Currently Honey I'm Homely By Dance Hall Crashers see related

does it really suck to be ten years old nowadays or is that just the way it looks from the outside?

listening to awesome '90s ska with female vox (esp. dance hall crashers, oh em gee i always forget how good they were) makes me wish i were ten again, but it seems like it'd be way more stressful now.  like that pressure to be "mature" (hot?!) starts earlier?  maybe not.

...but this makes me sad:
in 1996, gwen stefani was allowed to look like this:


(^despite the short vinyl dress and red lipstick, do you notice how this is not sexy according to current standards?  she has muscles!  she doesn't look like she's trying to turn you on!!)

now she has to look like this:

(wow, she looks ... like every other fucking media-approved hot chick!  noooo personality.)


(^those are NOT her breasts, by the way, not even post-birth-giving.)

but look how different the poses are.  she was always famous for being in great physical shape, but now she has to look weak or vulnerable in every shot?  so, while i still love the combination of hot AND flat-chested (though maybe that last picture isn't supposed to be sexy...?), the media's transformation of gwen stefai from my heeero (attitude!  power!  general awesomeness!) to... crazy-airbrushed, pouty, come-hithery, (impossibly beautiful?), patriarchy-endorsed "sex kitten" (maybe?...) makes ten-year-old me very sad.

edit:  actually i can't imagine this isn't worse even for kids now.  it's just the level of saturation.

so i was looking at pictures of dhc on last.fm and what's the comment some dudebro has left?  "why do the girls in ska always look more manly than the guys?"  (or something to that effect, i'm not driven to seek out his brilliance again.)  and a few weeks ago i made the mistake of reading the comments on the video for the waitresses' "i know what boys like" on youtube (i know, i know, never read the comments on youtube...) and they were mainly of the "is she what people thought was HOT in the '80s?" variety (that was the least offensive).

lesson: do not be a woman in public.  not new, but jesus it gets reinforced a lot these days... some of the things i overhear the kids at the liberry say really freak me out.

i hate people.

also: so who or what is the equivalent of dhc and, i dunno, salt-n-pepa for girls now?  :/

would whoever (a gnome?  "the bearrr?") is using my knee when i'm not looking please take it easy?

---------------

i wish i knew the mystery of
that thing called hate and that thing called love!
what makes the in-between so rough?
why is it always push and shove?
i guess i just don't know enough.

sometimes when you're killing time (because you're a paranoid chump!), it's fun to look up dead people.

did you know the mormons are tracking your dead relatives?  (probably baptizing them, too!)

my grandparents were all born between 1908 and 1919.  that's why everyone in my family is dead!  (oh, okay, or just old.  ahem.)  my great-grandfather ("the bread guy," for those in the know) was born 106 years before me!  i don't understand other people's big living families.

also:  "uncle x."

(il ressemble à mon frère!  sauf le nez.)

brief interest in genealogy: over.

Currently Hopeless Romantic By The Bouncing Souls --Kid see related

is it true, when we get old, our hearts die?
i heard it in a movie once and i think i know why
life, it sucks so bad, it makes you wanna die
whoaa-ohh-oh, but you get by--

[a belated vaguely badd-inspired/definitely personal-experience-inspired post:]

someone i have known for several years – who is supposedly my friend, though she has never been what i consider a very good friend – just told me, in a rather disgusted, decidedly not-joking voice, that i must be "crazy" because of something i said to someone else over two years ago.  (nothing like specificity!)  this person (the first) is, for some reason, the only person outside ma famille who knows about my ...undiagnosed disability, and she knows full well that my brain doesn't really operate the way most people's do and that, for one thing, i have a hard time understanding when it's not acceptable to be totally honest.  so in this situation we were talking about, yeah, i was probably disarmingly honest to someone who wasn't expecting it.

but "crazy" – wow.  because if you can't be accepted by your "friends"...  i mean, i don't need it brought to my attention that i sometimes do things "wrong," and i certainly don't need that criticism for something two years after the fact.  (i've already been thoroughly punished for that trespass – which i don't regret – anyway, as she knows.)

(and a bonus: we were talking about a particular boy i have a bit of a crush on at the moment and i mentioned how he appears to have a sort of unusual behavioral trait that – if it is what i think it is – is out of his control.  i brought it up because it's kind of endearing... he's sort of overwhelmingly good-looking, so it's nice to see something, like, more human.  her response?  "um, yeah, that's really really weird."  again in the judging voice.  hm.  so who does live up to your standards?)

all in all: uplifting conversation!