Hope Springs Eternal, goddammit
Long story short, another Assistant Editor position open, different grade, I applied, we'll see. Here we go round the stupid Mulberry bush once again. Maybe I'll get it this time since I don't really care anymore.
****In Other News*****
If you're in any of the goth communities on LJ, you've probably already seen the nefarious Ikea Ad that mentions 'your creepy gothic roommate.'
EDIT: Apparently it was fake. But I kept my entry because I got into a pretty good little rant there.
EDIT: And now it seems nobody's sure if it's real or not! One woman says she received this exact ad in her inbox from Ikea, but it could also be someone hacking their subdomain or something technical like that. But it's still fairly rude, I think.
And it's of course not worth getting into a kerfuffle over, because it's IKEA, but at the same time. . . WTF?
Someone in the corpgoth Yahoo group said they thought it was funny, that she wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't a goth in their marketing department who came up with it. And that's entirely possible, we all know how taking oneself too seriously is one of the greatest sources of comedy gold you can mine.
But it bothers me, and for two reasons:
1. It seems aimed at parents or others who are sending the kid off to college, and warning them about potential'bad influences.' What the hell is college for if not expanding your horizons and being introduced to ideas different from your own? I was just reading an article on Slate the other day about how children's play these days is sometimes micromanaged by overprotective and overinvolved parents to the point of scheduling their entire lives. And play has been observed to manifest in comparing themselves, essentially competing instead of creative interaction. 'Do you want to be the ninja or the pirate?' has become 'Which school do you go to? That's not a real school' et cetera. Teaching at Full Sail, I can't even begin to describe the times I heard a kid state some 'opinion' that was clearly a regurgitation of something their parent said or believed. Even teaching Middle School I encountered it, which is entirely expected at that age since a kid's movements are sometimes restricted. But then they leave the nest, they go out on their own, and their voter registration might say something different from Mom and Dad's soon.
2. The pillow would be a better room mate than the Creepy Gothic Roommate. Of course it's an ad, of course it doesn't dictate thought to the masses and isn't meant to be taken literally, but it's still a troubling statement. 'Feel free to walk into that dormroom with preconceived notions about how you can't trust anyone different from you, because your possessions do not judge or reject you.' That is certainly my extrapolation, but I think it's subtly hinted at in the ad's text.
It's pretty clear I don't take myself too seriously, but I'm also deeply aware and take seriously the side effects of negative portrayals in the media. I taught in a public school, and kids are STILL making fun of the kid who dresses either in all black or like a weirdo. Parents are STILL calling the school and saying shit like 'I don't want my kid in that kid's class, he's strange.' And that's just the kids saying god knows what about each other. And I don't even need to go into the parents who cast aspersions on my character and educational background just because of the color hairdye I used.
As an adult, I've found that people (specifically in the workplace) aren't friendly towards you until you've gone overboard with overtures of friendship and goodwill. You'll wind up painting someone's house on the weekend before they'll deign to say 'Good morning' to you, at least in my experience. There are certainly exceptions, and you might even make the argument that 'Well if they can't look past the exterior then fuck them anyway' but the problem is you can't always just tell them 'fuck off.' You work with them. They might be making a decision concerning your future career track, or someone who is making that decision might ask them about you and get 'Oh I don't know, she's/he's pretty quiet and doesn't really talk to me.' And I certainly have friends in this department that I talk to every day and joke with and maybe even am becoming friends with, but that's not everyone. And it matters. It's shitty and unfair and it makes me mad as Hell, but it still matters.
In a perfect world we'd all be judged by our works and not our appearance, but neither am I surprised to walk outside and find that beer and hot wings are not to be found growing on trees.
So this kind of thing bothers me. It makes me feel like I have to bake cookies for the entire goddamn department just so they won't expect Columbine out of me if I'm having a bad day and don't smile for once. And I'm human, I don't smile every day. I have that right, but with the media portraying us as a bunch of weirdos one straw away from harming the rest of the world's precious children with either our weird ideas or our guns and drug use, it seems I don't.
****In Other News*****
If you're in any of the goth communities on LJ, you've probably already seen the nefarious Ikea Ad that mentions 'your creepy gothic roommate.'
EDIT: Apparently it was fake. But I kept my entry because I got into a pretty good little rant there.
EDIT: And now it seems nobody's sure if it's real or not! One woman says she received this exact ad in her inbox from Ikea, but it could also be someone hacking their subdomain or something technical like that. But it's still fairly rude, I think.
And it's of course not worth getting into a kerfuffle over, because it's IKEA, but at the same time. . . WTF?
Someone in the corpgoth Yahoo group said they thought it was funny, that she wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't a goth in their marketing department who came up with it. And that's entirely possible, we all know how taking oneself too seriously is one of the greatest sources of comedy gold you can mine.
But it bothers me, and for two reasons:
1. It seems aimed at parents or others who are sending the kid off to college, and warning them about potential'bad influences.' What the hell is college for if not expanding your horizons and being introduced to ideas different from your own? I was just reading an article on Slate the other day about how children's play these days is sometimes micromanaged by overprotective and overinvolved parents to the point of scheduling their entire lives. And play has been observed to manifest in comparing themselves, essentially competing instead of creative interaction. 'Do you want to be the ninja or the pirate?' has become 'Which school do you go to? That's not a real school' et cetera. Teaching at Full Sail, I can't even begin to describe the times I heard a kid state some 'opinion' that was clearly a regurgitation of something their parent said or believed. Even teaching Middle School I encountered it, which is entirely expected at that age since a kid's movements are sometimes restricted. But then they leave the nest, they go out on their own, and their voter registration might say something different from Mom and Dad's soon.
2. The pillow would be a better room mate than the Creepy Gothic Roommate. Of course it's an ad, of course it doesn't dictate thought to the masses and isn't meant to be taken literally, but it's still a troubling statement. 'Feel free to walk into that dormroom with preconceived notions about how you can't trust anyone different from you, because your possessions do not judge or reject you.' That is certainly my extrapolation, but I think it's subtly hinted at in the ad's text.
It's pretty clear I don't take myself too seriously, but I'm also deeply aware and take seriously the side effects of negative portrayals in the media. I taught in a public school, and kids are STILL making fun of the kid who dresses either in all black or like a weirdo. Parents are STILL calling the school and saying shit like 'I don't want my kid in that kid's class, he's strange.' And that's just the kids saying god knows what about each other. And I don't even need to go into the parents who cast aspersions on my character and educational background just because of the color hairdye I used.
As an adult, I've found that people (specifically in the workplace) aren't friendly towards you until you've gone overboard with overtures of friendship and goodwill. You'll wind up painting someone's house on the weekend before they'll deign to say 'Good morning' to you, at least in my experience. There are certainly exceptions, and you might even make the argument that 'Well if they can't look past the exterior then fuck them anyway' but the problem is you can't always just tell them 'fuck off.' You work with them. They might be making a decision concerning your future career track, or someone who is making that decision might ask them about you and get 'Oh I don't know, she's/he's pretty quiet and doesn't really talk to me.' And I certainly have friends in this department that I talk to every day and joke with and maybe even am becoming friends with, but that's not everyone. And it matters. It's shitty and unfair and it makes me mad as Hell, but it still matters.
In a perfect world we'd all be judged by our works and not our appearance, but neither am I surprised to walk outside and find that beer and hot wings are not to be found growing on trees.
So this kind of thing bothers me. It makes me feel like I have to bake cookies for the entire goddamn department just so they won't expect Columbine out of me if I'm having a bad day and don't smile for once. And I'm human, I don't smile every day. I have that right, but with the media portraying us as a bunch of weirdos one straw away from harming the rest of the world's precious children with either our weird ideas or our guns and drug use, it seems I don't.