life is short

I keep telling myself that I shouldn't be surprised anymore at the depths and heights of human behavior anymore, but what I forget to tell myself is that stupidity is more commonplace than hydrogen in this universe.

So there's this school in upstate New York. For safety and health concerns (if the backpacks are so heavy you're afraid your students will injure themselves, aren't you the source of the problem?), they have banned all bags in the halls. As if that wasn't silly enough, they banned purses too, until they realized that hey! Girls carry feminine hygiene supplies in their purses! So they amended the rule so that girls can only carry purses when they're menstruating, and use it as an excuse to create an atmosphere of oppression and skin-crawly ick for people of both genders. Where is my sledgehammer of feminist rage, dammit.

Oh, dood. Livejournal. What the fuck? It is my understanding that pornish_pixies was deleted because some twittish group was searching on "incest" or "non-con" or "rape" and reporting said journals to the LJ abuse team. It always aggrieves me when there are not only puritanical idiots out there, but people willing to accomodate them. I am well aware that Livejournal is a private site and all its denizens agree to adhere to Six Apart's terms of service, but they're not even abiding by their own. (Yes, that's a post from a community that has vested interest quoting from a site that doesn't agree with them, but I don't think we have anything resembling authoritative sources here.)

The site mentioned in the links above also feels totally hinky to me. It's basically a domain with a Blogger blog and some links to books about the damage sexual abuse does to children. I would think that a site that does this sort of thing and actually works with law enforcement would have a press coverage section/touts of their busts or whatever you want to call them. The complete and utter idiocy of this still boggles me though. Do the people running this site (if it is more than one person at all) realize they've just sent a big fucking warning bell to any "real" pedophiles/child porn aficionados on Livejournal? (Not that this would be out in the open anyways, if these people had a shred of sense.) Now they're just going to drive them underground and onto some service that's even more obscure where nobody would think to look for them. Brilliant way to save the children!

I have no grudge against many nice people who work at Six Apart, but the way the company itself has behaved since it bought Livejournal is deeply fucking unimpressive. Six Apart has, in many different and small ways, decided to piss off the population of this fair site. I have lived and breathed fandom for over half my life, and I have been on Livejournal for a very long time. (Sometimes I suspect it's so they can make everybody move over to Vox, but that is all conspiracy-minded paranoia.) I don't know how long I can stay on a service that so chooses to disrespect so many of its (paid) users based on the insane frantic rantings of some half-cocked vigilante. Sure, they can just keep all the teenies and the emo kids as paid members, but it wouldn't be quite as fun anymore, would it?

Dear Kenneth Eng, fuck off and die, and leave some room in the world for Asians who aren't as much of a waste of space as you are. (You're also a horrible sci-fi author, but that is not really germane to the discussion.)

Surely there are more constructive ways to acknowledge that there is a great deal of racism in the Asian-American community without throwing, y'know, napalm on the fire? I don't think I've ever had anybody do anything to make me ashamed that I am the same ethnicity as they are, until now. Every time somebody who does something stupid happens to be Asian, Cody (jokingly, of course) says "You're Asian, talk to them." I think I kind of have to this time, because now he's making me (and everybody else with slanty eyes and yellow skin) look bad. :P

Um, what?

Israel says key world powers gave the green light to its Lebanon campaign by not urging an immediate truce.

I am so fucking done with the world.

So apparently the purity balls come with jewelry accessorization now too. They're not chastity belts--that's just too old-fashioned--they're chastity lockets! With functional keys!

You then explain to the child that you will hold the key to her precious heart until the day of her wedding. On that day, you will give her away like at all weddings, BUT in doing so you will also “give away” the key to her heart to her now husband. The key and lock are actually functional and your son-in-law will place the key in the heart to open it.

All together now: EWWWWWWWW.

mydarkstar, you should totally write a thesis on this sort of thing.

Stupid white guy who knows nothing about Asian culture starts magazine for Asian people, "promises to introduce readers to 'the essence of the Far-East Asian Women of New England.'"

But he has a Vietnamese girlfriend, so that counts for something, right?

I hate white people.