On 'The Secret Circle': Teen Witches In ZOMG Love
Derrida would probably not say much. Lacan, on the other hand, would have a field day.
0
On The Eight Truths About Weddings (That No One Ever Tells You)
@iantenna Yeah, but some people are going to freak out either way, because getting married is a big life change. I think it's more about personality type than about the wedding itself. Some people manage stress by obsessing over details. This can lead to the occasional breakdown, sure, but it also keeps them mentally busy. As a neurotic person, I know I'm going to be waking up in the middle of the night stressed out either way, so having a bunch of details to fuss over actually helps.
0
On The Eight Truths About Weddings (That No One Ever Tells You)
The "finding out what you're really like" thing struck a chord with me. I too thought I was too cool to care about my wedding and that I would somehow magically have the cheapest, most relaxed wedding imaginable. Then I learned that the reason I am a DIY person is NOT because I'm so chill, but in fact because I like to have control over how everything looks. So yeah, I am lovingly handcrafting everything myself, and yeah, it's pretty stressful, but ultimately I enjoy it, even though I know it's just a stupid wedding.
Sometimes I feel a little jealous of those awesome couples who felt comfortable blowing it all off and eloping together, but at the end of the day, I love throwing fancy parties, and this is the only time in my life that I'll get to do it, so . . . . I'm just giving myself permission to care, even if it means having the occasional breakdown over the centerpieces.
0
On A View From Outside the Temple
As a non-religious woman who was once madly in love with a Mormon man, I've spent a fair amount of time agonizing over whether Mormons are "weird" or not. When we were dating, I walked a tightrope between a genuinely strange religion and the genuinely prejudiced account of it in mainstream culture. I tried so hard to keep an open mind, but the misogyny and just - there's no other word - cultishness of the religion continually creeped me out. At the same time, when people found out I was dating a Mormon, they would make incredibly rude comments to me in public: "Oh, does he have six wives? Does he live in Utah?" This type of attitude just makes Mormons feel righteously besieged by the world. If I had been dating a Muslim, would I have to put up with people asking me if he was a terrorist? Jewish? Catholic? Nope. Mormonism is the last religion you're still allowed to mock.
Don't get me wrong, it's mock-able. I never had to deal with the underwear because my boyfriend hadn't been to the temple yet (he wasn't on a standard Mormon timeline, had experienced years of doubt, which is why we were together in the first place - how was I supposed to know he suddenly wanted to renew his commitment to the faith?). Watching this religion, whose orthodoxy and bizarreness seems to isolate its members from the rest of society, tear up my smart and talented boyfriend's brain was hard for me. When he proposed after an excruciating "romantic" evening of seeing Christmas lights at the SLC temple, I knew for the first time that I would never be okay with any of it, never ever ever.
These days, I am prepared to admit that yes, a lot of Mormons are pretty weird, mostly because they have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to keep themselves believing what they need to believe in spite of the world around them. The secrecy and insiderish-ness of the religion is a compensation for them, not a punishment - give up the world (but not material things! That's another story) and you'll get this awesome palace that's only for you, and a planet to rule over in the next life. Most of the Mormon men that I met have a creepy look to them that's hard to explain - they're super nice, but their eyes sort of stare right past you. I didn't get to know many Mormon women.
Well, what I meant to say was that this article was kind of boring to me. Google "ex-Mormon" and you'll find dozens of websites' worth of angry, broken people ranting about how crazy the LDS church is. This blithe, touristy account has nothing much to offer that you couldn't learn in 5 minutes on one of those sites. It just sounds like the "outsider" who wrote the article didn't really engage with it all that much.
1
On Our Obsession with the Word "Random": Fear of a Millennial Planet
No fair crying bad grammar if it's a parody of bad grammar! The Summer Heights High character who overuses "random" is a vapid teenage girl played hilariously by Chris Lilley. Ja'mie [sic] punctuates every other sentence with, "God that is so RANdom." Watch Summer Heights High! Watch it!
0
On 'The Hunger Games': Bloodless, Sexless and Not Very Hungry
The movie was very disappointing to me. I thought they softballed a whole lot of stuff.