Or maybe it's Menton.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Diagnosis: Female
The New York Times review of Lisa Appignesi's book Mad, Bad And Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors.
It would be hard to imagine a mental illness that better evinces the slippery interplay among fashion, delusion, diagnosis and treatment than anorexia, which announces itself with the appearance of following rather than defying social directives and which women embrace, as they did neurasthenia, as a mode of femininity, in this case to be slim rather than morbidly sensitive and enervated.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Pursuit of Youth
Ah, MSNBC is doin' good tonight, contrariennes.
Want to see what a mess celebrities have made of their faces?
Slideshow here.
Want to see what a mess celebrities have made of their faces?
Slideshow here.
i can haz chzbrgr?
WTF? Well, I tried. Txtng iz hrd.
The good folks at MSNBC offer instructions of a sort for those of you sometimes confronted with apparently indeciferable words and phrases creeping into print these days. Very common on blogs. And a must have if you want to communicate with the Millennials.
GTG SYT
The good folks at MSNBC offer instructions of a sort for those of you sometimes confronted with apparently indeciferable words and phrases creeping into print these days. Very common on blogs. And a must have if you want to communicate with the Millennials.
GTG SYT
Say What? Oh, McCain
You may not have heard of Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, but Sen. John McCain didn't even bother to vote on the bill that tightens up fair pay legislation to prevent courts from doing what they did to Ledbetter, imposing impossible filing deadlines.
Ledbetter didn't even know she wasn't being paid fairly until well after the deadline the court drew for the case.
McCain said what women really need is more education and training to obtain fair pay.
Credo has a petition you can sign to let McCain know how you feel about it.
Ledbetter didn't even know she wasn't being paid fairly until well after the deadline the court drew for the case.
McCain said what women really need is more education and training to obtain fair pay.
Credo has a petition you can sign to let McCain know how you feel about it.
Poem O' Teh Day: Wow
Dangerous for Girls
by Connie Voisine
It was the summer of Chandra Levy, disappearing
from Washington D.C., her lover a Congressman, evasive
and blow-dried from Modesto, the TV wondering
in every room in America to an image of her tight jeans and piles
of curls frozen in a studio pose. It was the summer the only
woman known as a serial killer, a ten-dollar whore trolling
the plains of central Florida, said she knew she would
kill again, murder filled her dreams
and if she walked in the world, it would crack
her open with its awful wings. It was the summer that in Texas, another
young woman killed her five children, left with too many
little boys, always pregnant. One Thanksgiving, she tried
to slash her own throat. That summer the Congressman
lied again about the nature of his relations, or,
as he said, he couldn't remember if they had sex that last
night he saw her, but there were many anonymous girls that summer,
there always are, who lower their necks to the stone
and pray, not to God but to the Virgin, herself once
a young girl, chosen in her room by an archangel.
Instead of praying, that summer I watched television, reruns of
a UFO series featuring a melancholic woman detective
who had gotten cancer and was made sterile by aliens. I watched
infomercials: exercise machines, pasta makers,
and a product called Nails Again With Henna,
ladies, make your nails steely strong, naturally,
and then the photograph of Chandra Levy
would appear again, below a bright red number,
such as 81, to indicate the days she was missing.
Her mother said, please understand how we're feeling
when told that the police don't believe she will be found alive,
though they searched the parks and forests
of the Capitol for the remains and I remembered
being caught in Tennessee, my tent filled with wind
lifting around me, tornado honey, said the operator when I called
in fear. The highway barren, I drove to a truck stop where
maybe a hundred trucks hummed in pale, even rows
like eggs in a carton. Truckers paced in the dining room,
fatigue in their beards, in their bottomless
cups of coffee. The store sold handcuffs, dirty
magazines, t-shirts that read, Ass, gas or grass.
Nobody rides for free, and a bulletin board bore a
public notice: Jane Doe, found in a refrigerator box
outside Johnson, TN, her slight measurements and weight.
The photographs were of her face, not peaceful in death,
and of her tattoos Born to Run, and J.T. caught in
scrollworks of roses. One winter in Harvard Square, I wandered
drunk, my arms full of still warm, stolen laundry, and
a man said come to my studio and of course I went—
for some girls, our bodies are not immortal so much as
expendable, we have punished them or wearied
from dragging them around for so long and so we go
wearing the brilliant plumage of the possibly freed
by death. Quick on the icy sidewalks, I felt thin and
fleet, and the night made me feel unique in the eyes
of the stranger. He told me he made sculptures
of figure skaters, not of the women's bodies,
but of the air that whipped around them,
a study of negative space,
which he said was the where-we-were-not
that made us. Dizzy from beer,
I thought why not step into
that space? He locked the door behind me.
Today's poem is from Rare High Meadow of Which I Might Dream, just published by University of Chicago Press. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
by Connie Voisine
It was the summer of Chandra Levy, disappearing
from Washington D.C., her lover a Congressman, evasive
and blow-dried from Modesto, the TV wondering
in every room in America to an image of her tight jeans and piles
of curls frozen in a studio pose. It was the summer the only
woman known as a serial killer, a ten-dollar whore trolling
the plains of central Florida, said she knew she would
kill again, murder filled her dreams
and if she walked in the world, it would crack
her open with its awful wings. It was the summer that in Texas, another
young woman killed her five children, left with too many
little boys, always pregnant. One Thanksgiving, she tried
to slash her own throat. That summer the Congressman
lied again about the nature of his relations, or,
as he said, he couldn't remember if they had sex that last
night he saw her, but there were many anonymous girls that summer,
there always are, who lower their necks to the stone
and pray, not to God but to the Virgin, herself once
a young girl, chosen in her room by an archangel.
Instead of praying, that summer I watched television, reruns of
a UFO series featuring a melancholic woman detective
who had gotten cancer and was made sterile by aliens. I watched
infomercials: exercise machines, pasta makers,
and a product called Nails Again With Henna,
ladies, make your nails steely strong, naturally,
and then the photograph of Chandra Levy
would appear again, below a bright red number,
such as 81, to indicate the days she was missing.
Her mother said, please understand how we're feeling
when told that the police don't believe she will be found alive,
though they searched the parks and forests
of the Capitol for the remains and I remembered
being caught in Tennessee, my tent filled with wind
lifting around me, tornado honey, said the operator when I called
in fear. The highway barren, I drove to a truck stop where
maybe a hundred trucks hummed in pale, even rows
like eggs in a carton. Truckers paced in the dining room,
fatigue in their beards, in their bottomless
cups of coffee. The store sold handcuffs, dirty
magazines, t-shirts that read, Ass, gas or grass.
Nobody rides for free, and a bulletin board bore a
public notice: Jane Doe, found in a refrigerator box
outside Johnson, TN, her slight measurements and weight.
The photographs were of her face, not peaceful in death,
and of her tattoos Born to Run, and J.T. caught in
scrollworks of roses. One winter in Harvard Square, I wandered
drunk, my arms full of still warm, stolen laundry, and
a man said come to my studio and of course I went—
for some girls, our bodies are not immortal so much as
expendable, we have punished them or wearied
from dragging them around for so long and so we go
wearing the brilliant plumage of the possibly freed
by death. Quick on the icy sidewalks, I felt thin and
fleet, and the night made me feel unique in the eyes
of the stranger. He told me he made sculptures
of figure skaters, not of the women's bodies,
but of the air that whipped around them,
a study of negative space,
which he said was the where-we-were-not
that made us. Dizzy from beer,
I thought why not step into
that space? He locked the door behind me.
Today's poem is from Rare High Meadow of Which I Might Dream, just published by University of Chicago Press. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
On Temporary Hiatus (sp?)
Yeah, I know I could easily check the spelling but I'm feeling unmotivated.
I probably won't return for a couple weeks, but when I do I'll be better.
Happy end of primary season.
I probably won't return for a couple weeks, but when I do I'll be better.
Happy end of primary season.
Military Industrial Complex
No one until now has detailed the extent of the connections between retired military officers, military contractors and...wait for it...wait for it...broadcast news organizations.
It isn't necessary to read the very long article in the New York Times today, the result of a lawsuit that netted the paper some 8,000 documents unless you're very keen on the dreary details.
This little excerpt gives you the general idea:
It isn't necessary to read the very long article in the New York Times today, the result of a lawsuit that netted the paper some 8,000 documents unless you're very keen on the dreary details.
This little excerpt gives you the general idea:
Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.
Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.
Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Democratic Debate In One Minute
I'm sorry, these folks are into the eyeballs and the advertising (who can blame them) so there's no embed for this. You'll have to follow the link, but it's worth it.
Erm, so I got to wondering because that's what you DON'T PAY me to do, and I decided to click on 23/6's About Us because although I saw it on Huffpo all the time, I've never really explored it.
etc.
Apparently it's another Arianna baby, and all satire all the time. (What's the IAC again?) I probably wouldn't have been curious at all except NPR did an interview about their McCain Girls viral video today. Never once was the Huffington name mentioned.
Okay, got to add this to my RSS feed. In the early days of my RSS feed, I thought it was so cool I was gonna write about it and recommend it. But frankly, it's just another internet time waster that I only use about once a week and every time I do, I'm sorry.
Anyway, the Daily Show, Colbert and 23/6.
Can satire save democracy?
I can do Carrie Bradshaw when I have to, but it wouldn't be a pretty picture. Too inside baseball? Sorry.
Erm, so I got to wondering because that's what you DON'T PAY me to do, and I decided to click on 23/6's About Us because although I saw it on Huffpo all the time, I've never really explored it.
ABOUT US
236.com is a co-production between the gigantic, vaguely Death Star-like IAC, and The Huffington Post, a progressive news hub where outraged people go in order to get more outraged before going to have dinner at Nobu.
Corporate Overlords
Publisher: Arianna Huffington
President: Sarah Bernard
IAC Head of Interactive Programming: Michael Jackson
Creative Types/Narcissists/Enablers
Editor: Jason Reich
Executive Consultant: Roy Sekoff
etc.
Apparently it's another Arianna baby, and all satire all the time. (What's the IAC again?) I probably wouldn't have been curious at all except NPR did an interview about their McCain Girls viral video today. Never once was the Huffington name mentioned.
Okay, got to add this to my RSS feed. In the early days of my RSS feed, I thought it was so cool I was gonna write about it and recommend it. But frankly, it's just another internet time waster that I only use about once a week and every time I do, I'm sorry.
Anyway, the Daily Show, Colbert and 23/6.
Can satire save democracy?
I can do Carrie Bradshaw when I have to, but it wouldn't be a pretty picture. Too inside baseball? Sorry.
Besame Mucho
was the most popular song on the day I was born. How do I know? Yep, there's a Web site for it. There's a Web site for everything. Mine is for women of a certain age and a certain attitude who don't have time to waste finding shiny objects out there in the ether.
If I had the patience, I might do some sort of analysis about the frequency of South American influence in American pop culture during the 30s, 40s and 50s. It seems to me I've seen a documentary, maybe about the movies, that mentioned it. Why were Americans in love with South America? Bob and Bing went to Rio, they had Hedy Lamar. Peggy Lee had a hit called Manana. Who was that star who always wore fruit on her head? Oh yeah, Carmen Miranda.
Why weren't we in love with France, for instance? Or Sweden?
I think it played sexy.
If I had the patience, I might do some sort of analysis about the frequency of South American influence in American pop culture during the 30s, 40s and 50s. It seems to me I've seen a documentary, maybe about the movies, that mentioned it. Why were Americans in love with South America? Bob and Bing went to Rio, they had Hedy Lamar. Peggy Lee had a hit called Manana. Who was that star who always wore fruit on her head? Oh yeah, Carmen Miranda.
Why weren't we in love with France, for instance? Or Sweden?
I think it played sexy.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Foodie Lore
We'll never get to eat there, but it's fun to read about Talula's.
Yet diners have included chefs, writers, tycoons, musicians, mushroom farmers, plastic surgeons, and actors. John Turturro traveled down from Brooklyn with his wife, Kathie Borowitz, on Valentine's Day; a friend had praised Talula's food so lavishly that Turturro had to see for himself.
"I was a little dubious at first, but the dinner surpassed my highest expectations," Turturro said after a banquet of egg custard with Jonah crab, exotic mushroom risotto, snails in rigatoni farci, roast pompano, osso buco and house-smoked bacon, lamb and wildflower honey, and an array of winter blue cheeses.
"Each dish was a separate love affair," Turturro said. "It was the kind of a meal you'd request before your execution."
Home Cooking Is Cheaper
than eating out. You knew that, but I've always liked Joel Stein's humor.
He concludes:
He concludes:
But sometimes we got to watch TV and not wear pants. If someone opens a restaurant like that, I'll rerun the experiment and drop fistfuls of saffron in everything.
Guys Need A Target
One memorable example of the power of choice architecture comes from the men's rooms at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam. There the authorities have etched the image of a black housefly into each urinal. It seems that men usually do not pay much attention to where they aim, which can create a bit of a mess, but if they see a target, their attention and accuracy improve. Spillage at the airport decreased by 80%!
Bumped into this on Andrew Sullivan's blog today and just had to pass it along. But the above paragraph is really all you need to know.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
The Debate Debate
I meant to watch last night's debate. I was looking forward to it, as a matter of fact.
I had to watch the last two online, and it was aggravating.
But as reports trickled in from the blogs picking it up on East Coast time, I decided not to bother.
Apparently, the ABC televised debate to a bigger audience than any of the previous 20-plus Democratic debates, was horrible. Full of gotcha questions that sounded designed to cater to right wing sensibilities.
The flag lapel pin Obama doesn't wear, the old Pastor Wright thing, etc.
I've read a lot about it today, and am not sure that the whole thing wasn't designed to give the apparent nominee — Obama — a taste of what Republicans will throw at him in the fall.
However, if you're pissed off about last night, there's now a petition.
I had to watch the last two online, and it was aggravating.
But as reports trickled in from the blogs picking it up on East Coast time, I decided not to bother.
Apparently, the ABC televised debate to a bigger audience than any of the previous 20-plus Democratic debates, was horrible. Full of gotcha questions that sounded designed to cater to right wing sensibilities.
The flag lapel pin Obama doesn't wear, the old Pastor Wright thing, etc.
I've read a lot about it today, and am not sure that the whole thing wasn't designed to give the apparent nominee — Obama — a taste of what Republicans will throw at him in the fall.
However, if you're pissed off about last night, there's now a petition.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Barack Hussein Obama
What's in a name? The great thing about the internet is that there is so much I can learn. The terrible thing about the internet is that there is so much crap.
From Juan Cole:
Read the whole thing, it's not that long.
From Juan Cole:
Americans may think of Saddam Hussein when they hear the name, but that is like thinking of Stalin when you hear the name Joseph.
Read the whole thing, it's not that long.
The Poll I'd Like To See
is the one that asks voters how many candidate YouTubes they watch and what they remember of them.
I remember the Wright preachings, and I'll remember this.
I remember the Wright preachings, and I'll remember this.
Dave Chapelle's Pixies
A commenter at TPM suggested that the 12 percent of African American voters in Pennsylvania who still support Hillary may have a pixy problem similar to this.
I don't know, but I do know I miss Dave.
I don't know, but I do know I miss Dave.
Lexicon Of Liberal Invective
I don't know how I've survived this long without it. And if Paul Krugman hadn't called himself a DFH and linked to it, I may have spent the rest of my days without this important reference work.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Pennsylvania, Tuesday
Andrew Sullivan finds it so I don't have to.
Having done an analysis of Pennsylvania's 19 congressional districts, CQ predicts Clinton will take 53 delegates and Obama will take 50. Yeah: that's it. No wonder we're parsing hard-to-hear off-the-record fundraisers.
Sex And The (Chinese) City
It's bad to keep promoting this. Well, not really. I'm addicted. Consider me the dealer. We give it away for free, and pretty soon you're paying for it. Yummm.
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