[Trigger warning for sexual coercion.]
The Frisky: 22 Things You Should Forgive Your Boyfriend For.
Generally, I just find compilations like this so banal that they hardly merit comment. Which is not to say they're benign: Even the opening salvo, "Forgetting to put the toilet seat down," disappears the many disabled women for whom a partner routinely forgetting to put the seat down is more than a minor inconvenience.
But this list, in addition to the usual curious exhortations to women to overlook some habits that may well indicate a potentially troublesome lack of respect, includes, in its final line, this:
22. Repeatedly trying to talk you into analWow.
"We will see if there is any legal action that we might take to restrain you from playing [our recording]. However, it would be more respectful of our wishes if you [would] simply cease to play it."—Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey, the two surviving members of the trio who performed as Peter, Paul & Mary, in a letter addressed to the anti-equality group National Organization for Marriage, asking them to stop using their recording of Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" during their rallies, since NOM's bigotry is "directly contrary to the advocacy position Peter, Paul & Mary have held for decades. ... We strongly support the rights of all gays and lesbians to enjoy the rights and rituals of marriage that are enjoyed by their straight counterparts, and consider the abridgment of this right contrary to the sense of equal protection and fairness inherent in, and implied by, the law, of the Constitution of the United States."
At some point I may have mentioned that while my family was riding the train between Chicago and New York last December, we were rudely awakened by armed government agents on the hunt for foreign looking people that may have boarded at South Bend, Toledo, Cleveland, Erie, or any number of totally not Canadian stations. They really didn't pay us much mind. Mostly they were interested in the folks seated in front of us speaking a foreign language (Russian, FWIW). That and yelling at the deaf woman in the next row.
Our general reaction (and AFAICT, the reaction of the folks immediately around us) ranged from extreme anger to OMGWTF?!? It was horrible, and as a US citizen, I have to say, horribly embarrassing.
Why was this happening? The US couldn't possibly have a policy of letting armed border patrol agents board trains and buses within our own national borders in an effort to harass and possibly detain foreign-looking folks.
According to today's New York Times, that was precisely what was (and still is) happening. To quote Lee Greenwood: "I'm American...I forget...that...I'm free."
[Trigger warning for violence/sexual assault.]
Insert requisite disclaimer here about how Saturday Night Live sucks, except for the times when it hasn't sucked.
I might not have even mentioned that New York's Vulture has a blurb on SNL's three new cast members, except for the video Portly posted by Jenny Slate, a current cast member of SNL whose evident talent is currently being brutally wasted.
Anyway, of the three new cast members (who, btw, all appear to be white), only one apparently has video of his skit-work available for review, and these are the descriptions of the two videos: "Here's [Taran] Killam as murderer Scott Peterson in a kinda not-funny Knocked Up parody" and "Here's Killam again in a Scrubs webisode, as Jimmy, a molest-y orderly."
Yeesh.
[Trigger warning for "ironic" "joking" about dehumanization and violence]
Perfect for when you want everyone to know you're an asshole, but your girlfriend hasn't washed your Toby Keith shirt:
Last night, as we were lying in bed about to fall asleep, Iain was, as is his frequent bedtime habit, touching different parts of my body and asking me: "What is this for?" to which I am meant to provide a silly answer, e.g. "The conveyance of cuteness." Sometimes, I provide extremely literal answers, which are amusing in their own way.
Iain, taking my thigh in his hand: What is this for?
Me: Locomoting.
Iain, deliberately misunderstanding me: Vocomoting? Is a vocomotive a train that talks?
Me: No, it's a train that's been put through a vocoder.
Pause.
Both of us, simultaneously, in our best attempts at replicating a vocoded voice: CH-oo-OO CH-oo-OO!
Laughter.
There are moments in any intimate partnership in which the two of you look at one another and realize, "This is why we belong together." That was one of those moments.
We are dorks.
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, publishers of Dudley Q. McEwan's Guide to Chillaxing.
Recommended Reading:
brilliantmindbrokenbody: Disability Blog Carnival!
Brad: Bring Your Genes to Your Life Insurance Sales Representative
BeckySharper: Hair Matters
Renee: On "Louie" [TW for sexual violence]
Living ~400lbs: Deciphering Studies: Absolute vs Relative Risks
Andy: Focus on the Family Says School Anti-Bullying Curriculum Forces Kids to Learn That Homosexuality Is Normal
Leave your links in comments...
I watched this about 10,000 times this weekend.
MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON from Dean Fleischer-Camp on Vimeo.
The Emmy Awards were last night, and, while I was the embodiment of wev about almost the entirety of the show, including most of the winners, I loved the opening of the show, in which host Jimmy Fallon was joined in one of his patented Glee homages by, among other notables, Lost's Jorge Garcia (Hurley):
Two pages.
That's how long the opening chapter is. Two pages. But hey, that's enough to meet our protagonist, Noah Gardner: "Good-looking, great job, fine education, puckishly amusing and even clever when he put his mind to it, reasonably fit and trim for an office jockey, Noah had all the bona fide credentials for a killer eHarmony profile" who had "spent a full decade building what most guys would call an outstanding record of success with the ladies."
Okay, so, I'm not most guys, but let me ask you something. Is "an outstanding record of success with the ladies" a common phrase among your peer group, most guys? Just wondering. It's nice though, to see Beck give a nod to Christian dating site eHarmony, I guess to keep relevant.
As he'd rounded the corner of age twenty-seven and stared the dreaded number thirty right in the face, Noah had begun to realize something... While he'd been aiming low with his standards in the game of love, the women he'd been meeting might all have been doing exactly the same thing. Now, on his twenty-eighth birthday, he still wasn't sure what he wanted in a woman but he knew what he didn't want: arm candy. He was sick of it. Maybe, just maybe, it was time to consider thinking about getting serious.
Conservative US radio and television commentator Glenn Beck speaks at a rally dubbed 'Restoring Honor,' to show support of the US military, organized by Beck, one of the de facto leaders of the Tea Party movement at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, on August 28, 2010. The rally has attracted controversy because it is being held on the 47th anniversary of civil rights legend Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' speech, at the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, where King spoke. [Getty Images.]So, Glenn Beck had his "Restoring Honor" rally this weekend, and, despite Fox News' estimate that half a million people were in attendance, it was more like 90,000. Which is still terrifying enough.
People gather at the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall on August 28, 2010, in Washington, DC. Thousands of Americans gathered Saturday in the heart of the US capital for a rally to 'Restore America,' led by conservative icons including talk show host Glenn Beck and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin. [Getty Images.]Yes, Sarah Palin was there, too, right in the center of a rally stewing xenophobic nationalism, patriotic jingoism, militarism, religion, and unfettered anger in a big, fascist pot.
Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin speaks during a rally dubbed 'Restoring Honor,' to show support of the US military, organized by conservative radio and television commentator Glenn Beck. [Getty Images.]There was a lot of this going on:
Two rally-goers stand side-by-side, a white man with a red t-shirt reading "One Nation Under God," and a white woman with a blue t-shirt reading "It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible." [Getty Images.]And some of this:
Men wear colonial costumes as thousands gather to support TV commentator Glenn Beck at his Restoring Honor rally on the US National Mall in Washington, August 28, 2010. [Reuters Pictures.]
Tami Ernst, and her brother John Ernst, both from Houston, are dressed for the occasion at the Glenn Beck 'Restoring Honor' rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, Saturday, Aug. 28, 2010. [AP.]As Sinclair Lewis famously said, when fascism comes to America, it will be dressed like a total jackass.
All part of Glenn Beck's crusade to reclaim the Civil Rights Movement, no doubt. [Reuters Pictures.]The inclusion of Frederick Douglass is great, just great. I love how it conveys that modern white conservatives are enslaved, seeking their freedom, and Beck is their Douglass. Sure.
Beck stands behind the banner of Lincoln, which reads "RESTORING HONOR." [AP.]I will take it as further evidence that God does not exist that Lincoln was not momentarily reanimated just so he could kick Glenn Beck's ass.
Actual Headline: Democrats can't agree over killing or saving the Bush-era tax cuts.
Of course they can't.
"It's hard to say the Republican economic policies were bad, [and] then continue them," Paul Begala, Democratic strategist and former advisor to President Clinton, told The Hill. "That is a bit of a mixed message."lolsob.
CNN: Court allows agents to secretly put GPS trackers on cars
Juan Pineda-Moreno was recently convicted of conspiracy to grow marijuana.
But he appealed on the grounds that sneaking onto a person's driveway and secretly tracking their car violates a person's reasonable expectation of privacy.
The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the appeal twice -- in January of this year by a three-judge panel, and then again by the full court earlier this month.
"You left place A, at this time, you went to place B, you took this street -- that information can be gleaned in a variety of ways," said David Rivkin, a former Justice Department attorney. "It can be old surveillance, by tailing you unbeknownst to you; it could be a GPS."
He says that a person cannot automatically expect privacy just because something is on private property.
"You have to take measures -- to build a fence, to put the car in the garage" or post a no-trespassing sign, he said. "If you don't do that, you're not going to get the privacy."
