2 am epiphanies

I had a realization really late last night. But, instead of blogging it, I decided to read Effing Dykes instead.

www.effingdykes.blogspot.com

Yes, I have officially read every post. Although my queer pride is greatly increased, I am left feeling like I'm out of the lesbian club. (Can I still be in the club if I find lesbians attractive? Can I keep my boyfriend? Please? He's British! He likes Doctor Who! He makes me toast! With beans on it! DoyouhaveanyideahowEFFINGDELICIOUSthatis??)



But, seriously. Seriously, now. *puts on serious face* Read Effing Dykes if you haven't already. Okay, maybe just a post or two. I realize not everyone is as fucking obsessive as I am and finds a blog and then reads the whole damn thing like it's a book.

I HAVE NOT LOST MY TRAIN OF THOUGHT. I was just caught up in the rainbows and butterflies and glitter that is being a card-carrying member of the LGBTQ community.

Breeeathe in that glitter. Breeeathe it out.



(I'm never blogging caffeinated again.)

H'okay. So about that 2 am realization. I'm pretty sure it's because my friends back home seem to be rather sheltered. Or else they are goody-goodies by choice. (Or else I'm totally deceived and "potluck at the church" is codeword for "we gonna rage our brains out on Jell-O shots.")



I have transformed into a bad girl. The kind that has "accidentally lost" her purity ring and makes her father shake his head with a, "But you were baptized."



After checking to make sure (for the umpteenth time) that this blog is indeed NOT linked to my Facebook (my family is big and Baptist and veryveryvery active on Facebook), I thought it was time to have a little heart-to-bloggy-heart.

I posted a posty post a waaaay long time ago about how I felt like I was hiding from my family. It was a rather emo little post. I was trying to be all deep n' shit (that's deep and shit, not deep in shit, although the latter may be up for debate). It's all like, "Baaaaah I'm not Christian and baaaah I sort of wish I was raised Jewish and baaaaah I'm a liberal and nobody would like the real meeeee. *sniffsniff*"



I'm going to try to not get that emo. Because emo's not cool anymore. Hipsters are cool, and hipsters are ironic.



Hipsters also don't seem to grasp the definition of the word "ironic." So, maybe you can try making this post hipster-ironic by reading it out loud in a funny voice. I do a rather good Mr. Burns from The Simpsons, personally.



I've realized that I can't tell my family about shit. Le duh. I think most people have that realization when they're about six and playing doctor with the hot neighbor girl in the Mary Janes. Although, I have admittedly started flying my liberal flag in front of my family. But that's just because I like riling up Republicans. Dear God, it's amusing.



What I hadn't realized is that I've morphed into the aforementioned "bad girl" of Dixie standards. That I am what I was warned not to become in Sunday school.

Yes. I'm the one that has a friend or two that hangs out with me to "be the example." I am no longer the purest little nerd. I am no longer the golden child. I am no longer the special little snowflake.



I feel like I should do something with this new status. That my propensity towards horror movies and oggling boobs freely and dropping the fuck-bomb all over the place and not believing in Jesus gives me some sort of right to do something.

I dunno. What's the next step? Epicureanism? Hedonism? I mean, I'm already going to hell, right? May as well get there thoroughly.

BUTBUTBUUUUUTT!!

My definition of a good night is watching reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Doctor Who! Snuggled warm in bed with a bag of Sour Patch Kids! I have a penchant for funny hats! I watch the news!

(Admittedly, I mostly keep up with BBC because I am an Anglophile that likes to feel British. I also watch Fox News because I like seeing Republicans get their red little panties in an elephant-sized wad.)



Sigh. If I'm going to be the "bad girl" that gets her soul and her (lack of) salvation discussed over Sunday dinner, I feel like I should actually be more of a bad girl. Maybe I'll get a tattoo. Maybe I'll take up smoking. Or maybe I'll stick with my Sour Patch Kids. And I'll definitely get back on campus and realize yet again that, to most of the world, I'm a harmless little lump of measily nerdflesh.

Have any of you found yourselves in this kind of situation, especially when leaving home for the first time?

Three cheers for long absences!

...No? No cheering?

That's okay. I don't deserve it, anyway.

School's been busy. I've still been blogging, but for blogs affiliated with schoolish things. Por ejemplo, I've sort-of-half-way been blogging for Sappho at Yale. And some other stuff that's sort of secret. I'm trying to work up the nerve to talk to Dodson and Ross to blog for them. Wouldn't that be awesome? Yes? I'm glad we agree.

No updates, really. Well, sure. There's plenty. But they're all college-y and pretty predictable. I mean, maybe you're shocked that I'm involved in slam poetry and have been fundraising to help the trans community in Uganda. I'm kind of having the stereotypical college experience of the bleeding-heart liberal, but I am enjoying it thoroughly.



None of this, however, has anything at all to do with what I want to talk about today. What I would like to talk to you lovely people about today is *cue the drumroll, maestro*:

BABIES.


Please. Do not be deceived by my penchant for cheesy Anne Geddes photos. Or even the fact that I do love babies.

I'm embarrassingly ridiculous around kids. I wave at them in public, and they usually wave back and giggle. I love playing games with kids. I love babysitting. Kids are adorable. They're too adorable.

I think this is their tactic, and I will not allow myself to be deceived.

You see, I do not want to have children. I've known this since I first started thinking about kids and realized at about age 15 or 16 how many girls around me were dropping out to have kids. When I was a little girl, I was never one to fantacize about getting married or having kids. When I realized that other girls did, well, I thought, "Maybe I should give this some thought."



The result was that I scared myself shitless about both matrimony and motherhood.

Dear God. No desire for either one of these. I don't know if that is going to change any time soon, but at the age of 19, they are the farthest farthest things from my mind. And when they're not the farthest things from my mind, I'm usually thinking about them in a panicky, please-Mommy-hide-me kind of way.



Matrimony is a separate issue that I shall talk about, y'know, separately. I'd like to focus on parenthood here. Now, I'm not knocking anyone that wants to have kids. Jesus, I find that damn noble of you. You want to squeeze a baby out of where? You're okay with staying up how late to try to get it to stop crying? You mean you wouldn't drop the f-bomb in the most creative ways when it spit up on your favorite Led Zeppelin t-shirt?



The main reason that I don't want to have kids, folks, is because I'd be an awful mother. I mean, truly awful. I was talking to my boyfriend recently about things that I would do to my kids, and that conversation went something like this:

"They're probably not going to be vegan like I plan to be, at least while they're growing. But I'll offer that as a preferable choice when they're, oh, 13 or so. But they won't be allowed to eat anything processed. No preservatives. And no beef or pork, and limited amounts of meat. If they eat anything that's not organic, I'll have a motherly cow. If it's a boy and anyone even tries to mention circumcision, I'mma kill somebody. They're not going to be raised in church. They're going to come out of the womb open-minded and liberal, dammit. No TV. For Godssakes, no TV. And no annoying toys that have bright colors and flash and honestly make my baby seem dumb. And they're going to be able to speak at least three languages by the time they start school. At least. No Barbies. No GI Joes. No toy guns or swords or weapons in general. And no Twilight."

Boyfriend listened patiently, and then I asked, "They're going to hate me, aren't they?"

"Probably," he said.

The thing is, I would get so frustrated as a mother raising them like that. And it would be mostly for selfish motivations. I mean, yes, that would be mostly for their own good (I think). But I'm not going to lie. I'm basically putting the lifestyle on them that I wish I had had when I was a kid. That I wish I had now.

Also, I don't really want kids because, frankly, I still feel like a kid.

"Oh, that's great. Never grow up. Never." Yeah, I hear you, you Peter Pan freaks.

(It's okay. I love Peter Pan, too.)



But the fact of the matter is this: Kids love me because I think they realize that, internally, I'm a kid, too. I love Sour Patch Kids and watching cartoons in my pajamas. I make sound effects when I push buttons. I have a penchant for bright colors. And no, I never intend on growing up.

Therefore, I love babysitting. I love playing with kids. But the issue that always comes up is this:

DISCIPLINE.



Jesus Christ on a cracker. I'm horrible at discipline. And not in the pushover kind of way. Oh, no. I'm no pushover. But the issue arises that any showdown between me and a little kid is less like something between an adult and a kid and more like something between two kids at recess on the playground.



I can usually get around this whilst babysitting. I just tickle the hell out of the kid until I can pick them up and play with them a bit until they forget that they were being a little snot in the first place. But something tells me that this isn't the best tactic for 24/7 motherhood.

Okay, so those are my less-shallow-more-reasonable reasons against motherhood.

I have more, folks. Good God, I have more.

Being pregnant doesn't really scare me. The thought of the after-effects on my body don't scare me. Hell, the birthing process itself? Mildly terrifying, but the pain itself is no big deal.

What does scare me is one word: episiotomy.

In other words, you wanna cut me WHERE?!



Oh. Okay. It's to prevent vaginal tearing. So, you're going to cut me to prevent tearing of my vag. You're going to CUT me.

As my mother cheerfully says whenever I think of this, "From stem to stern."

Really. Just say the word "episiotomy," and you have me cringing. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't really want to be pushing something out of myself that's so massive that my poor, poor birth canal is going to have to look like a scene from a horror movie. NO. NO NO NO.



"But none of that matters when you're holding your little bundle of joy."

Bull. SHIT. MY POOR VAGINA.

"So, have a C-section."
Okay, great. So I either have to choose between episiotomy *shudder* or vaginal tearing *shuuuudder* or reenacting the chestburster scene from Alien, only about 12 inches downwards.



All of this in mind, I'm pretty sure I'm going to become the old cat lady on the corner lot that hands out raisins on Halloween. But that's okay. I'll still be watching cartoons in my pajamas and eating Sour Patch Kids, all with my vag intact.



Do you have any phobias of social customs that seem to be expected of you?

Realization.

I haven't blogged in a while. And the opening greeting post thingy to the site is me bitching about Charles de Gaulle.

(I don't really hate the French, by the way. They're lovely people. And I want to go to France for a longer period of time than a six-hour lay-over. And I am mildly in love with Melanie Laurent.)


Don't have too much to say, really. School's out. I graduated as valedictorian of my class and gave a big, scary speech to a big, scary crowd. I'm going to Yale in the fall.

I've been noveling and listening to George Watsky and generally being a lazy ass.

Oh, and happy Fathers' Day, to all of the padres out there that (probably don't) read this blog. I'm sending good vibes out to you and stuff. :D

I hate the French.

Or at least, the Parisian airport.

I have about a million things I should be doing right now (cleaning, working on an essay due midnight, studying for an academic competition), but instead, I feel like I should publish this somewhere. A sticky-cheese truth I've known since I last flew to England.

Charles De Gaulle International is rotten. Rotten, rotten rotten.

Do you want to know why?

When I left for England, they departed 45 minutes late and made me miss my connection, stranding me in Paris for a few hours. Not a big deal, but terrifying for me, seeing as I had never travelled on my own before that.

Not good enough for you?

Okay. Allow me to elaborate what has happened today.

Danny (boyfriend) is flying from the UK to here. Made his flight into Paris on time. But you know what? KLM had a form that he needed to fill out.

One that he didn't know about.

He's had the tickets booked for a month. No news about this form at all.

So he had to stay in Paris a little longer to fill out the forms, besides the fact that his plane arrived late.

He missed his plane, long story short.

And CDG tried to charge him 2000 pounds for a new ticket.

Well, he and his father got this sorted. Thankfully.

But he's staying at the airport and will be leaving for here in the morning, missing a day of our trip.

So yeah. Sort of pissed.

Thought I'd share.

So I thought I'd make that list.

I mentioned in the last post that I had a list of my favorite bands. This is true. I used to be able to put it in order. I can no longer do this. But I can give a list.

And seeing as I'm not ready to go to sleep and I'm sick of studying, I am going to give you this said list.

My favorite bands are split into two categories. These are not the only things I listen to. I listen to a lot of things. A lot. My CD book is ponderous. And so is my milk crate overflowing with vinyl. But these next bands have been my favorites through the few years that I've lived thus far.

When I am more mentally awake, I shall expound on why I love these so. For it is my blog, and I shall do as I please. Muahahaha.

First are the CLASSICS. :D

My first and foremost and absolutely favorite band of ever ever ever is Queen.



My first love was Freddie Mercury. Long story, my friend.

I also adore the Beatles.


Okay. Neeext up is LE ZEPPELIN OF LED. =D


And theeeeen...

DAS WHO.


And I also love David Bowie. I know he's not technically a band. But I'm counting him.



And now for the MODERN bands. :D I know I probably could have been more creative with my category names.

FRANZ FRIGGIN' FERDINAND

Omnomnomnom.

And The Arctic Monkeys.


Aaaaand MUSE (saw them liiiive and you know you're jealous)


Also Green Day. Can't forget Green Day.

(Seen them TWICE. Got shot in the face with Billie Joe's Supersoaker at one of them.)

And The Bravery.


The White Striiipes.


And last but not least, The Raconteurs.


So. Did I do that just so I could sift through my favorite pictures of my favorite bands so I could relax enough to get some sleep? ...Yep. That's exactly what I did.

But I'll write about them more as things come up.

Love you guuuys. :D

The End of an Era

And by saying that this is the "end of an era," I mean that it is the end of a pretty big piece of my own, personal musical adolescence.

And that of millions of people around the world.

I know this is old news in the music world by now, but I wanted to discuss it here.

Last week, the White Stripes broke up.



When I found this out, I was scanning the New York Times website for news, and I saw a picture of Meg and Jack. Clicked. Read. And then proceeded to flip my proverbial shit.

And why did I flip, you ask? Well, the reason is this: The White Stripes were the Band That Was Never Supposed To Break Up. Meg and Jack, through the band's history, have been friends, lovers, husband and wife, divorcees, and "brother" and "sister." Meg even remarried on Jack's land, and Jack long ago opted to take Meg's surname.

They're tight, needless to say.

So I was reading about why they broke up, and the statement released from the press said that they had not broken up for, say, petty differences.

Or even artistic differences, for that matter.

They broke up because they thought that they had pretty much gone as far with their two-part band as they could without compromising the artistic integrity of the band.

They will be releasing no new albums (their last was released in 2007), and they'll be doing no more live shows.

To be honest, my first reaction to this was disappointment that I'll never be able to see them live. The White Stripes and their raw, delicious sound has made them one of my favorite bands (yes, I have a list) for the duration of my teenagerdom. I wanted nothing more than to see Meg and Jack batter away at their instruments on stage.

Surprisingly, I didn't cry about it.

I usually cry over everything.

Disney movies. Missing Led Zeppelin at the 02. Stubbing the hell out of my toe. My dog dying. Failing a quiz. Coming close to making a B in school.

I'm a cry baby.

No tears over this one, despite the disappointment.

I started to think about what this breakup meant, and realized that there's still The Raconteurs. And The Dead Weather. And Jack and Meg are still alive and well and doing amazingly.

So. They broke up. But there's still the music of the past, and there's still more music to come. And I'm okay with that.



PS: Sorry if this seems under par compared to the rest of my posts, but I'm at that point of tired where you're exhausted but can't sleep for the stress. It's a party, guys.

Not done yet!

I started blogging today, and went off on a total tangent. Instead of posting a mega-super-single-page-stretch-BAAAAAH-MY-EYES-ARE-BLEEDING-CUT-IT-OUT-JAY-HERNANDEZ (Remember that scene from Hostel with the Asian girl and Jay Hernandez where they're about to escape but her eye's screwed up and he...? Nevermind.), I decided to post this as a separate post.

So, allow me to switch from horror-movie-fangirl mode to Tyler-Durden-society-is-whacked mode.

(On Bing, one of the first suggestions that came up when I was searching "Tyler Durden" was Brad Pitt's workout for the part, followed with a title like, "Get Ripped Like Tyler Durden!". I find this ironic in one of the worst ways possible.)

First off, I want to make a comment about Margaret Sanger.

Now. For those of you that don't know. Ms. Sanger was a lovely, lovely lady during the Progressive era of the United States that founded Planned Parenthood and strove to give women power over their bodies to be able to have sex without getting pregnant when they weren't ready. She fought over the years to help fund the Pill, and then to make it accessible to all married women, and then to all women.

Margaret Sanger, in short, is a lady that I very much so look up to.

I am a feminist. I don't think this is a bad word. I embrace it. My heroes are counted among Betty Dodson, Betty Friedan, and yes, Margaret Sanger. And don't get me started on my love for Ms. Susan B.

(I could have done without the whole Carrie Hatchet phase of feminism in the 1920's.)

ANYWAY.

I am a feminist, and I think it's fantastic that I can choose when I want to have a child, or if I want to have a child at all. My choice. Not the choice of a man. Or the choice of an unsafe circumstance. We can be protected from STDs and have any career (almost--sexism does still exist, contrary to what most people seem to think) and choose motherhood whenever we want.

We have access to birth control in all its forms--condoms, the Patch, the Pill, etc.

So why the hell are there so many pregnant teenage girls at my school?

At any given time, out of a population of about 2000 at my school, there will be anywhere from half-a-dozen to a dozen girls doing the waddle.

Then, they'll usually drop out. This pretty much dooms them to a life of poverty. No education = no money. And while materialism is a no-no, I'd say it would be pretty nice to be able to feed yourself.

Well, I asked you why this happens.

That was more rhetorical than anything.

I know pretty well why there are so many young girls that get pregnant too young.

They get pregnant when they are too young because they are not educated.

Now, in the South, the sex education that I've received from school can be summarized thus:

Don't have sex. EVER. Unless you're married. If you have sex before you're married, you'll get pregnant a bajillion times and catch a bajillion STDs.

There's a problem with this, friends.

We're teenagers. We're stupid. We're hormonal. And, whether you want to admit it or not, we have sex. Get over it.

Most people are aware of the presence of condoms. Or the Pill. That's not really what I mean about not being educated in regards to birth control.

What I'm talking about is guilt.

Pure, unadulterated, guilt.

The US of A is a country where condoms are locked away at drug stores so you have to ask for a clerk to get them for you. Planned Parenthood clinics are staked out by anti-abortionists that will hassle anyone entering the building, even if not for an abortion. By many Christian groups, birth control is seen as a way of interfering with "G-d's plan," and girls wear purity rings and swear to be abstinent.

Now. Abstinence isn't necessarily bad. Can be good. But where abstinence becomes dangerous is when people are unprepared for sex.

That's when STDs and pregnancy happens, folks.

We're being raised in a guilt culture. A guilt culture where women are refusing to embrace what the women before us have given. A guilt culture where we are still allowing ourselves to be second-class citizens by not taking responsibility for not only our actions but also our bodies.

I don't give a damn how devout you are. I don't give a damn that you've been wearing a purity ring for years. You're still susceptible to that one moment of temptation. If you want to put it religiously, G-d made it that way. Adam and Eve. Song of Solomon. The urge is there. It will never go away.

So, instead of being in a situation where that urge could ruin you, keep a condom in your purse. Abstinent or not.

There's no reason for so many girls to be ruining their lives.

A lot of people ask me why I still consider myself a feminist. As though this became unnecessary once we gained the right to vote. As though modern-day feminists are just a bunch of hairy-legged, hippie lesbians that should be shoved to the far political left and mostly ignored.

Well, I'll tell you why I still consider myself a feminist. It's because girls still refuse to step up and take control of their bodies and of their lives in general. Not all girls. But a lot of them. Until we are all in control of ourselves, I'm still calling myself the "F" word.