Secret Ballot

At first glance, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) seems straightforward enough with regard to electronic voting machines. But as so often happens with these things, the reality is turning out quite different. According to eRobin Stelly, who's organized a blogswarm on this issue today, "HAVA doesn't mandate a voter-verified paper ballot although it does not mandate against a paper ballot. It's a very vague and poorly constructed bill. 26 states have passed legislation that mandates a voter-verified paper ballot and a 5% random audit... 13 states have similar legislation pending... Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick (PA-08) will be introducing legislation initiated by the Coalition for Voting Integrity to push back the HAVA deadline past the 2006 primary season. This is legislation that counties all over the country have been begging for. This is legislation that helps the cases of Connecticut and New York, both of which have announced that they will not be HAVA-compliant anywhere near the deadline of the 2006 primaries... If we can get the CVI/Fitzpatrick bill to be law, we may be able to get the voter-verified paper ballot legislation passed in many if not all of those 13 states." Something I didn't realize before: "op-scan machines are by design equipped with a voter-verfied paper ballot and, despite their flaws, are the electronic machine that voting groups like the Coalition for Voting Integrity support."

Of course, I'm still confused as to why US voters can't just mark an X on a piece of paper and drop it into a box, like voters in most other countries do. But then, I'm also confused as to why we have Election Day on a workday.

Women of Valor

RIP Wendy Wasserstein and Coretta Scott King.

It's Primatastic!

Thanks a lot, Mark Evanier - now I'm going to have that maddening Nairobi Trio earworm stuck in my head for the rest of the day...

Silly Site o' the Day

Still exhausted, and once again falling behind in blog-skimming, let alone writing my deadline-induced essays. Good news and bad news: My insurance company check for the car arrived, but it was made out to me and some bank that has nothing to do with the car, so I have to call the place wherein I'd planned to deposit it and make sure I still can. A very nice happenstance as a Good Samaritan found the envelope I'd dropped during my Friday commute and remailed it to me. Only one more car-less day, if all goes well, but I'm not really looking forward to slogging through post after post bewailing anti-filibuster Democrats and bemoaning the upcoming State of the Union address tonight, which I refuse to watch. This is one major reason why I'm not a political one-noter on this blog. Sure, it would make it easier to categorize me and I might get more Koufax votes and so on, but I'd even bore myself to tears. And to top it off, Dave Johnson from Seeing the Forest insists this State of the Union preview is funny, but I can't get it to load...

Silly Site o' the Day

The reason I'm posting so late is that I had a couple doctor appointments today. The upshot: I'm not diabetic and I'm not menopausal. Yet. More later, particularly regarding The Diet Thing, in a future post I hope to get in under the wire for the first Big Fat Carnival. Meantime, I'm slowly getting over my nervous jump every time the phone rings, but all the same I'm considering making use of The Rejection Line (via Trish the Countess).

Pluggery

And never you mind what that rhymes with. Cliff Meth's upcoming work Meth O.D. (love the pun!) ships this March and features art from all sorts of cool people including the guy who wanders around the Sea of Galilee a lot. Cliff also sent along a link to another reminiscence about Bill-Dale Marcinko written by Bill Loebs; it truly is wonderful to see how many creative people's lives Billy touched, and how he will always live on fondly in our memories. Lastly, over at MoCCA, around whose folks I can once again hold my head high as we've reupped membership, there's an exhibit currently running which pays tribute to the work of Irwin Hasen, a lovely gentleman and a mainstay at New York comic conventions. Yes, he'll be at the big one in February as well, right across the aisle from Neal Adams (scroll down to see floor map).

Mis en Place

"Mis en place" is a French phrase meaning to have all your ingredients (including tools and equipment) prepared, measured and laid out before you start assembling and cooking. In the realm of TV chefs with which I am occasionally obsessed as a viewer, it's essentially what happens before the camera starts rolling, and what makes everything look "so easy, you can do this at home!" It's a subtle subterfuge, as is so much else on the tube, that lulls the viewer into thinking what's done on TV can then be effortlessly replicated at home – along with the equally subtle message that any home cook who can't imitate that ease has something seriously wrong with them. The worst offenders are shows like the Martha Stewart-produced Everyday Food, which cheats even more by positing that their cooks are "Real People" in "Real Situations." As Jean Hagan's Lina Lamont might put it, "Well, of course they're real people – ain't everybody?" Only these folks are so "real" that they're actually referred to as cast members and they all happen to be professional chefs!

And believe me, the situations are anything but genuine as well. Look at those kitchens! It took me four apartments before I lived in a place with a kitchen big enough to allow me a pot rack, and that's only because I'm lucky enough to have a husband who knew what to look for at Ikea and how to properly mount it against the wall. I'd never even heard of a standalone oven-sized broiler until I saw it on TV in shows like Food Network's Good Eats, where Alton Brown (incidentally one of my favorite TV-foodie personalities) persists in assuming every viewer has one. My broiler has always been that little section tacked onto the bottom of the stove, with the pull-out shelf just big enough to slide in one foil pan a few inches under the heat source, and if you leave stuff in there more than a few minutes your smoke alarm will go off and the aluminium will start to smoke so it's hardly worth bobbing and bending to try to cook something in it. None of this space-the-size-of-an-entire-stove with adjustable shelves so you can choose how far away from the flame to put the food. I'm sure the fact that Good Eats is sponsored by a cooking-range company has nothing to do with this occasional myopic assumption. (To Brown's credit, he does often grasp concepts like reasonably priced gadgets, and I wouldn't mind owning stuff like this plunger set he sells if I had more use for it.)

It's the great divide playing itself out again, isn't it? The airy, well-lit kitchen more spacious than most people's living rooms, with the enormous pot-rack in the middle just like in the commercials between the cooking steps which rarely involve cutting or measuring the entire quantity of ingredients and almost never mention cleanup. That's all left to the behind-the-scenes sous chefs and other show staff, as invisible as the camera people and producers. Everything must appear seamless to foster and further the illusion of cooking as something Anyone Can Do In A Flash.

Only real people don't have flashes. Many of us who aren't telegenic (and how would a camera fit in our kitchen anyway?) don't sit down and plan our meals a week in advance. We come home around 7 PM after a full day's work plus an exhausting two-way commute and wonder if we remembered to take something out of the freezer two days ago to thaw in time for tonight's dinner. If we did, we quickly skim through our most-used-recipe collections to see what we can put together that won't completely wipe us out. If we don't own our house or don't live in a house we probably don't have grills, so we wonder why we keep any recipe involving grilling or broiling in the first place. Anything that needs marinating is out except on weekends, because we don't feel like eating dinner an hour before bedtime. For me, anything involving a food processor, blender or other electronic device is also out on weeknights; I have a few of those gadgets but they're in storage under the microwave cabinet because I don't have the open surface space to keep them within easy reach. We then count the ingredients involved in our chosen recipe and whether we have all of them (many of us don't keep all the "staples" in our fridge or larder all the time) and how many measuring spoons and cups and gadgets we'll need to get the whole thing together, because the recipes rarely factor in this type of prep time – as I call it, "the five things I need to do before I can get to the one thing I need to do." And we resolve we're only doing Actual Cooking for one thing, usually the entree, as the store-bought frozen veg can just as well go in the microwave. (Maybe if we're really ambitious we'll cook some couscous to go with the main course, as that means boiling water and a little margarine or oil, dumping in the couscous, and taking it off the heat so we can concentrate on what we're Actually Cooking.)

So we get out the cutting boards and chopper and cups and spoons and utensils and pots and pans, stand for awhile peeling and chopping and measuring out and washing the meat, by which time we've tired ourselves out so much we need to sit down again for a few more minutes, so that when we come back it's like the Magical Sous Chef Fairy has been in our kitchen and gotten everything ready and now we can Begin To Cook. (We won't even discuss the Washing-Up Fairy here, but she's been known to waylay many a weekend morning for me.)

The way I look at it, mis en place is half the battle, and it's the difficult half. If I had someone come in every day who acknowledged my kitchen's limitations and did a mis en place for me so all I had to do was stir things together and heat them, I could indeed cook like the pros. Anybody could. Instead I cook like a real person with limited space and even more limited energy. I'm still waiting for the cooking show that caters to that reality.

Fafblog Does It Again

"The president doesn't want to eat sweet, delicious babies. He just wants to protect America from the growing threat of a rogue baby insurgency." Me, I'm still trying to figure out if the phrase "unitary executive" is merely American slang for "Supreme Chancellor"...

Silly Site o' the Day

Lindsay Beyerstein informs us that yesterday was the third annual running of the Idiotarod. Why didn't they have silly stuff like this back when I lived in Brooklyn? Oh wait, they did.

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 1/22 thru 1/28/06

Our featured Liberal Coalition member this week is Big Media Jane, as Jane Hamsher has been all over the place: co-hosting the Washington Post online chat; participating in a conference call with Ted Kennedy, among others; and of course her stint with guest host Brad Friedman last night on the Young Turks blogcast filibuster. Jane continues to be one of the best informed bloggers out there, and a real treasure.

It's also been a week of changes for other LC members. All due sympathies go out to NTodd on his and Stef's parting of the ways, and to Michael at Musing's Musings on the passing of his grandmother, whom he fondly remembers here. Congratulations to Guy Andrew Hall on securing gainful employment. And of course, welcome back to Invisible Librarian Keith Kisser, whose RSS feed isn't yet turned on but he's doubtless working on it.

Here's what else caught my eye this week from LC member blogs:

• Amy types pretty well when she's drunk! And it was giddy to read, too.

• Echidne's gender-gap-in-wages series has wrapped, and she's a bit concerned about this US Secret Service Uniformed Division thing, although it's since been pointed out that this PATRIOT Act proposal is just an expansion of a force already in place (the former Executive Protection Service).

• Jeff at Speedkill reports on a bit of a religious disagreement going on in India.

• John at archy talks about a creepy high school ethnicity class that apparently thinks it's a good idea to teach object lessons during test-taking, rather than as an experiment agreed upon by all class members during regular lessons.

• Kathy Kattenberg at Liberty Street is less than impressed with Lucia Pinochet.

• Over at bloggg, Moi is mostly Mozart.

• Steve Gilliard celebrates the Boondocks Return of the King episode, calling it "a brutal take on our celebrity driven culture and how trivial many black people have become."

• Norbizness covers a Presidential town hall meeting.

• And Trish Wilson finds the G-spot! Um, in a manner of speaking. I'm still getting over dealing with seeing the words "G-spot" and "Whipple" in the same article.

Happy Near Year to 1.3 Billion People

It's the Year of the Dog. And of course the Dog has more.

Extra Credit

Do audit Professor Bérubé's discourse on academic freedom, if you can; well worth the time. It's taking a devillishly long time to load, though, so best try to read from the RSS feed like I did.

Radio Daze

Liberal Coalition member Jane Hamsher will be speaking on the Bradblog-guest-hosted Young Turks station video blog filibuster in a few minutes. I like Friedman's FM-DJ-cadence voice, and this is a cool thing to have on in the background as I skim through blogs (lots of familiar names coming on), but it does introduce a certain blognitive dissonance...

Caveat Emptor

I took a little time off from blog-reading to go through my latest Starcrest of California mail-order "catalog" (Starcrest is too cheap to actually send out a bound catalog, you just get a bunch of glossy pages in a packet, a la Valpak), and there's a bunch of stuff I want to order so I figured I'd do it online. In looking for their website I found this very informative thread featuring opinions from both sides of whether one should order from, or even work for, Starcrest. After reading the whole thing I still want to place my order, although I'm not happy with how they seem to treat their employees. They do have a website but you can't place any orders on it, which is not a surprise considering how their employees and ex-employees on the thread describe them as having very antiquated computer systems. The one thing that really struck me was how some of the thread dissolved into grammar flames, but I can understand the reason. Many people who don't have a good grasp of things like grammar and spelling are not only going to wind up stuck at these minimum-wage jobs but are quite likely to be treated by employers as less worthy. Once again I'm grateful for a good educational foundation.

Nothin' But Indians

Here's another good meme to spread courtesy of MB Williams (and others like Jane Hamsher). The Abramoff bribery scandal? Not only have the Democrats taken no money (i.e., they're not involved in being bribed at all), but as it happens Native American tribes (who, let's remember, are not perpetrators but victims as well) who contributed to Demos gave them less after Jack'off's interference, and gave Republicans more. That makes both Native Americans and Democrats among Jack'off's scapegoats. Spread the word; he's screwed over everyone but Republicans.

Silly Site o' the Day

A very happy birthday to my cousin Marc, the only member of my family who reads my blog regularly (more often than my parents, even)! He's also way smarter than me, so maybe he can make heads or tails out of this strange website (via Xeni at BoingBoing)...

Maintenance Notes

Keith Kisser's Invisible Library is back, so he's been re-added to the Liberal Coalition blogroll on my sidebar. Both Pam Spaulding and Melissa McEwen have permanent co-bloggers now so I've updated the sidebar accordingly, shrinking Da Gals section a bit whilst moving Pam's House Blend to Dynamic Duos and Shakespeare's Sister to Da Groups. I've also gone through my template and updated the addresses of all the LiveJournal blogs on the sidebar (mostly in the Kultcha sections), as LiveJournal has now changed to a Blogspot-type format ([user].livejournal.com). They're still redirecting okay but might as well make the change now while I'm thinking of it. [As I intend this to be my bloggy catch-up weekend, I may be making a few more adjustments which I'll update here, but first I need to finish my regular blogroll reading, write submissions for both the Big Fat Carnival and Ginger's and Kathy's And They Cook, Too fundraiser for DWB, do my Liberal Coalition Top Ten blogaround, start perusing all the Best New Blog Koufax nominees, and catch up on Carnival of the Feminists founder Natalie Bennett's latest Femmes Fatales links. Somewhere in this embarrassment of riches I'd also like to get through my DC comp box as well... I can dream, can't I?]

Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)

It's the weekend, and this hour-plus-each-way commute is so tiring that I'm losing stuff left and right - an unpaid medical bill, our rent increase notice that I've asked the landlord to resend, business cards that I was actually going to use this weekend... everything seems to fall out of my pockets on the way from home to work or vice versa. That never happens when I commute by car... *sigh* Only a few more days now, I know. Meantime, it's the weekend, and being sans car it can only mean one thing:



Bed!



Bed!



BED, I tells ya!!!

Goshamightie, I'm tired...

Haggling Over the Price

I'm proud to be a member of the No Ads ring hub. As far as I know, all the buttons on my sidebar are for free stuff (mostly services and informational resources), the only exception being my husband's artwork. I was very pleased when Blogger scrapped its banner ads in favor of top-bar search tools, even though it had been plain that bloggers like me who didn't want to pay money for their hobby weren't actually endorsing any of the banner ads. I've never solicited nor succumbed to any entity wanting to advertise on Pen-Elayne; why should I? We'd pay for internet access whether or not I had a blog, and both Blogger and Haloscan are free, so the only "expense" I've ever put into this is my time. Which, yes, is valuable, but it's just as valuable when I read or go to restaurants or play with my cats, and I don't ask for money to support those hobbies either (again, except for my tongue-in-cheek crequests asking people to buy my husband's artwork to keep us in sushi).

Back when I was doing weekly comic book reviews, I'd get lots of free comics and ashcans and even proposals and scripts from people asking me for my opinion. And it was cool, I knew my reviews were fairly widely disseminated and I was one of the few folks to actually discuss in detail things like art (you'd be surprised how few comic reviewers still only talk about the writing, which I think is like reviewing a CD and only discussing the lyrics) and they knew they'd get a fair assessment from me even though I never promised to give them a thumbs-up. Likewise, I'll occasionally get a book or DVD from someone wanting me to blog about it, and if I can spare the time (which I really can't for books any more, the last non-graphic-novel book I read was the fifth Harry Potter novel so you see how behind I am in that) I'll talk about it here, but as you can see by this essay a positive review isn't guaranteed there either. I even got a free ticket to a Broadway show last year on the day it closed and got to meet some cool bloggers there. And my friends know I'll plug their projects if they want me to, because they're my friends. But I never go out of my way to whore for anyone.

I'm very happy so many bloggers I know are going on a free trip to Amsterdam thanks in part to the Blogads they've agreed to solicit on their pages. I'm insanely jealous, in fact. Robin and I have been hoping we can get back to England this year, but I don't know if I'll be able to get permission to be away from my job for more than a few days, and even then there are lots of restrictions in terms of when I can take off. So yeah, to be free enough to just hop over to Holland all-expenses-paid is way cool. And to tell you the truth, if it didn't mean taking ads I might have said yes myself. All they need to do, after all, is "[a] be interviewed about the trip (the Dutch Tourism Board may be using this for online/offline promotions), [b] give Holland.com one month of premium adspace, and [c] put the 'Bloggers in Amsterdam' logo in their nav bar for one year, linking it to this blog post to disclose the nature of the trip." How onerous is that, when even the bloggers who don't take ads are giving this trip free PR by talking about it (and you know what they say about publicity)?

And you know everyone has their price. If we say we don't we're lying. I like to be nice to friends and aspiring creators, because I'm one as well, so it's my pleasure to devote some of my hobby (blogging) time to reviewing unsolicited stuff I'm sent. But there are those who would put a dollar sign on that and say "aha! that's your price!" Sushi dinners work well on me as bribery for -- well, I can't think of what at the moment, but I'm sure they work well as bribery. I've been to see TV shows where we're all required to sign a waiver allowing the television station in question to profit from showing our faces without us demanding a cut; we do that in exchange for being able to sit in the audience. If it comes down to it, the job world itself is nothing but giving up your time and talent in exchange for monetary reward.

And I'm certainly not above that; I find money and health coverage very necessary to live. But I don't find blogging as critical. It's something I enjoy the hell out of, I hope I keep doing it for awhile, but it's Just A Hobby, y'know? And as such, I highly doubt I can be bought off by any enterprising tourism boards out there looking for an Abramoffian quid pro quo.

But hey, you're welcome to try.

Update: More from Astarte and Roxanne.

On Girls Being Smarter, or Men Being Whinier

I'm glad one of our building tenants came in to pass out copies of a joke she really liked, Eve's Talk With God, first seen in the blogosphere a little over a year ago according to Blogsearch but of course much of the office world still revolves around the Land of Funny Photocopies. Anyway, if she hadn't stopped by, goodness knows how long it would have been before I realized Pandagon had mysteriously disappeared from my Bloglines subs. Because the Eve joke contains God's caution about Man, "He won't be as smart as you (Woman), so he will also need your advice to think properly." Which in turn reminded me of Amanda's terrific fisking post Daring white boy rebels strike for stupidity, which lots of other bloggers had referenced but which I couldn't remember reading despite being a faithful Pandagonian for quite awhile now.

In any case, I've resubscribed to Pandagon's feed so I could catch up with Amanda and Pam and Jedmunds, and here's what I want to say about the situation Amanda discusses, because I haven't seen this conjecture raised by anyone else yet. Could it be that girls are doing better in school in part because in large measure society still expects girls to be docile and obedient, whereas boys are encouraged to be rebellious and boisterous, and therefore on average girls are likelier to do better than boys in an atmosphere that rewards obedience? In any case, Amanda's post is terrific; here are a couple good quotes from it:

If there isn’t a better symbol of male privilege than giving all the boys in a high school extra points on their report cards just for being male, I don’t know what is.

What’s distressing about this is how anti-feminists describe a real gap in the average work ethic between boys and girls, but because of their belief in male superiority, they have to cast boys' behavior in flattering terms. What should be characterized as slacking off is characterized as charming rebellion. And what would be characterized as an admirable work ethic in boys instead is now obsequieous teacher’s pet behavior in girls. More than one feminist has described how behavior patterns get judged positively or negatively according to the sex of the person performing them.

I'm delighted to see the Pandagon commenters, always interesting and thoughtful, echo my thoughts about the situation with observations like "what does this say about the relative social status of girls and boys, that girls have been successfully trained to do what they’re told while boys demand to do what they want?" and "women are raised to serve authority, boys are raised to be authority and not accept anything less."

Update: Iocaste does the legwork.

Silly Site o' the Day

Via Len, it's the Mechanical Contrivium! They triv our ears, honest! Go on, consult the Contrivium, I did! And I found out the Ten Top Trivia Tips about Pen-Elayne!

• Ninety-six percent of all candles sold are purchased by Pen-Elayne.
• You should always store Pen-Elayne in an airtight container in the fridge!
• Humans share about fifty percent of their DNA with Pen-Elayne.
• Without its lining of Pen-Elayne, your stomach would digest itself.
• American Airlines saved forty thousand dollars a year by eliminating Pen-Elayne from each salad served in first class.
• In Chinese, the sound 'Pen-Elayne' means 'bite the wax tadpole'.
• While performing her duties as queen, Cleopatra sometimes dressed up as Pen-Elayne.
• Pen-Elayne was named after Pen-Elayne the taxi driver in Frank Capra's 'It's a Wonderful Life'!
• Pen-Elayne can eat up to four kilograms of insects in a single night!
• Pen-Elayne is worth its weight in gold - literally.

I wonder how they knew about the DNA thing...

Quote of the Day

Someone needs to sit these writers down and tell them to stop. You're not adding emotional resonance to the story anymore, because this ploy is tired and overused. You are not showing the slightest sensitivity to women's issues, so don't consider yourself enlightened for using such an adult subject. And you are not making the female character any deeper and more compelling with this, at all. If anything, they become more superficial because the issue isn't properly explored. And it really bugs me that these writers find the only way they can emphasize a female character's strength is by giving her a past sexual trauma to overcome. As though this is the only trial fit for a woman.

- Ragnell, Feel Like Vomiting

Silly Site o' the Day

This one's just for Cheryl Lynn, who's set up RSS feeds so I can now read her via Bloglines (yay!). Swanksigns is a gallery of odd street signs from all over the world. I don't think you'd want to contract with any of the people who designed these supposedly universal signs. Via Mark at BoingBoing,

Non-Liberal Coalition Link Dump

Because I have to clear my saved posts somehow!

• Marie at Left Coaster sings the praises of Barbara Boxer, and Eli actually endorses a Republican. I count these as more responses to MB Williams' Lefty Blogger Challenge to accentuate the positive.

• Avedon has a very good meme to spread, the fact that this country is far less safe than it was six years ago, before the current regime's ascension, in just about every way.

• Digby ponders a hypothetical around which I can't even wrap my brain. I try to stay far away from leading questions the moment I ascertain the answer they really want from me; why give them the satisfaction? This isn't a game, these are people's actual lives.

• Lastly, Ms K celebrates Mama Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the new president of Liberia.

Back to more blog-reading!

Milestone Note

Happy blogiversary, Ezra, and congratulations on selling out to LA Weekly (which I understand Digby has as well)! With so many bloggers "going pro" and getting paid for their hobby, I expect to see a lot less blog-begging in the near future, which is good for all of us.

Silly Site o' the Day

We are blessed with an abundance of sushi places in Riverdale (including at least two glatt kosher ones of which I know), all of which deliver so even sans car we can order our favorite food. As it looks like I won't have the car back for another week or so (hope the weather remains sunny!), and when I get home after an hour and a half commute on a train and two buses I don't feel like cooking, delivery in moderation (i.e., with me ordering stuff as low-salt as I can get) becomes A Good Thing. Besides, delivery-sushi is our traditional way of celebrating every time Robin finishes an issue, which he just did. Don't these origami sushi (via Cory at BoingBoing) look tasty?

He's No Superman

Go congratulate Zach Braff on a well-directed Scrubs 100th episode. Laura and particularly Eric Gjovaag, since you're on the West Coast where it won't play for another couple hours, you must watch this episode. You'll find out why about halfway through.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Following up on "There Will Always Be An Asterisk," that pop-culture site that put (with no NSFW warning) a completely off-topic semi-nude gal on their front page a couple weeks back has dropped the picture from its front page, agreeing that it probably wasn't the smartest move. Would that all comics folks were so mature. Alas, the backlash is still nasty and furious in some quarters, like The Inkwell, the professional inkers Yahoo group moderated by Chuck Gibson. On the heels of Chuck posting about some off-topic 9/11 theories, which I understand drew lots of controversy, a discussion ensued about the talents of fellow inker Jimmy Palmiotti, wherein a number of posters went a little out of bounds. I felt the most egregious comment came from a male professional who said "His skills never really were all that great, but he sure knows how to talk the pants off a hot chick! If you catch my meaning."

Now, I'm a friend of Jimmy's significant other, artist Amanda Conner, and the only way I could take this was as a slap to Amanda. So I did something I always warn other people not to - I took offense on behalf of someone else, and posted that I hoped he'd retract that statement, as I felt it uncalled-for and too personal. His response? "Uh, the part about Amanda was purely conjecture on your part Elayne!" Then another inker waded in unasked: "It was simply funny is all. Light fare, not to be taken as serious as you make it sound. You stirring the pot up good, aren't you?"

So you see what's going on here, don't you? The first inker didn't apologize for the "talk the pants off" thing (although he and others did a quick 180 when they discovered Jimmy had signed onto the list) and accused me of reading stuff into it, and the second inker basically suggested I "lie back and enjoy it" because the fault was with my lack of humor!

To top if all off, inker #1 then unsubscribed from the list in a huff, asking Chuck to post his final goodbye, where he essentially ripped into me and nobody else, claiming I was the one who "tanked" the list for him (in fact, claiming this was the third time I'd done so, on a mailing list I barely read!), despite the fact that the Amanda remark was a tiny little adjunct to the real controversies raging, the slagging of Jimmy and Chuck's off-topic political stuff. Isn't it amazing how I (and therefore All Women, I guess) have so little power due to my lack of reading comprehension and humor and, at the same time, so much power that I'm able to single-handedly shut down mailing lists with tangential posts three times?! In this sort of damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation, where a woman has no credibility but apparently enough power to topple a mailing list, is it any wonder more women don't participate in these types of venues?

On Wider Recognition

Thanks to whoever submitted my name in nomination in the 2005 Koufax Awards category of Most Deserving of Wider Recognition. While I won't lie and say I don't want people to vote for me, I don't feel as though I have less recognition than I should. Considering this blog is about politics and comics and feminism and sushi and New York and cats and whatever else I feel like writing about from one moment to the next - in other words, not an easily-categorizable, single-issue blog - I think I've been recognized pretty well by other members of the liberal blogosphere. I'm lucky enough (probably because I've been around long enough) to be on the sidebar blogrolls of lots of big-name liberal blogs; in fact, I think more political blogs link to me than comics ones, so there you go. What I would like, when MB open votes, is for someone to please correct her on the spelling of my first name, as I'm fairly sure it'll slip my mind...

Silly Site o' the Day

Blogger seems bloggered today, so let's see if I can post this. Heidi passes along a strange Japanese Spider-Man video.

Five Guilty Pleasures

Ever since Leah tagged me with this I've been thinking about what to write down. I'm afraid I'm not at all good at this sort of thing, as I don't think I have a lot of pleasures that make me feel guilty. I'm not ashamed of reading comics or partaking of any other entertainment hobby. But I guess I'll try to give it a shot:

• Long drives for pleasure (whenever I get my car back), because I know I'm "wasting" gas.

• Smiling at some of the simplistic or scatalogical jokes in the Elvira comic. I'm really not much for scatology, I like to think of myself as drawn to more intellectual, wordplay-type humor, so it kind of makes me feel incorrect when I smile over something fairly juvenile.

• The Office - Robin just bought the DVD of this brilliant British series, and some episodes positively make me squirm. I'm as fond of "embarrassment comedy" and farce as I am of lowbrow scatology, but The Office is compelling TV anyway.

• Tex Avery cartoons, when I don't particularly care for Tom & Jerry (same studio, same period) or Coyote and Roadrunner (same variations-on-a-theme gags). I don't know what it is about Avery, his stuff just makes me giggle. I blame Leonard Maltin and his terrific cartoon appreciation class all those years ago...

• Food porn, especially some of those Iron Chef America episodes where I'm rooting for the chefs to handle the theme ingredient which is still alive.

And no, I'm not tagging any others, this one was hard enough for me to do!

Silly Sites o' the Day

Two down, one to go. We ordered a DVR for our cable, which will happen next week; and this morning Robin accompanied me to the cardiologist, who put me on a beta blocker in addition to the meds I'm taking and I will remain under periodic observation. Now I just need my car back... *sigh* The trek to and from the medical center was interesting, as one of the Bronx busses with a terminus at the corner a block away from us has its other terminus at the hospital, so it might have taken slightly longer than a transfer to the subway would have but not so's I noticed, and it was way easier! Oh, speaking of treks, Keith R.A. DeCandido passes along The Picard Song (does Wil know about this?), and Shakespeare's Sister got a kick out of Taysiders in Space.

To Blogly Go

George Takei's blog is working again, although I still can't find an RSS feed for it. Anyway, two interesting posts to recommend: this one on becoming Howard Stern's announcer on Sirius, and this one about reactions to his official coming-out party.

Frivolous Request

Robin and I are attending the NY Comic-Con next month. I will be bringing lots of extra quarters with me. I currently need the following state quarters for my ongoing collection: Florida (from 2004!), Kansas, Minnesota, Oregon and West Virginia (the most recent quarter released). If you're planning to attend the convention, and you are in possession of any or all of these state quarters, let me know and we'll meet to do a quarter exchange.

Disney-Pixar

Apparently it's official. Steve Jobs is now the single largest shareholder at Disney, in exchange for Disney purchasing Pixar. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out in terms of further synergy with ABC and Apple and iTunes, as well as what official position Jobs winds up with at Disney (CEO of both Apple and Disney?)...

Silly Site o' the Day

Via Carolyn in email again: Click Here, You Idiot!

A Little Bit Pregnant

Today is Blog for Choice Day, and I'm going to blog as someone without a choice.

Night before last I dreamt I was pregnant. Not so much that it showed a lot (I'm large anyway), but somewhere into my second trimester. Amidst the usual dream craziness, I remember at one point patting my growing stomach and abdomen with a blessed-out grin on my face. I remember what an amazing feeling it was. Then I woke up childless and barren once more.

Lots of folks are childless by choice, and I say more power to 'em, live the life you want to. But I'm different. I've wanted to have kids since I was one. But, for whatever reason, I've never been able or lucky enough to conceive. And now I'm well past safe childbearing age and not rich enough to adopt and I've learned to ignore the sorrow and push it into my mental background most of the time. Besides, I have a wonderful husband, two terrific kitties and lots of caring friends and family members, I'm pretty darn blessed with company.

Regardless, the fact that fate has denied me a childbearing choice does sadden me when I think about it, so I get livid when I see people wanting to legislate other women's lives and bodies – our bodies! – by denying them choices as well. Everyone has a different circumstance that leads her life path into a women's clinic; how can you presume to know each one? You can't; they're private, they're none of your business unless you know the women personally (and even then it's not your body so it's not your decision to make), and you've no moral standing on which to pass judgment.

Koufax Semi-Finals #1 - Make Room For Reading

I think MB Williams is doing a smart thing by holding off opening up comments on the first 2005 Koufax Award semi-final voting, in the category of Best New Blog. Says Mary Beth, "How this is going to work this year, is that I'm not opening comments just yet. This being one of the categories where a majority of the nominees are probably new to most readers, I'm forcing you all to spend at least a little time getting to know the nominees. I'll open up voting after some of the other categories are up, and will update with an announcement at that time." Unfortunately, a quick perusal of the 120+ nominees reveals I know only a handful, and of those I can count the number on my sidebar with one hand. I currently have 768 Bloglines feeds, it's going to take much of tomorrow to even skim through the nominees. But I guess it's time to start beefing up my Guys in Waiting and Where the Women Bloggers Are sections anyway, and I consider this an important category because I think new voices are the lifeblood of citizen activism, and as good as they are and as limited as my time is, I still don't want to grow complacent by only seeking out opinions from blogs I already read.

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 1/14 thru 1/21/06

Well, it's been a decent day, wherein I got some rest and mellowed out and the landlord stopped by and helped us take down the trash and Lillian offered car-type help if we need it and I cooked dinner, and moreover a day where I wrote more blog stuff than I read, which is an odd feeling. I haven't done that in a long time. I kind of like it. So I'm forging ahead while I'm on a roll, first with this weekly LibCoal blogaround, then perhaps tackling my foodie contributions for Ginger and Kathy:

• Bora at Science and Politics catches us up on the latest science news, and examines in particular talk of a unified physics theory.

• Bryant Gries at Make Me A Commentator! takes a look at soft bigotry using standup humor as a backdrop. After years of amateur observation about humor and politics, my general rule of thumb about such things is probably best articulated by Heidi MacDonald in What It Feels Like For A Girl: "The powerless mocking the powerful is funny; the reverse is bullying."

• A very happy belated birthday to Echidne of the Snakes, who's had some good 'uns this week, including bemoaning our current state of perpetual war-thought, expresses amazement at some people's ability to perpetuate in their minds simultaneous contradictory stereotypes and not even realize they're doing it, and beginning a series on the gender gap that's sure to rival Ampersand's in its thoroughness.

• Maru Soze at WTF Is It Now?? takes an accidental trip.

• Michael at Musing's Musings celebrates the New Horizons liftoff.

• Moi at Bloggg looks forward to the Winter Olympics figure skating contests, and so do I!

• Steve Gilliard at The News Blog judges the content of some characters.

• Norbizness reviews women in cinematic mental distress.

• On a lighter celebrity note, The Countess Trish Wilson gives the heads-up on an exorcism to take place at the Martin-Paltrow mansion.

• And to round off our showbiz section, upyernoz gives a big rubber hose down to Albert Brooks' new flick.

Silly Site o' the Day

Given the subject matter discussed below and the need to exorcise certain images from my brain, I might as well link to this. Via one of my favorite atheists, PZ Myers.

Is It Really Octopus?

A review of The God Who Wasn't There

First of all, I'd like to thank associate producer Susan Whiteaker from Beyond Belief Media for sending me this DVD, and to apologize to her for my lack of a positive review. You sends your press kit, you takes your chances.

The film itself starts out promising and entertaining, especially the Life of Jesus film segments, but the visuals and soundtrack seem to emit more razzle-dazzle than substance. Writer-director-producer Brian Flemming's narration sounds more like a podcast or chat than a professional presentation. It's not clear why he chooses to do it himself until the end, which I found the most fascinating segment. That's when Flemming finally puts himself on camera and into his subject, discussing his own fundamentalist Christian upbringing and how he'd learned that the only unforgivable sin according to Jesus' teachings is to "blaspheme against the Holy Spirit." Of course, he interprets this differently than I would. To him, this means doubting the existence of God. Can't it just as easily be interpreted as going against the spirit within all of us that strives to do right by others and follow a moral code? In other words, if we deny our humanity, our intrinsic need to rise above base instincts and be good people, that seems like it would indeed be an unforgivable sin against social progress and personal enlightenment. So this segment doesn't really condemn the Bible or Christianity as much as Flemming's interpretation of same.

And this "all about me"-ism is proven in the docu's culmination. Yes, I'm going to give away the ending, because what Flemming does to Dr. Ronald Sipus – an educator whose faith I absolutely do not share in any way, shape or form, yet someone who acquits himself more professionally than just about anyone else in the film – mirrors what he has done to his viewers by making this in the first place. He purports to examine the lack of empirical evidence for the existence of Jesus, but never really does. What this film is actually all about is Brian Flemming and his personal quest for a cathartic confrontation with his past. And I think that would make a terrific subject, particularly as he comes off as an utter ass in his interview with Sipus, who justifiably accuses Flemming of setting up the interview under false pretenses just so he can vent his own frustration. Flemming is either so oblivious or so confident in the righteousness of his personal cause that he leaves this all on camera! The result, at least for me, was to utterly discount any cogent points he might have made in the rest of the film in favor of personal vindictiveness, which enlightens absolutely nobody. (Had he actually wanted to make the film he claims this is, Flemming would immediately have followed up on Sipus' offer to show him empirical evidence of Jesus' historical existence, but he utterly ignored that in favor of his own agenda.)

Now, to specifics. The interviews with random Christians didn't work for me, beyond the first one (people's conception of Jesus), which I understood and was able to allow for given the need to set parameters for the subject to be explored. But even I couldn't provide the mythos of Dionysus or Osiris off the top of my head without looking them up, and I've studied mythology! These folks seem to be there only to be ridiculed, much like the hapless interviewees on a Jaywalking or Ham on the Street segment (hence my title for this review post, based on the episode featuring reactions to the Octodog). I wasn't as interested as Flemming obviously is in "irreverent" mean-spirited mockery. I had hoped to be educated.

I wanted to know more, for instance, about the parallels of Jesus' story with that of other mythohistoric characters, and thought this was glossed over way too quickly. Why not expand your interview subjects to also include noted historical theologians, actual thinking people who are also religious? Why not attempt to study the historical record with commentary from more than one side of things?

Instead, Flemming spends an inordinate amount of time condemning fundies for cherry-picking which Biblical passages to emphasize or ignore (i.e., hatred of gays, way too long a segment which makes things stray from the premise even more) whilst doing a fair amount of cherry-picking other passages to prove its points. And it's all over the place. It brings in lots of subjects that have nothing to do with its main premise, and which are easily argued even by laypeople like me who don't know a lot about Christianity. Some examples:

† The lengthy "Passion of the Christ" excerpts are used without permission almost gleefully to make points (some Christians are obsessed with blood, and violence sells) which, again, have nothing to do with the premise of Jesus not having existed, and the accompanying rolling scroll of every single instance of blood and gore found in the movie seems as fetishistic as Gibson's production itself.

† Doesn't Flemming's claim that "The Inquisition was not a perversion of Christian doctrine, but an expression of it" depend on which Christian doctrine you mean? It's like saying that Charles Dickens' point in A Christmas Carol was Scrooge's stinginess and fear rather than his reformation and the transformative power of the holiday and of family. Once more, lots of cherry-picking here, seeking passages that specifically fit Flemming's premise while ignoring other passages, willfully refusing looking at the big picture. Most Christians if asked would probably sum up the goal of their religion as "love thy neighbor," as the Golden Rule is considered the biggie even though it's admittedly hardly given more than lip service by many professed practitioners.

† By the same token, isn't the whole anti-Semitism aspect connected with Jesus' death ("Jews killed our Savior") just an interpretation by some factions, rather than a matter of Biblical record? Other factions may see the moral of Jesus' death sentence as another warning that all organized religions tend toward corruption. And this is coming from a Jew who heard the "you killed Jesus" accusation a lot when I was growing up, but who's also aware of many Christians who've never encountered that mentality. Assuming it's predominant worldwide and endemic to the religion seems a bit myopic and provincial, just like assuming Rapturism (which, yes, we all know is dangerous and deceptive) has as much prevalence.

† I suppose that Flemming's proclamation that "moderate Christianity makes no sense" as he trots out footage of Pat Robertson and his ilk makes sense if you buy into the fundies' premise that everything in the Bible should be taken literally rather than as allegory. To paraphrase Flemming's tone, is it ironic that so many people around the time when Jesus was said to be alive seemed to understand the idea of allegory better than axe-to-grind documentarians?

Overall, I don't think Flemming proves his case that anything modern so-called Christians are doing now, or indeed what atrocities people have committed in the name of their religion going back hundreds of years, has any bearing on whether or not there was a historical Jesus. To throw in all this extraneous, attention-grabbing stuff feels like a desperate need to drive home the point repeatedly that Flemming believes these people to be wrongheaded to the point of tragic irony if they're supposedly worshipping a myth. This makes sense considering he's a former fundamentalist who's likely as strident in his newfound contempt for what he used to believe as an ex-smoker is about the evils of cigarettes, but it adds no credibility to his purported thesis and belabors the obvious. Ooh, Charles Manson killed in the name of a Christ that I claim didn't exist, and look! the sun is scheduled to rise in the east tomorrow!

Lastly, here's the part where I talk about how this is not the film I would have wanted it to be, rather than what it is. I normally don't appreciate when reviewers do this, so please forgive me, but with something like this the temptation of the Christ to speculate on what might have been is too great. In my opinion, we don't need to be told what we already know. It's, you should pardon the expression, preaching to the converted. I'm not even sure at whom something like this would be aimed, other than people already familiar with and contemptuous of fundamentalism (in other words, people exactly like Flemming), and what purpose does it serve to mock ordinary believers even more? Why not instead, using as full a historical record as you can manage – including an exploration of how outlawed cults formed and operated in those days, relying on oral rather than written tradition, handed down largely by women who then got marginalized from any authority once a religion became established as Constantine did with Christianity in the 4th century – rather than cherry-picking and speculation, go into more detail on how you find no evidence that Jesus existed? The film's graphics and music have already shown that Flemming has the knowledge of how to make this entertaining and interesting. He needs to, again pardon the expression, have enough faith in his abilities to do this by sticking to and expanding upon his stated premise, using the tools available to other professional documentarians, such as interviews with credentialed experts from all sides of a subject this controversial. In other words, Flemming's biggest error is in making this about himself and not admitting that it's about himself. And he should have asked Dr. Sipus to produce that empirical evidence when it was offered to him.

I came into this documentary wanting to like it – I watch enough "historical Jesus" and "Jesus as depicted through the centuries" programs to be intrigued by the subject matter in the first place. But willful blindness, self-indulgence and biased interpretation, whether in religion or documentary filmmaking, is something better avoided in favor of level-headed thoroughness and a comprehensive evidential record. I'm afraid I'm still awaiting the definitive documentary to tackle the subject of whether Jesus was real.

Talking Baseball, Again!

Apparently the fellow who used to be part-owner of the Texas Rangers has done something sort-of right for a change - he got directly involved in the controversy over the Cuban baseball team being denied entrance to the US to compete in the World Baseball Classic this March, and the decision has now been reversed by Treasury - so long as no money exchanges hands, apparently (i.e., dollars officially flowing from the US to Cuba). It's far from ideal, but it's better than I'd hoped. The MLB site notes:

Cuba is the preeminent baseball power on the international scene and the winner of three of the four Olympic gold medals since baseball became a medal sport in 1992. They were the winners of the gold medal at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece, and the 2004 International Baseball Federation World Cup in the Netherlands. The Cubans have won the latter tournament 25 times since its inception in 1938. The IBAF World Cup is now played on a bi-annual basis and Cuba has won 12 of the last 13 gold medals dating back to 1976 (South Korea won in 1982). Cuba has never competed against MLB players at the international tournament level and this is the first one that will include Major League players.

If this decision hadn't been reversed, it would have made us look even more incredibly petty than we already look on the international scene. Moreover, it would have made us look like cowards, which I'm sure factored into Bush's decision much more than the pettiness thing.

Update: It hadn't even occurred to me that the reason this whole thing seemed to weird to me was that Cuba isn't a capitalist country, so it didn't make sense why money could possibly have been a sticking point. Eli has more, including a link to this Granma article which ran the letter from the president of the Cuban Baseball Federation to MLB volunteering to direct the money it would have received from participation towards Katrina victims.

And Then There Were Three

Vaya con diosa, Lauren! Wow, a six-year run, that's amazing! Anticipating the debut of two new bloggers, I've now moved Feministe from my Dynamic Duos section into Group Blogs.

Aquaversary

Not midnight yet, so I made it in under the wire (although it's not even 9 PM West Coast time yet) - Happy birthday, Laura!!, and a very happy 10th anniversary to your Aquasite!

I Feel So Special!

Stephen Colbert talked about where we live last night, and interviewed our Congresscritter, who I seem to recall was one of the local dignitaries honoring my uncle a couple years ago, but I'll leave to it my cousin Marc to correct me in the comments section if I'm wrong...

Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)

Whew, Mom's finally home, time for everybody to stretch!



Datsa nice looooong kitty!



Amy actually held this pose for about half a minute whilst I got the camera and set up the picture. She's very self-aware of her intrinsically photogenic cuteness.

Transportation Update

Still no word from my insurance company on when an adjuster will be assigned to come look at my car; apparently I'm far from the only client in the area whose vehicle was damaged by the 60+ mph winds Wednesday morning, so they've got a bit of a backlog at the moment. Now comes word that TWU 100 members rejected the contract that president Roger Toussaint urged them to ratify. Nobody seems to know what this means (personally I'm waiting for Steve Gilliard to weigh in), but I hope we're not in for another NYC transit strike, as it'll mean I'll be going back to the Westchester Bee Line and a 1¾-hour commute each way until my car is repaired. And just when I think I'm finally getting the hang of timing the Metro North-MTA bus commute to make it back and forth in about an hour... have I mentioned I miss my car? Update: Steve's posted about it, and the NYT article to which he links says "transit service is expected to be unaffected. Mr. Toussaint made no mention of another strike, and the vote will proably mean that negotiators for the union and the M.T.A. will go back to the bargaining table to hash out a new deal."

Silly Site o' the Day

Oy, this early commute is starting to get to me... hope that insurance adjuster comes 'round to the auto shop soon, I want my car back! Hey, let's all celebrate Google's refusal to cave in to frivolous White House anti-privacy demands by playing with the Google logo maker (via BoingBoing)!

Silly Site o' the Day

Ugh - couldn't turn my brain off for more than a few seconds last night (and most of the preceding day), so I got very little sleep, and now I have to start my 1½-hour commute, trudging out in 32-degree weather to walk to the bus to get to the train to take me to the house that Jack built office. (It's about 25 minutes by car, just to get some perspective.) At least I get to read, though! Speaking of which, via BoingBoing, here's a Dr. Bronner's Soap label quote generator. Dilute, Dilute, OK!

Just So You Know...

I'm still shaky. But I feel somewhat vindicated. There was nothing I or anyone could have done to escape the freak winds this morning. According to this NY Times article, "the peak came around 7:30 a.m., according to the National Weather Service, which reported gusts reaching 68 miles per hour in the Bronx..." That's pretty much exactly when the branch tore off the tree and slammed down-and-sideways into my car. I've no doubt that was a 60+ mph gust; that's almost a once-in-a-lifetime kinda thing around here. The severe wind advisory remains in effect for another couple hours, and things should calm down tomorrow morning enough for me to do my first 7 AM traipsing through the downed trees on my way to the bus-to-Metro North. The good news, besides nobody being hurt and the damage not appearing to affect the car's overall functioning (making it eminently driveable once the roof and back window are repaired), is that I'm probably only out about $50 for my next week or so of public transit commuting, and the weather should stay mild enough that I won't have to worry about walking on snow and ice. Oh, and I get to read again, so I may finally catch up on my Entertainment Weeklys once more...

Come to the Carnival

The new Carnival of the Feminists has been posted at Feministe, with lots of links to women writing about comics (including one of my posts, thanks Lauren!) and other pop-culture matters.

Silly Site o' the Day

Not feeling terribly silly waiting for the tow truck and all, but I might as well keep my fingers busy. Pictures of Pennies comes to me via my cousin Marc.

Act of God

Okay, the first thing I need to say is, I'm fine.

But my car's not.

I was watching the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert hour last night, wherein they were ridiculing the idea that God takes a personal interest in every little bad thing that happens to people. And I pretty much agree. As far as I'm concerned, the only time "Act of God" enters into things is for insurance purposes.

This morning I witnessed an Act of God.

I woke up about 7 AM from a dream in which various mob bosses were attempting to rub me out. Needless to say, I wasn't eager to get back to sleep, not that the nasty wind howling outside would have let me. Shortly thereafter Robin awoke as well, and we went to the living room to check out the windy weather and speculate on what kind of commute I'd have.

I was not destined to have a commute today.

We watched a particularly powerful, freak gust of wind, and suddenly heard a loud cracking sound, as a huuuuuge branch from the tree bordering our landlord's property tore away and plummeted very quickly from a great height, probably around 40 feet up, as the wind blew it across the driveway, where it smashed into my car, shattering the back windshield and caving in the back of the car's roof. This all happened in about 2 seconds, not even enough time for us to catch our breath let alone do anything about the situation.



Rob dressed quickly and ran outside to take pictures for the insurance company.



You can see that not only is the back window completely smashed in, but there's a huge gouge in the back of the roof.



Here's a wider shot of my car in relation to the tree (right side, background) so you can see how far the branch had to fly across to even come near it. Lillian's car (which had been next to mine and which she moved, along with the branches, prior to this picture being taken) and the one next to hers (closest to the tree) weren't even touched.



Here's the offending branch in question - which, if it had hit a person, would likely have killed that person instantly. It looks a lot smaller in this picture than it actually is.

I've just spent the last two hours telling the office I won't be in, calling my insurance company, arranging for a tow to my local auto repair shop, and wondering how I'm going to get by for goodness knows how long without wheels.

I'm still pretty shaken up, but Rob and I have both kept our heads about this, and are resigned to whatever happens. And we're counting our blessings - nobody was outside when this happened, I wasn't in the car when it happened, we have another witness as Lillian's son saw the whole thing happen, and even though the car isn't in driveable condition I can still get into it and into the trunk. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to wait for the tow truck. More later after I calm down...

Silly Site o' the Day

Heaven help us all, Yetisports has a new game out, Pingu (penguin) Climb. Registration required but, if Robin's Yetispots obsession is any indication, well worth it. Wheeeee!

Maintenance Notes

For some reason frequent email correspondent Catherine Bergstrom wasn't on my sidebar; that's now been remedied. Kim Davis and PZ Myers have relocated their blogs; Karen McLaughlan has left Dark Bilious Vapors to set up her own blog, Peripetia; Mark A.R. Kleiman has turned his eponymous blog into a Reality-Based Community group blog, and Melanie Mattson's Just a Bump in the Beltway is now in that category as well; and CJ Finis' Synaptic Sync is back! Sidebar has been updated. Last but not least, Ampersand's currently taking submissions on size issues for the first Big Fat Carnival.

Silly Site o' the Day

Cold and depressing here at the office, thinking about how I'd rather be home and warm (our heat hasn't quite kicked in, and I can barely feel my feet at the moment) and watching Al Gore's speech on MLK Day, but at least the day's half over. Via Maru, as long as it's cold why not have penguins snow-write messages for you?

Food For Thought

Join the cooking bloggers in Kathy's and Ginger's cookbook to benefit DWB! I'll probably submit a grumbling essay called Mis en Place about the invisible sous chefs who do all the grunt work so that the TV presenters merely need to put stuff together on camera (something I suspect almost any idiot could do), plus maybe a few recipes for some of my specialties like no-salt latkes and many-bean salad and guacamole deviled eggs, and maybe even the chicken paprikash over couscous that I'm currently trying to digest. If you have any interest, stay tuned to Kathy's blog!

Geeky Gals Who Think Like I Do

Growing up I never had that many local female friends who were geeky in the same way I was. None of the other social misfit gals with whom I hung out seemed to have the same kinds of obsessions that I did. With a few exceptions (Helene the drummer at summer band school, my best friend Debby who loved Donny Osmond the way I loved David Cassidy), all through my school years my geekiest friends seemed to be male, and I didn't think that much of it because, in enjoying the same things they did and in not looking like a typical girl (I was large and boisterous, had very short hair and hadn't developed too many social skills, much like them) I guess I was accepted into their unspoken clubhouse.

After college, though, things shifted a bit when I struck out on my own, figuratively at least. I had befriended a few girls involved in Uncle Floyd fandom and who regularly caught other comedy acts like "Weird" Al Yankovic, but for the most part they didn't live near me. Jill, whom I met at a number of Jewish singles events, did. She introduced me both to actually effective pot and The Firesign Theatre in the same evening, and that's when it dawned on me both that "oh my god, there are people out there who think like I do!" and that women could be clever geeks and be very girly as well.

So Jill was one of them – more accurately, One of Us – and was around a lot during my INSIDE JOKE years, when I met more women who thought like I do. Those were the years of the zine scene, science fiction fandom, apas and so forth. And there was Anni Ackner and Candi Strecker and lots of others whose names are since lost to the aether of an aging brain. And we kind of stood out, especially those of us with zines that weren't strictly about sf fandom, because there weren't all that many young women self-publishing zines in those days. Like many pop culture hobbies, the zine scene was pretty male-dominated.

And then I married Steve and my circle of friends widened to encompass comic book fandom, and now that I'd attained the requisite social skills to get by in the real world it was like hitting a brick wall. After the relative female-friendliness of sf fandom, it was kind of a shocker hanging with all these guys who were creative and enthusiastic, to be sure, but also didn't seem to know how to deal with a woman who shared their interest. It was as though the unspoken clubhouse had suddenly reared its ugly head again, and after the comparative luxury of female geeky friends in IJ and sf circles I wasn't that used to being on the outside any more.

To me, comics were just another thing to read; I hadn't gotten into them earlier because, while I enjoyed (and still do) the fantasy aspect of "what would you do if you had amazing powers?" I found them too soap-operatic and didn't have the inclination (or money) to keep track of their interwoven plots. With Steve's help I'd quickly been brought up to speed on what was happening at the time and who was whom in the various "universes." He didn't prepare me for how female characters were depicted, but I'd had too many years of sighing in libraries during high school because Heinlein's space adventure books were soooo male that having female characters present at all in this new-to-me hobby was something of a relief. And of course, being the '80s, there were always plenty of independent comics to read as alternatives, including most of what Eclipse put out which was by and large female-friendly. Not having had the Marvel/DC habit ingrained in me as a youngster, I didn't put more weight on the content of those companies' books than that of the other comics I bought. So, while the social aspect of comics fandom was disappointing, the hobby itself still entertained me for the most part.

As the '90s rolled in, the more "grim and gritty" comics I encountered the harder the depictions of women characters became to ignore, particularly the visuals. And after the "speculeech" crash a lot of female-friendly indies went by the wayside, leaving mostly the male-appeal stuff. By this time I'd schooled myself in enough comics history to differentiate artists' styles, and I was learning more all the time thanks to apas, conventions and the Internet. And I knew it hadn't always been thus, both from a perusal of the medium's history and from my own personal experience. I was able to join Friends of Lulu, an organization which had just gotten off the ground and was determined to increase the visibility and viability of women in all aspects of the industry, from creators to retailers to fans, and that's where the great majority of my feminist energy went for the rest of the decade, as my circle of female geek friends increased.

By the turn of the century it appeared things were turning around. Many male as well as female readers were bored with "all grim all the time" and looking for books with more universal appeal. Girls were getting into manga in a big way. Women were becoming so accepted at conventions and on creative teams that some began to wonder if a specifically pro-woman industry group was even all that necessary any more. And yet, telltale signs remained that parity was far from achieved: the "cool" artists of the moment not quite getting that, to paraphrase Andrea Rubinstein, kick-ass female characters have no real claim to strength when their every move is in the context of male desire (skimpy clothes, butt- or boob-shots, etc.); the dearth of female names on convention guest lists and anthology "training ground" books at the Big Two; and the persistent creepiness of many male fans and pros at industry social gatherings (including not even giving any forethought to whether holding some of those gatherings at strip clubs or Hooter's breastaurants was at all welcoming to fellow creators and fans).

Every now and then such simmerings of frustration boil over, as evidenced by the most recent spate of feminist posts chronicled these last two weeks at the excellent link-farm When Fangirls Attack!, begun when one comics professional's dissatisfaction with conditions that virtually screamed at her "We don't want you girls in our clubhouse!" prompted her to give up on working in the so-called mainstream (the part of the industry that actually affords established creators a decent living). At such times when the glass ceiling seems more impenetrable than ever, it's heartening to see how many of us "geeks that think like we do" there really are. Thanks to the internet dozens of women, and not a few men, have weighed in on the subject with their own experiences, support and advice on how to continue improving things. And comics being at present but a tiny sliver of the entertainment pie with a loyal but vocal audience, chances of improvement are fairly good. After all, everyone concerned, from readers to creators to suits, wants to see the industry grow again. And being more welcoming to half your potential audience seems a win-win situation. The more feminist readers speak out about how to remedy continuing inequities, the closer those remedies become to implementation, and the more geeky friends we can all discover who think like we do.

Liberal Coalition Top TenTwenty
Week of 1/1 thru 1/7/06

I suspect the only reason I have a Top 20 this week is because Steve Gilliard has five of them. When the man's on a roll, there's no stopping him. Check these out in particular:

• The coming Republican shitstorm
• Dividing the man from his mother (the comment section is good)
• Dutch tired of goofy foriegners coming to smoke weed
• Idiots
• Color free magazines

Elsewhere around the Liberal Coalition members' blogs:

• Alex at Sooner Thought talks about a local Christian university proposing to fire divorced employees.

• Bryant at Make Me A Commentator! has some fascinating thoughts on how orthodox Judiasm views folks like Jack Abramoff (who's an orthodox Jew in the same way that someone like Pat Robertson is a Christian).

• Echidne speaks of the memory hole.

• Tena at First Draft is royally pissed at stupid polls, but that may be because her head still hurts from trying to parse presidential syntax.

• Horatio at Dodecahedron ponders the pot pill.

• Jeff at Speedkill has our parsha reading for the day, from the Book of Enoch.

• John at archy asks, when is a bomb not a bomb? More and more frequently, it seems.

• Jude Camwell at Iddybud notes the deep divide between the Dow and real life, and the lack of a divide between people of private faith and their public political activities.

• A round of applause to Leah at Corrente for going above and beyond in live-blogging this past week's Alito hearings!

• Maru at WTF Is It Now?? watches the TV in her mind.

• Mustang Bobby at Bark Bark Woof Woof reviews Brokeback Mountain.

• And last but not least is another Norbizness installment of "The Left Is"!

Silly Site o' the Day

Again via Carolyn in email, we present Click Here, You Idiot. If you're wondering, no, I couldn't be bothered reading to the end; I have enough to catch up on without needing to peruse endless variations on the same gag for a half dozen screens.

RIP Shelly Winters

A great broad, even later in life when she got (at least to me) a bit dotty. Mark Evanier has a couple of great anecdotes about her, natch.

Silly Site o' the Day

I tend to doubt Garth Brooks approved the use of his likeness for this pro-union animation, but maybe it falls under fair use for satiric purposes? Via Bora at Science and Politics.

Friday Cat Blogging (™ Kevin Drum)

Being as today's Friday the 13th, I need to give the black cat prominence. Here's Datsa against the neutral russet of the carpet...



And heaven forfend Amy not pose for the camera. Here she is in one of her favorite positions on the radiator.



If you click on the image you'll see her just about life-sized. Her green eyes really come through!



Update: Oh no, Robin just opened the closet door...we all know what that means...

"He was a Christian from Basrah and he had a lovely wife who adored him."

Riverbend puts a name and face on the interpreter killed last week when journalist Jill Carroll was abducted.

Triskaideka-Who?

Kath's happy. Laura's happy. And I'm happy! I'd be happier if they got the rights to air all the series throughout the show's on-again, off-again run, but I'll take what I can get for now...

Damn When Fangirls Attack!

That's right, damn them to heck! Ragnell and Kalinara are bound and determined to make it impossible for me to catch up on blog reading because of their wonderful link-farming! Just today I read two more highly recommended posts that I hope their authors will submit to the next Carnival of the Feminists (the pop-culture installment). Dan Jacobson comes out of hiatus to tell Nice Guys not to make complaints of sexism in comics about them, and the Fabulous Miss Rose ponders Unsolveable Philosophical Quandries on equality and being "just people."

Silly Site o' the Day

Long workdays (another 11-hour day yesterday!) have caused me not only to fall behind in blog reading and skimming, but to drop off in posting ability. With my boss on a business trip next week, then out of the country the following two weeks, I should be able to catch up soon, and I thank you for your understanding and patience. (Do they still say that on the subways? I always used to think, "yeah, as if I have a choice...") Now if I can only shake the fog from my head. My theory is that it's seeping in from the outside, this entire area is under a Dense Fog Alert at the moment and visibility is like maybe half a block. The drive to the office was very romantic, though! But, um, dangerous. Anyway, via Carolyn Ibis in email, today's site generates another of my favorite things, fake error messages.

Quote of the Day

"How can it be a triumph of female agency when the woman who's kicking some ass is doing it in the context of male desire?" - Andrea Rubinstein, Girl Power? [Girls & Game Ads, Part 3]

She's talking about games, obviously, but it could just as easily apply to comics (particularly relevant in light of recent discussions about women and comics). Via Ampersand.