There She Prose!

To the women saying things like “all women are crazy” and “girls are just stupid about relationships”: please, please stop.

I mean, no one should be saying things like that. But there’s an added layer of perniciousness that comes when women say it—it makes that discourse seem like the incontrovertible truth. If even YOU, a LADY, have to admit these things, they must be pretty undeniable, right?

When you say things like this, you aren’t just talking about “women.” You are talking about me. You are telling people that if they don’t like what I have to say, it’s okay to ignore it because my hormones or whatever are preventing me from interacting with them as a rational equal.

Knock that shit off.

Even if you don’t actually mean ALL women, even if you know that men, too, can be irrational and attention-seeking and have wackadoo ideas about relationships, when you say things like this, you are buying into and legitimizing a discourse that invalidates your own experiences. That is, you are saying that when you get upset about something, it’s not because it’s a legitimate concern but because you have the debilitating condition known as a vagina. Your audience has been informed by a reliable authority—you—that your relationship needs are unreasonable and irrational and therefore illegitimate. You’re giving people permission not to take you seriously!

Furthermore, using “crazy” to disenfranchise women depends on and reinforces the idea that people with mental illnesses are also incapable of having valid concerns.

Knock that shit off, too, please.

Although Botched Jesus was one of my favorite things to come out of 2012, I am actually even MORE grateful for the gentle nudge it gave me in a slightly different direction: between the Facebook group, the Flickr page, and numerous articles and slideshows, the internet is full of animals stuffed by people who appear never to have actually seen an animal.

 

HEY HEY HEY! via.

While the Gripsholm lion is perhaps the most famous example of taxidermy gone gob-smackingly awry, it also embodies (ha!) a tendency that I have noticed among our artistes: bad taxidermists have a particular love for cats. Specifically, they appear to believe that cats have VERY INTENSE FEELINGS.

I would like, here, to present a tenderly curated collection from some of the most expressive artists ever to work in the skin-filled-with-sawdust medium. I call it “11 Dead Cats Who Feel Things (with 2 bonus foxes).”

1.) “Guys! Guys! Guys? (Gus)”

via.

2.) “Hunter in Bat Country”

via.

3.) “Percival, The Clouded Leopard of Tremulous Approval”

via.

4.) “Yvette (or: you kept the receipt for that, right?)”

via.

The Excited Cat Triptych

5.) “Joy”

via. 

6.) “Sassy”

via.

7.) “Ed”

via.

8.) “Kyle Loves Surprises”

via. (Their caption is actually way better.)

8) “Dave sees London”

via.

9.) “Doubting Thomas”

via. 

10.) “First Date Series No. 3: Karl and Anna”

via. Also, is that a live rabbit? WTF?

11.) “Untitled Abstract”

via.

12.) “i’ve been waiting so long (for this moment)”

via. 

13.) “About His Business”

via.

When I was in college, there was a tradition called “Roomies” in which an entire dorm floor would go out on a giant group date—but with the twist that your roommate got to choose your escort. This sounds potentially terrible, I suppose, but in practice it was amazing. Because your “roommate” was doing the choosing, it was an accepted thing that you could ask anyone–ANYONE–out without losing face if things went south. And if things went, uh, north, you’d actually get an evening with that dreamboat from Advanced Grammar.

So. There was this guy.

I’d met him at an event and we’d hit it off, but he didn’t go to my school and so we didn’t really have a reason to run into each other again. But he DID–coincidentally, magically, amazingly–know my roommate. And so on the night of the big event, there he was, gerbera daisy in hand.

But there was a problem: this intimate group date with forty of my closest friends was happening at an ice skating rink.

Context: I am clumsy. Not uncoordinated clumsy. Not aw-cute-she-stumbled clumsy. I’m talking full-length-sprawl-on-the-sidewalk clumsy. Routinely-shatters-dishes-at-dinner-parties clumsy. Runs-for-the-bus-looks-behind-her-and-runs-into-a-signpost clumsy.

You can see the trouble I was in.

I had never been ice skating before, but I had been roller skating, and that…did not go well.

I mean, the truth is, sometimes walking is hard enough.

But I wanted to go on this date SO BAD. So I went. And my date was lovely—patient, encouraging, supporting me as I Bambi-legged my way around the rink and helping me up when I inevitably tumbled. Eventually he ran into some friends and I shooed him away so I could slowly wobble my way around the rink and “impress” him when he returned.

By the time he skated up and put his arm around my waist, I had made it around the rink a full 1.357 times without falling.

And so I turned my head to smile at him.

And.

Well.

If I told you that as he unsuccessfully tried to catch me I somehow entangled my legs with his, dragging him down to the ice where we would both lie still for a moment while I prayed a Zamboni would come and end it all now, that would be the truth.

But not the whole truth.

Because then I moved my leg to begin clambering up…

  

…and I kicked him in the mouth.

He never voluntarily saw me again.