Pen-Elayne on the Web

Silly Site o' the Day

I was reading Funny Times yesterday during my commute and was pretty taken with a piece by Steve Bhaerman, aka Swami Beyondananda. When I looked at his website to see if I could link to it, I discovered the link wasn't working. Steve confirmed in e-mail that "there is a glitch on the website right now in finding it," but he was kind enough to give me permission to reprint it in full. Firesign fans in particular should appreciate the rapid-fire wordplay.

2004 State of the Universe Address
by Swami Beyondananda
Knowing how busy most of us have been, you probably haven't stopped to ask, "I wonder how the Universe is doing." Well, since you didn’t ask, I will tell you. Just fine, thank you. Ever-changing, same as always. Purring in perfection. The Universe continues expanding, and I don't care what the economists are saying, an expanding Universe means more jobs for everyone. Overall activity is up, and when the Universe puts on its overalls, you know it's gonna be a busy year.

Meanwhile back on earth, the cosmos are drawing us forth. Even George Bush. He recently announced plans to have a man on Mars by 2025. As if we didn’t have enough Mars energy these days. You never hear them talking about putting a woman on Venus, do you?

Going to Mars. That is the George Bush answer to global warming and environmental destruction. Well, we're just about done with this planet. Time to mosey on to greener -- I mean redder -- pastures. The E.T.s are very concerned. Right after the Mars probe landed, the headline in the Intergalactic Gazette was: "There Goes the Neighborhood."

Fortunately, there has been an infusion of angelic energy on Earth over the past year. Have you felt it? And those angels have upgraded their entire system. Now it's every time a cell phone rings, an angel gets his wings. The activity is everywhere. Even the Fox network is coming out with an angel show this year. But you know Fox, they're a little edgy. The new show is going to be called "Inappropriately Touched By An Angel."

And we will need all of the angelic energy we can get, because I have to tell you, the forces of endarkenment made great strides last year, leaving their footprints on the backs of far too many. Sadly, 2003 was the year that the Irony Curtain descended over America -- the invisible wall of impropaganda they put up to separate the people from the truth. And when Michael Moore broke through the soundless barrier at the Academy Awards Show, it was a moment of truth in a year that was short on truthful moments. His courage to speak the truth at a time when lie-ability appeared to be an asset makes him the leading candidate for this year's NoBull Prize.

Yes, the body politic has been inundated with so much toxic BS, our skeptic system has overflowed and we've ended up swallowing toxic ironies whole. This is called "irony deficiency." Seeing a doctor won't help, but seeing a paradox will.

If a Speech Freely Falls in the Forest, and There is No One There to Hear it — is it Still Free Speech?

True, this is a dangerous world, and while Mr. Cheney can hide himself in some undisclosed location, Mr. Bush has to make an appearance from time to time, and must be protected at all costs ... from free speech. So to make sure that criticism of his policies doesn't become massive enough to reach critical mass, protesters are now cordoned behind barbed wire in what are called ... and I am not making this up ... free speech zones. So Americans are still free to speak freely -- as long as no one can hear them.

Now I bet many Americans haven't even heard of these free speech zones, and that is not surprising. It was one of those stories that went uncovered while the media was busy assaulting us with weapons of mass distraction. Like what just happened at the Super Bowl. CBS -- which apparently wants us to see only the B.S. they want us to see -- refused to run a MoveOn ad critical of George Bush. Meanwhile, their affiliate MTV (or, as it has come to be known, Empty Vee) happily distracted us with the Janet Jackson /Justin Timberlake fiasco. This is all too typical of mass media nowadays -- an overwillingness to expose a little boob, and an underwillingness to expose a big one.

You can bet the Super Bowl will be entirely different in 2005. Rev. Jerry Falwell was very upset at what he called "trashy titillation and toilet humor" and vowed to clean it up. He has proposed that next year's half-time entertainment be provided by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and the event be renamed the Tidy Bowl.

Strike While the Irony is Hot!

So the body politic must strengthen itself by doing free press presses and pumping ironies. You know the old saying, "Strike while the irony is hot!"

Like this one: The best way to make peace is by making war. I think Dick Cheney said it best: "We will keep fighting our war for peace, even if it takes forever!"

The War in Iraq is less than a year old, and it has cost us over $90 billion. That is $246,575,342 a day! Do the math. And if you find the math difficult to fathom, how about the aftermath? Who will foot the bill for this misadventure? I will tell you. That bill will be placed squarely at our children's feet. Years and years of bleeding off our precious livelihood to pay for weapons of deadlihood. No wonder the 'hood is so deadly!

Now of course there are those in the administration who say you gotta fight fire with fire, right? Well, I've been talking with some firemen lately, and you know what? They say, "No, you fight fire with WATER..." We should be dampening support for those terrorists, and instead we seem to be firing them up. So here we are, caught between Iraq and a harder place, and unable to pull out because we wouldn't want to lose face. Now I don't know whose face is being saved over there, but for sure ass is being lost -- ours and theirs. War may or may not be face-saving, but it is always ass-losing. So we the people must decide whether saving their face is worth losing our ass.

And this thing about preemptive war being a new policy -- not true. There's nothing new about it. It is old, very old. Listen, Mr. Bush, I know you sometimes get words mixed up, but Jesus did NOT say, "Doo doo unto others BEFORE they can doo doo unto you."

Seriousness is Threatening Our Right to Laugh

The world is in such serious condition, the Earth's protective laugh force has been compromised. That's right. Scientists have discovered a hole in the Bozone Layer -- our planetary clown chakra -- because not enough levity is rising.
The good news is, we have founded the Right to Laugh Party ... one big party, everyone is invited .. to help us all wake up laughing, and leave laughter in our wake. Why laughter? Well most Americans agree there's definitely something funny going on, so why not use comedy to laugh those clowns out of power -- which in and of itself will raise the laugh-expectancy on the planet.

Because our right to laugh is being compromised by laugh-threatening seriousness. Everywhere I go, I see people not laughing. People are saying to me, "I don’t understand it. I coulda sworn we voted for West Wing. How'd we end up with the Sopranos?"

The Trillion Dollar Question

Listen. A trillion dollars disappeared from the Defense Department accounts last year. Poof, like that. Totally unaccounted for. Did you see that on Unsolved Mysteries? Maybe it was on and I missed it. The Trillion Dollar Question. Now, there's a reality TV show I would watch. Another story covered up because the media failed to cover it. If we want the body politic to recover, we must uncover the under-covered stories that have been covered over. For indeed the best antidote for private excess is public access.

If Thomas Jefferson were alive today, do you know what he'd be saying? First thing he'd say is, "Boy ...do I feel OLD!" But then he would say that we are sovereign citizens, not subjects, and the government is our servant, not the other way around. And we are not being served very well by our servants. They are serving themselves first, their cronies second, and we the people are picking up the tab. Thomas Jefferson, radical that he was, would be saying, "Forget those airline passengers. Let's strip search the government!"

Time for a New Precedent

The good news is we don't need a revolution in this country. We've already had one, thank you. What we need now is an American Evolution where we the people evolve into the enlightened citizens our Founding Fathers designed this government for. We must choose a new precedent, because if we keep doing what we've done we will only get what we’ve gotten. Choose a new precedent ... and a new President will follow. So we at the Right to Laugh Party put forth this precedent: Government of the people, by the people, for the people where the government does OUR bidding, not the bidding of the highest bidder.

Now I know we have counted on the Democrats in the past to represent the people's interests, but ever since they suffered that electile dysfunction back in 2000, those Democrats can't seem to get an election, can they? For the past ten years, the Republicans have been playing hardball. Meanwhile, the Democrats have been playing hardly-have-balls.
So that is why we must elect ourselves. It is only because of citizens like yourselves that Dr. Dean was able to alert the American public to the dangers of Mad Cowboy Disease (where the body politic is put into a state of cattlepsy) ... and citizens like you who will continue to awaken the body politic no matter who the candidates are. Yes, we need to wake up laughing, and wake up loving, so we can once and for all heal the body politic and cure electile dysfunction.

Blisskrieg Launched, All Out Peace Declared

Last year, we launched the Blisskrieg and declared all out peace. All those who have been developing inner peace, time to let it all out. And time to bring that force of consciousness into the political realm. That is why it is my mission to turn devotees into votees, and offer up another new precedent: Religions of the world helping people practice the Golden Rule instead of saying, "We're going to heaven... and everyone else can go to hell."

So how do we bring that blisskrieg home? First of all, we must really recognize the foolishness of getting even, and get odd instead. An eye for an eye will only create blindness. Instead of doing what has never worked, why not honor the odd possibility that by doing something different, we can actually get different results? Because the main reason for toxic human conditions is toxic human conditioning. Generations of this toxicity has left a lot of residoodoo.

Through the human jestive system, we can transmute this toxic residoodoo into harmless laughter that will improve the atmosphere and restore the Bozone Layer. Laughter will help the body politic de-Tex -- oops, I mean detox -- and bring down the irony curtain as well.

Pray It Forward!

Now listen, even if we can't prove God exists, we know love exists ... and even if religion doesn't work, prayer still does. So pray it forward. Forget the idea that the messiah is going to come down and save the world. Did Jesus say, "Now don't do a thing till I return?" No! We have met the messiah, and he is US! Who needs a bail out from above? This is supply-side spirituality.

Pray in any religion, pray in all of them. My guru, Harry Cohen Baba, the Garment Center Saint, was Jewish, had a Hindu ashram, and prayed to Buddha and Jesus. "Any one of these could be right," he explained, "so why put all your begs in one askit?" No one should be excluded, not even atheists. In fact, it is for their benefit that I created my Ultimate Meditation Tape -- which is, of course, blank. Because if we can't pray together, we don't have a prayer.

Armageddon ... or Disarmageddon?

The choice is ours, every day and every minute ... love or fear. Will we continue down the well worn path to armageddon ... or take the road less traveled to disarmageddon instead? Are we going to buy into original sin, or go for humanifest destiny where we actually realize our human potential? Because no matter what I see on the 6 o'clock news I believe we have the potential to be human, that mankind can treat man kindly, and that we can bring about Nonjudgment Day where all heaven will break loose!

But we must enlighten up! How many of you are willing to take a vow of levity? All those willing to take a vow of levity ... please rise! Repeat after me: "All for fun, and fun for all!" I now pronounce you duly absurdified.

May you laugh, laugh, laugh till the sacred cows come home. For truly the farce is with us.

© Copyright 2004 by Steve Bhaerman. All rights reserved.

Steve confirms that he is indeed a Firesign fan, and adds that he "had a great telephone conversation with Phil Proctor several years ago. I was happy that he'd heard of my work." He also announces that his travelling show will be in NYC this October, and he'll keep me posted, so I'll certainly pass that news onto all of you.

Labels: Silly Sites

posted by Elayne at 9:15 AM | Permalink
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Obligatory ~~Canadian~~ Comics Content

If I don't blog about this, I'll forget to watch it when I get home. Go to this site to see the new AmEx Seinfeld/Superman ads. And I really enjoyed this blog post from Steve Lieber talking about panel rhythm, but then I'm a process wonk so I would. Lastly, via Laura Gjovaag, I learned that Rachel "Amy Unbounded" Hartman has a blog, so of course I had to blogroll her immediately. (Yes, our younger cat is named for Rachel's character.)

Labels: Comics

posted by Elayne at 8:50 AM | Permalink
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A Peep at Peeps

Robin didn't grow up around Peeps, so he had no appreciation for this entry from Terri. I know a few people who'd probably love it, though. I mean, besides me. Never touch the stuff, m'self. Update: It's spreading.

posted by Elayne at 10:29 PM | Permalink
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Cents and Gullibility

Budgie wonders what it is about us. As if in response, via Neil Gaiman, someone alertly spotted the follow-up to the dragon hoax story. Which I guess is like, what, a cousin to Leigh Ann Wilson's rock story (see Flea-Smitten below)?

posted by Elayne at 9:56 PM | Permalink
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From the Saved Items Folder...

Tristero wrote a wonderful essay last week about how the idea of "spreading democracy" can be read as so much provincialism. He also attempts to see recent events from what might be the POV of bin Laden, the terrorist muckety-muck whose hands we seem to be playing right into. [Update: For a different bin Laden POV, try Tony Hendra's latest. Via Leah at Corrente.]

In the same vein, Barista reviews/analyzes Hidalgo.

Steve Gilliard writes about Eggs Benedict. Hoorah, I now finally know how to make Hollandaise sauce!

Wonkette announces that the Sloganator Memorial site has moved here.

Lastly, Luis Toro at the American Street claims that today is César Chávez Day, but I'm fairly sure that's on Wednesday.

posted by Elayne at 1:39 PM | Permalink
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Flea-Smitten

Recommended reading: The tale of the mysterious rock that came in the mail, by Flea aka Leigh Anne Wilson; stop on by and congratulate her on her mention in the Chicago Tribune!

posted by Elayne at 1:28 PM | Permalink
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When Sauce for the Goose Isn't Sauce for the Gander

Something of which voters need to be keenly aware this year is the tendency of Republicans to criticize Democrats every time the Dems touch on a subject they feel should be traditionally associated with them, claiming in a huff "how dare they politicize this?!" as if they (Repubs) themselves hadn't been doing that all along. Case in point, via Julia, is the Bush campaign calling John Kerry's remarks at the New North Side Baptist Church "beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse and a sad exploitation of Scripture for a political attack." Yep, it's a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation. You don't invoke spirituality and you cede that entire subject matter (and base) to the Repubs; you do and you're accused of being inappropriate. Please, someone get these idiots out of power. Update: Kevin Raybould at LeanLeft has more to say about this, to which liberal Catholic Melanie Mattson says "amen." And Len Cleavelin weighs in as well.

posted by Elayne at 10:11 AM | Permalink
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Celebrating Women - 29 March 2004

Alas, it's still news whenever an ad campaign decides to use real women instead of stick figures. Plus, we large gals tend to make less money and, via Len Cleavelin, sometimes even occupations that have been havens for fat women in the past can become discriminatory.

Here are some link pages for websites working to change the perception (including self-perception) of fat women:

Uppity Women's fat positive book list and other fat positive links

SeaFATtle's fat acceptance link page

Mama Sutra's fat acceptance and body esteem link page

FaT GiRL's link page

Tish Parmeley at Fatshadow probably has more; it's hard to Google on "fat" and "women" without getting fetishistic sex pages.

posted by Elayne at 7:17 AM | Permalink
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Silly Site o' the Day

MadKane led me to the growabrain blog, from which it looks like I'll be taking lots of silly sites. Today's pick is the Pledge of Allegiance as a PowerPoint presentation.

Labels: Silly Sites

posted by Elayne at 6:53 AM | Permalink
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Hire Education

Congratulations to my friend Leah Adezio and to her son Stephen on his acceptance to Drexel's 5-year engineering co-op program!

posted by Elayne at 10:23 PM | Permalink
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But Is It Art?

I can't say what's more disturbing, this display (via Robin) or this one (sorry, forget which blogger referred to it). No, I take it back, I know which one's more disturbing.

posted by Elayne at 8:41 PM | Permalink
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The Six-Hour Week

Budgie reminds us that it's now British Summer Time. Here in the US, Daylight Savings Time doesn't kick in until next Sunday. So adjust your mental clocks accordingly - for this next week, when it's noon in NY it'll actually be 6 PM in Great Britain, not 5 PM.

posted by Elayne at 9:26 AM | Permalink
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Silly Site o' the Day

Via Budgie, apparently Marvin the Paranoid Android has a new job as a web server.

Labels: Silly Sites

posted by Elayne at 8:21 AM | Permalink
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Celebrating Women - 28 March 2004

Just about a year ago I talked about baseball, specifically as regards gender integration. And I just finished watching A League of Their Own again so, aside from the fact that Rob and I realized Rosie O'Donnell was doing the same voice and attitude here as she did in Tarzan (we kept looking at each other saying "Best friend coming through!"), I thought I'd give another salute today to the All American Girls Professional Baseball League as well as the current American Women's Baseball League, the Women's Baseball League, Inc. and, closer to home, the New York Women's Baseball Association.

posted by Elayne at 12:37 AM | Permalink
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oh my dear god NOOOOOO!

I didn't mean to, SZ, really, I'm so sorry! I was just having fun, honest! Had I but known the awesome power of my off-the-cuff musings...

posted by Elayne at 8:42 PM | Permalink
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Brief LC Blogaround

Just until Robin wakes up and I have to go out to the post office by our new address and find out exactly what it is (opinions differ) and pick up a change-of-address kit, then off to do other new-apartment-related errands for much of the afternoon to escape the inevitable open-house noises upstairs (only a few more weekends of putting up with that, yay!). I think this week I'll concentrate (in reverse alphabetical order by first name or handle) on the Liberal Coalition members who don't have properly working RSS feeds 'cause I skipped them last time and there are fewer of them:

Wanda at Words On A Page, who doesn't have permalinks either, notes that George W. Bush's daughters don't share their father's politics, although they do share his penchant for partying. I actually find it weirder that "Second Daughter" Mary Cheney shares her father's politics.

T. Rex's scorecards are always great. This week he asks "Where are they now?"

Mike Stabile at Left is Right recommends Noam Chomsky's new blog, which I'd put on my sidebar but, I dunno, it seems pretty disjointed so far, and I'm given to understand that although they're Chomsky's words he's not really sitting there blogging them himself, they're just essays taken from elsewhere (a message board, I think). Mike also brings news that Jeb Bush may be eyeing a presidential run in 2008. Lastly, I've bookmarked Mike's "Friday Fun" archives for future Silly Site reference. Why the Atom RSS feed works for Friday Fun and not for Left is Right is anyone's guess, but then I can't figure out why, when I click on an individual entry/item on many Blogspot blogs - including mine - Bloglines doesn't take me to that entry but to the first site linked to... my guess is it's probably a short-term Blogger problem...

Keith Kisser at The Invisible Library reiterates the news going around the blogosphere about China banning blogs. But nobody seems to be reporting this correctly. From what I've been able to ascertain, the hosting services that were shut down are apparently local ones, Blogbus.com and blogcn.com, (both load for me), not TypePad or Blogger or any of the familiar names we know here.

[Update: So far as I know, Yan's information about the TypePad/Blogger ban has still not been reported by any non-blog news sources and, while I regret using the words "possible misinformation" to describe her dissemination of hearsay, I've also asked her to provide me with corroborating URLs. So far she's only told me about another weblog that mentions the supposed Typepad ban. I await actual news site confirmation, as with the Blogbus and blogcn situation.]

Bryant Gries of Make me a Commentator! does another nice LC mini-blogaround, and still has the fortitude to read David Limbaugh.

That's it; off to read the LC blogs that are feeding to me correctly (thanks, Maru and MercuryX23 and Tony!). Might add to this brief blogaround if something there strikes my fancy...

Labels: Silly Sites

posted by Elayne at 9:45 AM | Permalink
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Celebrating Women - 27 March 2004

Nice article by Laura Flanders in the Guardian about Bush's crappy to non-existent feminist credentials. Ruth Rosen gives a nice plug to Flanders' new book Bushwomen, as does Susan Douglas. Flanders' eponymous website is worth checking out as well.

And an update to yesterday's post - Mark Kleiman has, in the comment section and his blog, confirmed that Kelly is his sister, and suggested I reread her essay, which I now have and, you know, she really does answer all the "but what about...?" questions I had. Worth a second glance, and a second plug. I'm still not totally sure that "Men dressing as women are dressing down," considering the Freestyle dressing movement and a certain "executive transvestite" whom I consider fairly aware of gender issues, but she makes some persuasive points and good connections.

posted by Elayne at 7:36 AM | Permalink
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Silly Site o' the Day

Rana at Frogs and Ravens says she found this Dyson vacuum cleaner ad-disguised-as-a-game (or is that vice versa?) from Tish Parmeley at Fatshadow, so I'm crediting/blaming them both.

Labels: Silly Sites

posted by Elayne at 7:29 AM | Permalink
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Crib Sheet

Via Wonkette, a nice resource called Footnote TV. Created by journalist Steven Lee, the site encourages readers to "look for your favorite TV shows and read about the real-life issues that have inspired episodes and skits." I remain skeptical - no footnotes for any Simpsons episodes? :)

posted by Elayne at 10:37 PM | Permalink
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Modern History

I always get a bit of a thrill from certain photos. Probably the sentimental streak in me. Oliver Willis has a great picture here from last night's "Democrats United" fundraising dinner (I'm sure there's an interesting "compare and contrast with the RTCA affair" awaiting some enterprising blogger!). I like this one too; it's by Pulitzer Prize winner Pablo Martinez Monsivais. There's just something about having certain figures of history together on the same stage at the same time that's way cool to me.

posted by Elayne at 4:20 PM | Permalink
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The Mournful Song Still Resonates

Kevin Keith at LeanLeft posts a remembrance of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, 93 years ago yesterday.

posted by Elayne at 3:51 PM | Permalink
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Obligatory ~~Canadian~~ Comics Content

Check out Cliff Meth's new column about Marie Severin, one of the most gracious women it's ever been my pleasure to know. Over at the Washington Monthly, Joe Sacco muses about love and politics. And here's an update on CrossGen, for those interested.

Labels: Comics

posted by Elayne at 3:25 PM | Permalink
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Making a Mockery of Self-Mutilation

Susie Madrak (among others) reports on the Georgia legislation outlining punishment for female genital mutiliation, specifically the ban on voluntary piercings. Now, I'm all with them that piercing is absolutely a form of self-mutiliation, I've been saying that for years. But see, to me this is a classic case of not agreeing with a personal preference but defending the right of someone to make whatever choice they want. I have a huge personal hang-up on facial piercings - it took me 30 years to screw up enough courage to pierce my ears, only once in each lobe thank you very much - and don't even get me started on even the idea of doing that to sensitive genitalia. But again, I recognize this as my personal hangup. So you know, if these Georgians are as squeamish as I am about such things, I suggest they do what I do regarding excessive voluntary piercing - if it's a friend or personal acquaintance, ignore it as best you can in the interest of your relationship with the pierce-ee; otherwise, if you see it on TV or if it's a complete stranger and you're sitting in a restaurant watching them pass by and you're busy making fun of the way they dress anyway, feel free to mock the hell out of it sotto voce. After all, one must assume they're doing the same thing to you behind your back, n'est ce pas?

posted by Elayne at 2:52 PM | Permalink
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Fiction Thrice Removed

So SZ passes along a few news stories she's been gathering about people whose lives have changed (or even ended) after seeing The Passion of the Christ. And in the comments, I'm wondering how many of these tales will wind up debunked on Snopes, but I also think it would be a cool idea to have a contest to see who can make up the most outrageous-yet-believable Passion-reaction tale.

Then I see, via TBogg, that there's a website doing it for real. Now mind you, I'm not one to suggest that people make up stories regarding a made-up story based on a made-up story, but you know, if the passion strikes you...

posted by Elayne at 1:18 PM | Permalink
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She's Rosie, Really!

Nutshell Kid Julia brings us Chicken Hawks with Rice. She has no idea how much I loved that TV special. Even after all these years I can still sing along to her parody...

posted by Elayne at 12:31 PM | Permalink
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Probing the Frontiers

Two pass-alongs to recommend:

Via Jesse at Pandagon, a site called MemeOrandum "presents a distinctly readable and relevant hourly synopsis of the latest online news and opinion, combining weblog commentary with traditional news reports." It seems very heavily skewed towards blog chatter. I've added it to the Round-Ups section of my sidebar.

And via Kevin Drum now of Political Animal, a group of scientists has started "a blog called The Panda's Thumb, dedicated to debunking the daily assaults on evolution from the ID zealots and the religious right." That one's been placed into my "Blogs in Waiting" folder. Hey, I'm up to 230 regularly-read blogs, gimme a break. :)

posted by Elayne at 11:55 AM | Permalink
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On Bended Knee-Slapping

Lots of bloggers have been talking about the utter inappropriateness of George W. Bush's remarks at the Radio and Television Correspondents Association dinner in Washington on Wednesday. While my favorite line came from Wonkette's review of the after-party ("No hard data on this, but fake journalist Rob Corddry appeared to be the star-fucking object of choice for real journalists"), I also like the observation from Jesse at Pandagon: "It's not funny when the person who did the bad thing jokes about the bad thing." I wish I'd written something like that as an adjunct to my humor essay last month. Although the RTCA remarks are certainly in keeping with Bush's sneeringly arrogant frat-boy attitude towards just about everything that's characterized most of his life (from blowing up frogs for laughs as a kid to mocking death-row inmates to the "trifecta" quip of which Eric at the Hamster reminds us), I don't know that I'd blanketly condemn anything of this sort as obviously "not funny" as much as my usual head-shaking observation that most of the mean-spirited jokes that come out of his mouth are in highly questionable taste.

Still, as evidenced by plenty of successful tasteless comics, this kind of humor does have a willing and appreciative audience. I just wish the audience in this case didn't consist of journalists. In fact, I'm rather saddened that folks aren't more appalled that the RTCA (which doesn't seem to have a website, by the way, and how weird is that for a media-based organization?) regularly hobnobs with the objects of its coverage, as they've apparently been doing for 60 years - so much for the idea of an adversarial (not to mention objective) press! And since the RTCA membership is therefore so subservient to power, you get a tailor-made positive reception for whatever nonsense spews out of the mouths of the powerful (which, in this stage-managed presidential race, counts for a lot). I reckon few of them even realize that Bush's "WMD search" wasn't intended at all as self-mockery, but ultimately as an indictment of them and their utterly ineffectual journalism - a sort of taunting schooyard dance - "I'm rubber, you're glue, I can get away with anything and you won't call me on it, see I'm doing it right now!" That would require some thought, some digging under the surface, some nuance - which I'm not sure too many people at that dinner possessed (besides Rob Corddry)...

Update: For all the people who think Bush's remarks were in bad form, do you think this is as well?

posted by Elayne at 11:17 AM | Permalink
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Celebrating Women - 26 March 2004

Are you surprised that most rapacious, clawing, greedy, self-centered venture capitalists are men? I didn't think so.

Trying to find updated news on the first Eucharistic service performed by two women in Dublin - apparently it was halted after protest threats - but the only paper covering it is subscription-only and my registration didn't take. In related news, a South African Dominee notes that The Passion has female stereotypes - no! really?

Kelly Kleiman (any relation to Mark?) thinks that men dressing in drag constitutes "yet another variation on a dominant group appropriating the identity of a disempowered group for its own ends," but you know, I've seen a lot of women dress in drag too so I'm not sure about this one.

Lastly, if you feel you really must apply to work in a "breastaurant," you might want to check for hidden cameras. Sadly, the economy is that bad that tons of women will continue to choose this route.

posted by Elayne at 6:47 AM | Permalink
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Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)

I must admit I'll miss the view from our window after it snows. Kitties will miss having wide windowsills on which to perch:

Ah, but we all must make sacrifices during this relocation...

Labels: Fotos, Friday Cat Blogging

posted by Elayne at 6:34 AM | Permalink
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Silly Site o' the Day

Via Carolyn Ibis, here's your chance to create your own postage-type stamps. Not good for actually mailing stuff. Here's my first attempt:

You can also create a whole sheet if you want.

Labels: Silly Sites

posted by Elayne at 6:25 AM | Permalink
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My 15 Minutes

Well, okay, more like 9 minutes, at least until the Daily Show (with Al Franken as tonight's guest!). But before I retreat... okay, collapse in the bedroom, I wanted to profusely thank Seth "The Talking Dog" Farber for his lovely write-up of this blog! The timing is kinda funny as the resume he mentions, whilst still linkable from here, has just been de-emphasized with the pending move (see below) and imminent need to update the address and phone (or perhaps eliminate them altogether from the online version), and I don't feel as though I've been nearly as prolific this last week as the standard to which I'd tried to hold myself previously... but it also serves as the best incentive possible for me to keep plugging away here. Thanks muchly, Seth!

posted by Elayne at 10:50 PM | Permalink
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Bronkers

Well, the apartment hunt is over, at least for this year! We've just signed a lease to take possession, as of April 1, of the top floor of a 3-family house (tenants already live on the first floor and basement) which literally lies on the border between North Riverdale and Yonkers. It's (barely) officially in the Bronx but the houses visible from the back window are in Yonkers; I've already taken to calling it "Bronkers." There's a little patch of land between the back patio fence and the back yards of those houses to which neither county has laid claim (tax reasons, I guess); Robin's thinking of either cultivating it for a garden or declaring it a sovereign country, possibly both.

When we started flat-hunting I suspended my job-hunting, so I'll be staying with my current company for the moment, which is moving out of the city altogether into a building my boss just bought in Westchester County, right by the New Rochelle train station. Our personal move and the company's move should just about coincide; if the company lags a bit it'll put another 10-15 minutes onto my commute into the city but that's certainly doable. And if it doesn't - well, this weekend I plan to vacate the premises during the open-house hours to avoid the louder-every-weekend tromping about going on upstairs (yes, it could be worse, someone else could have moved in by now) and throughout this half-empty building, and take a ride or two on the Bee Line bus system up into Yonkers then across the county to check out the newly-bought office building and time the commute.

I'm more psyched about this change than I'd first suspected; between the crowded subways with their too-small molded seats and the general push of the midtown crowds, it'll be nice to have Manhattan be a place to visit only on special occasions rather than a mandatory daily slog. And in a couple months I hope to go car-shopping with Dad. I haven't driven regularly in about 20 years, and I've never actually owned a car, but it will cut my daily commute down to about 15 minutes and finally enable us to visit friends and family without needing to rely on mass transit (which tends not to be so convenient once one gets into Jersey or Rockland County or even parts of Queens) so at this point in my life it's become a necessary evil.

We will have a Packing Party in a few weeks, at which time we'll also give away or dump all the furniture we're not taking with us (the new place is a bit smaller than our current one), including our dining room set, a couple just-barely-holding-together bookcases, our toaster oven and the table on which it rests, my computer table, and loads of VHS storage drawers, likely with the tapes still inside (most were taped off the TV and are pretty worn). I think Robin's also getting rid of all his PAL Star Trek:TNG tapes. The books and comics stay. :) More about the party once I've decided on a date.

posted by Elayne at 8:55 PM | Permalink
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Another Belated Milestone Noted

Happy belated blogiversary to John McKay at archy!

Labels: Milestones

posted by Elayne at 5:49 PM | Permalink
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Celebrating Women - 25 March 2004

Brief looks at what's going on around the country coinciding with National Women's History Month:

The Seattle Police Department held its first Women in Law Enforcement symposium yesterday, to celebrate the contributions and history of women in the department.

Nice musings on NWHM by the Ohio state auditor and a reporter for the (Middlefield CT) Town Times.

The University of Louisville has lots of events planned.

The Defense Department held a forum last Tuesday on "Emerging Issues for Military and Civilian Women in the Department of Defense: Impact on Readiness."

In Richmond, IN, Girls Inc. teaches that history can be fun.

And of course, New Jersey being what it is, the Star-Ledger reports on combining NWHM celebrations with National Craft Month. I was an NJ resident when I first started making gum-wrapper chains (which by the way I'm bequeathing to this guy), so perhaps the state lends itself to such things.

posted by Elayne at 9:09 AM | Permalink
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Silly Site o' the Day

Just in time for allergy season, Carolyn Ibis passes along this amusing 404 Error message reminding us that we all need a little more fresh air. My eyes and sinuses beg to differ.

Labels: Silly Sites

posted by Elayne at 7:17 AM | Permalink
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Keeping Up with Comments

So I said to myself, "self ('cause that's what I call myself), you really should look into Budgie's question about whether there's a way to be notified when you have new comments on your blog, particularly now that you're not there so much any more as you go through your blogroll via Bloglines." And then I said, "hey, wait a minute, didn't I subscribe to someone else's comments section RSS feed by mistake instead of subbing to their blog?" So I checked Haloscan, and sure enough, they offer an RSS feed for my comments sections. Moreover, when I click on a comment I'm shown the entire comment thread, including the fields in which to add any comments of my own. This stuff just gets more and more convenient!

posted by Elayne at 10:57 PM | Permalink
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If I Had One, It'd Be Healthy Too

Not sure if this qualifies as a Silly Site or Obligatory Comics Content or both, but Brooke Biggs talks about the advertising for an anti-syphilis campaign being run by the SF Department of Health, which I think is just too adorable (uh, in a mature-readers sense, I mean). Go to this page and click on each ad individually; some are one panel and others are 4-panel strips.

Labels: Comics

posted by Elayne at 6:25 PM | Permalink
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Items to Save and Savor

From my Saved Items folder, a few nifty and important essays:

The Old Bloody Shirt, in which Billmon salutes Vietnam vets better than you'll ever see our current Administration do. One for the Koufax nominations file.

Clarke, Clinton and Terrorism, some very nice observations from David Niewert on Richard Clarke and other former insiders who've had enough of this (mis)administration.

Empire in Fact, where Melanie Mattson looks at the expansion of US military bases.

posted by Elayne at 9:37 AM | Permalink
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Ms. Meets Maitena

Don't know what's happened to the Women Doing Comics list I used to maintain for Friends of Lulu, it doesn't seem to have been updated since I handed it to my successor. If it ever gets going again, I hope they include Argentinian cartoonist Maitena. Via Christine Cupaiuolo at Ms. Musings, here's the New York Times profile on her.

Labels: Comics

posted by Elayne at 9:15 AM | Permalink
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Celebrating ~~Women~~ Mommies - 24 March 2004

Happy birthday, Mom! Here's what I wrote about my Mom last year. In honor of her, I thought I'd celebrate mothers today with these links:

MOTHERS (Mothers Ought To Have Equal Rights)

Mothers & More

Blue Star Mothers of America, Inc.

Mothers Arms

National Organization of Single Mothers

Entrepreneurial Mothers Association

National Organization of Mothers of Twins Clubs, Inc.

San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace

Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo

Mothers for Clean Air

Mothers for Clean and Safe Vehicles

The latest on the Four Moms from NJ (via Atrios)
Also, Margaret Cho wrote a lovely bit about her mom the other day which I wanted to share. And lastly, a brief history of Mothering Sunday, which I believe was this past Sunday in the UK.

Labels: Family, Milestones

posted by Elayne at 7:02 AM | Permalink
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Silly Site o' the Day

Julia led me to the Project for the New American Empire, a very nice-looking site consisting of "a small group of dedicated patriots compelled to point a satirical finger at the naked Mandarins running the horror show." (This is the creepy group they're spoofing.) Julia and I are both among the "Seditionists We're Keeping a Close Eye on" listed on their Fifth Columnists page, and I couldn't be more delighted. I can hardly wait for their weblog to start up, and have put them in the Humor/Satire section of the sidebar.

Labels: Silly Sites

posted by Elayne at 6:35 AM | Permalink
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Celebrating Women - 23 March 2004

Tomorrow, four Bay Area women will be acknowledged for their community service by the National Coalition of 100 Black Women Inc. at the group's sixth annual Madam C.J. Walker Business and Community Recognition Awards luncheon. Here are just a few of the boundless online resources for and by black women:

Blackgirl International

The National Congress of Black Women

Black Women in Sisterhood for Action

BlackLiving - Black Women's Network

Blackwomen (UK)

Black Women in Mathematics

Black Women in Sport Foundation

Association of Black Women Historians

Black Women's Health Imperative

Black Women for Wellness

The Center for Black Women's Wellness

Distinguished black women of past and present

International Black Women's Film Festival 2004

Black Women in Science Fiction
That last one's for you, Carol Cooper!

posted by Elayne at 9:34 AM | Permalink
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Silly Site o' the Day

From Avedon Carol comes this tour of Casa di Libri, a house made entirely of books. More "cool" than "silly," admittedly, although I suppose that depends on your point of view.

Labels: Silly Sites

posted by Elayne at 7:11 AM | Permalink
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Real-Time Book Reviewing

Looks like Tim Dunlop at The Road to Surfdom is reviewing Richard Clarke's book Against All Enemies chapter by chapter. Great excerpts, nice analysis. Start here, then here, then here.

posted by Elayne at 9:47 PM | Permalink
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Another Bennie

Okay, last Bloglines-related post of the day, I promise. I just found out what the "Saved Items" folder is for. Now I don't have to e-mail my Yahoo account any time I find a Silly Site; I can just save any item (blog entry) I want to keep in that folder until I've referenced it. Also good, I might add, for posts one might wish to nominate for Koufaxes come awards time... of course, it too only works for blogs proper with RSS feeds...

posted by Elayne at 5:30 PM | Permalink
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Wytheville to the Rescue?

I decided to try a little experiment with my Bloglines subscriptions. I've taken all the blogs that weren't giving me good feeds or any feeds at all, and (re)subscribed to them via the Wytheville Community College (WCC) RSSify connection. And all blogs seem to have WCC feeds that didn't show up when I just pasted in the URL itself. So I'm back up to being able to access all 225 blogs on my blogroll via Bloglines (with asterisks on 52 of them, or 23%). If you're on Bloglines, instead of putting in the URL of the blog into the "Subscribe by Entering URL" box, put in "http://www.wcc.vccs.edu/services/rssify/rssify.php?url=[the URL of the blog to which you want to subscribe]" and see if it doesn't come up for you as well.

Now, I'm still not really sure how all this works, but as best I've been able to figure out here's the catch: if you subscribe to someone's blog this way and the blogger hasn't set themselves up for a feed, the connection can't actually notify Bloglines correctly of new blog entries/posts (which Bloglines calls "items"); if you hit "Preview" when you subscribe, you'll get the message "There are no items available for this blog. This could be because the blog has not been indexed yet, or it could be because Bloglines was unable to properly parse the blog." So you'll probably have to note that on your subscription list; I'm using asterisks there the way I've been doing on my sidebar.

posted by Elayne at 2:27 PM | Permalink
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"This Is For All The Fat Girls!"

A very happy belated blogiversary to Tish Parmeley at Fatshadow! Dunno how I missed that one, Bloglines tells me I'm updated on all her wonderful entries... *sigh*

posted by Elayne at 10:56 AM | Permalink
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Celebrating Women - 22 March 2004

A creepy article in the Calgary Herald about 500 native women vanished or murdered in the past 20 years led me to search on resources for native and aboriginal women in North America. Here are a few:

Native Women's Association of Canada

Niagara Chapter of Native Women

Quebec Native Women

Native Women's Resource Centre

Native American Women on the WWW

Native Women in the Arts

Native American Women's Health Education Resource Center

Famous Native Women in history

NativeWeb Resources for Women

Native Women Gallery
And that's just the tip of the iceberg!

posted by Elayne at 9:27 AM | Permalink
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Silly Site o' the Day

Via one of the Yahoo inkers groups, here are the Six Patron Saints of Graphic Design.

Labels: Silly Sites

posted by Elayne at 9:03 AM | Permalink
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Blogs in Waiting

I used to have no real system to check up on new-to-me blogs where I was undecided as to when or whether they'd ever go on my sidebar. I'd just put them in a "Blogs in Waiting" Favorites folder I'd made then forget about it, because the Favorites folder's only on my home computer and I never seemed to get through my sidebar's blogroll anyway. Well, with Bloglines I can make up a "Blogs in Waiting" folder that's always available to me every time I open the page to read through my subscribed blogs, and stick in that folder every blog that someone's recommended I check out when I get a chance. I just went through Jude Camwell's list of female bloggers she likes and added just about everyone with an RSS feed to said folder.

And yeah, for me that's gonna be the catch. If I can't subscribe to someone's blog through Bloglines, chances are I'll never get around to checking out their new entries. But as I type, I have precisely four new entries to read from the 183 (non-"Blogs in Waiting") weblogs to which I'm subscribed. Even with about five and a half percent of the feeds not interfacing properly with Bloglines, to be all caught up with that many blogs is... well, suffice it to say that it's something I haven't been able to do in a long while.

posted by Elayne at 3:54 PM | Permalink
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Celebrating Women - 21 March 2004

Lillian Robinson, principal of Women's Studies at Concordia University's Simone de Beauvoir Institute, is in the news today because she's written a book called Wonder Women: Feminisms and Superheroes which purports to explore female comic icons. So I thought I'd link to my friend Trina Robbins, the foremost "herstorian" of things of this sort, who did it first and is still doing it. If Trina were Canadian would she get this kind of publicity?

posted by Elayne at 8:40 AM | Permalink
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Silly Sites o' the Day

Time for a couple clocks, courtesy of Avedon Carol at The Sideshow. Here's the Bar Code Clock, which you can download to your system. And here's the VCR clock; be sure to click on the link below it to get a very funny 404 Error page.

posted by Elayne at 8:35 AM | Permalink
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Franken Sense

If you have a bit of time, you might want to read this 10-screen NY Times profile of Al Franken. I'm bookmarking it for myself to get back to it later. Via Barbara O'Brien at Mahablog, one of the tastiest Hot Links sources around!

posted by Elayne at 8:32 AM | Permalink
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An Intriguing Birthday

Happy birthday to PinkDreamPoppies at Alas, A Blog, who promises more info later.

posted by Elayne at 10:36 PM | Permalink
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Grim Anniversary, The Flip Side

Iraqi blogger Riverbend on the year of war.

posted by Elayne at 9:08 PM | Permalink
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Happy Spring

Okay, maybe I was a bit too skeptical. Looks like the day of protest garnered quite a bit of mainstream coverage, at least on the 'net. Of course, the spin is already being put on it in the form of comparing total turnout with last year's demonstrations, thereby attempting to belittle their impact. Don't fall for this one, folks; a hundred thousand in NYC and a million in Rome ain't "small." I don't watch American TV news as a rule, so I don't know what the coverage there has been. Will catch up on EuroNews tonight...

posted by Elayne at 8:49 PM | Permalink
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Liberal Coalition Blogaround

This'll probably be an all-day thing, as we have to take a second look in about an hour (I've started typing this at around 11:45 AM) at what we hope will be our new digs. It's also the first time I've done a blogaround since switching from my sidebar to Bloglines for my blogroll reading, so those LC members with no RSS feeds will probably be grouped toward the bottom. Incidentally, I'm finding out that some RSS feeds to Bloglines are better than others; so far I've had to put tick marks next to about 10 non-LC blogs out of my 183 subscriptions which apparently don't feed correctly (but to which I can still get via just clicking on their URLs), so I have to remember to check them daily even if Bloglines doesn't show any new entries for them. Still, that's like 5.46% so far, so not bad at all. Now I'll be checking to see how good the LC feeds are:

Alex Greenwood at Sooner Thought gives us Hypocrisy on Parade. I'm with him; I'm divorced as well (though still buds with my ex), but I don't go around judging other people's right to marry. Alex also notes that Jay Garner is among the Coalition of the Pissed.

My deepest condolences to David's parents on the loss of Pogo, as Amy notes on BlogAmY. And Pudge looks just like Datsa, which reminds me once more how lucky I am that my big boy beast is still with us. Also, David asks readers for their thoughts on the American Ideal. Lots more good stuff I'm not seeing on other blogs, worth a scroll down.

Andante at Collective Sigh practices the power of positive thinking, which I suppose applies to that 96-year-old woman about which she writes.

Bryant Gries (another 5.46 percenter) at Make me a Commentator! gives us some words from Arianna Huffington about personal responsibility, and does a nice mini-LC blogaround.

Charles2 at The Fulcrum reports that Bush is asking others to do his dirty work again, and also brings the sad news that pioneering MTV veejay J.J. Jackson has passed away, apparently of a heart attack. (Scott Baron at The Gamer's Nook also pays tribute to J.J.)

Chris Brown lets his "inner comic book mouse roar" as he attends and reports on the con that Robin and I were hoping to get to, before his work dwindled for awhile and the cat got sick needing twice daily medicine for the rest of his life and the rent got hiked so we needed to go apartment-shopping and, well, life getting in the way. Maybe next year! And another LC blogaround. Actually, two! I'd probably get mine done more quickly if I split them up...

Over at Corrente, Lambert has fun with haikus and decries the media for focusing on the wrong aspect of Bush administration lawbreaking.

Echidne of the Snakes discusses spring cleaning, which we'll be doing in a couple weeks in the form of throwing out everything we don't want to take with us when we move. Parting Party details to follow, for those of you in the NYC area. Oh, and yay, those tacky "piss in her mouth" urinals won't be installed at the Virgin lounge men's room at JFK after all.

Edwardpig is on the flipflops.

Eryk Salvaggio is going on a road trip - cool! Have I mentioned that we're hoping to get our first car this year? I'm hoping to hold out for a hybrid...

Speaking of driving, Guy Andrew Hall at Rook's Rant details the rules and regs of DUI in Minnesota.

HL Victoria at New World Blogger presents News around the third world and makes the political wonderfully personal.

Jeff at Speedkill has an interesting angle on tort reform.

Jesse at The Gotham City 13 tells us Colin Powell's nasty response to Arab journalists walking out on him after our troops killed two of their own, and Googles endorsements.

Jude Camwell at Iddybud reasons that the best way to get a message across is to keep it simple and direct.

It's not necessarily what Maru Soze (alas, yet another 5.46 percenter) at WTF Is It Now? covers, it's the way she covers it. It's all good. And the little pictures never fail to produce a smile.

Weren't we speaking of cars? MercuryX23 is as well, on his Fantabulous Blog, as he and his wife just got rid of their gas-guzzling SUV in favor of a Honda Civic hybrid! Good on ya, Mercury!

Michael at Musing's Musings discovers that the Nader for President headquarters has an unlisted telephone call and no visible office. Man of the people!

Moi on bloggg gives us more Feaky goodness, and discovers Lord of the Right Wing (my "Silly Site o' the Day" from December 17 '03).

Mustang Bobby of Bark Bark Woof Woof also picks up on the Nader thing, and does another dynamite Friday Follies LC blogaround.

Natalie Davis of All Facts and Opinions has been swamped with job-stuff lately but has a nice remembrance of Spaulding Gray.

Speaking of Fridays, at Happy Furry Puppy Story Time, Norbizness posts his Friday Bizarro! List (don't recognize the artist on Bizarro) and scares me with his anagrammatic talents.

NTodd Pritsky has changed his blog's name back to Doyihi Mir and gives us way too much cuteness of a boneless kitty. Also like the Bush Tai Chi move (is that to defend against the Rumsfeld Fighting Technique?).

Peter Shadzik at Kick the Leftist shakes his head again at the assholes' audacity and wonders what we're not being told about Pakistan. Also bad news regarding the portions at Red Lobster, a chain restaurant I really like. Seriously, that lobster bisque in the bread bowl was amazing.

Rivka at Respectful of Otters explains HIV prevention and long-term exposed seronegatives for the layperson and has some interesting thoughts about urban villages and how, um, bleached they look.

Steve Bates, the Yellow Doggerel Democrat, smells something in the air that oughtn't be there, and gives us a handy transcript excerpt from the Seven Dirty Words decision in honor of the FCC's latest jump backwards. Fuckers. Steve's also the best blog source to go to for complete coverage of the attempted Sierra Club takeover.

Steve Gilliard also throws some choice words at the FCC's new decision, and looks at political party fundraising in NYC. Also, a really creepy story about an Illinois Republican Senatorial candiate (scroll down to Crazy in Illinois).

I see where Susie Madrak totally agrees with me about Trish Wilson's wonderful post The "Invisible" Woman Blogger, but then of course I'm biased. As Susie notes, "Men aren't the only ones who get to decide what's important, and I'm pissed off by their attempt to frame the debate as if it's their inherent right to set the terms." Been there!

Lastly, upyernoz in his Rubber Hose updates his LC blogroll as well (I'm gonna wrap this up now, I'll tackle those LC'ers without RSS feeds another time) and makes a few points about the Spanish election.
Whew! Yep, on and off this has taken me a good eight-hour day. Good job I don't do it all at once...

Labels: Liberal Coalition

posted by Elayne at 8:04 PM | Permalink
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Celebrating Women - 20 March 2004

With all the peace demos going on today (see post below), I thought I'd link to some women's peace groups:

Women's Anti-War Resources and Organizations

CodePink

Women's International League for Peace and Freedom

National Women Peace Group (Nigeria)

NGO Working Group on Women and International Peace and Security

Coalition of Women for a Just Peace
The first link has tons of links to other groups, so I didn't want to duplicate too much effort.

posted by Elayne at 9:36 AM | Permalink
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Confluences

Via Michelle at You Will Anyway, there's a very cool astronomical phenomenon coming up in the next few days for those of us in mid-northern latitudes, which will let stargazers see Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter all without the aid of a telescope. Maybe the next time something like this happens, in four years' time, I'll have a car and be able to drive away from the bright lights of the city to view the phenomenon.

Planets aren't the only thing coming together for our viewing; just another reminder that today is a Global Day of Action against War and Occupation. Pretty good way to usher in spring. If you want to follow the worldwide demonstrations in the media, your best bet is probably foreign outlets 'cause, you know, the American media seems to have trouble finding protests. I'll be tuned into EuroNews, as usual.

posted by Elayne at 8:35 AM | Permalink
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Silly Sites o' the Day

Via Mark Evanier, can you pass this 3rd grade American geography test? Careful, it's a timed test. And via Eva Whitley, another timed quiz out to prove that Not All Americans Are Stupid.

posted by Elayne at 8:02 AM | Permalink
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The Ninth Coming

The BBC has announced the hiring of Christopher Eccleston as the ninth* Doctor Who when the series revs up again next year. Eccleston and series exec producer and writer Russell Davies recently worked together on ITV's The Second Coming, a drama in which Jesus Christ returns to Earth as a Manchester City football supporter.

*There have been a couple other Doctors, like Peter Cushing in the Dalek movies from 1965 and 1966, and Richard E. Grant doing the voice for the animated web adventure Scream of the Shalka.

posted by Elayne at 7:53 AM | Permalink
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Update on Cockrum Benefit Auction

Neal Adams has updated his website with the news of how to contribute to the upcoming Dave Cockrum auction, so if you're an interested artist who hasn't been contacted yet please click on Neal's sketch below for more information:

Neal gave me permission to post the sketch here. If you can't read the balloons, here's the dialogue:
COLOSSUS: Dave
DAVE: Hey guys, gosh it's been awhile.
THUNDERBIRD: We're here to help you, Dave.
STORM: It's the least we can do.
NIGHTCRAWLER: Da.
(Hang on, shouldn't that be "ja" instead?)

And I quite agree.

posted by Elayne at 7:43 AM | Permalink
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First Person Absurd

I think I've mentioned before how much I've fallen in love with TBogg's weekly visits into the weird world that belongs to America's Worst Mother™, Meghan Cox Gurdon. Well, this week Tom decides to chronicle/review the latest installment of her hermetically-sealed life as though it were, I dunno, some kind of Chandler novel or something. Screamingly funny, as usual. And of course, after you finish that you need to go over to World O' Crap for the rest of the story (best wait till this evening, SZ doesn't have the post up just yet but promises she will).

posted by Elayne at 3:05 PM | Permalink
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Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)

(Yeah, I'm still leaving up Kevin's Calpundit link in the header, even though he's moved over to the Washington Monthly, 'cause hey, if he ever decides to take up Friday Cat Blogging again it'll probably be on his personal blog...)

This week I actually thought ahead, and posted my FCB picture on my Buzznet homepage a few days ahead of time:

Split Level Kitties! Seems a shame we'll be getting rid of that computer desk when we move, but it won't survive another relocation. Cool stuff to note in the background includes the Bookworm game on my computer, my Lulu Volunteer of the Year award behind Amy, and the Perez/Ross Crisis poster on the wall.

Around the blogroll, Lis does her bit. And from Len Cleavelin comes this heads-up about a FARK Photoshop contest featuring a screaming cat. My God, won't someone think of the kittens?! As for MaxSpeak... oh dear, oh dear...

Labels: Fotos, Friday Cat Blogging

posted by Elayne at 11:33 AM | Permalink
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Grim Anniversary

"A year ago, President Bush, who had a global mandate to pursue the terrorists responsible for 9/11, went after someone else instead." Read the rest from Paul Krugman. And speaking of marking the occasion, I'm pretty sure most of you know about the demonstrations planned for tomorrow. It'll be interesting to see how they're covered (if at all) in the mainstream media.

posted by Elayne at 11:17 AM | Permalink
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Remembering Julie Again

Both Glenn Hauman and Mark Evanier recently linked to Harlan Ellison's eulogy for Julius Schwartz. Yesterday a memorial service was held at DC, where Neil Gaiman read a few words from Alan Moore - that remembrance is now up at Neil's blog.

posted by Elayne at 9:43 AM | Permalink
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Celebrating Women - 19 March 2004

I've been gathering inspiration for these daily WHM posts by typing the word "women" into Google News . As I've observed before, their front page rarely offers pictures of women - today it's Courtney Love in the Entertainment Section and some pregnant woman doing yoga in the Health section (accompanying an article assuring readers that "Male babies whose mothers used the allergy drug Claritin while pregnant are not more likely to have a particular genital birth defect" so even there the subject focuses on the Y chromosome) - so it's almost always necessary to do a search. Today's results are big on what one paper calls "indulging" and "destructive behavior" such as drinking and smoking heavily. I find it hard to believe that excessive consumption is limited to women, so I resented the alarmist tone with which the information is presented, but it basically comes down to the finding that young folks between 16 and 24 drink a lot. Here's the official press release (PDF file) of Living in Britain from the Office of National Statistics. Interestingly, the ONS notes "Young people drink less frequently than older people." So my conclusion, without having read the report itself of course, is that the reportage on it is fluffy and dubious. As usual.

As for smoking, the British Medical Journal will have an article on its site sometime today, according to this article, featuring "new research [that] has found that the effectiveness of nicotine patches seems to be related to the genetic make-up (genotype) in women, but not in men." Essentially, if you're a woman trying to quit smoking and you have a CC genotype, good luck to you; if you've got a CT or TT, you stand a better chance.

As for other indulgences like oil addiction, rampant consumerism and soul-numbing reality shows, goodness knows when we'll see any studies denouncing them.

Related sites which may be of interest (it's hard to find ones that aren't punitive!):

A Breath of Fresh Air!

UPMC Women's Smoking Cessation Project

Circle of Friends

Women's Alcoholism Center

The Women's Addiction Foundation

Action on Women's Addictions - Research & Education (AWARE)

Stepping Ahead

posted by Elayne at 9:38 AM | Permalink
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Silly Site o' the Day

Via Jesse Taylor at Pandagon, more fun with LEGO®, this time in the form of famous social theorists. (Once again, David Oakes, take note!) If I knew who any of these people were I'm sure it would be hilarious. Update: More LEGO® madness, courtesy of Anil Dash - it's the German site LEGO® Goes to Hollywood!

Labels: Silly Sites

posted by Elayne at 9:03 AM | Permalink
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Maintenance Note

I'm currently subscribed via Bloglines to all the weblogs on my blogroll which have RSS feeds. I've put an asterisk next to all the ones which don't (if you're one of them and obtain an RSS feed, please let me know!); eliminated the categories for Stand-Up Comics and Journalists; and separated the longer portions of each section (except the LC one) for easier readability. For some reason, it works nicely if I put an extra space in every 13 names. Changes are most likely still in process, but that's all I wanted to accomplish right now in conjunction with setting up my Bloglines newsreader.

Labels: Maintenance Notes

posted by Elayne at 10:56 PM | Permalink
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Ms. D's Milestone

Happy belated birthday to Ms. D, back from her vacation with ten pithy observations!

Labels: Milestones

posted by Elayne at 7:52 PM | Permalink
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Celebrating Women - 18 March 2004

I'd been meaning to display this earlier during Women's History Month; hope it works:

It's from the Breast Cancer Site, so in case the direct button doesn't work you can go there and click it.

The 4th European Breast Cancer Conference has been going on this week in Hamburg, and today a leading South African cancer doctor, Professor Justus Apffelstaedt, has attacked his country's government for wasting money on "luxuries" such as defence while failing to implement a basic breast screening policy that could prevent many women dying from cancer. My kind of guy, who correctly characterizes "investment in such major war machinery" as a luxury when put ahead of women's basic health needs.

Here are some worthwhile breast cancer informational sites:

Susan Love MD

Phenomenal Women of the Web Breast Cancer Awareness Network (warning, screwy popup that tries to install something on your computer)

Women's Informational Network Against Breast Cancer

Breast Cancer.org

MAMM Magazine

Avon Breast Cancer Crusade

To My Sisters... A Gift for Life

National Breast Cancer Centre (Australia)

Kim, this one's for you, wherever you are...

posted by Elayne at 10:17 AM | Permalink
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Obligatory ~~Canadian~~ Comics Content

It's International Dave Cockrum Day at Tony's Online Tips, and Tony Isabella was kind enough to mention this blog's efforts in helping spread the word about Dave's situation vis a vis his health, the tribute book and auction being handled by Cliff Meth, and the talks with Marvel. You can see my previous posts about Dave, chronologically, here and here and here and here and here and here and here and, finally, the Marvel news last night. Also, Robin informs me that Dave's wife Paty does regular updates here at the NightScrawlers Forum.

Also, via the Comicart Yahoo group (where I first heard about the Marvel thing during last night's chat) comes a link to this NY Times article about novelists who now are writing comics. Good coverage of Michael Chabon, Brad Meltzer and Greg Rucka (I must confess I had no idea Rucka wrote in other venues besides comics!).

Labels: Comics

posted by Elayne at 9:48 AM | Permalink
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Maintenance Note

As I get more into reading my blogroll via Bloglines rather than from my sidebar, I expect said sidebar to undergo some gradual changes. The first thing I've done is eliminated the TTLB-supplied Javascript for the Liberal Coalition and manually coded in those bloggers' names, since a few LC members and contributors still don't have RSS feeds (and therefore can't be on Bloglines yet) and I need to keep track of who they are via asterisks so I don't neglect their entries. (I've also eliminated duplicate entries for LC bloggers.) The second thing that'll probably happen is elimination of the Must View Daily (MVD) section and re-integration of those folks into News+Views, since the reason MVD existed in the first place will have been taken care of by Bloglines. I may or may not integrate Journalists into News+Views as well, as the line between professional journalists with blogs and journalistically-inclined bloggers becomes ever more fuzzy. Over time I expect the blogroll portion of the sidebar to become something more for my readers' convenience than my own, but I'm not counting any unhatched chickens just yet. Update: MVD section reintegrated; Budgie rejoices.

Labels: Maintenance Notes

posted by Elayne at 9:33 AM | Permalink
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Silly Site o' the Day

Big debate on Atrios' blog Eschaton as to whether this site is for real. I'm coming down on the side of those who think truth is far, far stranger than fiction. Also, it's worth considering that just because someone's of an evangelical bent doesn't mean they can't be clever as well.

Labels: Silly Sites

posted by Elayne at 9:25 AM | Permalink
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News Aggregators Explained

Like Laura and Andante, I've also fallen in love with a news aggregator called Bloglines. I wrote yesterday about the confusion that is RSS. I think I have it figured out now. A news aggregator is like a Usenet newsreader, only instead of message threads it reads blogs and lets you know which ones have new entries. I didn't realize this until I started playing around with Bloglines; had someone taken me aside, slapped me upside the head and said "Dummkopf, it's like reading Usenet only with blogs instead," I'd have nodded sagely that much earlier. :) Anyway, you need to be set up with an RSS feed in order for Bloglines to work on your blog, which Laura explained is pretty easy for those of us on Blogger - "if you are using blogspot to blog, setting up a site feed is really pretty simple. Go to your blog settings, click on the Site Feed tab, and set it to Yes." One more feature I never knew existed until I needed it! So for the moment I've only gotten through subscribing to about a third of my blogroll, and am putting an asterisk next to everyone who doesn't yet have an RSS feed, to remind myself that I need to check 'em off my sidebar instead of the newsreader...

posted by Elayne at 9:32 PM | Permalink
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Marvel Settles with Dave Cockrum

Great news! From the Silver Bullet site: "Marvel has stepped in to help Dave Cockrum, and it is clear that he and his family are satisfied with Marvel's actions, and appreciate its assistance in this matter. While the terms are confidential, Marvel is pleased that it could help Dave and his family, and wish him a speedy recovery and the very best." That's from Eli Bard, Senior Litigation Attorney, Marvel Enterprises Inc. Here's the page that goes into more detail. Cliff Meth, feel free to elaborate even further in the comments section if you so desire!

posted by Elayne at 8:53 PM | Permalink
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"Scene from Hell"

This evening in Baghdad, a powerful explosion, apparently from a car bomb, went off around the 5-story Mount (Jabal) Lebanon Hotel, killing 28 people (at last count) and wounding at least 41. A huge crater around 20 feet across and 10 feet deep was blown out of the road outside the hotel (home-away-from-home to a lot of foreigners), and a nearby apartment building were also severely damaged. The White House reaction? Pretty much a shrug.

posted by Elayne at 2:37 PM | Permalink
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Spread the Meme

Dave Johnson lives up to his blog's name Seeing the Forest by reminding us, of the radical rightists now in power, that They Just Lie. I agree with him that this cannot be repeated enough times in enough ways.

posted by Elayne at 1:56 PM | Permalink
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Doctor, I Have These Dreams of Flying...

Danny Fingeroth has posted on the Jewish Comics Yahoo group about his new book, SUPERMAN ON THE COUCH: What Superheroes Really Tell Us about Ourselves and Our Society, and the publication party being held at MoCCA next Thursday, March 25. It's from 6-8 PM and there's no admission price listed so I'm guessing it's probably gratis. From what Danny excerpted in his post, the book's gotten pretty good reviews from the Library Journal and Publisher's Weekly so far.

posted by Elayne at 10:07 AM | Permalink
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Silly Site o' the Day

Via Len Cleavelin, a handy-dandy Online Palm Reader!

Labels: Silly Sites

posted by Elayne at 9:24 AM | Permalink
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Celebrating Women - 17 March 2004

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Today I thought I'd celebrate Irish women, with some ancient Irish women in mythology and early history, a nice women's studies/Irish studies bibliography, the website for last year's Women in Irish Society Project exhibition at NUI Cork (part of their Irish Women's Movement Project), a tip o' the hat to Irish women writers, and a salute to Women on Waves and their ongoing struggle for freedom of choice in a land where women have to travel out of the country to have abortions. Update: Via Melanie Mattson, according to a historian St. Pat himself apparently thought very highly of women.

posted by Elayne at 9:11 AM | Permalink
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Another New Life!

Congratulations to my buddy Ann Lewis and her husband Joe on the birth of Raymond Allen Lewis, born on 03/15/04 @ 9:05 PM, 6 bls 9 oz. Says Joe, "Mom and baby are fine. Dad did not pass out." I can hardly wait to visit!!

Labels: Friends

posted by Elayne at 7:29 PM | Permalink
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Today's Must-Reading

Excerpts from Craig Unger's House of Bush, House of Saud on Salon.

posted by Elayne at 3:38 PM | Permalink
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Dave Cockrum Moves Again

Back into extended care (the step before being sent home). Here's Mercy Van Vlack's latest update:

Ken Gale, Arthur Lewandowski, and I went to visit Dave Cockrum at the V.A. hospital Sunday. He was having trouble with his oxygen count, so they whisked him back into the horsepital last week, into another room. When Arthur and I got up to the room we immediately saw him sitting up and eating pizza Ken had brought. There was a mix-up getting the pizza, (Fumble in the Bronx!) so Ken went ahead and Arthur and I followed and said, "There you are!" Dave hadn't had a slice of pizza since last year and missed it.

Dave was chipper and cheerful and we had a great chat about Legions old and new. I brought a page of the Legionnaires stickers and we played; "Who the $#%@ is that?!" He got most of them, and really likes Sneckies's exotic new reptile look in the current comics (he has had a lot of reptiles as pets). Movie music, Monty Python, astronomy, old monster movies, Warner cartoons, Aurora models all grist for a comics community conversation. The language in the room got a little blue, after all, these guys were in the armed forces, and like to cuss, but one of Dave's roomies told the other roomie to cool it: "There's company!" Funny guyz.

The doctors keep threatening to send Dave home: "As soon as…." He's deemed fit enuff, really. Right now they're worried he's not getting enough oxygen in his blood, that his lungs aren't getting enough air. But on March 15, 1004, they moved him BACK to the Extended Care Nursing Home, and when he gets better he can go home. There's also talk about moving him to a South Carolina horsepital so as to be nearer his family and macaws, but only if his condition gets better. He'll get a lot more physical and occupational therapy in the extended care section. His blood oxygen has been normal today, but Dave feels the same whether it's normal or not, so he has to be monitored carefully.

The guy in the next bed was complaining that "visiting hours are over!!"… at 7:45 but he was quiet at 8:30 when we left Dave to get some rest.

Driving Directions: Arthur was kind enuff to drive us up to da Bronx for a visit with Dave, and the route we took was a bit impeded by the Third Ave. bridge out coming back to Manhattan, but we got there no problem (Fordham Rd. exit of the Deegan). Busy Sunday night traffic not too bad. Dave has gotten used to Diet Ginger Ale at the hospital and asked that people bring that instead of Diet Coke. I wish more folks would go visit him in the Extended Care Nursing Home. I hope they don’t put him back in with the screaming man. I hope he gets to go home soon.

As it turns out, Dave ended up in the same room he was in before, but the "screamer" is in intensive care. The other roomie there, whom Dave liked talking with so much, was sent home. Dave is pretty friendly and makes friends easily so I'm sure he'll get to know his new roomies.

He would really appreciate visits, as that helps the nurses give better care and gives Dave a break from the monotony of the Horsepital and the television. Soon he may be going to South Carolina and it's harder to get there on the NYC subway, so all you locals, go visit him! Some of the great artists out there need to know they are still cared about! We took the 4 train uptown to Kingsbridge Road, walked West past the armory several blocks, and entered at the left at the parking lot on Webb Ave., and he's in the second building wing on the left beyond the main entrance. Easier to get in without all the airport detectors that the main horseportal has.

Dave Cockrum
Extended Care Nursing Home, NA1A
Bronx Veteran Affairs Medical Center
Floor 1A, Room 10D
130 W. Kingsbridge Road
Bronx, NY 10468

Dave at hospital - 1-718-741-4303 Visiting hours are 10 AM – 8 PM

I hope our apartment hunting is over soon so I can go back and visit Dave. He's really an amazing guy.

posted by Elayne at 1:43 PM | Permalink
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Laura's Challenge

Can you recommend for Laura Gjovaag's aunt five comic books or graphic novels that would dovetail with her reading preferences of historical fiction, sf and spy novels, but be pretty G or PG-rated (i.e., nothing that would get it an R-rating if it were a movie, such as excessive violence or harsh language or nudity)? I cheated, of course, by consulting the Sequential Tart recommended reading lists organized by genre, and here are my five:

Dignifying Science (fact-based historical fiction)

Astounding Space Thrills (science fiction adventure)

Xeno's Arrow (also science fiction adventure)

Terminal City (antique futurism; here's the Amazon link)

Tales of the Cherokee (Indian mythology)
Hope that helps, Laura!

posted by Elayne at 12:41 PM | Permalink
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Remembering Rachel

Killed by a bulldozer driven by an Israeli soldier, a year ago today, while attempting to prevent a home from being demolished. Here's her memorial site. Here are her cousin's thoughts.

posted by Elayne at 10:51 AM | Permalink
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"But three million voters arose essentially from disenchanted abstentionists to nail them. And almost all of these voters supported the Socialist Party, the main opposition group that had spoken openly against the Iraq war and was also denouncing the media manipulation."

From a letter written to Tom Tomorrow about the Spanish elections. I wish more progressive bloggers would reject the whole "Al Qaeda won" scenario being pumped so hard by the right-wing media. When the party controlling your government takes you to war against the express objection of the majority of your population, and then further insults your intelligence by calling your demonstrations against war and terrorism "anti-democratic" - well, to me voting that party out of power doesn't say "terrorists and warmongers have won," it says to me very clearly that they've lost. And that's important to remember - terrorists and warmongers are two sides of the same coin. When White House Communications Director (and Karl Rove buddy) Dan Bartlett is interviewed on the Today Show and says, straight-faced, that the world and the country are safer then in the next sentence talks about stepped-up Al Qaeda activity, and he's not even questioned about the discrepancy between his two consecutive statements, it's high time to realize Americans are facing the same situation as Spaniards - an administration that has, since it took office and in complicity with a bended-knee media, belittled and marginalized and mocked and ignored any opposition while lying its way into disaster (both foreign and domestic). And if (when) this administration is defeated in November, it will be no more a matter of "terrorists winning" than the Partido Popular's defeat in Spain was - it will be a matter of ¡Basta, Bastardos! here as well.

P.S. Is it just me (and Robin), or did anyone else feel that the Steven Colbert segment on last night's Daily Show was a bit inappropriate, joking about terrorists when the bodies in Spain haven't even been buried yet? Particularly when very much the opposite happened right after 9-11, there was an unspoken moratorium for at least a month as I recall...

posted by Elayne at 10:19 AM | Permalink
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Celebrating Women - 16 March 2004

Earlier today in Geneva, during the 60th Session of the UN Commission on Human Rights, a group of 24 female politicians has adopted a 3-page joint declaration calling for better protection of the estimated one billion women who suffer from some form of violent or sexual abuse. The initiative was launched by the Swiss foreign minister, Micheline Calmy-Rey. I can't find a copy of the declaration online yet (only the report of the Secretary General in PDF form), but presumably it'll be available here eventually.

posted by Elayne at 9:58 AM | Permalink
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Too Much Information?

Happy Freedom of Information Day! In honor of FOI Day, I'm trying something new. The folks at the Liberal Coalition, mostly the farmer, have been trying to get me to attach a working RSS feed to my blog since I've been informed that Blogmatrix is no more (so I've deleted those buttons from my sidebar), but I'm not even sure what RSS means or how news aggregators work. It all appears to be something that people use if they don't want to scroll down their blogroll to see who's been posting new stuff. Anyway, the farmer said I should use WCC/VCCS, so I've followed their instructions correctly as near as I can tell, and that's what the little "XML" button is on the sidebar underneath all my site meters. Apparently the feed updates every hour or so. So those of you who understand and use news aggregators, enjoy. Now, if only someone would tell me what my RSS URL is so that I could add it to my Feedster preferences (speaking of which, it'd be nice to figure out what all that Feedster HTML code means; help, Betsy!).

posted by Elayne at 9:42 AM | Permalink
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Silly Site o' the Day

What the heck, it's been on Kevin Raybould's page and Rick's Cafe Americain, I might as well post it here too. Been around awhile, an oldie but a goodie - here for your viewing and listening "pleasure" is the famed Leonard Nimoy Sings Bilbo Baggins clip. Now if only they still had the video of Shatner singing "Lucy in the Sky" or "Mr. Tambourine Man" - well, there yer talkin'. Oh, and of course I don't subject anyone to this sort of thing without also offering the cure.

Labels: Silly Sites

posted by Elayne at 7:25 AM | Permalink
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Silly Site o' the Day

Via Carolyn "In the City" Ibis, can you Spot the Hoaxes?

Labels: Silly Sites

posted by Elayne at 7:31 PM | Permalink
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Celebrating Women - 15 March 2004

Just announced: a women's marathon will be held in San Francisco on October 24. Here's a list of some women's sports organizations. There's even a WSO in Iran. Here's a Canadian look at the history of women's sports; an American look pre-Title IX and since that title's enactment.

posted by Elayne at 9:53 AM | Permalink
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A Thousand Words

After September 11, a number of fundraising and tribute books were released by prominent cartoonists, including Marvel's HEROES, the DC/Dark Horse/Image joint publication, WW3 Illustrated's special issue, and 9-11 Emergency Relief. There were a number of exhibits as well. Art has always been a good medium for catharsis and collective grief, so as you might expect the tragedy in Madrid is no different. Via Jesus Antonio Hernandez on the Comicart list, a couple galleries of 3-11 memorial artwork from Spanish artists and artists from around the world.

posted by Elayne at 9:32 AM | Permalink
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Socialists Win in Spain

With 90% of the vote in, it looks like the "Socialist Workers Party is on track to win 164 seats in the country's 350-seat parliament, just shy of an absolute majority. The ruling conservative Popular Party is tipped to win 148 seats. The Socialists so far have won 43.01 percent of the total vote, ending eight years of conservative rule."

posted by Elayne at 7:14 PM | Permalink
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Boston Accent Not Included

Via Bill Connolly, a very nice speech from earlier in the month by Teddy Kennedy, given at CUNY's Center for the Humanities' "Re-imagining the Welfare State" Conference.

posted by Elayne at 6:01 PM | Permalink
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Celebrating Women - 14 March 2004

Sorry to hear about the financial troubles of the NAC up Canada-way. They have a history to be proud of, but if they haven't even updated their website in over two years I think that might be a good indication of their current effectiveness. I don't blame the IFUW for their skepticism. I've seen a number of short-lived feminist organizations come and go, and to me longevity isn't nearly as important as what one accomplishes during one's days of strength. If an organization can change just one woman's life (or even a man's life) for the better, that's a good thing.

posted by Elayne at 4:49 PM | Permalink
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But It's Sunday!

This never would have happened in the old days. (I'd have known about it sooner if I'd gotten to August Pollak's blog, but I discovered the news independently thanks to my husband.)

posted by Elayne at 4:43 PM | Permalink
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Milestones That Happen While Falling Behind in Blogroll Reading, Part Umpteen

Congratulations to Lane and Tina on the arrival of the Wee Tomato, Maxwell James!

posted by Elayne at 9:54 AM | Permalink
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Covering One's Bases

Via CJ Finis, the Guardian offers readers a glimpse from a possible near-future.

posted by Elayne at 8:30 AM | Permalink
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Silly Site o' the Day

As I say below, it's Signspotting, via upyernoz.

Labels: Silly Sites

posted by Elayne at 12:33 AM | Permalink
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Liberal Coalition Blogaround

Even though the New Blog Showcase is no more, some alliances remain, TLC among them. I haven't done one of these in awhile, so I'm way overdue. I've started this after just finishing our apartment-hunting visits for the day (good job we'll be away from the park across the street before the cicadas arrive - thanks for the heads-up, Susie!) and my head cold's getting worse so it might be slow going.

Over at Corrente, Lambert links to the Campaign Desk interview with Helen Thomas. I don't seem to have the same problem with CJR's blog that others have expressed, but then I'm about three issues behind in reading the magazine. And keep scrolling down for Lambert's much-appreciated "Just Asking" questions.

N. Todd Pritsky decided to change his blog's name from Dohiyi Mir to The N. Todd Times in solidarity with Robert Cox, accused by the NY Times of copyright theft. I don't know enough to comment on the legality of the sitch, but to me it actually looks like a Times page more than it looks like a parody of a Times page. As my husband says, "there's a reason they change it to 'Super-Duper Man'." Here's an article about it from the NY Daily News.

Steve Gilliard's back home and asking, Who's running the Bush campaign? He also weighs in on one of my favorite subjects, the current culture wars.

T. Rex has been doing lots of surveys of his National Government class. Geez, I don't remember taking too many surveys in class when I went to college...

Trish Wilson is justifiably incensed over missing information in headlines regarding a mass murderer and his victims. Unlike these newspapers, whose job should be to inform rather than infer, I'm deliberately being vague here so as not to spoil the impact of her post.

Guy Hall at Rook's Rant reviews Kerry's "Bush is misleading America" ad and wonders if GE is serious about solar power.

Eryk Salvaggio at And Then... balks a bit at Andrew Northrup's Bush ad parody which I linked to yesterday. I thought the last picture was a bit much as well, but I also thought it was supposed to be, and gave the entire parody an intense impact.

Speedkill's in Troy, MT. Where they're into weather. In a big way. I mean, really into it. Not a lot for non-snowmobilers to do, I guess.

I know Charles2 is headed to the Great White North, but I have no idea where Jesse's going. Maybe to Troy, MT? No wait, what about Kenya?

Mustang Bobby (whose frequent blogarounds put the rest of us to shame) loves him his Salon. I find I'm going to their site a lot more often than I used to as well.

Jude Camwell at Iddybud ponders the message of the umbrellas of Madrid.

Andante at Collective Sigh suggests that Congress ask the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency some basic and sensible questions culled from Consumer Highlights magazine.

Over at Rick's Cafe Americain, Signor Ferrari has a weird experience with New York basketball fans. Geez, SF, I work a block away from Madison Square Garden, I coulda predicted all that. :)

Clonecone at It's Craptastic! has the "Are You Better Off Now Than Four Years Ago?" graphs from BuzzFlash, all in one handy chart, as well as news on Education Secretary Rod Paige's latest hissy fit.

Alex Greenwood and SoonerThought appeal for support on behalf of Kalyn Free of Oklahoma, who has endorsements so far from the likes of Rep. Patrick Kennedy and 17 labor unions. There's also a remembrance of OK attorney Fern Holland, killed in Iraq whilst investigation human rights violations.

John McKay at archy suggests a Kerry-McCain ticket just to see what it'd do to Karl Rove.

Rivka at Respectful of Otters tears Lauren Slater a new one.

Echidne celebrates the New John Kerry, and examines the record of George and the Girls in her latest Rara Avis installment.

Upyernoz at Rubber Hose is seeing signs. By the time I finally post this blogaround, it'll be Sunday and Signspotting will qualify for my Silly Site o' the Day.

Speaking of which, Amy did a Blogroll of Epic Proportion crossword puzzle and this blog was like the first answer I clicked on (clue: Source of Silliness). Way cool, I made a puzzle answer! Amy also discovers GAMPAC.

Peter at Kick the Leftist brings us warnings from rural Germany that the US shouldn't oughta mess with bits of the moon they bought from Dennis Hope.

Keith Kisser at The Invisible Library is as taken as I am with TBoggs' weekly look at America's Worst Mother™. Hey Keith, TBogg led me to SV's page, World O' Crap, where she supplements the skewering.

Edwardpig cites Barney Frank and the article the Congressman's just written about How A Bad Bill Becomes a Law in "what the legislative process has become under the Bush administration and the Republicans in Congress." Schoolhouse Rock it ain't. He also does a nice LC blogaround! Yep, it's Sunday already and I'm still not finished. :)

Speaking of Sunday, Mercury X23 notes that Jesus is now on the air! You can even send him Holy E-Mail!

I love Wanda's new Words on a Page banner picture.

Yikes, Chris Brown did a baby blogaround too; can this mother be far behind? And what about that water bottle dropped on Mars? For that thought I'll even forgive the unintentional fatphobia in his second paragraph...

Bryant Gries at Make Me A Commentator! has an iron will to actually listen to that much Rush and report back to his readers. And an LC blogaround! Good grief, I'm getting there, I'm getting there...

HL Victoria New World Blogger seems to have found the stats to back up Ezra Klein's feeling that the percentage of female to male political bloggers is remarkably low. But as we've been discussing on the LC mailing list, a lot of this might be semantics - am I a political blogger? a comics blogger? a New York blogger? a Silly Site blogger? or all those things and whatever else happens to catch my interest at any time? Is it perhaps the trend of women's blogs making the personal political and men's blogs doing the opposite? Or was that too pithy an observation since it's now 12:30 AM?

Woo-hoo, made it to the bottom of my LC blogroll - and a Feak Blogging picture to boot, up on bloggg, as well as a lovely tip of the hat to Granny D.

Lots of good LC readin' for ya there! And don't forget to check out the list of contributor blogs over at the LC blog sidebar! G'night all...

Labels: Liberal Coalition

posted by Elayne at 12:30 AM | Permalink
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Melanie's Friends

Melanie Mattson really ought to be on more blogrolls. The last two days she's signed off Just a Bump in the Beltway with a couple terrific links - on Thursday she linked to Le Prêtre Noir, the blog of Episcopal priest Father Bojangles, specifically his musings on the divine call for humanity to Be Fruitful and Multiply; and yesterday she excerpted from a Guardian piece on Garrison Keillor, with whom she has more than a passing acquaintance. What I like best about Melanie's contacts and friends and, I presume, her philosophy is the idea that one can be driven by deep spirituality to want to right the wrongs in the world without lashing out at the radical-rightists who seem to have stolen the religious spotlight whilst twisting the edicts they say they espouse from "love thy neighbor" to "God is on our side and our side only." Update: Another of Melanie's friends, Allen of The Right Christians, tells the story of a Right Jew.

posted by Elayne at 3:19 PM | Permalink
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Silly Site o' the Day

Robin's been telling me about a name currently in the news, Max Clifford, who will not be representing alleged US torture victim Tareq Dergoul, one of the four freed Brits formerly held at Gitmo. When I Googled on the name for this "PR guru" who is apparently very well known in the UK, I came upon this satiric article about him in a paper called The Spoof, which more than earns the parody page Silly Site honors and a place in my sidebar.

Labels: Silly Sites

posted by Elayne at 9:10 AM | Permalink
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Celebrating Women - 12 March 2004

So yesterday the Bubble Boy in Chief was crowing about "his record in advancing human rights for women, highlighting the administration's policies in Iraq and Afghanistan." (And as Maru notes, one of the Libyan "women" he praised isn't even female!) And I thought, well, that's a unique perspective I haven't seen anyone else claim, particularly not women in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here are some first-hand sites you might want to visit:
RAWA (the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) and their statement on International Women's Day
Afghan Women's Mission
Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan
Feminist Majority Foundation's Campaign for Afghan Women and Girls
Women for a Free Iraq
The Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq
Amnesty International report on domestic violence in Iraq
Act Together: Women's Action for Iraq
The Nation: Women Under Siege
Lastly, a couple blogs:
Back to Iraq (Chris Albritton) - Iraqi women protest changing family laws
And of course, Riverbend

posted by Elayne at 8:58 AM | Permalink
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Cliff Jumping

I've previously mentioned the Dave Cockrum tribute book that Cliff Meth's putting together. Cliff also has a regular column at the Silver Bullet site, and this week he probably seals his doom in terms of ever having a cordial relationship again with another comics great, Barry Windsor-Smith. I refrain from editorial comment of my own in the hopes that Aardwolf may someday publish Megillat Vashti if I ever get around to writing it... Update (3/18): Apparently "this story now has a new ending" - scroll down this page to read what it is (essentially, that BWS will be a part of the tribute book after all).

posted by Elayne at 9:55 PM | Permalink
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Silly Site o' the Day

Only have a few minutes during a pledge break between segments of The Funny Ladies of British Comedy, so I wanted to point to a site, via Andrew Northrup at The Poor Man, where you can Make Your Own Bush Speech. Andrew, of course, has been busy storyboarding his own Bush ad, which has received some very powerful reaction.

Labels: Silly Sites

posted by Elayne at 9:08 PM | Permalink
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Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)

Datsa was feeling poorly again this week, limping about gingerly and throwing up two days straight and having litter box trouble and a sore bum again. Here he is before we took him to the vet (posted to my Buzznet homepage):

The vet broke up a bit of the large dried stool via external manipulation, administered KY Jelly you-don't-want-to-know-where, and he seems active again now (um, that would be Datsa, not the vet), even having done a bit in the litter box. We did learn a couple positive things - that we can probably skip giving him the medicine if we go away for a day, and that we shouldn't be administering the Cisapride (pill) and Lactulose ("jollop") simultaneously - so it was worth the $35 office visit. Besides, I charged it to Robin's card. :)

Labels: Fotos, Friday Cat Blogging

posted by Elayne at 7:37 PM | Permalink
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Shadowy Network

International opinion still appears to be split as to whether the "Madrid Massacre" was perpetrated by ETA (a militant Basque separatist group) or Abu Hafs al-Masri (an Al Qaeda brigade). ETA has disavowed and condemned the bombings, while Al Qaeda has released a statement taking credit not only for them but for things like last summer's US blackout. Some folks in the US intelligence services and the EU police agency note that the atrocity bore little or no resemblance to previous ETA operations, while it does fit the pattern of past Al Qaeda mass murders, and we already know they're inordinately fond of the number 11. In short, I think the only thing on which most thinking folks can agree is that the secondary tragedy in all this is that whoever did it actually feels justified, rather than understanding that the horrific violence only makes the situation worse for them and the non-combatants they've butchered (and does nothing to soften the resolve of their enemies).

posted by Elayne at 1:34 PM | Permalink
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"Contemptkin"

That's the word coined by a commenter to this Atrios entry regarding Bush's Long Island speech yesterday at U.S.A. Industries in Bay Shore, "a small auto parts factory whose owner has received tax breaks from the Republican-run state and town governments, and who employs large numbers of non-English speaking immigrants happy to work for $6 to $9 an hour with few benefits." Turns out he got a standing-o from audience members who had no idea what he was saying. Mind you, not that those of us for whom English is our first language can decipher what he's actually saying half the time... Update: Jesse Taylor's all over this too.

posted by Elayne at 10:48 AM | Permalink
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"Top Six" Mutual Admiration Society

[Second attempt at posting; Blogger's edit/publish function is wonky this morning...]

Further proof of the incestuousness (is that a word, or will Mark Kleiman come after me?) of the blogosphere, as Tom Tomorrow tips his hat to Wil Wheaton, in response to Wil complimenting This Modern World as a writing inspiration. Congratulations to both gentlemen, by the way, on the milestones mentioned in those two entries - Wil on the imminent publication of his new book, and Dan on his new house. I'm not sure which makes me more jealous. Probably the house, as I'm in a relocation mindset. Hey Dan, if it's a 2-family, are you looking for any tenants? :)

posted by Elayne at 10:14 AM | Permalink
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Celebrating Women - 12 March 2004

Women's history, like history in general, isn't just a past-tense thing - it's always in the making. Hu Shixiang, deputy chief commander of China's manned space program, has announced that women will be recruited as potential taikonauts for space voyages starting next year, with candidates chosen from mainland China as well as from Hong Kong and Macau. I admit to a bit of skepticism regarding Hu's biologically deterministic view ("He said the meticulosity innate to women is helpful for smooth progress of space-based experiments") but I suppose one can't expect progress overnight regarding those who hold up half the sky (although I'd settle for not too much backsliding since that saying first became popular).

posted by Elayne at 8:50 AM | Permalink
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Creepy Racist Supersition of the Month

Susie Madrak reports on one more example of George W. Bush's unmitigated arrogance and non-existence sense of appropriateness: "Before speaking to a March 3rd Los Angeles audience at the White House Conference on Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, Mr Bush was introduced by an African-American male, whose head Mr Bush proceeded to rub while grinning and smirking." I don't tend to keep track of racist stupidity, there's way too much of it in the world, but I know I've heard of this skeevy custom in passing (something about rubbing the head of a black man bringing you luck). But specifically, where else has this abhorrent practice surfaced during Bush's presidency? Oh yeah, a little over a year ago Joshua Micah Marshall reported that Ohio Senate President Doug White did the same thing. Other examples (particularly among ignorami) must abound online, but I can't find them at the moment as it's a little tricky to Google on words like "head rubbing luck" and not get a bunch of porn sites, and I fear my MSN Search tracking referrals are scary enough as is.

posted by Elayne at 5:00 PM | Permalink
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"Listen to us, even if we don't talk exactly the same language that you do."

Yet another reason why I adore Julia H.

posted by Elayne at 3:48 PM | Permalink
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Morning Schleppage

This would be the morning I had to run errands for my boss, but I learned some cool things:

There's a nifty piece of abstract art in the tunnel linking the 42nd Street shuttle to the 4,5,6,7 trains underneath Grand Central Terminal. It's atop the entrance to the 4,5,6,7 area, and has those four numbers surrounded by lots of nifty gold and silver decorations featuring circles and wires and other shapes presumably designed to evoke images of trains. Next time you're in the tunnel, look up before you get to the Lexington Avenue area.

Roger Price has a doppelganger who works as an orderly at Lenox Hill Hospital. Just thought I'd mention it.

St. Peter's Church cannot be for real. Is this building actually a house of worship? Far out. You wacky Lutherans.

There's a second "Tandoori Row" (to supplement the original Little India on 6th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenues) located on Lexington Avenue between 27th and 28th Streets. Just about every building is an Indian restaurant. Half of them are boarded up. I shouldn't wonder.

On the Eighth Avenue (A,C,E) subway platform at 14th Street, I had my first encounter with the whimsical work of Tom Otterness, whose bronze sculptures are all over the place. Most people seem to like the alligator and the penny-sweepers, but my favorite was a lobster-creature with a moneybag for a head (and cartoon-shoes) clutching three cartoony-looking children in its claws; alas, I can't find a picture of it anywhere online. I found this presentation way cooler than the "eyes that follow you" Oculus exhibit in the Park Place station that Robin and I encountered yesterday. Once I can afford the tiny digicam I saw in J&R yesterday that I can carry with me all the time, I'm going to start documenting more public art in NYC and posting it to my Buzznet photoblog; it seems to have become something of a passion lately. (Incidentally, Otterness has done lots of cool public art but, contrary to rumor, other folks did the bird sculptures in the Canal Street Station uptown platform of the A train.)

posted by Elayne at 1:41 PM | Permalink
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Silly Site o' the Day

One of many from Carolyn "In the City" Ibis - create your own online Lite-Brite pictures!

[Insomnia still sucks.]

Labels: Silly Sites

posted by Elayne at 4:57 AM | Permalink
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Celebrating Women - 11 March 2004

The National Council of Women's Organizations "is a nonpartisan, nonprofit umbrella organization of almost 200 groups that collectively represent over ten million women across the United States. The only national coalition of its kind, NCWO has over twenty years’ experience uniting American women’s groups." Very spiffy website.

Speaking of organization, Jesse Taylor reports more or less on The Women's Museum and their "national scholarship program to identify the Total Women of Tomorrow and a collectible card series featuring the Total Women of Today and Yesterday." Jesse doesn't think girls would be interested in trading cards, with which I disagree (but then I collect interesting trading cards), but of course that's not the point of the scholarship program. The program's main thrust, near as I can tell, is to sell ARRID® products, since every trading card has the corporate name embarrassingly emblazoned upon it. Also, one of the Total Women of Today selected in 2004 is Condi? As apparently-not-interested-in-trading-cards girls might say, "eww?"

[Insomnia sucks.]

posted by Elayne at 4:53 AM | Permalink
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Celebrating Women - 10 March 2004

I'm in an immigration mindset for obvious reasons (see post below) so here are some sites that deal with women and immigration, from the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Family Violence Prevention Fund and LifeSpan. For more reading about women immigrants in the US, a good place to start might be Eleanore Hofstetter's bibliography of women immigrants from 1945 to the present.

posted by Elayne at 4:31 PM | Permalink
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From Temporary to Conditional to Permanent

Blogging late today because Robin and I had our final appointment this morning with the ~~INS~~ USCIS. We'd had one almost four years ago to change Rob's status from "temporary permanent resident" (wrap your brain around that one!) to "conditional permanent resident" and were told we were fine, we'd no longer have to come in, our marriage was genuine, he'd get his conditional green card in the mail, etc. Well, the card never came due to address mixups on their part, and I guess 9-11 changed the way they did other things, 'cause there we were again. Amazingly, it took under an hour. The woman who interviewed us was very nice, saw right off we were legit, removed Rob's conditional status and said the problem had been that we don't have a joint savings account. Which we would certainly have opened when we got married had anyone at the agency told us that it might be a good idea (we keep our finances separate due to Robin being self-employed), but nobody had said anything. Anyway, with any luck Robin will receive his permanent green card before we relocate (she's sending everything out to the Vermont Service Center for processing tonight and said it officially takes 6-9 months but in actuality it should only be a matter of weeks) and before he has to get his passport renewed in May, as that has to be sent here so goodness knows how long it'll take to process. Once all his actual IDs are OK again, we'll finally be free to travel out of the country. Bristol in '05? Mayhap Toronto again someday? Could be.

Afterwards we hung out at J&R for a couple hours, where I bought this for Robin, then we paid our respects at the former site of the World Trade Center. It was the first time I'd ventured there since 9-11, and as we passed Trinity Church I found myself sobbing already. Rather than gawking at the scene from one of the viewing areas, we opted to scope it from the vantage point of the new PATH station, and that was plenty close enough for me. I was still sobbing as we left, sobbing and cursing the Bush campaign ads. They just have no friggin' idea what seeing those pictures still does to many New Yorkers.

We hopped the subway up to Midtown (where Rob noticed his initials on a poster of their mascot, "Midtown Man," which he'd colored over John Cassaday's pencils and inks) and Red Lobster for a fairly decadent lunch. Got back about a half hour ago, going out again in a couple of hours to look at an apartment for rent, so I think I'll try to catch up on some reading now...

posted by Elayne at 4:11 PM | Permalink
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Silly Site o' the Day

From POE News, via my Firesign chat buddy Ken DeBusk, it's the Rumsfeld Fighting Technique! Another weird example of those Bushies' body language.

Which reminds me, a couple weeks ago one of the CREEP guys was being interviewed on a morning news show (don't recall who) and he started enumerating something, I can't remember what. And you know how most of us would count to three like this little animation on the right, correct? (I know, most of us have that extra pinky but you know what I'm trying to illustrate here.)

Well, this guy counted off 1, 2, 3 in the following manner:

And Robin said, "what the hell was that, why was he counting so strangely?" And I pointed out to him that the body language may have looked very clumsy but subliminally the message was "thumbs up, victory, okay." Like I say, you gotta watch these guys, they're tricky.

Labels: Silly Sites

posted by Elayne at 3:30 PM | Permalink
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CrossGen Update

Robin received an e-mail today from Jennifer Phelan Hernandez, Senior Vice President & General Counsel of CrossGen Comics, regarding their freelancer non-payment situation. I've blogged about this previously (in order) here and here and here and here and here and here. Given the standard confidentiality notice at the bottom of the e-mail I'm paraphrasing rather than quoting, but the gist of it is that they're contacting freelancers about their plans to pay the owed monies, asking for a return e-mail confirmation of amounts owed to make sure their records are complete and accurate. So if any freelancers are owed monies and have not received this e-mail, you need to contact Jennifer at CrossGen before the end of this month. All correspondence regarding payment should be addressed only to Jennifer. Stay tuned for further developments.

Labels: Comics

posted by Elayne at 7:41 PM | Permalink
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Doctor Bronner's Evil Twin

Y'all know about Dr. Bronner and his Magic Soaps, don't you? Many's the time I've exclaimed, out of the blue, "Dilute! Dulite! OK!" (warning, that one's a PDF). Well, just before leaving on his latest "mission," General J.C. Christian found a website called Liberty to the Captives — "This website is for the Christian who is obeying God's call to come out of the falling away church and become an overcomer who will keep Jesus' works until the end. This is the remnant church—the church that is standing in the evil day. Obeying God in this commission includes mentioning names and exposing the tactics of those who are fueling the falling away." — which features Miracle II Soap, containing (among other things) Eloptic Energized Stablized Oxygenated Water! By golly, I'm not sure what these products do but I do wonder what would happen if you were to combine them with Dr. B's stuff...

posted by Elayne at 2:35 PM | Permalink
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Seasonal Shenanigans

Mark Evanier presents a fascinating and chilling scenario outlining an economic version of a possible October surprise. I totally wouldn't put it past some of these folks...

posted by Elayne at 10:48 AM | Permalink
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Celebrating Women - 9 March 2004

It's self-proctology day - hooray for us! Please check out Ezra Klein's Where Have All the Good Women Gone? query at Pandagon, "about the shocking lack of liberal female bloggers," and all the responses to his entry that assure him we're really not shockingly lacking at all. If you don't see your name, or the name of a liberal female blogger, on the thread already, feel free to join in and add some more, I'd like to shore up my "Blogs in Waiting" bookmarks a bit. The Campaign Desk notes there's only one female-run blog in TTLB's top 20, but I see two (Ana Marie Cox and Jeralyn Merritt), and that's not even counting all the female guest bloggers Atrios has used. (Don't look at me, I'm #463 at present...) Considering that political blogging may be more of a male thing (and cultural/personal blogging perhaps more of a female thing), I think a 10% representation at the top tier is pretty good. Update: Much thanks and big sloppy wet kisses to Kevin Hayden and Christine Cupaiuolo for their lovely plugs, as well as to Jude Camwell, who mentions me and a whole lot of other female bloggers both on Iddybud and her Syracuse blog The Rational Liberal.

posted by Elayne at 9:50 AM | Permalink
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Silly Site o' the Day

You know, those Yeti-penguin-baseball sites I've mentioned in the past don't tend to last very long; none of the links I had seem to be working any more. But Trish Wilson found a new version, possibly inspired by the very bloody Passion of the Christ movie. Warning, it's extremely sick, I'm not kidding.

Labels: Silly Sites

posted by Elayne at 7:20 AM | Permalink
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"Why doesn't he use his superpowers to save himself?"

Ordinarily I don't praise wholesale copyright theft, but kudos to blogger mjxm for retyping the entire Steve Martin "Studio Script Notes on The Passion" piece from the back page of the March 8 New Yorker, as that magazine does not offer said piece online at any price and I'm not about to buy a hard copy of the mag just to read one piece, so I'm calling this one "fair use." :)

posted by Elayne at 3:36 PM | Permalink
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Silly Site o' the Day

There's a fun quiz on the right-hand sidebar of Monitor Duty (listed on my sidebar under "Kultcha"), to see if you can identify "48 Pixel Heroines" by their highly pixellated costumes alone. I don't know if it's reassuring or sad that "clothes make the woman" (i.e., female body types in comics are so identically-drawn that the only way you can tell them apart is their brightly-colored costumes)...

Labels: Silly Sites

posted by Elayne at 9:43 AM | Permalink
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Celebrating Women - 8 March 2004

Today is International Women's Day! Here are a few of the many IWD events taking place around the world today:

United Nations

UNESCO

UNIFEM

International Labour Organization

Canada

Australia

New Zealand

United Kingdom

Burundi

Women's Aid Organisation (Malaysia)

Phoenix, AZ

Berkeley, CA (KPFA/Pacifica)

NYC (CDC, Women Watch)

Washington, D.C. (Code Pink)
Really, too many to keep listing. Lots of union-led IWD events as well, particularly in England and Canada. Update: Around the blogosphere, bean celebrates as well, as does Echidne.

posted by Elayne at 9:39 AM | Permalink
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Celebrating Women - 7 March 2004

A quick perusal of Google's news site shows the only picture of a woman on the front page to be of Martha Stewart. Is that because, on the eve of International Women's Day, there are no women anywhere in the world newsworthy enough to make the front pages, or might it also have something to do with the dearth of women in leadership positions in the field of journalism? Probably something these folks are more qualified than me to answer. Some of the many organizations of women in media and journalism include the International Women's Media Foundation, the International Association of Women in Radio and Television, the African Women's Media Center, the Internet newspaper AfricaWoman, the Women's Media Centre of Cambodia, the Network of Women in Media, India, the Girls, Women + Media Project, WomensMedia.com, the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press, and the Journalism & Women Symposium (love their logo!), And did you know that, in late 2002, the National Women's History Project notes, the US Post Office released commemorative stamps featuring four women journalists?

posted by Elayne at 9:42 AM | Permalink
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Silly Site o' the Day

Via MadKane, take the Color Test. I went through it twice before realizing it said to choose "the color of the word, not the word" itself. So you know, I'm bad with words and colors. :) Seriously, if you're word-oriented, the easiest way to "cheat" your way through this is to choose the opposite of your instinct every time. They didn't really mix it up, every single choice has the color of the word different than the color the word spells out. Anyway, when you're through freaking out your left and right brains, come back to MadKane's Political Dish crossword.

Labels: Silly Sites

posted by Elayne at 9:13 AM | Permalink
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Slime and Pretend

More people who give Christians a bad name, reports Scoobie Davis. I agree with many of the comments to Patrick Nielsen Hayden's post here, the left needs to get some actual practicing, progressive Christians out there in the spotlight to counter these kinds of fanatic wackos.

posted by Elayne at 5:34 PM | Permalink
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Salam Pax Updates

...and thousands of bloggers breathe a sigh of relief that the Iraqi blogger is okay. Impressions of Karbala, among other things.

posted by Elayne at 4:56 PM | Permalink
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One Writer's Life

Fun autobiographical series of posts from Mustang Bobby on his love of words, both written and spoken. Weird coincidence - the first school play in which I ever acted also gave Bobby his first taste of trodding the boards. What are the odds?

posted by Elayne at 4:09 PM | Permalink
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Maintenance Notes

As it's a struggle even on my best days to get through the blogroll, and I feel guilty about not remembering to get to all of my fellow Liberal Coalition members often enough, I've moved that TTLB-supplied Javascript up on the sidebar to list all the LC members atop the "News+Views" section, right underneath my Must View Daily (MVD) section. (Note that TTLB lists by blog name in most cases, so there is some duplication with the names already elsewhere on the blogroll, but I'm not going to delete those because I personally prefer to list alphabetically by the blogger's first name.) I've also eliminated the Bravenet counter, not because it didn't work right but because SiteMeter now offers a meters style that includes a counter, I've only had Bravenet for a month, and I've had SiteMeter since July 9 of last year. I just went into SiteMeter and reset the starting date to 7 September 2002, the date I actually started this blog, but I don't think that'll change the count... still, with 45,100 unique site visits from 9 July 2003 to right now, I'm not complaining! Lastly, I'm pretty pleased with the way the Comics/Animation section is coming together, and eagerly await more suggestions.

Labels: Maintenance Notes

posted by Elayne at 3:34 PM | Permalink
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The Whole Megillah

Tonight marks the start of Purim, probably my favorite Jewish holiday because it revolves around the heroism of a woman, namely Esther. The Book of Esther was originally a scroll (Megillat Esther means "The Scroll of Esther") said to be a first-hand account of the events of Purim, written by Esther and her cousin Mordechai themselves. By special request of Esther to the Sanhedrin, the Megillah was included as one of the 24 books of the Biblical canon. It's a pretty cool story, and there are some pretty cool rituals that accompany the festival, such as kids wearing masks and costumes (it's customary to dress up as the characters in the story) to commemorate, among other things, the tale's plot elements of mistaken identity and disguises. There's also a sort of obligation to drink until you cannot tell the difference between the villain Haman and the male hero Mordechai. (Kinda the Jewish Hallowe'en and the Jewish St. Patrick's Day, all rolled into one!) I for one will be getting drunk and watching the Teen Titans cartoon tonight because it guest-stars Aqualad and, as Laura and Leah have reminded all, today is Aqualad's birthday, but I digress... I've been wanting to write the Megillat Vashti (the Persian Queen who refused to demean herself by doing a strip-tease before King Ahasuerus' guests, thereby sealing her doom - not to mention that of the Babylonian royal bloodline - for disobeying her husband's order, and not incidentally setting Esther's story in motion) as a comic book story for almost ten years now (I even have a willing artist, at least last time I checked about a month ago), and someday it will nag at my brain just enough to get it onto paper...

Labels: Holidaze, Ye Gods

posted by Elayne at 3:02 PM | Permalink
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Celebrating Women - 6 March 2004

I appreciate positive messages, so I really like the theme for this year's National Women's History Project celebration - Inspiring Hope and Possibility. Short bios of the 2004 honorees are here.

posted by Elayne at 9:08 AM | Permalink
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Silly Site o' the Day

And timely, too! As Gen. JC Christian says, "I want this game." Also proof, of course, that the God of the True Believers hates Macs.

Labels: Silly Sites

posted by Elayne at 9:04 AM | Permalink
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Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)

Well, even though Kevin has decided to hang up his weekly FCB over on Calpundit, I feel it's incumbent upon the rest of us to soldier on. Here's my first entry from my Buzznet homepage:

I have no idea we even had an American flag (rolled up behind Robin and Amy). Rob says it came as a free gift when he bought something online a couple of years ago.

Labels: Fotos, Friday Cat Blogging

posted by Elayne at 9:41 PM | Permalink
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Robin's New Assignment

We've been waiting to announce this for awhile, but it's officially on DC's site now so we have received the editor's permission to post the news. Robin is part of the creative team launching a new book set in the DC universe called Bloodhound. Dan Jolley is writing, Leonard Kirk is pencilling, and Robin's the inker. The hype paragraph describes it, the way hype paragraphs will, as "a creator-owned monthly that's got the tongues of DC execs eagerly wagging. The series focuses on Travis 'Bloodhound' Clevenger, a brutal ex-cop born and bred for tracking down metahuman criminals. But this 'Hound doesn't settle for taking bites out of crime; he takes chunks! Sit up and heed our words: fetch this book!" I'm very excited that Robin gets in on the ground floor of a brand-new title and character (I don't think he's started on the first issue of a book since his Marvel UK days), particularly when he's working with his "birthday twin" Leonard, and I'm also relieved that this steady work comes at a time when we're really going to need the income. And with Rob's efficiency, inking one steady book a month will still leave him time for working on his pencils and/or taking on other inking assignments and/or doing commissions. But I'm getting ahead of myself. For now, we both have steady employment and will soon be living in a nice quiet place and being more mobile and all that good stuff... Things finally seem to be looking up!

posted by Elayne at 4:47 PM | Permalink
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Martha, Martha, Martha

A K-Mart ad that ran during a morning "news" show break last week had the slogan "Wake up to Martha Stewart Everyday!", to which I naturally responded, "Isn't that what those of us who watch morning 'news' shows are doing anyway?" Well, mayhap no longer. (Hey, I can dream, can't I?) Yes, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and making false statements are serious things, but I get the feeling it's still all part of the EYCWD (Election Year Culture War Distraction™) parade...

posted by Elayne at 3:24 PM | Permalink
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Ashcroft's Bile Becomes Harder Than Usual

Currently in hospital with gallstone pancreatitis. Not expected to refuse painkillers. Update: Ana Marie Cox is, as usual, a very bad girl.

posted by Elayne at 1:59 PM | Permalink
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Obligatory ~~Canadian~~ Comics Content

Wil Wheaton is tickled pink, or more appropriately perhaps blue-green, to be voicing Aqualad for the Teen Titans cartoon, and reminds us he's "on" again this Saturday in a Dwayne McDuffie-written episode.

Labels: Comics

posted by Elayne at 11:47 AM | Permalink
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Celebrating Women - 5 March 2004

Only three more days to International Women's Day! Today's hats-off goes to the Girl Scouts and their Young Women of Distinction honorees. As you know, the organization is currently in the news for being under fire from some Texas wackos (no, that's not redundant) led by a religious nut who suddenly objected to one of last year's winners of the Bluebonnet Council's Women of Distinction Award (near as I've been able to figure out the regional councils all held their own separate WoD awards ceremonies last year, there was no national one), Planned Parenthood of Central Texas executive director Pam Smallwood. Jeebus, that was a whole year ago, and only now the wackos are up in arms? I smell EYCWD (Election Year Culture War Distraction™)! By the way, this is not the first time PPCT has been harassed by local fringe elements, which might explain why they've apparently given in for now. (Is anyone out there able to find a link to Smallwood's editorial in last Friday's Waco Tribune-Herald? Sounds like it was good reading.) Update: Morford weighs in. From his Morning Fix e-mail:

"It's not that we're a bunch of activists. We're just a bunch of moms who care about their kids," oozed Lisa Aguilar, who took her 10-year-old daughter out of her eight-member Girl Scout troop. "For us, it's the morality. Where is Girl Scouts going?" No, Lisa, that is not the question, honeybunches. The real question is, how does it feel to have the sexual/spiritual IQ of a small rutabaga, and what sort of sad and therapy-bound and miserable and sexually inept child are you right now raising, and why did the universe ever allow you to breed in the first place, and is it just for our amusement, and isn't the damn country plenty packed already with prissy sanctimonious sexless moms who wouldn't know a Hitachi Magic Wand from a hand blender, and if you don' trust Planned Parenthood to give safe, good info about masturbation, where do you think you're daughter is going to get it, dear? That's right, lesbians. Hardcore fisting-fetishist dykes. From San Francisco. With pierced nipples. Run and hide, Lisa. Run and hide.

He's such a bad boy, is our Morford...

posted by Elayne at 9:40 AM | Permalink
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Silly Site o' the Day

The most bizarre eBay auctions ever. At least that's what they claim. As I'm running low again, I'd like to reiterate my plea from last December 18 - please e-mail me suggestions for more silly sites! Update: Thanks again, Caroline "In the City" Ibis, for all the new sites you've sent my way!

Labels: Silly Sites

posted by Elayne at 9:33 AM | Permalink
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Le Grand Libération

Yeah, I know, I'm probably mangling French grammar, but oh well. Last night an extraordinary thing happened, which will require a bit of background and your indulgence as it's a personal thing (nothing icky, I promise!).

To the best of my spotty recollection (Steve would probably remember better than me, so I invite him to embellish upon the details), about 15 years ago I developed some lower back pain and started seeing a chiropractor, who as it turned out probably made things worse. About a month after the start of my sessions, Steve and I were walking around the Village with friends and Something went out. Something Big. And as I recall it laid me up and had something to do with my sciatic nerve being pinched and at the time our doctor still made house calls thank goodness because I could no longer walk and, with meds and about 3-4 days off my feet entirely, I was able to get back to work and find a physical therapist close to my office at the time, which is how I became friends with Jan and Maury but that's another story I suppose.

Anyway, since that time I have accepted that, while Jan has helped me tremendously in terms of teaching me how to move properly, initiating better hip rotation (my inability to utilize my hips properly when walking, possibly developed as a defense mechanism against catcalls, may have been another reason the nerve wound up pinched) and helping me develop a normal gait, some things have just been beyond my reach. My left leg has somehow felt "shorter" and less mobile than my right, and has had a tendency to cramp up at any time without warning (lots of fun in the ob/gyn office, I can assure you!). Getting in and out of cars was rough unless I did it Just So (almost always sliding in on the left side). Even standing still for an appreciable period of time (like in a queue) or sitting at my computer for hours on end has been tricky and exhausting if not outright debilitating. My stamina had decreased accordingly, which tends to initiate rather a vicious downward spiral. And, as everything in the body is so interconnected, I think a lot of the muscle aches I've had over the years have certainly been exacerbated by that pinch.

Well, last night I was lying on my stomach, trying to "loosen" my lower back by doing various stretches, and for some reason asked Robin to hold my ankle and foot still. I stretched a certain way - I don't know how, I certainly couldn't duplicate it at will - and felt Something release. Not just the little releases and clicks I get from regular stretching, but something major. Something I never thought I'd feel again.

I stood up, and it felt like my legs were the same length again. After all these years, my weight suddenly seemed evenly distributed once more. Nothing was seizing up. My hip rotation and range of motion were no longer diminished! Whatever we did, I think it resulted in a reversal of whatever had first gone wrong all those years ago.

Now, I know not everything will wind up corrected overnight. I still have and expect various age-related muscle aches. I can't bend the toes on my left foot the way my right toes bend (actually, I'm afraid to try for fear the leg will seize up again; that's the surest way to induce the cramping). I'm not putting aside Robin's mum's otter-head walking stick just yet. And I'm reluctant to move the wrong way for fear that whatever was set right will go out again. But if, after a couple days, this situation holds steady, I plan to go back on the exercise bike and take more walks (with the otter) and see how much sensible activity my body is now able to handle and, well, generally get physically healthier again. I feel like a great gift has been returned to me, and I'll be damned if I waste it.

posted by Elayne at 8:56 AM | Permalink
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