Yeah, I am out of pithy titles. Wevs. Enjoy the fruits of my reading.
It’s different for brown kids.
It’s still different for brown kids
Well it’s different for anyone of color, really
But ain’t it always a woman’s fault?
But at least we can all agree, Goldman Sachs is the unwashed taint of the financial sector.
What else should I be reading?
Once upon a time people hit shuffle on their MP3 players on Fridays and posted the first 10 songs to pop up.
I lost all, well most, of my digital music in the last few years. So instead I am starting a new tradition. Post the last 3 songs to play on Pandora or whatever music thing you got. On Saturday. Cause we’re rebels like that.
when you need to sneeze, but you can’t. Or you’re this close to orgasm but you just can’t.
I’ve got a big swirly post making its way through my head and it’s not ready yet. And I can’t seem to write anything else while this takes over my brain cells.
So in the meantime, enjoy the fabulous writing of T.O.E. and/or head over to the Elizabitchez tumblr where I reblog funny pictures and critique the bad or outdated geography of the 90’s Animaniacs’ Nations of the World song.
Michel Petrucciani, afflicted with a rare bone disease, was one of jazz’ leading pianists until his death at 36. The documentary film of his life portrays clearly how he used and tossed a series of women. Avoid.
The Ides of March is political junky George Clooney’s self-indulgent TV-caliber fllm about dirty deeds in a presidential campaign. Virulently misogynistic. Avoid.
Happily, “Chicken with Plums” (Poulet au prunes), the new Marjan Satrapi movie, is coming out. And if “Where do we go now?” (Et maintenant, on va où? ) is playing anywhere near you then move heaven and earth to see it. It’s moving, hilarious and has the most satisfying scene of a woman straightening men’s shit out ever consigned to film.
then you’re gonna have to acknowledge some super shitty truths.
Capitalism is a system built on unpaid labor, the unpaid labor done by women in caring for children and home and family, the unpaid (or might as well be unpaid) labor of non-whites both in building our country in the past and making the products we use in the present. Capitalism is a system that cannot exist without ever broadening definitions for what kind of work is of little monetary value, because the wages must go down for profits to go up. The only difference between now and before is that people who expected to be valued (middle class, white, male, educated, etc) are finding that they aren’t.
There was a French writer, who I can’t remember and who I actually haven’t read, being that his work hasn’t been translated, but who I had summed up by the amazing Ruthzilla that wrote that the reason the nuclear family was so important to capitalism is that you needed the back up workforce of women who could take over the tasks left by men who went to feed the war machine. That’s probably less true now that (white, middle-class and better) women are in the work force (non-white, non-middle class women have always worked). But no one could go out to their box-of-labor-pain* if there was no one to have the babies, raise the babies, educate the babies, cook the dinners, shop for groceries, clean the house, do the laundry, care for the old and the sick relatives, etc. Etc. And it is no fucking mistake that when we have to outsource these jobs for pay, that pay is never a living wage. Capitalism can barely be assed to value something that it thinks should be “personal responsibility” and cost nothing.
But these are the core things that a person, a family, and most importantly, a society needs in order to continue. There isn’t actually a society at all if there aren’t children being born. Ask the Spartans, who killed themselves off in wars faster than they could make new soldiers. These are the things that must be done before a profit is even made. These are the things that would still be done if every business on the planet was wiped out tomorrow. These are the things that are usually done by women, and if for pay they are usually done by women of color at the expense of their own families.
So if your revolution doesn’t take that into account, if you want to change the system but you don’t seriously take sexism, racism, ableism, etc into consideration and do the long hard work from the bottom up, then you’re revolution isn’t really going to fix anything for long.
Look, I keep thinking I am done writing about the new, stupid, sexist shit that could possibly be going on at the Occupy protests. But no.
It’s not fucking revolutionary to dismiss sexual assault, practice sexism, ignore women etc. It’s the same old same old same old. (It required an extra same old, it’s that fucking old).
H/t to Jack Crow. And the reason why we ladies keep y’all around is because we are your mothers and daughters and girlfriends and wives. There is no escaping a world with men in it. How can I hate all men when I am raising one? Or in love with one? But there’s a whole fucking mess of them that I wouldn’t cry if they fell off a cliff (cough-Julian-Assange-cough-President-Strong-Supporter-of-Women-cough-Harry-Reid-cough-etc-cough).
Kasabian- Underdog
This is the money quote:
When will we start to understand that any movement which asks women to put up with sexism as a sacrifice for the group, as if sexism isn’t part of the problem, is doomed to fail? It’s no accident – or secret – that women make up the majority of the world’s poor and that women are being hardest hit by the financial crisis.
It ain’t radical and new if it’s built on the same old same old, let’s change the world, I’ll give the speeches, and write the theories, and you make the coffee and iron my shirt, honey buns.
Fuck. That. Noise.
We got a giant, I mean the entire side of a cow, london broil for super fucking cheap that was going to go bad if it didn’t get made RIGHT THIS FRICKEN SECOND. And it’s Friday, and I am sofaking tired that I didn’t even know it was Friday till lunch. I thought it was still Thursday. I think I’ve lost and entire days worth of sleep this week and now the days all blerge into one (blerge is a technical term, look it up. Or don’t. Really don’t)
So I convinced Kid to make the London Broil by shouting directions from my prone position on the couch. And Kid did an amazing job. Then I showed him how to slice it on the diagonal .
Kid: I like doing this!
Me: What, slicing meat? Slicing meat is awesome.
Kid: NO! COOKING MEAT!
ME: Yes, cooking meat makes you feel like king/queen of the world. Like “I am the ruler and cooker of the flesh!”
Kid: As long as it’s not human flesh.
Me: OH when the end times come it will be human flesh!!! Muwhahaha
And not exactly off topic, someone needs to print up some bumper stickers that say “Save a cow, eat a banker”