there's a war.

it's the last day of my june challenge, and you all are about to read what i have to say about the supreme court ruling today and other tidbits of what's going on in the war on women.

this is been a trigger warning for violence against women, rape, misogyny, and mental health. 

SUPREME COURT GOES WITH HOBBY LOBBY

basically, what happened is that the supreme court voted 5-4 that hobby lobby and other private businesses do not have to offer women birth control as a part of their healthcare benefits.

the five justices that voted for this, they were... well... they were men.

so what this means is that if you're a woman and you work a private corporation, that corporation has the right to say, "nahhh, i don't really think i can offer you specific safe contraceptives and birth control and you know, like, basic human rights. because it's against my religious beliefs. you'll have to pay for them elsewhere, even though they're really really expensive and you probably can't afford them. sorry, that's just my religious bieliefs!"

i don't want to get into a religious belief debate. i am a religious person.

there is nothing wrong with religious expression and freedom.

but there IS something wrong when your religious expression and freedom stomps on my right to have safe and affordable healthcare.

while this whole ruling is an issue for religious freedom and expression, it's also an issue about women and what we can and can't do with our bodies. because, you know, hobby lobby says that BIRTH CONTROL IS BAD AND WE WILL NOT LET WOMEN HAVE IT but men can have vasectomies fully covered in their insurance plan. viagra is also covered, so if you're a man and you can't get it up, never fear! men can have as much as sex as they want, but if a woman has sex and she wants birth control, NAH, THAT'S AGAINST OUR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM.

tweet of the day:

i've often wondered, as have many of my feminist friends, what the world would be like if we regulated men's penises the way that they regulate women's vaginas.

MY VAGINA IS ANGRY, PEOPLE.

supreme court justice ginsburg gave a pretty scalding dissent about the supreme court's ruling today and how it's a slippery slope that we're falling into.

i mean, in america we already don't allow women to have total control over their bodies and their health choices, but now the supreme court has made it loud and clear and obvious that this is happening and that this behaviour is going to continue.

if you want to read the highlights of justice ginsburg's dissent and what she has to say about the supreme court's ruling, click here.

another thing that makes this whole issue really upsetting, besides the fact that women aren't getting the healthcare that they need and that corporations are being given more rights than women, is the fact that these corporations are saying that women can find birth control and contraceptives elsewhere while simultaneously working to shut down those places.

you know, like texas closing all but five abortion clinics in the entire state. the state of texas is the size of most of europe. this is problematic.

and last but not least, hobby lobby and other private corporations that are refusing to cover birth control are forgetting this: birth control and contraception lead to fewer abortions. isn't that your goal? fewer abortions?

MRA CONVENTIONS

i'm a part of my college's women's and gender studies facebook group, and a nice guy named adam (not my boyfriend) posted an article in the group about how michigan held its first MRA (men's rights activist) convention. it was originally in detroit, but they moved to a different location after feminist protested it. the MRAs then threatened the protesting women with physical abuse, rape, and death.

because that sends a good message about your convention and what kind of stuff you're going to talk about.

i highly suggest you read the entire article here.

the people that ran this convention attacked feminism left and right. some of the highlights, besides the rape jokes that got much applause, were quotes such as this:

"rape on college campuses was a myth perpetrated by man-haters, and the concept of rape culture, how society can tacitly approve of or rationalise sexual assault, was 'baseless moral panic.'"

i don't know, man, i think that one in four women being sexually assaulted on college campuses isn't baseless moral panic. or that one in six women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime.

i think that's a BIG BIG PROBLEM.

the men (and women) that held this MRA convention came with serious issues. they came with issues about women being favoured over men in divorce situations. they talked about how boys are falling behind in the education system.

these are all very important issues.

but these are issues that come from the patriarchal society that we live in, not women being in power. 

women account for less than fifteen percent of CEOs in fortune 500 businesses, we own less than ten percent of the world's land but account for over fifty percent of the world's labour, and the united states is one of the most drastically under-represented countries in the world when it comes to women in places of political power.

women being in power is not the issue, especially not when men are voting against our rights.

MISOGYNY DISGUISED AS MENTAL ILLNESS

this is my section about the UCSB shooter.

i've wanted to write about this for a long time, but i'll try to keep it snappy before i break a plate.

i was in petoskey for a wedding when i heard about the events that happened at UCSB and i was very very very very angry.

i was angry that he went on a mass killing spree. i was angry that the police thought that he was a "nice boy" and completely ignored all of his misogynist rantings on youtube. i was even more angry that other men supported him. (that is flat out disgusting, and in fact, a terror campaign against women.)

but what really pissed me off, what really was the big clincher, was that the media wrote him off as mentally ill.

as a mentally ill person, i find that insulting, disgusting, and very troubling.

the UCSB shooter was a misogynist. in his videos he talked about how women would not pay attention to him and would not sleep with him. he had an entire manifesto about it. and when these women (that he didn't even approach, by the way) did not pay attention to him or offer him sex, he went on a shooting spree.

LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING. WOMEN DO NOT OWE ANYBODY ANYTHING. THEY DO NOT OWE ANYBODY SEX. THEY DO NOT OWE ANYBODY. ANYTHING. WOMEN DO NOT EXIST FOR YOU. THEY EXIST FOR THEMSELVES. IS THIS FUCKING CLEAR?

the UCSB shooter felt entitled to women. and when he did not have any women, he felt slighted and unhappy that these women would not flock to him and have sex with him. so he killed them.

yet he's being called mentally ill.

you cannot pretend that misogyny is mental illness. one in four people in america are mentally ill and sixty percent of them don't receive the help that they need because of the stigma associated with having a mental health disorder. that stigma spreads when we label people like the UCSB shooter as mentally ill instead of saying blatantly that he was a misogynist.

there are people that will claim that he "snapped" after being rejected by women. first off, he wasn't rejected by women because he didn't actually ask any of them out or to have sex with any of them, he expected them to come to him simply because he was a dude that was a "nice guy". people will claim that this was an isolated incident of a man being upset after rejection.

here's another thing i want to lay down on the table.

if you google men being rejected by women, it gets very terrifying. VERY TERRIFYING.

there are stories about men stabbing women that reject them, men following them home and jeering at them, men running them over with cars, men shooting them.

men killing and hurting women when they are rejected by women. as i said in an earlier blog post this month, this is not an isolated incident, this is a societal problem.

and instead of addressing the societal issue of misogyny, we're going to write it off as mental illness.

PERFECT.

i wore my vagina shirt today for the supreme court ruling. because my vagina is being regulated by religious white men, and i'm fed up with it.

i'm fed up with the war on women. i'm fed up with the war on women in america. i'm fed up with the war on women around the world.

I. AM. FED. UP.

as maureen johnson said on twitter, let's turn all of this anger into action.

let's fight to end the war against women.

it's pride day and i have an announcement.

i've been sitting on this post for a really long time.

i would say i've been sitting on it all month, but i've really been sitting on it for probably a year.

today is pride day.

june is pride month.

today marks the forty-fifth anniversary of the stonewall riots, where pride initially started.

we've come a long way. but we still have a long way to go.

and i say we because i'm bisexual.

WOOOO I JUST CAME OUT ON THE INTERNET

(don't get too excited, i came out on tumblr in march. also this picture is my favourite thing ever.)

to come out to my parents, i painted two matching birdhouses. each had rainbow roofs. one was painted my favourite colours and the other one was painted the colours of the bisexual flag.

i gave them to my mom. i wasn't planning on crying, but the next thing i knew, i was like, MOM I'M BISEXUAL TAKE THESE BIRDHOUSES AS A SIGN OF MY LOVE SOB SOB SOB

and she was like, THEY'RE REALLY CUTE LET'S PUT THEM IN THE THREE SEASON ROOM

and i was like, THANK GOD I HAVE SUPPORTIVE PARENTS

and then my brother was like, LOL I KNEW YOU WERE BI SINCE HIGH SCHOOL

my brother is a bitch.

what is the definition of bisexual?

heteronormative definition that facebook seems to like: attracted to men and women. (this is, in fact, what my facebook says. interested in men and women. nobody noticed when i changed it.)

but gender isn't a binary. please always remember that gender isn't binary.

so the LGBTQ definition of bisexual is: attracted to the same and other genders.

for all intensive purposes, i like men and women. 

i guess this goes back to like... eighth grade when i had my first crush on a girl. she was in the musical with me and i was really confused because i'd had a crush on this blond kid named colin for like, two years. (when i crush, i crush hard.) and i was mostly like, how can this be? he is attractive. she is attractive. i like them both.

my parents have raised me that love is love is love is love is love is love and my church has taught me the same thing.

this is outside of my church.

WOOOO WE'RE ALL WELCOME BECAUSE GOD LOVES EVERYONE.

but when i had a crush on this girl i put it out of my mind. and then i justified it by being like, "welp, i just think she's really pretty."

there are levels of girl crushes. there's like, "wow i want her clothes and i want her skin" and "wow i want to be her friend she's so cool" and "wow i want to BE HER."

there's also "wow i want to date her."

i convinced myself, for quite a long time, that i had levels of girl crushes that were everywhere but "wow i want to date her".

then college happened and alma has some really hot girls. like, seriously.

i have not dated a girl. (that does not mean that i don't want to.) i have been in two relationships, and they have both been with men.

i have, however, kissed a girl. we were drunk after a performance of the vagina monologues and it was amazing.

being in a heterosexual relationship brings about something that i want to point out before we continue: bisexual erasure.

when you're in a heterosexual relationship, as i am and as i have been, you're assumed to be straight. only a handful of people know that i'm bisexual, and that's because i've told them in person or because they follow me on tumblr.

if i were dating a woman, people would assume that i am a lesbian.

there's a lot of stigma that comes with being bisexual. we're confused. we're one foot in the closet, one foot out. when we're in hetero relationships, we're taking the safe option to stay away from discrimination. when we're in homosexual relationships, we're assumed to only be attracted to the same gender or we're experimenting.

we have our own safe community within the LGBTQ community because sometimes we're even ignored and ridiculed by them.

it's kinda shitty.

the most prominent instance in media that i've seen this happen in is orange is the new black. piper is obviously bisexual or pansexual, and yet everyone around is either labelling her as gay or straight. she flips back and forth between larry and alex and in either instance she's either gay or heterosexual. nobody bothers to point out that she has been in loving, passionate relationships with both men and women and on multiple occasions has told people that she is bisexual.

yet everyone either says "omg she's gay!" or "omg she's straight again!"

it's kind of annoying.

you can say i have heterosexual privilege by being in a hetero relationship and that people assume that i'm straight, but i call it bi erasure, because you're not seeing me for what i really am.

there's also this really annoying thing where of people are like, "wow, you're bi? have you been with a woman?" and when i say no, they're like, "well then you can't really be bisexual."

uh, excuse you, that was rude and it hurt my feelings, and i think i know my sexual orientation better than you do, assbag.

sexuality is rated on this thing called a kinsey scale. i don't know if people actually still use it, but whatever. it was helpful to me in high school. (it also excludes a lot of sexualities. which is unfortunate.)

it looks like this.

when i first looked at it, i rated myself a strong 2.7.

when i look at pictures of jennifer lawrence and natalie dormer and emma watson and yvonne strahovski or when i'm on tumblr too long, i'm a pretty good 3.2.

(gay intensifies)

the kinsey scale says that an even three is bisexual, but whatever man, you like what you like.

you don't need a number to feel what you feel!

and i realllllly like jennifer lawrence.

since coming out to my parents, it's easier for me to talk about how hot women are. the other day at breakfast we were talking about celebrity outs and i was like, "well since i'm bisexual adam gave me two, one man and one woman. i'd definitely go with jennifer lawrence. mmmmm i'd marry her."

AND IT WASN'T AWKWARD! okay, it was a little awkward. but no one questioned it.

there was a post on tumblr today that said "raise your hand if you're a queer kid that started out as an overly invested straight ally" and i raised my hand so high alone in my bedroom. alone in my bedroom is where i spend most of my time.

i'd always get super pissed about gay marriage (or as i like to call it, marriage) and gay rights (or as i like to call them, human rights) and people would be like "whoa dude you're super invested in this" and i'd be like "i have my reasons" and inside i'd be like "YO QUEER PERSON HERE THESE ARE MY RIGHTS YOU JUST DON'T KNOW IT"

i started coming out to people small-scale this year. winter semester, to be particular. my best friend barbara and i were drinking in my room and being angsty and i was like "i gotta tell you a thing" and then we hugged. then i came out to my apartment-mates. kait said, "i knew you weren't kidding when you said you'd fuck jennifer lawrence."

adam figured it out before i told him. what a good boyfriend.

eventually i just got to this point where i really stopped caring. at choir rehearsal my friend hannah, who is also bi, was like, "ughhh it's so hard to find girls that aren't straight" and i was like "i know right" and she was like "are you" and i was like "yep" and that was the end of that.

barbara and i are heterosexual life partners. she jokes that she's the only heterosexual one in the relationship.

when i sort of cared who knew, i would drop hints casually in conversation. lemony snicket told me the best way to lie was to tell the truth but pretend you were joking, and that hid my sexuality for a good like... five years. then adam realised i wasn't joking. and then i stopped pretending that i was joking and i was just telling people.

and now i've told the internet. which is a lot of people.

GUESS WHAT, I'M BISEXUAL. if you're homophobic or whatever, you can hate me and delete me on facebook and unfollow me on twitter and generally be a bigot and say i'm going to hell and all of that good shit, but i'm me and i love myself and god loves me and i'm out and happy so whatever, dude.

let's finish up pride month strong, yeah?

YEAH.

"for the love of god, don't stop writing."

sometime in late march, one of my bestest friends hannah sent me a link on facebook to one of those huffington post article lists.

you know, the ones where you click it on and you  go OMG EVERYTHING IS SO ME I NEED TO RE-EVALUATE MY LIFE

and then ten seconds later you're like, "nahhhhh" and you take a buzzfeed quiz to see what type of burrito you are.

this list was entitled: 25 signs that you're in a relationship with your senior thesis

i felt spiritually connected to every single item on that list of twenty-five and that feeling of connectedness did not leave until i turned the damn thing in the last day of term.

my senior thesis was a novel.

THE STORY OF HOW AND WHY EMILY DECIDED THAT WRITING A NOVEL DURING HER SENIOR YEAR OF COLLEGE WAS A GOOD IDEA (hint: it really wasn't)

so once upon a time when i became an english major i was like, mmmm if i want to graduate with honours i need to do a senior thesis. while i was printing off a ten page paper (my first big paper!) as a sophomore, i ran into my friend heidi who was a senior and she was printing off her senior thesis. it was forty-four pages long.

forty-four pages of critical stuff. forty-four pages of literary analysis.

NAHHHH, MAN. I AIN'T ABOUT THAT LIFE.

alma has a very binary english department. that is to say... there is the creative side to the english major and there is the critical side to the english major, and you pretty much like one or the other, unless you're my friend christina who is ridiculously good at both. she just prefers critical stuff.

i'm more of the creative person.

i took a class called critical theory winter semester of my junior year. it taught me everything i ever needed to know about analysing literature. i analysed frankenstein using marxist theory, new criticism, feminist theory, psychoanalystical theory, and postcolonialism. (i hate postcolonialism. story of my senior year global literature class.)

i didn't like critical theory. i liked poetry workshop. i wrote some poems and gave them to my critical theory professor and i told her that i didn't like her class. she poured me some tea and said, "good. i'm glad you don't like it. keep writing poetry. get a master of fine arts. but for the love of god don't stop writing poetry."

i'd never been told by a professor that it was good that i didn't like her class, especially a class that is literally the cornerstone of the entire english major.

all through winter semester of my junior year i was thinking about what i wanted to do for a senior thesis. and all i could come up with was writing a novel.

i write novels in my spare time.

LOL WHAT A FUN HOBBY! SAID NO ONE EVER!

so i approached dr. vivian, my favourite creative writing professor, and told him i wanted to write a novel for my senior thesis and would he be my advisor?

a few forms later and we were rolling.

my mom thinks that dr. vivian is really hot, by the way.

i can't think of him as hot. because he's like... forty-three and he's read all of my weird writing.

i love dr. vivian because he's very soft spoken, he introduces each class by holding a rose and reciting the same rumi poem (and i know, i've had like, ten classes with him), he writes plays, short stories, and fiction, he's incredibly weird, and he totally believes in all of your potential, especially the potential that you don't think you have. one time we had my senior seminar in a graveyard. that was so awesome.

i also think that he's very inspiring in a horrible artist kind of way. his writing habits literally ended his first marriage.

that is a man commited to his craft.

my senior thesis with him was going to be finished by the end of the school year. it was going to be eight credits, four credits each semester. i would meet with him once a week for half an hour and we'd talk about what i was writing about and he'd read some of my stuff and it would be good.

i started writing my novel in july during camp nanowrimo, which totally fell apart when i went on vacation to oregon for a week. by the time i got to school in september i had eighty-two pages.

i went to my first meeting really excited. i gave him the first eighty pages.

here's how it went down.

"emily, i love the idea. but you don't get to it until page fifty-four. get rid of those pages. you don't need to lead up to anything."

oh.

in my whole life of writing novels, nobody's ever looked at them. i just have them all stored on my computer in weird places. i've never had any type of critic except for myself, and i'm probably the toughest critic that i have. which mostly means that i decide that i hate my novels and i never look at them again.

i'm also the kind of person who thinks like this: rough draft is final draft.

the one poem i've had published was a rough draft. the poems i presented at the international english honourary convention were rough drafts.

i guess i just don't like editing?

dr. vivian is all about that editing life. and he's all about telling me how far i need to go and how far i can go and i just need to get there.

even after he told me that the first part of my novel was worthless (it still is, let's be real), i was still super excited to be writing a novel. my senior thesis rocked!

but then like... college hit me. college where i was singing in choir and dealing with my anxiety disorder and being president of an organisation and taking other classes and being a senior and being an RA and just... COLLEGE

i had meetings with dr. vivian at three on wednesday afternoons in the library. i'd get out of choir at one thirty.

i'd write ten pages feverishly in the time that i had before my meeting with him, print it off, and we'd discuss it.

I DID THIS FOR TWENTY-EIGHT WEEKS.

the first class i had with dr. vivian was creative writing the fall of my sophomore year. i made a really cool portfolio with a hundred pages of my work. dramatic monologues, short stories, creative nonfiction essays, and poems. at the very end, he had me write about a habit of art. how did i write? what was my ritual?

fall semester of senior year i didn't have a ritual.

by winter semester i did.

since my senior thesis counted as four credits, i decided to only take two classes (relatively easy ones) and choir to take up my time. i needed more time for my growing novel.

my new writing habit looked like this: when i got stuck, i wandered around my apartment in my boyfriend's oversized sweater, ate red velvet cake yoghurt with a measuring spoon, and listened to "promise" by ben howard until i cried.

i can't make shit like that up.

when finals time rolled around and graduation was on the horizon, i wrote all of my final papers a week early, got them out of the way, and totally holed up in the library and just WROTE WROTE WROTE MY NOVEL.

my carrel notes helped.

dr. vivian told me that i didn't have to finish it, that i could have time over the summer, but BY GOD I WAS GONNA FINISH IT. I HAD THE POWER TO GIVE HIM A ROUGH MANUSCRIPT.

i was also fuelled by the fact that he needed a hardcopy and i could print it for free in the library and then bind it at the bookstore for like... fifteen cents.

the very last thursday at alma i wrote all day. hours and hours and hours of writing. breaking stuff into chapters. making a table of contents. last minute editing.

i finished it at seven oh four in the evening, ran around my apartment screaming, covered myself in makeup, went to the bar, and got ridiculously drunk.

the next day, the last day of term, i spent my morning printing and binding my senior thesis with my first ever hangover.

i had never written a novel like this before. i had never sat down with someone once a week and gone over it chapter by chapter. dr. vivian made it go weird places. like, magical realism weird places. (there's a dragon mural that moves and snow globes that scream sometimes.) he pushed me to my limit with what i could do creatively and it was totally awesome.

i think the best part was telling people how long my senior thesis turned out to be.

270 PAGES, BITCHES.

longest senior thesis in my graduating class, what up.

can we talk about how short my hair is in this picture? and how i don't look as hungover as i felt?

for the first time since turning that sucker in, i'm writing a new novel and not weird cynical poetry about missing my significant other and how smashing dinner plates is actually a good thing and how people live in spaces between my ribs.

it's really weird writing a new novel that nobody else is looking at and that i don't have to turn in for a grade.

but i'm writing, and i guess that's good.

i always think about dr. chen, my critical theory professor, a short fierce asian woman who taught herself english and then got a doctorate in gothic romantic era literature.

"for the love of god, don't stop writing."

MY VAN RIDES AGAIN.

THE CRIMSON AVENGER RIDES AGAIN.

that's me. in my sixteen year old minivan. wearing my new badass scarf from charming charlie.

who is charlie? why is he charming? my man friend asked me this question while i waited in line to buy it yesterday.

so remember that time two weeks ago when i crashed my van into a guard rail at seventy miles an hour and it was hysterical? and i mean hysterical in the hysterical crying way, not in the hysterical laughter way?

if you don't remember, click here and read all about it!

so after i spun into a guard rail and had my van towed away and i was driven away by a police officer sobbing my head off, i spent the next two days in wixom with my long haired man friend. i had a phone number for brighton ford, where it had been towed to.

i had the personal number for some guy named brian. he sounded nice on the phone.

the day after the accident i called him and i was like, "all i need is for it to be drivable. i don't care if it looks like it just crawled out of a junk yard. i just need to be able to drive it. can this happen by tomorrow?"

sure thing, brian says. he'll hoist it up, look at the suspension, and replace the tire that exploded.

no problem.

thursday comes. i call him. is my van ready?

no, it is not.

has it been hoisted up and looked at?

no it has not.

does brian have an estimate for how much this is going to cost me?

no, he does not.

so my parents drive three hours to pick me up from wixom and three hours back to bring me home. on the way back i lounged in the back seat of their SUV and looked up used fords on my phone.

my mom was like, you can look at used hondas and stuff! and i was like, NO I HAVE BEEN BRAINWASHED INTO ONLY BUYING FORDS. WE ARE A FORD FAMILY AND I WILL NOT FORSAKE IT.

my grandpa worked at ford. we're ford people through and through.

the way that the car situation is for my family is like this.

my parents drive a red focus that's a stick shift. my brother can't drive a stick. i can, but my dad doesn't trust me to drive it.

my brother drives an automatic focus that we've had since i was twelve. it's basically his car. he takes it to and from work and wherever he needs to go.

we have my parents SUV, which is only a year old and has spent most of that time sitting in the garage. it doesn't go anywhere except big trips because my parents' car doesn't have cruise control and my dad is not about that life.

am i allowed to drive the SUV?

no, i am not.

my van, my poor decrepit van, sits outside all day. but now it's two hundred miles away at a ford dealership.

i have a forty hour work week at kroger. so my dad literally drives me to and from work every day.

i feel like i'm in middle school.

on friday, my last eight and a half hour day in my forty hour work week, my schedule for next week is posted and it's like, YOU HAVE FIVE DAYS OFF and i'm like, OMG THIS IS PERFECT!

here is my master plan. my van will obviously be ready on tuesday, because it's already been there for two weeks and they've had plenty of time to work on it. when it's ready on tuesday, my parents and i will go pick it up. then i'll pick up adam and bring him home with me for fun activities! like the zoo!

last weekend comes. my dad is on the phone with brian every single day and the same conversation keeps happening.

my dad: so what's the status?
brian: uh uh uh uh uh
my dad: why isn't it fixed yet?
brian: uh uh uh uh

me in my head: what the hell are you doing with my van up there? i think the answer is nothing.

on monday night, the day before we're supposed to journey up to get adam, my dad calls brian TWELVE TIMES. when the tire exploded the fuel cap got disconnected. my van is old enough that they didn't really have a good way to replace it. but they had the part for a week and it still hadn't been put on.

my mom calls the dealership. she gets angry. she tells them not to connect her to brian because brian doesn't answer his phone anymore. (probably because he's afraid every time my dad says "hey brian, it's bill hollenberg again".)

basically this happens: WE ARE COMING UP TOMORROW TO GET OUR MINIVAN. IT NEEDS TO BE READY. WE ARE LEAVING AT NINE AND WILL BE THERE AT NOON. SOMEONE IS GOING TO PUT THE FUEL CAP ON TONIGHT. THEN TOMORROW SOMEONE WILL COME IN AND DRIVE IT TO MAKE SURE THAT IT WORKS. THEN YOU WILL CALL US BEFORE NINE AND WE WILL COME GET IT.

at nine thirty on tuesday they call us and tell us that the power steering doesn't work.

the power steering part is obsolete.

the struggle of driving a sixteen year old vehicle was never more real.

i was really pissed. i cried. i was supposed to pick up adam and bring him home. i cried some more.

then i took my brother's car and got him anyway.

we spent tuesday, wednesday, and thursday together driving my brother's car. we went to the zoo. we went shopping. we had a lot of fun. we kissed a lot. it was super happy.

this morning my dad called the dealership again. they had found a random power steering part that would work. my dad told them that we were coming to get the van today. we'd be there at four and that if it wasn't done by then, there would be hell to pay.

we got there at four thirty this afternoon.

people were still working on it.

total problems with my van since crashing it into a guard rail:

1 replaced tire
1 replaced headlight
1 replaced fuel cap
1 replaced power steering part
900 dollars of total cost

and this took TWO AND A HALF WEEKS?

i had spent the last two weeks looking at used cars and secretly wanting to get one. i had found a really cute focus stationwagon for under five thousand dollars and i wanted to test drive it.

but as soon as i laid eyes on my van, my wonderful minivan that isn't even really mine, all thoughts of getting my own car left my mind and i literally hugged my van. i stood there and i hugged the butt of it.

then adam and i sat on the sidewalk behind it while my dad talked to brian inside of the dealership.

my guess is that my dad laid it on pretty thick as to why this took so goddamn long and why they replaced the battery when they didn't need to. because that happened. the old battery was sitting in the passenger seat.

my dad did not pay for the new battery. i also do not believe that he paid for the towing bill.

brian gave me my keys and i almost cried. adam and i got in my van and the first thing i did was take a selfie from the front seat. he rolled his eyes at me and refused to get in the picture with me.

then i rolled my van onto 96 and we headed to wixom.

it rode so smoothly for a sixteen year old van! the new headlight looked wonderful! the new tire was ugly but functional! i didn't crash into any guard rails!

the best part was my CD was still in the player and started up on the same song i was singing when i crashed. YEAH BUDDY.

my van is back. unless it gives me any more weird problems or i crash it again (reminder that the crash was not my fault!) i won't get a new car.

i still secretly want one.

but god i love my crimson avenger.

AND THEN I GRADUATED FROM COLLEGE.

i think it's time i blogged about graduating from alma.

because like... that's a thing that i did. i graduated from college.

i spent a long time not wanting to graduate. to get myself in the mood for the fact that i would be leaving alma forever as a student, i hung up my graduation gown and hood on my wall in my apartment. 

it mostly just looked like a dementor at night.

the morning of graduation i was totally freaking out and totally excited and really upset that my room was empty.

the approximate stuff in my bedroom:

1 dress

1 pair of heels

1 jacket

1 pair of flats

1 cap and gown and hood set

1 naked drawing of my boyfriend

I SWEAR IT'S NOT WHAT YOU THINK

my apartment-mate kait was in a life drawing class. and my boyfriend happens to be a nude art model. and she made a very good picture of him. naked. and i was supposed to give it to him after graduation. there's a whole story about how she drew his testicles. if you wanna know, ask.

but you probably don't wanna know.

so anyway, i have this naked drawing of my boyfriend and i'm putting on my makeup and my mom is like WHAT IS THIS and i'm like, OH YEAH THAT'S A NAKED DRAWING OF ADAM and kait is like I DREW THAT MRS. HOLLENBERG

so that happened.

we started the morning off by going to the baccalaureate chapel service. some choir kids and i were singing two songs. there weren't that many of us and it was weird. and we never nailed the alto parts so i was unreasonably nervous. we all congregated in our caps and gowns in the basement of the chapel and president abernathy was there and it was the start of this question that frequented the entire day: is my hood on right?

NOBODY KNEW HOW THEY WORKED.

bachelor of science people had a maroon and gold hood. bachelor of arts and fine arts had a maroon and white hood. so i'm standing next to barbara and she has her gold hood for being a science major and i have my white hood for being all humanities and everyone is in heels but i'm in my flats and i'm like, man i should've worn heels.

this is always a problem for me. i'm five foot nine so when i wear heels it's like, HELLO UP THERE! but when i don't and everyone else does i sometimes feel short depending how tall the people around me are.

whether i wear heels or i don't, i always end up disappointed.

the chapel service was sweet. we processed in in our caps and gowns to some cool organ music and we all sat in the front and there was a lot of talk about how god was going to enrich our lives as college graduates and stuff. i was mostly thinking about how my parents were sitting near my ex-boyfriend's parents and how that all was going.

the few of us choir people (and barbara) sang our songs. i could see the pain in my dad's face as we attempted to sing the harmony. we only had twenty minutes of practice beforehand, to be fair.

after the service we all went outside for pictures on the steps and it was like, WHERE AM I SUPPOSED TO LOOK?! and all these parents were like, AWWW MY BABY IS GRADUATING and i was like, I CAN'T EVEN FIND MY MOTHER and barbara was like, MY FACE IS GONNA EXPLODE and finally kylie shouted FIVE FOUR THREE TWO ONE ENOUGH PICTURES and we all broke up.

look at us. so hungry and ready for senior brunch.

senior brunch is always amazing. sodexo, alma's food service (which also services prisons and hospitals) actually serves good food at senior brunch. you get tickets for your family to get in and i scored an extra one for adam. he had to sing at commencement anyway and i told him he might as well eat with my family.

we get in line for the cafeteria. the line is curling around newberry and it's kinda cold and i'm glad that my dress is knit. adam hasn't showered because he didn't realise senior brunch was so soon, and once again, we're standing near my ex and his family and his new girlfriend.

his grandmother said hello to me and that was nice. she fed me a lot of good meals and she's a very wonderful woman.

at senior brunch i had about two omelettes and eighteen thousand crepes.

BECAUSE CREPES, RIGHT?

then it was time to get officially ready for commencement. my parents and my brother went to go sit in the auditorium, adam went to go join the choir to sing loch lomond with the choirs, and i went back to my apartment to put on my shoes.

it was kind of chilly, so i was wearing panty hose. i put on my six inch high heels and as soon as i walk, i slide straight out of them.

i ditch the panty hose. my apartment is entirely packed up, so what do i do?

throw them away in the bathroom.

i totter to the middle of campus, macintyre mall, where everyone is milling around, trying to find each other. girls are wobbling in heels, the guys are trying to look macho, nobody has any idea if they're wearing their hoods correctly.

i'm standing in all of these people and i'm looking around campus and it really hits me.

this is my last day in alma.

i find barbara and my apartment-mates and we start taking pictures. who knows if we'll see each other after the ceremony? everyone is taking pictures and freaking out and i can't believe i'm wearing these stupid effing six inch heels. my bunions are killing me.

then they start lining us up, two by two. i'm standing next to tieler holland, my friend hannah's girlfriend, and i tell her that she needs to save my seat because i have to go sing with the choir.

after we're lined up, the bagpipes start. it's not alma without bagpipes.

then we start walking.

i was so freaked out, walking into the crowded auditorium. but it was a good freaked out, a freaked out where i couldn't stop smiling. when tieler turned to go into our row, i kept walking back to where the choir was so i could sing loch lomond one last time.

it was surreal.

i stood with the other choir seniors while the band played pomp and circumstance. the president said some opening remarks. i stood there with my knees knocking together.

then doc (our choir director) stood up and began to conduct loch lomond.

singing loch lomond at homecoming and commencement is a choir tradition that only alma could have. it is a beautiful piece that is beautifully arranged.

i sang like i had never sung before. 

can you find me?

i didn't cry! i almost did, but i didn't cry singing loch lomond! it was a miracle!

then it was time to go to my official commencement seat and that meant... speeches. lots of speeches.

there was a speech from my friend michael, our barlow trophy winner. his speech was amazing.

then our special commencement speaker got up to talk and he said "um" five times in the first thirty seconds.

it was a long speech.

he went on and on and on about jobs and the market and how it wasn't actually as terrible as we think it is. (i'm working at kroger. hmph.) then he talked about soon machines were going to TAKE OVER THE WORLD

he could've gone all cool sci-fi with that.

MACHINES. THEY WILL DOMINATE THE WORLD AND WE WILL BE FORCED TO POPULATE THE MOON AND PLANETS SUCH AS MARS. IT WILL BE A NEW STEP FOR MANKIND.

like, it could've been that cool. but it was more like "um... we need machines. they're a part of how we do business. um. machines. um. they're smart. we need them. um."

once he was done, thank god, it was time to actually walk.

i had vivid memories of commencement rehearsal, where they called each of our individual names and made us sit in our chairs in alphabetical order. i had live tweeted the whole thing and got an all-high score in flappy bird.

i was also kind of sort of live tweeting commencement because my dress had pockets and the auditorium had alma wifi.

alma is a small school, so we get individually recognised. we walk across the stage with our names called, whatever honours we've received, and we shake the president's hand and get handed our diploma holder, actual degree to come later in the mail. we pause for a cheesey picture with the president, we walk away to a screen for an official alma photo, and then we go back to our seats. for people sitting way in the back, we show up on a huge overhead screen.

we get to my row. i'm freaking the eff out. 

now i'm in line behind tieler. still freaking out.

i'm moving forward. freaking out even more. i know that dr. arnold, who's reading all the names, isn't going to mess up because she was my academic advisor for four years. i'm not worried about that.

i'm worried about tripping out of these damn six inch heels. WHY DID I WEAR THEM?

it's tieler's turn. i step up to a piece of tape. she walks across the stage.

apparently, dr. arnold said, "emily ruth hollenberg, bachelor of arts, cum laude, honours in english" but i did not hear a single word she said as i crossed the stage. i had my eyes fixed on president abernathy. he was the goal. get to him without stepping out of my shoes.

i got to him. took my diploma holder from him. shook his hand.

he smiled at me and said, "congratulations, emily, i'm so proud of you. i should've gotten you a tie as a graduation present."

and that's when i knew that alma was the only place for me.

where else would the president of the college give me two ties during my four years and then tell me as i walked across the stage to give me my degree that he should've given me a third?

i tottered over to get my picture taken with my diploma and then i was sitting back in my seat, waiting for everyone else to walk. i couldn't really feel my feet, but that might've been the shoes.

when everyone had walked, instead of throwing our caps, we continued the alma tradition of bouncing a beach ball around while we all processed out to the gauntlet of faculty and bagpipes.

you know, i hate bagpipes. but when i'm at alma, i love them. i love them so so so so much.

when i left the auditorium, my first priority was to find my family, which took a long time. i spent a lot of time hugging faculty and nearly everyone i could reach. i hugged my hall director of three years, willard, so hard i thought i was going to break a rib. i found adam and we managed to find my parents while my heels sunk into mud. we took lots and lots of pictures and nothing felt real.

what felt real was the headache i had from smiling so much and obvious dehydration.

but there it was, my diploma holder.

i was a college graduate.

i went to a small grad party for barbara and then i had three hour drive with my brother back to indiana in my minivan full of four years of college stuff. about halfway home i started to feel really really awful and i made aaron take over the driving.

then around marshall, michigan, i made aaron pull over and i vomited all over the side of the road.

picture this. it's eight thirty at night, the sun is going down, i'm wearing a fifty dollar lavender dress, i'm barefoot, and i'm standing on the side of the highway puking my guts out.

that was how i ended my graduation day. puking on the side of the highway.

it would've been a lot worse if my brother hadn't sat in the driver's seat laughing his ass off at me. when i was done, i leaned against my van and laughed and laughed and laughed because i had done it, i had graduated from college.

i had done a year of collegiate swimming. i had been a resident assistant for three years. i had gone through two boyfriends, made numerous friends, been in a production of the vagina monologues, travelled on spring terms across oceans, sang in choirs, attended all kinds of events that you can only attend at a place like alma, been president of an organisation, had been in a sorority and then left it, had been a part of the religious life, had stayed up eating late night fries at joe's, had done all kinds of crazy things, and i had still managed to get my degree with honours.

i had done it.

alma was by far the best four years of my life. if i could do it over again, i would in a heartbeat.

alma is my home and it always will be.

loyal hearts will cherish ever.

ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK.

IT'S ABOUT TIME I BLOG ABOUT ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK.

uh. spoilers. probably. or something. whatever.

orange is the new black.

soooo i've had a stolen netflix account for a while. (did i just admit that online?) like, my now ex-boyfriend had a friend that has a netflix account and he made a facebook group like yo share my netflix so i borrowed it from my ex when we were dating and now i have this netflix account.

one time it didn't get paid. but for the most part, i've had it for like... two and a half years or something.

i don't know the guy who pays for it. but his username is sam sucks cock and it's always refreshing to see when i want to watch something.

if i log out, i'm toast. will i actually pay for my own netflix if i ever get logged out?

we'll see.

backtracking to last summer. i was on tumblr and all of a sudden, as tumblr is rather famous for... there's porn.

except this wasn't porn. this was taylor schilling and laura prepon having intense shower sex and then i was like, IS THIS A TV SHOW?

and then it kept showing up and it was called orange is the new black, a netflix original, and i was like, hmmmm i should try this out.

so i did. i had a week before i went back to alma for senior year and it was only thirteen episodes. so why the hell not?

i didn't really know what i was getting myself into.

i'd like to think that as a product of american television and consumerism, i'm pretty used to seeing graphic and violent things. like, hello, i love game of thrones probably more than i'll love my first born child. (god i hope that's not true.)

but i start watching orange is the new black and it kind of broke down like this.

on a scale of one to ten.

game of thrones nudity: 3
orange is the new black nudity: 7
orange is the new black season two nudity: 9

game of thrones sex: 4
orange is the new black sex: 8
orange is the new black season two sex: 7

game of thrones obscenities: 7
orange is the new black as a whole: 10000

IT'S SO PERFECT FOR ME, YOU GUYS.

if you have no idea what orange is the new black is, i suggest you watch it. if you don't have netflix, i suggest you find it somewhere else online. and make sure wherever you find it, it has subtitles because believe it or not, a show about women in a minimum security prison actually has a lot of languages.

the primary ones being spanish and russian. we can't forget about healy's russian mail-order bride. she's actually one of the sadder parts of the show.

i got sucked into orange is the new black really fast. to be honest, i'm not much of a fan of the show's protagonist, piper chapman. not at all, if we're gonna be real about this.

so it's a good thing that the show focuses on all of the women and they are all treated as individuals.

since we all know what happened to piper to land her in prison (dating a super hot drug smuggler, alex vause), we're left to wonder how all of the other women ended up in litchfield correctional. lucky for us, every single episode we learn about the background of one inmate.

and it's awesome.

piper is whiny and boring. her love life is interesting because she goes in with a fiance but then meets up with alex and they have a lot of kinky washing machine lesbian sex and then her fiance finds out and then it's like, WOW WHAT IS HAPPENING IN PIPER'S LOVE LIFE but other than that... she's pretty boring and she tends to make everything about her.

it's really hard for me to pick my favourite inmate, if we're gonna be honest.

there's red, the hard russian woman that used to run the kitchen. she's really intense.

there's a nun. seriously. and she's pretty awesome.

nikki and morello make a good pair as a former heroin addict and a stalker, and suzanne always breaks my heart, especially when everyone calls her crazy eyes and she wants piper to be her prison wife. taystee and poussey make a great team, and things get intense when they get split up in season two.

poussey's backstory was heartbreaking and wonderful and i want the entire show to be about her. she's coming back as a series regular for season three, which means she'll be in every episode, HOLLA.

so many wonderful things happen in this show.

so many shitty things happen in this show.

friendships get ruined, prison guards are horrible to inmates, there's embezzlement and other things happening to make litchfield not such a good place, there's inmate mistreatment, there are fights and women rying to kill each other, people get transferred, people get sent to maximum security prison, and all kinds of other things.

but you know what orange is the new black does that is awesome?

IT'S A SHOW ENTIRELY ABOUT WOMEN. ALL WOMEN. ALL THE TIME.

for one of the first times ever, there is a show dedicated entirely to women. about their lives. about their lives in prison and about their former lives.

it's so awesome.

not to say that it's totally devoid of men. there's caputo, who's like a kind of assistant warden guy, and there's healy, who's piper's counsellor. they're obviously a part of the narrative. (i don't even wanna get into mendez, aka pornstache.)

but it is a show about women. and women being women.

it's just so... refreshing.

i fell in love with how real and how visceral it is. women holed up together in inhumane circumstances trying to survive. learning all of their backstories. learning to love them. seeing them as people and not just as criminals.

AGH I JUST LOVE IT SO MUCH.

yeah, there's a lot of lesbian sex and a lot of nudity (mostly female but season two features a gay male spa) and a lot of swearing including an old woman yelling the c word in the cafeteria.

but it's a wonderful show. it's hilarious. it's heartwarming. it's gut-wrenching.

IT'S REAL AND I'M TOTALLY ENAMOURED, OKAY.

LIKE, JUST GO WATCH. I CAN'T EVEN FINISH THIS BECAUSE JUST LIKE... GO WATCH IT PLZ.

KAY THANKS.

uh. video games. and a bit of feminism.

today's topic is... video games.

how much do i know about video games?

not that much.

i'm pretty sure that my first video game was my gameboy colour.

IT WAS GREEN. AND YES, I STILL HAVE IT.

my brother got his first. his was the generic purple one. the day after christmas we drove my van (yes. we had it that long ago.) to florida and my brother played it pretty much the straight eighteen hours.

i got one the next christmas. i attempted to play pokemon. i got pretty good at silver version. crystal was by far my favourite because i could be a girl. what a good little feminist i was. every single time i played crystal i was a girl named tracy because what do you know, i had a third grade crush on a guy named trace.

i saw him when i took the ACT my senior year of high school. oh lord. oh lord.

when i was about nine, the hot place to go was mcvans. there was one that we could walk to and aaron would trade in all of his gameboy games for other ones. (the deals were always super shitty.) i got ahold of frogger, which i sucked at, and then i got the best gameboy game ever, kirby tilt n tumble.

the technology was so profound! you tilted the gameboy and kirby moved with it!

it took me a long time and hours of playing, including when i was pooping, but i beat that game. i got all the red stars and went to all the bonus levels.

but i did NOT get all of the hidden blue stars. i tried and tried. the problem with the blue stars was they were only on certain levels and you never knew which level it was.

there was one higher level that had a lot of spikes and i could see the blue star, but i never ever got there. it was so sad.

after we had our gameboys, my parents bought us a used N64.

who actually knows how old it is? we got it used in the '90s. now it's 2014.

the first game we got was super mario 64. i loved that game. the first night that we had that console i played it for hours and hours, jumping in and out of picture frames and avoiding chain chomps.

i played it so much that i had a nightmare about it and woke up and vomited.

not a fun time.

then we got mario kart and super smash brothers. my brother and i played mario kart for hours and that was probably where we learned how to swear to eloquently.

mario kart, especially n64 style, will break friendships.

"NOT THE BLUE SHELL YOU IMPOTENT BASTARD"

i got pretty decent at super smash brothers, but i only played as kirby. probably because i was so obsessed with kirby tilt n tumble when i was little. (let's be real, i still think about it. i need some AA batteries, you guys. seriously.) and i learned all of his cheap shot moves and that's how i beat my brother consistently.

put that thing on 200% damage and do a smash? GONE. DEFEATED.

but yeah, i never learned how to play anybody else. i got pretty good at beating the master hand, but i could never land on all of the platforms or break all the targets when i really needed to.

mostly my brother just tried out different characters while i played kirby and we yelled obscenities at each other.

then came james bond.

i don't really remember which james bond game it is, golden eye maybe? i'm not sure.

that's when i learned how to play first person shooter. (lolz. i just asked adam what that was called.)

just like i did with super smash brothers, i played one character and one terrain only. the mountain one with the cabin and the underground system. if you went up the mountain cave you get could a pretty sweet bazooka and aim it long range and blow up anybody that came out of the other side of the course.

most of the time aaron kicked my ass. but i still ran around with guns and shot at stuff that moved. and of course, i was always moneypenny because WHAT UP, YOU CAN BE A GIRL IN JAMES BOND.

apparently you can't be in assassin's creed. i'll get to that later.

my long haired man friend, adam, is a gamer. his brothers are gamers. i'm talking like... six years of logged time on world of warcraft gamer. steam account gamer. jargon and hours spent on the computer playing with people across the world.

playing the board game version of dungeons and dragons at fraternity houses.

adam is a gamer.

adam talks about gaming a lot. most of the time i'm like

WUUUUUUUUUT

he has encouraged me to play video games with him. so far all we've done is get out my n64 and play it in his dorm room at alma. i kicked his ass at mario kart and he kicked my ass at super smash brothers. we didn't get into james bond.

i have yet to play any other games with him.

he likes to play horror games. like killing floor, the resident evil series, outlast, slenderman, home, deadspace one and two, amnesia, penumbra... and stuff.

i'm not a horror person. slenderman sounds bad enough and i guess that's like... tame or something? just people telling me about slenderman freaks me out. like, NOPE. NOPE NOPE.

the other day, adam and i were talking online about dragons. because I LOVE DRAGONS, O SMAUG, CHIEFTEST AND GREATEST OF CALAMITIES.

DRAAAAAGONS ARE SO AWESOME.

and adam was just casually like, "you know that skyrim has dragons, right?"

i've spent a lot of time looking at a skyrim poster that adam has in his room. it's a huge map of the skyrim world and it reminds me a lot of lord of the rings.

and it's made me realise that there are really intense games with really intense storylines and whole entire worlds with cultures and stuff.

that's really neat.

but there's also a lot of feminist issues circling around gaming culture, and as a super intense feminist, i can't discount that.

i watch feminist frequency, where a really cool youtuber named anita sarkeesian makes posts about feminist tropes in video games. she speaks at places like vidcon and stuff.

she's really cool.

she also gets death threats a lot from the gaming community.

right now the big thing is the new assassin's creed. i don't know which one it is or what it's called, because to me it's all assassin's creed. i've only seen someone play it once and it was literally this egyptian looking dude climbing a lot of buildings.

that's pretty much all i know about assassin's creed.

but the new story is that the new one doesn't uh... really feature any female characters that you can choose to be.

why?

because it was too hard to design them.

twitter, as it's wont to do, went a little bit nuts.

here are some of the best tweets as compiled by tumblr.

and the kicker

fifty percent of the gaming community is... drum roll please...

WOMEN.

from what i've learned from the intense tumblr gaming community and from having a boyfriend that identifies as a gamer... there's really only one criteria for being a gamer.

and that is playing videogames.

LITERALLY. THAT'S IT. TO BE A GAMER, ALL YOU GOTTA DO IS PLAY VIDEOGAMES.

whether that's like me, and playing kirby tilt n tumble all day and only knowing one character on super smash brothers, or whether you're like adam's brother who played world of warcraft for longer than the time i was in college, you're a gamer.

but apparently there's a lot of the (male) gaming community that's like LOL GIRLS DON'T PLAY VIDEOGAMES YOU'RE JUST A FAKE GEEK GIRL GO MAKE ME A SANDWICH LOLOLOL

and that makes me really sad because anybody can play videogames and can be a gamer.

this whole post came about because adam is visiting me this week while i have time off of work and he suggested that i blog about video games today. it's something that he's obviously really into and that he wants to share with me. i have a lot to learn, especially gaming jargon.

most of the time i'm like, "wait what does that stand for?!"

i think my first foray into adam's type of gaming is going to be skyrim. i really hope it's not like the time that i played halo for the first time and managed to blow myself up in the first ten seconds while my brother laughed hysterically at me.

no matter what kind of videogames you play, you're a gamer.

LOOK AT ME, I'M A GAMER AND YOU CAN TOO!