Roads to Safe Places

It's hot. I am bored. I'm unemployed. I have nothing else to do. Still. What the hell is this? Someone posted this on theaudiolibrary  and in spite of better knowledge, I gave it a try. I'd like to believe that this is ironic, but I can't, because this is so close to similar nice-guy narratives. It'd make a good litmus test for feminist allies, though.

It's about a whiny-ass sleep-deprived misogynistic white ~nerdy~ socially inept bully victim finding his muse in a dark and ~edgy white gawth ("post-goth") girl. I don't even know where to start. I'm guessing it's supposed to be "ironic" in that hipster sense that makes me wonder if people are using the same kind of dictionary.

This hero's misogyny and racism is incredible, as is the female characters flatness and her tendency to try and be "one of the guys", and in spite of the hyperbolic tendencies I can't bring myself to believe that this is not an author writing from his own personal and completely unironic experience.

I especially enjoyed the main character's whining about being treated badly when he's walking around thinking of female bodies as decoration, and the casual ass-pats he gets from his Goth-muse for staring at women like pieces of meat, because it's "fine for him" to do that. Because he's still young. Also, it's important to note that his chest-baring muse chooses not to "flaunt" her breasts. Unlike those hussies, you know? She still shows him her boobs, because that's just what girls do instead of explaining about minimizers. With, you know, words.

Oh, or the hero being upset with his one friend and bringing up the fact that he is one of the few white guys who know why black history month exists! So how dare he be upset with the white hero!

Or the countless occasions when the storyline is twisted away from NG's obvious shortcomings in the  human decency department at the moment where he's almost about to get called out on them, and get re-rendered as a pity party for the hero or morphed into a wish-fulfillment sequence. Like the scene in which the "nerd guy", when the "goth girl" calls him out on his obvious sexism, calls her out on her failed, attention-seeking suicide attempt. That'll show her. Or when the girl he lusts after without knowing anything about her just because she is beautiful tells her about how girls sometimes can be shallow, especially if they turn him down. And then makes out with him. Because's he's just that special.

He does seem to realise he's just as bad as the other guys, but the realisation is a mere blip of cognitive activity in a sea of self-centred ignorance, and while I wish readers are supposed to see that and point and laugh, I am not convinced. This appears to be a character honestly trying, and I am not sure whether this is book is someone cleverly telling the story of a privileged-as-fuck male teenager trying and failing to improve, or a failed attempt at writing a story about a quirky, yet relatable and most of all redeemable hero.

While it is possible to read this as the story of an inept narrator with an incredibly ironic focalizer I find it hard, and that still does not mean this book is worth the paper it is printed on, because it is not less annoying than similar and completely unironic accounts. It is so over the top that I wish I could be certain it was meant to be a mental kick in the rear for the target audience, but since I find it hard to believe that an audience who'd find this character relatable or interesting would even be able to see the irony I have my doubts about that working out. Maybe I'm underestimating people, but this book is still a waste of space unless you always desperately wanted to see the subtle workings of a privileged whiny white guys' mind and needed this book to come along to tell you about that, because you hadn't encountered any other sources on that so far.

For me, it's white noise and whining. It's whining about comic books, whining about not getting girls, whining about having a step father NG doesn't approve of, whining about having an unborn sibling, whining about not getting to go to a convention, and curiously enough, the fictional world always bending to his whiny will, which is annoying as hell, as by the middle you, or at least I started hoping for him to finally get a comeuppance. Even though this character clearly is in need of some serious therapeutic help.

In this as in the comic books/graphic novels the hero enshrines, I really, really don't manage to see the appeal.

Let's have some ducklings!

Let me preface this by saying: Don't feed ducks bread. It's unhealthy for them as well as the lake (if you are hell-bent on feeding them, and ducks looking as cute as they do and these birds being tame, anyway I can understand that, either use feeding pellets, or stuff like grapes or peas). The ducks on the Maschsee in Hannover are being fed by the students from the school across the street as well as the scores of visitors to the lake that come every day and they're so used to humans they're practically tame, more so than any other inner city birds I've ever seen. They'll even take food directly from people's hands.

And now on to the mallards and their offspring.



( Many many ducks and ducklings... )

Due to my exams and related stress I had completely forgotten that I actually submitted one of the prompts that I had been considering for minerva_fest .

And it has been claimed!

I'm more excited about this than I probably should be. Still. ♥

That's what I needed to read about after a day of filling in forms.

My most recent acquisition is a German book on essay writing for German students from 1868, though the book I own is a later edition from 1893. The author, Karl Leo Cholevius, a German teacher teaching at a Gymnasium, issues his advice in letter format to an imaginary addressee who is an Abi or A-level student in need of essay writing advice.

The book, Praktische Anleitung zur Abfassung Deutscher Aufsätze (Practical Guide to Writing German Essays) was a success at the time because it wasn't a collection of rhetorical figures of speech, but offered a how-to approach for, as the author says, "weaker students" who might require it. As one of the few of its kind it was an immediate success at the time.

In the second letter (and the second paragraph in the excerpt below), he addresses tutoring and its lack of usefulness when it comes to essay writing:



I'm too lazy to translate, but the short version is that he made the experience that it's usually the sons of rich fathers who'd like some tutoring a couple of months before their finals and think that paying for private lessons will fix everything.

Right now, I can think of three students I've been tutoring in the course of this school year to whom this applies. Heh.

Advertising featured in my brother's oral exam, and for some completely weird reason they never discussed what types of images are used to advertise - female bodies or parts thereof. These weird gender blinkers made me curious - with something as omnipresent as using female, heavily sexualised bodies to sell (other) objects, how can they really arrive at any kind of solid analysis of any kind of advertising, especially in ads about alcohol...?

Crocky and I soon discovered Jean Kilbourne's oeuvre on women in ads through her "Killing Us Softly" series focusing on women in advertising. She also has a documentary on thinness in advertising called "Slim Hopes", and what I liked especially about that "Slim Hopes" is the connection she draws between thinness and moral purity, especially virginity. She has some really neat examples of how the metaphors that used to surround sexuality and moral is now associated with eating because both of those "appetites" have to be controlled.

Some of her main points from the study guide:

She also almost quoted Granny Weatherwax ("There's no greys, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That's what sin is.")


Hardly news, but the documentary/talk is entertaining and interesting to watch even in spite of the annoying watermark and the miniature size.
I can't wait to see if one of our libraries has it.

Want to see something scary?

One of my students failed his last English exam - he got a 6, the worst mark on the German grading system. Very concerned, my boss and I asked him to bring it along, because we wanted to see what on earth could have gone so wrong - he'd been steadily improving, and his last written exam had been a (weakish) 4.

And then we saw the exam paper.
After getting together and poring over the thing together for a couple of minutes, we also have a pretty clear idea about:

1.) why our student failed,
2.) the age of his teacher,
3.) the up-to-dateness of his teaching methods,
4.) how tech-savvy the guy is
5.) which English book is his favourite (I'm thinking this one).

Look: 



Most of the problems the student had resulted from not being able to make sense of the questions - well, obviously, they're seventh graders, and it's 2010, not 1970, for heaven's sake!

"Breeder" is a derogatory term for a cis heterosexual person.

Because, you see, man + woman = babbies, and because no self-respecting queer person would ever be caught having a baby. I have no idea where this term originated, but if I had to hazard a guess I'd say within certain fringes of the cisgay community, given the nice focus on the reproductive organs of ciswomen there, though I am not sure if the main association is meant to be husbandry there. I can't really make myself care, either.

As someone who wants to have children, this term pisses me off incredibly. Not only is it misogynistic, it also completely erases any queer and/or non-cis couples who do have or want to have children, dehumanises children and parents alike and just generally makes you look like a fucking ass if you use it. 

I want children with Crocky. I am not sure how yet, or when, or however we'll be able to afford that, or what kind of bureaucratic nightmare that's going to be, but at some point in my life, I want to raise children with this woman I am married to. And fucking hell, this is not going to be easy, and a lot of it will be every bit as dehumanising as the term "breeder" suggests.

First, getting one half of our child's genetic material united with the other is very likely going to be done in a laboratory, or by a doctor the way it's routinely done by real life breeders on farms. Since it's "sittenwidrig", "against public policy/immoral" under German law, we'll either have to go abroad, where the cheapest ~breeding~ session still costs about €5000 (and there's no saying if this takes off the first time around).

And then, once that genetic material has happily united with its other half and my bank account lost a small fortune and we are reasonably certain that it's going to stay where it's growing, the next nightmare begins - adoption. The process takes at least a year, though stepchild adoption is the same for both heterosexuals and homosexuals. You file for it, and then someone comes round to examine your relationship, as you have to be found capable of taking care of a child by the state. Officials come into your home and interview you to see if you are fit to parent, what your emotional relationship to your child is like, how healthy you are, what your financial situation is.

For all of this, you have to have the all-clear of the errant biological parent. If they're not known, you get a waiver, though, again, the case has to be examined by officials.

And then, there's only the everyday misunderstandings and nightmares when encountering a system in which families like ours are not common (there are around 13k children living with queer parents in Germany), the stereotypes, the idiots who want to debate calmly as to whether it's a good idea at all that people like me have children, and queer idiots who think that the term "breeder" is a good choice of words when referring to heterosexuals.

OK, maybe this is harder than I thought and not as much a matter of common sense.

Let's imagine you are having a fight with someone and they suddenly really, really do not want to have a conversation with you that moment. Now imagine they are walking away from you.

At this point, how do you react?

- physically pull them back towards you and keep them there.
- let them go away and try again later.

From the position of the person trying to get away, what do you think is the preferrable option?

EDIT: are there any circumstances that make this believable behaviour that you'd be comfortable with and wouldn't make you go "wtf was that", as long as we're still talking to characters who are equals?

I can't believe that this is something that's an issue with adult film makers when filming scenes in which two non-abusive heterosexual adults who are in a relationship are having a heated discussion.

( A list of first impressions. ) So, overall, this is a really enjoyable movie and so, so much better than Colour of Magic or Hogfather, and I can't wait for the second part.

One of the learners in my tutoring centre has the most interesting pronunciation. She was reading a text the other day and it took a while for me to figure out what she was talking about.





Oh. And "sought", forgot about that one. I think she was talking about a sword, about which she had thoughts. But I can't be certain.

I'll get back into the discussion on home schooling later (thanks for the input!), but right now I have to moan about Hannover's GL(b) pride event. Granted, it's a GL event by tradition, bisexuals sneaked in only later, and trans folks' movements seem to be pretty disassociated from the LGB stuff that is going on in Germany. Still.

See, this year, there's fifty events, many of them sports events organised by our LGB sports club. However, out of these fifty events,  most of which are aimed at everybody, twelve events are for gay men only, and only six events are aimed at women in general. Why is that?

And some of the titles are unintentionally hilarious:

Stadtrundgang „Frauen an der Leine“ (the Leine being a river, though the name has a double meaning, making that either "Walking tour: Women on the Leine" - or "Walking tour: Women on a leash").

Offene Werkstatt! Für Frauen, Lesben und Mädchen. ("Open workshop! For women, lesbians and girls" - cool, lesbians aren't women now. Awesome).

But there are also some interesting events, and I'm thinking about going to some of the events on offer, especially the meeting with the people who do educational events at schools.

I regularly check our government's official e-petition page. It's a political barometer as good as any to find out what are the burning issues on my compatriots' minds, and naturally these days, there are petitions on our laws concerning sexual crimes and sexual predators, petitions against financial bail-outs in the Euro-zone, but there is also this:


"Stop funding the expensive and unpredictable LHC experiments at CERN and work to include clear objectives for the conservation our landscapes, biodiversity, health and human dignity into the application guidelines!" - For those of you who speak German, do click on that link and read his explanation of why we need to support his petition and find out why LHC experiments are esoteric.

There's also a petition which has 2k supporters right now, 2k too many in my eyes - a petition to decriminalise homeschooling in Germany, which I am really not a fan of. I like our compulsory school attendance and having children educated by professionals trained and paid to do so rather than their parents - unless these parents are trained to do so.

His main arguments are the lack of ethical and moral values students are taught public schools, mobbing, violence, negative socialisation, lack of motivation, falling standards, lack of support according to the student's individual aptitude and talents.

While I'm aware that especially for gifted students with gifted and didactically savvy parents this model might be ideal, especially if the child was subject to mobbing and endemic boredom, I doubt that it's a model that ought to be encouraged on a larger scale in Germany right now. It's not a model that's likely to be successful for families without a lot of cultural capital.
Also, I don't know about countries which do allow homeschooling, but I'd like to believe that enough trust in our educational system is warranted to make changes in the system and our institutions a solution even for those who are currently so unhappy with it that they'd like to take their children out of school.

Ok, people. Imagine you are a gun enthusiast, owned guns, and wanted to keep them in your house.

Now, pick your option of choice for gun storage from these two.


           

Made your choice? Awesome!

And now for storing ammunition. What looks like the sensible option here?

          

If you chose the first option in both cases, you ought to meet the father of last year's German school shooter Tim, who seems to have similar ideas about safety as you do. His son surprisingly got hold of both gun and ammunition and became, well, a school shooter with them.

( Seriously, wth. )

I received this in the mail today:



"Vielen Dank für Ihre Bestellung. Ich wünsche Ihnen viel Freude und viel Erfolg (falls es für eine Prüfung ist :D) mit dem Buch. Herzliche Grüße, SR."

"Thanks a lot for your order. I hope you enjoy it and are successful (in case it's for an exam :D ) with the book. All the best, SR. "

Big women like sexy underwear, too? And there are ads for that underwear? Neat, I thought.
How did the network react? "Omg, it's a fat person in underwear, cover your eyes! Take it down!"

This is the ad in question:


Also, this post about going to the OB/GYN while fat made me incredibly angry. It shouldn't have, after all the other nice stuff I've heard about people's GYNs (sexual harassment, violation, humiliation, scare tactics into submitting to a procedure, dismissing concerns and pain as "this doesn't hurt, ever, so pull yourself together" etc., and that's just the people I know offline).

Yes, I get it. Fat people ought to blob along elsewhere and not subject themselves to the innocent eyes of other people (even though, as junkscience claims, this will make perfectly thin women worry about their body image so deep, deep down that even they themselves don't realise). Yeah. I'll go do some homework and let my lifesaving chocolate nuts prepare me for boobquake.

That also goes for reviews on Amazon! Stupid me. Still, reviewers, if you have to sign your review with "BTW, I'm neither racist nor religious, just my opinion", then you ought to know that there's something wrong with what you were writing in the first place?

Also, I just read through the entries for the 4th lesbian literary award hosted by Édition El!es (if you speak German and like bad writing, check it out!), and those entries scare me. They read like something that has a high potential to end up on either canonrants - only that stylistically, I'd expect that kind of stuff on FFR or verreiss_mich . Though considering the host I probably should not be surprised - apparently, they're publishing books of authors who terminated their contract with this publisher and changed to the other notable lesbian publisher, the Konkursbuch, and there's also been trouble concerning authors not getting paid for their work. Classy.

You know, if you start your Master thesis by saying that you're only going to consider male homosexuals in your study because they clearly have it worse (oh god I wish this was more of a paraphrase) as well as because there's so little data on female homosexuals (well, fair enough), because there are so many men writing about homosexuals (...?), that doesn't make you look that good to start with, but I was willing to read your paper, anyway.

But then you proceed to make your case, saying that those pesky foreigners, especially muslim foreigners, hate gay people, want to steal from them and beat them up. What the hell. I was looking for a sensitive insight into sex ed aimed at muslim students regarding homosexuality in Germany, not xenophobic garbage.

I've enrolled in one of the arts classes (which are really cheap, they're €25 for 18 sessions) that are offered by Crocky's university for students. I'm looking forward to it, and I'm quite surprised at how much fun drawing is - after my nearly-ten-year-break I didn't really expect it to be anything other than frustrating, slow, and boring, but now, after two months, I'm quite glad I have taken this up as a hobby again.

What I'm especially pleased with is that I am so uninvested in it that learning to improve ought to be painfree - if this were teaching or writing, my ego would get in the way, and I'm really insecure about things I'm invested in and I'd be crushed if I found that I'd made a mistake because it is so, SO important for me to Get Things Right. Since this is drawing and I've only been doing it for two months, I couldn't care less.

Also, Crocky says she'd come along, and I'd love to get to do things with her.

Job-wise, I've filled in my application as an official emergency supply teacher for this summer. I like the sound of that.

EDIT:  lordhellebore 's post just reminded me: Happy Easter, everyone! I hope you're having a great weekend.

Unlike Hellebore's Flist, I'm in OMG! mood not because of Easter, but because of Dragons and Vikings ♥. I don't know how I could have possibly missed this, but I learned only yesterday about the existence of "How To Train Your Dragon", the movie and the books. Male character and obvious annoyances aside, I'm incredibly excited about this. Even though the main dragon looks like a cross between a cat and a tadpole, what's up with that?

Still. There are Vikings!!, and someone on the giant love-fest that is DeviantArt told me there was going to be a shieldmaiden. Yes, she's most likekly going to be female action heroine stock, I know, but I like to think that that'll be counteracted by the awesomeness of Vikings.

Vikings. And dragons. I've already heard that whoever did the runes in that movie ought to have read up on them properly and not used English spelling, and how did someone raised by two guys with fake Hoot's Mon Scots get an American accent...?



Still. Vikings.

and cats tadpoles Stitch dragons!!

Sometimes I suspect that my main reason for hoping I'll find a job as soon as possible come June is that I'll get around filing for state support. There are no words for how scared I am of those forms, filling in those forms some wrong way, getting things wrong in general.

They always make me seriously need cheering up, so I looked at funny HP comics on DA and tried to cheer myself up reading the "Help with Life " forum (short version of one of my favourite threads today: you're suicidal? Get your lazy ass to a gym already!).

I'm a big fan of ~ProtoWilson's comics which have Snape and a very short angry arts teacher OC insert (example here), which never fail to cheer me up.

Oh, and *rufftoon's Reality Shift strips, which are also awesome (the first one is here.)

Now I wish those forms would just either magically fill in themselves or dissolve...