Day 3: My Top 5 Pet Peeves

Whew, day 3 already! Let's do this, okay, in no specific order, my Top 5 pet peeves:

- Misogynistic and or Ignorant comments about Feminism

This one twists my titties, it really does. I consider myself a feminist, I am for the equal rights of women, for the obliteration of gender roles and especially the rights of transgender women, or as I like to call them, women, who are put down on a daily basis. I feel like we need to step back from this place where we assume all feminists are angry white hipster chicks with too much spare time and a Tumblr account. A lot of American right wing media loves bashing on it, I hear some people close to me saying really offensive shit... And I mean, it's not just about women's right, it's about equality, about justice, freedom, empathy... It's really not about being aggressive, and I know, the community can be so frustrated, but I mean, we're a generation of progressive millennials and we still can't remove sexism from our media, homes and workplaces. I see it. And it happens to men too. A lot of MRAs and 'meninists' are so ignorant and hateful... But what also gets my goat is feminists making misandrous comments, because these people don't really represent our views, but they are still feminists, and we get a bad rep from it. I need feminism, as a man, because I need feminine things to not be seen as demeaning, for the word feminine to not be an insult, for women to get equal payment as men for doing the same jobs. And like it or not, so do you.

- Religion.

Day 4 is my views on religion. I wanted to give it a specific one, but you know what, from the annoying "LIKE IF YOU LOVE JESUS SCROLL IF YOU LOVE SATAN" posts that never end, how do they never end, please just let them fucking end, THEY'LL END IF YOU STOP LIKING THEM AND ACCEPT YOUR DEITY ISN'T POLICING YOUR FACEBOOK ACCOUNT, to religious indoctrination to  religious bigotry to Christian Hardcore bands to Christian rock to anyone excessively using Satan as an excuse to *if I continue I will only end when Phillip J. Fry wakes up in the year 3000*

I really don't like religion. I try not to be one of those militant atheist assholes, but honestly... I see some stupid shit sometimes. And I will on occasion be an asshole about it because not everyone is perfect and someone needs to say something.

- Hatred Towards Metalcore

From the elitist "It's not real metal!" stuff to the ignorant "It's just screaming, there's no melody!" from muggles, just... Stop. I honestly just stop listening to the stupidity after a point. Metalcore is my favourite genre of music, I love high gain guitar tones and breakdowns and death growls and high screams and those awesome double bass pedal grooves... To me, it takes the best from heavy metal and hardcore punk, has a great community and the artists are just really cool people. I know it isn't for everyone, fuck, I WAS one of you people, but you *really* don't need to be ignorant asshats about it. If I could go back in time and slap the bejesus out of my younger self, I freaking would. But it takes an ear for the subtle nuances of screaming to appreciate which honestly, not everyone has. You can't just jump into metalcore. And we have bad artists, like every other genre.

- Homophobic and transphobic comments

Straight guys of the world, can we just assume that not every queer guy is out to fuck you in the ass? You're confusing them with student loans. And grow up. If I see another shitty comedy with some white guy getting into the nasty with a stripper only to find out she has a penis... Why is everyone so grossed out by penises? Why are we mad at penises? Granted, they aren't the prettiest, but like, straight cis guys, you've been living with a penis your whole life, get over it. But yes, I am an LGTBQ ally, I support the cause, and I get annoyed when people say homophobic or transphobic things. Not every transgender woman has a penis. And with Leelah Acorn's suicide I feel so ashamed for the transphobic things I've said in the past, and I know I was guilty of it... Just makes you think, what if I was one of those people, what if in some indirect way I was responsible for someone's suicide? What if that was me hearing those things? Empathy is already so hard to come by, don't be one of the world's assholes.

- People over my shoulder

Don't read my texts, don't read the article I'm reading, don't watch me draw, don't watch me write, don't read my facebook news feed, JUST DON'T. UUUUUUGGGGGHHH. If I wanna show you something, I will. Otherwise, just... Don't. It's rude as hell.

I have more. If you asked me this question again tomorrow, I'd probably say something different. These are just the five things that annoy me the most right now.

Read More

Day 2: Where I'd Like To Be In 10 Years

Oh, heavy. My ten year plan. Future me. 

I'm absolutely shit at this type of thing.

But here goes. One of my lifelong dreams has been to record a full length album, so in ten years, I'd like to have accomplished at least that. I have a multimedia project that I've been working on since highschool and I hope that by then it's actually complete. I would obviously want to have my Computer Science degree, with an honours perhaps in another field, maybe from humanities, maybe visual design, I dunno. It'd be something that I could practically use. I want to be fully independent at the age of 29... Oh crap, I just realised how far that actually is! So yeah, I want to be driving my second fully paid off car, in an apartment that I own, and I'd love to have a stable job and a partner. That's where I'd want to be, I guess.

I guess I'll take it a step further, I'd want to have kept up exercise and good diet enough to not be obese. I want like three more piercings on my face alone. I want to have decided on and have gotten my first tattoo. Uhm, maybe I'd do something funky with my hair. I dunno, the last year of my twenties, I should really live it up. As for where... I always said that I'd like to study locally, work globally... But I dunno. I'd love to be working in the UK. Or maybe somewhere else in Europe. Perhaps even America, more to the north though... Canada is also not out of the question. If I don't end up working or living there, I want to visit all these places before I'm 29.

I would like to speak a third or maybe even fourth language. I've been dabbling in a bit of French and I've always wanted to learn Japanese, but that's purely because I want to watch anime without relying on subtitles. I'd also like to have learned to play a brass instrument. And maybe violin, or cello. I'd definitely want to be a person who didn't give up on music.

Who I'm with? Well selfishly I wanna say my besties from highschool, but I can think of a few who are immigrating in the next three years actually! Haha. So hopefully I won't be alone. I do know that I'd like to meet more LGTBQ persons, hear their stories, and just interact with that community. I can't say I'm exactly a gay rights activist but I am an ally, and I do believe in equal rights. 

Lastly, I guess in 10 years I'd want to be closer to my ideal self. I wanna have less sleepless nights, less depressive fits, less nights when I come scarily close to making a noose out of my scarves to hang myself with. I remember, I think it was July in my final year of highschool, I walked out of a physics or a chemistry test. Actually, it started before that. Right as I ended the paper actually. I planned my own suicide in detail. To cut a sad story short, my plan was to compile a playlist of the last songs I'll ever hear, my favourite ones, to overdose on whichever pill would let me go in the most quiet way, and I'd lock myself in my bathroom with a pillow, so I could sit comfortably in the shower with my headphones on. Obviously, I never made it that far. Due to... Well weirdly enough, past me. The year before I was really depressed and I had my first real suicidal thought. So nearly seventeen year old me wrote a two page letter to future me, calling me out on my bullshit, telling me everything I thought other people should have been telling me. That's weirdly how I've been going. I guess I just don't want to disappoint seventeen year old me with the stars in his eyes and the world in his hands. It seems stupid and insignificant now, but when you're there, that final grade basically determines your whole life. If you don't make it, you might never go and study further, or you might have to come back, delay your life for a whole year. I was scared of that. I have this huge thing about failure. And I think highschool sort of beat it into me, where if I don't try, I don't have to feel bad about failing. So I just don't. I study enough at last minute to get by and I scrape through on the bare minimum. In ten years, I want that to not be me. I want to be a more confident, a more mature, and I guess a more emotionally stable person.

Okay, so now that we've gone there and back, I definitely want more onesies, I want to have started cosplaying, I always say I'm going to do it but I never do, and I want to be more open about some things I generally keep to myself. Also, I want the dream PC. Of course. High expectations, 29 year old Matthew.

Anyway, peace out, it's been way too real, and this was day 2. I have to admit, I sort of started this challenge on impulse but the topics are actually kind of fun and I dunno, if anyone else decided to do it I wouldn't be against reading and bookmarking and knowing all your secret details. Jokes, haha.

Read More

Day 1; Your Current Relationship (If single, discuss being Single)

Well, at this juncture, I am single. I recently broke up with someone in what was the douchiest of manners, but I am not going to discuss that.

Okay, well what is being single like? Ever watch Gotham until 5AM because your life has no real meaning and you have no one to marathon Gotham with because you're an ugly slug of a person? A teensy bit like that. Except I wanna say I'm a strong 5/10 slug of a person. I wanna say that I haven't found what I'm looking for. Which also, until very recently, wasn't very specific. Now it's less vague, I guess. There's a fair bit of stalking your exes involved. All of them. In separate google chrome tabs. While eating a tub of ice cream. Jokes, I'd have to leave my apartment and buy ice cream...

This is coming off as way more pathetic than I intended it to be.

But honestly, I guess, there is a little bit of freedom in being single. Not the "don't look at other people" kind, honestly, are we twelve? Yes, it's going to be an actual given that your partner doesn't find you and you alone attractive. Of course she loves Ian Somerhalder and his perfect abs. Of course he was checking her out when you weren't looking. The thing is, when you're with a person, you love their imperfect abs or flat-as-a-board butt. That's your favourite butt. Your favourite tummy. You get to frickle frackle and play with those. They're yours to touch. Because that's the best part. You're with someone for who they are and what they look like. Because the goal is to grow old, fat, broken, wrinkled and smelly together. So no, not that kind of freedom. The kind of freedom that says, less obligation. You don't have to and worry about how you look when that person comes over, or how clean the place is. You don't have to worry about budgeting more things. You don't have to answer any weird probing questions from friends, acquaintances and family (although this is replace with either weird and kind of condescending looks, questions about why you're single and even questions about your sexuality, people, amirite?) and there's also... Freedom to discover yourself. Change your hair without okay-ing the decision because it might weird out people in her or his life and you don't wanna cause them social embarrassment. You're free to go make those personal changes.

And that freedom is worth celebrating actually. You shouldn't ever feel guilty about being single or alone. You shouldn't feel sad about it. I think when we're alone long enough we start getting paranoid ideas about our person and we let ourselves become what we fear to become. I think that we should love ourselves more for the people we are. Because independence, self-confidence, distinct personality traits... Those are attractive. I mean, dependent, self loathing and boring aren't exactly the kind of things you look for in people.

So yeah, while being single does mean that you aren't sending good morning texts with kissy faces to someone, it does mean that you get to meet people in the search for the next potential Mr or Ms. right, it does mean that you get to be yourself and not integrate with someone else, and it means that you can become a better and stronger person, a person that Mr or Ms. right will be beyond in love with. And you can get white-boy wasted. #InAnOpenRelationshipWithVodka amirite?

Being single isn't actually all bad.

Read More