Yet another reason to hate beauty pageants

New Rule: People must stop using their upbringing as an excuse to justify being a closed minded idiot and bigot.

In last night's Miss USA pageant, Miss California (who got 2nd place) was asked a tough question about legalizing same-sex marriage. She answered diplomatically that "no offense to anybody out there", but she was raised to believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman. Don't get me started on the homophobic bigotry of this nice young woman because my mom reads this blog and I don't want her to hear me use profanity. But what I can't stand most of all is people who use the "I was raised this way" defense to justify limiting other people's freedom and quality of life.

Miss California, I am ashamed (though not surprised) that my state picked you to represent us in this retarded superficial contest. I was "raised" in a country that brainwashed its people to believe all sorts of retarded things, like "capitalism is evil" and "communism can actually work". My parents and grandparents grew up in a world where everyone around them was "raised" to hate Jews. But luckily many of these people de-programmed themselves and became kind, intelligent citizens who started using their own brains to deduce right from wrong. If you're going to be a bigot, at least don't credit your parents, who were raised by their parents living in a very different time. And try to notice that many of the freedoms you enjoy today are the direct result of people de-programming the sexist, racist, bigoted misconceptions of their upbringing so that women could vote and join the workplace, a black person could marry a white person, a Jew could marry a Catholic, and so on.

Maybe then you would be worthy of first place.

This title sucks because I'm overthinking it

As this college basketball season comes to a close tonight, I can't help but notice that The Boys are getting their butts kicked. By "the boys" I actually don't mean Michigan State, but all the guys who spent hours meticulously contemplating their bracket picks after Selection Sunday, only to get beaten by girls whose knowledge and interest in college basketball consists wholly of noting how tall/good looking certain players are. I speak not only from anecdotal (but completely scientific) observation, but also from firsthand experience, as for the last two years, I have made my picks quickly and arbitrarily, with only the seed numbers to guide me. My ignorant picks have afforded me a respectable second place both times in decently sized, mostly male bracket pools. First place usually seems to go to a lucky girl with a similar level of athletic acumen and agnosticism.

So I can't help but wonder, is it really luck, or is it the absence of overthinking stemming from a healthy degree of ignorance? People often weigh the merits of going with your heart/gut vs listening to your head when making decisions, but is one really better or wiser than the other, when you don't have all the information anyway nor a magic crystal ball? Choosing a crappy team to go to the final four because it's your alma mater--that's heart. Choosing a team after studying the season's stats and determining who has a higher probability of making all their free throws--that's head. But both body parts have potential to cloud your judgment and leave you inevitably blind to lots of uncontrollable forces. And both leave you with a similar level of regret if you're wrong, albeit for different reasons.

So I guess the moral of the story is, when faced with decisions big or small, save yourself hours of unnecessary stress/deliberation and make the decision based on something arbitrary (e.g. team with brightest uniforms, job that would give you the shortest email address, etc). That way, if you're wrong, at least you can blame it on me rather than beating yourself up over it.

Over and out,
Alla