Shakesville

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

[I thought I'd mark the beginning of baseball season by reposting this one from last March...]

I’ve noticed there are quite a few baseball fans who frequent Shakespeare’s Sister, and those who have been around here awhile know that I am the most tragic of baseball fans—a diehard Cubs fan (still currently in mourning over the loss of my beloved Alou).

So the following is for all of you, and is also an homage to my dad, to whom I owe many of the good parts of myself, including both my passion for politics (even though my political leanings are perhaps not what he had hoped) and my passion for baseball.

When my dad was a kid, he was a spectacular baseball player—a pitcher. He had an awesome arm that fell to the mercy of its own talent; this was just before regulations were instituted prohibiting pitching limitless consecutive innings, and so at 21, he blew out his elbow after years of overuse. However, the year before, he had the opportunity to pitch against Satchel Paige.

Satchel was 65, and had arrived in West Lafayette, Indiana as part of a tour of retired players. An exhibition game was held with the local team, and my dad had the great honor of being the starting pitcher. The game was called for rain; the All-Stars won, in no small part due to the paralyzing awe that plagued their young opponents.

After the game, my dad was able to speak with Mr. Paige, and their picture was taken for the paper.

I’m 30 years old, and I have heard this story countless times. Last night, I asked to hear it again. And I will ask to hear it again and again, each spring, as I anticipate the start of a new season.

Play ball!

#!@$

Within this distressing article about homeless people living in their cars, I find this little piece of information:

The number of "mobile homeless," as they are often called, tends to climb whenever the cost of housing outpaces wages, Dr. Hopper said. Last year was the first year on record, according to an annual study conducted by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, that a full-time worker at minimum wage could not afford a one-bedroom apartment anywhere in the country at average market rates.

But let’s make those tax cuts permanent!

On Friday’s Real Time w/ Bill Maher, that asshole Rep. Dana Rohrabacher was babbling about how illegal immigrants are bad for American workers because “they” (meaning undocumented workers) depress wages. And that’s just all kinds of scapegoating bullshit. Undocumented workers don’t depress wages—companies who employ undocumented workers for less than minimum wage depress wages, not the workers who accept the jobs. The money-grubbing bastard execs of corporate America who fight minimum wage increases depress wages. Their bought-and-paid-for cronies in the White House who reward them with tax breaks for offshoring and outsourcing jobs (and likewise resist minimum wage increases) depress wages. The CEOs who take home salaries 100x or more the average employee salary depress wages. Greed depresses wages in America.

And, as it happens, that kind of wanton, irresponsible, soulless greed depresses me, too.

Two Days

Two days until my very breath will be stolen, if just for a moment, by a happiness that knows no equal. Two days until another little bit of manna from heaven comes to nourish me. Two days until I am awash in the first blushes of a euphoria that will last for weeks, until it ebbs ever so slowly into merely a subtle bliss and merges with the dimmed but not diminished ecstasies that have come before and hover, always, near me. Two days until I find out what the soundtrack to the next bit of my life will sound like.

Two days to Ringleader of the Tormentors.

It is, as ever, two days before—the Sunday night before the inevitable Tuesday release date—that I begin to fear I will never hear the new album, because surely I will explode from excitement before the day, and the album, arrive. I click over to the evil Amazon and stare at the screen and consider listening to the samples of each song, and then I close the window. It wouldn’t be the same if I knew what the first few notes sounded like before I was lying on the floor in front of the stereo, the lyric sheet in hand, waiting to be killed. Again.

Come on, Tuesday. Bloody get here already.

“How the GOP Became God's Own Party”

Kevin Phillips in the WaPo:

Over a quarter-century of Bush presidencies and vice presidencies, the Republican Party has slowly become the vehicle of all three interests -- a fusion of petroleum-defined national security; a crusading, simplistic Christianity; and a reckless credit-feeding financial complex. The three are increasingly allied in commitment to Republican politics…

The potential interaction between the end-times electorate, inept pursuit of Persian Gulf oil, Washington's multiple deceptions and the financial crisis that could follow a substantial liquidation by foreign holders of U.S. bonds is the stuff of nightmares. To watch U.S. voters enable such policies -- the GOP coalition is unlikely to turn back -- is depressing…

These developments have warped the Republican Party and its electoral coalition, muted Democratic voices and become a gathering threat to America's future. No leading world power in modern memory has become a captive of the sort of biblical inerrancy that dismisses modern knowledge and science. The last parallel was in the early 17th century, when the papacy, with the agreement of inquisitional Spain, disciplined the astronomer Galileo for saying that the sun, not the Earth, was the center of our solar system.

Read the whole thing.

Last night, the four of us were talking about how long this state of affairs is sustainable. Forget for a moment the crushing deficit, our woeful foreign policy disasters, tax cuts, corporate welfare, cronyism, and all the rest of it—how far can the seams of the union strain from the pressure of the competing themes of secularism and dominionism before the fabric tears? Any attempt by advocates of secularism (who count among their numbers personally religious but politically secular people) to reinforce the wall separating church and state agitates dominionists into radicalism. Attempts by dominionists to fashion an effective theocracy radicalizes secularists. Neither faction is going to be content to sit back and respectively watch Christianity be pushed completely out of the public (by which I mean governmental) sphere or become the basis of our rule of law. Empirical “rightness” or “wrongness” of the positions make no difference in terms of averting confrontation; both sides are fueled up for the long haul by the surety of their own correctness.

Phillips notes that “the Southern-dominated, biblically driven Washington GOP represents a rogue coalition, like the Southern, proslavery politics that controlled Washington until Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860,” and I don’t suppose I need to point out that a civil war ensued shortly thereafter.

I’m not suggesting I believe another civil war is imminent. In fact, in spite of their asinine and infuriating war rhetoric, I think most of the members of the rightwing nut brigade are inveterate cowards, who are about as likely to pick up arms and go off to culture war as they are to sign up for service in Iraq. In other words, wholly unlikely.

I’m just beginning to wonder how far this can and will escalate before something diffuses this increasing tension, and what that thing could possibly be.

News from Shakes Manor

Last night, Mr. Shakes and I got to do one of our favorite things in the world—sit around shooting the shit with Mr. Furious and Mr. Curious until the crack of dawn.

This is the first time ever that Mr. F and I have lived more than a short drive away from one another; now it’s a whole two hours or so, which might not seem like much, but it makes for seeing each other less than when we lived a 10-minute walk apart, or, you know, in the same apartment. (Mr. Shakes and I also lived with them for awhile after returning from Scotland. Our “wedding reception,” after getting hitched at City Hall, had two guests—Mssrs F & C.)

They were in town because yesterday was Mr. F’s mom’s birthday, and, after the festivities, they swung by our place to indulge in our typical gabfest—politics, family, American Idol trashing, and elaborate hypotheticals like starting a phone sex operation which we will run from our rented keep on Fair Isle while giving the locals plenty about which to gossip. You know—the usual.

Discussing our plans to become eccentric hermits.

Mr. Curious shows off the latest issue of Hustler, which features an article about Scooter Libby’s dirty novel and the perverted proclivities of so many prominent conservatives, penned by none other than Shakespeare’s Sister. (The article is essentially a reprint of this post, and they got a great illustrator, Dan Collins, to illustrate some of the novel's excerpts, breathing sardonic life into their utter ghastliness.) As you may remember, I’m not much of porn objector, though I hadn’t ever bought Hustler. I knew Larry Flynt was a liberal, but I had no idea that every issue of Hustler was a blazing jeremiad against Bush and the GOP. Pretty cool.

McCain the Maverick Crashes and Burns

…and turns to a pile of ash which Tim Russert then pisses on while laughing maniacally and chanting, “McCain the Maverick is dead! Long live McCain My Bitch!”

This may be one of the best videos I have ever seen.

My name is Melissa, and I am a schadenfreudeholic.

Actual Headline

Attacking Iran May Trigger Terrorism

Duh.

Happy Blogiversary…

…to d r i f t g l a s s, one of the foxiest sarcasticats in the blogosphere. *mwah*

A Nation, Bullied

In one of my favorite episodes, “Please Don’t Kill Me,” of one of my favorite shows, Mr. Show, an evil genius called Dr. X holds the world hostage with threats to blow up the earth—a plan which is inevitably thwarted by an annual Doomsday Telethon, held by—who else?—Dr. X, who pleads with people to contribute generously to the thirty million dollar goal. He brings out a poster boy for the telethon who is prodded by Dr. X in a baby voice, “Tell ze audience vat you told me backstage,” to which the boy replies, “Please don’t kill me.” Dr. X’s face breaks into a saccharine grin. “Awwww. Dis is vhy I do dis,” he says, a tear in his eye. “For de kids.”

As with every sketch on the brilliant Mr. Show, there’s the obvious send-up of straightforward telethons, and then there’s the underlying scorcher—the nod at our society’s propensity to endanger people, only to give ourselves an opportunity to appear to save them.

“Please Don’t Kill Me” first aired in 1997, but it was a prescient indicator of things to come. I often feel, reviewing the news of Bush’s determination to manipulate us into a war which subsequently opened a new terrorist front from which he now professes to save us, that I’m living in an endless Doomsday Telethon.

The kids look thrilled.

It’s really just a kind of cowardly bullying—wanting to play the hero on behalf of those who wouldn’t be in danger (or perceive themselves to be in danger) were it not for your own actions, not for your own grim reassurances that they have something to fear. Yellabellied bullies aren’t brave enough to be seen as bad guys themselves; instead, they demonize someone else and promote themselves as your only chance for salvation, masking themselves in faux heroics. In the end, the effect is the same—their victims are cowed and submit to their will. The evil genius is thirty million dollars richer, but hey…at least the earth didn’t blow up.

I was induced to think about bullies, overt or not so, when I read at PSoTD that the U.S. Department of Justice and the National Association of Psychologists estimates about 160,000 students are skipping out on school every day to avoid being bullied. Putting the problem in perspective, PSoTD says:

Imagine that somebody threatened a city of 160,000 people - say Las Cruces, New Mexico - that they would be physically hurt if they went anywhere next day. Imagine those people then did not leave their houses.

It’s not hard to imagine at all, sadly. Tragic as it is, I challenge anyone to be surprised that bullying is so pervasive, when our foreign policy has been reduced to little more than schoolyard bullying, when our biggest campaign issues are the equivalent of pulling girls’ pigtails and refusing to let the gay kids play 4-square with the rest of us, when anyone who disagrees with the popular kids finds nasty rumors scrawled about them on the bathroom walls. There’s small bloody difference between an idiot bully screaming “Fag!” at a weaker kid who stands up for what he thinks is right, and a majority party maligning dissenters by screaming, “Traitor!” with approximately the same level of careful consideration. That is to say, none.

Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity—all their shills are bullies, too, rudely interrupting guests, deliberately mischaracterizing arguments to score mendacious points, gleefully bloviating assertions of rightness and superiority, cutting off mics, and generally behaving like schoolyard miscreants who attempt to finagle the appearance of capitulation or unnecessary apologies from their ideologically disparate targets, like it was so much lunch money in the pocket of one’s dungarees. Certainly some of their devotees, I can attest from personal experience, have incorporated this brand of argumentative bullying into their everyday dealings with people who have the audacity to disagree with them.

This is the example that’s being set by the so-called grown-ups. We can hardly feign surprise that their kids are behaving like assholes, too.

The experts have a suggestion.

The best way to safeguard your children from becoming a victim is to teach them how to be assertive. Bullies are less likely to intimidate kids who are confident and resourceful.

I didn’t see the word “triangulation” in there, did you?

I also didn’t see a suggestion to accommodate—or in any way indulge—bullying.

Bullies are nothing if not contemptuously opportunistic little shits; their first response to being called on their bad behavior is to whine and cry about how it is they who are the real victims (See: The War on Christians), and if you don’t immediately cosset their delicate egos, they’ll lash out with the accusation of intolerance. “Hypocrites! You liberals only claim to be tolerant!” But there’s no value in tolerating, well, intolerance. To paraphrase some guy called George, we don’t negotiate with bullies.

So…confidence, progressives. At every turn, on every issue. A nation bullied is no good for anyone, except perhaps the bullies. Time to be bold.

Let’s do it for the kids.

(Crossposted at Ezra’s place.)

Rice's "Magical Mystery Tour"

When members of the Bush administration aren’t busily stomping on my last good nerve like it’s a sack of flaming shit on the porch that needs putting out, they’re making such total asses of themselves that I am left writhing in discomfort. This week’s squirm-inducer: Condi Rice, whose “goodwill trip” to Britain “hit rock bottom when she failed to get a famous Beatles reference—even after she'd visited their hometown of Liverpool.”

Rice, a classically trained pianist and student of the great composers, has said she is a Beatles fan. But she looked blank during a stopover in British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw's hometown of Blackburn, when a British reporter referred to the "4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire."

Straw jumped in to explain that the line was from the classic 1967 Beatles song "A Day in the Life," on their album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." The Beatles were referring to a newspaper article about the Blackburn roads surveyor‘s count of 4,000 potholes in the area.

The reporter asked Rice to sing a few bars. She meant the part about the 4,000 holes. "But Rice, in over her head in Beatles trivia and looking sorry she had gotten into the whole thing," according to the Associated Press, woodenly sang the title "Sgt. Pepper‘s Lonely Heart‘s Club Band," then left with Straw.

Oh groooooan. It’s so embarrassing, I almost feel sorry for her. (To top it off, Rice and Straw—which sounds more like a bluegrass duo than two world leaders—were then pilloried in a Times of London editorial cartoon, which featured their likenesses “holding up a hole-ridden sign labeled ‘The Case for War.’” Heh—cheeky Brits.) But even as pitiable as any member of the Bush administration may passingly be, they always manage to swing me back around to open contempt by the end of any article.

Later, at a press conference, asked to name some of the "thousands" of mistakes she had said the U.S. made in Iraq, Rice replied: "First of all, I meant it figuratively, not literally. Let me be very clear about that. I wasn't sitting around counting. The point I was making to the questioner ... is that, of course, if you've ever made decisions, you've undoubtedly made mistakes.”

So just name one then. These people have a pathological aversion to admitting error, which is infuriatingly ironic considering their bounteous capacity to err.

McKinney

Great post from Pam on the politics of hair and how deeply internalized racism can be. Of course, she’s got the Freeper round-up, which will, as ever, make you puke.

I like Cynthia McKinney’s hair. And, being a hair-lazy white girl whose had variations on the same haircut since I was 14, because it requires no effort whatsoever, I know if I were a hair-lazy black girl, there’s no way on god’s green earth I’d mess with relaxers and shit. I’d have the biggest fro going.

I also agree with Pam’s conclusion that the whole incident is complicated, and that “it's probably going to look like both sides are in the wrong to some extent. Yes, race probably is a factor, also on both sides (McKinney's post-incident posturing undermines cases of blatant and extreme racism that is still rampant in society).” I’d add that I’m feeling uncomfortable with McKinney’s claim that she was “touched inappropriately.” That’s a loaded phrase, which has a distinctly sexual tone. She won’t say how, exactly, she was touched inappropriately, but if she’s using that phrase to describe her arm being grabbed, she’s not only undermining cases of blatant and extreme racism with her hyperbole, but cases of legitimate sexual assault.

April Fool's

Google has one of the best jokes I've seen yet--Google Romance:

Google Romance is a place where you can post all types of romantic information and, using our Soulmate Search™, get back search results that could, in theory, include the love of your life. Then we'll send you both on a Contextual DateTM, which we'll pay for while delivering to you relevant ads that we and our advertising partners think will help produce the dating results you're looking for.

Clever, that.

Check out the whole thing.

Quote(s) of the Day

I hate Bush and his handlers more with each passing day. Five years ago, I didn't think I was capable of this much hate. Thanks, assholes.

Actual headline in the Los Angeles Times today, I swear to you:

Bush Says Iraq Is in a "Period of Tension."
Well. This just in. Thanks for that.

The Stars in Our Eyes

Mannion’s taking a poll of the Sexiest Movie Stars. Top 5 male and/or female. He hasn’t completed his list yet, but is fairly certain that Uma, Halle Berry, and Teri Hatcher would make his Top 5 list. (I have politely suggested that he needs to pick up a recent magazine. I’ll give him Teri Hatcher circa Seinfeld—“They’re real, and they’re spectacular!”—but now she is Botoxed into expressionlessness, and ergo has precluded herself from inclusion on any Top 5 lists henceforth. But that’s just my opinion. Ahem.)

On any given day, I could easily name 20 or more women and men who could be put on either list; how can you really narrow it down to just 5? So I picked 10 of my favorite sexy moments to represent both sexes, on film or in some public appearance, although even that is too limiting. When is Liv Tyler not sexy? Or Ewan McGregor? Or Holly Hunter? Or Colin Farrell? You get the idea. Anyhow, here’s my list.

The Girls

1. Sigourney Weaver, Working Girl

The absolute queen of drop-dead gorgeous in her white lingerie. Of course, Sigourney is so unrelentingly hot, she looks good sweaty and shaved-headed, too.

2. Catherine Deneuve and 3. Susan Sarandon, The Hunger

The scene which had the greatest probability of making me shed all remnant of my heterosexuality. Luckily for Mr. Shakes, the Bowie-lust held me in hetero thrall. Which is kind of amazing, considering Bowie’s practically a lesbian.

4. Queen Latifah, in this dress

Come on now. That is just one stunningly beautiful woman. The first time I saw Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to fuck him, or be him. I recall, upon seeing the Queen sail down the red carpet in this dress, I had a very similar quandary.

5. Rosario Dawson, Alexander

It’s not really fair that Rosario Dawson’s unbelievable sexiness is lost among the ruin that is the rest of Alexander. Her body is amazing. The rest of the movie is so appalling, however, I’m still not sure I’d recommend renting it, unless you’re willing to fast forward just to see her in action.

The Boys

1. George Clooney, the Oscar Speech

He’s a classic. He’s a tux. He never goes out of style. He’s George friggin’ Clooney.

2. Gary Dourdan. CSI

A rather recent and highly sustainable crush. The ever lust-worthy Warrick on CSI, and I don’t care even if it really were the crappiest show on television (which John Howard will continue to tell me from here to eternity); I’d still watch it just to drool over Gary Dourdan, who is just all kinds of hotness.

3. Christian Bale, Batman Begins

Yeah, he was hot shit as Batman, but check his ass out as Bruce Wayne. Not too bloody shabby. I was barely deterred from wanting to do him when he was a bag of bones in The Machinist, even though his rib cage would have punctured my lung.

4. Liam Neeson, in anything

Obviously, this picture isn’t from a movie. I chose it because it shows off his hands, which are criminally sexy. Also, I’ll watch any piece of shit film if he’s in it; as proof, I submit to you that I have seen both Darkman and Satisfaction each more than once. (I also, as an aside, adore his wife, Natasha Richardson.)

5. Colin Firth, Love Actually

Rounding out the group (and saved as best for last) is Colin Firth, who is so utterly charming in Love Actually that I am reduced to loopy fawnfulness the levels of which I’m embarrassed to admit. Just look—a tall, broad-shouldered man in a cable-knit sweater sitting at a typewriter!

(Okay, maybe I’m biased. But come on, there’s no typewriter.)

There’s just something about a guy who looks great in a big, wooly jumper, or a big scarf, with a big head of curls.

Swoon.
All right—so that’s my list. Whatcha got?

I wish I had the answer …

…but I just don’t know what it is, either.

Friday Cat Blogging

One of the best things about having cats when you’re sick is that they snuggle up with you and purr while you scratch their ears and bellies, acting like wee, fuzzy, vibrating blankets of love.

One of the worst things about having cats when you’re sick is that they have to crawl all over you to do it.

Cat owners will know exactly what I mean when I say that cats do not sit, but arrange themselves—circling around, checking out all the best options, positioning themselves, and then kneading for no fewer than nine hours before they will finally rest their behinds in one place. Sometimes, they’ll even have to have a few “test sits” before they settle into their proper destination of repose.

If it’s you they fancy sitting on, they’ll knead you. This is never an especially pleasurable experience at Shakes Manor, as Matilda and Olivia have are not declawed, and, though they try not to shred us into bloody pulps during their kneading sessions, it can happen nonetheless.

Kneading a gurgling and churning belly is really just ever so much worse.

But late last night came the worst yet. I had fallen asleep in my chaise in a rather awkward, curled-up position, and when I awoke, my entire right leg from toe to hip was completely dead. As soon as I stretched it out, the pins and needles started. “Mmph,” I mumbled, approximately, biting the insides of my cheeks. “FUCKING HELL OWWWWW!” was what I wanted to say, but Mr. Shakes was asleep in the bedroom, which is the next room over, so I couldn’t. Or didn’t, in any case.

Then Matilda jumped up onto the chaise and began walking up my dead leg toward me, kneading as she went. I convulsed, then paralyzed with the pain of it, knowing if I moved a muscle, I would let out a bellow that would wake the neighbors, no less Mr. Shakes. I reached out my clawed hands slowly and waited for her to get within my reach, then grabbed her and held her against my face, screaming into her belly, “AHHGGGGHH!”

Her fluffiness served quite well as a scream-muffler.

I let her go, and she looked back at me like I was insane. “Wev, weirdo,” she seemed to say, then licked her nose and walked away.

Feingold Rocks

BradBlog's got video of Feingold's opening statement from today's censure hearing. I don't know how anyone with a modicum of integrity and faith in our Constitution can listen to him and not find him absolutely right.

The End of the World as We Know It?

In Slate, Michael Kinsley asks, “Would it be the end of the world if American newspapers abandoned the cult of objectivity?”

Aside from my disagreements with Kinsley over how significant a role genuine objectivity still plays in American media, as opposed to the ugly funhouse mirror version wherein each “side” of a debate is given equal time, no matter how ludicrous or untenable one side’s position may be, I think he’s right when he notes:

Abandoning the pretense of objectivity does not mean abandoning the journalist's most important obligation, which is factual accuracy. In fact, the practice of opinion journalism brings additional ethical obligations. These can be summarized in two words: intellectual honesty.

Therein lies my biggest objection to Fox News, for example. I don’t give a rat’s ass that it’s partisan; I take issue with its insistence that it isn’t partisan, despite all evidence to the contrary. If Fox News changed its tagline from “Fair and Balanced” to “Always Right” (wink wink, nudge nudge) and proudly waved an elephant-emblazoned flag, I wouldn’t complain a bit. It’s their mendacity in presenting slanted news under the guise of fairness and balance that irks.

Frankly, I think we’re long overdue for openly partisan news. This insistence on objectivity in news reporting is rather exceptionally American. Ask any Brit—they’ll tell you which is the conservative rag, and which is the moderate rag, and which is the liberal rag. And, considering that the average Brit is hell and gone more well-versed in political and cultural news than the average American, I don’t think much of an argument can be mounted that a partisan delivery undermines the conveyance of facts, if the effort is undertaken with sincerity—and that little thing called “intellectual honesty” which Kinsley mentions.

If this is, indeed, the end of the world as we know it, I feel fine.

Ads I Never Want to See Again

I know annoying ads are usually Toast’s thing, but after having spent an unusual amount of time in front of the idiot box, slathered across the sofa like a steamrolled cartoon character, the past couple of days, there are some seriously irritating adverts that I never, ever, want to see again.

1. Any ADT home security ad that starts with a mother talking on the phone to an away-from-home father while a creepy burglar skulks outside their picture window. Do home security systems really need to be marketed as man-surrogates?

2. Disaronno’s “Pass the Pleasure Around” advert, which features not only a woman blowing an ice cube, just so she doesn’t miss one last drop of Disaronno…

…but also offers up the worst attempt at a smoldering look by Bartender Guy that I’ve ever seen, who doesn’t look nearly as turned on by the fellacicle as he does sort of embarrassed and nauseated.

Suffice it to say, I share his pain.

3. Any advert for any Axe for Men product. Seriously, if I have to see one more woman humping plumbing or having wanton sex with a geek in an elevator because of Axe, I may have to kill someone.

Grouch, out.

ARGH!

Promptly after posting my last post about three hours ago, our electricity went out, I suppose due to extreme windiness. Now it’s back on, so let’s see if I can manage to eke out another post or two before something else happens as the universe conspires to drive me batshit insane.

*laughs maniacally*