Department Of They Still Won’t Ordain Women
Yet Still Keep Dressing Like Them

 

And one more thing.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops is speaking out against the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine because it was developed using cells from an aborted fetus.
“Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines raised concerns because an abortion-derived cell line was used for testing them, but not in their production,” a statement from the conference said.
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine, however, was “developed, tested, and is produced with abortion-derived cell lines raising additional moral concerns,” it continued.
( Bishops urge Catholics to avoid the Johnson & Johnson vaccine if possible because it was developed using cells from an aborted fetus   3-2-21 )

 

“Do they hear themselves when they speak?”

 

Excuse me, Catholic bishops: how are y’all able to take time out of your busy schedule –  of continuing to cover up priest child rape and discriminating against women and the LGBTQ community while shuffling parishioner funds to pay off sexual abuse lawsuits – to stick your pointy hats and noses into the public health arena?

Here’s an idea: STFU and go diddle yourself into oblivion with your rosary beads. Y’all have no business proclaiming anything about “moral concerns” ever ever ever EVER. 

*   *   *

Department Of Men are Verbs; Women Are Nouns

Did you ever wonder why the documentary about entertainer Britney Spears – who lives under a court-sanctioned conservatorship established when she was age 26 and who now, at age 39, is in a court battle with her father over who should control the fortune *she* has earned – relates to society’s the policing of women’s bodies, our achievements, and our mere existence?

Moiself  neither.

Until I read Kasia Urbaniak’s right-on essay, Britney Spears and The Good Girl Double Bind.  A distillation of the frustrating reality Urbaniak describes and analyzes:

“We’re so used to talking about who women are being
than about what they achieve.

And we’re so accustomed to putting attention on what men can achieve (or are perceived to achieve) versus who they are being.

We take this state of affairs so much for granted, that it’s almost invisible. Just think how much a woman running for office is scrutinized for how she speaks and dresses versus what she’s achieved in her decades-long career.

Meanwhile, a man can be a genuine predator, yet what he has done and what he’s perceived to be able to get done comes first and foremost
in how he’s evaluated.

We are obsessed with what men *do* and how women *are*.

Men are verbs; women are nouns.”

( “Britney Spears and The Good Girl Double Bind,”
Kasia Urbaniak, author and founder of The Academy — The School of Power for Women )

*   *   *

Department of Ick…just…Ick.

Here is how the afore-mentioned essay opens: 

Britney Spears is 10 years old, Ed McMahon is 69.
She has just given a jaw-dropping performance in a TV singing competition. He approaches her.
He comments on the 10-year old prodigy’s “pretty eyes,” rather than her powerful voice, and then asks: “Do you have a boyfriend?”
“No, sir” she retorts politely. “Why not?” presses Ed.  “Because they’re mean,” insists little Britney.
He leans over her.  “But what about me?”

 

*   *   *

Department Of Dressing Up At Home

Dateline: Last Sunday eve, watching the Golden Globe Awards.  ‘Tis our family tradition (previously mentioned in this venue, including here and here) of having a movie awards watching party (not any old awards show – just the “biggies,” as in the Oscars, Emmys, Golden Globes, and Tonys…and two of those don’t involve movies, but you get the idea) whilst consuming “movie food,” which is defined as hot dogs,   [1]  popcorn, chips & guac,  Skittles and Junior Mints and Red Vines licorice and/or your favorite movie theatre candies and snacks, washed down with liberal amounts of a sparkling beverage.

Due to the you-know-what-19 pandemic, this year the party was toned down, both on our viewing end and on the GG presenting end.  Friend LAH has been part of our tradition for years, and she joined MH and I for our distanced and masked celebration, along with our son, K (who is full vaccinated – we are all jealous, but that’s what working in medical research gets you).

The GG’s toned-down format was regretful. Part of the fun of watching the GGs is that the nominees are seated at tables, drinking and eating and drinking and chatting and drinking, and did I mention drinking? Thus, the atmosphere – and the acceptance speeches – tend to be looser (read: funnier and drunker) than the staid-by-comparison Oscars.

One bonus of this year’s show was getting to see many of the nominees in their homes (in some case, with their kids,who were so excited about Mom or Dad winning an award, which was adorable). Their attire ranged from Jason Sudeikis’ excessively casual, I’ll-never-win-so-I’m-going-to-be-comfy sweatsuit hoodie, to others who dressed as if they were headed for the red carpet interview (when we know they are in fact home, alone, counting the minutes until they can cover their Zoom screen and dash to the kitchen to scarf a fistful of Doritos during the commercial breaks).

In the latter category was Rosamund Pike, winner for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for I Care A Lot.  Pike unexpectedly supplied us with a great GG moment – not as great as the likely-never-to-be-equaled Best Acceptance Speech Ever ®  (given by Sacha Baron Cohen, 2007 winner for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, which can be seen in its glorious entirety here), but we still appreciated it.

 

 

This picture doesn’t do justice to the delightfully bizarre, horizontally expansive dress worn by Pike.  I’m wondering if she would have worn it had the GG’s been in their usual venue – she would have had to sit at a table by herself, as there would be no room on the sides for anyone else.  MH and I were reminded of  The Nutcracker Ballet’s Mother Ginger, the character who…well, for a moment we expected a bunch of polichinelles  [2]  to come scurrying out from under Pike’s voluminous hoopskirts….

 

 

Although I enjoyed the comic relief supplied by Pike’s dress, moiself  didn’t want it to distract from why she won the award.  So MH and I watched “I Care A  Lot.”  And you should, too. A perfect performance by Pike in a perfectly peculiar and entertaining film.

*   *   *

Department Of Dialog Which Causes Me To Spit Out What I Was Chewing
And Guffaw Aloud, Alone, At The TV

Dateline: a weekend ago, having dinner by moiself, watching the streaming show, “Resident Alien.” As per the show’s website, RA is about an alien who

“…crash lands on Earth and must pass himself off as small-town human doctor Harry Vanderspeigle. Arriving with a secret mission to kill all humans, Harry starts off living a simple life…but things get a bit rocky when he’s roped into solving a local murder and realizes he needs to assimilate into his new world.”

Harry is played by the marvelous Alan Tudyk,   [3]  who gives Harry hard-to-describe verbal and physical mannerisms which are, IMHO, totally believable and consistent with what you might expect from a character who is the equivalent of the offspring of the proverbial fish-out-of-water and a precocious adolescent with Asperger’s syndrome…in other words, an ET who gets his ideas of human behavior – and a doctor’s “expertise” – from binge-watching episodes of Law and Order and consulting his cellphone for medical information.

 

 

The dialog to which I refer comes from episode two, during Harry’s first day at the town’s medical clinic.  Standing outside the clinic’s exam room, reading the chart of a patient he is scheduled to see, Harry thinks, “I was a scientist on my planet so this is easy for me,” referring to his conception of human doctors spending years in medical school to learn a procedure as simple as burning off a wart.  “All I need is the internet and I can graduate in five minutes.”

Harry enters the clinic’s exam room, staring at the chart in his hands. A woman is lying on the exam table, her feet in the stirrups.  He doesn’t even look at he as he sits down at the exam stool at the end of the table, by her feet. “Okay, let’s take a look at that nasty thing,” he says, as he lifts the paper sheet covering her from the waist down.  He drops the sheet, stands up, and blurts out, “You’re not a 12-year boy with a wart.”

The patient, a sardonic woman (who how you say, probably gets around), chuckles, “Well, I’m not a 12-year-old boy…”

The clinic’s nurse quickly apologizes, grabs the chart from Harry’s hand, and replaces it with the female patient’s chart, whom, the nurse tacitly explains to Harry, is in urgent need of a pelvic exam  (“We had to move her up from tomorrow.”).

Harry had googled wart removal, not pelvic exam. “Pelvic exam…”  Harry repeats, stalling for time.  Both the nurse and the patient urge him to hurry things up; we see his head disappear beneath the sheet; he takes a look and triumphantly announces,

“Oh, okay, I see your problem – you sat on an earring!”

The patient flinches as Harry tugs at (what we assume is) her labial piercing.  “No – ah, no!” she gasps, “That’s – that’s supposed to be there.”

 

 

You sat on an earring.  I’m still dying, a week later.  [4]

*   *   *

Pun For The Day, Alien Doctor Edition

I heard a joke about amnesia, but I forgot how it goes.

*   *   *

 

May you never have cause for a doctor, or anyone, to think you sat on an earring;
May you disregard the unsolicited advice – about anything – from men wearing medieval cassocks and quoting Iron Age scriptures;
May you fantasize delivering an acceptance speech to rival Sacha Baron Cohen’s;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] Yes, that doesn’t qualify as “food,” and I have the plant-based version.

[2] Little children/clowns, depending on the production of the ballet.

[3] Any Firefly fans out there?

[4] The perfect reaction from an alien, as in, it’s not like anyone in their right mind would purposefully do that to themselves, so how else would you explain it?