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Many thanks to Rahael -- not sure if you'd like your real name used -- for sending the "Once More, With Feeling" soundtrack.
That's one cd that shouldn't cause the other person in the car to wince during tomorrow's drive to Chicago.
Speaking of which, updates may get nonexistent again. Seeing as I shouldn't even be writing this one, or should at least pack the monitor instead of running the laptop through it. . .
From Newsday.com (well, it's an AP article, but close enough), Who Will Punish Them?
Jurisdictions jockey for right to prosecute sniper suspectsOfficials continued to debate which jurisdiction would get first crack at sniper suspects John Allen Muhammad, 41, and John Lee Malvo, 17. They were to be charged today in Virginia, where three of the killings took place. The suspects already face multiple murder charges in Maryland and murder charges in Alabama unrelated to the sniper shootings. They also could be charged with federal extortion and murder counts that could bring the death penalty.
"Wherever the case is strongest, with the stiffest penalties, that's where they need to go," said Douglas Duncan, the top elected official in Montgomery County, where the rampage began Oct. 2 and where six people were slain.
[. . .] Maryland "comes in dead last" in terms of the strength of its law on the death penalty, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Virginia and Alabama may be more likely than Maryland to carry out executions. Maryland has put just three people to death, and all executions have been suspended under a moratorium imposed by Gov. Parris Glendening.
Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore, speaking on "Fox News Sunday," said his state would be best positioned to prosecute because it can more easily apply the death penalty.
"You know, we have the death penalty for both parties," he said. "We can try this juvenile as an adult and subject him to the death penalty, and we can move quickly."
Emphasis added here and there.
You have to appreciate the undisguised bloodthirst.
Well, maybe appreciate isn't the right word.
No mention of why Maryland has a moratorium.
The state of Maryland declared a temporary death penalty moratorium on Thursday, citing "reasonable questions" about the integrity of capital punishment in the state and across the United States.[. . .] Glendening, who supports the death penalty for especially heinous crimes, had been under pressure to halt executions until he receives a study that is due to be completed in September by a researcher at the University of Maryland.
[Gov. Parris] Glendening said he would not lift the moratorium until the study is completed and reviewed by the state legislature, which he estimated would be in about a year.
"I continue to believe that there are certain crimes that are so brutal and so vile that they call for society to impose the ultimate punishment," Glendening, a Democrat, said in issuing a stay of execution for convicted killer Wesley Eugene Baker, who was due to die by lethal injection next week.
"However, reasonable questions have been raised in Maryland and across the country about the application of the death penalty," the governor added.
Probably because it would merely confuse the issue.
Showing enthusiasm for executing a juvenile probably ain't winning us points in the U.N., either. At least, not with the folks we're supposed to be building a coalition with. Luckily, we don't give a fuck what the rest of the world thinks of our internal affairs.
We can meddle in theirs all we want, though. Convenient, no?
Well, at least the states are close enough together that surviving family members can just drive to the execution(s), instead of having to just watch it on closed-circuit, like the Oklahoma City people did with McVeigh. Something else that helped win friends and influence people worldwide. . .
with astrologers. Really. Visit your local university and find out for yourself.
Is today's horoscope-gag Boondocks a repeat? It looks familiar, except for Caesar's hair. . .
My Ghettoscope, courtesy of Bean Soup Times, is:
Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan 19)
Stay alert for the first signs of damage. Some would call you a pessimist, but you prefer to think of your philosophy as informed realism. If Pookie asks you where you are going tonight, then the caper is up. Maybe you should consider a life without the hook up at the freights.
Ok then.
My younger sister's reads:
Cancer (June 22-July 22)
Hide from all ignorant people. You need a long bath instead of a quick shower. Even though you find it disgusting to sit there in your own dirt, the heat will do your pores some good.
Strange. I was going to visit her in a few days, but she hasn't called me back yet. . .
Update: I ain't naming no names.
Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20)
Tonight, you are not just symbolized by the fish, but you will be sleeping with the fishes if you don’t stop disrespecting your mother. She brought you in this world.
The guilty know who they are.
Dropped by InstaPundit, evidently because my brain is still sitting somewhere outside the South Beloit toll plaza, and found a link to Brothers Judd Blog:
Maybe Harry Belafonte was more right than we all realize: the pampered and preferred house slaves are all in the GOP. The Democrats certainly treat their blacks like field hands--they're happy to work them hard, but don't want to see them loitering around the big house. How else explain that next Tuesday the Democrats will likely hold the Senate or even pick up a couple seats, almost exclusively because blacks vote the Democrat line at a 90% clip, yet given two sure thing Senate seats--in MN and NJ--and capable black candidates, the Party instead turned to two white guys in their 70s, leaving the Senate the most segregated public space in America?Meanwhile, black Republicans are given those mere token spots on the United States Supreme Court and running America's foreign affairs. What suckers...
Ok, anyone out there think Colin Powell is "running America's foreign affairs?" Even the lurking right-wingers?
No?
Moving on, can anyone come up with an opinion or decision by Clarence Thomas which indicates that the man deserves to be sitting on the Supreme Court? Some brilliant piece of prose or reasoning? Some deviation from the party line showing he wouldn't save time and trouble by showing Scalia how to forge his signature?
No?
See, that's what I'd forgotten, what with not having 'net access and hanging out with intelligent, funny and all-around cool people.
That there are some impressively stupid, racially insensitive morons out there.
Clearly, not seeing Little Green Footballs for the past few days contributed greatly to this oversight on my part.
So now I go Bronco. Or Caprice. Remind me to tell you my former locktician's theory about black men who drive white cars one day.
George touched on the D.C. sniper thing a few days back. Oliver has mentioned it a few times, too. Could lie and say I wish I had something to add, but I don't. There's the irony of all of us buying the line that it had to be a crazed white guy, but there's only so much sarcastic (supposed) humor to be wrung from multiple deaths.
Unless it's slow car chase white Bronco jokes, of course.
Christopher Priest mentioned losing some respect for David Letterman when Dave finally gave in and started doing OJ jokes along with the rest of the cool kids.
Letterman, sadly, succumbed to OJ jokes after first taking the high ground, shutting guest Howard Stern down with the withering disclaimer, "Double murders just don't crack me up the way they used to." Thunderous and sustained applause. Letterman forced Stern to keep his coat closed, to cover a Simpson parody tee-shirt, and Letterman has not, to my knowledge, ever re-run that segment. I wish he'd stuck to his guns, letting Leno be the jerk, but after a few test shots across the bow, Dave was fully in the Simpson gag reel, though still not to the gutter level of Leno.
Rarely watch Letterman, Leno or Conan, and I don't have a tv at the moment -- anyone want to tape "Angel" for me tonight? I'll be your friend -- so I gots no clue if they've been doing jokes about the sniper lately.
Don't especially want to find out, to be honest. I'm still catching up on reading various sites. There could be something utterly hilarious out there, and any pointers or suggestions are welcome.
Just not seeing anything funny about people dying right now.
Don't fly with Democratic incumbent Senators who are up for re-election.
U. S. Senator Paul Wellstone, running in a very tough campaign for reelection for a third term, was killed with his wife Sheila, his daughter Marcia and three staff aides when their plane crashed in a wooded area, two miles short of a runway on Friday, Oct. 25, in Minnesota. Today, Americans have lost not just a fine Senator but a passionate voice for justice and peace. Progressives across the land are in shock as the person many think of as the conscience of the Senate is gone.
The Kansas City Star mentioned that we've seen this movie before.
The accident that killed Sen. Paul Wellstone, a Minnesota Democrat, members of his family and three of his staff on Friday chilled political figures from Missouri, coming as it did almost exactly two years after the death of Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan.Sen. Jean Carnahan, the Missouri Democrat who now finds herself in a tough campaign against Republican Jim Talent to keep the seat she was appointed to after her husband's posthumous election, canceled an afternoon campaign event out of respect for Wellstone.
I'm confident the Republicans wouldn't pull the exact same shit twice. I wouldn't put murdering opponents past them, but it's nice to think they'd be a bit more creative in going about it.
NPR just mentioned former vice-president Walter Mondale as a candidate to take over for the late Senator Wellstone, but put it in terms of running against Republican Norm Coleman. The Green and Independence party candidates don't exist, apparently.
Heard they suspended campaigning on Friday, too. Guess after a few days of silence, they fell off the radar completely.
Moving.
Update schedule may get weird. Or nonexistent. Or something.
Management apologizes for the inconvenience.
Suppose I should pretend to care about this.
Plastic.com | Uncle Colin's Cabin?:
Singer and former Civil Rights activist Harry Belafonte recently kicked up a storm when he made some pretty scathing remarks about Secretary of State, Colin Powell's place in the Bush cabinet, comparing him to a 'house slave'.'Colin Powell's committed to come into the house of the master. When Colin Powell dares to suggest something other than what the master wants to hear, he will be turned back out to pasture.'Powell's response was dignified and diplomatic:'If Harry had wanted to attack my politics, that was fine. If he wanted to attack a particular position I hold, that was fine,' Powell said. 'But to use a slave reference, I think, is unfortunate and is a throwback to another time and another place that I wish Harry had thought twice about using.'"Even as a black man completely dissatisfied with the Bush administrations politics I feel as though Belafonte (and others) miss the point. That Powell can be a role model to African American youth in this country by holding the highest position ever held by a black man and the fact that his voice does get heard in the cabinet means that the world is probably a better, more level headed place with Powell in the cabinet."
Or the MetaFilter front page post on the same pressing issue currently confronting our nation:
There are those slaves who lived on the plantation, and there were those slaves who lived in the house... Colin Powell was permitted to come into the house. Harry Belafonte starts out with a flame but then shows himself to be a more eloquent and tenacious critic of Bush policies than any Democrat on the scene. What does it tell us about the state of our two-party system that we have to rely on Rat Pack era crooners to speak out like this in public?
Or, you know, there's yesterday's Boondocks. Which at least has the benefit of being funny and not claiming to be profound. Normally I pull excrutiatingly stupid posts out of Plastic or MeFi discussions that touch on race, but those. . . wouldn't know where to begin, really.
On the other hand, at least they're not festering cesspools of outright hatred like Charles Johnson's Little Green Footballs.
Tom Tomorrow was also a bit puzzled by that quote from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about tweaking the language of the Boondocks strip.
Luckily, one of his readers tried something utterly unprecedented.
Update from reader Dwight Brown:
After reading the entry in your weblog concerning the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution's "tweaking" of "Boondocks", I read the original
article and sent an e-mail asking for specifics on the circumstances of the
"tweaking." I also asked if Mr. McGruder knew of the change. Here is the
response I received:From: "Inside"
To: "Dwight Brown"
RE: Tweaking?
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 11:52:45 -0400We edited out a vulgarity and replaced it with dashes so that the meaning
would be clear but without the word itself. Yes, Mr. McGruder knows
Vulgarity?
Ok, I'm drawing a blank on that one. Unless you count "dang."
Might have been a "hell" in one strip. . .
Anyone got any ideas? Since it's much more fun to speculate wildly than for me to email the editor and ask what, specifically, got changed?
From the registration-required New York Times:
Trump Draws Criticism for Ad He Ran After Jogger AttackSome called him a racist. Supporters of the Central Park defendants have demanded an apology.
One does not appear to be forthcoming.
"No," Mr. Trump said yesterday. "They confessed. Now they say they didn't do it. Who am I supposed to believe?"
[. . .] In 1989, Mr. Trump paused in building his real estate empire to run the 600-word ad in The New York Times, The Daily News, The New York Post and New York Newsday, at a total cost of $85,000, under the boldfaced heading, "Bring Back the Death Penalty. Bring Back Our Police!"
In the ad, Mr. Trump said Mayor Edward I. Koch had stated "that hate and rancor should be removed from our hearts," to which Mr. Trump replied: "I do not think so. I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes." At the time, the attack victim was still in a coma.
The ad does not name any defendant, instead referring collectively to "roving bands of wild criminals."
Hatred. Suffering. Death.
Always productive responses.
Well, I got the dreads done at Hair Is, because they desperately needed it. The former owner, and my old stylist, has transcended the actual "working with hair" plane and gone on to teach others, so poor Belinda had to work with the rat's nest. I don't think I left her a big enough tip.
Didn't get to the Minnesota Children's Museum, or rather didn't try very hard. Which is good, since they close at 5 most days, except Thursdays and Mondays. It's open until 9 on the former, and not at all on the latter. Except Memorial Day through Labor Day, when. . . as you can see, this was all much to complex to bother with.
The good thing is, the Sesame Street exhibit, which looks interesting, will be around until mid-January of next year.
The bad thing is, Elmo is featured, probably in a prominent way.
Can't abide by characters they added after I stopped watching the show. I'm still not thrilled with anyone other than Big Bird knowing that Mister Snuffleupagus isn't imaginary.
Oh, and apparently my mutant band-killing powers have increased to effect blogs as well.
This must be to balance the mutant annoying-people ability, which has narrowed down to just VASpider lately. Weird.
I take no responsibility for the Queer Theory stuff, though. I know nothing of the subject, and think the Butlerian Jihad was something in one of the Dune novels.
Right, clothes and dishes to wash and pack, kick-ass Aretha to listen to, and probably a lack of updates today again.
Er, except this update. From the Pop Matters review of The Queen in Waiting: The Columbia Years (1960-1965):
Franklin led a rather schizophrenic artistic career during her days at Columbia, in large part, because the label and her various producers weren't quite sure what to do with her gifts. This was particularly the case in an era when black and women artists were so easily pigeonholed. Franklin's producers literally struggled to see if Franklin was going to be the next Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington or even Bessie Smith, while also being conscious of some of her contemporaries like Nancy Wilson and Dionne Warwick. None of these concerns ever translated into real commercial success while Franklin was with the label, though the work she did with Clyde Otis towards the end of her tenure consistently churned out "turntable hits" -- those songs that rarely charted high, but where known to rock a house party from time to time. Tracks like "Runnin' out of Fools" (Franklin's biggest hit for the label), "Cry Like a Baby" (penned by a young Ashford and Simpson) and her covers of "Walk on By" (Dionne Warwick), "Mockingbird" (Inez Fox), and "You'll Lose a Good Thing (Barbara Lynn) are examples of such songs.
Though Franklin has often been referred to as a "great" singer, much of her reputation has been generated by the power that she exudes as a singer. Though she has recorded some striking ballads and mid-temp tracks ("Natural Woman" and "Giving Him Something He Can Feel" come immediately to mind), Franklin rarely gets credit for her stunning interpretations of ballads. The real highlights of The Queen in Waiting are Franklin's ballads, songs that likely got lost in the initial shuffle to get Franklin some hit records at Columbia. Franklin is simply stunning on tracks like "Just for a Thrill," "Skylark" (the Otis produced alternative version is simply brilliant), "God Bless the Child", and "Blue Holiday". The same can be said for Franklin's version of Otis's "Take a Look" (inexplicably left off the earlier collection Jazz to Soul, which The Queen in Waiting replaces) that remains one of Franklin's best performances.
I'm washing the dishes very quietly.
But when someone realizes you'd be interested in a paper titled "Reproduction of Gender Hierarchy in the Case of Amateur All-Girl Rock bands in Finland," I'm thinking that's an indication you're revealing way too much about yourself to the world.
And this is what I told the (purportedly) Good Twin yesterday when he sent the link.
Mavis Bayton (1993) who has studied female rock musicians in England argues that feminism had had a great impact on these women and encouraged them to play rock. In my study the girls had a negative attitude towards feminism. Still, they took equality between the sexes for granted, but they did not want to stress their gender. By not wanting to talk or think about gender they tried to solve what was the major problem for them: their gender, the difficulty of mixing female gender and rock music. Even though it seemed to be easy and unproblematic for the girls to become rockers, there still was something wrong.The concept of the sex-gender system refers to principles of organizing relationships between the sexes in a given culture. According to the Swedish historian Yvonne Hirdman (1990), the basic principles of the Western sex-gender system are the logic of the separation of the sexes (dichotomy) and the logic of the male norm (hierarchy).
By dichotomy I refer to all the various practices of separating the sexes, for example division of labour and differences in clothing. Gender hierarchy sets men as the norm and treats women as exceptions of the norm and also places a higher value on the male gender.
I mean, yes, I followed the link, but still. . .
The paper does explicitly mention something I vaguely babbled about yesterday:
However, dichotomy between the sexes did not vanish completely since there seemed to be a tendency to form same-sex bands instead of mixed bands. There are no statistics which tell us the exact numbers of all-male, all-female and mixed rock bands. All I have is what the girls told me about their opinions on mixed bands and some literature on boys in bands. Many girls said they are also ready to play with boys in the future, if necessary. But still none of them actively sought male musicians to play with or preferred mixed bands to all-girl ones. They were quite happy to play with girls. It is also quite reasonable to believe that boys often prefer their own sex. This suggests that there might be a tendency to form same-sex bands. Thus, the segregation of the sexes does not vanish completely but, to some extent, adapts a new position. Girl musicians break the old dichotomy by starting to play rock but the segregation is still maintained because both sexes, more or less, tend to prefer their own sex.
But we're talking Finland here. If you want to go all Sapir-Whorf and talk language,
People often mistakenly assume that languages spoken in neighbouring countries are closely related. For this reason they ask questions like 'Is Finnish like Swedish?' or 'Does everyone in Finland speak Russian?' A simple answer to both questions is 'No.' Swedish - although one of the two official languages of Finland - and Russian belong to the Indo-European group of languages while Finnish is one of the Finno-Ugrian languages. The latter group also includes Hungarian, Estonian, Lapp and several lesser known languages spoken in Russia. The Finno-Ugrian languages share enough common lexical and grammatical features to prove a common origin. Although these languages have developed separately for thousands of years, it can be seen that common features include for instance:1) absence of gender (the same Finnish pronoun hän denotes both he and she),
2) absence of articles (a and the in English),
3) long words due to the structure of the language,
4) numerous grammatical cases,
5) personal possession expressed with suffixes,
6) postpositions in addition to prepositions, and
7) no equivalent of the verb to have.
I'm not sure any conclusions reached in the paper apply to English-speaking. . .
I'm doing it again, ain't I
Ok. Valuable lesson yesterday. When I'm tired and grumpy, I get all intellectual. Or what passes for intellectual with me, anyway.
Don't worry, skimming it I'm not sure what the hell I was talking about either.
Over at Bellona Times, Ray Davis writes an insightful but less academia-flavored take on the previous season of Buffy:
In a television series, we can be sure that the regulars will return, no matter how much crap they're dragged through, and we can be sure that they'll stay together, no matter how dreadfully they may have behaved towards each other.
Which quote isn't particularly representative, or much of an indication of what the entry is about. But I didn't want to just say, "This is cool, click the link and read it."
Wait, can I do that?
Jim Romenesko's Media News links to an article in USA Today, of all places, on how 'Boondocks' comic echoes African-American thoughts:
As much as it might pain some to hear this, the barbs offered up by Freeman -- McGruder's black everyman -- closely track the thinking of a broad cross section of African-Americans. That's a truth many of the strip's critics avoid as assiduously as a stroll through an inner-city neighborhood.McGruder's comic strip is an unwavering voice of black consciousness. He is as much the nemesis of the black leaders he believes have gone astray as he is of whites he thinks have undermined the interests of African-Americans.
That makes him a very dangerous black man.
There was also a piece in the Chicago Tribune a few days back.
And to a certain category of readers, [McGruder] has become like a torturer's needles shoved under their fingernails--a persistent source of pain and anger and outrage. In the just-over two years that I have been the Tribune's public editor, rarely has a week gone by without at least one complaint about "The Boondocks." Invariably the complaints are from white readers; I can't recall a single one from someone who said he was black.
Ok, guess they just stopped complaining before he took over. Or stopped reading the strip. Or something, because I'm not buying that clear a racial breakdown on complaints.
Found another mention doing a Google search for that Trib column (which I'd originally seen linked yesterday at, um, Anil Dash's maybe?), from the Atlanta Journal Constitution:
I'm not a "Boondocks" fan. But I am a fan of the First Amendment, which means McGruder has the right to make fun of the president of the United States and to make my life complicated by doing so, which he does -- often.The controversy over this particular strip was compounded by its running in the Sunday comics pages, which are printed in advance and often are not read by news editors before being distributed. (During the week, "The Boondocks" runs inside the Living section, and editors have, in the past, tweaked its language before publication.)
Which is. . . interesting. I didn't know they could do that, and would like to see some examples.
On second thought, I probably wouldn't.
Right, checked, the Trib column was linked where I thought it was. Also followed a link to Identity Theory because I am Sarah Vowell's bitch.
That last link is to an interview with her. It's cool. Click the link and read it.
Was at some trendy bar Friday night -- damned if I can remember the name, it's in the same mall as St. Anthony Main theater -- in a (blech) mixed-race, mixed-gender group of people.
Looked over at another table at one point, and one of the trendy white male patrons was openly staring at us in what looked like disgust.
I went back to paying attention to our conversation.
There was a time I would have had some sort of reaction to that, but after living in Minnesota for a while, I've grown quite accustomed to it.
Another very good reason to get the fuck out.
Speaking of annoying trendy white males in Minnesota, Rob Nelson writes in this week's City Pages:
Beyond the PaleIn other words: Let me describe here what some people you might never have heard of had to say about something related to what only a small portion of you might care to identify as White Male Hegemony. But first I have to tell you: Rosie Perez's backside is fine.
And now the main attraction: her brain. "When we talk about the history of Latin people in the media," says Perez to a half-full house of film enthusiasts at Lincoln Center, "we see that [racist representation] isn't new. There was this Latin screen star, Lupe Vélez, who was Mexican; she crossed over because she starred with Gary Cooper [in 1929's Wolf Song]. She was called the 'Mexican Spitfire.' And they asked her to dance in everything: love stories, Westerns, whatever--she'd break into dance. Back then, they didn't call it 'The Latin Explosion,' but it was basically the same thing. What followed for her was a series of films where she played oversexualized women--caricatures. Unless [a woman of color] was screwing a white guy in Hollywood, she didn't have a chance. A lot hasn't changed."
It's not a bad article, really. Just very clearly not meant for me.
It covers a panel discussion on race at the New York Film Festival, with Rosie Perez, Warrington Hudlin and Michael Eric Dyson, among others, speaking on the subject. Which sounds fascinating, and I'm sure it was, but all you're going to get in the article is Mr. Nelson's take, which isn't.
At least, not for me.
Want to know more? Well, I tried looking for a write-up on the panel at Village Voice's site, but got immediately distracted by the front page link to Rage Before Race: How Feminists Faltered on the Central Park Jogger Case:
Feminists who rallied on the courthouse stairs outside the 1990 trial of five African American and Latino youth accused in the infamous rape and beating of the 28-year-old Central Park jogger made it painfully clear—there was a choice to make: gender or race. With flimsy evidence and an almost immediate indictment by the public, advocates for the teens believed they were easy lynch victims and demanded further investigation and fair trials. But to some feminists, bringing up "the race issue" "muddled" the case and detracted from the bottom-line issue—violence against women and justice for the victim.[. . .] Some activists say this case highlights the continuing struggle within the feminist movement, and often, its failure to truly engage the needs and issues facing women of color, or grapple well with situations in which issues of race and gender are intermingled.
And then I decided it was time to just step away from the computer for a while.
Might break this into two entries at some point.
Not fucking likely, though.
I mentioned not liking the term "mixed" when it's used in reference to people. 'course, I'd meant groups of people, rather than individuals. Don't really care for it there, either, but this:
Project RACE: From The Director: The Problem With The "Mixed" Label - biracial mixed race multiracial interracialI especially dislike the term "mixed." First, it lends itself to references in Spike Lee movies, where he calls "mixed" people "mixed up" and "mixed nuts." It also makes for not so cute newspaper and magazine headlines. One day I really thought about why "mixed" annoys me so much. I realized that if a person isn't "mixed," what is he or she -- pure? Wow. It sounds pretty neo-Nazi-Hitler-like to me. Do we really want to separate Americans into those who are pure and those who are mixed? Personally, I don't want to even go there. When my young son testified in Washington, he told the lawmakers, "Puppies are mixed, people are multiracial." Another good reason not to use it.
[. . .] Tiger Woods refers to himself as "Cablinasian," which is a word he made up for the combination of all of his heritage. I think it's creative and meaningful for him. For the rest of us, let's stick with the term preferred by our community -- "multiracial."
This seems just a wee bit strident. And this is me saying that.
Don't make no nevermind to me, anyway. I might be multiracial, but I'm not "multiracial" as far as these mother fuckers are concerned.
It's like an inverse one-drop rule. Only stupider.
Ended up at Project RACE (which congratulates "Erika Harold, the first multiracial Miss America" -- despite the blue eyes, Vanessa Williams is in the same boat as me, not "multiracial" enough [well, yes, and there was that scandal, but shut up, I'm riffing]) following a link from Interracial Voice, who are equally fucking useless.
Multiracials today are pioneers -- blurring race-lines, penetrating, expanding the envelope of "whiteness" -- making inroads more people of color will soon follow.
Because the way to destroy bullshit hierarchies is by creating additional categories within those bullshit hierarchies.
The title of the Guest Editorial is "On Rejecting Identity Politics." Which is odd, as embracing the multiracial identity seems to be the only reason they exist.
Whatever.
Over in the sane part of the universe, George links to the New York Times piece on the play "Yellowman," titled "Light Skin, Dark Skin and the Wounds Below."
In "Yellowman," directed by Blanka Zizka, there are two performers, Howard W. Overshown and myself. We play many characters. Howard's main character is Eugene, who is light-skinned. I play Alma, who is darker. She is the narrator for the audience as well. I also play Alma's mother. Eugene and Alma are childhood friends who fall in love. But they are surrounded by a society that doesn't accept it.[. . .] Certainly "Yellowman" and the subject of internal racism can make many black people squirm. But internal racism is not exclusive to us; on a very human level every group of people does this. It's the kind of thing that makes Italian and Jewish girls go out and get nose jobs.
[. . .T]here was a family, a particular family, that was extremely fair skinned. For generations, the family had interbred to keep the light-skinned color line going. And they would condemn people who were darker. So you had people who hated this family and whom this family hated.
Ok, maybe "sane" isn't the right word. . .
Update: I suck.
VASpider sent me a link to the NY Times article, and I completely forgot to mention this.
This isn't the only reason I suck, obviously, but it is the first that springs to mind at the moment.
George sends along a link to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Male Defeat, from the September issue of I-used-to-remember-to-read-it Bad Subjects:
Buffy's awesome arse-kicking ability sits comfortably with my aggressive feminist tendencies. However, I always liked the playful personality of Spike, the resident evil vampire played by American actor James Marsters. Spike delivers the best lines. Indeed, Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, has distinguished the show through sharp dialogue peppered with self-reflexive wit and intertextual humor. The razor-like insights of Spike's dialogue shape him as a worthy foil and folly to Buffy's physical prowess. As a result, he embodies a contradictory masculinity that embraces a series of complicated issues encircling the current 'crisis in masculinity.' He is a conundrum. Simultaneously empowered and disempowered, Spike is forced to redefine his identity outside traditional masculine power. With Buffy colonizing the space of male legitimacy, Spike is persistently problematized within the Buffy universe.
Problematized?
There's also a review of Bowling for Columbine at the site. Not only is it written at a level suitable for us sub-PhD types,
Throughout the film Moore mentions the history of the NRA and ties it closely with the history of white Americans' fear of African-Americans. He points out that the NRA was "coincidentally" founded in the same year that the KKK was founded. And in following the story of the Columbine shooting early in the film, and the shooting of a six-year-old girl in Flint Michigan toward the end of the film, Moore chronicles the NRA pro-gun rallies that were held in both locations within weeks of the respective shootings. NRA president Charlton Heston presided over those rallies, and at the end of the movie Moore pulls all these threads together in "Roger & Me" style by pursuing a one-on-one interview with Heston.[. . .] My only real critique of this movie is that Moore could have gone a lot further to tie together his points about white Americans' fear of African-Americans with his thesis that Canadians [are] almost the same as us. He neglects to mention that Canada does not have a comparable history of slavery, which could go a long ways toward explaining why white Canadians are so much less afraid of their nonwhite neighbors.
it contains the suggestion, taken from the film itself, that the one thing differentiating the U.S. from other nations with high levels of gun ownership is, um, us.
Wonderful.
Think I'll finish reading the Buffy essay now. . .
You think you're on your own
But that's just your desire
'Cause all you really need, baby
Is right here if you try
(But) I feel, I feel
I'm never gonna be enough for you
I feel, I feel
I'm never gonna be enough for you
You speak but there's no sound
Gonna scream these heavens down
These times feel safe and warm
Got to push your body on
Still I feel, I feel
I'm never gonna be enough for you
I feel, I feel
I'm never gonna be enough for you
Heaven knows, in their lifetime
That I'm crying out for you
Still you believe, I'm alright
How I feel, I feel
Feel, by the late Skunk Anansie. Uppity-Negro.com: We kill bands we like dead.
Noticed at VASpider's that for some bizarre reason -- probably drugs -- this site is up for Blog of the Month. Drugs, or a misguided Affirmative Action program. The effects can be similar.
Obviously, I'm rooting for kd, and encourage everyone else to do the same.
In reverse order, of course.
Ronn, who unlike me has an attention span longer than thirty seconds, continues to follow the Central Park 5 case (with a brief, but perfectly understandable, interruption; hope everyone is all right, and Movable Type has never given me any problems not caused by my own failure to Read the Friendly Manual, for what it's worth). Today's update covers infighting at the DA's office:
There are also reports that former ADA (and current crime novelist) Linda Fairstein is pushing for Morgenthau to fight to uphold the convictions. She is supported by many ADAs that played a part in the convictions of the five teens. That is to be expected. Another faction within the DA's office — again, from numerous news reports — believes Reyes to be the lone rapist and that all rape and assault charges related to the jogger should be expunged.
If you can call it infighting when some of the people involved no longer work there.
The music thing, which seems totally unimportant in comparison, involves rock bands featuring black women as lead vocalist. Noticed a Skunk Anansie cd and single among the piles of stuff getting packed, and wondered briefly why they were never very successful in the States.
I'd like to think it's the label throwing up their hands in confusion at marketing the group, and giving up. But I'm blanking on any other groups with a mixed-race, mixed-gender membership hitting the big time.
I really hate using the term "mixed" when writing about people, by the way. But the circumlocutions are even worse, so whatever.
Anyone got any examples?
From Genderfuck: A Disruption of the Learning Process:
The need to study this court case [Pat Doe v. John Yunits] through the lens of Queer Theory is entirely important to this paper. It establishes the new ways of thinking about systems such as the judicial courts and schools, and society such as education and social thought processes. Queer Theory emerged as the study of sexuality in academia. Basically, the queer theory movement started in the late 1980s through academic conferences. The movement was primarily focused on “new ways of thinking and theorizing.” Queer Theory was an answer to what Judith Butler described as “unwritten and written codes of heterosexualized gender systems”(Butler qtd. in Stein 181). Queer theories are constructed upon the following guidelines:
a conceptualization of sexuality which sees sexual power embodied in different levels of social life, expressed discursively and enforced through boundaries and binary divides.
the problematization of sexual and gender categories, and of identities in general. Indentities are always on uncertain ground, entailing displacements of identification and knowing
parody which leads to deconstruction, decentering, revisionist readings, and an anti-assimilationist politics
a willingness to interrogate areas which normally would not be seen as the terrain of sexuality, and to conduct queer “readings” of ostensibly heterosexual or nonsexualized texts. (Stein 181-2)
There's more information about the court case in link, if you're interested. Don't think it's the one mentioned in this MetaFilter discussion, but some of the ill-informed commentary applies equally well. Or equally badly. Or something.
I was more interested in this bit, from the introductory paragraph of the paper:
Identity is a key factor of an individual in the society. Identity often is skewed despite the rhetorical statement: “You are who you are.” However, many times a society unconsciously attempts to mold the identities of individuals into homogenous products. The important thing is not to let yourself prejudge individuals or acts of people because this creates an assumption that brings a stigma against the individual.
I've been stumbling over my own ignorant assumptions quite a bit lately, plus having to deal with other people's, with the result that I'm really not liking a society that produced them, or me, very much at the moment.
That, and discussions of identity politics always give me a headache. It's usually in the context of a perfectly valid point, but the first person to post a comment using the word "essentialist" will win a very special prize.
After discussing that important issue, Dru also wrote up a detailed report on Chomksy's lecture at LBJ Auditorium:
Today, the main theme of Chomsky's lecture seemed to focus on how we, as residents and citizens within the United States, can effect change in our government's imperialistic actions towards the rest of the world. Ultimately, Chomsky, and many other leaders in the realm of political science, believes that the goal of the United States government is to control the resources of the middle east and elsewhere. It is control, rather than access, which is driving the current push towards war with Iraq - as well as documented plans to continue forward into other areas rich with resources.
Not her usual choice of subjects, but she writes about politics just as well as she does about c******* and b******. And we all need a change of pace every once in a while.
Even hippies.
Followed a link from Full Bleed to the seemingly pleasant confines of Uffish Thoughts.
But then. Unspeakable evil.
And also cute actress, but sweet creeping zombie Jesus, I'd hoped all mention of L'Trimm had been purged by the Ministry of Truth.
Looking back at that music, or those clothes, or that hair, is not nostalgia.
It's fucking dementia.
"The Page of Wands.""Justice."
"Judgement. My trick. The Queen of Cups."
"Ace of Cups."
"The Star. My trick. The Hermit."
"With trumps she leads!" Leo laughed. "Death."
"The Fool. My trick is. Now: the Knight of Coins."
"Trey of Coins."
"King of Coins. My trick is. Five of Swords."
"The Deuce."
"The Magus; my trick"
Katin watched the darkened chess table where Sebastian, Tyÿ, and Leo, after the hour of reminiscence, played three-handed Tarot-whist.
He did not know the game well; but they did not know this, and he ruminated that they had not asked him to play. He had observed the game for fifteen minutes over Sebastian's shoulder (the dark thing huddled by his foot), while hairy hands dealt and fanned the cards. From his small knowledge Katin tried to construct a cutting brilliance to toss into the play.
They played so fast. . .
He gave up.
From Chapter Six of Nova, by Samuel R. Delany.
The game being played is based, more or less, on bid whist:
Melannie Cunningham has to shout to be heard over all the racket. "There's four things you need for a good bid-whist party," she says. "Good food, good drinks, good music and good fellowship."The Doo Drop has plenty of all four tonight. It's 10 p.m., and the joint is jumping. The Impressions are wailing on the sound system, waitresses are hustling back and forth with cocktails, Cajun catfish and fried chicken and several dozen card players - all black - are shouting at once, yelling taunts, slamming down cards.
Bid whist, a card game that's equal parts luck, skill and talking trash, is a black American tradition, played in every corner of the country.
And now, thanks to Cunningham, Washington has its own official bid-whist organization.
The Bid Whist Players Club of Washington State, which Cunningham organized six months ago, meets on the first and third Fridays of every month. Now 150 members strong, it draws players from Lacey all the way to Everett.
That's because the game is such an important part of black social life, Cunningham says.
"You could have the most uppity, hoity-toity black person and a street person," Cunningham says. "It doesn't matter because the game is so common across the culture. "When it's time to talk bid whist, we all talk the same language."
Like many aspects of black history the origins of Bid Whist are a matter of speculation, shrouded in. . .
Blah. Hate writing like that. Nobody knows for sure how the game started. It traces back to slavery. All you need to know.
Well, except the basic rules:
Rank of Cards: The rank of cards within each suit shall be as follows: A,K,Q,J,10, and so forth. There is no rank of suits other than trump, which shall be different in each game, and will outrank all other suits.Tricks: Each trick will begin with one player leading a card. The lead for the first trick belongs to the bidder, each subsequent trick will be lead by the player who won the previous trick. The player who plays the highest card of the suit led shall win the trick unless a trump has been played, in which case the player who played the highest trump wins the trick and leads the next.
Following Suit and Trumping: Each player after the lead must play a card of the suit which was lead unless s/he does not have one. In that case, that player may either play a trump or play a card in any other suit. Trump may be lead at any time in the game.
And so on and so forth. It ain't that hard, really. I've learned to play -- and promptly forgotten -- several times over the years.
If it's no Black People Love You (obligatory Dru link; sorry for skipping the last few entries, honey), you can always download a Windows version from bidwhist.com.
Want to know more? Check out Play Cards! The Electronic Newsletter For Bid Whist, although you maybe wanna make sure your speakers are turned off, or that your browser knows playing embedded MIDI files is a Very Bad Idea.
It’s a raw night
Who wants to bar fight
Well come on alright
And I dare a motherfucker to come in my face
Baseball bats
I got something for that
It goes clack clack clack clack
So I dare a motherfucker to come in my face
It’s so real
How I feel
It’s this society
That makes a nigga want to kill
I’m just straight ill
Riding my motorcycle down the streets
While the government is sounding like strippers to me
They keep saying
But I don’t want to hear it
Ooo baby you want me?
Ooo baby you want me?
Ooo baby you want me?
Well you can get this lapdance here for free
Well you can get this lapdance here for free
Well you can get this lapdance here for free
See, you gots to make the mental disorders work for you.
Like if you know you're going to suffer from insomnia anyway, why not drive to Illinois, unpack the car, turn around, and drive back to Minnesota?
Time it right, and you can hear the "Too Much Bloody Noise" (British-influenced Rock) and "Automated Hip Hop" (what is sounds like) shows on WSUM- Madison Student Radio. Sigur Rós and N.E.R.D.'s Lapdance in rapid succession, enthusiastic djs who sound like human beings (albeit very young and way too wired human beings), no effn' advertisements. . . It's a beautiful thing.
Plus, snow to welcome you back. And announcers on NPR saying things about two to five inches of accumulation.
Since your brain shut down completely somewhere around Beloit, you can safely pretend you imagined that last one.
If you avoid looking out the window.
Update: In the comments, Jason mentions the too-sexy-for-MTV video for Lapdance. See if for yourself at the AV page of N*E*R*D's site.
They also have a nicer version of the lyrics, which can't easily be linked directly. So, um, the link no longer matches what's on this page.
Meh.
Know there was a better gallery of Guinness advertisements somewhere -- had a few of the ads on my desktop at one point -- but really should be on the road already, and haven't time to look.
Taking a carload of Things I Don't Particularly Need back to Illinois. Good thing a carload in a Focus is a surprisingly large amount, since I have a surprisingly large amount of Things I Don't Particularly Need. Many of them very heavy boxes of books.
Which is why I started the morning with a Guinness. For Strength.
Don't even remember doing the MT upgrade. Or packing the boxes. Or what's in them, or how they ended up in the car.
I have a good feeling about the drive, too.
Behave yourselves. You know, like last time I left for a while.
On second thought, forget that last sentence.
Not sure about the underlined links thing, and the light grey text seems a bit too light for easy reading. Might just be my combo platter of an uncalibrated ancient monitor, Mozilla, and configured-by-a-moron Debian.
However, showing that Bad Things happen when you give in to peer pressure is a valuable lesson for younger readers. So perhaps it's for the best.
So. Any questions?
Comments?
Curse words?
Michelle points out that one may order directly from PussyPuckerPots.com, rather than through a retailer. You can also suggest new pick-up lines through the site, but topping
Hey Baby - I bet you just can't wait to rub my Strawberry Snatch all over your lips...
may not be possible. Or particularly desirable.
Dru notes that Lorraine of blue period is, in fact, a distinct individual, and not merely an aspect of the randomWalks hivemind. Management apologizes for the earlier confusion, and also any confusion caused by this attempt to clarify the earlier confusion.
Laura announces the continued existence and output of Ward Connerly:
It's not every day that one gets immortalized along with Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, and Colin Powell in a poem, especially a poem penned by the New Jersey poet laureate. But I think I'll have to pass on this "honor" after reading it and learning the poet is Amiri Baraka (the poet formerly known as LeRoi Jones), one of America's premier haters and anti-Semites. [blah blah] maniacal litany, and the anti-Semitism [blah blah] anti-Jewish, anti-white, pro-Black Panther screeds [blah blah] hate-infused, Jew-bashing [blah blah] infection of victimology. . .
Again, stake through the heart or beheading, or prolonged exposure to direct sunlight. If the vamp ain't dust, it ain't dusted. Confirm those kills, people.
Finally, Formula 51 isn't nearly as bad as the ads would lead you to believe. Ebert gives it one star, but, y'know, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.
Remembered after 10 years, "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" seems more and more like a movie that got made by accident when the lunatics took over the asylum.
His commentary on the DVD includes the line, "Ok, I was really fucked up when I wrote this next scene, but so was everybody else making the movie, and we're not sure what the hell it was supposed to mean either. You maybe want to leave the disc playing and go to the kitchen for the next few minutes, and prepare yourself a snack. Something with a short preparation time. Lasagna, perhaps."
I shall endeavor to do better regarding factual accuracy and current information in future.
--Aaron
Well, Monique says she's doing the NaNoWriMo thing, and so does Jessica, and there's bits up at randomWalks, with credit to the lovely and talented Dru, who I've decided to link to in every entry from now on just to annoy her, and. . .
Odd. The boxes actually seem to be magically emptying themselves.
Should I stop being such an asshole and mention Oliver in a non-snide fashion?
God, the dialogue is bad. I learned a long time ago that comic book writing was best read in your mind, not out loud. The writers haven't learned that. I swear the writers went to "Snappy Dialogue Camp", and they should ask for their money back. I guess everyone wants to be the next Buffy (a show I've never watched) and figures that there's a secret mysterious formula to get internet obsessives hooked. God help me if this is it, because we're in for some bad television.
Never watched Buffy?
No, guess not.
Want to etc., etc.? Check out the What is NaNoWriMo? page:
National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over talent and craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.
And improve your snappy dialogue by reading through some old Buffy transcripts at the aptly named Psyche: Transcripts & FanFiction.
If you're looking to learn by bad example, they also have FanFiction.
Damn. Actually, yes.
And that was just the throwaway joke introducing Makara's page from the models section of OPi8.com. That'll learn me.
Sorry. It's this image makes me wonder. And then I wonder why I wonder. And then I wonder why the boxes around me aren't magically packing themselves.
Guess taking the quiz at Am I Black. . . Or not? isn't going to speed things along.
13: Do you have an African name?
- Yeah, "Jabouti". Ass.
- Of course, it siginifies my freedom from the "slave name" that my white masters gave my ancestors.
- Shut up, nigger.
Nope. Doesn't affect the boxes at all.
Dru has a much more interesting story about her African name.
Go bug her for the sordid version.
Then you can work on overcoming them.
Avoided even reading this much-linked article at Wired:
Esta producción independiente trata de un joven tan obsesionado con las Macs de Apple que se convierte en un revolucionario al estilo Malcolm X, que lucha contra la intolerancia a la computadora: un problema que hay que solucionar sea como sea."La película trata sobre el fervor religioso que se apodera de los usuarios de la Mac de un modo que no sucede con los usuarios de otras plataformas", comentó el director y escritor Jake Barnes, quien se define a sí mismo como un "adicto a la Mac recuperado".
En la película, Rayment hace el papel del Hermano Copland, un personaje al estilo Malcolm X. (Copland es el nombre que iba a tener el sistema operativo de Apple que estaba en desarrollo antes del OS X.)
Because I didn't like the look of the headline. Stupid, I know.
Bit annoyed initially by the title of the movie, iBrotha, since, y'know, that name was taken, but for once I finished the article before freaking:
El sitio web de la película está dedicado a la memoria de Rodney Lain, un famoso columnista online que escribía sobre la Mac bajo el seudónimo iBrotha. Lain se suicidó en junio."Rodney era un buen escritor y decidió quitarse la vida cuando estábamos en la mitad de la producción", comentó Barnes. "Es una muestra de respeto y una forma de demostrar que no nos estamos aprovechando de su trágica muerte."
Maybe I should start approaching things with a more open mind.
Nah, that's crazy talk.
Packing. I fucking hate packing.
Fine. Film: Mac Fervor, Malcolm X Style. Monolingual American scum.
From the about link at http://www.iBrotha.co.uk/:
iBrotha is the story of a young man so passionate about Apple Mac computers he turns into Malcolm X to get the machines the respect they deserve. By any means necessary.It explores race and human divisions in a semi-humourous manner using the metaphor of competing computer platforms and an arsenal of hats, glasses and cricket bats.
But there are enough cognates that you should have been able to work out most of the other quoted material.
And you're lucky I didn't use the Portuguese version, E se Malcolm X usasse Mac?.
Shipping today, from Satin Slippers Adult Shopping for Women:
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Leave the last line alone. I know you're tempted, but just let it slide.
And yes, I really, really hate to pack, if you hadn't noticed.
Huh.
From bisexuality and lesbianism in black culture:
the idea that lesbianism/bisexuality threatens the 'manhood' of black males is pervasive. black men have, for a long time, wrestled with the image of them as emasculated due to the 'castrating' black woman. in order to maintain their newly acquired status as the most 'manly' man, they must support the existing white patriarchy and conform to the highest ideals of its structure. therefore, they either ignore black female homosexuality or they exoticize it, turning it into a form of pleasure for them and not a sub-group of its own. modern rap songs will include references to watching two women 'get it on', as evidenced in this lyric: "had an episode with two lesbians/i got a fetish for that". that statement epitomizes the perversion of the lesbian/bisexual experience into something solely performed for the pleasure of males. lesbianism is transformed into a fetish object for males and is therefore acceptable to discuss. to view lesbian/bisexual relationships as an entity unto themselves, without the need for male approval or participation, would be akin to admitting emasculization of the black man and therefore losing his power in a patriarchal society. by taking this stance, that female-to-female relationships are like live pornography for men, black males are again trying to one-up their white counterparts by saying that they are the more masculine males in this society.
That's from Cuntabulous, by the way.
That gender/race/sexuality stuff makes my head hurt. So black men are acting out to maintain standing (in white society) by treating black women's lesbian/bi sexuality as an object, in order to avoid another stereotype (created/maintained by white society) that. . .
Right. Pack.
On the David Hager tip,
Citing Hager’s recommendations to treat headaches, eating disorders, and premenstrual syndrome (PMS) with prayers, Rep. Maloney stated, “Of course everyone is entitled to their own beliefs. But I happen to believe that the head of the women’s health panel at the FDA should believe in women’s health… This administration seems to have expanded its faith-based initiative to faith-based medicine.”
-- Feminist Daily News Wire, Feminist Majority Foundation
Hanne may have mentioned it a few days back in her journal, and it might have come up in conversation with Heather, but I don't really pay attention when black women are talking. Especially about stuff that doesn't concern me none.
What?
I would ignore the context, in this case Kathryn Jean Lopez on David Hager & FDA on National Review Online, and just look for other articles by conservatives which use the phrase, "But here's the kicker." They seem to like that one. Me, I like saying "cuntabulous." Different strokes and shit.
Ignoring the context might be a good plan.
Dr. W. David Hager, a doctor and professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Kentucky, was the subject of a piece in Time magazine by Karen Tumulty titled "Jesus and the FDA." Dr. Hager, it would seem, is a "Jesus freak" (my words, not Tumulty's) who wants to reverse Roe v. Wade by questioning a drug treatment that appears to be dangerous, refuses to prescribe birth control to unmarried women, and, actually, would rather have his patients pray and wait for Divine intervention than medically act to treat disease.Sounds kinda silly, doesn't it? Well, it is.
Um, she goes on to illustrate the Deeply Flawed Liberal Bias of the Time piece, which NRO couldn't be arsed to link to, but Jessica did, and Laura linked to her. . .
Oh. It's all women talking about this. Guess it doesn't concern or interest me.
Right. Back to packing.
There's an Action Alert at Population Connection, if, y'know, you're a chick, and worried about this stuff.
Boys may go laugh at the comical foreignness of Japanese Apple Switch Advertisements.
If I was optimistic -- stop laughing, damn you -- I'd look at it like this.
The drafting of ESR's manifesto, and that link takes you to version the fourth:
WE THEREFORE AFFIRM that both the terrorists and their state sponsors have made themselves outlaws from the moral community of man, to be dealt with as rabid dogs are.
(Changes in purple. It's like evolution, only without the getting better part.}
coming so soon after CalPundit's Critique of Pure Fisking:
Childish, petulant, ignorant, and willfully trying to miss the bigger point. Almost autistic in the certainty that their hyper-rationalism has dealt a devastating logical blow to their safely-out-of-sight opponent.
means that events in the blogosphere are coming to a head, and a Great and Holy War shall. . . hang on, that gag's been done already, way back in get your voltr on, page ten of Get Your War On. And I didn't know the book had an introduction by Colson Whitehead.
Colson Whitehead (Foreword) is a recent recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, and the author of John Henry Days which was a 2002 Pulitzer Prize Finalist and was also short-listed for the LA Times Book Award and the National Book Critics' Circle Award. His first novel The Intuitionist won the Quality Paperback Book Club's New Voices Award for 1999 and was PEN-Hemingway Award for First Fiction finalist in 1999. He is also the recipient of a 2000 Whiting Writers' Award. He lives in Brooklyn NY.
I only care because, you know, he's a Negro. They don't mention it, to avoid scaring people off.
There an excerpt from The Intuitionist up at Salon, if you're interested. Plus, he's doing a reading/seminar at New York State Writers Institute on. . . um, yesterday. Sorry. C.P.T.
I'll go back to packing now.
My older sister, who I might add is several shades lighter than I am, but won't, because it has no bearing on anything, forwarded this here story:
CHANNING REVEALS HERITAGE: Performer Carol Channing has been hiding a secret about her heritage. The star of Broadway's Hello Dolly has written an autobiography, Just Lucky, I Guess, in which she reveals for the first time that she is part African-American. The 81-year-old actress writes that when she was 16, packing for college, "my mother announced to me I was part Negro." Her mother added, "I'm only telling you this because the Darwinian law shows that you could easily have a black baby." Apparently, Channing never realized her light-skinned father was of African descent.
Great. Now I have to read the book. Do you have any idea how embarrasing it's going to be, taking that to the counter at Border's?
Wonder if they'll put it in the African-American section?
Ward Connerly bitched quite a bit about that, you know.
Third, "Creating Equal" was not placed in the African American Interest section because of its "topic," namely race, as Ms. Landis states. My book is about treating all people with dignity and respect as equals. How is this a "topic" of unique interest to "African Americans?" No! "Creating Equal" was placed in the African American Interest section because of the color of my skin, because of the "one drop of blood" rule, and because B. Dalton Bookstore presumed that only "African Americans" would have an interest in my book.
Black conservatives, man. Always seeing racism where none exists. And studiously ignoring it when it does.
The latter being:
Synesthesia is an involuntary joining in which the real information of one sense is accompanied by a perception in another sense. In addition to being involuntary, this additional perception is regarded by the synesthete as real, often outside the body, instead of imagined in the mind's eye. It also has some other interesting features that clearly separate it from artistic fancy or purple prose. Its reality and vividness are what make synesthesia so interesting in its violation of conventional perception. Synesthesia is also fascinating because logically it should not be a product of the human brain, where the evolutionary trend has been for increasing separation of function anatomically.
From The Synesthetic Experience, found at the Google Web Directory page on the subject.
Also (more or less) the name of a character in Top Ten:
Syn has "synaesthesia," which is a mental disorder in which people perceive input in non-standard ways, seeing sounds and hearing colors. In Syn's case this means she can read people and objects empathically and has vague precognitive abilities.
Gene Ha added to this description:
She can't see the future exactly (like Irma's husband), but she can see omens of the future others can't see. And these synaesthetic impressions can make her very nervous. She was originally, in the script, a much more jittery person than I drew.
Top Ten, for the non-comics readers, was a book written by Alan Moore, and by illustrated Gene Ha and Zander Cannon. Mr. Cannon is currently living and working in Japan, and keeps one of those other kinds of blogs, with interesting personal details, because he actually has a life.
Okay, the enkai went just fine, and Julie and I came through it with flying colors. One thing of interest is that a certain percentage of Southeast Asian people are missing a gene that allows them to metabolize alcohol properly. So one or two drinks down, and they are flying. Their faces turn red and they giggle their heads off. Entertaining to say the least, particularly when the person in question knows about 30 words in English and is trying to talk to us about the Minnesota Twins being in the playoffs. Okay, that's enough talk about drinking. Sorry. This journal will now be about things other than drinking for the sake of readers under 21 (US), 19 (Canada), 18 (UK), and 20 or tall enough to buy from a vending machine (Japan).
He also knows that site design doesn't mean choosing a default template, but this may tie into that whole "artist" deal.
I find the big blue bar calming. It sounds like Lanterna, and tastes like green tea ice cream.
Do they make blue tea ice cream?
I always forget about Anil Dash:
Those of us in the majority, who are of all political stripes, correctly see stridency and cliquish, back-slapping, jargon-laden repetitious rantings as neither productive nor useful. That you have tacked "-pundit" onto an adjective and then suffixed .blogspot.com on the end of it does not suddenly mean that anyone with any decision making power about international politics suddenly gives a shit about your opinion.
Probably because I'm jealous.
Would mention that George noticed ESR's manifesto, too, but this would involve admitting I'd visited his site, and noticed that M.T. v. 2.5 link in the sidebar.
And that's not gonna happen.
Considered wandering around the links on the blogdex sources page for the manifesto, but realized that a) not everyone is as sane as Anil Dash -- DailyPundit and VodkaPundit are listed, after all -- and b) they've probably all upgraded, without problems, and I'd start feeling guilty.
Not guilty enough to spend the five minutes it would take to upload files, mind you.
Would it even take five minutes? Michelle? Jason? You're the ones acting like characters in an ABC After-School Special on peer pressure, how complicated was it?
I should have felt some need to comment.
Instead, I didnt visit InstaPundit until this morning, to find Glenn Reynolds noting the revised anti-idiotarian Manifesto of Eric S. Raymond:
WE REJECT the theory that `fairness' requires us not to notice the dominant gender, age range, ethnic character and religion of our terrorist enemies; and we urge the systematic use of such profiling to both make anti-terrorist screening more effective and reduce the overall intrusiveness of anti-terror measures on the majority of the population.
There's quite a bit more. One of the opening salvos proclaims, without anything vaguely resembling evidence, that:
WHEREAS, the Left has failed us by succumbing to reflexive anti-Americanism; by apologizing for terrorist acts; by propounding squalid theories of moral equivalence; and by blaming the victims of evil for the act of evil;
He does go after the Right and "many" Libertarians as well. Not all of the latter, so presumably he's claiming everyone on the Left and Right are following their marching orders.
Good thing I'm not a member of either. Or talking about politics.
And, y'know, whenever white folks like him start ranting about "we" and "us" I know perfectly fucking well it ain't shit to do with me.
Radio K is playing a nice selection of music right now, and the dj isn't as annoyingly Minnesotan as the student staffers often are. Or wasn't, until a minute ago. Any history of a language community halting a vowel shift through culls?
Any road up, I have packing to do.
There is talk of more crunchy water falling from the sky tonight.
Update: Slight correction on the Radio K tip. If they were NPR, I'd say they were having a pledge drive. In their terms, they're asking listeners to Buy A Watt.
Let me put it to you like this: I barely gots a pot to piss in and a window to throw it out of. . . and I'm tempted to call and offer 'em the toll change from the car to get 'em to shut the hell up.
No, there are no toll roads in Minnesota. You get used to dealing with them around Chicago, though, and old habits die hard. With a Vengeance.
Old news -- the date on the story is September 30th -- but I don't remember hearing anything about it at the time. Theliberalmedia covering up for America's enemies, as usual, I expect.
U.S. Climbers in Nepal Claim AttackTwo American mountain climbers say they came under fire from men who appeared to be Chinese soldiers during a hike in Nepal near the border.
Jeff Lamoureux, 36, and David Morton, 31, both from Seattle, Wash., said in an interview Monday in Katmandu that two men shot at them on Sept. 20 while they were looking for a new route to climb 23,984-foot Mount Nagpai Gosum.
They were more than seven miles inside Nepalese territory at the time, they said.
[. . .] The Chinese Foreign Ministry in Beijing said it had no information on the case but would investigate.
No similar incidents have been reported in the past and the motive remained unclear.
I was asking the same thing when I read this. Why tell the reader how high Nagpai Gosum is?
Not that this is exactly the safest place on the planet to go wandering around.
Tibet trek to Nepal exacts deadly tollThe Himalayas run through the border of both Nepal and Tibet. On one side, a Chinese regime which stifles religious freedom. On the other, a massive exiled Tibetan community headed by their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.
Children and teenagers attempt the trek, walking and hiking from one side of the mountain range to the other.
But while some make it over the mountains, hundreds of young Tibetans die every year attempting to escape Chinese rule.
Since it ain't like we care all that much about children or teenagers here in the U.S., the deaths of a few hundred of 'em on the other side of the planet is hardly worth noting.
Also not worth noting, if two guys from Seattle were really likely to find a "new route" the locals hadn't been previously aware of.
I'm Not Talking about politics today. I only visited Indianz.com for the comics. Oh, that wacky Garfield.
So, in this article:
J.C. Begay extradition hearing moved to CrownpointCROWNPOINT An extradition hearing for Navajo Nation Council Delegate J.C. Begay will be at 10 a.m. Wednesday in the Crownpoint Judicial Court, officials said.
A motion for a change of venue was made by Navajo Nation White Collar Crime prosecutor Ella Rose Wilson in Window Rock, Ariz. The original hearing, scheduled for Wednesday in the Shiprock court, was canceled.
The state of New Mexico has charged J.C. Begay with cattle rustling. The state District Attorney's Office in Farmington has charged him with larceny of livestock and unlawful branding, both felonies.
New Mexico issued a warrant for his arrest Sept. 11. That warrant is still outstanding, however, the state has no jurisdiction on the reservation. State charges were made because those claiming cattle was stolen or rebranded by Begay are nontribal members.
I'm just interested in the words. Like "Nation," and "extradition," and "jurisdiction." They all end in "-ion."
Also a bit surprised that cattle rustling still goes on, but I'm a city boy and a vegetarian, and cannot be expected to know such things.
VASpider makes the switch to Movable Type 2.5. And that's cool.
Severely underestimates my ability to come up with excuses, though.
For example, visiting other people's sites. Hers took me to George's, where he said yesterday in an entry titled Black male authenticity, H.B. in charge and C.P. time.:
Disclaimer: I am not now, nor have I ever been, a real Black man. Nothing I say, think or do should be construed as constituting authentic African-American-icity. My blackness is real, but I am not.
See? He says it without quoting foul-mouthed Korean-American comics.
Speaking of whom, yesterday Heather wrote:
I officially declare today to be National Shut The Hell Up About Politics Day.
I'll be observing this tomorrow, since, like George, I'm on C.P. time.
And naw, he ain't upgraded yet, either.
I'm waiting him out.
I don't mind eating pussy; it's just not my first choice. I mean, I'll eat it if they are out of what I really want. Like if there's no more chicken? I'll have pussy.
Because I like Margaret Cho. Saw her live between movies, so I recognized some of the material in Notorious C.H.O. (out on home video November 19th, order yours today). Didn't make it any less funny. And I look for interviews, like the one at The Male Box that quote up top is from.
Why? What did you think I meant?
I've mentioned Dwayne McDuffie before, of course:
In addition to the comic books I write whenever I can score an assignment, I'm currently contributing scripts to STATIC SHOCK! (the KIDS WB! animated series based on my comic book, STATIC) and JUSTICE LEAGUE, the new Cartoon Network animated series. Upcoming comics work includes an original graaphic novel called GIFTED (with artist Michelle Merkin) and the all-new THE ROAD TO HELL graphic novel (with co-writer and creator Matt S. Wayne and artist Kris Dresen).
Coincidentally, there's an interview with Kris Dresen up at TechnoDyke:
TechnoDyke: Who are your readers? A lot of females and lesbians (relative to their general presence in comic readership at all)Dresen: Judging from the correspondence we get, Manya's readership is almost equally divided between men and women, which is actually pretty cool. We get a lot of mail from guys who are excited because their wives/girlfriends never read comics but they love Manya. At shows we've been to recently we've been noticing that the women who buy our book range in age from early teens to their 70's, which is astounding.
Which quote is actually on page two of the interview, but it seemed silly linking directly to that. . .
I've pretty much given up on handing the Rare Good Comics to people, especially women, who don't normally read them. Mostly because the reaction -- "I thought comics were crap for teenage boys and developmentally arrested men, but this is nice." -- reminds me of the people who insist I'm not really black because, you know, I speak so well.
That, and I'm afraid they'll venture into a comics shop alone looking for more Rare Good Comics and either see the usual, and get scared, or have to deal with the teenage boys and developmentally arrested men who work/hang out in the shop, and get scared.
I'm also in a worse than normal mood today. Tourists are encouraged to post idiotic comments, because I'd dearly love to rip some random stranger on the 'net a new one for no particular reason. Cheaper than therapy, and safer than going out and starting fights in bars.
Ended up at TechnoDyke, which I assure you I don't normally read, following a link at Michelle's. Warning: that particular entry is not for the prudish.
Damn funny for the rest of us, though.
Think I'd like a Labia Lemon air freshener for the car, but I doubt they'll expand the line into those. . .
Update: Added links to the good stuff, Finder, Hopeless Savages and pretty much anything from Slave Labor, respectively. Anything by Jhonen Vasquez is worth a look, and the only thing keeping me from quoting passages from I Feel Sick is knowing that without the artwork, some of the magic is missing.
Clearly, you can't expect total objectivity from something called the Thomas Miller-El Information Page, located at thomasmillerel.com. Figure as long as you know the biases up front, it's easier to filter them out.
There's background information on the Miller-El case specifically, if you'd like it, plus an article on Jury Selection in Dallas County:
The U.S. Supreme Court twice found Dallas County's method of selecting jury pools unconstitutional, forcing the county to include minorties in the venire In response, Dallas County, under the direction of the legendary Henry Wade, developed a system of training prosecutors to excuse minorities, women, Jews, and the physically challenged from criminal juries. In 1963, Bill Alexander, one of Henry Wade's top aides, wrote a treatise on jury selection in criminal cases. That treatise instructed prosecutors as follows: "Do not take Jews, Negroes, Dagos, Mexicans or a member of any monority [sic] race on a jury, no matter how rich or how well educated."
Emphasis added, of course.
Technically, they were taking class into account. Or at least mentioning it as irrelevant.
Sorry. There's another quote included at the top of that article:
"If you ever put another nigger on the jury, you're fired".(Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade reprimanding Assistant District Attorney Hampton for seating a black man on a jury.)
And even though I know things like this happened in the distant past (cough), it's not something I needed to see this early in the morning.
There was a fairly detailed story on Morning Edition, and the audio will be up later today. If you wanted to know more.
Right, one more thing, from that article on jury selection:
Soon after the Alexander memo was written, then-Assistant District Attorney Jon Sparling wrote the now-infamous Sparling memorandum, entitled "Jury Selection in a Criminal Case." This memo advised prosecutors to exclude from juries "any member of a minorty group which may subject him to oppression - they almost always empathize with the accused."Sparling instructed prosecutors to avoid women ("I don't like women jurors because I can't trust them"); Jews ("Jewish veniremen [no clue - The Mgt.] generally make poor State's jurors...Jews have a history of oppression and generally empathize with the accused") and the physically challenged ("Look for physical afflictions...These people usually sympathize with the accused.")
In case you'd been wondering about the lumping together of wimmenandminorities, and the inclusion of peoplewithdisabilities in that group.
Good thing this is pre-Stonewall. It'd be even more crowded once you tossed the GLBT contingent in.
Indianz.com is back up. If it was ever down in the first place; always keep in mind the distinct possibility that I'm an idiot.
Today's blues: Appeals court won't recognize tribal authority
Applying Supreme Court precedent seen as negative to Indian rights, a federal appeals court last week refused to uphold tribal authority over a health clinic located on tribal land.In a unanimous ruling, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals questioned the reach of tribal sovereignty. A three-judge panel said there is a "heavy presumption" against a tribal court's ability to resolve disputes involving the clinic.
The finding was based on Nevada v. Hicks, a pivotal 2001 Supreme Court ruling in which a tribal court was denied the right to hear a dispute involving state officials accused of violating tribal and federal law. At a rally in Washington, D.C., last week, tribal leaders repeatedly referred to the case as a hindrance to self-determination.
Granted, there's a sniper on the loose in the D.C. area, and yes, I don't follow the news as well as I should, but somehow I managed to miss hearing about a rally by any tribal leaders in our nation's capitol last week.
Google News, as usual, is your friend.
Indian Country Today: Campaign against "terminators in black robes"Passers-by stopped in surprise at the array of tribal regalia on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court during the Oct. 7 Sovereignty Run rally, but it made a serious point. In a dramatic change from the past, Indian country now fears that the biggest threat to its progress comes from the nation’s highest court.
The rally brought representatives of 50 native nations, including Alaskans, Hawaiians and Taino from Puerto Rico, together with legal scholars, leaders of the National Congress of American Indians and Senate Majority Leader Thomas Daschle for a program of speeches attacking a trend in the Supreme Court that many feel is undercutting tribal sovereignty. The rally, and the end of a 2,800-mile cross-country relay run across the United States, coincided with the opening of the Court’s fall term.
Daschle jogged the last leg of the run along with NCAI President Tex Hall and 40 other Indian runners, including Sovereignty Run Team Leader Fawn Sharp, Quinault, who participated on the run throughout its entire cross-country course from the Quinault reservation in Washington State. The final stages were rerouted because of the on-going sniper scare in the northern Washington suburbs.
Speaking to the gathering of about 200, Daschle said, "Tribal sovereignty is a fundamental American principle that is rooted in laws and treaties and cannot be broken."
If you read that last sentence without laughing, you're a better person than me.
In fact, no matter what, you're probably a better person than me.
Texas still leads the country in executions, right? About the only statistic Bush improved, if you can call it that, as governor?
From The Moratorium Campaign:
Supreme Court to Hear Arguments in Texas Race Case10/15/2002
From The Death Penalty Information Center:On Wednesday, October 16th, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case of Thomas Miller-El, a black Texas death row inmate who claims that Dallas County prosecutors engaged in a racially biased jury selection process at the time of his trial in 1986. Miller-El v. Cockrell will require the Court to clarify the rules for demonstrating racial discrimination in jury selection and to determine what evidence a lower court should consider when reviewing such a claim.
Miller-El asserts that Dallas County prosecutors systematically excluded African-American jurors during his trial. Ten of the 11 potential black jurors were eliminated by the prosecution. In their final analysis, the lower courts discounted evidence that, until at least the mid-1980s, prosecutors employed a policy of removing as many black jurors as possible from trials of black defendants.
There was another stat I should look for, indicating that black jurors were less likely to vote for convictions in cases where the defendent was up for the death penalty, but there are so many numbers tossed around by both sides of the debate, and there's the class-based adjusting of racial data that no one ever wants to bother with, so I'm not sure how accurate that was to begin with.
Wouldn't surprise me to find out higher-income, more mainstreamed/integrated black people were closer to the norm regarding this, as in so many other things.
Don't think that was one of the goals of the Civil Rights Movement, but you can never really predict these things. . .
You do realize that "norm" is a euphemism, right?
Oddly unindicted Illinois Governor George Ryan, for example. Bet'cha they serve him as soon as he's out of office. Bet'cha a dollar.
Until then, he's following his conscience. Rather than the party line or the polls. Gotta respect that.
From Guardian Unlimited | World Latest | Ill. Opens Review of Death Row Cases:
CHICAGO (AP) - Illinois' capital punishment system went on trial Tuesday in the first of nine days of clemency hearings for nearly every inmate on death row.
Illinois Prisoner Review Board member Victor Brooks opened one of the first of at least 140 clemency hearings with an apology to family members of victims for forcing them to ``revisit the unwarranted carnage inflicted on their lives.''
He's also sorry for any innocent people currently on death row, but, y'know, if they hadn't fucked up somewhere along the line, they wouldn't be there.
The hearings for all but a handful of the state's 160 death row inmates come after Gov. George Ryan said earlier this year that he intended to review every death penalty case before he leaves office in January.``This is unprecedented,'' Robert Dunne, a member of the board, said before the hearings. ``Normally we only hear petitions for clemency from death row inmates when their executions are imminent.''
Ryan declared a moratorium on executions in January 2000, calling the state's death penalty system ``fraught with error'' after 13 inmates were found to have been wrongfully convicted, including some found innocent.
This ain't abolishing the death penalty, of course. Nor is it saying that everyone on Death Row is some tragic Jean Valjean figure. . .
Maybe there is such a thing as too much coffee. Pretend I am not making literary references.
I have no cable. I never experienced the wonder of Sifl & Olly.
And then it's 3 AM, I'm on the corner wearin my leather,
This dude comes up to me and says, Hey Punk!
And I'm like, yeah, WHATEVAH!Then I'm throwin' dice in the alley
Officer Leroy comes up and he's like, hey I thought I told you..
And I'm like, WHATEVAH!And up comes Zafo, and I'm like Yo! Zafo, whassup?
And he's like, Nuthin.
And I'm like, that's cool.....Cuz this is my United States of Whatever
And this is my United States of Whatever
There is video, which I suppose I could link to directly. But, again, I'm old-school, and such things were frowned upon back in the day. Scroll down to the last entry under the second season.
Want to know more? Check out the Sifl & Olly Cyberspace Station, which is official, or The Sifl & Olly Archive, which isn't.
"MAHK JCHI" by Robbie Robertson, from the cd Music for the Native Americans.
Mahk jchi tahm buooi yahmpi gidi
Mahk jchi taum buooi kan spewa ebi
Mahk jchi tahm buooi yahmpi gidi
Mahk jchi taum buooi kan spewa ebi
Mahmpi wah hoka yee monk
Tahond tani kiyee tiyee
Gee we-me eetiyee
Nanka yaht yamoonieah wajitse
An English translation is available, for non-Saponi speakers.
I couldn't reach it, at least. Odd, today of all days.
From a few days back, and mirrored at Leonard Peltier Defense Fund:
LPDC | Article | Indianz.com - October 9, 2002Peltier Seeks Reduction in Prison Sentence
Attorneys for American Indian Movement activist Leonard Peltier were back in federal court on Tuesday to seek a reduction in sentence for the ailing prisoner.
More than 100 supporters and family members showed up in St. Paul, Minnesota, for the hearing. A drum group rallied the group outside the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, where a small ceremony by Lakota elder David Chief was held.
Inside, a three-judge panel of the court considered pleas to change two consecutive life terms Peltier is serving in Leavenworth, Kansas. Attorney Eric Seitz said a federal judge relied on faulty evidence to send the internationally-known figure to jail.
Much more information, like, you know, background and context if you're not familiar with the internationally-known, but domestically-invisible figure, at FreePeltier.org. For what it's worth.
Columbus Day protests, like Peltier's case and, to a much greater extent, Mumia's, have sort-of faded into background noise as far as the mainstream is concerned. Quick way to label someone a member of the loony left is suggesting they participated in a rally or march for any of those causes.
Whatever.
Removed most of the right-wingers from the links over yonder, after realizing I didn't find them very funny anymore. Did keep Town Hall, though.
TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: William F. Buckley, Jr.A single day's news sometimes looks like the distillate of an irony factory. It's there to remind us of contradictory human behavior on almost every scale, reaching back into history and projecting paradoxes for tomorrow.
Because, you know, I only wish I could write like that.
Thankfully,
Uncle Toms still alive and wellCHICAGO--A Bean Soup Times investigation uncovered a new breed of Uncle Tom and his people still alive and well in America.
Despite talk of a “new day” the Black community can rest assured that there is a new crop of youth taking the baton of licking boots. In the past, a handkerchief head negro was afraid of his own shadow. This new breed of buck dancers are modern and thugged, but uphold negative stereotypes used to justify racism all the same.
The October Bean Soup Times is up to wash the stink of Town Hall out of my head.
They also help restore normality by pointing out the Top Ten Things Unchanged Since 9/11
- People are STILL vegetarians, but -- and even though Grandma and them had plenty of pork ribs at the family reunion -- your knucklehead, meat eating relatives STILL ate all the vegetarian food up first.
- "Yo' black ass" is STILL a preferred insult by Black Americans who missed the whole Black is Beautiful movement.
- The Honorable Louis Farrakhan STILL does not scratch where he don't itch and grin and smile when ain't nothing funny.
Love 'em, love 'em, love 'em. I could quote the whole thing.
Serious, you know them negroes can't afford no lawyer.
Eh. Minor edits to the Bean Soup quotes. I ain't like I usually proofread either.
What do you mean, "What does that mean?" Thought I told you kids to get off my lawn. . .
Unlike Metafilter, where I keep quiet because I gots no choice, I could actually chime in on the Plastic discussion, Whitey's Gotta Go:
Race itself is a product of social discrimination; so long as the white race exists, all movements against racism are doomed to fail... The key to solving the social problems of our age is to abolish the white race. Until that task is accomplished, even partial reform will prove elusive, because white influence permeates every issue in U.S. society, whether domestic or foreign.What's that!? The insane ramblings of some Al Sharpton wannabe? Ummm, no. It's Noel Ignatiev, fellow at Harvard's W.E.B. DuBois Institute, author of How The Irish Became White and the man who runs a website called Race Traitor whose motto is treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity & believes that the deconstruction of the white race is the only hope for worldwide social change.
It's the Sharpton line that tempts. And I don't even like the man that much.
In the comments, which are in no way influenced by the inflammatory title and condescending write-up, someone named dswensen writes:
White people don't have any more choice about the circumstances they're born into than anyone else. Asking people to give up their privileges based on their race seems to me just a whit counterproductive to the idea of abolishing racism.
In his -- call me crazy, but I'm thinking "he" -- in his defense, this reply is titled "I'm posting drunk, please forgive me."
On the other hand, readers have declared the remark nuanced.
I only quoted the first of two paragraphs, and "declared" in this instance refers to the karma system on Plastic, but it's hard to riled up including all those details.
Fairly standard stuff. Is there a Federal mandate that someone in these sorts of discussions say, "There's just one race, the human race," or "Forget Italian-American or African American, we're all just Americans," or something to that extent? Or are there really people out there who find such statements profound?
Rhetorical question. I've met people like that.
They usually live in the suburbs.
The late, lamented Beezus:
(Beezus are three girls from Champaign who have been together for about two years. Beezus can be reasonably classified with Cub, Scrawl, Barbara Manning, and Tuscadero when searching for a reference point for their sound. Their songs are personal, emotive, and totally catchy.)
did a great cover of Superchunk's Slack Mickeyfickey, which I'd listen to much more often if my only copy weren't as the b-side to the "i'll call you blue" 45.
If you're too young to know what some of those terms mean, get off my lawn. Punk kid.
Annoyingly, Ginger links to an article about how Gay immigrants' rights hinge on new legislation:
Chris Rigdon never paid much attention to immigration issues. Then three years ago he met a man at church from Venezuela who was working in Houston. They fell in love and decided to spend their lives together.If Rigdon were heterosexual and wanted to be with a woman from another country, all he would have to do is get married and sponsor his spouse for permanent residency in the United States.
Because he is gay, however, his commitment ceremony last Nov. 24 means as little to the the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service as it does to nearly all states and the federal government.
Partners of gays and lesbians are not considered family members eligible for immigration. Thus Rigdon, 30, and his partner, a 38-year-old engineer named Carlos, officially are nothing more than roommates.
And she says sensible things, some of which I disagree with, in a perfectly calm, reasonable manner.
Young lady, it's extremely difficult for me to get an entry out of that sort of thing. How about a bit more bombast next time? Some swearing, perhaps? Just a bit of intolerance towards gays and lesbians, instead of treating them like human beings?
I mean, honestly. It's like talking to an adult.
She's also gone to MT 2.5, of course. At what point does my "I'm waiting for the early adopters to find the bugs" excuse no longer work?
You can order the single from Parasol for fifty cents American, so you may as well pick up something else to make it worth the postage. It was recorded by Brendan Gamble, so you might as well get his Heartless Moon cd.
Hey, you should see how I pimp product from people I actually know, as opposed to just liking their work. It's even more shameless.
That your lyrical methods were. . . unsound.
George, who until fairly recently I'd counted on to serve as the voice of reason hereabouts, grabs the mike and goes:
(inspired by Michael Powell's "In Maine Town, Sudden Diversity and Controversy"; apologies to "The Girl From Ipanema")
SOMALIS:
Slim and lithe and black and Muslim
we folk from Somalia go walking
and when we move here,
each one that moves here goes "Ah!"
He recently went all Talking Headsy over at Jason's, as well. I'm starting to worry.
The upcoming move to the Twin Cities should help. Fresh 20-below air, five or six hours a day of sunlight, plus, a thriving immigrant community.
Census 2002: Muslim immigrants learn, prosper in Twin CitiesImmigrants from predominantly Muslim countries such as Iran and Pakistan are better educated than whites of European ancestry, and they are becoming more affluent, according to a new analysis of Twin Cities data from census 2000.
The explanation is simple, some of the immigrants say: In many of those countries, only the elite have any real chance of making it to this country in the first place.
"Only the top 1 percent or 2 percent of Bangladeshis comes to this country," said Mahfuza Ali, a research scientist at 3M with two daughters at St. Paul Academy. "And they come here with education as their No. 1 goal."
Well, most of them are thriving, anyway.
Somalis in the Twin Cities area aren't doing nearly as well as those from other historically Muslim countries in the Middle East or from Asia, such as Egypt or Pakistan, the data indicate.That probably has to do with Somalis' more recent arrival and with their being refugees, said John Logan, director of the Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research in Albany, N.Y., which produced the report.
Don't think Lileks ever writes about the Iranian or Pakistani immigrants. Easier to kick around the Somalis, I expect.
Always going for the cheap shot. Reminds me of me.
Is Porklips Now out on video, by the way? Or was it included in the Hardware Wars reissue?
Followed, possibly, by a hoo?
Star-Tribune: Angels' 10-run seventh ends Twins' seasonTorii Hunter stood . . . and stood . . . and stood in center field during the bottom of the seventh inning Sunday.
Hunter felt justifiably helpless as the Angels scored 10 runs, beating the Twins 13-5 to win the American League Championship Series.
"I was thinking, 'These guys won't stop scoring on us,' " Hunter said. "I was trying to be real, but they had it in the bag when they got those runs."
Indeed, they did. The avalanche wiped out a 5-3 Twins lead and enabled Anaheim to win the best-of-seven series in five games.
I'm not an Angels fan, of course (and could we possibly get less Cordelia in the next episode? Like by leaving her out of the opening credits?).
I just live close to downtown and the 'Dome. The next group of people with any combination of face paint, homer hankies, bobble-head dolls, or Gods help them all three, would have been found pummeled to death behind the gas station dumpsters. The bodies might not have been identifiable, even using dental records.
My only regret is that the fan who went Giuliani on that Royals coach ain't wait until the next game. . . when the Sox played the Twins.
Sorry. There are people in mourning all around me, and they must be mocked.
This getting off on the suffering of others thing is cool. This must be how the warbloggers feel.
They probably wear face paint too.
No one uses link buttons anymore. . .
Ok, I rarely use link buttons, and insist on putting them in entries, rather than the sidebar. Told you I wasn't a real blogger.
There would be a joke here, based on comments in the Slashdot thread on Rebecca Blood's The Weblog Handbook, but I just can't work with that material. Insulting those people would be like kicking a kitten.
Any road up, OnHerOwn.net, an actual Ani Difranco fan site if you couldn't tell from the button, includes a wallpaper gallery. Me, I like the one from Caitlin. Not enough to use it -- screen's usually way too cluttered to see the background anyway -- but, y'know, the dreads don't look that bad.
Am tempted to use the one with the green hair.
This worries me slightly.
Wouldn't call it a bad habit, exactly. More like a nervous laugh.
Guardian Unlimited | World Latest | Report: Lawyer Claims New Evidence
The lawyer for three of the five teen-agers convicted in the 1989 attack on a female jogger in Central Park said all the defendants should be exonerated, citing new evidence uncovered in the case, The New York Times reported Sunday.``I don't want anyone to be confused about this,'' attorney Michael Warren said. ``It's not on the basis of legal error, it's on the basis of new evidence, which, if it had existed at the time of the trial, the outcome would be different.''
Prosecutors began reinvestigating the case in January after Matias Reyes said he acted alone in raping and beating a 28-year-old investment banker who was left for dead in the park April 19, 1989. DNA found on the jogger has linked Reyes to the attack. No biological evidence from the five people convicted of the crime has been found.
There may be a longer version of this AP article which includes the names of the teen-agers. Or, since they're now potentially innocent and were juveniles when the crime took place, their names are. . . does the US media not print the names of juvenile suspects? Or is that a British thing?
No matter. All names are given in an article at Newsday:
In the end, five teenagers were convicted in one of the city’s most shocking cases largely on the basis of their own admissions to police, especially the videotaped statements made by four of them.[. . .] In the chilling videotapes, reviewed by Newsday, each of the four teens says he was present at the brutal assault but did not rape the jogger. Three of them — Antron McCray, Raymond Santana and Kharey Wise — describe participating in some way — holding her down, fondling her legs or her breast, kicking her. The fourth, Kevin Richardson, says he only tried to stop the attack. They name others, including in some cases each other, as having raped or beaten her.
The fifth teenager convicted — Yusef Salaam — did not give a videotaped or signed statement, but allegedly told a detective that he hit the jogger with a pipe and fondled her breasts.
That article has transcripts.
They also have the videos.
The confessions by four convicted in the Central Park jogger case show discrepancies in who initiated the attacks, what types of weapons were used and in the unfolding events.These excerpts from the videotaped confessions obtained by the district attorney's office from Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Kharey Wise begin when they first see the jogger and continue through the initial attack.
WARNING: Many of the descriptions are graphic and violent. Much of the sexually explicit part of the confession of each has been edited out of these excerpts.
I tried watching one.
Perhaps he wasn't being intentionally bad.
The follow-up link in an entry at randomWalks, but it lets me indulge my bizarre obsession with Finland. It's not a fetish, Kim isn't even originally from there.
From the Helsingin Sanomat International Edition:
Kaurismäki boycotts New York Film Festival
Filmmaker refuses to attend after Iranian director denied visaFinnish film director Aki Kaurismäki cancelled his planned participation in the New York Film Festival out of solidarity for Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostam, who could not get a US visa to attend the event.
Kiarostam was hoping attend a screening of his film Ten last Sunday. Kaurismäki's turn was to be on Wednesday this week, when his latest feature, The Man Without a Past is to be shown.
[. . .] Kaurismäki announced the cancellationof his visit to New York on Monday in a letter he sent to the director of the festival, Richard Peña. He expressed sorrow at having to make such a decision, praising the New York Film Festival as "one of the best in the world".
Kaurismäki explained his move by saying: "If the US authorities do not want an Iranian, they will hardly have any use for a Finn, either. We do not even have any oil."
This story is from Tuesday. On Friday:
The powerful explosion that shook a shopping mall in Vantaa on Friday evening, leaving seven dead and dozens injured, has been shown to be caused by a bomb. Finland's Minister of the Interior Ville Itälä (National Coalition) confirmed the fact at a press conference on Saturday morning.
Before you start jumping to conclusions, though:
A police press briefing held at 16.00 on Saturday revealed that the seventh victim (see above) had been identified as a Finnish student from the Greater Helsinki area, apparently around 20 years of age. Preliminary evidence would appear to suggest that the chemistry student, who died instantly, was responsible for the explosion.The man has no criminal record, and no motive has as yet been put forward for his actions, nor would police be drawn on the likelihood that he acted alone. The possibility that others might be involved was not ruled out.
This was mentioned at InstaPundit, where Mr. Reynolds wrote:
Vantaa, I believe, is near an area where immigrants tend to cluster.
I would write asking what the fuck that was supposed to mean, but given he approvingly quotes Max Power in another entry:
What's wrong with a little colonialism? Are people saying that the brown peoples of Iraq aren't worthy of Western-style democracy and freedoms?[. . .] It's frankly appalling and close to racist to see people complaining that a repressive and murderous dictatorship might get replaced by a democracy because the people leading the transition aren't the same skin color as the victims of the totalitarian regime.
I can make a very good guess.
The language couldn't be that hard to pick up. Children over there learn it. Sometimes they learn another one or two at the same time, so it must be terribly easy.
Update: There must be a simple way to link Google News related articles pages. Well, simpler than selecting and pasting, which may not be possible, now that I think about it. . .
Update: Oh yes, I'd forgotten.
In his entry on this, titled Welcome To The Real World, EUnuchs, Bill Quick writes:
I suggest you turn out the peace marchers. That should take care of the problem.UPDATE: Sorry, make that the pro-Islamofascist, anti-American peace marchers.
I suppose that extinction-level cataclysm I start praying for every time I visit the warbloggers will take out Finland, too.
Still, a flight from Chicago is as low as $375. Are the Northern Lights visible there? They'd make a pretty backdrop when the meteor hits.
Well, actually uppity-shinob is the law. . .
That's precisely the sort of in-joke that keeps most visitors from posting here, or even understanding most of the site. Darn shame there's no way to look this stuff up if you're truly interested.
There's also the question of unwritten rules.
Well, there's just the one rule, really. It applies in no other situations, so I can understand how people could be confused.
Don't be an asshole.
Clearly, this doesn't apply to me. I am, after all, a Black militant, violently misogynist, homophobic, anti-Semetic and prejudiced against all white people. Including some of my relatives.
No, this applies only to people posting comments. And it translates, in my effed-up moral universe, to "don't piss off the webmaster."
With exceptions, of course. After all, Laura once said,
OK, you have certainly blown your cover. You are definitely a dyke from 1989.
And I didn't immediately have her killed.
But only because she didn't suggest I also played softball and had a mullet.
Not that I know anything about such matters. I'm able, in a limited way, to pass myself off as a novice/poseur/former member of the scene who dropped out years ago/baby dyke first night at the club only because I know just enough about various subcultures to sound like I vaguely know what I'm talking about. Any actual Linux users/SF fans/comics readers/goths/feminists/Buddhists/smarks recognize instantly that I'm talking out of my ass whenever I go into the slightest bit of detail. Because I get the details very, very wrong.
That's why you've got extremely superficial entries and long, detailed discussions, where I sit back and take notes from the people who actually know what they're talking about.
I'm also not emotionally invested in most of the issues to have taken sides. Except regarding Black militancy, where I follow the standard party line of the Democrats, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and the Nation of Islam. Because, as we all know, these four agree on all the issues.
And Louis Farrakhan is a known Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan. There's an article on WHEDONesque about him appearing in an upcoming episode, as a calypso singer turned demon.
I know, that gag has been done to Death. . .
My sister -- no, the one who doesn't write romance novels -- forwarded this from some Tori Amos mailing list or other.
We've just gotten a clip of "a sorta fairytale" and wanted YOU GUYS TO SEE IT FIRST. Take a look at Tori's breakthrough new video:
REAL: http://www.toriamos.com/video/asortoffairytalevid.ram
WINMED 56K: http://www.toriamos.com/video/asortoffairytalevid_56.asx
WINMED 100K: http://www.toriamos.com/video/asortoffairytalevid_100.asx
WINMED 300K: http://www.toriamos.com/video/asortoffairytalevid_300.asx
QuickTime: http://www.toriamos.com/video/asortoffairytalevid.mov
There are a number of other Death and Sandman Images I could have used for that first link, but liked that one the best. Rarely see anyone whose hair is even more out of control than mine. . .
Never mind.
Some poor potential blogger tried interviewing me last night on IM. Late last night. Early this morning. My brain was not functioning. So I hope he or she saved the log, because I casually clicked the window shut even while thinking, "I should save this."
My responses, which I'm trying to remember, were much less coherent than the re-creations here. I may have said, "That'll put marzipan in your pie plate!" for no particular reason at some point.
Them: So, it's mostly black guys who read and comment on your site?Me: Um. . . well, there's Jason, and George stops by sometimes, and Ronn and j. brotherlove every once in a blue moon. . . not really, no.
Me: Maybe if I didn't insult O-Dub and Darmon whenever they stop by. . .
Them: So you post about stuff like the Colin Powell - Harry Belafonte thing?
Me: The what now?
Them: The links are to sites that you read regularly?
Me: When you say "regularly". . .
There was more. I might even remember enough scraps for it to be worth mentioning.
Tony came up, but I started a rambling answer about posting photos of women, then realized most of the women here might actually like it more if I did. And then there was some odd business involving Kate Dillon and size issues, which may have made perfect sense to me at the time, but on reflection makes me wonder if the free clinic has therapists available on Saturdays.
I did feel guilty enough to actually, you know, read some of the people I've linked to. While having the IM chat. I cannot multitask properly even when wide awake. If the child ever does start a blog or post a transcript, ignore the bit where I say, "Oh, that's what Neo meant when she mentioned side effects of birth control pills. I'd been too embarassed by my ignorance at the time to ask."
And I did admit I'd only read about the Powell-Belafonte thing at Die Puny Humans. Leading to the question, "Is that another black blog?" To which I replied yes, not realizing that sarcasm does not travel well in this medium if you don't use smileys. And I fucking hate those things.
Think towards the end of the chat, everyone was black. Including Rachel Lucas and Dawn Olsen. And possibly Rebecca Blood, although I might have been thinking of LuCyFurr, who to my knowledge doesn't actually have a blog, and created a composite. . .
I trust this serves as a cautionary tale to anyone thinking of IMing me.
I may just uninstall the software entirely.
Update: Honestly compels me to point out that there might, possibly, have been one Goose Island Honker's Ale involved in addition to sleep deprivation. Two, max.
Then someone came in through the back door, which I'd left open because it was unseasonably warm, and forgotten about -- clearly, I've lived in Minnesota for too long, and will probably put a key under the Batz Maru welcome mat next -- and finished off several more. There's no way I could have had that many.
It would have made me say very silly things.
From In the Dark, the third episode of City of Dark Angel:
Camera pulls back to reveal Spike watching [Angel and Rachel] from a rooftop.Spike (in high voice): “How can I thank you, you mysterious, black-clad hunk of a night thing? (low voice) No need, little lady, your tears of gratitude are enough for me. You see, I was once a badass vampire, but love -- and a pesky curse -- defanged me. Now I’m just a big, fluffy puppy with bad teeth. (Rachel steps closer to Angel, and Angel steps back warding her off with his hands) No, not the hair! Never the hair! (high voice) But there must be someway I can show my appreciation. (low voice) No, helping those in need’s my job, - and working up a load of sexual tension, and prancing away like a magnificent poof is truly thanks enough! (high voice) I understand. I have a nephew who is gay, so… (low voice) Say no more. Evil’s still afoot! And I’m almost out of that Nancy-boy hair-gel that I like so much. Quickly, to the Angel-mobile, away!”
Spike lights a cigarette while he watches Angel lead Rachel away.
Spike: “Go on with you. Play the big, strapping hero while you can. You have a few surprises coming your way. - The ring of Amarra – a visit from your old pal Spike, - and, oh yeah, - your gruesome, horrible death.” Smiles.
And, you know, you can listen to a wav of this, as the transcript fails to do James Marsters' reading justice.
Seems like all the cool kids are going to MT 2.5, most recently Team Murder. Many of them also mentioned the birthday/anniversary, and took the time to thank Ben and Mena. This is because, unlike me, the cool kids have mad skills and some modicum of social skills. Sad, really.
George, who has both, still hasn't upgraded yet, preventing me from looking like a total slack mickey fickey.
It's the broadcast television version of Uppity-Negro.com. Radio Raheem says unto the Korean grocer, "D, mickey fickey, D!"
Never mind.
Possible upgrade later today. Or something.
Won't help. I'll never join the exalted ranks of the real bloggers. I mean, look at O-Dub. He says nice things about Zadie Smith, without the snarkiness accompanying my praise of Jae-Ha Kim, ending with the bold, original statement, "Smart women writers. There is nothing better."
Do I say these things? No. Because I suck.
The Zadie Smith link goes to her piece at Eyeshot. And, um, the previous link goes to their constantly-changing homepage, rather than her. . . see, the real bloggers know how to link things properly, too. Anyway, the piece is titled ON THE ROAD: AMERICAN WRITERS AND THEIR HAIR.
In Philadelphia, when the question and answer section rolls round, the first question comes from the third row, second from right.The question is: “Why did you leave Destiny’s Child?”
The answer is “Religious differences.”
But I am cheered to find the questioner is that greatest of all living American writers, Neal Pollack, who has made the fair city of Philadelphia his new home. With the understated renaissance-man gentility for which he is rightly famed, Pollack greets me afterwards with a hearty American handshake, and some simple advice on this meeting-and-greeting signing process I have such trouble with. “Use a pen,” he says, as I take my place behind the desk, “And remember the kids love you. And then when you’re done, come eat with me.” The smile he gives me, the toothy beam, is that smile which almost converted Gertrude Stein, which won Pollack the MacArthur Fellowship - the self-same smile that has brought us all here today in lieu of a fee. I smile back. He laughs at my overbite, hands me a restaurant address and disappears. I turn to my public.
I see that sixty percent of my audience are wearing t-shirts with cats on them, but, refreshingly, forty percent are clinically underweight and encased in distressed denim and/or shirts bearing the stitched names of people who worked in gas stations many years ago (none of my public have ever worked in gas stations.) There they all are, waiting. Their hair is shiny and impressive. Some of these kids have such great hair they might as well be writers themselves. In front of my desk they wait, reaching back to the horizon, like a long line of wandering souls waiting to cross the red sea, that is if you are willing for a moment to think of Philadelphia as Jerusalem, and autographs as manna and book-sellers as roman centurions and Neal as Jehovah and readers as wandering souls. I clutch my pen. Is Neal right? Do the kids really love me?
Which piece I might have linked before, but it bears repeating.
She also provides a brief autobiography, and an introduction to the text. This appears after the bit I just quoted above, another indication of my non-blogger-iness.
Hello. Some of you may know me as an English writer of third-person comic fiction, a scribbler of epic narratives populated by a colourful crowd of zany characters battling with a range of cultural issues, all speaking in the ponderous dialects of a world far removed from your own. Or, on the other hand, you may not.I have just completed a book tour, which is somewhat like being on safari but without the attendant dangers of thick bush-land, extreme heat, guns, or wild animals. But book tours offer their own perils to the young writer. I have been on an American book tour before. Four things come out of an American book tour:
1. The writer gains 15 pounds.
2. The writer can find a minibar within five seconds of opening a door, irrespective of wood-paneling camouflage.
3. Any original thought the writer ever had – every pretty black mark she ever made on a piece of white paper – is replaced by the endlessly reoccurring phenomena of the writer’s own name rising up at them in embossed font on the front of a book they have come to despise.
4. The writer is reduced to embracing the only creative subject she has left: writing about writing and writers. And, if she is lucky, hair.
Lacking social skills, I could use this as an excuse to tease Hanne mercilessly. Especially the bit about the minibar.
But instead, I shall take my cue from Oliver Willis.
Smart women writers. There is nothing better.
I'm not sure how to react to this. From The New York Times:
Likely U-Turn by Prosecutors in 1989 AttackA sweeping re-investigation of the 1989 Central Park jogger attack, including new DNA tests and admissions from a murderer never suspected in the crime, has persuaded senior prosecutors and detectives in Manhattan that the convictions of five Harlem teenagers cannot stand, according to three officials involved in the inquiries.
In an interview yesterday, the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, stressed that he had not yet made up his mind about the case but said that if the claims of the murderer, Matias Reyes, continued to hold up, he would go along with a request by defense lawyers to vacate the convictions. The jogger, a 28-year-old investment banker, was beaten, raped and left for dead in the park on a night when other runners and bicyclists were being attacked and robbed by bands of youths.
"We always knew there was someone else out there, but I didn't expect this," Mr. Morgenthau said. "If the facts require us to consent, we're going to do that. We won't hesitate."
Of course they won't. Didn't fucking hesitate during the original prosecution, after all.
How anyone could interpret this as showing that "the system works" is a mystery to me. This must be a lack of imagination on my part.
Right, sorry, NYT requires registration. There's a series of articles at Eyewitness 7Online, the local ABC affiliate's site.
They may have been innocent. That is the fear one juror in the trial of three teenagers convicted of brutally attacking and raping a jogger in Central Park in 1989 now has according to a published report.Harold Brueland told the Daily News, "It's beginning to look like words were put in their mouths. If it turns out that they (the prosecutors) were manipulating us to convict kids with confessions that were obtained fraudulently, it's terrible. I'll feel awful."
Not sure how to react to that either. I'd look for statements made by jurors at the time of the trial, but kind'a doubt they'd improve my mood.
On the other hand, they'd probably be full of certainty. Or passionate intensity. Or something.
There's a press release up at artbomb.net about upcoming books by Alan Moore. Among them is The Mirror of Love:
This epic poem recounts the history of same-sex love, revealing a hidden side of Western culture through the lives of its greatest artists. Sappho, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Oscar Wilde, and many others are woven into this rich, visceral piece described by The Comics Journal as a "vital, affecting piece of work . exquisitely moving -- not because it's a testament to same-sex love, but because it's a testament to love, period." Originally written fourteen years ago, The Mirror of Love sprang from Moore's activist heart as a reaction to Britain's controversial anti-gay law, Clause 28.
I'm in the States, of course, and have no clue what Clause 28 is.
The Clause applies to local authority funded activities. It states that a local authority shall not "intentionally promote homosexuality."The clause was debated at length at the Committee stage in the House of Lords. Hansard records the Minister for State at the Home Office said:
"Local authorities have a duty to provide a comprehensive and efficient library service. Provided this and only this is what they intend to do, there can be no question of the Clause inhibiting them from stocking any book they think necessary for that purpose." Hansard (Lords) 1. 2.88
"We recognise that local authorities are under a duty to provide a comprehensive and efficient library service and that they may wish to stock a range of materials about homosexuality, dealing with homosexual themes or written by homosexual authors. Clause 28 does not stop them doing so unless they are setting out intentionallly to promote homosexuality." Hansard (Lords) 1.2.88
It's probably something Moore made up. Writers do that sort of thing, you know.
Update: Ask a silly question -- such as What is Clause 28?
Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 states that:A local authority shall not
- a) intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality;
- b) promote the teaching in any maintained school the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship;
[. . .] Perhaps the thorniest issue in interpreting Section 28 is that of how promotion is to be construed. It might be said that a relatively innocuous statement such as "homosexuals are human beings" would be an infringement of the Section. Another view might be that the Section is not infringed unless there is encouragement to the public to become homosexual. The difficult issue of what exactly is meant by promotion would be a matter for the courts, which can consider the purpose of legislation and ministerial statements made in Parliament.
Since it is widely thought that no legal action has ever been brought under Section 28, the above is largely academic. It is perhaps more pertinent to consider how the Section has been perceived in public libraries, and what effect it has actually had on library services.
Get a disturbing answer. Good thing we don't have similar laws here in the US.
Do we have similar laws here in the US?
Or is this another of those silly questions I'd be happier not knowing the answer to?
Update: I'm not very intelligent. Didn't even cross my mind to check out the Guardian:
Row erupts over section 28The simmering row in the Tory party over section 28, which has become a totem for social liberals in the party, erupted at the Guardian's fringe meeting yesterday after one Conservative moderniser called it "offensive".
As the party struggles to define itself, Steven Norris, the Tory candidate for London mayor, said: "Section 28, which effectively says homosexuality is due to a lack of moral fibre, is offensive."
Mr Norris said the party had to stand for "equality of respect for every citizen".
"If you think equality is a soft idea you are wrong. This is a battle not yet won, but at last it is engaged."
[. . .] Section 28, introduced by the Tories in the 1988 Local Government Act, effectively stops teachers discussing homosexuality in schools, and is one of the key issues in the party's debate on modernisation.
The Tories are the equivalent of the Democratic Party.
There is no equivalent of the Republicans. All the religious freaks left, remember, and went to colonize Australia.
Or something else starting with an "A".
I love Laura. As do all good people.
This meme might be getting on in years -- well, blog-years, which is about a week -- but I don't get out much, so I only first saw it at Interesting Monstah.
R. Robot writes, or at least randomly generates:
On the set of The Real World, Uppity Negro Pundit engaged in wildly low treason that most Americans found shocking. "Is there any evidence that Iraq 'thinks they might want to team up with terrorists,' as the President said?" were the words. If so, then why has Jenna Bush's call for legacies been so successful? Among the defeatist Islamists, Uppity Negro Pundit mischaracterizes people like Tony Blair with the usual baying. "Maybe we could get Afghanistan straightened out first," he said last week. This kind of wretched insouciance is as execrable as it is ideological. In a special appearance on The Simpsons, Uppity Negro Pundit engaged in curiously vile treachery that most Americans found shocking. "I thought the hijackers were Saudi," were the words. It is tempting to accept this verdict as all the proof needed that Dick Cheney is solidly on the right track. But the argument needs to be addressed, not because it is foolish but because it is the fashion among fools, and because those fools are curiously bitter fools. The proof that our mission is patriotic and faith-based is that it's so risky.The negligent duplicity of the Democrats and their dishonest cultural elite is vile. The apologists of the liberal elite have become more bizarrely hysterical in their outrageous disgrace than I could scarcely have imagined last week. Politics are allowed in politics, but there are limits, and there is a pale, and Uppity Negro Pundit has managed to appease those limits, and excuse beyond that pale.
Which is only funny if a) I wrote about politics and b) I actually used the alternate URL UppityNegroPundit.com, I suppose.
Sue me. I am easily amused.
Suppose I could post-date this, so it stays on top of the page until I change the site name again.
Nah, that's crazy talk.
Jae-Ha Kim is a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times. A New York Times bestselling author, her books include Best of Friends. Kim's magazine credits include Entertainment Weekly, People and Rolling Stone. She received her B.A. from the University of Chicago and her M.S. from Northwestern University. Kim may be seen in the indie film Under the Bus.
I like her despite the University of Chicago and Northwestern stuff. Never met the woman, so I'm not sure if she's one of those Medill people. You can always spot them. It's wearing the diploma everywhere as a necklace gives it away. That, and how they casually drop it into conversations. You know, stuff like, "Oh, you twisted your ankle? That happened to me once, walking around Medill," or "Your younger brother got sent to Afghanistan? Wow, that's a long way from Medill," or "Oh no, an alien armada is decimating the Earth! I hope they don't destroy my alma mater, Medill."
Like I said, casual. Just so people don't mistake them for one of those non-Medill-attending peons, who didn't attend Medill.
Not sure what her book is about. I guess there was some tv show called Friends or something?
Her columns, on the other hand:
I knew I had made the right decision. Sometimes you’ve just got to dump your friends. It’s like spring cleaning for the soul.Dumping your friends is different from losing touch. The latter is passive action that happens because one of you moves away, or he gets married, or she has a baby and is too busy to listen to you harp about a Kate Spade handbag that you absolutely have to have. Eventually, you run into each other again, exchange new numbers and addresses and make an effort to renew your friendship.
Breaking up with a friend is a pro-active decision. When you break up, you have no intention of reuniting again. It takes guts, because sometimes they’ll confront you. And then you have to be prepared to say four of the most difficult words in the English language: “I don’t like you.” Make that five. “Anymore.”
Then, too, you have to be prepared to not hear their voices anymore, annoying though they may have become.
The breakup with my friends last year didn’t come as a surprise to any of us. But it still wasn’t easy. One had been a pal of mine since college. We still have many mutual buddies. The other was a friend of hers. Over time, I realized that they enjoyed hanging together more than they did with me. And, to my surprise, I found that I enjoyed being alone or with my other friends more than I did with them.
Her columns, like the just-quoted Dumping Friends, are quite good.
She also does film and concert reviews, celebrity interviews, writes about television shows I've actually sat through episodes of. . . basically, Jae-Ha Kim is livin' on phat beach. It's her world, the rest of us just live here.
Medill graduates usually do quite well for themselves, so this isn't particularly surprising.
I have no ulterior motives in this, by the way.
There's safety in numbers. That's the only explanation I can come up with as to why a stadium full of 95 percent men would work itself up into a collective dither, trying to get the few women in the venue to expose their breasts.Hey - ever hear of Playboy?
If any one of these lumbering morons was at a beach, or even a bar, there's no way he would walk up to a girl and scream, "Show your - - - -!" at her.
But it's become a recurring cry at rock concerts, particularly at those such as heavy metal shows that attract mostly young men.
At Metallica's recent Rosemont Horizon gig, the predominantly male crowd created its own entertainment prior to the band's entrance by screaming that mantra at an uncomfortably rabid frequency to the few women in the audience. (The person working the lights abetted them by projecting the spotlight on various women.)
The scenario wasn't cute or funny. It was obnoxious and, from a woman's point of view, frightening.
"Boys will be boys," a guy sitting behind me shrugged off.
Yeah, well it's about time they grew up to be men.
I just really like her writing, like the piece about Stupid music fans. Sometimes there are lessons which apply to other realms as well.
It's National Coming Out Day tomorrow.
Every Oct. 11, thousands of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people and allies celebrate National Coming Out Day. They hold workshops, speak-outs, rallies and other kinds of events all aimed at showing the public that GLBT people are everywhere.
Neither I, nor (to my knowledge) anyone I know, has received spam as a result of sending or receiving Yahoo! Greetings.
Yahoo! does not use the names or email addresses from this service for any marketing purposes and Yahoo! does not share any of this information with third parties without your permission.
From the Eurythmics' fourth album, 1984 (For the Love of Big Brother), the soundtrack for the film Nineteen Eighty-Four:
Sexcrime (Nineteen Eighty-Four)
Can I take this for granted
With your eyes over me?
In this place
This wintery home
I know there's always someone inSexcrime
Sexcrime
Nineteen eighty fourAnd so I face the wall
Turn my back against it all
How I wish I'd been unborn
Wish I was unliving hereSexcrime
Sexcrime
Nineteen eighty fourI'll pull the bricks down
One by one
Leave a big hole in the wall
Just where you are looking in
And that's it. I'm going to bed.
Considered, and rejected, including the animated gif in the Greeting. This thing takes long enough to load on a dialup as it is.
More information about the Eurythmics album is available at eurythmics.musicdot.com.
Finally, I may have heard an unfavorable review of certain Hello, Kitty merchandise recently, but am maintaining the polite fiction that I didn't.
And this time I mean it, I'm going to bed.
Music and lyrics by Lisa Germano.
A baseball bat, a baseball bat beside my bed
I'll wait around and wait around, and wait
I hear a noise, I hear a noise, well I hear something
I am alone, you win again, I'm paralyzed
I drift away, I'll drift away, am I asleep yet
I hear a scream, I see me scream, is it from memory
Am I awake, am I alone, when it is sunrise
A baseball bat, a thing of mace
That thing of mace, the thing of mace, where did I leave it
A psychopath, a psychopath, he says he loves me
And I'm alone, and I am cold and paralyzed, I can't move
Should I reassure Oliver that his friends and family are much more likely to be killed by friends and family than by psycho sniper guy? Or will this not help so much?
Wait, I tell a lie. According to Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Characteristics:
Males were more likely to be victimized by a stranger, and females were more likely to be violently victimized by a friend, an acquaintance, or an intimate.[. . .] Family members were most likely to murder a young child -- About one in five child murders was committed by a family member -- while a friend or acquaintance was most likely to murder an older child age 15 to 17.
[. . .] For murder victims, 45% were related to or acquainted with their assailants; 15% of victims were murdered by strangers, while almost 40% of victims had an unknown relationship to their murderer.
Depends on age and gender. Who'd have thought it?
Not Jason's fault, I should have known better than to hit the link to. . . dear god, he's declared himself a pundit. Jason, could you include a small warning next time, in case I take the stupid pills again?
Right, I should express some controversial opinion like the real bloggers do. Um. Killing other people is Bad. When it's random and well-publicized, anyway.
Discarded all your beauty in despair,
declared yourself a concubine,
filled the bathtub full of wine,
bathed and drank the night away,
and said there’d never come a day
when politics would ever mean a thing.
Last Night, by Over the Rhine, from Besides. There's an mp3 available, which is good, since my only copy is on tape. . .
I only said I'd stop the Ani lyrics. Be more specific next time.
From Racial Vilification Policy - empowerment, not punishment, by Dr Katharine Gelber:
Hate speech doesn't just impart incorrect information and stereotypes about people. It stereotypes its targets, it restricts their ability to participate as fully equal human beings in society. Racist stereotypes can contribute to a climate of justifying violence and discrimination against marginalised groups. But at the same time racist hate speech in fact does the marginalising. Vilification is not just unpleasant. It does things, which have been documented at this conference and elsewhere. These include limiting victims' personal liberty; leading hearers to internalise discriminatory messages, so that they begin to believe them; and silencing. Of these, the silencing impact is the most immediate, and I would argue, susceptible to remedy by hate speech policy.If vilification silences and disempowers its targets - and this is both its aim and its outcome - then hate speech policy should be designed to redress the harm occasioned. Perpetrator-focussed remedies tend not to render targeted communities less silenced or less disempowered. This is why I advocate a policy of "speaking back"; a policy of providing educational, material and institutional assistance to targeted communities to respond to incidences of hate speech.
Providing assistance to targeted communities to respond allows them to challenge the silencing effects of hate speech - by actually speaking. It also allows them to contradict the claims made by hate speakers - by sending out their own messages.
In this way the hate speech has been responded to in an appropriate way, a way that empowers targeted communities to speak back. This policy is not perpetrator-focussed, rather it is focussed on empowering targeted communities.
Don't worry, it's from a conference in Australia. No one is talking about such heresy here. Or I'm just not looking in the right places.
Dr. Gelber's name appeared as a reference fairly early in Digital Representation: Racism on the World Wide Web, by Indhu Rajagopal with Nis Bojin. Bits of that might be appearing here in the near future, too. I think Neo sent the link to keep me distracted, so I would shut the hell up.
And it's working.
Right, last one, I swear. Think I've about milked that gag for all it's worth at this point, anyway.
Why I'm Never Signed On to AIM, Exhibit A:
Some Random Guy: who is this?
ahawk31361: Er, does "who" refer to the questioner, or the person being asked?
Some Random Guy: it mean "who are you"
Some Random Guy: means*
ahawk31361: Sorry, distracted. Who's asking? Seeing as, you know, you're asking.
Some Random Guy: im trying to figure why you are on my buddy list
ahawk31361: Ever visit the site http://www.uppity-negro.com?
Some Random Guy: oh yah
Some Random Guy: thats what it is
Some Random Guy: what is that site about
ahawk31361: Women's erotica and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Some Random Guy: lol
Some Random Guy: no really
ahawk31361: You think I'm joking?
Some Random Guy: yah
Some Random Guy: u are
Some Random Guy: whats it about
Some Random Guy: im interested, but busy... so could you plz tell me
ahawk31361: Politics and pop culture from a black perspective. More or less. usually less.
Some Random Guy: i have a project for you
Some Random Guy: i want you to find uses of the 'epithet' Uncle Tom in popular culture
Some Random Guy: by blacks or whites
Some Random Guy: Chop Chop!!!
ahawk31361: Think George handled that one recently: http://www.allaboutgeorge.com
Some Random Guy: is this a joke
ahawk31361: Well, no, he linked to an article on the reissue of Uncle Tom's Cabin.
ahawk31361: Few days back. Maybe a week.
Some Random Guy: im trying to write a book on that topic
Some Random Guy: how old are u
Some Random Guy: u are like a 12 yr old huh
I was having a civil conversation with someone else in another window at the same time, but that was probably a figment of Dru's imagination as well.
Michelle has the right approach, I think. Remind me to remove that link from the page at some point.
I'm also probably going to strip all the HTML out of that transcript, or delete this entry entirely. It's a mess in there. . .
Oh, right, Jason, who unlike me realizes that "site design" isn't restricted to choosing one of the default MT templates, mentioned LOL and suchlike recently. And the main reason I don't read the Milestone Yahoo Group is that one of the participants insists on writing like that. Call me old-fashioned, but I don't particularly care for translating that stuff into English in order to read it.
After all, I'll just pass the blame on to Dru:
And then there are the trips to "the city" where our group of inexperienced teens can be found wandering down streets, searching for Wax Trax and Cabaret Metro, while tourists take their picture. Dodging Nazi skinheads and posing at Punkin' Donuts. Drucilla picks up a PETA pamphlet and becomes convinced, once and for all, that it is wrong to eat animals.
If you're not wondering how/if Cafe Voltaire fits into this, and how much was spent at The Alley, I may not want to be your friend.
I don't care what my sister says, there's no such thing as too much Ani.
Realized I hadn't read any of Bruce Sterling's Viridian Notes recently, when a vaguely Viridian-sounding story showed up at Me-Phi-Me. This is because I never bothered signing up for the list, and would only read them when Ellis re-posted them on the WEF.
Clearly, this is no longer an option.
I will therefore be catching up on several of them at a time, every few months. I'm on far too many mailing lists as it is, even if Margaret Cho and Meg Lee Chin's announcements-only offerings are few and always informative. And it's not a fetish, so shut up.
Driving this point home rather effectively -- the one about mailing lists, please do try to keep up -- are the months of unread messages from OUTiL sitting in the copy of Eudora on this laptop.
OUTiL is open to lesbian, gay, bisexual, dyke, queer, homosexual, etc. linguists and their friends. The only requirement is that you be willing to be out to everyone on the list as glb(-friendly); it's sort of like wearing a pink triangle.The name can be pronounced in English, to rhyme with "shout'll", or in French, anglicized if you wish to something like "ooh, *teal*". Yes, in the latter case it means 'tool'.
Unread messages from 1997-98, mind. Set up a filter, let them pile up, realized this, unsubscribed, and. . . well, a normal person would delete them. But I feel this would be rude, and am planning on going through them at some point. When I'm trapped on an International flight with no 'net access perhaps.
And the airline better have standard American outlets on the flight, since the battery only holds about 20 minutes of charge.
Not my fault she didn't snag the domain, and someone else with the same name did. You snooze, you lose.
U People's Network ran an ad for Enterprise last night, before I could avert my eyes in horror. Noticed a text bar with the tagline "Trek to the Stars" or somesuch at the bottom of the screen.
Could'a sworn they made a big show about how the, um, show was called just Enterprise, not St*r Tr*k: Enterprise, when they did the big rollout last year. You know, in a desperate attempt to convince the non-Trekker majority of the planet that, really, you can watch this too, it's perfectly safe, and you won't end up giving Chris Rush the screamin' heebie-jeebies by appearing near his apartment in your motorized Captain Pike wheelchair in a documentary.
This idea has been jettisoned, I take it?
Warren Ellis comments on the piss-poor quality of SF television in his latest BAD SIGNAL email. Which you puny humans will just have to subscribe to in order to read, since, you know, no more WEF.
Yes, I am in withdrawl. Shut the hell up.
Movable Type 2.5 is live and direct, meaning there may be a brief interruption in service later today.
Or I'll wait for Jason or Michelle to take the plunge fir. . . oh look, Michelle is miles ahead of me.
Jason, you gonna let her make us you look like a slacker? Don't go out like that, my brother.
Update: Michelle claims to have discovered the upgrade by accident. Uh-huh. It's all part of her Evil Scheme to. . . Michelle, what's the Evil Scheme about? I know there's a maharajah involved, and a penniless sitar player. . .
Can't we all just. . .
No Penises on the Land, Addendum to MWMF Policy:When the MWMF organizers extended the "womyn-born womyn only policy" to include the "no penises on the land" clause, they took an essentialist stance in claiming an individual’s gender is tied to the presence or absence of a particular form of genitalia. While this clause would allow for pre-operative female to male (FTM) transsexuals and post-operative male to female (MTF) transsexuals to participate in the festival, it is an extremely dangerous argument that ignores many issues within the womyn’s community.
. . . no, I suppose we can't.
Karma Sutra plays what may be their last show of 2002 this Saturday at "Give Peace a Dance - Earth Dance" in Chicago. This, from their email list; the show schedule is also up at DivaNation's site, for nonsubscribers.
Nothing about Scarlet Life shows, but Yvonne Bruner of Big Hat will be performing with Pointy Teeth.
Anybody need a scorecard to keep track of all that?
Briefly cheered by a cancellation notice, until I realized it was the Salt Lake City show, not the one at Patty's wedding. Darn. Looks like she's going through with it, and I have to wait for the marriage to break up after all. . .
Note to Karen: there is no such thing as too much ani, and how was I supposed to know Patty was straight?
Guns don't kill people, say people with guns who express violent revenge fantasies whenever they read about crimes.
Newsday.com - Report: Tarot Card Found at Sniper Attack SiteA sniper terrorizing the Washington suburbs reportedly left behind a Tarot card with the words, "Dear policeman, I am God," near a bullet casing outside the school where a 13-year-old boy was critically wounded.
[. . .] The taunting message, first reported Tuesday night on WUSA-TV, was left on a Tarot card known as the Death card. Unidentified sources cited by The Washington Post confirmed the report.
Tarot cards kill people. Or the sorts of people who have them kill people.
Wouldn't The Tower have been more appropriate? Or does expressing even that incredibly superficial level of interest make me suspect?
Probably from one of those tacky Rider sets, too. And I imagine the television news shows will do lurid, ill-informed stories about this, showing images from badly-illustrated. . .
It's in poor taste to complain about this sort of thing when someone is wandering around randomly shooting people, of course. But I get the feeling that this angle is going to be picked up on, rather than the more obvious one.
Because guns don't kill people.
Best way to figure out if you should listen to a reviewer is by reading a review of a work you're already familiar with. So, if you're not from Chicago and don't realize that you should implicitly Trust Roger Ebert, you could have a look at his review of, say, "Grave of the Fireflies"
It tells a simple story of survival. The boy and his sister must find a place to stay, and food to eat. In wartime their relatives are not kind or generous, and after their aunt sells their mother's kimonos for rice, she keeps a lot of the rice for herself. Eventually, Seita realizes it is time to leave. He has some money and can buy food--but soon there is no food to buy. His sister grows weaker. Their story is told not as melodrama, but simply, directly, in the neorealist tradition. And there is time for silence in it. One of the film's greatest gifts is its patience; shots are held so we can think about them, characters are glimpsed in private moments, atmosphere and nature are given time to establish themselves.Japanese poets use "pillow words" that are halfway between pauses and punctuation, and the great director Yasujiro Ozu uses "pillow shots"--a detail from nature, say, to separate two scenes. "Grave of the Fireflies" uses them, too. Its visuals create a kind of poetry. There are moments of quick action, as when the bombs rain down and terrified people fill the streets, but this film doesn't exploit action; it meditates on its consequences.
to see if his opinion more or less lines up with yours. Personally, I thought the parts of the film I saw were brilliant. And so fucking depressing I have yet to actually finish watching it, but they can't all be The Feel-Good Movie of the Summer. . .
Not at all similarly, but I can't come up with a decent transitional sentence at the moment so this one will have to do, it's easy enough to determine if Karin Lee's reviews should influence your borrowing/purchasing decisions. Read the Comics for the Ill: Jhonen Vasquez review:
I Feel Sick is arguably the best of Vasquez's books. The art and storytelling have grown more sophisticated and streamlined without losing Vasquez's wit and sick humour. It's the story of Devi, whose date with Johnny in JTHM went horribly awry when he tried to kill her. Here, she's struggling to make a living as an artist, doing illustrations for horror novels, and trying not to lose her grip on her own work. Things are complicated by one of her unfinished paintings, which appears to have become possessed. Despite, or perhaps because of, the sheer over-the-top surreality of the story (one of Devi's failed dates, we learn, was with a zombie), I Feel Sick is really an excellent story about the sheer hell of being a creative person in a society seemingly bent on squashing creativity at every turn.
Realize that anyone who likes Jhonen, but not so much as to foist Fillerbunny minicomics on the uninitiated is, clearly, an individual of rare insight, and wander around Bookslut for a bit to see if the rest of the crew maintains the same level of coolness.
Except, you know, books, not films, like the introductory meandering suggested. There's more information at Nausicaa.net if I didn't turn you off to the idea of seeing "Grave of the Fireflies." And there's a story that Jhonen was doing a cartoon series on Nickelodeon, but that's just silly.
If there was such a thing, surely his I Feel Sick collaborator, Rosearik Rikki Simons, would mention it on his site.
Or his other site.
Or something.
Bookmarked this ages ago, and I'm not certain why. Probably saw it at wood s lot. In fact, checking blogdex sources for the link, that's the only entry. From December 23rd. This is probably deep and significant, or can easily be made to look convincingly so.
I Give You Back, --from She Had Some Horses by Joy Harjo, 1983
I release you, my beautiful and terrible
fear. I release you. You were my beloved
and hated twin, but now, I don't know you
as myself. I release you with all the
pain I would know at the death of
my daughters.
You are not my blood anymore.
I give you back to the white soldiers
who burned down my home, beheaded my children,
raped and sodomized my brothers and sisters.
I give you back to those who stole the
food from our plates when we were starving.
I release you, fear, because you hold
these scenes in front of me and I was born
with eyes that can never close.
About the Author:
Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma and an enrolled member of the Muskogee Tribe, Joy Harjo came to New Mexico to attend the Institute of American Indian Arts where she studied painting and theatre, not music and poetry, though she did write a few lyrics for an Indian acid rock band. Joy attended the University of New Mexico where she received her B.A. in 1976, followes by an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. She has also taken part in a non-degree program in Filmmaking from the Anthropology Film Center.
The world needs more Indian acid rock bands.
Many of her poems are available online, from the previous link. Can't guarantee everything will work; had to pull an interview from the Archive, so try not to be too shocked at the odd 404.
Nine years ago, Native American poet Joy Harjo made a bold prediction."I've been studying the saxophone for four years," she said during a reading taped for the Lannan Literary Videos series. "And someday I'm going to have a band."
And the day came when she realized that prophecy. In 1997, Joy Harjo and Poetic Justice released the group's first CD, "Letters From the End of the Twentieth Century", a combination of rock, jazz, reggae, tribal and Latin music. It features the celebrated Muskogee poet, Harjo, 47, singing and chanting her work and playing the alto saxophone.
[. . .] "I believe in the power of words to create the world, she says. I have a poem that will turn hatred into love. And one to release me from fear. And then she speaks the words:
"Fear, you have choked me, but I gave you the leash.
You have gutted me but I gave you the knife.
You have devoured me but I laid myself across the fire.
I take myself back, Fear . . .""Words are doors. Or openings to meanings, she explains. Our world springs from them. It takes an idea to start a war or create an organization.
There's more/updated information at JoyHarjo.com, including lyrics and sound clips from the cd Letter From The End of the Twentieth Century.
Just plugged her name into Google News, figuring that if I'm thinking about her, she must have. . . no, that's crazy talk. Only two results, a reading from her new book last month at San Jose State University, and an announcement of the book from Okmulgee Daily Times:
The internationally acclaimed Muscogee poetess, Joy Harjo, will be discussing her newest book of poetry, "How We Became Human New and Selected Poems: 1975 - 2001" at the Creek Council House Museum on Saturday, September 14 at 3:00 p.m. This event is sponsored by the Creek Indian Memorial Association and is open free to the public.Over the past twenty-five years, Joy Harjo has emerged as the powerful international spokeswoman in verse for America's indigenous peoples. Across seven collections, in poems of breathtaking beauty and staggering social conscience, she has raised our awareness of the historic plight and everyday reality of Native Americans. Fearless and defiant, her voice has brought grace and relevance to the lives of America's many silenced identities, scores of individuals marginalized for their race, ethnicity, sexuality, or class. HOW WE BECAME HUMAN (W. W. Norton & Company: July 29, 2002; $26.95 cloth) gathers a quarter-century of this celebrated humanitarian and brilliant poet's work, offering an epic look at American spirituality, from ancient myths of creation to snapshots of contemporary life.
If you're interested in that sort of thing.
Update: Or, if you're more in a novel sort of mood, Dru is (re)reading Ellison's Invisible Man. Might have been 10 years since the last time I (re)read it, and the book had somehow become much more textured than it was the first time I'd read it. Odd how that happens. . .
At the oddly omnipolitical BlackElectorate.com, there's a link to an article at the well-known antiracist resource, FrontPageMag, titled Leftist Racism:
The British Empire is the best case in point. Britons of that era regarded it as blindingly obvious that they were a superior race especially blessed by God (sound familar?). Yet did they therefore perpetrate pogroms or holocausts against anybody? Far from it. As Christians, they actually saw their superiority as giving them a duty to care for the "lesser" races (Kipling's famous "white man's burden").
Which quote is towards the end of the piece, after the author has assured readers that Hitler was, in fact, Leftist, and anything which says otherwise is part of a Big Lie. In fact, that latter phrase may have been in all caps. I'd rather not re-read the thing to check. Worryingly, the author restricts his attention to racism in Western Europe and the US, and only among white folks in the US at that.
Writing about racism among black people would have meant treating us as subjects rather than objects/victims/martyrs, after all.
The reference to Kipling is. . . confusing.
Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine,
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
(The end for others sought)
Watch sloth and heathen folly
Bring all your hope to nought.
From The White Man's Burden, by Rudyard Kipling, McClure's Magazine, Feb. 1899.
Except I always read it as mocking the entire notion. Then again, I also don't think Swift was serious about his Modest Proposal.
I'm not a very good American, you see.
The first American to get to grips with the concept of irony!San Francisco: The Daily Telegraph spoke to Jay Fullmer, 38, who became the first American to get to grips with the concept of irony.
"It was weird," Fullmer said, "I was in London and, like, talking to this guy and it was raining and stuff and he said, like, great weather, or something like that. And I thought-wait a minute, it's like, no way is it great weather." said Fullmer.
Fullmer soon realized that the other man's 'mistake' was deliberate. "This guy was pretty cool about it," Fullmer said.
I know that irony doesn't come from elephants.
Want to know more? Make sure you have Java and popups turned off, and visit "The White Man's Burden" and Its Critics.
And I really don't want to.
If you were wondering what sort of demographic was actually impressed by the Bush address:
Apart from that, though, everything seemed fine. I heard a rumor that the Commie networks (Commie Broadcasting System; Nothing But Commies; and All Bloody Commies) did not deign to carry the President's speech live. Was this true?If so, there must have been something more important on -- like a baseball playoff game [yawn] or Al Gore [who?] giving a speech to a critical Democrat constituency like the Gay Crippled Latinos Society [snore].
Kim du Toit seems to have favored it. So that's the all-important Deranged White Male demo, right there.
The (current) Mrs. has a blog now, too. Nothing about the Prez, but a few days ago she did say:
The Mister and I got on the subject of Iraq and the U.N. last night. We dug out Jesse Helm's January 2000 speech to the U.N. It was and is a great speech.
It's quite good. I mean, in only three sentences, she's managed to convince me that I don't want to be anywhere near their happy little family, and should offer prayers to any gods which might be paying attention that it never, ever grow.
Unfortunately, there's a bit on homeschooling further down the page, indicating my prayers would come too late. Well, there's always school shootings or something. Are there homeschool shootings? You'd think so, in that house. Or at least hope so.
As for the Helms speech (you're not meant to put a possessive apostrophe inside a proper name like that, right?), for those of us who didn't have a copy handy, the senior Senator from Harkonnen-controlled Arrakis said:
When the distinguished Secretary General, Kofi Annan, was elected, some of us in the Senate decided to try to establish a working relationship. The result is the Helms-Biden law, which President Clinton finally signed into law this past November. The product of three years of arduous negotiations and hard-fought compromises, it was approved by the U.S. Senate by an overwhelming 98 -1 margin. You should read that vote as a virtually unanimous mandate for a new relationship with a reformed United Nations.
You might remember Kofi Annan's predecessor, Boutros Boutrous Ghali:
In the final months prior to the end of Ghali's first term in office it was evident that the United States, the most influential member-state in the UN, did not want him to return to his position. The obscure and dour Egyptian Coptic Christian had become even a domestic political liability to the United States government.The Republican opposition to then President Clinton routinely cited Ghali as the reason why the American government should not pay its backlog of dues to the United Nations, a development that threatened to cripple the activities of the organization. The money would be wasted anyway, Ghali's critics argued, because they alleged he had failed to rein in the UN's bloated bureaucracy, among other "sins". The American government listened to its domestic critics. At the time Ghali's term came up for renewal, it became well known that the US' attitude was "Anybody But Boutrous".
Or not. That was way back in the previous millennium, and we're meant to be shaking off the dead hand of history teachers. Or something.
Anyway, the U.S. sort'a engineered Ghali's departure and kind'a hand-picked Annan as a replacement, at least in part because he's also from Africa. Some people accept the Afrocentrists' absurd notions about Egypt being part of the continent it's attached to, you see, which is why Ghali taking the spot was seen as something of a victory back in the day.
That's even further back in the mists of time, though. We should look to the future instead of the past.
Doubt there's going to be as much of it, so it'll be easier.
Right, I'd almost forgotten why I can't be a real jounalist. Like my identical twin cousin from England, George:
There are three televisions in the newsroom. Everytime he opens his mouth, sibilant whispers echo around the walls at low volume. "Weapons of mass destruction." "The world has also tried economic sanctions." "His own people." "Tough, immediate requirements." "Military conflict could be difficult." "We will plan carefully." Then applause. "That is not the America I know." "Security for the people of Iraq." "Using murder as a tool of terror and control." "America speaks with one voice." "The time remaining for that choice is limited." "May God bless America."
Calling out "Bingo!" in the midst of that probably wouldn't be appreciated. And I expect hisownpeople had been gassed, and hearing that phrase does trigger the Murdering Rampage of Rampaging Murder.
No, best I forgot about Bush's speech and missed it. I expect Mourning Edition will broadcast the lowlights later.
Marketplace just mentioned that weapons' manufacturer stocks may not be a lucrative short-term investment, as a longer war might divert funds from buying new toys to maintenance and paying the troops. What a waste. Don't they realize my portfolio is much more important? Wait, that's right, I don't have one.
Bush didn't try to say nuclear, did he? Just weaponsofmassdestruction?
Could point out Orwell's Politics and the English Language again:
As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier--even quicker, once you have the habit--to say "In my opinion it is a not unjustifiable assumption" that than to say "I think." If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don't have to hunt about for words; you also don't have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences, since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious. When you are composing in a hurry--when you are dictating to a stenographer, for instance, or making a public speech--it is natural to fall into a pretentious, Latinized style. Tags like "consideration which we should do well to bear in mind"or "conclusion to which all of us would readily assent" will save many a sentence from coming down with a bump. By using stale metaphors, similes and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself.
But as usual, no one important was listening the first time.
Besides, Uncle oSAMa himself wants the deed done. Who am I to Refuse and Resist?
Uncle oSAMa link found at Warblogger Watch, while looking for another Orwell quote I vaguely remember the cheerleaders for Holy War taking out of context and transforming into another prepackaged rhetorical device. But I got discouraged, and gave up. Really should work on that passionate intensity thing. . .
Context is everything, of course. And I know I'm the last person on the planet (or close to it) to see Moulin Rouge, but I made the common mistake of thinking that anything that popular couldn't possibly be any good. Eh. Live and learn.
As long as I'm linking the unimportant nonissues of the day from BlackElectorate.com, there's also a statement from Amiri Baraka about his poem:
The recent dishonest, consciously distorted and insulting non-interpretation of my poem, “Somebody Blew Up America” by the “Anti-Defamation” League, is fundamentally an attempt to defame me. And with that, an attempt to repress and stigmatize independent thinkers everywhere.This trashy propaganda is characteristic of right-wing zealots who are interested only in slander and character assassination of those whose views or philosophies differ from or are in contradiction to theirs.
[. . .] Actually, in my focus on various forces of terror Afro Americans and other oppressed people of the world have suffered, slavery, colonialism, Imperialism, Neoneo-colonialism, National Oppression, the ADL disingenuously makes no mentionof my probing into the creators of the holocaust, e.g., : "who put the Jews in ovens, / and who helped them do it, / Who said "America First"/ and Ok'd the yellow stars", which of course is a reference to America's domestic fascists just before World War 2 and the Nazi Holocaust.
Nor do these ADL purveyors of falsehood mention the poem's listing of some of the Jews across the world, oppressed, imprisoned, murdered by actual Anti- Semitic forces, open or disguised. The poem asks "Who killed Rosa Luxembourg, Liebnecht/Who murdered the Rosenbergs/ And all the good people iced, tortured, assassinate, vanished".
The ADL apparently is not outraged by McCarthy era frame-up and execution of the Rosenbergs, nor the assassination of German Jewish Communist leaders like Liebnecht, Luxembourg. The ADL leaves these things out to try to make their lies more believable, and also because these victims of imperialism were on the Left.
It's like the U of I/U of M game all over again, as far as I'm concerned. Or unconcerned.
Could check to see if his daughter Lisa Jones (of Bulletproof Diva fame) has weighed in on this; she's an incredibly good writer with a unique point of view and a low opinion of Minneapolis. So, clearly, she's worth listening to.
Her dad and the ADL, though? Um, yeah. Fascinating. Wake me up when it's over.
Better still, don't.
Update: That's odd.
Amiri Baraka syntyi New Jerseyn Newarkissa 1934 keskiluokkaiseen perheeseen. Tuolloin hänen nimensä oli Everett Leroy Jones. Hän opiskeli useissa yliopistoissa, mutta jätti opinnot kesken. Varsinainen koulu oli Yhdysvaltain ilmavoimat, jossa hän toimi kirjastonhoitajana.[. . .] Viime vuonna eläkkeelle jääneellä Barakalla on seitsemän lasta kahdesta liitosta: työtä kansalaisaktivistina jatkavat muun muassa tytär, kirjailija Lisa Jones sekä poika, opettaja ja muusikko Ras Baraka.
Usually I don't dream in Finnish unless I've been drinking vodka cranberries made with Finlandia.
That article is the first result from Google when searching for Amiri Baraka and Lisa Jones. Needless to say, I am no longer feeling lucky, and just give up.
Update 2: Ok, so I lied:
Now, let's zoom ahead several decades. To a young woman writer, of mixed racial heritage. Lisa Jones, number 52, who jokes about the abundant number of black Lisa Joneses there are to be found. Her Jewish mother, Hettie Jones, swears there was only one other Lisa when she gave her daughter that name. The surname, Jones, comes from her father, Leroy Jones - poet, revolutionary, writer - later known as Amiri Baraka. Lisa Jones, defines herself as a black woman, whose mother is white. Hettie Jones was disowned by her first generation immigrant parents for her marriage to Jones. Later they begged her to terminate both her pregnancies. Even after she separated from her husband, she decided to stay in the black community and raise her daughters as black, not biracial. She later wrote a book How I became Hettie Jones.
From Djembe Online - No 21: Black, white or somewhere in between, which article/review also touches on passing.
Djembe, as everyone knows,
is distributed quarterly in Denmark, Sweden and Norway (plus app. 100 subscribers in USA and Africa) with a circulation of 3,000 copies.Djembe Magazine focuses on inspiration between cultures. We write about world culture, world art, world music. The articles are mainly in the Danish language.
Or I'm still asleep.
The story itself really isn't that interesting, despite being linked from BlackElectorate. Plus, it's from FOXNews.com:
Chicago Alderman Dorothy Tillman says America is rich today for one reason -- slavery -- and now corporate America must pay something in return."It was because of the free labor of blacks. It was because of all of the suffering we took and we did that made America so powerful," Tillman said.
At Tillman's urging, Chicago city government this week unanimously passed a new law requiring corporations to tell if it had a hand -- any hand at all in the slave trade.
It does have a photo of Dorothy Tillman wearing a hat. As opposed to a photo of Dorothy Tillman not wearing a hat, which would in itself be much more newsworthy, but highly unlikely.
Sorry, at this point the reparations debate bores me. Not as much as "Barbershop" (although Boondocks still got a laugh), but almost. Mildy amusing is people ranting about Jackson spending (minimal) time complaining about the film instead of Working On Things That Truly Matter, when these same people tend to either ignore or disparage him when he does just that, but y'know, take your laughs where you can get them.
There should be links to D.C. Thornton and Oliver Willis in that last paragraph, but this would involve looking at their sites to find the proper entries, and I'm just not in the mood for their particular brand of self-righteous bullshit just now. Sorry. I might go back and add them later.
Or I might write about the Angel season premiere instead. More believable characters, for a start. And Gunn asking Fred to please not use slang.
Now that's comedy.
Update: Meh.
Mr. Thornton actually opinionates on this pressing issue three times, because, you know, it's important to show how Jackson is obsessed with something so unimportant.
No results were found for "Central Park" but I'm confident this owes to my imprecise use of his search function.
Blame Ellis for the title, he's the one who mentioned hearing the upcoming Godspeed You Black Emperor and Sigur Rós cds recently.
Why does he get the new music first?
Because he's cooler than the rest of us.
Over at Common Dreams:
McDermott Accuses Bush of Plotting to be EmperorU.S. Rep. Jim McDermott broadened his attack on George W. Bush's war plans yesterday, saying the president is threatening military action in Iraq as part of a plot to crown himself emperor of America.
Criticized for saying on a trip to Iraq early last week that Bush would mislead the American public, McDermott, a Seattle Democrat, was back in his district yesterday telling cheering supporters that Bush is planning a war to distract voters' attention from domestic problems.
[. . .] At the heart of the debate, McDermott said, is whether Congress or the president has the power to declare war.
"This president is trying to bring to himself all the power to become an emperor — to create Empire America," he said.
And he warned his supporters, "If you go along like sheep that is what will happen."
The warbloggers, who never met a cliché they didn't embrace as a shortcut to thinking, have termed McDermott, David Bonior and Mike Thompson "useful idiots." Do they set macros for all their little catch phrases, do you think? Not for typing the blog entries, for arriving at their arguments. There doesn't seem to be any actual logic at work. . .
Oh yes, and The Warren Ellis Forum on Delphi?
All over. Nothing to see here.My thanks and eternal gratefulness to the moderators.
It's been fun.
-- W
Again, announced after the fact. Sorry. One hell of an archive to dig through, though.
As usual, events are mentioned here after they've taken place. Hell, this announcement might even vanish from DreamHaven's site before you can click over and see it:
Saturday, October 5th, 7:00pm, Lake Street store
There will be a women's erotica reading featuring Hanne Blank, Heather Corinna, and Catherine Lundoff. Hanne is author of Big, Big Love and editor of Zaftig, Shameless: Women's Intimate Erotica, and Best Transgender Erotica. Heather is a photographer, writer, and founder of Scarletletters.com, a women's erotica website. Catherine is a writer and has had stories published in many anthologies, including Zaftig, Shameless, and several of the Best Lesbian Erotica series. You must be over 18 years of age to attend.
I'd intended to blend unobtrusively into the crowd, a skill perfected in small, dimly-lit clubs in Chicago and Urbana-Champaign. They were honed to such a point that not only did people tend to back into me, they also sometimes attempted to walk through me, reacting with mild confusion, then utter alarm, when they realized the small, human-shaped obstruction they kept bumping into was, in fact, a small human.
This meant my interactions with other patrons were generally limited to surprised yelps followed by muttered apologies, with my contribution restricted to quiet assurances that no harm was done. Which is pretty much pushing the envelope on my conversational abilities, so that's all right.
I realized upon walking into DreamHaven that these skills would prove useless, as the crowd was fairly small, and the store was brightly-lit. Also, it was the sort of crowd you'd expect to find in a science-fiction bookstore in Minneapolis at a reading of women's erotica, meaning it was composed chiefly of women, with most of them fairly fair-skinned, and fairly blonde. They also looked to be mostly my age, meaning I was the youngest-looking person around.
Luckily for all concerned, I was not carded.
You know, someone else has probably already written about this, possibly one of the participants. Think I'll have a look for a link before going on about it.
Yes, I did run out of coffee again. Think I'll try to find out if I'm near the route those Fair Trade guys take on their bikes, and see if I can just buy wholesale from them. . .
I assure you, you're not missing anything. I was completely out of my depth the entire evening, and responded as I usually do by being very obviously surprised at everything. So, you know, "Wow, DreamHaven Books & Comics has a large selection of books and comics by Neil Gaiman, and it must be very difficult for her to breath in that outfit, and oh look, that long-suffering young woman seems to have brought me a cup of coffee, which that nice John M. Ford is offering to pass to me, perhaps I should read another of his books besides the musical Star Trek one."
Coffee. What a good idea. Perhaps I should get some.
Update 10/9: Oh good. Hanne has written a much more detailed, informative account. Except the bits where she's obviously confused me with some other person in attendance. Easy mistake, that.
It's not really passing if someone clueless (like me!) asks a person who doesn't look Jewish (whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. . .), and has an easily-mistaken, non-ethnic-sounding name, like Moe Moskowitz, what s/he's doing for X-Mas, right?
Think the word implies some degree of effort on the part of the person doing the passing. Like if he'd changed his name to Robert Kaplow or something.
Whaddayamean "Kaplow" is obviously Jewish? It doesn't end in "-itz" or "-stein."
Is passing an issue for the Jewish community in the U.S., or is it just that the vast majority of Gentiles are insensitive idiots? Discuss.
Or, if you'd like to avoid the accusations of anti-Semitism I'm clearly just begging for: The "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" military policy mandates passing as the only acceptable behavior for gays in the armed services. Discuss.
Oh, and leaving lesbians out of the equation implies that all women in the military are obviously part of the 10 (or so) percent, and besides, they don't represent nearly as much as a threat. 'cuz, you know, they're just chicks. Discuss.
Want to know more, since I obviously gots no clue what the fuck I'm talking about? You could start at GayVeterans.com, as long as you're not visiting from a .mil address. They track that shit, you know.
Meaning you really shouldn't be here. Good luck with that court-martial!
Only found out a couple years back that DC Fontana, writer of the acclaimed "The City on the Edge of Forever" episode of the original Star Trek series, was, well:
When Star Trek; The Original Series ended, it left a gaping hole for most of the fans. One of Star Trek’s (The Original Series’) writers decided to take a chance, ". . . in early 1973, Star Trek (The Original Series) reappeared on the small screen in animated form. The show, produced by Dorothy Fontana, lasted two seasons, and drew praise from critics" (Nimoy 150). During the production of the live action version of The Original Series Nimoy felt that Mrs. Fontana "gave us, by far, the best stories where we interacted with women who were fully developed characters in their own right". He continues, stating that ". . . Star Trek was a product of the sexist sixties, and that was sometimes reflected in the writing, where women characters were often treated as stereotypical love interests or altogether ignored. Dorothy’s scenes not only avoided such stereotypes, but were dramatically intriguing" (Nimoy 118). "Women writers feel able to play around with archetypes and stereotypes, male writers are more likely to avoid them for fear of being misunderstood and alienating much of their likely audience" (Women as Portrayed in Science Fiction). "Like all of Dorothy’s scripts, [The Enterprise Incident] had an edge to it, an adult level of complication, and social commentary. The character’s lives were being affected, their ethics violated, even their spirituality touched" (Nimoy 118). With scripts of this standard, Mrs. Fontana went on to write nine episodes for The Original Series and five for The Next Generation . One of The Next Generation episodes was the pilot, Encounter At Far Point, which she co-wrote with Roddenberry (Nemecek). "In 1972 Harlan Ellison stated (in his intro to ‘When it Changed’ by Joanna Russ in Again, Dangerous Visions [anth 1972]) that ‘the best writers in [science fiction] today are the women’" (Women SF Writers).
(Ellison quote deliberately left in; I know what I'm doing. Trying to trigger another heart attack.)
From Dorothy Fontana, Women’s Roles, Feminism, Science Fiction, and their effects. As you can tell from the title, it's an academic work. Don't let that stop you, though.
That's not really an example of passing, of course; not her fault I just assumed she was a guy. I'm sure most guys do.
Now, James Tiptree?
Before 1977, no-one in the science fiction world knew anything about James Tiptree, Jr, although there was a lot of speculation. On one occasion, fans staked out his post office box in the hopes of revealing the true identity of their hero. They were sure he was some daredevil spy, even though he referred to himself as "Uncle Tip" in letters. Then came the revelation that 'he' was really 'she' - Alice Sheldon, a retired clinical psychologist, CIA photo intelligence agent, army officer and artist. She was born Alice Hastings Bradley, trailled through Africa as a child with her writer mother and lawyer father hunting big game; married twice to become a Davey and then a Sheldon; and then through her science fiction writing used the nom de plume James Tiptree, Jr.
That's passing.
Article pulled from the Archive, from geekgirl, neither of which I've mined recently, so shut up.
It's not possible to reasonably discuss passing without also bringing up outing. These reactions, from Printed Matter -- Alice Sheldon or James Tiptree, Jr., are (arche)typical:
"I don't think I have ever been so completely surprised in my life - or so happily," wrote [author Ursula] Le Guin describing how she felt upon learning that Tiptree was a woman.For many years, science fiction was a male genre, featuring boys and toys: war, space, rockets, technology, uniforms, military issues and violence.
Even sci fi writer Michael Bishop admits being a little miffed when he found out Tiptree's true identity, as he had claimed "him" as an ally - proof that men could write about women's issues with sensitivity and verve.
Well, Ursula's is, anyway. The other reaction, or debate, is internal to the person passing/being outed, juggling serving as a role model for the latter instance, or deriving the benefits of the assumed role in the former.
Perhaps I shouldn't read academic works. . .
Want to know more? There's a site for The James Tiptree, Jr. Award, "an annual literary prize for science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender." Is where I found the original, now-broke, link to the geekgirl article, and the one from Printed Matter.
And if you think I'm obviously trolling for comments from someone with a Trek-themed site, and who recently wrote:
When did someone decide that "gender" meant "woman", anyway? Does that mean that I don't have a gender?
Well, duh.
Really, I gots no problem with conservatives/libertarians posting here. I just give 'em the bum's rush when they're not saying anything remotely interesting or original. Which, y'know, is most of the time.
It's like watching two people you can't stand getting in a fight.
Pioneer Press | 10/04/2002 | COLLEGE FOOTBALL: Gophers 31, Illinois 10: Gophers hit books, knock fight out of IlliniGlen Mason, passionate about academics, sent his University of Minnesota football players to class Thursday afternoon, even though their Big Ten Conference home opener against Illinois was just hours away.
He shouldn't have bothered. The Gophers did enough schooling Thursday night.
On second thought, remove "like" from that first sentence.
Not sure mentioning academics and the Gophers is a good idea, all things considered. Yeah, different sports, but same program, and as I mentioned earlier, I can't stand 'em.
That last is not another Singin' In the Rain reference. Much.
And as for the Fighting Illini, well. . .
Every once in a while, some fool will mention the Vikings, or the Fighting Irish, in debates about Indian mascots. Time was, I'd try to explain the major, obvious hole in this logic.
I was more patient when I was young.
Nowadays, I'm confident Every thang's gonna be all white.
Want to know more? See the News-Gazoo's illini sportsfacts online, which I'm sure will be updated before the paper hits the streets this afternoon. For morning dead-tree info, check the Daily Illini.
Dave Eggers worked for 'em back in the day, if I remember a'right. Which I probably don't.
Update: Insert cruel speculation about why the team name -- Fighting Whites, no second "i" -- is constantly, and consistently, misspelled.
From Comicon.com PULSE:
GAIMAN WINSThe Madison, Wisconsin jury has awarded victory on all counts to Neil Gaiman in his lawsuit against Todd McFarlane.
The jury found that Gaiman had copyright interest in Angela, Cogliosto and Medieval Spawn. In addition, they found that McFarlane and Gaiman had entered into agreements in 1992 and 1997 and that McFarlane had breeched both agreements.
McFarlane's attorney called the verdict “the nightmare we feared." McFarlane himself looked somber.
For an eyewitness account, go to ICv2
And, y'know, I'd quote from the ICv2 story instead, but I'm Heidi "Woodward" MacDonald's bitch.
She survived editing Transmetropolitan, after all.
Want to know more? Neil has a blog/journal sort of thing. Shocking, I know.
Note carefully that there is nothing about Miracleman. Shut up about your Miracleman. Nobody wants to hear about your Miracleman.
Not very good, but it does sort'a bring the quote full circle. By way of Tierra del Fuego and back into Armenia through the City of Emphysema.
Am a bit surprised Elayne didn't mention this. . .NPR : Firesign Theatre, Now Playing on NPR
For those whose dorm rooms rang with the voices on those albums through the late '60s and early '70s, Firesign Theatre needs no introduction. But for the uninitiated (and the younger): Meet Firesign Theatre, which isn't a theater at all. It's the four-man comedy troupe of Phil Austin, Phil Proctor, Peter Bergman and David Ossman (all of them born under astrological "fire signs").
Playing "Spot the Firesign Reference" was a drinking game for Milestone Comics. No, really.
Want to know more, or at least what the title refers to? See, Buddy Holly's mom was upset about him and The Crickets getting booked as a Black band, and. . . you know what? Look it up your damn self.
Special Guest Referee: "Blind" Principal Snyder. The new guy has to buy a ticket with the rest of the proles.
Over at why-oh-why-did-I-hit-that-link? FrontPageMag, Racial Myths and Realities:
Throughout the 1990’s, both conservatives and liberals worried about the large divide between blacks and whites over issues like the Crown Heights riots, The Los Angeles riots, the O.J. Simpson verdict, Louis Farrakhan’s “Million Man March”, affirmative action, hate crime legislation, choice of political parties and many other topics.
No, that's not the myth bit yet. There really are only two groups, "conservatives and liberals," and everyone lined up for their team on all the issues mentioned above. Except by-God individual and iconoclast Black conservatives, who had the correct (read: white) perspective on them.
Well, and some white trash who supported O.J. Who was the onliest person ever to escape conviction for a crime he'd obviously committed. Just him. No one else. Ever.
Mind you, if he does have carte blanche to kill dumb white bitches, I can think of a few more could use culling.
Go, Juice, Go!
I mentioned the foul mood earlier, yes?
The recent emergence of issues such as racial profiling and “reparations” [Hello Sneer Quotes, my old friend, I've come to write with you again] for slavery indicates that this divide is as wide as ever.
Because, again, we've all chosen sides based on racial identity.
A fight!
A fight!
A nigga and a white!
If the nigga don't win,
Then we all jump in!
So tired of this shit.
After a few more sweeping overgeneralizations, the article settles down to identify the myths, which are:
To construct a straw-man argument against the overwhelming factual evidence in the article, I've omitted it. And obviously, you couldn't hit the link up there and read it for yourself. Shameful, the rhetorical strategies employed by. . . hang on, you could click the link, now that I think about it. Never mind.
Oh, and you know that moral relativism thing the left engages in so much?
Finally, it helps to keep lynching in proper perspective. The highest estimates of lynchings from after the Civil War until 1960 are around 5,000. This is hardly a remarkable level of violence for a 100-year period. Other blacks kill more blacks every year in America. This also pales in comparison to over half a million people killed in less than a year in Rwanda’s 1994 tribal wars, the discovery of 15,000 Polish officers killed by the Soviet army in the Katyn Forest at the end of WWII, the 30 million Chinese killed off by Mao in his “Great Leap Forward” in the 1960’s, and the millions of Ukrainians purposely starved to death by Stalin in the 1930’s.
Don't do it. It's wrong.
Let's see, 5,000 is "hardly a remarkable level of violence for a 100-year period," O.J. got two (there's an example in the article of two white men [from a group of four] being hanged themselves for lynching a black man and his two daughters, but no other examples of criminals being convicted of crimes they'd obviously committed). . . well, we've quite a bit of work to do catching up. Usually, we at least go to jail for killing white folk. Hell, sometimes even if we haven't, but get a lousy public defender. Good thing there are wealthy Black celebrities nowadays, a sure sign of progress, who can afford quality attorneys and beat the system.
Perhaps someday, we'll reach that lofty status where the system doesn't even bother coming after us. Or at least waits a few decades before doing so, like with the Birmingham Church bombing.
Go, Juice, Go!
Well, yes, it's obvious flamebait, but those people aren't particularly bright. . .
And yes, viscous whites. That's how it's spelled throughout the article.
Nah, too easy.
Update: Oh yeah, The Sound of Silence, misquoted for no particular reason, by Paul Simon, retired Senator from Illinois. Loved them bow ties, they gave him that stylin' Nation of Domination look.
Laurence Simon/Ron Goldman joke deleted for reasons of space, good taste, and not wanting to accidentally read his blog and realize that, really, I could make space for it.
And I can't tell from the article if there are races/groups other than white and black or not. They're not mentioned in the intro, but Japanese internment is used as an example. Weird.
Note to conservatives:
Not long ago, Chester A. Hurdle opened a newspaper and read a commentary by a man who opposed paying reparations for slavery, partly because he believed that the victims and their immediate descendants were dead."I guess I'm a ghost," Hurdle said to himself, "and so is my brother and my sister."
Shut the fuck up.
Oh, I've made this request before?
Well, it bears repeating.
From WashingtonPost.com | Aging Sons of Slaves Join Reparations Battle. It's theliberalmedia, and it's about the lesser races, so I expect you'll just ignore this, as usual. Or worse:
David Horowitz, a white conservative analyst, is perhaps the most vocal opponent of reparations."This will isolate the black community," he said. "Look at what reparations does. It says to the rest of America, 'You're involved with slavery and discrimination. Now, racists, first apologize and give us money.' Anyone with half a political brain knows this is not the way to go about things. Beyond all the merits of the claim itself are all these political problems."
The political problems are, obviously, insoluble, and therefore the issue should not even be discussed in polite company.
No one has ever confused David Horowitz with polite company.
And, um, when exactly did the black community stop being isolated?
Blogdex currently shows one reference to this story, at sic semper tyrannis. About what you'd expect:
They ["We" for me, but y'know, write for your audience] are hardly alone or unique in this. Virtually every group in the United States has had to suffer at some point in their history, and usually at the hands of their fellow-citizens. What about the millions of children of Irish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants?
I'm in a foul mood today.
What about them?
No, really. What the fuck happened to "millions of children of Irish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants" at "the hands of their fellow-citizens" that compares to slavery?
The author, predictably, mentions "no dogs or Irish allowed" signs. Wow. Horrifying. How did people ever survive? No wonder Irish immigrants used to try leaping overboard to their deaths rather than be brought to. . . oh, that's right, they didn't.
At least, not that I'm aware. Perhaps I was asleep in class that day.
There's also that charming phrase, "now-favored minority group."
Which is right up there with theliberalmedia, wimmenandminorities and gassedhisownpeople in convincing me the speaker/writer has nothing worthwhile to contribute. So I appreciate the usage, since it saves me time otherwise wasted looking for a point.
Bored now.
Corndolly - Self-Titled
I honestly do not remember how I got this cd. Either it was cheap/free when I ordered something else from Parasol (also holders of the Indies.com domain, which at one time was probably worth more than the rest of the company. . .), or I heard one of the other bands the members ended up in when Corndolly broke up. Does the name Angie Heaton mean anything to anyone?
"Often compared to artist Liz Phair, Heaton's voice is powerful yet subtle. Her songs show a terrific amount of personal influence while still remaining available to her listeners. This pop/punk singer has close ties to many other projects including Liquorette and Corndolly." – Aversion.com
Didn't think so, no.
As for the original group/cd:
Yes, the chart-topping hits Squirting Banana Dildo & Come Out are available once again on this self-titled release. This CD also includes tracks from the band's single on Dalmation Records. The disc compiles 4 unreleased songs along with 7 previously released (although out of print) tracks. Seven of these tracks were recorded by Brad Wood.For the majority of their time together, Corndolly was an all-female affair. When one of the original members left the band, a male bassist joined. So, yes, it's a girl band... kinda.
I have nightmares about being the male bassist for a girl band. I always end up designated driver, and have to convince drunk women that we really need to get in the van before someone rips off our equipment again, or we won't make it to the gig in the next city, a mere 14-hour-drive away. . .
Stop snickering, those dreams are frightening.
Want to know more? Two Angie Heaton cds are available at EMusic, which means free samples if nothing else, and you can pick up Liquorette at spun.com used or Parasol new. And that last link will let you hear their version of "Oh Sheila."
No, that was meant to make you want to hit the link. . .
I appreciate the links, by the way, and should have mentioned this earlier. Hadn't looked at them until the "that's racist!" 2001 archive at angry asian man reminded me.
Yes, I find this slightly disturbing, too. . .
It is in Japanese society, one where the myth of society as mono-racial and mono-ethnic is deeply embedded, that zainichi [ethnic Korean, more or less] youths live their lives. An enormous amount of invisible pressure is at work to assert that being "the same as others" is both vital and a matter of course. Even a slight deviation from the norm could render one a potential target of ostracism, bullying, and abuse.In this context, the vast majority of zainichi youths regulate their "selves" in accordance with the Japanese majority, and act in a way that is "the same as others." They adopt Japanese pseudonyms (pass names) instead of Korean ethnic names. They "conceal" their ethnic origins in front of their Japanese peers and neighbors. Such are the examples of a disguise which allow Koreans to "pass" as Japanese. In most cases, "passing" performances go beyond disguise: many zainichi youths incorporate in these performances a sense of negative self-esteem, self -dislike. Some of them wish from the bottom of their hearts that they were Japanese. Such an attitude can be called the "assimilationist orientation."
Someone's probably done a definitive study on passing (racial/ethnic, gender, and orientation, probably others I Iack the imagination to come up with). Any suggestions on that?
We have conducted in-depth interviews with approximately 150 zainichi youths regarding their life histories since 1988. Each interview takes from 3 to 4 hours, and focuses on their ethnic identity, as it is subjectively understood by the respondent him/herself.Overall, the following are our two major findings. Firstly, the vast majority of zainichi youths we interviewed had an experience of being exposed to some forms of discrimination and prejudice, either direct or indirect, either overt or covert, against themselves as Koreans by the majority Japanese, and have had or have identity crises. Therefore, we have to be critical of some common statements made by Japanese researchers, which overlook the complexity of the problem by saying that the zainichi youths are relatively smoothly accommodating themselves to Japanese society. This is in fact true when compared with the first generations who had been struggling with feelings of bitterness toward Japan and of nostalgia for their Korean homeland; and the second generations who had been desperately attempting to establish their economic bases and fighting against discrimination and harsh poverty. However, the accommodation to Japanese society of the zainichi youths is far from being free of psychological conflicts.
Secondly, we have observed a great diversity of zainichi identities. It is thus inappropriate for us to attribute to the zainichi, a great[er] homogeneity as a minority group than they have in reality. A traditional division of the zainichi identity into a type which strongly maintains its Korean ethnicity and another which loses its Korean ethnicity as a result of assimilation, is in fact too crude a dichotomy to reflect the present situation surrounding zainichi youths. A crucial problem hence arises: Why [do the] ways by which zainichi youths resolve their identity crises vary so much in reality?
Minor editing for clarity, sorry.
Don't suppose any of this sounds familiar. . .?
No, don't suppose it would. Those Black Studies courses would have been a complete waste of time, if you'd bothered taking any.
Bitch. Please.
The bitch in question is Mister Charlie again:
Bullshit. I have a very lively comments section, and all are welcome, as long as they keep their posts within my ruleset, which places no restriction on content, only on delivery.
Um, yeah. I noticed.
Delivering content that agrees with him, is what he's trying to say.
Ended up at his place again following a link from dcthornton.blog, another place I generally avoid. The drinks are watered down and overpriced, the acoustics suck ass, the guy on the sound board is apparently deaf from years of exposure to. . . hang on, that was the hole-in-the-wall bar I got dragged to a few weeks back. Never mind.
The argument in the second paragraph [follow the link, lazybones] that the right side of the blogosphere constantly agrees upon everything as if they were sheep and ignoring opposition can also be easily applied to blogs on the left. Both sides are guilty in that regard.
Today's vocabulary word would be "manichean" but no one paid attention the last time. So instead it's "fuckwit."
For purposes of this discussion, the definition is, "one who actually believes the left/right dichotomy expressed in mainstream discourse in the US means something."
You really don't want to know more. Trust me on this.
Well, Laura might get that, anyway. . .
From The Onion A.V. Club | Video: Singin' In the Rain:
Set during film's awkward transition from silence to sound, Singin' stars [Gene] Kelly as a vaudevillian turned movie star whose successful series of films with Jean Hagen seems doomed to end with the arrival of sound; Hagen's abrasive, squeaky voice suddenly becomes a problem when audiences demand to hear as well as see their idols. Caught in the angry tide of shifting public tastes, the studio behind Kelly and Hagen's latest film decides to make it a sound picture and then a musical, and fresh-faced ingenue Debbie Reynolds is enlisted to overdub Hagen's lines. Escapism raised to the level of art, Singin' In The Rain inventively satirizes the illusions of the filmmaking process while celebrating their life-affirming joy. Half parody, half homage, the movie became the apex of the splashy MGM musical, while showcasing the collaborative possibilities of the studio system.
Links added here and there.
It's a nice film, if you're not opposed to the idea of musicals.This review doesn't mention Donald O'Connor at all, concentrating instead on the (co-) director, choreographer, screenwriter and songwriter(s), which I find odd since the only bits I remember distinctly are "Make 'em Laugh" and the sequence with [I Want to Live Like] Cyd Charisse. Hey, ho, funny old life.
Update: Is it bad that my reaction to this NY Daily News article:
Best Supporting Actress nominee Jean Hagen died in 1977 and Kelly in 1996, but those remaining remember the filming as if it were yesterday. "At first, Gene and I were stiff together," recalls Donald O'Connor, 77, who plays Kelly's best friend, Cosmo. "But then I found out that Gene had a sense of humor."One reason the picture is so good is that there was so much ad-libbing. We had scenes that were a little crazy. Gene liked that after awhile. In the beginning, he didn't know how to take me. Nobody knows how to take me at first."
Today's musicals don't appeal to Cyd Charisse, 81. "People who love musicals want great music and dancing," she believes. "Every time I've seen musicals recently, they've been on the dark side — 'Chicago,' 'Moulin Rouge.' And when I saw Stephen Sondheim's work on Broadway, I was disappointed. Everything was so dark."
was simply, "Cyd and Donald are still alive?"
[insert Dead or Canadian? joke here]
. . . how the hell does this monstrosity rank slightly above George? There really is no accounting for taste. . .
Ask (well, idly mention, more like) and ye shall receive. Since the Referrer System code I swiped from Stephen Downes after seeing it in action at wood s lot doesn't really count. Well, it counts, hence the numbers in brackets, but. . . did I mention I'm out of coffee? No? Does it show?
Anyway, right, Anna. Who I'm apparently meant to find attractive. Good thing people mention these things, I'd not have realized it otherwise.
I note with disgust that I"m still listed as a Minnesota Blog, and that otherwise cool local chain Dunn Bros has opened a location in Maul of America.
Swear I'm going to buy a shitload of red paint and put a Dayton-Hudson target on the roof of that thing one of these days. . .
Still building the defense. How'm I doin' so far?
np: Anúna, eponymous
Exhibit A: Chicago Bears - Superbowl Shuffle mp3 (no longer available for reasons of space, bandwidth and good taste. . . crazy ain't gotta mean ugly. Which don't explain --)
Exhibit B: Reading Mister Charlie:
White House: assassination of Saddam would be cheaper than warHmm, lessee. Nine billion bucks for a month's worth of battle, or less than a buck for a single bullet in the skull.
By George, I think Ari's right. Now watch the lefty loons start to screech about how horrible is the very notion of blowing Saddam away.
And the creatures he chooses not to ban:
They're aiming for the wrong guy: from lucianne:
Following the stolen election of 2000, the United States economy was healthy and experiencing the greatest period of economic prosperity it has ever enjoyed. From 1992-2000, the federal government had a $1.5 trillion surplus. It only took nine months for the surplus to be given to the rich (corporations that profit from war) at the expense of the poor.-snip-The Center also notes that “last year’s tax cut is the largest single reason the ten-year surplus has shrunk since January 2001.”
An article from everyone's fav adulterous reverend.
And here I thought you lot had already killed "everyone's fav adulterous reverend," in Memphis, back in '68.
My bad.
Ophelia: ~ Sings ~
They bore him barefaced on the bier;
Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny;
And in his grave rain'd many a tear:--
Fare you well, my dove!
. . . they're not going to fall for this, are they?
Ended up at Daily Pundit by way of In Arguendo, by way of Pen-Elayne on the Web, by way of a comment at Comicon.com PULSE's coverage of the Gaiman-McFarlane trial.
Ok, that ought to help. . .
Which was a side project of those crazy, mixed-up Poster Children, who had that cd named RTF. . . skip it. The joke's still not funny.
Anyway, on the PC-Pine Configuration tip:
NOTE - PC-Pine has no explicit setting for you to enter your email address - it constructs a system-specific email address from your user-id and user-domain, e.g. chem0123@herald.ox.ac.uk. While this is a valid email address, it is not the "canonical" form preferred at Oxford, e.g. John.Smith@chemistry.ox.ac.uk. However, the Oxford mail system normally rewrites a sender's system-specific email address into their canonical one. To explicitly specify a canonical email address to PC-Pine, you need to define a customized header. In a later part of the sample PINERC file, locate the line:
customized-hdrs=Reply-To:,Enter your email address between the colon and comma, e.g.
customized-hdrs=Reply-To:John.Smith@chem.ox.ac.uk,Finally, re-save the modified PINERC. file and exit Notepad.
If anyone else is trying to work around the lack of working dot clocks in their Debian XF86Config by turning Windows into a *nix like-a-look. X was always painfully slow on this thing anyway.
Want to know more?
POSTER CHILDREN 15 YEAR ANNIVERSARY PARTY AT PHYLLIS'S MUSICAL INN, CHICAGO, ILOCTOBER 5 2002, $5
Poster Children, DIY veterans and technology freaks who recently created and released their own DVD, will reach a 15 year milestone this October. Currently recording their 8th album at the band's own BIT RIOT STUDIOS in Champaign, IL, the band is also preparing for a special 15 year anniversary show at the place that started it all for them in Chicago, Phyllis' Musical Inn (1800 W. Division).
Want to know more about Debian? Try debianHELP.
Yes, Brendan Gamble fits into all this, but playing "Six Degrees" using him and Trina Shoemaker ain't exactly challenging, 'specially with Chambana groups. Trina does pull in Over the Rhine and Catie Curtis, if'n you wanted to head East with it, but what I said about knowing nothing of Toshi Reagon? Goes double for Catie Curtis.
Update: Which means I don't know about the show she's doing in Beloit (heh) next Thursday, or the show in Chicago at the Old Town School of Folk Music the following day. Certainly have no clue about a performance in Columbus on Saturday the 12th.
Wonder if she needs a roadie?
What is wrong with my life that I wonder these things?
How empowering for young women is a show that's opened, for the last two weeks, with the deaths of young women? And if this week was a Lola Rennt tribute, what was last week? And what does it mean that the only characters William can hit without the chip kicking in are. . . ok, guess Anya isn't really a. . . fuckit, clearly I'm putting either too much or not enough thought into this.
Why don't you kids read some coherent thoughts on Culture, Heritage, Belonging while I try to figure this out? You won't regret it.
No one ever made kente cloth dog beds, right?
Finally got PC-Pine working, through the bizarre process of Reading The Fine Manual and looking over the Linux config file. Think my problem with this stuff is realizing how much I don't know, rather than paying attention to what I do understand. Or I'm a spazz.
Motivated to do this because Eudora (well, version 3.x anyway) doesn't handle multiple POP accounts. Yeah, I know, write a batch file to swap out the ini's, and there shouldn't be an apostrophe on that, and shut the hell up.
Opened the newsreader on a lark (I have odd larks, and have requested that shutting the hell up already, yes?), and found the following message on rec.arts.comics.misc from one Jonathan Ian Mathers:
Hello All. Just a quick note to invite all to the Gloomy realm of Neurotically Yours. (It's a comic about a Goth chic and her rabid pet squirrel "Foamy") It's kinda like Vasquez's "Johnny The Homicidal Maniac" & "I Feel Sick"If anyone can think of some kind of promotional thing, let me know.
I'm trying to get this thing off the ground.Thanks All
Website Of Doom:
(Musical Commentary, Goth Chics & Foaming Squirrels)
www.4yrecords.comFree Music:
www.mp3.com/negativesockboy
(Is that <PRE> text working ok? Looks weird in IE 5.5 in 640 x 480, but so does everything else. . .)
If you don't know who Jhonen Vasquez is, this means nothing to you, but the art is similar without being a swipe, the sense of humor has that same feel, and why the hell are you here if you don't know who Jhonen is?
And the message had an encoded graphic! Yeah, that whole MIME "begin 666 {filename}" thing, and lots of seemingly-random characters. It's so old-school, most of you probably have no idea what I'm babbling about.
I'm hoping one of you can recommend a Windows decoding program, though.
Lynda Barry appeared on Talk of the Nation this afternoon, as everyone probably knows already. Why I hadn't recognized her name earlier, despite having read Ernie Pook's Comeek in the Reader for ages, is probably another sign of encroaching senility.
Later tonight is The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow on PBS, in most areas anyway. Learned a long time ago that they're not really a network as far as that "airing at this time nationwide" thing goes. Would make a joke about the USS Clueless guy passing on this, since it's that stupid, pointless "ethnic studies" garbage, but can't be bothered.
Also, old news, but Priest wrote about that 9/11 anniversary thing a while back:
I live in walking distance of NORAD, the air defense station for the U.S. and Canada. The Olympic training center is here in town. We have a couple of fleets of fighter jets at two air bases and the U.S. Air Force Academy is at the north end of town. I'm used to seeing squads of attack fighters banking overhead (sometimes to my real annoyance). Today, they have a more ominous reverberation: not just of possible jihad, but of the greater obscenity of rich people getting richer off of the tragic losses this country has suffered. And the great WASP moral right taking center stage to corral Reagan-ish "American" values that echo a kind of "Love It Or Leave It" injunctive demand. "With Us Or Against Us," Bush said. But who's "us"? Enron perp-walks and Saddam saber-rattling notwithstanding, this is a government of the rich white people, by the rich white people, and for the rich white people. These are people who cannot fathom the intrinsic threat the word "Us" has when uttered by a Texas millionaire who has little or no idea who Nelly is.
Whether this is good or bad depends on your point of view.
There's also a (p)review of sorts of Marvel's TRUTH at Comic Book Resources. There is Kyle Baker art. This is good from any point of view worth listening to. Unfortunately,
Marvel passed along the first issue of TRUTH, the upcoming 6 part mini-series set to recount the earliest days of Captain America. The story concept is that the Super Soldier Serum may have produced Steve Rogers as Captain America, but that it was tested on enlisted black soldiers first. Given the history of Tuskegee, as is pointed out in all the media material, it's not that much of a stretch. It's also why I was willing to give the book a shot, and not just dismiss it as another attempt to be retro-politically correct. (On the other hand, Bill Jemas is quoted in the press release as saying, "we try to create stories that will resonate with the 21st century readers." I'm not entirely sure how a story set 60 years back is going to do that. ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN's update to the mythos I can see. I'm afraid I don't see that with TRUTH, unless wallowing in our past sins is supposed to resonate with me somehow. Generally speaking, it doesn't. I prefer to look forward.)
the reviewer is an idiot.
Sorry, the reviewer's political biases, which run pretty much opposed to mine, manage to leap out in the first fucking paragraph of his review. And reminded me of this line from MetaFilter:
The problem isn't getting people to remember Tuskeegee, it's getting people to forget it. Everytime it's pointed out that African-Americans suffer disproportionately from high-blood pressure, heart disease, kidney disease, stroke, cancer etc., and low rates of compatible organ donation, somebody starts whining that it's all the fault of the Tuskeegee experiment. African-Americans don't trust the medical establishment, etc. Maybe it's time to get over it, and move on.
Let's see, mentioned the ethnic studies thing, dropped a few references to the Tuskegee Experiment and the whole looking forward/get over it attitude towards same, as well as Priest's essay. Will the right-wingers miss the point entirely?
Does the Pope have a Catholic dick?
12 INT. THE MAGIC BOX- DAY 12 The shop is bustling with customers now. Anya is working the register and Buffy and Willow are at the counter, busily researching. A CUSTOMER approaches Willow with an antique hourglass. CUSTOMER Do you gift wrap? WILLOW Do we! (to Anya) Do we? (Anya nods) Oh! We do. Little help... Giles is desperately trying to manage the customers and answer a flurry of questions. GILES No, no. Ground cloven hooves are 30% off. The whole ones are full price. (turns around) That's not... candy! He looks up with relief as XANDER enters the store. GILES Xander! There's too many of them... people! And they all seem to want things. XANDER I hear ya. Stay British. You'll be okay. He pats Giles on the shoulder then heads over to Anya. XANDER The thousand-yard stare. Damn! You hate to see it on any man but especially in retail. Anya wraps up a woman's purchase and hands it to her. ANYA (to woman) Please go. The woman walks away, shaking her head. XANDER Anya, the Shopkeeper's Union of America called. They wanted me to tell you that "please go" just got replaced with "have a nice day". ANYA But I have their money. Who cares what kind of day they have? XANDER No one. It's just a long cultural tradition of raging insincerity. Embrace it. Anya calls out to her customer. ANYA Hey, you! Have a nice day. XANDER There's my girl!
From the No Place Like Home transcript at Psyche, which just added Lessons in PDF, if you like that sort of thing. And even if it's technically redundant, "PDF format" looks better.
Feel like I should say something about this:
USS Clueless - USC HiresWould our nation not benefit if fewer blacks in colleges spent their time in black studies and more went into electrical engineering?
[. . .] I'd like to see more blacks follow in the footsteps of Thurgood Marshall [complimentary, thus for my sinister purposes useless, bits deleted] I'd like to see fewer following Cornel West, about whom the less said the better. But I want more: I don't just want more Marshall's. I want to see a black Feynman, brilliant and irreverent, looking at everything sideways. I know he or she is out there somewhere. I want to see an American black win a Nobel Prize in Physics. Chinese Americans have done it, Indians have done it; Japanese Americans have done it; Hispanics have done it; Jews have done it; why not an American black?
But what is there to say, really? Other than advising any American black (sweet Lord. . .) in college right now to make the paternalistic, self-righteous Great White Fucker proud, by following his dreams (which should be the same as yours, and if they're not, there's something wrong with you), and becoming what he knows, in his heart of hearts, that you can become: a statistic he can quote at your less-accomplished fellow American blacks when they whine about mistreatment.
Stirring, ennit?
Update 10/2: From the "Great Minds Think Alike" department -
And finally, it seems that the specter of retirement may have short-circuited a few neural pathways in Dick Armey's brain. The outgoing House Majority Leader, speaking at an event in Florida last week, announced that "I always see two Jewish communities in America: one of deep intellect and one of shallow, superficial intellect. Conservatives have a deeper intellect and tend to have occupations of the brain in fields like engineering, science and economics... Liberals are generally not very bright, and conservatives are deep thinkers." Oh really? So let's get this straight: Jews that disagree with Armey must be liberals, and are therefore stupid, since it's well known that conservatives are smarter than liberals. Yup, it sounds like something that might come out of the mouths of right-wing hate radio broadcasters like Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, but this is the House Majority Leader for goodness sake. Way to throw in some religious slurs with your partisanship there too, Dick.
From Democratic Underground's Top Ten Conservative Idiots (No. 85)
You could combine these notions and end up with Confirmed Bachelorette Condi Rice. . . or with Alan Keyes, if you're in a spiteful frame of mind.
He was making sense, you know. Until they cancelled that shit like AfterM*A*S*H.
Update: And if I know my right-wingers, and God knows I'd prefer not to, one of them will choose to quibble over use of the term "American black" rather than anything substantial. They may make sneering reference to the term "Afro-American" as well.
Bitch. Please.
Spare me.
