Cultural Snobbery: Emoticons

Say, when was the last time you heard a professional writer decry the widespread usage of emoticons? That’s right, it’s 2009 and we’re apparently still talking about this.

Salon’s Mary Elizabeth Williams, enlightened sage that she is (/sarcasm), is beating a long-dead, decomposing, barely-recognizable horse carcass with her condemnation of those three little syntax keys: :-) (I’m partial to the two-key :), but hey, tomato, tomahto). Her venom is intense:

Whether they’re humble punctuation marks or shape-shifting, animated gifs matters not — I loathe them in all their forms. I see a face at the end of a sentence, I start lopping off IQ and attractiveness points for the person who wrote it.

God forbid that we benighted, uneducated web users dare to experiment with language or create our own linguistic conventions. Emoticons, as with any new set of words, have expanded the English language and increased humans’ ability to express themselves. Further, in the age of instant messages, texts, emails, we can communicate much faster. To use her example, consider the following:

1. I’m looking forward to seeing you tonight.
2. See you tonight. :)

I’d argue that the second sentence is more expressive than the first. It’s paints an image of a person smiling as they think about the coming evening. The first is dry and very job interview-ish – “I look forward to speaking with you.” Yawn. Srlsy.

This wisest of all internet writers (/sarcasm), in concluding that emoticons are the banter of the stupid-ugly-pedestrian internet class, has led me to conclude that we could build monuments to her pretentiousness. For the record, some of the most compelling, colorful, interesting articles (forum posts, blogs, etc.) I’ve read on the interwebs have been sprinkled with smilies, frownies, tongue-teasers, rage-faces, etc. Some haven’t. And to be sure, there are plenty of bad writers out there who never use emoticons.

So, Ms. Williams, find something worthwhile to complain about, or get off your high horse.

Personality Evolution

I’ve taken various forms of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (a popular personality test) over the last eight years. Each time, I’ve felt like it’s given me some new insight into my life. However, now that I’m settling into my adult skin and becoming a little more set in my attitudes, I look back and I think how useless this test was.

When I was 17, I tested as a strong Introverted INtuitive Feeling Perceiving personality. (“The Idealist”).

Then at around 20, I’d become an I N Thinking P (“The Architecht”).

By 23, I was a strong I N T Judging (“The Mastermind”).

Then at 24 I was back to INTP.

Today, I’m apparently an Extraverted N T P (“The Inventor”).

The only letter I’ve never been is Sensing. Yet if you typealyze this blog, I have the writing style of an ISTP (my old score notwithstanding). I know I’ve changed a lot since I was a young, shy, anxious kitten, and I sometimes think that my own mother, were she still alive, wouldn’t recognize me today. But seriously, I’ve covered a quarter of the map with this test! That’s ridic.

Anyway, the point is that people change as they grow. Even if the MBTI has any merit at all, it’s worthless before a certain age, and really ought not to be given to undeclared college freshman (thanks, MSU career center, for convincing me that I was computer science material for four years. I might as well have consulted an astrologer).

Dear Culture Critics: STFU

There’s something that’s been really grinding my gears lately: writers who opine on matters of American culture and who insist on using the pronouns “we” and “our.” I’m talking to you, Slate and Salon.

What qualifications does one need to be a cultural critic? I can think of only one: a sense of humor. Satire is wonderfully fun, and generally doesn’t assert that something is wrong with all of “us.” However, most culture writers I’ve read recently seem to eschew the art of humor, and instead write serious, earnest pieces condemning the behavior of a small segment of the population and assigning it to every single American (or woman, man, web-user, member of the western world, etc). Usually, their “stories” are an avenue for the authors to yell at the world for being unfair, or to vent about a personal pet peeve.

Andrew Keen is the most incorrect in his assertions about the internet ruining culture, but lucky him, he’s not the most annoying. Here’s one among zillions of articles about how Twilight sucks and is going to ruin teenagers’ ability to have relationships:

Just as America’s young men are being given deeply erroneous ideas about sex by what they watch on the Web, so, too, are America’s young women receiving troubling misinformation about the male of the species from Twilight. These women are going to be shocked when the sensitive, emotionally available, poetry-writing boys of their dreams expect a bit more from a sleepover than dew-eyed gazes and chaste hugs. . .The bigger problem here is that we’re breeding sexually incompatible human beings, and vampires are to blame.

/rolling my eyes as hard as I can./ Yeah, Edward Cullen is the first prototypical romantic male character in the entire history of literature to give young women high expectations of the young men they date. Ever hear of, oh I don’t know, Pride and Prejudice? Romeo and Juliet? Hell, Titanic was only ten years ago. How quickly these cultural experts seem to forget. Anyhow, the assumption implicit in his complaint is that it’s somehow wrong and unacceptable for any young woman to ever have her hopes dashed and her heart broken by an immature young man at some point in her adolescence. Gee, and here I was thinking that learning about relationships from experience was all part of “growing up.” Silly me.

Here’s another article that accuses modern society (a.k.a. “New York City”) for it’s apparent impatience and hatred towards – of all things – motherhood:

But I think there’s another toxic subcurrent under the stroller vitriol, the subway dudgeon and the like. “It’s all about the space we take up, the public space,” says Sohn. “Why is that the metaphor that keeps coming up?” Why indeed? Women — still — are not “supposed” to take up space. Mothers, in particular. We are — still — supposed to remain in the background, doing whatever it is mothers do, smiling. We grow a belly, we need a seat, we say “excuse me, please,” we speak up (or, God forbid, blog), and we’ve crossed the line, said or asked too much, become “entitled.”

The author obviously never met my mom. Ever heard of Claire Huxtable? Roseanne Connor? Debra Barone? Americans LOVE strong-willed mamas.  You can’t assume that the behavior of a few communicates the view of everybody, nor that your experience is universal. Maybe nobody gave you a seat on the subway because you give off nonverbal bitch-vibes. Maybe you really do live in an area where people are inconsiderate. Who knows? That’s my point. But when you can’t finger something as the direct cause, don’t go blaming “society” for your problems.

Every generation thinks that the world is going to hell. Come on, culture critics; be original.

 

 

I’ve Taken All I Can Stand and I Can’t Stand No More! I’m DONE!

What’s got me so annoyed? What am I so frustrated with that I’m completely done? I’ll tell you what: khakis.

That’s right. I hate khakis. Has any woman ever put on a pair of khakis, looked in the mirror, and said “oh yeah, these look good!” ??? Heck no they haven’t, and I’ll tell you why: because khakis suck.

First, the traditional bland, oatmealy (not-quite-a) color of khakis is rarely flattering to anybody. And guess what! If you have a big ass, khakis only make it look bigger. Short legs? Khakis shorten ‘em. Wide birthin’ hips? Khakis widen ‘em. Thick thighs? Imagine the tight creases of creamy khaki material stretched over them. You see what I mean? Khakis don’t hide anything; rather, they embellish.

Second, the fabric that khakis are made out of makes it impossible to find a cut that is flattering and doesn’t stretch out or lose its shape by mid-afternoon (plus, they wrinkle something fierce). The cut of khakis, whether its boot cut, trouser-cut, flared, skinny, whatever, just does not flatter any body shape. I don’t care if you’re a skinny, five-foot-eleven fashion model – you look like an awkward, poorly-dressed teenager in khakis.

Third, nothing looks good with khakis! A crewneck sweater? “Hi, I’m Boring, nice to meet you.” A polo t-shirt? She’s a man, baby! An argyle sweater? More polished with normal trousers or a pencil skirt. The only things that match khakis are a private school-boy blazer (and even that looks pretty young-boyish), or a blue smock that says “How Can I Help You?” on the back.

These pants make me think of two kinds of people: IT professionals, and Target employees. Khakis were originally designed to homogenize a large group of subordinates, I feel pretty sure of that.

Anyone familiar with TLC’s program What Not To Wear knows that Stacy and Clinton have a special term for that ugly dress in every woman’s closet that doesn’t fit or flatter them at all: the “I Give Up” dress. Khakis are hearby officially deemed the “I Give Up” Pants. I’m done with them. No more. I’m leaving the scourge khakis to men, who seem to wield these casual Friday pants far better than women.

The Severance Economy

I’m a little annoyed after this article in the WSJ (apologies if Rupert Murdoch has already pulled it behind his beloved paywall) about laid-off white-collar workers on the verge of bankruptcy because they’ve blown through their severance pay. Each person mentioned in the article made a comfortable salary in a senior-level or executive job, collected their severance when they were laid off, and… continued living and spending as if they were still making bank: daily starbucks, luxury car payments, salon trips, private school tuition for the kids, etc. Each turned down job offers because the salaries weren’t quite as much as their previous (bubble economy) jobs paid. Now these folks still can’t find work, and their savings are approaching $0.

Excuse me if I don’t feel much sympathy for the former i-bankers who might have to sell the mercedes. I don’t mean to hate on the bourgeoisie, but seriously: wtf???

Should the U.S. allow torture?

Disclaimer: I don’t know jack about foreign policy or matters of national security, so take this post for what it’s worth.

Will Wilkinson got me thinking (as he usually does) with a recent post in which he denounces Americans who advocate, or even tolerate, the military’s use of torture:

That so many Americans are so ready to rally around the most vile, most obviously illegitimate arm of the American state is evidence for the proposition that patriotism is a tool for rendering a people ready to torture and kill at the state’s behest, or to tolerate it. I am disgusted that people who pretend to care about liberty are not disgusted.

My instinct is to wave the banner of peace and emphatically agree with Will. And for the record, I believe that in most situations the use of torture (or “enhanced interrogation methods”) by representatives of the state is abhorrent. I say most situations in order to allow room for a Jack Bauer-type of character to do whatever it takes to keep a nuke from detonating in Manhattan, or whatever kind of far-fetched, only-in-television scenario you’d like to imagine.

But what if (and I’m being purely hypothetical, here) those interrogators actually believed that they were in an extreme situation similar to those found on prime-time dramas?* Imagine that you were an interrogator, that some large-enough number of people were facing imminent death, and that you believed the person you’re interrogating had information that might help you prevent those deaths. I have very little doubt that 99% of humans would be capable of inflicting a kind of harm that would make Eli Roth queasy, if they believed it could save some large-enough number of people. Hell, any parent could bring unspeakable horrors against another human if they thought their child was in danger.  So I wonder if our collective hesitancy to insist that this torture scandal be continually in the spotlight is due, in part, to the understanding that, while a certain action can be unjust and morally reprehensible 99.99% of the time, there are those very few, highly unlikely situations where we know our own sense of right and wrong would easily succumb to panic, emotion, or even a utilitarian formula concerning the quantity of lives saved. Perhaps we’re hesitant to admit that we’d really like to leave that option on the table. (Author’s note: as a general rule, whenever I write about society using a lot of “we” and “our,” I’m being purely speculative).

On the other hand, and more seriously, extreme cases rarely justify the general case. Public figures who subscribe to this “by any means necessary” approach to interrogation really are a disgrace. There’s absolutely no justifiable reason for either a government or a society to openly advocate the torture of prisoners, especially, as Will rightly points out, when that society claims to uphold liberty as a core value. There are some practices that a just, peaceful, and free society cannot condone; abandoning all sense of empathy and treating humans as bags of meat is one of them.

But what about serious matters of national security? What if that extreme situation really does happen someday? Well, as I said above, if an individual finds himself in that type of scenario, I’m pretty confident that he’ll go “Jack Bauer” on whoever he has to in order to get the information he needs. The key word there is  “individual.” Consider two cases: 1) an interrogator from a military with a pro-torture policy, and 2) an interrogator from an anti-torture military. In the same set of extreme, thousands-will-die circumstances, there isn’t much practical difference between the two: the accused gets tortured either way, and thousands of people are saved (or not, if the accused really didn’t have any credible information). Morally though, the difference is huge. In the first case, the state, the elected officials, and implicitly, the people condoned/endorsed torture; in the second, one individual had to make a tough choice. The first case results in the rest of the world being pissed at all of us, while the second results in you and I not being held responsible for the torture of a human being.

In my humble opinion, a world where individuals are left to make tough choices is vastly preferable to one where people’s choices are made for them and called “policy.” (Oh snap, I think I just outed myself as a libertarian.)

*For the record, I’m sure Lynndie England et. al. were just really, really nasty people who were unqualified to be in charge of prisoners, so to be clear, I’m not referencing any real acts of torture that the U.S. has carried out.

On G.I. Joe’s “Baroness”

I saw G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra this week.

That’s right, I happily paid my $8.00 to see this testosterone-fueled, explosion-packed, army-glorifying, SFX-heavy, mind-numbing, adrenaline-pumping tribute to boyhood. Well, at least I knew what I was getting into beforehand.

I have no comments about the movie’s plot, actors, or effects – my expectations were low, and I left the theater feeling like I’d been somewhat entertained (and to its credit, the film clocks in at just under two hours). However, there was one aspect of the movie that I can’t resist from ranting about: the generic, one-dimensional, dubiously-underdressed, tough-cookie female warrior, a.k.a. “Baroness.”

Here is a list of  strong, fleshed-out, femme fatales, with varying degrees of sexiness, hand-to-hand combat training, and knowledge of lethal weapons:

Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver)

Aeon Flux (animated)

Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss)

Fran (Final Fantasy XII)

Zoe (Gina Torres) – Firefly

Alice (Milla Jovovich) – Resident Evil

Ziyi Zhang will kill you gracefully

The Silk Spectre

Tasha Yar – Star Trek:TNG

Vasquez – Aliens

Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton)

River Tam can kill you with her brain.

Lightning – Final Fantasy XIII

The Bride (Uma Thurman)

Eowyn (Miranda Otto) – LOTR

Chun Li – Street Fighter games

Queen Elizabeth (Cate Blanchett)

Lara Croft (Angelina Jolie)

What makes these women enthralling characters? Personality. Rather than than running around in stilettos and alternating between “cruel” and “sexy” facial experssions, these women kick ass without taking any names. Many of them have intriguing backstories, or flawed personalities. They’re more than flat, generic place-holders for teenage fanboys’ spank fantasies.

[SPOILER ALERT]

“Baroness” (played by Sienna Miller) is a former civilian who gets brainwashed and turns evil. Somehow over the span of four years, she becomes a master of hand-to-hand combat and works her way to the top ranks of an evil, conspiratorial weapons manufacturing corporation. During that time she also meets and seduces one of Europe’s most promient physicists (who lives in a much nicer home than any researcher would ever be able to afford), a man so devoted to his research that fails to notice (until it’s too late) that she’s a key executive in a start-up global terror organization. Baroness eschews full-body armor and instead marches straight into the battle zone in a vinyl catsuit. She’s a complete bitch to her ex-boyfriend throughout the entire movie, never missing an opportunity to bust his balls, but she undergoes a convenient psychological breakthrough at the last possible second, has a sudden change of heart, and rescues him from being fed to the Big Baddie’s evil human experiments (which seriously pissed me off, because I was looking forward to her comeuppance). Miller flexes her acting muscle in this role, portraying a whole three emotions throughout the entire movie; through 80% of the film she plays  “smug bitch, ” and then elegantly switches to “not-nearly-remorseful-enough,” plus a few moments of “catatonic.”

“Baroness” is boring, one-dimensional, predictable, and unreasonably dressed, to boot. And it’s not as if any of the other characters are very well-developed, either. I can forgive “Scarlett” for being equally boring (but more smartly dressed), or Channing Tatum as the middle-America everyman, or even Marlon Wayans as… Marlon Wayans.   With “Baroness,” I’m annoyed that I’m supposed to accept this noncharacter as the “sexy antagonist” AND “sexy protagonist/love interest.” It just doesn’t work – there’s not enough material there for her to play two roles in the story! Give her fewer lines and make her a sexy, reticent assassin! Give her a bigger role and more personality! Give her a stunt double so she can do extra-cool fight sequences! Argh, just do SOMETHING!

Paramount, you f*cking suck.

No Such Thing as Perfect, Supermodel Edition

It’s recently been brought to my attention that supermodel Heidi Klum, often touted as one of the world’s most beautiful women, has a flat butt. That’s right: Heidi Klum has no ass.

Compare an image of the smokin’ hot Victoria Secret model taken from the front with one taken from the side view:

See what I mean?

Remember when everyone wet their collective pants over Heidi losing her “baby weight” in only 4 weeks, just in time for the VS fashion show? Look at this woman’s frame: there’s no way she gained as much baby weight as your typical endomorphic woman. Her metabolism is likely much higher than average, and her body weight probably naturally settles towards the lower end of the scale (for a six-foot woman, that is).

Let’s pause for a moment, and celebrate the fact that you can have an ass that’s as flat as a man’s, and still be one of the world’s most coveted women.

Cue Rant:

I mention Heidi Klum and her invisible derriere in order to talk about something more serious. I’ve grown tired of the complaint that the fashion industry and the mainstream media are decimating women’s self-esteem with their skinny, beautiful models. The “unachievable beauty standards” placed on women by the media  (and often times by women, or at least, gay men in the fashion industry) can be easily mitigated by doing one simple action: turn off your goddamn television.

Really, it’s that easy.

In my own experience, I’ve attained higher levels of self-esteem and comfort with my looks after limiting my time with the idiot-box, particularly since outgrowing the trashy Vh1 and MTV neworks (yeah, like ANY of the girls from “Rock of Love” intimidate me? Please). Granted, I still have moments when I think I’d like to be a boyish, eastern-European, doe-eyed femme fatale with 4-foot-long legs and a BMI of 17 (think Milla Jovovich – rrrrrawwrrrr), but for the most part, I’m pretty satisfied with myself these days, and far less critical of other women. The feminazi movement would do well to stop castigating the fashion industry, and instead encourage women and girls to drop the remote and take up a friggin’ hobby.

Not only has turning off the television done wonders for my self-image, but so has simply observing the dating habits of my peers. Most of my male friends aren’t dating 6-foot bombshells, but rather, relatively in-shape women who just look after their appearances. I’ve never heard a man say that he only dates skinny women who look like adolescent boys – or women with the looks of the typical runway model. It’s not as if straight men are setting impossibly high standards for women. As far as I can tell, there’s plenty of copulation still going on,  and it’s certainly not limited to the most beautiful people. And there’s no glut of committed, monogamous relationships out there either. The lesson to be learned from this is that you don’t have to be in the upper echelons of physical beauty in order to be desirable, or for people to love you and care about you. (It seems so obvious…)

That’s the end of my mini-rant today. I leave you with some words on eating disorders from that wisest of old sages, George Carlin:

Some Thoughts On Will Ferrell

Let me just get this out of the way now: I absolutely hated “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.” It was probably one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. It wasn’t funny; rather, it was nonsensical, non-sequitur, sophomoric, and boring. I understand it was supposed to be a farce of the 1970s swinger lifestyle and feminist movement into the workplace, but the plot failed to be engaging, and overall the film FAILED on pretty much every level (save for one exception: Paul Rudd and his “real panther” cologne made me chuckle).

In particular, Will Ferrell was just horrible. The humor of his supposedly-improvised lines was based on absurdity and/or shock value, not cleverness. From what I’ve seen, Will Ferrell’s style of humor can be reduced to the following few elements:

1. Saying something completely absurd in a deadpan manner (“They named it San Diego, which of course in German means a whale’s vagina”).
2. Awkwardly trying to complete a task or emulate a behavior better-suited to a person of smaller stature; portraying a clueless man-child. (“Elf”)
3. Showcasing his unimpressive, hirsute physique.
4. Total randomness. (Boats n Hoes)
5. Actual humor (“Celebrity Jeopardy,” Robert Goulet rap, much of the SNL material).

Yet for all his faults, Ferrell isn’t completely worthless. I finally got around to watching one of his earlier films, “Old School,” yesterday, and I was surprised – it was actually pretty good. Sure, Ferrell sheds his clothes to clumsily reveal his shapeless torso and pasty white butt, but otherwise the film was entertaining. I have a feeling Luke Wilson is what saved the movie – Ferrell works well when he has a “straight man” to work with, and Wilson is one of the best straight man players in comedy today (I’ve loved him ever since “Idiocracy,” a brilliantly funny dystopian dark comedy. If you haven’t seen it, definitely check it out). Where Vince Vaugn plays the idiocy-enabling buddy (a lukewarm performance at best), Wilson is the voice of reason to Ferrell’s ridiculousness… and he’s cute as hell, to boot. IMHO, Ferrell is at his best in a double act, whether he’s playing the funny man as in “Old School,” or the stooge; Ferrell’s “Alex Trebek” to Darrell Hammond’s “Sean Connery” was some of SNL’s best comedy in the last decade.

So, while I still loathe most Will Ferrell movies, I now have a criterion for deciding whether or not I’ll give his films a chance:

• “Stepbrothers” - comedic duo with two idiots. Pass.
• “Blades of Glory” – John Heder is friggin’ hilarious, although I’m not sure how the dynamic between the two would play out. Proceed with caution.
• “Land of the Lost” – Ferrell’s supposedly carrying this film solo. Pass.

Calling the Introverts Out

Are introverts smarter people? More thoughtful? Or just more anxious? After reading this article about the difficulties faced by introverts when traveling (H/T Marginal Revolution), I’ve concluded that, if nothing else, introverts are defensive about their standing in the world:

Introversion and extroversion are inborn traits, and the difference between them is not that one is gregarious and at ease in the world and the other shy and awkward. Rather, extroverts are outwardly motivated and gain energy from interaction with the outside world while introverts are more inwardly directed and drained by interaction with others. Introverts’ thinking tends to be deep and slow, we require copious time alone, we prefer probing conversation to shallow chitchat, and our social lives are geared more towards intimate one-on-one interactions than “more the merrier” free-for-alls.

Confession time: I’m a reformed anxious introvert. I was an extremely shy person growing up, and it wasn’t until about a year or two ago that I was able to shed my social anxiety and join the rest of the world. I may not be at the level of, say, your typical Chi-Chi’s waiter (as parodied in Office Space), but these days I think I’m a middle-of-the-road ambivert. I get energized talking to new people at parties or while out socializing, but I also love my time spent on the couch watching House or Star Trek:TNG and chewing on the show’s philosophy. However, too much going out or staying in leaves me either run-down or extremely bored. I’d bet that most people sit somewhere close to the middle of the introvert-extravert continuum.

Yet, it seems to me that there’s a certain arrogance among the more intelligent introverted/anxious people. Witness it in the above passage. Deep thinkers. Probing conversation vs. shallow chitchat. Intimacy vs. free-for-alls. Ouch. Do I sense some hostility here? Obviously, I can only speak from my own experience, but I’ll admit that I really looked down on outgoing people back in my shy days (perhaps out of envy?). I truly believed that the more outgoing a person was, the less intelligent they had to be by necessity. My rationale went like this: smart people take time to think, and the more talking a person does, the less time they have for thinking. QED. Of course, that couldn’t explain the extremely bright, extraverted folks I’d occasionally come across, but I had a one word answer for them: “douchebags.” Obviously they weren’t as smart as people thought they were, they were just good at selling themselves. (Right, and I’m sure someone like Kevin Rose, a former television personality, techie-wunderkind, and the founder of Digg, is making millions simply because, despite being complete dolt, he knows how to network. /eyeroll). Yeah, I was kind of stuck-up jerk when it came to people who were succeeding where I couldn’t, much in the same way that academics hate capitalism. What’s worse is when two or more reasonably intelligent, awkward introverts get together. When hanging out with my reserved and more “cerebral” friends, our own ego-stroking combined with our hating on extraverts and would tend towards becoming one big bitchfest, whether or not were even aware we were doing it.

Thus, my experience leads me to conclude that the author of that article is incorrect: many introverted people are shy and awkward, and have high levels of anxiety and insecurity. Awkward extraverts are easy to spot – that’s the guy at the party who wanders from conversation to conversation, telling the same bad joke and screwing up the punchline every time.  Awkward introverts stay mum so as to hide their social retardation. Whereas comfortable introverts still may contribute to conversations; awkward introverts don’t offer up much. All of this is to say that introverts aren’t necessarily smarter, more thoughtful, or more considerate of others, although some of them most certainly are. Likewise, there are some brilliant extraverts out there who are absolutely charming at parties – I’ve met them. No single personality type has a monopoly on intelligence or social grace.

So to the awkward intellectual introverts out there, I say: seek therapy, join a club, or just get off your f***ing moral high horse.

————————————-

Just for fun, I’ve taken a quick online Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. My result: ENTP

Puzzling, this is the first time I’ve ever tested as an extravert. Usually I test closer to INTP, although I’ve been feeling restless lately now that I’m done with school and haven’t yet found full-time employment – I need something to put my time into. Also, note that Jungian personality types are only a theoretical model (as are most psychological theories), so take the results with a grain of salt.