Happy Birthday to youuuuuuuuuuu!
You look like a purveyor of the radical homosexual agennnnnndaaaaaaaa!
And you smell like one, too!
Kenny Loggins and I both want to wish you a happy birthday, Deeks.
Keep the fire, man. Keep the fire.
Happy Birthday, Deeky!
Happy Birthday to youuuuuuuuuuu!
You look like a purveyor of the radical homosexual agennnnnndaaaaaaaa!
And you smell like one, too!
Kenny Loggins and I both want to wish you a happy birthday, Deeks.
Keep the fire, man. Keep the fire.
Backyard Visitors
Looking out the kitchen window this morning, I spotted some colorful visitors.
(Click pic to embiggen.)
This couple is a part of a larger pride (or "muster" or "ostentation") of peacocks in the neighborhood. They're beautiful to look at, but they're noisy and not especially friendly. Nevertheless, it's something to make you grab the camera when you're standing in the kitchen pouring a second cup of coffee.
(HT to Shaker Shaun for the correction.)
Update: They wandered around to the front yard later. More pics below the fold.
A: Oh, for some fowl reason.
[rimshot]
Thanks, everybody, I'll be here all week.
Actual Headline
Vatican 'forgives' John Lennon (for saying four decades ago that The Beatles were more popular than Jesus).
Awesome. I'm sure he totally gives a shit.
Dealey Plaza
November 22.
If you're over 50, you cannot write today's date without remembering exactly where you were and what you were doing when you heard the news flash from Dallas in 1963. The next three days were a blur of images, mostly in black and white, from the TV set on the whole time or from the newspaper photos. New names and places entered the lexicon: the grassy knoll, the Texas School Book Depository, Parkland Memorial Hospital, Love Field, Lee Harvey Oswald, Officer J.D. Tippet, Jack Ruby, Arlington National Cemetery, "Eternal Father, Strong to Save," the muffled drums, the silent parade, the eternal flame.
November 22, 1963 has become one of those dates. Just as those over 85 remember October 24, 1929, over 75 remember December 7, 1941 and April 12, 1945 and we all remember 9/11, the date has become a shorthand reminder of everything before and everything after and the difference between then and now.
There will always be questions about what really happened in Dealey Plaza on that Friday afternoon. As recently as 2005 there was new speculation as to where the shots came from and whether or not the films of the event are "accurate." Most of us who remember that day, however, do not dwell on the event as much as they reflect on how life changed in that instant. We've taken it from the immediate tragedy and used it as a marker for our lives and our society. Some of us mark the date as the last time we felt truly safe about anything. A decade that began with the New Frontier and Camelot ended with the SDS and Hair.
It would be simplistic to say that everything that came after -- Vietnam, the counter culture, hard rock, the arms race, Watergate, disco, the Middle East, OPEC, terrorism -- would not have happened had President Kennedy not gone to Dallas, had run for re-election in 1964 and beaten Barry Goldwater in a close election. Nothing so much enhanced the life of the young president as much as how he died; an election that was decided by one vote per precinct in 1960 turned into a 60-40 landslide as recalled by the voters the summer after Kennedy was assassinated. That isn't so much revisionism as it is the optimism we had about ourselves and our country, regardless of politics, and the pain we felt with the loss.
Commentators are fond of saying that great events shape our nation and that everything is different after such an event as 9/11 or November 22, 1963. In a way that is true, but it isn't the event that shapes us so much as our response to it. September 11, 2001 united us -- however briefly -- as a nation against an enemy. November 22, 1963 united us too, but it also made us look at ourselves and wonder how such a thing could happen in our own country, in such a nice town as Dallas, and on such a warm sunny afternoon in Dealey Plaza.
Footnote: In addition to John F. Kennedy, C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley also died on November 22, 1963. Novelist Peter Kreeft speculated that it must have been an interesting first night in the spiritual world for discussions of theology and politics.
(This post was originally published at Bark Bark Woof Woof on November 22, 2005, and updated where appropriate.)
Phabulous
So I was skimming the new Google themes for gmail. I saw the one called "phantasea" and thought, at first, that it was "placenta".
< double take >
But, hey, who doesn't want a a placenta as their background image?
The Muses Are Heard
As you may or may not know, Liss and I are good friends. I mention this in part to make you jealous, but also to let you know that our friendship does have its price. For example, when Liss can't sleep, and gets all loopy, she kills time in the wee hours of the morn Photoshopping pictures, superimposing my mug into a weird little fantasy world she's created for me. A world kind of like Planet Unicorn, but gayer. A world where I am, apparently, Olivia Newton-John:
And, as is typical of our friendship, I responded to this image thusly: "You know, if you're gonna go through all that work to Photoshop my ass into that picture, couldn't you have at least done something about my eyebrows?"
And with that, I wish you all a happy weekend.
Madame Secretary
Clinton confidantes say that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton will accept the position as the next US Secretary of State.
I know, believe me I do, all the legitimate arguments for Clinton to stay in the Senate, and I know, believe me I do, all the legitimate arguments against Clinton as SoS.
I even agree with many of them.
But I still can't help feeling giddy at the thought of the woman who stood in front of the United Nation's 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing and said, "If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women's rights and women’s rights are human rights once and for all," being my Secretary of State.
And having recently, while running for president, resolved to make global gay rights an active "part of American foreign policy" ain't too shabby, either.
[H/T to Shaker Broce.]
Shaker Gourmet: Weary Outrage Biscuits
Our recipe this week comes from Shaker Keori:
Serve as an alternative to Pathetic Anger Bread or use in your next Nietzschean bake sale.Weary Outrage Biscuits
Makes 9-12 biscuits depending on size of cutter
2 cups all purposes flour (or go 1 cup all-purpose, 1 cup wheat)
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt (optional)
5-6 tbsp cold butter or margarine, cut into pieces
3/4 cup of milk
1 cup parmesan cheese flakes
1 cup cheddar cheese crumbles
2 tbsp minced garlic, more or less as desired
1-2 tbsp rubbed sage (optional, to tase)
Directions:
Preheat oven to 450 degrees F
Mix flour, baking powder, and salt.
Add butter, in pieces, to flour mix. Do not allow butter to melt. Mix butter into flour mix with fork until mix is dry and crumbly.
Add cheeses and sage, mix well. Add milk, mix well.
Add minced garlic. Do not add garlic to dry mix, or it will be quickly coated by flour and you will not see whether or not it is evenly distributed!
Mix dough until garlic and cheese is spread evenly throughout. Add flour with a coated hand until dough become elastic and can be removed from bowl. Move dough to floured surface, knead and roll out. Cut biscuits with a glass or biscuit cutter, place on greased cookie sheet.
Bake 9-11 minutes, until tops are golden brown.
If you'd like to participate in Shaker Gourmet, email me (include a blog link!) at: shakergourmet (at) gmail.com
Daily Kitteh
Anybody seen Sophs?
Livsy, have you seen Sophs?
"Did somebody say catnip?"
Wooly Bully
I was reading a NYT article about a group of scientists speculating about resurrecting an extinct mammoth, à la Jurassic Park III. I found the article interesting for a couple of reasons. There are the sciency aspects of the story, and being the nerd I am, that type of thing fascinates me. I also got a kick out of the way the scientists seemed to throw out (seemingly arbitrary) monetary figures about how much such a project would cost. Like these guys were contractors you've called up to get an estimate on that new deck you're installing. "Sure we could build ya a wolly mammoth. It ain't gonna be cheap. That'll run ya about, say, ten million, give or take." Scientists also speculated that if one could clone a mammoth, a Neanderthal couldn't be too difficult either.
It was a geniunely fascinating article. Until i got to end, where I read this bit:
"Catholic teaching opposes all human cloning, and all production of human beings in the laboratory, so I do not see how any of this could be ethically acceptable in humans," said Richard Doerflinger, an official with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.What is that quote even doing in a science article? You never read a story about a church bake sale being interrupted with an interview from some Nietzschean saying "God is dead, cookies are pointless and futile." And, you know, it's not like the Church has this great track record when it comes to science, what with all that flat earth, center of the universe, burn the witches type stuff in their cannon.
So quit spoiling my science articles with b.s. about whatever some schmoe from some church thinks about atoms, or black holes or cryogenics or anything.
Quote of the Day
"I really opened myself up in JCVD. I peeled back the skin of the fruit, cut the pulp and then took that very hard seed. In this film I cut that hard seed, and inside that seed was a kind of liquid cream substance of the man I am, or the woman you are."—Jean-Claude Van Damme, in an interview with Newsweek about his new autobiographical film, JCVD.
Sounds awesome. Can't wait to see it.
Friday Blogaround
hey your gay blogaround
Recommended Reading:
Echidne: Quality and Quantity
Renee: What Do The Homeless Deserve?
John: Fox is Classy, As Usual
Avedon: Everything Old is New Again
InfamousQBert: Bobby
Shayera: So Very Close
Jon: Creating the future: Computers, Freedom, and Privacy 2009
Leave your links in comments...
Rape isn't Hilarious
[Trigger warning.]
Yesterday, Shaker Pranamama emailed me the link to this piece at Jezebel, in which Megan asks: "Is a rape joke ever funny?"—a query that strikes me as soliciting serious exploration about as much as "Is Dane Cook a douche?" I mean, some questions just don't warrant our time.
Suffice it to say, Megan concludes that rape jokes can be funny, in no small part, it appears, because she wants to justify using humor to deal with her own sexual assault.
Except, here's the thing: Public rape jokes have fuck-all to do with sexual assault survivors using humor to deal with their own sexual assaults.
Megan's argument lacks some critical distinctions and exceptions: Public jokes and private jokes are not equivalent. Jokes for laughs and jokes for catharsis are very different animals. Jokes about rape made by men, who have a significantly lower chance of being raped, are not the same as jokes made by women, whose lives are qualitatively different from men's because of their heightened chance of being raped. Jokes that minimize the severity and ubiquity of rape (e.g. prison rape jokes) perpetuate the rape culture; jokes that underline the severity and ubiquity of rape (e.g. Wanda Sykes' detachable vagina bit) challenge the rape culture.
And even still, all rape jokes run the very real risk of triggering survivors who aren't expecting rape jokes in their escapist entertainment. (Go figure.) Which underscores the inherent deficiency of the question "Is a rape joke ever funny?" It's incomplete without a discussion of audience, intended or otherwise—and the audience for any rape joke potentially includes survivors who may not only find the joke decidedly unfunny, but also triggering.
The distinct possibility of someone experiencing anxiety, panic, or some other distress associated with re-experiencing one's sexual assault after hearing a rape joke sort of renders irrelevant the question of whether the joke is "funny," you know?
Certainly, there are those who would play the old "hysteria" card, diminishing the gravity of post-traumatic stress disorder as the same "oversensitivity" with which feminists or people of color or LGBTQIs or disability activists or some other marginalized group are branded for objecting to demeaning "jokes"—although I can't really imagine a more pathetic and cruel argument than dismissing PTSD sufferers as "oversensitive" to justify continuing to make rape jokes.
And now we're back to that critical distinction between public rape jokes that treat rape as a joke and sexual assault survivors using humor to deal with their own history. Only one of those is triggering by design.
Failing to deconstruct both the difference in authority and intent, and the wholly separate culture meanings and effects, of dudez making rape jokes in a widely-watched cartoon and a just-raped woman making jokes about her circumstances just to get through to the next minute without breaking down, effectively casts those two scenarios as equivalent. They are not. And any of us who can understand why the n-word has a totally different meaning in the mouth of a black man with his mates and in the mouth of a white supremacist with his, can surely understand why not all rape jokes are equal.
Context, especially for such a delicate subject, is everything.
I don't begrudge Megan her dark humor; I hang on quite firmly to my own gallows humor about such things myself. But I don't use the humor of the hangman to justify it. The hangman can go fuck himself.
[Rape is Hilarious: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty, Twenty-One, Twenty-Two, Twenty-Three, Twenty-Four, Twenty-Five, Twenty-Six.]
Double-ew Tee Eff
Okay, ready for the most bizarre thing you'll see all week? I don't think you are.
I'll put it below the fold because it's pretty gruesome, but here's the long and short of it: You know how Politicians love to "pardon" a turkey at Thanksgiving in order to squeeze in a dumbass photo op, leading to crowd-pleasing stupid photos like this one?
Well, Sarah Palin apparently thought it would be a dandy idea to also get in a photo op "pardoning" a turkey and gave an interview to a local Wasilla TV station...
WHILE TURKEYS ARE BEING SLAUGHTERED IN THE BACKGROUND.
I shit you not.
Okay, I realize that turkeys have to be killed before they're eaten, and I'm not suggesting Palin had that going on behind her on purpose, but... but...
Seriously. What the fuck?
(Confused energy dome tip.)
Bigger Than Jesus
Hillary Clinton is Bigger than Jesus. By more than 200 votes. At least according to voters in Jacksonville FLA. Clinton pulled in 234 write-in votes to Jesus's mere 23 in Duval County on election day. Jesus tied (for fourth) with None of the Above, and beat out His Number One Fan, Mike "I Hate Queers" Huckabee by two. God got six votes, so, I think, Catholically speaking, you could add those to Jesus's votes to suggest He actually took third place. Though, that still puts Him behind Ron Paul.
Also garnering votes: Chuck Norris and Bill Nye with two each (I smell a cage match!), as did noted hater of Mexicans and CNN talking head Lou Dobbs; Donald Duck and T. Boone Pickens (what, no Yosemite Sam?) got three each. It also warms my cockles to see some folks still love Fred Thompson as much as I do. He got four votes.
In the single digits I was thrilled to see Tommy Chong; it's good to know stoners still vote. Also winning lone write-ins: Bill O'Riely (sic), Hilary Bush (yeah, tres clever, oh and sic, by the way), Weird Al Yancovic (sic; and what is it with people not being able to spell?) and Truman (presumably this one, not that one.)
Inexplicably, Obama got four write-in votes. I wonder if those are counted. Probably not.
OFFS to the Quillionth Power
Okay.
Okay.
*Takes a deep breath*
You all know how the manufactured "War on Christmas" crap drives me completely around the bend.
Well, I've just read something so mind-explodingly stupid that I'm having serious questions regarding my sanity. Daniel Henninger has written an Op-Ed in the WSJ stating...
I can't believe I'm about to type this.
The reason we are in our current financial crisis is because...
*Deep sigh*
Because we don't say "Merry Christmas."
No, seriously.This year we celebrate the desacralized "holidays" amid what is for many unprecedented economic ruin -- fortunes halved, jobs lost, homes foreclosed. People wonder, What happened? One man's theory: A nation whose people can't say "Merry Christmas" is a nation capable of ruining its own economy.
[...]
It has been my view that the steady secularizing and insistent effort at dereligioning America has been dangerous. That danger flashed red in the fall into subprime personal behavior by borrowers and bankers, who after all are just people. Northerners and atheists who vilify Southern evangelicals are throwing out nurturers of useful virtue with the bathwater of obnoxious political opinions.
The point for a healthy society of commerce and politics is not that religion saves, but that it keeps most of the players inside the chalk lines. We are erasing the chalk lines.
Feel free: Banish Merry Christmas. Get ready for Mad Max.
Excuse me. I'm going to go bang my head against the wall for about twenty minutes.
Back. Whew, hey, look at all the pretty colors!
Yes, apparently you can't say "Merry Christmas," even if you want to. Apparently we're all wearing voice-activated shock collars or something. And somehow, because people "can't" say "Merry Christmas," we're all about to lose every cent we have and start wrestling sweatily in domes made out of scrapped SUV's while Tina Turner laughs like a maniac.
Okay, that's it. ENOUGH. It's over. THE WAR ON CHRISTMAS HAS OFFICIALLY JUMPED THE SHARK. This has gone beyond parody; it's officially now The Most Incredibly Fucking Stupid Idea On Earth. ENOUGH. I swear to Jebus, the next person that starts spouting this crap is going to find me hot-gluing a Christmas Sweater to their goddamn torso. CHRIST.
(Hand-shaking tip of the energy dome to digby.)
Fair and Balanced
Eric Boehlert's got a great new piece about the media's double standard in its coverage of new presidents:
In anticipation of the new administration, Beltway media insiders are busy laying the groundwork for how reporters and pundits will treat the new team on Pennsylvania Avenue.The thing that makes Boehlert great is that he manages to get through the entire rest of the piece debunking that CW without ever saying: "HA HA HA HA HA, no stop, really, you're killing me, HA HA HA HA HA, oh my aching sides, HA HA HA HA HA, no seriously, shut the fuck up, you mendacious wankers."
"Once a president takes office ... an adversarial relationship usually flourishes, at least with beat reporters," wrote Howard Kurtz in The Washington Post. And former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, discussing the press corps on Fox News, agreed: "They are inevitably going to turn on him, as all -- this happened to every administration. I don't see why we should be surprised. It is the natural turn of events."
The conventional wisdom is quite clear: The press always turns skeptical and becomes combative when new presidents come to town.
