Good Songs and Annoying Commercials

[queerbychoice]

"Choosing to love is risking a lot
and trying to change and to give all you've got.
But don't pretend it comes out of the blue -
you take a chance and see it through.
And if it's refused what can you do?
Continue hopefully? Start anew?

Lick your wounds, buy your booze.
You won't get drunk by accident - you'll choose.
Don't blame him for refusing your bid.
He didn't decide to love. You did."

     —The Pet Shop Boys, "You Choose," Release, 2002

I bought that album yesterday. I don't understand how I managed to fail to buy any Pet Shop Boys album until so long after it was first released, but apparently I did. It won't happen again.
Such queer by choice lyrics!

Speaking of queer by choice issues, somebody is interviewing me for a student newspaper at Dublin University in Ireland this week. He emailed me questions and I have to write answers and email them back. I'm beginning to think I prefer real-time interviews where I just say everything I can in a limited amount of time until the interview is over. It can be annoying to not have time to say everything I wanted to say, but on the other hand, having days and days to write my answers causes me to feel a need to write more elaborate answers, resulting in more work for me to do.

On another subject: Has anyone else here seen the Hershey's commercial where some guy is complaining to some other guy that women are all crazy, stupid, utterly lacking in the slightest rational behavior or ability to be reasoned with in any way, and the other guy agrees but adds that he finds it very convenient that women have no brains because it means that all he has to do to get them to do anything he wants is to wave a little chocolate in front of them - and then he adopts a ridiculous high-pitched parody of a female voice moaning near-orgasmically at the sight of chocolate, "Ohhhh myyyy goshhh, chocccolaaaaate, I loooooooove chocccolaaaaaaate . . ."? It's the single most offensive commercial I've seen in the past 10 years. Granted, I watch TV so rarely that I haven't seen the majority of commercials that have been broadcast in the past 10 years, but . . . let's just say, I don't feel like buying Hershey's anymore. I like chocolate very well, but I prefer to obtain it from companies that do not proclaim me subhuman.

Today is my first day of work. I would be at work already except that they told me not to come to work until 10:30 the first day because the people who are going to train me have to drive to Sacramento from their separate office two hours away and they won't arrive until 10:30. So these are my last few hours left at home.

Comments

[yareach.livejournal.com]

At least Hershey's is crap chocolate anyway. *blech* And now with this commercial, even more so.

<3 Pet Shop Boys.

[sammka.livejournal.com]

And I also resent the implication that I will turn into an orgasmic moron just from the sight of Hershey's chocolate. It takes a FAR HIGHER cocoa content (70% or higher!) to turn me into a chocolate-grabbing freak, thank you very much! I would also like to point out that any male who has tasted good chocolate with high actual-cocoa content will also turn into a puddle of goo when presented with such treasures.

[mariness.livejournal.com]

Now, you see, if the guy had been waving around some Godiva truffles, he might have had a point.

But for a Hershey's bar? Nah. Even I'm not that chocolate obsessed.

[faintpraise.livejournal.com]

I too love the Pet Shop Boys. A lot (hmm I'm not sure they are on my interests list, must fix that).

The commercial sounds awful.

[theotherjay.livejournal.com]

See, this is why I don't watch tv anymore.

Funny, isn't it, how when we have a strong ideological filter, we see things in the world through that filter, in support of our principles? Mind you, the connection is clear. But again, I have to raise the counterargument. I don't think people really choose to fall in love, though they can certainly choose to encourage and nurture those feelings, or to try to remove themselves from that situation. But love is something that hits you whether you want it or not, often at the most inconvenient times, with the most impossible people. (Or maybe that's just me...) You choose to express love. You choose to have relationships, though sometimes they sneak up on you. You choose to acknowledge your feelings. But love itself, I'd say, isn't so much a choice as it is one of the emotions that contributes to your choices.

Who would have thought the Pet Shop Boys would be so profound?

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I think that we choose what traits to consider desirable, and then when someone shows up who possesses those traits, we find it difficult to stop finding them desirable because in order to do so, we would have to revise our preexisting decisions about what traits to consider desirable.

[theotherjay.livejournal.com]

If we choose which traits we find desirable, why do so many women, who claim to really want a Nice Guy, find themselves attracted to assholes? ;-)

Ok, so that's not the best argument. Here, perhaps, is a better: By this logic, could you make yourself consider desirable some trait which you presently do not? Say, for example, you were pressed into an arranged marriage. It would be very helpful to be able to choose to be attracted to your new partner, who you were compelled to be with; and very inconvenient to be simply unable to be attracted to them, even if all your family and culture insisted to you that you should be happy to have them. Could you choose to be attracted to that person?

This is not just an idle thought experiment. There are still societies in the world where arranged marriages are practiced, and the principals are frequently told that they are lucky, that the husband or wife they're handed is attractive and they should properly love each other. But they may well be unable to really feel love or attraction for that person, confounding their families, their spouse, and even themselves. If they could just choose to be attracted to a given set of traits, would that problem still exist?

Just a thought.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

There are plenty of unhappy arranged marriages, but there are nearly as many unhappy freely chosen marriages. To me, the very fact that arranged marriages have been even sufficiently marginally successful to continue existing at all proves that people do have the ability to choose to find different traits desirable.

The only limit to one's ability to choose to find different traits desirable is that one must be able to actually convince oneself they are desirable - one must find some reason to think so, because nobody ever chooses anything if they sincerely believe that they're making a 100% stupid idiotic terrible choice. Thus, I've found myself very able to choose to find any different body type desirable, but I would have extreme difficulty choosing to find stupidity desirable, because my current ideas about relationships strongly associate happiness in them with having a partner who isn't too stupid to understand anything I want to say. However, there are plenty of people who do find stupidity to be a highly desirable trait in a partner - and most of them are domineering sexist heterosexual men who are looking for the youngest possible, most naive possible, stupidest possible female partner because that will make her easier to manipulate into doing anything they want, and their current ideas about relationships strongly associate happiness with having a partner who unquestioningly obeys their every word. So I believe I'm fully biologically capable of acquiring a taste for that, but in order to do so I would have to rewrite a pretty significant amount of my ideas about happiness and relationships, and throw away a significant amount of the ideas I was raised to believe. I'm capable of it, but it would be an immense undertaking and I'm not motivated to try it.

[dzuunmod.livejournal.com]

I like television, but very selectively. It can be great, sometimes. But when I'm not selective and I just watch whatever's on, I often feel my brain slowly oozing out of my ears.

[wordspore.livejournal.com]

Yeah. . .no Hersey's for Juliet either.

[nouveau-prole.livejournal.com]

When you get the craving for Hershey's corporate muck, treat yourself to a little fantasy instead - this method has done wonders for The Lovely Sandra's waistline.
Hope first day at new job went well for you.

[theobscure.livejournal.com]

"It's the single most offensive commercial I've seen in the past 10 years. Granted, I watch TV so rarely that I haven't seen the majority of commercials that have been broadcast in the past 10 years, but . . . "

Be glad you haven't seen the Labatt Blue "switch" commercial, then.

[nouveau-prole.livejournal.com]

Over here in UK we recently had a Yorkie Bar advertising campaign based on the slogan "It's not for girls". Obviously this was meant to provoke the opposite reaction, and send the girls scurrying to the shops for Yorkie Bars. But the girls didn't, and the campaign was swiftly dropped.
When Yorkie Bars first came out, the advertising had you believe that they was only for hunky, young, male lorry-drivers - they sold like hot feckin' cakes.