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The Long Lens Camera I’m Not Blaming

February 24, 2023

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, music, politics, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Long Lens Camera I’m Not Blaming

Department Of Whatever Stupid Thing You’ve Done,
You’ll Feel Better About Yourself After Reading This

Dateline: Wednesday, ~ 8 am; trying to squeeze in some advance dinner prep – mixing up a plant-based Caesar salad dressing – before my 9 am streaming yoga class.

Usually, I turn the blender off, LIKE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO, when I tap down/add more ingredients, etc.  But I was just going to scrape a bit of the dressing down the sides of the blender, and it was such a small spatula…

 

 

Before I knew it the blender blades grabbed the spatula, whirled it around and ejected it, along with most of the blender contents.  My hair and face were blotched with salad dressing, as were parts of the kitchen, including the ceiling, nearby cabinets and counters, appliances, the kitchen floor….  Lemon juice, caper brine, Dijon mustard and other acidic ingredients in the dressing stung my eyes  (and the next day I noticed blotches of acid burns on my face – hopefully, the marks will fade/heal in a few days).     [1]

After I rinsed my eyes and face and beheld the kitchen, moiself’s  heart sank.  Where to start?  I called upstairs to MH: “Uh, I need your help down here…”  He descended the stairs; I led him to the kitchen carnage and said, “Now, you can’t laugh, because I could have blinded myself.”

Later, after we’d cleaned up as best we could, MH tentatively asked, “Can we laugh now?”

This is my contribution to the never-ending, You think *you* did something stupid? Listen to this!, make-everyone-feel-better campaign.  This was a public service on my part.

I happened to have a haircut appointment that afternoon, and my haircutter got a kick out of my explaining why she might find bits of dried yellowish gunk in my hair.  I’d managed to clean most of it out, then stopped when I remembered, “Ah yes, I’m getting a haircut in a few hours and a professional is going to wash my hair….”

 

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Yeah, We All Know How, Sooner Or Later, Drunks Who “Lose Their Way”
Decide To Defraud The Government And Buy A Lamborghini

(excerpts from “Orange County man who bought luxury cars with COVID relief funds sentenced to prison,” LA Times, 2-18-23, my emphases)

“An Orange County man who fraudulently obtained $5 million in pandemic relief loans and then spent the money on lavish vacations, luxury sports cars and his own personal expenses was sentenced Friday to 4½ years in prison….
Mustafa Qadiri…obtained the funds by submitting loan applications to the federal Paycheck Protection Program, which Congress created in March 2020 to provide emergency aid to small businesses struggling to survive amid COVID-19 related shutdowns and other business interruptions….
Qadiri…filed the applications…on behalf of four separate Newport Beach companies, none of which were actually in operation at the time…lied about the companies’ employee numbers, falsified bank balances and created fake tax returns….
Several friends who wrote character references for Qadiri…described him as a caring and generous man….successful in business early in life, then suffering from alcohol abuse in recent years — which caused him to lose his way.”

 

 

“I must have lost my way,” said the pope, when he woke up from his latest bender and found this new popemobile in his driveway.

 

*   *   *

Department Of I’m Still Thinking About This

Dateline: early eve, February 5. Texting with a friend who was watching the show, moiself  realized the Grammies were on and I’d forgotten about it. I quickly turned on the TV, but ended up switching back-and-forth between the telecast and a recording of the latest SNL, because the Grammy Awards show was, for the most part, IMO, rather tedious.

I know it’s not an award show these days unless someone gives a speech about how progressive and inclusive they or their idols are. So, there was that.  But another, unexpected drag was having that panel of non-industry folk (read: music fans) giving their take on why *their* favorite song should win the Record of the Year award.  Really? If I wanted to hear the opinion of average Joes re what song they like I’d get together with a bunch of my neighbors and we’d just talk about it.

When I’m watching a show celebrating the arts, I’m watching for the art being celebrated. If the show is (ostensibly) about celebrating popular music, I’m watching for the music performances, not the speeches.  Perform, y’all, not preach! I want to see the performers sing and play their songs, more than I care about whether or not they get an award.

And then:  the MF (Madonna’s face) brouhaha.

 

 

“Look, I don’t know exactly what has happened to Madonna’s face, but like the rest of you I can neutrally observe that most 64-year-olds do not emerge from the back-end of middle age with a brow line as smooth and hard as polished river rock. Earlier this week she appeared at the Grammys looking rather [insert your own kind or unkind adjectives; I’m not going to do it for you], and people noticed in a very big way, and by the next morning news outlets like the Daily Mail had lured in a whole scalpel of plastic surgeons to dissect what they believed had gone into the situation, and into Madonna.

Soon the artist herself responded via Instagram. ‘Many people chose to only talk about Close-up photos of me Taken with a long lens camera By a press photographer that Would distort anyone’s face!!’ she wrote…”

 

 

“…and no, I do not understand her capitalization rules but I am reprinting them because with Madonna you never know when something is a mistake and when something is a curated message. ‘Once again I am caught in the glare of ageism and misogyny That permeates the world we live in.’
She is right, of course, about the misogyny in particular. The takeaway from President Biden’s State of the Union speech was, his best performance in years, not what is going on with his eyelids? but the takeaway with Madonna — an icon who has been steering culture since Ronald Reagan was in office — was, did Madonna’s face eat Madonna’s face?”
(excerpts from “The unacceptable Look on Madonna’s face: We seem so horrified when women age, no matter how they try to do it.”
Monica Hesse, The Washington Post, 2-9-23  )

I was watching that part of the Grammies show, where Madonna (who apparently hasn’t toured/has stayed out of the public eye for a couple of years) introduced a couple of performers.  A part of me still wants proof that it is/was Madonna who did so.  Is DNA photo analysis a thing yet?  Had she not been introduced as Madonna, moiself  would not have recognized one of the most recognizable figures in pop music.  And I assumed the long-distance filming of her – not a still photographer’s shot, but the camera filming her, while she was speaking – was because the camera operators were equally appalled and thought that a closeup would be…well…even more cruel.

Of course, the pundits had to weigh in via the various news outlets.  Judging from what I read, some of the op-ed writers needed cognitive enhancement even more than Madonna thought she needed Botox.  I’m thinking of author Jennifer Weiner’s NY Times guest essay. Her essay title alone is worthy of a cosmetically enhanced face palm:
“Madonna’s New Face Is a Brilliant Provocation”

 

 

Oh, deary dear deary deary.  Ms. Weiner, y’all be trying to sell us a big festering turd on that one. That “new provocation” is the same old capitulation to the wolves of sexism and ageism wrapped in the sheep’s clothing of cosmetic “enhancement.”

 

 

(excerpt from Weiner’s essay)
“…Beyond the question of what she’d had done, however, lay the more interesting question of why she had done it. Did Madonna get sucked so deep into the vortex of beauty culture that she came out the other side?….

Perhaps so, but I’d like to think that our era’s greatest chameleon, a woman who has always been intentional about her reinvention, was doing something slyer, more subversive, by serving us both a new — if not necessarily improved — face and a side of critique about the work of beauty, the inevitability of aging, and the impossible bind in which older female celebrities find themselves….

‘I have never apologized for any of the creative choices I have made nor the way that I look or dress and I’m not going to start,’ [Madonna] wrote on her Instagram on Tuesday. ‘I am happy to do the trailblazing so that all the women behind me can have an easier time in the years to come.’

 

Thank you, oh great one, on behalf of all the women behind you, for taking this trailblazing burden upon yourself!

 

Moiself  will let a couple of letters-to-the-NYT-editors writers have a go:

Ms. Weiner quotes Madonna as saying, “I am happy to do the trailblazing so that all the women behind me can have an easier time in the years to come.” I am curious, how does this represent trailblazing?
Cosmetic surgery for approval or attention, even self-approval, seems less like trailblazing and more like objectification. To see more women aging naturally in the media spotlight would be the definition of a trailblazing and daring example to set.
(ST, Los Angeles)

Jennifer Weiner writes, “I’d like to think that our era’s greatest chameleon, a woman who has always been intentional about her reinvention, was doing something slyer, more subversive, by serving us both a new — if not necessarily improved — face and a side of critique about the work of beauty, the inevitability of aging, and the impossible bind in which older female celebrities find themselves.”
Please. As a 65-year-old woman, I can tell you: Having extreme surgery is certainly not a new way to “ ‘critique’…the work of beauty, the inevitability of aging, and the impossible bind” in which all older women find themselves….
It strikes me as extremely sad that so many beautiful women in their 40s, 50s and 60s think that erasing their years cosmetically — cutting themselves open, pulling or pushing their skin and rearranging their faces — is a reasonable approach toward getting older….
(IK, Brooklyn)

Here’s the thing, Weiner, and all y’all other defending-Madonna pundits:  I (duh and of course) am with you on the sexism and aging thing, and about criticizing the culture that “makes” women think that they have to cosmetically mutilate enhance themselves to hide the physical manifestations of continuing to live (i.e., aging).  But your opinions are only half correct. Yes, the culture blah blah blah, but cosmetic procedures are also an individual choice, especially for someone with as much money and influence as Madonna.

Does Madonna, or any other performer, sincerely want to be radical and provocative and trailblazing? Then show – *be* – an honest portrait of individual aging.  Madonna’s extensive work reinforces, rather than critiques, the unfairness and stereotypes of women and aging, and does *nothing* to change or challenge the ”impossible bind” re women and their appearance, nor does it recognize the power of the individual to dare to age publicly, gracefully, and even proudly.

 

 

I highly doubt that an Isis-backed, terrorist-funded, plastic surgeon’s team kidnapped Madonna at gunpoint.  No one forced her to do the procedures she chose. Societal pressures, schmessures – of course that exists.  But to somehow paint Madonna (or any woman who succumbs to the real and pervasive social coercion to erase wrinkles/dye hair/hide any evidence of aging) as a victim is infantilizing.  Would we do the same for men, in a slightly different but ultimately related topic – as in, would we excuse misogynistic behavior by noting that society was primarily responsible?  Would we accept the rationalization of the bricklayer who, when called out for cat-calling women who pass by his construction site, says in his defense, “Yeah, I know it’s not right, but this is the society I live in, and I was raised to see women this way.”

Sure, females in the public eye, from news anchors to performers to politicians, have been enculturated to see themselves and other women in a certain way…and in Madonna’s case she absolutely participated in setting up her ever-youthful, hyper-sexualized image that can only and ultimately boomerang and provide a then vs. now, comparison downfall. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

 

 

Consider poet/singer/songwriter/photographer/author, Patti Smith, who at age 76 continues to produce her art.  Not only is there no evidence that a surgeon’s scalpel or Botox syringe has ever penetrated her skin, Smith doesn’t even dye her graying hair.    [2]  But then, Smith never based her music and art on her appearance or sexual allure (as Madonna definitely did/does, whether or not you think that by her doing so she exploits or critiques the phenomenon).  Smith’s music and poetry – her body of work – have always focused on what’s beneath the surface, unlike so many female performers where their body of work is entangled with their the presentation of their physical bodies.

…and speaking of so many performers, when I beheld many of the other/younger female performers I saw on the Grammy show   [3]…. Oh, dear, I felt so old.

 

 

I felt like I wanted to be their Wise and Beloved Auntie® whom they invited backstage; I wanted to tap them on their shoulders, point to Madonna and say,

This could be you someday. Have you noticed how your male musicians/actors/emcees/performer peers are not showing as much skin as you are, and have you thought about why?
You’ve been lied to if you think that displaying your sexuality means you are taking control of it and are not in fact being defined and exploited by your appearance.  By creating this body of work that has more to do in some ways with your body than your work, although you may want to keep working on the work, your actual body will crease and change and fade…and then what?
When you make your face and your body such a vital focus in your presentation of your art, *that* will be what your audience will focus on.  They’ll be writing and talking and posting about *you* one day – and not about your work, but about how your face looks like a rhino’s ass.

 

Does your long camera lens make my butt look big?

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week   [4]

 

(Warsan Shire, Somali-British poet, writer, teacher)

*   *   *

May you not need reminding to turn off a blender when you poke it;
May you never confuse greed with “losing your way;”
May you fight the misogynistic powers that tempt you to embrace “anti-aging”;   [5]

…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] They have…but not completely, yet.

[2] nor even combed it, as a snarky Rolling Stone magazine writer speculated many decades ago, in his profile of Smith.

[3] And the Oscars and Emmys and all of them.

[4] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

[5] And remember that the only sure fire way not to age is to die.

The Christian Left I’m Not Shaming

January 6, 2023

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, freethought/humanism, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), music, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , Comments Off on The Christian Left I’m Not Shaming

Happy New Year, y’all.

Department Of The Partridge Of The Week
It’s that time of the year again. As has become a tradition much maligned anticipated in our neighborhood, moiself  is hosting a different Partridge, every week, in my front yard.   [1]
Can you identify this week’s guest Partridge?

Goodbye to Shirley (Mama P), Keith, Laurie, Danny, Tracy – to all the Partridges until next season.

 

Wait – she can’t just box us up like those friggin’ elves…can she?

 

*   *   *

Department Of Putting It All Away

The holiday decorations, that is.

 

Even Cablefish gets a Santa hat in my house.

 

 

The Mantle of Red Pointy Things. ®

 

 

This one tried to hide, but I found him anyway.

 

Farewell, Holiday feasting.

 

 

It’s a wistful day.  Moiself  plays seasonal music, from Misty River’s Midwinter  album to Run DMC’s Christmas In Hollis, on repeat, while I pack away the adornments.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Here, But Not There, And Why

Dateline: Tuesday morning 7:45 AM.  It’s high tide; thus, I’m walking on a road which parallels the beach, and not on the beach itself.

About 100 yards ahead of me a man and his big shaggy dog cross the road and start ambling in the direction I’m going. Out for the morning poop walk, moiself  assumes. The dog is sniffing and sniffing and sniff sniff sniff sniffing clumps of grass, driftwood, and bushes along the road. It stops several times for a longer sniff, almost assuming the classic squat position, then continues until it finally reaches the magic point. By then I have caught up to man and beast, as the latter prepares to do his business and the man prepares his picking-up-dog-business bag.

As I pass them by I am wondering about the dog, So, why *that* spot?  It looks identical to the one you sniffed fifty feet back. Was it particularly aromatic with…familiarity?

“Oh, I remember! I pooped here yesterday, and it was grand. I’ll poop here again!”

 

 

Or, perhaps the pup’s motivation is more sinister than celebratory:

“Aha!  This is the poop-place of that poodle I despise. I’ll show him…”

I’m sure many dog owners   [2]  have their theories (or even certitudes) about the phenomenon of what makes the Perfect Poop Place. ®  But the thing is, only the dogs know. And they do not volunteer this information. I’ve tried asking discretely and quietly, when their owners cannot hear me.  The doggies have yet to reveal their secrets.

 

And someone is always watching.

*   *   *

Department Of It’s Not Too Late To Make A Resolution To Treat People Like People
Sub-Department Of The Problems With Cherry-Picking Quotations

I saw this, posted via the Facebook book group, The Christian Left, last week:

“When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”
– Leviticus 19:33-34 (ESV)” 

 

 

 TCL is, as far as moiself  can tell, a group of Christians who advocate what they see as the more humane/liberal side of Christianity.  Thus, I assume this posting was meant as a wake up (read: shaming) tactic, or reminder to their conservative/borderline-racist Christian cousins, with regards as to how the latter treat migrants and asylum seekers.

Fine; okay.  Shame such folks whenever and however you can.  However….

How do those on “The Christian Left” react when their conservative cousins do the Bible-thumping in reverse?  That is, when conservative Christians share other quotes from their Bible, which they deem equally valid guidelines for modern day living? Such as….

* “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.”
Leviticus 18:22 (ESV)

“Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death. Because they have cursed their father or mother,
heir blood will be on their own head.”
Leviticus 20:9 (NIV)

* If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. They shall say to the elders, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you.”
Deuteronomy 21:18-21 (NIV)

* “Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves.”
Leviticus 25:44 (NIV)

* “For six days, work is to be done, but the seventh day shall be your holy day, a day of sabbath rest to the Lord.
Whoever does any work on it is to be put to death.”
Exodus 35:2 (NIV)

 

image from Pinterest “conversative Christian quotes.”

 

Far better to do the right thing, to treat other people as what they are, members of your own species, because it is the right thing to do and because of just that – that they are your fellow human beings- rather than to have one’s morality based on conflicting interpretations of pre-scientific, Iron age “scriptures” written by people who thought the earth had four corners and floats on water  [3] and that their god wanted them to ban handicapped people from making temple offerings or even approaching the altar   [4]  and that leprosy, aka Hansen’s disease, could be cured by following their god’s detailed instructions, which are, in a nutshell,   [5]

Get two birds. Kill one. Dip the live bird in the blood of the dead one.
Sprinkle the blood on the leper seven times, and then let the blood-soaked bird fly away.
Next find a lamb and kill it. Wipe some of its blood on the patient’s right ear, thumb, and big toe. Sprinkle seven times with oil and wipe some of the oil on his right ear,
thumb and big toe. Repeat. Finally find another pair of birds. Kill one and dip the live bird in the dead bird’s blood.
Wipe some blood on the patient’s right ear, thumb, and big toe. Sprinkle the house with blood seven times….
(Leviticus 14)

 

 

 

*   *   *

Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [6]

I go into a laboratory and create a unicellular organism that will kill millions of people.  I infect flying/biting insects to serve as the delivery system for that organism.
If I release those insects, am I evil?
Without exception every theist I have asked says, “Yes.”
I then ask them to explain malaria.
(anonymous)

 

 

*   *   *

May you be amused by considering the whys/wheres of dog-poop-depositing;
May you treat your fellow human beings as fellow human beings;
May you put away your holiday to the sound of some excellent tunes;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] Specifically, in our pear tree.

[2] Which moiself  has not been for decades.

[3](Isa 11:12, Ps 24:2, 136:6, Rev 7:1.,

[4] Levi. 21¨16-20

[5] A most appropriate container, as medical scientists have discovered that Hansen’s disease can be cured with antimicrobial MDT (multi drug therapy).

[6] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.   No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org

The Pulitzer Prize I’m Not Sharing

December 2, 2022

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, freethought/humanism, music, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, science, The Write Stuff (literary life), TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Pulitzer Prize I’m Not Sharing

Department Of The Partridge Of The Week

It’s that time of the year again. As has become a tradition much maligned anticipated in our neighborhood, moiself  will be hosting a different Partridge, every week, in my front yard.   [1]

Can you guess this week’s guest Partridge?

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Perhaps The Writer Of The Story Should Rethink
The Use Of The Modifier, “Successfully”

Dateline: Wednesday morning.  Moiself  reads these two opening paragraphs of a story published the previous evening in The Oregonian:

“The very morning he left a residential drug treatment program he successfully completed, a Douglas County man went straight to his former drug dealer and bought a pill.
Hours later, (the man’s) grandparents found the 25-year-old in a barn on their ranch in rural Drain, dead from acute fentanyl intoxication….”
(“Oregon man dies from fentanyl hours after leaving treatment.”
The Oregonian 11-29-22)

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Yes! Yes! See This Movie, Yes! Yes!
But With Caution

Caution as in, perhaps a trigger warning?

 

 

I was literally shaking as I left the theater.

She Said.   Everyone should see this movie…however, moiself  has a feeling that only those who understand the experiences will have the inclination to do so.

Yep, moiself  was rattled, even though I knew (most of) the facts of the story the movie tells – of how NY Times investigative reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey (and journalist Ronan Farrow, working separately and simultaneously on the same story for The New Yorker) broke the Harvey Weinstein story and later wrote a book about both HW’s many abuses and their experiences investigating them (She Said:  Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement).

Kantor and Twohey shared the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for public service with Ronan Farrow, for their reporting on the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault and abuse scandals.

 

 

Harvey Weinstein, that serial rapist and sexual abuser of women and girls (at least three of his victims were teenagers at the time of their assaults; one was sixteen), has four daughters, whose ages range from twenty-seven to eleven.  Can you even imagine being one of them?

 

 

As I said wrote, I left the theater shaking, not with surprise but by the reminders that, with his goons and enablers and attorneys and accountants and other sycophants, HW almost got away with it.  Hell, he DID get away with it.  For. Decades.  And he wasn’t alone…and in how many workplaces, from Mom and Pop stores to multinational corporations, did and do predators continue to get away with it?

The movie touched on much more than the HW story itself.  It brought to mind the universal experiences of women abused by powerful men, some of which came out during the subsequent Me Too movement, some of which are ongoing, and most of which are lost to history, blackmail and extortion, victim-blaming and shame, and fear.

 

 

In one scene Kantor, a mother of two young daughters, is talking with Twohey, who’d just recently had her first baby (also a daughter), and who has dealt with some postpartum depression.  The story the two reporters are investigating is stressful; particularly wearing on them is the psychological damage they have seen inflicted upon HW’s victims, whose lives have been turned upside down (and careers ruined, in many cases) and who are too fearful to come out on the public record against such a powerful man…  [2] …and who live under a dark cloud of futility and despair.  I wish I could recall the exact dialog, but the essential vibe of the brief but powerful scene is this:  the two reporters briefly wonder aloud about how whether the frustration, fear, and depression experienced by many women might be the result of the pervasive drag-down common to the female experience: of having to deal with the burden of being female in a world where men still overwhelmingly hold and abuse power and act on the assumption that they can do whatever they want to any woman who is lower than them on life’s totem pole.   [3]

One of many powerful scenes in the movie involves several minutes of static video – footage of a NYC hotel hallway – while the reporters listen to audiotape of a “conversation” between HW and one of his victims (she was wired by the NYPD after reporting her assault). I need another word for conversation; I found it brutal to listen to, as HW harangued and pleaded and whined and threatened and interrupted the woman as he tried to get her to accompany him to his hotel room for a “meeting” (that’s where he does *all* his business meetings, he insisted,  [4]  and she is being so mean and unreasonable for refusing him, he pouts, and trying to embarrass him and “nothing” would happen, he promised “on the life of my children”   [5]  ).  And the woman was resisting and trying to get him to listen to her tell him how uncomfortable he was making her feel, and to answer her questions about why he had assaulted her (grabbed her breast) the previous day (“That’s just what I do,” he dismissed her complaint) and he went on and on, not taking her “no” for an answer, and repeatedly interrupting and talking over her….

I’d never had a sexually psychotic, sadistically bullying film producer try to intimidate and/or lure me.  Still, it all seemed so…familiar.

 

 

Two scenes later, Twohey and Kantor, both women in their early 30s, are seated at a table in a local pub with their editor, a woman in her late 60s.  They are there to discuss the HW investigation.  Two men enter the bar, spot the reporters, and began flirting with them.  One of the men approaches their table and invites the reporters to join him and his buddy (he doesn’t even make eye contact with the older woman; it’s as if – surprise! – she’s invisible to him).  Kantor is sitting with her back to the man; Twohey politely but firmly declines the man’s invitation.  The man persists. Twohey declines again, says that they are having a conversation and don’t want to be disturbed, and the man persists and interrupts and she declines several times (each time louder than her previous decline), the last time rising to her feet and yelling at him that she’d told him “…we are in a conversation and you need to FUCK OFF!”   Both men retreat, making smarmy remarks about how they know what those women “need.” Twohey apologizes to Kantor for yelling; Kantor assures her —reminds her – “Don’t say you’re sorry” (for standing up to bullies).

How fucked up is it – that women are conditioned to say they’re sorry, even when rightly and righteously reacting to someone else who is in the wrong?  The bar conversation scene, following the chilling audiotapes scene, was an obvious juxtaposition of a specific instance of harassment with What Women Endure On An Everyday Basis ®, in both professional and social situations.

 

 

But I can’t get out of my mind something that occurred to me after the movie was over.  I don’t think it was the director’s conscious attempt to put that observation into my mind.  Still, it is powerful, and it is this:

She Said  tells the story of the investigation into sexual assault and harassment, in HW’s Miramax Films in specific, and the movie industry in general.  Ironically (or not), a common trope in romantic comedies – one of the most successful movie genres – is that of the ardent male suitor who pursues his female love interest despite her having little to no interest in (or initially even repulsed by) him.  He won’t take no for an answer…and the movie rewards him for that, and presents his perseverance in a positive light.  He’s a man who knows what he wants!  And he goes for it!  His love interest is worn down by his persistence and finally says yes to him, whether for the moment or for life.

I repeat: in cinematic romcoms (and often also in “serious” movie love stories) the protagonist is rewarded for his dogged pursuit of someone who is not initially interested in him.  Even when the object of his desire says no, it’s his job to change her mind.  This kind of character is lauded in romcoms for behavior that in any other situation is essentially stalking.  And what happens in the movies? He “gets” his prize.  He is rewarded for his stalking persistence; he is rewarded, and praised and even presented as a romantic role model, for not taking no for an answer.

Of course, this convention only applies when the romantic protagonist is male.  If the pursuer is a female who is persistent and won’t take no for an answer, then she is presented as a neurotic/sociopath who’s going to boil your bunny.

 

 

*   *   *

 

 

Actually…not.  Moiself  got so twitterpated with the She Said subject matter that I’ve no energy left for other topics.  Except for maybe a brief interlude considering the therapeutic value of looking at pictures of unbearably cute baby animals wearing Santa hats.

 

 

*   *   *

Punz For The Day
Cinematic Edition

Friends ask me how I sneak candy bars into the movie theater.
Well, I have a few twix up my sleeve.

Speaking of movie treats, how does actor Reese eat her ice cream?
Witherspoon.

What do you call movie a gunslinger with glasses?
Squint Eastwood.

 

I know what you’re thinking, punk. Don’t encourage her.

 

A French director wants to open a floating cinema in Paris with drive-in boats.
I just think that’s in Seine.

Some people forced me to watch a horror movie about clowns by punching me all the way to the cinema.
Yep, they beat me to IT.

 

 

*   *   *

May all of our animal friends look unbearably cute in Santa hats;
May you always and confidently guess this week’s Partridge;
May you always know when to take no for an answer;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Specifically, in our pear tree.

[2] The majority of HW’s victims were not well-known Hollywood stars (although there were several of those), but Miramax aides and clerical staff, way down on the totem pole and with no public interest in their stories.

[3] And to such men, all women, simply by being female, are lower than them on that totem pole.

[4] And, as HW  told so many of his young, naive victims, who were film industry novices, “That’s how it’s done in Hollywood.”  Being new to the business, most of them thought he knew what he was talking about and that *they* were ignorant stupid and/or were the ones sexualizing the meeting invitation by even being suspicious of its location.

[5] That was HW’s favorite tactic, to promise (that he wouldn’t do anything sexual, or that he was telling the truth), “on the life of my wife and children” – which one HW associate said was the no-fail tell that HW was about to lie.

The Holiday I’m Not Renaming

November 18, 2022

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, community, current events, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), music, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, science, sports, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Holiday I’m Not Renaming

Department Of It’s The Little Things Which Make Life Worth Living
In These Trying Political Times

Dateline: Tuesday afternoon. Apropos of…whatever, my offspring, son K and daughter Belle, have this exchange on our family messenger group, Yep!!!! Cats!!!!     [1]     (sans pix; these are my illustrations):

K:
I did not realize how truly gigantic Fetterman is.
He’s like 6’9.”
Since words and reason don’t work we now have Fetterman
to give the insane senators a swirly.

Belle:
(thumbs up)
First on the list: Mitch McConnell.

 

 

Belle:
Although I think just turning him upside-down would kill him,
probably couldn’t even get to the swirly part.

 

 

 

Moiself  walked around the rest of the afternoon with a big smile on my face, thanks to the imagery provided by my offspring. 

 

Relax, Mitchie-boy. Just think of it as your well-deserved spa treatment.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Another Good Thing ® About Social Media

There’s no shortage of criticisms of the various social media outlets, and most critiques are legit, I’d wager.   [2]   Even as I am encouraging those who complain about supporting a certain megalomaniac to drop their Twitter accounts and stop buying Teslas, moiself  remains on one social media site: Facebook. Here’s one of the reasons why.

Dateline: earlier this week.   A FB friend posts pictures of his grandchild‘s visit to what looks to be an amusement park, and picture shows the child playing that classic arcade game, Whac-a-mole. Seeing this picture prompts a lovely flashback for moiself – a memory I’ve not thought of in decades.

Dateline of memory: A long time in a galaxy far far away (Southern California). I am visiting my parents at their home in Santa Ana.  It’s summertime, and the County Fair is on.  My parents tell me they haven’t been to a state or county fair in ages, and suggest we go. And so we do. As we walk past the various cheesy games and merchandise and food booths, nothing catches our interest, until we come to an arcade. I espy a Whac-A-Mole game, and instantly am obsessed with getting my mother to play it.

 

 

My mother is hesitant, despite my enthusiastic recommendation. She knows nothing about it, she says (Even better!!!, moiself  thinks to  moiself ) I assure her that it’s a straightforward game, no complicated strategy or levels or scenarios: she simply must hold the mallet and whack the heads of the moles as they pop up from the console.

“Why?” she asks me.

“There’s no time to get existential right now,” I reply.  I put my two quarters in the slot, press the game’s start button and put the mallet in my mother’s hand.  “You don’t want me to waste fifty cents, right, Mom? Look – there’s one!  Pretend it’s digging up your rosebushes!”

Unlike the champ in the above video, my mother is exquisitely awful at Whac-A-Mole. Her timing is atrocious; even so, she soon gets into it in her own way, emitting a high-pitched, “Oh!” whenever a mole head appears, followed by her delayed whack at its head. My father and I, standing to the side of the game console, are doubled over with laughter as we watch my mild-mannered mother, with an increasing maniacal look in her eyes, pursues those pesky moles:

“Oh!”
(whack)

“Oh!”
(whack)

“Oh!” (whack) “Oh!” (whack)

“Oh oh oh oh oh oh!”
(whack whack whack whack whack whack)

It is one of my favorite memories of her.

 

This is another one.

 

I haven’t gone to a county fairs in years and it’s been even longer since I’ve even seen a Whac-a-mole game.  So, then:  would that memory have been prompted by anything else, save for a post on social media? It’s not like I would have seen a picture of my friend’s grandchild playing this game – like most of my FB friends, we don’t have a letter-writing kind of relationship.  

*   *   *

Department Of Well That’s Not Up To Their Usual Standards

Moiself  is referring to the recent rerun of an interview with (the late) Loretta Lynn on Fresh Air .

It was a tad interesting, due to the skills of FA host, Terry Gross, arguably   [3]  the best interviewer out there.  But IMO it was not up to the usual FA standards.  This was because Lynn was (again, IMO)….  There’s no easy way to say it.  The guest can make or break the interview.  And it wasn’t that Lynn was a “bad” guest, or an audaciously humorless and insufferably boorish one like a notable few TG has dealt with.  [4]   On the contrary.  Lynn was pleasant enough, but it seemed to me that she was also…well… rather…simple, or basic. Not plucking every string on her guitar, so to speak.

 

In the history of country music, LL’s talent was even bigger than her hair.

 

LL seemed not at all interested in self-reflection and/or discussing or exploring how she writes her songs.  Okay; fine; her prerogative.  But then, why agree to be come on a show where the whole point is to talk about your work as a female singer who broke ground in her genre for writing her own songs?

The point of a FA interview with a musician/singer/songwriter is to reflect upon one’s work, technique, inspiration, and so on.  Which Lynn summed up in sentences like, “Oh, I don’t really know,” or “I don’t like to talk about that.” Lynn’s songs are personal – she’s said in previous interviews that her husband was, in one way or another, “in every song” she wrote, yet she wouldn’t go further when FA  host TG would ask her about *how* or why her husband is in a particular song.

And TG let her get away with it.

LL’s song Fist City is borderline hilarious in some ways and disturbing in others.  And TG did not probe into that, as I have heard her done, through the years – the decades now –  that I’ve been listening to FA interviews.  Gross is insightful and persistent as an interviewer, and respectfully so.  She typically does not give up after one attempted conversational diversion by a guest.  And her guest was country music legend Loretta Lynn, who has written all these classic country songs about women trying to take her man (including, wait for it: “You Ain’t Woman Enough To Take My Man”), and… hello? What are those lyrics about?

 

 

If it had been any other songwriter, I think TG would have asked more persistently about the song’s implications.  She did try, but Lynn wasn’t having any of it.  “Oh I don’t want to talk about that,” LL would purr, in her soft Kentucky lilt.

I wanted TG to get LL to at least to consider why people might want LL to talk about that problem – about how she was really singing about, writing about, the wrong problem.  When LL sang about how some women were ‘after,’ (her words) her man, the underlying problem wasn’t those women.

Loretta Lynn, the woman who wrote so empathetically about birth control liberating women from the life of a brood mare (“The Pill”), and the trials of a divorced woman having people think that just because she’s divorced she’s loose/available (“Rated X”) didn’t seem capable of, or willing to, consider the fact that it was her husband who was the problem. He married her, but chased after other women.  But Lynn…wouldn’t go there.
And TG, in deference to Lynn’s age, status and/or “sweetness,” didn’t seem willing to push it the way I think she would have with another musician…or politician, or writer or artist or sports figure or…..  Is that ultimately respectful, or patronizing?

 

 

   *    *   *

Department Of The Big Day Next Week

The more I know about the origins and mythologies (read: lies) about Thanksgiving, the less I want to call it that.

I’ve always had a certain ambivalence regarding Tday.  Even as a child, I suspected we weren’t being told the truth about that much vaunted Happy Time Between Indians and Pilgrims ®.  Historians are starting to speak up, and…how can I put this?  Folks, if the Readers Digest, hardly The Socialist Review, is willing to address this issue, that means it’s way past time the rest of us did.

 

 

“Thanksgiving is both uniquely American and full of treasured traditions. But this rosy picture of modern celebrations leaves out most of the real history of Thanksgiving….
Yes, you can still settle down with family to give thanks. But it’s important to know what you’re celebrating and unlearn some long-held myths.”
…. What’s the harm in believing the happy version so many of us grew up with? It’s just a story, right? This whitewashing downplays the long and bloody series of conflicts between white settlers and Native Americans that would occur over the next two centuries…..
‘Narratives of a harmonious Thanksgiving celebration were created to justify westward expansion and Manifest Destiny,’…. The term Manifest Destiny, coined more than two centuries after the first Thanksgiving, was the belief that settlers were destined by God to expand across America and prosper….
Myth: The “first Thanksgiving” started the tradition that founded the holiday.
Truth: The harvest celebration of 1621 was not called Thanksgiving and was not repeated every year. The next official ‘day of thanksgiving’ was after settlers massacred more than 400 Pequot men, women and children. Governor Bradford’s journal decreed, ‘For the next 100 years, every Thanksgiving Day ordained by a governor is in honor of the bloody victory, thanking God that the battle had been won.’
We should add that to our list of favorite Thanksgiving quotes as a stark reminder of the real history of Thanksgiving.”
(“The Real History of Thanksgiving,” Readers Digest, 11-15-22)

 

 

I like the idea of a holiday involving gratitude, and one in which friends and family get together for a celebratory meal.  As for what is in the meal, as the years have gone by, my own dietary preferences have changed – although even as a child I never was all that fond of the big bland boring turkey and wondered what all the fuss was about.    [5]  Moiself  likes the idea of variety feast, rather than a fixed menu.  [6] 

Moiself  also likes that which is practiced by our neighbors to the north.  Canadian Thanksgiving, which I and my family have experienced thanks to the generosity of a dear Canadian friend and (former) neighbor, is more of a general harvest celebration, without a traditional fixed menu.

Hmmm, so, how’s about Harvest Fest?  Gratitude Day?  Grativest Day? Harvitude Day?

 

Yeah, like that’s gonna fly.

 

Perhaps I’m being persnickety here.  After all, I’m the one who points out the secular origins of Christmas, which I don’t insist on renaming it, for the same reasons that, for example, I call the middle day of the week Wednesday even though I do not worship the Germanic god for whom the day is named.  Still, knowing the origins of Thanksgiving and the subsequent mythologies which promoted it, I can’t help but wish for a name change.

But that’s about as likely to happen as Elon Musk is likely to gift the running of Twitter to the Southern Poverty Law Center, sell his holdings in Tesla and donate the profits to Greenpeace, then take a vow of abstemious living and join a Buddhist monastery.

Ah, but it’s good to dream.

 

*   *   *

Punz For The Day
Tday Edition

How did Ziggy Stardust express his gratitude to the Thanksgiving host for serving her tasty sweet potato casserole?
“Wham, yam, thank you ma’am.”

My family advised me to stop telling Thanksgiving jokes,
but I said I couldn’t quit cold turkey.

How does rapper Sir Mixalot, who loathes pumpkin pie,
express his Thanksgiving dessert preference?
“I like big bundts and I cannot lie.”

 

I’ll give her points for not eating us, but really, these jokes are fowl.

 

*   *   *

 

May you have a good feast with friends and family, whatever you call it;
May visions of Mitch-getting-a-swirley warm the cockles of your heart;
May you find a whac-a-mole game and go to town;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] So named, by MH…I can’t remember the specifics, but it had to do with one of us commenting about all of us posting cat pictures yet again.  It has evolved into a family message board…with – yep! – lots of cat-sighting pictures.

[2] Wager, rather than aver, because I’m not on most social media and thus can’t speak from direct experience.

[3] As in, you could argue with me about this, but you’d lose.

[4] As in her FA interviews with Bill O’Reilly and Gene Simmons.

[5] My most memorable Tday was when the friend of a host brought a huge chinook salmon he’d caught the previous day in Alaska, and the hosts, my aunt and uncle, roasted it simply, with herbs and lemon juice.  I WAS AMAZED.

[6] Also, I haven’t eaten meat for years, so there goes that feast centerpiece.

The Tribalism I’m Not Embracing

November 4, 2022

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), community, current events, freethought/humanism, Holidays, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), music, nature, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, science, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

What would ushering in the holiday season be without The Dropkick Murphys?

 

 

Speaking of holidays, since 2008 I’ve kept track of how many greedy candy mongers trick-or-treaters have graced our porch.  The numbers range from a low of 25   [1]   to a high of 63, with an average of 45.  This year we had 26.

 

 

 

 

Only twenty-six?  MH and I were speculating about the downswing (last year’s count was 60). Combination of a school night and the (at times heavy) rain?  It couldn’t be the latter…oh, c’mon, kids (and parents), this is Oregon.

Last year we gave out full-sized   [2]  candy bars.  This year (before moiself  knew what would be the lame turnout) I wanted to do something different. I walked up and down supermarket aisles, looking for inspiration.  And found plenty. 

Here are the things I wanted to give out to trick or treaters:  Small jars/cans of pimentos or black olives or cornichons or sweet corn or Liquid Smoke or soy sauce or…Beanee Weenees!  Of course, if word got out that we were distributing the latter, the kiddies would leave skidmarks from our neighbors’ porches to our own.

 

Accept no substitutions.

 

Here are the things we *did* give out to trick or treaters:

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of The Perspective That Could Save Us   [3]

From the podcast Unexplainable, The Gray Area:  “On the first episode of Vox’s new podcast, The Gray Area, host Sean Illing talks with Neil deGrasse Tyson about the limits of both politics and science.”  What caught my attention was NDT’s assertion that taking a “cosmic perspective” is the most rational and helpful– and arguably the only– thing that can solve our myriad of social, political and environmental challenges.  This is an excerpt from their discussion:

NDT:
What’s the most intelligent species there ever was on earth?

SI:
 Oh…you’re setting me up. Um, since you’re asking me, it can’t be people…

NDT:
No, it *is* people; it’s not a trick question.  So now I ask, who declared that humans are the smartest animals there ever were?  Humans did.
Whereas a cosmic perspective would say, imagine a lifeform smarter than we are:  Is there anything we have done in the history of civilization that (this smarter-than-us lifeform) would judge to be clever?

 

 

This was a great 1980s, one-woman play (written by Jane Wagner and starring Lily Tomlin), which was being revived in early 2022, starring Cecily Strong.

 

 

NDT:

It’s a simple thought experiment, when we compare ourselves to chimpanzees, our closest genetic relative.  We have 98, 99% identical DNA to a chimp. Now, if you’re really into homo sapiens you say, What a difference that 2% makes! We have philosophy and the Hubble telescope and art and civilization! And all the chimp can do is maybe extract termites from a mound, and the smartest of them will stack boxes to reach hanging bananas from the ceiling.
 But I pose you the question: suppose the intelligence difference between chimps and humans was actually as small as that 2% might indicate.  What would we look like to some other species that’s 2% beyond us in intelligence – just the 2% that we are beyond the chimps?
Continue on that line. The smartest chimps can do what our toddlers can do.  By that analogy, the smartest humans would do what the toddlers of this species can do.
Putting all that in context, all I’m saying is that for you to say we’re pretty clever… another species 2% beyond us, there’s nothing we could do that would impress them.
So, that species visiting earth on the rumor that intelligent life had surfaced, after seeing our rampant irrationalities – the wars we fight against our own species, because you live on a different line in the sand, because resources are unequally distributed on the land and in the ocean, because you worship a different god, because you sleep with different people – and we slaughter each other and enslave people….  Those aliens will run home and say, “There is no sign of intelligent life on earth.”
It’s a cosmic perspective, offered for your consideration.

SI:
This …is (your) central plea…that we take a more cosmic perspective on things…

NDT:
On *everything.*

SI:
 …on everything, and achieve some clarity about what really matters and what doesn’t, and how stupid so many of the things that we *think* are important really are…

NDT:
I wouldn’t say stupid so much as just kind of irrelevant. You think it’s important and it’s actually not. That’s a more significant value of a cosmic perspective: it forces you to rebalance your portfolios of concerns in the world.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Cosmic Perspective Is Definitely Needed Here

The LA Times is one of four (online) newspapers moiself  subscribes to, and I’ve been watching (as in, reading about) the following scandal unfold for…yikes, is it weeks, now?  The machinations of local/Los Angeles politics may be way off most people’s current events radar; however, even those with no interest in such, even those with their heads under the proverbial rock when it comes to west coast politics, by now have likely heard of the LA City Council recording scandal.

The scandal in a nutshell:   [4]   An anonymously leaked recording of a private conversation among LA City Council members and a labor leader making racist and classist remarks and political scheming regarding redistricting has prompted a state investigation, and led to the resignation of the LA City Council president and said labor leader.

“Behind closed doors, Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez made openly racist remarks, derided some of her council colleagues and spoke in unusually crass terms about how the city should be carved up politically….
Martinez and the other Latino leaders present during the taped conversation were seemingly unaware they were being recorded as Martinez said a councilmember handled his young Black son as though he were an “accessory” and described the boy as “Parece changuito,” or “like a monkey.”…
Martinez also mocked Oaxacans, and said “F— that guy … He’s with the Blacks” while speaking about Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón.

( “Racist remarks in leaked audio of L.A. council members spark outrage, disgust,”
LA Times 10-9-22)

 

 

 

 

Moiself  listened to excerpts of the recorded audio tape…as much as I could stand, before switching to reading the key moments of the transcripts.    [5]    In private conversations among three council members and an LA Labor leader – all Latino and all Democrats –  Councilmembers Nury Martinez, Kevin De León and Gil Cedillo scheme with LA county labor dude Ron Herrera re redistricting plans; Martinez disparages Oaxacans as “little short dark people” and “so ugly” and refers to a (white, gay) councilmember’s Black son as a monkey who, in her opinion, needs a “beatdown.” Re LA County Dist. Atty. George Gascón, Martinez said, “Fuck that guy. … He’s with the Blacks.”  None of the others present and participating in the conversation disputed or called out Martinezon her remarks –  which also included crass and bigoted comments about Jews, Armenians, and other groups….

I felt a little bit left out at some point.  Martinez insulted just about everyone but middle aged white ex-Californians who moved to Oregon.

When reading about the scandal, I was reminded so much about what I think is a fact being overlooked here.  Nury Martinez was caught acting out one of our collective human traits on steroids:  she was revealing her tribalism.

 

Picture from 4-2-12 Newsweek article by biologist E.O. Wilson,
“Why Humans, Like Ants, Need a Tribe.

 

We home sapiens are a tribal species. It’s too bad that the whole concept of race has entered human consciousness, as we are not different “races,” whatever that means. We are not racial – that term is a misnomer invented by European naturalists and anthropologists in the early 18th century.    [6]

“More than 100 years ago, American sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois was concerned that race was being used as a biological explanation for what he understood to be social and cultural differences between different populations of people. He spoke out against the idea of ‘white’ and ‘black’ as discrete groups, claiming that these distinctions ignored the scope of human diversity.
Science would favor Du Bois. Today, the mainstream belief among scientists is that race is a social construct without biological meaning.”
(   Race Is a Social Construct, Scientists Argue,”  Scientific American 2-5-16)

“(The tape’s) comments about Black and Indigenous people displayed a prejudice against darker skin that, while not ubiquitous, still runs deep in the community and is rooted in the colonial eras of Mexico and Central America.
‘This is not just four bad apples,’ said Alejandra Valles, chief of staff of SEIU United Service Workers West.
‘We have to use this opportunity as reflection and honesty about the anti-Blackness, the anti-Indigenous colorism and racism in the Latino community. Because that’s happening.’ ”
(“ L.A. Latinos grapple with familiar colorism against Black and Indigenous people in racist tape,” Rachel Uranga, Los Angeles Times, 10-17-22)

Interesting, to me, that comment about the bad apples. Because that’s it – that’s the dang the thing about “race.” We are all from the same apple tree, and yet we pick at each other.

 

“You want bad apples? I’ll show you bad apples.”

 

Race.  It’s an unfortunate entry in our Lexicon of Life. We are not racial, but we are definitely tribal at our core…maybe I’m just quibbling re semantics.  However we define “we,” we spend our lives scrambling like roaches across the floors of an old San Francisco apartment kitchen, trying to make sure we get (what we perceive to be) our share but wanting to hide our maneuverings when the light comes on.

We have obsessive concerns, so majorly illuminated in the LA Council tapes, of alliances between our various tribes and the tribes within the tribes – woe to anyone naive enough to think that, for example, all White or Latino or Black politicians are a monolithic bloc.  Read the transcripts; listen to the tape and hear the concern over alliances, over who is from where.  Listen as the entrenched Mexican-American politician spews (and thus reveals) the colorism of her ancestral roots as she derides the “short ugly” Oaxacans (who are so irritating as to also want political power    [7] ) and that DA who, although he has a Hispanic surname, “Fuck him, he’s with the Blacks.”

Who is in power; who wants power; who can we trust to share the power?  Who is one of us; who could be one of us, but “us” doesn’t really want “them” included.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of This Needs Repeating

The cosmic perspective flows from fundamental knowledge. But it’s more than just what you know. It’s also about having the wisdom and insight to apply that knowledge to assessing our place in the universe. And its attributes are clear:

* The cosmic perspective comes from the frontiers of science, yet it’s not solely the province of the scientist. The cosmic perspective belongs to everyone.

* The cosmic perspective is humble.

* The cosmic perspective is spiritual—even redemptive—but not religious.

* The cosmic perspective enables us to grasp, in the same thought, the large and the small.

* The cosmic perspective opens our minds to extraordinary ideas but does not leave them so open that our brains spill out, making us susceptible to believing anything we’re told.

* The cosmic perspective opens our eyes to the universe, not as a benevolent cradle designed to nurture life but as a cold, lonely, hazardous place.

* The cosmic perspective shows Earth to be a mote, but a precious mote and, for the moment, the only home we have.

* The cosmic perspective finds beauty in the images of planets, moons, stars, and nebulae but also celebrates the laws of physics that shape them.

* The cosmic perspective enables us to see beyond our circumstances, allowing us to transcend the primal search for food, shelter, and sex.

* The cosmic perspective reminds us that in space, where there is no air, a flag will not wave—an indication that perhaps flag waving and space exploration do not mix.

* The cosmic perspective not only embraces our genetic kinship with all life on Earth but also values our chemical kinship with any yet-to-be discovered life in the universe, as well as our atomic kinship with the universe itself.

(“The Cosmic Perspective” By Neil deGrasse Tyson
Natural History Magazine, April 2007, The 100th essay in the “Universe” series.)

 

 

*   *   *

  Department Of Regarding Next Week’s Elections,
This, Unfortunately, Says It All   [8]

“Liz Cheney and I are not brave. We are just surrounded by cowards.”
Rep. Adam Kinzinger ( R ) Illinois

*   *   *

Punz For The Day
Political Tribes Edition

I don’t approve of political jokes; I’ve seen too many of them get elected.

Republicans should build their border walls with Hillary’s emails
because nobody can get over them.

I knew Communism was doomed from the beginning – too many red flags.

What’s the difference between Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green and a flying pig?
The letter F.

What do you call a Russian procrastinator?
Putinoff.

 

I’ll laugh about this later.

 

*   *   *

May a cosmic perspective help you to rebalance your portfolios of concerns in the world;
May you be cognizant of your own tribalisms;
May you value your atomic kinship with the universe itself;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1]  Did not do in 2020.  Hmm, I wonder what was happening then?

[2] Not the “fun” size featured in most stores, as Halloween staples. For kids, since when does fun = smaller?

[3] From…ourselves?

[4] An appropriate container…if nuts were the size of 747s.

[5] As of this writing I think investigators still have no idea who did the recording, and who “released” it.

[6] Marked by the publication of the book Systema naturae in 1735, in which the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus proposed a classification of humankind into four distinct races. (“Race and History: Comments from an Epistemological Point of View” National Library of Medicine, )

[7] Indigenous Oaxacans expressed frustration and anger at Martinez’s comments referring to them as “little short dark people” — a racist stereotype often used to demean Indigenous communities. “I was like, I don’t know where these people are from, I don’t know what village they came [from], how they got here,” Martinez said, before adding “Tan feos” — “They’re ugly.”  (“For Oaxacans in L.A., City Council members’ racist remarks cut deep,” LA Times, 10-11-22)

[8] And I hope, after next week’s election results, we won’t still be saying it.

The Basic Ball I’m Not Vogueing

August 26, 2022

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), community, current events, friends, games & puzzles, music, politics, radio & podcasts, Recreation, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Basic Ball I’m Not Vogueing

Department Of Serves You Right
( And By You, I Mean Moiself )

Because This Is So True ®  for moiself, and several others beset by earworms,  I shared this post after seeing it on FB.

 

 

That night, or rather, early the next morning, my petty brain woke me up at 3:30 am and forced me to listen to this:

 

 

Yeah.

The following night’s song was an improvement, at least, harmony-wise:
The Eagles cover of Seven Bridges Road.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of A White Lady Watching A Black Lady Sketch Show

Last week, after listening to a Fresh Air interview with show creator Robin    [1]   Thede, I began watching episodes from the first season of A Black Lady Sketch Show.   [2]    I’ve a lot to catch up on; the show has been running for three seasons.  But so far it looks like it’ll be well worth it to park my ass yet again in front of the TV rearrange my hectic schedule so as to find precious time to devote to appreciating the show’s thoughtful-narrative mixed-with-magical-reality commentary on contemporary society.

Translation:  I laughed, out loud, a lot.

Here is a mishmash of bits that caught my attention:

* The premier episode: The Bad Bitch Support Group, wherein guest Angela Basset supports women who feel guilty when they wake up in the morning and don’t want to put on makeup or want to wear house slippers instead of three inch heels…but Bassett’s “support” turns out to be cooperation, with two pharmaceutical researchers who are observing this test group of women through a two-way mirror:

First researcher:
“What is happening to subject four?  She seems to have built up an immunity to the Foxycodone.”

Second researcher:
“Double her dosage!” (shakes bottle of pills).
“If women start rejecting impossible beauty standards,
we’ll go out of business.”

Foxycodone.  I’m dyin’ here.

 

 

* The delightfully/deadly serious ramblings of the nonsense-spewing Dr. Haddassah Olayinka (“How many Caucasian seconds must pass before it’s time for me to tell the truth?”)  Ali-Youngman, “pre-Ph.D.” The recurring character is described by Thede (in the Fresh Air interview) thusly: 

“Dr. Haddassah Olayinka Ali-Youngman, pre-Ph.D., is a charlatan of sorts, a saleswoman of sorts, a conspiracy theorist of sorts….somebody who spouts a lot of conspiracy theories about the world…. She’s fun because she gets to say all the things that I think sometimes we see online or in other places. I’ve known women like this who constantly think everything is a conspiracy.”

Check out this ramble of a diatribe toast Ali-Youngman gives at her sister’s wedding:

 

 

* A takeoff skit on ball culture,   [3]   the The Basic Ball (“A ball for the rest of the LGBTQ Community”).  The emcee does his best work-it-girl narration, over the pulsing dance music glitter ball strobe lighting, as a trio of dissipated looking women clad in, well, non-glittery, non-ball clothing (read: sweats and down jackets; pajama pants), stumble their way onto the catwalk.:

“The category is, clinical depression. All my children serving chemical imbalance, that’s right, make your way to the floor if you can…..  You are tired; you are unmedicated; make your way to the floor…  Walk for the judges; now vogue.  Oh, I see you, eating carbs! Oh, I see you, too depressed to leave the house.  I’m looking for sadness… I’m looking for Eeyore in Dior….”

 

 

Other Basic Ball categories include

*Barbecue Grill Daddy

(“They’re serving leather and linen; they’re serving let’s-argue-about-routes-to-work:  ‘I take the 405 to PCH.’  ‘Oh, I just take Cahuenga all the way down.’  You’ll gag… They are cookout ready, Betty – oh, he didn’t start the grill until everybody showed up? You won’t be eating until night time…. Oh, he is passing out matching shirts at the family reunion; he is mispronouncing all of your friends’ names…”)

* Running Errands

(“Oh, did you remember your reusable canvas bags?  Oh, work it girl – she has all her receipts; yes, she knows the return policy and she will not take store credit, baby….Oh, she’s running a quick errand and didn’t think anyone would see her, but you ran into your boss, and now she knows you do not have eyebrows….”)

*   *   *

Department Of Yet Another Reason To Go On Living

That would be this:  Northcoast Pinball, the pinball-centric video arcade in Nehalem, has a new Godzilla pinball machine.

 

 

While I’m no wizard,    [4]  I do enjoy playing pinball, and can get quite picky re what, for moiself, constitutes a good game.  I never really got into video games; something about the three-D, mechanical immediacy of pinball punches my flippers.  My enjoyment of pinball also stems from following a certain philosophy I have re recreational activities:

If you can’t do something well, learn to enjoy doing it poorly.

 

 

 

I wish I could take credit for coining that masterful maxim, which, IMO, is a key component of psychological health.

Despite the above quote I do not consider myself a poor pinball player.  I just enjoy it too much – as in, I find it relaxing – to take it (or moiself, playing it)  too seriously. When I’m in the pinball lounge I often see players who are quite intense, and who obviously have a strategy.  I know of one strategy I could employ to get “better” (as in, getting a higher score/winning more free games):  simply spend a lot of time getting to know one game.

 

 

 

 

Each game has its own/different scenarios, “routes,” and shooter allies and ramps, bumpers, and traps, etc.  And although all pinball machines flippers, the flippers of different games have a different feel (and reaction speed), which I notice immediately when I go from one machine to another…which is my non-strategy strategy.  I allow moiself  one or two games on a machine, then move on to the next, trying to play at least one game on the twenty-plus games in the lounge.   [5]  Which means I’m in the pinball lounge for a minimum of 30 minutes…thus….

Hint for all pinball and/or video arcade aficionados:  earplugs are your friends.

 

 

The noise in the arcade when there’s just me and one or two other players is tolerable…but still, tolerable can be too much, and I know that we humans consistently underestimate noise levels and what constitutes over and/or dangerous levels of exposure.

Thus, I have started wearing earplugs when I’m playing pinball.  And I am concerned for the owner of the pinball lounge.  He is one of the Nicest People I’ve Ever Met ®,  [6]  but his geniality and right-on social and cultural attitudes are not going to protect him from the fact that the continual noise exposure in his workplace is going to give him hearing loss.

“A study conducted by University of Maine graduate students recorded noise levels in four video arcades. The study found noise levels so extreme that visitors in the arcades risked temporary hearing loss in just 30 seconds of exposure. Extended or frequent exposure at such levels may result in permanent hearing loss or tinnitus.

In one of the arcades noise levels peaked at 114 dB, with average sound levels of 93 dB. In another the noise levels varied from 69 dB to 119 dB…..

A continuous noise level of 85 dB will result in hearing damage. At 115 dB, the noise levels are eight times higher and hearing damage may occur in 30 seconds….

Not only the video arcade customers put their hearing at risk in this environment. Arcade employees are even more at risk, unless they use hearing protection. They are exposed to the high noise levels repeatedly and for longer periods of time.”

( “Video arcades causing hearing loss and tinnitus,”  hearit.org )

 

How I wish a friendlier version of this could be in arcades.

 

Places of employment with high noise levels   [7]  now offer – or are required by OSHA to mandate – ear protection for employees and visitors.   [8]  I can see how an entertainment venue might not want to acknowledge that their business has a certain risk to your health….but that doesn’t change the facts.  So perhaps I can suggest another business venture for him, and other arcade owners:  sell earplugs.

I regularly stock on the ones pictured above, buying in bulk for what amounts to 17¢, but with other brands and buying even more, [9]    you could get the price for 9¢/pair, possibly even lower.  Along with the snacks and beverages most arcades have for purchase, I wish they’d also have earplugs available at the front desk, where people purchase their tokens, for a minimal cost.  You could charge just 25¢ per pair – or give them away free, to kids under age 12 or whatever, and to adults for a minimum purchase of $10 or $20 worth of tokens…there are many possibilities of working this in to arcade “culture.”

Moiself  is going to gird my proverbial loins and present this idea, as diplomatically as possible, next time I’m in the arcade.  Hopefully I will find out that the owner already wears earplugs.   [10]     Wish me luck.

 

 

*   *   *

Punz For The Day
Pinball Edition

Have you played the new Lord of the Rings pinball machine?
It doesn’t take coins, only tolkiens.

What’s the difference between a vacuum cleaner and a pinball machine?
Pinball doesn’t suck.

Why couldn’t Led Zeppelin play pinball?
They had No Quarter.

 

Hulk hate bad pun…

 

…but Hulk love my own pinball game.

 

*   *   *

May you find a pinball arcade and see how much fun it can be;
May you OF COURSE wear hearing protection while doing the above;
May you resign yourself to the occasional 3 am
♫ Ooh ee ooh ah ah ting tang walla walla bing bang; ♫
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Nice name, but she spells it wrong.

[2] All three seasons currently streaming on HBO.

[3] A subculture which originated when Black and Latino drag queens organized their own ballroom pageants to protest what they saw as the racism of established drag queen pageants.  Participants choose from several multitude of categories in which they can “walk” and vogue for prizes.

[4] Style points for those getting The Who song reference.

[5] There are a couple of the old-timey machines (the ones requiring only one token to play), which I skip, because I find them boring.

[6] And whose politics I am quite fond of. There are scattered references, including books and other reading materials he keeps by the lounge’s sitting areas, and signs in the windows, that he – and his wife, who runs the pottery gallery next door – are right-on considerate, intelligent, religion-free, humanists and feminists.

[7] E.g. factories, or where employees are outside but using loud equipment such as mowers or leaf blowers.

[8] MH, son K and I wore them recently, while visiting Belle at her place of work.

[9] Like these, 500 pair for $44.60.

[10] Ones that are so cool and discreet that I haven’t noticed them.

The Thumb I’m Not Under

August 19, 2022

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), freethought/humanism, general ruminations, music, politics, radio & podcasts, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , Comments Off on The Thumb I’m Not Under

Department Of Classic Sexist Songs

What, you ask, must a song do to make it into this Department’s Hall of Shame?

Thank you for your interest.

There are many, many components which go into having a song be thus maligned labeled.  These components can be distilled into two broad (sorry) categories.  To be a true classic Sexist Song ® the song’s vocalist(s) – be they male or female – must sing lyrics which:

– lecture a particular woman re her unworthiness without a man, and/or

– advise women in general about how to be a worthy female companion to a man;

– if female, the singer must bemoan her single state while embracing dependence on a man, without whose attention she will (literally or figuratively) die…

♫  “…he is my destiny…” ♫
( sings Little Peggy March, in I Will Follow Him…lyrics written by four men)

 

 

 

What follows is just a taste of those rock and pop tracks standing the test of time (read: old enough) to be considered classics.  Of course, other music genres, particularly rap and hardcore, have plenty of contributions to this wretched category.    [1]    But for brevity’s sake moiself  limited this sampling to songs of the 1950s through 1970s (with one early 1980s contribution, from The Police. Also, many of the songs have been covered by multiple recording artists; I’ve listed just one).

                                                         Recording artist(s)               songwriter(s)

* A Man Needs a Maid                    Neil Young                            Neil Young

* Every Breath You Take  [2]           The Police                            Sting

* For the Love of Him                      Shirley Bassey                      Henry Jerome /B. Martin

* Under My Thumb                         The Rolling Stones              Jagger & Richards

*He Hit Me (and it felt like a kiss)  The Crystals                         Carole King /Gerry Goffin 

 

Uh, yeah,  The above song deserves a special mention.

 

 

 

In Carole King and Gerry Goffin’s fruitful songwriting partnership, Goffin wrote the lyrics and King the music.  Yep, the sentiments expressed in the hit  (“You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” were penned by a natural man. Not until she stepped out as a solo act did Carole King become a lyricist.

King, who herself suffered domestic abuse at the hands of her third husband, later expressed regret her involvement with penning the dreadful He Hit Me (and it felt like a kiss), whose masochistic lyrics had a root in reality.   Eva Boyd, aka the singer “Little Eva,” worked for Goffin and King (who were married to each other at the time) as their babysitter before she had a hit with their song,  The Loco-motion.  Boyd showed up at Goffin’s and King’s home one night, covered in bruises after a weekend visit with her boyfriend.  When Goffin and King began to question her, Eva tried to reassure them that she was okay, explaining that “He” (her boyfriend) “…really loves me.”

“Half a century later, King has an uneasy relationship with the title. ‘I wrote the music to He Hit Me (and It Felt Like A Kiss). Obviously, I’m complicit in having written that song. I kind of wish I hadn’t written any part of that song, but Gerry wrote that lyric. … again, that’s one song I kind of wish I hadn’t had any part of writing.’ “

(Carole King Kind of Wishes She Had Nothing to Do With This Disturbing Song, cheatsheet.com/entertainment )

 

 

Actually, more of the same.  The list continues.

* If You Want To be Happy  [3]       Jimmy Soul                         Guida /Guida /Royster

* It Must Be Him                            Vikki Carr                            Becaud/David/Vidalin 

* I Will Follow Him                        Little Peggy March              four songwriters, all male

* Run For Your Life                        The Beatles                          Lennon/McCartney

* Wives and Lovers                         Jack Jones                          Burt Bacharach, Hal David
                                       

 

 

 

Special shout out to the songs of Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, whom I mentioned in previous blog 3 years ago:

“One advantage of occasionally listening to an oldies station is occasionally having reminders of how much I loathed the songs of
Gary Puckett And The Union Gap.
In the songs GP & TUG which were most known for – “Young Girl,” “Lady Willpower,” and “Woman, Woman” –  lead singer GP expresses a recurrent and overriding concern: girls and women should have sex with him.

Back to the list:  if you check the songwriting credits to these and other festering turds of lyrical misogyny, you’ll note that the vast majority were penned by men.

 

 

 

 

Moving right along….  The unofficial winner of the coveted title of

Song With The Most Degrading ,Sexist, Condescending and Infantilizing Lyrics …

 

 

 

Yep, it’s Wives and Lovers!

♫  Hey! Little girl
Comb your hair, fix your makeup
Soon he will open the door
Don’t think because there’s a ring on your finger
You needn’t try anymore

For wives should always be lovers too
Run to his arms the moment he comes home to you
I’m warning you…

Day after day
There are girls at the office
And men will always be men
Don’t send him off with your hair still in curlers
You may not see him again

For wives should always be lovers too
Run to his arms the moment he comes home to you
He’s almost here…

Hey! Little girl
Better wear something pretty
Something you’d wear to go to the city and
Dim all the lights, pour the wine, start the music
Time to get ready for love…  ♫

 

 

Moiself  can’t put it any better than this, re Jack Jones’ cover of the song :

“This has everything a person could hope for in a sexist ‘60s song.  Ordering women around? check.  Emphasizing that a woman’s place is in the home?  Check.  Reiterating that it’s only natural for men to sleep around?  Check.  Offering demeaning advice to do everything you can to please your man and warning that he’ll leave you if you don’t?  Check.  Veiled threats of violence?  Checkmate.

It’s like Burt Bacharach and Hal Davis distilled sexism in its purest form and smeared it all over Jack Jones’ smiling, white teeth.  And speaking of Jack Jones — his condescending, smarmy, yet totally earnest and chipper delivery is half of what makes Wives and Lovers stand above all the other sexist songs – like a man standing above a woman after he slapped her for not having dinner on the table when he came home from a hard day at the office.  And his dulcet tones – it’s no wonder this song won him a Grammy for best vocal performance…”

( excerpts from from flush fido productions blog, “Sexistiest songs of the ‘60s, #1” )

 

*   *   *

 

Punz For The Day
Women in Song Edition

Why do balloons hate going to Lady Gaga concerts?
They’re scared of pop music.

How many altos does it take to change a lightbulb?
None; they can’t get up that high.

What did the crowd yell to the opera singer who said she couldn’t sing because her mouth was full of garbanzo beans?
“Just hummus a tune!”

What’s the difference between an argument with seamen and a popular female musician?
One’s a sailors’ tiff, the other’s a Taylor Swift.

 

We…are never ever ever…hearing these again, right?

 

*   *   *

May you have enough time on your hands to listen to the songs listed here, to find out (if you don’t already know) why they are listed here;
May you have fun compiling your own wretched song lyrics lists;
May you placate Ms. Swift by listening to some of her songs
(which IMHO mostly have most excellent lyrics…unless you’re an ex of hers);

…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

 

*   *   *

 

[1] e.g. almost anything by Eminem.

[2] Thanks a lot, Sting.  Do stalkers really need an anthem?

[3] Inspiring lyrics include, ♫ “If you want to be happy for the rest of your life/Never make a pretty woman your wife/So for my personal point of view/Get an ugly girl to marry you…An ugly woman cooks meals on time/She’ll always give you peace of mind…” ♫

The Gender I’m Not Erasing

July 22, 2022

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), community, current events, family life, freethought/humanism, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, music, Oregon, politics, radio & podcasts, reproductive rights, travel, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Gender I’m Not Erasing

Department Of Why I Fear For My Country
Chapter 1285 In A Depressingly Long Book

Moiself  be so effin’ tired of this:

“….writing for the majority in overturning Roe vs. Wade, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. argued for a more narrow interpretation of the rights guaranteed to Americans, saying that the right to an abortion was not spelled out in the Constitution.”

 

 

Imagine that!  How astonishing, that the all-male, all-white, enslavers-of-Black-Africans, upper class, property-owning dudes who wrote and signed our nation’s governing document over 240 years ago didn’t “spell out” women’s’ rights to bodily autonomy, when they wouldn’t even give women the right to vote?

 

 

Justice Alito, take your ass out of your mouth for just one minute:  consider the intellectual absurdities behind why you (or any person in the 21st century person), when it comes to interpreting and applying the US Constitution, would consider himself an originalist.

 

 

And as one who call himself an originalist, why are you not then demanding the resignation of your SCOTUS colleague and fellow ignoramus originalist, Clarence I’m-only-black-when-I-can-play-the-race-card Thomas, whose enslaved ancestors were “spelled out” in the Constitution as 3/5 of a white person and who were not enfranchised, much less able to hold judgeships and other public offices?

 

 

Why are you not also demanding the resignation of the latest originalist  horseshit-licker adherent, Amy Conehead Coney Barrett, who, if the original writers of the Constitution had their way, would neither be able to vote nor serve on the SCOTUS?

“…why should we, in the Sight of Superior Beings, darken (America’s) People? Why increase the Sons of Africa, by planting them in America, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks…”
(Founding Father and United States Constitution signatory Benjamin Franklin,
lamenting the “darkening” of America,
“Founding fathers, trashing immigrants,” The Washington Post 8-28-15 )

Nor was it “spelled out” in the Constitution, nor even imagined by its framers, that one day the Roman Catholic son of “swarthy” complected immigrants with surnames like, hello, ALITO, might serve on the SCOTUS.

 

 

 

Look.  Moiself  was born here (USA), and almost everyone I love is here.  Sigh, to the nth.  To start over in another country, at my age and lack of “other” language skills – which would translate into never-quite-belonging-in- ____ (insert country name) – is not likely to happen.  But in the past few months….

 

 

Having seen other alternatives, I get urges to run away to Norway or Denmark or Sweden or Iceland – to countries with equally complicated histories but which don’t enshrine the mistakes of those histories in their contemporary governing documents.

*   *   *

 

 

*   *   *

Except…not completely different.  In fact, depressingly similar.

Department Of Stop What You’re Doing And Read This Op Ed Piece Now,
Whether You Be A Man Or A Person With A Vagina Woman:

The following are excerpts from “The Far Right and Far Left Agree on One Thing: Women Don’t Count” ( Pamela Dowd, NY Times,  7-3-22; my emphases)   [1]  

“It wasn’t so long ago — and in some places the belief persists — that women were considered a mere rib to Adam’s whole. Seeing women as their own complete entities, not just a collection of derivative parts, was an important part of the struggle for sexual equality.

But here we go again, parsing women into organs. Last year the British medical journal The Lancet patted itself on the back for a cover article on menstruation. Yet instead of mentioning the human beings who get to enjoy this monthly biological activity, the cover referred to “bodies with vaginas.” It’s almost as if the other bits and bobs — uteruses, ovaries or even something relatively gender-neutral like brains — were inconsequential. That such things tend to be wrapped together in a human package with two X sex chromosomes is apparently unmentionable….

“…(on the far Left) the word ‘women’ has become verboten. Previously a commonly understood term for half the world’s population, the word had a specific meaning tied to genetics, biology, history, politics and culture. No longer. In its place are unwieldy terms like ‘pregnant people,’ ‘menstruators’ and ‘bodies with vaginas.’

Planned Parenthood, once a stalwart defender of women’s rights, omits the word ‘women’ from its home page. NARAL Pro-Choice America has used “birthing people” in lieu of ‘women.’ The American Civil Liberties Union, a longtime defender of women’s rights, last month tweeted its outrage over the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade as a threat to several groups: ‘Black, Indigenous and other people of color, the L.G.B.T.Q. community, immigrants, young people.’

It left out those threatened most of all: women.
Talk about a bitter way to mark the 50th anniversary of Title IX.”

“The noble intent behind omitting the word ‘women’ is to make room for the relatively tiny number of transgender men and people identifying as nonbinary who retain aspects of female biological function and can conceive, give birth or breastfeed. But despite a spirit of inclusion, the result has been to shove women to the side….

Women didn’t fight this long and this hard only to be told we couldn’t call ourselves women anymore. This isn’t just a semantic issue; it’s also a question of moral harm, an affront to our very sense of ourselves.”

 

 

 

“Those women who do publicly express mixed emotions or opposing views are often brutally denounced for asserting themselves. (Google the word ‘transgender’ combined with the name Martina Navratilova, J.K. Rowling  [2]    or Kathleen Stock to get a withering sense.) They risk their jobs and their personal safety. They are maligned as somehow transphobic or labeled TERFs, a pejorative that may be unfamiliar to those who don’t step onto this particular Twitter battlefield. Ostensibly shorthand for ‘trans-exclusionary radical feminist,’ which originally referred to a subgroup of the British feminist movement, ‘TERF’ has come to denote any woman, feminist or not, who persists in believing that while transgender women should be free to live their lives with dignity and respect, they are not identical to those who were born female and who have lived their entire lives as such, with all the biological trappings, societal and cultural expectations, economic realities and safety issues that involves.

But in a world of chosen gender identities, women as a biological category don’t exist. Some might even call this kind of thing erasure.

When not defining women by body parts, misogynists on both ideological poles seem determined to reduce women to rigid gender stereotypes. The formula on the right we know well: Women are maternal and domestic — the feelers and the givers and the ‘Don’t mind me’s. The unanticipated newcomers to such retrograde typecasting are the supposed progressives on the fringe left. In accordance with a newly embraced gender theory, they now propose that girls — gay or straight — who do not self-identify as feminine are somehow not fully girls. Gender identity workbooks created by transgender advocacy groups for use in schools offer children helpful diagrams suggesting that certain styles or behaviors are ‘masculine’ and others ‘feminine.’

Didn’t we ditch those straitened categories in the ’70s?”

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Parenting Confessions

This memory came to me apropos of … still trying to figure it out.

Anyway, the setup: People say you can call your dog anything as long as you use a certain type of voice.  It doesn’t matter what you say; Rover thinks you’re expressing undying admiration as long as you use high tones and a sing-song inflection:

“  ♫  Oh, whose the good little dung-doggie?  Rover’s just a little dirt doofus,
you widdle sweetie doo-doo-eating turdy-sack, oh, yes you are!  ♫  “

Along those lines….

Dateline:  a long time ago in galaxies far, far away (28 and 25 years ago).   I am blurry-eyed after early morning breast-feeding sessions, rocking whichever babe (28 years ago, son K; 25 years ago, daughter Belle), desperately trying to get them to go back to sleep by trying to sing a lullaby whose name and lyrics my sleep-deprived, 3 am brain cannot recall… except that it begins with the ultimate parental admonition,

“Go to sleep, little —-”

“…little…” what?  I think it’s something that rhymes with sleep.  Maybe, sheep?  Yeah, maybe, but what comes after that?  And I refuse to call my children sheep.  So, as I am wont to do, I craft my own lyrics, using my most Loving Mother ® voice:

“Go to sleep, little creep,

go to sleep or I’ll drop you…”   [3]

 

“C’mon, sweetie, drink your Ambien tea or mommy’s gonna keep singing.”

 

*   *   *

Department Of Appreciating Mondegreens    [4]
Is A The Key Factor In Maintaining Mental Health

Dateline: Monday afternoon, driving up the coast to meet friends from high school who are in the area.   [5]    The podcast I was listening to ended;  moiself  pressed my car radio’s scanner, trying to find a station which had somewhat decent reception (which can be iffy on the coast) and which was not a talk or religious format.  The first such station I hit upon was in the midst of playing a song with this lyric in its chorus:

♫  You’re the best thing since bathrobes, baby….  ♫

Huh? I pressed the button to remain on the channel, as my curiosity was piqued.  No, it can’t be “bathrobes.” Let’s see what the second chorus sounds like….

♫  You’re the best thing since bathrooms, baby….  ♫

Who doesn’t appreciate a bathroom, (especially when you’re on a road trip), but, really?

One more chorus:  oh…backroads. It turned out the country crooner   [6]   was comparing his sweetie to backroads.

 

 

*   *   *

Punz For The Day
Backroads Edition

I don’t care for most country music – not to denigrate those who do.
And for people who DO like country music, ‘denigrate’ means ‘put down.’

What do you get when you combine country and rap music?
Crap.

I got a white noise machine for our bedroom.
It turns out that falling asleep to country music is harder than I thought.

 

 

 

 

*   *   *

May you resist the pressure to use gender-erasing terms;
May you enjoy making up your own lullabies;
May you learn to fall asleep to country music;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1]  Excerpts, schmexcerpts – I practically quoted the whole damn article.  Because it’s that good, that refreshingly sensible.

[2] The latest, which sounds so silly as to be an The Onion story. Sadly, I ain’t making this up: “Quidditch is now quadball, distancing game from J.K. Rowling, league says.,”  (Washington Post, 7-20-22 )

[3] And they did, eventually, go to sleep.

[4] “…a mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase in a way that gives it a new meaning. Mondegreens are most often created by a person listening to a poem or a song; the listener, being unable to hear a lyric clearly, substitutes words that sound similar and make some kind of sense….” (Wikipedia, Mondegreen )

[5] Friends from high school…junior high, actually.  Wow.

[6] Well, of course it was a country music song.  Did moiself  really need to tag the genre?

The Good Ole Folks I’m Not Romanticizing

May 20, 2022

Robyn Parnell current events, family life, freethought/humanism, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), music, nature, school, science, TV, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Thanks for checking in, so to speak (…er, write).  I am taking moiself  on holiday.  From this Friday and through June, I will be posting blogs from the same time period of eight years ago (late May-June, 2014).  New posts will return in early-mid July.

Until then, I hope y’all enjoy these reruns (or at least gain a modicum of petty amusement from making fun of them, and/or noting how NOT perspicacious my 2014 blatherings observations turned out to be).  Perhaps they may spark some sense of déjà vu in you, or cause you to contemplate what you were doing and thinking in those pre-pandemic, pre-idiocy epidemic times (i.e., before the debacle that was #45).

Moiself  apologizes for the fact that visuals (pictures; video clips) in the original posts may or may not be included.
*   *   * 

 Remember to call your billiards shots 

White cat in the side pocket.

*   *   *

The Offfspring of Duh Meets the Progeny of You Can’t Make Up This Stuff

Dateline: May 21, a New York Times article, Bryan College is Torn; Can Darwin and Eden Co-exist?, about an Christian college which is being sued by two long-time faculty members as part of a controversy over the college’s stance on the origin of humans.

In a nutshell – an appropriate container, as you’ll see – the lawsuit revolves around the college’s “statement of belief,” which professors have to sign in order to be employed at Bryan College.  The original statement of belief, quite retro re the school’s views on creation and evolution,[1] is apparently not backward and Neanderthal strong enough for the college’s administration and governing board.  Fearing “a marked erosion of Christian values and beliefs across the country,” college officials recently added new language to the SOB [2] –  language they refer to as a “clarification” – that would have faculty members professing that Adam and Eve “are historical persons created by God in a special formative act, and not from previously existing life-forms.”

Some Bryan College students as well as professors are objecting to the SOB’s addition, claiming that it “…amounts to an assault on personal religious views” and that “it makes (Bryan College) a more narrow place.”

Gee, ya think?

Bryan College president Stephen D. Livesay defends the SOB’s clarification:

“…this is something that’s important to us. It’s in our DNA. It’s who we are.”

 Oh. My. Mr. Livesay. Whatever possessed you to use that term?

There’s no such thing as DNA. Because if there was, you’d be able to trace human ancestry back to previously existing life forms….ooooh….never mind.

 *   *   *

Speaking of (or implying) dinos, Wednesday’s Google Doodle tagged Mary Anning, a British palaeontologist.

And I’m using the British spelling intentionally and respectfully, not just to be colourful , so take a hike, spellchecker.

*   *   *

Animal Enrichment

We have a pair of Juncos nesting in the bird house we so inconveniently located (well, for the birds) above the jungle-gym/climbing tree of our outdoor cat, a Bengal named B.B.  We put the birdhouse up for more decorative than functional reasons, as an object d’yard art, thinking that no sane bird would choose to homestead in such close proximity to a feline. But, alas, a pair of Juncos seems to be feeding chicks housed within.  Fledging time should prove to be interesting.

*   *   *

Department of Random

Last week, watching the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, I got to thinking [3] about the ironies (or should I say insincerities?) behind one of the Country-Western genre’s staple themes, when guest Dolly Parton performed a song called Home.

There are a plethora of CW songs that pay tender tribute to and ostensibly yearn for the good ole folks and good ole, simpler times back home (“we wuz dirt poor but we wuz luuuved”) — songs written and performed by multimillionaires who did everything in their power to escape that life, that locale, and those people.  If life back then ‘n there was so good, why did you want out? Why were you so ambitious, in some cases even desperate, to leave it all behind and go for something more?

Just wondering.  Excuse me, wonderin’.

*   *   *

I Request a Moment of Respectful Silence

Please join me in honoring the passing of a national treasure, TOWIAWNCHH. [4]  Yes, The Only Women in America Who’s Never Colored Her Hair has thrown in the towel.

 

*   *   *

Department of Mixed Experiences

“We are never, ever coming back.”

Last week MH traveled to Pasadena to attended Nerdfest 2014 his Caltech Class of 1984 reunion.  He hemmed and hawed over attending, as he holds no special fondness for his alma mater and was not interested in the reunion activities.  He decided at the last minute to go because he wanted to see a group of friends who’d planned on attending.  One of these friends from Caltech days, who has continued to be a real life buddy  [5],  had this to say on his FB page about the reunion:

“As usual much bigger participation by younger and older classes. Energetic young woman working for the (Caltech) Alum Assoc introduced herself and explained her job was partly to improve relations with 1980’s classes. I asked what her theory was and she said their best guess was alums from that era had “mixed experiences” and many “did not enjoy returning to campus”.

I think all Caltech classes should hold their reunions on grounds of the previously-mentioned Bryan College.  Caltech alums could schlep in some previously existing life forms, planting them strategically around the campus grounds….

 *   *   *

My Wicked Fantasies ©
Chapter One in a (hopefully, very short) series

I will consume a cabbage, beans, Brussels sprouts, garlic and broccoli smoothie three hours before my next scheduled airplane flight.  When going through the security checkpoint, I will refuse to enter the TSA scanner machine and ask for the security pat down instead.

 *   *   *

May all of your security pat-downs reveal no previously existing life forms, and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

 

 

 

[1] It includes statements such as, “The origin of man was by fiat of God.”

[2] Praise Jaysuuuus for the opportunity to use that acronym.

[3] Fortunately, this train of thought lasted for, at most, five minutes.

[4] Her slave name is Robyn Parnell.

[5] And who is a favorite dude of mine as well.  Even if he is a dwarf scientist. Which I’d more fully explain, but then this footnote would need a footnote, and that’s just not right.

The World Languages I’m Not Learning

April 29, 2022

Robyn Parnell annoyances, are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, freethought/humanism, general ruminations, Isms (religion), movies, music, politics, radio & podcasts, school, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The World Languages I’m Not Learning

Department Of How Did I Not Know Until Now About This Song !?!?

Dateline: Monday am, 7:30 ish.  Morning walk/podcast listen: Clear + Vivid: Bette Midler: How She Became Divine.

 

 

The Divine Miss M herself was regaling host C+V  host Alan Alda with tales of her first European tour, and how the following ditty Midler performed on stage “…went down really well” in Germany.

(sung to the tune of the theme song of the movie, The Bridge Over The River Kwai) :

♫  Hitler…
had only one big ball
Goering…
had two but they were small
Himmler…
Had something similar
And poor old Goebbels
had no balls
at all.  ♫      [1]

I’d vaguely known about Hitler’s goofy gonads (he suffered from right-side cryptorchidism – an undescended testicle).  But the fact that this detail was woven into an anti-Nazi ditty delighted the spirit of the 11-year-old Girl Scout who still resides in me – the girl who wanted to sit in the back during the boring troop meetings and exchange bawdy jokes with the other so-inclined scouts instead of listening to yet another boring lecture on how we were supposed to be working on our camping merit badges.

 

“All in favor of skipping reciting the Girl Scout Promise and singing the Hitler song instead, raise your hands.”

 

*   *   *

Department Of Yet Another Podcast Citation

The most recent episode of the People I (Mostly) Admire podcast – website description: “Steven Levitt, the unorthodox University of Chicago economist and co-author of the Freakonomics book series….tracks down other high achievers and asks questions that only he would think to ask….” – had me hooked with the opening:

“My guest today, John McWhorter, likes to stir things up….
He’s a linguistics professor at Columbia university, author of over a dozen books, and has emerged as one of America’s most prominent public intellectuals. He’s an opinionated centrist, and chances are, whatever your politics, you’ll love his views on some issues, and despise his stance on others.”
(intro to People I Mostly Admire, episode 72: “Leaving Black People in the Lurch” )

 

 

 

I was immediately intrigued by the host’s description of his guest: “an opinionated centrist.”  Not being fond of political labels (at least for moiself ), I don’t consider moiself  to be a centrist.  Rather, I approach issues as a “Does this make sense?-trist.” When some folks on The Far Left ® find out my liberal/religion-free/ flaming feminist viewpoints, they assume that I’ll tick off all their boxes on particular issues.  And when they find out that I do not, *they* get ticked off.

My intrigue-ears perked up for other reasons as well, including the fact that McWhorter is a linguistics professor.  Being a linguist, as in studying the cultural and cognitive development and application of languages, is one of my “if-I-were-to-do-it-all-over-again” professions.   [2]  Now, just because I maintain an interest in that area of study doesn’t mean that I have any current and/or particular skill in or aptitude for languages – far from it, as anyone who has heard me mangle the French language could attest to.  And while moiself  is on the subject I’d like to offer a shout-out to all you Parisian shopkeepers and restauranters who, despite the stereotype of the snooty French, were most patient and gracious with me when I was visiting your merveilluse ville and tried to order a pain au chocolat in every venue possible.

 

Let me guess, *elle demande* the entire tray, again?

 

Once again, I digress.

Back to the podcast opening.

Steve LEVITT:
“In your day job, you (McWhorter) are a linguist at Columbia University and you also moonlight as a commentator on American society, especially around issues of race. But I’d like to talk first about linguistics, because I suspect if we start on race, we’ll never make our way back to linguistics.”

Linguistics/ race – I wanted to hear it all.  Any author of a book called “Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter,” is all right by me. Then, after the first 15 minutes of linguistics talk, I was surprised by McWhorter’s choice in an answer to a certain question.

LEVITT:
So, English is obviously emerging as something of a world language, and that’s mostly for accidental, historical, social, political reasons. And in my very first episode of this podcast, I had Steve Pinker, the Harvard linguist, on. And I tried to get him to make a vote for what the best world language would be. I had no luck. He would not bite on that at all. Is that a question you’ll bite on?”

MCWHORTER:
” Hell yeah.
….If all of the world were going to use a single language, it should be not English….
Really, the language of the world should be Indonesian.”

 

 

Really.  He chose Indonesian.


MCWHORTER:
“…Not the way it’s written, but the way it’s typically spoken, where you have almost no suffixes, almost no prefixes. (Indonesian is) not a tonal language. It’s very low on throwing you with things like, what does ‘pick up’ mean?  You can pick up a disease; you can pick somebody up from school; speed is about picking up speed. Why deal with that? There’s very little of that. …. even though most people who don’t speak Indonesian would find it hard to learn just the words themselves….if you could pick up 500 of them, say 600 of them…the grammar would be very, very easy. You could make yourself understood. I would say it’s better. It’s easier for everybody — colloquial Indonesian would be the one.”

McWhorter’s quotes about the reasons why a language like Indonesian would be a better “world” language  [3]  made me think about Turkish, which I studied for a few days in an online course (until Putin’s aggressive assholery changed my travel plans   [4]  ).

Here are nine encouraging and refreshing observations I made during my brief foray into the Turkish language:

  1. Turkish is phonetic; thus, pronunciation is easy!
  2. Every letter in a word is pronounced!   [5]
  3. Each letter has only one sound!
  4. Two or more letters are never combined to make a new or different sound!
  5. Turkish contains no articles at all!
  6. It is also not a gendered language; nor is it tonal!
  7. There is no 7th observation!
  8. There are standard rules for making plurals!
  9. Word Order is set: Subject-Object-Verb. The verb is always at the end in written Turkish!    [6]

 

You’d spin with delight, too, if you spoke such a sensible language.

 

After twenty-five or so minutes of Fun With Words®,  podcast host Levitt ventured into topics where McWhorter’s opinions have made people who are prone to look for divergent poles line up into their default defensive positions…such as McWhorter’s book, Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America.

LEVITT:
“I was talking to a white friend of mine, someone who is deeply sympathetic to the anti-racist cause. And she said to me recently, ‘My daughter is friends with a Black girl in her nursery school class….and I’d like to invite that Black girl over to my house for a play date, but I’m afraid to because I don’t know the appropriate way to acknowledge my white privilege to the girl’s parents. And I don’t want to insult them by not acknowledging it.’

 To me, what a disaster – when kids can’t build friendships because parents are so paralyzed by fear of not doing the right thing.”

MCWHORTER:
“You know what? That woman is who I wrote Woke Racism for.
That is exactly what I mean. That is somebody whose heart is very much in the right place, but she’s so afraid of being called the dirtiest-name-other-than-pedophile in our current cultural vocabulary that she’s basically hamstrung.

After a while, it might be that you end up avoiding Black people because you don’t want to take a wrong step. And then you get accused of being a racist. And where does that get us?  To actually say, ‘What is the result of all this?’ is seen as somehow beside the point.

Rather, what’s considered important is smart people stating that racism still exists; racism is systemic. Now, what’s actually happening out on the ground, whether we’re improving Black lives by stating that, is considered subsidiary…..

And yet, that’s the situation that I saw us slipping into starting after the hideous murder of George Floyd. I saw us dealing with a kind of semaphore, where we say things and we say things and we say things, and what we’re really doing is fostering a kind of general guilt and engaging in a kind of passion play…. But the result is not anything that any civil rights leaders of the past would have recognized as meaningful. We need to get back to doing the real thing.”

 

Fine; you’re awake. Now, make the bed and start cleaning up the mess you left in the kitchen.

. 

LEVITT:
“I always ask my guests to give advice to my listeners. And I’m curious what advice you would give to young people trying to build a good life for themselves.
And would you give the same advice to a young white person and a young Black person?”

MCWHORTER (my emphases):
“… at this point, in the way our national dialogue goes, I would say this to kids of any race: Distrust your impulse to suppose that people who don’t think like you are either naive or evil.

It’s very easy to think that if they don’t think like you. It’s either they don’t have the facts that you have, or if they do have the facts that you have, there’s something sinister about them. They’ve got motives that they’re not quite letting onto.

And the sad thing is that these days, young people are being taught to think that way by an awful lot of grown-ups.

It’s an easy misimpression to fall into because we tend to be binary thinkers. But with any debate that’s uniquely challenging or frankly, interesting, about which you might argue, that’s different from decreeing that people are either stupid or bad. And that’s what a diverse and large society is all about. That’s what diversity of opinion is.”

Moiself  highly recommends that y’all’s selves listen to the entire interview, and pay attention to McWhorter’s insightful analysis re how “3rd wave anti-racism” (a term he borrows from the feminist movement) “is a religion.” It’s guaranteed to offend at least a few third wave anti-racists and religionists.  Now, that’s my kind of a podcast guest.

 

 

*   *   *

Punz For The Day
Woke Politics Edition

Why were environmental activists protesting outside the elementary school?
That heard a rumor that the kids were singing, “Rain, rain, go away.”

What do you call a woke Star Wars droid?
R2-Me2

Did you hear about the laundromat manager who had her Facebook account cancelled?
FB monitors read that she told her customers to separate the whites from the colors.

One night I dreamt that I was a muffler…
I woke up exhausted.

 

“There’s woke jokes, and then there’s woke jokes.”

 

*   *   *

May you choose meaningful action over virtue-signalling;
May you have fond memories of your bawdy joke-telling, scout-meeting (or the equivalent) ignoring days;
May you enjoy singing the song about Hitler’s balls;    [7]

…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] Yes, this is the first footnote of this blog.

[2] Which would also include neurobiologist and astronaut.

[3] Better than, say, English, with its jumble of grammar, spelling, and pronunciation variants.

[4] We (MH and I) had planned a trip to Turkey in late May-early June.  Maybe…next year?

[5] With one exception – ğ, lengthens the sound of the vowel preceding it.

[6] Spoken Turkish allows for some flexibility.

[7] You know you’re going to hum it, at least once, if only to yourself.

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