Strike Three

I just had a lovely phone conversation that I’d like to share with y’all.  Details may have been embellished because funny.

The setup:  After unsuccessfully trying to update my profile info on the pet microchip website (strike one), I looked for an email address to seek help.  There was none (strike two).  I was forced to make a phone call and wait on hold for several minutes.  The following conversation was the strike three.

Lady:  Hello, how may I help you?

Me: Hi, I tried to update my profile info on your website but couldn’t.  Can you please help?

Lady:  Sure, just let me get some info from you. (She gets it from me.) Ok, so for this you’ll have to fax in a copy of your change-of-name document and we’ll get that changed for you.

Me: Fax?!  Really?  What year is this?

Lady: 2015, ma’am.

Me:  Exactly.  Fax machines should have all self-destructed by now.  Can’t I just email you a picture of it?

Lady:  Oh…sure, I guess you could do that.  Send it to: wereidiots@stoopidville.com

Me:  Why couldn’t you have just put this information on your website instead of making me call and wait on hold?

Lady:  Oh that would be too easy.  See, we need to be sure that our customers are worthy of our services and love their pets enough to call and wait on hold.

Me:  —-

Lady:  Also, I see here that you owe a balance on your account.  The first year of this service was free, but every year after that there’s a fee.  You could either pay $20 to secure your membership for the next year or just pay $283655673 for a lifetime membership.  Since your precious little kitty is so young, I recommend the lifetime membership.  Would you like to take care of that today?

Me:  Uh, what?  We’ve never paid membership fees.

Lady:  Oh, well we don’t send out bills.

Me:  Then how do you collect fees?  Via carrier pigeon?  Telepathically?  Or maybe the lost animals do it!!!

Lady: We send you a reminder email, or when you call us we remind you.

Me:  Wow, so you do try to use email?  Why wouldn’t you try and fax me first?  I never once got an email or fax from you.  Or a carrier pigeon.

Lady:  Maybe it went to your spam folder or you deleted it since you hate the animals.

Me: Yeah, no.  Unlike you, I actually understand how emailing works.  And billing, for that matter.  So why isn’t my online account closed since we’ve never paid you a dime?

Lady:  I can’t answer that question because I am incompetent.

Me:  Ok, so…if my cat had gone missing one year ago and someone found her, would you still have called me even though we’ve never paid?

Lady:  Oh yes.  We would never not reunite you with your animal.  We love an-

Me: You love animals, yes.  I get it.  So what you’re telling me is that this is a free service.

Lady:  No, it’s not.  You have a balance due.  Would you like to take care of this today?

Me:  No.  No, I would not.  You just go take care of those animals while I go all Office Space on my fax machine.  Oh wait.  That’s right.

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Puerto Rico – los animales

Welcome to the third post (or fourth if you count the post on the conspiracy against our secret super powers) about my trip to Puerto Rico last July.

Click here if you missed the one about all the mouth watering and not-so-mouth-watering food we consumed while on the Isla del Encanto.

For this post, I will recap all the wonderful creatures we came across on our journey.  There was quite an array, complete with mongeese and a lizard we lovingly named Chupagente.

Me gustaria caca de gato

Remember before I left, I was hoping to barter for a great price on cat poop?  Well, I found some bonafide Puerto Rican cats trolling the streets of San Juan, and just like Ace Ventura, I let them swarm around me carrying all their fleas and disease.  It was kind of awesome.

Godzirra!

We found several giant iguanas that are slowly eroding away the precious, historical fortresses by literally digging holes in the rock walls so they can come out and sunbathe whenever they want.  And don’t let their lazy demeanor fool you- they can move right quick when they want to (meaning, when I am trying to take a picture of them).  Lazy bastards.  But maybe not-so-lazy since it takes a badass to dig a hole into a rock wall.  Badass bastards.

Aye, sea turtles

When we got to Luquillo on the eastern side of the island, we saw signs up about baby sea turtles hatching, and I immediately started quoting Pirates of the Caribbean (“…with human hair, from my back“).  They had protected sea turtle nests roped off on the beaches, and as we were walking back from dinner one night, I tried to give the unborn babies some moral support so maybe they’d hatch for me like in Jurassic Park but no dice.  I also made a mental note to lay off the booze at this point.

Beware the Mongoose!

So, as we were eating trying to choke down our melted cheese logs before hiking into the tropical rainforest, we notice this sign:

Turns out, at some point people got sick of how many snakes there were on this godforsaken island, and so someone decided to bring in a bunch of mongeese because, hey, they eat snakes!  Sweet deal!  You know what they also do? They also are great at carrying rabies and then munching on human ankles.  Greaaaat.  Not only that, but once they ate all the snakes, there was nothing left to eat the rats.  Somebody figured the mongooses(es) would eat the rats, too, cuz hey, they’ll eat anything, right?  Well…not if they’re le tired.  Someone had forgotten their thinking cap on that day since it turns out that rats are nocturnal and mongeeses are not.  Awesome job, you guys.

Stop, now, what’s that sound?

When we got to the smaller island of Vieques, we found a cute little cicada in the bathroom of our open-air hotel room.  How cute!  I just left him be, since he seemed to get a kick out of watching me pee.

Sadly, it seemed this little guy had come into our bathroom to die.  Either that, or I blame the horribly stinky, toxic fumes that get released inside our bathroom.  Sad face.  We said a few words.

Chupa my balls!

Still fragile from the lovely impromptu cicada funeral, we found a cute lizard intent on crawling in amongst my toiletries and refused to leave the now cursed bathroom area.  “This place is doomed, all ye who enter here!” I screamed at him, trying to save him from meeting the same bitter end as his cicada friend.  I guess he just loved us too much and stayed for quite a while, and so we called him Chupagente (after the famously named chupacabra, of course).

Horsey, horsey, horsey!

The island of Vieques is swarming with semi-wild horses, and I adored them ever so much!  I think they appealed to my inner 7 year old girl.  They also often blocked traffic and didn’t give a flying mongoose’s ass about it.  That appealed to my inner 75 year old man.

Stay tuned for more adventures from PR!

An Open Letter to My Cat: You had me at meow

Dear Sadie,

I love you.  You know I do.  I mean, I carried you for however long cats gestate.  I birthed you, for crissake. Don’t you dare listen to people who tell you otherwise.

I give you things.  I buy you expensive cheap toys and then go into the bathroom to cuss the world when you prefer to chew on my expensive therapy books instead.

I let you sit on my lap.  Even when I am trying to blog and eat ice cream at the same time.  Even in the summer, when you’re a steaming ball of fur that sticks to my sweaty legs.  Yummy.

I brush you.  Even though you get into a frenzy and try to bite the brush and end up biting my hand.  I understand; you can’t control yourself.  Those crazy social grooming-induced endorphins render you impulsive and violent.  But I know you bite because you care.

I feed you.  Even though you’re picky, and not even consistently picky.  You really love to keep me on my toes.

Most of all, I clean up after you.  I do all the normal expected cleaning up, sure – with pleasure.  I scoop your box full of clumped liquid and solid evil and then breathe in dust that probably causes evil-like organisms to grow in my lungs.  *cough, cough*

But you see, I go above and beyond because you take me to that place.  You challenge me.

It would be too easy for all the evil to be deposited in your box, and so you like to hide it.  And boy does that get an enthusiastic reaction from me.  Boy oh fucking boy.

It would also be too easy for evil to come out only one end of your Abomination Factory you call a body.  Gotta increase production during these hard times.  Maybe you have a monthly quota or something, I don’t know.

These additional little gifts, these little bits of Chewbacca Surprise really light up my mornings, especially when I am already late for work.

For all this, I’d like to thank you.  Truly.

Because what would I do with all that free time not spent scooping and scrubbing and cussing?  Let’s be honest, I’d probably be eating more ice cream.

So thanks.  I’d be fat(ter) and with less black lung disease without you.

And thanks also for the little extras you throw in, like when you serve as my alarm clock I never set on Saturday mornings.  You have no idea how much joy it brings me to hear your howling cries of longing as you reach up and jiggle the handle of my annoyingly loose bedroom doorknob.  I miss you, too, my little fur-demon.  I guess we can both sleep in when we’re dead.  Let’s see which one of us goes first.

You complete me.  You had me at meow.

Your loving Mama,

Melissa

P.S. – Remind me to tighten my bedroom doorknob.  And electrify it.

Kicking Ass and Taking Names (in more ways than one)

Since the boyman has been hunkered down in his hole working on his thesis, the two of us haven’t been to many (any) movies recently. So now that he’s all good and gradumacated (pause for applause), we’re going hog wild!!

Basically, we struck a deal. I love women kicking ass and taking names, and Brian loves history and war where men are kicking ass and taking names. This means we went to go see Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and War Horse.

SPOILER ALERT! I reference a few details of these movies, but I don’t spoil any endings. Hopefully you’ve either already seen these movies cuz you’re superfly, or you don’t care about them being minorly spoiled because, hey, it’s better than getting your toes gnawed off by a rabid clown.

TRIGGER ALERT as I reference events of sexual violence.

Both of these movies are about wild, spirited creatures who are being controlled by others more privileged than they are. Both of these movies involve intense violence, perseverance, devotion, and justice. It’s very possible that this is where the similarities end, although if I was in a pinch I could probably drag this on for a few more paragraphs.

Have you ever wanted to watch a movie so moving, so beautifully stunning, so captivating, but still have that constant reminder that you’re in a movie theater surrounded by cranky old people??! Then see War Horse!

I don’t understand why older folks feel it’s ok to talk through movies while at the theater. Do they even realize they are doing it? Do they realize it and not give a fuck? It was all I could do not to turn around and ironically ask them if their parents had ever taught them any manners.

Not only did these cranky-pants folks comment throughout the movie, the things they said were in no way contributing to the richness of the entertainment (although, now that I think about it, unless you’re at Rocky Horror, commenting at the screen will in no way improve the experience). The asinine comments can be placed neatly into 3 categories. Some examples:

1. My personal life and hopes and dreams should be heard by everyone

“My arm hurts…it’s been hurting me all day.”
If you keep talking, more than just your arm will hurt, sister.

“This movie has been everything I had hoped for.”
That’s nice, lady. I had hoped for a movie free of bitching and moaning, but I guess we can’t both have what we want now can we?

2. Captain Obvious to the rescue!

“Whoa, there’s the horse!”

“Ooh, he’ll be competition!”

“Oh look, they’re in love!”

Let’s see if I understand. Either you don’t quite get what’s going on and you’re attempting to confirm your current comprehension level by indirectly asking for input from your fellow moviegoers, or you very much do understand and you are selflessly translating the difficult content so that those around you can catch up. Either that or you have no filter and can’t keep your trap shut. Not sure, though.

3. Maybe if I yell loud enough, Spielberg will hear me

“No, don’t kill him!”

“He’s not dead, he just needs medicine!”

Ok, so that last one was from Lord of the Rings, but still, I admire your sentiment and I actually agree with you that the horse still had more life left in him, but hows about we give the cute horse our moral support in controlled, mature silence?

[Edit: contrary to popular belief, these last two statements do not give away the ending of the movie.  It’s the kind of movie where you’re left guessing til the end.]

Bottom line is that if people want to talk during a movie, then STAY THE FUCK HOME and wait for Netflix.

So I guess that was my review for War Horse. I recommend it, especially if you like horses or war. And the story is an Odyssey story, in that it follows the horse through the war and through various owners, places, and predicaments. My only caution is if you have this rare disease where you’ll die from overactive tear ducts, then don’t see it. And also, if you’re like me and you can’t stand to see animals in pain, then there will be one heart-wrenching scene where you’ll have to look away while your body is heaving with sobs. Needless to say, I felt very cleansed and vulnerable in the aftermath. My therapist would be proud.

————————

Now for Dragon Tattoo.

I read the books, saw the Swedish movies, and now I am licking my chops for the American versions.  I am a huge stickler for staying true to books in the movie versions, and any significant deviation from the original plot warrants a strongly worded letter in my book.

I thought Noomi Rapace’s Swedish performance as Lisbeth in the original movies was pretty well done, and I was skeptical that any second attempt could improve on the character, especially when left in the hands of Americans.  David Fincher  and Rooney Mara did not disappoint!  In fact, I thought that Lisbeth was indeed made much more three-dimensional, we could see a few more layers to her, and there was even some time devoted to giving a peek into her traumatic past, tidbits of the story yet to unfold.  Yes, Lisbeth sometimes chooses violence, but she does so only when she’s provoked and only when she sees no other option.  When we see Lisbeth mugged on the subway, she first hesitates and then runs after the guy and fights only to get her bag back and then runs away.  After her escape, we see her heave a sigh of relief and not one of satisfaction.

In my personal opinion, Lisbeth suffers from severe PTSD (post traumatic stress). The books describe her ability to cut herself off from all emotion and often stare back blankly when she chooses not to answer a question (that choice is yet another way she is able to fight back against her imposed narrative of being victimized and having power taken away from her).  I feel that this vital piece of Lisbeth’s behavior hasn’t been expressed fully enough in either movie version.  The American version did a slightly better job in that Lisbeth avoids eye contact and physical proximity, but the Swedish movies had Lisbeth responding with too many quips, too normal, too wordy, too talkative.  I wish some director out there would have the balls to put that gut-wrenching silence up on screen.  Let her eyes and that defiant silence do the talking.

I very much preferred Daniel Craig as Blomkvist to the actor in the Swedish version for the same reason as Mara – Craig was more human, more 3D.  In this version, Blomkvist was warmer, sweeter and less stoic than in the Swedish version.  He was also a bit more passive and humble.  His reaction when Lisbeth first comes on to him in her no-nonsense fashion was endearing, with his wide-eyed, stammering, chivalrous concern.  And plus, Daniel Craig is an awesome piece of ass to look at.  Thank you, casting director!

Another concern going into this movie was how Americans might portray the rape and sex scenes.  On one hand, I appreciate Europeans being able to portray sex and sexual violence with more transparency, rawness, and in graphic detail.  The books were certainly in graphic detail, and so there’s that part of me that wants the movie versions told as closely to the book as possible.  The American scenes were not as graphic as the Swedish ones, and maybe it was because I have already seen the Swedish scenes that I didn’t feel like anything was lacking from the American scenes.  The fear and pain and anger were all still there.

In closing, an ode to Lisbeth.  I fucking love Lisbeth Salander. She is a tortured soul who doesn’t play the victim.  She uses violence only when she doesn’t see any other options, but when she does use violence it’s with awesome warpaint that would scare the shit out of Hitler, let alone pathetic rapist pigs.  She’s not a maneater or oppositional-defiant in a negative clinical sense.  She’s not empowered by the violence she inflicts, she merely wants to level the playing field that has been tipped against her favor even before she was born.  People like me relish watching her take her power back from her abusers in any creative way she can think of, like tattooing their heinous acts on their chests.  She does the things that I sometimes wish I could do and she says the things I sometimes wish I could say.  She doesn’t abide by gender norms or sexual norms, she does what she wants, when she wants, and basically just asks people to leave her the hell alone.  My inner angsty-feminist teenager squeals with pleasure when Lisbeth comes on the screen.

Genderbending is fun for everyone!

Ladies.....

I hate it whenever someone puts me in a box.

It’s usually pretty dark in there and my claustrophobia starts to kick in right quick.  If I am lucky, someone poked some air holes in there pre-melissa-insertion.

So when I say “puts me in a box,” I usually mean “makes assumptions about me” or “has rigid expectations of me.”  When this happens, The Melissa gets quite angry and ranty, and few topics get my goat worse than when it comes to gender issues and the like.

To be clear, let’s define the word “gender.”  Here I will be using the feminist theory definition of gender as a social construction apart from biological sex.  Even though it is pretty commonly accepted, the terms sex and gender are not synonymous.  Sex refers to a person’s anatomy, chromosomes, etc.  Gender refers to the social roles and behaviors we perform.  Sex is a physical state while gender is a mental one.  An easy and fun way to remember this is that ‘sex is between your legs and gender is between your ears.’  Teehee!

While gender often matches a person’s sex (a biological man often plays the social roles of a male), it does not have to, and is so much more complicated and dynamic than the rigid binary boxes society has created for sex and gender.  In actuality, both sex and gender (as well as sexual orientation, but that’s a whole other post) exist on more of a spectrum with there being lots of shades of gray in between.  For the time being I wanna focus on gender and all the awesome variations and shades of gray.

Gender is something that we do.  Gender is performed, gender is behavior and a way we express ourselves in the world.  The most obvious way that we do gender is by how we visually present our bodies with clothing, hair (or lack of hair), nails, makeup (or lack of), accessories, etc.  This past week I wore a tie to work.  I have worn ties a few times before, but last week I wore my own tie – pretty purple paisleys.  I got a variety of reactions, from non-reactions to giggling to compliments to asking me what the tie was for.  I think it’s fair to say that most of those reactions imply that me -a lady- wearing a tie -male clothing- does not match the binary categories.  To be fair, if I had walked into work wearing a prom dress (a matching sex/gender combo), I might still have gotten the same reactions just because of the variable (in a long list of possible variables) of the office dress code.

I am dapper

I was also invited to a mustache party (nothing kinky, I swear), where mustaches were mandatory, regardless of gender.  What a hoot!  Both my partner and I were sans mustaches, so I drew one on each of us using my black and brown eyeliners.  How’s THAT for genderbending – I used a traditionally-marketed-to-female-gendered product to paint a bio-male thingy on my bio-female face.  Woot.

I find it interesting to see how I feel when I test the boundaries of traditional gender categories, depending on what I am doing and how public it is.  One of my clinical supervisors encourages us to identify what ways we defy gender norms without even thinking about it – by being ourselves – since who fits into the categories 100% of the time?  Answer: no one.

As a lady-person, I get to have lots more safe space in which to play with genderbending than men do, and I think that sucks.  We live in a world where I can wear a tie to work and just get some giggles, but if my partner wore a dress to work, he would have much bigger, more serious consequences.  That’s called a double standard and I hate it, hate it.  What are people doing to defy these stupid, stupid rules??!  I want to hear them!

No wonder we genderize things – our use of language demands it so!  We have three singular pronouns we use: he, she, and it. We lack any mainstream way of referring to a person whose gender is unknown or outside the binary without dehumanizing that person by saying “it.”  How horrible is that?  It may not sound like much of a crisis, but I definitely think it informs, fuels, and traps us in these harmful, restricting binaries.  On a sidenote – did you know that we have actually do have gender-neutral pronouns?  That’s pretty effing awesome!  No more using “they” as an awkward singular in term papers.

People get sooooo uncomfortable when they can’t put people/things/COLORS into gender categories.  Why is this?  Animals and human babies are a good example for this, since they don’t have gender.  They simply don’t got it.  Animals act instinctively based on their biological sex and that’s it, while humans develop gender gradually as their brain and social skills/world develops.  But when we get them as pets and baby humans, we assign them a gender using names and colored collars (you know, baby collars.  all the cool moms are doing it).  Without these names and collars, we don’t know what pronoun to use and people. go. nuts.  If a person doesn’t know a baby/animal’s gender, they usually either ask or refer to it as masculine.  Have you or anyone you know been scared that someone would mistake your baby/cat/lizard for the wrong gender?  Has anyone mistaken the gender?  Did you correct phe? (<—-gender neutral pronoun! How useful!)  Why or why not?  Why is it important to us that we project gender onto our things?  I find the discomfort around this subject absolutely fascinating, and I draw attention to it so that maybe others might get curious about why going against the traditional grain gets us so uncomfortable.

That reminds me, I was wrapping xmas presents yesterday, and my frugal self has two kinds of wrapping paper: a light blue one that says “Happy Holidays” so it can be used for xmas and Hanukkah, and one with assorted yellow and pink stripes to use for all occasions.  As I was making decisions about what to wrap in what, I realized I was choosing to wrap presents intended for males in the blue-based paper and females with the pink paper.  This will not do.  Buuut, my gut reaction to thinking about wrapping against gender norms made me uncomfortable.  My actual thought was more about me not wanting to offend any of my male family members (take note that I had no worries about offending the females with this arrangement).  Oh dear me.  The solution?  I said ‘fuck it’ and did it opposite.  Now, don’t give me a Nobel Peace Prize.  All I am saying is that the simplest damned things like this crop up all the time, and collectively, they mean something.  Stop and think about what they might mean.

Ways I defy gender norms by crawling out of my box:

• I hate cooking, I am not good at it, and I don’t wanna cook for you or anyone else.  So there.
• I wear ties.  With gusto.
• I wrapped xmas presents in paper with pink stripes that are intended for men.

How do you crawl out of your box? (the assumption I am making here is that everyone defies gender norms. booyah.)

For additional reading, check out this awesome blog post about one teacher working to abolish gender binaries by educating her students!!  Makes me so excited about life!