Thursday, July 22, 2010

A Day in the Life (of a "Humorless Feminist")

This was my day on Monday. At first I wrote it down because I was in a silly mood and felt like writing about how I was spending my day swiveling in an office chair eating cupcakes. At some point during the day I realized there was some irony here, about feminists always being accused of being "too serious", "too angry", "humorless" etc. (And yes, I have personally been accused of having no sense of humor because I don't find racist/sexist/homophobic humor funny. Because I'm a very serious person who hates to laugh, you see. I am holding back laughter even now!) So let's have a look at my very angry, humorless day, shall we?

Me.

1pm - Wake up in a stupor caused by spending the entire day before doing housework and grocery shopping and making an emergency run to Walmart which involved standing in line for 30 minutes next to a lady who kept abusively yelling at her children and all I was trying to buy was deodorant and buttermilk but they didn't have a 20 items or less checkout open for some reason, and then I came back and baked cupcakes, and really the only time I sat down all day was when I was too exhausted to do anything so I watched some show about cougars. In the sexual sense.

1:13pm - Obtain leftover pork chop. Spend two hours watching Ivan Coyote videos on Youtube and using Twitter to harass Sarah Palin and post inane things about Blue's Clues.

3:38pm - Decide that I somehow still didn't get enough sleep. Go lay down. Decide sleep is for suckers. Read Dave Barry Turns 50 instead.

4:00pm - My friend Sabrina, who I am staying with, reminds me that tonight is acting class at the library and asks if I want to go. I tell her "no" through my door in a tone that sounds really rude but is actually mostly tired and disoriented.

4:50pm - I am still reading and I keep seeing statements in which Dave Barry is describing the 50s but could just as easily be describing the 80s. Sabrina is leaving for class so I get back on the computer and decide to write a bunch of those quotes down and compare them with my own childhood.

5:00pm - I am tired of Dave Barry so I mindlessly refresh Facebook for half an hour instead.

5:30pm - I wander into the kitchen for reasons I am not sure of until I get there and stare into space for five minutes. I decide I want coffee. There are forgotten packets of hazelnut instant coffee in the cabinet. Sabrina's mom wanders into the kitchen half-asleep (she works nights) and starts asking me if I need anything and I say no and she's like "Well if you need it let us know and we may not have it but maybe we'll get it" and I'm like "kay" but what I'm thinking is "I hope she leaves the room fast because I don't want her to know I am drinking her hazelnut coffee even though I've never seen her drink any and it expired in May and I doubt she'd care anyway." Because I am weirdly paranoid about other people's food.

5:40pm - Look at Facebook.

5:45pm - Look at Twitter.

5:50pm - Look at Facebook.

5:55pm - Look at Twitter.

6:00pm - Go on archive binge at Hyperbole and a Half.

6:24pm - Discover that laying way back in the computer chair with my legs on the couch and swiveling the chair is really fun because the chair moves fast because only half of my body weight is actually on the chair.

6:26pm - Remember that Sabrina is going to be home any minute and it'll be her turn on the computer and I am wasting the last bit of my turn swiveling the chair back and forth. Decide to write about how inane my day has been.

6:40pm - Writing this reminded me that I also watched another sex show where they said a guy had "sexual anorexia" and I wanted to Google that and also see what an asexual friend had to say about it because I personally felt equating the desire not to have sex with the desire to starve oneself was pretty rude. Wikipedia says this:

"In the view of some practitioners, corroborating the seminal work of Patrick Carnes, there are people who appear to have a sexual addiction which is expressed through a variety of behaviors such as the compulsive use of strip clubs, prostitutes, cyberporn sites, etc. but more accurately fit the definition of sexual anorexic in that they seem to lack the ability to have a relationship of a sexual nature beyond a paid-for or anonymous experience. The person does not have an aversion to sex but to intimacy."

Sounds pretty different from asexuality, although I still don't get the comparison to anorexia. Find an interesting article on Jezebel that is critical of the idea but never mentions asexuality. End up wanting to bang head on desk due to following comment:

"Query: When are most men going to realize that if they aren't getting any from their sig O it may be more about what they're NOT doing before they even get to the bedroom? More than what she's not doing FOR him when they are there. Do the dishes. The laundry, the bathroom floor - an exhausted partner really doesn't care if you get off, dude. In my experience, sharing the load almost immediately creates a sense of intimacy in women. "

Because women don't actually like sex, you see. It's just how they repay their husbands for a job well done, in order to train them! If we are ever turned on, it is only by your ability to do laundry! Also the article mentions "people of both genders" which could be forgiven on a mainstream site but on a feminist site there is no excuse really. Remember that this kind of thing is why I don't read Jezebel very often [I could rant on why these things bother me but it is far beyond the scope of a silly "what I did today" post]. Anyway Sabrina is home so I give the computer to her.

6:55 - Ask Sabrina how her class went. Find out they spent most of the time composing a poem that featured the word "diarrhea."

7:00 - Go to take a bath. See empty shampoo bottle in trash and realize I get to pick the next shampoo. Be irrationally happy about this. Almost choose Suave Ocean Breeze shampoo because apparently it tastes like lawn chemicals and I want to know how it smells. Choose other shampoo instead because it is moisturizing and I have terrible hair. Wonder why there is "clarifying" shampoo since that shit turns my hair into straw despite the fact that I am white, which means my hair becomes oily every few days, whereas everyone else here is black, which means their hair only becomes oily if it is 1982. Decide Sabrina's family probably knows their own hair care needs better than I do.

7:03 - Read Dave Barry Turns 50 in the tub. Be unable to get the phrase "hot diggety dog ziggety boom" out of my head. Get dressed (yes, at 7pm) and put on my new Old Spice deodorant because I refuse to let socially-constructed gender roles tell my armpits what to smell like. Smell like a very clean man. Be irrationally happy about this.

7:30 - Write in my journal with a brand new glittery orange pencil that reminds me of juice. Be irrationally happy about this. Decide I need juice. Wonder if it would taste good if I mixed orange juice with orange Fanta. It tastes okay. Add milk and vanilla to make something approaching an Orange Julius.

7:47 - Realize it is almost time for Star Trek TNG to come on. Turn on BBC America. Be bored by people on BBC World News talking about champagne. When TNG finally comes on, watch for 30 seconds and then be too antsy from drinking coffee and an orange Julius within two hours of each other to sit still. Offer to help Sabrina cook dinner.

8:15 - Cook while listening to Disney CD and singing along obnoxiously. While waiting for rice to cook, play word association game that ends up involving Harry Potter, Star Trek, Dr. Seuss, Pokemon, and harlequin ichthyosis.

9:50 - Eat dinner while watching that one episode of The Simpsons where Homer gets drunk and thinks he sees an alien and Leonard Nimoy inexplicably shows up and sings "Good Morning Starshine" with Mr. Burns yes this happened.

10:15 - Sabrina goes to take her turn on the computer. I am antsy. Play DDR. Fail a bunch because it is Max 2 and I only have Supernova and I have no practice on these songs.

11:00 - Watch an episode of Dr. G where a kid dies and they do the whole autopsy and can't figure out why he died and then they get the tox report back and it turns out he was supposed to be on methylphenidate, which is the generic for Ritalin, but instead the pharmacy accidentally gave him methadone, and he was taking it for a whole month and no one figured out "hey, this kid is acting like he is doped up on methadone", so it built up in his system until his heart stopped. Holy shit.

Midnight - Get on the computer and start talking to Roni about whether Sherlock Holmes was autistic and how House/Wilson is totally Holmes/Watson right down to the names and the fangirl slash, and how it annoys me when people attribute everything their children do to the fact that "that is just how girls/boys are", and which feminist blogs we like, and the difference between irreverant and offensive humor, and how the writers of the Venture Bros. are full of shit when they say they "don't know how to write women" because all the women on the show are badass, and why every time a character on TV gets a sex change they "switch back" after awhile, and how guys Roni plays Warcraft with are sexist and she should really just make fun of them because having an earnest feminist discussion with douchebags on Warcraft isn't gonna do anything. (So I guess this is the "humorless feminist" part of my day, except for the part where we spent a lot of it talking about an Adult Swim cartoon that we love, and the part where we made a bunch of jokes even while having serious discussions, and most of those jokes included a lot of swearing, and the part where we began the conversation by calling each other "barfbrain" and "trucknuts.")

2:30am - Roni signs off so I watch a bunch of Kylie Minogue videos, eat a cupcake, and discover that searching Twitter to see things people have said to Sarah Palin is very entertaining. Around 3am I am finally too tired to internet any longer and stagger back to my room to read actual books until I fall asleep.


So you can see that I am a very serious person who only does and says very serious things. Often while wearing a monocle.

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