YouTubing

For Brian.

To be fair, I would totally make that face if I got my hands on a copy of the Star Wars Christmas special.

blahger

Blogger seems to be broken, right when I want to talk about Patricia Madrid at UNM.

Will this post come through? Who knows?

6 years

DSC_1416
Originally uploaded by feelingdave.

Me and B.

Married for 6 years last week.

Awww....

Question for the hivemind

(to borrow a turn of phrase from Lindsay...)

Okay.

So the baby is drooling excessively, has a runny nose but no fever, and has become prone to sudden screaming fits where she will chew on her thumb incessantly.

Is she teething? Already?

Goo...

Tummy Time
Originally uploaded by plucky punk.

So the biology test was fine but now I have to worry about the environmental science test tomorrow and the religion (ugh, I know, what was I thinking) test on Tuesday.

*And* my anthropology professor totally over-assigned homework.

So, I'll get back to you in a second. For now, my nose is in a book.

Get your cute on, part 2

Probably only of interest to grandparents and other relatives.

I will go study now.

Get your cute on...

Meep
Originally uploaded by plucky punk.

I have a big biology test tomorrow and I'm not studying.


Well, some things never change.


Meanwhile, marvel at the blue anime eyes of my baby...cute, no?

One more before bed

Meant to post this last week, actually. We've been having freaky amounts of rain here in the desert lately. Last week my dad caught this footage of a freaking waterfall behind his house. Craziness.



You can tell it's been raining too much for awhile because it's so green. The hill behind his house is usually brown and rocky, not all green and tropical like that. And certianly not with a waterfall.

Hey!

It was my blogiversary last month and I didn't even notice.

Maybe if I post a link to my wishlist, someone will buy me a present.

But then I guess I would have to post more that once every two weeks! Lol...

And now to totally undermine my argument about fashion and shallowness...

Let's get some shoes.

And this is the bullshit I'm talking about...

There've been a few threads on Pandagon the past few weeks where I've been compelled to jump to the defense of fashion, of dressing cisgenderd-ly (hmm...that's not a word, is it?) and stylishly. Most recently, there's this thread, where I commented:

Why is it shallow to appreciate beautiful clothes? If I appreciate a beautiful painting on the wall, thatÃ?’s fine and intellectual even. But if I appreciate a beautiful dress on my body or beautiful shoes on my feet thatÃ?’s shallow.

Not that the fashion spread in question isn'’t creepy, but IÃ?’m tired of being told one of my hobbies is designed to make me feel bad about myself when I actually enjoy it and have fun with it.

And then a bunch of people jumped up to say that fashion is bad because it's a requirement for women, because you can't get a job without affording a really great dress, etc. (Which I think is a huge exaggeration, because last time I checked no one wears couture gowns to job interviews, but whatevs...)

Sure, there's a huge issue with the fact that it's hard to get a job in a professional situation if you don't have professional-looking clothes. (but fashionable? The office manager at my last call center job looked like she shopped at the Dress Barn...)

On more than a few occasions I've been in a situation where I literally had no clothes to wear that would be taken seriously for a job I've wanted (this is a serious problem if you're trying to get a job...any job...when you're homeless), and it sucks. And it's wrong. And it's especially hard when you're plus-sized like me, because the places where you're likely to find cheap office wear are unlikely to have *anything* appropriate for my size. I know, I've looked.

And it's also kind of a strawman. Trust me, Dolce and Gabbana or Prada or Roberto Cavalli are not trying to sell clothes to women going for job interviews. And are employers really saying things like, "Well, I was going to hire the seriously qualified woman with the JC Penny's clothes on, but this 90-pound waif wearing Manolos came in, so never mind!" Unless you're interviewing to be Anna Wintour's assistant, I doubt it.

What's much more likely to happen is what's happened to Jessica of Feministing. Read this post, this post, and Jessica herself responding to what Ann Althouse, self-proclaimed representative of "real feminist values," had to say about a picture taken at a luncheon with Bill Clinton.

Jessica: I'm not judging you by your looks. (Don't flatter yourself.) I'm judging you by your apparent behavior. It's not about the smiling, but the three-quarter pose and related posturing, the sort of thing people razz Katherine Harris about.

From how Althouse describes it you'd think Jessica were hanging off Bill like a stripper hangs off a pole.

But she committed the crime of standing there (she's the one in the middle), daring to be the person wearing clothes of a flattering cut and proportion, with great skin and hair. Because she wore clothes that were'nt dated and that flattered her figure (and has a stylish haircut,) her work has no value, and she has nothing to offer.

The commenters at Pandagon that irked me are only further up the slippery slope from this, and this is only further up the slippery slope from the "she wore slutty clothes and deserved it" apology for rapists.

I see a lot of bloggers saying they're attacking the patriarchy, but somehow 9 times out of 10 they do this by attacking women. Hmm. (And yes, I realize I'm attacking some women in saying this...irony forever!)

Genius

This is hilarious...but probably not safe for work.



Hee.

Yes, another content-fee post. Good thing I don't care! Woot woot!

RIP

You know, I always used to joke that one day that Crocodile Hunter guy was going to piss off the wrong animal and it would eat him.

Now that it's happened, I kind of feel like an asshole.

Words Mean Things

I agree with this woman, but for a slightly different reason.

ROSEMONT, Ill. - The newly elected head of the largest Muslim group in North America called
President Bush's recasting of the war on terror as a "war against Islamic fascism" inaccurate and not helpful to people of her faith.

Ingrid Mattson, the first woman president of the Islamic Society of North America, said Friday that labeling terrorism as "Islamic" only adds to a misunderstanding of the religion.

Mattson acknowledged that terrorist groups "do misuse and use Islamic concepts and terms to justify their violence."

"But I think that when we then bestow that term upon them we only make the situation worse and somehow give validity to their claims which we need to deny and reject," she said at the opening of the group's 43rd annual convention.

There's not even anything specifically Islamic about so-called Islamic fascism (and if you need this explained, I'll direct you to al-Muhajabah because I lack the patience and time). It's insulting to "normal" Muslims and makes "us" sound like we lack credibility.

But what really gets me about the term is...how is al-Qaida fascist? How can a stateless organization be fascist? Isn't it by definition impossible for a stateless organization to be fascist? And if we're talking about states that sponsor terrorism such as Iran, aren't they a theocracy? We already have a word for theocracy. It's theocracy.

I think the real reason the term "Islamic fascist" (or the Newspeak-sounding "Islamofascist") find resonance amongst the Bush administration and its followers is because if they can't use "communists" as their catch-all for evil because they'd sound like dinosaurs, and if they said they were afraid of a theocracy they'd really turn off their fundie base.

Sigh.

So I really want to start back with blogging regularly.

Maybe someday I'll do that birth post but I've kind of gone shy about it.

But I can't help but miss the blogtopia of a few years ago, when all of my favorite blogs weren't overrun with ad hominem (and ad nauseum) discussions 200 comments long about whether the childless are more oppressed than parents or vice versa, and who isn't accepting who's life choices and whether blowjobs can ever be consentual and whether or not my clothes are hurting feminism. I keep casting about looking for an interesting discussion to join in on and just getting disgusted by a bunch of people acting like 2 year olds who've had too much psychoanalysis done.

So give me a minute while I look for inspiration elsewhere.