Pink locker rooms: The evil result of a sexist society?

Apparently, there is a ruckus being raised at the University of Iowa over some pink locker rooms. The visting team's locker rooms at Kinnick Stadium have been pink ever since the era of Hayden Fry (who, for all y'all non-Iowans, was a legendary coach during the 80s and 90s). They were recently remodeled, but the pink hue was maintained for all the visiting teams' viewing pleasure.

The story behind the pink? Fry claims that he decided to have the locker rooms painted pink because it is supposed to be a soothing, relaxing color. A University of Iowa law professor claims that the pink color is "a sexist and homophobic gesture." Check out the full story.

So which is it? I have no doubt that there's more to the pink color than just an innocent attempt to make the visiting football teams feel more relaxed before taking on the Hawkeyes. This is football we're talking about. It's a male-dominated sport, and I'm sure that part of the point of the pink paint is to demean the visiting teams and make them feel a little less manly as they put their pads on and get ready to go bump chests and grab each others' butts on the playing field.

On the other hand, I think it's a little ridiculous when we have to resort to nitpicking about colors, hidden meanings and secret symbols meant to convey some sort of sinister message or promote a certain cause. Jerry Falwell's assault on the innocent Teletubbie Tinkie-Winkie comes to mind as a comparable example of this.

Oh my god, that character on a children's TV show is purple and carries a bag and has a triangle on his head -- he's clearly trying to promote a "gay agenda" and probably beaming out gay germs through the TV that are infecting our children! Oh my god, a football team painted their opponents' locker room pink -- they're clearly trying to promote a homophobic, sexist message.

I'm definitely a feminist, but I believe there is such a thing as overreacting, and the pink locker room vendetta is a definite overreaction.

Late-night TV annoys me

I work odd hours. Basically, from the time that most people would be watching TV, starting at maybe 6 or 7 p.m., I'm just kicking into high gear at work. I haven't seen a show in primetime in about two years, so I know very little about various housewives and why they're desperate. Actually, I probably wouldn't watch that show even if I was sitting at home twiddling my thumbs every night from 7 to 10.

My lack of TV exposure has never bothered me before, because I still had the chance to see the best show on television -- the Daily Show. It reruns on Comedy Central at midnight, thank God. In fact, the Daily Show used to run back to back at midnight and again at 12:30, forming a perfect duet of Jon Stewart to put me in a good mood before going to bed.

But now, all that's changed. The gods of Comedy Central have decreed that ex-"Man Show" host Adam Carolla gets to have his own show at 12:30 to take the place of the Daily Show reruns that I've grown so fond of. Unfortunately, this makes the post-12:30 TV landscape a dark, desolate place filled with "Girls Gone Wild" commercials, "Cheers" reruns and infomercials for various acne products.

There's very little to pull me through until 1 a.m., when "Family Guy" reruns on the Cartoon Network. I'm not sure if things would be any better if I had a more normal schedule, but at least I wouldn't have to suffer through watching the "Girls Gone Wild" commercial every 10 minutes. Maybe I should just read a book or something...

I sympathize with hurricane victims

Yes, it's a Saturday night, and I am sitting here by myself writing a post on my blog because, well, I'm pretty much trapped in my house. It started raining here around 7 p.m. and it hasn't let up much since then. And when I say it's raining, I don't mean that there are little sprinkles and droplets of water cascading dreamily down from the sky. No, instead there are sheets of large, spear-shaped daggers of water pelting everything, including me, my car and my windows, which I foolishly left open this morning.

I just attempted to go out and meet a friend at a bar downtown, but it was a futile quest. While the street that my apartment is located on is not flooded, every single street that surrounds it is covered in about two to three feet of water. It's one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen. I've never been trapped in my house by water -- snow, on the other hand, is more common, given that I live in Minnesota.

It's oddly unsettling, and I'm starting to feel somewhat claustrophobic. Even if I wanted to leave and go to the grocery store, for instance, or to rent a movie so I'd at least have something to do, I can't. My car can barely handle two inches of water, much less two feet covering the roadway. Oh well, at least I have my episodes of Friends on DVD. Monica and Chandler are always good company.

Anyone can be published online...

I just discovered that some of my numerous writings done on behalf of a certain newspaper that I work for appear in their entirety online on the paper's web site. This is very surprising to me, since I feel that most of the stuff that I have written for the paper is, well, mind-numbingly boring. This is not entirely my fault, because the powers that be only assign me things to write that happen to be mind-numbingly boring. Basically, I'm stuck writing all the crap that no one else wants to write because my real job is to proofread, and then they "let" me write stuff of my own in my spare time.

This is one of my personal favorites. http://features.dglobe.com/bridal0617/D11.htm
I got to interview different photographers and try to pull teeth to get them to talk about all the new and exciting trends in wedding photography these days. Most of the quotes I got were actually one-word grunts and half-garbled sentence fragments, so this is actually impressive that I was able to make something of a coherent story out of it.

This is my latest masterpiece. http://features.dglobe.com/TodaysFarmSep2005/C16.htm
Again, it's quite impressive that I was able to form a story out of the information I got from these people. It was about their Century Farm (for those of you non-rural folk, that means the same family has owned the same farm for at least 100 years). I asked, "Are there any interesting stories about the history of the farm?" The reply, "No." Umm...OK. "What do you know about the history of the farm?" The reply, "Not much." Me: "Would you care to elaborate on that?" The reply, "I don't know."

All I can say is that I'm glad I don't have to do this full-time. I'll just stick to sitting in front of my computer editing other people's writing and laying out pages. It's much easier than trying to extract boring information from even more boring people.

journey of self discovery, Part II

Wow, it's really fun reading stuff that you wrote in high school. On Thursday, Dec. 18, 1997, I wrote a journal entry that I titled: "Early Bird P.E.: The Evil Result of a Sexist Society." Of course, I don't mention anywhere in the entry about how exactly early bird P.E. is sexist, but I do have some rather humorous quotes. Ironically, I never did end up having to take early bird P.E.

This is sooo evil! It is a horrible injustice and discrimination against those of us not inclined to get up at 5:30 in the morning!!!! It makes me sick just thinking about it! ... It's so stupid it makes me want to puke. Like knowing exactly all the rules of pickleball is a necessary skill in life. We must be punished for wanting to learn?? For wanting to learn real information which might actually be of value to us in the future? Information that makes us knowledgeable about the world? Not information that makes us sound like stupid jocks who weren't good enough to play real sports, so had to resort to pickleball and badminton!!!!!

I think the point I was trying to get at here is that it was unjust that I was being penalized for having a full schedule of real classes -- math, science, English, journalism, etc. -- so they were going to make me come in before school to fit in P.E. That never actually happened though. I can't remember why. Maybe someone got wind of my journal entry and thought, whoa - we better not mess with her.

I'm really glad I was forced to keep a journal during one semester of high school. It's been really entertaining to read. Thanks, Mrs. Phelan. I owe it all to you. And thank you, 17-year-old version of myself, for having such a good sense of humor.

Journey of self-discovery

I'm amazed I ever even kept a journal, but the only reason I started doing it in the first place was because it was a religion class assignment during my junior year of high school. As I recall, the teacher, Mrs. Phelan, didn't actually read what we were writing, she just flipped through to make sure that we were actually writing in them, and we had to have a certain number of pages written.

But in honor of my birthday, I thought it was interesting to read what I wrote in my journal on Sept. 16, 1997 -- my 17th birthday. Items in parentheses were added by me today.

"Great, Mrs. P just gave us a sheet of questions which we have to address in our journals (it really bothers me that I didn't include the necessary comma before which). Sounds like fun. I really hate that these are supposed to be our own things and we can do whatever we want, yet we're supposed to answer a whole list of deep and thought-provoking questions. It seriously annoys me. (wow, talk about teenage angst -- I feel the anger). Oh well, today is my birthday. I choose to be happy today. I won't ruin it by trying to answer depressing questions about the state of my life and my goals and whatever."

I then go on to talk about how two random guys in my class wished me a happy birthday. Yada, yada, yada. Then it picks up with:

"I feel much happier now, even though I have a cross-country meet tonight and it really bites. If I run a good race, maybe it'll be OK, but it's a really crappy way to spend a birthday."

Ahhh, high school. Those were the days. A crappy birthday involved having to run in a cross country meet. I only wish I still was in good enough shape that I even had the capability to run in a cross country meet.

Breaking News!

This just in, Bush is taking responsibility for something. Shocking, I know. He finally screwed up so badly that he was left with no choice except to accept the blame for it in order to try to salvage his much-damaged image in the aftermath of Katrina (why his image wasn't sufficiently damaged in the aftermath of the entire Iraq war debacle is beyond me).

"Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government," Mr. Bush said. "And to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility."

Maybe this is the start of a new trend for Bush -- maybe he's going to start admitting to his mistakes and seeking plausible ways to fix them. I'm not holding my breath on that, but if he were to do such an outlandish thing as own up to his responsibility and admit when things have gone wrong, then at least I could have a miniscule amount of respect for the man -- it would almost make him seem human. This may be the first compliment I've ever bestowed on the president: Way to acknowledge your mistakes, Georgie.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/13/national/nationalspecial/13cnd-storm.html?hp&ex=1126670400&en=06d2b6ca34cb435f&ei=5094&partner=homepage

On moving on

I feel today like life in the globe (the place/town that I work) has become somewhat unbearable. There's too much tension among friends, boyfriend and family that I feel like my head is going to explode and I walk around in a constant state of pressure -- like I'm walking on eggshells and trying to keep everyone happy. Sadly, I can no longer keep everyone -- or anyone happy. I feel like my life is a huge, unfixable mess, and the only solution that I can come up with is to get as far away from it all as possible. Because, unfortunately, that is still the primary way that I like to solve problems -- by running away from them. It is odd that after only about a year and a half in this corner of the universe, I feel like I've made a sufficient mess of my relationships with everyone I know here that there is nothing left for me to do except leave it all behind.

And, by leaving it behind I mean moving away -- nothing too drastic, but I decided today to go on a job interview in Idaho. I went back and forth over what to do about the whole Idaho issue. At first, when the publisher of the newspaper called me up out of the blue and asked if I would be interested in going to Idaho, I laughed, thinking, "There's no way in hell." But I decided to hear him out anyway, primarily because it was a big ego trip to have the publisher of a newspaper that is much bigger than the one I currently work at calling me on the phone and trying to talk me into coming and working for him.

I told him I would think about it -- but I was still thinking, "yeah right, I'm not moving to Idaho." I have too many connections to the Midwest, especially the Iowa/Minnesota/South Dakota area, and I wouldn't want to leave them all behind. But something has changed over the past couple of days, and I'm starting to wonder if that would really be such a bad thing.

It all started with a big brouhaha over my birthday, which is coming up on Friday. One of my friends decided to plan a party for me, but then said in no uncertain terms that my boyfriend is not allowed to come (not that he would probably want to come anyway, because he hates her and she hates him). But, that puts me in an awkward position of having to choose what I'm going to do -- and either way, someone is going to be pissed off. Basically, it's going to be the worst birthday of my life, no matter what. There will be drama, there will be angry words, bitterness and hurt feelings, and I'll be the one caught in the middle of it all.

There's more to it than that -- and it would take me all day to put the full story into words, but all I can say is that I've had enough. Everyone is accusing everyone else of being controlling, and I'm caught in the middle, trying to sort out all the crap and wondering why I am even associating with these people, who all say that they just "want what's best for me."

What do I really want to do for my birthday? I want to crawl into a hole in the wall and stay there without talking to anybody until the shitstorm blows over on Sept. 17. In the meantime, I'm lining up a job interview in Pocatello, Idaho.

Gotta love the Onion

I feel that the Onion has done a better job summing up my frustration with the whole New Orleans fiasco than I ever could. I admit I don't read it as often as I should, but between the Onion http://www.theonion.com/content/node/40305 and last night's episode of the Daily Show, which proves that Jon Stewart is still the best social commentator around -- much better than any half-assed CNN or MSNBC pundit -- I finally felt like someone out there was giving a voice to all the anger and frustration that I've felt over the past week as I watched the disaster unfold.

Be sure to check out this artice from the Onion:

Government relief workers mosey in to help
NEW ORLEANS—Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown, leading a detachment of 7,500 relief workers, moseyed on down to New Orleans Monday afternoon. "Well, I do declare, it's my job to see if any of these poor folks need any old thing," Brown said from his command rocker on the command post porch, adding, "Mighty hot day, ain't it?" Follow-up teams of emergency relief workers are expected to begin ambling into the Gulf Coast region as early as this weekend.

As well as my personal favorite, titled "Bush encourages survivors to chew on own boostraps for sustenance"

WASHINGTON, DC—In an emergency White House address Sunday, President Bush urged all people dying from several days without food and water in New Orleans to "tap into the American entrepreneurial spirit" and gnaw on their own bootstraps for sustenance. "Government handouts are not the answer," Bush said. "I believe in smaller government, which is why I have drastically cut welfare and levee upkeep. I encourage you poor folks to fill yourself up on your own bootstraps. Buckle down, and tear at them like a starving animal."

I guess the excitement has worn off...

As is evidenced by the long lull in between now and the last time that I posted something, the world of blogging has lost some of its luster for me. The honeymoon period is over, and now it comes down to the real question -- do I have what it takes to continue this blogging experiment, or will it sit idly by like just another one of my journals that I haven't written in for five years?

I'm hoping that I can stick with this particular project, because I start things without finishing them way too often. I have the attention span of a hyperactive five-year-old when it comes to certain projects -- like deciding I'm going to go through all my old newspapers and throw out the crappy issues and make photocopies of the good ones that I want to save for my portfolio. I started that project last week sometime, and then I stopped after I was about halfway done sorting through my towering stack of papers. I didn't even get close to the photocopying stage.

And then of course, there's always the plan that I'm going to do a thorough cleanup of my apartment -- including vacuuming, getting down on my hands and knees to scrub the kitchen floor and going through my closets and getting rid of all the stuff I use so rarely that I forgot I owned it. I usually abandon that idea shortly after I've finished doing the dishes and putting away all my clothes.

No, I won't let my blog become like another failed cleaning attempt or a never-finished portfolio project. I just got a little sidetracked the past week due to an unhealthy addiction to CNN's coverage of the chaos in New Orleans.

I thought about blogging on the subject of that catastrophe and the horribly botched government response that followed, but I didn't feel like I had anything new to add to the subject. All the sadness, anger and helplessness I felt watching people dying at the New Orleans Convention Center for lack of food and water more than three days after the hurricane moved through is nothing that numerous reporters and pundits haven't expressed throughout all the storm coverage that I've watched. On that subject, all I can say is that I hope the government learns from its numerous mistakes and makes some major changes to ensure that the same horrificly inept response to a disaster isn't repeated in the future.