Hate Fest ‘07, or Dr. Socks Attempts to Self-Medicate
This picture has absolutely nothing to do with the post. I just think it’s cool.
Hi, everybody. Remember me? Right. The long-lost blog hostess.
Okay, here’s the deal: I’m fed up and irritated with many, many things. Not you all, of course: actually you’re one of the, um, things (?) that I find cheering. Not that you’re things, but — anyway. One reason I started this blog was so that I could vent about things that piss me off, but somehow I’ve gotten myself into a mode where I’m actually too fed up to blog about the things I’m fed up about. So, to try and break through to the other side (break on through to the other side, sang Hot Sexy Dead Jim Morrison before he was dead), I’m just going to start listing the things I hate. Feel free to join in and we can make this a party. Misery and company, yadeyade.
People and Things I Hate Right Now: a list off the top of my head in no particular order
1. George Orwell
2. Colette
3. Bush
4. Russia
5. The French
6. Traditional Home magazine
7. German toilets
8. Anti-feminists
9. Pornography
10. The National Review
11. Albert Camus
12. Wikipedia
13. Sexist asshats
14. Republicans
15. Comment spam
16. Trackback spam
17. Email spam
18. Ethiopia
19. Pakistan
20. FGM
21. Christian fundamentalists
22. Islamic fundamentalists
23. Jewish fundamentalists
24. Rich people
25. Whoever did the ad campaign for Clorox bleach
26. Advertising agencies, all of them
27. People who talk in corporate-speak
28. Traditional Home magazine (yes, again, and a thousand times)
29. Fashion
30. Karl Lagerfield
31. Hip-hugger pants
32. Rap music
33. Alberto Gonzales
34. Bush (again)
35. Tolstoy
36. Misogynists
37. Rick Tramonto
38. People who idolize famous chefs
39. Caviar
40. People who fly to Italy just to eat truffles
41. Sexist Italians
42. Karl Rove
43. Camille Paglia
44. Stupid sexist male novelists who think prostitutes all love their work and their pimps
45. Stupid sexist male novelists who think women find street harassment charming
46. That fucktwit German judge who denied a Muslim woman a quick divorce from her abusive husband because husbands have the right under Sharia law to beat their wives
47. Sharia law
48. “Feminists” who think hiring strippers to entertain at a professional conference is a feminist act
49. Sudan
50. George Balanchine
Okay, well, that’s a start!
56 Responses to “Hate Fest ‘07, or Dr. Socks Attempts to Self-Medicate”
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therealuk says:
1) liars
2) hypocrites
3) people with their head up their arse
4) identity politics
5) pomo bullshit
6) evolutionary psychology
7) positive thinking
8) stupid short termist populist politicians
9) factory farming
10) men (YES, ALL OF YOU bwhahahahaha !!! )
11) the tabloids
12) the blinkered and patriachal stupidity of the medical profession
13) being unwell
14) spoilt brats
15) bad drivers
16) bureaucracy
17) lethargy
18) loudness
19) war, famine, poverty, injustice
20) linear timeMarch 24th, 2007 at 1:41 pm EST -
Violet says:
Linear time! Good one!
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Jodie says:
1. Death
2. Taxes
3. The Patriarchy
4. Drama at work
5. Boring excess paperwork
6. Car payments
7. My asinine state congressmen -
simply wondered says:
1. lists
errr…as it’s a party i have brought a bottle of british sherry (or perhaps ’sherry’) to offer to any conservatives present
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Kaitlyn says:
Hatefest is a good idea. What is a blog but a diary?
I hate when people mispronounce my name. I have bad handwriting, but it’s usually a roll sheet or medical record.
I hate my sister every few minutes when we’re around each other, but that’s my problem, not hers.
I like Orwell. I like Animal Farm and while I won’t reread or buy it, 1984 is okay, though listening to it on CD in class is a pain in the ass when you can read a page per Mr. CD’s paragraph.
I hate Mikey, and the feeling is mutual.
I still hate my father, though it’s definitely easing into apathy.
I hate the fact that the application for another scholarship (that I qualify for and could win) came on Saturday, when the University is closed, so I can’t call and ask questions, something I’ve been doing on a daily basis.
I hate that it’s still March.
I hate it when people look at me funny when I’m walking to the store, on the sidewalk along the highway. Or when I’m walking on the sidewalk in my neighborhood.
I hate that Memphis has no decent public transport for the people outside the city limits.
I hate(d) driving the last time I did it, we ended up in a ditch.
I hate male GYNs who tell you it doesn’t hurt. (Thankfully, I don’t have one right now. He’s male, and he got snippy when Mom asked him questions like When will she be better? What’s wrong? Will the pain be better in time for school? Can you a sign a release for my lawyer?)
I hate my dad for saying that since I’m 18, I’m an adult, and he has no obligation to pay for my medical bills, then calling back and saying he will, but he can’t read what Mom sent him.
I hate people who assume that when you turn 18 you’re magically mature and financially stable enough to get thrown out of the nest. It’s true for some, but not true for those who were in the hospital 4 days after they tirned 18, and 10 days before. Like me. Illnesses don’t end when you become an adult, especially if they’re not childhood problems, but adolescent ones that have pagued you since puberty.
I hate people who smoke.
I hate little kids that scream in Wal-Mart.
I hate waiting in stores after finding everything I need. (Wal-Mart’s the only store in town that carries Ben and Jerry’s Stephen Colbert Americone Dream ice cream AND cotton underwear.)
I hate that the Daily Show and Colbert Report are only on 4 days a week, for an hour.
I hate that Mad is a monthly magazine.
I hate that SNL and MadTv suck.
I hate kittens, too, for being cuter than me.
I hate “Animal Cops” on Animal Planet for making me see abusive human assholes.
And the misogynists and racists and lying fucks in charge of everything.
I also loathe dial-up with the fiery passion of a thousand suns.
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Steve says:
Politicians who cant even write theior own apolgies
Men who after they are rejected say that the woman “is fucked up,” as if only someone “fucked up” would rejevct their stupid, vile sorry ass.
Bobby Knight
The food channel
Bobby Flay
Winters in the northeast
Reckless, aggressive drivers
George W. Bush
Pretentious twits
Jerry Springer
Creflo Dollar
Jerry Falwell
Star Jones
Hummer gas guzzlers
People incessantly calling for property tax cuts
American football
Bill Cosby
Bill Cosby
What the Chinese government did at Tienamin Square
Bill Cosby
Martha Stewart
Mitch McConnell
Tom DeLay
A certain impossibly arrogant and pathologically selfish and self-absorbed author waiting for news of a certain big award which if there is a God in heaven he will not get
Sam Brownback
Dick Morris
Siding salesmen
American Idol
Kids who are bullies
People who get and then tout phony graduate degrees
People who mistreat food servers
Chef Boyardee
Robert Rodriguez
Tony Robbins!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Any motivational speaker
Bus drivers who speed
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Tom Nolan says:
“Violet’s List”
German (and Austrian) toilets: just why are they back to front like that, so that your excrement piles up just inches beneath you buttocks? Is it because Germans are fascinated by their own faecal matter? I never managed to get a straight answer to this question - I always found it difficult to bring the matter up at dinner parties.
Bush: well, obviously.
George Orwell? Violet hates the twentieth century’s best prose writer and it’s most courageous polemicist? Shame on her.
Camus? Camus? Camus?
The French?
Credibility shot.
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Infidel says:
Hate is a pretty strong word.
I think I may hate the butterfly that ultimately makes circumstances such that conditions exist wherein inevitably bad things happen to good people and even bad things happening to not so good people and animals and ecosystems and beauty and not so beautiful and bad things happening to anything. Bad…I hate bad. -
Pony says:
All the above, and these not yet covered. And yes they’re not known to you. That’s why I’m putting them in:
1/ American imperialism, which includes thinking our forests, our water, our airspace, and our Northwest Passage is yours.
1/ American television and print media, which leak across the border.
3/ American supermarkets and box stores (WalMart) which come in and price down until the locally owned people walk away without their shirts.
4/ American medical care, which is moving in and setting up private clinics where all the doctors and surgeons prefer to work, don’t you know, so the wealthy who can afford to go there get their surgery NOW, but not without our taxpayer funded healthcare having to foot part of the bill. Where we could never afford to get our hips.
4/ And the right-wing conservative Canadian political jackasses they rode in on, calling it Free Trade.
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a louis wain cat says:
I admire a lot about Orwell, but I find he was brilliant and insightful as long as the subject didn’t involve women and/or women’s issues, at which point he turned into a complete moron. I’m guessing that this particular glaring blind spot is the reason for his inclusion on Violet’s list. Same sort of thing with Camus, who I don’t have a very positive impression of in general for various reasons, though I haven’t read enough of his stuff to say much about him.
I am apparently more filled with hate than I thought. It wasn’t that difficult to equal the length of Violet’s list, and I probably could have kept going, but this is good enough for now. So, in no particular order, ranging from the obscure to the sadly inescapable, fifty people, groups of people, and things that evoke ire and wrath in me:
1: Extropians
2: Ayn Rand
3: The Chinese government
4: Our Beloved Great Leader and Teacher, George W. Bush
5: Alberto Gonzales
6: Anti-environmentalists
7: Martin Durkin
8: The Revolutionary Communist Party/Living Marxism/Spiked Online/whatever the hell that bunch of tree-hating genocide deniers are calling themselves now
9: “Techno-optimist” libertarians
10: People who claim that prostitution and stripping are “empowering”
11: Especially the guy I heard about who told his girlfriend that “you can’t be a feminist until you’ve done sex work”
12: The patriarchy
13: Indie rock snobs
14: Julian Simon
15: Fundamentalism in general
16: Glenn Reynolds
17: Postmodern hipster irony
18: Pornography
19: Transhumanists
20: Murray Bookchin
21: Neoconservatism
22: Vladimir Putin
23: Camille Paglia
24: Christopher Hitchens
25: Global warming denialists
26: Jim Inhofe
27: Joe Lieberman
28: Stewart Home
29: College Republicans
30: David Brin
31: Goreans
32: Dan Savage
33: Sean Suhl
34: People who actually buy stuff from e-mail spam
35: “Liberals” who think that the Chinese government is some kind of progressive force for liberation and that the Tibetans should be grateful to them
36: Knee-jerk contrarians
37: Ray Kurzweil
38: Jimbo Wales
39: The Reverend Sun Myung Moon
40: Karl Rove
41: Lynne Reid Banks, author of I, Houdini, a children’s book about a hamster in which our adorable protagonist has a Gone-With-The-Wind-style “romantic” rape/seduction scene with a female hamster, and it’s presented as all cute and sweet and it scarred me for life when I read it around the age of 10
42: The fact that I’m not kidding about that last one
43: That peculiar British phenomenon known as the “Decent Left”
44: People who are aggressively pro-Israel
45: People who are aggressively pro-Palestinian
46: People who listen to commercially manufactured pop music aimed at teenagers in order to prove that they aren’t “rockists”
47: Anyone who describes themselves as a “South Park conservative”
48: James Dobson
49: Mass extinction
50: The whole sorry state of the modern world -
Violet says:
George Orwell? Violet hates the twentieth century’s best prose writer and it’s most courageous polemicist? Shame on her.
I like his writing quite a bit*, but he personally was rather loathsome. An incredible misogynist. Of course that’s a problem with a lot of dead people — good artists, atrocious human beings. Like Camus, Tolstoy, Colette, and a boatload of other people not on the list because I wasn’t thinking about them at that moment. Misogynists or anti-semites or racists or all three (Nietzsche, Wagner, T.S. Eliot, etc., etc., etc.)
*Except when he was talking about women or women’s issues, as a louis wain cat points out.
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Pony says:
Yes!
1, 2, 9, 19, 37, 38 and 51 (that would be cri on iks
Can I buy you coffee?
Fair trade organic of course, not at Starbucks. Oh hell just meet me at the border. I’ll sponsor you, adopt you, marry you, whichever applies.
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Violet says:
German toilets: Erica Jong said “German toilets are really the key to the horrors of the Third Reich. People who can build toilets like this are capable of anything.”
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Kaitlyn says:
I like Lynne Reid Banks’s Indian in the Cupboard books.
I hate that books are so expensive and that I can’t convince my fathers they’re related to my health. They are - mental health. The shrink said as much.
I hate that I’m sick and I cause problems for my mom and sister and can’t do anything about them.
I hate Memphis weather. It’s been in the ’80s for a week or so now.
I hate my boobs. When I’m hot, I want them uncovered or at least not stuck in a bra - even a comfy sports bra is too much. I hate that they’re big enough that I can’t go braless. I hate my nipples for being so huge and dark they show through my white shirts and bras.
I hate being overheated.
I hate the Yankees.
I hate the way the military is screwing over vets, whether they’re wounded or not. There’s a story in today’s paper - a soldier was shot in the abdomen, and the explosion set his magazine on his waist on fire, setting him on fire in 2005, when he was 20. And he’s only 20% disabled. He’s 22 and walks with a cane and has PTSD, but the military says it’s only ‘anxiety and depression’. He can’t keep a job or sleep through the night, but he qualifies for nothing. If he takes the $8000 the army is offering him, he can’t get the full VA benefits. He’s fighting this, of course.
I hate that it’s now better for soldiers to die than come back wounded.
I hate that so many are many age and are getting mentally fucked up.
I hate my uncle for messing up his kids’ lives by refusing to get over the fact that his wife left him. He went to Iraq in ‘04, despite a suicide attempt in front of his children and a short stay in a psych ward (his army buddy checked him out AMA). They lied about his mental health so he could escape the responsibility of single parenthood.
I hate that he supports Bush and the war.
I hate the fact that “Grounded for Life” does not play every day and is not out on DVD yet. Or if it is, that I don’t have it.
I hate that my uncle and his wife have 5 or 6 big dogs in a small yard that has no grass.
I hate that my cousin’s stepmom called her fat when she lived in a place that offered no outdoor play space for an 8 year old and, as an 8 year old, had little say over what she ate.
I hate that I feel guilty for not going to church or at least believing in God.
I hate that I can’t talk about religion with my sister because “Jesus is [her] favorite person.”
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Kaitlyn says:
People who idolize famous chefs
My sister likes Rachel Ray.
I can hate on my sister, you can’t.
I understand your George Orwell thing. I heard Roald Dahl could be a bit of a dick at times.
But I don’t want to know that, I want to read Matilda in peace.
Actually, learning that the Little House on the Prairie books were redone by her right-leaning daughter made a hell of a lot a sense - especially about the Long Winter, one of my favorites, but it confused the hell out of me the first time I read it. Almonzo Wilder had all this food source and he wouldn’t share it! With the starving townspeople! That was so fucked up to me. You’re going to let people die so you can plant a good crop when the winter lets up? Dickhead.
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Kaitlyn says:
I also hate youtube.
All the Daily Show and Colbert clips are gone, even the compilations set to “I’m too sexy” or “you sexy thing” (fucking hilarious).
Along with all the great ’80s videos. Grr.
Youtube takes forever to load, but it loads on my computer, few other formats do.
I just learned that myspace videos work on firefox. The waitresses - I Know what Boys Like
Now I’m afraid I’ll have to rejoin myspace for the 3rd time to enjoy 80s videos.
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Tom Nolan says:
Hey, Violet
George Orwell was not “personally loathsome”. In fact it’s hard to find any one who knew him, male or female, who didn’t like him. That’s not the result of some particular hagiographic biography either: *all* the major accounts of his life agree on his unwavering decency and warmth of character.
As for his misogyny: what are you referring to exactly?
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will says:
I do love to hate.
I’ll have to think of some things. You have an excellent list so far.
Quickly:
I hate that medical professionals do not know more about the brain.
I hate that I cannot understand what my daughter is thinking.
I hate that people spend so much time hating other people that they hurt their own children.
I hate cancer.
I hate that we had so little snow this year.
I hate that I havent found a book that captivates me.
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j0lt says:
Mondays.
Oh, and about 95% of what was listed above.
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Violet says:
George Orwell was not “personally loathsome”.
Tom, for a feminist — indeed for any self-respecting woman, and I would hope for any decent man — a misogynist is automatically “personally loathsome.”
So you’ve actually read Orwell’s oeuvre and biographies of him and you’ve totally missed the fact that he was a misogynist? And a homophobe? This is an almost universal view. Certainly there are acolytes who try to defend him, but even they have to figure out how to explain away the things he actually wrote.
Here’s Orwell in the Gissing essay:
“Doubtless Gissing is right in implying all through his books that intelligent women are very rare animals, and if one wants to marry a women who is intelligent and pretty, then the choice is still further restricted, according to a well-known arithmetical rule. It is like being allowed to choose only among albinos, and left-handed albinos at that.”
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Kaitlyn says:
I’m not throwing out Animal Farm!
This means war, you know.
I hate that I can’t leave a message with a teacher, I have to leave it with the front desk lady who does not like me. And I need to hear from them so I can apply for an $8500 scholarship, instead of the piddly ass $7500 I have now.
I do not hate that I qualified for an academic scholarship that gives me $7500 a year.
I hate that I’m in pain.
I hate that we don’t understand mental illness.
I hate that most of the jobs working with the mentally disabled pay shit, so you get a lot of abusive jerks.
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Violet says:
This means war, you know.
What does?
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Violet says:
I was looking back over people’s lists, and Dan Savage caught my eye — jesus, what an asswipe. That is the failure of feminism right there, the fact that there are young women not only reading him but writing to him for advice.
Every Dan Savage column ever:
Female reader: “Dear Dan: How can I keep my boyfriend?”
Dan: “Do whatever he wants you to do! Clean up after him, dress like a pony, spray your nasty smelly twat with Lysol — that is, if you can shut your mouth long enough to let him fuck you. Or keep it open if he wants to do that. Remember, girls, if you don’t give a man whatever he wants he’ll leave your sorry ass. Whoops — I think I hear the sound of a million angry feminists removing their fingers from their nasty twats just long enough to send me an irate email telling me I’m a sexist!”
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Kaitlyn says:
Um, everything means war?
I like Animal Farm, regardless of the author’s assholery.
It was a stupid joke attempt.
Fighting over Orwell makes as much sense as any other fight going on today.
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Violet says:
I get it now, sorry.
I like Animal Farm, regardless of the author’s assholery.
Me too. I don’t think people shouldn’t read Orwell. Tolstoy was in private life a misogynistic lunatic, but that doesn’t mean people shouldn’t read Anna Karenina.
I do think, though, that works with a sexist or racist current should be accompanied by a critical apparatus and that naive readers should be alerted to what the author is doing.
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Mandos says:
1. Lists of things that people hate.
2. Incorrect ideas about South Asian history and politics.
3. Potatoes served almost any way except fried. -
simply wondered says:
Um, everything means war? - i thought peace meant war. i read a book about it once, i think.
my son is a left-handed albino…does he have to marry orwell or gissing?
and, mandos, i did the list gag!
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Mandos says:
Sorry but you are British and therefore your humour is too understated to use up the humour value of the list gag.+
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simply wondered says:
dammit, you’re right! my humour is more understated than everything except the amount of laughs it raises.
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Tom Nolan says:
Tom, for a feminist — indeed for any self-respecting woman, and I would hope for any decent man — a misogynist is automatically “personally loathsome.”
Come on Violet, Orwell died on another continent many years before you were born; there’s no question of your having feelings in regard to his person. You mean, rather, that you find some of his opinions unpleasant. I’m guessing, by the way, that your aversion to him was brought on by just the passage you quoted. Am I right?
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Violet says:
Tom, I was trying to explain what I mean by “personally loathsome.” I mean that while I respect him as a writer, and while I acknowledge (though I don’t actually know this) that he may have been a personable fellow, his personal prejudices were loathsome. Good writer, loathsome person.
For example, Ezra Pound — excellent editor, insightful, good poet, apparently lots of fun at parties and great in bed. But, you know, an absolutely raving anti-semitic Fascist. A loathsome person.
I’m guessing, by the way, that your aversion to him was brought on by just the passage you quoted. Am I right?
No, actually I found that quote for you just to give you something solid. Read his political essays and his correspondence with friends; he made no secret of his sexism. He explicitly believed that women were inferior — dumber than men, mindless, silly, born to serve — and didn’t hesitate to say so, many times. He ridiculed the feminist argument that if women were educated like men they would be able to think as well as men. That’s why his defenders have such a tough row; Orwell was quite explicit about his belief in women’s natural inferiority.
But in fact, since you ask, I came to his political and personal writings only after his fiction, and it was because I wanted to find out if he was as much a misogynist as he seemed to be in his fiction. And indeed, he was. I don’t wish to sound condescending, so forgive me if I say this badly, but: as a female reading Orwell’s fiction and journals, his misogyny is overwhelmingly obvious. The more you read, the more you realize to your sinking disappointment that it’s not a mistake, not a deliberate effect. The man was fixated. He couldn’t help himself. The more I read Orwell the more I was saying dear GOD this man is seriously fucked up. I’m going to suggest to you, as politely as I can, that you might think about the fact that you, as a man, can apparently read his work and totally miss this. Kind of the way white people miss racism, which we all do. This might be an opportunity for you to discover how male identity and male privilege conceal from you certain effects which are painfully obvious to a non-male, non-privileged reader. You might, for example, read Daphne Patai’s study of Orwell from the 80s (I think it’s called The Orwell Mystique or The Orwell Myth). I haven’t read that book entirely but I recall excerpts, and I think Patai did a good job of expressing the point of view of the female reader, of how we find ourselves stunned and excluded by things that, apparently, male readers pass over without even noticing.
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Irene says:
My current hate-on is for:
Vanity Fair covers where the men are fully clothed - suits no less - and women are naked.
Any photo/illustration where the men are fully clothed and the women undressed.
The men who come up with these ideas
The women who don’t object
The fact that there are hardly any photos of women fully clothed with naked men around them
That no one would think this is a viable idea
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cf4 says:
Right now I can only think of four things that qualify as “hate” for me:
* Ayn Rand
* Roman Abramovich
* Osama bin Laden
* The fact that I’ll never get a chance to meet and thank the 16 year old boy whose lungs are in my body. His death saved my life.The list used to be a lot longer, but events surrounding #4 shortened it quite substantially. Hatred is tough to live with.
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will says:
“Any photo/illustration where the men are fully clothed and the women undressed.
The men who come up with these ideas
The women who don’t object
The fact that there are hardly any photos of women fully clothed with naked men around them”
I will not disagree with the basic idea about the covers, but isnt it mainly women who come up with those ideas? The Anne Lebovitz (sp?). (Not that that makes the covers any better.)
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larkspur says:
I hate that George Orwell is dead, and thus not available for smacking upside the head and being taken on a world tour, dressed in pink, and being shown the internets, and introduced to y’all. But alas, he is still dead, and so that’s all he wrote. (We could have turned him, I know it.)
But meanwhile…I hate ticks, especially the one who bit my shoulder and refused to allow me to dig his entire body out, meaning I had to go to the ER (the community clinic is closed on weekends) and get the wound dug out by a nice physicians’ assistant. And now I get to be on antibiotics for two weeks.
I hate antibiotics. I mean, I love them, but my body hates ‘em. I have two weeks of gastrointestinal distress coming right up. (But of course, I appreciate antibiotics. Don’t be cross with me, antibiotics.)
I hate popular reality shows that think it’s oh-so-cool to have a segment where the contestants pose as murder victims.
I hate Kathleen Parker.
I hate Amy Alkon, the Advice Goddess, for her cheap shots at “the toxic mold known as radical feminism” while explaining to a young woman that men are unable to see dirt and dust and crap and filth around their apartments - I mean, unable, genetically, to recognize these conditions as inhospitable to carbon-based life forms. (Amy blames “the toxic mold” for programming us to think that men and women are exactly alike in all things.)
I hate that Pat Tillman was so massively disrespected upon his death, and that the fakery means that the Rangers who accidentally shot and killed him have no way to expiate their guilt. The nightmare they participated in never happened (until now), and so their pain and guilt isn’t really happening. Not that they’d have got much useful psychiatric help anyway.
I hate that Marla Ruzicka is dead.
I hate the Cheney family. I mean, I hope Mary’s pregnancy is normal and that her baby is healthy and happy. But I hate that they are smart enough to know that their limitless priviledge is unearned. I hate that they will never have to face anything that can’t be alleviated by money and influence.
I hate Britney Spears’s parents and lawyers and managers, who seem pretty goddamn sanguine about using Britney up and throwing her away.
I hate bunions.
I hate that a dear, brilliant friend of mine, who is under 30, has spent the last year getting various bits of melanoma carved out of her lovely, strong young body.
I hate Connie Chung and Diane Sawyer, who started out as ambitious, disciplined young reporters and then threw it all away to join their journalistic counterparts at the champagne trough.
I hate not having thick wavy hair.
And I hate Dinesh D’Soooza.
But I’m kind of fond of y’all.
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ehj2 says:
dear friends, dear loves,
i hate that we don’t remember more easily we’re the children of giants …
if you have a moment for beauty so exquisite it aches … click here
we are indeed the children of giants
and we have clipped our wings
yet sometimes there are experiences
that make us remember we can fly
where we came from
and that giants still move among us
perhaps only as dreams
but also how much is truly possible
if we will but reach
with open arms … -
Violet says:
I will not disagree with the basic idea about the covers, but isnt it mainly women who come up with those ideas? The Anne Lebovitz (sp?).
I think most fashion photographers are men. Annie Liebowitz became a personality because she worked for Rolling Stone, etc., etc. But all the other famous fashion photographers I can think of, from Richard Avedon to Herb Ritts, have been men.
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will says:
I’ll have to look. I know Liebowitz is the Vanity Fair photographer.
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will says:
Brad Pitt topless:
December 2006
Brad Pitt, posing for one of Robert Wilson’s life-size, high-definition-video portraits. Photographed in Los Angeles on September 21, 2005.But this is beside the point. Certainly, women and men editors put more naked women on covers than men
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Violet says:
Now ehj2, here I am having a hatefest and you’re being all uplifting.
Don’t you know what Trotsky said about the abscess on the body and letting it run until the clear blood flows?
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ehj2 says:
oh oh oh please,
let the clear blood flow …
oh god, oh violet, our full moon,
let the clear clear blood flow …how i hate when the blood
the clear blood of deep inner life cannot flow …we are all — the each — of each other
the communion of this moment
the wind of the breath of the giants …i love you — you know …
so you know …
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Irene says:
Good point. Then again, I think it could be art directors who come up with ideas for mag covers.
So if the art directors are women who come up with ideas like “let’s put the fat old guys in suits and make them act oblivious to the naked supermodel draped across the main guy’s body,” I hate them too.
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Irene says:
Hey Violet,
what’s wrong with the wikipedia? Where can I see this ad campaign for Clorox bleach? Who’s Tramonto, (I’m Canadian) and how popular is the hiring of strippers at conferences?
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Kaitlyn says:
I think Annie Liebowitz, I think of this picture.
I actually hate that there isn’t a nudist place around here, because I am finally comfortable with my body and want to go nude (or at least topless) because I want to, plus it’s Memphis, and even short shorts and sports bra can be too much when you’re having chemical menopause induced hot flashes.
I hate that I am in so much pain.
I hate that the doctor cut my Lyrica dosage by a third and that my pain has increased a thousandfold, sharp, so sharp, much sharper than the general suckiness of the endometriosis.
I hate that I said the wrong thing twice today at the crisis center. :(
First, I answered a question a client asked me about my health. They’re not supposed to discuss their problems in the front room, and neither am I. We’re not supposed to let them know too much about us because some are clingy.
Then I said something about my bigotted grandmother and her comment last faal about Harold Ford - “You’re not voting for him, [my mother], he’s black.” In the car with a mixed race couple that I didn’t know, showing no tact.
I hate that I feel so shitty for making simple mistakes, when Ms Lois doesn’t even care as long as I learn from them, she doesn’t hold it against me and I hold it against myself.
I hate that thinking about this makes me cry.
I hate that my sister doesn’t want to discuss sex in front of other girls - our long time friend, our mom.
I hate that my sister and mom think that I shouldn’t discuss race in front of the minority I’m mentioning unless they’re longtime friends or something. I said they would have objected (the couple in the car), but they didn’t. Mom said maybe they were afraid to. I think that’s an even bigger reason to discuss race - so you won’t be afraid to tell someone you’re uncomfortable because they’re a member of the majority, oppressing race.
I hate that I now feel guilty for messing with my other racist Grandmother’s head. Not for messing with her head, but for reporting the story to two black women - fellow volunteers, who laughed, not a fake laugh, they would have otld me I was offensive. (Grandma pulled up to drop becky off, and her friend Jonathan - who is a 1/4 Cherokee and as dark as his full blood grandmother while his parents are white as white - was there bothering mom and I, and I pulled him outside when grandma pulled up. “Why?” “Because it’ll bug her.”)
I brought it up today because they were talking about genetics - specifically weight and body shape. And I talked about how all the females on my mom’s side of the family are curvy and on the heavy side, except for one cousin. And then I brought up Jonathan. I see his skin color as an interesting bit of genetics. He’s pulled over all the time for driving while dark-skinned and being a teenager and his Spanish teacher (he had Spanish with Becky) insisted he was Hispanic, even when he said he wasn’t.
I hate that I’m in pain and I haven’t heard back from the doctor yet!
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Violet says:
1. what’s wrong with the wikipedia? Fount of all misinformation.
2. Where can I see this ad campaign for Clorox bleach? In an old issue of Traditional Home I was reading, sorry. But this is why it pissed me off: the theme of the ad was how moms (always ‘moms’ in ads and Torture President’s speeches, never ‘mothers’) have to be superwomen what with the career and the housework and the chauffeuring kids to school. It was supposed to be one of those “helpful” ads, with suggestions on how mom could ease her workload, one of the ways being of course to buy wonderful Clorox products. Anyway, one of the other suggestions was to “ask Dad” if he might consider pitching in on some things. Can you fucking imagine? It’s 2007 and we’re “considering” asking men to “pitch in” and help with what, of course we all understand, is still women’s work. (And by the way, I should explain that the “traditional” in Traditional Home refers to decorating style, not lifestyle — like French Provincial, etc. I get irritated with the magazine because if features rich people who have no idea how privileged they are, not because it pushes sexist roles, which it doesn’t.)
3. Who’s Tramonto? Annoying Chicago chef who has come out strongly in favor of animal torture because what really matters in life is having excellent fois gras. And who also I strongly suspect is a sexist asshat on the basis of an interview I read.
4. and how popular is the hiring of strippers at conferences? I have no idea, but I was incensed by a “feminist” at Salon arguing that the women scientists who objected to a stripper being brought into to entertain a conference were being uptight. Cause stripping is such an empowering feminist act doncha know.
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Irene says:
Thanks for your answers, Violet.
I hear you on the Clorox ad. Just today I was checking out a site from someone who had emailed me on Blogher, and was bowled over by their About us page.
“We, a group of working moms, enjoying our hot chocolate latte, were chatting about work and life, when the name “woot.com” came up. We all had negative things to say about them. No, we have no problem with their business style, we only wish if they can establish a program that blocks “very married men” from their site! Why? No, we are not feminists…. just read on.
We work all day, (and yes, we women actually work - not supervise and fiddle around like men!) dinner preparations are waiting for us, (no, our dinner doesn’t appear magically on the table) and the kids then demand our attention.
Our famished “overworked” husbands now enter the scene, only to take their dinner plate opposite the TV! Their eyes are focused on the TV for the next few hours totally oblivious to the home chores, claiming “we need to know what’s going on in the world”…”
From http://www.lunchhoursale.com/aboutus.aspx
Looks like these women wouldn’t even consider asking their mates to pitch in. That might make them seem feminist-like.
I didn’t know wikipedia was so full of errors. I like using it because they write about and link to contentious issues and adversarial reports about the subjects.
Re: strippers. Yeah - it’s so empowering that men are all over it. Kind of like the way they dance the pole for us. It’s always give give give.
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Irene says:
Hey Kaitlin,
good catch with that photo.
Seems it was voted “top US magazine cover of the past 40 years” in 2005. I guess I missed all the copycat photos that the award inspired, and all of the men rushing to empower themselves by taking off their clothes.
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Kaitlyn says:
Irene, maybe they were worried about being shot by deranged fans hours later?
Life is weird, we have many superstitions. “If I do a photo shoot like John with Liebowitz, I’ll get shot like John. I’m keeping my clothes on.”
Or maybe no rock star has the same sort of relationship they had at the time, Kurt Cobain didn’t need Courtney Love like John needed Yoko, and I don’t want to see Tommy Lee naked. Or Paul McCartney and his new girlfriend who should be around my age.
I want to see George Harrison from 30-40 years ago naked…
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will says:
I need to go make a wiikepedia entry for Dr. Socks:
“Couldnt get into first choice of college, so she went to Number #2 College in State. Often irritable. Loves her dog. Formerly circus performer. Always entertaining. Attacks issues with passion. Few know that she was George Allen’s first wife.” -
Mari says:
I hate having to be afraid when I’m going home from work late in the evening.
I hate being told that I ought to be afraid when I’m going home from work late in the evening.
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simply wondered says:
but I was incensed by a “feminist” at Salon - AHEM!!! i really don’t think you can use those two words in the same sentence without being thought a total fruit bat.
have a banana, doc.kaitlyn, sorry to be ageist, but if you are young enough to be macca’s gf then you should at least finish your homework before you post here. to your room, young lady. (mind you as macca’s gf you are also rich enough to order a professional hit on me…you do as you like.
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a louis wain cat says:
Somewhat delayed response here…
Re Pony’s response to my list- it’s nice to see someone else has issues with that whole transhumanist/Objectivist/techno-libertarian axis of political belief. I don’t think enough people on the left realize quite how scary that crowd is. (God, I just realized that if they get their way, we’ll see literal Randroids. Argh.)
On Orwell’s misogyny- as Violet said, the Gissing essay isn’t an isolated blip, alas. I haven’t gotten around to reading any of his personal correspondence yet, where I would imagine it’s even more pronounced, but the impression I get from his writing when the issue comes up is of a sort of unexamined misogyny in which women just weren’t really that significant to him as anything but sex objects. Pretty much every time the subject of women or women’s issues comes up in his writing, it’s noticeable. There are a couple of throwaway lines here and there which indirectly indicate that he thought of women’s suffrage as basically a minor issue of no great importance one way or another, Julia in 1984 is written as a complete male fantasy with almost no characterization outside of the sexual, in one essay he takes the claim that “one can see what is wrong with the leftwing movement by the ugliness of its women” as a “penetrating” one, in Homage to Catalonia I remember there’s a clear note of contempt when he writes about the women who were actively fighting, etc.
That being said, “Notes on Nationalism” may be the best, most insightful thing I’ve ever read on the way people think about politics, and his prose style was incredible. That he was a genius and one of the greatest political writers ever is true, and that he was a misogynist and a total dimwit on the subject of women is also true, and I don’t think the latter should be denied on account of the former. Actually, he made a similar point himself at times- see his essays on Dali and Kipling, for example.
(I do kind of think it’s possible he could have been turned, as larkspur puts it, but who knows.)
On Violet’s summary of every Dan Savage column- yep, I’d say that’s pretty accurate. And the irony is that what that all boils down to, what Savage’s whole “sex-positive” “Good, Giving, and Game” shtick so often ends up amounting to, is that good old traditional standard, “lie back and think of England.” Patriarchy has many masks.
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hipparchia says:
we now have permission to hate the rich, so i plan to, at least until i become one of them someday.
and linear time, that’s a good one.
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simply wondered says:
‘we now have permission to hate the rich’ - oops - we needed permission all this time?
if we are unhappy about orwell do we have to start slagging off thomas hardy? (not that i particularly mind, i just don’t want to be out of step.)
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Jess says:
I hate
1. Money
2. Racists
3. Grey
4. Drought
5. The mosquito that lived in the past and made the now what it is today
6. People who get the username that I want to use before I get it
7. The word “Sup?” -
simply wondered says:
56 is beyond irony, is it not? hatelistspam is the new black
