The Misadventures of a Native New Yorker

I swear, I want to take a red pen to 90% of the LJ community posts I read.

I have never subscribed to the whole "lol just the internet!" school of thought. If you are solely represented by text, wouldn't you want to sound like someone with a brain?

Then again, if you don't *have* a brain to speak of, it may not be such a worry, but still. My inner English major gets twitchy. And, I am less sympathetic to people with lousy grammar.

I'm all for charity. I donate to many over the course of a year. Usually I'm a guaranteed sucker donater when friends hit me up because they're running/walking/pogo-sticking to protect endangered species/prevent cancer or stop brain clouds. I feel like these charity events work on two levels, and work well - not only do they raise money for good causes, they get people to pay attention to these causes. Usually because one is often reluctant to part with cash until they know exactly what they're donating to. So, money is raised, people are informed, there's cake, and everybody wins. Yay.

However, I'm a bit more dubious of the idea of the whole notion of "raising awareness" for its own sake. Sure, it's fine on its surface - you're explaining to people what something is and why it's good or bad. In my experience, it's generally bad, as "raising awareness" has been a cover for "I'm going to scold the living shit out of you" for many things. Or sometimes, it's even worse. Sometimes things are done in the name of "raising awareness" that make no sense whatsoever. The perpetrators claim that they're "raising awareness," but usually it's just an excuse for bad behavior and property destruction. For shock and awe. I'm sure you can think of a few organizations that are famous for this, but I'm leaving them off the table for now.

No, right now my annoyance crosshairs are firmly centered on the flabbergastingly dumb meme to circulate on facebook yesterday. In said meme, women were advised to post the color of their bras as their status (in place of such witty one-liners as, "Work is boring," or "I want a sandwich."). In doing this, they were told they'd be "raising awareness" for breast cancer. Some immediately complied. Many others (myself included) balked. Especially because one has nothing to do with the other. Worst of all, we were told to not tell TEH BOYZ, and make them guess what we were being all mysterious about. *facepalm*

A few issues:
1. How does it raise awareness if we don't tell anyone what we're doing? I understand that there are many out there who live their life like an eternal 6th-grade slumber party, frilly bedsheets and all, and if it makes them happy, more power to them. (Even though I am certain that was one of Dante's circles of hell in The Inferno.) If I've learned only one thing from being in a relationship with a real!live!person!, it's that you can only benefit from clearly communicating your problems, wants, needs, and/or desires so that the both of you can work on an effective solution together. It doesn't come from an article in a magazine or on the web of how to determine what your mate is thinking by the way they hold their beverage or contort their eyebrows. Similarly, announcing our bra colors to the world without telling anyone why won't really help anyone cure cancer. However: giving money to scientists is known to work - foundations to!

2. We're not talking about cancer, we're talking about bras. Announcing your bra color to raise awareness of breast cancer is like raising awareness about poaching by talking about your collection of Beanie Babies.

3. And, oh, by the way? MEN CAN GET BREAST CANCER TOO. Shocker. Even though their bewbs are not as spectacular as ours, they have the equipment and can therefore contract the disease. So how can not telling men about something that could have as much of an effect on them as it does on us accomplish anything whatsoever?

I have a lot of people on my f-list here that are tireless supporters of the cause, and something like this really takes away from how hard they bust their asses to raise staggering sums of money. If curing cancer was as easy as announcing your bra to the world, I'm sure laughingirl would have been perfectly happy to do so, go to brunch and about her weekend, rather than spend months busting her hump fundraising and days walking for the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer events she's involved in every year. If Facebook had said to post that if you were in favor of stopping breast cancer, post this as your status with a link to make a donation to a worthy cause, that would have been entirely another matter. I would have done it! But post my bra color? Nope. Sorry. (for a worthy cause: click here)

Is breast cancer a problem? Hell yes. Has all of these walks and talks and pink kitchen-aid mixers brought attention, money, and energy to stopping a terrible disease? Yes. That's wonderful. I just worry sometimes about the way it's perceived and represented - people treat it like only women can get it, and it's the only disease that can kill us. (Although the "red" campaign people are getting the word out about heart disease). Women get all kinds of cancers, and they're just as deadly. I also wish all this "awareness" didn't have to be all cute and twee. Although the contrarian in me kind of wants to start raising awareness for colon cancer (which runs in my family) by wearing a brown ribbon and baking chocolate starfish cookies. Think that might work? We're more than aware of breast cancer. What we need to do is fight it through education, through science, and through medicine. Not through flashing strangers on the internet.

There's a great essay in Newsweek that also makes a great point: "what we need is not a context free reminder of the disease, but a cure, as well as some scientific clarity about how best to prevent the disease."

Happy birthday trebleahead

I am off today. It is rad, even though I am spending the day cleaning. More on the awesome weekend of awesome later.

But first, a video you all need to see (thank you, killerweasel, thank you oh so much.)



And now, back to work. j_bkl and I are making lots of progress!

(edited to add: the awesome that is Movie Macro Monday on sf_drama

::Opens door::

::looks around::

You were right, antheia. Much ado about nothing.

That being said?

::clings to LJ:: OMG NEVAR LEAVE ME AGAIN.

(honestly, it wasn't so bad. I read some other blogs, did a bunch of work, went to a lunchtime seminar. And now LJ is back, and ahead of schedule! Whee!)

I just dug up my vox account. I have no idea if that's going to be down today in addition to LJ, but at the very least it's something (along with facebook, twitter (equilibriumgirl is my name over there), Jezebel, Gawker, and all the other links I have on del.ici.ous) to keep me busy during the outage.

(edited to add: there's also typewrittenteacup.blogspot.com - although I'm not sure what I'll say. Damn it, what will I be able to keep refreshing and scrolling through?)

Name there is same as the name here.

See you guys after the break...provided that they don't fuck anything up.

I'm not going to directly link to the article in order to protect some of her privacy, but big ups are due to my girl redstapler, for landing a kick-ass new job that suits her awesomeness. I squee in her general direction. ;)

I actually think the duvet is really cool. The throw pillow, also. But I agree with angelislington that if it was a Star Trek: The Next Generation set, I'd have ordered it by now.

OMG WTF NO NO NO NO x INFINITY (volume xxvii) Nothing against the dude, but I am so against stuff like this on principle. Douglas Adams is dead, therefore THERE SHOULD BE NO MORE HITCHHIKER BOOKS.

And last, but not least, a morning funny, for those of you who've read Breaking Dawn., or Breaking Dawn spoilers (and already know how the book will end). Many LOLs to be had.

And that's just some of what's on the internets this morning. :)

dazz made himself this really cool avatar, so I made one, too!! (no idea how accurate it is or isn't. I always thought the one in the icon looked most like me. Not sure, though.)



Upon further reflection, I think this one may be more "me."



You can have one, too!!

I'm proud of myself for going to the gym today, despite leaving work late and not being sure I wanted to. But i did it!! And I'd like to make a habit of this. We'll see how I do.

Let me once again expound on my love of the internets. Really and truly.

All week long, wendywoowho has been talking up her love of 1776, which I'd seen once in the 7th grade and remembered enjoying, but really hadn't seen since. I knew how awesome it was (I mean, if you involve William Daniels in anything, the awesome is sure to follow), but I didn't own a copy, and I didn't have time to change my netflix choice. I was extremely in the mood to see it again, especially after reading this all week. But I was thwarted. Video store was closed, and Turner Classic Movies isn't showing it until ELEVEN O'CLOCK tonight. What?

Previously, I had been unable to get the "watch instantly" feature on Netflix.com to work, but that's different now. Now? It WORKS. I finally got the damn thing to work!! And I'm watching, via the internet, 1776, which I'd been dying to see. It also means that I'm going to easily be able to catch up with Season 1 of Doctor Who. Hopefully some nice person will be willing to let me borrow 2 and 3 after that, especially if I wind up liking season 1.

Anyway, before I get back to the movie, I just wanted to wish all of my fellow Americans a very happy Independence Day. May you celebrate it with roast beast and explosives.

The good news is that I found away to keep myself from constantly looking at LJ during work. The bad news, is that the solution is MySpace. . Yes, yes. I've caved. It's as additive and silly as I originally thought. It's Friendster on crack. And I love it. Some of you have gotten friend requests from me already, otherwise

I had a pretty kick-ass weekend. After Friday's fun, I met up with vbpal on Saturday and we headed into the city. First up was the Young Designer's Market, so I could find a present for whtegrlwthehair's birthday. I was also going to meet up with Carly there so she and I could have a look around together, but she was running a little late. Evan and I were kind of hungry, so we ambled around while we were waiting for her in search of sustenance. We ended up going to Vietnam Bahn Mi So No. 1 on Spring and Broome, which wound up being some of the best money I spent all day. $4 netted me a bottle of water and a HUGE sandwich (pork, some cold cuts, cilantro, sauces) on toasted french bread. I was skeptical at first, but it wound up being absolutely wonderful. After meeting up with Carly and getting caught in the rain (in that order), we hit the market. A couple of hours later Carly had bought a few things and I'd gotten Catherine a great shirt for her birthday.

Then Evan and I headed to the Big Apple Comic-Con, which wasn't so great. I wasn't impressed, it wasn't organized well and the selection of vendors and products wasn't so hot. Evan, a comic-con vet, was really disappointed. I was only annoyed about the $15 admission fee. There was a bizarre collection of celebrities there, ranging from the expected (Peter Mayhew, George Romero, porn stars, Corin Nemic from one of the Stargates) to the random (Jane Wiedlin from the Go-Gos had a table. Why?)

After picking up a couple of Neil Gaiman graphic novels, I headed into the ladies' restroom. While in there I started talking to an older woman. She laughed that I'd heard her talking to herself, but I told her that nowadays, you never know who's crazy and who's on the phone. She thought that was really funny, and then started talking to me about how "Otherworldly" cons are and how marvelous it was to be there. I talked to her a bit more, but when the "crazy" light started blinking, I beat a hasty retreat.

Turns out, I was talking to this woman. Her co-star has gone on to large-scale stardom and Scientology. She's signing pictures at a con. I'd be a bit barmy myself, were that me.

Then Evan made me an awesome dinner, we met up with his girlfriend Michelle and headed to BAM for Thank You For Smoking, which may be the best film I've seen so far this year. Easily. It was the glorious kind of smart funny that you don't get to see often enough nowadays. It's pretty dark, but I haven't laughed out loud this much at a movie since I saw The 40-Year-Old Virgin. I walked out of the theater happy, and feeling as though I'd made a great investment. It was totally worth my $10.

I might as well post this, it's been sitting in Semagic since lunch. *sigh*