By Beauty Damned

You're Gonna Hear It, Mister

Well here I am. My week of slothing and studying has been glorious so far. I really feel like I'm getting better at this SAT stuff, understanding the math enough to get through the sections with some confidence, which is great. I spend every day taking practice tests and trying to learn from my mistakes. I'm not scoring perfect yet, but I am doing really well and I'm determined to score skyhigh on my reading and writing, so even if my math score isn't tops, everything else makes up for it.

Taking this week off is the best thing I possibly could have done for myself right now. I needed a break from work and I really needed to feel like I'm truly in the final stages of preparation for this test. I know it's not life and death, but it will bring me so much satisfaction if I do really well. My biggest fear is that I'm going to get in there on test day and the essay question is going to be some obtuse, one dimensional blurb that I am expected to write two pages about in 25 minutes. I am scared that I will get halfway through writing my essay and then realize that I'm completely off track and that I should have structured it totally differently, and "oh my god how am I going to fix this in time?" The essay is the first section of the test. I am scared I'm going to panic as soon as I read that first question and I'm going to screw it up. I can't think those things. I practice writing at least one essay every day and pray that I will have it down to such a science by the time test day comes that I won't even have to think about it, I'll just turn that bitch out. I really do feel that if I don't get top score on my essay, I'm going to be pissed enough to take the test a second time.

The weather has been cruddy the last couple days, which is kind of good because it keeps me glued to my studying, but it also seems to suck the energy right out of my body when the sky is gray and I can see the wind pushing and pulling on the trees outside. It's weird not to go to work for a week. You romanticize the notion when you're sitting at work wishing you were elsewhere, but when you're home all day you really have to stay busy so that you don't feel like a total sloth when the sun goes down and you realize you haven't done jackshit all day. I've been really good this week though, so I have cause to pat myself on the back, though I did binge out on television until three in the morning last night after studying. You know when you get so zoned out on television that you become totally indiscriminate about what you're watching?

Tivo is bad. After I'm done watching the shows I've recorded, I browse other shows to record. Then I watch shows that I haven't recorded and don't intend to record, which is where things get really out of hand. Like at 2:30 a.m. when you're watching a show about the behind the scenes of the show Desperate Housewives, when you don't even watch Desperate Housewives. Why the fuck am I watching a show about a show that I don't even watch? It's not right.

I watched a couple of Jon Stewart episodes last night. Watching that show is always a mixed bag of emotions. Laughing because it's fucking hilarious, and banging my head against the wall because it reveals things that are, painfully, a part of our reality that I wish did not exist.

Samantha Bee conducted an interview with two women who had been fired from a company called Weyco for being smokers. The company decided to test all of their employees for nicotine in the blood stream and they fired any employee who came up positive. Weyco did it to save money on health insurance. The fired employees were understandably outraged. Samantha then interviewed one of Weyco's executives, who just happened to be one of the biggest assholes alive. Among his littany of discrimatory remarks, he stated that it would be reasonable to fire an older employee and replace them with a younger, "better looking" employee. He went on to state that he might be offended if he saw an albino working at McDonalds because he doesn't want to have to see those people. I never know if these interviewees are for real or not. But if so, that guy should be shot in the kneecaps.

More disturbing is the stuff that you KNOW is real, like Jon's video footage of a rally at a "Megachurch" in Kentucky in support of a rule change that would make it impossible for democrats to block republican judicial nominations. The scene at the Megachurch looks more like the Republican National Convention than it does a ceremony of worship, especially with Bill Frist and other well known political/religious figures joining in on the action. It was a jubilantly angry affair during which they all went off the meter about how gay marriage, women's rights and the left's insistance on having a secular government is destroying the very fabric of American life and how any opposition to republican judicial nominations is an attempt to interfere with their right to free speech and religion. That's when my brain begins to steadily bang itself against the front of my cranium in frustration. I'm not kidding when I say it hurts. Jon points out the most hardhitting irony in everything. Not that there's any shortage of irony in politics these days...but that show really captures the essence of hypocrisy in politics and laziness in the media. Because it's on television and they are able to show many video clips, the point comes across without much explanation necessary.

The Christian Right is really on a wild crusade. Drunk with all the power they've gained in Washington, they forge ahead for the rest. I feel like I'm looking back at the history books, at the misdeeds and machinations of men long gone. But I'm not. I'm looking at reality. Today. The zealots are on the warpath. And much as I wish I wasn't, I'm worried.

While many other countries are making leaps and bounds in legalizing gay marriage, many Americans stand as ninnies against progress, siding with all this grandstanding about the sanctity of marriage and family values. Nothing makes me angrier than hearing people talk about "traditional family values," as if they themselves are some exemplary beacon of what morality and family values are all about. Half the people in that goddamn Megachurch have probably been divorced. But they don't want same sex couples to marry because it will violate the sanctity of marriage? Where do these people get their self righteousness from?

Meanwhile, some dickhead on CNN sights a report that scientific studies have shown that kids raised by two parents of the same sex turn out fucked up. The anchor does not bother to call it out as the false claim that it is, instead nodding and smiling and dicking off on her journalistic responsibility. I have a study right here that shows how Mormons, Catholics, Christians and Jehovah's Witnesses fuck their kids up. I conducted it all by myself. I found that by teaching their children intolerance, cloaked discrimination and effective tools of self repression, their kids grow up to be: a) just like their parents (not good); b) floozies, prostitutes, sociopaths and drug addicts (a little better, but still not good); or c) the exact opposite of their parents (it's lucky when it happens!)

Posted by Maria at April 28, 2005 01:05 AM | TrackBack