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motivation

me: did i tell you my dad gave me scrap paper for my printer that im using to print off my prospective job announcements so I can apply to them

but he gave me all the resumes of the people he rejected from the job he hired for recently

Alana: hahaha, that is the saddest thing ever

I hate this so much.

Jan Brewer's spokesman Paul Senseman's explanation of the image (which neither he nor Brewer created) is extremely condescending towards the working class and towards Rosie the Riveter the extremely powerful feminist icon:

"It shows her with a little bandana on. It shows she's workin'. And she's got her blue collar on and she's working hard . . . and got her sleeve rolled up and doin' some of the dirty work that hasn't been done in quite some time."

Obviously, Paul has never gotten his blue collar on and doesn't know shit about the workin' class.



Anyway, bigotry is alive and well in the United States and exists in people with extreme power and influence on laws and cultural perception. So yeah, that's still happening.

Because my middle name is "tasteful"

Holy Crap

Tracie is totally right about this girl!



I FOUND HER!

I don't know how I could have forgotten this

Maybe it's because it took me almost a year to finally get around to discussing it here, but I totally forgot about the BEST PART of this story:

So immediately after class I called my sister who I had a missed call from.

Amy: OH MY GOD.

Me: No, me first! Seriously, oh MY god.

Amy: Ugh. Fine go.


So I tell her the whole story. It takes the entire twenty minute walk home.

(and keep in mind, I'm really upset. I've been on the verge of tears for at least an hour now.)

I finally make it home and kick off my shoes. I'm barefoot and feeling the tiniest, tiniest bit better. I finish my story.

Amy: That sucks, it's my turn.

Me: Fine, go.

Amy starts talking about whatever the hell it is Amy wanted to talk about and I take about three steps into the kitchen. I feel something. Immediately I know what it is.

It's a dead animal.

I don't even put my entire weight on my bare foot against dead, furry OOZING animal before I LOSE MY SHIT.

I collapse onto the floor in a fit of uncontrollable sobs. I cannot speak. I cannot even breathe. I cannot even pronounce the words DEAD BAT for at least 2 minutes.

Me: (incoherent, possibly dieing)

Amy: What? What's going on?! STOP IT. You had your turn! Listen to me!

Me: (I don't know if I was even breathing at this point. I just had the worst day of my graduate experience and now there is DEAD BAT residue on my BARE FOOT)

I writhe on the floor. The cat is confused.

Me: Whimper. Ok, I'm OK.

I look at the bat and start sobbing again. At this point instead of giving a shit about the fact that I am having a major emotional breakdown, my sister starts screaming the second half of her story to me. I am still crying and haven't taken a full breath in at least five minutes.

Amy tells her her story (whatever the HELL it was about) and I pull it (hardly) together.

She finishes and I grab a paper towel to scoop up the dead bat and toss in the kitchen trash can.

Me: That sucks. Ok, I need to go take a two hour shower now.

Amy: Ok, I'll talk to you later.

Me: Ok, bye.

In relation to the previous post:

John showed this piece I made a while ago to his Digital Imaging class in preparation for their mapping project. He told them, "This is a map of the female body."


























I should have yelled across the lab that, "No, it's a pornographic body. THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT... pornographic, not female. Totally different."


I didn't.

I should have.



I should do a lot more yelling.

Feeling nostalgic for my Feminism and Visual Culture days

There is a professor here who likes to proclaim that he is guided in all he does by Katie Grace ****'s breasts.

This professor is male, white, straight, able-bodied and tenured. Katie Grace **** is a graduate student who put on a performance piece where she read from sheets of paper which she would then discard one by one onto the floor. During this process of reading and discarding she seamlessly removed both her shirt and bra and finished the piece bare-chested.

This professor now claims it is Katie Grace ****'s lack of inhibition in her art which inspires him to live his life without feeling the need to fear or censor himself. (See, it's like all his thoughts and ideas are like a woman's breasts, you know, oppressed.)

Unfortunately, this manifests itself as a frequently repeated proclamation that "I am guided in all I do by Katie Grace ****'s breasts."

Seriously.

Though I never saw the performance piece, I can imagine it probably has nothing to do with a white male's liberation of ...something?, thus leading this professor to believe that his own fixation on a younger woman's breasts is all in the name of Art (capital A) and should be both applauded and frequently discussed.

To which my gut reaction is: No. Ugh, no.

And upon further discussion, my reaction remains the same.

Also, to irritate me further, I've never met this artist before, but now Katie Grace *****'s name will forever be linked to her breasts. When I hear her name, I (and you) will think of her breasts. When I meet her I will first be thinking about her breast. And thus Katie Grace **** is reduced to her breasts. Somehow I doubt the point of her piece was to be forever identified this way. Just a hunch.

When I first moved to Iowa I had a hard time adjusting. I was working a job I hated, fighting a cockroach infestation and the long standing relationship that brought me here was already going south. I started volunteering for purely selfish reasons. I needed an escape.

Not long after I was at a party when a vegan asked me, "Why horses? Isn't it cruel to turn these smart, capable animals into beasts of burden? Why not use something dumber? Like cows or machines?"

The horses stride at the walk is similar in length and cadence to that of a human's walk. Riding builds strength and muscle memory necessary for what will become some students' first steps. I remember one student who after over a year in therapy still hadn't walked. After one five week session on Jasper's back, his father set him down, stepped back and we all watched as he took six steps forward.


I told the vegan this.

"Oh." He said. "Well, would you EAT a horse?"









...probably not one of these horses.

I've been frustrated a lot lately.

The end of last year I got in a big fight with one of my classmates (and subsequently the rest of the class) about the depiction of a character with a disability in his film.

My classmate was making a video interpretation of the book Heart of Darkness. He acted all four parts, including a filmmaker, an elusive rock throwing forest dweller, a helpful dimwit, and finally a character he described as kind of off, kind of weird. The character was depicted by lying naked on a cement floor wrapped in a dirty blanket. He drooled while gasping and yelling instead of talking. His hands were uncontrolled and contorted as was most of the rest of his body and he lived deeply secluded in a rundown cabin in the woods. The character was undeniably disabled.

After the screening and many praise for the beauty and clarity of HD, I raised my hand.

"Can you tell me exactly what is wrong with the character in the cabin?"

While I cannot claim to be an expert on disability, having worked with people of all ranges of abilities since high school, I have a pretty good vocabulary when it comes to actual symptoms of real diseases/syndromes/injuries/etc.

"Oh, I don't know. I guess I just imagined he's been living in this cabin for so long... maybe he starved at some point and this is what happened to him."

Knowing nothing about the effects of starvation on the human brain and body I asked, "Oh, is that what happens to someone when they almost starve to death?"

"I don't know. I didn't look it up or anything. I mean, that's just an idea. I don't think it really matters what's specifically wrong with him."

At this point, because of years of academic training (I'm in 19th grade!) and an inability to argue in a way that might actually engage people, I pull out my big vocabulary:

"Oh, in that case, I find the portrayal of this specific disabled body problematic in that it seems to be a collection of disability stereotypes Frankensteined together to create an idea of disability which you then use to stand in for 'weirdness' or 'otherness.'"

At which point the class rallies to this character's defense.

They don't think the specific disability matters and the viewer will know the character is being played by an able-bodied actor anyway. One person even said he liked the performance because it was kind of funny to see his classmate act that way. Others said they liked the character as he is because the way he acts weirds them out and makes them feel uncomfortable.

The discussion ends when my professor (who makes over $100,000 a year teaching and is quite established as an influential white male filmmaker) informs me:

"It's not the specificities of the individual character that are important, but the filmmaker's idea of what that character represents that truly matters."

Which, of course, was the exact opposite of the point I was trying to make (read: white, upper middle-class, male, college-educated, able-bodied filmmaker's ideas are NOT more important than actual people with disabilities and just because he has the ability to use disability stereotypes to create the idea of difference and otherness in his Art does not give him the right to perpetuate said stereotypes using such an influential medium.)

Years of academic training have also taught me to recognize arguments I cannot win. Besides I suddenly had to focus all my energy on not crying in front of fifteen men. I let it go.

***

The next week brings a new cut of the same film. I don't expect much change in the character in question and subsequently am not surprised when there is little difference. He had cut out some of the sound, I assume because of the funny comment, but left the visual of the dirty, uncontrollable, helpless body (now gasping in silence) untouched. I wasn't going to open my mouth.

The lights come on and my most trusted Iowa friend, the one who came the MFA program when I did (the only other person in my year) raises his hand. He was present last week for the discussion, but had missed the screening. He knew my argument and how upset I was last week.

"Dude, this film is INCREDIBLE and I don't think it makes fun of retarded people at all."






I haven't taken a class in the film department since.