The music is a bit much

but the message is effective: Who's On The Line by wgaamerica, via Ducky Does TV.

New Additions to the Store!

Let people know how you really feel:


Be proud of who you are:


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Excitement!

I just opened The Official Steve the Penguin Store at CafePress.com! Featured above is one of the premiere items in the Steve the Penguin collection. It's my favorite shirt so far, but there will be more soon. For now, enjoy the other pieces that are also available:

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If you see one movie this year,

make it this one:

"Who's the third guy again?"

Guess Who Thinks Rape Is Hilarious Now?, by Melissa McEwan at Shakesville, via Feministe.

Maybe this is why I haven't watched a Will Ferrell movie since Talladega Nights.

How I spent my Thanksgiving plane ride home:

Yes, High School Musical 2 was my inflight entertainment. I was thrilled. I was also probably the only passenger singing along. Who else would be silly enough to stay up watching Zac Efron dance on a tiny beveled television screen?

I still can't believe the flight attendants didn't feed us anything on our five-and-a-half hour flight. Not even a tiny breakfast muffin. My plastic cup of orange juice did not cut it.

Here's what got me through a hefty patch of turbulence:



Corbin Bleu, I've got game. I can show you how I swing, too!
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"That's some catchy racism!"

The 9 Most Racist Disney Characters, by Ben Joseph at Cracked, via Racialicious.

These old Disney movies are a little bit like your aging Uncle Frank. Honestly, he means well when he points out that Will Smith is "well-spoken." It's just that he, like the assemblage of clips below, dates from a time when people were unfairly characterized by their ethnic background (the acceptable methods are, of course, religion, geography, sexual preference and income) . . .

Commenter trey (and his many like-minded friends) puts us critical-thinkers in our place by pointing out who the real racists are. Emphases mine, typos his:

People like you that can take anything and make it into a racist issue make me sick. Most of these things are just silly and by pointing them out you are being more racist than the person that created them. I think it's racist to say every theif on television should be white because it might offend someone of another ethnicity. It's not like there were only Asian bad guys on chip and dale. There were white ones too but no one ever pointed them out and said they are thieves because they are white. You just said that they were thieves becaise they were Asian. Do you see how your the one being racist? Most of this is just silly like the comment about African Americans not existing in Fantasia. What you would rather Disney leave the racist portion in the movie? You know good and well that you would still be mad. You my friend are racist for pointing out people of different skin colors and talking about their behaviors because of it. You're causing more hurt than help.

Oh trey. If only someone could help people like you.

Same problem, different day.

I just had to click on the link on the Defamer home page: Book Report: Teenage Girls Are Seeing Red, on Jezebel.

Last night, there was a reading and party for Red, a collection of essays by teenage girls. So what exactly is going on with teenage girls today? They're pissed! Basically nothing's changed, 'cause we were some angst-y ass teens...

That seems cool, right? Except that every girl and woman featured in the photo gallery on the Jezebel page is white or some kind of light-skinned. Somehow it makes Gossip Girl look like the United Nations. Commenter Newlywed muses:

i guess brown girls don't have any place in pre-pubescent literary works...why isn't there even a token? :(

It's the same sentiment others have expressed during the debut of the book How Sassy Changed My Life: A Love Letter to the Greatest Teen Magazine of All Time. Well, I can't find them right now, but they were mentioned briefly in the book. Maybe it was in the Summer 2007 issue of Bitch magazine. This halifax_slasher person shares some of my views:

. . . Like all teen magazines, Sassy was forced to provide so-called complementary copy (Ed. note: read this article by Gloria Steinem) for its advertisers, shilling their products in alleged articles. And although Sassy prided itself in getting away from the "bland, blonde" cover models of other teen magazines, its cover models were beautiful skinny girls who were occasionally "ethnic." I suppose in the field of magazines this may seem progressive (considering Cosmo has something like one black cover model every decade or so), but it still teaches us what girls are for . . .

Most the content inside the magazine was also written for, by and about "indie" white people. The magazine wasn't as subversive and rebellious as the editors deluded themselves into believing it was. Similarly, it's great that the book Red is written by teenage girls; but if those girls are all white, and quite possibly all upper-middle class, it's not a progressive movement at all.
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I'm still not changing my name.

Buffy the Name-Taker, by Ann at Feministing.

As a fifth anniversary gift to her husband, Freddie Prince, Jr., Sarah Michelle Gellar has changed her name to Sarah Michelle Prinze.

"On their anniversary, she showed [Freddie] her new driver's license," the source tells Us. "It was so sweet."

Despite the fact that Gellar Prinze has said she isn't a feminist, I was still pretty surprised by this. Does the concept of giving away your own name as a birthday gift seem a little fucked up to anyone else? It doesn't strike me as weird to change your name of your own accord, even several years into the marriage. But framing it as a "gift" makes it seem like a sacrifice rather than something she wanted to do for herself. Kind of like the difference between "I got a boob job because I wanted one" and "I got a boob job for my husband's birthday."

From the comments section on Defamer, Bufflekins weighs in on this announcement:

If only Reese Witherspoon had changed her name to Reese Phillippe...perhaps it could have changed so very much. Sigh. Oh well, so much poignant history.

String_Bean_Jen sums up my sentiments in the Feministing comments:

My insides always sag a little when I hear about women changing their surnames to their partners' upon marriage. It is practically the only 'choice' confronting women that I remain absolutely rigid on saying no to when it comes to calling one's self a feminist. I think it is a practice that needs to die and I have yet to hear/read a smart, solid argument about why a woman should or would choose to change her surname to her partner's upon marriage (or in this case, 5 years after marriage), even on this fabulous blog/forum.

And another gem from cherylp:

If it was really free choice, maybe the majority of society would acknowledge that I even have a choice... Yes women have a choice. By law. But in fact, the patriarchy places so much pressure on women to make one particular choice...

You are awesome, antigone. If it was truly a choice, wouldn't people choose things at about the same rate? But they don't, suggesting something else is going on.

This reminds me of the argument I've had a bazillion times about marriage with my mother (I'm not keen on participating). By all means, 'technically' I have a choice about that... but then why do 95% of people still do the same thing? I mean, wouldn't it be like 50/50 if it was a real choice?

But I like clams.

From day ten. by pamie at pamie.com.

...Andy Gordon is the person who taught me what a "clam" is. He taught me by pointing out that I'd written one in my first script that was to be produced for television. He pointed it out by shouting it to everyone in the room.

You see, a clam is not a good thing...

I hadn't meant to put a clam in my first script...an Oprah joke during an Oprah-themed episode of television. That's a lot of Oprah jokes! And some of them got pretty clammy. I'd shorthanded a "What happens with Oprah stays with Oprah" joke that I meant to replace and somehow I forgot, and we're at the first table read in the writers' room, and Andy -- who is normally quite jovial and jokey with me, is all squirming and frowning and making these faces like I'm kicking him in the stomach. And we get to this joke and he shouts out as if he can't contain anything anymore, "Jesus Christ, can we do something about this CLAM on page thirty? It makes me want to KILL MYSELF."

~

Anyway, the other day, while rallying at the rally, a few of us started thinking of clams to write on our signs, to show our solidarity with other hack writers. Alex, Jessi, Rafael, Laura, and later Sara, all contributed to these gems.


"Could I BE any more on strike?"
"Note to self: Striking sucks."
"Hello.... strike."
"Strike is the new Job."
"WE WERE ON A STRIKE!"
"What happens on strike, stays on strike."
"And by 'strike,' I mean asking-for-four-more-cents-on-DVD-residuals and by 'Picket' I mean wanting-a-cut-of-the-revenue-on-Internet-downloads-and-new-media." (our demands are a bit wordy.)
"So we're striking? ....Awkward."
"Wassssstriiiiike!"
"We're literally on strike."


Just a few I remember before we depressed ourselves.

But those clams were funny. In that context. Not as actual jokes on TV. I get the funny because of the irony of how trite the jokes are. My humor is an acquired taste, as are the rest of my qualities.

The Day After

I'm currently watching pretty much the scariest movie I could watch, considering the current geopolitical climate. I saw The Day After for the first time during middle school. That was in 1994. During the Clinton administration. There was absolutely nothing to worry about. My classmates and I were watching this movie in our health class thinking about how scary it was back in the 80s to have to worry about the Cold War and nuclear holocaust. And then we moved on to our next class and went about our business.

Even the next year when we had the hurricane, it was bad, but not mushroom cloud bad. Yes, the island did look like a bomb hit it, but we didn't have to worry about breathing the air. Most importantly, in 1995, under the Clinton administration, FEMA was a highly functioning agency. Things got done. People got food, water, blankets.

Amazingly, watching this TV movie about a man-made (emphasis on man) disaster has made me feel better about my dilemmas. I feel patient now. I feel better about my proposed solutions. They aren't the ones I wanted. They aren't the things I planned for. They are what I have to deal with now.

I'm miserable

for many reasons, including the previous post on Windows Vista. Here are some more videos to explain this computer problem of mine:

Here's the problem:

My old printer stopped working with my new computer. Now other stuff that came embedding in the computer have stopped working as well. I thought it was just me and my computer. No. It's not. It took that guy from Dodgeball and that guy from The Daily Show to make me realize what the problem is:



It's not like I had a choice of operating systems. Windows Vista is what came with the computer. I don't think Windows XP is even offered on new PCs anymore. I would downgrade to Windows XP on my new computer if I could. This is so annoying. I don't care if Bill Gates is helping poor people across the world. Right now, he is making my life miserable.

"Either Chinese, or some black dude – who can remember?"

This article has caused quite the controversy on Racialicious and many other blogs. It's a blogoversy. Someone write that down!


The Real Thing, by Tama Janowitz, New York Times Blog.

My husband Tim and I adopted our daughter Willow, who is now 12, from China when she was 9 months old. We were told by the adoption agency that once the process was complete and the three of us were back home, many people would stop to inquire about our daughter’s Mongolian features or why she did not look like us.

It may be that having a child of a different ethnic background from yourself is more difficult in other parts of the country. And certainly that may lead to problems. But In my neighborhood in Brooklyn I see black women with half-Asian, half-black kids and I see kids with dark skin and blond hair — the mother is white, the father is not. There are Indian fathers and Caucasian mothers with their offspring. There are families with two dads. There are also Hasidic families with ten kids and Muslim women dressed in full burkas who have dressed their daughters the same way.

So here in New York City, we haven’t attracted too much attention.

Well, O.K., sometimes.

It is true when she was a baby, if I took her out on my own, sometimes people did ask me, “Is the father Chinese?” If I said “yes” the usual response was “Good for you!” This puzzled me, so then I just said, “Either Chinese, or some black dude – who can remember?”

Yes, who can remember? Aren't all multiracial-looking babies the products of promiscuity? I know my nephews and nieces are. So are my mixed friends. Their parents obviously had no shame in their game. I'm hilarious!

Here is the passage that most other people are writing about:

A girlfriend who is now on the waiting list for a child from Ethiopia says that the talk of her adoption group is a recently published book in which many Midwestern Asian adoptees now entering their 30s and 40s complain bitterly about being treated as if they did not come from a different cultural background. They feel that this treatment was an attempt to blot out their differences, and because of this, they resent their adoptive parents.

So in a way it is kind of nice to know as a parent of a child, biological or otherwise – whatever you do is going to be wrong. Like I say to Willow: “Well, you know, if you were still in China you would be working in a factory for 14 hours a day with only limited bathroom breaks!”

And she says — as has been said by children since time immemorial — “So what, I don’t care. I would rather do that than be here anyway.”

My favorite response so far comes from Sarah Kim, who reminds me that sharing your story with others is very important, for everyone involved: To Willow Janowitz: You’re not alone….

What made me incredibly sad while reading the post was thinking about the all-too-real pain that the blogger’s daughter, one Willow Janowitz, must be experiencing at being the butt of her high-profile mother’s jokes. Whether or not she has read or will read “The Real Thing” (and whether or not she will read/not read my little blog post here), I would like to say to you, Willow, that you are not alone. There are hundreds of thousands of other adoptees who, like you, have grown up in families where the insatiable need to normalize, to forget, to erase difference drives parents to say such (unintentionally) hurtful things to their children. It is so hard—SO HARD—as a 12-year-old transracially/transnationally adopted child to articulate why we sometimes feel conflicted, confused, and sad. And so sometimes we express this complex whirl of unremembered memories, feelings, and thoughts in reduced phrases—”I hate you.” . . .

So yes, Willow, I agree with your mother in that I do think you should write everything down. Girl, write all of this shit down. So not only can you tell your therapist (there is no shame in therapy!!!), you can tell the other adult adoptees that I hope you will one day meet. Because there are a lot of us. In fact, there is a global community of us. We are out there (even though by reading the NYT one wouldn’t think so), and we have voices, and we support one another. And we would support you . . .

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It took long enough.

America's war returnees: many troubles but more help, by Gordon Lubold, Christian Science Monitor via Yahoo! News.

Nearly five years into the war in Iraq, the US Army has taken steps to improve the process by which it screens soldiers returning from war.

Many have trouble transitioning from combat dangers to a normal routine at home. But sometimes just identifying the problem is the issue.

The Army has improved its process by adding a second mental-health assessment three to six months after its initial screening, which is completed as soon as a soldier returns from war. This second screening has allowed the Army to unmask troubling trends among its soldiers: a fourfold increase in relationship problems compared with those reported in the first assessment, a surge of major depression among many, and increased alcohol abuse.

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Lost in Translation

For the past week, I have been trying to set up my old printer with my new computer. It has been such a trial, involving phone calls and emails back and forth. But today, after 40 minutes of trial and error with customer representative Rob, my printer finally works with my new computer. Hooray!

At the end of the call, when Rob asked if I had anymore questions, I told him I had one. Since he pronounced his Hs "hey-ch", like Anne Heche, was he from Canada? He said yes, he's from Nova Scotia. But then I worried that he thought I was making fun of him, like the Road Rules Down Under people did to their Canadian roommate who said "a-boot." I was trying to be nice and friendly since he had been so helpful. But sometimes my quirkiness and whimsy can be misunderstood, even by other people who share my nationality. :(

To emphasize my previous laments,

including I'm a normal person., I should share this with everyone!, Agree to Disagree? and Jigaboos & Wannabees, I offer you the following:

Racist Parents Kidnap Daughter and Try to Force Abortion, by Rachel S. at Alas, a blog, via Racialicious and Rachel's Tavern. Emphases mine.

A few days ago I read a story from Rueters (sic) about a couple from Maine, who kidnapped their 19 year old daughter. They forced her into a car, and tried taking her to New York so they could force her to have an abortion. The daughter escaped and called police while she hid in a store in New Hampshire. The parents have been arrested and held on $100,000 bail. After reading the first couple paragraphs of the story, my immediate reaction was, “I wonder if the potential father is black.” However, the initial article reveals very little about the motive. After my initial read, the only motive I could glean was that the parents were mad that the boyfriend was in jail. But, this story didn’t add up to me. So yesterday, one of my students mentioned the story and said that–the kidnapped woman’s boyfriend is a black man, and the daughter told police that racism was a motive in the kidnapping.

Based on my research on interracial relationships, this story actually fits fairly well into the narratives I have seen in many white families where relatives strongly object to interracial relationships. The only thing that surprises me about the story is that the parents attempted to kidnap this woman; the cases I know of personally generally involve less direct coercion. I know of 2 cases (one in my research and one in another sociological study) where parents of a white person in an interracial relationship suggested, encouraged, and promoted abortion to prevent the birth of a biracial child (I am hesitantly using the term biracial because most of the white relatives would say the child is black.). I also know of other cases where people encouraged white mother’s to place a child for adoption because the child’s father was black, and I know of many situations where white families offered bribes and/or withdrew emotional and/or financial support as a way to discourage an interracial relationship or a pregnancy that resulted from such a relationship. In these cases, white relatives feel they are protecting the family’s reputation, and/or they feel that the relative in the interracial relationship is too naive (especially women) to know what she/he is getting into. White relatives who feel this way believe that birth of a biracial child is a permanent marker of an interracial relationship that will hurt their relative’s social standing (white privilege), and to some extent, I’m sure they are right about this. The irony of this is that many white relatives of interracial couples would be the first to say that race doesn’t matter or that whites do not have unearned privileges, but suddenly when it hits close to home, they change their tune . . .

Readers, I'm not saying that you are like the people mentioned in the article. I'm saying that people like that exist and they are plentiful. Therefore, I'm still alone. :(

[Insert tiny violin here.]

For a conflicting twist, the picture above comes from this article:

Not tonight, dear . . . in fact, not ever, by Dr. Pam Spurr at Times Online, via Feministing. Emphases mine.

Having researched my new book, as well as talked to thousands of men and women over the years, I now firmly believe that too many women see the sexual side of their lives as something to be claimed completely and utterly as their own. That’s fine for single women flexing their sexual muscles.

But once they settle into a relationship, many will continue to do so. This doesn’t make sense to me at all – and unfortunately I’m privy to the heartbreak and distress that goes along with this view . . .

At the risk of being called old-fashioned (though I don’t think that old-fashioned should always have negative connotations) and antifeminist, I’d go so far as to say that for both partners sex could be considered a duty, if it is something that one partner knows would make the other happy. Does he really want to go up on the roof to repair a leak on a Sunday afternoon? Does she really want to take out the rubbish in the pouring rain? No, but partners in relationships do such things because they know that it makes the other happy. Sex should be seen in the same light . . .

I can't even enjoy the rarely featured interracial couple in peace; I have worry about my vaginal duties to my nonexistent husband, too.
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“Teaching men not to rape”

Politicians and Rape: For Once, Good News, by Jill at Feministe. Emphases mine.

This made my day. Tory leader David Cameron is proposing broad educational and service-based responses to sexual assault:

He pledged longer-term funding for rape crisis centres, to change attitudes towards rape through sex education and announced a Tory review of sentencing.

The government says it has taken action to improve conviction rates.

In a speech at the Conservative Women’s Organisation conference, Mr Cameron said: “Studies have shown that as many as one in two young men believe there are some circumstances when it’s okay to force a woman to have sex.

“To my mind, this is an example of moral collapse.”

He called for “widespread cultural change” and warned that society has become increasingly “sexualised” over the past decade, during which time treating women as sex objects has become viewed as “cool”.

He also called for compulsory sex education in schools to drive home the message that sex without consent is a criminal offence.

. . . Acquaintance rape can be a tricky issue, because “no means no” just doesn’t jibe with all of the other messages that men and women received. The sexual power game puts a lot of women on a tightrope between virgin and whore; there’s pressure to have sex, messages that nice girls say no at least once or twice, imaging of sex as domination, assumptions that women will be the “brakes,” shame in giving an enthusiastic “yes” under certain circumstances. Men see the same thing — and they internalize the idea that “no” might mean “yes,” that women get off on being “ravished” and want men to take complete sexual control, that if a woman is in your bed it means she’s consented to doing pretty much whatever you want, that women exist largely for male pleasure . . .

That's what I'm saying, yo. Women shouldn't be the only ones taking rape prevention classes. It's not like they're raping themselves.

Why should I expect anything less?

Update: Innovative, William Morris Putting Assistants Out On The Streets, from Defamer via The Hollywood Reporter. Emphases mine.

As it turns out, those call-rollers who were told that they'd be sacrificing their overtime pay to help their companies weather the writers strike were the lucky ones, as THR confirms that Innovative Artists has laid off about 10 of its assistants, a move the agency's head says is necessary for the firm's survival while the flow of executive-nourishing commission checks slows to a trickle . . .

"If in my judgment I need to make changes ... (or) cut expense accounts, I'm going to do what every one of my competitors is doing," Innovative owner Scott Harris said. "I need to take measures to survive what could be a very lengthy strike. My priority is to keep this business running." Harris said that he has no plans at this time to lay off any executives but that more assistants will probably be let go.

Oh, Scott Harris. One can only hope that none of the assistants you have harmed in the name of "business" end up being your future boss, a boss that emulates the caring and compassion you have consistently displayed.

Two related articles

Ladies! Meet Available Striking Writers, from today's Defamer via Craigslist.

With a male-to-female ratio nearly as favorable as that of the average nuclear submarine crew, there is perhaps no better place for single women to prowl for companionship than their local WGA picket line . . .

And from the May 9, 2007, issue of Defamer: Hollywood Diversity Shocker: White Guys Still Doing All The Writing, which I grouched about earlier this year.

I knew there was something weird and strangely familiar about all of these strike videos. Okay, so there were three (two and a half?) black men featured in the video above. But they weren't writers. And none of the people speaking from the podium were female. Also, when Dennis Haysbert was on the screen, I kept wondering when he would tell us about Allstate's stand.