I'm currently studying broad-spectrum visual arts at a local community college, because I can't afford real art school just yet, and one of the classes I have to take is Macintosh Basics, in keeping with the filthy lie that Macs are somehow just better for art and design.
Uh, what?
I've got some time on my hands before I have to go to work, so let's dissect this statement to find out just how furiously idiotic it is.
First off, what makes a computer 'good' for visual work? Processor speed and RAM, so it can keep up with the demands of whatever Adobe product you're using (I may not be a Mac snob, but I'm a proud Photoshop snob), and display quality, so you can see what you're doing. These things are not unique to Macs, nor does the Apple company produce any sort of superior hardware for these purposes. If you crack open your Mac, you're going to find pretty much the same bits and pieces that are in your Dell, only packed in there more tightly and with less ventilation. The only difference is that Dell hasn't charged you nearly as much for the Apple logo on the case, and your user interface isn't jam packed with flashy animations.
Which leads me to my second point, that Apple computers are an enormous scam. I went on their website to check the price of their lowest-end desktop. It's $1,200, for a 3 GB i3 processor, 4 GB of RAM, a 500 GB hard drive, a 256 MB graphics card, and a 21.5" display. I then went to the Dell website and priced a computer with equivalent specs; it came out to be just shy of $800, and that's with a monitor included and a bigger hard drive (the smallest option was 750 GB.) Congratulations, you just paid $400 for a brand name. Now, if you actually prefer your OS-whatever and your Apple logo, that's fine, as long as you recognize that you're spending extra money on gimmicks.
Finally, to put all of this in perspective, let's take a look at Gabriela, my desktop computer, with whom I make all of my digital art. I built her in 2007, and she cost about $800, with no operating system, monitor, mouse, or keyboard. She has a 3 GB dual core processor, a 500 GB hard drive, up to 8 GB of RAM (I only have 2 GB installed, because that's all I really need), and a 256 MB graphics card. Basically, her specs are just a bit shy of that Mac, despite the fact that she's three years old. Even if I include her OS and monitor, that's still about $1,000. For the same computer, three years ago. Who runs the latest version of Photoshop perfectly, in addition to being able to handle most PC games with the graphics set all the way up.
Don't kid yourself; your Mac is not any better for art, or anything, really, than my 3-year-old homebrew PC is. You just paid more so you can feel smugly superior in your Apple lifestyle. Ultimately, if you can live with yourself for that, it's none of my business, but don't force your beliefs on the rest of us.
10/11/10
It's only bad to begin with if you let it be.
So there's this thing on YouTube right now called "It Gets Better", where gay adults share their stories about being gay adults in the hope that gay teenagers will stop killing themselves in massive numbers. I considered making my own video for this cause, which would itself cover the same material to be discussed in this essay, but I decided not to expend the effort as I'm not quite an adult yet and don't really count, and also because what I have to say on the subject probably isn't what a lot of people want to hear. So here's the essay equivalent.
The issue of gay people ranting about how gays are perceived in society is a massive source of frustration for me. I myself faced abuse regarding my sexual orientation long before I actually came to terms with it, from the standard middle school idiots who thought that calling a girl who dressed plainly and who wasn't ready for boys yet a lesbian was some kind of insult. Quite frankly, it was just the latest thing in a string of "YOU ARE NOT LIKE US, THEREFORE WE MUST SAY MEAN THINGS TO YOU", which only really came about because homosexuality was just appearing on the collective radar of my age group at the time. Being made fun of for supposedly having sex with the best friend who was very dear to me was no different from being made fun of for not going to church, not saying the pledge of allegiance, not having a boyfriend, not listening to popular music or wearing popular clothes, or any of the other things I was regularly berated about by my peers. It was just another stupid thing that people said, and I spent many happy hours with my mom and dad eagerly brainstorming witty retorts I could use (my favorite in response to the lesbian question ended up being "Why, you got a sister?")
And actually I'm bisexual, so nyah.
Anyway, given that peer abuse was kind of a standard thing with me from third grade on, I was one of those kids the guidance counselors would always 'check in' on from time to time, and I never really got why. Kids said nasty things to me on the playground. So what? When I happened to mention that I was being called a lesbian with some regularity (in conjunction with having rocks thrown at me, which I found the more serious offense), the school staff got all gaspy and told me that I should have reported it immediately as 'sexual harrassment'. Yeah. Still people saying stupid things to me on the playground trying to be mean but ultimately coming off as idiots. It's annoying, but again, why do I care?
Why do ANY of you care? All of you teenagers who face harrassment because you're gay, WHY DO YOU LET THIS SHIT BOTHER YOU? Who cares who you want to go to bed with? Why do you need society's approval to be who you are? "It gets better", my ass -- 'it' can be as awesome as you want it to be the minute you stop giving a shit about what anyone else thinks of you. If you're happy with who you are and who you love, great. You don't need anyone else to be happy about it for you. Go about your life, live it to the fullest, and if anyone tries to bring you down, stand your ground and laugh at them. But no more of this bullshit that harassment over sexual orientation is just something that needs to be toughed out. It only hurts if you let it hurt you -- don't let these assholes run your lives.
The issue of gay people ranting about how gays are perceived in society is a massive source of frustration for me. I myself faced abuse regarding my sexual orientation long before I actually came to terms with it, from the standard middle school idiots who thought that calling a girl who dressed plainly and who wasn't ready for boys yet a lesbian was some kind of insult. Quite frankly, it was just the latest thing in a string of "YOU ARE NOT LIKE US, THEREFORE WE MUST SAY MEAN THINGS TO YOU", which only really came about because homosexuality was just appearing on the collective radar of my age group at the time. Being made fun of for supposedly having sex with the best friend who was very dear to me was no different from being made fun of for not going to church, not saying the pledge of allegiance, not having a boyfriend, not listening to popular music or wearing popular clothes, or any of the other things I was regularly berated about by my peers. It was just another stupid thing that people said, and I spent many happy hours with my mom and dad eagerly brainstorming witty retorts I could use (my favorite in response to the lesbian question ended up being "Why, you got a sister?")
And actually I'm bisexual, so nyah.
Anyway, given that peer abuse was kind of a standard thing with me from third grade on, I was one of those kids the guidance counselors would always 'check in' on from time to time, and I never really got why. Kids said nasty things to me on the playground. So what? When I happened to mention that I was being called a lesbian with some regularity (in conjunction with having rocks thrown at me, which I found the more serious offense), the school staff got all gaspy and told me that I should have reported it immediately as 'sexual harrassment'. Yeah. Still people saying stupid things to me on the playground trying to be mean but ultimately coming off as idiots. It's annoying, but again, why do I care?
Why do ANY of you care? All of you teenagers who face harrassment because you're gay, WHY DO YOU LET THIS SHIT BOTHER YOU? Who cares who you want to go to bed with? Why do you need society's approval to be who you are? "It gets better", my ass -- 'it' can be as awesome as you want it to be the minute you stop giving a shit about what anyone else thinks of you. If you're happy with who you are and who you love, great. You don't need anyone else to be happy about it for you. Go about your life, live it to the fullest, and if anyone tries to bring you down, stand your ground and laugh at them. But no more of this bullshit that harassment over sexual orientation is just something that needs to be toughed out. It only hurts if you let it hurt you -- don't let these assholes run your lives.
9/15/10
America is owning one's own vehicle.
Slightly more than a month ago, although it seems longer to me now, I came to possess that symbol of rebellious teenage freedom, my own car. I don't know if it the freedom it symbolizes for me personally is of the rebellious teenager variety any longer, as I'm nearly 20 years old, but it was still a big deal. I'd put off learning to drive simply because I had absolutely nowhere I needed to be able to take myself, and also because both of my parents' cars were manual transmission, which is even trickier to learn when you're still getting used to moving a whole car around in addition to having to shift. Unfortunately, when I started school and found a new job, I really, really needed to be able to drive like, immediately, and after a good eight hours of driving lessons and nearly six months of tooling around the Ohio countryside in my mother's brand new Prius, I finally acquired my license. Around the same time my mom happened to locate a used car for me, and given the convenient timing and the fact that it was inexpensive and in wonderful condition, we decided that it had to be the one. No complaints so far.
Later that day, as I stood in the driveway admiring my new car (it was hard to do much else that weekend, and I still find myself gazing out into the car park through my bedroom window from time to time), my father said to me, in essence, "You know, there's something quintessentially American about having a car and being able to take yourself places without relying on anyone else. It really captures our spirit of independence. Just think, if you wanted to, you could go out for a drive just for the sake of it!"
Of course, my response, being the pragmatic pessimist that I am, was "What, and waste perfectly good gas? That stuff's expensive!"
But today, as I threaded my way into a parking space in front of the shop where I purchase my hair color, closed the sunroof, and turned off my iPod, I thought, wow. A month ago I would have had to ask my mom to drive me out here, or waited until she was going out to run errands anyway. But here I am, with my own car, fueled by gas that I paid for with money from my crappy part-time job, with the wind in my hair and Nomico twittering Bad Apple!! at a potentially lethal volume through the stereo, about to buy a new coating of purple for my hair. How amazingly awesome is that? How uniquely American!
I think that the reason that car lust is such an innately American thing is because, between centuries of group-mentality societal practices and the fact that things are just closer together, independent transportation isn't as big a deal for most of the rest of the world. A car is just another thing that needs to be purchased and maintained, and when you're living in an urban area with trains and buses a-plenty, it's unnecessary. Here, or at least in the Midwest, where I live, not only do we have an ancestral mentality whereby doing things yourself is the preferred course of action, but also plenty of wide open spaces to be traversed that make setting up trains incredibly costly and inefficient. Hence the necessity of the car to be able to go anywhere at all, and hence the amazing romanticization of it.
My car isn't even anything particularly fancy. It's a red 2002 Ford ZX2 with over 100,000 miles on it and an idle that's so rumbly it's like sitting in a massage chair at red lights. Still, it's my own little bubble where everything is the way I want it. I control how far down the windows are or how high the A/C is, and if I want to drive around blasting selections from the Twilight* soundtrack, that's my business. Eating and drinking are permitted, although trash goes in the grocery bag on the floor, thank you very much. My car tells people everything they need to know about me, from the Aperture Science parking pass on the windshield to the Gadsden Flag on the rear window, to the "What Would Gordon Freeman Do?" and "Kayabuki/Aramaki 2012" stickers on the back bumper. While public transportation may be more economical in some respects, no amount of frugality can ever replace the sense of independence that comes from owning a car. God bless America.
*Note: Born Contrarian Amalgamated Enterprises LLC does not endorse the Twilight franchise, except as snark bait - the first movie had a bitchin' soundtrack is all.
Later that day, as I stood in the driveway admiring my new car (it was hard to do much else that weekend, and I still find myself gazing out into the car park through my bedroom window from time to time), my father said to me, in essence, "You know, there's something quintessentially American about having a car and being able to take yourself places without relying on anyone else. It really captures our spirit of independence. Just think, if you wanted to, you could go out for a drive just for the sake of it!"
Of course, my response, being the pragmatic pessimist that I am, was "What, and waste perfectly good gas? That stuff's expensive!"
But today, as I threaded my way into a parking space in front of the shop where I purchase my hair color, closed the sunroof, and turned off my iPod, I thought, wow. A month ago I would have had to ask my mom to drive me out here, or waited until she was going out to run errands anyway. But here I am, with my own car, fueled by gas that I paid for with money from my crappy part-time job, with the wind in my hair and Nomico twittering Bad Apple!! at a potentially lethal volume through the stereo, about to buy a new coating of purple for my hair. How amazingly awesome is that? How uniquely American!
I think that the reason that car lust is such an innately American thing is because, between centuries of group-mentality societal practices and the fact that things are just closer together, independent transportation isn't as big a deal for most of the rest of the world. A car is just another thing that needs to be purchased and maintained, and when you're living in an urban area with trains and buses a-plenty, it's unnecessary. Here, or at least in the Midwest, where I live, not only do we have an ancestral mentality whereby doing things yourself is the preferred course of action, but also plenty of wide open spaces to be traversed that make setting up trains incredibly costly and inefficient. Hence the necessity of the car to be able to go anywhere at all, and hence the amazing romanticization of it.
My car isn't even anything particularly fancy. It's a red 2002 Ford ZX2 with over 100,000 miles on it and an idle that's so rumbly it's like sitting in a massage chair at red lights. Still, it's my own little bubble where everything is the way I want it. I control how far down the windows are or how high the A/C is, and if I want to drive around blasting selections from the Twilight* soundtrack, that's my business. Eating and drinking are permitted, although trash goes in the grocery bag on the floor, thank you very much. My car tells people everything they need to know about me, from the Aperture Science parking pass on the windshield to the Gadsden Flag on the rear window, to the "What Would Gordon Freeman Do?" and "Kayabuki/Aramaki 2012" stickers on the back bumper. While public transportation may be more economical in some respects, no amount of frugality can ever replace the sense of independence that comes from owning a car. God bless America.
*Note: Born Contrarian Amalgamated Enterprises LLC does not endorse the Twilight franchise, except as snark bait - the first movie had a bitchin' soundtrack is all.
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