Book Recommendation
I have been going nuts at the library, and have read more books in the past two weeks than I did in the months since christmas. My friend Kate has a book blog (it's on my sidebar) and I don't want to get in on her specialty, BUT every last one of you should read "Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants" by Jill Soloway. It's very funny. I "related" to so much of the book, but "related" seems like an understatement. Come on, just go read it, don't make me sell it to you.

Get your money right!
In a world where I mention in every blog post that women make 76 cents for every dollar a man makes, and that's after you adjust for differences like industry and time off of work to care for children, our Supreme Court has tossed down to us minions the following pearl of legal wisdom:
If you are being discriminated against because of sex, gender, or race by being paid less than other people in your same position who are not your sex, gender, or race you have to figure it out and file a complaint to the EEOC within 6 months of when you agreed to your rate of pay.
Why?
Because the Supreme Court considers the "act" that constitutes the discrimination the first time you were offered the unequal pay, rather than considering each paycheck in which you are paid less than your coworkers a new act of discrimination.
So the new protocol for you to perform when you are initially hired: Run around right away asking other people in comparable positions what their right of pay is.
This ties into something I've been wanting to discuss for awhile. Did you know that you have a right to discuss your paycheck and other compensatory benefits with your coworkers under the National Labor Relations Act? It's considered "collective action" and if your boss encourages you to keep your rate of pay under wraps, they're committing an unfair labor practice. Luckily for us workers, you can complain to the NLRB, and they very probably won't file a complaint in court against your boss, and you just set yourself up for retaliatory action. But hey, that retaliatory action is another unfair labor practice! And the cycle of life continues.
I did not know I had a right to discuss my paycheck with my coworkers until last year. I have been asked at at least 2 of my jobs not to discuss raises I've received with coworkers, and didn't think anything of it, because I hadn't read a labor law casebook yet. You see what happens when you don't read labor law casebooks kids?! You gotta keep on top of these things.

And to bring it all full circle, this is the same Supreme Court that just limited abortion rights. Because it's not like a woman ever got an abortion because she DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO RAISE A KID. No, women get abortions because they don't want to ruin their figures, or they need more time to run around flashing their boobs to Girls Gone Wild, or they think having an abortion gives them credibility among their man-hating friends. Goddamn women. Once we figure out how to squeeze a newborn through a penis we'll be set.

Hip Hoppity hoo.
One of the things I like about hip hop is that there is a lot of respect for the artistic process in hip hop lyrics. Lots of respect for the Artist, starting out really lame, battling, spending all their energy writing out rhymes, coming out on top, becoming the best of the best, untouchable, etc. Lots of references to pouring your pain into rhyming.
While I can't relate to the experience of rapping, I can relate to the self-importance and necessary delusions of grandeur for artists. I consider myself an artist, you will probably not be surprised to learn.
But Carrie, telling jokes is too mundane to be an artform.
No. You're wrong.
But Carrie, all of your good jokes are really filthy. And all of your 'smart' jokes are not funny, and are usually very confusing.
Just because something is bad art doesn't make it not art.
Something funny happened last night at Chucklef*ck. I performed, and I had all of these jokes written about a couple of particularly painful incidents in my sexual maturation. So I started telling the story, and I couldn't remember any of the punchlines. I really did have punchlines written down, but I didn't end up saying ANY of them. So I ended up just telling this really sad story about myself, sans jokes. The room got really quiet and everyone was intensely uncomfortable. Holy crap, you should've seen their faces. It was like that scene in the Exorcist where the little girl pees on the floor in the middle of the dinner party.
Let me tell you, you have not lived until you have told a room full of people who are expecting you to tell jokes a whole slew of really awful things about yourself. On the flip side, you have lived if you have not had to sit through someone you expected to tell you jokes making you really uncomfortable with their sexual history. I would recommend being the speaker, not the listener, in that scenario.
I have been going nuts since the fat girl joke incident. Actually, I've been going nuts since before that. Before that I was really sad about how bad my jokes were, and why was I knocking myself out, and making all of these big life changing plans, to perform jokes I wouldn't laugh at or remember hearing? And then the fat girl joke incident happened, and I was really angry, because everyone thought it was inappropriate for me to get pissed off about some stupid joke, and I should try to write some clever material off of it instead. I didn't want to be clever, I just wanted to be angry.
Then last night, my material wasn't funny, it was just sad and embarassing. And it turns out, while it's a big thrill to make an audience laugh, it's actually a big thrill to make an audience recoil in embarassment too.
So what's the point? I do not know. But I will say this: Chucklef*ck- you miss a week, you miss a lot!




(.....of Carrie's psychic unraveling!)

Huzzah!
What a beautiful friday we have on our hands. I am facing some challenges in my life right now.
Those at the forefront of my mind include:
1. My car's brakes are fading fast and there's some weird, incredibly loud whirring sound that starts up a minute after the car turns off.
2. My phone keeps turning off and staying off.
3. Some work stuff that isn't appropriate to broadcast to potentially the whole world

So what is the plan of attack?! How will I brush these obstacles aside with grace and aplomb?
Here's how:
1. Sitting tight
2. Trying not to spend any money
3. Not driving my car
4. Waiting it out until my next paycheck

Voila! Tell you what, these exact steps have done wonders for me before. It's not a very fun plan, but no one ever promised me a rose garden. (Well, once, but since I hadn't asked for a rose garden and didn't want to get into gardening, when they didn't follow through I let it slide.)

I have been thinking a lot recently about when "personal" problems turn into group issues. For instance, we have public transportation pretty constantly during the day because at some point someone thought, "all of these people have the 'personal' challenge of getting to work in the city; we should do something about that as a group." But we don't have very good public transportation at night. LOTS of people go out and get drunk on friday and saturday night and have the 'personal' challenge' of getting home without drunk driving. And the solutions suggested to this 'personal' problem are 'personal' solutions: trick a friend into not drinking that night and driving you around, or get sober before going home. Transportation during the day is appropriate for group action, transportation at night is appropriate for individual action.
My question is, how many people have to experience the same 'personal' problem before it becomes a group problem?
Women have lots of 'personal' problems that we think and write and get advice for ALL THE TIME. Especially when it comes to childcare and romantice relationships. Here's a standard romantic 'personal' advice column:
Q: I was dating this guy and I thought it was going really well and then he seemed less interested, and I tried to talk to him about it, and he got annoyed and said he wanted space and how do I make him like me again?
A: You need to stop smothering him and play hard to get and if that doesn't work you need to find someone who appreciates you!

Ok. Now it makes a lot of intuitive sense that this is a 'personal' problem to be tackled by the individual woman. But on the other hand, 98.5% of the heterosexual relationships I've been witness to have gone through the same exact process. And sometimes it ends the relationship, sometimes the relationship goes on with both parties being a little anxious, and sometimes Zeus descends from the heavens to render the issue moot.
Why isn't this a group issue?
Actually, during the time I wrote this this question turned from a real one into a rhetorical one.
Duh Carrie, any group solution to this problem would be really scary to people. Hey, it's even scary to me.
Although why is considering group solutions to the problems posed by heterosexual relationships scary? And what would those solutions look like?
It's worth considering if only for the mental workout, and what else are you going to do today, your JOB DUTIES?

Dictators, first thing in the morning!
To enhance our intimacy, here is a good example of my monkey-like curiousity. (Monkey-like in that it is easily diverted and resolved by typing on a keyboard.)
I was reading on Pandagon about Haiti, which is interesting because my mom the nurse just came back from a medical mission to Haiti. The most interesting detail from her trip is she said it seemed like everyone had crazy high blood pressure, blood pressure that would be treated as an emergency situation in the states. My mom attributed it to people not drinking enough water consistently throughout their lives, because they first of all don't eat enough (and you get a lot of your water from food) and there's not a lot of clean drinking water to go around.
That's pretty interesting in a really sad way- kinda makes the obesity epidemic seems like peanuts as far as public health crises.
So then I remembered back in my crazy college days I went to a religious studies conference at OSU and this professor presented a really interesting paper on how Papa Doc Duvalier used voodoo imagery to scare the bejesus out of people while he was dictator of Haiti. Not that people were scared of voodoo the way we are, as some kind of exotic magic show, but scared the way everyone is kind of scared of their religion. Scared and reverent. Another really effective scare tactic of his was to kill lots of people.
And then I followed the link on wikipedia to "cult of personality," which is a phrase I think I have used incorrectly many times. I think I would be good at helping to manage a dictator's cult of personality. The first thing you need is lots of paintings and sculptures depicting the dictator as strong and athletic and saving people. Maybe helping some old people and kids get up after they have been knocked down by the winds of tyranny. Or trampled by the horses of tyranny, or pushed aside by the line-breakers of tyranny. The second thing you need is a secret police force that terrorizes people. No, on second thought, let's make that the first thing. The third thing you need is an international enemy that justifies why your police force has to be full of such bastards. The standard international enemies have been communists, the United States, and jews. Fourth thing you need is some recurring public ceremonies that mimic religious ceremonies and involve lots of bowing from the citizenry. If someone asks, "Why do we have to bow to you?" the dictator should explain he doesn't want you to bow to him, he's just a humble servant of the people, but by bowing to him you're bowing to a symbol of this great nation. To keep appearances in line with this explanation the dictator should not clap and squeal every time he's bowed to, but accept it stoically. And then the symbol of the great nation can go home and eat a 4 course meal for the country, and look at his private zoo for the country, and perform some adult activities with nubile young things for the country.

I'm kind of a natural at this. Spread the word- don't be stuck without a plan after your violent coup! A coup without Carrie is no coup at all!

Five Fun Ways to Support Gender Equality!
1. Tell a male friend that he looks tired and offer him your blush and lip gloss
2. When purchasing goods or services from a male-owned company, pay them 76 cents for every dollar requested.
3. When two male colleagues have a heated disagreement, use your hands to make a clawing motion, imitate a cat's growl and then chuckle.
4. Tell men you don't know on the street that they should smile.
5. Buy me stuff.

Ok! You're right, a post like this is just lazy! You're better than this, you could be reading 5 million other blogs by people who APPRECIATE you! Come back to me, I'll make it better, oh baby baby please baby baby....

I need more interesting things to think about.

Fat or Stop Giving Feminists Reasons to be Angry.
Time to acknowledge some things about the Cleveland comedy scene:
1) There's lots of woman-hating
2) There's lots of racism
3) It's on the whole, not very funny.

One of the staples of our scene is jokes about fat girls. Specifically, how no one wants to sleep with them. I do not think these jokes are funny and here is why:
- I come from a family with a lot of large women in it, and I plan on being a large woman myself someday. All of these women get laid on a regular basis, and when I am large I plan on getting laid consistently too.
- But don't think just because they are getting laid they have shrugged off the neurosis our culture insists that large women have. I've watched my relatives and my friends engage in the kind of high-risk self destructive behavior only people who think they aren't worth much get into. I've watched them pour their time and energy into plotting to change their body in impossible ways. I do believe my mother has said something about how much weight she 'needs' to lose every day since my little brother was born (and he's 22).
- I have personally become despondent after getting pictures developed at how round my face is and how big my upper arms and thighs are. When I was 18 I plotted at how I could get money to get a boob job, not because my boobs are small, but because they are oval shaped, droopy D-cups. I thought they were disgusting. Like every girl I know, I congratulate myself when I don't eat. I cannot get through a meal without thinking of my fat. I cannot have sex without thinking of my fat. Heck, I can't take the bus without thinking of my fat.
- Kicking people when they're down is not funny, end of story. And at this point in history, overweight women are constantly told they are disgusting. They are either invisible in the media, or they are the butt of a joke. This is a big deal because the majority of women in America are overweight. Let me make this crystal clear: the majority of women in this country are constantly told that they are disgusting and that they are the punchline to a joke.
- I am committed to not getting bogged down in the psychological traps set for women. I am going to be large when I'm older. It's what my genetic inheritance intends for me. And I'm going to enjoy it. There's a picture of my great-grandmother standing in her doorway when she was in her 80's. She is built like a fridge. She is glaring at the camera. She looks scary as hell. You would not break into this woman's house if the great flood came and it was noah's ark. That is going to be me. And I will still be getting off like nobody's business, because despite what male comedians will tell you the male libido does not go thru the same editing process as the Playboy art department.
- So I don't laugh at fat girl jokes and I don't pretend not to be angry about them. Because making people live their lives feeling needlessly ashamed and disgusted about themselves is cruel, and I don't play nice with people who are being cruel.

I'm back, don't get uppity.
I've been moving back into my parents house to save money. It is a surprisingly time-consuming process. Surprising to me because I had a vision of me and my dog being able to move to a faraway city with just one carload of possessions, and tonight I will take my fifth carload over to my parent's house.
I have been getting rid of lots of stuff too, that's why the five carloads seems so ridiculous. It's surprising to me how quickly my stuff gets picked up by people when I put it out on the treelawn. I put this laptop bag I hated out there. This bag was the bane of my existence when I was in school. The bag itself was too heavy, and with a laptop and a book in there it became boulder-like. The straps squeaked as I walked, and law school is a quiet place, so I was broadcasting my presence for a pretty big radius. I put this bag on the treelawn, went inside and looked out the window, and a guy on a bike was putting it on his back. I felt so relieved; it was like finally getting a mole removed. A mole that's been giving you back pain.
I also dropped off all my knitting stuff at Stitch and Bitch to get divvied up. That felt good too. For a lot of people knitting seems to be a healthy, social hobby, but for me it was definitely a crutch to make being a socially anxious hermit a little more interesting. It was pretty much something to do with my hands while watching Laguna Beach marathons. I don't even like to wear knits.
I really like shedding possessions. Because I hate taking care of things, and I hate feeling like I should be using something, and I feel tied down by having stuff.
So I was moving stuff until about 12:30 last night, and then went to bed at my parent's house. I was feeling anxious about my morning routine, since all of my clothes are in boxes. When I feel anxious I grind my teeth, wake up a lot, and talk in my sleep. Last night I discovered I also sleep-eat. I woke up at 4:30 in the morning, went downstairs, turned on the kitchen lights, got out cereal, poured milk on it, sat down to eat it, all on auto-pilot, and then about halfway through the bowl I thought, "What the hell time is it?" I figured out it was 4:30, and then it took me the rest of the bowl to figure out there was no reason for me to be awake. So then I went back to bed and had weird dreams, and woke up at 6, 6:30, and 6:50 before my alarm went off at 7. When I woke up I was having a dream where I was overwhelmed with feeling angry. What the heck is that about? I had those kind of dreams a lot last summer, when I was feeling really angry in my waking life, but this one came out of left field.
Let's attribute it publicly to moving stress, and then worry privately that Carrie has a chemical imbalance that will always make her prone to anger problems, and maybe talk about it in hushed tones when she's not around.
I tried to write a post yesterday about strippers and feminism. It didn't seem to be going anywhere, but it might find its way to the publish button if I have another restless early morning.

My Righteous Anger Melts Like Butter.
I was going to write YET ANOTHER serious post, this one about an interview with an Iraqi feminist which you should still go read, despite the lack of commentary from me. Maybe you could leave a comment here with your reactions? No woman-hating. Keep the woman-hating in your pants.
But then I received an email from comedian and man about town Mike Polk, alerting me to more press for Chucklef*ck! I love press for Chucklef*ck! Here is the surprisingly accurate review by Scene Magazine's Jaded Critic. The major pitfall of the review is HE DIDN'T KNOW MY NAME, and people knowing my name is very important to me. That's why it's in the url for this blog. That's why I talk about myself in the third person so often. Excuse me, that's why Carrie Callahan talks about herself in the third person so often.
In other Mike Polk related news, he's in a group named Last Call Cleveland, and I found their spoken word/video piece about El Caminos humorous.

Year in Review.
Happy International Worker's Day! It's kind of a bad time to be a worker internationally, but that's all the more reason to celebrate our day (since pretty much every other day is International Boss' Day.)
It is also the day I was born, now 25 years ago. This past year my life was characterized by upheaval. I consistently found myself in circumstances I had not anticipated. I consistently found myself bewildered. I consistently felt frustrated, I consistently felt stuck. I consistently found a way each time, after much hair pulling and yelling and crying and sitting on the couch turning to re-runs of "The Hills" for solace, to get unstuck. This past year I learned about agency.
Here are the accomplishments of my 24th year:
1) Took my law school finals in the immediate aftermath of The Lousiest Breakup Ever. Despite an inauspicious start (dropped a letter grade in each final from the first week of being single), got it together and ended in the top 20% of my class. Suck it law school, suck it Breakup.
2) Moved into apartment meant for nesting couplehood and lived on my own for the summer without a car. Did not die, did not take up cutting myself. Suck it, debilitating depression.
3) Survived period of May through November, in which spontaneous crying was a constant obstacle to be anticipated. Got good at finding areas of sparse street traffic to walk my dog in. Suck it, confused strangers.
4) Discovered labor law was actually a massively unappealing career field. Found myself totally disinterested in doing any work for my second year of law school. Overcame barrier of self-hatred and habit of beating up on myself for laziness to realize that no reality existed in which I wanted a law degree. Quit law school. Suck it, self-hatred.
5) Bought a car, learned how to switch lanes without hyperventilating. Suck it, highway.
6) Did standup, wrote jokes, felt like myself for longer and longer periods of time. Suck it, alienation.
7) Got a job, paid off $2,000 loan from the summer, paid off all but $500 of money owed to former school for aborted fall semester. Paid my federal loan payments. Suck it, debt.
8) Did more and more standup gigs, wrote more and more, have solid 20+ minutes of material. Maybe half hour. Suck it, silence.
9) Organized Chucklef*ck, which I am immensely proud of. It's gotten my ass into gear with writing, I see fellow comics take risks and be funnier than I've ever seen them, and I've met lots of people I actually enjoy being around. Suck it, nothing-to-do-on-mondays.

Some people say they want to die before getting old. That is absolutely not me. It seems like every year my tolerance for being bullshitted goes down, my patience for those who don't have my best interests at heart goes down, and my fear of the consequences of doing what I think is best for myself goes down. I have lots of each of those, and the depletion is not happening as quickly as I would like, but I can only imagine that by the time I am 102 I will be the surliest straight shooter you ever met.
The goals of my 25th year: not to backtrack on the progress I've made on not taking shit, to take even less shit, to listen to my gut, to improvise and be alert to changing circumstances, to take care of my dog and myself. To make out with John Legend.
Goals for tonight: A stellar karaoke performance of "He Stopped Loving Her Today," grocery shopping.