ASK Musings

No matter where you go, there you are.

Monthly Archive: March 2015

Wednesday

11

March 2015

0

COMMENTS

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

Written by , Posted in Reviews

Four Stars

marie-kondo-decluttering3

I heard about the “KonMari Method” from a quick blurb in New York Magazine a few weeks back. Seeing as how I love to be tidy and clean, as well as the fact that I’m feeling a bit weighed down from all of our stuff, I ordered the book and started reading it on Sunday. I nearly finished it in one go, I enjoyed it so much.

First off, I must admit that this problem of having too much stuff is admittedly not a luxury everyone has. Duh. Just as pervious reviews of books about what to eat have been greeted with the occasional ‘nice to have that problem’ comment, I can imagine that this might cause more than a few eyes to roll. And that’s cool – you do you. But considering the fact that I, for example, love to write in my books, I often can’t go the library route, leading me to acquire and hold on to many more books than I actually really want to keep. I think most folks who have access to some disposable income can end up spending it on things they either don’t need now, or hold onto items they no longer need.

Ms. Kondo’s premise is that homes get messy because we have more items than we need, and instead of constantly buying clever containers, shelving units and even full off-site storage lockers, we need to cull what we have back to the items that bring us joy. Yeah, that’s right. Joy. Some reviewers get caught up on this – how could toilet paper, for example, bring us joy? Well, considering the despair I’ve felt over discovering I was out of toilet paper only after I’d put myself in a position to need it, I don’t actually think that’s a stretch. Same with, say, a kitchen tool. My bread knife doesn’t make my eyes sparkle, but man do I love the fact that I don’t smush delicate breads when I use it.

The KonMari method is, on the surface, simple. Touch literally every single thing that you own (in order – starting with clothes), and decide whether to keep it or discard it. Once you are sure you are going to keep the item, you find the right place for it, and that’s where it lives. You don’t go room by room as some places suggest; you do all of one type of item in one go. Anything in that category that you forgot to put in your pile for consideration gets automatically tossed.

She also asks us to be respectful of our things, to thank them for doing what they have done for us. This might be too touchy-feely for folks, but it worked for me. And it helps ease the pain of the slow realization that you aren’t ever going to read Ulysses, and that’s okay. You bought the book, and it taught you that reading Ulysses isn’t enough of a priority for it to make sense for you to hold onto the book. Thank it and discard it.

Yes, discard. That could mean donate, recycle, or even throw out. Does that seem wasteful? I think it might to some. If you bought a dress (or received it as a gift) four years ago and never wore it, her theory is it is more wasteful taking up physical space in your closet and emotional space in your mid than it is to donate it to Goodwill. And this does go for EVERYTHING – she even direct readers to take every photo out of every photo album and photo box, go through them, and only keep the ones that really speak to you. Brutal, right? But man, that sounds kind of amazing.

If anything I’m writing appeals to you, then I strongly recommend this book. I plan to tackle the clothing portion starting tomorrow night, and I can already tell that there are some items that I’m going to discard that a week ago I couldn’t have imagined. But the chance that I might need it for a Halloween costume in a decade isn’t a good enough reason to keep it around.

Her point is also that once you clean up the clutter from your house, you will have more clarity in other parts of your life. Am I expecting that once we reduce our stuff I’ll suddenly find my dream job? No. But I can see that there may be more subtle benefits. On the second-to-last page of the book, Ms. Kondo writes “The moment you picked up this book with the intention of tidying, you took the first step. If you have read this far, you know what you need to do next.” It might seem cheesy, but I do.

Sunday

8

March 2015

0

COMMENTS

What I’m Reading – March 8, 2015

Written by , Posted in What I'm Reading

Injustice

– “The deal has another effect: it all but confirms a two-tier justice system in which senior officials are slapped on the wrist for serious violations while lesser officials are harshly prosecuted for relatively minor infractions.” Patraeus Plea Deal Reveals Two Tier Justice System Leaks (via The Intercept)

Sexism in Tech

– “There are all kinds of studies and surveys and reports that utterly contradict what Mayer is saying, that gender is, in fact, “an issue” in the tech industry—especially viewed through an intersectional lens that reveals the lack of equitable opportunities for women of color and women with disabilities.” Today in LOLOLOLOL WHUT (via Shakesville)

– “Adria trusted Ronson to tell her story, to do it justice, only to have Ronson draw a false equivalence between her, a woman challenging inappropriate sexual jokes at a tech conference (at which everyone had signed a photo disclosure form), and the man who was making those inappropriate sexual jokes. And to draw a false equivalency between her, a woman challenging sexism in a professional space for technology workers, and Justine Sacco, a woman casually making racist jokes under her real name while employed as a senior director of corporate communications for tech company IAC.” The Falsest of False Equivalencies (via Shakesville)

War on Drugs

– “Rhonda was sitting quietly in a windowless courtroom between two lawyers last week, her jaw set and her fate unclear. Her lawyer, and the lawyers representing her son and daughter-in-law, were doing their best to make their case in spite of being legally prohibited from making their case. Instead, the lawyers painted the family as honest and hardworking, calling them “salt of the earth people.” Obviously, they couldn’t say what they wanted to say, what Rhonda wishes she could shout at the jury: The plants were for medical use. Washington State has a medical marijuana law.” A Stunning Overreach from the DEA Is Playing Out in Eastern Washington (h/t @FakeDanSavage)

Misogyny

– “Young people need a clear understanding of what sexual assault is through a curriculum devised by experts, a comprehensive explanation of enthusiastic consent, and a roadmap for how to deal with a culture that victim-blames and is generally decades behind where it should be.” College is too late to start teaching students about sexual assault (via @JessicaValenti)

– “It is actively unhelpful for Kristof to be using a discussion of unconscious bias in order to suggest that conscious, active, harm-objective racism and misogyny isn’t all that common. It’s an argument that gaslights every woman and every person of color who reports lived experiences that suggest otherwise.” Nicholas Kristof Is Being “Helpful” Again (via Shakesville)

– “It also paints a fairly inaccurate – and transactional – picture of female desire. Despite terrible gift books to the contrary, most women don’t get off on men vacuuming or picking up socks (not that there’s anything wrong with those that do). What turns women on is what turns men on: good sex.” Women don’t need ‘choreplay’. They need men to do some chores (via @JessicaValenti)

Worker Rights

– “The cutbacks have been so drastic in some places that they virtually guarantee injured workers will plummet into poverty. Workers often battle insurance companies for years to get the surgeries, prescriptions and basic help their doctors recommend.” The Demolition of Workers’ Comp (via @ProPublica)

Racism

– “For example, few Seattleites seem to be aware of the large role our city has played in re-segregating America’s schools. In 2007, courtesy of a suit brought by a group of predominantly white Seattle parents (Parents Involved In Community Schools v. Seattle School District), the Supreme Court dealt a huge blow to education equity when it declared U.S. schools could not seek to achieve/maintain integration by taking account of student race.” Time to shed the ‘progressive mystique’ and confront racism in Seattle (h/t @StrangerSlog)

Wednesday

4

March 2015

0

COMMENTS

Paris by Janelle McCulloch

Written by , Posted in Reviews

Three Stars

Paris

This is a book I’ve seen in a few different higher-end design stores. It seems like the kind of thing that Anthropologie would stock (shoot, maybe they do); I happened to get it at one of those houseware shops that stocks things according to color. We are lucky enough to be heading to Paris at the end of the month, so I felt justified in buying this book.

Written by a journalist and photographer, this book feels more coffee table book than guide book. The photographs are just gorgeous; honestly, I think it’d be worth buying if you just want something gorgeous to set on your coffee table to pick up now and then. The colors are so vibrant. The accompanying text is fine, but it’s not necessarily exactly what I am looking for in what essentially is a very pretty guidebook.

Ms. McCulloch spends half of the book providing overviews and ‘a walk through’ most of the arrondissements. Each overview is about two pages, followed by two pages highlighting shops, cafes, museums and streets the author thinks the reader should explore. All of the places are then listed in the second half of the book, with addresses and fuller descriptions of them. Which leads me to treat this as a reference book. However, it’s so large that there’s just no way I want to bring it with me on our trip. I could go through and write down each place to visit, but it seems to defeat the purpose, as the shops will be lacking in the context the author worked so hard to provide.

Wednesday

4

March 2015

0

COMMENTS

Unspeakable Things by Laurie Penny

Written by , Posted in Feminism, Politics, Reviews

Four Stars

I ended up following Laurie Penny (@pennyred) on Twitter at some point. She’s a UK-born-and-bred white journalist who writes about feminism, class, geek culture, and all that lies in between. She covered the Occupy movement, and many other uprisings stemming from young people recognizing that they are currently getting the shit end of the stick. If any of you are familiar with Anita Sarkeesian and Feminist Frequency, you might have come across the above video, as it was the second part of a conference talk in which Ms. Sarkeesian participated.

I enjoyed this book. I thought she shared interesting ideas in a way that I hadn’t been exposed to. This book is as far away from the Sheryl Sandburg-style b.s. lean in feminism as I think you can get if you are a white woman (which I think necessarily limits one’s ability to fully understand and discuss the intersection between gender and race that black women and other women of color experience). While nearly 250 pages long, the book only has five chapters, and I think that’s a good thing. It allows Ms. Penny to focus on creating mostly well-crafted and interesting essays on topics that, if you’ve read about, you’ve probably not read about in quite this way.

I enjoyed in particular her take in “Lost Boys,” which looks at the ways in which men are angry because they aren’t getting what they think has been promised them. She discusses the real ways that the patriarchy (oh, yeah, I said it) doesn’t just fuck over women, but it fucks over the majority of men as well. “People are realizing how they have been cheated of social, financial and personal power … but young men still learn that their identity and virility depends on being powerful. What I hear most from the men and boys who contact me is that they feel less powerful than they had hoped to be, and they don’t know who to blame.”

But lest you worry that this is a book about feminism that just focuses on men, the other chapters are full of somewhat new and definitely interesting ways of looking at gender and sexuality from the perspective of those who are freshly out of high school or college, or making their way into their late 20s. I just barely avoided joining the Millennial generation (I’m about a year too early, and thus a Gen X-er), but they have grown up in a world that is drastically different from the one I grew up in, and it shows in many ways, including how gender and class intersect.

She talks elegantly about rape culture, including sharing her own experience confronting her rapist years after the fact. She talks about the ways in which society puts the onus and blame on women to protect themselves, as opposed to on the men to, you know, not rape. And she rightfully points out that rape culture isn’t just about men raping women, but that it’s about the culture around how women are treated, from the work they might engage in (including sex work) to the clothes they wear to the choices they make around employment (if they even have choices).

I think this is a good book to add to the list of those who value feminism and who have some understanding of its background and history. It’s not as accessible a book to use to introduce a skeptic to feminism as, say, Full Frontal Feminism by Jessica Valenti, but not every book needs to – or should – be that.

Sunday

1

March 2015

0

COMMENTS

I Must Say by Martin Short

Written by , Posted in Reviews

 

Four Starsmaxresdefault

I love the movies Pure Luck and Innerspace. They are ridiculous, and probably do not hold up, but I love them. I also hold a special place in my heart for The Three Amigos. The one thing they have in common? Martin Short.

This is a very sweet book, which makes sense, because Mr. Short is, by all reports, a very sweet guy. He seems kind, generous, and funny in a dorky way that works for some people but not everyone. And if written by anyone else, I think this book would rub me the wrong way. It’s basically a few chapters about his early life, followed by a whole lot of name dropping. But the thing is, he’s not actually dropping names. These are just his friends, and they of course feature prominently in his memoir.

Mr. Short faced some rough stuff in his life. He lost his older brother when he was in his early teens; by the time he was 20 he was an orphan. His wife died in 2010, after 30 years of marriage. He’s experienced a lot of loss, but he’s also experienced a lot of joy. He’s had an extraordinarily successful career without necessarily being everywhere all the time. I don’t know if most people think of him as a big name of comedy, but I think comedians think of him as a big name in comedy, and they would know. I also have some issues with some of his choices – especially using a fat suit as Jiminy Glick – but I do genuinely believe it does not ever come from a place of hate.

One thing I really took away from this book is the Nine Categories. It sounds like a cult, but it’s kind of amazing, and I think I’m actually going to try it. Basically, as he faced some challenging times in his career, he wanted to keep things in perspective, and make sure he was devoting time to the things in his life that matter. So, to quote him:

“I decided to systematically compare my performance in that one specific category of my life – work – with my performance in the other important life categories, and to give them all equal importance.” (emphasis mine).

Man, that is a refreshing outlook. It doesn’t put work at the center of everything. In case you’re interested, the categories are:
– Self
– Immediate Family
– Original Family
– Friends
– Money
– Career
– Creativity
– Discipline
– Lifestyle (this is meant to include both having fun and making a difference in the world)

I love it.

I read the book, but I believe he read the audio version, and I’m betting that would be fantastic.

Sunday

1

March 2015

0

COMMENTS

What I’m Reading – March 1, 2015

Written by , Posted in What I'm Reading

That Dress

– “Conformity is now hand-picked. You can find the people who support your version of reality, and use them to battle the people who don’t. You don’t have to wonder whether you are right or wrong; you just have to find the people or the evidence that agrees with you.” Why The Dress Matters (h/t @ChiefElk)

Classism

-“Why do people think they’re entitled to decide how food stamps, in particular, are used? Not all government benefits elicit such feelings. When we give people assistance through the home-mortgage interest deduction, we don’t feel entitled to tell them what house to buy or what neighborhood to live in; when we subsidize a college education through student loans, we don’t tell students what school to go to or what to major in.” Why Do Americans Feel Entitled to Tell Poor People What to Eat? (h/t @deray)

Sex Work and Feminism

– “Both the abolitionist movement and the anti-choice movement cast women as victims, often unwitting victims who think they’ve independently chosen to do sex work or have an abortion, but are actually seriously deluded or naïve—they don’t realize they’re under the coercive sway of patriarchy, capitalism, men, or the “culture of death.” Or maybe they’re just too poverty-stricken or drug-addicted to do anything but be a passive victim because they have “no choice.”” Cozy Bedfellows: Prostitution Abolitionists and Anti-Abortionists (h/t @pastachips)

White Feminism

– “And before you say “But, Blue, she said women not just white women,” let me be blunt: If you say black people need to stand up for you – that means you are asking every person in the room who is both black and a woman to choose her gender over her race in order to suit your agenda. It’s a very subtle form of feminist segregation that I’ve heard about for a few years now. And it’s complete b.s.” Dear Patricia Arquette: Blacks and gays owe white women nothing (h/t @allisonkilkenny)

– “I’m not here for kumbaya feminism. Kumbaya feminism demands that Black women take a backseat to whatever interest of the day white women deem most important. Kumbaya feminism castigates as “divisive” any Black woman who dares speak out against the White Feminist Industrial Complex. Kumbaya feminism is little more than trickle-down feminism.” The Road to Structural Erasure Is Paved With Well-Intentioned White Ladies (via @AngryBlackLady)

Worker Rights

– “Right-to-work legislation, which is aimed at gutting union membership by ending requirements that workers have to pay dues in workplaces that are organized, likely wouldn’t affect the NFLPA directly. But the statement noted that many stadium workers at Lambeau Field, the home of the Green Bay Packers that was renovated in 2003 with an all-union workforce, will feel the effect of the law.” Why The NFL Players Association Is Taking On Scott Walker (via @ThinkProgress)

Irony

– “Google is, of course, ignoring all of his 23 requests via the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to remove stories linking him to reports on how horrible a person he is and how sleazy his website was—before the FTC shut him down.” Revenge Porn Dude Wants His Personal Info Removed From Internet Lolol (h/t @AngryBlackLady)

Student Loans

– ““Corinthian took advantage of our dreams and targeted us to make a profit,” the so-called Corinthian 15 wrote in a letter to the Education Department. “You let it happen, and now you cash in. We paid dearly for degrees that have led to unemployment or to jobs that don’t pay a living wage. We can’t and won’t pay any longer.”” A dangerous revolt: People are refusing to pay back student loans (h/t @rustyheadedgirl)