Self-Loathing for Beginners

I can’t stand it when people gender the spectrum, though I am mortified by exactly how much I care. For example, read this article from Science Magazine’s blog along with me and see how excessively furious I get over its every little idiocy.

It’s called “Blue and red” and it’s by a professor, at San Diego State University, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, named Thomas J. Impelluso. He writes:

The color blue is often associated with boys, while red (or pink) is associated with girls.

[Keep your eye on that "often."]

Neuroscientists Anya Hurlbert and Yazhu Ling demonstrated through a series of tests that women tend to prefer the red end of the spectrum. But is this a cultural phenomenon or is it biological? Chinese researchers demonstrated through another series of tests that this preference extends across cultures.

[Well, two cultures. Because let's not get all fixated on the British Redcoats, Stalinist Russians, and Catholic cardinals. They obviously wore red, not to express their preference for it, but to attract warm-spectrum-loving girls. ]
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“There, but for a typographical error, is the story of my life.”

— Dorothy Parker, when her host told her that guests in another room were “ducking for apples.”

When I first heard this quote, it took me a minute to add it up; then I laughed out loud. I still do, every time I run across it. If you’re hungry for more, the Dorothy Parker Society Onlinemaintains a laundry list of lively links to all things Parker.

Parker is a great model for self-loathing women in comedy who want to use their air of self-respect to good advantage. Chelsea Handler (My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands) is funny because she has no class at all, but Parker was a class act who got comic mileage out of tossing her dignity into the crowd…like a wedding bouquet.

In SL4B, I used this quote as the heading for a chapter called, “Food for Self-Loathing.”

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These commandments are so secret, most self-loathers don’t even know when they’re following them.

1.  Thou shalt not compromise thy principles, ever.
2.  Thou shalt be best at everything, else thou hast failed.
3.  Thou shalt be chill; let nothing get to thee.
4.  Thou shalt eschew banality, nor be ordinary.
5.  Please thee thy crazy parents, be they satiable
    or be they not.
6.  Thou shalt feed the hungry—every living one of them.
7.  Feel at all times happy, for moodiness is an abomination.
8.  Remember: to err is regrettable, to forgive thyself, defeat.
9.  Thou shalt trust thine own judgement, yea, even when thou art nuts.
10.  Thou shalt not self-loathe.

From SL4B; “the Building Blocks of Self-Loathing,” page 29

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