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.

loving this cd

Pink Martini | Hang On Little Tomato

i listened to this cd all weekend - i dragged out the tree with the lyrics in one hand and the tree in the other, stumbling over the italian in 'una notte a napoli.' i re-heated the roast chicken singing in full voice (i never sing in full voice since i have a roommate) the lyric booklet open in front of me next to my whiskey.

but my all time favorite song: 'kikuchiyo to mohshimasu.' it's the most romantic song i've heard about a one-night stand ever. i'm desperate to find more about the original artists but my googling skills are dead. when i was a kid, i watched a lot of japanese variety shows on tv with my mom and sister, and the new year's eve shows always featured men in kimonos singing sad, melodic songs the entire audience knew.

it's a good memory.

in honor of mlk: the social security 'crisis'

Editorial: Social Security/Blacks get more, not less, from it

hmm. makes you wonder, huh? could the fact that people of color benefit more from it be one of the reasons the social security system suddenly needs to be be dismantled? hm? could it??

for once, i'd like my paranoia to be completely without merit.

oh, hey - let's all take a moment to wish mlk a happy birthday. i know i'll be thoughtfully contemplating my brownness for the next few hours.

tepid

friday night i had a drink at the tasting room with dr. B--, a man who has rejected private practice to continue providing care for poor people with awful lung issues; a funny (sorta), nice (very), smart and progressive kind of a guy. when he arrived, we kissed on the cheek, shook hands and then sat so very far from each other at the bar there was room for two chess boards between us. i counted three awkward silences and eventually became so maniacally chatty i could barely recognize myself.

after he dropped me home i ordered a pizza, watched part of a naughty movie on cable (word to the wise: 'snow sluts' apparently shows there is an apalling lack of lube in the northern climes of europe), tried to be fascinated by 'van helsing' and crashed, missing a message from Wet Nacho who called to dispel the chilly loneliness of his own apartment on the northside.
...
my alarm buzzed the next morning and i donned three layers to meet BC for breakfast and then a walk at the botanical gardens. with the temperatures hovering around 8 degrees, how lucky i was to find a cab idling outside my apartment building when i left. we beat the hipsters to the flying saucer, ate really thick pancakes, and then drove to the gardens just off the green el line. in the winter, the warmest place to be is a humidity filled greenhouse reading about palm trees, spathes, and flowering cacti. you can watch the koi gawp at the air or stand on a hidden path and, um, take a private moment. it was so quiet i could hear water dropping from the leaves to the bricks and paths below.
...
BC and i made plans to meet for dinner and movie at my place later and i spent the rest of the afternoon at the movies and picking up a roast chicken for dinner. yes, i totally faked another dinner. yes, dammit! i fake dinner!
...
it was also time to drag out the tree. it stood in our princess turret full, tall and handsome. it was naked but a pine smell still clung to the needles. so i wrestled the tree to the floor and pulled it through the apartment to the back stairs where it lodged between the wall and the landing, effectively stuck. but after being rescued by two workmen who needed to get to the roof, our tree finally rested in our dumpster. so our princess turrett is ours again.
...
renting movies with BC - horrendous. he wanted to get 'repo man.' who wants to spend the night watching emilio estevez? yuck. so we compromised - fellini's '8 1/2'. i fell asleep three times.

quiz: r u quirkyalone?

you know who you are:

you like being in a couple but mostly it's 'feh.' you're almost indifferent to it. you go to movies alone, you like sleeping in the middle of your bed by yourself, you like your friends a lot and the whole relationships as destiny thing is 'feh.'

take the quiz. i'm a 110 - VERY quirkyalone.

Girl in the Locker Room! has some cool stuff on it today, including a nod to essence magazine who's launching a 12-month long campaign to 'take back the music' - wrenching hip hop away from the whole pimps/ho's paradigm.

already the discussion on the essence board is lively, most women agreeing that the representation of black women in hip hop has to change. there are some who think it's a matter of free speech and 'artistic expression.'

i'm always hesitant to automatically oppose the image of the 'ho' with the 'lady' considering the history of black female sexuality in this country. while the reaction to emancipation for writers like pauline hopkins may have been to promote a model of black female sexuality based on white middle class mores, i think that black women (artists, writers or whatever) have recognized very keenly its limits.

for me, the matter is agency, not image. a couple of the rappers essence interviews say that the women choose to be on the videos - not thinking about the economic barrel they have these women over, not thinking about the crass commercialization they're encouraging these women to particpate in. yes, it is their choice (e.g., no one is dragging these women kicking and screaming into the studios to shoot a video) but that's a very limited and narrow definition of choice: are these women choosing from a position of agency/control or are they making a choice based on the allure of star-fucking and cash?

it's slow today, you know?

pro-life nutbaggery.

so the pro-lifers have taken the logical leap i thought they would. they're setting their sights on contraception. fringe element? wacko anti-choicer? not likely to happen?

we'll see.

(via worshipping at the altar of mediocrity)

hey, i'm bleedin' over here

Nerve.com - "The One" Is the Loneliest Number by Tobin Levy

yada yada yada. boys boys boys.
35 35 35.
jesus.

my roommate is going to be out of town this weekend. normally, i'd be plotting like mad to dig up some skinny boy to ravish in the empty magnificence of my apartment. normally - jeez. i haven't done anything like that since i was 33. so i'm kind of puzzled why i'm not doing it this time. i mean, it's been MONTHS since my last carnal encounter. long wintery months. why not call up Wet Nacho and give him a chance to erase the bad sex from last year. why not let a scrabble session with BC get out of hand. (geez, this may be the problem - there're only two!!)

but i suspect i will spend friday night having civilized drinks with dr. bob and will spend saturday night watching vampire movies, drinking wine and eating cheese. and belching.

because i'm a lady.

yee haw

indeed.

Longtime DNC member Susan Turnbull said Dean still has plenty of work to do because DNC members are being cautious and want to know what the candidates would do for the state parties.

wow, you'd think this was all about them and not about the needs of the party at large. how about he'll make sure we don't suck up to the conservative appeasers in our party who'd rather sell out the base than be progressive and advocate for some real change?

[via bitch. ph.d.]

eggs remain in OUR basket: Delegate to withdraw HB 1677

heh.

i've been getting most of my info from democracy for virginia but the well-timed period also has work on it (she's a doctor!).

cosgrove's withdrawal, though admirable for recognizing what a shit-storm his poorly worded legislation would provoke, is still dishonest. it fails to acknowledge what the real purpose of his bill was. since virginia already has a safe-haven law on its books, what was the point? if it was to stiffen the penalties for dumping babies in traschcans and dumpsters, why not just change the language of the original bill?

the language of the cosgrove bill was not confusing (for those of us who could read, anyway.) it stated very clearly that women who failed to report a spontaneous miscarriage to the authorities would face legal action. it outlined very clearly the ways the state would have been able to invade virginia women's privacy and bodies. there was no misinformation, no convolution or misunderstanding.

whatever cosgrove's intent behind the bill, its implementation would have been an attack on women's reproductive autonomy.

psst, i can't sleep

well write a story for this!

bighappyfunhouse is having a contest.
you know you wanna.

(go on, close that excel spreadsheet, click on word and spit out that long yarn you've been itching to tell - the one about larry, his cat bubble and what they did with that weird kidney dish.)

am watching the bachelorette.
one word: virgins.

this is gonna be funny. (or sad.)

the salvador option

it's happened.

we have completely lost our moral mooring. we have forgotten history, we have erased our consciences and have closed our eyes to what we're about to do. our president sits in his tower telling his people he only wants to hear the good news, thus insuring he won't have to hear the horrific things we're about to unleash on his behalf.

have we no bottom?

wasting more time

over at Bitch. Ph.D., there's an amusing collection of best/worst pickup lines.

heh. i like the buddhist one.

jp is teacher of the year

he gets high off linguistics.

the reason why people don't understand bilingual education is because they don't know how it's taught; because they don't know the first thing about linguistics and language acquisition and have never thought to ask; because they think too often in binaries ('if we're not teaching kids english, we must be teaching them foreign-stuff! and if they're into foreign stuff then they're not american!')

so you go, jp - you and your code switching and contrastive analysis.

(shhh, we're not supposed to call members of the prevailing power structure dumb.)

nyt may start charging for online reading.

N.Y. Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. was quoted in the article as saying: "It gets to the issue of how comfortable are we training a generation of readers to get quality information for free. That is troubling."

yeah. because, you know, information should be paid for.

ass.

feminism, where art thou?

gack.

via green fairy (who immediately returned to bed once she received this news.)

all your eggs in MY basket, pt 2

Democracy for Virginia: Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty: HR1677 - A Reply from Delegate Cosgrove

this is why the internet is good.
you can stop problematic misogynist legislation.

sigh.

USATODAY.com - Education Dept. paid commentator to promote law

my brother, my brother.
paid. to carry the gov'ts water.

men to women: 'all your eggs are in MY basket'

follow the links. i'm too angry to do it. via Bitch. Ph.D.

so some wanker in the virginia legislature wants to make it illegal for a woman to miscarry in PRIVATE.

when you think men can't sink any lower or get any stupider they always find a way to surprise the hell out of you. i'd like these men to just come out and say what they're really thinking: hey, ladies, fuck you!

i'm a whiny baby

one of my must read blogs,Bitch. Ph.D., just announced to her very cool readership that she's quitting her academic job soon. in the comments there are quite a few people who did the same and are very supportive.

there are even a few who are now using their work in the nonprofit sector and i'll be totally honest: I AM FUCKING JEALOUS.

there. i have revealed myself to be petty beyond all pettiness. i want the dream, dammit! i want to email all these people and ask them, how the hell did you manage that?

i'm sorry. i'm stressed out and thinking about cashing out my 401(k) because i need a cash cushion (even if it's tiny and about to get me taxed to death.) and i'm stressed out because i have a few informational interviews to follow up on and i'm abso-fucking-lutely terrified. and i'm thinking of applying for an adjunct position with the city colleges here and have i mentioned i'm terrified?

i haven't looked at my CV in 8 years. jesus.

anyone have a midol? cuz i really need one. my pants are killing me.

Project Censored 2005 - Top 25 Censored Stories

i'd have more faith in this list if it was edited better.

and today, in a word, blows. tedious work, work to find other work postponed, delayed stress, and having a tremendously bad hair day. tremendously.

there is an air of rebellion at the office, there have been two nervous breakdowns this week and i think someone's getting fired tomorrow. (not me.)

all the good ones are british...

sbf iso src (single radical cleric) with long toenails and hook. you are: into flip flops and rubbing noses.

yesterday

was a good day: finished the 2nd draft of a working poem, 'indifference'; finished a 4th draft of another, 'untitled'. i read several good poems by other people (it seems i'm growing into adrienne rich) and bought a pile of comic books. let me say right now that azzarello's 100 Bullets is the best effing series i have read EVER. it's violent, outrageous, complicated, funny, and have i mentioned violent? in 'samurai' i've seen one shanking, one shower beat-down, a couple of unfortunate events involving tigers and there's at least one heavily implied scene of jail-time train pulling. i'm learning so much. POWERS has become tedious and i've decided to wait for the trades.

today...i've just spent 15 minutes talking to the customer service people at american girl place while putting in an order for coconut the dog for my boss' niece.

sigh.

Shirley Chisholm, First Black Congresswoman, Dies at 80

aw, man.

i was fascinated by her when i was a kid. she was so majestic to me. her deep voice, her long sentences, her deep seriousness.

no one is serious anymore...

so here i am, a half hour until the first day of 2005 ends and i've spent the whole day in bed. (it's never a good idea to drink 6 bottles of champagne all in one night.) i woke up at 4. so maybe it's time for some resolutions. i only bring up resolutions because it's the traditional thing to do and because, based on a loud late conversation last night with my roomie and G--, i may need some.

but...on the other hand, screw resolutions. i have enough stress in my life as it is.

bugger.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Judge won't let woman divorce while she's pregnant

if we took all the news stories showing how women get screwed by our institutions, and laid them end to end, do you think they'd reach the moon?

link via eschaton.