on a lighter note, i spent most of yesterday sleeping and playing video games, with a brief yoga interlude because i realized that not moving around all day was turning me to stone. i gave diana my fat yoga dvd because i thought i'd moved past it and basically memorized it, buttttttt i need to get it back from her and make a copy. i think i have stockholm syndrome with the smug asshole who hosts it. i haaaaaaaated her calling me a sassy diva and strong confident woman and stuff when i was just trying to get my downward dog on, but now i find that it's hard to do it without her stupid encouragement.
namaste, jerk
also, i have no concept of time so i'll be like "i just held that pose for THREE HOURS !!!" and it was actually 15 seconds, so i think having an instructional video helps.
on monday night i played borderlands with perry for a few hours. the game is okayso far, though i have absolutely no clue what is going on or what the objective of the game is. i think one of the problems is that i can't read quest text on my tiny tv (not that i ever read quest text anyway) and that i'm playing with someone who knows what we need to do.
maybe my goal for today will be to make perry tell me what the game is about.
yessssssterday night i played left 4 dead 2 with ken (and were later joined by a couple of other dudes who i kinda know !). THAT was a lot of fun. i guess i don't know what this game is about either, besides killing a lot of zombies and trying to escape from them. i think the factors that led me to believe that it was more fun is that it seems a lot easier. there's tons of stuff to kill at close range and you don't have to even aim your gun (and it manually reloads), whereas in borderlands there's usually a bunch of dudes shooting at you and ducking behind stuff for cover (because they are alive and not dead).
the game itself looks pretty cool, though there's not a lot of variation in the zombies (and one zombie was wearing the exact outfit i was wearing yesterday and i had to kill her over and over D:). the zombies' movements are fast and jerky and scary. we finished two of five possible campaigns, and there doesn't seem to be much variation- waves of zombies, the same 4-5 special zombies showing up occasionally, and then some kind of gimmicky objective. there is a marked difference between each of the skill levels though- we did everything on normal, switching to 'easy' for the tougher parts (the first campaign was just me and ken with two computer players, before two of his friends joined us) so at least there's some variation there. overall it was really fun and seems like an easier beginner game to get used to using the controller. unfortunately i did the worst out of everyone every time !
what else? i took a german placement test (required of all people taking the summer german I class who have previous experience) and i was super worried i'd place out of the class and mess up my schedule. guess what ! i totally didn't need to worry because i forgot like all the german i know. when people are talking to me or i have to read something in german, i can understand like 85% of it, but i don't remember tenses and genders and pronouns at all.
one part of the test was writing a personal essay and mine seriously was like, "my name is roxy, i live in philadelphia, i'm 28 years old, i love fanta and potato salad, my favorite singer is nena hagen" (basically like, all stuff from the laughably outdated neue freunde textbook, which was mostly about the scorpions, falco, and piranha 2).
what else did i want to talk about? oh, i wanted to talk about monster high, mattel's attempt to capitalize on the success of both bratz and twilight. it's basically a line of toys where the characters are descended from monsters but are run of the mill misogynist stereotype airhead bimbo shopaholics !
so like, can anything marketed toward young girls be cool? ever? bratz are fucked up weird dolls that promote materialism, competition between women, sexualization of children (one of their lines was... babies... in diapers... with makeup and heels), and unhealthy body images. twilight is a fucked up book that promotes abusive relationships as romance, a stereotype of female weakness and incompetence, sexual assault and stalking as romance, and uses monsters as a thinly veiled excuse for men to do whatever they want to women because it's their NATURE. why would you then COMBINE these two things to sell to female children? oh, because money is and has always been more important than the health, future, and well-being of women.
the dolls don't come along with books, or comics, or even a tv show. they are just dolls, with a "fun website" that you can log on to, a la those pet toys for babies. the website is full of riveting information like that the werewolf's biggest pet peeve is not being able to wear platform heels in gym and that she spends hours plucking her excess hair to be fabulous. wouldn't a werewolf's biggest pet peeve be that she goes fucking berserk and kills humans during the full moon? the vampire is vegan, which means she's not a vampire. one of the characters isn't even a mummy, she's just egyptian. is "egyptian" a monster now? like, the characters essentially have nothing to do with monsters and their monsterness is only presented as a slight setback in their quest to be hot sexy fashionistas who love boys, gossip, and shopping. plus, to compensate for their monster features, i guess they wear even less clothing than bratz !
get that message, little girls? you're a thing. if you don't look like these dolls, you're ugly. if you're ugly, you're worthless. oh, and instead of having actual interests you should only care about shopping, makeup, gossip, and boys. i just wanted to state that in case the message mattel has been sending us since the 1960s was too subtle.
soooo basically i'm going to blow up the planet.
p.s. i haven't even played red dead redemption yet. word is that it is going to suck on my crappy CRT tv in my bedroom !
p.p.s. i already watched everything good on netflix
ughghghghghghghgh. i hate these more than regular bratz; is that even possible?
ReplyDeletehonestly, i think the work mattel has done (with barbie, etc.) will make dolls that are "ugly" in any way undesirable to little girls. blessing/curse?
ReplyDeleteohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh my god that fucking monster doll bullshit. i don't even have anything intelligent to say about it, it is too fucking depressing.
ReplyDeleteps i was at target the other day and noticed that mattel makes 'Racecar Driver Barbie' and she is WEARING FUCKING HIGH HEELS.
IN HER RACECAR DRIVER OUTFIT.
reach for the stars, women !!!!
ReplyDeleteroxy #1
ReplyDeleteMonster Bratz are soooo dumb. However I wish they had real concerns...like the Mummy could be constantly worried about dehydration...the wolfwoman could totally be embarased by coughing up hairballs at inappropriate times, the frankenstein could contemplate life and its meaninglessness, the vampire could teach us about safe,um,blood drinking...like a psa. Mattel dropped the ball. also why are their heads so big?!
ReplyDeletethere are all kinds of studies about proportions and features about what is the most attractive, and dollmakers tend to run with those and exaggerate them- hence the big heads, super long hair, wide spaced gigantic eyes, tiny waists, etc.
ReplyDeleteif you read the website it really seems like they're TRYING to give them monster concerns but that they're very conscious of not making them seem weird, gross, ugly, unattractive, unsexy, etc. like the wolfwoman has lots of body hair but assures you that she removes every single hair to stay "fabulous".
Hey Roxy, happy Bloomsday.
ReplyDeleteMan, I kinda feel the same about this doll shit as I do about plus-size clothes. Like, I GET that things have been done a certain way for... forever and that any company's main objective is to make money. But like, why not offer something other than the same crap sending the same messages? At least from a business standpoint, why not try to reach a wider audience? If someone were to make a socially conscious doll for kids widely available I gotta believe it would sell like crazy and probably even cut into the, like sexy monster babies dolls' profits. If they're that worried about girls getting the wrong message, surely there'd be enough dough left over to do some PSAs or run a summer camp about the importance of being thin, tan and blonde !!
Aside from the obvious problems, Twilight bums me out on a personal level: my mom forced herself to read the books because it's all her coworkers (women in their 40s-50s who teach special needs kids !) talk about and she felt left out. If I ever find myself in a similar situation, MAY I JUST FEEL LEFT OUT, PLEASE.
i actually read the twilight because i thought it would be 'fun' and stupid, like fluffy goofy books i could joke about. i am seriously so disgusted and appalled by them, and i don't encourage anyone but parents considering letting their young daughters read them to read the books.
ReplyDeleteunfortunately, i'm kind of in the 'lisa lionheart' camp re: coming out with some kind of cool, progressive dolls for kids. i think it'll take like 203982903 years of dolls slowly becoming progressive and normal before kids really accept them.
Agreed, re: who should be reading Twilight books. It troubles me to think that a lot of parents probably have read them and still deemed them appropriate for their children. They probably figure it's better than nothing, but like, reaaalllllly?
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, you're probably right about the dolls; how easily I forget the pressure kids feel to have the same stuff as their peers (funny, considering I only played with Barbies to appease my friend when she'd bring them over). I kinda wonder if American Girl dolls are the first step in that direction, but considering the insane price tag and corny historical stereotypes (heyyyy the only African American doll they make is a fugitive slave), it seems more a sidestep than a step forward. I did find this, though: http://therumpus.net/2010/05/funny-women-23-post-apocalyptic-american-girl-dolls/
Man, that was my German book! Now it's driving me nuts trying to remember what the one with the orange cover was called. (Possibly Wie Geht's?) There was Neue Freunde, then something else, then Unsere Welt (which had a purple cover). They all had the same "characters" (German teens wearing '80s clothing). One of them was named Margit Dastl.
ReplyDeleteNeue Freunde had all that stuff that was like entire chapters on how you get to school, and the choices were like "mit der Strassenbahn" or "mit dem Moped." Also there was a part about movies (ins Kino!) and the example was Der Mann mit zwei Gehairnen starring Steve Martin.
chrysta, unfortunately the american girls thing is a bust- aside from being a million dollars each, i'm pretty sure their store has a beauty parlor in it.
ReplyDeletekate, i totally reference that all the time ! florian weber, der falco, piranha zwei, limonata, kartoffelsalat, etc etc.
Werewolf Bratz plucking her excess hair has left me speechless.
ReplyDeleteI am 99% sure megan and I went to high school with someone named florian weber ! Is that a famous german name ??
ReplyDeleteAlso, my mom went to four different stores before we got here and she could not find any gender neutral pull up diapers without pink princesses on them. :(((((((((((((((((
florian weber was just like, a rando deutsche teenager in our book ! he went to lots of parties and brought red cabbage and shit.
ReplyDeleteit's also depressing that your child cannot even GO TO THE BATHROOM in something that isn't gender branded.
crapping in a plain white diaper definitely made me gay
ReplyDeleteOK, I had to come back and post that the middle book in the series was called Wir, die Jugend.
ReplyDeleteI happened to be home this weekend, where I actually have a copy of Unsere Welt--I think my oldest brother may have stolen it. Anyway, that's how I found out it was Wir, die Jugend.
It's classic. The best part is the "Wie sagt Man das?" section. It gives examples for something like "giving opinions" and then you have to practice. Suggested topics for giving opinions included designer jeans, cowboy boots, a vegetarian diet and bodybuilding. Also for "making suggestions," one of the suggested phrases was, "Why don't you fix yourself up a little?"
hahahahahahahaha i cannot stop laughing at 'why don't you fix yourself up a little'
ReplyDeleteI totally learned German from "Neue Freunde" in high school! Sad but true, I thought Jens Kroger was a foxy River Phoenix look-a-like back in the day...
ReplyDelete