So, after Andrew Breitbart doctored a video to make her look as though she were biased against white people, Shirley Sherrod was pushed out of her job at the USDA, because, according to Sherrod, "you are going to be on Glenn Beck tonight." And how did that knee-jerk reactionism to avoid bad press (as if there's ever going to be any good press for the administration on the fucking Glenn Beck show, christ) work out for Obama & Co.?
A black employee who resigned from the Agriculture Department on Monday said the White House forced her out after remarks that she says have sparked a fabricated racial controversy.
Shirley Sherrod, the former Georgia director of Rural Development, said she received a phone call from the USDA's deputy undersecretary Cheryl Cook on Monday while she was in a car. Cook told her that the White House wanted her to call it quits.
"They called me twice," Sherrod told the Associated Press. "The last time they asked me to pull over the side of the road and submit my resignation on my Blackberry, and that's what I did."
Firing of USDA official highlights larger political problems involving race: "The sensitivity to Sherrod's comments—particularly in an agency that has a history of discrimination against minority farmers—was evidenced by the dispatch with which Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack ordered her to resign. Both Vilsack and an official at the White House denied Sherrod's assertion, in an interview on CNN, that her firing had come at the instigation of the White House. The decision, they insisted, was Vilsack's alone."
The firing of Shirley Sherrod—and the cowardice of Tom Vilsack: "[The firing of Sherrod] is mostly about cowardice. The coward in question is Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack who, even though from Iowa, fired Sherrod in a New York minute, and by extension and tradition—"The buck stops here," remember?—Barack Obama himself. Where do they get off treating anyone so shabbily?"
Ousted USDA official: I'm not sure I'd take job back: "The woman ousted from the Agriculture Department over racially tinged remarks that sparked a firestorm in the media said she was uncertain if she would return to her job if invited back. … 'I am just not sure how I would be treated there,' she said, adding that she couldn't get coworkers to listen to her side of the story." Who could blame her?
Yeah, this is much better than having Glenn Beck—whom no one expects to ever say anything favorable, nor even truthful, about the Obama administration anyway—babbling stupidly about the story for a night or two. It's always preferable to take the bait in the most reactionary and panicky way possible and then be (quite rightly) regarded as craven amateurs who can be bullied into behaving in the most ghastly, contemptible way toward decent people just because some mendacious hack says so.
I also have to wonder if they know what the optics of this are. If [Breitbart et. al.] can scare them to this extent with obviously doctored videos, what happens when they see a real threat? Are they going to flap their arms like penguins and run around in circles screaming "they're coming to get us, run for your lives!!?" At this point, that doesn't seem entirely ridiculous.
Seriously, this shows tremendous weakness. Andrew Brietbart is a con artist and right wing entertainer whose antics should always be met with a cynical laugh and a shake of the head. To fall for his schtick more than once is political malpractice.
…They are telling [right wingers] everywhere that all they have to do is gin up a phony controversy (especially about a black person, apparently) and the administration will fire them so as not to shake confidence that they are "fair service providers."
This is sheer cowardice.
This entire situation is emblematic of the biggest problem with the Obama administration: Their priority isn't what's right. Their priority is what's politic.
Meanwhile, the NAACP says they were "snookered by Fox News and Tea Party Activist Andrew Breitbart into believing she had harmed white farmers because of racial bias," but will learn from this "teachable moment." If the NAACP still needed to be taught that Breitbart is a professional liar after the ACORN bullshit, something has gone terribly wrong at the NAACP.
Still. At least they admitted they fucked up. Which is more than anyone can say for the administration.
Due to important Phil Collins related work, Genesis Rewired (featuring Daryl Stuermer, the creative force behind Genesis) has canceled its August 4th concert in Syracuse.
"He'll comply with all the conditions and hopefully put this matter behind him and hopefully get back to work."—Philip Friedman, attorney for Pennsylvania North East District Judge Gerard Alonge, who was "suspended without pay Tuesday for two months for behavior that included calling female lawyers repeatedly and making uninvited visits to their homes or offices." Friedman also helpfully explained that Alonge is merely "socially inept and challenged with women," but never meant them any harm.
The Department of Public Health on Monday expanded its vaccination recommendation to include children age 7 and older; adults age 64 and older; women before, during and immediately after pregnancy; and anyone who may have contact with pregnant women or infants.
A third Los Angeles County infant has died of whooping cough, public health officials announced Tuesday.
The confirmation of the death -- the sixth pertussis-related death this year in the state -- comes a day after the California Department of Public Health expanded criteria for those who should be vaccinated against the highly contagious disease amid what is shaping up to be the worst outbreak in 50 years.
“This expanded set of recommendations is an appropriate response to the epidemic in Los Angeles County and statewide,” Dr. Jonathan E. Fielding, the county’s public health director, said in a statement. “Vaccination is our best defense against pertussis. This is a disease that is especially dangerous for infants under six months of age, who are not old enough to have received the number of vaccine doses needed to be protected against whooping cough.”
So far this year, nearly 1,500 cases of whooping cough have been reported statewide, about 289 in Los Angeles County, including 184 laboratory-confirmed cases, officials said. All of those killed by the disease were infants.
Pertussis is the formal name for whooping cough, and it's a disease that is now preventable and unfortunately is still very much with us, and there's several reasons for that. One is that the original childhood vaccines didn't confer lifelong immunity, so the kids who got properly immunized in childhood because they had conscientious parents, by the time they were teenagers, forget it. They're a reservoir of continuing infection in the community.
[...]
Whooping cough is a particularly miserable disease. ... You cough and you cough and cough, and you cannot stop. Eventually you manage to inhale a little air, and that's the whoop. And if you don't inhale any air, you may pass out. If you do, you're likely to make the noise of the whoop and throw up, and then a few hours later or even an hour later you do it all over again. These spells happen many, many times a day, and they'll also wake you up in the middle of the night. So these people are sleep-deprived, miserable. They never know when the next attack is going to get them. ...
Just the mechanics of the cough will hurt. Adults get rib fractures. It takes a pretty brutal cough to break your ribs. Little kids will get hernias; they'll get rectal prolapse; they'll get bleeding around the eye; occasionally they get bleeding in their skull; they'll bite their tongues. They do all kinds of damage just from the mechanics of the cough, never mind the fact that these people are suffocating and miserable.
What about those who can't be vaccinated?
They are highly dependent on everyone around them to be immune, and certainly one of the major public health recommendations is that people who have contact with infants should get vaccinated because they're dependent on all of us not to give it to them. ...
But the real problem with young infants is they're too young to vaccinate themselves; they don't get a good response to the vaccine in the first several weeks of life. And of course most of their mothers have no immunity, because the average woman of childbearing age in this country has no immunity to whooping cough, so she has no antibodies to share across the placenta. And so those babies are completely vulnerable, and they're the ones who are most likely to die of whooping cough.
…shocked, I tell you, to find out that conservative media blowhard Andrew Breitbart selectively and mendaciously edited video of a speech given by USDA employee Shirley Sherrod at an NAACP function in order to "prove" that the NAACP and the Obama administration is racist.
Breitbart cut the video to make it appear as though Sherrod, who is black, didn't do everything in her power to help a white farmer because he was white—which is indeed what Sherrod says, but as part of a larger anecdote, the context of which Breitbart edited out, about how she eventually did work with that farmer over a two-year period and eventually became friends with him and his wife, Eloise Spooner. She was telling a story about overcoming racism, and he edited it to cast her as a racist. Spooner, now 82, says: "She's the one I give credit to with helping us save our farm."
Breitbart, called out for his "creative" editing, responded, "I think the video speaks for itself. The way she's talking about white people ... is conveying a present tense racism in my opinion. But racism is in the eye of the beholder."
Unfortunately, despite Breitbart's tactics being exposed as the manipulative, dishonest, unfair garbage that they are, Sherrod has still been forced out of her position at the USDA, because the administration did not even wait for context of the video before pushing her out the door. They took the word of known liar Andrew Breitbart over a two-decade employee of the US government, in order to avoid controversy.
Yeah, how's that working out for you?
Now the administration is pointing the finger at Tom Vilsack, and the USDA is pointing it back at the administration. Whatfuckingever. Who cares. They're all a goddamn disgrace—and if they had any decency, Sherrod would be given her job back with a hefty promotion and a humongous apology ASAP. Stop playing the blame game and fix it. Assholes.
Dudley going wild at the dog park last weekend. Set to Suede's "Moving."
We were the only ones at the dog park for most of the time we were there last weekend, so Dudz didn't have anyone to play with except us. And, as you'll see in the video, he still hasn't quite grasped the concept of "ball" yet, lol. So Iain and I would walk in the opposite direction to Dudz, and, once we were halfway across the park, he would go tearing by us at full speed, prompting us to then walk in a different direction. This immediately became the Most Funnest Game Evarrrr!—and we played it for about 40 minutes until Dudz was absolutely knackered. (And so were we!)
For those who prefer, and request, the more domestic videos of the girls and Dudz chillaxing at home, I've got more video from this weekend, and I'll try to get that edited and posted later this week.
A couple of still shot of Dudz on a tear are below the fold.
I look for the tiny bits of good in the article: that transgender women are able to find employment that they couldn't before. If it means someone's not forced into* the sex trade, this is good. The comment section is surprisingly not headdesky (as of this writing; there are only 19 comments as I write this). The post itself isn't horridly objectionable.
But at the same time, this practice simply reinforces the transphobia that makes it even slightly effective: it's only the "shame" of having a transgender person walk up to your door and knock that's in play here, and I have a hard time feeling that that's a good thing in a more general sense. And can it be long before one of the transgender women here comes into a situation of violence? Wouldn't be the first time tax collectors had run into that problem, nor trans people. Mixing the two seems like a recipe for disaster, particularly in a country in which Important People can get away with even more violent contempt for the "lesser" than many. Note that the article points out they stayed away from one tax defaulter, because the person happened to be an important minister.
I really, really don't blame any of the women getting involved. When one can't get work, one takes what comes, keeps one's head down, and one takes the damn money, because who knows where it can come from next time?
* As opposed to choosing to take part; while there can be a valuable conversation had on whether being a sex worker is something one can reasonably be said to "choose", please note that this post is not the place for that conversation.
I've never been much of a fan of Bret Easton Ellis. Reading about self-absorbed rich people has rarely appealed to me (see also), but I have read a couple of his books. I don't recall much about either of them, other than one started (and ended) in mid-sentence as some sort of stylistic conceit.
All of which is neither here nor there, and is just a preface to the news that Ellis has a new book out.
Imperial Bedrooms is described by Publishers Weekly as a "brutal sequel to Less Than Zero." Clay (AKA Andrew McCarthy) is "casting teenagers for his eighties period film" and "finds himself eyeing the sixteen-year-old actors dressed in the style of his youth." Anyway, "chains and mutilations", "creepy noirish bent", "mass graves", "tortured soul", "mysterious text messages", "betrayal and horror", blah blah blah. More transgressive, masturbatory bullshit from Ellis.
Ellis' publisher, Macmillan, has found the perfect way to promote the book. They've launched a site called The Devil In You which features a fun little "game," the sole purpose of which is to abuse and degrade an actress measure the player's morality.
For example, the player can either "GIVE HER BOOZE" or "PROPOSITION HER" or "RIDICULE HER. Or "let her go." (See image above.) There is no other point to the game. Other than to promote the book through virulent misogyny.
Which may be appropriate for Ellis' book, but doesn't make it any less contemptible.
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.]
Commenting Guidelines: Please refer to this post for Shakesville's policy on discussions of voting. Please use "I" language, and bear in mind that many local/state elections do not include candidates from parties other than the two major parties, so many US voters don't have the option to vote Green, for instance, in every election even if they want to.
So, basically, here's the deal: Democrats are spineless when they're not in the Congressional majority/White House because they need to get elected, and Democrats are spineless when they are in the Congressional majority/White House because they need to get reelected, so they never mount a vociferous challenge to conservatism because they have to get/stay in office in order to keep the Republicans from doing, uh, exactly what they're doing anyway, only more so.
Democrats are set to pass an extension of unemployment benefits today. ... But victory obscures defeat. Republicans managed to take a jobs bill, weaken it to an unemployment benefits and state and local relief bill, weaken that to an unemployment benefits bill, and then weaken that bill.
The bill does not include an extension of the $25-a-week Federal Additional Compensation funds, tacked onto many unemployment checks. It also does not include any of the other provisions originally included in or proposed for the jobs bill or extenders package: It does not close tax loopholes, or provide Medicaid funding to states, or include funds to keep teachers and other state employees working. It also does not create an additional fifth tier of benefits; federal extensions only continue in states with higher than an 8 percent unemployment rate, and the maximum weeks of state and federal benefits remains ninety-nine.
Republicans in the Senate, in other words, have won the fight over further spending on job creation. The argument has narrowed to unemployment benefits, and Democrats can't even reliably win those votes.
Seriously, if the United States Congress can't even agree on extending unemployment benefits during the worst employment crisis in a generation, the United States Congress has truly ceased serving the United States and its people.
We are officially a wholly-owned subsidiary of the highest corporate bidder.
Here's a story from today's New York Times about Brittany Novotny, a candidate running against Sally Kern to represent Oklahoma City in the U.S. House of Representatives.
[A picture of Ms. Novotny talking to Dorothy. The caption reads: "Brittany Novotny, Oklahoma's first known transgender candidate, on June 27 at an Oklahoma City gay pride parade.]
Select answers below the fold:
"Gay" Campaign? I'm really not clear what the author means here. Is it a reference to Novotny? Her supporters?
Ms. Novotny does not merely "identify as a heterosexual woman." She is a heterosexual woman. I don't see that "identify as" qualifier attached to other folks' sexualities, you know.
I don't care about Ms. Novotny's birth name. It's not relevant here. It's not relevant anywhere.
"Sex transition"? WTF?!?
-- I'll give the Times some credit, they did manage to find a picture of a politician campaigning. So, uh, bravo?
I get the impression that the use of "gay campaign" is meant to highlight fears of the "homosexual lobby." But why go there? Why qualify Ms. Novotny's identity as a heterosexual woman? It's hardly as if trans and gay are the same thing.
A few years ago, I was fairly active in an internet forum for folks working through/talking about gender transition. One of the bigger splits on the forum was between straight women and lesbian women (these are not the only two options, and there were also trans men present). Straight women and lesbian women do move in different circles, within different subcultures.
I'm a dyke. My partner is a dyke. This has nothing to do with my being trans, and I get really indignant when folks use my transsexuality to qualify my lesbian identity, or my partner's identity. Ms. Novotny is a heterosexual woman, and may well be straight (it's entirely possible to be solely interested in opposite-sex sexuality while still not being straight). She's not gay. I know I hate it when people imply that I'm kinda like a gay man. Ms. Novotny certainly isn't a lesbian, either.
This article is framing things on Rep. Kern's terms. Why? Unless the Times is also run by hate-filled bigots, there's just no need.
[Trigger warning for Gibson rantings of the usual multi-flavored offensiveness and for a picture of a scratch.]
So, I see that Radar Online has posted yet another recording of Mel Gibson ranting uncontrollably at his former partner, Oksana Grigorieva, where he reiterates his contention that if she is raped, it will be her fault, calls her a stream of misogynist epithets, and unleashes this gem: "I'm not giving you my house and you can rot unless you crawl back, suck my cock and say you're sorry, in that order! Do you understand me? You fucking offend my fucking maleness, my masculinity, my being, my soul!"
Yowza.
As heinous as these recordings are, I've listened to each of them because: A) I'm curious; and B) I often find it interesting what parts of celebrity outbursts get reported and what parts get left out (which is something I can only discern by listening/reading a transcript). Remarkably, the media has, for the most part, been uncharacteristically conscientious in reporting Gibson's threats of sexual violence, without couching them in victim-blaming or rape apologia.
Anyway, so I grab my lunch (homemade tuna salad on wheat flatbread, if you're interested) and head back into the office with the intent of listening to this hot mess while I eat, trailed by one doggie and three kittehs who are all desperate for my affections bites of my lunch. I push play on the recording just as Matilda and Dudley are coming through the door, which still has a pet-gate mounted on it, despite the fact we never use it, and, all of a sudden, Tils—who hates the sound of any electronic voice emanating from the computer, or coming through the phone—wheels on Dudz like he's the Devil himself (or, perhaps, Mel Gibson).
CLANG! goes the metal pet-gate.
I turn to see ten pounds of fuzz, all standing on end. Tils yowls at Dudley with an unearthly voice, to which he responds by running to his big pillow next to my desk and collapsing immediately into a submissive position. She walks up to him and HISSSSSSSSSES! I turn off the recording and tell her to be nice. She looks and me, looks back at Dudley, and gives him a low, menacing growl for good measure. He looks at me with an expression that seems to say, "What the fuck did I do?!"
I grab Tils and give her a big squeezy cuddle, and she spits at me and kicks away, leaving me with this:
Shitty picture taken with my phone of a long-ass bloody scratch across my chest.
This is only the beginning, Shakers. If Mel Gibson is not stopped, Matilda may unleash her fury onto the planet in order to stop him herself. And, frankly, I can't blame her.
Last night, I saw a trailer for The Expendables, which, according to the Big Leatherbound Book of Records I Just Made Up has more testosterone per frame than any movie ever produced in the history of talkies. (Only the silent film The Balloonatic has more.) I have but one question: Was Chuck Norris not available? I mean, how much time does writing shitty columns for WorldNetDaily really take out of a man's day…?
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, and Sylvester Stallone hang out in an empty Planet Hollywood church. They discuss an important "job" that needs to be done for "the Agency" for some undisclosed amount of money. It's a suicide mission, but Stallone's ragtag team of mercenaries will do it, dammit!—even though, as Token Black Guy Terry Crews explains during the Group Exposition Scene back at Mercenary HQ, "they've got a whole army…we got four and a half men." Token Asian Guy Jet Li doesn't think that's funny! But Jason Statham does! A white guy and a black guy teaming up to be racist bullies against an Asian guy shows how post-racial this shit is, yo. Oh no! It's a beautiful brown-skinned woman being held by swarthy anti-American types! Hopefully she won't have to make out with Sly Stallone who wrote this piece of shit die! Save her, mercenaries! There are scenes of the Expendables doing the "job." Things go boom. Men run around with machine guns. There is fist-bumping. And—wouldn't you know it?—these guys are RECKLESS! But damn if they don't get the job done! Sometimes you gotta BREAK THE RULES, amirite? HIGH FIVE! Oh Maude, it's Mickey Rourke! And Dolph Lundgren! (Victory!) And Randy Couture! And Eric Roberts! And Stone Cold Steve Austin! HOLY SHIT! This masterpiece should have a much cooler title than The Expendables to honor its amazing quantity of heroes—something like Roid Rage: The Revenge. More thing blow up. Cars crash through windows. Men grunt and scream and dive away from explosions and crashes that COULD HAVE KILLED THEM! Phew. Witty quips. They hate each other, but they're brothers, man. Legolas and Gimli Sly and Statham compare kill numbers and dispute the winner WHICH IS NOT CLICHÉD AT ALL. Coming to a theater near your ass August 13.
There is a longer trailer here with additional scenes of our many, many heroes kicking ass for America. Careful your sides don't split from the killer wisecrackery!
Okay, that was probably uncalled for. As a patriotic former Finnish resident, I just wanted to point out that Finland finished two places ahead of Sweden in Forbes Magazine's totes important pseudonon-scientific study of the world's happiest countries. Sweden finished at #4, behind Denmark, Finland, and Norway.
:cough:
Iceland finished in 23rd (I blame Halldór Laxness), but otherwise you might have noticed Nordic countries in places one, two, and three. Sweden, which is also a Nordic country, finished fourth. I'd blame gay marriage for Iceland's woes, but same-sex marriage is also legal in Sweden and Norway (Denmark and Finland only permit domestic partnerships). Forbes largely frames the Nordic countries' happiness as a by-product of wealth, which absolutely baffles me, particularly given the study's methodology:
"First [Gallup] asked subjects to reflect on their overall satisfaction with their lives, and ranked their answers using a 'life evaluation' score from 1 to 10. Then they asked questions about how each subject had felt the previous day. Those answers allowed researchers to score their 'daily experiences'--things like whether they felt well-rested, respected, free of pain and intellectually engaged. Subjects that reported high scores were considered 'thriving.' The percentage of thriving individuals in each country determined our rankings."
Rest. Respect. Comfort. Engagement.
I can see how income is correlated to those things, although per-capita GDP seems like an odd statistic to use (median income, anyone?). However, the causal relationship between wealth and happiness doesn't strike me as straightforward. Besides, the United States finished 14th. If it was really all about the Benjaminsgayly coloured bridges, you'd think the U. S. would easily out-happy a social democracy whacked out on salmiakki. Perhaps we should look more carefully at Forbes' throw-away line about the “Scandinavian”[sic*] countries taking care of people's basic needs.
A modest retelling of my 10 months in Finland might shed some light on the situation.
In late 1998, I began investigating the possibility of studying in Helsinki the following academic year. Being me, I decided to enroll on my own, as opposed to following a bizarrely isolated exchange program. So, I contacted the University of Helsinki to apply as a visiting student. The confusion began as soon as I was accepted:
'How much do I owe you, and where do I send the check? Do I need to draw funds from a Finnish bank?'
'What in God's name are you talking about?'
'Tuition. How much is your tuition.'
'What in God's name are you talking about?!?'
Once we got past that little inter-cultural barrier, the next thing to do was to find an apartment. I ended up finding a place in Kontula, on Helsinki's far eastern fringe. I paid around $180 a month for a room in a three bedroom apartment. Because my apartment was multiple kilometers from the city center, I was forced to take a five minute walk down to the metro station, which was next to the shopping center that included two grocery stores, a bakery, the local library, one of many local day care centers, a liquor store, and several restaurants and bars. When I was feeling lazy, I'd wait up to ten minutes for a bus to the station. There, I would wait another five minutes to board a train for the twenty minute ride to the city. There, I could purchase a monthly student transit pass, which ate another $30 out of my bank account.
When I started at the University, I was subjected to the horrors of UniCafe, the restaurants run by the Helsinki University student union. As you can see from today's menu, life was tough. At Porthania this afternoon, there was a choice between bolognaise with minced meat and grated cheese, soya and vegetable pan, and chicken waldorfs[sic] salad. These cost students 2 Euros 60 (including a beverage and unlimited bread, salad, and potatoes). Students who sprung for the fried salmon with white wine sauce coughed up 4 Euros 20.
One of my first activities at school was to meet folks at Symbioosi, the biology student organization. I was at one party with my fellow students when it was time for me to catch the last bus back to my apartment. As it turned out, the woman I was talking to also needed to catch the last bus back to her apartment. Unfortunately, she lived in what she described as an urban hellscape, surrounded by violent criminals, asphalt, noise, and the foul stench of dying hope. Let's just say it was surprising to learn that we both lived in the same complex. I would later learn that my friend's impression of our neighborhood were largely accepted as fact throughout the country. Our neighborhood was infamous. I was apparently living in some sort of Nordic Cabrini-Green.
A typical Finnish hellscape, showing the Kivikko neighborhood of Kontula, in eastern Helsinki. Note the ravages of urbanization.
The multiple kilometers of lit cross country ski trails don't show up on the above picture. Nor do the fields where I played pesäpallo with other folks in the neighborhood who ranged in age between about 6 and 60. I do recall taking batting practice on that field, though.
I spent a lot of time watching and playing sports in Finland. I certainly made a habit of watching sports on my many trips around the country on reduced fare train tickets (although even well off people didn't pay too much for public transportation). There were trains everywhere. After one of my friends from the US excitedly told some Finnish acquaintances that he'd never rode on a train before, I remember one of them looking at him and stating that she'd never rode in a car before, so there. And really, why bother with cars, what with the trains and buses, and bike paths connecting everything?
As I was in Helsinki for the better part of the year, I needed to go to the doctor a few times. I was really, really nervous about this, what with my American health insurance and all. However, given that I had the sniffles, I was managed to be seen by the doctor right away. For free. Without an appointment. This happened a few times, actually.
When I wasn't going to the Finnish film archives to see cheap movies, taking in concerts or museums at a student discount off of essentially nothing (or often times for free), I did make feeble attempts to socialize. I went to a few events organized by the Karelian osakunta. Given my Pohjanmaan (Ostrobothnian) ancestry, this made a great deal of sense (Ostrobothnia and Karelia are basically the Finnish equivalent of, um.... they're really different. During the 1930s, a handful of folks in Ostrobothnia kidnapped the third (ex-)president of Finland in an attempt to "return" him to the Soviet Union, or at least Karelia. It was sort of as if Tea Baggers accused Harry Reid of Communism, and then drove him to Massachusetts).
Owing to my limited grasp of the Finnish language and cultural differences, my forays with the Karelians were not smashing successes (although as I am from Minnesota, there was much talk of hockey). Mostly the Karelians seemed confused:
'I hear college students have it bad in the US.'
'Yes, college can be very expensive.'
'How small are your stipends.'
'What?!?'
'How much do American students get each month.'
'In America, we typically pay a good deal of money to study at college.'
'What?!? Yours is a bizarre country.'
'Indeed.'
--- Taxes in Finland are high. Very high. The government is big. Very big. While there's not socialism, Finnish society is most definitely flavored by social-democracy. The same could be said of the other Nordic nations. They also happen to have GDPs near that of the United States. Yet somehow, surveys of the Nordic nations show higher levels of rest, respect, comfort, and engagement than the US. Color me unconfused.
*Finland is not a Scandinavian country. It is, however, a Nordic and Fenno-Scandian nation.
Alright you Whonitarians, time to hold forth on the latest episode. Sorry about the delay; I wanted to watch it a second time, and then forgot to get it posted when I had. :)
Please note that this thread is specifically about Season 5 (reboot), Episode 12. Spoilers for anythe only remaining! episode are explicitly off-topic.
Note also that the comment thread may contain spoilers for any and all previous Doctor Who media.
My overview is this: Just what it says on the tin. There's a Pandorica, and it opens. More in comments.
Transformers 3 is being filmed across the road from my work. This is the sign they erected outside my building, lol.
"FILMING INVOLVING GUNFIRE AND EXPLOSIONS AHEAD. Do not be alarmed."
They aren't lying. Yesterday, we had to explain to clients on the phone hearing explosions in the background that war had not broken out in Chicago; it was only the filming of Transformers 3.
A bitch just caught up on the latest verbal malfunction by former GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin.
Refudiate-gate is all over Twitter and even the major networks are chatting about it.
Full disclosure – a bitch loves to fuck with the English language.
My friend Brother Rob Thurman is the reigning bitchitude champ of made up words…he’s known to issue forth made up words with such confidence that a body often thinks they’ll find that new word in the dictionary!
But there’s an art to made up words…a key rule that Palin mislooked or under-understood. One must use context when using a new word to ensure that people know what the fuck you are talking about.
Pause…sip coffee…continue.
For example, when first using “fuckeduptitude” I recommend placing it in a sentence that clearing defines what that shit means.
“Sarah Palin’s defense of drill baby drill, despite the current fuckeduptitude of the oil spill in the gulf, is yet another public display of ig’nance.”
Note – ig’nance is not considered a made up word…’tis more of a misspelling that I use ‘cause that’s how I like to say the word ignorance…and deep down in my heart of hearts I just KNOW Shakespeare would have adored that shit (wink).
FYI – when you Google "Sarah Palin refudiate", Google gently asks you whether you meant "Sarah Palin repudiate".
Priceless!
Anyhoo, Sarah Palin deleted her refudiate tweet and issued forth a new tweet-pinion…but her defense of making up the word refudiate guaranteed that the original tweet would live on in.
In the spirit of American independence, a bitch defends Palin’s right to make up words so that I can continue to do the same!
After all, this bitch wouldn’t want to get all hypocriticatopical on this shit.
Blink.
***Lawd, spell check is pissed off to high heaven at this post!!***
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