Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Do you know how old are the girls?

Well, here's a milestone.  Tonight, for the first time in my life, someone on the street offered to get me a prostitute.  "Nick" was poor, wretchedly skinny and nearly toothless, but he matched me stride for stride over the course of my ten minute walk to the hotel after dinner.  My impromptu guide to life pitched and pitched hard--his goal was clearly spare change, but he aimed to earn those coins.  First it was massage and "boom boom!," then he outlined the ages of the hookers (17!  16! 15 . . . ), grinning and gesturing towards some passing preadolescent girls to demonstrate his point.  As we walked, I got a basic education in Filipino whoring (the hotel desk clerk will know where to find someone, I can get clean girls, payment is by the hour and there's never an overnight rate, it's crazy cheap, etc.)  Strip clubs made a brief appearance on the menu.  Nick could see I wasn't biting and even floated a potential alternative, without presumption: "you want go to a gay bar down here?"  He also discoursed on tourist attractions and claimed to be able to point me in the direction of much better housing deals than my own. 

Then he asked me for money.  I gave him 6 pesos.  He asked for 10 more.  I did not give him 10 more, and I said goodnight.


Monday, February 25, 2013

Hot As Balls In The Philippines

A gracious good morning, and welcome to another edition of Hot As Balls In The Philippines.


I'm your host, Sam, and it is HOT AS BALLS IN THE PHILIPPINES.

Good night, and good luck.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Life on Crutches

So, I’m on crutches.  Poor Sam and Will (and countless others) have heard me complain about this to no end.  But now I can write about it!  I started writing and have so much to say that I’m going to make it a series.  

So, part 1: CRUTCHES AND ACCESSIBILITY

Being on crutches has gotten me thinking a lot about ableism and how fucking hard everything is when you’re not completely able-bodied.  I realize that it’s the shittiest to be like “OHAI DISABLED PEOPLE I NOW UNDERSTAND YOUR PLIGHT AND CAN THEREFORE SPEAK FOR YOU” because I don’t and I can’t.  After all, I don’t know how long I will have a leg brace and be on crutches, but it is nearly impossible that it will be more than 8 weeks.  
(UPDATE: I saw the doctor today and I can start putting weight on it and don’t have to wear the leg brace anymore.  So this will be even shorter than I thought)


Just to be clear: I can not, IN ANY WAY, speak for folks with long-term disabilities.  I shouldn't need personal experiences that of just a fraction of something to be made more aware of it.  But I did. Through my experience, I have realized how incredibly inaccessible lots of places are.  Even when they are supposedly “accessible.”  

Here’s just a few things:

1) “accessible” entrances or ramps or whatever are almost always the least direct line between where you are and where you are trying to go.  For instance, the handicap accessible entrance is on the opposite side of the building where I intern when I walk (crutch?) from from the train station.  And I work in a very large building.  So basically, to get to the handicap entrance I would need to walk around to the other side of a city block.  Or I can go up several flights of stairs.  At least I can do that.  If I were in a wheelchair, I don’t know what I would do.  Did I mention that city block is all uphill?

2) The new green line trains (that’s when I know that I’m at least a little bit of a native bostonian.  I think they must have replaced these about 10 years ago) are considered handicap accessible.  However, when going inbound, to tap your metro card to pay, you need to go up several stairs.  Therefore, I end up not paying for my tolls, because I’m too terrified to try to get up the stairs and pay on a moving train, especially when I’m afraid that I’ll lose my seat.  (I found out the hard way that I am not very good at standing up on the moving train).  So I end up sitting there, feeling like I’m cheating the MBTA and afraid that they’re going to arrest me.  There is an alternative available to me at my train station (although not all t above-ground rain stations, as I discovered a couple of days ago): I can show up at the train station early enough and tap my card to get a one-trip pass printed out for me.  That way, I will have paid before I even get on the train.  But what does that require?  More walking.  And what am I supposed to do if the train arrives just as I’m getting there?  Should I wait for the next one?


3) lots of doors, especially doors that lead outside, are really heavy, and half of the handicap buttons that I have pushed don’t work.  This includes the door to the bathroom at work.

4) People offer me help or say something to acknowledge the shittiness of my situation, and it is always with the best intentions. But it wears me down because I hear it all day.r  I don’t want people to be sorry for me, or constantly be drawing attention to the things that are hard for me.  I already know they’re hard. I find myself changing what I do in order to make people less nervous and less likely to offer help.  For example, I hesitate to take the 15 stairs up from the train station on the way home (a lot of my inconveniences revolve around my commute to work, but that’s mainly because it’s the only time I leave the house) instead of walking an additional 300 meters to go up a long ramp because it makes people nervous. Basically, everywhere I go, people are constantly asking me if I’m okay.  And I get tired of putting on a happy face (we could get into why I feel the need to put on a happy face, but that’s another blog for another day).

5) people don’t offer help when I really need it. For example, I need a damn seat on the train.  But people rarely get up for me.  I generally stand there looking scared and then someone (almost always a woman, I’ve noticed) says “Would you like to sit down?”  And I have to say “YES,” therefore showing that I am dependent on them. I am dependent on other people’s kindness.  And it’s true that there’s a little sticker that says that  there is a seat that  people are supposed to get up for handicapped folks (when ASKED - see problem of ).  But there is almost always a woman with a baby in that seat.  And I’m not about to move a woman with a baby.  Lord forbid, what if we have more than ONE person on the train at a time who has some kind of disability and needs a seat.  The MBTA is not prepared for that level of chaos.  

6) Everyone looks at me.  Everyone.  Just for a second, but they do.
 

Let me be clear: each of these things, individually, is not that bad.  But all together they add up to what I can best call the ableism version of microaggressions: little things that in isolation are manageable, but cumulative make up so many individual moments of my daily life that I end up feeling exhausted and having no fight left.

If this is even the tiniest TASTE of what people with real, permanent disabilities experience, things need to change.  And I feel like such an asshole -  SUCH. AN. ASSHOLE. - for not realizing that until now. 

Busan



















Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Stupid understanding of prenatal development.

Every time I see a closeup photo of a clitoris and labia, I'm mentally realigning it and watching the penis and scrotum pop out at me like Darwin's own Magic Eye.

I wonder if there are any women out there looking at closeup photos of penises and scrotums and visualizing them as clitorises and labia?  I hope so.

More like RADIO *BLAB*! Ha ha! *pained sigh*

Guys, "Radiolab" finally got to me to the point where I had to turn it off mid-episode.  The ep was called "Speed."  The second Jad Abumrad and Robert Crulwich started down the rabbit hole of high-frequency trading with their patented brand of candy-coated whimsey and wide-eyed fauxlosophy, I could no longer stand to listen.  Sorry, Jad and Rob--I still love you.  But I can't stomach hearing you talk about things when I actually know something about those things.  Because then your explanations just seem sluggish and infantile and wrongheaded and GAAH.  And then I remember about Jonah Lehrer, and the whole program starts to smell fishy, and I need some time off, okay?  The writer (an anthropology PhD) of a Slate op-ed about Jared Diamond's latest book took the position that the more familiar you are with Diamond's subject, the harder it is to agree with him.  It's sorta like that with me and Radiolab right now. 

On the bright side, Ira Glass is picking up the slack with the latest "This American Life" on a downtown Chicago school in a gang-ridden neighborhood.  It's a two-parter!  God bless you, "This American Life."  When you do journalism, you do it so so right.

Monday, February 18, 2013

Headline: Not-Completely-Skinny White Woman Is Mainstream Sex Symbol! Apocalypse Nigh!


Yep, it's that kind of blog now.

Seriously, though, sometime you should take a look at the full gallery of Kate Upton pics from her Antarctica shoot for Sports Illustrated (who helpfully provided her with a jacket occasionally so she only got a little bit of frostbite and her sight and hearing only began to shut down temporarily NO SERIOUSLY THAT HAPPENED GOOGLE IT WTF SPORTS ILLUSTRATED YOU ARE HORRIBLE PEOPLE.) 

Now, it may be that the internets are just finally tired of bodysnarking on Kate Upton, who will only be less than half my age plus seven for a few more short years, by which time my marriage to Jennifer Lawrence will no doubt be on the skids, so that works out just fine.  But I can't find much attention paid online to the conspicuous not-skinniness of our intrepid heroine in these photos.  And foreals, guys, just look up any other picture(s) of Sports Illustrated swimsuit models--or swimsuit or underwear models in general--and you will not find anyone looking this curvy.  And I'm not just talking about Ms. Upton's ahem ship-sinking icebergs ahem, either.  She has thick, wide hips and a pleasantly convex belly, too, which only gets successfully 'shopped out in some of the photos.

Know what I'm waiting for?  I look in the mirror every day and I'm waiting for the Russell Crowe swimsuit shoot, the Greg Grunberg fashion brief line.  I want big, somewhat chunky GUYS to be publicly desirable in their underwear.  But hey, I'm a big guy so I'm biased.  Let's take care of the women thing first, since they've been waiting long the hell enough for it and since they're the true poster [people] for dehumanizing objectification anyway (and since, let's face it, we've still got a ways to go--this Kate Upton progress is baby steps at its babystepsiest, to be sure) and then . . .






Someday, Greg.  Someday, buddy!

Wait, you're not reading this at work, are you?