wAitiNG foR doROthY

oh the horror

2008-12-17T12:43:00.004-05:00

i managed to dredge up the archives of my old law school blog that i ran with some of my classmates which gained some level of notoriety before other students found out about it and we shut it down. it made the new york times magazine. /pats self on back.

anyway.

after perusing the archives, it appears that i had a minor crush on someone who is now one of my best friends. i don't really remember having a crush on her, but those are my words. it's on record. i know my five year "secret crush" statute of limitations is up, but i am so not telling her! at this point, it would be like confessing a secret crush on your sister (although i just had a very graphic dream of a sexual nature involving a guy friend who is essentially my brother and i informed him about it just to see his reaction - yes i know... TMI TMI TMI. emily1, please don't throw up.)

fortunately for me in law school, i was having a simultaneous crush on another classmate, a crush that was much more debilitating and paralyzing, which effectively drowned out the crush i was harboring for the person who is now one of my BFFs. yes it was pretty horrible, but at least i didn't end up obsessing over my current friend. THANK CHRIST!

i am realizing that i have had crushes - to varying degrees - on pretty much every attractive lesbian who has crossed my path in the last eight years. [addendum: and on boys that become lesbians. tee hee.]

maybe i really am that easy.

ugh

2008-11-17T04:53:00.001-05:00

relationshipFAIL

bad times

2008-11-13T15:57:00.003-05:00

i don't like it when someone just pulls the carpet out from under my feet without warning. i can't concentrate at work, and i keep fantasizing about an alternate life that has no basis in reality and had no chance of coming to fruition anyway. sorry i can't go into detail. basically, the economy sucks and i have no business neglecting my job, my relationship is on the rocks, and my "plan b" is a golden unicorn (and requires time travel).

blech.

8 against 8

2008-10-20T21:35:00.001-04:00

go to www.8against8.com - 8 famous lesbian bloggers - 8 days - $8,000 - to defeat proposition 8.

GO AND DONATE!!!!

life is good

2008-10-20T01:08:00.004-04:00

i'm glad i got whatever i wrote previously on this post off my chest.

free at last! free at last! thank god almighty i am free at last!

that is all!

sarah palin on snl

2008-10-19T02:20:00.002-04:00

Freefalling

2008-10-06T11:46:00.002-04:00

Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves.

Andrew Jackson to a delegation of bankers in 1832

sexist?

2008-09-16T18:59:00.002-04:00

From this article, someone from the McCain camp says about the SNL skit starring Tina Fey as Palin and Amy Poehler as Clinton (if you haven't seen it, you're way behind - just google it and watch it already):

“The portrait was very dismissive of the substance of Sarah Palin, and so in that sense, they were defining Hillary Clinton as very substantive, and Sarah Palin as totally superficial,” McCain advisor Carly Fiorina told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Monday. “I think that continues the line of argument that is disrespectful in the extreme, and yes I would say sexist.”

Hoo-kay. Implying that Hillary Clinton is substantive while Sarah Palin isn't is sexist. That's a new one.

holy shite

2008-09-12T10:54:00.002-04:00

jesus christ, this thing is as big as the gulf of mexico.

remember this?

2008-09-09T18:15:00.002-04:00

Back in March I predicted that Lehman Bros would fold.

Today, Lehman Bros' stock fell 45%. D'oh!

-----------

I also predicted that Britney Spears would win an MTV music award. And she took home three.

-----------

I also predict that I will need to use the bathroom in the next few hours.

uh, who the fuck cares?

2008-08-26T18:30:00.001-04:00

what was elizabeth edwards supposed to do? blast it on her facebook status?

i can't read this shit, because it pisses me off

2008-08-26T11:03:00.002-04:00

i really thought the chinese were over putting grannies in labor camps. that's so 1949. assholes.

i wuz sheltereded.

2008-08-13T16:27:00.005-04:00

just had coffee with a high school friend who informed me that half of my friends in high school were queer and just didn't tell me. and that she had pursued a hot lesbian teacher while still a student and dated her. and then attempted to break up with her, which caused hottie teacher to write her notes telling her to go to the principal's office for "special assignments." then teacher would show up and attempt to discuss the relationship and hook up with her. she also made out with a friend of mine who was hot. and now another friend is in ny city, out and proud, and i had no idea in high school or now.

another friend of mine, about three years ago, told me that she had dated another girl while in high school and didn't tell me because she didn't think i could handle it. bull fucking shit. maybe i would have said... "hmm... what a good idea." of course, i probably would have run back in the closet during college, but that's another post that will never be written.

both of these people had been my best friend for long a period of time in my life.

i know this is like, twelve years after the fact, but come on... did i really seem that delicate to you people?! i was the features (arts and culture) editor for the school paper for crying out loud! (yeah, that basically means "not a square" in my high school. i guess you had to go there. bleh.)

Deep Thought

2008-07-28T10:42:00.001-04:00

inhaling a cookie is not the proper way to consume it.

ooo!

2008-07-28T10:29:00.000-04:00

geek girl takes on her old employer, google, with a new search engine. hot!

Homophobic Representative + Gun + State Capitol = WIN!

2008-07-26T08:52:00.001-04:00

Props to fellow Quenchista Maudite Entendante, who noticed this tidbit in the news:

OKLAHOMA CITY -- An Oklahoma lawmaker who made headlines in March for her comments regarding homosexuals was stopped from bringing a gun into the state Capitol on Wednesday, troopers said.

Check out her scathing post here.

But Rep. "Homosexuals are a bigger threat than terrorists" Kern wants to reassure you that her inappropriate gun-toting "has nothing to do with the homosexual situation."

Seriously, I am so not surprised by this situation in the slightest.

This is pretty much what I've been attempting to articulate about the state of academia

2008-07-25T12:40:00.004-04:00

Really, this guy continues to blow my mind. Although this was written over ten years ago, it is still relevant, as the trendy pomo left (as opposed to the rest of the left, who is unjustly lumped in with them) still continues to have a chokehold on academia. Posting in its entirely.

A Plea for Reason, Evidence and Logic
Alan Sokal
[from New Politics, vol. 6, no. 2 (new series), whole no. 22, Winter 1997]

[Editors' Note: As most of our readers probably know by now, Alan Sokal, a physicist at New York University, submitted a parody of postmodernist studies of natural science to Social Text, which published it as serious contribution in its "Science Wars" issue, Spring/Summer 1996. He then revealed the hoax in the pages of Lingua Franca, producing a wide-ranging debate on the politics of postmodernism and the nature of truth, reason and objectivity. What follows is a transcript of a talk given by Sokal at a forum on that subject held at New York University on October 30, 1996.]

Alan Sokal is a Professor of Physics at New York University. In the summers of 1986-88 he taught mathematics at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua. He is co-author with Roberto Fernández and Jürg Fröhlich of Random Walks, Critical Phenomena, and Triviality in Quantum Field Theory (Springer, 1992) and co-author with Jean Bricmont of the forthcoming Les impostures scientifiques des philosophes (postmodernes).

THIS AFFAIR HAS BROUGHT UP AN INCREDIBLE NUMBER OF ISSUES, and I can't dream of addressing them all in 10 minutes, so let me start by circumscribing my remarks. I don't want to belabor Social Text's failings either before or after the publication of my parody: Social Text is not my enemy, nor is it my main intellectual target. I won't go here into the ethical issues related to the propriety of hoaxing (although I'm glad to defend my ethics). I won't address the obscurantist prose and the uncritical celebrity-worship that have infected certain trendy sectors of the American academic humanities (though these are important questions that I hope other panelists will address). I won't enter into technical issues of the philosophy of science. I won't discuss the social role of science and technology (though these are important issues). Indeed, I want to emphasize that this affair, in my view, is not primarily about science -- though that was the excuse that I used in constructing my parody -- nor is it a disciplinary conflict between scientists and humanists, who are in fact represented on all sides of the debate. What I believe this debate is principally about -- and what I want to focus on here -- is the nature of truth, reason and objectivity: issues that I believe are crucial to the future of left politics.

I didn't write the parody for the reasons you might think at first. My aim was not to defend science from the barbarian hordes of lit crit or sociology. I know perfectly well that the main threats to science nowadays come from budget-cutting politicians and corporate executives, not from a handful of postmodernist academics. Rather, my goal is to defend what one might call a scientific worldview -- defined broadly as a respect for evidence and logic, and for the incessant confrontation of theories with the real world; in short, for reasoned argument over wishful thinking, superstition and demagoguery. And my motives for trying to defend these old-fashioned ideas are basically political. I am worried about trends in the American Left -- particularly in academia -- that, at a minimum, divert us from the task of formulating a progressive social critique, by leading smart and committed people into trendy but ultimately empty intellectual fashions. These fashions can, in fact, undermine the prospects for such a critique, by promoting subjectivist and relativist philosophies that are inconsistent with producing a realistic analysis of society that we and our fellow citizens will find compelling.

David Whiteis, in a recent article, said it well:

Too many academics, secure in their ivory towers and insulated from the real-world consequences of the ideas they espouse, seem blind to the fact that non-rationality has historically been among the most powerful weapons in the ideological arsenals of oppressors. The hypersubjectivity that characterizes postmodernism is a perfect case in point: far from being a legacy of leftist iconoclasm, as some of its advocates so disingenuously claim, it in fact ... plays perfectly into the anti-rationalist -- really, anti-thinking -- bias that currently infects "mainstream" U.S. culture.

Along similar lines, the philosopher of science, Larry Laudan, observed caustically that the displacement of the idea that facts and evidence matter by the idea that everything boils down to subjective interests and perspectives is -- second only to American political campaigns -- the most prominent and pernicious manifestation of anti-intellectualism in our time. (And these days, being nearly as anti-intellectual as political campaigns is really quite a feat.)

NOW OF COURSE, NO ONE WILL ADMIT TO BEING AGAINST REASON, evidence and logic -- that's like being against Motherhood and Apple Pie. Rather, our postmodernist and poststructuralist friends will claim to be in favor of some new and deeper kind of reason--such as the celebration of "local knowledges" and "alternative ways of knowing" as an antidote to the so-called "Eurocentric scientific methodology" (you know, things like systematic experiment, controls, replication, and so forth). You find this magic phrase "local knowledges" in, for example, the articles of Andrew Ross and Sandra Harding in the "Science Wars" issue of Social Text. But are "local knowledges" all that great? And when local knowledges conflict, which local knowledges should we believe? In many parts of the Midwest, the "local knowledges" say that you should spray more herbicides to get bigger crops. It is old-fashioned objective science that can tell us which herbicides are poisonous to farm workers and to people downstream. Here in New York City, lots of "local knowledges" hold that there's a wave of teenage motherhood that's destroying our moral fiber. It's those boring data that show that the birth rate to teenage mothers has been essentially constant since 1975 and is about half of what it was in the good old 1950s. Another word for "local knowledges" is prejudice.

I am sorry to say it, but under the influence of postmodernism some very intelligent people can fall into some incredibly sloppy thinking, and I want to give two examples. The first comes from a front-page article in the New York Times (10/22/96) about the conflict between archaeologists and some Native American creationists. I don't want to address here the ethical and legal aspects of this controversy -- who should control the use of 10,000-year-old human remains -- but only the epistemic issue. There are at least two competing views on where Native American populations come from. The scientific consensus, based on extensive archaeological evidence, is that humans first entered the Americas from Asia about 10,000-20,000 years ago, crossing the Bering Strait. Many Native American creation accounts hold, on the other hand, that native peoples have always lived in the Americas, ever since their ancestors emerged onto the surface of the earth from a subterranean world of spirits. And the Times article observed that many archaeologists, "pulled between their scientific temperaments and their appreciation for native culture, ... have been driven close to a postmodern relativism in which science is just one more belief system." For example, Roger Anyon, a British archaeologist who has worked for the Zuni people, was quoted as saying that "Science is just one of many ways of knowing the world. ... [The Zunis' world view is] just as valid as the archeological viewpoint of what prehistory is about."

Now, perhaps Dr. Anyon was misquoted, but we all have repeatedly heard assertions of this kind, and I'd like to ask what such assertions could possibly mean. We have here two mutually incompatible theories. They can't both be right; they can't both even be approximately right. They could, of course, both be wrong, but I don't imagine that that is what Dr. Anyon means by "just as valid." It seems to me that Anyon has quite simply allowed his political and cultural sympathies to cloud his reasoning. And there is no justification for that: we can perfectly well remember the victims of a horrible genocide, and support their descendants' valid political goals, without endorsing uncritically (or hypocritically) their societies' traditional creation myths. Moreover, the relativists' stance is extremely condescending: it treats a complex society as a monolith, obscures the conflicts within it, and takes its most obscurantist factions as spokespeople for the whole.

My second example of sloppy thinking comes from Social Text co-editor Bruce Robbins' article in the Sept./Oct. 1996 issue of Tikkun magazine, in which he tries to defend -- albeit half-heartedly -- the postmodernist/poststructuralist subversion of conventional notions of truth. "Is it in the interests of women, African Americans, and other super-exploited people," Robbins asks, "to insist that truth and identity are social constructions? Yes and no," he asserts. "No, you can't talk about exploitation without respect for empirical evidence" -- exactly my point. "But yes," Robbins continues, "truth can be another source of oppression." Huh??? How can truth oppress anyone? Well, Robbins' very next sentence explains what he means: "It was not so long ago," he says, "that scientists gave their full authority to explanations of why women and African Americans ... were inherently inferior." But is Robbins claiming that that is truth? I should hope not! Sure, lots of people say things about women and African Americans that are not true; and yes, those falsehoods have sometimes been asserted in the name of "science," "reason" and all the rest. But claiming something doesn't make it true, and the fact that people -- including scientists -- sometimes make false claims doesn't mean that we should reject or revise the concept of truth. Quite the contrary: it means that we should examine with the utmost care the evidence underlying people's truth claims, and we should reject assertions that in our best rational judgment are false.

This error is, unfortunately, repeated throughout Robbins' essay: he systematically confuses truth with claims of truth, fact with assertions of fact, and knowledge with pretensions to knowledge. These elisions underlie much of the sloppy thinking about "social construction" prevalent nowadays in the academy, and it is something that progressives ought to resist. Sure, let's show which economic, political and ideological interests are served by our opponents' accounts of "reality"; but first let's demonstrate, by marshalling evidence and logic, why those accounts are objectively false (or in some cases true but incomplete).

A bit later in his article, Robbins admits candidly that "those of us who do cultural politics sometimes act as if ... truth were always and everywhere a weapon of the right." Now, that's an astoundingly self-defeating attitude for an avowed leftist. If truth were on the side of the right, shouldn't we all -- at least the honest ones among us -- become right-wingers? For my own part, I am a leftist and a feminist because of evidence and logic (combined with elementary ethics), not in spite of it.

This plea of mine for reason, evidence and logic is hardly original; dozens of progressive humanists, social scientists and natural scientists have been saying the same thing for years. But if my parody in Social Text has helped just a little bit to amplify their voices and to provoke a much-needed debate on the American Left, then it will have served its purpose.

asians doing shameful things

2008-07-24T18:41:00.002-04:00

queens sweatshop raided. i think, in addition to throwing them in jail for a very long time, the owners' mugshots should be sent to every person of chinese descent in the tri-state area. the word "criminal" should appear right below the mugshots. there is a concept called "losing face" is chinese culture, and this form of public humiliation would be quite delicious. :)

awooooogggaaa!!!!

2008-07-23T21:46:00.002-04:00

over the course of the past four months - with the (1) 13 hours a day, 6 to 7 hours a week boiler-room atmosphere of my workplace where everyone became desperate and abusive and the (2) increased fighting between me and my girlfriend due to said job situation (which i've been trying unsuccessfully to get out of), i've become pretty unsettled and unhappy. timewise, the bulk of the deterioration of my sanity started around 10th year reunion and has pretty much gone downhill.

and the kicker came yesterday. my ex called me after 3 years of not contacting me and relayed some heavy stuff. i'm not going to get into it here, but it brought back a lot of memories that i thought i had erased permanently. i know she had to tell me this stuff, but wow, i was so not in the right frame of mind to hear it. of course, i handled it immaturely, because i couldn't deal with it emotionally. so now i just apologized, through e-mail of course, because calling was too difficult.

i wonder how my dad dealt with all the job stress and marital craziness and general awooga that was and continues to be his life and how he came out normal and successful. and he immigrated penniless from a different country, which i'm sure adds a whole mountain of uncertainty and stress.

"experts" announce that middle class is struggling

2008-07-23T14:46:00.001-04:00

here.

gee, i'm no "expert," but that's a no-brainer.

tAstEe driNk

2008-07-22T00:55:00.003-04:00

Okay, this looks like a seriously awesome recipe. I mean, just listen:

Blend cantaloupe, cardamom, honey, milk, and yogurt for about 3 minutes and voila you have a tasty treat!

Yummmmmmmm.

It's of East African origin - Horn of Africa.

treadmill, part 2

2008-07-16T14:44:00.003-04:00

This seems to be a recurring theme on this blog.

So is the future implosion of the financial industry.

So, why do we continue to work ourselves to death? Are we going to reap the benefits of our labor?

This blows.

Something In The Wind

2008-07-14T12:45:00.003-04:00

i think it's the scent of a full-scale banking panic.

i have that deer caught in the headlights thing going on. i keep on living my daily life by going to work, looking for a new apartment and dutifully saving 8 percent of my salary in my 401k and saving the rest of my disposable income in cash like it all still means something.

i don't wanna grow up!

2008-07-14T01:48:00.003-04:00

ok, deleted the post that was here because i forgot that y'all had this site linked to your real names on various places on the internet. but i hope y'all were temporarily amused. =P

denial.

2008-07-14T00:58:00.000-04:00

it's not just a river in egypt

suckage.

2008-07-07T19:25:00.007-04:00

been at the office virtually every day since easter. girlfriend's birthday is coming up this weekend. was unsure if i could make festivities even before the following new development, but now a friend of ours has secured her parents' house in the hamptons for a house party for my girlfriend's 30th birthday. (just to let everyone know, having a free house in the hamptons for a party is NOT NORMAL for me. or for 99.9% of the population. it's something out of another dimension.) there is no way i can make it all the way out there, because i'm basically chained to my desk all weekend except for evenings.

seriously. how much does my life suck?

(yes, i know "wah wah i can't go to the hamptons" sounds like yuppie angst, but let's put this this way. let's say that you're in grade school, and instead of regular recess, the school is throwing a carnival that only happens once a year - with cotton candy and hot dogs. let's just say that you didn't do anything bad, but your teacher made you sit in the classroom and miss recess anyway. not just ANY recess, but THAT PARTICULAR recess. it just plain stinks.)

What A Bunch Of Whiny Ass Titty Babies

2008-07-05T09:35:00.006-04:00

rich and well to do suburbanites think their 'solitude' is so much more important than addressing pressing needs for improved civic infrastructure. sudbury, ma residents are fighting the conversion of an old railroad into a bike trail. the bullshit-laden tantrums from grown adults is just hysterical:

Looking out at a lushly wooded area beyond a stone wall on her 100-acre estate, Carole Wolfe's face darkened. There, in the distance, she said, nervously pointing a finger, stretches a former rail corridor that, if some have their way, could bring trouble upon this town where her family's roots date to Colonial times.

"Instead of solitude," Wolfe said, "you'd be having people."

yes, my pretty. the worst thing in the world is the prospect of having lesser beings who can't afford a 100 acre estate in one of the most expensive states in the union saving money by using a bike trail near your home. your wealth and privilege totally entitle you to be free of people who aren't wealthy like you and your neighbors. the only members of lesser classes who should be permitted to enter your sanctified world are those worthy peons you hire to clean your palaces and care for all the non-native flora in your waterhog landscaped perfect lawns.

Opponents of the "rail trail" say the path would draw hundreds of thousands of bicyclists who would bring with them noise and other disruptions into what is now a pristine landscape. Hordes of bikers, walkers, and rollerbladers would scare away wildlife, they say, and invite crime from trespassing to vandalism and assault.

i presume then that the pampered, privileged, 100-acre-estate-owning twats of sudbury oppose the presence of roads near their homes. think of the noise of hundreds of thousands of motorists driving in their noisy cars along those giant four lane highways near those plush energy-hog homes that consume more power than a dozen tenements in the dirty city full of permanently suspect poor people who are dying for the chance to hop in a car and drive out to sudbury to smoke blunts, drink 40s, terrorize deer and tag the garden walls surrounding the estates of sudbury with eyesore graffiti.

so deep is the concern for wildlife and the environment that sudbury residents surely must travel everywhere by foot. who would want to damage the environment with a gas-guzzling luxury vehicle! surely, they don't want to damage the pristine and untouched wilderness dotted with naturally occurring horse stables, 5000 square foot homes, privacy hedges, mowed lawns, pools, private schools, golf courses and country clubs!

"We don't have neighbors nearby," said Marianne Maurer, whose family's tree farm is bisected by the proposed bike trail. "If something happened, no one would hear us yelling."

competitive cyclists, and average bike commuters are a scary lot. they wear all those funny-looking neon spandex outfits and enormous bike helmets. this attire is beloved by burglars everywhere for their unique value as camouflage while they surreptitiously break into expensive homes before making a quick and sure getaway by bike.

Some opponents have gone so far as to make unusual threats. If the trail is built, some said, they will sell their land to developers who want to build dense clusters of affordable units.

the residents of sudbury astonish me with their enduring capacity for mature and adult behavior. when you want to impress others with your capacity for respectable and dignified behavior when you face the awful prospect of not getting your way, fall to the ground, kick and scream at the top of your lungs until the shade of your face approaches the hue of a well-ripened tomato. show your concern for preserving wilderness and open space by selling to all those developers who are dying to build dense, clustered homes for people who don't have as much money as you do! especially during this horrific credit cisis and tanking housing market.

"This is not some little footpath," said Nigrelli, a statistician who works in the healthcare industry. "This is a large, state-undertaken project."

He pointed out that the trail would probably be paved and measure at least 10 to 12 feet in width.

my god! 10 to 12 feet. that's like.... almost half of a two lane road for motorized transport, none of which exist anywhere in sudbury!

As far as Maurer is concerned, a better solution is for bikers to get their exercise indoors.

"My whole theory is: Go to the gym that you got the membership for and that you know you are not using," she said.

this open space and wilderness is mine godammit! mine! all mine!!! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

4th o' july!

2008-07-04T10:45:00.001-04:00

have fun at your bbqs and your day off in general!

(oh and bye.)

Horror Movie Lesson: Stupidity Is All It Takes

2008-06-27T10:38:00.004-04:00

i watched the original the amityville horror last night. to summarize: a man murders his parents and four siblings. a year later, the price of the house is in the pits because no one wants to buy it. except for the family which is the subject of the movie.

the family discovers a gateway to hell in their basement less than a month after moving in, yet they continue to stay in the house for two more days. then, when the house goes apeshit and blood seeps from the walls, they decide to flee in the middle of the night. the father of the family decides to halt their flight to safety long enough to retrieve the family dog.

advice from a bitter 30-something who used to be stupid

2008-06-25T18:55:00.005-04:00

there has been a discussion on a few other blogs about this article about ivy league grads being tempted by high salary jobs. *yawn* as predicted, some people are bothered by its "implications." so what are the implications? the only "implication" i see is that a higher salary will pull you out of debt faster than a lower salary.

see, the 22 year old me would really hate the 32 year old me. the 22 year old me used to call people who went into i-banking "brainwashed" and "herd followers." and now the 32 year old me is embarrassed that she was ever the 22 year old me.

at some point, little ol' me decided to be idealistic and quit her "soulless" job a little too early and went into a risky profession that was artsy and exciting, then went severely into debt intending to come out of law school to do a low-paying but "not-soulless" subfield. there is nothing like the sound of uncle sam's jack boots to make you understand how the world really works. there is nothing like seeing people who took these "soulless" jobs and kept at it for a few years living happily out of debt and sitting on a small pile of money, pursuing what they truly love in their second career as a film maker, restauranteur or non-profit director to make you realize that you were a real douchebag at 22.

if there are any college seniors or recent college grads reading this, please don't let anyone make you feel guilty about going into investment banking or some other high paying job. you're doing the right thing. let me say it again. YOU'RE. DOING. THE. RIGHT. THING.

and honestly, it bugs me when others get all indignant when their contemporaries go into high paying jobs. it's getting to the point that i boil with rage (or at least take time out of my day to rant on this blog, which rarely happens nowadays). (the 22 year old me better not come within 100 feet of me.)

there, i said it. i had to get that off my chest.

life doesn't end at 22. but what you choose to do at age 22 can sure affect the rest of your life.

great article in the village voice

2008-06-25T13:22:00.007-04:00

triumph of the lipstick lesbians

(but really, who uses the term "lipstick lesbian" anymore? it seems so antiquated, if a term from the late 90s / early 2000s can be antiquated...)

here's something that bolsters my suspicion that i was born ten years too early:

I came out in the p.c. early '90s, when being a lesbian meant cutting your hair short and wearing rainbow rings and Doc Martens. Androgyny, or boyishness, was how lesbians recognized each other: If a woman had a crew cut and an Indigo Girls T-shirt, you could safely assume she was a dyke.

precisely why i didn't come out until years after college. i associated being a lesbian with being gender-variant and radical, which i wasn't. (not that there aren't gender variant and radical lesbians, but i wasn't comfortable emulating that model, didn't appreciate the pressure to emulate that model, and there weren't any images in the media that i could relate to.) i was also too frail to play sports. another strike.

i continue to be annoyed that "the L word" (notwithstanding all of its silliness) wasn't created when i was in college. i think i would have had my "eureka" moment a lot earlier. i think a lot of women would have had theirs too. i should have been born in 1985. sigh. oh, bette porter and helena peabody, where were you in the 90s?

i'm sorry but... WTF?!

2008-06-24T17:29:00.000-04:00

there is no "justice" in the justice department

Wherein Emily1 Apologizes For Being A Terrible Blogger

2008-06-24T13:12:00.005-04:00

i know it is lame to write a post to apologize for not blogging, but i'm doing it anyway.

i've been _really_ busy. i feel paralyzed when it comes to writing about anything because the economy is so uncertain and i'm burned out on politics.

i'm a bad blogger. sorry. emily0 and emily2 are kind enough to post occasionally while i try to get my stuff together. i'm getting married this September, so i'm also helping my future husband plan the wedding. or trying to. i suck at planning big events. i figure people should be happy with some food, booze and music, but a wedding is a whole lot more involved than that.

P.S. i'm graduating with my CS degree this fall. yay for me!
P.S.S. i'm probably going to apply to the Master's Program. yay for me! not so yay for me blogging much.

update

2008-06-16T12:37:00.000-04:00

forget my last post. i seem to have reverted to my normal, generally asexual state. i think it was the change in the weather.

whew!

i hope that never happens again. it was annoying bordering on agonizing.

sexual peak

2008-06-11T01:22:00.002-04:00

i am developing crushes on pretty much every attractive woman who walks by, including a few people i already know and never looked twice at before (which is incredibly disturbing). of course i'm not going to do anything, because i already have a girlfriend, and it's really bad manners just to jump on a stranger on the subway or at starbucks. and macking on my friends? ew, just ew. but i'm having these thoughts anyway.

my friend explained that this generally starts happening to women in their early 30s... and continues until around age 55.

how do you turn this off? should i watch porn, or will that only make it worse? help!

I WANT

2008-05-17T13:24:00.000-04:00

This couch.

WOO HOO GAY PEOPLE IS MARRY

2008-05-15T15:00:00.003-04:00

W00T CALIFORNI-GAY! I IS CONGRATULATING FOR THE GAY PEOPLES! !

W00T marriage is for old people! I want it!

Update on the DSM-V Issue

2008-05-15T15:00:00.001-04:00

This crucial bit of information has come to us from Dr. Marshall Forstein. Please read it.

Before people get overly hysterical about the Gender Identity Work group for the DSM, some things need to be made clear.
The letter you are asking us to sign onto is inaccurate in many ways and does not help our cause. Let me clarify what I know as someone who has worked with the American Psychiatric Association for many years.
1- there are TWO professional associations: Both unfortunately go by A P A
a) one is the American Psychiatric Association [this is a MEDICAL society of physicians who specialize in psychiatry]
b) the other is the American Psychological Association [this is a non- medical society of psychologists who are not medical doctors but have a PhD or PsyD or EdD in psychology, either clinical or research or academic or all.]
The American PSYCHIATRIC Association is the organization that publishes the DSM. This is a guide to diagnosis and NOT to Treatment.
Dr. Zucker, although not my preferred choice to head the work group on Gender and Sexuality, does not decide himself what the American Psychiatric Association publishes in the next DSM. In fact, there is a lengthy, and complicated process of peer review based on PUBLISHED scientific literature- in fact, the way we got homosexuality OUT of the DSM [1973] was to force the scientific program committee to produce evidence that homosexuality was an illness, and then in 1989 we removed ego-dystonic homosexuality because there was no evidence to support it and we suggested that there was also ego-dystonic heterosexuality that was a phase of people coming to understand their inner nature.
Sexual orientation is NOT even an issue for the DSM committee to consider. Transgender Identity is a bit more complicated, especially in childhood. The DSM work group will struggle with these issues in coming up with criteria for what to diagnose as a true gender identity disorder. I WANT TO EMPHASIZE THAT TREATMENT RECOMMENDATIONS ARE NOT A PART OF THIS ENDEAVOR.
Any treatment recommendations that the American Psychiatric Association makes are the result of significant process of creating EVIDENCED based research.
I am currently the Chair of the Work group on Practices Guidelines on HIV Psychiatry for the American Psychiatric Association, and so am intimately aware of the process. Guidelines go through rigorous research review for controlled studies in order to make recommendations. Hundreds of people review these guidelines before publication, and the same will be true of the criteria set forth by the work group on the DSM gender identity subcommittee.
EVEN if there is literature out there that disturbs those of us who are comfortable with the concepts of transgender identity, unless it meets peer review by legitimate journals ( i.e. non religious based periodicals) it will not be considered in the development of criteria for diagnosis or treatment.
I hope that what I have written makes us pause a bit before we do something to alienate even our supporters and friends in the American Psychiatric and the American Psychological Association who have been very pro-gay and pro-trans in their deliberations so far. There will always be a vocal minority that claim otherwise, but the process is vetted by many people committed to scientific integrity and evidence.
I have alerted the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists to the announcement of Dr Zucker's appointment and we will be addressing the implications of this within the psychiatric and psychological professional groups. I will also be talking with the Medical Director of the American Psychiatric Association and the Director of the Research group that oversees the DSM to convey the concerns that people have about the "transphobia" that may emerge.
In good conscience, however, I cannot sign a petition that is inaccurate and misleading - it may do far more harm than good. Clarity of the scientific evidence, asking the right questions of the committee, and addressing the criteria that will be put forth for review before it is ever considered ready for publication is the only way we will be taken seriously.
Please let me know how I can help to keep the issues clear.
Marshall Forstein, M.D.
Associate Professor of Psychiatry
Harvard Medical School Director, Adult Psychiatry Residency Training
The Cambridge Hospital
The Cambridge Health Alliance
1493 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-665-1189
office 617-665-3449
mforstein [at] cha.harvard.edu
APA STATEMENT ON GID AND THE DSM
May 9, 2008
The American Psychiatric Association has received inquiries about the DSM-V process, particularly concerns raised about the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Work Group.
The APA has a long-standing mission to provide guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders, based on the most current clinical and scientific knowledge. Through advocacy and education of the public and policymakers, the APA also affirms it commitment to reducing stigma and discrimination. The DSM addresses criteria for the diagnosis of mental disorders. The DSM does not provide treatment recommendations or guidelines. The APA is aware of the need for greater scientific and clinical consensus on the best treatments for individuals with Gender Identity Disorder (GID). Toward that end, the APA Board of Trustees voted to create a special APA Task Force to review the scientific and clinical literature on the treatment of GID. It is expected that members of the Task Force will be appointed shortly.
There are 13 DSM-V work groups. Collectively, the work group members will review all existing diagnostic categories in the current DSM. Each work group will be able to make proposals to revise existing diagnostic criteria, to consider new diagnostic categories, and to suggest deleting existing diagnostic categories. All DSM-V work group proposals will be based on a careful, balanced review and analysis of the best clinical and scientific data. Evidence accumulated from work group members and hundreds of additional advisors to the DSM-V effort will be considered before final recommendations are made.
The Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Work Group, chaired by Kenneth J. Zucker, Ph.D., will have 13 members who will form three subcommittees:
--Gender Identity Disorders, chaired by Peggy T. Cohen-Kettenis, Ph.D.
--Paraphilias, chaired by Ray Blanchard, Ph.D.
--Sexual Dysfunctions, chaired by R. Taylor Segraves, M.D., Ph.D.
Each subcommittee will pursue its own charge, provide ongoing peer review, and consult with outside experts. The DSM-V is expected to be published in 2012.

Updated info on anti-trans moron

2008-05-14T05:38:00.000-04:00

This came over the TransMuslims list - a member asked a friend of his about this issue, and she responded as follows. I have no further information.

Unfortunately, the petition is not very well written, and Zucker may chair the whole committee on Sex, Gender and Paraphillia, he doesn't have direct control over anything trans related. That is in the Gender Identity subcommittee, headed by Dr Cohen-Kettenis who actually has a good head on her shoulders.
If you want to complain (and I STRONGLY recommend you do) here are the contacts you should be sending it to.
Rhondalee Dean-Royce, 703-907-7820
rroyce@psych.org
Sharon Reis, 202-745-5103
sreis@gymr.com
Zucker is pure insanity. His policy for dealing with pre-puberty transkids is to first deny them all "cross gender stimulus" (toys, TV, even drawing that corresponds to the opposite sex), then when that doesnt work to prevent them from even playing with, or contacting friends of the opposite sex. He has said "transition is an unfortunate and totally avoidable outcome in gay youth". He advises parents and school administrators NOT to provide information to fellow students so that a transyouth may be "peer pressured" (read: bullied, physically and verbally assaulted) into a gender normative role.
Blanchard is also in there, though he is heading up the paraphilia sub-comity. Blanchard his half of the half-brained idea of autogynaphillia (the other half is Bailey). Their theory is that there are only three types of transpeople
1) men who are too ashamed of being gay so they want to be women so they can be straight men
2) men who want to masturbate with a vagina.
3) liars

The sender notes, "Anyone notice a distinct lack of transmen?"

Anti-Trans Moron Appointed as Head of DMV-V Committee on Trans Issues!

2008-05-13T05:10:00.002-04:00

I am forwarding this from where I encountered it on TransMuslims: here's a quote from a site that has more information and a petition.

The American Psychological Association (APA) recently appointed Dr. Kenneth Zucker to chair the task force responsible for updating of mental health language and treatment of diagnoses such as Gender Identity Disorder (GID) for the upcoming DSM-V (Diagnostics and Statistics Manual, Fifth Edition).
Don’t let his recent appearance on NPR sounding like a nice guy fool you. At a time when the American Medical Association (AMA) is supporting stopping discriminating against and stigmatizing transgender people, Dr. Zucker is a widely recognized proponent of reparation (”ex-gay”) and aversion therapy for children and youth. These techniques have been proven to be ineffective at best and–more often–severely damaging to the mental health of people who are LGB or T.

I am looking into this more but I am mostly just making this post a flag for us... please look into it if you can.

A Publick Apologee

2008-05-13T04:52:00.001-04:00

I come before you to confess my sins.

O friends, I did in fact rent and enjoy this horrid and tawdry film, 27 Dresses, & during the viewing of which did ogle Katherine Heigl lesboppropriately, but only whilst committing the sin of enjoying a hypertawdriclicous romance film of the genre known as "extreme heteronormative chick flick", for which my excuse of lesboögling is no excuse at all.

O my friends, I compound my error by buying into the heteronormativity of said "flick" and imagining it were, in fact, me as Katherine Heigl's character, but while James Marster is in fact pretty cool I did substitute also Katherine Heigl or another hot woman whenever he did appear with Witty Male Banter.

My sins are made worse by my shame at not truly being contrite for having enjoying this film, and duly confess that I also rented another film with Katherine Heigl in't, namely Knocked Up, of which I am of the understanding is even yuckier heteronormativity (but O sweet friends, she is so hot, ever since I saw her as a youngun on that show where she were an alien, ahhhh), wherein a drunken frat boy is "redeemed" as the ideal match for her.

In an attempt to hide my sins, I do duly confess that under the pressure of feeling ill, I did rent also extreme violence movies to try to "water down" my sins, namely Hitman & Live Free or Die Hard.

HOWEVER! I did also rent Michael Clayton, which though it has George Clooney, does in fact feature the unbearably desirable Tilda Swinton, with whom I fell madly in love as a child while watching Orlando and who, over the years, has only gotten hotter. (Her portrayal of the Archangel Michael in the otherwise horrid Constantine made me swoon with desire...)

O my friends, forgive me these lapses, as I am only human.

the real orange county.

2008-05-06T22:08:00.002-04:00

i love my hometown. 40 point spread, baby. end it tonight. end it!

Solution To Record High Vacancies Due To Foreclosure

2008-05-01T09:59:00.002-04:00

...and to the honey bee colony collapse problem. let's turn all those empty homes into beehives! the bees just want to upsize, that's all.

Gin And The Cognitive Surplus

2008-04-30T23:31:00.003-04:00

emily0 showed me this from warren ellis. fucking amazing.

Watch this one.

2008-04-30T02:35:00.002-04:00

Comparisons to Amy Winehouse will be (or already have been) made. Duffy is a bit more "Motown" though.

Food Rationing Comes To America

2008-04-21T23:36:00.003-04:00

food rationing has come to america while food riots erupt around the globe. i haven't been blogging because it's too depressing. the economic empire that is the US economy is teetering ever so slowly toward oblivion and it doesn't seem like anyone actually wants to acknowledge this. i can't bring myself to blog because all i can think of writing about is the fact that there's an impending global famine (see this article about the wheat fungus that's killing off a major staple crop) and that there's an economic meltdown ahead of us.

who does ben benarke think he is? some sort of fucking wizard, i'd imagine. does he actually think he can correct the ridiculous imbalances in our economy by fiddling around with interest rates and opening up a credit line to the very same troubled banks that got us into this mess? let me make a confession. about 5 or 6 years ago, i was convinced the american economy was going to collapse and suffer a meltdown not unlike the Great Depression. i considered taking my meager savings and buying precious metals or investing them in stocks related to precious metals. when the collapse didn't happen, i basically figured that i was an idiot for paying so much attention to goldbug nutters.

i should have listened to my gut and bought the gold. it has tripled in price since then. my gut has been talking to me a lot lately and it's saying that we're totally fucked. basically, i'd sound like a survivalist nut jar if i said what i really think. so, i'm avoiding the internet.

meanwhile, i've been dreaming of building a house out of dirt.

darwin award candidate / fox news.

2008-04-17T19:30:00.001-04:00

link.

1) how did this chica get into yale?

2) fox news is completely depraved.

Who are we?

2008-04-12T22:35:00.004-04:00

3 Quarks Daily hosted this amazing video.

Also, I'm kind of that person who holds up the "I am an idiot" sign... d'ohh.

the education gap re: white dem voters

2008-04-10T18:36:00.003-04:00

fbi wiretaps on mlk

2008-04-01T10:21:00.003-04:00

in its witch hunt, the fbi failed to prove that mlk was a communist. instead, the wiretaps proved that mlk was very much a heterosexual.

a blog i stumbled upon.

2008-03-30T00:04:00.004-04:00

the pakistani heretical girl, written by a queer pakistani girl living in england. this is her site's quick description: "Apostate Pakistani girl in England speaks out and tells her own story of surviving Islam." yes, it is angry, but please don't be put off by the anger. the anger is justified. it is very eye-opening. read her back story, the parts about the hijab, forced marriages, and the u.s.'s afghan policy. it will make you think about the limits of multiculturalism and how western feminists and the left in general may not be seeing the full picture regarding women's place in islam. reading her blog made me realize how ignorant (and lucky) i really am. more people like her need to speak up and get their voices heard.

New(ish) lesbian blog.

2008-03-25T12:33:00.003-04:00

Some crazy lesbians started Grace the Spot and its companion feature Stuff Lesbians Like, which is like Stuff White People Like except about lesbians. Go visit.

Midterm Period Sucks

2008-03-24T14:48:00.003-04:00

grrr. light blogging this week. too busy. i've chosen five recipients on whom to bestow the Excellent Blog Award. i will post them when i am finished with midterm hell. if i have time, i will read blogs on my blogroll and choose five more.

Garfield, Minus Garfield

2008-03-20T03:14:00.001-04:00

Garfield, Minus Garfield is unbelievably trippy. A smart person wondered, "what would Garfield look like if I removed Garfield from it?" The result is pure genius!

Go, look. What are you still here for?

obama and his pastor. and ron paul.

2008-03-18T12:12:00.004-04:00

if people can be found guilty by the actions of their associates, then all of us are guilty. the actions of ron paul's associates helped sink his campaign. when the ron paul newsletters were unearthed from a dusty early 90s trash heap, the left (and much of the right) couldn't stop harping on the vile racist rants found therein. ron paul repudiated those messages. the left (and much of the right) were unconvinced.

since what goes around comes around, the left now has to deal with the vile anti-american and racist rants of obama's close personal associate (his pastor) that were made much more recently. should obama's campaign be tossed aside as well?

sorry, but something about all of this just makes me cynical.

i don't give a crap about what geraldine ferraro says. i don't give a crap about what jeremiah wright says. and come to think of it, i don't care what the ron paul newsletters said during a time when i wasn't even old enough to have a driver's license, even though this retraction comes a little too late. there, i said it. i was thinking this all along, but it wasn't "proper" for me to admit it.

the "glass houses" idiom comes to mind right about now.

stick with the issues. don't get distracted by the rants of lunatics.

Sigh

2008-03-17T18:07:00.003-04:00

Every time I think that I may be a little too harsh on the thing called the "liberal arts education", I run across something like this, which makes me want to call for the systematic shuttering of all liberal arts colleges. (Granted, the stuff beyond the first two paragraphs isn't so outlandish and may even be somewhat intriguing, but the title of the page caused my jaw to drop.)

Four months ago, a prophet spoke...

2008-03-17T15:40:00.002-04:00

Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Getting That Old Dotcom Feeling
Posted by emily1 at 9:34 PM

anyone else out there thinking that the financial industry has been smoking crack for the last ten years? anyone want to take bets on when the first big bank goes under? will i be wiping my ass with dollar bills next year because they're worth less than toilet paper?

the mortgage rate interest resets won't peak until next year. soft landing, my rosy red ass.

The first big bank just went under, and Lehman Brothers is next!

I await the day I can wipe my bum with dollar bills.

Bear Market Indeed

2008-03-15T19:09:00.005-04:00

the Federal Reserve, in an attempt to restore confidence in the credit market, now accepts debt as collateral. this has been characterized as the Federal Reserve's 'boldest action since the Great Depression'. predictably, many investors and analysts are disappointed that the Federal Reserve just didn't purchase the mortgage securities outright. i am sick of idiot speculators who want their stupid asses bailed out after their foolish investment strategies bring the eminently predictable consequences down on their heads.

in other news, Drake Management is contemplating whether to shut down one of its largest hedge funds or continue to restrict redemptions or to allow their clients to shift money into other funds. they aren't the only firm to have a wee bit of trouble with hedge funds:

At least a dozen hedge funds have closed, sold assets or sought fresh capital in the past month as banks and securities firms tightened lending standards. The industry is reeling from its worst crisis because bankers -- staggered by almost $190 billion of asset writedowns and credit losses caused by the collapse of the subprime-mortgage market -- are raising borrowing rates and demanding extra collateral for loans.

Bear Stearns sought a bailout just days after reassuring their increasingly panicky clients that things were A-OK. apparently, their clients weren't reassured because there was a run on the bank which prompted the bailout by the Federal Reserve and JP Morgan. the bailout itself isn't a total fix because Bear Stearns needs to solve its financial crisis or find a buyer very soon. the real story behind the bailout is that JP Morgan borrowed the money from the Federal Reserve for Bear Stearns, but JP Morgan isn't bearing any of the risk of default on the loan. that risk is entirely on the Federal Reserve itself.

Prosperity Is Just Around The Corner

2008-03-15T17:48:00.004-04:00

Record fuel prices blow budgets

Separate from the role energy prices play in the risk-and-reward scenario for speculating investors, the result for Americans' lives is that energy, and the mobility that it brings, is becoming crushingly expensive.

High oil "makes us poorer than we would otherwise be," says St. Louis Federal Reserve President William Poole. "There's a hit to real income. It's a drain on your purchasing power."

How this shows up in everyday life:

•Portland, Ore., trucker Lee Klass delayed a dental operation that will cost $500 after insurance payments because of $4 diesel fuel. He can't boost his fuel surcharges fast enough to keep up with zooming diesel prices, he says. "It's impossible for a normal business to keep up with it. You just can't do it."

Many more going bankrupt

Bankruptcy filings have surged 22 percent in Massachusetts this year, as more people are unable to afford their rising mortgage payments or refinance their homes to pay bills, according to court filings and bankruptcy attorneys.
more stories like this

[...]

Lawyers, trustees, and other bankruptcy specialists said the housing crisis is the single biggest reason that personal bankruptcy filings are rising rapidly. They said homeowners with subprime and adjustable-rate mortgages who cannot make their higher payments are resorting to bankruptcy. A decline in housing values has also limited the financial flexibility of homeowners who once were able to tap their home equity to pay off car loans or mounting credit card bills.

Employers cut back on hiring

Employers in many of the world's largest economies are "taking a step back in hiring", reflecting concerns that the crisis in financial markets could spill over into other sectors, according to a survey of more than 55,000 employers.

The study, conducted in 32 countries by Manpower, one of the world's largest recruitment companies, reported that the jobs outlook in the US, one of the main engines of the global economy, was the weakest for four years.

401(k)s tapped to save homes

Struggling to save their homes from foreclosure, more Americans are raiding their 401(k) retirement accounts to pay their bills — and getting slammed with taxes and penalties in the process, according to retirement plan administrators.

Rather than borrow money from their 401(k) accounts, which would have to be paid back, a growing number of beleaguered families have been cashing out, plan administrators say.

Some Homeowners Use Arson to Avoid Foreclosure

Looking to cash in on their insurance rather than face foreclosure, some people have committed arson to avoid losing their homes.

Michigan authorities believe 38-year-old Sheryl Christman was one of those people, when she set her home ablaze Sept. 1. Christman was just three days short of foreclosure.

Good times are over, central bankers told

Life for central bankers is going to get tougher as globalisation begins to produce malign effects - pushing up prices and spreading a financial crisis across the world, monetary policy chiefs said on Friday.

[...]

Jean-Claude Trichet, the ECB president, said the recent surge in commodity and food prices "reminds us that globalisation can also lead to upside risks in world inflation".

WellPoint is dark cloud for insurers

Shares of Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc. plunged $17.11, or 26%, to $48.72 in afternoon trading, following its announcement late Monday that it would slash profit expectations. The company cited several factors, including medical costs, lower fully insured enrollment and a weak economy (emphasis mine).

Sharing the Pain

We have always gotten a distorted picture of how well Americans were doing from politicians and the media. The U.S. has a population of 300 million. Thirty-seven million, many of them children, live in poverty. Close to 60 million are just one notch above the official poverty line. These near-poor Americans live in households with annual incomes that range from $20,000 to $40,000 for a family of four.

It is disgraceful that in a nation as wealthy as the United States, nearly a third of the people are poor or near-poor.

The High Cost Of Eating

2008-03-14T20:24:00.007-04:00

Surging costs of groceries hit home

[... C]orn prices have more than doubled in commodity markets over two years, and soybeans nearly tripled, according to DTN, a commodities analysis firm in Omaha. Meanwhile, with poor harvests in major wheat-producing regions, wheat prices have more than tripled.

These crops have a profound impact on food prices because they form foundations for many products, including oils, sweeteners, and flour. Corn, for example, is a key ingredient in livestock feed. When the price of corn rises, so does the price of feed, and ultimately, so do the prices of meat, poultry, and eggs.

citizens from the wealthy developed world sacrifice luxuries like expensive organic food to cope with rising prices, but for the world's developing nations, food inflation promises economic consequences that are far more dire that having to eat conventionally grown food.

China's Inflation Surges to 8.7% as Food Prices Soar

Food costs soared 23 percent after blizzards destroyed crops and snarled transport links, causing shortages. China, the biggest contributor to global growth, raised rates six times last year in a failed attempt to curb prices and more increases risk triggering an economic slump as export demand weakens.

[...]

Pork prices soared 63 percent from a year earlier, vegetables climbed 46 percent, and edible oil rose 41 percent, adding to the burden on the 300 million people estimated by the World Bank to be living in poverty. The state-run People's Daily Online reported last week that most respondents in a survey of 100,000 people described inflation as ``unbearable.''

``Food prices make up one third of the consumer-price index but for poor households it makes up more than 50 percent of their household budgets,'' said Sherman Chan, a Sydney-based economist with Moody's Economy.com.

Food and Energy Shortages Stoke Inflation, Anxiety in Pakistan

The line for cooking oil was nearly a block long, just a few miles from the Parliament building. Saida Bibi, fistful of rupees in hand, elbowed her way to the front of the angry crowd shoving its way into the government food shop.

She had waited in the line seven times for seven hours over the course of a week and left empty-handed every time. But with the price of cooking oil at most markets nearly double what it was at government-subsidized food shops, she couldn't afford to do anything but wait.

Global calculus of food aid for N. Korea changes

Severe crop failure in the North, surging global prices for food and tougher behavior by donors, particularly South Korea and China, are putting unaccustomed pressure on Kim Jong Il's dysfunctional communist state.

[...]

China also appears to have tightened its food squeeze on North Korea for domestic reasons. In order to meet local demand and control inflation, Beijing slapped a 22 percent tariff on grain exports to the North.

China is by far the country's major source of food imports, and the tariffs have resulted in higher prices and less grain in markets across North Korea, according to several aid groups.

lions and tigers and...

2008-03-14T19:19:00.003-04:00

...bear markets!

speaking of bears... bear stearns' stock fell 47% today! ouch!

More Props For Us!

2008-03-12T20:22:00.008-04:00

i'm delighted that two other bloggers have decided to honor wFd with the Excellent Blog Award. ThePoliticalCat gave wFd this award a little over two weeks ago, and now Dizzy Dezzi of Dizzy Dayz has also chosen to recognize wFd as an excellent blog. i passed this award on to other blogs after ThePoliticalCat awarded it to wFd a couple of weeks ago. since this blog has been twice honored, i will compile another list of nominees this weekend.

One Of The Most Incompetent Suicide Attempts Ever

2008-03-10T19:45:00.004-04:00

last week, my fiance show me a case tried in the alaska court of appeals in 2007 concerning an individual who must be inducted immediately into the suicide incompetence hall of fame. in october 2002, Robert R. Dorr kidnapped his estranged wife after discovering that she was seeing another man. Dorr shot and killed his wife as she tried to escape from him and then turned the gun on himself. unfortunately, he was not as successful in killing himself as he was in killing his wife. Dorr shot himself twice in the head and survived.

there's a short blurb about his sentencing here.

Think Your Food Bill Is Too High?

2008-03-08T20:09:00.011-05:00

imagine trying to make it on a third world income, where it is not unusual for a family of 8 or 10 people to depend on one wage earner. staples like cooking oil and wheat are at record prices. it's things like this that make me realize how unbelievably lucky i am to have the luxury of treating wheat and cooking oil like negligible expenses.

the new york times puts a positive spin on this development, noting that the higher prices are reviving the american farmer and that some of the rise can be attributed to increasing demand from a growing global middle class. they also note that higher fuel prices are responsible for more expensive food, however. additionally, globalization is introducing new tastes to consumers around the world. in nigeria, demand for wheat has soared because bread has ceased to be a delicacy and is now a staple food.

Another Big Ass Fib

2008-03-08T15:24:00.005-05:00

another personal story of suffering and triumph has turned out to be fiction. this story also involves an author who lied about her ethnicity. again, rather than paraphrase, i will quote a news article:

In "Love and Consequences," Jones writes about growing up as a half-white, half-Native American girl in South-Central Los Angeles in the foster home of Big Mom. One of her foster brothers, she writes, was gunned down by Crips gang members outside their home. Jones also claimed she carried illegal guns and sold drugs for the Bloods gang.

apparently, fake memoirs are rather common. people like stories of amazing triumph over adversity and suffering, and the publishing world is apparently a sucker for fake ones.

HOLY GEEK CLOCK, BATMAN!

2008-03-08T10:07:00.005-05:00

OMG this is the geekiest thing I may ever have seen.

thanks, katsmeat!

Great Ad For Family Planning

2008-03-07T23:00:00.005-05:00

emily0 showed this one to me a while back:

The Wonderful World Of Science

2008-03-07T22:32:00.005-05:00

apparently, identical twins aren't exact replicas of one another. not that this is news to me. during my freshman year in college, i met a pair of identical twins that included one heterosexual and one lesbian.

in other news, the skeleton of a prehistoric toad the size of a bowling bowl was recently discovered in Madagascar. the toad weighed about ten pounds and had teeth. paleontologist David Krause said that it might have even been able to take down hatchling dinosaurs.

Have A Cup O' Depression This Morning

2008-03-07T09:08:00.004-05:00

so when do bankers start jumping out of windows and throwing themselves in front of trains?

in other news, just when thought your tour of bizarro world was over, statistics come out indicating that job cuts for the month of february are the highest in five years, yet the unemployment rate dropped last month from 4.9 percent to 4.8 percent.

Scream 'Yeehaw!!' and Pass The Foreclosure Notices

2008-03-06T10:48:00.005-05:00

i think the financial industry will be forced to exit the denial stage of grief very shortly. our rapidly deteriorating credit market is also presenting some difficulties in securing educational loans. i listened to a program on NPR this morning that touched on this developing crisis. when the interviewer asked the loan expert whether students would be forced to go to cheaper public institutions, i began to laugh heartily. public universities are increasingly becoming not-cheap. many students' choices are between expensive public universities and more expensive private ones. the only cheap education these days is through self-teaching.

way to win hearts and minds.

2008-03-03T12:38:00.004-05:00

leftist terrorists burn down luxury homes in seattle.

the earth liberation front claims to use "economic sabotage and guerrilla warfare to stop the exploitation and destruction of the natural environment." [source]

so these people plan to save the environment by BURNING SHIT DOWN. all that toxic smoke and dust from charred paint and chemically-treated wood escaping to the atmosphere must be doing wonders for their cause.

Link Farm #5

2008-03-02T10:17:00.006-05:00

This is why Social Security is so important by Brian from Incertus

this post explains in simple, stark terms why social security cannot be privatized. if people can withdraw their retirement savings from private accounts, they will do so even at great penalty. the reason we have social security is to provide a minimal level of support for people who reach old age with no savings, either through bad luck or bad decisions.

if you believe we shouldn't 'subsidize bad decisions', then you might as well own the consequences -- the elderly who were foolish with their money in their youth will be begging and dying in the streets without programs like social security. private charity will not solve this problem.

communitistic conservatisim by skippy from skippy the bush kangaroo

conservatives aren't actually against affirmative action and socialism!

Sexism in All Shapes and Forms - Africa Edition by SocProf from The Global Sociology Blog

SocProf shows why instituting religious law doesn't solve social problems. it just gives religious authorities power to persecute people by focusing on 'moral' issues instead. this post also addresses the horrific sexual abuse women face in war-torn regions around the world, though i'm not convinced that sexual violence as a tool of war is a new phenomenon.

Yet another way the soldiers in the field get screwed over by BlueGirl from Blue Girl, Red State

the armed services would not be able to meet their recruiting numbers without female enlistees. womens' interest in joining the military has dropped significantly because of the absence of family-friendly policies that accommodate women's needs surrounding pregnancy and childbirth.

Midnight in America...Waiting for the Other Shoe...And Considering Obama Among the Wreckage.... by Melina from Brilliant at Breakfast

change is a scary concept for most people. one reason that Obama unsettles a lot of people is that he talks a lot about change. Melina points out that settling for the familiar is what brought us to the critical juncture our country faces today.

That's One Big Ass Fib

2008-03-01T08:52:00.008-05:00

Misha Defonseca, the Belgian woman who wrote Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years, has admitted that her story was a hoax. rather than try to paraphrase, i will just quote this article:

[...]the author acknowledged her story was not autobiographical and that she did not trek 1,900 miles as a child across Europe with a pack of wolves in search of her deported parents during World War II.

[...]

Defonseca wrote in her book that Nazis seized her parents when she was a child, forcing her to wander the forests and villages of Europe alone for four years. She claimed she found herself trapped in the Warsaw ghetto, killed a Nazi soldier in self-defense and was adopted by a pack of wolves that protected her.

Ms. Defonseca is not even Jewish. her parents were, however, killed by the Nazis because they belonged to the Belgian resistance.

Pardon The Mess

2008-02-27T23:19:00.005-05:00

so, i decided to upgrade our template because i wanted access to advanced features. doing so wiped out all the modifications we did to the classic template, including the blogroll. blogger, in its infinite wisdom, does not provide a means to copy a list of links all at once to the sidebar, so i have to add them back one by one by hand. this process will be done in a couple of days. we have a long blogroll.

The Things You Learn By Reading Mein Kampf

2008-02-27T20:53:00.003-05:00

Adolph Hitler was obsessed with a national language:

Today perhaps some can appreciate the greatness of the Germans in the Reich's old Ostmark, who, with no one but themselves to depend on, for centuries protected the Reich against incursions from the East, and finally carried on an exhausting guerrilla warfare to maintain the German language frontier, at a time when the Reich was highly interested in colonies, but not in its own flesh and blood at its very doorstep.

As everywhere and always, in every struggle, there were, in this fight for the language in old Austria, three strata:

The fighters, the lukewarm and the traitors. (11-12)

he also viewed women as passive conduits of national identity:

This sifting process began at school. For the remarkable fact about the language struggle is that its waves strike hardest perhaps in the school, since it is the seed-bed of the coming generation. It is a struggle for the soul of the child, and to the child its first appeal is addressed:

'German boy (emphasis mine), do not forget you are a German (emphasis mine),' and, 'Little girl (emphasis mine), remember that you are to become a German mother. (emphasis mine)' (12)

Hitler, Adolph. Mein Kampf. Trans. Ralph Manheim. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1971.

mixx.com - a better digg (and less homophobic)

2008-02-25T16:16:00.002-05:00

social bookmarking sites have been gaining in popularity in the past few years, with digg.com being the current market leader. however, the site has been accused of being frequented by (1) homophobic visitors who consistently flag or bury gay-themed content and (2) generally women-unfriendly visitors. (think: geeky college kids who have never been laid.)

blogher.com wrote an article a couple of months ago about lesbian digg.com users consistently getting banned from the site, despite posting quality articles. apparently feminists were getting banned from the site as well.

enter mixx.com, which has a sleeker interface and a much friendlier user base. the creators of mixx.com did something ingenious - allowing users to create public groups. this way, the geeky college kids who have never met a gay person or spoke to a woman before in their lives can go about their business in their circles, gays and lesbians can link to gay stuff without some homophobic idiot flagging the story as soon as it reaches the front page, and everyone can live in peace. one can, of course, still submit stories to the main content as well as their groups. however, even those submitted to the front page from someone in a different demographic is treated with respect (unless it is obvious spam, such as porn links) by others.

all in all, i recommend mixx.com.

We've Been Tagged!

2008-02-24T21:45:00.003-05:00

ThePoliticalCat just bestowed this award on WFD. we are now required to pick ten other excellent bloggers in return. here are my ten nominations:

Quench Zine

this blog was the first one that came to mind when i was mulling over my choices. quench is erudite, thought-provoking, funny and challenging. this blog covers LGBT issues, women's issues, poverty issues, race issues and manages to be the best-dressed and most entertaining at any party. you _have_ to add this one to your blogroll.

Persephone's Box

i visit Sage's blog several times a week and i'm always delighted when there's a new post. i admire anyone who can share difficult and painful stories with such candor and eloquence. this is one of the most unique feminist blogs out there.

B12 Solipsism

this blog is a brainy, arty blog with beautiful photographs and interesting commentary on politics, science, culture and art. and beautiful photographs. lots of beautiful photographs.

The Global Sociology Blog

this blog is a relatively new discovery. i found it because the author wrote a great article about our expanding surveillance society at Daily Kos. the author, who is a sociology professor at a midwestern community college, writes meaty posts about globalization, human rights, gender, class stratification and other important topics in the field of sociology. if you're like me and you like to read long, sourced, researched material about the human condition with a liberal viewpoint, this is a great blog for you.

Orcinus

this blog is an old favorite of mine that i discovered several years ago. it was there that i learned what fascism actually is. David and Sara write long and engaging articles about neo-nazi groups, authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism and their relevance to current political events.

Fetch Me My Axe

this is a great feminist blog that i added to our blogroll about a year ago. it covers LGBT issues, sexism, racism and disabilism. i have found some great links there over the past year, including Screw Bronze!.

skippy the bush kangaroo and jon swift

skippy and jon were the bloggers who inspired so many smaller blogs to band together and help raise each other's profiles after Blogroll Amnesty Day. they threw open their own blogrolls to the little blogs who wanted to exchange links and urged all of us to be active in promoting each other's work.

Rubber Hose

this blog has been on the blogroll here at WFD for some time. i first discovered it when upyernoz linked this post by emily0. this is an eclectic blog with posts about international politics, international culture, american politics and law.

Kusala

Joe has been a reader and commenter at WFD for a while. his blog covers a gamut of topics, one of them being the challenge of living with HIV. he also writes about politics, movies, food and life as a gay man and has a habit of posting nice photos, including many beautiful images of food.

My Left Wing

this blog is a good place to enjoy lefty dialogue and it is possible to discuss topics that are likely to result in banning at Daily Kos. it's far friendlier to a strong feminist point of view than some of the large liberal blogs, and the people who write there represent a diverse cross-section of liberals who don't necessarily tow the Democratic party line.

Assur is King! Assur is King!: Religion in the Exercise of Power in the Neo-Assyrian Empire

2008-02-23T16:46:00.002-05:00

Assur Is King! Assur Is King!: Religion in the Exercise of Power in the Neo-Assyrian Empire (HOLLOWAY Steven W 2002: Boston/Brill; Culture & History of the Ancient Near East, 10) is my latest library gold nugget. I am just digging into it now, but it is a highly intriguing book. It's about 600 pages long and has the following description on the back:

Steven Holloway’s work is the first monograph devoted to Neo-Assyrian religious imperialism. Neo-Assyrian religious imperialism was expressed by punitive measures such as "godnapping", the violent deportation of a vanquished foe’s divine images, but also, and this is a far less-studied facet of this topic, by the geographical focus and extent of the material support the Assyrians lavished on favored polities, in effect a Marshall Plan aimed at winning over the elite citizenry pivotal to maintaining economic and political equilibrium.

W00T!

I promise to blog about it as I read it. Which will happen when I'm not doing my Arabic homework, like, say, now. (I should be chanting poetry in 8th century CE Arabic so I can recite it properly from memory...)

A Subtle Estonian Ad For Ice Cream

2008-02-22T18:58:00.001-05:00

Student Loan Meltdown Next?

2008-02-22T16:14:00.007-05:00

this diary at Daily Kos and the discussion thread are thought-provoking. there's very little denial any longer that the banking industry is in serious trouble due to lax lending standards in the mortgage market over the last seven years. could the student loan market face a similar fate? student lending has already been the subject of scandal. now that we're facing a possible recession and the soft job market that this entails, how high will the default rate go?

putting all of this aside, the real issue is the cost of higher education. i've encountered several interesting theories regarding the iron clad law that the cost of higher education shall rise much faster than the rate of inflation. one theory is that education is labor intensive and because there are few ways in which the process of providing an education can be automated, the cost of doing so rises faster relative to the cost of doing other jobs. if there were a way for one educator to effectively teach ten times as many students, it would be possible to charge less per student.

a theory proposed in the diary i linked is that colleges and universities raise tuition and fees simply because they can. this theory posits that providing ready and easy access to educational loans has made it easier for colleges and universities to raise prices. perhaps legislation should be passed allowing educational loans to be discharged in bankruptcy. or are low wages for jobs not requiring a degree the real problem? if high school graduates could skip college and go directly into the job market and enjoy a satisfactory standard of living would colleges and universities face lower enrollments and be forced to compete for students, resulting in lower educational costs?

so, what can be done? should it be harder to borrow money for school? should we collectively pay for the cost of higher education so that students don't have to pay for their educations out of pocket? one objection to this that i find compelling is that using taxes to pay for everyone's education forces those who don't go to college or graduate school to pay for the people who do go. since college and graduate degrees translate into higher earnings this means that a relatively privileged minority will be subsidized by the less privileged majority.

College Student In Utah Carries Concealed Weapon On Campus

2008-02-21T15:29:00.004-05:00

yes. you read that right. he started doing this after the Virginia Tech massacre. he may feel safer, but i wonder what his classmates would think if they knew. another one for the WTF files.

More Doctors Smoke Camels

2008-02-20T21:18:00.002-05:00

Let Your Children Be Born Alive

2008-02-19T22:29:00.002-05:00

brought to you from the Soviet-era Estonian Department Of Ineffective Advertising. what's up with the Beatles soundtrack?

Link Farm #4

2008-02-19T20:56:00.007-05:00

ah hell, why wait a week to do another one?

Appreciation to supporters by Rebecca from School For The Girls

i found this truly amazing new blog (and added it to the WFD blogroll) via ThePoliticalCat. in short, School For The Girls is written by Rebecca Alitsi, a young woman from Kenya. in the posts on the front page, she has already covered the following topics: the current violence over the Kenyan elections, disability issues, friendship and the education of women in Kenya. in this post, she asks for donations to help cover the school fees for two female students. please go and give help if you can. i'm currently trying to find out how to send money to the bank account listed in the blog's sidebar, so that i can do my part to help these young women achieve their dreams.

Distorting Michelle Obama by dnA from Jack and Jill Politics

Jack and Jill Politics is another new addition to the blogroll. this is the blog where i discovered La Chola, one of the blogs featured in yesterday's link farm. i discovered Jack and Jill Politics through Maat's Feather, a blog run by Shanikka, one of my favorite commenters at My Left Wing. this post breaks down yet another example of our stupid and mendacious political discourse. the target of attack by the doughy pantloads of political pomp is Michelle Obama who can't say that she's proud of the US without being attacked as a narcissist. irony died today.

My New Hero… by MarvalusOne from Opinionated Black Woman

i found this blog through Maat's Feather and it is also a new addition to the blogroll. this post links a _great_ video of a young Obama supporter who has his facts down cold when questioned about his reasons for supporting Obama. like MarvalusOne says, this shows why it is important to know your facts. i would add that is especially important to know them before you open your mouth in front of a video camera. the Obama campaign should hire him.

kabando wa kabando by upyernoz from Rubber Hose

Rubber Hose has been on the WFD blogroll for some time now. i meant to link this after it was posted, but like most things in my life, i put it off, then i got busy and then time flew. in this post, upyernoz shares the story of his personal relationship with kabando wa kabando, a kenyan politician who is close to kabaki, the man who narrowly won the presidential election. damn, but the internet sure makes the world seem like a smaller place. i'm also astounded by how worldly and well-traveled upyernoz is.

Link Farm #3

2008-02-18T20:16:00.006-05:00

this is sorely overdue. i vowed last year after blogroll amnesty day that i would do this weekly and promptly broke that vow. it's sort of hard to blog regularly when holding down a full-time job and taking upper level computer science courses. i'm hoping that since i am enrolled in only one course that i can spend more time blogging and reading other people's blogs. here is this week's offering:

Disability Rights: Why it is YOUR problem by Elizabeth McClung from Screw Bronze!

i should have added Screw Bronze! to my blogroll a long time ago. i have rectified this oversight. i found her blog via Fetch me my axe, another fine blog on the WFD blogroll. this post explains why disability rights are important for everyone. all people could potentially become disabled and face humiliating and cruel discrimination, even at the hands of people who are supposedly devoted to fighting for their rights.

What academic freedom means to me by Lesboprof from Lesboprof

this post covers the problems with bland, opaque and generic non-discrimination policies at many academic institutions. Lesboprof doesn't think they truly foster academic freedom because they don't clearly protect her statements in the classroom that draw on her own experiences as a lesbian. she wants to be able to discuss LGBT issues as they pertain to her profession and research without fear of discrimination. this is another blog i found through Fetch me my axe.

40 days of contemplation: day four by La Chola from La Chola

this powerful post from another new addition to the blogroll explores the need for forgiveness and love when people do the most unthinkable things. La Chola has been told that she is naive for thinking that love must be a component of the struggle against violence. she uses the example of Hector Black to illustrate why. Hector's daughter was murdered by an intruder she surprised in her home. at first, consumed by rage and hatred, Hector arrived at compassion and understanding when he learned about the sad and tragic childhood of the man who murdered his daughter.

Another One For The WTF Files

2008-02-18T15:33:00.005-05:00

a teenage girl who repeatedly called the police on her psycho, abusive, estranged boyfriend was threatened with arrest for calling too much. she's dead now because her boyfriend murdered her and then committed suicide. way to go, law enforcement!

Ronald Reagan On Invading Aliens

2008-02-17T15:41:00.003-05:00

Estonian Soviet-era Advertisement For Vegetarianism

2008-02-17T12:18:00.003-05:00

this just brings back memories of Sweeney Todd:

Charles Barkley Tells It How It Is

2008-02-17T10:14:00.004-05:00

just got this link from Dizzy Dezzi. Charles Barkley on The Situation Room:

BARKLEY: Hey, I live in Arizona. I have got great respect for Senator McCain. Great respect. But I don’t like the way the Republicans are taking this country. Every time I hear the word “conservative,” it makes me sick to my stomach, because they’re really just fake Christians, as I call them. That’s all they are. But I just — I’m going to vote Democratic no matter what. [..]

BLITZER: All right. One quick point before I let you go. You used the phrase “fake Christians” for conservatives. Explain what you’re talking about.

BARKLEY: Well, I think they — they want to be judge and jury. Like, I’m for gay marriage. It’s none of my business if gay people want to get married. I’m pro-choice. And I think these Christians — first of all, they’re supposed to be — they’re not supposed to judge other people. But they’re the most hypocritical judge of people we have in this country. And it bugs the hell out of me. They act like their Christians. And they’re not forgiving at all.

BLITZER: So you’re going to get a lot of feedback on this one, Charles.

BARKLEY: They can’t do anything to me. I don’t work for them.

More YouTube Fun

2008-02-17T09:58:00.003-05:00

a surreal Japanese pizza ad with a catchy jingle:

The Things You Learn Reading By Mein Kampf

2008-02-17T09:46:00.003-05:00

as a boy, Adolph Hitler thought about joining the clergy. this interest by replaced by an interest in the military:

As it happened, my temporary aspiration for this profession was in any case soon to vanish, making place for hopes more suited to my temperament. Rummaging through my father's library, I had come across various books of a military nature, among them a popular edition of the Franco-German War of 1870-71. It consisted of two issues of an illustrated periodical from those years, which now became my favorite reading matter. It was not long before the great heroic struggle had become my greatest inner experience. From then on I became more and more enthusiastic about everything that was in any was connected with war or, for that matter, with soldiering (6).

he viewed the middle class office job with trepidation because it represented loss of liberty and opportunity for glory:

I did not want to be a civil servant, no, and again no. All attempts on my father's part to inspire me with love or pleasure in this profession by stories from his own life accomplished the exact opposite. I yawned and grew sick to my stomach at the thought of sitting in an office, deprived of my liberty; ceasing to be master of my own time and being compelled to force the content of a whole life into blanks that had to be filled out (8).

Hitler, Adolph. Mein Kampf. Trans. Ralph Manheim. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1971.

butt boils.

2008-02-15T17:16:00.002-05:00

i've noticed that one of the most popular search terms for this site is "butt boil" or any one of its brethren: "boil on the ass", "pilonidal cyst", or "boil on the butt." we get quite a few of these per day, so here's my advice to all who find us through such a search:

PLEASE SEE A DOCTOR!

i know it's expensive. i know that making an appointment, waiting in line, filling out the paperwork might even be characterized as a "pain in the ass," but from what i've heard, the pain in the ass suffered as a result of a pilonidal cyst is much worse.

we know the state of the health care system in this country is as fetid as the liquid that flows out of such a boil after it is lanced, but attempting to seek help from us will do you no good, as we are not medical professionals. we can only give the following advice: GO. TO. THE. DOCTOR.

this has been a public service announcement.

(sorry, em1. i know this was your area of expertise, but i couldn't help it!)

Transgendered British Boy Hangs Self

2008-02-15T14:41:00.004-05:00

another horrible story about a queer kid:

A boy of ten hanged himself after telling his mother that he wanted to become a girl, an inquest was told yesterday.

Cameron McWilliams, who liked to wear girls' underwear, asked if he could start using make-up just days before committing suicide, the hearing heard.

.... more ....

hat tip to queerty.

Mao Offered To Give The US Some Of China's Women

2008-02-15T12:21:00.004-05:00

[...] the chairman said, "We have too many women. ... They give birth to children and our children are too many."

[link]

the women clearly got themselves pregnant. men had nothing to do with it.

Squirrel Eats Fermented Pumpkins. Gets Drunk.

2008-02-15T12:08:00.004-05:00

i am really starting to appreciate YouTube.

Something To Give Emily3 Nightmares

2008-02-15T09:02:00.003-05:00

violinist trips, falls down concrete stairs, smashes his Guadagnini violin.

This One Belongs To The WTF Files

2008-02-14T18:26:00.006-05:00

a woman taught her cat to eat with human utensils. she also taught it to eat noodles and ice cream with them.

Squirrel Obstacle Course

2008-02-13T22:38:00.004-05:00

Water Skiing Squirrel

2008-02-13T21:57:00.003-05:00

wAitiNG foR doROthY

oh the horror

ugh

bad times

8 against 8

life is good

sarah palin on snl

Freefalling

sexist?

holy shite

remember this?

uh, who the fuck cares?

i can't read this shit, because it pisses me off

i wuz sheltereded.

Deep Thought

ooo!

Homophobic Representative + Gun + State Capitol = WIN!

This is pretty much what I've been attempting to articulate about the state of academia

asians doing shameful things

awooooogggaaa!!!!

"experts" announce that middle class is struggling

tAstEe driNk

treadmill, part 2

Something In The Wind

i don't wanna grow up!

denial.

suckage.

What A Bunch Of Whiny Ass Titty Babies

4th o' july!

Horror Movie Lesson: Stupidity Is All It Takes

advice from a bitter 30-something who used to be stupid

great article in the village voice

i'm sorry but... WTF?!

Wherein Emily1 Apologizes For Being A Terrible Blogger

update

sexual peak

I WANT

WOO HOO GAY PEOPLE IS MARRY

Update on the DSM-V Issue

Updated info on anti-trans moron

Anti-Trans Moron Appointed as Head of DMV-V Committee on Trans Issues!

A Publick Apologee

the real orange county.

Solution To Record High Vacancies Due To Foreclosure

Gin And The Cognitive Surplus

Watch this one.

Food Rationing Comes To America

darwin award candidate / fox news.

Who are we?

the education gap re: white dem voters

fbi wiretaps on mlk

a blog i stumbled upon.

New(ish) lesbian blog.

Midterm Period Sucks

Garfield, Minus Garfield

obama and his pastor. and ron paul.

*Sigh*

Four months ago, a prophet spoke...

Bear Market Indeed

Prosperity Is Just Around The Corner

The High Cost Of Eating

lions and tigers and...

More Props For Us!

One Of The Most Incompetent Suicide Attempts Ever

Think Your Food Bill Is Too High?

Another Big Ass Fib

HOLY GEEK CLOCK, BATMAN!

Great Ad For Family Planning

The Wonderful World Of Science

Have A Cup O' Depression This Morning

Scream 'Yeehaw!!' and Pass The Foreclosure Notices

way to win hearts and minds.

Link Farm #5

That's One Big Ass Fib

Pardon The Mess

The Things You Learn By Reading Mein Kampf

mixx.com - a better digg (and less homophobic)

We've Been Tagged!

Assur is King! Assur is King!: Religion in the Exercise of Power in the Neo-Assyrian Empire

A Subtle Estonian Ad For Ice Cream

Sigh