"The New McCarthyism" is a lot funnier than the old one

I apologize for posting audio of Limbaugh, but this is too funny not to.

Check it out. He says:

"Then these people will be called up to testify before Chairman Frank's committee. And they will be asked questions like 'have you attended any pro-capitalist meetings during the course of your tenure at AIG?' 'How many of your friends are free-market capitalists? and what are their names? and where can we find them? and if you fail to answer you will be cited as being in contempt of congress.'"

Fucking hilarious right? I mean, who in their right mind would actually ask these questions? What's more, Rush, and those carrying his water, are simultaneously accusing Congressman Frank of being a McCarthyist as well as a communist. Not very apt students of history. Of course, these guys really love to pile on Barney Frank... I think it's partially because of the whole gay thing. Which I think is a weird thing for a bunch of supposedly totally het guys to do. Whatever.

Media Matters points out another gem of Limbaugh's.

LIMBAUGH: I'm very serious. You have a company -- let's take AIG out of this 'cause they're so emotionally charged. Let's say that the company being bailed out is the XYZ Widget Company.
CALLER: Right.
LIMBAUGH: We've determined that we need to bail out XYZ Widget. XYZ Widget has people who work there.
CALLER: Mm-hmm.
LIMBAUGH: We're going to bail XYZ Widget out because we need XYZ Widget to continue operating as an ongoing business.
CALLER: OK.
LIMBAUGH: We need them to manufacture widgets and sell widgets and so forth. So why in the world -- or how do you get to the point where you're going to bail out the company, but you don't want the employees to get paid?

There's a whole lot more of this at the link, but I picked this bit out for one reason: AIG doesn't make anything. Widgets or otherwise. All AIG did (and currently does) is move money around. The don't make anything. Now, let's substitute "XYZ Widget" for "General Motors". Can anyone who listens to Rush tell me whether he was in favor of making sure the employees of GM got paid? Or was he more interested in seeing the the "Big Three" go bankrupt so that the autoworkers union would fail?

Rush Limbaugh is more interested in seeing paychecks for executives and imaginary workers than he is in seeing paychecks for real workers. You know, like the people who listen to his show.

My god. No wonder he took 2,000 oxycontins a week. It would take that amount of narcotics to make any of these arguments even slightly cohesive.

Someone had some time on his hands...

Schmoogie and I did some math.

Since 1972, Samuel L. Jackson has been in 127 movies, or 3.4 per year.

William H. Macy has been in 115 movies since 1978. 3.7 movies per year.

Which means that William H. Macy is actually harder working than Samuel L. Jackson, and maintains my claim that Macy, rather than Jackson, has been in every movie ever made.

Check that -- Christopher Lee has been in 264 movies since 1948 (9 of which were Dracula movies -- and 6 of which are coming out in the next two years; we've begun to think that he really is Dracula), which is 4.3 movies per year. Making him the king, even though many of his roles have been kinda gimmicky.

(Edited to add...)

A propos of something

Behold my next goal.

















It will be mine. Oh yes. It will be mine.

(Image from MaryKayInTouch.com)

Why I don't care about Bristol Palin and her baby-daddy

A message board on which I post has seen a flurry of nonsense about the Bristol and Levi break up. A friend of mine commented that she thought it was ironic, and a hand-full of people jumped on her for being judgmental of conservatives or some shit.

There are a number of reasons why I have not blogged about the media dust-up over Brisvi (see what I did there?) breaking up, chief among them being that I really don't give a flying moose. Sarah Palin is funny. She cracks me up (although, I really wish she would get some new material), and as a political figure who refuses to go away already, she's fair game. Her family, however, is of no interest to me not matter how fervently each member was paraded around the campaign trail when Gov. Palin was John McCain's running mate.

Yes, I see the irony. Ha ha, saw that one coming. My friend has a valid point: it is pretty ironic that they made such a huge point out of "Sarah Palin's knocked up daughter is engaged after all", and now that they've split the message is entirely lost, it's true. But Bristol Palin never should have been dragged onto the trail in the first place. Didn't those kids have to be at school? How much did we learn about John McCain's family? He was, after all, the top of the ticket for the Republican party -- if they wanted to push family values, they should have mentioned something about how John and Cindy adopted a baby girl from South East Asia when Cindy was there on a humanitarian mission. If they wanted to push het marriage as a value, they could have made a big deal about how John McCain has several children who are married with their own children.

But no. Bristol Palin, whose pregnancy was made public by the McCain campaign was the center of this idea -- this family values nonsense. And it's wrong. She was provided an extreme disservice by her mother who no doubt authorized this information becoming public. And I think I know why:

Sarah Palin was mortified when she found out Bristol was pregnant; to the point that Sarah wanted to kick Bristol out of the house (allegedly), but then she was tapped as VP for the Republican ticket. Well, can't kick the kid out, that would look bad; instead, embarrass her, air her dirty laundry on the national stage and make everyone in the country who neither knows her nor her circumstances snicker about how irresponsible she is. Sarah Palin made the information about her pregnant, unwed teenage daughter public in order to punish her.

The thing is though, their family business is none of our business. I don't care what it says about the "party of family values". Keeping your family business to yourself is a family value, and keeping your nose out of other people's vagina's is another. It's not important what the Republican party thinks about pregnant teenagers who aren't married and who decide that they aren't going to marry (for whatever reason, it's their business, remember). It's not even important that the daughter of the VP candidate for the Republican party has an unwed pregnant teen. Yes, it's ironic. Yes, it gives even more truth to the "keep your focus on your own damn family" saying that we have on the left.

However, Sarah Palin was wrong to punish her daughter by forcing her pregnancy into the public spot-light and everyone who keeps re-enforcing that punishment by continuing to talk about Bristol and Levi and their child is a bastard (myself included, I suppose). It's not our business, and I'd like to see the subject dropped entirely. The girl is 18 (I think), a new mom, a high school drop out blah blah blah. I know too much about her, and I really don't want to hear any more. What's next? Whether her mom made her wear a training bra stuffed with tissue before her breasts developed? Whether she pees in the shower?

No. No more. Enough with the goddamn over-share for the purpose of cheap political points. Bristol Palin is not a politician or public figure. So leave her the fuck alone already. That goes for you too, Governor Palin.

Edit: hehe, "unwed married teen" doesn't make a lot of sense, does it? Fixed. Thanks JE.

Monday doggy blogging

Jessica at Feministing has been falling behind on her Monday Monty Blogging, so I'm gonna help out by posting pics of my dog, Stewie. So, don't send nasty emails to Jessica, just come here for cute pics of a cute doggie.

Edited to add: Stewie is currently having a running dream.

Whitehouse Council on Women and Girls

I don't think many people realize how huge this is. Here's President Obama's speech before signing the executive order. I told you he was a feminist.

Is an apple a vegetable? (My appologies to Anderson Cooper)

No. It's not. This question is kind of like asking "Is pornography adultery?" If you have no clue about botany or nutrition, sure you could make the argument that the tree-growing fructose-containing apple is, in fact a vegetable. Similarly, if you have no clue about relationships, sex, or performance art you could make the argument that someone who is alone with their computer watching people ze never has met and never will meet while engaging in the sexual act one performs upon one's self is actually committing adultery.

I hate this question. I hate this idea that masturbation and/or watching porn is "cheating". How is this cheating? Doesn't adultery have to involve another person, not just a picture of another person? What's more, if you think about someone else while having sex with your partner is that adultery? Well, if watching porn is, then thinking about someone else while you're having sex with your primary partner most certainly is as well!

However, it doesn't matter how fervently you argue that apples are vegetables and that watching porn or masturbating is the same as cheating; it's just not fucking true. It's not. I don't care how many degrees in botany or nutrition you have, apples aren't vegetables, and porn isn't adultery.

Here's why: infidelity involves another person. Whether it's an emotional affair or a physical one, someone else is involved. So, unless you've got Multiple Personality Disorder, masturbation regardless of what you watch while doing it, does not involve another person and is therefore not infidelity.

But people hate porn. Some people hate porn (some people hate apples too), and will do whatever the fuck they can to give it an even worse name than it already have. There's a whole lot of bullshit that people use to reason this view, but it basically boils down to an idea that masturbation is "wrong" (why?), and watching other people fuck is "wrong".

And yet, suppose that someone likes to watch CNN while masturbating -- does that mean that watching CNN constitutes adultery? No. It means that they really like to be informed about what's going on in the world. But none of these anti-porn assholes would even make that argument, they would just say that that person is "sick" and that it's "wrong" to beat or rub off while watching Anderson Cooper. I highly doubt that. Have you seen Anderson Cooper?

But the bottom line is, for these people, that masturbation is wrong, porn is wrong, and anything and everything even remotely associated with either of these things is wrong. Morally wrong, and a danger to your relationship because if your partner finds out that you've been masturbating while watching Anderson Cooper, ze is going to think one of twho things:

1. OMG! Ur so sikkkkk!!!
2. Hey, can I play?

And sex for recreation is also wrong.

Oh god, can you tell us when it's going to stop?

Yes. It's snowing again. For the moment it has ceased, but, and maybe it's just me and the weather hasn't noticed this yet -- it's fucking MARCH. The Spring Equinox is less than two weeks away and this part of the country rarely sees snow once in January let alone having it fall in fucking March! I'm so sick of this, I could plotz.

Who knows, I just might. (At which point I will get back to you and detail what is exactly involved in a "plotz", because even though I've used that word most of my life, even I don't entirely know what it's supposed to mean.

In the meantime, I think I know why Uncle Walt chose now to start his regrowth. He knew it was going to keep snowing. Today he went out into the yard and sat under that weird bush-tree thing for about three hours. He says this area of the world isn't the best for his colors since it's not the greatest camoflage, but it still works out pretty well. (He's more used to the blues and greens of arctic ice, rather than the brown of dirt and tree limbs.)

Point of order, re comments

I pretty much publish all comments, whether they agree with me or disagree with me. The only thing I ask of commenters is that you NOT USE ALL CAPS TO TRY TO MAKE YOUR POINT BY DOING THE EQUIVALENT OF YELLING. It's really, really annoying.

So, keep it civil, use proper capitalization, and, if it's not too much to ask, correct spelling and punctuation would be greatly appreciated too. (Although, correct spelling can't be universally enforced since I'm really not that good at it myself.)

Any and all comments which violate civility will be deleted. This includes threats, ad hominem attacks, comments written in ALL CAPS, divulging private information about someone other than yourself, and anything else I deem to be exceptionally rude (although, I will try not to have too thin of a skin on this one).

I want comments and discussion, but there are some things I just won't put up with. The internet equivalent of screaming is one of them.

And now for something completely different: a cardboard drawing of the Kool-Aid man

Ooooh yeah.

Update on the 9-year-old from Brazil

Apparently, her rapist will not be excommunicated like those who helped to save her life. Apparently, abortionis worse than rape in the eyes of the Catholic Church. Well, considering that the Catholic Church has historically used rape as a weapon to help their soldiers get closer to G*D (Crusades anyone?) this doesn't surprise me in the least.

If I had any respect left for the institution itself, I would spit. But I don't. Sorry, but I gotta back Heart up on this one and add my own power to her curse. This is completely disgusting. There will be no rest for the patriarchs, or any of those who uphold this hideous idea that abortion "the taking of an innocent life" (what about original sin?) is worse, so much worse as to (in the eyes of this organization) deny someone salvation, than is the rape of a 9-year-old girl and the destruction of her life.

People, wake up. This is how most religions view women. The violation of our bodies is does not even affect the leaders in the least, but if we try to take our bodies back we deserve hellfire and damnation.

I wonder what Jesus of Nazareth would have to say about this bullshit that's being done in his name?

Attention Seattle: the Croc is back!!!

Why did no one on the Slog mention this? Did they think that the ad would speak for itself?

The Crocodile, the Crocodile, the Croc, is reopening.

For those of you who are especially nerdy in your love for the Seattle music scene (like I am), let me say that again.

The Croc, 2200 2nd Ave Seattle 98121, that, when it closed abruptly "in December, 2007, broke many a heart and" made some "folks [feel] a piece of Seattle had died," is being reopened "[a]fter months of renovations and reconstruction", according to its website.

I fear we're never going to get answers as to why the Croc's manager called all the bartenders one Saturday night in December of 2007 and told them not to come in to work the next day; but at least there will be some return to normalcy in the Seattle music scene... even if there aren't that many acts worth hearing these days. (Although, it appears from the Croc's concert calendar, Special Guest is going to be playing a lot of shows in the next couple of months. Ha ha.)

A couple hints to the Croc's booking staff: Bad Dream Good Breakfast, Toy Box Trio, Cherry Poppin Daddies, and (longshot here...) Spiraling.

Uncle Walt shedding!

You may not know this, but dragons occasionally shed all of their outter scales and regrow a new hide. Usually they are hibernating on great hoards. Naturally, this makes them more vulnerable to attacks by adventurers, and more than a few dragons have been defeated during thier periodic shedding. This explains why this shedding is of an unknown incriment of time.

Mymuch-beloved dragon incarnation of my great-grandad, Walt Abplanalp, has begun his once-a-incriment-of-time shedding and has turned gesso-white all over his body.

I'm not sure how long it's going to take for him to grow all his scales back, but I'll be sure to post pictures of his new hide.

Preach it sista

Brazlian bishop excommunicating mother girl who had an abortion... at 9-years-old.

WitchUponAStar says everything I would say, so go read.

And now for something completely different: a satelite named after a comedian

NASA has plans to launch a new addition to the International Space Station, which will be delivered this December. But first, it wants OUR help to name what they're currently calling "Node 3".

On last night's Colbert Report, Stephen told us the top suggested name was "XENU", but urged the Colbert Nation to do everything within its power to get that node named after Colbert. Why not?

Today, the top suggested name is Colbert, but it's hard to tell how much of the vote the suggested names have, because the percentage tabulation only counts the names that NASA came up with itself -- those Firefly-watching NERDS! Something must be done. Go to the website, click the button for other suggestions and type in "COLBERT". We'll show NASA why Firefly only lasted one season, while Stephen recently did his 500th show!

Aside: Seriously though, I don't get Firefly. I'm the only one of my friends who doesn't own the box set of its single season and has never seen the movie. I don't get it. I don't want it explained to me. I don't want to watch it. It's just like football, okay. I have no interest and the next person who tries to get me to be interested in it is going to have things thrown at them (soft things that won't do any damage, but things nonetheless).

Yay! Another reason to hate the iPhone!

Fat shaming aps!!! Yay!!!

Look, I know, I know, some people need to diet and counting calories helps them, but most of the people who do count calories really don't need to.

And I just hate that contraption so goddamn much!

"The author concludes that the subject is a judgmental bitch."

So, new study comes out (actually came out in 2007) that concludes that feminists aren't all man-hating lesbians. Some of them are heterosexual. Some of them are men! Wow. Neat. In fact:

"They found that having a feminist partner was linked to healthier heterosexual relationships for women. Men with feminist partners also reported both more stable relationships and greater sexual satisfaction. According to these results, feminism does not predict poor romantic relationships, in fact quite the opposite."

(Emphasis mine.) Turns out feminism is good for heterosexual couples, even. (Although, I'm pretty sure those of us who are feminists and in heterosexual relationships already knew that. Just ask my Schmoogie.) Since this promotes feminism as being a good thing (rather than bad), it's been spread around the femi-sphere -- and even Twisty has written about it.

Twisty's story is good until about 2/3rds of the way through.

"Still, I have to wonder how many of the women identifying as “feminist” in the study were in fact the sort of feminist for whom “pole dancer” is a synonym. What I suggest is not altogether an unlikely scenario, since this species of feminist is, as we know, much more common than the feminist kind of feminist. Feminists who use their empowerfulization to reclaim femininity, you know, for themselves goddammit, would of course enjoy the reinforcingly pleasant side effect of appeasing dudes who are threatened by non-patriarchal gender roles. Which just might account for the male satisfaction with feminism found in the study."

Wow. Judgmental much? This little mini-tirade from Twisty translates thusly: unless your feminism is exactly the same as my feminism, you're a pole dancer, and as such have no value as a human being. (Because Twisty is one of these people who thinks that sex workers have no self-respect, no value as human beings -- let alone feminists -- and therefore shouldn't exist.)

The other thing that stands out so glaringly in this mini-tirade (as in fact, it is pretty tame compared to some of the other, rather amusing, things that Twisty has gone off a bridge over), is that Twisty sees heterosexuals as reinforcing the patriarchy simply by virtue of being heterosexual. So, even if you do identify as a feminist, if you're a heterosexual feminist, you are a sex-worker and therefore not only not a "feminist kind of feminist" but also not worth the air you breath.

So really, this study is completely wrong. All the feminists who aren't man-hating lesbians aren't real feminists, because if you want to be a real feminist you must also choose to be a lesbian and hate men. All men. Even Ewen McGreggor and Christian Bale -- actually, especially Christian Bale cause he yells at women. Otherwise, you're a pole-dancing sex worker -- and that's an insult to humanity.

Get over yourself Twisty. You are not the BE-ALL END-ALL of feminism. Cast your jaundiced eye upon my middle finger.

Finally, a reason to be glad you're not an Oscar Meyer weiner

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

So, Barack Obama isn't the anti-Christ because he "isn't popular enough". That means only one thing: Oscar Meyer Weiners must be the anti-Christ. Think about it.

If I were an Oscar Meyer Weiner, everyone would be in love with me.

There are only two positions where the love and adoration of all are expected and required: Oscar Meyer Weiner and anti-Christ. Is it not possible that the two could be one single, delicious sign of the End of Days? I mean, Dobson said that the anti-Christ would be a Jewish male. "Meyer" is a Jewish name -- and there certainly isn't anything more male than being a tube of meat and meat by-products. And we've all already been indoctrinated into believing that this tubed meat is not only delicious, but nutritious! How old were you when you learned the song of the anti-Christ? It's too late! Only the vegans, Kosher Jews, and Halal Muslims will survive unscathed!

EVERYBODY PANIC!

Seriously though, this "end of the world" "anti-Christ" bullshit is getting really old. Every generation since the beginning of time has thought that it was the last. Get over yourselves. Really. And this guy does not need to be narrating a show about the end of the world. He shouldn't be on the teevee at all.

My feminist heros Part 1: Mary Kay Ash

I've been a Mary Kay Independent Beauty Consultant for nearly two years now, and while I'm getting into doing it full-time, I'm going back and reading her autobiography, Miracles Happen. As I've been reading, (actually re-reading), I've been noticing a few things standing out a little more. I hadn't yet come into my feminism fully when I first read Miracles Happen, so there were a few things the great importance of which I missed the first time around.

For instance:

"One company paid me $25,000 a year to be its national training director, but, in truth, I was acting as the national sales manager - and for a salary much less than the job was worth. Then there were times when I would be asked to take a man out on the road to train him, and after six months be brought back to Dallas, made my superior, and given twice my salary! It happened more than once. What really angered me was when I was told that these men earned more because they had families to support. I had a family to support too. In those days, it seemed that women's brains were worth only fifty cents on the dollar in a male-run corporation. Even more insulting was the way a woman's ideas were rarely respected. I became enraged every time I presented a good marketing plan and was dismissed with "Mary Kay, you're thinking just like a woman." I knew that in my company "thinking like a woman was going to be an asset, not a liability!"

(Italics in the original, bolded text mine)

It's statements like those bolded in the paragraph above that make me wonder why Mary Kay Ash has been over looked for 50 years by feminists. Looking at her words now, when contemporary feminist writers don't hesitate to let their words reflect their rage, Mary Kay's words are pretty tame. But when you think about the world in which she grew up, that she would acknowledge her rage and then go on to do something to change the world she lived in so dramatically, it's hard not to see her as a feminist icon. Even if she did change her world with what some might dub as "proping up the patriarchy" -- because after all, Mary Kay's empire was founded on a tool used by the patriarchy to make women feel bad about their bodies -- right? I mean, that's all she did, right? Make up?

Wrong. The company is called Mary Kay Cosmetics, but it's not really about make up. It's about skin care. And the way Mary Kay taught us was that we need to teach other women about skin care. Maybe the reasons skin care is so important is so that we can be physically attractive in our faces, but the motto of the company isn't Enriching Women's Lives for no reason. Mary Kay Ash wanted women to learn about their skin, to feel good about themselves, to be confident in their abilities, to be able to run their own businesses, and to gain financial independence in a world that pretty much ignored a woman's need and ability to provide for herself.

If that's not feminism, then apparently, I'm in the wrong club.

Mary Kay Ash took something that pissed her off and actually created change in the world. Today there are more than 1.5 million active Independent Beauty Consultants, like myself, in more than 30 markets worldwide. South East Asia, Eastern Europe, Iran -- places where women are even less respected than they are in the West, places where it's incredibly difficult for a woman to survive without the support and approval of a man. How is that not feminism?

I'm not saying that skin care is a feminist act. I'm not saying that make up is a feminist act. What I'm saying here, ladies and possibly gentlemen, is that Mary Kay Ash was completely forgotten by the feminist community, and I think that's something that needs to change. Maybe she didn't do a whole lot of feminist writing (that is, writing couched in popular feminist terms), but she did do and say a lot that lead to the actual empowerment of millions of women. Her work is as important to feminism as the work of any other woman (or man, for that matter) who created change for women and for society in the last -- however long its been.

I love Mary Kay. I love Mary Kay products. I love teaching other women about skin care and letting them choose the things they want to learn about (surprise, I don't sell make up to everyone who comes to a skin care class, because not every woman likes make up -- although I do hear "I don't really wear make up" as a reason not to host a class quite often and I smile and say "that's okay, the first class is about skin care anyway -- you do have skin right?" I joke). I love that Mary Kay Ash saw a world that ignored women's abilities and decided to act to capitalize on the abilities of women. She wanted to create a world that had

"instead of a tightly closed corporate door bearing the sign "For Men Only", our company has an open portal that bears the invitation "Everyone Welcome - Especially Women."

And that's the world that she worked to create. That's the world that Mary Kay Cosmetics still works to create. That's why I'm proud to call myself a Mary Kay Independent Beauty Consultant. And I would love to share it with you!

Interview meme, care of Natalia

1. If you had to describe your childhood with just two adjectives - which adjectives would you pick?

Long and hard? Hehe. I'd really rather not describe my childhood if it's all the same to anybody.

2. Could you name some of your favourite photographers?

Yes, I could. I'm very fond of Lois Greenfield, especially her large format black&white stuff (at left). I also adore Richard Avedon (he did a lot of portraiture, fashion photography and pictures of naked men -- btw, he was very gay and died in 2004 -- at right), ManRay (BFFL of Marcel Duchamp, my favorite artist of all time, and pioneer of modernist photography -- up top); and also Annie Liebowitz, but who doesn't adore her? Speaking in more conte-

porary terms, the photography of my colleagues Braydie Duncan and Matt Hinshaw are marvelous, as well as Nikki Allen, and Janna Richards (with whom I traded rose-themed photographs and her work is hanging in my studio).

3. You've mentioned that you despise Dickens - can you write about that in more detail?

I could, but I don't think my reasons for despising Dickens will be very satisfying. I really just don't like his style of writing. It's not only long-winded, but it's boring, and I am certain that a thousand monkeys at a thosand typewriters for a thousand days could write A Tale of Two Cities. Although, I do respect the themes in Dickens' work, the disparities between the upper-crust and everyone else in Industrial Brittain, so at least he's got the social conscious thing down.

4. Describe the most vivid dream that you have ever had - or one of the most vivid dreams ever.
I have done a lot of lucid dreaming, where I can control what happens in the dream. Usually it's because I wake up from a dream I didn't like the ending to and I go back into that dream and redo the ending... like this one dream when I was in the lair of a murderer (it was totally CSI) and he was about to catch me, but I dialed 911 on my cellphone, and got my knife out of my bag and totally killed him (in self-defense, of course).

5. At the moment, what's the coolest item in your desk?

I'm totally obsessed. I've got a whole bunch of Obama paraphenalia, including a(n empty) bottle of Yes We Can Cola, produced by local soda maker Jones Soda (whose HQ is about two blocks from my alma matre, Cornish College of the Arts, and who give away free soda on Friday afternoons between 3-5p -- the rest of the time it's 50 cents a bottle (max 2)).

My desk is a complete mess right now though. I haven't been in there for a while cause it's been cold here. Oh yeah, out there, my studio, in the garage -- but at least it's in the same corner with the water heater so it's kinda warm.