Contending with a headache that keeps coming back. Probably linked to hormonal crap, as there are other signs of that. Behind on work. Not enough money to buy medications. But wanted to say a few things...
Yesterday it never reached 90 degrees as a high. Last night the low was below 70 degrees. This is the first time in months and months that either has occurred. Plus, we got Rain. Even so, with the relief, I kept thinking about it being the anniversary of Hurricane Ike all weekend. Galveston has nowhere near recovered, may never recover. All the lives and livelihoods lost.
During my coverage of the aftermath last year, I looked through hundreds or thousands of photographs online. And there was one -- I'm not even going to tell you what it was about, except it showed what must have been a long, agonizing death. I wish I hadn't seen it. I wish I could wipe it from my mind. It haunts me still.
One of the "hormonal signs" is that my sleep is all awry. I keep dropping off at odd times and not sleeping through a complete cycle. This plays havoc on an already challenged body. The new TV season is not yet arrived, and I'm not sure it will be much good when it does get here. Except for those PBS documentaries and science shows, g*d bless them.
I watched one last night about the history and impact of Helvetica. Yeah, the font. It was utterly fascinating and raised more questions than I know how to answer. It's yet another source of brainwashing and homogeneity. Will we ever throw off corporate control of our lives? Postmodernism can go FUCK itself. Clarity does not equal communication or respect. Reacting against something does not produce new ideas or energy if that's all you're doing. These are a few of my sub rosa reactions.
(Dinah as a kitten in November 2001)
Tomorrow Dinah turns 8 years old. She usually comes and sits by me when I create the LOLCats weekly round-up, which is a little unsettling because I know she's not registering the photos, it must be something I'm generating energetically to attract her. Or the occasional zany laughter. I'd give her a special treat tomorrow except she doesn't like wet food or human food, only kibble and Whisker Lick'n treats, both of which she gets on demand. I guess I can pick up some of the red rings scattered around and throw them all day so she can run around like a maniac, that will make her happier.
("States United" map from Strange Maps
I've noticed that in the blogs I like to read first/most often, there's a serious collective movement underway to unroof the bedrock racism of what's being aimed at Obama in the name of "anti-socialism" or the teabagger reactionaries. A solid group of us are naming names and making a list, and I feel good being part of this effort. A few of them have written me private e-mails or linked to me. More are using ideas I raised without credit, but perhaps it was their idea simultaneously, that happens when an inevitable realization sweeps the minds of thinking folks. There is also a concurrent decision to call out crazy where crazy appears, differentiating delusion from those who foment and prey on delusion. It has libertarians very, very upset out there. My name has been bandied about with extreme negativity. Oops.
It reminds me of how outraged hippie and counterculture boys were when women started demanding equal rights. Like, we were trashing their good times by pointing out what THEY were doing that was sinking the possibility of real, enduring change.
I never enjoyed "Happy Days", just like I find "That 70's Show" unwatchable. You have to ignore huge segments of the population to pretend like the 1950s or the 1970s were lighthearted, with only rock and dope added to what is (in Hollywood-land) still all about white boys looking for sex.
Here's some of those fighting the Very Good Fight: Jill Cozzi at Brilliant at Breakfast; Richard Blair at All Spin Zone; Crooks and Liars in general, but especially Mike Finnegan's daily blog round-up and DO GO READ Nonny Mouse's recent post Stoopid Peepul ; Hullaballoo in general but especially Digby, Tristero and DDay; Batocchio at Vagabond Scholar; Michael's incisive analysis of current images at BAGNewsNotes; Echidne (24/7) for Real Feminism and astute take-downs of pseudoscience; and, while I always read my friend Kat's BitchCraft, her latest post (Challenging Art and Our Educations) promoting her friend -m-'s reaction to seeing Judy Chicago's "Dinner Party" for the first time is extremely good. 
(The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago)
Yeah, Kat and -m-, we been robbed. We coulda been a contender. However, unlike Marlon Brando, we are still alive and still able to lace on gloves. Even with this damned headache, I'm not dead yet.
To give thanks in another direction, I'm a big fan of the adventure games produced by Sandlot Games, which assuredly must have some really really smart women designing product. The entire Tradewinds series has been female-friendly and good on a number of oppression issues -- for instance, when you have the option of creating your own character, some of the images you can select from are actually fat. And the people of color are not Cosby-women-light. However, their latest, Tradewinds Odyssey, set in ancient Greece, is outstanding in its non-sexist portrayal of genders, its inside humor, and its clever rethinking of myth and history. For instance, when one dimwitted god or king (can't remember who it was) says he wants something sparkly to get himself a woman because "Girls like shiny things, right?", the hero replies "I think you're confusing girls with crows". Zing!
Even better, during one quest the Minotaur's sister is trying to help her discriminated-against brother (lots of disabled-rights messages in this one), and she turns to the Amazons for assistance. Once she's done with her part of the story, she announces that Hippolyta has created a "women's commune" that she's going to join because she's decided to come out. It's couched in other language, but the message is clear. Right ON! 
(Tradewinds Odyssey screenshot)
Okay, back to typing emergency room reports of people who've arrived with far progressed conditions because they don't have insurance and couldn't afford to see a doctor back when a simple prescription or low-cost treatment would have interrupted a downward spiral. We can't afford NOT to have universal health care any more. Do the math, stoopid.
Monday, September 14, 2009
TIDAL MONDAY
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
BLOGROLL AMNESTY DAY
(Graphic provided by ZenComix.)
I'm celebrating Blogroll Amnesty Day today for the first time. For a full explanation, see the originator Jon Swift. The short version is, it's a chance for bigger blogs to promote smaller blogs whom they read and/or wish to support. But I'm a small blog, so I'm employing the caveat that it doesn't have to be smaller than me: It just has to be choice blogs for whom I'd like to blow a celebratory horn.
Below is my "Check These Out" list. Not all of these blogs publish every day, or even every week. But I love each and every post they produce, I learn from them, I find my energy and spirits raised by reading them. Some of these bloggers have become my (cyber)friends because of exchanges we make to each other's blogs. And, it just so happens, they are all blogs created by women. Go figure.
Flip Flopping Joy -- by BrownFemiPower (whom I discovered at La Chola because of last year's B.A.D.): BFP writes about everything pertaining to the human condition, from a WOC, no limits perspective. She IS the leading edge, the event horizon. 
See Saw -- by Liza Cowan at Pine Street Art Works, Burlington, Vermont: About art + retail, plus politics, pop culture, and did we mention art?
Sue Katz: Consenting Adult -- by Sue Katz: Frank talk, critical views and a belly laugh now and again
Ojibway Migisi Bineshii -- by Ojibway Migisi Bineshii: News and information about Aboriginal, First Nations, Indigenous and Native people worldwide from an Ojibway feminist perspective.
BitchCraft -- by Kat: Feminism, music, and geekiness, free of party lines or pontification.
Womanist Musings -- by Renee: Humanist, pacifist, womanist, deep deep voice against racism and classism -- thank god this woman is also raising children. 
Carolyn Gage -- by Carolyn Gage: Lesbian-feminist plays, musicals, one-acts, and monologues
Monday, July 21, 2008
BEAKER, BEETHOVEN, AND BLOGGING
Okay, this is simply outright theft from Kat's blog BitchCraft. But I am a Beaker FANATIC, and this clip was new to me. It also struck me as a perfect tribute to the downside of a weekend spent with Netroots Nation bloggers (none of my Group News Blog companions, thank g*d, who were utterly remarkable in their ability to converse on any topic and their equal hunger to listen attentively).
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
POLITICS AND POETRY FOR $400, ALEX
I made cornbread stuffing with broccoli florets and two cod filets for dinner tonight. Well-fed, I took the Online Jeopardy Contestant quiz, 50 questions with 15 seconds to answer each. We'll see how I do if they contact me in the future. It was a lot harder than watching it on TV, even without having to buzz in or phrase it in the form of a question. I also didn't have Dinah beside me chirruping inquisitively every time I shouted out an answer.
My number one choice for Presidential candidate dropped out today -- no, NOT Guiliani, you scalawag, I meant John Edwards. I'm disappointed, mostly at the treatment he received for talking about issues no one else is, but I still have two grade A candidates to choose from and I'm contented with either.
I bring this up particularly to contradict the hydrophobic spew of so-called pundit Dick Morris, who announced on Faux News today that Edwards' supporters "are those that can’t decide which they don’t like more—a black or a women getting elected". Yep, that sums me up to a T -- me who wouldn't object if all U.S. property got returned to people of color and at least 80% of ALL positions of leadership were held by women.
As a momentary aside, I seriously don't understand how these sorts of people get named "pundits" or why their opinions are ever sought. It's clearly a WBC (White Boys Club) for the most part, and they of course always choose each other -- you don't even have to watch Survivor to know that. But why do we let them get away with it? I remember in the early 70s, there was a commercial for some product which was introduced by "celebrity Rula Lenska". The first time it came on, my mother, the queen of pop culture, turned to us and said "Huh? Celebrity? Have any of you ever heard of her?" I guess she was the forerunner of Fabio and Ryan Seacrest alike, Gumby figurines they can pose however they want.
John Edwards, I believe, would have taken on both the wealthy elite and the corporate media, with somewhat of an insider's understanding. He was willing to utter the words "poverty" and "class", and didn't have to a cleansing palate rinse with kiwi sorbet afterward. Furthermore, he was an enthusiastic parent from a relationship which had survived the death of a child. That either makes you or breaks you (if you don't pawn it off onto someone else). I believe it had made him. Everyone always talked about his hair and his boyish grin -- the same morons who claimed Dubya looked friendly and "fit". (Dubya may have toned muscles but he still looks like shit on a stick, and his eyes are the deadest in the world except for maybe Gunner Dick's.) What I saw on John Edward's face, however, was maturity and the kind of compassion conservatives can't even acknowledge existing, the compassion that Buddha refers to: the compassion of grief.
Yes, even rich white boys can be good leaders for us. You know, in that 20% I'm willing to allot them, which is likely more than they karmically deserve. As a group, they've been running on empty for a couple of millenia.
(Image by Amelie Chica)
There's some good writing out there in Cyberia today. I'm going to snag the juiciest of it to share with you. First, over at Daily Kos, DHinMI posted in It's A Change Election a message so short and powerful, I'm copying the whole dang thing (it's homage, DH, please don't come down on me for theft!):
"Next time you hear someone extol the virtues of "traditional family values," or call on the country to seal the borders and not allow in new immigrants, or declare that we need to go back to the good old days (that often weren't very good), there's something you should remember. Something that demonstrates the profound changes in this country since the 1950's, before the civil rights movement and the feminist movement helped to greatly advance the cause of equal opportunity for ALL American citizens, something that demonstrates that we will not go backward, that America has irreversibly changed, and that we have changed for the better:
"Never before in the history of the United States of America have the voters and delegates of a major political party had to choose their nominee for President from a field that did not include a white male.
"We may or may not win this election, but in the greater social and cultural conflict fought out in this country for the last 50 years, we have won. Democrats liked all our candidates when John Edwards was still running for President, and we still like our candidates now that we no longer have a white male to choose. We are not threatened by having to chose between a woman and a man of color. We not only accept this as our current American reality, we embrace it as our future. WE are the party of tolerance. WE are the party of diversity. WE are the party of solidarity. And WE are the party of change."
("Blue Rudder", photo and copyright © 2007 by Liza Cowan)
Over at Digby, Dday in The Legitimate Change That Should Come From This Primary explains in easily understandable language why our current primary system is BROKEN:
"If 1-2% of all voters can whittle the field down to two candidates, and deliver a nominee on the Republican side, we have a serious problem and everyone knows it...It needs to be reformed in a big way. The fact that Florida broke the rules, moved up, delivered no delegates on the Dem side, but obviously succeeded since they PICKED THE REPUBLICAN NOMINEE, should tell you something. We need a spread-out process and maybe earlier conventions to end this bad front-loaded system. It's terrible for democracy."
("Field Labor #5", woodcut by Michele Ramirez)
Back at Kos, Markos himself delivers two excellent commentaries on anti-Hispanic racism playing out in this election. First, in Bashing brown people to the electoral abyss, he begins with quoting Tim Dickinson's article in The Rolling Stone, Blame Pedro:
"Back in 2005, when Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee fought against an 'un-American' and 'race-baiting' proposal to deny undocumented workers access to health care and other government services, he declared that the bill 'inflames those who are racists and bigots and makes them think there's a real problem.' Impugning the piety of the bill's state-senator sponsor — like the governor, a Baptist preacher — Huckabee quipped, 'I drink a different kind of Jesus juice.'
"That was then. Today — with the nation bogged down in a disastrous war, oil prices at $100 a barrel, climate change cooking the planet and the economy veering into recession — the geniuses vying to lead the Republican Party have decided what's really wrong with America: Mexicans. Even the Rev. Huckabee is chugging the GOP's nativist Kool-Aid: In December, the same man who two years ago called on America to 'be a place that opens its arms, opens its heart, opens its spirit to people who come because they want the best for their families' unveiled his 'Secure America Plan,' which would target 12 million of these good folks for mass deportation 120 days into his first term.
"The immigrant-bashing had the desired effect, winning Huckabee the coveted endorsement of Jim Gilchrist, leader of the Minuteman Project border vigilantes. Gilchrist — who, in a nod toward moderation, clarified to Rolling Stone that his group does not believe that undocumented workers ought to be 'mowed down with machine guns at the border' — has high praise for Huckabee's plan. 'It appeared to me that I had written it myself,' he says. 'It was that strong.'"
Markos goes on to explain how and why racism came out from under its partial wraps in the Republican camp.
In a second post, Immigration issue killed Romney in Florida, Markos quotes Simon Rosenberg:
"According to the exit polls Mitt Romney and John McCain tied 33% to 33% among the 89% of the Florida voters last night who were not Hispanic. Among Hispanics, who where 11% of the Florida GOP electorate last night, the vote was 54% McCain, 24% Rudy and 14% Romney. So it was the vote of Hispanic voters who put John McCain over the top in Florida, and gave him the most important win of his fight for the GOP nomination.
"Thus, John McCain, the candidate who championed immigration reform, may have had the nomination delivered to him by those Hispanic voters he has been fighting for. And Romney, who has led the anti-immigrant crusade in the GOP field this year, saw this strategy explode on him - as it has virtually every other Republican who has invested in it - last night."
If you ask me, the explosion wasn't big enough.
In a related story, Alternet reports:
"The National Council of La Raza, which includes nearly 300 affiliated organizations, will launch a new initiative on Thursday titled 'We Can Stop The Hate,' aimed at curtailing the influence of CNN's Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck as well as MSNBC political commentator Pat Buchanan. In addition, the organization is petitioning for Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee to renounce the endorsement of Jim Gilchrist, a cofounder of the Minuteman Project, an anti-immigration group."
This is a good place to remind us all that when we are addressing the lies and malignancy of hate speech, "la raza" translates to "the people", NOT to "our race" as the xenophobes are prone to claim.
("Tuberculosis Ward, Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island 3", photo by Stephen Wilkes)
Also at Kos, BarbinMD reports on today's Justice Department oversight hearing in The Nuremberg Defense, including a chilling exchange between Sheldon Whitehouse and current Attorney General Michael Mukasey. Thank g*d there's SOMEBODY in our government who understands that "I was only following orders" is not a defense. Check it out.
("Rhino in Fog" by Geert Goiris)
Other enjoyable reads right now include:
Jesse Wendel's insider understanding and predictions concerning the WGA strike, along with a definitely provocative video from Speechless, at "We've Got Everything We Need".
Kat at her new blog BitchCraft has been grabbing my attention with her musings on the disturbing youth of figure skaters, and defense of the "healthy choice" that divorce can be.
LaDoctorita at Unconventional Beauty outlines another example of Nobody Listens to Women, Part 2.
To close, a little Judy Grahn, from her book Confrontations With The Devil in the Form of Love:
I only have one reason for living
and that's you
And if I didn't have you as a
reason for living,
I would think of something else.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
BROAD CAST 23 JANUARY 2008: FUN WHILE IT FREEZES
(Metal sculpture by Frank Plant)
NEW KID ON THE BLOG
Kat, a regular commenter and sometime poster here as well as at Maoist Orange Cake has plunged into running her own blog at BitchCraft. Focusing on feminism, music, and geekiness, Kat made her first venture as part of Blog for Choice, and a wonderful start it is. Give her some sugar, ya'll. And, to remind you, another Maoist Orange Caker and commenter here, Shadocat, has had her own blog for a while (despite being caught up in new grandmotherhood) at Ma Vie in KC. We blog, therefore we deserve Cake.
(F es por Fanny succionado hasta secarse por una sanguijuela)
I re-read Edward Goreyk's Gashlycrumb Tinies regularly, for the morbid thrill of it all. I've now discovered there's a version online (from Argentina) in Spanish. !Cubra los ojos de sus niños!
One of the blogs I check out and enjoy regularly, Homo Academicus, has written a biting commentary on the study in the January issue of Developmental Psychology, a journal of the American Psychological Association, which declares (as if it is breathtaking new information) "Bisexuality is a stable identity, not just a phase." Do tell.
Natasha's analysis is not to be missed. Go read it, but here's a sample:
"Bisexuality is maligned by both the gay and the straight camps. They are described as being fence-sitters, too scared to come right out and admit to being gay. Bisexual men especially are often suspected of being semi-closeted homos. ... Bisexuals who end up in long term relationships with someone of the other sex are often attacked by gay folks for their ability to enjoy heterosexual privilege, while being dismissed by straight folks as having gone through a bisexual phase and thankfully emerged 'normal.' Bisexuals are called greedy and sex-crazed, as if their love of sex is so great they just can’t help hopping into bed with whoever offers. They are suspected of being incapable of holding down long term relationships, accused of being unable to resist the draw of whichever genitalia their partner doesn’t have."
Right ON, sistah.
An article by Roni Caryn Rabin in the New York Times declares In the Fatosphere, Big Is In, or at Least Accepted. It begins:
"Blogs written by fat people — and it’s fine to use the word, they say — have multiplied in recent months, filling a virtual soapbox known as the fatosphere, where bloggers calling for fat acceptance challenge just about everything conventional medical wisdom has to say about obesity."
The excellent piece goes on to quote one of our heras, Kate Harding, founder of Shapely Prose (long linked in my sidebar), who says “One of the first obstacles to fat acceptance is breaking down the question of whether being fat is a choice. No fat acceptance advocate is saying you should sit around and wildly overeat. What we’re saying is that exercise and a balanced diet do not make everyone thin.”
In a recent post, I referred to the phenomenon known as "droplifting" or "shopdropping", where items for sale which have been altered for reasons of politics, promotion or art are placed back on store shelves to be discovered by random consumers. Weburbanist has a great recent examination of this activity. In addition to some wonderful images, they have two videos to enjoy, A Beginner's Guide to Shopdropping (which I think would be especially fun to watch with an adolescent), and Mixed Messages: A Shop Dropping Intervention.
And, for your pleasure, more ICanHazCheesburgr images from the singular mind of little gator, not LOLCats per se (LOLCritters?) but in that zany genre. Remove liquids from your mouth before viewing (after the fold).
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