Highschool English

Books I remember reading in highschool and liking:

Their Eyes Were Watching God (my first AP English teacher was in love with this one)

Wuthering Heights (But the ending sucked. I recently got an oddly romantic email about it from an old highschool friend. Go figure.)

parts of Canterbury Tales (I'm descended from Chaucer's sister-in-law Katherine Swynford)

The Killer Angels (actually this was eighth grade, I'm cheating)

The Great Gatsby (the high point of ninth grade english)

Books I read in highschool and hated:

Heart of Darkness (BLECH. It was a good teaching tool, being dense and short, but BLECH)

The Yellow Wallpaper (short story, not a book, but still, I detested it)

Lord of the Flies (Really now. Blech.)

Crime and Punishment (boring, nasty, long, and the epilogue doesn't make a lick of sense in context)

I'm not sure if I had to read Huckleberry Finn until college, actually? But I'm oddly indifferent to it.

I really thought I could remember more. Apparently, most of what we read was forgettable dreck? At least I was never made to read Ayn Rand.

Of all the things to be annoyed by

It suddenly ticks me off that in Discovery Channel shows about sex and sexual attraction, hetero sex is always man-on-top.

Seriously?

Sooooo...

I decided upon graduating to take a year off of school.

That year is up.

Now what?

Man, a BA in Literature gets you nothing.

Anybody have any ideas on how to become an editor?

Anybody have any advice on getting really awesome recommendation letters for gradschool?

Anybody know if you can put a key back on a keyboard when even the little squishy doohickey underneath is gone? My quotation mark key popped off...more than a year ago and I'm sick of it. I managed to write a thesis without it, too.

In Which a Hobby Reinforces Harmful Gender Policing

I love it when blogs I would categorize as "fun" cover topics I call "serious." So imagine my delight upon finding The Studioist, and this post:

Thoughts on Man Caves, Mom Caves, and Gendered Space

As the Guiness scientists would say, BRILLIANT!

The comments continue the goodness, with such snippets as:

"When I commented that “I think this personal space arms race is often a sign of culturally-reinforced familial dysfunction”, what I meant is that there are strong cultural narratives about how families should work that undermine families."

"...the “caveman” image insults everyone–it suggests that in the home or family sphere, men are incompetent, monosyllabic oafs, leaving women to be the Responsible Caretaker 24/7."

"I also found it strange that they call it a mom cave. As if women in general can’t have a place to themselves, unless they are a mom."

"Ready"

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Quibble

A number of blogs I read are written by women who are pregnant. Most of these are my cotton-candy blogs, that talk about clothes and jewelry and interior design and have pictures of cats. So I guess I shouldn't have particularly high expectations about this kind of thing, even when said bloggers are open about considering themselves kind of liberal, and mostly it's just a mistaken misuse of the word--

But I hate it when they refer to a fetus's "gender."

I mean, the kid is still a cashew-shaped blob with a tail, floating about in your amniotic fluid, and you're already talking about how it will conform to societal pressures and expectations about its appearance and behavior.

You mean your baby's sex, people. SEX.

Word to the Eyeball-Wise

Contact lenses are a prescription device.

It is federal law that you cannot be given contact lenses without a valid prescription. Contact lens prescriptions, according to federal law, only last one year.

No, you cannot "OD on a contact." We know that. But it is still a prescription device that comes into direct contact with your eye.

SERIOUS SHIT can happen when you wear your contacts incorrectly. If we give you contacts when your Rx is expired and you come back with a scratched cornea and an ulcer that cause you to lose your eye (YES THIS IS POSSIBLE, dumbass) that would be all our fault because we broke the law, and people would lose their licenses and it would be very, very bad for all of us.

So no, we can't "just" give you contacts, any more than we can "just" give you, say, a pacemaker.

PRESCRIPTION DEVICE, people.