Love Me, Love My Media

I found a great article about how one woman refuses to date any man from the internet who doesn't admit to watching or reading something by women.

I posted this article on FB and had two major disagreements in any hour. The stand out quotes were:

"I read and watch what I like to read and watch. The gender, ethnicity, and religion of the creator don't matter to me."

"The quote "If that’s how you want this to go, that’s your call, but I’ll be over here flirting with the guy who wants to talk about how Pulp Fiction paved the way for Inglorious Basterds" would be (justifiably) ridiculed if it was said by a man."

Of course the Tarantino comparison should be ridiculed. Male directors making violent movies with almost exclusively male casts isn't anything new and the article says as much. The only thing The L Word and OITNB have in common is the lesbian relationships, hour long format, and women dominating the story. There is limited overlap in subject matter, locations, actors, broadcast format, etc. Male characters are the supporting cast and that's the rarity.

"It severely warps our sense of humanity when all the stories we absorb are ones in which men are people and women are background decoration." Of course we all primarily consume media we like but what you like is a valid factor when selecting who to have coffee with from the internet. 

But if you only like books, TV shows, and movies starring, directed by, and written by white men, you're only hearing the stories of (mostly white) men. And I say from experience, not all men can capture a female voice. We are not as conscious of our boobs as some male writers like to think we are.

If you never hear stories by people of color, people of faith (or atheism if you're religious), women or some intersection of the above, you're only hearing part of the story. An Asian immigrant woman is going to have a different point of view than a lesbian from Brooklyn or a gay man from the Bible Belt.

What bothered me was that my friends dismissed the article without really seeing the point. It's about the dominance of male voices and how that's completely normal. 

Female directors, female writers, and female lead movies are grossly underrepresented. Only one female has won an Academy Award for Best Director ever. What was the last female lead movie you saw? Can you name a movie with a female lead that realistically deals with issues women face?

Geeks have been begging for a Wonder Woman movie since The Avengers came out but the studios kept offering BS reasons why it wasn't happening. Like how men wouldn't see a female lead action movie (Lara Croft) or there'd be a lack of audience (millions of forum posts on the internet disagree). 

Fans shouldn't have to fight for media that's both wanted and needed. Batman got a reboot, Thor and Captain America got 2 movies, Iron Man got 3, Arrow and The Flash got live action TV shows before Wonder Woman gets her day in the sun. Also, can we get a little more Black Widow please?

I wouldn't call either of these guys sexist but I don't know if I'd call them feminists either. What seems fairly obvious to me clearly isn't to them. The world is doing a much better job of telling their story so it may be harder for them to see.

The big lessons to take away are:

1) Don't list too many of anything on your internet dating profile. 

Keep your list of media to 5 or 6, 10 at the absolute max. Give a sampling. When it comes to dating profiles, too much is never a good idea.

2) Be open minded. 

If a guy only lists a handful of media and they're all by men, he may deserve a chance. Maybe he just needs some help to find the right female driven show/book. And men, find some female centered media. Learning more about our lives and our voices can only be good for you.

Music: Wonder by The Doubleclicks

Baker's Dozen Challenge Book 10

For Nonfiction I read A Little F’ed Up by Julie Zeilinger. It’s a book about feminism written by a young woman who isn’t even out of college yet. I am seriously questioning some of my life choices. I wish I’d been that mature and driven in high school.

A Little F’ed Up is a great book to introduce young women to feminism. Zeilinger does a great job at relating feminist issues to what’s happening to high school and college women right now. As someone who’s a little closer to thirty than university, I didn’t get as much out of it as I would have liked.

Jessica Valenti has written several topics on what’s relevant to me right now. I’m dealing with feminism as it pertains to adult relationships, friendships, work, and the possibility of children (eventually, someday, maybe). Zeilinger hasn’t been alive long enough to relate to that. She’s a voice for young women and even gave them a place to express their voices (thefbomb.org).

Her tone was very conversational which is probably more welcoming to teenagers. I found it to work sometimes and a bit grating at others. She also uses a lot of the same language. I have an incredible amount of respect for Zeilinger for doing all this at such a young age. It’s a excellent read for young women but somewhere in your twenties, you’ll start to relate a little bit less.

1) Another World – Wild Cards edited by George R. R. Martin (Wild Cards #1)

2) Learned Something – Animals Make Us Human by Temple Grandin

3) Movie-Book – The Fault in Out Stars by John Green

4) Graphic Novel – Fanboys vs. Zombies Vol 1 by Sam Humphries

5) Dust – You Don’t Sweat Much for a Fat Girl by Celia Rivenbark

6) Nonfiction – A Little F’ed Up by Julie Zeilinger

7) Reread – Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (as read by Wil Wheaton)

8) Shorts – 20something Essays by 20something Writers edited by Matt Kellogg and Jillian Quint

9) Fiction – The Rosie Project by Graeme Simison

10) Shiny – Dear Mr. Knightley by Katherine Reay

11) Retelling –

12) Wild Card –

13) The End –

Music: Scheherazade by Abney Park

Maryland Stereo-Truths

A friend of mine shared article, 10 Maryland Stereotypes That Are Completely Accurate, on the book of face recently. As a life long Marylander, I can say that some of these are truer than others but none of them are false.

1) Accents –  The Maryland accent is a thing but it’s more Baltimore specific. I don’t sound like this but I have relatives who do.

2) Crabs –  We are absolutely crab snobs. If I see a Maryland crab cake on the menu and there’s no Old Bay in sight, I scoff derisively.

3) Old Bay – While most of us don’t carry it on our person, it does go with everything. I’ve used it on fries, chicken, corn on the cob, shrimp alfredo, and mac n’ cheese.

4) Natty Boh – I’m not sure if it’s still brewed locally but it was originally. You can get Natty Boh at any bar in Annapolis or Baltimore and find that mascot on an insane amount of merchandise. I’ve even seen Boh themed t-shirts for all the local sports teams.

5) The Colts – FUCK THE COLTS!!!! They fled the to Indianapolis overnight (literally) and left Baltimore without a team from 1983-1996. My grandfather was a season ticket holder at the time. He never quite landed on a team for too long after that happened.

6) Ravens vs Redskins – I haven’t seen the divide very much first hand. Everyone I know is either one or the other. Most Redskins fans I know are casual whereas Ravens fans bleed purple. 

7) The O – A friend of mine from Boston moved out of the area for work. He went to a baseball game and said it was nice to be somewhere they didn’t yell “O” during the national anthem. It’s a thing.

8) Yankees in a Rebel State – If you ask a northerner, we’re the south. If you ask the south, we’re the north. Honestly, central Maryland is much more like the north and the farther east, south, and west parts are a little like the south. The article states it as well as I ever could.

9) State Flag Pride – While we don’t all have crazy flag pride, we all know what it looks like.

10) Lacrosse – I never got into lacrosse. I know it’s a thing but I still maintain our state sport is jousting. I don’t care if they changed it. Jousting is cooler and it was their first so : P

Music: Metro Song by Go Remy

See It To Believe It

I was poking around BuzzFeed in between searching the world for job postings (CareerBuilder, LinkedIn, and sent a follow up email for another job I applied for. So there.) They had two videos about unemployment. 

One was alarmingly depressing facts considering I’m with half a dozen staffing agencies and I’m still just getting radio silence on all of those fronts.

The other one had actors demonstrating what is basically my life right now. So much truth.

Music: Never Had by Oscar Isaac

Baker's Dozen Challenge Book 9

For Learned Something I read Animals Make Us Human by Temple Grandin. Each chapter is about a different sort of animal. It was a good way to structure it but I inevitably got more out of some chapters than others. Here’s some of the stuff I learned:

-Animals born in the wild then taken into captivity had normal brain development and are therefore healthier animals than most animals born in captivity.

-Wild wolves don't live in packs but rather family units with a breeding pair. Wolf packs with an alpha as we know them are a result of captivity. Lone wolves are mature cubs who are now looking for a mate.

-Cats chose to domesticate themselves since humans was where their prey was rather than be domesticated and shaped the way dogs were. They are also more scent based hence head rubbing and kneading.

-Horses have hyper specific fears. Seeing a white cowboy or a ball cap won't remind them of the bad experience but a black one cowboy hat will.

-Dairy cows only produce milk after birthing a calf. Because they do this so often, they've been breed to have lower social bonding so the mother and baby aren't upset upon separation.

-Broilers are chickens sold for meat. Layers are hens who lay the eggs we eat. Hens require privacy when they lay their eggs.

-Thousands of years ago, cheetahs were so scarce they had to inbreed to survive leading to a lack of genetic diversity. It is also ladies choice when it comes to mating which was only discovered through fieldwork.

-The biggest determinate of repetitive behavior in zoo animals is the range they usually cover in the wild. Polar bears are some of the biggest offenders because they usually range around 5 miles on a typical day.

Much like her last book, it was very interesting and informative. Some of her points seem so obvious it’s a wonder they don’t occur to other people more often. Inevitably I found the dog chapter more rewarding than the chicken chapter but this is definitely one of my new favorites.

1) Another World – Wild Cards edited by George R. R. Martin (Wild Cards #1)

2) Learned Something – Animals Make Us Human by Temple Grandin

3) Movie-Book – The Fault in Out Stars by John Green

4) Graphic Novel – Fanboys vs. Zombies Vol 1 by Sam Humphries

5) Dust – You Don’t Sweat Much for a Fat Girl by Celia Rivenbark

6) Nonfiction –

7) Reread – Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (as read by Wil Wheaton)

8) Shorts – 20something Essays by 20something Writers edited by Matt Kellogg and Jillian Quint

9) Fiction – The Rosie Project by Graeme Simison

10) Shiny – Dear Mr. Knightley by Katherine Reay

11) Retelling –

12) Wild Card –

13) The End –

Music: Good Guys by Aqua

Baker's Dozen Challenge Book 8

For dust I read an essay collection by Celia Rivenbark that’s been collecting dust on my shelf for too long. One of the perils of buying books faster than you can read them is that some of the subject matter feels a little dated. 

I get the references to Bernie Madoff, Jon Gosselin’s asshole phase, Fabolous, and the underwear bomber but they definitely aren’t the most recent crazy bits of our culture. All of them are funny but they felt especially southern.

I know she bills herself as a southern writer but she felt more southern in this book than in Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like A Skank. She wrote about her elementary school age daughter a bit more and that was always some of her best stuff. 

With a combination of age and internet, I think her daughter finds her role as subject matter less amusing. The collation ended with an essay about her middle school aged daughter and the craziness of being 13. I wish she’d done a little more on that.

I’m adjusting to her style that is less centered on her family and more centered on pop culture. My favorite essays were the ones about dogs on Twitter, Christmas gifts, politics, TLC, and Chinese bachelors. If you like her other stuff, this is definitely worth a read.

1) Another World – Wild Cards edited by George R. R. Martin (Wild Cards #1)

2) Learned Something –

3) Movie-Book – The Fault in Out Stars by John Green

4) Graphic Novel – Fanboys vs. Zombies Vol 1 by Sam Humphries

5) Dust – You Don’t Sweat Much for a Fat Girl by Celia Rivenbark

6) Nonfiction –

7) Reread – Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (as read by Wil Wheaton)

8) Shorts – 20something Essays by 20something Writers edited by Matt Kellogg and Jillian Quint

9) Fiction – The Rosie Project by Graeme Simison

10) Shiny – Dear Mr. Knightley by Katherine Reay

11) Retelling –

12) Wild Card –

13) The End –

Music: Fool's Gold by Fitz & the Tantrums

Take a Chance on Me

I just called about a phone interview I had on 5/22. It was for a branch of an organization that does a lot of meeting and conference planning. This is some of the things I’ve done in the past that I’ve really enjoyed.

I sent a follow up ‘nice to talk to you’ email the Monday after the interview and called today. I hate figuring out where the balance is between interested and desperate since it’s different for every organization. This organization has come up more than once in my search and I think I could do really well there. I just need them to take a chance.

I’ve already drafted a ‘here’s why I really want this position’ email since it’s literally what I want to do more of with my career. Things have been very dry since I stopped working at NCAF (just ask unemployment). I’ve called 5 staffing agencies this morning and I’m going slightly crazy from boredom.

At least I have project manager training classes, a bunch of errands, two restless dogs, and a few hundred books to keep me occupied in between searches. Ugh, I’m ready to be working and doing something with myself again.

Music: Lass jetzt los (Let It Go German Version) by Willemijn Verkaik

Update: I heard back. They sent me a generic 'no thanks' email. New week, new month, same old crap.