. | | Friday, April 24th, 2009 | | 11:12 am |
The irony police really do slack off a lot these days. Yet again, a bunch of people that claim to be against homophobia and to hate homophobes almost immediately fall back to using "lolz republicans are all teh gay anyhow" as an insult. It's not that hard to see why I've come to the conclusion that most of these people actually don't give a shit about gay rights, but merely enjoy having one more thing to bitch at the other side over. To that effect, letter format! Dear leftist fucktards (and all those who proclaim themselves to be for leftist causes because it's more popular and rightists are easier targets), Please stop turning an issue that could potentially affect my life and concretely does affect the lives of many others into your personal internet bitchfest fodder. Or, y'know, just die in a fire. I'm good with either. With no love but lots of matches, Rann | | Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 | | 6:41 pm |
Is it just me, or is a lot of the adoration-bordering-on-worship-bordering-o n-lust for the big O being translated into actual lust for his wife? I mean, everywhere I go that is big on Obama, I see people fanning themselves and swooning over just how ZOMGhawt Michelle is like the woman was the hottest thing since Angelina Jolie showed off pretty much every tattoo she has and a few she doesn't. It's like... they won't openly cross the line into lusting after Obama (possibly because He Is Above Temptations Of The Flesh), they'll instead lust after his wife, the one that it's acceptable to gush over how beautiful she is. ... She ain't. She's no paper bagger, but geez. I'm sorry, objectively, she's 999,999 in a million as far as looks go. She's dead average. C'mon, I never saw rampant conservatives go on benders of squeeing over how hot Laura was. (There was, though, plenty of stuff about how she was often reserved, refined, and soft-spoken, which are clearly not traits that can be ascribed to Ms. Recently Proud.) The Cult of O definitely does take on some strange permutations. | | Thursday, April 16th, 2009 | | 7:20 pm |
As a bit of a heads up, I won't be around this weekend. Going on a little weekend trip with the parents to visit some restaurants they saw on TV. I won't say which TV show, but I will admit that I have every intention of eating a two pound doughnut this weekend. |
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