Update for Everyone III - The Whinge Binge

[Simfan34]

Why was that necessary for them all to do that? Why couldn't the transgendered man just introduce himself as such-- give his name, and we would've gotten the message. Will we all need to start giving our preferred pronouns?

[Simfan34]

They're also talking about their "gourmet" dining hall. That word is now officially deader than a doornail. Although the video makes it look nicer than the dining hall at my college

[Simfan34]

There's a Wizard of Oz themed video for their wellness center.

RECEPTIONIST: What's your name?

MALE STUDENT: I'm Dorothy!

Distinctly nervous laughter from the audience

[Simfan34]

They're also talking about their "gourmet" dining hall. That word is now officially deader than a doornail. Although the video makes it look nicer than the dining hall at my college

I take that back.





Now I know why college costs are spiraling out of control. And the place is huge!

[Simfan34]

Rowan in South Jersey.

Food reminds me of the Dig Inn (anyone been to one of those?) on my block that I eat at often. And it's probably much cheaper.  I actually just had a proper four course lunch- if you count that little pork as a course and not an amuse-bouche (seriously, something that could pass for an amuse-bouche in a college dining hall!). I could have gone for the soup and made it five. Just... wow!

[Simfan34]

I feel like I've been becoming a worse and worse poster over the years and I don't know what to do about it.

Utter nonsense.

[Simfan34]

Why is there a woman in my apartment?

[Simfan34]

Why is there a woman in my apartment?

Wait, I thought I was hearing things... but there actually was.

[Simfan34]

Maybe you had sex with her?

Fanciful thinking, I'm afraid! (My dad only jokingly suggested I drink a beer to cool off!)

I have a friend staying with me for a few weeks, so it turns out he met up with one of his friends before heading up to Boston this morning-- but I never heard anyone come in so was confused as I heard him apparently having a conversation with this woman. I was actually mostly joking when I first posted that (I thought he might be on the phone or something), but thankfully I took it seriously enough to change into some decent clothes before finally taking a look.

Unfortunately I then had to hike uphill ten blocks to class in 90-degree heat, only to find the room had apparently been changed to a building 8 blocks in the other direction, so my decent clothes were drenched in icky sweat by the time I got to class.   Even more unfortunately for me my apartment has no air-conditioning whatsoever, so I can't even go back there to relax. Back to living in the library for me...

[Simfan34]

I have kind of an understanding with this girl I like; she likes me too, but we're not 'together' (yet) because we want to see if our feelings will stay (or, since they'll inevitably cool and change since that's what feelings do, if we'll still want to commit to each other regardless then). I'm happy with the situation, although a little nervous about the future, especially if our feelings don't cool and change in the same direction or at the same time.

Very sensible!

[Simfan34]

I will pray.

[Simfan34]

Also I'm growing disenchanted with certain aspects of trans/queer Discourse and I'm not sure what to do about this.

What specifically?

The language games with constantly shifting rules, partly. Mind you I'm really reluctant to be openly critical of this because most people who are openly critical of it are so as an excuse to be bigoted but it's getting exhausting to keep up with. Relatedly the idea that's developing that every conceivable facet of sexual predilection or gender expression can (or even has to) itself be an 'identity', and the ethos that the LGBT community ought to be 'inclusive' of everybody who is anything at all other than 'straight in a really narrow, specific way', rather than being a space for specific groups of people who have a specific shared history. Does that make sense?

It's why I prefer the term 'queer'. I'm not (that) old but I'm young enough to remember as a teen in the late 90's when there was an LGB. Mindful of my audience here, I think it was well intended but not necessary to bring into the LGB identity (as a circle within queerness if you will) trans* issues because they don't necessarily sit together. They are 'other' and suffer from being 'other' but to quote a 70 year old gay friend of mine 'they tried to fix us (emphasis on the 'us') in the 50's and we fought back but now they ask to be fixed'. I can see the angle he's coming from here. Bringing in notions of the need to change and conform into the LGB sphere doesn't sit well with those who have a different sense of themselves.

Which is why I think that different identities that are not (to be wonderfully crude) 'man with penis, who loves his penis, only screws and or loves woman with vagina' are queer identities but they are not necessarily LGB...T identities.

In terms of identities for, I would say to someone call me what you want, being okay with it is more important than what you're calling me. LGBT is now often deployed as a legitimate moniker within conservative social and religious circles but on the basis that they are not okay with it and that for me means that it is in danger of not meaning anything.

A looser association for example also extends to the understanding that queer issues and rights are historically linked with women's rights and feminism and even with minority rights. They were born from the same movement, the same countenance.

I appreciate that someone finds this a salient distinction.

[Simfan34]

LA being a driving city is such a missed opportunity. The weather here is pretty much perfect for walking, and instead the city's, well, what it is. I really wished they had built that Wilshire subway line extension back when Metro was beginning instead of 2035...

This is perhaps truer than a New Yorker like me is comfortable admitting. When I was in LA last, we visited an outdoor shopping mall near Cedars-Sinai and it made me think about how much more pleasant walking outside was than New York's two extremes, but the point was moot since there wasn't much walking to be done in the first place. New York wins again, in spite of ourselves.

[Simfan34]

Was walking into the Canal Street Station when my mildly drunk friend started to talk a little too loudly about how hot the redhead standing down the platform was. Turns out that of all the women of the world, that one particular redhead he chose to wax panegyric about... was my sister-in-law.

Well, that was awkward.

[Simfan34]

Sorry about your granduncle.

Your dinner looks fantastic, Hagrid-- now I'm hungry. I didn't know Canadians also associated turkey with Thanksgiving.

[Simfan34]

We men are like territorial crabs.

[Simfan34]

I just learned that my grade of 45 people will see a private showing of Star Wars the Force Awakens on it's opening day.

How expensive is the school that you go to?

$27,000

What in the name of God...?

[Simfan34]

To be fair, I know a great many people who went to top-flight private schools in NY and  boarding schools in the Northeast, which all seem to have fixed annual tuition at $50,000 (and this is what you'd be paying for twelve years, remember, not just four!), but given Classic Conservative's self-admitted intellectual narrow-mindedness ("I'm only going to get my news from The Blaze from now on!"), I do not think his parents are getting their money's worth.

I'm so much shocked by the sticker price as I am by what it's apparently bought. I'd at least have thought it would have been enough to impart a knowledge of proper punctuation. It's also not something I'd have chosen to share, had it been me.

[Simfan34]

About half of the people I've met here seem to have gone to a private school, so make of that what you will. Some may be narrow-minded, sure, but they're usually not going to be that kind of narrow-minded-- unless we're talking about "private academies" in the South.

e: Also he's supposed to be Catholic? What's with the effusive praise of Billy Graham and general Protestantishness? And "G-d"? Isn't that strictly an Orthodox Jewish thing?

[Simfan34]

That doesn't add up! I'm all for the Tridentine Mass, and while I don't make a big deal about it, I can't see how that reconciles with everything else.

[Simfan34]

Wait, this is a Catholic school? I've never heard of a Catholic school that cost so much. That's absurd. The Catholic schools near where I live are far more reasonably priced.

However, I did have one friend tell in an argument once that I would be a lot different if I went to a public school rather than a Catholic school. Of course I did go to a public school and have never enrolled in a Catholic school in my life.

Heh. I've had more than a few people assume I went to a private school, and they're usually surprised when I tell them I didn't. I sometimes I think I'll always vaguely wish I did, but I'm not silly enough to actually believe my parents should have spent over half a million dollars just to assuage some trivial elitist hankering I might have otherwise had. But perhaps I should have applied for Regis High School here in NYC, which is probably the best Catholic high school in the country, if not the best overall -- and completely free.

[Simfan34]

Yeah, I should definitely clarify - I was improperly using Catholic and private synonymously. Obviously these elite competitive privates that we see are in a separate category.

I suppose I was using it imprecisely as well. There's a difference between, the local Catholic school, which is in many areas what people have in mind when they think of a "private school", and places like Regis, Delbarton, Marymount, Loyola, or Sacred Heart, which are on par with the other high-powered private schools in this area (and cost around $15-20,000 less, to say nothing of Regis!).

I've definitely known the sort of people you describe coming out of the former sort of school-- they're generally no better or worse than people who went to public school (not that I'm calling them stupid or anything, but those I know who did well would have probably done just as well in a public school).

Around here, these kind of Catholic schools cost around $10-15,000, and they're obviously going to cost less in other parts of the country. Now this is the confusing thing. This would mean that Classic Conservative is probably attending the kind of competitive top-tier Catholic school I mentioned before, and those provide a first-rate education-- which makes his willful ignorance and seeming inability to punctuate even more perplexing. (I'd understand if he just didn't take this place seriously enough to bother, but that's clearly not the case.)

[Simfan34]

Maybe it's just because being a black Republican has made it a necessity for me, but I can't imagine how someone with an education in that kind of environment can simply not know the value of being exposed to viewpoints contrary to your own. ChairmanSanchez was right-- it makes you more a well-rounded person, it ensures that your assumptions and opinions will be able to withstand scrutiny. There's value in watching MSNBC if only to be able to laugh at its ridiculousness, since you will be reminded of just why Rachel Maddow, and not you, is the one being ridiculous; if you didn't, there's no way of knowing if she's actually talking sense.

I can understand how the inbuilt biases of the intellectual establishment can leave a liberal who went to "good schools" with no appreciation for this-- how else do you think we could have wound up a generation of activists demanding "safe spaces" everywhere?-- but I don't see how any conservative, in the face of this bias, can manage to think this way. I mean, what sort of educated person thinks that they can get all their news from The Blaze and be fully-informed?

Classic Conservative, I'm sure you'd think that someone who got all of their news from Salon or Mother Jones and only ever saw conservative viewpoints when they were being derided, would be a rather poorly-informed person. Why is the opposite any better? You must know that on The Blaze you will almost always only ever read caricatures of liberal viewpoints rather than the actual thing. Now, actual arguments made by liberals may also sound like caricatures, but how do I know this?-- because I actually expose myself to them! I read articles in the college newspaper, shared by people on Facebook, and the like, and because of that, because I know what they're really saying, rather than what some biased person says they're saying, I am able to say that I disagree with them. This is not so much a valuable thing as it is a necessary one.

One of my favorite conservative thinkers is Princeton's Robert George, who I've actually had the privilege to meet a couple of times. He manages to be widely respected as a senior academic at a top university while simultaneously being unapologetically right-wing. He is also in the habit of holding debates with Cornel West, who I'm sure you're heard of. Why do you think he sees value in this?

I will have to challenge what you post from now on, because it's clear you're not being challenged enough as is. I will note that you will probably benefit from watching PBS and listening to NPR. PBS Newshour is by far the best daily news show on television-- I watch it most of the time when I'm at home. News on PBS is certainly more unbiased than anything on cable news, and does a very good job at representing different viewpoints on contested issues, not to mention covering stories (especially international ones) that most other networks overlook. As someone whose parents' car radios are perpetually set to NPR, I can tell you that NPR has a considerably more pronounced slant, if not so much in how they tell the news than what news they choose to tell-- a lot of it is what you think liberals would want to hear about-- in particular, poor people and LGBTs are over-represented topics. But there's no real harm in that.

One last thing. Why, exactly, did you choose to stop watching FOX News?

[Simfan34]

I'm not sure why I quoted your post there. Sorry about that, although I'm pretty sure I was sure to spell out that I was directly addressing Classic Conservative.

[Simfan34]

Left my gym bag on the bus today. Was in the middle of a very frustrating phone call when they rolled up to my stop and I just walked right off without noticing I wasn't carrying it, and by the time I did realize, the bus was pretty much out of sight. As expected with all the seedy characters on the bus, when I called, they managed to get in touch with the driver and he said there was no bag on the bus.

Was at least $200 worth of stuff in there

I fainted on the way to class this morning. Was out for about 10 minutes in a gas station store because I felt it coming on. Of course no one helped me, lol. Now I'm stuck in the school hospital, and they're mad at me for going to my first class, agh.

E: good evening world i went to said thank u all for being concused about me but this is between god and me

Hmm. Doesn't seem like a good day for us all. That sucks. Hope you're feeling better, smilo. Virginia, I seem to have lost a glove so I can empathise... somewhat. I know Panasonic makes a very good and outrageously cheap portable speaker if you're looking to replace it.