Stuff Heather Thinks is Super Great

Jezebel’s coverage of the Jennifer Weiner/Jonathan Franzen controversy. So basically, JFran (as I’ve decided to call him, “Jonathan Franzen” being so many letters and “JFer” being taken) has a new novel coming out called Freedom, which you’ll have heard about if you came across a copy of Time two weeks ago, with JFran on the cover next to a headline touting him as “Great American Novelist” whose book “shows us how we live now.”  Jennifer Weiner, chick lit author, has (essentially) interpreted the missing article in said headline as The, and questions why the hubbub.  She says that far less frequently, women writers get the attention and critical praise that male writers do –– particularly white male literary writers, like JFran, JFer, DeLillo and the like.  Their ilk, may I say, if I am being literary myself here.  I agree that there’s a double standard: for every Lorrie Moore, there seems to be a dozen Michael Chabons.  When I read this article, I tried to make a list of my favorite female writers and came up with three.  One of which was Jane Austen.  What the fuck, ladies and gents?  We need to remedy this.  I declare 2011 the Year of Ladywriting.

“Magic,” B.o.B and Rivers Cuomo. For some reason, YouTube doesn’t have the official music video up, I assume because it’s not released yet.  But!  I found a video of the lyrics.  God, this song is catchy.

“Hero”-era Enrique Iglesias. Have you heard Enrique’s new single, “I Like It”?  Did you actually like it?  Yeah, I didn’t either.  Enrique!  The excessive AutoTune makes you sound like a robot that malfunctions when sexually aroused!  If Pintsize from Questionable Content were to release a pop single, it would be this.  Enrique, you disappoint me greatly.  I used to believe you when you said you could blah away the pain.  What happened, Enrique?  What happened to you?

Jesus/Lafayette. When True Blood opened their third season with the introduction of Nazi werewolves, I said, “Really? Are you serious?” and buckled in for a bloody, unsatisfactory ride.  As expected, the third season is not altogether awesome.  (Werewolves, now FAIRIES?!  Are you fucking with me, HBO?)  But the budding romance between Lafayette and his mom’s nurse, Jesus, is a bright spot in the midst of Sookie/Bill drama and Jason’s seasonal romance with some female character he met a week earlier.  Alcide’s gone and Eric looks like he’s about to be whacked.  If so, the writers better step up the J/L screentime.

My job at the mall. Who knew? I really enjoy selling products when I like and use the products myself.  I’ve turned into one of those saleswomen who give you their opinion as you try stuff on.  Is that obnoxious?  I don’t know.  I can’t help myself.  It’s become a compulsion, telling women to try the blue jeans versus the red ones or the balconette if they don’t love the T-shirt bra, because balconettes are super supportive and comfortable.  And what’s that you say?  You don’t have a charge card with us?  Well, applying for one saves you 15% on your purchase today without even having to get approved.

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sojourn in suburbia part 3

My dad left at 8 am for work and will not be back til 9 or 10 at night, so today is light on the terrible/AWESOME quotables. The only other person with whom I have had any human interaction is my aunt’s cleaning lady, Robin. I offered her tea when she got here to assuage my guilt about largely ignoring her for the rest of the time she was here. She did not want any tea. The rest of my day has been spent watching the X Files, complaining about how cold I am, reading Gawker posts on Tao Lin, making tea, wishing someone else would make me tea, wishing someone would read selections of TS Eliot’s “The Wasteland” to me while I drank tea. Why is my life so hard? I don’t know. It took me three hours to write one email today. Suburbia is a disease. I’m going to go watch Bones now.

shit my dad says part deux

August 23, 2010

[on the adult students he teaches at a local tech institute] “Sometimes I think I should just bribe my students not to come to class so I can go home. But then I would have to teach them what the word “bribe” means, so maybe it’s not worth it.”

[after I got him a slice of cake and cup of tea] “This must be how a king lives!”

“So do you keep in touch with your friends on email and stuff when you’re on the computer? Is that what you do?”

[on the game of bejeweled i was playing on my phone] “Oh, is that a game? It’s pretty! Pretty colors!”

“To me, music is art, so it’s okay to listen to it for a long time. TV isn’t art. That’s just one man’s opinion.”

shit my dad says dot tumblr dot com

OKAY OKAY I didn’t write a list of stuff I hate. I know. I am the worst. Also I feel like you like me less when I complain about things. I know I do. Anyways I am at my dad’s for like four days, which gives me A LOT OF THINGS TO HATE/#FEELINGS but I am not going to talk about that here because I don’t pay you people enough, honestly. Instead I propose a list of Things My Dad Says, updated frequently. Would you prefer them all in this post, or new ones each day? SPEAK TO ME.

August 22, 2010

“It’s like I’m the only one left who still eats meat. I need to make a friend to eat meat with me.”

“My back hurts from that drive yesterday. I need one of those things… those things that Shaquille O’Neill talks about.”

[to a Lady Foot Locker employee] “If you were going to buy shoes, and for some reason you didn’t want to buy them at Foot Locker, where would you go?”

Stuff Heather Thinks is Super Great

Huge. Like every other fat ladyblogger on the interwebs, I started watching this show when it started a few weeks ago.  My mom and I watch together, and while it’s caused some psychologically significant bickering, generally we like Huge.  It’s pretty nice to see people who look like you on TV, being treated like ordinary people.  A few times the dialogue has made me cringe, but it’s a drama.  The show has addressed eating disorders, LARP, teen relationships, family dynamics, social awkwardness, and produced the two best parodies I’ve seen in a while (Love Handles, a reference to More to Love, and Phantasm, a version of Twilight in which the Edward character is a ghost).

Mad Men. I want to marry and then have fashionable, mysterious, alcoholic children with this show.  Also, on a related note, I want to send a fruit basket to the person who invented this Tumblr. (Spoiler alert on the Tumblr.)

Making fun of the advice in Cosmopolitan. Last night at work, I seriously considered taking a Cosmo as one of my two free Friday magazines, if only to mock incessantly the “Untamed Va-jay-jays!” article on this blog.  But then I realized that my boss would think I actually read it, and the snob in me can’t allow that to happen.

Motown. Every now and then I put on an album or artist I haven’t listened to in a long time and then that will be all I listen to for weeks.  Guys, how great is Aretha Franklin?  Super great.  And Diana Ross and the Supremes?  Also great.  (Though not quite as much, let’s be real.)   They keep me hanging on, make me feel like a natural woman, like I’m one in a chain of fools giving the RIAA money, etc.  And speaking of old-school R&B…

Jose and Comfort did hip-hop to Otis Redding on SYTYCD and it was glorious.

SYTYCD ended recently, I think, but Mom and I are behind by about three weeks.  To be totally honest, I rarely paid attention to the weeks before that.  I can’t bring myself to care much anymore, which is why there’s been a noticeable lack of dance clips on this blog as of late.  But every now and then I’ll catch part of it and there will be a routine that makes me straighten up and think, hey, I should embed that.  This is one of them, for obvious reasons.  A) Hip-hop.  B) Otis motherloving Redding.

I was going to blog about how awesome it is that Dmitri’s on OKCupid, but Rachel got to it already, so ah well.

Building furniture. Anyone moving in the recent future, give me a call!  I will not necessarily carry the big items upstairs, being afraid to break them and myself, but I can assemble IKEA like nobody’s business.  I’ll also throw in some age-inappropriate puns on “screwing” for no extra charge.  You can’t see me because this is a blog, but I just winked slyly.

“Love the Way You Lie,” by Eminem and Rihanna? More accurately, this falls under Stuff Heather Isn’t Sure How to Feel About.  Britni at Oh My God, That Britni’s Shameless did a good job of covering the controversy in asking whether it’s “empowering or disturbing,”  but I don’t see why it can’t be both.  Disturbing because it can be easily interpreted, as some have been doing, as a love song to an abuser; it muddles and simultaneously reinforces the female-as-victim trope.  Like he says, “I can’t tell you what it really is / I can only tell you what it feels like”: it provides a perspective that could alter the public perceptions of domestic abuse, whether to a positive (“It will never change”) or negative (“She likes it”) effect.  What do you think?  I’m curious.

the new era

Last week Peter moved into his new apartment, so I went and helped his family carry stuff upstairs/put together a bed from IKEA.  The apartment’s a super nice place, particularly this week, as it now has a plushy emerald couch with matching ottoman, the gigantism of which I had not expected in a living room rented by (mostly) grad students.  Anyway, I like it and Peter seems happy there, and all that is good.  The apartment gets an official HRHF Super Stamp of Approval.

The visit’s led me to think more about how everything is changing, has changed, such and such, and we are heading straight into a new era (albeit one that so far, thankfully, does not involve disastrous double dates, like in the O.C. ep of the same name). Throughout the summer I’ve alternated between neuroses and shifting aimlessness.  On one hand it’s like, OH GOD LOANS NOVEMBER WHY CAN’T I FIND A STABLE JOB OH RIGHT I HAVE ZERO CONFIDENCE IN MYSELF and on the other, the feeling that it’s just summer as per usual, so why not just let everything go.  Except it’s not just summer, is it, because this is our lives now.  Which becomes clearer and clearer as August rolls on.

A friend said it better –– certainly more succinctly/less navelgazing –– a few days ago, but here I am saying it now: postgraduation does not have to be so terrible, I think.  This will be good.  Our lives are going to get wonderful, you guys.  I can see it.  This will be good.  I’ll keep making wishes for us at 11:11, anyway, though.  You know how I do. Whimsy and optimism and all that.

the best i have ever felt about leggings and ludacris

Ok so once Riese wrote about how she just wanted to watch this Ciara video forever (specifically, she said “If there was a channel that showed this video over and over again, 24-7, I would sit in my bed and watch this channel for the rest of my life, until I died, and I would still be happy and snug as a bug in a rug.”) and at the time I was like I dunno, I guess, whatever. But then the video for “Ride” came out, and I’ve watched it maybe eight to ten times today? Just saying. Like for real.

Also in 24 hours Batia and I will be in the same house! omfg!