M Town

List of essential oils and kitchen oils toxic to cats. Most of these are quite common so clean up thouroughly after yourself and make sure windows are open! Also avoid burning/diffusing these oils in excess around your furry friends!!

It disappoints me that so many in the progressive space are lauding Eminem’s freestyle diss of Donald Trump. I want to tread carefully here because while I agree with the anti-racist message expressed in his lyrics (some of it, though, predictably, feels like a dick measuring contest. I.e. Eminem essentially telling Trump: “I can embody hegemonic masculinity better than you can!”), I just can’t get behind Eminem as the face of any sort of resistance. And the embrace of him as an advocate for this movement seems to me not only misguided, but insidious. 

At first thought, I didn’t immediately understand why Eminem would dislike Trump but, on second thought, I think I get it. Eminem is a rapper who, perhaps not undeservedly, has earned plaudits in the hip hop community and in pop culture at large for being a serious student of hip hop and for rapping in his own voice rather than cynically appropriating black music for profit (Iggy Azalea, anyone?). I can respect that. Eminem, working in a music form developed by black Americans and aware of his white privilege, came for Trump due to our Tweeter-in-Chief’s virulent anti-blackness and racism against people of color in general (for example, his disastrous handling of Hurricane Maria). Make no mistake, I support any callout of Trump’s racism. However, the way I see it, Eminem essentially rose to prominence by trafficking in the same cultural milieu that made Trump our president.

Eminem came to prominence in the wake of third wave feminism and the burgeoning gay rights movement (late 90′s). Although many cite his technical ability/lyrical dexterity as the reason for Eminem’s popularity, I would argue that NEITHER of those things are what made him famous. The cultural context is also important. There is always a backlash in the wake of any civil rights gains. Eminem embodied that backlash for many suburban white boys. 

If you speak to a Trump voter about the reasons for their vote, you will get a variety of responses. Some will be couched in economic terms (Trump will create more jobs/get my old job back), some will be wrapped in flagrant bigotry (I want THOSE PEOPLE to go back where they came from), but a buzzword that comes up again and again is “political correctness”. Political correctness is, of course, an ephemeral term used to denote changing social norms more than anything. On the campaign trail and in office Trump has propagated the idea that cishet white men are oppressed by multiculturalism and feminism (important to note: many of these cishet white men ARE oppressed by classism. But Trump has convinced many of these men that their economic plight is due to the nefariousness of immigrants/black people/women/LGBT people.)

Eminem, I would argue, is firmly embedded in this backlash-against-political-correctness narrative. Eminem came up in a time where overt sexism and homophobia were becoming (slightly) less socially acceptable and, therefore, the unapologetic politics displayed in his songs (raping women, killing women, gay-bashing) felt like the release of a pressure valve to young white boys who wanted to engage in hegemony but felt stifled by shifting norms. These young fans wanted, even if only at the implicit level, to put girls/LGBT folks back in their place. Many of these young fans would probably claim they were “just kidding” if questioned about their endorsement of Eminem’s lyrics, but it’s certainly true that listening to his music must’ve felt like a form of catharsis to these fans. Eminem’s music gave young white boys an avenue to express hegemonic masculinity loudly and proudly.

One major difference between Eminem and Trump is that Eminem didn’t/hasn’t scapegoated people of color in his campaign against political correctness. That could be seen, by some, to make him superior, but what, ultimately, would Eminem’s vision of an ideal future look like? Although Eminem has made a few tepid denouncements of his misogyny and homophobia in recent years, it is not particularly surprising that Trump’s own homophobia/misogyny get no callouts in Eminem’s diss. Essentially, Eminem is willing to call out Trump’s racism, but you can’t ever expect him to divorce himself from Trump’s other myriad bigotries. He is too firmly embedded in that narrative. 

Deniers: “Irma is a Category 5, just like Andrew in 1992. Fake news.”

Scientists: “Did you miss the part where we said LARGER.”

As some of you might already have guessed, I’m a fan of Japanese girl idols. One of the many, many idol groups in existence today in Japan is NMB48, a Osaka-based spin-off group of the (in)famous AKB48. NMB has a weekly show that’s surprisingly entertaining as well as educational called NMB to Manabu-kun, in which the members of NMB and a few comedians listen to guest lectures by experts in various fields.

Back on May 15th, the theme of the episode was pataphysics/the science of sci-fi. One of the topics of the lecture held by university professor Yanagita Rikao was the age-old question of “WHY ARE MAGICAL GIRLS NEVER ATTACKED WHILE TRANSFORMING???”

This was his answer, based on the magical girl series Futari wa Pretty Cure.

Question: The transformation scenes in Pretty Cure are very long, so why don’t the bad guys attack the girls in the meantime?

“Even when I was little, I was thinking ‘Hey! Attack them now!’”

“I found this odd as well, so I watched the transformation scene many times. And what I noticed is, when the Pretty Cures yell ‘Dual Aurora Wave!’ and transform, a rainbow-colored column of light shoots up from the ground, going BOOM!”

“And then the Pretty Cures levitate, and go up into the air. Based on this, I believe the protagonists of Pretty Cure are being held up in the air by the power of light.”

“When we think of light, we usually think it heats up things or lights up things. But in reality, light has the power to hold up things as well.”

“When the sun is beating down on us in the summer, the human body is being pressed downwards by the sun beams with a force of 2/100,000g.”

“But this is only about a one-hundred of the weight of a mosquito, so no matter how hot it is, we don’t feel that sunlight is heavy.”

“So that means the light holding them up must be extremely strong. If we assume that the two Pretty Cures each weigh about 45kg and do some calculations…”

“It means the light during the transformation must have the energy of 2,100,000,000kW per 1m2.”

"While the entirety of power that Japan is capable of generating is only 100,000,000kW.”

"So they’re using 21 TIMES the amount of energy the whole of Japan can generate.”

"So what would happen if a bad guy jumped in to try to sabotage their transformation?”

“He would EVAPORATE INSTANTLY.”

“DEATH AWAITS ANYONE WHO DARES TO DISRUPT A PRETTY CURE TRANSFORMATION.”

"So this means the best thing to do would be to transform close to any bad guys.”

“Yes. They are the strongest while they transform, and are practically invincible.”

So I was at the pharmacy and needed to ask one of the pharmacists some questions about my birth control as I had switched to a new medication. I walk over to the consultation window, pills in hand, and some man arrives at the pick-up window, which is right next to it. 

Because at least one mention of menstruation is necessary to discussions about the pill, I unashamedly started to talk to the female pharmacist who was no more uncomfortable than I in getting my questions answered.

However, the man at the window seemed offended by my concerns about my feminine health, saying as an aside to the person behind him that “there is a time and a place for that gutter talk”.

NO FUCKING SHIT, MISTER. THIS IS THE FUCKING PLACE. I thought to myself, mortified not because of the conversation but because this man thought he ought to shame me for this. I exchange a look with the pharmacist, who seems to be having the same thought. Raising her voice slightly above what was considered necessary in a quiet CVS, she pressed for more details on my period, which I happily obliged to supply. And I am POSITIVE the woman assisting him took her damn time just so he would be subjected to imagery about consistency, flow, and duration of my last three periods.

$7.25 x 40 hour full time work week: $290

$290 x 4 weeks per month: $1,160

That weekly check comes to, according to you, 290. Most places DO NOT pay for your half hour lunch that is required by law. So your beginning number was wrong. $7.25 x 7.5 hours a day x 5 days a week only gets you $271.88.  Most people in America get paid bi-weekly, so let’s double it to get the budget. $543.75. That’s GROSS, not NET. Out of that comes anywhere between 10% and 15% taxes depending on state so we’ll low ball it at 10%. Automatically down to $489.38 a pay check. Now health insurance. Usually anywhere from 70-100 a pay check for the cheapest plans. Again, we’ll low ball and go $70. So now we have $419.39 a paycheck. x 2  = $839. 

Eight hundred thirty nine dollars. A MONTH.

But again, you seem to think that’s fair. So let’s proceed. You say rent is $500? Okay. This person now has $339 left to buy groceries for the whole month, pay utilities, car payment, car insurance, and gas money to get to work. 

Those are the bare needs. You have to eat. You have to pay for heat, water, garbage removal, gas and or electricity because apartments do not always include things and rarely all of the above. Most cities in America do not have public transportation. Mine doesn’t despite the fact that our population is over 15,000 people, not counting a taxi. If you have a car, you have to pay that. If you have a car, legally you have to have car insurance. You have to pay that. You have to have gas in that car to get to work to make that money.

Now if you can tell me you can get all of that out of $339 you’re lying.

You are so focused on rent that you aren’t thinking about everything else people have to pay for. Rent was an example. This is a breakdown of the budget you gave me and it’s not possible to live off that in 2017 America. 

And BECAUSE this person makes over $800 a month, they probably won’t qualify for financial aid or food stamps. $800 is the line in my state where they won’t help you. No food stamps, financial aid, or government housing if you make more than $800 a month.