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February 29, 2000
Books are evil!!
I was sitting at my desk yesterday, having a miserably busy day, when someone I haven't seen in a couple of weeks came up to me and said "You look like you've lost a lot of weight!" That's always an ego boost.
It's still unbelievably busy here, though, and we're understaffed. I spend most of the day wanting to either hide under my desk sucking my thumb or start whacking people with books. Thus far, I have managed to avoid both, but I make no promises for the future... I was happy to have class yesterday, because it meant I got to leave work early. I yawned my way through class, managed not to fall asleep, and got home to find a frantic Barry hunting for his missing wallet. It turned out he'd either dropped it or had his pocket picked on the bus (my bet's on the latter). Happily, the wallet did turn up on the bus, minus all the money he had -- he was just happy to have his green card back.
Two articles in Salon intrigued me today: this one made me very angry, and very disturbed. It's about a book written by two men who theorize that men are genetically predisposed to commit rape. The logic is, women of prime childbearing age are usually targetted for rape -- the authors presume that's because the rapists are obeying genetic urges toward reproducing. The authors also claim that women in that age group suffer more than children or elderly women who are raped. Their logic completely escaped me on that point.
My first thought when I started reading the article was "Oh, great -- men can't be held responsible for committing rape, because it's all in their genes!" Yep. Check out page three of the article: "Thornhill and Palmer strongly imply that the rapist is the one breed of criminal who, if sufficiently inflamed by miniskirts and cleavage, can't be held entirely responsible for his crime." The old argument that a women "asked for it," because she was dressed provacitively.
I've been bothered by all the little kids selling things on the subway trains and in the stations. We don't really get many kids going door-to-door in our neighborhood, but the people next door send their little one over every time she's doing one of those fundraisers. I don't really mind giving money to help out the school (although I would be more inclined if I actually had a kid who might be going there) but I don't like feeling obligated. If it's my neighbor's kid, I really feel like a jerk if I don't buy some chocolate or gift wrap or whatever. The parents who take thier kids on the subway give you the stink-eye if you say "No" to their kid -- when the parents are actually watching. My mom never let me and my brother go door-to-door selling things. I was always pretty happy about that -- even when I was a little kid, I never thought it looked like much fun.
And here's a link from Jessamyn: Reading books addles your brain! I'm not entirely sure whether the author meant for this to be fun or not, but I giggled all through it...
Posted by Mary Ellen at February 29, 2000 10:45 AM