Uppity-Negro.com

I think it's important -- and, with this Interweb thingee, pretty damned convenient -- to read non-U.S. news sources, just to see how events are covered elsewhere. Sure, they're biased, but at least it's a different set of biases than you get here, and going in with full knowledge of those biases allows one to. . .

BBC NEWS | Americas | Canada MPs argue over sex symbol

Tempers flared when an MP accused an ex-minister of "rubbing shoulders with Gina Lollobreegeeda", reports said.

The apparent mispronunciation prompted Human Resources Minister Joe Volpe to yell: "It's Gina Lollobrigida, idiot!"

Opposition MP Jason Kenney hit back, saying he was sorry for "offending the ageing sex-kitten community".

. . . wonder why the fuck one bothers.

Mr Volpe later told reporters he too had some regrets over the row.

"I'm sorry I called him an idiot. I should have referred to him as an imbecile," he said.

It's also good to have visitors from other places, to put this sort of thing in context. Nalo? Lauren and Emira? Tristan?

Does this sort of thing happen often up there?

And do you younger sex kittens have any sort of political organization to condemn these sorts of abuses? Or is there some internecine conflict between you and the previous generation?

And does anyone know who that actress was playing the CEO of the Italian branch of Wolfram & Hart on last week's Angel?

These are the sorts of questions that fail utterly to keep me up nights.

Continue reading "The news at 1100ish GMT, read by Aaron Hawkins" »

Posted by Aaron at 6:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Coffee, tea, Stoli, I'm not particular. . .

You'll be astonished to learn that Gothic Beauty Magazine is available at Hot Topic, I'm su--

No, I haven't had coffee, tea or Stoli so far today, why do you ask?

If you're looking for slightly more coherent commentary, I suggest Priest:

But Bush is not even a shadow of Reagan, whom I didn't like, either, but at least I believed he believed in something. Bush doesn't seem to believe in much of anything. His shallowness fairly inhibits everything he does, and he owes his buoyancy to the fact the Democratic party is even more clueless than he is. Faced with an opponent who has wrecked the economy and taken us to war in the wrong place, all in baldly obvious attempts to please his rich buddies and avenge his daddy, the Democrats have come up with-- apparently nothing. This late in the day, I couldn't tell you who John Kerry is or what he stands for or why I should vote for him. As bereft of real ideas as the Bush camp is, the Kerry camp is bereft of soul. Kerry is the cardboard cutout candidate. The Guy Who Is Not Bush. That's his platform: I Am Not Bush. Beyond that, I haven't an earthly clue about him.

But that's just my opinion.

Sure, you could try Warren Ellis instead:

Bukkake is a Japanese innovation in porn video wherein groups of men. . .

But do you really want to do that? I think not.

If you haven't had enough Cynthia Fuchs -- is such a thing possible? -- there's also reviews of Dogville and The Spook Who Sat By the Door, which sounds like a fine double-bill to me, but I think we've established that I really shouldn't be posting right now.

And Heroic Trio, reviewed at Stomp Tokyo at that link, might fit better than Dogville.

Or I just have a thing for Michelle Yeoh doing wire-fu.

Oh look, coffee's done. Good. This was getting painful to write, I don't want to even think about how it reads. . .

Posted by Aaron at 9:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

All day tomorrow, if I forget to set the alarm clock:

Free-For-All Friday (Plus One Day Extended Mix)

http://www.uppity-negro.com/cgi-uppity-negro/mt.cgi

Username: guest
Password: guest

Suggested Topic: Talk about your favorite Sanrio (or otherwise kawaii) character.

Posted by Aaron at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

From The rains in poetry and painting, by B.N. Goswamy:

In Kalidasa’s great classic, Kumarasambhava, occurs one of the most celebrated passages of Sanskrit literature, in which the poet traces the journey of the first drops of rain as they fall upon Parvati. The Goddess, as a young maiden mortifying herself to be able to win the hand of her chosen lord, Shiva, remained seated, the poet says, out in the open, in scorching heat, meditating, as always: eyes closed, legs crossed, nearly bare of body. In the course of this long penance, summer approached its end, and clouds started gathering in the sky above, rumbling and beginning to become dark and dense with each passing moment. And then the rain began to fall. Its first drops, the poet says, "lingered a little as they fell upon her eyelashes, trickled down the ridge of her nose, descended to her lower lip, trembled there for a moment, and then, falling upon her firm breasts, broke into countless pieces that, re-grouping, wended their way slowly through the fine folds on her stomach, and came to rest at last in the pit of her navel".

Sensuous, and intensely poetic, as it is, the passage is as much about the onset of rains as it is about the supple grace of Parvati’s body. For, woven into Kalidasa’s description, with great subtlety, are so many of the lakshanas or signs of classical female beauty: large eyes with long eyelashes, sharply ridged nose, a soft and full lower lip, breasts high and firm, three light folds – the trivali – on the stomach, deep, really deep, navel. There are connections here – between nature and man, or woman – that are hard to miss.

Which was one of the very, very few references to trivali that a quick Google brought up. Saw the term in a description of a statue at the Art Institute last night. Ford Free Tuesday, don't'cha know.

Reminded me again that I know entirely too little about the spread of Buddhism from India to the rest of Asia, or how native/local/Hindu/Shinto gods/deities/things you really don't want to invoke unless you know what you're doing were integrated into the pantheon. Um, assuming Buddhism has a pantheon, which I'm not entirely sure it's meant to. . .

And, of course, there were quite a few statues and other representations of Ganesha:

Lord Ganesh has four arms. The four arms represent the four inner equipments of the subtle body, namely mind (manas), intellect (buddhi), ego (aharnkar) and conditioned consciousness {chitta). Lord Ganesh represents the pure Consciousness, the Atman which enables these four equipments to function in you. In one hand he holds an axe and in another a rope. The axe symbolises the destruction of all desires and attachments and their consequent agitations and sorrows. The rope is meant to pull the seeker out of his worldly entanglements and bind him to the everlasting and enduring bliss of his own Self. In the third hand he holds a rice ball {modaka). Modaka represents the joyous rewards of spiritual seeking. A seeker gains the joy of satisfaction and contentment as he progresses on the path of spiritual evolution. In the fourth hand he holds a lotus (padma). The lotus represents the supreme goal of human evolution. By holding the lotus in his hand he draws the attention of all seekers to that supreme state that each one of them can aspire for and reach through proper spiritual practices.

Being who and what I am (at the moment, anyway), I immediately focused on the axe. . .

. . . and I suppose the same holds true for how I immediately focused on the trivali on the other statue. . .

Continue reading "Ganesha is the God who can protect His devotees from any vigna or obstacle" »

Posted by Aaron at 5:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

np: Amy Ray, Lucystoners.

Which the title, of course, is not taken from. It's early, and I've still not perfected the Big Gulp French Press.

Spent last night with Dan and The Irresistably Cute Lisa watching Gryffindor Grand Rapids stomp the Wolves into the ice, as they always do. It's their Seeker; the kid is good, as long as no Dementors come out on the. . . ok, that joke is dead.

At one point, Lisa claimed she was not aware that Smith -- which she's been accepted to, and will (probably) be attending come the fall -- was a women's college.

Did I mention that Lisa is blonde?

Thinking about something Lawrence Simon said about trust the last time I did the FFAF thang -- that's open until Sunday night, by the bye -- and also a half-remembered quote from Glenn Reynolds about how he doesn't allow comments because it's like handing someone a can of spray paint to deface your site.

I dunno, maybe I just have a different view of human behavior.

This isn't just a Chicago thing, pretty sure I saw the same thing in Minneapolis when I lived there: in winter, if you're walking and see someone whose car is stuck in the snow, most people will head over and give 'em a push to get 'em moving again.

Pretty sure that's not taught in Driver's Ed -- which isn't mandatory in schools in Minnesota, as you can tell by how the fuckers (can't) drive -- and seeing as my agnostic ass does it, it's not about hoping Saint Peter is looking down and taking notes. It's just. . . you see somebody needs help, you help 'em. Since that's normal behavior, not much point looking into it much. It's the folks who don't should be studied, to figure out what the fuck is wrong with them.

Ain't a profit motive involved either, because no one expects the person in the car to pay 'em. There's a sort-of hope that if you're in the same sitch, someone will do the same for you, but absolutely no dream that it'll be the same person you helped. You might not even get a look at the person, so you wouldn't know anyway.

And since you're not getting a look at 'em, it goes without saying that gender, race, class, orientation, religious affiliation, all those cool things that divide us up into tribes. . . make absolutely no fucking difference whatsoever.

Ok, I might pass by someone in an SUV with a Bush/Cheney 2004 bumper sticker and a Jesus fish on their ride, but only if I noticed same before stepping up to give the thing a shove.

None of which has anything to do with opening your site for guest entries, I suppose. Eh, what's the worst thing that can happen? Someone abuses your trust and uses your own site to post a vicious personal attack? Been there, done that, not really that impressed, actually. And the nice thing about having the worst thing that can happen, happen, is that afterwards there's really nothing to fear.

Unless you react to said worst thing in stereotypical, "A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged" fashion.

Which'd be silly in this instance. This place is by no stretch of the imagination high-traffic, but there's a couple hundred people coming through per day. Just because one of 'em is an asshole is no reason to treat all the rest as potential assholes. Oddly, treating people like potential assholes. . . tends to make 'em behave like actual assholes. Go figure.

Which is the pre-caffeinated explanation for why I encourage comments, and participate in Free-For-All Friday.

Or something.

Continue reading "there's definitely no logic" »

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