Hosted by a giant slingshot.
Make Way for Ducklings
In a scene right out of Robert McCloskey's classic children's story, look who showed up in the backyard this morning.
I'm sure these are Muscovy ducks since there's a large population of them that hang around along the canal and are frequent feeders in my yard.
Crossposted.
The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
And yes, I see I added an extra "o" in saloon. LOL. Wevs.
I'm too lazy to fix it now, so enjoy my knuckleheadery!
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
Daily Dose o' Cute
A slideshow of some of my better photographs of the furry residents of Shakes Manor—Matilda, Olivia, Sophie, and Dudley—set to The Smiths' "Oscillate Wildly."
In case this one gets yanked, too, a couple of still shots from the video are below the fold...
Dudley
Sophie
Olivia
Matilda
Leave Jason Batman* Alone!
If I hadn't already posted a Quote of the Day, this would have been it. Tough luck, Gabe. Better luck next time!
I would like to offer a defense of Jason Bateman.* Deliberate. Save your emails!
...Let's say that you were a successful Hollywood actor and you wanted to buy an expensive new phone on the first day it came out, because you, like many other confused people in this upside-down world apparently, have a deep need for immediate gratification. But you're a decent enough guy/lady. You go to the store, and you stand in line with everyone else. All 2,000 of them. (Seriously, that is so many people to be standing in line for a fucking phone. Unacceptable. That is the thing that people should have been booing. "Booo! Get off the line!") And then someone from the store comes up to you and says "Hi, I recognize your face from the TV at my house. It would be my pleasure to allow to you come into the store now without standing outside for six hours, which is a CHOICE that everyone else in this line is making OF THEIR OWN VOLITION." What are you going to do? Say no? "No, sir, I'm right where I am supposed to be. With the people!" That's somehow EVEN WORSE.
Not to mention the fact that it was one Jason Bateman, not, like, 300 Jasons Bateman. In a line of 2,000 people (God damn it! Doesn't anyone in Hollywood WORK?) letting Jason Bateman cut has no appreciable effect on the speed or efficiency of the line. It's going to take you just as long (too long) to get a thing that you don't need, much less that you don't need TODAY TODAY TODAY TODAY. "I was perfectly happy to spend the entire day in this awful line for a thing I could order from the comfort of my home and have within a week, but now that a single person has not had to suffer the same chosen fate, I am furious, but will definitely keep waiting in this line for sure. What am I going to do? NOT wait in this line? Don't be ridiculous."
Woot!
Today's strip was number 200. I can't believe it's run this long, since it was originally meant as a one-off riff on the long-running newspaper comic "Frank & Ernest"—the idea being that if its white, straight, male protagonists are "frank and earnest," then the biracial/gay and fat/female protagonists of my strip would be "conniving and sinister."
The Frank & Ernest strip that inspired C&S was this one. It ran in Aug. 09, right in the middle of the debates about healthcare reform, which left so much at stake particularly for the poor, for women, for people of color (especially poor women of color), and for gay men and lesbians, who largely can't get health insurance via partner benefits, and the dismissive "joke" about Congressional debates by two "frank and earnest" white guys, while I was spending my days plowing through Congressional testimony and sorting through details of complex reform proposals, just irked me to no end.
So I fired off a quick post about it, accompanied by a terribly, terribly drawn comic strip, lol. And then it just...stuck.
I've refined Deeky's and my avatars a bit over time, but it's still the same basic premise. And I guess I'll keep doing it until I run out of ideas.
Thanks to everyone who's been so supportive of the strip. And special thanks to Deeky, for being such a good sport.
Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"
See Deeky's archive of all previous Conniving & Sinister strips here.
[In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman (Liss) and a biracial queerbait (Deeky) telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.]
Quote of the Day
[Actual promotional image from film's official website.]
"I'm sure there are even worse Sandler movies to come for future generations to view as sociological curiosities. In the present moment, though, in the theater during Grown Ups, I felt a deep and abiding sadness every time the audience laughed and the sounds of their chuckles turned into the ringing of the cash register, and all I thought was a sad, simple truth: This, America, is why we can't have nice things."—Film critic James Rocchi, reviewing for MSN Movies the new Adam Sandler-penned masterpiece Grown Ups, a film he describes thus: "Imagine if The Big Chill were made today. And obsessed with flatulence, urine and breast milk. And every female character a hag, a harridan, a harpy or a hottie. And if none of the characters seemed to actually like each other."
[H/T to Iain.]
Speak for Yourself
Ugh, Roland Martin, please do shut up.
Anyone who says that "soccer will never be a dominant sport in America" without even a passing mention of the demographic shift currently taking place in the US, largely due to immigration from soccer-loving nations, is a bozo.
Especially someone who's a Texas native.
I thought I loved soccer when I was a teenager and regularly went with some soccer-loving friends to see Chicago Power games. And then I went to college in Chicago, and I worked as an instructor at an ESL (English as a Second Language) school for adult immigrants, and had students from all over the world, but mostly from Mexico and Central and South America, all of whom* loved soccer like whoa. And their kids loved soccer like whoa. And their kids will probably love soccer like whoa, too. Just like my immigrant husband does.
Personally, I suspect soccer will be "a dominant sport in America" just as soon as ESPN and its advertisers figure out how to make shitballs of money on a game that doesn't allow for regular commercial breaks.
[H/T to Iain.]
------------------------
* Not really "all." Just not like "all" USians dislike soccer.
Heard
I never listen to the radio except when I'm in the car. When I'm using my mom's car, as I was to run an errand awhile ago, I generally leave it on whatever station to which she's already got it tuned. And her favorite station always airs these obnoxious adverts for local casinos that boast "the loosest slots in Chicagoland."
1. It's impossible for every goddamn casino to have "the loosest slots in Chicagoland."
2. The "loosest slots"…?! Eww.
Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, makers of Lissie Brand Adhesive Bandages, sold in convenient bulk size, for inveterate klutzes.
Recommended Reading:
Kizu: These Are My Colours
Angry Asian Man: Filipino Nurses Fired for Speaking Tagalog
Andy: HRC Calls on Michael Steele to Repudiate Texas GOP Platform
Restructure!: Scientists Are "Normal" People, Some Children Discover
Fiqah: Pasttime Paradise: Down-Home Racism In "Post-Racial" America
Atrios: Your Liberal Media
Dorothy: My Weekend Pride
Leave your links in comments...
Assvertising, Part Wev.
I was checking to see whether there was any baseball on TV today, and ran across this ad campaign (image from copyranter):
It's bad enough that the Twins aren't on TV. It's worse yet that White Sox announcers will be calling today's Cubs-Sox game, meaning I'll hear approximately 557 references to balls prior to the third inning ([TW: homophobia]Welcome to [TW: Rape Imagery]White Sox Nation*, Population: Balls). But this, ad? Really?
Look:
1) People have in fact told me to grow a pair. This happens to a lot women, and not just the transsexual ones.
2) By "down there", I assume you mean vagina?
3) You know what takes a certain amount of courage? Growing a pair, and subsequently asserting one's right to not have said pair.
Summer's Eve is a product of the C. B. Fleet Company. You may contact them here.
–
*Okay, my personal biases are showing. There are plenty of wonderful people who root for the White Sox. I've just noticed an unfortunate trend in the last decade for said franchise to resort to mananalogies in tv broadcasts and promotional material.
[Assvertising: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110.]
Having it Both Ways
New York State is planning to sue BP. Not because it's concerned about worker deaths or environmental degradation. Nope, New York is suing because it's lost a lot of money on BP's stock.
Fair enough, I suppose. I actually contribute to one of the pensions in question, and I'm generally in favor of being able to retire one day.
This is where my non-understanding of capitalism shows. Or perhaps, my understanding begins to look depressing.
I pay a few thousand dollars a year into this pension plan. New York also puts some thousands of dollars into said plan. In 2060, I shall retire, and the State of New York will pay me $950,000 per year, hopefully for many decades. I know this sounds impressive, but do recall that in 2060, this amount will barely suffice to keep me in Rax (it'll be big again in the future-- just you wait) and subsidized housing. Anyhow, we'll have to find a way to make up the difference between several thousands and nearly a million, and presumably interest isn't going to cut it, so yeah, BP ahoy!
Therein lies the rub.
I think New York's got something of a case here. BP is clearly mismanaging the Deepwater Horizon spill, which is clearly hurting the value of its stock (although the CNNMoney article also suggests that I might consider cutting short my next Aldi run to buy BP stock). Perhaps if someone (BP?) gave investors a true sense of the risks involved, New York would have invested in funds that contained more stock from Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Wal-Mart, and other responsible corporations.
This is where having it both ways comes into play. Some folks (e.g., me!) maintain that not destroying the Gulf of Mexico is a social good (or at the very least, a social not-bad). Some folks (e.g., me!) are interested in enjoying grape pineapple milkshakes from Rax in the coming decades. It turns out that one road to Rax Riches (TM) involves allowing casual acquaintances to intimidate farmers in Columbia, harassing folks in the Caucasus, allowing employees to die on your watch, and generally making a mess of the planet, none of which seemed to be a problem a few months ago, incidentially.
Honestly, I don't know what the solution is. However, I'm more than a little uncomfortable with the notion that BP owes it to me to be more profitable. As I see it, that's kinda how we find ourselves here to begin with.
That Sound You Hear Is the Death Rattle of Dinosaurs
Remember Will Phillips, the 10-year-old Arkansas kid who refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance in class because the continued prohibition on same-sex marriage in most of the US renders the words "liberty and justice for all" meaningless to him…? Well, he has been invited to be the Grand Marshal of the Fayetteville Gay Pride Parade.
And that CANNOT STAND according to American Family Values Children Christian Liberty Freedom Patriot Association Foundation Organization!!!
The American Family Association, based in Tupelo, Miss., has called Will's selection to be grand marshal "a form of child abuse," and it has called on the city's mayor to "cancel his plans to issue a proclamation celebrating homosexual behavior and gay pride."You know, it's funny—I can't recall the AFA ever issuing a press release about their passion to stop Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist
"We believe that it goes beyond the pale for adults to exploit a 10-year-old child for dark political purposes," said Bryan Fischer, the director of issue analysis at AFA. "He is too young to understand. There is nothing about homosexual conduct to be proud of and much to be ashamed of."
The AFA, according to Fischer, has sent an "action alert" to its members in Arkansas, and he says they have deluged the mayor's and city council's office with e-mails "asking him to stop this charade." Though there are no plans to actively protest at the parade, Fischer said, "as of noon Thursday our records show that the mayor and city council had received 12,300 e-mails asking them to stop the parade."
Apart from the hypocrisy and evident bigotry emanating from the AFA, I've just got to call big-time bullshit on their contention that a 10-year-old is "too young to understand" the concept of equality or to have begun to rudimentarily develop his own set of ethics. A long time ago, I posted excepts from a journal I kept when I was 9, which included my contempt for an episode of Knight Rider centering sex and murder (instead of focusing on the technology and action stuff I loved, in no small part because it didn't feel upsetting to me).
The assertion that Will is too young to have come to his own conclusions about "homosexual conduct"—especially given that he has quite evidently been allowed the exposure to opposing viewpoints—is way more child-hating than offering him the chance to stand up for his beliefs at a Gay Pride Parade ever could be.
But I guess arguing he's being exploited is easier than admitting a 10-year-old kid is capable of more sophisticated thought than "God said so! I know because my dad said so! And he knows because his pastor said so! Because God said so!" which is the basis for the entire collection of unsupportable bigotries they call an ideology.
Maude Save Us From the Headless Fatties!
[Trigger warning for fat hatred and dehumanization.]
Shaker Sherri sent me a heads-up about this new campaign by billboard advertising company Interbest Outdoor to recruit potential advertisers: "Your Ad Here" is out and "Give Us Money to Take Down These Disgusting Pictures of Fat People! HURRY! ZOMG Look at How Hideously FAT They Are! BUY AN AD ALREADY!" is in.
[Click images to embiggen.]
If you can't see the images, they are, respectively, of a headless white fat female body, neck to knees, clad in only bra and panties and standing sideways, and a headless white-but-vaguely-swarthy pot-bellied and hairy male body, mid-chest to mid-thigh, clad only in white briefs and standing frontways. The copy on each reads: "The sooner you advertise here, the better. Interbest Outdoor."
I am, as ever, a particular fan of the headless dehumanization. Fates forfend anyone's totes fun fat-hatin' be ruined by the reminder the fat bodies at which they're laughing belong to real human beings, who, if they're like most fat people, don't find in their real lives much of a distinction between, "I don't hate fat people; I just hate their bodies."
I also love the idea that Interbest Outdoor apparently doesn't think any of its potential advertisers are fat and/or hairy.
There is, by the way, a third in the series, which is a closely-cropped image of a man picking his nose. Because, ya know, being fat is just a bad habit you don't have the will or courtesy to break.
In Which I Substitute An Email Conversation with Liss for an Actual Post
Deeky: OMFGLOL! This is sooooooooooooo hilarious. (It's not.)
p.s. Get off my lawn!
Liss: The reason why this is stupid, apart from the fact that no one would ever do that, is that the "joke" is predicated on the erroneous assumption that technology necessarily undermines intimacy. Which might have been passable as "humor" before every single person on the planet w/ the privilege of an internet connection had themselves or knew someone who had fallen in love or made a fast and lasting friendship over the internet.
Now that shit just reads as: "Relationships formed via technology aren't real."
To which my only response is to invite its author to kiss my ass.
Deeky: Seriously. Whoever drew that is a total butthole.
New York Raises Price of Cigarettes to Eleventy!!!!11! Dollars Per Pack
...at least in New York City.
Earlier this week, the New York State legislature passed yet another one-week budget extender. This latest bill included provisions to raise the state tax on cigarettes by $1.60 on July 1, and on September 1, to collect (so says New York) tax on tobacco sold to non-indigenous visitors to tribal lands coterminous with New York State.
There's certainly commentary to be had on what now passes for New York's legislative process. We don't exactly have a great track record.
There's also commentary to be had about the following truths:
1) New York has a massive budget deficit.
2) Cigarettes are unhealthy (and in turn, presumably drive up medical costs).
Of course, I'd rather blather on about responsibility.
Excise taxes on tobacco are politically safe. Everyone, seemingly, loves to hate those reprehensibly irresponsible smokers.
I see a few massive problems with heavy reliance on hatred-based taxation.
This particular tax hike is condescending, and as I said, based on hatred of particular groups of people. See also, the proposed NYS tax on sugary beverages.
Speaking of “particular groups of people”, I believe I've already mentioned that members of certain demographics are more likely to be targeted by cigarette marketers, and/or are more likely to smoke than others: people of color and/or LGBT people and/or lady people, as opposed, say, to straight white guys. As for hatred of indigenous people, yeah, there's a bit of that going on, too. Again.
In these tough times, it strikes me that it's been increasingly common for politicians to bemoan folks' lack of responsibility, and to talk of how we all need to sacrifice. People who rely on social services need to sacrifice. People who provide social services need to sacrifice. Teachers and others public employees need to sacrifice. Smokers need to sacrifice. People who buy shoes need to sacrifice. Indigenous tribes need to sacrifice (actually, that last one's usually a little less polite :ahem:).
This is all very interesting, given that I haven't heard much about the requirement for certain other people to make responsible sacrifices. These are largely the same folks whose continuous irresponsibility helped put New York (and much of the country) in the hole in which it now finds itself. Perhaps we could spend more time discussing the impact of an increasingly regressive tax structure (including a growing reliance on excise taxes and user fees). I haven't heard either the Demopublican or Tea Party Parties discuss this lately, so I thought I'd throw it out there for kicks. Have at it.
Question of the Day
That's me, wearing one of my favorite t-shirts, which says: "Don't make me go Zelda on you."
My absolute favorite t-shirt, though, is my "Rats Off To Ya!" t-shirt, which I wore to Blartfest 2009, otherwise known as Lollablartooza.
Anyways... What's on your favorite t-shirt?
