In which there’s another slightly wonky Android map of my adventures.
I went for a bike ride! Now I’m melting like a bad witch because: heat and humidity!
I felt like I had to go because it’s my day off, the dishes are done, and I sit around inside ALL THE GODDAMNED TIME, because it’s either a blizzard or a sauna out there. (Or I have nowhere to go. But I digress!)
So a bike ride it was, even though it’s 80-something and 70% humidity.
Went to unlock the Schwinn from under the stairs and it had a flat tire, of course. Went to the Marathon on the corner but their air’s off, so had to wait for the light across Lyndale at rush hour to go to Eric’s Bike Shop for air.
They let you borrow a hand pump, the bastards, rather than having a compressor. Plus you have to haul your ride up stairs and through a manual door to get in, which is weird for a bike store. You’d think they’d let you enter with your bike through the level garage door entrance on the side or something, rather than making whoever’s working the front desk hold the door all day long.
Anyway, then I rode along 28th to the Bryant street Greenway ramps and headed back toward my place. Passed it. Exited the Greenway at Nicolette, rode around a bit, moseyed on home, passed it, went down to Lake and turned left, and rode until I finally found the damned Walgreens.
Bought the mini-scrunchies (that’s how thin my hair is now! i buy mini-scrunchies!) and pair of sunglasses that have been on my to-get list for months, put them on, and rode home.
So humid. So hot already. It’s only the middle of May! It’s only bearable if you’re on the bike and moving (which I discovered when I tried to sit on a rock under a tree on the Greenway for awhile). I hope so much that it cools down and acts spring-like for the next four weeks, because this is bullshit!
Rode home. Nobody hit me with their car!
The apartment building itself seems somewhat bearable in the hallways, but my living room is miserable! Stuffy, hot, humid as fuck, just uncomfortable. I love you for supporting all life on earth, Sol, but sometimes you overdo it on this little ol’ brick building I live in! Ha ha!
LUCKILY, THE BEDROOM NOW HAS AN AIR CONDITIONER. So I turned it on high and stripped off and am sitting here in blessed refrigerated air in a cotton bra and prairie skirt and probably will not actually melt. Yay!
Whenever I tell Scott I hate the weather here, he just ignores it like I’m saying I hate TV commercials or something. I don’t think he groks that I legit do not like Midwestern weather, and that this is not merely my third, but my sixteenth (at least!) year living in it, so it’s not just an offhand observation! I really think it’s not the best!
Compared to Walla Walla — a town with the mildest, most pleasant weather on the continent, and all four seasons fairly represented in their time — the weather here does suck! The grass was still brown a month ago, and now Spring’s over! It’s summer! Turn on your A/C! Fuck you!
But he did buy me an air conditioner (which just basically astounds and amazes me), and I suppose since he won’t fucking move to Walla Walla, it’ll have to do. Heh.
Revision (8:53 PM): I went to bring my bike in just before dusk and it was cooler, so I went for another brief ride. Would still be out except I didn’t have my bike lights with me. Sky was doing a Maxfield Parrish thing, and although the humidity is still high it was much nicer!
In which I write about a toy. A doll. A temple idol, a spiritual tool.
I’ve had an Amma doll for a long time, and over the years I’ve collected all the outfits and extras, and I keep it all in an old wicker picnic-style basket. I can dress her in her whites, or as Devi, Krishna, or Kali.
There’s also a nightgown, socks, a swim dress, perfumes, a sun dress I made, and a tiny Home Depot apron (in case she ever wants to do some yard work or something). Garlands, necklaces, earrings, belts, a mala. A hairbrush.
There used to be a sweater, but apparently I’ve lost it.
I’ve read treatises written by those who don’t yet grasp what spirituality is or what it’s for, droning on and on about the phenomenon of white women and their Amma dolls, trying to make all kinds of Freudian implications about infantilization and adult women “playing” with dolls, as if there were something wrong with play, something sinister about child-like joy and absorption.
Yeah, yeah, I get it. There is evil in the world (although this is not it), and the dolls creep you out. Whatever. Your mistakes are your own. Or are they?
Because the fact is, this doll isn’t a Barbie, empty of meaning. It’s not a collection of plastic crap that symbolizes only imperialism and consumption. This doll is a profoundly useful spiritual tool, whether anyone who thinks they’re weird is capable of understanding that or not.
When you’re nearly always apart from your guru, being able to play with and cuddle a toy, one imbued with layers of complex spiritual and philosophical information, is a fucking oasis in a desert of streaming services, social networking, avarice, empty affluence, fear, and anxiety.
The process of handling the doll focuses the mind on the guru. Changing the costumes over time creates deep curiosity — why does Kali have a garland of skulls? what issues are there to consider about religion and violence? is suffering different than violence? is death meaningful? what the fuck is a demon: is it a literal bad entity, or a representation of one’s own flaws? is the mind a demon? Does Krishna’s flute, like, symbolize something? maybe Krishna just liked to play the flute? does it have to be meaningful? What’s the difference between information and meaning? what’s it feel like to be enlightened? aren’t the enlightened supposed to be without preference? so why the flute and not something else? — which drives self-education and awakens the understanding that all this shit represents something.
These symbols are not just arbitrary foreign cultural weirdness. They have meaning. They peel like an onion.
When you see your guru for two days a year, and spend maybe 4 minutes of those two days actually with her, you need a conduit, a way to get back, a helpful symbol. When you’re losing your shit because you don’t know what the fuck is going on with your life or what you are or are supposed to be doing, you grab your Amma doll and you have a good cry.
Or, as I frequently do, you bitch God out for this stupid reality in which one has to have a mind capable of suffering in order to want to become enlightened: you cannot even want enlightenment without suffering first! It’s built-in! What the fuck!
Brahman dwells within itself, forever content. In the deeps, God isn’t even aware of us. If he’s the brilliant scientist in the state-of-the-art lab, we’re some random bacteria in the sludge around the drain in the unused third sub-basement he doesn’t even know about.
This occasionally makes me so infuriated I bitch and hiss at my doll, because it’s easier to have a conversational focus in the form of a small item than it is to try to somehow address the entirety of the manifest universe at once, because seriously, where would you even look?
You look at your doll, as a representative of That, and you complain. You lay out your grievances. You pitch a fucking fit. You say you know everything that exists is a manifestation of an inherent quality of the Lord’s, and you know that selfishness, stupidity, and greed are just as much expressions of God as generosity, intelligence, beauty, and sacrifice, and that’s cool, but: suffering! Why is there suffering? Why even manifest as apparent discrete entities with minds of their own when that is itself literally the cause of suffering? What’s the point of us even being here to experience shit when it’s frequently so awful? Why even do this in the first place? How can You be loving if this manifestation with all its inherent bullshit is a fundamental expression of what You are?!
And then you get the brain dump. God, Guru answers. No, you don’t see visions or hear voices, but suddenly you have understandings that you didn’t have before. Knowledge just appears in your head, intact. (I’ve noticed when reading Matruvani that devotees’ stories are often like this. They’re waiting and waiting for whatever outcome they think they want, and eventually they get freaked out and complain to the altar or a photo of idol or guru, and then, and only then, at the final hour, the thing, the outcome, the whatever, occurs.) I think that it’s perfectly fine and okay and even encouraged to natter and nag and bitch at the Beloved. Amma even says several times in various books that one should have a running commentary and be always thinking of and talking to one’s beloved deity. Don’t gossip with others, tell the beloved. Don’t complain to others, tell the beloved. Don’t suffer needlessly and stoically, tell the beloved.
The whole point of and thread running throughout is about where the mind should be. The mind should be not on worldly bullshit, but on any symbol that will eventually lead it inward. Apparently this is called pratyahara, and is the process of withdrawing the mind from distraction and turning it inward toward its source. It’s a pain in the ass, in one way, because it’s hard and tedious and sometimes it hurts. But it’s also effortless, in the sense that at some point you realize that there is no effort, only grace. Because you feel like you’re making effort but you eventually come to know you’re not: you go years sometimes without effort, and then suddenly great strides are made. Your heart is arid and then the rains come, and you’re not the rain. You reach for That when the guru wants you to, and at no other time.
Another irrationality, that, as most of it is in this arduous process of destroying the world, and yet once you know it, you know it. Since there’s nothing to measure, you can’t prove it, but you have experienced it and know it to be true. They say if you take one step toward the guru, the guru will take a thousand toward you, but you also know that shit does not move at all without the guru doing it, because you’re not the doer, you’re not even real. You are your mind, and your mind is a reflection of consciousness.
Just like you know God’s not an asshole but doesn’t really find human suffering all that compelling, in the same way a human being does not find the death of a few skin cells all that compelling, and yet, by the same token, some aspect of God does shit like takes birth and gets nailed to a cross like Christ or dies of cancer like Ramakrishna or crucifies herself in her darshan chair like Amma in order to point us in the right direction. They come and They come and They ever come, these incarnations, and They show infinite love and beauty and grace and They say, look, I’m suffering my balls off here, because hey-what, the suffering of the mind and body is irrelevant. And let me teach you why.
And it’s utterly impossible to encompass, but there it is. The whole thing’s a huge joke somehow. You’re not even here, your you-ness isn’t real, it’s a soup of consciousness your mind is building the whole of reality out of, and your mind is not even conscious itself. It’s a construct! It merely reflects! I’m waiting for the punch line!
Terror is the mind realizing you know it’s not real, and that you’re becoming willing to surrender it to That in order to escape suffering, which is also not real.
I’m waiting for the punch line!
In which I lecture.
This article advises you to immerse yourself in all the miserable details of your debt, and feel how bad you feel for an entire week, because apparently remorse and guilt will somehow magically attract money into your life. Because your debt is the result of your own terrible emotional flaws, and not a system set up to put you in debt.
“Unconscious spending habits”? Like you’re somehow not aware your outgo is higher than your income? “Messy money practices”? How is being poor in a rich society a messy money practice? Don’t spend any money for a whole day! Fuck you, person who wrote this article who has obviously never been broke a day in her life. Poor people tend to have to buy every day, because they can’t afford to purchase in bulk.
When you’re living hand-to-mouth, you tend to buy food and gas daily, in small increments, with the ten bucks you have to your name. You can’t go buy $150 worth of sensible groceries to last you for the next three weeks of frugal meal-planning, because you don’t have $150. You can’t cross town and fill your tank at the one gas station with the lowest prices, because you don’t have enough gas to get over there, in the first place, and even if you did, you have to eat so you couldn’t even buy a quarter tank anyway.
These sorts of articles about debt, about writing it all down in excruciating detail, living cash-only, really getting a handle on it… they’re all bullshit. You fuckheads have literally no idea what you’re talking about.
To fix debt, you need money. That’s it. Emotionally torturing yourself with your poverty, in minute detail? For an entire week? Is just weird. You already know you own more than you can pay. You’ve already tried to earn more. This isn’t psycho-fucking-therapy, it’s math.
I repeat: only money fixes debt. Nothing else. Not guilt, not self-recrimination, not even more austerity. Just money.
Odds are you’re not in debt for making extravagant decisions. You’re probably in debt because you were given a line of credit you could not support, by a greedy corporation eager to exploit human nature, were or are un- or underemployed through no fault of your own, or went to college to get a degree that doesn’t boost your earning capability (because that’s what they said you were supposed to do and you were compliant).
Very, very few people live beyond their means in the sense of buying too many extravagant things. Paying rent and bills, buying food and clothes, and having the same sorts of extras everybody else in your class has (like vacations and iPhones) is not extravagant.
Most people in debt are in debt because their employers don’t pay them enough to live like the rest of their class lives, or because they can’t get any or enough work. Not because they’re greedy or lazy. The numbers show most poor people actually work more than full-time.
Wages have remained stagnant for the past thirty years. You’re not earning what your parents earned at your age, and yet society expects you to do what they did and buy a house, get married, have two cars so you can both get to work, have new cell phones every two years, own a sufficiency of linens and dishes and furniture and be able to afford hobbies and toys.
Having to choose between groceries and the dentist is bullshit, but being told to take better notes and avoid spending for an entire day to get out of debt isn’t advice, it’s abuse.
In which I cooked, like, all afternoon, basically.
Today, I made two salsas:
A hot poblano-corn relish:
Spicy black beans:
Mexican brown rice. That weird cottage cheese guacamole I make. And shredded chicken, for him.
Cheddar, sour cream.
There’s leftover queso blanco dip, so I heated that up, too! What the hell!
Look at that. Fuckin’ delicious burrito bowl.
And I didn’t even have to put on pants!
I’m so fucking high strung, you guys.
So I woke up this morning, had a hummus/tabouli/falafel/feta lettuce wrap, drank some water, decided being awake was stupid, and went back to bed ’til afternoon.
Got up a second time, had some water, rearranged my very dirty hair, put on eyeliner, dressed, took my shit out of one bag and put it into another, and went for a bike ride.
Nowhere to go. Nothing to do. No one to see. It was so easy when I lived in a small town and didn’t have a car. Got my exercise in without noticing, in the form of transportation.
It was raining. Low-seventies. Nice light spring rain.
Rode to the Midtown Global Market again. Locked up my bike, under a tree to help keep the seat dry. Went inside.
Walked around for a few minutes. Realized I was hungry. Walked around until I found a place selling chile rellenos. Ordered some. Wandered over to a coffee shop. Didn’t buy coffee. Felt anxious and weird, dizzy maybe, and realized that my vision isn’t really up to dealing with very high-information environments: the two different prescriptions, both out of date, plus the addition of the floaters that have been slowly and regularly increasing over time, make my brain feel weird.
Chose a table. Took out my readers and a magazine. Leg bounced. Felt like I just wanted to get back on my bike. Uncomfortable. Not an anxiety attack yet, but close. Also, the body, so unaccustomed to exercise, feeling different than usual.
“Number one seventy one? Do you want salsa?”
“Please.”
“Mild or hot?”
“Hot.”
“Green or red?”
“Red. Thank you.”
Sat down to eat. Can’t really see my food; really need to get in to see the optometrist. Put my readers on. Methodically and rapidly devoured a chile relleno. Unwrapped the tortillas. Cut the other chile relleno into thirds. Made three chile relleno tacos. Wrapped them up. Took off my readers. Cleared my table. Got a container from the counter and put my tacos into my messenger bag.
Walked around the market some more. Really should have enjoyed it, because it’s really the sort of place I would enjoy, with all the international stuff and all the interesting people, but didn’t. Just wanted to get the fuck out, get back on my bike, move, use up some energy. All the little shops: didn’t go in. Last time I was there, last winter sometime, I saw a really great top in one of the booths. Didn’t even look for it. Walked by the coffee place again, decided I didn’t need a drink because I had a water bottle on the bike. Really not feeling at all normal. Just being here is fucking difficult. What the actual fuck. I have nothing to do until work at 6 tonight, and I came here to sit and read and write, didn’t I? What the fuck is even wrong with me?
Sat down at a table in the central seating area. Readers and magazine out. Knee bouncing, I made it fewer than five minutes before I got up and left.
The rain had stopped.
Unlocked my bike, tied up my right pant leg, and off I went.
Nice ride. Much better. Leg muscles working felt good, damp air felt good, the lilacs are finally in bloom.
Most of the Midtown Greenway is in an old train corridor, beneath the streets and safe from traffic. Saw Mexicans under the overpasses. Some were singing. One was sleeping.
Pulled over at a rock and sat for a few minutes. Thought it would be a nice place to meditate, but didn’t want to mediate. Wanted to go the fuck home and relax. Got up, rode the last thirty feet to the Soo Line Garden, dismounted, and pushed my bike up the bark trail to street level.
Flushed, hot, inwardly shaking my head at how honestly hard it is to walk my bike up a steep hill, almost there, almost at the top, slow steps, at least nothing hurts.
Still aware of how floaters confuse my brain’s interpretation of what I’m seeing and what’s moving when I’m outside and the light is bright. I don’t notice them at all in familiar or low-light situations, but out in public in bright light there’s a sensation that everything is moving, even though it’s not, and my response to weird vision and being in public is to ratchet everything up, fight-or-flight style. My internal experience is one of great agitation and intensity and nervousness, and I’m having to deliberately focus on the feel of the air and the smells and all the nice nature around me rather than the quite frankly irrelevant internal experience.
Meanwhile, while all this weird shit is going on, simmering half a degree below a full-blown goddamned panic attack, I look like a pleasant, plump, white lady, slowly walking her retro bike up a hill through a garden, wearing black linen palazzo pants and a slouchy V-neck, meditation beads and a messenger bag. Really makes you realize that nothing is how it looks. You see someone and have no idea what it’s like to be them; who knows what goes on in the skulls of other pleasant-looking, plump, white ladies?
They’re probably all mad geniuses but too pleasant to say so, or gacked out of their head on street drugs just walking along, looking like somebody’s grandmother, smiling pleasantly.
In which there’s a map, and a bangle of sorts!
Google Maps never really does well with the Greenway, but this is, more or less, my path for the day.
(I still can’t tell, honestly, if I’m charmed by the knowledge that my Android phone tells Google Maps everywhere I go, or freaked out.)
In the early afternoon, I stopped on the corner for a jar of delicious iced coffee and a salad to go, and then I rode to the lake, sat my fat ass in the grass behind my bike, ate, and then I rode home again.
It occurred to me that going to the park specifically to eat was an excellent fat-girl behavior! Hi, I’m fat and I’m the only person in sight who is eating! I just ate and took off. Didn’t even walk out on the floating dock I love so much. Oink!
Fucked around at the apartment for a couple hours, but wanted to go ride some more. So in the late afternoon I rode the Greenway in the other direction, east, and bought dinner from the Midtown Global Market — a cheeseburger for him, falafel for me — so not only did I spend a bunch of money today for no reason (there are plenty of groceries in the kitchen) but I rode 5 miles!
Now, the ride to the Midtown Global Market is a fuckin’ breeze, and you’re, like, Oh, yeah, I got this, my quads are in better shape than I thought, far the fuck out. But the ride home? Is ever-so-slightly all uphill and OMG IT half KILLED me.
But still, I rode five miles today, voluntarily and on purpose, for fun, by which miracle I conclude that this RoadID bracelet, which arrived in the mail today, is magic.
Five miles isn’t far, of course, but it’s a lot more than no miles!
Anyway, it’s basically dog tags for your wrist:
Apparently, if you get knocked off your bike in a car accident, your shit usually ends up many feet away from your person, and often isn’t found until after you’re off in an ambulance. So I figured, since this is a super high-traffic neighborhood, everybody here drives like they have PMS, and I’m usually alone when I’m out walking or riding, some wearable ID would be a good idea.
Name, age, location, emergency contact, medical information: apparently these details are fantastically useful to EMTs when an injured person is unconscious.
Now, I guess if you’re sporty, you put some kind of motivational motto on the bottom line, like SHUT UP LEGS or some shit, but I’m not so I put a mantra. And the badge thingy on the left is a custom ‘OM’ symbol. Custom! OM!
I briefly considered the ‘BIKE’ badge, because I ride a bike and have done for the past decade, but I’m hardly a real cyclist, like those skinny nerds with all their clothes and gear, so I figure it would have been weird. I’m riding along in Thai fisherman’s pants and a Hanes cotton t-shirt, right? I’d probably be publicly shamed for appropriating jock culture or some shit, amirite? YOU’RE NOT WEARING WICKING LYCRA, YOU HIPPIE, YOU CAN’T HAVE THE ‘BIKE’ BADGE UNTIL YOU DO A TRIATHLON. IN NEON LYCRA!
To conclude: I am older than I’ve ever been and in tremendously bad shape, but it felt so great to look at things that are green and flowering and to smell the spring breeze and to move and to ride along the lovely Midtown Greenway!
Such a gorgeous day! Yay!
In which there’s a screen shot.
THIS IS A TWEET FROM THE WHITE HOUSE ACCOUNT: “During the last 8 years, Americans have been under attack from the federal government for following the tenets of their faiths.”
Wait, what?
Oh. No. No. No, no, no. Christians are not under “federal attack.” Trump’s basically agnostic, so this is about money, power, “winning.” He’s sucking evangelical dick, too. Not just Russian.
“If you still want to quote from Leviticus, despite Jesus’ doing away with Mosaic law, then you better be prepared to enforce the whole thing, not just the parts you like. This includes not only the injunction against shellfish and mussels and such, but also against wearing fabrics made of blended fibers, cutting or shaving your beard, sowing mixed seed in a field, and a slew of other things nobody but Orthodox Jews take seriously anymore.”
In which there’s a tostada.
I made the salsas and the guac and fried the tortilla. I even put on a pot of pinto beans, but they’re not done yet. I mean, I made salsa. Look at this shit.
And then about a third of the way through eating the glorious thing with the delicious salsa on it, I had a panic attack — first one in awhile — and now it’s just sitting there, getting soggy, and I’m sitting here twitching and freaking out and I have a fan pointed at me because I think there might be a hot flash component, maybe? But I’m definitely dying.
Heart attack, maybe organ failure. You know how it is.
I went to the site I used to go to when having panic attacks, but it’s dead. Looks like the last post was a year ago, and the login no longer works and the forum posts are there but filled with database errors.
Fingers are numb, heart is pounding, dizzy, tense: the works. God, but I do hate me a panic attack!
Although the process of writing this post, together with Rainy Mood in another tab, has gotten me most of the way through. I think I’ll get up and move around now… maybe put the rest of the delicious but only partially-eaten tostada away, and then maybe curl up because now, between the open window and the fan, I’m really cold. Of course.
May your day be panic and anxiety free!
In which there are tiny baby tomatoes.
In which I’m just going to go right ahead and say that maybe the reason women didn’t traditionally run universities was because everybody knew we’d start giving out PhDs in queer vegan comic blogging.
This is another anti-feminist rant. I know, I know, nobody cares. I get that. It’s fine. Listen, I know I’m a bossy, frequently abrasive little twerp, but this?
THIS is a motherfucking DOCTORAL THESIS:
Interviews? COMICS? HOW IS HAVING YOUR FRIENDS DRAW COMICS ANY SORT OF “DOCTORAL RESEARCH”?
Do I care about animal welfare? Fuck yeah, I absolutely do. I “came out” as vegetarian at 19 or 20, and am proud to have not eaten hundreds of entire beef cows, chickens, pigs, and goats in the decades since. Am I aware of the life cycle of the commercial milk cow? Yes, I am, and it’s crap, and don’t even get me started on the calves. But I’m also aware that people in those industries aren’t all brazen assholes, and that we’d have an awfully hard time producing dairy products at current volumes from low-yield, hand-pastured, hand-milked Imaginary Idyllic History cows.
Note how the author writes “twelve (12)”, as if there were a real danger that we, as readers, would be overwhelmed by THE ONLY NUMBER ON THE PAGE. Autoethnography sounds like a nifty science-y word… if you’re an idiot who thinks writing about your subjective feelings is some form of scientific research. It’s not. It’s a diary.
And I’d wager you did little to no historical research into vegetarianism, veganism, and the moral and ethical issue surrounding meat-eating, or, you know, actual ethics, let alone any past or present scientific research into diet and metabolism. If you’ve ever even heard of Jain Dharma, let alone possess an in-depth understanding of their philosophy and the ability to speak intelligently about the meaning of “harmlessness” and renunciation, I’d be pleased for you.
But I’m guessing you chose to turn your diary into comics because you didn’t, don’t, and haven’t.
I’m not anti-diary. I majored in English and I’m very interested in diaries, journals, experiences, inner voices, growth and change. And I’m not anti-blog, either. I’ve been blogging since you were in grade school, and there are some insightful-as-fuck pieces scattered in amongst the self-indulgent, whiny crap on this domain, and I wrote IT ALL.
I’m just pissed that I didn’t get a doctorate for it.
THE POTENTIAL USE OF COMICS IN RESEARCH.
I do not think “research” means what you think it means.
And what the fuck does queerness have to do with diet? I’LL TELL YOU. It informs your choices and causes you to avoid certain foods, increasing your chances of self-inflicted malnutrition, but it does not have any impact whatsoever on what nutrients you actually need to thrive. Digestion doesn’t give a FUCK about how you identify, because it’s an actual thing you could study if you weren’t trying to get a PhD in vegan comics blogs.
I’ve been letting my feelings inform my diet for a long time, way longer than you, so I’m an expert in this shit. I get it. The very concept, the very idea of animal suffering is nearly paralyzing. I remember feeling that way, too. It’s the normal tenderness of youth, for some of us. But with perspective there comes an understanding that everything suffers, everything dies, animal products have always been in our species’ diet, and nobody cares if you do or don’t have some cheese, and even you won’t care about such trivial shit when something truly transformative finally hits your life.
I have no issue, honestly, with people who want to study twee shit like gender theory, and hang out in their little enclaves. Knock yourselves out. But it is not academia. The person who wrote the captioned thesis is obviously not equipped to tell the difference between a feeling and a fact, and yet will believe they’re scientifically qualified when they receive a doctoral degree. Meanwhile, in truth, the one single skill they’ve learned is useless: how to torture the language of the diarist into some ersatz, technical-sounding, empty jargon. This is an absolute failure of education. In a decade, when that candidate realizes they don’t actually know anything, they’re going to be furious, and rightly so.
When a person leaves university they should know facts, actual facts, like how things work and where various things come from, and they should be equipped with the ability to learn more things. They should be able to effectively self-educate, to discern between hard and soft sciences, they should have an understanding of human and natural history, and they should be capable of problem-solving. A PhD in blogging is bullshit, and according to Based Mom we can thank third wave feminism for this cloistered, self-obsessed pseudo-scientific bullshit.
Academic feminism co-opted the language style of scientific papers in order to give their own “research” more gravitas and cachet, and all it did was teach a generation of students how to write impenetrable, unreadable crap. As a life-long reader and a regular writer, seeing so much noise in the signal, in an effort to emulate science, and, by extension, men, just bugs the shit out of me.
As an equality feminist from the 1970s, I am dismayed by this new craze. Women are not children. We are not fragile little birds who can’t cope with jokes, works of art, or controversial speakers. Trigger warnings and safe spaces are an infantilizing setback for feminism—and for women.”
– Christina Hoff Sommers, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute
Honestly, if this is what women-run education looks like? I’d rather put those horrible, oppressive white men, you know, the ones who gave us medicine and food preservation, back in charge.
Can you even? I mean, like, the logic is so circular it blows the mind.
