A break from random blogging for some content

I can't tell you why the only content I've been posting today are images and little snippets that only really amuse me; I can't tell you because I don't know. I'm having a slow day... and not slow as in the day isn't going by very fast... just mentally deficient and sleepy so I'm baking a loaf of bread and sitting around the house because it's been a while since I've done either of these things.

Another thing I haven't done in a while is put in my two cents about some things that I've been hearing a lot about on the televisions and internets (aside from swine flu, which the CDC has now confirmed 9 cases in Washington state with another 36 "probable" cases -- I'm still not worried, frankly and my advice remains: wash your damn hands).

So, I'll start with Justice Souter's impending retirement. President Obama has to appoint a woman to replace Souter. That's pretty much all I have to say. I've been working too hard lately to pay much attention to judicial nominations, but I'm sure that you are bright enough to have your own comments on Souter below.

Next: Asher Roth. I was over at my non-maternal twin's house last week and heard the song "I love college". Now, as far as hip-hop and rap go, I don't know Akon from Wy-Clef (although, I totally dig the studio versions of Kanye's "Heartless"), but I know a douchebag when he brags about getting a drunk 19-year-old naked (and as memory serves, when I was 19 that was no big feat... hell, it still isn't). Racialicious has an even more in-depth take on this guy than him simply being a douche: he's presenting his white upper-middle-class privilege rapper style as an alternative to blackness. There's a quote of Roth where he goes so far as to say:

“Culturally, Em[inem] was almost a black guy. My background is more stereotypically white.”

Make of that what you will (white=not poor, not picked on, privileged), but personally, I'm pretty fucking offended. I don't know what this guy thinks he's trying to say, but the majority of poeple living in poverty are white (because the majority of the population is white, dur), so when he says "stereotypically white", I really don't know what he's trying to say except that he thinks he's better than people whose backgrounds aren't "stereotypically white", whatever that means.

Finally, last week, Iowa Congressman Steve King wasted some valuable tax-payer time ranting about various kinds of -philias as a reason why Congress shouldn't pass the new Federal Hate Crimes bill (named for Matthew Shepard). Well, take a look...

Now, King wants to exempt pedophiles from being dubbed a "protected class" under new hate crimes legislation because, as we all know, pedophile is a sexual orientation. (And he can't follow the rational thought on the other side.) I also don't think it dignifies a congressman to call someone's sexual organs "plumbing" on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Feel free to throw in your two cents on any of this in the comments...