-I've been thinking a lot about that film you showed in class last week. -You mean the porn? -Yeah, that one.

One of them older men in my Feminism and Visual Culture class has developed this irritating and insulting habit of whenever he speaks he first begins by doing this:

"When some of you speak, it is very easy for me to understand. You (points at classmates), you, and you are very clear.

"When some other people speak, like you (and he points at me every time) I have a very hard time understanding what you are saying. I am just asking that when you speak, you remember me and remember to take care of me. Please take care of me."

I felt mildly bad because he is from Sudan and doesn't speak the best English even though I was planning on strangling him if he ever asked me to "take care" of him again. That is until a month into the semester when he revealed he isn't planning on buying any of the books.

Really? Is my big, literate vocabulary too much for you? Are you really going to ask me to define objective and subjective?

The first day of my Feminism and Visual Culture class one of the older men asked the professor, "What exactly is feminism, anyway?"

It has all been down hill from there.

I hate this so much

I am transcribing this article in its entirety. It's from a website geared at professional women and I hate it so much.

10 Things You Should Never Say to a Lesbian

10. All lesbians just want to be men.

No, we don’t. We are women who like to be with women. Who said anything about men? So guys have penises, so what? It’s not like I can’t walk six blocks and buy one of my own. Plus, I don’t have to worry about being too small or any other “sexual dysfunctions” of which many men are concerned. If anything, men want to be lesbians.

9. I am totally cool with lesbians, I just think two guys hooking up is gross.

Do you really think that makes us feel good to hear that? While many lesbians might also be less than excited about two men hooking up, we are still a part of the gay community. We don’t care about your approval, and you are not any less homophobic just because you like the idea of two women together. You know what I think is gross? Your impudence and stupidity.

8. You’re too pretty and feminine to be a lesbian.

If you think all lesbians have crew cuts and wear flannel shirts and combat boots, then you have obviously had your eyes closed for pretty much your whole life. If you think all lesbians are ugly women who just can’t get a man, then you are an idiot. Lesbians come in all types, shapes, hairstyles, clothing, sizes, hot and not, fat and skinny, girly and not so girly. Don’t say stupid things like that—women are never too pretty and feminine to be lesbians … I bet you a hundred bucks my girlfriend is hotter than yours.

7. How do you have sex without a man?

Very easily actually. If guys didn’t have penises, I am sure they would find something to do in bed with a woman. Contrary to assumptions made during the Victorian era, women can and do have sex without men all the time—and very well I might add.

6. Why do you have to flaunt your sexuality and shove it in our faces?

Every day of my life, I see heterosexual people holding hands, kissing each other, and wearing their heterosexual clothes. I see advertisements and movies; I watch TV shows and read magazines; everything I see celebrates and flaunts the lives and loves of heterosexuals. If anything, you shove your sexuality in my face all the time. If I hold hands with my girlfriend, I am not shoving anything into your face; I am just holding hands with my girlfriend. Not everything is about you.

5. Lesbians can’t raise kids, especially boys. Children need a mom and a dad.

Are you living in the 1950s? At least half of you reading this have divorced parents and of that group, nearly 80 percent of you lived with your mom after the divorce. Are you saying that you are screwed up because you only lived with your mom? Kids need love and security, and besides, all studies have shown that children raised by gay parents are no different from those who grow up in heterosexual households … so shut up.

4. Are you hitting on me?

Ummm … probably not. This may come as a surprise to you, but not all gay people want you. Do you want every heterosexual person you see? Don’t you have taste? Discernment? Get over yourself—you’re not that hot.

3. Hello sir (or dude, or bro, or son …)

Do you have eyes? Can you not see that I have breasts? Just because I have short hair and wear men’s clothes does not mean that I am a guy, that I want to be a guy, or that I hate guys. It’s just hair and clothes—get over it.

2. Being a lesbian isn’t biological, it’s a choice.

Do you have a choice about who you are attracted to? If things were reversed, could you be convinced to become gay just because the majority of people are? The only choice we have is whether we want to be true to ourselves or not. End of story.

1. Can I watch?

No! And please stop asking. Life is not a porno movie. Would you want some dude watching you? I don’t think so.

I saw a girl today riding her bicycle in 0 degree weather.

She had ear flaps but no scarf!


I swear my own face almost fell off just from seeing her like that.




On a similar note, I had to leave my house in 0 degree weather without my winter coat because I had to pick it up from the dry cleaners.

That was quite a dilemma.


But they sewed a button I had lost back on without me even asking. Awesome. Now my chest will be significantly less drafty.

Before I leave I am going to do something really mean to Iowa City, I haven't thought of what yet, but watch out Iowa.

It took me all of 12 seconds of being home in Iowa to slip on the ice and fall down the stairs.

I actually have a line of bruses down my arm marking each individual stair I hit.



I have the feeling people think I'm being funny when I say I fall down in the snow and ice all the time. But, seriously, it's like, all the time.

In addition to the big news of the microwave...

The cat has somehow managed to lose an eyebrow during the trip home.



Where could it be?

I don't even own a microwave.

My mother's microwave broke this holiday season.

It is all she talks about.

She called three different people today to tell them and discuss her options (I don't understand why there are more options than just going to Target and buying a new one).

In addition we had to investigate the entire body of the thing looking for bits that can unscrew just in case we (my mother and I!) decide to try and fix it ourselves.

She called multiple appliance places asking for advice and pricing on getting it serviced ($200!)

The broken microwave came up at dinner three separate times (baked potatoes that were actually baked! Do you know how long that takes compared to making them in the microwave? ...I do).


This is the third day of this.

I can't wait until my own retirement.

Yes, this pretty much sums up my academic/life goals

Kyle: and i want my first published article to be on the play of sound, images, and text in his [Lubitsch] work.

me: I want mine to be about blue yoga panty/shorts



The race is on.

Can we discuss the fact that is it 57 degrees right now (in DECEMBER) and the weather forcast for tomorrow predicts a high of 13!?

ugh

My cat has more developed lifeskills than I do.

So I come home the other day and my darling, precious kitty rushes to the door to meet me. This is rather unusual considering all the acknowledgement I usually get is a quick glance from either the bed or the chair (depending on where I left him that morning). What's even more unusual, however, is the fact that the cat is SOAKING WET. Not kind of wet, not oops I got sprayed with the hose by a pesky neighbor wet, not caught in a rain storm wet (and it hasn't rained in days), not whoops I slipped and fell headfirst into the toilet (again) wet, no he's soaking wet.

"What the hell happened to you?"

Then I panic and run up the stairs to make sure nothing has broken or overflowed and now my whole (2nd floor) apartment has turned into a huge aquarium and kitty actually just swam to the door to meet me.

Interesting fact: Nothing else in the house is wet.

Gross. The cat is following me around like a sad puppy and I realize somebody smells Herbal Essence fresh and it is not me. I pick him up and his collar is tightened a hole too high.

SOMEBODY GAVE MY CAT A BATH.

Somebody (who is not me) gave my cat a bath and then sent him out into the 40 degree weather soaking wet.

Why?

Who bathes somebody else's cat, then puts them out in the cold?



This is how I answer all of life's questions now.

I'm probably a bad person

As most of you know I volunteer at a therapeutic horseback riding facility that teaches people with disabilities how to ride horses. This is a good thing I do.

Recently, because of the change in weather, we have reduced the number of classes and I go out on Tuesdays instead of Saturdays and have a whole new group of kids to work with. The first Tuesday class has little children in it, kids between 4 and 6 specifically. Today I happened to get out in the arena a little early with my horse Jasper and watched as the kids and their parents arrived.

There are two little girls in the class. One, the one I work with, only knows about 3 words right now and has a very distinctive way of purring everything she says. She really has an adorable raspy, purry way of saying "hi" if you can imagine. Another little girl doesn't pronounce words and is very excitable. Whenever she sees the horses she starts roaring loudly and jumping up and down as high as she can. This is also adorable.

So today the purry girl is dressed in a huge puffy pink coat with a furry hood and rainbow striped leggings. The jumpy girl has a big blue coat and red hat with tassels. When my girl sees the other come in she starts purring "hi" and goes in for a hug. The other girl, seeing the horses and all the people, gets excited and starts roaring and jumping as high as she can. My girl seems determined to give the other girl a hug and proceeds to chase her around with her pink marshmallow arms outstretched while the other girl, oblivious to my girl, continues to roar and bounce around.

All the parents are aww-ing and encouraging the each of the girls to interact with her "friend."

Needless to say, they let this go on for a very long time.


And her I am out in the middle of the arena and it's all I can do to keep from falling over myself because I all I can think about is how I am watching a real life Pokemon battle.






My girl did not get her hug in the end... which I think means she lost.

Ask me about the bunny plan next

Recently I was walking past Pet Central Station (my most hated pet store ever) and stopped to look at the kitties in the window.

Me: "You know what, Chris (who I was with, even though I didn't mention it earlier), I've been thinking about getting another cat. I don't want to get just any cat, though, I really want to get some old lady cat who doesn't really like people or other cats. Then Ransom, who is always desperate for attention especially from other animals, will always be pestering her and she will smack him around a bit and put him in his place and be forever exasperated at his youth. I imagine it will be kind of like a sitcom in my living room starring cats."

Chris: "..."

Me: "But, that's not really a good reason to get another cat, ...I guess."

Chris: "No."



Sigh.

So, for the first time ever I'm in an apartment that I actually really love. It's the entire top floor of a house, the perfect size, really old and full of character (meaning if I fuck something up or break this or that nobody will ever know) and the cat has figured out how to climb up the stairs of the building next door and dramatically leap from their balcony onto the roof of the person under me and come in through my 2nd floor window. I don't even have to walk down the stairs to let him in or out. It's pretty perfect.

Of course, with any apartment, there is going to be some things that need fixing/redecorating/changing. No big deal.

Ha.

In the first 4 seconds I was here I managed to break the little contraption that holds up the shower head. Luckily my father was in town and MacGyver-ed together the old shower head contraption with one of those baby-keeper-outer safety things good parents put on their cabinet doors. It worked perfectly until I decided the wood shelf it was attached to needed to be painted and snapped the whole thing in half trying to screw it back on.

Dammit, there was no way my father's fix would work now the thing was in two pieces, so I decided I would just glue the adjustable level part in place and sacrifice the luxury of adjustable levels. I only have Elmers glue though and decided that was good enough so, of course, it didn't work and now there is a spot of dried glue on the counter top. I ended up just jamming a screw into the moving parts and it falls out whenever I touch anything and I'm always afraid it's going to fall out and then I'm going to step on it and probably bleed to death in the shower. It's the best I can do it seems.




I've been meaning to add an additional light to my living room because the one I have now is recessed into the ceiling with a frosted plate of glass over it which means it doesn't actually produce any light at all. It's been slim pickings in the beautiful and elegant wrought iron pedestal thrift store lamp market these days so I decided I would just work with what I already have. I made a bunch of paper cutouts (safe, right?) to hang from the ceiling light and hide the naked bulb when I removed the glass to let more light out. I managed to get the plate out and even clean up a few of the cobwebs and dead bugs before I saw a gigantic spider hanging out on the edge of the hole. Since he was brown I concluded he must be a brown recluse and if not it's totally not worth the risk because those things are deadly poisonous and if they don't kill you you'll probably lose an arm or piece of an arm or whatever and it might have a family in there somewhere. Anyway, now my light looks like this:



and I pretty much hate it.

It does let a lot more light out, though.

To top it all off, it's getting colder rapidly and I have a window air conditioner in my bedroom right next to my bed. I finally decided it was time to get it out so I can properly shut the window and keep out the cold. So I prop open the window, wiggle the thing out, get it about 3 inches away from the window before deciding that's where it's probably going to stay until spring, because it is way too heavy to move any more than that, and go to shut the window. My window has this weird side lock thing that holds the window shut with little feet that press into the wood so it doesn't move up or down. Apparently, the little foot thing was in the window-doesn't-move position while it was open, because when I went to close it the window crashed down on the little pointy top part of the foot which impaled itself into the wood and now for the life of me I cannot get it to move up or down.


Now there's about a foot of open window that is letting in all kinds of cold as well as those poor little bugs that just aren't into hanging out in the cold (can I blame them). Not to mention the cat keeps standing on the ledge and sticking the top half of his body out the window and I absolutly do not trust him enough not to be clumsey and topple out. It is very stressful.


***

I remember when Leah officially moved out of our Arizona apartment and the next day I couldn't get the lid off a jar. I sat outside my neighbor Paul's apartment until he came home and he popped it right off. I remember telling him I was worried about living alone and he assured me I could handle it, that I was overreacting and everything would be alright.

Well Paul...










*************

Edit:
I also, after finishing writing this, remembered that I somehow managed to break off one of the little things that hold my refrigerator up and unscrewed the other so they would be even. Naturally, this made the whole thing lean forward so every time I opened the door something would slide off the shelf onto the ground. I remedied this problem by propping the front up with a pack of Ms. Cleo tarot cards, which, annoyingly enough, the cat is determined to fish out from under there.

(It seems the cat is the real victim here, doesn't it?)

I wish everyone would stop blaming me for their own goddamn ringworm.

So last year I picked up a somewhat minor case of ringworm from my Precious Angel Kitty Princess (I'm actively trying to get them to change her name from Smokey) at the barn where I work. To be honest, she could have feline aids and crabs for all I care and I'd still scoop her up for a little love every time I saw her. She's just so fucking cuddly.

Anyway, it was right on my neck and to keep it from spreading I covered it with a giant rectangular bandage. It wasn't subtle and I told everyone anyway, because it was pretty fucking funny (I thought).

I am home this summer with my family (months and months after curing my ringworm) and my sister comes over for dinner.

Amy: I have this weird bug bite on my face.

Me: Looks like ringworm to me.

Amy: Shut up.


A few weeks pass:


Me: How's the ringworm?

Amy: Shut Up.


Two months later:

Amy: So that ringworm is on my leg now.

Me: Hahahaha, you still have ringworm. (Oddly enough it's even funnier when somebody else has it)

Amy: I blame you. You brought it home.

Me: Shut up!





Discrimination!

Since the last post was way too long for the completely unsatisfying punchline, here's a short one for you.

I turned back my students' first project grades on Tuesday. I, of course, left the printing until the last possible minute and naturally discovered both my office and the workroom to be out of white paper.

I was in a rush so I was all, "fuck it" and pulled out purple paper, but there wasn't enough of that so I had to supplement it with a nice pastel gold.

As I handed back I was all,

"Here are your grades on colored paper...

Please continue to respect me as an educator."




(The grades no good, but damn if it's not going to look great on your refrigerator)

I hate you Pet Central Station Part 4 (parts 1-3 not published, but they're fucking real)

I am painfully out of cat food.

As in Ranse had an omelet for breakfast.


...Yeah


I know I won't have time to drive to the grocery at all today and I also know I better not come home without any food or Ranse is going to be annoying as hell. I guess neglect will do that to a kitty.

Anyway, there's only one pet store downtown, Pet Central Station. So I go there before my last class.


Me: (after walking around the store for 10 minutes and noticeably trying hard not to pet the giant store golden retriever who is following me around for a good portion of that time) Do you carry Science Diet?

Clerk: Oh no, that has bad things in it. We would never feed it to our cats so we won't sell it to you.

Me: (carefully avoiding admitting I usually feed kitty the shit with the cartoon cat on the front because it's less than $6 dollars at the HiVee and the only reason I'm looking for Science Diet now is because I have a coupon I peeled off the hefty stack of free samples the cat has been living on for the past few weeks) ...Oh.

Clerk: If you want something really healthy and tasty I usually buy a bag of this ($22), this ($25) and this ($36!!) and mix them together for a really tasty dinner.

Me: Ok... (sliding my coupon back into my pocket). Well, I've bought this for him before. (I point to a lonely bag way off to the side)

Clerk: Well, that will do. Our cats here won't eat it. This stuff is really good, the roasted duck or on the other wall we have a steak and sweet potato flavored variety. Sounds good, doesn't it?

Me: ...

The clerk finally leaves me there to pick my food and I decide on some french brand (as in the writing on the bag is actually in French) specially formulated to be "Extra tasty" for "Fussy cats" (chats difficiles) because suddenly I feel pressured to act like I care what the kibble tastes like , even though how the hell should I know if it's going to taste good or even like real food products because I don't try my cat's food for quality control even though right now I feel like that makes me a bad pet owner.

And soon I am shelling out the $25 dollars.

Clerk: Oh, when we first got this nobody would buy it and all the bags expired.

Me: Why do you have to be so passive aggressive? Honestly, if it's brown and kibble shaped I think the cat's going to be pretty happy eating it. And according to everyone since I let him outside he's going to get hit by a car and eaten by a raccoon before old age anyway so what does it really matter what's in the pellets?

Me: (for real this time) Uh, huh.

Clerk: But then we fed it to the cats and they seemed to really like it. We did a taste test, with multiple varities and most ate this kind.

Me: That's good.


Long story short I carry the super bourgie cat food around with me for the rest of the day (to class, dinner, the bar) and when I get home kitty is so excited. I immediately rush to open the bag and pour a bit out and 2 things:

1. It smells like a mother fucker.

2. It smells exactly like Goldfish Crackers. EXACTLY.


Gross gross gross.

I hate you Pet Central Station.

I don't usually post things from other people's blogs...

but rather than bitching about a student's bitter anti-Catholicism movie pitch I thought this might be mildly more entertaining:




Also nicely calls to mind a student's project last semester titled Oh My Rock, about cavemen who debate whether rocks are, in fact, the real God.

So there's this guy and he's wearing a black suit and a skinny black tie...

So, I'm teaching a fiction video production class this semester and I put a no violence policy in my syllabus. I thought it was relatively clear: no violence, no guns, no aggression towards women. I basically tried to take away everything they love.

This Thursday they pitched their first major projects of the semester. There was one bar fight, one karate fight, one fatal car crash, and one clobbering over the head and tying to the train tracks.

And I'm all, "WTF guys?"

And they're all, "What?"

And one of them is like, "A car accident isn't violent."



So after many very long discussions about each individual project (at one point I told a student there are three douchbags in his film, the two caricatures he created and the filmmaker himself, cause I'm a nurturer) most of them will be re-pitching on Tuesday.

Well, the train tracks student emailed me with his new pitch to get a once over before Tuesday. Now the film is about a filmmaker making a film about a guy tying someone to the train tracks. Except, the actor playing the guy getting tied to the train tracks convinces the filmmaker that it is a really dumb idea so the filmmaker runs home to rewrite the script. The catch is he is so flustered about the script he accidently LEAVES THE ACTOR TIED TO THE TRAIN TRACKS.


And I'm all like, "Sigh."

But then I'm like, "WAIT A MINUTE, is that supposed to be me?!"





Teaching stresses me out.

What do I do with all these FEELINGS?!

I subscribe to this woman-with-careers-email-listserve-thingie that comes everyday and thus I almost never read it.

I just happened to open it up accidentally this morning and one of the articles was titled "Managing the Feelings."



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