If anyone has an file of Santana's "Smooth" and is willing to let me have a copy, contact me I can't seem to find it on iTunes and need it for a drum lesson. Thanks! I'd pay for it but I'm not signing up to a whole other annoying music service and truly do not want a whole Santana cd. :P

I read a little news blurb on another blog about a South Carolina school lunch program that involves giving saltines and juice to kids whose parents are overdue for paying for school lunches. The comments on this blurb absolutely turned my stomach. I can't stop thinking about it. There's bootstrap conservatism where people want to not foster a psychology of dependency, and then there's bootstrap conservatism where they don't mind depriving kids of nutrition. Just what leads someone to feel like they can say in good conscience "I'm not going to pay for someone else's kid to eat, that's their problem"? And these people bitch about the "me" generation?? There were a number of interesting (and even good) suggestions on better ways to handle the situation in the comments but I had to stop reading because I couldn't take the cruel neglect advocators anymore. If my supposed choices are to possibly cause some people to gain a sense of "entitlement" and be psychologically damaged by "handouts" or causing children to grow up with the aftereffects of not only parental neglect but also the neglect of the community, then I choose the former. Consider my craw officially stuck with this.

I just got an email from the DC Divas listserv. Subject: "The Best Looking Team in the League!" The what in the huh? Now, don't get me wrong, I'm overjoyed about the Divas and they are hot. I hope to go catch a game this season - anyone want to go with me? But that email was a real eye roller, from stem to stern. It would be one thing (that would bother me) if they felt the need to put a feminine "face" on the team to market it, but to take it to the level of competition? Whatev. On the website there are some links to training videos though... now this is how I could enjoy some football! (My vote for best logo in the league: Toledo Spitfire.

Tonight we had a solid peril_book_club meeting. Most reviews of Stephen Fry's Making History were positive, with a few disputes of style and taste. Mucking with time is a real challenge, I think he rose to it. We decided on the Dan Savage book for next month, which I'm confident if I manage to read it will leave me annoyed and angry (with an outside hope for grudgingly respectful), so it should be a super interesting meeting, at least. If anyone can tear me down off my soapbox, that is.

[edit] I forgot to note one of the major highlights of my day: being in the Trader Joe's and realizing I'm suddenly humming "Robbery, Assault and Battery" to myself, and further realizing that this is happening because it's playing in the store. It turns out they use XM in the Annapolis TJ's so I had a bonding moment with the dude who chose the station. <3

i saw not one but two sets of truck testicles on my way home. i'm thinking, if i ever do get a pickup, can i get some little ovaries to hang off the back? surely i am not the first person to consider this.

also i hate warcraft iii. it makes jack mean.

now to dinner.

So someone I know is looking at the maternity leave at their place of work. Apparently, it is 5 weeks. Her partner gets no leave and must take vacation to spend any time at home during/after the birth of his child. The real kicker is her maternity leave starts one week AFTER the birth, and any time during and up to that time, she must use vacation. I think this is outrageous (both the inequity and the shortness of that time), but then I'm a commie pinko liberal who doesn't love profit enough to see what's really important. So this thus-far childfree feminist is curious what the stats are across her f-list? Which she recognizes is largely skewed towards the affluent?

Poll #508244 Family Values
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 51

For women: How much maternity leave is allowed at your place of work?

For men: How much paternity leave is allowed at your job?

From a thread elsewhere, I said the following responding to a general discussion of "but I don't want to feel bad/guilty for X or Y cultural circumstance/ancestral inequality/thing i said that i did not mean as an offense but that someone was offended by":

People mix up "feel responsible for their words and actions and their effects" and "feel bad" an awful lot. Also apparently sometimes holding oneself responsible feels "bad". To people for whom this feels bad I say, "get over it". Since life isn't fair or kind, trying to make it as fair and kind as possible for as many people as possible takes work.

I would add to that, not feeling bad about injustice or harm (particularly on a scale like, say, slavery) is kind of callous. You don't want to feel bad because your ancestors may or may not have been slaveowners? Oh? Just what do you want to feel about it? Happy? Nothing? I feel bad that anyone's ancestors were slaveowners. Do you mean that you don't want to be personally blamed? Why don't you examine why you feel personally blamed by whatever discourse just occurred? In some way that does not cast blame back?

"I don't want to feel guilty for being white/male." is not an excuse to not feel responsible for something you just said or did, and not a reason to blow off someone who brings prejudice or an -ism into the conversation.

And this has been said a million times, but just bears repeating.
It is for the offended to decide whether they can be offended, and not the offender. The offender gets to decide whether they care enough about that person to consider the effects of what they just said or did and decide if it warrants further action, an apology, an examination of things.

Today is already looking to be a shining example... first I listened to morning radio. Silly me. Next, I'm in the 7-11 waiting in line, and I see this little girl (about 5?) standing right in front of the magazine display, which is naturally basically about ten thousand maxim type things. She sees the "Biker" mag with a woman standing near a bike with (what else?) virtually nothing on. She tugs her mom's sleeve. A number of things to say cross my mind:
"Women aren't just things for men to ride like bikes."
"If you ever want to ride a motorcycle, I recommend protective gear if you want to keep your skin on."
"Girls can actually ride bikes, too, not just stand around naked next to them."
Her mother and I exchanged exasperated glances, I purchased my Dannon fruit-on-the-bottom, and nothing was said.
Then I got in the car and what was on? That vile song about sexism masked as being "good to your daughters".

The final insult being when I saw a poor kitty that looked just like Nicolas dead on the side of the road.
Can I please go back to bed.
(And I haven't even heard about state of the union yet.)

here is my thingy, er:( sense of humor analysis... )

Ironically, I hated Fish Called Wanda because of the live fish-eating scene which made me cry and cry. Other than that I like this analysis!

Take the quiz here.

Do you know what you would do if someone was attempting to sexually assault you?

If you'd like to discuss what to do and what not to do, and to learn from trained people ways to defend yourself, my trusted friend thewronghands is going to run a quick seminar on september 11th or 12th. Here is her post about it, let her know if you might be interested.

I have been lucky. Very lucky. But I don't know what I would do if I were assaulted, which is bad news. I plan to go.

I have now seen eighty bazillion posts decrying the horror of Curves. At this point, rather than making the same comment in every person's journal, I figure I had better just... make a post. (Of course, those of you posting recently don't have any way of knowing how many times I've heard the news, so I'm not like mad at you, I'm sorry if I come off bitchy. :()

http://www.snopes.com/business/alliance/curves.asp

"All this is by way of saying that while it's correct to identify Gary Heavin as a patron of pro-life endeavors, it would not be right to point to Curves as a supporter of those same causes. "

Curves is the most woman-positive gym atmosphere I've ever encountered. We live in a culture where women's bodies are commodities, battlegrounds, objects of immense criticism and ridicule. This is a place where you can, ironically, escape that and just feel like you're taking care of yourself. I did not get a hard sell. I am not pressured to buy extra shirts, drinks, or books. (Although they do produce that stuff.) The women there are smiling, taking the machines (which are not difficult to learn how to use) at their own pace. There is no sense of shame, there is no sense of some kind of oppressive misery of being a woman who doesn't fit the ideal. There are women of all walks of life, shapes, and sizes. It's also a great deal cheaper and more convenient than most gyms. (Although, not, by any means, the cheapest way to get exercise.) In fact, there is everything right with Curves for me and for many women who are busy yet need some motivation to get excercise in an organized atmosphere.

At my Curves, we've openly talked about the controversy and about attending the March for Choice. I don't think anyone is made to feel unwelcome. Every franchise is different, and owned/managed by a different set of people. It pains me to see people making a decision about something that is clearly helping so many women feel better about themselves and achieve something they desire due only to where Gary Heavin put his money.

Edit: Well, will you look at that. http://www.curversforchoice.org/.

Once again, Dan Savage needs to STFU. This is one of my biggest pet peeves, people telling other people what they "should" or "shouldn't" wear. Like sammka says, just how does he equate "obesity" with "girl love handles"? Isn't there a spectrum, a variety of body types? Perhaps this is a little humorous hyperbole? Well it doesn't fly with me, bucko. Bodies are bodies, everyone has one, and literally no one's is "perfect". Ladies, women, girls, boys, men, wear whatever the hell you want. If someone can't handle it it's their problem.

[x-posted to feminist_rage]

Please put on your imagination caps. You have been granted the position of editor for a new feminist magazine. Your budget is not a problem, allowing you to be picky about writers and advertising. What would this magazine look like? Who would be your target audience and why? What types of articles would you have and who would write for them? What would be featured on the cover? To follow up on the question from last week, if popular culture figures such as Christina and Britney (or pink, jessica simpson, avril l. and so on) wanted to be on the cover, what would you cite as your standards and would they be featured?

I would create a magazine for which the theme was making invisible women visible. It would be the anti-People. I would feature a seemingly random selection of women talking about their everyday lives, what is important to them, what motivates them, what they get paid to do. I would hire a staff of journalists who are both educated classically and educated informally. The theme would be something like, "we're all boring and ordinary, and that is why we are all important". There would be at least one picture of each woman accompanying her interview/feature, showing that woman as she wishes to be seen.

Stylistically, well, that's not really my forte... covers might be a collage of images of the women detailed inside... or perhaps each issue would have a theme that the profiled women would talk about, and the cover would reflect that directly or abstractly. There would be no celebrities, unless the women featured chose to mention them, but there would never be a picture of someone "famous" within the pages, and the object would not be to make anyone famous. I would hope to focus on women who you typically do not see in the public eye; there are plenty of outlets for the popular culture. I want to feature the people on the other end of the spectrum.

This magazine would never get published. Although in a way it already is, here in blogs.
... for WHB ...

Things my hypothetical son will hypothetically say when he's 25:
"My mom... yeah she was odd. She'd dress me in pink, as a baby, and then when people would say, Oh, what a pretty little girl she'd say Actually, he's a pretty little boy, thanks. Then when they'd get all indignant that she was causing me trauma, she'd say I'm not the one causing him trauma, morons who prejudge based on a dye color, they might be causing him some trauma. My mom was a little weird... yeah, I turned out just fine... but my mom was a little bit different."

If you think gender socialization is fakery, or something crazy feminists made up, just walk down the aisles of the local Toys-r-Us. Sometimes I understand why some mothers take on the incredible burden of home schooling.

Last night we went out to Sullivan's. Yup, we went to a bar and steak house with a name like Sullivan's on St. Patrick's day. I was itchy until we got seated, but once we did it was smooth sailing. But getting me to go out on any "holiday" is getting more and more difficult, let me tell you.

Whatever sick is going around, it might have got me. Coughing, sore throat. Bleh.

to give you an idea of how i feel about nudity.

imagine how things would be if this was NOT WORK SAFE. because there are tits in it.

it's so ridiculous, the whole thing. and i'd take my shirt off but i think you all know why that would not work, even besides getting myself arrested.

get over the boob people. get. over. the. boob.

Does this sound like Victoriana or what? You know, just when you think that the world is progressing, you have to stop and say, no, people will always do stupid, vain, self-destructive shit and buy into a system that disables them, no matter how much it hurts. Fantastic.

so i have found one half of the accursed split enz box set. i fret i will never find the other half for less than a million zillion dollars. sigh.

i totally didn't call my dad and wish him a happy birthday last night because i am a terrible daughter. GAH. i called him this morning but still. so, belated happy birthday dad!!! i need to get on the ball about the parents' birthdays now that i feel i am a real adult!!!

they've set up festive holiday decorations in the lobby. these include but are not limited to weird statues of black bears in santa hats humping snowmen. if i had my camera, i'd take a picture.

with more and more friends having kids all over the place, i've been more and more attuned to observing the way people treat boys and girls differently from a very young age. it's amazing the things people say about treating children and the way children will act and the way to react to it based on gender. i am observing all this in case someday i have some little ankle-biters myself. i'm sure i won't know what it's like until i have one. in my mind's eye, however, no matter what your feelings on the natural bent of girls or boys, treating children differently automatically fosters inequality. i'm sure this attitude annoys people.

also i think people may have started putting less stock in my judgement of people since i have opened my circle of friends as widely as i can.

so the guy who hands out the free Washington Post supplement thing, called "Express", has been flirting with me every day to try to get me to pick up one of these free fluffy things. well, he could have told me i look pretty today for other reasons but either way, today i smiled and grabbed one. on page 2, there is a blurb on a new beauty contest, an all-digital one, with all digitally generated women. anyone who knows me knows i would find this detestable. but the web page isn't even operational! why report on this? why even put this in your cute little free newsmagazine? and am i at all surprised that this is something coming out of italy? not really. anyways i won't be picking up another one of those no matter how many times the guy at the metro tells me it's nice to see me looking so pretty again today. i should lurk around like a weirdo and see if he says this to everyone.

in other news, if this guy is not drenched in sarcasm, he is today's collegiate times cretin.

i have to get this out of the way - man did i have a weird experience on saturday, or at least it's weird for me. it was in the midst of a slightly less weird experience, the bachelorette party. while normally i am sort of hyper-critical about this particular tradition, the spirit and camaraderie of this weekend's activity was reassuring, and i had a really pleasant time - except for the club.

so the gals wanted to split the night up - some chilling and booze at home, various commemorative transition-into-monogamy activities for several hours, quiet time to laugh and smile and bond and drink. then go out to a club - no not a strip club, i mean had the rest of the crew wanted to do that fine, but to my great relief that was not part of the plan. no, a standard issue dancing club, playing old favorites from our wilder youth, boogying down in rapturous celebration of our friends passing into a new phase of life. great. by friday all plans fell into place. i found a great idea for scrapbooking on indiebride.com (thanks to pictsy for finding that site! most people know how cynical i am about weddings, but this site was pretty refreshing) and the snacks procured by traceracer did a body good. well, maybe not the tiny wieners wrapped in biscuits, but everything else was pretty healthy! we donned powerpuff girls temporary tattoos and the guest of honor drank boone's straight outta the bottle and a comfortable glibness was reached by all participants save the ones driving.

then... then we trek out to polly esther's in rockville. now i had never been to this club, so i don't know if this was a typical night. two floors, one seemed to be mostly contemporary stuff, hip-hop, justin timberlake, stuff i normally call a guilty pleasure. the other side was supposed to be 70s? or 80s? but mostly was incredibly long remixes of old classics like "wild thing". not than i mind that either, really. i can probably be convinced to dance to just about everything. i started (and ended) with a drink called a purple rain - i can probably be convinced to drink anything with grape kool-aid in it, too. so, we're all grooving. general harmless making fun and pestering of the bride-to-be commences. all's well. until we all decide to hit the dance floor.

which brings me to my question: has it always been typical of suburban club nightlife for strange men to feel like they can dance up next to you and rub their genital area on your hips or ass??? and then, when pushed away and given the head-shake of NO, to move in to a different angle and try again? or for men to feel that they can grope you at will? nearly every member of our party was involved in a feeling-up attempt, or what i would hereafter like to call harassment or assault. i can't seem to find the MD laws in a quick search, but the NY laws certainly state it is so (non consensual touching of a sexual area) and most publicly funded endeavors define it that way too. anyways, so, someone does that and you turn to them and say, "stop that", "no", or "get away from me", but then they do it again??? i have to say that by comparison, the "freaks" at every goth/industrial club i have ever been to have never made me feel as skeeved as i felt (and this was unanimous, unequivocal among the 11 women in our party) as i did at this club. if i went to clubs like this more often i would seriously consider making up an assault awareness pamphlet written with both men and women in mind to help them understand the definition of consent and ... well i just don't even know how to finish that thought. it might warrant a post to girly_action except i feel as though my energies would be wasted on people who don't want to hear it (the clubgoers, not the denizens of that fine community) and that my work would be better spent elsewhere.

i've talked to several people at work now, and each one has said, "well, that's just what you can expect if you go to a club." once again the onus is on the woman to "accept" this or "prevent" it. we also observed that if there was a guy nearby who demonstrated his propriety over you, that you were "safe" as it were. as maudallan compared, it was as if the alpha male of your pack had to scare off the beta males. dear virginia slims: "you've come a long way baby" is no longer an appropriate slogan, please rescind until further improvements are made. criminy.

that aside, (as difficult as that is to wave aside) i had a good time, and even managed to get out and dance unharassed to several guilty pleasure songs on the hip-hop side of the club (thanks salami_salome for joining me!). if i can manage to find a club where i can expect not to be skeeved upon (or at least not skeeved upon in a way that involves touching my body without permission) that plays hot 99.5 music, i'd love to go. devil_panda, ima lookin at you. :) much thanks to the sober drivers! and congratulations to zarobi.

sunday was leisurely - ate pizza, read house of leaves, bizarrojack's parents stopped by and we chatted for a bit. later on hit the diner with the usual suspects. really, i am doing a lot of bitching, but i had a very good, very happy weekend.

an article on graveyard shifts from cheetahmaster:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/937791.asp?0cv=CB20&cp1=1

i am really glad i woke up in time to get over to vonjonkman's to enjoy canasta, as well as poutine (for the first time). it's something i shouldn't eat but hey, when you melt cheese over fries it's hard to go wrong. bonus: harry knuckles. oh, and i didn't play canasta at the CANASTA DISASTA. woops.

fuck evite, and here's why: (this came in my email today)

EVITE Newsletter - August, 2003

Hello Kim,

We've noticed that lately loads of Girls Nights have been planned on Evite. So we did some research and found a round up of Ladies Night Hot Spots in your city, courtesy of Citysearch. Sorry fellas - this month its all about high heels, lipstick and pink drinks!

high heels, lipstick, and pink drinks are not inherently evil. the assumption that this is what girls do with their valuable time is. i suppose a girls night doesn't include amber-colored drinks (fuckin' beer, yo), stomping boots, or bad horror movies. or basically anything else but high heels, lipstick, and pink drinks. we all have our uber-femme moments now and then. (ok, some of us do) but please, people, assumptions??? [edit] oh, and let's not forget the implication that guys shouldn't be interested in lipstick, high heels, and pink drinks. in whatever form.

been going hog wild in the feminist community again. it's so great and challenging and inspiring for me. even though i know that i don't always have my thoughts very well organized, being challenged and having to defend my ideas is really good mental exercise. good writing exercise as well. besides, being righteously angry about something i can speak with some authority on is easier than being righteously angry about something i hardly understand.

======

today i dreamed about going to college. not a big surprise, considering i visited my alma mater last weekend. the dream was one i've had in alot of contexts but the theme always remains the same: i can't remember/figure out when and where i need to be in class. this time it was the first week of class, and i forgot to bring my class schedule. i was looking for terminals all over campus to log into so that i could find out where i had to be... was my first class english, or history? i was distracted for some reason by some people who wanted me to play in a battletech game, but i wanted them to leave me alone, because i was so excited to be back in school, learning something. i've had similar dreams all my life, and especially since i graduated i have these dreams where i have not gone to class or done homework for months and i need to catch up on the entire semester within a few weeks, but i haven't been to school in so long i don't even remember what classes i'm taking or what rooms they were in. sometimes it takes place in college, sometimes in high school, but it's always the same feeling of wanting to go to class but not being able to get there, and feeling guilty that i haven't been going all along.

i'd say that writing is on the wall.

=======

i'm so well rested! thank you tylenol pm. i should take you every day. oh wait. i had dinner with oontzgrrl at the diner so i am therefore also well fed. i feel like i left her abruptly and without finishing talking, but i was cold. i also wished i had hugged her, in retrospect. sometimes i am less huggy than i mean to be. i don't know why this is. i used to be such a physically affectionate person, but nowadays it seems like my instinct isn't there, or my inhibitions are heightened. she had alot of insights into my actions and thoughts as usual. i swear, so often, it seems like "written in the stars" is not a lie! anyways, she is one of the many people i can learn alot from. many of those people i don't even have time to talk to.

======

i stopped listening to the news... is that irresponsible?
i need to remember to get new mascara. maybe i should be more worried that i can think about something so frivolous tonight.

yay! i'm having a good day. maybe it's the sunlight. today's mom quote of the day, in the course of discussing hairstyles:

"you don't want it to look all dykey, right? ...
... or do you."

hearing my mother utter the word "dykey" will never grow old. at any rate, i did get my hair cut, and although i really enjoyed the experience because Autumn over at Bubbles in Arundel Mills is a really nice lady with alot of interesting things to say, she had a picture and she STILL wouldn't cut it as short as i wanted. i will give her another chance because she's so cool and she clearly has alot of stories to tell, having apparently lived in four different countries. the mall on a friday morning at 10am right after a snowstorm is an interesting place. i got two other things done while i was there: i got an exciting new down comforter, on SALE! woo! and i had lunch with traceracer who very kindly put up with me blather, blather, blathering at her during what was meant to be HER birthday brunch.

on a more serious note, i'd like to direct people to a post that zorah made which moved me greatly. "In American society, the woman's experience makes her the alien, the other." i have got to stop being afraid to express myself on this, and i must educate myself on it.

one of the things that i consider to be a large part of being a feminist, for me, is to be able to see through, or understand, when sexism crops up in literature or television, or really in any public forum, any medium. a fine example of this is that this morning i was listening to the radio, and there was a CVS ad on; the ad went something like this: "blah blah blah ... CVS pharmacists are obsessed with perfection! blah blah blah ... if you're a mom, you know what we mean." I wish I could remember the complete ad text, because I think in context it made more sense, but that's all I can remember... and I think it's obvious enough. I was immediately sickened that they would completely and totally ascribe childcare to the mother and marginalize the father in such a simple and deceptively innocent statement. I know that some people think it's stupid to get worked up about something so small, but as far as I am concerned, every time that ad airs it sets another brick onto the wall stopping progress in gender politics. Somewhere, someone is hearing that and having their feelings on gender roles reinforced or formed, conciously or subconciously. I suppose some people might not even hear the sexism in that statement; I guess that's exactly why I consider myself a feminist.

Off to write an angry email.