Well, with only a couple of weeks until finals, spring semester is coming to a decided close. I'm down to 15 credits, and you would think that it makes life a lot simpler, but uh... not quite so much. It's still 5 classes, you know.

I'm registered for summer classes through the International School of Linguistics, which partners with UND; this will allow me to complete my linguistics minor--much to my parents' chagrin. I'm also registered for classes for fall semester, and it should be both busy and spectacular. I'm actually enrolled in multiple English classes again, which to some may sound dreadful, but to me is greatly preferable.

I'm taking Diversity in Global Literatures, which will be investigating the peculiar similarities of folk tales across cultures. I'm also taking Studies in English Drama, which will be focusing on satire in theater, and Gothic Lit, which is apparently being taught by a new professor. My other two English classes are Survey of English Lit I, which is required to graduate, and Digital Humanities, which should be particularly interesting. My other courses include Continental Philosophy (which will touch on most major schools of philosophical thought) and ASL (for my Linguistics minor). With any luck, I'll manage to make it through the semester without dropping anything.

That said, I'm also going to have to be working full time (hopefully more like part time during the school year) in order to actually pay rent and live, since I just moved into a new apartment with my boyfriend, and the rent isn't exactly cheap.

This means that my reading time will likely be greatly diminished, but never fear! I will do what I can to get reviews out in a relatively timely manner. I have a handful of books that I'm working on currently, a couple of which are even nonfiction, and a handful that I'm really interested in reading soon. I also have a draft chillin in the archives, which will be finished as soon as I finish reading said book. lol.

Also, I'm kind of trying to look into doing the whole lit review thing in a more professional setting/manner, but I'm not really sure how to go about doing so. I'm looking into it. I'll get back to you on that.

So that's what we're looking at. My goal is at least one or two books a month, but we'll see what my work load(s) look(s) like and go from there. I do what I can, guys. I really do try.

http://emirenaereviews.blogspot.com for anyone who isn't already familiar, following, whatever. It could be interesting. As always, if you have any suggestions or requests, just let me know. (=

--Emily

Public Reading

So yesterday (04/04/2014) concluded the 45th Annual UND Writers Conference, featuring authors/poets Geoff Dyer, Brian Maxwell, Sarah Leavitt, Jessica Lott, Robert Pinsky, and Colson Whitehead. It's really an awesome event, and I hope that it carries on for at least another 45.

Each morning of the conference, there's approximately an hour allotted to community members who wish to read their own material, and this year, I took a leap and did it.

The piece that I'm reading is a short story entitled "Break Through". This isn't the best recording in the world because it was done on my phone, as I haven't a video camera, and it has this thing where it randomly decides to refocus and stuff. Also, my boyfriend was recording, so it's a little shaky and he coughs at one point. Sorry about that. But I watched it last night and I'm pretty sure the sound is decent enough that it's understandable.

I guess, truth be told, I'm not ENTIRELY certain how I feel/felt about this, but at least people laughed in the appropriate places. What was also interesting to me was that the people who seemed to be vaguely uncomfortable were not the adults or the older people, but in fact my peers. And that rings oddly to me.

Also: I know that people are going to want to tell me that they think, considering the material, that I mean "Breakthrough", but I don't, and I want you to think about what that means. I don't want to explain it to you because I want you to try to work through it on your own. If I'd meant Breakthrough, I'd have titled it thus.

Feminism, Post-Feminism, Queer Theory: Super Condensed

Feminism arose in order to even out the binary relationship between the male and female genders.

2nd-wave French feminism is the genre therein with which most people are familiar, earning the movement its bad name for bra-burning and refusal to shave, etc. The idea was that because women could do anything that men could and certain things that men couldn't (i.e. carry children), then women were better and should therefore take the top spot in a gender binary. Therefore, instead of evening out the binary, they just went to flip it and put themselves on top.

Post-feminism came along and looked at all this and said "No, no no. That's not right, either." And went back to setting out to even the binary again. This time, however--at least in terms of literary criticism, with which I am most familiar (imagine that)--they looked not only at the way that women have been represented and shoe-boxed into particular roles, but also the way that men have been. Just like women, men have expected cultural roles and are berated when they neglect to live up to their set expectations. Post-feminism decided that both genders were equally important and therefore worked to examine both of them throughout history and the modern period.

Queer theory is more of a literary criticism method than anything else, at least as far as I'm familiar with it. It looks at literary relationships between characters or even just particular characters on their own and questions whether there might be something not-quite-hetero about them or their motives, and that's what's influencing the play out of plot. Etc. Etc. Whether it's ever accurate or not isn't really the point; it's merely a lens through which to examine literature, and I think it's particularly interesting (although I must admit I never did fully get the hang of it).

So now you know!

Cheers!

Arizona's Vetoed "Religious Freedom" Bill and Tammy Bruce's Disturbing Op-Ed

So here's the deal: A girl I used to know in high school--we were in band and FBLA together, but that's pretty much it because she's 3 years younger than me--shared this link this morning with the tagline "Worth retelling" attached to it. Now listen; I identify as Christian, but over time I have found that I dislike church. I could go on and on about why, but I don't think I have to. It boils down to the idea that people use pieces of the Bible and completely disregard the rest of it purely for the sake of attempting to run other people's lives.  And I'm not okay with that.

So then comes this Really Bad Opinion Post on Fox News Online and really completely disrupts my otherwise calm and relaxing Sunday. Tammy Bruce decides to start out this post with "As a gay conservative woman," and you should always recognize that as a massive red flag. (And I realize that I basically just did the exact same thing above, which acts as the same kind of flag, telling you that there's 'not-good' up ahead.) She goes on to say that she supported it. How can a gay woman support a bill that promises to turn modern-day America back into 1920's-style segregation but against non-heterosexuals instead of another race? I don't understand.

In the Old Testament of the Bible, it tells us that for a man to lie with another man the way he lies with a woman is "an abomination," etc etc. But in the same section of the Bible, we find an entire section which says things like: 

• A man can totally own slaves
• Not only can a man own slaves, but he can beat them to within an inch of their lives so long as they live three days afterward. If they die after that, who cares? They made it three days. Totes not your problem anymore.
• A man can totes sell his daughter for livestock
• Because lets be serious here; what good is your baby girl when you can get an ox? Amiright?
• It's super sinful to cut your hair. Like, let that shit grow, man.
• It's also def not-okay to mix fabrics when you dress yourself. Dudes; all wool or nothing.
• If that girl down the street has sex before she gets married, y'all should totes visit a gravel pit and throw it all at her, because Biblical punishment for that is a stoning.
• But if that one guy who lives next to her has pre-marital sex, high five that muthafukka, cause he da man
• Oh, also, don't go poking holes in your body--like your earlobes or your lips or anything? Yeah, definitely not cool. 
• Putting ink and stuff in it isn't okay either. Like, you were given that body, man; treat it nicely.

Also, just a side note: the way the Bible phrases that whole 'no dudes with dudes' caveat realistically just prohibits bisexuality, not homosexuality. I'm just sayin. You can't lie with a man the same way you do with a woman. So, if you're lying with a woman, no men. If you're lying with men, no women. Apparently orgies were a big no-no.

Anyway. Moving forward, the gist of the Arizona bill in question was to basically make it legal to segregate the state's population based upon their sexual orientation. It would give business owners the right to deny service to people purely because of what they might like to do with their genitalia. This bill would have opened the door for returning modern-day America to a state of 1920's-style segregation, and honestly, even living in one of the most conservative states in the entire bloody nation, I am horrified that this even made it as far as it did. 

Your religious beliefs do not get to dictate whether or not you provide the same business-services to gay people as you provide to fellow straight people just because you're morally against one of their sins.
Under that logic, you should also then by denying those services to anyone who has had sex outside wedlock or committed adultery or gotten divorced. See my helpful bulleted list above.

Seriously, the writer of this article is appallingly misled and the fact that she's so adamant about there being a "gay gestapo" completely revokes any sort of credibility to her argument.

A "gay gestapo"? Really? Are you fucking kidding? This is just as bad as that mormon woman who decided that Frozen was an embodiment of the "gay agenda" and working diligently to indoctrinate the country's youth to liberal thought processes. I just got done watching Frozen in the theater here, and I watched it with her argument in mind, and I seriously have to tell you that she has the single weakest analogy I have ever come up against--and I'm an English major. 

Frozen has nothing to do with being gay or coming out; it's about realizing that you are who you are and neither you nor the people who care about you can honestly be happy until you're happy with/being yourself. Every single one of us has felt oppressed at some point in our lives by something, and this movie is about escaping that oppression, regardless of how its inflicted. Elsa learns that hiding who she is from the world only makes things worse; Anna escaped the seclusion of the castle and learned that sometimes people suck, but there are others who will make things okay again; Olaf escaped a ceaseless winter. The list can go on. Can you make the parallel to being gay and accepting it and coming out of the closet, world be damned? Sure. But is that what this is about? No.

What people seem to have a hard time understanding is that there is no "gay agenda." There is no "gay gestapo." People feel "bullied", as Tammy Bruce says, because others are putting their methods of oppressing others into their faces and they don't like it. No one likes to have their mistakes or wrongdoings put in front of them because we don't like to look at what we've done wrong. Sounds a lot like what a lot of church organizations, doesn't it? Think about it.

Certainly, there are people who go much too far with things. But there are people who go too far with everything. 2nd-wave French feminism, for example--See this helpful breakdown here--took feminism too far. Joseph Stalin mutilated Marxism and took it way too far. 

"As Americans, we did not go through the growing pains of the civil rights movements only to capitulate to 21st century bullies who have the gall to use the importance of minority rights as a weapon to extinguish those with whom they disagree," she says at the end of her op-ed.

USE THE IMPORTANCE OF MINORITY RIGHTS AS A WEAPON

TO EXTINGUISH THOSE WITH WHOM THEY DISAGREE.

DO YOU READ THIS, PEOPLE? DO YOU SEE WHAT SHE'S SAYING?! Your religious freedom and/or values should not be more important than my mother-in-law's right to receive whatever service it is you're offering to the public just simply because you don't like the fact that she's gay. The minute your religious preferences deny our neighbors access to things because they make you uncomfortable, we have a problem. That's oppression.

Blacks were made to sit in the back of the bus because they made whites uncomfortable. Were made to drink from separate water fountains, eat at different counters, use different laundromats, BECAUSE THEY MADE UNCOMFORTABLE PEOPLE WHO FELT THEMSELVES SUPERIOR.

I understand that she's saying what she is because Christians have been having our religious freedoms/values/beliefs/etc stomped on for years because, after all, we're Christian. But what I'm saying is that your religious freedom ends at the point where you stand in front of me and tell me that you'll provide your business services to me and my sins but not to my mother-in-law for hers. The one verse we all so love to quote from the Bible is "judge not lest ye be judged", and this entire situation is one of people trying to be judges.

Remember the other side of that judging coin, guys.

Let Bygones...

Dear American Populace,

As a 21-year-old female living in the Midwest, slightly overweight but making up for it in creativity, intelligence and humor, I am entirely sick of reading posts online that "Real men love women with curves" or "real women have curves" or "real men eat meat"--you get the drift. Society's concept of "Real people" is so far off the mark that it's frankly disturbing.
Women and men come in all shapes and sizes. Genetics plus lifestyle equal an incredibly vast collection of body types, and there is beauty in the body of every person. Whether or not we see it individually is entirely arbitrary. We are conditioned to look toward persons in the media like Taylor Swift or Hayley Williams, Paris Hilton or Emma Watson--Tom Hiddleston or Justin Timberlake, Josh Hutcherson or David Tennant--and define our concept of beauty in the exact terms of what these men and women look like. In the end, regardless of whom a person happens to find attachment, the ideals are the same: thin, thick voluminous hair, muscular, tall, elegant, poised, etc. The problem is that, in this era, at least 50-60% of the American population doesn't even come close to looking this way. Most of us consume a bit too much candy, junk food, soda, etc. and we end up with a bit of extra padding around the softer places of our bodies. Lord knows I have some.
But you know what? You don't have to be built to be attractive. You don't have to be tall, or thin, or blond, or brunette, or elegant. (Elegance helps, but that can be learned to a certain degree.) You just have to be you. My boyfriend has an oval face with "chinstrap" facial hair (I believe that's the correct term for it, anyway) and is approximately 5 inches taller than me. He used to be quite built/rugged, but in the past couple of years he's put on a bit of extra weight and although he's ashamed of it because he remembers how he used to look, I love it because it's part of what makes him who he is. At 5'7" and 183 lbs (when I checked the scale last; and let's not talk about Thanksgiving, okay?), I've obviously got a bit of extra cushion around the middle; my thighs are a bit rounder than they need to be. I have a heart shaped face, and hooded eyelids. My hair is very fine and unruly, and a couple years ago I chopped it all off. I've fought with my self-image my entire life because growing up, I was always the fat kid while my brothers were both super skinny. When I look in the mirror, I don't see my features so much as I see an entire lifetime of struggles with depression, anxiety and anger issues; I see years of social torment and oppression; I see every mistake I've ever made.

But when people look at me? That isn't what they see. They see my outside, unmarred by my tumultuous psyche. They see my face, not my past. This is what people see when they look at you. Your face, not your breakfast. Your body, not your exhaustive workout regiment. You. And yeah, once you start getting to know people, your brain starts re-interpreting those features, but only insofar as you see them. Nice people grow more attractive; you begin to find physical faults in assholes. It's human nature.

But what I want you to take out of this is that you are beautiful for existing, for being you, for being alive. You are beautiful for the decisions you make and the lives you change. You don't have to diet to be beautiful. You don't have to work out to be beautiful. You don't have to be tall or short or eat bacon or not eat bacon or like women with curves or headboop cats (although I'll admit the latter probably helps, haha). You just are what you are, and that should be enough.

Never stop striving to be better than the person you were yesterday. Everybody else can fall away, but at the end of the day you're the one you have to sleep with at night. And that's a really strong incentive to find the motivation to do whatever it is that you need to do to be happy. Go to college, read a book, see a therapist, hug a friend, call your mom, pet your dog, go for a run, eat some fucking chocolate! That's all it takes.

Because there isn't a single individual on this planet who doesn't deserve to be loved and treated like they're extraordinary. You are extraordinary, even if you don't know how to see it yet. I believe in you. Now you go out into this world and you believe in you. Because once you do, you'll make others.

Rant Alert

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Car Trouble

Okay. Check this shit out:
Car died in the middle of a U-turn over a week ago. I mean it wouldn't even turn over or anything. So I had it towed to Rydell. I had it scheduled for an oil change and a couple of things on Monday morning anyway. I called on Friday and nobody answered. They finally called me on Monday and were like, "So we got your car towed here?" blah blah blah. So I called back and talked to him. "Yes, do the oil change. Yes, do an analysis to figure out what the hell is wrong."
>>Tuesday: "So you need a new alternator." "Okay, put it in." "Cool; we'll call you tomorrow."
>>Wednesday: Nothing.
>>Thursday: Nothing.
>>Friday: I called them to find out what the hell they're doing with my car. And the chick at the service desk is all like, "So we're waiting on a new radiator, right?"
And I kinda freak out. "Uhm, nobody said anything about a radiator. What the hell?" (Okay, so I didn't actually say "what the hell" but that was the sentiment. You know what I mean.)
"Uhm. Let me put you on with one of the guys in the service department."
"Okay, thanks."
Answering machine. Go freakin' figure. So I left a message on the machine to please call me back--and I remembered to leave a number and everything.
Nothing.
>>Saturday: Nothing.
>>Sunday: Nothing.
>>Monday: Presidents Day; shop is closed. i.e. Nothing.
>>Tuesday: Get a call during my Comm course. So I didn't answer. The guy leaves a message on my phone and--for real--he goes, "So uh... we put in your new alternator last week, and uhh... our technician broke your radiator, so we had to order you a new one. And uh, we put that in this weekend, and we took it for a test drive, but the check engine light was still flashing, so we brought it back in and looked at it again. So if you want to call us at (number)--" and then the message cuts out because APPARENTLY my phone only lets you leave a 1 minute message or some shit. Go figure.
So I called back. Aaaaand everyone's freakin busy. GO FIGURE.
So FINALLY they call me back and he says, "Yeah, so we had another car come in this morning similar to yours and we put the parts for it into your car, and now your check engine light isn't coming back on. But your oxygen censor still needs replacing, so do you want us to do that or do you just want to take it and see what happens?"
"Well how much is it going to cost to replace it?"
"About $200-250."
"What am I sitting at right now?"
"With the alternator and the oil change, about $1100 or so."
Sigh. "Can you put that in today? When can I get my car back?"
"I think we can get that done tonight. You could pick up your car tomorrow."
"Then yeah, just put in the new censor. I'll pick up my car tomorrow."
"Alright. We'll do that and I'll call you later this afternoon, okay?"
"Okay, thanks."

It's officially 7:20 p.m. and I haven't heard back from them. Like, seriously? What the fuck, you guys? This is stupid. I mean, that conversation was at 1:30 p.m.
I've had band class and test driven a new vehicle and worked on my English paper so far in this time period.

These people suck.

Suffice it to say, I'm a touch on the crabby side. Imagine, eh?

Sigh. Whatever. Whatever. It is what it is. I'll survive. And I'll get my car back. And all will be well.

Ugh.