Boatboy, who is a frequent commenter at Bark Bark Woof Woof and here at Shakesville, has started his own adventure in bloggy goodness:
The View from the Docks
Go over and say hi and add him to your blogroll.
Welcome Aboard!
Dispatch from Blogginz HQ
Hey all you Shakers, it's Kenny Blogginz here again, with another one of my Blogginz Bloggin' Blasts! Sorry about not posting in 10,000,000 years, but I've been super busy with community college.
Anyway, just thought I'd whip up a post to let all you fanz know I wasn't dead, and share one of my Amusing AnecdotesTM!
So I was at McDonald's, eating quality food, when all of the sudden, my good friend (let's call him Jeff Goldblum) said, "Don't look now, Kenny Blogginz, but there's a baby right behind you that looks exactly like disgraced Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich!"
Naturally, I just had to see this with my own eyes. Sure enough, there was this baby with a gigantic pompadour of combed-to-the-side brown hair, probably goo-ing and gah-ing about the price of vacant senate seats and how he was just like Gandhi!
[Blago Baby Dramatization]
In closing, next time you're about to ask Rod Blagojevich the tough questions on national television, make sure he's not actually a baby.
I think that's what might have happened on The View.
Take A Moment
For those of you buried under ice and snow...
(click pic to embiggen)
Relax and imagine yourself basking in the sun or enjoying the warm breeze in the shade for a few moments before going back to work or braving the cold.
PS: I also put this up as a commemoration of the first anniversary of the production of Can't Live Without You at Manhattan Rep in New York. This picture was used as the publicity poster.
Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.
Happy Birthday, SKM!
Happy Birthday to youuuuuuuuuuuuuu!
Happy Birthday to youuuuuuuuuuuuuu!
You look like a purveyor of the radical feminazi agendaaaaaaa!
And you smell like one, too!
(Mmm, lavender!)
I must admit, I was looking for an altogether different cake when I stumbled across this beauty. And upon laying eyes one it, my search was over. Mr. Tom Selleck and the chestiest cake evah won the day. Big time!
Steele to Head RNC
We see your black president and we raise you a black Republican National Committee Chairman!
(The GOP is evidently as good at poker as they are at everything else.)
No word on whether Steele is a Magic Negro, too.
ETA: In all seriousness, and despite the fact that Steele regularly provides the GOP cover for its racist bullshit (like the aforementioned holiday CD fiasco), I think this is, on balance, a good thing. It's not that Steele's positions aren't objectionable; they are. But they are no more objectionable than any of the other men (yes, all men) who were in the running for this position. (And, in some cases, they are less objectionable.)
It matters that there are visible people of color in top leadership posts of both parties at the same time. That's important for this country, and it's more than just a symbol. It's one of the millions of little things that will fill in that oft-referenced void in which abuse of marginalized peoples happens.
ARGH
Shaker Kathy emails:
I found this in the comments to the Katha Pollitt piece you linked this morning. The CIA is handing out Viagra so the chieftains can get it on with their "much younger" wives, and in return they give information on militants. But God forbid we should fund family planning for low-income women in this country.I also like this: "Chieftains are offered health checks before being offered Viagra to ensure the excitement is not too much for them." Meanwhile, Krugman writes today that "the United States is the only wealthy country in which the economic catastrophe will also be a health care catastrophe—in which millions of people will lose their health insurance along with their jobs, and therefore lose access to essential care."
Is this week over yet?
Rape Culture: Hell's Kitchen Edition
Does anyone here watch Hell's Kitchen, Fox's garish, ugly take on Top Chef? Season Five premiered last night and we were introduced to the Tool Academics that are this year's contestants. It's your typical crew of self-important, deluded gourmet wanna-bes and as per usual there are at least a couple (or three, or four, or twelve) misogynists in the bunch. And right off the bat we're introduced to a real winner. Giovanni, an executive chef from Florida, in his little get-to-know-me moment confesses he has quite the way with the ladies:
When I first started cooking, it was an easy way to get a girl to my house. Instead of taking 'em out to dinner, I could get 'em home—food is an aphrodisiac, then you pour a little wine onto that, and then you go on to the next [pause; smarmy grin] level.And there it is, about five minutes into the episode, and we've a man practically admitting he rapes women, and it is presented unquestioningly, unblinkingly, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. It should be shocking and surprising to me, to everyone really, but it isn't. Rape culture: you're cooking in it.
[Rape Culture: We're Soaking In It—Parts One, Two.]
Today In Vile, Offensive and Stupid
Why, yes, that is a shifty-eyed President Obama, sending a (white) woman, against her will, to a "Mengele-esque" abortionist (who's covered in blood, don't you know, and standing next to a cash register). Note the newspaper with the headline "Gitmo To Close" as the
How in the fuck does one's world view become so distorted, so detached from reality, that this is how they see Obama's election to office? Forced abortions in pursuit of cash while terrorists are allowed to run free? Really?
For fuck's sake.
(Via Lawyers, Guns and Money.)
** Updated to add: As pointed out, the fetus is the one asking to be waterboarded, not the woman. She, as per usual, "has absolutely no voice at all," to quote commenter GypsyLee. And since several of you have asked, the above is by cartoonist Glenn McCoy of the Universal Press Syndicate.
Buddy, I Got Your PMS Right Here
When last we visited with Freakonomics, they were comparing prostitution to rice consumption. Today, Stephen Dubner introduces his readers to a tracking tool for men to keep tabs on the menstrual cycles of the women in their lives:
A Menstrual Site for MenYes. Be free of misogyny.
That's how PMSBuddy.com pitches itself. To wit:PMSBuddy.com is a free service created with a single goal in mind: to keep you aware of when your wife, girlfriend, mother, sister, daughter, or any other women in your life are closing in on "that time of the month" - when things can get intense for what may seem to be no reason at all.Note that they are smart enough to not include "employees" in the list of women to keep an eye on.
Is there anything the internet can't do?
With regard to Dubner's commentary, I love how he takes care to point out the wisdom of excluding employees "in the list of women to keep an eye on," which not only implicitly suggests that all men are employers and all women employees (female bosses? zuh? twenty-first century whaaaaat?), but also makes one positively giggle at the thought that there's hardly a need for PMSBuddy.com to make the suggestion when there are bloggers at the New York Times to do it for them.
And with regard to the premise itself, specifically the idea of "things [getting] intense for what may seem to be no reason at all," I will merely direct you to this old post, in which I explain that women who suffer irritability as a symptom of PMS are not losing their shit for no reason. PMS does not lower one's ability to reason; it lowers one's patience and, hence, tolerance for bullshit.
Perhaps I should launch a menstrual site for women: The PMSBuddyBuddy—a free service with a single goal in mind: To give the wives, girlfriends, mothers, sisters, daughters, and other women in the lives of douchebags using the PMSBuddy a place to explain what those self-centered assholes are doing day in and day out that's driving them fucking nuts, i.e. the reasons that "things can get intense."
Like signing up to a social networking site and finding a de facto friend waiting for you, each user at PMSBuddyBuddy will have "He uses PMSBuddy" automatically generate at the top of her list.
[Thanks to Shakers Emily and TJ for passing that along.]
Shaker Gourmet: Roast Veg Stew
Our recipe this week comes from Shaker JoAsakura, who adds that is is also known as: "Crap. I have a crisper drawer full of produce about to go off."
If you'd like to participate in Shaker Gourmet, email me at: shakergourmet (at) gmail.comRoast Veg Stew
Ingredients part 1: Potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots tomatoes, squash - any varieties. Red bell peppers (or..eugh..green), Parsnips or turnips or beets work well too ;) Basically whatever you might have on hand. I usually use one or two of each. Peel and cube. Preheat oven to 450 deg. F. Toss veg with a little bit of olive oil, sage, pepper and salt. Pop on a baking tray and let roast in the oven for 30 minutes. (or less. After about 20, you might want to check, since all ovens are different)
Ingredients part 2: a couple of good handfuls of spinach and/or mustard greens/broccoli/kale/etc., 1 12 oz. can of crushed tomatoes, 1 cup of veggie broth, 1 cup of dried lentils (optional, but great), spices to taste.
On stovetop, saute up some broccoli or spinach (or any mixture of strong, tasty green things) with some garlic and onion. I usually use about three cloves worth of garlic and roughly the same amount of onion. When everything is wilted and/or golden, empty both the can of tomatoes and the broth into the pot and stir well. add lentils. If
you have dried mushrooms on hand, they're great to crumble in this. A dried chile pepper is great too, if you've got one. Neither is necessary.
I spice this by scent, really. My usual mix includes herbamar, smoked paprika, dried mustard powder, and pepper.
When the veg in the oven are done (browned edges, all the potatoes are soft, etc.) dump them into the pot with the other ingredients and cover and let simmer for about half an hour more.
If it's too thick for your needs, extra water or veg broth will not harm it.
It's great in a bowl with rice, spooned onto tortillas (teff or corn in my case), or mixed with scrambled eggs in the AM!
Facepalme D’Or: “Structured Water”
Happy Friday, Shakers! It’s time for me to make a cup of tea, look back over my week, sift through all of the gobsmackingly, facepalmingly stupid things I have encountered, and award my Facepalme D’Or—the award for the flat-out dumbest thing a person or media presentation has tried to foist off on me this week.
So, in honor of President Obama's pledge to restore science to its rightful place, I award the Facepalme D’Or to Elysée Cosmetics for its “structured water complex”. I encountered this risible concept during a brief, lamentable exposure to the Home Shopping Network (HSN). I cannot find the relevant snippet of this HSN skin-care ad on YouTube, but Elysée's website repeats the same gobbledygook:
Structured Water Complex: Different waters resonate at different energy frequencies. Some of these frequencies are better at penetrating through the cellular wall tissue than others. Hexagonal structured water is proving to be the best. Similarly, cell wall tissue resonates at varying energy frequencies, this relating to age, location and condition of the cell tissue. Some of these frequencies absorb water easier than others. When water, with energy frequencies best suited for absorbing into the cell, is coupled with energy frequencies most successful in penetrating the cell wall, the result is more rapid hydration of the cells, than with regular pH balanced water. Structured Water technology utilized in our entire line of products combines energy signals with anti-aging ingredients to achieve the best available results. The task is to allow water to penetrate the cell wall easier (with less resistance) producing faster hydration of the cell tissue.Codswallop. Notice the classic pseudoscientific gambit of vaguely referring to real scientific concepts, taking them out of context, and giving them groundless applications. In this case, Elysée invokes the concepts of nuclear magnetic resonance and cell signaling/signal transduction, and abuses them to hornswoggle the scientifically illiterate among us into buying $60-an-ounce water.
Like the Nobel Prize, the Facepalme D’Or can be shared. I therefore include all makers of contraptions for "changing the structure” of drinking water (I'm looking at you but will not link to you, Water Vitalizer Plus); high-dollar "clustered" bottled water (for shame, Zunami!), and Max Huber Research Labs, who continues to use its “deconstructed water” in Crème De La Mer products, even after the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority found there was no scientific evidence to support the company’s claims back in 2002.
No, medicine shows and their snakeoil are nothing new. But these particular hucksters are hiding behind science, and science has a lot of recovering to do after Bush's fondness for censoring scientists and eliminating scientific oversight, so I'm in a zero-tolerance kind of mood.
There's more about “structured” water and pseudoscience by chemist Stephen Lower, who has written a handy website debunking this whackaloonery.
And, check out ScienceBlogs’ Rightful Place blog.
Feel free to leave your own personal Facepalme D'Or nominees in comments.
Quote of the Day
"I'm going to be urging—in fact not urging, demanding—that the Treasury Department figures out some way to get the money back. This is unacceptable."—Senator Chris Dodd, on the $18.4 billion in bonuses handed out by Wall Street financial firms even as taxpayers are bailing them out. It's one of the largest ever bonus pools during some of the worst ever losses in the securities industry.
President Obama is urging them to be responsible and "show some restraint and show some discipline." Uh, yeah. If they were capable of that, we wouldn't be bailing them out in the first place.
For the Top Chefies...
Chef Jeff McInnis is not your sex object.
I'm not going to change the way I cook because of one person's opinion. My opinion about Tom Colicchio's food is that it's extremely boring. I've been to his restaurant. His chicken dish on his menu is roasted chicken with roasted potatoes, thyme and olive oil. If I want that, I'd go to my grandmother's house.Well, that's certainly the most interesting Jeff's ever been. If only he had shown this haughty, hubristic, slightly delusional side of himself on the show, maybe his knives would still be unpacked in the Top Chef kitchen.
...I think the show used me as some kind of sex object. Every single show that I've ever seen, they have me with my shirt off in the beginning — which is kind of strange. I don't run around the house naked half the time like they portrayed me. It seems like a camera was always following me around trying to find me whenever I'm taking my clothes off to change in the morning or at night. So, to be used like that is always fun.
I always knew there was some fire lurking behind that carefully-maintained anger management veneer, but see what happens when you refuse to let loose the crazy? You lose out to badly cooked veal and an Italian accent.
Lesson learned, Chef Jeff.
Blue Dogs and Token Republicans
I was going to write about the Blue Dog (i.e. conservative) Democrats starting to make obstructionist noises, and about Obama reportedly seeking a Republican for his cabinet (which is being reported as if he didn't already appoint whiny-ass jerk and former congressional Republican Ray LaHood to as Secretary of Transportation), but Digby already wrote this post about both, so just go read that.
I 
Meryl Streep
Meryl Streep won Best Female Actor at the Screen Actors Guild Awards the other night for her role in Doubt, and I loved her acceptance speech. For one, she's funny, which, of course, women aren't supposed to be. For another, she celebrates other women, including her competitors, completely defying the Girl Math. And finally, she is humble without discounting her own accomplishments, which is an excellent model for lots of women, who—by virtue of an absence of examples of simultaneous female leadership and humility—have a difficult time talking about the things they do well without minimizing their importance. (Raises hand.) Meryl Streep is a trailblazer on many paths. I boundlessly admire her.
Thank you, everybody. Well, I didn't even buy a dress! I'm really, really, really shocked! And even though awards mean nothing to me anymore [grins, pants nervously and excitedly], I'm really happy. [laughs] Okay, I want to thank, oh, so many people—Miramax, Daniel Batteck (ph), and especially Scott Rudin, who just goes out of his way to find interesting things for everybody to do, especially the girls!
And, oh! Can I just say there is no such thing as the "best" actress? You know? There is no such thing as the "greatest living actress." I am in a position where I have secret information, you know, that I know this to be true. I am so in awe of the work of the women this year—nominated, not nominated. So proud of us girls!
And everybody wins when we get parts like this. Thank you to John Patrick Shanley for writing this amazing piece. Thank you to Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is just the most fun to work with and the most—he sets such a great example to all of us of how to live your work with integrity and imagination every time, every time out. Thank you to the glorious Amy Adams—so funny, so real. The gigantically gifted Viola Davis—my god, somebody give her a movie!
Wow, I'm sure I've forgotten everybody. Joseph Foster, all the kids, Helen Stenbourg (ph), Alice Drummond, all the cast, thank you to the Sisters of Charity, thank you Sister Peggy—big hug to everybody there. Your, your love, and your work, is so inspiring, was so inspiring to all of us. Okay, I gotta get off! But thank you so much—I really, I really do appreciate this. Thank you, actors! [blows a kiss] Love you, love you.
Women Transform Welsh Politics
I've frequently written (e.g. here) about the importance of diversity in government and the relationship between inclusion and the centering of minority and/or marginalized issues. There's an interesting story at the BBC today that provides a brilliant real-life example of the effects of gender parity:
The almost equal gender balance [47% since May 2007] of AMs in the Welsh assembly has transformed how politics in Wales is conducted, according to a new report.That list bit meaning, of course, that it's not such an entrenched boys' club that institutional misogyny can be disguised as "tradition."
…The report quotes an anonymous male Labour AM who says: "It makes a difference to the culture in which group meetings are conducted, as I've said we have fierce disagreement in group meetings but it is conducted with the complete absence of chest thumping and table thumping."
The AMs interviewed as part of the research agreed that women had an impact on the type of policy issues that were debated. More emphasis was given to what one AM referred to as "non-traditional areas".
They said: "Domestic violence is on the agenda, equal pay is on the agenda and all those kinds of really important issues that probably wouldn't be there if there wasn't such a high number of women."
Researcher Charlotte Aull Davies from Swansea university said: "The culture, the way debates are conducted, the language used and the policies that are prioritised are linked, by almost all AMs, both to the gender balance of the assembly and to the fact that it is a new institution."
Maybe I'm reading something that isn't really there, but it seems to me that the male assembly member quoted seems almost relived to be free from the obligation of beating his chest. If he were, I wouldn't blame him. I've been the only woman working on an entire floor of men in an advertising firm, and that shit is exhausting even to watch.
[H/T to Shaker chaos_monkey.]
Friday Blogaround
Seriously, Shakers, learn to blogaround.
Recommended Reading:
Jill: A Story in Pictures
Kevin: Oscar Grant Punched in Face before Being Shot
Rebecca: Is it Justice Yet?
Marcella: Judge Unimpressed by Rapist's Excuses
Boehlert: The AP's Thursday Train Wreck
Avedon: In the Weeds
Leave your links in comments...
(How to Be) Impossibly Beautiful
Today, the always-responsible Daily Mail covers the "Jessica Simpson Weight Controversy" in its typically ghoulish way (under the headline "Thighs the limit as Jessica Simpson squeezes into skin-tight leather trousers")—and I warn you that clicking through will expose you to some serious fat-hatred, long before you even get to the comments, so click judiciously.
The reason I mention it at all is because it includes a "before and after"-style image juxtaposition of Simpson that is meant to illustrate how far she's fallen…
That's what we're really talking about here. The difference between those two photos.
(One of which, let's note, is an airbrushed publicity shot and the other a candid shot.)
On the left, "every man's" fantasy. On the right, a disgusting, sloppy, fatass wreck that inspires editorial representation like this:
Perspective has left the building.
Speaking of perspective, now here's the really interesting part from the Daily Mail article:[Simpson] spent months sculpting her body to play Daisy Duke for the 2005 big screen version of Dukes Of Hazzard.
Got that? Even eating a strict diet, Simpson had to work out two hours a day, six days a week to attain the physique she's now being crucified for no longer having—and it's evidently a perfectly reasonable expectation that she do it for the rest of her life.
She endured two-hour workouts six days a week with personal trainer Michael Alexander, who sculpted her physique with a combination of running, squats, lunges and weight-resistance exercises.
She also followed a South Beach Diet-style low-carb, high-protein menu which featured grilled chicken, fish and green vegetables.
Simpson didn't need that rigorous regime because she needed to lose lots of weight: She just had to get to Daisy Duke from where she is now—which used to be considered enormously hot, until she made an extraordinary effort to make her body do something it doesn't naturally do. Now she's lambasted for refusing to maintain it by dedicating at least twelve hours a week of her life just to working out, a schedule she called "emotionally destructive."
And in this very article, stuck right between the paragraphs detailing that demanding routine and the paragraphs reporting Simpson's heartbreaking description of it, is this:But following her recent weight increase, it appears Jessica has been indulging herself over the Christmas and Thanksgiving period.
Yes, that's right. She's just a voracious pig.
By the way, it was just over a year ago that Jessica Simpson was too skinny.
To every Shaker who reads this: Be healthy. Be happy. Remember that perspective has left the building. And know there is at least one other person on the planet who does not give the tiniest, infinitesimal fuck what you look like and thinks you are beautiful just. as. you. are. because everyone looks hot holding a teaspoon.
