You may have noticed, I changed up the blog design today! I think it's still a work in progress, so let me know if you have any suggestions, or if anything doesn't work.
But far more interesting than the new banner is the fact that the content of this blog is about to change significantly. I'll be studying abroad starting in a month, and I have the feeling that I'm going to want to spend less time following odd little bits of American politics, and more time letting my friends and family know how I'm doing. So starting in a month or so, this space is going to get a lot more personal. I'm going to try for a photo a day while I'm in Europe, and I'll be writing about what I'm up to. When I get back in May, I assume blog content will return to what it's been since high school, so come back in five months if you're not interested in reading about the minutiae of my semester abroad!
I wanted to write a "congrats!" and "keep fighting!" to women in Saudi Arabia, who were given the right to vote today. As Think Progress points out, they still aren't permitted to drive, and need male permission to travel or receive certain medical operations, among other things. But hopefully this is a step in the right direction!
As a blog note, I now have share buttons! Want to like this on Facebook, tweet it, +1 it on Google, or e-mail it to everyone you know? All those exciting options are now just one click away, so get on it!
You may have heard (because I think I've told everybody in the world by now) that I'm going to University of Limerick, Ireland in the spring! I'll be studying multiculturalism, gender, and Irish politics and society - the interplay between religion and politics is one of my favorite research topics, so I'm really excited to get to study the Good Friday agreement, while also taking the really unique classes Limerick has on theories and practices of multiculturalism (which seems particularly relevant after this summer, for a lot of reasons.) This is also going to be my first time traveling outside of the United States, and I hope to see lots of exciting things in the UK and maybe even elsewhere in Europe!
Buuut...
While I got a scholarship that covers some of the program costs, it'll still be more than I can afford, and I'd like to get out of school with as few loans as possible, so I'm asking anyone who's willing and able to help me make up the difference. If I can get about $2,500 I won't have to take out a loan, but really, any amount I end up with helps! You can donate at SmartyPig. The trip is sure to provide endless inspiration for blogging and I promise frequent updates!
Hello, universe! I know updates to this blog have been slim to none of late, but I have a good excuse - my laptop died, and I probably won't have my own computer again until sometime next semester. Though, the lack of personal computer is less a problem than the loss of the feed reader I had on my e-mail program... I need to set up a new reader on Google. If you have any blog recommendations that I should check out while I'm sorting all that out, post them here! Regular posting will resume once I have a computer! See you then! <3 Spiffy
I sort of like looking at the stats for this blog - for the most part, they're not particularly impressive, but sometimes they're amusing.
For example, in the past week, two people from Sweden have been here. One had a wrong URL and left right away, the other actually stuck around and read something. I've also had a couple readers from Australia, and a few from the UK, most of whom were returning visitors, but who spent much less time on the website than the Australians did. Of my United States readers, more than half came from Virginia, and almost none came from any of the South, Midwest, or Alaska.
Maybe you all think this is incredibly boring. But the fact that I have an international audience whose reading habits I can stalk via internet makes me happy.
One of the top search terms that brings people from Google to here is "feminism in cartoons," so anyone here looking for that should totally head over to Sociological Images, which has a pretty long discussion about the upcoming Disney movie The Princess and the Frog. One thing they comment on was that originally the black Princess character was going to be cast as a maid. When I was talking about this movie to a friend and mentioned that, she immediately went "Ooohhh, no. Cinderella as a maid is ok, but the first black princess, not so much." Which, as far as automatic reactions go, says a lot about the way different roles are perceived depending on the race of a character.
That same conversation included a lot about Miyazaki movies, which I adore, and I am now thinking about race in Miyazaki/Japanese films vs. in American ones. I'll get back to you on that.
Which is awesome, but makes me wonder what I'm going to do with this blog... after all, the whole "Out of the Locker" thing came about because I wanted to offer my political opinions as a high school student. I won't have a locker in college, thank goodness! But hopefully I'll still have opinions people want to hear, so I need to change the name and tagline.
So today I got off a plane and logged on to my disaster of a blog roll - hundreds of posts left unattended while I lounged on the beach. I was tired, I was grumpy, I deleted most of them. Here's the ones that kept my interest!
"It's extremely distressing to consider that in 2009 suicide is a top three killer of young people, and it's truly devastating to learn that LGBTQ youth are up to four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers. I deeply hope my support can raise the organization's visibility so even more despondent youth become aware of The Trevor Helpline's highly trained counselors and Trevor's many other resources. It's vitally important that young people understand they are not alone and, perhaps even more important, that their young lives have real value."
Very cool, Dan, very cool.
After that, my attention span for serious national news kind of wavered (as if Dan Radcliffe was serious national news...) and I wandered over to fashion blogs. Gala Darling has a "Hey, we're halfway through 2009! Let's reevaluate our goals!" post that looks great for the start of the school year, and which I will read properly at sometime that isn't right after a 5 hour flight. Meanwhile, the lovely Uniform Project had a particularly cute outfit, and for a good cause: She's raising money for the Akanksha Foundation, which supports education in India.
Last but not least, my religion blogs were fun and thoughtful as always, and Monkey Mind had some cool thoughts on the way we talk about God in Unitarian Universalism. I didn't watch the videos in the post, but I'm sure they're awesome too.
And now, I need a nap! Goodnight moon, goodnight spoon, goodnight blogosphere. Eight days until college, wish me luck!
I'll be gone until August 10th, going on adventures with my neighbors and visiting my grandparents. And then it'll be almost college! Aah! Wish me luck, see you all in August!
Teacher: Jane Eyre is frequently described in the book as "plain," but she sort of "becomes beautiful" as the story goes on... Girl: She outgrows her tomboy phase! Me: ....Way to compare non-gender-normative behavior to unattractiveness and/or undesirability.
The conversation had moved on to a completely different topic before I realized that I'd been mentally monologuing about gender binary, gender roles in literature, and the connection between attractiveness and gendered behavior. Sigh.
Going to the Fem 2.0 conference instead of school tomorrow, whoo! Jill from Feministe, Amanda from Pandagon and a bunch of other exciting people are going to be there! I can't wait!
Though, if I'm going to be an awesome conference-going blogger, I really ought to write more often...
I don't usually post videos on my blog, but when I do, it's usually because they're freaking awesome. Here's the year 2008 in videos posted to my blog, for your entertainment.
March 24th: Anne Hathaway says that supporting gay rights isn't brave, it's, you know, something decent human beings do. "Love is a human experience, not a political statement."
April 12th: Some funny people had a song about hymenization of virginity, and I wrote a significantly less funny rant on the same. I've been reading about this all year, it just doesn't go away!
May 8th: This guy I've never heard of (James Pence, I guess his name is?) had a fantastic video up about what, precisely, makes a terrorist. Hint: Think less explosives and more foreclosures and wiretapping.
May 15th: The California Supreme Court struck down the state's gay marriage video, and I celebrated with parody songs. Will you commitment ceremony me?
June 11th: School ended, Obama won the nomination, and YouTube gave us a long list of reasons to vote Republican. "I just don't feel I deserve health insurance, and hybrid cars really suck."
August 15th: The Olympics started, campaign season began to heat up, and we argued against McCain's "maverick" thing by pointing at his record. It didn't quite work, but points for effort.
November 7th: Apparently nothing happened during election season, but as it wound down, I reflected fondly on some of the finer moments of the campaign.
December 3rd: Finally, with the year drawing to a close, we unleashed the full fury of liberal Hollywood with Jack Black's wonderful "Prop 8: The Musical."
Starting next week, I'll be blogging over at Choice Words, the blog of Choice USA, a youth-run reproductive/sexual rights group. Pretty awesome. I'll still be posting everything here as well, but if you get the chance check out some of the other wonderful people over at Choice Words!
Lots going on now, between school, lit mag, college apps, and various life-related things, so posts may be somewhere between slow and nonexistent for the next few weeks. Leave ideas for topics you want me to write about when I come back!
It requires skipping an important literary magazine event, but I think it'll be worth it - when else will I get to learn about cool reproductive rights things in high school? So I promise to have lots of awesome blog posts from RLJI that weekend, to make up for the lack of epic blog posts that has come with the first few weeks of school.
I used to write over at LiveJournal, and am leaving my blog there up for archive purposes, so you can find it here.
I'll start posting serious things later this week, but in the meantime, I'll introduce myself: My name is Katie, and I'm a high school senior. I'm also a political intern, creative writer, literary magazine editor, and wanna-be activist, and will hopefully be writing about all of this at some point or another, but for now, I'll end this little ramble with a very important question:
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