June 2011
14 posts
Are you a Simple Girl? How about a BATSHIT FUCKING CRAZY BITCH?!
Well, are you?
Although I would like to believe the Simple Girl Index isn’t just a catalogue of what is (or isn’t) in my closet, why can’t we call it what it really is? “Simplicity” is just a euphemism for how soon it will be before I get another date as long as I live in Manila, which, given my score of 4 out of 100, is probably never. I am never going on another date in this country as long as I don’t own a Neverfull (plus 2 points, bringing my total dateability factor to 6. Yay?), which means I’m screwed, because without a decent internet connection my only concept of Neverfull is Sasha Grey’s vagina flower.
Even if it’s not an accurate indicator, all the SGI really does is confirm how materialistic and superficial Filipinos really are, especially in matters of choosing a mate. I’m not completely innocent in this case. I will judge. The shit. Out of what you own or are wearing. Crocs. White pants. Owl City. Paolo Coelho. (And if that’s not enough, I’ll be like “WHERE’S MY MILLION PESO WEDDING DRESS, BITCH?!” when the big day comes) We all have our deal breakers, but it’s the blanket generalizations of deal breakers—against a whole sex for that matter—that void the good intentions. But whether the SGI was conceived out of bitterness, envy, or genuine affection, I do acknowledge the shred of truth it contains. If it means confirming that these things do matter to guys, I’ll even quote the last dude I dated:
“Wala ka bang normal na clothes?” (“Don’t you have any normal clothes?”)
Maybe they should’ve called it the “normal” girl index, considering how loosely that term has been abused in all its brutal, alienating glory. I’ve always had a bone to pick with Manila’s rigid characterization of the “simple” and the normal, especially when female relations are shrouded as chick-flick fodder, creating this whole us v them situation with singles and marrieds.
“We’re having brunch, you know, being normal, having normal discussions about manipulating guys into marrying us! Giggle!”
It doesn’t help that the prime example of chick-flick-imitates-lifeis Sex and the City, because I cannot think of a better example of a show where things like ring-worship and SHOPPING displaced the complexity of characters and human relations for the sake of better ratings. Remember the first episodes of SATC? Charlotte was supposed to be a curator before she turned (legitimately) neurotic and marriage obsessed.
But through these lists of things that will confirm your eligibility in the eyes of the hairier sex, we’re just adding to a culture of batshit crazy bitches masquerading as simple girls. Ladies, it’s bad enough that we all secretly hate each other, but do we have to confirm the banality of our existences by taking something like the SGI, and effectively turning Filipino women from consumers into the consumed?
Or am I overthinking it? I hate being accused of overthinking, because it just diminishes the gravity of issues that merit actual thinking. (Or is the point here that I’m a girl, I’m not supposed to think?) It’s tantamount to being told that my priorities, no matter how individually tailored they are to my concerns, are completely irrelevant. Since when is finding someone to eat cheese with irrelevant? We’ve already devoted this much energy to it, and it envelopes so many issues that need more than lists. Are we saying Filipino men are easily duped? And in effect, are Filipino women easily bought? Does this make our men, if not as shallow, even shallower than our women?
And if overthinking it contributes to my being stuffed into yet another box, I think I’d rather be there with all the other dateless virgins.
Anyway, while we’re stereotyping women, why don’t we take it a notch further with categorizing the opposite of the simple girl. Here is…
The Batshit Crazy Bitch Index (Or why no one’s asking you out)- [ ] do you think scrapbooking is a legitimate creative exercise?
- [ ] do you go full-retard on the Magic Sing?
- [ ] do you go full-retard on anything? Anything! I’ve seen someone go full-retard on a ceiling fan. It blew my mind! No pun intended.
- [ ] are you easily offended by my use of the word “retard”?
- [ ] how about “normal”? how do you feel about the word “normal”?
- [ ] have you been asked if you have any “normal” clothes?
- [ ] did you respond with some irreverent comment about said asker’s mother?
- [ ] do you carry your own bag?
- [ ] what the fuck is in that thing? A brick?
- [ ] do you own a shit-ton of shoes, half of which you never wear?
- [ ] does your incessant, debilitating concern about your skin keep you from stepping out without your stupid fucking umbrella? Because if there’s a way to go full-retard on something—ANYTHING—this is it: stop going full-retard on the sunscreen!
- [ ] does spending the equivalent of my mom’s salary on a handbag help you forget that you’re going to die one day?
- [ ] does spending the equivalent of my mom’s salary on a watch help you forget that there’s hunger in your own backyard and unspeakable acts of violence are being committed all over Africa?
- [ ] does answering this quiz help you forget that you haven’t gotten laid and maybe—just maybe!—you could solve that problem through the tenets of material culture buy Buy BUY?
- [ ] does the music of Michael Buble make you want to sit back, relax, enjoy a nice sweet pinot noir with your girlfriends? (Just kidding. Michael Buble doesn’t make music and you don’t have to be an SG or a BCB to know that.)
- [ ] do you have a playlist for your funeral?
- [ ] do you have a playlist for the next Valentine’s Day you will be spending ALONE?
- [ ] do you have any nervous ticks?
- [ ] how about tourette’s?
- [ ] do you cuss people out incessantly and then blame your fucking tourette’s that motherfucker AAAARRRGGGHHHHHjKJKDJYF$%$^*&!! JOHN!!!…?
- [ ] so…how’s that road rage?
- [ ] do you end up giving security guards the finger when you meant to salute?
- [ ] do you know that this is a nasty habit that you have to kick immediately?
- [ ] does iced tea make you gag?
- [ ] I put about 3 shots of Tanduay in that iced tea. Better?
- [ ] do you end dates by slapping your conquest’s ass and high-fiving yourself (fist pumping is acceptable)?
- [ ] Have you ever referred to a date as a conquest?
- [ ] I forgot, you don’t get asked out in this country! LOLOCAUST! Have you ever been accused of being insensitive?
- [ ] How about tactless? Mean? Batshit crazy? (plus 3 points for all 3)
- [ ] Of all the Glass children, do you find yourself relating to Buddy the most?
- [ ] Have you ever gathered all your other batshit crazy girlfriends around under your cloud of whisky stink so that you could talk smack about whoever was missing?
- [ ] wasn’t it FUN?
- [ ] Have you ever nicknamed the penis of a guy you dated?
- [ ] WASN’T IT FUN?!
- [ ] Lastly, do you even have a
vaginaflower?
Last Plane to Jakarta is the best music blog ever. EVER. Hands down. No contest. EVER. →
lastplanetojakarta.com
All the reviews are done in verse, and if that’s not genius, I don’t know what is. I mean, how else do you get away with turning a phrase
no one in their right mind
would say
out loud
unless you let it sing?
I know long form crit and nonfic have recently become territory very dear to my heart; but it is verse that drew me to words in the first place, through the unlikely medium of (and I know it sounds icky now) a Hole song. Or was it a Veruca Salt song. Either way, it’s something I no longer listen to (but might go back on, for the sake of nostalgia).
From “the temple at the end of the cosmos”:
gonna go out on a limb here
and say that somewhere out beyond the final star in the universe
there is a building
standing on a grassy hillsuspended there in the final iteration of all seeing
like the cover
of some trippy science fiction
paperbackand since I am feeling emboldened to describe things
seen by few and remembered by fewer
let me further speculate that there is a record player inside the building
and speakers in the windows on the second floorthe speakers point out toward the small field
whose terminus is the void;
the turntable to which they are connected
plays a ride for revenge albumthe album is called wisdom of the few
its sleeve is on hi-gloss stock
and it’s an awesome record
no matter what anybody tells you
“
My father would usually poke his head through the door about half an hour later when it was time to say goodnight.
“Good book?”
“Yeah.”
“OK day?”
“Yeah.”
“Anything else?”
“Nope.”
“Brush your teeth?”
“Yeah.”
My father closed the door. I noticed a slight hesitation. About thirty seconds later he opened it again.
“Anything you want to tell me?”
“Nope”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Brush your teeth?”
“Yeah.”
My father was a kind and gentle man. By no stretch was he authoritarian. Which, intentionally or not, had the powerful effect that when he did speak with authority it signaled that something was definitely up.
“I’ll ask you one more time. Did you brush your teeth?”
I paused. I put my book down.
This was a serious dilemma. I could admit to my lie and thereby reveal that I was capable of duplicity. Or I could stick to my guns. Since I was enthralled by the concepts of honor and bravery I chose to stick to my lie.
“Yeah. I brushed my teeth.”
My father didn’t say anything. He signaled that I should get out of bed. I threw back the covers and rose with what I hoped was a swagger. I followed my father into the bathroom. My resolve was starting to crack. My father picked up the toothbrush. He held it out to me. He fanned the bone-dry bristles.
“Now brush your teeth,” he said.
” —- Adam Harrison Levy, “A tattoo, a toothbrush, and a pipe”
“The place he found was on 26th Street and 8th Avenue, overlooking a large department store. For six hundred dollars a month, he finally had his own place. It was a time for changes, momentum. He started seeing a psychiatrist, signed up for a fitness class at the YMCA, dropped all that, went back out on tour, kept on drinking and recorded the albums Small Change and Blue Valentine. He played ballads on the piano with an adult magazine jammed into his pocket and people in the audience would be moved to laughter, or tears, or indifference, or jabber, it was all the same after a while, and he would find himself like he always found himself, alone with the sound of whatever city he was in.”
—
- “Resident Bohemians: The Nighthawk, Tom Waits” by James Yeh
“
In Paul’s previous relationships he experienced dissatisfaction as an empirically backed enthusiasm for the future, in that it implied the possibility of a more satisfying relationship with some as yet unknown person in forthcoming months or years. With Michelle, whom he felt closer to than his previous girlfriends (he’d told her this a few times, truthfully), he reasoned that if he was unhappy there was something deeply—genetically, maybe—wrong with him.
[…]
One afternoon Michelle emailed that she might study abroad in Berlin from February to May; that night, outside Whole Foods, where they’d met to see a movie, Paul said he didn’t know if he wanted to be in a relationship with someone whose level of commitment allowed them to consider being apart four months. Michelle said she was in a different time of her life. “Maybe I shouldn’t,” she said, earnestly pensive, in bed, and was quiet, then said, “Where do you see us in five years?”
“Ideally, together, I think,” said Paul after some time.
” —- Tao Lin, “Relationship Story”
Play
Play
“would writing today be better or worse or exactly the same, if the photograph never existed?
sub writing with any word, really. people, life, the present moment. this is on my mind.
i came across “word-painting” today, in my thesaurus. a graphic or vivid verbal description. i’d never heard of this noun. i imagine it came about before the camera.” —
sub writing with any word, really. people, life, the present moment. this is on my mind.
i came across “word-painting” today, in my thesaurus. a graphic or vivid verbal description. i’d never heard of this noun. i imagine it came about before the camera.” —
via heartbeat city:
“Here are some of the various things I tried: EST, riding a ten-speed to Nova Scotia and back, hypnosis, cocaine, sacro-cervical chiropractic, joining a charismatic church, jogging, pro-bono work for the Ad Council, meditation classes, the Masons, analysis, the Landmark Forum, the Course in Miracles, a right-brain drawing workshop, celibacy, collecting and restoring vintage Corvettes, and trying to sleep with a different girl every night for two straight months (I racked up a total of thirty-six for sixty-one and also got chlamydia, which I told friends about, acting like I was embarrassed but secretly expecting most of them to be impressed—which under the cover of making a lot of jokes at my expense, I think they were—but for the most part the two months just made me feel shallow and predatory, plus I missed a great deal of sleep and was a wreck at work—that was also the period I tried cocaine). I know this part is boring and probably boring you, by the way, but it gets a lot more interesting when I get to the part where I kill myself and discover what happens immediately after a person dies.”
— David Foster Wallace, “Good Old Neon”
“…it was a nice dinner, but we were both feeling strange and awed and breathless, still caught in the impulse that made me postpone my plane reservation. Then sneaking into Cranbrook and the dark room and the black coat at the threshold and making love for the first time — hurriedly but so that we both knew it was only the first time. Then the drive to the airport and Aline’s autobiography with significantly small mention of any engagement. Then, waiting in the airport on those hidden chairs, you in the black coat and black hat and I looked at you very intently and thought how much I did want to see you again…”
—Eero Saarinen to Aline Louchheim, “Love and Architecture” by Alexandra Lange
