What is the one accessory you can't live without?
Could be something practical (a belt to keep your trousers up) or something sentimental (your grandmother's ring), but in any case something that's most frequently on your person when you leave the house.
(Medical accessories that do double-duty as fashion accessories, e.g. eyeglasses or stylized canes, are of course welcome answers, but one need not feel obliged to mention them if one would rather talk about, say, one's favorite hat.)
Question of the Day
Photo of the Day
![image of President Obama flanked by two American flags, giving him the appearance of having red-white-n-blue wings: 'President Barack Obama pauses before shaking hands at a campaign event, Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012, at the Apollo Theatre in the Harlem neighborhood of New York. [AP Photo]'](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v642/shakespeares_sister/shakes3/610x-45.jpg "President Barack Obama pauses before shaking hands at a campaign event, Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012, at the Apollo Theatre in the Harlem neighborhood of New York. [AP Photo]")
Y'all, don't tell anyone, but I'm pretty sure President Obama just sprouted Old Glory wings. I think our president might be an X-Man.
Alcatraz Open Thread
Did you watch Alcatraz last night? What did you think of it? Did you love it? I did! I LOVED IT.
Here are the Top 5 things I loved about it (some minor spoilers):
1. I love Jorge Garcia! I love his character soooooooooo much! And the last scene, in the bedroom, you know the one I mean, where the kid says the thing, and he gets all teary? I was reelected as Mayor of Blubbington six times during that scene alone. Jorge Garcia, you are awesome.
Do you know how awesome Jorge Garcia is? I already don't even think about Hurley when I'm watching Dr. Diego Soto, and Hurley is one of my favorite things in the universe.
2. I love that Sarah Jones' character is a real female character—not a "generic" (read: male) character that's being played by a woman, but a female character who says things the way human beings socialized as women say things. That is very good writing!
3. I love that Alcatraz looks like Lost because Jack Bender is directing it. I am a fan of his directing!
4. I love that the only time any reference has been made to Jorge Garcia's weight, it was sneered out of the mouth of a horrible person. That's RIGHT! Fat hatred is a horrible thing that horrible people do!
5. Everything else!
News I Don't Want to Write About
Here are all the news items I don't want to write about today!
Mitt Romney's taxes! #1 on the list of News I Don't Want to Write About! This day and every day! Who cares. He's rich, and he doesn't pay squat, because neither party has the spine to argue that filthy wealth should be taxed to blazes when there are people literally starving in the streets in this nation. "Let them eat bootstraps," says literally everyone in Congress, except Bernie Sanders.
There is the story about some fuckbrained Georgia judge who thinks that President Obama needs to show up in court to testify in a birther case. It's vanishingly unlikely that the decision will actually result in Obama's having to testify, but, if it comes to that, I vote that Obama just sends a life-sized cardboard cut-out of himself with a copy of his long-form birth certificate stapled to it.
There is the swell tale of the Oklahoma state legislator who has introduced "a bill to ban the making and selling of food or products that use aborted human fetuses." You know—just in case!
(Guess what party he's in! Go on—guess! Did you guess the Republican Party? Of course you did! You're so smart. Give yourself 1,000 points!)
There is the news that Warren Buffett's oft-invoked secretary, who has a name and it's Debbie Bosanek, will attend the State of the Union address tonight in Official Gimmick Capacity. That'll be fun!
There is the news that European financial crisis will slow the global economy this year, according to the International Monetary Fund, who (futilely) urges states to jettison austerity measures in favor of investment. That would require sensible people to be in charge. Oh well!
There is the scandalous report that Jim Carrey's daughter, Jane Carrey, got SPECIAL TREATMENT from the producers of American Idol, who allegedly allowed her to avoid camping out for days in order to get a shot on the show. Listen, everyone: We can't have it both ways. We can't treat famous people, or kids of famous people, like they're our public property to be harangued and mauled every time they step in public, but also expect them to behave like average people. The nature of the celebrity machine has made life unsafe for lots of celebrities, so it's time to quit whinging about line-jumping.
There is the news that Rick Warren is "fighting obesity" at Saddleback Church. Great. WWJD? Work out with a personal trainer twice a day, no doy.
Finally, there is allllllllll the coverage of candlelight vigils and undilutedly glowing remembrances of Joe Paterno, to none of which I'm going to link. You know what? If I kicked tomorrow, and none of the people who allegedly admired me mentioned that, among my many blogging exploits, was showing my ass on issues of race, trans*fail, having to publicly jettison misogynist and disablist language from my repertoire, and other embarrassing displays of privilege and ignorance, plus ten gazillion typos, it wouldn't be honoring me: It would be dehumanizing me.
[True Fact: Deeky would definitely share all the ways I am an asshole in private, too. Which just goes to show you what a great friend he really is.]
Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.
Quote of the Day
"Tonight, the President will do what he does best. He will give a nice speech with a lot of memorable phrases. ... We'll also be treated to more divisive rhetoric from a desperate campaigner-in-chief. It's shameful for a President to use the State of the Union to divide our nation."—GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, who definitely did not pay taxes on a crystal ball last year, so I guess he's just psychic.
I myself am not able to predict the future, but I'm nonetheless going to go out on a limb and assert that Romney's prognosticator is broken.
Unless, of course, President Obama, who can hardly be said to be desperately campaigning, if the words "desperate" and "campaigning" still mean the same things they meant yesterday, breaks wildly from tradition and replaces his (frankly rather tiresome) rhetoric of unity, bipartisanship, and transcending ideological differences with "divisive rhetoric...to divide our nation."
It could happen!
Spoiler Alert: It won't.
Daily Dose of Cute
"What?"
So, I'm out walking the dogs earlier, and they're doing their usual thing—trotting along, being no trouble, sniffing about at various Stinks of Interest as we move down the (new!) sidewalk. And we're walking, and we're walking, and, at one point, I look down to discover that the little Dorito-earned rapscallion pictured above has somehow acquired a GIANT PIECE OF FRIED CHICKEN and is just happily bopping along beside me with it in her mouth.
Where this piece of chicken came from I have no idea. It probably fell out of a garbage bin into one of the lingering piles of snow at the ends of driveways, and she managed to scoop it up without missing a step.
"Eww! Where did you find that?!" I laugh-exclaimed, reaching down for it. "Drop it." She spit it into my hand and grinned. I tossed it aside, and she gave me a pitiable look. "That's grody," I told her. "I'll give you a good treat when we get home."
And so I did.
* * *
Below, a quick little video of Dudley being lazy after our incredibly taxing 15-minute walk.
Study: Abortion Safer Than Childbirth
In what will surprise absolutely no one who knows the first thing about the reproduction of women and other people with uteri, a study by Dr. Elizabeth Raymond from Gynuity Health Projects in New York City and Dr. David Grimes of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine at Chapel Hill has found that legal abortion is safer than childbirth, having a lower mortality rate and fewer complications.
The point isn't, of course, that women and other people with uteri who want children should be persuaded to have abortions instead.
The point is that all the anti-choice rhetoric that pretends pregnancy and childbirth are no big deal, and abortion is extraordinary dangerous, is comprehensive bullshit.
Pregnancy and childbirth do carry risks, and forcing pregnant people who want abortions to face them is cruel and violent.
This is a real thing in the world
"Inspired by the iconic sleeve of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures album, this Tee incorporates Mickey's image within the graphic of the pulse of a star." Okay then!
Number of the Day
10 million: The number of jobs the US labor market still needs in order to return to pre-recession employment. Heidi Shierholz at the Economic Policy Institute:
The jobs deficit left from losses in 2008 and 2009 remains well over 10 million jobs; this takes into account both the 6.1 million fewer jobs we have now than we did before the recession started, and the fact that we should have added over four million jobs over that period just to keep up with normal growth in the working age population.I hope President Obama's got one magical speech prepared for the State of the Union tonight.
In December, the addition of 200,000 jobs was heralded as strong growth, but, as the figure shows, even at that rate the United States will not return to full employment until 2019. By way of comparison, to get back to full employment by the start of 2016 – four years from now – the labor market would have to add around 320,000 jobs a month. But expectations are that sustained robust job growth is at least one year away (pdf).
LOL!
So now Newt Gingrich is a free speech crusader because the big meanie liberal media won't let him reap the benefits of his cheap applause lines.
Hilarious.
Always with the principles, this one.
In related news, I see Newt's bringing back "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control." Good times. It's like the '90s all over again!
Someone get me Ace of Base's "I Saw the Sign" on that jukebox—STAT!
If There's One Thing I've Learned...
...It's that Ron Paul supporters are terrible at Photoshop. Ergo, i.e., e.g. and vis-à-vis:
Holy moly! What is going on here? A page from a coloring book and Ron Paul pointing and red boxes and another, smaller Ron Paul and a tea cup and maybe an American flag in there somewhere? Layers of flavor!
Wigs! And something about cigars. Huh? Yeah. I dunno. Does anyone want to discuss dressing a black man up like one of the Founding Fathers? No? Me either.
A flag in this one, for sure. And some text (poorly rendered) that admits voting for Ron Paul is throwing one's vote away (no doy) but that's okay because The Republic is at stake. Or something. There is also more text underneath that I can't read, so it's like a flashback to Raygun, but without any talk about Soundgarden.
Time Magazine! Yeah, Paul's supporters really like to put him on the cover of Time. There are lots and lots of variations on this out there, all of them are pretty terrible. I like this one because it features the Constitution. Ron Paul looooooves the Constitution. Too bad marriage is between one man and one woman and he can't marry it.
Whut? Sunday Sunday Sunday! This one is really in your face, isn't it? "Have we lost America?" Did you check behind the sofa? I'd check there. Stuff always gets lost behind the sofa. Also: "What's the deal with airplane food?!"
Bonus image!:
Ron Paul looking verrrry presidential. Oof. Seriously. It's like someone in the office took a picture of Del up in accounting because they were going to put his picture in the newsletter to celebrate his 15 anniversary with Tedelco Condensers Corp. (Just FYI: Tedelco Condensers Corp's motto: "Service, Selection, Value.") Next time, pick a better picture, that's all I'm saying.
News from Shakes Manor
Sitting in the living room after tea, talking about what would happen if one of the enormous origin stars a billion times bigger than our sun exploded right now (like ya do)...
Iain: [Offers a really detailed and interesting thought that I'm going to reductively paraphrase as: "The gamma ray burst would destroy all life on Earth."]
Me: Wait a minute—wouldn't it just turn us all into hulks?
Iain: *makes :-| face*
The Oscars Thread
Melissa McCarthy, in Bridesmaids.
So, the Oscar nominations were announced this morning, and, in Good News, the amazing Melissa McCarthy was nominated for her supporting role in Bridesmaids, and, in Bad News, "Academy Award nominee Jonah Hill" is now a Real Thing in the World. Whooooooooops!
The full list of nominations is here. Insert my standard annual commentary about the dearth of female and non-white directors and writers.
The two black women nominated, Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis, were both nominated for playing maids in The Help. I trust I don't need to explain why that is A Problem.
(Note: Bérénice Bejo, who was also nominated for a supporting role, is Argentinian, but I do not know if she identifies as a woman of color.)
The only man of color nominated in either acting category appears to be Demián Bichir, who is Latino.
Luckily, both George Clooney AND Brad Pitt are nominated for Best Actor, so I'm sure there will be PLENTY OF PRANKS at the Oscars!
Discuss.
Primarily Horrendo
![Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich yawns as he leaves the stage after taking part in The Republican Presidential Debate at University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida, January 23, 2012. Florida will hold its Republican primary on January 31, 2012. [Getty Images]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v642/shakespeares_sister/shakes3/610x-44.jpg "Did this picture make you yawn? It totally made me yawn.")
I know how you feel, brother.
So, the Four Horsemen of the Crapocalypse had another debate last night, because "debates" where a bunch of dudes with essentially the same policies stand behind star-spangled podiums screaming nonsense at each other is very good for democracy or whatever. I didn't watch it, because who fucking cares. But my pal Richard Adams has a great play-by-play here, if you want to feel like you were there, in the company of a witty Englishman.
Otherwise, here's my Executive Summary: Taxes, disgrace, Freddie Mac, lobbying, K Street, taxes, Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher, hey remember the 80s?!, Terry Schiavo (whut), taxes, Jesus, amen.
Everyone was on the attack against frontrunner (again) Newt Gingrich, which really forced Gingrich into doing what he does best: Shamelessly lying with a contemptuous sneer that effectively reads to dildobrainz who don't pay attention to facts that he is being honest, because who would lie that brazenly? (Newt Gingrich, that's who!) It's that utter confidence in the uninformed voter and irresponsible media that makes Gingrich dangerous. He's Teflon, baby.
And he's now leading in Florida, site of the next primary.
Meanwhile, every establishment Republican who's been whining incessantly about the likelihood of Mitt Romney getting the nomination is now shitting their sensible trousers at the possibility of a Gingrich candidacy. Whooooooooooooops we never thought THAT would happen!
To that end, Russ Douthat, still inexplicably being given page-space by the New York Times, is Calling Mitch Daniels. Ha ha you can have him! Take my governor—please!
Not for nothing, but the reason that "various capable Republicans [have decided] to forgo a presidential run this year" is because there's no point to running against President Obama, unless you're a Rick Santorum who thinks blastocysts are more important than the national economy or a Ron Paul who thinks US foreign policy is a garbage disaster (it is!) and imagine you can single-handedly reverse sixty years of industrial-military momentum in creating a perpetual war machine.
If you're just some douche in a suit who only cares about social issues insofar as they can be used as wedge issues to elicit votes from bigots and rubes, and your primary concerns are corporate cockwanking, privatization, and decimating the social safety net via austerity policy, you could hardly do better than Barack Obama.
Sure, he's no Newt Gingrich—he's more Bob Dole; Republican retro!—but giving him eight years to move the Democrats' economic platform even further to the right only accelerates the corporatocratic coup Big Business has been engineering with Republicans' assistance for the last forty years. So, why would any self-respecting Mitch Daniels or Jeb Bush run in this election and risk losing for no good reason?
And that, my friends, is why the Republican field now currently consists of a Santorum, a Ron Paul, and two egomaniacal opportunists who will do and say anything to get elected, including telling the absurd lie that President Barack Obama is a radical socialist lefty—a deceit so incredibly, laughably mendacious that Mitch Daniels and Jeb Bush couldn't even choke it out of their throats with a straight face.
In other news, blah blah Mitt Romney's taxes, Rick Santorum is still a jackass, SuperPACs are such a great idea and Newt Gingrich's is about to get a $5 million donation from one person, and something something Ron Paul.
Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.
Question of the Day
We haven't done a "desert island" question in ages, so here we go… As always, the desert island comes equipped with a power source and kickass entertainment system.
Were you to be stranded for an indefinite period of time, which one book, one album, and one film would you want to have with you?
Book: The Complete Works of Virginia Woolf
Album: "The Very Best of Nina Simone" by Nina Simone
Film: Harold and Maude
What I'm Listening To
[Content Note: The below video includes some strobe effects, which may make it not safe for anyone who experiences photosensitive epilepsy.]
Today in Rick Santorum Says Something Stupid
[Content Note: This post discusses reproductive rights and sexual violence.]
Rick Santorum says lots of stupid things. I mean, he's basically a one-man stupid things saying machine. If the things that came out of his mouth were a Transformer, they'd transform into a dysfunctional hunk of stupid metal made exclusively of stupid parts with lots of little stupid bits sticking out all over it. The man is full of fuckery, is what I'm saying.
And every time he opens his mouth to disgorge another vomit-chunk of cruel, wretched, compassionless stupidity, it's somehow worse than the previously rancid pile of muck that fell from his lips after being malformed in his contemptibly antipathetic brainpan. To wit:
Standing steadfast as the most socially right-wing candidate in the GOP presidential field, Rick Santorum has repeatedly touted his extreme anti-choice position, which dictates that abortion should be uniformly illegal, even in cases of rape or incest. He even suggested that physicians who provide abortions to such victims should be criminally charged.Yes. Indeed, that seems to be the problem with virtually every position Santorum holds: His definition of humanity almost always excludes women and other people with uteri.
Last Friday, CNN's Piers Morgan asked Santorum to clarify his reasoning behind such a callous position. Insisting that "it's not a matter of religious values," Santorum explained that sexual assault victims should "accept this horribly created" pregnancy because it is "nevertheless a gift in a very broken way" and that, when it comes down to it, a victim just has "to make the best out of a bad situation":
SANTORUM: Well, you can make the argument that if she doesn't have this baby, if she kills her child, that that, too, could ruin her life. And this is not an easy choice. I understand that. As horrible as the way that that son or daughter and son was created, it still is her child. And whether she has that child or doesn't, it will always be her child. And she will always know that. And so to embrace her and to love her and to support her and get her through this very difficult time, I've always, you know, I believe and I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created — in the sense of rape — but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you. As you know, we have to, in lots of different aspects of our life. We have horrible things happen. I can't think of anything more horrible. But, nevertheless, we have to make the best out of a bad situation.The problem with Santorum's sense of humanity is that it doesn't seem to extend to the victim.
As always, I do dearly love (read: detest with the fiery passion of 10,000 suns) the fact that Rick Santorum is so catastrophically incapable of self-reflection that he is able to acknowledge that rape (forcing a woman to do something with her body she doesn't want to do) is a Terrible Thing, while simultaneously asserting that the denial of abortion (forcing a woman to do something with her body she doesn't want to do) is a Moral Imperative.
I'm really hard-pressed to see why I should be any less contemptuous of a man who sits at a big mahogany desk in Washington making decisions about my body without my consent than I should be of a man who used physical force to make decisions about my body without my consent.
Undoubtedly, Mr. Santorum would be outraged and horrified to be compared, even obliquely, to a rapist.
As well he should be. I am horrified to have to make it.
Of course, a man who holds the position that he should be able to legislate away my bodily autonomy and supersede my consent about what happens to my body shouldn't be too goddamned surprised by the comparison.
Wacky Weather
The eight inches of snow we had this weekend are now gone, courtesy of a warm thunderstorm overnight.
This is truly the strangest winter I can remember.
Now we are ankle-deep in mud. In January.
If Al Gore hadn't invented the internetz for us, I might be really mad at him for inventing global warming right about now.
