Sweet Disorder

Ah, the good old days

Garrison Keillor writes about the Mr. Blue days. I've never been a fan of his (I just don't relate to the Prairie Home thing- I am a Californian), but I did like his Mr. Blue columns.

Though I have to admit that this article is...strange.

You'd think Biblical figures might be above this sort of thing.

Everyone's playing Survivor/Big Brother knockoffs these days.

Have I blogged this before?

First you get this, then you get this.

Well, I WON'T be a monkey's uncle.

Apparently, this isn't a joke. Or so Amy says: "I had to check three times for signs this anti-evolutionary Web site wasn't a parody, because it’s just too hilarious to be real." Oy fucking vey, this is FRIGHTENING. Scientists will cry. I still hope it's not real anyway.

"Cassidy Turnbull (grade 5) presented her uncle, Steve. She also showed photographs of monkeys and invited fairgoers to note the differences between her uncle and the monkeys. She tried to feed her uncle bananas, but he declined to eat them. Cassidy has conclusively shown that her uncle is no monkey.

2nd Place: "Women Were Designed For Homemaking"
Jonathan Goode (grade 7) applied findings from many fields of science to support his conclusion that God designed women for homemaking: physics shows that women have a lower center of gravity than men, making them more suited to carrying groceries and laundry baskets; biology shows that women were designed to carry un-born babies in their wombs and to feed born babies milk, making them the natural choice for child rearing; social sciences show that the wages for women workers are lower than for normal workers, meaning that they are unable to work as well and thus earn equal pay; and exegetics shows that God created Eve as a companion for Adam, not as a co-worker."

You KNOW that last one is making me vomit compulsively.

The squirm factor

So I found this article on The Tavis Smiley Show, and came across this bit:

"Recently a listener in South Carolina called me to complain about the program. He asked that I not use his name. We spoke openly of the feelings some people have who are not African American -- when they hear a public radio program that they think is designed to exclude them.
The program is something new -- even radically new -- for many public radio listeners. The program's producers shouldn't underestimate that there is a "squirm factor" for many listeners.
The Tavis Smiley Show may be targeted to African Americans, but it doesn't exclude anyone who is interested in the lives and the perceptions of black people."

I've listened to the TS show from time to time, and as a well, non-African American, didn't feel excluded. It struck me as a very accessible to everyone show, it just happens to have a more specific focus than er, non-minorities may be used to. The general standard is to be "generic" in focus, but given the current situation "generic" often translates into "white focus" to some degree. I suppose it's only fair to flip the squirm factor onto those who don't normally have it.

I have to admit that I have felt "squirm factor" occasionally, but more with certain literature by certain authors. When someone not-of-that-race picks up the book and a few pages into it reads a paragraph going off about how all people of that race are nasty, well... uh, yeah, obviously that wasn't meant for me, l'll be going now.

The job of a lifetime...and he passed it up.

This is rather heart-wrenching for the journalism folks. "My friend Scott Dickensheets, well known in local journalism circles, currently as managing editor of Las Vegas Weekly, recently was offered the chance of a lifetime. He didn't take it. The story behind that decision is, to me at least, fascinating." To summarize it, Scott got his dream job in New York, but his family couldn't move and he couldn't afford it. Poor dude. "Scott fears he'll never get another chance like this. I think he's wrong." I certainly hope he's wrong, but who knows. *crosses fingers*

It's even more of a PITA to get published than ever, just for a different reason.

“If your first book or two is not widely read, it can ruin your chances of publishing anything else,” Bradford says. “You don’t want a small debut. You need to hit them over the head right away.”

Why one shouldn't waste their time...

playing fruit slot machines.

Why Internet advertising sucks

This fellow goes into great detail as to why.

" In fact, I suspect nobody reading this will be able to recall a single web advert or campaign. They just don't seem to stick in the mind.
Even when I am aware that there is something flickering or moving in the corner of my field of view, I filter it out and do not remember which company or product was being advertised.
Admiring a British Gas advert on a showcase website is like reading an advertising magazine or going along to an awards ceremony. You see the work in isolation, and look at it carefully, having decided to spend the time doing so.
But when I am online, looking for information, reading the news or simply surfing around aimlessly, the ads are in the way and I block them out.
You can tell that the sites themselves know that the adverts are an irritant, because why else would they offer subscribers an ad-free version?
Part of the problem, for me at least, is that the web is still such a poor medium, in terms of speed of access, navigability, layout and quality of content, that the adverts turn a website from being barely usable into one that is just unacceptable.
My screen is small, and I do not want to waste the space displaying adverts when I have such a limited room for the material I want to read. And my connection - even a broadband one - is not so fast that I do not resent the time spend downloading images for ads.
When I eventually manage to find my way to a page that seems to have some useful information on it, then I do not want to have to deal with an overlaid ad that has to be clicked on to make it go away, or a large banner that occupies most of the screen for five seconds before shrinking, or a banner with flashing graphics and sound.
If I am watching TV or at the cinema then the appearance of the ads is well-flagged and I can anticipate them and - if I am not interested - turn away while they are on.
But on the web the ads are there, trying to grab my attention, and I resent and resist this."

Another one of those times when I hate being my gender.

"Which is more dangerous in Canada: being a cop, or being a wife? The answer is: wife. By a long shot."

In contrast to merely being a woman who is, or has been, in an intimate relationship, policing is much safer. It is no more dangerous than any other job in which workers must deal with the public. It's no riskier than being a retail worker. Police officers are injured no more often than motel clerks or service station attendants. Occupational Health and Safety statistics, based on claims for workers' compensation, show that farmers, miners, loggers, nurses, taxi drivers, commercial fishers and construction workers are injured and killed much more often than police."

Disturbing and sad

This is one of the many reasons why behavior modification programs are a bad idea. Okay, so I don't know what program they went through, but it sounds a bit similar if two over-18-year-olds have to ask mommy and daddy's permission before they have sex. Now that is WHIPPED.

Bleah, but not a surprise.

Marriage ruins geniuses and criminals.

For those of you who got sick of reading due to dull textbooks.

Textbook Writing 101.

"As you draft sample chapters, you'll face every textbook writer's dilemma -- do I write for students or for the professors who order the copies? Students want simplified, clear, and entertaining texts; to reach an average student, your style must compete with the local newspaper, Saturday Night Live, and Puff Daddy. Professors want intellectual complexity and vocabulary that announces, "This is college, ladies and gentlemen." They want you to sound like The New York Review of Books, PBS, and Joan Didion. From my observation, most textbook writers figure out which group butters their royalty checks. I, however, took the path less traveled and wrote directly for students. Sure, some reviewers sniffed, "Maybe it's OK at a community college, but we would never use it here" -- meaning at a place of higher education. I gathered my integrity about me like sagging underwear and pressed on. Today it gratifies me when students say my book talks to them and they really like that it's not too heavy to carry. Rule #2: Write for both students and professors, to spread the alienation around.

The copy editor also polices political correctness, checking that you used roughly the same number of hypothetical men and women in examples to prevent stereotyping. That means that women should not be nurses, cooks, secretaries, or sex objects. It means men must be."

Huh.

I never quite thought of AA in this way before.

"Kirkpatrick also says AA's First Step, "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol," sends a destructive message to many women who turn to alcohol to overcome a sense of powerlessness. She also argues that the Fourth Step of taking a "fearless and moral inventory" compounds, for many women, the shame of the disease.
Tracey Deschaine, a nurse anesthetist who has worked in recovery centers, agrees. "Women have known all along they're powerless, that's part of the reason they fall victim to drugs or alcohol. They need to be told they have power inside them to get well," she says. "And in the Fourth Step," she continues, "you have to go out and emotionally flog yourself. Nobody has to tell women to flog themselves. They do it all the time."

Wow.

This is from Mark Morford's Morning Fix, which as I mentioned before isn't archived online, but I gotta quote this:

"Ah but you see, kill yourself, and they win. And they don't deserve to win. Because their worldview, their approach is based on hollowness and lies and fear and disingenuous misinformation, and bad sex, and ugliness, and the world needs more like you, because you, simply by existing and believing and trying and loving intensely, affect them, counter them, destroy them. See? You are needed. There is plenty of magic left. Do not drop the sword. Sharpen it."

Unhappy endings

Columbine pretty much nails down how I feel about similar issues with very unhappy endings: "If you take the time to make me love a character then I have an interest in the well-being of that character. If you make me love a character and then do something horrible to that character, I can only conclude that your purpose was to slap me in the face."

Perhaps the best "careful what you wish for" EVAH.

Evangelist asks for God to give him a sign, God sends him lightning and sets the church on fire.

A-maz-ing.

This woman lap dances to get the money to save sick cats. While she sounds a bit strange to say the least (living in cat pee, not taking the medications she really needs to make sure the cats get theirs) and paranoid and almost the textbook case of an animal hoarder, I have to admire her dedication to saving cats.

And I was wondering why I seemed to be on a gay-link theme today...

The Stranger is asking you to appropriate gay culture. ALL of it. This is cracking me up no end, even if uh, I'm one of the ones being told to appropriate.

Please take back the fag hags. "Think of it as an immigration crisis--it sucked so much to be around you and survive in your world, so they started hanging around us." (Speaking of, Margaret Cho got married on Friday the Thirteenth? Hee!)

Take my parents, please. "People don't raise their children to be gay, which is why coming out to parents always exhausts three days and 14 boxes of Kleenex. Depending on the particular parents' self-perceived fuckups (my dad was absent, my mom was domineering), they receive the news with a personalized combination of horror, hysteria, emasculation, guilt, and denial--especially denial. Most of us gays try to avoid said overblown parental crisis by leaving obvious clues and encouraging parents to put it together on their own, but that never happens, because parents are thick and slow, every last one of them, and they assume everyone is straight even after proven gay.
Straight people have the gift of default sexuality and never have to spell it out to their parents. Make no mistake, Will & Grace be damned, gay people still have to spell it out: I have a friend in her 30s who, while uncomfortable broaching the issue directly, wears no makeup and a Utilikilt--that's a kilt crossed with a utility belt--and her parents, against all evidence, still set her up with men. Similarly, I did so much high-school and community theater that by the time I'd turned 17 I'd been in three separate productions of The Music Man. And my parents were shocked when I told them.
Not only did they not realize I was gay before I told them, but they refused to believe it--or accept it--after I told them. Such denial is insistent, illogical, dull-headed, and tedious, and it is commonplace among parents of us gays. It explains why, a year after I thought I had made myself clear, I found myself having the aforementioned conversation with my dad about how fun it is to fuck the ladies with our big Frizzelle family dicks. That day he left me no choice but to articulate, in no uncertain terms, just how fun it is to fuck the guys. If ever there was a chance for us to be close, I ruined it that afternoon; I'm fairly certain there's only one thought that occurs to him when he looks at me now: Buttfucker! Buttfucker! Buttfucker!

What straight people don't often recognize, and wouldn't recognize unless they had to appropriate our parents, is that being gay means (1) having to describe your lurid sexuality to your parents in no uncertain terms (Buttfucker! Buttfucker! Buttfucker!); (2) having to suffer their vain heartache of coming to terms (or, as the case may be, not coming to terms) with what you cannot change; and (3) always having to be embarrassed in front of your parents, on some level, about the people you love and have sex with.
That last one is a big deal. Unless you have two mommies and your name is Heather, being gay means going against what your parents have taught you, or shown you, about relationships--you're going so far as to be against the very method by which you were conceived--and for most parents it seems that this is an unconscionable slap in the face. It is a barrier to having a close relationship with them."

Makes me wonder.

''Are girls only empowered or powerful when they're acting like men?'' asks psychologist Ann Kearney-Cooke, who directs the Helping Girls Become Strong Women Project at Columbia University. ''And then these women are in various levels of being undressed, with low-cut clothes, tight-fitting costumes - very sexualized.

Because our society is uncomfortable with the idea that women can be aggressive, Kearney-Cooke argues, we fall back again and again on a few stereotypes: the woman who's trying to act just like a man, or the woman whose only real weapon is her Barbie-like body. Giving Barbie a couple of GI Joe's guns (or, thanks to Hong Kong, martial-arts moves) doesn't transcend the stereotypes; it only compounds them.
The Angels do plenty of chopping and kicking. So does Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft, and so does Carrie-Anne Moss in the ''Matrix'' franchise. Of course, all the boys are doing it, too, but somehow the shots of the kicking women always seem to focus more on the line of their legs than on the effect of their blows. It's like watching the Rockettes on steroids.
''Watching'' is the operative word here. If these women are meant to inspire fantasy - and they are - it's not the fantasy of being them, but of seeing them. Terms like ''objectification'' have been thrown around for so long that we almost forget what they actually mean, but these movies are here to remind us. The Angels are objects, not subjects - girls whose power lies in how they look to others, not women who derive strength from acting for themselves.
It's a strange recipe for an action movie, when you think about it. And it's true that the Angels do take action - they kick, they fight, they run. But are we supposed to admire their skill or just watch what jiggles when they jump?
''The females may be as tough as the males, but they also have a challenge to look sexy while doing it,'' Miller says. ''Male soldiers head off to battle in full combat gear, women soldiers in midriff-revealing tank tops with cleavage.''
For the generation that's growing up with the ''Powerpuff Girls'' cartoons, which combine extreme girliness with extreme aggression, those mixed messages may seem perfectly natural. Why wouldn't the Powerpuffs grow up to be Lara Croft? The real question is: How could they not?"

This doesn't surprise me either.

"A study led by a UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute researcher challenges standard treatment guidelines for bipolar depression that recommend discontinuing antidepressants within the first six months after symptoms ease. Study participants treated under the guidelines relapsed at nearly twice the rate of those who continued taking antidepressants in conjunction with their mood stabilizer medication during the first year after remission of acute bipolar depression. The researchers found no increased risk of manic relapse in those who continued the medication for one year."

From what I've seen of my now-former friends, they deteriorated RAPIDLY after they got all "I don't want a CRUTCH!" and quit their meds. Hence why the ex-friends. Now I am all for everyone staying on their "crutches" forever if they have to.

That's not good to hear.

Being a caregiver can make you age faster. Which I guess isn't a surprise, really.

A shoutout to my friend Denise...

who always complained about how hard Chinese was to learn: you have to use both sides of your brain to understand it. How linguistically interesting that a group would create something that difficult spontaneously, eh?

That's assuming he makes it there, of course.

Strom Thurmond's personal heaven. *snort*

Oh, and hmmmmm, he had a black daughter.

Perhaps someone should get her a lucky bamboo plant.

Man, what a few years Al's had. Poor girl.

My favorite Ghost Monologue so far, I think.

Jennifer Dovacek on what you would have done if you'd known, or not, and dying during middle school gym class.

"If I had it to do over again -- well, duh. But I don't know how much good it would do to have that second chance anyway. You're still the same person. If you're a person who would never have cut homeroom, you'll still go. If you're a person who would have elbowed a dork-ass in the head if he tried to kiss you, you'll do it again. If you're a person who never thought things through enough, you'll be as stupid as you were before."

Sexual Orientation Orientation Day

This is amusing. As is the sequel.

"Second, for the ladies, no, you don't have to own a dog. Again, this is outside the parameter of requirements and more like a preference. You may own a cat, or a dog and a cat, or two cats, or a goldfish. It really doesn't matter. The only exception is the Chihuahua, which is a dog specially bred for gay men."

"Hi, name's Cory."
"You might want to think up an interesting way to spell that. Interesting spelling is very gay."

"Homo on the range."

Being a gay guy in Montana isn't what you'd think it would be.

The horror, the horror

I loathe places like Tranquility Bay. They are fucking scary traps that kids can't escape from unless they become mindless automatons. I'm not joking.

"Students who fail to grasp this formula are forcefully encouraged to get the message. One girl currently has to wear a sign around her neck at all times, which reads: 'I've been in this programme for three years, and I am still pulling crap.'

That without Tranquility they would be dead is an article of faith among all the students.
I ask one how they would have died. 'What?'
It soon becomes apparent that despite all having been programmed with the script of their near death, no one has paused to wonder how it would have happened. But if they hadn't been dead, they would have been poor, a destiny they have been taught to consider more or less the same thing. 'Tranquility showed me that I'd have been a minimum wager,' Nick says. 'This place saved my life.'
'I'd probably be living with a drug dealer or something awful like that,' speculates a girl. 'And going nowhere. Not being successful.'
What spark Kate and others have is lit only by Kay and the chaperones, towards whom a faintly flirtatious electricity seems to flicker. These children do not just obey rules. They seem to have been psychologically rewired.
'You have to understand,' a former student, who turned 18 and walked out, tries to explain. 'The staff are constantly trying to work out what you are thinking about and constantly telling you what to think about, and then constantly checking to see if you are thinking about it. And if you're not, and they know you're not, you might as well be dead.'
Scott Burkett, a student who left two years ago, explains: 'You can only move forward in the programme if you share intimate details of your life. If you don't share, you're not "working the programme", and they'll take away your points. In a meeting, your rep will suddenly pick on you and say, "Right, I want to hear something private, right now. Come on. Or do you want to go to OP?" And I'm going through this inventory in my head real fast, thinking what will hurt least to say? Because you tell her secrets and then she uses them against you later. Like, say a guy mentions problems with his girlfriend, a month later she'll have him up, and she's saying, "You don't think she's waiting, do you?" She's laughing at you behind your back. "How many of your friends do you think she's sleeping with right now?" So I start telling her something, and she just says, "I'm not listening to that, that's not deep," and she calls for the guard to take me to OP. And I've got until he gets in the room to give her something better, or he's taking me.'"

Honestly, any parent who thinks these places are good is someone I am appalled at. I understand the difficulties of dealing with your punk-ass kid (I may not have been one, but I have had friends), but this is just beyond frightening and veering into psychotic. How you could deliberately do this to someone you love, I do not understand. And one of my mom's bosses did that to his kid (though not TB). OY.

I hate the world sometimes. Heck, make that "often."

This makes me want to cry and cry.

The corporate life.

Will Leitch isn't all that thrilled by funky Fridays at work:
"But like most companies during these difficult economic times, my company has been forced to keep a close eye on the bottom line, cut some corners and slash the budget a little. Like anyone who has seen co-workers laid off, this can be demoralizing for the people left behind - though, of course, not as demoralizing as it is to the people who, you know, lost their jobs.
Now, because corporate entities are, well, entities, they can't really go around to each individual employee, pat them on the back, tell them they're doing a good job, that they're appreciated, that their job is safe, that they shouldn't worry, everything will be fine. But they have to do something, right?

It seems amazing that people, adult human beings, not only come up with these ideas, but that they actually think they actually have some hope of being effective. On what planet do people respond to such condescension? Do people who work in human resources take their son aside and tell them, "Boy, I want you to know that I appreciate your productivity this month. On Friday, you will be allowed - no, encouraged! - to part your hair on the right set of your head, rather than the typical left. Enjoy! You deserve it! If you have any further suggestions, please feel free to contact me or your mother during normal business hours."
Listen. I know these people mean well, even neither the word "human" or "resource" is likely to make anyone feel like a unique and special snowflake anytime soon. But we are grown men and women who long ago accepted that to have the things you want in life (money, love, sex, home, alcohol, sex, clothes, sex), you have to work a steady job for a larger company that, by its very essence and structure, really doesn't care for you individually one way or the other. We know this. We've known it for a while. We're not even mad about it; we really don't mind. We're just not particularly fond of being reminded of it through empty platitudes and obviously forced attempts to "relate" to the workers."

Once again... spoiler etiquette bitching.

I gotta love Montykins for his spoiler commentary: "Before I get into this, I ask you this: If you're terrified of reading spoilers, why are you reading reviews? Sheesh. My opinions have some support in the books, and to mention that support, I shall occasionally be referring to the contents of the books. Deal with it."

I am getting pretty annoyed with the spoiler issue of late, in case you couldn't tell from say, that post below about the most useless HP article ever.

If you do not want to know ANYTHING about the books, then it is up to YOU to try to avoid media about them. The rest of the world cannot be held responsible for keeping you innocent most of the time (we'll get to the other part of the time later). For example, those who are paranoid might really want to avoid anything at all with Harry Potter mentioned in it, instead of happily reading and then "Oh my god! Someone mentioned the name of the DADA teacher!". And if you're not planning on reading the book for quite a long time after it comes out AND you want to stay unspoiled (I'm not saying M. Giant is, I don't know and couldn't tell), then frankly, you shouldn't be expecting to stay spoiler-free. It isn't going to happen. Public domain, folks.

This includes book reviews, as Monty pointed out. I started a (very little) review site, and lord knows, it's rather tricky trying to talk about what you liked and didn't like without setting off the Spoiler Police. You know how much of a bitch it is to write a book review without revealing any plot? I've tried. It's useless. "This book was good, except for the ending, which sucked, but I can't tell you why it was good or it sucked. The end." What use is that? If I don't know anything about a plot, I won't bloody read the book. I won't buy a book that has NO plot synopsis and nothing but fancy "This is wonderful" quotes from authors on it, either. If you want to know if a book is good or not without knowing any of the plot before you buy it, I think you're gonna be up Shit Creek. Deal with it.

Incidentally, I did review Harry Potter. I tried to not get into a whole lot of plot detail (my general goal is to only mention events up through the first half of the book in the public section and put end spoilers in the extended entry section), but there really is only so much a girl can do.

And I'm one who would gladly spoil everyone on earth if I could, so you should admire my restraint ;)

Yes, there are sometimes when an anti-spoiler person cannot shelter themselves from finding out stuff. One can't really do anything about say, the office water cooler conversation when it's right next to your office, at least beyond yell. However, those on certain message boards need some help, because it can be prevented if people like, USE BRAIN CELLS.

I'm not picking on any one board here, I've seen this happen on well, every UBB board that has a spoiler thread on HP this week. This routine happens daily.

(1) Someone starts a thread, people start posting, there's a fairly mild "please leave spoiler space" note in the first post. Some people do that.

(2) Some people will leave enough spoiler space. Others will attempt one of the following methods:
(a) Making one or two lines of spoiler space before they start:
Spoiler spoiler spoiler spoiler have I left enough space yet? Okay, so Rosebud was his sled...
(b) The short text lines variety:
Spoiler space
Spoiler space
Spoiler space
Spoiler space
Okay, so Rosebud was his sled...
(c) Doing a bunch of little stars:
*
*
*
*
*
*
Okay, so Rosebud was his sled...
(d) Just plain old spacing:








Okay, so Rosebud was his sled...
In short, they may (or may not) attempt spoiler space in the way that they've seen it done on e-mail, but they don't get it right for UBB, which deletes extraneous spacing in their showing of active topics. I repeat, the extra spaces get deleted. Only text shows up. So then guess what happens?

(3) Someone will check a list of active topics on UBB and see one of the following spoiler space results when they come across the listing for the thread:
(a) (same as above)
(b) Spoiler space Spoiler space Spoiler space Spoiler space Okay, so Rosebud was his sled...
(c) * * * * * * Okay, so Rosebud was his sled...
(d) Okay, so Rosebud was his sled...
This person, and then a few others, will promptly have the entire thing RUINED FOR THEM FOREVER and then complain about people being morons.

(4) Someone will post to the thread a warning, telling people IN GREAT DETAIL that in order for spoiler space to work on UBB, a person must type real words, not spaces, not just a few lines of text, they must type a paragraph, for FOUR LINES in order to create enough spoiler space, in order to fend off more of #3 happening.

(5) A few people get the clue, others apparently just can't read and continue to do #2, starting the cycle repeating once again.

Those who can't read, I want to bop in the head, and I'm the biggest spoiler whore out there. Look, I'm not that fond of spoiler space creation either, but do you want everyone on the board to think you're an idiot? No. So here's what you do: make it fun. Get creative. Take four lines to claim that Harry, Cho and Hermione had a threesome in the Potions classroom, or that the Weasley twins are committing incest. Have some fun, go wild, write Harry Potter and the Jerry Springer Episode. Because it's a hell of a lot more fun, easy to remember, and take up space making up something funny than just remembering to type "Spoiler Space!" thirty times in a row. Hell, nobody wants to do that.

Can't argue with that.

On June 26, Janis called it:
"When does anyone use their religion as an explanation for their actions or beliefs, routinely? When they want to engage in behavior that would get a secular institution sued. When priests tell you why women must be shut out of their decision-making process completely by being barred from ordination and thus barred from the College of Cardinals where all church policy is set ... they use religion as an excuse. When people want to call gay men and lesbians names, they use religion as the excuse. When people want to beat their children black and blue, they use religion as the excuse. When they want to refuse medical treatment to those children, they use religion as the excuse.
I have heard infinitely more people use religion as the excuse for horrible behavior than use it as the explanation for charitable behavior or loving kindness. Religion is the excuse for holding yourself to a low moral standard, where morality is defined as being kind and loving to other people. Treating other people as you would wish to be treated, as the golden rule supposedly says. (It's much more fun to quote Leviticus than to quote Christ, though, isn't it?)
No secular business could get away with explicitly barring women from their Boards of Directors. No corporation could dare state out loud in their bylaws that no gay people are permitted to rise above the title of VP. They'd get sued into the ground and called intolerant, and with good reason.
Unless they are religiously based. Religion is the excuse for hate and permits its followers to adhere to a lower moral standard. Religion is evil. If you tell me you're a religious person, I know what's coming next -- some mealey-mouthed excuse for why you should get to hate someone with a clear conscience. It never involves working harder to be loving, patient, or kind. It never involves charity work, or donations to good causes. Without fail, "I'm a religious person" -- most often "I'm a Christian," let's face it -- is followed by, "and so that's why I get a free pass to act like a shithead. And moreover, because it's all down to religion, I'm actually superior for it!"

I know and know of some decent Christians, but the word itself has been tainted for me forever because of the bad ones. The CHRISTIANS, as I call them, because they're the first to proclaim their Christianity as they do something horrible. I'm at the point where I make the nasty sick face if someone uses the C-word around me. Heck, reading Sara's new weblog always gives me a bit of the willies for the URL alone, even though she seems to be a lovely, sensible person who would never act like any of the so-called CHRISTIANS do.

*sigh*

Reading material

I just liked this paragraph. No real reason to put it here.

"I love you. But I lust after and covet so much more than your body. I wanted to possess the power of your eyes, the way they see form and beauty that isn't even there yet and draw it up out of nothing into the solid world. I wanted to own the honor of your heart, unbowed in the vilest horrors of those bleak hours on Komarr. I wanted your courage and your will, your caution and serenity. I wanted, I suppose, your soul, and that was too much to want." -A Civil Campaign.

Best. 80's. Movie. Site. Evah.

80's Movies Rewind.

Invisible writers.

"Writing itself is the aim, for it is writing, not publishing, that transforms individual human experience."

Brilliant.

"Never hook up for the long term with someone you wouldn't want to take care of if he or she became a quadraplegic; never hook up for the long term with someone you don't think would take care of you if you became a quadraplegic."

Don't I just wish.

Going to this would be damned cool, if I (a) wrote well enough to be accepted, (b) had an extra $650 lying around for it, not to mention paying for a flight from California, food, etc., plus (c) I really need to put my extra money towards er, getting a laptop first, eh? Clarion has always sounded cool, but who the hell can take six weeks off any more?

This sounds like fun: The Evil Overlord Devises A Plot.

Interesting article on genetics

This guy is an adopted bioethicist...who found out that his father was a rapist.

Fair warning

Today is a Bad News Day. I am giving anyone who comes by here today fair warning to NOT make any comments about something I've done to piss them off of late. Just. Don't. Not only will it not be well received, I will most likely go ballistic on your ass because my self-control isn't really here right now.

Thank you.

Love stinks, yeah yeah

You have to admire a girl who throws a Broken Heart Ball with what was to be her wedding. Though uh, hoping the former groom will show up? Uh, good luck there, honey, he's going on your honeymoon with his mother.

Even though I'm not supposed to read this, it's funny

The Guide to Being Venemously Pregnant, Part One.

On Smoking

On the one hand, it can kill ya. On the other hand, it can get you promoted. Oy.

Now I'm reminded of the party I was at this weekend where the only ones there who didn't smoke were me, my fellow poster, and the dog. *sigh* At least nobody to my knowledge smokes around my office, and at my old job the smokers hid their smoking except when they were at bars. But it's still a royal PITA socially when you can either avoid the smoke and be a social pariah or risk your lungs.

Wow, something finally appropriate for the "God Only Knows" category here.

Rundowns on a whole lotta religions, for the curious.

Oooh, John Mayer.

"My head is like a box of Nerds." He also gets distracted by his open fly in the "Inside the Square" video.

I like what he said about "My Stupid Mouth", saying every year that he's not going to say anything and then blowing it. Lord knows I do that like, every. freaking. day.

Anyway...for you fan whores, there's lots of stuff here for ya in the multimedia section, including his own Palm program (heh) with tour dates and lyrics.

Sounds good to me.

Avoiding the "mommy trap."

Sample excerpts.

People looooooove short hair.

Pardon the personal rant for a moment, but I just stumbled across Marshmallows & Bile and a note hit home (6/12).

"Let me give you a word of advice. If you have very long hair and want to keep it that way, follow the cardinal rule that I have always followed up until last night when I experienced a massive brain fart that I will regret for the next three months or so: Have a man cut your hair.
Men, whatever their other voluminous faults that I have catalogued in gory, screaming detail over the lifetime of this blog, like women with hair past their ass-crack. This is a redeeming feature in someone whom you are currently trusting to stand behind your head with a scissor. Women, however, do not. Never go to a woman with short hair to have your hair trimmed if you like it long. Just don't. Do not pass go, do not collect $200."

See, I have always been a fan of long hair. I was very much devastated in second grade when my mother decided that "short was CUTE!" and unbeknownst to me, told the hairdresser to cut mine all off into a Buster Brown boy cut. I then rebelled and refused to get so much as a wittle bitty trim for oh, at least ten years or so. Yes, I had split ends from hell. I would have had to have cut it to shoulder length to trim them all off, and I refused to do that or give up more than like, an inch. While I did not know this about male hairdressers (I've never seen one of these things in my neck of the woods, like female dentists), I do suspect the short-haired-woman-wants-your-hair-short-too thing is accurate. I had a roommate one summer who had butt-length curly black hair who wanted just a trim, and ended up with her hair cut off to midback against her will. Her parents wanted to kill her (luckily for her, they were in India). I won't get my hair done in this town.

In my experience, nearly every guy I ever met (except for, ironically, my current significant other here) has been into long hair, and every girl that doesn't have long hair herself, well, usually tended to beg me to cut my hair "really short and CUTE!" The only reason I have short hair now is because it became an involuntary issue- I had pneumonia last summer, which caused half of my hair to fall out for six months straight during and afterwards. (For those wondering, yes, my hairdresser has short hair.)

On the one hand, it's cute...but on the other hand, I get sad when I see someone whose long hair is still intact and pretty.

Very interesting article on Helen Keller

Here.

The Book Doctor

Weegee is offering to help people find books that they'd like to read. Sounds like an interesting service, eh?

(Uh, not that I need help with this...*looks at 5-page-long wish lists on 2 sites*)

Ooooh.

Encyclopedia Mythica.

More from Sidekick Magazine

On actors changing their names: "It seems to me that in the past, regardless of how their real name sounded, actors and actresses wanted to reinvent themselves as they arrived in Tinseltown. They thought it was important to distance themselves from the life they once had, and become reborn as a member of the Hollywood rich and famous. Running away to Hollywood to become a movie star was an escape from their doldrum lives and families, and changing their name was imperative to achieve a full break with their past. Name changes went along with a new image, that gave them an entrance into a life of long hours, large parties, fancy outfits, and access to a whole new life in the fast lane. For stars like Montgomery Clift (Edward Clift), Marilyn Monroe, and Judy Garland (Frances Gumm), the change in name and change in lifestyle seemed to lead to a loss of self-esteem that could not be recovered from. Name changing almost seems like a symptom of the fact that as movie stars, they no longer retained a sense of identify, of who they really were."

Explains a lot, I think.

"Why, you're beautiful without your glasses!"

After reading Meg's entry, I was amazed.

"Oh my God, without your glasses you're quite beautiful!", he exclaimed.
What the hell do you say to something like that? Top it off with the fact that the lead singer of the band chooses that moment to come up and congratulate me on my recent weight loss. (A three-ounce pair of glasses maybe?) So I tried to keep them in my hand and just aim my conversation at the talking, floating blobs across from me. I felt pretty, but that was soon overpowered by the massive headache I got from straining my eyes."
I was feeling quite offended for her, though it didn't seem to bother her too bad. Maybe that's because I can't stand contacts and can't wear them even if I wanted to, I don't know, but I'm really annoyed at glasses=fugly on a girl.

Then I stumbled across this brilliant column. (The entire magazine and its concept are brilliant, I need to go back and read more archives when I'm not about to leave the house in 20 minutes.)

"Marilyn's my favourite, because her character of Pola is a glasses wearer. However, due to that classic problem, "Men don't make passes at girls who wear glasses," she keeps them on her face as little as possible. Naturally, that leads to hijinks, until she finally meets a man on an airplane who figures out her little secret when he catches her reading a book upside down. Once Pola puts her spectacles back on, her seatmate (also a glasses wearer) complements her on how they frame her face, and it's love at first sight -- first in-focus sight, that is. Ah, sweet romance.
So with people in the movies and on television ditching their glasses left and right, I'm amazed that they don't start bumping into things and falling down -- didn't they actually need those glasses? Were they just for show?
after years of suffering, I've finally decided to phase out the contacts and, since I don't have the stomach for surgery, commit to the eyeglasses full time. Now that my sister Jill's wedding is over -- my last big photo op -- I don't have many red carpet events to look glamourous for. From now on, it's glasses only for me. People will think I'm smart! People will think I'm offbeat! People will think I'm deathly afraid of sports! People will...not, actually, think it's sexy. Ah well, can't win them all.
I guess I can understand why Hollywood doesn't often feature glasses on its female stars. They don't exactly communicate "carefree and low maintenance" -- an action heroine could be taken out of commission by a bad guy just by knocking her glasses away, an adventure heroine would be lost in the jungle in a second if a monkey took her glasses, and even a romance heroine would have trouble with the making out if her glasses got in the way." (Uh, the last bit's never bothered me, actually ;)

Picking a book cover...

is not nearly as easy as it would sound. "I explained that I was looking for an image that conveyed strong emotion (preferably happiness or excitement), showed ethnic diversity (or avoided depicting one particular ethnicity), and avoided romantic or gender stereotypes (such as a woman crying). Yes, yes, they assured me, no problem. Then the results came in.
One diligent searcher wrote, "I've compiled a selection of nine related images for you. I didn't have much luck with this." Nine may seem like a lot, but not when the database contains hundreds of thousands of photos.
In my long search for the appropriate cover photo, I discovered how extraordinarily difficult it is to come up with images that avoid stereotypes where gender and emotion is concerned. (In retrospect and upon reflection, of course, I now wonder how I could have expected anything else.)"

The joys of bridehood in the modern era.

This plugs some of my favorite sources on the subject.

Buy your cool merchandise

while you still can. Sniff. My fellow poster and I am buying up so much yesterday and today it ain't even funny. I planned on putting up more links today, and yet I am too distracted and reclicking around the site to read anyone else. Sheesh. And lunch is mostly over by now.

The rise of the...

fag stag.

Is this a good sign?

(Note: non-perma link, will probably change in a week) Hot Flash! Trophy Wife Models Are Passé: Rudy to Jack Welch, Remarrying Geezers Get Middle-Aged Babes With Power Dowries.
"From Gerald Levin to Jack Welch to Rudy Giuliani, the Judi Nathans of New York have been elbowing the 25-year-olds aside. They’re a new breed of fortysomething Superdames who have been around the block—sex bombs who can do a balance sheet and set the dinner table—and they’re retiring the old-fashioned Bimbettes from the forefront of New York society.
How do we account for this spate of middle-aged drinks of water taking over from the retired phalanx of day-old cupcakes?
For one thing, the economy. If, in the 1950’s, diamonds were a girl’s best friend, in the early 21st century, a second income is a boy’s. "You complete me" may not refer as much to the heart these days as the budget. Ever since the crash, a potential spouse’s kickass career is as much of a draw as her body. When it comes to a second wife, why take on the cargo of a young, hot extra dependent—most of these old boys already have a lot of dependents in boarding school and college—when you can strap another engine to your jet, in the form of a high-functioning middle-aged babe with her own income? And probably some money saved from her first divorce?
We’re not talking about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt here—or even Bill and Hillary Clinton. Picture Teresa Heinz and John Kerry, instead. In the current Elle magazine, Lisa DePaulo describes the Massachusetts Senator and Democratic Presidential candidate and his 64-year-old second wife "nuzzling each other’s necks, in rapt whisper, his enormous paw around her shoulders pushing her close." Mr. Kerry is quoted saying that his wife "is very earthy, sexy, European."
But Ms. Heinz’s foreign-policy credibility was as much of an aphrodisiac as her stacked body. "How many [other] women did he go out with … who could talk to a parliamentarian from Japan about the global environment?" Ms. Heinz told Elle.
A woman with an aura of authority and influence, said Elle editor Roberta Myers, no longer sends men running toward the nearest Hooters: "They find it sexy and interesting. And they better get used to it because more and more women have it."

Man, I wanna...

move to an island.

And they wonder why teenagers are so screwed up.

"This is the vicious double standard. This is the insane mixed message, worse than it ever was, hammering into these sexually mal-educated kids the idea that sex is, of course, the greatest goddamn thing in the entire history of the known universe ever and is the only thing really worth living for, and is concomitantly also the ickiest most disease-riddled guilt-packed disgustingly wrong and blasphemous and abusive and victimizing act you can ever do with another person with the notable exception of convincing them to turn Republican.
Want to know what's really to blame for the vast majority of sad teen pregnancies and drunken backseat gropings and really unpleasant de-virginizing experiences in this country?
Want to know the root cause of nearly every crude high school lug thinking sex means pumping like a jackhammer for two grunting minutes and every beautiful girl thinking sexual pleasure means lying there frozen and pretending to moan for those two same minutes? You got it -- it's that very same mixed message.
This is the problem. There is no survey that addresses true teen sex. There is no data, no stats, no one really celebrating the idea that, because teens are, have always been and will continue to be, absolutely and insanely sexually demonically possessed, that maybe, just maybe they should be, gasp oh my God don't say it, encouraged to enjoy sex as the raw and real and consensual and mutually beneficial and sticky and wonderful and tricky and deeply mindful but ultimately glorious act it so bafflingly is. Wow what a radical notion."

Oh, the joys of traveling in this day and age...

and being transgendered.

Oh man, and I thought I had way too much spam after a weekend away.

Good lord. "So, from early Friday morning, when I powered down my computer to head off to vacation, to 6am on Tuesday morning, when I am typing this, I have received just short of 1500 pieces of e-mail. Of which six were not spam."

For the freelance writers in the crowd

I've been on this book newsletter for awhile now, and they've got some interesting tips.

"I Don't Care If America Thinks I'm A Child"

Great article about the nature of adulthood these days, following up on that whole you're-an-adult-at-26 thing.

"This is something adults always do -- they take back any half-formed maturity you might have had, at the slightest provocation, asking for respect while giving none in return. And they do it for good reason: It belies their insecurity that, in spite of a chronological head start and a steady, inevitable sagging, they haven’t gotten farther in life. At any point this side of death, it’s hard to believe you’re an adult -- you never get over the childhood insecurity of not knowing what it means to "act like one." You have to be told, be given signs, and no one seems to agree on what those signs are.

The law says that by the age of 18 I should be tried as an adult if I commit a crime of any kind. I can buy porn and tobacco. I can get married, drive, be sent off to war, and vote in elections -- basically, anything that might make me an active member of the human community, short of automobile rental.

So here’s why I’m confused: If I am to take this literally, I am right on target to graduate from college, before the deadline, (chosen by you, America) of 22 years and change. Doing good so far. Here’s what gets me: I am already supposed to be financially independent around now, working a full-time job so that I can support a family when I’m 24.5.

Let’s be honest. I’ve been in the red since day one, and with my ridiculously priced education training me for little more than titillating cocktail-party banter, gainful employment is a far-off dream. I can’t convince a woman to stick around for the night, much less for the time necessary to bring a pregnancy to term. Even 26 sounds way too early for me to have the well-being of any living thing under my care. I can’t handle houseplants.

College is this time that we are supposed to have, to be young and play grab-ass with the greater world of ideas and experience. But the problems with this are logical and well-documented. For many the experience lacks pith, with all of the sitting in dimly-lit library stacks, searching for rare treatises on epic verse. To other people, college has nothing to do with academics. Either way, it is the chance to extend our childhood -- that time in which we hold no responsibilities -- to its maximum. It’s the time when we can be self-absorbed children with the appetites -- physical, intellectual -- of an adult. For others, college is just a voucher one receives that shows an education was committed -- a proof beyond all empirical testing that the rite of passage, merely ritual, has been performed.

My dad told me once that his father had a test for adulthood. My grandfather told him that the day they went out to dinner and my dad picked up the check, he would consider him an adult. Equal. Money and success can do a lot to get you closer to adulthood. Showing that you’re worth something, to someone."

And speaking of adulthood, Knot Magazine has come out with a Quarterlife Crisis section. "We're not interested in the fall at 50. We're talking about the unraveling at 25, the growing pains, tune-ups, and the graceful ascent and outright denial of growing up." Actually, looking at the site in general, the whole place is really all about Quarterlife Crisis.

He's got a point there.

"If movie theaters were introduced today, I think they'd fail completely. Let's say that for whatever reason, there are no movie theaters. Instead, movies are either first shown on television, then released on DVD and VHS, or they go straight to DVD and VHS. No theatrical run, because there are no theaters.

Then some Hollywood power players have a great idea: instead of releasing movies on TV or directly to video, they're going to create these things called "movie theaters." They're going to show their movies in these movie theaters exclusively for maybe three months, then shortly thereafter they release them to video. Can you imagine the pitch?

"Instead of paying two bucks to rent a movie, or twenty or thirty bucks to own it forever, we're going to charge you ten bucks to see it once. That's ten bucks each. Family of four, forty bucks. Then we're going to stick you in a room with a hundred other people. The chairs aren't as big as the ones you have at home, but hey, we've got to fit a hundred people in there. Anyhow, the show starts at a designated time, so don't be late. And you can't stop it, so if you want another drink or to use the bathroom you're going to have to squeeze past the rest of the people in your row and miss part of the movie. Speaking of drinks, we're sure you'll agree that there's no way we're going to make a reasonable profit off a ten-buck ticket, so we're going to mark up the cost of snacks and drinks a little. Well, a lot. Maybe four times what you'd pay in a 7-Eleven. Which, we're sure you'll agree, is still not going to turn as much of a profit as one would hope, so we're going to show you a few advertisements first. Yes, we know that doesn't sound quite as nice as seeing the movie at home, but we do have something to offer that you can't get at home: a big screen. Huge. Whopping. You'll be sitting there and you won't even be thinking about the dorks behind you making body noises and quoting South Park, or the fact that you could have a 24-hour rented vid-fest for what you spent on snacks alone, or the fact that you need to hit the john but you don't want to miss a fight scene, because the screen is that damn big. Just, just very very large."

Interesting article

Cal Professor John Ogbu thinks he knows why rich black kids are failing in school. Nobody wants to hear it."

The world's most expensive...saltcellar?!

My mother collects saltcellars for some reason- usually, they're just little cups you used to put a pile of salt into on the table. This one, however, well... dang.

I rather like what the author of this piece said about the worth of art here. "But the same forces that make the Cellini so valuable at auction make it almost impossible to sell on the black market. A corrupt collector with, say, a stolen da Vinci drawing can probably hang it safely on his wall; only a specialist would know the provenance of the thing. But anyone who's taken an introductory art history class would recognize the Cellini at a yard sale. It's a hot potato: Show it, and you might as well be wearing a sign that says "Arrest me."

In truth, then, I misspoke when I said the piece was "worth" all that money since there's no possible market for it, no economic transaction in which it can function—except, perhaps, ransom or insurance. You can use the Cellini at your table, I suppose, in which case it's worth about as much as a pair of plastic salt and pepper shakers from Target: $3.98 or so. Beyond such practical terms, it's as worthless as it is priceless."

Awwww.

This picture makes me happy.

I love chicagowench.

"I find myself bridling at the monkers people seem entirely too willing to put on me these days, and fighting to find ways to refute them. I am not 'Sean's Mom'. Sean does not- despite all evidence to the contrary in this journal- define every aspect of my life.

"In addition to telecommuting, I write maddening things about how I do not love every second of being a mother, enjoy drinking, had sex before marriage, and am a Jew. Please, hold throwing stones at me until the end."

And just as much as I bridle over having labels assigned to me, I have a mad hate on for people ascribing things to my child. When the inlaws were here, my MIL insisted on speaking 'for' Sean, giving voice to emotions, motivations, thoughts... lady, he can't focus more than 12 inches away, I assure you he's not opining in his inside his head voice on how much he loves going for car rides. I doubt he knows the word 'car', he has yet to have the 'water' moment from The Miracle Worker. Also, he doesn't know from bears yet, so your insistence on buying him every teddy bear themed item under the sun because 'he wuvs bwears'? Wrong."

This one's for the journallers

Journal prompting help.

Fire sucks.

Oh yes, someone FINALLY agrees with me on this!

Some folks are finally tired of the perpetual non-long-term romance on TV shows.

I, for one, am tired of hearing about Moonlighting and Rhoda killing the love!

"The "Friends" writers have thrown every obstacle in front of the inevitable Ross/Rachel coupling short of killing off one of them. The "Will & Grace" writers introduced the most promising love interest Will has ever had, then promptly wrote the guy off the show. It's taken three years for "Ed" and Carol to have their second real kiss. And Frasier Crane is still a lonely, lonely man.

This sorry state of affairs can be blamed on "Rhoda," "Moonlighting" and the more general paranoia that TV writers feel in their role as guardians of the status quo.

Change is toxic to most TV writers, who fear it will alienate an audience used to seeing the same characters in the same basic situations week after week.

Change was certainly bad for "Rhoda," which was humming along nicely until Rhoda married longtime boyfriend Joe -- at which point the audience snoozed, the ratings plunged and the writers gave the couple a quickie divorce. And conventional wisdom blames the rapid demise of "Moonlighting" on the decision to put David and Maddie together.

Largely because those two relationships failed, TV romantic comedy has been plagued by unrequited love, unresolved sexual tension and other tired variations of the old will-they-or-won't-they formula.

But as writers scramble to do what they think is best for their shows by keeping unattached characters single at all costs, they usually wind up hurting themselves in the process.

Grace (Debra Messing) fell hard for her neighbor Nathan, played by Woody Harrelson. Harrelson wasn't going to stick around as a regular, but even if he had been willing, the writers weren't prepared to pair off Grace for good, so they had her neuroses sabotage the relationship. Nathan dumped her, and Grace spent an entire depressing episode lying in bed while trying to cope with her history of driving away men. The character had gone from endearing but unlucky to pathetic and self-destructive.

So Greenstein and writing partner Jhoni Marchinko took an unusual step: They decided to have Grace fall in love again and let it actually work out. Earlier this year, they introduced Harry Connick Jr. as Leo Markus, a hunky doctor who was Grace's ideal man, and began laying the seeds for the two to get married.

Given Grace's track record, plus the overall sitcom history for this kind of thing, nobody believed the writers would go through with it -- right until Grace and Leo actually said their "I do's."

And they've been rewarded for it. The ratings are up for this season, critics who had turned on the show embraced it again and, best of all, Grace is a more interesting character as a neurotic married woman than she was as a neurotic singleton.

"(Grace) has become cooler, more centered, more of a woman, more laid-back, and still funny," says Greenstein. "I've actually enjoyed Debra's performance more than in any other season."

Everyone claims that "Moonlighting" fell apart because David and Maddie had sex, but forgets that their first time was immediately followed by the introduction of Mark Harmon as Maddie's ex-boyfriend, yet another frustrating obstacle for a permanent romance." (And this bit is what I've thought for YEARS AND YEARS, so thank God someone said it!) "If the writers had just let David and Maddie get together while continuing to bicker and annoy each other -- much the way the "Cheers" writers handled Sam and Diane after they got tired of keeping them apart -- viewers might not have deserted the show."

Some other current TV comedies that are actually damaging themselves by denying romantic fulfillment to their characters:
"Friends": The Ross/Rachel relationship, which wasn't even planned when the show began (Joey/Monica was supposed to be the big love story), became so huge that it threatened to swallow the show whole. The repeated breakups and reconciliations have made both characters (particularly Ross) seem indecisive, abrasive and just plain crazy." Amen! Now I actually kinda hate them together, and Ross has become an enormous dick, so much that I can't stand to watch him at all any more.

Name popularity.

Popularity of the name Jennifer: #19 in the 60's. #1 name in the 70's (figures), #2 in the 80's, and #14 in the 90's. Thank gawd it's going down, I already don't answer when someone calls my name any more as is. I guess I'm lucky that I'm a girl though, and that my parents didn't decide to call me Michael- which is the top name for guys from the 1950's on. People, stop naming your children Michael already! Though does anyone remember having 2-7 Michaels per class the way there were Jennifers? I somehow don't remember knowing shitloads of Michaels. Though I do remember the family that named their kids Michael and Jennifer...

Wedding Movies- why are they so popular?

(Original story is NYT link, permalink not working- should you find this later, look for May 11, 2003.)

The Fail-Safe Summer Wedding Film. Lori, queen of Indiebride, wonders about these flicks:

My near-Pavlovian reaction goes a long way toward explaining the appeal not only of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," but of wedding movies in general. Cardboard characters, tepid acting, improbable plots, unfunny jokes -- add some nuptials to the mix, and suddenly all is forgiven.

One thing seems certain: romance is only part of the package. Built into the wedding-film genre are several other surefire elements. Above all, there's the suspense of the "speak now or forever hold your peace" moment. And since every wedding begins with the setting of a date, these films use racing-against-the-clock plots that add tension and raise the stakes of even the silliest story lines. Add luscious sets; dramatic, and sometimes absurd, costumes; tortured family dynamics that often erupt in broad comedy; and characters grappling with questions of true love and destiny. All the ingredients are there -- it's no wonder Hollywood simply rearranges them from time to time to suit a new premise and cast.

Unlike most weddings, which end with the prospective bride and groom marrying each other as planned, wedding movies often rely on what I call the "soul mate" plot, in which the protagonist almost marries the wrong person....When the characters aren't in danger of marrying the wrong person, it's usually because they're in danger of not getting married at all. ...Watch enough such movies, and these devices -- whether poignant, suspenseful or just plain ridiculous -- begin to seem as ritualized as the wedding ceremony itself.

After several weekends holed up with a stack of wedding movies, here's what I've learned: bridesmaid dresses are hideous (I already knew that, thanks); best men give drunken toasts (I was aware of that, too); grooms are uninterested at best, and at worst terrified; and Bridezilla lives. Indeed, despite the contemporary trappings of the newer wedding movies, the genre seems to have completely ignored the feminist movement."

It makes me wonder why I own so many of the movies mentioned in the article when you see the same thing done repeatedly, eh?

For San Franciscans, should any read this weblog

While the column linked here originally is quite excellent for fans of SF, I rather enjoyed these remarks as well about living there: "It's an unspoken rule here that you must pretend like you don't notice that the person next to you on the bus is a 7ft tall transsexual lesbian-identified wiccan priestess with one leg. The rule is basically this: I'm a freak, you're a freak, you pretend that I'm not a freak, I'll pretend you're not a freak. It's how we all manage to live together in relative harmony." Though #3 mentioned here is a very strong reason why I will never move to SF (or Berkeley) no matter how liberal I am. Well, that, the weather, and the big fat quakes.

Mom's no fun, let's kill her off

Why moms are usually killed off or stupid in children's lit: they don't allow adventures to happen. "Indeed, I sometimes think there would be no children's books at all were it not for mothers conveniently dead or missing; that no adventure can be had, no high jinks gotten up to, as long as a mother is hovering close by, poised to put a stop to any dangerous nonsense. What mothers are, from the point of view of anybody who wants to write a book that kids can't put down, is a narrative problem. A barrier to the plot. To have a lively, adventurous children's book, you cannot have a normal, attentive mother; you have to have a mother who has been disappeared, a mother who is away and/or bat-brained enough to leave her child in the care of someone even less responsible.

To be sure, in some children's books, it's both parents who are missing -- think Harry Potter -- but Dad's absence is clearly less important than Mom's. Dads are, let's face it, a little more lax, a little less emotionally attentive: If Atticus Finch's wife had been alive, do you think Scout would have been allowed to spend so much time spying on Boo Radley? And what about Nancy Drew? Had her mother been alive, would she have been permitted that dangerous convertible? No indeed! Dads, with their absent-minded, garage-puttering ways, are not a plot problem at all. In fact -- as with Caractacus Potts, the eccentric father in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" -- dads are often a high-spirited accomplice in merry mishap."

Not so moms; so many children's authors, including (et tu!) Dr. Seuss, have this entirely nonradical, entirely un-new, really pretty dispiriting idea of the mother as impediment to all the fun there is to be had in life. Now that I'm a mother, I look at this whole long literary tradition, works of fantasy and growing up and adventure -- "Alice in Wonderland," "The Wizard of Oz," even the PBS series "Dragon Tales," in which the mother is this faraway Latina voice, calling, "Max! Emmy!" while her kids, up in the playroom, are returning from dragonland -- and ask myself: Are these stories telling me something? Is it in fact my fundamental role as a mother to keep weird, interesting things from happening to my children? Am I the household killjoy?"

Maybe it's like dominoes. You knock one down, it's easier to knock the rest

I'm not one for making random, completely-out-of-the-blue posts about me on this blog, but why on earth am I suddenly now considering subscribing to Salon? Because paying to read stuff online generally annoys me (it's not like you're paying for a magazine you keep), I can't use their daypass system at work, I'm way losing track of "usernames and passwords" for everything as is, and I can't really use their site for weblogging any more anyway.

I went cold turkey the day they started the day passes and hadn't looked back. Then someone mentioned a series they're doing this week and I was interested enough to do the day pass at home. And started reading the archives and realized how much I'd missed some things, like "Since You Asked." And they hand out free magazine subscriptions. And I can do it with ads (I don't care, I ignore them anyway) for $18.50 a year. And hell, I've started to find myself occasionally donating to websites and subscribed at Motley Fool and I don't really know why.

Then again, I've got plenty of other expenses going on in my life. This weekend oughta be a hurter. We'll see, I guess.

Who cares if you're missing and you're not young enough?

Rachel Cooke, a 19-year-old runner, disappeared in January 2002. Her dad has an online journal talking about the search for her, and well, yikes. "Only one part-time F.B.I investigator worked on Rachel's case. It seems that if the missing person is over a certain age, her value as a human being goes down. Seventy F.B.I. agents were assigned to the Oregon case. Is a 19-year-old that much less important than a 12-year-old? We still love her now just as much or more than when she was 12. I can't even get Rachel posted on the FBI missing persons web page." (She was finally listed in June.)

I'm apparently not as bad as I thought.

I haven't posted in a while, and saw the Dante's Inferno ratings quiz. I thought I was a bad,bad man, but apparently not...

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Second Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

TV time is just plain strange.

This article points out the very strange usage of time on many TV shows, such as the 11-year-long Korean War, the four-year-long senior year of high school, etc., etc.

I'm not sure...

what a Slutpublican is, but I like the name.

Oh, man.

Am LOVING this new Google Viewer. Lets you see your searches in kind of a slide show format.

People, not plants!

So, a cartoonist got laid off, and this is his last words, so to speak. (Not a permanent link, other things will be put in, so I'm just pasting the good stuff.)

"Getting canned sucks. But I understand that difficult business decisions must be made in difficult times, and I'm glad I'm not the one who has to make those difficult decisions. But if I was... I'd probably cut the private service that comes in to water and dust and turn the plants in the publisher's office, before I'd cut a local cartoonist. In other words, I'd cut something only the privileged few who enter the publisher's office see, before I'd cut something 190,000 readers see. Is the position of local cartoonist really valued less than office plants? I could've watered 'em, and I don't even have a PhD in horticulture."

Thank you, Monty.

He says some stuff I thoroughly agree with on spoilers.

"I can understand not wanting to know about big, dramatic plot twists before a movie comes out. But if it's been out for a few weeks, you don't get to tell people to stop talking about it on the grounds that you're thinking of maybe seeing the movie some time, and you don't want to mess up the pristine viewing experience. If it means that much to you, see the movie when it comes out.

As a corollary, I have to warn you that at a certain point, you're opening yourself up for mockery. Citizen Kane is over sixty years old; you've had plenty of opportunity to see it. Fifty years ago, Peanuts was using "Rosebud was his sled" as a punchline. Anyone who is currently thinking of complaining that I've "spoiled" a movie that came out before they were born can, quite frankly, shut up.

Normally, I don't care about being spoiled. It's my contention that if a single piece of information can ruin a book or a movie, then that book or movie was already flawed. Even straightforward whodunit mysteries can, if they're well-written, reward rereading. And I'd rather people just say what's on their minds rather than, once they've found out I'm the only one in the lunch group that hasn't seen Unbreakable, talk about the movie while dancing around the "twist".

As far as I'm concerned, (a) there is only so far most people should have to go to make sure you remain pure and "unspoiled," and after that, it's up to you to save your ears from sulliment, and (b) it won't kill you and/or ruin ALL of your enjoyment of the thing to find out a detail about the plot. My ex was ridiculous about this- he threw a hissy when I mentioned that a character was in a new book. He wanted to know NOTHING about the book before reading it but the title. Oh, please. I'm a big spoiler whore, and it's still different for me actually seeing what happens as opposed to hearing beforehand what happens.

Childless old people not dying of loneliness.

There's something to tell the relatives next time they pressure you.

Straight Talk About Graduate School

People, for some obscure reason, are always telling me that I should go to grad school. I think it's because of the glasses. Seriously. Or just that it's the traditional "stalling point" for those who don't want to get real jobs or don't like what job they have. I suspect, however, that anyone who actually wants to go should read this. It is blunt and truthful and gets into the horrors of the thing and what to watch out for. Oy. Vey. Also read this too.

Who wants to buy a GOLDEN TURD?

Of course, this comes from Japan.
"Ryukodo, a Kyoto-based decoration manufacturer, has trouble pushing out enough of its golden turds to keep up with demand.

The blistering pace at which they've sold since hitting souvenir stores and clothing outlets across Japan since June 2000 seems to vindicate the old adage that nothing is as grossly overrated as awful sex and nothing as underrated as laying a decent log.

Supposedly lucky charms, golden turds weigh just under 2 grams and their curl gives them a height of some 1.2 centimeters. Rather than appearing scatological, they're cute little dollops of dung, which first made them a hit among high schoolgirls." (Because EVERY stupid trend in Japan starts with high school girls. I think I fear Japanese high school girls.)

"I bought loads of them and gave them to each member of my family as a souvenir," a schoolgirl who developed a feel for the fake feces she bought while on a school trip to Nagasaki tells Shukan Asahi. "I tied the one I bought for myself on the end of my mobile phone."

Since the end of last year, sales have been far from bogged down. Instead, they've skyrocketing as growing numbers of housewives and salarymen scramble to get their hands on these nuggets." (And what's even scarier in Japan, the adults follow up on all the dumb teen trends.)

"With the world as bleak as it is nowadays, we wanted to come up with a product that would get people laughing," the golden turds' creator, Ryukodo president Koji Fujii, tells Shukan Asahi, giving the poop on why his products are far from being just mere crap. "Nobody in the world would get angry if somebody gave them one of our turds as a souvenir" (I would. It's even worse than the "My parents went to Hawaii and all I got was this lousy T-shirt" souvenir. "My parents went to Japan and all I got was GOLDEN SHIT!") "and just seeing them presented would lighten up the whole atmosphere. It's been over two years since we really first started selling them, but I reckon the world has become an even darker place in that time." (So, okay, they're doing this as a worldwide morale booster...okay, that's frightening. Hey, there's a war on and the world's going to hell, buy a golden turd!)

"Current versions include turds with funny faces painted on them, and others that emit a fragrance, though the odor let off is highly unlikely to be anything like the real thing." (I can understand the funny faces. But why would you want to buy a SMELLING golden turd? And yeah, I'd frigging HOPE it doesn't smell like the real thing!) "Ryukodo employees are currently scratching their heads over how to come up with more ideas for other shitty products." (I don't wanna know. And yet, should I find another link on this someday, I will post it with horror.)

Though hey, I guess you could use it to check for cancer. What is with the Japanese and the scatological?

Also in Japan, they have discovered that a lion crap a day keeps the deer away.

Japanese folks are swarming to get married, but they won't sleep with their spouses, prefer to boink their sons or masturbate with toys. Between that and the above stories about schoolgirl prostitutes, man, this country needs a boatload of psychiatrists and sex therapists shipped over, stat.

Hey, PDA geeks!

I made a PDA version of this page. Not all links work on a PDA, of course, but hey, what the hell. (Besides, after my new Palm i705 comes in next week, I can read my own page online!)