More random, silly, stupid - quotes!

“640K ought to be enough for anybody.” Bill Gates, 1981(Ha! You would think so, right?)

South Park Eric Cartman: “I would never let a woman kick my ass. If she tried something, I’d be like, HEY! You get your bitch ass back in the kitchen and make me some pie!” (A sexist pig…but I love him)

“Do you have blacks, too.” George W Bush, to Brazilian President Fernando Cardoso (Oh Dear Lord, how was he elected?)

“I’m not Anorexic. I’m from Texas. Are there people from texas that are anorexic? I’ve never heard of one. And that includes me. “- Jessica Simpson (someone give that gal a Big Mac)

“So many of the people in the arenas here were under-prividged anyway. This is working very well for them.” – Barabra Bush (September 2005, during the Katrina disaster) (At least we know stupidity is inherited. George Jr didn’t have a shot in hell)

“So, where’s the Cannes Film Festival being held this year?” Christina Aguliera (Hmmm…)

“What’s Walmart, do they sell like wall stuff?” Paris Hilton (Finally a store she hasn’t shopped in)

“Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society.” Rush Limbaugh (How is this guy still on the air?) 

 

I recently received an email from an old friend of mine about blonde jokes and I was tickled pink from it, like I always am. Being a brunette I have always taken immense pleasure at sticking it to blondes (what can I say, I’m passive aggressive, lol). Am I ashamed of myself for my actions? Not in the least! Yeah, yeah – brunettes always come off as the bitter, ugly ones without a date and so be it. If my little consolation prize is to giggle at ‘dim witted blondes’ then leave me in my cocoon of embittered jealousy to laugh myself to death.

The obvious truth is (dare I say it?) blondes are not stupid and actually it’s fascinating to read about the origins of where this stereotype came from. Some people think it all began with Anita Loos Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, with Marilyn Monroe perfecting the role, but there are theories that the stereotype goes back further. Some suggest that because most Caucasian children are born with at least a touch of blonde in their hair that being blonde is linked to infancy, hence fawning over blondes and encouraging them to act like a child. Another theory suggests that the Greeks and Romans were fascinated with the fair hair of the Nords and Celts, so they would try and dye their hair with toxic chemicals to achieve the same effect, causing mental illness. One other theory argues that in the Middle Ages, aristocrats often had dark complexions and stayed indoors, whereas the lower (dim witted) working classes slaved outside in the fields all day, hence a lightening in hair and darkening of skin. Whatever the reason, the stereotype persists and I suppose I shouldn’t buy into it (especially considering my mother is blonde) but hey, what’s an embittered brunette to do on her lonesome every Friday and Saturday night apart from brew up some more blonde jokes? Ha! (Ever noticed that the good witch is always blonde and the wicked witch is a brunette?….)

Anyho, here’s some blonde jokes, enjoy!

God Loves Blondes
 
A blonde finds herself in serious trouble. Her business has gone bust and she’s in dire financial straits. She’s so desperate that she decides to ask God for help. She begins to pray… “God, please help me. I’ve lost my business and if I don’t get some money, I’m going to lose my house as well. Please let me win the lottery.” Lottery night comes, and somebody else wins. She again prays… “God, please let me win the lottery! I’ve lost my business, my house and I’m going to lose my car as well.” Lottery night comes and she still has no luck. Once again, she prays… “My God, why have you forsaken me? I’ve lost my business, my house, and my car. My children are starving.  I don’t often ask You for help, and I’ve always been a good servant to You.  PLEASE let me win the lottery just this one time so I can get my life back in order.” Suddenly there is a blinding flash of light as the heavens open. The blonde is overwhelmed by the Voice of God, Himself…
“Sweetheart, work with Me on this…. Buy a ticket.”

The Accident

    A blonde had just totaled her car in a horrific accident. Miraculously, she managed to pry herself from the wreckage without a scratch and was applying fresh lipstick when the state trooper arrived.
    “My God!” the trooper gasped. “Your car looks like an accordion that was stomped on by an elephant. Are you OK ma’am?”
    “Yes, officer, I’m just fine” the blonde chirped.
    “Well, how in the world did this happen?” the officer asked as he surveyed the wrecked car.
    “Officer, it was the strangest thing!” the blonde began. I was driving along this road when from out of nowhere this TREE pops up in front of me. So I swerved to the right, and there was another tree! I swerved to the left and there was ANOTHER tree! I served to the right and there was another tree! I swerved to the left and there was ….”
    “Uh, ma’am”, the officer said, cutting her off, “There isn’t a tree on this road for 30 miles. That was your air freshener swinging back and forth.” 

What’s with Miley Cyrus? Ok, we all remember the Britney Spears drama, yes? Why on earth are we creating another Britney train wreck? What on earth is wrong with us?! There has to be something wrong with a society that is so hung up on seeking out a pretty young girl, casting her in the role of cute but hyper virginial maiden, only to wait with baited breath for the moment that she will be cast as the fallen angel lured by the temptation of sex. It’s sick, that’s what it is. Are we stuck in a vortex of Victorian restrictions, are we turned on by the thought of the forbidden virgin? Lets be realistic, teenagers are going to want to have sex, duh. Their bodies have matured and their emotions are in flux, so it’s just damn wrong to castigate this Miley whateveryacallher, just because we, for some damn odd reason, seem to think any hint of sexuality in teenagers is mortifying. Ya know what? I think society needs to grow up, really. Since when is Disney the moral dictator of America? Disney makes cartoons for God’s sakes, not laws. Miley, if you want to wear a blanket covering you, go for it. The point is you WERE covered up. If Disney and the other tight laced critics had their way, you’d be wearing clothes up to your ears and down to your ankles. Express yourself, don’t be ashamed to explore the art of being a teenager. Poor Britney should have taught you that lesson… read the quotes below. During the shoot by Annie Liebovitz, everyone, including Miley’s parents, thought the photos were appropriate. What happened to change all that? Or should I say who has a stick shoved up their (fill in the blank.)

“I took part in a photo shoot that was supposed to be ‘artistic’ and now, seeing the photographs and reading the story, I feel so embarrassed,” she tells ET. “I never intended for any of this to happen and I apologize to my fans who I care so deeply about.” Miley Cyrus

“Miley’s parents and/or minders were on the set all day. Since the photo was taken digitally, they saw it on the shoot and everyone thought it was a beautiful and natural portrait of Miley. In fact, when BRUCE HANDY interviewed Miley, he asked her about the photo and she was very cheerful about it and thought it was perfectly fine.”

Not the Baby

The moment my mother told me she was pregnant, I wailed incessantly, inconsolable in my selfishness. I turned from her and flung myself at my father, clinging to his neck, hands flailing, my arms a death grip. Usually, Dad would untangle me from him and order me to stop being a baby, but when he didn’t do his duty and set me on my own feet, I knew I really had something to fear. Mom’s hands were perched on her belly, showing me where the problem lay. With a wisp of premonition of a queen about to be deposed, I knew that the identity I had possessed for six years was to be ripped away from me. My security blanket was shredded.

“Are you not pleased? You’re going to be a big sister.”

I glared at my invisible advisory, hidden beneath the camouflage of a blue flowery skirt. Mom rubbed her belly, Dad rubbed my back.

A big sister? Was there anything worse in the world? I had two big sisters. They were sitting on the couch, two book ends of smugness. Until now Laura and Claire’s only reason for existence had been to teach me to appreciate the delights of being the youngest child; the excuses made for my bad behavior, the extra hug or kiss at the end of the day and the last candy bar given to me because I had the most growing to do. But now, now it would be gone. The room was filled with a thick silence, full of expectancy. The queasiness I felt in the pit of my stomach was not in sympathy for my mother’s condition, but for my own.

Standing over me, Mom promised that things wouldn’t change, I’d still be the number one child. I looked over to my sisters’, the empty space between them was just big enough for me. Laura and Claire fidgeted, bobbing up and down on cushions, smiles twitching on their lips. They were like two fishing boats on a sea of juvenile contempt, each casting out their nets and trying to haul me in. This little fishy did not want to be caught.

The day my mother told me she was pregnant I began to wage war on my unborn sibling.

I watched Mom grow, her stomach bulging like a large egg was shoved under her dress – I would have gladly cracked and scrambled it. I danced on the outskirts of her attention, trotting into tantrums with a red faced flourish and waltzing away pacified when a treat was thrown my way.

I stalked Mom’s every move, not really knowing why I suddenly craved the need to be cradled every time I saw her. I took to hiding behind the living room door, crouching, waiting for her to settle on the couch before launching myself at her, my arms steel traps, my knees clambering for position. The ambushes always failed. Mom pushed me aside, her hands thick armor linking over her stomach, keeping me at bay. I sat at her feet instead, content with an idle pat to my head. Scraps were delicious when you were starved.

At school all the teachers and dinner ladies congratulated me. Word got around that I was going to be a big sister and wasn’t that wonderful? In a blaze of confusion I nodded and agreed, letting myself become falsely indoctrinated into the joy of awaiting the new arrival. But talk got old and I drifted away from my friends, consumed with the need to be alone. I noticed the more distance I put between myself and other children, the more attention I gained from concerned teachers. One day Mrs. Bales was walking around the school yard and spied me all by myself. I was digging in the ground, making mud pies with the bubbles of dirt that earthworms had spat up after the last down pour.

“Not long now, is it Rebecca? Two-three weeks?”

I ignored the question, molding the mud into perfect spheres, my fingers caked brown.

“Did your Mom pick any names out yet?”

I squashed the mud, lodging it under my nails. Mom hated having to clean my nails.

“Do you want a little brother or a little sister?”

I finally responded, my eyes spitting salty, bitter tears. Mrs. Bales gathered me to her and tried soothing me, stroking my hair. I reveled in the softness of her shoulder. She asked me what was wrong, my tears soaking her blouse. I told her my cat had died. It had been run over by a car right in front of my eyes. I had held it in my arms as it wriggled and died. It was my Mom’s fault because she had let the cat out when I told her not to.

I didn’t own a cat.

I lived on Dad’s promises that I was still number one and I deflected my sisters’ teasing, firing rapid rounds of fists and words back at them. One evening Dad asked me to stay and watch over Mom as she took a bath; I was to be her guardian and alert him at any sign of trouble. I sat on the toilet seat and watched as Mom splashed around, half submerged, her face rosy as she washed herself. The bathroom was like a jungle, the wallpaper slick with condensation, the air thick and wet. I breathed it all in, liking the taste of the water vapor in my mouth and the feel of it prickling my skin.

Mom hummed a tune that sounded familiar; it skittered along the edges of my memories leaving me quiet and mournful. I stretched my mind trying to recall the time and place she had once hummed it to me, but no sharp memory stepped forward. Occasionally, Mom threw questions my way and I caught them but didn’t answer. My eyes strayed back repeatedly to the mound of her stomach, pale and wobbly. Every now and then that lump of flesh would lurch against Mom’s skin, a franticly energized earthquake causing ripples in the water. Mom winced, patting her belly and I marveled at the fact that my usurper could kick her and get away with it.

“Come and say hello to your little brother or sister.”

Mom held her hand out to me and I didn’t know whether to take it or bite it. I crept closer, cautiously kneeling by the bathtub, the steam from the water turning my cheeks red. My hand bypassed Mom’s and landed directly on the moon of her stomach. I held my breath, letting the heat of her skin seep into my palm. For a moment I felt a flutter, I felt connected.

“Hello?”

Nothing. No movement, no acknowledgement. Nothing. Disappointed, I took my hand back and returned to the toilet lid, a sentry for my father.

“Some of the items orbiting are useful satellites. However, of the 6,000 satellites launched since the 60s, it is estimated only 800 are operational. The rest float uselessly in orbit, accompanied by thousands of items of debris from collisions and explosions.”

Anyone concerned????

A Note to Myself

I know he doesn’t mean it. I know because when his birthday comes along and I buy him the best, most expensive gift his face will light up and the little kid I still love and look for will be there. He’ll open his arms and he’ll hug me tight, until I can’t breathe and the pain in my ribs will wash away the one in my heart. Because I matter. I’m his favorite. It’s me and him against the world, against our parents, against our sisters. I know he’ll grow out of the distance he is putting between us, because it’s always me and him.

Color Monitors is a tough nut to crack – I think that to be able to access what Kevorkian was trying to discuss, the ‘reader’ needs to be able to put aside their own baggage, their instinctive reactions of defensiveness and its not an easy thing for some people to do…including myself.

By Maxim Dolgobrod: closeup of the water emerging from a fountain pipe, which formed this “head”.

Surfing around Wired.com, I found a great section focusing on art. The topic for photography this week was little things that you might over look, things that might turn someone into hypocrondriacs and germaphobes. I don’t have a great digital camera, just a Nikon I picked up on sale a couple of years ago, but it’s still great fun capturing images. Below are a few of my weirder photos, but be sure to check out Wired’s competition and vote for your favorite images this week.

When Dust Takes Over

Under The Boardwalk

Spokes of the London Eye

Natural History Museum

Elephant Skull

And finally…My Brother, the Idiot

It has to be said, Wired.com is fabulous. If I had been a more diligent student and read these links ahead of time I would have been aware of the wonderfulness that is encapsulated in this web site. Ok, so maybe I don’t agree with all of the writers, I have a brain so I’m not expected to, but I utterly appreciate the topics that make up the majority of the site’s content. Bravo Wired, Bravo.

Ass kissing over, lets get to the meat of this post. Below are a few questions, as requested, for my Writing for Electronic Communities class. The readings for the class included Garfield on YouTube, Davis on LonelyGirl15 and Vogelstein on Facebook.

Q1) Money rules, or at least, it always has in TV land and Hollywood. To make something in these industries, you need money, or the attention of people who have money – but not so for the creators of YouTube and Facebook. They started off by themselves, without the influence of huge corporations, creating a vision of their own. But as sites gain popularity and influence, they eventually sell out. YouTube sold to Google, Facebook was going to sell to Yahoo – does the selling of these sites to larger corporations endanger the integrity of the site itself and how could it effect users? Should the creators of these sites maintain ownership or is it just not feasable?

Q2) On Garfield’s reading, one YouTube user states, “One of the biggest obstacles to advertising success is the damage that success could inflict on the YouTube experience, till now an oasis of relative noncommercialism in a world of brand inundation. The Google deal has already spawned bitterness at the grass roots, where some are dubious that GooTube will retain its soul. “I think its the beginning of the end of youtube as we know it,” wrote a poster named SamHill24. Another, Link420, declared simply, “ITS OVER!!!! youtube is screwed.”"

Is it really screwed? Or will Google’s investments help push the Internet-TV medium forward and provide new opportunities? What, exactly, do you think Google plans to do with this site?

Q3) LonelyGirl15 creators Mesh Flinders and Miles Beckett wanted to harness the power of authenticity and exploit the anonimity if the Internet to pull off a new type of storytelling. They hired an actress to play the part of Bree and for all intents and purposes, pretended that this girl was real – why? What did they think this would accomplish? Eventually, as LonelyGirl15′s popularity grew, the truth came out:

“IN EARLY SEPTEMBER, MATTHEW FOREMSKI, the 18-year-old son of a Silicon Valley tech reporter, dug up an old version of Rose’s MySpace page. She’d deleted it when she became Bree, but Google cached a copy, and Foremski posted the link to his father’s blog. Within 48 hours, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and a slew of TV stations ran the story. The jig was up. Many assumed the series would sputter and die. Media reports zeroed in on how viewers had been duped, suggesting an inevitable backlash. But the fans – raised on the unreality of reality TV and with the role-playing ethos of the Web – seemed to take the revelation in stride.”

Some people lament about the popularity of reality TV shows, between American Idol and Survivor, but these are what people want to see. Obviously LonelyGirl15 follows that trend, so why bother to hide that it was fictitous? What does it say about our society that we are generally not concerned if something is ‘fake-reality’? What do sites like YouTube provide for us that makes us clammer to watch and participate?

Q4) Davis muses that Internet TV is created by advances in technology, sites like YouTube and a hybrid of storytelling. It is this idea of hybrid story telling that has me fascinated. What the hell is hybrid storytelling? We have clear genres for traditional text based writing: novel, scripts, plays, poetry, memoir, creative non-fiction… but what about this master’s class we are taking? What constitutes as Electronic Writing? Anything that is published online? Does hybrid storytelling include hypertext? What category exactly does LonelyGirl15 fit into; it is interactive with viewers, its followers can influence the outcome of the story line, so in a sense, do you think it can be experienced and has the same qualities of a hypertext novel, only in a visual form?

Q5) What bothers me about sites like YouTube and Fackbook is that no matter what, like a frigging boomerang, money keeps coming back into question. Vogelstein, when discussing Facebook’s creator, Mark Zuckerberg’s success, mentions the Three C’s: Connection, Communication and Commerce. I hate that last C, inevitable though it may be. Think about why Facebook was started – so Zuckerberg could stay in touch with his college friends. This whole social networking phenomenon was started by the first two C’s, Connection and Communication – and it worked just fine. Now commerce is added and yes, the site and logo gain nortoriety, but does money diminish the original goals of Facebook? Is it not more impressive that Mark Zuckerberg created a site that re-connects/connects millions of people, rather than applaud him for the amount of zero’s that are put on his paycheck? Even with a potentially limitless medium like the Internet, does Capitolism triumph over the freedom humanistic endevour, expression and interaction?