Seven 9s and 10s

"Date A Girl Who Reads" by Rosemarie Urquico

littlemissdorkette:

(In Response to Charles Warnke’s You Should Date An Illiterate Girl.)

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she…

This, and the essay to which it responds, makes me want to stab things - not living things, because that’s cruel, but definitely inanimate objects, like pillows and cushions and melons and old wooden sheds.

Girls come in all shapes, sizes, and levels of literacy, and being of any particular shape, size, or level of literacy does not explicitly exclude a girl from also being any of the other options.  Just because you spend your free time perusing the shelves at used bookstores doesn’t mean you don’t also like browsing through the racks at Nordstrom, and just because you haven’t read a book since junior high doesn’t mean you don’t also like to spend your time analyzing gravitational redshift.

Literacy, and specifically “the enjoyment of reading,” does not indicate a person’s character, potential, or intelligence any more than the mass of the poop you’ll make tonight will impact ocean levels.

(via rinaedin)

People are dumb

<rambling rant>

Don’t search Twitter for “Jeopardy” and read through an hour’s worth of tweets unless you want to see a lot of people being genuinely stupid.

I saw far too many “Jeopardy is fixed” tweets… because the Final Jeopardy question was “Sports and the Media” and Jelisa, the sports writer, won the show.

Right. It’s fixed. Or maybe, those other two dudes are complete fucking noobs.

The answer, “On Feb. 8, 2010, the major headline in this city read, “AMEN! AFTER 43 YEARS, OUR PRAYERS ARE ANSWERED” might be one of the easiest I’ve ever seen.

OK. Fine. Not everyone is a sports fan. That Roger dude is a PhD computer science nerd, not your typical sports fan. But THIS ISSSSSSSSS Jeopardy! They were being tested on an event that happened less than a year ago! An event that made headlines around the world - not just sports headlines - as an occasion to celebrate the turn-around and recovery of a great city.  That’s not “fixed.” That’s common sense.  It doesn’t take a genius, or a sports writer, to know that the Super Bowl - arguably the most publicized sporting event on the planet - happens the first week of February, every year.  And yet, you think that because they essentially asked the contestants “Hey dude, who won the super bowl this year?” it was all a setup? That’s just fucked up.

She won fair and square, fueled by an intense final minute of Double Jeopardy in which she significantly closed the gap between herself and Roger.  I guess you’re also gonna tell me that they fed her the question “What are the Lacrimal Ducts?”  (Seriously… that was some impressive shit.)

She’s a woman and she’s got a brain and she took down goliath and it was awesome and you can all take your conspiracy theories and shove them right up your asses.

</rambling rant>

High-res Merlin Mann is a man that I generally hate to love.  Somehow he became the posterboy (in a minute you&#8217;ll see what I did there) for modern, web-humor and social commentary.  Everyone orgasms at his every tweet.  People think he can do no wrong.  It&#8217;s an uncanny comparison to the way people treat President Obama, but on vastly different levels. As much as I love You Look Nice Today! (a lot) and as often as he makes me laugh (a lot) I still tend to fight the urge to like the guy, mainly because everyone else seems to think he&#8217;s more of a webmessaih than just a standard webcock. But, he hits the nail on the head with this post that I have reblogged below. merlin: The Real Deal On Day One, Obama Sets a New Tone - NYTimes.com “Starting today,” Mr. Obama said, “every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information, but those who seek to make it known.” Okay. Here’s the deal. I’m breaking my general, radio silence about the Obama thing. Partly, because the election (and the ungodly not-funny, not-interesting “coverage” thereof) basically destroyed my soul for six months. Partly because (yeah, I’m sorry I have to admit this), I had a lot of concerns (some very disturbing) that this man would never make it to getting sworn in. And I didn’t want to jinx it. But. I have a feeling this guy may be the real deal. Seriously. I’m still annoyed by the goddamn posters and hats and songs and freeform hagiography about a Chicago politician who’s still a civil servant and a human being. But, I also have a feeling this civil servant’s got the stones to see reality and remind people what it means. And to tell people in unapologetic terms what the deal is going to be to start unravelling a lot of fundamental brokenness. I also predict that he’s going to disappoint an unbelievable number of people who’d like to think he’s all-powerful Zeus with a secret pack of smokes and that tidy haircut. But, y’know, maybe honest, un-shiny, and difficult-to-productize disappointment is exactly what we need right now. Instead, of eight years of empty boxes and flag stickers. Maybe what we really need is somebody to tell us it’s time to grow up, to think about how the rest of the world operates, and to accept that being a country of adults means doing a ton of insanely hard work and making sacrifices where not everybody wins. Thing is, I’m supporting an honest, level-headed man who seems to care about doing a good job and telling people the truth. But, I’m not supporting a poster. It’s posters we need a shit-ton less of right about now.

Merlin Mann is a man that I generally hate to love.  Somehow he became the posterboy (in a minute you’ll see what I did there) for modern, web-humor and social commentary.  Everyone orgasms at his every tweet.  People think he can do no wrong.  It’s an uncanny comparison to the way people treat President Obama, but on vastly different levels.

As much as I love You Look Nice Today! (a lot) and as often as he makes me laugh (a lot) I still tend to fight the urge to like the guy, mainly because everyone else seems to think he’s more of a webmessaih than just a standard webcock.

But, he hits the nail on the head with this post that I have reblogged below.

merlin:

The Real Deal

On Day One, Obama Sets a New Tone - NYTimes.com

“Starting today,” Mr. Obama said, “every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information, but those who seek to make it known.”

Okay. Here’s the deal. I’m breaking my general, radio silence about the Obama thing. Partly, because the election (and the ungodly not-funny, not-interesting “coverage” thereof) basically destroyed my soul for six months. Partly because (yeah, I’m sorry I have to admit this), I had a lot of concerns (some very disturbing) that this man would never make it to getting sworn in. And I didn’t want to jinx it.

But.

I have a feeling this guy may be the real deal. Seriously.

I’m still annoyed by the goddamn posters and hats and songs and freeform hagiography about a Chicago politician who’s still a civil servant and a human being. But, I also have a feeling this civil servant’s got the stones to see reality and remind people what it means. And to tell people in unapologetic terms what the deal is going to be to start unravelling a lot of fundamental brokenness.

I also predict that he’s going to disappoint an unbelievable number of people who’d like to think he’s all-powerful Zeus with a secret pack of smokes and that tidy haircut. But, y’know, maybe honest, un-shiny, and difficult-to-productize disappointment is exactly what we need right now. Instead, of eight years of empty boxes and flag stickers.

Maybe what we really need is somebody to tell us it’s time to grow up, to think about how the rest of the world operates, and to accept that being a country of adults means doing a ton of insanely hard work and making sacrifices where not everybody wins.

Thing is, I’m supporting an honest, level-headed man who seems to care about doing a good job and telling people the truth. But, I’m not supporting a poster. It’s posters we need a shit-ton less of right about now.