You people are doing this on purpose

It must be a contest. That's the only explanation. Whoever can come up with the biggest "who gives a shit?" entry wins a prize. These past three weeks have been a veritable tennis match of hum-drum, boring, "who gives a fuck?" type blogs. Don't get me wrong, though: all blogs are that way, so when I can pick out your blog as especially inane, you have problems.
Fortunately we have Saddest_Borg's blog today, a person who drove this contest to its natural conclusion. This is the top. It is only up from here.
I hope you're deep in your seat, because if not you will fall the fuck out. Today we get to cover such pressing issues as Abortion Rights in Poland and UKRAINIAN ELECTIONS OH NO and my personal favorite: "Why I hate anime (!)"!

Since I've just come back from the screening of an important documentary, today is a good day I think to post a post about Poland.

Of course this poses a perhaps rhetorical question of when is it not a good time to post about Poland?

Because make no mistake, women are getting abortions.

Oh, so essay over.

Take a look at any newspaper and you'll likely find one or more ads in the health section--the code is typically "restoring menstruation".

The numbers I'm familiar with are around 80-200 thousand abortions a year (out of about 20 million women total). It's hard to tell exactly, because, well, it's the black market.

Oh-- so it continues.
For some reason I'm reminded of school.

The absolute lowest end of the price range right now, to my knowledge, is 2000 zł, which comes out to nearly $700. The average monthly wage as of January 2010 is 3213 zł, or about $1111;

So most of a month's paycheck, but considering the alternative--

How is this useful to anyone outside Poland?

Err, it isn't?

It highlights the fact that the right, particularly the religious right, can and will take away women's right to a meaningful choice if that right is not constantly defended. This will most likely be done, as it was done here, by your elected representatives--mostly men in both cases--who will fuck women over without a second thought if there's a bargain to be made. And once the fight is lost, you will find it unbelievably hard to reclaim your basic human rights.

Ah.
Well thanks for that informative and interesting reading, Saddest_Borg. I sure will be meditating long on the issue of abortion rights in Poland all week.
You know, outside of other pressing issues my Titanic mind has to sift, like: The Scarlet Letter and church government practices in 17th century England.
I am enjoying these new fine art reaction images. I feel classy and funny all in one breath.

So do I hate anime because of a number of legitimate reasons, or am I buying into some unexamined but common attitude? Like--hypothetically--Americans on the Internet feeling insecure in their cultural hegemony?

Anime, like all things, used to be fucking awesome (in the 1980s) and like all things has experienced a steady decline due to our increasingly backward and decadent society.
I have no trouble saying "our society", either, because Japan, America and all of the Western world is dealing with the same issues.

Call me a snob, I don't give a shit. Call me elitist. Call me a hypocrite, go ahead; I've paid money for Mass Effect 2, after all, knowing full well what awaits me.

A game where you throw people out of airlocks and romance blue alien women? (I.E., the same fantasy every man has ever had ever while looking up at the night sky?)

But videogames aren't supposed to be good.

What? Fuck you, Mass Effect was awesome.
I made a cool Samuel L. Jackson guy with the name Axel.
Axel Shepard.
Fuck yeah.
Of course my image of a badass Clint Eastwood in space fantasy was ruined when he opened his mouth and nothing but the most Canadian accent ever came out, but whatever it was a cool illusion at least.

People haven't been making videogames for hundreds of years in various historical circumstances, societies and languages; they're a very recent symptom of an ever further globalising culture that's hell-bent on devouring its own children. Small wonder they don't have much to work with.

Hey man, just because you don't know how to enjoy vidya gayman doesn't mean the rest of us have to be miserable.
This is really the Flowers for Algernon dilemma (see I can be pretentious too): do you want to be miserable and bored out of your huge genius brain or happy and pants on head retarded?
Simple solution, that. Be really smart while at the same time maintaining a little bit of a retard edge (stay just back from full retard, basically) and you get to enjoy the best of both worlds.
Like me. I have absolutely no practical skills at all (well, I can drive, but that's about it) and yet I know everything there is to know about literature, practically.

Never again will I say a bad word about fanfics or the practice of writing them. This is what bestselling novels in English are today: indistinguishable from a well-written and uninventive fanfic. Was it always like this?

Actually.
Before you ramble on and on let me paint you a rich narrative with Wikipedia.
So there was this guy who probably didn't exist living in circa 8th century B.C. in Greece. He wrote some totally fuck awesome books. Then a couple hundred years later some Roman guy decided the previous guy's fuck awesome books were indeed fuck awesome, so he decided to write his own fuck awesome (dubious) fanfiction. The heroes of the former's last book and the latter's fanfiction are basically the exact same, bar the fact that the latter is a whiny bitch. Also his name is Aeneus instead of Odysseus (real subtle there)
You know, exactly like how fanfiction works. To the fucking letter.
So I have now conclusively proven fanfiction is a 2000 year old tradition.

Polish novels are even worse. I don't even read any of these anymore, they're just so depressingly and uniformly dismal.

Oh hi, just being the best Polish book ever written.

Some years ago in my class on Native American Women Writers,

I am so, so sorry.

I handed out, as an illustrative counter-text, a story from Herbert Schwartz's Tales from the Smokehouse, a collection of Native erotic stories.

Oh YOU handed out. I guess you were the leader of this train wreck.
Also yes, Tales from the Smokehouse.
I've had the distinct pleasure.

In the story, a Christian missionary enters the room of a young Native female convert, finding her naked on the stone floor, her arms outstretched, gazing at a crucifix on the wall.

I made mention of this to a friend on MSN and he linked me to an album of the world's best porn music.
It helped.

Seeing the man's erection, the young girl inquires, "What is that pointed stick that stands out from your belly?" His Pauline response is:

Baby.
Oh, no, wrong again:

"My child... this stick is a thorn in my side, which causes me great pain and misery."

Thorn in your side? Must be some stick!
Now he's posting the cover of the recent vidya gaym "Dante's Inferno" and seems surprised that it exists.
Personally I was surprised it took so long to turn into a vidya, but I guess not everyone has the same foresight I do.

Between this and that Harkonnen guy who can't get off unless he kills a pretty young boy, there's potential here for a devastating critique of one of the "foundational" "works" of nerd "culture". Quite frankly though, I'm content with making y'all reading this think of gargantuan cocks whenever Dune is mentioned.

Funny it never occurred to me until you said it, and I'm constantly looking for new cock jokes to tell.
I won't say you're reading too much into it, but you probably do want to suck 20-30 dicks in the men's bathroom. Just putting it out there.
Well I guess that's it for today. I must say I've enjoyed this entry a lot more than, say, last entry.