I Rant, Therefore I Am
Sometimes I think I wouldn't want to rant at all, if only I never got out of bed. Or turned on the radio. Or read any of the newspapers piled next to my side of the bed. Ok, nevermind, the urge to rant seems to be inevitable.
1. I'm still unpacking boxes of books and ran across Florence King's book Reflections in a Jaundiced Eye. Reading some of it made me think, whoa, Flossie, lighten up, willya? She's got a poorly-disguised sense of grievance that makes her writing just shimmer with stupid-smart resentment. She hates the 80's flavor of feminism because (shocking!) there are women in positions of power who take advantage and do stupid crap. Yo, Flo, listen up: there will be equality between the sexes when there are as many incompetent women as men in the workplace. Just because you admire the overachieving earlier generation of self-sacrificing working women doesen't mean their sucessors are a bunch of losers.
All I can ask is, why isn't Miss King writing science ficton? Not to dis sci fi (ok, I'll dis anyway), but that's a crowd loaded with that same old, oh, I'm smarter than my peers but what does it get me? They told me to go to school but then mocked me for being smart, blah blah blah. Hey, all of you: maybe you were mocked because it was easy and they were insecure assholes. But letting your childhood asshole peers mark you for the rest of your life is stupid and that's why there's therapy. Get some and shut up about it already.
But Miss King's decline as a writer is distressing because she was so brilliant in Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady. That book is fantastic and I'm pissed that I've apparently lost the better work while hanging onto the crappy one. Which will be on its way to Half Price Books, and soon.
1.a. And another thing: in one of her columns for the Raleigh News and Observer (a fairly crappy paper, good only on the literary page and the sports page during basketball season) she remarked in passing that she underlines as she reads books, in pen, even in library books. God, I hate that. Fuck you, Florence, along with all the other underliners-in-pen-in-library-books. I'll decide what's important when I'm reading a book, thankyouverymuch. Knock it off.
2. Those of us who live in college towns have the same stupid, fucking problem every Fall, which around here starts when summer is in full swing: like the swallows returning to Capistrano, the college students return and run around crapping all over the place (figuratively speaking, thank God), clogging restaurants and stores, tailgating and acting like they own the fucking world.
I want to make some College Kid throwies: powerful tiny magnets with a note attached that says, Hey, Moron, Go Back to Campus and Stop Driving Like An Asshole. Some Of Us Live Here. Toss it at their car and HA!, I win a pointless moral victory.
It was actually worse in Chapel Hill, because the town's population doubled every Fall, but UT students seem to be more fucking entitled, probably because UT's so damn hard to get into these days.
3. Oh, and drivers: when we're in the middle of a miserable fucking drought, stub out your goddamn cigarette and stick it in the ashtray. If you flick it out of your car there's a good chance it'll land in the grass and start a fire. Jerk.
1. I'm still unpacking boxes of books and ran across Florence King's book Reflections in a Jaundiced Eye. Reading some of it made me think, whoa, Flossie, lighten up, willya? She's got a poorly-disguised sense of grievance that makes her writing just shimmer with stupid-smart resentment. She hates the 80's flavor of feminism because (shocking!) there are women in positions of power who take advantage and do stupid crap. Yo, Flo, listen up: there will be equality between the sexes when there are as many incompetent women as men in the workplace. Just because you admire the overachieving earlier generation of self-sacrificing working women doesen't mean their sucessors are a bunch of losers.
All I can ask is, why isn't Miss King writing science ficton? Not to dis sci fi (ok, I'll dis anyway), but that's a crowd loaded with that same old, oh, I'm smarter than my peers but what does it get me? They told me to go to school but then mocked me for being smart, blah blah blah. Hey, all of you: maybe you were mocked because it was easy and they were insecure assholes. But letting your childhood asshole peers mark you for the rest of your life is stupid and that's why there's therapy. Get some and shut up about it already.
But Miss King's decline as a writer is distressing because she was so brilliant in Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady. That book is fantastic and I'm pissed that I've apparently lost the better work while hanging onto the crappy one. Which will be on its way to Half Price Books, and soon.
1.a. And another thing: in one of her columns for the Raleigh News and Observer (a fairly crappy paper, good only on the literary page and the sports page during basketball season) she remarked in passing that she underlines as she reads books, in pen, even in library books. God, I hate that. Fuck you, Florence, along with all the other underliners-in-pen-in-library-books. I'll decide what's important when I'm reading a book, thankyouverymuch. Knock it off.
2. Those of us who live in college towns have the same stupid, fucking problem every Fall, which around here starts when summer is in full swing: like the swallows returning to Capistrano, the college students return and run around crapping all over the place (figuratively speaking, thank God), clogging restaurants and stores, tailgating and acting like they own the fucking world.
I want to make some College Kid throwies: powerful tiny magnets with a note attached that says, Hey, Moron, Go Back to Campus and Stop Driving Like An Asshole. Some Of Us Live Here. Toss it at their car and HA!, I win a pointless moral victory.
It was actually worse in Chapel Hill, because the town's population doubled every Fall, but UT students seem to be more fucking entitled, probably because UT's so damn hard to get into these days.
3. Oh, and drivers: when we're in the middle of a miserable fucking drought, stub out your goddamn cigarette and stick it in the ashtray. If you flick it out of your car there's a good chance it'll land in the grass and start a fire. Jerk.
posted by jwoods at 7:57 AM
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