These were taken when I still liked the Gang of Two; y’know, before I caught Mingo peeing in my closet this morning.
Fanty & Mingo in a pile of blankets
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Archive for Deborah Lipp
Friday Kittenblogging
Interview with Dan Savage
Dan Savage writes a weekly advise column for The Onion‘s AV Club. This week, AV Club interviews him. It’s a joy to read from start to finish. It’s smart, it’s weird, it’s funny, it’s incredibly diverse. In fact, I insist you read the whole thing.
Here’s an excerpt.
I actually think the solution to homophobia is eradicating misogyny. I think a lot of homophobia is hatred of women repackaged, ’cause gay men seem to preoccupy homophobes the most. It’s usually about anal sex, and gay men are perceived as taking on the woman’s role, and women are despised. The woman’s role is less-than. And in a male-supremacy culture, men who take on the woman’s role willingly kind of freak out some of the dudes. If you could eradicate misogyny, homophobia would evaporate. That’s why I always tell women, “If you’re dating a homophobe, you’re dating a guy who’s secretly a misogynist, who secretly hates you. And you shouldn’t.”
The Back of the Vegetable Truck
I don’t normally do this sort of post, but this just cracked me up.
AmericaBlog has this excerpt of CNN’s Jack Cafferty discussing Boehner.
CAFFERTY: These guys are either arrogant or stupid and neither of those is a good thing if you’re going to be the House majority leader–am I missing something here? Where’s the reform part? I wonder how long this guy is going to last.
WOLF: You did hear Ed Henry say that it is a basement apartment which is not necessarily all that desirable—
CAFFERTY: Yea…and pigs fly upside down and the moon is made of green cheese and there’s no quid pro quo from a lobbyist who is also your landlord? Do I look like I just fell out of the back of a vegetable truck to you?
Vegetable truck! LOL! The lovely thing is all those eggplants and cabbages in the Republican party will believe it.
Yahoo provides Chinese police with dissident data
Reporters Without Borders is reporting that Yahoo has been turning over information (email addresses, attachments) to the Chinese government, leading to the arrest and imprisonment of political dissidents. » Read more..
What Sign *Should* You Be
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You Should Be A Capricorn |
 What’s good about you: hard working and ambitious, you’re practically a guaranteed success What’s bad about you: you can be unforgiving toward people who fail you In love: you’re very picky, but extremely devoted to the one you choose In friendship, you’re: likely to be a good friend but expect a lot in return Your ideal job: rock climber, sculptor, or practitioner of black magic Your sense of fashion: preppy and put together You like to pig out on: meat and potatoes |
It Just Feels Right
One of the hardest things to learn is that your gut feeling is not my gut feeling.
Don’t trust your gut.
Okay, go ahead and trust your gut for you. That’s good sense. That’s using your intuition wisely. But your gut feeling is not an indicator of human gut feeling. How you feel doesn’t tell us how “all men” or “all women” or “all parents” or “all teenagers” feel. (When I see the ubiquitous “What do women want?” “What do men find attractive?” message board plaint, I am often tempted to ask if the poster really believes that all men/women/girls/boys are the same.)
No one seems to know this, yet the knowledge is crucial. So get this: Just because homosexuality squicks you out, doesn’t mean it is against nature. It just means it squicks you. Just because polyamory offends your sensibilities doesn’t mean it is inherently offensive. Just because your gut says “wrong, wrong, wrong” when you think of aborting a fetus, doesn’t mean that this is the right and normal way for a woman to feel.
Years ago, I got into an abortion argument with a friend and I said that to me it felt, viscerally, really violating to have anyone tell me what to do with my uterus (in fact I said it felt as bad to be told not to have children as to be told not to abort). He said it was all well and good that I felt that way, but his wife’s viscera were every bit as trustworthy as mine, and she felt differently.
He was right. Basing an argument about choice on my gut feeling was wrong. But the thing is, lots of arguments are based on that. The whole anti-gay propoganda machine is all about that it feels unnatural to straight people. And it does feel unnatural; if you visualize screwing someone you don’t want to screw, that feels ew yuck oh no no way no. (It feels especially unnatural to people in denial about their own gayness, but that’s another story.)
What’s needed in our world, in many arenas, is for people to unhook from the idea that they can predict nature, right, wrong, and all of human society based on what makes them go “ick.”
Monday Movie Review: I Married a Witch
I Married a Witch (1942) 5/10
In the 1600s in New England, Jonathan Wooley (Frederic March) condemns a witch (Veronica Lake) and her father to burn. She curses Wooley and all his descendents to be unlucky in love. In 1942 a chance lightning bolt frees father and daughter from their supernatural prison, and they decide to plague Wooley’s descendent (also March) on the eve of his wedding and as he’s about to be elected governor.
I have a problem with dumb comic fantasies: I get caught up in the plot. I want it to make sense; or at least enough sense so that I stop worrying about whether or not it makes sense. And this one just utterly failed on that level. » Read more..
What Firefly/Serenity Character Are You?
You are HOBAN WASHBURN, or simply “Wash”.
You are the ever-quirky pilot of Serenity and husband to first mate Zoe. You willingly admit your bouts with cowardice, wear garish Hawaiian shirts, and play with dinosaurs.
You always provide the comic relief and demonstrate true dedication to your wife.
**Which Firefly/Serenity Character Are You?**
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Sad news from the land of data recovery
My friend Glenn came over with his data recovery tools, and after many attempts was finally able to read from my former hard drive. (My ex-c?) It took hours to read the files once it recognized there was a drive, and after hours and hours of waiting the results were…
No readable files. Six years of movie reviews…gone. Three book outlines for books I haven’t yet written…gone. Lesson learned…priceless.
Liberal Hollywood
In a previous post, I suggest that Westerns are an iconically conservative movie genre, and suggested The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance as something like the conservative movie. I wondered what an iconically liberal genre might be, and what movies were quintessentially liberal.
Despite all that “liberal Hollywood” talk, it hasn’t been an easy exercise. Lots of genres tend to embody conservative values; many “law & order” action movies, all those Rambo and Death Wish things, and there’s a strong punish-the-slut current in most horror.
In the previous post and its comments section, we came up with a short list of liberal movies:
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- 12 Angry Men
- All the President’s Men
- Inherit the Wind
- Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
- Silkwood
- Dances with Wolves
Over dinner, I thought of a few more:
- The China Syndrome
- Erin Brokovich
- Norma Rae
(and here comes the one I think is quintessential)
- The Grapes of Wrath
This starts to look like the courtroom drama is the liberal genre, with the battle for an underdog’s rights being the liberal theme.
So, now it’s your turn. What do you think are the quintessential liberal genre(s) and movie(s)?
