Today's hot topic is...

I have been a Barack Obama supporter from day zero, but watching the coverage of Hilary's concession on Saturday made me feel a little bittersweet. Don't get me wrong, I've been waiting for this thing to be over since Super Tuesday. I don't know, maybe it's the feminist part of me stirring or something. I do in fact feel that the sexism has been a huge issue in her campaign, and I feel bad about that. The things that certain cable pundits have gotten away with saying are pretty terrible. I think Hilary's candidacy has been a good thing for women overall--I think she did pave the way for someone else to win this in the future, and I think learning that sexism isn't as dead as we thought it was might be a valuable lesson.

Pardon my elementary take on the subject, I've never been a particularly good student of feminist theory, but the way I see it, women are (or have been in the past) disadvantaged in three ways: institutionally, culturally, and biologically. We've gone a long way in getting things equal institutionally--I have access to an equal quality of education and equal job opportunities as my male peers. The fact that a lot of women in Generation Y see this as no big deal is somewhat of an insult to the feminists who paved the way for us, but also can be seen as a sign of progress. There are still issues with pay equality, some glass ceiling stuff to work through, but for the most part, we're good there.

As for biology--well, that's kind of a tough one to change. Given the current medical technology, we can't make my reproductive scenarios as equally varied and un-tethered in time as a guy's. Maybe someday. However, this is one of the gender inequalities that most chafes me in my life.

Cultural sexism is what I think was most encountered by the Clinton campaign, and another thing that really bites me in my life right now. The fact is that culture is afraid of strong women. Part of the reason that the campaign went on so damn long is that Hilary was most appealing as a candidate when she was down. The second she was seen as an underdog, as she was seen as picked-on or ganged up against, the voters seemed to rush to her defense, in the same way that Martha Stewart became a much more popular figure after she was knocked down a peg and put in prison. A woman is only appealing when she's down. In the same vein, why is it that a man can raise his cachet with the opposite sex by becoming more successful, while the more success a woman attains she's less attractive in the dating market?

I was composing this entry earlier today but later had a conversation with my boyfriend about a book he was reading, and we started discussing good books in general. I mentioned a few (Memiors of a Geisha and Girls in Trucks) that I remember enjoying recently and he, half jokingly I think, dismissed them as chick books. Why is a book/movie with a female protagonist almost instantly dismissed in our culture as something for chicks? Why are men the default and women the "other"? It's these kinds of cultural things that I feel are the current battleground for fighting sexism. Culture takes a lot longer to change than it takes to pass a few laws, but is several orders of magnitude faster than biology, so I'm somewhat optimistic.

Hawaii

The boy and I are planning a September trip to Hawaii, the island of Kauai to be exact, and I could not be more excited. Unlike most residents of California, I haven't even been once. Boy just left for three weeks in Arkansas for work, which makes me sad, but I'm making the best of it by being all industrious-like.

I've recently re-discovered how awesome libraries are. They're free, and you're not stuck with piles of books you'll never re-read again that you are required to schlepp between apartments. It's fabulous. I found some recent Kauai guides at the local library yesterday, and spent quite a few wine-soaked hours pouring over them and planning out fun things to do on the island. (This was when I wasn't coaching my friend in the finer points of GTA IV and watching him go on cop-killing sprees.)

I wonder if I'm doing myself a disservice by planning things out so far in advance. Will I psyche myself out before the actual trip? I'm going to go with no, I doubt it. I haven't been on a real vacation since Thailand a year and a half ago, so I have the right to be stoked.

What an awesome weekend!

I can barely walk due to a combination of sadistic trainer, uphill hike, and bay to breakers, but it was quite a bit of fun.

Irony

me: i do lots of things ironically

B: Yeah, me too. I'm trying to cut back though
I'm... not sure why.

me: oh is irony dead?
i was wondering that myself
i'd noticed that i'd cut back recently as well

B: Which... oh my god. Plug your ears so your brain doesn't explode

me: haha
go ahead

B: It's kind of ironic. Because the hipster mentality is that once something becomes popular, it's no longer cool. So by discarding irony because it's popular with hipsters...
GAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
The irony is collapsing in on itself. I think our tendency to cut back is born of a desire not to implode
But in so doing, feeds into the irony vortex
Oh god. You can't escape irony
Fighting it only makes it stronger!

me: i love you

B: I love you too.
:)

Coachella, very late

Here's Coachella from the point of view of the iPhone photographs that I sent to my boyfriend as updates over the weekend. I had an amazing time and this is in no way a comprehensive overview. :) Also, these are in reverse order.

Giant inflatable pig over the crowd during Roger Waters' set. This was an epic set by the way. Everyone in the group was completely amazed and surprised at how amazing it was. I was not. I'd seen him perform in 1999 in Kansas City and was blown away then. Good to know not much has changed in nine years.



I was standing right beside Elijah Wood for the entirety of Gogol Bordello's set and managed to get a decent photo without attracting attention and looking like a total stalker. He is an incredibly small person! Apparently he's dating one of the drummer/dancer girls for Gogol Bordello which explains his presence there. I'd never heard of the band before this, but the set was really high energy and a lot of fun.


The Tesla coil.


The outdoor stage while the National was playing as the sun went down.


Silver balloons in the dance tent while Adam Freeland was playing.

Skydiving!

From the better-late-than-never file, I want to write about the experience I had a week and a half ago of skydiving over Monterey Bay. It's one of those things that I had always wanted to do, but I kind of got roped into this accidentally. My friend D sent out an evite for indoor skydiving in a vertical windtunnel, and I was down for that no problem. Only a few people responded positively to that idea though, so D was all, "Why don't we just go for the real thing instead?" At that point it seemed too late to say no, so before I knew it, I was headed down south with five other friends to jump out of a plane at 15,000 feet.

I was a bit nervous while we were hanging around at the hangar. This transferred itself to full on panic when my tandem instructor slapped a harness on me and started explaining what we were going to do. He kept saying things like "Okay, when we get to the door of the airplane you're going to get down on your knee like this, and tilt your head back, and..." and all I could think of was "No I most certainly am NOT!" No one else in my group was really freaking out all that badly, but I was going nuts.

They drove us to the drop zone, as we were in the second group to go up, and when I saw the first group open their parachutes and descend from the sky my anxiety faded away because I thought it looked like a ton of fun. Then we got on the plane, and I was fine. I think that's when others in my group started to get a bit nervous however, watching the person before them jump out of the plane really freaked them out I think.

I was the last person to jump out of the plane, and I was just so focused on walking with another person attached to my back that I didn't watch anyone else fall out of the plane or anything. I got to the door and down on my knee like I was told to on the ground and I don't remember being scared at all, just looking at all that ground below me and thinking "Wow, that's awesome." Then we rocked back and fell out of the plane, whee!

It only felt like falling for a second or two, then it just felt like floating with a LOT of wind. I wasn't falling, the plane was going away. Bye plane! It was pretty cold, I wished I'd had gloves or something. 70 seconds of freefall, then parachuting down, which I thought was super fun and would love to try again, to control the parachute and everything myself.

The adrenaline/endorphin rush lasted for several hours afterwards. I was sitting on the concrete in the sun with my friends afterwards, we were giggling at everything and proud of ourselves for doing it.

I didn't get a video, but David did. Enjoy.

Discuss

(Discussing the article discussed in this blog post)

Maggie: Like boys don't swoon over Obama
please
me: haha
Maggie: EVERYBODY swoons over obama
me: chris matthews gets tingles up his legs
he said so on the teevee
Maggie: there you go
me: yeah, seriously, the biggest piece of evidence in supporting her premise is the article itself
Maggie: Word
me: i think the flaw in logic here is that she's blaming women for being dumb, when it's actually humans who are dumb
Maggie: Congrats, Charlotte Allen. You've successfully proven that women you are stupid
me: Humans: Really evolution, is this the best you can do?
Maggie: Case in point: Multiple editors (probably of both sexes) at the Washington Post who thought this poorly-sourced, pointless ball of ranting was even remotely newsworthy.
Evolution: Ur doin it wrong
me: put that caption on a picture of charlotte allen
as a rebuttal
Maggie: Oooh, now I'm getting to the part where a professional writer bitches that escapist fiction isn't exactly true to real life and, thus, women are dumb.
There's going to be a dent on this desk when my head is through hitting it
me: because men don't read COMIC BOOKS
Maggie: Which totally aren't soap operas + explosions
Wow, the stupid burns.
me: yeah. i thought you'd like that. and by like, i mean enjoy making fun of.
Maggie: Poke Charlotte Allen with sticks!
Ok, I have to get back to making my house a home and caring for men and children now....by which I mean, conduct an interview about the science behind anti-addiction medications.
me: :)
Maggie: You have fun making your house a home, by which I mean programming computers for one of the most successful companies in America