Shakesville

Daily Dose of Cute

Zelda, to our continual amusement, loves to run underneath Dudley, and, frequently, she will stand directly underneath him, with her front end poking out one side, and her back end poking out the other side, so that Dudley looks like he's got a second tail jutting out of his side.

Zelda stands perpendicular to Dudley, and under him

Zelda stands perpendicular to Dudley, and under him

BFFs.
Here is another fact about Zelda: She likes to roll in stinky things.

This makes her not unlike many dogs, although, as I discovered yesterday after she rolled in something black and grody and unfathomably stinky, covering more of herself with the horrible stuff than a wet paper towel (or 20) could handle, it turns out she is scared of the bath. She let me wet her down and soap her up and scrub her in the kitchen without a complaint; indeed, that was a lot of very fun attention! But when I called her into the bathroom and tried to get her into the tub, she was so fearful of the prospect that she peed on the floor.

She then ran into the bedroom, lather and all, and looked at me with those big brown eyes, suddenly full of anxiety, and an expression that seemed to say, "I'm sorry; I think I'm a bad dog but I don't know why; please don't be mad at me."

I wasn't mad at her. I also wasn't sure how to help reassure her in that moment that I wasn't, and that there was nothing to be afraid of. So I asked for help.

"Dudley," I called. He was lying beside her. "Come here, good boy." He got up and came to me in the bathroom. I lavished him with affection and praise.

Zelda followed. I scratched her wee soapy head. "What a good girl!" I told her. Her entire back end, not just her tail but her entire butt, waggled with earnest joy. The bathroom wasn't so scary anymore. Dudley had showed her the way.

I didn't try to put her in the bath. I soaked a towel and rinsed out the soap as best I could that way.

Dudley hung out, patiently letting me rub his head and shoulders with a wet towel, too. Like a good boy.

There Are Just SO MANY Ways to Be a Bad Mother

Here's one that everyone who's ~~anyone~~ an asshole is talking about this week:

three images of singer Victoria Beckham carrying her infant daughter while wearing very high heels

Victoria "Posh" Beckham was out and about this week with new daughter Harper, and she was wearing her signature high heels, thus allegedly proving she obviously has no regard for her daughter's safety.

Maybe because I am not a mother myself, or possibly because I'm not a self-important dipfuck who uses my own experience as a benchmark against whom everyone else on the planet is measured in a perpetual game of negative judgment I play in a void of self-esteem, I fail to comprehend the reasoning at work here. I understand it goes a little something like, "That bitch is gonna trip in those shoes and kill her baby," but the logic, such as it is, really broke down for me when I took two nanoseconds to contemplate the fact that Victoria Beckham routinely wears heels that are frequently described with words like "precarious" by people who don't share her affinity and talent for wearing them.

I guess what I'm saying is: I have no reason to suspect that Victoria Beckham isn't precisely as proficient in towering heels with a baby in her arms as she is without a baby in her arms, or that she's any more likely to trip while wearing shoes she wears all the time than she is while wearing ballet slippers.

That deduction didn't exactly tax my brain, disabled by its ladyness even though it is. So I suspect that maybe the criticisms of Posh are not really about Posh at all, but about a familiar commentary on motherhood and womanhood, and how women must, at all times, sacrifice evidence of their womanhood, their femininity, to the altar of motherhood. Nothing, of course, makes a woman a more terrible mother than putting herself first, or even the appearance thereof.

I also suspect that the criticisms are a reflection of many people's inability to see past their own experience so that they might credit others with experiences they don't have. Sure, I look at Victoria Beckham's shoes and see a pair of ankle-breakers, but I am not Victoria Beckham. It really doesn't matter that I would be likely to trip in those shoes, because she isn't.

This is a small thing, or seems like it, in the scheme of all things. But it's emblematic of a culture in which we are increasingly hostile toward other people's individual experiences and capabilities, because the only way to judge them, the only way to wield our sanctimony like a weapon of destruction, tearing someone else down because it's so much easier than building ourselves up, which takes time and energy and self-reflection and honesty about our own flaws, the only thing that makes engaging in the harsh cultural pastime of ad hominem criticism, is to fail, deliberately and utterly, to see the targets of our judgment as unique human beings, with their own particular set of circumstances that may be very different from our own.

Maybe it would be a bad idea for you to walk in stilettos while carrying an infant. That doesn't mean it's axiomatically bad for Victoria Beckham to do the same.

To ignore even these little differences between people is to deny other people's individual humanity.

So casually do we engage in such a brutal denial, when we say, even obliquely, the world should be just like me.

Still With That Old Bullshit?

It's Friday, I am tired, and I am sick of this bullshit: House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Etro) is dragging out that old claim that homosexuality is a choice.

Oh, do go to hell, Boehner. That idea has so thoroughly been discredited it's really embarrassing you're still using it.

Nonetheless, from a recent brief by Boehner's Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group:

According to multiple studies, a high number of persons who experience sexual attraction to members of the same sex early in their adult lives later cease to experience such attraction.

(And of course, the study the brief cites doesn't actually say that. Whoops!)

I guess, like Hollywood, Boehner is out of new ideas, too.

This is a real thing in the world.

back and front images of Tim Allen promotional air freshener

A Tim Allen promotional air freshener—a term I use loosely since it smells like a chemically-created facsimile of BBQ chicken—being used to market Allen's new show, Last Man Standing, which was originally titled Man Up when I first wrote about it.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, "To capitalize on the Tim Allen comedy's 'manly man' theme, the network is handing out barbecue chicken-scented Allen air fresheners at hardware stores, gyms and auto-parts stores. Football games will host show-themed food trucks and 'man caves'." Of course they will.

[Insert grunting apelike noises here.]

It's Like People Have Noticed They're Unemployed

President Obama's senior political adviser David Plouffe said Wednesday that people won't vote in 2012 based on the unemployment rate.

..."The average American does not view the economy through the prism of GDP or unemployment rates or even monthly jobs numbers," Plouffe said, according to Bloomberg. "People won't vote based on the unemployment rate, they're going to vote based on: 'How do I feel about my own situation? Do I believe the president makes decisions based on me and my family?'"

September 15, 2011:
Gallup polling graph for the second week of September, showing the question 'What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?' with 'Unemployment' leading all other answers by at least 11%.

Gallup polling graph for the second week of September, showing the question 'What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?' with 'Unemployment' leading all other answers by at least 11%.

Gallup: Thirty-nine percent of Americans in September name unemployment or jobs as the most important problem facing the country, up from 29% in August. Unemployment has now passed "the economy" as the most frequently mentioned issue.

Whooooooooooops.

Friday Blogaround

This blogaround brought to you by lion-men.

Recommended Reading:

Yashar: [TW for misogyny, ableism, and emotional abuse] A Message to Women From A Man: You Are Not "Crazy"

Touré: [TW for racism and violence] The Most Racist Thing That Ever Happened to Me

Pam: [TW for racism and Christian supremacy] Fundie, Inc.: NC Election Fliers Linked to Anti-Public School Christian Activists

Britannica Editors: [TW for racism and violence] Commemorating the Trail of Tears

crunkadelic: Watch out for the Big Girls: Some Thoughts on TLC's Big Sexy

Andy: Australia Introduces New Passport Rules Allowing for Third Gender

Hans: Dinosaur Feathers Found in Amber Reinforce Evolution Theories

Ed: Snails Cross Continents by Flying Inside Birds

Jos: [TW for transphobia] 10-year-old Trans Girl on Being Bullied by Adults and Accepted by Her Peers

Leave your links in comments...

Today in Rebootapalooza

image of Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman from the late-80s TV series 'Beauty and the Beast'

Because the US entertainment industry's reservoir of creativity is deader than a dire wolf in the La Brea tar pits, CBS Television Studios is plundering my childhood yet again to reboot the late-80s panty-creamer Beauty and the Beast, which starred Linda Hamilton as feisty Assistant District Attorney Catherine Chandler and Ron Perlman as beastly humanoid sewer-dweller Vincent. (IMDb: "The adventures and romance of a sensitive and cultured lion-man and a crusading District Attorney assistant." LULZ.) It was your basic kick off your shoulderpads and crack open a bottle of Riunite furry cosplayer fairy tale for professional ladies.

Anyway! The reboot is coming soon (that's what she said):

Sources confirm to TVLine exclusively that CBS Television Studios is developing a reboot of the ’80s cult classic Beauty and the Beast for The CW.

The original series, which ran on CBS from 1987 to 1990, starred Ron Perlman as the mythic man beast and Linda Hamilton as the object of his affection.

The new version will not only modernize and CW-up the love story but also add a procedural twist. Nice pedigree, too: Without a Trace vet Jennifer Levin and Brothers & Sisters' Sherri Cooper will pen the script and serve as executive producers.

Yay for women-helmed shows! Of course, the fact that this is being developed for the teen-catering CW, and is returning to air in the middle of a nasty feminist backlash permeating every corner of pop culture, does not suggest that the show is likely to end up on the ol' Shakes Manor DVR.

But hope sproings eternal! Sproingity sproing! It's not like there isn't a rich vein of patriarchy-deconstruction to be mined from a Beauty and the Beast retelling, by anyone who's inclined to go that intriguing route. Sproing!

Casting Predictions: An unknown Kristin Stewart-lookalike as Catherine. The Jonas Brothers as Vincent.

Quote of the Day

"[H]ealth care was one of those areas where even conservatives used to be willing to accept government intervention in the name of compassion, given the clear evidence that covering the uninsured would not, in fact, cost very much money. ... Now, however, compassion is out of fashion—indeed, lack of compassion has become a matter of principle, at least among the GOP's base. And what this means is that modern conservatism is actually a deeply radical movement, one that is hostile to the kind of society we've had for the past three generations—that is, a society that, acting through the government, tries to mitigate some of the 'common hazards of life' through such programs as Social Security, unemployment insurance, Medicare and Medicaid."—Paul Krugman.

A key part of the Republican Establishment's cultivation of hatred has been the subversion of empathy. Othering is the foundation of hate-based scapegoating, and Othering can only happen in a void of empathy. Compassion is not merely out of fashion; its existence is an impediment to modern conservative politics.

That makes for colossally grim prospects for the survival of a democracy with any semblance of a functional social contract.

Which, of course, is not a bug of modern conservatism but a feature.

Photo of the Day

6-year-old Emily Baldry stands beside a 160 million-year-old ammonite fossil

Six-year-old Emily Baldry unearthed a 130-pound, 40cm ammonite fossil with a seaside spade while "accompanying her father Jon on an archeological trip to Cotswold Water Park, Glos, last year." It has been restored by experts and will be put on display at a local visitors' center.

The fossil is officially known as a Rieneckia odysseus – but Emily, of Chippenham, Wilts, has affectionately dubbed it Spike.

She says: "I took him to school and all my friends think he's great."

Her father calls Spike "an amazing find."

[Via.]

Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

Mr. Mister: "Broken Wings"

They Hate Us for Our Freedom

Or, you know, maybe—in addition to using phrases like "they hate us for our freedom" which sets up "Muslims" and "Americans" as mutually exclusive groups—any resentment, suspicion, or disdain that actually does exist could have a little to do with shit like this:

Counterterrorism agents at the FBI's training center in Quantico, Virginia are being taught that "devout" Muslims are more likely to be "violent" and that American Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers, according to training materials acquired by Wired's Spencer Ackerman. (In fact, mosques have been found to be a deterrent to the spread of terrorism.)

An FBI spokesperson told Ackerman that the slides were no longer in use but dates on the slides would suggest that they were used at least until March 21.

The documents offer a violent interpretation of Islam in which "Any war against non-believers is justified" and a "moderating process cannot happen if the Koran continues to be regarded as the unalterable word of Allah."

...The information in the slides is clearly Islamophobic and completely ignores the fact that Islamic extremism, while a national security concern worthy of sober discussion, is a limited problem within the United States and hardly a frequent phenomenon in Muslim communities. A recent Duke terrorism study showed that since 9/11, the U.S. has experienced only 33 deaths from Muslim terrorism while 150,000 murders have occurred during the same time.

...While the FBI is developing a track-record for giving pseudo-experts like Robert Spencer and William Gawthrop an opportunity to spread their Islamophobic views which demonize all Muslims, the truth is that Muslim communities have served as some of the most important allies for the FBI in their efforts to combat Muslim terrorists.

Eli's got much more at the link.

It is alarming, if not surprising, how much US defense and security policy is built on a foundation of fear and paranoia born of easily debunkable stereotypes. I do understand the need for, and usefulness of, rational fear and/or suspicion among people tasked with defending a nation, but there's just such an abundance of boogeymen in the US.

Imagine if we'd spent the last decade being as scared of economic collapse and its architects as we were of terrorism and Osama bin Laden.

If You Can't Beat 'Em, Change the Election Laws

In case there were still any doubt that Republicans actually hate democracy, they are now rewriting state election laws in ways that will favor their election chances, by making it more difficult for people who tend to vote Democrat to vote at all:

Looking to capitalize on their historic gains last year, Republican lawmakers in several states are rewriting their election laws in ways that could make it more difficult for Democrats to win.

They have curbed early voting, rolled back voting rights for ex-felons and passed stricter voter ID laws. Taken together, the measures could have a significant and negative effect on President Obama's reelection efforts if they keep young people and minorities away from the polls.

"It all hits at the groups that had higher turnout and higher registration in 2008," said Judith Browne-Dianis, a civil rights lawyer who co-directs the Advancement Project, which has been tracking the new regulations.

Pennsylvania lawmakers are considering the latest, and perhaps most potent, legislation, a measure that would divvy up electoral votes by congressional district rather than use the winner-takes-all approach. The change would almost ensure a net gain of 20 to 24 GOP electoral votes in the 2012 presidential election.

The only good thing to say about this is, to quote D-Day: "If the Pennsylvania GOP gambit leads to a real discussion about why the Electoral College ought to be abolished, they'll have done the nation a service." Too true.

Of course, serious discussions about things that strengthen (or weaken) our democracy are thin on the ground these days.

Happy Birthday, Mustang Bobby!

cake of a red Mustang photoshopped to read #59 on the side

Happy Birthday to youuuuuuuuu!
Happy Birthday to youuuuuuuuu!
You're as gay as a pink pair of shoe-oooooos!
And I love you as much as pink shoes, too!

Happy Birthday, doll!

*mwah*

Open Thread

Question of the Day

Suggested by Shaker libractivist: Who was your first crush?

I could, relying on the ambiguity of the question, tell you that my first crush was Joey Bradford, over whom I mooned desperately in the fourth grade, but the truth, which I simply cannot deny, is that my real first crush, developed over re-runs during dinner at the dawn of my sentient memory, was totes Captain B.J. Hunnicutt.

image of Mike Farrell as B.J. Hunnicutt from M*A*S*H

Him, I moon over still.

An Observation

Sometimes, I genuinely cannot believe I actually live in a country where a person like Rick Perry has a legitimate shot at the presidency.

Don't Worry, Everyone!

The earth is still in rotation around the sun and John Boehner is still an epic dipshit.

Daily Dose of Cute

Doggeh Wrasslin'!

Video Description: Dudley lies in the middle of the living room floor on his side; Zelda can be heard trotting down the hall. She comes into the room and sniffs at Dudley's face, then walks by. He gets up, tongue hanging out of his mouth like a glaikit. They wrestle around, Dudley on the floor, so that he's shorter than Zel and gives her a chance to be the Big Dog. Then he jumps up, and they spin around biting each other's faces and legs, snarfing and huffing at each other. Matilda, sitting next to me off-camera, can be heard hissing in the background. Zel sniffs at her, then goes back to playing with Dudz. I pan to Matilda, who is having none of it, and wanders away. Zelly play-bows and leaps at Dudz, and then they lick each other's mouths. Dudley flops back down, and Zelda trots away. (About 5 seconds later, after I'd turned off the camera, she came back, and dumped as many toys as she could carry on his head.)

Still pix of the whole Party of Five below the fold (on most browsers)…

Matilda the Cat, lying on me and looking up at me

Matilda the Cat, lying on me and looking up at me

Matilda

Olivia the Cat, lying on the back of the couch near the window

Olivia

Sophie the Cat, lying on the stairs and looking very serious

Sophie

Dudley (Why the long face, Dudz? Hurr hurr.)

Zelda the Mutt, lying on the floor looking over her shoulder at me

Zelda the Mutt, lying on the floor looking over her shoulder at me

Zelda

Infographic of the Day

Below is just a screen capture of what is an interactive infographic about national abortion restrictions in the US, by state and type of restriction. Click on the image (or here) to go to the interactive infographic.

screen capture of interactive infographic about national abortion restrictions in the US, by state and type of restriction

Note that my state of residence, Indiana, tops the list.

As I have mentioned previously in comments, I feel decidedly less safe because of the anti-abortion legislation in Indiana, particularly the legislation dealing with "late term" abortions.

I am not desirous of getting pregnant, which makes me concerned about abortion restrictions since I am a sexually active fertile cis woman of childbearing age—but, if I were keen to have a child, I would be even more concerned about carrying a pregnancy to term in a state that values a fetus' life more than mine.

Which underlines one of many inherent flaws in "pro-life" rhetoric and policy: It actively discourages from becoming pregnant any woman who is not willing to potentially risk her life to have a baby.

That is, beyond the usual risks that advanced medicine is now mostly able to contend, in those places where it's allowed.

When I see that colorful display of anti-choice legislation across my state, all I see are barriers to informed, enthusiastic, safe, uncoerced reproduction. I'm certainly not the only one.

Virginia Update

[Post Updated Below]

If you recall, a couple weeks ago I posted about the state of Virginia attempting Kansas-style regulatory shut downs of abortion-providing clinics. Today was the public meeting regarding the regulations and, thus, the chance to speak about them. So many people came that the board extended the public comment period from the 20 allotted minutes to more than an hour. Here are some highlights:

Supporters of the proposed regulations spoke in broad anti-abortion terms, citing out-of-state medical malpractice and the immorality of the practice. The first speaker, Frances Bouton, likened legal abortion to slavery. Del. Bob Marshall's wife, Cathy, spoke on his behalf, citing "ground-up babies" being flushed into the public water system. [ed: Say what now? Are you serious?! --Misty]

Those opposing the draft regulations included several doctors who noted that first-trimester abortion is one of the most common procedures in the United States and one of the safest.

Internist Wendy Klein, MD, noted that colonoscopies, also performed in doctor's offices, carry a 100 times greater risk than first-trimester abortions. Other speakers in opposition represented young college graduates, low-income women and African-American women, all unable to afford health insurance and basic medical care. The common plea to the Board -- with a couple of younger speakers noting its composition as primarily male and white -- was to consider medical and safety issues rather than their religious beliefs in their vote.

The vote is this afternoon, though I do not know at what time. According to the VA Dept of Health site, a resident can send public comment in these ways:

Members of the public wishing to submit written comments concerning the draft emergency regulations to the Board prior to the September 15 meeting may submit them via email to commissioner.remley@vdh.virginia.gov; via U.S. mail to Post Office Box 2448, Richmond, Virginia 23218; or by fax to (804) 864-7022.

Since it is still Sept 15th and they haven't yet voted--as far as I know--it couldn't hurt to have your voice heard via email or fax.

[UPDATE] According to NARAL VA:

Breaking bad news: #VA TRAP regulations OK'd by BoH, will now go to Gov. McDonnell.

Virginians can sign a petition being sent to McDonnell here.