Bite-Sized Subversions - challenging thoughts about everyday things

I’m so bloody sick and tired of men who assume center stage is for them.  The way the movie ends, and most of the way it plays out, it’s about the dad, about how he can’t deal with his failure to protect his daughter.

Mom’s not quite so important, apparently, despite her greater empathy with the whole experience: not only is she too beating herself up over her failure as a parent, for, after all, she’s as much the girl’s parent, but also she must surely be saying to herself ‘It could’ve been me — at 13.’

And that’s what the movie’s really about.  The real story, the far more important story, is about Annie.  She’s the one who misplaced her trust.  She’s the one who pays for it, with her life almost.  She even says as much, but apparently the director didn’t hear the writers (assuming he chose the last scene and determined how it was shot, who got the close-up, who got their big face in the camera last…).

This movie should’ve been an examination of not only trust (what is trust and how do we know who to trust?), but also an examination of love: with all the shit we force-feed our kids (including the shit ads the dad makes), it’s perfectly reasonable and perfectly predictable that what happened happened (and I refer here both to what Charlie does and what Annie does).

Shame on Schwimmer for making it about the man.

There are over 2 million people in prison. Each week, there’s another thousand.  We pay for their housing, food, medical care, education – about $30,000 per year per prisoner.

So I propose a new three-strike law: first crime, you get rehab (maybe it was truly an accident; maybe you’ll change your mind about stuff; maybe you’ll grow up); second crime, you get imprisoned (okay, this is punishment, pure and simple, because if that’s what it takes – ); third crime, you get exiled – you get kicked out.

Given your inability or unwillingness to follow the rules of this society, you should live in some other society, yeah?  If you have found another society willing to take you, great.  Bye.  If not, we will escort you to a remote designated area.  You’re on your own.

Really, it’s not as if the bar is set that high.  Basically, you just have to pay for the stuff you use (via taxes for the stuff in common, such as roads and parks, and at the check-out for everything else) and abide by a bunch of laws, most of which are pretty reasonable.  Sure, some of our taxes are unjustified and some price tags are too high, but we don’t have to say we agree, we don’t have to serve in the military, we don’t even have to engage in that bare minimum of participation, voting.  And a lot of price tags are too low, given the actual materials and labor.  So geez loueez if you want a free ride and you can’t abide by a few rules, then I say get the hell out.  We’re tired of carrying you.

I wonder if the overwhelming sense of entitlement, which is what, I think, justifies much lawbreaking in the eyes of the lawbreakers, comes from a life of getting what you don’t deserve and not getting what you do deserve (and, conversely, seeing others get what they don’t deserve).  For example, most ‘kids’ who live at home – do they still have to do daily chores to earn their allowance, not to mention their food and shelter?  Every time I hear that they expect their parents to just give them money – for everything – I think, wait a minute!  You want it?  You work for it!  Slave at a minimum wage job for a year and save up for it.

As for not getting what you deserve, yeah it’s hard knowing that people with ten times as much didn’t work ten times as long or ten times as hard.  They either had it given to them or they got it through grossly unfair salary differences (bonuses at work, golden parachutes, severance pay – I’ve been declared redundant, I’ve been fired, and I’ve quit, but I’ve never gotten more than a – well, actually I never got a farewell party either.  But that injustice doesn’t justify the other injustice.  And anyway, all this addresses just theft and property damage in all its manifestations – economic violations of the social contract, if you will.

Other violations of the social contract, such as personal damage in all its manifestations (assault, manslaughter, and so on) are harder to explain.  And, truthfully, I find these people easier to exile.  If you have so little control over yourself or so much disregard for me, for my life, I’d rather you be somewhere else.  Far away.

So, go!  Let us escort you to our border.  Cross over into this designated non-country, and you can do whatever you want.  If you’re not killed first by others like you.  Or by just trying to live without society, without the benefits of a couple thousand of years of others’ work.  Work that has given us dvd players and ipods, not to mention medical treatment, and shoes, and light bulbs, and flush toilets.  But hey, you gave all that the finger.  So make your own damn shoes.  And be careful not to step in your own shit.

(I dare say you’ll miss us a lot more than we’ll miss you.)

In a rape trial, that the woman was walking alone in a park at night has been considered relevant – presumably it’s a mitigating circumstance: the accused can be excused for thinking she wanted it if she was walking alone in a park at night.

What!?  Why? Why is it that a woman walking alone in a park at night is understood – by men – to be implying consent to sex with any and all men?

Are parks designated sex zones?  I suppose in a sense they are.  Lovers often meet there for clandestine encounters.  Yeah, for consensual clandestine encounters.

Okay, but parks at night are also popular mugging zones, perhaps because of the poor lighting which makes escape easier in the event they are policed.  Okay, but a woman walking alone in a park at night is more at risk for rape than for purse-snatching.

So why is a woman walking alone – ah, is that it?  A woman unaccompanied by a man is unowned?  Up for grabs?  Literally?

I recently read a lament about work attitudes, about how more and more people seem to think that just being there is enough, that their paycheque is for putting in time rather than for actually doing anything, let alone for doing a good anything, that people feel no guilt about the mistakes they make, nor do they feel any desire to do better.

I’d like to offer some comments in defense, or at least in explanation, of that position.  First, teachers give marks for attendance – for just being there.  And no matter how many mistakes you make, you’ll still pass.  So, hey, who says the students don’t pay attention?

Second, the job you’ve been hired to do is probably so trivial and boring, it’s impossible to keep it without sending your brain out to lunch while you’re there.

Third, showing initiative has, in my experience, backfired more often than not.  Do a good job, yes, but be careful not to do too good a job, be careful not to do, or even point out, what your supervisor should’ve done.  That’s called insubordination and it’s just cause for dismissal.  Seriously.  For example, when I worked at a detention centre, I noticed one night that the previous shift’s reports had several spelling errors.  I corrected them.  For this, I was reprimanded (because the reports were used in court and, I was told, any changes would be suspect).  So, later, when I saw a coworker collecting statistics in a most onerous fashion (not only without computer assistance, but without using a symbol key – he’d write out the full referral agency every time rather than assigning, say, numbers to each of the six possibilities and providing a key), I did not make a suggestion to our supervisor.  I guess you could say I showed no initiative; I guess you could say I displayed no desire for improvement.

Gone are the days when one gets a raise or a promotion for a job well done.  The salary grid and the advancement ladder are based solely on number of years, on seniority – on how long you’ve been there.

What has been glaringly absent in news stories about children with AIDS in Africa is comment about why there are so many children with AIDS.  “We are going down,” a woman says, “Theft will go up, rape all over will be high.  People –  ”  Wait a minute.  Back up.  “Rape all over will be high”?  And that’s just one more unfortunate circumstance beyond their control, is it?  What, as in ‘boys will be boys’?

Excuse me, but when someone knowingly infects another person with a fatal disease, he’s killing her.  And if someone takes away someone else’s right to life, I say he forfeits his own.  And not only is the HIV-infected rapist guilty of murdering the woman he rapes, he’s guilty of murdering in advance the child he creates (whether he himself is HIV-infected or whether he rapes an HIV-infected woman).  There’s something incredibly sick about knowingly creating a human being that will die, slowly and painfully, because you have created it.

So, the solution?  Drugs, yes.  But the kind vets use when they put an animal down.  (Or, if mere prevention rather than justice is the goal, castration.  At the very least, vasectomy.)  I mean, let’s have some accountability here!  Those 20,000 kids with AIDS didn’t just appear in a pumpkin patch one morning.  Someone made them.  With a conscious, chosen, deliberate act. 

Why didn’t Bailey get the Chief of Surgery position?

For the same reason Ed jokingly says to Greg, when he questions his rank, “Should I get you a dress?”—and they both laugh.

Because in 2012 being a woman is (still) (STILL!) (STILL!) being subordinate.

I love that on Grey’s Anatomy, so many main characters, surgeons every one of them – are women.  Actually they outnumber the men.  8:6.  And yet Owen gets the Chief position.  Richard, then Derek, then Owen.  3 of the 6 men get to be Chief.  0 of the 8 women.  Bailey’s been there longer than Owen.  And longer than Sloan, the other contender.  And yeah, okay, Kepner got the Chief Resident position even though she was there longer than Karev, but he didn’t want it.  (And we see it primarily a position of responsibility, not power.)  At one point, the Chief (Webber) said he was grooming Bailey for Chief of Surgery—what happened?

And Sam gets to be team leader in Ed’s absence.  Not Jules.  Again, she has more seniority on the team.  And is just as competent (if not more so—she can shoot and she can negotiate a crisis).

This is why I stick to my Cagney and Lacey, Murphy Brown, and Commander-in-Chief reruns.

(We’re going in the wrong direction, people.)  (And just when did we turn around?)

Since men commit 90% of the crime, they should pay 90% of the tax that supports the judicial system. Prisons are expensive to build and maintain. As are prisoners – they don’t work while they’re in prison, so we have to support them. Then there’s the expense of the police forces and courts that get them there. We already require that they pay the bulk of car insurance premiums because they’re the worse drivers. So what’s stopping us from going further, making the system even more fair?

And since a large percentage of their crime is violent, it follows that men are responsible for far more ER visits than women (assuming no gender differences with regard to illness and other injury) (actually, since men take more risks than women, there probably is a gender difference with regard to injury) (don’t forget the driving thing), so men should pay more of the tax that supports the healthcare system.

Oh and the military. Men are the ones who thrive on aggression, they get off on the excitement of fighting. They want to join the military. They want to go to war. So let them pay for it. Let them pay the $530 billion required by the military budget.

Then there’s all the environmental stuff. All those beer cans, empty cigarette packs, fast food cartons – most of the litter along the highways was put there by men. As they continue to drive their big gas-guzzlers with the high emissions. And the companies that dump toxic waste, and clear cut forests, and dam river systems? All run by men.

We could call it the Gender Responsibility Tax – a $5,000 surtax could be levied on each and every male. Payable annually, from birth to death. By the parents, of course, until the boy reached manhood.

While both ‘the soaps’ and ‘the game’ have been criticized as poor viewing choices, only the soaps have been dismissed as fluff. However, a close examination reveals that, in fact, the soaps have more heft than the game.

In both cases, Read the rest of this entry »

So – this was quite a while ago – a colleague at work, another part-timer, who was also going to grad school, got a government grant. She’d be getting $675/month to cover her living expenses. I’d spent five years saving $10,000 to cover my living expenses (hopefully it wouldn’t take more than ten months to get my degree).

She’s ‘native’. Well, she was born in Canada same as me, actually in the same year even, but her parents’ parents’ parents’ parents’ parents’ parents were living here before the Europeans moved in.

So, the argument goes, Read the rest of this entry »

I was sort of attacked by a dog a while ago when I was out running.  It wasn’t really a severe attack: I was simply taken down, like a deer, in a well-executed stealth manoeuvre by a large German Shepherd; he did not, nor did his companion, come in for the kill, or even the maul – I was left with a single but deep and ragged bite requiring half a dozen stitches.

It wasn’t provoked – well, perhaps it was – in the way a red miniskirt provokes an assault:  I was running, which in itself is provocative to most canines for at least accompaniment, if not pursuit; and I was running past (but not on) his property, so I was, given the canine propensity to extend legal boundaries by a few miles, ‘in his face’.

Thing is, Read the rest of this entry »