Aww

Boys are so funny.

Not in the "wah, boys are such strange creatures that I don't understand!" whiney way that, yeah I know, I have lamented in the blog before. What I mean is guys are just funny. They are creatures of entertainment, and are quick to take every opportunity to crack an inappropriate joke, or make people squirmishly uncomfortable. They have comedic timing, usually, and they're witty, hilarious, and I swear they just get away with so much more shit than women do. Look, I just typed shit, twice. You know what I think when I write shit (thrice!) in one post? I think, damn, now I look really unlady-like. I think, well great, now I'm an uncouth female writer and I'm taking cheap shots because I ran out of the really melodic, lyrical bull that I'm used to putting out in the world. I think, I seem like freaking Amy Poehler, and I don't think she's funny. I think she's crass and a little disgusting and like I'd rather rub a dead rat on my hand than watch her on TV. When a guy swears in his writing, like say in another blog that I frequent written by a certain boyperson/coworker/I bet you won't notice this for a week does, the profanity comes off not only pithy and adeptly turned, but I swear to God sometimes it sounds brilliant. Like fuck was the greatest word ever invented, or shit was the best descriptor anyone has ever used. I have never had so much aggravated language in a blog post before, and I will brazenly admit that it feels both liberating and, well, twitchy. My leg is popping up and down now. Swearing in public turns me into the squirrel from Hoodwinked.

I was reading Marie Claire which, I still think, is one of the best women's magazines out there today. It's informed, intelligent, and it makes a damn good case for being an independent, free-thinking woman. All the important "IN" words for women. But, it's really just not funny. There are polite quips and banter here and there, and the recent article about dealing with the downside of wedding season (omg, totally do not give the same gift to every bride and groom you see this year) is supposed to be so funny because they include a sidebar on how to handle nasty 911 situations, like the bride being pregnant on her wedding day. Do NOT make jokes about her belly and how she's a mommy-to-be, FYI. Holy fuck (whoo! count 6) it's just boring. But it's the kind of humor that women are accustomed to and hits right in their comfort zone. Polite giggles with your hand held over your mouth, right ladies? Throwing your head back and laughing at a magazine would be, well, in poor taste. Boys get Maxim. Boys get Details. Boys get freaking Playboy. Not saying I want naked dudes linked in with my intellectual stimulation, but when women try to put it all together it just comes off smutty. Hello, Cosmo.

The Daily Show has all dudes, right? Are there any women? I'm not a habitual watcher, so I wouldn't know. And the Colbert Report, well, duh. Okay, but you have SNL. Or Mad TV. And Tina Fey made history by becoming the first lead SNL female comedy writer. She's funny! She wrote one of my favorite movies of all time, Mean Girls, and she's the featured celebrity (because every magazine has to feature a celebrity now) in the May issue of Marie Claire. Except, Tina Fey is one of a very few smart, witty women who have managed to retain some modicum of femininity while they stay true their inner hijinx. Cybil Shepherd comes to mind as a funny woman. Candice Bergen on occasion. And even so, in my mind, the perception of them is slightly masculine. They have a fairly mannish quality to them. Take That 70's show for example. Redhead Donna, hilarious, but with a definite air of masculinity. Brunette Jackie, laugh worthy but in such a hee-hee, airhead way. So, what, being funny means you're being like a dude?

I often wonder if I can identify a female writer or male writer just by their style. In fact, reading Marie Claire today I was trying to do that. Male, Female, Female, Female. And, perhaps pleasantly surprising enough, I was wrong a few times. But only, and get this, when it was a man writing. Men can adapt female writing, but then they seem, what, gay? Women can adapt male writing, but then they seem butch. But how many female writers are there for GQ? Or Maxim? I seriously considered applying to Maxim when I was looking for jobs, but would I be giving up my liberated woman views to work for them? Verdict: yes. Application killed. But, is that holding me back? Guys will write for a women's magazine, so, why shouldn't I try writing for a men's magazine? Because I don't ever feel like I could be funny in the way that they need. I could be cute funny, and that's what it all comes down to. Men can be laugh out loud, raucous, hilarious and completely inappropriate funny. Women can be laughable, adorable, and quaint. Fucking A.

Even at the tail end of this ranty post, all I can think is, "I read my writing and think, gee, I feel like flowers and clouds after reading this." I read other people's writing, mainly male writers, and think, "Yeah, that's it, get into the gritty shit. Do it." I can't even get myself to do it -- this entry is a definite stretch for me -- so if, as a women's college educated, independent, liberal female, I'm worrying about crossing the line, someone tell me how women in general can toe the line between funny and crass without getting shit on?

I've definitely heard at least a couple guys tell me that girls will never be as funny as boys. Is it because we aren't willing to take the chances? Or because taking the chances makes us look too much like one of the dudes. Freaking gender stereotypes. I am liberated. I've made "that's what she said" jokes, albeit like twice, but I've gone there and I've done that. I've done keg stands, watched videos I never should have watched with things in places they never should have been, and I've shot guns, I like comic books and I can beat you at Street Fighter II. And I still like pink, and high heels, and make-up and snuggling.

And the next time some asshole guy slams his arm into my shoulder because he thinks I'm a prissy bitch, I'm going to turn around and knee him in the balls or punch him in the face. Cause, you know what, I am a prissy bitch.

I just wish I could figure out how to do it all without feeling like I was giving up some special, delicate, flowery part of myself.

Suppression

I haven't really smoked in a long time. And by not really smoked, I'm not talking about the social smoking that happens over drinks on patios or huddled together beneath a single coat outside a bar. I'm talking about the way I used to enjoy a clove or two or four over multiple cups of tea with T and K: sitting in K's apartment, or in the Bug or the Jeep, or going back even further, behind Stone-D in those wretched plastic deck chairs as we philosophized and enjoyed the waning warmth of my first East Coast Fall.

Growing up in Northern California gave me a perennial hatred of smoking. What was the point when there was so much clean air, so many healthy alternatives -- like biking! -- to give you a buzz instead of a cigarette? My father smoked for the majority of my (and his) life, and even as a little girl I did my damnedest to get him to quit. I still remember the first time I told Big Bro I was vaguely intrigued by it, as much as it disgusted me. I couldn't help but imagine the indefinable enjoyment that filling your lungs with a foreign substance would bring. By then, my father had quit smoking -- a result of medical problems brought on by his forty plus years inhaling carcinogens -- but, his last half full carton of cigarettes remained in the "Cabinet of Forbidden Things," just below the liquor. Big Bro grabbed an unopened pack, produced a book of matches and led me onto the patio with the single command to "smoke it." I remember blubbering on about tar in my lungs and envisioning black clouds floating morbidly in my chest. Instead of lighting up and inhaling, I stood awkwardly in front of my brother's stone cold stare and ran whatever crappy stoge my father owned beneath my nostrils while I forced myself to intake the raw, upchuck-inducing scent of tobacco. Later, I would cut that same cigarette open with my swiss army knife and sift through the leaves, trying to discern what made this otherwise mundane brown substance so life altering.

So obviously, it was rather a big deal when I picked up smoking in college. Initially it was experimental. Try it on for size and see if the inner bad girl in See would revel in it the way she'd enjoyed all the other debauchery I'd pointedly avoided in high school. Much to my disdain, I did, a lot. For the first month and a half of college I was hooked, and since then it's become both a stress and an escapist tendency which produces occasional unhealthy trysts when I'm feeling anxious, or in the case of senior year, full on semester long lapses. Since graduating though, and likely because I've spent so much more time in California living a much healthier existence, the habit has subsided and for the better part has dropped from my life completely. Unless, of course, a select few people or situations pop up which bring back the familiar yearning.

Earlier this week, Big Bro discovered an empty clove box in the glove compartment of his car. Perhaps a year ago that box would have been the inevitable unearthing of distressing anxiety levels, but funny enough this was just a forgotten remnant of this past Fall and T's visit. I have reserve boxes well hidden, but they haven't been touched since she left in October. I quit! I quit months ago and whatever flare ups there have been were negligible. For the better part I decided to leave the dirty addiction behind me and find more constructive ways to relieve tension. But since Big Bro mentioned it to me, I haven't been able to get it off my mind. Is it just because I've been a wee bit stressed and, when stressed, I crave the sweet aftertaste and momentary buzz of a clove (controlled escapism at its finest)? Or, is it because Big Bro brought an otherwise well suppressed tendency to the forefront of my mind? I've never really considered myself a smoker, and if someone asks I'll generally say no (perhaps with some addendums), but is it possible that the reality is I'm actually a smoker pretending to be a non-smoker?

When we've managed to suppress or control a desire, a tendency, or an otherwise unattractive aspect of ourselves that we loathe, that doesn't mean it's disappeared. It still exists, floating patiently in the tiny corner its been relegated to, and I assume, waiting for whatever previously created synapse to fire which will bring it to the surface. Arguably, these could be referred to as "gut reactions" or "instincts" right? If I wasn't talking about smoking, couldn't I just pass this off as genetic inclination? My father was a smoker, my quasi-addiction is just an instinctual development of some kind. Hrm, there's a claim that's going to garner a lot of smacks. From the few psych studies I've read, like this one in the nytimes, supposedly our knee-jerk responses, or "gut reactions," are from years of not only evolution but of our own personal experience. Which means we're simply taking situational and circumstantial evidence and instantaneously comparing it to a backlog of information we've stored in our brains. Your immediate response is based on years of conscious or unconscious observations. But what happens now, after we've learned how to suppress and ignore even the strongest reactions we feel? Doesn't it imply that, at a very basic level, we've taught ourselves as an entire race not to trust ourselves and therefore not to be ourselves?

While this may seem like some well-formed argument to start smoking again, it's not. It's just curious to think about all the daily reactions we -- okay, I -- have and whether or not many of them are unfounded. Of late, a lot of my knee-jerk responses have been unfortunately tuned incorrectly. What I believe is something similar to X situation from my past, is actually something entirely different, often times contrary to what I originally thought. Is this what growing up means? Questioning everything you know and wondering whether it's even remotely correct? Humans are so smart now they can outsmart themselves.

A wise friend told me the other day, it's not necessarily how we recognize something as good or bad, or even how long it takes us to recognize it; it's the actions we take after we've recognized it that define us. Cue Michael Cane and Christian Bale circa 2005. Smoke, yes? Smoke, no. Bitch-smack girl, yes? Bitch-smack girl, no.

Ah well, much though cloves kept me company throughout college, looks like they're going to stay stuck in their nasty little boxes hidden away for the rest of time. Or, you know, until I have a phenomenally large freak-out that reminds me of X so much, I can't control myself.

What? Like you've never given in before. Geeze.

Barfity Bloggity wah?

Sometimes I write pretty well. No, honestly. At certain points in time there's the off chance that I'll write something witty, and pithy and generally enjoyable -- even to me. That's not to sound like a pompous ego-maniac, more to acknowledge my overwhelming self-deprecating manner. (Which, at this point, having spent a fair amount of time with other "writers," I've found is pretty standard. Oh man, I'm a cliche.) I blame Dave. Dear Dave, how could you help re-popularize this self-aware writing style that is predicated by making terrible self-referential jokes all the time? I like how many dashes I used in those words just now. Dashes make me feel smart.

But really, this entire post is just an attempt to stimulate my writing brain into working again. Here's a note about writing articles on topics you think you really care about: don't do it. I have at this point exhausted what I once felt was a lot to say about this topic -- I don't feel I can be all that honest, nor do I feel I'll say anything that people won't be angry about once heard. Alas, perhaps that's the point, I'm not supposed to say what's nice, I'm supposed to say what needs to be said. Be honest, be accurate -- but it doesn't always mean you can be fair. Case in point: I'm profiling a program I originally admired, and subsequently am incredibly disappointed by, having learned that some of its participants came away from their experience with a somewhat sour attitude. It's made me question whether I have real commitment to anything. The subject matter interests me, and I can't even finish the article. Technically, I should be able to write this without a ton of thought -- but I actually give a damn about the subject matter, so now I'm not writing at all because everything is coming out mean. Whoo, I'm a commitment-phobe! But hey, I'm young, it's no big deal. I love being in my twenties. You can blame everything on youth, and inexperience, and on a desire to be a "free-spirit." No one will hold it against you, really, because hey, you're young! ::Light cigarette, take swig of vodka, frolic in otherwise inappropriate manner for a lady with any class::

So ends the writing wrant...and now I'm just procrastinating. Oh well. Rysiebops has passed this on to me, and there is relative joy to it, so I pass it to you. Even my blogging is uninspired. I'm putting someone else's vlog on my blog. Good lord.

Are You a Hack?

Someone recently said to me that the reason they listen to foreign music, is so they can enjoy the song without thinking about the insipid lyrics. Twice the melodic enjoyment, half the soulless writing. That being said, is it actually the novelty of sound that entrances aforementioned person? Is it actually nothing to do with the words, just the expression of so-called "angst" and a momentary "catharsis" that entices them into the music? Essentially, the exoticism of the experience is actually what you crave, yet its exoticism is balanced by an idea that you are familiar with -- in this case a particular musical motif. The song construction is the same, it's just the words that provide that extra jolt of excitement. (I would have hurt myself if I wrote "je ne sais quoi" there -- it's such a cheap out for writers when they actually can't think of something. Try not to call me out for it when I actually use it in my writing since I couldn't think of something.)

So, here is the question: in appealing to the exoticism inherent in the story I'm being asked to tell, to the "extra something different and special," does that, in fact, make me a sell-out? Okay, okay, it has been pointed out that I'm not actually a "sell-out" because I make the grand sum of 0 dollars, therefore I can't technically sell-out. But, still --

am I basically exposing my writing "special parts" just to catch a break?