of the elizabitchez broadcasting system
Monthly Archives: March 2010
this is a test
of the multiple feed posting options to twitter and facebook. Did it work?
Internet geeks – assistance por favor
So I have a twitter and a facebook account that are rarely updated because I am mucho lazy and can’t be assed to update 3 different things twitter, blogger, facebook) all the time.
Is there an app of some kind that will link the 3 together so that whenever I put up a new post here, a link is created there?
And because Pearl Jam always makes me think of Skip james, here’s a Monday morning present for any of you all who are feeling a bit hung over and or bruised by the weekend
THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS
is way too good to disappear into the shared items in the reader.
One of the biggest problems of lefty theory is that it is often seen as solely a critique without alternatives. Shit, even I’m guilty of it. But that’s one of the reasons I play Queen for a day, it gets me to imagine the possibility of a better world.
From this piece, I’ve just had my brain boggled by the idea of imagining a world where credit is democratic. What if everyone got access to a reasonable loan to own a home, or start a business, or shit, just was able to have a checking account? (Lack of checking accounts is a HUGE problem among the poor, the better off of you all might not realize that those of us on the poor end get our accounts closed for being overdrawn and then have to wait 5+ years before you can open another one. We’re called the Unbanked- I’m sure it’s google-able).
My brain is whirling at the idea of a world without overdraft charges that are more than you spend on groceries. What if everyone was guaranteed a low interest rate home loan for a specific amount (say the average home price for a home big enough or small enough for your household in your area) that kept all housing costs under a specific percentage of your income? Rich people could still buy ridiculous houses, but they’d have to do it with their own cash, and poor people wouldn’t be relegated to slums or exurbs only. What if we mandated living wages and eliminated consumer debt? With the wages people wouldn’t have to go into hawk every month using credit cards to pay basic living expenses, and paychecks would go back into the production (industry) side of the economy instead of to the speculative side in the form of credit card payments.
What if credit was not a hierarchial system? Perhaps then the wealth gap between races and sexes would not be so grand, but the “deserving” white folks with their good credit scores might have to give up a wee bit of paternalism towards those of us who they keep trying to teach middle class values to. But in the end it would benefit all of us (well all meaning everybody not stealing, I mean earning a fat paycheck in the banking industry).
Art blogging: perhaps I am missing something?
I’ve been chewing on something for a good long week now, trying to figure out if a bit of time would make me change my mind about it.
So I stumbled (not stumbled- the blog is in my reader) across this blogpost .The work is by Kimiko Yoshida and is a series of ongoing self portraits.
(Because the blog where I found this and the artist’s own site don’t allow posting of pics, I am not going to post them here- please do follow the links to follow along)
Most of Yoshida’s work (ok all) is stunning and thoughtful and twists your brain around the ideas of cultural traditions and women (Yoshida herself) becoming so entrenched in those traditions that you can barely make the person out whose self portrait it is.
But then there is the whole blackface issue. Now since I’m not black, I’m just trying to go with some empathy here. Forgive me if I struggle a bit, but here’s what’s bugging me.
1) Blackface- never right. I understand the point, reducing classic images of the female gaze perpetrated by male artists into monochromatic self portraits. It’s clever. But my internal squick measure is still freaking the fuck out.
2) But Yoshida is Japanese and lives in France, different cultural baggage that she’s carrying around there. Does blackface have the same connotations when done by someone with no cultural narrative for it? And am I missing a huge point in that this is a Japanese woman, representing (at least in the Gauguin type painting) a brown Tahitian woman, in blackface.
3)That said, I can’t “give” the artist a pass on the blackface being that I’m white and all.
4) But what really bugs me is that with all Yoshida’s work and with the specific work/show (see here also for more of the same show) that this blogger is writing about, the blogger/designer, Brad Ford at Design Therapy, chose to ONLY focus on the black face portraits in his blog post. (To the best of my knowledge, meaning what I read into his blog and I could be totes wrong- he is white and American and therefore has at least a passing knowledge that blackface is a no no).
So am I bothered by the art itself (a little) or by the manner of presentation of it by a blogger (a lot)? While intent does not a an anti-racist make, I think the artist might be trying to intentionally make us question, while the blogger seems to be following a lazy path of social conditioning+oh look at the pretty shiny thing.
Speak up peeps. You don’t have to be an art geek, really. (Talking or writing about art is a bit like being a wine snob most of the time- you can make up all sorts of pretentious sounding shit and get away with it, depending on the audience. You can also just keep it simple with a confident like/dislike. People will assume your opinion is patently the obvious one with the simple answer and that they are dumb for going on about it like an actual critic).
Watching SNL and being nostalgic
Well, not really, it’s on in the background. But I am remembering just how fucking hot Eddie Vedder is. Damn. I may be officially old (well not for another few days, then I am officially old) but Eddie Vedder still makes me squee.
ETA: I knew there was an unplugged video where Vedder writes PROCHOICE on his arm in sharpie during the middle of the song. It just took me a minute to find it.
Pearl Jam, more than any other band of the era, was what got me through the worst part of my childhood, the year my mom went into the mental hospital and I went to live with foster parents. I borrowed Ten from a cute boy (on tape even). Before that, the only music I knew that wasn’t bubble gum crap that had no relation to my actual life was “alternative” music from the 80’s (my first ever concert was the Cure, for example). Listening to Pearl Jam was like that super satisfying moment where a scab falls off and you can see the new pink scar underneath. Vedder wrote about bullying and horrid parents and not exactly believing in god. The songs hold up well 20 years later (while I pretty much can’t listen to anything the Cure did after Boys Don’t Cry and Depeche Mode, well we won’t go there).
BTW, I loved Just Breathe, the song I just watched them performed on SNL.
Holy shit, i think this means I am old
15 years ago today, the Kid showed up in the world, late (by ten days) after having lived a warm and comfy life swimming around in my belly and eating second hand pickles and chocolate chip cookies.
He’s the best thing that ever happened to me, this adorable ball of love and unshakable sweetness who I am so lucky to know. The Kid taught me that if it was okay for me to stand up for him to the cruelties of the world, it was just as okay to stand up for myself. He is unshakable in his kindness, which is not something i see in a lot of grown ups (or other kids for that matter) and he is undeniably himself.
He is a proud feminist boy. He is brilliant and thoughtful and geeky and perfect. And he made a deal with me about a year and a half ago that involved him giving up all teenage angst behavior at the age of 15 (Auntie says- yeah right, my kids are in their 30s and I still get that shit. She thinks I might be a bit delusional). But he’s not really all that angsty. He’s just himself, the Kid, who occasionally rolls his eyes at me but is way more likely to offer a hug.
In the last year he’s grown taller than me. He likes to stand as close to me as he can and go “haha, taller than you”.
The Kid has his own (sometimes frustrating) timeframe for doing things (see 10 fricken days late! 10! and only came out then because of a c-section).
He is the best person I know, and he’s only 15. I cannot wait to see what marvelous things he does and thinks in the world.
But yes, I think this officially means I am OLD. OLD OLD OLD.
I love you punkin munkin, tater tot, sir rotten monkey, stinkerbell Mr. Potatey. Happy birthday and thanks for letting me watch you turn into such an awesome human being.
Failed bank gets FDIC bailout and STILL forecloses on little people
That all totally sucks, but it is worse. The bank that refi’d their house, IndyMac, is the same bank that caused runs on their ATMs about 2 years ago. The FDIC had to bail its ass out.
Are you all feeling the hopey change yet? I, for one, am not actually happy to be welcoming more people into my little homeless corner of the world. Not because I don’t welcome the company, but because I am real fucking familiar with the untethered chaos that comes from financial instability. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, except for the banksters themselves.
Inappropriate conversations with children
Me: I want soup
Kid: What kind of soup
Me: noodle soup, like pho
Kid: I miss pho
Me: we could make it. It’s just rice noodles and broth and slices o’ meat
Kid: And the extras, don’t forget the extras
Me: like thai basil and cilantro and lime and hot sauce
Kid: BEAN SPROUTS! DON’T FORGET THE BEAN SPROUTS! They’re my favorite part.
Me (to the tune of SirMixalot’s Baby got back, complete with silly dance moves) I like bean sprouts and I cannot lie. You other brothers can’t deny!
(ftr- Seattle is lousy with pho soup places. The best place to eat out if you’ve only got a few bucks is any of the Than Brothers places. You get a giant bowl of soup, bigger than your head, and cream puffs for under 5 bucks. OH and vietnamese coffee is pretty fucking rad too)
The Big Orange Cheetoh- still not progressive
You know, it gives me no fucking joy to have been right all through primary season about the blogger boys and their douchebaggery. It might give me joy if people figured it out and Markos Moulitas now had as much influence over politics as I do.