Hey y'all -
I haven't forgotten about my promised posts on crutches, but the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that I don't have that much to say. Still, I try to spit it out in the next few days.
But first, the interwebs roundups of things that caught my eye this week:
Best headline ever: "Deval Patrick bears all at photo opp"
Monument made the front page of Jezebel. Way to stalk my shit, Jezebel. Even though I really had nothing to do with this high school thing because I graduated a bajillion years ago. I wish we had this when I went to high school. On the other hand, they also have security cameras, which is weird. Nowadays, there would be no skipping out on study hall and playing my guitar that I left in the hall by the band room. On the other hand, I guess I wouldn't need to skip out to do that. As long as I'm one of the 6 kids who gets selected to do this superspecial program. Everyone else is fucked. (Also, Sophie!!! Who does she look like, guys? Yup, they're siblings.)
Finally, Joss Whedon is making a movie adaptation of "Much Ado About Nothing." I want to be excited, because both of those things, individually, are awesome, but I'm not convinced they're going to work together. The trailer is kind of meh.
And that is all the important news from this week!
My friend Lee sent me an e-mail today which said nothing except "A gay, black politician was lynched in Mississippi, the KKK is at Oberlin, Chavez is dead, and sequestration is a bitch."
Clearly he has his news priorities all wrong. At least that's what I'm going to keep telling myself as I die a little bit inside.
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Friday, March 1, 2013
I just read the list of Oscar winners
because I'm far from the meaty bosom of the USA right. now. Well, I sort of just read the list. I read part of the list, and then I quit in horror. Yay?
Y'know when...
Y'know when you meet a Vietnamese guy in the lobby, and he occupies some hazy temporal limbo between the ages of 15 and 30, and you don't know whether he's creepy-metro or just Vietnamese, and it's really late but he earnestly asks you if you could spend a moment talking with him, and early on you just get the vibe that the conversation's gonna last over an hour and end up being about how everyone wants to sleep with him, but you don't see any way out, so you politely engage him in conversation, and then an hour later it turns out the conversation IS about how everyone wants to sleep with him, and you are in awe of your own goddamn prescience but not so much as you are in agony having to exchange one more pair of words with this creepy, painfully sincere Vietnamese guy? Yeah. Dammit. Damn. It.
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.
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.
I'm your host, Sam, and it is HOT AS BALLS IN THE PHILIPPINES.
Good night, and good luck.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
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.
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.
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