Blog #7: My fear of octopuses is completely and totally rational

Did you know that the male pillow octopus grows to only a few centimeters, while its female counterpart can stretch further than six feet? You go, girl!

But octopuses have more to offer than just an extreme body size. One intelligence trait of the octopus that has been circulating YouTube for a while is their ability to camouflage into almost any background. Their entire bodies are covered with tiny pigmented cells called chromatophores, each of which contain three sacks of colors and are surrounded by muscles that can control how the pigments are displayed by either relaxing or contracting. Think of it like a balloon; when it's loose, the color is small and concentrated, but when you stretch it out the color spreads and expands. A terrifying balloon of death.

Every one of these cells is controlled independently by the nervous system, allowing for an incredible amount of control and complexity for the range of colors. This also means that the octopus can change its appearance in less than a second. As if I wasn't already freaked out enough; not only can an octopus completely envelop me in its arms of death to slowly strangle me as I drown, but it can also sneak up on me, like a lioness waiting patiently for its prey to become complacent.

But enough about my completely rational fear of a slow, horrible death-by-camouflaged-tentacles. Remember the male pillow octopus we talked about earlier, the tiny one? Well, what he lacks in size he makes up for in creativity. These little buggers will rip off the poisonous tentacles of Portuguese man-of-war jellyfish -which they are immune to- and wield them as swords to keep predators at bay. As disturbing as that is -imagine ripping off the arm of one of your enemies and using it to fight off your other enemies- is it wrong that I find this defense mechanism kind of adorable? The things are only a couple centimeters long!

Blog #6: On Hating Twilight

I remember reading Twilight in 8th grade just before its massive popularity hit and loving it. Stephanie Meyer had created a world I was completely able to fall into and roll around in. Then, about a year later, it started getting pretty heavy mainstream attention, and so the haters started to crawl out from under their angry rocks, ready to sink their teeth into something freshly beloved. No vampire pun intended.

Twilight hating became, almost overnight, the sport of choice for "intellectuals", all of whom cited its anti-feminist protagonist, its borderline abusive love interest, and its less-than-stellar writing style. While I can offer plenty of arguments debunking those concerns, that's not what's so interesting about the fad of hating Twilight.

What's interesting to me is that it happened to Twilight, and not to one of the hundreds of adult romance novels whose entire genre is essentially subjugating at least one gender for sexual purposes- and I am including men. Yes, Twilight was more popular than many other romance novels, but its haters have almost created an entire social movement around the dislike of one silly book series.

There are many books in this world, and arguably many far worse than Twilight. In fairness, Kristen Stewart hasn't done much to help the negative view of the series, but even before the wildly popular movies premiered, the hatred was almost louder than the love.

I suppose my biggest question about the fad is this, though. With all the things in the world to spend energy hating, why Twilight?

On Sexist Jokes

A man is driving and runs over a woman. Who is at fault?
...
The man, because what was he doing driving in a kitchen??

Hi, my name is Bri (hi Bri!) and I'm a female who laughs at sexist jokes. I can't help it- they're so absurdly offensive that they actually throttle past the "offensive" line and end up at funny. Obviously I don't find these jokes funny when the "comedian" actually believes the sentiment, but when it's me and a couple friends and someone cracks a kitchen joke, I'm going to laugh. And I'm going to laugh hard.

I don't find sexist jokes funny because I'm an anti-feminist, or because I believe my gender's rightful place is in front of a stove, let's be clear. No, I love sexist jokes because it forces people to, frankly, chill the fuck out.

Let me explain. I believe that if you can't laugh at something, then you don't completely understand it. I believe that cracking jokes about something is just as valuable a coping mechanism as "roaming the halls weeping" (thanks, Spock!). Laughter reminds us that through every horrible event there comes a reason to continue living. Joking about touchy or controversial topics is just a way of dealing with them, because yes, sexism is funny. It is honestly hysterical to me when one person believes they're inherently better because of the set of genitals they lucked into prenatally. And how do I express that opinion? By satirically telling jokes to point out how imbecilic their points-of-view are. I would much rather laugh than yell, would rather smile than sob, and would rather spread entertainment than hate.

I laugh at sexist jokes because if I yelled and protested over every sexist, bigoted, or hateful thing someone makes light of, I would never get to sleep. I laugh at sexist jokes because they're funny, and because laughter is the best medicine for a fractured world. I laugh because, well, why not?