I Do Not Think This Movie Means What You Think It Means

Yes, perhaps a rebellious mythical creature who, in a turbulent mixture of adolescence, infatuation and authoritarian repression (repression by her father), sacrifices her most prized ability in order to achieve an extremely painful physical transformation (to get away from her father) at the hands of a notorious sociopath, then wordlessly abandons everything she knows (her father), could be called a "Daddy's Little Sweetheart."

I just don't want to live in a world where that is true.

I mean there are plenty of Disney characters that are more "Daddy's Little Sweetheart" than Ariel: Belle and Cinderella, to name two. I get that it's the summer, so beach, ocean, blah blah blah, but how about a different caption? How about "Little Princess" (she was literally a princess right)? Or "I Wanna Be Where the People Are?" "Hot Crustacean Band?" I would buy the hell out of that shirt.

I guess there is the possibility that this whole thing is a cheeky prank, but given that this is mass-produced Disney-made shirt retailed at Babies 'R' Us, and not, say, the week-long project of an independent artist via Vix Emporium or Etsy, I just have my doubts.

So guys, I suppose what I am saying is, I did not buy the tank.

Generational Snarkfare

I usually try not to engage in agism. Sometimes, though, I am the victim and I feel I need to defend myself.

Earlier today at work, I came across a piece on how to engage "millennials" (people around their 20's right now, which for the next few months includes me) in the job market. It was an interesting piece, but the suggestions seemed to apply to people of all ages. I won't link to it here because I like to maintain some separation of this blog from work.

A few commenters posted thoughts along the lines of "why don't we stop coddling these spoiled brats" and "I'm a baby boomer and life is hard, grow up kids."

I normally leave these alone, but the workday was almost over and I was feeling passionate.

I won't post here what I posted on the article, but suffice it to say that I defended myself.

However, I will post what I emailed to my sister, a more legit millennial, age-wise, after I read the article and all the get off my lawn comments.

Here is an excerpt:

"On second thought, maybe they're right. Look at what they had to live through: unprecedented economic growth in the 50's, enduring the pain of watching on TV as their parents and liberal peers fought for civil rights in the 60's and 70's, undergoing the incredibly hard work of ruining the economy in the 80's and then raising children, only to have them turn out to be lazy, entitled little assholes, in the 90's and 00's. [B]oomers never got a chance to rest, not ever! Well, actually I guess many of them are retired now, pre-2008, thanks to pensions and 401(k)s. But they'll always remember how hard things were, with unhampered career trajectories, salary increases, health insurance and fully-funded retirement plans. And bonus: years from now, as their cold corpses decompose on piles of accrued savings, we, the coddled millennials, will probably get to work in China as coal miners to pay off all those U.S. Treasury notes after other countries call in Boomer-accrued war debt! FREE international travel, and all we'll probably do is bitch about it and cough a lot. What a bunch of spoiled kids we are, right? I feel guilty even existing."

I guess I'm tired of Baby Boomers, who are largely responsible for the shape our economy is in, blaming my generation for everything. Look, a) we're the ones who are going to have to live in this mess and b) y'all raised us.

We have many more years to live, and we need to press on. Ease up, olds.

Bureaucracy and Cupcakes

I love food trucks. So I started following my faves on twitter. The day I started following Buttercream, a popular and delicious cupcake truck, owner Kate Carrara's followers were alerted to a trying situation for the dessert-peddler: the cops and the City's Department of Licensing and Inspection, who had given Carrara a warning about not being able to vend in a particular spot a few weeks prior, drove her truck away from said spot in her presence. She paid $200 to retrieve the truck.

What?

It's the kind of thing that, if anyone besides cops had done it, would basically be robbery and grand theft auto.

Granted, Carrara should have made sure she was in the right place. But the bigger issue, she says, is knowing where she is allowed to vend. The city's labyrinthine maps and codes do not make this at all clear to a lay person/small business owner/anyone. In a functioning city, a permitted vendor should be able to call up the proper department, name a spot, and be told definitively whether one can vend there or not.

Unfortunately, Philadelphia has not historically been the best example of transparent city government in our great nation. Among the comments in the Inquirer story linked above: "She should have just paid off the L&I inspector...like everyone else does" - ouch. But this city, including L&I, seems to suffer continuously from stories of corruption and incompetence.

We could say that Carrara is planting this story as a stunt, a campaign to raise her business' profile and drum up sympathy, and, therefore, publicity. But even if she is, it's working for me. This is a woman, a small business owner, who already has a cadre of followers in a city that is notorious for bad government. Even if she's overselling the story, the mere facts are enough to make me feel that the city is more concerned about padding its coffers than helping citizens sustain their livelihoods and making Philadelphia a nice place to live.

Team Buttercream.

Dog Day Disappointments: A Listicle-Link Dump Combo

With limited commentary, please allow me to present a top-ten list of petty/petit bourgeois annoyances* that always seem to rear their ugly heads and stick their tongues out at me - and maybe also at you, yes, you! - in August, the year's crappiest and most inappropriately named month.

10. Paying your third electric bill of the summer, oh hello air-conditioning overuse

9. Humidity-induced makeup-smeared faces resembling infected characters in Outbreak

8. Realizing that Outbreak came out 15 years ago and you are therefore old for thinking about it

7. Lazy kneejerk political ads, especially ads produced by people with whom you usually agree

6. Doing everyone else's work while they are on sweet vacations (#7 might be related)
5. Sweating without provocation - like, when you are sitting down doing absolutely nothing
4. No built-in three-day weekends like "4th of July weekend" or "Labor Day weekend"
3. The thundering sound of 1,000 18 year olds setting foot onto campus for the first time
2. Reading the sucky news: I mean, you've got your slow news days, and slow news weeks, but August may be the only slow news month**
1. Biting into a bad peach

* They really are petty. The pettiest things you can imagine. I was grumpy this morning and thought it would be funny and possibly therapeutic to draw them out.
** And by slow I don't just mean fluffy stories, I mean stretching stories out until they are unrecognizable. I mean how long have we been talking about this "ground zero mosque that is neither at ground zero nor a mosque" (h/t Mike3550 and maybe Keith Olbermann, too, I think, probably others, for the Coffee Talk joke).

Public Health Emergency? Call Secretary--...Oh.

Do you think now that we have a public health emergency the Republicans will deign to confirm Kathleen Sebelius? Even though swine flu doesn't seem to be epic, it's a pretty big albatross around the neck of the Republicans in 2010 if even one person in America dies. I see an analogy forming: Public Health:Democrats::Security:GOP.

On a related note, here.

Port Authority Salaries

I usually avoid ribbing civil servants about their salaries, because a) they are usually low, and b) if they're high, many (perhaps most?) of our public servants are talented, unsung heroes who could have made bank with their skills but chose to serve the public instead, so bravo if they can make a decent living.
Today, however, I freely mock the reported salaries of employees at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, generally speaking. Here's a public agency that just raised its tolls (so the fat salaries look bad), has failed to rebuild the WTC site projects in a respectable time frame (so the fat salaries look bad), and seemingly towards giving at least one airport tenant a free pass on a recently passed labor harmony/employee retention policy (which just makes me angry) and turns out fully one sixth of Port Authority employees make upwards of $100 K a year.
The one caveat is that I think the outrage over police officers making over $100 K a year is distasteful. Why shouldn't someone who risks his or her life to save your ass make just as much as the bureaucrat who processes his paperwork?

World-Class Sexism

As long as I’ve been watching the Olympic Games, I’ve presumed based on the coverage that when it comes to women’s sports, Americans seem to want to watch only swimming, gymnastics, and beach volleyball. Okay, we are a country that wants to watch only the bathing-suit-clad female athletes; fine. (Yes, women’s track and field also gets some action from time to time, depending on star quality.)

But having spent a good many evenings this week watching this, it has been excruciating to listen to the way men and women are covered.

What are we to learn from Bob Costas and company?

1. The most important thing you need to know about a French swimmer is that she had controversial photos taken of her, and she lost her man to an Italian swimmer. (Both are accomplished athletes, and, oh-by-the-way, the Italian swimmer broke her own world record yesterday.)

2. What’s really amazing about the U.S. women’s volleyball team is that they actually get along. Oh yes, and they have both been married since 2004! And one of them almost lost her wedding ring in the sand!

3. This American gymnast is so upset. Let us close up on her face as it nearly tears up.

So, if I’m a 12 year old athlete watching, what I am learning is, no matter what you accomplish in your sport, even if you get to the absolute top of your game by competing in the freaking Olympics, you will only be recognized for tabloid controversy, nuptials, tiny dramas, or crying. And bonus if you are totally BFF with your volleyball teammate. Otherwise there is no way you’ll be able to set for her.

It’s a shame. I’ve always thought that Costas was so classy, and I am really proud of our female American athletes because truly, most of them do set an incredible example for girls. Dave at Organizing Grievances has a post about the ludicrousness of the hype around China’s anthem-singing boo-boo, and MaryAnne Johanson has a good find about the more overt cases of sexism. But sometimes subtle sexism is the most treacherous kind, because of the way it seeps in.