How Sex Killed Society

so the last night I was having a conversation with Mike about a sad epiphany I had the other day and he suggested that I start writing some of my ideas down in a blog so that I can regain that intellectual stimulation I feel I've lost since being out of school. so here's to the first of many (hopefully)...

How Sex Killed Society

So we were listening to oldies on the way home from San Diego and I realized something that the so-called feminist in me shuttered to think. I realized that the sexual revolution in the '60's is the cause of the sad state of our society with regards to popular culture. I look around me at the icons young girls have to look up to like Kesha and the like, and I just mourn our demise. In listening to oldies, I noticed a common theme from male and female artists alike: love and romance. This theme lies in stark contrast to the over-arching theme of todays music which seems to revolve around getting drunk and being slutty. The question that came to me in recognizing this contrast is: what happened socially that shifted the popular culture paradigm from expounding the virtues of being classy and demure and singing the wonders of puppy love and first kisses to a paradigm that is over-run with tales of drunken debauchery and sleazy late night encounters? The answer: the sexual revolution. Now don't get me wrong, as a woman I believe that we should be able to make our own choices and should not be cloistered to prevent sexual freedom. When I stop agreeing is when that sexual freedom transforms into an excuse for a lack of personal accountability, and teaches the youth that the only way to have fun is to go out get drunk and sleep with a random stranger. Now the ideals behind the sexual revolution were valid: a woman should be able to have sex like a man, a woman should be free to express herself how she pleases and a woman should be able to do these things free from societal judgement. But the reality of the situation is that the sexual revolution has led to many women turning to sex to fill the self-esteem void and this, in turn, gives society permission to treat women as objects. ...more to come

updates

wow, it has been forever since I have posted anything here. Let's see...what has happened since the reception. Well, I guess the biggest news came in December when we found out we are having a baby. We went to San Diego for our birthdays and saw the Chargers beat Kansas City and went to the zoo. In February we found out that our baby is a boy...YAY!!! and we picked a name: Parker James Cates. This past weekend we celebrated our 1 year anniversary (geez I can't believe how quickly time passes). We went to San Diego again. We went to a mystery dinner theater (Mystery Cafe) and it was so funny, we had a great time. We also went to the Wild Animal Park, and were less than impressed, there's not much to do unless you have lots of extra money. Mostly though, we just relaxed in the hotel room and watched Community and Glee. It was amazingly relaxing. And that pretty much brings us up to speed on life events.

some reception pictures

so here are a few of the best of our reception pictures. our photographer, Robin, was great. she took almost 800 pictures and really did a great job capturing all the fun and all the details. I am really excited to finally have a few really good family group photos.

As for other news, we are almost finished moving. Our camping trip was amazing (pictures to come soon). Hailey got a little bored; three days of camping is probably a little bit too much for such a young kid, especially with no other kids around. She did however make friends with the group of UCLA students taking a trip before their masters program starts. By the time we left Arizona hot springs, they all knew her name. The beach was filled with a chorus of "Bye Hailey! Have a good trip Hailey!" etc, etc. it was cute. She is definitely an extrovert.

Recently I took this Career Discovery Series training class at work where we talked about different personality types and what career paths go along with those well. We took the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality test. I came out as an INFP, which pretty much fit me to a T, I was impressed. It was a very interesting opportunity for personal exploration, and I am very excited to continue doing career research and start setting goals to help me move in the direction I want to go. Time to figure out what I want to be when I grow up...

checking in

so it seems im not so good at this whole blogging thing...i just never remember that i want to write stuff down. so to check in, it has been an extremely busy month for us and its only the 18th. our reception was great, we had a lot of people turn out and it seemed that everyone had a really fun time. thank you dennis and gloria. (still waiting on pictures) then we started moving last weekend. not so sure yet how i feel about living with mike's parents for the next few months, but i think that the end result will be well worth it. mike may move to the day shift soon, which would be an amazing turn of events for our family. friday night we will drive out to nevada for our second canoeing trip to black canyon (we went for our honeymoon and now we are taking hailey with us on the same trip) super excited for that. hailey is too, she started trying to pack this morning, it was cute. then next weekend is hailey's 8th birthday, still dont know what we are doing for her, but we'll figure out something fun. so thats its for us so far...until the next time i am procrastinating...

This weekend...

So Hailey is still in Hawaii but she will be back tomorrow sometime in the afternoon. Bethany plans to drop her on their way back from the airport. It has been very quiet this whole week. And it’s not like we have her every day, so I am used to having free nights, but it has definitely been weird not having her at all. This weekend we will help Dennis and Gloria in their backyard, laying brick for the new patio. I think it is going to look great when it is all done, though I really can’t wait until we are finished for much more selfish reasons. I think we are going to have a really relaxing movie night in on Saturday and maybe go to the drive in on Sunday to see the new kids movie, but we’ll see. Looking forward to the reception. Looking even more forward to after the reception when we will move into the backhouse…thank goodness we will finally be rid of Kermit.

slacker

so I have really been slacking when it comes to posting, and more importantly when it comes to working on my art in general lately. My last sketch was on June 15, so a full month ago. I did however read the most amazing book in that time. The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson. This is easily one of the top five best books I have ever read. The way that Davidson describes the world is beautiful and addictive.

http://www.amazon.com/Gargoyle-Andrew-Davidson/dp/0385524943

and the author seems quite funny.

So the plan, is to start taking advantage of my time alone (oh yes, my husband now works the 12-9pm shift so I have A LOT of free time on my hands at night) and do at least one 20-30 minute sketch a night and one painting a week. lets see how that works out...