Do you all remember the story about the homeless young woman who got an internship at Elle? She’s got a story that’s pretty universal as far as homeless folks go; had a job, lost a job, had a crappy family and friends in the same boat she was. Ends up living in a trailer in a Wal-Mart parking lot (since we don’t have a Wal-Mart in the city, trailer folks park under I-5 near Greenlake. Last time I was over there I saw 10 to 15 trailers parked on the side of the road.) And now she’s coming out with a book, “The Girl’s Guide to Homelessness”. Good for her, too bad the tiny advance is already spent.

But it’s the comments that show the various reactions we have to abject domestic poverty. There’s the “can’t be as bad off as she says, she has a laptop” and the suggestion to become an escort (I’ve gotten that suggestion in comments before too- thankfully I have a mighty ban hammer). Bootstraps! Spoiled Brat! You all know these lines.

But there’s also a lot of “damn government giving our money to banks instead of to the people”. Damn government indeed.

I have half a dozen semi-finished posts on Important!Shit! that I can’t seem to be assed to finish this week.

Let’s talk movies instead. Specifically how much I want to go see The Whistleblower. It’s like a custom-tailored RQ flick. It’s based on the true story of a Nebraska cop who went to work for Dyna-Corp as a sub-contractor to the UN and discovers a great big nasty human trafficking nightmare. It stars Rachel Weisz, and we all know I’d go watch that woman read shopping lists, and is directed by a woman, Larysa Kondraki. It passes the Bechdel test in the trailer, multiple times even. Oh and new Sherlock Benedict Cumberbatch is in it along with a bunch of other big fricken names.

So peeps, whatcha watching? Whatcha wanna be watching?

Besides, I’m in a particularly mushy mood lately. Can’t imagine why? (cough*turbomuffin*couch)

No peeps, this is not a joke. Miley Cyrus, the teen sensation that I have mercilessly teased the Kid about for years (he does not like Miley, yet I insist on claiming he’s harboring a secret crush on her)because it is just soooooooo fucking funny, has been yelling on Twitter about Urban Outfitter’s anti-gay, pro-theft policies.

Good for her.

(As for the Urban Outfitters straight up steals from indy designers claim- look I don’t believe in copy rights. But this is really straight up wholesale theft of an idea. They didn’t improve on a design. It’s not inspired by, not similar to, but the exact same necklaces made probably by underage moppets in a developing country for slave wages. They could have gone to the artist and done a contract or licensing deal. But no. They had to be shady fuckwads about it.)

There is an amazing post about rape and colonization up at Tiger Beatdown regarding Strauss-Kahn and feminist solidarity.

This ties in with Sasha’s post about calling the poor “weak”, even if it’s with good intentions. Since I’m a structuralist, I look at what happens when you erase one aspect of oppression in order to bring light on another aspect. In the case of “we are all chambermaids” it is erasing the major problems of both class and race. Those kind of erasures are why there is both feminism and womanism*, two philosophies with the same basic goals (crushing the patriarchy) but one is often a top down, white, middle class or better view while the other is a bottom up, intersectional view of gender, race, class, etc.

The benefit to existing structures that this kind erasure provides should be obvious. Obfuscation is one of the kyriarchy’s best tricks. It’s why the main issues talked about in feminism are the wage gap (which is bigger for well educated women than for less educated women), abortion (with minimal attention paid to the decision to parent instead of to not parent), and rape. Often ignored are things like the mommy gap,

Dear readers, I give you for the first time a picture of the Kid himself, lounging on our newly acquired sofa (and yes, he is wearing a 2L4O shirt. My shirt, actually.)

I’ve been relegated to the love seat, because he’s taller than me or something. Little bastard.

(Kid is now 16, I figure he’s allowed to decide if he wants a picture of himself up in the interwebs).

w00t w00t! I’m trying to remember the last time I sat on something squishy and comfy. I think it’s been 5 weeks.

So thank you, to you know who, for helping out with the delivery. I’ll post a pic when they get here. I’m so excited I could squee to break the windows.

EDT: After a paperwork kerfluffle, I am finally getting my mattress tomorrow. SWEET. By tomorrow night it will actually look like people live in this apartment. Right now it’s looks mostly like tidy squatters live here.

Via Facebook I found this link . You should click it if for no other reason than to see the Class Warrior’s t-shirt. The essay is slightly over-puffed in the way that academic writers are often over-puffed. If you ignore the seesaw rhythm and just concentrate on the dude in a class war shirt in a Circle K, you will give yourself happy thoughts.

As for the crux of the piece, the “join us” everybody, heart of America crux, the author is clearly not as familiar with us unincorporated peeps as he thinks. We don’t want to join a system that is fundamentally flawed in it’s structure, but if things keep on keeping on, we expect you all will be joining us soon. We’ll shove over, there’s room for all the unterbussen.

True story, this song, played over and over and over, helped me memorize the answers to 6 different essay questions on a political economy test once. Seven Nation Army got me through Ancient World History. The White Stripes- powering Lizzie through college circa 2004.

(If the blogger won’t lemme embed- here’s the link)

It’s been a year and a half and there are still over 1300 makeshift camps for the victims of this horrible disaster. Or at least there were over 1300. The new President (and friend of Baby Doc) Micheal Martelly seems intent of ridding the country of them as fast as possible. This would be good, if he was moving people into permanent, or even long term temporary shelters, but instead he’s just sending thugs into the camps to loot and destroy.

The only appropriate response is anger. But instead we have Republifuckers in our own country, like Eric Cantor, who are making aid to disaster victims in the recent tornado spree dependent on spending cuts. Republifuckers also want to cut spending for weather satellites that do the crucial job of predicting things like hurricanes and tornadoes. I wish had the faith that the dems would fight this, but grown ups don’t play make believe games like that. Soon our disaster areas will look just like Haiti’s, and that’s just what they want.