The Ventures: "Wipe Out"
Random Nerd Nostalgia: Cold War Culture Was Very Strange
I mean, what kid wouldn't want their very own fake nuclear sub?
[Description: "POLARIS NUCLEAR SUB: Fires Rockets and Torpedoes. Only 6.98. Over 7 Feet Long. Big Enough For 2 Kids." (Picture of two smiling white kids with dark hair, one girl and one boy, waving behind a ginorous looking fake submarine. Another white kid peers through the periscope. An inset picture shows two white boys inside the submarine, both crammped into its bridge, which looks more like a tiny two-person cockpit.] "How proud you will be as the commander of your own POLARIS SUB-- the most powerful weapon in the world!What hours of imaginative play as you and your friends dive, surface, manuever,watch the enemy through the periscope and fire your torpedoes! What thrills as you play at hunting sunken treasure in pirate waters and exploring the strange and mysterious bottom of the deep ocean floor! HOURS AND HOURS OF ADVENTURE -- Sturdily contructed of 200 lb. test fibreboard. Comes complete with easy assembly construction. Costs only 6.98 for this giant of fun, adventure, and science.(Because of the POLARIS SUB's giant size we must ask 75c. shipping charges.) MONEY BACK GUARANTEE--Order today and we will rush your POLARIS NUCLEAR SUB to you. If you don't think it is the greatest ever--the best toy you have ever had--just send it back for full purchse price refund." (There is a coupon to order assuring you a 10 DAY FREE TRIAL and a list of FEATURES including "Electrically Lit Instrument Panel."]
I dunno. Personally, I'll stick with the much cheaper (and totally customized!) refrigerator box combination submarine/spaceship.
(Posted in honor of the United States Navy's
Seen
By Shaker StarGlory, who emails (which I am publishing with her permission): "I was driving in Windsor, CT, a town about 45 minutes from my home that I had never been to before, when I saw this road sign which made me immediately think of you and Shakesville, and I knew I needed to stop and take a photo."
[Click to embiggen detail.]
Awesome. Totally awesome.
Generally Horrendo
Situational awareness may be the thing that decides this election, Shakers. Now, here is some news!
This Guy: Obama Struggles with Campaign Theme. I don't know what the big deal is. "I Am Not Mitt Romney" is a perfectly solid campaign theme. It definitely highlights in a very clear way the thing that is more likely than pretty much anything else to convince me to vote for Barack Obama.
That Guy: Mitt Romney to Officially Clinch Republican Nomination Tuesday. Congratulations, Mitt Romney! It is really cool for you that Republican primary voters hated you the least! Now we can only hope that general election voters will hate you the most! FINGERS CROSSED!
This Guy: Obama to honor Medal of Freedom recipients at White House ceremony Tuesday. Neat. I am very positive on most of these choices! And I am certain that the President was waiting on pins and needles for my opinion!
That Guy: Romney and Trump Are Totes BFFs, Even Though Trump's a Goddamn Birther. That is not CNN's actual headline, BUT IT SHOULD BE!
Here is Eugene Robinson writing both hilariously and accurately about what a ginormous honking liar Mitt Romney is!
And here is a nice story about First Lady Michelle Obama sponsoring the USS Illinois, the first Navy submarine to be staffed by an all-female crew.
Last but not least: We are at not-war in North Korea now, too. FYI.
Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.
Good News, Everyone!
Reuters: President Obama marks Memorial Day by promising no more war "unless it's absolutely necessary."
That would make me feel a lot better if every US president who's ever started a war didn't believe the war was "absolutely necessary," even if the private reasons were different than the public ones.
Blog Note
Today is Memorial Day in the US, so we're off doing various Memorial Day things. We'll be back tomorrow!
Open Thread
Hosted by a Central Indian Forest Owlet. Photo by Jayesh K. Joshi.
This week's Open Threads have been hosted by rare birds featured in
National Geographic's 2010 Best Rare-Bird Pictures Contest.
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!
And don't forget to tip your bartender!
Discussion Thread: Pet Origin Stories
Olivia
By request, after Olivia's origin story won us a prize just slightly less exciting than a fra-gee-lay leg lamp, below are the origin stories of the other furry residents of Shakes Manor. Please share your pet origin stories and pix in comments!
[Commenting Note: Please note that some people need to purchase pets from breeders for reasons of allergies, and some people will have purchased pets from pet store chains in years before info about puppy and kitten mills was widely known. This should be a fun thread, so I'm requesting no judgment on how pets were acquired.]
BushQuotes!
Chapter 3, page 44: "My enthusiasm for our mission is exceeded only by my confidence that we can succeed. And when we do, those who feel left behind will have new hope, those who have grown cynical will begin to care, and our children will grown up in a more prosperous and more peaceful state."
That is something George W. Bush said. For real. Without a trace of irony.
[From George Bush's A Charge to Keep, gifted to me by Deeky, because he hates me. In the US, all people who plan to run for president write a shitty book. (Some are less shitty than others, by which I mean the Democrats' books.) A Charge to Keep was George W. Bush's shitty I-wanna-be-president book, published in 1999. I am blogging one random quote per page every day until I have either made my way through the book or lost it behind a couch.]
Market Magic!
I am supposed to believe there is such a thing as real competition in this country. I just got off the phone with Comcast, telling them I wanted only the bare minimum of services, reduced from what I currently have.No one ever believes me when I tell them. I believe you, Susie! Iain and I go through this with Comcast I MEAN XFINITY all the time. We'll be wondering where we can save some money, and we'll say, "Let's get rid of HBO." So Iain will call Comcast and try to cancel, and we'll end up with HBO and Showtime for $5 less a month. Not promotionally—permanently. I don't know how the fuck it happens.
I keep going through this exercise, and I keep forgetting how Kafkaesque the whole thing is: By cutting off premium and HD channels, I can save (wait for it) $1.89 a month. Wow.
No one ever believes me when I tell them, either. Comcast just threw in a $15 a month credit and free HBO and Showtime if I keep the same service for $2 more. This is some crazy shit.
Daily Dose of Cute
Yesterday afternoon, I went into the garden at midday for a moment of meditation to push through a bit of writers' block. I sat in the grass, crossed my legs, and breathed. When I opened my eyes, this is what I saw:
"Zup, Two-Legs? When you're done sitting there all stupid, wanna run around in circles?"
Later, in my office, I turned in my chair after finally finishing this piece, to discover this business:
As you can see, the crate door is open (the only time he's crated is when we're both going out for a long while, because otherwise he gets anxious), and there's a dog bed outside the crate right beside it. (There's also another dog bed beside that one.) He just occasionally likes to wander in there for awhile and hang out. Because Dudley.
Quote of the Day
"We let Willow cut her hair. When you have a little girl, it's like how can you teach her that you're in control of her body? If I teach her that I'm in charge of whether or not she can touch her hair, she's going to replace me with some other man when she goes out in the world. She can't cut my hair but that's her hair. She has got to have command of her body. So when she goes out into the world, she's going out with a command that it is hers. She is used to making those decisions herself. We try to keep giving them those decisions until they can hold the full weight of their lives."—Will Smith, in an interview with Parade.
I love this so, so much.
[H/T to Shaker alabee, who saw it at STFU Conservatives.]
Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by sepia globes.
Recommended Reading:
Amanda: How The Zero Weeks of Paid Maternity Leave in the US Compare Globally
Zerlina: In Defense of S.E. Cupp [Content Note: The post at this link contains discussion of misogyny and issues of sexualization incompatible with consent.]
Cheryl: A Tale of Two Hoodies: Mark Zuckerberg vs. Trayvon Martin
sheridf: The Wait of the Nation [Content Note: The post at this link contains discussion of fat bias and body/food policing.]
Terry: Limbaugh Rewrites His History of Attacks on Michael J. Fox; Gets Fox's New Remarks Wrong [Content Note: The post at this link contains discussion of ableism.]
Helen: Sports Illustrated on Trans Athletes
Ragen: Dieting and Logic Make Poor Bedfellows [Content Note: The post at this link contains discussion of fat bias, dieting, and eating.]
Joe: The Obama Era Assessed: A Bibliographical Note on a New Qualitative Sociology Issue
Courtney: Quote of the Day: Margaret Powell
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
The Patriarchy Kills People
[Content Note: Self-harm; bullying; misogyny.]
Reading this profoundly sad and enraging article about a 7-year-old boy who hung himself as a result of bullying, I was already heartbroken, and then I got to this part:
The mother told police that her son "had been depressed due to her recent separation from his father; the fact that he had been bullied continuously by the children at school, in addition to the constant teasing that he had endured because he was the only boy in the home of eight females," a report says.And that's when I burst into tears. Because the world hates women so much that little children bullied a male classmate just on the basis that he lives with eight of them, and subjected him to so much (probably homophobic and transphobic) bullying on that basis, on simply being a boy among women and girls, that he killed himself.
And obviously there were multiple factors at play here, but his father's absence was what made him the only male person in the home, and the constant bullying about it was a reminder of his father's absence, so it was a vicious cycle centered around gender, each issue exacerbating the other.
The Patriarchy makes an absolute fucking trainwreck of the lives of so many boys and men, too. Feminists are stereotyped as man-haters, but I am a feminist because of this story as much as any woman-centered story I will ever write about. As long as women and men are not regarded as equals, no one is truly safe.
My sincerest condolences to his family and friends.
[Via Andy.]
