June 2005 – Page 3

Sad Songs

Jeanne and Lynn have recently written about songs that make them cry.

Lynn and I are completely in agreement on this one: “Alone Again, Naturally,” a song that isn’t very compelling, cheesy if anything, but has a line that kills.

I remember I cried when my father died, never wishing to hide the tears.
At sixty-five years old, my mother, God rest her soul,
Couldn’t understand why the only man
She had ever loved had been taken.

Dismay is the worst emotion to witness.

The most recent song I have found that expresses this emotion is “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” by Sufjan Stevens (right click, save as). I had just downloaded a prerelease of this new CD and listened to it as I was planting my garden this spring. Elbow deep in peppers, I found myself weeping openly. There are several parts of this song that could go wrong, but it doesn’t. Pay attention to the one-line chorus and the last verse.

The CD with this song, “Illinois,” isn’t yet on the market, preorder it for release on July 5th. It is beautiful, Sufjan’s best work, and has an appeal for all kinds of music lovers. In the meantime see it’s sister CD, Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lakes State.

If you don’t feel like listening to sad songs, watch this (via Amanda).

Live From the College Republican Convention

What a brave Democratic mole:

Inside the training, sparcely placed beer bottles (not cans this time, these guys are high class) punctuated the tables in Salon A. One young conservative felt the need to be wearing his aviators while he sipped on his Coors Light and listened to the speaker.

One speaker encouraged these College Republicans to use the following phrases on their posters to get people to their speaking events:

“Feminazi’s Beware.”
“Where are MY reparations?”
“What women really want.”

Yet in spite of conservative tactics like these, David Horowitz continues to claim that it is the left that is intolerant, while the white Christian male is the downtrodden oppressed. I missed him earlier in the day, but I saw him last night at Heritage so ‘sall good.

Satin

When I was a young teen my best friend had a scooter. We rode it all over town before we were old enough to get a real driver’s license, and Miss Fartblossom always me wear the stupid-looking helmet so it wouldn’t mess up her hair. We called it the Razz, a likely name considering it was the model of the scooter and painted directly on the front.

One day we were riding around town in the moped and got the bright idea that we needed to graffiti something in a campus parking garage. We drove back to Kmart and picked up two cans of spraypaint. On the way back we tried to decide what we would write. She decided to write “The Razz is the shit.” I can’t remember what I had planned on.

Miss Fartblossom was paranoid that we would get caught, so the plan was to do it as quickly as possible, ride away before we got caught, and come back later to survey our work.

The plan unfolded as follows: We got to the top of the garage, whipped out the spraypaint, she squealed wtih glee as she wrote, I kicked my can because it wouldn’t work, and we scurried back onto the scooter and rode away, little rebels that we were. It took all of thirty seconds.

Later we returned to admire her artwork. We took one look and I threw back my head in laughter. It read, “The is th sht.”

The important lesson learned: If you’re going to graffiti something in a public place, make sure you spell it correctly.

Interview on Feminism with Bob Hayes

Over this next week or so I will be in the midst of an email-based conversation with Bob Hayes quite like the one that Ampersand did last month on progressivism. Bob seems like a nice guy and has set the terms of the interview in my favor. I’m looking forward to reading the range of responses the interview will provoke.

I just got my first set of questions. We’re underway! Anyone have anything specific about feminism or feminist theory you’d like me to needle in?

Bonus Cat Blogging

I think somebody is hot.

In other news, I got word from my parents that they have reached Michigan. I talked to Ethan while he romped in the lake.

And us? Obviously Pablo, Doug and I are sweating our, uh, furry asses off.

Gigapixl Project

Check out this project:

If you are reading this text on a 1280×1024 computer monitor, a one-gigapixel Gigapxl? image would be 35 of your screens wide and 22 screens tall. A four-gigapixel image is twice as wide and twice as high?that is, 70 screens wide and 44 screens tall. When printed at the highest resolution discernable by the human eye, these images range from 5×10 feet up to 10×20 feet in size. Compared to leading 6-megapixel digital cameras, a Gigapxl? image has between 160 and 666 times the number of pixels. It also resolves an independent color triplet at each pixel unlike Bayer-pattern digital cameras. These images are big and sharp beyond anything you are likely to have seen in your life.

Sez Alex at After School Snack,

A photo of the Bixby Bridge allows one to zoom in on the face of a person sitting on the bridge, too small to see in the full photograph.

I really like the zooms on the shuttle launch.

The Blog Follows

The Lexington Herald-Leader today contains an article that begins, “The young lawyer whom Kentucky Chief Justice Joseph Lambert yesterday named his chief of staff has strong opinions about Democrats, gay marriage and other hot-button topics, and until recently he enjoyed posting them on the Internet.

Jason Nemes, 27, a former Republican congressional aide, discontinued his personal blog — with posts such as ‘Democrats are anti-American’ and ‘Does a fetus feel pain?’ — before taking a job at the state Supreme Court.”

The newspaper also offers a related item consisting of “Excerpts from the blog.”

Those excepts are a doozy. I love what he has to say about vibrators.

Now, as Lambert’s chief of staff and general counsel, making $117,804 a year, Nemes will help the chief justice as he operates the statewide courts system and issues opinions that define Kentucky law.

Nemes said he intended for many of his Web postings to be taken only half-seriously. For example, he said, he does not hate Democrats.

“I had no idea I’d be working for the Supreme Court. If I did, maybe I’d have done things a little differently,” he said. “You create these (Web) sites out of a sense of entertainment, and you say some things to be provocative, just to get a response.”

Just like Anne Coulter! Is there a Republican list of talking points and canned responses to legit accusations against their politics?

I’ve said a few things just to be provocative, and the responses I provoked were enough to know that from then on out it was my job to be honest. Honestly stupid at times, but hey, at least I can admit that.

via TalkLeft

The Disneyfication of Feminism

Screenwriters may have internalized them, graduate schools may have assimilated them, but contemporary romantic comedy heroines are pure corporate product, a desperately pandering and clueless assemblage of received notions, sexual anxiety and recycled focus-group-think handed down over the years like Grandma’s cheesecake recipe.

and

Romantic comedy heroines aren’t characters anymore, they’re tranquilizers. They provide exactly what love does not, in a way it wouldn’t if it did. They’re designed to fan the fantasies, soothe the disappointment and calm the frayed nerves that come later. And to do that, they must be built to specifications.

via Ms. Musings

My Cat Ate My Homework

Doug actually ate my fucking homework.

Friday Random Ten – The Not Going On Vacation Edition

My whole family including Ethan is headed for the annual family vacation to a lake house in Michigan for a full week of summer fun. Me? I’m in class taking a test. Number of times I’ve been able to enjoy the summer week at the lake house? Zero. Summer classes, baby, and there is a lot of work waiting for me this weekend.

The good news is that I’ll be on vacation next weekend. In Arkansas! Yeah! My only hope is that my Friday Random Ten will bring me good luck and favor with St. Lauren, patron saint of the Left Behind.

Joy.