Moxy Fruvous, Canada’s knock off version of They Might Be Giants (I jest, I jest. Not really.) sings about kicking ass. Literally.

$350 a month to live in a shipping container in Iraq, work 12 hour days 7 days a week, and get raped by your boss.

Gross. Just fucking disgusting. Though I can’t say I am surprised.

h/t to Feminist Philosophers

It’s the cusp of the most patriotic of days here in the old USofA. Ugh. I’d be happier spending the weekend in another country (July 4th getting drunk in the alley behind the Pantheon was pretty damn awesome) but I have lovely friends and a hot boyfriend and a kick ass kid and vodka tonic makings. So (as a lovely friend once put it) let’s all celebrate Happy Inter-dependance Day!!!!

Sasha says “Fuck you” to uber-privileged feminists who say fuck you to low income women (full disclaimer, I briefly flirted the the New Agenda idea during the primary bull-shit, but there was a better choice than Palin in the election. Namely Cynthia McKinney, who I didn’t have to contort or subvert my beliefs to vote for).

Today marks the start of a mass hunger strike at California’s Pelican Bay prison over solitary confinement. Yes, we are still using that abysmal tactic. Yes it’s still torture. And it’s just as bad when it’s inflicted on (mostly) men of color as it is when it’s inflicted on Bradley Manning.

s.e. smith has a great post up at Tiger Beatdown on austerity in Greece vs. California. Part of me wonders if the urban planners of yesteryear specifically eliminated the town square from American life so that there would be less opportunity for mass protest. We don’t have a Tahrir Square here.

Social psychology is pretty damn cool, yo! Try reading these blogs for fun and entertainment. You Are Not So Smart and Tools for Changing the World

It’s Canada Day! Go give a Canadian a hard time about their lying meat. Canadian bacon- it’s really just ham. (Don’t really give Renee a hard time, she’s awesome.)

Now, since it is officially afternoon, I can drink a refreshing vodka tonic without being an alcoholic (though what is my excuse for drinking mimosas with brunch?)

The Boyfriend is coming over (w00t w00t) so you all get a mushy song.

I blame Sylvie for making me like Band of Horses. Same with Miike Snow. Damn her.

Oh and in NOOZ- Timmy fucking Geithner is planning on leaving the Obama administration. I am way to hip and cynical to think Obama might try getting someone to take that position who doesn’t walk around with a brown nose and toilet paper holster courtesy of the financial vampires. Gawkerites think Jamie “the poors are so mean, they call me names when all I did was ruin their lives and their children’s lives” Dimon.

At this point I think the pubic hair on Clarence Thomas’ coke can has a better grasp of real economics. (Well it’s not so much that the douchenoodles don’t grasp economics, it’s that they don’t care if they burn down multitudes of communities as long as their friends get big fat bonus checks and pay no taxes).

I am now going to resume my good mood. Vodka tonics in 3…2…1

Or it’s not just a criminal act to be poor, it’s now a criminal act to feed the poor in Orlando (fucking) Florida.

Can’t sleep here. Don’t eat there. Don’t give food away. Don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t. Why it almost seems like governments are trying to starve a certain segment of the population to death.

Or maybe they’re worried that us poor folks are like bears. If you give us a taste of human food, we’ll never learn to pull ourselves up by our furry bootstraps and work a minimum wage job.

Or maybe, if we’re really lucky, after getting probation (probably for committing some form of criminal existing while poor crime) we can get jobs as migrant farm laborers!

Fuckers.

I’ve been meaning to write a post about all the colonialism movies I’ve seen and how they SUCK but Sociological Images has a video up that pretty much covers it

I think the line “OK boss” is the key.

That said, I recently watched Even the Rain which was refreshing mostly in it’s attempts to show what a load of bullshit the Great White savior idea is. The story is about a film crew deciding to shoot a movie about Christopher Columbus in Cochabamba, Boliva (and yes, they make fun of themselves for shooting Incans who speak quechua as Tainos) because the labor is cheap there. They meet Daniel, a fiery local organizer who causes some trouble at the open casting for extras, and decide to cast him as Hatuey, a Taino rebel. What they don’t realize is that Daniel is a local organizer against water privatization and that battle is about to get fierce.

Over and over, the film shows how that white film crew, while making a movie about the evils of colonialism and the birth of the slave trade, ignores what is going on around them. When they can no longer ignore it (Daniel gets arrested for protesting) they buy their way out of trouble but sell Daniel out in the process.

Unfortunately at the end, there is a little bit of white savior-ing, but for the most part it a nice change of pace from standard “I will show you poor oppressed brown folk the way!”

Lenin to women: cease your infernal girlish prattle.

The following gem was mined from my choice of in-flight entertainment, “Socialism: A Very Short Introduction” by Michael Newman. It concerns an exchange between V.I. Lenin and Clara Zetkin, who was in charge of the Communist International Women’s Secretariat.

[S]oon after the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin admonished [Zetkin] for encouraging women members of the Communist Party to discuss sexual matters, rather than the fact that the ‘first state of proletarian dictatorship is battling with the counter-revolutionaries of the whole world.’ He thus told her, ‘I could not believe my ears’ when informed that ‘at the evenings arranged for reading and discussion with working women, sex and marriage problems came first.’

No matter what the movement, guess who gets to take a number and stand in the back of the line? You got it. If you ask yourself, “What have my male comrades ever done for us?” and keep coming up with the answer “Diddly fucking squat,” you win a coupon for your own liberation redeemable after the apocalypse.

To a man, they never get it; the vanishingly few who do (Arthur Silber comes to mind) have experienced marginalization, often in several dimensions, *and* have generalized from that, rather than playing Oppressions Can Be Ranked and Mine Comes First. The rest will bully, badger, nag, and blame you, but never treat your political aspirations as anything more than a girlish fit of pique.

Well, not really. But….

I am super femme in presentation. I’ve got long, flowy, shiny hair. I have very traditional (though slightly exoticised due to black hair, dark eyes and pale olive skin)feminine features. I like skirts. I wear pink and or red nearly every day. I paint my nails. And the shit that I am really fucking bananas good at, cooking, decorating a house, putting together an outfit (when I have the clothes), and raising the Kid are all super traditional girly pursuits.

I also cuss like a trucker, have been in a couple of actual fights and am way more likely to jump in the middle of a brouhaha, physical or otherwise, than most of the dudes I know. I don’t dream of a princess wedding (Elope! Elope! Is what I say whenever a friend tells me they are getting married) and I’ve been the wanton hussy and never the “but will you respect me in the morning” type for as long as I’ve been into boys. All those traits usually scream MASCULINE! And perhaps if I didn’t already present as the feminine (almost) ideal, I wouldn’t be allowed to get away with that shit.

All this is just a blathering way of saying femininity- not evil. Also not just for girls. Masculinity- also not just for boys. Be who you are, and throw a mean left hook if you have to.

I finally got around to making a pretty resume and shockingly, I have interviews (no really). And I am realizing that I own no appropriate interview clothes (live out of 2 small suitcases for 2 years and just see how long holding onto the formal business attire lasts? I own fewer pairs of shoes than most dudely types and a single coat).

I have a phone interview today. And an in person interview tomorrow (which is business casual, I can pull that off) and another Thursday (full business attire, it’s for a hedge fund. I know, I know. But poverty sucks, people, and this job pays really well). It’s also the end of the month, rent to pay, so there isn’t any extra cash to run to to the thrift store or discount clothing places and pick up a basic anything. There isn’t even enough in the bank for me to pull out 10 bucks and do laundry.

Throw money in the pot and maybe in the very near future I may be self-sufficient. OMG I can’t even remember what that was like.

And if you don’t have the cash to be spending, send me some good luck instead. I need all the help I can get.