Random Thoughts of the Week: December 21st-27th

• A girl in Barnes and Noble was talking to someone on the phone and she says, “I’m gonna buy John a new globe, mom said that his is outdated.” Uhh…I don’t think much has changed recently.

• A family of gingers is terrifying. Seriously, we saw like 7 of them, all with bright red hair. They all walked the same and barely talked, pretty sure they were the children of the corn. Seeing just one is already a little weird, but 7 of them together is a bit much.

• I’ve never understood the “fashion choice” to use a belt to keep your pants underneath your ass. Why not just buy children’s jeans and stick your calves in them?

• I was stopped at a red light and the lady in the turn lane next to me wasn’t paying attention; when her arrow turned green, the guy behind her honked about 5 times. She still was not getting it so she looked over at me confused and I just pointed at the light. She finally put it together.

• We were singing Christmas carols while working and we couldn’t remember the 12 days of Christmas. While figuring it out, I realized that you can’t just say “5 golden rings,” you have to sing it.

• There was a storm on Tuesday and they said it was supposed to snow. It got me thinking, does it snow if there’s thunder? I don’t think it’s ever happened.

• It’s kind of hard to get to work on time when my car door is frozen shut. I was leaving 20 minutes earlier than I usually do in case the roads were bad, but it took me 20 minutes just to get my door open.

• Having a car with a broken cruise control is unfortunate when it comes to driving 6 hours to Arkansas.

Random Thoughts of the Week: December 14th-20th

• If you’ve ever wondered what the definition of cluster fuck is then you should attend one of our meetings at work and you’d probably get a good idea of it. This just about sums it up:

• I enjoy when people are caught off guard by my sense of humor. Don’t look so shocked/offended, just enjoy a bit of laughter at the expense of others (as long as it’s not about something super serious). If you can’t do that then at least laugh and then look offended, that’s acceptable.

• In one of my finals a girl cleared her throat once every 30 seconds, and if she wasn’t doing that she was coughing; talk about distracted.

• I’m amazed when people talk to each other at normal volume when the room is full of other people who are completely quiet. That’s just awkward; no one else is talking and you know they’re all listening to you.

• This girl, the one talking at normal volume in a room full of quiet people, started talking about a cockroach being in her shower.

• The girl I sat next to at graduation spent most of the time, before and after we sat down, taking pictures of herself.

• At graduation they called names alphabetically and by majors. When we got to chemistry: “So-and-So Dean of Chemistry to present the graduates of chemistry”…they called one guy’s name…”how about a round of applause for the graduate of chemistry.” Just the one guy; I bet he feels accomplished.

• Watching two male roommates try and decide on a laundry detergent might be the most amusing thing I’ve seen at Walmart. A close second would be the woman who was climbing the shelves to get a spice. This was in the same trip too.

• I watched a movie for 20 minutes before noticing it was muted.

• I’ve discovered that my procrastination is consistent in all aspects of my life. I’m just as terrible about actually trying to find a job as I was at doing work for school.

• My power went out due to wind; I can only imagine how my nights will go when there’s actually a storm.

• Have you ever had someone ask you “why don’t you like me” or “why aren’t we friends?” There are only two responses:

Random Thoughts of the Week: December 7th-13th

• I will always be amused at the way people trot to the bus. They don’t want to full out run, but if they walk they’ll miss it.

• I get asked how to spell my last name a lot, but for the first time ever someone asked me if Friederich was spelled with an F. Nope, it’s with a ph: Phriederich.

• We got our group project grades back and mine was fine, but one of the girls who did a lot of work got 160 out of 200. What’s funny to me is that peer evaluation was part of the grade; our fellow group members were to score us, out of 10, on how much we contributed to the project. The problem with that is 3 of them were barely even present enough to know what our project was, let alone who participated. The only thing they know is how much they didn’t do.

• A woman spent $1,250 on gift cards. It made me a little sick to my stomach.

• It’s always awkward when someone does or says something that they want me to acknowledge, but I just don’t care. Example A) Waiting in line to get into the bar and the guy in front of me turns around…Random guy: “How’re you doing?” Me: “Good.” Random guy: “How’s your night going?” Me: “Pretty good.” Awkward pause. Random guy: “Tonight’s my last night as a single man.” Me: “This is your bachelor party?” *Said with a lot of judgement* End of conversation.

• Why do people hug as a greeting? I barely hug people I’ve known for a long time; I certainly don’t want to hug someone I am just now meeting.

• We sat down to eat lunch and the lady in the booth across from us started telling us her life story and complaining about everything that’s gone wrong for her. One good snippet was her saying, “My friend calls me mentally ill, and I’m not mentally ill,” as she’s having a full blown conversation with herself.

• I’m fairly certain there’s an event in hell where everyone has to push around a Walmart cart with fucked up wheels. Seriously, those carts are a great form of torture.

• A lot of people think I’m negative about everything, but really I’m just avoiding the disappointment they’re likely going to feel when things don’t go as well as they assume they will. I’ll be over here enjoying my genuine surprise at how well it turned out while they’re disappointed with how well it didn’t. You’re welcome for the great life advice.

• P.S. that doesn’t mean don’t have hopes and dreams or expect things of yourself, but don’t expect someone or something to make you happy.

It’s Time to Stop: A look at why slut shaming is a crappy thing to do

Recently Jenna Marbles came out with a video that is 9 minutes and 23 seconds of shaming girls for having sex (I’m not gonna link to the video because I’m not into giving it views but you can easily find it). I made the mistake of reading the comments and then I got angry and decided that this is something I needed to write. Marbles is by no means the only woman to think this way, but the fact is that she has five million people that watch her videos, and a very heavy chunk of those people are young, impressionable girls.

We’ll come back to Jenna later. Right now I wanna discuss the act of slut shaming itself. It’s something we’ve probably all done in our lifetime. More than likely because we are trained to do so. We are taught at a very young age that girls are to be “sexy but not sexual”, and that girls who have sex are not good people and should be looked down upon when this is just not the case. This type of thinking is extremely harmful in multiple ways. For one, it pits females against their own gender, contributing to girl on girl hate. “Slut” is usually one of the first insults thrown out by somebody towards a woman they dislike, even if they’ve only had sex with their boyfriend, or haven’t even had sex at all! But we attribute people who have sex to be bad and therefore “sluts” are bad and that’s what we call girls we don’t like. It also hinders the feminism. Shaming a woman for what she does with her own body halts the progress we’ve made to make decisions on our own. Slut shaming also supports the double standard of women and men having sex. A man is revered for having a lot of sex, and a woman is put down for it.

But the most harmful thing slut shaming does is strengthen the belief that how a woman acts or dresses leads to her getting raped. Victim blaming is already a huge problem in our world. Saying a woman deserves to get attacked and have a penis forcibly put inside her against her will solely because she dresses in a revealing way is not only cruel but incredibly ignorant.

Slut shaming is just a silly thing to do anyway. A woman is perfectly capable of making her own choices of what to do with her own body, and unless it’s actually hurting you then it shouldn’t matter. “but Alex, girls get pregnant and then I have to pay for their babies with my tax-” oh my god stop. That is maybe the dumbest thing you can say about this whole situation. Also, this problem can be solved be teaching both girls and boys how to be smart and safe about sex.

All this brings us beck to Jenna’s video. As mentioned above, she has five million subscribers, and her top demographic is 13-17 year old girls. That is the prime age when girls are discovering and exploring their sexuality and videos like this only make them feel shitty for doing so. Marble’s is only adding to the problem and is using her influence in the wrong way which is both upsetting and infuriating.

Okay two big things we’ve learned today. 1) How much sex a person has has no relation to their worth as a human being. 2) Slut shaming is harmful in a multitude of ways.

So just don’t do it!

-Alex

Random Thoughts of the Week: November 30th-December 6th

• A minivan flew past me on the highway, going at least 80, and changing lanes like they were running from the cops. I mean really, a minivan! They were probably late for a parent teacher conference.

• There was just so much bullshit at the end of my paper. My brain was saying this:

• and my hands were doing this:

• A guy walked into class and sat down with 5 minutes left. What is the point?

• How annoyed do you think the people who ring the bells for donations are with that sound?They probably hear that ringing in their sleep.

• I wrote about Mormon.org in my blog once, once, and now Facebook suggests it to me every time I’m on.

• Isn’t it amazing that in the 90s there was a song that’s background was just a fucking baby making noises and it was popular? I still sing along when it comes on Spice Girls radio, but I can’t help but wonder who made that final decision.

• On that note, how about Barbie Girl? Why does that song even exist? Again, I jam out to it, but it’s a little bit fucked up; talking about hanky-panky and undressing her everywhere…I listened to that as a kid, but then again that’s like a lullaby compared to what kids are listening to nowadays.

• A woman and a bunch of kids asked me if there was a way to call the security guard to his car because they were doing a scavenger hunt and it was an emergency. Uhh I can punch you in the face and actually give him a reason to come over here.

• One of the new guys at work said that I didn’t seem like a very pleasant person. This was after I told him I didn’t ever want to work with him because he was talking about “lady parts” being gross and that they “do gross things.” He also said that if he found a wallet he would take all the money out and then turn it in. You’re telling me that I don’t seem like a pleasant person? You’re clearly an idiot, but I didn’t come right out with that and say it to your face. Why would I be pleasant to a person who is clearly an immature asshole?

• If you’re wearing short shorts that need a separate piece of fabric to connect the denim, like two pieces of denim connected by zebra fabric, then you probably shouldn’t be wearing short shorts. They’re apparently made to be expandable for your thighs…no body wants to see you in those.

• I was waiting after class to talk to my professor and the girl that was talking to her before me said, “I’m going on a cruise Saturday, I emailed you at the beginning of the semester, and I need to take my final before that. I’ll be out of town from the 8th-15th.” My professor obviously said it wouldn’t happen because she won’t have the final made by then. Who the fuck goes on a cruise for all of finals week?