Le'go my Ego

No response to my initial feeler about doing Blogathon '03, with the idea of earmarking my sponsor bucks for the Global Fund for Women (one of Blogathon's suggested charities). Meanwhile, Mary Beth Williams (link at sidebar) is already getting lots of sponsors. So it looks like I won't be doing the Blogathon after all. It's a bit like the conundrum of the tree falling in the forest - if you make tentative plans to blog for 24 hours straight for a good cause and nobody sponsors or even seems to care, what's the point? And can I, in fact, feel sorrier for myself? Whine whine whine, I don't have as many readers as all these bloggers who write better than me, yadda yadda. As I'm sure you'll agree, the only thing worse than lamenting how nobody cares is not realizing that, well, nobody cares that "nobody cares." This stuff has got to be boring to read. Considering the punchier I get the more prone I am to such tiresome navel-gazing, it's probably for the best. Although I still would have wanted to see if I could actually do it. :)

"Every Country Should Have Its Own Al-Jazeera"

The above was Jon Stewart's nail-on-the-head glowing praise and/or sarky summary of Fox News, as told to Bill Moyers on a NOW interview this evening. A wonderful 20 minutes, for which I thank Jeralyn Merritt's heads-up, and which I hope to high heaven Lisa Rein (link at sidebar) sees fit to put up on her site. NOW uses Stewart's appearance as a springboard for its brief history of American political satire, linking to its discussion boards in case any other Firesign Theatre fans want to "Tell us about your own favorite examples" and speak up for the 4or5. Or, come to think of it, bloggers like MadKane, Tom Tomorrow and Adam Felber (links at sidebar). [The satire overview also links to The Onion, Whitehouse.org and the Borowitz Report, as well as to the Daily Show's homepage. Hey, look at that, so do I!] Update: Bill Connolly points to the transcript, also from NOW's website - thanks Bill!

"Simply put, the Americans can’t stay, but neither can they leave"

That's the conclusion drawn vis a vis the situation in Iraq by the always-indispensable Christopher Albritton, who's been there. His well-thought-out essay should be must reading.

Summer Reading

...and some are not! But for those of you who are, please refer again to my Tom Tomorrow book plug below and, while, you're at it, don't neglect the works of the others on the "Big Six" list on my sidebar. Here's info on Wil Wheaton's book. Here's the stuff Mark Evanier's put out. Neil Gaiman has just run down the list of what's out from him this summer (scroll down a bit), and Peter David's got a direct link to buying his books on his blog's right-hand sidebar. Lastly, here's Priest's section on his comics; it's a teeny bit out of date but should serve fairly well. Update: Tom's book preorders place him at #15 on Amazon's sales ranking at last check! This is a fun game for this afternoon, "check to see where Tom's pre-orders put him now!" Think I'll go back every half hour. :)

Subscription Query

Salam Pax (link at sidebar) is back from Basra, and has written about his trip in his Guardian article. The Blogosphere seems excited that the Guardian will soon launch a weekly news magazine in the US, but nobody's been able to tell me how to subscribe. The notice reads, "The Guardian will this week unveil a series of paid-for packages on its network of web sites," but this page seems to be only for the one printed in England, yes? And the prices seem kinda high - $114/year? An In These Times sub is less than $50 for two years. Can someone give me more actual information on the new Guardian venture, or is it not yet available?

Unabashed "Top Six" Plug

When anyone on my "Top Six" blogroll list (see sidebar) asks me to publicize their stuff, I'm there. Tom Tomorrow's new book is out! Buy it. Review to follow once I get and read my copy. [Part of me is actually considering whether to start up my Pen-Elayne For Your Thoughts comics reviews again, as I do miss doing them, but I don't want to feel obligated to read stuff as soon as it comes out; I'm back up to two Diamond packing boxes filled (upright) with unread comics and the pile doesn't seem to be shrinking any time soon...]

Spiffing

Still playing with my sidebar. Split up the blogroll a bit so that the loose categories that were in my head are now delineated on the screen. Found out the names scrunch slightly closer together if I eliminate the font code on each line, which I think is A Good Thing so far. Added the message boards I usually visit (registration required on all of 'em), and a few more pretty boxes linking to various free blog services. Looking for more ways to type sentences that aren't really fragments but look like them because they're missing the subject "I" at the beginning.

"We are literally going to have to rewrite medical textbooks"

This is amazing. And a finding that I'm probably going to be following very closely, as I'm sure will every woman who was taught to believe our menstrual and ovulation cycles were de facto intrinsically tied together. And speaking of "icky female stuff," Stonehenge gets labelled as labial!

Pieces of Paper

Whatever happened to voting by just marking an "X" on a piece of paper next to the candidate of your choice? Geez, it's been good for decades just about everywhere. Hasn't last Sunday's hacker contest taught us anything? Why are we even considering using these black boxes if they're so easily tampered with and (as Lis Riba, link at sidebar, also noted) don't even spit out ATM-type receipts?

Move Along, Nothing to See Here...

So I was doing some sidebar maintenance during switchboard relief, and the receptionist's computer isn't as advanced as mine so Blogger's edit template is different there - there's no "Publish" button, and I didn't realize that if I hit "post" it would give me a blank post. I deleted the posts but the Haloscan comments were still there, until I reposted. So if you'd like, use the comments section to this pointless post as an Open Thread. Let's see, how about posting your opinions on this (via Cyndy Roy, link at sidebar)?

The Curious Savage

Yes, there's actually a play by that name (written by John Patrick); I know only because it was my high school acting debut (I played, as I recall, Mrs. Paddy). But I digress. Of all the blog commentaries on MSNBC's firing of Michael "Savage" Weiner, as far as I'm concerned Mark Evanier sums up the situation best. And I do mean "sums," as in "follow the money."

Tool Crazy

Still experimenting with adding stuff to see if it'll work. (Dang, I'll do anything to keep myself from working on my storytelling!) There's now a Google search bar at the bottom of this page. Seems to work quite nicely! I also signed up for FreeFind (as did Lis) and got an e-mail that my site has been "spidered" but I haven't gotten any instructions as to what coding to add (other than "If you like FreeFind please link to us from your site"). Color me confused again, but hey, what else is new... Update: I also changed my hit counter from GoStats to SiteMeter, based on Tom Tomorrow's latest blog post, plus the fact that GoStats seemed to be a bit buggy (referrals were cumulative rather than "last 24 hours" and every time I went to my own page it counted as another hit) and that I'd just checked out all the referred-from sites so I figured it was time for a change. So far I'm loving the SiteMeter (not the least because all the stats are kept on their page rather than mine)!

Empowering Objectification

I've lost track of how many times I've tried to explain to people my thoughts on why I don't feel women (both real women and female characters) who play to the male gaze and expectations are advancing any sort of feminist objectives of egalitarianism, parity, empowerment, etc. Thanks to Christine Cupaiuolo at Ms. Musings (link at sidebar), I can now point people to her blog entry on this subject, which pretty much covers all the bases I've been trying to. Thanks, Christine!

Trackback Heads-Up

I've responded to Natalie Davis (link at sidebar) in the comments to my July 5 entry "Proactivity." If you haven't yet read her comments, I urge you to. As is usual whenever I correspond with Natalie, I feel like my response is woefully inadequate and terribly thought-out and in general that I'm way outclassed compared with her erudition and grace. And may she forgive me for always considering her an outstanding citizen, even if she herself does not. Update: Whew, she's not angry with me after all! This (and the bit about Hugh) totally makes my day and obliterates the "feeling of impending what's-name" (as Robin calls it) that I had during my lunch hour. Hugs all around, beautiful people!

Even Fantasy Stock Markets Make My Head Hurt

I blame Lis Riba (link at sidebar). Not only did she post a nice little autobio synopsis today, but she also linked to a whole bunch of places where she could check incoming links to her blog. I do this occasionally (see "I'm An Adorable Little Rodent!" at the sidebar) but I figured, hey, she's got it all laid out, I'll check them all. So I went on the fantasy stock market called Blogshares to check out how much I'm worth and see if I could start "investing" in other blogs - and I haven't a clue. I haven't had my site bid on in a month, although I've been really good about pinging weblogs.com whenever I update (at least when it's working!), and that's presumably where their bot/spider visits. Oh well, maybe it's because I hadn't "claimed" my blog yet (by putting the Blogshares logo and link on my sidebar), so I've done that now. I get the feeling that any investment activity will start if I visit my parents in a couple weeks. My dad seems to be real good at this sort of thing, and hey, it'll be something we can do together. (As for activities with Mom, well, that's what clothes shopping is for!) Update: Okay, this is really weird - I clicked on the sidebar link and it now shows that I bought 1000 shares of my own blog this afternoon. Do they automatically give you 1000 shares when you claim your blog? Head hurts...

Today's Buzz (NYT-Registration-Free!)

The blogosphere seems to be all abuzz today over this NYT op-ed, What I Didn't Find in Africa, linked via Google news so you don't have to deal with the NY Times overly-intrusive online registration process (and hey, guess what? their "breaking news" e-mail bulletins are now a premium service too!). My one-woman alterna-link crusade continues!

Speaking of busy bees, Julia (link at sidebar) has been blogging up a storm this past couple days, including bringing us another prime example of irony, a great review of a TV movie that I thought looked too silly to even watch, and a recommendation to sponsor Mary Beth Williams (link at sidebar) in this year's Blogathon. As Blogathon 2003 falls at the end of my vacation week I was considering participating in it too, probably earmarking my sponsor bucks toward the Global Fund for Women (one of Blogathon's suggested charities), but I don't want to step on Mary Beth's toes here. What do y'all think? Should I go for it? Would you sponsor me (and MB)?

Living There, You'll Be Free, If You Truly Wish to Be

As Spencer mentioned in the comments on Friday, a local station did indeed run a showing of 1776 last night. The non-letterboxed version (not as bad as pan-and-scan but always hard to watch anyway because so much is cut off the sides of the screen), with some weird edits. For instance, it included most of Cool Considerate Men, except for the bit after the Hancock/Dickinson exchange I reproed on Friday, the part that begins "And that is why they will follow us... to the right, ever to the right..." - a bit of a shame, since that line kind of echoes Goering's "the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders" and ties into the scene (which was shown) where the Congressmen burst out into the street doing a modified goose-step using their walking sticks to approximate a "Heil Hitler" salute. The lead-in lyrics and actions are a very powerful combination, and the piece loses a bit of impact without the first. Also missing was the very funny bit of business with a sexually frustrated Jefferson trying to start the Declaration, where Ken Howard tossed away one piece of paper after another, culminating with him just looking at blank sheets before throwing them up in the air in despair.

Not sure how much else was excised, as I was flicking stations between 1776 and Willy Wonka, probably watching more of the latter than the former (which I'd just seen on DVD a couple days earlier, after all). Both early '70s musicals do deal with freedom in their own way, though, so that got me to thinking abut how I perceived the word is used differently by the left and right. The right seems to use what I call a directed or steered freedom, a freedom towards something that you're "allowed" or expected to want - for instance, freedom to worship, freedom to choose from among available products, etc. Whereas the left most often embraces a sort of escapist, outsider freedom, as in freedom from want, freedom from persecution, freedom from fear, etc. It makes sense, if you think about it, for relatively comfortable conservatives to be more in favor of regulated and limited freedom, and progressives struggling on behalf of have-nots to think of freedom in broader and looser terms. Interestingly, FDR seemed to split the difference in his Four Freedoms speech, the first two being directed freedoms and the last two being escapist freedoms. The problem with escapist freedoms is that they often require more imagination than directed ones. It's much easier to be steered towards a preconceived choice than encouraged to flee danger and repression in search of an unknown end. The latter can make for a powerful fantasy, but it's usually just a facade; the reality of modern America tends towards multiple-choice questions rather than thought-out essays. Just something to consider when speaking to one's fellow Americans about freedom.

Aloha Oy!

Looks like my Blogger template's been hacked. Yep, "small, unsecured sites," that sounds like much of Blogtopia (Y,SCTW!). Robin can't load my page without seeing a charming picture of a Hawai'ian couple wallpapered all over the text. But hey, he's on a Mac, who knows? I loaded about four times before I got the site correct, one of the loads seemed to produce a French Freedom blog. Wish I could still read French Freedom. Anyway, as I keep saying every time my tummy rumbles, this too shall pass... think I'll lay low for awhile...

Proactivity

Way I see it, we have two choices. We can either whine about how This Isn't Our America, which to me is pretty much ceding all the ground we've won over the decades to the reactionary fundie-right; or we can try to take back what we can, if need be a manageable little at a time. Gary Hart's in favor of the latter. So are some folks at MIT (yeah, this one's all over the blogosphere). So's the Adbusters contingent (via Jerry Bowles, link at sidebar), and they're Canadians! To paraphrase free speech absolutists, the answer to offensive speech isn't to censor it or stick your head in the ground and wish it away. The answer is more speech, proactive speech, speech that brings the truth to light and overwhelms the darkness.

Nookie on a French Subway?

No, that's apparently not the definition of a metrosexual. Via Natalie Davis and Christine of Ms. Musings, the word apparently describes "straight, urban men who are willing to embrace their feminine side" through things that, um, don't seem terribly sexual. I'm sorry, but "expensive face creams and designer clothes" have always been the province of the self-obsessed rich, no matter the gender. The idea that rich "masculine men" are slovenly went out with-- well, was it ever in? I mean, Cary Grant? Pick-a-James Bond? Hello? Sounds to me like some bored style reporters hit on a new way to sell more people stuff they don't need whilst laying in a subtle dig at stereotypes of gay men as de facto fashion plates.