Tag Archives: WTF Wednesday

WTF Wednesday: Must We Show So Much Boobage as We Empower Ourselves?

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Behold, m’ladies. The latest ironic, gender-stereotype-busting, geek-affirming musical video designed to empower us, by showing the world: Fuck Yeah, We Are Women, We Are Bad Ass, We Like the Same Things that Men Like and We Are Good At Them, Too. Plus, We Have Boobs.

 

 

This video and this tweet from Nathan Fillon (yes, of Firefly fame) is why I should not be allowed to roam the Interwebs…

I find offense everywhere I turn and then burn a hole in my head because I agonize over things that, to most people, don’t matter. Look at me, here I am, trying to find fault with a musical video featuring female (supposedly) geeks named TEAM UNICORN. Come on, what’s the matter with me, shouldn’t we all love geek girls and Everything Unicorn?

I can never decide whether to rejoice and feel empowered or to throw up my hands and resign because of what is now considered to be “female empowerment”… by those who are on our side, men who are supposed to be more enlightened than most of their counterparts.

The top comment for the video is from a proud dad whose daughters watched JLA before Dora the Explorer. I am very happy for him and proud of his girls too for smashing gender stereotypes, crossing the boundaries. I loved ThunderCats & Transformers etc. when growing up. So people are liking and sharing this video NOT because of the gratuitous boobage?…

 

"Sexy Ass" = Sexy + Badass? Nicely done. All our feminist foremothers thank you.

It is getting harder and harder to be a modern woman.

In her seminal essay “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All“, Anne-Marie Slaughter, perhaps facetiously, wrote, “… women feel that they are to blame if they cannot manage to rise up the ladder as fast as men and also have a family and an active home life (and be thin and beautiful to boot).”

At the turning point when high heels are no longer tortured devices invented by men to force us to all sway our hips unsteadily in order to exhibit the fantastical, imagined femininity but rather a figurative pair of Samurai swords that we wear to demonstrate our resolve, and to dare men to face our sexuality and general badassness with respect, I became extremely confused and simply gave up.

Show your sexuality. BUT demand respect and autonomy. What the lady giveth, the lady may taketh away.

Be a diva if you’d like. Be girly and feminine if that’s your style. Accumulate wealth. Climb the ladders. Emulate men in all their power, glory and vice. Be all that you can be.

That’s exactly the problem, isn’t it? When everything counts in theory, nothing makes impact in reality.

We are not being allowed to be all that we can be. For starters, we are NOT free to be un-sexy, un-pretty, un-thin. Have you noticed the myriad of female empowerment icons all looking pretty darn hot? If they don’t look hot now, no worries, they will as soon as they take off their geek glasses and their hair pins. We are being (re)trained to (continue to) be the object of desire. Do your progress thing. Be a Super Woman. Better yet, handle everything. You’ve got the power. But make sure you look hot while you are doing it. The male gaze lingers on. Probably even more perniciously because now we are in on it.

Sometimes I just want to stand up and scream, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house!”

Then I reprimand myself for possibly (mis)appropriating Audre Lorde’s famous words and for being a defeatist. I also feel guilty for not being a feminist AND a sexpot AND a fierce warrior Ninja AND a genius mathematician all at the same time.

Sitting down now. But not before I post this:

Helen Keller FTW. Absolutely no boobage required.

 

The Yellow Invasion

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By now you probably have heard of “The Super Bowl commercial you probably did not see”.  Former Rep. Pete Hoekstra’s campaign advertisement aired during Super Bowl features a beautiful Chinese woman (or, as he called her later when he was made to explain himself, “a Chinese girl”), complete with a straw hat, bicycle, rice paddy, and “Chinese-sounding” music.

It’s like, HELLO! back to the World of Suzie Wong, Fu Manchu, and Dragon Lady.

 

 

The Internet, at least the part I frequent, was all-a-buzzing, criticizing Hoekstra’s campaign of insensitivity, stupidity, and flat-out lying. There are several areas about this ad that are under criticism:

1. The actress’ perceived accent, fake or otherwise: I was quite moved by people of non-Asian descent being offended by the portrayal of a Chinese person (purported in China even though the scene was actually show somewhere in California) speaking with an accent and “broken” English. I have to admit: I did not see this at all. We have all heard atrocious fake Asian accents, and compared to those, hers is actually subtle (regardless whether the actress is Asian American or Asian Asian).  And the “broken” English amounts to dropping the “S” after a verb which I sometimes do by mistake because, well, I am speaking a foreign language.

I would like to put this out here: Although I would rip anybody’s head off for attempting fake Asian accents, my children’s included, there is no shame in speaking English with an accent. Duh. I tell my kids, “Don’t make fun of people speaking with an accent. They all know one more language than you do. And their English is better than your [insert foreign language].”

2. Her accent is not authentic: Well, we will find out when the APB put out by Lawrence O’Donnell for this poor actress succeeds in tracking her down. Even though I do not like what she did, being a theatre person, I have to give her some slack: Do people understand how hard it is for actors of Asian descent to find roles that are NOT stereotypical in nature?  She actually sounded a bit like me. So now I am sitting here wondering: “Fuck. So people think MINE is broken English and my English sucks?”

I was once criticized by an audience for not having an authentic Chinese accent in the play I was in. I found it hilarious and thought it was a great compliment. What do people think a Chinese accent should sound like? It baffles me really.

3. She does not look Chinese: People say that to me all the fucking time. Well-intentioned criticism like this frustrates me to no end. What IS a Chinese supposed to look like? Is there an encyclopedia of Chinese people that we can look up like a bird watcher’s guidebook? Nope. Not Chinese. Angle of eyes all wrong. Not Chinese either. See? The nose is not in the right place. Coloring is all wrong too. Seriously?

Furthermore, who cares if the actress is Chinese or not? It does not matter whether she is American-born or not either. What matters is that PeteHaveNoClueHoekstra and his people approved an ad with rampant, racist stereotypes (and of course, shameless fear mongering and blatant misinformation regarding debt and economy).

4. Yes, the fear mongering alluding to the misconception about the debt China holds against the US [Remember the Chinese Professor ad in 2010? And the Yellow Peril trope populated by the Fu Man-Chu series in the 1930s?], and the relationship between the debt and the economy. Actually, it is rather insulting that PeteGetNotHoekstra assumes people would believe the line he’s trying to draw between US government spending and jobs being sent overseas. Here, allow me to quote Paul Krugman: [I know not everybody worships him but this article, Nobody Understands Debt, is spot on]:

Deficit-worriers portray a future in which we’re impoverished by the need to pay back money we’ve been borrowing. They see America as being like a family that took out too large a mortgage, and will have a hard time making the monthly payments.

This is, however, a really bad analogy in at least two ways.

First, families have to pay back their debt. Governments don’t — all they need to do is ensure that debt grows more slowly than their tax base…

Second — and this is the point almost nobody seems to get — an over-borrowed family owes money to someone else; U.S. debt is, to a large extent, money we owe to ourselves.

… …

It’s true that foreigners now hold large claims on the United States, including a fair amount of government debt. But every dollar’s worth of foreign claims on America is matched by 89 cents’ worth of U.S. claims on foreigners. And because foreigners tend to put their U.S. investments into safe, low-yield assets, America actually earns more from its assets abroad than it pays to foreign investors. If your image is of a nation that’s already deep in hock to the Chinese, you’ve been misinformed. Nor are we heading rapidly in that direction.

 

Ok. Now that we’ve got the air cleared, could I please start with my psychotic foaming at the mouth now? Thank you.

Nobody seems to be bothered by this. At least, they did not comment on it. My first reaction?

“O.M.G. Is she selling porn??!! Is she trying to get the good ol’ American white boys into her pants?!”

WTF is with the downcast eyes, the come-hither smile? What’s even more bizarre is that she’s supposed to be addressing  Debbie Stabenow, Hoekstra’s opponent in this race. I was seeing Lotus Blossom and Dragon Lady morphed into one right on my computer screen, on a Monday morning, in the fucking 21st century. It was such a visceral reaction that I had to grip the edge of the table to stop myself from screaming; I held my breath in fear because I was half expecting her to say “Me love you long time”… This is THE most offensive stereotyping I have seen so far in the 21st century. PeteMeSuckHoekstra did not even try to hide it. This “character” in his campaign ad is made up of everything that created “Dragon Lady” and sustained this stereotype over the decades. The ad, unapologetically, resurrected the stereotype of women of Asian descent as calculating, treacherous and manipulative a la “Dragon Lady”. Along with that, the ad invokes the fear of the Yellow Peril (originated in the 19th century when Chinese laborers were imported like cattle to the West Coast to build the railroads): only now they stay in China while taking away the jobs from the Americans…

 

Hello? PeteIamNotARacistHoekstra, Fu Man-chu called. He wanted his Dragon Lady back. He said that you could come over to the 1930s to visit her.

 

Thank you, indeed, PeteShowingYourTrueColorHoekstra, for reminding me and for proving to people who like to tell me that “It’s in your head. Racism does not exist any more. Grow some thick skin. Stop whining.” that idiots without self-awareness are still around us. Stay vigilant.

 

 

WTF Wednesday

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I have been thinking that I should make this a weekly feature. There are so many WTF moments, don’t you think? But sometimes when I finally found time, it was NOT Wednesday any more, so I waited, and then I missed another Wednesday…

Anyway, 5 minutes before midnight. STILL Wednesday. And I always have the West Coast to count on when necessary. So quickly some WTF moments from this week and last week:

 

“Tea Party Groups In Tennessee Demand Textbooks Overlook U.S. Founder’s Slave-Owning History”.

Did your jaw hit the desk? Yup. Mine did too. But of course, the Texas Board of Education had approved of revisions to textbooks last year that include

the exploration of the positive aspects of American slavery, lifting the stature of Jefferson S. Davis to that of Abraham Lincoln, and amendments to teach the value of the separation of church and state were voted down by the conservative cadre. Among other controversial amendments that have been approved is the study of the “unintended consequences” of affirmative action.

Actually, you could have just stopped me at “the exploration of the positive aspects of American slavery”. I want to use this piece of sad news as a test stone to people I know: If you are not immediately outraged, if you even “stop and think about it”, you are out. It’s black and white in this case.

 

Newt Gingrich’s three marriages mean he might make a strong president — really 

This is written by a “DR” Keith Ablow so it must be true. The article is published on Foxnews.com so we know it is… *cough* *cough*. This is so quote-worthy so I have to share:

Warning: Don’t drink or eat when you read the following.

So, here’s what one interested in making America stronger can reasonably conclude—psychologically—from Mr. Gingrich’s behavior during his three marriages:

1) Three women have met Mr. Gingrich and been so moved by his emotional energy and intellect that they decided they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with him.

2) Two of these women felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married.

3 ) One of them felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married for the second time, was not exactly her equal in the looks department and had a wife (Marianne) who wanted to make his life without her as painful as possible.

Conclusion: When three women want to sign on for life with a man who is now running for president, I worry more about whether we’ll be clamoring for a third Gingrich term, not whether we’ll want to let him go after one.

And I checked, The Onion had nothing to do with this.  Daily Kos, on the other hand, had a lot of fun analyzing this. Good times.

 

Komen breast cancer charity severs ties with Planned Parenthood

Susan G. Komen for the Cure announced its decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood centers.  “Many suspect the move is a result of political pressure by antiabortion activists,” LA Times added helpfully. You think?!

The Internet was immediately set ablaze and some news reports are saying that donations to Planned Parenthood actually spiked. Yeah, us!

 

 

 

Before I go, let me share something that will make you smile. Thanks to Mary Lee. I have not stopped smiling since I saw it.

Janet Howell, Virginia State Senator, Attaches Rectal Exam Amendment To Anti-Abortion Bill

To protest a bill that would require women to undergo an ultrasound before having an abortion, Virginia State Sen. Janet Howell (D-Fairfax) on Monday attached an amendment that would require men to have a rectal exam and a cardiac stress test before obtaining a prescription for erectile dysfunction medication.

The bad news is, yes, the ultrasound bill passed. The bad-yet-we-can-find-something-good news is, Senator Howell’s amendment failed (naturally) but it was lost by only three votes. 19-21.

WTF Wednesday: So you think you are being a good Samaritan…

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Hello, there. I thought I’d resurface with an installment of WTF Wednesday. I hope this serves as a nice counter balance to the holly jolly Christmas cheer, as manifested by the non-stop Christmas music ringing in your ears, that’s making you, even though you don’t want to admit it, a little bit dizzy. Or maybe even stabby.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving surrounded by people who love you and whom you love. I hope that you have finished all the left-over in the fridge or at least the pies that you left outside in a Tupperware container because there was no space in your fridge. I hope you now finally have space in your fridge for the more important things in life. I mean, beer, white wine, Franzie, etc. of course. I hope that you have by now managed to feel less bloated so you can fully enjoy the said beverages without other stuff such as meat and stuffings in the way.

I received an email from our local food pantry today: “There has been a tremendous response to the call for food donation. As a result, the food pantry is inundated with donations and is in great need for help to sort all the food in order to stock the pantry.”

You ask: How hard is it to just stick the cans and boxes onto the shelves? And why is it such an emergency?

Basically, the shelves are empty because all of the food is on the floor of the sorting room waiting to be processed.

The food needs to be processed before they can be put on the shelves because people are crazy.

Yup. You heard me.

Some people must think that poor people will eat just about anything. You know, as the saying goes: Beggars can’t be choosers? So they bring in everything from their pantry that they do not want and yet cannot bring themselves to throw away.

Rusty jars. Torn packages. Dog food mixed with a box of people food.

The volunteers have to open up every single jar of peanut butter because somehow people love to donate half-eaten jars. My son found two today. And it’s his first time there. Bingo!

And you know what? Stop buying green beans. It seems that what most people do is buy green beans, leave them on the shelf at home, and then donate them whenever there is a food drive. Come on. If you don’t like green beans, don’t buy them, because chances are the poor people and their poor children do not like them either.

Most of the time is spent on inspecting the expiration dates. Here is my plea to the FDA or whatever government agency in charge of this: Please dictate a date format and a set of standard locations for putting the expiration dates on food packages. Really. Go into your own pantry and time how long it takes you to find the expiration date for everything in there and to decipher the alphanumeric string.

The oldest expiration date I saw today? 2006.

2.0.0.6.

That’s like, oh I don’t know, half a decade ago. A baby has grown up enough to enter Kindergarten during all those years when that can was sitting inside your house post-expiration.

(Blogger’s Note: I went back again today and won the top prize:  A can with the expiration date of 2002. Apparently though even that is not the oldest the regular volunteers have seen there.)

Being Chinese, I understand the inability to throw away food. I really do. Heck, the folk tale tradition tells us that one of the main responsibilities of the God of Thunder is to strike people who waste food. You throw away food, you get smitten to death.

However, let’s think about this: These people are already unable to afford basic meals. Hello? That’s why they come to the food pantry in the first place. What do you think will happen when they eat your shitty food and become ill? It’s much worse than if you have not tried to help.

So here is the shocker: the expired food does get identified and thrown away. Oh yes. Don’t think you can sneak one in: Oh, maybe they won’t notice… so you don’t feel bad about wasting food. Any time the volunteer spends on reading that expiration date is time not spent on stocking food on the pantry shelves for families in need of help.

 

I can totally see Fox News headline: SHOCKING REVELATION ABOUT POOR PEOPLE IN AMERICA!

Megyn Kelly: Poor people not really poor. They refuse to accept expired canned goods!

Bill O’Reilly: I remember in the good ol’ days when there were only good ol’ hard-working American people in this country, we ate expired food all the time and we grew up fine. It’s all those Liberal’s fault: putting such a Socialist idea into the poor’s heads that they should say NO to a perfectly good ol’ can of green beans with an expiration date of 2010.

WTF Wednesday: I will stab anyone who says “Boys will always be boys”

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I wrote a post titled  I will stab anyone who says “Boys will always be boys”  in October 2010 at the height of teen (and preteen) suicides. With the nation coming together in the movement It Gets Better, I felt relieved.

“People get it now.” I thought. “They are reaching out to our young people. People are taking bullying at school seriously.” I told myself. “There is hope that things will change.”

What the fuck was I thinking?

 

Almost a year from when the movement It Gets Better was first started in September 2010, Mother Jones this week brought to our attention that NINE teenagers have committed suicide in ONE school district in the past two years. (Never mind your first reaction: Why weren’t these cases reported by the news outlet? Now that we have the celeb-endorsed It Gets Better, teen suicides are no longer news-worthy or something?!)  That district, Anoka-Hennepin school district, is the largest in the state of Minnesota with 40,000 students. The situation is so alarming that the area where the school district is located has been identified as a “suicide contagion”, according to the school district website, “because of higher than normal numbers of suicides and suicide attempts.”

Nobody can really pin point precisely why these young people decided to take their own lives. Most of them were either self-identified as gay or were thought and taunted as gay. Wouldn’t you know that the Anoka-Hennepin school district apparently has one of the most homophobic official school policies?

Anoka-Hennepin has a policy on the books known colloquially as “no homo promo,” which dates in back to the mid-1990s. Back then, after several emotional school board meetings, the district essentially wiped gay people out of the school health curriculum. There could be no discussion of homosexuality, even with regard to HIV and AIDS, and the school board adopted a formal policy that stated school employees could not teach that homosexuality was a “normal, valid lifestyle.”

Later the policy was changed to require school staff to remain neutral on issues of homosexuality if they should come up in class, a change that critics said fostered confusion among teachers and contributed to their inability to address bullying and harassment, or to even ask reasonable questions about some of the issues the kids were struggling with, like sexual orientation.  Source: Mother Jones

 

After so many young people have lost to us, people started paying attention and asking questions. The Anoka-Hennepin school district is currently under Federal investigation.  The Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Center for Lesbian Rights have also filed a law suit against the district. (SPLC explains why they are suing Anoka-Hennepin here)

The Anoka-Hennepin school district has been the subject of an investigation since the fall of 2010, after several students and community members came forward to report both verbal and physical bullying and harassment . During the ten month investigation, SPLC heard from students and teachers about concerns regarding the “neutrality” policy and implications of a gag policy in the classroom.

According to Sam Wolfe, lead attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center, students have reported being called vicious anti-gay slurs and subjected to being physically assaulted pushed into school lockers and trash cans due to their actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. One student even was reportedly attacked by a pencil and stabbed in the back of the neck. Source: WashingtonBlade

 

Maybe it is pure coincidence, but Anoka-Hennepin school district happens to be in Minnesota’s 6th congressional district whose representative is none other than Michele Bachmann.

Michele Bachmann who just recently signed a Christian right conservative family value yada yada group’s pledge which also stated that children born into slavery were somehow better off than children born into modern African American families.

Michele Bachmann who has from the beginning of her political career opposed any education and policy promoting tolerances towards the LGBT communities, who sees a “homosexual agenda” where gay youth would lure and indoctrinate the otherwise non-gay youth into a life of sin.

 

Yes, Michele Bachmann, there IS indeed a "Gay Agenda"...

 

Michele Bachmann who is the favorite of the Tea Party, and is leading the one woman (+ one ambiguously “pray the gay away” gay therapist husband) charge against gay marriages in defense of marriages, vowing to ban gay marriages (AND pornography, because you know, straight people do NOT watch porn. Ever). “Marriage is something worth fighting for!” she yelled. Cough cough. Michele, on this point, I think we all agree with you: Why do you think the gay community fights so hard for their right to marry?!

(I am waiting for her to say something in support of Hitler and deny Holocaust. Just you wait. It’s like she is playing a “Really? Really?! Are you fucking kidding me?!” Bingo game…)

 

According to a blog post on The Dump Michele Bachmann Blog from 2006 (way before she became a household name), “Most of the time Bachmann avoids committee hearings like the plague. However, she did deign to attend a hearing about a bill to address bullying in schools.” At this hearing in 2006 (which has been unearthed and discussed in these past few days), Bachmann questioned a proposed “zero tolerance” anti-bullying bill:

 “For all us, our experience in public schools is there have always been bullies, always have been, always will be. I just don’t know how we’re ever going to get to point of zero tolerance and what does it mean? … What will be our definition of bullying? Will it get to the point where we are completely stifling free speech and expression? Will it mean that what form of behavior will there be – will we be expecting boys to be girls?” – Michele Bachmann, 2006

 

She went on and on to say that there are differences between boys and girls, that children are like barbarians and we as parents are trying to civilize them, yada yada yada. Why? So we as parents simply expect boys to be barbarians? To bully each other? To pick on the weak who cannot defend themselves? Lord of the Flies? 

I have been seeing red ever since I read this line of hers this afternoon. I am so upset that I cannot really talk about it intelligently. I have said all that I wanted to say wrt. this subject in October 2010  I will stab anyone who says “Boys will always be boys”. I did not expect the day when I need to repeat myself, and it seems more urgent than ever because Bachmann is running for President and I honestly do not want to live in a country ruled by her and her narrow-minded friend. Heck, I don’t even want to live in a country where such an outcome is POSSIBLE.

I need to go stab a pillow or something.

Oh, one more thing.

Can we bring Sarah Palin back please?

WTF Wednesday? Duh. Winning!

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This is a cheap shot and oh so predictable. But I need to pay homage to the latest Interweb sensation and not only an awesome Internet meme in the making but a generous provider of meme material.

Yes, my friend. I am talking about Charlie Sheen. My apology indeed. I know most of you are tired of hearing/reading about Sheen’s latest antics by now, but allow me to have some fun.

For two days now my co-worker and I have been saying,

Duh. WINNING!

to each other when something, um, AWESOME, happened at work, i.e. we have been saying this to each other or playing the sound wav. file a lot.

 

 

Many of you would argue that this man is far gone, that he needs immediate medical assistance. But I read the highlights of his rants and I cannot help but be impressed by his creativity and command of metaphors:

What they’re not ready for is guys like you and I and Nails and all the other gnarly gnarlingtons in my life, that we are high priests, Vatican assassin warlocks. Boom. Print that, people. See where that goes.

I’m freakin’ bayonets. I’m battle-tested bayonets, bro.

I’m an F-18, bro. And I will destroy you in the air. I will deploy my ordnance to the ground.

I wish him nothing but pain in his silly travels especially if they wind up in my octagon. Clearly I have defeated this earthworm with my words — imagine what I would have done with my fire breathing fists.

These insults are the rocket fuel that lives in the tip of my sabre.

… People that don’t have tiger blood, you know, Adonis DNA.

I’m extremely old-fashioned, I’m a nobleman, I’m chivalrous. I believe that chivalry is not dead, it’s just been in a coma for a while.

I’m sorry, man, I got magic, and I’ve got poetry in my fingertips.

 

And yes, you have all heard this golden nugget:

I am on a drug. It’s called Charlie Sheen. It’s not available because if you try it once you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body.

 

And seriously, these gems, if they had not been spoken by Sheen, would have been on a t-shirt or coffee mug somewhere:

Can’t is the cancer of happen.

Dying is for amateurs.

 

There is something to be said about this unabashed optimistic confident outlook on one’s own life and oneself.

I am not bi-polar. I am bi-winning.

I cured it with my brain, with my mind.

The only thing I’m addicted to is winning.

 

To be 100% honest, once in a while, I’d like to be able to say something like this without any trace of irony in my heart:

I’m tired of pretending like I’m not special. I’m tired of pretending like I’m not bitchin’, a total frickin’ rock star from Mars.

 

Ok, so at the end of the day, I guess the above serves as further proof he’s manic–depressive. However it turns out, I am going to be WINNING-ing in the office in the near future. Beats the Sad Trombone that we have been routinely using.

Duh. WINNING!

 

p.s. You can generate your own Winning rant with the Stark Raving Mad Libs (which I found through The Bloggess). Here is mine.

p.s.s. I found many applications for this new Internet Meme of WINNING: for instance, I used it this morning when I found the parking spot right next to the train station entrance empty even though I got there late. It could also be used sardonically to explain what some people were thinking when they said something that made everybody else go “What what?!”

 

This could be used to explain what these people were thinking when they said something that made everybody else go "What what?!"

 

Double L for Loser

 

p.p.p.s. You know who gets to say WINNING for realz? Robert Downey Jr. That’s who.

The REAL Comeback kid from drug rehabs and embarrassing arrests

 

WTF Wednesday: These boots are made for walking

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These boots are nice, right? But I am not showing them because they are sexy. These boots were spotted 2 hours into a mountain climbing route...

This is what most of the paths on those mountains look like...

And this is what the mountain peak looks like...

WTF Wednesday vs. The Silverlining Man

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As predicted, the midterm election results painted the map red.

.

Bloody hell!

.

Yes, yes, we got bagged. It’s 5:30 am, and I haven’t slept. I have not packed for my trip overseas, nor have I finished getting the house ready for my absence. At a time like this, we need…


The Silverlining Man!

He will deliver a different, better, more comforting perspective so we can move on…

The Silverlining Man: At least none of the Trifecta of Teabagging Crazy was elected last night.

Sharron “I look like an Asian” Angle.

Christine “Masturbation = Adultery” O’Donnell

Carl “LOL Photoshop is awesome” “Imma gonna run on this anti-gay ticket because it seems promising” Paladino

All out. For now.

Do you feel better now? Good.

Thank you, Silverlining Man!

But wait. What is it Speedhag my trusted Invisible Unicorn?

.

.

Seriously. WTF? People?

Jan Brewer: The New Face for the Fight Against Glossophobia

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Jan Brewer.

We all came to know Jan Brewer, the current Governor of the State of Arizona when on the fateful day of April 23, 2010, against (and perhaps delighted in?) the rising controversy and media scrutiny, she signed the “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act” (aka Arizona SK 1070), setting the record for Arizona as the state with the most encompassing and strictest anti-illegal immigration laws, effectively bringing the country back 100 years.

Little did we know that Governor Brewer, under the facade of mean-spiritedness, tough-shit, insensitivity and fuck-political-correctness a la Sue Sylvester in Glee, actually struggles with her own disability. She is a sufferer of glossophobia.

The New Spokesperson for Glossophobia raising awareness to this horrible horrible condition

Glossophobia is NOT the fear of gloss, as some of you may have thought. It actually means Fear of Public Speaking. Or in layman’s term, speech anxiety.

I used to despise her too. But no more. Have you seen the video of her at the televised gubernatorial election debate when she was caught all of a sudden by her glossophobia? ? She stared at her prepared speech for more than ten seconds, lost for words.  I assume that the extremely awkward gap of silence was not caused by her not having prepared for this debate especially since this happened during her opening statement when she was introducing herself and summarizing the wonderful things she has done for her state.  In fact, I assume that she must have practiced and practiced and practiced. But when you suffer from speech anxiety, you have no idea when it is going to catch up with you. Just like that. Snap. She blanked out.

When Rachel Maddow played the same clip on her show, she besought her audience to go against our humane tendency to avert our eyes when a proverbial train wreck is happening, to put in suspension our discomfort in witnessing our fellow human being’s moments of embarrassment. It is painful to watch, as Maddow said, but watch it you must otherwise how would you understand what a horrible condition glossophobia can be? The pain. The humiliation. The suffering.

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It was very painful for me to sit through those 40 seconds. I wanted to turn my head. That awful gap of silence that must have felt like a lifetime.

Tick tock tick tock. Oh fuck. My mind is blank. Say something. Make something up. Fill it with whatever. Think on your feet. Ad lib. Improvise!

As an actress, going blank on stage was my worst nightmare. As a mouse in the corporate maze, public speaking is my biggest fear.

People have asked me whether it is not ironic that the thought of speaking in public sends me straight to panicville when I have stood in front of a full theatre wearing nothing but a bustier and underwear. To me, there is a natural explanation: when I was on stage, I was someone else, saying someone else’s lines, living someone else’s life, all according to the script. It was actually safe.

Public speaking is a whole different beast. A much scarier one. Thinking on my feet? Making it up as I go along? Ad libbing? No not I. Improv? Not in this life.

This is why I have been content in my lot in life: Can’t speak in public? Well, let’s cross out all these things then as potential career choice… It was a long list to cross out. And I am pretty sure running for public office was one of them!

After I stopped shivering from witnessing that painful episode and recovered from my shock, three light bulbs immediately appeared over my head, like so:

Light Bulb #1: OMG. Jan Brewer is a victim! I cannot believe we have been so mean to her!

Hath not a glossophobic eyes? Hath not a glossophobic hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons? If you prick us, do we not bleed?

I cannot believe that I, a fellow victim of this condition, have been so callous as to think that there is something wrong with her. NO! Jan Brewer deserves our sympathy. I for one empathize with her.

Light Bulb #2: WTF? So you can run for public office and even be elected a state governor when you cannot finish a brief self-introduction without quivering and looking pitiful? AND you can also make grammatical errors when you are reading from a prepared speech? I feel CHEATED! I have been lied to! Where is that piece of paper where I crossed off potential career choices due to my “condition”?

Light Bulb #3: Thank you, Jan Brewer. You have inspired all the glossophobics to reach for the star! So what if we tend to blank out during our public appearances? We will no longer fear the sound of the crickets! Down with the crickets! We can still run for public offices and hope that we are brilliant enough to fabricate scare tactics such as “headless bodies popping up all over Arizona borders because of illegal aliens” and to manipulate people’s fear and frustration towards the economy into votes!

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CODA: Unfortunately right after I finished the draft for this post, Jan Brewer’s behavior made me question her commitment to the Glossophobia Awareness Movement. In fact, I doubt that she suffered from this condition at all!

After what I thought was her “coming out as a glossophobic” party at the debate, she went on the Sean Hannity show, managed to completely sidestep her performance (or lack of) at the debate and told everybody that Obama and “the federal government is after Arizona and they are going after everybody.” Ok…

Then I noticed it. The nasal voice. She sounded as if she had the worst nasal congestion the world had ever seen. I became breathless just listening to her. I kept on taking bigger and bigger breath because I was afraid I was going to stop breathing the way she was going to stop breathing. (Yes, I am an empathetic listener…)

Perhaps because of her severe nasal congestion, she’s got a lot of loogy, snot, boogie way up there? Or maybe it is the other way around? Man. I feel bad for her.

Or maybe it is all her. You know: *Jazz hands* Just Jan. *Jazz hands*

I mean, after all, with a maiden name like DRINKWINE*… Well… You know…

* Nope. Not kidding. Yup. It really is Drinkwine. Can’t make this shit up.