DISQUS

This is what happens when I don't look at your tumblr for a while. I love caffeine free diet coke! I'm not supposed to have sugary soda or caffeine anymore because of the hypoglycemia, and it's the only way I can occasionally drink almost-normal soda like an almost-normal person. That being said, no one I know will drink it except for me.

I thought this piece was actually pretty weak. Where are the points? I couldn't find any that weren't strange and made up (e.g. "people get tattoos because they are tired of their bodies"). Just sounded like somebody with a personal dislike of tattoos trying to come up with reasons why it's objectively correct to dislike them (with some cutey-cute quips for added cleverness), when "tattoos just aren't my cup of tea" would suffice.

The lower back tattoo, also known as "ass antlers."

I think there's some hope that maybe as the obligatory kind of crappy writing that used to accompany mp3 blogs and such becomes less necessary, people who aren't really interested in doing good writing will stop doing so much bad writing. And maybe good writers and the people who appreciate them can focus on what's important to them without being conflated with this other half-assed kind of thing. But I don't know if it's actually likely.

I'm pretty sure "Gay Bar" is on the list at the Korean karaoke place just a little ways north of me in Austin, and at least some of those Wilco songs are on the list when the Mohawk does their periodical karaoke thing.

"Seeing Other People" and "Anything You Want" are both songs I would totally do at karaoke.

Brian would be excited about the inclusion of "My Valuable Hunting Knife," which he is obsessed with.

I think the association of youth with music is a really recent thing in Western culture. For centuries, music was something that everyone was expected to enjoy and participate in. Now that I think about it, the whole "music is for adolescents" thing really only dates back to the whole phenomenon of marketing for teenagers and the pseudo-oppositional culture of "rebellion" that started in the early rock'n'roll era--basically taking something "shocking" that your parents are supposed to disapprove of and commodifying / marketing it to young people as some kind of ready-made identity. Which of course didn't last that long before getting undermined by aging baby boomers. The whole "this is not your father's Oldsmobile" ad campaign comes to mind. Anyways, prior to that, sure, people might have associated excessive preoccupation with music with youth, but music wasn't constructed as this thing supposedly made by and for the under-30 set.

Personally, I don't think I appreciate music any less now that I'm older than I did when I was a teenager. Back then there was still so much to learn about it that it was extra exciting, and I have gotten a little jaded in some ways. But my knowledge of music and the experiences I've had also make my current experience of music richer, which is a totally ok trade-off in my book.

The thing that bugs me about that grups article is the totally unexamined class privilege aspect. It's all about these people with fancy jobs pulling in a way bigger salary than the average person, who live in New York City and places like that. But they take all these generalizations from them like "the generation gap is closing" and stuff. Maybe in these certain groups, with certain interests who make certain amounts of money and are all white. But is that really true elsewhere?

I'll be there!

I walk past sleeping homeless dudes on the way to work all the time. But the guys in the park I walk through are used to it--tons of people walk to UT through there and there are dog-walkers as well.

Thank you so much for posting that!

His description of slash is really flawed--for one thing, the whole "one of them is the woman and one of them is the man" thing is total b.s.

Scott's got so much hair, it's freaking me out.

He looks like a character. Kinda cranky, but who wouldn't be if they had tb.

I have to admit, I feel asleep during the third quarter. Travel exhaustion + normal inability to concentrate on football = zzzzz.

I put Hollis on my bloglines.

I totally see the point of Buy Nothing Day. Part of the reason for it is what you pointed out--it's difficult-to-impossible to totally disengage from consumer culture even if you object to it. Most people who have problems with consumer culture aren't to the point where they want to go live off the grid or whatever (personally I don't think isolating yourself from others is the answer anyways), but that's no reason to just throw up your hands and do nothing, even if a lot of what you do end up doing is mostly symbolic.

It's not a judgement on your grandma if someone is choosing to participate in Buy Nothing Day, or even to criticize the buying orgy that occurs on Black Friday. Most people don't even stop for a moment to think about the icky side of post-Thanksgiving shopping, to think about how much we have when others (including most of the people who make the stuff we buy) have so little. To me, if there is a point to Buy Nothing Day it is largely just to get "normal people" to give those things a moment's consideration even if they do end up going shopping anyways.

Regarding your statement about the "If there is societal pressure to do X, I must perform the opposite of X!” thing. I think that's a pretty simplistic / pointlessly insulting way of looking at another viewpoint. Some people may do "rebellious" things out of perversity, but others have better reasons. Just as some people might do more "normal" things because they're mindless conformists, while other people do them because they've made an intentional decision for good reasons. There's also the danger of reacting to reactionaries--if you get steamed thinking about what you see as knee-jerk rebellion, so you endorse the "normal" thing with a vengeance, you're being reactionary too.

Have you ever read the Baby Name Wizard blog (http://www.babynamewizard.com/blog/index.html)? It's by a lady who writes baby name books. She also has this application thingy that charts the popularity of different names over time on a graph (http://www.babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/lnv01...) that is interesting to play around with.

Anyways, she talks about this kind of stuff a lot. For whatever reason I find the whole subject really fascinating, and maybe you would too. I wonder what she would make about the statement you mentioned. A lot of times, when there's some theory in the news, she ends up poking holes in it (e.g. here: http://www.babynamewizard.com/blog/2005/06/quic...).

The short answer I would give to your question: sexism. A little bit longer answer: It's not necessarily that men think women are less likely to be capable writers, though I'm sure there's a component of that. But there's also institutionalized sexism. I mean, what are the statistics on how many books that are published are by men versus by women? If there are fewer books by women to start with, that is probably due to ingrained, subtle forms of sexism. There's also the fact that people think women writers are more likely to write stuff that is appealing to women, but don't assume male writers are more suited to a male audience. Etc. etc. etc..

I took that quiz the other day--I'm Batman too.

That blurb about the plucky single mom seems pretty sexist to me. Would someone really say the same thing about a single dad who wanted to hang out with his girlfriend? Is the fact that it's a boyfriend "du jour" instead of a committed long-term person really important when it comes to making a value judgement about this person? Who is this person who listens in on other people's personal calls? Etc.

I'm so glad I don't eat meat.

I kind of like the idea of DM and cigar smoke.

I've been reading the Westeros books lately too--I'm about halfway through A Clash of Kings right now. I'm borrowing it from McKee, who just got A Feast for Crows yesterday.

Did you know they filmed a bunch of that movie in Austin? And they filmed some of it at my coworker's house. Dr. L's house was used as the set for the neighbor's house, the people who lived next door to the In Cold Blood family. We went by his place and saw the room that the movie people had decorated.

I'm supposed to be a B5 character too--Susan Ivanova.

I like the idea of the coconut hat.

I'm over here at this other island not far off and we have boats.