Two Words

It's a good Saturday morning. The sun is out, the house is quiet, and I'm engaging in my favorite morning activity: sitting on the couch under a blanket reading blogs and the news in absolutely no hurry at all. Since I've got nowhere to be, I can savor the writing a little more, I can read more slowly, in fact, I can actually read instead of skim. I go through probably two to three hundred pieces of stuff in my RSS reader every day, so there's a lot of very fast skimming. So I'm reading this NYT article by Adam Liptak analyzing the impact of the recent decision which weakened the exclusionary rule. The content isn't really important to what I want to say about the article, but for context: the exclusionary rule is the principle that if the police break the rules while procuring some piece of evidence, that evidence can not be used to prove that a crime occurred. So if police need a search warrant to enter your house, and they don't procure a warrant, they can't use drugs they find in your house to convict you of possession. Or if police torture you to obtain a confession, the confession can't be used to prove that you did whatever you're accused of. The idea is that the evidence might very well be valid, but that the exclusionary rule is for "deterrence." That is, if police know that evidence obtained by breaking the rules will be thrown out, they'll be more likely to obey the rules.

Anyway, the finer intricacies of the exclusionary rule are not what interest me today. I thought Liptak wrote a fine piece, and explained the law and the opposing views quite well. He also discussed the evolving personal philosophies of the justices, which is a subject that always fascinates me because I think it's a unique idiosyncrasy of American law and jurisprudence (and really, politics) that important questions of how we live our lives can end up hinging on the deep thoughts of a single person not elected to office.

And then I get to this:

Justice O’Connor, in her last weeks on the court while the Senate considered Justice Alito’s nomination, was almost certainly the swing vote, and she showed her cards.

“Is there no policy protecting the homeowner a little bit and the sanctity of the home from this immediate entry?” she asked a government lawyer, her tone sharp and flinty.

David A. Moran, who argued the case for Mr. Hudson, was feeling good after the argument. “I was pretty confident that I’d won,” he said in a recent interview. “O’Connor had pretty clearly spoken on my side.”

(Cue record scratch) What? Her tone was "sharp and flinty?" I've heard O'Connor, and her voice is neither particularly sharp nor flinty. Had she had some kind of voice-box operation? A scratchy throat? Ingested significant quantities of helium? Or was this complete editorializing on Liptak's part, through a convenient sexist lens? I suspected the latter. Because remember, O'Connor is not only a woman, but an old woman, an old, powerful woman, and this she ends up frequently portrayed as a crone of the highest order (see, e.g. Nancy Pelosi).

So, I did a little digging. First, I managed to pull up the transcript from the oral argument in question. It didn't take much searching around to find it, and this is what it said:

MR. SALMONS: That's not --
JUSTICE O'CONNOR: -- to just go in. So,
if the rule you propose is adopted, then every police
officer in America can follow the same policy. Is
there no policy of protecting the homeowner a little
bit --
MR. SALMONS: Of course the --
JUSTICE O'CONNOR: -- and the sanctity of
the home --
MR. SALMONS: Of course there is --
JUSTICE O'CONNOR: -- from this immediate
-
MR. SALMONS: -- Your Honor, and that is
not --
JUSTICE O'CONNOR: -- entry?
MR. SALMONS: -- our position. And we,
respectfully, would argue that that's not an
appropriate way to conduct the deterrence analysis.

Well. So far, this is not matching at all with the image Liptak is giving me with his "sharp and flinty." So I wondered, was Liptak there? Or maybe he just listened to a recording? Because from the transcript, I don't see how you get "flinty." In fact, what I get is "Dude, don't you know that you're supposed to shut the hell up and let the justice finish the question?" The, like, second thing they teach you in law school is "Don't interrupt the judge."

So I had to know. What did it sound like? For your listening pleasure, I've clipped off from the hour-long argument the few seconds of this exchange. Let's have a listen.



I'll let you judge for yourself whether there's any way, without sexism, that O'Connor's tone could be described as sharp or flinty. This is such a small thing. It didn't add anything to Liptak's description. It didn't add anything to the discussion of the exclusionary rule. In fact, several other people are quoted in the article, and there's no unnecessary editorializing about how they sounded whenever they said the quoted material. The article is not, as a whole, sexist in any way. So why seize on this one thing? Because it baffles me that this kind of small stuff makes it into print and television and movies all the time. I don't have any particular expertise beyond being a relatively close reader (when I want to be) and having read a few feminist blogs here and there, and this jumped out at me like a samurai with a sword. Was there no editor there to say "Adam, what the hell is this?" It adds nothing, and futhermore, it's not even accurate.

And it's a compendium of a million tiny things like this that make me never able to forget, not even for a moment, that I am a woman and thus subject to disdain and disgust at any possible moment, without reason or warning.

Where's Grandpa?

Reading this post and the ensuing comments, I started to notice something very weird. Writer Lisa Belkin is discussing different perspectives on women helping their daughters take care of their children, and how some women ask for more help than the grandmas want to give. And some grandmas would love a chance to help out, and don't get one.

But nowhere in Belkin's article or in a single one of the comments was there a single mention of families having the parents' fathers take care of the little rugrats. It was "my mother" versus "my mother-in-law." It can't be that rare, can it? I know that Bitch's dad sometimes will, like take PK for a whole week or something.

I never got any substantial care from my grandparents because, I think of location issues in one case and language barrier issues in another. But why are grandpas out of the picture? I excpect to have a kid/kids someday, and I really really hope that I can convince my dad to come live somewhere near me by then because 1) I would hate to deprive him of the chance to be #1 grandpa, which he would be because he is incredible with kids and loves spending time with them, teaching them etc 2) It would be really awesome to have him around, for my sake.

Is this a generational issue? Is it just that the women who are today's grandmas took such a huge share of the childcare when they were raising their own kids that even looking after the grandkids is still only a woman's job? So what's Grandpa doing? Playing golf (like my dear late grandpa)? Watching sporting events? Still no time for the nitty gritty of diapers, toys, and hungry kids?

Cooking at home

See, once you start to get okay at cooking, as has happened as a consequence of my cooking obsession the past few months, even when you completely screw things up they still taste good. For example, last night I attempted to make dinner. I was tired and not really paying very good attention. The centerpiece of the meal was steak. Unforunately I bought a couple of ribeyes that were clearly intended to be used not for the salt-and-pepper-and-sear treatment I gave them, but some other preparation. Perhaps Mexican, b/c they were from my beloved store? I dunno, but it was like $3.50 for nearly a pound of meat, so I should have known. So they were completely not designed for the purpose for which I used them, and consequently, a little tough and definitely not thick enough. But since I seasoned them really well and didn't overcook (medium-rare), it was still pretty good.

Then let's come to the mashed potatoes. I absentmindedly just threw the potatoes into the water whole, instead of chopping into quarters like I usually do. As a result, when I decided they were done, they were in fact not all the way done and the mashed potatoes had giant lumps in them. But having been mashed with the skins, seasoned with freshly ground celtic sea salt, freshly ground pepper, a little half&half, butter, and a dollop of sour cream they were still really good.

Finally, the vegetable was some kale. I have never cooked kale before in my life. So I didn't blanch them, which I really should have b/c of bitterness. I also got the oil way too hot before throwing in the garlic so the garlic browned when I did not intend it to. I also was OUT OF OLIVE OIL (thanks to boyfriend who has been on a homemade-crouton making rampage) so I had to use canola. And I didn't cook the kale long enough. But it was still damn good. Slightly bitter, garlicky, delicious dark greens.

All this is to say that all you people who don't cook, get your ass in the kitchen and screw around. If you have just a little bit of experience, and at least some of your ingredients are high quality, you can make delicious stuff. This was a weeknight meal that took, like 30 minutes beginning to end or less, and even though I definitely screwed up every part of it significantly, it still tasted great.

Food.

it *is* the economy, girlfriend

Gag! Gag! Gag!

I know I shouldn't read these NY Times style articles before my morning coffee; I know it. And, yet, here I am reading about the 'widows' of New York financial guys who need a support group because their alpha male traders, bankers and whatnot are melting down along with the economy.

From the piece:
Dawn Spinner Davis, 26, a beauty writer, said the downward-trending graphs began to make sense when the man she married on Nov. 1, a 28-year-old private wealth manager, stopped playing golf, once his passion. “One of his best friends told me that my job is now to keep him calm and keep him from dying at the age of 35,” Ms. Davis said. “It’s not what I signed up for.”

Really, Dawn? Your boyfriend quits golf and *that's* the moment you realized the economy was in trouble??

My eyes rolled so hard they almost got stuck.

She may not have signed up for nursing her husband through this fiscal crisis (though I believe that's what 'for better or worse' covers) but neither did a lot of women sign up to stand at the edge of our economic pit of despair. I was on a conference call last week with some other association folks and one of them said that she's frustrated by how this recovery package is being compared to, and perhaps modeled on, the New Deal. She said, 'Our workforce is different now! A significant portion of the workforce is low-income women with children. How will this package help them?' She has a point.

Where do women work? The majority of women work in the service industry, in education, child care, human services and other 'traditionally' female sectors (like nursing.) But what are the priorities in the stimulus package (at least, the House version I read)? Green industries, technology, infrastructure and science. How many jobs will be created for women? What about making it easier for businesses to provide work supports for women with families? Paid sick days? Child care support (which is included in the package, yes.)

When the talking heads spew crap about the stimulus package, there is an assumption that what's good for dudes will automatically trickle down and benefit the ladies, but maybe not.

The Senate version of the recovery package is going to undergo changes as the two sides dicker and bargain over the next week. (Keep your eye on S. 336, the Senate appropriations bill for the recovery package.) I've heard that the administration wants to be able to sign this bill by President's Day, so things are going to be moving fast. But it's crucial to make sure work supports that directly impact working women stay in the bill. (GOP senators want to obstruct? Whatever. Their ideas didn't work the first time.)

Extra reading:
Ms. Foundation's recommendations (including allied organizations)
The Obama administration's explanation of the job impact on women
Linda Hirshman's observation that the recovery package is stuck in the 50s
The Nat'l Women's Law Center's breakdown of the recovery package

(sorry, no fun posts from Ding; this has been a douchebag of a work week.)

Put a Ring on it, Redux

Did you guys know the Steelers don't have cheerleaders? And that the Cardinals are McCain's team? Just sayin.



Sorry I've not been posting anything. My whole house is on antibiotics and the upswing, but there were some dark days here this week. Back to regular programming next week. Which will also bring, to the delight of some of you, the end of the 08-09 NFL posts.

Happy Superbowl weekend!!

"That was really an outstanding comment."

Former Rep. Dick Armey (R-TX) goes apeshit on Hardball when Salon's Joan Walsh dares to disagree with his idiotic "INCOME REDISTRIBUTIONISTS!" comment.

In other news, good thing that Obama and the Democrats agreed to make sure that no government money could go to states that might give birth control pills (horror!) to low-income women. Once they compromised on that silly little issue, the Republicans agreed to support the bill! Or not.

the jesse taylors among us

This post by Jesse at pandagon made my jaw drop! Yes, it's a post about food. What's the problem, you ask? His advice is simple and absolutely correct.

It's the prices of the food he's quoting. Man alive. Is this what most of you have to pay for food? Has it always been like this or is it just the rising cost over the past year? I am extremely fortunate to live two short blocks from a Mexican grocery store (bigger than a bodega, but much smaller than, say, a Jewel/Osco or Dominick's or Safeway or whathaveyou) that I shop at basically every day, just picking up what I need, because it's extremely cheap and convenient. And I really hope that Jesse just lives somewhere really expensive, because these prices are crazy.

$2 for 3 limes when they're out of season? I just paid $2.00 for 16 and made tasty homemade lime soda (fresh lime juice, club soda, and sugar syrup. To make sugar syrup, boil 1 part water and 1 part sugar until the sugar is dissolved. Cool. Your empty olive oil bottles [washed, of course] are a great way to store the syrup in the fridge).

$1.50 for an onion? At my grocery the Spanish dry onions are $0.39/lb. Garlic is $2-3? Whaaaaaa?

I'm sorry, I'm kinda bragging. I know it's unseemly. But this is a real benefit of living in a poor neighborhood that's not one of those grocery-blight poor neighborhoods. If you live in a urban area, there's bound to be a store like mine not too far from where you are. And if you live in Chicago, I know for a fact these kinds of stores are everywhere. So you have no excuse.

So here's my latest meal, which fed a very-hungry B. and me, plus served as leftovers for the next day's lunch.

Southwestern Chicken Salad with Cilantro-Lime dressing

1 head Romaine ($0.69) (this is the most ridiculous deal, it's usually $0.99 which is still ridiculous)
1 cup frozen corn (bag is $2.50, so this is about $0.50)
1 15oz can black beans ($0.89)
1/2 cup quesadilla-style cheese (big bag is $5, so this is about $0.60) (It's called, like, "melting cheese for quesadillas", and is, in fact, really really good for making quesadillas)
4 large limes ($0.50)
1/3 cup chopped cilantro leaves (bunch is $0.39, so this is about $0.10)
1/2 cup sour cream (tub is $1.50, so this is about $0.40)
1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper, 1 tsp sugar (negligible price)
1/2 cup canola oil (I dunno, let's say $0.25?)
Chicken breast fillet (1 pound at $2.00/lb), plus more salt, pepper, and 2 tbsp oil to season and cook.

First, make the dressing. You need some kind of processing b/c the cilantro has to get pulverized. I couldn't for the life of me find my mini processor attachment for the hand blender, so I used a coffee grinder. I'm awesome. So throw the cilantro, sour cream, juice of all the limes, salt, pepper, and sugar in whatever you're using and grind it up to a paste. Then add the oil a few tablespoons at a time and mix until it's all emulsified. This dressing is stupidly good, people. I used a piece of sourdough to mop up what clung to the coffee grinder bowl, it was that good. Put it in the fridge while you do the rest.

Wash and tear romaine into bite-size pieces, toss with cheese in big bowl. Season the chicken breast fillets on both sides with salt&pepper. Coat a saute pan with canola, get the oil hot. Fry up the chicken on both sides until opaque (if they're fillets, it won't take more than a few minutes.) Let the chicken cool a bit, then chop it up into bite-size pieces or strips. In the same pan you cooked the chicken in, throw in the corn and drained black beans (don't get the pan too hot first though, because then the water content from the frosty corn could cause the oil to leap out and burn you). When corn/beans are warm, pour them, along with whatever liquid's in the pan, over the lettuce mix. Add chicken and dressing, and toss well. You will probably want to add the dressing a bit at a time so you don't overdress it.

This salad is stupidly good, people. And the total cost is...let's see. $5.97. And that's definitely at least four servings. So yeah, under two dollars for a meal that isn't just beans-and-rice good, but balanced-and-delicious good. You've got vegetables, protein, starch, dairy... yum. You could also easily add other tasty veggies, like a chopped raw or roasted red pepper, shredded carrot, cucumber, or whatever you happen to have in your box. Just think about what you're saving by cooking the chicken yourself (instead of buying that pre-cooked shit that costs like $7), and making your own dressing. Plus, you can't find dressing this good in a bottle.

Post MTV, Pre-YouTube

Preface: I would have embedded the videos linked in this post, but all of them happen to have embedding disabled. If you can, you should click through and check them out to see what I'm talking about. Also, I did screencaps.

Back sometime in 2008, me and my boyfriend wanted to meet some friends for drinks by where they live, and so we pick a bar at random on the commercial strip nearest their apartment. The place was called Take Five, which at the time I think sounds great because a) it shares a name with my favorite mass-market candy bar, and b) everything on the menu was $5, even food. Sounds great! Plus, I really want a cocktail.

While we're waiting for our friends to show up, me and B. sit and have a drink and check out the TV screens, which are fucking everywhere. There's one in our booth. They're mounted to every surface and above the bar. On the bar. Which would be annoying enough by itself, if you didn't happen to notice that all the screens were basically playing pornography. You know those hip-hop videos, with about 30 bikini-clad women dancing by a pool drinking champagne or whatever? These were those same videos, but the explicit version. Did you guys know there was an explicit version? With actual nudity and some things that are not merely "suggestive" of sex, but actual sex? I did not. So, flabbergasted, we sat in a bar and watched soft-core-porn-cum-rap-video after video until our friends came, we gulped down our drinks, and left. I felt profoundly weirded out and uncomfortable having just watched naked women gyrate on television screens while in a public place. (A similar, but lesser version of the sick feeling I had after my one and only visit to a strip club).

I miss the late 90's and early aughts, when I could be aware of music without having any earthly idea what images the artist and his or her producers had decided were best equipped to sell the song and earn them cold hard cash. See, I got online tonight wanting to post something fluffy about popular music, and how even though I'm in many ways a recovering indie snob, I do love me a good popular-ass song. Like this Beyoncé hit, Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It), which is one of the most ear-wormy songs I've heard in years. The repeated off-beat scratch sound, the clap track, the bizarre rhythms coming together, good lord it's been a while since a new song came out that made me want to shake my ass so bad.



The lyrics are hilariously weird, and very confusing from a feminist perspective. On the one hand, she refrains "if you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it," which is pretty much textbook objectification. She is referring to herself as "it"? And men declare their possession over "it" (women) by putting rings on them? Whoa.



But then she also says "I put gloss on my lips, a man on my hips/Hold me tighter than my Dereon jeans/Acting up, drink in my cup/I could care less what you think/I need no permission, did I mention/Don’t pay him any attention." Which is pretty awesomely feminist. In some sense, Tracie is right: the song is a giant fuck-you to the controlling possessive douchebags who suddenly act jealous once the relationship is over. And how you go out, have a good time, and don't need permission.

I really kind of love the video for this song. I can't explain it. I love how spare it is, I love that it's in black-and-white, I love the bizarre and inventive choreography, and the fact that there's not a single man in the whole damn thing. It's like Beyoncé is so bad-ass that there can be a whole video of just her doing a kindof avant-garde dance (by popular standards) in a weird leotard and millions of people will sign on to YouTube to watch it. And I think I like it because it's not really like any other video out there. The only similarity is that it includes lip-synching and dancing.

So that's the good side of YouTube, that I get to see this video which just makes me really excited. That I otherwise wouldn't see because look, people, I am not going to sit around and watch MTV and wait for songs I like to come on. When I was thinking about writing this post, I was thinking of other popular songs that have really caught my ear lately, and a big one is Kanye West's Love Lockdown, off his latest album, 808s and Heartbreak. I really like Kanye a lot, and though he is basically nuts and his latest album is a bit of a letdown, Love Lockdown, is, I thought, a great track. So I was going to post the video along with my Beyonce love.

And, cut to... what the fuck? The song is halfway ruined for me now. The video is filled with overtly racist imagery. We're talking scary identity-less Africans in facepaint with spears. Banging drums. And looking scary. And rushing at the camera en masse, like they're going to attack you.



Then there are the identity-less African women with sexy half-exposed tits and more facepaint. Being sexy and exotic. Gag me. I really wish that I had not know about this Kanye video, because it is so bizarrely weird and gross. For no reason. Why do that? You had the idea because there are African-sounding drums in the song? Good work, dude.



Well, I thought, maybe some of his other videos are better. Nope. See, for example, Stronger, from his before-last album, Graduation. Instead of using racist African savage people tropes, it is a crass exoticization of.. Japanese culture!



Japanese characters (I think? Please correct me if I am an idiot). Sexy Japanese nurse! Ooh, it's downtown Tokyo, with all the neon lights! "Me Likey?" I really did not notice that line before and now it is making me squnch up my mouth real hard. Or, let's see, the video for Flashing Lights. I will give you the plot.

Sexy woman gets out of car, strips to bra and underwear. Struts in slow motion around barren landscape in 5-inch heels, breasts tantalizingly and exaggeratedly bouncing in bra that definitely does not fit. Pours lighter fluid on clothes, lights them on fire. Reveals Kanye West bound and gagged in trunk of car. Kisses Kanye's face, then bludgeons him to death with a shovel.



Okay, well that one kind of turned things on its head, but.. not in a good way.

When I went to Take Five last year and watched those pornographic music videos, it was the first time I'd paid attention to any music videos at all since my MTV/Backstreet Boys/Mariah Carey obsession back in the 8th grade. I didn't like it. And now, more and more, I find myself turning to YouTube as a way to experience music that I don't necessarily want to buy, but I want to hear, or I want to share it with a friend and discuss it. Since music videos are basically male fantasy (ever hear of how high the percentage of male directors of music videos is? It's absurd), and designed to sell shit, they pretty much always involve incredibly racist, sexist imagery. Not to mention that with the porn revolution of the last ten years, it is becoming increasingly influenced by the images and style of hardcore pornography.

Beyoncé's lovely strutting aside, I could really do without being aware of that again. Oh, 2002, how I knew you.

Celebrate

Guess who has a birthday tomorrow? The Big Bitch, that's who. Facebook told me so.


I point this out because she is in the process of packing and moving, which sucks always but especially on a birthday. And because if I tell you today, there is ample time for you to buy something from her wishlist or send some cash for a gin and tonic. It's Chinese New Year, after all (Xin nina quai le!) and what better way to usher in a year of good fortune than by doing something nice for an internet stranger?

I Am A Pilgrim

Business; family, commercial, and monkey, takes me to the Outer Midwest for the next few months. I'll be peregrinating the Upper Great Lakes for a bit before I get settled but I'll write soon as I get work.

Or sooner.

Until then, drinks are on the Bee Sisters!

We Want the Funk

I want to smell like a dog.

Boy, you do smell like a dog. Like forty pounds of wet dog.

No, Uncle Taddy. I want to smell like a dog can smell. So I can sniff the ground and find lost kids and other stuff that I can't find.

You lost a kid?

No.

That's a relief.

But if there was a little kid here and he got lost...

Or she...

Can we have a little girl kid?

Not my department. Talk to your mama. Anyway, we already have a little kid.

Who?

You, ya eedjit.

Oh, yeah. And I smell like a dog.

Boy, you smell like two dogs and a sackful of dead fish.

So, you'll never lose me.

No, I'll never lose you.

Never?

Never, ever.

Walkin the Dog

Is there anything more fun than dancing? OK, that, for sure, but how you gonna get to that if you don't dance? By the most direct route, I mean?

Was it Geo Bernard Shaw or I. V. Stalin who said dancing is the vertical expression of a horizontal desire? Stalin, I think.

Stalin or Shaw; I don't want to get sidetracked by attributions. The point is, if you are interested in being with someone, and want to let them know, get up on the floor. You can spend a lot of time and money to make an impression on someone and never communicate your longing like you can by simply shaking a tail feather.

Shower them with gifts. Wine them. Dine them. Take them to the Art Museum and deliver profound bon mots about symbolism and vanishing points. Dally over coffee, discussing politics and philosophy and your life's dreams. Drive out to Spirit Canyon and sigh over the sunset and moonrise.

Or, plug the box with quarters, select A19, and put_your_backfield_in_motion. Old School.

Its Saturday morning which means Saturday night is closer than its been all week. And you know what that means. Turn it up. Shake it up, heat it up. Roll it over like your back ain't had a bone.

Bounce that booty for a minute and then punch D24. Dance like nobody's watchin. Hug. Squeeze. Whisper sweet nothings.

And don't ever wonder.

Barack Obama, Honorary Bitch

Hot damn. We'd all hoped that Obama would get some shit done, but what, we're two days into his administration and he's already stopped Guantanamo show trials, ordered Guantanamo closed, banned torture, ordered a full review of U.S. detention policies and procedures, repealed the Global Gag Rule, clearly stated his support for Roe v. Wade, and gotten started on an economic recovery plan. (Having already given a boost to a number of small businesses in New York and Detroit as well as helping national brands maintain retail sales even during the downturn.)

The FDA's moving on stem cell research, black and white test disparities are disappearing, and the Senate passed the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

And the man gets to keep his smartphone.

Now if he'd only take on the credit union that's handling our damn mortgage, since it turns out that the entire first part of this post was a goddamn lie: mortgage guy called me back the next morning to say that underwriting person he'd talked to was a trainee and that they wouldn't give us 5% after all. So now we're dealing with credit union, where our contact person never returns phone calls unless they're from a penis person (this is what happens, often, when you work with military-affiliated institutions, grrrrrrrr) and has basically been completely incompetent....

Liberal ladies

Forbes has a piece on "The 25 Most Influential Liberals in the US Media." I'm pleased to see guys-I-have-met-multiple-times-and-therefore-feel-like-I-know, Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias in the list. But as with all lists of influential people in this list-manic age, where are all the women bloggers? The funny thing about the list is that it includes some women (4, to be exact), but they're such obvious choices that it's clear the writers really don't know many women in media except the really famous ones. The women are: Maureen Dowd (seriously? How is she influential? Every liberal I know complains about her columns 95% of the time), Rachel Maddow (major duh), Oprah (ditto), and Arianna Huffington (double ditto).

I can think of some other ones, especially if we're going to be talking bloggers, man. Amanda Marcotte? Melissa McEwan? Jill Filipovic? Jessica Valenti (who's now writing books, too, which you think would matter as an indicator of Influence)? Or, for that matter, Katha Pollitt, who really has been around for a while and is a big deal. Or, hell, let's even go mainstream-media. How about Gail freaking Collins, who was editing the Op-Ed page of the NYT for like 6 years, and is now a columnist there whose columns are way better than Dowd's.

I'm sure if I sit here for a few more minutes I can think of some other good candidates, but right now I have to get dressed and go to work (I'm debuting this blog-daily-in-the-morning-before-work routine, let's hope I can keep it up).

Oscar thoughts

The nominees have been announced.

Okay, did anyone else see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button? Because I really, really did not like that movie. And I'm not a particularly critical movie watcher--I'm usually the one coming out of the theater saying "that was great!" while others are nit-picking. But Benjamin Button was, like, a idea for a "great" movie that just fell totally flat. The characters? I didn't give a shit about them. The plot? So boring I fell asleep. The let-me-tell-you-a-story-now-we-have-a-flashback gimmick? Worked in Princess Bride and never again since then. So I am just baffled by its having received THIRTEEN frakking nominations. The technical stuff I'm down with. Makeup, Visual Effects, Score, whatever. It was a technically marvelous movie. But it was just that. A technical triumph. If this movie gets Best Picture I'm going to be really, really annoyed. And I usually do not care about the Oscars at all.

The two movies that I'm really glad to see are getting a lot of recognition are Slumdog Millionaire and Wall-E. If you have not seen either of these two movies, do so immediately. I watched Wall-E on the plane to Cairo and just literally sobbed in wonder through the first half of it. Watch it if for nothing else but to see how a film with basically no dialogue for an hour can be funny, sad, moving.. it's truly incredible. One of the greatest love stories captured on film, ever. One of the greatest accomplishments of the human imagination.

I also was really happy to see some acting nominees from comic performances. They're usually so few and far between, and only "serious" performances get recognized. But Robert Downey Jr. was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Tropic Thunder, which was a hilarious turn and I hope he wins (very little chance he will, though). Penelope Cruz also got a nod for her role in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, an excellent film that actually presents a fairly nuanced view of women and sexuality, relative to the vast majority of crap out there. It was actually a romantic comedy without any of the tired, annoying tropes in every romantic comedy ever. And Cruz was excellent, although, like Downey Jr., no chance she wins.

I still really need to see Milk, The Wrestler, and The Reader. Movies!

Why Choice

- Because choice is the paradigm of personal responsibility. Choice is being thoughtful, not fatalistic or deterministic, about consequences and ability and reality. Choice allows individuals to inhabit their realities, to own them and to know themselves within them. Adults make choices.

- Because pregnancy is expensive, long, and dangerous.

- Because I only slept for 4 hours the last 3 nights, and I can count on one hand (on my peace fingers in fact) how many times I have slept 7 hours in the last 3 months. And my kid is 3.5.

- Because if you believe life begins at conception your only authority for believing that can be your God and your God's personal revelation to you. And surely you know that's not good enough for the public sphere.


It's Blog for Choice Day. Add reasons in comments.

A good beginning

It's begun. Obama's halted the show trials of Guantanamo prisoners, including a 15-year old Canadian citizen who's been tortured (!). According to This American Life's Inauguration Show (if you haven't listened, you should), there are actually photos of Omar Khadr buried under a pile of rubble during the firefight in which he supposedly murdered an American soldier with a grenade--photos that the judge wouldn't allow at the trial. Not because they'd influence the non-existent jury, but because he didn't want the media to see them.

More about Khadr on Wikipedia, where I found these pictures. Look at that baby. I don't care what he's done--and according to TAL, he and his family were indeed al Qaeda supporters--he is a child. That we tortured him and were trying him without Habeas Corpus or any assessment of his mental health, without a jury, in violation of the Constitution and international law, is inexcusable.

But not atypical, as I told Nancy Goldstein at Broadsheet yesterday (and emailed the new administration about): the U.S. currently has over two thousand children serving life without parole in our regular prisons. I hope that the administration will do something for them, too.

Union

I've been trying to avoid harshing anyone's Obama buzz with crass talk about how awesome the Steelers are and thank God this story came along because I was losing restraint.

The Steelers say they have a new fan in the White House and the new president also has one of the team's most recent prized collectibles, a game ball from their victory in the AFC championship Sunday.

Dan Rooney and his son, Jim, personally delivered the football to Barack Obama Monday night in Washington.

The two Rooneys, who campaigned heavily for President Obama in Pennsylvania and three surrounding states for several months before the election, attended the black-tie dinner at the Washington Hilton that Obama held for Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate he defeated in November. The Obama campaign invited the Rooneys to the dinner.
[...]
"He's a [Chicago] Bears fan first, he admits that," Dan Rooney said yesterday at the Steelers' UPMC training center. "But he's a Steelers' fan. He's said it, and all his staff, they're rooting for us [in the Super Bowl]."

The Messiah is rooting for my team, y'all.

Nice

Check it.

Brought to my attention by L. at Faux Real.

Oh, I Used to be Disgusted

In the spirit of our great national victory, this historic inauguration, and national unity, I will observe a cease-fire on name calling as long as the GOP do. Our new President has shown the way and I will follow.

I will not be the one to break the peace we have made here today. I will follow the example of President Obama.

I will not refer to Republicans as a plague or a pestilence. I will not refer to them as swine or vermin.

I will not call them bootless, chinless, feckless, brainless, filibustering, chin-wagging, bible-thumping, finger-pointing, blame shifting, shit-eating, motherfucking, page-boy screwing, warmongering, lying, cheating, Treasury-looting, worker-hating, immigrant baiting, gay-bashing, racist, sexist, torture-loving, chickenhawking, earth-fouling, Constitution-overthrowing, secret-policing, wire-tapping, panty-sniffing, no-bid contracting, assholes.

From now on. Because our country is in a mess and we don't have time for all this in and out running. President Obama needs all of us to start pulling together and I'm willing to give it a go.

But they better not start with me. Cause I'm not one of these turn-the-other-cheek Democratic voters. I will return fire. And my aim is true.

Oooh. The Queen of Soul is singing. Let us Pray.

Watch the Inauguration

Here, live, on Tuesday. Assuming the embed code works.

Update: Gawd. If, like me, you can't stand the FOX talking heads, here's a list of other places to watch the coverage.

Good for the soul

Happy MLK Day, everyone.

If, like me, you don't have cable, you can catch yesterday's prer-inaguaration show on here. I put it on out of idle curiosity, thinking it would be kind of dull, and so far (I'm only a few minutes in) we've got:

The Bidens and the Obamas. Both, if I may have a moment of utter shallowness, looking fabulous. Jill Biden's in all black with a very pretty coral-colored frilly (silk?) scarf, which is a great color for her. Michelle's in all camel and black, no color; she looks better than Jill, but in a non-upstagey kind of way. So, so classy.

Next, a light-skinned African-American sergeant singing the Star Spangled Banner. Followed by a speech by Denzel Washington. At this point, you cannot fail to be acutely aware of how very rare black faces are in national politics, and how rarely we see African-Americans represented as central to American identity, rather than as tokens.

It really is pretty awesome. The big old statue of Lincoln in the background takes on a whole new meaning--the meaning it's always had, really, but one we rarely understand on such a gut level.

Band of Brothers

My brother, Jim, knows most everyone. Or rather, most everyone knows him. You probably know him. If you don't, you'd be one of the few.

I seem to follow in his wake although I'm five years older than he. I have run across his spoor, so to speak, on soil foriegn and domestic.

I crap you negative.

One year Jim and I and the rest of our brothers traveled to Ireland. We were standing on the curb in Dingle, watching a wedding party parade past from the church at one end of the street to the reception hall at the other end. As that party passed our party, the bride fell out of line to approach me and ask, Are you related to Jimmy Porter? Cause you look just like him.

The groom and his groomsmen started to bunch up behind the bride. Hard glares were passed. A taste, like burning hair, filled my mouth and I was unable to form the words that would shift attention to Jim. I silently jerked my head sidewise to indicate the relative in question.

She gave him the yoo-halloo, shrieking, Jimmy! He coughed out a friendly holler. They embraced. The groomsmen grew restless. I continued twitching but at a higher frequency.

Everything turned out fine, of course. It always does with Jim. The bride invited us to the reception. The groomsmen stood at ease and we all went off to the party like, well, like brothers.

On that same trip, Jim seperated from the group for an interval. There had been some harsh words exchanged one evening and the next morning he slung his shaving kit into his portmanteau and beat feet for the train station.

The rest of us departed for Limerick the following day. On arrival, we stopped in at Durty Nelly's for refreshment and there, on the back bar, was a freshly stuck sticker promoting Len's Bar - Hammond Wisconsin, Jim's place of employ.

Two day's later, we were at public house in Port Louisburg, taking a thoughtful glass. I presented my ID to the bartender to cash a traveler's check. The barman gave my passport and I the once over and asked, Are you related to Jimmy Porter? Cause you look just like him.

He waved towards a booth in the front of the pub and damned if it wasn't Jimmy, crammed in the booth with the local drinkers, quaffing and carrying on like he'd lived there all his life.

A couple years ago, I was in Milwaukee, driving down West Vliet St around 3 in the morning. I pulled into a gas station on 35th St to fill up.

I handed my credit card to the sleepy cashier behind a bulletproof blast shield. Studying my card, his droopy eyelids jerked open like a pair of oversprung window shades. He looked at me and asked, Are you related to Jimmy Porter? Cause you look just like him.

Another time, I was driving down Thomas Ave in Minneapolis late at night during a hideous snowstorm. I inched slowly down the street, straining to see through the whiteout.

I could dimly see a sort of shadow, rising from the street, falling back, and rising again. I stopped, thinking it might be an injured person.

It was a dog and had, apparently, been struck by a vehicle. I couldn't tell how badly he was hurt but it was clear he was panicing and starting to go into shock.

Back at the house, I got him cleaned up and warmed up and called the phone number on his tag.

I reached the owners and told them I had their dog. In spite of the storm, they came quickly to pick him up and were effusive in their appreciation for his rescue. We introduced ourselves all around.

I don't remember what their names were but when I told them who I was they glanced at each other and then asked me, Are you related to Jimmy Porter? Cause you look just like him.

People Get Ready

Times is hard.

I've been working for wages since I was fourteen. That's more than 40 years. I've never seen it this bad and all signs point to it getting worse.

I've heard projections of national unemployment going to 10% . We know official unemployment figures count only a fraction of jobless workers so God knows what the real situation is.

And that's just for starters. Historians will be dining out on stories of the total tonnage of damage done to the country and the people by the GOP for years to come. While we may never be able to reckon the entire cost of failed national leadership, its pretty clear the charges will be staggering.

Now, we'll have a chance to see what real leadership can do. And, we'll have a chance to see what the American people can do when they have real leadership. Cause Barack and Biden can't do for us. But we can't do for each other without leaders who believe in us.

I love my country. I love my American people. I really do. I can't wait to see what will happen now that we have leaders who love this country and her people, too.

Saturday series

Things that are making me happy:

1) I have been pointed to two magnificent eviscerations of Thomas Friendman, both in the NY Press, both by Matt Taibi, one from 2005, one from last week.

From the 2005 piece:

Things are true because you say they are. The only thing that matters is how sure you sound when you say it. In politics, this allows America to invade a castrated Iraq in self-defense. In the intellectual world, Friedman is now probing the outer limits of this trick's potential, and it's absolutely perfect, a stroke of genius, that he's choosing to argue that the world is flat. The only thing that would have been better would be if he had chosen to argue that the moon was made of cheese.

And that's basically what he's doing here. The internet is speeding up business communications, and global labor markets are more fluid than ever. Therefore, the moon is made of cheese. That is the rhetorical gist of The World Is Flat. It's brilliant. Only an America-hater could fail to appreciate it.

From the more recent:

Even better was this gem from one of Friedman’s latest columns: “The fighting, death and destruction in Gaza is painful to watch. But it’s all too familiar. It’s the latest version of the longest-running play in the modern Middle East, which, if I were to give it a title, would be called: “Who owns this hotel? Can the Jews have a room? And shouldn’t we blow up the bar and replace it with a mosque?” There are many serious questions one could ask about this passage, but the one that leaped out at me was this: In the “title” of that long-running play, is it supposed to be the same person asking all three of those questions? If so, does that person suffer from multiple personality disorder? Because in the first question, he is a neutral/ignorant observer of the Mideast drama; in the second he sympathizes with the Jews; in the third he’s a radical Muslim. Moreover, after you blow up the bar and replace it with a mosque, is the surrounding hotel still there? Why would anyone build a mosque in a half-blown-up hotel? Perhaps Friedman should have written the passage like this: “It’s the latest version of the longest-running play in the modern Middle East, which, if I were to give it a title, would be called: “Who owns this hotel? And why did a person suffering from multiple personality disorder build a mosque inside it after blowing up the bar and asking if there was a room for the Jews?

2. I got a request for a campus interview yesterday.

3. I am loving my bedtime reading right now: Proust was a Neuroscientist, in which Jonah Lehrer really simply and sharply makes connections between the representation of various sensory and cognitive processes in artistic works through the last 2 centuries (Whitman, Eliot, Cezanne, Woolf) and more recent discoveries in neurology about how vision, memory, subjectivity, etc, are chemically enacted in the brain. It's really a lovely read and seems very erudite while maintaining a very simple prose style.

auld lang syne

My frirend G.D. over at Postbourgie recommended reading Vanity Fair's Oral History of the Bush Administration, and boy howdy.

The article is essentially a series of statements from high-level former whitehouse officials, state department and justice department folks, etc. Some choice quotes from the part I've read so far:

this Sarah Palin–like president—because, let’s face it, that’s what he was. . . .

there were detailed discussions and briefings on cyber-security and often terrorism, and on a classified program. . . . he seemed—I was disturbed because he seemed to be trying to impress us, the people who were briefing him. . . . The contrast with having briefed his father and Clinton and Gore was so marked. And to be told, frankly, early in the administration, by Condi Rice and [her deputy] Steve Hadley, you know, Don’t give the president a lot of long memos, he’s not a big reader—well, shit. I mean, the president of the United States is not a big reader?

Christine Todd Whitman, the E.P.A. administrator, was one of several people in the Cabinet, along with Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, who strongly supported a proactive position on climate change. And she was, I think, in Europe telling European governments that the U.S. position was to regulate carbon dioxide. And when she got back home, she had an interaction with the president in which she was very brusquely told that that was off the table. The turning point, essentially, was that Cheney grabbed hold of this issue and took down the whole notion of regulating CO2.

I remember feeling like I was looking at people who had won a reality-game ticket to head up the White House. There was this remarkable combination of hubris, excitement, and staggering ignorance.

On September 4 [2001], we had a principals meeting. The most telling thing for me about the attitude of these people was on the decision that had been pending for a long time to resume Predator [remote-controlled drone] flights over Afghanistan, and to now do what we couldn’t have done in the Clinton administration because the technology wasn’t ready: put a weapon on the Predator and use it as not only a hunter but a killer.
We had seen bin Laden when we had it in the Clinton administration, as just a hunter. We had seen him. So we thought, Man, if we could get this with a hunter-killer, we could see him again and kill him. So finally we have a principals meeting and the C.I.A. says it’s not our job to fly the Predator armed. And D.O.D. says it’s not our job to fly an unarmed aircraft. I just couldn’t believe it. This is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the director of C.I.A. sitting there, both passing the football because neither one of them wanted to go kill bin Laden.

That night, on 9/11, Rumsfeld came over and the others, and the president finally got back, and we had a meeting. And Rumsfeld said, You know, we’ve got to do Iraq, and everyone looked at him—at least I looked at him and Powell looked at him—like, What the hell are you talking about? And he said—I’ll never forget this—There just aren’t enough targets in Afghanistan. We need to bomb something else to prove that we’re, you know, big and strong and not going to be pushed around by these kind of attacks.

I was called with the specific question of whether or not the F.B.I. on the ground could interrogate [Lindh] without counsel. And I had been told unambiguously that Lindh’s parents had retained counsel for him. I gave that advice on a Friday, and the same attorney at Justice who inquired called back on Monday and said essentially, Oops, they did it anyway. . . . A few weeks later, Attorney General Ashcroft held one of his dramatic press conferences, in which he announced a complaint being filed against Lindh. He was asked if Lindh had been permitted counsel. And he said, in effect, To our knowledge, the subject has not requested counsel. That was just completely false.

the Justice Department really never lived up to its name. It was not the Department of Justice—it was often the Department of Litigation Risk, and they saw everything through the perspective of whether a decision might result in some kind of liability, whether someone might get sued or prosecuted.

Go read the whole article. Try to avoid thinking about how nice it would have been if any of these people had told us this shit at the time.

really, congress?

Hey, what was some of the important stuff going on in Congress yesterday?
H.Res.68: "Supports the establishment of an NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision Championship playoff system in the interest of fairness and to bring parity to all NCAA teams."

Who knew that was the kinda stuff Congress needed to address?

In other legislative news:
Ledbetter passed Senate vote but got stuck a little (what's with the hysteria over trial lawyers?)
the Senate doles out the other half of the bailout cash while poor Barney Frank's little accountability bill gets no love
Cornell gets a pat on the back for their Mars Rover
and Tony Dungy gets a shoutout for his prowess as coach, role model and dad

It was a big day in the halls of power.

(next stop: Inauguration Road Trip 2009! Follow my tweets all the way up to the Inauguration and beyond! The balls, the cocktails, the crowds, the security pat downs, the tears, the public drunkenness! Have I mentioned the balls! Not that I'm going to any but I just like saying 'balls'!)

Try a Little Tenderness

Is there a Geneva Convention of Love?

I don't mean; are there regulations governing the conduct of romance? Everybody's got to figure those out for themselves. Its funny how the rules are immutable across time and yet they have to be discovered anew by each ardent lover.

Neither am I talking about rules governing the competition between rivals for the affections of the adored object. Its hard to see how rounds of escalation in treacly poetry writing, ghastly song singing, costly gift giving, lavish dining, long weekends in three star hotels, vigorous love making, and corny troth plighting can be or should be checked.

No, I mean, are there rules restricting the kinds of reprisals that can be taken against the romantic rival?

There is, of course, the criminal code. It puts the more grotesque means of revenge beyond reach and rightly so. Arson, kidnapping, the yanking out of toenails with a pair of pliers; all these measures are proscribed as unlawful. And inhuman. And unimaginative. And, frankly, impractical.

Short of outright injury or commission of a Class II felony, though, are there measures that simply should not be inflicted on the competition?

I say no. All's fair in love and war. That stuff our mama's taught us? You know, a soft answer turneth away wrath, the Golden Rule, turning the other cheek; useless, entirely, when it comes to dealing with a romantic rival.

Just as the adored object is showered with your care and devotion, so the rival must be treated with implacable ruthlessness. He should have no waking hour when he does not fear some form of insidious attack. His sleeping hours should be few and punctuated by nightmares of vengeance from the better man.

There is a risk that scorching the earth on which the interloper stands may alienate the beloved. I'm not too proud to reveal that I have, in the past, sprung certain gags on the loathed co-suitor which seemed, to me, hilarious and clever but were thought childish and retarded by the woman of my dreams. But, hey, war is an uncertain enterprise.

So, what I'm trying to say is; I need some suggestions for really funny but profoundly mature dirty tricks to launch against a fellow not worthy to make up my lady's bed much less sleep in it. Not filling his shoes with toothpaste. Not letting the air out of his tires.

Something more adult, more preux chevalier.

And I'm sort of pressed for time, so, you know; can you help a brother out?

Bitches are powerful

Two of your humble bloggers--Sybil and myself--plan to be in attendance at the Feminism 2.0 conference in D.C. three weeks from now.

It's kind of a cool idea: bring together the feminist blogosphere (that would be us!) with the leaders of major feminist organizations (Kim Gandy ofNOW, Eleanor Smeal of Feminist Majority, Dorothy Height of the National Council of Negro Women, Carol Jenkins from the Women's Media Center--you get the idea) to forge stronger links between the popular online voices of contemporary feminism and the bitches who get shit done at the policy level. The thing's being sponsored by a host of organizations dedicated to researching and broadcasting women's issues.

And now, with a new administration coming in, is the perfect time. Whether or not you agree that Obama looks like a feminist, the countryr's certainly in the best position we've been in for years to actually improve the lives of women here and abroad. Obama's already pledged to increase funding for the State Children's Health Care Program (which is near and dear to this blogger's heart) and the senate is voting today on the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. This is meat and potatoes stuff: fair pay for working women, health insurance for their kids. Change is here, folks.

So Sybil and I (and maybe some of the other bitches, if they can swing it) are going to descend on D.C. like the harpies we are to see what else can be done by we, the little people, to keep the ball rolling along. We promise to blog what we learn and say, and to do what we can to include your perspectives, if you will share them. You can follow the activities on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, too.

You're welcome to join us (Bitch PhD get-together?). If you can't just up and fly to D.C. on short notice, but want to help, the conference organizers are still looking for sponsors (scroll down to the bottom of that page). Sybil and I, too, would be MOST grateful for any little donation to help defray our expenses--we'll be staying with friends, but there are still last-minute plane tickets to be purchased and of course bitches have to eat.

A lot. Because it's going to be cold. Only my dedication to the cause could haul me out of southern California in February.

Gender(ed) Awards*

Since the Golden Globes (which I skipped Jack Bauer to watch) (and what a tragic moment this is for the Bitch collective to be pondering award)s, I have been obsessing over something that is so clearly something I should've thought about by now, but haven't. Which probably gives it a false sense of significance. But anyway.



Is it not so strange that all the awards shows for non-music, that is, all the completely performance based awards (because at least in theory things like Best Album are about writing) segregate the actual performance awards by gender? Not Best Screenplay by a Man or Best Cinematography by a Woman, but always and across the board Best Supporting Actress and Best Actor. What's the deal with that?

It's all about the performance aspect, no? The writing and directing and score and costuming awards we can think of as awarding a discreet skill. But performativity, as I figure it, is so inextricably linked to gender that we cant think of ways to compare performances across those lines. I admit it's hard for me to conceive, because of conditioning, of the nominees being Meryl Streep, Brad Pitt, Kate Winslet, and Mickey Rourke. And if such a thing ever were the case, wouldn't it be fascinating to see how the gender allocation of award winners broke down? How else to make clear the relative dearth of choice roles for women?

Is it also an appearance thing? Like, the performance-based awards are implicitly partly about appearance and the maintenance of gender segregation is a symptom of the fact that we use completely different, irreconcilable aesthetic paradigms for men and women? And no one gives a shit what he screenwriter looks like?

So anyway. That's what I've been thinking about for the last few days, in the few minutes of the day that I am not obsessing about whether I will get a campus interview call. I think I am back to baking tonight.

*Sometimes the PhD gets the best of me and I can't resist the gimmicky-parentheses-in-title-conference-paper move.

damn, i'm good

PART ONE

I have spent ALL MORNING (and into the afternoon) trying to call a credit union to get a competing loan on this house nailed down. Busy signals (??!?), left voice mails (not returned), "out of office" messages, it never ends. Finally got them on the line--oh, she "assumed it was a refi" and that there was no deadline. Niiiiiice. So I find out how to quicken up the process (we close a week from tomorrow) and then gird myself to call the other bank, the one we've been working with for months. The one that's got us locked in at a freaking 7% rate.

Me: So, um, hi. I have a few questions for you on this place. First, since the seller's in town, the agent says we should get her in to sign the papers rather than having to fax things back and forth (Agent: Good idea.). . . second, the appraisal--it was done, right? Where is it? We haven't paid for it yet, so I've been wondering (Agent: You can pay for it at closing.) . . . . third, uhm, well, look. Mr. B. has talked to the folks at the Navy Credit Union, and they say they can give us a VA loan at 5.25%.

Agent: Oh?

Me: Yeah. And I know you've been working with us for ages now, and I don't want to yank this away from you, so I thought I'd call and see if there's anything you can do to compete with that.

Agent: Well, you're locked in. I can call secondary marketing and see what they say, but I really don't think we can meet that at this point. I suppose you can go ahead and start the process with the credit union, but you know, you're supposed to close in a week and that could take some time. . . .

Me (settling down to business): Actually, we've already started the process, and we're approved for the loan.*

Agent: I see. Well, let me call secondary marketing and get back to you.

Me: Great.

I hang up, and I look up the number for underwriting in Texas, planning on calling them to see if they'll fax the appraisal to my agent. The phone rings 30 seconds later.

Agent: Hello, B? I can offer you 5.25% if you can pay a half point.

Me: Really! That's awesome. What about our being locked into the 7% rate?

Agent: I guess they let it expire, because they told me I can just give you today's rates.

Me: Okay, good. Let's see. The credit union is offering us 5.5% with no points, and 5.25% with one point, so let me think . . . .

Agent: Oh, hey, guess what? I can give you 5% if you can pay a point. That beats them.

Me: So it does. And a quarter percent over the life of the loan, that's a fair bit of money. What are we talking about in terms of closing costs, then?

Agent: Let me see. (Mumbling, numbers.) Well, the seller is giving you back enough to cover the cost of the point, so that leaves you with taxes and insurance. . . . our charge for a VA loan is only $355, so let's say $4k plus title, escrow, and taxes. . . . I don't know how much insurance they might want you to pay up front. . . .

Me: Mmm-hm. . . .

Agent: Let's say, conservatively, $4k max. So $8k total.

Me: (Thinking) We close the day before Mr. B. gets paid again. We should be able to float this and end up putting the damn plumber and foundation work on a credit card. Argh. (Out loud) Well, that makes things really tight for the next few months. But over the life of the loan it saves us a lot of money. . . .

Agent: Yes, it does.

Me: Okay. Let's do it.

Agent: If I lock this in, are yu going with us?

Me: (Thinking) And not have to fax and scramble with the damn credit union? Hell yes. (Out loud) Yes. If you lock us in at 5%, we will stick with you.

Agent: Done.

We hang up. I do the gloating victory dance of the winning negotiator.


*I neglected to tell him that b/c of the credit union's dawdling, there might be an issue with the appraisal, which takes ten days to do. Unless they agree to accept the one that Wachovia did, which is apparently in the Texas underwriter's office and which I'd somehow have to get Wachovia to fax over to them.

PART TWO

I call the sheriff's office in ___ county to ask them about serving the dead cat people with papers. The dead cat people last week told the escrow company that they had "the wrong number," and they have consistently refused to give the lawyer any contact information, replying to him--late, and only after he insisted that they reply in writing--with a fax from Kinko's, so I'm absolutely certain that they won't sign for certified mail. Sheriff's office is quite helpful, tells me to mail papers in with a cover letter and a check for $45 and they'll "get right on it." Court date is in March. Which should be just in time to pay off the credit card bill for the house repairs.

we are all oscar grant (and dymond milburn, michael cho, adolph grimes...)

I am looking for answers.

I want to know how many police have ever been convicted of the wrongful death of any civilian of any color.

I want to know how complicit our media is in police shooting acquittals.

I want to know how many people of color are killed by police each year without justification.
(or is there always a justification for killing us?)

I want to know how many civilians are really killed by police in hinky shootings.

I want to know how many police departments have serious problems with charges of police brutality and abuse and why they aren't doing anything about it.

I want to know when we're going to start seeing that it's not just about police shooting black people.

I want to know how police departments train their cadets.

I want to know why a transit security force is equipped like a small army, and with less oversight.

I want to know when we're going to start looking at our police forces as the ticking bombs they are.

I want to know what any of us would do if three unidentified men tried to grab a 12-year old daughter, called her a prostitute and beat her while trying to get her into a van - and we discovered they were cops.

I want to know what makes a 'good' shooting.

I want to know what 'resisting arrest' really is and how to do it without losing my life.

I want to know if these continued acts of violence by police count as civil/human rights violations.

I want to know how many American cities have become blanketed by police surveillance cameras - and yet their first move is to confiscate cameras that capture their bad acts. (In this case, they missed a few.)

I want to know if you feel safe when you see a cop.

I want to know if you think your skin color protects you from police violence.

I want to know how to connect the dots and put these acts of state-supported violence in a larger sociopolitical context.

I want to know what can be done.

(if there are comments: keep it civil and as non-racist as possible.)

When We Remember Zion

Since the economy struck a reef in September, fiscal sails have been shortened on the good ship porter.

Vital capital projects have been postponed, drawn out, or canceled outright. Brows are wrinkled, budgets scrubbed, invoices challenged. The merest purchase requires approval by the full Women's Committee.

My own frugal expenditures, mostly for chewing gum and guitar strings, have come under scrutiny. My appetites, widely remarked on by my friends as abstemious, spartan even, are being reviewed by this same Committee for any costly extravagance.

Now, really, I don't mind. I am a man of modest lifestyle and can justify every dime I spend. Or I can rationalize every dime I spend. Justify or rationalize. I won't quibble. Its in the eye of the beholder, anyway, isn't it?


The point is, taddyporter's expense accounts are an open book. I do not shrink from audit by those nearest and dearest to me.

Where I draw the line is accounting for income. I don't even tell my mother how much money I make.

Don't get me wrong. I take care of my family. I have several jobs and sidelines and I bring the checks home every payday.

But. I have several jobs and sidelines which pay in cash. And I've always simply pocketed those proceeds. It was understood that cash income was outside the family and not taxed.

However. The general economic crisis has turned the attention of the Women's Committee to this untaxed revenue stream. They probe. They pry. They prod.

Only this morning, I was vigorously cross-examined about the gate for the dance where my band played Saturday. Questioned, I confessed my end had been around a hundred dollars. Questioned further, it was learned I retained around eighteen of those dollars. Which were then handed over with dark mutterings.

For a while, I thought the women were mistreating me. Until I perused the Sunday New York Times this morning because I hadn't had time to read it before now because I was WORKING. Where I read this.

I will never complain about my family's demands for money again.

We bring the funny

1. This story, with photos (warning: bare ass), is supposedly funny but I admit that the only thing I could think after seeing the second picture was of how excruciating it had to have been to have to sound calm and cheerful to your kid in that situation:

Man: No, no, honey, I'm okay, don't worry, someone will come along very soon and help us. No, I'm fine. EXCEPT THAT I'M LITERALLY FREEZING MY ASS OFF.
Kid: (laughs)
Man: (thinking to himself) Dear god, hurry the fuck up assholes! Before I fall and break my goddamn neck or worse, before the kid starts crying again....

2. This video, otoh, is genuinely hilarious (warning: links to Pajamas Media). "Some of them are saying i'm going out of my way to make them dislike me, but i'm just being myself." Truer words were never spoken.

Both links via ObWi, which also has two excellent front-page posts about closing Guantanamo that are well worth your time, by the way.

Annus Mirabilis

UPDATE (by M. LeBlanc): People, we are LESS THAN 80 votes behind. Voting closes in less than two hours! Get your friends! We can do it!

This morning, I realized that the last time I was mad at my husband was ... well, I can't even remember for sure! It was well before the holidays, I can tell you that much. Readers, this may be a record. Sybil Vane is not t hat sanguine, generally speaking; she is, some may say, quick to anger. It's not for nothing, the Very Large Bitch business. And yet, here we are well into 2009 without my having raised my voice in anger at my spouse even once. I don't feel like this has happened since the courtship has been over.

Hard to say how long this can last but I can tell you something that won't help: losing the meaningless weblog contest to some other schmoes. Today is the LAST DAY of voting, people. To help inspire you, I have provided some reasons why you might consider us the best Very Large Blog of 2008:

Bill Donohue does not.

We make tasty things.

As well as really attractive things.

We attend bothersome political events so you don't have to.

We have provocative personal lives. A few of us, anyway.

We predict things with keen insight and accuracy.

We write some of my favorite posts of the year.

A very short list, obv, because my semester starts TOMORROW and while I am honestly pretty prepared I like to spend the day-before days obsessed about details. Feel free to add your own reasons in the comments; we love that sort of shit.

college admissions bleg

Does anyone out there work in admissions? My dad has a friend whose son is super-bright, and his mom wants him to go to college, but she doesn't know the first thign about the process. Plus, bonus catch: son wasn't born in the U.S. Apparently his paperwork is in process, and she thinks he should have a social security # by February, but in the meantime I gather she's run into some problems getting him registered?

Second interesting bit of info: the kid's dad graduated from Yale, though his dad really isn't part of their life. So I told her, well, have him apply as a legacy at Yale! She's thinking one of the UCs, so that he can stay close to home--which isn't a bad idea, but I'm trying to encourage her to also consider applying for private schools. Of course she doesn't know about financial aid, so I've advised her to fill out a FAFSA and to appeal any offer they get if it's not enough.

Other details: kid graduates in May, has taken SAT but didn't check the box to have colleges send him information, so they're not getting tons of brochures in the mail. Aside from his absent father, I think no one in the family's been to college.

But anyhoo, so the questions are:

First and most importantly, how does a kid without a social security number go about applying to and registering for colleges? Is there a difference between private and public colleges on this front? (Kid is in California.)

Second, is there any difference, financial-aid or admissions-wise, between an applicant who is transferring from a community college and one who is applying straight out of high school? Mom doesn't want kid to go to community college, but if FA doesn't come through obviously getting a few pre-reqs out of the way inexpesively would be a good idea. Mom's concern is that kid would lose momentum, which who knows (I don't know the kid), but I'd at least like the info to tell her.

Third, am I correct in thinking that there's basically one universal FA form (the FAFSA), and that she won't have to fill out half a dozen forms? And is there any other advice to someone who is basically completely ignorant of this whole process but who has a promising kid that you think I should pass along (other than "aim higher and ask for money")?

VOTE! Buy Merch!

Today and tomorrow are the last days to vote for us in the "Very Large Blog" category of the 2008 Weblog Awards. After an early lead, we've fallen behind not one, but two blog and this displeases the bitches general greatly. So vote! Pimp us on your very own blogs! Or Facebook!



To commemorate this special event, we have created some awesome tshirts (and bags and buttons, because why not).



The Cafe Press shop is here.True to our slogan, there are plus-size shirts and maternity shirts, too. They cost more, which is annoying, but blame Cafe Press, not us. It seems, though, that they're better quality along with the higher price. I personally think the mousepad would be a delightful addition to any home office.

Alternative Careers, take 1

Like anyone who has spent 8 years acquiring non-portable expertise in a highly specialized niche field, I am often thinking about alternative career possibilities. This morning a particularly compelling one occurred to me.

After MAGNIFICENT performances from my beloved franchise, I like to listen to sports talk radio the next day to relive the glory. Sports talk radio, unfortunately, suffers from the same flagrant misogyny as does much of talk radio and professional sports culture. Not entirely surprising. The sports talk "personalities" tend to pepper their observations about the games with off-topic dialogue about their wives and how many shoes they buy, the suspect sexuality of men who like shoes, the inanity of female sidelines reporters, etc. It's a real problem and always results in my turning off the radio in frustration.

In the HIGHLY unlikely event that getting a tenure track job in a city my husband and I both want to live in doesn't pan out, I might look into starting a non-misogynist sports talk radio program. I'm not even going to go so far as calling it feminist sports talk because, honestly, I am trying to veer away from specializing in overly narrow fields in my next career moves. This will just be non-demeaning sports talk.

Which means I would mostly just talk about sports. Like the incredibly gutsy play-calling from the Steelers last night. Or how when the team is in hurry-up offense mode and Ben is calling the plays, they almost always drive with maximum efficiency. Or how an all PA Superbowl seems likely. And awesome.

Also, do vote today.

medium-sized bitching

Some things that are making my weekend sort of suck:

1) I cannot stop futzing with my syllabi. They are completely dissatisfying to me. To call my classes this semester "new preps" would be an understatement. One course is completely out of my field and the other would be sort of in my field if I weren't such a half-assed practitioner of my field. I've not read, to say nothing of taught, many many items on these syllabi and I can't figure out a good way to have large portions of the semester taken up by student presentations. Plus I keep realizing I have a date wrong somewhere, which jacks up the whole thing.

2) I find myself in agreement with Thomas Friedman today, which is not a position I find comfortable.

3) My daughter is deeply lodged in post-holiday I-am-used-to-having-everyone's-attention mode and WILL NOT stop bugging me. She has become completely frank about her strategizing, asking for something she can't have/do and then, when I say no, saying "I will just keep asking and asking..." and finally declaring, "I am losing my patience!" Me too, kid.

4) The Ravens win last night. I do not care for that franchise or its coaching staff. People around me are insisting the Ravens at home, rookie quarterback and all, are a much better matchup for my beloved Steelers, should the latter win today, but I say it's tough to be a team 3 times in one season, rookie quarterback nonwithstanding.

5) No news last week re: campus interview.

6) Having to start sending out application for the spring round of job postings is, as always, the most soul-sucking professional activity I have ever engaged in.

7) We have found someone who wants to nannyshare with us on precisely our weird schedule. But she has twin 3 yr old boys and is insisting she will not pay more than $10/hr. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that this is gross.

8) This is starting to look like a Very Large FAIL. Internet, how will we ever ride this blog to fame and glory if we can't count on you to follow-through on very simple tasks?

Comparatively, how are y'all's weekends?

I almost forgot!

Chalk it up to the weekend? Anyway, we're now losing to both the Panda AND Jesus. TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE. Vote, my minions! If you do, LeBlanc might just have something special cooked up for y'all soon.

Practice Makes Perfect

Telephone rings.

Yello?
Miss-Ter Porter!
Sen-yore Rey!
Waddup?
Waddup? You know waddup.
I don't know waddup.
You know waddup.
No, I don't know waddup.
Well, if you knew better, you'd do better. Where were you last night?
Oh, yeah. Sorry about that. Something came up.
Sorry my ass. What do you mean something came up? Something? Or someone?
Well, both.
Don't tell me; Rosa called you.
Yeah.
Goddammit. Did I tell you to quit fooling with her?
Yeah, yeah. But its not like that.
Oh, no? What's it like then?
What can I say? She calls. I answer.
How long do you think you all can carry on like this? Everybody knows.
Not everybody. Jesse doesn't know.
He's gonna find out, loverboy. Sure, he's stupid but he's not dead.
Fuck him if he can't take a joke.

Fuck him? No. Fuck you. He is going to fuck you up.
Well, I'll worry about that then. Mira, I'm sorry I missed practice. How did it go?
How did it go? It didn't go. We got a gig Saturday and nobody showed up to practice. Well, nobody but me and Lindita.

What happened to Spooky?
He had to go with his wife to look at quincenera dresses.
Oh, Jesus. What about Crime Scene?
He promised Trina he'd stay home on Friday nights. Spend more time with her.
So?
I guess he meant it this time.
What about Flaco?
What about Flaco? Forget Flaco. He just got a new girlfriend. That boy is totally whipped.
And White Rey? I know he showed.
He flaked out, too. His wife got laid off so he's working extra shifts now.
Well, as long as Lindita was there. As long as you and her know what to play, the rest of us can just sort of fall in.
She only stayed like fifteen minutes. Then her boyfriend got bored and they took off.

That's fucked up, man. See, that's the problem with having women in the band. The women don't take it seriously.

You're telling me.

Egyptian Winter Breakfast: Belila

I have just created the most perfect everyday winter breakfast and am eating it. Right now. At 6 pm. Basically, this breakfast is designed to be prepared and then eaten again and again--it is easily recreated for several days running. This is, in my opinion, much better tasting than oatmeal but has a similar purpose: something hot, delicious, slightly sweet, and easy. I used cracked wheat because that's what I thought sounded right, but I think the belila of my childhood was probably made with whole wheat. Which is even better for you.

Making the cracked wheat:

This is remarkably like making rice. Heat up a medium saucepan and throw in a couple tablespoons of butter. Measure out a cup of the cracked wheat, and when butter is melted put wheat in the pot. Saute, stirring, for a minute or two until it gets a little translucent. Then pour in two cups of water. Bring to a boil, then turn heat to low and cover. Cook for about 20 minutes, or until wheat has soaked up the moisture. Done! Just put in an airtight container and tuck it in the fridge.

In the morning:

Put a few spoonfuls, or say, about a half cup of the wheat in a bowl. Pour over milk to just cover (or, if you don't have milk, like me, half cream and half water to cover). Add a couple teaspoons of sugar, a half teaspoon or so (or a few shakes) of cinnamon, stir it up and put in the microwave until it's piping hot (minute and a half? two minutes? something like that). I then added a handful of golden raisins (courtesy the Indian grocery store). You could also use regular raisins, or nuts, or both. Or some nutmeg? Maybe add some honey? I will try some of these options tomorrow. So BAM! in the morning in under 5 minutes you have very delicious, hot, mildly exotic breakfast. You could, of course, warm it up in a saucepan instead of the microwave. Or use whole wheat instead of cracked wheat (which is what I plan to do next time). I might also try some cardamom, or brown sugar instead of regular. I'm stoked.

This is remarkably easy. I had no idea what I was doing--literally making it up because I couldn't find the right recipe online--and it came out absolutely delicious.

(I did the belila experiment right in the middle of my carnitas experiment, which is ongoing).

An Eye For An Eyelash

The Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye is savage enough. But Israel's insane offensive against Gaza seems to follow the logic of an eye for an eyelash.

—Avi Shlaim, How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe, Guardian, January 7, 2008

In a very real sense, the Western world and particularly the United States is to blame for the current slaughter in Gaza. Not in the sense that American and European weapons are being used by Israel to kill hundreds of Palestinian civilians along with its Hamas fighters. It is true that American money finances this war like all others that Israel wages. It is true that without American aid Israel would be nothing of the great power it is today. But these observations are banal—no, the way in which we are to blame is in our moral support of Israel. Not financial.

Every blog comment section, newspaper letters page, political science department, and parlor room in America is populated with bloodthirsty and war-glorifying rhetoric about Israel's "right to defend itself" and Israel's "security." To Americans, Israel is the ultimate in nation-state masculinity, quietly destroying its neighbors again and again in the face of their tireless but ultimately ineffective amateur warfare. Even Barack Obama said that "Americans hold Israel in such awe and with such reverence."

Perhaps Obama speaks for many Americans, but he does not speak for me. Israel is a rogue state whose continued blatant violations of international law in service of its brutal attempt to literally extinguish its enemies have cost hundreds of thousands of lives, contributed to untold worldwide instability, and cemented the prominence of the modern terrorist, a figure which has wreaked still more havoc on innocents. I bear it no reverence, although perhaps I do regard its continued existence with awe, at least for the utter rawness of its aggression.

America's moral support of Israel manifests as support for virtually every action Israel takes. When Israel blocks off food and supplies to Gaza, it is properly defending itself. When Israel kills twenty Palestinians in response to a single Israeli casualty, it is properly defending itself. When Israel wages war on half a nation in outrage at two of its soldiers taken hostage, Israel is properly defending itself. When Israel sequesters a people in a tiny strip of land with no real economy and doesn't allow them egress and entry, it is properly defending itself. In short, there is nearly nothing Israel can do that it not defended by mainstream American politicians and thinkers on both sides of the political aisle as an appropriate defense of its right to exist. American opinion is so utterly lopsided in Israel's favor that the mere criticism of any Israeli action will cause the criticizer to be rained upon with a dozen accusations of anti-semitism.

And so, the rather savvy Hamas leadership, which gives not a whit of care for the immediate safety of the people it purports to represent but seeks only to advance its agenda of victimhood and expand its political power, draws Israel into a slaughter so brutal that all but the most hawkish can agree is disproportionate and wrong. Because blockading supplies, restricting movement, and killing innocent civilians is not enough to earn American disapproval. Instead, Hamas fires off rockets day after day, knowing that they will accomplish nothing but kill a few Israelis (I believe about a dozen since the now 14-day-old war began) and bring massive death and destruction to the Palestinians. The second of these two is their goal, and Israel is neatly complying by being as bellicose and violent as it ever has, with nearly eight hundred dead as of today.

Israel has its own political agenda, which, like Hamas', is in great part domestic. Wouldn't you know but that elections are coming up in Israel and the war is proving a great boon to defense minister Ehud Barak's Labor party?

I see no ceasefire in immediate sight. The continued fighting serves both Hamas and Israel's leadership. The killing of Palestinian civilians in droves satisfies the Israeli people's thirst for violence and "action." And the killing of Palestinian civilians satisfies Hamas' martyrdom/victimhood agenda and makes Israel look near-indefensible on the international stage.

One early evening in Cairo, I was flipping through channels on my dad's satellite box when I came across what I later found out was a Palestinian channel. I watched for about twenty minutes as the most violent, disturbing, manipulative piece of television I have ever seen played across the screen. It was a very extended music-video-cum-patriotic appeal that did not end before I had to shut it off. Arabic singers wailed in heartfelt, pained, and beautiful voices about people being martryed while gruesome image after gruesome footage was interspersed between video of them singing their emotional pleas in the recording studio. I saw children's limbs blown off, women attacked by teeth-gnashing dogs, bodies dragged through the streets, young men shot in mid-run, and hundreds of mothers' faces wrenched in grief as their dead children were pulled away from them. As the violence escalated, the singing became more and more intense in a crescendo that improbably kept crescending. It was truly shocking how manipulative it was.

Together, Hamas and Israel are using Palestinian deaths to satisfy their own political needs, and the war serves them both. Israel gets to talk big about "destroying" Hamas, which if it has any strategic instinct whatsoever it knows it will not do. Hamas gets to increase its own profile and rally the Palestinian people to violent resistance with the liquid courage of their collective grief and anguish, inflamed by the recent carnage like some awful flambé. Israel's response to ceasefire suggestions, saying that if Hamas stops firing rockets they will end the offensive, amount to a juvenile "you first."

But Israel's actions are indefensible, so indefensible that they need to marshal an army of internet soldiers to make the case justifying their aggression. Do not forget that they, not Hamas, are the ones who ended the ceasefire by attacking killing six Hamas fighters in early November. Do not forget that they never complied with the other conditions of the ceasefire by allowing adequate supplies into Gaza. Hamas' rocket fire also has no defense. But given the disproportionately small number of casualties compared to the ones Israel has wrought, it is much less desperately in need of one.

Both Hamas and Israel need to broker a ceasefire now, and stop using the Palestinian people as pawns for their own political gain, for shows of macho might and for gruesome fodder in the nationalism-martyrdom campaign. That is the first thing they can do to show that they even care a ounce about bringing peace. Since I've been alive, I remain unconvinced that either side does.

Bounty

We do not watch a lot of TV here (in fact I just cancelled our cable because we got one of those HD antennae and now I can get networks from the sky) but what we do watch we really like. Inevitably that leads to a situation like this:

Sunday, 4:45 Steelers/Chargers playoff game
Sunday 7:00 Golden Globes red carpet coverage begins
Sunday 8:00 Jack Bauer comes back into my life

The Steelers are non-negotiable, obviously, but once they are through beating the Chargers (even if LT is healthy I think this is a good match-up for us), what do I celebrate with? (Did yinz see the great piece about Dick LeBeau I twittered yesterday?)

I realize many of you will judge me for being excited about both the parade of superficiality that is the Golden Globes and the glorification of violence and paranoia that is 24, which is a valid enough judgment, but, hey, I like what I like. And I don't like having to chose. Maybe you all can vote about it.

You're damn right, pseudonymous kid

Me: Shit, I have to cook dinner. Jesus.
PK: Mama, why do you swear so much?
Me: I dunno. I kind of swear a lot.
PK: Maybe it goes along with being a professor of the English language.
Me: ....
PK: After all, they are words.

do it!

What does a bitch have to do to get you people to vote? That damn Panda blog is beating us. Since when do a bunch of very large bitches get their asses kicked by some half-extinct, slow-moving vegetarians??

And when you're done with the fluff--but VERY IMPORTANT fluff!--pick up the phone and call your Representative and tell her or him to vote to support the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which is being voted on TOMORROW. We might should have enough Senate votes this time to get that fucker passed.


(Image is of a brooch that you can BUY at Etsy. If you are so inclined. She has a couple other cute things too. I want the brooch done as a pillow....)

Also Home

Gah, what a long time away. The Vanes got home last night after a week visiting northeastern Vanes and Vanes-in-law, a trip that began the same day I red-eyed back from MLA. In the middle seat. I walked into my house last night and felt like I hadn't been there in a month. And as much as I want to never leave again I had to get out of there this morning and plant myself at a coffee shop because there is so much semester-related work to be done and if I stay at home I will get lost in a vortex of unpacking and trying out my new cookie sheets.

Before I throw myself into syllabi I wanted to check in and say that MLA was fine. Perfectly fine. Thanks. I was actually so prepared for it to be terrible (and all the travel aspects were) that I was pleasantly surprised by how nice portions were. My closest friends had interviews as well and I was so thankful for our all being there together. Some very close grad school friends who have gone on to t-t- jobs were also there and generously willing to mock interview and calm nerves. I ran into a few people from my MA program about whom I had nearly forgotten. I had intentions of meeting up with some internet people, but all the real life people combined with the nerves sort of jumbled out more speculative possibilities. That was my only real disappointment.

Partly I suspect I found MLA so tolerable because I attended exactly one panel. And I chose it wisely, veering away from my own stuffy field and instead going to the Twitter panel. It was excellent, a good rundown here. Not only were the presentations themselves engaging, but the panel as a whole felt radically more productive than the typical conference panel because the presenters decided to limit themselves to about 5 minutes of speaking so as to allow more time for actual conversation. And then THEY DID. These academics, they spoke for about 5 minutes! It was awesome! I can actually follow something for 5 minutes. The ensuing conversation was so smart and dialogic I felt like everyone was engaged at a level one doesn't often see at these things. Which was sort of the point of the entire discussion about how twitter works. So bully to them for doing a great job.

And then I didn't go to anything else. Not the big deal Horowitz thing, where I heard there was shouting and general bad behavior. Not the president's address. Not anything. And because I felt like I needed to do what I needed to do to stay clam for the interview I didn't even experience my normal conference guilt about skipping shit.

My one MLA recommendation is something most of you wouldn't be stupid enough to do anyway: do not stay in the hotel where the main conference activities are happening. Every time I walked into the lobby it was a sea of anxious humanity and posturing academics. Heinous. Everyone staring at name tags when you walk through, the whole thing with the feel of an incredibly nerdy and unfashionable high school reunion. There is some loveliness going on down there for sure - people running into old grad school friends, some laughter and shit-talking. But that is mostly overshadowing by the handshaking and anxiety-infused air. Stay far away.

I know that's a mediocre update but I feel frantic about the shit I need to get back to doing. More later, partly on meeting with publishers. I am too nervous and jinxy to write about the interview itself, except to say that I do think it went well. Thanks for the remote well-wishing, all.

Home

Well, while I was gallivanting around the world, we went and got ourselves nominated for something, no thanks to my sorry ass. So go vote, ladies and gents. I sense that you all didn't miss me much, thanks to my pathetic lack of pre-departure blogging, save all those ridiculous recipes, which prepared you for my absence. I am happy to report that it looks like I will be going back to work soon, which means my brain will be turned back on and I'll once again have interesting things to say (not that I don't have a great deal of interest in some chicken tikka masala right now).

Egypt is the same as it ever was, although I fear the pollution might be slightly worse or it could be that it was irritating me more because of a sore throat. The gulf between establishments that serve the rich and poor grows apace. One evening, a late-night meal for 6 people at the price of 34 L.E. ($6), the next morning, coffee for two and a diet coke for the same price. Food costs more, but the taxi prices have barely budged.

My relatives are doing well, and I am now completely certain that each and every one of my cousins and second-cousins between the age of 16 and 30 is considerably more fashionable than me. One of them, the closest to me in age, with whom I was quite close growing up, has become a documentary filmmaker and created some truly excellent work which I would link to if he weren't, you know, related to me and everything. I find all my cousins kind of amazing. I come from this sprawling Egyptian family starting with my grandfather, a pharmaceutical salesman who died long before I was born. He and my grandmother had eight kids between about 1935 and 1965. Six of those eight got college degrees, despite both their parents not having done so. They were a doctor, an artist, an accountant, an archaelogist-turned-insurance-business-owner. Now their children and grandchildren are taking up the charge, and the only person in the whole clan under the age of 35 who isn't either graduated from or still in college is my older brother.

These are solidly middle-class people, in a place where there doesn't appear to be much of such a class. I don't know what it is about the family that makes them all doggedly pursue an education. It's not as though everyone is super smart--some are, some are merely average, and a few have great difficultly succeeding in an academic environment. But in an economy where jobs are scarce and good jobs even scarcer, they press on. I found out they are studying banking, computer science, and English literature. They're all on Facebook. Most don't speak that much English, and they are shy about doing so. But even though I can't connect with many of them, I look at these young people and I feel scared and hopeful about the future of Egypt.

In any case, I'm back, and I've got a lot on my brain. I'm also sick, and sniffling my way through a be-jetlagged night. Maybe I'll see the sun come up. Maybe I'll crawl back into bed with my sweet boyfriend who I have been so glad to see. It's a wonderful trip where you get to go home, and then go home again.

Fail

Goddamnit I am smoking a cigarette. I blame the dead cat people, who can SUCK MY USED BUTT. After I finish this delicious cig (don't tell PK) I am going to small claims court to fill out the paperwork to get a judge's order to make the escrow company release my money, which has been in escrow since JULY. I owe my lawyer $550 for sending two letters to these assholes offering them money if they'd just sign the escrow release forms, letters they've failed to respond to except with a fax, two weeks late, reiterating their "offer" to sign if we'd give them half the money. They've refused to give the lawyer a response to the most recent letter, or their address or even phone number, so I have no idea how to tell the court to reach them. With luck I can leave them out of it and just file against the escrow company.

My sole consolation is that the lawyer will get my money rather than those assholes. That and I hear that the dead cat house tenants havent paid rent in months. I hope the owners are losing their goddamn shirts, and I'm GLAD they didn't accept our offer of $750 for their utter non-cooperation.

the queer black family

Queering Black Politics: Reconsidering the Black Single Mother Argument

In light of taddyporter's post and discussion below about non-traditional families (or non-cookie cutter families), here's another wrinkle: race. I think a commenter in that discussion made mention of how class identity impacts a family's cookie-cutterness, and though there were a few commenters who included ethnicity in their family's composition, I don't know if any analysis crept in of how race informs whether a family gets called traditional or not.

From the post:
"The problem is not that people are different. The problem is not that girls aren’t marrying. The problem is not that black women are reproducing. The problem is that the dominant ideology governing what is socially acceptable and legally rewarding works to systematically discriminate against queer ways of life, including unmarried lifestyles, living without a pronounced male head of household, or being a single parent.

No, the black family does not always resemble the patriarchal nuclear family that has been deemed the most successful and productive. Yes, black single mother households have increased over the last four decades, and yes, a number of black children come from single-parent households. We should use these realities to question the formation of exclusionary norms, rather than to lambaste black morality with underlying aspirations to assimilate."

Anyway, it's a fabulous, rigorous piece.

(via PostBourgie)

Vote, bitches

You can vote once a day. So I'm gonna bug you all about it.

In other "yay for voting" news, a really shitty article* in yesterday's NYT reports that the Dems intend to pass a Fair Pay Act, reinstating the understanding that victims of discrimination don't need to be mind readers that existed before SCOTUS ruled against Ledbetter.

*Ledbetter was *not* a response to Joe the idiot Plumber, chronologically or substantively. Also, the case discussed in the article is badly misrepresented--Garcia was suing the builders, who never owned the building, for having done the work. The judge's reasoning is asinine, but that part of Garcia's case was pretty weak anyway.

That Her Warfare is Accomplished

The chief of United Nations relief in Gaza reports over 500 residents killed in ten days of air and artillery strikes by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Palestinian agencies estimate 2500 wounded. Palestinian combatant deaths were calculated at around 75% of the total.

Saturday, IDF shelled Gaza City with white phosphorous and stormed the city with tanks and infantry.

Fighting in the built up areas is punishing civilians even more severely than the air strikes. IDF says the city is being stormed to eliminate Palestinian fighters but mostly what's being eliminated is ordinary Palestinian people. The linked news story reports that that the largest hospital in Gaza had nothing but non-combatant casualties and was overwhelmed, entirely.

Twenty children were killed in the last 24 hours.

Please contact your congresspersons to demand;

the United States employ all diplomatic means to move an immediate cease-fire in Gaza,

the United States suspend all weapons deliveries and all military resupply to the IDF while it campaigns in Gaza.

Vote Bitch PhD in the 2008 Weblog Awards

This is where you click and vote for BitchPhD.

Then you tell your friends about it. And send them the link.

http://2008.weblogawards.org/polls/best-very-large-blog/

And then you bug them about it.

And then victory is ours!

(We were up 2 votes to one when I voted. Good timing, hey!)

Hostages to Fortune

During one of the recent floggings, the subject of cookie-cutter lives came up with respect to the structure of people's families and households and domestic arrangements.

A certain amount of fright and anger, which often amount to the same thing, was expressed over the flamboyant configuration of the House of B. The apparent indifference of Dr B and Mr B and the Connoiseur to the ma-pa-kid-kid-dog-cat-cable-TV household setup seemed jarring to notions of the ideal or, at least, preferred family constellation.

I wouldn't even mention the more titillating aspects of their arrangement except that its, well, titillating. How they can sleep with more people than they have a right to and still maintain a loving relationship all around is a puzzle to a lot of us. Its not as puzzling as why so few people want to sleep with good old taddyporter but that's the subject of another post.

Anyway, it got me to thinking: There's all this uproar in defense of the cookie-cutter life and yet, how many of us actually live it? I don't doubt that the ma-pa-kid-kid model predominates in the popular imagination but how many of us live in households that are modeled that way down to the last bunkbed?

For one thing, I don't even think that model is the most common type, is it? Isn't the single person household the most common type? Just what are those people up to behind closed doors?

There are plenty of households made up of childless couples. Do they pose a threat to the social order?

Many of those childless couples are gay and lesbian. And many gay and lesbian couples have children. Do either of these arrangements hinder the lives of the ideal American family?

When I think about the households of my friends, I realize there is a wide spectrum of arrangements. My best friend lives with his wife and three small grandchildren. Several of my friends, men and women, are single parents. One of my brothers is divorced and his two boys divide their time between his house and their mother's house. One of my cousins is divorced and her boys stay in the same house all the time, the parents rotating in and out at bi-weekly intervals.

My unmarried stepdaughter lives with her adopted seven-year old boy. She has three roomates, men, who watch over her son and her with a paternal devotion that could not be greater if they were all the same blood. And no, she's not sleeping with any of them. Just so there's no misunderstanding.

My own household would not meet the criteria for the Great American Family. Talk about your jarring configurations. An aged auntie, a grouchy middle-aged (that's right, middle-aged) man, a twenty three year old niece with a six year old son and another niece, eighteen years old. And two dogs. And three cats. And cable TV.

Even among families with more conventional arrangements, I bet there are periods where they deviate from convention. Demands of work seperate the spouses for stretches of time. A relative or friend down on their luck is taken in. The family has to move across country and stays with grandma and grandpa while they get themselves settled in a new house. A house burns down and the kids are farmed out to the relatives while things are put back in order. Or the kids are sent to stay with relatives over the summer. Stuff like that.

The point is, families and households are an adaptation. The problems and demands of life are fairly uniform but their solutions, if not infinite, are pretty diverse. A practical solution for my family may be completely impractical for yours. The key is not whether our families look the same but whether our families are each happy and healthy and ready to meet the demands of the day.

So, my reader, what about you? Is your family upholding the ordinances of Providence or are you experimenting with your own arrangements? And if you are, can I come for supper?

It's an honor just to be nominated

Hey! We've been nominated for Best Very Large Blog in the 2008 Weblog Awards! Starting Monday y'all can vote for us here, and the other fine nominees here.

Don't forget to vote for Black Women, Blow the Trumpet in the Small Blog category, both because she told us we'd been nominated (thanks, Black Women!) and because in the end, it's really all about the small blogs.

And you better vote, bitches. Because that "honor to be nominated" bullshit is bullshit. We wanna WIN.

And you know better than to mess with Very Large Women. We will kick your ass if you don't elevate us to the heights we deserve. I hear that winning means we get lots of 22-year old hottie groupies, because everyone knows that the kids love the internets.

Oh noes

My jeans have a crease in them. Guess that's what I deserve for letting a 22-year old do my laundry.

Happy 2009

My boyfriend The Connoiseur is snoring with his feet on my lap, I'm listening to old TAL podcasts, and all's right in my selfish little corner of the world.

Here's hoping 2009 will be a year in which more people everywhere have the luxury of enjoying such small perfect pleasures than has been the case for many, many years.