![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
It's Adam and EVE, not Adam and STEVE!
Jun. 26th, 2008 06:27 pmBad thing 1:
I lost it today, and probably embarrassed myself a bit. I work close to the Capitol building in Denver, and across the street, as well as in front of that golden roofed dome, there are now and again little clusters of people waving signs and opinions. More often than not it's the generic STOP THE WAR sign, to which most people wave a thumb up and honk the horn.
Today however, there was a van across the street of the Capitol, by the corner of Lincoln and 13th Street, and this vehicle in itself was a giant fat sign and opinion. I know this happens in America, I know...I've seen it before, I've walked past it just shaking my head, like sensible people do..but this van...
yeah..it was plastered with gay slandering slogans, big photoshopped guy-on-guy pictures with vile text and signs attached, a gigantic cross with an anti gay slogan on the roof (and an American flag), pictures of people holding their nose against TEH GAYZ, and that's just the mild stuff.
Bible verses of course, with the word REPENT generously sprinkled here and there, and basically a plain message that gays should die and burn in hell, and get help to get dead quickly so they can go to said hell.
So, this was probably the most distasteful piece of four wheeled junk I've ever seen, but still, it was just a van...and I've seen some gross things in my day.
Some people who know me really well, know that I'm actually a bit intimidated by vast masses of people, and the kind of organism that clusters of people in demonstration, rallies, concerts, can become when stricken by emotion or circumstance. So rallies aren't my type of thing, because I absorb feelings around me really much, mass-analyze them critically and get pretty stressed.
I say this to clarify how absurd and odd what I did was. I went to my office, told my work mates about the van, and that I had to do something. P said I should egg it, but I don't want to break the law. He said he could help me, but not until our lunch break. I still wasn't liking that idea. But I told them I needed 30-45 minutes off. And then I took a big piece of carton and a fat magic marker and wrote:
The People in this ugly van are BIGOTS, but they probably don't know what that word means!
And I went out and stood by the van for an hour, holding this pathetic sign, showing it to cars driving by. I still don't know what happened to me, to make me do that..it definitely felt like a Michael Douglasesque Falling Down moment of sorts. Something slipped in my head, and the whole thing felt a bit unreal.
Let me swiftly assure anyone interested, that the idea wasn't a huge success. Sure, I got many thumbs up and honks, but also some fingers and "up yours" - which made me really feel bad. I smiled nicely to such people and said "have a good day". One lady came and took pictures of the van and me, she was really sweet, actually. She was from a progressive Christian church and was going to post it in their magazine, as a protest (apparently her church has a fairly healthy gay community). At two points I saw movement in the van, but no one came out or said anything.
I realized just how futile it was when a yuppie, who rolled down his window and gave me the finger, made me realize that he was probably against the message on the van, that he thought I was the owner of the van, and that he didn't know the meaning of the word bigot either.
Even my go-berserk, monkey-brain red-hot-chili-rage was too intellectual to be effective.
Dehydrated and slightly depressed I went back to my office, to find a couple of members of the staff ready to go out and "rescue" me, because they thought that someone had punched me. It felt as if someone had I guess. I still don't know what went boink in my brain.
Bad Thing 2:
If I read/hear another text, post, message, rant or article from an attractive person about the yoke - nay, the burden of being pretty/attractive, I shall...I shall...I shall I swear I shall put a curse on them so that they, no matter how attractive they are, can't go five steps outside of their bathroom without bombing off loud stinky cheese farts in their lovely pants. This curse shall last until they understand their skewed ways and repent by wearing a fat suit for a whole week, just like Gwyneth Paltrow did.
Doubtlessly, beautiful people can have hardships as well, and there can be some downsides to being very attractive, but no matter if you're extroverted, introverted, rich, poor, gay, straight, happy or unhappy, unemployed or employed, secure or insecure, there are ALWAYS benefits from being pretty, and even if you know some of these benefits, you are probably blind to many of them and take them for granted.
No one sees this more clearly than a person who's been both much less attractive than the norm and more attractive than the norm in their lifetime. Sure..almost everyone can find love, if they try, but this isn't about love, this is about all the wonderful wonderful other bonuses from which plain or ugly people are deprived. And I won't even bother to talk about the quite nasty negative effects of being unattractive.
So don't come and whine about beauty to me because that kind of martyrdom will gain you a permanent fat suit or a horde of warts from this crazy cursing bitch.
Go whine to some dude, because many dudes are sexually conditioned to be dumb, just as dumb as pretty darling TM if she believes that he'd listen sympathetically to her woes if she'd been ugly. Yeah, right.
Bad Thing 3: Many have emailed me about the new Swedish Internet Privacy-Breach Law of Doom. And yes, it is indeed DOOM to Sweden as we know it. Just read Here (thanks for the link Alex!)
One thing to remember in this hoopla is however, particularly for Americans, that this law was created by the Swedish Right Wing Alliance, who are temporarily in power right now. Ironically enough, some Americans who've addressed this issue to me, have thought it to be an offspring of Sweden's "Big Brother" Socialist mentality.
Not so. The Swedish leftist parties, particularly the Social Democratic Party are protesting this abomination wildly. In all probability, this law will be amended eventually, and in all probability the Alliance will fail in the next election.
I have so foreseen, or else I'll put them all in fat suits.
Good(ish) thing 1: Next week I'm temporarily between contracts (bureaucracy), so I'll have an impromptu "vacation", meaning I'll have time to sleep, exercise, talk on the phone, work with my book jobs and who knows..maybe even clean this dump. When I start on the new contract I'll get that long awaited raise, etc etc.
Good thing 2: I had forgotten how delightful Stella Gibbon's Cold Comfort Farm was, how funny and how futuristic! I also re-watched the BBC television movie from the mid 90's yesterday, with such stars as a very young Kate Beckinsale, Joanna Lumley, Ian McKellen and Stephen Fry, and could still claim it to be up there on my top 30 favorite movies of all times.
Good thing 3: I've lost a little weight, probably due to my little ulcer which I'm nourishing tenderly. If I say the word "little" often enough, I've decided that all things addressed will eventually become cute.
Has anyone else noticed how much faster you're done writing about good things compared to bad things?
Screw people & politics. I'll marry movies and books instead.
This message was brought to you by the Bitter Scandinavian expat PMS Association of Libras. Trust a LIBRA to make a rally-sign that's too lame&intellectual to be understood.
meh..next book please!
I lost it today, and probably embarrassed myself a bit. I work close to the Capitol building in Denver, and across the street, as well as in front of that golden roofed dome, there are now and again little clusters of people waving signs and opinions. More often than not it's the generic STOP THE WAR sign, to which most people wave a thumb up and honk the horn.
Today however, there was a van across the street of the Capitol, by the corner of Lincoln and 13th Street, and this vehicle in itself was a giant fat sign and opinion. I know this happens in America, I know...I've seen it before, I've walked past it just shaking my head, like sensible people do..but this van...
yeah..it was plastered with gay slandering slogans, big photoshopped guy-on-guy pictures with vile text and signs attached, a gigantic cross with an anti gay slogan on the roof (and an American flag), pictures of people holding their nose against TEH GAYZ, and that's just the mild stuff.
Bible verses of course, with the word REPENT generously sprinkled here and there, and basically a plain message that gays should die and burn in hell, and get help to get dead quickly so they can go to said hell.
So, this was probably the most distasteful piece of four wheeled junk I've ever seen, but still, it was just a van...and I've seen some gross things in my day.
Some people who know me really well, know that I'm actually a bit intimidated by vast masses of people, and the kind of organism that clusters of people in demonstration, rallies, concerts, can become when stricken by emotion or circumstance. So rallies aren't my type of thing, because I absorb feelings around me really much, mass-analyze them critically and get pretty stressed.
I say this to clarify how absurd and odd what I did was. I went to my office, told my work mates about the van, and that I had to do something. P said I should egg it, but I don't want to break the law. He said he could help me, but not until our lunch break. I still wasn't liking that idea. But I told them I needed 30-45 minutes off. And then I took a big piece of carton and a fat magic marker and wrote:
The People in this ugly van are BIGOTS, but they probably don't know what that word means!
And I went out and stood by the van for an hour, holding this pathetic sign, showing it to cars driving by. I still don't know what happened to me, to make me do that..it definitely felt like a Michael Douglasesque Falling Down moment of sorts. Something slipped in my head, and the whole thing felt a bit unreal.
Let me swiftly assure anyone interested, that the idea wasn't a huge success. Sure, I got many thumbs up and honks, but also some fingers and "up yours" - which made me really feel bad. I smiled nicely to such people and said "have a good day". One lady came and took pictures of the van and me, she was really sweet, actually. She was from a progressive Christian church and was going to post it in their magazine, as a protest (apparently her church has a fairly healthy gay community). At two points I saw movement in the van, but no one came out or said anything.
I realized just how futile it was when a yuppie, who rolled down his window and gave me the finger, made me realize that he was probably against the message on the van, that he thought I was the owner of the van, and that he didn't know the meaning of the word bigot either.
Even my go-berserk, monkey-brain red-hot-chili-rage was too intellectual to be effective.
Dehydrated and slightly depressed I went back to my office, to find a couple of members of the staff ready to go out and "rescue" me, because they thought that someone had punched me. It felt as if someone had I guess. I still don't know what went boink in my brain.
Bad Thing 2:
If I read/hear another text, post, message, rant or article from an attractive person about the yoke - nay, the burden of being pretty/attractive, I shall...I shall...I shall I swear I shall put a curse on them so that they, no matter how attractive they are, can't go five steps outside of their bathroom without bombing off loud stinky cheese farts in their lovely pants. This curse shall last until they understand their skewed ways and repent by wearing a fat suit for a whole week, just like Gwyneth Paltrow did.
Doubtlessly, beautiful people can have hardships as well, and there can be some downsides to being very attractive, but no matter if you're extroverted, introverted, rich, poor, gay, straight, happy or unhappy, unemployed or employed, secure or insecure, there are ALWAYS benefits from being pretty, and even if you know some of these benefits, you are probably blind to many of them and take them for granted.
No one sees this more clearly than a person who's been both much less attractive than the norm and more attractive than the norm in their lifetime. Sure..almost everyone can find love, if they try, but this isn't about love, this is about all the wonderful wonderful other bonuses from which plain or ugly people are deprived. And I won't even bother to talk about the quite nasty negative effects of being unattractive.
So don't come and whine about beauty to me because that kind of martyrdom will gain you a permanent fat suit or a horde of warts from this crazy cursing bitch.
Go whine to some dude, because many dudes are sexually conditioned to be dumb, just as dumb as pretty darling TM if she believes that he'd listen sympathetically to her woes if she'd been ugly. Yeah, right.
Bad Thing 3: Many have emailed me about the new Swedish Internet Privacy-Breach Law of Doom. And yes, it is indeed DOOM to Sweden as we know it. Just read Here (thanks for the link Alex!)
One thing to remember in this hoopla is however, particularly for Americans, that this law was created by the Swedish Right Wing Alliance, who are temporarily in power right now. Ironically enough, some Americans who've addressed this issue to me, have thought it to be an offspring of Sweden's "Big Brother" Socialist mentality.
Not so. The Swedish leftist parties, particularly the Social Democratic Party are protesting this abomination wildly. In all probability, this law will be amended eventually, and in all probability the Alliance will fail in the next election.
I have so foreseen, or else I'll put them all in fat suits.
Good(ish) thing 1: Next week I'm temporarily between contracts (bureaucracy), so I'll have an impromptu "vacation", meaning I'll have time to sleep, exercise, talk on the phone, work with my book jobs and who knows..maybe even clean this dump. When I start on the new contract I'll get that long awaited raise, etc etc.
Good thing 2: I had forgotten how delightful Stella Gibbon's Cold Comfort Farm was, how funny and how futuristic! I also re-watched the BBC television movie from the mid 90's yesterday, with such stars as a very young Kate Beckinsale, Joanna Lumley, Ian McKellen and Stephen Fry, and could still claim it to be up there on my top 30 favorite movies of all times.
Good thing 3: I've lost a little weight, probably due to my little ulcer which I'm nourishing tenderly. If I say the word "little" often enough, I've decided that all things addressed will eventually become cute.
Has anyone else noticed how much faster you're done writing about good things compared to bad things?
Screw people & politics. I'll marry movies and books instead.
This message was brought to you by the Bitter Scandinavian expat PMS Association of Libras. Trust a LIBRA to make a rally-sign that's too lame&intellectual to be understood.
meh..next book please!
