but if i look at the sum total of my summer:
- got married
- mini-mooned
- officiated a wedding
- started bartending again
- celebrated my dad's birthday with the family
- saw the out-laws on the coast
it's hard not to forgive myself. i urge you to follow in kind. enough of this babble--on to the babbling!
After such an absence, it's difficult to know how to jump back in. i'm pretty sure this is one origin of writer's block. Perhaps i can claim i have had writer's block the past month and thereby define myself as a writer. ACK. Gotta get out of my head. let's steal a page from jimmy fallon's playbook, and slowjam the mother f'n news ya'll. The news these days could use a jamming or two.
'Project Runway's' real-size model: Show was 'adult bullying at its best'
Now first let me give props to the headline person who punctuated this. As you all know i don't much care for the capitalization and punctuation rules, but that doesn't mean that I don't appreciate a copyeditor who does. Props.
I have seen a number of seasons of Project Runway. I should start there. I have not, thankfully, been watching this years version. But after reading this headline, wifey pulled up the episode on the ol ON DEMAND and we gave it a watch. It was as bad as the article says it was. You got to watch as a woman who had been selected by HEIDI friggin KLUM for a makeover and was psyched out of her mind for her tiny slice of 15 minutes of fame get torn down as a human being in a manner so insensitive as to draw the horrified stares of every human in earshot. Forgive the pscyhologist in me, but as all those people looked on, i couldn't help but think of the "bystander effect" and how one of those people speaking out could have made all the difference in the moment (apparently one of the designers did reach out to Terri-which was nice to hear.)
In the moment, my wife and I disagreed on what the "worst thing" was ( as in "do you know what the WORST PART is . . .". She believes the fact that the designer is a "big boy" makes it "the worst". I think that fact that the woman is not, in fact, that heavy is "the worst".
But, thinking about it more--i believe we were both wrong. The worst part of all this bullying is always the most insidious. The worst part of the show was watching the judges critique the "real women" who loved their outfits but had the unfortunate luck of having their designers be on the bottom. The goal of the task was to transform these women into something else entirely -- the person they wanted to be. And these two women, feeling new and fresh and special and like models-for-a-day had to stand there as HEIDI friggin KLUM called their outfits slutty and "hooch-mama-esc". (there were at least two hooker insinuations.) If you watch the women's faces, as these critiques are happening, you see the
same joy draining from them as you did with Terri and Ven Budhu's horrific low self esteem driven hideousness. Of course, the fact that they didn't send him home, was certainly salt in the wound as well.
Let's get worse before we get better people: Let's move on to shit dumb male politicians say about rape.
First, it pains me greatly that this has become a "category". that there are more than one iderations of this shit feels very 1950's . . . maybe 1920's.
We got this dipshit.
* Rep. Todd Akin: The Statement and the Reaction
and if i may take a second on this one. The dumbass rep. Akin is not COMPLETELY wrong on this one. He just messed up his species. See female ducks get raped all the time. They call it "reproduction" -- but often, in the duck world, it is "forced reproduction." And, as evolution isn't sexist, turns out that female ducks can actually get the male ducks to "shoot down the wrong passageway" when they are being raped, to prevent reproduction. Fact check me bitches. This shit is true. But, alas, no such rape vagina has been discovered in female humans, so . . . yah . . . akin's is a dipshit.
Then that dipshit AGAIN being even dipshittier!
* Self-styled rape expert Todd Akin, a GOP Senate candidate, now says breastmilk can cure homosexuality
*edit*8/29/12*this article originated in a satire column and then got picked up by the news. Classic. Never too old to play the fool* but ill leave the mockery anyway*
This one is infuriating on just so many levels. The first is that we still have elected officials who think homosexuality NEEDS a cure. That alone makes me want to give him a good fisting. But this is made all the worse by the fact that he is just so plain stupid as to believe that in the event that homosexuality needed a cure, that we actually have one. I mean breast milk? that's not even a good guess. He should have at least come up with something clever like playing broadway musicals backwards or eating only tuna and canned ham for a year straight. But alas, he gave us breast milk, and thus became the mother of all dipshits (AMAZING PUN!).
* Self-styled rape expert Todd Akin, a GOP Senate candidate, now says breastmilk can cure homosexuality
*edit*8/29/12*this article originated in a satire column and then got picked up by the news. Classic. Never too old to play the fool* but ill leave the mockery anyway*
This one is infuriating on just so many levels. The first is that we still have elected officials who think homosexuality NEEDS a cure. That alone makes me want to give him a good fisting. But this is made all the worse by the fact that he is just so plain stupid as to believe that in the event that homosexuality needed a cure, that we actually have one. I mean breast milk? that's not even a good guess. He should have at least come up with something clever like playing broadway musicals backwards or eating only tuna and canned ham for a year straight. But alas, he gave us breast milk, and thus became the mother of all dipshits (AMAZING PUN!).
More recently we had this gem of a turn of phrase which seeked to further reduce and destigmatize that dirty little thing called rape.
* Paul Ryan Said Something That Should Force Him Off the Ticket, But You Probably Didn't Hear About It
The summary here is that Paul Ryan (R. VP nominee), in presenting his personal views about abortion (and specifically the question was in incidence of rape) responded that no matter the "Method of Conception"-- life is life.
the obvious problem here is that rape is not a method. rape is a violation. a stripping of control of your own body. it is foul and scarring and extremely common!!! in the worst possible way. There is no method. Rapists do not rape for progeny. Women never get raped to get pregnant.
And now to some lighter headlines . . .
* Recently SF Giants baseball standout Melky Cabrera was suspended for 50 games for violating the leagues drug policy. This story didn't have much pizzaz at first. The "Melk-man" was having a breakout season, won MVP of the All-Star game, and then was found to be cheating. Taadaa and busted. And at first, the reports were that he had admitted to cheating and that was that.
But thankfully, for us, it got crazy. Melky and/or his associate then proceeded to buy a website (in south america that sells some substance that Melky was going to claim to have taken "by accident," the result of which was his high testosterone levels and positive steroid test. Yup. the ol' "fake website for a fake product which tricked me" defense. Didn't seem like it took MLB investigators too too long to sniff this one out. I mean, from the minds who brought you "this plan," you can only imagine that their execution of said plan was equally impeccable. I can just see Melky, all dumbass and sitting in a room by himself, a unlit cigar lying next to him, and him wondering, "when am i going to get to say . . . i love it when a plan comes together!" Not gonna happen melky. not gonna happen.
* Here Are The Bic Pens For Women That Everyone Is Laughing At
This one is more of a public service announcement. You gotta see this. I could sit here and go on and on about the stupidity and sexism innate to the creation and marketing of this product. But, thankfully for us both (this post is getting long . . . . overcompensating much?) plenty of brilliant women and men have already taken to the comments section of Amazon to thoroughly ridicule Bic. Enjoy!
This one is more of a public service announcement. You gotta see this. I could sit here and go on and on about the stupidity and sexism innate to the creation and marketing of this product. But, thankfully for us both (this post is getting long . . . . overcompensating much?) plenty of brilliant women and men have already taken to the comments section of Amazon to thoroughly ridicule Bic. Enjoy!
And now. As always, for your mental sherbet, are cute doggie pics.
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| the "over-under" |
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| heart-shaped love |
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| the "bridge-over-troubled-puppy" |
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| "head-to-head" |
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| "mom, look, look mom. I'm upside down." |
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| dad, i think i can pull these off! |
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| the "classic" |
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| big ol frog dog |
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| the "96" |
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| "bridge-over-troubled-puppy" II |
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| "over-under" II |
and last but CERTAINLY not least. This is what happens when a pitbull meets a frenchman.
The Breastmilk story is a joke. Even though the article you link to says in the first line "When I first read THIS, I thought it was a parody — something from The Onion perhaps. It’s not:" They clearly didnt look very hard. If you follow the link to the source on DailyCurrant you can see their tagline "The Global Satirical Newspaper of Record". This is a prime example of "Poe's Law " (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law) This isn't to say that Akin isn't a Dillhole I just think he should be held accountable for stupid things he actual does and says. Also his friends are dumb. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/house-committee-science/
ReplyDeleteGreat. just what this blog needs. a do-good fact checker with "correct information" and theory as to why the mistakes were made. thoughtful too. sigh.
ReplyDelete