The absolute futility of everything that I'm studying is started to get to me. It isn't that I have no energy; it's that I don't want to waste the energy I do have on these things.

Philosophy of any type is already a hard subject -- not in that it is hard to understand, but in that it is hard to apply. Of the humanities, it is one of the most abstract. Even something like ethics becomes somewhat tangential in modern political discourse. That said, even something like metaphysics holds a certain charm for me, for all its abstraction.

But you know what, Merleau-Ponty? There comes a time where I do not fucking care and that time is when I have to read you. I'm getting the whole image as not just a reflection but a thing-in-itself shtick. I understand the perception as active rather than passive thing. Your writing is beautiful, even! Still, I've read some 20 pages and I've managed to pick three or four ideas and this all seems so painfully irrelevant that I want to claw my eyes out.

I think part of this is academic exhaustion. Earlier in the semester I truly enjoyed a lot of my reading, but now I've read so much, and been frustrated so much, that I want to throw my hands up in the air and quit. I think this reading broke me. I think it started when I had to choke down Kawabata's House of the Sleeping Beauties which, aside from being very boring, had so much suppressed violence I started feeling a little ill.

I'm also becoming tired of feeling like a raving feminist. It's not insane to ask why we're not studying any women writers in a lit class when there are, indeed, many women in the canon the lit class is focusing on, or to correct a professor who says "X had sex with Y" when in fact X raped Y. The second isn't even a feminist issue! Rape happens to all genders by all genders. It's not a feminist issue, it's a fucking human rights issue and in this case Y just happens to be a woman and X just happens to be a man.

Also, I am sick of the fact that I keep hearing people saying "God, men shouldn't have to be feminists". Depending on how you're defining feminism (I am working from a very lose, all-encompassing definition, i.e. women deserve the same respect and rights and opportunities that men get) I think it's a viewpoint everyone should take up. I don't care if you have a cock, I think you should care about/notice how women are treated and do something about it if you're in a position to effect change. Same way I feel like I should care about and notice the conditions, rights and treatment of people of color even though I'm white.

I'm also tired of playing the oppression Olympics with people. Yes. We're both women. I'm white, you're black. That's great. I'm bisexual and you're heterosexual. That's awesome. I'm cool talking about the issues there are with being a black woman in 21st century mid-west America. What I'm not cool with is you claiming that you have somehow suffered more than any other minority ever. No. You can't do that. You can't quantify that and compare that. Really? Sure, black women had to go through not just slavery, but a rather extensive pattern of spousal abuse by black men. Is that better or worse than every act of oppression the Jewish people have ever gone through, including the Holocaust? Is that the argument you want to make? That black slavery was somehow worse than the holocaust? Do you really want to compare the two? Not everything in the world can be reduced to numbers. It's a moot point and you're a tool for even bringing it up.

And don't claim it's just your opinion. Your opinion is insulting, unsubstantiated and totally counter-productive towards producing any kind of meaningful dialogue towards the wrongs in the world. Your opinion is not immune to criticism. If you don't want people to attack you for being a twat, keep your opinion to yourself.

A lot of this is stored up aggression combined with exhaustion. I'm tired of living with abstracts and hypotheticals and individuals who are interested in only spouting off their opinions. I'm frankly embarrassed at the inability of my peers to understand that "not saying no" =/= consent. I, honestly, want to do some kind of art, whether it be writing or painting or drawing of making icons. And yet I'm stuck writing papers about binaries and self/world and the metaphysics of Yukio Mishima as they relate to Platonic metaphysics and whatever. It's not that I hate this stuff, it's just that I feel like I'm losing my own words under all of it.

Also, I have another sinus infection and my checking account was hijacked. So yeah.

This happened a few days ago, but it deserves commemorating here:

ashlultum: "Godiva, as you can probably tell by the fact that it has "god" right there in the name, is heaven's embassy on earth."

Here at Denison, we are srs bzns about our chocolate.

Maybe I'd be able to consider the extremist pro-life stance a little more seriously if I ever met someone who argued with logic rather than dead fetuses plastered all over their car/livejournal/backpack/dog/boobs/&c.

See, I understand where extremist pro-lifers are coming from. Really! I swear I do! It's a hard topic, and although I'm pro-choice myself, I do think that the termination of the life of a potentially sentient being is pretty morally ambiguous no matter what. Still, shoving a fetus in my face and screaming "could you ever kill something as beautiful and pure as this!?" is less than effective for two reasons:

A. It makes you look incapable of making a legitimate, reasoned argument.
B. My immediate response to a fetus is basically: "omg ew ew get it away from me gross".

So yeah. Reasons Why Pathos-Oriented Propaganda Fails With Kendra No. 109.

Edit: because I made a gross generalization.

I've had an amazing weekend. I feel like writing this, because all too often I get caught up in the bad and forget to commemorate the good.

I spent Friday watching Avatar: The Last Airbender with my friends. This show is fun, and what's more, the animation is outstanding. What's more, I was not doing homework watching it with my friends! Which is awesome! Because friendship rocks!

Saturday I drove to Easton with my girlfriend, aeirol, and we bought Godiva chocolate, ate Chipotle for dinner, and had cheesecake for dessert. This was me making up for her birthday, as I was sick as a dog on the actual day. Anyway, Easton is really pretty to walk around this time of year; they have lights strung up across all the streets, and all the plants that line the streets are still in bloom. The place almost felt tropical. It was an awesome date, made more awesome because it wasn't on Denison campus.

Today was awesome in its own right. I saw my best friend, stormantia for the first time in about a month in a half. Together, we experienced some truly terrible animated films, including one which was a rather half-assed re-telling of Arthurian legend, wherein Mordred did not kill Arthur, Guinevere did not sleep with Lancelot, the animation was painful and the singing was worse. I'm also kind of resentful towards anything that doesn't make Morgan le Fay at least a little awesome, as I grew up with The Mists of Avalon and she is made of win in that book.

stormantia also gave me a hand-made stuffed whale (with elephant print), that I am cuddling right at this moment. It was like the best present ever!

So yes. I am ridiculously happy and only vaguely sniffle-y as far as sickness goes, which is pretty good for this time of the year. I'm also caught up on all my work. So yes. Life rocks!

I really should've taken the lock-yourself-in-the-cupboard-and-don't-come-out advice that lordhellebore gave me. Today I had the best plan ever of driving on 2 hours of very disturbed sleep and managed to ram my car into a curb, thus totally destroying my front right tire. This would not be such a tragedy if I didn't have to drive home today, and if my tires weren't of a foreign make that is apparently really expensive and really difficult to get here in the United States.

So yeah. Things kinda suck!

Today I:

Fell and twisted my ankle pretty badly
Managed to spill milk all over the place where the trays go in the dining hall
Missed my mouth whilst drinking a glass of water
Subsequently knocked over said glass of water on to my computer cable
Spilt ramen noodle soup all over my carpet
Fell over while using the restroom
Hit my elbow on the top of my bed once (don't even ask)
Hit my head on the top of my bed twice
Dropped my computer on the floor

I've also been running a low-grade fever all day and it's been really really hot so that's been great!

I also keep having freaky-as-hell dreams, which means I'm not really sleeping because as soon as I do doze off I dream about nuclear wastelands and friends killing me and all that lovely stuff. There are things I can take for this, but if I take them then I won't be able to get up in the morning without some serious groggy-brain.

I also have spent the past six hours attempting to write what should be a two-page paper. It's not, by the way. Two pages that is. It's about four. This is because I have problems with brevity and I am compulsively thorough with my writing.

Seriously, how can you expect anyone to write anything worth reading in 1-2 pages? This is where everyone tells me I'm a crazy windbag y/y?

So I was planning on doing a massive pimp for Battlestar Galatcia consisting of extraordinarily intelligent remarks on the series, pictures, youtube links, and general fun nonsense, but that's a project for when it's not the day of and when I don't have a massive amounts of assignments. So, I bring fic.

Dualities by AvacadoLove is Harry Potter & Avatar: The Last Airbender crossover fic wherein Draco and Zuko end up chillin' together in limbo due to an incidence involved Vanishing Cabinets.

Yes. The premise is pure crack. The actual fic is more along the lines of pure brilliance. My review really hits all of the points thus:

This is, on the whole, completely spectacular. You took a premise that I really, genuinely doubted would work at made it into a beautifully crafted piece of fiction. The two words are juxtaposed quite nicely, and I love the cultural misunderstandings that come from that. You mesh the two "magics" together fairly smoothly. I especially like how both Draco & Zuko can use the power from one another's world to a small extent.

Draco's characterization was absolutely brilliant. You managed to let him be the whiny, spoilt brat that he is without casting him as a two-dimensional side-character. I rarely find authors that hit such a happy medium in their fic. Draco's indecision on whether to use the Imperius on Zuko was fantastic, as was his reasoning behind his ultimate decision not to.

Zuko I loved perhaps even more than Draco. You allowed for Zuko's dorkiness to show through and yet still presented him as the Zuko from canon. He was still confused and I loved how you played him trying to convince himself that he had made the right decisions.

The humor was spot-on without being crackfic and their relationship was played nicely and organically. Also, the timing of the story fit well into both canons.

I think the greatest strength in your fic was how aware it was of both characters & their shortcomings. You certainly brought out their common ground, but at the same time you contrasted the two very effectively.

I don't know how someone who is not familiar with both fandoms would read this, but I think it's worth a try!

I learn by word vomit. No. Seriously. I learn by opening my mouth, vomiting words, and then trying to figure out what the hell I'm saying while I'm saying it. This is apparently not all that unique, which I suppose is a good thing, though in practice it must lead to something of a headache for the non-word-vomit-y ones. I try to be at least vaguely clear in my posts, which is why I don't update very often.

I want to make a bingo card of philosophical/theoretical terms. On it will be words like "hegemony" and "knowledge" and "dialectic" and all of those words which are gloriously imprecise and mean everything and nothing all at the same time.

How are you anything but an absolutist if you believe there is one best answer? We're constantly undermined by absolutism. Even the most extreme relativism depends on one absolutist remark for it's groundwork. It is possible to escape absolutely and should we even bother trying?

Also, when someone says "most well-known detective within the western tradition" does anyone else thing of Batman rather than Sherlock Holmes?

Clearly I should not be allowed on LJ when I have barely slept.

For stormantia, because she's been working her ass off for free rent to learn to be a good RA.

( 2 icons of my art )

Hope you're keeping everything under control!

Also, I hope everyone else is doing well. A lot of my friends seem to be in pain, and I wish I could do something for you guys. If you think of anything please ask.

Alan Bennett is basically made of pure awesome. He’s a brilliant writer with a profoundly amusing personal history and the two films that’ve been spawned by his theatre work are two of my favorite films of all time. Thus, my 10th is an Alan Bennett Pimp of Awesome.



( How do I define history? Well it's just one fucking thing after another. )




( His majesty was all powerful and all knowing. But he wasn’t quite all there. )

Phew. I really need to start typing these things up in advance. I'm always almost late and never have any idea what to do. But yeah, these two films may/may not be out of your comfort zone, but I really encourage you to check them out because they are amazing

I know this might be overly-sentimental, but I don't much care at the moment. I don't take change well, and I take loss even worse. I wanted to share this. Because there were good times. They always are.

I lost my first pet today. It's stupid to cry over a mouse that cost six dollars, but I did. It's stupid to cry over something that you knew was going to die any day, but I did. I found out while I was at work. She died a few minutes after I left.

I didn't even get to hold her one last time.

I buried her in the back yard, in a box taped shut with a piece of her favorite treat and some paper towels. I tied a white ribbon around the box, and we dug the grave deep. I don't think that's such a bad way to be laid to rest.



Goneril
requiescat in pace
She was named after the eldest of the daughters in Shakespeare's King Lear. She was ten kinds of stupid, but also six kinds of sweet. She was soft and dark and warm, and you could feel her heartbeat with your fingertip. I miss her. Regan & Cordelia are still there, but the cage seems empty without her.

I loved that mouse.

Just thought I'd share some of my little side projects. Some of them are new, and some of them I've pimped out in the past, though it's been a while.

I started an icon journal at rhetoricons. I now share it with aeirol, and she makes much better use of it than I do and her stuff is awesome, so you should check it out!

stormantia & I have two journals with our pet projects in them: bw_splody & thesummerland. bw_splody is for our webcomic about superheroes that will happen one day! If stormantia ever gets off her bum and draws something, it'll probably be posted there. thesummerland is a newer project of ours, which involves the misadventures of a modern lad named Caden and a sword-and-sorcery type lass named Juniper. The comm is mostly for brainstorming, and any input at all is totally welcome.

Next is rottenpremises, wherein cyloncurry and I shall be taking tried & true tropes from the Harry Potter fandom and adding 100% more awesome. Brainstorming and crack will likely be in abundance.

Finally, I have my own little writing community at synecdochical. Most of what I post is prose in ryxenverse, meaning it doesn't make sense out of context. Still, I've got some poems up there. So ... yeah. If you're interested!

Anyway, that's all for now. If you're interested in anything I just posted I'd really love it if you'd take a look!

Today is the first time I implement stormantia's awesome plan, id est the tenth of awesome, wherein we pimp something out that we really really love. I've chosen two relatively small things that you can access through the internet at no charge.

ONE; I am sure you are all familiar with Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series. Some of you may have read the books, most of you saw the film, and a few of you might've even enjoyed it. Regardless, oxymoronassoc and saint_renegade have used their combined genius to improve the books 400%. Thus I bring you Growning Up Cullen, wherein Edward is a scrapbooking fiend and Emmett is -- Emmett, except with more fratboy.

NO ONE UNDERSTANDS MEEE HE WOULD SEETHE AS HE PRESSED HIS WILDFLOWERS

TWO; The world of classical music is often portrayed as a little ... well, lame. Igudesman & Joo do very little to dissuade their audience of that notion, but they are lame in the most spectacular of ways -- one of which involves playing jump rope and/or river dancing to a vacuum cleaner. Regardless, the two of them are talented musicians, as well as individuals who are always bringing the LOLz.

( Here they're doing an awesome rendition of 'I Will Survive' )

I am sorry I do not have cool artists to rec like everyone else.

aeirol AND I ARE GOING TO SPAIN IN ABOUT TEN DAYS!!

Okay, yeah. We've just spent about 10 hours messing around with Delta, trying to figure out why the internet kept quoting prices around $800 then trying to charge us $1,400+ when we went to purchase the ticket. Then the voucher I had wouldn't work. We had to call in four times and thus were put on hold for an hour or so each time trying to figure out what was wrong. We still don't know. My voucher was valid, but Delta's internet sucks something massive so it still wouldn't work and I had to buy tickets over the phone and it took like two hours and I am very frightened of the phone and I wanted to cry because I am a wimp and I do not even know except that I am going to Spain with my girlfriend and it is going to be amazing!!

I am lucky that aeirol knows Spanish. I get to stand there, dumbly, in the background!! It will be pretty!! Ernest Hemingway liked Spain!! IDEK!! ZOMFG I cannot think coherently b-but SPAIN!!

I realize that, between now and about this time last year my Nerd Factor has pretty much skyrocketed something ridiculous. I am thanks to cyloncurry strangely obsessed with Battlestar Galactica, spend an inordinate time reading superhero comics, and am minoring in Latin.

That said, I'm about to damn myself further. Here's a fanmix for Percy Bysshe Shelley. Because he was a total loser and I am too. I made the cover art and everything.

( Never Fade Away: A Percy Bysshe Shelley Fanmix )

Of course, let's be honest. With an icon like the one I'm using, it's hard to be entirely serious. Also, with Shelly's life as a whole taken into account, it's also hard to be entirely serious. Thus, I've also added bonus stuff:

( Never Fade Away: B-SIDES & Extras )

DOWNLOAD THE FANMIX HERE AND THE B-SIDES & EXTRAS HERE

Okay, and yeah. This was a bit of a GIP too, but I gave you guys free music. If you don't mind, I would like a comment if you snag. Also, if I have piqued your interest in Shelley, do pick up The Pursuit by Richard Holmes. It is truly monstrous as far as length goes, but it is also truly worth it.

Since my brain likes to, at times, greatly resemble a sieve, I did not remember that Sarah Rees Brennan’s debut novel came out recently until lilian_cho posted about it today. I have only one truly salient thing to say on this matter: it does not matter if you do not like fantasy; it does not matter if you feel young adult fiction is beneath you; it does not even matter if you are in the midst of reading the most meaningful novel ever written; do yourself a favor and buy this book.

It's called The Demon's Lexicon. I just spent about five hours straight reading it. I finished it in one sitting. It's currently 5:30 am, and I have to go into work today. This is clearly a Bad Thing, but staying up this late and reading this book was totally worth it. [And yes, what I'm about to write is totally spoiler-free]

Sarah Rees Brennan, who you can find at sarahtales, wrote fan fiction years ago. It's all off the internet now, but it was brilliant stuff. Even though she was writing within the defined parameters of a given canon, she had a strong authorial voice and her characters were each unique, well-defined, and very much hers, for all they were clearly borrowed.

The thing is, though? No matter how utterly fantastic her fanfiction is, nothing can measure up to the brilliance of her original work. Brennan's potential really, truly explodes when allowed free reign. In The Demon's Lexicon she has created a world that is richly magical tied down with firmly realistic elements -- there are demons, but there's also fixing the sink; magicians, but also finances to worry about; &c. -- and it's this exact mix of the fantastic and the realistic that catches my eye. It's sort of the same reason why I really got into the Watchmen film, or Atwood's Oryx and Crake -- the world has a heavy dose of plausibility to it. It's not sugar-coated, but it's not excessively dark & gritty.

Brennan's characters are all incredibly likable and also very distinctive. I think they all do and/or say things that make you want to hit them, but they also all do and/or say things that make you want to hug them. The female characters are strong and brave and smart but not perfect, and manage to avoid most tropes. The relationships between the characters are complex, healthy, and Brennan doesn't resort to a sacharrine Disney-style romance. I'm not just interested in every character: I'm interested in how they interact with each other, and while I definitely favor certain dynamics, I found myself happy no matter what pair of characters or individual characters were the current focus of the book. The dialogue is at times witty and at times it hurts so good and at times strangely poetic. The descriptions are exactly where they need to be: not overly sparse, but not overly flowery either. Moreover, Brennan has an amazing ability to go from humorous to heartbreaking both smoothly and quickly. The flow of her writing really reflects how moments seem to flow in reality, which is perhaps the strongest point of the book.

Also, and this is perhaps the crowning glory: her characters act their age, even if they are used to extraordinary situations.

So. The Demon's Lexicon. Sarah Rees Brennan. Go read it!

Anyway, another thing I stole from lilian_cho:

Fandom meme: Comment and I'll LJ stalk you to find (up to) three fandoms you apparently love. And then you answer these questions about them!

01: What got you into this fandom in the first place?
02: Do you think you'll stay in this fandom or eventually move on?
03: Favorite episodes/books/movies/etc.?
04: Do you participate in this fandom (fanfiction, graphics, discussions)?
05: Do you think that more people should get into this fandom?

Now I need some advice: I have a $750 plane credit with Delta to pretty much anywhere I want to go. It expires in August, and I am very poor otherwise. Suggestions?

This is probably old news to a lot of people, but cleolinda posted some linkspam a while ago, and one article in particular really caught my eye.

The simple version is this guy, Christopher Handley, was in possession of a large amount of manga, some of which contained depictions of minors in the act of sex. The exact amount of this specific type of manga in proportion to Handley's entire collection is not mentioned, though it is implied that this manga -- which seems to be primarily lolicon or shotacon -- is only a small portion of Handley's actual collection.

The damning law than Handley is facing is the 2003 Protect Act. As of now, Handley is looking at a minimum of 5 years in jail and a maximum of 15.

The article was of particular interest to me. As a kid, I was what seems to be called a weeaboo nowadays, though back then I just referred to myself as an otaku, though calling oneself an otaku is hardly a positive thing, self-designated title or no. Anyway, I was obsessed with manga. I read pretty much anything the bookstores carried, regardless of quality. Boy's love/yaoi/shounen-ai not included because that was gross and as a child I feared the homogay; also, lesbians did not exist. I slowly grew less interested in the medium, and in the summer between my sophomore & junior years of high school, I sold over 1,000 volumes of my personal collection. I still read a handful off titles -- still do read a handful of titles -- but the animanga mania had passed.

I didn't really look at stuff that I wasn't already involved in/hadn't been recommended to me for a couple years. Then, about a year ago, I decided to try out some new titles and to find out what happened in some of the series I used to follow. It was a really disturbing experience. There were things I had missed when I was younger that made the stuff almost unreadable now. It lead me to do some extensive research on the subject for my literary theory course. The focus was a feminist one, and what I discovered was that, much like American comics, a lot of manga had some pretty disturbing things to say about women in particular and relationships on the whole -- at least from a Western viewpoint.

( The point is that, to me, there are a lot of issues with the material in manga )

The Handley case bothers me because it seems to disregard the right to -- I can't even say fantasy because if those volumes were just a small portion of his collection, it's likely that he just grabbed some volumes to sell them to someone else. The intent to sell is also covered in the Protect Act, and that makes sense when it comes to actual child pornography where children were harmed. The problem is as of yet and to my knowledge there's no literature linking lolicon or shotacon sex-scenes to actual children. Having seen a fair amount of sex-scenes in Japanese manga, mostly of the yaoi variety I got over my homogay fear and realized lesbians exist and that I may/may not be one, I can attest that they're not incredibly realistic. There's no pubic hair, and a lot of the time the peen is just some sparkly blank space. Even where the genitalia is depicted, most mangaka don't really go for realism in their art. Which isn't to say all the art is the same; but most styles aren't exactly exactly focused on realism. What I'm getting at is, it doesn't seem like any children were harmed in the production of this stuff, so even if it is a little morally repulsive to most of the United States, I don't see what the hell is so obscene about possessing and distributing this material to other consenting adults. But then again, I'm a firm believer that morality and legality aren't really the same thing.

And you know, for every "slippery slope" argument, there's a rebuttal in saying that looking at manufactured comic porn might provide an outlet for people who would otherwise not have one because they happen to be attracted to children. Or, perhaps aeirol said it more clearly, "I've heard this argument used for porn before, and it makes sense to me: if reading this stuff is a way to curb any desire, no matter how slight, to go out and abuse children, then it's a good thing." Once again, we return to the realm of fantasy versus reality. Disregarding Handley’s specific case, I honestly feel that, as long as your fantasy does not harm anyone else, you should be allowed to indulge in it. Jailing someone for purchasing something that seems to be clearly in the realm of "fantasy" is one eerie step too close to the Thought Police for my liking.

I'm also a little bit curious because I haven't seen massive fandom backlash against it, and this sounds pretty much like the strikethrough '07 thing everyone got so upset about. Really, I think this is far worse and could quite easily extend itself into the fan fiction world – in which case, a pretty hearty amount of ficcers would be in trouble, especially if we’re talking about fic concerning minors – under 18s in the United States.

Also: There's a good post expanding some of the objections to this case further by Neil Gaiman here.

I was watching the news today. One of the lead-ins to a story I ultimately didn't end up seeing was this: "Is it possible to be over-protective?"

I don't care if it was a rhetorical question and I don't care what to what such a question was in reference. The fact that it was even asked makes me ill. What the hell?

There was recently a protest on our campus. It was over, globally speaking, a somewhat minor issue relevant only to Denison students. The actual background isn't much relevant to what I want to talk about, but my friend Robbie gave a pretty succinct explanation on facebook:

To make a long story short, students came together to show disapproval of President Knobel's decision. He disregarded the constitution and chose to provide funds to an organization that the student government almost unanimously voted not to fund.

I didn't much care either way, and only found out about the whole thing via Erin [aeirol] afterward. I wasn't even going to mention it here until this comment on Robbie's album of the event:

Why don't students come together to protest something that actually matters to the rest of the world (war, Darfur, hunger, clean water, racism), and not a silly budget issue that polarizes an already tense campus?

It's this kind of attitude that I find so utterly frustrating. First of all, it isn't as if there is an either/or; protesting student rights on Denison's campus isn't mutually exclusive to protesting the events in Darfur, or the war in Iraq, or women's rights. Even if you acknowledge that there isn't an either/or and chose to say something like "if you have time to protest this thing you could easily protest something better" you still come out looking like a douche. It's as close to infinite regress that exists: there will always be some issue more important or on a greater scale than the issue in which you're currently involved. And, even with issues of the greatest importance and of absolutely enormous magnitude, well, there'll always be more than one of those, and then it turns into a massive smackdown of which one is more important.

Secondly is the fact that people value different things and are under no obligation to protest things which they don't feel strongly enough about to protest. Does it make someone a wonderful person to stand by and scream about student rights whilst ignoring starving children a few miles away? Not really, no. Neither does it make them a horrible person, nor does it invalidate the cause they're protesting.

Saying anything along the lines of "why are you protesting X when you could be protesting Y?" really, to me, only sounds like another way to propagate ignorance. It's the same argument a lot of sexist assholes use, and really, it seems one of the most effective ways to slaughter any kind of meaningful dialogue that might be brought up on the subject. Exempli gratia*:

STATEMENT: This song is not just insulting to anyone who's an atheist (debatably anyone who falls outside of the Christian tradition, but let's just say atheist for now) but it also propagates the myth of the atheist somehow being a lesser human being than the Christian. That's not just insulting -- it's dangerous. So I'm going to write a blog post about it.
RESPONSE: Why can't you blog about more important things than a song? Women are being sexually harassed every day in the workplace! Why don't you blog about that? It's a lot more important.

STATEMENT: What seems to be blatantly racist casting in the upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender film pisses me off, so I'm going to write a letter to the producers & sign a petition.
RESPONSE: It's just a movie based off a children's cartoon. How can you say that when our environment is going to hell? Why don't you write letters to the government about how to fix the environment? Why don't you sign a petition that will help us get clean water?

STATEMENT: I am really unnerved by the portrayal of women in general & what constitutes a desirable relationship in the Twilight series. Thus I am going to stage a non-violent protest of this book in a bookstore.
RESPONSE: Why are you protesting this when we have a possibly unjustified war going on? You should protest something that's really important, not something like a piece of teen fiction.

*As aside, I believe all six things are worth getting riled up about. What I don't believe in is enforcing your personal (and often unrelated) hierarchy upon them.

In short, I really get sick of people trying to dictate what is worthy of blogging about/writing letters about/protesting versus what is not worthy. It's not absolute and, frankly, it's really not your place to invalidate something which others believe is worth taking measures for/against.

If you want to talk about how effective a protest is, or how justified a protest is, that's something else -- something that's totally valid. But stop getting offended that some people give a damn about what you deem as unimportant.

ETA: Fixed the Avatar link and finished a couple sentence fragments. O-oops.

I go to write about gay marriage and I end up talking about capitalism. How absolutely typical.

Our ethics text also has, possibly, the most painful translation of Aristotle in existence. Though, having said that, I'm sure there are worse. This? This is what I would do if I had a time machine -- I'd go back and get some proper manuscripts from Aristotle. Reading bad translations of his lecture notes doesn't make anyone happy.

ETA: Back to LGBT rights, now with utilitarianism! I suck at this.