More abominations from your local Kiss station

I've written before about my confusion and distaste for crass pop-music lyrics. Do people not think about what they're singing? Are listeners just bopping around, thinking that it's okay to hum along to the overtly sexual lyrics pulsating through the virginal ear drums of the soccer team in the back of the minivan? I hate to sound like an old codger, but I'm already thinking that if I ever have children (ick), I'll be one of those parents who only lets them listen to the family-friendly soft rock stations. I don't want my eight year old to so much as ask me to kiss them thru the phone, nevermind asking when they'll be old enough to date go-go dancers and rent yachts. Who am I kidding? By the time I have kids, maybe radio will be dead. Looks like they'll be hearing the 7-hour long Celine playlist I have so lovingly crafted. If you remain unconvinced of the rapid degeneration of pop music lyrics, please join me as we take a stroll through the sordid modern day Top 40 Scene.

I'll start with the song I find most egregiously offensive, Lady Gaga's "Love Game." It's a well-known fact that Lady Gaga is certifiably insane, so maybe we can't expect her to have a conscience, or a brain...or integrity. Let's look at the following:

I'm on a mission
And it involves some heavy touching, yeah
You've indicated you're interest
I'm educated in sex, yes
Now I want it bad, want it bad
A love game, a love game

Uh, alrighty. Well, in case you weren't entirely sure what Lady G had been leading up to in the preceding verses, she's here to let you know it involves some heavy touching. I do wish that whoever wrote these fine lyrics had just kept in the original phrase, which we know they were thinking of, "heavy petting." It has been so underused, almost entirely forgotten, ever since we wrapped up the miniature sex-ed unit taught by gym teachers in fifth grade. You know I'm right. And of course, Lady Gaga must too, as she says she is educated in sex. Do you have a degree, my Lady? Or is this more of a life experience/apprenticeship situation? I assume the latter, but nevertheless I'm still curious. However, the real reason I object to this song is this line: "I wanna take a ride on your disco stick."

Are you serious? Can this really mean what I think it does? How, in one or two musical generations, did we go from The Beatles' innocent, "I want to hold your hand" to THIS. I tend to think if there is something you would never say to someone in real life, it should not be the chorus of a pop song. If you said to someone, "I wanna take a ride on your disco stick" and he responded affirmatively, that should be a sign to stay away. That is a sentence no one should say or hear.

Moving on, before I get too upset. The following song was blasting through the radio in a friend's car recently, when everyone suddenly got up in arms about a particular line. However, in my extensive research for this entry, I have found even more objectionable material in "Blame It (On the Alcohol)" by Jamie Foxx feat. T-Pain.

a) Baby I would rather show you
What you been missing in your life when I get inside.

Good lord. If you are going to be a presumptuous womanizer, could you at least do it discreetly? Perhaps employ some literary devices to keep your motivations somewhat shrouded in mystery?

b) Fill another cup up
Feelin on yo butt what?

I guess not. The lyrics to many popular songs theses days fail to exceed the intellectual levels of most sixth-grade boys. Yo butt what!! Speaking of, where on earth is Sisqo?


c) She look me dead in the eye
Then my pants got bigga

This was the lyric that sent the girls in the car squealing. And not in a good way. Remember the swirling romance of Frank Sinatra's "Fly me to the moon" or the understated sexiness of Bob Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay"? THIS SONG IS NOT LIKE THAT.

I was going to close this entry with another song dissection, but after reading Flo rida's "Right round" lyrics, I am just completely exhausted. I know many of these songs are meant to be played in clubs, so singing about strippers and drinking is apropos. But am I the only one who feels her soul whither sometimes? When I'm driving around suburban Massachusetts, passing school children, historical sites, and Girl Scout bake sales, am I the only one who wishes for a little more Simon and Garfunkel and a little less Jesse McCartney and Ludacris?

Leave your favorite lyrics in the comments.

Pots of gold and rainbows, and me red balloons!

So, tomorrow is April 1st, and jobless college seniors everywhere will whimper quietly as the dawn of a new month reminds us all of the unstoppable gallop toward graduation. A lot of you probably never imagined you'd be dreading graduation day so much, but sometime between now and our freshman year, the world collapsed, and suddenly it seems we're left in the dusty fallout of four years of hard work, inflated dreams, and accumulating student loan debt with no hope in sight.

I'm sorry, is this outlook too dreary for you? You can tell me if it is, but I get the sense from all of my friends' increasingly anxious Twitter updates that I'm not the only once facing nightly quarterlife crisis anxiety attacks. It seems unfathomable to me that after I've tried to do everything right during college and taken all the advice of people who told me to volunteer, get good grades, get involved with campus media and organizations, and immerse myself in new situations, that I'm still just another unremarkable faceless wanderer in the way overcrowded jobseeker purgatory.

Then something occurred to me, and hey you, yeah, the one weeping at the computer screen, I want this to occur to you too. Let's not get depressed. Lend me your ear, sugar plum.

So am I the only one who feels like every time someone (granted, these are mostly stories from journalists, so make of that what you will) tells me how they found a job, it always involves some freak occurrence/unexpected twist of fate? I can't count how many people have described finding a job in a way similar to this: "Well, I was walking down the street, feeling bad for myself because I couldn't find a job as a reporter at any New England newspaper. I decided to stop at a farmer's market, and got to talking with a local farmer who was selling a kind of fruit I'd never heard of. He told me it was the only thing unicorns would eat. Unicorns? I thought this guy was crazy, but then out of the corner of my eye, a real, live unicorn emerged out of a shady thicket and beckoned to me. In a leap of faith, I got on its back and it flew me to a Chuck E Cheese, where the owner happened by with a free pizza for me and my new unicorn friend, and mentioned that years ago, he'd interned at the Hartford Courant. His old supervisor works for The Providence Journal now and is incidentally looking for a new health beat reporter. And you won't believe this, but at that very second the editor from the Providence Journal walked into Chuck E Cheese with his daughter. It was her sixth birthday. We had an impromptu, and obviously informal, interview in the ball pit, and I was hired on the spot. No clips, resume, networking, or cover letter required!"

Have you heard tales like this? Any speaker to ever come into one of my reporting or writing classes seems to relate some type of "I slipped on a banana peel, and the man who helped me up is my boss now" sort of story. It's not exactly helpful advice for people involved in old-school, rigorous job searches, but there is information to be gleaned from these tales. Here's my advice. Don't feel bad about yourselves just yet. Let's look for four-leaf clovers, throw spilled salt over our left shoulders, and make even more eye contact with strangers than usual. Make wishes on gingersnaps, keep your eyes peeled for leprechauns, and spend sleepless nights looking for shooting stars.

This is how you find a job.

In the mind of a procrastinator...a stream of consciousness

I'm going to write my paper. Let me find the course reader and my notes. Page 29...women in the labor movement...

I'm thirsty. I guess I should make some tea. Oh, this kitchen is disgusting. I should clean it.

Kitchen is cleaned. Back to work, but I shouldn't do my history homework right now. Must research my magazine article so I can sketch out some interview questions. Let's check the news to see if there are any updates on my topic. Better yet, Twitter. Now let's read the Twitter feeds of every single one of my followers. So many links from NPR! I need to listen to these stories.

This has been productive. Maybe I'll write some cover letters for jobs. Let's pull up the Career Center's e-mail. Ooh! An email from my mom! Hi mom! I should write back. Sent. Ooh! Someone wrote on my wall. Which reminds me, I need to go on facebook to RSVP to an event. Huh? Facebook says it's Julie's birthday? I have to call her.

Where's my phone? Can someone call my phone? Oh I hear it, it's in my bed. Oh my God, when was the last time I washed my sheets? I need to do that right now. Okay, laundry's on. Back to work.

But first I should put on some music. I can only be productive if I'm listening to something good. Hey, where's my Ipod? Oh I hope I didn't leave it at the gym. Speaking of, I need to put on another load of laundry. My gym clothes smell worse than a fifth-grade classroom after recess.

But I don't have any more quarters for the washer and dryer. I have to take a walk to the coin machine. I need some fresh air anyway.

Back. Found my Ipod in the hamper. I'm going to sit on my bed and read, away from the computer. No reading news, e-mails, Twitter, anything. I can only read about women in the labor movement.

Labor movement? Textile mills my foot, at least they had jobs! I will never find work. Why am I even trying to study? I'm a second-semester senior. I haven't watched Grey's in three weeks. Maybe I should just do that instead.

My brother's a genius and I just blog.

I'm a failure. My second stab at 20 posts in 30 days was a catastrophe; I only posted ten entries! My computer crashed, I realized I was enrolled in classes and had a plethora of assignments due, and also was busy with several quarterlife crisis moments along the way. Time was scarce, and so was inspiration. Last time I tried a blogging blitz. my life was defined by dreams of McLatte, slave labor at the intern desk, and my absurd devotion to a particularly shameful ABC reality show. I had more to write about and definitely more time to do it. But no excuses. Let's pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and get back to the hard-hitting, thought-provoking material you've come to expect from Catherine the Greatest.

THREE THINGS YOU THINK YOU UNDERSTAND BUT YOU REALLY DON'T.

My older brother James is a physics major doing graduate solar research at Penn State. He understands everything about science, machines and technology. I feel that he was born with this knowledge. He definitely didn't it get it from my parents, and his teachers were generally too busy collecting squirrels for pets (that really happened) or making their students write letters to other students on boats (that also really happend). He just knows everything. More than once I have called him with a question like "How do microwaves work?" or "How are electrical fires started underground? Where is the electricity in relation to the sewer system and subways in a big city?" And he always knows! How does he have such extensive knowledge about everything from kitchen appliances to sanitation systems?! My brother is so smart! He's always been a patient teacher with me, but I think he knows that my liberal-arts word-oriented brain will never be receptive to his techy, nerdy lessons. So here's a list of things, many of which he has thoroughly explained to me multiple times, that I still do not understand.

3. Aviation. I should probably go to the library and check out a book on the Wright brothers, because it is unfathomable to me that someone said, "Hey, let's take a giant weighty machine and propel it through the air." And sure, I have come across the word "aerodynamics" before, but don't lie, you don't really understand how planes work either. And don't tell me to go to howstuffworks.com. I've been there. I can read and understand it, but there is still a voice in the back of my head whispering, "This is pretend." Hundreds of people pile into a large metal object and soar through the air. WHAT?!

2. Space. One day I am going to write an opinion piece about all of the conflicting emotions I have about NASA. The fact that $18 billion dollars a year goes into that program astonishes me, and frankly I feel that the folks over at NASA could be screwing us all over and no one would be the wiser. Huh, Pluto's not a planet? Erm okay. What's that? Water on Mars? Maybe so! They could tell us Whitey Bulger was found on the moon, and who are we to say, "That's not possible"?

Remember when the Columbia shuttle exploded because of the damaged tile? NASA knew the piece broke off, but didn't really look into it, despite the persistent pleas of a chief engineer who was on his game. Also, it was Martin Luther King weekend, so people were out of the office, and didn't feel like investigating the matter. How do you send a SPACESHIP out into the solar system, and then just put your feet up and take a three-day weekend? I wrote about this topic before, but my indignant rage has not subsided in the least. Also while we're talking about Space... that "picture" of the Milky Way... is not really pictures of the Milky Way. Didn't you ever stop to think how they could possibly photograph a galaxy we're allegedly a part of? They're just pictures of other spiral-armed galaxies that science nerds imagine the Milky Way could be like. How deceptive. I feel cheated. Next time I see an astronomer, I am giving them the wickedest wedgie.

1. The Internet. James has tried to explain this to me forever, but I still don't get it, and don't lie, you don't either. Tell me, when you send an e-mail, where does it go? How can governments block sites in certain countries? When you get a virus that paralyzes your entire computer by releasing hundreds of "trojans," what is that? The Internoodle is one of life's greatest mysteries, but unlike space, I am grateful for it on a daily basis. I imagine all of its processes to be similar to what happened in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, when Mike TV puts his candy bar in the machine, and it breaks into tiny pieces, and is put back together again. If this is not how the Noodle works, then don't tell me because I don't want to hear it. In my tiny brain, the Internet is sort of a cross between Humpty Dumpty and chocolate. On a related note, fax machines are ridiculously far beyond my comprehension. How does the phone send an image?!? On another related note: phones...so much easier to understand when there were actual wires and cables. Alexander Graham Bell would have a stroke if we told him about cell towers.

What don't you understand? You can say it; I am clearly in no position to judge.

Will work for absolutely nothing

Students are being taken advantage of in an unexpected and underestimated way, and that is through the inherently unfair process of unpaid internships. Sure, internships are not an entirely new invention, but the pressures placed on undergraduates to secure one, and the interminable emphasis on doing so (FIND ONE OR YOU MIGHT AS WELL DIE), certainly weren't a part of my parent's generation. The good news is a lot of people recognize this fact and offer me pitying glances when I talk about paying back student loans while interning for no pay. The bad news? Nothing will ever be done about it, because there will always be privileged students who are able to work for free, and parents who will support them. I am one of the lucky ones, I've been able to live at home, but I've also had to earn my own money as I go. I recently finished my second internship, and I can't lie. I'm a little bitter.

Part of the blame, I suppose, is on myself for being overly ambitious and naive, thinking it would be a smart idea to pursue a career in publishing. These unpaid "internships" are more popular in some professions than others, and in mine, it's almost impossible to find something that pays. The few that do are so highly sought-after that thousands of students apply for only a handful of positions. But apparently, in a world inconceivable to my liberal-arts brain, a world inhabited by mathletes and science-fair winners, students actually get paid for the work that they do, and get meaningful experience at the same time. Oh, to be an engineer.

I am loath to sound like the "entitled interns" that Gawker so readily makes fun of, but I think an oft-forgotten point must be made about unpaid internships. Working for free is one thing, but in many cases, students end up paying through the nose for an internship because the workplace requires you get credit for it. Many schools waive a tuition charge for summer credits. Syracuse, God bless it, does not. Allow me to explain.

Over the summer, I interned a measly two days a week at a snoozefest interior design magazine. My supervisor there absolutely demanded that I get course credit for the internship, because otherwise, I would be completing work without any "compensation."

Oh, really, is that right? Well, if I get credit, I must pay tuition. Nevermind that I didn't need the credit at all, as I was about to take a semester off because I had extra credits. To review: I am paying money in order to be given the honor of completing more unpaid work. I chose the cheapest route and took the internship for one credit, which cost $900. Add to that about $400 in transportation costs, not including the special events and shoots I went to. This fall, I worked three days a week at a city magazine, and averaged about $50/week in transportation costs (this time I fortunately was not subject to any credit requirements). I am eternally grateful for public transport; I am sure I would have averaged much more between gas and parking had I been driving. But $50 is a lot of money for a poor student, and I wish internship supervisors, as well as college internship offices, would keep this in mind, especially if they are expecting students to pay for course credits.

I understand that people want to make sure students are committed, and that those students need to prove themselves in a professional environment before anyone wants to hire them. But after a while, I couldn't help but feel a little degraded when I continued to scrape pennies together to go to work in a place where, some days (particularly over the summer), no one acknowledged my presence. A "thank you for coming" every now and then would have been nice, as I sat in my threadbare clothing, hunched over whichever frozen lunch entree was on sale that week. Or, what about the times I wrote an article that the magazine ordinarily would have paid a freelancer to write? But because I, the intern, wrote it, they can rest easy and save some cash. At one point, I seriously thought about forwarding my tuition bill to the magazine's parent company just to see what sort of response I would get. Forgive me everyone, but sometimes it was a challenge to gear myself up to be a motivated, self-starting intern when I was worried about whether I could make enough money at my job during the other four days to pay my loans, bills, and oh yeah, the train fare to get my pathetic intern self to the office.

The reason this stings so badly for me is because, after all of that obnoxiousness, and skipping family vacations, and working seven days a week for months on end, a career in publishing isn't even what I want anymore! I worked hard, and I did good work. So what return do I get on the investment of all of that time? A few lines on my resume, a recommendation from a supervisor? Should I be grateful for the honor of just being given the opportunity, even if it deterred me from a career and set my life askew? Even if I did want to work in magazines, the industry is pretty much going up in flames, so where would I work? How many more of these unpaid internships am I going to have to complete before I am "qualified" enough to get paid?

I think we need a government bailout-- to all of the college-educated, unpaid interns past and present, for anyone who schlepped themselves to and fro, hoping it would pay off some day, only to find out their industry, their dreams, or both, had shattered somewhere along the way. I promise to make like GM and restructure my life, think about how to be greener, the whole nine.... but I cannot promise a pay cut. What's less than zero?

O beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of graaaiiinnn

Our impending graduation has caused me to think an awful lot about my future lately. I might use the phrases 'existential crisis', 'anxiety attack', or perhaps 'crippling self-doubt' to describe my state of mind on any given day. One of the decisions I've been mulling over is whether to pursue the whole journalism thing, or head more toward the non-profit "save the world" side of things. For a variety of reasons, at this point, I see myself doing more with my policy studies degree than my magazine journalism one. A few days ago, Maureen Dowd's column affirmed my horror at the current state of job opportunities with the media.

You should read it, but I'll summarize for the word-weary or functionally illiterate. Basically, Pasadena Now, a lifestyle and news site in California, outsourced ALL OF ITS REPORTERS TO INDIA. I thought maybe it was a dinky site, and the outsourcing only meant that Indians would be surfing the Web, compiling event listings for the peeps in Pasadena. NOPE. It's a pretty legit site, and now, all of the stories are written by Indians, using Web searches and telephone reporting. Pardon me? I thought the whole point of city/regional sites, papers, and magazines was to give readers an insider's guide to where they live, dispensed by people who live there. But apparently you can provide that perspective from any corner of the globe?

I don't stand a chance.

Think I'm being pessimistic? Maybe. But two weeks ago I read this article, which says children of Indian parents, who moved their families to the States for more opportunities, are now going back to India. Because that's where the jobs are. To give you an idea, a quote from the article: "Exact data on émigrés working in India or spending more time here are scarce. But this is one indicator: India unveiled an Overseas Citizen of India card in 2006, offering foreign citizens of Indian origin visa-free entry for life and making it easier to work in the country. By this July, more than 280,000 émigrés had signed up, according to The Economic Times..."

Okay.

So what does this mean for me? India here I come. Although, maybe now isn't really the best time. Oooh, what about China? It's the future!! No, there's that whole censorship thing. I don't know how kindly they would take to my outspoken diatribes.

Maybe there's another solution. I have always been fond of harkening back to the days of the Depression and riding the rails. There's a lot of country out there to see people, and it's about time we took a look. I might look rather fetching with oil smudges on my face, and rocking a little Newsies outfit. And it really is about time I went farther west than New Orleans. Who's with me?

You're so vain, you probably think the Super Bowl is about you

A gal named Amy Borkowsky is single and desperately seeking a husband. She is in her 40s, and living in New York, where she says it's harder to find a guy than TV shows like Sex and the City make it seem. Her solution? Raise $3 million so she can advertise herself in a commercial during the Super Bowl.

This is a horseman of the apocalypse. This woman is asking people to give her money so she can advertise, and in my mind humiliate, herself in front of the tens of millions of people who tune in to watch the Super Bowl. In the LA Times article, someone criticizes her lofty goal, noting it seems like such an act of desperation; but I was struck more by the mindlessness of such shameful self-indulgence. What makes you think you deserve people's money? Have you exhausted every other avenue? How did you possibly arrive at this as a solution to your dateless existence?

Three million dollars is a tremendous amount of money. If Amy was so determined to get herself a public audience, I wonder if she ever considered something other than blatant self-promotion. The thought of this much money being given to a woman who wants nothing more to do with it than buy herself some ad time and try to catch a man, who's probably a six-pack deep, stuffing his face with nachos and salsa, is mindboggling to me.

I am glad to report she has only raised about $2,800, according to her official site. Now, I could maniacally rattle off some statistics about how many hungry people could be fed with a cool $3 mill, or how many children could receive life-saving medical treatment for conditions no one in the U.S. typically dies from, but tonight I am feeling weary of the world, so I am just going to paste a little image I Stumbled Upon recently. May it sock Amy in the gut as forcefully as it did me:

Never say I didn't warn you.

Recently, while on a binge-perusal of Post Secrets, I came across one with a picture of Mr. Rogers. The writing said "You never prepared me for how cruel the world can be."

This sparked a brilliant idea. What if there was a children's show that did just that? One that prepared children for the twists and turns that are inevitable parts of life, a show where the host informed youngsters of the harsh realities of the adult world. Just imagine. I immediately began formulating a list of show topics in my brain.

Episode One: Car Accidents
Episodes Two and Three: Credit Card and Student Loan Debt
Episode Four: When your boyfriend cheats
Episode Five: Unemployment
Episode Six: Health Insurance.

The options are really limitless. We've all had those moments, where you just want to yell at your parents, your teachers, anyone. YOU NEVER TOLD ME IT WAS GOING TO BE LIKE THIS. This show, while brutal and will most likely reduce viewers to tears, will solve that problem. Children will graduate pre-school well-versed in relevant topics, such as the housing crisis, war in the Middle East, and dependence on foreign oil.

Come on PBS, what do you say? Instead of having that damned trolley lead to the land of make believe, let's give those kids a nice dose of reality.

Please leave suggested titles for the program in the comments section.

I stretch because I feel sad

A stranger wraps her hands around my hips and pulls them up toward the ceiling. Then, she moves a hand to the small of my back and puts another one around my rib cage. She pushes, twisting my torso outward.

It's 9:30 a.m., and I feel intensely uncomfortable. I have never spoken to this girl in my life and she is freely groping in third-date territory. Welcome to yoga!

After frustrating schedules in past years, I finally had the time to take a fitness class at SU this semester. For reasons that presently escape me, I decided to take yoga. I figured it would force me to stop being a maniac, who worries incessantly about things like hegemony and cultural genocide, and ''center" myself for a couple hours a week. Despite being about as flexible about as Britney Spears is reasonable, I came to enjoy and look forward to the class.

But in the past weeks, it has somehow devolved into a touchy-feely, earthy crunchy feelings fest. Our Hippy Instructor Extraordinaire, Annie, recently ended class early and instructed everyone to gather in a circle. We were told to state why we were taking yoga and what we hoped to get out of it.

Cue eyeroll. I mentally check out at this point and begin wondering whether there is enough change in my bag for coffee at People's Place.

The sharing begins. Mary takes yoga because her grandmother is 84 and is as bendy as the day she was born, and by God, Mary wants to be like that too! (Have you ever tried to bend a baby? LIKE RUBBER BANDS, THEY FLEX!)

Julie is a senior and is having trouble facing the stressful reality that, in nine short months, she will have to be a Big Girl. Yoga, she is sure, will fix this and postpone the onset of reality. I picture Julie pulling out tufts of hair at a cubicle, breathing deeply and whipping out a Warrior III yoga pose, just as her boss rounds the corner to ask about those cover sheets for the TPS reports.

Instructor Annie looks on sympathetically, eyebrows furrowed, listening closely to her pupils' tales of woe. She tells us her story-- she moved to San Francisco to be a dancer (flapper?), but it didn't work out. The room is heavy, wondering what catastrophe befell Annie. What could keep Annie from the stage?! My nagging questions go unanswered, and Annie tell us she happily teaches dance and yoga now and lives a comfortable life with husband and dog. By piecing together the chronology of her tale, she is at least 10 years older than I thought. Note to Lindsay Lohan: Maybe you should do yoga because you have aged 20 years in the last three.

But this interruption to class, while annoying, is not entirely maddening. But fast forward to the next class. Annie stops us again with 30 minutes left, instructs us to count off by ones and twos, with each group going to an opposite side of the studio. Walk backwards, she says. Then, CRASH INTO SOMEONE AND TALK TO THEM. We are not allowed to ask regular questions like majors, years, and all of that. We are to ask deep, soul-probing questions and report back to the class about the girl that we met.

Cindy: This is Emily, her dog just died and she feels constipated today.
Emily: This is Cindy, she loves Hello Kitty and wants to operate hot air balloons for a living.

Do you feel my pain? I love engaging strangers in conversation, don't get me wrong. But not in yoga, which seems to be happening with increasing frequency. Last week, when I was feeling particularly in the zone, Annie stopped class because our ''energy" was too heavy.

Dear Professor,
I will not be handing in my research paper. It makes my energy too heavy. Please let me know if there is a sexual favor I could perform in exchange for credit.
Thanks,
Catherine

Today, when we partnered up with people to do the aforementioned adjusting of each other's postures, I could not have wanted to do anything less. Maybe I am being overly self-conscious or narrow-minded, but am I asking too much if I want to do downward dog by myself, without the probing finger tips of strange girls all over my body?

Just saying.