June 30, 2007
My MPAA rating: what the hell?
Mingle2 – Online Dating
It’s because it found one instance of the word sex. Huh? Sex is one of my bloody categories! It’s in 14 post titles alone! Other keywords I’ve seen on other blogs include rape (which is in 4 post titles), abortion (3 post titles), and gay (though of course GLBT rights is another of my categories), lesbian, pain, torture, death and drugs (each of which is used in one post title). Again, those are just appearances of those specific words in the titles of my posts; they’ve appeared in the text of the posts a great deal more.
So, yeah, I’m annoyed that most progressive bloggers are getting NC-17 ratings, and I got PG. I mean, fucking-A, that’s lame. Though things are clearly skewed if Pandagon only got an R. I guess what I’m saying is that you can let your kids read my blog if you think they’ll appreciate it, but I don’t have to be happy about it.
😉
My blog away from blog
I’ve been added to the ever-growing group of listers over at lists(dq). It’s a thoroughly eccentric group of lists so far, and it’s bound only to become more odd and goofy as time goes on. Go check it out!
Quote of the day
(care of Joy Harjo, poet, musician and human being extraordinaire)
“At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want. ”
—Lao Tzu
June 29, 2007
“Emotion-free” something, all right…
I realize that for every pet owner out there who treats her dog like a human child, there’s at least one other pet owner who treats his dog like an object, something incapable of feeling sensations, let alone emotions. Check out this anecdote from Mitt Romney’s past, which was featured in Wednesday’s Boston Globe:
The white Chevy station wagon with the wood paneling was overstuffed with suitcases, supplies, and sons when Mitt Romney climbed behind the wheel to begin the annual 12-hour family trek from Boston to Ontario.
As with most ventures in his life, he had left little to chance, mapping out the route and planning each stop. The destination for this journey in the summer of 1983 was his parents’ cottage on the Canadian shores of Lake Huron. Romney would be returning to the place of his most cherished childhood memories. . . .
Before beginning the drive, Mitt Romney put Seamus, the family’s hulking Irish setter, in a dog carrier and attached it to the station wagon’s roof rack. He’d built a windshield for the carrier, to make the ride more comfortable for the dog.
Then Romney put his boys on notice: He would be making predetermined stops for gas, and that was it.
So, Romney had the presence of mind to construct a windshield for the dog crate, but it didn’t occur to him that riding on the roof of a station wagon for 12 hours might still be less than comfortable — indeed, one might go so far as to say extremely fucking unpleasant — for a dog? Maybe Seamus liked to put his head out the car window, so Romney thought this would be that much more fun for him. Somehow I suspect it was more likely that he wanted to bring the dog on vacation for the family’s fun and amusement, but didn’t want to put up with actually having him in the car. And, of course, it gets worse (by the way, if you’re eating, I don’t recommend reading the rest of this post until you’ve finished): Read the rest of this entry »
Which Western feminist icon are you?
Cool.
Which Western feminist icon are you?
You are Angela Davis! You were the THIRD WOMYN IN HISTORY to appear on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. You are a communinist, black power-lovin’ lady who shook up the United States when you refused to lie down quietly to oppression. You WENT TO JAIL! Wow. You kick so much more ass than Foxxy Brown.
Take this quiz!
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June 28, 2007
Thursday YouTubein’ — Take On Me
A New Wave favorite from the days when MTV really was Music Television. Not only is it harder to find music videos on basic cable these days, but it seems to me that many artists just don’t put the same effort into their videos anymore — they spend more money, sure, but it’s not the same. Does that make me sound old? Oh well.
June 27, 2007
Hump Day Poetry: e.e. cummings
“next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims’ and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn’s early my
country ’tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?”
He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water
—e.e. cummings, 1926
June 21, 2007
Thursday YouTubein’ — Run Runaway
[I’m so excited about this one that I’m writing it on Saturday. In other news, I am an enormous dork. Wait, haven’t I said that before?]
Below is Great Big Sea’s first single. That was the context in which I knew the song. I’d heard it at GBS concerts, danced to it, sang along with the chorus. I knew they hadn’t written it (it just didn’t sound like one of theirs), but had more or less assumed that it was a traditional Newfoundlander song, or perhaps a couple of them mashed together, since it has a vaguely similar sound to many of GBS’s trads. The video is ridiculous, which is partially because it’s 1993, but mostly, I think, because it’s the b’ys:
June 20, 2007
Hump Day Poetry: Emily Dickinson
Thoughts related to the post that precedes this one — as well as stumbling across a Fark.com conversation about the subject of that post, which I refuse to link to because the racism and ablism in it were rather overwhelming — made me feel that the following poem, #435 in the Dickinson oeuvre, is rather appropriate. Enjoy!
Much Madness is divinest Sense—
To a discerning Eye—
Much Sense—the starkest Madness—
‘Tis the Majority
In this, as All, prevail—
Assent—and you are sane—
Demur—you’re straightway dangerous—
And handled with a Chain—
—Emily Dickinson, 1890
U.S. citizen deported, now missing in Mexico
This story makes me so angry I almost can’t talk about it. A developmentally disabled man was arrested for trespassing, deported, and has now been missing for over a month. From the above-linked ACLU news release:
LOS ANGELES — Federal immigration officers and the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department illegally deported a U.S. citizen last month, the ACLU/SC has learned. He is missing in Mexico, and today the ACLU/SC and the law firm of Van Der Hout, Brigagliano & Nightingale file a lawsuit in U.S. District Court seeking his safe return.
Pedro Guzman, 29, was born in Los Angeles and raised in Lancaster, California. He was serving time at Men’s Central Jail for trespassing, a misdemeanor offense, when he was deported to Tijuana May 10 or 11. Mr. Guzman is developmentally disabled, does not read or write English well, and knows no one in Tijuana. He declared at his booking that he was born in California.
He spoke to his sister-in-law by telephone from a shelter in Tijuana within a day of his deportation, but the call was interrupted. Family members traveled to the city in an attempt to find him and have remained there, searching shelters, jails, churches, hospitals, and morgues.
The other side of the story (from the AP): Read the rest of this entry »
I am the Lizard Queen! 