A Trifle from Our Ridiculous Lives

Get Back in the Kitchen!: Thursday, after another grueling week of academic bullshitting, I thought it would be nice to have dinner off-campus; the food served here, despite the $50,000 tuition we all pay, is best left to rats and people who already firmly believe there is no God. I asked Woman, Bring Me a Beer! to dine with me, and we set forth merrily in pursuit of a meal that our stomachs wouldn't reject as poison.

Woman, Bring Me a Beer!: I was just coming off an extremely tedious day at work. The entire shift consisted of my coworkers playing games with each other on their shiny new iPod Touches and my boss telling me if I did all the paperwork for the entire office, he would give me an iPod Touch. Which might seem like an exciting offer until you know that "all the paperwork" means more pages of data entry than Thomas Paine had common sense. When Get Back in the Kitchen! offered me free food, the kindness was enough to make me sob in relief. At least a good dinner would salvage the day.

GBK: We walked first to our favorite little restaurant just a short ways from campus. Though the sound of raucous drunken laughter and the smell of Lysol-covered vomit had scared us out of patronizing that restaurant until we were brave sophomores, we came to love its darkness, its leaking pipes, its moldy and puzzling art. However, on Thursday night, when dreams of cheap American food danced through our heads, we could not find a single person to serve us. This restaurant is notoriously short-staffed, but generally, a pleasant bartender or cook will come to seat you within a few minutes of your arrival. We waited and waited and waited, reflecting our faces in the shiny mirror—hoping someone would come feed us.

WBMB: Not only did we wait—we paced. We did the time honored attention stunt: walk from one end of the hall to the other, sigh loudly, make large gestures, dance back and forth on your feet, poke your head into the kitchen, and repeat until served. One pair of semi-sober men in the bar watched our routine, smirked, and continued to slobber down their food.

GBK: In the bar area, a dozen bearded-faced drunkards were laughing merrily at something; the bartender, an obvious puppet of the new management, looked right through us, and continued serving beer to crazy men. The bar area was so testosterone-filled and delirious we feared to enter it; we thus waited several more minutes, with waning patience, before finally deciding to vamoose.

WBMB: I still wish we had walked into the kitchen, beaten some pots, and played with their cash register before we left. I'm sure they wouldn't have noticed. Instead, as GBK said, we left. As we stumbled up the sidewalk towards our next option, the problem occurred to me! I would have been perfectly comfortable wading through the roaring bar to demand food from the bartender if there had been women there. GBK agreed. The problem is that the women of this town weren't getting drunk at 6pm on a weekday like the men. Their men probably demanded that they drink themselves under the table at home, thus never needing to leave the kitchen.

GBK: We both decided our discomfort was a woman's issue, and that I would lament the fact that there were no female drunkards in my next Women's and Gender Studies class. We next walked to another American-fare restaurant just a few minutes away. This restaurant is always packed; strange, because the food they serve is lackluster at best. Yet, Thursday, fortuitously, they were able to seat WBMB and me immediately. We opened our fancy redesigned menus and were stunned by the rise in prices. I, for one, had no intention of paying ten dollars for a dry hamburger—the only edible thing on their menu. I wanted to bounce, but WBMB, of better breeding than I, insisted we stay.

WBMB: The entire idea of leaving seemed too awkward to me. We had two ways out. One, to take the back door just ten feet away from our table. That would have required passing the hang out spot of all the waiters. We needed to time it so they were all working, which is impossible at that place since the waiters never serve you. I think they earn their money for the skill at which they can glide through the restaurant without actually pausing at a single table. The other way involved walking through the entire building to the front exit and being wished a good night by the hosting staff. How could I reply to that, "Fuck you, I hate you and your overpriced slop?"

GBK: We decided to split a dessert—which was still obscenely expensive for what it was. While we ate, we drew on the paper on the table. "Heaven is just one jump away," I wrote, and WBMB drew a happy little man flying from a cliff, and then proceeded to draw several knives. Indeed, we were joyous little diners.

WBMB: The presence of crayons and chocolate improved my mood dramatically. We considered leaving the art for our waiter, but worried he wouldn't pause to fully enjoy it. So using a hair-tie, we rolled it up and left happier than we came in—though also closer to poverty and still just as hungry.

GBK: We left the restaurant with our crude art, after I tipped badly—WBMB commented after the fact that it was a pity I hadn't tipped as to make our dessert come to a total of $6.66. Undeniably, the Devil was stabbing us with his pitchfork that night. After our dessert, we went to find dinner, and decided on a cheap faux-Mexican restaurant. We decided to take our orders to go, as we still had much studying to do that night.

WBMB: I never had much faith in these particular burrito makers, but it was a quiet night and our two orders were literally the only ones in the entire store. I watched them throw them together, and snickered a little as one worker failed to roll up GBK's even after three solid minutes of struggling, but overall felt confident that while dinner wouldn't be good, it would end my hunger without withering my soul, (as campus food is wont to do).

GBK: We got back to our dormitory and opened our respective burritos to find that the lovely people at the restaurant horribly botched our orders. WBMB had wanted chicken on her fruity little burrito, and I had wanted steak on my traditional one. I do not know about other people, but there is something about expecting steak and getting chicken that makes one want to weep—it's positively un-American. And for her part, WBMB did not seem too pleased, either.

WBMB: Steak is grisly. Steak is heavy. Who wants steak with mango salsa? Who? We had such simple orders. Give me chicken, give her steak with extra cheese. Instead I got steak and she got chicken with no cheese. The only way they could have failed more is if they forgot that burritos come with tortillas. Maybe I should be grateful I didn't end up with a tostada?

GBK: After our sad little dinner, WBMB and I read for our poetry class the next day, and were driven nearly to violence. There is something about the combination of the insanity of Sylvia Plath and an unhappy tummy that doesn't go well together. When we read "Tulips," the two of us could not help but cuss: "You fucking bitch! I would have liked tulips if I were in the hospital!" What we were really saying is that we hoped someone would bring us some hospital food, or John the Baptist's head, or a road-killed raccoon, so that we could actually eat something. But alas, such was not our luck, so we were resigned to spend the rest of the night shrieking bad Plath poetry at anyone who came near our study area, and wondering why the hell this was our life.

WBMB: I think the worst part came the next day in English class when our professor spent the entire period talking about her love of Sylvia Plath. If insanity is what makes you great, then I guess this Ivy League education will ultimately be worthwhile.

~Get Back in the Kitchen! & Woman, Bring Me a Beer!

A Note to Young Ivy Leaguers: Britney Spears is not Superwoman

Sometimes, even at my elite top ten college, I cannot help but think I am adrift in a sea of morons. True intellectual discussion is seldom had in classrooms here; instead, the banal is discussed with such self-righteous overtones, with such indignation, that people convince themselves every word that is being said is the life-pulse of humanity. I would like to quote a much beloved professor on this: "pedantry is its own breathing hell." Though perhaps having one professor like her makes this college worth it, the idiocy of those around me sometimes makes me think I should have gone to state school.

In my Women's and Gender Studies class on Thursday, we somehow found ourselves in the middle of a two-hour discussion about how Britney Spears has made depression okay to talk about, and has thus liberated many women to speak about their illnesses; by being publically depressed, Britney Spears somehow made depression less taboo in the West. My initial reaction was none other than WTF?, but I kept my cool, and calmly stated that Britney Spears was probably bipolar and not depressive, and that I felt she had done nothing for people with genuine mental illness. Furthermore, I continued, it was not all that surprising that a musician should have a mental illness in the first place—that it seemed most artists tended to have something. I was then accused of trivializing mental illness, and my class continued, undeterred, in their discussion of the heroism of Britney Spears.

First of all, Britney Spears is not heroic; she's crazy. She did not come public about her struggle with mental illness is some respectable way; she shaved her head, ran around with her crotch hanging out, and was hospitalized. If anything, she was a joke. The media had a field day with her and her antics. Women, possibly, could have sympathized with Spears, empathized with Spears, but never in any stretch of imagination could they have felt liberated by Spears.

I find it revolting that in the Ivy League, every act of deviance is taken as a sign of revolution against the terrible Western social structures the people here imagine they are so oppressed by. "The other" is exalted, no matter what "the other" is. Drug addicts and committers of suicide are painted in the same heroic stroke as genuine innovators and revolutionaries. My classmates and professors fail to see that some of the people they are so praising have not worked to overthrow anything; they merely suffered.

It pisses me off, too, that here everything Western is demonized. Obviously, Western nations and cultures are very much to be blamed for some of the conditions that plague Third World nations now due to colonialism, but Hollywood movies are not necessarily a bad thing. Democracy is not necessarily a bad thing. And apple pie is just fucking delicious. We should be able to admit to ourselves that what works for countries like the United States and England might not work for other countries and peoples, while not completely debasing the cultures we live in—the very same cultures that have given us the liberties and freedoms we enjoy today. "The other" is not necessarily better. How would my classmates like it, for instance, if they lived in country where they were jailed for their political beliefs?

I certainly cannot stand the self-indulgent socialists that surround me, but I am happy enough to live in the United States, where we can have these stupid, trivial, inane debates about the importance of Britney Spears without fear of retribution. And my classmates should feel happy to live in a country that makes it illegal for me to beat the bloody hell out of them in a back alley.

God Bless America, You [All] Drive Me Crazy.



~Get Back in the Kitchen!

Depression is the New Ugg Boot

Cogito ergo doleo.
I think therefore I am depressed.

It's time to talk about a fashion trend that's been sweeping the media for the past few years: depression among college students. If you somehow missed articles in such publications as USA Today, Time, US News, Psychiatric News, or your very own daily campus news, depression is on the rise with college students. Prozac is quickly becoming the ring pop of the college years.

Or at least this is what the "experts" would have us believe. Today I'm not really that interested in dissecting college student depression; I want to look at this media obsession. These media articles love to quote statistics. Not any statistics will do; they want to quote flawed statistics without every acknowledging their own limitations. Reports of depression are hard to pin down, but most of these writers toss them out like Holy Writ, and it leaves me wondering if they're simply stupid or pulling a highly ironical prank on all of us. Since these articles have the same amount of humor in their tone as a hysterical feminist who feels she has been oppressed, I'm going to lean towards the former.

There is one statistic each article whips out in the beginning: according to surveys such as those conducted by the American College Health Association, 10% of college students are diagnosed with major depression and 25% feel at some time "so depressed it was difficult to function." Wow. Um, that's so incredibly . . . like the general population. Maybe the headline should be: Breaking News, College Students Are Just As Depressed as You. In the United States about 9.5% of the population is officially suffering from major depression during a single year, approximately 30% of all women become depressed at some point, and while numbers are harder to pin down for men, new research suggests it is comparable to women. If you look at it that way, college students overall are less depressed than the rest of the population. It must be the Red Bull.

The staff of college health service groups are only too eager to comment on the amount of depressed students. Hey, the more of us who are feeling blue the more job security they get. One college staff member was quoted by Social Work Today as saying, "67% of all students who seek counseling show signs of being depressed," (emphasis mine). This is grave indeed. People getting counseling are not happy. They aren’t depressed necessarily, but they do show signs of it. Honestly, who do they expect in counseling? Psychopaths? Last time I looked, our counseling services didn't even have a check-box for us on the intake forms that said, "I sometimes like to kill people." Sure, people go to counseling for other issues and disorders, but even people with other mental health disorders frequently have comorbidity with depression.

One of my favorite "numbers" came from a staffer at a college in Georgia. She said that she rates depression as the third biggest problem for students after "academics and anxiety." You mean depression is more of a problem than kleptomania? You mean more students are depressed than dying from scurvy? We have more depressed people than anorexics, alcoholics, drug addicts and rapists? And this is a bad thing? The article used her quote to create a doomsday like effect, but let me ask this — what do they want to be the third biggest problem for students? And let's not forget, according to their earlier statistics, 75% of all students never get passed the trials of academics or anxiety to feel depressed.

Furthermore, how exactly is she separating schoolwork and anxiety and depression? Schoolwork can cause stress which leads to depression. Anxiety can cause a loss of functioning that can lead to depression. Depression can cause a loss of functioning that can lead to panic attacks. And around and around we go. I think many students would say those three issues are inextricably linked. So I'm left asking, what was this quote supposed to accomplish or prove?

Here is my problem with these numbers: they are serving to appease the public guilt about college suicides and campus shootings rather than addressing the real problem. They write these articles because there is a public fear and horror about certain events happening at colleges in this country, even here at our very own Ivy League institutions. Instead of giving the public useful, insightful numbers, they give them shallow hype.

Want to talk numbers? Fine. Let's talk about the statistic that 10% of students are diagnosed with depression. Most colleges have paperwork categorizing at least 10% of their student population as alcoholics. So either we have non-depressed alcoholics or the alcoholics are the only depressed people on campus. Obviously there may be some problems with our data gathering on depression among students. Do the vast number of media articles ever mention this, even once?

No.

So before we start freaking out about college students being depressed let's figure out how widespread this problem really is. There is no way we can address the problem if we don't have a realistic understanding of it. And while I usually support recycling, the media's dependency upon the same faulty statistics isn't saving any polar bears.

~Woman, Bring Me A Beer!

Get Back in the Kitchen! says: If polar bears used Prozac, they wouldn't need environmentalists to save them.

Of X-Chromosomes and Crazy Bitches

Sometimes I worry that having two X-chromosomes is just plain bad for people. I think the key example of this is feminists. Yes, dear bell hooks, I know that Feminism is for Everybody; however, I feel that there is something about the possession of a uterus that makes one more inclined towards the cause. Though I'm sure there are plenty of nice, sensitive men out there who truly believe in equal rights (or an easy lay), the vast majority of feminists are women. Crazy, hormonal women.

For twenty years, I considered myself a feminist. I got weepy over suffrage, I was adamant about a woman's right to choose, I cared deeply about issues of domestic violence and rape, I hated tampons. I would passionately insist on the equality of the sexes to anyone who would listen. Yet, just this past week I discovered that term "feminist" does not apply to me. Rather, I am a tyrannical elitist patriarch, whose comma use keeps the entire female population down. Yes, people, every time I use a comma or a semicolon, some young struggling housewife gets punched in the face by the iron fist of patriarchy.

In this, my junior fall at an esteemed Ivy League college, I made the momentous mistake of taking a Women's and Gender Studies class. I believed it would be an interesting way to fulfill my last requirement; I believed in the feminist cause and all that crap. What I didn't expect was to be seated in a class with a bunch of upper-middle-class white women who believe that they are oppressed by everything. Television? Oppressive. Bras? Oppressive. Academia? Really fucking oppressive. The class is not a class; rather a group therapy session about how badly the whole world has treated them. One day soon, I think, everyone will just burst into tears, gather into a group hug, and sing Kumbaya.

Last Tuesday, my professor invited a student to our class to talk about the writing and editing services our college provides. My professor urged us all to employ these services; better grammar and better structure would improve the persuasive properties of our papers. Thus, when my professor later asked us to comment on the book we had all just finished, I thought a critique of its (deplorable) grammar was appropriate. I simply told the class that I found the bad grammar so distracting that it was often difficult for me to find the argument; moreover, I felt that a woman writing on feminism should be particularly careful to employ the conventions of Standard English, as many men consider women inherently intellectually inferior to men, and the use of poor grammar would just validate this belief, thereby undermining the entire feminist movement. My professor: The author is just trying to have a conversation with you. She's trying to appeal to women by being conversational. When I suggested that the book was in no way written in the vernacular (the vocabulary used was much too elevated for the average person to understand), and that the grammar was simply poor, I was called an elitist. "Why does the author have to write a certain way to be considered intelligent?" asked a girl in my class. "My grandma is illiterate—does this mean she is too stupid too write a book?"

Honestly, I do not know how one is supposed to reply to such a question, so I simply persisted in my stalwart, Oscar Wildean fashion: "There is good grammar, and there is bad grammar, and that is all." Whereupon, fifteen shrill voices rose in a cacophony of "classist," "supremacist," and "patriarchal." "By not recognizing alternative forms of writing," insisted my professor, "you are just reinforcing the patriarchal academic structure." Other members of my class called my grammar both "patriarchal" and "oppressive."

I feel that there is a certain ludicrousness to these charges; first of all—do my fellow classmates attend an Ivy League college because they are not elitist? Did not my professor obtain her PhD from the same "patriarchal academic structure" that she so laments? If my professor and my peers spent their lives handing out brochures protesting the evils of patriarchal society in the streets, perhaps I could respect their arguments. But instead, they are all here, in a cozy New England town, with manicured fingers and neatly accessorized outfits, going on tearfully about the oppression I sincerely doubt that any one of them has ever experienced.

After being demonized for two hours in class, I went online to look at the writings of both my professor and my peers. And guess what? Not a single one could compose a sentence in anything resembling proper English. Not a single one.

So you know what, feminists? Fuck you. Fuck you and your pseudo-liberal world philosophies and poor sentence structure. Because you know what? I heart patriarchal grammar.

Damn, I wish I were a man.


~Get Back in the Kitchen!



Woman, Bring Me A Beer! says: My computer's grammar check is offended by this post. It believes "housewife" is too gender specific and should be replaced with "homemaker". Even the computers are calling you elitist.