You might not be all that surprised that I like pinball. It’s a pointless, fruitless contraption of annoying sounds and bright lights, with a bunch of half-broken metal inside. That’s more or less the crown prosecutor’s description of me from last spring. I heard they spent like a day in a whole-office brainstorming session just to come up with that one, but I digress.
The point of pinball is, like all great human endeavours, to rack up an arbitrary score by playing the game. To this extent, you pay money for a limited number of chances. A better writer than me could make this some sort of metaphor on life itself, but I’m not going to resort to that kind of trickery. No, I want to talk about actual pinball.
Here’s the thing about a game that mostly consists of bouncing a steel ball into stationary objects, which trigger sensors and relays. That stuff breaks down, and it breaks down all the time. Although you may imagine all mechanical objects as existing in a perfect state of repair and a zero-percent-humidity vacuum, the real world is completely filthy. Dirt and hair get into things. Grease reacts with the plastics and becomes some kind of nightmare tar that has to be removed with industrial paint-stripping equipment. Screws pop out. The playfield flakes off and warps. Complex electronics seize up somewhere deep inside and begin to act, in the words of Alan Turing, “fucking haunted.”
So that means that the operator of a pinball machine has to be constantly maintaining it. Keeping an eye on all the bumpers. Being good enough to play it and hit all the features, check to make sure the multi-ball bonus works. This is the kind of thing that I like to do, but unfortunately I was born a couple years too late to become full-time employed maintaining pinball machines across America, driving a $500 Plymouth Barracuda, seeding secret second and third families whenever I find a small town that I particularly liked. Instead, I get to look at my friends’ pinball machines and go: that looks bad. You should replace that part. And then they say: I can’t, because nobody makes that part anymore. And then I spend a year meticulously constructing an exact replica of that part, only for the next thing in line to break.
All this is to say that pinball is keeping me from doing even basic maintenance on my fleet of terrible cars, which I’m sure is appreciated by the citizenry at large. Stick that in your ass and smoke it, Your Worship.
also society will never move forward if straight women don’t stop babying men like “he’s a man of course he can’t remember our anniversary” “men simply aren’t able clean the way women do” “i would never expect my boyfriend to know what type of products i like” do you even want a partner or do you want a giant grown up child
Yup, but at the same time- straight women have got to stop treating housekeeping and caregiving as the source of their self-worth and have got to start teaching their sons and husbands how to help.
A lot of straight women pull this malarkey, NOT because they’re kind and being exploited, but because they find most of their self-worth in being A Good Housekeeper and A Good Caregiver. Having family help you clean, to a person like this, is an admission of defeat. They might allow their daughters to help, because daughters need to learn that being A Good Woman means finding all your value in Keeping House- but they’d never let their sons or husbands help, because that means they’re not Good Enough.
This kind of complaining is often performative homosocial bonding that helps cement a cishet woman’s status in her group. By complaining about how useless men are at housekeeping and caregiving- oh, he NEVER remembers birthdays, he ALWAYS makes me do the cleaning, he could NEVER keep track of what products I use- a cishet woman implicitly sets herself up as the opposite. She reinforces to her social group that she is Good At Being A Woman… and that she is Better At Being A Woman than someone whose husband is helpful and kind, because She Does Everything Herself.
And yes, people do try to make being More Exploited Than Thou a virtue. It’s sick and sad. It means women who are being abused can’t get help qnd women who aren’t feel guilty about it. But them’s the breaks.
You can’t just yell “straight men, shape up!” The dysfunction goes much, much deeper than that… and some of it is on cishet women.
the good part about looking back at primary sources it’s a reminder of how much utter crap there was back then instead of just focusing on the good bits that stood the test of time.
Joss Whedon: Inventer Of Feminism Or Literal Hitler?
Joss
Whedon invented feminism. Before Joss Whedon, every female character on
television was crushed to death under the weight of her male co-stars’
heavier paychecks in the second-season finale.
Every female
character Joss Whedon ever wrote was forcibly impregnated by a demon and
brutally murdered, because Joss Whedon hates lesbians.
But Warren And The Trio Were –
EVERYONE
GETS THAT WARREN AND THE TRIO REPRESENTED THE THREAT OF
NON-SUPERNATURAL MISOGYNY, YOU DON’T GET CREDIT FOR PICKING UP ON THAT
Joss Whedon Doesn’t Understand What Bisexuality Is
Willow Identifies As Gay And You Are Robbing Her Of Self-Determination Because She Doesn’t Have A “Gold Star”
I’d
Feel More Comfortable With Willow’s Lesbianism If It Weren’t Sometimes
Equated With Drug Addiction, Literal Vampirism, And Megalomania
But She Was Clearly In Love With Oz
Who Are You To Say What Love Is
Dark Willow Was Pretty Hot, Though
Yeah, Dark Willow Was Super Hot
I’d Watch Dark Willow And Doppelgangland-Era Willow Hook Up If It Weren’t A Patriarchal Fantasy
Spuffy Is Problematic
Bangel Is A Child’s Delusion Of What Love Is
Spuffy Is Literally Assault
Okay But He Felt Really Bad About It And Didn’t Have A Soul
Waif-Fu And Thermodynamics: You Can’t Violate The Law Of Conservation Of Momentum
Season Six Felt Like Watching My Friends Get Murdered In Slow Motion Right In Front Of Me
It Was Worth It For Once More, With Feeling, Though
No, It Wasn’t
Doublemeat Palace Cancels Out Once More, With Feeling
Doublemeat Palace Cancels Out My Childhood
Xander Is The Only Character Who Retains Their Humanity On The Entire Show
Xander Is A Greater Monster Than Angelus And Invented “Nice Guy” Syndrome
Buffy Started To Falter After Angel Premiered
No, Buffy Started To Falter After Firefly Premiered
No, Buffy Has Never Faltered And Is Still On The Air
Buffy Started To Falter When Angel/Faith/Buffy Came Back
Buffy Was Better When It Was A Movie With Kristy Swanson
What If Evil?
Dark Willow Straight-Up Flayed a Dude!
Extremism In the Pursuit of Love Is No Vice
If a Dude Had Flayed Willow, Would We Be Cheering?
Everyone Was Too Hard On Dawn For Being A Regular Human Being
Don’t You Dare Try To Retroactively Justify Dawn
Oz vs. Tara
Oz Was Boring; Tara Was Too Good For This Sinful Earth
Tara Was Boring; Oz Was The Greatest Love Interest In Television History; Remember That Animal Crackers Monologue
What About Kenned–
SHUT UP ABOUT KENNEDY
Jenny Calendar And Race-Bending
Is It Important That Buffy Is Decidedly Not Book Smart?
Not Everyone Is Book Smart, That Is Elitist
Buffy is the Lady Channing Tatum of being Body Smart and That Is Sufficient
It Is a Tremendous Problem and Girls Should Not Watch This Show Or They Will Not Take College Seriously
I Shouldn’t Have To Watch Angel In Order To Appreciate Cordelia’s Growth As A Character
Shaming: Everyone Is Shamed
“Beer Bad” Is Slut-Shaming
“Beer Bad” Is Substance-Shaming and Preachy
“Beer Bad” Is Just a Terrible Episode
Angel Losing His Soul After He Has Sex With Buffy is Slut-Shaming
THE EPISODE WHERE WILLOW ATTENDS THE WICCAN MEETING IS WICCAN-SHAMING WICCANS ARE REAL WE ARE NOT YOUR PUNCHLINE
KENDRA’S ACCENT THOUGH
Was It Irish Sometimes, Or Was That Just Me?
Her Accent is Perfect, and Not To Be Questioned
Activating All Potential Slayers Was An Act Of Patriarchal Violence
Slaying Is Empowering
No, Slayers Were Literally Created When A Woman Of Color Was Forcibly Invaded By A Demonic Essence
