augh! some things!

first of all, this whole "1,000,000 strong for colbert" thing is out of control. it is a huge mistake for colbert to run because, while i support getting 18-25 year olds excited about voting, it's nader all over again and we are going to end up with a candidate we're ambivalent about supporting because all the kids voted for colbert. if anyone i know votes for colbert, i will slap them. i don't care what state you're in or if you crunch enough numbers to make it "okay" because your vote "won't count." voting is our constitutional right and if you use it irresponsibly i am furious with you. votes always, always count because it is your one opportunity to say something that will be heard (unless you have a really big megaphone and stand somewhere in washington dc). exit polls, stats, people pay attention to these things and actually believe that they represent something, and a vote for colbert represents that our generation cares more about a couple laughs late at night than the state of our nation. while i understand that the state of the nation is frustrating - this is why zombie movies, with their promise of the erasure of two-party politics and credit card debt, are so popular - but to buy into the "i don't care, imma vote for colbert" mentality is to hand the country over to old white rich men forever. i just pray that at the last minute before the primaries, colbert takes his whole facebook group aside and says: "hey guys, thanks for your support but i'm not actually going to run, although now that you're all jazzed up about voting why don't you go out there and throw your lot in with ______?" that is the only way that i can support this. if it goes anywhere else than there, i'm just furious.

also, i pretty much hate queer, feminist, postcolonial, and ethnic theories because guess what? when you break up with someone and then hate them vehemently, that's still a feeling you have for them. when you're furious with heterosexual, masculine, colonist, or white perspectives and form a theory in reaction to and which excludes those perspectives, you're still defined by them. also, no one listens to a zealot, and let's face it, that's pretty much what's goin on right now, or at least how most people see it ("people" meaning people entrenched in the academic world, which i understand represents a privileged minority). i'm not going to say that these theories are "invalid," i'm just going to say that a lot of products of liberal arts universities, like myself, are just SO SICK of hearing them that the second they hear "heteronormative" or "subaltern" they just tune the heck out. so what's the alternative? i don't know yet, but carolann, james and i are working on it.

all families have secrets. not just catholic ones. also, even if your parents were raised catholic but had completely abandoned it by the time you were born, you're still catholic. i don't know what it is, but you are.