RIP Dr. George Tiller

http://www.feministing.com/archives/015744.html

Thank you for all you did.

Humans are bad for small business, dontcha know?!

Holy fucking shit. Long story short:  Republican embarrassment Michael Steele uses the following tidbit to demonstrate why providing gay employees with partner benefits is exactly like sucking fat Al Qaeda wiener and taking a poo all over freedom, apple pie, Christmas, McDonalds, baseball, trucks, cowboys, and your mom:

“Now all of a sudden I’ve got someone who wasn’t a spouse before, that I had no responsibility for, who is now getting claimed as a spouse that I now have financial responsibility for,” Steele told Republicans at the state convention in traditionally conservative Georgia. “So how do I pay for that? Who pays for that? You just cost me money.”

God, I know, right?  All this homo entitlement makes me totally sick.  It’s almost like gay people expect to be treated like real human beings, with rights and everything!  WHY DO YOU HATE AMERICA, QUEERS?!

I see Steele’s point.  Providing pesky pinko benefits for your staff costs a good Christian business money.  Therefore, a great way to reduce the amount of hard-earned cash that the communists force you to spend on people instead of Jesus is to have some of your employees not actually be people.  You will not only save oodles of money, but also become a shining example of American creative business ingenuity and capitalistic know-how!

Actually, this little argument is pretty awesome for us.  Why, under Mr. Steele’s logic, the institution of marriage itself – gay or, um, “opposite” – is a business liability.  Does that mean that the GOP is going to go from “patriarchal hetero marriage and the nuclear family are the fundamental building blocks of society and those who don’t participate are terrrorists!”  to “marriage and family equal the death of small business, capitalism, and America.  Uncle Sam wants YOU to stay single!”?  I gotta say, as a person that thinks marriage is kind of a little bit of bullshit, I’d be pretty amped to see this happen.

I mean, either way, we can’t really lose here.  Since neither the legalization of gay marriage nor the toppling of the institution itself isn’t likely to happen anytime soon, in the short term all a small business has to do to survive this wonderful economy is hire nothing but gay Atheist unmarried feminist non-reproducing baby-killing socialist fagtards!  We are, literally, the most desirable candidates for any and all financially-savvy institutions nationwide.  Suck on my balls, unemployment!

Hmmm…I smell the most beautiful of  conservative inner struggles emerging:  Do you love money more than you hate homos?  Or do you hate homos more than you love money?  You can also replace “homos” with “illegals” to play the 2006 version of this game, and if you’re really up for a challenge, use both.

Oh my god, somebody get thee to a Wal-Mart/sports’ bar/trading floor before I pass the fuck out.

Alive!

I know you all were really worried because I’ve been a little absent, but I am totally ok.  You know how sometimes managing life (or, um, sleeping) becomes more important than blogging?  Yeah.

I mean, everything’s fine.  It’s just that work’s been mad busy and the weather is finally starting to get nice, so, you know…fuck all y’all, I’m going outside.

Happy (late) Holidays!

I don’t have anything original to add on the subject of 4/20 and I’m sick as balls, so I’m just going to cop out and link to an old post that sums up my feelers.

I did not have a good 4/20.  I was absent from work, but because of the sicks, not because I was paying homage (I also now have the kind of job where you shouldn’t really take days off to, you know, get messed.  All growns up!  Responsibility!).  In fact, I have not, um, “worshiped” in what seems like forever due to this throat/head/whole fucking body deelio that I have going on.  Booourns on this year’s 4/20, but I hope everyone else had a good time couchin’ it and noshing on Cheetos, tacos, and handfuls of dry cereal.

This headache is raging.  I’m going back to bed.  Puff puff pass, ya’ll!

Dear Diary,

Holy fucking shit!

I’ll start from the beginning…

So I was on my way to see my bf Greg.  He’s soooooo hot, and I was thinking I was totally going to let him get to 3rd base…maybe even go all the way!  We’ve been going out for like 6 months and I think I’m kinda ready.  Katie’s sister Heather (the one with the big boobs) said that it’s not even that big a deal and said it probably wouldn’t hurt that much if his thingie isn’t super big and OMG, she would know.  She’s done it with, like, 5 guys, including Kevin from the soccer team WHILE he was going out with Lisa!!!  She even showed me and Katie how to give a blow job!  I can’t even imagine doing that – so gross!  But Heather said it’s, like, the best way to get boys to like you (as long as you keep your teeth out of the way).  Ew, whatever.  I just hope my boobs start growing soon.  Training bras are bullshit.

Anyway, so I get on the L train to go to Greg’s, and I’m sitting in the very last car near the back window.  I may or may not have been very much under the influence of “nature’s medicine” (shut up, I have glaucoma).  As we were pulling out of the station, I guess someone yanked the emergency brake because the whole train instantly lurched to a complete stop out of nowhere.  Nobody knew what was going on, and all of a sudden some dude comes running through the car, lunges toward the back window, and starts screaming “yo!  There’s a guy on the tracks!  You hit him!  He’s all smashed up!”  Um, ew.  Calamity ensues, and for some disgusting reason, all the people in the car dash to the window to check this shit out, loudly reporting unnecessarily graphic details to everybody who had the misfortune of being around.  “Oh my god – there’s a piece of him right over there!”  “He’s still alive!  He’s wiggling!”  “He got runned over!  He’s cut in half!”  I seemed to be literally the only person who had absolutely no interest in investigating something that would undoubtedly give me nightmares for the rest of my life, and I remained paralyzed in my seat with my head in my lap and my fingers in my ears singing “LA LA LA LA LA LA LA!” while I fought off the pukes and tried desperately to go to my happy place.

My initial thought was “I’m way too fucking buzzed to deal with this,” but needless to say, mellow was quickly harshed.

So people were obviously going totally batshit.  That first guy who came barreling through the car kept yelling “let me the fuck out!” and eventually escaped through an open window.  I guess he thought he was going to, like, sew dude back together on the spot and be a hero or something.  They eventually opened the train doors and people started spilling out and going to get a closer look!  Hipsters were whipping out their Holgas and Polaroids and iPhone cameras and giant Nikons swinging ’round their necks, literally clamoring for the money shot*.  I mean, seriously – I can’t imagine wanting to do anything but run screaming in the other direction, but apparently I’m a weirdo or something.  I’ve learned a lesson recently, and it’s that America fucking LOVES gore.

*(The first response my boyfriend had was that he “resented” this sentence, obvs because  he is a photographer with a giant Nikon that is constantly dangling from his neck.  But what he doesn’t understand is that what I described totally fucking happened and was actually true, no matter how much it reads as a dig on young, “cool” freelance photographers.  Um, don’t take it personally, unless you happen to be the girl that I saw doing this.)

As the riders started filing out of the station (because that train wasn’t about to go anywhere for a long ass time), we all started conversing and piecing together what happened.  Apparently there were two guys, one who was supes wasted, trying to switch cars.  I guess the less-faced dude was having to almost carry lushie because his motor skills were very much impaired, and somewhere between the cars balance was lost, and, well…yeah.  I thought I was traumatized until I talked to a chick who watched this go down, and she told me that peeps were all hating on ‘em right before IT happened because that guy was hammered and acting a fool.  One minute everyone is giving him shit, the next minute, he be dead, yo.  Now, everybody who’s ever used public transportation on a Friday night knows how annoying obnoxious drunk people are (especially if you happen to be sober), so we’re all guilty of giving the stink eye to sloppies – but seriously, can you fucking imagine?! Yeah.  So the lesson here is be nice to your fellow wo/man, even if they’re stupid, because those people who were all “what an asshole!” are going to feel like shit for a long, long time.

This city is fucking insane.

Oh, and it took the cops, like, 15 minutes to get there, and the ambulance didn’t arrive until 5 minutes after the cops – like there are more pressing issues in Brooklyn than a guy who was dismembered.  Jesus fucking Christ.

In short, I will never walk between train cars ever again.  Those MTA “we’re serious about safety – your safety” posters may be poorly written and lack proper punctuation and use ugly models, but um, the point has been made.  It turns out they are serious about safety!

Well, that’s it for tonight, Diary!  TTYL!

Yours ’till Niagara falls,

Kendall

P.S.  Greg and I totally went all the way!  Home run!  Actually, it was more like 17 home runs, winning the World Series, getting an endorsement deal from Nike, and landing on the Wheaties box (= anal).

Go fuck yourself!

Remember that exhaustive, 50-page article on sex toys I was writing that totally ruined my life for 3 weeks?  That bitch is published, yo.  Go learn about dildos.

I feel like a dick for this, but any mistakes/funky formatting/missed hyperlinks you find in there, um, aren’t my doing.  My writing process includes a minimum of 10 extensive proofreads.  Just saying.  I also don’t know where the two extra “ever”s in the title came from – the draft I sent in only had one, but I guess someone thought you really needed to be convinced of the thoroughness of this thing.

Stop Googling my name, Mom

You’re not going to like what you read here, and I’m too old to be fielding calls about what my future employers might think.

Oh, and I love you.  I haven’t called because I’ve been so busy at work I want to die and I’m tired like an elderly lady, but since you asked: the dinner party was good, I wore jeans (seriously, what kind of a question was that?), and I can’t believe you listened to that whole NPR interview.

The rest of you, check this shit out.  Tres awesome!

Update: Oh, fiddlesticks.  People who read this in Google Reader ended up at a Facebook Pages’ info site if they clicked the link above.  I realize you did not ask for an explanation, but I’m giving one anyway lest people mistakenly think I’m enamored with this newfangled internettery known as “Facebook.”  What happened is that URL was still on my clipboard from when I was compiling a guide for work, and I didn’t notice it because my brain is practically mush right now.  The link was supposed to take you to an amusing post about how not to be a feminist ally, which it now does.

The irony of a “Social Media Specialist” fucking up hyperlinking on her blog is not lost on me.

Family Values Lobby’s priorities are deliciously out of whack: Watchmen edition

Sigh. I’m back, and I promised myself I wouldn’t blog until I got my shit together at work and at home.  Then I realized that’s never going to happen, and I came across this, so naturally I find my undisciplined self breaking my futile, arbitrary, self-imposed rules.

The gist: The Christian Film & Television Commission (oh dear lord) is miffed at the MPAA for allowing all those cock shots of that blue guy to permeate Watchmen without slapping it with an NC-17 rating, previously made famous to my generation by Showgirls.  I love it when one evil conservative organization gets cheesed off at another evil conservative organization because it wasn’t being evilly conservative enough.  Apparently flaccid, stylized, near-cartoony penises that aren’t central to any part of the plot and just happen to appear in passing should net you Hollywood’s most restrictive rating.

Oh, you fucking insane fundies.  Now, under normal circumstances I wouldn’t legitimately be able to comment on this ridiculous uproar beyond “why do bodies freak these people out so much?” because I ‘d never voluntarily see this movie in one hundred million years, and would therefore be unable to survey the wangage and construct an educated, researched opinion on its degree of excessiveness and offensiveness in comparison to other questionable aspects of the film.

But my boyfriend made me go, so thus I, through no choice of my own, now have the necessary knowledge and experience required to tell these people that they’re FUCKING INSANE!  Watchmen was literally the first action/superhero/comic book/sci-fi/appeal-to-the-lowest-common-denominator movie I’ve ever seen, and it hopefully will be my last.  It was entertaining enough, I suppose – it had a good soundtrack with some Dylan songs, including an amazing cover of Desolation Row (which I became embarrassed about liking when I discovered it was done by My Chemical Romance).  Nonetheless, I spent an estimated 40% of the film squeezing my eyes shut hard enough to smudge my mascara, desperately attempting to escape the jaw-dropping violence that was so creatively and unnecessarily graphic, I’m kind of amazed the director wasn’t forcefully institutionalized (rather, he was rewarded with a very large sum of money).  I often actually had to close my ears too, no joke.  I couldn’t even fucking listen to that shit.

My point is this: Watchmen contained incredible, sickening, unbelievable displays of violence – violence against women, children, men,  and good taste.  There was a rape n’ lady-beating scene that literally made me cry.  A pregnant woman was shot to death.  A little girl was raped, murdered, and fed to dogs (the rape and murder weren’t shown in the movie, but the dogs tearing apart the body were).  Her attacker was subsequently killed in a manner that I obviously declined to watch, but was described to me as being pretty goddamned horrific (the term “face-splitting” was thrown around).  Off the top of my head those were the worst parts (though I really don’t know because, like I said, I couldn’t watch a lot of it), but the bottom line is that this was a violent fucking movie in every sense of the word.

…and yet, what The Christian Film & Television Commission chose to worry themselves with is the idea that people who are  a) old enough to see an R movie, b) mature enough to be taken by parents to see an R movie, or c) smart enough to successfully sneak into an R movie are going to spend an estimated 4 total minutes checking out a swinging, cerulean dong.  Not the prolific rape, murder, gore, blood, guts, bone-snapping, or overall apocalyptic, earth-ruining violence, but a mere penis, something which occurs naturally in 50% of the population.

(Sidenote: I have a hard time understanding why graphic violence is considered more acceptable and even more enjoyable to watch than titties, ass, dick, and fucking.  One makes you cringe and vomit, and one makes you all happy and horny (assuming the scene in question is relatively non-exploitative and you’re able to put some of your feminist objectification issues to the side for a second).  My boyfriend has been questioning me about why I close my eyes during bloody scenes, and my short, very reasonable answer is “why the fuck would I ever want to see that?”  I mean, seriously – am I really missing out if I don’t know what brains look like splattered on a wall?)

Anyway, it’s difficult to figure out exactly where all this red state anti-dick crazy is coming from, but let’s take a little look at what we do know: Watchmen is clearly a movie created for and marketed toward that oft-ignored and oppressed demographic of “young white dudes.”  It’s also worth noting that, despite the unnecessary and gratuitous sex scene (with tits!), that damn blue cock dominated the moral panic headlines.  This is a seemingly unusual departure from the fundies’ typical repulsion toward anything having to do with female sexuality (and parallel worship of anything phallic), until you factor in homophobia – then it starts to make sense.  I mean, nude female bodies are filthy, whorish, and responsible for the downfall of civilization, but they’re “acceptable” so long as they’re also being objectified and displayed for godly heterosexual male consumption and titillation.  At least pussy won’t make ya queer, fag!

So I’m going to go out on a limb here and hypothesize that The Christian Film & Television Commission’s real underlying (and ridiculous) concern is legions of teenage fanboys being unable to resist the sinful draw of giant, azure phalluses, thus instantly becoming deep-throating San Francisco pansies.  Save for some brief flashes during the sex scene, Watchmen was mysteriously lacking female nudity (which, according to the various message boards I’ve had the misfortune of encountering, is a common complaint), and I have a sneaking suspicion that packing the film with boobs and clam shots wouldn’t have ruffled the fundies’ feathers as much.  I mean, at this point, nudie ladies in R films are like McDonalds – you see ‘em so much you don’t even notice it anymore.  Yawn.

It’s also evident that the Jesus Movie Club is not at all worried that the normalization and desensitization of violence against women might, oh, you know, promote rape and such.

In short, fundie moral outrage priorities are fail.  Again.

Gone Fishin’

On vacation, getting crunked.  Will most likely not be posting or responding to comments, although I’ve never been good at not working when I’m not supposed to be (I am, however, really good at not working when I am supposed to be).

This is you:

This is me:

(That’s my friend John.  We rule beach photos.) 

Anyway, suck it.  I’m off eating burritos.

A face for radio

So my boyfriend and I were stumbling home in a hazy, movie popcorn-induced junk food coma on Saturday night, and some lady on the L train suck a microphone in our faces and asked us what we thought about robots taking over the subways or something like that.

Next thing I know, we’re on NPR.

I had a bunch of brilliant, insightful, and eloquent observations, but of course they only used the one dumb thing I said.  It is true though – I’m an old-fashioned kind of gal, and something about the old-timey nostalgia of a person-conducted train is beautiful.  I love trains.  I wanted to be a hobo when I was a little kid, until my mom demanded I stop telling people that and adopt “doctor” or “lawyer” as a career goal instead.  I didn’t aspire to be either of those things, so I compromised and decided on “Las Vegas bartender/poker dealer.”  I’m lucky my parents didn’t drown me in the neighborhood pool.

In all honesty, I don’t give a shit about robotrains.  I give a shit about the fact that monthly passes are about to cost over 100 bucks a month and they’re still making service and job cuts.  Go fuck yourself, MTA.

P.S.  Doesn’t my boyfriend sound sexy?