Ladies, Ladies, Ladies.

Alright.  So I went to my sister's high school basketball game last night and I was reminded of something that's bothered me for a long time now.  Lady sports teams. There are the Rockets and the Lady Rockets, the Cougars and the Lady Cougars.  It's, quite frankly, absurd that so long after the women's rights movement etc. that societal norms like this still exist.

I mean, do schools think that people will be confused? "By the way, these are the lady basketball players.  We didn't want you to get confused."  I mean, why use a qualifier at all?  It's not like spectators will sit there and say, "Oh good thing they have 'lady' plastered on their jerseys, otherwise I wouldn't have known!"  And, if for practical reasons such as distinguishing the girls' teams from the boys' teams, schools find it necessary to separate them, they should do just that.  Call one the men's team and the other the women's team.

But to add a modifier like "lady" is completely unfair and uncalled for.  I am reminded of an earlier time where there were doctors and lady doctors, engineers and lady engineers.  I do not consider myself a feminist. I do not feel that terms like "history" and "mail" are offensive.  But this seems like one term that society can do without. Why separate one set of student athletes from the rest of the school.  Are the Lady Trojans any less representative of the school than the Trojans?

So I move we strike the practice entirely.  If you play for your school, that's all you should be labeled as.  A representative of your school, not a female representative.  The term is archaic and degrading.  If we are to keep saying "Lady Terrapins" then let us also say "Gentlemen Terps."  All I suggest is equality.

If I Can't Post Rubbish Like This...

Then what's the point of having a blog?  This is my nonsense blog, anyway. So no harm posting random stuff:

This is not a poem.
Everyday my heart breaks into another piece.
I cry and I cry and cry.
I can feel my soul and I know it’s somewhere between my heart and my throat.
This is not a poem.
I can never tell you again that I love you. That I think of you everyday.
I can’t even speak to you. You don’t seem to mind.
I cry and cry and I cry.
I can’t look into your eyes and touch your face.
I can never kiss you softly and tell you I love you.
But this still is not a poem.
The blue skies are still blue.
The grey ones are grey.
I cry on blue days with grey skies. I cry.
I lost my best friend. I lost my dreams.
I lost everything when I lost you.
But at least it’s not a poem.
If I’m lucky I can distract myself with games and faces I hardly know.
I can hold it off until I sit alone.
And cry and cry and cry.
If my eyes could just see you.
If you would just speak softly in my ear.
I wouldn’t have to hurt. I wouldn’t be alone.
I wouldn’t have to miss you so much.
I wouldn’t have to write a poem.

Agricultural Fair Fun

The Agricultural Fair was a smashing success!  My oil painting Goddesses received a 1st place ribbon (scoring me $4.50).  Unfortunately, the woman receiving entries decided it apt to title my work "Sailor Girl" instead. Oh well. The piece is meant to play off of David Salle's works that involve painted collage of images and patterns.  I tried to work in different elements while maintaining a common conceptual theme.  Sailor Moon, Nike of Samathrace, and Venus (the 2nd planet in our solar system) all fit onto the canvas quite amicably.  I was actually inspired most by Salle's Mr. Lucky, or as the fair attendant would have called it "Angels, a Star, and Some Fish."  I was taken with his portrayal of statues.  I think mine turned out pretty well.

I also entered a set of four umbrella still life paintings that netted me a 4th place ribbon. ($2.00 there!)  I'm in the process of selling them to a friend.  She's my very first sale, and naturally I'm very excited that she was taken with my work.

This was a fair, afterall.  Where are the cows?









That's better.

Girl Gamers

Alright, I hate to be this person, but after a particularly awful game of Left4Dead, I really feel like a good rant.

I am aware that there exist jerks, a-holes, and generally unsavory people on the Internet and in online gaming circles. However, I am still taken aback by the frequency with which I run into guys in games such as L4D and other first person shooters who treat me as their verbal punching-bag because of my gender. (If you haven't already guessed, I'm a girl.) These people maybe wind up in the same game as I do 1 out of 20 times, but this number really ends up being too frequent. How hard is it to headshot zombies when some guy's asking you if you need to "change your tampon" or "sit on my lap to use your medkit"? Why should I and other female gamers be subject to calls for sandwich-making or dish-washing while crowning witches or what-have-you? Again, most male gamers I run across are true gentlemen that treat me with perfect respect and equality. If I suck at the game, they let me know, but at least it's not blamed on my gender. I do not mind a-holery, but I do mind cat-calls, references to how I could better spend my time shopping or cooking, and other absurd comments that have nothing to do with anything.

I'm so darn miffed at this. It is all I can do to not squeeze the trigger when those little green cross-hairs pop up. Well, proverbially speaking, since L4D doesn't have colored cross-hairs.

Up to Date?

Hello Internet.

I was thinking about the nature of blogs. You can't really call something a blog if you only update it every 6 months or so, now can you? I'm going to try to update this more regularly. Kind of like I'm going to try to workout more regularly (hah). We can't put all our eggs in one basket though, so I'll try to even the odds a bit. Something might get accomplished, you never know.

Also, flashcards are lame. I spend more time making them than using them. I can't even justify the amount of time I spend in their construction by calling it studying because it is one of the most mindless, tedious tasks ever invented. I don't even like using them for art history. Or in general for that matter. They even have to come up with backward-a**, confusing systems for organizing them! They're not ordered on their own, how silly. I prefer my notebook. You know, where, by definition, you keep notes? That way you can draw comparisons between related dates and artists or what-have-you. All this based on an organized list.

Actually, I'm more miffed that I keep forgetting the one card that I'm supposed to have to get credit in my class. I have like 150 other cards in my bag, just not that one, elusive bast*rd.

Still Not Funny

I sent out an email to the Diamondback editorial staff. We'll see if they even bother contacting me....

Art Dump

Art for everyone! Yay!!!