lol your big gay blogaround makes me jizz in my pants
Recommended Reading:
Steve: Kristol Leaves The Times
Latoya: Did Darwin Have a Different Motivation for Creating the Theory of Evolution?
Del: Beanie Baby Bonfire - Who's In?
Sean: Barack Obama vs. Genetic Determinism
Echidne: Repeat After Me: Correlation Does Not Necessarily Mean Causation
For the Losties: Rachel's first Season 5 recap. Bliss. I look forward to these almost as much as the show!
And Shaker Wheelie Catholic passes on the site Poems for the First 100 Days, which is "post[ing] a new poem by a contemporary American poet—a poem written for and during the first 100 days of this new administration."
Leave your links in comments...
Monday Blogaround
Happy Blogiversary...
...to my pal Tom Watson, celebrating five years of being totally not the golfer.
News from Shakes Manor
Email Edition
Liss: If we're all living in a giant hologram, I'm going to JIZZ! IN! MY PANTS!
Iain: I JUST! JIZZED! IN! MY BRAIN!
Hologasm.
Have I Mentioned Lately That I Love Russ Feingold?
U.S. Senator Russ Feingold, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, issued the following statement today on plans to introduce an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to end appointments to the Senate by state governors and require special elections in the event of a Senate seat vacancy.As this plan involves more democracy, I fully expect Republicans to oppose it.
"The controversies surrounding some of the recent gubernatorial appointments to vacant Senate seats make it painfully clear that such appointments are an anachronism that must end. In 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution gave the citizens of this country the power to finally elect their senators. They should have the same power in the case of unexpected mid term vacancies, so that the Senate is as responsive as possible to the will of the people. I plan to introduce a constitutional amendment this week to require special elections when a Senate seat is vacant, as the Constitution mandates for the House, and as my own state of Wisconsin already requires by statute. As the Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee, I will hold a hearing on this important topic soon."
And possibly the DNC.
We're Going to Need a Clean-Up on Aisle Three
The Digital Shorts continue to be the only reason worth watching Saturday Night Live. I might even like "I Jizz in My Pants" even more than "Dick in a Box."
I love the way the dudez immediately start blaming the women. That's so exactly how tools like the characters in the video behave in that situation; such a perfect commentary from our favorite NOW t-shirt wearing comedian.
Btw, Iain and I are now jizzing in our pants over everything.
Iain: Do you want a soda?
Liss: Yes, please.
Iain hands Liss soda.
Liss: [singing] You hand me a soda and I JIZZ! IN! MY PANTS!
Portly's Sunday Skype Brunch
Hey Shakers! I'm holding the second Skype-chat at this link:
Portly's Sunday Brunch
Please join me for chat and fun (we had a blast last week). Shakers and their friends are welcome -- chat policy is the same as Shakesville comment policy.
See you there for virtual coffee, tea, and mimosas!
If you have any difficulty getting in, leave a comment in this thread, or email me.
(Note: You may want to check your Skype profile before you enter the chat and remove personal info if you want to remain anonymous -- also, using your Shakesville handle will be helpful.)
Update: Chat has ended as of 2:15 pm PST. I plan to post a Sunday Brunch chat next week from 10 am to 2 pm Pacific time. Watch for the announcement, and thanks to all who joined us.
It's Okay, Ted
Ted Haggard is back in the news.
It was only a matter of time, I suppose, before these stories hit the news. I'm not surprised, and I don't think anyone who knows what it is like to be in the closet is surprised either.Disgraced evangelical leader Ted Haggard's former church disclosed Friday that the gay sex scandal that caused his downfall extends to a young male church volunteer who reported having a sexual relationship with Haggard — a revelation that comes as Haggard tries to repair his public image.
Brady Boyd, who succeeded Haggard as senior pastor of the 10,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs, told The Associated Press that the man came forward to church officials in late 2006 shortly after a Denver male prostitute claimed to have had a three-year cash-for-sex relationship with Haggard.
Boyd said an "overwhelming pool of evidence" pointed to an "inappropriate, consensual sexual relationship" that "went on for a long period of time ... it wasn't a one-time act." Boyd said the man was in his early 20s at the time. He said he was certain the man was of legal age when it began.
Reached Friday night, Haggard declined to comment and said all interviews would have to be arranged through a publicist for HBO, which is airing a documentary about him this month.
Boyd said the church reached a legal settlement to pay the man for counseling and college tuition, with one condition being that none of the parties involved discuss the matter publicly.
For those who either don't get it or are still shallow enough to laugh and point -- perhaps too loudly -- the closet and all the baggage that comes with it is a lonely and claustrophobic place to live your life. What's worse, the more you try to stay in there, bolting the door shut against the real world and perhaps holding your family, your wife, or your children hostage with you, the worse it is when you finally come out. Meanwhile you torture yourself with denial and the instruments you use to enable the denial like booze or pills until the pressure becomes too much. It's like trying to compress water -- you can't do it -- or it comes out in catastrophic ways.
I don't know Ted Haggard personally, but I know a lot of people like him, and for a while I was in there with him. Fortunately I had a family that didn't judge me -- even though I was irrationally sure they would -- and I felt strongly enough in my spiritual beliefs that I was able to let go of the community I grew up with and embrace another one that I knew would welcome me. I was fortunate. For whatever reason, real or imagined, Ted Haggard was not. And now he is paying for it. He already has lost something he valued -- his spiritual community -- and he has endured the hatred, scorn, and mockery that came with his public outing. And while I may have been angry with him for his hypocrisy and his inability to accept the fact that being gay is hard-wired at the factory, so to speak, I always knew what he was dealing with.
So let me say this to him, speaking as one gay man who's been out of the closet since he was 22 and who spent the ten years before that very aware I was in it: it's okay, Ted, to come out now. I don't approve or condone your denials or the harm you've caused your family, your children, your church, or those who believed you when you said it was a one-time thing; but then, we've all done that. The thing you need to do is to make amends. Don't apologize for being gay, apologize for your actions. Don't deny what you are, but acknowledge who you are to those who mean the most to you. What you did in the past must be made right with no excuses, and you must shun the false hope of the religious alchemists who say that you can be made straight. There is nothing wrong with being gay, and besides, you can't turn lead into gold if you're gold already.
Ted Haggard has a lot of growing up to do. Being in the closet keeps you in the dark about what it's like to live in the world as a whole person, and once you get out, the light can be disorienting. That's okay, too. He's going to stumble and perhaps try to get back in. But pretty soon, he will discover that once you get used to it, you stop thinking of yourself in the terms of gay, straight, or whatever. You are just you.
And that's okay, too.
Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.
CNN Headline Nooz
Always asking the hard questions, like: Should your wife have guy-friends? [Please note: Reading the linked article may result in severe cranial injury as a result of repeated head-meet-desking.]
This segment of CNN Headline Nooz brought to you by the the 1950's.
[Previously in Teh Nooz: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six.]
I Write Letters
Dear Trolls,
All you need is me.
You hiss and groan, and you constantly moan
But you don't ever go away
And that's because
All you need is me
You roll your eyes up to the skies
Mock horrified
But you're still here
All you need is me
There's so much destruction
All over the world
And all you can do is
Complain about me
You bang your head against the wall
And say you're sick of it all
Yet you remain
'Cause all you need is me
And then you offer your one and only joke
And you ask me what will I be
When I grow up to be a man
Me? Nothing!
There's a soft voice singing in your head
Who can this be?
I do believe it's me
There's a naked man standing, laughing in your dreams
You know who it is
But you don't like what it means
There's so much destruction
All over the world
And all you can do is
Complain about me
I was a small, fat child in a welfare house
There was only one thing I ever dreamed about
Fate has just
Handed it to me - whoopee!
You don't like me, but you love me
Either way you're wrong
You're gonna miss me when I'm gone
You're gonna miss me when I'm gone
You don't like me, but you love me
Either way you're wrong
You're gonna miss me when I'm gone
You're gonna miss me when I'm gone...
Love,
Liss
P.S. I just got Mozza tix! Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!
So...
...I totally want this shirt:
—for what I'm quite certain are exactly none of the reasons for which it was conceived.
Shaker Gourmet: Chicken & Wine Sauce
From Broce, who says: "Ok....this is one my mother calls "chicken and wine sauce" though there's no wine anywhere near it. It's easy, and perhaps not terribly organically PC for lack of a better term, but it goes over *very* well with guests, I've found."
This sounds like a recipe that will work with a crock pot as well!Chicken & Wine Sauce
In a bowl mix:
1. 1 can cream of mushroom or cream of chicken soup. (Don't add water to any of the soups, just the soup itself)
2. A couple of large shakes of soy sauce.
3. 1 Can chicken and rice soup (I tend to use the reduced sodium soups).
Cut up a couple of stalks of celery fairly fine, and do the same with a small onion. If you like mushrooms toss in a few small mushrooms as well, sliced thin. Toss all of those in the sauce.
Take a cut up chicken and lay it in a single layer in a baking pan - I find pyrex works fine. Generally I use this with bone in skin on chicken, but I think it could easily be done with boneless skinless as well.
Pour the sauce over the chicken and put the chicken in the oven at about 350 for an hour or so - just make sure the juices run clear. The last 15 minutes or so I toss in a couple of handfuls of minute rice to soak up the sauce, but you can just as easily make rice separately.
When the chicken is done layer it over a bed of rice and spoon some of the sauce over it.
If you'd like to participate in Shaker Gourmet, email me at: shakergourmet (at) gmail.com
Daily Kitteh
It's practically impossible to get any work done with this level of
unbridled cuteness incessantly tormenting me from two feet away.
You Know You're Doing Something Right....
...when Bush's former chief speechwriter Marc Thiessen moans: "It's not even the end of inauguration week, and Obama is already proving to be the most dangerous man ever to occupy the Oval Office."
I Promise to Pretend That You Are More Competent Than I Am, While Still Doing the Work Myself
This short Chemistry dot com spot is running on the Bravo network lately (transcript below):
Woman: I promise to take out the recycling, even though I think you're way better at it.The idea that women should bolster men's egos by pretending to be less competent than they are is a real classic. Last week, Echidne wrote a post on Louisa May Alcott's Under The Lilacs. Echidne presents Alcott's description of an archery competition in which the book's young heroine is winning, but throws the competition at the last minute so that the boy will triumph. In return, she wins said boy's admiration. Echidne notes that Alcott's book shows "how much work has always gone into the turning out of conservative women."
Man: I promise never to take myself too seriously.
Isn't it time you found great chemistry with someone? Take our personality test and get your first five chemistry-inspired matches free. Visit Chemistry dot com today.
I think this pressure extends to progressive women as well, and it seems we haven't come as far since the Victorian era as we'd like to think. Furthermore, Chemistry's 16-second spot squeezes in an extra wrinkle: not only will the woman feign lower competence; she will do so while still performing the task herself.
And what happens if we comply with this cultural directive? Well, Chemistry dot com can help out there too.
I went and took another look at this commercial from their "vows" campaign:
Man A: I promise not to tell any of our friends that you occasionally wear bronzer.The martyr role? What, would that be like taking things onto oneself ("I promise to take out the recycling"), while maintaining a properly self-effacing attitude ("even though you're way better at it")? Over and over, forever?
Man B: Yeah, that's a secret!
Man B: I vow as your partner to never play the martyr role.
Man A: [points and laughs] That's your mother's job. And I promise to respect your rational problem with cilantro.
Watching these two commercials, I feel like I'm encountering the same woman at two stages of life: the young martyr-in-training, and the used-up mother good for a laugh about what a silly old martyr she is.
I think it's great that Chemistry dot com is open to clients seeking same-sex partners, and that they're not afraid to show it in adverts. A good next step would be to show two loving men without tut-tutting at women about what pains in the ass we are.
I would also like to see a depiction of two women together without getting into a clusterfuckastrophe of prescriptive gender stereotypes. But if this is how Chemistry dot com does with ads featuring one woman or even no women at all, I won't hold my breath. But I will keep on teaspoonin'.
At What Point...
...does chutzpah outweigh ego? Or do they just keep growing together until they collapse into a black hole of narcissism?
Blagojevich Compares his Arrest to Attack on Pearl Harbor
In an interview with the Associated Press yesterday, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) compared his arrest last month to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. “Dec. 9 to my family, to us, to me, is what Pearl Harbor Day was to the United States,” said Blagojevich, who faces federal corruption charges for attempting to sell President Obama’s vacant Senate seat. “It was a complete surprise, completely unexpected. And just like the United States prevailed in that, we’ll prevail in this.”It's a great time to be from Illinois! I'm sure next we'll be hearing that being kept from his morning jog is worse than the Hindenburg disaster.
