North vs. South

Know what word disturbs me? Milquetoast. I can only ever think of Milk + Toast when I see it. Reminds me of French Toast. Yummy. Oh! The other day, I had a dream in which I used the word “kerfuffle.” I woke up an immediately looked it up because that’s just how I roll, and man alive (!) it is in fact a real word, AND I used it correctly in my dream. Wow. My subconscious mind has a better vocabulary than this me. In other news, the coffee I drank this morning is making me pee like a racehorse. In other other news, when the word “racehorse” just popped (almost spelled “pooped”) up in my mind, I connected it with “racecar” and thought it might be a palindrome. This led me to examine the word for an embarrassingly long time before I decided to punch myself in the face.

So, there’s a female basketball player at Rutgers named Epiphany Prince. See: my previous post about ridiculous names.

I’ve been doing so much reading/philosophizing/news-keeping-upping/worrying lately that my brain’s about to blow. Basically, I’m living the dream. I spend most of my days thinking about what I’m going to post on this blog and not posting anything at all. In fact, right now, I’m listening to NPR news and trying to write at the same time. The fact that it just took me five minutes to write this very sentence just goes to show how terrible I am at multi-tasking.

I FINALLY finished reading Elizabeth Wurtzel’s book, Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women. Incidentally, I got it for my birthday (I picked it out, of course) and my mom was shocked by the title. My parents are so goofy. They are constantly surprised at the things I say or the issues I’m interested in but never really oppose them. When I took a history course called Pornography and Prostitution at Vanderbilt, they, as the phrase goes, didn’t condemn it but didn’t condone it either. By the way, I asked my mom if she identifies herself as a feminist, and I was the one who was shocked this time. She gave me such a half-way response that I’m concerned about her sanity. Why on earth all women aren’t feminists continues to boggle my mind. I guess they don’t have a clear definition of what feminism is, but Cheese is Priced! Isn’t that in the same vein (vain? vane?) as an African- American not in favor of the civil rights movement (which I guess Zora Neale Hurston kind of was, but it’s not the same), or homosexuals who don’t support legislation for gay marriage and such? Haha, I just called my dad to ask his opinion, and he bypassed the question by yelling at me for being awake at “6:00 AM.” For the record, it’s 7:57 AM (CST). I can’t win with this man. My brother, on the other hand, immediately answered with a firm yes. Maybe it’s a generational thing?

Back to Wurtzel, I’m so on the fence about her. Her book was definitely not what I expected. By the title alone, you’d figure it’s going to be this treatise on the badassity of women throughout history. Not so much. In fact, she spends way too much time bashing women and/or talking about how powerless we are. What in the shit fuck ? Plus, her analysis of Hillary Clinton pissed me off. Her thoughts on the comments of people like Betsy Wright, Dorothy Stuck, and Hugh Rodham, all of whom <I’m sorry I have to interrupt my own thoughts here. I just had to turn off NPR. By God, I have concentration issues! I cannot trust people who claim to be able to thrive in chaotic environments. Bull to the shit. Plus, they just started to play some bizarre remix to Santogold’s “L.E.S. Artistes.” And now back to our regularly scheduled program…> stated that they had high hopes for Hillary and whatnot go as such,

“These are not the kinds of things that you say about someone who is full-grown – unless, of course, that person has somehow failed to live up to expectations, or just plain failed and disappointed at any measure. Because all of these notions – serving on the Supreme Court, heading up the State Department, getting an elected office, maybe becoming the first woman to chair the Arms Services Committee in the Senate…these grand ideas are pie-in-the-sky dreams. As far as Hillary is concerned, it ought to be clear to everyone that these dreams are gone – not deferred; they are gone completely.”

Gahhh!!! Granted, this was written in 1998 and Wurtzel was a drug addict at the time, but for some unknown reason I’ve always liked Hillary, and for some unknown reason every one else in the world seems to hate her. Not to use a cop-out or anything, but am I the only one who thinks maybe, just maybe, part of the animosity so many people harbor against her is mostly based on the fact that she’s A WOMAN? Gasp! I don’t know; maybe I’m just paranoid. Chuckle, chuckle. I just used a semi-colon back there, and I’m pretty sure it was Salon.com that ridiculed this book by calling it an endless series of semi-colons or some such thing. Anyhow, and this seems ridiculous even to me, I remember back at the DNC last Fall that one of my friends (who shall remain anonymous) and I admitted to each other that we got a little misty eyed after watching this video.

In retrospect, I must have been in a highly emotional state that day, or at least on a DNC high because let me tell you that was one hell of a convention. I don’t think I’ve ever spent so much time watching CSPAN. I get in those embarrassing moods once in awhile; for instance, I almost cried the first time (and believe me there have been multiple viewings) I watched the Jim Carrey version of Horton Hears a Who.

Pat yourself on the back if you’ve actually read this far.