is it just me?

...or is Adam Sandler starting to look a lot like Bob Dylan?

Perhaps it's just the hair.

passing the word

From tigtog:

This is a crosspost to effect a Googlebomb, correcting an injustice against a fellow feminist blogger.

Jill Filipovic, who blogs at Feministe and Ms. JD, is a NYU law student who has been the subject of cyber-obsession on a discussion board allegedly populated by law students. The discussions regarding Jill Filipovic (and many other female law students) are sexist and sexual in nature, rating the women’s physical attractiveness and fantasising about sexual contact, both consensual and non-consensual. Neither Jill Filipovic or any other of these women contributed, or gave their permission to be discussed, to the discussion board in question.

Jill Filopovic’s name and class routines etc have been regularly posted to this board, and at least one of the pseudonymous board-members claims to be Jill Filipovic’s classmate. Photos that Jill Filipovic posted (with full rights reserved) to an internet photo-storing and sharing site have also been posted to the sleazy discussion board without her permission. This is a horrendous invasion of Jill Filipovic’s privacy, a violation of copyright law, and calls the ethics and character of the alleged law-students participating in these discussions on the discussion board into question.

A major side-effect of an already nasty situation is that the sexist, objectifying cyber-obsession threads come up on the first page of internet search results on Jill Filipovic’s name. To an inexperienced user of the internet, it may even look as if Jill Filipovic and other female law students chose to compete in these Hot or Not rating competitions, instead of having their pictures posted without permission.

This post is an attempt to balance those internet results to point to the significant writings of Jill Filipovic instead, using the Googlebomb tactic and also linking this post to social networking sites (eg. del.ici.ous, Stumbleupon). Please feel free to copy any or all of what I’ve written here to your own blog in order to help change the top-ranked search engine results for Jill Filipovic. If you don’t have your own blog then please at least link to one of Jill’s this post[s] listed below at your preferred social networking site and give it the tag “Filipovic" (as well as any others you think appropriate).

I have linked to these sites in this post:
Jill Filipovic’s bio page at Feministe
Jill Filipovic’s blog posts at the Ms. JD blog
Jill Filipovic’s article about these scummy lawschool sleazebags at Feministe
Jill Filipovic’s article at Ms. JD: When Law Students Attack

If any of the other female law students stalked by the same sleazy site wish to copy this text with names altered, you hereby have my full permission to do so. All other rights reserved. (C) 2007 tigtog

Mississippi Moment: how to spell

It is my contention that Jackson is really just a pretentious cowtown. I drove there last week to drop someone off at the airport, and drove through Brandon, Mississippi. Brandon is obviously becoming a whiteyville-outlying-bedroom community for Jackson commuters. The high school looks like an outlet mall. Across from the high school is a gated community of identical mini McMansions. Outside of these hideous developments, the landscape is pretty boring, especially in winter.

This subdivision is called, I shit you not: Provonce. Clearly it is meant to be pronounced as in "Provence," the region in France, giving it snooty European appeal. And yet, this being Jackson, Mississippi, SPELLED FUCKING WRONG. AAAAAGGGHHHH. Pro-VONCE. Because one of two things happened:

1. the bourgie redneck developers never bothered to check the spelling.

2. They decided people were too stupid to pronounce "Provence" correctly and it would interfere with their marketing/branding/making piles of money selling prefab generic mini-Tuscans to the whitey-flighty masses.

Either way, I wish I'd had my camera with me so I could share this abomination.

media check

reading (finally): Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

listening to: Radio Paradise

staying up too late for reruns of: Scrubs

Sexual Harassment Sunday

Here's a new one. I'm in my front yard, working in my garden. Wearing normal gardening clothes (knee-length shorts, t-shirt, garden clogs, hat), right? And I'm adding topsoil to a bed, which will be followed by mulch. It's a lovely spring-like day, my yard is looking nice, I put in some new plants yesterday, and I'm pretty relaxed, in my own little world.

Which all comes to a screeching halt as a car drives up and I hear this:

"You bend over much more and somebody's gonna stick something in your ass."

Here's the kicker: it's a WOMAN. Two women in the front seat, a guy in the back, driving with all their windows open, looking for people to harass on a Sunday afternoon. Holy crap. I stand up, give her the stinkeye, and lift my middle finger in salute.

"Oh holy crap, she's turning around," think I. "She and her friends are going to jump out of her car and beat the crap out of me for flipping her off."

No. She goes up the block, turns around, so that her female friend in the passenger seat can say the same thing:

"You better not bend over any more because someone is gonna stick something in your ass."

Again with the middle-finger salute, because I can't think of anything to say but I'm not just going to stand there and do NOTHING. This time, however, I'm backing towards the front door.

Then she follows up by pointing to the guy in the back seat and says, "You need some black dick." He leans forward like he's going to say something and I just turn around, go get my keys that were hanging out of my car door, and head to the front door to get my phone & camera. I hear "Look at her...something something something," as I shut the door, and lock it.

MotherFUCKER. I get my camera and cell phone, come outside, they're gone. I sit on the porch, fuming, seething, shaking, and about ready to cry but determined not to. Part of me hopes that they come back so I can take their picture and get their license plate. I've got the phone ready to dial 911 if they get out of the car. I sit there for like ten minutes, adrenaline pumping through my veins, furious, terrified, indignant, outraged.

They never come back, but as I finish in my yard, I cringe every time I hear a car come down the street. I give any number of people the stinkeye just because it looks like they might be slowing down to look at me. My adrenaline is high the whole time. I can't bend over without wondering if somebody driving by is going to threaten me with anal rape. AGAIN.

MotherFUCKER. I can't bend over to pull a weed in my own fucking yard on a sleepy street in a sleepy little town without being sexually harassed - by WOMEN? WOMEN are doing this. Holy fucking crap. Did they do it to impress Mr. Black Dick in the back seat? Did he put them up to it? What would have happened if I said anything? I mean, THEY KNOW WHERE I LIVE.

So now I guess I have to carry my phone & camera in my pockets whenever I go out front to work in the yard, in case I decide to bend over. I'm mad at myself for thinking I'm no longer safe in my own home because the reality is, I was never safe in my own home. Nobody is. I'm depressed that women will do this to other women. It's bad enough when men do it, but when women do it, it's also a betrayal.

Boy, complacency, it'll do a number on you. My guard was down because I thought I was in a safe place, and those women just fucked up my whole goddamned day.

quote of the day

"Language shapes consciousness, and the use of language to shape consciousness is an important branch of magic."
- Starhawk, Dreaming the Dark (p.23)

the litter in new york city

As previously noted, I was in New York City a few weeks ago, and let me tell you what I mostly remember about the city itself, besides the freezing-ass cold: those fucking Norbit movie ads. I was going to grab one off the web and put it in this post, but you know what? I can't stand looking at it another second. They were on bus shelters, taxicabs, billboards, draped ten stories high on buildings. Eddie Murphy in fat drag lying on top of Eddie Murphy in man drag, with the tagline "Have you ever made a really big mistake?"

God forbid anyone should accidentally fuck a fat girl.

This is the subtext of that nasty poster:

"Oops, it was an accident! I was just walking down the street minding my own business, and suddenly! SUDDENLY!! I was alone, naked, with a fat woman, putting my dick in her, over and over again! I have no idea how this happened. I would never admit to having gone to any trouble to do this, because everybody knows, you don't have to make any kind of effort to fuck a fat girl! No! They are grateful and desperate and given half a chance, will carry your narrow ass up the stairs, into the bedroom, and fuck you! I swear, I didn't mean to! I'm not ATTRACTED to fat girls! Ha! Like that would ever happen! Nobody likes fat people! NOBODY! Also, if you fuck a fat girl, she will suddenly be desperately in love with you and chase you all over the place, to hilarious effect, in slapstick fashion, while wearing absurd clothing."

You know, I haven't seen this movie. I don't need to. Nobody does.

Hollywood knows: There's nothing funnier than a fat girl in a nightie, unless it's that same fat girl in a nightie chasing a skinny guy. Ask that woman from the Parkers. Monique is her name, I think? She's making bank off working the stereotype, and of course doing her sisters no damn favors.

I bet I know why Eddie Murphy has to play the fat lady in Norbit. I bet even Monique wouldn't take on such a degrading role, and she has displayed a real willingness to take it on the chin for a paycheck.

I wonder how Eddie's fat black sisters feel about this nasty movie. I wonder how his brothers (fat or thin) with fat wives, girlfriends, mothers, sisters feel about it. I can imagine the brothers, being as dudely as white boys, not seeing Eddie's hateful "comedy" as offensive because, dude, you know, it's just a movie, right? But in black America, fat women are far less offensive to the overall community than fat white women are. So why is he making millions off this premise?

I wonder: This misogynistic movie, making millions and millions every day, does it even reflect black America, even though Eddie Murphy is black? His appeal has always crossed racial boundaries, I guess, and fat jokes, it turns out, are something we all have in common, white, black or brown. Well, in that case, what a great day for racial harmony in America, when whites and blacks alike can all point and laugh together at the very notion that someone, somewhere, might accidentally fuck a fat girl.