David and Goliath Tees Being Assholes as Usual (If you aren’t aware of what a nasty guy Todd Goldman is, basically he is a massive plagiarist.)
Today the Washington Post ran pretty much one of the worst articles ever. Shakesville and Pandagon tackle the article so you don’t have to read it.
Jill on men’s “right” to anonymously threaten women.
School Takes Away White Privilege For A Day For Black History Month, Parents Outraged
Guatemalan Worry Dolls (I was reminded when I ran across the set I inherited from my grandfather a moment ago. They’re neat.)
Casting Director Fired from “Shelter” Flick
Just ’cause I love this story and it has cheered me up immensely today: Hereville
Just getting back on track and already massive personal issues (and not just drama, actual problems) totally hit me out of nowhere and fuck with my world. Look for a post or two tomorrow, but I may not be able to keep up with my ambition of a post every day for a little while…too busy trying to pull my life (well, really, our lives…mine…and if I have anything to say about it, someone else’s) back together after a terrible, terrible day which is going to have lasting repercussions for a long time to come.
Posts on the fucked-upness of the criminal justice system may be forthcoming.
There are scars that run like rivers down my body, slowly snaking over flesh and bone, winding down along my skin in crooked red and silver streaks, over stomach, hips, and thigh — the burden of bearing children or merely the potential, skin stretched too thin, to the breaking point, leaving marks that never go away. I hide them beneath layers of clothing so that I won’t catch my own disapproving scowl in the mirror when I think that I am not paying attention; I will let my lover strip me bare and tell me I am beautiful, but I can’t bring myself to believe him.
There are red, angry scars like an alien landscape, craters across my cheeks and brow and shoulders and chest, and though I do nothing to hide them — I do not cake them in cosmetics to pretend they are not there — I secretly fret and fuss and worry, though I have never had the luxury of being the slender, pretty blonde in the sitcom with just one huge red zit appearing suddenly on the day of the prom. When I had hair, I hid behind that, burying myself so that no one could see the face riddled with pockmarks and inflamed follicles, the greasy sheen, the bad skin. Now I can’t hide it behind anything, and I am not always sure that is a good thing.
I have more scars. Cats and rats and ferrets scampering over my skin, the joys and sorrows of caring for a living breathing creature and the death of one. Whole pieces of flesh gone, razor burns and ingrown hairs, just a memory now that I have accepted the fact that I can never be conventionally beautiful and I will never be a silky-smooth hairless Barbie doll (though I will not lie — sometimes all of us wish that we could be that). Burns: angry brown marks on my left wrist and right arm, clumsy accidents in domesticity, glaring reminders of my failure to ever be the proper, meek, prospective housewife I was taught in Sunday School to be. More and more, scars marking territory and proclaiming my faults and flaws and, occasionally, a virtue, not all of them visible to the naked eye and some beneath the skin and in my blood, my mind, my soul — and I do not hide any of them from anyone.
I don’t make love in the dark. I have reconciled myself with the idea of being photographed for sentimental purposes. And though I try to care for my body and love it and secretly hope to improve it in pursuit of an unrealistic ideal, I do not conceal my flaws. I have never tried. It would be a futile exercise, and I would be found out for the clown I am, hiding behind the mask. And, truthfully, no one who has seen those myriad imperfections has ever expressed anything but enthusiasm for my body, heart, soul laid bare…
But I can’t bear to look.
Inmate Awaiting Sex Change Says State Has Stopped Treatment (Plus, an interesting LiveJournal discussion on the article.)
GOP To Americans: Take Your Government Transparency And Shove It
Navy Sonar Harms Whales (video)
Pondering a Post-Bullshit America
McCain Repudiates Comments of Introductory Speaker at Rally
PLUS: NPR interview with Cunningham re: McCain Flap (Can’t you smell the bullshit through the speakers? Hilarious.)
Anti-War Movement Wrestles with 1968 (The article isn’t great. The comments are interesting. What’s pertinent here is how fucking scary everyone finds the prospect of civil disobedience. OMG. ANARCHY!! Recreate68 rocks my socks.)
In case you haven’t seen it yet, because it is hilarious - Stuff White People Like
AUDIO: Fairytales My Mother Told Me
When I was young, my mama told me, little girl, you can do, you can be whatever you please, and you can do anything that a boy can do, and you can be anything that a boy can be, and you can do it just as well and, maybe, even better. She told me, little girl, nothing in this world can ever stop you.
When I was young, my mama told me, little girl, fairytales do come true, and Prince Charming will come for you, and you can find true love that never dies. She told me, little girl, you can have faithfulness and fidelity, a perfect happy family, if you are good and follow all the rules.
When I was young, my mama told me, little girl, God has a plan, though it cannot be seen or felt or understood by man, and He will always forgive you and love you no matter what you do (at least if you do nothing really bad). She said, He wants us all to be together for eternity, so if you do all that I say he said, maybe when we die in Heaven we can see each other, always be with one another, again.
NPR: Hair Samples Used to Trace Geographic Moment
Microsoft Slapped by EU With $1.35B Fine
Mexican Border Wall Will Not Be Built On The Land of the Wealthy and Well-Connected
Feminists are “Language Rapists”
Hollywood Casting Call for that “Inbred” Look
Dead Baby Found In Basket at Denver Hospital (Safe haven laws I’m sure have some interesting feminist implications, but I’m sleepy right now.)
Some kickass poetry to start your day (yes I’m biased, and no reason, just ’cause) and audio!
Scandal-ridden homophobic D.A. in ‘Lawrence v. Texas’ case resigns
Gay Man Beaten for Saying “Hello”
Immigrants Commit Far Less Crimes Than “Native” Citizens in California
National Eating Disorder Awareness Week
Just because I am trying to learn how to do this: 5 Ingredient Crockpot Recipes
Look out.
Look out the bedroom window to the street–if it faces the street–and see it stretching like two long arms reaching forever and ever (or maybe not so far) in either direction. Let your line of sight be directed down a meandering road that may, in this corporeal world, terminate to the North, but which, some of us know, really leads West, West, further and further back, winding down through Grand Junction or up through Yellowstone past the Rockies to that body of water, a landlocked sea, dead to everyone and everything but the putrid flies and bugs inhabiting it, and the seagulls glutting themselves upon its salty shores. Let it take you further, submerge you in the Platte and then sweep you away, down, down toward Mexico to escape an invented persecution with two wives and too many mouths to feed and to Guatemala with pretensions of
Spanish aristocracy.
This is where we come from. This is where we’ve been.
Look out.
First, a little humor to start off your day - Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results of the 2008 Election Early (video)
Huckabee Supports Proposed CO “Egg As Person” Amendment
Chavez Government Fights English “Linguistic Imperialism”
Interesting Guardian Article on Wikileaks: Online Anonymous Whistleblowing
Proposed Florida Confederate Heritage License Plate
Screw the Voters, Let the Superdelegates Decide!
Pakistan Blocks Access to YouTube
Gay Iranian Refugee Risks Deportation From UK (Not sure what can be done about this one at this point?)
Terrorist Watch List Contains Almost 1 Million Names, Most of them Americans
Google Claims IP Addresses Are Not Personally Identifiable Information
Banks Unable to Foreclose On Homes Due to Lost Paperwork
Lawmaker Proposes Stripping USDA of Safety Oversight
Rape: Pretty Real When It’s Happening
Gang Rape Video Posted to YouTube Viewed 600 Times Before Being Removed
Dearest Family,
I am aware that you are concerned about me and only want the best for me, in your limited sense of what “best” means. (Hint: what you accept as “best” is nothing that makes me happy, and, in fact, tends to be exactly that which makes my life most unbearable. See: trying to convince me to waste my time at a vocational school or community college rather than pursuing a degree at an excellent, if expensive, school, in an area which excites me. See: trying to break me up with my boyfriend, who is in fact the reason I am going back to school and who is demonstratively good for me by most objective measures…just not the ones you think are important, apparently.) I appreciate that you genuinely care about me even if you do not understand me and generally give poor, unsolicited advice. I love you anyway, even when I sometimes probably shouldn’t. (See: trying to break me up with my boyfriend. Assholes.)
However, I cannot help but notice the irony of the girl with the terrifying facial piercings and tattoo in a dead-end job with no professional or intellectual aspirations in life lecturing the clean-cut aspiring art and creative writing student about her unprofessional appearance due to her short hair. I cannot also help but notice that the coincidence when this conversation coincides with a recent transphobic diatribe about the aforementioned sister’s distaste for people who defy conventional gender norms and preference for “girls who are feminine” and “men who are masculine”. This, combined with the failure of Congress to recognize that, once again, trans issues are everyone else’s issues, and that gender-nonconformity is in fact a very real area of concern re: discrimination in employment for the cisgendered, results in lectures about my appearance being far more personally hurtful and infuriating than you can possibly realize.
Furthermore, suggested solutions to this issue — “buy a cheap wig” — are laughable.
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