...to Shakesville contributor Mustang Bobby, whose blog Bark Bark Woof Woof is celebrating eight years of barking up all the right trees today. Congrats, my friend!
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker Angelfish: Have you ever dreamed the same thing more than once?
I've had a pair of recurring dreams in my life: One was a recurring dream about my teeth getting loose and wobbly and unstable in my mouth, and occasionally falling out (which apparently is supposed to signal feelings of inferiority); the other is a recurring dream about being in a highrise building, near or on the top floor, when a huge—and impossibly tall—tsunami wave crashes over and engulfs the building (no idea what that's meant to symbolize).
I haven't had either one in a long time, though. Now I tend to get variations on the theme of school stress—being back in high school and forgetting my locker combination, not being able to find a class, forgetting my university schedule, realizing that I'm about to come up several credits short and won't graduate. These are super annoying, especially since I haven't been in a classroom of any traditional sort in 15 years.
I have more pleasant (or straight-up weird) dreams than unpleasant ones, but none recurring that I can recall.
News I Don't Want to Write About
[Trigger warning for sexual violence, violence, rape apologia, exploitation.]
There is A LOT of news today that I do not want to write about!
There is the Penn State Sex Abuse Case, which is yet another horrific story about institutional sex abuse against boys by men whom they trusted, while men in positions of power looked the other way. We have heard this story before. The Catholic Church. The Boy Scouts. If this fucked-up world needs another post to be written about the presumed decency of Real MenTM while gay men are erroneously scapegoated as child predators, it will have to wait until another day, when I am fired up by anger and not deflated by grief. I do recommend reading Paul Campos on this story (with the caveat his post contains disablist language).
There is the Conviction of Conrad Murray, Michael Jackson's personal physician, who has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter by a California jury. I am sad about this whole thing. I honestly didn't follow the case that closely, because I only have so much capacity for depressing celebrity exploitation stories and I'm ALL FULL UP at the moment, but I guess it's good he was held accountable for what seems like extremely irresponsible medical practices to a casual observer? You tell me.
There is Rep. Michele Bachmann's Ongoing Campaign to Make My Head Explode. "Self reliance means, if anyone will not work, neither should he eat." Oh, Michele. You are THE WORST.
There is Warren Buffett's $20 Billion Spending Spree. Nice spending spree if you can spend it, or something!
There is the Celebrity Boxing Match between "Octomom" and the "Long Island Lolita." They are two women with actual names! Do you know them? The media has done their best to make sure we don't! It makes exploitative—but sexy! woo woo!—boxing matches much more FUN if the participants have been sufficiently dehumanized. True fact.
Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.
Quote of the Day
[Trigger warning for sexual violence, medical malfeasance, racism, misogyny, disablism, and victim-blaming.]
"I'm crushed. They cut me open like I was a hog. ... I have to carry these scars with me. I have to live with this for the rest of my life."—Elaine Riddick, who was a 13-year-old girl when she was raped and impregnated by a man who was never held accountable, then legally sterilized without her consent after giving birth nine months later.
Riddick's records reveal that a five-person state eugenics board in Raleigh had approved a recommendation that she be sterilized. The records label Riddick as "feebleminded" and "promiscuous." They said her schoolwork was poor and that she "does not get along well with others."Riddick, who is black, is one of 7,600 people sterilized in North Carolina between 1929 and 1974, 85% of whom were female, and 40% of whom were people of color.
She is one of the estimated 2,000 survivors, many of whom are bravely telling their stories as the state tries to figure out reparations, even though as Governor Beverly Perdue rightly notes: "There isn't enough money in the world to pay these people for what has been done to them."
Daily Dose of Cute
There has CLEARLY already been a heaping helping of cute already today, care of Deeks and Jack. But who couldn't use more cute? (I could!)
Dudley and Zelda are always Very Concerned About the Goings-On when Iain and/or I do anything outside around the house. They take up spying positions wherever they can find them, but the best place ever is obviously at the front door.
"We have Some Concerns about what may or may not be going on out there."
Dudley: "All this standing and looking has really wiped me out."
When the front door window is not available, the window over the couch will suffice, although it's totally not as good.
"This vantage point stinks. Let's get Two-Legs to open the front door."
Open Thread: New Cain Allegations
[Trigger warning for sexual violence.]
Sharon Bialek, the fourth woman to make allegations of sexual harassment against Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain just gave a press conference detailing the alleged event, and what she described is more accurately called sexual assault:
Bialek says Cain took her to the NRA offices — she thought they were going inside, but Cain reached under her skirt to grab her genitals and tried to force her head down to his crotch. She says she said: "What are you doing? That's not what I came here for." To which she alleges Cain responded "You want a job don't you?"There's going to be a lot of victim-blaming and a lot of rape apologia in the media. That will not be allowed in this thread.
Bialek says she didn't file a complaint because she didn't work for the NRA.
"I am coming forward to give a face and a voice to those women who, for whatever reason, cannot come forward."
I've got no more commentary than I had previously: I believe these women, and I have no reason not to believe them. Neither does anyone else.
#mencallmethings
Sady Doyle started a hashtag on Twitter so female bloggers could share some of the vitriol they receive from a seemingly never-ending cavalcade of thunderfucks in their inboxes and comments sections. Check out #mencallmethings, where I direct you with a trigger warning. It ain't pretty. And it's almost certainly worse than you even imagine.
I've contributed a bunch of stuff already, and will continue to submit as time allows.
Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by white kitten socks.
Recommended Reading:
Doctor Pen: 42nd Down Under Feminists' Carnival
Pam: [TW for homophobia] The Unholy Trio of Anti-LGBT Groups Pushing NC Marriage Amendment
Andy: UK Ban on Gay Blood Donation Lifted
Vanessa: [TW for bullying; rape culture; misogyny; homophobia] New Study: Sexual Harassment Prevalent in Grades 7 to 12
Melissa: Hollywood Feminist of the Day: Gemma Arterton
Igor: Jon Huntsman: Personhood Movement 'Goes Too Far'
Atrios: Maybe We Could Hire People to Do Some Stuff
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
The Bluest Eye
[Trigger warning for racism; colorism.]
[Image from KTLA news segment; post title from Toni Morrison's novel of the same name.]
Because in this age of Impossible Beauty, no one can ever be beautiful enough, Dr. Gregg Homer of Stroma Medical in California is developing a laser procedure that will turn brown eyes blue:
[Homer] announced on KTLA-TV that he had come up with a laser procedure that removes the brown pigment, known as melanin, in the iris. Once removed, the blue color underneath is revealed, giving the person blue eyes. Homer said the procedure takes about 20 seconds.Despite Homer's assurances about the safety of the procedure, which may be available within two years, Dr. Robert Cykiert, associate professor of ophthalmology at NYU Langone Medical Center, told ABC News that the laser treatment is "risky" and "very likely to cause a high pressure in the eye, known as glaucoma," which could be temporary or permanent, and can cause permanent vision loss.
"We use a laser that's tuned to a specific frequency to remove the pigment from the surface of the iris," he told KTLA.
The change is irreversible because, once removed, the melanin cannot grow back.
Sound scary? Homer says he's been working on the science for 10 years. He told the news channel that he and his team had 15 ranges of "sophisticated" tests to make sure there is no eye tissue damage during or after the procedure.
Taking extreme risks to one's health in pursuit of beauty is not new, of course; there have been several high-profile deaths from plastic surgery procedures in recent years. And, like other procedures developed to facilitate conformance to a kyriarchtypal beauty standard, the bluing of eyes reinforces privilege. Homer is unabashed in his privileging of blue eyes:
"The eyes are the windows to the soul; [there's] this idea that people can actually see into it—a blue eye is not opaque. You can see deeply into it, and a brown eye is very opaque, and I think that there is something meaningful about this idea of having open windows to the soul," Homer told KTLA.Silly narratives about blue eyes being more "readable" are nothing more than codswallop used to justify the privileging of blue eyes, which are associated with whiteness, though not every person with blue eyes is white.
In both some white communities and some communities of color, there is a privileging of lighter eyes—blue, green, hazel, light brown—over dark brown or near-black eyes. It's a variation on colorism, which privileges light skin over dark, and has its own legacy of bleaching and lightening and lasering similar to the one Dr. Homer is trying to build for eye color. Light eyes, pale skin, hair that is light and fine and straight—these are all privileged to create a kyriarchetype that treats everything else as "exotic." As other. As less than.
Suffice it to say, I find Homer's "revolutionary" new procedure to be deeply problematic on multiple levels. Discuss.
[Commenting Guidelines: There are lots of women and men who like to play around with eye color using contact lenses, and, should that become part of the discussion, I would ask commenters to bear in mind what I said here: "Quite evidently, we each have a responsibility to think critically about our individual decisions, and not pretend they happen in a void even when we make choices for no one's pleasure or security but our own. Just because one is doing something for hirself doesn't magically turn it into a choice without cultural implications. But it's eminently possible to critique the culture in which individual choices are made, and the cultural narratives that may affect our decision-making processes, without condemning those individual choices. Or the people making them."]
Finding Jack
I was driving home the other day, ambling through rush hour traffic, thinking about how much I need to pee. Typical Friday, really. Edmondson Avenue heading into downtown was crowded, slow, but not completely stopped.
Somewhere between Uplands Park and Cathedral Cemetery I saw a cumpled up brown paper sack in the road in front of me. The only reason I really noticed the litter was because of it's shape. I thought to myself, "That piece of paper looks just like a kitten."
A moment later I realized that piece of paper was a kitten! Eep!
Okay, so just to get an idea of where this furball was, I've kindly recreated the placement of the kitten in the image below. I've also used a graphic of a teddy bear in place of the feline for reasons that should be obvious.
(Artist's rendering © 2011 Deekyvision Enterprises GmbH.)
I stopped, put on my flashers and jumped from the car. I ran to the front of the car but the kitten was gone. Crap. He'd crawled under my car. I guess for safety? "Kitty, don't do that!"
Reaching for him just prompted him to run out behind my car. Uh oh. Yeah, if "Yakety Sax" had been playing, it would have been perfect. I chased him around a bit, holding up traffic as we weaved and dodged around the road around my car until he slowed enough for me to grab him.
As I carried him back to the car I noticed how scrawny he was. A tiny little underfed thing. I tossed him onto the floorboard and drove away, not sure what I was going to do with a dirty, mewing kitten. A bit down the road I stopped and, using my smart phone, checked the hours for the city's animal shelter. Unfortunately they'd closed for the evening.
Well, I said to myself, I guess he can stay the night and I'll drop him off in the morning.
That was over a week ago. The kitten is still in my apartment.
I took him to the vet the next morning. They bathed him, weighed him (1.6lbs), and following some tests declared him in good health. His name is Jack.
Here he is that first night, having perched himself on my back, like I'm a pirate and he's a parrot:
For scale, here is Jack and an Xbox controller:
Welcome home, Jack. I am glad to have found you. You're safe now.
Oh, and to the woman who gave me dirty looks as I was picking up Jack from the road: Kiss my ass.
[Cross-posted.]
Number of the Day
49.1 million: The number of USians living in poverty in 2010, or 16% of the population, according to a new broader measure of poverty released by the US Census Bureau today.
How Dire Is the State of the Republican Primary?
Herman Cain, serial sexual harasser, is still leading in Iowa. Newt Gingrich, serial philanderer, is now polling in second.
Yiiiiiiiiiiikes.
Earthquakes in Oklahoma, Northern Afghanistan, and The Philippines
Oklahoma's largest quake in decades buckles highway; rattles residents: "Central Oklahoma continued to experience dozens of aftershocks Sunday, nearly 24 hours since the state's strongest earthquake since 1952 was felt throughout the region. More than ten aftershocks measuring at east 3.0 magnitude were reported Sunday, in the hours after a 5.6-magnitude earthquake took residents by surprise Saturday night. The temblor rattled homes and structures, causing belongings to scatter in houses and sending strident, booming sounds through the area."
Moderate earthquake shakes northern Afghanistan: "An earthquake of 5.5 magnitude has rattled the Hindu Kush region of northern Afghanistan, but there are no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The U.S. Geological Survey says that the quake occurred Monday at 4:29 p.m. local time."
Moderate quake shakes Philippine City: "A moderate earthquake injured one person, knocked out power and prompted the evacuation of dozens of patients from a hospital Monday in a southern Philippine city, officials said. The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology measured the quake at magnitude 5.2, while the U.S. Geological Survey said it was 5.0. The quake shook houses in Valencia City and other parts of Bukidnon province shortly before nightfall, prompting residents to run outside in panic as TV sets and other objects tumbled off tables, Office of Civil Defense Director Anna Caneda said. 'The shaking was brief but quite intense,' Caneda told The Associated Press."
Fortunately, no serious injuries and limited damage have been reported in all three locations.
Occupy Everywhere & Economic News Round-Up
[Trigger warning for violence.]
Below is video of an Occupy Oakland protester being shot with a rubber bullet while filming the police line in the early hours of November 3: "While filming a police line at Occupy Oakland after midnight on Nov. 3 following the Nov. 2 general strike, an officer opens fire and shoots me with a rubber bullet. I was standing well back. There was no violence or confrontations of any kind underway." [Via Zaid at Think Progress.]
CNN—A roundup of Occupy protests: "On Monday, a hearing will be held [in Atlanta] for a protester who was charged Saturday night with aggravated assault and obstruction after police said he assaulted a motorcycle officer patrolling the area. However, demonstrators said the officer 'accelerated into a demonstrator.' ... Riverside [California] police arrested 11 people Sunday after a group of about 40 demonstrators formed a human chain to prevent officers from pulling down tents near City Hall, Occupy organizers said." Etc. Meanwhile, in Chicago, police have installed surveillance equipment near Occupy Chicago HQ.
Welcome to America 2.0!
Here's some of the other stuff I've been reading this morning...
NPR—What Do Occupy Wall Street Protesters Want?: "Occupy Wall Street is in its second month of protest, and the frustration with financial big wigs continues to grow. Tomorrow's protesters will track 11 miles from Upper Manhattan to Lower Manhattan, ending in Zuccotti Park, the place where it all started seven weeks ago. They're calling the walk End to End for 99%."
The Guardian—US entrepreneurs cash in on Occupy movement: "The revolution could be trademarked in the US as more entrepreneurs seek to profit from the Occupy demonstrations. T-shirts began to appear days after the first protest on 17 September, a march through lower Manhattan. Now T-shirts, coffee mugs and other merchandise are being offered on the campsites that have sprung up in cities across the US. The US patent and trademark office has received a spate of applications." Perfect.
Barry Ritholtz in the Washington Post—What caused the financial crisis? The Big Lie goes viral: "A Big Lie is so colossal that no one would believe that someone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. There are many examples: Claims that Earth is not warming, or that evolution is not the best thesis we have for how humans developed. Those opposed to stimulus spending have gone so far as to claim that the infrastructure of the United States is just fine, Grade A (not D, as the we discussed last month), and needs little repair. Wall Street has its own version: Its Big Lie is that banks and investment houses are merely victims of the crash. You see, the entire boom and bust was caused by misguided government policies. It was not irresponsible lending or derivative or excess leverage or misguided compensation packages, but rather long-standing housing policies that were at fault. Indeed, the arguments these folks make fail to withstand even casual scrutiny. But that has not stopped people who should know better from repeating them."
WaPo—Wall Street's resurgent prosperity frustrates its claims, and Obama's: "President Obama has called people who work on Wall Street 'fat-cat bankers,' and his reelection campaign has sought to harness public frustration with Wall Street. Financial executives retort that the president's pursuit of financial regulations is punitive and that new rules may be 'holding us back.' But both sides face an inconvenient fact: During Obama's tenure, Wall Street has roared back, even as the broader economy has struggled. The largest banks are larger than they were when Obama took office and are nearing the level of profits they were making before the depths of the financial crisis in 2008, according to government data."
New York Times—The Next Fight Over Jobs: "The way the job market is going, it will never be robust enough to bring down the unemployment rate, now at 9 percent, or 13.9 million people. Monthly job growth has slowed to an average of just 90,000 new jobs a month over the past six months, a pace at which growth in the working-age population will always exceed the number of new jobs being created. High unemployment and low job growth, which have plagued the economy all through the current 'recovery,' hurt both consumer spending and economic growth. But don't count on government to do the obvious and urgent thing—intervene to create jobs. Tragically, the more entrenched the jobs shortage becomes, the more paralyzed Congress becomes."
Paul Krugman in the New York Times—Here Comes the Sun: "Let's face it: a large part of our political class, including essentially the entire GOP, is deeply invested in an energy sector dominated by fossil fuels, and actively hostile to alternatives. This political class will do everything it can to ensure subsidies for the extraction and use of fossil fuels, directly with taxpayers' money and indirectly by letting the industry off the hook for environmental costs, while ridiculing technologies like solar. So what you need to know is that nothing you hear from these people is true. Fracking is not a dream come true; solar is now cost-effective. Here comes the sun, if we're willing to let it in."
In Eurozone news...
The Guardian's live coverage is here.
CNN—Greece's prime minister to quit in deal to salvage bailout package: "Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou will step down as his government's leader, the country's president announced Sunday night—agreeing to do so on the condition that the controversial 130 billion euro bailout deal is approved. The announcement follows a meeting on Sunday in which Papandreou and Antonis Samaras—the leader of the New Democracy party, Greece's leading opposition party—agreed to form a new government."
The Guardian—Italy hails businessman a hero after he launches appeal to save the economy: "A businessman has become an unlikely national hero after urging Italians to buy up government bonds to help drag the country back from the brink of an economic meltdown. As the prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, scrambles to deliver key reforms, the Tuscan financial services entrepreneur Giuliano Melani announced his appeal with a full-page ad in the leading daily Corriere della Sera, complete with his telephone number and email address. Melani says the bill for Italian government bonds expiring annually is €260-270bn (£223-232bn), a sum which would be taken care of if every Italian paid €4,500."
CNN Money—Europe: The worst-case scenarios: "That upheaval [in Greece] serves as just another reminder that the the crisis is far from over. ... Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy, put the odds of Greece leaving the eurozone at zero in the near term. Global Insight, another consultancy, puts it at about one in three. But UBS's Magnus puts it at 50-50 in the next year or two, and 80% by 2016."
This is not good:
The Guardian—Far right on rise in Europe, says report: "The far right is on the rise across Europe as a new generation of young, web-based supporters embrace hardline nationalist and anti-immigrant groups, a study has revealed ahead of a meeting of politicians and academics in Brussels to examine the phenomenon. Research by the British thinktank Demos for the first time examines attitudes among supporters of the far right online. Using advertisements on Facebook group pages, they persuaded more than 10,000 followers of 14 parties and street organisations in 11 countries to fill in detailed questionnaires. The study reveals a continent-wide spread of hardline nationalist sentiment among the young, mainly men. Deeply cynical about their own governments and the EU, their generalised fear about the future is focused on cultural identity, with immigration—particularly a perceived spread of Islamic influence—a concern."
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to leave links to what you've been reading and/or writing in comments.
Sunday Shuffle
You?
(This song, btw, was the one I picked as the theme song for my thirties when I turned thirty :-))
Happy Birthday, Iain!!!
It's my burfday!
Once upon a time, I mentioned to my friend Mannion that Anne Bancroft and Mel Brooks had always been my favorite Hollywood couple. "Not Bogart and Bacall?" he asked. "Not Newman and Woodward?"
"Nope," I replied. "Definitely Anne Bancroft and Mel Brooks."
He asked why. It was because of something Anne Bancroft once said. Yes, that Brooks made her laugh. And this: "When I hear his key in the lock at night my heart starts to beat faster. I'm just so happy he's coming home. We have so much fun." I can totally relate.
I'll never get over my crush on Iain.
There will never be anyone with whom I more want to share good news, with whom I most want to celebrate my successes or lament my failures, with whom I more want to see a movie I'm dying to see, or passionately discuss a book I loved, or play Talisman until we're falling asleep at the table or Rock Band until our fingers are ready to fall off.
Last night, I took him to dinner at his favorite restaurant, and, nearly ten years after our first dinner date, I am still excited to gaze at him across a table and have a tumbling conversation about interesting things.
Which reminds me of something else Anne Bancroft once said about Mel Brooks. "I'd never had so much pleasure with another human being. It was that simple."
I can totally relate to that, too.
I love you, Iain. Happy Birthday.
