Generation X

You know, way back when, I would get so offended when someone called me a Gen Xer. I was all, "Don't label me" and whatnot. My brother, also a Gen Xer, would remind me that was one of the things that made me a Gen Xer--not wanting to be labelled. And I'd get all pissy. He was proud to be an Xer mainly because it meant he wasn't a Boomer.

A few years later, I was a book editor and the publishing company I worked for had just put out a book about Baby Boomer toys. I went off on multiple rants about how the Boomers got all the damn attention... Where the hell was the toy book for my generation? So, we began to talk about it. It never went anywhere, but we had an ongoing discussion about what we'd call it. I insisted that we not go with "The Gen X Toy Book" because Xers wouldn't buy it if it was named that. No one believed me. I told the son of a coworker about the idea. He (the son, not the coworker) was my age, and he also insisted we not call it the Gen X book for the same reasons. And we commiserated about how no one understood us and how we were always under the shadow of the Boomers..... and eventually there would be Boomer kids, god help us all.

Fast forward 10+ years: the Boomers and their spawn are still getting all the attention. The difference? I'm damn proud to be a Gen Xer. We turned out pretty fucking good.

So, when I saw Generation X is Sick of Your Bullshit over on Gizmodo? Man, my day was fucking made.

I have two favorite passages:

Generation X could use a better spokesperson. Barack Obama is just a little too senior to count among its own, and it has debts older than Mark Zuckerberg. Generation X hasn't had a real voice since Kurt Cobain blew his brains out, Tupac was murdered, Jeff Mangum went crazy, David Foster Wallace hung himself, Jeff Buckley drowned, River Phoenix overdosed, Elliott Smith stabbed himself (twice) in the heart, Axl got fat.

and

Right now, Generation X just wants a beer and to be left alone. It just wants to sit here quietly and think for a minute. Can you just do that, okay? It knows that you are so very special and so very numerous, but can you just leave it alone? Just for a little bit? Just long enough to sneak one last fucking cigarette? No? 

Whatever. It's cool.

Love. Love. Love. This actually made me proud to be an Xer. 

It can also be found over on Mat Honan's Tumblr. 

Personhood

Okay.

I wasn't going to discuss this, but here it goes. In Mississippi they are voting on Amendment 26, also known as the Personhood Amendment. I'm not even going to link to something that will explain what it is, because it's fucking stupid. So, here you go: Vote no on Amendment 26.

The Personhood Amendment is just that: An amendment defining when "personhood" begins. The implications of this to family planning and a woman's health are far reaching and downright terrifying. Women become nothing more than incubators. They're not people. This kind of attitude is one of the main reasons I don't live in Mississippi anymore. There are a lot of reasons I don't live there anymore, but I could not live in a state that didn't think I was smart enough to make decisions about my own health or well being. I couldn't live in a state that saw me as a second-class citizen.

I am adamantly and passionately pro-choice. I always have been. I am not pro-abortion, as the anti-choice people would have you think, I am pro-choice. I want a choice. I want everyone to have a choice. To be pregnant is the decision to be left to those involved--and their doctors, if need be. I can't make this decision for you and you can't make this decision for me. I do have friends who are anti-choice--we just don't talk about it. I'd like to think I can accept those who don't agree with me, and I do have friends who are adamantly anti-choice, but I couldn't live in a state that had no respect for me as a human being, as a person.

Amendment 26 goes too far. Far, far too far. I can't even go into how far because it would make me angrier than I have been in a long time. Mississippi, the state and its government, has spent far too much time trying to keep women from making their own health decisions, from allowing women access to medical procedures that are completely legal and none of their fucking business. The state of Mississippi believes that if you are a woman, you are not in complete control of your body--you are at the mercy of the government.

They felt that way before Amendment 26 and it was never something I was comfortable with. Ever. I hated it. I was offended by it. There was no one in the government who represented my voice. Mississippi politicians, including Democrats, know that being pro-choice is political suicide.

Now, it's up to the voters of Mississippi.

I hope, I mean really hope, that common sense prevails. I hope that right prevails. There are good people in Mississippi. There are good, smart people in Mississippi. There are people who are terrified of Amendment 26. I can only hope that they win. I hesitated to say something about this because I didn't want to perpetuate the image of Mississippi as nothing more than a bunch of freakish evangelicals. Because it's not. But Amendment 26 isn't just about Mississippi. If it's passed, it will be appealed. And it will eventually end up in front of the Supreme Court.  If this passes, this affects all of us. And looking at the Supreme Court right now, how they would vote on this.... That scares me, too.

Reading, Watching, Listening

Reading
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. Holy crap this is a good book. I mean grippingly good. Amazingly good. Read it. Right now. Go.

The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You, by Eli Parisher. I picked this up on my way to Wisconsin. I had started reading the copy we had in the library but decided I wanted my own because I wanted to underline stuff and make notes. It's an easy--and interesting--read but I keep forgetting it on my desk at work. It's a fascinating topic, though, how Google shapes what you see by basing results on previous results, location, etc. It's handy, in a way, but what's not handy is that people don't realize it's doing this is happening.

Watching
Reality Shows
Project Runway. Yes, I'm still watching, but by this point I don't really care. However, I am very much looking forward to Project Runway All Stars.

America's Next Top Model All Stars. Yeah, I'm still watching it. I have no clue why.

Specials
Prohibition. I haven't watched all of Ken Burn's most recent PBS series, but I have seen the first episode and liked it a lot. I knew the basic facts, but there were some things I had never thought of before.... Mainly women's roll in prohibition. I knew all about the Women's Christian Temperance Union, but in my mind it was made up of women who hated alcohol for alcohol's sake, but it was so much more complicated. I'm not sure why I never thought about that.... I just never had. Anyway, I have all three episodes on my DVR and plan on watching them all.

Sitcoms (non-new)
How I Met Your Mother. I've watched this show from the beginning. I really do like it. And Neil Patrick Harris is legen--wait for it--dary.

Community and Parks and Rec. I'm lumping these together just because I always watch them back to back. I adore, and I mean absolutely fucking love, both of them.

Modern Family. Yup. Still good.

Happy Endings. I caught this off and on last season. I don't love it, but I find it entertaining. I watch it because of Damon Wayans Jr.

Glee. Yeah... Still watching. It's like I need to know what happens. I'm too invested.

Sitcoms (new)
2 Broke Girls. I still think this is a litte formalistic, but I like it. I like that neither girl, while having some of the stereotypes for their type (bitter and crabby / blond and rich) don't fit all the stereotypes. The rich blond girl is book smart. The bitter girl likes bubble baths. There is potential.

Suburgatory. I've only seen two episodes, but it has potential.

New Girl. Okay, I'm not watching this. I watched two episodes and stopped. I hate this. I mean hate. Deep seething hatred. I hate it for so many reasons. The main one: Quirky and weird does not equal flighty and stupid. This quirky girl character, usually played by Zooey Deschenal, is as unrealistic as the Barbie image that has been shoved down our throats for all these years. I know this character is supposed to appeal to us "real girls" or us "real women," but she doesn't. Why? Because while I'm a little odd (some may say quirky) and a little (or a lot) flighty, I'm not stupid. And maybe the original version of this character wasn't like that, but she became that. And that is unappealing. Plus, the most interesting characters? The men. And the most interesting of them? The one played by Damon Wayans Jr. But when Happy Endings got picked up for a second season, they wrote him out of the script and replaced him.

Movies
Cedar Rapids. I haven't seen much lately, but I watched Cedar Rapids last weekend. And I loved it. Really loved it. During the movie, I liked it, but when it ended, I realized I didn't want it to end. I wanted it to keep going. I wanted to know what happened to these characters. I had wanted to see it since I used to live in small-town Wisconsin and I grew up in small-town Iowa. I'm not from Cedar Rapids, but I grew up north of there in Cedar Falls (yes, people get the two confused). Having spent most of my childhood shuttling between Iowa City and Cedar Falls (for lots of reasons), I have gone through Cedar Rapids, also known as the city of seven smells (it really stinks), more times than I can count. So... I wanted to see this. And I adored it.

Listening
Since I have been between computers, I haven't been buying/downloading much music, but first on my list will be the new Wilco, The Whole Love. I heard the first single and was hooked.

Pop Culture Happy Hour. Still listening to this and still loving it. I'm listening to it right now.

Did you miss me?

Hello, Interwebs. Did you miss me?

So... my laptop, my six year old laptop has been slowly dying for a couple of years. It's 100g harddrive was full, it's battery was dead, and when I typed something, I would have to wait thirty seconds for it to show up. Which means I spent more time trying to figure out what I had just typed than actually typing. I had a netbook. It was a great little netbook. But after two years of beating the crap out of it, it decided it didn't really want to turn on anymore. Or at least it would only turn on when it wanted to... meaning never when I needed it. I have been anticipating this big crash for some time. About a month ago I bought an external harddrive and moved everything I cared about--mainly music and pictures--off both computers. Then I reformatted my six-year old computer making it a little more usable than it had been. And that's when my netbook started to get cranky.

That's when I gave up.

I had planned on buying a new computer in the spring. I figured I could get by with what I had for the next few months. I could buy a new TV, and then after Christmas and my tax return, I could get the computer I really wanted. And this time I decided it would be a Mac.

I bought my first laptop in 2001. I was in library school and I wanted something that was portable. My desktop was in my bedroom and with school work, I spent the majority of my time staring at my bedroom wall. I knew I couldn't spend two years like that. So, I bought a laptop. I had it long after I graduated when one day it just wouldn't turn on. Since the fan had gone on it before, I figured that's what had happened. I had a laptop at work, so not having my personal computer wasn't that big of a deal. But a few months later, I bought a new Dell.

Both times I considered buying a Mac, but I didn't due to cost. In library school, I wish I'd spent the extra money just to have something lighter and sleeker. I didn't buy a Mac the second time because I needed a larger harddrive for music files. Buying a Mac with a 20g harddive just didn't make sense when I could get a 100g harddive in a Dell for the same price. So, this time around, with cloud computing and cheap external storage making harddive space pretty much irrelevant, I decided to go with a Mac Air, but after doing some comparison and asking friends with Macs and students I saw with MacBook pros, I decided on the 13" MacBook Pro. I've had it a few hours, and I am already completely and totally in love with it.

I have my issues with Apple and with Steve Jobs (may he rest in peace). The first computer I ever used was an Apple IIe. My mom bought it used in the early 80s from a computer programmer who had taken a job with Radio Shack to work on their Commodores and he decided to part with his Apple. (I bethca he's kicking himself now.) My mom bought it because she was in grad school and she wanted to try out this new thing called word processing, and my brother wanted to be an engineer, and she knew having a computer at home would help him. My brother took the Apple to college three years later, and my mom still has it. According to my brother, it still works.

I got my iPod six years ago. Actually it's my second iPod since I broke my first one in a very stupid way. I'm on my second iPhone. I love both. My iPod is also on its last legs, but as I told some students last year, you will take my iPod out of my cold, dead hands. I have a very strange sentimental attachment to it.

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniac really did a great thing when they made personal computer more accessible. And when Jobs was forced out Apple really did tank. This is when I was using them in publishing, and the Apple mantra was "save and save often" because they crashed, constantly. Then Jobs came back. And look at Apple now. However.... Jobs became The Man he and his devotees said they were rallying against. He had a deathgrip on damn close to everything. But, he really understood how people interacted with computers. He understood that style was important. He made running a computer easy.

I wasn't sure I was willing to give up some of the freedom I felt I had using a PC that could work with most drives, software, etc. Then I realized that I wanted to ease of use that Apple provided more than anything else. I wanted the style. I can afford it now.

Am I an Apple fangirl? No. Not really. But I do love my Apple products.

Could I become an Apple fangirl. Um... yes. As I am already thinking about buying Apple TV when I buy a new TV.

Netbook Death

I'm not ignoring you, dear readers, but my little netbook is barely alive and my laptop is one step away from barely breathing. Hopefully, this issues will be addressed and fixed soon. Plus, my life is crazy busy right now, so ye olde blog has taken a back seat to most other things.