Is It Hypocracy Or Something Else?

I write this knowing that I could alienate quite a few people I know if they were ever to read it. I don't necessarily want to do that, but this is how I feel and I just really want to get it out there.
For the past three summers I've been a counselor for the teen program at a Unitarian camp. And I really enjoy it; the kids are all good kids, I love the other counselors and I get a free week of food and lodging. It's awesome.
The problem I have is with the Unitarians. They try to sell their church as "We don't care what you believe, as long as you believe something," and "All are welcome" but the whole message of tolerance that they seem to think they're promoting is often clouded by a very "Us and Them" mentality.
Sometimes it's stated outright and sometimes it isn't, but I often get a very "We're so great because we're so accepting, not like some other people," be they other religions or non-hippies or whatever. That attitude being just as exclusive and segregatey as people who openly hate other religions or races or groups of people.
It's like the thing that sets them apart, their supposed acceptance of all people, is the thing that gives them a sort of holier than thou attitude. It bugs me.
Some of the other counselors keep expecting me to show up one year with a chalice tattoo but it's not going to happen. I enjoy camp for my one week out of the year, then I go back to my real life. It's fun for a while but it's not for me.
To be honest, I know some Unitarians in my "real life," too and they bug me even more than the people at camp. Now that I think about it, the "Us and Them" mentality is only ever implied at camp. The UUs I know out here are far more likely to state it outright and not even notice the double standard.
Sorry, I'm getting all bitter. I should stop now before things get ugly. To make myself feel better, I shall tie it all together with a line from Illumination by Gogol Bordello (which I love and makes me happy):
"Of course there is no Us and Them, but Them, they do not think the same."

Be seeing you.
-Sally

Songs That Are All A Very Specific Time

Always by Seapony
Any Minute Now from The Simpsons
Any Time At All by The Beatles
April Fool's Day by Rufus Wainwright
Back In '64 by The Rutles
Daybreak by Harry Nilsson
Day Of The Dead by Voltaire
Early Christmas Morning by Cyndi Lauper
Early In The Morning by Harry Nilsson
4 AM by Madness
Friday by Rebecca Black
Halloween by The Misfits
In The Middle Of The Night by Lick The Tins
Last Christmas by Wham
Last Friday Night by Katy Perry
Last Night by The Strokes
Midnight by Red Hot Chili Peppers
Monday Monday by The Mamas And The Papas
Monday Morning by Death Cab For Cutie
Monday Morning by Fleetwood Mac
Monday Tuesday Wednesday by The Kinks
1985 by Bowling For Soup
1989 by Mindless Self Indulgence
1941 by Harry Nilsson
1917 by The Fiery Furnaces
1979 by Smashing Pumpkins
Nowadays from Chicago
Nowadays by Eels
Right Now by Van Halen
Same Time Next Year by Johnny Mathis
Saturday Morning by Eels
Saturday Night by Bay City Rollers
Saturday Night by The Misfits
Saturday Night Sunday Morning by Madness
Summer Of '69 by Brian Adams
Summertime from Porgy And Bess
Sunday Morning by No Doubt
Sunday Morning by Velvet Underground
Suppertime from Little Shop Of Horrors
Suppertime from You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown
The Good Old Days by Eels
The Morning by Eels
The Morning After by Faith No More
The Night by Voltaire
The Night Before by The Beatles
3 AM by Matchbox Twenty
Thursday by Conan O'Brien
Today by Smashing Pumpkins
Tomorrow from Annie
Tomorrow by Wall Of Voodoo
Tonight from West Side Story
Tonight Tonight by Smashing Pumpkins
Tonight Tonight Tonight by Genesis
Tuesday Afternoon by The Moody Blues
Tuesday Morning by Melissa Etheridge
Tuesday Morning by The Pogues
2082 by They Might Be Giants
Two Minutes Till Lunch by Wall Of Voodoo
Wednesday by Tori Amos
Wednesday Morning 3 AM by Simon And Garfunkel
Yesterday by The Beatles

HONORABLE MENTION: every song on Suspended Animation by Fantomas

If anybody has any others, please let me know. I enjoy lists.

Be seeing you.
-Sally

Disturbing Images Comparison Study

Okay, so, I've heard that Mr. Bungle's only music video was banned from MTV back in the day due to "disturbing imagery."



Yeah, I guess I can see how that might be kind of creepy. You've got clown masks, doll abuse, guys who I guess are supposed to look like they've been lynched even though they're clearly not hanging by their necks. Spooky, I guess.
On the other hand, I remember a summer when MTV played the video for I Stay Away by Alice In Chains roughly sixty two quatrillion times.



I had to run out of the room every time this damn video came on. Creepy claymation, an actual storyline (as opposed to the unconnected images of the Bungle video) about violent deaths and the entire ruin of a circus caused by something as small and random as a fly, not to mention the fact that all the "accidents" were caused with malice aforethought by the dude who brought the flies into the circus. This video still scares me.
The video for Travolta / Quote Unquote is too random and blurry to be disturbing. I Stay Away, however, makes me want to hide under the bed and cry.

Be seeing you.
-Sally

Oh, Fen Sieve

I'm fairly laid back about a lot of stuff. Not everything, clearly; go to any number of the entries I've written on this blog about commercials that piss me off. But overall, I manage to take a lot in stride. In fact, there are only three things that offend me so solidly and consistently that the very idea of them make my blood begin to figuratively boil and my hands literally turn into very tense fists:

1) Katy Perry - It baffles me that Katy Perry has a career of any kind, but it especially baffles me that she has a musical career. She can't sing on key, she can't sing in syncopation and her music is Just Terrible. Sitting here trying to put my thoughts on this woman into words is making me so angry that my hands are actually shaking. I can't even count how many typos I've had to go back and correct in this paragraph.
I managed to ignore Katy Perry for a very, very long time until Firework became a painfully inescapable song. The first time I heard it I figured it was the innocuous kind of bad and I could learn to tune it out. I held onto that belief for as long as it took the song to reach the chorus, when she sings "Baby you're a FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIREWORRRRRK!" and (I goddamn nearly had a seizure of hatred typing that, by the way) the entire listening audience with half a brain wants to burst its own eardrums with the most painful implement it can find. Nobody ever taught Katy Perry that singing really loudly is not the same thing as singing on key and the fact that a lot of people can't hear how flat she is really bothers me. Has the whole world gone tone deaf? It physically hurts me that this woman has fans.
I would have a paragraph here about how much her lyrics suck but that would involve me going and finding her lyrics online and verifying that the lyrics I thought I heard are the actual ones in the songs, and I just cannot bring myself to do that.
Her music is so awful it makes me mad when I can't even hear it. I was at lunch with a couple of friends about a year ago and in the middle of the meal, for no good reason, I started snapping at everything either of them said and pretty abruptly ended a conversation. To fill the sudden silence one of my friends asked "Is this a Katy Perry song?" It was at that moment I realized that there was any music on in the restaurant at all. Couldn't hear it before then, I was too busy enjoying lunch and chatting with friends to notice it. And that wretched woman's disgusting voice still burrowed into my brain and pissed me off.
My friend Kristin hates Katy Perry, too, but she always says something that I fundamentally disagree with; while complaining that she can't sing and should go away, Kristin always says "Sure, she's beautiful, but..." That's not true. Katy Perry is not beautiful. When you can actually see the arrogance in a person's eyes, that negates any physical beauty they may possess. I have never, ever seen a picture or a video of Katy Perry where not only her eyes but her entire face wasn't shrieking "I am wonderful. Everything I do is amazing and you are shit by comparison." The worst is that one video where she's made up to look "awkward" or whatever; they've given her frizzy hair and braces as though that somehow can hide the fact that she's completely full of herself. That video looks to me like "Look at me, I'm making myself ugly so you peons will think you can relate to the goddess that I am."
I don't ever support assholes on the internet saying famous people should die or kill themselves; that's just mean. I will say, however, with great sincerity, that someday when I'm, like, ninety two and I hear the news that Katy Perry has died of old age, I will not feel anything remotely resembling remorse. In fact, I will probably laugh. Because she's awful. And I hate her. And absolutely everything about her offends every cell in my body.
Oh, and I forgot to mention the preview for that fucking self serving documentary she made about herself. In 3-D, probably just to make sure everyone is absolutely certain how big her boobs are. The entire preview makes me want to vomit, but one moment moreso than all the rest of it: the moment where they show her standing on a stage and telling her audience "Thank you for believing in my weirdness." What are you, twelve? Because going around and telling people "I'm weird" is something twelve year olds do. If you haven't grown out of that by the end of high school, I'm just not going to respect you (unless you're Weird Al Yankovic; he is my personal hypocracy in regards to that rule). You're stupid, shallow, childish and desperate for attention, Katy Perry, and referring to yourself as "weird" is just proof of that.

2) when people tell me I won't know something because it's "before your time" - That's no reason for me to not know something! I know about plenty of things that are considered "before my time." I'm a fan of Peter Lorre, The Beatles and MGM musicals from the 1940s and '50s. I like the Marx Brothers, The Addams Family, Cab Calloway and vintage advertising. I could tell you more about 1930s horror movies than I should know, considering I haven't seen half the movies I know great swaths of information about. How dare you use my age to assume what I know and what I don't!
Generally if I don't know about something, it's for one of two reasons: I'm either uninterested or it's never come up before. That's it. I don't know where Tanzania is because I'm not terribly interested in geography and I don't know who directed Gone With The Wind because I don't care. I fuckin' hate that movie.

3) people who are easily offended - For the past several summers I've volunteered as a counselor for the teen program at a summer camp in the midwest. Every year the teens have a night that for a long time was called Slut Night (a name that originated from an act of solidarity with a girl who was being picked on for wearing club clothes to a dance). This year some "concerns" were raised about the name of the event and the coordinator of the teen program had to sit through meetings with parents and an interested third party about the changing of the night's name.
My immediate reaction to that was "Tell them to go to hell." Do these people really not know how teenagers talk? The kids all know the night as Slut Night; it doesn't matter what the "official" name is, they're going to keep calling it Slut Night.
Various politically correct (which is code for "fucking stupid") names were kicked around. The absolute worst was Respect Night because "we're teaching the kids to be respectful of everybody regardless of how they dress," which makes me throw up in my mouth a little. Someone suggested Come As You're Not Night, to which the interested third party said "Why does it have to be Come As You're Not? Why not Come As You Are?" Because they do that every night, you fucking idiot! That's boring! The point is to get dressed up.
They settled on Costume Night, everybody kept calling it Slut Night in the real world and I nearly gouged my eyes out with how retarded I thought the whole situation was.
"Retarded," by the way, is a word I never used to use for fear of offending someone. Then I realized my immediate reaction to hearing people get offended by words was always something along the lines of "Suck my dick, you uptight cunt" and decided I may as well just use the words that I feel best express what I think or feel at any given time.
And I do censor myself. I don't use racial slurs, for instance, because I'm not fond of them. I honestly think they're kind of horrible; I'm not in favor of the idea of racial superiority. I do, however, have a friend who throws around racial slurs like they're confetti and the most severe my reaction to that ever gets is "Huh. That's not the word I would have chosen." They don't offend me. It's really difficult to offend me with words all on their own.
The attitude of people who do get offended by words, however, offends me deeply. There always seems to be a smugness to it that makes me want to physically hurt something.
A month or so ago I read a story about some comedian (I forget who; it wasn't one I'm a fan of) making a rape joke and, when an audience member got offended, made her the star of her own rape joke. It turned into a whole big thing, people on the internet got all uppity and the guy was forced to make a public apology. Because I was curious I looked up what the guy said and, honestly, I thought it sounded rather tame. I'm fans of a lot of comedians who have told rape jokes. George Carlin, for instance. I don't recall there ever being a backlash against him for it, either. I think the only thing wrong with what this other guy said is that his rape joke wasn't funny. Maybe that's why people got offended.
I hope so.

Be seeing you.
-Sally

An Amendment To Lovely Ladies In Entertainment

I was going to just avoid the whole subject until I remembered one of the parties involved was on my Lovely Ladies list and ... well, okay, it goes like this:
From what I've pieced together from the internet news and debates I could actually stand to read before giving up, Spoony got fired from ThatGuyWithTheGlasses because Lupa started a fight with him over something he posted on Twitter. The post was apparently a rape joke (the only thing about it I found offensive was the fact that it was pretty much entire incomprehensible) that he almost immediately apologized for. Months later, Obscurus Lupa saw it, got mad, Some Stuff Happened (this is the part where stories get muddled and Sally gets fed up) and Spoony got fired.
I like Spoony. I think he's funny. I also think Lupa is funny but, to be honest, I'd kind of lost interest in her reviews anyway. Remembering to watch them was like a chore. I still think her Radu Reviews are good and I'll probably watch them if she posts more. But on the whole I had pretty much stopped watching both Lupa and Spoony by the time all that shit went down.
And, in the spirit of nonpartisanship, not knowing the whole situation and really not knowing the whole situation, I hereby eject Obscurus Lupa from my Lovely Ladies In Entertainment list.
Her replacement is Macedonian singer-songwriter Kaliopi Bukle.



She's beautiful, her singing is amazing and she isn't in the center of any controversies I am aware of.
Tune in next time when I go off about people getting offended by stuff.

Be seeing you.
-Sally

I'm Pretty Sure This Is The Coolest Man Alive

I'm certainly not as cool as him and I bet you aren't either.

Be seeing you.
-Sally

Sally Still Hates Commercials

This entry will have to be done without the aide of a video because I can't remember what company (or whatever) released the ad and searching Youtube came up with nothing. So I shall just have to describe to you what I saw and why I am irrationally pissed (like I do).
It was a public service announcement this time, rather than an ad for a product and it went something like this:

A girls' soccer game is happening and, therefore, girls are playing soccer. Suddenly loudspeakers around the field start shouting stuff like "Is your body ready for bikini weather?" and "Wearing too much makeup prevents face rot!" and "Probably some stuff about impressing guys!" Then half the soccer players turn into fourteen year old prostitutes and wobble off the field in leopard print platform shoes while the other girls look confused because the game isn't over yet. Then an announcer says something about "When they're being barraged by messages like this, is it a surprise that more girls drop out of sports by some young age than boys do?" and then something about girls not reaching their full potential because of that.

Okay, look. Playing sports is not what makes a girl reach her full potential. How dare you imply that I will never be successful as a human being because I'm a chick who never played sports? I hate sports. I'm not a competitive person. That doesn't mean that by age fourteen I was prancing around in leopard print platform shoes and enough makeup to poison a small animal.
I wore makeup to school exactly once; I was in seventh grade and some girls were making fun of me because I didn't wear makeup. So the next day I came to school with some smeared on hideous green eyeshadow, because I thought that somehow that proved my theory that wearing makeup every day is stupid (I don't quite follow that logic now, but it made sense to me at the time). Then the girls made fun of me for wearing makeup wrong. Whatever.
The point is, the ad implies that if you don't play sports you'll turn into a mini whore and that's bullshit. People are who they are; I knew plenty of girls in high school who played sports and then, off the field, looked and acted a lot like the little hookers from the commercial. The two aren't mutually exclusive.
I've never been one for dressing skanky and wearing too much makeup (and somewhere out in the world there is televised proof that I can't walk in high heels). I've also never been into sports. That doesn't mean that I'm a failure as a woman, or that I can't reach my full potential because I was never involved in wearing a uniform and trying to prove I'm better than people who wear a different uniform by throwing and kicking stuff. I'm not good at competitve sports. I'm not good at competitive anything. I'm good at writing, I'm decent at singing and I'm a fine baker. My hope is that someday I can make a living as a writer, and I'm slowly working toward that goal.
On the flipside, girls who play sports may become failures in life just as much as anyone else. Sports don't make you a better or more successful person; they make you a sports player.
Anyone, I repeat, anyone, can be a success and anyone can be a failure, regardless of what they do, how they act and what they look like. The commercial makes sense on the surface (I guess; my gut reaction was to find it offensive but I can see why people would find it convincing) but if you really start to think about it, it means nothing. Every circumstace is personal and cannot be generalized the way the ad generalizes them. Sure, maybe some chicks who used to play sports and quit to go be mini whores would have had better (or whatever) lives if they'd stuck with the sports. But I firmly stand by my belief that people are who they are and they're going to continue being themselves regardless of what choices they make. If they're failures, maybe they would have made the choices that led to them becoming failures regardless of whether they stuck with soccer or not.
Reaching one's full potential has nothing to do with sports. It has to do with work and effort and planning and knowing what steps to take to get to where you want to go. A person can do that without having ever stepped foot on a soccer field. A person can also do that while wearing platform shoes and a pound of lipstick.
Hell, a person can do that while playing soccer in platform shoes and a pound of lipstick. I might actually watch that game.

Be seeing you.
-Sally