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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 acqui