My roomie, who is super nice and wants to feed me and keeps
apologizing for having her grandkids over and gave me a break on first weeks
rent cuz she didn’t have a bed frame, lets me use her bike. I rode it to the
internet so I could write. And drink.
It’s a nice looking bike. But it’s a grandma bike. It a
little small for me, my knees come above the handle bars that do that little
“U” shape towards the rider. It’s bright red and has a woman’s seat which I’m
still not really clear on the difference of men and women’s bike seats. But it
does feel… wide? It’s got a basket that hangs flimsy against the handle bars,
it smacks against the wheel cover on the front if I bounce against something.
Which happens a lot since there’s no suspension. It has seven gears but only a
few a reliable. The others click in and out of their pegs, giving the bike a
stuttering, forgetful personality. The brakes aren’t great and if I really
needed to stop I don’t think I could. So I drag my feet out along the bike when
I approach an intersection. It’s the perfect bike for a hipster, dopey and
inefficient. But looks good. If you’re a grandma.
I’m not a grandma though. I wear a helmet that’s too small
for my head. And when I pass by the open air restaurants, patrons can see a
potato headed figure hulking over a poor little bike that looks like it may
crumble under the weight of the clown ferrying himself with a backpack full of
beer to free wifi.
I’m pretty lonely now. Not terribly, and there’s nothing you
can do, but like I wanna hang out with people my age. So I got back from a run
the other day and there was a guy shooting hoops outside my house. I thought
that I should just ask he wanted to play 2 on 2. It’s a simple pitch. I’ve
convinced people of far more. But I took a second to evaluate my decision.
He wasn’t wearing a shirt (neither was I, but keep it in
your pants), and he had a real build to him. Biceps, and pecs and those muscles
that sound like dinosaurs more than human tissue. I don’t trust guys with that
many muscles. And I decided I didn’t like this guy and that he’s a dick. This
is an example of prejudice. But follow me through my thought process as I stare
at this halflete.
You have to work out to build muscle. You have to sit down
and spend some of your precious time on earth lifting pieces of metal with
numbers etched in them. A little lifting is good of course, a little tone. But
this guy had done so for so long that I had an internal monologue. So we’re
talking a real beef cake here. A real slab of prime rib. A big ol’ meat muffin.
So a conscious decision for this guy is to spend a major part of his life
trying to get ripped. Not ripped really, top heavy. Top heavy is the best way
to describe it.
Would I want to spend time playing basketball with this
moron? He’s chosen a life of sweaty benches and arm curls. He can’t be a great
guy. He’s got these big broad shoulders. Nobody with a sense of humour and
adventure and intelligence spends that long in a gym. My immediate thought is
that you mold your chunks that way to get women. If that’s the case then he’s
just contributing to over population by breeding beautiful idiot assholes. Then
I thought maybe he’s gay and then I was like “Well good for him it’s a hard
game out there”.
And then I thought about his goals in life. Why spend so
much time on your body? I mean a little yea of course. But this is a real
effort being expended. Don’t you want to go make something? Discover something?
Realize a truth?? Film a movie, build a bridge, invent a technology? Why waste so
much on something so temporary? You’re obviously an idiot. What an ass.
And then when I was peaking in my contempt for him, he
turned around and the way his muscles contoured around the small of his back, the
shadows made it seem like he had a tramp stamp. Welp that’s it. I’m not playing
with this jack wagon.
Of course, I had just come from an absurdly long run. Which
had blistered my feet and taken up much of my day.
Moral of the story is I’m a hypocrite, I didn’t play
basketball with that guy and everyone’s a faggot.
I used the word “faggot” there for comedic effect. I don’t
really use that word or swear in general. But words have different meanings in
different places and over here the word “cunt” is used VERY differently.
I never use cunt, I just don’t think it sounds that good
coming out of my mouth. Plus the social repercussions in the US. But in Aussie,
cunt is just another word for friend. “Oi, he’s a funny cunt”, they’ll say. I
think you could use it as an insult but I’ve never heard it that way. So the
context of words is really what puts the meaning in them. I think.
If an Aussie bloke went to the US and unknowingly started
throwing cunt around like he was home, would he offend you? Would you ask him
to change his behavior? He obviously doesn’t mean any harm, but words still
have meanings and can hurt people.
I tend to err on the side of “say whatever you want, but
know that people will react”. I tend to defend “offensive” jokes. A friend once
said she didn’t think any rape jokes were funny, and that rape couldn’t be
funny, and that she didn’t want to hear my joke that might have something to do
with rape. I find that kind of offensive! And dangerous! If you say no one
should tell rape jokes, then you give rape a power and shrouds it in mystery
and closes more opportunities to talk about it.
Jokes can be cathartic. It’s a way for people express
themselves and maybe ease the pain. I don’t know what it’s like to be raped, or
to have that fear really. But I’ve been dying to write a good suicide joke.
However, there are a ton of terrible rape jokes, and
research that shows that misogynistic humour can actually increase the tendency
for rape to occur (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20042541,
I couldn’t read the whole study just the abstract). Which is super scary but
also kind of makes sense, if you normalize and trivialize treating women poorly
then that will manifest itself in culture. To me that means you have to make a
damn good joke if it’s going to be about rape.
Sarah Silverman has a great “10 Tips To Prevent Rape”, my friend tells
an awesome joke about rape, and there should be a third example here but I don’t
have great internet access and I don’t think Louis CK’s joke about rape is that
funny.
What was I talking about? Context and cunts. Yea. So An
Aussie guy comes to US and is saying cunt a lot and a person is mad about it.
Well, it’s probably not a big deal for the guy to change his speech pattern,
but let’s say it is. In order to be offended you have to accept that your
meaning of cunt is more “real” than his. That your version of reality is more
important. And it’s allowed to be! But I think that’s what you have to accept
when you’re being offended.
Again, super simple for someone to not say cunt, I probably
won’t defend that guy in court. So let’s pick a harder example.
How bout the confederate flag? For a lot of people, it’s a
symbol of racism and oppression. It’s a big middle finger to black people and
probably more than a little threatening. Certainly can be deemed offensive. One
time I was singing for this band and they wanted the band logo to include the
confederate flag in the background and I was like Noooooooooooooooo way Jose.
Jose played bass.
But presumably, for a lot of people, the confederate flag is
not that. It represents the south, home and family. It’s your teenage years
drinking beer and driving around on 4 wheelers, listening to your favorite
music and having the people you love surround you. Some might say it represents
state’s rights and independence, but I’m not gonna play that angle. Not a great
angle, it’s a little obtuse.
The point is, it could have nothing to do with race for some
people. And then when you’ve got two differing view points on a thing and it’s
a hot topic, Then you open a shitty store in a mall that sells dildos and candy
and Good Charlotte CDs.
No you often have contention because someone is challenging
someone to give something up that they believe to be true. Either the confederate
flag does or does not represent racism. Or that the racism is or is not more prevalent
than its other meanings.
I’m not trying to convince anyone that flying the
confederate flag is not racist or not offensive or isn’t not racist nor not
offensive. But I’m trying to say you impose your reality on someone when you
try to convince them of something. Maybe that’s obvious, but I think you should
be aware of it.
Because I was taught in school that when being persuasive
you should never admit the opponents side may be true. And like c’mon. That’s
why we have such a split political environment. And butt heads butting heads.
You can’t be 100% right. The other guy is a little right
too, and you should be aware of it.
Or not. Look at how meta this argument can get.
