Uppity-Negro.com

Anyway, so.

It occurs to me that I have a) a cell phone with no roaming chages, b) a laptop with a WiFi card, c) a list of free hotspots thoughout this great land of ours and d) a hell of a lot of free time in the near future.

And also no relationship, no pet, not even houseplants to water.

I'm thinking road trip.

I'm also thinking working during road trip, if anyone knows a legit work-from-'home' type biz, or something that doesn't require that 20-century physical presence thang.

Failing that, there's a list of very cool online classes offered by Manpower, which I could take from pretty much anywhere.

Go on road trip, spend part of the time inside taking class, come back with certification. Seems reasonable to me, but I may be hopped up on coffee, Red Bull and Mountain Dew again.

Any suggestions? Questions? Comments? BitPass contributions to the road trip fund?

Update: Oh, right, Paypal donations also gratefully accepted, and I think I had an Amazon honor system account set up at one point. I just really want BitPass to work out, since the micropayment thang seems like the Wave of the Future™.

But filthy lucre is filthy lucre. I'm flexible.

Posted by Aaron at 11:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBacks (0)

1. First Night Evanston, where Karma Sutra will be performing from 7:30 to 9, and I am Preston Klik's bitch.
2. The HotHouse New Years Eve Celebration "with Japanese blues diva Yoko Noge and her exciting and fun band[, Jazz Me Blues and guests Erwin Helfer and Ari Brown]. Dancing, merrymaking, drinking all night long as we ring in the new year in style. Ticket price includes open bar and buffet courtesy of Sinha catering, party-makers and a midnight champagne toast."

Or I can stay home, watch tv, and wait for terrorists to blow up Dick Clark.

Fools.

Dick Clark does not age.

Dick Clark cannot die.

Dick Clark will be the last thing on this planet when the sun grows cold, or goes nova, or whatever the little yellow ones do, I can never remember.

Posted by Aaron at 3:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Not doing me any good, but:

Thousand Waves Martial Arts and Self-Defense Center, Chicago : For women and men

Help get the word out about our self-defense courses -- print out this informational flier, give it to your friends and family, and post it in a public place!

FREE SEMINAR	Wednesday, January 28, 2004 6:30 - 8:30 p.m.
Continues:	February 4 - March 3, 2004 (Wednesdays) 6:30 - 8:30 pm

Cost:  $95 ($75 for Thousand Waves members)

To register, call us at 773-472-7663.

I'd thought, wrongly, as usual, that they offered capoeira classes. Don't worry, I'm not sure how that's pronounced either.

Might try Gingarte Capoeira -- they're just down the street, basically -- but this would involve getting my shit together. And having a source of income to pay for the classes, come to think of it. . .

Huh. There's also International Capoeira Angola Foundation - Chicago. The also offer Afro-Carribean dance and Middle Eastern Belly Dance.

I. . . shouldn't sign up for the Belly Dance class, should I?

Posted by Aaron at 1:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

But it's a start: That Would Be Sir Tim (Berners-Lee):

Tim Berners-Lee, the man credited with the creation of the World Wide Web, will be anointed a knight by Queen Elizabeth.

Berners-Lee, 48, is being knighted in recognition of his "services to the global development of the Internet" for helping to invent the Web. Buckingham Palace announced the news yesterday as part of its 2004 New Year's Honours list.

One of the few living folks I can think of who changed the world. And generally for the better, he wrote, thinking about the thread he had to close earlier this morning because of idiot infestation.

I'm sure if he tried, he could have parlayed this into (greater) fame and fortune, but seems to me he ain't seeking it.

One of the good ones, in my opinion.

If you're thinking, "He didn't change the world," I would point out that you're reading this.

And I'd check the right-wing blogs to see who was the first to make an Al Gore joke, but don't have that supply of Louisville Sluggers yet. . .

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

From a January 1, 2003 post from indie rock librarian:

There is a song by Scrawl that I play every year called, "11:59 It's January." Allow me to share the lyrics with you because I think it speaks volumes about my current mindset:

january came too soon
survived the holidays without you

but who are you, you are anyone i wish i knew
and tonight i wish i knew every single one of you

first day champagne old acquaintances are far apart
tonight auld lang syne means leave before the kissing starts

last year went down the drain
they all do really so why complain
drink a cup of kindness yet
and say goodbye to all regrets

it's january

11:59 --- 8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1-midnight

was it a good year do i really need to know cause now it's behind me forever
it was a good year because it was such a bad year that this year can only get better

last year went down the drain
they all do really so why complain
drink a cup of kindness yet
and say goodbye to all regrets

it's january

and who are you, you are anyone i wish i knew
tonight i wish i knew every single one of you
tonight i wish i knew every single one of you
tonight i wish i knew ... every single one of you
every single one of you (it's january)
every single one of you (it's january)
every single one of you (it's january)
every single one of you (it's january)

Scrawl, which Redpac convinced me to see at 7th Street Entry in Minneapolis several years back, is one of my favorite bands.

They have therefore, of course, either broken up, or gone on indefinite hiatus.

You can order a cd or 45 (for those of you old enough to remember what those are) from Parasol, or read more about 'em at Simple Machines Records.

Redpac, which cd of theirs did even they not have a copy of? I'm sure someone around here could find it. . .

Posted by Aaron at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Someday I expect the "discrete" lesbian will not turn her head on the streets at the sight of the "butch" strolling hand in hand with her friend in their trousers and definitive haircuts. But for the moment it still disturbs.

--Lorraine Hansberry, in The Ladder, May 1957, quoted in Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests, 1992.

And above quoted in Lesbian Quotations. Compiled by Rosemary Silva:

This work is essentially a collection of quotations about lesbians and lesbianism organized into seven broad topics: lesbian identities and communities; emotional aspects of lesbian bonds; nature of lesbian sexuality; anti-lesbian sentiment, discrimination and homophobia as expressed by the church, the military, patriarchal society; heterosexual women, the psychiatric establishment, and pornography; lesbian myths and stereotypes; internalized homophobia, its sources, and the struggle for recognition, equality, and liberation; and family roles, relationships, lifestyles, and life stages/changes. A single index of authors and specific subjects concludes the work.

Snagged it at Brown Elephant last Saturday. I really should ask the staff their names, we're getting to know each other pretty well at this point. . .

The male party line concerning Lesbians is that women become Lesbians out of reaction to men. This is a pathetic illustration of the male ego's inflated proportions. I became a Lesbian because of women, because women are beautiful, strong and compassionate.

--Rita Mae Brown, A Plain Brown Rapper, 1976

Just flipping through it, really, but I'm not sure a book of quotations is something you're meant to read beginning to end.

First quote selected because there's still some denial controversy about whether Lorraine Hansberry was or wasn't. Second selected because I joke about these things, but know better. Ain't gonna stop me, but I know better.

And obviously, there's people here who'd like/could use this book more than me. Anyone want it?

Posted by Aaron at 3:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Listen up, I got something to say.

Straight out of Oxford a crazy motherfucker named Hawking.
When I be rocking the mic you be gawking,
at me 'cause I'm a bad mama-jamma,
you wanna lock me up put my ass in the slamma.
But fuck that shit 'cause no jail can hold me,
you can't even catch me much less control me.
So if you see me coming you better duck,
'cause Stephen Hawking is crazy as fuck.

I know, old joke, but I still like the track.

No, this entry has no point whatsoever. And this is different from the rest of them how exactly?

Posted by Aaron at 5:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

So a few days back, angry asain man said:

Whether you're for or against affirmative action, I think it goes without saying, it's a lot more complex than just giving out cookies and donuts. I don't know, what would be a more accurate simulation? How about having minority actually gather all the ingredients and baking the cookies, then having the white students take all the cookies away, and selling them at the given prices? Probably still not quite accurate, but it's just a thought.

He's writing about this CNN story, Bake sales used to protest affirmative action:

SEATTLE, Washington (AP) -- Campus bake sales by conservatives who oppose affirmative-action are cooking up discord -- and complaints about restrictions on free speech.

Organizers charge white students $1 for a cookie, while blacks and other minorities pay 25 to 95 cents. Doughnuts are available for 50 cents to everyone except Asian Americans and whites, who cannot purchase them.

Unfair? So is affirmative action, organizers contend.

Second (at least) cycle on this -- remember Dru mentioning something similar a while back -- but I don't recall the bit about Asian Americans being mentioned in the others. Wasn't reading the stories that closely, to be honest. Manufactured whiteboy controversy tends to bore the hell out of me. One of the reasons it's hard to get into pop music these days, too, but that's a different story. Entry. Something.

Is a bit amusing watching them take umbrage on behalf of Asian Americans, though. There's a photo of "Members of the University of Washingon College Republicans" with the CNN story; take a guess what race and gender they are. No, no, go on, guess.

Perhaps the Ladies Auxiliary did the actual baking. . .

Off to look for polling data on Asian American reactions to Affirmative Action. If dim memory serves me a'right, they (because, y'know, they're a homogenous group) were generally in favor.

Posted by Aaron at 2:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Looking for info on mixed-race children from the Korean War Conflict, and although there's a bit on white/Korean kids, either the Negroes who went there were an uncommonly chaste bunch, or. . . no, can't come up with a punch line for that. Because the absense worries me.

Did find some info that'll improve your mood as much as it did mine:

1790: The first U.S. Naturalization Act limits the right to become a naturalized citizen to "free white persons."

1880: California prohibits the issuance of licenses for marriage between a white person and "a Negro, mulatto, or Mongolian."

1909: California passes a law specifically adding the Japanese to the list of those barred from marrying whites.

Part of me wants to look for a transcript of the floor debate on that. The sane part realizes this would be a Very Bad Idea Indeed.

And there's also a few sites for the film Seoul II Soul:

In the film, Hak [ J. Chung] explores his own identity by taking a close look at a very engaging family. The Yates' household consists of the father, a black Korean War veteran, his war bride and their three grown children. This love match has endured for over thirty-five years because of the couple's intellectual and spiritual unity. When they first settled in America, they faced discrimination and misunderstanding.

We learn how their children felt growing up as mixed race kids in a home where both cultures were valued. However, it is a surprise to learn that this seemingly well-adjusted family cannot escape the pain of cultural miscommunication. The beloved eldest son is estranged from his parents because his blonde wife and his mother are at odds. His wife does not understand the nuances of her in-laws expectations. His mother is offended that his wife won't eat kimchi and addresses her by her first name.

Won't eat kimchi?

Bitch.

And more, from 2003 APA Heritage Month:

The National Asian American Telecommunications Association (NAATA) presents Hak J. Chung's Seoul II Soul in honor of African American History Month. Seoul II Soul is a half-hour documentary that investigates the meaning of ethnicity and its effect on family structure in modern America in the context of an interracial marriage. The filmmaker's quest to define his own identity in America leads him to one extraordinary family, Mr. and Mrs. James Yates of Los Angeles, an African American husband and his Korean wife and their children.

The film portrays their search for ethnic and social identity. Seoul II Soul tells—in their own words—the story of how they fought for and built a prosperous and happy life in a society that often treats them as outsiders.

Ok, no, I have no idea why I suddenly got the urge to look for info on this either. But I'm done now. Unless anyone has suggestions as to where I can Read More About It.

Posted by Aaron at 1:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

More deserving of one than that previous thing. . .

Ta! Interview with Bob Carpenter:

Springboard
``In my first year at Carnegie Mellon Lori Levin was teaching Natural Language Processing, and she wanted something to give people that would do basically what PATR-II (Shieber et.al. 1983) did. So I wrote a simple Prolog implementation of PATR with a marginally useful interface and a manual. I took the Gazdar & Mellish textbook (Gazdar et.al. 1989) and did it the way I thought it should have been done, rather than the way it was done in their book. I worked as a TA for Gazdar and Mellish at the 1987 Stanford institute, where they kept me busy debugging the programs before their book came out. They attributed the unification-based system in their book to me, but the key unification algorithm was actually borrowed from Pereira and Shieber, and my wrapping of that system was modified beyond all recognition. It was the first time I built a system that I intended other people to use, and it was really the springboard in some ways for the implementation of ALE (Attribute Logic Engine).

Frankenstein
``After moving to CMU in 1988, I shared an office with Carl Pollard. I really hated HPSG (Pollard et.al, 1987) at that time, because to me it looked like a complete Frankenstein theory. Not because it is built up from all these other grammar formalisms, like LFG and GPSG and CG and all that, but I had a real bias against the fact that it was using different sorts of mechanisms to do everything. You can look at Categorial Grammar, and you can say there is a pure logical reasoning mechanism on which everything is based. But in HPSG that uniformity comes only at the level of the feature structure logic. It is important not to confuse the kind of underlying attribute-value logic formalism with the linguistic theory. In HPSG there is this whole linguistic theory that contains things like the Head Feature Principle and the Quantifier Binding Condition and Principle A of the Binding Theory. That is the linguistic theory. HPSG should not be criticized on the fact that it is based on a Turing-powerful constraint resolution system. You just cannot do in the linguistic theory, everything you can do in the underlying theory. Shieber originally pointed this out in the context of PATR.

``Now of course no linguistic theory, GB, HPSG, any of these, have really laid out a meta-theory of what really counts as a grammar. You will never find anybody saying: `A GB grammar is the following thing: one of these versions of this, one of these versions of that.' They talk about it that way, they say it is somehow parameterized, but you never actually see a list of parameters. No one can make a proposal so that someone will stand up in the audience and say: `Ah, but that is not a GB grammar!' Similarly, I could add a bunch of features and devices to HPSG and no one could say: `That is not HPSG'. You can say that it is not in the spirit of HPSG, or not in the spirit of GB, but it is really all just a matter of esthetics. So I think insofar as people really want to make theories of a universal grammar, then they should be honest and lay out the possible grammars. Again, GPSG perhaps came the closest to this goal in spirit, but it didn't really excite many linguists. Once you lay something out concretely, it's just a little too easy to see where it falls down.''

Don't worry, I had to look up some of the acronyms too.

Guess I could have linked the definitions, or included them here at the end.

Yep, could have done that.

Tra la la la la.

Or rather, Ta!:

This is the archive of the late, and sadly missed "Ta!", the Dutch students' journal for Computational Linguistics. The magazine was founded in 1993, and stopped about four years later. The homepage no longer exists, the editors have dispersed all over the world, but the interviews are still there, and we are doing all we can to not let them disappear with us. Here they are - enjoy!

Funny thing is, found this looking for an interview that Ted Briscoe conducted with Gerald Gazdar, and found I liked it better.

I had given up on linguistics by 1985. [. . .] I had come to the conclusion that the only way to get ideas across in syntax was to engage in a continuous marketing exercise. Thus Joan Bresnan had spent many years doing relentless marketing of LFG. But if I'd wanted to do that, I'd have gone into sales or something, not become an academic.

Gazdar is just so damned bitter, and I really don't like that sort of thing in a person.

What?

Posted by Aaron at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Since MT keeps pinging Die Puny Humans every time I add a link to the previous one. . .

Dutch Martin: Star Parker on 'Uncle Sam's Plantation':

Parker: At root of this love affair blacks have with government is their hatred for capitalism. The problem is one of trust. When given the choice, blacks trust government institutions over private institutions. Blacks have been convinced that the wealthy are exploitive thieves who have grown that way on the backs of the poor. Most blacks hate free markets more than they love freedom so the self-destructive nature of government dependency does not bother them. In fact the residual results enhance their case that America is racist. Most blacks do not want to see through this nonsense because then the responsibility to move on is individual. It is hard to live free. It is also hard to forgive. It is also hard not to envy. This dilemma of human nature is not new. Remember, when Jesus was distributing responsibilities to his disciples and told Peter of his portion, Peter’s first response was to ask what John would be required to do.

Short answer, all the twat's bullshit deserves:

1. Capitalism = slavery
2. Big Govmint = Federal Civil Rights legislation and (until fairly recently) favorable Supreme Court decisions

Actually, she doesn't deserve that much. . .

"[T]he wealthy are exploitive thieves who have grown that way on the backs of the poor." Um, want to offer a bit of evidence that they're not?

Particularly the ones who have Old Money, which goes back to that pesky slavery thing mentioned in note one?

That, and since this was, until that last Presidential election, a democracy, we at least had some control over Big Govmint. Corporations. . . they might do better selling the illusion of choice, but. . .

Too long, too much. Skip it.

Update: Ok, bit more.

I've been given to understand that the Civil War War Between the States was unnecessary, because eventually capitalist-driven technological develpments would have made slavery economically unfeasible.

Realize it's hard to put yourself in someone else's shoes, but how would you feel if you knew the only reason your ass wasn't in chains is because it was "economically unfeasible."

Not because you were a fucking human being as deserving of liberty as the melanin-impaired. Not because you lived in a nation that claimed long and loud to anyone paying attention -- and anyone who isn't -- that it's a beacon of liberty, a shining city on a hill, etc. fucking etc.

Because it was "economically unfeasible."

That people will actually say that shit to my face tells me we have a long way to go.

Update: Duh, this link and the last few in the previous entry found at BlackElectorate.com. Yes, I saw the MJ/NoI thing. Yes, I'm ignoring it this time around too.

Update: From the Chicago Tribune:

"The Nation of Islam, in response to several inquiries, has said today that it has no official business or professional relationship with Mr. Michael Jackson," the statement said. "The Nation of Islam joins thousands of other people in wishing him well."

But it speaks volumes about the crackas who were so obsessed with this notion.

Wonder if you get a volume discount on Louisville Sluggers even if you're not part of a sports team?

Posted by Aaron at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Last full day at the temp assignment, so I'll be staying late tonight. Until they kick me out/the backup starts, most likely. Because yes, I intend to take them for all they're worth. You got a problem with that?

Because of my pagan work ethic, I'm also going to give them their money's worth, so less blogging, more data entry. Rather than full entries, I'll just toss stuff in here.

First stuff: DPH ZEROFOUR: statements for 2004: Reginald Hudlin, writer/director:

Here are my wishes for the year to come:

Instead of yet another Tupac album, the music industry digs in the vaults and releases unheard music from Sly Stone and Stevie Wonder.

American filmmakers produce films as good as BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM, WHALE RIDER, 28 DAYS LATER, DIRTY PRETTY THINGS, CITY OF GOD, LOVE ACTUALLY and the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy.

Saw WHALE RIDER at the video store the other day, but the DVD with all the extras was out. Definitely worth the rental, if you've not seen it.

Second stuff: Epitonic.com:

Epitonic.com is a site for sore ears. We are a campaign - a group of individuals who share a zealous lust for music - music that invades our thoughts, music that propels our bodies - music that allows us to revel in passion and pleasure. We refuse to dilute the energy that constitutes our lives - this seamless integration with the pulsing of sounds and shrill notes sailing wildly through nightclubs and concert halls across the globe. Instead we've elected to thrust ourselves into this sea of binary manna - information which helps us sustain our ravenous appetite for music - the Internet.

Short version: free mp3s of Good Music. The sort you might not hear on the radio, I'm afraid.

Ok, list format. Descriptions optional.

• Emily the Strange
• Bookslut review of Inga Muscio's Cunt: A Declaration of Independence
• Inga Muncio's site (previously linked, but worth a fresh look)
• A deeper look into racism

  Ruthie Welch, 13, had read about racism, but she was still shocked after hearing first-person accounts. She interviewed Nathaniel Banks, an assistant dean of students for minority student affairs at the University of Illinois and a Project 500 participant. Banks told stories of walking along a street with a cousin and being stopped by policemen.

  "They were just walking through a white neighborhood and they were going to be arrested," said Welch, still with a look of disbelief, days after the interview.

• Chuck D's Terrordome: YEAR END NOTES FROM OZ, CYBERSPACE, AND MY G-DAMN MIND�

Posted by Aaron at 9:52 AM | Permalink

Chatting with Michelle in ICQ yesterday, and she warned me off looking up life expectancy stats. Should'a listened to her.

Of course, she also said I should take it as a compliment that several people blow through the site, look at the subject matter, and decide I'm a she. And then notice the disturbing obsessions, slap their virtual forehead. . . and decide I'm a dyke.

I'm not going for the genderfuck anymore, people.

(Ignore the entries in the links list with the words "dyke" or "lesbian" in them, which could explain some of the confusion. I'm riffing, and facts have nothing to do with it.)

So yesterday Jesse linked a Fucking White Oppressor piece from Phyllis Schlafly calling feminism "humorless preaching".

I'm gonna figure part of the confusion here is that I come off as a feminist, which is silly, because whenever a man says "I'm a feminist," he's leaving off the second part of the sentence, ". . . if it helps me get in your knickers."

Slightly more seriously, I'm not sure men have the right to declare themselves feminists. Or rather, although they have the right to declare themselves anything they damn well please, if they can really make an accurate assessment. . . ok, this is the pre-coffee syntax again.

Guess I could do a second poll, "Is I a feminist? Ain't I not a woman?" But people are still voting on the first one, and the results might argue against doing so, if The Stupid stays in first place.

I'm also not sure anyone can accurately judge how funny they are, as opposed to how funny they think they are. But I'd hardly call myself humorless.

Is I humorless?

If you think so, please note your race and gender, as I have a feeling this demographic info might lead to an obvious conclusion. Which you'll miss the point of completely, cracka.

Specifically, boy cracka, but I'm speculating here.

Update: Come t'think of it, I've noticed that when conservative guys describe feminists as humorless -- and generally as dykes -- it's because a) the woman in question doesn't find their sexist jokes funny, particularly as they're delivered while the guy is refusing to make eye contact, preferring to stare at her tits and b) the guy has zero chance of getting in her knickers.

Perhaps this applies to Phyllis Schlafly, too?

Posted by Aaron at 9:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Hi kids.

Just a reminder -- or info that's New to You, possibly -- I'm 33. I'll be 34 next January 12th.

Examining the life expectancy rates for Black men, I've already got more years behind me than I do in front of me.

So, if I often seem short-tempered, that's one reason.

Clearly, I'll be even more short-tempered with those who can expect to live longer. Check the charts, and do the fucking math.

Thank you for your kind attention.

--The Mgt.

Update:  Just to cheer you up some more, if you're waiting for me to hurry up and fucking die already:

Gulf War service linked to Lou Gehrig's disease

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - New research provides further evidence that military service in the 1991 Gulf War raised the risk of Lou Gehrig's disease or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

ALS is a degenerative nerve condition that results in paralysis and eventually death. At present, there is no cure for the disease.

In the new study, the rate of ALS in Gulf War veterans younger than 45 years of age was more than twice the rate expected in the general population.

And also:

Army Set To Eject Sick Gulf War Vet And Family
Health of wife and children deteriorating

Dr. William E. Baumzweiger, one of the civilian doctors who has examined the Jones family, defined the Gulf War Syndrome illness as a "multisystem disease, whose symptoms are well characterized now: headaches, diarrhea, insomnia, mood alterations and cognitive problems. What is less well accepted is that it represents a specific disease process, that it is the result of a specific pathological process in the brainstem set up by a combination of immune attacks on the critical pathology in the lymphocytes in the brainstem."

"Gulf War Syndrom illness, Baumzweiger wrote in a February 16, 2000 report, "has complex pathology and symptoms. Its victims invariably demonstrate neurological abnormalities, neurobehavioral/orientation problems, photophobia, periods of disorientation and headaches are invariably seen due to inflammation in the brainstem and associated structures."

Oddly, knowledge of your impending mortality through debilitating illness -- if I don't just get shot by another brotha, or the cops, or a Korean store owner (ok, that last was uncalled for) -- does not improve one's ability to suffer fools gladly.

That's ok. In Zero Four, I will endeavor to not suffer fools gladly.

Won't suffer the motherfuckers at all.

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

From English Resource Grammar and Lexicon, at the Linguistics Department at Stanford:

The LinGO English Resource Grammar (ERG) is a broad-coverage, linguistically precise HPSG-based grammar of English. It was developed initially using the PAGE system, but the LKB is now the primary grammar engineering environment. The ERG is semantically grounded in Minimal Recursion Semantics (MRS), which is a form of flat semantic representation capable of supporting underspecification.

Got there from the current research page for UIUC's linguistics department.

Which, you know, I was just glancing at.

Like most places, they didn't like taking their own undergrads as graduate students, but figure it's been long enough. . .

Trouble is, I can't decide between CogSci and law. Well, guess there's no reason I couldn't do both.

Except that whole only 24 hours in the day thing.

Temp assignment ends on Wednesday. Figure I'll make a day trip to Shampoo-Banana at some point. Just to get the feel of the place, and decide if I'm even willing to spend another couple years there.

Oh, and about that project mentioned up top? If you didn't follow a word of the description, it's a Cool-Sounding Thing. Trust me on this.

Posted by Aaron at 4:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Couple things I wanted to get out the way, hoping that if I say them now, at the end of December, I can just point any idiots to the archive if they decide to say or do fucked-up shit.

I'm not putting up with fucked-up shit around here next year. Just so you know. Messages might vanish with no warning, so if you decide to type some long, accusatory fucked-up shit, either save a copy, or use a real email address, so's I can mail it to you, so you can post it someplace somebody cares. Your own site, perhaps.

Oh, you don't have one?

Well, you ain't using mine.

And use a real email address anyway. Ain't saying you got to use your real name -- I can totally understand not wanting to be associated with this place in the Real World, and (potential) employers do Google folks -- but if you can in no way, shape or form stand behind what you say, don't even bother saying it.

Cracka.

1. If you're white and thinking of offering me advice on How to Properly Confront Racism. . . fuck you.
2. If you're black and thinking of offering me advice on How to Properly Confront Racism. . . fuck you. Well, unless you older than me and actually got more experience with this sort of thing. If that's the case, though, you probably ain't wasting your time reading blogs, so I feel pretty good about that first sentence.
3. Anybody else, I probably ain't heard your perspective, so offer away. Just don't be surprised if afterwards I say, "Wow, that's really interesting. I never looked at it that way before. And fuck you."
4. Much of my humor, like the previous entries, is deadpan, and based on conscious violation of social rules/mores/manners. If you're thinking of correcting the nigger who don't know no better. . . I bow to your wisdom, and feel I cannot learn sufficiently from you in this impersonal venue. Please, I urge you to meet me, in person, and say what you have to say to me that way. However, see previous message re: Louisville Sluggers.
5. Update: Because I just know it's gonna bite me in the ass sooner or later. . . sorry to go all semantics/semiotics/Matrix Revolutions quotes on y'all again. . .
   "Nigger" is a word. What matters is not the word, but the connection the word implies. It's quite possible -- I can give you some links to comments here, if you'd like, the most recent from Gray -- to make the connection without using the word. Alternately, it's possible to use the word divorced from the usual connection. Though we can argue all day about what "usual" means in this context.

   Speaking of context, "The fucking fucker's fucked" is not only a perfectly grammatical sentence of English, it's also a meaningful one in context. From a linguist's point of view, anyway.

   This is why we shouldn't be asked about usage.

   But I digress. As per usual. Point is, just because I'm slinging the word around with abandon (which, of course, I'm not, but I like the expression), that don't mean other folks should feel free to do so.

Might be adding to this as the day/week goes on. Or idjits do shit piss me off.

Guess I could explain that first numbered point. . . although it's all well and good that you've decided to confront racism, do keep in mind that, thanks to that pesky white privilege, you could make that decision. And can decide at any point that you don't feel like dealing with it, because you're too tired or whatever.

Not all of us have that option.

Hence, your opinion is. . . no, "suspect" isn't the right word. "Not as valuable or informed as you'd like to think it is, " perhaps.

Yeah, yeah, it's horribly racist of me to feel that way. Was that your Racist Incident for the Day? Did it impact your enjoyment of life in any way whatsoever? Can you easily avoid dealing with my horrible, racist self by just not visiting this site?

Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth fingers?

Not the choir of regulars, y'all's cool, it's the tourists I'm trying desperately to keep schtum.

Posted by Aaron at 9:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (1)

Well, the people have spoken, and the people don't like The Stupid.

I know what Garrity meant by this -- she explained in a comment -- but I'm curious as to what the other people voting for that option had in mind.

Hope it's not more anonymous insults from random strangers on the Internet. Because boy, that really. . . has no effect on me whatsoever, really. Get a hobby, asshole.

Any road up, Video Game Soundtracks.

Tell an idiot you listen to those, and it's a bit like telling an idiot you're going to an Ethiopian restaurant. They do insist on going for the most predictable, stupid joke possible.

In Zero Four, I'm going to start carrying a Louisville Slugger with me, so I can deliver some hands-on diversity training where necessary. Not sure how to handle that online, but I'm confident a solution will present itself.

If you know nothing of this but are willing to learn, a trait I'm going to be looking for in people from now on, here's another copyright-violating streaming Real Audio file for your amusement and edification:

Final Fantasy Symphonic Suite - Nobuo Uematsu

Encoded it dual-stream for 56k dialup and 256 Kbps DSL, but I think the dialup version wants all of that bandwidth. So, you may be SOL. But you must be used to that by now.

I'm not asking you to geek out over this stuff. You don't even have to be interested; you might give it a try and decide you don't like it.

Key phrase: give it a try.

I realize it's easier to make your mind up beforehand, but you know what?

"Easier" is not something you should necessarily be looking for in your life.

Update: From that link, and interview with former Police-man Stewart Copeland and Mark Motherbaugh called The Art of Video Game Soundtracks:

These short conversations provide a valuable perspective on the art and craft of composing music for games. Because both of these music artists have had great success in both the popular music as well as film and TV scoring worlds, their insights into working on games provides a helpful commentary for anyone trying to understand the critical and artistic basis of game music.

Mark Mothersbaugh
Unlike doing a TV show, like I’m doing Dawson’s Creek this week. I get the tape yesterday, I’ll write the music today and tomorrow and score it the day after and it will be on TV by next week. So, you know it’s a really fast turn around. Whereas with Crash [Bandicoot], we have maybe 6 months, at least as much time as you have when you do an album with a band. You have about as much time as that to craft your music and to keep improving on it as you listen to it over and over again and look at it against graphics. So it’s interesting, it’s a different process.

Stewart Copeland
It’s not really between writing pop songs and scores, it’s really a 3rd thing. Like film composing, you don’t have to write the top line, but like pop music you don’t have to follow the drama, the plot line. So it’s kind of ideal really, you can come up with that riff, that cool groove, but not have to come up with a lyric for it.

Mind you, I'm not saying all of them are good, or creative, or worth listening to even while you're playing the game itself. Sturgeon's Law applies as well here as anywhere else.

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

Or, how Dean can win in a landslide.

Quoting a bit of a quote from The Black Commentator:

In 1989 new tax rules forbid credit card interest from being a write-off.

Promise to bring that back.

We're talking 99% here.

Credit card companies and banks can't be pouring that much into campaign funds. . .

. . . except it ain't about the cash. Or not just about that. It's about control.

So that ain't gonna happen.

Plus, the mortgage people also don't want that brought back -- big part of the refi explosion was folks rolling credit card and other debt into their mortgages so they could write off the interest.

Of course, that seems to be collapsing. I get less spam for it, anyway. Perhaps they've all switched over to wanting to show me P*r*s H*lt*n having sex.

To the Universe at large: I do not want to see P*r*s H*lt*n having sex. Please stop spelling her name weird ways to get around the filters I have set up to prevent my seeing offers for it.

Hell, the notion puts me off the idea of sex, thank you very much.

But I digress. Bring back letting us dumb-ass, credit-card-using idiots write that (0.9% to 21+%) interest off, and the White House is yours on a fucking silver platter.

You're welcome.

Update: Today's Kwanzaa Principle - Kujichagulia.

On this the second day of Kwanzaa, the principle of self-determination, kuchijagulia, is celebrated. Today we affirm our determination to create, name and define our lives for ourselves, instead of allowing others to do this for us.

If you're thinking of making a Kwanzaa joke in comments. . . not only have I heard them all before, I've probably made them before you were even aware the holiday existed. So, please, spare yourself the annoyance of having the comment deleted or, worse, the embarrassment of me ripping you a new one, and keep schtum.

Posted by Aaron at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Something I read on the Warren Ellis Forum once, and it stuck with me. Nubian goddess knows folks might act like they had a lick of sense if they actually took that serious. . .

Anyway, when listing my disturbing obsessions, I realized I'd actually left one off. Meaning either this particular one can't be that disturbing, or I have a mind like a sieve.

Or, a little from column A, a little from column B.

Photo ripped off from/links to Latin Beat: Shakira....stunning performance on MTV Unplugged:

I know I only briefly mentioned it last week but Shakira was simply wonderful in her performance at the MTV Unplugged taping I attended this month. She did songs from both her current ("Donde Están Los Ladrones?:") and her debut album ("Pies Descalzos") with several surprises including a slow, dark, sexy version of "Estoy Aqui" and an appearance from a live Mariachi band. But the most exciting moment came when Shakira donned a traditional belly dancing belt (with the little bells) and danced an authentic belly dance while singing her middle eastern inspired "Ojos Aquí". The audience went crazy!

She is so beautiful and so tremendously talented and so...YOUNG! It took my breath away to think that she is only 22 and has done this much creatlively in her last two albums. In her press conference that followed the taping Shakira spoke about how hard she is working right now and will continue to work over the next year.

Not thrilled with the blonde thing myself -- there's a piece on that in the pink issue of Bitch, if dim memory serves me a'right -- but I do have to admit, she pulls it off well.

But I picked that photo instead, so nyaah.

And while we're on the subject:

Upcoming Shakira DVD & CD!
A new Shakira DVD is coming February 2004. She'll release a new album in 2004. Stay tuned for more details!

Shakira Appointed UNICEF Ambassador
Shakira has been appointed as a UNICEF Ambassador - the youngest UNICEF Ambassador ever! She recently attended the UNICEF Press Conference in Madrid on October 24th.

But I mentioned that last one before.

True, I could have mentioned it in English, but do try to expand your horizons.

Want to know more? There's the offical word from Shakira.com, and a veritable cornucopia of fan sites. Some of which, again, ain't in English, but between web-based translation tools and the fact that they're mostly in Romance languages, this should not cause stress.

Update:

See commentary below; consider this the re-release.

Director's commentary: I was going to do a brief linguistics lesson, this time demonstrating the meaning of the term "antonyn" by using a photo of Shakira as an antonym of "assless," but decided against it.

Also, one of the fansites, Viva Shakira, has a gallery of only red/brunette photos, if you're into that sort of thing.

Posted by Aaron at 9:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Probably reg-required, at the Trib, Women take a seat at strip club bars:

Rose Eyong and Chantal Idouin nursed cocktails at Shotgun Willie's, the gentlemen's club that regulars affectionately call "Shotties."

The two friends faced a raised and padded neon stage near the cigar case and shoeshine booth. Their eyes darted between an entertainer in white thigh-high fishnets playing peek-a-boo through her knees and a middle-age man offering up one bill after another.

Women. In a strip club?

"I like to watch the men," Idouin said with a giggle. "They really look at those girls and give them all their money."

[. . .] I've been continually surprised by the number of female customers I've seen," said Katherine Frank, author of "G-Strings and Sympathy: Strip Club Regulars and Male Desire" (Duke University Press, $19.95).

The anthropologist danced in strip clubs for six years while conducting research for her doctoral thesis. She learned that women, along with men, enjoy the free-spirited party atmosphere.

"We spent a lot of time making the women feel beautiful and comfortable," Frank said. "If that interaction goes well, it's going to be better for everyone."

Danielle Egan also studied sexuality and body-image issues by working in topless bars.

"It's pretty incredible to watch how women act," said Egan, a St. Lawrence University sociologist. "Women, more so than men, tend to be boisterous in a strip club."

For purposes of this article, queer women do not exist, apparently.

Piece originally appeared in The Denver Post; perhaps there's a longer version there, which acknowledges that not everyone is straight.

Perhaps winged monkeys will fly out of my butt.

Update: I get curious. Here's the Denver Post version, Strip-club crowd: Why more women are watching other women take it off.

Yes, it's slightly longer.

No, queers still do not represent.

On the plus side, there's another article on Something's Gotta Give, Someone's gotta say it: She's 50+ and sexy. Covers the same territory as the ones linked here previously, really, including mention of the upcoming film Calendar Girls.

Yes, I'm reading WomanNews. You got a problem with that?

See also: Bunnies celebrate 50th on their own, about the 50th Anniversary of the Playboy Bunnies:

Former bunnies include supermodel Lauren Hutton, singer Deborah Harry and actress Sherilyn Fenn. Others include Cynthia Henderson, now a lawyer and once a member of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's Cabinet; federal Judge Kimba Wood; and Polly Matzinger, now an immunologist at the National Institutes of Health.

And also: Funding potential unleashes an explosion of dating sites:

"There is a ridiculous number of people doing this business," says David Card, an analyst with Jupiter Research. He cites the recent announcements from networking service Friendster that it raised venture funding--$13 million in October and slightly more than $1 million earlier--as a factor in the recent explosion of new sites.

"What's happening now is Friendster has raised some money, so other people are thinking there's funding to be found," Card says.

Mind you, I still haven't actually met anyone on Friendster. . .

Posted by Aaron at 2:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Then:

The FBI was obsessed with Martin Luther King, who they saw as the most powerful and popular leader of the the Civil Rights movement. In Racial Matters, Kenneth O'Reilly quoted a number of top FBI agents who said:

"Hoover dreamed of destroying Dr. King and replacing him with a "manageable black leader. And a few of the more confident FBI officials, William Sullivan included, tried to find one. In January 1964, when Sullivan proposed to remove King from his pedestal, he suggested that the Bureau replace King with the "right kind" of black leader." (142) In fact, in 1964, the FBI sent King a tape they had made of him having sex with women other than his wife and they threatened to release it to the public if he didn't resign his leadership of the movement. But the letter they sent with the tape blackmailing him when even further. The FBI wrote:

"King, look into your heart. You know you are a complete fraud and a great liability to all of us Negroes. White people in this country have enough frauds of their own but I am sure they don't have one at this times that is any where near your equal. You are no clergyman and you know it. I repeat you are a colossal fraud and an evil, vicious one at that."

and the letter went on to say:

"King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have 34 days in which to do...it. You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal, fraudulent self is bared to the nation."

Here the FBI was actually suggesting that King should commit suicide to save himself from these embarrassing public revelations.

Now:

By the end of the [2000 Republican National] convention, the future national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, had emerged as black conservative stars, and a concerted effort by Republicans "to invent new black leaders" -- as former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) once put it -- was well underway.

[. . .] In 1983, when he was a young congressman during the Reagan administration, Gingrich sparked a controversy when he said: "It is in the interest of the Republican Party and Ronald Reagan to invent new black leaders, so to speak. People who have a belief in discipline, hard work and patriotism, the kind of people who applauded Reagan's actions in [invading] Grenada." The idea still applies, he said.

In a recent interview, Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) denounced Gingrich's statement as "patronizing and insulting to black people" then and now, and said such comments are "probably why Republicans get the bad results that they do" when they attempt to reach black voters.

Conservative het white men are just so damned helpful. I don't think there's a more helpful group of people on the face of the planet.

Oddly, after they help folks, they end up richer while the recipients of the help end up fucked and abandoned, but I'm sure this is all in the past, they're recognized the error of their ways, etc., etc. -- see that Chomsky piece I quoted a few days back.

Can only speak for myself here, obviously, but if you assholes really want to help?

Kill yourselves.

Thank you so very much.

The Mgt.

Update: Added a link for Racial Matters to the quoted text.

Posted by Aaron at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (2)

I resisted the incredibly strong temptation to create a new entry announcing Miss Vietnam USA 2004, with the title, "And the Nguyen-er Is. . ."

Because making puns in different languages just puts me on the road to rampant Rumiko Takahashi-ism. And no one wants that.

I have accepted that I'm actually Saotome Ranma, though.

VASpider is just one of my fiancees. You kids can discuss among yourselves who the rest are.

Actually. . .

Macho Chick! Built like a stick! Dumb as a brick! Thighs are too thick! Can't even kick!

Ok, obviously Akane is. . .

MERCY SELF-CENSORSHIP SYSTEM ENGAGED

Posted by Aaron at 8:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

From last December 26th:

First off, here's Neil Gaiman explaining what the hell Boxing Day is:

(Basically it's the day you eat leftovers and sprawl a lot, named after the Victorian custom of servants getting their holiday "boxes" -- gifts of money -- the day after Christmas.)

Parentheses left in because it was a parenthetical remark.

Next up, Dr. Maulana Karenga explaining what the hell Kwanzaa is:

[Kwanzaa was created t]o introduce and reinforce the Nguzo Saba, the Seven Principles and through this, introduce and reaffirm communitarian values and practices which strengthen and celebrate family, community and culture. These seven communitarian African values are: Umoja (Unity), Kuji-chagulia (Self-determination), Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility), Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics), Nia (Purpose), Kuumba (Creativity), and Imani (Faith).

Well, that's part of the response to the question, "Why was Kwanzaa created?" There's more at The Official Kwanzaa Web Site , if you wanted to know it.

Really should stop treating Kwanzaa like the punchline for a joke one of these days. I mean, I understand the motivation -- same as I understand the motivation behind creating faux-African names -- and just because I don't agree with how this is being expressed. . .

Coffee time.

While I'm here, though, there are several valid critiques that can be offered against my writing about the Miss Vietnam USA pageant; using the words/phrases "male gaze," "objectification," "exoticism" and/or "fetishized". . . really isn't going to help anyone, anywhere, but if it makes you feel good, go for it.

Yep. Coffee.

Update: The only reason I'm not declaring today Talk Like A Marxist-Feminist Day is because it would be a violation of the spirit of Umoja. Well, that, and Michelle would kick my rusty butt, and she's enabling my unhealthy obsession with Audrey Tatou.

Note to self: in Zero Four work on not developing unhealthy obsessions, c.f. Audrey Tatou, Emmylou Harris, Margaret Cho, Rashel Diaz, Trish Thuy Trang and The Ghettofabulous Jessica.

Update: On faux-African names and ghetto fabulousness, from Jaheim: Still Ghetto - PopMatters Music Review:

Nowhere is Still Ghetto's luster more on display than on the fabulous lead single "Fabulous". "Fabulous" is short for "ghetto fabulous", that ghetto survival mode that has been elevated to a level of high style. "Ghetto fabulousness" has often been an excuse for some folks (the folks, if you know what I mean) to celebrate the absurdity of ghetto life (see anything by the Big Tymers). But "Fabulous", written by producer Kay Gee and Balewa Muhammad (of the Transitions), is more in the vein of the "way out of no way" spirit that has defined so much of post-Middle Passage black life -- creative transcendence over the absurd and the ridiculous. Against the backdrop of those folks who think dysfunctional behaviors are positive attributes (no really, anything by the Big Tymers), "Fabulous" is truly inspiration. The song gets much of its inspirational power from a subtle chop of the opening piano (likely a celeste) riff from Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes's classic "Wake Up Everybody" (1976), itself a call for "ghetto renewal". On the song's sing-sing chorus Jaheim riffs defiantly about the folks (our folks if you feelin' me on this) who "spend up all our dough on them chromie things / Named our kids them funny names" and have "pre-paid cellies for local calls" -- the folks who use pre-paid phone cards and cell phones because they can't afford to have their regular service turned back on or who bequeath their kids with names like "Shaniqua" or "Dequan", guaranteeing that they will never be mistaken for anybody else (it's about doin' you, dun), while invoking some faux-mother-land regality.

Most telling about "Fabulous" is the line in the bridge where Ja sings "we got love for y'all, but y'all don't love us". While it would be easy to perceive the line as directed to white folks, anybody familiar with Chris Rock's now legendary diatribe about "niggers and black folk" know that Ja's flow is directed at some of the folks who think "ghetto fabulousness" is more a threat to national (Negro) security than the Patriot Act.

If this ain't your tribe, chances are you still ain't gonna understand.

That's cool.

I'm feeling Umoja today. Any questions, no matter how ignant you think they might be? Feel free to ask.

Posted by Aaron at 4:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Haven't done one of these in ages. . .

Numbers not 100% accurate -- haven't been processing the logs, and they're purged/restarted every few days to keep 'em from getting too long -- but that's more or less where folks are coming from.

Another goal for Zero Four: Bump up those numbers from South Korea.

Title taken from MSIChicago | Exhibits | Christmas Around the World/Holidays of Light, which exhibit I also haven't been to in ages. Doubt it's changed much, except for the whole charging admission to the Museum of Science and Industry thang; don't think I've been since they started doing that, and it's been, um, probably slightly over a decade. . .

Did you know that in China, families hang flowers and ribbon fish on their holiday trees?  And in Egypt, they plant beans and seeds before New Year’s Eve. In Switzerland, children have to wait while moms and dads secretly decorate the Christmas tree. Christmas Around the World and Holidays of Light is your guide to a whole world of winter holiday celebrations.

Maybe in Zero Four I'll actually get to it.

Posted by Aaron at 9:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

And what better way to observe this than with Visions of Enlightenment: Understanding the Art of Buddhism at the Pacific Asia Museum?

That was a rhetorical.

When you hit that first link, is the Buddha glowing? Then you have Flash 6, and can experience the pretty-darned-cool Flash Site.

I'm running Debian GNU/Linux and Mozilla Firebird, and I see a glowing Buddha. The rest of you have no excuse. None at all.

Posted by Aaron at 12:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

After all, in today's fast-paced, ever-changing world, isn't it nice to know there are some things you can rely upon for stability?

Asia Pacific Arts Online Magazine: First Annual Miss Vietnam U.S.A. Pageant

After five years of planning, the first annual "Miss Vietnam U.S.A." pageant will be held on December 20 at the Grove of Anaheim. Hosting the show will be Mai Phuong and Tuan Cuong.

[. . .] The show will feature sixty contestants from all over the nation competing for the grand prize of $20,000 and a brand-new Mercedes Benz. The first-runner up will win $10,000 and the second runner-up will win $5,000. There will also be a reward of $3,000 each in the categories of Miss Photogenic, Miss Congeniality and Miss Ao Dai (traditional Vietnamese dress).

(Update: Added Google Images link to Ao Dai, in case you were curious what one looks like. You're welcome.)

I mention this because Trish was scheduled to perform.

See? Predictable.

Want to know more? Check out MissVietnamUSA.com.

Later, we shall discuss whether a beauty pageant represents a sign of progress or not. Clearly, somebody thought it did, or they wouldn't have spent five years putting it together. I'm not sure it's my place to question their decision.

Wait, what am I saying? It's my blog. I get to question everyone's decisions.

I just choose not to.

I do, however, worry that so many of the contestants are blonde. . .

Update 12/25: Well, they finally updated with the winners. Madison, you'll be glad to know that the blondes appear to have been shut out entirely: Miss Vietnam USA 2004 is the very brunette Contestant #34, Caroline Nguyen. Additionally:

"Our full color 120 pages Magazine/booklet is available for everyone to purchase. Our magazine is $5.00 plus $2.50 for shipping and handling." To order, send a check or money order to our P.o Box and we will send the booklet within 7 days.

To:   P.O. BOX 10184
     Westminster, CA 92685
Attn: Magazine/booklet Order

Hell yes I'm ordering one.

Maybe several. They'd make nice (albeit sligtly late) Kwanzaa gifts, I think. Because what says Kwanzaa like cute Vietnamese women, presumably with a section featuring all of them wearing the Ao Dai?

Don't answer that.

Seriously -- as much so as it gets around here -- that first link has several interesting news bits, such as:

Korean Costumes Through the Ages

The Asia Pacific Museum in Pasadena is hosting the "Korean Costume Through the Ages" from November 1, 2003 until February 1, 2004. This exhibit will be the first of its kind in Southern California to trace the development of the hanbok (traditional Korean dress) from the Three Kingdoms Period (1st century BC- AD 668) to the modern period.

For more information, visit http://www.pacificasiamuseum.org

And also:

Goryeo Dynasty Exhibit at San Francisco's Asian Art Museum

The San Francisco Asian Art Museum will be hosting the "Goryeo Dynasty: Korea's Age of Enlightenment, 918 to 1392" exhibit from October 18, 2003 until January 11, 2004. The exhibit will examine the artistic works produced during the Goryeo Dynasty with over 113 rare artworks on display, seven of which have been designated as the National Treasures of Korea. Items on display include celadon ceramics, Buddhist paintings and sculptures, illustrated Buddhist sutras, ritual implements, metal crafts and lacquer wares.

For many of these objects, it will be their first time on display in the U.S. They have been collected from over thirty-five lenders throughout Asia, Europe, and the United States. This is the first exhibition of its kind outside of Korea.

For more info, see http://www.asianart.org

And that's skipping the bit about Amy Anderson's Chopschtick Comedy, and the Korean American Symphony Orchestra making its debut in "Echo of Dreams" at UCLA , with help from the Korean Youth and Community Center.

That issue also has an article Nothing Funny about Cho's New Line, about the clothing line:

Revolutionary, co-creating designer, Ava Stander states, "High Class Cho is reminiscent of the glamorous fashions of the '40s, where screen sirens of every shape filled each frame with infinite possibility, mystery and desire." This philosophy is also made apparent by the clothes collection coming in four sizes: "Audrey" (size 10-12), "Lana (size 12-14), "Marilyn" (size 14-16) and "Anita" (size 16-18).

Link added, natch.

And even though you'd think I've now milked the site for all it's worth, you'd be wrong. Go visit. There's more.

After all, I pulled all that from the November 21st issue. The current one covers The Last Samurai and also the latest from Sandra Tsing Loh.

She also drinks Two Buck Chuck, which gives her several dozen coolness points.

Update: The bits with Margaret Cho and Sandra Tsing Loh also touch on size issues, which I, being an idjit, never really connect to the Asian community. Somebody slap me, ok?

And also, from Amy Anderson's bio:

Unlike her name, Amy Anderson is originally from South Korea. She was adopted and raised by Swedish people in Minnesota where her inevitable comedy career took flight. She spent six years in Minneapolis as a comedian, actor and writer before fleeing to sunny Los Angeles.

Are there any non-Korean female Asian comics?

Posted by Aaron at 6:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Everybody Knows
(co-written by Sharon Robinson)

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died

Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows

Everybody knows that you love me baby
Everybody knows that you really do
Everybody knows that you've been faithful
Ah give or take a night or two
Everybody knows you've been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes
And everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

And everybody knows that it's now or never
Everybody knows that it's me or you
And everybody knows that you live forever
Ah when you've done a line or two
Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton
For your ribbons and bows
And everybody knows

And everybody knows that the Plague is coming
Everybody knows that it's moving fast
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman
Are just a shining artifact of the past
Everybody knows the scene is dead
But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
What everybody knows

And everybody knows that you're in trouble
Everybody knows what you've been through
From the bloody cross on top of Calvary
To the beach of Malibu
Everybody knows it's coming apart
Take one last look at this Sacred Heart
Before it blows
And everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

Oh everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows

Taken from The Leonard Cohen Files, a wealth of information if you're looking for that sort of thing.

I know, should have been Hallelujah, which would'a been in keeping with both the Shrek and X-Mas themes. . .

Posted by Aaron at 3:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

About Christmas, my master would give four or five days' holiday to his slaves; during which time, he supplied them plentifully with new whiskey, which kept them in a continual state of the most beastly intoxication. He often absolutely forced them to drink more, when they had told him they had had enough. He would then call them together, and say, "Now, you slaves, don't you see what bad use you have been making of your liberty? Don't you think you had better have a master, to look after you, and make you work, and keep you from such a brutal state, which is a disgrace to you, and would ultimately be an injury to the community at large?" Some of the slaves, in that whining, cringing manner, which is one of the baneful effects of slavery, would reply, "Yees, Massa; if we go on in dis way, no good at all."

Thus, by an artfully-contrived plan, the slaves themselves are made to put the seal upon their own servitude. The masters, by the system, are rendered as cunning and scheming as the slaves themselves.

"Joe," said a master, "if you will work well for me, you shall be buried in my grave." The slave said nothing, in reply; but thought, Massa is a bad man, and that he would not like to be buried near him. The slave thought he had been too near his master, all his life, and had rather be away from him, when he died. Seeing the slave idling, "Joe," shouted his master, "have you forgotten what I promised you, if you work well?" "No, Massa, me bemember; but me don't want." "What for, Joe?" "Because de debbil might some day come, and steal me away, in mistake for you, Massa." His master was silent on this subject ever afterwards.

From:

Slave Life in Virginia and Kentucky;
or, Fifty Years of Slavery in
the Southern States of America:
.Electronic Edition

Right, that's why I avoid slave narratives. Can't stand the attempt to represent the dialect by mangling spellings and suchlike.

Update: And the other reason, now that I think about it, is that although I don't doubt the veracity of the accounts, they're very self-consciously structured for a particular audience to elicit a certain response.

Ah hates being manipulated. Which is pretty ironic, all things considered.

Oh, and Michelle persuaded me not to post Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Match-Seller today.

Thank her.

And she said nothing about linking. Just that posting the thing would be. . . not so much with the good.

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

Formerly a Slave,
Now an Inhabitant of Canada,
as Narrated by Himself:
Electronic Edition

I WAS born, June 15, 1789, in Charles County, Maryland, on a farm belonging to Mr. Francis N., about a mile from Port Tobacco. My mother was the property of Dr. Josiah McP., but was hired by Mr. N., to whom my father belonged. The only incident I can remember, which occurred while my mother continued on N.'s farm, was the appearance of my father one day, with his head bloody and his back lacerated. He was in a state of great excitement, and though it was all a mystery to me at the age of three or four years, it was explained at a later period, and I understood that he had been suffering the cruel penalty of the Maryland law for beating a white man. His right ear had been cut off close to his head, and he had received a hundred lashes on his back. He had beaten the overseer for a brutal assault on my mother, and this was his punishment. Furious at such treatment, my father became a different man, and was so morose, disobedient, and intractable, that Mr. N. determined to sell him. He accordingly parted with him, not long after, to his son, who lived in Alabama; and neither my mother nor I, ever heard of him again. He was naturally, as I understood afterwards from my mother and other persons, a man of amiable temper, and of considerable energy of character; but it is not strange that he should be essentially changed by such cruelty and injustice under the sanction of law.

[. . .] On one of these occasions, my master got into a quarrel with his brother's overseer, who was one of the party, and in rescuing the former, I suppose I was a little more rough with the latter than usual. I remember his falling upon the floor, and very likely it was from the effects of a push from me, or a movement of my elbow. He attributed his fall to me, rather than to the whiskey he had drunk, and treasured up his vengeance for the first favorable opportunity. About a week afterwards, I was sent by my master to a place a few miles distant, on horseback, with some letters. I took a short cut through a lane, separated by gates from the high road, and bounded by a fence on each side. This lane passed through some of the farm owned by my master's brother, and his overseer was in the adjoining field, with three negroes, when I went by. On my return, a half an hour afterwards, the overseer was sitting on the fence; but I could see nothing of the black fellows. I rode on, utterly unsuspicious of any trouble, but as I approached, he jumped off the fence, and at the same moment two of the negroes sprung up from under the bushes, where they had been concealed, and stood with him, immediately in front of me; while the third sprang over the fence just behind me. I was thus enclosed between what I could no longer doubt were hostile forces. The overseer seized my horse's bridle, and ordered me to alight, in the usual elegant phraseology used by such men to slaves. I asked what I was to alight for. "To take the cursedest flogging you ever had in your life, you d--d black scoundrel." "But what am I to be flogged for, Mr. L.," I asked. "Not a word," said he, "but 'light at once, and take off your jacket." I saw there was nothing else to be done, and slipped off the horse on the opposite side from him. "Now take off your shirt," cried he; and as I demurred at this, he lifted a stick he had in his hand to strike me, but so suddenly and violently, that he frightened the horse, which broke away from him, and ran home. I was thus left without means of escape, to sustain the attacks of four men, as well as I might.

He did survive this, and eventually escaped to Canada. You might have guessed that from the title.

Just a bit of one of the North American Slave Narratives available from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Never read many slave narratives.

Can't imagine why.

Not entirely certain why I'm going through them now, to be honest.

np -- CoCo Lee, A Love Before Time, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon soundtrack, cello solo by Yo Yo Ma.

Think I chose that narrative because Josiah was the name of a character in The Crew. A damned good character, and one I'd like to see more of, but I ain't seeing that happen any time soon. . .

Posted by Aaron at 1:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Anyway, so. According to American Indian Place Names at Fact Monster, Chicago is "Algonquian for 'garlic field.'"

However, the word Chicago links to the Fact Monster page for Chicago, which states that "The name Chicago is thought to come from an Algonquian word meaning 'onion' or 'skunk.'"

Emphasis added.

Also of interest, perhaps:

The first white men known to have visited the region were Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette in 1673. The first permanent white settler was John Kinzie, who is sometimes called the Father of Chicago. He took over a trading post in 1796 that had been established in 1791 by Jean-Baptiste Point du Sable, a black fur trapper. Fort Dearborn, a blockhouse and stockade, was built in 1804 but was evacuated in 1812, at which time more than half of its garrison was massacred by Potawatomi and Ottawa Indians loyal to the British.

Flipping over to Algonquian Language Family (Algonkian Indian Languages, Algic, Algonquian Indians), we see that:

Though this language family is most properly known as 'Algic' to linguists (Wiyot and Yurok are not considered closely related enough to qualify as Algonquian, and the broader category Algic includes them as well), 'Algonquian' (or 'Algonkian') is the general term most often used by the Native Americans who speak them.

I'm taking "speak," present tense, to mean there are still people who, you know, speak the language.

So why the confusion about what the name of the city means?

These are the questions that would keep me awake nights, were it not for Two Buck Chuck.

Actually closer to Three Buck Chuck here in Onionville or Skunktown or whatever the fuck the name means.

Want to know more about place names around the city? See Yes, Virginia, there was a William Busse, possibly registration-required, in the Trib:

Flossmoor. No, not named by a local dentist. It's the combination of two Scottish words — "floss," meaning dew on the flowers, and "moor," meaning gentle rolling countryside.

Wilmette. An Anglicized version of the name of Antoine Ouilmette, a French-Canadian fur trader who first came to Chicago in 1790. He and his part-Potawatomi wife Archange moved to a cabin along the lakeshore near what is Lake Street in present-day Wilmette.

Joe Orr Road (Chicago Heights). Joe Orr, born to pioneer settlers in 1864 on a farm near the corner of Dixie Highway and Joe Orr Road in Chicago Heights, founded a coal company in 1902 and later became a major road builder in the area.

McHenry County and the village of McHenry. Major William McHenry, from White County in Downstate Illinois, was a famous commander in the Black Hawk War as well as a state representative and senator.

Steger. John V. Steger built a series of three-story structures for his piano factory. The town built up around this business.

I see I shall have to call McHenry "Indian Killer Town" from now on. Sorry, Neo.

Posted by Aaron at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

But it'll be going to a US publisher this time around. Del Rey, in fact; ¡Journalista! thanks two people, both of whom I rudely fail to mention, for noting the opening of their manga site.

Image from one of the CLAMP books they managed to acquire the rights to, Tsubasa RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE:

Sakura is the princess of Clow--and possessor of a mysterious, misunderstood power that can change the world. Syaoran is her childhood friend, and leader of the archaeological dig that cost him his father. Their names and faces may be familiar, but nothing about this story is what you think it is. Because this is another reality...where whatever you least expect can happen. And it does--when Sakura goes to the dig to declare her love for Syaoran, a mysterious symbol is uncovered, and the vast repercussions it has for Sakura and Syaoran trigger a remarkable quest. Join Syaoran and his friends on a journey through the worlds of X, Chobits, Magic Knight Rayearth, XXXholic and may more classic clamp series. All in the name of Syaoran's single goal: saving Sakura.

Yes, I'm a mark. I freely admit this.

Want to know more about Tsubasa?

Depuis déjà 8 chapitres (il y a deux mois environ) Clamp commençait un nouveau manga dénommé Tsubasa RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE (faite attention à la capitalisation).

That's special.

Posted by Aaron at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

. . .this might be of interest to someone.

The Center for Women & Information Technology (CWIT) at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) is pleased to announce the availability of a merit-based scholarship program to encourage women to prepare for careers in information technology. The CWIT Scholars Program identifies 10 high-achieving high school seniors annually and provides four years of financial and programmatic support for pursuit of a bachelor's degree at UMBC in computer science, computer engineering, information systems, or a related field. Now in its second year, the program is open to both women and men who support women's full involvement in information technology.

In addition to financial support, CWIT Scholars benefit from mentoring, internships, service learning opportunities, specialized courses including one on "Women, Gender, and IT," brown-bag lunches, interaction with distinguished participants in the CWIT Speakers Series, and more. Additional information and an application form are available on the CWIT web site:
http://www.umbc.edu/cwit/cwitscholars.html .
Application deadline:
January 15, 2004.

Please help spread the word about this exciting scholarship opportunity.

Joan Korenman, Founding Director
Center for Women and Information Technology
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Baltimore, MD 21250 USA
korenman@umbc.edu
http://www.umbc.edu/cwit/

Want to know more? Women in IT is a theme that crops up from time to time at misbehaving.net Could do worse than start with If I Had It To Do Over.

I should have stayed in school, some way or another. I just didn't get it then. The more school, the more opportunities I would have had, the more authority I would have had, the more choices I would have had, the more interesting people I would have met. I thought then I wanted my freedom -- to be free of school, to be done with it. Little did I know the more school I did then, the more freedom I would have NOW when it really matters.

And what kind of school would I have done ... more IT, more Finance, more languages for starters, maybe law.

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled bitter misogyny, already in progress.

Although, reading the entry at misbehaving on The Montreal Massacre. . . that doesn't seem terribly funny.

Posted by Aaron at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, depends on the people you chat with in IM, I suppose.

Annoyed poor (but recently liberated from the tyranny of wires) Dru playing with a Wired Bot last night, insisting the poor girl try to have a conversation with it.

It had an, um, limited vocabulary and repertoire of responses. I blame the parents. Parent. Programmer. Well, script writer, more like; the actual programming involved in Building an AIM bot was handled by those with a better grasp of Perl than I.

Damning them with faint praise, there.

Anyway, ideally I could get Install the Net::AIM module on the server and let the bot run from there, so I wouldn't have to be connected for it to be live and direct. Figure I could set it up to answer limited questions about the site, rather than forcing tourists to read the archives or use the search function before saying foolish things.

I know it won't work, but it gives me something to do.

Other than data entry.

Want to know more? See hacks.oreilly.com: Create an Amazon AIM Bot for details on how you, yes, you, my friend, can create your own little virtual slave friend.

Like the Keebler RecipeBuddie, who you can easily add to your AIM buddy list and ask about. . . well, not vegan recipes, tried that, and it was singularly unhelpful, but vegetarian worked.

Posted by Aaron at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Been going wacky with adding feeds/links to Bloglines again; currently there are 99. Who will be the lucky #100? Does anyone care, including me? Will the Caped Crusader escape?

Found Dot City: Dorothy Parker's New York by way of recently updated list at Typepad. I think. It becomes a blur, I admit.

But they do ask the musical question:

Parker & It's A Wonderful Life?

Did anyone ever hear of Mrs. Parker working on this classic? It's not in any books I've come across. It does seem hard to imagine that she worked on the famous Jimmy Stewart holiday staple. Watch closer when it's on TV this holiday season?

There is the odd cynicism among the syrupiness. The line from the sista about saving up for a divorce at the end, for example. . .

Anyway, if you don't want to know more but actually do, drop 'em a line.

Director's cut:

Thought of using this image of Mrs. Parker instead, but would have had to resize it. Like it a bit better than the one in the entry, though.

I do hope they're monitoring my network usage. Explaining why I was surfing for photos of Dorothy Parker seems like a fun way to spend an afternoon. . .

Posted by Aaron at 9:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Luckily, the place is less crowded than normal.

Today's Boondocks is the cause. That link goes directly to the image/strip; click here for the strip along with the ads which help support quality programming on PBS Ucomics.com.

Like George, I'd been reading more strips than usual lately, using the feeds from Tapestry. Which link actually takes you to an explanation of why those feeds ain't working no more.

Actually, no, I'm using feeds from, um, somewhere else, now that I look at 'em. Somewhere else that hasn't got a C&D from Ucomics yet, so my linking them would probably be a Very Bad Idea Indeed. But drop by Bloglines and do a search for your favorite comics; even if you don't use the service, you should be able to copy and paste the URIs.

Ok, perhaps more coffee is required. I'm having that thing where I'm not sure I'm making any sense whatsoever again.

Posted by Aaron at 8:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ok, checked with Froogle, which allows you to "[f]ind products for sale from across the web," and yep:

Froogle Search: negro dominatrix

Uppity-Negro.com: A Hooper X Fansite: August 2003 Archives
$12.95

I'm still cheap.

I really need to write them about that at some point. . .

Posted by Aaron at 4:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

When I tell other people to do something -- like, say, update their MT Blacklist blacklist -- I take my own damned advice.

Also considered, and rejected, installing MT 2.65 after seeing it mentioned at the Comment Spam Clearinghouse. Did update the XMLRPCServer.pm, but sent the file in binary rather than ASCII since Mickeysoft's shitty little FTP client bitched about bare linefeeds. I have no clue what that file does, of course, or if that's going to break it, so if something seems to be not working, that's one possible reason.

And I'm seriously reconsidering the whole coffee-Mountain Dew - Red Bull in one day thing. Did any of the above make any sense at all?

Posted by Aaron at 3:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Try to avoid automatically going into knee-jerk mode.

Naked middle-age women--it's the latest screen trend.

Wait! Don't cover your eyes.

"Diane Keaton looks great!" Star-Telegram movie reviewer Christopher Kelly was saying with amazement last week about 57-year-old Keaton's romp with Jack Nicholson in "Something's Gotta Give." (News flash: It's not uncommon for fiftysomething women to look terrific.)

Last month it was Meg Ryan's sexy silhouette in "In the Cut" that was prompting the Hollywood press to fling exclamation points. Sure, she used to be America's sweetheart but now she's--gasp!!--41!

And next month comes the ultimate old-enough-to-know-better, nekkid-lady movie, the true-life "Calendar Girls," in which some half-dozen actresses, including Helen Mirren and Julie Waters, play backwater British women who doff their brassieres and knickers for a good cause. All that uncovered middle-age flesh won't make audiences cringe a bit--though it will make them smile.

Not a bad article, is Movies reveal naked truth about older, sexy women (registration maybe required, I just can't tell anymore). But the first few paras -- deleted, because I'm like that -- made me expect much worse. Perhaps my expectations were low.

Want to know more? See also The naked truth. Not as good a piece, but has this quote at the end:

"Helen Mirren is still one of the sexiest women on the planet. I don't care if she's 58 years old," says Cole. "She's gorgeous - and you get to see her naked. That's got to be worth something."

This forgives much.

Posted by Aaron at 1:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

My first poll

Which negative aspect should I rid myself of first? The Veiny The Evil The Stupid The Horny Other

View current results

Got myself a free poll @ www.Votations.com after seeing one in action at Snarkalicious.

What?

Update: All right, two votes so far, let's see. . .

One for "The Evil."

And one Other/Write-in for. . . "The imprinting on cute redheads in pigtails."

Have I mentioned lately that I hate you all?

Update 12/26: Stalinist revisionism on the Authored On date, so this hovers up at the top until the end of the year.

Deal.

Also, vote!

Update: Further revisionism; put the poll in the sidebar, and put this back on the 23rd. I probably got the time wrong, though.

Posted by Aaron at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

I really seek out Noamster-bashing on the part of the right (and some elements of the left), because I figure someone there actively engaging what he says might cause me to look at it differently.

Y'know, thesis, antithesis, synthesis, and all that good shit.

And yes, left-right is that dualistic stuff I said I was so over. The circumlocutions wouldn't make this any clearer, so let's just accept the labels, realizing they're pretty much intellectually bankrupt, and move on.

Trouble is, most of the bashing is just. . . bashing. Ad hominem attacks, misquoting, ignoring the extensive footnotes. . . it's sad, really. Anyone seen a decent counterargument to anything he's written?

Such practices reflect a trap deeply rooted in the intellectual culture generally — a trap sometimes called the doctrine of change of course, invoked in the United States every two or three years. The content of the doctrine is: "Yes, in the past we did some wrong things because of innocence or inadvertence. But now that's all over, so let's not waste any more time on this boring, stale stuff."

The doctrine is dishonest and cowardly, but it does have advantages: It protects us from the danger of understanding what is happening before our eyes.

For example, the Bush administration's original reason for going to war in Iraq was to save the world from a tyrant developing weapons of mass destruction and cultivating links to terror. Nobody believes that now, not even Bush's speech writers.

The new reason is that we invaded Iraq to establish a democracy there and, in fact, to democratize the whole Middle East.

That's from Selective Memory and a Dishonest Doctrine, originally published in the Toronto Star, presented for those of us south of the border by Common Dreams. Since the prophet is without no damn honor in his own crib, and the mainstream media tends to ignore the guy like the plague.

And if there is a cult of personality around the man, it ain't something he's cultivated, and from what I've seen ain't something he really wants. . .

Posted by Aaron at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

¡Shakira para presidente del mundo!

La cantante colombiana fue nombrada por la organización benéfica UNICEF como “Embajadora de Paz”, galardón dado a sólo unas cien personas en todo el mundo.

Shakira, de sólo 26 años de edad, se transformó así en la galardonada más joven y la primera colombiana en recibir el honor. La cantante dijo recientemente que se siente muy honrada con el nombramiento y feliz de poder contribuir de alguna manera a intentar mejorar la calidad de vida de los niños alrededor del mundo, algo que la llena mucho como persona y como artista.

(From MTVla.com | MTV Noticias -- and this is old noticias, from October 31st.)

Learn Spanish. Or rather, re-learn the Spanish I've forgotten from lack of use.

Shakira is just an excuse to do that. Yes, that will do. . .

Posted by Aaron at 9:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Because it bears repeating: I don't believe in manifestos, either.

So, in one of the not-enough-for-a-minor-by-like-four-credit-hours African Studies courses I took, the professor gave us some readings on female genital mutilation.

FGC is a term used to refer to any practice which includes the removal or the alteration of the female genitalia. There are three main types of FGC that are practiced through the world : Type I or Sunna circumcision, Type II or excision, and Type III or infibulation. These three operation range in intensity, from the "mildness" of Type I, to the extreme Type III. Type II is a recent addition to FGC. I will explain in the next sections what each of these practices involve, and outline some of the short-term and long-term effects that they have.

The only reason you're not currently clicking frantically to get away from some extremely disturbing photographs is because I'm not quite as evil as people seem to think.

The procedures are also sometimes called female circumcision, which has led some well-meaning but hideously stupid men to compare them to male circumcision. Yes, and we can also compare rope burn to third-degree burns over 80% of your body. I do applaud the tendency of idiots to speak up, though. It makes them easier to identify for later attention.

So while we're all sitting there horrified, the professor began explaining about a group that visits villages and provides the (usually) women who perform the procedure with surgical implements, and teaches how to sterilize them. . .

And we all, predictably, expressed shock and revulsion at the idea.

And she gently explained that you don't stop people doing something they've been doing for centuries before you showed up by cloaking yourself in self-righteousness and telling them they're barbaric savages. Oddly, that tends to make people defiant, and at best will only drive the practice underground. At worst, you end up creating fundamentalists who hate your Western fucking guts. The sterile surgical gear at least reduced the chances of girls developing infections.

And some of us, predictably, expressed shock and revulsion at her acting as an apologist for barbaric savages.

In our defense, we were kids.

Some of us grew up.

Any Americans feeling self-satisfied about how we would never allow something like that to take place here, pay more fucking attention. What's more, we don't, as a matter of policy, consider fleeing here to escape the procedure an adequate reason to grant political asylum.

I don't think I've ever identified myself as a liberal. People assume I am, because I don't bother hiding my absolute hatred for conservatives and libertarians. This is because I find liberals generally pleasant, occasionally annoying, but Mostly Harmless.

Conservatives and libertarians, on the other hand, are evil and must be destroyed.

And that's about the closest you're going to get to a manifesto around here. Now if you'll excuse me, I found a copy of Ozma of Oz from the good people at Project Gutenberg.

I should make sure those links still work. . .

Posted by Aaron at 8:51 AM | Permalink

Anyway, so, thought I'd picked Trish Thùy Trang randomly when I was surfing Vietnamese pop singer sites.

(For those of you just joining us -- it's been pointed out to me recently that every blog entry is the first one someone reads -- it's. . . complicated.)

Lots of the Vietnamese restaurants and stores in the 'hood have had posters up for a concert for a while, and one of the pictured performers was a very cute redhead in pigtails (yes, I'm imprinted on cute redheads in pigtails, shut up, shut up shutup). Actually looked closely at one of 'em walking to work this morning, and the name next to that photo?

Trish Thùy Trang.

Missed the concert already, though. Darn. Probably would have integrated the joint, too, and I do so dearly love doing that.

Oh well. Shame the curtains probably don't match the dra--

Hi, my name is Aaron, and in Zero Four I'm hoping to not be so VES and especially H.

Update: Actually, tearing my eyes away from Trish, the concert is December 26th.

I shouldn't.

I really shouldn't.

While I ponder this, here's a story and some images from ASEAN Para Games 2, mentioned in that entry linked above.

Also, Google offers a translation option for Vietnamese. I can only assume it works. Why my employer blocks translate.google.com (but, obviously, not Google itself) is beyond me.

Posted by Aaron at 8:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

But I know that it's not. Sad, really.

That's the ad what showed up when I visited the Planetary #18 preview at PopCultureShock, pointed out in a Bad Signal mailing from Warren Ellis. Lots of interesting posts at that last link recently, with a variety of writers and artists taking a whack at the theme of what Zero Four will bring, artistically.

And shit.

And visiting the Toys link at PCS. . . I'm still not sure if that was deliberate. But I am very, very grossed out.

Want to know more? Check out the (archived) Bizarre Breasts columns from the good women -- and some men -- of Sequential Tart.

I suggest starting with The Bizarre Breasts Tutorial: How to Draw Breasts:

Bizarre proportions are nothing new to comics; be it the desire to cater to the cheesecake crowd or simply the preference of the artist, distorted anatomy has become commonplace. The fact that "professional" artists may utilize distortions in published works is a bit disappointing, but frankly, if they've gotten the job the odds are they aren't going to feel the need to change their style. That's fine, the world needs laughter. However, what does bother me is the possibility — hell, the reality — that amateur artists are copying this exaggerated anatomy and making these mistakes their own. So, in hopes of reaching those for whom this advice may actually have some impact, I have utilized my meager knowledge of anatomy and admittedly unpolished art skills to bring the world a brief tutorial on one of the comic artists' greatest challenges: the breast.

But that's just me.

Update: On the other hand. . .

(Sung to the tune of "Be Our Guest" from Beauty and the Beast)

See our breasts!
See our breasts!
Jutting pertly from our chests!
Let us focus on the mammary,
And disregard the rest!

See them swing!
Watch them bounce!
More fan service to the ounce!
We think tits are a lip-smacker,
Nothin's better on a cracker!

Gravity,
They defy!
Like balloons they float on high!
Topped with nipples taller than Mt. Everest!

Perhaps Lisa Jonte's See Our Breasts! is a better place to start.

Visit Girlamatic.com for more of Lisa's trademark wit. And art. And stuff.

Posted by Aaron at 7:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Settled in his seat, with the two curved canopies of clear plastic over them (the stationary one of the car, and the tunnel above rushing backward at one hundred seventy-five kilometers an hour), Bron turned to the left (Sam was also sitting there), thought about ice-farmers, and asked: "I still wonder why you decided to take me."

"To get you off my back," Sam said affably. "Maybe it'll lead you to some political argument that seriously challenges my own position. Right now, though, yours is so immature there's nothing I can say to you, except make polite noises — however much those noises might sound to you like ideas. [...] Maybe seeing a bit of the real thing will waylay your fears and shut you up. Or it may send you off screaming. Scream or silence, either'll be more informed. Personally, with you, I'll find either a relief."

-- From Trouble on Triton, by Samuel R. Delany, Wesleyan University Press edition with a foreword by Kathy Acker.

From an entry from Wednesday, May 29, 2002, before I'd switched to MovableType, before lots of things.

Still a good quote, though.

And I'll forget this by then, I just know it:

Plan-It Purple Event Details: 2004 Leon Forrest Lecturer, Samuel R. Delany, - April 15, 2004:

Event Title:  2004 Leon Forrest Lecturer, Samuel R. Delany,
Event Date:  April 15, 2004
Event Time:  4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Event Location:  TBA
See the Evanston Campus Map
Event Description:

The 2004 Leon Forrest Lecture presents Samuel R. Delany, professor of English and creative writing at Temple University. Professor Delany is a critic and novelist, with essays and interviews so far collected in seven volumes, the most recent three of which are Silent Interviews (1994), Longer Views (1996) and Shorter Views (1999). He has written a highly praised autobiography, The Motion of Light in Water (1988) and the best-selling Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1998), and, among his fiction, The Mad Man (1995), Atlantis: Three Tales (1993), and Dhalgren (1975). Some of his early science fiction— Babel-17 and Empire Star (both 1966), Nova (1968), and Driftglass (1970)—will come back into print. In 1999 a substantial book of his letters, 1984: Selected Letters appeared. Mr. Delany is a multiple winner of both Hugo and Nebula Awards for science fiction, a recipient of the Pilgrim Award for outstanding scholarship in the field of science fiction studies, and the William Whitehead Memorial Award for a lifetime’s contribution to Lesbian and Gay Literature. His scholarly interests include Walter Pater and the aesthetic movement, Hart Crane, and contemporary poetics, as well as questions of race, gender, queer studies, and literary theory. He has previously served as a comparative literature professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and as an English professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Event noticed at Golden Rule Jones, Literary events and topics, with a Chicago angle, which was itself noticed at ChgoRed: Girl Editor.

Which I'm having a few. . . issues with -- the approving link to Lileks is a very bad sign -- but the information is good.

Vamping.

Other Pilgrim Award recipients include the late Damon Knight (never read nothing by him, but fondly remember the Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man"), Joanna Russ (ain't remembering nothing of hers I read neither), Ursula K. Le Guin (Hey! I read. . . no, Shirley Jackson wrote The Lottery. I got nothin'.) and a bunch of other folks any true SF fan would have at least passing familiarity with.

I'm an SF fan poseur.

Posted by Aaron at 2:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Narrator:  The machines, having long studied man’s simple protein based bodies, dispensed great misery on the human race. Victorious, the machines now turned to the vanquished. Applying what they had learned about their enemy, the machines turned to an alternate and readily available power supply, the bioelectric, thermal, and kinetic energies of the human body. A newly refashioned symbiotic relationship between the two adversaries was born. The machine, drawing power from the human body, an endlessly multiplying infinitely renewable energy source. This is the very essence of the second renaissance.

Bless all forms of intelligence.

From The Animatrix: The Second Renaissance. Partial transcript at Matrixfans.net. Image from The Matrix Character Database.

If you have a high-speed connection, or just lots of free time, both parts of The Second Renaissance are available, gratis, at the Animatrix site. Pity Final Flight of the Osiris isn't, but I guess Square is still trying to recoup some of the losses from the whole ill-fated animation studio thing. . .

Lots of 'em during the intro/outro (is outro a word? Or just something hip-hop artists like to use on their cds) for both parts of The Second Renaissance. The one at right was shamelessly ripped off from Hologram Communications - Promoting holograms, holistic health, and wholeness in spirit. Holistic/Spiritual Web Design. Clicking the mandala image should -- if you have Flash 4+ installed -- give you an animated version of same. It's pretty.

Management accepts no responsibility should it trigger an epileptic seizure or anything.

Epiphanies, revelations, a sense of well-being, sure, we'll take all the credit for that. But collapsing to the floor twitching? That's all you.

Posted by Aaron at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Rage Against the Machine: Wake Up
(WMA: 28k / 56k / 100k - G2: 28k / 56k / 100k)

Although ya try to discredit
Ya still never read it
The needle, I'll thread it
Radically poetic
Standin' with the fury that they had in '66
And like E-Double I'm mad
Still knee-deep in the system's shit
Hoover, he was a body remover
I'll give ya a dose
But it can never come close
To the rage built up inside of me
Fist in the air, in the land of hypocrisy

Movements come and movements go
Leaders speak, movements cease
When their heads are flown
'Cause all these punks
Got bullets in their heads
Departments of police, the judges, the feds
Networks at work, keepin' people calm
You know they went after King
When he spoke out on Vietnam
He turned the power to the have-nots
And then came the shot

Yeah!
Yeah, back in this...
Wit' poetry, my mind I flex
Flip like Wilson, vocals never lackin' dat finesse
Whadda I got to, whadda I got to do to wake ya up
To shake ya up, to break the structure up
'Cause blood still flows in the gutter
I'm like takin' photos
Mad boy kicks open the shutter
Set the groove
Then stick and move like I was Cassius
Rep the stutter step
Then bomb a left upon the fascists
Yea, the several federal men
Who pulled schemes on the dream
And put it to an end
Ya better beware
Of retribution with mind war
20/20 visions and murals with metaphors
Networks at work, keepin' people calm
Ya know they murdered X
And tried to blame it on Islam
He turned the power to the have-nots
And then came the shot

Uggh!
What was the price on his head?
What was the price on his head!


I think I heard a shot
I think I heard a shot
I think I heard a shot
I think I heard a shot
I think I heard a shot
I think I heard, I think I heard a shot

'He may be a real contender for this position should he abandon his supposed obediance to white liberal doctrine of non-violence. . . and embrace black nationalism' 'Through counter-intelligence it should be possible to pinpoint potential trouble-makers. . . And neutralize them. Neutralize them. Neutralize them'

Wake.

Up.

One of the things that seriously disappoints me about the blogosphere or whatever the fuck you want to call it is that there's so little experimentation with the form. It's like, "Oo, I can publish. . . text. And quote stuff. And add comments to it."

Yeah. Fascinating. You're changing the world. Go you.

And don't mention "Fisking." Just don't. I like you. I'd hate to have to shoot you in the face and skullfuck the exit wound.

Photoblogs/moblogs/audio blogs, those are cool. Even if I don't visit -- or, looking over my links list, link -- any of them very often, at least they're doing something different.

Let's think outside the box here, people.

Hell, let's even acknowledge the existence of the box in the first fucking place.

Update: You know, VampWillow seems to be less veiny and evil than I am, writing for the Guardian about this topic, more or less:

The revolution should not be eulogised:

Weblogs have enraptured masses of people and are routinely described in outrageously overblown terms. They have been discussed quite seriously as the future of academia, journalism, and even democracy. But many over-enthusiastic commentators seem blinded to historical precedent or blinkered by their insistence on describing the new form in terms of familiar institutions.

Enthusiasm abounds. Bloggers enjoy describing themselves as pioneers, though their ideas of innovation are sometimes suspect. "We are writing ourselves into existence," some ecstatically proclaim, as if Pepys and Boswell and the historic legions of their fellow journal-writers had never existed. These bloggers, who tend to use their weblogs as public, interactive diaries, are as enthralled by their discovery of online community as were those who stumbled upon the early computer Bulletin Board Systems in the 1980s and Usenet in the 1990s. The communities that weblogs create and the act of writing every day to a real audience have transformed lives, but such experiences are not unique to weblogs, nor even to the Internet.

And I expect I should remove -- or temporarily disable -- the link to Willow. And send her that Fred Astaire - Ginger Rogers movie poster I said I was going to put in the mail last week. . .

Posted by Aaron at 9:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Although some just call it "quoting." Special needs children. I really don't think this mainstreaming/integrating them into regular classes thing is gonna work. . .

Shrek

Negroes are like onions.

Donkey

They both smell?

Shrek

NO! They have LAYERS. There's more to us underneath. So, negroes are like onions.

Donkey

Yeah, but nobody LIKES onions!

[. . .]

Shrek

Negroes are like onions.

Donkey

What, 'cause they stink?

Shrek

No . . .

Donkey

'Cause they make people cry?

Shrek

No . . .!

Donkey

You mean if you leave them out they get brown and start growing little white hairs?

Absurd notion, really.

Negroes are like parfait.

Posted by Aaron at 8:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Housekeeping first: commented out the Referrer System, as it either fall down go boom yet again, or someone is trying to use it to hack the place. Will check file permissions and probably clear out the database latah.

Day late and a dollar short noting this: Finder writer/illustrator/publisher and all-around cool person Carla Speed McNeil gave birth back on December 4th. Congratulations to Carla and her husband, and I for one welcome our new infant overlords.

This was mentioned at ¡Journalista! last Friday, but noted at the I-ain't-even-know-it-existed artbomb blog even before that.

Which blog also notes/links TIME Magazine: 2003 Best and Worst: Comics. Keeping in mind that DC (and Vertigo/Wildstorm/ABC/etc.) is/are also part of the AOL Time Warner family, they don't appear that much. So much for synergy.

PERSEPOLIS makes the cut. All I needed to know.

And, funny story, passed out early yesterday during The Longest Night of the Year, woke up at 5:30 or so, thought it was this morning, posted those entries, had some coffee, took a shower, noticed that Mr. Sun had yet to make an appearance. . . then noticed that the little light next to PM was lit on the alarm clock.

I am dumb.

The days grow longer from here on out, and in Chi at least it's unseasonable warm, if overcast.

Guess I don't need the lawn furniture after all. . .

Update: Sorry, more housekeeping, bringing us full circle.

I'd rather hoped Talk Like the Architect Day would get the haughty pseudo-intellectual writing style out of my system, and I could get back to doing this at a level comprehensible to a wider audience.

Just seems to have made things worse instead.

So, if you're having problems keeping up. . . Change or Die, son, because looks like this is the new status quo around here.

Luckily, there will still be obscure pop culture references, professional sports entertainment lingo, gratuitous swearing and weird obsessions with Vietnamese music, films, actresses or whatever else I think is interesting at the time.

Just, you know, with the odd AI or linguistics lesson tossed in for good measure.

Might could take a leaf out of Karsh's book and use version numbers.

Not sure what revision this is, though. . .

Posted by Aaron at 8:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

Ok, this is a Helix Producer-converted Quicktime movie I found on a backup cd from one of my old computers. The file date is 6/21/97.

And it might be older than that; date might'a got changed when I copied it from where-ever the fuck it originated.

Features the pre-recorded track Tori Amos used (still uses? Ain't seen her live in a dog's age. . .) when she performed Cornflake Girl live, and Tori doing her strange little dance before skipping merrily back to the Bösendorfer (Happy 175th, guys!) -- at which point it ends.

Real Video - Tori Amos: Cornflake Girl Dance Dance Revolution

Clicking that should bring the file up in Real Player. I'd embed it, but this seems to cause crashy badness, and although I'm evil, I'm just not that evil. Deliberately. Usually.

And this babbling might bring use of the clip in under Fair Use. Or it might not be copyrighted, or whoever holds the copyright might not give a flying fuck at having a lower-quality version up here.

Guess I'll find out if I get a C&D.

Until then, enjoy.

Update: You'd think I would have noticed this before.

Tales from Tori, a journal/blog sort of thingee.

Last updated November 17, 2003, looks like, so you can't read her take on the capture of Saddam Hussein or revelations about Michael Jackson, darn it all to heck.

No, I'm not reading the back entries. I love the little frosted flake dearly, yes, but. . . a little of her talking goes a long way, and I'm gonna figure the same applies to the journal.

Sue me. I'm a dino.

Posted by Aaron at 7:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This started off as a reply to a comment by Neo in The Elephants in the Room, but kept getting longer, because I'm a mouthy bastard. Deal.

So in DykeWrite: Matrix Revolutions, dkitty writes:

Trinity at least isn't the sniveling damsel in distress she was in the second flick.

And I kind'a raised an eyebrow at that, because the film starts with Trinity kicking ass and taking names. Figured the child who wrote that must not have ever seen (or read about) a genuine sniveling damsel in distress.

And then I figured the child who wrote that couldn't give a shit what a dino like me thinks.

That her standards for what constitutes a decent portrayal of a female character are just so much higher than mine, that something I'd let pass by, or even applaud as groundbreaking, would be disappointing to her.

And that's a good thing.

And hardly an unprecedented thing. There's films from the 60s that feature African American characters that I think are stereotypical and one-dimensional that were seen as seriously pushing the envelope at the time of release. The older black folk who shake their heads at my refusal to accept this no doubt reacted the same way to films from the 40s that had "progressive portrayals" of Negroes, but were seen in the 60s as hopelessly outdated.

Dinos are just willing to accept less. It's why we need to die.

And I don't know enough about the Queer community/ies (no, honest, I don't) or Deaf community/ies to state this for certain, but I'm confident there's a similar dynamic at work there. That there are kids today at Gallaudet who look at Children of a Lesser God and are just disgusted with how Marlee Matlin's character is portrayed.

And that's also a good thing.

Because the kids are going to force changes in pop culture that us dinos wouldn't. And eventually those changes are going to bubble up into the political culture.

Not that I'm thrilled with becoming extinct and being used as fuel for their flying cars (dammit, kids, don't go out like us! Get your fucking flying cars!), but I think they're going to make a better world.

That's a value judgment on my part. Other dinos might see this new world as strange and frightening.

Hell, they might find today's world strange and frightening.

You can toss them in the gas tank now, far as I'm concerned.

Update: Knew it still had to be up somewhere. . . Kevin Smith directs Dante and Randal from CLERKS discussing the flying car.

Randal

It’s times like this it occurs to me that we were lied to by “The Jetsons”.

Dante

What are you talking about?

Randal

According to that show we were suppose to be tooling around in flying cars by now. You see any flying cars lately? That’s the problem with TV, it always lies to us.

Dante

Yeah, well most of us rational thinkers weren’t banking on a cartoon to offer us a viable glimpse into the future of technological development.

ISTR a commercial featuring Avery Brooks also bitching about the lack of flying cars. And I talked about this with Neo yesterday.

Perhaps I should add to my will, "Cremation by means of fuel for flying car."

Perhaps I should make a will. . .

Posted by Aaron at 7:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

"The question before is, whether the class of persons described in the plea in abatement compose a portion of this people and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they are not, and that they were not included and were not intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the constitution and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to the citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race and whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the government might choose to grant them."

-- Chief justice Roger Brooke Tanny of the United States Supreme Court in the case of Dred Scott vs. Sandford, quoted in Zion Archives, Bits and Pieces, reached by way of the Matrix Character Database.

Want to know more about Dred Scott v. Sandford?

9. The change in public opinion and feeling in relation to the African race, which has taken place since the adoption of the Constitution, cannot change its construction and meaning, and it must be construed and administered now according to its true meaning and intention when it was formed and adopted.
10. The plaintiff having admitted, by his demurrer to the plea in abatement, that his ancestors were imported from Africa and sold as slaves, he is not a citizen of the State of Missouri according to the Constitution of the United States, and was not entitled to sue in that character in the Circuit Court.

Me neither.

Does seem that the Dred Scott decision lives on in an unofficial way at times, but that's a post for another day.

Update: This seemed a bit obvious, but sometimes stating the obvious is good.

At some point between the time of The Second Renaissance and that of the films, the machines went from being "read" as black (see above) to being "read," or at least portrayed by, white men.

Dualism. Nasty shit.

Posted by Aaron at 1:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

WARNING: Contains spoilers for movies you couldn't possibly think you could see un-spoiled at this point, but I give notice anyway, because I'm nice like that.

So Jason said in comments a bit ago, in reference to The Matrix Trilogy:

And, I can't say it enough, all the heroes were brown people.

I refuse to not feel wonderful about that. Black people, Brown people, Yellow people and some token Whites saved the day.

Rainbow Coalition, motherfuckers!

What we're all going to pretend not to notice is that, while there was a multiculti group either fighting against the system -- the Zion humans, the Oracle, Seraph, the Keymaker -- or trying to escape it -- Sati and her parents -- I seem to remember, viewing the film through my personal, distorted set of ideological blinders, that everyone working to uphold the system, from the Agents to the Architect to the Merovingian and the Twins. . . were white.

An accident of casting, perhaps.

And let's not talk about Switch (who died) and Charra (who died) either, eh? Make folks start wondering why the butches get no love.

Then again, the femmes get even less, because I ain't recalling none.

Want to know more? You could do worse than drop by DykeWrite: Matrix Revolutions.

Posted by Aaron at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Neo

The Architect told me that if I didn't return to the Source, Zion would be destroyed by midnight tonight.

Oracle

*rolls eyes* Please. . . You and I may not be able to see beyond our own choices, but that man can't see past any choices.

Neo

Why not?

Oracle

He doesn't understand them - he can't. To him they are variables in an equation. One at a time each variable must be solved and countered. That's his purpose: to balance an equation.

Neo

What's your purpose?

Oracle

To unbalance it.

The Matrix Revolutions, transcript from Zion Mainframe.

Slight edits, mostly HTMLizing the transcript. Using <dl> -- the dictionary list -- to produce something script-like is a violation of protocol, but it looks prettier that way.

Self-evidently, it's actually supposed to be used for definitions, using the following format:

<dl>: Enclosing list
<dt>: Dictionary term, the word you're defining
<dd>: Dictionary definition, the, um, definition

But I like the formatting, which is why I used it for that FAQ entry, too.

True, could re-create something similar using stylesheets and a few different <p> classes to offset text, but why reinvent the wheel?

'sides, whenever I try, I end up with something that ain't quite round.

Posted by Aaron at 8:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Oh sure, I'll do a news story every now and again when it grabs my attention, but the high-profile stuff -- capturing fugitive dictators, convicting snipers, whatever freakishness Michael Jackson is up to this week -- I just can't work up the enthusiasm, usually.

That, and the whole left wing bloggers blogging about how right wing bloggers were blogging how left wing bloggers weren't blogging about the capture of Saddam (and we're on a first-name basis why, exactly?) with sufficient enthusiasm. . . made me want to run away screaming, actually.

Which would have been a mistake. Silver Rights does a roundup on right-wing reaction to the little paternity revelations about the late Strom Thurmond, senator from Planet Klingon. Attention conservation notice: they're dumbfucks. But you, me and her all knew that going in, and it's nice to see conclusive evidence of their dumbfuckery.

Well, no, it's not, but it's worth reading anyway.

And that's just brimming over with faint praise. Sorry. Washed dreads, it's not all that warm in the apartment, and my brain may be icing over.

I will therefore go out on the porch to smoke.

Seems theres a flaw in that logic somewhere, but I can't figure out what. . .

And this will be the last entry today, I think.

Monica Bellucci poster is about to scroll off the page, and we can't have that. . .

. . . so I'll mention here that (courtesy of Dwayne's blog) Static Shock has been renewed:

Action abounds in the fourth season of Static Shock as Static and Gear unearth an underground group of metahumans whose exposure to sunlight can be fatal, help African superhero Anansi protect the secret of his power, save a gifted young athlete from the criminal clutches of a powerful supervillain, get jolted into a face off with the Green Lantern, who may have gone renegade, and discover that world famous NBA All-Stars have a super secret of their own. The captivating season premiere takes Static on an electrifying adventure into the future as he teams up with Batman to save his adult Static-self.

Not just Batman. Batman Beyond.

I'm so looking forward to that. And am so going to forget and miss it.

And so should rewrite that introductory sentence so it doesn't sound like Dwayne's blog somehow got the show renewed.

Onward. Nalo Hopkinson mentions FutureVisions 6.0: A Symposium on Science Fiction and Social Change, which I'll let you read more about either at her site, or at the official one. Or neither. Up to you, really.

I mean, just because possible topics for discussion include:

• SF Film and Race
• Feminist Utopian Futures
• Social Satire and SF

No reason anyone here'd be interested. Tra la la la la.

That isn't really current events, is it?

This wasn't really a roundup, was it?

Brain freezy. Fix later. Smoke now.

Update 12/21: The Strom Thang is also discussed at Pandagon, mostly talking about a Kathleen Parker Fucking White Oppressor TownHall.com column. Money quote, from the comments:

Kind of silly to point out that the woman's age didn't make it a criminal offense in 1925, considering that inter-racial sex was a criminal offense in 1925.

Hypocrisy really is the greatest luxury, isn't it?

Raise the double-standard.

Money quote from the column:

And when a black girl gives birth to a baby whose daddy happens to be the son of her wealthy white employer, well, those things happen, too. And life goes on.

Clueless fucking white bitch.

You have no idea.

Pray to whatever gods you worship that you never have to learn.

Sorry. Patience with clueless white folk has now been used up to fiscal 2007, and there's no end in sight. . .

Posted by Aaron at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

It's a Frequently Asked Questions entry, an unfunded Federal mandate left over from the Clinton administration. Effin' liberals. . .

Who are you, anyway?

Aaron Hawkins, of Chicago, Illinois. Went to school at Avalon Park, Gillespie, McDade Classical, Whitney Young, Deer Creek Jr. High, Homewood-Flossmoor and finished up, to date, at the mother-fucking, trigger-happy University of Illinois at Shampoo-Banana.

Why do you call Champaign-Urbana "Shampoo-Banana"?

Because it amuses me to do so.

Why do you spell it "ignint" while Margaret Cho spells it "ignant"?

Because she ignint.

You hate white people.

Please restate your response in the form of a question.

Why do you hate white people?

Nigh on half a millennium of oppression.

Cracka.

Don't you feel you're setting back race relations by using the term "cracka," thus harming the cause of Martin's dream?

Your point being. . .?

Don't you think you'd be more persuasive and make more friends if you weren't so antagonistic?

. . . the fuck makes you think I'm interested in making friends?

Then you're interested in making enemies?

. . . the fuck part of "I am so over dualism" are you having a problem with?

Are you a member of the Nation of Islam?

No, because I can't figure out how to tie a bow tie, and clip-ons are gauche.

Why have you never condemned racist and antisemitic statements made by Screwy Louis Farrakhan?

I take no responsibility for what comes out the Honorable Minister Farrakhan's mouth, or for when he sticks his foot in it. I gots my own shit to worry about. And I don't see your cracka ass pouncing on every racist statement made by your fellow crackas, unless you think you can get some political traction out of it. Concordantly, shut the fuck up.

Why are you still talking like the Architect?

Because it amuses me to do so.

Is that what it's all about for you? Amusing yourself?

If you have to ask that question, you're too stupid for me to waste time talking with. You may go. I give you leave to go.

Any other questions? Post 'em in comments.

I might even answer them.

Update: Added links for the Chicago Public Schools I went to, and for Screw of I. Fuck suburbia. I hated that shit.

Yes, the fact that I went to McDade Classical and Whitney Young Magnet should tell you something. But you're probably still gonna treat me like an ignint nigga, cracka.

And I only gots a B.A. from UIUC -- grad students are some bitter mother fuckers, and I prefer my sunny disposition -- in Linguistics, concentration on Computational Linguistics/Cognitive Science and Computer-Based Language Instruction. Seemed like a good idea at the time. And I was only a course shy of a minor in African Studies -- three years of Swahili, most of which I've forgotten from lack of use -- but of course I was too lazy to actually get it.

Besides, don't see that improving my marketability in the job market too much, and that's why you pursue higher edjumacation, right? To make serious bank?

Would'a stayed in Electrical Engineering instead of changing majors if that was the case. . .

Update: Bonus footage, mercifully left on the cutting room floor.

But if I was to use the word "nigger" on my site, you'd say I was racist!

Oh, don't be silly.

You don't have to use the word nigger for me to call you racist.

But that's a double standard! That's racist!

Hold up.

My ass faces employment discrimination, housing discrimination, a shorter life expectancy, a higher unemployment rate, a way better chance of getting a cap in my ass from the cops because the wallet/cell phone/Three Musketeers bar I'm holding somehow looks like a gun in my hand. . . and you're whining, not because you can't use a racial slur on your website, but because people might say things that hurt your poor widdle whiteboy feelings if you do?

My god, you're right, that is racist. Tell you what, sign up with BitPass so's I can give you a quarter, so you can call somebody gives a shit.

. . . phone call costs more than a quarter now, gramps.

Then dial down the middle with 1-800-CALL-ATT! Free for you, cheap for them!

Oh my God. All this time, all these years. . . and I never suspected the truth. You. . . you're secretly Carrot Top, aren't you?

BWAH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted by Aaron at 6:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

Which is a totally inappropriate title for an entry about Minister Farrakhan interviewing Ja Rule, which is why I'm using it.

No one -- yes, I'm looking at you, Jason --explain to the tourists. Watching them go ballistic would provide some much-needed comedy around here.

On the eve of the release of Ja Rule's latest album, Blood in My Eye, the rapper sat down for a unique and revealing conversation with Minister Louis Farrakhan, the controversial leader of the Nation of Islam. Farrakhan is a trusted figure in the hip-hop community for his interventions in beefs and his championing of black civil rights, but he's also made headlines for his candid, anti-Semitic remarks.

This interview was not produced by MTV News.  While we do not normally present interviews or news reports that we did not create, we felt that this conversation was important for our audience to be able to read and consider for itself.

[One, two, skip a few. . .page four] Farrakhan: Ja, there's several lessons in what I'm hearing. Either we follow the public or we lead and teach the public. The public has an appetite for the beef. They love it. Now, we have to get them to have an appetite for something better than the destruction of one another. Hip-hop says we are thugs, we come up out of the street and now we've learned to rap, which is a tremendous art form. But now the enemy of all of us is watching. A war is about to come down on the rap community. When you and 50 throw down, it goes all the way down into the streets. Now what I see is, somebody intended to kill 50. You don't shoot somebody nine times for them to come up. So, if he's wiped out with all his popularity, and they can even subtly suggest that you or your people did it, then those that love 50 turn their guns on Ja. This has to end at some point and we need to educate the public. Don't call for Ja to clap back at 50, and 50 to clap back at Ja, when we've lost Biggie and Tupac, or we lose Ja and 50.

If you let the public dictate and you continue to follow that, the end result will be death and destruction. 50, you and me, we gotta sit down at a common table and work out the way hip-hop will go to the next level. The grave is where we are right now, mentally, and we gotta come up out of that. The power to come up out of that is the wisdom you gain as a result of increasing your knowledge and understanding. Then you feed that gently into your lyrics so the public says, "I'm glad Ja taught me better, because I was about to throw down and kill my brother." Like you said, Ja don't like 50 and 50 don't like Ja. There's a battle, but it's going from words to the gun. And we have to stop that.

The funny thing is, the people who hate really don't like Minister Farrakhan the most, have probably never read even that long of a quote from him.

He's a Villain, you know. You can boo and insult him and shit. In fact, you're encouraged to do so.

Which ain't to say I'm thrilled with the guy, but there's lots of people I'm less thrilled with.

Some of whom hold fairly high office, depite being completely and totally unelectable.

Posted by Aaron at 4:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Common problem with Negroes, apparently. From the December 18th Daily Howler:

What had KFI’s progressive Democrat [Tammy Bruce, Professional progressive Democrat, feminist, openly gay twat] said? [Judith] Michaelson’s [Los Angeles Times] report provided some details. As [KFI program director David Hall] apologized on behalf of KFI, Hall spoke in the first person plural:

MICHAELSON: “Specifically,” Hall said, “Mrs. Cosby was characterized as ‘incredibly unstable, crazy, paranoid, delusional, just nuts’ and the like. It was suggested that Mrs. Cosby seek therapy. We had no information about Mrs. Cosby’s mental health…We wish to apologize.

“Similarly, in challenging Mrs. Cosby’s assertion that her son’s killing was racially motivated, we suggested that Mrs. Cosby caused her son’s death by giving him access to an expensive car. Those comments were remarkably insensitive…Ours were cruel statements to make to parents whose son had recently been murdered.”

As for Bill Cosby, Hall said statements by Bruce about him were “false, offensive and unnecessarily hurtful. And they too need to be retracted.” Hall cited “our statements” that Cosby had “multiple illegitimate children as a result of multiple extramarital affairs with white women,” and another that he “secretly funded the criminal defense of O.J. Simpson.”

No doubt about it—Bruce’s deep “investment in progressive politics” had really begun to shine through! In a lengthy, generally sympathetic portrait of Bruce, Ron Russell provided more quotes in the New Times Los Angeles:

RUSSELL (11/12/98): “I have two words for you this evening,” she warned listeners. “Camille Cosby.” The Tammy, as fans affectionately call her, then went ballistic. In two hours of fire and brimstone, she ripped apart the essay line by line, not only questioning Camille’s sanity but wondering aloud about her super-rich and powerful husband’s sexual mores, referring to him as a “philandering, impregnating friend of O.J. Simpson.” While acknowledging that she had no proof, she suggested that the revered Cosby, a friend of Simpson lawyer Johnnie Cochran, may have secretly helped to fund the ex-football star’s murder defense. But most of her ire was aimed at Camille’s assertion that the 27-year-old Ennis had been shot to death while changing a tire late at night near a lonely stretch of Mulholland Drive because he was black. Bruce posited that he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time—while driving his mother's $130,000 Mercedes-Benz. She then implied that the parents themselves shared the blame. “I say to Mrs. Cosby first of all, if she’s not in therapy she needs to get some immediately. And how dare she!” fumed The Tammy.

Bruce said her remarks been taken out of context.

. . . the fuck was the context?

Jesse gots a little somethin'-somethin' on T-Bruce, too. And reveals far too much about the Black Elite in the process. Have a care, brother, we don't want to have to. . . sanction you, after all.

Posted by Aaron at 2:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Also, do as I say, not as I do.

So part of the Chomskian Revolution (and he despises that phrase, I believe) in linguistics was proposing this. . . thingee, we'll call it. . . called the Language Acquisition Device.

"Acquisition," not learning. Conscious decision there; despite what folks like to think, you don't teach your child a language. As anyone who's struggled to get a hunk of silicon to try to make a decent attempt at passing a Turing Test can tell you, you couldn't consciously impart everything you know about a language if you tried, because you just plain ain't aware of how much is running in the background.

Anyway, [one] theory goes that at some point, around puberty, the Language Acquisition Device goes bye-bye. After that, you're on your own trying to learn (yes, learn this time) a second+ language, and we all know how much fun that is.

Ok, except the Americans, most of whom don't even fucking bother.

Taking this into a new realm, thus stomping all over the theory and leaving it useless, been ripping off Warren Ellis and talking about Neophobes a bit lately.

What if there's something in your head that deals with the new?

That lets you create new categories for dealing with previously-unencountered shit?

And what if that, also, goes bye-bye after a certain point?

This explains Republicans, I think.

But, just like some folks can soak up new languages after puberty, some folks can handle the new past. . . what, early to mid 30's? That seem like a reasonable cut-off?

So, some musicians, like the late Miles Davis, or David Bowie, or even Michael Jackson, can keep putting out material that sounds contemporary for the time it's released, while others just stagnate and keep mining the same ground.

I'm leaving the self-conscious repackaging stuff like Madonna does out of this, because I'm rude that way. Fuck you, I'm vamping.

Difference, I hope, is that while there doesn't seem to be any way to re-activate the LAD, the part that deals with the new maybe doesn't have to wither and die. Or can be brought back through effort.

For folks who have lost it, well, as far as I'm concerned, they're just taking up space and breathing my air, and I wish they would stop.

Because although Neophobes do, apparently, die early, they just don't die early enough. And while these walking zombies are shambling around, they're reacting to newness badly. Often violently.

Not just with physical violence, although there's plenty enough of that to go around, but by trying to force unfamiliar concepts -- or unfamiliar people -- into their pre-existing set of conceptual categories. And hacking off anything that doesn't fit.

Sorry. Thinking out loud. No point, old men like me don't bother making points. There is no point.

Director commentary/bonus footage: Meant to work the sentence, "At some point, the new becomes threatening rather than intriguing," or something like that, in there. But it was going on too long as it is, and I couldn't get the wording exactly how I wanted it; don't feel like looking through a thesaurus trying to find the right words, and they're not coming to me.

Could add some more here about the LAD and Turing Test, but figure there are links for the curious.

That, and at least part of this sounds vaguely reminicent of stuff in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. Well, perhaps no one will notice the similarity.

Oh yeah. And then there's this wretched fucking powerpoint document (remixed/ruined into HTML by Google):

Critiques of schema/frame/script theory (1)

How are they acquired to begin with? Processes of induction that are poorly specified

How do we make sense of unique or novel events for which no schemata exist?

Why do stereotypic events get described at all?

Critiques of schema/frame/script theory (2)

What about odd occurrences that nonetheless are not explicitly incompatible with the schema? – e.g.,

‘John is pretty crazy, and sometimes does strange things. Yesterday he went to Sardi’s for dinner. He sat down, examined the menu, ordered a steak, and got up and left.’ (Kaplan 1981, quoted in Brown & Yule, p. 250)

Critiques of schema/frame/script theory (3)

Constraining the activation of world knowledge:

Which schemata are activated, on the basis of which text cues? What parts of a given schema are activated? – e.g.,

The Cathedral congregation had watched on television monitors as Pope and Archbishop met, in front of a British Caledonian helicopter, on the dewy grass of a Canterbury recreation ground. (The Sunday Times, quoted in Brown & Yule p. 240)

Critiques of schema/frame/script theory (4)

the boundaries of scripts/schemata are difficult to determine

the restaurant script is unusually self-contained

These are general problems for any model of the role of background knowledge: how to determine principles limiting the range of knowledge that must be included, so that all and only relevant schemata, etc., and all and only the relevant parts thereof, are activated.

Critiques of schema/frame/script theory (5)

The number of possible scripts/schemata is potentially limitless: therefore they are of limited use as a text analysis tool. (Hoey)

Hoey argues that the knowledge contained in schemata is accompanied by more generalised expectations – e.g., that problems are followed by attempts at solutions. Typical pattern: Situation – Problem

But delving too far into schema/frame/script theory gives the entire game away, for anyone who hasn't quite managed to work this all out yet. And, again, where's the fun in that?

Posted by Aaron at 1:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's Christmas time and I feel generous. A one day only special. You can be a guest reviewer on Redpac.com.
Click this link:
http://www.redpac.com/mt/mt.cgi
username: guest
password: guest

There's only 3 rules:
1. It should be interesting and entertaining.
2. You must use proper English.
3. Sign your name at the bottom.
That's it. You can review anything. A place, a person, a thing, an event...anything, as long as it's a review.

I also reserve the right to delete it if it's really stupid or crappy. It's my website, when you pay for your own you can do what you want with it.

Also sprach Redpac. Good luck with that, son. Think the Free-For-All-Fridays here have gone pretty well so far. Except for the Canadian fuck, who really should step forward and 'fess up at some point. Confession is good for the soul, you know.

Posted by Aaron at 1:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We do all at least know who Saussure is, right? And have a basic understanding of the whole langue/parole distinction?

Oh my fucking lord, I am so never signing up to teach this course again. . .

Google is your friend. The resouces available from Linguist List, likewise, are your friends.

I'm not your damn friend. And you ain't mine.

Posted by Aaron at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

So at some point -- think after I kicked my second, and thus far last, $100 donation to Scarleteen -- that pompous prick Gray said I was sending "mixed signals."

Which could have been a brilliant insight on his part, or a sign of a complete and utter lack of comprehension.

He proceeded to demonstrate, conclusively, that it was the latter.

Luckily for him, I've decided to make him my pet project.

This is not an act of kindness on my part.

Quoting from Marvin Minsky's paper JOKES and the Logic of the Cognitive Unconscious:

But Freud's theories do not work as well for humorous nonsense as for humorous aggression and sexuality. {0} In this essay I try to show how these different forms of humor can be seen as much more similar, once we make certain observations about the nature of commonsense reasoning.

Here is our thesis:

1. Common sense logic is too unreliable for practical use. It cannot be repaired, so we must learn to avoid its most common malfunctions. Humor plays a special role in learning and communicating about such matters.
2. It is not enough to detect errors in reasoning; one must anticipate and prevent them. We embody much of our knowledge about how to do this in the form of "censors" that suppress unproductive mental states. This is why humor is so concerned with the prohibited.
3. Productive thinking depends on knowing how to use Analogy and Metaphor. But analogies are often false, and metaphors misleading. So the "cognitive unconscious" must suppress inappropriate comparisons. This is why humor is so concerned with the nonsensical.
4. The consequences of intellectual failure are manifest in one's own head, while social failures involve other people. Intellect and Affect seem less different once we theorize that the "cognitive unconscious" considers faulty reasoning to be just as "naughty" as the usual "Freudian" wishes.
5. Humor evolved in a social context. Its forms include graciously disarming ways to instruct others about inappropriate behavior and faulty reasoning. This deviousness makes the subject more confusing.

Our theory emphasizes the importance of knowledge about knowledge and, particularly, aspects of thinking concerned with recognizing and suppressing bugs -- ineffective or destructive thought processes. When seen in this light, much humor that at first seems pointless, or mysterious, becomes more understandable. {1}

This is an act of kindness, although I'm fairly certain it won't be recognized as such.

This is where the entertainment value comes in.

Bit worried about people who read this who don't "get" my humor. Think it goes back to that whole manichean thing; in their personal narrative, they're the hero, making me the villain, they're the victim, making me the victimizer, blah de fucking blah.

Bored now.

Director's commentary/bonus footage:

Couldn't work this in -- bit heavy, and I was going for a light tone with the entry: How is Understanding an Advertisement Possible?:

Anyone who reads this essay will routinely accomplish the identification, understanding and criticism of advertisements encountered while watching TV, listening to radio, sitting in the cinema, reading a magazine, walking past billboards, and so on. In this essay I offer an analysis of some neglected conditions of possibility of this routine accomplishment. I do so because it seems to me that failure to undertake such an analysis or to realise (even to deny) its significance is a serious limitation upon the value of the hermeneutics and critique of advertisements which has been produced within broadly structuralist and semiological paradigms, say from Barthes' essay, 'Rhetoric of the Image' (Barthes 1964a) through to Williamson's book Decoding Advertisements (1978). These tend to take for granted important conditions of possibility of the routine accomplishment, proceeding directly to a hermeneutics or critique which consequently has an unnecessarily hazardous character, inviting the question 'How do you know?' Specifically, they tend to ignore those conditions of possibility which distinguish instances of speech or utterances (parole) and their comprehension from the or a language (langue), to recall the Sausurrean distinction (Saussure 1959; Barthes 1964b, Ch. I), and so analyse utterances as if they were languages, which they are not.

Also, need to do more of an intro for Minsky and his theories, for those unfamiliar with 'em. This is, well, again, a bit heavy: Frames and Scripts in Artificial Intelligence:

As an attempt to equip computers with the necessary world knowledge, the notion of frame was introduced into artificial intelligence. Thus the computer scientist Marvin Minsky defined a frame as "a data-structure for representing a stereotyped situation" (Minsky 1975). The idea is that in our plane example the cognitive category PLANE would activate a whole bundle of other categories which belong to the same [FLYING ON A PLANE] frame, for example PILOT, FLIGHT ATTENDANT, LIFE VEST, SAFETY BELT, FIRST CLASS, ECONOMY CLASS, SAFETY INSTRUCTIONS and so on. All these categories and the specific relations that exist between them (e.g. X has a Y, X is on Y, X is a part of Y) are part of the frame and must somehow be fed into the computer. In addition to this rather general frame there are many so-called subframes which capture the knowledge of still more specific situations of a flight, e.g. [EATING], [WATCHING THE MOVIE] and [GOING TO THE TOILET]. In view of the complexity of many everyday situations, Minsky suggested that our knowledge should be represented in complex "frame-systems" in which the frames are interconnected. The processes working on such frame systems are supposed to match a frame to a specific situation, to use default values to fill unspecific aspects, and so on.

And since the linguistics seminar went over so well, figured delving into Artificial Intelligence is just asking for trouble.

Oh, and I recently (attempted to) join the blackblogz ring.

Somehow, I doubt some of this material is gonna help my chances of getting in. . .

Posted by Aaron at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Still mining Dictionary.com out of sheer bloody-mindedness at this point:

manichean:

n.

A believer in Manichaeism.

adj.

Of or relating to Manichaeism; dualistic.

---

[From Middle English Maniche, from Late Latin Manichaeus, from Late Greek Manikhaios, from Manikhaios Manes, the founder of the philosophy.]

manichean

Manichaean \Man`i*ch[ae]"an\, Manichean \Man`i*che"an\, Manichee\Man"i*chee\, n. [LL. Manichaeus: cf. F. manich['e]en.] A believer in the doctrines of Manes, a Persian of the third century A. D., who taught a dualism in which Light is regarded as the source of Good, and Darkness as the source of Evil.

The Manich[ae]ans stand as representatives of dualism pushed to its utmost development. --Tylor.

Like I said, not my tribe. Sorry, but I am so over dualism. Ergo, the correct answer to the Jedi/Sith question posed a few days back is, of course, c: Nun of the Above.

Now, if I'd asked whether I was a sin-eater or a shaman, maybe then we'd have something to discuss. . .

Posted by Aaron at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

From Reconciliation - A Prayer, by Joy Harjo:

I

We gather by the shore of all knowledge as peoples who were put here by a god who wanted relatives.

This god was lonely for touch, and imagined herself as a woman, with children to suckle, to sing with - to continue the web of the terrifyingly beautiful cosmos of her womb.

This god became a father who wished for others to walk beside him in the belly of creation.

This god laughed and cried with us as a sister at the sweet tragedy of our predicament - foolish humans -

Or built a fire, as a brother to keep us warm.

This god who grew to love us became our lover, sharing tables of food enough for everyone in this whole world.

III

All acts of kindness are lights in the war for justice.

IV

We gather up these strands broken from the web of life. They shiver with our love, as we call them the names of our relatives and carry them to our home made of the four direction and sing:

Of the south, where we feasted and were given new clothes.

Of the west, where we gave up the best of us to the stars as food for the battle.

Of the north, where we cried because we were forsaken by our dreams.

Of the east because returned to us is the spirit of all that we love.

© 1994 Joy Harjo. The Woman Who Fell From The Stars, Norton.

Clearly, II was omitted as part of my evil scheme to, um, I dunno, make ignint mother fuckers actually click the links, maybe?

Director's commentary: Trying something funky with inline styles, which may, like many of my experiements, produce utterly unexpected results. If it looks like ass in your browser, let me know.

Probably ain't gonna fix it, but a good thing to be aware of.

Posted by Aaron at 9:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Because I know you ain't gonna hit the link and try to be less ignint:

Measuring Blood: Blood Quantum, Mixed-Blood, Wannabe's

What is a "blood quantum," and why do American Indians argue about it so much?

Well, the way the government defines whether someone is a "real" Indian or not is they measure their blood. They have some arcane way of doing this by dividing the number of generations since all your ancestors were pure-blood by the number of marriages with people who aren't pure-blood. By their counting, I think I'm 7/8 Indian. Some of it is Muskogee, but they don't care about that. They're just trying to see how close we are or are not to white. We argue about this so much because nobody likes it. It's a really bad way to define somebody's culture and almost everyone agrees on that, but everyone can't agree on a better way, so there's a lot of complaining and it doesn't change.

Basically, there are four problems with this.

• One, it puts pressure on Indians not to marry white people or their children will lose their heritage, and that bothers a lot of people.
  
• Two, it means that if some of your ancestors aren't in the records, you can be denied being an Indian.
  
• Three, it's wrong for outsiders to tell you if you can or can't belong to an ethnic group. Nobody makes African-Americans prove their entire family line before they can get a scholarship from the NAACP or can put "Black-owned" on their business if they want to.
  
• And four, most disturbingly: it guarantees the extinction of the American Indian. By this standard, white is the default, and everyone is approaching whiteness. Someone who is 1/8 Indian is considered white, and that is the end of their Indianness-- they are white and their children will be white, forever. On the other hand, I am 1/8 white, but that doesn't mean that's the end of whiteness in my line. It keeps sitting there, just as it has since the 19th century when my white ancestors entered my family. Eventually one of my descendants will marry a white person again and hah! We will be 1/4 white. A person can get more white, but not more Indian.

Do you see what I mean? Every generation, there are fewer people this system thinks are full-bloods, and all the blood quantums get smaller.

Want to know more, without being made to feel guilty? Not that that's what I'm trying to do. Much. Unless I think your ignint cracka ass deserves it. Try Poetry from Indigenous People In Response to the Dominant Culture. Site favorites Sherman Alexie and Joy Harjo are among those listed.

. . . your ignint ass ain't gonna hit that link either, are you?

Well, I tried. It's like Nubian Goddess Dorothy Parker said. "You can lead a horticulture, but you cannot make her think."

Posted by Aaron at 9:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

We all know what the term "blood quantum" means, right?

Lucky, ignint mother fucker if you don't.

By way of the invaluable Indianz.com, which I only read when I'm in a good mood because I just know some shit there gonna piss me off, Isleta Demands Proof of Heritage:

Update: S'funny, ain't get the subscriber redirect when I hit it. . . go to Indianz.com > News > Elders have until New Year to prove they are Indian and hit the link there if you're having trouble getting in.

ISLETA PUEBLO— Lupita Abeita was born in a one-room adobe house in the middle of the pueblo in 1914.    

She grew up speaking Tiwa and cooking beans and red chile for the feast day of St. Augustine each September. Before he died in 1998, her older brother, Joe M. Abeita, was the leader of the pueblo's religious rituals.    

So imagine Lupita Abeita's surprise when she received a typed letter on official Pueblo of Isleta stationery this week, telling her the tribe had questions about whether she was a legitimate member— and that her $2,000 Christmas-time payment from the tribe would be held until she could prove her Isleta heritage.    

"She said, 'If they don't recognize me as a child of the pueblo, who am I? What am I supposed to do?' '' said her daughter, Juana Jiron.    

Abeita is not the only elder to have her identity as a tribal member questioned this week. Her surviving brother, Joe D. Abeita, also received a letter.    

In all, according to a member of the Isleta Tribal Council, 132 of the approximately 2,800 people listed as tribal members got letters notifying them that the pueblo was reviewing its membership rolls and that they would have until Jan. 2 to prove they are at least half Isleta in order to continue to be considered tribal members.

[. . .] Many tribes in New Mexico and elsewhere use a one-quarter blood standard to determine tribal membership. The Isleta constitution says an Isleta tribal member must have at least one-half Isleta lineage. There is also a provision for adoption or naturalization, Teller-Velardez said.

U.S. Census data shows the pueblo's total population as 3,166. About 84 percent of pueblo residents— 2,675— identified themselves as American Indian with no other race. Another 181 people identified themselves as American Indian, but bi- or multi-racial.

About 300 pueblo residents said they were black, white or other races.

Luckily, I'm fairly certain it's a group of helpful white (not mixed, just white. And mixed-up) folks fighting against any sort of blood quantum tribal membership stuff, for no other reason than because they're evil and must be destroyed.

Sorry, because they believe we're all one race, the human race, and giving any sorts of benefits to mud people the lesser races indigenous people only creates divisiveness and resentment.

And shit.

Oddly, they usually also champion the rights of indigenous people in, say, Iraq or Tibet. Or Nicaragua. The Miskito had all kinds of helpful conservative white folk in their corner.

When it was politically convenient, anyway. From that previous link:

Nicaragua village in grip of madness

A team of doctors, psychiatrists, and anthropologists have reached a remote Miskito community in the jungles of northern Nicaragua where 60 people are suffering from a mysterious "collective madness".

The outbreak of the malady, known as grisi siknis in the local Miskut language, began in the Raiti community near the Honduran border a month ago. Seven cases were reported in neighbouring Namahka last week, where one 15-year-old girl is said to have died.

Other cases have appeared in three other nearby communities.

In all cases, the patients have the same symptoms: long periods of coma-like unconsciousness, interrupted by sudden bouts of frenzied behaviour.

During the attacks, sufferers attempt to flee their communities with their eyes closed, seizing any weapon they can find with which they appear to try to defend themselves against invisible attackers.

According to local press reports, they have extraordinary strength and often four people are required to restrain them.

Moral of the story: Never take help from conservative white folks. The gods see right through that shit, and payback's a bitch.

Posted by Aaron at 8:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I rather like that phrase, not just despite, but I think because of the racist overtones.

If you're not familiar with the phrase, short version is, it was used to describe them Indians who refused to submit to the demands of their genetic superiors vis-a-vis where they could live, and where they could go.

I'm off the reservation, white man.

I defy your walls. I defy your power. I defy you.

Catch me if you can.

A good tradition to follow, in my opinion.

(No, it's not still Talk Like the Architect Day, I just figured vis-a-vis worked in that sentence.)

Anyway, been off the reservation for a while. And yes, the cavalry came out after me to keep me getting "out of hand," and I laughed at the attempt.

So slow. So clumsy. And trying to head me off when they haven't even got the slightest clue where I'm going.

(Advertisement featured at Dictionary.com when I checked to make sure I was spelling cavalry correctly:

I'd tell them to give it up. That I know the territory better, that I can move much more rapidly, and vanish like a ghost just when they think they have me.

And they have no idea what my goal is in the first place.

But I find the attempts amusing, for the time being.

And they won't listen anyway.

Update: Ah me

Using Earthlink's Accelerator/proxy for browsing on the laptop, with it set to reduce image quality slightly for faster loading. I'd hoped that saving the banner ad would do a Matrix Reloaded and give me the full-size, full-quality version, but no joy. That's why it looks kind'a funky.

And getting the original back would take Extreme Random Chance.

Made a larger thumbnail, at least. Management apologizes for any inconvenience.

Update 2: Link to satorimedia sketchbook added because a) Be Kind to Bigots Week is so over, b) apparently, a demonstration of gay black man level tacky is required for some folks and c) mother fucker needs a well-placed kick in the complacency.

Fortuitously, I'm in a well-placed kick-giving sort of a mood.

You're welcome.

And the Breast Cancer Site graphic you're still pulling from me, instead of uploading it to your own server?

You're welcome.

And the tech support via comments for your bud?

Again, you're welcome.

Since I just know you mother fuckers was gonna say, "thank you" at some point. I know white folks ain't genetically incapable of uttering the words, heard other people say 'em before. . .

Posted by Aaron at 7:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Ergo, I didn't pick up that much living with the photographer for several months. Sad, really, the opportunities I've let pass me by.

But I know what I like, vis-a-vis photography.

And, concordantly, I like this.

Not just her, you insensitive clod, the composition of the shot, the lines, the textures. . . ok, and her. Shut the hell up.

From atPictures.com's Monica Bellucci gallery, courtesy of the evil Karin.

Posted by Aaron at 7:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

. . . that there have been a number of times I've considered shutting this thing down completely.

Concordantly, I also feel compelled to point out that, it is incontrovertible that if the majority of posters here were boys, I would already have done so.

Nothing against boys -- I are one, allegedly, most of the time -- but they tend to be dumb, ergo, eventually everything comes down to comparing the size of their. . . um, yeah, girls are just cooler.

And I'm not just saying that because, at last count, I'd at least made out with three of the ones who currently/formerly posted here.

Only two of whom are lesbians.

And one of them wasn't at the time.

I think.

Mind you, the only one I currently see vis-a-vis (using the face to face meaning for once). . . I think I shut up now.

I think I should have shut up before starting, in fact.

Update: Oh, hell, this is not an invitation to speculate -- publicly or privately -- about who those two people are.

The third, I'm guessing everyone can figure out.

If you must, though, Kris Dresen is most definitely not among the two.

God, I wish. . .

Um, I mean, concordantly, ergo, vis-a-vis, shut the hell up.

Posted by Aaron at 4:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ergo, I assume -- perhaps incorrectly -- that if you have any interest in seeing it, you have already done so. Or that you're waiting for the video release, in which case your expectations of viewing it unspoiled cannot be high.

Nevertheless, material from The meaning of Sati in the matrix revolutions appears below.

After thinking about it for a while, I have come to this conclusion.

Brahma created Sati to tame Shiva and teach him the lessions of love. Shiva till then had rejected samsara ( the family way of life ) and was prone to wandering around the jungles and mountains. This caused concern among the gods that others might follow and society itself might collapse if people reject the family way of life. So Sati was created and through Sati, Shiva felt the first pangs of love.

To draw a matrix parallel, oracle ( Brahma ) created Sati so that programs feel love for the first time.

There is another meaning of Sati, vis-a-vis women in the Hindu tradition:

Sati (Su-thi , a.k.a. suttee) is the traditional Hindu practice of a widow immolating herself on her husband's funeral pyre.

"Sati" means a virtuous woman. A woman who dies burning herself on her husbands funeral fire was considered most virtuous, and was believed to directly go to heaven, redeeming all the forefathers rotting in hell, by this "meritorious" act. The woman who committed Sati was worshipped as a Goddess, and temples were built in her memory.

But let's assume that ain't the one they were going for.

Not in this film, anyway.

Posted by Aaron at 3:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Persephone: A long time ago, when we first came here, it was so different. He was so different. He was like you. I'll give you what you want. But you have to give me something.

Neo: What?

Persephone: A kiss.

Trinity: [raising an eyebrow just the teeniest tiniest fraction] Excuse me?

Persephone: I want you to kiss me as if you were kissing her.

Neo: Why?

Persephone: You love her. She loves you. It's all over you both. A long time ago, I knew what that felt like. I want to remember it. I want to sample it. That's all, just a sample.

Trinity: [pointing Big Freakin' Gun at Persephone] Why don't you sample this instead?

Had to find a copy of the script because, to be honest, I was paying no attention to the dialogue when she was on the screen.

Ok, I'll stop. Readers are reminded of my current status, vis-a-vis being Veiny, Evil, Stupid, and, most crucially in this particular instance, horny.

Want to know more? Persephone has a larger role in Enter the Matrix, and SPOILER FOR A VIDEOGAME YOU'LL PROBABLY NEVER, EVER PLAY

The game explains why (in the fictional universe of the Matrix, anyway) Mary Alice comes to replace Gloria Foster as The Oracle.

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

As far as Google search results, that is.

I've quoted Hamlet a few times, for example. Ergo, I'm currently the #3 result for They bore him barefaced on the bier, Hey nonny, nonny,

Number one for Rashel Diaz, for Google Italy anyway.

Number one for "Double V" + Victory, which almost makes sense. Except there are places a hell of a lot more infomative. Good thing I rip them off link to them when I do entries.

Only #2 for life Expectancy of a gang member. 24, if you're interested.

And that's just a sampling of today's referrals. It's probably a good thing I don't archive these things. Some of 'em are just plain freakish.

Update: And what really confuses me is, if you're searching for "They bore him barefaced on the bier, Hey nonny, nonny," why would you click the link named Uppity-Negro.com?

Posted by Aaron at 2:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Concordantly, currently playing on the ol' (well, new rather) MiniDisc player:

I don't want you and I don't need you
Don't bother to resist, I'll beat you
It's not your fault that you're always wrong
The weak ones are there to justify the strong

The beautiful people, the beautiful people
It's all relative to the size of your steeple
You can't see the forest for the trees
You can't smell
Your own shit on your knees

Hey you, what do you see?
Something beautiful, something free?
Hey you, are you trying to be mean?
If you live with apes man, it's hard to be clean

There's no time to discriminate,
Hate every motherfucker
That's in your way

The worms will live in every host
It's hard to pick which one they eat most
The horrible people, the horrible people
It's as anatomic as the size of your steeple
Capitalism has made it this way,
Old - fashioned fascism
Will take it away

The Beautiful People, Marilyn Manson

Some of you may not be familiar with his oeuvre or with professional sports entertainment, ergo unfamiliar with the song. It's really not bad, vis-a-vis contemporary pop music. And you can always download the sumbitch.

Posted by Aaron at 1:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

God bless Sony for their wackiness, but, um. . . Sony shows off jogging robot:

Sony has showed a new version of its Qrio robot that can jog at a top speed of 14 metres per minute.

Running is a much more difficult task for a robot to perform as both of the machine's feet must be off the floor at the same time.

Sony said the Qrio jogging robot was the result of three years of work but that it had no plans to put it on sale like the Aibo robot dog.

[. . .] "As humans we find running and walking extremely easy," said Toshi Doi, Sony Executive Vice-President.

"But for a humanoid robot to run and walk may not sound that exciting, but please remember what a big surprise it was when the first bipedal robots walked."

Sony said it had to make changes to the robot's joints and central processor to make the jump and keep it upright while jogging.

I'm violating a deeply held personal belief vis-a-vis hotlinking the photo at the Beeb, but don't feel like uploading that.

Because it's too fucking weird. I have my limits, you know.

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

Although I studied French in grammar school, and later took a year at U of I, I can neither read nor speak it worth a shit.

Concordantly, the odds of there being a Talk Like the Merovingian Day at this site are slim. Nevertheless, given the existence of certain systemic anomolies, one should not totally discount the possibility.

I could provide a translation, vis-a-vis the title of this entry, but leave you to your own ends. Ergo, The Fish may be your friend.

Or may not.

Always makes a hash out of what I plug in.

Posted by Aaron at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Architect: Hello, I've been waiting for you three.

Neo: Who are you?

Justin: Yeah, who are you?

Architect: I am the Architect. But, please, call me Larry.

Sean: Hey, Larry

Justin: Larry.

Architect: I created the Matrix... and several popular video games including Q*Bert and Dig Dug

Justin: Remember that?

Sean: Yeah.

Architect: I didn’t create Frogger, however, I came up with the name "Frogger." Can you believe they were going to call it "Highway Crossing Frog"?

Sean: That is so lame

Architect: I know, it’s the lamest thing I’ve ever heard of... “Highway Crossing Frog”...

Yes, I rented Matrix Reloaded, ergo I gave Los Bros. Wachowski even mo' money, just for the MTV Movie Awards spoof.

And, you know, Monica Bellucci. Woot woot!

Concordantly, that's my favorite image in the gallery. You can have your full frontal nudity, give me a cute woman with a goofy smile waving any day.

Posted by Aaron at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

As I said, there is no honor in victory over unworthy adversaries. So, a brief usage guide, courtesy of Dictionary.com:

ergo

Conj.: Consequently; therefore. Adj.: Consequently; hence.

concordantly

Adj.: Harmonious; agreeing.

vis-a-vis

prep.

1. Face to face with; opposite to.
2. Compared with.
3. In relation to.

adv.

Face to face.

n. pl. vis-à-vis

1. One that is face to face with or opposite to another.
2. A date or an escort, as at a party.
3. One that has the same functions and characteristics as another; a counterpart.

Don't worry, I'll be randomly tossing them out to make word salad, too, but let's at least try here people.

Posted by Aaron at 9:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

So Seraph said, anyway.

But forget him. Today, it's Talk Like Colonel Sanders Exposition Guy Day.

Sorry. Today is Talk Like the Architect Day on Negropanopticon.com. Concordantly, every post, every comment, every trackback needs must include at least one of the following words or phrases: "concordantly," vis-a-vis" and/or "ergo."

Failure to comply with these directives, vis-a-vis usage, will result in the ruthless editing of the offending material to meet my exacting standards.

Ergo, you can't hang with the Big Dogs and Talk the Big Talk, maybe you needs to keep schtum for the time being.

We begin with this Open Thread. Criticisms of my recent actions, which even I question the wisdom, if not the sanity of, are welcome. Speculations as to my motivations or thought processes in choosing these actions should be left to the Vulcans, who at least have some mind-reading abilities.

Additionally, although some form of anonymous posting is possible, vis-a-vis falsified email addresses, web proxies and other forms of trickery, I state up front that I will not attempt to determine the identity of anyone who posts material I find personally offensive.

Unless I find it really offensive, in which case all the proxies in the world ain't gonna help you. Concordantly, although tracking your identity though the legal system using subpoenas may be expensive, time-consuming and set a precedent which will return to bite me in the ass one day, I will not hesitate to do so.

Ergo, bring it.

Update: Silly me. Confused "ergo" with "apropos." Your pardon.

Coming up tomorrow on Negropanopticon.com: Wear a Dress Like Persephone Day. Woot woot!

Yes, I'm a mark for Monica Bellucci. Sue me.

And get your vision checked. Woot woot!

And, of course, "fight" need not necessarily mean physical confrontation.

Ergo, a discussion on a web site could constitute a fight.

And there are many among you I wish to truly know.

Posted by Aaron at 8:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Oh, that wacky Lou Sheldon, head of the Traditional Values Coalition in Anaheim.

Quote from Prostitute-teacher takes plea bargain, and it's just chock full of fun little bits like that.

Unfortunately, not all of them are quotes.

Or perhaps I'm reading too much into calling the subject of the piece "a $250-an-hour hooker" who "turned tricks in a rented condo with older men" until her "'sting' arrest." Why, those probably aren't sneer quotes around sting in the original, either.

There are some words of wisdom, though, from a (to me) unexpected source:

But the head of the California PTA for Alameda County, which includes Berkeley, wasn't so sure. "As long as she's not bringing it into the classroom, maybe it's not a problem," said Carol-Ann Kock-Weser, who emphasized that her opinion did not represent PTA policy.

More's the pity.

There's also stuff for the conspiracy theorists out there:

[Prostitute-teacher Shannon] Williams said the August bust at her condo was her first prostitution arrest, but that she has been arrested for civil disobedience several times, beginning with protests during the first Iraq war in 1990. She was later arrested during gay rights demonstrations in San Francisco and more recently protesting treatment of terrorism suspects at the U.S. military base in Cuba, she said.

Amazing they didn't try to use the PATRIOT act against her somehow.

Any road up, if you avoided hitting that first link to the Traditional Values Coalition site, can't say I blame you. But at least have a look at this propaganda poster.

I cannot do battle with such unworthy adversaries.

There is no honor in such a victory.

Update: See, that's the problem with early-morning blogging. I forgot that I'm meant to give my opinion on all this in the most leaden, mind-numbing prose possible. Oliver is my role model, and I hope that one day, I'll be a real blogger just like him.

So, *ahem*, the Official Uppity-Negro.com Statement on Sex Work by Teachers: As with many things, I'm too close the the problem, via-a-vis, an ex who felt compelled to give up teaching, something she loved, because of sex work. Ergo, I state up front that my take may be skewed by emotion rather than pure logic. I ain't Surak of Vulcan, ya know.

(And now I managed to fit "concordantly," "vis-a-vis" and "ergo" into entries! I am The Architect! DANCE, PUPPETS, DANCE! BWAH-HA-HA-HA!)

[Fuck, was that the out-loud typing?]

Right, um, what a teacher does out the classroom is, frankly, none of your god damn bidness. And clearly, being a "$250-an-hour hooker" is a hell of a lot more lucrative; what do teachers make? I mean adjusting the per-hour classroom pay for all the work involved outside the classroom, preparing lessons, grading shit, and all that good stuff. Swear to Nubian Goddess, the next ignint mother fucker compares their 9 to 5 to teaching gets pure, 100% nigga all up in they face. . .

Ugh. That's not how Oliver would do it. That's not how Oliver would do it at all.

I've failed.

My apologies.

Changed "apropos" to "ergo," as an Architect should.

Posted by Aaron at 2:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, not in Japanese, they're translated -- not flipped, though, so you'll be reading right to left -- but not Vietnamese, so. . .

Never mind.

At some point when I wasn't paying attention, Viz joined the online comics fad (they said the same thing about talking pictures), with Maison Ikkoku and Alice 19th. The former, I have the entire manga series and should probably not think about what that must have cost. The second, never heard of it before. Did read a bit of Yu Watase's Fushigi Yûgi when it was being serialized in Animerica Extra (which, um, it still is, but I haven't picked up an issue in ages), and it was nice enough.

Maison Ikkoku, of course, is by Rumiko Takahashi.

I don't need to add anything to that with this crowd, right?

Anyway, Flash (version unspecified) required. And that whole right-to-left thing.

Posted by Aaron at 3:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So back on December 3rd, I muttered:

I'm in Illinois, so this isn't a concern for me at the mo', thanks to still oddly-unindicted former Governor Ryan.

Ah me.

Ex-Gov. Ryan indicted:

Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan was charged in a federal racketeering indictment Wednesday with taking payoffs, gifts and vacations in return for government contracts and leases while he was governor and secretary of state.

Ryan, 69, a Republican known worldwide as a leading critic of the death penalty, gradually became the focus of a corruption investigation that began even before his 1998 election as governor. The growing scandal was a factor in Ryan's 2001 decision not to seek a second term.

Here I figured they'd wait until 2004.

I mean, um, I'm shocked, shocked at these allegations of corruption in Illinois politics.

Posted by Aaron at 2:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There's a saying that numbers don't tell the full story.

58,000 American soldiers died in Vietnam, which traumatized us for two generations. But the Vietnamese lost two million people—10% of their population. We claimed they placed a lower value on human life, thereby making the senseless slaughter more acceptable. Much of American foreign policy still flows from our humiliation in Vietnam. The “we’re number one” breast-beating of the Reagan era was clearly compensation. And Bush Senior’s testy desire for a “statute of limitiations” regarding Vietnam was apparently another way of saying that we should be free to engage in more wrong-headed imperial ventures.

Now America’s hawks want the rest of the world to pay for the trauma of 9/11. In typical American fashion, we have commercialized this to the point of nausea, and turned it into a political weapon. Many outside the U.S. who bore the brunt of war and terror during the 20th century—too much of it instigated by the U.S.—hoped this tragedy would lead us to look for the true sources of terror. As Indian novelist Arundhati Roy put it, the world sympathized with our tragedy, but they also said to us, “in the gentlest, most human way: ‘Welcome to the World’.”

Or that a million deaths is a statistic. I'm not sure what that makes two million.

Found American Myopia: The View from Abroad looking for info on Arundhati Roy.

This was a mistake.

Spectramind sounds like a front for a Bond villain's evil empire, but it is in fact a successful Delhi call-centre operator. Its computer screens show GMT. They also give the temperature in the UK, in case a staff member feels the urge to reveal that India is enjoying yet another day of blue skies and sunshine.

'We find showing new staff videos of Yes, Prime Minister is particularly effective,' said Raman Roy, Spectramind's chief executive. 'They get a two-hour seminar on the royal family. We download the British tabloids from the web to see what our customers are reading. We make new staff watch Premier League games on TV.'

Spectramind claims to shun the encouragement of false accents, but other companies persist with such policies. And the effect of splitting personalities and changes in social and family life forced by the new working patterns is starting to be scrutinised in India. Critics raise cultural concerns and suggest there is a high turnover rate of staff. The industry is already encountering some of the same problems that quickly emerged in the West. Call centres are finding it harder to retain workers as the economy strengthens.

This is primarily because many jobs involve long hours staring at computer screens and offer few career prospects. Burn-out rates in India's £1 billion-a-year industry are extremely high, with industry watchers estimating that one in three workers quits after only a year.

The author Arundhati Roy recently remarked that the adoption of foreign accents 'for jobs in call centres show how easily an ancient civilisation can be made to abase itself completely'.

From The Observer: Bombay calling...

This was a very, very bad mistake.

Because now I'm thinking about forced code-switching in the workplace. And I truly doubt anyone wants to read about that.

Personally, I don't especially like that it exists as a concept.

Posted by Aaron at 2:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ok, signed up with BitPass, mostly to beat the crowd, and because I have horrible early adopter syndrome which normally I can't do anything about because I'm po' but since signing up is free. . .

Heh. Too much coffee this time around. Just as bad as not enough, really.

No clue what to do with it, of course. There are some Ideas for Earners by that Scott McCloud fellow, but none of them seem to apply here, except The Site Donation -- prefer to keep it voluntary because as soon as there's any sort of expectation on me to provide content, which anyone subscribing would do, I'd get horrible writer's block performance anxiety stressyness. And who wants that?

Will figure out something to do with it later. I know the script is up and running -- configuration doesn't require any in-depth knowledge about your server, it's mostly point-and-click -- so it's there if I ever figure out what to do with it.

No, this entry has no point whatsoever.

Update: Meh. Donation link, if you're so inclined.

Posted by Aaron at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ok, as indicated an entry or two back, I don't read Vietnamese (or Japanese, or Chinese, or Tibetan, or. . . think it's easier to list the ones I can stumble my way through, actually). So I'm not positive what this says:

Live Action của Sailormoon đã được công bố sẽ trình chiếu trên 26 kênh của Nhật vào ngày 14 tháng 10 này.
Muốn xem thêm hình ảnh thì vào trang web chính thứ của Sailormoon mà xem (Web J).
Hu hu, mấy cô bé dễ xương quá đi mất

But I can make a pretty good guess. And I'm going to pretend not to notice the English title of the page that text is from. And so are you.

Want to know more? There's three pages of comments at the link.

But keep it to yourself, because I think I prefer my blissful ignorance on this, thank you very much.

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

Oh, that wacky Aaron McGruder:

Left-wingers tend to like cartoonist Aaron McGruder for his comic-strip assaults on the Bush administration in "The Boondocks." But at a dinner Sunday night marking the 138th anniversary of the Nation magazine, McGruder earned boos for saying liberals need to be meaner if they want to win back the White House.

[. . .] "Noble failure is not acceptable," he told The Post's Richard Leiby, recounting his remarks yesterday. "You've got to be prepared to get your hands dirty. You need to do whatever it takes."

An unscripted reference to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice -- whose love life has been the topic of McGruder's strip -- also caused some discomfort in the audience, which included actress Uma Thurman, director John Waters and author E.L. Doctorow.

"I've met Condoleezza Rice and called her a murderer to her face," McGruder said. From his studio, the cartoonist opined, "This is what I do. I am always going to speak honestly. I'm always winging it, and that's one of the things that gets me into trouble."

Opinions expressed within quoted material represent those of whoever I'm ripping off, and not those of Uppity-Negro.com, ¡Journalista! (where I found the link to the WaPo piece) or anyone except Mr. McGruder.

God bless 'im.

Posted by Aaron at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Of course they do.

Young comics draw on Japanese tradition:

Comics and cartoons aren’t just for kids. [AAUGH! Does that have to appear in every single article, even over there? - Ed.] In Viet Nam, Japanese comics, or manga, have become extremely popular among teenagers and adults. Grown-ups trade comic books at their jobs, privately write and draw their own work and get into heated discussions on Vietnamese web sites. They call themselves otakus, or comic fans

Manga, with its simple colourful style and fantastic narratives, may seem a contemporary art form, but it actually has its roots in 13th century Japan. Temple walls would be decorated with crude, exaggerated images of the afterlife, which look remarkably similar to today’s cartoon drawing. Manga is widely-read throughout the world, and it rivals the American and French comics industries.

Aspiring Vietnamese cartoonists see manga books as their "textbooks", while otakus see them as their bible. Their on-line names are often based on manga characters, and they speak of the books, which they began reading when they were children, with a religious devotion.

Imadoki writes on www.accvn.net, the country’s most popular manga site.

"Manga is still new in Viet Nam. People still lump comic books with kiddie entertainment." But for the true fans, "manga is an everlasting inspiration."

The site’s motto carries an even stronger resonance. "Focusing on manga and anime (Japanese cartoons), we embrace the whole world."

From Viet Nam News (and can a brotha get a definite answer on if it's one word or two? Or should it just depend on my mood?). Which link is to the front page; the one up top goes to the article. Never sure how to handle these things. . .

There's an article today on Viet Nam prepared for ParaGames, about the ASEAN ParaGames in Ha Noi (again, one word or two? I feel so ignint. . .), the local equivalent of the Paralympics, looks like.

Readers are reminded that the fastest way to get your ass waxed by somebody in a wheelchair is to confuse the Paralympics with the Special Olympics. That shit pisses mother fuckers off something fierce.

Want to know more?

ACC Vietnam (Anime Comics Club Vietnam) là một câu lạc bộ phi chính trị, phi lợi nhuận, tập hợp các thành viên Việt Nam yêu thích truyện tranh và hoạt hình, không phân biệt giới tính, tôn giáo, tầng lớp hay tuổi tác.


ACC Vietnam do một số thành viên cũ của box Truyện tranh - Trí tuệ Việt Nam online thành lập vào tháng 9 năm 2002 với tiêu chí: Xây dựng 1 sân chơi lành mạnh cho giới trẻ VN nói chung và các Otaku VN nói riêng. Từ đó tạo được sự hiểu biết, tinh thần đoàn kết và mối giao hữu trong lực lượng Otaku VN, cùng với khẩu hiệu Lấy anime và manga làm tâm, quay một vòng, ta có cả thế giới

Yeah, so would I. . .

Posted by Aaron at 7:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The people who don't like you have a name, too. Neophobes. Those who fear and hate the new. And I bring good news.

Neophobes die early.

It's true. A recent scientific study shows that neophobes experience such stress when in the presence of the new that it signficantly shortens their lifespans.

By hating you, they're killing themselves.

From [BAD SIGNAL]X-Thing, that post from the Warren Ellis mailing list I mentioned, but declined to quote, a bit ago.

More than worth a moment of your time, so you too can bitterly regret the fact that Marvel -- new, old or whateva -- are much too effed up for him to waste his time with.

This has been your comics content for the day.

Unless I find something else.

Remember seeing some Korean comics a while back, and they were decent. Wonder if they have manga in Vietnam? And if I'm going to get a fatwa declared on my dumb ass for calling it manga?

Update: Uh, Ginger? Sweetie?

One of us! One of us!

Posted by Aaron at 7:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Few years back, there was an article in the Sun-Times about a murder in the Vietnamese community here.

The victim's name was Nguyen.

Someone else interviewed for the piece was named Nguyen (no relation).

And a second person interviewed -- the investigating officer, I think -- was also named Nguyen (no relation).

Murder isn't funny.

But when I hit the second parenthetical "no relation", I had to stiffle a laugh.

Yep. Sith.

Anyway, my ignorance bothers me. Much more so than that of other people -- have finally realized there's not a hell of a lot I can do about that, other than mock it relentlessly -- but I've wondered for a while why that name is so ubiquitous.

Just not enough to look into it. And inaction is a form of action.

So, taking action to resolve my ignorance (or this one small bit of it, at least), from the Vietnamese Adoptee Network, It's All in a Name:

Vietnamese people usually have three names. The first of these three names is the name which identifies the person's family. The middle name appears next and the given name (what we generally call the first name in our western society) appears last. Thus if John Howard Carrison was Vietnamese, he would be known as Garrison Howard John. Or Helen Elizabeth Jones would be Jones Elizabeth Helen.

Because there are many similar sounding names, it is very important (when correctly identifying a person) to obtain an accurate listing of the name. Vietnamese names cause particular challenge for the investigator because they are so similar in sound and because it is difficult to ascertain the gender of the individual soley from his/her name.

It is important to understand that Vietnamese is a monosyllabic language. Every word in the Vietnamese language is a single syllable when it is correctly pronounced. As an example, let's look at the most common name--Nguyen. If we were to apply an English translation to this spelling, the result might be Nih-goo-yen. Understanding that the pronunciation is correctly just one syllable, however, the correct way to say Nguyen is Winn.

[. . .] There are more than 70 million people in Vietnam, and almost half of them carry the last name of Nguyen. However, despite the size of the nation and its large population, there are only about 100 family names. Adding to the confusion is the fact that nearly 85 percent of the entire Vietnamese population have one of the following family names:

Dang; Dao; Dinh; Do; Duong; Hoang; Huynh; Le; Ngo; Nguyen; Pham; Tran; Vo; Vu. Other names you may see are Au, Bui, Cao, Chau, Chu, Chuong, Cu, Doan, Gia, Ha, La, Lai, Lam, Loung, Ly, Ma, Phan, Ta, Trinh, Truong and Tu.

Unlike the American custom, a Vietnamese bride does not assume her husband's family name. She retains her own family name throughout her life. Traditionally, the children of the marriage will take the family name of the father. The only time husband and wife will share the same family name is when they both have the same name prior to the marriage. The most common instance, because of sheer numbers, is Nguyen.

So, there's something. I'm going to continue pronouncing it wrong, unless I think about it -- tend to go with how things are spelled, despite knowing full well from English that it ain't necessarily so.

The academic approach is all well and good, but sometimes a personal touch helps. Concordantly, from The Meaning of Names at Mission College:

Yen Ha Nguyen

My name is Yen Ha. I was born in Vietnam. My last name is Nguyen, which is the most common name in Vietnam. My name is Ha because my parents lived near a romantic river in the center. When I was a kid, some people called me "Ha ha ha" and they laughed. I was embarrassed. I asked my parents to change my first name again and they were annoyed . When I grew up, I understood all the meaning of the name Yen Ha is Smoke flying above a river. These words come from Chinese. Actually, I really love the sound and the meaning of this name.

Nguyen Vo

I am Nguyen Vo. Vo is my family name. My first name, Nguyen, means Pray. When my mother was pregnant, she wanted to deliver a girl. My mother was in luck. She had a girl: me. At that time, she named me Nguyen. I really love my name.

Yes, I'm wondering why Vo only has two names too. . .

Try to dispell my ignorance, and just end up with more -- albeit different -- questions.

No wonder most people don't bother trying.

Posted by Aaron at 4:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The young lady over there is Trish Thùy Trang, and I just left a diacritic mark off the u in the middle name, because I'm too lazy to look up the html for it. Sue me. Or mouse over the image (which is a link to a page dedicated to her at VietScape), and you'll find the correct transliteration, albeit in all caps. Didn't feel like pasting it into the actual text of the entry and looking like I was shouting.

Went to one of the many, many Vietnamese restaurants in the area for lunch. Like I said in the title, the soup was quite good. As was the plate of mint and bean sprouts that may have been an appetizer, and may have been a table decoration.

Finding out that they only took cash after I'd finished eating? Not so great.

And Bank One is doubtless gonna hit me up with a service charge in addition to what the ATM I ended up running to added. Blah, sez I, blah.

Anyway, lovely restaurant, and I'd meant to grab a pack of matches or a business card so I would remember the name, but forgot to do that much. Ask me later.

In the meantime, prepare yourself for links like this one to GroovySaigon.Com, "Your Guide to Everything Cool and Stylish in Saigon, Vietnam." Don't worry, I'm sure it's just a phase.

Also meant to ask about the DVD they were playing, which featured one of the most amazing music videos I've seen in a while (possibly because I haven't watched the things regularly since. . . did I ever? Has anyone?) -- wire-fu, great costumes, serious synchronized drumming. . . I'm all about the Vietnamese Pop Music right now.

Um, yes, the waitress was cute too, but I don't see what that has to do with anything. . .

Update: Director's cut.

Groove|Asia is recovering from a virus infection, which is the only reason they weren't linked in the entry.

The second graphic, the Xmas one, links to Trish Thuy Trang: A website dedicated to all the fans. You can download some songs and videos from there, send email postcards, and generally geek out over the woman. If that's what you're looking to do.

Not bad stuff, but I think I shall have to prepare a special line of greeting cards for pop singers. "This is your vocal range. Please do not attempt to exceed your vocal range. The results are unpleasant for all involved."

Update: And the ISO Latin 1 Character Entities and HTML Escape Sequence Table is your friend. Or mine, anyway.

Posted by Aaron at 2:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Right, by way of ¡Journalista!, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Scott McCloud:

12/15: On the micropayments front, Bay Area station KMEL and Alicia Keys(!) are trying out some bitpassed concert pix and video clips. Meanwhile, the earners list continues to grow and as of now, if you'd like to try selling some stuff on your own site, go ahead, the door is now open. I'm not making a big splash with the info, cause they're still putting the finishing touches on the documentation as we speak (i.e., it might still be a bit confusing at first for non geeks) but for all intents and purposes, BitPass is now open to anyone with a website.

Hmm. BitPass, eh?

What is BitPass?

BitPass is a service that enables providers to profitably charge for access to their online content and services.

What are your fees?

There are no setup or monthly fees.
For items priced $0.01-$5.00, the transaction fee is 15%.
For items priced $5.00 and higher, the transaction fee is 5% + $0.50.

How are you different from PayPal?

PayPal handles only the transfer of money and does not securely manage access to online content. For example, PayPal provides you the option of directing a buyer to a URL after a purchase is made. However, that destination URL is not secure and can be accessed directly without paying. To protect that URL, you would have to roll your own access control system or use a third party solution. In contrast, BitPass combines money transfer and access control services into a single solution that is flexible, affordable, and easy to use.

Nah, I'd have better luck selling sex toys than getting people to pay to read this monstrosity. . .

Posted by Aaron at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Texas housewife busted for hawking erotic toys
Sales rep for Brisbane firm sold vibrator to undercover agents:

A Texas housewife is in big trouble with the law for selling a vibrator to a pair of undercover cops, and the Brisbane vibrator company she works for says Texas is an "antiquated place'' with more than its share of "prudes.''

Joanne Webb, a former fifth-grade teacher and mother of three, was in a county court in Cleburne, Texas, on Monday to answer obscenity charges for selling the vibrator to undercover narcotics officers posing as a dysfunctional married couple in search of a sex aid.

Webb, a saleswoman for Passion Parties of Brisbane, faces a year in jail and a $4,000 fine if convicted.

God, I want to live someplace the cops have nothing better to do than bust people for selling fucking toys.

Pardon the pun.

And come to think of it, no I don't.

Link courtesy of Atrios.

Update: See also: I got pulled over in west Texas so they could look inside my car.

Also added a link to Passion Parties, Inc. because giving free publicity to sex shops is one of the things I live for.

Passion Parties is the premier sensual party plan company in the United States and Canada. We are celebrating 10 years of bringing quality sensual products to multitudes of people. Our exclusive line of products are designed to encourage intimacy between partners.

People have used sensual aids and toys dating back as far as recorded history. Today, sensual aids and toys are more popular than ever. Yet many people need or want to be discreet about purchasing such products. So, what greater venue for bringing sexual products to people than one of the most personal and educational environments available in 21st century marketing: the in-home party.

As a direct selling party plan company, we are able to bring the value of product knowledge, education, and confidentiality simply not found in the retail environment. In addition, the business model of direct sales offers generous rewards for the consultants who bring these products to their customers.

So. . . it's the Avon of sex stores? Or the Tupperware?

Mary Kay, maybe?

Actually, I could use some extra mon-- no.

No need to try to compete with early to bed.

Not that I could.

Posted by Aaron at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

"Do it?"

Dan, I'm not a Republic serial villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my masterstroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting the outcome?

I did it thirty-five minutes ago.

Alan Moore's Watchmen, still held up by many -- ok, me -- as one of the best graphic novels ever, superhero stuff or no, by way of a LiveJournal comment.

Want to know more about Republic Serials?

If you saw them as a youth but not recently, I warn you, without the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia. . . they look like ass.

Posted by Aaron at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Ok, I been done said Don't fuck with the Jedi Master, son. And, surprisingly, it seems to be working; the tourists and trolls are keeping schtum, as it should be.

Given recent behavior on my part, though -- being Veiny, Evil, Stupid and Horny, mouthing off to possibly well-meaning but hidiously stupid people in stores, ignoring Nubian Goddess knows how many rules of decorum and manners and posting comments in places I really shouldn't be (or should at least be maintaining the polite fiction I ain't), saying things that I know perfectly well will piss people off --

Which reminds me. "Pissing people off" implies an action, hence responsibility, on my part. "Getting pissy/pissed off with me" suggests I am a mere passive observer of someone else's actions. . . did you even take the prerequisites? I don't normally let underclassmen in my seminars, you know.

Any road up, given my conscious decisions to behave in this manner, the obvious question which presents itself is: Am I a Jedi. . . or am I a Sith?

And if the latter, always two there are, no more, no less. A Master, and an Apprentice. Which I am? The Master, or the Apprentice?

No, haven't had enough coffee yet. Working on a can of panther piss Mountain Dew, though.

np -- Duel of the Fates, John Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace soundtrack.

Update: Added image of Jedi Master Mace Windu (as always, click for larger version in a pop-up).

Windu, a diplomat by nature, believed in the power of words over action. But as the galaxy found itself increasingly fragmented by the rise of a powerful secessionist movement, he grew to question some of his firmest held beliefs.

Also added a link to the Duel of the Fates music video. You can gank an mp3 of the song from that previous link, if you're so inclined to ignore copyright.

Now then. Hand me my lightsaber... it's the one that says, 'Bad Mother Fucker.'.

Posted by Aaron at 8:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

See, when I were a youth, by this point in December you could have seen It's a Wonderful Life half a dozen times, on various stations, by now. Mostly the PBS affiliates, but even ABC in Chi would dredge it up, if I remember a'right.

This was because it was believed at the time that the film was in the public domain, and anyone with a print could run it however much they wanted without owing nada to nadie.

And then, once the film's status as a Holiday Classic was assured, mostly by those infinite repeat viewings, it somehow got un-public-domainified.

According to this here article:

We have litigated this issue often: a derivative work, if thrown into the public domain, does not affect the copyright of the original work. For example, if the film CATCH 22 fell into the public domain for whatever reason - the copyright on the original Joseph Heller novel work would prevent anyone from selling, exhibiting, distributing, etc. the film.

Likewise, the film IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE is a derivative work, according to the present copyright holder, from, among other things, an original short story and/or script. Indeed, most if not all films are considered derivative works - they derive from copyrighted screenplays, theatre, books, etc.

[. . .] The film IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE is not - REPEAT IS NOT IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN - and everyone in the biz recognizes that now. Even though many once believed that the film itself lost some copyright protection, and at some time, the market was flooded with broadcasts and videos, today it is accepted that the copyright holder of the original work still controls all film rights to the original work. Thus the film, a derivative work, cannot be sold, distributed, copied, broadcast without the consent of the copyright holder of the original work.

So, technically, it wasn't un-public-domainified. It was never really in the public domain. It's just that everyone and his uncle thought it was.

Now you know, and knowing's half the kaiju big battel!

Posted by Aaron at 6:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Nubian Goddess, why is that song stuck in my head? If you don't recognize that, don't ask. And be thankful.

Last linguist-related geekout of the day. Promise.

The British National Corpus (BNC) is a carefully-selected collection of 4124 contemporary written and spoken English texts, primarily from the United Kingdom.  The corpus totals over 100 million words and covers a representative range of domains, genres and registers. The entire corpus has been analyzed and marked up with part of speech (POS) tags. Provenance and other attributes are carefully documented for each text. "What is the BNC?" provides a succinct overview of the corpus;  for an exhaustive description, consult the British National Corpus Users Reference Guide.  Chapter 1 of Guy Aston and Lou Burnard's BNC Handbook includes an informative survey of possible uses of corpora in general and of the BNC in particular.  Additional useful information and resources (including various frequency lists with more refined POS tagging) are found on the companion website for Word Frequencies in Written and Spoken English based on the British National Corpus by Geoffrey Leech, Paul Rayson and Andrew Wilson.  The introduction includes a very readable discussion of how the corpus was tokenized and tagged.

This site incorporates a database (referred to here as the w&p-db) derived from the second or World Edition of the BNC (2000); it is not affiliated with the BNC Consortium. It aims to provide a simple yet powerful interface for studying words and phrases up to six words long appropriate for both experienced researchers and novice users.  For investigating words in longer contexts, the full BNC corpus and Sara search and analysis software is available on CD-ROM from the BNC Consortium (a single user license costs only £ 50).  Alternatively, one can look up individual words and phrases online.

From the description of the Home Page of "Exploring Words and Phrases from the British National Corpus". If you don't understand why this is incredibly cool. . . catch me at my office hours.

Update: Oh, right, was someplace with a radio playing, and the DJ asked a trivia question, "What was the first video played on MTV?"

The answer:

I heard you on the wireless back in Fifty Two
Lying awake intent at tuning in on you.
If I was young it didn't stop you coming through.
Oh-a oh
They took the credit for your second symphony.
Rewritten by machine and new technology,
and now I understand the problems you can see.
Oh-a oh
I met your children
Oh-a oh
What did you tell them?

Video killed the radio star

I warned you. . .

Posted by Aaron at 3:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Like I said, woke up ungodly early Saturday morning.

And caught part of a repeat -- or late broadcast -- of Conan O'Brien, with guests former sidekick Andy Richter, the WWFE's Mick Foley/Mankind/Cactus Jack and singer(?) Marilyn Manson.

They had me at Robot Opera Singer Who Fights Crime!

And I don't even watch that much tv.

If it was all that entertaining, I would.

Oh, and my reaction to Foley, who is Good?

Mark.

Posted by Aaron at 3:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

She was a real fine specimen of humanity,
she had all the bits and pieces where God meant them to be

And every lash was a lover cooing so gently,
while the fishes in the ocean swam gracefully

Eat your heart out,
eat your heart out.
Chew 'em up,
spit 'em out

She cast her eyes and clenched her face,
to a great big sea of jocks and apes

Small town bullies, posers and fakes,
two bit hustlers junkies and snakes

They liked to slobber, dribble and drool,
suckin' on their lagers,
eyein' up the jewels

Huffin' and a puffin' and a chokin' on the fuel.
Big Bustin' Broncos, with big, bustin' tools!

She walked right in, lighting up the joint.
Struttin' that mean stuff, stressing every point

And their faces turned white as she settled in with ease.
Complete brain malfunctions homosapiens disease

As tongues untied, they bumbled over grunts,
infantile slobbers,
adolescent stunts

Eager for the kill, but clueless to the hunt.
Slaves to the stereotype and puppets to the front

[Chorus]

Hold your fire,
cool your jets,
swallow your pride,
disengage

You apes aint gonna make it just swinging in the trees
You better learn to walk upright before she brings you to your knees

Yeah the battle raged on,
pheromones and gist,
evolutionary wishes,
jism and drips

Test tube babies,
chemical that mix,
too lethal to explode,
but seething to hiss.

Now it's time to unleash this metabolic overload,
the symphonies of planets, microcosmic superbowl

When push comes to shove, Mother Nature takes her toll
Survival of the species, container for ythe soul

She looked real hard and cracked a grin.
"I feel a little adrenaline.

"I could use a little bit of discipline. Who's come to play, let the party begin!"

They shrunk back soft,
they shriveled and creaked,
faces turning cherry,
knees going weak.

Blusterin' and a flusterin',
unable to speak.
Willing lambs to the slaughter,
gone all quiet and meek.

[Chorus]

Hold your fire, cool your jets, swallow your pride, disengage

You apes aint gonna make it just swinging in the trees

You better learn to walk upright before she brings you to your knees

 

And God, she created civilization

(And it didn't take long, to whip these apes into shape.)

And God, She Created Civilization, Meg Lee Chin, from Junkies and Snakes (which I'd held off buying, since it's mostly remixes of songs from Piece and Love).

Posted by Aaron at 2:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Not sure why anyone would want to do that -- it ain't pretty even from where I'm standing -- but here's the secret ingredient:

1. Say something that pisses me off.
2. After I respond in a pissed-off fashion, rather than asking (either out loud or just to yourself) what you did to piss me off, say, "Hey, don't get pissy with me."

Big difference here. "Make you pissed off." "Get pissed off with me." I'd explain the difference, but we've run over time for this class already. Catch up with me at my office hours.

Posted by Aaron at 1:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Since I seem to be holding a virtual seminar on this sort of thing today:

Sociolinguistics is a term including the aspects of linguistics applied toward the connections between language and society, and the way we use it in different social situations. It ranges from the study of the wide variety of dialects across a given region down to the analysis between the way men and women speak to one another. Sociolinguistics often shows us the humorous realities of human speech and how a dialect of a given language can often describe the age, sex, and social class of the speaker; it codes the social function of a language.

From the self-descriptively titled Sociolinguistics page at Explore! Linguistics, brought to you by the University of Oregon.

Chatted about this with Dru in AIM yesterday: Politeness:

In everyday conversation, there are ways to go about getting the things we want. When we are with a group of friends, we can say to them, "Go get me that plate!", or "Shut-up!" However, when we are surrounded by a group of adults at a formal function, in which our parents are attending, we must say, "Could you please pass me that plate, if you don't mind?" and "I'm sorry, I don't mean to interrupt, but I am not able to hear the speaker in the front of the room." I different social situations, we are obligated to adjust our use of words to fit the occasion. It would seem socially unacceptable if the phrases above were reversed.

According to Brown and Levinson, politeness strategies are developed in order to save the hearers' "face." Face refers to the respect that an individual has for him or herself, and maintaining that "self-esteem" in public or in private situations. Usually you try to avoid embarrassing the other person, or making them feel uncomfortable. Face Threatening Acts (FTA's) are acts that infringe on the hearers' need to maintain his/her self esteem, and be respected. Politeness strategies are developed for the main purpose of dealing with these FTA's.

Added a link to the names [Penelope] Brown and [Stephen] Levinson (who's apparently in residence at Beckman in Shampoo-Banana these days. . ) to a slide giving a very brief breakdown of A Model of Politeness. It's a fascinating topic, but the problem I ran into with it is, once I was aware of this, I couldn't help, um, fucking around with Face-Threatening Acts when other people toss 'em at me.

There are certain ways one is meant to respond to these sorts of things -- don't get me started, just. . . don't, I'll start ranting about Katz-Fodor semantics and we'd be here all day -- and when you very obviously don't play by the rules. . .

. . . in my case, people think it's because the nigger doesn't know any better.

I've developed quite an attitude about that lately.

Leading someone to say to me, "I really don't like your attitude."

And me to reply, probably much too loudly for a crowded store, "Oh my god, and you think I care?!?"

She called the manager on me.

The manager pointed out that I didn't work there.

At which point, the older white woman who'd expressed her displeasure with my attitude asked me why I hadn't told her I didn't work there.

And I asked her why she'd assumed that I did.

Then left a beat.

Then added, "cracka," to the end of the question.

Racism is something else I use as an opportunity to fuck with people. Really should stop doing that.

Once it's no longer entertaining.

Update: Sorry, should explain that sitch better. Woman came up to me in the store and asked where something was. I sort-of shrugged and made a suggestion. She asked where the suggested location was, and I pointed out the signs hanging from the ceiling.

Yes, I could have just told her I didn't work there -- not that I was dressed like anyone who did -- but where's the fun in that?

I'd ask if you wanted to know more, and toss up a link to the HTML translation of a PDF on Adapting Brown and Levinson’s ‘Politeness’ Theory to the Analysis of Casual Conversation, but that's probably going a bit too far. . .

Posted by Aaron at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

But, for the next hour or so, I should be available. Really.

ahawk 9289068

This site is powered by the ICQ2Go Panel © 2002 ICQ Inc. All Rights Reserved. Use of ICQ2Go Panel is subject to the ICQ Terms of Service.

There's some question as to whether any messages you send will actually reach me, but there's something mystical and cathartic about writing a letter and then burning it, right?

Ok, I'm vamping. I shut up now.

Posted by Aaron at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Click for larger version in a pop-up

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

Remember, there are no stupid questions, just stupid people.

The answer to this particular question can be found at the oddly-titled Stef Slembrouck (1998-2003) - WHAT IS MEANT BY DISCOURSE ANALYSIS?:

One starting point is the following quotation from M. Stubbs' textbook (Stubbs 1983:1), in which discourse analysis is defined as (1) concerned with language use beyond the boundaries of a sentence/utterance, (2) concerned with the interrelationships between language and society and (3) as concerned with the interactive or dialogic properties of everyday communication.

The term discourse analysis is very ambiguous. I will use it in this book to refer mainly to the linguistic analysis of naturally occurring connected speech or written discourse. Roughly speaking, it refers to attempts to study the organisation of language above the sentence or above the clause, and therefore to study larger linguistic units, such as conversational exchanges or written texts. It follows that discourse analysis is also concerned with language use in social contexts, and in particular with interaction or dialogue between speakers.
--STUBBS Michael, 1983. Discourse Analysis: The Sociolinguistic Analysis of Natural Language. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Discourse analysis does not presuppose a bias towards the study of either spoken or written language. In fact, the monolithic character of the categories of speech and writing is increasingly being challenged, especially as the gaze of analysts turns to multi-media texts and practices on the Internet. Similarly, one must ultimately object to the reduction of the discursive to the so-called "outer layer" of language use, although such a reduction reveals quite a lot about how particular versions of the discursive have been both enabled and bracketed by forms of hierarchical reasoning which are specific to the history of linguistics as a discipline (e.g. discourse analysis as a reaction against and as taking enquiry beyond the clause-bound "objects" of grammar and semantics to the level of analysing "utterances", "texts" and "speech events"). Another inroad into the development of a discourse perspective is more radically antithetical to the concerns of linguistics "proper". Here the focus is on the situatedness of language use, as well as its inalienably social and interactive nature - even in the case of written communication.

With respect, I don't think English is his native language. At the very least, it's probably not the only one he knows; how many do you speak?

Been trying to go more multimedia around here lately, embedding images and (in a failed, browser-crashy mess) sounds. That, and tried to make it easier to get in touch with me, but the status indicators for AIM and ICQ just didn't work as well as I'd hoped.

The analysis/criticism bits, well, those have been around from the start.

Realize some people have problems with the notion that the nigger has anything going on under the dreads, and I've been willing to put up with that -- even from people who really should fucking know better -- for a while.

Be Nice to Bigots Week is over. Not sure why it lasted as long as it did, actually.

Posted by Aaron at 9:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Old, old news, but since no one ever listens to linguists:

Resolution On The Oakland "Ebonics" Issue
Unanimously Adopted at the Annual Meeting of the
Linguistic Society of America
Chicago, Illinois   January 3, l997

---

Whereas there has been a great deal of discussion in the media and among the American public about the l8 December l996 decision of the Oakland School Board to recognize the language variety spoken by many African American students and to take it into account in teaching Standard English, the Linguistic Society of America, as a society of scholars engaged in the scientific study of language, hereby resolves to make it known that:

1. The variety known as "Ebonics," "African American Vernacular English" (AAVE), and "Vernacular Black English" and by other names is systematic and rule-governed like all natural speech varieties. In fact, all human linguistic systems -- spoken, signed, and written -- are fundamentally regular. The systematic and expressive nature of the grammar and pronunciation patterns of the African American vernacular has been established by numerous scientific studies over the past thirty years. Characterizations of Ebonics as "slang," "mutant," "lazy," "defective," "ungrammatical," or "broken English" are incorrect and demeaning.

2. The distinction between "languages" and "dialects" is usually made more on social and political grounds than on purely linguistic ones. For example, different varieties of Chinese are popularly regarded as "dialects," though their speakers cannot understand each other, but speakers of Swedish and Norwegian, which are regarded as separate "languages," generally understand each other. What is important from a linguistic and educational point of view is not whether AAVE is called a "language" or a "dialect" but rather that its systematicity be recognized.

3. As affirmed in the LSA Statement of Language Rights (June l996), there are individual and group benefits to maintaining vernacular speech varieties and there are scientific and human advantages to linguistic diversity. For those living in the United States there are also benefits in acquiring Standard English and resources should be made available to all who aspire to mastery of Standard English. The Oakland School Board's commitment to helping students master Standard English is commendable.

4. There is evidence from Sweden, the US, and other countries that speakers of other varieties can be aided in their learning of the standard variety by pedagogical approaches which recognize the legitimacy of the other varieties of a language. From this perspective, the Oakland School Board's decision to recognize the vernacular of African American students in teaching them Standard English is linguistically and pedagogically sound.

I thought it bears repeating.

Don't even remember what site I was at where some idjit made a dumb-ass Ebonics joke. Started banging out response, then realized how utterly fucking pointless it would be.

They're going to grow old and die, and perhaps their children will be an improvement.

This is the most optimistic way of looking at it that I can come up with.

Want to know more? See the Bibliography and the links on Resolution page.

Posted by Aaron at 9:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Literature Network>George Orwell>1984>Chapter 2:

'Up with your hands!' yelled a savage voice.

A handsome, tough-looking boy of nine had popped up from behind the table and was menacing him with a toy automatic pistol, while his small sister, about two years younger, made the same gesture with a fragment of wood. Both of them were dressed in the blue shorts, grey shirts, and red neckerchiefs which were the uniform of the Spies. Winston raised his hands above his head, but with an uneasy feeling, so vicious was the boy's demeanour, that it was not altogether a game.

'You're a traitor!' yelled the boy. 'You're a thought-criminal! You're a Eurasian spy! I'll shoot you, I'll vaporize you, I'll send you to the salt mines!'

Suddenly they were both leaping round him, shouting 'Traitor!' and 'Thought-criminal!' the little girl imitating her brother in every movement. It was somehow slightly frightening, like the gambolling of tiger cubs which will soon grow up into man-eaters. There was a sort of calculating ferocity in the boy's eye, a quite evident desire to hit or kick Winston and a consciousness of being very nearly big enough to do so. It was a good job it was not a real pistol he was holding, Winston thought.

[. . .] Some Eurasian prisoners, guilty of war crimes, were to be hanged in the Park that evening, Winston remembered. This happened about once a month, and was a popular spectacle. Children always clamoured to be taken to see it.

[. . .] A trumpet call, clear and beautiful, floated into the stagnant air. The voice continued raspingly:

'Attention! Your attention, please! A newsflash has this moment arrived from the Malabar front. Our forces in South India have won a glorious victory. I am authorized to say that the action we are now reporting may well bring the war within measurable distance of its end. Here is the newsflash -'

I mean, yes, wonderful news, captured without a shot being fired you say? He's a terrible man. Did you know he gassed his own people?

Christ. I've lived too long. . .

Posted by Aaron at 8:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ok, been up about an hour for some reason. Oh, right, passing out fairly early last night. After waking up at around 4:30 yesterday morning. When did I become a morning person? And can I stop?

Skipped the Over the Rhine show; holiday money tightness, the whole passing out early thing, The Ghettofab Jessica not wanting to come with, I have a plethora of reasons for not going, really.

Did hit The Brown Elephant resale shop again -- starting to think that if you want to see me on the weekend, you should just go there -- and picked up an IBM Cordless Computer Connection. Basically a cordless phone without the actual phone bit, just a small(ish) box plugs into the modem port of your computer. Hey, it was five bucks, and I got three days to return it for a full refund if it doesn't work.

Went for it so's I can use the laptop without having a phone cord stretching across the room. No, still no DSL or cable or satellite; figure mostly I update this place and check email, so a high-speed connection at home is, well, pointless. For when I do need to do a megadownload, figure I can head to Cyberia Internet Cafe, pay a buck for an hour of WiFi and get a cuppa joe, and handle things that way. Or, y'know, there's Screenz, or some free hot spots I could try. So, really, no point paying for it.

Um, rambling. Sorry.

Previous link to Wi-Fi FreeSpot™ Directory is probably the only thing of value in this entry. Ignore anything else.

Did the "replacing a cordless phone battery" dance with the IBM Cordless thingee, figuring the one in it was original equipment, and might be the problem if it didn't seem to work well. Think the replacement is the right/compatible type, but Christ, could it be any less fun trying to figure that out if the model number of the old battery isn't conveniently listed on the package for the new one, which it weren't in this case?

Tried helping a woman at Target having the same problem, but at least I'd brought my old battery with me, and could try comparing sizes/connectors; she was just stabbing in the dark.

Ended up at Radio Shack, predictably. Couple in line in front of me was negotiating for a second cell phone for her, and working out if it was easier/cheaper to put a second phone on his contract, or create a new one. At one point, he asked her, "Will you remember to pay the bill?" and I just looked at him and said, "Ok, that's the end of the relationship, right there."

Still Veiny, Evil, Stupid and Horny, and should not be in public. I forget this.

They wandered off to the side to discuss the matter, and I said to the guy behind the counter, "While they're breaking up, could you help me find the right replacement battery?" Think he got the right one; it's still charging, and I'm just going to leave it be until I get home from work, rather than seeing if it does anything now with less than the full, suggested 16 hours.

Gives me something to look forward to.

Coffee, I think.

np -- You Run Your Mouth, Delectric, courtesy of iRATE radio, and I've forgotten where I saw this program mentioned (Team Murder, most likely), so I'm not sure who to thank.

Oh, and I gave it a 5. Good beat, easy to dance to.

Update:

Amazingly, with the charged new battery (about $13, if I remember right), the cordless thingee works. Alleged connection speed of only 33.6ish, but since I'm really only working with text (and using Earthlink Accelerator proxy thingee [I like the word thingee, keeps me from sounding like I know what I'm talking about, even when I do], it's all good.

I'd sit outside and work, but it's friggin' cold out there. Maybe come Spring. . .

Posted by Aaron at 5:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Um, sorry.

Schroeder congratulates Bush
World leaders who divided over the war in Iraq are united in welcoming the capture of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

Bush's rivals mostly pleased by news of Saddam's arrest

Time was, I could get an entry out of that sort of thing, but either they're getting stupider, or I'm just sick of fucking repeating myself.

So, does anyone out there not get the point here?

No?

Ah.

Ask your mommy and daddy to explain it to you. Maybe they're still willing to use hand puppets and very small words, but I ain't the one.

Posted by Aaron at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I loves me some Powerpuff Girls:

"I'm not Aaron. Aaron is not my name. For the name, Aaron, is not the correct name to address me by, because it is not my name. If you were to address me by the name Mojo Jojo, that would be correct, for my name is Mojo Jojo and I will only be addressed by that name, which is Mojo Jojo, and furthermore it is not WE who will rule the world, it is *I*. I being Mojo Jojo, who is not Aaron, shall rule this world alone, which is to say without anybody else, and without anybody else shall I rule this world; and when this world is ruled by only one person, not a collective group, that one person who shall be ruling the world will be none other than me, Mojo Jojo.

"Evil laugh!"

Ok, I may have paraphrased a bit. Good to see that link next to Bellona Times in the sidebar still works.

Posted by Aaron at 7:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Once upon a time there was an audio format called Liquid Audio.

The company that developed it, also called Liquid Audio, offered a free player, and allowed you to download free tracks, or you could purchase them. They were like a buck, buck fifty per song, the quality was great, file sizes weren't too bad, and they had players for Windows and Mac.

There is no love for Linux. Not a bit.

But, things change, and now Liquid sells tracks in Windows Media format instead.

For those of you -- sorry, me -- who purchased tracks in Liquid Audio format, they'll still work, if you gots your Passport (re-acquired, after I remembered what my fucking password was). . . and a copy of Liquid Player.

It's no longer available on their web site. There's an End of Life statement, which is all well and good, but I'd hoped they'd say, "We don't support this shit, but you wanna download it, knock yourself out."

No suck luck.

Luckily, a broken link at least gave me a file name, EnPromolmp6.1.0.17a.exe. So, did a Google on that and found a few places with the thing sitting around collecting dust.

Am downloading it now. And yes, will run a virus scan on it first to make sure they're not just fucking with the gullible and desperate.

I have learned my lesson about proprietary file formats. From now on, I'm sticking with EMusic and mp3s.

Or Ogg. Seeing as some tracks I'd thought I ripped in mp3 format are actually Ogg-Vorbis thingees, and now I can't play them either. Maybe if I change the extension?

Guess I lied about stopping with the early-morning coffee-fueled rambling earlier.

Update: Right, one reason for the rambling is, on a whim I, um, borrowed the USB mouse and keyboard from my sister's iMac -- ain't a big fan of touchpads myself -- and plugged 'em into the Gateway laptop. Had to get a few HID device files off the Windows 98 install cd, but other than that, all things working well.

Except the open apple key (their keyboards don't have the closed apple key anymore, do they?) acts as a Windows key, bringing up the Start menu, which is mildly confusing. control (All lower case? Why?) and alt/option work as they ought, but aren't where I think they ought, so I'm doing Silly Things when I try to copy and paste.

Yes, it's more TMI, but it's geek TMI instead of the other kind. Deal.

And yes, I noticed that the referrer script -- or database for same, at least -- fall down go boom again. Well, it gives everyone a chance to try to top Google, This Modern World and Atrios. . .

Posted by Aaron at 7:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The filthy Blog Body Shop, it plans a redesign, and mostly I just want more room over there for stuff like this, the Scarleteen donation graphic (which is pushing/outside the boundaries in some resolutions, I think), and of course, Tina the Troubled Teen, whom I dearly miss. Good thing The Ghettofabulous Jessica keeps putting her up. . .

Hotspot Locator Address   City   State / Province   Zip Code / Post Code   Country -Select a Country- Argentina Australia Austria Bahamas Bahrain Belgium Brazil Canada China Croatia Czech Republic Denmark Finland France Germany Greece Hong Kong Iceland India Indonesia Ireland Italy Japan Latvia Luxembourg Malaysia Mexico Netherlands Norway Philippines Poland Portugal Saint Kitts and Nevis Saudi Arabia Singapore South Africa South Korea Spain Sweden Switzerland Taiwan Thailand Turkey United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Distance Radius (Miles) 1 2 5 10 20 50 100

Yes, I'm going wacky with the WiFi. And am wrestling with my conscience about using iPass (not the Illinois State Toll Authority one, somebody else), since their closest access point is the McDonald's down the way.

Ah hates McDonalds.

Even if they have made some steps forward. Anyone even remember what their styrofoam containers used to look like? And didn't they ask/demand their suppliers not use some growth hormone or other?

Too many damned shades of gray in the Real World. I'm going to go read some comics.

No, all the comics I have here are by Priest, Warren Ellis and Grant Morrison. . .

I'm going to go read some warblogs.

Posted by Aaron at 6:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, we had the first accumulating-on-the-streets snowfall here in chilly Chicago, and that means it's time to buy lawn furniture!

If you didn't laugh at that, you're probably reading the wrong web site.

Apologies. Haven't done one of those for a while.

Thinking out loud. Pay me no mind.

USB mouse and keyboard should work. . . the latter plugs into the former, if I remember a'right. . . and there's the dongle lets you connect an external montor to the laptop. Don't know why you used the desktop in the first place, laptop was faster and had more memory.

Be nice if Apple made a docking station so there weren't wires running all over creation, but meh.

And speaking of wires, wireless routers are dirt cheap these days. Should be able to stick a card in the main system and just plug the MSN DSL modem into a router; the laptop has an Airport card already, right? Kill two birds with one stone that way, access to the main system without swapping the ethernet cable and can get rid of that phone cord running over the built-in in the living room. Might improve throughput without that long-ass cord mucking things up to boot.

Plus, it'll let you use the laptop with the DSL from anywhere in your apartment. Or, hell, as the super, anywhere in the building, although I can't see all of the tenants looking kindly on that. Maybe want to get to know their schedules. And, you know, not drink all their beer up.

Leave a bottle. They'll just think they went on a bender and forgot.

Duh, was thinking the main system might complain about not having a montior connected if you hook the laptop up to the one it's using, but there's already a second monitor conveniently sitting in the closet. I am dumb.

802.11b's getting phased out, but it's more'n good enough, so you might could get the equipment cheap used at Que Computers; closed Sunday, so I should'a suggested this yesterday. Again, dumb.

Right, off to shovel a parking space and pile junk in it to save it. . .

Finally (after downloading updated drivers from Realtek) got the (GigaFast WF721-AEX) wireless card recognized in Windows, and in Linux using their sort'a half-ass open-source driver, went to the local Screenz. . . and still couldn't connect without borrowing a card from them.

Jesus wept.

Well, I almost did, anyway.

Took the card back to Micro Center and exchanged it, then headed a wee bit further south to Cyberia to test it. The total babe working there hadn't ever set up a new WiFi account, but her manager managed to talk her though it over the phone.

And the card worked. Has a different serial number than the previous one, natch, starts with a "C" instead of an "R," but must still use the Realtek chipset, because Windows detected it immediately without having to install anything and the network came up flawlessly.

Spent about an hour there (I have 16 minutes left, and their network is up 24/7 even if they're not open, so I could drive into range and work from the car, but that would be, you know, totally insane), then came back to the apartment, had lunch, and tried Screenz again.

And again, flawless.

My faith in $39.99 ($9.99 after $30 mail-in rebate) PCMCIA wireless network cards is restored.

That's Windows, anyway. Linux, like I said, the Realtek kernel module and software bring up the card (as wlan0) and it detects the network, but doesn't autoconfig. And I was too lazy to read the docs on how to manually configure the network, and boot into Windows, get the appropriate info, boot back into Linux, and plug it in. Downloaded some Wireless Tools for Linux that should handle that stuff automagically, but the Realtek drivers are using an ancient version of some protocol or other, and brings the card up as wlan0 instead of eth0, so there might be some futzing involved. Not sure; got tired of sitting in Screenz playing with it, and don't have a network at the apartment to toy with.

Actually, that's not true, but I don't imagine whoever's running the WEP-encrypted network I'm detecting now would appreciate my using them as a guinea pig.

And that's enough coffee-fueled early morning rambling for one day, I think. Off to trudge through the barely-an-inch of snow to buy smokes. There's some cosmic law says you have to run out right after a snowstorm. Remind me to take that up with Management next time I speak to them.

Posted by Aaron at 4:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Why have I never linked Guerrilla News Network? Especially considering their recent Guerrilla of the Week?

But despite the lack of media exposure, Chomsky is at the top of his game. His slim book entitled "9/11" has sold more than half a million copies. He blew away a 30,000 person stadium full of cheering anti-corporate globalization activists at last year's World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Millions of college students revere him as their hero. His new book, "Hegemony and Survival: America's Quest for Global Domination" has just been released, and the response has been heady. The influential New Yorker magazine recently ran a 15 page in-depth profile on his life and ideas, and The New York Times Magazine just ran a controversial interview that among other things insinuated he was a "self-hating Jew." Bono calls him the "Elvis of Academia." He must be doing something right.

The foundation of Chomsky's moral universe is the belief that intentions and rhetoric have no meaning outside of actions. In other words, you can talk all the bullshit you want about democracy, but when you're blowing up children, you're a fascist. Chomsky puts special emphasis on the role of the intellectual to hold those in power to the fire. That most western intellectuals fail miserably in this task is not surprising to Chomsky. In fact, little fazes him. Even being called a "terrorist lover."

Not long after 9/11, he made the mortal sin of pointing out that in the big scheme of things 3,000 American deaths, while horrible and tragic, was nothing really out of the ordinary when compared to the death and destruction that regularly is inflicted on Third World nations, often by the U.S. itself. This, not surprisingly, didn't go over well. Chomsky was attacked as an "Al Qaeda apologist." The wounds were too raw for that sort of cold historical analysis.

That the U.S. invaded Iraq largely on the exploitation of the American public's post-9/11 fears shows those wounds still haven't healed.

Oversight, I expect. Same reason I never (permanantly) linked LUMPEN.

Or I'm getting more radical in my dotage.

Posted by Aaron at 4:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In fact, I'm starting to think it's a hoax.

I mean, sure, there's a web site:

"The Singing Biologist is a musical about a young jazz singer's passionate investigation into the nature of love. While she prepares her biggest show for a famous theater, Rose begins to experiment with romantic tragedy. The theater management plots against her, and the lives and loves of her colleagues play to the insistent back beat of human nature. This unprecedented feature takes an intellectual twist, ambitiously wringing the boundaries of ethics, religion, biology and love into an inquisitive romance that puts flesh on the premise: it takes a rockin’ scientist to sing a modern love song."

And the film is mentioned at Pigeon Penelope, which bills itself as "Place for Imani Coppola fans!"

But, um, I've never heard of it. Not a blessed thing.

Or the new cd:

Imani's new cd "Post Traumatic Pop Syndrome" is now avaliable for $12(shipping included) by writting [sic] to:

Post Traumatic Pop Syndrome Research Fund
345 Elder St. Apt #201
Brooklyn, NY 11237

And I'd swear I searched for info on her a few weeks back, when I bought her first cd, and nothing came up. Not the fan page, not the movie site, nada.

It's like I've slipped into some bizarre parallel universe, where the only noticeable difference is. . . Imani Coppola's career?

Update: Singing Biologist trailer in Real Media format, if you don't do that Quicktime thang.

But IMDB has nothing.

Ok, um, in this universe, on Star Trek, did Spock always have a beard, or just in the one episode?

And have the Cubs ever played the White Sox in the World Series?

I want to know just how freakish this place is. . .

Posted by Aaron at 2:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Tend not to talk about linguistics that much, despite the degree. And sort-of blow people off when they ask about it, because frankly I already spend more than enough time trying to convince people that no, they don't know what the fuck they're talking about and really, really need to stop acting like they do, and trying to translate complex ideas to a level where they can be understood by those with a non-splitting family tree.

Yes, I am in a wonderful mood today. Good of you to notice.

Slashdot mentions the review of Morphix-NLP I noticed on Field Methods a few days back, but neglected to mention.

I'm mentioning it now.

An Introduction to Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST)

RST was originally developed as part of studies of computer-based text generation. A team at Information Sciences Institute (part of University of Southern California) was working on computer-based authoring. In about 1983 part of the team, (Bill Mann, Sandy Thompson and Christian Matthiessen) noted that there was no available theory of discourse structure or function that provided enough detail to guide programming any sort of author.

Responding to this lack, RST was developed out of studies of edited or carefully prepared text from a wide variety of sources. It now has a status in linguistics that is independent of its computational uses.

[. . .] RST is intended to describe texts, rather than the processes of creating or reading and understanding them. It posits a range of possibilities structure -- various sorts of "building blocks" which can be observed to occur in texts. These "blocks" are at two levels, the principal one dealing with " nuclearity " and " relations " (often called coherence relations in the linguistic literature.) A second level of structures, called schemas , is not presented here.

I mention this because RST Tool is probably -- haven't checked -- on the Morphix cd:

This manual describes the RST Tool, a graphical interface for marking up the structure of text. While primarily intended to be used for Rhetorical Structure (cf. Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST): Mann & Thompson 1988), the tool also allows the mark-up of constituency-style analysis, as in the Generic Structure Potential (GSP - cf. Hasan 1984; Halliday & Hasan 1985).

The tool works under Windows, Macintosh, UNIX and  LINUX operating systems, and requires the pre-installation of Tcl/Tk, a scripting language engine.

Link to Tcl.tk added to original. Because I felt like it.

Meanwhile, back at Sony Computer Science Laboratory Paris: Language, one topic under study is The production and recognition of emotions in speech:

The ability to express and recognize emotions or attitudes through the modulation of the intonation of the voice is fundamental to human communication. In particular, it allows to coordinate the social interactions with babies, like in language games (giving feedback, calling for attention).

[. . .] Emotions have some mechanical effects on physiology, like heart rate modulation or dryness in the mouth, which in turn have effects on the intonation of the voice. This is why it is possible in principle to predict some emotional information from the prosody of a sentence.

We are investigating how to control the pitch (fundamental frequency) and energy of synthetic speech signal so that a robot can express attitudes or emotions that can be recognized by humans.

God bless Sony. They're wacky.

Moving further east, we reach Sony Computer Science Laboratories Inc. (Japan branch), where there's folks like Katashi Nagao:

I have been researching the human-computer interaction in which natural language is the principal interaction medium. My current research objective is to integrate natural language with other nonverbal modalities. This so-called multimodal interaction pursues a smooth interaction by combining linguistic and non-linguistic contexts. In my opinion, the research on multimodal interaction can be categorized in two classes. One is agent-orientation that considers computers (or software modules) as social individuals that can converse with humans and perform tasks cooperatively with humans. The other is real-world-orientation that embeds computers into physical circumstances or makes them be always with humans. These computers can be aware of humans' real-world situations, be cognizant of their personal information, recognize their intentions from their speech and actions, and support them automatically.

Seem like nice folk, based on the Prospectus of Sony Computer Science Laboratories:

The Sony Computer Science Laboratories was founded in February 1988 for the sole purpose of conducting research relating to computer science. Our objective is to contribute extensively to social and industrial development through original research that looks ahead to the 21st century and has the potential for achieving breakthroughs in computer development. It is our policy to make public the results of our research. Research currently under way here is focused on distributed operating systems, computer networks, programming languages, human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence, complex systems and other fundamental aspects of next-generation computers. With work in these field as a starting point, we plan to expand into extensive research in the computer science. Each member of the Sony Computer Science Laboratories sets his or her own research goals within these basic research themes. Results in any format such as research software or technical papers are published under the names of the individual researchers. This is because we believe that research should be carried out by a group under its own initiative and with the freedom of its individual members, and that a laboratory should be a place dedicated to supporting this activity. The results achieved by each member are evaluated through such media as technical papers, research software products, and domestic and international conferences and professional associations. Therefore, in our compensation system, which is completely unrelated to seniority, each members is financially compensated in accordance with his or her achievements.

Any road up, have come to the conclusion that if someone isn't interested in the material here, no one is forcing them to read any of it. Same applies if you're offended by any of it. You can always, you know, fuck off.

Don't let that screen door hit you in the ass on the way out.

On second thought, let it hit you.

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

According to this article at Africana.com, the bankruptcy of Vanguarde means that Savoy Magazine, along with Body & Soul and Honey, are now black history.

Yes, I'm late noticing this, and if I read hiphopmusic.com more frequently I would have known last month, and I suck, and let's move on, shall we?

Or back. The subject/title is Black History, and there's lots to know:

Past Imperfect: Black Iraq

Thirty years of black and Diaspora studies have shed light on the scale, intensity and impact of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade — the 400-year traffic of Africans between the continent, Europe and the colonies of the alleged new world. Less attention has been paid, though, to the millennium-long slave trade that scattered African slaves throughout present-day Iraq, Turkey, Kuwait, Iran, Pakistan and India. Emerging European capitalism and the labor requirements of cash crops like sugar, cotton and tobacco drove the Trans-Atlantic trade; the Trans-Saharan trade, which flourished from the eighth century AD through the 1840s, brought African labor to the hazardous enterprises of pearl diving, date farming and the raw, brutal work of clearing Iraqi salt marshes. African boys were commonly castrated to serve as eunuch guards of royal harems. Unlike those who were enslaved in the west, however, blacks enslaved in the Arabic-speaking world also served as guards, sailors and high-ranking soldiers. In the 19th century, Basra was one of the most profitable slave ports in the region, commonly offering slave traders as much as 50% returns upon their "investments."

There has been a black presence in Basra — present-day Southern Iraq — as early as the 7th century, when Abu Bakra, an Ethiopian soldier who had been manumitted by the prophet Muhammad himself, settled in the city. His descendants became prominent members of Basran society. A century later, the writer Jahiz of Basra wrote an impassioned defense of black Africans — referred to in Arabic as the Zanj — against accusations of inferiority which had begun to take root even then.

Maybe I should try to dig up a translation of that. There still seem to be quite a few people convinced of our inferiority.

Or maybe just my individual inferiority to them. Don't know, don't care.

Also noted/linked at hiphopmusic:

The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record

The hundreds of images in this collection have been selected from a wide range of sources, most of them dating from the period of slavery. This collection is envisioned as a tool and a resource that can be used by teachers, researchers, students, and the general public -- in brief, anyone interested in the experiences of Africans who were enslaved and transported to the Americas and the lives of their descendants in the slave societies of the New World.

I haven't looked through that yet.

I will one day. It's something I feel that I should look through.

Just. . . not today.

Posted by Aaron at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

You're not responsible for those, according to the Noamster.

Still, this is still theoretically a democracy, even if that last election didn't count, so we do all bear some responsibility for this:

Bush's 'Global Gag Rule' Blamed for Abortion Deaths:
Published on Friday, December 12, 2003 by the San Francisco Chronicle
U.S. Policy Blamed for Abortion Deaths in Ethiopia
'Global Gag Rule' Prevents Agencies from Discussing Pregnancy Alternatives

DUNA, ETHIOPIA -- Yemmi Samta didn't know that her 14-year-old-daughter, Saron, was pregnant until she found her unconscious and bleeding profusely on the dirt floor of her ramshackle house.

Samta begged a neighbor to load Saron onto a donkey cart and take her to the nearest clinic, 12 miles away. But the girl died on the way from septicemia, a form of blood poisoning, and loss of blood caused by an illegal abortion.

"I held her and pleaded to God not to take her," Samta recalled. "God took her to his arms, and I saw the life go from her body."

Saron's death represents a staggering reality about women and mortality in Africa. African women have a 1 in 16 chance of dying while pregnant, according to a report released last month by the World Health Organization, the United Nations Population Fund and UNICEF.

[. . .] The ban -- first announced by President Ronald Reagan in 1984 and rescinded by President Bill Clinton in 1993 -- prohibits U.S. financing to organizations that perform or counsel abortions or provide post-abortion counseling, even if they do not terminate pregnancies themselves.

"Hospitals tell us they still see many deaths from illegal abortions," said Amare Bedada, executive director of the Family Guidance Association of Ethiopia, a 37-year-old domestic health organization. "If we are going to keep women healthy and alive, we have to provide abortion-related advice."

[. . .] "By depriving us of contraceptives, we now face an increase in unwanted pregnancies," Bedada said. "Women are once again using abortion as a routine contraception, not as an emergency measure."

That last, of course, would be the predictable consequences.

Here's that bit linked earlier from an interview with Chomsky:

You know, it's a very simple ethical point: You're responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions. You're not responsible for the predictable consequences of somebody else's actions. The most important thing for me and for you is to think about the consequences of your actions. What can you effect? These are the things to keep in mind. These are not just academic exercises. We're not analyzing the media on Mars or in the 18th century or something like that. We're dealing with real human beings who are suffering and dying and being tortured and starving because of policies that we are involved in. We, as citizens of democratic societies, are directly involved in and are responsible for. And what the media are doing is insuring that we do not act on our responsibilities, and that the interests of power are served, not the needs of the suffering people, and not even the needs of American people who would be horrified if they realized the blood that is dripping from their hands because of the way they are allowing themselves to be deluded and manipulated by this system.

What about the Third World? Well, despite everything, and it's pretty ugly and awful, these struggles are not over. The struggle for freedom and independence never is completely over. Their courage, in fact, is really remarkable and amazing. I've personally had the privilege, and it is a privilege, of witnessing it a few times in villages in Southeast Asia and Central America, and recently in the occupied West Bank, and it is astonishing to see. It's always amazing, at least to me it's amazing, I can't understand it, it's also very moving, and very inspiring, in fact, it's kind of awe-inspiring. Now, they rely very crucially on a very slim margin for survival that's provided by dissidence and turbulence within the imperial societies. How large that margin is, is for us to determine.

I don't imagine the use of "we" and "us" in that passage by the professor of linguistics is accidental.

Posted by Aaron at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Of course, you consistently have a veritable cornucopia of entertainment options, but sight-unseen I second this suggestion:

SHIRIN NESHAT, Asia Society and Museum, 725 Park Avenue, at 70th Street, (212) 517-2742, through Feb. 15. If you're in the mood for a moving story, briefly and beautifully told, drop by Shirin Neshat's video installation. The piece is titled "Tooba," the Koranic name for a tree in paradise that provides sustenance and shelter to those in need. Nearly every religion has a similar image. Ms. Neshat gives it a distinctly feminist cast, associating it with the figure of a woman under assault in a world dominated by men. In this case, a woman who appears to be hiding under a tree to escape pursuers is absorbed into its trunk: simple miracle, told with the highly stylized grace of a medieval mystery play. Hours: Tuesdays through Sundays, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Fridays to 9 p.m. Admission: $7; $5, students and 65+ (Holland Cotter).

Mentioned seeing her installation at the Walker last August; the one mentioned in the Art Listing weren't included. I think.

Want to know more? Try Asia Society Event - Exhibition: TOOBA: Shirin Neshat. Couldn't hurt, might help.

Posted by Aaron at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Poor design choice on the part of RedEye (the best red paper in town, they claim, as if there's any distinction in this, considering the competition), but what can you do?

Anyway, currently residing at http://www.redeyechicago.com/cover.htm, we have (why am I linking this twice? Just am) Sexy city: Adult-oriented businesses thrive despite regulations:

Revenue figures for adult-oriented businesses in the Chicago area aren't readily available, though the businesses have to register with the city's Department of Revenue.

A quick glance at online listings for Chicago After Dark, an "upscale adult leisure-time guide," gives an indication of the adult industry here—80 video stores in Chicago and the suburbs that sell or rent adult videos; six gentlemen's clubs (a.k.a. strip clubs); and a handful of adult book stores. There also are dozens of phone numbers for area escorts and massage parlors.

[ Read more in Friday's RedEye ]

Only if it's free, people. I ain't paying for that shit.

Want to know more? There was a CNN.com article, Sex sells, especially to Web surfers: Internet porn a booming, billion-dollar industry, that I was going to email to the self-appointed leader of The Emerging Pornographic Majority, seeing as I have nothing to contribute on the subject.

I did erotica.

It was tasteful.

Oh, and I didn't send the link because I saw that photo at the top of Oliver's page and wanted to slap the smirk off his face.

Again.

It's an unconscious reflex, I think.

Anyone else get that, or is it just me?

Posted by Aaron at 9:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Thinking about a day trip to Shampoo-Banana this weekend, mostly because I want to pick up some seeded sourdough french bread at Strawberry Fields (if you tried some, you'd know it's worth the trip), but it turns out Over the Rhine is doing a show there at the Highdive Saturday night. Never been to the place -- might have not existed, or had a different name, when I lived down there -- and Martyrs' is a very good place for a show, as I found out seeing Happy Rhodes a few weeks back. Decisions, decisions. . .

Any Chi/Shampoo residents on the fence about seeing 'em, George emailed me a couple articles a few weeks back, and I don't think I ever got 'round to posting them. Or thanking him for sending them. Because I suck.

First off, Just about a Masterpiece:

Over the Rhine celebrate their tenth album by making it a double. What we get is one of the most powerful discs they've ever recorded, the soulful gospel/folk/rock that they do best. That disc is followed by another, more adventurous and experimental effort. Karin Bergquist sings like her life depends on it. She and her husband, songwriter/ keyboardist/ guitarist Linford Detweiler, have penned some of their most poetic and inspiring lyrics, taking us on a tour of heartbreak and struggling faith. Call it a heart attack in the heartland. You're unlikely to hear better albums all year.

And also, Coming Home to Ohio:

'Over the Rhine' has been the moniker over several combinations of performers, but two names have stayed the same—Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist. They're two unique singer/songwriters born in the Ohio Valley that first had a love for music, then found a love of collaboration, and eventually fell into the kind of love about which most great songs have been written. Currently gearing up for a major tour, Detweiler and Bergquist are joined by bassist Rick Plant, who recently toured with Buddy Miller; drummer Will Sayles; and multi-instrumentalist Paul Moak for what promises to be one of the most thrilling live shows ever to take place under the banner Over the Rhine.

I caught up with Linford a couple of weeks after witnessing their tour kickoff concert at the Cornerstone festival in Illinois. We chatted a bit about the festival and its remarkable history, and then got down to business discussing the new project.

"I" in this case being:

Coinciding with the double CD release of OHIO, we bring you a double dose of Over The Rhine; an album review and interview, both brought to you by special arrangement from Communiqué and author Jeffrey Overstreet. Please take time to visit his website, Looking Closer

And "we" is Communiqué: An Emergent Arts Journal. The current edition of which also features a review Befriended by The Innocence Mission.

Among other things. Noted the name of the group on the main page; didn't realize they had a new cd out.

np - Claire Voyant - Bittersweet.

Posted by Aaron at 8:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Despite my mentioning them here, more likely than not.

First off, Over the Rhine:

Sun Dec 14: Chicago IL, Martyr's

As in, this Sunday. Right. I can do this.

Next up, Emmylou Harris:

12/22/2003 - Mon : Allstate Arena
Emmylou Harris and Spyboy open for Dave Matthews and Friends featuring Trey Anastasio.

Um, I saw a hockey game at Allstate Arena last night. This does not strike me as the best venue for a show. But, Emmylou. Decisions, decisions. . .

And I think that's it.

Unless, y'know, I'm forgetting something. . .

Posted by Aaron at 5:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

I did ask nicely, I thought.

Gave it another go my own self:

"The Queen of Swords is a very private person, one who keeps to herself. Proud and withdrawn, she nevertheless keeps a sharp watch over her realm and makes her presence felt in subtle but effective ways. She is a somber, stately person who holds her sword pointed downward to signify pacification by force."

I'm not sure this is an improvement.

Particularly given the context in which it came up:

The card at the top left represents how you see yourself. Queen of Swords: Sharp, quick-witted, keen person. Intense perceptions. A subtle person. May signify a widow or woman of sadness. Mourning. Privation. Absence. Loneliness. Separation. One who has savored great happiness but who presently knows the anxiety of misfortune and reversal.

But am I a Professional Widow?

Posted by Aaron at 3:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, went to see The Wolves, anyway. But there were a few fights, and isn't that what you're really paying for?

Actually, it was a free ticket, supposedly, since I went to the season opener. As has happened with every Wolves game I've attended, they ain't win.

I am not a jinx.

In other news, Lisa became the first person to call me on wearing the dreads in a Scrunchie; I can only assume my co-workers are pretending not to notice.

What? They're long enough that they're a bit of a nuisance, and this way they're not covering my ears or anything.

"But they're for girls!" Lisa protested.

"Yes. . .?" I replied.

Nice girl, but I just don't understand how her mind works.

For a start, why she agreed to be Redpac's roommate. . .

Posted by Aaron at 12:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

So, I'll probably be keeping schtum today. More than made up for it yesterday, I think.

Did want to mention (for the folks not on the mailing list) that MT-Blacklist v1.62 beta final is live and direct, as is an updated (as of 12/10) MT-Blacklist Master Copy.

And I realized that after sternly admonishing folks to update their blacklist, I neglected to explain how to update your blacklist. Luckily, Jay got it all under control.

If you're still not running the plugin, installation is a breeze, and it leaves your blog minty-fresh. Give it a go.

And that's it, I'm going to. . . work.

Posted by Aaron at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

From Dru Blood: More from Chapter 3 (drop by her place for context, he suggested):

Few abusive men rely entirely on verbal abuse or intimidation to control their partners. Being a nonstop bully is too much work, and it makes the man look bad. If he is abusive all the time, his partner starts to recognize that she's being abused, and the man may feel too guilty about his behavior. The abuser therefore tends to switch frequently to manipulating his partner to get what he wants. He may also sometimes use these tactics just to get her upset or confused.

There are some signs of manipulation by abusers that you can watch for:

• Changing his moods abruptly and frequently

Yep, I've done that. . .

• Denying the obvious about what he is doing or feeling.

. . . and that.

• Getting you to feel sorry for him

. . . um. . .

• Getting you to blame yourself, or blame other people, for what he does.

Eheh.

Right, think I'll have to pick up a copy of Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men. And try to use it for self-analysis instead of as an instruction manual. . .

I'm quite serious here.

If the self-mocking Veiny Evil has lent the impression that I'm not taking any blame for the end of my relationship with Heather. . . that's not right.

That's not right at all.

Except "blame" might not be the right word there, but damned if I know what is. Might could be the two of us could work out the whys and wherefores with a long conversation over some girly drinks, but since that probably ain't happening anytime soon. . .

Not sure how to end that sentence either.

Or know perfectly well, but don't care to admit it to myself, let alone the Great Unwashed dropping by here on a regular basis.

Cordelia would be so disappointed in me.

It seems I do have some tact after all.

Posted by Aaron at 4:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Is there a way to chmod a file on a Linux webserver using the command-line ftp client what ships with Windows 2000?

No reason.

Just curious.

And, y'know, making conversation.

And playing with my new Technorati Profile.

Update: A second geek question, this one about linguistics: Anybody got a decent link to a paper/thesis on the glottal stop in the sound system/phonology of AAVE/Black English/Ebonics/How Them Negroes Talk? Always wonder about that when I listen to Destiny's Child's Independent Women.

Geek. Linguistics. It's not like I didn't warn you.

Update: Ok, this one isn't from me, it's from Body and Soul: Calling all MSTies:

Anyway, while I'm on the subject, anyone have suggestions for MST episodes that a kid who loves them should not miss? (Avoiding the obvious. He already has Manos,Mitchell, and Eegah.)

Haven't seen an ep in years -- I never warmed to Mike as the host, for some reason -- so I ain't the one to help a sista out with this one. Anyone else?

Entry reached the long way via ALLABOUTGEORGE.com.

Remember, he's the good one.

Posted by Aaron at 2:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

In fact, I did, and it was ugly, and I ended up apologizing and feeling like an asshole, so let's avoid that this time around, shall we?

Leora The Sane links here and says nice things, so I feel I should reciprocate. She also refers to me as, "another Minnesota blog," which error I've emailed her about.

Politely, this time.

Perhaps the VESH is finally wearing off.

Returning to ripping things off from Die Puny Humans:

Author Susannah Breslin and illustrator Anthony Ventura are about halfway through their Fetish Alphabet. Originally inspired by Edward Gorey's The Gashlycrumb Tinies, the upcoming book replaces Gorey's portraits of ill-fated children with an A-Z roll call of unusual sexual preferences. Today's program, a preview of good things to come, is brought to you by the letter B...

That's from O R D O, a magazine/site I wasn't aware of until now, and will probably spend entirely too much time looking over later.

And. . . ok, perhaps it's not wearing off after all.

Update: Linked the site in one of those old entries. . . anyone got a copy of The Best of Maledicta they don't want no more? Guess I could look places other'n Amazon for the thing. . .

Also, from the Contents of Maledicta 13 (Coming around December 2003, they claim):

• The Intensifiers Fuck and Fucking Used by Famous Folks
• Dysphemism and Euphemism in the Erotica of Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin
• Swahili Terms for Vulva and Vagina
• Finnish Maledicta and Euphemisms

Yes, it's the last one pushed me over the top on getting the thing. Markety-mark-mark-mark.

Posted by Aaron at 1:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

From Die Puny Humans (and indirectly the Bad Signal Mailing list):

Fear of new things shortens life

Animals with an innate phobia of novelty have higher levels of stress hormones after a new experience and die significantly younger than their braver kin, new research has found. The work suggests that a lifetime of fearful stress can take an accumulated toll on health.

"It shows we need to consider personality traits and behavioural styles when trying to understand physiological mechanisms of health," says Sonia Cavigelli at the University of Chicago, Illinois, who conducted the study with her colleague Martha McClintock.

Stress is known to have many effects on health including triggering brain cell loss and reducing fertility. But it is also known in some cases to enhance the immune response for inflammation. So the lifelong effects on stress on an individual are difficult to gauge.

If you're here, I'm going to go out on a limb and say you're not a neophobe.

Probably the opposite, in fact.

That Bad Signal message I mentioned above contains a bit of what Warren Ellis would do with NEWXMEN if he was taking it over, which he isn't, so stop fucking asking.

It's quite good.

And no, I'm not quoting it.

Suffer, non-subscribing scum.

Posted by Aaron at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

And the song is n[ow] p[laying], as I'm wont to say:

I meant to ask you how to fix that car
I always meant to ask you about the war
And what you saw across a bridge too far
Did it leave a scar

Or how you navigated wings of fire and steel
Up where heaven had no more secrets to conceal
And still you found the ground beneath your wheels
How did it feel

Bang the drum slowly play the pipe lowly
To dust be returning from dust we begin
Bang the drum slowly I'll speak of things holy
Above and below me world without end

I meant to ask you how when everything seemed lost
And your fate was in a game of dice they tossed
There was still that line that you would never cross
At any cost

I meant to ask you how you lived what you believed
With nothing but your heart up your sleeve
And if you ever really were deceived
By the likes of me

Bang the drum slowly play the pipe lowly
To dust be returning from dust we begin
Bang the drum slowly I'll speak of things holy
Above and below me world without end

Gone now is the day and gone the sun
There is peace tonight all over Arlington
But the songs of my life will still be sung
By the light of the moon you hung

I meant to ask you how to plow that field
I meant to bring you water from the well
And be the one beside you when you fell
Could you tell

Bang the drum slowly play the pipe lowly
To dust be returning from dust we begin
Bang the drum slowly I'll speak of things holy
Above and below me world without end

Nubian Goddess Emmylou Harris, "Bang The Drum Slowly," from Red Dirt Girl

Posted by Aaron at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This one for funny, sexy, zaftig Margaret Cho:

Time for Holiday Presents!
------------------------------------------------------------------
If you place an order at our shop of $15 or more by December 20th we will give you an enhanced CD with so much exclusive Cho stuff you won't believe it. If you put the CD in your CD player, you'll be the very first to hear 5 rap songs from MC MC and B Nurse B (Margaret and Bruce Daniels) and when you put it in your computer, you'll be the first to see a clip from the upcoming films, "Revolution," and "Behind the Revolution," plus a few other surprises we know you'll love.

So give your friends & loved ones a little Holiday Cho this year and we'll give you this super special enhanced CD, autographed by MC MC herself, just for shopping at http://www.margaretcho.com/shop.

We'd like to thank God, Mommy & Assmasters everywhere...
------------------------------------------------------------------
That's right, Margaret's CD "Revolution," was just nominated for a Grammy for Best Comedy Album! Congratulations and Thank Yous are in order. Spread them amongst yourselves for helping make "Revolution" such a success!

Margaret's films on TV in 2004
------------------------------------------------------------------
In January, Margaret's films, "I'm The One That I Want" and "Notorious C.H.O," will air on Showtime. You can check the schedule here: http://www.margaretcho.com/television/television.htm.

See Margaret Live
------------------------------------------------------------------
Margaret continues to tour in the new year. We'd love to have you be part of the process as she works on new material for her next show at various comedy clubs across the country. It can get kind of rough sometimes in those clubs and we love to see your friendly faces out there. Schedule and ticket information here: http://www.margaretcho.com/tour. Please check every now and then as we are adding more dates.

Team Cho wishes you all the best of Holidays and a fabulous New Year.

Her competition (but it's an honor just to be nomin-- fuck that noise, I'm rooting for her) for that Best Comedy Album Grammy, according to VirginMegaMagazine, are:

• A Life In Comedy, Garrison Keillor
• Poodle Hat, "Weird Al" Yankovic
• Shut Up, You F***ing Baby! , David Cross
• Team Leader, George Lopez

Go Cho!

Update: Mark.

NPR : Commentary: Gay Marriage:

Comedian Margaret Cho has this commentary in support of gay marriage. She thinks gay people should be allowed all the outlandish marriage ceremonies that straight couples claim as their right, such as drive-through ceremonies in Las Vegas.

Total, predictable mark.

Update: Almost totally unrelated, except for my equally disturbing obsession with Margo Timmins, but there's too damned many entries today, and it's starting to worry me.

Signing up for the Cowboy Junkies mailing list, after getting this forward through Ecto:

We are a little (ok, a lot) late with our Junk Store Holiday Sale this year. We wanted to build the sale around our latest internet-only release, but there have been all sorts of delays in getting parts from our licensor in the UK. Anyways, the new CD is in, just in time for those post-Holiday-blues.

We have licensed a couple of early 1990's live recordings from Strange Fruit / BBC Records. This is the same company who put together the Radio One Sessions cd that we released last year. This cd is comprised of music from two concerts that were recorded by the BBC during The Caution Horses tour (1990) and the Black Eyed Man tour (1992) of the UK. They are beautiful sounding recordings of two excellent concerts. The disc is entitled In The Time Before Llamas and you can find out more info about it on our site at: http://www.cowboyjunkies.com/exclusives/llamas/index.html

The cd is only available in North America through our website and we are selling it for CND$15. You can go directly to the disc in the Junk Store by going to: http://www.maplemusic.com/product.asp\?dept_id=2&pf_id=01-106

Which brings me to our Holiday Special -- for a limited time you can buy In The Time Before Llamas and Waltz Across America (our internet only release of live recordings from our 1999 - 2000 tour of North America) for the bargain basement bonanza price of CDN$25 (which is about US$20). Think of the hours of fun comparing concerts -- or, if you already own Waltz Across America you can give it away to that special someone that you will inadvertently piss off over the holidays...think of it as a cheap -- I'm Sorry -- gift. The link for the bundled special is: http://www.maplemusic.com/product.asp\?dept_id=2&pf_id=01-107

All you North Americans should be aware that if you want to get the disc before Christmas Day and you want to use the more affordable surface mail you will have to get your order in before December 11th. For anyone outside of North America we have unfortunately missed the cut off date for guaranteed delivery before Xmas. But, as I said, we could all use a little post-Holiday music to bring us just a little further down. You can check out all of the Holiday shipping deadlines at: http://www.canadapost.ca/business/dec/send/deliveryschedule-e.asp

In other news -- .we have just finished mixing all of the songs for our new CD and are in the process of choosing which songs to go with and in what order. The album is tentatively titled One Soul Now and we are aiming for a world-wide June 2004 release. Which will mean will be seeing a lot of you out there next Summer.

Have a great holiday season and keep safe -- we'll be in touch.

Margo, Michael, Peter and Alan

Oh, and for once, the answer isn't 42.

It's 17.

If I did the maths right. . .

Hmm. Worked for Margo. . .

Google Image Search: Margaret Cho.

Ah.

That's dangerous, that is.

Posted by Aaron at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From the Lush newsletter I got in email. . . yesterday, apparently. I've worked my way up to yesterday. Yay me. Now to change the subscription on that over from the ahawk addy to the real one, like I did for Hanne's list. . .

Dear Lushies,
With Christmas only a couple of weeks away, right now is the perfect time to pick up the gift for everyone on your list.

Remember that with your order of $100 or more (product only) the SHIPPING IS ON US!

It's good stuff. You'll easily run up $100. And that's not Canadian, I'm talking $100 in real money.

Is there anyone out there I haven't offended? Because I'm trying.

I'm trying so very hard.

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

Argh.

Nalo Hopkinson: Wednesday, November 05, 2003

Here's the schedule for the tour for The Salt Roads. It's subject to change, so please verify details before you act on them. If we know each other and you drop by any of these, please come and say hi. I'd love to see familiar faces. Be aware, though, that I anticipate that I'll be frazzled and underslept, which will make it entirely possible that I wouldn't recognize my own mother. So bear that in mind if I look at you blankly, and just hand me a clue.

[. . .] Chicago, Illinois, USA

Monday, November 17, 2003
7:00 PM

57th Street Books
1301 East 57th Street
Chicago, IL

Tuesday, November 18, 2003
7:00 PM

Afro Centric Books
4655 South King Drive
Chicago, IL

Well, if I had actually gone to UC San Diego for the oh-so-useful PhD in Linguistics, I'm confident I would have missed her there at Mysterious Galaxy last night, too.

I will now grouse about my suckage for the rest of the day.

Grouse, grouse, tile grout, grouse.

Posted by Aaron at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Want to know more about ghost in the shell: [stand alone complex]?

The most serious brain-hacking crime was "Ghost Hack", a case where total individuality including past memories and body discretion of a certain person became the subject of the hacker. Various countermeasures were taken, such as the development of numerous protective walls and barriers along with reinforcement of regulations, not to mention security intensification within the neural network system.

But they failed to abolish cyber-crimes, thus resulting in a rat race: further development of protective walls and barriers, and the emergence of more intelligent and original hackers.

Wondering what the hell an AT field is?

The AT-Field (Absolute Terror Field):

There are four types of AT Fields. The first is the basic latent field inherent in all living beings. The next two are derived from the first and take either a passive or aggressive stance. The final type is a collection of specialized versions - only one of which will be discussed here.

Latent
All sentient life forms possess an AT Field - according to Kaoru. This includes Angels, EVAs, and even Humans. This latent AT Field can go unnoticed for an individual's whole life. The AT Field is what holds the bodies of humans together and ties their consciousness to that same body.

Didn't think so.

Update: There's a beautiful trailer for Standalone Complex (there's an inconsistency about whether Stand Alone is two words, or run together) that I got from. . . somedamnplace when I had DSL; doesn't seem to be at AnimeArt.com - Music & Video - Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex, but the ones that are there are quite nice too.

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

Or: Addendum to my previous.

This site is a multiracial, feminist, size-positive, queer-friendly, politics/pop culture/current events blog where any and all visitors and not only free, but actively encouraged to participate in discussions.

It's also a Stalinist dictatorship where free speech ends at the door, run by a Negro whose patience with whitefolks bullshit has already been exhausted through fiscal 2005.

There is no contradiction between these statements.

If you can't handle all that pseudo-intellectual posturing, here's the short version: Don't fucking get on my bad side, asshole.

Why yes, I did go Xmas shopping last night, how did you guess?

Ikea wasn't the usual madhouse. That's all I can say for it.

Update: One more thing. If you're trying to get in touch to bitch about, say, having had your IP banned or messages deleted, please leave the default subject line in place when you hit that mailto: link over yonder. Otherwise, your email will probably be lost in the spam deluge which I'm at the point of deleting en masse without bothering to check if it's from an actual person.

Not that I really want to hear from you in the first place.

Suggested soundtrack: Jerra, "Who Your Friends Are," by way of the invaluable Internet Underground Music Archive.

See also: *jerra.com* for more song downloads and assorted weirdness.

Posted by Aaron at 8:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Or: On message deletion, IP banning and thread closure.

So fuck ya'll all of ya'll
If ya'll don't like me blow me
Ya'll are gonna keep fuckin around wit me
And turn me back to the old me

[Chorus]
Nowadays everybody wanna talk like they got
something to say
But nothin comes out when they move they lips
Just a buncha gibberish
And muthafuckas act like they forgot about Dre

Now you wanna run around and talk about guns
Like I ain't got none
What you think I sold 'em all
Cause I stay well off
Now all I get is hate mail all day sayin Dre fell off
What cause I been in the lab wit a pen and a pad
Tryna get this damn label off
I ain't havin that
This is the millennium of Aftermath
It ain't gonna be nothin after that
So give me one more platinum plaque and fuck rap
You can have it back
So where's all the mad rappers at
It's like a jungle in this habitat
But all you savage cats
Knew that I was strapped wit gats
When you were cuddled wit a cabbage patch

Dr Dre lyrics - Forgot About Dre song text, Uppity-Negro remix.

The regulars here are all adults, and know how to comport themselves in public, so this isn't intended for them. But to all the University of Louisville whiteboys, 16 year old Aussies and LK gangbanger tourists dropping by recently?

Behave.

As is his wont these days, Management does not apologize for the inconvenience.

Posted by Aaron at 6:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

And have a perfectly good reason for doing so, I think.

One of the great early socialists said that the status of women in a society is a pretty reliable index of the degree of civilization of that society. If this is true, then the very low status of women in SF should make us ponder about whether SF is civilized at all.

The women's movement has made most of us conscious of the fact that SF has either totally ignored women, or presented them as squeaking dolls subject to instant rape by monsters—or old-maid scientists de-sexed by hypertrophy of the intellectual organs—or, at best, loyal little wives or mistresses of accomplished heroes. Male elitism has run rampant in SF. But is it only male elitism? Isn't the "subjection of women" in SF merely a symptom of a whole which is authoritarian, power-worshiping, and intensely parochial?

The question involved here is the question of The Other—the being who is different from yourself. This being can be different from you in its sex; or in its annual income; or in its way of speaking and dressing and doing things; or in the color of its skin, or the number of its legs and heads. In other words, there is the sexual Alien, and the social Alien, and the cultural Alien, and finally the racial Alien.

  - Ursula K. Le Guin, American SF and the Other

Remind me to explain how I got to the essay from Fictionwise. Long story.

Posted by Aaron at 4:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Total mark. It's sad, really.

But have there been any Trek novels featuring Uhura?

I could look it up, but I'm sure someone reading this knows more than I could possibly want to know. . .

Cover art (click for pop-up larger version) for The Lost Era: Catalyst of Sorrows:

"The mysterious return of a virulent scourge thought to be long extinct threatens devastation on a scale almost too horrific to contemplate. Zetha's only hope of stopping it is across the Neutral Zone-among the enemies of Romulus. Now Admiral Uhura, centenarian chief of Starfleet Intelligence, must decide what to do with the knowledge Zetha has risked her life to bring to her. In order to stop the spread of the disease that is already ravaging the Romulan Empire, Uhura must assign a hand-picked team of Starfleet officers to covertly trace the contagion to its source-and do whatever is necessary to contain it.

"But the world awaiting Lieutenant Benjamin Sisko, Lieutenant Tuvok, Dr. Selar, and Zetha herself is a hot zone of secrets, deceptions and subtle machinations, revealing an imminent holocaust beyond anything the away team expected, or what they could hope to combat."

Admiral Uhura.

I like the sound of that.

Any of the other books in this series any good? Swear the only Trek novels I've read were John Ford's How Much for Just the Planet? and pretty much anything with Diane Duane's name on it.

Like I said, I follow creators.

And she's one of the good ones.

Update: And there are some nice blurbs on her site about Margaret Wander Bonanno, author of the upcoming book. Plus:

"Margaret Wander Bonanno is savvy, creative, and deliciously naughty. The lady can write."
 - Nichelle Nichols: Star Trek's Uhura

Ok, all I needed to hear. I'll give you a review when I finish it.

Maybe.

Update 2: Well. It's already available as an e-book from Fictionwise. $5.99, more or less with various rebates. I've bought some short stories from them, but never a novel. Anyone have any experience reading one like that?

Posted by Aaron at 2:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

From the Times Online, we have Teens face obesity and infertility.

Scotsman.com goes with Health Warning to Fat, Smoking Teenagers .

I think The Independent wins out though, with Fat, infertile and mentally ill: future's bleak for adolescents, says BMA.

Scare Headlines?

What Scare Headlines?

From that last one -- they're all covering the same material, after all:

The next generation of adults is likely to be the fattest, most mentally disturbed and least fertile in history, doctors warned yesterday.

Teenagers who gorge on fast food, binge on alcohol and drugs, and indulge in promiscuous sex represent a public-health time bomb that could overwhelm the NHS, the British Medical Association (BMA) said. One fifth of youngsters aged 13 to 16 are overweight and a quarter of those aged 16 to 19 smoke at least once a week. British adolescents are drinking more than ever, and have one of the highest levels of alcohol use in Europe.

Their sexual health is also suffering, with as many as one in 10 girls aged 16 to 19 infected with chlamydia, a sexually-transmitted disease which can make sufferers infertile.

Checking the CDC 2002 National STD Surveillance Report:

In 2002, the overall rate of reported chlamydial infection among women in the U.S. (455.4 cases per 100,000 females) was over 3 times higher than the rate among men (130.1 cases per 100,000 males), likely reflecting a greater number of women screened for this infection. The lower rates among men suggest that many of the sex partners of women with chlamydia are not diagnosed or reported. However, with the advent of highly sensitive nucleic acid amplification tests that can be performed on urine, symptomatic and asymptomatic men are increasingly being diagnosed with chlamydial infection. From 1998 to 2002, the chlamydial infection rate in males increased by 54.7% (from 84.1 to 130.1 cases per 100,000 males) compared with a 19.6% increase in women over this period (from 380.8 to 455.4 cases per 100,000 females).

For women, the highest age-specific rates of reported chlamydia in 2002 were among 15- to 19-year-olds (2,619.1 per 100,000 females) and 20- to 24-year-olds (2,570.1 per 100,000 females). Age-specific rates among men, while substantially lower than the rates in women, were highest in the 20- to 24-year-olds.

In 2002, the rate of chlamydia among African-American females in the U.S. was 8 times higher than the rate among white females (1,638.3 and 202.5 per 100,000, respectively). The chlamydia rate among African-American males was 12 times higher than that among white males (573.7 and 48.6 per 100,000 respectively).

Math is hard, so I'm not going to run those numbers to determine the percentage. I'd probably get it wrong, anyway.

Not bothering looking up smoking, drinking or sexual activity rates either.

I'm sure they'd just scare me.

Posted by Aaron at 1:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Realized, chatting with Michelle yesterday, that I'm the cell phone equivalent of the person whose VCR clock keeps flashing 12:00. And that gag makes no sense to younger people, does it? Things don't seem to come with digital clock readouts on the front panel anymore, and they get the time from the local PBS station somehow. . .

So, decided to join the ranks of those with annoying ringtones. Since Michelle threatened deep hurting if I went for "Baby Got Back," I went with "Revolution" by some obscure little band from, of all places, fucking Liverpool.

Only things to come out of Liverpool are steers and queers, and they don't look like. .. wait, that's Texas. Never mind.

Also looked into developing for mMode, since I find it. . . annoying. . . that I can't read my own site on my phone.

Yes, this is an odd sentiment to express, and would not have had any meaning whatsoever as recently as fifteen years ago (if not ten).

Welcome to the 21st Century. Or the latter bit of the 20th, I'm slow.

Just registered for the developer program -- the free one, are you insane? -- so if this manages to hold my interest long enough, there might be a cell-enabled version of this thing soon.

Or I can run (one of) the XML/RDF feed thingees through a converter, but where's the fun in that?

Part of the impetus behind this is the article on DoCoMo in the September, 2001 Wired I picked up at Brown Elephant on Sunday. Fifty cents American, easier than lugging around the laptop to read the articles online.

One look at the 27th-floor Sky Lobby at NTT DoCoMo and you know you've reached the antechamber to something big. The elevators, swift and noiseless except for the crisp electronic ping that announces their arrival, deliver a constant stream of supplicants: Japanese executives in their obligatory business suits, Swedes and Finns looking ridiculously tall and blond, American engineering types pulling awkwardly at their ties. The place pulses with expectation and anxiety. Rising overhead for 17 floors are the offices of the corporate colossus behind i-mode, the world's most successful - almost its only successful - wireless Internet service.

So far, the wireless Internet has flopped spectacularly in every part of the world except Japan. WAP, the wireless application protocol that was supposed to put cell phone users on the Internet in the US and Europe, is memorable mainly for having inspired the slogan "WAP is crap." Yet i-mode, introduced with minimal expectations in February 1999, has attracted more than 25 million subscribers - one-fifth of Japan's population. New subscribers are still signing on at the rate of 43,000 a day, 1.3 million a month. The Internet is never mentioned in the ads they see; the i in i-mode stands for "information," and the logo - a large, stylized i - plays off the i that marks the information booths in subways and airports. Japan's infatuation with English-language product names even extends to DoCoMo itself: Ads proclaim it an acronym for "Do communications over the mobile network," but dokomo is also a word in Japanese. It means "everywhere."

Plus, the cover features a boom anime babe makes me think wrong things.

Another bit from that issue, from the bit I mentioned yesterday talking about manga (actually, a Top Ten list for the nation/culture):

9. EROTICA

"The Japanese have a long connection with rope, going back perhaps as far as 3,000 years. Prehistoric Japanese pottery was often designed with rope. In many of the Shinto shrines, you'll see huge ropes that mark the sacred ground. Decorative tying was used to symbolize good things; for example, the gift of money at a wedding would be wrapped in an intricate cord pattern. A kimono is tied onto the body: There isn't a single hook, snap, or button. Tying is an intimate part of the culture. Medieval samurai even had a martial art, hojo jitsu, dedicated to the art of tying up their captured enemy. At the turn of the 20th century, one gentleman, Seiu Ito, started photographing women in elaborate rope bondage and single-handedly popularized a style known as shibari." - Midori, author of The Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage (forthcoming from Greenery Press), was born in Kyoto.

Japanese rope bondage is spreading to the West: There are now American-based shibari Web sites and a West Coast shibari scene.

The Japanese adult entertainment industry produces 5,000 X-rated films a year. A censorship committee must screen each one for approval.

Added the link to Midori's BeautyBound.com, which I assume still works.

Not willing to check from work.

Unless I can check that from my phone. . .

. . . which would mean using it during a weekday, something I've been avoiding despite the fact that I do get 150 minutes with my plan for the month, and I doubt I've used 10.

Babbling. Cell phone geekery and Japanese bondage. And I'd so hoped I'd worked the VESH out of my system by now.

Update: As it happens, the phone browser reads regular old HTML just peachy, it's just the index page on this site is too friggin' huge for it to load.

Choked on one of the entries, too.

The problem is not the coding. The problem is that I'm a wordy bastard.

Also, think with the Gigafast card mentioned in the previous entry, that I got a cd with the drivers for chipset A, but a card featuring chipset B. You'd think, with 600+ MB of storage, they'd just toss all the drivers on the install cd.

And I think you'd be wrong.

There are updated drivers on their support page, but the serial number printed on the card doesn't match any of the three listed there. So I'm not sure which, if any, I'd have to download. And the things are huge. . .

Eh, will email and ask if there's another serial number besides the one on the bottom of the card. Or something.

Posted by Aaron at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Mundanes may wish to skip this entry.

Yes, I called you mundanes. You prefer muggles?

Latest MT-Blacklist plugin spammer blacklist is dated December 8th. If you're running MT-Blacklist -- and at this point, if you're running MovableType, you damn well should be, he wrote, glancing over at Jesse with anticipatory condemnation -- you owe it to yourself to add the updated file every once in a while. And to export your own; mine is at http://www.uppity-negro.com/blacklist.txt, which includes the ones from the master list and the random idjits who show up here but haven't made the master list yet.

Got Debian to recognize the Lucent Winmodem, more or less, by downloading the source and compiling the thing, rather than just adding the appropriate entries to my sources.list and letting apt-get take care of bidness. Still getting unresolved symbols using modprobe or insmod on lt_serial[.o], but figure adding the right stanzas to serial.conf and modules.conf will take care of them.

Warned you about the geek, didn't I?

Still nothing on the CardBus/PCMCIA wireless adapter front; the new, new kernel I compiled loads the right modules, but doesn't automagically configure the card. Which is probably too much to hope for, but I can have some illusions, right?

Yeah, that's what I thought. Sorry I asked.

Trouble is, the card, a Gigafast WF721-AEX -- which says on the box that it supports Linux -- comes in a variety of flavors, with a variety of chipsets, so there's a bit of poking about /proc and suchlike to figure out what I'm dealing with, then getting the right settings and modules.

Mind you, the card also says it supports Windows 98, but all it does is detect the card, bring up the New Hardware Wizard to install a PCI Ethernet Adapter, fail to find any driver whatsoever, and leave me with a big yella question mark for that socket.

Keep meaning to call/write Gigafast about that, but decided to tackle the GNU/Linux stuff first.

It's geekier that way.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled veiny evil, already in progress.

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

It's a whatever-has-Aaron's-minute-attention-span-at-the-moment blog, is what it is. And that's comics right now.

Except at this point I tend to follow creators rather than characters, which is why I'm thinking of giving Plastic Man a try -- Kyle Baker has demonstrated his ability to deliver.

And since Black Panther and The Crew are no longer going concerns, more's the pity, guess I'll have to check out CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON:

CAF is a mainstream super-hero book re-teaming the classic 1970's duo for a fresh look at the buddy-hero comic book. Over time, Sam (Falcon) Wilson has evolved into his own man, much more Cap's equal than his sidekick. He has learned a great deal from his mentor-- perhaps too much as Falcon embraces the same ideas and principles as Cap, but expresses them in different ways. In ways Cap does not always agree with.

The opening arc, "Two Americas," could more aptly be titled Captain America VERSUS The Falcon, as The Falcon has apparently violated National Security, and the government has given Cap only 24 hours to track Falcon down and bring him in. Falcon uses everything Cap's taught him against his former mentor as Falcon puts principle above the rule of law, the American ideal above the American government, but does so in a way Cap cannot entirely agree with. Which beggars the question, does the concept of principle over government apply only to Cap, or only to those things Cap himself agrees with?

"Two Americas" presents two points of view, too distinct truths about America, from two strong-willed and valiant men who have sworn to do what is right and to uphold justice-- even if that pursuit brings the two men on a collision course.

I'm pretty much done with "mainstream super-hero book[s]," but Priest also has a damned good track record. Wish he'd try his hand at something else, but the US ain't Japan, and super-hero stuff is pretty much the only game in town.

Which is an exaggeration to the point of being untrue, but I'm vamping.

Could write something about Jen Van Meter's Cinnamon, which is a Western, but that would take, like, thought and stuff. Vamping. Onward.

About that Japan line:

"Manga developed after World War II at the hands of one designer, Osamu Tezuka. He was influenced a great deal by the work of Carl Barks - the creator of Scrooge McDuck. Basically, Tezuka made an American art form Japanese by mixing Disney with sophisticated stories. In the US, McCarthyism lobotomized comics, reducing them to this one genre of costumed superheroes. But in Japan, comics grew into a literary art form: You have romance comics, historical comics, golf comics, sports comics ... they're made for every market and for every taste. Now Disney is taking cues from the Japanese. The Little Mermaid is heavily influenced by the manga style, and The Lion King is basically Tezuka's Kimba the White Lion."
  - As editor in chief of CPM Manga, Christopher Couch brings English-language versions of Japanese manga comics to American audiences.

Manga accounts for more than 40 percent of all books and magazines sold in Japan, an average of 15 titles per person each year.

Very long, very good piece on this at The Comics Journal, "You can't miss what you can't measure."

"[...] This past week, the folks at Viz threw a party because Shonen Jump hit the 500,000 mark in sales for a single issue (granted due to a promotional insert), before settling down to its average of 300,000. For those out of the loop, Jump is a manga anthology featuring some of the most popular children's television and gaming properties like Yu-Gi-Oh! and DragonBall Z. Top-selling card games and top-rated television shows means top-rated comics! Well not in the Direct Market. The latest estimates put Shonen Jump Volume 1 #11 at 225th place with 8,369 copies sold. That leaves the other 291,631 copies to be sold in other venues. Thus, the comic book Direct Market is able to represent approximately 2.9% of the total sales of this book. So this tells us that comic shops are reaching just shy of 3% of their potential audience with their current tactics. That's a lot of untapped potential (at least for this particular title, and remember that these are of that coveted youth market -- the next generation that we're NOT reaching). Books selling below this margin include CSI: Miami, the entire line of Disney comics, and DC's entire kid-friendly lineup, which includes the popular Powerpuff Girls and Scooby-Doo properties, as well as the classic Looney Tunes (stars of a major motion picture and a hugely hyped DVD release)."

Which is actually a quote from somewhere else, but I thought it illustrated the point.

Meaning I should explain what that point is here, but if you can't work it out yourself just from the numbers, I give up.

And know full well that Captain America & The Falcon probably ain't gonna be long for this Earth.

Posted by Aaron at 4:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From TechnoDyke (and we should all know their URL by now), Shopping by Stereotype: Guaranteed Hit Holiday Gifts for the Many Different Dykes on Your List, by our very own (well, she's her very own, I suppose) Michelle Jones:

Whether you're shopping for your girlfriend, your ex or your best friend, we've got recommendations that are a perfect fit for just about all of the lesbian stereotypes you're shopping for. We know stereotypes are generally bad but they can be really helpful when you're trying to make out a manageable holiday shopping list and we all need all the help we can get around the holidays so cut us some slack.

Options include:

• Granola Girls
• Mamacitas
• Nerdy Girl

And many many more.

There would be a comment here, possibly a snarky one, but see title.

Posted by Aaron at 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

So, poking around Google Groups for no particular reason whatsoever:

From: davisonj@en.ecn.purdue.[AIN'T-NEED-SPAMBLOCK-BACK-THEN - ed.].edu (John M Davison)
Newsgroups: rec.music.industrial
Subject: Re: Info on LA Style
Keywords: techno rave
Message-ID: <1992Apr22.235750.4834@en.ecn.purdue.edu>
Date: 22 Apr 92 23:57:50 GMT
References: <1992Apr18.035858.1090@gagme.chi.il.us> <1992Apr22.033051.2495@cs.brown.edu> <1992Apr22.164955.10752@ecst.csuchico.edu>
Organization: Purdue University Engineering Computer Network
Lines: 6

In article <1992Apr22.164955.10752@ecst.csuchico.edu> atman@ecst.csuchico.[AIN'T-NEED-SPAMBLOCK-BACK-THEN - ed.].edu (Thin Layer Of Pond Scum) writes:

>Are there any songs with rocky & bullwinkle samples?

    "Hey Rocky!" by Boris Badenough. I think it was a Chicago thing.

davisonj@ecn.purdue.[AIN'T-NEED-SPAMBLOCK-BACK-THEN - ed.].edu

And it's true:

Boris Badenough
Releases:

Hey Rocky!, 12" (Trax Records)

Appearances:

What's Up Rocky on The Chicago Trax Edition, CD (BCM Records)

Hey Rocky (Extended) on The History Of The House Sound Of Chicago (15-CD-BOX), CD (BCM Records)

Hey Rocky on The History Of The House Sound Of Chicago, 12x12" (BCM Records)

What's Up Rocky on Chicago Trax, 3xCD (Trax Records)

Whats Up Rocky on Chicago Trax, CD (Mirakkle Records)

Not part of the Trax catalog at EMusic, alas.

Or, as usual, I'm not looking hard enough.

Lots of House there though.

If you like that sort of thing.

So, think I should write that guy?

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

Seems to be a meme whose time has come.

From The Village Voice: Features: American Gods by R.C. Baker:

Alex Ross, one of America's preeminent comic-book artists, recounts the genesis of his 1997 Uncle Sam comic. "[Writer] Steve Darnall and I both felt that our culture was at a crossroads of its own selfishness," he says from his studio near Chicago. "The American spirit was at a very low ebb," he adds, pointing to the profligate Clinton economic boom as "a blinding factor."

Asked to do a cover painting for this issue of the Voice—a riff on the finger-flipping patriot deemed too provocative for the hardcover edition of Uncle Sam—the chronically overscheduled Ross hesitates, then chuckles. "If you'd asked for anything else, I'd have had to say no. But I've wanted to get that one out there for a long time."

"Uncle Sam represents the government," Ross says, "and our current government is giving us the finger. But you can turn that around and see the true spirit of the nation giving it back to a government that is telling its citizens, 'We know what's best—don't question us.' That finger is definitely a fuck-you back at this government."

Noticed a poster at Chicago Comics yesterday, walking from Pick Me Up to the El station on Belmont, advertising "a joint signing [by Alex Ross and Chip Kidd] for the release of JLA - LIBERTY & JUSTICE and MYTHOLOGY: THE DC COMICS ART OF ALEX ROSS" on Saturday, December 13th, 3 to 6 PM.

Pretty sure I got the (oversized, gorgeous) Superman book he did, but not the other. . . two, at this point?

Update One: By way of The Comics Journal: ¡Journalista!:, coverage of another Alex Ross signing in the Toledo Blade.

Update Two: The Crew #7 and the first issue of Kyle Baker's Plastic Man are in shops even as you read this.

As is Superman/Thundercats.

Yes, you read that right. Superman/Thundercats.

Perhaps you skimmed that the first few times.

SUPERMAN/THUNDERCATS

The Earth is doomed.

Posted by Aaron at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

By way of Slave Labor Graphics:

New Artwork from Jhonen Vasquez in L.A. Weekly
Check out the strip (and, once again, we remind you that we don't mean that kind of strip) Jhonen did for super*Market, an independent comic convention that took place in Los Angeles the weekend of November 7. No, the "enlarge image" link doesn't work for us, either. That's because the link has the wrong URL. Fortunately, we were smart enough to figure out that the real link is here.

Everyone here loves Jhonen, right?

I mean, he's no Kris Dresen, whose work you can adorn your body with and help support TechnoDyke.com with t-shirts, jerseys and assorted other swag, but, y'know, he does some nice stuff too.

That's. . . not a grammatical sentence of English, is it? Well, I tried. . .

Odd day yesterday. Started downloading Debian security updates after trashing the existing install and starting over from scratch (no, the Lucent internal modem still isn't working, but I'm living in hope), went for a walk waiting for 70+ MB to fit down a very narrow pipe, and ended up at Chicago Diner.

At about a 9:15.

They open at 10.

So I headed the couple extra blocks over to Pick Me Up Cafe. And hope I wasn't too obnoxious sitting there having a conversation with Neo on the cell. I really don't want to be one of those people.

About that initial walk: I live, more or less, at Clark and Berwyn (I know you're out there, Son of Sven fans, shut the hell up).

Call it 5200 north.

Chicago Diner is located at about 3400 north.

It was a nice morning for a walk.

Also, I cannot gauge distances for shit.

I took the Red Line home.

Then later I had dinner at Heartland Cafe and tried not to annoy The Hotness That Is Nina X, since the full (or is it just almost full?) moon seemed to be making everyone, staff and customers, even more freakish than normal. And if you've been to the Heartland, you know that's quite freakish indeed.

And somehow managed to see Antonia's Line at some point too.

Just don't ask for a timeline on any of this.

See, I had something called a Zombie at Pick Me Up (and only see from that last link that they do, in fact, offer vegan breakfasts, since I only looked at the hot drinks on the menu yesterday, because I am an idiot), which if I remember right is two shots of espresso in a huge friggin' cup of joe, and although I might have slept since then, I can't really swear to that.

Anyway, um, yes, new Jhonen Vasquez art. Go look.

Oh yeah, and at some point I ended up at Brown Elephant. Woman next to me, wearing a fetching big black leather jacket and nothing vaguely resembling makeup, was riffling through a socket set to make sure all the pieces were included. And I looked over at her and said, "Stereotype."

And she paused.

And then laughed and admitted that, um, yes, she did have power tools at home.

I did not further inquire what sorts of power tools.

Note to self: Do not venture out in public when veiny, evil, stupid, horny and buzzing on entirely too much coffee, you start hitting on random butches in resale shops.

Posted by Aaron at 8:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

One: New City Chicago: The cock crows - Is Big Chicks near the end?:

As The Daley Center hosts the hearing regarding the potential closing of Big Chicks, the crowd breathes heavily on one another.

"Everyone must pass through security today," a uniformed guard says to more than fifty groaning people waiting outside the courtroom, all supporters of the beloved Uptown gay and lesbian bar. "And if your cell phones go off, you're out." They shift through the line, only to find that they have to wait some more, as the courtroom is full.

The previous night, Big Chicks owner Michelle Fire sent out an email begging for customer support, and she got her wish. Dozens turned out to intimidate the Liquor License Control Commission. The judge's final decision was to not decide at all, postponing the case until January 13. Until then, the bar's heart still beats.

One - Extended data A:

Big Chicks takes its name from a moniker its owner, the sizable Michelle Fire, picked up on a trip to India. The natives there had trouble pronouncing "Michelle," so they simply called her "Big Chick." Others have called her "The World's Coolest Den Mother," because she is so close to the mostly gay customers who patronize her bar. As she notes, "we play well together." Fire's art collection, which hangs on the walls of the bar, is devoted to images of women (not the usual fare for a gay bar), including a semi-nude drawing of the owner. Deejays spin Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

One - Extended data B:

Best of Citysearch 2003: Gay & Lesbian Bar in Chicago:

2. Big Chicks: This Uptown tavern is one of the most straight-friendly gay taps you'll ever encounter.

Two: Shasta MacNasty: Pretty Fat Girls:

These fat girls are pretty. And these girls are pretty fat. Seriously. I'm fat not, just not as big or as tall. Let me admit to you that I have a love/hate relationship with my body and other fat women.

[. . .] I admire AnnMarie because only is she damn cute, but she's effing HUGE and works her shit like she could give a rat's chance in hell what you think. This is clearly evidenced in her booty video. I don't know anyone personally, thin or fat, who'd make a movie shaking her ass, then put it on her web site. Not even me, so don't look for it :)

Ah, me. In the words of the immortal poet Mystikal, "Shake ya ass.

"But watch yourself."

Stole that gag from Jon Stewart when he hosted the Grammys.

Yes, I've been waiting for a chance to use it. Sue me.

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

Wondered about the amount of traffic (not much, but noticeable) from Right Wing News lately. They've announced their 2003 Warblogger Awards. And this place was shut out entirely. Last year, I was annoying as Atrios. Well. I'll try to contain my disappointment.

Made the mistake of hitting the front page of the place -- there's an allegedly humorous piece about Rodney King being beaten to death which I would link, but then I would have to slit my wrists -- and also this piece of brilliance:

The story of the 37 linguists who were kicked out of the military for being gay under "don't ask, don't tell" has been floating around for quite a while and has been used to bash the policy. However many of these linguists were trainees and a large percentage of trainees flunk out of the program. On top of that, not all of them were studying Arabic, so it's not as if their loss was that big of a deal. Besides, are they supposed to get a free pass on the rules that everyone else in the military has to live by just because they're linguists? They knew the rules (which are more lenient than the military would prefer by the way) before they joined up and if they couldn't abide by them, they shouldn't have gotten into the military in the first place.

Come to think of it, there are multiple correct answers to the challenge posed in the title.

And I'm sure John has perfectly good reasons for not joining up himself. He may even have mentioned them at some point, but I keep forgetting to check.

Actually, have any of the civilian warbloggers ever discussed why they're still civilians?

Just saying is all.

Posted by Aaron at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

But the e-mail said to forward at him.

Or more likely, given the subject matter, her:

CALL FOR FEMINIST ZINES
Calling all zine-making women and grrrls! At its June 2004 conference in Milwaukee, the National Women's Studies Association will for the first time designate an entire exhibit table for a zine display. We're looking for current zines with a feminist edge or outlook, however you might define that. More information about the conference, which is titled "Women in the Middle: Borders, Barriers, Intersections," is available at this website: http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/CWS/nwsa/

Even if you can't attend the conference, you can have your zine displayed. - For print/paper zines, just send samples (preferably one copy each of two different issues) and full information about how to order or subscribe. We'll display the samples at the conference, where we'll also give interested browsers a handout listing all the zines on display, with contact/order information for each.

After the conference, the sample issues will be donated to a university library collection, campus women's center, or other worthy repository of printed materials, where your zine can continue to make its mark. If your zine is online only, send us the URL and we'll include information about your e-zine on the handout.

Deadline: April 1, 2004. Send your samples and information, and indicate whether or not you'll be attending the conference in person:
JoAnne Lehman
ATTN: NWSA Zines
430 Memorial Library
728 State Street
Madison, WI 53704

Questions? Write to jlehman@library.wisc.edu

I still think Will is an odd name for a girl, though. Short for Wilhemina, maybe?

Posted by Aaron at 3:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

Flawless victory.

The Immortals - Mortal Kombat theme

Mortal Kombat!
Mortal Kombat!
Fight!
Excellent.
Liu Kang
Sonya
Jax
Kitana
Jade
Sub-Zero
Scorpion
Cyrax
Smoke
Sheba
Motaro
Hahahahaha!

Choose your destiny.
Flawless victory.
Fight!
Mortal Kombat!
Finish her!
Excellent.
Liu Kang
Sonya
Jax
Kitana
Jade
Sub-Zero
Scorpion
Cyrax
Smoke
Sheba
Motaro
Hahahahaha!

Brutality.
Animality.
Fatality.
Superb.
Choose your destiny.
Flawless victory.
Fight!
Mortal Kombat!
Finish him!
Well done.
Outstanding.
You'll never win!
Danger.
I win.
Hahahahahaha!
Choose your destiny.
Flawless victory.
Fight!
Mortal Kombat!
Finish him!

Song originally posted when I went, um, pink and evil, in an entry titled your god is dead and no one cares if there is a hell i will see you there.

It has animated Hello, Kitty gifs.

Posted by Aaron at 1:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Namely, Brainpowered 30: Nothing Happened:

In the face of all that, it's an understandable message to broadcast: find a place away from politics, because this is a time in which voting genuinely doesn't matter. We're all fucked. Apathy is nothing to be ashamed of. Anger is pointless.

And certainly we're in a time where anger in art has largely gone away. This isn't the cool detachment of post-modernism, so much as just a turning inward. The kind of stuttery lurching rise of emo over the last couple of years is a case in point: a total defanging of pretty much any working definition of punk in service of whining about how you've got no fucking girlfriend. "Emotional punk" = Crying Ugly Kid Music. There should be a sign in guitar shops: "We reserve the right to refuse sale to people who want to write songs about wearing glasses and being dumped by girls who didn't know your name anyway."

I've mentioned him being my role model, yes?

Oh, and has DC/Vertigo gotten 'round to collecting the last issue of TRANSMETROPOLITAN in trade yet? Does everyone understand why we all wanted to kill the bastard when we read it?

Posted by Aaron at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Elvis Mitchell interviewed Rebecca Miller about her short story collection turned film Personal Velocity, on the Wednesday, November 20, 2002 edition of The Treatment.

Based on Rebecca Miller's acclaimed book of short stories, "Personal Velocity" tells three tales of women who have reached a turning point in their lives.

Kyra Sedgwick is Delia, a spirited working-class woman from small town New York who leaves her husband and sets out on a journey to reclaim the power that she has lost.

Parker Posey is Greta, a cookbook editor who is "rotten with ambition" and struggling (not too hard) with issues of fidelity to her kind, but unexciting husband.

Fairuza Balk is Paula, a troubled young woman who takes off on a journey with a young hitchhiker after a strange, fateful encounter on a New York street.

As each of the three stories unfold, the film follows its characters as circumstances force them into an awakening of their inner selves and an emergence on their own life's paths.

Of course it has Parker Posey. There's a Federal mandate involving independent films and Parker Posey.

Seriously it is a very good film, and I can't recommend it strongly enough.

And I'd rather like to not ever see the first segment, with Kyra Sedgwick, ever again.

Not because it's bad. Because it's that good, and that powerful.

And that's just my opinion.

It's possible to disagree without being disagreeable, I hear.

Could tie this in to Dru's discussion of the 'C' word, but I'm just not feeling up to it. Erm. Sorry. Imagine there's a transitional sentence here or something.

I don't think it applies to Kyra Sedgwick's character either, if you're wondering.

Update: Idiot. Talked a bit with Jason a few days back, and he mentioned that he'd said:

I'm also throwing no rotten tomatoes at Personal Velocity. Maybe because Parker Posey plays a character that seems so familiar to me or because Kyra Sedgewick's Delia feels like such an honest, raw, real person or maybe just because it's a short film that feels important and powerful like good short stories are supposed to feel. I don't know. I just absolutely loved these stories. And Fairuza Balk is, per usual, so choice in a crazy goth way.

The man don't listen to me, so could someone else warn him off the crazy goth girls?

I mean, crazy alone is cool. Goth, always good. But that unique combination can only lead to tears.

And blood.

Lots and lots of blood.

Posted by Aaron at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (1)

Giles: Cordelia, have you actually ever heard of tact?
Cordelia: Tact is just not saying true stuff. I'll pass.

The late, lamented Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Killed by Death.

Anyway, tact, manners, politeness, all that good stuff -- and it is good stuff, your sainted Grandmother would turn over in her grave you ain't manage to learn any -- these should not be used to obscure or ignore unpleasantness.

Or, as Cordy put it, "not saying true stuff."

Don't agree with the word "true" in there, though.

Not sure how to explain this. Perhaps I could illustrate with a Simpsons quote.

Kang (as Bob Dole): "Abortions for all!"
(Booing)
Kang: "Very well - abortions for none!"
(More booing)
Kang: "Hmm...abortions for some, miniature American flags for others!"
(Cheers)

Wait, sorry, wrong quote.

Marge: "C'mon Homer, Japan will be fun! You liked 'Rashomon'..."
Homer: "That's not how I remember it..."

Actually, might make more sense to illustrate using Rashomon:

Set during the chaos of 12th-century Japan, a woodcutter, a priest, and a commoner wait out a thunderstorm in the shadow of a ruined gate. To pass the time the woodcutter and priest tell the commoner of a recent investigation in which they both took part. They tell the tale of a samurai and his wife who were attacked by the infamous bandit Tajomaru while travelling. The husband is killed and the wife and bandit have sex. However, during the investigation the specifics of the attack are called into question as those involved relate conflicting versions of the events. The film cuts back and forth between the gate and the various versions accounting for the attack.

(Are there Kurosawa films with likeable women characters, by the way? Just saying is all. . .)

Um, right, so, you got three people in a sitch, you'll get at least three different versions of a story, all of which hold some claim to "truth" even if they vary drastically, blah de blah, not covering any new territory here, right?

Good. Moving on:

satorimedia sketchbook: Rudeness:

Is that really a word? Perhaps "impolite" is a similar term, but I think that somehow "rudeness" implies more the direct and active intent to actual convey disrespect towards someone.

It's been on my mind a lot lately. [Personal stuff deleted - The Mgt.] Continuing as I pointed out to a friend that a recent blog post was rude, and having his attempts at justification metamorphose into an attack on me (and since it's on his own blog, which he has bought and paid for, he is entitled to be as rude as he likes). It's been a long time since I've been called both an "arrogant self-righteous prick" and "candy ass cracka" but I suppose it was overdue.

Never refers to me by name here, which I suppose allows for some plausible deniability -- "candy ass cracka" isn't a direct quote from me, after all -- but technically, if you squint a little, you could describe this as being tactful.

As in, not saying true stuff.

Fuck that noise.

Continuing:

Similarly, my friend with the blog has slammed my attempts at discussing why his comments were rude with a combination of "You have no idea what you're talking about" along with a "You never asked!" guilt trip, followed by pulling out the further difference that he is a minority, I am not (after all, guys like me are a dime a dozen) and therefore not only do I need to shut up, but I had better not continue lest he be forced to go almost as far as "gay black man level tackiness".

Gay black man level tackiness cuts diamonds, baby.

Ain't you ever see Paris Is Burning?

Any road up, his description of events has that cool Rashomon feel, for me at least, but I'm not feeling up to giving the Democratic response, either here or in his comments. Call me crazy, but I think spreading the veiny evil into other people's sites is, you know, rude.

But do I gotta explain why comments like, "it's on his own blog, which he has bought and paid for, he is entitled to be as rude as he likes" might provoke reactions along the lines of, "That's mighty white of you"?

(Should that question mark be outside the quotation marks, seeing as the entire sentence is the question, rather than the bit in quotes, which is a statement? Yes, I have a degree in linguistics, but that just means I make it up as I go along and claim native speaker intuitions/dialect differences when I screw stuff up.)

Nah. Lost cause, there, I think.

Jason, you maybe wanna email your address to the guy so's he can send you the Boondocks book I was gonna loan you, since I mailed it to him a while back. I'd explain why it's necessary for me to go through third parties to get my shit back, but, again, this would be lacking in tact.

As in, not saying true stuff.

I know, I know, "Get over it, already." Um, this is me getting over it. True, it's not as mature as ignoring the existence of other people or de-linking their site, or talking about them without actually mentioning names.

Wait, that's not true.

Update 2: Ah, me. Don't suppose it's worth mentioning that, as the source of the veiny evil, it's perfectly acceptable for people to spout off here? Or that I've already demonstrated that I'm not from the "delete shit I strongly disagree with" school on this one?

No, I expect not.

I'll just point out that I made a choice, and am more than prepared to live with the consequences of that choice. If one of those consequences is losing friends, well, that's life in the big city.

And I see no need to "justify" my choices to anyone.

As Neo said in Matrix Reloaded, "Pants. The problem is pants."

Wait, that's not right. . .

Update: Actually, the hypocrisy of that last bit, given I dropped the link to satorimedia sketchbook is. . . something I could probably get away with not mentioning, as I doubt anyone noticed.

Darn shame the Java version of ICQ I used to have that convo with him doesn't preserve messages in history. I imagine the unedited transcript would be revealing.

For instance, it might make him look like an active participant, rather than a bystander who merely observed "attempts at justification metamorphose into an attack."

Wait, that's getting into the response I said I wasn't writing. Never mind.

Posted by Aaron at 8:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

New photoset going up at C.L.I.T. later today; I'm having trouble uploading the photos while simultaneously downloading Brendan Gamble's Heartless Moon from EMusic. Bloody dialup. How do people live like this?

And I gotta tell you, I'm getting a little tired of having to webmistress that site. Haven't I done enough for the lesbian community? I turned my last girlfriend gay, ferchrissakes. I'm doing recruiting for you people, and do I get a toaster oven? Nooooooo.

Sorry. Still veiny and evil, apparently.

But this cathartic venting does feel good. Better than sex, baby. They should bottle this stuff. . .

Yes, I know, my impact on someone else's orientation/libido is precisely jack/shit, it's a joke folks. And I think my resisting the comedy goldmine that is claiming to have turned a woman into a dyke for this long, seeing as it rests on my personal staples of self-pity and -mockery, stands as a testament to my. . .

Yep. Veiny and evil.

Next, I'll be wearing one of them black corset numbers.

No, there will be no photos. Looked over the release I signed with Heather, and apparently she actually owns my likeness rights. In fact, I owe her for posting that photo with me and Happy Rhodes a few weeks ago, which is why I still have that Scarleteen donation graphic up; I'm hoping someone else will cover the usage fee for me.

I'm joking again.

Do I need tags for that or something?

Posted by Aaron at 5:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, from people I'd actually listen to, anyway.

What's needed, I think, is The Uppity-Negro.com Drinking Game.

You know, "Ends post with 'meh,' take a drink, refers to running gag of marrying VASpider, drain the glass," that sort of thing.

This thread is for suggested rules.

Yes, I'm bored. Does it show?

I mean, hell, I even visited the fucking white oppressor looking for something to distract me.

It's not very hip to consider the plight of single women who yearn for something so old-fashioned as men, all male and very virile. The plight of homosexual men and women who can't get a marriage license will no doubt occupy us through next year's elections and beyond.

No, it's perfectly valid to compare these situations. And more people should use the word, "plight." I think I will from now on.

While I was at the seminar, a former law enforcement officer, who was dressed as a woman, explained, "sex is between the legs, while gender is between the ears." She further explained that she felt like a woman on some days and that he felt like a man on others. In other words, he felt that she could become a member of a protected class whenever he wanted. That day he felt like a she.

I even learn things. I had no idea women were a protected class.

Protected from whom. I wonder?

And this was just going to be a throwaway gag, but this particular little piece of bile, I'm just a lesbian...trapped in a man's body, actually did get my attention.

That evening, I went home and did some research on the issue of sexual orientation. Specifically, I was curious as to the proper classification of someone who has a sex change (from man to woman) and then decides to continue to date women. Is such a person homosexual or heterosexual? I also wanted to know if I could ever become a member of a protected class because of what is "between my ears" as opposed to "between my legs."

[. . .] While I was doing my research something strange happened. I guess you could say I had an epiphany. After all these years of thinking I was just a white male heterosexual Protestant Republican, I realized I was wrong. I'm really a lesbian trapped inside a man's body.

Naturally, I was concerned that when I revealed this to my girlfriend (now my wife), she would be alarmed. I even thought it might end our relationship. But that wasn't so. When I told her about my condition, she came back with this stunning revelation: She's really a gay man trapped inside a woman's body. It seems we really were meant for each other!

This is what passes for humor among conservatives.

This is what I find interesting.

Almost want to split one of their skulls open and go poking around to figure out why.

Except for the figuring things out part.

Right, drinking game rules.

Posted by Aaron at 6:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Since VASpider asked to keep hers, guess I won't be assigning people Tarot card-based nicks. Probably asking for trouble, anyway; sorry, Karin, I keep meaning to write Facade and tell them they need an interrupt screen between your reading request and the actual reading, asking "Are you sure you wanted to know this, kid?" And offering a nice, safe link to, I dunno, some Hello, Kitty cards or something.

Anyway, in case anyone had forgotten, there's generally perfectly good reasons for the current name assignments. Except the ones I just tossed out.

Gothic Babe of the Week image of Rebecca Blood, who I hope and pray no longer drops by here, originally linked in the entry with the oh-so-subtle and intellectual-sounding title, Fuck that objectification shit, she's cute.

Where the discussion turned to breastfeeding-friendly corsets, because that's the type of site this is.

Really fucking weird.

Update: And speaking of really fucking weird, Dru links to rune readings, if you don't trust some silly cards to reveal your moosey fate.

Wait, that didn't come out right.

Sorry, no it did.

Posted by Aaron at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

Letter From Duluth: It Did Happen Here: The Lynching That a City Forgot:

Many white people had never heard of the lynching; older generations had chosen not to pass the memory down. Many African-Americans here -- just 1,415 black people are counted among the population of 86,000 -- had heard of it, but spoke about it quietly, among themselves.

Then Heidi Bakk-Hansen, who works downtown, read a book about the lynching. Every time she passed the empty corner at First Street and Second Avenue East, it haunted her. The men had been accused of assaulting a white woman, but a mob pulled them from jail before a trial and before anyone could see that the charges seemed dubious. In 2000, Ms. Bakk-Hansen, who is white, told their story in a local newspaper.

To many here, the memory was painful and inexplicable: how could a lynching, the legacy of Southern towns, have happened in a gritty but placid port city beside Lake Superior, nearly in Canada? And wasn't Duluth too small, too overwhelmingly white, for racial strife anyway?

Registration may be required; I can't tell with the NYTimes anymore. Luckily, VampWillow pointed out the New York Times Link Generator the other day, and it tosses up this here link.

I'm being deliberately glib here because I really don't want to think about the subject of the article, thanks.

But I'd feel guilty not mentioning it just because it makes me uncomfortable.

Posted by Aaron at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

The film is careful to keep its focus within childhood. It's not a story about homosexuality or transvestism, but about a little boy who thinks he's a little girl.

Maybe Ludovic, played by a calmly self-possessed 11-year-old named Georges du Fresne, will grow up to be gay. Maybe not. That's not what the movie is about.  The performance reflects Ludovic's innocence and naiveté.  There is no sexual awareness in his dressing-up, but simply a determination to set things right.
  --Roger Ebert

"Ma Vie en Rose" ("My Life in Pink") is, to my knowledge, the first cinematic exploration of gender identity in young children. It is about Ludovic, a seven year old French boy who is convinced he is meant to be a girl .... [The film] has no action, no violence, no romance, no aliens, no natural disasters -- not even a recognizable star. It is certainly no comedy and, though it is a film about children, many conventional parents will not want their children to see it. In sum, it has no targeted audience ....

Yet in a world that genuinely prized and did not just tolerate difference, this film would have been made by Disney.  It marks a new, truthful departure in cinematic understanding of difference in human sexuality and gender identity in children ....

Think of all the "sinister" stereotypes that have traditionally been associated with left-handedness, and the unnecessary discipline and punishments we visited on left-handed children. We may someday come to think about children like Ludovic in much the same way. "Ma Vie en Rose" is an enlightened beginning of that process.
  --Alan A. Stone

IMDB: Ma vie en rose (1997)

Tagline: Sometimes you just have to be yourself.

Plot Summary: Ludovic is a small boy who cross-dresses and generally acts like a girl, talks of marrying his neighbor's... (more) (view trailer)

Official site: Ma Vie En Rose: Main Page:

"Ma Vie en Rose" ("My Life In Pink") is the story of Ludovic, a little girl born in a little boy's body. For him, nothing is more natural than to change his gender. As a hopeful and sensitive child, he truly believes that a miracle is going to happen. He will be a girl, no doubt about it, and he's in love with Jerome, his school mate, and son of his father's colleague. Initially a source of amusement, an outrage begins in their suburb when the two boys are discovered pretending to get married. The family begins to realize with horror that his desire to be a girl isn't just a little boy's fantasy. They try to make him change his mind, to no avail. The situation turns into a real-life drama of intense reactions from neighbors, friends, and teachers, resulting in a profoundly optimistic ending.

This was one of those movies I resisted seeing like a complete and utter prat, until I was dragged kicking and screaming. . . and loved it, just as I was told I would.

Don't worry, I'm still capable of being a complete and utter prat. Think I've demonstrated that quite well around here the last week or so, in fact.

Any road up, it's been a while, but from what I remember there's no good reason for that R rating. You can understand someone making a site dedicated to pointing this out.

Oddly enough, said site

is blocked by CyberPatrol (CyberLIST Checkpoint Code:1)  Discovered July 2002

I'd swear, there's a moral here somewhere, but damned if I can figure it out.

Update: And somehow, I did an entry about the site, using the URL as the title, and never linked the site itself.

Apparently, being veiny and evil also makes you stupid.

Oh, and clicking the graphic up top gives you a friggin' huge version, suitable for printing.

Posted by Aaron at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

That, and the link opens a new window. Just to warn you.

Oh, and I usually go for the Cat People Tarot deck. Quit snickering, Neo.

That thing gonna fit in the sidebar? Just changed to a smaller Scarleteen donation graphic, so there's space. . .

Update: Huh.

Rejuvenation: A woman leaps fully grown from a podlike form; she reaches skyward in a gesture of great joy at being alive and having the opportunity rise successfully to great achievements. The cat's face and body position express exaltation and joy. It is currently in it's ninth life and looking forward to a tenth. Each of the cat heads, which represent the cat's past eight lives, has a different expression, symbolic of some mood or event in the past.

Interesting.

Oh, right, these are from Facade, which I remember visiting using Mosaic at U of I, so they've been doing this for a loooooong time. . .

Well, since 1993, if the copyright notice at the bottom of the pages means anything. In WWW time, this makes them, what, 3 billion?

Update: Indulge an old man's curiousity.

Plug your name, any old question -- "Is Aaron totally insane or what?" for example -- in, and select the Cat People Tarot and One Card spead, and post in comments what card you got.

Been thinking of redoing the nicknames anyway. . .

Posted by Aaron at 4:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (1)

Knew I was forgetting something. Would it be too annoying if I post-date this entry for tomorrow, so it's the first thing I see?

Yeah, that's what I thought. Never mind.

Posted by Aaron at 2:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

I drink too much wine, I must take a piss. Bank One (or a subcontractor) distributes offensive t-shirts. . .

The Louisville Cardinal Online - Sister Souljah sparks campus controversy

Though Sister Souljah, an African-American author, activist, and lecturer, spoke on the University of Louisville campus over a month ago, her lecture has had a lasting impact. After her Oct. 28 lecture on 'Black Student Activism on College Campuses,' Louisville Cardinal columnist Brian Yates wrote an opinion article questioning her appearance on U of L"s campus. This article, as well as local media attention, spurred a forum on Sister Souljah"s lecture and a response from Mordean Taylor-Archer, the Vice Provost for Diversity and Equal Opportunity at U of L.

Sister Souljah was brought to the university in Oct. as part of the Bank One Diversity Lecture Series. Bank One donated $50,000 to the university after some of the company"s representatives were found passing out racist t-shirts on campus. A committee of students, faculty and staff decided to earmark this money for programs addressing diversity.

[. . .] Not everyone got a positive message from Sister Souljah"s lecture. Jill Adkins, a junior political science major who spoke on WHAS radio on Nov. 18 with Yates, felt very uncomfortable at the lecture. 'I respect African-Americans. I respect Asians. I respect all people. But I do not respect the fact that I came there for a diversity speech only to hear examples against white people. I had to sit there for two hours and listen to this speaker say nothing but hateful remarks. I felt hated,' Adkins said.

Welcome to our world, sister.

I mean, *ahem* there is no place for offensive statements, regardless of the source.

And shit.

Many black women at the forum pointed out that if anyone should"ve been offended at the lecture, it should"ve been black women. Shelanda Frazier, a senior communication major, said that Sister Souljah talked about how black women represent themselves, how they act when they are with their boyfriends or trying to pursue men, how society makes black women and how black women accept that they"re 'hoochies,' 'sluts,' 'whores' and 'bitches.' 'She said that,' Frazier stated. 'All I could say was "Ouch." I can"t get angry because it"s the truth and the truth hurts.'

Another woman at the forum mentioned that, though Sister Souljah said a lot of things she didn"t agree with, she still got a lot out of the message as a white woman about self-respect and respecting others. 'I think that"s more what she was talking about than hating white people,' the woman said.

Unless you have a very good reason for doing it.

Posted by Aaron at 1:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Times of Tibet: Free Tibet activists launch global countdown campaign to save Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche:

Free Tibet Campaign today participated in a global campaign push to save the life of Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche, a prominent Tibetan religious leader. Tenzin Deleg remains under sentence of death in the Tibetan region of Kham (Sichuan, People's Republic of China) despite numerous governments' expressions of profound concern to the Chinese leadership about his sentence.

"Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche was unjustly sentenced to death and we are determined to raise his profile so that China will find politically impossible to execute him. We appreciate the concern that our government has expressed about his case but they cannot afford to be complacent," said Anne Callaghan of Free Tibet Campaign. "The detention of Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche is an extremely sensitive case politically, and injustices such as this will only end when Tibet is free."

Yeah, like that's gonna happen.

Still, no reason not to at least try to Help to save the life of Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche:

Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche could be executed as early as 7 April 2004. Pressure must be applied to the Chinese authorities to remove Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche's death sentence and to provide the opportunity for a free and fair re-trial. This trial should be open to impartial independent observers and allow Rinpoche to select his own legal counsel.

Free Tibet Campaign needs your help; by signing up to lobby your MP, writing letters to the Chinese authorities and by organising your own local action to highlight Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche's case. Following international pressure five Tibetans connected with the case have already been released. Please help secure the release of Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche.

About to say something snarky about campaigning just to prevent this particular unjust execution, rather than to abolish the death penalty full stop, but there's nothing says you can't do both. Might have more impact in your own state (I'm in Illinois, so this isn't a concern for me at the mo', thanks to still oddly-unindicted former Governor Ryan) or country rather than against them foreigners, but it's easier to convince people about how Wrong and Evil this sort of thing is when official enemies do it.

I did just write something snarky, didn't I?

Sorry. Veiny and evil lately. I'm working on it.

Update: thought that name looked familiar. . . mentioned his case in passing back in January.

Later, we will discuss what it means that I think things like, "That Tibetan monk's name looks familiar." And, furthermore, that I'm right.

Update 2: Fixed typos. The copyeditor has been sacked without references.

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

BBC NEWS | South Asia | 'Landmine use rising' in Nepal

Troops and Maoist rebels are increasingly using landmines in the conflict in Nepal, campaigners say.

Those most at risk are children, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines said in a report released on Wednesday.

The number of civilian casualties from mines planted by both sides is rising as a result, they say.

More than 8,000 people have died in violence in Nepal since the rebels took up arms in 1996 - six policemen were the latest victims, officials say.

'Hundreds of deaths'

The Nepal branch of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines says the organisation has recorded around 500 deaths caused by landmines in the past 33 months.

More than 100 of the victims were civilians and a quarter of them children.

Of some 900 wounded, nearly one third were civilians.

The group's co-ordinator in Nepal, Purna Shova Chitrakar, said the army had planted more than 10,000 landmines in different parts of the country.

She said Maoist rebels frequently use improvised devices - but she could not say how many they have used.

Nepal is not a signatory to the 1997 international Ottawa Treaty that banned landmines.

And you know who else didn't sign that?

No one of interest. Kuwait. Morocco. Saudi Arabia. Couple Eastern European and African nations. Oh, and the United States.

Final bit from that BBC story:

An army spokesman said mines were the only defence from the rebels for soldiers in their barracks and camps.

He said the army used anti-personnel and anti-vehicle mines made in China, India and Russia.

Security officials said most of the explosives used by the rebels are homemade while the factory-made ones they use come from India.

In the latest reports of fighting, officials say six policemen were killed on Tuesday night in 600 kilometres (375 miles) west of the capital, Kathmandu, Reuters news agency reports.

It is not clear if the Maoists suffered any casualties.

Well. That's an effective defense, then.

Added a link or two to the article text. See if you can find them.

Posted by Aaron at 9:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

how 'bout getting off of these antibiotics
how 'bout stopping eating when I'm full up
how 'bout them transparent dangling carrots
how 'bout that ever elusive kudo

thank you India
thank you terror
thank you disillusionment
thank you frailty
thank you consequence
thank you thank you silence

how 'bout me not blaming you for everything
how 'bout me enjoying the moment for once
how 'bout how good it feels to finally forgive you
how 'bout grieving it all one at a time

thank you India
thank you terror
thank you disillusionment
thank you frailty
thank you consequence
thank you thank you silence

the moment I let go of it was
the moment I got more than I could handle
the moment I jumped off of it was
the moment I touched down

how 'bout no longer being masochistic
how 'bout remembering your divinity
how 'bout unabashedly bawling your eyes out
how 'bout not equating death with stopping

thank you India
thank you Providence
thank you disillusionment
thank you nothingness
thank you clarity
thank you thank you silence

Thank U, Alanis Morissette, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie.

And isn't it ironi--

No, I think I'll leave that one alone.

You're welcome.

But Alanis does ask folks to drop by Fire Griles - Steven Griles - Dirty air, dirty water, dirty business, and I thought I should pass that along as long as I'm violating copyright on her lyrics.

WHO: J. Steven Griles is deputy secretary of the Department of the Interior. He's also the man advancing the Bush administration's assault on our public lands.

WHAT: Griles is a "former" oil, gas and coal lobbyist who is now the second-in-command at the Department of the Interior -- the agency in charge of protecting our nation's natural heritage. He has led the charge to weaken the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, while pushing for an increase in mining and drilling on our public lands.

SMOKING GUN: National Environmental Strategies (NES), the oil and gas lobbying firm Griles worked for, is currently paying him $284,000.00 a year as part of a $1.1 million payout for his client base. As deputy secretary of the Interior, Griles is charged with overseeing and revamping environmental regulations that affect the profits of his former clients and NES’s current clients. Read more...

WHAT CAN I DO: During the Reagan administration, Secretary of the Interior James Watt proposed the same type of agenda as Griles. The environmental community collected over 1 million petition signatures to remove him and succeeded in getting him fired. By signing this petition and forwarding it to a friend, you are taking a stand against corruption and for the protection of our common assets.

The Bush administration seems fairly impervious to public opinion -- maybe that has something to do with not actually being elected, I dunno -- but signing the petition couldn't hurt, might help.

Since, as I've noted before, if you're visiting this site, you're already on a government watch list.

np -- I Don't Love Anyone, Belle & Sebastian, Tigermilk

Find your own links, I gots data entry to do. . .

Posted by Aaron at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"The absolute destiny: apocalyptic darkness, apocalypse"

Image (click for larger version) shamelessly stolen from Ohtori Online, link to which found at Anime Web Guide: Revolutionary Girl Utena:

Utena Tenjou arrives at a new school...in a boy's uniform. This establishes her reputation as a rebel and gains the adulation of virtually every girl on campus. Ansi Himemiya is a quiet dark skinned girl who seems to be completely submissive to a cruel student. Appalled at that cruelty, Utena resolves to save Himemiya and quickly finds that the key to this is a secret arena where duels (swordfights) are fought. Himemiya is the "Bride of the Rose" and must serve whomever is the Champion. Utena's admission ticket to the arena is a ring that was given to her long ago by a man (Utena's childhood memories remember him as her 'prince'). More by luck than anything else, Utena wins the match and gains Himemiya's service. This makes her a target for challenges for it seems that EVERYONE wants the position that Utena now has. What sets this series apart is the extensive imagery. A lot of the atmosphere is set up by shadow plays...both in the frequent flashbacks (Utena's mostly), and in the side commentary by two girls whose shadows are the only things we see. Other than that, it's basically a shoujo drama with many mysteries attached. For instance, what does being the Bride of the Rose mean?

Lyrics at Anime Lyrics: Revolutionary Girl Utena: Zettai Unmei Mokushiroku; Absolute Destiny: Apocalypse

Posted by Aaron at 4:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment:

Domination operates by seducing, pressuring, or forcing African-American women and members of subordinated groups to replace individual and cultural ways of knowing with the dominant group's specialized thought. As a result, suggests Audre Lorde, "the true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us." Or as Toni Cade Bambara succinctly states, "revolution begins with the self, in the self."

Lorde and Bambara's suppositions raise an important issue for Black feminist intellectuals and for all scholars and activists working for social change. Although most individuals have little difficulty identifying their own victimization within some major system of oppression--whether it be by race, social class, religion, physical ability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, age or gender--they typically fail to see how their thoughts and actions uphold someone else's subordination. Thus white feminists routinely point with confidence to their oppression as women but resist seeing how much their white skin privileges them. African-Americans who possess eloquent analyses of racism often persist in viewing poor white women as symbols of white power. The radical left fares little better. "If only people of color and women could see their true class interests," they argue, "class solidarity would eliminate racism and sexism." In essence, each group identifies the oppression with which it feels most comfortable as being fundamental and classifies all others as being of lesser importance. Oppression is filled with such contradictions because these approaches fail to recognize that a matrix of domination contains few pure victims or oppressors. Each individual derives varying amounts of penalty and privilege from the multiple systems of oppression which frame everyone's lives.

A broader focus stresses the interlocking nature of oppressions that are structured on multiple levels, from the individual to the social structural, and which are part of a larger matrix of domination. Adhering to this inclusive model provides the conceptual space needed for each individual to see that she or he is both a member of multiple dominant groups and a member of multiple subordinate groups. Shifting the analysis to investigating how the matrix of domination is structured along certain axes--race, gender, and class being the axes of investigation for AfricanAmerican women--reveals that different systems of oppression may rely in varying degrees on systemic versus interpersonal mechanisms of domination.

Word.

Posted by Aaron at 3:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The CFQ & Femme Fatales Firefly Episode Guide, that is.

Now the complete series is being issued on DVD in a box set available on December 9th, and to herald its arrival, both [Joss] Whedon and [Tim] Minear have agreed to discuss the making of each episode with CFQ. Their views will be presented each week day beginning today until the show reaches stores.

For those unfamiliar with Firefly, the show’s official DVD description is as follows: “Five hundred years in the future, there is a whole new frontier, and the crew of the Firefly-class spaceship Serenity is eager to stake a claim on the action. They'll take any job, legal or illegal, to keep fuel in the tanks and food on the table. But things get a bit more complicated after they take on a passenger wanted by the new totalitarian Alliance regime. Now they find themselves on the run, desperate to steer clear of Alliance ships and the flesh-eating Reavers who live on the fringes of space.”

Coolness.

Link found at WHEDONesque, the Joss Whedon weblog.

Posted by Aaron at 3:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yes, this The Muppets the Gift of the Magi: Story Book Set & Advent Calendar.

Celebrate Christmas with Kermit and Miss Piggy. A touching Christmas story about the true meaning of the holiday--that giving is more important than having, and loving is most important of all--O. Henry's classic "The Gift of the Magi" is now transformed through the Muppets' quirky humor and the innovative Story Book Set & Advent Calendar format.

That there is some fucked-up shit.

I mean, have you read The Gift of the Magi?

Posted by Aaron at 3:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

That there is some fucked-up shit.

Posted by Aaron at 1:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Glad I don't have to deal with that shit every month.

Update - Uppity-Negro.com Statement on: Garrity's comment:

That is not funny.

This is also the Uppity-Negro.com Statement on the question, "How many Lesbian Feminist Seperatists does it take to screw in a light bulb?"

Update: Seriously, or as seriously as it gets around here, Michelle writes of this, as does Dru, among others.

That "keep schtum" notion seems like a good idea for me regarding this topic, too.

Posted by Aaron at 1:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

The long-form Smooth Criminal video kicked ass.

Posted by Aaron at 1:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Since Elayne mentioned delinking, and I mentioned adding TechnoDyke and DykeWrite -- and is it ok to have them next to each other in the links list? Ain't no East Coast - West Coast rivalry or some shit going on? Because, you know, that's what killed 2Pac and Biggie. Well, what killed Biggie, anyway -- where was I?

Oh, right, while we're on the subject of links and the removal thereof, put a little somethin' somethin' back in. Don't know if nobody noticed it was gone, considering how many of the damn things there are, or if everyone decided to politely not mention the elephant in the room.

This is not a sign of maturity, people.

Unless you like the smell of elephant dung.

This has been your African proverb for the day.

Posted by Aaron at 1:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From Book Reviews. WMU Libraries - American Tongue and Cheek:

[Author] Jim Quinn (I bet he doesn't like to be called James), is an unabashed populist seeking to prevent the English language from being corrupted by what he calls the new pop grammarians, who themselves also claim to be crusading against debasement. These include self-appointed purists such as Edwin Newman, William Safire, and John Simon among the new experts, and H. W. Fowler, Wilson Follett, Theodore Bernstein, and Bergen Evans among the older authorities.

Few of the grammar watchers are women, thus making, as Quinn points out, the epithet "schoolmarm" inaccurate, if not sexist. According to Quinn the so-called guardians of the language are often ignorant of the history of English usage; they are also usually snobbish, devoid of humor, have tin ears, and far from conserving correctness, they are really radicals seeking to preserve impossibly genteel, over fussy "standards" which most speakers and writers not only ignore, but should ignore.

[. . .] But Quinn indulges in over-kill. After a few chapters, despite his wit, I became just as tired of his zealotry against the purists as of their pomposities. Quinn spends too much time trading nits with the nit-pickers about mere points of grammar, rather than discussing what to me are far more important questions such as: unnecessary jargon, the deceitful use of euphemisms and circumlocutions, the over-reliance of the passive voice to avoid taking responsibility; and other examples of deceitfulness.

To be fair to Quinn, he is not out to get all the purists. He rather likes the late Bergen Evans, in fact. And he does make a good case defending Black English. He is often a fair-minded descriptive linguist. He loves language and seems authoritative without being pedantic.

Help keep my ass honest, kids. You notice me using the passive voice -- almost wrote in that response to Elayne, "people who aren't pissed off at me" rather than the much more accurate "people I haven't manged to piss off recently" -- thought I gotta admit, this doesn't seem to be a problem with AAVE, something I was researching half-assedly when I stumbled upon the book review -- gently or not-so-gently remind me that the shit did not just happen, that I had an active role in making it happen.

Figure no reason to burden Garrity with sole responsibility for playing Jiminy Cricket to my dumb ass. So let's try the distributed computing model.

Which reminds me, saw this on MeFi yesterday:

FightAIDS@Home: FightAIDS@Home is the first biomedical distributed computing project ever launched. It is run by the Olson Laboratory at The Scripps Research Institute, and uses your computer to assist fundamental research to discover new drugs, using our growing knowledge of the structural biology of AIDS.

It's like seti@Home, only useful.

Ain't installing it on my work computer, and forgot to put it on the laptop last night because I suck, so this is another of those little reminders to myself. Because those always work so well. . .

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Just added DykeWrite Weblog to the sprawling list at right. Is that too long and annoying at this point?

Not that I have any plans of doing anything about it if you feel that way. Just curious.

And because I'm ever a day late and a dollar short, check Why DykeWrite May Be Closing Its Doors.

Hope not. Not when there's pieces like Demographic Politics:

When the question of “What gender are you?” is asked, it places the respondent into a box that is walled by stereotypes and biases. Sometimes the walls are necessary (medical forms), most times not (pretty much anything else). What the act of providing the pithy answer of “Yes, please” [to a pollster's question, "Sex?"] illustrates is that the state of my gender, or anyone else’s really is of no consequence.

The late stand-up comic Bill Hicks had a routine/rant in which he pointed out how insidious marketers are by encapsulating our lives into neat little labels and categories. And as anyone who is within ten feet of this article can testify, human lives are rarely as simple and tidy as the categories in which we are placed. We are all greater than the sum of our parts.

'course, this ain't really my fight, so maybe keeping schtum is my best course of action right about now. . .

Update: Right, saw the link poking around the Google cache and archive pages for Boston Dyke.

Have I mentioned my hatred for script kiddies recently? Even if they turn out to be Brazilian script kiddies, rather than the bored (U.S.-dwelling) suburban kids I'd originally guessed?

Oh, I just did?

Well, it bears repeating.

Update 2: Added TechnoDyke to the other sprawling list of links. Because otherwise I will forget about Michelle's upcoming piece, and feel like an idiot.

Probably still will, actually.

Probably forget, or probably feel like an idiot, you ask?

Yes.

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Just visited The Boston Dyke. Or what should be The Boston Dyke, anyway.

Script kiddies. The replacement index.html was generated with fucking Frontpage.

I realize it's probably bored suburban kids who just have too much free time and don't know any better, but like I said in the title, the little fucks should be sent to jail jail. If you're thinking bored suburban kids wouldn't last a day in there, well, your point being. . .?

Sorry to see that, love. Need any help with anything?

Update: Yeah, not the first time this particular group did this shit.

And, of course, mentioning/linking their previous efforts just gives them the, what, notoriety? attention? they're desperately seeking.

Well, there goes my good mood out the fucking window.

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Heh.

Apologies for any delay, but we've been celebrating a little known British festival called Thanksgiving. Oh, I know you Americans have your version, but ours predates it a little. It's to celebrate the fact that one day, a bunch of killjoy, puritan, know-nothings decided to leave our country in a boat. There was much rejoicing, and we've kept up the celebrations since. I wonder what happened to them?

From the current (so this link won't bring it up next week) Lying In The Gutters column up at Comic Book Resources. There's also some rumors/stories/etc. up that are only of interest to comics geeks, and maybe not even then.

I just liked that gag, is all. And should write Rich and tell him we've still got them, and would very much appreciate their coming over and picking 'em up. Dumping your Special Needs Children off with the babysitter and then leaving town with no forwarding address is just sad. . .

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From artnet.com Magazine Features - How to Make Art in an Epidemic:

Gran Fury, the hell-raising collective that arose from an ACT UP project at New York City's New Museum, also emerged at this time. Not only did the collective nearly get itself indicted for obscenity for exhibiting its stunning Pope Piece, which skewered the Pope for his lethal anti-safe-sex beliefs at the 1990 Venice Biennale, but it raised hackles in this country in 1989 and 1990 for its street-spanning banner for a New York City Day Without Art exhibition at the Henry Street Settlement that read "All People With AIDS Are Innocent" and for its famous Benetton ad-inspired image of three interracial homo- and heterosexual couples kissing above the caption "Kissing doesn't kill. Greed and indifference do." When it appeared on the sides of buses as part of Art Against AIDS' Art on the Road project, it prompted a Chicago alderman to call the work "an incitement to homosexuality." Who knows? Without AIDS, the culture wars might still be a bush-league skirmish in the Bible Belt.

I know you don't want to know more on that one, either.

Free Christian articles from Allongod.com: Freedom of Speach?

Its creators call it art with a message. But when a poster showing kissing men and women was displayed on city buses, two politicians said freedom of speech had gone too far.

"Where will we draw the line in terms of this homosexuality -heterosexuality thing?" said city Alderman Rogert Shaw, who said he would introduce an ordinance banning the AIDS awareness poster.

"Is anything going on in this country now [acceptable] under the guise of free speech?"

About 80 of the posters, which depict three couples - one heterosexual, one lesbian and one gay - each locked in a romantic kiss, were displayed on buses and at transit stations....

[. . .] Shaw said he planned to call a special City Council meeting to discuss his proposed ordinance, which would bar depictions such as that in Gran Fury's poster.

"This poster has nothing to do with the cure of AIDS," he said. " It has something to do with promoting a lifestyle, which I object to."

State Representative Robert Regan, a Republican, said Tuesday he would reintroduce legislation in the Illinois General Assembly that would bar such displays of sexuality. A similar bill failed this spring....

Unfortunately, it's no longer a question of what you want to know.

It's what I think you need to know.

And yes, I want a copy of that Gran Fury poster. The Brown Elephant on Ashland has one, but somehow I doubt it's for sale. Never had the balls to ask, to be honest.

Update: Should add a couple sics to that material from Allongod.com. . . really, I know how to spell speech most of the time.

Also, found a larger, full-color version of the Kissing Doesn’t Kill. Greed and Indifference Do. poster. Click to view in a popup window, you know the drill.

Ganked the image from Ecole du Magasin - 12eme Session; they have more (all?) of the group's other work up too.

1. Do you resent people with AIDS?
2. Do you trust HIV-negatives?
3. Have you given up hope for a cure?
4. When was the last time you cried?

Interwoven into ArtForum: Gran Fury talks to Douglas Crimp. ('80s Then).(collective of AIDS activists)(Related article: '80S )("Artworks for Teenage Boys" )(Interview), from Good Luck...Miss You- ~ -Gran Fury.

Update:

The graphics collective Gran Fury, formerly part of ACT UP, has taken its sharp- tongued message even further: a superslick Benetton parody ran on buses in San Francisco and New York in 1989. Its headline blared "Kissing Doesn't Kill: Greed and Indifference Do" over a row of kissing couples, all of them racially-mixed and two of them gay. "We are trying to fight for attention as hard as Coca-Cola fights for attention," says group member Loring Mcalpin. "[I]f anyone is angry enough and has a Xerox machine and has five or six friends who feel the same way, you'd be surprised how far you can go."

From II. Culture Jamming, in the online course Culture Jamming.

Nowadays, of course, you don't even need the Xerox machine.

Anger and friends, though? Well, as long as you keep enough of a handle on the former that you don't piss off the latter. Too much.

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"Do you have time?" is the National AIDS Trust's World AIDS Day 2003 campaign to increase awareness of HIV-related stigma and discrimination. Stigma and discrimination are recognised as major factors fuelling the global HIV epidemic, creating a climate of fear and ignorance and a reluctance to confront rising infection rates.

It's a growing problem. UNAIDS has targeted HIV-related stigma and discrimination in a two-year initiative to reduce the harmful effects faced by people living with HIV. Earlier this year, NAT launched an ongoing campaign - "ARE YOU HIV PREJUDICED?" - which aims to combat HIV stigma and discrimination in the UK and beyond.

It only takes a moment to learn the real facts about HIV. Do you have time?

Click here for the 2003 AWARE catalogue.

I don't even have to ask if you want to know more.

AlterNet: A World AIDS Day Remembrance

Nowadays people hardly talk about AIDS deaths. We talk about medication "cocktails," steroids, viral loads, and AIDS fundraisers, as if death is somehow not part of the reality of AIDS and never has been. But numbers don't lie.

I have my own set of AIDS numbers. Some I can rattle off the top of my head: in 1993, I lost 21 people to AIDS. In 1994, another 12 died. In 1995, 14 more. In total, about 150 people I know have died of AIDS. I say "about" because I kept track of the number for many years, but at some point I gave up. Sometime after the 50th memorial service, the 80th trip to the hospital, and the 100th obituary, I stopped counting.

And now, I admit with no small degree of shame, all the deaths sometimes blur together, like a packed rush-hour subway car, or some relentless parade. It's just impossible to keep track of everyone.

Of course you fucking don't.

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That entry after the next one -- the one with the paraphrased/repurposed Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back quotes, and I'm glad somebody out there gets my pop culture references -- just makes the point that yes, anyone running a web site knows quite a bit about the people visiting it.

It also includes the name of my hosting company, Hostway, in case any other motherfuckers had any notions about getting this place shut down.

Me and the Hostway rep had a good laugh about that one.

Have I mentioned how tired I am of thus-far-only white people's bullshit right about now?

Good thing I know better than to generalize this into negative feelings about all white people. You'd have to be pretty fucking stupid to do some shit like that, based on race.

Or gender.

Or orientation.

Or any one of a number of other factors.

Hell, I even know some tops who don't resort to pulling childish shit to get the last word in, so I can't even write prejudicial shit about the lot of them. Darn my common sense. So many people seem to manage to make it through life without a fucking lick of it, after all.

Not really giving a fuck what's the basis -- or at least the justification -- for other folks' stupid shit these days.

Just don't bring it here.

Unless you want it back with interest.

Management wants somebody to apologize to him for the inconvenience, but is seriously starting to think the words, "I'm sorry" aren't even in some mother fuckers' vocabularies. . .

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Official site for Utena - the Movie.

Produced by Central Park Media.

From Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie (same film, kids) :

A new student comes to a strange school and is caught up in a battle for the affection of a beautiful and mysterious girl. Sounds like a familiar plot, doesn’t it?

But REVOLUTIONARY GIRL UTENA: THE MOVIE is not your typical high school drama. For one thing, the new student isn’t all he seems to be—and neither is the school. Duels, mystery, conspiracy, hate, love and millions of roses fill this award-winning animated movie.

In 1997, director Kunihiko Ikuhara and popular female comic artist Chiho Saito created the TV series “Revolutionary Girl Utena,” which broke new ground in portraying an intense emotional relationship between two girls, gender-bending Utena and femme Anthy. (Ikuhara was already well known in the U.S. for his work directing the animated series “Sailor Moon,” which had a lesbian couple as part of its regular cast of sailor-suited super-powered girls.) In the TV series, Ikuhara and Saito created a world in which the beautiful and powerful students of exclusive Oohtori Academy each suffer for their secrets, even as they try to win the mysterious “power to revolutionize the world.” With the movie, Ikuhara takes the relationship between Utena and Anthy to the next level.

Beautifully animated, UTENA boasts one of the finest voice acting casts in Japan and a chart-topping soundtrack. We are pleased to have award-winning director Kunihiko Ikuhara here in person for this screening—sure to be a feast for the eyes, ears and heart.
—Erica Friedman

at the site for the 26th San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival.

Missed it back in June of last year, natch. Film's out on video & DVD, but looks like one of them things works better on the big screen.

Well, what can you?

Want to know more? There's always Utena TV, for a start, or Anime Web Turnpike is always good. . .

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