Uppity-Negro.com

Changed the index back to showing 7 days rather than 3, since I haven't been tossing up 10 entries a day lately. Still too long? Loads over the course of a two-hour period on a dialup connection? Bitch now or forever hold your peace.

Also added annoying tracking code to the individual archives, since the disparity between the hit counts the actual server reported, and the ones Site Meter claimed, was getting absurd. This looks awful in Mozilla and NS7, as part of commented code shows for no particular reason. Guess I could file a bug report on that. . . or Opera is correcting my poor code, and that comment isn't actually a comment. . .

And when you're defragging a Windows partition prior to (maybe) resizing the thing, and it keeps restarting because "drive contents have changed" despite the fact that you're in safe mode and nothing else is running, that doesn't mean the kids at Redmond were so mind-bogglingly stupid to have the program use the swap file (because you only have 24MB of memory), notice that change, and start again, right? Because then I would have to have them killed.

I must just be doing something stupid. Like trusting the list of running programs that comes up when I hit CTRL-ALT-DEL.

Update:

<Geekrant>
Like most of the Old School, I remember when hard drives were an unimaginable luxury, and you ran everything off of floppy. Yes, children, including the Operating System. You wanted an app? Take the OS disk out and put the application floppy in. Saving your work? Yet Another Floppy Disk.

And no, we did not get errors constantly. They built the damn things to last back then.

All I needed was four disks to get Debian to the point where it could see the network. And it took more like 8, because half the things threw up errors with fdformat. Not a problem with random files, serious deal-breaker when writing full-disk images.

I think the ones that worked were all older disks that I copied the contents of. The last batch of floppies I actually bought, with the big "Lifetime Warranty" on the side of the box, were the worst of the lot.

Steve Jobs had the right idea. The things are useless.

Ironic, since the last batch I only got to move system files to my Antique SE/30 to begin with.
</Geekrant>

I lied. Geekrant continues.

The laptop is formatting the ~500 MB /usr partition now, after finishing the oddly-satisfying removal of the old root. For some reason, the install instructions don't just come out and say, "If you're trying to install on top of another version of Linux, forget it. Trash that sucker, then we'll talk."

Oh, and I'm a moron, and currently have Apache running open to the world, since the install demanded HTTP for transferring files. Any visitors will just see Red Hat's standard, "Hi, there's nothing here" page. Or the firewall and hosts.allow will block them. Don't know, don't want to find out.

Oh yeah, and my former life as an Amiga and Mac user keeps haunting me, as I put follow the prompts to put disks in and ignore the big HIT RETURN instructions on the screen, figuring that of course the computer knows the disk is in the drive. How stupid can it be?

Better to ask this of myself.

Posted by Aaron at 8:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Seems like there's only one reason I ever link Great Day in Harlem. . .

In an AP story, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports:

Jazz great Lionel Hampton dies

NEW YORK -- Lionel Hampton, the vibraphone virtuoso and standout showman whose six-decade career ranked him among the greatest names in jazz history, died Saturday. He was 94.

[. . .] Hampton worked with a who's who of jazz greats, from Benny Goodman to Charlie Parker to Quincy Jones.

Hampton and pianist Teddy Wilson were the black half of the fabled quartet with Goodman and drummer Gene Krupa that in 1936 broke the racial barriers that had largely kept black musicians from performing with whites in public.

Wilson had recorded with Goodman and Krupa previously, and white soloists "jammed" informally with black groups, but a color line was drawn when a white band was on stage.

[. . .] A Republican Party stalwart, Hampton appeared at fund-raising and celebratory party events, but played the White House during Democratic administrations too, performing over the years for Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan and Bush.

He was back in Washington in January 1997 as a recipient of the National Medal of the Arts. President Clinton hailed him as "more than just a performer. He is a lion of American music. And he still makes the vibraphone sing."

I'm not in the mood for black Republican jokes just now, thanks.

It should surprise no one that one of the best pages about a jazz musician is in The Netherlands. Google's cache of the page is working; the actual Lionel Hampton Story page seems to be getting slashdotted at the moment.

I'm not checking to see how old Quincy Jones is, because I don't want to think about that now. He's a celebrity DJ at Radio@Netscape; "Thriller" was playing last time I clicked it, but there's jazz there too, and what we'll call pop for lack of a better term. If you like your music kept as segregated as bands used to be less than 70 years ago, it's not the place for you.

And neither is this site.

Posted by Aaron at 8:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Mentioned this cd when writing about Blogcritics a while back, and I must admit I've not really been back since:

Pixies by The Pixies (The Pixies)

They've now got a review of the Gil Evans biography, Gil Evans-Out of the Cool: His Life and His Music. In addition to his work with Miles Davis (including the indispensible Sketches of Spain), Gil and company helped out on what I still consider to be the perfect pop song, Sting's cover of Jimi Hendrix' "Little Wing".

No, really.

It helps that Sting really isn't on the track that much.

I mean, ok, there's the guitar solo by Hiram Bullock, right? Which jams. Then he fades out, Branford slowly builds up on the sax, and you can really hear the rhythm section (including the Gil Evans orchestra) in the back of the mix, making it quite clear they're prepared to keep the groove going for as long as necessary.

Some people would claim the presence of the rhythm section disqualifies this from being a pop song. They are fools. Ignore them. And play it loud.

Posted by Aaron at 8:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, EMusic finally fixed their little link-to-item problem. Meaning that if, for some odd reason, I felt really enthusiastic about:

Piece And Love by Meg Lee Chin (Invisible Records)

I could link directly to it, rather than using one of the generic banners. Not at cure-for-cancer levels in the grand scheme of things, but I like Meg. And am still on her mailing list, now that I think about it. Boy, they've been quiet for a while. . .

Oh, and this really deserves an in-depth, critical analysis. But I'm me. So forget that.

Prime Time in Black and White is a five-year, longitudinal study of 1) the on-screen presence of black Americans in prime-time network television and 2) of issues pertaining to behind-the-scenes control.

[lots of worthwhile information ignored so I can go for the cheap joke]

Table 1: Top 5 and bottom 5 shows in terms of the
percentage of characters that were black

Top:

1. Girlfriends (UPN) [sitcom] 89%
2. One On One (UPN) [sitcom] 88%
3. My Wife and Kids (ABC) [sitcom] 83%
4. The Parkers (UPN) [sitcom] 79%
5. Early Edition (CBS)* [drama] 76%

Bottom:

1. Just Shoot Me (NBC) [sitcom] 0%
2. Dharma and Greg (ABC) [sitcom] 0%
3. Three Sisters (NBC) [sitcom] 0%
4. Dawson's Creek (WB) [drama] 0%
5. Sabrina (WB) [sitcom] 0%

And I kind'a liked Jenna Elfman, too. Not enough to watch the show regularly, mind you. And I thought Sabrina had a Black Friend? Or is that just the cartoon?

Yes, there's a piece about this in Bitch. Shut up. I cannot escape my destiny.

Posted by Aaron at 5:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Don Wycliff writes in the Chicago Tribune:

When should race be used as an identifier?

Here's the text of a correction that ran in the Tribune last Saturday: "A brief in Wednesday's Metro section about a United Airlines flight attendant who successfully sued the company for race, sex and age discrimination failed to mention the man's race. Leroy Gordon is African-American."

It was a reader who called our attention to this. I was relieved, when the metro desk sent in its report on the error, to learn that it was simply an oversight: In trimming his story down to a brief, the reporter didn't notice that he had trimmed out the complainant's race.

This isn't the first time race has been curiously left out of a story where it appropriately belonged. Every few months, it seems, I get a letter or phone call from a reader wanting to know why, in an otherwise thoroughly reported story--and these seem to come up most often in the context of crime stories--we neglected to include the person's race.

As often as not, after I've queried the editors, the answer turns out to be that someone exercised an excess of caution.

The Tribune stylebook, our fundamental guide in this as in most other matters journalistic, offers this general prescription on race: "Derogatory and unnecessary references to race do not belong in the Tribune."

[. . .] Many of my most rabid correspondents would say that these examples [omitted - hit the link, cypherpunk] subtly load the dice against the truth, because they speak of a white suspect when "everybody knows" that the real problem is crime committed by blacks.

These are the folks who, within hours after the story broke last month about a mob's beating two men to death after a traffic accident on the South Side, began firing off e-mails like this one:

"Why doesn't your paper give the color of the people involved in this murder? Could it be because they are blacks killing whites in a brutal manner? If it were the other way around I know without a doubt you would be doing so, and in a sensational manner."

(Of course, the real reason we didn't mention race was that it wasn't an issue: all those involved were black.)

They're the ones who conveniently forget Charles Stuart, the Bostonian who hatched and executed an elaborate plan to rid himself of his pregnant wife and blame the whole thing on a shadowy black criminal. They forget Susan Smith, who deep-sixed her car with her two children inside and then contrived a tale of a black carjacker to explain the disappearance of her car and kids.

I'd forgotten Charles Stuart's name. I have not forgotten the incident, although, as Mr. Wycliff notes, others have more convenient memories.

Ask around. You'll probably notice a pretty strict racial breakdown of who does and doesn't recall those details. I'm assuming you know black people to ask in the first place; warbloggers are, obviously, exempt from this.

Not that melanin content has anything to do with how the memory works; this is that race as social construct thing again, another point the warbloggers will no doubt miss entirely. I expect one of them to accuse me of being racist for even mentioning the disparity, and dispute that such even exists.

All without actually talking to any black people.

As noted previously, ignorance is fine (and I really want some barfi now, but I don't think the Indian place that opened down the block serves it). Speaking from a position of ignorance, on the other hand, and resisting all attempts by others to rectify it, is being a dumbass. In their case, being a dumbass cracka.

And I'm really tired of dealing with those right now.

Posted by Aaron at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (2)

Um, everyone's figured out the "gender/race as construct" subtext around here by now, right? Excluding the tourists, who have enough problems with the text, period?

Figured out what bothered me about MixedFolks.com. The same thing that really annoys me about the Multiracial Activist types.

If you define "black" as "totally, 100% unmixed African ancestry", then I don't think any of us qualify. Guess you could do DNA testing to check, for what it's worth, but the majority of black people are mixed, or multiracial, or whateverthefuck you want to call it. If everyone is part of a continuum, why should some folks with more recent white ancestry claim uniqueness? Or is that a stupid question?

Realized this while washing the dreads, which may have been a mistake in retrospect. I don't really have black hair, so it doesn't behave the way people expect it to. This caused my locktician no end of grief before the things finally took.

So race does matter. At least when you're getting your hair done.

Or shaving it. I've mentioned the no-shave chits in the military before, yes? And how black guys were more likely to get them, because we're more likely to get razor bumps?

Then there's body hair. Um. Not much to say on that one. Arms, no. Chest, I can count them on the fingers of one hand. Legs, I would lose a competition with a French woman.

And yet, despite this evidence, I still think race remains a social construct.

Will probably add links or something to this later. Just downloaded Netscape 7 final, and want to see what it can do.

After I finally realized there was a Mozilla version of the Stumbleupon toolbar, too. . .

Update 8/30: Neoteny?

From the results I have received so far, it is apparent that though American Indians are amongst the least hairy ethnic groups, people of mixed race are often hairy. But, hairy men of mixed race which includes American Indian often grow their body hair later than other hairy men. Some extreme cases include men who did not become hairy until their mid to late twenties. This should not be confused with the tendency of hairy men to continue growing hair (in new places) well into their thirties. This suggests to me that the American Indian race is generally hairless because of neoteny. Neoteny is the retention of juvenile physical characteristics in the adult individual.

Guess it all depends on what you consider normal. Oh, right, white people are normal. The rest of us deviate more or less from that baseline. Blah.

There's a (mercifully) brief bit on The Idea of Race at the University of Washington's Kennewick Man Virtual Exhibit:

Some physical characteristics such as black hair are common among many, but not all, Native Americans. Others, including head and body shape, height, skin color, and facial hair, vary significantly. Native American men from Pacific Coast tribes, for example, often have heavy facial hair while other Native American men have none.

I get five-o'clock-shadow after about a week, myself.

This bit should annoy the tourists:

Nineteenth-Century Ideas about Race

The nineteenth-century idea that there are only three human races -- Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid -- emerged from European folk concepts of the Middle Ages about the significance of physical differences like skin color, head shape, or type of hair. All people were thought to belong to one of these races and most authorities believed that these physical differences also implied differences in intelligence, abilities, and general merit as human beings. Some believed that such "racial" differences justified social inferiority, colonial control, and even slavery. This attitude is illustrated by the following quote from the 1800s.

"The indominable, courageous, proud Indianin -- how very different a light he stands by the side of the submissive, obsequious, imitative negro, or by the side of the tricky, cunning, and cowardly Mongolian! Are not these facts indications that the different races do not rank upon one level in nature?"
Louis Agassiz, Professor of Geology and Zoology, Harvard University, 1850

The ones who actually read Gene Expression that is. I tried after a. . . discussion with the proprieter at Matt Welch's a while back. Yeah, that was time well spent.

Unlike with lactose intolerance, I couldn't find any stats about what percent of the planet tends towards more or less body hair. Seems to be the same thing again, though; northern European = "normal", rest of the planet = "deviant".

Charming.

And yes, there was something about this in the latest Bitch. I swear, this is the last time I'm ripping off their shit. Honest.

Not that any of the links I looked at even mention body hair on women. The dainty creatures have none, apparently.

Posted by Aaron at 9:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBacks (2)

I have been given to understand that I "don't know diddly-squat about Africa", in the midst of a withering lecture about racism from, um, a conservative white South African expatriate. My sense of the absurd does not quite extend that far, but I do appreciate having my limits illuminated. Kind'a.

To rectify the holes in my knowledge left by 4-hours-shy-of-a-minor African Studies classes at UIUC (and you'd think my advisor, Professor Bokamba, would have mentioned this), I was gratified to see that today's MediaChannel.org | News Dissector Web Log covered the conference in SA, and current events there:

Yesterday, I visited the Landless People’s Camp, where a few thousand black South Africans are meeting to plan their own march on the summit. Under apartheid, whites, who were the minority, controlled 87% of the land in this country. Those numbers have not changed radically and these people know it. The government fears more land seizures like the ones in neighboring Zimbabwe that have destabilized that society.

[. . .] After apartheid fell, the spies of the old regime were put in together with the intelligence operations of the liberation movement. It was an uneasy combination. This intelligence apparatus has not had much to worry about until now, but now they are anxious and antsy. The anti-globalization movement feels the government's gaze and resents the climate of intimidation. Last night I met a young woman who was hit by a police stun grenade and was burned while peacefully protesting. “I was singing a song in an African language I didn’t know, just humming along,” she told me. “and this grenade was lobbed at me without warning.” She is now walking with a cane.

Nope, nothing new there. . .

Seizing land would, clearly, be a Very Bad Idea. Just as bad as it's turned out in Zimbabwe, although a sane judge has nullified at least some of the eviction orders.

On Wednesday the Zimbabwe High Court nullified eviction orders served on 54 white farmers as President Robert Mugabe ruled out any possibility of talks with the white landowners, telling them that they had no rights to control property in Zimbabwe.

The beleaguered white farmers have appealed for a meeting with Mugabe to discuss the seizures of their farms but Mugabe told state radio that there was "no room for talks" between him and the white farmers. He said the rights of the white farmers to own land in Zimbabwe were secondary to those of blacks.

"There is no room for talks, there is no room for negotiations because the real owners of this land are asserting their rights and reclaiming their land," Mugabe told a gathering in the southeastern town of Chiredzi.

"If you (whites) want to live with us, to farm alongside us, we, the rightful owners of our ancestral land, will carve out some land for you. But you cannot decide what you will have in our country," he said.

That we/you shit will be the death of us all, but it's almost a relief to see it expressed so openly.

Almost.

South Africa is going to have to deal with the imbalance in land ownership at some point. Doing nothing is also dealing with it, but almost as bad as Mugabe's solution. Well, they can always take the US route to handling land-holding minorities.

The white people already have casinos, so they're halfway there.

Posted by Aaron at 1:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

As someone who shall remain nameless has sent me a set of Debian install cds, and the version of Red Hat on this little laptop is getting long in the tooth, I'll probably be installing that later today. Which means either sharing the cds on the real computer using a nice, simple and already configured FTP daemon, or getting bloody NFS working. At least I've got an ethernet card in the thing this time; last time the install involved PLIP. You don't want to know how long it took. And that was just the configuration. . .

I am not a geek, by the way. Which is why I'll be saving my XF86Config from the current install, rather than setting it up again. You have to configure with a monitor attached rather than using the built-in screen, and I'm already going to have cables all over the place.

The fact that I probably have a copy in one of my sent email directories from when I helpfully mailed the thing to some poor bastard complaining on comp.os.linux.portable is not indicative of geekiness, and I resent your implication, sir.

I appear to be the anti-Lileks. Not just because the warbloggers link here while condemning the politics but grooving on the pop culture stuff, but because both of us are way behind the curve. He recently picked The New Yorker and finally became aware of the anti-SUV crusade that the Car Talk guys have been on for a while. I saw the September Harper's Magazine, and saw they'd quoted a bit of Gail Simone's (quite dated by now) Women in Refrigerators. This was noted a week or so back on rec.arts.comics.misc, and Gail sez there was additional material that didn't make the cut. Or got cut. Or something.

Gail (who's old column/satire thingee You'll All Be Sorry! is still available at Comic Book Resources) is currently doing Killer Princesses with Lea Hernandez, along with lots of other stuff I'm too lazy to look up right now. She chimed in on the WOMEN IN COMICS: This Is Your Last Call thread on the WEF, along with Lea, Finder's Carla Speed McNeil, and a whole bunch of other folks I'm forgetting. Time and money sink, the thing is. Comics equivalent of Ecto, basically.

Other reason I'm the anti-Lileks? I link things. A lot. Possibly too much.

We've all realized that entries with pretty pictures mean I'm using a real computer, while these text-only ones mean I'm on the laptop, right?

Oh yeah, and Cleopatra Jones is looking for laptop recommendations. Not the steampunk variety, so I got nothing to contribute. As usual.

Duh. WiR is described by the woman herself as:

This is a list I made when it occurred to me that it's not that healthy to be a female character in comics. I'm curious to find out if this list seems somewhat disproportionate, and if so, what it means, really.

These are superheroines who have been either depowered, raped, or cut up and stuck in the refrigerator. I know I missed a bunch. Some have been revived, even improved -- although the question remains as to why they were thrown in the wood chipper in the first place.

There's commentary by some pros, too. Go on. It'll give you that warm, "misogyny lives in fiction" feeling.

Posted by Aaron at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBacks (0)

die puny humans

warren ellis speaks clever

If you need more explanation, you probably wouldn't be interested to begin with.

Oh, all right. Warren sez:

die puny humans is my newsmine. I wanted a place to put my research that was accessible, searchable, and, crucially, not cluttering up my bloody computer. This is it. Means I can get to my stuff from anywhere with a web connection. Anything I find on my daily trawls around the web that interests me goes up here.

Now if he just gets rid of that top frame. . .

Posted by Aaron at 11:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Greg Morrow, a/k/a USENET'S Dr. Elmo, now has his own blog. You might remember him from the Elmo Brand Pseudoscience™ featured in several Priest comics over the years. Or not. Your loss.

He also did not appear in a paycheck comic, more or less, as Mike the Parademon. That was Mike Chary. Confusing the two indicates how long it's been since I hung out on the newsgroups, and that I cannot tell that "Greg" and "Mike" are two different words.

Good thing I checked that. Either of those two could flame me into oblivion. Combined? It'd be ritual seppuku rather than face the battle.

For similar reasons, although I may not agree with everything he says, he's way smarter than me, so I shut the fuck up. You might want to keep this in mind if he turns on comments at some point.

And apropos of nothing (no, really, I just didn't feel like making two entries), we have Big Fun with Dayton-Hudson:

Thanks to Target, the nationwide department-store chain, students across the country may be heading back to school in hip-looking white supremacist regalia. The retail giant is selling shorts and baseball caps splashed with “EIGHT EIGHT” and “88” – white-power code for “Heil Hitler,” because “h” is the eighth letter of the alphabet.

Know I read this somewhere. . . in Woody Allen's pre-stepdaughter-marriage-and-therefore-acceptable film Sleeper, folks in the 22nd century are walking around wearing Swastikas, because they have no clue what significance the symbol held in the distant past.

I had no idea 88 meant that today. Learn something new and stupid every day. . .

Where are my manners? Found Greg's blog through What She Really Thinks. And, keeping with the rare outburst of manners, that's all I'll say about that.

Update 8/29: VASpider is really entirely too sensible to hang out here, but does not seem to have realized this yet. Nobody tell her.

Posted by Aaron at 2:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (2)

Think I prefer this one.

Quan Yin's name is a translation of the Sanskrit name of her chief progenitor which is Avalokitesvara, also known as Avalokita. In its proper form it is Kuanshih Yin, which means "She who harkens to the cries of the world."

I mean, there are way too many RHPS types around here to use:

In both Taoism and Buddhism Kuan Yin is the goddess of compassion, she is the Japanese Bodhisattva Kannon or Kanzeon, and is identified with the Indian Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, including all of the scriptures which apply to him. Kuan (Shih) Yin means "the one who hears the cries of the world and comes."

Freaks.

In sculture and paintings, Kuan Shih Yin is variously depicted as male and female. These things happen.

Scholars believe that the Buddhist monk and translator Kumarajiva was the first to refer to the female form of Kuan Yin in his Chinese translation of the Lotus Sutra in 406 A.D. Of the thirty-three appearances of the bodhisattva referred to in his translation, seven are female. (Devoted Chinese and Japanese Buddhists have since come to associate the number thirty-three with Kuan Yin.)

Although Kuan Yin was still being portrayed as a male as late as the tenth century, with the introduction of Tantric Buddhism into China in the eighth century during the T'ang dynasty, the image of the celestial bodhisattva as a beautiful white-robed goddess was predominant and the devotional cult surrounding her became increasingly popular. By the ninth century there was a statue of Kuan Yin in every Buddhist monastery in China.

Despite the controversy over the origins of Kuan Yin as a feminine being, the depiction of a bodhisattva as both 'god' and 'goddess' is not inconsistent with Buddhist doctrine. The scriptures explain that a bodhisattva has the power to embody in any form--male, female, child, even animal--depending on the type of being he is seeking to save. As the Lotus Sutra relates, the bodhisattva Kuan Shih Yin, "by resort to a variety of shapes, travels in the world, conveying the beings to salvation."

No idea if this involves hot and cold running water.

Vaguely apropos to Jewish Task Force's righteous condemnation of Black History Month, education in the West (or mine, at least) doesn't really stress the movement of religion/philosophy/iconography between India, China, Tibet, Japan, Korea, Viet. . . um, them other Asian countries. There are quite a few. Not that Tibet is a country; it's an autonomous region of China. You know. Like Puerto Rico or Washington, DC.

We're only slowly getting a picture of Islam here, and that's colored by the fact that 6,000 5,000 nearly 3,000 Americans people from all over the world were killed in the 9/11 attacks. So it's a rather grim version of history, full of wars, conversion by sword and people whose names are spelled about twenty different ways using Roman characters.

Which is a bit like someone seeing Buddhist monks in Vietnam protest the war by self-immolation, and deciding that Buddhism is all about setting yourself on fire.

No, silly, that's the Falun Gong.

Added a few images from Isisdownunder's Kuan Yin Pictures and Information. There are also some nice images, and lots of info about various godesses, at the Erzulie-Lilith page of The Goddess In World Mythology site. If you're into that sort of thing.

As an ignorant Westerner, I have no clue about the significance of the gesture she's making with her right hand in that first picture. It's a wonder I'm even aware that it has a particular significance, really.

Update 2: Oh, right, forgot.

Today Kuan Yin is worshipped by Taoists as well as Mahayana Buddhists--especially in Taiwan, Japan, Korea and once again in her homeland of China, where the practice of Buddhism had been suppressed by the Communists during the Cultural Revolution (1966-69). She is the protectress of women, sailors, merchants, craftsmen, and those under criminal prosecution, and is invoked particularly by those desiring progeny.

I'd warn Michelle not to go invoking her because of that last bit, but doubt this would really be an issue.

Posted by Aaron at 9:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Haven't tried listening to "Bitches Brew" recently. My neighbors are annoying me, though. Perhaps I will put it on, set it to repeat, turn it up, and leave for the day.

From Not Without My Handbag, by way of VASpider's Web:

Beautiful Welsh names (girls)
Aelwen(fair brow)
Arwen(Fair)
Briallen(primrose)
Drudwen(precious)
Ceindrych(Elegant, fair)

. . .

BOMB WALES NOW! Seriously, take any one of these words, put "Marie Johnson" behind it and try not to laugh. Now imagine the kindergarten teacher trying to say Fflur on the first day of school. That's right. We need to bomb Wales now.

I want to have her children.

Obviously, she'll get to pick the names. I still think "Toyota Corolla" is a good faux-African name meself. . .

Meanwhile, Giles takes on the marketing of Shakira. No quote, go visit him. I'd point out that one of her Pepsi ads appeared in the front of that People en Español I bought a while back, and there's a blurb about her in the latest Bitch. Because they are the zeitgeist.

Also, MeFiMe does that link/discuss thang on the PS2 Network Adapter, but there are some Dreamcast-using filth there. Ignore them, and ask for killfiles as a feature.

Today marks Jack Kirby's birthday. Mixed emotions from me, since despite his central role in creating the comics industry, I remember reading his dialogue.

Want to know more? Much Kirby love at (the archive'd version of) the Toy Wonder's site. Think you get images and working links in other browsers; I'm doing the lynx thang, and don't feel like checking. There is text. It should be good enough.

Plus, lots of good content there means fewer complaints about the lack of such here. It's all good.

Bugger (Yay! Now I can hang out with Jason!). Checked, and there are no images in that particular archived version of Unca Cheek's page. Thought they did graphics files too, but they might pull them from the actual site. And his is long-gone. Might check other versions of the page later.

Update: Ok, they do have images files. Just not the ones for that particular page. Tragically, this is also true of the pages for Luke Cage, Hero for Hire. I think we all agree with Luke when he says, "Sweet Christmas!"

Or not. Whatever.

Posted by Aaron at 7:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)

So, those irrepressible scamps at Jewish Task Force (who I liked better when they were called Science Hebrew Team Gatchaman -- and I have a feeling I will regret making this joke) reveal the Truth about Black "History" Month Propaganda:

The United States Constitution prohibits the establishment of a national religion. For this reason, JTF strongly objects to the unconstitutional establishment of America's "national religion" since the 1960s: worshiping blacks.

In January of every year, we have a national holiday honoring a Communist white-hater and Jew-hater named Martin Luther King. All of our Presidents combined get only one holiday. But Martin Luther King, by himself, receives this honor. And King is actually honored more than the Presidents. For Presidents' Day has merely become a day for commercial sales and bargains. On King's holiday, on the other hand, no store would dare to advertise sales and bargains. Because his "holiday" is so sacred.

Every February, we now have Black "History" Month. No other people in the United States receive such recognition. Prior to white colonists coming to black Africa, the blacks had never established a single school, any written language, any mechanical or technical invention or anything else of value. Other than putting plates in their mouths, wiping themselves with leaves, picking insects out of their hair and eating them and living in huts held together by human excrement -- other than these great "accomplishments," blacks never achieved or invented anything. Yet we are now told that they have some sort of celebrated "history."

I keep telling myself this isn't meant to be a hilarious, over-the-top parody of a racist web site, but rather an actual racist web site. Doesn't work. I keep laughing anyway.

We know that what we are saying here is extremely controversial. The truth is always controversial.

Uh-huh. Weird, putting those two sentences together, you'd think they were suggesting some relationship between them, but other than proximity, I just don't see one.

Oh well, Meryl Yourish has a new essay up, and Amish Tech Support keeps on keepin' on.

They're not quite as funny, though.

Posted by Aaron at 6:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Know why I don't write about the military stuff more often?

PURPLE T-SHIRT EVENT

On March 19, 1991, following the cease fire, personnel from NMCB-24 required medical attention after becoming exposed to unidentified airborne noxious fumes. These fumes resulted in acute symptoms, such a burning throats, eyes and noses, and difficulty in breathing. In addition, portions of their brown T-shirts turned purple. It was also reported that portions of some of these same individuals' combat boots also turned purple.

Because no one would believe most of it.

Let's try this again:

Black Steel (live) - Tricky, Sessions at West 54th

I got a letter from the government
The other day
I opened and read it
It said they were suckers
They wanted me for their army or whatever
Picture me givin' a damn - I said never
Here is a land that never gave a damn
About a brother like me and myself
Because they never did
I wasn't wit' it, but just that very minute...
It occured to me
The suckers had authority
Cold sweatin' as I dwell in my cell
How long has it been?
They got me sittin' in the state pen
I gotta get out - but that thought was thought before
I contemplated a plan on the cell floor
I'm not a fugitive on the run
But a brother like me begun - to be another one
Public enemy servin' time - they drew the line y'all
To criticize me some crime - never the less
They could not understand that I'm a Black man
And I could never be a veteran
On the strength, the situation's unreal
I got a raw deal, so I'm goin' for the steel

Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos, Public Enemy
Ridenhour - Shocklee - Sadler - Drayton

Posted by Aaron at 8:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Some of the warbloggers take umbrage -- in fact, they take all the umbrage -- to the term chickenhawk. Just because they were too young to serve in the last few wars, or declined to volunteer for the the ones they could have served in, is no reason to suggest that they shouldn't be writing furiously about somebody else's friends and family getting shot at.

Pussies.

Various sources, including the Mercury News, report:

U.S. TELLING THOUSANDS THEY MAY HAVE TO SERVE AN EXTRA YEAR
Mercury News Wire Services

WASHINGTON - The Defense Department is notifying more than 14,000 reservists that they may be required to extend their duty, to serve up to two years instead of one, in a move seen as a contingency for possible action against Iraq.

The action, the most extensive since the Vietnam War, affects about 4,800 Air Force reservists and about 9,200 members of the Air National Guard, said Commander Randy Sandoz, a Defense Department official.

[. . .] The call-ups are under what the military calls a ``partial mobilization,'' which was ordered by President Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks. During this, the president can activate up to 1 million reservists and Guard members to serve up to two years.

The last partial mobilization took place during the Persian Gulf War, but few, if any, served more than a year because the war ended so quickly, officials said. The Vietnam War had many reservists serving full two-year terms.

Now, since I got called up during Persian Gulf War I, I can say whatever the fuck I want. Convenient, no?

I was a student at the time, not unlike Ellen Feiss, only of legal age, you sick perverts. So I was actually making more money during the time I was in.

Lotta guys I was over there with were only in the Reserves so they'd have a full 20 years of service, and could retire with full benefits. These were older guys, with real careers and families. Some of 'em ran their own businesses, like our medic, and if you're thinking they were making anywhere near as much running around in the sandbox you haven't noticed what military pay is. People do not live on post because it's a shorter walk to muster; they do so because even with a housing allowance, they can't afford to live among civilians.

Yeah, there are laws requiring creditors to not give you too much shit because you've taken a huge pay cut, and employers (for those who weren't self-employed) were required to take you back if you lived. That still meant for a lot of hardship.

At this point, the chickenhawks would chime in about how these people knew the risks when they signed up. Um, no. Back then, at least, our enemy was the USSR (remember them?), and conventional wisdom was that in the event of a war, we'd all be fucked. You wouldn't have to worry about your construction business or medical practice idling for several months, because we were all going to be killed in a nuclear strike. Paradoxically, a larger enemy meant it was safer to be in the Reserves.

The other funny thing, for expansive definitions of funny, is that some guys had their contracts expire during the conflict. Oddly, they felt little compulsion to re-up. Equally oddly, the military basically said, "Sorry, can't afford to lose you. You're staying."

This really had a positive effect on morale.

They did let this one guy go home, after his house in rural [insert Southern state here] burned to the ground because the [volunteer] fire department had a long-ass drive to the place. That was sweet of them, I think.

Oh, and the guy who had a life-threatening allergic reaction to the perfectly safe drugs we were given. They let him go, too. So it wasn't all gloom and doom.

I can almost accept the warbloggers treating The Enemy as faceless and expendable -- remember how they were whining about not wanting to hear more about Afghan civilian casualties? -- but you'd think they'd treat our forces like human beings. And you'd be wrong.

I'm mostly talking enlisted, though. We were quite aware we ain't count for shit, but from the brass that was expected. These warblogger fucks, though. . . damn. How much you want to bet they're the ones who criticize the left for not supporting our troops or tying enough yellow ribbons around old oak trees?

Fuck the random lottery draft shit. They need to just fire up Google, see who's seriously enthused about invading other folks, and specifically get them to do it. I expect you'd see a rash of foot injuries.

And again I say: Pussies.

I said not to ask. . . turns out the unit I did my drills with was not, in fact, the unit I was actually in. So when NMCB 24 out of Redstone Arsenal, Alabama got the call, so did I in *cough* Chicago, Illinois. If I'd told 'em I lived in Shampoo-Banana, I'd have had to do drills with some group in Danville or something. Oddly, they didn't blink when I submitted the paperwork for education benefits because I was enrolled at UIUC. Internal communication not their strong point. Which is how they once gave me tickets for a flight to San Diego out of Midway that didn't even exist anymore, then told me they'd get me on a flight out of O'Hare (when I called from Midway to let them know). You ever drive from Midway to O'Hare? During Summer Road Construction season? Knowing that if you missed the flight, you'd be declared AWOL?

Ah, the military. They had the audacity to ask me why I didn't want to re-up.

Update: See, same message, but a picture is worth a thousand words. I am so surplus to requirements around here. . .

Posted by Aaron at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (35) | TrackBacks (0)

On the latest, no-we-ain't-going Jo'burg summit, Toren Smith writes:

One can only look at the professional whiners, NGO-ticks, worthless EUnuch bureaucrats, aid parasites and other assorted riff-raff gathered in South Africa like a vast glob of idiocy and wish those black market nukes were just a little easier to come by.

As of 2000, Mr. Smith was President of the translation/localization house Studio Proteus. He lived in Japan for some time, but either never got 'round to visiting the Peace Memorial Museum, or was constantly confused about why the locals didn't find his jokes about nukes funny.

He continues:

The sight of pompous liars like Mbeki, who took a stable, relatively peaceful, and prosperous nation and turned it into a economic basket case rotten with crime and paralytic with corruption telling us to clean up our act is sick-making. Yes, there's no more apartheid in South Africa. Except now the blacks there have a lower life expectancy and a reduced per capita income, among other miseries. Don't get me wrong--apartheid had to go, but the reality is that the end result has been a worse life for the average South African black, including a nearly doubled chance of being murdered by members of another tribe.

For a minute there, I was getting him wrong. It almost sounded like he was saying the lives of blacks were better under apartheid.

No, wait, that is what he's saying. Oddly, I got that link to Kim (old boy in the next entry) from Toren's site. Can you figure out what these two have in common?

Update: Any San Francisco readers who aren't headed to Toren's for a quick, full-contact "diversity training seminar", let me know how the PS2 Online Launch Party at the Metreon goes.

Oh, and any Windows users out there want to tell me if the Kingdom Hearts site is worth rebooting for? You maybe want to make sure the kids ain't in the room. I got a feeling Square + Disney = Even Worse Crack for Children than Yu-Gi-Oh.

Yes, I'm a hypocrite. Sue me.

And I'd look for the guy who basically called for the West to re-colonize the lesser races, as we're incapable of running countries on our own, but am in a shitty enough mood as it is now.

Posted by Aaron at 8:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (3)

Answer:

Kim du Toit was born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa. Kim emigrated to the United States in 1986. [. . .] Kim, proudly, became a U.S. citizen in 1989. Having fled the liberals in Chicago, Illinois, Kim now lives in north Texas. He still hates Mayor Daley.

Question: Who the fuck would write this shit?

Lest anyone forget, the sainted Nelson Mandela's African National Congress party is essentially Communist. This is one reason why Mandela was imprisoned for so long (apart from his being a self-confessed terrorist, of course), and why the ANC were hounded out of South Africa.

Mandela was released, open elections were held and the ANC came to power. People held their breath, expecting the Blacks to wreak vengeance on the Whites for the years of apartheid-- and largely because of Mandela, who had become a lot more pragmatic while in prison, this never happened.

That whole "wreak vengeance on the Whites" notion is sounding better and better these days. Darn shame I'd be spending this period keeping idiots from vengeancing themselves on friends & family. Otherwise, I could probably get a PS2 during the looting.

np - Lisa Germano, Geek the Girl

Posted by Aaron at 7:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

And on this Women's Equality Day, or a few days ago when he had a spare minute, Our Glorious Leader did proclaim:

Today, American women enjoy unprecedented opportunities in business, education, politics, and countless other aspects of our society. Historically, however, women suffered grave inequalities and were denied some of the most fundamental benefits of citizenship.

Each year on August 26th, we mark the important anniversary of the day on which women gained the right to vote. In celebrating Women's Equality Day, we remember the brave and determined individuals who worked to ensure that all women have the opportunity to participate in our democracy. Their dedication to the suffrage movement improved our society, and continues to inspire women today.

[. . .] In Afghanistan, the Taliban used violence and fear to deny Afghan women access to education, health care, mobility, and the right to vote. Our coalition has liberated Afghanistan and restored fundamental human rights and freedoms to Afghan women, and all the people of Afghanistan. Young girls in Afghanistan are able to attend schools for the first time.

Mind you, at a different part of the White House site, we have:

This is the first time in several years that many Afghan boys and girls--especially girls--will have the chance to attend school. The people of Afghanistan have been hurt by years of civil war and a brutal government that didn't give its citizens the freedoms that we enjoy. When the Taliban regime was running the country (from 1996 through 2001), girls were banned from the classroom. Women teachers weren't allowed to teach. Not many boys went to school either. Only 32 percent of Afghanistan's 4.4 million children were enrolled in school in 1999. Nearly all girls, 92 percent, were not in school.

Maybe the Proclamation meant young girls born after the Taliban took power. Yeah, that's the ticket.

And we're back to the ever-popular agentless passive again. Naming no names, or even groups, "women suffered grave inequalities and were denied some of the most fundamental benefits of citizenship."

Wankers.

Posted by Aaron at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

One site that pops up doing a Google search on civil rights movement Jews (and for some reason using that term makes me uncomfortable) is From Swastika to Jim Crow - Black-Jewish Relations, for the ITVS program of the same name. Was a bit surprised to see this praise for the show, given the source:

The story of Black-Jewish relations in the United States is a long and complex one.... Jews were among those who worked to establish the NAACP in 1909. African-American newspapers were among the first in the U.S. to denounce Nazism.... FROM SWASTIKA TO JIM CROW creates hope and reminds us of a time in U.S. history when the two communities came together.

- David Horowitz, Washington Review

I mean, that doesn't sound anything like the current David Horowitz:

You'll recognize many of the names of the Reparations movement leaders immediately. It's a who's who in the racial shakedown racket: Jesse Jackson. Al Sharpton. Johnnie Cochran. Randall Robinson. Cornel West. These men, and others from the far left, are preparing for the biggest legal shakedown in the history unless they're stopped. During the past half year, David Horowitz has spoken campuses across this great nation, appeared on countless television and radio talk shows, and distributed thousands of books and booklets detailing who is behind the reparations movement and why. Hes worked hard to expose the true motivation - money and power -- behind the movement and to educate millions of Americans to the damage this divisive movement will do our nation if it is allowed to proceed and succeed.

I like the <em> tag. It's purty.

You don't have to be in favor of reparations -- I'm not, after all -- to find rhetoric like that more damaging and divisive than the call for reparations itself. Reasonable people may disagee on this, as with all things.

Back to the show:

With the late 1960s came the birth of the Black Power movement, emphasizing self-determination, self-defense tactics and racial pride, and representing a radical break from the nonviolence and racial integration espoused by the Reverend Martin Luther King. The separatist rise of Black nationalism was just one of the difficulties facing the Black-Jewish alliance since the end of the Civil Rights movement. The rapid decline of American anti-Semitism since 1945, combined with the nation's continuing pervasive racism, convinced Blacks there was an insurmountable racial gulf separating the two groups. Blacks no longer perceived the division as one between the persecutors and their victims - including Jews - but between those with white skin and those with black. Through the eyes of Blacks, Jews became Whites with all the privileges their skin color won them, regardless of alliances they had in the past.

As early as the first two decades after World War II, James Baldwin, Kenneth Clark and other Blacks encouraged liberal Jews to give up the "special relationship." This came in part from a fear that the Jews' determined belief in their bond with Blacks would eventually become offensive and, paradoxically, provoke Black anti-Semitism. The prospect of this shift was incomprehensible to Jews who believed that their own history, culminating in the Holocaust, defined them as oppressed and thus incapable of being the oppressor.

And here we are today.

There's an utterly appalling -- there's that word again -- little site called Blacks and Jews Newspage, which describes itself as "dedicated to the dissemination of accurate information about the historical relationship between Blacks and Jews. This site IS NOT an OFFICIAL website of the Nation of Islam or of any individuals or organizations named within."

They provide a helpful link to the Nation of Domination site, though.

Found a link there at another site that pops up in the original Google search, Jewish Tribal Review. Their self-description states:

This site exists for non-profit educational purposes only. Its purpose is to elicit public discussion about the issues above. It is against all forms of bigotry. Criticizing the wealthiest ethnic group in America and any expression of its ethnocentrism, in-group solidarity, racism, unethical behavior, dual moral standards, political influence, dedication to a foreign nation, and exertion of power is not bigotry. It is one of our most elemental rights in a free society: to expose the bias, hypocrisy and injustice of influential power elites that effect all our lives.

(The Jewish Tribal Review has been defamed by a web site called "The Hate Directory" as an example of "hate." That defamation is fraud. Read our email exchanges with that Hate site's proprietor and decide for yourself which web site -- that one or this one -- holds the higher moral ground).

If the words "wealthiest ethnic group in America" don't set off alarm bells, there's something very wrong with you. True or not -- and I can't be arsed to look up the stat, and worry about anyone who'd actually note such a thing -- it plays to some very old stereotypes.

Mind you, there is a double standard about stereotypes, too.

The site is listed under Google Directory - Society > Issues > Race-Ethnic-Religious Relations > Hate > Hate Groups > Anti-Semitism, and they've some fairly nasty company.

There's also a category for Google Directory - Society > Issues > Race-Ethnic-Religious Relations > Hate > Hate Groups > Jewish.

At an August 17, 2002 rally in Washington to demand "slavery reparations" -- also attended by the black Hitler Louis Farrakhan, recently returned from giving aid and comfort to America's enemies in Iraq -- ungrateful New York City Councilman Charles Barron threatened to storm the Treasury Department for his "40 acres and a mule" before promising random racist violence if his demands were not satisfied: I want to go up to the closest white person and say, "You can't understand this, it's a black thing," and then slap him, just for my mental health.

A former Black Panther, Barron joined with Brooklyn Borough President Marky Markowitz in ousting pictures of the Founding Fathers from Brooklyn Borough Hall in favor of the drug-dealing pimp, rapist and woman-beater Malcolm X, who admitted in his ghost-written Autobiography that he enjoyed beating white prostitutes for his "mental health."

Oh, that wacky Jewish Task Force.

There are only 7 Jewish hate groups listed, as opposed to 12 for blacks. But the winner, and still champion, with 242 different organizations of sweet, sweet hatin', are white folks.

This figure does not include warblogs. They need a new directory editor.

Posted by Aaron at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (0)

The lovely and talented Bob Mould was on Wait Wait -- Don't Tell Me! this weekend, for those of you who have lives and disposable income, and don't rely on public radio for entertainment and companionship.

Couple weeks back, they had Buddy Guy (and I just mistyped that "Buffy", but will chalk it up to bad finger placement). Week after that, Orrin Hatch was on the show, being all human and what-not. It's harder to hate people when they do that.

Luckily,

Why has nobody put a bullet through Yassir Arafat's skull yet?

this is not a problem with Mister Charlie. Christ.

A few weeks back, he wrote:

Aaron of Uppity Negro couldn't open his mouth to me without insinuating I'm a racist

Gee, I'm not allowed to post at his site, so I guess I'll have to respond here.

Bitch, I ain't insinuating shit. You make racist statements, if that's a preferable way of conveying the idea. Otherwise, yes, I think you're a racist, dumb-ass mother fucker, and I ask about you the same thing you wonder about Arafat. Or is it a threat when a Negro says that about you, as opposed to you writing about a member of the lesser races?

Honestly, you meet the most appalling sorts of people.

Yes, I appall people too, but at least I don't claim to be "politically incorrect" or "provocative" when I do it. Wankers.

Posted by Aaron at 9:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

Yes, again with the Scrawl. The mix tape ended with "11:59 (It's January)" from Nature Film, leaving me to think this was a New Years Eve thing. Which year? Um. . .

Dwayne McDuffie and Kyle Baker goodness up at Comicon.com:

[WB Animation studio is] also chock full of comics folks. Of course, Paul Dini and Bruce Timm, the masterminds behind the entire Batman Animated franchise work there. In addition, Denys Cowan is co-producer on Static Shock, and Dwayne McDuffie is story editing JLA. While I was snooping around, I saw a cubicle with the name plate "Kyle Baker" - alas Kyle was not there, but I did see his storyboards for a new Looney Tunes short he had pinned to his wall. But I can't say anything about them! I don't know about you, but when I hear the words "Kyle Baker" and "Looney Tunes" together, I get all tingly.

[. . .] At last, I saw Dwayne McDuffie, hard at work on a JLA script. I even asked him some questions, and I am allowed to tell you what he said.

THE PULSE: How did you make the jump from comics scribe to animation scribe?

MCDUFFIE: STATIC, a comic book I co-created for Milestone, was adapted into the Kids WB series STATIC SHOCK (now going into its third season). Producer Alan (BATMAN THE ANIMATED SERIES, BATMAN BEYOND) Burnett gave me a shot at writing a script for the series early in the first season and was also kind enough to ask me back for two more (I've ended up doing three scripts in each of the three seasons). When an injury prevented Paul Dini from finishing his work on a two-part JUSTICE LEAGUE episode, producer Rich Fogel gave me the nod (I can account for my whereabouts at the time of Paul's accident. My lawyers say I can't stress this enough). The scripts came out well and I was given two more. Later they asked me to join Justice League's staff as a story editor for the second season. I've also done a Scooby Doo episode for the fall season.

Yes, back to cartoons, but at least now they're American cartoons. And Dwayne McDuffie, Kyle Baker and Denys Cowan are black, so technically this is vaguely on-topic for this site.

Oh, the person doing the interviews is one of the few women working in the comics industry, which also makes this on-topic.

What, me snarky?

Posted by Aaron at 7:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Am listening to an old mix tape I never got 'round to sending (was it for Alex?), because I suck. Think I managed to kill Scrawl, although I did get to see 'em live once. Beezus I know broke up, but deny responsibility. As both groups had actual talent rather than relying on T&A, neither achieved the success of [insert pop tart of the moment here]. Stupid Americans.

Anyway, you can get a Beezus single for fifty cents from Parasol, if you're a dino like me and actually own a turntable. Otherwise, there's EMusic. Who I can no longer download stuff I bought and paid for from, since I don't have a subscription. They're getting a nasty email one of these days.

Oh yeah, and listen to Women in Music with Laney Goodman. It does tend towards granola, compared to the old "She's Actual Size" show on WEFT, but don't let my ignorant prejudices stop you. And I'm sure there are some people who just can't get enough of female folk singer/songwriters with guitars. . .

Posted by Aaron at 6:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

See, I'd actually connected to AIM and everything, using Gaim, right, but then I foolishly decided I wanted to use a buddy icon. C'mon, who can resist Skank Zero Hopeless Savage?

Anyway, the instructions call for changing the protocol from TOC to Oscar. Don't worry about it. Just don't do it. Took me right back to thinking I was on, when this was not the case.

Bastards. Just when I found some cool Sakura and Escaflowne icons, too.

No one has said, "Shut the hell up about your anime, nobody wants to hear about your anime," but this should be the last of it. Really.

Another part of the source of that last set of icons, strictlyshoujo.com | anime and manga for girls, focuses on Card Captor Sakura. The Japanese version, obviously, rather than The Crime of Cardcaptors:

A few weeks ago, KidsWB began airing a show entitled "Cardcaptors." Fans of Card Captor Sakura may have noticed that this show bears some eerie semblance to our beloved CLAMP creation.

Alas, it is, in fact, only a semblance.

Nelvana seems to have mutilated the show beyond all possible recognition.

If you visit their FAQ, you will notice that Nelvana attributes this to market research which indicates that "kids" wished to see the show center more on Li Syaoran (Li Showron, to uneducated Americans -- and never you mind that Li is supposed to be his last name). While we don't have access to their hard data, I rather suspect they polled a heavily male audience. You know, the ones who watch Pokemon. Because it is this same audience they wish to attract. (A later interview with Nelvana confirmed this fact -- it was requested by Kids WB. See http://www.fantasticon.com/anime/features/cardcaptors.html for more information.)

Since the existing animation market in American is something like 70 percent male, young males after all are the only people worth polling.

Girls just don't matter.

For once, the long-suffering-fan routine (which is what keeps me from most anime and manga newsgroups and web sites) is actually appropriate. KidsWB took a show with a female protagonist and tried to edit it into one with a boy in the starring role. This meant actually skipping the first seven episodes of the series, so they could begin with the one introducing Li, but the others just set up the situation and the minor characters. You know, the girls.

Fox did something similar with Escaflowne, starting their version of the series with the second episode. They also, paradoxically, played up the fighting while removing the bloodshed. The Escaflowne Report, linked in an earlier entry, goes into actually troublingly obsessive detail about what was removed from the US broadcast version. A brief sample:

As the reports said, the first episode was skipped almost entirely. Or rather, as I predicted it was folded down into about 5 minutes total, then interspersed into the second episode at reasonably appropriate times to create a backstory; a sparse one, but at least it's there, which is more than you can say for Cardcaptors. Generally, whenever Hitomi cuts to one of her visions or daydreams in the second episode, we are instead shown key visions or events from the first episode.

[. . .] But by far the most meaningful change is how the American edit handles violence. As I mentioned in my introduction, there is a lot of violence, blood, death, and destruction in Escaflowne, much more so than anything else you're likely to see on Saturday morning. This is because Escaflowne was targeted towards a high school teen audience and showed at a less juvenile pre-prime-time slot. The American edit does not - because it is targeting [younger] kids. I was curious as to how they could deal with this discrepancy. As expected, they did find a way, although I can't say I'm all that pleased with it.

First of all, it would be impossible to omit the death and destruction without completely screwing up the show, so they didn't try to do that. Insteady they chose to tone down how it is done. Virtually all signs of blood have been eliminated. Anytime someone is attacked, they never actually show them being hit. Instead they show them aiming, firing, and then cut to the victim falling to the ground. We never see the weapon actually hitting them, piercing their body, or making them bleed. Nor do their bodies afterwards show much visible signs of damage. But the unfortunate consequence of this method of reducing the intensity of the battle is the disruption of the flow.

For those of you who saw the original version, yes, that was my reaction, too. . .

If you're really bored, you can debate whether or not Escaflowne was shoujou to begin with; Anime News Network's editorial on the Fox edit says it wasn't, and there were two different comics/manga adaptations of the series, girly character-development heavy shoujou and fightin' robots action shonen. If I wanted to lose serious money in the dying comics market, I'd buy the rights to both and publish 'em together in a flip book, half of each issue dedicated to each version. Then retailers could write saying it sold better when they racked it the boys' version cover facing out, and wouldn't it be more sensible to use the back cover for ads instead? And maybe take the girls' version out completely, since people were complaining about paying for half a book they had no intention of reading?

Funny. I was writing about pop culture so I wouldn't get annoyed.

Want to know more? There's more info on the Escalowne Manga if you want. Warning: Hitomi seems to have gone all upfront in the shonen version. Another reason it would sell better in comics shops. Perverts.

Slight return: The archive doesn't have a copy of that interview from http://www.fantasticon.com/anime/features/cardcaptors.htm, and their 404 isn't that interesting. There's a discussion about the interview from way back in 2000 from rec.arts.anime.misc at Google Groups, if you're interested. There's one pull quote from Nelvana:

This series is about capturing the various magical cards running about, not about sexual relationships. The various relationships you speak of are not conducive to children's programming.

Because, you know, children don't have crushes or anything, and everyone is perfectly, totally straight until they hit college at the earliest.

Anyone else amused at the loss of the interview due to the site going down (well, along with the robots.txt instructions)? At least when a print magazine goes under, there are old issues floating around. I'm sure someone saved/printed a copy of the thing, but for it to no longer be publicly available (without more digging than I felt like doing), in the face of all we've been told about how the web is superior to dead trees media. . . No, this is a rant for another day.

Posted by Aaron at 1:31 PM | Permalink

Plugged Lynn Peril's name into Google, since I'd forgotten the location for Mystery Date and looking for it here would mean reading my crap writing and wincing. One of the results was an article she did about (a book on) Bettie Page.

LET ME get it off my chest right away: I am sick of Bettie Page, the dark-haired, straight-banged pinup model who walked away from it all in 1957. What has led to this ennui? In a word, oversaturation. The years following Page's disappearance have seen the rise of a veritable Bettie Page cult.

Which is actually more than I ever knew about the woman. The sorts of stores that feature merchandise bearing her image usually aren't the sorts of places where you want to ask questions. Not needing Comic Book Guy mocking my ignorance, thanks. I'll just hide it instead.

The review was in The San Francisco Bay Guardian, the current issue of which features an article on Deep Dick Collective. Which Ronn Taylor mentioned a few days ago, but he's cooler than I am.

"D/DC occupies this space that isn't exactly comfortable for anybody," [member Tim'm T.] West tells me a week later, during our interview at Sexual Minority Alliance of Alameda County (SMAAC), the Oakland-based gay youth center where he worked until he recently left to pursue teaching high school full time. "We're not comfortable for black gay people; we're not a comfortable act for white gay people, white straight people, black straight people. We draw people who are actually thinking about identity - dealing with their racism and erotophobia. You don't get to be this cool gay white guy and not called out in some regards. But there are audiences that do get committed to the ideas that we're talking about, and they are doing some soul-searching."

I'm all in favor of soul-searching. For other folks, anyway. I ain't got time for that shit.

There's also a piece by Annalee Newitz of Bad Subjects fame. Or perhaps fame and Bad Subjects should not appear in the same sentence. . .

Any road up, think sfbg.com gets added to the sprawling monstrosity that is my bookmarks.

Since otherwise, I'd have to come back here to find the link. And ah hates doing that.

Posted by Aaron at 8:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Remember, kids, don't poke fun at the site owner.

Naria and Eriya (pictured) appeared in the trop belle pour American television series Vision of Escaflowne. Fox Kids! tried, but the results managed to alienate fans of the original and failed to attract new viewers. These things happen in the fast-paced world of kids' programming. Fickle little bastards.

Anyway, about those two in the graphic. From "hit CTRL-A to read the very light text on this page" Silver and Gold:

In the Cut version of Escaflowne, the editors were smart in taking out certain parts that told us more about Naria and Eriya. If you've ever seen the Uncut version, you know what I mean. Now, if you like, you can keep reading, but what I'm about to say may offend some younger readers. Read it at your own discretion:

In the uncut version, Naria and Eriya have a close relationship. I mean, a really close relationship. *cough* I mean, a relationship that is pretty much considered taboo in our day and age. Do you get the picture? The editors were more or less smart when they cut out the part from Operation Rule of Love when Naria leaned over her sister in a  suggestive way and wanted to kiss Eriya to know what it tasted like to kiss Folken.  That's the kind of close relationship they have.

Those wacky Japanese.

Returning to Gender and sexuality in Japanese Anime at theory.org.uk, there are more than a few broken links. Hey, it was written in 1999; things shift around. Figured since I looked the things up, might as well put 'em here. Yes, I could send them to the person who put up the site so he could fix them, but that would make too much sense.

Gilles' Service to Fans Page is the "good introduction to anime" mentioned early in the article. Amy Katsumi Sakurai's Anime for the Transgendered didn't move that much, but the 404 with the old link doesn't tell you that. The archive has a copy of B.C. Holmes' The Third Gender and Hybridity, or you can dig around BCHolmes.org. I have a perilously short attention span, and could not find the article within two clicks. Amazingly, Jo Ni's Resource And Guide To Homosexuality, Bisexuality and Transgenderism In Anime is still in the same place. On the other hand, the Archive only seems to have the front page of Karen Smith's site. Karmic balance, man.

Yes, I am still too disgusted with your Yanqui politics to write much about them, so I read up on gender fluidity in Japanese cartoons. Everyone relaxes in different ways.

Want to know more? See facts which weren't about Bandai's plans for the Fox version of Escaflowne.

Update: And how I managed to forget to mention AnimeResearch.com in all that is beyond me. Wait, that's right, I'm a moron. Never mind.

Posted by Aaron at 8:00 PM | Permalink

We're all sick of this shit, right?

ajc.com | ELECTION 2002 | RESULTS

And in her traditional south DeKalb stronghold, McKinney's voters didn't come out in the kind of numbers she has typically drawn. For example, at Stoneview Elementary School, a McKinney stronghold and the site of a melee over ballot access for the 1,767 people who showed up to vote in the 2000 general election, only 169 people cast ballots Tuesday, most of them for McKinney.

Yep, people giving up on the political system entirely is exactly what's needed now. Thanks, Fucking White Oppressor!

Playing a Quick Mix from My.MP3.com. Handly little thing.

1. Deadly Nightshade Family Singers* -DNFS - Silence Descends
2. Rachel Sage* - Big Star (live)
3. Tori Amos - Pretty Good Year
4. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - O'malley's Bar
5. Terror Core* - STRICT NINE - The Haunted Apple Tree
6. Leonard Cohen - The Future
7. Rachel Sage - Obsessive Love Song (live)
8. Sister Soleil - Strength
9. Audra* - In All Our Androgyny
10. INDIA.Arie* - Butterfly
11. Cowboy Junkies* - I'm So Open
12. PJ Harvey -M-Bike

The * indicates an MP3.com page for the artist where you can hear/download their songs. The rest are official sites or cool-looking fanpages or whatever. I left out the songs which are currently locked due to rights issues. And everyone knows about Beam-It, right?

Putting your personal CDs online is a breeze with MP3.com's Beam-it technology. [. . .]

1. Insert a CD in your computer's CD-ROM drive.
2. Click on the Beam-it button.

In a few seconds, you'll see a status message indicating which tracks from your CD were added successfully. It's that easy!

This "click" business only applies to Windows and Mac users, mind. Some of us have to type in arcane commands, including our bloody password, every time we want to add something. Unless they've updated the Linux client, which I doubt. I'd check, but I'm too apa-- never mind.

Update: The protestations are true. I'm not a geek, so I forget some of the little controversies.

From the previous link, Robert Szarka's Notes on MP3.com's Beam-It Protocol:

The privacy concerns associated with the service are real, though as someone else noted it's unfair to equate MP3.com's stated policies with RealNetwork's violation of its customers' privacy with no prior disclosure. Personally, I'm happy to provide information about my musical tastes to companies like MP3.com and CDNow that provide a real service and do so responsibly. MP3.com, however, should do a better job of informing customers that it collects other data (e.g. the IP address and MAC address) and disclosing the ways in which it is used.

For the non-geeks, some definitions from Webopedia.com:

IP address

An identifier for a computer or device on a TCP/IP network. Networks using the TCP/IP protocol route messages based on the IP address of the destination. The format of an IP address is a 32-bit numeric address written as four numbers separated by periods. Each number can be zero to 255. For example, 1.160.10.240 could be an IP address.

MAC address

Short for Media Access Control address, a hardware address that uniquely identifies each node of a network. In IEEE 802 networks, the Data Link Control (DLC) layer of the OSI Reference Model is divided into two sublayers: the Logical Link Control (LLC) layer and the Media Access Control (MAC) layer. The MAC layer interfaces directly with the network media. Consequently, each different type of network media requires a different MAC layer.

The practical upshot of all this is, MP3.com knows who you are when you tell them what cds you own. If your reaction to this stunning revelation is saying "duh," you're not a geek either. You're far too sensible.

If you're horrified at this invasion of your privacy and thinking about swapping out ethernet cards whenever you use the program (since most of us have dynamic IPs to begin with). . . um, yeah, keep fighting the power. You probably refuse to get one of those savings cards at the local supermarket, yet pay using a check or debit card.

My only problem with Beam-It was my idiot early-adopter instincts and weird music tastes. They might have an alternate solution now, but way back in the day, if you submitted a cd that wasn't in their database they would, um, rip it. And upload the rip. Again for the non-geeks, this is a Bad Thing. A Bad, time, bandwidth and drive-space consuming thing.

After the RIAA lawsuit (you may now hiss the villain), not all songs on all cds are available. ABBA must have freaked, since all of their songs from the Muriel's Wedding soundtrack are locked. Yes, even the orchestral versions of Dancing Queen. Bastards.

Posted by Aaron at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

So I suggested Cardcaptor Sakura as a more pleasant alternative to Yu-Gi-Oh! Like everything else I write, this requires some background. Indulge me. And my tendency to run words together inconsistenly.

According to the outline shamelessly ripped off from The *Cutie Cutie* Card Captor Sakura Page (and do you really want that in your browser history?):

The story begins with a cute little girl named Sakura Kinomoto. One day, Sakura is in her father's library and finds a book named The Clow. The Clow is a large book with a gold lion on the front and originally held the Clow Cards. As Sakura held the book in her hands, it began to glow. Cerberus (aka Kero-chan), a little critter with wings, emerges from The Clow's cover and asks Sakura to capture the Clow Cards. Kero-chan was sleeping on the job, so the Clow Cards escaped. Sakura is given the title of the Card Captor and the Key that can catch the Clow Cards. The Key can grow to staff-size and also can use the powers of previously captured Clow Cards! Sakura is reluctant to become the Card Captor at first, but Kero-chan informs her that if she fails in capturing the Clow Cards, Disaster is certain.

The Key and the Clow Cards are not the only things in Sakura's arsenal. Thanks to Tomoyo Daidouji, Sakura's best friend, she also has cell phones, mini-computers, and...COSTUMES!! ^_^ Tomoyo loves to make costumes for Sakura and then film her, so it only makes sense that she would film Sakura performing her Card Captor duties while wearing her creations. "It's the Birth of the Card Captor!"

Oh, shut up. It's a Geocities anime fan site. You're lucky I didn't include the Comic Sans MS font tag.

Anyway, that last bit about Tomoyo. . . er, they have a different attitude towards such things over there. See also: Sailors Neptune and Uranus. Oh, the eternal debate. . . Anyway, according to theory.org.uk, and with a name like that, it has to be good:

So is Japan more liberal about these issues?

Jennifer says: "This is not to say that Japan is a queer-positive society overall, for it is not. Japanese society is more accepting of many things western cultures actively seek to destroy, but only under the understanding that the matters in question are kept private. Few Japanese parents would welcome the prospect of a queer child, and there is a certain exclusion offered openly queer individuals in Japan, for they are considered odd, or different, and being 'different' in Japan is a source of interest, but also immediate suspicion.

"So, perhaps the best way to understand the representation of queer folk as positive, or at least comically human, characters in Japanese media, is to see Japan as a culture fascinated by difference, precisely because it is maintained as a homogeneous society. It is a culture that is not overly hateful towards queer issues, but neither is embracing by any means, and finds acceptance of the queer mostly as entertainment, or as a hidden and therefore unoffensive, subculture. The hidden nature of queer culture in Japan is not, however, linked with dread fear of violence as might be often found in western culture, but is rather more an extension of the general social disdain for overt expressions of intimacy of any sort."

Er, there's quite a bit more there, actually, but I won't ask you to indulge me that much. The extended quote is from Jennifer Diane Reitz of Accursed Toys fame. She also runs Transsexual.org, if you're wondering about her bona fides with such things.

I was talking about a children's cartoon at one point, wasn't I?

Right, um, there's a comparison of the original version and the edited all to hell US broadcast disaster at CCSvsCC. Y'know, CardCaptor Sakura vs. Cardcaptors.

Consider yourself lucky I didn't bring up (The Vision of) Escaflowne. Could get at least three more screens worth of material out of Dilandau alone. . .

Update: Want to know more? God, you're a glutton for punishment. See toastyfrog's guide to anime for help with bizarre terms like, um, anime, and Anime Web Turnpike is an invaluable source of Geocities fan pages that use Comic Sans MS where someone over the age of 13 would not.

Time for more coffee, I think.

Update 2: See also: Media, Gender and Identity by David Gauntlett.

Media, Gender and Identity provides a new introduction to, and analysis of, the relationship between the media and gender identities today.

Since many of the key texts on media and gender were written, a lot has changed. We've seen the rise of 'girl power' and better roles for women in TV and film, plus the emergence of cocky new lifestyle magazines for men whilst we hear that masculinity is 'in crisis'. The worlds of pop music and magazines give women assertive, aspirational messages, whilst texts for men are both cheerfully virile and quietly insecure. New identities abound, but some traditional images persist too.

Within this landscape of complex media messages, there are individuals trying to establish their own identities, to feel comfortable in themselves and as part of society. Media influences are clearly subtle and indirect, so how can we understand them? David Gauntlett proposes a new route through this question, providing clear chapters on theorists Anthony Giddens, Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, to show how recent ideas in identity negotiation and queer theory can be used to understand the place of popular media in people's lives.

Or, you know, you could just buy Cardcaptor Sakura and watch the pretty cartoon. It's not necessary to overanalyze everything to death, after all.

That's why I'm here.

Posted by Aaron at 9:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

See, I would never even have heard of Mary Fahl if I hadn't liked October Project.

Nor would I have ordered the November Project ep, for all the good it did.

This is all because Tisha Stima sent me a mix tape with two October Project songs on it. And I only knew her from the Tori Amos mailing list, Really Deep Thoughts (original version). Long before most of you kids' time, probably.

And I only got into Tori because Gaiman mentioned her in the lettercol of an issue of Sandman.

So it's his fault. Blame him.

And he's up to like his twentieth Topic at The Well. Chatty bastards, his fans are.

Posted by Aaron at 9:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, I'd thought Lileks would comment on recent events in His Fair City (I just live here). No, but he did have this to say:

Rearrangement of the entire national purpose along racial lines. E Pluribus Unum vs. Ein Reich, Ein Volk. I know, I know - just because it's on the money doesn't mean it's so, but if you think this nation is trending towards some sort of government-enforced ethic purity, you really need to get out of your suburb more, and visit me in the city. Black people! Brown people! Yellow people! Mingling and living with impunity!

I'm guessing he wrote this before he saw the news, then.

You can see the neighborhood change before your eyes going through Minneapolis. The bus is best for that, I think; driving is too isolated, walking (for me, at least) means getting asked for drugs and stopped by the cops. But any way you do it, it's impossible not to notice that you move from African-Americans here to Somalis there to Hmong there, and even though there'll be a mix with your fellow passengers/drivers/pedestrians, it's a stretch to say they're mingling. Unless this is a euphemism for "not openly at each other's throats."

You might be wondering about white folks.

Note carefully how Lileks ain't mention 'em either.

Want to know more? See the Racial Segregation Statistics for Cities and Metropolitan Areas if you're into that whole objective data thing. Before the Racial Privacy Initiative types shut 'em down.

Update: Fuckit. SEGREGATION: NEIGHBORHOOD EXPOSURE BY RACE for Minneapolis/St. Paul. And here's Chicago, just for comparison.

I'll agree with Lileks on one thing, though. The suburbs are usually even worse.

Fortunately, most of them are within the blast radius.

Posted by Aaron at 7:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

How can you tell the dreads are out of control?

When some sweet, innocent child points at you and squeals delightedly, "Yu-Gi-Oh!"

Don't worry, they'll never find the body.

Update: vaguely related. Know how some people have the right idea, but the wrong execution? Or maybe it's the wrong idea to begin with, but it sounds right?

Nah, me neither. Check out the list of Mixed Actors & Actresses, including site favorites Lexa Doig and Kristin Kreuk, at MixedFolks.com.

There seems to be a flaw there somewhere, but I can't figure out what. . .

Posted by Aaron at 10:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Democratic party pulls head from ass, looks around:

Impact of McKinney Loss Worries Some Democrats (washingtonpost.com)

Black and Jewish political leaders voiced concerns yesterday that the defeat of Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.), a critic of pro-Israel policies, by a challenger receiving extensive Jewish support might intensify ill feelings between two important Democratic constituencies. Any increase in tensions between Jewish and African American voters, political activists said, could damage Democratic hopes of taking back the House and keeping control of the Senate.

[. . .] Although both Majette and McKinney are African American, the unusual interest in their primary by pro-Israel groups backing Majette and by pro-Muslim groups backing McKinney triggered talk yesterday of a potential for sharpened conflicts between blacks and Jews -- in Georgia and elsewhere.

Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Tex.), chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said that "at the grass roots" among African American voters, there is a growing perception that "Jewish people are attempting to pick our leaders. . . . There is some concern about that. It's concern about any candidate being targeted by a special-interest group for voting on any one issue."

Next, Democratic Party realizes sun rises in East, sets in West, after repeated observation of phenomenon.

That quotation from Johnson "set off" something named Mitch Weber. Why? He doesn't say. Just that:

That's precisely the sort of remark that turned me against the ACLU. Some people - yes, people, not just statements - are too vile for First Amendment protection.

Uh-huh.

He also wrote, a few days before:

In a related story, I recently noticed, after three years in New Haven, that one of our busiest intersections - College and Chapel - is named in honor of Desmond Tutu. Has anyone ever boycotted a street corner before?

Known of his existence for all of five minutes, and already I wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire. Think that's a new record.

Posted by Aaron at 9:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, that didn't take long. Cheerfully linked by InstaPundit, who can't seem to give up on Cornell West or Cynthia McKinney either, VodkaPundit writes of our supposed allies in Saudi Arabia:

Like that twisted ex-girlfriend you can never completely detangle from, the Saudis will perform some very sweet gestures, cause a lot of grief, and sometime down the road, force us to come in and pick up the pieces of their shattered selves.

I want to work the check-in table at the warblogger convention. I shall give them all nametags which read, "Hello, My Name Is Fucking Ignorant Het White Male Oppressor". Might be a bit confusing at first, but I'm confident they'll work out some system.

Posted by Aaron at 8:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm not quite certain what to make of this, to be honest.

BBC NEWS | Africa | Africa cocoa slavery 'exaggerated'

New research says that reports of children being traded as "cocoa slaves" on plantations in West Africa have been heavily exaggerated.

Last year, Western lobbyists severely criticised multinational chocolate companies for using cocoa cultivated by child slaves.

But detailed research by the Nigerian-based International Institute for Tropical Agriculture says that while child labour is a major problem on farms in poor countries, very few of the children were traded or could be described as slaves.

Most children interviewed by the institute gave the realistic, but rather undramatic, explanation that they were searching for work and a better life.

On the one hand, it seems convenient, let us say, that a group based in Nigeria would dispute the original reports.

On the other, the Western media does tend to present Africa as a land of unrelenting horror -- haven't seen anything about Ethiopia and Eritrea releasing all POWs here, for example, because that's good news.

The unrelenting horror thing helps maintain the idea that those of us fortunate enough to have had ancestors enslaved here are far better off than Africans who actually live there, a notion WriteWoman noted Dinesh D'Souza expanding on on NPR a few days back.

It's like how reporting on slavery in the Sudan usually seems almost gleeful in pointing out how backwards and evil those people are. Leading some people here to act as apologists or deny it exists, which isn't really helping.

Screw it. Back to pop culture with me.

Posted by Aaron at 8:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So, in bitch #17, there's a brief mention of:

Catherine Orenstein's highly entertaining and intellectually keen Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: The History of a Fairy Tale from the Forest to the Bedroom {BASIC BOOKS} parses the multiple meanings of the many variations of our culture's most familiar narrative. . .

Which isn't quite the right title (the sub should be "Sex, Morality, and the Evolution of a Fairy Tale"), but I'm hardly one to cast stones.

Harvard Book Store has an informative description, which you'd expect for what tuition costs:

In Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked Catherine Orenstein reveals for the first time the intricate sexual politics, moral ambiguities and philosophical underpinnings of Red Riding Hood's epic journey to Grandmother's house--and how, from the nursery on, the story influences our view of the world. Beginning with its first publication as a cautionary tale on the perils of seduction, written in reaction to the licentiousness of the court of Louis XIV, Orenstein traces the many and various lives the tale has lived since then, from its appearance in modern advertisements for cosmetics and automobiles to the inspiration it brought to poets like Anne Sexton and its starring role in pornographic films. In Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked, Red appears as seductress, hapless victim, riot grrrrl, femme fatale, and even she-wolf, as Orenstein shows how, through centuries of different guises, the story has served as a barometer of social and sexual mores pertaining to women. Full of fascinating history, generous wit, and intelligent analysis, Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked proves that the story of one young girl's trip through the woods continues to be one of our most compelling modern myths.

Amazon's editorial review is similar, and even name-checks Charles Perrault, which I felt was trying too hard.

The magazine also features an interview with Lynn Peril about her upcoming book, Pink Think: Becoming a Woman in Many Uneasy Lessons, as well as her zine Mystery Date.

And god help us all, there's a site for the book. Don't think that was mentioned in the interview. Oddly, what was mentioned, in Lynn's very first answer, was:

I also always wanted to do the type of writing that I do now because I really hated it when people wrote about popular culture in a really academic sense. If you want to write about, you know, the meaning of Dobie Gillis, write about the meaning of Dobie Gillis. Don't write about what Derrida would've said about Dobie Gillis.

I'm not ripping things off from them on purpose. It's just. . . happening.

Posted by Aaron at 7:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Minnesota nice, ladies and gents.

Pioneer Press | 08/23/2002 | MINNEAPOLIS: Melee breaks out after police shooting

About 75 to 100 people in the Jordan neighborhood of North Minneapolis rioted Thursday evening after police said an officer accidentally shot an 11-year-old boy in the arm while executing a search warrant. The boy did not have life-threatening injuries and was released from the hospital, Minneapolis police said.

Several vehicles were damaged and at least six people were injured, including three journalists covering the incident. A Metro Transit bus had several windows smashed and three passengers sustained scrapes, one requiring hospital treatment. A station wagon and an SUV were set on fire.

By midnight, about a dozen police cars filled with officers in riot gear were continuing to monitor the neighborhood, particularly the corner of 26th and Knox avenues. A Minnesota State Patrol helicopter flew overhead, using infrared equipment to look for lingering groups of people.

Police said the neighborhood appeared to be quieting.

I don't live anywhere near there, by the way.

Minnesota Public Radio is covering the story as well. Chalk it up to Chicago world-weariness, but I keep wondering what the big deal is.

I suppose that's a bad sign.

Posted by Aaron at 5:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

I've mentioned Lanterna a few times before. EMusic has samples from the second album:

Elm Street by Lanterna (Badman Recording Co.)

And regular NPR listeners have heard bits of at least "Silent Hills" from the eponymous first cd.

Which someone is selling for a penny on eBay. Not me; that one's way down on the list of things I'm willing to part with. But, um, even with postage, it's easily worth what they're charging.

Or, you know, you can order it from Parasol. That's the one I have, with the much prettier packaging than the Rykodisc version on eBay.

It's entirely possible that this is only of interest to Shampoo-Banana 'fugees. The same people who'd care about the Nina Paley page at Apple.com. Who else even knows who Nina Paley is?

No, I'm curious, because I have a feeling people around here who didn't go to Screw of I know (of) her, and I'm wondering how.

And apparently, she's in India until December anyway.

Added EMusic link thingee, just for the hell of it.

Posted by Aaron at 4:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Oh, like anyone is going to notice.

Via WHEDONesque, which I would check more often if I weren't spoilerphobic (not even an issue there) and especially stupid:

`Buffy' writer may be TV's best

[Joss] Whedon is a true child of television, figuratively and literally.

In the literal sense, his grandfather, John Whedon, was a comedy writer on the ``The Donna Reed Show'' and ``Leave It to Beaver'' in the 1950s and 1960s. His father, Tom Whedon, was a writer on series including ``Alice'' and ``Benson.'' And right after graduating from college, Whedon himself got a job as a story editor and writer on ``Roseanne'' in the early (and very good) days of that series.

In the figurative sense, no one working in TV has a surer sense of American pop culture and television's place in it than Whedon. His shows are studded with neatly phrased references to everything from comic books and pop music to obscure films and old TV series. It's as if several decades of cool poured into Whedon's brain and now come out through his fingertips.

``Benson''?

I could mention the comic

Oscar nominee Joss Whedon is one of Hollywood's hottest writers, having scripted several hit films and created one of television's most critically praised shows, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Now, the celebrated Whedon is bringing his talents to Dark Horse Comics, where his eight-issue supernatural suspense miniseries Fray debuts in June.

In the future, the world is a manmade, hopeless hell, riddled with radiation and disease, and populated by the masses who suffer the ill fate of mutation. Add to that vampires, demons and other grim, supernatural threats -- unrecognized by the world at large, but still a constant and deadly reality -- that cower in shadows and skulk late-night streets. When the forces of darkness come calling, a young and incredibly tough girl named Melaka Fray will be transformed from street urchin of a disposable society to its only savior.

Fray marks Whedon's comic writing debut, but this visionary series is a product of the writer's life-long fascination with the comics medium. "I've always wanted to write comics, and after establishing this relationship with Dark Horse on the Buffy books, I was thinking about it even more. I also saw how much fun the writers -- including guys like Doug Petrie, who works with me on the show -- were having with the comics, so I decided to abuse my vast power and force Dark Horse to let me do a series."

but then Jason would probably strangle me.

Posted by Aaron at 2:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Geez.

I was reminded of a scene from the old TV show, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, where Maynard G. Krebs, Bob Denver's character, a prototypical beatnik of the late 50's and early 60's -- or, at least, what passed in Hollywood as a prototypical beatnik of the late 50's and 60's -- was watching a TV western movie with a baby on his lap. "Look, Baby," Maynard says, "someone's getting out of the train. If he looks at the clock he's a bad guy, but if he's wearing a white hat he's a good guy." The shot centered Maynard who sat in silence and looked at the TV nonplused. "Hmm," said Maynard trying to figure out what he had seen, "He looked at the clock and he's wearing a white hat. It must be one of those adult westerns."

And I thought I was aiming at a narrow demographic.

That passage is from one of Bob Ingersoll's old The Law is a Ass columns from the Comics Buyer's Guide, which are currently re-running at World Famous Comics.

The column usually describes screw-ups that comics writers make when they write about legal matters. The ones going up on the site are from 1988 (Remember Action Comics Weekly? Don't worry, the creators are trying to forget, too), so you've got a piece for comics fans (a tiny market to begin with), about books that came out 14 years ago, making reference to a tv show from the '60s (although Nickelodeon might have created a new generation of fans). Yeah, that's gonna have widespread appeal. . .

Folks have been predicting the death of the comics industry for a while, and with distributors and publishers going under, it looks like the stopped clock effect might have finally kicked in. Plus, y'know, there are several million fans of both The Simpsons and Futurama. The overwhelming majority of them will never even know the crossover comic exists.

In the Bongo Comics Universe, and from the point of view of Matt Groening, Futurama is the real world while The Simpsons is just a comic book and TV show. "In the future they still rerun The Simpsons," says Terry Delegeane, Managing Editor of Bongo Comics. "In an episode of Futurama called The Day the Earth Stood Stupid an alien race, the Brain Spawn, were bent on taking over the universe. They came to Earth and tried to destroy it by draining everyone's brain, but for some reason, they had no effect on Fry."

The aliens zap their victims minds into literature and leave their bodies to die," continues the editor. "In this story, the Planet Express crew make a delivery to a living planet that collects comic books. The Brain Spawn are about to invade and discover Fry on the planet. Ultimately, he and the rest of the cast of Futurama are sent into an issue of Simpsons Comics.

The ones that do may not be near a comics shop, and won't be able to find the thing.

True, most books are crap superhero slugfests and many shops are frightening places with scary, scary people (Lileks can't-make-a-permalink ass was in Big Brain Comics recently, ferchrissakes), but there is good work out there. Shame so few people ever hear about it.

Note I am still avoiding politics. You don't want to read that sort of thing at the moment. In fact, your monitor would probably melt.

Insert Zelda Gilroy/Sheila Kuehl joke here.

Hey, how many politicians have the word "irrepressible" in their bio?

Update: Linked to the Comicon.com Pulse version of the story, added graphic. Kube still want sleep. And thinks lots of diacritic marks make a language pretty.

Posted by Aaron at 9:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Obsessed with Brazil? Me? Perish the thought. I just think martial arts are cool. I'm shallow like that.

From Capoeira Arts' History of Capoeira:

Capoeira is an art form that involves movement, music, and elements of practical philosophy. One experiences the essence of capoeira by "playing" a physical game called jogo de capoeira (game of capoeira) or simply jogo. During this ritualized combat, two capoeiristas (players of capoeira) exchange movements of attack and defense in a constant flow while observing rituals and proper manners of the art. Both players attempt to control the space by confusing the opponent with feints and deceptive moves. During the jogo, the capoeiristas explore their strengths and weaknesses, fears and fatigue in a sometimes frustrating, but nevertheless enjoyable, challenging and constant process of personal expression, self-reflection and growth.

Ok, that's more vague description than history. Unfortunately, the history is vague as well.

Most of the questions related to the formative period of the art still remain unanswered. When, how, and why did capoeira emerge in Brazil? From what specific cultural groups did it come, and from which original art forms did it derive? The difficulty in answering these questions resides in the lack of written registers of capoeira and in the absence of an oral tradition that reaches as far back as the pre-dawn of the art. Also, the unclear Europeans' notion of cultural and geographic boundaries of the African territories at the beginning of Portugal's colonial enterprises, as well as the mixing of Africans from different tribes in the same work areas in Brazil, increase our uncertainties.

Supposedly, I can take classes here in Minnesota, but have long since learned not to rely too heavily on info found on the web. And emailing someone or picking up the phone are obviously out of the question. This would require some measure of social skills, after all.

First heard about the art on a PBS documentary, which suggested that the slaves made it look like dancing to keep their masters from getting suspicious. Initially, they showed slow, graceful movements of several people practicing, then cut to an actual fight. Graceful? Yes. Slow? I wish I'd taped it so I could go through frame-by-frame, and I'd probably still miss things.

And the overwhelming majority of people in the U.S. have never even heard of it, and snicker gently when you describe it as Afro-Brazilian martial arts. Because, y'know, niggers ain't have stuff like that.

Good reason to learn it. To demonstrate on those sorts of people.

Want to know more? CAPOEIRA.COM "is a portal-type site with resources covering a wide variety of Capoeira-oriented topics." There's also a Google Directory category, although I've not tried all the links. However, one of them, iCapoeira.net, features

photos from [Nokia Mobile Phones'] Capoeira ad campaign featuring iCapoeira.net editor, Scott Miller and Swimsuit Model, Shakara Ledard.

I mentioned the shallow thing, right?

Posted by Aaron at 7:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (1)

Well, all things considered, I've had worse days. The mere fact that I'm currently incapable of writing coherent sentences, or understanding things without reading them several times, detracts from this not a bit.

Not convincing anyone, am I?

The current issue of Granta (78: Bad Company [nothing to do with the movie, I think. Granta is usually good, for a start]), features a piece called Dervishes by Rory Stewart.

When he turned back to me again, Umar seemed much more animated. He sat cross-legged on the mattress and leaned towards me. 'My friend,' he said. 'There is one thing you will never understand. We Muslims, all of us—including me—are prepared to die for our faith—we know we will go immediately to heaven. That is why we are not afraid of you. We want to be martyrs. In Iran, twelve-year-old boys cleared minefields by stepping on the mines in front of the troops—tens of thousands died in this way. Such faith and courage does not exist in Britain. That is why you must pray there will never be a "Clash of Civilizations" because you cannot defeat a Muslim: one of us can defeat ten of your soldiers.'

'This is nonsense,' I interrupted uselessly. What was this overweight man in his Y-fronts, who boasted of his social life and foreign friends, doing presenting Islam in this way and posing as a holy warrior. It sounded as though he was reciting from some boxed set of leather books called Diatribes against Your Foreign Guest.

Which passage isn't all that representative, but conflict is better at grabbing people's attention than the history of tombs or descriptions of alien cultures. Some people, anyway.

I'm probably going to delete this in the morning. Assuming I see it; I try to avoid reading anything I've written. Always want to re-write it, and it never gets any better.

Like this. Now.

Update: Lena Park makes me happy.

You can hear a few more of her songs on her official site. Korean fonts a must, I'm afraid. And, apparently, Windows Media Player.

Well, there's always the photo gallery. Universal language, that.

What can I say? Sleep deprivation drives me towards K-Pop.

Is K-Pop a word?

Posted by Aaron at 10:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I love Jane Yolen.

The only one of her books I ever read was Briar Rose. Which I may have a copy of, or I may have actually sent it to Stacey, as I'm fairly certain it was a gift for her. I forget things. Degenerative brain disease.

Technically, the book is a Young Adult novel, which in the U.S. means it's better-written, and written at a higher grade level, than novels supposedly aimed at adults. I found this paradox amusing once, but after dealing with the adults those novels are aimed at, it doesn't seem as funny anymore.

Any road up, here's what Kirkus Reviews thought:

The latest in the Fairy Tales series begins with a provocative premise: retelling the story of Sleeping Beauty as a Holocaust memoir. Rebecca Berlin (Becca), the sweet young heroine, fondly recalls the odd version of Sleeping Beauty that her grandmother (Gemma) often told her and her sisters. Although Gemma always identified strongly with Briar Rose, the sleeping princess, no one had thought it anything but a bedtime story--but when a mysterious box of clippings and photos turns up after Gemma's death, hinting that the accepted version of Gemma's origins is untrue, Becca begins tracing the real story, which bears striking resemblances to Gemma's fairy tale. The trail finally leads Becca to the site of an extermination camp in Poland.

Actually, if you hit the link, the review itself is fairly negative, but selective editing is your friend.

Ms. Yolen's site also offers advice from an award-winning, published author, if you're looking for that sort of thing.

For Writers:

There are writers who believe that writing is agony, and that's the best anyone can say of it. Gene Fowler's famous words are quoted all the time: "Writing is easy: all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead." Or Red Smith's infamous screed: "There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein."

But by God that's a messy way of working. And blood is extremely hard to get off of white paper.

Personally, I'm not.

About the title: there are people who react badly to portrayals of the Holocaust in fiction, feeling such things lessen the impact of the actual events. Reasonable people can disagree about this.

Posted by Aaron at 5:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

This entry is, on the face of it, a link to Nerdbait.com. As in:

nerd•bait (nerd•bait-ing, nerd•bait-er, nerd•bait-ed)
n&rd-bAt
verb

The act of teasing, seducing, and otherwise enticing unsuspecting fanboys and/or geeks with intelligence, humor, and feminine wiles

But does this mean it worked? That I'm poking fun at people it would work on? That it worked but I'm disguising this with a cynical veneer? Should I drink from the cup in front of me?

Should I stop being so mean to Anya?

Update: Oops. Rather obviously, found at WEF. I never visit the Nerdbait forum. Except the once. And that was an accident. Honest.

No, I lurk around Skate Jesus:

No idea why, really. Nothing in common with any of those people. . .

Posted by Aaron at 1:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Or Speed. As in Light Speed Press. As in Carla Speed McNeil, writer/artist of the series Finder.

It's good. Very, very good. Don't take my word for it, though. Warren Ellis, he of the soon-to-be-dead WEF and all-around terrifying individual, says:

FINDER is a densely imagined walk in the clouds, a piece where the destination isn't always as important as the journey. It's very, very easy to leave the track of the main plotline and get lost in the details and sights and sounds of a gently mental future culture.

A Finder is a member of a secret society of superbly skilled elite trackers and hunters. Jaeger is a Finder. He's also a Sin-Eater; a scapegoat who purifies the dying by taking on their sins and being punished for them. SIN-EATER, is a tangled story of family, madness, secrets and visions that can go within pages from the hallucinatory to the kitchen sink and remain utterly lucid. And completely fascinating. It does that trick that all good sf novels do - it draws you into its world deeply enough for you to live within it.

Think I've mentioned the book before, but it can't happen often enough. The more people buy it, the longer Carla can keep doing it. Which means more Finder-y goodness for me. Everybody wins.

Ok, mostly I win, but that's really the only thing that matters, right?

Stupid MetaFilter. Between the Speed Racer thread and the Brady Bunch Hour (with Fake Jan) thread, I am officially nostalgia-d out for the rest of the month.

Especially since I caught a few eps of Speed Racer a few years back, and was amazed at how much it sucked. Never revisit your childhood favorites, people. Your shit taste back then will make you want to do the time travel thang.

Update: And as long as I'm indulging the junk/pop culture fascination, SEE Chef Morimoto Iron Chef - Japanese: Asian Spicy Sauce with Tomato and Tofu, Medium Hot.

I'm gonna miss the WEF. . .

Posted by Aaron at 1:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Not that some lives are worth more than others or anything, but at a guess, which story do you think you're more likely to hear?

A:

Nepal Tourist Plane Crash Kills All 18 on Board

A plane carrying foreign tourists slammed into a mountain in bad weather in Nepal on Thursday, killing all 18 people on board.

The Shangri-la Air Twin Otter carrying 13 Germans, three Nepalese crew, a Briton and an American crashed mid-morning just minutes before it was due to land in the city of Pokhara, Nepalese officials said.

The tourists had been booked on the same flight from Jomsom to Pokhara on Wednesday when it was aborted because of bad weather, a German embassy spokeswoman told Reuters in Pokhara, about 85 miles northwest of the capital.

B:

IOL: Landslides, floods kill 65 people in Nepal

A landslide triggered by heavy monsoon rains swept through a mountainous village in eastern Nepal, killing up to 65 people on Wednesday and pushing the death toll from seasonal floods in south Asia to over 1 000.

Most of the residents of the Nepalese village of Thapra, 200km from Kathmandu, were asleep when the landslide struck early on Wednesday, said Lekhnath Pokhrel of the Natural Calamity Management Centre.

He said helicopters loaded with relief material and rescuers were waiting at a Kathmandu airport for the weather to clear.

More than 25 million people have been displaced or stranded in Nepal, India and Bangladesh since June.

25 million (mostly) brown people, versus 13 Germans, a Briton(?) and an American. Go on, take a wild guess.

The Nome King claims that when the flit hits the shan, stories that would normally not pass the ideological gatekeepers manage to get into the major media. The man is clearly deranged.

Targeting minorities is an FBI tradition

''Concluding that second-class citizens would have second-class loyalty, the FBI dismissed every black dissident as subversive, every criticism of American policy as un-American,'' [Kenneth] O'Reilly [author of Racial Matters: The Fbi's Secret File on Black America, 1960-1972] continued. ''While Woodrow Wilson defended national self-determination at the Versailles peace conference, his State Department solicited intelligence reports from the FBI on any black American who complained about riots and lynchings.

''While the president promised to bring democracy to the world, black activists reminded him that he had not yet brought democracy to blacks in his own country or to the not-very-white peoples who lived in America's overseas possessions.'' When Monroe Trotter, editor of the Boston Guardian and head of the all-black National Equal Rights League, pressed Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts to read the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments of the US Constitution into the Treaty of Versailles, ''Hoover, already adept at making himself useful to the incumbent administration, called upon the bureau to monitor `Negro leaders' and their `political stand ... toward the peace treaty and the League of Nations.'

''By the fall of 1919 the FBI had institutionalized surveillance programs aimed at blacks. Bureau field offices across the country covered `the Negro Question' systematically, recruiting `reliable Negroes' as informants in the `various Negro lodges and associations' and having them report on `Negro ministers' and anyone else who preached `social equality' and `equal rights.'

''The informants infiltrated every racial advancement and black nationalist group, from the moderate National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to the immoderate African Blood Brotherhood, hoping to detect `ultra radical activities' or even `liberal activities' ... Hoover concluded that `the Reds have done a vast amount of evil damage by carrying doctrines of race revolt and the poison of Bolshevism to the Negroes.'''

We're abolitionists. We're Communists. We're supporters of Islamic terrorism. And we commit more crimes and get preferential treatment due to quotas. Wow. No wonder we're feared and hated.

Why do we have to commit crimes if we're getting jobs we're not qualified fo-- never mind. There I go using logic again.

Posted by Aaron at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

Blacks seek change, oust congresswoman - Miami Herald

Cute phrasing there, guys.

Was going to say something about how, under our winner-takes-all primary/election system, the 42 percent or so of the people who did vote for McKinney have been told, essentially, "You Negroes get out of line and the Master Race will smack you down", but why bother?

Over at the no-longer-giving-me-500-Server-Error Metafilter, there's a link/discussion about the 44 year anniversary of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. From Mr. Douglas's speech at the first debate:

In pursuance of the arrangement, the parties met at Springfield in October, 1854, and proclaimed their new platform. Lincoln was to bring into the Abolition camp the old line Whigs, and transfer them over to [Joshua] Giddings, [Salmon] Chase, Fred Douglass, and Parson [Elijah] Lovejoy, who were ready to receive them and christen them in their new faith. (Laughter and cheers.) They laid down on that occasion a platform for their new Republican party, which was to be thus constructed. I have the resolutions of their State Convention then held, which was the first mass State Convention ever held in Illinois by the Black Republican party, and I now hold them in my hands and will read a part of them, and cause the others to be printed. Here are the most important and material resolutions of this Abolition platform:

1. Resolved
, That we believe this truth to be self-evident, that when parties become subversive of the ends for which they are established, or incapable of restoring the government to the true principles of the constitution, it is the right and duty of the people to dissolve the political bands by which they may have been connected therewith, and to organize new parties upon such principles and with such views as the circumstances and exigencies of the nation may demand.

2. Resolved
, That the times imperatively demand the reorganization of parties, and repudiating all previous party attachments, names and predilections, we unite ourselves together in defense of the liberty and constitution of the country, and will hereafter co-operate as the Republican party, pledged to the accomplishment of the following purposes: to bring the administration of the government back to the control of first principles; to restore Nebraska and Kansas to the position of free Territories; that, as the constitution of the United States, vests in the States, and not in Congress, the power to legislate for the extradition of fugitives from labor, to repeal and entirely abrogate the fugitive slave law; to restrict slavery to those States in which it exists; to prohibit the admission of any more slave States into the Union; to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia; to exclude slavery from all the territories over which the general government has exclusive jurisdiction; and to resist the acquirements of any more Territories unless the practice of slavery therein forever shall have been prohibited.

3. Resolved
, That in furtherance of these principles we will use such constitutional and lawful means as shall seem best adapted to their accomplishment, and that we will support no man for office, under the general or State Government, who is not positively and fully committed to the support of these principles, and whose personal character and conduct is not a guaranty that he is reliable, and who shall not have abjured old party allegiance and ties.

(Emphasis and links added for the hell of it.)

Slavery? In the District of Columbia? Oh, that could never have happened. There are some limits on American hypocricy, after all.

Wait, no there aren't.

Looking at the U.S. now, it's shocking to imagine slavery existing throughout the country, or in the District of Columbia, the nation's capital. President Abraham Lincoln felt this all his life. On April 16, 1862, he signed an act abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia, an important step in the long march toward freedom, citizenry, and equal rights for African Americans.

Heh. "Black Republican party." Ok, maybe the past did go somewhere, but I'm not sure it's the right direction. . .

Posted by Aaron at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

George Kelly, who sent along this Salon article with that subject line, keeps insisting that copyeditors/web lackeys are my friends, and it keeps being so not true. Is there a J-school course on bad puns, or does this come naturally?

Let's talk about sex
Margaret Cho on her Emmanuelle year and her ex-boyfriend, the super-duper leather dude. Plus: Why Asian-Americans make fun of their parents.

Aug. 22, 2002 | Margaret Cho leaves little to the imagination in her new concert film "The Notorious C.H.O.," detailing, whether you really want to know or not, the details of her more recent sexual escapades, including being fisted by a very short lesbian in a sex club. Yet there's something in her delivery -- and in her remarkably cartoonish face, which seems to almost turn inside out expressing outrage at herself -- that makes even the most graphic revelations as charming as they are disarming.

[. . .] "The Notorious C.H.O." isn't just sex talk. Cho's parents get a fair amount of screen time, both as talking heads in the pre-show interviews and as characters in some of Margaret's most affecting moments on stage. "When I was growing up they were the worst," she says. "I was so mad at them all the time. I started making fun of my mom because -- its such an Asian-American phenomenon to make fun of your parents because they are so foreign and you just can't believe that they live with you and they are so embarrassing, and so we would just always make fun of our parents. My characterization of my mother came out of that. It was one of the first things I ever did as a performer, when I was like 5."

There's a brief interview with Margaret's parents at the beginning of the film. You know that impression she does of her mom? Where you keep thinking, "Oh, she's exaggerating, she's making this up"? Um, no.

Cho lives her life in recurring cycles: putting a show together, touring, promoting the film version and then returning to real life again to rest and begin gathering material. She's balancing now on that cusp between projects, reading, collecting her thoughts, catching up on other interests. This morning she just finished reading Jim Goad's new book, "Shit Magnet," and she's a little obsessed. "He was put in jail for beating up his girlfriend and he's very proud of having committed this crime," she explains. "But he's really an amazing writer, so I get past all of my own ... I'm the kind of person that if an artist is saying things that I absolutely disagree with, I can still like them. I just don't have to agree with what they are saying."

Another reason I love her so. There's too many folks whose work I'd have to skip if I thought about their icky politics/personal lives/marriages to their step-daughters. . . this is all hypothetical, of course. And I haven't really seen any of his movies since the earlier, funnier ones.

On the other hand, there's people where I like their work more because of their politics/personal lives/marriages to Dawn French. I mentioned the hypocrisy thing, right?

She isn't sure what the next show will be, but it seems likely that it will deal with racial identity. Cho was particularly pissed off and inspired by the recent line of Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirts featuring Asian stereotypes doing laundry and the like. "It was so fucked-up. It's infuriating the casualness people have towards racial discrimination of Asians." A group of Stanford students started an Internet protest and inspired a nationwide boycott of the stores. "The response was really exciting," she says. "Students gathering together and taking action. I don't think there's been that level of organization by Asians before." It's not just Asian stereotypes that inspire her ire. Take the recent thriller "Unfaithful": "All that movie's about is how it is OK to kill French people. It is not OK to kill the French!"

Here I'd managed to forget A&F's attempts to market racist chic. Thanks heaps.

Then again, this provides political cover for not buying their crap, so it's all good.

Why are we meant to hate the French so much? They gave us that statue that really don't mean shit to me, but those with lighter ancestors seem so fucking impressed with. And, y'know, Josephine Baker and James Baldwin and more jazz/pop musicians than you can shake a spittle-soaked reed at. . .

And I must apologize to the Minnesotans. They didn't close Notorious C.H.O. after only one week. They just moved it to the full-price theater down the street.

To make room for The Good Girl. I take back what I took back.

Posted by Aaron at 8:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

Doesn't run in Win 98 or under WINE, so it does me no good. . .

World Cafe is not available on the air in the Twin Cities, but is in Duluth. Explain this to me.

As ever, Public Radio Fan is your friend. And, um, through some weird coincidence, they're currently playing the new Peter Gabriel single now. So he's actually going to release the new album in the States, then. How nice.

Perhaps we'll get WOMAD, too. Just one, maybe two shows. As much as a country of comparable size, like England or Germany.

Bitter? Me?

Oh, and I forgot my medication and read Lileks.

I found beaucoup idiocy on the NEA / NIH site, and lots of predictable pabulum on the PBS site as well, but the idea that the NEA project is a HATE AMERICA FIRST project is wrong. Everyone’s focussing on the page that encourages study of the WW2 internment camps, and how contemporary attitudes apply. I agree that it smacks of self-flagellating nonsense, meant to remind us all of the Emergency Racism Reserve that sits under this nation like a gigantic tank of bile, waiting to be tapped by the legions of white-sheeted night riders. Yawn.

Use of unnecessary violence in the apprehension of James Lileks. . .

. . . has been approved.

np - World Cafe, obviously, Kate Bush, "And so is love", The Red Shoes

Posted by Aaron at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

Ok, I feel I should do penance for the Emmylou obsession at this point. . .

The Pink Issue of Bitch, which I should probably not read in public, features an article about Sarah Jones and her ongoing struggle with the FCC. The story's also been covered a few other places; FAIR's write-up gives the basic details:

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently fined a community radio station for airing a political rap song that attacks sexual exploitation and degrading lyrics in popular music.

On May 17, the FCC issued a $7,000 fine to Portland, Oregon's KBOO, a listener-sponsored station, charging that Sarah Jones' "Your Revolution" violated the Commission's decency standards, which were revised in April. The song, which challenges the sexualization of women in rap, asserts that "your revolution will not happen between these thighs."

The FCC ruled that "Your Revolution" contained "unmistakable patently offensive sexual references" that "appear to be designed to pander and shock." This ruling came after the FCC issued an order, nearly seven years in the making, to "provide guidance to broadcast licensees regarding compliance with the Commission's indecency regulations."

You can listen to the Entartete Kunst (well, Entartete Musik) at Airbubble, if you're curious about such things. Pervert.

Or find out why I'm making with the German all of a sudden.

Or there are several links at Sarah's unfortunately-flash-heavy site that'll let you Read All About It:

“Forget about the melting pot. . . multicultural is not a buzz word. This is reality, not just a PC culture.” Born mixed-raced, Jones finds the thread for her stage quilt from her own experience. “I’m taking large risks with the stereotypes. . . .It’s easier that they’re based on real people.” The Baltimore native attended Bryn Mawr College and then came to New york and began doing spoken word, winning the Nuyorican Poets Café’s Grand Slam Championship in 1997. Her anthem, “Your Revolution,” a sexually charged reworking of Gil Scott-Heron’s poem “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” clouts misogyny upside the head, while allowing women to celebrate hip-hop without having to be a “bitch’ or a ‘ho.”

That first statement is silly, of course, as everyone knows that Multiculturalists are the real racists.

Uh-huh.

np - Peter Gabriel, "The Time of the Turning", OVO: Millennium Show

Duh. The article in Bitch describes Sarah's countersuit, which is at least as important:

In an unusual counteroffensive, a New York poet and performance artist filed suit yesterday against the Federal Communications Commission, charging that it violated her First Amendment rights when it fined a radio station for playing a spoken-word song by her with vivid sexual imagery.

The artist, Sarah Jones, asked for a judgment in federal district court in Manhattan that the 1999 song, "Your Revolution," is not indecent as the agency found; for an injunction preventing the commission from enforcing the $7,000 fine against KBOO-FM, a listener-supported station in Portland, Ore.; and for a finding that the commission's ruling violated her free-speech rights.

Lawyers who specialize in First Amendment cases said it was extremely rare for an artist to intervene legally in a case of this sort, which usually pits the F.C.C. against the station it has sanctioned. The suit also represents a further development in a debate about whether the commission is too strict or too lax in policing the airwaves.

Since this story only involves race, gender, sexuality, free speech and government control of the airwaves, it's not been talked about too much. Those are such boring topics, after all.

Posted by Aaron at 7:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

Right. Entries first, in-jokes second. Simple enough rule.

I have no idea where I got a copy of Fiona Apple's Tidal. It just sort-of appeared. Meaning I must have stolen borrowed it from someone, and forgotten to give it back. And now I've forgotten who I got it from in the first place. Good thing I'm so good at losing friends; the odds of that person tracking me down to get it back are slim to none. . .

It's a surprisingly good cd. Surprising, because she was just a kid when it came out, really. Yes, 19 is "a kid" for me now. When I was 19, I would have been irritated beyond belief at this description. I am also a professional hypocrite.

Never picked up the second cd with the long-ass title, which her official site concentrates on. Liked the first single, but I think the MTV acceptance speech breakdown spazz thingee scared me off. Had a bad experience around then with a cute-but-dangerously-insane woman, and I think the resonances were disturbing. . .

I also really liked the live version of "Sullen Girl" (oh, shut up), but have no idea where the tape copy of it is. Someone was sweet enough to give me a copy, and I thank her for this by scarring her psyche for life with vagina dentata images. I suck.

Not enough to deserve cute-but-dangerously-insane women, I think, but suck nonetheless.

Update: Boy, you look through those little booklets. . .

Miss Sara Lee plays bass on some of the tracks on Tidal. If you're visiting this site, you might remember her as ani difranco's touring bassist. Seriously lost cases might even own her solo cd, Make It Beautiful.

Well, I don't listen to it very often, and might sell it. So there.

She has that whole official web site thing going on, too, although it looks like it's not been updated in a while.

Posted by Aaron at 5:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

That last entry has comics and video installations. I always forget I'm not supposed to mix low and high art. Never understood why, but this is apparently very important to some people. Apologies.

In a press release, the American Sociological Association asks:

Would 'race' disappear if the United States officially stopped measuring it?

WASHINGTON, DC -- What if the U.S. government stopped measuring race? Would the results be positive, negative, or indifferent? Under what conditions does the classification of people by race for the purpose of scientific inquiry promote racial division, and when does it aid in the achievement of justice and equality?

Some scholarly and civic leaders believe that the very idea of "race" has the effect of promoting social division and they have proposed that the government stop collecting these data altogether. Respected voices from the fields of human molecular biology and physical anthropology (supported by research from the Human Genome Project) assert that the concept of race has no validity in their respective fields. Growing numbers of humanist scholars, social anthropologists, and political commentators have joined the chorus in urging the nation to rid itself of the concept of race.

At its press conference today, the American Sociological Association (ASA), a scholarly organization of 13,000 academic and research sociologists, asserts in an official statement that it is imperative to support the continued collection and scholarly analysis of data on racial taxonomies.

[. . .] ASA also goes on record as opposing the elimination of data collection on race, because sociological studies show that this practice does not eliminate its use in daily life, both informally by individuals and formally within social and economic institutions. In France, information on race is seldom collected officially, but evidence of systematic racial discrimination remains. In Brazil, the nation's then-ruling military junta barred the collection of racial data in the 1970 census. The resulting information void, coupled with government censorship, diminished public discussion of racial issues but did not substantially reduce racial inequalities. Refusing to acknowledge the fact of racial classification, feelings, and actions, and refusing to measure them does not erase their consequences and will not allow research-based approach to the alleviation of race-induced social inequalities. At best, these actions will preserve the status quo and create an information vacuum.

(link courtesy of John C.)

One of the aforementioned "scholarly and civic leaders" is Steve Sailer, a proponent of the Racial Privacy Initiative (which I'd link to directly, but they've set links up to go boldface on a mouseover, causing it to jump to the next line in my browser. So it's no longer under the pointer, and I can't click it. Moving the pointer down to the link causes it to unbold and flip to the previous line. This is why my site design is so boring; to avoid effed-up shit like that.). Briefly,

The Racial Privacy Initiative would make it more difficult for the bureaucrats to carry on illegally discriminating by race in the name of affirmative action, since they couldn't demand that, say, University of California applicants check off race and ethnicity boxes.

As someone who was admitted to UC San Diego after Prop. 209 passed, all I have to say is, meh.

Think the folks in favor of not collecting data are headed in the same direction as Brazil. Discrimination will still take place, but it'll be harder to even try seeking court remedies because there'll be no data backing up accusations. And innocent until proven guilty still holds true in cases of little brown people charging discrimination, even if they can be detailed without trial indefinitely these days.

Charming.

Want to know more? Someone far more intelligent than I (which don't take much) suggested discussing Race, Class and Power in Brazil a while ago. It's so different from our effed-up color issues, though (assuming you grant that such exist), it's hard for me to wrap my brain around the issue. Priscilla (the utterly gorgeous woman from Brasil I had a linguistics class with a zillion years ago) was fair-skinned, blonde, green-eyed and partially black, after all. And she just could not understand the caste system here at all.

Posted by Aaron at 3:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

Written Arabic frustrates me.

There must be some psychological reason for this.

I can't read Japanese either, of course (or Korean, or Aramaic, or god-forbid Chinese, or. . . you get the idea), but looking at those characters doesn't produce the same "This is information, but you are too stupid to recognize it" reaction. No clue why.

The cover is from Disney Comics Worldwide, mentioned in the Sprited Away update. Weird random fact of the day:

Disney is active in ten countries in the Middle east besides Israel. They are Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Yemen, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon. Saudi Arabia represents about 50% of the Disney market and is the biggest consumer of foreign goods between Western Europe and Souteast Asia. The United Arab Emirates is the second largest economy in the Gulf region and accounts for 20% of the Disney business. It is home to Disney's head office in Dubai, where open-door policies and free trade practices prevail.

Huge Disney presence in Saudi Arabia. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. A disturbing pattern emerges.

Update: Duh. Other reason I was thinking about Arabic is seeing several short films by Iranian artist Shirin Neshat; there's an exhibit of her work at Walker Art Center, and will be for a few more weeks.

There are several short films; a few of them are, well, Walker calls them "dual projection installations", which is a nice way of saying there are essentially two films, projected on opposite walls simultaneously. Sometimes action takes place on both at once, but mostly events on one are observed and reacted to on the other. They're short enough that you can either sit through the installation twice, or just look back and forth, without your brain exploding or your neck locking up.

The credits roll at the same time, with one set in English and the other in Arabic. That was when I noticed the irritation factor. Or maybe my neck was starting to lock up.

Want to know more? Time Europe has an interview/photoessay with Shirin Neshat, and there's also a site for Sussan Deyhin, who provided beautiful, haunting music for several of the films.

Update 2: Because I am a moron.

There's a very good reason to examine Shirin Neshat's work these days:

Shirin Neshat doesn't quite know where to call home. The 43-year-old artist was born and raised in Iran but moved to the U.S. after high school to study art. When the Islamic Revolution overtook her homeland in 1979, Neshat was exiled and couldn't return until 11 years later--and the country she went home to bore little resemblance to the one she left.

Neshat dealt with her sense of displacement by trying to untangle the ideology of Islam through art. The result was Women of Allah (1993-97), a photographic series of militant Muslim women that subverts the stereotype and examines the Islamic idea of martyrdom.

Unless, y'know, you're one of those "they hate us for our freedoms, and because they're EEEEEEE-VIL" types. That's not a productive attitude, and trust me, I know from unproductive attitudes. I'm not only the president, I'm also a client.

The above quote was from the already-linked intro page; this one is from the interview:

TIME:   Why are people in the West so fascinated by Islam?

Neshat:   It's so different from what they are. When you look at a culture that is so different, you start questioning yourself ... The way in which Islamic ideology has been growing rapidly around the Middle East is [seen as] a threat ... It's not even religion. It's like the Soviet Union, communism, which was once a threat. I think that Islam is very often dismissed because that ideology doesn't fit into the kind of rationality that the western world has.

Could try connecting this to the ever-popular dual consciousness of the American Negro, but Du Bois and Frantz Fanon elicit the same reaction as N**m Ch*sky among some folks. And epileptic seizures are so unpleasant to watch.

Posted by Aaron at 2:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

Kathy Y. Wilson, also known as Your Negro Tour Guide, wrote last week:

My sexuality has long been among a grocery list of judgment-heavy words like speculation, discussion, debate, horror, fear, damnation and prayer. Perhaps yours as much as mine.

As such there are people who even think my sexuality invalidates my intellect; that it backspaces me to the child's table. Some people say I don't speak for Negroes or anyone else.

Why, they're absolutely right. I didn't sign up to be spokeswoman for anyone but myself. Nothing about me gets co-opted. Still, it's fodder.

"Eck! She's a dyke," they whisper. "Nobody's listening to her."

Most of these homophobic naysayers connecting the incorrect dots are Negroes. Many in that number are Christians. They've forgotten that we collectively and individually have so much work to do that fretting over who's in my bed is not only counterproductive but silly and dangerous. It shows a real lack of focus.

So. Homophobia (or whatever we're meant to be calling it, since it's not a real phobia) in the black community.

You expect it from the ignorant, the backwards, reactionary, the Republicans and Libertarians, but it's more that a little disturbing to see among progressives:

Black civil rights leaders in the 1950s and 1960s stiff-armed James Baldwin back in the day. Forget that Baldwin was a pied piper for racial and social equality whose pen wielded significant influence. He was an ugly black faggot.

That's Kathy again. Moving beyond progressive and looping back towards reactionary, Clara B. Jones and Robert A. Dickerson write in Are Black Males Homophobic?---A Note:

In 1968, Eldridge Cleaver stated, Homosexuality is a sickness, just as are baby-rape or wanting to become head of General Motors. To be a healthy male, then, is to be homophobic, afraid of and opposed to homosexuality. It may be no accident that Cleaver was a Black male, spokesman for a generation asserting their rights to power and authority in a hostile environment. Power and authority were not only political and economic, but also sexual. The Black male, according to Cleaver, should reject social pathologies in the forms of capitalism and homosexuality. More recently, homophobia by Black males was also reinforced by Louis Farrakhan who equated homosexuality with prostitution and drug addiction in his 1995 State of America address.

(I've long since given up trying to figure out how Farrakhan or the Nation feel about a particular issue. Between their own inflammatory rhetoric, and the just-as-bad counterattacks from the mainstream, there's no point. But I digress.)

[. . .] In a 1989 essay, the Black feminist bell hooks addressed Homophobia in Black Communities. She argued that homophobia is less likely where poverty enforces a context in which structures of dependence were important for everyday survival. Hooks views are similar to those of the social scientists Charles Zastrow and Karen Kirst-Ashman who state that, nonwhite gay men may see their racial and ethnic communities as safe havens from the oppressive white majority culture. Hooks also suggested that homophobia may be less common among southern Blacks who may be more openly expressive of their sexual preference and whose communities may be more tolerant of diversity. Hooks raises the interesting possibility that Blacks may be perceived as homophobic because they are more likely to express anti-gay opinions. Cleaver and Farrakhan may not be more homophobic than their white counterparts, then, they may simply be more predisposed to express their homophobic beliefs and attitudes.

Wondered where I'd ripped that last idea off from.

Then again, Marlon Riggs covered all this a long time ago, and no one cared then, either.

Posted by Aaron at 9:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Found at Nausicaa.net:

"Spirited Away" US Trailer
Click here to view the English-language trailer (QuickTime 5, hosted at Apple.com).

Thanks to Paul Alvarado-Dykstra and Michael Howe for the news.

They also note that the official site is live and direct, for those with Flash 5 anyway.

Spirited Away is, of course, the latest film from Hayao Miyazaki. Lots of information on him, his work, and the distribution deal with Disney that probably seemed like good idea at the time, at the first link.

Think I'll be looking for more pop culture stuff today. . .

Update: For the sequential art fans, Viz has the publishing rights for Spirited Away.

You'd think Disney would take those, too, greedy bastards that they are. Until you realize that they don't do comics, for some reason.

At least, not in the States.

At least, not anymore.

Posted by Aaron at 8:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, thank God that's over. If McKinney had won, the right-wingers would have been completely insufferable. As it is,

"I know, I'll prolly jinx it by gloating, but it'll be SO good to have `the cutest little commie' in congress back at the farm grazing..."

"Not to be a horrible racist...but you really ought to see the crime and drop-out stats for areas that vote McKinney."

"Excuse me while I celebrate like a Palestinian after a terrorist attack over Cynthia's imminent defeat! "

"On behalf of Democrats everywhere, I want to send a genuine, heartfelt `Thank you' to the GOP voters in McKinney's district who helped remove an ongoing disgrace. We're ALL better off with her gone. . ."

(Preceeding quotes from Mister Charlie's)

They're still completely insufferable.

Still, between this and the still-smouldering reparations debate, it's possible to get an accurate idea of the current state of race relations in the U.S.

No, silly to jump the gun on such scant evidence. Perhaps the good people at little green footballs take a more sober approach.

"Good. Excellent. Thank you, voters, for getting rid of that embarrassment.

"I hope that lets some of the America-haters know just where they stand with the rank and file."

"The ultra-left won't get the message, they never do, but McKinney's defeat is a huge signal to the Islamofascist lobby and the blame-America-firsters that the people aren't buying their story."

"The Devil went down to Georgia, or at least she'll be going back there when her term is up at the end of the year."

"Adios and good riddance to that racist b#$%^."

There's also a little song, if you hit the link.

Touching, ennit?

I'm confident that at least one of them expresses reservations about how Majette's victory, owing to Republican crossover votes and massive financial support by out-of-district pro-Israel groups and individuals, confirms the worst fears/propaganda of some elements of the black community.

No, really. They can't be that stupid.

They must give at least passing thought to how this must look to people who don't share their worldview.

Wait, sorry, I'm being divisive and race-baiting again. I'll stop.

Posted by Aaron at 7:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Rodney King — the most celebrated civil rights "victim" of the last quarter century was in point of fact a convicted felon resisting arrest. The President of the United States and the U.S. Justice Department took up King's grievance despite his record, despite his race (more probably because of it) and despite the exoneration of the officers involved in the incident by a jury of their peers. The police were tried a second time — a procedure directly against the American legal grain — and Rodney King emerged triumphant. He received his "justice."

That was David Horowitz, in his subtly-titled Reparations Buffoons On the Washington Mall

It's got it all, really. The sneer quotes, playing fast and loose with the facts, the use of "Buffoons" in the title.

Oh, and the kids at little green footballs are shocked at the anti-Semitism emanating from the Cynthia McKinney camp. Mind you, the entry has this sentence:

The woman is absolutely despicable; no wonder she has the support of CAIR and other radical Muslim groups.

I can't satirize this stuff. I just can't.

Glenn Reynolds reports on voter intimidation in the 4th District race. Police cars sitting outside polling places, folks getting their ids checked and double-checked. . . no, wait, that was niggers in Florida in 2000. This is people getting phone calls.

Again, I can't work with this material.

Lastly, one of the Fucking White Oppressors (namely, Paul Craig Roberts) asks:

What is the future for whites in a political system where both political parties pander to third world immigrants and support racial privileges for minorities? Having lost equal protection of law, what will whites lose next?

The ones who actually believe this stuff?

At a guess?

Their minds.

Posted by Aaron at 8:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Hate them folks who have to slow down to check out an accident scene. Morbid fascination with human suffering. Disgusting.

So, in the McKinney-Majette primary battle, the Atlanta Journal Constitution has the following quotes from the locals:

Bill Dillon, 67, of Chamblee, who described himself as a "50-year Republican," voted in the Democratic primary because of the race. "If I could vote a thousand times against [McKinney] I would," he said. "I don't dislike her, she's probably a very nice person, but I hate her politics. I'm willing to do everything in my power to keep her from being elected."

Eileen Lichtenfeld, 47, of Dunwoody, said she'd voted for McKinney in the past, but switched this year. "Majette seems very qualified and much more mainstream," she said. "Over the past couple of years, McKinney's taken some extreme positions. I happen to be Jewish, so her endorsement by Louis Farrakhan doesn't help."

Ooo! Ooo! Can I use that logic, too? So any Republican endorsed by Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, who spoke at Bob Jones University, who has any affiliation with the Council of Conservative Citizens, who. . . sorry, forgot me head for a minute there. Of course I can't use that logic. It would be divisive and race-baiting.

The first guy, there's not much to say, except it's a good thing this ain't a Cook County election. . .

Update: AJC lists/updates Congressional primary results, if you just can't get enough. Currently, Majette leads 53% to 47%, but that's with one of 174 precincts reporting.

Posted by Aaron at 5:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There actually are Mohicans left, you know. James Fenimore Cooper notwithstanding.

From the always good for an infuriating rage Indianz.com, some good news for a change:

The state of Idaho does not have the right to tax the sale of gas in Indian Country, a federal judge has ruled.

In a major victory for three tribes, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter barred Idaho officials from enforcing a new state law that authorized the tax. His August 16 decision, released yesterday, said only Congress has the power to regulate Indian commerce.

"Congress has not created a specific authorization for states to tax motor fuels sold on Indian reservations," Carter wrote in an 11-page decision.

The ruling represents another chapter in a long battle over Indian taxation. The Coeur d'Alene Tribe, the Nez Perce Tribe and the Shoshone-Bannock Nation have been forced to collect and remit a 25-cent-per-gallon tax on gas sold on their lands.

Over the years, the tribes have handed over millions to the state, money that would otherwise go to their communities. The Shoshone-Bannock tribes, for example, cite $22 million in lost revenue.

I'd'a sworn some idjit or other mentioned Indians in the context of the reparations debate, as a group that truly deserves payment for all the fucked-up shit that happened in the distant past. Because, you know, ain't no fucked-up shit happening now. If there was, you'd hear about it. Since you don't, there isn't.

Plus, you know, they have casinos. And that one chick is on the new dollar coin that don't nobody use.

No, really, tried using one at the Co-op, and the cashier just looked at it for a second.

Seeing as I've recieved a Guatemalan centavo, a Cypriot 1-something piece, a tuppence and more Canadian coins than I'd care to count shopping at Co-ops (fucking hippies), I have no idea why this would have come as a shock to the woman. Unless they're just being more careful now.

Oh, and in case you'd forgotten who is the source of all evil in this world:

The tax was finally struck down in June 2001 by a unanimous Idaho Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case after Idaho Attorney General Al Lance appealed.

In response, Idaho Republicans this past spring rushed to overturn the decision and reinstate the tax by making it retroactive to 1996. They did so even though Lance, in a legal opinion, said the move was unconstitutional.

Yes, Republicans. The Grand Old Party of Original Intent. The Original Intent was for all you mother fuckers to be dead by now.

Posted by Aaron at 2:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

So The Girl sends me a venting email complaining about some guy who made a lewd comment at her when she was jogging that morning.

I am sensitive new-age guy, and a supportive friend, so I may have written back something along the lines of, "It's called a sports bra, look into it."

The message might have continued, "And technically, running back to your apartment from where-ever the fuck last night's one-night-stand lives isn't really jogging."

There could have been something along the lines of, "And you must have been barefoot, since you own no shoes that you could possibly run in. I'm not even sure how you walk.

"Although it is interesting to watch.

"Especially from the back."

So I should not have been surprised at the call. I let the machine get it. Freaks call me.

"I know you're home, and I know that cheap-ass machine only got like five minutes of record time, and if you think I don't have five minutes worth of shit to say, you got another think coming. . ."

I picked up. This was a mistake. I tried to say hello, but she cut me off.

"What are you doing now? Doesn't matter. We're going to Victoria's Secret."

I weighed my options.

"¿Que? No hablo ingles."

"Baka."

"I don't speak Japanese."

"I don't speak Spanish," she lied. "C'mon, we're burning daylight."

I weighed my options, and realized I had none. "When should I pick you up?"

"Not a problem. I'm on your back porch."

I hung up the phone and walked to the kitchen. She gave what could be described as a jaunty wave through the window.

Praying I'd locked the screen door for once, I opened the back door. No such luck. She walked in.

"Hey. You got any beer? Real beer, not that Goose Island shit you like so much?"

Anyone else, I would have asked if it wasn't a little early for that. In her case, I'm surprised she didn't go straight for the hard liquor. "Check the fridge. How did you know I was home?"

"I saw your car. Why you always park so far? Come back and get me."

". . ." I walked out the door and held the screen open. She just looked at me.

"What, you expect me to wait outside? It's hot. Drive around some to let the AC kick in."

Once the car was cool enough for her highness, we set off. She flipped through the cds in the glove compartment with an expression of open disgust.

"And why are we going to Victoria's Secret?"

"You the one told me to get a sports bra."

". . . I don't think they sell sports br--"

"You ever look? Or were you too busy playing with the frilly things? You sick fuck."

". . ."

"Or looking at the posters. Those women are airbrushed all to hell, you know. Real women have hair down th--"

"Find anything you wanted to listen to?" I tried. Vainly.

"Hell no. I didn't even know Lisa Germano had this many cds out. Why you want to listen to whiny women, anyway?"

". . . Couldn't you have gone with somebody else? Stacey?"

Another look of disgust. She has a range of them. "No, she'd drag me up in Lane Giant."

". . . Bryant."

"No," she sighed, "unlike some people, Brian has a job, and a life, and can't just drive off to Mall of America at the drop of a hat."

I turned on the radio.

At the mall, I looked at the map to try to figure out how to get to the place. She said, "Ok, Hot Topic. Let's go."

". . ."

"It's on the way," she insisted.

I looked at the map again. "I don't see the dimensional portal you're talking about."

"Ok, maybe you want to hang out here checking out the ghetto hoochie mama jailbait, but some of us have other stuff to do. C'mon, we're burning daylight."

"I wish you'd stop saying that."

"You started."

I tried reason. "You wanted to go to Chicago. Then when we got there, you didn't want to get up before noon."

"I was tired after the drive."

"I drove."

"And I wanted to swing by the Sanrio store too, while we're here."

". . . You couldn't have taken the bus?"

She gave me a cold look. "It's freaks on the bus."

I let it slide. Sometimes it's easier to just let it slide.

Later, outside Hot Topic, she wore a grin which could accurately be described as "shit-eating." Hating myself, I asked why.

"The cashier was hitting on you."

This was a change from her normal technique, which is accusing me of looking at other women when we're out. I asked why this was a problem, seeing as we're not dating, and she said it made her look bad.

I hang out with her for the material. I keep telling myself that.

"She was like 13. And no, she wasn't."

"Like you ain't notice how she leaned over the counter."

"There wasn't much there to notice. Except the freckles."

"You were checking her out? She was like 13, you sick fuck. And why you looking at other women when you're with me?"

"I hate you. I've mentioned this before, right?"

"And the way she practically massaged your hand when she gave you the change. What was up with that?"

"Which reminds me," I said, "how did you manage to `forget your purse' when it was your idea to come here in the first place?"

"Damn, I said I'd pay you back."

"You say that often. It happens less often."

Posted by Aaron at 8:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

Saw a story yesterday about my ISP launching a new ad campaign, based in part on their new software that blocks pop-up ads. Yeah, it's called Mozilla, look into it.

So, naturally, they're having DNS issues again today, and I can't actually see anything. Good thing I have my IP address memorized.

I am not a geek, by the way. In case you were wondering.

This means there are not quotes for the following links, which I'd added to my bookmark(lets) for future use. Perhaps some will be added later. Or not. Sunrise in about an hour and a half, half-hour walk to the river, you do the math.

Debra Pickett interviews Ira Glass, host of This American Life and all-around nice guy. He makes pledge drives fun. How many people can you say that about? Mention is made of his visit to Israel and the planned show about it, which already aired by the time this print interview appeared. Which makes no sense, if you think about it. . .

Found on Me-Phi-Me again, as a secondary link to a story, there's poet/author who's name I've forgotten (Update: Wanda Coleman) talking about a Bob Marley interview, smokin' weed, hair issues in the black community (with Bo Derek name-checked), esp. as they relate to employment within Corporate America, body image/weight as it relates to class and race (as black folk move up the class hierarchy, the eating disorders show up. Or men have to start pretending women with eating disorders are attractive. Or something. I can't see the article right now, remember?), and much, much more.

And I was going to post some Deni Bonet lyrics to prove that I ain't no feminist, although I'm not certain how this logic would have worked.

I will charitably assume this is because I'm half-awake now, not that I was utterly insane at the time the notion came to me.

And apparently, MT uses the URI internally instead of the IP address for posting. So this is going up through a dial-up connection, which doesn't have DNS issues -- I think their tech support is in India, and I don't want to bother the kids in the middle of the night. Or whatever time it is there.

Still no quotes, because I am too much of a snob to use this slow-ass connection to do such things.

Blah.

Posted by Aaron at 5:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Think I could make a very short Perl script to spit them out, in fact.

Denny Wilson, who I would remind readers describes himself as "A Grouchy Old Cripple", comments on tomorrow's primary and tries getting a rise out of me by writing, among other things:

The simple answer to your question is be a Democrat for a day. I know how hard this will be. I'm actually getting the shakes contemplating voting for a Democrat myself. I mean, it will be as foreign to me as it would for Aaron to say sumpin' nice about a white person.

Uh-huh.

This is the same guy who can't even bring himself to use the c-word, which I do with reckless abandon. I did caution others against doing so, however, using a song from the South Park movie to do so.

So predictable, I know. Your pardon.

I'm so sorry
Mr. Cripple
But I just can't feel too bad for you right now.

Because I'm feeling
So insanely super
That even the fact that you can't walk
Can't bring me down

Not that I know the extent of his disability, nor do I care. No less a figure than Tony Danza once told me, "How do you treat an asshole with a disability? Like an asshole!"

Bored now.

Posted by Aaron at 9:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (21) | TrackBacks (0)

Let's pretend that The Washington Times is an unbiased source of information. Later, we'll pretend that GIANT talking monkey pirates are flying out of my butt.

GOP gets out vote for foe

Nearly 35 percent of the Republicans in Georgia's 4th Congressional District are expected to cross over and vote in tomorrow's Democratic primary in an effort to oust Rep. Cynthia A. McKinney.

The Republicans would join a strong Jewish vote in support of Mrs. McKinney's foe, former state judge Denise Majette.

"We've been trying to get out the message that we need them to vote in the [Republican] primary, but everybody so detests McKinney," said Dale Ranta, chairman of the DeKalb County Republican Party. He estimated that more than one-third of his party members will opt to vote in the Democratic primary.

"It is unfortunately more than I care to hear, that 35 percent [figure]," he said.

Three Republican groups in the 4th District have formed to vote out Mrs. McKinney. Even their names portray what has become vehement opposition: "Goodbye Cynthia," "Anybody but McKinney" and "New Leadership for DeKalb."

[. . .] A Majette campaign spokeswoman said that while her candidate is not seeking Republican votes, "it looks like our opponent is doing that for us."

But Dana Mott, a spokeswoman for Mrs. McKinney, said it is "absolutely a Republican effort" to remove the congresswoman.

[. . .] Since July 1, Mrs. Majette has outraised Mrs. McKinney by 7-to-1.

And in case you'd forgotten, McKinney is Evil Incarnate, a witch who consorts with daemons (print and finger), and is by association anti-Israel, anti-Semetic and anti-American. And her hair looks goofy.

While the five-term lawmaker has denied accusations that she is anti-Israel, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan who has been accused repeatedly of anti-Semitism visited Atlanta over the weekend to voice support for Mrs. McKinney.

An article in the Nation of Islam's weekly newspaper, Final Call, notes that Mrs. McKinney is being assisted in her volunteer coordination by Steve Cokely.

Mr. Cokely gained notoriety in the late 1980s when he said that Jewish doctors had injected black babies with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson has also visited the district to give his backing to Mrs. McKinney.

Oddly, they neglected to remind readers that Rev. Jackson said "Hymietown" that one time. Instead, they merely place his name in proximity to the Nation of Domination types and hope for the best.

Not sure whether to end this with the lyrics to Garbage's Paranoid, which at least has a good beat and it's easy to dance to (and if you get that reference, you're old), or Bang Bang Bang by Tracy Chapman, which seems more appropriate.

Posted by Aaron at 9:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Wouldn't turn around and break it
And anyone who's ever played a part
Wouldn't turn around and hate it

Sweet Jo. Sweet, sweet Jo.

Who said in a comment:

"If these are the principles that define feminism, then we are all feminists now. "

Absolutely! I believe that every reasonable person in this country is a feminist, regardless of if they realize it or not.

Darling, you probably shouldn't visit Metafilter:

Is there any need for a Men's Movement?
Or is the struggling existence of such organisations, and the sporadic publishing of Achilles Heel magazine, for example, evidence that organised groups and 'movements' for men are redundant? Maybe it's evidence that 'men's' needs are still under rated and unsatisfied, and that we don't focus on our needs because we are working too hard?

'Deadbeat Moms', Appearing In A News Bulletin Nowhere Near You
"The subject of 'Deadbeat Dads' is well-known for regular flogging by the media. So where are the stories about Deadbeat Moms? This is the first I've ever seen. Numerically, more fathers are remiss in child support payments, simply because mothers are more often rewarded custody of a child in the US courts. Playing the percentages reveals a different story, however: 57% of mothers required to give up at least some, if not all of the money they owe vs. 68% of dads who pay up. Moms also get about 60 percent of what they are owed, whereas dads only get 48 percent.

"So why is the Deadbeat focus always on the Dad? Are mothers somehow considered too sympathic to be the subjects of these stories? Or, is it simply the catchy lure of an alliterative label?"

Discussions that start off with the assumption that women are treated equally as men (or black people are treated equally as white people, or queers are treated equally as breeders [go on, start shit]) usually end up in some fairly bizarre territory. You get these weird comparisons, like men's movement vs. women's movement, or deadbeat moms vs. deadbeat dads.

Which aren't given quite as much of a funny vibe as, say, The National Association for the Advancement of White People (who have been held back for too long in this country/society/planet). On the other hand, there's the Defense of Marriage Act.

I'm usually more interested in how people talk about such things than about the topics themselves, because all sorts of interesting little biases come bubbling to the top. Like in the Plastic discussion, where someone says:

Feminism captured all discourse about gender in the 70s, and hasn't let go. Any attempts to discuss gender apart from feminist categories is roundly mocked and denounced, even if that discourse is not anti-feminist. The reaction to the Men's Movement of the early 90s is a good example of this.

Feminism itself, of course, is never, ever mocked and denounced. Just think of all the women who proudly call themselves feminists on tv and in movies. They're always portrayed in a positive, saint-like fashion. Characters like. . . ok, help me out here.

Or, in the MeFi thread:

Women working is simply a return to the norm of all human history from the strange upper-middle-class interlude of the late 19th and most of the 20th century, where technology and money reduced the burdens of homemaking to the point that many men could conceive of themselves as the sole support of their family, instead of a partner who completely depended upon his wife's contribution.

As for power in the family, I think that in a well-functioning family, power always has been largely equal ... and where the power wasn't equal, it was with the woman quite frequently, not the man. (Source: the domestic novels of the 18th and 19th centuries ... )

Which is probably more proof that you shouldn't base your idea of the past on domestic novels than anything else; otherwise the writer probably believes that slaves were quite happy, and queers did not exist until fairly recently.

The really scary bit about that last one is that it sounds like an enlightened attitude, but it's so ahistorical that it's actually, um, not.

Or he's right and I'm wrong. If only there were a historian in the house. . .

Anyway, social movements putting the ignored needs of straight white men front and center are obviously a necessary counterbalance to the current domination of our society by women, queers and people of color.

There are people who believe that. They resent it when you giggle at them.

All the more reason to do it, then.

Before anyone accuses me of being a dirty feminist, I'll have you know I snickered when the NPR announcer mentioned flooding in Europe was leaving "rain-soaked dykes" across the countryside, and immediately I thought of flash-flooding during MWMF. So there.

Update: As usual, the throwaway jokes produce as much discussion as the supposed topic. Not sure if this is a good or bad element of my writing style. . . Over at VASpider's, talk about word choice, connotation vs. denotation, the role gender plays in determining what's funny and what's insulting, and the time Peppermint Patty and Marcie borrowed Linus's. . . no, that joke is dead.

Posted by Aaron at 7:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (21) | TrackBacks (2)

Over at Pop and Politics, Nicole Blades interviews Boondocks cartoonist Aaron McGruder, and they speak of a topic near and dear to my heart:

Nicole Blades: Let’s talk about writer’s block.

Aaron McGruder: It’s just a nightmare. You look everywhere but sometimes there’s just nothin’. It’s really difficult to be doing what I’m doing nowadays. Politicians and celebrities are getting so ridiculous that there’s nothing to make fun of.

NB: When you’re on deadline do you just lock yourself in, stay away from the news and other distractions?

AMcG: It just depends. If I’ve got the ideas already then usually I will turn everything off and just how to figure out how to make the joke. If I have no ideas then, yeah, the TV usually stays on and I’m hoping for a miracle. Which actually did save me one week. I had no jokes, deadline was a couple hours away and I turn on the TV and heard Dionne Warwick got arrested. I was like, "Thank God."

Wish the strip wasn't quite so centered around Huey and Caesar these days. I can get that here, after all. And Isis still hasn't appeared, damn it.

Q: What happened to Isis?
A: Isis was one of the first characters I created and she is an intregal part of the strip. While she was never introduced in any of the early strips on the Hitlist or in The Diamondback, she did appear on our old site so if you're looking for her, don't worry. I am redesigning her a little, and she is going to be the last of the main characters to be introduced. I may decide to wait and introduce her on television, but we'll have to wait and see.

The interview linked above mentions, very briefly, "developing TV shows [working with director/producer Reginald Hudlin] and movie-making". So, maybe she'll appear in one of those, except they don't sound Boondocks-related. So, maybe not.

Posted by Aaron at 10:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Visitors from major corporations must think I'm joking when I say I'm going to block their cheap asses unless they start hitting the tip jars. We'll see who's laughing when you're reconfiguring your web proxy, pal.

1. US Commercial
2. Network
3. US Educational
4. Non-Profit Organization (because goddess forbid lesbians get jobs where they make a living wage)
5. Canada
6. United States
7. United Kingdom
8. Australia (Freetles? Skippy? Do you babes ever work?)
9. Switzerland
10. Japan
11. US Military (insert "Oh fuck" here)

12. US Government (ditto)
13. France
14. Netherlands
15. Germany
16. Norway
17. Brazil
18. Croatia/Hrvatska
19. Sweden
20. Turkey
21. Belgium
22. China
23. Austria
24. Malaysia
25. Argentina
26. Costa Rica
27. Israel (Um, I'm really sorry about all that stuff I said. . .)
28. Thailand
29. Denmark
30. Hungary
31. Italy
32. South Korea
33. Taiwan
34. Finland (Kim, you could answer my email, y'know. I was joking about leaving your husband. We can keep him as a pet, and somebody has to look after the kids while we're having sex.)
35. Mauritius
36. Old style Arpanet (insert "What the fuck?" here)
37. Chile
38. Cyprus
39. Estonia
40. Ireland
41. Mexico (they just come looking for Rashel Diaz photos. Which shows good taste, really.)
42. Saudi Arabia (like Cynthia McKinney, I have no shame. Front the petrodollars)
43. Singapore
44. Spain
45. India (homemade samosas and barfi can be substituted for cash)
46. Niue
47. Slovenia
48. Togo

Niue?

Your pardon, I am a product of the Chicago Public School system. What the fuck is Niue?

Posted by Aaron at 3:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

Finally recently updated, it's the trigger-happy, mother-fucking Bean Soup Times, featuring your so-very-very-wrong Ghettoscopes, Horoscopes that "keep it real":

Cancer
You are not claustrophobic. Your ancestors came here in ships. It's natural to start screaming in the elevator when you're the only Black.

Virgo
James Brown said if you don't work, you don't eat. What part don't you understand?

Libra
No matter what the problem is; just get a joint, a beer, turn on some music and all your troubles will go away forever.

Pisces
It's your month. Turn your car radio up loud, stop traffic and talk to a friend about nothing.

Some of the tourists may be wondering why it's perfectly acceptable for the Bean Soup Times kids to make these jokes, when if they said them, they'd be accused of racism.

Just because. Now shut the fuck up.

Yeah, I did get around to setting that macro. Makes writing these things so much easier.

Posted by Aaron at 8:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Mentioned this before in a comment. Guess I should make those inline for the archives, although that's gonna be a killer for dialup users. . .

Courtesy of the the American Hypertext Workshop at the University of Virginia, American Slave Narratives: An Online Anthology:

From 1936 to 1938, over 2,300 former slaves from across the American South were interviewed by writers and journalists under the aegis of the Works Progress Administration. These former slaves, most born in the last years of the slave regime or during the Civil War, provided first-hand accounts of their experiences on plantations, in cities, and on small farms. Their narratives remain a peerless resource for understanding the lives of America's four million slaves. What makes the WPA narratives so rich is that they capture the very voices of American slavery, revealing the texture of life as it was experienced and remembered. Each narrative taken alone offers a fragmentary, microcosmic representation of slave life. Read together, they offer a sweeping composite view of slavery in North America, allowing us to explore some of the most compelling themes of nineteenth-century slavery, including labor, resistance and flight, family life, relations with masters, and religious belief.

Although I'm certainly not going to suggest people read through all of the interviews before speaking on the oh-god-shut-up-Shut-Up-SHUT-UP reparations issue, anyone whose knowledge of American slavery comes entirely from repeated viewings of Roots, Gone with the Wind and Mandingo is requested to shut the fuck up.

Anyone making jokes about Jews building the pyramids is encouraged to emigrate to Egypt, obtain citizenship, and begin legal proceedings at their earliest convenience. Otherwise, as before, shut the fuck up.

Any Indians hoping the lot of us go the fuck back where we came from after cleaning up the mess, in contrast, may rant as they like.

Conveniently, this includes me.

Others claiming an "Indian princess" (what, were there kings, then?) as a multi-great grandmother should take the brown bag test before speaking up.

Are you darker than the bag?

Rant how you like.

Are you lighter than the bag?

If you're one of my sisters, this means you one of them peanut-butter-coloured Negroes, and I don't know how I got all the melanin either, but at least I got the good hair too, so nyaaaah.

Otherwise, rant with care.

If this talk of brown bags and good hair confuses you, this is probably a good indication that you should pretend you failed the test, and really really really need to shut the fuck up.

Management appreciates your compliance.

Update 8/19: See, this is what I'm saying.

George Kelly manages to say about the same thing, only with fewer words and a noted lack of profanity.

He also links to a sober consideration of the issue which includes a historical context, which I'd called for by throwing a tantrum instead of just, you know, looking for one.

I could be good. If I wanted. Possibly.

Update: I wasn't going to do the link/trackback thing, but figured I should give a context for the extreme bitchiness of this entry.

Posted by Aaron at 7:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (33) | TrackBacks (0)

Really, you just have to substitute "black" or "African-American" for "Negro" and "Afghanistan" for "Vietnam".

Was it ever so apparent we need this dialogue? [Applause]

How do you talk about three hundred years in four minutes? I wrote a letter to the New York Times recently which didn't get printed, which is getting to be my rapport with the New York Times. They said that it was too personal. What it concerned itself with was, I was in a bit of a stew over the stall-in, because when the stall-in was first announced, I said, Oh, My God, everybody's gone crazy, you know, tying up traffic. What's the matter with them? You know. Who needs it? And then I noticed the reaction, starting in Washington and coming on up to New York among what we are all here calling the white liberal circles which was something like, you know, you Negroes act right or you're going to ruin everything we're trying to do. [Laughter] And that got me to thinking more seriously about the strategy and the tactic that the stall-in intended to accomplish.

And so I sat down and wrote a letter to the New York Times about the fact that I am of a generation of Negroes that comes after a whole lot of other generations and my father, for instance, who was, you know, real American type American, successful businessman, very civic-minded and so forth, was the sort of American who put a great deal of money, a great deal of his really extraordiary talents and a great deal of passion into everything that we say is the American way of going after goals. That is to say that he moved his family into a restricted area where no Negroes were supposed to live and then proceeded to fight the case in the courts all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States. And this cost a great deal of money. It involved the assistance of the NAACP attorneys and so on and this is the way of struggling that everyone says is the proper way to do and it eventually resulted in a decison against restrictive covenants which is very famous, Hansberry versus Lee. And that was very much applauded.

But the problem is that Negroes are just as segregated in the city of Chicago now as they were then and my father died a disillusioned exile in another country. That is the reality that I'm faced with when I get up and I read that some Negroes my own age and younger say that we must now lie down in the streets, tie up traffic, stop ambulances, do whatever we can, take to the hills if necessary with some guns and fight back, you see. This is the difference.

And I wrote to the Times and said, you know, can't you understand that this is the perspective from which we are now speaking. It isn't as if we got up today and said, you know, what can we do to irritate America, you know. It's because since 1619, Negroes have tried every method of communication, of transformation of their situation from petition to the vote, everything. We've tried it all. There isn't anything that hasn't been exhausted. [It's] rather remarkable that we can talk about a people who were publishing newspapers while they were still in slavery in 1827, you see. We've been doing everything, writing edtiorials, Mr. Wechsler, for a long time, you know. [Applause]

And now the charge of impatience is simply unbearable. I would like to submit that the problem is that, yes, there is a problem about white liberals. I think there's something horrible that Norman Podhoretz, for instance, can sit down and write the kind of trash that he did at this hour. [Applause] That is to say that a distinguished American thinker can literally say that he is more disturbed at the sight of a mixed couple or that anti-Semitism from Negroes – and anti-Semitism from anybody is horrible and disgusting and I don't care where it comes from – but anti-Semitism, somehow, from a Negro apparently upsets him more than it would from a German fascist, you see. This was the implication of what really gets to him. Well, you have to understand that when we are confronted with that, we wonder who we are talking to and how far we are going to go.

The problem is we have to find some way with these dialogues to show and to encourage the white liberal to stop being a liberal and become an American radical. [Applause]

I think that then it wouldn't — will not become as true, some of the realy eloquent things that were said before about the basic fabric of our society, which after all, is the thing which must be changed, you know, [applause] to really solve the problem, you know. The basic organization of American society is the thing that has Negroes in the situation that they are in and never let us lose sight of it.

When we then talk with that understanding, it won't be so difficult for people like Mr. Wechsler, whose sincerity I wouldn't dream of challenging, when I say to him — his sincerity is one thing, I don't have to agree with his position. But it wouldn't be so difficult for me to say, well, now, when someone uses the term "cold war liberal" that it is entirely different, you see, the way that you would asses the Vietnamese war and the way that I would because I can't believe [applause] — I can't believe that anyone who is given what an American Negro is given — you know, our viewpoint, can believe that a government which has at its disposal a Federal Bureau of Investigation which cannot ever find the murderers of Negroes and by that method [applause] — and shows that it cares really very little about American citizens who are black, really are over somewhere fighting a war for a bunch of other colored people, you know, [laughter] several thousand miles — you just have a different viewpoint. This is why we want the dialogue, to explain that to you, you see. It isn't a question of patriotism and loyalty. My brother fought for this country, my grandfather before that and so on and that's all a lot of nonsesne when we criticize. The point is that we have a different viewpoint because, you know, we've been kicked in the face so often and the vantage point of Negroes is entirely different and these are some of the things we're trying to say. I don't wnt to go past my time. Thank you. [Applause]

Lorraine Hansberry, excerpts from a transcript of a forum sponsored by the Association of Artists for Freedom at Town Hall, New York, June 15, 1964. Panel members were: Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Lorraine Hansberry, Leroi Jones, John Killens, Paule Marshall, Charles Silberman, James Wechsler and David Susskind, moderator.

Included in Black Protest: History, Documents and Analysis 1619 to the Present, edited with introduction and commentarty by Joanne Grant.

If I sometimes seemed unimpressed with the recent rehashing of this 38 year old dialogue, you'll have to excuse me. I'm getting cranky in my dotage.

Update: And I make typoes too. And add links without mentioning having done so, a tendency that repeats itself in the second update. Oddly, given the rampant unauthorized duplication of copyrighted material on the 'net, and I'm pushing fair use with the above my own self, there does not appear to be an online version of Podhoretz's "My Negro Problem and Ours". Which might be for the best, as it never fails to annoy the hell out of me.

Update 2: Ah, research. A version of these remarks appears in the posthumous collection of Lorraine Hansberry's writing, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, adapted by husband and possible beard Robert Nemiroff. There's a further passage in the book, from another part of the discussion:

Radicalism is not alien to this coutnry, neither black nor white. We have a very great tradition of white radicalism in the United States — and I've never heard Negroes boo the name of John Brown. Some of the first people who have died so far in this struggle have been white men. And I, for one, would be prepared, I must say in exception to anything said, to accept the leadership of a person who gives that much devotion as against someone who would exhibit the traitorous characteristics, of, say, a Moise Tshombe.

I don't think we can decide ultimately on the basis of color. The passion that we express should be understood, I think, in that context. We want total identification. It's not a question of reading anybody out; it's a merger. . . but it has to be a merger on the basis of true and genuine equality. And if we think that it isn't going to be painful, we're mistaken. . .

Posted by Aaron at 10:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Ok, finally heard something chilling on the radio.

This week's This American Life does something the warbloggers seem totally incapable of; talking to people of color.

Rather than at or about us, that is.

See Public Radio Fan for local airtimes and available 'net streams, and the show should be up at the TAL site early next week.

I'm confident the people who need to hear the show probably won't, or will manage to totally miss the point, but eh.

Update: Um, ok, Uppity-Shinob doesn't need to hear this. Neither does Laura. Or Jason. Or Trula. Or. . . in fact, maybe I should just delete this entry.

The Transom.org discussion for this show is currently empty, but it's early in the broadcast schedule yet.

Posted by Aaron at 3:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

It's the word choice that fascinates.

On September 13, two days after America observes the one-year anniversary of the worst day in its history, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and his mob will take to the streets of Washington to protest against President George W. Bush. Such timing is bound to make an impression on the American people, but probably not the one Jackson hopes for.

Rev. Jackson and the mob are not part of the American people, apparently.

[. . .] This does not mean the president has snubbed black people; much to the contrary, he's consistently met with African-American pastors and business leaders, the kind of men and women whose names don't turn up on journalists' Rolodexes, and who don't have a professional axe to grind. Aside from post-9/11 patriotism, this may have something to do with the fact that 54 percent of nonwhites in a recent Gallup poll approve of the job Bush is doing.

The glass is slightly more than half-full, then. Another way of looking at this is, 46 percent of mud people nonwhites think Bush is an idiot. And do I have to mention his miserable showing in the election among black people again?

No, Jackson's ire means that [Bush] has frozen out the old-line civil-rights establishment: men like Jackson, NAACP president Kweisi Mfume and NAACP chairman Julian Bond. Bush has wisely taken the advice of black conservative activist Bob Woodson, who said prior to Bush's taking office, "It would be a mistake for Republicans, a mistake they've made in the past, to assume that they've always go through the civil-rights door to get to the black community. And standing at that door are the gatekeepers: Jesse Jackson, Kweisi Mfume, Al Sharpton. What Bush has got to do next is not be trapped by these gatekeepers."

Despite his public ranting, Jackson has from time to time attempted to use back channels to secure a meeting with Bush, to no avail. Jackson, whose financial empire is reportedly on the ropes, knows his livelihood depends on being perceived as a power broker, is desperate. You can't be a power broker if those in power won't give you the time of day. Bush is allowing Jackson's rabblerousing career to die on the vine. It's a mercy killing.

Jackson, friend of Fidel Castro and Yasser Arafat, has done himself no favors in the aftermath of September 11 by positioning himself increasingly on the loony-left, anti-patriotic fringe. This week, he criticized the Democratic-party leadership for not doing enough to back Rep. Cynthia McKinney, the wack-job black Democrat from Georgia who faces a tough primary battle. McKinney, on whose behalf anti-Semitic tyro Louis Farrakhan will be campaigning over the weekend, has taken campaign contributions from Arab extremists, and has accused the Bush administration of orchestrating the 9/11 massacres to serve its own political interests.

From Rod Dreher on Jesse Jackson on National Review Online. Emphasis added here and there.

It ain't that there aren't valid criticisms you can make of Jesse Jackson and the rest. I'm not running out to join the Nation of Domination, if I lived in McKinney's district I'd definitely at least check out the competition rather than blindly voting for her, and I gots no clue what's going through Al Sharpton's mind, thinking a presidential run is a good idea. The only saving grace is that he's not planning to do so as an independent; at least in the debates he might bring up some issues that would normally be ignored.

Given all that, though, reading the NRO piece does little to convince me that the Republicans would welcome me with open arms. They'd gladly take my vote, though. And if I'm willing to loudly denounce other black people, so much the better. Gives them cover for their own attacks.

Charming.

Posted by Aaron at 7:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Weird.

While Lileks was on MPR Friday morning, VampWillow was on WILL's Afternoon Magazine later in the day.

WILL is the public radio station in Shampoo-Banana. Which I always liked more than I do Minneapolis. There is probably some lesson here.

Both shows are available on the respective station's sites, for the Real Audio capable. Suppose I could compare and contrast. . .

Nah. That sounds too much like actual work.

WILL got the URI for Rebecca's site wrong, too. Honestly. Well, the announcer got Lileks' wrong, too, during the show, but the site has the right one.

Before any Minnesotans even consider doing the "We're Superior" dance, need I remind you that you're reading this -- and can listen to both shows -- on the World Wide Web? Rather than Gopherspace?

Update: No, WILL has the right link. And for the terminally lazy, direct links to the Real Audio -

• Rebecca Blood on WILL
• James Lileks on MPR

The similarities of the questions, and the basic content of some of the answers, is actually a bit scary. Except when Rebecca says it, it makes sense. Not that I'm biased or anything.

But let's face it, who wants to see Lileks in a corset, breastfeeding-friendly or not?

Update: . . .

Willow and VampWillow reacted to Anya the same way.

Update EX2 Alpha + Championship Edition: Yep, that's my six in the morning syntax all right. I'm still not sure if that "is" should actually be an "are" because I'm not quite certain what the subject of the damn sentence is. Remember, kids, don't blog drunk, half-awake or when you're about to slip into a hypoglycemic coma.

No, if I took my own advice you wouldn't get any updates at all. Shut up.

Posted by Aaron at 5:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (1)

I'm sorry, but does anybody really care about either the state fair or Celebrity Birthdays?

Aug. 22: Author Ray Bradbury is 82. Actress Valerie Harper is 62. Correspondent Steve Kroft (''60 Minutes'') is 57. Actress Cindy Williams (``Laverne & Shirley'') is 55. Singer Roland Orzabal of Tears for Fears is 41. Drummer Debbi Peterson of the Bangles is 41. Singer Tori Amos is 39.

As an early birthday present to us, Tori has a new single out/available online.

On August 16, AOL First Listen will feature the exclusive premiere of Tori's new song, "a sorta fairytale," for three days. Look for it from AOL Keyword: First Listen and on the Web at Netscape, AIM Today, ICQ and CompuServe.

She's on Epic now, which is actually a division of Sony. From the above, I'd have sworn it was part of AOL Time-Warner.

No, that was Atlantic. And they dropped her a while back.

Corporate stuff makes my brain hurt.

On the plus side, Bonnie Raitt is appearing at the state fair. No, that one's almost as unhealthy as the Emmylou Harris obsession. . .

Update: And anyone with half a brain would include an actual, you know, link to where the Tori song is.

Those of us who can't just type in AOL keywords, that is. Is there a tag for those?

Update again: The official lyrics to A Sorta Fairytale ain't here, despite what Google seems to think. Management does not apologize for any inconvenience, since it ain't like this is our fault.

Posted by Aaron at 8:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (19) | TrackBacks (0)

Ok, so I'm foul-mouthed, easily irritated, and often write things which are in no way conducive to having a constructive conversation about anything.

On the plus side, I'm aware of this.

Over at Little Green Footballs, on the other hand:

8/16/2002: Birds of a Feather

Screwy Louie Farrakhan is going to stage a rally in Georgia to support Arab boot-licker Cynthia bin McKinney.

I don't think they are.

Although it's good to read this stuff, in a way -- white people generally have enough sense of self-preservation not to say shit like this when I'm around in what we'll jokingly call the real world -- it also reinforces my belief that we're all doomed. And that that isn't actually a bad thing. Given a choice between death and sharing a planet with Laurence Simon:

Okay, so we've got Screwie Louie and Jesse the Jackass on the record... that just leaves Irrevered Al and we've got all a hat-trick.

So, when all are together rallying for Cynthia McKinney, should they be called The Three Agreedoes, The Three Scrooges, or The Blaxis of Evil?

I'll take death, thanks

In fact, Biggie Size it.

np - the Sunday, March 17th Industrial Radio show. Every show starts with TNT Party Zone's Das Omen (Teil 1). Yet I never get tired of it. Go figure.

Update: dcthornton weighs in, with the sort of unique insight and penetrating perception that cause me to forget his blog even exists most of the time.

Meanwhile, at Mister Charlie's, something calling itself Jason O'Toole cheerfully declares:

Mckinney is now reaching out for that all-important black nazi vote!

Perhaps this caused Godwin's Law to kick in; it's the second comment, and the last at this time.

The first was Laurence repeating part of his little joke.

Gee, the sky's gone all dark and ominous. Maybe God is listening to me after all.

Update 2: Good shit - Remix of Front 242's Welcome to Paradise in the Industrial Radio show, about an hour and 40 minutes in.

Dumb shit - Amish Tech Support.

Update: Courtesy of COINTELPRO Tool (and anyone using that name is, quite clearly, an idiot):

C-SPAN has finally posted video of the McKinney-Majette debate from last Friday.

Enjoy. If that's the right word. I don't think it is.

Update 8/17: Jason makes with the balanced view again. But I swear he only does that so I'm the one who gets shot first.

Posted by Aaron at 4:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (21) | TrackBacks (1)

Apparently, someone out there asked, "How could the McKinney-Majette primary get even more divisive?"

ajc.com | Metro | Farrakhan to stump for McKinney

The already fiery election campaign between Rep. Cynthia McKinney and Denise Majette is likely to get more heated: Louis Farrakhan is coming to town.

The controversial Nation of Islam leader has scheduled a 6 p.m. rally Saturday in DeKalb County to urge support for McKinney, who is in the tightest race in her 10 years in the U.S. House.

The site of the rally had not been announced Thursday. Steven Muhammad, a Nation of Islam member who heads the metro group Muslims Active Politically, would say only, "He's here to ensure that money does not interfere with a race, that the people's voice is heard in the 4th District, not the money of political lobbies."

[. . .] McKinney's campaign manager, Bill Banks, said he knew little about the visit or why Farrakhan is coming.

"We have a lot of people coming in. They saw what happened to [U.S. Rep. Earl] Hilliard in Alabama," Banks said, referring to a black congressman who was beaten in a Democratic primary by an opponent who raised more than $1 million, much of it from pro-Israel donors concerned about his relations with American Muslims.

Majette has raised more than $1.1 million, more than half of that in the past six weeks and much of it coming from out-of-state Jewish donors.

McKinney has raised about $640,000. More than half of McKinney's donors have Arabic names and live out of state.

Anyone else really looking forward to what the warblogers make of this? Didn't think so.

I was in and around Chicago when Minister Farrakhan had the not-quite-deathbed revelation that anti-Semitism Bad, and I think local coverage was more extensive, so I'm as unimpressed with having that tossed his way as I am with Jesse Jackson's 'Hymietown' comment constantly brought up.

Then again, there are white people in and around New York who have a more nuanced view of Al Sharpton. It's all a matter of perspective, I suppose. What information you have, what information you flee from because it might conflict with your biases.

Whatever. Farrakhan evil, Jackson a shakedown artist, Sharpton a poverty pimp, McKinney anti-American and supported by terrorists, please fuck off and die.

Update: Too late.

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit kicks off the disinformation campaign:

CYNTHIA MCKINNEY has Louis Farrakhan stumping for her.

Those of you capable of reading fucking written English may have noticed that quote from McKinney's campaign manager.

At least the site he links to uses the more neutral, and accurate:

Louis Farrakhan is coming to Georgia's 4th this weekend to stump for Cynthia McKinney

You can excuse Glenn, though. He must have been foaming at the mouth over this:

TED TURNER LAND GRAB UPDATE: Turner has surrendered his claim to the land on St. Helena Island, owned by descendants of Gullah slaves, that he was attempting to claim. Good move, Ted. But then, when InstaPundit and Michael Moore unite in a good cause, the result is well-nigh irresistible.

UPDATE: Here, courtesy of reader Simon Ashton, is another story on the subject.

Well, at least now they're specifically descendants of Gullah slaves, instead of generic ones.

And he mentions "[t]he Nigerian members of [his] extended family" in another entry in case anyone (yes, me, I'm looking at you) was thinking of tossing baseless allegations of racism™ his way.

I see this is going to be a good day.

Posted by Aaron at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Because I suck. And keep finding new ways to suck.

This weekend, in collaboration with National Poetry Slam 2002, the Minnesota Spoken Word Association holds their conference Singers of Daybreak.

SINGERS OF DAYBREAK is the only conference of its kind dedicated to dialoguing about the art form of Spoken Word. It was created by e.g. bailey, Shá Cage and Leah Nelson, in July of 2000, and brought to fruition by a group of Minnesota spoken word artists (including Bao Phi, Frank Sentwali, Desdamona, Carloyn Holbrook, Sister Mimi, Truthmaze, and J. Otis Powell!), in August of 2001, with the hopes of creating a forum where spoken word artists from around the world could come and dialogue, perform, share and network. We hope that conference will be a place where spoken word artists will feel welcome and supported, where they can share their knowledge, experience and talents with other artists and the public. We want to create a space where critical issues, concerns and developments in the art form can be highlighted, showcased and discussed. We want the diverse experiences of artists, and the long legacy of spoken word to be fostered and shared. In creating this conference we hope that it will aid in the further development of this dynamic and vibrant art form.

Sliding scale registration fee, which I think means they should pay me, but doubt they'll see it that way. Ah well, I'm sure the local papers will cover it.

Maybe they'll send Lileks, so he can get the ass-whuppin' he so clearly needs and deserves.

Also on Sunday, the lovely and talented Hope Sandoval will be appearing at Theatre de la Jeune Lune. Never been in the place, despite walking or driving past it several zillion times, but it looks quite nice:

The structure was built at the turn of the century as a series of warehouses. In 1906 the Gothic Revival facade was added by the celebrated Cass Gilbert, the Saint Paul based architect whose major projects include the Minnesota State Capital, the U.S. Supreme Court building, and New York's Woolworth Tower.

Especially in comparison to the rest of downtown Minneapolis, which sucks more than I do.

There's also something called "Ozzfest", whose official site features the most useless collection of framesets I've ever seen. Anybody know what that is?

Update: Speak of the devil and up he comes. Lileks is on MPR's Midmorning program even as I type. Despite what you might think from visiting this site, they do have intelligent people on the show every once in a while.

Don't ask me for examples, though.

He admits his ass shouldn't be there, though. One flash of insight in a life sadly devoid of them.

He speaks of banality, but fails to mention himself in the example. The moment of revelation is over. Damn, that was quick.

He mentions hermetically-sealed echo chambers, but says anti-idiotarian without nearly enough dripping irony. I may have to call.

You will know me by the string of bleeps. Unless they're actually live instead of on a three-second delay, in which case you will know me by the sudden end of the call.

Posted by Aaron at 9:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Found on Me-Phi-Me (where some of the comments cause me to grind my teeth, and be thankful I don't have an account):

Guardian Unlimited | Arts | He wasn't my king
For black people, Elvis, more than any other performer, epitomises the theft of their music and dance
Helen Kolawole
Thursday August 15, 2002
The Guardian

As another celebration of a dead white hero winds up, in this hallowed Week of Elvis, shouldn't the entertainment industry hold its own truth and reconciliation commission?

[. . .] This won't happen of course. Media arrogance and dishonesty means we are eternally bound to live in a skewed world where Elvis is king of rock'n'roll, Clapton is the guitar god, Sinatra is the voice and Astaire is the greatest dancer. Accustomed as we are to this parade of white heroes, the case of Elvis is particularly infuriating because for many black people he represents the most successful white appropriation of a black genre to date.

From what I hear, Adele had the talent, but I think she means her bro.

Elvis also signifies the foul way so many black writers and performers, such as Little Richard, were treated by the music industry. The enduring image of Elvis is a constant reflection of society's then refusal to accept anything other than the non-threatening and subservient negro: Sammy Davies Jnr and Nat King Cole. The Elvis myth to this day clouds the true picture of rock'n'roll and leaves its many originators without due recognition. So what is left for black people to celebrate? How he admirably borrowed our songs, attitude and dance moves?

Public Enemy's prolific commentator, Chuck D, was clear on why he felt compelled to attack the pretender's iconic status. In their 1989 song Fight the Power, he rapped: "Elvis was a hero to most/ But he never meant shit to me you see/ Straight up racist that sucker was simple and plain/ Motherfuck him and John Wayne."

To contend that Elvis was a racist is hardly shocking. ("The only thing black people can do for me is shine my shoes and buy my music", he once opined.) And, as a dirt poor Southerner raised in close but separate proximity to black people, his racism would hardly have distinguished him from millions of others. Chuck D's attack was not aimed at Elvis the person, but Elvis the institution.

Which is good, since the quote appears to be a fabrication, but the sentiment is in the right place. Or the wrong place, if you're one of those people.

I'm going to go blast Living Colour's "Elvis is Dead" until the neighbors call the cops now.

Update: Woah. I'd been using lynx before, and didn't see the images.

Adele Astaire was hot. I mean, she's no Rita Hayworth, but. . . I should quit while I'm ahead, shouldn't I?

Posted by Aaron at 8:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

At the subtle hinting of goneaway (who is now probably going to ask for comments permalinks, because some people are never satisfied), have added MT-Search to the site. What this means for you as a consumer is, you can dig through the Moveable Type version of the blog with the same ease as you could search the old site using the Negro where? page, except:

1. the results are actually updated
2. the page looks nothing like the rest of the site

The appearance of the page will probably change when I get around to fooling with the config file. Suppose I could link it to the side (or at the bottom, depending on your browser of choice), so people can still find it once this entry scrolls off the front page, but isn't this thing too complex already? Do I want to know how long it takes to load on a dial-up?

Oh, and I looked for some common four-letter-words, and you people make me sick. God, do you kiss you mothers with those, um, fingers? Some of the language. . . wait, most of those are the entries, not the comments.

Never mind.

Update: And another thing. The search link opens a new window, because I've not yet bothered adding navigation to the page. Should links normally bring up new windows, or is everyone cool with the whole middle-mouse-button/context menu thing if that's what they want to do? Or should I steal the code that lets you check such behaviour as an option?

Or should I just do whatever the hell I want and ignore your input? That one sounds good, too, actually.

Posted by Aaron at 7:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Too much cynicism makes the baby go blind. Or makes the cat suck the life out of it. Or something.

So, on the Dark Side there's my unhealthy love for xina nicosia, a/k/a The Unhappiest Girl in New York City (which column, like the rest of Antagozine, hasn't been updated since quite some time ago):

Yeah, it’s New York Insert Your Expletive City, and I’m just one of the eight million stomach-churning people crawling around down here amongst the misery. There’s a lot of unhappiness, right? It’s exponential, we all make each other less happy, it’s like 8,000,000^473,291 unhappy.

And I’m number last.

Unhappy, unhappier, and here’s me: -est. -iest once you take off the y. And if you happen to be joyful and fulfilled, contented, potent, blossoming, elated, fanciful, excellent or swell, then, well, I sincerely hope you don’t step in acid or choke on your frappicino or lose a thumb or anything. Really. I welcome you to mock my pain on a regular basis. Hell, it’s cheaper than yoga and not trendy yet so you won’t have to walk around for three weeks with henna tatoos in order for your investment banker friends to be impressed at your cutting-edge-ness. Because they still think it’s okay to call anything cutting-edge.

Isn't she dreamy?

On the also-Dark-but-in-a-cheery-sort-of-way Side, you may peruse the fine selection of Afro Ken merchandise at Hot Topic.

What?

Ok, you can also browse the African National Congress gopher server, which must have been left running in a closet somewhere. And it's probably wrong to even point to the poor thing. Please do not make it fall down go boom.

And I've learned a very valuable lesson about Gaim. At least I think it's valuable, and it's probably about Gaim. But I should no longer suffer from the delusion that I'm connected to AIM when I am, in fact, not. Are there any better clients out there? Don't really use the thing enough to have shopped around, to be honest.

Posted by Aaron at 8:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

And if not, why not?

From Gay.com / PlanetOut.com Network and Yahoo!:

With less than a month to go before Miami-Dade County voters go to the primary polls on Sept. 10, the battle to retain the county's 4-year-old gay rights ordinance could hinge on the hotly disputed African-American vote.

On Tuesday, African-American leaders led by state Rep. Frederica Wilson and Bess McElroy, former president of People United Leading the Struggle for Equality (PULSE), held a press conference to oppose the ballot initiative (which would scrap the current gay rights law) and make their own appeal to the county's 184,000 registered black voters, who reflect about 20 percent of the total electorate.

In contrast, African-American civil rights activist Nathaniel Wilcox, a veteran of PULSE, is leading the charge to repeal the anti-discrimination law that took years to put back in place after Anita Bryant's Save the Children campaign scuttled it in the late 1970s.

Wilcox has helped energize the conservative black church community, with the backing of the African American Council of Christian Clergy, who recently helped circulate a flyer saying Martin Luther King would be "outraged" by the gay rights law. A spokesperson for Coretta Scott King and the King Center disavowed the flyer.

A valid criticism of this site is that I don't spend nearly enough time talking about ignorant-ass black people (the Right Rev. Reggie White excepted).

Allow me to address this concern. Nathaniel Wilcox is, officially, an ignorant-ass black person. Using MLK's name in that way pushes him close to the border between ignorant-ass and hopelessly fucked in the head.

And a trivial Google on the subject brings up:

"While Martin Luther King, Jr. never expressed publicly his views on homosexuality, in private conversations with his wife, and through his actions, he did see that gay and lesbian rights were an issue that had to be dealt with," Cothren said.

"Dr. King firmly believed that discrimination whether it be racism, homophobia or sexism against anyone is wrong and completely unacceptable," he said.

The King Center released an official statement Aug. 1 denouncing the invocation of the civil rights leader's name in conjunction with a fight to deny rights to gays, including a statement from his widow.

"I appeal to everybody who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream to make room at the table of brother- and sisterhood for lesbians and gay people," Mrs. King said in the statement.

-- From The Washington Blade ONLINE! National.

On good days, I think homophobia in the black community is like anti-Semitism in the black community; it's not that there's more of it, just that people don't bother hiding it. Which could be considered a refreshing breach of the constricting rules of political correctness, if you're looking for a silver lining in that cloud.

You don't want to know what I think on bad days.

Update: And here's President Bush, speaking out in support of hate crimes legislation:

The history of our country is the story of a promise, a promise of life and liberty made at our founding and fulfilled over the centuries in our laws. It is a story of expanding inclusion and protection for the ignored and the weak and the powerless. And now we extend the promise and protection to the most vulnerable members of our society.

Today I sign the Born Alive Infants Protection Act.

My bad. That was President Bush, being an ignorant-ass white person, as usual.

There's also a column by Leonard Pitts Jr. in yesterday's Detroit Free Press, pointing out that Linking King to anti-gays is an outrage. Because they call themselves that, I always mistakenly think Freep.com is the Free Republic site. So initally when I saw where the article link pointed, I was like, "Wow, they must have stopped taking the stupid pills."

Tell Ford Motor Company to remove their financial support for Will & Grace!

No, I must have picked up their prescription by mistake.

Posted by Aaron at 3:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBacks (0)

I just happened to notice that somebody wrote:

Happy Birthday Dawn Olsen

(albeit in all caps)

And that it's some incredibly tacky animated Sanrio birthday cards up at Yahoo! Greetings.

Just random observations.

It ain't like I'm mentioning folks' email address, which can easily be found on their home page if you're looking for it.

I am capable of some level of tact, after all.

Wait, no I'm not. dolsen98@hotmail.com

Well, that's my good deed for the year out the way, done in a manner which makes sending Hello, Kitty cards sound vaguely threatening. Template for the entire site in one post, kids.

Posted by Aaron at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

From the pages of Indianz.com:

U.S. moves to stop Oglala Lakota hemp farm
THURSDAY, AUGUST 15, 2002

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered an Oglala Lakota family to stop planting and harvesting hemp on their South Dakota ranch after tests showed traces of marijuana and cocaine.

U.S. District Judge Richard Battey granted a temporary restraining order against Alex White Plume and his family. The White Plumes have come to national prominence for asserting a sovereign right to grow hemp on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

[. . .] The dispute here is one of scientific and legal debate. Hemp and its illicit cousin marijuana both contain an active ingredient called tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).

In marijuana, a certain amount of THC gives users a characteristic "high." Hemp doesn't do that.

Recognizing the difference, the Oglala Lakota Tribe in 1998 passed a law that legalizes hemp, which can be used for a number of purposes. The most significant use on the cash-strapped and equity-poor reservation is for homes.

"The people used to have the buffalo for our food, clothing and shelter," said former President Joe American Horse at the planting of hemp seeds in April 2000, on the 132nd anniversary of the Sioux Nation Treaty of 1868. "Now, hemp can do that for us."

Given what happened to the buffalo, that may not be the best comparison to make.

Technically, this is a national sovereignty dispute. As in:

Stating the USA does not make treaties with ethnic minorities but only with other sovereigns, [Program Manager for Slim Butte LUA and former President of the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council Jim] American Horse said he is prepared to exercise the self-determination inherent in the Oglala Sioux Tribe as a successor government under the Treaty of 1868.

I'd suggest that if they want to be taken seriously, they should start blowing shit up, but. . . no, I'm already on a watch list.

If they want to be taken seriously, they should start blowing shit up.

And remember, one corpse in a dinner jacket is worth a dozen in uniforms!

What? It's their land, they can do whatever the fuck they want. Or is anyone suggesting the farmers in Zimbabwe should quietly accede to Mugabe's insane little directives?

Issues are always so much clearer when they involve someone else, aren't they?

Posted by Aaron at 8:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

Although it's the money (supposedly) received on the 11th that's been giving McKinney more bad press lately.

Pass the brew mother fucker while I tear shit up and y'all listen up close to Roll Call (as the tourists wonder about that reference and the title, and I hope they all fuck off and die):

State Judge Denise Majette raised more than six times as much as Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) last month, according to new reports filed with the Federal Election Commission, closing what had been a huge gap in resources.

[. . .] Majette, who ended June with just $99,000 in the bank, raised $489,000 in July and reported $196,000 in cash on hand at the beginning of August. She also spent almost the same amount as McKinney during the period, doling out $393,000 in the month.

Since the beginning of August, Majette reported raising another almost $140,000.

McKinney, meanwhile, raised $79,000 in July and reported $141,000 in her war chest at the end of last month after spending just over $400,000 in July.

An independent poll conducted late last month showed Majette with a slim lead over the incumbent, reinforcing the results of a poll released by Majette in May.

Bob Doyle, a consultant to the challenger's campaign, described the money flowing to her coffers as "further evidence of Cynthia McKinney being on the ropes.

"The fundraising numbers are evidence that our message is working and that Cynthia McKinney, her days are numbered," said Doyle. "I think people in Georgia have had enough of her over-the-top comments in Congress."

People in Georgia? Oh, is that where her money is coming from, then?

I'll wait for the watchful, objective types like Indepundit to do the research on that. I'm confident they will show the same painstaking dedication to Truth and Accuracy they do when reporting on sand niggers donating to McKinney, and implying that the donations came in as a result of the 9/11 attacks.

Why yes, I did pack a lunch. Why do you ask?

Posted by Aaron at 7:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

The stereotypical feminist would, of course, be both shocked and appalled by my linking to the Gothic Babe of the Week. Then again, the stereotypical black militant guy is violently misogynist, as well as homophobic, so there shouldn't be any women -- let alone the man-hating, castrating feminist variety -- visiting this site anyway.

Pseudo-intellectual justification available on request.

Or, y'know, there's the old joke about the Christian fundamentalist who keeps watching hours of trash television to better know their sins.

But, fuck it, Gothic Ba-- holy mother of god.

I was better at choosing those nicknames than I'd thought.

Update: Oh yeah, and I killed Industrial Radio by enjoying it, too. The old shows are still available, and just reading the playlists makes you a better person.

For certain definitions of better, anyway.

And the penultimate issue of TRANSMETROPOLITAN hit stores in the U.S. today, which isn't goth/industrial related, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

Ok, there's always Writhe and Shine, the latest version of which you can see at OPi8.com.

Don't make me mention Gloomcookie, you mopey bastards.

Or Lenore. Just. . . go hang out in the necropolis or something.

Update:

Sorry, needed to lighten the mood. Click for more details, or to buy your own!

Update 2: Now with title and alt attributes for the Hello, Kitty tv image. Bloody Mojira. . .

Posted by Aaron at 7:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBacks (1)

And what's Fonzie like?

Before he jumped the shark, anyway?

And yes, sorry to tell you, but I have actually seen black people in person. Yep, right up close and in the flesh. Even had friendships with some. Even went to a - gasp - black doctor once! Even worked for a black doctor once. Holy moly, I even own books written by black people like bell hooks. Shocker!

It's never crossed my mind to say to people tossing accusations of racism my way that I have white friends. It sounds like a stupid thing to say in any event.

Never feel the need to state, "I am not a racist," either. What the hell would that prove?

I'm from Chicago, so most of the doctors I went to were from Southeast Asia. Chicago Hope and E.R. take place in some parallel universe.

Are any of the black people here even capable saying how many white people they've worked for? I never kept track, to be honest.

Any of the women here keep track of the number of men they worked for?

How about the men who've had women managers? Ah, thought that one would work.

Books written by white people? Um, again, don't really think about it that much when I buy or read the things.

And yet, I'm not the one claiming not to notice race.

Hey, ho, funny old life.

Meanwhile, in the backwoods, GOCinAtlanta makes a serious tactical error:

Aaron's the guy over at uppity-negro who thinks all of us warbloggers are, in his words, 'racist motherfuckers'. I was talking to my sister last night about his comments and what he called Andrea but when I pointed my Netscape 4.7 browser at his site, it, and I am not making this up, got This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. I know there's a joke in there somewhere. He took exception to some of the things I said about him, mainly that he was a racist. However, I did not call him an MF. He was miffed that I didn't have a comment function on my blog. That's what my e-mail address is for. I would gladly publish anything negative that he may send me. So, if anyone knows Aaron, pass on these instructions.

1. If your e-mail program is Outlook Express, select Compose Message.
2. Type in your vitriolic (if you don't know what that means, find a dictionary) comments.
3. Click on Send.

I've mentioned that I usually run Linux, right?

Outlook Express? Oh, them's fighting words, bitch. Even when I go into Windows, I use Mozilla's mail program. Or Eudora, if I'm in a goofy mood. But Outlook Express? Fuck that noise.

I've noted that Netscape 4.x users are fucked and abandoned, although normally the site just looks totally effed up; no clue why his mom's sister's computer crashed.

Yes, I'm taking liberties with that remark; he didn't say whose computer it was, just that he was showing it to her. Shut up.

Oh, and

Randolph, one of my readers, and a source of information, told me [Aaron] was a real racist MF

Ok, technically Denny himself did not call me an MF. He was merely relaying information.

No comments section on his site, naturally

Wouldn't call that miffed. Bemused, maybe.

Hey, ho, funny old life.

Update 8/15: What is it with these people?

Earlier, Chuckles said:

Well, let's suppose that Aaron wants to go diving. He might not have time to steal a decent computer. (And let the hate mail begin.)

Ah. This must be that "political incorrectness" I've heard so much about.

At least I ain't using Netscape 4.7 and Outlook Express, luser.

He also added:

In case Aaron is reading, the vernacular is the everyday use of language. The spoken or narrative as opposed to the literary. Oh, wait a minute. He's probably watching Star Trek reruns and commenting on how the black guys are always the ones who get killed.

I've mentioned the linguistics degree, right?

Tom Lehrer notwithstanding, satire is still possible. Hell, Jeff got a laugh out of me for making fun of the worn-out catchphrases I toss around with abandon. But that's just. . . sad.

Black people steal things and are stupid, and I talk about Star Trek. Um, ok. You wound me, sir. Your Neopet and mine, in the Battledome, at dawn. Choose your second.

Or choose your destiny.

Posted by Aaron at 4:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (31) | TrackBacks (0)

Today on hour two of MPR's Midmorning, starting at 10 Central:

Is feminism dead?
The suffrage movement became irrelevant after women won the right to vote. Now with career possibilites no longer limited by gender, some say the feminist movement too has essentially served its purpose.

Guest: Kay Hymowitz is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. She wrote an article titled The End of Herstory for the Summer 2002 volume of City Journal.

Feminism, like the civil rights movement, achieved all its goals at some interminate point in the distant past and is only promoted/clung to by dinosaurs who have not yet realized their own liberation, or by demogogues who make baseless allegations of sexism/racism to promote their own interests.

Or so the neocon party line goes, I think. After their first sentence, I usually start singing "Hey Mister DJ, put a record on, 'til they stop talking 'bout this bullshit."

(Previous joke shameless ripped off from Margaret Cho.)

Want to know more? Didn't think so, but The End of Herstory is up on the web. Using techniques I learned from Rachel Lucas, here are some heavily edited, out of context and rearranged quotes:

When you ask young women today if they think of themselves as feminists, more often than not they will pause for a moment. Then they will answer something like: Well, I believe in equal pay for equal work, or Yes, I do believe women should have choices, or Of course, I believe women should have equal rights.

If these are the principles that define feminism, then we are all feminists now. And the future belongs to feminism, too: a 2001 American Demographics survey of adolescent girls entitled The Granddaughters of Feminism found that 97 percent believe women should be paid equally, while 92 percent believe lifestyle choices should not be limited by sex.

[. . .] But how do we explain that pause that comes when you ask women if they consider themselves part of the movement? The truth is, very few Americans are capital F Feminists. Polls show that only about a quarter of women are willing to accept the label.

[. . .] Activists who try to make sense of these young feminists who are not Feminists conclude that the movement has an image problem. The reason so many people believe in feminist goals yet reject the label, they say, is that the media have given us a cartoon picture of liberationists as humorless, Birkenstock-wearing man-haters, our eras version of the old-fashioned spinster. Feminism is still an unfinished revolution, they say, and young women share its goals. They just dont like the packaging.

But this explanation falls far short. Feminism is not simply suffering from a P.R. problem. Its just over. As in finished.

No, think I managed to preserve her meaning. Darn. I am still but a learner, it appears.

Posted by Aaron at 7:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (23) | TrackBacks (0)

Via Jim Romenesko's Media News:

The cover of Vogue this month features size-0 Jennifer Aniston. On InStyle you'll see super-slim Gwyneth Paltrow. And in Elle and Harper's Bazaar, the usual: page after page of stick-thin models.

To look at most fashion magazines, you'd never guess the truth: The best-selling dress size in America is 14.

But there's a new magazine that aims to prove you don't need visible hipbones to be chic.

On the cover of Grace, billed as the magazine for women "living life to its fullest," is gorgeous 170-pound, size-14 model Kate Dillon. No starvelings on the inside, either. The stylish photo spreads feature the latest fashions - '60s-inspired fur-and-leather vests, stiletto-heeled boots, clingy knits - worn by refreshingly Rubenesque beauties.

But don't call it a magazine for plus-size women.

Of course, the Philadelphia Inquirer copyeditor/web lackey manages to blow the good karma from the article itself by using the headline "Where size is a plus", but seeing as no one has ever commented on the blatant anti-copyeditor bias around here, apparently everone realizes what scum they are already. . .

Except Nelly Min. She rawks. Even if she is a size -3.

Want to know more? Kate Dillon takes questions at the NOVA Online site for Dying to be Thin. There's a site for Grace Magazine, which claims the second issue will be out Real Soon Now.

And the 13th get your war on is live and direct. Determining why I would hesitate to mention I noticed this at dru's site, given the rest of the content of this entry, and whether that hesitancy is itself yet another sign of my stupidity, is left as an exercise for the student.

Or I'm just pissed that she has the Pink Issue of Bitch Magazine and I don't.

Posted by Aaron at 7:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, not really, but it sounds cooler than the real version.

Rachel Lucas does not intend to reply here, it seems.

And Aaron, I didn't complain or comment because I really lost interest when you acted like a complete prick when I asked you for dialogue. You. Know. Saying. Smart. Ass. Things. Like. Let. Me. Explain. It. In. Small. Words. And. Typing. Each. Word. Like. This. I asked a perfectly civilized question: "Have I misunderstood?" You said you'd have to explain it to me in very small words.

So Aaron calls me a bitch/slut/cocksucker/dumbass white girl because I defend Dawn, and now Aaron and Dawn are apologizing to each other. Which is fantastic and I'm all for it. But I'm confused and Dawn you're a nice person so explain it to me please.

Well, she gets the timeline wrong, for a start. The bit about explaining in small words was in the original post, before her request for dialogue. And I usually leave the "ue" off of that, and will probably do so in future.

The bit where I started slinging insults in her direction was in a different post altogether, and she's conveniently quoted that bit out of context. Although I suppose the insults work either way.

Sorry, this is all from Dawn's comments section, which I'd not bothered checking until a few minutes ago. I am beginning to wish I hadn't.

Jason, you have the patience of a saint.

Rachel, given that you said at Monique's

I hate being called a bitch, but sometimes it's true.

I'm curious as to why you're doing the martyr routine over at Dawn's.

Playing to the audience, perhaps?

I'd also like an explanation of the difference between not being politically correct, which is virtuous, and being a complete prick, which apparently is not.

This no longer has anything to do with Dawn, so please stop hiding over there. It's embarrasing, really.

Update: Jason, as always, puts it all in perspective. Also, you can find the complete script for Pulp Fiction, along with other Cool Stuff™, at Gods Among Directors.

Posted by Aaron at 11:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (28) | TrackBacks (1)

Found on Boing Boing:

The Jack Benny Program was in production on two different radio networks from 1932 to 1955, under six product brands.

The archives on this site provide several episodes of the show in MP3 format. They are of inconsistent recording and transfer quality; one or two are not complete shows and several have been edited (missing commercials and musical numbers). Still they should prove helpful to those interested in learning about Jack Benny and other early radio programs.

Yes, it's the Jack Benny Radio Archives. I can't figure out how to link directly to an episode, so search for episode 683. Special guest Jack Warner blows his lines, and Benny reams him for it.

And that link seems to be broken. Typical.

Er, not that I remember the original broadcast, of course. That was in 1949.

There's been Benny appreciation here before. I blame my grandfather for this sort of thing.

Posted by Aaron at 9:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Stupid Internet, anyway.

The August editon of geekgirl is up, and describes an upcoming museum exhibit:

Lookalike. Barbie × Lolita × Lara Croft
September 7 ­ November 3
NFI (www.nfi.nl)

Barbie, Lolita and Lara Croft are three female icons that recur in all sorts of ways in our contemporary society. They inspire countless photographers and artists, but also advertising and film directors. These three 'women' - one a doll, one a character from a novel, and one a 'game girl' - are at the heart of the exhibition Lookalike at the Nederlands Foto Instituut from September 8 through November 3, 2002. The exhibition examines the way in which photographers, visual artists, advertising directors, fashion designers, video artists, game makers and film directors have been inspired by these three fictional women.

Barbie, Lolita and Lara represent three divergent archetypical images for women. Barbie is the young, successful woman, obsessed with her appearance, who conjurs up for us the norms and values of a materialistic, Americanised society. But despite the focus on her appearance, Barbie has an asexual aura. This contrasts with Lolita, the apparently innocent child-woman from Nabokov's novel of the same title. In 1999 the fashion magazine Vogue introduced the Lolita girl as the new, sensual image for women. The newest heroine has been called into being with the aid of digital techniques: the militant, well-proportioned Lara Croft. This tough gal has made short work of conquering the hearts of both men and women. Nevertheless as an ambivalent phenomenon she provokes discussion: is she a role model for feminists or a new female cliche?

Well, I think it sounds interesting, anyway. Not that I'll have a chance to see it or anything, so I'd probably be happier if I didn't know it existed.

The exhibit is curated by Flos Wildschut of the NFI and Deanna Herst of Axis, foundation for Art and Gender (Amsterdam; www.axisvm.nl)

Which is an interesting site in itself, even if my poor 'mercan brain has trouble dealing with the concept of "an organisation concentrating on initiating and developing projects in the field of art and gender. Its main objective is the renewing of concepts of masculinity and femininity" which is "financially supported by the Dutch Ministery of Education,Culture and Sciences".

Us Americans don't have no ministries.

Or education or culture, if you want to be like that.

And science funding isn't given much priority, unless it's something you can make money at. . .

We can still nuke 'em, though. We can be proud of that.

Not sure why we'd want to be, or why we'd do it, but we can, and that's enough.

Posted by Aaron at 8:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, the most recent entry I found was from August 3rd, so perhaps Glenn Reynolds has finally decided to shut the hell up:

TED TURNER LAND-GRAB UPDATE: The Associated Press has picked up on the Ted Turner / Gullah legal conflict.

Michael Moore and Doonesbury remain silent, however.

The previous entry, from July 21st, gives a few more details:

TED TURNER GULLAH LAND-GRAB UPDATE: Democratic weblogger WyethWire has more information on Ted Turner's efforts to wrest a parcel of land on St. Helena Island, S.C. away from a group of descendants of slaves who want to keep the land from being developed. (If the second, permalink, doesn't work -- as has been all too common with Blogger sites lately -- follow the first link and scroll if needed). He has links to maps and all sorts of other information. Excerpt:

And to add insult to injury, the island that Ted Turner wants to turn into his own playground is home to the Penn Center, where Dr. Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference planned the March on Washington.

I'm quite surprised at how little attention this story has gotten beyond these reports in local papers. Is it because of some sort of professional courtesy among media barons?

I like the wording in that one. "[A] group of descendants of slaves". What percent of the black people in this country does that describe? I'm gonna go out on a limb and say "most".

Most definitely applies to these guys:

Two hundred members and supporters of the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association spent their July 4 sitting in at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's regional offices in western Tennessee. The group alleges that the federal government has mishandled operating loans for local African-American farmers, and it ended its five-day sit-in only when U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman agreed to meet with the farmers and discuss their grievances.

Since 1996, African-American farmers have lost their farms at a rate three times higher than white farmers and, according to the association, the Agriculture Department routinely delays or denies them farm-operating loans and disaster relief. Of the 16,000 farmers who received federal funding in 1985, only 209 were African American. In 1999, 20,000 African-American farmers won a class-action suit against the Agriculture Department (Pigford v. Glickman). The feds agreed to compensate each farmer $50,000 for discrimination suffered between 1981 and 1996. To date, 40 percent of those awards have yet to be dispersed.

Link via Tapped, which also mentions a Washington Post article on the same issue.

Anyone waiting on Instapundit to comment on this with anywhere near the vehemence he directed at Ted Turner, I hope you packed a lunch.

Spelling out my objections for the slow learners, seems to me Glenn was only railing about the Gullah dispute because it let him sling accusations of racism at evil liberal(?) Ted Turner. If it was anyone else messing with the little brown people, he wouldn't even pretend to give a fuck.

I would, of course, be thrilled to be proven wrong about this.

Posted by Aaron at 4:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

The library. Evil Willow turns Willow around and looks her up and down, particularly noticing her pink sweater.

Evil Willow: (appraisingly) Well, look at me. (doubtfully) I'm all fuzzy.

Willow: What do I want with you? (catches herself) Uh...

Evil Willow: (grimly) Your little school friend Anya said that you're the one that brought me here. She said that you could get me back to my world.

Willow: Oh. (gets it) Oh! Oops!

Evil Willow: But I don't know... (smiles wickedly) I kinda *like* the idea of the two of us.

She turns Willow around again, caressing her shoulders.

Evil Willow: We could be quite a team, (meaningfully) if you came around to *my* way of thinking.

Willow: (uncertainly) Would that mean we have to snuggle?

Evil Willow brushes Willow's hair away from her neck.

Evil Willow: (coaxing) What do you say?

She gives Willow's neck an eager, lengthy lick. Willow shudders with loathing and grimaces at the feeling.

Evil Willow: (enticingly) Wanna be bad?

Willow: (completely unnerved) This just can't get more disturbing.

From Doppelgängland, written and directed by the man himself, Joss Whedon.

Since she's mentioned it, guess it's ok if I do. . . Dawn Olsen has asked me for an interview. I have assured her that I'm quite boring, and it would be more interesting to spend the time feeding her goldfish.

And I'm not even sure she has goldfish.

Would anyone be interested in seeing such a thing? I was going to add a Javascript poll, but kept thinking about that line from Truth or Dare. . .

The options would have been "Make nice with the PRs" and "ECW! ECW! ECW!", so I suppose you could put that in the comments.

If you're very, very silly.

Posted by Aaron at 2:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

Hey, and dumbkopf! Watch out for the CD changer in my trunk, huh?

Dropped by Blogcritics.

There is much love for the Pixies and They Might Be Giants.

They are therefore Officially Cool.

You need not even leave your computer to sample/purchase music from either group.

That is all.

Posted by Aaron at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The hippie peaceniks are babbling again.

Lots of arguments have been offered on behalf of striking Baghdad that are not reasons at all. For instance, that Saddam Hussein is an evil man who has brutalized his own people.

Certainly true. But the world is full of brutal regimes that have murdered their own people. Indeed, Washington ally Turkey's treatment of its Kurds is scarcely more gentle than Iraq's Kurdish policies.

Moreover, the U.S. warmly supports the royal kleptocracy next door in Saudi Arabia, fully as totalitarian, if not quite as violent, as Saddam's government. Any non-Muslim and most women would probably prefer living in Iraq.

God, these people living in their little dream world, writing their fantasies up and posting them at liberal mouthpieces like National Review Online. Makes me sick.

Oh yeah, that's the first few paragraphs of an NRO comment by "Doug Bandow [. . .,] a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan."

I'd say I didn't realize that Alzheimers was contagious, but Mister Charlie does not find such comments amusing.

Readers are encouraged to find instances of warbloggers joking about the illnesses or potential illnesses of people they don't care for -- something about Arafat and babywipes, perhaps -- and forward them to Bill Quick so he may denounce them with the same vehemence he directs at those cracking wise about Reagan and Heston.

Speaking of women, and Iraq, and Kuwait (I left out the bit of the editorial talking about using Iraq's invasion as justification for Gulf War II), Inter-Parliamentary Union helpfully point out:

Women in Kuwait do not yet have the right to vote or to stand for election.

Women's Action goes even further:

Kuwait is the one remaining country in the world where only men have the right to vote. Women in Kuwait are denied the opportunity for political participation although women hold positions such as Director of the University of Kuwait, Kuwaiti Ambassador to Austria, and Under-Secretary of Higher Education within the Ministry of Education. On 16 May 1999, the Emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, issued a decree granting women full political rights to vote and to stand for office. On 23 November 1999, the National Assembly rejected the decree by a two-thirds vote.

Well, there you have it. Democracy in action.

The CIA Factbook adds:

Literacy: definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 78.6%
male: 82.2%
female: 74.9% (1995 est.)

True, they're not exactly unbiased, but if they don't have solid information to go on, they'd end up doing extraordinarily silly thi-- never mind.

Anyway, that gap in literacy rates actually isn't that bad, comparatively. Nepal, for example, has a 40.9% literacy rate for men, 14% for women. Nice to see there are some places where the ladyfesto is taken seriously.

Well, at least the women of Afghanistan are free now.

15% literacy rate, to 47.2% for men, by the way. And that's from 1999; seeing as the Taliban took over in 1996, you really can't blame them. Not that that's going to stop people.

Seeing as birth rates tend to drop when women become educated and learn about odd notions like effective birth control, you'd think conservatives' fear of a brown planet (which, um, we already have, but they don't get out of the suburbs much) would lead them to push women's education with a vengeance.

Ha! I made a funny.

Posted by Aaron at 9:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I finally saw Notorious C.H.O. on Saturday. It wasn't perfect, but how many movies are? Still loved it, but this might just be the Margaret Cho obsession talking, and I'd pay to see her reading a grocery list.

The cartoon at the beginning, on the other hand, was perfect. And an eloquent statement on the sad state of Black-Korean relations. Which it probably set back years.

Meanwhile, I've managed to piss off someone I've never met. Again. This time, the person in question describes himself as a "Grouchy Old Cripple [who] rants from Atlanta GA. and pushes the boundaries of bad taste and political incorrectness."

Again with the political incorrectness. Christ, at least I just admit that I'm easily irritated and foul-mouthed, and leave it at that.

Any road up, Denny Wilson writes at GOCinAtlanta:

One of my readers, Carl, pointed me to a site called uppity-negro. See, I even provided the link. [He did, too. I just didn't feel like copying the source or adding it. - Mgt.] I figgered out Aaron, the owner of the site, either had a sense of humor or an attitude. [Why is this an either/or proposition? - Mgt.] He's got an attitude all right. Randolph, one of my readers, and a source of information, told me he was a real racist MF and engaged in name calling. I won't even mention what he called Andrea Harris. ["elitist Ashkenazi cunt" - Mgt.] Who's she? Click on Speenville on my blogroll. Anyway, I was planning on fisking an article in last Tuesday's Chicago Tribune, but as Carl pointed out, Aaron had already put his own racist spin on things. I found out that all warbloggers are racist bastards. No, he called us 'racist motherfuckers'. What a racist butthead.

Well, he managed to get "racist" in there five times in 129 words. Not great, but not bad.

There was a time I'd be amused at someone calling me "a real racist MF" and "a racist butthead" who "put[s] his own racist spin on things" and also accuses me of engaging in name calling. Lots of things that are funny the first time you hear them lose the amusement value over time.

Anyway, that was today. He also mentioned the site on Friday, but I was doped up on mescaline Midol and must have missed it.

I ain't miss much.

No comments section on his site, naturally, so I'll just have to hope he sees this and decides to drop by. Suppose I could write a short note, but since he didn't have the common courtesy to do so. . .

Wait, common courtesy is political correctness. He proudly claims to push the boundaries of political incorrectness. Of course he didn't write. My bad.

np - "Cannon Song" by Stan Ridgeway, from September Songs: The Music of Kurt Weill

Update 8/13: Odd. I know he's here, and from the Friday post it's clear he, like Rachel, wishes to engage in dialogue. I mean, he easily refuted my nonsensical suggestion that Condi Rice is the only black person the warbloggers care for.

Let's see. He left out Colin Powell, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Clarence Thomas, and many others. And I've read a lot of warbloggers. I'm a warblogger. I have detected no dislike of black people. I have detected no racism.

Can't even be arsed to plug "Colin Powell blog" into Google to refute that first one.

I note you listed few enough that you could count them without taking your shoes off. Depending on how many fingers you've a) lost to the combine harvester and b) were born with, you inbred hillbilly pigfucker.

Suppose it saves money at the holidays, only having to get one gift for your mother, sister and aunt.

Wait, you do have all your toes, right? Because some folks'll never lose a toe, but then again some folks'll.

And if you've detected no racism, well, I guess you're an expert at that sort of thing, right? Years of personal experience?

Come on, Denny.

Bring it.

(slight return): Redpac, you're the expert on generating heel heat. Is that going too far? Ain't like I got Bob Mould writing for me or nothing. . .

Posted by Aaron at 11:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (19)

Don't blame it on the moonlight
Don't blame it on the good times
Blame it on drucilla.

She's got this quote from the Ladies Against Women ladyfesto at the top of her page, which sent me off looking for a copy of Valerie Solanas' S.C.U.M. manifesto. You know the one:

Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.

It is now technically feasible to reproduce without the aid of males (or, for that matter, females) and to produce only females. We must begin immediately to do so. Retaining the mail has not even the dubious purpose of reproduction. The male is a biological accident: the Y (male) gene is an incomplete X (female) gene, that is, it has an incomplete set of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion, aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples.

The male is completely egocentric, trapped inside himself, incapable of empathizing or identifying with others, or love, friendship, affection of tenderness. He is a completely isolated unit, incapable of rapport with anyone. His responses are entirely visceral, not cerebral; his intelligence is a mere tool in the services of his drives and needs; he is incapable of mental passion, mental interaction; he can't relate to anything other than his own physical sensations. He is a half-dead, unresponsive lump, incapable of giving or receiving pleasure or happiness; consequently, he is at best an utter bore, an inoffensive blob, since only those capable of absorption in others can be charming. He is trapped in a twilight zone halfway between humans and apes, and is far worse off than the apes because, unlike the apes, he is capable of a large array of negative feelings -- hate, jealousy, contempt, disgust, guilt, shame, doubt -- and moreover, he is aware of what he is and what he isn't.

That impish scamp.

Anyway, somehow I ended up at Stank Magazine instead.

From their Mission Statement:

From birth girls are encouraged (even required) to be sweet, to hold their tongues and trouble no waters as WHAT a girl says, HOW she says it, and HOW she presents herself has total bearing on her value as a woman. The stereotypes are all too familiar. The sexually liberated feline a.k.a. ho is only suitable for male libidinous pleasures. The demure, soft-spoken, submissive woman a.k.a. doormat is the ultimate prize-marriageable and controllable. While the aggressive, confident, outspoken, attitudinal woman a.k.a. bitch is the bane of man's (and woman's) existence.

Black women have forever endured the attitudinal stereotype. Whether we're rolling our eyes, sucking our teeth, flying off at the handle over SOME shit or simply taking NO shit, Black women have been criticized and mocked for having TOO much mouth, TOO much opinion, and WAY TOO much attitude.

Such is the reason for STANK!

[. . .] Fuck you if you don't like it or if you don't get it. Your approval is not needed.

I might have to rip off that last bit.

If you find them worrying, that's why I included the Solanas quote. It's the MLK/Malcolm X thing again. Comparatively, the good people at Stank seem quite reasonable and tolerant. . .

Posted by Aaron at 9:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBacks (0)

If you don't recognize that quote, you should rent House Party. I'm not sure when I picked up Conan O'Brien's way of calling the group Kid and 'N'Play, but find it very hard to stop. . .

And I realize Robin Harris ain't exactly an uncommon name, but I was surprised the first few Google results didn't refer to the late comedian.

What was I talking about? Oh, right, Fusarium venenatum.

You might know it by it's trade name, Quorn.

A health advocacy group accused the government Monday of allowing fake meat made from fungus to be sold even though it makes some people sick and demanded the product, known as Quorn, be recalled.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest said it had received reports from 33 people who had suffered vomiting, diarrhea and other ailments after eating Quorn. A North Carolina man broke out in hives and had trouble breathing, the group said.

Quorn is the trade name for mycoprotein, which is used as a substitute for ground beef and chicken, and in lasagna and fettuccine Alfredo.

"Quorn mycoprotein has been proven to cause severe digestive reactions," Michael Jacobson, CSPI's executive director, said in a letter to the Food and Drug Administration. "Those reactions have led to fainting and dehydration, which could be life-threatening."

Or not. That's from the San Francisco Chronicle version of an AP story. Wired and CNN have the same story, so no new details there.

Which is odd, as this isn't exactly new news.

May 21, 2002 -- Vegparadise News Bureau

Quorn, a Laboratory Mold Creation, Invades the U.S.

Is it a mushroom, a fungus, or just plain mold? Is it a food or yet another laboratory creation disguised as food?

After gracing dinner tables in Europe for the last 17 years, Quorn has reached the United States and is now available in frozen food sections at markets across the country.

What is Quorn? According to the manufacturer, Marlow Foods of the United Kingdom, "Quorn foods are made with mycoprotein, from the fungi family - and a relative of mushrooms, truffles, and morel, that offers a strong nutritional profile and an authentic meat-like texture." Marlow Foods is a division of AstraZeneca, a giant pharmaceutical company.

That description differs radically from the view of Michael F. Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest in the May 2002 issue of Nutrition Action Healthletter.

"It's actually a fungus that's grown in huge fermentation vats. Mycoprotein is as close to mushrooms as human beings are to jellyfish," says Jacobson. He continues by asking, "Do we want to eat foods made of traditional farm-grown ingredients or mold grown in vats?"

And, way at the bottom,

Because all Quorn products contain egg whites and some contain dairy, none of them are vegan.

Figure some of the nasty reactions are from people who weren't aware that the fungus (Don't. I know you want to say it, but don't.) they were eating also had egg and dairy -- know I wouldn't even think to ask that -- but I'm really talking out of my ass here, and should stop.

There's also us lactose intolerant ty-- no. Don't know what I'm talking about, will rely on the quotes.

There's actually a site dedicated to complaints about Quorn, called Quorn Complaints.com of all things. Their take:

Marlow Foods (a division of the giant pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca) claims that its Quorn product is some natural, mushroom-like food. Quorn's packaging states that the so-called "mycoprotein" in Quorn "made from natural ingredients," "mushroom in origin," and "made from a small, unassuming member of the mushroom family."

Bah! It is made from a fungus found in a British dirt sample, and grown in huge fermentation vats. The fungus that makes up Quorn, Fusarium venenatum, has nothing to do with mushrooms. It is about as closely related to mushrooms as an octopus is related to humans.

If it was in a British dirt sample, maybe that would explain why people over there don't react as badly; they're accustomed to the stuff in the environ-- no, that doesn't make sense. . .

The site is run by CSPI. Yes, the same people in the AP story. There's a few press releases, but the most recent one is from May.

So why did this go out on the wires today?

Somebody at AP knew someone who got sick, maybe?

And speaking of meat substitutes. . .

If you ever find yourself in Dinkytown (U of M campustown, basically), hungry, with only $4.27 to your name, head to Camdi Chinese & Vietnamese Restaurant. I recommend the mixed vegetables with mock duck, but there's a long list of choices, and they're all good.

And the Afghan restaurant is gone, replaced with a steak house or some shit. Not that the food was great, but it was still way better than your average fast food.

And some idiot decided that what downtown Minneapolis needed was a Hard Rock Cafe. Built right across the street from First Av.

There are too many levels of wrongness here to begin listing them.

Posted by Aaron at 5:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Etc., etc.

There have been a few, though. And a recent addition.

Guardian Unlimited | World Latest | Stamp Honors Thurgood Marshall

A new commemorative stamp honoring Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court justice, was unveiled Friday.

The 37-cent stamp, which will go on sale in January, was unveiled at the annual meeting of the American Bar Association.

[. . .] Marshall is the ninth Supreme Court justice to be honored with a stamp. Others were John Jay, John Marshall, William Howard Taft, Charles Evans Hughes, Harlan Fiske Stone, Earl Warren, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Hugo Black.

And he is the 25th in the post office's Black Heritage stamp series, which has included such leaders as Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King, Jr., Benjamin Banneker, Whitney Moore Young, Jackie Robinson, Scott Joplin, Sojourner Truth, and A. Philip Randolph.

I'd swear there used to be a rule against starting sentences with "And".

Continuing with Not Talking about Elvis from the previous entry:

Generations have grown up accepting the rumored remark as fact, and the animosity has lasted more than four decades. On their 1989 hit "Fight the Power," political rappers Public Enemy called Presley a "straight-up racist." A year later, the black rock group Living Color recorded "Elvis Is Dead," which included the lyrics "I've got a reason to believe / We all won't be received at Graceland."

[. . .] But, surprisingly to those who have long believed the rumored remark to be true (including this African-American reporter), it seems that he didn't make it.

"I never said anything like that," Presley told the black-oriented magazine Jet in 1957 from the set of "Jailhouse Rock." "And people who know me know I wouldn't have said it."

This issue of Jet is still available for your perusal at black beauty and barber shops across the country. No, they're not holding on to it for sentimental reasons; they still have the larger-sized issues of Ebony out, too.

Which reminds me, I was in Border's, and Essense was racked with the Women's Interests magazines. They dropped the woman-centered focus ages ago. . .

But I digress.

The racist remark first appeared in white-owned Sepia magazine as part of a story titled "How Negroes Feel About Elvis." It was alleged that Presley had made the statement either in Boston or on Edward R. Murrow's "Person to Person" TV program. But Presley had never been to Boston or on Morrow's show.

So why does the rumor persist? For one, blame the tenacity of urban legends. Folklorists define urban legends as apocryphal stories that are passed from person to person and even generation to generation as true. They can be anything from the story of the man with a hooked hand who terrorizes teenage lovers to the rumor, spread largely by e-mail, that designer Tommy Hilfiger doesn't want black people to wear his clothes.

The purpose of these tales isn't simply to spin a good yarn. In his book "The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings," professor Jan Harold Brunvand writes that these oft-told stories "reflect many of the hopes, fears and anxieties of our time."

This is largely why the Presley rumor still has relevance. There is a lot of resentment because Presley reaped more benefits from R&B-influenced music than did any black artist.

Well, that's the most sensible statement I've seen in a mainstream publication for a while.

One of the few times I've seen folklorists mentioned in a Western context, too. Well, as Western as black people in the U.S. are meant to be, anyway. The extent of this varies depending on what's being discussed.

But in the rigidly segregated world of the 1950s, Presley was able to achieve more success than any black artist. This fact keeps the shoeshine rumor going.

"'The rumor has persisted because Elvis is a symbol of so many social and musical inequities that are legitimately resented," says Peter Gural¬nick, author of the definitive biographies "Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley" and "Careless Love : The Unmaking of Elvis Presley."

"Had everything else been the same -- the moves, the clothes, the look -- but Elvis had been a black man, would white America in the '50s have embraced him with the same enthusiasm?" asks Patricia Turner, co-author (with Gary Alan Fine) of the new "Whispers on the Color Line: Rumor and Race in America." "The answer is probably no. And there's a lot of resentment about that."

Good thing things have changed in this country, and such matters are no longer an issue.

So, I hear Eminem has a new cd out.

He's nowhere near as good as the Beasties, though. And Vanilla Ice? The less said, the better.

And apropos of nothing, missed a Fishbone show here Saturday. Funny, I don't think the black radio station (who seem to have lost their domain) mentioned it at all. . .

Posted by Aaron at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

I like how that usually gets run together into one word. Kind'a like theliberalmedia.

From about the most biased source you can get, the McKinney 2002 campaign site:

McKinney Wins Debate; Majette flip-flops on affirmative action

Representative Cynthia McKinney trounced opponent Denise Majette in an Atlanta Press Club debate scheduled at 7:30, August 9, 2002 at the Georgia Public Television studios (channel 8 in Atlanta). In a debate that focused on Representative McKinneys record in Congress and Majettes record as a judge, McKinney won both fronts.

During the debate a reporter from the Atlanta Journal Constitution challenged Majette, saying that in a prior interview Majette said she opposed affirmative action, but in a meeting of African American professionals, Majette changed course and said she supported affirmative action.

Majette refused to address this flip-flop on affirmative action.

Not that someone seeking office taking diametrically opposed views on an issue in front of two different audiences is surprising. That it was a reporter from the Journal Constitution is, given they've got Cynthia Tucker writing for 'em.

Tucker shows that when it comes to the crunch, she is snugged down in the Man's pocket. Her paper has been unrelenting in its attempts to discredit McKinney. "[She] has shown herself to be a fringe lunatic, well outside the congressional mainstream," Cynthia Tucker wrote in one typical commentary.

Outrageously, Tucker asserts McKinney is "incapable of aiding any cause" and has the final pious effrontery to declare that "The plight of the Palestinians and their desire for an independent homeland is a serious cause deserving of thoughtful, mainstream advocates. Hilliard wasn't one, and neither is McKinney."

Er, that's Alexander Cockburn, and the piece is from Working for Change, again hardly an unbiased source.

A cursory glance at Denise Majette's campaign site revealed no mention of the debate, but there is a quote from yesterday's (Aug. 11th's) Journal Constitution:

AJC endorses Majette -- Cream of the crop in races for House Atlanta Journal Constitution

According to the last U.S. Census, Georgia's surge in population growth earned the state two additional congressional districts. So this year's congressional campaigns have generated intense interest and some unusually spirited races.

The following are recommendations in house races with primary opposition.

In the 4th, incumbent Cynthia McKinney's irresponsible -- indeed, wildly irrational -- rhetoric has alienated many of her constituents.

So it is no surprise that she has drawn a strong challenger, former DeKalb State Court Judge Denise Majette.

Majette is more than just "not McKinney." With a Yale law degree, she is bright and thoughtful, a moderate candidate who can well represent the needs of a diverse district.

I love buzzword bingo. Irresponsible, wildly irrational, strong challenger, bright, thoughtful, moderate, diverse. Do you think they have a list of them, and just copy and paste between documents, or is there a macro that goes through an editorial and adds them where appropriate?

Not that I don't have a set handful of predictable words and catchphrases, but at least I'm usually trying to be funny when I toss them out.

This really deserves it's own entry:

ajc.com | Living | Was Elvis racist?
By CRAIG SEYMOUR
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Pop Music Critic

This view is not based simply on his use of black music, but on an infamous alleged statement, dating back almost 50 years, that he apparently never made. But it's as much a part of the Elvis myth as polyester jumpsuits and peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches. It's also the reason many people, particularly African-Americans, will view the celebratory events commemorating his death with resentment and anger.

"The only thing Negroes can do for me is buy my records and shine my shoes."

No, on second thought, it doesn't. Been there, done that, can't find the June archives on the site, but I'm dumb.

Update: Democracy Now interviewed Congress Member McKinney today. You know the Public Radio Fan drill.

Damn. McKinney just said Majette voted for Alan Keyes. Them's fighting words.

Posted by Aaron at 7:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Hyperballad - Björk (with the Brodsky Quartet)

We live on a mountain
Right at the top
There's a beautiful view
From the top of the mountain

Every morning I walk towards the edge
And throw little things off
Like car-parts, bottles and cutlery
Or whatever I find lying around
It's become a habit
A way to start the day

I go through all this
Before you wake up
So I can feel happier
To be safe up here with you

I go through all this
Before you wake up
So I can feel happier
To be safe up here with you

It's real early morning
No-one is awake
I'm back at my cliff
Still throwing things off
I listen to the sounds they make
On their way down
I follow with my eyes 'til they crash
Imagine what my body would sound like
Slamming against those rocks
When it lands
Will my eyes
Be closed or open?

I go through all this
Before you wake up
So I can feel happier
To be safe up here with you

I go through all this
Before you wake up
So I can feel happier
To be safe up here with you

I go through all this
Before you wake up
So I can feel happier
To be safe up here with you

Safe up here with you
Safe up here with you
Safe up here with you

Posted by Aaron at 7:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Or: Finally someone let me out of my cage.

I have noticed a trend.

Jim Treacher:

I said that you SEEMED to be IMPLYING something along those lines. . .

Dawn Olsen (same source):

. . . or you really WERE implying I was racist. . .

Jeff Goldstein:

. . . the implication being that my failure to mention affirmative action by name weakens my position. . .

Emphasis added.

No one else had an English teacher who went totally bugfuck about the difference between imply and infer, then?

While we're at it, Manichaean doesn't mean "someone from Manchester," and racism isn't a fucking on/off switch in your head, where you're either a card-carrying member of the KKK or utterly free from prejudice. Zadeh's first paper on this stuff came out in '65, you must have encountered the idea at some point.

Oh, one last thing. Rachel Lucas, whose site motto is "Life's too short to be politically correct", wrote the following:

But the 'insensitivity' police can just ram it.   There is no reason we should guard our words and defuse any ticking bombs of negative association we might inadvertently create.

"We"?

Bitch, you better be pregnant, have a mouse in your pocket, or be talking about humanity in general, because from your post on this, I'm inferring that this is another of those white privileges you claim don't exist.

You maybe want to consider carefully before you answer this one. The title of this post refers to how Jason and George ain't around much to rein me in.

So I don't have to "imply" anything.

Posted by Aaron at 7:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (21) | TrackBacks (2)

If you ain't like Buckaroo Banzai or Big Trouble in Little China, you're probably. . . no, it never works. They stay and say dumb shit no matter what.

The Evil in this case is Black 'Lectorate interviewing arch-villain Cynthia McKinney. What bizarre, anti-American delusional rantings does she deliver this time?

Davey D: Are you concerned about the violent images directed towards women in Hip-Hop lyrics?

Cynthia McKinney: Davey, I am. Especially as a mother. And I'm concerned that those are the lyrics and TV videos that get air time. But the politically instructive messages of other artists are virtually ignored. And I'm concerned that our children are being herded into thinking of themselves only as sexual objects and not real competitors on the battlefield of life, in economics, in politics, in academia.

I also think that it is important that we consider the interests of Independent and "Mom and Pop" retailers who depend upon this culture for a living. They are part of the Hip-Hop community and many artists would not be successful without these stores.

Hear that? She's calling tv and radio racist! And telling black people to burn down Best Buy and Circuit City stores!

Sorry, it looks like so much fun when the tourists do it.

Bit of a puff piece, but she's a politician running for office, so you can't expect much. She does casually mention "reparations, political prisoners and things like COINTELPRO", which will no doubt cause another of those cultural misunderstandings.

I've already been told that reparations are a shakedown by race hustlers and poverty pimps, that there are no political prisoners in the U.S. and that COINTELPRO protected us all from dangerous radicals like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Jean Seberg, so don't feel the need to remind me. Thank you ever so.

Posted by Aaron at 2:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

No sane being would attempt to discuss race, class, sex, sexuality, body image, and Eurocentric definitions of beauty in the same blog entry.

No, no sane being.

Courtesy of Giles, who demonstrates far more restraint than I:

Beyoncé Knowles' booty gets a trim

Beyoncé Knowles was a little too bootylicious for Maxim. The "Goldmember" star and lead singer of Destiny's Child is the cover girl in the August issue of the raunchy men's mag, and a source says the Maxim art department "worked overtime" slimming down Knowles' thighs and hips in a photo spread inside.

"SHE'S A healthy, big-bottomed girl," says a source. "She out-J. Lo's J. Lo in the behind department. They thought it was maybe a little too much of a good thing."

Interesting comparison, that, and a reason George is the Good Twin. If I'd worked at Salon, I most definitely would have brought up Erin J. Aubry's piece, Back is Beautiful:

If I had any doubts about the ascendancy of Jennifer Lopez's butt, they were put to rest during a recent stroll through a New York City airport. After arming myself with magazines to while away the three hours until flight time, I sat down and began with Vanity Fair. There, in the middle of a long narrative about the Reagans, dropped as coyly as a handkerchief, was a photo spread of Lopez. Its point of impact -- detonation, to be more exact -- was a shot of her from behind in which she peeked over one shoulder, clad in nothing but mules and a pair of old-fashioned briefs that rode strategically up over a high, rounded butt.

Being a black woman with a similar (all right, bigger) endowment, I felt an odd mixture of pride and panic. Was this a passing Hollywood fancy or a giant step for butt-kind? A racially steeped fetish wrapped in the glitter of celebritude, one of the chief bibles of which is Vanity Fair? Would my own butt, which I have alternately embraced and lamented and written about extensively as a metaphor for tortuously unrealized black assimilation in America, finally get its aesthetic props? Would James Brown be called out of retirement to record a '90s version of his signature new-social-order anthem titled "Say It Loud, I Got Back and I'm Proud"?

The short answer is it's far too early to tell. While the reviews of Lopez in her latest film have been wildly enthusiastic -- the L.A. Weekly rhapsodized bluntly about her "spectacular ass," the more restrained New Yorker dubbed her a bona fide "voluptuary" -- I reserve suspicions that folks are merely effusing over the appearance of a young actress in a romantic lead who isn't blond and/or appears to live entirely on Slim-Fast. But from where I sit -- and from what I sit on -- Lopez's butt, while certainly one to be admired, is of entirely modest proportions. I went to see "Out of Sight" with a woman friend who turned to me as the final credits were running and said, looking rather bewildered, "Where was the butt here? What in the world are you going to write about?"

There is no gentle way to say this: There really ain't that much back there, comparatively speaking.

What you're using as a basis for the comparison is another of them cultural things. Since any attempt to explain things for the tourists only confuses them, I'll let them either do their own research (not bloody likely), ask if they're not following (not bloody likely) or rant about how I'm angry, racist and think white chicks generally have no ass whatsoever.

Quite likely, that last one. And they actually get one out of three correct for once.

Want to know less? I managed to not write about this sort of thing before, and am bailing now. I may not be sane, but I am easily distracted, and it's nice outside.

Update: Typical. Two of the three links I tried in the old entry are broken. And it's only been less than two years. Go figure.

The Wayback Machine gives up MSBET's article on Hip Hop Feminism and Student Advantage's piece on how Body Image Varies by Race and Culture.

Or did, until I searched for 'em, setting off a check of the respective robots.txt files for those sites which will probably result in them getting pulled. Funny old life, ennit?

Update 8/12: From that second link:

In African American and Latino cultures, on the other hand, Whitehead-Laboo said that roundness and voluptuousness are attributes. "It is considered a tragedy not to have a behind [in African American culture]," she said with a laugh. The songs "Baby Got Back," by Sir Mixalot, and "Doing the Butt" are examples of African American men voicing their opinion that it is preferable for women to be slightly large.

In another example, Rosie O'Donnell and Madonna were on a trip to a Latin American country and O'Donnell received more favorable male attention, Whitehead-Laboo said. "A bone is for the dog, meat is for the man," explained one male inhabitant of that country when O'Donnell asked why she got all this attention.

[ . . .] Whitehead-Laboo's speech also touched on the occurrence of eating disorders in the gay community. Fewer lesbians than heterosexual women suffer from eating disorders due to their rejection of traditional sex roles, she said. As gender identities are altered and more lesbians become comfortable with maintaining a feminine appearance, these lesbians may be more susceptible to eating disorders.

That last sentence makes my brain hurt. Perhaps I just know the wrong people.

Or the right people.

Or something.

Posted by Aaron at 1:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Michelle mentioning she picked up a copy of Grand Theft Auto III reminded me of the Boondocks strips about the game. Haven't played it myself (no PS2, the PC version would laugh at my system), but know enough about it to get the jokes. And so should you. The second one is better than the first, but you need the set-up for it to work.

There are a number of people who just don't get the strip. Don't care for the font in (some) versions of it myself, and the one at Okayplayer (weekdays only, sorry) looks sharper than the one at Ucomics, with better-defined shading. Maybe they're doing touch-up work, and that's why it goes up later.

That ain't what I meant by not getting the strip, though. I mean the folks who glance at it grimly, then say, "That isn't funny."

I'd like to think that what they mean is, "I don't see the humor in this," but no. I've come to realize they mean, objectively, the strip isn't funny. It just has angry, racist black children talking in Ebonics. That's a paraphrase, but it is an actual complaint I've heard.

If you're bored, you can try explaining the cultural references to these people, you can point out that the characters rarely even use slang, let alone BVE, you can mention that Caesar (and pretty much the rest of the cast) constantly undercut Huey's wackier ideas.

If you're bored, and looking for some busywork which accomplishes nothing.

Then again, Cathy is still running. Or Guisewite is adding contemporary references to the old strips and re-running them; doubt anyone would notice.

That's really not a fair comparison, though. Cathy inspires apathy. People get pissed about Boondocks. Papers run it on the editorial page instead of with the majority of the comics. The strip gets pulled if the material is seen as too controversial. People write in and threaten to cancel their subscriptions.

No, really.

When The Boondocks first appeared in the Los Angeles Times in April 1999, the Times reader representative, Narda Zacchino, received about 200 complaints from readers who called the strip racist and offensive, and threatened to cancel their subscriptions if the strip continued to run.

Over a comic strip.

Insecure much, cracka ass cracka?

Want to know more? Read an account of cartoonist Aaron McGruder's speech, What's The Color of Funny? at Mossyrocks News. Two pull quotes:

Anyway, Aaron said if you're not the kind of white person he draws (actually, I see a lot of myself in Riley's teacher: she hasn't, I don't think, noticed his color, but won't put up with his mouth!) he's not offending you, and if you are, tough.

Er, that's him Aaron, not me Aaron. Not that I give a fuck about offending you either.

Oddly enough, while everyone is upset with him, he says the most upset group ("apart from Ward Connerly's people") is the Multiracial Activist Coalition Group. He says the leader of this group is a white lady and she's really vocal.

As has been pointed out several times, I'm multiracial. The majority of black people in this country (if not this continent) are multiracial. We ain't the ones the Multiracial Activist Coalition is talking about. They mean the ones slightly less diluted. The ones whose racial mixture is more recent. The. . . fuckit, it's a group for libertarian rainbow babies with a white parent, ok?

Fuck them and Ward Connerly.

That's me Aaron, not him Aaron. But he probably feels the same way.

Actually, Riley hits both Jazmine and Cindy, but a) Jazmine is still standing afterwards, while Cindy goes out of frame, and b) violence is always funnier when clueless white people are the victims.

However, see the Charlie Brown/Lucy/football homage for Cindy's Revenge.

Posted by Aaron at 9:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, Edward Said probably puts it better, but he's so damn wordy:

Most people are principally aware of one culture, one setting, one home; exiles are aware of at least two, and the plurality of vision gives rise to an awareness of simultaneous dimensions.

From Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, 2000.

There are also some pertinent quotes from C.L.R. James on the 'Negro Question', but some people have problems doing any external reading. Which is the problem, really.

I don't think about "coons" and "minstrels" and "misunderstandings" and "stereotypes."

says Rachel Lucas. And I knew that was the case for some people, which is why I quoted so heavily in the post she takes objection to. If you're not into the whole clicking thing, the title of this was, "Take a deep breath, slowly count to ten ." The first line was, "Going ballistic at the slightest provocation gets real old, real fast."

Failing to heed either warning -- perhaps I should have gone with the original title, "Calm the fuck down" -- she goes on to say:

And so it goes. Once again, blacks and/or [insert any minority here] read something into a white person's speech that doesn't exist. Attribute racism or insensitivity where none exists. Insult Whitey and call her names despite a complete lack of wrongdoing on her part because they hear something in her speech that is not there.

[. . .] The point I'm trying to make is, it is my observation that often, black people themselves can perpetuate clichés and stereotypes. I am white, and when I eat watermelon, I am overcome with memories of eating it with my friend Julie (also white). There is no other connotation in my mind. When I think of big butts, I think of myself and all the women in my family. And all the women in America. I don't think of black women in particular. That is reality/truth/fact. If somebody hears the words "big butt" and "watermelon" in the same sentence and are immediately offended and instantly smell insensitivity, who's got the hang-up?

. . .

Well, Rachel, perhaps if your moms had dropped you on your big butt as a child, rather than on your head, you'd be capable of either comprehending written material, or having sense enough to request clarification when you miss the entire point of something.

Or perhaps I'm giving you too much credit.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Whitey doesn't see color everywhere he looks. Whitey doesn't associate watermelon with black people. Whiteys my age don't even know about most of the "Coon Caricature" stereotypes. And that doesn't mean that we're oblivious to the past.

The last sentence contradicts the penultimate one.

I shall go over this again. Slowly. I shall use small words. Not. Everyone. Sees. The. World. The. Same. Way. As. You.

This does not seem like a difficult concept. If you're still confused, just ask. There are no stupid questions, just stupid people.

Let's take race out of the equation. It seems to cloud minds.

What is Kabuki?

Kabuki plays deal primarily with forbidden topics, with social issues and social tensions that have no other outlet. Since kabuki directs itself at common people, rather than the noble class, the plays are passionate, lurid, sometimes violent, and often scandalous. In order to deal with forbidden topics, the playwrights cleverly write history plays, using historical incidents, most of which are familiar to the audience, to discuss contemporary politics and scandals.

[. . .] Although your senses are filled with costume, color, scenery, spectacle, noise and music, the focus of your attention is on the actor's skill which displays itself in a large stock of formalized "movements" or "conventions" (kata: "form," "pattern," "model"). Kabuki as an actor's theater is a theater of gesture; all kabuki acting is "patterned acting." Each gesture, whether in movement, dancing, speech, or music, is highly formal and traditional. You know exactly what to expect, what kinds of movements will come where, and all the excitement of the play lies in the actor's execution of these movements. These gestures embody most of the dramatic and cultural meaning of the play, and though they are highly formalized and take great skill, their subject matter is almost always human passion and the often fierce conflict between the inner passions and outer obligations and decorum.

I cannot appreciate Kabuki. I don't know what the gestures mean, the historical references are lost to me, the formality has a distancing effect rather than drawing me in. Were I to attend a performance with someone who knows the form, I'm pretty sure they'd be laughing or shocked or thrilled at things which would leave me saying, "What?" and "I don't understand." and "Where's the tea?"

We would, in a very real sense, not have seen the same play at all.

Was that clear enough for you fuckheads?

Update: Changed the link to point to the actual article, rather than Rachel's home page.

This involved looking at the article again.

I should not have done that.

Also, Jason has withdrawn in disgust, which is not the same as apathy.

Or, in my case, saying, "Screw you guys, I'm going home."

Posted by Aaron at 7:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (1)

Dude, if I kept the other color scheme, somebody was gonna get hurt. And it was probably gonna be me.

Protein Widsom is back for the moment. Dude, Hostway has never given me a moment's trouble. 'cept for the time I ran out of space, and your site is probably larger and gets more traffic, so. . . ok, I got nothing.

Here's the discussion of race mentioned yesterday in dismissive fashion, which ain't no way I could properly encapsulate by quoting, and as I'd feared there is no explicit mention of affirmative action. The closest is:

I agree with [Steve Sailer, founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute], and I've said as much in my comments, which is precisely why I take the position that "race" (as we conceive of it in the U.S.) is problematic, and that government-sponsered social programs that rely on faulty ideas of "race" are divisive and counterproductive; whereas forging a national identity (which is "real" in the sense that citizenship is a legal category -- not so slippery as "race") is a more socially beneficial identity goal -- provided we continue as a society to find workable ways to account for the most unfortunate of our citizens.

I'm guessing "unfortunate" in this context means "likely can't get a cab, likely can get a beatdown or worse from the cops." Could be wrong about that too, though. And, I don't know, "unfortunate" makes it sound as if there were no decisions involved by anyone, and this is merely the regrettable state of the world. "Less fortunate" and "disadvantaged" sound even more euphemistic, though, not to mention carrying the implication that other folks are "more fortunate" or "advantaged", and we probably don't want to go there.

Oh, and Laura? Trula?

(my great great great Grandmother on my Mother's side was Native American -- at least, that's how the story goes)

Don't start.

There's also a comment from Steve Skubinna, who write:

Most people in the US use the term race in a cultural sense, which is nonsensical. That's why people like Ward Connerly, Clarence Thomas, Condi Rice, Colin Powell, and Thomas Sowell can be excoriated as "inauthentic." They express opinions different from those deemed appropriate for their "race" by self selected arbiters. Under the dead hand of PC doctrine, people are not permitted to be individuals, but are only valid when made undifferentiated bits of a large group identity. Anyone not accepting this is suffering from "false consciousness." Interesting how such enlightened, "liberal" thought discards any concept of individual worth in favor of group affiliation

No, I ain't cut him off, there's no period at the end of that.

And you people hear that? You're not permitted to be individuals. No wonder the guy at the comics shop gave me a weird look yesterday. I wasn't buying properly black books. Or maybe it's the combination of non-black books that was the problem; wasn't until I left that I realized I'd picked up TRANSMETROPOLITAN and The Whoopass Powerpuff Girls.

Hey, it has pinups from Kyle Baker and Jaime Hernandez. Shut up.

Don't worry, I'll be purging the comics, book and record collections of anything which deviates from my assigned gender/racial norms. Was thinking of selling the Disappear Fear cds anyway.

Or I suppose I could move beyond the narrow confines of politically correct categories in the only way permitted, which appears to be becoming a neocon (or, if I really want to have no effect on the system, libertarian). Which, um, actually looks even more restricted and narrow, to be honest, and I think I'd have to lose the dreads, so fuck that noise. . .

That and them folks seem to have no culture whatsoever. That seems to be the draw of this site for some of them, in fact.

Odd, that.

Posted by Aaron at 5:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (2)

Heard on the World Service (and there's an article up, too), and read at The Guardian, while the U.S. media slowly begins another news cycle:

US schools returning to segregation

American schools are now becoming increasingly segregated by race, according to a new study. Nearly half a century after the famous battles to integrate the school system, classrooms have become "re-segregated" and more race-based, according to the survey.

The report by the civil rights project at Harvard University confirms what activists have increasingly claimed that despite the many changes in US society, de facto segregation still exists in many parts of the country. Legal challenges to affirmative action policies have also had an effect on the levels of integration.

According to the study, integration between whites and blacks is either decreasing or unchanged in all but a few of the country's largest school districts over the past 14 years.

I expect the right-wingers, if they don't ignore this altogether, will relate charming tales of how there was one black family in the otherwise lily-white suburb they grew up in, and they went to school with one of the children. If we're really lucky, they'll tell us that the single, solitary black kid was their best friend growing up.

Think I'd prefer if they ignore the issue.

That's out in the real world. On the 'net, race doesn't exist. Unless, y'know, you're dumb enough to mention it in the domain name of your site. And you still get boundaries.

On the other side of that one street that everybody knows and nobody talks about openly, the one you don't cross unless you're looking for trouble, there was another discussion of race going on at Protein Wisdom. Which seems to have gone down again. It was mostly theory again though, more "what is race?" and "how should we deal with this?" rather than "here's how this affects the lives of actual people." There may have been a comment to the effect that affirmative action (not thrilled with the thing meself, before somebody gets started. . .) exacerbates the problem, but I'm going by memory and could be horribly, utterly wrong.

I keep meaning to point out that white is a race, rather than a state of transcendence, and not directly experiencing racism is, in fact, directly experiencing racism,

I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools , and blank checks.

Describing white privilege makes one newly accountable. As we in Women's Studies work to reveal male privilege and ask men to give up some of their power, so one who writes about having white privilege must ask, "Having described it, what will I do to lessen or end it?"

After I realized the extent to which men work from a base of unacknowledged privilege, I understood that much of their oppressiveness was unconscious.

but that tends to make people uncomfortable.

Uncomfortable people tend to get defensive. And then there's the accusations and the name-calling and the utter breakdown of communication. Not fun.

And I'm all about mega super happy fun these days.

Update: There's a line at the end of the Guardian article, "after the election of President Reagan in 1980, federal funds for desegregation were reduced and resegregation began."

No comment. I always get yelled at for suggesting that (all the) black people (I know) hated Reagan's senile fucking guts.

Also, plugged "segregation" into Google News search, and got this as a result.

Miami Herald | Stamp honors Thurgood Marshall

In 1954, Marshall and his legal team prevailed in the landmark Supreme Court case, "Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas," that struck down segregation in public schools.

I always use Alanis' "Ironic" as a throwaway line. Does "Thank U" work?

Thank you India
Thank you terror
Thank you disillusionment
Thank you frailty
Thank you consequence
Thank you thank you silence

Nah. Luckily, Brunching Shuttlecocks still lets you make your own.

Update 8/11: In case you'd not noticed, I'm quite rude at times.

kd and Jason did the Trackback thang, and do I reciprocate? No.

I suck.

Posted by Aaron at 5:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (2)

No, really, this time I mean it. I give up. Doesn't matter what I say, doesn't matter if I'm quoting someone as distant from black militancy as Johnny Cash or Tori Amos, it all gets filtered throught the site name and ends up evidence of anger, hatred, racism, poor breeding, confusion about which fork to use and a preference to just going to a nice Ethiopian restaurant and using njera instead of the whole utensils thing anyway. Well, no more of that. From now on, it's all Bright and Cheerful and Happy Happy Happy!

At least until the meds wear off.

Update: I swear, this is all you people want. . .

The Immortals - Mortal Kombat theme

Update 2: Maybe I shouldn't have taken the entire bottle. . .

Tricky - Wonder Woman

Posted by Aaron at 3:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (27) | TrackBacks (1)

the king grew vain;
Fought all his battles o’er again;
And thrice he routed all his foes, and thrice he slew the slain.

Alexander's Feast
or, The Power of Music;
An Ode in Honor of St. Cecilia's Day
John Dryden

I've linked the place before, but it really can't be done enough: Y? The National Forum On People's Differences is described thusly:

Y?, the first and only site of its kind, gives you a way to ask people from other ethnic or cultural backgrounds the questions you've always been too embarrassed or uncomfortable to ask them. If you have the courage to ask, Y? will evaluate your question, consider it for posting and try to get someone from that background to answer. If needed, we'll get an expert to weigh in.

You'll also have a chance to answer questions related to your own demographic background.

Y? The National Forum On People's Differences has no agenda or cause, other than to get people talking across their differences - a running dialogue Y? believes most of us would like to see occur but that has yet to fully unfold through the conventional media.

So, if you were to find yourself thinking, "Why does it seem that black people, particularly women, are afraid of dogs - even friendly ones?", there are a number of people reading the site willing to volunteer answers. Not only does this prevent embarrasing yourself by asking one of your black friends (assuming you have any, he muttered at the warbloggers under his breath), it prevents the embarrasment of not asking, and coming up with bizarre theories based on nothing. Everybody wins.

The site is listed at Racial Issues and Identities: A Guide to Resources on the Web from the liberalmedia New York Times, if that influences your point of view in any way. The list is a bit out of date -- they include (the wrong address for) netnoir, which I barely remember, and I've been on the web a hell of a lot longer than most of you. As ever, The Wayback Machine is your friend.

The title/opening quote refers to how people seem to be covering very old territory in some of the race/attitude discussions popping up lately, and to be honest I feel like a grad student auditing an undergrad course. I keep thinking, "Doesn't everybody already know this stuff? And aren't you oversimplifying to the point of being misleading?"

For instance, without naming names, if I never have to hear about someone's racist relative (uncle, grandparent, cousin, etc.) again, it'll be too soon.

Or maybe it's PMS. Yeah, that's probably it.

np: My Scarlet Life's cd Buzzbomb

Almost forgot, looking up netnoir on the archive, I also hit Café Los Negroes, which remains the epitome of cool six years later (even though you might have to check different versions to see stuff). Think they were why I didn't really think that much about this site's name. How was I to know the Limited Black English Proficiency types would wig out?

Posted by Aaron at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Because I know you don't visit his site, more words of wisdom, this time from The Last Time Priest Discussed The Viability of Black Heroes:

2. white-bashing

Most people want to read comics or see movies or listen to music they can immediately identify with, and I'm guessing a great majority of people who have never even tried PANTHER have an instinctive notion that they will not be able to identify with the character. But people universally identify with Michael Jordan or Michael Jackson or Muhammad Ali.

The problem with race and popular media is this in most every "black" movie or "black street" music CD you'll see or hear, there is some hostility directed towards whites. Now, were I a white male, I certainly wouldn't want to spend eight bucks to go see a film where white males are portrayed as stupid and the butt of every joke, or where I am made to feel guilty about things I had nothing to do with, and prejudices I don't actually have.

That is my pet peeve with a lot of black film and black comedians it's all White People Bashing, and it limits our opportunities. In addition to the assumption that PANTHER may be about dusty hungry kids in the desert, or that the lead character may not be someone the reader can identify with, it is possible we are also burdened with the reflexive instinct that PANTHER— by virtue of its being a "black" book— is somehow hostile to whites.

Yes, well, if I promise to take that to heart, will you consider the following?

4. stupidity

During the "blaxploitation" craze of the 1970's, Marvel and later DC rushed to put out numerous books starring black characters. The problem was not that these books were conceived and written by whites, but that they were, in large measure, written and conceived by whites who apparently had never actually met a black person, but had learned about our culture from, say, the TV show Good Times. 

Most of this stuff was horribly offensive and completely inaccurate. As excited as I was, at 12 or 13, to see black heroes appearing on the stands, I could not for the life of me understand why Luke Cage wanted to wear a chain around his waist and say, "Christmas" all the time.

Dwayne McDuffie has posted the script for Icon #13, which guest-stars Buck Wild, Mercenary Man. Any similarity between Buck and Luke Cage is purely satirical, and not grounds for legal action by Marvel Comics. So nyaaah.

Posted by Aaron at 8:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Pop culture references which should probably be left obscure, but screw it.

Bubble: I wish I was more curvy. I wish I had breasts like yours.

Edina: No, you don't.

Bubble: Yes, I do.

Edina: No, you don't.

Bubble: I do. Great, big, large, pendulous breasts. I'd like to fill a bra.

Edina: No, you don't. Don't, just, just stop saying you do. You don't know what if feels like. You think just because you feel better with a couple of oranges stuffed down your cups, you know what it feels like. Well, you don't. It's hell.

Bubble: I don't have to wear a bra. I just stuff the oranges down me vest.

Absolutely Fabulous, from Series One, Episode Two - "Fat".

So I want to kill this waitress
She's worked her a year longer than I
If I did it fast you know that's an act of kindness

But I believe in peace
I believe in peace, Bitch
I believe in peace

I want to kill this waitress
I can't believe this violence in mind
And is her power all in her club sandwich

But I believe in peace
I believe in peace, Bitch
I believe in peace

I want to kill this killing wish
They're too many stars and not enough sky
Boys all think she's living kindness
Ask a fellow waitress

The Waitress, by Tori Amos, from Under the Pink.

Author Dwayne McDuffie was co-creator/co-owner of Milestone Media:

Milestone Media is a relative newcomer on the scene: their first series rolled off the presses less than three years ago. Yet, in that time, they’ve had one hell of an impact. Somewhere else in these reviews I mentioned that black characters are underrepresented in mainstream comics. Actually, it’s not just blacks, but just about anyone who’s not of white anglo-saxon background. And where are the superheroes who speak for Black and Asian and other communities, and educate (mostly white) readers?

That’s where Milestone comes in. Since its inception it has billed itself as a “multicultural line of comics,” and it certainly was. Most of the heroes and heroines were Black, Asian or Latinos. So much for tokenism. Add to that the fact that the good people at Milestone are as multicultural as their creations, and you’ve got yourself one revolutionary line of comics.

Another great feature of Milestone is that they’re not afraid to tackle head-on difficult subjects like racism, antisemitism, homophobia, abortion, drug abuse, and others.

That's an older page, so it speaks of Milestone in the present tense, rather than past. And, possibly, future.

The Blacks in Comics panel [at SDCC] focused on creating positive momentum for black creators currently working in the comic industry. One of the major announcements from the panel was that Milestone Founders Dwayne McDuffie (Story Editor, Static Shock) and Michael Davis, are in negotiations with the online venture UrbanEntertainment.com (Undercover Brother) to bring back the Milestone Universe. How the universe will be utilized, or whether the venture will be online, print, or something new, is unknown.

Here's hoping.

Want to know more? Read Milestone Memories from Icon artist MD Bright and forgotten man Christopher Priest, and visit the Milestone Rave.

Be kind. Bring a bundt cake for your fellow ravers.

Not that I commented in this thread, but there's been coverage of these tracts of land here before. . .

Posted by Aaron at 8:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I think the tourists are getting stupider. Or at least more vocal, which amounts to the same thing in their case.

"And that, gentlemen, is how wars begin --

"-- little steps. Anticipatory responses. Get them before they can get us. Little breaks in communication. Don't you agree --

"-- King T'Challa -- ?"

Priest, in the script for Bla--. . . no, if I say it, it'll be taken as more evidence of my anger and racism.

Speaking of comics, have a look at The Last Time Priest Discussed Race In Comics, even if I kind'a hope the title is misleading. He's tired of the subject, though, and you can't blame him.

I stopped dealing much in interviews awhile back because every interviewer would, sooner or later, start talking to me about race in comics. I don't wanna talk about race in comics, unless it's about Superman racing The Flash. I want to be asked the same kinds of questions you ask Mark Waid. I am not so different from Mark Waid, except he has more money and dates prettier women. Few if any interviewers ever ask Mark Waid abut the state of race relations in comics, but its a theme I revisit over and over, to the point where I will, likely, now decline to discuss the issue. It's just kind of... done for me.

[. . .] Most people in comics are, largely, white intellectuals. Intellectuals tend to think they are beyond racism because, well, they are intellectuals. They've read lots of books and they have an elevated sense of the commonality of man. Intellectuals tend to look down their noses at guys like Archie Bunker and abhor racism. Intellectuals give to the NAACP and march on Washington and embrace the "oneness" of the human species. To many of these people, who was first didn't matter, doesn't matter, and won't matter. The fact they do not seem to know is actually some business to be celebrated: that we have moved beyond such distinctions.

But, wait, "we" haven't moved anywhere. White intellectuals are incredibly dangerous to the cause of social equality in that they deny the institutionalized nature of racism and sexism in this country.

I think the entire point of the term, "institutionalized racism," is the racism you don't see and don't intend and aren't even aware of. When I go up for projects or pitch deals, I have the added component, the extra invisible section of my proposal, that white writers don't: this business of race. If an editor pauses, for even one second, to worry about the consequences of NOT offering me or Dwayne McDuffie a book, even if the Ed thinks someone else is right for the job— that is institutionalized racism.

I don't think comics are any more or less racist than any other corporate environment. It's just that, as a field, comics is terribly small compared to other publishing. So even five racists in comics is a huge demographic, statistically, as compared to, say, racist accountants or racist short order cooks.

Ask any white professional in comics who the racists in the business are, and you'll likely get a shrug or a denial that there are any. Ask almost any black pro in the business, and you'll get the same five names. We all know who these people are (some of whom have, bless God, moved on to other fields). Many of us have suffered directly or indirectly from these people. But mentioning the names will get you blacklisted and, likely, sued. These are people whose racist tendencies are largely ignored by white PTB's who probably don't even notice them, but these tendencies ring the alarm bells of any blacks within their orbit. It's the dirty secret of comics: the commonly accepted short list of racists every black pro knows and almost no white pros do.

I think Mark Waid was in Parade magazine a while back, so you're probably familiar with him. Another name dropped in there is Dwayne McDuffie, a/k/a "the guy whose site Aaron can't read in Mozilla or lynx." Mr. McDuffie recently wrote, in the Milestone Yahoo! group:

How about this, in 1988 I co-wrote Deathlok with my friend Greg Wright, who is white (and who I don't think it's unfair to say was a lesser writer than I was at the time). Based on the success of that book, Greg got 5 regular, monthly assignments. I got...none.

Priest can tell stories that would stun you but he's a real gentleman, so he doesn't.

But let's say you're right. Preist and I got our shots. So did Doeselle. That's three people in twenty years. We're the only three people good enough in the past 20 years? Please. I had three guys at Milestone alone who were ready. They didn't get a shot. Who did? Matt Wayne and John Rozum, two excellent writers who are also white.

Race remains an issue, especially in writing and editorial positions.

We won't even discuss black women writing comics, because. . . well, it would be a very short conversation, unless you want to talk theory.

It's not all gloom and doom. There's good news at Dwayne's blog:

Billy Dee Williams will provide a guest-voice of an African hero in [a Static Shock] episode set in Africa.

Everybody loves Billy Dee Williams.

Update: Actually, ending on an upbeat tone doesn't really fit the rest of the site. Here's a final word from Priest:

Nobody's evil, nobody's sitting around twirling their mustache and deliberately trying to keep the darkies out. But the most insidious thing about the institutionalized nature of race in this country is the fact that educated white liberals don't believe it exists. And, to my experience, that particular demographic, those people who think they're above racism or beyond racism, often end up being the most racist of all.

Considering some of the people claiming to be left/liberal these days, I find it hard to disagree.

Gunn makes with the intelligent, insightful thing again, and makes me wonder why I even bother posting at all.

Demonstrating the sort of class I'm just not capable of, Anja links back and refuses to rise to the flamebait here. Dude, public fights means more hits. More hits means free publicity. Think about it.

Besides, as Wolveroach says, conflict builds character.

Posted by Aaron at 8:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (2)

But you don't have to use Windows Media Player after all. New Funk Times, providing information much too valuable to be relegated to an off-the-front-page post comment, wrote in regards to the Bootsy Collins interviews mentioned a week or so ago:

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PJebsen/BC-AllStarFunk.htm are available for RealPlayer as well:

http://www.portalsite.org/sounds/Bootsy-Interview_01.rm
http://www.portalsite.org/sounds/Bootsy-Interview_02.rm
http://www.portalsite.org/sounds/Bootsy-Interview_03.rm
http://www.portalsite.org/sounds/Bootsy-Interview_04.rm
http://www.portalsite.org/sounds/Bootsy-Interview_05.rm
http://www.portalsite.org/sounds/Bootsy-Interview_06.rm
http://www.portalsite.org/sounds/Bootsy-Interview_07.rm
http://www.portalsite.org/sounds/Bootsy-Interview_08.rm
http://www.portalsite.org/sounds/Bootsy-Interview_09.rm
http://www.portalsite.org/sounds/Bootsy-Interview_10.rm
http://www.portalsite.org/sounds/Bootsy-Interview_11.rm
http://www.portalsite.org/sounds/Bootsy-Interview_12.rm
http://www.portalsite.org/sounds/Bootsy-Interview_13.rm
http://www.portalsite.org/sounds/Bootsy-Interview_14.rm
http://www.portalsite.org/sounds/Bootsy-Interview_15.rm
http://www.portalsite.org/sounds/Bootsy-Interview_16.rm
http://www.portalsite.org/sounds/Bootsy-Interview_17.rm

Go get funked up.

Posted by Aaron at 7:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So, in a part of the Sculpture Garden I've somehow managed to miss until now (specifically, Jenny Holzer's Selections from The Living Series, number 24 in the list), there are a series of marble benches, each with a different aphorism.

One of them is:

After dark it is a relief to see
a girl walking toward or behind you.
Then you are much less likely to be assaulted.

There are at least two possible interpretations of this.

dru takes the discussion of "attitude" into gender.

Go.

More info on Jenny Holzer, and other installations, available at Artcyclopedia.

Posted by Aaron at 6:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

David Bowie reference or Alan Moore's Watchmen reference? The world may never know.

Today's Guardian features the oddly-headlined story:

Tibet No Worried About Propaganda

DHARAMSALA, India (AP) - In China, the government has opened a charm offensive, freeing Tibetan prisoners and taking reporters on tours of the Himalayan region. But in Dharamsala, home to the Tibetan government in exile, there is little worry that Beijing will score a public relations success.

Exile officials say the Chinese campaign is just a belated reaction to the popularity of the Dalai Lama, exiled leader of Tibetan Buddhists.

``It's an attempt by the authorities to take the propaganda initiative because for the last two decades international public opinion has been swayed in favor of the Tibetan refugees,'' said Thubten Samphel, secretary of the Department of Information and International Relations for the government in exile.

``What we have is to tell the truth, and there's no more powerful weapon than just telling what's happening in Tibet.''

[. . .] For more than a decade, the government in exile has said that the Dalai Lama - who fled China after a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule - is ready to enter into a dialogue with Beijing. While the exiles want autonomy for Tibet, the Chinese government maintains the region is an integral part of China.

But with Beijing now so concerned about its image, the exiles see a renewed chance for their own cause.

``One very positive change in China is that now they care for international public opinion, Samdhong said. ``That situation should be taken fully in our favor.''

Truth as a weapon.

Well, suppose I was that naïve once. . .

Meanwhile in (technically) another part of China, the Taipei Times reports in another oddly-headlined article:

... while Beijing intensified propaganda offensive

China ratcheted up its tough talk yesterday, warning Taiwan that increasing "radical pro-independence moves" are shoving China toward preparations for a military solution to the cross-strait impasse.

But Beijing also said it remained committed to peace.

The Chinese government used its official media -- English-language newspapers in particular -- to disseminate words of caution to Taipei: Comments by President Chen Shui-bian [Chinese characters deleted], and especially any referendum on independence, risk military consequences.

There is a growing possibility that "peace will have to be safeguarded and won through the use of force," said an article in the government-run press, quoting a "senior military source." But it said any military preparations would be "a backup."

Naturally, everyone can see how absurd it is to speak of safeguarding and winning peace through the use of force.

Since it's one of our enemies saying it.

They should talk vaguely about regime change, and leak a few invasion plans, like real superpowers do. They really need some new PR people.

Posted by Aaron at 5:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I give up.

I was visiting angry blogger Aaron at Uppity-Negro, whose site name is almost as socially awkward as mine, and I must say I just don't know what to say.

He hates warbloggers and wants to kill one just to see 'em die.

Dawn Olsen, ladies and gentlemen.

And my exact words were, "At this point, I think I would shoot one of them just to watch him die."

I hear the train a comin'; it's rollin' 'round the bend,
And I ain't seen the sunshine since I don't know when.
I'm stuck at Folsom Prison and time keeps draggin' on.
But that train keeps rollin' on down to San Antone.

When I was just a baby, my mama told me, "Son,
Always be a good boy; don't ever play with guns."
But I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.
When I hear that whistle blowin' I hang my head and cry.

I bet there's rich folk eatin' in a fancy dining car.
They're prob'ly drinkin' coffee and smokin' big cigars,
But I know I had it comin', I know I can't be free,
But those people keep a movin', and that's what tortures me.

Well, if they freed me from this prison, if that railroad train was mine,
I bet I'd move on over a little farther down the line,
Far from Folsom Prison, that's where I want to stay,
And I'd let that lonesome whistle blow my blues away.

Folsom Prison Blues, (Man in) black gangsta rapper Johnny Cash.

DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE WORDS THAT ARE COMING OUT OF MY MOUTH?

Chris Tucker, to Jackie Chan, Rush Hour.

To which the correct response is:

Don't nobody understand the words that are coming out of your mouth.

Chris Tucker, after Jackie Chan quotes the above line back at him, Rush Hour 2.

Posted by Aaron at 4:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (24) | TrackBacks (0)

Not just Ghost World, mentioned yesterday, but also the documentary Crumb.

I found some of the artist's work, ah, slightly offensive, to put it mildly, but there's a line in the film to the effect that only white people ever complained about it. So, clearly, I couldn't possibly be offended, and had only imagined that reaction. Silly me.

The Comics Journal interviewed Art Spiegelman, and Mr. Crumb was one of the topics discussed:

GROTH: What did you think of Crumb's last comic?

SPIEGELMAN: Self-Loathing I thought was brilliant. I thought it was really brilliant. Crumb is great. I really love what he does. I'm repulsed by some of it, but not by the Self-Loathing comic at all. What repulsed me was what he thought was an outrageous racist comic in the last Weirdo.

GROTH: What he thought was satirical?

SPIEGELMAN: What he thought was satirical and outrageous.

GROTH: I interviewed him for the Journal last week and he told me that you gave him a dressing down over that.

SPIEGELMAN: Yeah, well, this is like Rashomon. I didn't see it as a dressing down. That implies a condescension that has nothing to do with how I perceive Crumb. I saw it as an expression of my own disgust. I thought he received my response with his usual "Yuk yuk, that Artie Spiegelman -- isn't it amazing that he's able to work up some moral indignation?" I think I was just seen as rising to the bait as given. My problem with the strip was that it wasn't virulent enough. And the proof of that is that it was able to be co-opted and reprinted in a neo-Nazi magazine with no problem. If he had done his job as a satirist well, it would not have been able to be looked at without anger by the presumed target -- the presumed target being the racist, rather than the blacks and Jews.

GROTH: On the other hand though, that brand of racist is particularly stupid. I wonder if it's possible to do a satire that they themselves would have recognized as being satirical about them?

SPIEGELMAN: I believe it's possible. I think if it had really done its job, they inevitably would have been unable to embrace it, it would have made them uncomfortable. As it stands it really is no more than a fairly anemic catalog of racist cliches. The last page ostensibly satirizes White Men, but actually just functions the same way the last two panels of an old pre-code crime comic book functions. "Commit a crime and the world made of glass, crime doesn't pay." A glib moral after 15 pages of lurid mayhem. Similarly Crumb's strip has a coda that is simply the super-ego falling back into place to try and rationalize and justify the pleasures of what came before.

GROTH: I'm not sure how relevant this is, but, did you think the failure for that comes out of racist impulses on the part of Crumb?

SPIEGELMAN: I think it comes from a repetition compulsion on Crumb's part that sometimes passes, in his mind, for introspection. Something similar to the way Crumb reported my responses to you happened with Terry Zwigoff; I think there's some misunderstanding of my response to his film. I called him up to rave about it and he walks around saying, "Boy, that Spiegelman sure hated my film."

Apologies for the length on that. The interview is referenced in the footnotes to New Racist Forms: Jim Crow in the 21st Century at the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University:

Books with racist jokes remain popular. Blanche Knott's Truly Tasteless Jokes series and Maude Thickett's Outrageously Offensive Jokes series were bestsellers.²⁷ The jokes are similar to the ones found on the webpages of White supremacy groups.²⁸ R. Crumb's comics²⁹ include many racially stereotypical characters, including "Salty Dog Sam," a Coon caricature, "Angelfood McSpade," an Amazon-Savage hybrid who talks like a Mammy, and "Jockey boy," a dwarf Coon caricature dressed like the lawn ornament.³⁰ Crumb's supporters claim that he is a satirist.³¹ Crumb's writings, many originally published in the 1960s and 1970s, are being reproduced. His story, "When The Niggers Take Over America," is reminiscent of The Birth of a Nation. In both, Blacks are portrayed as thugs, rapists, murderers desiring to enslave Whites.³² For an excellent history of racism in comic books, see Ethnic Images in the Comics.

The Museum was also the source of the image and text in the previous entry. Think Lisa sent me the link to it ages ago, but, y'know, mind like a sieve. Thanks and apologies if I got that wrong.

Reasonable people can disagree about whether a particular image (or statement, or opinion) is racist, of course, and there's always context to consider. I think some people's positions are intrinsically more valuable due to personal experience, but I'm racist, so ignore me.

Rashomon link added to the interview, of course. More info on the film at IMDB, and at Japan on Film.

Posted by Aaron at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Going ballistic at the slightest provocation gets real old, real fast.

See, very few people do this sort of thing deliberately. Mostly, it's misunderstandings. Little things.

For example, let's say you're quite familiar with The Coon Caricature:

The coon caricature was one of the stock characters among minstrel performers. Minstrel show audiences laughed at the slow-talking fool who avoided work and all adult responsibilities. This transformed the coon into a comic figure, a source of bitter and vulgar comic relief. He was sometimes renamed "Zip Coon" or "Urban Coon." If the minstrel skit had an ante-bellum setting, the coon was portrayed as a free Black; if the skit's setting postdated slavery, he was portrayed as an urban Black. He remained lazy and good-for-little, but the minstrel shows depicted him as a gaudy dressed "Dandy" who "put on airs." Unlike Mammy and Sambo, Coon did not know his place. He thought he was as smart as White people; however, his frequent malapropisms and distorted logic suggested that his attempt to compete intellectually with Whites was pathetic. His use of bastardized English delighted White audiences and reaffirmed the then commonly held beliefs that Blacks were inherently less intelligent. The minstrel coon's goal was leisure, and his leisure was spent strutting, styling, fighting, avoiding real work, eating watermelons, and making a fool of himself. If he was married, his wife dominated him. If he was single, he sought to please the flesh without entanglements.

Emphasis added. That's the bit we're concerned with for now.

Now go read this.

Then, if you've forgotten, see the song intro, and the slightly worrying discussion which followed.

Little things like that. Misunderstandings. I'd say cultural insensitivity, but ah hates when other people talk like that.

np - Scarlet Life (two songs available at mp3.com for streaming/download ), sugar, spice, saccharin & cyanide.

Posted by Aaron at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBacks (1)

This may be another of those Chicago things. If you don't know the lyrics to the Funtown song, you're probably at the wrong web site.

Heh. The place is still listed as a tourist attraction. Well, at least they ain't got Old Chicago or, gods forbid, Riverview.

I have vague memories of walking around Riverview, odd given a) it was closed before I was born, and b)

An often unacknowledged factor in Riverview's popularity during much of its history was the informal exclusion of African-Americans from the park. Although there existed no official policy against the admission of blacks to the park, all Chicagoans, white and black, recognized that Riverview, like many other public amusement sites, lay on the white side of the invisible racial boundaries that divided the city. Few blacks risked crossing such boundaries. Those who did put themselves in danger and were often viciously attacked by white thugs for their refusal to submit to white authority. Rather than accomodate African-Americans, Riverview's owners and patrons found it more useful to make blacks the subject of white amusement at the park. For many years, the African Dip was a well-known midway attraction, particulary among young white males eager to demonstrate their racial solidarity with other whites. Players of the game paid for the chance to dunk an "African" in a pool of water. Those who were hired to play the role of the "African" were encouraged to be as verbally abusive as possible in order to incite the racial animosities of white patrons and thus drum up additional business for the game. White Chicagoans responded positively to the informal exclusion of African-Americans from the park and race-themed games like the Dip because of their own ethnic diversity. By defining themselves as "white," ethnically diverse Chicagoans developed a sense of racial solidarity that obscured the particulars of their own ethnic backgrounds. The Dip remained in operation until the late 1950s, when the NAACP pressured the park's owners to remove the odious game.

Don't know what MLK was thinking, coming up in Chitown. . .

George Kelly links to/quotes from a Trib article about marketing to Latinas. Could go into how when the major corporations finally notice us little brown people and start marketing hair care and cosmetics products, they tend to wipe out the wee people-of-color-owned businesses which had previously been filling the niche, since the big corps have no problem getting financing and distribution while some of us, um, do, but that would involve research.

Instead, I'll ask if any of the North American readers don't see signs and billboards in languages other than English on a regular basis. I'm thinking that growing up in an actual city, and not caring about how bad (snicker) some parts of Minneapolis are meant to be, has given me a skewed take on the issue. That, and watching Telemundo and Univision.

Listening to the Radio Rey, the AM Spanish-language mostly-music station. I'm sure Clear Channel will buy them out and start broadcasting bland, nationwide programming shortly, probably originating from their stations across the border in Tijuana. The hippies also have some Spanish-language shows mixed up in their Community & Bilingual Programs, but. . . well, check the list. They're trying to cover a lot of territory. Hippies. God bless 'em.

Want to know more? See the Minneapolis/St Paul AM Radio Directory and demand the motherfuckers all change to starting their call letters with W or K, because it's really annoying having the river right there messing stuff up.

There's also a site devoted to Riverview Park. They avoid the unpleasant racial stuff because, as everyone knows, Chicago is in the North, and never had such problems.

Posted by Aaron at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Clearly, it's going to be one of those days, and it's barely started.

Today's theme music: Dulcinea, by Black Tape for a Blue Girl.

If you're not familiar with them, they're on Projekt, which should tell you everything you need to know.

Didn't realize they had a new cd out. Good, something else light and cheery to brighten my mood. . .

Changed the new cd link to point to the special Scavenger Bride site, rather than the page at Project.

Posted by Aaron at 12:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Although KCRW promises a 1999 Margaret Cho interview on Elvis Mitchell's show The Treatment, the link is broken. Bastards.

The audio for the Dan Clowes interview works, though. For all you Ghost World and Eightball (etc.) fans out there.

Oh, and the Sweet and Low Down-era Woody Allen interview is there, too. I see what time it is. They just can't handle the aZian sistas. Typical.

Posted by Aaron at 6:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

It doesn't count if your ex got it in the separation, no.

Finally got to the public library's lost our lease book sale. Even in a picked-over state, it's a treasure trove for the right person. I'm not in the market for 30-year-old copies of Popular Science or novels in Hindi, Japanese or Finnish, so there was very little for me. Got the January 2001 issue of Journal of Black Studies, which was worth the two bits for the article on Afrikanish-Deutsch alone (although I wish it had gone into more detail on the 17th- 18th- and 19th century Africans in Europe. . .) .

Also picked up a like-new 1967 edition of White Reflections on Black Power by Charles E. Fager, a review of which you can't read here unless you're prepared to pay, or have a subscription to The New York Review of Books.

Freakish. Flipped to a section on segregation in schools in Chicago, recognized the names -- (The Honorable) Richard J. Daley (Plaza), Roman Pucinski, Everett Dirksen -- and the Real Audio WBEZ broadcast I'm listening to just mentioned evacuating the Dirksen Federal Building.

Is it worth mentioning that Chicago kicked Martin Luther King's ass?

Shortly afterward white counter-protesters in the Chicago area physically assaulted King in the Chicago area during an unsuccessful effort to transfer non-violent protest techniques to the urban North.

No, not just the other guys. . .

King next brought his crusade to Chicago where he launched a slum-rehabilitation and open-housing program.

In the North, however, King soon discovered that young and angry blacks (such as the ones in Watts who once replied "Martin Luther Who?" to a question about whether the civil rights leader would approve of their behavior) cared little for his pulpit oratory and even less for his solemn pleas for peaceful protest.

This really isn't something to be proud of, is it?

Update: Didn't like how the whole-paragraph-link thing looked.

Posted by Aaron at 5:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Minor messing about with the links. Took out Right Wing News (you can easily find them if you want to see that sort of thing), because they've nothing worthwhile to say. Added Dru because she's just that damn cool, and tossed in the link to Google News Beta because it's too useful to be ignored.

Removed Anja after realizing I could not remember the last time I read anything vaguely original or interesting at his site. Think it was the Britney Spears photo with Austin Powers joke caption that pushed me over the edge.

Ok, that and the current, unorganized thoughts on the War On Terror, which deviate from the mainstream not in the slightest.

I have no (useful -- blocking referrals is just a minor annoyance to anyone with half a clue) control over links in, but figure the tourists are feeling like the frat boys who rent Rose Troche's film Go Fish because they hear it has hot girl-on-girl action.

Think I'm going to rent that, actually. Haven't seen it since it opened.

Another update: the Hollywood Video nearest my apartment did not have Go Fish on DVD.

Considering where I live, this is like walking into a Starbucks and them telling you they're not serving coffee.

Actually, that's happened to me. . .

Ok, it's like going to a Japanese restaurant, and them telling you they're not serving miso soup.

Actually, that's happened to me, too. . . anyway, not only was the tape in the "Alternative Lifestyles" section (which works better than "Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered, Family, Friends and Allies" section, which is what it would be if queers ran the place), it has a big "G/L" written on the label.

Surprised they didn't spray-paint the box hot pink.

Update: Yes, I spelled drucilla's name wrong. How silly of me.

Hey, that's how the official site spells it. Talk to them.

Posted by Aaron at 2:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Compare and contrast:

1. Jason, who says "Please" rather than being uppity, has an interesting discussion of race, and links to more of the same. There's quite a bit of personal experience involved.
2. Included in the preceeding is a comment from drublood, who's had her own issues dealing with this stuff recently. I think she's going to hurt somebody before she's done. Been a while since I had to help someone go underground, but you'd be shocked how easy it. . . *ahem*, I mean, again, these are Real Life Stories.
3. I've already linked to Eric Olsen's thoughts (sometimes with the proper name attributed. . .). Note the entry consists almost entirely of quotes from articles.
4. Eric trades thoughts with Jeff at Protein Wisdom, and again the entry is dominated by quotes from an article.

Obviously, I have my own notions about why one group has anecdotes, while the other relies on research. I'd rather hear yours, though.

Speak.

Posted by Aaron at 1:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (2)

Perhaps "protectorate" is a more accurate term. If everything you know about the invasion, you learned from the Clint Eastwood - Mario van Peebles (ugh) film Heartbreak Ridge, please kill yourself.

I'm making that request a lot lately. Rush hour traffic has been getting worse recently.

From The Black World Today:

Prison Transfer Heats Up Grenada and St. Lucia

CASTRIES - The leaders of St. Lucia and Grenada are under fire after the pre-dawn transfer of 11 hardened criminals from Castries to the notorious Richmond Hill facility in St. George's following the alleged discovery of an escape plot.

The incident has also re-ignited the controversy over the long-awaited construction of a new facility in St. Lucia.

The unprecedented prison transfer came after authorities discovered what appeared to be an elaborate escape plan that included a container of diesel, 1,300 euro dollars in cash and gaping holes in the walls separating four prison cells.

You might be wondering why the adjective "notorious" got stuck up there. World Prison Brief of the International Centre for Prison Studies - Caribbean helpfully notes:

Prison population total (including pre-trial detainees / remand prisoners) 327

Official capacity of prison system 45

Occupancy level (based on official capacity) 726.7%

I'm using lynx at the moment, so I don't know if there are any photos available showing conditions in the place. Use your imagination.

There's a bit more detail at Special Operations.Com's article about Operation Urgent Fury.

The two primary objectives were Fort Rupert and Richmond Hill prison. Fort Rupert, which intelligence reported was housing the core of senior advisors to General Austin, was collectively known as the Revolutionary Council. Richmond Hill prison which held scores of illegally imprisoned civil servants and other citizens arrested by the oppressive RMC regime.

[. . .] The Richmond Hill prison was built on the site of an old fort, overlooking the town of St. George's. The prison, in turn, was overlooked by Fort Frederick, at the time a fully-manned garrison outpost used by the People's Revolutionary Army.

The article is worth a look, despite lacking even the pretense of objectivity ("oppressive" regime equally well describes a number of our friends, but they rarely get the word tossed around. Except Saudi Arabia, and only recently. . .). For a start, whenever you see "chaotic planning and last minute interservice bickering at serior [sic] levels", you know you're at least closer to actual events, rather than the official version.

Note to servicepeople and potential draftees: Any invasion where you're given tourist maps is one where you should find the closest four-star hotel, head for the bar, and wait an hour or so. It should all be over by then, and you can charge the military for the drinks.

And I lied before. What I said. It wasn't true. Photo here.

Posted by Aaron at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Interesting.

I'd wondered why I was getting so many hits for searches on Hinton Battle, given the site name has changed several times since then. Google still brings up the July 5th version of the front page, with that name, in their index.

As they'd been updating the site daily for a while, this seems odd.

Think I know why.

Do a search for Patricia Meili. The interesting result is the one from The Black World Today, which notes that that's the name of the jogger in the 1989 Central Park. . .

Wait, sorry, you're not meant to know that. Not until the press blitz for her upcoming book, anyway.

A Richard Roeper article in the Sun-Times, which has received some minor discussion, discusses the media's ID policy towards rape victims. He doesn't mention this case, of course.

I made the mistake of linking the article and dropping the name back in June, and Google's indexing got slightly wacky just after that.

Perhaps this is coincidence. Don't especially feel like contacting Google and her publishing company to find out.

They're still doing better than AltaVista and MSN Search, which bring up no results at all for the name in quotes. . .

Posted by Aaron at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

i am not a pretty girl
that is not what i do
i ain't no damsel in distress
and i don't need to be rescued
so put me down punk
maybe you'd prefer a maiden fair
isn't there a kitten stuck up a tree somewhere

i am not an angry girl
but it seems like i've got everyone fooled
every time i say something they find hard to hear
they chalk it up to my anger
and never to their own fear
and imagine you're a girl
just trying to finally come clean
knowing full well they'd prefer you
were dirty and smiling

and i am sorry
i am not a maiden fair
and i am not a kitten stuck up a tree somewhere

and generally my generation
wouldn't be caught dead working for the man
and generally i agree with them
trouble is you gotta have yourself an alternate plan
and i have earned my disillusionment
i have been working all of my life
and i am a patriot
i have been fighting the good fight
and what if there are no damsels in distress
what if i knew that and i called your bluff?
don't you think every kitten figures out how to get down
whether or not you ever show up

i am not a pretty girl
i don't want to be a pretty girl
no i want to be more than a pretty girl

not a pretty girl, obviously, by ani difranco, from the album of the same title. Available from her site (the previous link), or by calling 1-800-ON-HER-OWN.

Regular readers of this site probably already own the thing, but tourists from the Vanilla Suburbs might. . . no, no, they probably won't.

Other than the bored Liverpudlian, they seem to be keeping schtum, so best to ignore them, I suppose.

The original Trek managed to sneak a line past Standards and Practices involving a variation of the phrase "maiden fair." Nichelle Nichols, who played Captain Uhura, still gets a kick out of that one. . .

Posted by Aaron at 9:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Back on July 31st, allAfrica (and apparently, only allAfrica) reported:

World Leaders Congratulate Liberia for 155th Independence Day

In observance of the 155th Anniversary of the Independence of Liberia, congratulatory messages to the President, Government, and people of Liberia have continued to pour into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

According to a release from the Ministry, Messages of Congratulations and Felicitations have come from Presidents John Agyekum Kufor of Ghana; General Emile Lahoud of Lebanon and Mohamed Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.

Others were received from United Nations Secretary General Kofi A. Annan.

Er, that's the full story, actually.

Other articles might have just fallen out of Google News' date window; there's a story at the BBC from Friday, July 26th. Don't remember seeing anything in the U.S. press, but I don't read anything that closely, and may have missed it.

Or we have more important things to worry about than former colonies struggling nations in Africa. Perhaps if they were funding terrorists or something.

As it is -- and you may have noticed the absence in the allAfrica story -- we seem to have forgotten to send a card. Or my hasty search of the White House site didn't turn anything up, anyway.

Haven't mentioned the continent around here lately in an attempt to follow Black Folks Etiquettes for Mainstreaming. Item #7 specifically states:

Do not associate yourself with anything African, because you have more in common with Europeans and know nothing about Africa.

Marilyn Shaw has a number of other helpful suggestions, starting with:

1. Do not associate with any controversial figures, affiliates or organizations that espouse “Black Power,” i.e., Black Panthers, Nation of Islam. Remember Arsenio Hall and Tavis Smiley.
2. Refer to yourself as an, “American” not “African-American.” Remember, the goal is for white America to see the, ‘content of your character,’ and not your color.
3. Speaking of “content of your character,” recite only King’s, “I have a Dream,” speech of 1963 - March on Washington, and completely ignore his, “Beyond Vietnam,” speech of 1967- New York.
4. Addendum to #3. Do not ever bring up any of King’s association with controversial figures, affiliates or organizations. 

Links added, natch.

The warbloggers, bless their hearts, are nodding and wondering what the problem is.

At this point, I think I would shoot one of them just to watch him die.

Posted by Aaron at 8:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been told, again, that I have an "attitude."

Do white people ever tell other white people that they have an "attitude", or is this something they pick up in their special "How to avoid baseless allegations of racism" courses, and only use against the lesser races?

Oddly, she seemed surprised by my predictable response of "Fuck you, bitch." And started to launch into the you-can't-talk-to-me-like-that speech.

I walked away during the first sentence.

So not needing this shit right now.

Posted by Aaron at 7:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (19) | TrackBacks (0)

Haven't regularly read Slashdot for a while.

I can tell you precisely which post drove me off, too.

n8willis writes: "Well, it was probably only a matter of time, but Reuters reports that Napster has licensed an "acoustic fingerprinting" technology from someone called Relatable to insert into its filtering system. Boy, I just can't wait for the opportunity to pay Napster a monthly fee to share my music with other people. And have them censor me for my trouble, too."

Geek buzzword bingo. "share", "my music" (what, you created it, then?), "censor".

Well, gee, Timmy, who could be against sharing? Who could be in favor of censorship? I guess your position must be the right one, then.

I'd been getting annoyed with the comments for a while before that (and made the mistake of switching to karma=-1 to moderate, and got even more annoyed), but that pushed me over the edge. Not my tribe, not my language, not my space.

I have the same reaction to "Islamofascist", "Paleostinian", "race hustler" and "poverty pimp". Figure anyone so comfortable with their prejudices that they wear them like the blank badge ain't worth listening to or treating with respect.

Maybe it's the linguistics background. Even without getting all Sapir-Whorf, language use can alter an argument, with the form distorting the content. Which is why we get abominations like the American Serviceman Protection Act or, just signed into law, the Born Alive Infant Protection Act.

If you can say that last name with a straight face, please kill yourself.

It's National Night Out, which in my case is a damn good reason to keep indoors. The less I deal with Minnesotans, the more I'm able to tolerate them. And since my very deliberately bad acting job at being polite does not register with them (do I strike you as the sort of person who would honestly say, "Oh, I'm so happy for you!"? No? Then why do these motherfuckers not recognize this as a not-so-subtle hint to fuck off?), best to avoid the unpleasantries entirely.

Besides, tonight The Rerun Show is doing "Facts of Life" and "The Jeffersons".

Huh. Go out and find reasons to kill Minnesotans, or stay home and find reasons to kill my tv. Or, wacky idea, I could finish Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, since I won't be seeing The Business of Fancydancing any time soon. . .

The new Elvira film opens here on the 24th, though. Yay Cassandra Peterson.

Posted by Aaron at 5:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

You'd think they would have mentioned at last night's showing of Some Like It Hot that today is the 40th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe's murder by the Kennedy brothers death by drug overdose. Or maybe that would have put a damper on the ocassion. . .

Mutter mutter title of this entry mutter mutter.

Tadatoshi Akiba, mayor of Hiroshima, makes with uninformed criticism of U.S. policy on weapons of mass destruction:

On the 57th anniversary of the world's first atomic bomb attack in Hiroshima, the mayor of the city has criticised the US for pursuing its own interests, and urged a worldwide ban on weapons of mass destruction.

As thousands gathered for the annual ceremony at Peace Memorial Park in the Japanese city, Tadatoshi Akiba suggested that Washington's policies in the post-September 11 world were misguided.

"The United States government has no right ... to unilaterally determine the fate of the world," Mr Akiba said.

He also urged US President George W. Bush to visit Hiroshima to see "with his own eyes what nuclear weapons hold in store".

I'm sure President Bush has seen Sum of All Fears, which had better special effects. Besides, do you really want one of them Bush boys in Japan? They tend to puke.

Missed this yesterday. In The Guardian, David Hencke reported that

Tony Blair was accused yesterday of sneaking through parliament a decision to give the Royal Nepalese Army two Russian-built military helicopters under an aid programme normally used to bring peace to war-torn countries, despite Nepal's record of human rights atrocities.

The military expenditure was hidden in a paper laid 48 hours before parliament went into recess and was slipped through under the "global conflict prevention pool" - a fund backed by the Foreign Office, Department of International Development and Ministry of Defence.

The document lodged in parliament in the name of the MoD says the military assistance "will comprise two Mi-17 support helicopters, explosive ordinance disposal equipment, logistical equipment, communications equipment and equipment in support of the military intelligence support group which the UK are assisting the Royal Nepalese Army in setting up".

Britain is planning to buy the Russian Mi-17 support helicopters on the open market.

And foreign minister Mike O'Brien is visiting Libya. What are they up to over there?

In the registration-required Chicago Tribune, Salim Muwakkil writes on

The Middle East's political spillover

The political spillover of Middle East issues into U.S. politics is threatening the political livelihoods of some members of the Congressional Black Caucus and straining relations between black and Jewish Democrats.

This is a significant political development because blacks and Jews have been traditional political allies and both have been strong pillars of support for the Democratic Party. What's more, Jews were among the strongest supporters of the civil rights movement and remain prominent in the struggle for racial justice.

Warbloggers excepted, of course. Other than Condi Rice, they seem to hate the lot of us with an obsessive passion. They're not racist, of course. They just don't like black people.

The Congressional Black Caucus has been among the strongest supporters of Israel and the fiercest foes of anti-Semitism.

Not sure those two should be in the same sentence, since the number of idiots equating any criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism seems to be growing daily, but whatever.

But increasing cycles of Middle East violence and growing black support for some Palestinian issues have raised tensions between the two constituencies.

There follows some stuff on Hilliard's defeat, none of it new to anyone who's been paying attention in the slightest, then turns to arch-villain Cynthia McKinney and her newly-strained relations with the white folk:

McKinney, who came to office in 1992 with considerable Jewish support, since has alienated some members of the Jewish community with her increasing expressions of support for the Palestinians.

In an April interview on a Berkeley, Calif., radio station, McKinney called for an investigation into whether President Bush might have had prior knowledge of the Sept. 11 terror attacks and if some members in his administration had profited from them.

While McKinney's behavior has angered some right-wing supporters of Israel, it has energized others with hopes that some legislators can defy the stifling conventional wisdom that has made U.S. foreign policy an embarrassment to the civilized world.

A number of progressive groups have signed on to McKinney's campaign and are doing their best to offset the influence the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

"Pro-Sharon [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon] forces have targeted this African-American Democrat for defeat for her strong stance in favor of both Israel and Palestine," wrote Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun, in the publication's recent edition. He said he backed McKinney's candidacy and called her positions on Israel a "reasonable critique."

But in these days of suicide bombings, full-scale occupation and targeted assassinations, even a reasonable critique can mark a candidate for political death.

Suppose that comment I made up there could trigger a discussion of whether or not Jews are people of color. I recommend against it. My contribution to such things is usually laughing myself silly for five minutes straight, regaining my composure, clearing my throat, then laughing myself silly again. Over and over and over. I mean, I'll grant you the Beta Israel, but if we're talking the warblogger crowd, if the motherfuckers were any whiter, they'd be clear.

It's been a crap day so far, though, and I could use a good laugh, so anyone wants to give it a go, feel free.

Posted by Aaron at 2:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Leonard Cohen, from the album of the same name and the Natural Born Killers soundtrack.

Give me back my broken night
My mirrored room,
My secret life
Its lonely here,
There's no one
Left to torture

Give me absolute control
Over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby,
Thats an order!

Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree thats left
And stuff it up the hole
In your culture

Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St Paul
Ive seen the future, brother:
It is murder

CHORUS:
Things are going to slide,
Slide in all directions
Wont be nothing
Nothing you can measure
Anymore

The blizzard,
The blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold
And it has overturned
The order of the soul

When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant

When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant

When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant

You dont know me from the wind
You never will, you never did
Im the little jew
Who wrote the Bible

Ive seen the nations
Rise and fall
Ive heard their stories,
Heard them all
But loves the only engine
Of survival

Your servant here,
He has been told
To say it clear,
To say it cold:
Its over, it aint going
Any further

And now the wheels
Of heaven stop
You feel the devils riding crop
Get ready for the future:
It is murder

Things are going to slide ... [repeat chorus]

There'll be the breaking
Of the ancient
Western code

Your private life
Will suddenly explode

Therell be phantoms
Therell be fires on the road
And the white man dancing

Youll see a woman
Hanging upside down
Her features
Covered by her fallen gown

And all the lousy little poets
Coming round
Tryin to sound like
Charlie Manson

And the white man dancin

Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St Paul
Give me Christ
Or give me Hiroshima

Destroy another fetus now
We dont like children anyhow
Ive seen the future, baby:
It is murder

Things are going to slide ... [repeat chorus]

When they said Repent Repent ...

Hiroshima link, to Studs Turkel interviewing Paul Tibbets of the Enola Gay, courtesy of Metafilter. Happy Anniversary.

Posted by Aaron at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It would be absurd to appraise a man's worth by the race to which he belongs and at the same time to make war against the Marxist principle, that all men are equal, without being determined to pursue our own principle to its ultimate consequences. If we admit the significance of blood, that is to say, if we recognize the race as the fundamental element on which all life is based, we shall have to apply to the individual the logical consequences of this principle. In general I must estimate the worth of nations differently, on the basis of the different races from which they spring, and I must also differentiate in estimating the worth of the individual within his own race. The principle, that one people is not the same as another, applies also to the individual members of a national community. No one brain, for instance, is equal to another; because the constituent elements belonging to the same blood vary in a thousand subtle details, though they are fundamentally of the same quality.

The first consequence of this fact is comparatively simple. It demands that those elements within the folk-community which show the best racial qualities ought to be encouraged more than the others and especially they should be encouraged to increase and multiply.

This task is comparatively simple because it can be recognized and carried out almost mechanically. It is much more difficult to select from among a whole multitude of people all those who actually possess the highest intellectual and spiritual characteristics and assign them to that sphere of influence which not only corresponds to their outstanding talents but in which their activities will above all things be of benefit to the nation. This selection according to capacity and efficiency cannot be effected in a mechanical way. It is a work which can be accomplished only through the permanent struggle of everyday life itself.

From My Struggle, by an obscure Austrian painter.

Eric Olsen updates the script for the 21st Century:

Many people wish the subject of race would go away. But wishing doesn't make it so. We have been told for some time now that race is a "biologically meaningless" concept. A report last week in the NY Times asserts that isn't so:

[. . .] It seems clear to me that if there are identifiable genetic differences between groups, then race does exist as a biological concept:

[. . .] So race exists at the genetic level: it is a real biological concept. What does this mean for human relations?

[. . .] The key would appear to accept objective differences between groups without yielding to the temptation to stigmatize "difference" as inherently inferior - a tall order for hearts and heads alike.

That's the last paragraph. Before that, he writes:

Surely the ideology expressed by Islamofascists and Palestinian terrorists is hopelessly anti-Semitic and racist. . .

The audio for last weekend's This American Life is up at their site. There's a short -- not interview, really, no questioner interrupts her -- a young Israeli woman speaks about the people she technically shares a country with. I'd like to say I found it chilling, or shocking, or even just disappointing.

Not much point feigning reactions for rhetorical effect, though. I leave that to others.

I don't think they realize how they sound to anyone who doesn't think like them, and they refuse to acknowledge the possibility that any reasonable person could disagree. So any objections are, by definition, unreasonable, irrational or just plain incoherent.

Well, I wish all sides the very best of luck in their Holy Crusade to eradicate the Hated, Evil Enemy, and look forward to meeting you in the enlightened paradise you're so passionately committed to building on this earth.

Not that there's room for the likes of me any of your paradises, but maybe I can get a temp job somewhere.

Update 8/7: Quote/link from Eric Olsen, not Alterman, as I'd previously written. The latter does the Altercation blog at MSNBC. Odd mistake, given their diametrically opposed political views, and that in Minnesota you can't fling a cat without hitting someone named some variant of Olsen.

Look, I'll prove it to you. Where's a cat?

Posted by Aaron at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

In case you were wondering where your fellow guests at the party are from:

1. US Commercial
2. Network
3. US Educational
4. Australia
5. Non-Profit Organization
6. United Kingdom
7. Canada
8. Netherlands
9. United States
10. Japan
11. Sweden
12. Finland
13. Malaysia
14. Turkey
15. Germany
16. Denmark
17. Hungary
18. Indonesia
19. Brazil
20. New Zealand (Aotearoa)

You kids get to know each other. I'm gonna go check out the movie.

Posted by Aaron at 8:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tonight's music and movie in the park: Heiruspecs and Some Like It Hot.

First, the band, from Hip Hop Section - Webzine Hip Hop Francophone:

Découverts avec le live at the Bryant-Lake Bowl en compagnie de Oddjobs et des chicagoans Typical Cats, Heiruspecs, live band de son état, assurait la charpente musicale du show. Heiruspecs, originaires de St Paul (Minnesota), se font connaître avec leur premier album Antidisestablishmetabolism (épuisé, disponible sur mp3.com/interlockrecords). Deux ans plus tard, les 6 larrons livrent Small Steps avec des featurings plus qu’alléchants en la personne de Slug et Qwazaar. Heiruspecs est composé de Felix et Muad’dib (mcs), Sean Mc Pherson (bass), Tasha Baron (keyboard), Peter Leggett (drums) et Josh Peterson (guitar).

Why do people always forget that I'm the Evil Twin? Giles is back, by the way.

The movie, you must all be familiar with:

Two Struggling musicians witness the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and try to find a way out of the city before they are found and killed by the mob. The only job that will pay their way is an all girl band so the two dress up as women. In addition to hiding, each has his own problems; One falls for another band member but can't tell her his gender, and the other has a rich suitor who will not take "No," for an answer.

The movie was why I had Natural Born Killers on the brain earlier (though how it ended up Tank Girl by the time I posted, I gots no clue); Stone uses rear projection as an absurd joke at a few points in the film, an effect also seen in Joss Whedon's Buffy episode Restless.

I remember there being a few rear projection scenes in Some Like It Hot, and I just can't take the things seriously anymore. Sure, the film itself is a comedy, but that's not one of the things you're meant to be laughing at. . .

Flight to Arrakis (slight update): Well, anyone nuts enough to do a rap about Frank Herber's Dune (listed under Muad'dib in the linked page) is my kind of people. Pity whoever tries to rep them, though. Live hip-hop bands have an uphill battle to begin with, and mixed-race bands just confuse radio programmers. Still, they deserve success, so visit their site (first link up there) and give them your money and stuff.

They asked the crowd to put their hands together. It was ugly. Note to white people: listen to the bass, not the drums.

And how did I forget to give this entry a title before?

Posted by Aaron at 6:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Linked this story before, but it always bears repeating. There are some extremely slow children out there, after all.

From The Decline of National Review by James P. Lubinskas:

In fact, the National Review of the 1950s, 60s and even 70s spoke up for white people far more vigorously than Pat Buchanan would ever dare to today. The early National Review heaped criticism on the civil rights movement, Brown v. Board of Education, and people like Adam Clayton Powell and Martin Luther King, whom it considered race hustlers. Some of the greatest names in American conservatism–Russell Kirk, Willmore Kendall, James Kilpatrick, Richard Weaver, and a young Bill Buckley–wrote articles defending the white South and white South Africans in the days of segregation and apartheid. NR attacked the 1965 immigration bill that opened America up to Third-World immigration, and wrote frankly about racial differences in IQ. There were always hints of compromise, but passages from some back issues could have been lifted right out of American Renaissance. Not so today. NR still supports immigration reform and is not afraid of the IQ debate, but Mr. Ponnuru’s article is just one example of its complete abandonment of the interests of whites as a group. What used to be an important part of the NR message it now dismissed as illegitimate “white identity politics.”

If you're not familiar with them, here's what the Anti-Defamation League (hardly an unbiased source, but still) has to say about American Renaissance:

Founded and edited by Samuel Jared Taylor in 1990, American Renaissance promotes "genteel" racism: pseudoscientific, questionably researched and argued articles that validate the genetic and moral inferiority of nonwhites and the need for racial "purity." Generally avoiding overt bigotry and stereotyping, many of North America's leading intellectual racists have written for the journal or addressed AR's biannual conferences.

Probably not a comparison the current group of National Review writers and editors are looking for.

Back to the article:

A famous example of the early NR stance on race was an unsigned editorial of August 24, 1957, titled “Why the South Must Prevail.” It was almost certainly written by Mr. Buckley, since he uses similar language in his book Up From Liberalism. The editorial argued against giving blacks the vote because it would undermine civilization in the South:

“The central question that emerges . . . is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not prevail numerically? The sobering answer is Yes–the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists.”

“National Review believes that the South’s premises are correct. . . . It is more important for the community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority.”

“The South confronts one grave moral challenge. It must not exploit the fact of Negro backwardness to preserve the Negro as a servile class. . . . Let the South never permit itself to do this. So long as it is merely asserting the right to impose superior mores for whatever period it takes to effect a genuine cultural equality between the races, and so long as it does so by humane and charitable means, the South is in step with civilization, as is the Congress that permits it to function.”

Given the above, and there's more in the article at AMREN if you've the stomach for it, you'd think any article on racism in National Review would consist entirely of the words "We're sorry."

What is racism, rhetorically?

It's a reflexive, irrational, all-encompassing alibi for black failure derived from a hyper-sensitivity to racially disparate outcomes; it is also, more familiarly-with few exceptions — whatever a black person says it is.

And you'd be wrong.

Mark Goldblatt asks, "What Is Racism?", and comes up with a rather predictable answer.

Also predictably, Mister Charlie thinks the article is the bee's knees.

Which, coming from a man who uses the title "Subhuman Savages Strike Again" for a blog entry, says everything you need to know.

Posted by Aaron at 6:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Update and more details on the Slick Rick deportation story up at BET.com.

No, I ain't linking to their home page. Not until I get my Boondocks cartoon, damn it.

They've also got letters from Will Smith and Chris Rock to David Wing of the INS, and audio of some of Rick's tunes.

Oh, and there's a petition, which you can either sign on-line, or print and use as a form letter.

John Bulger
Immigration and Naturalization Service
7880 Biscayne Blvd.
Miami, Forida, 33138

Dear Mr. Bulger,

I believe that Rick Walters, better known as the rapper Slick Rick, should be granted bond and released from INS detention while his case is being argued in court. There is nothing in his history that suggests that he is a “flight risk.” On the contrary, during the six-and-a-half years since he was released from prison, Mr. Walters has always cooperated with judicial and prison authorities. He is a longtime resident of the Bronx, New York, and he should be allowed to return there to live with his wife and children until his legal problems are resolved.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

(The downloadable petition is a zipped Word document. Open Office 1.0 handles it fine, but figure not everyone has the thing. . .)

Seriously this time, Free Slick Rick.

Posted by Aaron at 4:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

That's how Dre spelled it, man. Back the fuck off.

From BlackElectorate.Com (and who better to comment on this?):

An Open Letter to Rep. Cynthia McKinney on the Upcoming Primary Election by Andrew McIntosh

Dear Cynthia:

Like many black Americans, I hope that you will be victorious on August 20 in the primary election to be the Democratic candidate for Georgia's Fourth Congressional District. I am especially concerned for you in light of the success of non-black interests in defeating your congressional colleague, Earl Hilliard, in Alabama's primary election in June. The same outsiders who flooded Hilliard's congressional district with money and propaganda on behalf of the their puppet candidate, Arthur Davis, are doing the same thing for your opponent, Denise Majette. Emboldened by their success in Alabama and the lack of a coordinated retaliatory response by the black community, these outsiders are now targeting you.

Please understand, Cynthia, that your being targeted is not simply a matter of the Jewish lobby being upset with you because of your votes on the Middle East. The conspiracy against you - and that's exactly what this is - is far more involved and far more sinister. The sad truth is that many Democratic Party officials who should be standing by you (especially in view of your long and loyal service to the party) are quietly conniving at Denise Majette's illegitimate challenge and the behavior of the outsiders who are pulling her strings. Worse yet, there are party officers who are actively aiding and abetting Majette in her attempt to defeat you. This is especially true of the "centrist" (i.e., crypto-conservative) Democrats of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC).

[. . .] I wish you the best of luck, Cynthia, and I hope to see you continue your political career for many years to come. The black community needs leaders like you. Black America hasn't had a bold and audacious congressman like you since the days of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. As Adam used to say: "Keep the faith, baby; keep the faith!"

Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. link added for those of you who slept through the entire month of February in school.

Opinions expressed in quoted material are not necessarily those of Uppity-Negro.com.

Necessarily.

Given the subject matter, perhaps that title isn't the best choice.

And I'd heard DLC actually stood for Democrats for the Leisure Class. Stupid News from Neptune.

Since WEFT doesn't stream anymore due to licensing fee issues (mutter mutter mutter), you can get a taste in the column of the same title, by show co-host Carl Estabrook, in CU Cityview. The existence of which I was unaware of until about two minutes ago.

Posted by Aaron at 4:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

From John C.'s email to my annoyance and your screens, by way of the Cincinnati Enquirer:

Police discipline unequal

Records show blacks get more punishment
By Robert Anglen

For years, Cincinnati's African-American police officers have been subjected to more discipline and harsher penalties than white officers.

Even though African-Americans make up 29 percent of the department, a Cincinnati Enquirer analysis of police records between 1997 and 2001 shows that blacks got more than half of all serious disciplines.

Records show that black officers were more likely to be terminated than whites during that period and their suspensions accounted for nearly two-thirds of the total hours in punishment handed down by supervisors. Records also show that some white officers received less punishment than blacks for similar violations.

[. . .] This doesn't surprise African-American police officers and activists, who say the numbers show a pattern of discrimination that police administrators for more than three decades have dismissed merely as anecdotal.

Nor does it surprise police union officials. They say their attempts to raise concerns about racial disparity in the department have been ignored, resulting in an unfair discipline process that allows some officers to be treated differently than others.

“No, I'm not surprised by it. It upsets me. It has upset me for years,” says Fraternal Order of Police lawyer Don Hardin. “I know there is a disparity problem in the department, and just one of those disparities is race.”

Emphasis, as ever, added, because it amuses me. Not sure how the warbloggers will react to this one. I mean, on the one hand, police. On the other hand, it's a union, and a lawyer.

On their site, the Fraternal Order of Police avoid the word "union" on the front page, except for a headline from a linked Wall Street Journal article. On the history page, they note:

Martin Toole and Delbert Nagle knew they must first organize police officers, like other labor interests, if they were to be successful in making life better for themselves and their fellow police officers. They and 21 others "who were willing to take a chance" met on May 14, 1915, and held the first meeting of the Fraternal Order of Police. They formed Fort Pitt Lodge #1. They decided on this name due to the anti-union sentiment of the time. However, there was no mistaking their intentions.

Heh. "anti-union sentiment of the time". Yeah, things have gotten so much better.

Could discuss the complex interplay of race and class, but I'm easily distracted by shiny things, and feel I've said it all before.

Check out the article: there are some stats and anecdotal evidence I see no reason to copy over here.

Want to know more? Well, there's nothing specifically about this on the National Black Police Association site at the moment, but they do have a list of career opportunities.

Ooo, United States Capitol Police. That's almost worth applying for just to see the look on the face of the guy who does the background check. . .

Posted by Aaron at 3:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Wrong L7 song, wrong soundtrack. Degenerative brain disease.

When I get mad
And I get pissed
I grab my pen
And I write out a list
Of all the people
That won't be missed
You've made my shitlist

For all the ones
Who bum me out
Shitlist
For all the ones
Who fill my head with doubt
Shitlist
For all the squares who get me pissed
Shitlist
You've made my shitlist

Shitlist
Shitlist

When I get mad
And I get pissed
Shitlist
I grab my pen
And write out a list
Shitlist
Of all you assholes
Who won't be missed
Shitlist
You've made my shitlist

Shitlist, by L7, from the Natural Born Killers soundtrack.

One of the tracks is "history (repeats itself)" by a.o.s. Anybody know anything about them?

You've got Leonard Cohen, Diamanda Galás, the Cowboy Junkies and don't forget about Dre, all put together by Trent Reznor. What's not to like?

Well, other than it being an Oliver Stone film.

Make Your Own Oliver Stone film:

1. Restless camera
2. Relentless soundtrack
3. Simplistic battle between Good and Evil
4. Go ballistic

Saw a short film describing this process on Channel 11 years back. No clue what the thing was called, but the filmmaker was a riot.

Posted by Aaron at 3:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Sorry about the title. Getting visits from the wrong side of the tracks, and figure they should know up-front that they're not going to like it here.

That's the ones who don't just see the site name and decide to stay away. That used to bother me (leading to the rotating cognitive dissonance-inducing fansite names), but at this point I'm thinking it helps screen out the morons. And that's a Good Thing.

Apparently, being black is convenient. It allows me to make baseless accusations of racism, claim victimhood status, and gives me preferential treatment by police fearful of baseless accusations of racial profiling.

And now that all the black people have recovered from the laughing fit. . .

Seriously, that's an incredibly stupid thing to say, unless you're actively trying to move to the very top of the shitlist. Best comparison is telling a woman you've just met, and who just very hesitantly mentioned getting breast reduction surgery due to backaches, the impossibility of finding clothes that hang properly, and unwanted attention from idiots, that if you had big ol' tittys like that you'd never leave home.

I dunno, maybe some people want to move to the top of the shitlist. . .

Oh, one more thing:

What are the potential health consequences of steroid abuse?

Health consequences associated with anabolic steroid abuse include:

• Hormonal system disruptions. Reduced sperm production, shrinking testicles, impotence, and irreversible breast enlargement in boys and men. Decreased body fat and breast size, deepening of the voice, growth of excessive body hair, and clitoral enlargement in girls and women.

I don't make stuff up.

Update: Oh, what the hell:

bill collector called today
shove
IRS is on my pay
shove
my boss says i should comb my hair
shove
my father think's that i'm nowhere

get out of my way or i might shove
get out of my way or i'm gonna shove

landlord doesn't like my dog
shove
my eyes are burning from the smog
shove
the neighbors say i jam too loud
shove
America thinks it should be proud

get out of my way or i might shove
get out of my way or i'm gonna shove

some guy just pinched my ass
shove
drunken bums ain't go no class
shove
the club says we won't get paid
shove
it's been months since i've been laid
get out of my way or i might shove
get out of my way or i'm gonna shove

Shove, by L7 (the official site seems to be down), from let's call it the Tank Girl soundtrack.

Something else I won't be parting with. Come on, I've got to have something crap in here that I won't miss. . .

Posted by Aaron at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Today, Indianz.com (again for the slow learners, that's how they spell it) features a few articles from The Billings Gazette on the Nez Perce War of 1877. From that last link:

[Chief] Looking Glass [of the Nez Perce bands] counseled against going to war when the Nez Perce were forced onto the greatly reduced reservation. He grudgingly agreed to go onto the reservation at Lapwai, Idaho, choosing an area near the middle fork of the Clearwater River.

Gen. Howard, receiving an erroneous message that Looking Glass was joining the other bands after the battle in White Bird Canyon, ordered two cavalry companies to arrest Looking Glass and all others near him.

The effort was compromised by trigger-happy civilian volunteers. Their village was destroyed and their horses stolen, but Looking Glass and his people got away.

Forced now to fight, Looking Glass joined the others and during a two-day running battle July 11-12 bloodied Howard's troops at the Battle of Clearwater.

The content is bad enough, but let's focus out attention on the form.

Our brave heroes, the white guys, received "an erroneous message" (rather than a deliberate lie), and their "effort" (not attack) was "compromised by trigger-happy civilians" (not sabotaged by overenthusiastic Injun-killers).

The villains of the piece "bloodied Howard's troops" (as opposed to managing to stave off an attack, or launch a counter-offensive).

History is written by the winners, of course, but usually they're less blatant about using word and event choice to construct a narrative in this way.

Or that's what the evilnastybad pointy-head liberal professors in their ivory towers do, anyway. Real 'mercans see through their transparent lies, and write stuff like the above.

And then claim they're being objective.

It's that last point that makes me hate them. I gots no problem with someone else holding a worldview I totally disagree with, but when they start claiming it's the One True Way of looking at the world, I tend to get effnic.

If effnic don't work, there's always moving straight on to nigga.

True, this is reactionary, but since it's a reaction to someone else getting effnic, in their case way white, it seems a prudent course of action. Tends to generate more heat than light, but if you're looking for reasoned debate on the 'net, you'd best hang out in places where everyone agrees with you to begin with.

Not that that qualifies as debate. . .

Posted by Aaron at 9:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Always forget that the compleat Calvin and Hobbes, starting at the beginning, is up at uComics. Luckily, reading too much on the computer gives me eyestrain.

Not that that stopped me from reading all of Nowhere Girl in one go, but trust me, once you start, you'll not want it to end.

And, at the end, there's a link to (among other things) Max & Lily. Just in case you were thinking of resting your eyes.

Had to hit the comics archive at memepool for the name/location of Nowhere Girl, since it's been a while since I read it, and I (predictably) had forgotten the site. This is all just one big bookmarks list for me, you know. There's other good stuff in the archive, and I'll not bother repeating them. This is more laziness than anything.

Apropos of nothing, Mariko Mori - Miko no Inori, 1996 and Translated Acts: Performance Art from East Asia.

Also (via Spleenville of all places), Viewing Japanese Prints.

And that Sundance page I linked earlier has an interview with Mira Nair (scroll way down), about her film Mississippi Masala, a/k/a that one Denzel movie nobody ever remembers.

Posted by Aaron at 9:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

May as well get the really obnoxious bit out of the way first:

I signed up as an EMusic affiliate, you see. Although they claim to offer the ability to create links directly to a particular song or artist, this does not appear to be the case. So the charts were the least unpleasant of the alternatives.

Currently, the number one song is "Here Comes Your Man" by The Pixies, which probably says something about their demographics.

Luckily, I think it's something good.

(Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" is number 7, which also says something, but let's just ignore that for the moment. . .)

It's the original, 1987 recording, rather than the one on Doolittle, if that counts for anything. The self-titled pseudo-album it's on is currently number two on that chart.

Number one is a compilation called "Awesome 80's", featuring songs which were not only played to death back in the day, but are being played to death all over again on stations desperately going for those tall Yanqui Gen-X nostalgia dollars.

Unlike me and EMusic, who provide this service as a convenience to you.

Quarterflash's "Harden My Heart". These must be the End Times. I can't imagine how things could possibly get any worse.

To any Gods who might be reading, that was not a challenge.

Posted by Aaron at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Drylongso.com advertises itself as "extraordinary thought for ordinary people", and with front page stories on Zora Neale Hurston, Audre Lorde and Langston Hughes, they're not kidding.

Drylongso is also the title of a film by Cauleen Smith, and a children's book by Virginia Hamilton.

The author explains that in the Gullah language, "drylongso" is a black colloquial expression that means something rare has become so common that it is very ordinary.

You can hear the Gullah language/dialect, and see a bit of the culture, in Julie Dash's film Daughters of the Dust.

Languid look at the Gullah culture of the sea islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia where African folk-ways were maintained well into the 20th Century and was one of the last bastion of these mores in America. Set in 1902.

There's an (Internet Archive'd) interview with Julie Dash from Sundance, where she discusses using the dialect in the film:

Moikgantsi Kgama: A lot of people said they had trouble understanding Daughters because it was in the Gullah dialect, and the accents were very heavy. When you made the decision to use Gullah, did you consider those things?

JD: Absolutely. I considered them, and I thought about all the other fine independent films that I've seen with very strong dialects in them and how people would struggle through them. Your ear can adjust to them if you want it to. With certain black sounds, people disengage [and say], "Oh, I can't understand it."

Let's look at Miller's Crossing, the wonderful film by the Coen brothers. It's not only in Irish-American brogue, but they're using slang from the twenties. It's a difficult film to understand, [but] people still watch it, no problem. So yeah, I was very much aware of it. Why does our stuff have to be so easy, [with] simplistic, stereotypical characters? I know people are tired of hearing that word, but that's exactly what they love. If you offer a new character to them, a real character who is not a victim, they are like, "I don't know who this is, I can't watch it, it's unacceptable, it's not for me, it's too culturally specific." All of these things start pouring out of them. All these defenses about why they can't watch it.

How many films about different cultures did we watch that we had to learn and understand? I mean if you think about it, as a child growing up, I'm sitting in front of the TV, watching soap operas. I grew up in Queens Bridge Project. I don't know anyone who acts like that. I'm sitting on the edge of the couch, constantly translating, thinking why would she say or do that. [It's a] totally different reality. I didn't know people like that. I grew up translating, so I am not afraid. I am not afraid of different cultures.

Wrote a paper on the Gullah dialect (which is probably sitting on an Amiga-formatted disk somewhere), using the invaluable Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect as a primary source.

A unique creole language spoken on the coastal islands and adjacent mainland of South Carolina and Georgia, Gullah existed as an isolated and largely ignored linguistic phenomenon until the publication of Lorenzo Dow Turner's landmark volume Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect. In his classic treatise, Turner, the first professionally trained African American linguist, focused on a people whose language had long been misunderstood, lifted a shroud that had obscured the true history of Gullah, and demonstrated that it drew important linguistic features directly from the languages of West Africa. Initially published in 1949, this groundbreaking work of Afrocentric scholarship opened American minds to a little-known culture while initiating a means for the Gullah people to reclaim and value their past. The book presents a reference point for today's discussions about ever-present language varieties, Ebonics, and education. For readers today the book offers important reminders about the subtleties and power of racial and cultural prejudice.

Which is background on the people currently having their cause championed by those selfless proponents of Ebonics and fighters against racial and cultural prejudice, the warbloggers:

TED TURNER LAND GRAB UPDATE: Now the NAACP and a South Carolina legislator are siding with the slave-descended black landowners whose land Turner is claiming. This is on top of the Associated Press story that ran yesterday, as well as earlier accounts from local papers, and a story in The Black News.

We still haven't head anything from Michael Moore, Doonesbury, or Molly Ivins, all of whom seem strangely uninterested in the story of a rich white billionaire trying to gain control of land held by the descendants of slaves.

Keep fighting the Man, Glenn Reynolds.

Your links list would make a excellent starting point.

Posted by Aaron at 3:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Alternet has a printable version of this article, and since they don't have banner ads, guess I could link to that instead. . .:

Hip Hop Confronts War
Walidah Imarisha, War Times
August 2, 2002

Since Sept. 11 corporate media have regurgitated the government's mindless pro-war propaganda. It's not just CNN and NBC, though: big money rappers have fallen in line to rally 'round the flag, from Mystikal to R. Kelly to Wu-Tang Clan to MC Hammer.

Hammer is still alive?

There is no god.

And Wu-Tang is just always up for a fight. You'd think the names like "Ghostface Killah" and "Masta Killa" might be some small indication of this.

"Whether you have Dan Rather or Wyclef or Ja Rule wrapped up in red, white and blue, it's the same, because then they become the Dan Rather of the hip hop community," says Mario Africa of the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, publisher of AWOL, a political hip hop magazine.

Rapper Canibus' song "Draft Me" is just part of a media blitz feeding the racist attacks that have claimed dozens of Middle Eastern/Arab/South and Central Asian people since Sept. 11: "Lurkin', to leave y'all with bloody red turbans/Screamin Jihad!' while y'all pray to a false god/We ready for all out war, it's time to settle the score." The song ends with a clip of George W. Bush.

Taking a page from the right-wingers' book, who the hell gonna listen to someone named Canibus?

But luckily, underground hip hop is speaking out against the "war on terrorism," operating, as Africa says, as town criers. "It's these cats who are selling their CDs out of their backpacks and the trunk of their cars who come with the analysis, because they can say this is what it means to me, because we live under the gun."

[. . .] And hip hop artists/organizers are still doing what they know best: creating art. Seattle hip hoppers put out "911amerika" earlier this year (See www.nwexplosion.com). Gabriel Teodros, one of the organizers, says, "I was disturbed that for the first time in my life people of color were waving U.S. flags and screaming retaliation ... The CD just felt like the best thing we could do to help combat the self-destruction."

Erik Wissa works with the Boston American Friends Service Committee's hip hop program Critical Breakdown. He says hip hop, as the voice of young people today, is a vital tool for the progressive movement. "A lot of organizations don't see the power in music, but cultural workers have always been at the forefront of every movement."

Somebody has to say it: American Friends Service Committee runs a hip hop program?

Guess that somebody didn't have to be me. . .

The children have never been known for their policy analysis skills. Chuck D and KRS-One are still the go-to guys for actual insight, or at least the ones with the name recognition to maybe get mainstream coverage.

Except, of course, they usually don't.

Want to know more? See The Guardian's article on Draft Me. Explaining why you have to look overseas for decent mainstream coverage of hip hop politics is left as an exercise for the student.

Posted by Aaron at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Odd headline, given she's actually plugging her own film, but I guess the copyeditor (scum) thought the ref would catch readers' attention better. . .

Michelle Yeoh has no regrets about turning down 'Matrix' role

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) - Malaysian-born actress Michelle Yeoh said Wednesday she has no regrets about rejecting a major role in the "Matrix'' sequels to film her new movie, which she hopes will thrill audiences as much as her last hit, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.''

Filmed in Tibet and China, "The Touch'' cost dlrs 20 million to produce _ dlrs 5 million more than the Oscar-winning "Crouching Tiger'' _ and opens Thursday throughout Asia, where the action star's massive fan base ensures rousing box-office returns.

Technically, that should be Tibet Autonomous Region. That's what the people with the nuclear weapons call it, anyway. Then again, they can't hold on to Taiwan, either.

Taiwanese president backs independence referendum
By Benjamin Kang Lim

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian said on Saturday he backed legislation for a referendum to decide whether the island should formally declare independence from China, a move certain to anger Beijing.

Holding a "referendum is a basic human right that cannot be deprived or restricted", Chen told a gathering of pro-independence activists in Tokyo during a video conference.

"I want to sincerely urge and encourage everybody to seriously consider the importance and urgency of passing legislation on a referendum," Chen said.

Although Chen did not give a timetable, his comments were likely to stoke tensions with Beijing, which considers Taiwan a renegade province and has threatened to attack if the democratic island of 23 million declares independence.

Beijing had no immediate comment. But Taiwan cable news network TVBS quoted a spokesman for the Taiwan Affairs Office of China's cabinet as saying unification was the island's only political future.

[. . .] When Chen took office in May 2000, he promised not to declare statehood or push for an independence referendum in what was seen then as a gesture to Beijing.

[. . .] Repeated surveys show most Taiwan residents prefer a political relationship with China and fear the consequences of any declaration of independence.

Chen's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is the largest party in parliament but it does not have an outright majority and it would be difficult to get any referendum bill passed.

Beijing has said closer U.S. military and political support for Taiwan encourages pro-independence sentiment on Taiwan. Chen's comments were likely to raise tensions between China and Taiwan and could draw in the United States, analysts said.

"This negates the goodwill he has expressed," said Liu Bih-rong, political scientist at Taipei's Soochow University. "But he's said different things to different people on different occasions. I expect him to mellow his stance in two weeks."

As usual, the best line is at the end of the article. Who do you think is pushing for closer ties with China?

Taiwan's government faces increasing pressure from business leaders to embrace closer commercial links with the mainland as the island recovers from its worst ever recession.

Emphasis added. Because the notion amuses me.

Back to the important news, though, Michelle Yeoh has a new movie.

But the movie, which enjoyed a sold-out premiere Tuesday in Malaysia, is no retread of director Ang Lee's Chinese-language epic. Yeoh, known for her Asian martial arts prowess, transforms herself into a contemporary heroine reminiscent of Indiana Jones and Lara Croft of "Tomb Raider.''

Insert breast implant joke here.

The movie, directed by Peter Pau, who won an Oscar for his cinematography in "Crouching Tiger,'' features Yeoh as a trapeze acrobat who gets tangled in a quest for a mystical Buddhist artifact.

This line worried me, since when cinematrographers direct. . . well, who saw Juice? Looked pretty, right? But, um, somewhat lacking?

(See Ernest R. Dickerson's credits at IMDB if you're confused at this point. And try reading the credits some time.)

The script is a hackneyed blend of romance, humor and swashbuckling, but the movie soars during Yeoh's limb-twisting action sequences and panoramic views of Tibet's Namtso Lake.

Miramax Films has bought the U.S. distribution rights for "The Touch,'' which is the first movie from Yeoh's new production firm, Mythical Films. It is expected to be released in the United States later this year.

To complete "The Touch,'' Yeoh surprised fans early last year when she turned down an offer by the Wachowski brothers, who courted her to star in their sequels to the science-fiction blockbuster, "The Matrix.''

But Yeoh, whose biggest role so far was in "Tomorrow Never Dies'' in the James Bond franchise, says she doesn't mind not appearing with Keanu Reeves when "The Matrix Reloaded'' _ the first of two planned sequels _ hits screens in May 2003.

"I don't have any regrets,'' Yeoh said. "Not doing 'The Matrix' wasn't a difficult choice, to be honest. 'The Touch' was the easy No. 1 choice.''

Yeoh, who turns 40 next week, says she has no plans to retire from the adrenaline-pumping movies that have been her staple for 15 years, which have seen her kickfighting alongside Asia's top male action stars, including Jackie Chan and Jet Li.

"I'm blessed with the fact that I have physical abilities, so while I can, why do I have to turn around and say I only want to do movies where I'm only sitting down, walking and standing still,'' she said.

I mention this because usually 'mercans get movies weeks or months before everyone else, and it's cool that Ms. Yeoh opened hers in Malaysia.

Think I posted something about how, like a lot of the CTHD cast, she doesn't actually speak Mandarin:

[Co-screenwriter James] Schamus wasn't the only one on set wrestling with multiple languages. The film's dialogue was written in Mandarin Chinese, the language spoken throughout most of China, but not the Hong Kong region, where Cantonese is widely spoken. Since many of the film's actors and actresses came from the Hong Kong martial arts film tradition, they found themselves delivering lines in what was essentially a foreign tongue.

"Chow (Yun Fat) and Michelle (Yeoh, who shares top billing on the film with Chow), in particular, had a very tough time," Schamus said. "Michelle's first language is actually English.

"They both struggled very hard, but Ang succeeded in keeping their voices. They're not dubbed. Though [Mandarin-speaking audiences] can hear the accent, [they] still took to the film."

From Eric Wittmershaus interview with James Schamus in the indispensible Flak Magazine.

Not that I actually know anything about any of this -- Tibet, Taiwan, Chinese linguistics -- but I find it interesting.

And post about it here.

Which is why I no more deserve the Uppity-Negro.com domain than some guy in Amsterdam deserves House Negro.com.

He's got a better soundtrack, though.

Research assistance by George Kelly and our statistician Marge N. O'Error. Our producer is Blue Chevigny. WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia, who always forgets that this is a web site, not a film, and says:

The essence of this film looks at how East meets West. We have all these different elements, which I'm very, very confident will transcend whatever language, whatever culture, wherever the place.

Update: Fixed the TAL line, though why I keep doing NPR/PRI jokes is beyond me. Left out the Michelle punchline because I couldn't remember which car company had the ad with the James Bond theme and John Steed at the end.

Michelle is Emma Peel, by the way.

Posted by Aaron at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Minor admin junk of no interest to anyone — changed the number of days displayed on the index page from 7 to 3. Because I thought the scroll bar looked funny.

Which means reading older entries will involve hitting the monthly archives, which are even longer.

Perhaps I have not given this matter enough thought.

Right, content. Um, American Samizdat is very informative, and collaborative, and a nicer place than here.

So go there.

Posted by Aaron at 9:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

OPi8.com : NEW DARK CULTURE is where I ordered my Corporate Whore t-shirt from. Hell yes, I wear it to work. You confuse me with someone who even pretends to give a fuck.

Yolk | generasian next is another magazine I don't fit the demographics for.

The Mars Canon looks like the sort of film that isn't going to make it to Minneapolis any time soon.

Metrosexuality might have been screened at one of the local bars, but they managed to hide this pretty well. Or I'm just looking in the wrong places.

BRITNEY, BABY, ONE MORE TIME! would probably make Anja's head explode. I am debating whether or not this would be a good thing.

Down and Out With the Dolls has a cool flash site and cute punk chicks. What more could you need? Well, there's good music, too, so you have no excuse.

This week(end)'s This American Life: Give It To Them.

Polls show that most Israelis are confused about what to think about the current situation. "Give It To Them" [image at the TAL site] is a bumper sticker slogan fromTel Aviv that captures the contradictory feelings. In Hebrew it has the same sad double meaning as in English -- Nachzir L'Hem V'Shalom Al Yisrael -- meaning, roughly, "Give it to them and there'll be peace in Israel." That is, "Give back the territories and there will be peace in Israel" and also "Sock it to them and there will be peace in Israel." This week, stories of what life is like these days in Israel and the West Bank ... with Palestinians stuck indoors for weeks under curfew ... and many Israelis trying to ignore the conflict, though that, of course, isn't easy.

I expect the show will be decried as more pro-Palestinian propaganda from the lunatic fringe.

Update: And of course, you can find local air/stream times at Public Radio Fan.

The rest of the line-up for Shonen Jump has been anounced. Well, I liked Akira Toriyama's character designs for Tobol No. 2, anyway. . .

Update: Forgot about Babyhead Magazine. From the description:

Babyhead both satirizes and plays homage to the cartoons and TV shows of the 70’s and 80’s, asking and answering pressing questions that no other magazines dares to: What is the Superfriends conspiracy? What ever happened to Jem and the Holograms? What would Diff’rent Strokes: The Movie look like? What’s the real deal about Degrassi Jr. High?

Ok, this one I think I hit the demographic for.

Posted by Aaron at 4:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

From the July 31 Donahue on MSBETNBC, with final guest (scroll way down) Margaret Cho:

DONAHUE: When America - when we see an Asian, we don't see an American.

CHO: Right. And that's, I think, a big problem. You know, I think that when people say to me, "So where are you from?" it's such a loaded question because they're not really asking me where I'm from. You know, they're asking me or they're saying to me, "You don't belong here. Where do you belong?" And so it's a very confusing thing because I don't want to be angry at people and I don't want to seem hostile and say, "Well, you know" - and tell them that's what they're saying.

And you see people are just trying to be curious and start a conversation, but that's what - the form that racism takes in our country now. It's not about these blatant stereotypes. It's not about these blatant hate crimes. It's about these small, subtle things that happen day to day that make you feel like you don't belong.

Not that warbloggers are exactly subtle. Small, definitely.

The new(ish) film, Notorious C.H.O., plays Thursday, August 8th at Landmark in Chitown, as part of Reeling: The Chicago Gay and Lesbian Film Festival (why is Elvira at the Fest? Good question. . .).

It opens Friday, August 9th at the, um, Landmark Uptown Theatre here in Minneapolis. Which is odd, as I don't recall seeing a poster for it outside the place. That poster for Secretary is up, though. Ass, not cleavage. What is this world coming to?

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Why do I think I can toss out jokes based on Hamlet (Act 5, Scene II if you want to be particular) and expect people to get them? Seeing as we're all "angry Black guys" who no doubt eschew the work of Dead White Males?

Christ. Have the idiots finally left? Can I get out the Lysol and disinfect the place?

GUIL (quietly): Where we went wrong was getting on a boat. We can move, of course, change direction, rattle about, but our movement is contained within a larger one that carries us along as inexorably as the wind and current. . .

ROS: They had it in for us, didn't they? Right from the beginning. Who'd have thought that we were so important?

GUIL: But why? Was it all for this? Who are we that so much should converge on our little deaths? (In anguish to the PLAYER:) Who are we?

PLAYER: You are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. That's enough.

GUIL: No — it is not enough. To be told so little — to such an end — and still, finally, to be denied an explanation ——

PLAYER: In our experience, most things end in death.

GUIL (fear, vengeance, scorn): Your experience! — Actors!

He snatches a dagger from the PLAYER's belt and holds the point at the PLAYER's throat; the PLAYER backs and GUIL advances, speaking more quietly.

I'm talking about death — and you've never experienced that. And you cannot act it. You die a thousand casual deaths — with none of that intensity which squeezes out life . . . and no blood runs cold anywhere. Because even as you die you know that you will come back in a different hat. But no one gets up after death — there is no applause — there is only silence and some second-hand clothes, and that's — death ——

And he pushes the blade in up to the hilt. The PLAYER stands with huge, terrible eyes, clutches at the wound as the blade withdraws; he makes small weeping sounds and falls to his knees, and then right down.

While he is dying, GUIL, nervous, high, almost hysterical, wheels on the TRAGEDIANS—

If we have a destiny, then so had he — and if this is ours, then that was his — and if there are no explanations for us, then let there be none for him ——

The TRAGEDIANS watch the PLAYER die; they watch with some interest. The PLAYER finally lies still. A short moment of silence. Then the TRAGEDIANS start to applaud with genuine admiration. The PLAYER stands up, brushing himself down.

PLAYER (modestly): Oh, come, come, gentlemen — no flattery — it was merely competent ——

The TRAGEDIANS are still congratulating him. The PLAYER approaches GUIL, who stands rooted, holding the dagger.

PLAYER: What did you think? (Pause.) You see, it is the kind they do believe in — it's what is expected.

He holds out his hand for the dagger. GUIL, slowly, puts the point of the dagger on to the PLAYER's hand, and pushes. . . the blade slides back into the handle. The PLAYER smiles, reclaims the dagger.

For a moment you thought I'd — cheated.

ROS relieves his own tension with loud nervy laughter.

ROS: Oh, very good! Very good! Took me in completely — didn't he take you in completely — (claps his hands) Encore! Encore!

PLAYER (activated, arms spread, the professional): Deaths for all ages and occasions! Deaths by suspension, convulsion, consumption, incision, execution, asphyxiation and malnutrition —! Climactic carnage, by poison and by steel —! Double deaths by duel —! Show! —

ALFRED still in his Queen's costume, dies by poison; the PLAYER, with rapier, kills "KING" and duels with a fourth TRAGEDIAN, inflicting and receiving a wound. The two remaining TRAGEDIANS, the two "SPIES" dressed in the same coats as ROS and GUIL, are stabbed, as before.
And light is fading over the deaths which take place right upstage.

(Dying amid the dying — tragically; romantically.) So there's an end to that — it's commonplace; light goes with life, and in the winter of your years the dark comes early. . .

GUIL (tired, drained, but still an edge of impatience; over the mime): No. . . no. . . not for us, not like that. Dying is not romantic, and death is not a game which will soon be over. . . Death is not anything. . . death is not. . . It's the absence of presence, nothing more. . . the endless time of never coming back. . . a gap you can't see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound. . .

The light has gone upstage. Only GUIL and ROS are visible as ROS's clapping falters to silence.

Small pause.

ROS: That's it, then, is it?

No answer. He looks out front.

Small pause.

The sun's going down. Or the earth's coming up, as the fashionable theory has it.

Pause.

What was it all about? When did it begin?

Pause. No answer.

Couldn't we just stay put? I mean no one is going to come on and drag us off. . . They'll just have to wait. We're still young. . . fit. . . we've got years. . .

Pause. No answer.

(A cry.) We've done nothing wrong! We didn't harm anyone. Did we?

GUIL: I can't remember.

ROS pulls himself together.

ROS: All right, then. I don't care. I've had enough. To tell you the truth, I'm relieved.

And he disappears from view. GUIL does not notice.

GUIL: Our names shouted in a certain dawn. . . a message. . . a summons. . . There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said —no. But somehow we missed it. (He looks round and sees he is alone.)

Rosen—?
Guil—?

He gathers himself.

Well, we'll know better next time. Now you see me, now you — (and disappears).

Immediately the whole stage is lit up, revealing, upstage, arranged in the approximate positions last held by the dead TRAGEDIANS, the tableau of court and corpses which is the last scene of Hamlet.

That is: The KING, QUEEN, LAERTES and HAMLET, all dead. HORATIO holds HAMLET. FORTINBAS is there.

So are two AMBASSADORS from England.

AMBASSADOR: The sight is dismal;
and our affairs from England come too late.
The ears are senseless that should give us hearing
to tell him his commandment is fulfilled,
that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.

Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.

Still haven't managed to see a live version. The film doesn't quite use the same script, but it's definitely worth the rental if you've got a video store with a decent selection.

Familiarity with Hamlet, although not required, adds a few dozen shades of meaning to otherwise perplexing events and dialog.

Update: Forgot Stoppard co-authored the script for Brazil. Great, now I'm his bitch, too.

Ok, think the italics tags are all matched up now. Some browsers cut 'em off with a paragraph tag, others don't. Go figure.

Web standards my ass.

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Sequential Tart (well, Barb Lien-Cooper; not sure if one is meant to credit the interviewer or the publication for these things) has a long, fun interview with comics writer, playwright, magician and alien abductee Grant Morrison. The second question is:

Some of the best art seems to be made from the fringes, from the under-appreciated genres (noir writing, SF/fantasy, the DIY movement of punk). There is a line of thought in rock criticism that rock "died"; when it became respected and "legitimate". For instance, Nik Cohn thought Sgt. Pepper was the death knell of rock and roll music.

In keeping with the above, are comics an art form? How respected should comics be?

The warbloggers have been discussing comics lately. All mainstream superhero comics, from what I saw; it was a story in Fantastic Four that provoked the whole thing.

They're missing the good stuff, as usual. Mundanes. These are the people who keep voting for Olive Garden as the Best Italian Restaurant in newspaper polls. Check around Artbomb.net for reviews, news stories and the Warren Ellis - Colleen Doran collaboration SUPERIDOL.

And everyone should read Jhonen Vasquez' miniseries I Feel Sick. If you hate it with every fiber of your being. . . there's not much point visiting this web site, either. And you definitely shouldn't be posting comments.

Unless you want to explain why you didn't like the book. Aw, go on. Talk to Virtual Spooky.

Squeak!

Update: How did I forget Global Frequency?

Yes, yet another secret conspiracy out to achieve world [pause] domination!. Starting to have trouble keeping track of all the directives myself, and forget if I'm writing a Master Control rant or a SubGenius rant. . .

Remember: Eternal Salvation or triple your money back! Name one other belief system willing to make that claim!

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Comic Book Resources has a list of this year's Eisner Award Winners from SDCC. Not many surprises:

Best Coloring: Laura Depuy, Ruse (CrossGen); Ministry of Space (Image) - PDF of the first issue available at the link

Best U.S. Edition of Foreign Material: Akira, by Katsuhiro Otomo (Dark Horse)

Best Penciller/Inker or Penciller/Inker Team: Eduardo Risso, 100 Bullets (Vertigo/DC)

Best Graphic Album-New: The Name of the Game, by Will Eisner (DC)

Best Writer: Brian Michael Bendis, Powers (Image); Alias, Daredevil, Ultimate Spider-Man (Marvel)

I'd be upset that Brian Azzarello, writer for 100 Bullets, lost out, but, y'know, Nubian goddess Jill Thompson (who I'd swear I saw at a Tori Amos show in Chicago a zillion years ago, but redheads at a Tori show weren't exactly thin on the ground. . .), so instead I laugh like Nelson.

Best Writer/Artist-Humor: Evan Dorkin, Dork (Slave Labor)

Couldn't quite fit the full Milk & Cheese quote, "Love us with money or we hate you with hammers!" in the Amazon tip jar. "Gin makes a man mean" fits, but I'd have to leave out, "Everybody booze up and riot!"

I hope he was there, and gave an acceptance speech. Those are always good.

Best Continuing Series: 100 Bullets, by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso (Vertigo/DC)

Stupid Brian Azzarello, anyway.

Full write-up at CBR later today, audio of acceptance speeches up Tuesday.

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The guys at Penny Arcade (specifically, Tycho) put it about as well as I possibly could:

Where the hell did this Zanzarah thing come from, Germany? I never know what you guys are going to do next. For the uninitiated, Zanzarah is a 30/30/30 combination of Magic: The Gathering, Quake One, and Pokemon. The remaining ten percent acts as a reservoir for cream. It's nuts, and the production values (especially on some of this audio!) are through the roof. I had a hell of a lot of fun with the demo, although I'm not sure if they had me in mind when they made it. Playing a girl who captures fairies in a magical forest is not something I would tell my psychologist I spent my weekend doing.

Only managed to watch the video and check out the artwork my own self. The demo laughs at my onboard video. Then starts crying. Then removes itself and asks me not to bother it again.

It's very, very pretty, though. In a disturbingly femme sort of way.

Maybe this is a good thing. The avatar looks more like an actual, human-proportioned 18-year-old than, say,

Lara Croft is the monstrous offspring of science, an idealized eternally young female automaton, a malleable, well-trained techno-puppet created by and for the male gaze.7 The popular Nuderaider patch, a game add-on that strips Lara Croft's clothing is evidence of this gender-subject configuration. The fusion of femininity, death and technology in characters like Lara Croft is a lucrative and enduring formula in capitalist market-based economies, a potent combination noted as early as 1951 in Marshall McLuhan's essay, "The Mechanical Bride"8. Lara Croft traces her lineage to the female robot in Fritz Lang's "Metropolis", mannequins, blow-up dolls and comic book heroines. She is a product of the mechanization of bodies beginning in the Industrial Revolution9; her fetishized beauty resides in her slick and glistening 3-D generated polygons, evolved from clunky robotic metals into more appropriate attire for Information Society.

Footnotes in the source article, Switch-Does Laura Croft Ware Fake Polygons by Anne-Marie Schleiner.

And speaking of Penny Arcade, I worry that this particular strip was designed specifically for the Red Headed White Devil.

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So, doing the why-the-hell-do-I-still-own-this? thing again, and pulled out the Higher Learning soundtrack. Ok, only saw the movie once, no real desire to see it again, so why. . .

1. Higher - Ice Cube
2. Something To Think About
3. Soul Searchin' (I Wanna Know If It's Mine) - Me'Shell NdegéOcello
4. Situation: Grimm - Mista Grimm
5. Ask Of You - Raphael Saadiq (of Tony! Toni! Toné!)
6. Losing My Religion - Tori Amos
7. Phobia - OutKast
8. My New Friend
9. Year Of The Boomerang - Rage Against The Machine
10. Higher Learning/Time For Change - The Brand New Heavies
11. Don't Have Time - Liz Phair
12. Butterfly - Tori Amos
13. By Your Side - Zhané
14. Eye - Eve's Plum
15. The Learning Curve - Stanley Clarke

Oh. Right.

Guess I can copy the good tracks (i.e., most of them) to a CD-R. The booklet isn't that great. . .

Update: Two points.

First, I'm in Windows for the first time since whenever, because I wanted to hear the Bootsy interview mentioned a day or so back, and watch Living Colour's banned video for "Bi" (which is hereby adopted as the official site sound+vision track). I've also been totally spoiled by the URL button in Movable Type. Why people can't be platform-independent?

Speaking of which, the funky div/line problem doesn't show up in Netscape 7 or Mozilla in Windows. Sure it'll be there when I go back to Linux, though. Why people can't be. . . oh, that's right. Well, they should do it right.

Secondly, are there any 'net stations with the diversity demonstrated on this soundtrack (rap, R&B, rock, jazz, soul, alternative/college/whateverthefuck)? Under the new regime, most radio programmers will be shot. Those running stations which proudly advertise themselves as "rap-free" will be first in line.

Update 2: As long as we're talking about Me'Shell anyway. . .

And her Okayplayer-designed site is much better than her old one. Not as good as PuffyAmiYumi's, but I think them and their site are something of an acquired taste. . .

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Ok, maybe the one RHPS performance at The New Art in Champaign, but honest, that was it.

Changed the title again, after realizing I just don't have the business sense to pass for Nabiki:

Nabiki Tendo is the middle daughter of Soun Tendo. Approaching everything from a business perspective and a somewhat cynicist attitude, she lives to profit off of the situations she is thrust into, no matter how good or bad they seem to be for her or for those involved. She has, for example, taken advantage of Ranma's curse that changes him from boy to girl many times.

And for another thing, I don't have a cynicist attitude.

Hey, fuck you too, pal.

No, my favorite Ranma ½ character is the One True Fiancé, the cute fiancé, Ukyo Kuonji:

Years later, Ukyo found Ranma and tried to take her revenge. Because she was so embarrassed by Ranma's rejection, she had begun dressing as a boy so that she would never have to deal with the opposite sex again.

I mean, I like okonomiyaki, and the idea of attacking people with a giant spatula sounds perfectly reasonable to me. . .

Want to know more?

El padre de Ukyo tenía un carro de okonomiyaki (una especie de pizza) con el que se dedicaba a la cocina y venta ambulante; su pequeña hija le ayudaba. En aquellos tiempos, Ranma y Genma entrenaban por las montañas cerca de donde Ukyo y su padre tenían el carro. Ranma siempre bajaba al carro en busca de okonomiyaki gratis, y Ukyo se enfrentaba a él; Ranma llamaba "Ucchan" a Ukyo, y ni siquiera sabía que era una chica; de sus continuos combates surgió una bonita amistad.

Sin embargo, Genma y el padre de Ukyo acuerdan en secreto el noviazgo de ambos niños, teniendo como dote el carro de okonomiyaki, a pesar de que Ranma ya está prometido a Akane; así, Genma decide preguntar a Ranma para decidirse: "¿Qué te gusta más, Ukyo o el okonomiyaki?"; Ranma responde lo segundo, y Genma coge el carro de okonomiyaki y se larga con su hijo, abandonando a Ukyo.

Diez años después, Ukyo reaparece retando y venciendo a Genma, y acaba en la misma clase del Furinkan que Ranma y Akane, donde reta a Ranma tras recordar toda la historia del abandono; Ranma no sabe por qué Ukyo está tan vengativo tras todos estos años, pues desconoce que es una chica y que está prometido a ella. Tras un combate en el que Ukyo castiga severamente a Ranma, éste se recupera rápido e inicia un feroz contraataque, que culminará cuando Ranma coja a Ukyo del pecho... y note un bulto extraño; Ukyo se revuelve dándole una bofetada, y Ranma la mira incrédulo. Su primera reacción es mojarla con agua caliente (será por costumbre), pero el puñetazo que le da Ukyo le demuestra que no es un caso como el suyo.

Want to know more in English? See The Spatula web site.

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See, I ain't even know it was a Living Colour Yahoo! group. Do I not suck?

Sean Mario writes:

Living Colour is mentioned in the "Hear & Now" part (page 72) of the Music section in this week's Entertainment Weekly (vin diesel on cover). It basically mentions the reunion, the positive response at concerts, what they had been up to, the new record (with expected guests), the vivid reissue, and the bands like Rage and Limp that owe a lot to LC, etc.

Vin made the covers of Jet and Entertainment Weekly? Damn, gotta give props to the brother. Assuming, as Jet did, that he is one.

Meanwhile, Kegley L. Gore links to a San Jose Mercury News article headlined Voter study asserts that money talks in politics.

I am weak, and the temptation is too great.

i don't care about your dreams of peace
i don't care about your please lord please
i don't care about your africa
i don't care about your ancestors
'cause money talks and i'm listening to the sound
money talks and it's the only sound that counts
i don't care about your truth to tell
i don't care about your heaven - hell
i don't care about your rock and roll
i don't care about your blues, jazz or soul
'cause money talks and i'm listening to the sound
money talks and it's the only sound that counts
money talks and i'm listening to the sound
money talks and it's the only sound that makes the world go round
i used to be like you ... faithful and true
i used to lend my helping hand to my fellow man
than one day it all broke up
that's the day when i woke up
i don't care about your other man
i don't care about your master plan
i don't care about your free the land
all i care is cash in hand
'cause money talks and i'm listening
money talks
money talks
money talks

Money Talks, by Living Colour from the Biscuits ep.

Can't find the Living Colour article on EW's site (friggin' AOL Time-Warner), but they do have a semi-interactive interview with Chuck D.

Subscriber-only, natch.

Update: Weird coincidence of the day --

Living Colour Debut Expanded For Reissue

Living Colour's landmark 1988 album "Vivid" will be reissued in expanded form Sept. 3 via Epic/Sony Legacy, according to a label spokesperson. In addition to the Mick Jagger/Ed Stasium-produced set's original 11 tracks, the revised edition will host five rarities, including three that have never before been issued on CD.

[. . .] Rounding out the rarities are two remixes: "Funny Vibe (Funky Vibe Mix)" - originally issued as a 12" single and re-worked by Prince Paul and Bobby Simons with additional microphone work by Daddy-o and Public Enemy's Chuck D and Flavor Flav; plus "What's Your Favorite Color (LeBlanc Remix), which was remixed by Keith LeBlanc for a promotional 12" single. A 1988 concert performance of the band's breakthrough hit "Cult of Personality," closes out the reissue.

Emphasis added.

And very, very odd. I remember Chuck and Flavor on the track; does this version have more of 'em? Hopefully more Chuck, less, um, you know.

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Wondered why I couldn't reach Giles' site. . . Hie thee to QuoteUnquote.Nu for the sort of thoughtful blogging you're just not likely to find around here. Unless I remember to take my meds.

The site is dismal, and our domain payment fees come too late. The URI is senseless that should give us content. . .

Yep. Meds.

Posted by Aaron at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If I don't mention that the title comes from a Living Colour album, is that ok?

This issue only, two towering intellects of our time join forces! He's the interviewer! She's pimping product! Andrew Sullivan and Camille Paglia! They fight crime!

Paglia's lecture/product concerns multiculturalism. You can probably guess what her take is.

Multiculturalism is in theory a noble cause that aims to broaden perspective in the US, which because of its physical position between two oceans can tend toward the smugly isolationist. It is no coincidence that much of the primary impetus toward multiculturalism began in California, because of its Hispanic heritage and its pattern of immigration from Mexico, Latin America, and the Pacific rim.

This is the bit where the black people in the audience start making polite coughing noises.

Wait, "black people", "audience", "Camille Paglia lecture". Sorry.

In this first decade of the new millennium, I remain to be persuaded that college students are graduating even from the elite schools with deeper or broader knowledge. They are certainly well tutored in sentiment--that is, in how to project approved attitudes of liberal tolerance, though how well these will survive the test of adult life remains to be seen.

Most people would just say "political correctness". For her speaking fees, you get the fifty dollar words.

Mind you I agree with the notion that children find it easier to just regurgitate whichever political viewpoint their instructor is espousing, but that's hardly limited to multiculturalism. When the professor says Fortran is the greatest computer language ever designed, you shut the fuck up, write your programs, and wonder why the hell older people in a fast-changing field would be given a) tenure and b) an intro class to teach.

On the other hand, in one of my women's studies classes, one of the middle-class, suburban white girls who made up the majority of the students (yeah, go figure) ended a (perfectly correct) condemnation of rape camps in the former Yugoslavia with (paraphrasing) "We should do something."

I was PMSing that day, and it was my first semester after getting back from Gulf War I, so I looked around the room, noted that very few people in it were likely to either volunteer for the service or end up getting drafted if bad came to worse, so who the fuck did she mean by "we".

You could hear a pin drop, until the instructor said, very slowly, "Ooo-day, does anyone want to address that point?"

No one did. Go figure.

Think I got a B in the class, but I blew off studying for the final.

When people drone on and on about the oppresive, silencing forces of political correctness, they're usually just saying they're too chickenshit to speak up and possibly take their lumps for doing so.

Or that they want to use racial slurs and resent having this opportunity, which their ancestors took for granted, removed from their Invisible Knapsack. Aww, pole sana.

Posted by Aaron at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I have been given to understand that this site is boring, and that I merely

tick off insults and lob baseless accusations -- which you commingle with tangentially related song lyrics, feigned, world-weary indifference, and snippets of whatever book you've be [sic] reading that you think might impress your site visitors.

Yes, pointing out the uninflected copula means there's a serious spelling or grammar error coming up soon. It's how the universe maintains balance.

Well, no more of that sort of thing. From here on out, it's nothing but Buffy quotes, anime, manga, Sanrio and San-X characters, and talking about my Neopet (speaking of which, I earned 200 Neopoints for referrals. In your face, Jessica Linker!).

(Then again, she probably has seventy-quindrillion points, and her Neopet can kick mine's neglected ass, so perhaps I should refrain from doing the "We're Superior" dance. . .)

What? Nobody complained about that, so those topics must be ok, right?

Oh, and breast cancer and female genital mutilation, but I really don't have much to add on either subject. Despite a teenager dying of the latter in Sierra Leone on Monday.

Or does dismissing deaths count as "feigned, world-weary indifference"?

Best to ignore the issue altogether, like most people. Remind me to edit that reference out later.

Posted by Aaron at 9:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

See, here's my problem.

White Christian women in today's society face a unique problem. They are barraged with feminist organizations on the left which encourage abortion, racemixing, and lesbianism. The so-called spokeswomen for these organizations seldom have any day to day experience with raising families, trying to make ends meet, or living a moral lifestyle.

To me, this just doesn't sound that different from what the conservatives and libertarians are saying.

Oh, they soften the rhetoric, but they're generally against abortion (especially if their tax money is even indirectly involved), they delight in ancient jokes about feminists being lesbians, and their commentary about race, well, the less said, the better.

Plus, there's that whole "limousine liberal" thing, and how out-of-touch they're meant to be with real 'mercans or hard-hats or blue states or whatever the term of the moment is.

The only difference, really, is replacing blatant anti-Semitism with blatant anti-Arab/Muslim prejudice.

These attitudes regarding women were the first of many bad influences Judaism has had on White European and American civilization. For example, black men received the right to vote before white women. Even today white women are put at the same level as the non-whites, in civil "wrongs" legislation, such as Affirmative Action programs. The same Jewish teachings in the churches which promotes race mixing, which is now almost condoning homosexuality, also has sought to keep white women from exercising their intelligent perception of the evils of society.

No, I'm not quite certain what they were getting at there, either. It's the jump from race mixing to homosexuality that loses me. Bit like the people who insist on conflating homosexuality and bestiality; you want to ask what planet they're from, but worry about getting too close, in case they suddenly turn violent.

The best bit is the last paragraph, though.

There are still millions of white women who oppose secular humanism, who oppose abortion, who oppose homosexuality, who oppose the concepts of globalism, who oppose the immoral education their children are receiving, who oppose the confiscation of the 2nd Amendment, who oppose the heavy tax burden due to ghetto welfare programs, who oppose the filth coming out of Hollywood and the entertainment industry and who oppose the anti-white propaganda forced upon them day after day. We need strong, intelligent, God fearing white women who won't take a back seat to the corruption which exists today. We need white women to stand up and be the heroines God intended them to be.

Warblogger manifesto, it is, if you take out the scary "white women" stuff.

Never said where I was pulling this from, did I?

The Dilemma White Women Face in Today's Society, from your friends at the Women of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

Dear Sisters,

White women have been used as pawns for the liberal-Marxist establishment for too long. It is time we begin to seriously consider the direction our beloved America is taking. The media attempts to portray the majority of women as being pro-abortion, pro-homosexuality, pro-euthanasia, pro-globalism, and pro-immigration. We know this is not true.

They ridicule and demean our white brothers trying to rid them of their natural sense of protection. They fabricate statistics meant to cause women to fear men and promote hostility between the sexes.

Again, take out the explicit references to white people, and suddenly this all sounds quite familiar.

By the bye, Indepundit has a post up describing the large financial donations made by sand niggers (or those with sand nigger-sounding names) to arch-villain Cynthia McKinney on 9/11.

I only mention that here to avoid creating an entirely new entry. There is no relationship whatsoever between these two topics.

Posted by Aaron at 11:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Women of Wonder is a (currently) two-volume anthology series collecting science-fiction stories by women, including Octavia Butler, Storm Constantine, and Suzy McKee Charnas, among many others.

A volume like this can't hope to be all-inclusive, so another of my favorite authors, Mary Soon Lee, doesn't have a story in the book. Well, maybe the next volume. . .

In the meantime, you can buy one or two of her stories (cheap!) at Fictionwise eBooks. Or you might be able to find them free if you look, but seeing as the most expensive one is 69 cents, and you can get the lot for less than $11, there's hardly much point expending the effort.

There's also an excerpt from Kathleen Ann Goonan's latest novel, Light Music, at The Infinite Matrix. This is another of those sites I have the odd feeling I should like more than I actually do; it's home to Bruce Sterling's weblog, for a start.

Ah well, guess I should savagely attack it for not being what I want it to be.

Oh, that's right. I'm not a conservative.

Posted by Aaron at 10:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So, on another blog in a completely unrelated discussion, brave Jeff G. of Protein Wisdom attacks me and Jason for no particular reason:

And [Aaron has] yet to post a single point that challenges the way I think. He drops insults and out of context song lyrics into the comments box and leaves. He's not interested in discussing anything -- just in trying to cast people as caricatures in order to fit them into ready-made boxes.

That you hang on his every word is your own business, Jason. Just please don't mischaracterize my response to him.

Ahem.

Jeff, you humorless, clueless, funkless, dickless, racist, pretentious, pathetic little shit, if you have anything to say to me, please do so here, rather than filling someone else's site with your delusional blather.

I assure you, the fact that you and Mister Charlie dislike me so intently only serves to convince me that I'm doing something right.

I also find your projection amusing, and your constant cries for others to stop "mischaracterizing" your views laughable.

Now either shut up talking about me, or put your money where your fucking mouth is and bring it, dickhead.

Thank you so very much.

And, like, addendum: I'm not actually angry at the twat, only the fact that he'd rather make snide comments on his site, or spew on someone else's, rather than showing the testicular fortitude to speak to me directly. I truly doubt he will do so now, either.

Also, her perspective is a well-written, elegantly-designed site, and hardly deserving of his venomous presence. I'm not sorry I found the place, but do wish it had been under better circumstances.

Posted by Aaron at 10:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

I tend to forget that Women's Enews runs Nicole Hollander's comic strip Sylvia, which is obviously the only reason I'd mention their site. I'm certainly not reading any of their articles. Everyone knows this is a post-feminist, post-apocalyptic, Post Super Sugar Crisp world.

Always forget about Jump Start, too, and end up reading weeks at a time. Unlike Boondocks, I don't feel the need to warn people that it may not be for everyone. Curtis, which I'm not even linking, isn't for anyone. No clue why that abomination still exists. It must have fans, but gods help them if I ever meet any.

Good thing there's an official Dykes to Watch Out For site. Otherwise, I'd try to read it at PlanetOut, and end up finding Margaret Cho writing on fag haggery, and who wants to see that?

For a start, it's not comic strip related, and I'd almost managed a cohesive entry for once. . .

I also forget the Funny Paper column in Baltimore City Paper. They read the strips, so you don't have to!

9-11 IS STILL A JOKE DEP'T.: The wearying take-off-your-shoes-for-the-metal-detector routine pops up in both Wednesday's Beetle Bailey and Sunday's Blondie. Next time, just do another golf gag, fellas.

As with pretty much everything else, Sturgeon's Law most defintely applies to comic strips.

Posted by Aaron at 5:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Kathy Wilson, who unlike me actually is Your Negro Tour Guide, wrote in last week's Citybeat about the cancelled Cincinnati Festival:

There hasn't been a lapse in a music festival -- Jazz, then R&B -- in 40 years. During that time, changing tastes in a changing market and the one-two punch of apathetic fans and musicians greatly altered the festival Santangelo's brother helped to establish.

And then there's race and class, that tired Cincinnati sing-along. This is about more than a temporarily postponed Easter Parade of clothes, hair and cars, all played out to the strains of perennial Cincinnati favorites, Frankie Beverly & Maze. It's about how Cincinnati evolved from a landmark for Jazz and a port where giants of the day dropped anchor to being very nearly a Jazz ghost town.

As the article goes on to mention, the cancellation is due in part to the ongoing boycott, which involves mud people getting killed by police or something. Nothing you need concern yourself with.

Because I have a damaged brain, the article reminded me that I saw a copy of Kathleen Ann Goonan's debut novel Queen City Jazz (the first chapter of which you can read here) at the used bookstore a few days back, along with a few Melissa Scott books. Not only am I racist in thinking that police might possibly be a bit trigger-happy when dealing with the lesser races, I'm also sexist and usually think SF by women is better than the stuff by men. I think the preference has to do with character development. Women actually do it.

And, um, no one is confused as to why the article would remind me of the book, right? Or at least no one following the links?

Lastly, before you get your hopes up, in the listings for the Greater Cincinnati Jazz & Heritage Festival, Over the Rhine refers to the neighborhood, not the band, although the visitors from the Netherlands (you frighten me, by the way) can catch the band later this month, before they head to England, Italy, Ireland, Wales (poor bastards) and Chicago.

Yes, I'm sure they'd like to talk to the person responsible for lining up those dates, too. . .

That was even more disjointed than normal. Note to self: get sleep.

Posted by Aaron at 4:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Bounced from a link to an old bell hooks article on Misogyny, gangsta rap, and The Piano on the Skate Jesus Delphi Forum (don't ask. Just don't.) to Jonathan Sterne's piece Scratch Me, and I Bleed Champaign: Geography, Poverty and Politics in the Heart of East Central Illinois.

Champaign is the larger of the two towns, originally growing up around a railroad station established just to the west of Urbana in the 1850s. Politically, it's a much more conservative town, both in its local ordinances and in its appearance. Downtown business interests, as represented by the Champaign Chamber of Commerce, essentially control the city council. Of the two towns, Champaign takes in a disproportionate amount of retail business. In all, Champaign operates along a suburban logic: outside the 'historic' downtown, strip malls, service industries and subdivisions organize the town's sociology and political culture. Complementing the retail provisions are new and expensive housing developments on the southwest and west sides of town.

Established in 1837, Urbana is one of the oldest cities in Illinois, and for some years was actually larger than Chicago (which is not to say it was ever very big!). Urbana is also the county seat, so it supports a healthy civil service bureaucracy. In fact, its status as a county seat has probably enabled it to escape some of the dominance of local businesses manifested in Champaign. Sales taxes are a little higher, local ordinances are a little more liberal, but Urbana's most defining feature is its 'historic' nature.

Guess which one I lived in? No, go on. Give you a hint: the one with Strawberry Fields in it.

But a distinguishing feature of both towns, one that doesn't seem to come up much in the promotional literature, is the durable segregation of a significant number of their residents. According to the 1990 Census, roughly 13,000 out of just under 100,000 Urbana-Champaign residents are black. African-Americans, while clearly a minority in town, comprise a sizable segment of the population -- and the largest 'minority.' Yet, despite a visible presence, the legacy of segregation remains -- the majority of black residents live in a concentrated section on the northern end of town. Other kinds of poverty are similarly segregated -- there are several trailer parks on the outskirts of town.

Volunteered as a voter registrar for the NAACP back in Shampoo-Banana (which caused Colson's head to go 'splody, as I dropped this little detail after he'd ranted about how the evilnastybad negroes were running anti-Bush ads, and should have their nonprofit status revoked). There are housing projects, grim as such things usually are (ever been to Altgeld Gardens? And you're on the 'net? Wow. Congratulations.), but at the one I visited, and have forgotten the name of, the Federally-mandated older white woman's husband actually still lived with her.

All black neighborhoods have at least one older white woman, who'd married a black guy back when such things got you disowned, and who stayed in the community after her husband left her/died/was killed. Really, there's a law on the books requiring this. It's why we're always so rude to warblogger-types who act like mixed relationships/marriages are something new under the sun. And threaten the ones who openly discuss "doing the rainbow" with instant death. But that's a rant for another day. . .

The flow of African-Americans into the county was slow but steady at first. The 1850 census listed 2 'free coloreds' in the county. By 1860, there were 41 blacks in the cities; by 1870, the population had grown to 163; and by 1880, that number grew to 462. Initially, this population was not clearly limited to one area: an 1878 survey shows black residents scattered throughout the towns. But by 1904, African-American residents were clearly concentrated in a northern part of town, bisected by the border between Urbana and Champaign.

Conditions in town were certainly better than in the southern United States, but not much better. Many blacks found employment through the University's Fraternity/Sorority system, and other low-paying service jobs. There was little industry in either town, and those higher paying jobs went mostly to whites. Thus, low rents attracted black residents to the northern part of town, and explicit segregation policies kept them there.

Apropos of nothing except yesterday's definition of Mister Charlie, Miss Debbie lives in the sorority house, and has no clue how much the black women who clean up after her filthy self hate her fucking guts.

There's more in the article, but it fails to mention that back in the day, black students at the University of Illinois had to live off-campus, with the townies, because the dorms didn't allow colored residents.

There's also a few old yearbooks which include the campus chapter of the KKK.

Nothing is served by pretending things haven't changed -- I lived in the dorms for a year and a half before getting shipped off to Gulf War I, f'r instance -- but pretending none of this happened, or that it had no impact on the present, isn't doing anyone any good either.

No, I take that back. It helps the conservatives feel better about themselves. And self-esteem is much more important that actual education, after all.

Posted by Aaron at 3:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

This story is so last month, but if Mercury News finds it noteworthy -- and they seem to be the only ones who do -- who am I to say different?

Teen in videotaped police beating says he did not provoke officers

A black teen-ager who was punched and slammed onto a police car by a white police officer during a videotaped arrest told grand jurors he did not provoke the confrontation, according to court papers.

Donovan Jackson, 16, testified earlier this month that he was beaten and choked by officers until he lost consciousness. His statements are in a 450-page transcript of grand jury proceedings unsealed Tuesday by Superior Court Judge David Wesley.

[. . .] Morse, 24, has pleaded innocent to assault, saying he punched Jackson after the teen-ager grabbed his testicles. Morse's partner, Officer Bijan Darvish, 25, pleaded innocent to filing a false police report. Both were placed on leave and face up to three years in prison if convicted.

The transcripts show that two sheriff's deputies who made the initial traffic stop were granted immunity in exchange for their testimony.

More, as they say, in the link.

I like how the more responsibility you have in the public or private sector, the more likely you are to be granted immunity when it looks like you broke the law, or failed to intervene while someone else did so on your watch. This must be that personal responsibility thing the conservatives are always lecturing about.

Rogue cop? Immunity. Selling arms to Iran? Immunity. Insider trading and massive fraud? Immunity. Jaywalking?

Yes, many of us who live in New York City did think Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was joking when he said he was cracking down on jaywalking. It was something Humphrey Bogart as a private eye might have said sarcastically to a homicide lieutenant whose guff he did not intend to take ("That's real good, flatfoot, but isn't it about time for you to go out and arrest another nun for jaywalking?"). But then a law student crossing Sixth Avenue got a $50 jaywalking ticket. What we had forgotten was that Mayor Giuliani is never joking.

Well, see, if you crack down on minor little things, overall crime goes down.

Major stuff need not concern you, citizen. Well, except for the televised hearings, when the senators and congressmen get to grandstand for the folks back home.

I'm figuring the cops don't do day one of jail time. Anyone want to bet against me?

Posted by Aaron at 2:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)