Suburban Kitsch

Kitsch, as adj.: A tacky or lowbrow quality or condition. Highbrow elitists need not apply.

Preliminary Top 13 Films of 2009

Posted by GraceKathryn on February 9, 2010

I have not yet seen quite a few films from 2009, but here goes… this will give you a good idea of my taste in films:

1. Inglourious Basterds

2. [500] Days of Summer

3. A Serious Man

4. Up in the Air

5. Antichrist

6. Funny People

7. Capitalism: A Love Story

8. Paranormal Activity

9. District 9

10. Moon

11. Up

12. An Education

13. Away We Go

***I have not yet seen the Hurt Locker, the Road, Invictus, the Messenger, the White Ribbon, Crazy Heart, Public Enemies, the Last Station, or a Single Man. Yes, I have seen Precious. Meh.

Posted in Movies | Leave a Comment »

Ayn Rand… self-loathing woman? Misogynist?

Posted by GraceKathryn on January 9, 2010

Oh, Ms. Rand…

I am on page 154 of your book thus far, and here are a few comments. I will lay them out in the form of an email I typed to a fellow blogger, Sarah of Two-Headed Blog, who blogged her way through Atlas in 2008, just as I am doing now. Here is a link to the first entry Sarah wrote while reading the book. It’s called Blogging the Atlas.

After reading to almost the point in Atlas Shrugged that Sarah was at when she wrote the entry above, I decided to read her detailed thoughts on the book thus far. Afterward, I sent her the following email, which sums up my thoughts as concisely as possible (I could write so much more):

Sarah,

I just read your first blog entry on Atlas Shrugged where you were about as far in the book as I am now (I don’t want to read your thoughts ahead of my own while wading through the book), I have to say that I find hardly anything I disagree with you on. I think your analysis was very well written and I greatly appreciated the brutal honesty that came with reevaluating your own views in light of Rand’s ideas.

I, too, think that Rand brings some very good points to light in the book so far. The biggest impact to me so far has actually been that the book has been really inspiring. I mean in the sense that it makes me actually want to ascribe to her Nietzsche-esque “uberman/superman/hero” ideal and go out and PRODUCE SOMETHING. I find something inspiring in her exultation of the highly achieving individual. It makes me want to try to BE more of that myself.

My main critique comes from the fact that the people and situations in her invented world DO NOT exist in reality. She writes straw man arguments and characters and then tears them down with the utmost of ease. She writes wooden caricatures, not characters. No one exists like that in real life — either on the extreme idol-worship “producer” side, or on the bumbling bureaucratic “everything is for the public good” moocher/looter type. Her black and white categorical morality gets really old really fast. In her world there is no room for gray areas, utilitarianism (of even the most modest kind), democracy, compromise, or even complexities. She sees everything as very simple.

But that’s just not how the *real* world works.

Despite myself, I really enjoy the book as a work of thoughtful fiction. However, I still can not comprehend why so many people find this thing to be soooooo freaking compelling that they would change their entire worldview based on one reading. The dialogue reads like it was written by a robot. One wonders if she ever had a conversation with an actual human being in her life. But perhaps the wooden caricatures and dialogue can partially be explained by her acquisition of English as a second language???

Plus the rampant misogyny bothers me… a lot. Ayn Rand… a self loathing woman? I vote yes. She REALLY had a thing for being dominated. She was obsessed with the inherent “superiority” (not just her preference) of male domination in the sex act and in relationships in general. It’s a little unnerving.

I look forward to reading your subsequent posts as I plow my way through this behemoth of a book.

Faithfully trudging along,
Kathy

A part of Sarah’s reply to me was as follows:

I’m the same way…I hate to read what other people have written about something before I’ve read it myself.I had the same reaction you describe (feeling “inspired”). It really boosted my work ethic for awhile, and made me want to feel joy in the act of working and being productive. I also agree with your straw man criticism. She is very black and white, and I remember having the thought that in a perfect world, she may be right about some of this stuff…but it’s soooo not that perfect world.

Weirdly though, I don’t recall being quite so struck by the misogyny. I may have cut her some slack, and chalked it up to her being a product of her time. Although, since you’ve mentioned it, I agree it’s appalling.

I’m anxious to hear your thoughts as you read on.

Regarding Ayn Rand and her warped sense of superiority/inferiority as it relates to the male/female sex act, I don’t think I could say it better than Robert M. Slade did in 1998:

Both family and sexuality are rather hideously portrayed. First, is it ridiculous to call a woman a misogynist? Rand seems to rail against the “keep ‘em barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen” mentality, but also manages to put women very firmly in a subordinate position. Sexual activity (tame as it is) seems to be more of an “acquiescence to rape” than any kind of romance. (One also suspects that Rand was into bondage, considering a great many of the descriptions and comments.)

Marriage vows in an objectivist church would probably run along the lines of “Do you promise to attempt to dominate and subdue this woman until such time as you grow bored?” “Maybe.” “Close enough. And do you promise to applaud this man`s production until such time as you find someone with a bigger … corporation?” “Whatever.” “By the power vested in me by having scammed you guys out of a marriage license fee, I now pronounce you man and appendage. May you be unencumbered by small persons.”

There are many quotes throughout Atlas Shrugged along those lines:

Hank Reardon (a hero protagonist) reflecting on his wife, “She seemed to be a woman who expected and deserved a pedestal; this made him want to drag her down to his bed. To drag her down, were the words in his mind; they gave him a dark pleasure, the sense of a victory worth winning … He felt – a profound pride at the thought of granting to a woman the title of his wife … almost as if he felt that he wished to honor a woman by the act of possessing her.”

Yes, posessing her. As in owning her.

And perhaps the most telling quote of all so far comes from another hero protagonist:

Francisco d’Anconia, speaking to Dagny Taggart: “I wish I could tell you what a relief it is to see a face that’s intelligent though a woman’s.”

That statement is rampant with subtext! I suppose Rand believes intelligent women are so few and far between that it is worth commenting on. I could forgive Rand for this due to the time she was writing in, but she created an entire world right out of thin air for her books. Rand’s New York City never existed.  People like the characters in her novels never existed. Thus she could have written anything she wanted regarding the roles and propensities of women in her made up world. It simply appears that Ms. Rand had such a low opinion of women in the real world that this animosity naturally bled over into her writing. In The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged both, the “strong” intelligent female protagonist desires nothing more sexually than to be violently dominated by (and even subservient to) “the right kind of man.” At one point in Atlas, Dagny tells her mocking brother that the reason she hasn’t shined Francisco d’Anconia’s shoes is simply because he hasn’t asked her to.

Ayn Rand as feminist? Um, no. Ayn Rand as misogynist? I’m leaning heavily that way.

Posted in Books, Feminism, Philosophy, Politics, Shrugging Atlas | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

IMMD

Posted by GraceKathryn on January 3, 2010

This really happened.

Today while getting an oil change I had a brief conversation with the guy working at the auto shop that made me ridiculously happy. Whenever I’m running errands that I think might involve any amount of sitting in waiting rooms I try to remember to bring some reading material along with me. Upon getting out of the car with my book, the auto shop guy noticed it and exclaimed dramatically in a tone of disgust and astonishment (direct quote):

“Atlas Shrugged?!?! Is that for pleasure?!?!”

Me (kind of laughing, yet trying to deflect as to avoid an awkward conversation): Um, not exactly. No it is not.

Auto Shop Guy (obviously restraining himself from saying anything he might regret, i.e. commenting his feelings on the book): Ugh! Good.

He went on helping me with car stuff for a few minutes, and then veered back to the topic of the book.

ASG: So what class is it for?

Me: Well, it’s not exactly for a class.

ASG (again looking astonished): Then why on earth are you reading it?

Me (again laughing and smiling): Because I know quite a few people who are lovers of Ayn Rand …

The look of horror on his face was epic!

Me: … and after being told so many times that just I don’t understand the delicate nuances of her philosophy and having it implied to me that “if you just read Atlas Shrugged you would understand,” I decided to finally read it. It’s kind of an intellectual exercise.

ASG (body language and facial expressions showing his disgust for the book, and completely stammering to not say something to a customer that he might regret): Wow. Um, yikes. Well. I could… no, I shouldn’t.

Me (now super-happy and continuing to laugh): Hey, it sounds like we agree on this topic!

ASG: Yes. Yes it does.

It made my day.

Posted in Books, Humor, My Life, Shrugging Atlas | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Shrugging Atlas Shrugged

Posted by GraceKathryn on December 31, 2009

In discussions with most Libertarians (that I have personally encountered, especially of the Ron Paul ilk here in Oklahoma), the conversation inevitably always leads to an urging for me and other like-minded individuals to, “read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.” As though this epic book’s airtight logic will somehow magically turn us “collectivist moochers” and other “non-producers” into Austrian-economics and virtue-of-selfishness loving radical individualists who will instantly see the error of our ways immediately upon cracking into its 1069 pages (paperback 35th anniv edition).

I attempt to be an intellectually virtuous person (even though I fail miserably at times, as do we all). To me intellectual virtue means truly making an honest effort to grapple with the ideas presented by people you currently disagree with strongly. It means trying to see things through others’ eyes and honestly wrestling with the ideas that other people find so persuasive. Therefore, after years of resistance, I have decided to take these people’s urgings seriously and just read the damned* book and get it over with. [*]And when I say read the damned book, I mean the word literally, in the sense that C.S. Lewis used the word damned in Mere Christianity not as frivolous swearing but instead to refer to a philosophy or idea that is “damned … under God’s curse, and will (apart from God’s grace) lead those who believe it to eternal death.” †

Yes, I believe that Ayn Rand’s Objectivist “philosophy” and her elevation of the “virtue” of selfishness due to a rejection of her straw-man made up definition of altruism (that she basically invented and pulled out of her ass) is rotten to its core. I have made no attempts to hide the fact that I am a Christian. However, as rotten philosophies go, Objectivism is not only internally inconsistent, but it is evil from a secular humanist perspective as well. One can reject the existence of evil outright (I do not, but that is a discussion for another day), but Objectivist principles are also inconsistent with principles of compassion and human mercy, which many atheists and secular humanists embrace wholeheartedly. [And as a side note, I embrace atheists and secular humanists wholeheartedly, as many of them are some of the most well-rounded, caring, intelligent, and generally awesome people I know. And YES, atheists can be moral - just not Ayn Rand (likewise, believers in God(s) can be VERY immoral)]

The Libertarian will respond, “No the principles of compassion and human mercy are not inconsistent with Objectivist ideas and the Virtue of Selfishness because in our perfect Libertarian Utopian society there will be basically no want. There will be virtually no poor. If there are any needs to be met, the poor will be taken care of by private, non-coercive, charity… out of the goodness of those private actors’ hearts. This is simply how the truly unregulated free market works. Oh, and P.S. all taxes are coercive aggressive theft.”

Did you think that Libertarians were just about limited government, deregulation, and little to no taxes? Nope. Modern Libertarians base their entire worldview around a bedrock principle, set in stone, as though written by the hand of God (or some immutable “natural law”), of what they call the “Non-Aggression Principle” or NAP. Read up on it. There may be a test :-)

Anyway, back to my quest to read Atlas Shrugged. I imagine it will take me quite a few weeks or months as I tend to abandon books as quickly as I start them. However, I have to admit that after the first 30 pages or so of sub-par writing I’m a little intrigued. Perhaps bad writing appeals to me. I am already familiar with the entire basic plot of the book, just not the specifics. There are a few plot points I’m already speculating on, such as who (or what multiple people) Dagny Taggart is going to end up hooking up with / getting raped by. At this super-early stage I’m voting for either Hank Rearden or the young brakeman on the train who knew of Halley’s Fifth unpublished Concerto (Is the young brakeman Richard Halley? Is he a relative or Halley? Oooh… the plot thickens). OR… will Dagny hook up with John Galt? I mean, Who Is John Galt, after all? Why ask questions there are no answers for?

Or will Dagny hook up with / marry 3 different guys like Dominique Francon does in The Fountainhead? Oh, but wait, only the man Dominique is TRULY an equal with (Howard Roark) gets the honor of raping her in the violent sense (excluding the regular marital rape that goes on throughout the book with her other two husbands)… Er, I mean, she gives herself willingly to Roark, a complete stranger at the time, willingly in a violent way when he breaks into her room at night and has rough forceful sex with her simply because “she likes it rough.” Yeah. That’s it. Not rape at all. Not marital rape. Roark’s breaking and entering does not equal rape in the least either. Rand definitely does not glorify rape in her novels. </extreme sarcasm>

Yes, I have already read The Fountainhead in full.

In the first 30-ish pages alone of Atlas Shrugged I have highlighted some of the most ridiculous dialogue ever (“Jim, I studied engineering in college. When I see things, I see them.”) But perhaps I’ll save it for another blog post and get back to my trashy romance novel. I’m trying to be fair. The book is moderately entertaining so far. I’ll give her that!

I’ll try to blog sporadically through the book under the category “Shrugging Atlas”. I think my next post may be just a listing of some of the more ridiculous quotes from the book I have encountered thus far.

Full disclosure: If you couldn’t tell from the entire prior post, I am incredibly biased. This is why I am reading Atlas Shrugged in the first place – to see what all the effing fuss is about. In fact, my bias against Rand’s philosophy runs so deep that it can almost be entirely summed up in this GQ article from a few months back: The Bitch is Back. The entire 6-page article (mostly about ARA’s – Ayn Rand a-holes who never outgrow the “Ayn Rand stage” that most young college kids go through… much like lip rings or purple hair) is well worth your 20 minutes to read, but if you skip to the 6th page and start with the FU’s, in a moment of brutal honesty I’ll tell you that those words just about entirely sum up my personal feelings on Ms. Rand.

Now bring on the trolls!!!

____________________________________________________________________________

† Full text of C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity – http://lib.ru/LEWISCL/mere_engl.txt

Posted in Books, Philosophy, Politics, Shrugging Atlas | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Because I’m Annoyed, Enjoy the Noise. Best Albums of 2009.

Posted by GraceKathryn on December 13, 2009

I need a happy distraction to get my mind away from stressing out about finishing up my one terrible statistics paper, and being horribly irritated because of a frustrating debate/discussion I have become involved in. Therefore I decided that making my pseudo-best of 2009 Albums list would be a good way to de-stress myself!

I have to preface this “list” by saying that I don’t think it’s possible for me to rank these in any order, as the ones I liked the best I just listened to over and over for months… Plus I spent about 4 months of 2009 listening to almost nothing but Fleet Foxes – s/t (which came out in 2008) on repeat, but I’m not putting it on here so as to be fair to albums that were actually released in 2009.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The best

God Help the Girl – s/t

Regina Spektor – Far

Moby – Wait for Me

Cats on Fire – Our Temperance Movement

Andrew Bird – Noble Beast

Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

Black Eyed Peas – The E.N.D. (OMG! How did that get on here?!?! Wes must have hacked my blog!)

Runners Up

Jenny Owen Youngs – Transmitter Failure

Loney, Dear – Dear John

The Swell Season – Strict Joy

Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career

A Fine Frenzy – Bomb In A Birdcage

Great Lake Swimmers - Lost Channels

Kings of Convenience – Declaration of Dependence

(500) Days of Summer Soundtrack (Admittedly, this soundtrack consists of mostly pre-existing tracks, but I. Don’t. Care.)

Away We Go Soundtrack (The same disclaimer applies to this soundtrack as well… But what can I say? I love Alexi Murdoch.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yes I realize that I have an odd, eclectic taste in music. It’s not as “hip” and “indie” as a lot of what other people listen to.

I listened to a lot more music than this during 2009. These just happened to be a few of what I thought were the better albums I heard. I may make a “best songs” list at some point, but this was kind of fun. Now back to looking at multiple regression analyses.

Posted in Music | 2 Comments »

End of Semester Implosion

Posted by GraceKathryn on December 3, 2009

I have been wanting to write a follow up to my Vanity and Guilt post from a while back and to answer comments from my most recent post on Pretentiousness and Elitism… but alas, my reference of time may be different from that of other people’s. It is actually not unheard of for me to answer or follow up on emails weeks or months after-the-fact, so one can apply that same principle to answering comments on my blog. It’s not that I didn’t read your comment or that I don’t have anything to say. I am simply a severe procrastinator – to the extreme.

Speaking of procrastination, right now I have the excuse that it is the end of the semester for me and I have less than two weeks remaining to study for and take a big statistics final, write about 12-16 pages on decision-making, then gather data, run a multiple regression analysis on it, and write an additional gigantic end-of-semester research paper for my stats class. These are not easy feats. As I stated before, I am a master procrastinator. However, in the past I have almost always performed surprisingly well under extremely stressful time-sensitive conditions like these. Actually, this is usually how I perform my best… at the very last minute.

So it’s unlikely that I will see you for another few weeks, fair blog. Wish me luck on not failing my statistics class. I am hoping for a B, but realistically I think a C is more feasible at this point. It looks like my straight-A streak will be broken after this semester. It’s disappointing, but I doubt it will hinder my job prospects in the future.

See you in a few weeks!

Posted in My Life, My Own Stupidity, Schoolin' | 1 Comment »

On Pretentiousness and Elitism

Posted by GraceKathryn on November 13, 2009

There is a writer whose blog I occasionally read who writes in the most pretentious style imaginable. I’m not sure if this person only expects PhD candidates to be able to decipher her writing, or if she just believes herself to be so self-important that this is how she really talks. The writing sounds like something out of a freaking Woody Allen movie. I can usually only make it through a few sentences of each blog post, regardless of how fascinating I find the subject, before I start to feel nauseous from the elitism inherent in the writing style.

My blog is titled Suburban Kitsch. I am currently a suburbanite. Kitsch means lowbrow, tacky, tawdry, or appealing to popular or undiscriminating taste. I try to avoid elitist-style pretentiousness in my writing. Sometimes I succeed in that effort at way too far a degree. For example, I actually have to try really hard to keep my bathroom humor in check, especially on my twitter account (tee hee).

The shirt below is an example of kitsch at its absolute finest. For some reason I own it. I think a distant relative may have given it to us unbeknownst to me.

Kitsch at its finest!

Kitsch at its finest!

One day I was digging through my “sleep shirt” drawer and lo-and-behold, this treasure presented itself to me! I had no idea it existed in our house! I proudly put it on and ran around the house loudly singing “Freedom Isn’t Free” from the Team America: World Police soundtrack, and then I may have transitioned into Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (Angry American)” – i.e. the “boot in your ass” song.

Jared immediately pointed out my hypocrisy. “Your blog is called Suburban Kitsch. I thought you were supposed to be against elitism. You are embodying the very thing you are supposed to be against.”

Ouch. Buzzkill.

So then, what is elitism? What constitutes pretentiousness in writing or speech? Surely they are real things. I have observed personally those in the “educated classes” looking down upon those they deem to be inferior and ignorant… I can read plain indignation in the writing on their blogs. Even their writing seethes with judgment and an air of superiority. I observe it at parties. You would think we would have grown past the “cool kid” phenomenon now that we’re adults. But no, the judging of others has simply moved to the intellectual elite who feel they are more fashionable, hip, and educated than those yokel rednecks… regardless of political persuasion.

Personally, I always have to keep myself in check that I do not become like this. It is so easy for me to fall back on my education, my knowledge of news and culture, my one puny trip to Europe, or what I think are my enlightened views, and then use all this to therefore judge so many others. But those people I am judging know SO MUCH MORE than me about many realms of knowledge that I am completely ignorant about. My knowledge is not infallible, and I’m almost never the smartest person in the room. I’m no cooler than anyone else. In fact, I actually use the word “word!” as an exclamation of happiness, so that probably makes me the lamest person on the planet. Basically, I try to never let myself feel too self-important. This is VERY difficult.

I have an ongoing conversation with my husband about what particular words carry the most pretentious connotations when used in regular conversation. Jared feels that the word “fabulous” is extremely pretentious and should never be used by anyone unless they are actually on the TV show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. He also thinks that the word “atrocious” is about as pretentious as you can get, unless it is referring to a literal atrocity. For my part, I believe that in everyday conversation (at least in mixed company with non-PhD candidates), one should never use words that would be more at home in an academic journal article… for example “onerous,” “obfuscation,” or “pejorative.” In my opinion, using words like those in everyday conversation is just showy and pretentious to the extreme (not that I haven’t ever done it).

How about you? What words do you think have pretentious connotations? Do you care at all about elitism? Do you ever feel like you’re being judged by “intellectual elites,” or are you one yourself? Do you think there was something wrong with my parading around in said shirt while singing a Toby Keith song? (and just in case you didn’t catch it before – I was being a huge smartass while doing so).

And P.S. Freedom costs a buck-o-five.

Posted in Cultural Observation, Introspection, Miscellaneous, My Life | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

The most famous Eagles song

Posted by GraceKathryn on November 6, 2009

Dear readers, I have a plea… Please help me settle a disagreement that has been going on for over a decade now. If I get enough votes in the poll below, maybe, just MAYBE, the person with whom I have this disagreement will finally quit their stupid and completely wrong insistence as to which of these two options is the most famous Eagles song. Please vote. PLEASE vote. I am not telling you which is the correct answer because it is so painfully obvious as to not even warrant a mention.

Thank you for your time.

Posted in Miscellaneous, Music | Tagged: , , , | 5 Comments »

Vanity and Guilt, Part II

Posted by GraceKathryn on October 17, 2009

I should start off by saying that I am absolutely terrible at using the art of subtlety to convey sarcasm in my writing. And when I say terrible, I mean TERRIBLE. Frequently when I write a blog post, email, or essay, I will go back and read what I wrote later or have someone else read it, and it becomes evident that I have not at all successfully conveyed the original point that sounded so profound in my head.

In the last post I spent a few paragraphs detailing how much weight I’ve lost over the past 8 months or so. I talked about how all my clothes fit me like clown clothes now, and I griped about the presumptive compliments I’ve been getting. In my head, I was truly not gloating. The weight loss was not a blessing. It sucked. I have been really sick this year. The majority of that last post, including the paragraphs talking about the weight loss, were really just one big bitch-fest about how much it sucked to lose that much weight so fast.

I felt like crap for most of the year, I wish people would not have congratulated me on my weight loss, and I felt guilty when I even dared to feel a shred of pride for being skinny because getting skinny sucked. That is the point I intended to convey in my writing.

Instead, I think I inadvertently wrote a bitterly ironic post titled “Vanity and Guilt” wherein I came off sounding like a vain (ha!) conceited bitch who now spends all her time staring in the mirror at her super-hot bod. Please know that was NOT the message I intended to convey while I was writing the post. Now I’m experiencing the guilt part all over again because everyone who read that original post probably thinks I’m a complete narcissist now.

I never claimed to be the best communicator in the world. Unfortunately I’m a bit rough around the edges and it shows in my writing. Reader beware.

Posted in Feminism, Introspection, My Own Stupidity, SuburbanKitsch | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Vanity and Guilt

Posted by GraceKathryn on October 14, 2009

There’s no way this is healthy…

Since January, I have lost 25% of my total body weight. Yes, you read that right. Twenty-five percent. I know for certain that I have lost 25% of my body weight because for the past few years I have been keeping a meticulous spreadsheet of my weight, which I update usually at least once a week. I used to log in my weight every Tuesday morning like clockwork and update the spreadsheet daily with my workout details as well (distance run or exercise class attended in a given day, etc). Now I only update it with my weight sporadically, and my workout routine has fallen by the wayside for the past few months mainly because of health issues.

(Yes, I know that keeping a detailed spreadsheet of my weight is probably not healthy either).

I currently weigh less than I did in high school, even as a freshman, and I am almost embarrassed about the size of pants I had to buy this weekend. I don’t think I ever wore this size of pants even at 12 years old. None of my old clothes fit, even the shirts. I have almost nothing to wear now. Everything I own fits me like clown clothes. I did the math, and if I lose 7 to 11 more lbs, I will officially be underweight according to BMI estimates. Hurrah! (Said with sarcasm).

Long story short, I have been dramatically dropping weight over the past 9 months and everyone has noticed. Some people make comments, some people don’t… but everyone has noticed. There is no way for people NOT to notice, unless they’re blind. It even shows on my face. I got carded today and the woman told me that my license picture doesn’t even look like me. Yep, that’s what losing 25% of your body weight will do.

Here’s the thing… I have not been trying to lose weight. At all, really. I got skinny because I have been really sick this year.

So now I apparently look all hot (or at least way more attractive than “fatty Kathy”) because I conform better to society’s beauty standards. I’m getting complimented all the time, and all the while feeling like crap. This happened to me all summer especially when I was dropping the pounds at a dramatic rate (and when I felt the most terrible physically). People would complement me on how good and thin I looked (“OMG you lost weight! You look great!”) and while it stroked my ego, I also felt absolutely awful. The first few times I responded with some sort of mumbled change of subject, but after that I gave up and started saying thank you just to end the conversation, all the while feeling like a horrible vain hypocritical terrible person.

I don’t feel bad physically every day anymore (though I don’t feel fantastic either), and I’ve stopped dropping weight. I’ve held steady at this same weight for about 2 months now (that’s why I thought it was time to finally buy some new clothes in a size that actually fits). Now I think I’m beginning the road to recovery physically, for the most part.

But now I’m stuck in the beauty trap. Now that I’m thinner than I’ve ever been in my entire adult or teenage life, I actually kind of like it, despite loathing myself for enjoying it at the same time. It makes me absolutely disgusted with myself for even buying into this BS. I didn’t even TRY to get this way and the only reason I’m so bony now is partially because I allowed myself to be malnourished! It’s more complicated than that (don’t worry, I don’t have an eating disorder), but I did go a few weeks without eating very much at all a while back. This is not the kind of beauty ideal we should ascribe to! Is thin really the be all end all of beauty? (Please don’t say yes!)

I hate that I’ve been sick all year, but even more I hate that I have enjoyed being thin because of it. It’s disgusting and I condemn myself for it. It is wrong and I feel like I have betrayed all women. Why can’t we embrace our physical differences instead of trying to live up to an unattainable beauty “ideal”? I am obviously guilty of falling into the same trap, and I feel terrible for it. I’m sure I will never break free of it, but the best I can hope for right now is to be self-aware when I am being vain.

Will I intentionally try to pack on the pounds now? No, though I might do so if I start dropping any more weight. Will I try to eat more regularly now, and more healthily? Yes, even though it will be difficult because this year has all but killed my appetite (which was a big reason for the weight loss in the first place). If that brings on a bit of weight gain, so be it. And if it does, I’ll try not to cry.

Evolution of Beauty

Evolution of Beauty

Check out the Health at Every Size movement. Guess what? Fat does not necessarily = unhealthy! You can be fat AND healthy! It just involves eating intuitively and being physically active for pleasure.

Posted in Cultural Observation, Feminism, Introspection, My Life | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Christian Nihilism

Posted by GraceKathryn on September 15, 2009

If I were not a Christian I would be a nihilist, and I regularly have to keep my natural tendency toward existential nihilism in check. There is a reason Ecclesiastes is my favorite book. It is the most hopeless and nihilistic book in all of scripture. Despite my optimistic, idealistic, and altruistic nature, I thrive on hopelessness and despair.

If you do a quick inventory of my favorite movies (Dogville, Match Point, City of God, 28 Days Later, the Last Kiss, etc), you will see that they are ones in which there is no redemption and where people treat each other callously and without any remorse for the harm they inflict. They often get away completely guilt-free with murder. I would also personally act this way toward others if I truly embraced nihilism, as I am inclined to do – and I know there is real malevolent evil in my heart. That is why those films resonate so personally with me.

In a world completely devoid of any true or ultimate justice, this is truly the way things are. There is no reason at all for a rational person to not act consistently in a manner of complete and total selfishness, even to the point of murder and mean-spirited deception even for entertainment’s sake, so long as it maximizes one’s own rational self-interest. If a person can kill their mistress without getting caught and live with the guilt for the rest of their life because her death will ultimately bring them a far more pleasurable life in the long run (as happens in the plot of one of the films I mentioned above), this is completely morally acceptable. There is NO reason at ALL to condemn this action in the absence of moral values and ultimate justice.

Likewise, in the absence of any moral values or ultimate justice, there is no grounding upon which to condemn infant rape, instrumental rape during war with machetes, brutal female circumcision, animal mutilation and abuse, the torturing and murder of homosexuals going on right now in the middle east and still in our country, generations of racism and violence, or any other heinous and violent act that we consider to be a violation of justice. There is no grounding at all upon which to cry “FOUL!” The best we can do is to say that we just don’t like these acts, but we can never condemn them as truly wrong, because the very concept of ultimate, objective wrong does not even exist.

No humans will ever agree on exactly what actions should be defined as “right” and “wrong” in a moral sense – that has been culturally, religiously, and sociologically dependent even person by person for as long as humans have lived in society together. Even in a marriage no two people are ever going to completely agree on every moral and ethical issue. But if we can’t even agree that the concept of objective, transcendent moral values actually exist (meaning outside of our own collective human consciousness – in other words, outside of our own heads), then we’re really screwed.

I’m not arguing that we should go put up the 10 Commandments at any Capitol buildings. That’s just stupid. My point is much more philosophical and is far broader than any issue that encompasses any religion.

I would be a nihilist if were not a Christian and if I did not believe that objective moral values exist external to the human mind. I do not pass judgment at all on anyone else who believes otherwise, but if I did not believe what I do, I would personally lie, cheat, steal, manipulate, and live my life to fully maximize my own rational self-interest (in other words, completely selfishly). Yes, I might even murder if I thought it would benefit me in some way – and I highly doubt that I would feel a shred of guilt about it. The “guilt gene” seems to have skipped a generation with me. That is why I absolutely love this Aldous Huxley quote (and I also adore Brave New World, incidentally):

I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; and consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do. For myself, as no doubt for most of my friends, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. The supporters of this system claimed that it embodied the meaning–the Christian meaning, they insisted–of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and justifying ourselves in our erotic revolt: we would deny that the world had any meaning whatever.”
[Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means, 1937]

Huxley admits that he had reasons (namely his unrestrained sexual freedom) for believing that the world has no meaning. It seems that the Christians are not the only ones who start from a conclusion and then work backward to their premises. They just happen to get accused of it far more often. Hmmm…

The reason I am a Christian is not merely because I am convinced that objective moral values do exist, but also because of what I find to be an encyclopedic body of evidence in support of the basic claims of the faith‡, and because of the absolute lack of coherence and rationality I find in all alternate worldviews that I have explored. I was a sincere agnostic/atheist from about the time I was around 10 yrs old, through my entire teenage years, and into the beginning of my adult life. Not to mention that the horrors of the flipside of the ‘problem of evil’ are almost too much for me to handle. All of this hit me as a 14 year old atheist when I was writing death poetry in my own blood about how we will all ultimately be turned to dust, with no hope and no redemption.

The ‘problem of evil’ in this world is simply not a problem for me and it never was. However, the problem of no ultimate justice for the Holocaust is a HUGE problem for me, and it’s a huge problem for atheists as well. I guess their only answer is, “it sucks to be Jews.” At least believers in some semblance of a justice-fulfilled afterlife have a kind of response.

Additionally, personal experience is not at all why I believe (especially since it all happened after my conversion), but there have been some very odd coincidences in my life since summer 2001 when I officially “converted” or whatever you want to call it. Yes, granted, it is entirely possible that they are all just coincidences, but the statistical improbability of some of the things that have happened (on specific dates, etc) has been very strange.

Anyway, to sum it all up, I’m a Christian who struggles with nihilism. I still struggle with the evil in my own heart and mind and with the idea that I should care about anything in the world at all. Also I know that I am personally capable of truly heinous acts. People are NOT basically good. That statement is complete and total bullshit. I love the MGMT song Time To Pretend because it is sublimely true. The band has managed to write the ultimate anthem to nihilism. Here are the lyrics. Enjoy.

I’m feeling rough, I’m feeling raw, I’m in the prime of my life.
Let’s make some music, make some money, find some models for wives.
I’ll move to Paris, shoot some heroin, and fuck with the stars.
You man the island and the cocaine and the elegant cars.

This is our decision, to live fast and die young.
We’ve got the vision, now let’s have some fun.
Yeah, it’s overwhelming, but what else can we do.
Get jobs in offices, and wake up for the morning commute.

Forget about our mothers and our friends
We’re fated to pretend
To pretend
We’re fated to pretend
To pretend

I’ll miss the playgrounds and the animals and digging up worms.
I’ll miss the comfort of my mother and the weight of the world.
I’ll miss my sister, miss my father, miss my dog and my home.
Yeah, I’ll miss the boredom and the freedom and the time spent alone.

But there’s really nothing, nothing we can do.
Love must be forgotten, life can always start up anew.
The models will have children, we’ll get a divorce.
We’ll find some more models, everything must run its course.

We’ll choke on our vomit and that will be the end.
We were fated to pretend
To pretend
We’re fated to pretend
To pretend

Yeah, yeah, yeah

_____________________________________

‡ Note that I said BASIC claims of the faith – if you get to know me you will find that I will only try to defend solidly 2 or 3 main issues. The rest of the doctrinal concerns are entirely debatable as far as I’m concerned. I’ll just be over here trying to feed the poor, care for the sick, and fight for those who don’t have a voice. Even if I’m doing a bad job at it, which I admit that I am most of the time.

Posted in Books, Christianity, Introspection, My Life, Philosophy, Religion | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 14 Comments »

Depths of Humility

Posted by GraceKathryn on September 13, 2009

So guess what? Our contractor and his meth-addict friends did not steal my inherited diamond ring. Jared had multiple heated accusatory conversations with the guy, we filed a police report on him, I spent half a day driving to all pawn shops within a 30-mile radius, and it turns out that we just hadn’t looked hard enough at home.

Ouch.

I feel terrible. I falsely accused someone of something they clearly did not do.

We owe him a HUGE apology, which we are definitely going to give him. We are also going to revise the police report to let them know that we found the missing ring and he has since returned the other items he stole (Like a gas can. A GAS CAN. Really. How stupid of a thing is that to steal?) About that…

The fact remains that the contractor did indeed steal other items of low value out of our garage (which, when confronted, he confessed and ultimately did return them), and he also left shady people with criminal records (including records of burglary) alone at our house for extended periods of time with access to the inside of our house. He also did a crappy job on the work we hired him to do (because he showed up high), and he said some pretty messed up and unintelligible things on the phone to Jared and in person to both of us during the few weeks he was doing work at our house.

Long story short: please follow the advice I gave in the post below about what steps to take to protect yourself BEFORE hiring a contractor. This story has a somewhat happy ending, and I came out of the whole thing feeling like a complete a$$hole, but we still did get screwed over and had to go through an ordeal. I’m happy my ring wasn’t stolen, but I don’t ever want to hire a meth-addict for a contractor again.

I do, however, have a great deal of grace for the guy. Ultimately, I feel really bad for him and a part of me wants to reach out and help him, but considering what has happened with our particular situation recently I don’t think it’s possible for Jared and I to be the ones to do it. It must be extremely difficult to try to stay clean after years of drug offense felonies on your criminal record. The poor guy probably can’t even get a job at McDonald’s. What other kind of work is he going to be able to do now but to mow lawns and paint houses? This is a real life example of the tension of justice vs. mercy in my mind and in my life. It will never be ultimately resolved.

I still feel like a terrible person, though. I want to say I’m sorry 1000 times. This is what humility and personal growth feels like.

Posted in Introspection, My Life, My Own Stupidity, Philosophy | Leave a Comment »

Extreme Joy, Murderous Rage, Cautious Optimism

Posted by GraceKathryn on September 9, 2009

Today has been a roller-coaster of emotions all by itself.

Extreme Joy

I arrived at work this morning to an email greeting me with this wonderful news:

On behalf of [the Vice President], I want to congratulate you on your selection as one of the recipients of the 2009 Staff Development Scholarships.

The Scholarship Committee consisted of a group of your peers from [divisions within the organization].  Of the applicants, the Scholarship Committee selected you for your demonstrated talent, dedication, and merit.  Through the pursuit of continuing education, you and others like you are setting a benchmark of excellence that [the organization] is pleased to sponsor.  [The Vice President] is very proud of you!

Your scholarship is worth $1,000 and must be used  by August 31, 2010.

I applied for that scholarship way back at the beginning of July and had just about given up hope of receiving it. I had expected to hear something by now. This was fantastic news!

Needless to say, as soon as I read the email I was jumping around my office gleefully like a crazy person. Remember the ridiculous happy jumping dance Tracy Flick does in Election when she first thinks she won? Yeah, that was me this morning. I think I actually let out a little squeal and clapped my hands in glee. My office mate would have thought I was insane except that she is used to regular outbursts like that from me by now. I promptly told her the good news and then I ran and quickly told another coworker friend who wrote one of my letters of recommendation. Hugs were exchanged. I giggled.

The icing on the cake about getting this particular scholarship besides that a). I worked damn hard for it, b). I can sure use the money, and c). It’s a fantastic morale booster and a great résumé-padder, is that a good friend of mine applied for and got the same scholarship as well! We were in direct competition with one other and we both received the award! Hooray for overachievers!

Murderous Rage

Fast-forward to a mere 30 minutes later.

I got a semi-emergency call from my husband at work telling me he had just discovered that the meth-addict contractor we hired to paint the outside of our house (who had already finished the job, crappily, a few days ago) had stolen some stuff out of our garage and possibly from the inside of our house as well. I rushed home from work to find that the only possession in the entire world that I cared about, my Grandma’s wedding ring that I inherited 2 1/2 years ago when she died, was gone. No $hit. I had posted a comment on a friend’s blog less than 2 weeks ago about how this particular ring was the only possession in the entire world that I care about, and now it’s gone. I don’t know how long it has been gone. It could have already been gone when I posted the comment. They were working on the house for about 2 weeks.

A police report has been filed and I have made the rounds to every pawn shop in Norman, Noble, and Purcell looking for my ring. It is a one in a million shot I will ever get it back but I’ll still check back every week or so. It doesn’t help that the ring is so generic looking – it’s a white gold round cut four pronged solitaire diamond ring. Real distinctive. It fits perfectly on my right ring finger. Only I would be able to identify it if I saw it. It does have a slightly bent prong and the diamond is a little bit loose.

God is mocking me. God says, “Kathy, it’s just stuff. Even if it was your only remaining tie to your Grandma and you placed a great deal of value on it, it’s still just a rock.”

Yes, God, you’re right. But that’s not going to stop me from eschewing your mockery by ironically praying (to you!) to get it back and continuing to scope out the pawn shops… and also to hope that I’m not just an idiot and that it’s lodged underneath my dresser or something.

The situation with the contractor is really sketchy and we’re not even sure if it was him personally who took the ring and some of the other stuff. He definitely took a ladder and some other miscellaneous low-value stuff out of our garage, but we have no idea what else could be missing from the inside of our house just yet. We’ve tried to do an inventory on everything valuable we have, and we can’t find anything else missing just yet. The problem is that he brought at least 2 or 3 other people (read: drug-addict friends) over to do work at our house at various times who we never really met or had a chance to talk to. Any one of them could have taken the ring without his knowledge. The main contractor was clearly high out of his mind at least once or twice when he showed up to do work, and we could tell that one of his other workers was high a different time as well. They were hired to paint the outside of the house, and they only even had access to the inside because of a technicality where we had to leave a garage door unlocked for 2 days so they could paint it. They did not ever have permission to enter our home.

Hindsight is 20/20. We looked him up on the Oklahoma Dept of Corrections database this afternoon, and guess what? He has an extensive police record of drug offenses for sale and posession – meth and marijuana. He most recently got out of jail in November 2008. At least none of his criminal offenses were for violent crimes.

Lesson learned: Trust no one. This should really be common sense but sometimes you have to learn the hard way. With contractors:

  1. Get multiple references, especially if there is a need for them to have access to the inside of your house while you are not there. Call the references.
  2. Ask if they are insured. (Ensures further credibility).
  3. If they seem a little bit high, they ARE high. This might be ok if they’re just mowing your lawn or something, but don’t let them in your house or garage! Protect your garage access code and door openers at all costs!
  4. If they spout conspiracy theories they may or may not be high, but you should probably fire them anyway. You don’t want your hard-earned money going to support Ron Paul, 9/11 “truthers,” or antivaxers, do you? Not to mention that pesky meth habit…
  5. Look them up in the OK Dept of Corrections Offender Database online BEFORE hiring them.
  6. Yes, meth addicts do work for much cheaper than other contractors, but it’s not worth it. Believe me!

Cautious Optimism

I have nothing particularly noteworthy to comment on President Obama’s address to Congress tonight that hasn’t already been said by people far more eloquent than me, but his speech did fill me with cautious optimism. Of course, I thought that Obama gave far too much compromise to the anti-reform crowd in his plan as detailed in the speech tonight, but such is politics. I think this is the best we can hope for in this country right now.

We have a horrible broken health care system right now in this country. That is a fact. I think with this speech it appears that perhaps, after a month of complete and total standstill, perhaps progress can begin to be made again toward getting some sort of major legislation passed by the end of this year. Additionally, the unbecoming heckling outbursts of the anti-reform crowd during Obama’s speech clearly hurt their own cause… so yay for that.

So as to not end on a negative note, here is a happy little video that has been making the rounds lately online. Enjoy.

Posted in Miscellaneous, My Life, My Own Stupidity, Politics, Schoolin' | 1 Comment »

Yes, there has been a redesign

Posted by GraceKathryn on September 8, 2009

SuburbanKitsch has recently undergone a redesign, for a few reasons:

  1. I didn’t like the fixed width columns and not being able to change the color scheme on the page. It made the overall page too skinny and it was not very aesthetically pleasing, in my humble opinion. I much prefer the 3 column layout as it stands now. And,
  2. I recently noticed that Stuff White People Like was using the same template as my blog. This was simply unacceptable. Clearly, that far inferior highbrow elitist blog was ripping me off. I had to put a stop to the travesty.

Hopefully I can figure out some of this complicated CSS coding stuff in the next few weeks and further personalize the page, but I’m fairly happy with how it looks right now. If only the Interwebs could have just stuck to HTML so I don’t have to go learn stupid CSS… I was pretty good with HTML coding. But noooo, everything just has to change every few years.

Posted in Miscellaneous, SuburbanKitsch | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

Hook, Line, and Sinker… again?

Posted by GraceKathryn on September 8, 2009

I thought I was over this silliness. I thought I had grown up. I took a break from these stupid online “debates” for about a month, and now I’ve just allowed myself to fall back in to the same pattern and get sucked right back in… even to the tune of being “de-friended” on facebook yet again. Seriously.

I consider myself to be a reasonable person who is capable of having logical and rational discussions without resulting to personal ad-hominem attacks. I try to adhere to this principle as much as possible in all discussions I have online and in person. Apparently, other people are not so agreeable to try to keep conversations at such a level. Therefore when I checked back to a particularly contentious discussion board after a few hours in the middle of a conversation tonight, I found that I had been de-friended without even an explanation as to why. How very mature of that person.

Again, I do admit that in the past I have crossed the line MANY times by making smart-assed, rude, and condescending remarks when I have shot off my mouth without thinking. My behavior in the past has been wrong, and many people deserve apologies for the things I have said. However, I don’t believe that this has been the case at all in the past few weeks and days. Recently, I have been intentionally trying to be much more thoughtful about the way I approach conversations with others that I may not agree with. This was the case with the person who recently de-friended me. I honestly have no idea what I did to offend this person. My entire dialogue with them was perfectly civil and I did not attack them personally in any way at all. I even complimented one of the points they made!

The good news out of all of this is that now I have one less troll to deal with posting snarky and rude comments on my page! I do realize that people (who I personally know somewhat in real life) are probably talking about me and making fun of me behind my behind my back right now… but it’s ok with me. A few months ago I probably would have been crying over it, but I have bigger fish to fry right now.

I have the gift of (over)confidence, but I lack the gift of eloquence and tact. I have the gift of boldness, but I lack the gift of thick-skin and calm-headedness. I have no problem standing up in front of an audience to speak, but no one wants to listen to what I have to say because my thoughts are a jumbled mess and I have a tendency to offend people. Then when people bite back because I offend them, I get my feelings hurt (though usually just a little bit – mostly I just get really angry and it makes me want to lash out further and cause them pain).

In summary, right now I would make a terrible politician, even though I think that could possibly be what I am gifted to do. I just have a very long way to go. I guess I’m glad 30 is the new 20 and my whole life is still ahead of me. Personal growth, here I come…

Posted in Cultural Observation, Facebook, Introspection, My Life, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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