Nike made a funny

And by funny, I mean, they're either really, really bad at getting their own subtext, or they're just evil.

Via Shakesville, I see this announcement from Nike that they're looking for a new female "Field Reporter":

+ Gotta be an 18-24 year old girl

Because women 25 and older are gross to look at, duh.

You have to be ready for anything and anyone. As this is being written, the current Nike Field Reporter is spending a few days just hanging out with Kobe Bryant.

I don't know what this could possibly mean, except "hey, you remember that guy who, despite being one of the best players in the game, is known just as well for probably raping someone? Yeah, you have to be okay with hanging out with potential rapists. Don't be a crybaby mmkay?"

Seriously? You "have to be ready for anything" like...spending time alone with Kobe Bryant? That, coupled with the age and gender requirement...it's just too much.

Prosecute the Torturers, Disbar the lawyers, Impeach the judges

I have a confession to make: until last week, although I didn't say it, in my mind, I thought that we shouldn't prosecute the torturers. But a video has shaken me to my core and made me reconsider my position.

Let me be clear. When I say "prosecute the torturers," I do not mean the men and women who went into those rooms and carried out what we have come to refer to, in horrifyingly sanitized language, as "enhanced interrogation techniques." They are not culpable. We have heard from many of them, saying they objected, saying they thought it was wrong. Their supervisors, their superiors—the people they trusted—let them down and forced them to go through with horrible and damning acts. And those people's supervisors let them down the most. No, it was the Dick Cheneys and the Jay Bybees who were and are responsible for what these soldiers and CIA agents did. And I still fervently hope they feel sick because of it, despite a certainty that they do not.

But I had been swept up by Barack Obama's "look forward, not backward" rhetoric. It appealed to me, because a part of me wanted to forget. Indeed, I'm sure many Americans want to forget. Our psyches protect us. They help us to forget, push down, erase, sublimate, disperse the worst feelings and experiences of our lives. When we can not forget, when we are haunted by it, that's known as suffering from mental illness.

It's a good instinct. It helps us be emotionally healthy. I am glad to have forgotten how I really felt the first time I saw the pictures from Abu Ghraib. That sick, horrid feeling. The feeling of powerlessness, the instinct to protect people from harm, totally futile because the acts had already occurred. The feeling of disgust, hatred and even aggression toward those carrying out the acts. It's not a pleasant feeling.

So I thought: we have a broad national chorus that reaffirms that torture is wrong. We elected a president and a party who oppose it. Let's move on, past that awful chapter. Let's focus our energy on getting people jobs and fixing our schools.

But not only did I forget how it felt, I forgot about what torture is. You see, with all this talk of waterboarding, sleep deprivation, ensure, 1600 calories--or 1500?, enhanced and non-enhanced techniques, it became an overwhelmingly technical discourse. Reading those memos is an exercise in dehumanizing what is, in my opinion, one of the most authentically human instinct: the instinct to protect the vulnerable from harm. And though they might be criminals or terrorists (or not), when the torture begins, they become instantly vulnerable people.

I remembered that I forgot only when I watched what has become known as the "UAE torture video." It's a 2005 video of a member of the Emirates Royal Family, Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, assisted by uniformed officers, torturing an Afghan grain farmer who had stolen or owed him money. Although I want you to watch it, I'll understand if most of you don't, although you must read the article at the link. It's one of the more horrifying and sickening things I have ever seen, and I'm not particularly squeamish. I spent the majority of the video covering my eyes, listening to the audio, and occasionally peeking through to find out what was happening.

Global Voices Online describes it this way:

torturing an Afghan grain farmer, attacking him with a cattle prod, then literally pouring salt on his wounds.

They also beat him, kicked him while he was down, and then ran over parts of his body with a Mercedes SUV.

Now, I'm not going to assert that what the Bush administration authorized against detainees, and what soldiers and CIA agents did to them, was as bad as what you see in this video. But it's in the same league. The difference is that what the Sheikh and his police buddies did amounts to attempted murder. I mean, they really could have killed the guy. The American techniques, on the other hand, were carefully engineered not to present any significant risk of actual death, although they present certain risk of serious physical, psychological and emotional harm, and certain risk of feeling like death is imminent.

But aside from that difference, they are the same. They are both torture. That sickening, scared, disgusted, helpless feeling I felt when watching that video? That's what the phrase "shock the conscience" was invented for.

We will never be able to see tapes of what American soldiers and CIA agents did to the detainees. But I am certain that if we were to see those tapes, we wold have a collective response not too different from the one I had when I watched the UAE torture video. Sick. Scared. Wanting to stop it and helpless to do so.

Some cynical sadists will say that we shouldn't make policy decisions based on emotional responses. In this case, however, that's exactly what we should do. We have become far too divorced from emotion on this issue. Again, one of the standards for determining what constituted torture is determining what "shock[s] the conscience." That's what that phrase was invented for. And we need to find our collective, national conscience again.

I'm highly skeptical of retributive justice. I don't want to prosecute the torturers because I want them to suffer. No, because we must reaffirm our position that those who abuse great power are more, not less culpable than those who abuse ordinary power.

Those who directed their lawyers to write legal nonsense, intellectually incoherent and morally bankrupt justifications of violence, should be prosecuted as the masterminds of the affair. All the lawyers who willingly turned their back on the United States Constitution, which they swore to uphold, and the Geneva Conventions, and assisted their clients in authorizing criminal acts, should be disbarred and maybe prosecuted as well. Judges who provided such assistance and are now sitting pretty on the bench (I'm looking at you, Jay Bybee) should be impeached and forced to step down.

Not to punish them or to "make them sorry." Because if they are not now, then they will never be sorry for what they did. But because the limited utility and the dubious political expediency of prosecution must take a backseat to the redemption of our national conscience.

And because we must resist our instinct to forget.

Love Thy Neighbor

I'm in the middle of a heartbreaking exchange of e-mails with my Uncle Jack.

The other day he sent out one of those stupid right wing mass e-mails to me and my brothers and my cousins and a bunch of other people I never heard of. The e-mail detailed how immigrants were bringing down the good ole USA by flocking here to collect $1890.00 a month in welfare payments.

I love my Uncle Jack like he was my daddy. I usually turn a blind eye to these infrequent right wing lapses of his. This one touched a nerve, however.

I replied hotly to him and its been on ever since. Currently, I'm appealing to my Auntie to pour oil on the waters and repair the rift in the lute. I know I shouldn't sass my Uncle and I didn't mean to. Its just, well, he got on my last nerve, you know? Its especially galling for him to talk shit about immigrants considering our own family would still be stuck in County Armagh if his daddy, my grandfather, had not committed numerous felonies to get his progeny to the United States of America.

Anyway, that's not what this post is about. I only bring up my Uncle Jack because in the latest round of escalation, he sent me some kind of anti gay bullshit about how some fool in the GOP is calling the narrative of Matthew Shepard's murder a hoax, that it shouldn't be used to promote anti-hate crime laws.

I'm not even going to link to what he sent me because its so odious. I just want to say something about anti-hate crime laws and why I think they're necessary.

It should be clear by now that I'm a blue-eyed ghuedo, straight as they come, and as grumpy a geezer as you'll ever want to know. I favor anti-hate crime laws because they protect my right to self determination.

The animals who go round beating and harassing and murdering gay people and Black people and Mexican people and Jewish people and all the people against whom they have some kind of imaginary grievance are trying to tell me they have the right to decide for me who will live in my neighborhood, my community, my country.

And they don't. Nobody has the right to decide that. Not even me. Not really.

I'll live wherever I please. And the only way I can be sure and preserve that right is for everybody to have the freedom to live wherever they please.

Now there's plenty of other good reasons to legislate anti-hate crimes laws. This is one of them. This is my reason.

finally, a thread in which you lot can tell me what to do

At least, if you know anything about gardening (especially so. Cali type gardening), you can.

So here is my google sketchup plan of what I want the front yard to do, more or less. (Click for more bigger.)



The front patch of planty things is supposed to be more deserty (sage and maybe red-hot pokers amidst a ton of poppies and gazanias), the back corner patch is supposed to be more tropicalish (canna, birds of paradise, those ubiquitous things that have the little tiny white flowers amid a two-or-three-foot high mass of spiky iris-like foliage). The front orange tree might be a lemon, or vice-versa, and if I dare I might stick some dwarf plumerias in front of the porch wall. Which is the one with the little holes in it. I might also move the hibiscus from the back yard to the left (your left, facing the house) edge, which is basically where the driveway goes all the way to the back behind the house. And there really won't be any grass, but I got bored with searching for and inserting little models of shrubbery.

The patio wall that comes out towards the curb currently doesn't exist. At the moment, the entire yard is basically a flat grass plot with a straight concrete walkway from the curb to the door, and a hideous four foot tall white wrought iron fence all the way around. Nondescript flowerbeds on the edges, yadda yadda. I want to spend mother's day making the men help me rototill the grass, then cover it with groundcover fabric to kill anything left alive (and to keep it from becoming a huge weed patch while we sloooooooowly do all this work ourselves, with the complete lack of extra money we currently do not have).

Here are my questions. First, if I plant densely with gazania and poppies in front, and, uh, I dunno, some other kinds of ground covery things towards the back, can I avoid weeding? I am not a reliable gardener who does regular maintenance. Mostly I putz when I damn well feel like it and ignore everything the rest of the time.

Second, given that PK insists that the little wall with the holes in it must be that color of seagreen turquoise, and I rather want the back patio wall to be a sort of dark blue, do I *really* want to pull the turquoise around the rest of the house like that? Because if I leave it white, it looks sort of choppy and kind of glaring. OTOH, I'm not convinced by that turquoise wall that doesn't yet exist. OTOH yet again, I plan on covering it with rosemary and planting lavender in front of it (google sketchup only has so many reasonable-looking shrubbery options), so it'll be less HI I AM A TURQUOISE WALL once the planting is done.

So basically we have here three zones. Back zone, by the left-hand room (which is my study): tropicalish, with the scent of orange or lemon blossoms, extending across little porch with possible plumeria. (There will be a hammock on the little porch too.)

Center front of yard: more deserty and native. I would dearly love to put some matilija poppies in there, but the fuckers get eight feet high and spread like crazy, so I am thinking maybe pots? On the new patio?

Around the patio area: mediterranian, ish. Rosemary on street-facing wall, lavender in front of it, jasmine along the wall that leads to the front door. Pots on patio eventually. Probably a bbq. Maybe not a gate, bcause the idea is really that I want it to seem open to the street in a "hi, we're bbqing, step on in and grab a dog" sort of way.

Between the back left corner and the deserty area there will be stepping stones, or some kind of sand pathway (you can see it, sorta, if you look at the big version of the image). So like, three triangles, basically:

left front corner to front door = tropicalish
front door to right front corner (including new patio) = patio + mediterranean stuff that smells heavenly
front triangle, from left to right edge with central point at front door = nativey stuff, hopefully good butterfly and bird habitat (including hummingbirds).

What think you people? Am I insane? Is the three-zone plan going to work or is it going to look schizophrenic? Can I minimize watering by only attending to the plumerias and orange trees and basically ignoring everything else once it's established?

And how fucking cute is this? Don't you all just want to come visit?

Uncle Say He Must Pull Up Him Head

Its a little early in the day for a spliff but, as we say in my country, it must be five o'clock somewhere.

A comment in Dr B's excellent post about Arlen Specter and the decline and fall of the goddamned GOP sent me into a reverie about reggae.

In any such reverie, of course, the BMW's soon swim into view. I'm not going to talk about them because they have been so popular. Cool taddy is a cool daddy and would never talk about people or events widely known to the masses.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Sure I would! Cause I'm not cool. I'm hot. Who here is not?

The thing is, the folks here can be cool when they want to be but I can't seem to be. There's a heart on my sleeve, a bead on my brow, and a monkey on my back.

If I could come over to your house right now, I'd be jumping on your couch, wrassling your kid, or your dog, or both, messing with your radio, pawing through your books, rifling your fridge for a beer, bumming a cigarette, then refusing it cause I've been off tobacco for two weeks now. That's why I'm a little, uh, frantic.

I'm not a rude guest. I'm kind of a demanding guest, I guess. I would be today, anyway. Because, you know, the cigs.

So to help me settle down. Tell me about your favorite reggae bands or reggae tunes or both. Or either. Or share your favorite reggae concert experience. Or don't. Its all the same to me.

Or share some other amusing anecdote. If its a romantic anecdote so much the better. Something sweaty, please.

If its an anecdote about changing the oil in your motorcycle, that's fine, too. Or changing a flat on your ten-speed. I don't give a fuck. If I had my druthers, I druther hear the romantic anecdote though.

I'd share a few anecdotes myself but I can't think of any right now. I can't think of anything except how I could go for a smoke. Roasting a spliff seems to ease the desire but, as you may have guessed, I'm out of papers. My brother Jimmy has gone for some but he can't be relied on. Who knows when he'll get back?

OK, I guess I should share something about a favorite reggae band since I brought this up. Uh, OK, here's a video of Beenie Man. Here's a recording of Toots. Here's a performance of Steel Pulse.

I got to go sweep the ashtrays for roaches.

Aw yeah!

Via Postbourgie, Arlen Specter's switching sides.

I've been wondering when Specter (and Olympia Snowe and . . . I dunno, there must be other Republicans who aren't willfully ignorant Update: Oh yeah, Susan Collins.) was going to get sick of being associated with the "lalala I am not listening to your so-called facts" politics of today's Republicans. I mean, you'd think that the Palin-for-VP thing, or the embarrassing "budget proposal," or the jaw-dropping ignorance of basic economics displayed by their "cut spending" approach to the economic crisis, might have done it. (You wouldn't think that the last administration's disdain for the constitution* would have, sad to say, but let's be realistic. You also wouldn't think that anyone in public office would know less about economics than I do, but hey: in America, anything is possible.)

Apparently, though, shamelessness is kind of a prerequisite for Republicanism these days; Specter's switching to hang on to his job rather than out of, oh, principle. Which, good for the people of Pennsylvania, say I: if your senator's not gonna do the right thing, grab him by the balls and drag him where he needs to go.

Now if only the good people of Minnesota would get their shit together and get Franken to Washington already, we could start to get on with this shit.

*And on that topic, since it needs to be said: hell yes, Pelosi needs to be held as accountable as anyone else on this torture shit.

The things you learn

I didn't know that flipping someone the bird still had such a powerful offending effect. Given that it's one of the first "offensive" things I learned, I always thought it a sort of childish gesture. Like, something really bad you do to your parents when you're 11 or 12, and they send you to your room and are very angry with you. As an adult, well, I didn't think it had much power or clout. It's great coming from kids, though. See, e.g. the header image on this blog.

But apparently, in downtown Chicago, it's still incredibly vile! I was crossing the street just moments ago on my way to work, and a guy almost hit me because he didn't seem to understand the whole right-turn-on-green-yield-to-pedestrians thing. Which you've got to do if you drive anywhere in downtown Chicago. So this guy zooms through the space between me and another guy crossing from the opposite direction, which is just about one of the stupidest things you can do, because he could have hit not one, but two people. I throw up my hands and say "what the fuck?!", mostly as a gesture of solidarity with the other guy who almost got hit. Then I flip the bird in the direction of the guy in the car, assuming he will neither see nor hear me, but mostly to make myself feel better.

The guys screeches the car to a halt (no joke), opens the door, and unleashes a stream of vile shit at me. "No, fuck you, bitch. Watch how you cross the street, you [......bitch] [whore] [piece of shit]." I really can't remember everything he said, there were so many insults packed into like three sentences. Me and all the other people around just stood looking dumbfounded while this guy went off, then closed his door and sped away. Oh, and I think he called me fat, too.

All that for flipping the bird? That's a dangerous weapon.

HA HA HA HA HA

I think I just peed myself. I must have the flu!!!!111!!

I was just talking to Wendy Wright, the president of the conservative group Concerned Women for America, about the nomination of Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D-Kans.) to run the Department of Health and Human Services. The group opposes the nomination, and Wright is raising some questions about the timing of the swine flu crackdown so close to tomorrow’s cloture vote.
“Some people think that declaring a state of emergency about the flu was a political thing to push the Sebelius nomination through,” said Wright. She pointed to news stories that ask whether the slow-walking of the Sebelius choice will hurt the response to the flu. “If there’s even a hint that [Department of Homeland Security] is manipulating the health situation to push a political appointee through, well, it almost defies imagination [you don't say? - ed.] that they’d be willing to that.”
Wright said that she’d heard the speculation “on talk radio,” and wanted to be skeptical, but “there’s too much of a basis in that argument to easily dismiss it.”

You gotta love the CWA.

Via the Rude Pundit.

I bought you that ring cause I never was Cool

I spent Friday through Sunday at an academic conference. I find it so easy to hate these things. Most of us, when we are in regular contact with the classroom, have to find ways to at least pretend we have considered the relevance of our work, or that we are grounded in something that resembles reality. Academic conferences seem so often to present academic persons with the opportunity to luxuriate in the irrelevance of their research. I get that conferences are important; I get that academics need opportunities to hear what their peers are thinking about; I get that our teaching schedules do not often leave the opportunity for research to be a part of daily life such that a whole block of days devoted to scholarship is something special. I totally get that the further one gets from grad school the more conferences give an opportunity to see old friends.

But holy hell, you academics out there surely feel me when I note that these things are usually a total drag. Yes, it's supposed to be about collegial conversations and inquiry. Instead, questions are usually thinly veiled attempts for the questioner to exposit her own ideas and to faintly suggest those ideas are better than the presenter's. Yes, people are very often bringing exciting ideas in nascent form, but who can digest paper after paper when they are just read for 25 minutes at a time? I saw two presentation this past weekend by scholars who were ostensibly very invested in visual culture but who gave presentations that relied entirely, I shit you not, on transparencies. As my traveling partner/colleague noted, who can honestly take a person who uses transparencies seriously as a scholar of visual culture?

So, generally I am really bothered by conferences, but this one was a little different. Firstly, I was traveling with my best grad school friend (I have actually been lucky this year in that my last conference was also a trip with another best grad school friend). Secondly, and I didn't realize this till we were on the flight there, but I felt a little differently about going to a conference as a person who had secured a job. In some amorphous way, I felt like having a tenure track job for next year made me feel more invested in the conversations in my field, or maybe more accurately, more invested in the profession. Or maybe I just felt more like a professional.

Granted, this was a pretty vague feeling and it wasn't strong enough to translate into any real enthusiasm for most of the papers I listened to. But still. It was there and I was happy for it. Until dinner on Saturday night, when my girlfriend and I were with two lovely Ivy league grad students. It was like we were actually networking, which I never successfully do at these things. So there we are, enjoying ourselves, and we haven't yet really talked about what anyone is doing next year but the conversation eventually turns that way. The one Ivy kid got a job and the other Ivy kid didn't. And when I say that I got a job and I say where, the second Ivy kid - the one WITHOUT a job - actually literally sneers for a second. Then this person quickly controls the facial expression and asks, "Well, how do you feel about that?"

I was astounded. I know the job I got isn't at a school that is itself academically impressive, but Jesus, it's a job. A tenure track job, in this market. And while I had, somewhere in my mind, prepared for some level of sneer from faculty members in my department (you always know exactly which ones it will be), it had never occurred to me that I might be condescended to by a peer. One who had been on the market this year, in my field, and knew just how wretched it was.

Anyway, the whole thing riled me. But because I am a complete pansy I didn't say anything remotely confrontational, I just talked about how I do feel about the job - which is excited and grateful and incredibly lucky. The Ivy league asshole nodded and smiled and tried to look convinced. As I talked, I realized I felt exactly like I did in 3rd or 4th grade, when I was really excited to wear my new sneakers to a field trip and didn't realize until I got to school that they were totally the wrong sneakers. Not cool, not even in the slightest.

The thing that really burned me was that I had spent the whole day marveling at how little pressure there is in these settings for humanities scholars to make their work relevant. I can count on 4 or 5 fingers the number of talks I heard wherein the author pointed to the relevance of her work to anyone other than scholars of her tiny little field. And I can't help thinking that while it has its luxurious moments, I would be fairly embarrassed if my mom or dad were there and took the proceedings as evidence about my profession. And there I was, with a job where I will be teaching students, a lot of them, and a lot of them who will be the first in their families to o to school, and I am being asked to feel like I am a marginal member of the profession.

And I don't have any good way to wrap this up or any redemptive thought that allowed me to make sense of the whole thing, except that I really decided to just give in to how much I fucking hate the Ivies. And I really really do.

Is It Safe?

The right wing is busy with their disinformation campaign to promote torture. They claim that torture is OK because it works even though it doesn't seem to have forced any of their captives to confess that Saddam was behind the attacks of September 11 like they dreamt.

But, you know, they might could be on to something. Maybe we're not asking the right questions. Maybe we don't have the right captives.

Before we dismiss the fevered claims of the right wing as a cynical ploy to suppress discovery of their crimes, maybe we should put them to the Question. We'll pay the ransom they demand for release of our hostage economy but first they must answer; is it safe?

rip bea arthur

Sadness! It is a fact that to feminists of my age, Arthur's character "Maude" was the popular face of feminism (sorry, Gloria Steinem, but it's true): smart, sarcastic, single, independent, older, and not the least bit interested in placating the Archie Bunkers of the world. And yeah, that character is completely bound up with our view of her, which she both acknowledged and seemed perfectly okay with.

As Dorothy Zbornak, Arthur seemed as caustic and domineering as Maude. She was unconcerned about the similarity of the two roles. "Look — I'm 5-feet-9, I have a deep voice and I have a way with a line," she told an interviewer. "What can I do about it? I can't stay home waiting for something different. I think it's a total waste of energy worrying about typecasting."

That "yeah, whatever, I'm getting paid" attitude was part of her appeal and persona, too, tapping into the pragmatic and economic foundations of second-wave feminism and, again, striking a real chord with our admiration of women who were ready to give the finger to the moralistic tsk-tsking of women who "selfishly" saw right through the bullshit self-sacrificing feminine ideal.

Which--and god help me I'm going to use this word again--is also, of course, part of why Arthur (like Coulter today) was derided, by those who didn't like her persona, as "mannish" and unfeminine. So far I think we're all on the same page: calling a woman a man is supposedly an insult. The difference, though, is that inasmuch as feminism (at least my version of it) is partly aimed at deconstructing those binary gender roles, there's "mannish" and then there's "mannish." Ideology is full of self-contradictions: "men" are admirably practical, independent, and unmanipulable, and "men" are selfish, winner-take-all, scorched-earth assholes. ("Women," in contrast, are dependent, emotional and selfless, and when they're practical it's usually in a self-sacrificing "the kids gotta eat first" rather than a self-aggrandizing "hey, I'm getting paid" way.)

So sometimes being "mannish" or "masculine" is a compliment, and sometimes it's an insult, depending on which qualities are being emphasized. Yes, blah blah, both interpretations continue to traffic in sexist stereotypes inasmuch as we're still dealing with "masculine" v. "feminine" dichotomies. But, to wrench Arthur's statement about typecasting out of context, what can we do about it? That's the language we've got, and the only way to avoid it is to constantly explain that women can too be independent and practical and admirable and that those are not nuh-uh "masculine" values.

Which is, of course, true. But the dichotomy remains, nonetheless, and sometimes one gets tired of being the critic and wants to be the artist instead--which is to say, one uses, rather than interrogating, existing symbols. (Just to snarl the clarity of all this even further, critic/artist, like male/female, aren't "real" dichotomies either, although they do do real symbolic work.) Hopefully when we operate in the world of the symbolic the result is complicated enough that an attentive audience can discern (however dimly) facets and reflections rather than simple blacks and whites.*

So yeah. RIP Bea Arthur. I have no idea what you were really like, but boy did you mean a lot to me.



*And don't you miss how those 70s shows were willing to reflect on race, too? Sigh. That Jerry Seinfeld needs to get off my lawn.

Plan Be

As many of you have no doubt heard, the FDA has lowered the age requirement to get Plan B over the counter from 18 to 17. This is great news, but it doesn't go far enough. I see no reason why there should be an age requirement on it. It's nothing but an attempt to control teenage women, borne of paternalistic fears at the thought that they might--gasp!--have sex.

Here's the thing: If you're old enough to be having sex, you're old enough to be using Plan B. Clinical trials have shown that it's actually extremely safe, and there are absolutely no health reasons for restricting it to women 17 and older, or 18 and older. There simply aren't. There are only political reasons and moral reasons.

And those moral reasons aren't coherent. Because if a 15-year-old woman is freely consenting to sex, and there is some kind of mishap that leads her to need plan B, she should be able to get it. And if a 15-year-old isn't freely consenting to sex, but a man is raping her, then she needs plan B even more. Why does the government think that possibly being saddled with a pregnancy will make men stop raping women? It hasn't worked before. Men still find ways to rape women, even when the threat of pregnancy is there. Men still found ways to rape women before there was birth control. Which is why this post by Robert Stacey McCain is shocking in how revolting it is:

Plan B -- the drug that allows guys to breathe a sigh of relief the morning after using some chick for selfish pleasure -- will now be available to 17-year-olds without a prescription.

Who cares that she's not even old enough to buy a pack of cigarettes legally? Get her drunk on wine coolers, get what you want, then the next morning, take her to CVS to get Plan B and make sure there's no chance the slut will show up in a few months talking child support payments and DNA tests.

So guys, if you screw a 17-year-old and "forget" to use a condom, remember: Nothing says "thanks a lot, you cheap whore" like the gift of Plan B! (via Pandagon

It is so evident in this passage that McCain doesn't believe that women are human beings. It never occurs to him that a 17-year-old might need plan B because she decided she wanted to have sex. No, to him, young women are only receptacles for men's desire and men's semen. If she's not old enough to buy cigarettes, she's apparently not old enough to have volitional thought. And of course he mentions "child support payments and DNA tests"--because that's all these men worry about: the possibility that they might get saddled with a monthly financial obligation because they produced another human being. Don't you know? Women get pregnant just to get THA MONEY! Dolla bills y'all!

Though you won't be hearing any FDA officials or politicians spouting off the same vile shit that McCain is, their hesitancy about making Plan B available to all young women is borne of the same disregard for young women as volitional human beings. I understand that there's a legal presumption that women under 17 are not able to consent to sex. I understand that that's a bright-line rule and, in general, I think statutory rape laws are good ones. But making Plan B available to women younger than 17 is not at all at odds with principle that, in general, a woman under 17 is not able to legally consent to sex with a man over 17. Because they do it anyway. Some of them do it consensually, and some of them have it done to them non-consensually, i.e. men rape them. And both of these groups need access to birth control, which is medicine. Don't forget that.

I needed Plan B once. It was over two years ago. I'd just started dating my boyfriend, and we were very, very excited about the newly-blossoming relationship. In fact, it was probably one of the craziest times in my life in terms of emotional upheaval. One of the first few times we had sex, the condom stayed inside me after he pulled out. With all the semen in it, of course. I didn't freak out, but I was definitely scared. First, there was the no easy task of getting the thing out, which was quite an ordeal. And it hurt. Then there was the "what the fuck do we do now?" It was my first condom mishap ever, and his too. Even after we'd decided to get Plan B, there was still the "what if I get pregnant anyway?" We talked about it.

The problem: it was about 1 a.m. We were both leaving in the early morning, on separate flights, for a trip to New York. I really didn't want to be running around New York City while I was on a quasi-business trip trying to find a pharmacy to give me Plan B while the 72 hours were ticking. So we looked online and found a 24-hour pharmacy a couple miles away. It was late and it was January-cold, so we hopped in a cab together.

I didn't want him to come in with me. I don't know why. The social context of the drug made me feel like walking in with a dude in the middle of the night and asking for contraception...I just couldn't do it. I went in alone. Of course, I had to find the pharmacist, and ask for it, and he asked me for ID. Thank god I had some on me. That night, I learned my boyfriend's ATM pin just days after we started dating because he insisted on paying for the thing, but I refused to let him come in with me.

I'm a little ashamed to say that the whole ordeal was scarier than I expected. I felt like I wasn't in control, and I was worried about having to get the stuff from the pharmacist. Now, remember that at this time I'm a 24-year-old woman, about to get a professional degree, in a relationship that, if not yet stable, is certainly not emotionally abusive or problematic. And I considered it a very small ordeal.

Now imagine a young woman, 15, or 16. Who doesn't yet have even as much bearing as I did about sex, and relationships, and relating to men and dealing with contraception. And you want to tell me that these young women shouldn't be able to do what I did? They shouldn't be able to decide that, well, they'd rather not get pregnant and they'd rather play it safe? Instead they should have to get a prescription for an over-the-counter drug? And somehow manage to get an appointment with a doctor, and figure out how to pay for the doctor's appointment (not to mention pay for the drug itself), and negotiate talking to their parents about it, all within the space of 72 hours? Especially considering that the effectiveness goes down the longer you wait?

That's what you want? Well, fuck you.

Women are human beings. Even 15-year-old ones.

twit

In general, I cannot fucking stand Maureen Dowd. And yet, this "piece" of hers on Twitter, mainly a condescending interview with its founders, manages to shock me with the amount of loathing it inspires in me. She manages somehow, in a fairly brief piece, to present herself as the embodiment of nearly everything about Boomers that chafes a person. Some highlights:

ME: Did you know you were designing a toy for bored celebrities and high-school girls?

BIZ: We definitely didn’t design it for that. If they want to use it for that, it’s great.

ME: I heard about a woman who tweeted her father’s funeral. Whatever happened to private pain?

EVAN: I have private pain every day.

ME: If you were out with a girl and she started twittering about it in the middle, would that be a deal-breaker or a turn-on?

BIZ (dryly): In the middle of what?

That last bit I like, obviously, because it allows me to imagine Biz Stone as deeply bored with MoDowd. More:

ME: Was there anything in your childhood that led you to want to destroy civilization as we know it?

BIZ: You mean enhance civilization, make it even better?

ME: What’s your favorite book?

BIZ: I loved Sherlock Holmes when I was a kid.

ME: But you’ve helped destroy mystery.

BIZ: When you put more information out there, sometimes you can just put a little bit of it out, which just makes the mystery even broader.

And finally, "ME: I would rather be tied up to stakes in the Kalahari Desert, have honey poured over me and red ants eat out my eyes than open a Twitter account."

Spare me, Mo. It's interesting to me that people like this feel the way they do about Twitter; interesting is overstating it, actually. It's predictable. I'm no Twitter evangelist; I like my Twitter account fine, I like the tweets of people I follow, I like thinking in 140 characters. It's not changing my life, but it sure as shit isn't ruining anyone's either. I know people who are using it in genius ways, having full on pedagogical conversations and building networks/connections through their Twitter communities. I know people who are getting job interviews because of Twitter. It's a powerful tool.

As with any posturing about the civilization-destroying effects of technologies, especially technologies of communication, Dowd's rant misses the point entirely. Sure, telephones may seem to devalue human communication and connection by virtue of presenting conversing persons with disembodied voices and no face-to-face contact. But as it turns out, telephones allow people to stay connected and introduce a new kind of discourse into human communities, one that certainly requires us to develop new mental space to accommodate it. Shocking.

Even worse, and more common, is the suggestion that Twitter is in some way facilitating laziness, or is just giving you something to do when bored. It somehow escapes critics of this nature that conveying an idea in 140 characters requires discipline. As I wrote back in January, the MLA panel on Twitter was the most disciplined I have ever attended, with participants limiting themselves to 5-7 minutes presentations and actual conversations resulting. The complete irony is that Twitter critics, both within MLA circles and MoDowd circles, accuse Twitterers of narcissism. As though more words mean less self-involvement. No reader of bloggers would dream of advancing such an equivalence.

a child is not a locker

You'd think the Justices would get this concept but, apparently, they're senile.

I'm taking a brief break from a brain-busting federal stimulus proposal to bring a SCOTUS case to your attention - that of the middle school girl who was strip searched by a school administrator on a bogus charge that she was carrying high grade...ibuprofen.

(This case has been floating in/out of my attention for the past day or so but I'm juggling a federal proposal, a move and a potential dumping of LTF this weekend so I thank BostonianGirl for emailing the Bitch Collective about it.)

The gents at LG&M have the scoop and let's have this be your space to argue why it may be ok to search lockers willy-nilly and not infringe on privacy rights but strip searching a kid without parental consent is dangerous and wrong. Or, if you dare, you can take the opposite approach. (I'm talkin' to you, lawyers.)

And if anyone has the gray cells to think of what can be done if the SCOTUS actually says state officials can, indeed, strip search our children without our consent because it's about teh drugs, throw that in there, too.

Keep it clean, keep it smart and make our jurisprudence proud.

Green Day: A Chat

On the occasion of Earth Day, two of your friendly bloggers engage in a brief conversation about how older women can be really, really, hot, and the "green" fad that has taken over the universe.

Sybil: i know its not really appropriate for me to be surfing this site
but i feel like just posting an announcement that helen mirren is about the hottest woman on earth. [Link]
M. LeBlanc: which site?
oh.
oh god wwtdd has been so awful
in the past
Sybil: always is. he is completely terrible
and yet sometimes.
i am so bored
and today
helen mirren
is smokin hot
M. LeBlanc: she is, man
some older women...
the senior counsel at my organization
kinda looks like her
blonde and gorgeous
Sybil: omg
M. LeBlanc: though younger.. she's probably mid-fifties or sixty
and she is SOOOOOOO smart
and i have the hugest professional crush on her
Sybil: that would drive me to distraction, that sort of thing
M. LeBlanc: this is her. [link redacted]
plus all that she is HOT. and stylish.
Sybil: i love [name of college] grrls
M. LeBlanc: dude whatever happened to that friend of yours that you were going to hook me up with.. like forever ago
wasn't that you?
Sybil: oh, totally it was.
i feel like i actually did cc you two on an email, didn't I?
i think that happened.
anyway, she just had a baby
7 weeks ago
M. LeBlanc: oh haha
oh baby!
crazy
having a baby sounds insane
Sybil: as well it should
it is a ridiculous endeavor
M. LeBlanc: i have a very pregnant co-worker, and everytime i look at her it's just like.. whoa
so much baby
Sybil: so much and yet so utterly helpless
M. LeBlanc: i know
i was thinking about your tales of [your kid]'s hippie preschool this morning when i was packing my lunch
in 7 different plastic sandwich bags
Sybil: i sometimes feel aghast at how much i totally don't have a baby anymore, but mostly i feel thrilled
OMG
on EARTH DAY no less
M. LeBlanc: i know.
BUT
i WAS going to drive to work
and took the train b/c of earth day
so there.
Sybil: oh, well then.
totally.
that was like a whole carbon offset right there
you are pretty much clear now
M. LeBlanc: i actually want to write something about earth day
and how i feel about the whole "green" thing
Sybil: and about how annoying it is?
M. LeBlanc: but i can't think of anything coherent
well the ideas aren't annoying
Sybil: because i find it to be just class code in the vast majority of cases
M. LeBlanc: but everyone who subscribes to them is.
right.
it's like "i have time to give a shit about this"
Sybil: yes
M. LeBlanc: at the same time, i really do like taking public transit rather than driving, for a whole bunch of reasons
and it is nice to bring my own bags to the grocery store instead of using 80,000 plastic bags per month
for no good reason.
Sybil: totally, i agree
i like having my bags
some things make my life a lot easier
but am also aware of the little twinge of self congratulation i feel about using my bags
M. LeBlanc: right!
Sybil: and it makes me feel all bourgeoisie barfy
M. LeBlanc: but it's like.. how do you tap into motivation to do that shit
that's not based on self-congratulation?
because it's really, really hard to tap into the "this is better for the earth 100 years from now" motivation
Sybil: oh, totally. even my kid is dead by then
M. LeBlanc: so i think mostly people who do "green" stuff are mostly riding on the "this is who i am" satisfaction of defining themselves as someone who gives a shit.
Sybil: absolutely. it is self branding.
M. LeBlanc: if you're not doing it because you like the kind of person it makes you seem like you are, and you're not doing for world-100-years-from-now, because who can honestly derive any motivation from that, then why are you doing it?
i find it frustrating
Sybil: i relate
M. LeBlanc: i should just post our chat on the blog.
poor-woman's blogging.
Sybil: totally. look at us.
here we are, talking about shit that matters
in our off hours
no off switch, man

Too Much?

If I post this as the picture accompanying the ad that I very much need to put up to find an occupant for the third bedroom in my apartment, I'll be rolling in replies, right?

The Libyans

Did Libya's National Security Advisor, Mutassim Qaddafi, son of Muammar Qaddafi, of course, really wear a shiny brown suit to the State Dept. to meet with Secretary Clinton?

Because that's some moxie, man.

Try a Little Tenderness

!Hola!
OK, I know I promised not to be online for a bit. However, surgical schedules in the toolies being what they are, my day of reckoning has been pushed back a tick so I find myself with some time on my hands.

I've been filling the idle hours by slogging through the dubya Torture memos.

The first thing that occurs to me as I read them is, Good God, is this how these people spend their time? Because if my folks had upended the family treasury to send me through law school, they would be very disappointed to find I wasted the ghastly price of my costly education to wank out legal rationales for jerking wings off flies.
Second, it seems to me the whole torture/don't torture debate is fundamentally misinformed.

Torture is an instrument of terror.

Permit me to repeat. Torture is an instrument of terror. Conducted by officers of the state, its state terror.

It's purpose is to terrorize the torturee, the torturer, the community from which the torturee is drawn, and, most importantly, the community from which the torturer is drawn.

Torture is not intended to extract information. Its intended to extract confession. Its intended to exact submission. Its intended to cow, to intimidate, to humiliate. Its intended to ensnare us all in the crimes of the regime. Its intended to plant a feeling of helplessness in the occupied population. Its intended to divide the occupied population into informants and informers. Its intended to demonstrate the complete power of the regime to dispose of people in any way they wish. Its intended to terrorize the population the regime fears most; us.
Do not be confused. All this blather about how torture is needed to compel captured al-Qaeda to spill the beans on their super-secret plans for murder and mayhem is absolute horseshit.
We know that few of the captives held at Guantanamo Bay, Bagram, Abu Ghraib, and the CIA black sites are, in fact, al-Qaeda. Most of them are people swept up in pacification sweeps for being out after curfew, or whose papers were not in order, or who were denounced by informants, probably as payback for some quarrel. They could not be compelled to give information about al-Qaeda plans because they had no information.
They could be compelled to confess. They could be compelled to infect their communities with terror.
And if you think the community the regime wished to terrorize was the Iraqi nation or the Afghan nation, think again.

Salad for One

Close your eyes, recipe-haters, because I've got a few of them comin' atcha. My boyfriend's been gone for a week, and I'm adjusting better than I thought. Longing is a funny thing. You know, when I'm cheerful and energetic, which is most of the time, the fact that my best friend and lover is hundreds of miles away doesn't bother me that much. I send him cute text messages, I shoot the shit with my friends, complain to co-workers, and wile away hours surfing the internet. But when I feel down for whatever reason, or physically unwell, not having my honey around is the fucking worst thing imaginable. I get the lower lows without the higher highs.

It's also a pain in the ass because I have no one to cook for. If I'm going to make something elaborate, it has to be something that will be a) really good, so good that I'm going to want to eat it several times, and b) suitable for eating as leftovers. There aren't that many things that meet that test, especially since I'm a notorious leftover-hater and my palate is fairly sophisticated. So I've been thinking hard about things to eat that can be easily made in a serving for one, so I don't have to eat leftovers. And it turns out that a lot of the things that can be made for one, and made from scratch (I don't do frozen shit.. it tastes gross) turn out to be pretty healthy. And since I've been having some digestion-related health problems of late, I figure the more fruits and vegetables I get into my body, the better.

1. Warm Edamame Salad

Edamame
Shallot
Sea Salt
Black Papper
Sunflower Oil
Parmesan

Oh god, I improvised this last weekend with whatever I found in the fridge and freezer and it was amazingly good. Get frozen shelled edamame (soybeans). Cook them according to the package directions, which involve putting them in boiling water for a few minutes. The package I had says 5 minutes, but I usually find 3 is enough. You want them to still have a little bite, not be totally soft. I used about a cup and a half of the beans. While they're cooking, finely dice a small amount of shallot (red onion or regular onion would work, too). When the edamame are done, drain and immediately put in a bowl with the shallot. Toss with a generous few shakes of sea salt and plenty of black pepper. I was going to use olive oil, but I didn't have any and used cold-pressed sunflower oil instead. Turns out it was a vastly better choice—the nutty flavor is the perfect complement. Whatever you do, use the highest-quality oil you have here, because the flavor stands out. Then grate a fair bit of real Parmesan on top of it. If you have Pecorino Romano, that would be even better. The whole thing will take less than 10 minutes.

This is the perfect "I just got home and I'm starving and need a snack before I can think" dish. Healthy and so very, very tasty. It was actually inspired by a dish I had at a very fancy Italian restaurant two weeks ago: Fava Beans with Truffle Oil and Pecorino Romano. It was completely unreal. But I can't afford truffle oil and I don't have the time for favas. This is the poor woman's version of that.

2. Egyptian-Style Panzanella

Cucumber
Tomatoes
Sunflower Oil
Balsamic Vinegar
Stale Bread
Pistachios
Salt and Black Pepper

I completely made up this salad. It's not the most amazing thing I ever tasted, but it was goddamn good and had an interesting flavor. Take a whole cucumber (you know, the big ones), peel it, and dice it. Many recipes want you to seed cucumbers, and I have no idea why. The watery seedy-middle is the best part! Dice up some tomatoes; I used 3 or 4 of the small ones (bigger than grape, smaller than plum). Take your stale bread (I had slices of a baguette) and tear it up into small pieces, however much you like. You could toast it in a skillet first, but I was too lazy for that. At this point in making the salad, I thought.. this needs some nuts! All I had were pistachios. So I shelled 8 or 9 of them and chopped them up. Season it generously with salt and pepper, then toss with a bit of balsamic and sunflower oil, a teaspoon or so of each. I call this Egyptian-style panzanella. When I eat dinner with my relatives in Egypt, every meal is accompanied by a giant salad of cucumbers and tomatoes with oil and vinegar. No lettuce. And the pistachios scream "Egypt" to me because pistachios are so popular in desserts. And because of the bread, it's like a panzanella. Which I also ate at the Very Fancy Italian Restaurant just days before.



3. American Salad

Anything with Ranch Dressing on it screams "America" to me. You don't have to use Ranch--you can use any dressing you like, since this salad doesn't have any flavors that would really clash with a dressing. Even a regular oil-and-vinegar would work great. But I like a big salad with a very light coating of cream-based dressing sometimes. It feels decadent, but it still packs a lot of nutrients.

Romaine Lettuce
Cucumber
Tomatoes
One Egg
Carrot
Swiss Cheese
Sunflower Seeds
Dried Apricots
Ranch Dressing

Put a small saucepan of water on; you're going to hard-boil the egg. Actually, I'm going to medium-boil mine, because I like the yolk a little soft. While that's happening, peel and dice the cucumber, roughly dice the tomatoes, tear the lettuce into bite-size pieces. Peel the carrot, then use the vegetable peeler to create thin strips of carrot. This is way, way easier than julienning the carrots and produces a better result anyway. Don't grate the cheese. Cut it into slices and then cut the slices into thin strips, i.e. julienne it. I used to grate cheese on my salads but I think if you're going to bother to have cheese in a salad, you should be able to taste it. This ensures that—you want cheese matchsticks, basically. Throw on a decent handful or two of sunflower seeds. Now, get a cereal bowl and fill it with cold water and a few ice cubes.

When the egg has been in boiling water for about 9 minutes, take it out and put it in the ice-water bowl. This stops cooking the egg, prevents the dreaded gray ring, and generally ensures your egg is delicious.

A few minutes later, when the egg is cool, shell it and slice or dice it up. Throw it on the salad, and then add just a tablespoon or two of the Ranch. It's much, much better to way underdress at first. You do not want to overdress this salad, or you won't be able to taste how delicious it is. A little bit of Ranch goes a very long way.

Other things to add that would be great: croutons, diced red pepper. This salad is a perfect light spring evening meal. Which is why I had it tonight.

4. Mushroom and Tomato Saute with Eggs

Button or Crimini Mushrooms
Tomatoes
Butter
Two Eggs
Cream, Half&half, or Milk
Parmesan or Pecorino Romano
Bread

Have you noticed that I like tomatoes yet? God, I love tomatoes. A couple weeks ago my boyfriend bought me this giant flat of these tomatoes that are really shockingly delicious for this time of year. They're the "cocktail" size, bigger than grape or cherry but smaller than plum, and still on the vine. The flat had probably 20 or 30 of the suckers. I think it cost $2 at our local bodega. Fuck, I love that place.

I know all these recipes contain similar ingredients, but that's kinda the point. Since I'm living alone now, I have twice as much stuff to use up. So these are some ways to make good use of some very basic staples. Vegetables, eggs, dried fruit and nuts, bread.

Melt a tablespoon or two of butter in a saute pan. When it's melted, add sliced mushrooms and roughly diced tomatoes (I think I had 6 or 7 mushrooms and 3 tomatoes). You can add some shallot here, that would be tasty. Saute for 4-5 minutes, until the mushrooms are soft and the skin is peeling back from the tomato flesh. While it's cooking, beat two eggs with a few shakes of salt and pepper, and a generous splash of the dairy option of your choice. Remove the mushroom/tomato mixture to a wide bowl, and add another half-tablespoon of butter. There will be some juices in the pan. This is good. This helps your eggs taste delicious. When the butter melts, turn the heat to medium-low and add the eggs. Keep stirring them with a wooden spoon until they're fully cooked but still moist. Nestle the eggs next to the mushrooms and tomatoes in the bowl. Grate parmesan all over everything, and serve with slices of bread.

This isn't really a "salad", but it makes a perfect Sunday morning brunch for One while I watch the LPGA tour.

No Ell You Vee without a Jay Oh Bee

While it may not be a revelation to the women who blog and comment and read here, the hairdressing salon may well be the best place to begin the revival of the American economy.

Yesterday, I escorted a busload of ladies from the Old Folks's Home to Jay-Dee's Next Big Thing Beauty Shop and Nail Salon here in downtown Hardscrabble. And fellas, let me pull your coat; if you need a job, get over to Jay-Dee's or your local equivalent. Cause they got the hook up.

I will say it helps to go in the company of a dozen or so older women who have come to look on you as something of a grandson. They talk you up to the operators. They wax poetic about your looks. They lobby the operators to fix you up with sisters-in-law. They endorse your character, describing, in dreamlike tones, what they would do for you if they could shave thirty years from their current age.

Which is a little non-plussing, if that's a word. I mean, shouldn't these ladies be preparing for the next life instead of basking in carnal daydreams about this one?

Not that this didn't interest and, I might say, amuse, the operators. But what they really wanted to know was, Does he have a job?

My grandmothers were of mixed opinion on that point. I worried that the confusion might extinguish the unexpected opportunities for romance. Instead, it set off a landslide of information about opportunities for work. Everybody knew somebody who was hiring. Everybody knew somebody I could call to see about work.

And not only about work. Need bootleg cable? They got the hook up. Best after hours joint? They got the hook up. Want to sell something? Want to buy something? Want to trade something? They got the hook up.

Tonight, I have a date with Polska Church Lady so I decided to get a haircut myself. Fellas, did you know that, in a woman's hairdressing shop, they wash your hair for you before they cut it? Do you have any idea how grand that feels? Oh, God. Its wonderful.

Seated in the chair, glowing from the ritual purification of the scalp, I told the operator I was surprised to learn they knew so much about available jobs.

Well, she said, women come here and talk about things that are important to them. Kids, food, men, love...

I get that, I said, but I was unprepared for all the talk about jobs for men.

But that's part of loving men.

Huh?

You know what they say...

No, what do they say?

No Ell You Vee without a Jay Oh Bee.

So forget bailing out Wall Street. For a tenth of the money we've wasted on Goldman Sachs and AIG and the rest of those bums, we could put the country back on its feet and our people back to work by investing in hairdressing shops and nail salons.

Plus, consider the stimulating effect on my romantical life. Win-Win!

Friday cat blogging

I got one of those scratching pad/rolly ball things for the kitten. Here is a brief photo essay about what happened.


Luna decides the toy is hers.


Medusa wants attention from the big cat.


Maybe I can get her to play?

[brief scene of violence redacted by the MPAA]

Nope.

Also not as interesting as teabagging

But, I got a job! Assistant Professor of recipes, domestic minutiae, bourgeoise preoccupations, and maybe some books - here I come.

UPDATED: to less confusingly note that while I was intending on snark, I mostly meant to announce that I got a job in my field (which is only tangentially making blogs more boring with the above mentioned topics). And, also, happy Friday.

not as interesting as teabagging but, still

Texas lawmaker suggests Asians adopt easier names

I suppose I shouldn't be too hard on poor Mrs. Brown; after all, I have had my 'inaccessible' moniker turned into all sorts of strange configurations - Dinge, Dinghy, Dang, Dong, Deng, Dingy, Dhinge, and (the most annoying of all) Bing.

But, really. To fail to understand that Asian Americans are, indeed, American citizens?
Tsk, tsk.

What am I going to make for dinner?

I'm stuck this afternoon with three of Pseudonymous Kid's friends over for a playdate that snowballed ("can I come too?"). In theory this is awesome; I like all the kids, and PK playing with other kids usually makes my life easier.

Not unpredictably, however, the fact that we only have two wii remotes and two water pistols is turning into a "problem." I want to play Lego Star Wars! PK is using the hose! My water pistol isn't working properly! I quit (That last one is PK himself.) Because I am a lazy mama, I'm less worried about the squabbling ("let them work it out themselves") than I am bothered by the way they keep coming to me to tattle/solve problems. GAH.

Plus, with four kids and no car, I'm stuck for dinner plans. In theory these guys will all go home by 6:30, in time for dinner. In practice, I'd like to be able to start dinner earlier, if only to have something appropriately mommish to be doing so I can tell them to get out from under my feet and go outside. I could also order pizza, but PK hates it. LE SIGH.

So. Having offended half the universe, let's offend the other half (or maybe the same half, what with this being such a domestic housewifey post, after all). What the hell should I cook for dinner? I've got some halibut, some potatoes, various herbs and spices, bread, rice, and pasta. Also cheese, but Mr. B. is on a no dairy diet these days (so inconvenient).

Hit me with your best fish dinners, people. Please.

Ann Coulter really is a cunt, people

Okay, look. As I said in the comment thread, I knew that folks wouldn't like the Coulter joke. And yes, I posted the thing anyway because (1) I thought it was an amusing piece of satire, although yes, the Coulter joke is not the most original thing in the world; (2) the teabagging parties--and the right-wing dumbasses that support them--are, in fact, really weirdly blind about things like, oh, what "teabagging" means and the whole queer culture thing.

I'm perfectly aware that everyone has decided that calling Coulter a cunt--or saying she looks mannish--is terribly sexist. I don't buy it. As I said in the thread, her shtick is *founded* on the whole "I'm so feminine and pretty" crap. She makes comments about how democrats and lefties generally are ugly. Her self-presentation is high-femme. Underlying the "she's a maaaaan, baby" reactions, I think, is a critique of her invocation of rigid gender norms to market herself. Is it the most sophisticated critique? Not usually. Is it often a critique that's completely uncritical of those gender norms? Yes, but not always: context matters, and I think that the "this is a feminist blog"/"so-and-so isn't usually like that" comments that are being so dismissed in the comment thread below function occasionally (as in this case) as reminders of that. In the context of someone who is usually right-on about feminist issues (if not always; even Homer nods, people), one might extend the benefit of the doubt and think that maybe what's going on isn't just a "haha she looks like a man and is therefore irrelevant" comment. (Especially when that's not, actually, what anyone has said.)

That said, I do in fact get that the "tranny" thing (as opposed to "mannish" or "cunt") bothers people, and I do in fact get why. And I agree that that it's not a particularly funny joke. Then again, the whole piece is queerphobic, not just that bit, and it's that way on purpose. I'm not going to speak for or apologize for my boyfriend, so if you want me to agree with you all that he's a frat boy who hates women, well, fuck off. (I will agree that he can be an asshole, though. Just like I'm a bitch.) And I'm not going to get into what he "really meant" because, well, screw that on a number of levels. I will, however, explain how I read it.

I hoped that, once the un-pc-ness of the trans joke had been noted and admitted, that the actual focus of the satire, which isn't AC, would be appreciated. As I read it, the joke is that the Uber-Heteronormative Right is having freaking teabagging parties. The speaker, in the post, is an uber-heteronormative dude who's all, ooh, I took out an ad trying to get a hottt Republican chick to let me teabag her! IOW, the speaker is a jerk who doesn't get it. In keeping with Proper Conservative Values he's gentlemanly and polite about it (George Will would be proud), but therein lies a big part of his cluelessness: the teabagging parties are not "civil" disobedience at all, they're completely at odds with traditional umc Republicanism (before the libertarian freaks and the Norquisties took over), and traditional umc Republicanism is unequipped to deal with them.

In other words, *I* don't think the joke, in the context of either the post itself or the blog as a whole, is doing what people seem to be thinking it's doing (i.e., reifying rigid gender dichotomies, excluding queers, etc.), any more than saying that Newt Gingrich, say, sounds like a total closet case whenever he gets all hot and bothered over Our Boys in Uniform and those icky girl "infections" that should keep women out of the military. I think it's working in the way that, say, a persona saying "while Mr. Gingrich was, perhaps, a little . . . graphic in his language, I think it is undeniable that the cleanliness and decorum that ladies cherish is in short supply in military operations. Or so I have heard; while I, like the ladies, appreciate the virility and masculine virtue of soldiers (and how!), I have never myself been afforded the opportunity to enjoy their company in a professional capacity." Speaker: closet case. Implication: chickenhawks are closet cases. Homophobic: not really, no.

So, them's the ways *I* read the piece, and I had hoped that, after acknowledging that yes, trans jokes are generally uncool, readers might get that. Clearly, transgenderism isn't yet "mainstream" enough for folks (at least straight cis people like yours truly) to get away with that. Lesson learned. I apologize for posting the thing.

Teabag me

My boyfriend sent me this email, and it requires a larger audience.

Surely you've heard of this new wing-nutty form of protest; Teabagging Parties. Now I'm actually one that approves of taxes, in fact, I favor increasing some of them. I am however, deeply patriotic and a huge supporter of free speech, equally speech I don't agree with and doubly so if that speech is mumbled into complete incomprehensibility by the judicious application of and occluding quality of my rather hefty testicles.

Thus inspired, I ran an ad looking for a volunteer to help me make a proud stand against the tyranny of democracy by allowing me to admit my teabag into the warm welcoming maw of country love. I specified--hey, it's my ad--that my little flag-pole waver should be something of a Michelle Bachmann (R - Nutbagville) look-alike. Sadly and in my naivete surprisingly, I received no responses. Days went by and I began to despair that I'd have to widen my stance if not on name, then on appearance.

Recharged, I re-ran the ad, this time requesting either Michelle Bachmann or even a Michelle Malkin look-alike. Why not? I like the Ornamental girls. Crickets. Facing a palpable sense of desperation, I edited the ad to include anyone who might bear some resemblance to even Sarah Palin (R - WTF). Nothing. Imagine my disappointment when by Tuesday I had heard not one thing from the local body politic. Imagine again my elation as I received a response just this morning, with a photo!

Sex and protest has its ups and downs though and I was compelled to write back, thanking her for her interest and confirming that she did in fact, look pretty much exactly like Ann Coulter but that things probably wouldn't work out for us. I didn't admit, because I know people can be quite sensitive about these things, that I know I wouldn't be able to work it, no matter how appropriate with a pre-op T-girl. Pity, she was a pleasant enough fellow.

taxes shmaxes

A few "dos and don'ts"

If you are moving around tax time, don't pack your W2s and related tax forms in one of two large cardboard boxes labelled "important stuff." I'm looking at you, Mr. B.

If you do something stupid like that, do keep track of where those boxes are.

Instead, do pack important papers in either a folder that you keep with you in a purse or computer bag. You know, the one you use every day, so it's important, which is why you didn't pack it away in a box.

Do put tax papers, including paystubs and receipts, in a designated folder all year long. It isn't enough if only one member of a couple does this. Especially if the person who does this isn't the primary wage earner.

Don't ignore paystubs as unimportant; if you misplace or lose your W2s, you can use paystubs to estimate wages and taxes paid.

If for some reason you are out of town and your spouse is filing taxes--or an extension for taxes--do leave your phone on so that he/she can contact you, if needed. Again, this is especially important if you are the primary wage earner. It's super-duper especially important if you are the primary wage earner but don't put your papers someplace where your spouse can find them. Preferably, if spouse is the person who handles bills and taxes, in the place that spouse him/herself prefers.

Transhumance

Blue Corn Woman is in Ojo Caliente. That means she'll cross the Raton in a couple weeks. And that means its time to bring the cows off winter pasture.

I call Moya to tell her.


!Sobrina!
!Tio!
Hey! I'm calling about the cows.
Never mind the cows. What happened at the doctor?
Nothing. Look, we have to bring the cows home. Blue Corn Woman's at Ojo.
What do you mean, nothing? What did he say? Goddammit, Uncle Taddy. Tell me what he said.
Nothing. Nothing. OK, he said what we figured he'd say.
Benign?
Uh, no.
...
...
Moya?
Come home Uncle Taddy.
Its just a few more weeks. I'm almost done.
Just come home.
No! You crazy? The job's almost done. It'll be done ahead of schedule. Get a nice fat bonus for that, too.
Just come home, now.
Why? You're the one who wanted me to take this job.
Its different now. Everything's different.
Nothing's different. And I'm not giving up my money. And I still got a couple things to wrap up for your Grandma.
No. You need to come home so we can take care of this.
OK; first, I'm the uncle. You don't tell me what I need to do.
Fuck I don't.
Alright, alright. But I'm taking care of it. Next week.
For real? You're not fooling with me, now?
No, no, of course not. They're going to do the procedure next week. Its just an outpatient deal. In by breakfast, out by lunch.
Then I'm coming out there.
No, no, no. Don't do that. I'll be fine. Anyway, you have to bring the cows home.
Will you fucking forget the fucking cows! Fuck! How you can do this by yourself? How you going to drive yourself home?
Your Uncle Jimmy will be here. He'll drive me.
Uncle Jimmy?
Yeah.
You and Uncle Jimmy?
Yeah.
I'll be there Monday.

A Broadsheet Comments Thread Worth Reading?

I can't believe it either, but it's true (sorry, Broadsheet writers; I love you guys, but your commenters generally suck ass). Apparently HBO is going to make a movie about the 2008 campaign. Sarah Hepola asks:

This is a women's blog, so we'll start here: Who should play Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton? (Bonus points for casting Obama and McCain and Bubba.) At the end of the day, we'll check back in and see who the likeliest candidates are. HBO, we got this thing!

Answers in the comments are cracking me the hell up. I can't help envision a league of competing Sarah Palins having a conversation full of nonsense. Some genius picks for Palin include Megan Mullaly (you know, Karen from Will & Grace? Brilliant!), Sandra Bullock (she does a great airhead), and Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Elaine from Seinfeld), who is just a brilliant comic actress.

Hillary is more difficult. I nominate Allison Janney, mostly just because I love love love her and want to marry her every time I see her in anything.

I am surprised that no one nominated Richard Dreyfus for John McCain. It's the obvious pick, I think. No one does annoying asshole better than Dreyfus. Although the suggestion of Jason Alexander for McCain has me giggling at my desk.

I'll leave the Obama picks to the comments. Sorry for stealing your idea, Sarah Hepola!

Pseudonymous Kid knows which side his bread is buttered on

PK: Bad Mama!
Me: What's this "bad Mama" stuff?
PK: Bad Papa!
Mr. B: Does that work better for you, PK?
Me: Works better for me.

Banh Mi

Ladies and Gentlemen, if you like to complain about recipes on this blog, get ready to complain again, because I must inform you that there's a stream of 'em coming down the pike. Just like when I was unemployed and had nothing to do and was embarking on ambitious cooking projects to pass the time away, I am now sensing another cooking phase coming on. My dear boyfriend skipped town on Saturday and is now a resident of the District of Columbia. Which means I will go through an adjustment period consisting of looking around my empty apartment and going "what the fuck?" Of course, the cooking will be less fun this time, as instead of having an in-home guinea pig, I will have to beg my friends to come over and sample my wares. Or I'll just make things that can be easily done in small quantities. For your information, vegetable preparations are particularly good for this, and they don't suffer from the "what the hell am I going to do with this giant container of fish heads" syndrome, since you buy exactly what you need.

Banh Mi is a fucking delicious Vietnamese sandwich that I eat whenever possible from the venerable Ba Le Bakery in Chicago. But see, Banh Mi is the perfect lunch, and Ba Le is miles from my office. There might be somewhere downtown to get Banh Mi, but I haven't found it. So I've been making these the night before and bringing them to work the next day. They can get ever-so-slightly soggy, but I kind of like it. You can make it without any exotic or hard-to-find ingredients!

You will need:
-Crusty French Bread. The lighter the crumb, the better. You want something with a flaky crust and an airy crumb.
-Jalapenos or other chiles. I use jalapenos because they're very easy to find.
-Carrots and daikon to make the pickles. A daikon looks like this.
-Vinegar, salt, and sugar to make the pickles.
-Mayonnaise. Regular Hellman's is fine, but if you have an Asian market near you get the Japanese mayo known as "kewpie." It is thinner, tangier, and more delicious.
-Pork pate. I get a pork liver pate. Any kind of pork pate would work, though. A country pate would be particularly nice if you can get your hands on it.
-Regular ham.
-Fish sauce, Soy Sauce, or Maggi Soy Seasoning (optional).
-Cilantro

First, you need to make the pickles. This is the most important component of the Banh Mi sandwich. Putting these on anything makes it taste vaguely Banh Mi. These are really easy, and you can make a big batch that will serve you for weeks.

Do Chua (Vietnamese Pickles)

1 large carrot, peeled and cut into thick matchsticks
1 pound daikon, each no larger than 2 inches in diameter, peeled and cut into thick matchsticks
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons plus 1/2 cup sugar
1 1/4 cups distilled white vinegar
1 cup lukewarm water

Put the carrot and daikon matschsticks in a bowl with 1 tsp salt and 2 tsp sugar. Knead with your hands for a few minutes to get the water out (this makes them crispier!) Drain in a colander, rinse, and try to get all the water out

Make the brine: 1/2 cup sugar, 1 1/4 cup vinegar, 1 cup water, stir until it dissolves. Put the vegetables in and marinate for an hour before using. Supposedly they'll keep in an airtight container for a month.

Now that you have the pickles, it's time to assemble your sandwich. Cut a sandwich-sized piece of baguette and remove the inner fillings. You need to do this for your sandwich to have structual integrity. Toast it under the broiler to crisp it up a bit. Spread both sides with a light coating of mayo, and use a dash of fish/soy/Maggi if you want. Spread the bottom half with a very thin layer of pate. Pate is super-strong and can overwhelm, so don't get too zealous with it. Cut your ham so it's approx. the shape of the sandwich and put 2 or 3 slices depending on thickness.

Now stem, seed, and slice your jalapeno or other chile (slice it very thinly unless you want a mouthful of ow) and spread 4 or 5 slices on the sandwich. Now add the carrot/daikon pickles. Be generous. These are very tasty. Finally, roughly chop the cilantro and put a generous amount on top.

If making for the next day, like I do, wrap it in wax paper, secure with a rubber band, and put it in the fridge. A ziploc-type bag encourages sogginess. Don't do it. Or eat it right away, while the bread is still a bit warm and toasty. Yum, yum, yum.

This is just a very basic version. If you look on the internet there are tons of recipes for other fillings, like marinated beef, pulled pork, tofu preparations...many, many possibilities. This is really the sandwich of the gods, people.

Happy easter, peeps!

It's that time of year: when I post a link to the annual Peeps Diorama Contest just to irritate the other PK and our mutual buddy Orange.

Both of whom will be happy to hear that this year, my PK didn't get Peeps in his Easter basket because I was the totally lame mom: I picked up some chocolate at Target a couple of weeks ago while puttering about, and that was it for the Easter holiday. Which I'd forgotten was this weekend until someone at PK's school said something on Thursday.

In the event, I didn't make cassoulet or even confit, because our kitchen sink decided to stop draining yesterday. We went and had a huge brunch at the Jewish diner and brought home leftovers for later. Feel the holiday spirit!

Mr. B. is now down in the crawl space next to the basement trying to figure out if he can snake the plumbing from there, because running a snake into the sink drain itself didn't work. If his heroism boots nothing, I'll be calling the plumber tomorrow morning along with filing an extension on our taxes.

The kitten, too, had a cruddy Easter: she chewed on the mouse cord for PK's computer and gave herself an electric shock. The hiss! clunk! growl! followed by a kitten shooting out from under the computer table and knocking over a lamp would have been entertaining if I hadn't thought she was being attacked by the big cat.

Luckily, Medusa seems fine. And hopefully she has learned not to chew on cords. I'm not so sure how to teach her not to chew on plants, which worries me because she was climbing in the neighbor's brugmansia this morning. Then again, if she keeps climbing the drapes and sneaking into PK's closet to try to get to the mice, I might just kill her myself. Although, as you can see, she is pretty cute. Almost as cute as a little yellow peep.




Update: as you can see, Mr. B was successful! While you can see how filthy he is, you can't appreciate the smell. Count your blessings.

This is Just to Say

I have traced
the IPs
that were pegged
to your comments

and which
you probably
thought
were private.

Forgive me
they were tempting
so easy
and stalkerific.


I didn't really. I just wanted to say thanks for the conversation in the thread yesterday. I never was going to send the email because I wasn't sure how it would come read, but I wanted to know how it would read to you. And boy howdy do I. I do think there is a larger conversation, or fifty, to be had about professional norms in academic job searches, transparency of norms, disempowerment of workers, passive aggressive emails, internet anonymity, and what is wrong with a few of you that you actually thought I was going to open the email with the salutation, "Dear Dr. Same-Basic-Interests-As-Mine-But-With-Better-Pedigree-And-Recommenders" - I mean, seriously.

But for now I am going to work on my Easter brunch prep. Which involves matching the tops and bottoms of a million plastic eggs and taste testing at least 20% of the chocolate I bought, to name just a couple important action items.

spilling my guts all over the internet

Apparently Good Friday is an important public school holiday in the liberal hotbed of California, war on Xmas notwithstanding.* In other words, even though spring break was last week, PK has no school today.

And yet I am up, because I can't remember when my reassigned small claims court date was. For some reason, I had thought it was the 11th, but this morning as Mr. B.'s bath water running woke me up I realized that tomorrow is the 11th, and it's unlikely I have a court date tomorrow what with its being Saturday and all. So, like insomniacs everywhere, of course I suddenly Couldn't Go Back To Sleep! and got up to look for the court papers. Which unsurprisingly I can't find.

Fuck it. Obviously the court date isn't tomorrow. I'll look again later today and call for a postponement if needed, blah blah papers still having not been served, etc.

*I'm ashamed to say that my state of birth and choice, having chalked up a big fat Fail on the whole "progressive" thing last fall, is now being lapped by Iowa and Vermont. As is New York, which is also (imho) an awesome place. That said, I want to put in a plug for Iowa (I've never been to Vermont), which actually a state filled with common sense and is fairly liberal as a result. New York's got an idiot campaign to try to get gays to make a "pilgrimage" to Stonewall this year (motto: "Still treating you like second-class citizens all these years later! Please give us your money!"; I recommend Iowa instead. After all, NY and SF are so over, gay-rights-wise, and if there's anything teh gays care about, it's not being passe.

But back to my neurotic gut-spilling and demonstrating that I'm the last person who should ever offer advice to anyone. So I spent most of this week feeling like crap about being a shitty wife, a fond but incompetent mother, and having torpedoed a career I spent years getting qualified for (but that last thread of Sybil's sure makes me feel better about that last part, anyway--boy howdy). I mean seriously; on Tuesday I was revisiting the old days of reminding myself that suicide is not an option because of what it would do to PK and no, killing PK as well as myself is not the way out of that problem.** (Mr. B. called and made me feel better by spontaneously offering to do the dishes when he got home, and the moment passed, so chill.)

Then yesterday during a playdate between PK and a school friend who is totally awesome, I realized something about my parenting that I really have been doing wrong. And bizarrely, this realization made me feel better. And I think in an oblique way it also speaks to the surprisingly (to me) contentious discussion on the post below, which seems to me to be getting hung up on the intersection of generalizations and personality in kind of a cruddy way; that is, for whatever reason we seem to be muddying the distinction between "what one should do" and "what kind of person would do that?!? in kind of unproductive ways.

So come, let us gaze into my navel, and see if we can learn anything there.

Example of my parental imperfections: PK has a temper, and is pretty blunt and graphic about his feelings. He has a younger cousin who, like him, is a bit of a shit-stirrer; she's good enough at it, in fact, that she has stirred PK's very own shit for him more than once, which really pisses him off. (Kid can dish it out, but is not so fond of taking it.) Anyway, so he has decided that he loathes cousin X. Which fine, he's a kid, he's allowed to have preferences about who he likes and who drives him nuts, and I suspect that as they both get older and acquire better interpersonal skills, things will smooth out.

But a while back he was at Grandpa's house, and my sis called. Cousin X is in a phase of wanting to talk on the phone, and unlike PK she doesn't actually dislike her equally button-pushing cousin. (And why should she, since she tends to get the better of him, the little minx?) Anyhoo, so she wanted to talk to cousin PK, and he was amazingly polite about it, apparently: spoke civilly to her, didn't say anything mean. But the entire time, he was sort of edging away from the speaker phone towards the door, and later on he told Grandpa that he hates Cousin X and wishes he could stab her.

Which Grandpa, dammit, went and repeated to my sister. He and sister are both concerned about PK's saying this, which is understandable. So PK and I had a talk about how yes, I know that you don't really want to stab Cousin X (PK: "Yes I do!!") and I am really proud of you for talking nicely to her on the phone even though you didn't want to do it. But. When you say things about people to other people, it can really upset them, especially if those other people like the person you're talking about. So blah blah this is why we don't talk about hurting other people, even if we don't actually intend to do it and are only venting perfectly normal hostile feelings. And by the way, you know how you want Tia Y to paint a mural in your new room? And how she's said she'd be happy to do it? Well Tia Y is Cousin X's mama, and how do you think it makes her feel to hear you say things like that about her grunty? And I know you like Tia Y....

IOW, what I think I'm doing is trying to get PK to understand how his actions affect others. What PK thinks I am doing is guilt-tripping him (his words). I've never really understood this, but watching him play with his friend yesterday, and being aware of how differently I behave with friends of his than I do with him, I suddenly got it.

See, I'm really good at the Aunt role. You know: let's do this fun thing, sure you can have ice cream, wow, look at you on that scooter! Letting kids I like know that I like and admire them? Yep, I can do that.

But with PK, as he's gotten older, I've more and more turned to letting him know I like him through teasing. Which I don't think is bad per se: he "gets" it and enjoys it and teases me right back. But the straightforward affection and frank admiration I gave him a lot when he was younger, for some reason I've been less forthcoming with as he's gotten older. I don't know for sure why this is: residual issues from my own upbringing, the fact that he's a boy rather than a girl, trying to balance unconditional love with the role of teaching him social norms, an ad-hoc response to the fact that he really does have a hell of a temper and that humor rather than earnest "tell me how you're feeeeeeeeeeling" stuff is the best way to redirect it. Probably all of the above plus other shit, too.

But so yeah, yesterday I realized that you know, he's right: I *do* guilt trip him a lot. And it's not like it would be that hard to explain, say, the Cousin X situation in a non-guilt-trippy way, by focusing on being considerate of Tia Y's feelings because doing so is kind and you, PK, are a kind person (which is true, temper notwithstanding). Rather than being considerate of Tia Y's feelings because look how nice Tia Y is to *you*!

Parents and people who've been through therapy will recognize this pedestrian revelation of mine as pretty standard psychology: focus on the positive, praise the qualities you want to see in people, reinforce good rather than negative behaviors, yadda yadda. But you know how it is: you can know this stuff but still screw it up without realizing it.

Oddly, as I said, noticing that wow, I could (as a parent and a person) think more about doing a or b because it's kind, rather than because it's The Right Thing To Do, made me feel better rather than worse. The meta lesson here is that I could be kinder to myself, too, by being less insistent on thinking in terms of generalized rules of behavior and Being A Good Person, and just being okay with, you know, the idea that it's okay to take feelings into account even if those feelings are idiosyncratic. Given that PK tends, like his mama, to be very motivated by a sense of justice, and to have a strong (even fierce) protective instinct towards vulnerable living creatures (like, oh, say, mice or kittens) and underdogs, kindness rather than Right and Wrong seems, ironically, to be an easy enough Rule for him to internalize.

And given that, more and more, he seems to be prone (again, like his mama) to a little anxiety, combined with procrastination, combined with very high expectations of himself indeed, he could probably stand to learn to be kind to himself sooner rather than later.


** No, you do not need to call 911. Years ago, pre-proper-medications, this kind of thing was sort of a frequent thought, complete with how would I do it? fantasies; on Tuesday, it was an especially shitty half hour in the midst of an especially shitty day. I mention it for the same reason I talk about all my personal shit: because I'm an idiot a born teacher and I happen to think that sunlight in dark corners is better than shame.

Every Step You Take

Am curious about how the readership feels about this. I know who one of my job competitors is. I know both because of the university IP address from which he posts job market wiki updates and because his CV was actually laying out in view in several rooms during my campus visit. As luck would have it, this person once rejected me from a conference panel he organized; small fucking world.

Anywho. What I want to do is write this dude an email. It would go something like this:

Dear Dr. Same-Basic-Interests-As-Mine-But-With-Better-Pedigree-And-Recommenders:

Based on the IP address of the last update to the job market wiki re: the Awesome Job I Want, I wonder if you might be another candidate in the search. If you aren't, or if you would rather not, regardless, have a conversation like this, just ignore this email and I will forget I sent it.

In any case, in the interest of more transparency and collegiality and less generalized emotional angst about the process, I thought I would introduce myself and say it would be nice to have a dialogue with someone in the same shoes. I'm also very interested in your work on Narcissism, Ruining Well-Established Blogs, and Comfort Food, as they are focuses of my work as well. So, in short, it seems just as well that we virtually "know" each other as colleagues, in any event.

I do hope this email doesn't overstep appropriate boundaries. The market this year has been so terrible and unpredictable and I have spent a lot of time thinking about systemic ways the profession could make it more humane. Wondering if you and I might be able to bring some collegiality to the process seems like a baby step in that direction.

My best wishes -

Sybil Vane, person who has better Rate My Professor scores than you do.

Some parts are more optional than others. What I wonder though is how people would feel receiving it. I'll tell you, I honestly believe I would find an email like this, were I the recipient, generous and collegial. To say I am in the minority with this opinion though, based on the informal polling I've done, would be an enormous understatement. Obviously, the ideal outcome of sending such an email would be the beginning of a dialogue that ultimately netted me more information. But even if there were nothing gained on that score, I still would like to think that there would be something satisfying in having made the contact and being known to each other.

Am I a crazy stalker person who has lost all touch with reality?

Delicious Things

The first two I made yesterday and the pie recipe I am posting because people asked.

White Chicken Chili - this was cool for me because I got to use a ton of leftover stuff in the house

3 chicken breasts, chopped and sauteed in olive oil with a large white onion, a medium red pepper, and 3 cloves garlic
3 cans white beans
5 cups chicken broth
1/2 cu heavy cream
a handful of jarred jalapenos
4 or 5 roasted yellows peppers from a jar
a cup of chopped broccoli
3 tablespoons flour
half a carton of leftover Thai take-out white rice
2 tablespoons chili powder
salt and pepper

I put it all in the slow cooker on low for 6 hours. Delicious.

Sweet Corn Bread

1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
2/3 cup white sugar
1/4 cup honey
2 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
some salt
1/2 cup corn kernels - fresh (and cooked) would be best, but I used canned to success. Also frozen would probably work.

Bake at 400 either as muffins, which are done more quickly, or in a brownie-type pan, which takes longer.

Pumpkin Pie

about 2 cups of cooked pumpkin. I usually bake the pumpkin a day ahead of time and refrigerate it. This lets excess oil/fluid settle to the bottom of the container, so you can avoid it in your pie. And I don't puree it before I throw it in the mixing bowl, just blend it with the other ingredients with my hand mixer. I like having some pumpkin texture to my pie.
3 eggs
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup heavy cream
some teaspoons of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves

I always bake it in frozen pie shells, which I am sure in anathema to many of you, but I am only particular about very specific things. Bake at 375, maybe for an hour.

Produce and Fucked-Up Weather Bleg

Internet, I am worried that I ought to cover my strawberries tonight. Can anyone help me figure out what exactly I should do? I am getting conflicting information about the best way to go about it from the internet (shocking). What should a bitch do? Assume resources are limited to newspapers and some stakes, and assume a pretty staggering level of laziness, paradoxically combined with high levels of displaced anxiety about the safety of the blossoms and wee green strawberries.

Fire Next Time

Damn, these chickenhawks do have a bark, don't they?

Generalissimo Gingrich joined the Sabbath gasbaggeen to bring his considerable military experience to bear on the question of what to do about the PDRK.

Strutting about the televised stage of Murdoch Managed News, the bold caudillo told the interviewer he would have taken forceful but unspecified action to abort the North Korean regime's missle launch;

There are three or four techniques that could have been used, from unconventional forces to standoff capabilities, to say: ‘We’re not going to tolerate a North Korean missile launch, period.’

Sounds like he's been reading Tom Clancy to fill the idle hours. Period.

Now, if Newt Gingrich had spent even one night sleeping on the wet ground with his K-Bar knife tucked into his jammies, you might be tempted to take him seriously. For a minute.

Not that military service is a requirement for opining on national security affairs. Its a free country. Newt and the chickenhawk flock are at liberty to say any damned fool thing they want.

But you have to wonder if their shoot-first-ask-questions-later-make-a-desert-and-call-it-peace doctrine springs from the fact that they have no personal knowledge of what the fuck they're talking about. They have no idea of the forces they're tampering with; no experience of being mortared or rocketed or watching tracer fire sprint up the hillside to stomp them out of the shallow mudhole they scooped out of the ground with their little entrenching tool.

Now, lots of people have an intellect broad enough to appreciate problems and difficulties that lie outside their own personal experience. I'm not one of them but I recognize this as a shortcoming and have spent most of my adult life in an effort to correct it. You may judge for yourself, in the pages of this blog, how uneven is my progress but I'm trying. I really am.

In contrast, the chickenhawks have figured out how to build careers based on their ignorance. I suppose you have to give them credit for that. Talk about making something from nothing.

Sadly, for the rest of us, their foolishness has made nothing of something. Empty chairs at the dinner table of thousands of American families. Empty chairs at the dinner tables of how many hundred thousand Iraqi families? A big hole in the Federal budget. And nothing to show for any of it. They've made us weaker and our enemies stronger. They've divided our friends and multiplied our enemies.

Now, I hear Newt has left the Baptist community to become a Roman Catholic. Not sure why. Maybe he thinks we have great Baptist spirituals like this. We don't.

We do have vows of silence. Think it over, Newt.

promises, promises. and a tip.

Should I continue along this academic career path, I can make a few iron-clad commitments about how I would comport myself on the other side of an academic search, culled from my own and from friends' experiences on the market this year:


1. I will *always* respond to emails from job candidates after campus visits, even if just to tell them I have nothing I can tell them.
2. I will never take a candidate to a Mexican restaurant for lunch. If this decision is out of my hands and we end up at such a place, I will do my part my not ordering the sizzling fajita platter, the arrival of which would not only add ambient noise and smoke to the table, but would ensure the candidate smelled like fajitas the rest of the day.
3. I will not ask a candidate if she "has any critters."
4. Even if the search committee has no alcohol budget for meals, I will make sure to order a drink on my own tab so the candidate feels less like the ordering of a drink will be hugely stigmatized.
5. I will never speak with certainty about timelines for decisions, given that so much of that timeline will inevitably be out of my control.
6. I will never judge a candidate who appears to be in foot pain. In fact, I will try to keep band-aids in my purse during campus visits so I can offer anyone suffering from 'Sensible Shoe Syndrome' some first aid.
7. I will not speak disdainfully about having rejected my religion of upbringing at a table where I do not know the religious persuasions of other people at the table.
8. I will not fill a dinner conversation with inside gossip shared among myself and my fellow search committee members.
9. I will not send a rejection email to a candidate which has in the "To" field the names and addresses of every other person being rejected from the position.
10. If a candidate is interviewed at MLA, that candidate will always get a personal email letting her/him know when the search is completed.

That's all I can promise for now.

Also, apropos of nothing: I made pumpkin pie today because it's Mr. Vanes birthday and that's his favorite treat (dumb). But I had to make it with canned pumpkin, which is anathema to me. So to make it more interesting I used melted vanilla ice cream instead of condensed milk or cream or whatever. I give the thumbs up to that decision.

Relationship Talk

This article from Jezebel is cracking me the hell up.

"Using nicknames and made-up language is an easy way to inject positive communication into everyday life.. In fact, it's probably the single easiest thing you can do to keep your relationship going strong," claims Jamie Turndorf, PhD, a relationship therapist. The bond created by developing a private language gives couples the sense that they are closer to each other than anyone else, thereby creating a sense of true intimacy.

Juxtaposed with the SNL sketch on Saturday night with all the guys talking in their "girlfriend voices," it is the perfect demonstration about how made-up names and made-up language are the ultimate guilty pleasure: you would totally die if anyone else heard your conversation, but it's so great and funny and satisfying.

I will freely admit that my boyfriend and I can be completely ridiculous. It's mostly my fault, I think, and it started way back right after we started dating when I started calling him "Boo." "Boo" morphed into like 80,000 other names. Seriously, I feel like we make up new ones almost every day. Sometimes it's like a contest to see who can be the most ridiculous and nonsensical. The other thing to consider are my unique songs. Just about every day, I find myself singing nonsensical made-up songs, full of made-up names and other nonsense with no real content, to entertain myself. When I'm alone these song are sung to the tune of "la" or "da", but when I'm around my honey it's all "You're a [elaborate made-up name], an [another elaborate made up name] of a [contentless nonsense]."

Sometimes I feel embarrassed about it. It's truly, completely absurdly ridiculous and embarrassing. But, on the other hand, I think it's an important part of my self-expression. I do a serious job, trying to help people with serious problems. I spend a lot of the time that I'm with my boyfriend talking about serious things. But despite my somewhat serious life, I have an intensely goofy side to my personality. And I mean really goofy. Making stupid faces, singing stupid songs, making the most groan-inducing puns known to man, and generally being bubbly and silly. So I've concluded that it's a vital part of my well-being to be able to express that, and not only to express it, but to express it to someone who is unfailingly amused by my antics. Plus, I'm very affectionate, and it's all a part of the many ways I show affection.

I've been thinking a lot about my relationship and the benefits it brings me in the last couple weeks. You see, my boyfriend got a job in DC and is leaving this Saturday. I'm excited about it, because it's a great job and I think he's going to be marvelous at it. Plus, the thought of a new city is thrilling! And I'll probably be trying to move there in six months or so when my job is over. So it'll only be long-distance for a few months, and in that interim I plan to have a lot of fun, probably move to a new neighborhood (as our current apartment is much too big and expensive for me alone), and use some of the time freed up by being effectively single for some exciting pursuits. For starters, you can expect significantly more blogging.

But despite all this excitement, there's a real pit of sadness in my stomach. Over the past two years or so, we've become exceptionally close, and the time we spend together is full of joy and interesting conversation. Though I think I'll adapt fairly quickly and will, most of the time, be just fine with it, I have to confess I'm not looking forward to those occasional moments of painful lacking, late at night or in times of stress, that I know are coming.

Outrider

They're back!

The sandhill cranes are back! Around here, that's not a sign that spring has come but its a sign that spring is not far off.

There's a pair of sandhills in the corn stubble across the street from my mother's house. They are dancing. They are strutting. They are preening. They are singing.

OK, they're not singing, they're croaking their odd croaky call.

But they're here! Winter won't last forever, after all!

Vive l'France! Vive Layfayette!

Just watched the President's town hall meeting in Strasbourg.

The last question asked of the President was something along the lines of "What do you expect the French to do?" in the war on terror.

Now, just put aside the problematic phrase, war on terror, for a moment. The question signaled, to me, the true basis of American power in international affairs; the affection of ordinary people for the United States of America.

The disgraced, disgraceful dubya junta squandered and alienated this affection and, doing so, diminished our power. By reaching out, by honestly acknowledging the shortcomings and mistakes of the United States, the President is able to restore that affection and mobilize it in support of our own interests.

That's something the right has never understood. Honest admission of facts already clear to the simplest observer does not weaken us, it strengthens us. Here you have an American president telling a foriegn audience; "Hey we fucked up, can you help us out?" And the response is, "Sure. When do we start?"

That is force. That is power. That is muscle that cannot be equaled by any amount of big battalions or aircraft carriers or attack submarines.

The diplomatic and political attacks on France by the dubya regime always seemed especially silly. And stupid. And ungrateful, given the the debt we owe France for the very existence of our state. The American people and the French people should always be united by their historic struggle for liberte, egalite, fraternite.

Its great to have a President who knows that and knows what to do about it.

Teachers can't resist this sort of meta-lesson garbage

The best parts of teaching are the surprises. That's actually not really true, the best parts of teaching are the summers and the days when you can see wheels turning in students' faces; but I have had a couple of useful surprises lately. Relatedly, people often say the best parts of parenting are the surprises, which is also not true. The best parts of parenting are the smell of your kid's neck and when kids figure out how to be funny.

Anyway, classroom surprises, I've had a few. Recently I was teaching 2 different texts in 2 different classes with a kind of familiarity in common. Text A was very well-known to my students in terms of the story it told/figures it created, but none had ever actually rad the actual text (think screening Gone With the Wind or The Ten Commandments maybe for 19 yr olds who had never seen them).

Text B was very well-known to my students because they had all read it in high school (think To Kill a Mockingbird).

My expectation was that Text A would be hard to deal with productively because the content was, as an idea, so incredibly overdetermined, and Text B would make for an interesting teach because since they had already engaged the text once, this second read and discussion would allow for more nuance in analysis. Not what happened. The discussion of Text A was so engaging an interesting; it seems that being so overly familiar with the content of the text freed students up to really think critically about the form ("Oh, I knew this would happen but that's not how I thought it would happen!" etc). The discussion of Text B was heinous because having already analyzed it once, my students' were wedded to their high school explication ("The story is about growing up, loss of innocence, and racism. Done and done.") This surprised me, but helped me realize some things about the differences b/n asking students to assess form and content, the different modes in which they consider form and content, and the difficulty of letting go of an expectation that comes from first-hand experience.

Applicability to my real life at the moment: am having a hard time on the day-to-day level waiting to hear about the results of my campus visits, feeling worried that nothing will pan out, feeling paralyzed by all the disappointment that will surround me if there are no offers. Feeling utterly paralyzed by the thing being out of my control. So I am thinking the thing to do is to think of this as a Text A scenario: the content of the academic job search is so completely overdetermined: stress, angst, travel, performance, wait, angst, performance, misery, etc. Instead of doing the Text B thing, where I assume I already know what this is all about and have expectations of being miserable until everything is settled, I need to start doing the Text A thing, where I pay attention to the form it takes and try to be interested in the way I am reacting to things and how the process is teaching me something about my professional identity.

Sorry I've not been writing much. I've been really antsy and self-absorbed. Will probably continue to be so for some time, but am going to work on being more detached about it. One good thing is that plans are in motion for my favorite event of the year, Easter brunch. Probably forthcoming: recipes for the delicious things I plan to make. Maybe if I keep up this meta-teaching moment sort of thing, I will punctuate all of those recipes with maudlin "recipes for personal satisfaction" or some such.

american violet

Yes, it's an 'issue' movie but see it anyway.

It's based on the true story of Regina Kelly, her Texas community, Hearne, and how its police department terrorized poor people of color. (The transcript of the Frontline episode, 'The Plea,' is here.)

It just screened in Chicago and friends recommended it.

Wide release dates:

April 17-
New York, NY
Los Angeles, CA
Chicago, IL
Washington, DC
Atlanta, GA
Dallas, TX
Bryan, TX

May 1-
Boston, MA
Philadelphia, PA
Houston, TX
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Francisco, CA

prank me

God, I love a good prank.

Replacing coworkers' family photos with weird families you download from the internet? Good times. (Note: it's even funnier when you sneak in a family from a different ethnic group.)
Filling desk drawers with office supplies? Awesome.
Hiding a yucky pina colada air freshener in an office and driving someone insane when they can't find where the smell is coming from? Fabulous.
Cordoning off a whole desk area with hazard tape? Yesss.
Honey on a headset? Huzzah.
Switching around laptop keys? (Just one or two, like the N with the M or the ; with the ') Excellent and very gaslight-y.
Turning up the volume on a phone? Basic, but gets the job done.

But then there are those pranks that go the extra mile. That show someone has been thinking of you. A lot.

It was karaoke night at the Mutiny, one of the dirtiest bars ever - like, literally filthy - and I was on a first date with a Fermi Lab physicist; he was having a blast. I, sitting at the bar, watching him through the bar mirror, was having less of a blast but still enjoying how he got the whole bar singing 'Welcome Back, Kotter' like a bunch of Muppets.

He had just started up Sammy Davis, Jr.'s 'The Candy Man' when two girl friends of mine walk into the bar, stare at him, studiously ignore me and walk to the back of the room. I froze, watching them watch him while he belted about rainbows and candy and shook his beard around. Then, after they drank their beers in silence, they left just missing his big finish.

The next morning, I'm at my Big 5 consulting firm. I'm walking down the hall to my office. There is a solid path of candy, like in Candyland, from the lobby televisions all the way to my desk. At my desk, there is candy in my chair, in my drawers, my files, across my bookshelves, piled in my pencil holder and desk caddy, sprinkled across my laptop. My family photos have been replaced with Sammy Davis, Jr. I log on and every time a window opens, Sammy's face pops up and sings 'Candy Man.'

Then the phone calls start. All sorts of people (coworkers, partners, senior managers and my roommate's frikking sister) call me.

'Ding,' they say. 'I have a question.'
'Sure, Rich,' I say.
'Who can take a sunrise and sprinkle it with dew?'
'Dammit!!'

All day. All frakking day. You could hear the howls of laughter from other offices.

So hats off to you merry pranksters today.
This is your day. Shine on.

(And feel free to share your favorite pranks in comments. Even if they are a little cruel.)