Monthly Archives: June 2016

Strangers making noise at the subway

The other day, I entered the subway station and a man was playing an erhu. No, I didn’t know what it was called before, and I’m not about to confess which search terms I entered to find out because they won’t make me sound very smart, but congratulations, now you know what it’s called, and I know you were wondering. Anyway, an erhu, a thing you now know about because you just Googled it, sounds deeply annoying. I walked a little further and discovered a trumpeter. You all know what a trumpet is, and how annoying it sounds. Can you imagine these two competing musicians occupying just one small station? Get your shit together, guys. Also the train was late, so I had to listen to an erhuist (yup, I made that word up)/trumpeter mashup and it was not okay.

It makes so much sense that Brock Turner’s father raised him

By now, you’ve probably heard about scum-on-the-earth Stanford swimmer’s horrifying father’s plea for leniency for Brock Turner, a young man who underwent the trying ordeal of having raped a woman behind a dumpster after a frat party. (If you haven’t read it, here it is via The Guardian.) I kind of hate that I just called him a Stanford swimmer, because he’s a rapist first.

You may also know about the Turner Family Support Fund Facebook page, which solicited donations for the defense of their son against the violent rape he committed. Not being a parent myself, I can’t speak to what I would do in this situation. I guess you have to keep loving your child, even if that child is a rapist. But you don’t have to ask other people for money to support him. Nor do you have to feel sorry for him because he can’t enjoy a steak and only got “20 minutes of action” out of raping someone.

I wonder if the rapist’s father would feel better if it had taken longer to rape his victim. (Side note: I’m pretty sure he has no actual idea how long the rape lasted.)

How does his mother feel about all this? As noted above, I’m sure she has to keep loving him, but that doesn’t mean she has to be proud of him. I sincerely hope she’s not proud of him.

“I’ve been shattered by the party culture and risk taking behavior that I briefly experienced in my four months at school,” the rapist said in his blame-game statement. Really great use of the passive voice. Your high school English teacher must be proud. I guess it was the abstract “party culture” that violently raped a woman, and subsequently made you the victim of its evil pull.

“These things force me to never want to put myself in a position where I have to sacrifice everything.” First of all, that statement offends the victim. Secondly, it offends the English language, because what? I’m really sorry about the sacrifices you had to make in order to rape someone.

I can’t respond to this any better than the victim herself did. If you haven’t read her statement to Brock, please read it in full here.

In summary, The Onion said it best with this amazing video from 2011.