Notes on a Scandalous Life

Today, the weather is beautiful. It's a perfect afternoon to take off the t-tops, pick up a six-pack, drive to the lake, and spend the whole day laying in the sun and pretending that Lake Tawakoni isn't full of AIDS (or, better yet, getting thrown around on the jet-ski, if I happen to not incapacitate myself by drinking the entire six-pack). Instead, I'm at work, listening to old-time country, because Chuckles got to the radio first. It's my fault, really - I arrived at the office earlier, but missed my golden opportunity to launch the classic rock station, post-haste. I love Chuck, with his shorts (I have never seen the man in pants. Ever.) and his eclectic collection of festive Hawaiian shirts, but I really wish he had better taste in music. I'm zenning out... I'm zenning out.

Tomorrow is the first day of the next semester, and, instead of looking forward to it, like I usually do, I'm royally dreading it. Or all the accompanying homework, at least. I wish I could have taken the whole summer off, to give myself a break. Instead, I chose to take 7 hours and work 50 hours a week for the majority of June, July, and August... a choice that padded my bank account and bought me a few more pairs of very unnecessary shoes and some much-needed college credit, but kind of sucked all the will-to-live out of my soul.

I decided that the cure for my senioritis would be a vacation that will very likely make me even MORE reticent to return to my East Texas lifestyle of... nothing, and, so, Abby and I got our passports. My parents are going, too - Mexico had better start stocking up. All-inclusive? Very yes. This vacation will either leave me well-rested and ready to face the rest of one of my very last semesters of undergraduate study, or, alternatively, I may just be compelled to stay in Mexico forever. At this point, I'm pretty ambivalent as to which route I will take. Being educated is nice, and all, but I have a feeling that I could stretch a nice tan and an abundance of piña coladas out for a very, very long time.

I wouldn't say that I have senioritis, perse - I like college - but I am desperately looking forward to graduating. Not because I'm tired of school, but because I'm jealous of all my friends who are off and living in more exciting places with more culture than Conservative-ville, TX. So maybe, instead of senioritis, I have an advanced case of the-grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side-itis. Whatever.

Among things that don't suck about Texas: my car. Disregarding my tires, of course, one of which blew out on the fourth of July (should I capitalize fourth - since it's a holiday?). Okay, I can change a tire... but, unfortunately, my car lacks a spare. In its place: a subwoofer, installed by D-Bag Rick, the former owner of my Camaro. So, I had to get a tow. To NTB, because Discount Tire, where I purchased (or, should I say, Brandon purchased - but more on that later) my $800 set of racing tires, was closed. So, instead of paying for fireworks and booze on this particular holiday, my first choice, I paid for a tow and a cheap (sort of) tire to tie me over til I could get around to getting the blown-out one replaced. Fortunately, replacing the tire at Discount this week was only like $20, since it was still under warranty.

Speaking of Brandon! He called to inform me, the other day, that I had not yet paid certain medical bills that I originally received less than a month ago. Since my phone or electricity is not likely to be turned off if I do not pay these bills, I was originally not in much of a hurry to pay them, but, now that Brandon has decided to bug me about them (in the event that they could go against his credit), I have upgraded the urgency level of these bills to maybe. Right up there with light bulbs (which I actually DID buy - although it took me a few months to simultaneously be in Wal-Mart and remember that I can't see when I'm in the hall) - but waaay behind shoes. Maybe he should have been a bit more generous with that divorce settlement, eh? Oh, yes. I'm a bad ex-wife. Good thing I have no plans to get married again!

And, now, off to finish work for the afternoon, so I can start trying to convince somebody to rent The Unborn tonight. Demon fetus for the win!

I think just about everyone but me got the day off of work, so I'm retaliating against the man by writing a blog during my paid work hours. It's kind of an empty gesture, really, because my boss wouldn't care, but, you know. I can dream. And so, here I am, sipping on Big Red (por gratis, because my coworkers are trying to fatten me up), and wondering what I should say now.

Serving at Cracker Barrel has been going well, ever since they stopped playing the Wounded Warriors DVD on a loop. Wounded Warriors, as I now know (brain space I could maybe have used for something more important, like... well, anything), is a charity benefitting men and women who sustain injuries during their respective careers in the armed forces. Which is all fine and good, except for how, you know, the military DOES provide full-coverage healthcare, and disability. Meanwhile, people keep dying in other countries, which doesn't matter, apparently, because they didn't die for AMERICA. Sigh. I tried to relate this idea to another employee, only to be quickly shot down with a snippy"They DESERVE this. Is any of YOUR family in the military? Because, if they were, you would understand!" Sigh again.

And yet, soldier-worship is so prevalent. I keep seeing people join the Facebook group "Petition to remove 'soldiers are not heroes' from Facebook", and I have to wonder why. For one, the group is not going to accomplish anything, because saying that soldiers are not heroes is not a death threat, racial slur, or anything else that Facebook prohibits in its terms of use. It's just an unpopular idea.

Second, "Soldiers are not Heroes" makes a pretty good point: it's a little perilous to declare that all soldiers ARE heroes. Whether or not you agree with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I'm sure that it's pretty easy to accomodate the idea that a soldier who risks his life to save a fallen comrade, or something of that nature, is a hero. But, then, not all soldiers do such things. A few soldiers see the front lines... and some spend their deployments chilling out in an air-conditioned tent in Iraq. And some don't deploy, at all. And a lot of them sexually harass their fellow soldiers. Personally, I think that we need to stop exhalting soldiers. They are just ordinary people, getting paid to preform a dangerous job.

Last month, the Guardian published a really interesting article that deals with the prevailing attitude among the Big 3 (Islam, Judaism, and Christianity) that God hates women. Well, maybe he doesn't hate us, but he definitely created us to play supporting roles, at best.

The article is not anti-religious; actually, it seeks to reconcile religion to the modern blending of gender roles by pointing out that the abandonment of patriarchy does not necessarily need to lead to a disconnect from religion, but from history.

First, the authors gives examples of sexism in the modern practice of each of the Big 3: an Islamic man beating his daughter to death for liking a British guy, the Baptist church's official statement on the duties of womanhood (why, submission to our respective spouses, of course!), and a snide comment from the Pope in 2008, when he said that modern standards of gender equality take away from the differences that God established between the sexes.

None of this is groundbreaking, of course (and, Protestant-ly speaking, scant little of it is Biblical, either, considering Jesus' attitude toward and treatment of women), and, so, the article probes further, asking the question: "Why do so so many women actively participate in their own demeaning?" After all, we often make up a larger percentage of church-goers than men, even though we are typically stuffed into positions of subordinance and non-plus-ery. This is something about which I've often wondered, myself, and the article offered several possible explanations:

1. "Religions are sticky", and hard to get out of with any saving-of-face, especially for women, who are encouraged even less to think and act for themselves than their congregational male counterparts.

2. Because women, religious or not, tend to have more monotonous lives than men, going to church infuses a little excitement - provided the woman behaves herself and doesn't, OMG!, talk back to someone with a penis.

3. The article's final and, I think, ultimate answer is that religion consoles its members for what it has removed from them in the first place. Because religion often implements sexism in a big way, it also makes sure to let its members (men included, because it's not like they're all enjoying the pressures of traditional gender roles, either) know that life does, indeed, suck, but that God has something less crappy in store for them in the next life. Just as long as the men assume the responsibility of maintaining a dictatorship in their households, and the women are "submissive".

While all of the explanations make sense and are probably true in a lot of cases, the last one rings the most true for me, especially for those of us who were raised in the church. As the authors put it: "It's the sad, familiar, heartrending bargain in which the victim embraces the perpetrator, in some complicated, confusing, all-too-human mix of appeasement, need and stubborn loyalty. The fact that the embrace is all on one side is resolutely ignored."

Last night, I finished reading Charlotte Temple. This book was never exactly at the top of my reading list, but it was assigned to me for school. Sometimes, I get this weird urge to actually do my homework.

The story is frustrating, but at least it's simple - Charlotte is an unsuspecting innocent who, under the influence of a sketchy French schoolteacher and a manipulative suitor, makes the mistake of eloping to America. As a result, she dies. The book is sort of a Puritanical cautionary tale - young women, says the author, are not fit to decide whom they should and should not marry; that's up to the parents. Men, you see, are sneaky bastards, and will ship you off to America, get you pregnant, and then leave you. Forget finding another man once you're there, by the way, because, once you've lost your chastity, no man will take you seriously again. Ever.

Overlooking not-too-subtle message of "disobeying your parents and having premarital sex automatically leads to pregnancy and death", Rowson's warning to young women DOES have its roots in some sound reason. There weren't many autonomous women at that time, and, so, women depended on either their parents or husband for support. Breaking the ties between you and your parents left you entirely at the mercy of your significant other, so, if that failed, you probably would have pretty much just been screwed.

In America today, women do not suffer so much from a lack of potential to obtain autonomy (or birth control), but some people still cling to the method of finding a mate that Rowson proposes in her book. It's called courtship, and, in theory, it keeps you from having your heart broken by the dating game, because you'll never spend any time alone with your significant other until you're married. Rather, your parents will supervise all your interaction, and, ultimately, determine whether you can or cannot marry the person you are "courting". In Charlotte Temple, we see where the ideology behind courtship is rooted: young women are ruled by their emotions, and, so, their parents ought to guide them in choosing a mate. Otherwise, men will surely take advantage of us, and, heaven forbid, have sex with us, and we will get pregnant and die.

Last night's new Intervention might possibly rank as my second-favorite episode of all time, topped only by alcoholic/meth-head/frequently-nude Cristy ("I'm just on a permament good one that none of you guys will ever get to experience"). It featured Polish twins Sonia and Julia, who, due to some very dramatic sibling rivalry and codependency, had somehow both grown up to be some crazy, anorexic bitches.

The girls problems manifested due to their lifelong competition to be the "skinny twin". So, they kind of hated each other. But, then, they were practically attached at the hip, so they had to find a way to deal with their rivalry. The solution, of course, was to adopt the same exact rigorous diet and exercise routine, so that no one would have to worry about the other twin sneaking in, uh, less food.

Dark-haired twin was a dead ringer for Brandon's roommate's equally-skinny, equally-whiny girlfriend, so I got to enjoy a little vitriolic mental substitution, which was nice. The really interesting part of the show, though, was the way the parents of the twins reacted to their daughters' mental illness. As migrants from Poland, they just didn't get why anyone would struggle with food in such a way - they were just happy to be in America, where, in contrast to Poland, the getting is good, in the food department. I'm unsure of exiting data on this matter, but it seems like Anorexia is pretty much a product of our culture, which, contradictingly, offers us way more food than we need, and then encourages us to worship the bodies of unfed people.