why teenagers suck

HoustonChronicle.com - 1 in 3 teens says First Amendment goes 'too far'

i don't know if this says something about the way we're raising our youth or the public school system's failure to teach comprehensive civics and history or just the plain sad fact that adolescents seem to be stupider than originally thought.

(or perhaps some combination thereof.)

again with the eggs in their baskets...

The Well-Timed Period: Legislating Delivery, Kansas Style

what's wrong with kansas?

well, for one, you're not allowed to refuse medical assistance, according to one hazy bill being introduced to the kansas legislature relating to crime and punishment relating to giving birth without medical assistance.

like the virginia bill, this one is chock full of vague language and medical fog surrounding a woman's right and ability to give birth when/how she wants. unattended births/stillbirths are a criminal act - and yet it only covers hospital births. huh. go figure.

the well-timed period has the info (including the email address of the woman sponsoring the bill).

so i hope this makes the rounds and gets people riled up, too.

consistency, people - consistency!

i have a problem

i once thought alcohol was going to get me in trouble but i was wrong. it's comic books. instead of filling my brain with wonderful words from the world's literary lions, i've stuffed my head with blams, snikts and thuds. i read the stories of 15-yr old boys who get sent to prison and have out of body experiences; stories of working class magicians living in london; of the secret origin of mutants with admantine skeletons; of heists gone wrong and covert ops gone horrifically overt.

when he rang me up, the guy behind the counter said, "get ready - $63."
"hey!" i said. "that's less than a pair of shoes!"
"comics are better than shoes."
"it's getting neck and neck."

i've discovered a new series, "hard time," from the dc focus line. i've also begun to read 'constantine' (so i'll know exactly why i'm going to hate the new movie) and, while the new powers arc is a good one, it's also a slow one. churn it out, boys, i'm getting impatient! and when the hell is 'the forsaken' going to come out with their new one? 'the losers' doesn't disappoint but i wish they'd stop with the exposition and get more into the action, you know?

but this is all to say that i have a problem. a serious comic book buying problem. (you know you have a problem when your roomie says to you, "i think we have to catalog stuff.")

when up is down

Recasting Republicans as the Party of Civil Rights

ok...so let's go vote for republicans because they were anti-slavery 100 years ago!!

jesus christ people. anyone else find it hilarious they can't find anything more relevant and RECENT??

meet dan.

there are no words.

thanks, roomie.

best. show. ever.

Uffish Thoughts: I want to be stereotyped. I want to be classified.

came across uffish via bitch (you know where to find her) and squealed when i saw poor poor kevin's face. poor kevin - either bump up or go home. bad leadership, weird hair and the strange ability to be even more incoherent than the models.

but roommie and i love this show. love love love. it's gettin' down to the nitty gritty and next week, i need to see FashionMom go out in a teary, hysterical, face-in-the-drink meltdown to end all meltdowns.

(confession: i am also fascinated by heidi klum's voluptuous teutonicity. since giving birth her ass looks great.)

shoes shoes shoes shoes

Eileen Shields, Spring '05 - LEILA

thanks to bitch. phd (who is also thinking about shoes), came across this site and THIS shoe.

i love this shoe. i have versions of this shoe already. (mmm, my nude pink spanish leather tango shoes that make my feet ache when i have to run after a bus but look so sexy when i am standing still...mmm, i love you.)

i think i must have this shoe.
but it's my rent...
sadness.

smartypants = empty pants?

Times Online - Sunday Times

yet another article about how being a smart woman 'dooms' you to gristly spinsterhood.

but it's great for this one sentence:

“The bright girl, on the other hand, remembers that old saying that at first she sinks into his arms only to spend the rest of her life with her arms in his sink.”

newsflash: spine disappears

The New York Times > Washington > Senate, 85-13, Confirms Rice as Secretary of State

alas, previous reports of a democratic spine were premature.

so M-- (aka BeanCurd) leaves for brazil thursday. for two weeks or so, i forget. i'm a little bummed - the attention has been sort of nice. that sounds cruel, as if the person giving the attention doesn't matter, but that's not true. it's like a mutually reinforcing loop:

boy<=>attention<=>me

is it shallow? absolutely. i have no qualms admitting i can be about as deep as a baking tin. i should not be worried about where my next boy-action is coming from; i have resume revision, phone calls, emails and networking to get done. i have my DREAM to pursue. grr. but boy-action is nice. boy-action is...mmm...very nice.

i should go to the gym tomorrow morning.

spinal tap

The New York Times > Washington > Senate Democrats Speak of Slowing Confirmation Votes

could it be true?? are the democrats growing spines? have the jellied forms of our leaders suddenly fixed their courage to the sticking place? are they, at last, suddenly waking up to what it means to be the opposition party?

dare we hope it lasts the next four years...?

totally useless but...

The New York Times > Movies > Oscars 2005 > The 2005 Academy Award Nominations

yuck.
what a crappy list.

homework

i'm writing a white paper for my firm about how to create and pitch blogging as a communications practice.

funny, huh?

bush=poop

via boing boing

heh.

wavering between safety and a desire to do more meaningful work, i went on a frenetic cycle of interviews last week and the one before. i hated every single one. i could have tolerated any of those positions (which were just more of the same thing i'm doing now.) but i would have ended up hating everything again within a year. i'm noticing that my dissatisfaction cycles are getting shorter and shorter. a year from now i'll be totally unemployable because my bitterness and anger will make me unfit company.

so the dream is out there...floating. i'm just waiting for my next wave to bring me a little closer.

(note: networking is painful and i hate doing it. i don't care if it's about personal relationships. it makes me feel like a tool.)
...

blew off BC this weekend to trudge out in the blizzard to meet a girl friend for dinner and a movie. (A-- wagged her finger at me and said i put boys before my girls. hm. considering i've only had two boys in the past year and saw one of them once a season, i find that hard to believe. every single day i'm surrounded by my girl friends. what the fuck?) because the weather sucked so bad, i was going to call off seeing BC last night anyway, but to drag my southern california ass through snow and wet and wind for a less than spectacular movie and dinner just made me grit my teeth.

(note: 'house of flying daggers' is like an extended chinese music video. and i think a kung foo movie should be a fucking kung foo movie - i want to see kicking ass. not meandering bullshit romance and yearning. if i want that i'll watch 'cold mountain' again. more flying daggers, more kicking ass, less weird kissing and making out in beautiful chinese landscapes, please.)
...
my libido is dead.
desultory onanism results only in a mild, 'hm, that was...pleasant.' if i can't rock my own world, something is gravely wrong.
...
dreamt last night that my dad and bill cosby were friends. bill visited me specifically to ask me why i wasn't married and when i hemmed and hawed, he cast a critical eye over my outfit and said that my shoes could be better. he then proceeded to throw out everything in my closet.

bastard.
...
goals for this week: let's try and finish something, goddammit.

rude but right: social security and survivor benefits

The Rude Pundit

here's a story of my own:
my mother and father always made very modest money and when my mother died four years ago, the social security survivor benefits my father received was a cushion for a man who had never cleared more than 40k a year as a pastor (oh, some years, 30k would have been a gift.) my father hadn't expected these benefits at all; he had, frankly, forgotten they existed. when the check arrived in the mail, he cried. he was able to settle some debt and keep the house - he was able, in other words, to participate in this great ownership society of ours. (sarcasm here.)

so here's a note to those republicans who want to take away 'ordinary people's' money: hands off, fuckers.

sex & the church gal

Feminary: My Beloved Waits for Me

the feminarian is a young seminary student in california blogging about what it means to be a feminist in seminary. i like reading it because some of her struggles mirror my early ones when i was waaay churchy.

but now she's starting a project - collecting stories from women of faith about sex and sexuality. the openness and honesty is revealing. i once started a project like this for african american women of faith and it died a slow awkward death. my take-away: black women in church are more conflicted about sex and faith than we think.

anyway, go read it. it's an ongoing project but the first four are rather interesting.

why david brooks is a tool

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Empty Nests, and Hearts

[via echidne]

I reached my 35th birthday this year and my uterus still remains uninhabited. It is empty, has been empty and shall remain so. I will die never knowing what it is like to fill with a child; I will never feel my breast swell with milk; I will never watch my body shift and grow tumescent with anything other than a large meal. One by one, my eggs make their slow unpredictable journey to my uterus and they wait for a bit before collecting in my Instead cup and being poured down my toilet. Sometimes they decide to stay home. Perhaps they’ve already figured out that it’s pointless to go all the way down there when only a warm emptiness will await them. This is my body’s cycle and I have chosen to remain empty.

But David Brooks takes my emptiness, a personal vacancy that I’ve purposefully authorized, managed and maintained since adolescence, and wants me to give it up for the good of the nation, so my eggs can be rendered serviceable to the state. “That would be good for the country” he says, because there aren’t enough young people to support the old. My fecundity would become fodder for the aging. My reproductive system an offering to the homeland. In sum, I become servant to my biology for a nation that cannibalizes itself and end up not so very different from my ancestors whose sons and daughters carried the plantation system on their backs, endlessly producing generation after generation of brutish labor.

So, Mr. Brooks, this is what I say to you: hands off my ovaries, my empty uterus and the bloody clots that I flush down the toilet ever month. If my body is the nation, then I shut my borders to your reproductive imperialism and ovarial greed. Your sympathy and desire to give us gender-specific options in the workforce is hollow; if your care was genuine, suggest ways a woman could raise a child without marriage.

It’s been a mere 125 years since the Angel in the House earned the right to leave it and you want us to return to it again. Oh, you want tax-credits for ‘stay at home parents’ but you lie. You want women to stay home. We go in young and fertile and emerge uneducated and useless. In other words, you want us to have the lives our mothers and grandmothers led; lives of deferred dreams and repressed bitterness.

Ah, perhaps that is your game. Time travel.

um, mlk day pt 2: rude, but right

The Rude Pundit

if you like your homage to slain civil rights leaders sprinkled with a little, uh, salt then this is the place for you:

There will be blood orgies at the Watergate the likes of which that town hasn't seen since Ronald Reagan smeared himself with pig feces and demanded the cherries of a dozen College Republican girls be popped in front of him as he masturbated slowly, deliberately, eyes glazed over with mad power and semi-deified glory.

dude.

greenfairydotcom: Back brush step, heel drop

(in between posts, i swear i'm doing work.)

but this post from green fairy reminded me of another gender war conversation i had with my father saturday afternoon, while i was shopping for dinner things after the movie. i was standing in the abandoned aisles between chips and dip when i felt the urge to call my sister and wish my niece a happy birthday. (i tried not to feel hurt that she yelled 'thanks, tita - bye!') so one of the endless in-laws passed me to dad.

dad: so, how did it go?
me: what?
dad: the date? the doctor? how'd it go?
me: oh. that. it didn't go.
dad: oh, ding. what did you do?
me: why does it have to be me? he was boring! nice guy but really boring!
dad: you're never going to find a man --
me: (groan)
dad: --if you don't learn how to soften up. you know, be...softer. act weaker. be a lady.
me: god, dad. HE was boring. i was perfect.
dad: that's what i mean. you have to bring him to your level.
me: (now standing in front of the butcher) i don't want to bring anyone to my level. three tilapia, please. i want someone who's already there.
dad: your mother ruined you. she never showed you how to be a lady.
me: you married her.
dad: we ruined you.
me: i discovered i'm quirkyalone.
dad: you crazy.
me: i gotta go, dad. i'm cooking dinner for a guy i'm not dating.
dad: love you.
me: me too.