the front row

nothing's new

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 04:22:25 GMT

Been wasting a lot of my time elsewhere these days. I don't have a real explanation, beyond that a lot of my friends don't really post to LJ any more, so it's mostly become a tool for keeping track of people. Trust me that life is fine in the meantime, and e-mail me of you want to catch up for reals.

just like i told y'all

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 22:57:13 GMT

So, I've been maintaining a constant low-level chortle at the efforts of certain Ron Paul supporters to establish 'Paulville' in the West Texas Flats. Now, as I find out, they have (drum roll) a WEB SITE. The subtitle is 'Like minded people, coming together!'
What I want to know:
1.) So they're similar to people with minds?
2.) In what sense does a coop that holds land in the shareholders' stead qualify as a libertarian paradise? Sounds like some collectivist poppycock to me.

In other news, life continues apace. Nick, bless him, got me a hose for the garden and it's literally the best labor-saving device I've gotten in the last year and some. I always felt like a pioneer lugging the watering can up and down, up and down the hill to water the vegetable garden- but no longer! I've joined the (20th?) century at last!

history is with us

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:37:38 GMT

I just read this powerful post by Rick Perlstein about open housing in late '60s Chicago. The rhetoric used then, by whites who desperately argued for their right to remain free of black 'infiltration' of their neighborhoods, sounds all too familiar. Many mention an editorial by Barry Goldwater that stated, 'rights, and respect, are earned.'
Um, no. They're not. Read your Constitution and try again, please. There are many, many people who still argue this line, and they all deserve to be addressed the same way. Rights are not earned; rights inhere. We have those rights, not because of how we act, but because of who and what we are. Rights are not created by wealth; they are not mere reflections of societal norms.
Which, ironically enough, is why I'm so very down on libertarianism. Libertarianism invariably hews to a traditionalist view of rights that may no longer be relevant to our society; libertarians might recognize a right of companies to pollute groundwater, but not a right of residents to have water free of pollution; a right to discriminate racially, but not a right to be judged on the merits instead of on one's race. This recognition only of affirmative rights creates a sort of race to the bottom, a moral hazard by which she who behaves worst and creates the greatest externalities is rewarded economically, and ignored by the state, as long as she doesn't go around punching nuns in the face. Libertarians, especially the anarcho-capitalist variety, generally do not think to change societal norms or remake the social order, no matter how unjust it may be. They think of society in Econ 101 terms: equal distribution of resources and rational actors, and assume that society mirrors this understanding. As we know, it does not.
Anyway. Read the post, please. It's historical, not ideological (for the most part), and it puts the lie to anyone who argues that civil rights legislation was unnecessary because race relations would have naturalized eventually.

so damn glad

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 21:00:06 GMT

Life is good. School is double-dutch-done. I'm working on really interesting things at my internship. There are tomatoes and squash and peas in the garden (well, the plants, anyway) and the little Carolina jasmine in the front yard is slowly winding its way up towards the sun.
Oh, and the Democratic primary is effectively over. Thank all possible deities. Everyone vote Obama, because the only thing older than John McCain is his agenda. I know there's a lot of noise being made about women voters taking their ball and going home or going to play with the Republicans instead, but I suspect that there'll be very few of those, at least among my friend group. To those that are considering it, please consider that yours is not the only agenda; a McCain presidency will be worse for many, many people who are not well-off white males. Think of the wars he'll start, the benefits he'll cut, the Supreme Court justices he'll appoint (and the rights that he'll thereby constrict) and every other disastrous policy position of his that you desperately disagree with. Obama is preferable to that in any number of ways.
We'll have our day, we women. We will. There will be a woman vice president, and a woman president, some day. In the meantime, everyone reading this remembers 2000, where a few thousand votes could have made all the difference. Don't be the person who has to apologize for their vote this time around. A year from now, don't be ashamed of the decision you made in November.

i am that shrill harpy

Mon, 19 May 2008 05:44:19 GMT

Just saw Iron Man. On one level, it was hilarious and fun.
On another level, it was so goddamn tired. Summer movies are this universe where men, hot men, schlubby men, smart men, stupid men, walk around surrounded by beautiful women in ludicrous heels who tumble into bed at a moment's notice; I mean, here's Gwyneth Paltrow, for god's sake, an actress in her own right, walking around in 5" ankle-strap heels and a skin-tight pencil skirt taking Robert Downey Jr.'s dictation.
Women are an afterthought in this world. They're a momentary distraction, something pleasant for the eyes to wander across between explosions. There will never be a summer movie about women who are leaders, women who are technical visionaries, women who make hard decisions and fight other women for the fate of the world. There will never be a female Iron Man.
And I hate to be shrill. Because god knows, no one ever listened to some shrill feminist harpy going on about summer blockbusters.
But there's still so much to do.

looking back on Loving

Mon, 05 May 2008 17:21:25 GMT

Mildred Loving, of the landmark Loving v. Virginia decision, passed on today. I can only hope that forty years from now, we'll look back at the various DOMAs the way we look back today on the anti-miscegenation laws: to ask, how did that take so long? There is no rational reason not to allow gay people to marry, just as there was no rational reason not to allow members of different races to marry.
(Turns out Mrs. Loving thought the same, for what it's worth.)

don't let me hear that life is taking you nowhere

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 16:54:54 GMT

The Pod hit 'Golden Years' by David Bowie while I was walking in to school today. That song is one of the few that can right off put me in a good mood; I think it must have something to do with watching A Knight's Tale on TV some time and the one scene where they're all dancing funky to, strangely enough, 'Golden Years'.
Which of course made me sad, because Heath Ledger isn't much of a dancer any more. But it was sunny and 'Golden Years' was on, and somehow one abides.

The starlings in their bright mail were feeding on the grass

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 17:33:09 GMT

Virginia Woolf has said everything better than I will ever say it.
That said: the (European) starlings are out in force recently. It seems to be the time of the season for them; always on the way to or from school I'll hear and then see one perched on a power line, warbling loudly, flapping his wings in display. Or maybe it's a she; European starlings aren't sexually dimorphic to the extent that some birds are, so the males and the females look the same to me. (I'm told by the interwebs you can distinguish them by the length of the breast feathers. Ho ho ho.)
The funny thing I saw today was a group of starlings, all sitting in a tree and exhibiting this behavior- and then a robin jumped up into the tree and started doing the same thing. Oh! dear silly Robin.
I know I'm getting older because spring heartens me, it really does. The slow opening of the season, from the wintry camellias and poisonous hellebores to daphne and crocus, star magnolia and daffodil and then, suddenly, lilac, hydrangea, peony, like fireworks; it feels beautiful, moving, meaningful. I fall in love with spring so easily, each time more easily than the last. My affection for the seasons accumulates like the gold scales of sunlight in Woolf's Monday or Tuesday, a wealth of useless sentiment. (No wonder my classmates call me 'grandma'.)
I had two planters on the stoop, and both of them seem to have passed the winter much better than I expected; all of the herbs in them have come back, as opposed to those actually in the ground in the front yard, which are still reluctant. I put in jasmine and daphne that I hope will be lovely and fragrant by summer, but they're taking their time too. There's something unforgiving or unhealthful about the soil in our yard. Perhaps it's just a reminder not to put down roots just yet.

tonight: high school humiliations revisited

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 02:22:29 GMT

Tonight is LAW SCHOOL PROM! I have a vintage yellow dress (that I took the hem up on today) and a grey velvet clutch (that I made today) and GOLD SHOES and my blue coat (that I mended today).
I'm a crafty mofo. And as my reward, I'm taking tickets from my fellow students for the first hour or so of the prom. I hope my feet don't die.
The point is, I've been watching The Mummy Returns and The Scorpion King, because, you know, they're on, and they're AWESOME. Especially The Scorpion King, what with the Rock going into slooooo moooooshun every time he starts fighting. Fabulous. I love that man.

gimme everything you own, and then beg to get it back

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 02:15:09 GMT

We've been reading about the various methods by which the United States took land from the native tribes. It's not quite what you'd expect- long before the government came anywhere near putting the tribes on reservations, our nation's greatest minds were working on the assumption that as heirs to the discovering nations that came before them, the United States already had 'absolute title' to all of the land within their borders. They then forced each tribe onto smaller and smaller parcels of land, by treaty and forced treaty, by forced migration, by congressional legislation abrogating treaty. Native people weren't using the land productively, they reasoned, and so they weren't entitled to it. A choice quote in my casebook reads, 'three hundred thousand people have no right to hold a continent and keep at bay a race able to people it and provide the happy homes of civilization.' This isn't the rhetoric of self-evident rights and liberties that we are familiar with; rather, it is the rhetoric of imperialism, of fascism.
Aand Godwin's Law strikes again. I don't know. I'm rambling. The point is, all this makes me unbearably angry. There's this sad irony that in 1491, the inhabitants of the Americas had the incredible good fortune to be living in a vast land with vast resources, vast enough to accommodate them two times over; in 1492, they had the bad fortune to be in that same vast land when others 'discovered' them. Native Americans had, for the most part, no systems of real property ownership (read: real estate) because they didn't need them, because land wasn't at a premium; when the European nations began parceling up the New World, they only acknowledged a basic right of occupancy in the inhabitants because the inhabitants did not have property rights that the European nations recognized.
If I were there, on San Sebastian, when Columbus landed, I would have told them to kill every damn European who set foot on their land, and keep doing it until no more came. Because once those greedy nations got a foothold, it was mere centuries before they'd taken it all.

i'm gonna go out and get absolutely drenched in mccain

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 15:08:01 GMT

So, um, there's this video, by McCain supporters (one presumes), which kind of filks 'It's Raining Men'.

As Dan Savage notes, this is a disrespectful and, more importantly, badly sung misappropriation of an early gay anthem. However. If this is how McCain supporters want to promote him, I say bravo. Please, pudgy off-tune ladies, misappropriate some other movement anthems. My boyfriend recommends 'In The Navy', for one. Why not '(You Spin Me) Right Round' or 'I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight'?
But why even limit yourselves to the gay movement? We've all been waiting for a conservative cover of 'I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar' or 'Rebel Girl' by Bikini Kill. How about 'War' by Edwin Starr, or 'Mosh' by Eminem? Lend your atrophied vocal cords to the cause. The results are bound to be hilarious and do nothing whatsoever for your candidate.

an open note to SciFi Original Production Company

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 08:20:00 GMT

Dear Messrs,

In regard to your movie 'Bone Eater,' not to be confused with 'The Bone Snatcher,' which also played last night: never do a monster reveal before the opening credits. While I understand that your opus suffers from many flaws, I believe that correcting this matter would make it bearable for at least the first five minutes.

Most sincerely yrs,

Ursula

P.S. Stop casting Casper Van Dien in all your movies; you're only protecting him from the social Darwinism of the acting world. His failed acting genes must die out in order to allow mankind to evolve.

scary things I have read this morning:

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 18:20:42 GMT

1.) McCain / Huckabee '08
2.) McCain / Lieberman '08
3.) McCain / Gingrich '08

Seriously, can anyone explain to me why they hate Hillary so thoroughly that they would consider voting for McCain instead? Give me detailed policy reasons, not 'she's not for hope and change!' or 'her husband got a blow job in the Oval Office!'

Because I get all my news from Jezebel these days...

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 18:49:11 GMT

Think you've got colored wires growing from your skin? You're not wrong. Maybe.

This reminds me of dreams I used to have of grass growing out of my skin, some sort of airborne parasitic grass plague, or the one with the 'vampire' that looked like an alligator and when it bit you, you started growing teeth from the edges of your mouth around the back of your head... Weird. My dreams these days are mundane (ZOMBIES) and boring (ZOMBIES).

Edit: Goshdarnit, now I'm all itchy. Damn fungus/wires/worms/nanites/tobacco beetles/what-have-you.

noise

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 03:16:30 GMT

Other people have lots to say right now. Myself, I'm fond of silence for the moment.
There's nothing better than when the world around you makes its own noises- the drop of leaves on a quiet morning, the thunder in July, the constant percussive din of hail falling.

Gachnar for America

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 00:15:39 GMT

Verbatim Ron Paul ad: 'Repeal birthright citizenship!'
That's right, kids, Paul wants to repeal part (if not all) of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the one that says that '[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.' This was, of course of course, the amendment that made slaves born in the United States US citizens, thus vacating the Supreme Court's ruling in Dred Scott. Paul's objection to it no doubt is connected to what anti-immigration activists call 'anchor babies'- US citizen children born to illegal immigrants, who can then petition to have their parents become legal permanent residents and, eventually, US citizens. What those activists don't consider is that those parents are still deportable; in order to gain US citizenship they would have to leave the United States, usually for a 10 year period, then go through consular processing (usually taking 1-2 years) then wait another five years to apply for citizenship. That's IF they succeed in consular processing, which they sometimes won't. What this means is that 'anchor babies', as they are invoked by anti-immigrationists, are effectively a myth. If you enter the US illegally, you have to have a really exceptionally good reason not to be deported, and a young child usually isn't enough. (See, for example, Elvira Arellano.)
The 14th amendment continues to the Equal Protection Clause, which states that 'no state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.' The Equal Protection Clause has been the basis for countless progressive Supreme Court decisions - Strauder v. West Virginia (overturning a state law that prohibited blacks from serving on juries), Brown v. Board of Education (mandating racial integration of segregated school districts) and most recently, Lawrence v. Texas (overturning anti-sodomy laws). No doubt Paul doesn't approve of these decisions either, seeing as how they limit the power of the states.
The point is, eliminating the first clause of the 14th Amendment would eliminate a number of important humans rights advances made in the last 140 years and reestablish an underclass of persons not protected by the Constitution. Children born to immigrant parents; racial, ethnic or religious minorities; gay and transgendered persons; all would be at the mercy of the electorate in the state they lived in. Without the Equal Protection Clause, imagine how many more lynchings would be allowed under color of law; imagine how much worse the racial or economic divides in our nation would be. Ron Paul wants to take our country back in time, and the destination he has in mind is a darker, crueler era that most of us wouldn't recognize.

I'll take 'Iowa' for 2008, Alex.

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 03:24:33 GMT

Obama is fine. I'll take Obama. Maybe he'll flesh out his platform now. Still waiting for the next/first female president- Nick mentions some congresswoman from Kansas as a possibility. It sure as heck ain't Feinstein or Pelosi or Clinton, although I couldn't tell you why beyond that people seem to dislike elderly women in positions of power. Better run before menopause hits, ladies, and don't forget your injections.
As for Huckles... well, we'll see. I'm overjoyed that Giuliani polled below 10%, and that Paul did 10% barely. Ron Paul: he's like Gachnar for Republicans!

P.S. Well, Huckles has his message, and I believe it is: 'Eat the rich. Also, CHUCK NORRIS!!'

done in the last two days

Mon, 24 Dec 2007 07:41:46 GMT

Wrapped presents
Read The Keep by Jennifer Egan
Watched Sweeney Todd and Superbad
Slept a bunch

Other than that... a whole lot of bupkiss, my friends. Long, luxurious bupkiss. Freedom has never tasted so sweet.

gimme gimme

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 18:59:35 GMT

People who want my Christmas list:
Amazon list is here; anything that's on it is still wanted, so stop asking me to update already.
Other items I'd like:
Bikini Kill T-shirt or Sleater-Kinney T-shirt (You can never have too many.)
Yarn and crochet books
Long gloves
Socks
Fun cooking supplies and cookbooks
etc. etc. etc.

I'm soo poor this year, but I'm trying to make presents for everyone I can think of. Let me know if you have things you'd rather have than the product of my blood, sweat, and tears. That said, if you can't afford to get me anything at all, I understand. DON'T DO IT. I'll love you anyway.

Edit: Amazon wishlist link works now.

Oh, for goodness's sake.

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 14:30:54 GMT

Erica Barnett, token feminist commentator of the Stranger, asks: 'Am I Obligated to Support Hillary Clinton Based on Her Gender Alone?'
Answer: No. This has been another edition of Short Answers to Unnecessary, Overhyped Questions. Vote for who you want to vote for, ECB, just spare us the notion that this overwrought article, as you've written it, with your wavering back and forth on whether or not to indulge in the apparently guilty pleasure of identity politics, is worthy of print.

lovely news for a sunday morning

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 17:52:07 GMT

From the NYT:

BUKAVU, Congo — Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynecologist, cannot bear to listen to the stories his patients tell him anymore.

Every day, 10 new women and girls who have been raped show up at his hospital. Many have been so sadistically attacked from the inside out, butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood, that their reproductive and digestive systems are beyond repair.

“We don’t know why these rapes are happening, but one thing is clear,” said Dr. Mukwege, who works in South Kivu Province, the epicenter of Congo’s rape epidemic. “They are done to destroy women.”

Pure awful. But if you care enough to keep reading, the rest is at this link. It's free, but still behind the subscriber wall. Read it, and tell me that shit doesn't need fixing.

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 05:42:35 GMT

You know, I agree with everyone else- nothing says sexual liberation and gender equity more than a t-shirt that says 'Ride the S.L.U.T.' The pun is subtle, yet hilarious, and I'm sure that the dudes wearing said t-shirt mean it in the best and most respectful way possible.

Afraid of zombies?

Sun, 09 Sep 2007 21:42:35 GMT

The GOP is your party.

Sat, 08 Sep 2007 02:35:39 GMT

LAW SCHOOOOOOOOOL law school law school law school. Was there ever anything else in my life? I don't know- maybe I should ask my LAW SCHOOL BOYFRIEND to find out. (I do not have one of these.) Peej is coming to live with us, so we're clearing out a room in which to acclimate him. My phone is dead dead dead, so if anyone wants to contact me they should e-mail because I check my e-mail five billion times a day. Also, please make your Scrabulous move. You know who you are.
I finally got around to watching the JT concert on HBO, and it was delicious, although I wish there had been less scantily-clad ladies and more scantily-clad JT. Watching it made me want to learn dance moves, not the skanky girl dancer moves but the smooth boy dancer moves. My feelings towards JT are aspirational. As ri says, I am clearly a lesbian.
I'm crocheting a lot lately. If anyone wants anything handmade for Christmas, please so state NOW so that I can get it in the queue. Thank you.

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 06:07:38 GMT

I putz around on craft sites with embarrassing regularity, and while putzing found this one by a textile artist in Japan. Her sweaters are very chunky and textural, very neat (if not really my style), but some of her crocheted work is fabulous. The screen in the entry I linked is definitely something I want to ~~copy~~ use as inspiration for a curtain; maybe for the bedroom or the living room. (I also want her collection of crochet motif books.)
Otherwise... life continues apace. I look forward to leaving work and camping with the fam in August.