So many people make a big fuss over the holiday season, my family included. I just can't get into the whole month of preparation and cooking and shopping for one day that has been so totally blown out of proportion.
That whole, big tree, elaborate holiday dinner, and family gatherings up the wazzoo thing isn't my deal. I would much prefer sitting around on the couch watching Miracle on 34th street with my friends, a white aluminum tree decorated with a box of the old shinybrite decorations [[the ones that my mom doesn't let us put on the tree because "the other ones we have are so beautiful, Jaclyn, we don't need to use old ones."]] sitting in the corner, telling funny holiday stories while drinking a vodka and cranberry. That's all I want out of the holidays. I want candles lit, incense burning, friends over, and Lorena McKennitt singing out of the stereo speakers. No big holiday fuss, no 6 hours of cooking on Christmas Eve Day. Just pizza and beer with friends is fine. Have a fire going. Turn the Roomba on and let it torture the dog as it chases her around the room.
Ah, how simple it all could be.
Instead, we all compete to out do each other on the holidays. Whether its putting up more lights than your neighbors to win the Home Owner's Association's Contest, or having an ostentatious meal in which the whole goal is to out do your sister-in-law who hosted Christmas last year. The competition that has become the holiday season has eroded away the true meaning of it all.
No, not Jesus. Not even family. Candy Canes. Yes. To me, a candy cane wraps up the entire holiday season quite nicely. Our family doesn't get along all too well on a normal basis, forcing us to play nice while under the extreme stress of the holidays is just asking for trouble. We're half Jewish, so the birth of Messiah thing doesn't work for us. So really, Candy Canes are the only available option.
Candy Canes are the embodiment of self-indulgence in my mind. They are a candy that are only available for purchase at Christmas time, come in almost any flavor imaginable, and come in boxes of like 50. They are the one thing that we look forward to when December rolls around: The ability to stuff our face with hard candy and not feel guilty because it's festive.
So everybody, simplify your holiday, and go buy some candy canes
22.12.07
A Whore By Any Other Name
I was walking down the hallway on my way to Chem yesterday, and some girl [a girl I had had words with on multiple occasions] rammed into me and muttered, "goddamn whore...." under her breath. Now, any normal person would be upset that their morality had been doubted in such a way. Me, not so much. I don't have morals, I have ethics, and my lack of morals is well known around the school.
However, one thought that did pop into my mind was "Why is it that when a girl exercises her right to sleep with any guy she chooses, she's a whore, but when a guy does the same, it's acceptable? He gets called a player, or a pimp, neither of which hold the same negative connotations that whore, skank, or slut does." My mind went back and forth over this as Mr. Pope droned on about electron configurations, but alas, no answer came.
So I asked my mother when I got home. She said something along the lines of it is that way because a girl who sleeps around has no self respect. I held my tongue, because I didn't want to have that argument with her; but I felt she was wrong. I, and many of my friends, have large amounts of self respect. If we don't want to do something, we don't do it. That's why most of us don't enter into serious relationships: we don't want to.
Other people make the argument of low self esteem. Hmm, how about no? Once again, I have amazing self esteem, bordering on conceit. I mean, I have my bad days where I feel fat and ugly, but on the whole, I know I'm a beautiful girl who is well read, witty, and confident. Like I said, I'm pretty damn secure.
So my quest for answers continued. My father said it was because women are supposed to pure and virtuous, and women who abandon that virtue become less than disireable. Right.... women are supposed to remain innocent, but guys can sleep around their entire adolescence, and then go scoop up a virgin when they want to settle down? No thank you. Besides, what guy in his right mind wants a virgin anyway?
But I digress.
Why is it all right for a guy to do these things? Because he's a guy. Bull shit. Because it's his job as a man to spread his seed [[this one came from a health teacher... ah, the educational system at it's best.]] Once again, bull shit. Because other guys don't see it as a bad thing. DING DING DING WE HAVE A WINNER.
That's exactly it. The girls who get called whores do not get called whores by guys. It's other girls. Jealous girls. Guys don't care if a girl is a cherry or not. All they care about is the fact that there is a possibility that they might get laid. Girls however, are all about reputation.
Right. Yeah. Ok. Just another example of how us women just make life more difficult for ourselves.
However, one thought that did pop into my mind was "Why is it that when a girl exercises her right to sleep with any guy she chooses, she's a whore, but when a guy does the same, it's acceptable? He gets called a player, or a pimp, neither of which hold the same negative connotations that whore, skank, or slut does." My mind went back and forth over this as Mr. Pope droned on about electron configurations, but alas, no answer came.
So I asked my mother when I got home. She said something along the lines of it is that way because a girl who sleeps around has no self respect. I held my tongue, because I didn't want to have that argument with her; but I felt she was wrong. I, and many of my friends, have large amounts of self respect. If we don't want to do something, we don't do it. That's why most of us don't enter into serious relationships: we don't want to.
Other people make the argument of low self esteem. Hmm, how about no? Once again, I have amazing self esteem, bordering on conceit. I mean, I have my bad days where I feel fat and ugly, but on the whole, I know I'm a beautiful girl who is well read, witty, and confident. Like I said, I'm pretty damn secure.
So my quest for answers continued. My father said it was because women are supposed to pure and virtuous, and women who abandon that virtue become less than disireable. Right.... women are supposed to remain innocent, but guys can sleep around their entire adolescence, and then go scoop up a virgin when they want to settle down? No thank you. Besides, what guy in his right mind wants a virgin anyway?
But I digress.
Why is it all right for a guy to do these things? Because he's a guy. Bull shit. Because it's his job as a man to spread his seed [[this one came from a health teacher... ah, the educational system at it's best.]] Once again, bull shit. Because other guys don't see it as a bad thing. DING DING DING WE HAVE A WINNER.
That's exactly it. The girls who get called whores do not get called whores by guys. It's other girls. Jealous girls. Guys don't care if a girl is a cherry or not. All they care about is the fact that there is a possibility that they might get laid. Girls however, are all about reputation.
Right. Yeah. Ok. Just another example of how us women just make life more difficult for ourselves.
19.12.07
Duty to Serve
I was talking to my dad about the War, and he compared it to Vietnam. That got me thinking. We have the right to disagree with the government, what they do, what they say, but when it all boils down, we are American citizens and are required to fight for our country. That's it. Hands down. No questions asked. No running to Canada.
Later that week, one of my friends was dissing the war in Iraq, saying that he thinks we never should have gone, and that our country is retarded. It sent a pang of guilt through my heart. Normally I would have agreed, but that conversation with my dad was still ringing in my head. I did some more thinking and finally figured it out.
Protesting the war is acceptable. Disliking the president is acceptable. Hating the government is acceptable. Insulting the country is not. Because as wars, presidents, and cabinet members come and go, the country is forever. Being an American isn't something that we can just shrug off. We enjoy so many personal freedoms, and if the time comes when our country desperately, can't live without us, really really really needs us, we all have to square our shoulders and go. We have the right to protest. We have the duty to serve.
Later that week, one of my friends was dissing the war in Iraq, saying that he thinks we never should have gone, and that our country is retarded. It sent a pang of guilt through my heart. Normally I would have agreed, but that conversation with my dad was still ringing in my head. I did some more thinking and finally figured it out.
Protesting the war is acceptable. Disliking the president is acceptable. Hating the government is acceptable. Insulting the country is not. Because as wars, presidents, and cabinet members come and go, the country is forever. Being an American isn't something that we can just shrug off. We enjoy so many personal freedoms, and if the time comes when our country desperately, can't live without us, really really really needs us, we all have to square our shoulders and go. We have the right to protest. We have the duty to serve.
Mind Your Own Goddamn Business
The United States used to have a very true reputation of being an isolationist country. We were self sustaining, and didn't need to rely on other countries for goods and services [[within reason: if we needed India Ink, we had to go to India, eh?]].
I'm not exactly sure where we got so dependant on other countries, or where this idea of a "Global Economy" became a good thing. I rather like the idea of not being at the mercy of another country, whether it be for oil, for cars, or for nine one one call dispatchers.
I'm not exactly sure where we got so dependant on other countries, or where this idea of a "Global Economy" became a good thing. I rather like the idea of not being at the mercy of another country, whether it be for oil, for cars, or for nine one one call dispatchers.
17.12.07
Native Son
In my honors English class this quarter, we were assigned the book Native Son by Richard Wright. Wright was a member of the Communist Party, and while living in Chicago, edited the Red magazine, Left Front. The book, portraying the plight of a young black man, Bigger Thomas, involves the communist party directly. Bigger, after raping and murdering two women, one black, one white, is put in jail. The Labor Defender's come to his defense. He tries to pin the murder on the communist. Yet nowhere in class are we allowed to discuss principles of communism, even though it is Germain to the subject.
Few people in my class understand what communism really is. When Jan, the Red, was first introduced in the novel, one student actually said, "Fuck that commie bastard." My teacher merely reprimanded him for language. I asked him later why he didn't like communists.
"Those mother fuckin commies are all over in fucking Korea man. And like Russia too. Fucking Soviets. The whole bunch of them. We should just nuke everybody 'cept Canada and the UK."
That was the only answer he could offer me. He hated all communists because the two communist countries he knew had, at one point or another, been at war with the United States. While I admit that the communist theory is in fact flawed, at least I know the reasons why.
I did however, want to do a little bit more research into communism. I went down to Barnes and Noble and subjected myself to many suspicious looks as I asked salespeople to help me find a copy of The Communist Manifesto. It describes the capitalist system as one divided into two classes, the rich, who will remain rich by cheating the proletariat, and the proletariat who will always remain under the rich's thumb. Marx proposed an ideal, a practically Utopian society, and urged the workers of the world to unite.
This proposal was for people to band together, and escape the oppression of the capitalists. He urged them to be able to support themselves through farming and manufacturing as a way to raise human consciousness. That consciousness can then be molded into accepting the new forms of private ownership that the party puts in place. But there still has to be enough for everyone to have an equal share of property. It also says that the capitalist system distances the worker from the work because the worker does not feel involved. They can't even afford to buy the goods that they help produce! The Party goes on to say that the endless line of production and poverty for some, and wealth and prosperity for others has become a destructive force in society. They call for the impoverished people of the country to become conscious of the situation and revolt against it.
In the process of a communist revolution, the state must abolish all private property, and rent land out to public purposes, add a high income tax, get rid of all right of inheritance, confiscate the property of emigrants and rebels, centralize credit back to the state, centralize transportation and communication back to the state, acquire ownership of all production and factories, equalize the liability of all labor, combine the industries of agriculture and manufacture reducing the distinction between country and city, free education for children and abolition of child labor.
This basically gives the state all power, and responsibility to redistribute the wealth back to the people. That lends itself to the growth of corruption. But one of the central, unspoken contingencies of this ideology is that people are inherently good. That everyone can share equally and live communally. Which, unfortunately enough, goes completely against human nature. It is human nature to want. To want more than you have. To want as much or more as your nieghbour.
However, this practice has been applied successfully. There are numerous communes around the country that do not affiliate themselves with the communist party, just believe in sharing and loving ones neighbour.
Now that I have discussed what communism actually is, we can get back to my main point: The ignorance of high school students to the world outside of the United States.
As far as most students are concerned, you're either a democratic nation [a.k.a. the good guys] or a communist [a.k.a. the bad guys]. Socialists, Anarchists, Theocratists, and Monarchists are either disregarded, unknown, or grouped in the communist category. This leads to the whole, them versus me mentality that so many Americans have. The "My way is right, because I'm American, and we're democratic, and we rock at life, and y'all can just go die in a hole" way of thinking.
However, this isn't the average American's fault. It is the government's fault. And before you dismiss the whole bottom half of this otherwise decently written article as a conspiracy theory, at least read my topic sentence, would ya? Thanks.
The American government instituted various laws which dictate how schools get funding. [*AHEM cough cough NCLB cough cough*] The schools get funding by performing well on standardized tests, such as the PSSA, the IOWAS, the TERRA NOVA, or the REGENT. Teachers are then encouraged by the school administrations to cater their curriculum to teach the material which will appear on the aforementioned tests, which mainly consist of math and reading comprehension. This decreases the average American student's exposure to knowledge which they will one day need in the real world.
And why is the government purposely and knowingly depriving the youth of America the knowledge of the sciences, history, and world cultures? Well, I'm not too sure about the science bit, but I have the world cultures bit all figured out. By depriving us of the knowledge of things such as communism and socialism, we will not realize the subtle changes happening in our own government. As our democratic republic slowly sidles into a position of a totalitarian government, we will have no clue what has happened until it its too late. We will wake up one day in an Orwellian society, rubbing sand out of our eyes, and have no clue where we all went so wrong or so blind.
Few people in my class understand what communism really is. When Jan, the Red, was first introduced in the novel, one student actually said, "Fuck that commie bastard." My teacher merely reprimanded him for language. I asked him later why he didn't like communists.
"Those mother fuckin commies are all over in fucking Korea man. And like Russia too. Fucking Soviets. The whole bunch of them. We should just nuke everybody 'cept Canada and the UK."
That was the only answer he could offer me. He hated all communists because the two communist countries he knew had, at one point or another, been at war with the United States. While I admit that the communist theory is in fact flawed, at least I know the reasons why.
I did however, want to do a little bit more research into communism. I went down to Barnes and Noble and subjected myself to many suspicious looks as I asked salespeople to help me find a copy of The Communist Manifesto. It describes the capitalist system as one divided into two classes, the rich, who will remain rich by cheating the proletariat, and the proletariat who will always remain under the rich's thumb. Marx proposed an ideal, a practically Utopian society, and urged the workers of the world to unite.
This proposal was for people to band together, and escape the oppression of the capitalists. He urged them to be able to support themselves through farming and manufacturing as a way to raise human consciousness. That consciousness can then be molded into accepting the new forms of private ownership that the party puts in place. But there still has to be enough for everyone to have an equal share of property. It also says that the capitalist system distances the worker from the work because the worker does not feel involved. They can't even afford to buy the goods that they help produce! The Party goes on to say that the endless line of production and poverty for some, and wealth and prosperity for others has become a destructive force in society. They call for the impoverished people of the country to become conscious of the situation and revolt against it.
In the process of a communist revolution, the state must abolish all private property, and rent land out to public purposes, add a high income tax, get rid of all right of inheritance, confiscate the property of emigrants and rebels, centralize credit back to the state, centralize transportation and communication back to the state, acquire ownership of all production and factories, equalize the liability of all labor, combine the industries of agriculture and manufacture reducing the distinction between country and city, free education for children and abolition of child labor.
This basically gives the state all power, and responsibility to redistribute the wealth back to the people. That lends itself to the growth of corruption. But one of the central, unspoken contingencies of this ideology is that people are inherently good. That everyone can share equally and live communally. Which, unfortunately enough, goes completely against human nature. It is human nature to want. To want more than you have. To want as much or more as your nieghbour.
However, this practice has been applied successfully. There are numerous communes around the country that do not affiliate themselves with the communist party, just believe in sharing and loving ones neighbour.
Now that I have discussed what communism actually is, we can get back to my main point: The ignorance of high school students to the world outside of the United States.
As far as most students are concerned, you're either a democratic nation [a.k.a. the good guys] or a communist [a.k.a. the bad guys]. Socialists, Anarchists, Theocratists, and Monarchists are either disregarded, unknown, or grouped in the communist category. This leads to the whole, them versus me mentality that so many Americans have. The "My way is right, because I'm American, and we're democratic, and we rock at life, and y'all can just go die in a hole" way of thinking.
However, this isn't the average American's fault. It is the government's fault. And before you dismiss the whole bottom half of this otherwise decently written article as a conspiracy theory, at least read my topic sentence, would ya? Thanks.
The American government instituted various laws which dictate how schools get funding. [*AHEM cough cough NCLB cough cough*] The schools get funding by performing well on standardized tests, such as the PSSA, the IOWAS, the TERRA NOVA, or the REGENT. Teachers are then encouraged by the school administrations to cater their curriculum to teach the material which will appear on the aforementioned tests, which mainly consist of math and reading comprehension. This decreases the average American student's exposure to knowledge which they will one day need in the real world.
And why is the government purposely and knowingly depriving the youth of America the knowledge of the sciences, history, and world cultures? Well, I'm not too sure about the science bit, but I have the world cultures bit all figured out. By depriving us of the knowledge of things such as communism and socialism, we will not realize the subtle changes happening in our own government. As our democratic republic slowly sidles into a position of a totalitarian government, we will have no clue what has happened until it its too late. We will wake up one day in an Orwellian society, rubbing sand out of our eyes, and have no clue where we all went so wrong or so blind.
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