An Excellent Punch at Religion

Y'all better VOTE, bitches.

Also, free coffee @ Starbucks.

Fuck Sarah Palin.

Okay. The other day on (possibly) digg.com I saw an article about a "Sarah Palin porno." My understanding was that someone basically had a casting call for Sarah Palin lookalike porn actors and is planning to make a porn that features a Palin-esque leading lady. I chuckled when I read it. I asked myself: Am I as a feminist offended by this? The answer was no. Although I think pornography as it exists today is, for the most part, anti-feminist in nature, this is overwhelmed by my belief in free speech. It seemed perfectly natural that in 2008, politics have changed along with our culture and political candidates have become celebrities. And that someone would put a character in a porn film with the intention of parodying Mrs. Palin. Because the performance would have been parody.

However, today I was reading about the Sarah Palin sex doll, and I was disgusted. The first bulleted point in the ad is "Sarah Palin makes sexism sexy." I remembered the Palinporn incident and wanted to try to figure out why my reaction to one of these incidents was a shrug and the other so much more severe.

I think it's because I thought of the porn as a parody. I assumed the title would be something about Miss Alaska or have a reference to the vice president in it, but I assumed Sarah Palin's name would be left out. They would have at least made an atrocious pun. (I briefly considered attempting one, but I'll refrain.)

Perhaps a porno featuring a look-alike of a male presidential candidate has never happened (Although Nixon seems like he was begging for it); I haven't done any research on that. But we parody everything in our culture. The parodies of politicial figures of SNL have been going on since the show came on (nearly 30 years ago), and the Clinton sex scandal opened the door for our leaders' sex lives to be talked about openly. (As opposed to Kennedy's sex life, which was an open secret that nobody talked about openly.) The SNL skits about Clinton weren't pornography, but they did tend in sort of the same direction.

The fact that there exists for purchase a Sarah Palin Sex Doll offends me because in our sex-soaked culture that would never happen to a male candidate. If Sarah Palin were a male vice presidential candidate, this would never have happened. I will admit, though, that I think the degree of absurdity and ridiculousness demonstrated by Sarah Palin probably does have something to do with it:


There's talk about whether people's remarks are sexist or not, whether a particular claim made about Clinton or Palin was sexist, but these days people for the most part know to watch what they say when a microphone is in front of their face (with occasional exceptions). You have to look other places for the nebulous remains of sexism. The existence of a sex doll of Sarah Palin, brazenly stating Sarah Palin's name in the title, screams sexism. I'm not saying it should be censored or that they should be stopped or anything. I'm not saying that Sarah Palin sex dolls are the problem, but they are a symptom that the problem is still there.

I think (hope?) this is the closest I will ever get to defending Sarah Palin.

Moving and moving on.

It's raining and I'm taking my second sick day in a row off work.

I love it when it rains in Sacramento. It makes me feel like I'm in front of a hearth, warmed by a fire. Even when I'm not. Inexplicable, right?

Anyways, the real reason I'm posting is because for the first time, I've been looking seriously at apartments. I'm getting paid on Tuesday, and depending on the size of that check, I could move fairly soon. Combinatorial, I'll be getting my first credit card in a few days, which could help with my moving situation too. So, moving has been on my mind. I won't be making a ton of money right out, but just the desire is enough for me to just jump the gun so I can get my own place and not worry about silly things like a couch or dinner table.

The desire is to make my life my own, and that is happening.

I have a good job that I can do decently (well enough to avoid getting fired). It's made me think back to school and how much I hated certain parts of it. How, if it came down to just exams, I'd have failed out.

Every so often, I get the feeling like I'm at a cusp. Graduation oddly didn't feel this way. Going to Miami the first time definitely did, but leaving somehow felt like things didn't end. Maybe because I chose to not walk. Dunno. Back then, it was a shock, and I sent an email to a bunch of people all at once. The only response I got was from my high school French teacher.

But moving out, with the pressure low and the first storm in seemingly over a year in Sacramento looming, does. Realizing that for the most part I'm already financially independent. Realizing that soon, we'll start to fill our living rooms with playpen balls. That soon, we will have what we choose. Not the corporate townhouse with a million plasma tv screens, or the rural cabin with no manner of communication, but our future. Just seems so... foreign.

It reminds me of how many people at my work seem to have such a singular track. I know that when I say I work ten or eleven hours a day, people assume the same from me. I know that there is an expectation from those in my position to push themselves harder and further just from the opportunities to do so.

Anyways, this is just me rambling. I know I have it good and I'm not trying to rub it in anyone's face. I'm trying to preserve the moment so that in six months, I can look back and see how naive i was.

Who's excited to see Biden whoop Palin during the VP Debate on Thursday? I am!

:'(

i have a bad feeling in my stomach about what is happening in the economy right now...

A fun mad-lib?

Today I went grocery shopping. On my way home, I saw a man standing on a corner waving a sign at cars that said "Abortion kills [noun]." I was driving, so I didn't catch the bottom. You can fill it in as you desire. I like "Christians," personally, but I'm an optimist.

As most of my acquaintances know, I am unflinchingly pro-choice, in all situations, the end. Seeing this guy made me wish a little bit that I still had those giant "Vote Pro-Choice" signs so I could stand on the corner opposite him and balance things out a little bit. It also raised my heart rate a tad, but I just went home.

It did, however, trigger a memory that I now realize is my earliest memory of having an opinion about this issue. I didn't know the term "pro-choice," and I probably barely understood what abortion was, but looking back, even if I couldn't name it, that was it.

I was on the school bus home. I was sitting with a girl named Jessica somebody who lived a few houses down from my grandparents. We were friends for part of elementary school. I remember it was close to election time, and it was definitely a Clinton election. So I'm guessing it was his second term in 1996. Somehow, as unlikely as it sounds that ten-year-olds would be discussing politics, it came up.

Jessica said (obviously regurgitated from her parents) that Clinton was bad because he was for abortion. She explained that abortion is where a woman is pregnant and someone gives her a shot or a pill (inaccurate, but prophetic) or something and it kills the baby. My approximate response was, "Only if that's what you want. It's not like he wants to do that to everybody."

Even at ten, it seemed perfectly reasonable to me that someone might get pregnant by mistake, and might choose not to actually have the child. Not just reasonable, intuitive. I don't know where I got that attitude; it isn't as if my parents were terribly forthcoming about sexuality or pregnancy or politics. But it was there, and it hasn't wavered.

So, vote pro-choice.

Just doing my part...

I pretty much hate politics pundits these days.

Maybe there is justice in the world?

This made me feel warm and fuzzy inside to read. Via this.

Who knew Enzyte came from Cincy? It fucking figures Ohio would be involved somehow.

comments and tags

im a firm believer in both
so do as much as possible

McCain is a douche.

Meta blogging

Fractals are kick ass anyone want to experiment in making one- this is a brush pallate reminds me of electric sheep

Science is fun!

WIN.

Blogs, Comments, and the lack of faith in humanity

Now as this it endeavor itself is a blog, this is a tad hypocritical. Maybe since most of "our" comments are meant in jest or corrallation, it might not be as bad. But I find that the more comments i read on blogs or posts, especially targeted at "Middle America" I find my trust in the better nature of humans falling in each in every post. maybe its the painful realization, that now that I'm out side of the collegiate, academic and traditionally socalily liberal environment, I don't understand those who are convinced anyone who is not, 1) Christian, 2) Republican, 3) Pro- life, and 4) Creationist is insane and not worth being human. Maybe it's just Cincinnati, or Ohio, or the Midwest, but this is not the environment I can see myself growing into a valued member of society.
If you ever feel like testing this theory, that If one reads comments, ip so facto, one becomes disgusted with humans. Let's test it any day on let's say the reputable newspaper of the Cincinnati Enquirer. This is but one example, but any article from as mundane as announcements are fraught with what I consider reasons to leave and emigrate to Britain or Germany. I might do that anyway.

Tool, indeed.

I keep seeing commercials for this ridiculous object:

It's a shower pouf. Or a mesh sponge. Axe calls it a "Detailer Shower Tool," because putting it into the vocabulary of cars and machinery and packaging it like a Craftsman tape measure makes it butch. It costs around three or four times what a mesh sponge costs.

[[On a small (potentially insignificant?) scale, this is an illustration of a concept I have encountered many times in feminist discourses. In order to gain power, subjugated groups sometimes strive to be like the (perhaps misguided) dominant group, e.g., women take to wearing clothing traditionally only worn by men (pants), or otherwise aspire to seem more like men (shoulder pads) in order to be seen as their equal. It is much less likely that a dominant group will strive to take on the characteristics of a subjugated group ([most] men don't aspire to dress like women). In other words, taking the simplistic example of attire, there has been a gradual equalizing over several decades of the types of clothing it is acceptable for men and women to wear. Both have shirts and pants and shorts. There are still men's and women's versions to account for bodily proportions and other social cues (like color and material), but the differences tend not to be of kind. However, this equality arises from the subjugated group (i.e. women) taking on characteristics of the dominant group (men), not the other way around. It was not a two-way street. Characteristics of the subjugated group, if possessed by members of the dominant group, seem out of place, inappropriate, and negative. (Men dressing as women, men being emotional, etc.)]]

So, even though a mesh sponge or sponge or loofah or shower pouf might sometimes be a convenient way to wash oneself in the shower, it's a gendered item. Women use shower poufs and loofahs. They are not butch. But Axe wants badly to market them to men. Bill O'Reilly (butch!) isn't even clear on what a loofah is, whether he should sexually harass women with it, or eat it in a Mediterranean restaurant. Ay, there's the rub. Axe has probably spent millions of dollars on ads that tell men that women will find them sexually attractive if they smell good (read: like Axe). Axe has been slowly pushing perfumed personal hygiene products on men--gently, so as not to scare them--for several years. The shower pouf seems a bit radical. Also, faggy? Butch guys do not want to seem faggy. They want to be sexually attractive to women, not other men! Axe has made it very clear that the scents contained in its products are engineered to be attractive to women. How do they solve this marketing predicament?

Fucking Detailer Shower Tool.

Mc Cain is Pirate!

I do not like to think of myself as knowing who I would like of the stupid men running for president. But I must say, that I'm beginning to hate Mc Cain. first off, his very famous celebrity ad is essentially mud throwing, something only the weak, and fearful do in my opinion. it means that he has nothing good to say about why he is worthy of the job, nor his plans once he gets there- mind you, none of them will happen, as we are not a dictatorship and the congress is still Democractic for the next year- good luck !
Anyway to add fuel to this very familliar fire, as an Ohio resident i get blessed to see this ad every time i turn on the television, let alone the olympics, you know that old yarn of brotherhood, peace and a sense of fair play. Never mind ad space is up to 750,000 . i would love to have just the funding of one ad!
and finally, John McCain is no better than the musical pirates that as, a GOP hes supposed to hate- oh wait, that's supposta! It seems his ad, not only uses images of celebrities like Paris or Britany, now hes on the RIAA's most wanted, or at least he should be. Wired has a great article on how much Mc Cain sucks- even more than what i said. I think we should so a photoshop contest or find one that shows either McCain as a pirate or a theif. Both look good on a resume of the next president.