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There’s nothing like being in a room full of social workers and overhearing everyone else’s research interests, job experiences, or areas of specialization. I can’t think of any other situation where I could state my actual research without reservation, explanation, or tempering the terminology to make it seem less galling to the listener. Too many times I have been asked what I’m interested in studying (by non-social workers/non-public health workers), only to watch the person’s face crumple into a sort of confused sympathy before the all-too-familiar flicker behind their eyes indicating the unspoken question: “What the hell happened to you that you would want to study such a thing?”
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For as long as I can remember I have been told that I “look angry”. This puzzles me, because once I got my braces off and grew out of my adolescent punk rock rage–which really wasn’t even that severe (I am one of the only people I know that actually smiled for my senior pictures), I became a more or less well-adjusted person with a wide capacity for humor, amusement, and laughter. However, the one thing I do not generally do is smile when something is not funny or pleasing to me, and this bothers certain people. Certain people who are men.
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My brother’s eyes are
sea green, like the crayon and
the sky before rain.
I had this fascinating conversation at the grocery store the other day. Transcript after the jump.
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The thing that bothers me about a lot of the reporting that’s been done around the hateful, racist Arizona legislation essentially allowing racial profiling of “illegals” is that no one in the mainstream media is actually coming out and calling it as such. “Controversial law signed by Governor Jan Brewer” is about the worst even supposedly leftist outlets like The Huffington Post can offer. Why can’t we just say what it is: hateful, racist, morally unconscionable, draconian, probably illegal?
Smarter people than me have already written volumes about this bill, and it should be a no-brainer as to why this is a sad day for Arizona and the rest of the country and Latin America. This law sends a message to Latino/as everywhere that they are not welcome here, even if they are citizens, even though they were here first, even though Gov. Jan Brewer and all the Tea Partiers and the rest of the old white men who run this country are themselves direct descendants of “illegal” immigrants. The panic about immigration and the drug cartels in northern Mexico is a gigantic farce and it is irresponsible to claim that our national security is threatened by brown-skinned men who traffic marijuana and cocaine and guns across the border to be sold to white-skinned people in the suburbs. Pretty disgusting.
La Prensa Libre has more, and at least The New Republic will call Tea Partiers crazy and mean.
May Day is a day of action to stand in solidarity with those who have immigrated to the United States and to call for an overhaul of the system, from the ideological ground up.
This post epitomizes so many things I have felt about being a female lover and consumer of music, specifically, music of the indie rock persuasion (”So I’m supposed to buy her a book and some tea and sit around listening to chicks who can’t play their instruments?”, etc.).
Yay for hospital visitation rights!
I was welcomed home from Guatemala with cake. Vegan chocolate cake with a fudge and peanut butter ganache, from my vegan friend Kelly, who is also some kind of baked-goods alchemist. I stole this website from her computer when she wasn’t looking and now every day I am visited by a cake oracle in the form of this blog, and reminded that I really have no business being thin.
According to all the best advice from Cosmopolitan magazine, there are 12 things EVERY GUY wants on a date that you may never have guessed. Written by a guest editor from Maxim, among warning women to forgo babydoll dresses (”because they make you look fat”) and boyfriend jeans (”because they’re not flattering”), the article included this gem of advice: “Don’t talk about yourself too much, because most guys aren’t that interested.”
I don’t think most women are stupid enough to actually take advice from Cosmopolitan (this is, after all, the magazine that regularly features “holy shit, I never knew that!” tips on how to please your man…such as…moving around during sex), but what always strikes me about these articles is that the suggestions for women always have to do with twisting yourself into all kinds of shapes to impress/please/fuck a man who apparently doesn’t need to do anything to impress/please/fuck you. Meanwhile, magazines targeted toward men offer no such tips on how to make conversation with women, as apparently it is assumed that you don’t need to make conversation with women because why would you care about what they have to say?
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I know I shouldn’t feel so annoyed when people remark on how much younger than 28 they think I am. After all, they most likely mean it as a compliment…i.e. isn’t it great for women to look younger than they actually are? And maybe in ten years or so, my feelings will change and I’ll be flattered when/if someone tells me, “Wow, I thought you were younger.” But I still take issue with the fact that 1) 28 is an age where you should need to feel flattered about looking younger and 2) it’s a mostly backhanded compliment anyway, as generally what the speaker is NOT saying about your advanced age is, “Where are your husband and kids?” or “Why do you still dress like a teenage boy?” or “You seem a lot less mature than someone who’s pushing 30.”
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I am going to do things a little differently the next time I come to Central America. Even though I’ve complained about it often, my standard of living here is far out of reach for the vast majority of Guatemalans. I live on a safe street inside a house that, despite its lack of insulation and the ever-present black mold blossoming on the walls, is equipped with all the comforts to which I’m accustomed (electricity, indoor plumbing, gas for cooking, a relatively hot shower). Because I can’t be bothered to hike the 20 minutes uptown to the sprawling Mercado Democracia in Zona 3–or take the colectivo to the even cheaper, more chaotic Mercado Minerva by the chicken bus terminal–I buy my vegetables and spices at the most expensive, centrally located market in town, a convenient three blocks from my house. For the most part, my weekends have been filled with fun activities exploring the country that many of its countrypeople cannot afford to enjoy, like hikes and hot springs soaks. I consistently drink the best beer available, go out whenever I want and take taxis home after midnight ’cause it’s only Q25 and you can usually bargain the guy down. Almost everything I do is tailored for maximum convenience, which is a luxury so many people around me cannot afford. The biggest hypocrisy of all is that the people at the community center where I’ve been volunteering for the past seven months think I’m the good person for coming here to work for free.
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