What are three character traits you strive to have?
Compassion, patience, and self-respect.
Self-respect is maybe not traditionally considered a "character trait," but I've found that a lot of indecency is perpetrated because of the lack thereof—and, crucially, since it's my answer, I am a better person, more honest, more generous, more accountable, when I hold myself in esteem.
[H/T to @GarlandGrey.]
Question of the Day
Cute Bat Is So Cute OMG SOOOOOO CUTE
If you, like me, love bats and wanted to be "the world'th foremotht bat exthpert" when you were a child with a lisp, then you will love the stuffing out of this video. If, on the other hand, you do not find bats adorable and even their fine mosquito-devouring qualities cannot endear them to you, give this one a pass.
Text Onscreen: Lil' Drac—An orphaned short-tailed fruit bat. Lil' Drac's mother was rescued after a zoo closure. The stress of the transfer caused her to abandon her baby. This is not uncommon for mothers who feel unsure of their own safety. Lil' Drac was found shortly after he was abandoned and hand-raised by Bat World Sanctuary volunteers. [Piano music. Video of Lil' Drac, a tiny wee bat whose head is smaller than a fingernail, being held in white hands, being gently rubbed and wrapped in gauze as if it's a blanket.] Lil' Drac was examined for injuries, warmed, and comforted before being fed. [Video of Lil' Drac being gently stroked with the tip of a cotton swab.] A warm, damp cotton swab feels a bit like a mother's tongue. [Video of a small piece of foam being held up to Lil' Drac's mouth and milk formula being dropped into it; he slowly begins to nurse.] A tiny foam tip is used so he can nurse his milk formula. It takes him awhile, but he finally gets the hang of it. [Video of Lil' Drac being stroked with a cloth and fingertips while he nurses on the foam, then hanging upside down a finger.] As the days passed he became stronger as his personality emerged… [He stretches his wing, scratches himself with his foot, and then begins to gently sway while hanging from the finger.] …and we discovered that he likes to rock himself after being fed. [Adorbs little bat rocks to pretty piano music, aaaaaand this is where I begin to blub. The person begins to gently brush him with a tiny brush.] He needs to be gently brushed to encourage self-grooming. [Lil' Drac clings to fingers, still sucking on foam. Scratches himself. Falls asleep on fingers.] Lil' Drac grows bigger and stronger every day… [Video of Lil' Drac rocking some more.] …and he rocks. [Major blub.] For more information about bats and how they make the world a better place, please visit www.batworld.org. Music: White Horse by Brian Crain. www.briancrain.com Thank you Brian for allowing us to use your beautiful music![Via The Daily What.]
Headline of the Day
Gingrich Pledges Not to Commit Infidelity a Third Time, Reaffirms Opposition to Marriage Equality. Snort.
Which just underlines what bullshit the unholy marriage between political conservatives (small government! no taxes!) and social conservatives (big Jesus! no homo!) really is. There's nothing politically conservative about forcing people to sign pledges about private consensual sex acts, or about arguing that the government should be in the business of telling people they can't marry a consenting partner of legal age.
Gingrich doesn't give a flying flunderton about this horseshit, except insomuch as it will help him win the GOP nomination. (Or impeach a president.) He's got the sexual ethics of a Republican with no sexual ethics.
It's embarrassing to watch these sad, socially stunted failosaurs bray about getting Gingrich to sign their morality yearbooks as if it matters, as if he cares. What fools.
Number of the Day
Six: The number of members of the Walton Family (as in Sam and Bud Walton, the founders of Wal-Mart) whose combined wealth as of 2007—$69.7 billion—was equal to the combined wealth of the entire bottom thirty percent of the US population.
BTW the new 2011 Forbes 400 has the inherited worth of these six Waltons at $93 billion. The 2010 [Survey of Consumer Finances] data that is slated for release spring of 2012 will almost certainly show a further widening of the wealth gap given that corporate profits, stocks, and CEO pay have all recovered while housing values & equity (the lion's share of wealth for average Americans), wages, and family incomes have yet to turn around.So, basically, the combined fortune of these six people may now, in fact, be equivalent to more than a third of the rest of the US population.
[H/T to Iain.]
Photo of the Day
[Click to embiggen. Photograph by Annie Liebovitz.]
Meryl Streep, whom I adore, which I may have mentioned previously, ahem, is on the cover of Vogue this month. It is her first Vogue cover at age 62 (by comparison, Blake Lively's already graced the cover twice), and the accompanying story is amazing. Hang her portrait in the halls of importance! All of them!
The Dexter Thread
I am really missing our Walking Thread (more than the show? maybe), so I thought we'd do a Dexter thread this week, as I know many of the Shakers who watch The Walking Dead also watch Dexter.
Oy, this show. The only reason I still watch it is pictured above. Oh, Jennifer Carpenter, how I wish you had your own show. A different show. That was good.
[Spoiler Alerts from this season below.]
So, Dexter has always been problematic, and I'm not even going to go into all the reasons why a social justice-minded person might object to it (or even why a social justice-minded person might like it), because I'm too busy being annoyed by how STUPID it's gotten.
And it's just been renewed for two more seasons! Noooooooooooooooooo! I need closure! I need the endgame to begin already! This show is starting to feel like homework every week! Just get me to the finale! PLEASE!
All right, so I have issues, and I'm going to keep watching this damn show through every last one hundred million serial killers in the Miami Metro area until Dexter is caught or killed or redeemed. NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES YOU SAY "DARK PASSENGER" YOU WILL NOT DRIVE ME AWAY! But in the interim, I hope I've got some people to lovehate this show with.
Can we start with LaGuerta? They should have named her Rorshach, since she is a totally different person depending on which writer is looking at her. Welp, this week, we need her to be a conniving harpy! Welp, this week we need her to be a feminist mentor! Welp, this week we need her to be ethical! No, unethical! A sexpot! No, a frigid bitch! Listen, I long for complex female characters, but LaGuerta isn't complex: She's a hot mess of wildly inconsistent character development. Lauren Vélez deserves better!
Is Anderson, the transfer from Chicago, ever going to be given anything to do? When he first showed up, I figured he'd be Deb's new love interest, but evidently his only purpose this season was to introduce the word "tableau."
And what is going on with Quinn? Specifically Quinn's mood hair. Uh-oh, Quinn's hair is messy; he must be on a bender. Phew, Quinn's hair is neat; looks like he'll competently do his job today. Oy, this show!
I also feel the need to express my amazement at the never-ending parade of nannies Dexter can find who will work 24/7 and have no lives upon which his ridiculously erratic schedule ever impinges. LUCKY!
Other random grievances: Both forensics interns are psychos? Whut. Whatever happened to the thread about Harry having fucked informants, suggesting that Deb and Dex are half-siblings? That whole thing just went away. Is Deb's grody fantasy an attempt to reintroduce it? Oy, this show. Tom Hanks' weird little cousin is no John Lithgow, or maybe he is, but I can't stop thinking about how much he looks like Woody. Uncanny! Actually, that's not a grievance. I like him!
There's more, but I don't want to steal all the complaining. Have at it!
Daily Dose of Cute
The Dudley Model is 75 pounds and made from: One nosehead, one giraffe neck, a tangle of awkward legs, snowflakes, cinnamon, and goofiness.
The Zelda Model is 40 pounds and made from: A recycled teddy bear, snuggles, squid ink, and Doritos.
Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by trees.
Recommended Reading:
Feminist News: FDA Finds Yaz Contains Insufficient Warning Labels
Igor: [TW for homophobia] Romney Tells Gay Veteran That He Would Support Repealing Same-Sex Marriage Rights in New Hamphsire
Evan: Rick Perry: Americans Don't Want a President Who Can Name the Supreme Court Justices
Fannie: [TW for gender policing] Mississippi School District Changes Yearbook Photo Policy
Noelle: [TW for sexual violence] What Arpaio Didn't Do This Time: Over 400 Sex Crimes Ignored
Andy: Married GOP Christian Politician Campaigned Against Gay Marriage at Home, Secretly Donates Sperm to Lesbians Abroad
Angry Asian Man: [TW for racism] Chik-Fil-A Cashier Names Customers "Ching" and "Chong"
The Heretik: Eye in the Sky
Tami: Notes from the Black Women and Marriage Project: An Everything Kind of Love
Ted: Picture Perfect
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
"I have always known I was a girl."
Shakers pavlov112 and Anitanola sent along this story in the Boston Globe about a set of identical twins, one of whom is a young woman who is trans.
The article is problematic in places (it starts out with a heapload of gender essentialist tropes, for example), but it's definitely worth a read to see what this family has gone through. The obstacles a trans* kid faces even with a supportive family and access to trans*-specific healthcare services are enormous. It's also yet another good (and sad) example of how prejudice is something that children are taught, often by adults who cloak their intolerance in "safety concerns" and religious moralizing.
Anyway! Go read it!
Debate-a-Thon 2012
So the Republicans had yet another debate this weekend, this time in Iowa, and, with Herman Cain having bid his presidential aspirations adieu (or something less Frenchy and traitorous), and Jon Huntsman off fucking around in New Hampshire because his poll numbers were too low to qualify him for participation in the debate (whoops!), there were a modest six participants in the ABC News debate on the campus of Drake University in Des Moines: Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, and Michele Bachmann.
I'm sure there's a transcript somewhere, but who cares, amirite? Taxes, Reagan, illegals, Jesus, bootstraps, taxes, Obama stinks. Even if the Republicans' rap weren't already as predictable as my response to a Jay Leno monologue (boom!), I think we'd all sufficiently have gotten the picture after fully 500 debates during this interminable primary.
Anyway! There was one vaguely notable incident during the debate: Mitt Romney challenged Rick Perry to a $10,000 bet (like normal people do all the time) over Perry's contention that Romney's position on healthcare mandates has flip-flopped. (It has.)
Naturally, people took notice of Romney's proposed wager, not just because he is wrongity-wrong, but also because it's maybe not the smartest idea he's ever had to flippantly bet 20% of the median US household annual income as if it's pocket change, while the country is in a virtual depression.
But Mitt Romney is nothing if not a deeply awkward campaigner whose unexamined multi-layered privilege makes him so cringe-inducingly clueless that he can make exponentially worse even the most minor controversy surrounding his extreme wealth. So, in New Hampshire the following day, Romney recalled how "his experience as a Mormon missionary in France had given him an appreciation for the privileges of his upbringing."
Living on no more than $110 a month in France – which Romney said was the equivalent of $500 or $600 in today's dollars – the former Massachusetts governor said he learned to live simply when he left for France in 1966 at the age of 19, stretching those dollars to cover food, clothing and rent over two and a half years in France. He lived in a series of apartments with little or no plumbing or amenities like refrigeration.Okay, first of all, if you want to be president of the United States of America, you should probably indicate some awareness that there are still lots of the people in the United States of America who are living in extreme poverty.
"You're not living high on the hog at that level," he said. "A number of the apartments that I lived in when I was there didn't have toilets – we had instead the little pads on the ground – OK, you know how that works, pull – there was a chain behind you with kind of a bucket, bucket affair. I had not experienced one of those in the United States."
Romney said he and his fellow missionaries showered once a week at a facility where you could pay a few francs to bathe – "Or if we were got lucky, we actually bought a hose and would hold it there on the sink … and wash ourselves that way."
"I lived in a way that people of lower middle income in France lived and I said to myself, 'Wow. I sure am lucky to be born in the United States of America,' " Romney said, adding that he began to appreciate "the freedoms and the gifts that come by virtue of having been in this country."
Secondly, it's gross to talk about living simply while doing voluntary missionary work in Europe as if that was experiencing real poverty. Real poverty is like walking a tightrope ten stories up with no safety gear; Romney might have spent a minute on a highwire, but he had the secure safety net of his parents' multimillion dollar fortune stretched beneath his feet the whole time.
I believe the great social commentator Jarvis Cocker said it best: "Rent a flat above a shop / Cut your hair and get a job / Smoke some fags and play some pool / Pretend you never went to school / But still you'll never get it right / 'Cuz when you're laid in bed at night / Watching roaches climb the wall / If you call your dad he could stop it all, yeah / You'll never live like common people / You'll never do whatever common people do / Never fail like common people / You'll ever watch your life slide out of view / And then dance and drink and screw / Because there's nothing else to do."
I can't wait to hear Raconteur Romney tell us about the time he got a profound understanding of homelessness by going camping.
Fat Trans* Woman with Shortish Hair
Following up on Liss' post of a few weeks back (Fat Woman With a Pixie Cut), I mentioned in comments there that I was feeling inspired, and considering cutting my own hair short for the first time since I transitioned. Well, sorta - I did it once, about six months after I transitioned (in 1992), but it...wasn't successful.
(TW transphobia, non-graphic mention of violence)
I mean, I thought it looked cute, and of fairly similar length to my own here, but I was so early on in my transition that I just couldn't make it work. I got misgendered very VERY often, as opposed to the just "often" that was happening daily. I found that being misgendered was seriously a bad thing: it not infrequently led to violence against me. It's likely that's mitigated somewhat by it being twenty years later, but this is a reality that trans*-spectrum people face.
(end TW)
So there's a certain amount of screwing the courage to the sticking-point involved, for me, in having my hair cut short, as well as something of a political statement - the latter's value considerably lessened by the fact that being misgendered is now a thing of my past pretty much exclusively.
I am also, like Liss, fat. I'm currently something like 174 cm (5'9")*, and weigh approximately 120kg (~244 lb, 17st7). So there's some intersectionality here between being fat and being trans, but then I have a privilege in "getting away with" having short hair that Liss doesn't: my hair is almost completely grey, and I'm ten or so years older than Liss, so mainstream feminine identity means I should be shortening my hair at this point, so I can signal my unavailability to fertile males**, or some such evopsych bullshit. This is in tension with the societal precept that we fat women oughta have long hair anyway, because round-face-blah-long-lines-blah-bullshit-blah.
In the earlier thread, I posted a few pictures of my hair as it had been recently. While it looked lovely long and dyed, it was somewhat less lovely in grey (sadly, I am grey, not silver or white, as is often the case for genetic redheads - red runs in my family strongly, and parts of my not-scalp hair have always been reddish), and besides, given that i tend to feel hot far more often than cold, I found that I almost always wore it up in one manner or another, clipped, ponytailed, braided, whatever. At which point, I may as well have short hair!
In the end, I ceded my all-grey privilege to have short hair, because after I cut it - yes, I cut it, in about three minutes, last Wednesday morning - I then went on to dye it blue. Advantage to my particular type of greyness, it takes semi-perm dyes BEAUTIFULLY.
Enough blather. I'm going to take a shower now (7 minutes! Down from 27!), then take the picture you see below. 
There we go: fat trans woman with shortish hair. Which is also blue.
Thanks to Liss for the inspiration, and to the Shakers with the incredible pictures and stories from that thread as well.
* My disability is such that I am shrinking notably - the doctor expects me to lose 10-12 cm (4-5") before I'm done, assuming I live my family's usual long life.
** As if!
Economic News Round-Up
Here's some of what I've been reading this morning...
Reuters—Anti-Wall Street activists look to block West Coast ports:
Anti-Wall Street protesters, hoping to briefly cripple a key supply chain of American commerce and re-energize their movement, plan to attempt to block major West Coast ports on Monday.And reminding us why the Occupy Movement exists...
By marching on U.S. ports from California to Alaska, organizers look to call attention to economic inequalities in the country and a financial system they complain is unfairly tilted toward the wealthy.
The planned action comes after the Occupy movement that began in New York in September has seen its tent camps in most big West Coast cities dismantled in police raids, leaving the movement looking for new avenues to voice its discontent.
...Police in several cities were so far not disclosing their plans for handling the protesters or whether they aimed to confront them, risking clashes, or stand back.
The Port of Oakland has mounted a public relations campaign to dissuade protesters from joining the effort, while two of the largest labor unions involved have split -- with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union opposed to the blockade and Teamsters in favor.
But union workers were largely expected to stay on the job, and were contractually barred from joining such a strike. The protest will focus in part on truck drivers who earn low wages and cannot join unions because they are classified as independent truck drivers, and must provide their own trucks.
"It's a group that encapsulates basically everything that is wrong with society," [Mike King, a graduate student who acts as a media liaison for Occupy Oakland] said.
New York Times—With lobbying blitz, for-profit colleges diluted new rules:
Last year, the Obama administration vowed to stop for-profit colleges from luring students with false promises. In an opening volley that shook the $30 billion industry, officials proposed new restrictions to cut off the huge flow of federal aid to unfit programs.I highly recommend reading this whole article. In other reminders of why the Occupy Movement exists...
But after a ferocious response that administration officials called one of the most intense they had seen, the Education Department produced a much-weakened final plan that almost certainly will have far less impact as it goes into effect next year.
The story of how the for-profit colleges survived the threat of a major federal crackdown offers a case study in Washington power brokering. Rattled by the administration's tough talk, the colleges spent more than $16 million on an all-star list of prominent figures, particularly Democrats with close ties to the White House, to plot strategy, mend their battered image and plead their case.
Bloomberg: Bank Credit Highest Since Before Lehman as US Growth Continues.
WaPo: Congress Edges Toward a Bipartisan Compromise on Spending.
CNN Money: Millions of Unemployed Americans to Lose Unemployment Benefits if Congress Doesn't Act.
Paul Krugman in the New York Times—Depression and Democracy: "It's time to start calling the current situation what it is: a depression. True, it's not a full replay of the Great Depression, but that's cold comfort."
Meanwhile, the Eurozone debt crisis is "far from over."
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to leave links to anything you're reading and/or writing in comments.
Sunday Shuffle
This is not my video but I was there this past Tuesday night! WOOOOOOOO! It was an amazing show and I highly recommend seeing them live.
How about you? What are you listening to today?
Open Thread
Hosted by a Bea Arthur tattoo. Thank you for being a friend.
This week's Open Threads have been hosted by portrait tattoos.
The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
(Don't forget to tip your bartender!)
Film Corner!
Below is the trailer for Young Adult, written by Diablo Cody and starring Charlize Theron, the IMDb description of which is: "Soon after her divorce, a fiction writer returns to her home in small-town Minnesota, looking to rekindle a romance with her ex-boyfriend, who is now married with kids." (Ha ha I will never stop loving the film trope that all female writers are dangerously crazy!) On the film poster, Theron is dressed in pink sweatpants, her high school boyfriend's green gym hoodie, and a Hello Kitty t-shirt, carrying two pink bags, atop one of which sits a tiny white fluffy dog. In pink text, it reads: "Everyone gets old. Not everyone grows up. A bit of baggage this December." Ooooooof.
As always, this might be a great movie. But the marketing for it sure doesn't make it look like one.
Charlize Theron, dressed in sweats and hoodie, stands at the counter in the lobby of a hotel. A young white woman behind the counter welcomes her and asks if she has a reservation. CT says no and hands her a credit card. Doggy noises emanate from within the pink bag she has sat on the counter. "Is that a dog in your bag?" "Nope." "We actually allow small pets with a cleaning deposit." "Good, because I have a small dog in my vehicle." Yiiiiiiiiiiikes.
David Bowie's "Queen Bitch" begins to play. Sad times.
CT meets Patton Oswalt, former classmate, in a bar. He asks her if she's moved back to town. "Of course not. Gross." Various scenes of CT getting ready, putting on a wig, going out, drinking, breakfast at her parents', seeing a classmate's baby, attending a party, hugging someone, getting glared at judgmentally. Another woman calls her a "psychotic prom queen bitch." In other words, the usual pointless montagery that establishes nothing besides the fact that this is, indeed, a movie with multiple scenes in it.
Text onscreen reads: "The girl you HATED in high school is BACK."
CT and Patton Oswalt talk in the bar parking lot. "Here's the deal," she tells him. "Buddy Slade and I are meant to be together, and I'm here to get him back." Oswalt replies, "I'm pretty sure he's married with a kid on the way." She says she doesn't care. He advises her to get therapy. She snorts derisively. Oh boy.
More montagery. She calls a baby ugly, gets her nails done, makes a scowly face, does shots with Buddy Slade, gets wine spilled on her white blouse at a baby shower (I think), is told "you are a piece of work" by Patton Oswalt, shops at Macys for a dress to make Buddy Slade's wife jealous.
This movie definitely has many scenes of Charlize Theron acting like a real asshole! And getting karmically punished for being an asshole! And acting like an asshole some more because she's not getting the memo from the universe! If you like seeing stupid assholes doing stupid asshole things, there is a good chance this movie is for you!
To Buddy Slade, who by the way is played by Patrick Wilson, whose ass you may have seen in Little Children, Charlize Theron says: "You can come to the city with me, like we always planned." He replies incredulously, "Mavis, I'm a married man!" She is not defeated: "I know! We can beat this thing TOGETHER!" He looks back at her and sighs like she is a stupid asshole. Because she is.
The one good thing about this trailer is that I don't need to see the movie. Because now I know that her crackpot scheme fails and she is shot down by Buddy Slade and all that's left to find out is whether she finally grows up, and, as it turns out, I don't fucking care. The End!
