home again, home again, tickety boo

This is one of my favorite pictures from my trip to New York last summer. It's part of the oxidized surface of a Richard Serra sculpture. All of the pieces have these complex patinated, scratched and roughed-up surfaces, but the outdoor ones are particularly nice. I think they're Cor-Ten steel, which is meant to rust, but I think he must treat them so it's not a uniform patination.

on pleasure bent again, with never a thought for what my poor family might suffer

Tomorrow I head through darkness and forecast rain, eastward, for a job interview. On Friday I shall depart in my own modest equipage in the direction of the Poet, whose birthday it will be, arriving, dog willing, at 6 in the afternoon. I hope to dine peacefully at Lillo's Trattoria, thence to the Poet's abode. I shall return home at midday Saturday for a modest luncheon with a fellow curator and perhaps we shall take a turn about the galleries.

Japanese ukiyo-e prints...

I am ass-deep in them. Also ass-deep in: footnotes, budget requests, exhibition checklists, the Chicago Manual of Style, and BlowPops (instead of cigarettes).

Ah, William Fucking Shatner

ir/resistible

Completely irresistible:



This is Nigel when he was a porch kitty, begging at every window to be let in. No matter what room I was in, he was at the window, meowing. I resisted for two solid weeks. And then, the snow came, and I could resist no longer. He lives inside now.

Completely resistible:



The ugliest purse in the world. Spotted in the wild at TJ Maxx in Hattiesburg, MS. Dear god, what about teh kittenz? It looks like something Dolores Umbridge would keep her wicked quills in. I almost spent seven dollars on it simply to get it out of circulation.

unpack THIS!

Having solved all of our economic, racial, educational, and environmental problems here in the Magnolia State, three arrogant, deluded, fat-hating Mississippi politicians want to make it illegal to serve an obese person in a restaurant.

Warning: Fat People Hatred Inside

I quote:

"Any establishment to which this section applies shall not be allowed to serve food to anyone who is obese."

"This section" applies to all restaurants licensed by the state. In other words: all restaurants in the state.

Reps. Mayhall, Read, and Shows hate fat people. Oh, and get this: it's two Republicans and one Democrat. So nice to know our politicians can cross the aisle and agree on things that REALLY MATTER.

The Health Department is designated as the enforcer. What, will they put medical scales and calculators at each door? "Hm, let's see....weight, height, ooooh, too bad, you're just over the [almost entirely useless and ever-changing] BMI designation "obese." No food for you, fattie!"

And this, my internet friends, is Mississippi Dumbfuckistan at its finest.

ayiyi

The Chantix, it is nauseating. I am growing accustomed to the vivid dreams. I do not want to smoke, but mainly because I am too nauseated to think of it. I hope this passes because, yuck.

for anyone who misses home

A moving video about loss, home, and New Orleans:



HOME

oh, and one more thing

My statcounter deal says several searchers for "women who like to be raped" somehow found their way here.

SO, DIRTBAGS and RAPISTS, let me tell you this: there is NO SUCH THING as a woman who likes to be raped. Pull your head out of your ass and hear this now: Go, get a LOT of therapy, or cut your nuts off, or jump off a bridge, I don't care which, because if you are looking to rape a woman, you are a sick and evil waste of carbon.

Chantix dreams, nights one and two

They are NOT JOKING AROUND when they say you might have "vivid dreams" when you take Chantix.

Night one: I am roommates with Peyton Manning and several other people. He needs a ride downtown, but first I must find socks in the large communal closet. One dresser is six drawers of socks - three drawers mine, three his. I throw out several shirts in my quest for a clean shirt. We go downtown and hang out in his swanky hotel room. He changes into much-too-small denim shorts and I get him to wear normal pants. We hang out some more. Then he needs a ride to the game. The playoff game, which in this context is the Sunday before the SuperBowl. Peyton is charming and tall and funny, as one would expect him to be.

??

Night two: I have a dream that I am part of a group of photographers trying to get pics of Paul McCartney. He lets some of us in and I discover I have my lenses, but no camera body, in my bag. I take out a notebook and start writing down everything he says. There are several pools in the backyard, and a diving board. We walk around the back yard, and the pools, and through the house. I have been in the housed before, house-sitting, but he doesn't know it. Someone else hired me to do it while he was out of town. Pool/backyard morphs into a raggedy beach "resort" with a pier. At the end of the pier is sort of a surf hut/bar/hangout. Dominic Monaghan (of Lord of the Rings and Lost) is there, and he is dirty. Like, clearly, he has been sleeping rough, out there on the beach, and needs a shower. We keep taking walks out down a levee,then back again. There is much rooting in fridges for beverages. Sometimes beer, sometimes soda. The kitchen is filthy in the way an undergrad party house is filthy. But there's beer in multiple fridges. Dominic Monaghan is hitting on me, but he really needs a shower.

So, night three is tonight. I wonder which random celebrity will be featured in this one.

I HAZ A VEGGY BURGER

well, heavens to betsy...

THIS is hilarious:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/01/inappropriate_iconography.php#more

pang

I have a fondness for mid-century modern design. It's sleek and beautifully designed, but made of homely industrial materials. My house is by no means sleek & efficient enough to really come close to the mid-century modern aesthetic, but sometimes, I see a thing that I want, and it gives me a pang. I want it, because it's beautiful and red and rich, and the curves are perfect, the form and function are in perfect sync, and the pang, well: I can't afford it. I can't see ever having so much disposable income that I can buy this, this perfect, beautiful, red chair, for eight HUNDRED dollars:



Here's an alternate view, in plain wood, so you can see how delicious and perfect and loungy the bent plywood is:



Really, if I think about it too much, I might just cry. Wah.

Cat Update

It's been an all-vinyl day here at Casa Jezebella. Laundry, homemade veggie/potato soup, hot tea, and, right now, Adam & the Ants "Kings of the Wild Frontier" is on the turntable.

Having finally downloaded pictures to the laptop, it's time for a kitty update.

Ferris is very serious about inhabiting the slow-cooker box. Alas, someone peed on it, and it had to go in the trash shortly after this photo shoot. Also, I can't get Picasa to rotate the damned picture for some reason.




Bennet is very serious about everything, all the time. He looks worried a lot. He's currently concerned about the presence of a fourth cat. Said fourth cat will be the topic of another post, because between downloading pics on Saturday and this afternoon, the camera cable has stopped working.



And Pippin loves human food. Here he's enjoying some organic baby spring greens, which he prefers without dressing. Always concerned about his girlish figure, that one.

Well, that's unexpected.

I got a call at 8:30 this morning. On a Saturday. Everyone knows I'm in bed at that hour on a weekend. Hell, I'm usually still in bed at that hour on a weekday. It's the Poet: "Look out your window." Me: "Huhwhat?" Poet: "Look out your window." Me: "Well, that's unexpected."

It was snowing. In Buttcrack, Mississippi. I've been here over five years and it's only snowed once before. Tragically (ahem) I was in Paris at the time, so I missed it. No big deal, as a few winters in the Midwest cured me of any fascination I might have had with snow. So, I went back to sleep, during which time the power went off. It got a bit chilly, I drank a lot of hot tea, and fortunately, the power came back on just after noon. I headed out late this afternoon to shoots some pictures just to prove that, yes, Virginia, sometimes it really DOES snow in the Deep South. By late afternoon it was turning slushy, and now it's about to drop into the 20s so I expect it'll be a charming lot of ice by midnight. I hope the rednecks who successfully navigated the snow in their pick-em-up trucks realize that ice? It's nothing like snow. You simply cannot drive on ice, no matter how big & manly your truck is. Anyway, I'm staying off the roads. I'm thinking of baking a cake, but first I'd have to clean the oven, and, ick, who wants to do THAT on a Saturday night? But, mmmmm....cake! It's a tough decision to make. I'm also anticipating another power outage as soon as the branches start freezing & cracking, so I've got the central heat cranked up a few extra degrees. This will not prevent the cats from sleeping in a pile on top of me. Yay! Cat blanket!

So, herewith, evidence:

nail in the coffin

I liked Dennis Kucinich, I really did. But I'm done with him. He's progressive, but not progressive on women's rights. Apparently the "workers," "people" and "human rights" he promotes are for men only.

First, I found out he hosted a fundraiser with notorious misogynist & pornographer Larry Flynt at Hustler Headquarters. Flynt, let's be clear, isn't just a pornographer. He's a purveyor of sexism and racism. To wit:


"Rape and domestic violence jokes are a recurring theme in Hustler cartoons. One cartoon depicts a billboard where the text reads: "If you have been raped or would like to be raped, call RAPE LINE 555-7675." Another shows a middle-aged white man wearing bright red boxing gloves. He is punching a naked woman's breasts. She is screaming, with her hands tied up behind her head. The caption reads: "Every good fighter started out slappin' one of these around."

This is Kucinich's pal?


THEN, I find out he's got a no-holds-barred anti-choice voting record. I'm not talking just anti-abortion - he's anti-contraception. Here's his comment on it:

"I haven't been a leader on this," Kucinich said. "These are issues I would not have chosen to bring up."

Oh, okay then. We'll just talk about what YOU want to talk about? Uh uh. I don't think so. As Pollitt notes, "That a solidly anti-choice politician could become a standard- bearer for progressivism, the subject of hagiographic profiles in The Nation and elsewhere, speaks volumes about the low priority of women's rights to the self-described economic left, forever chasing the white male working-class vote."

So, Dennis Kucinich: You are a grave disappointment to me. You proved to me that the left is still as misogynist as the right. That even lefty men don't think women are human. That "human rights" don't include "women's rights." I will no longer be voting for you in the primary.

*Props to Blamers gentaggard & Bird for the links.

d000000d.

I'm going to cancel Scientology from my area.

Tom Cruise

Ever noticed how much Mitt Romney looks like Max Headroom?

HAAHAAHAHHAHAAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHAAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHAHHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!

Courtesy the Mad Feminist Genius Practical Culture-Jamming Lab.

Feel free to distribute this image, but please credit the Lab, or the Mad Feminist Geniuses will have to bust some heads.

squeeee

If anyone wants to know where I was in the mid-80s, read this:

THE KIDS WERE ALRIGHT

Whatever happened to the seminal figures of SA punk? You might be surprised

Marching Plague! The Raging Woodies! Fearless Iranians from Hell!! Lung Overcoat!!

My ex-brother-in-law was at the notorious Sex Pistols show at Randy's Rodeo, the one that made the cover of the San Antonio paper.

the politics of crying

Something's been bothering me for a while now. Men crying on television. Athletes, actors, politicians, reporters: all men, all crying, all the time. Why does this bother me? I'm a feminist. I should be fine with men expressing their emotions. The problem, I've realized, is women don't have the same freedom. Sure, the boundaries of male behavior are expanding, but a woman who cries is still seen as irrational, emotional, "feminine".

Here are two descriptions related to political candidates crying in public:

"Crying can humanize a candidate, express empathy and help the person connect with voters."

"... tearful television interviews aren't helping [the candidate's] case for leadership."

Guess whose tears are "humanizing"? Guess whose tears are torpedoing their campaign?























A. Mitt Romney, penis owner
B. Hillary Rodham Clinton, uterus owner

When Mitt Romney cries, it's spun as positive. When Hillary Clinton is "tearful" - she didn't even actually CRY, people! - she is admitting defeat, looking like a loser, and being de-humanized.

How is that crying humanizes men and de-humanizes women (makes them ineligible for responsible jobs, for example)? It doesn't. It can't. There is no logic in this.

This is why I'm sick of looking at men cry. Because there are always, always negative consequences when a woman cries in public, and now there are positive consequences when a man cries in public.

How often did Bill Clinton weep while campaigning or in office? All. The. Time. Hillary "tears up" and the doom-and-gloomers predict the end of her campaign, her career, her very believability as a candidate.