I was browsing around WordPress in the tag listings when I came across this post, and felt I had to add my own commentary. Mainly because I’m a smartarse, and because I like to show up people who are wrong. It’s called Schadenfreude, and I love it.
There’s a certain amount of political interest there, too, mind. I just am a smartarse first and foremost.
The thing is, while the ERA is probably a great thing to support in principle (although more on that later), the last incarnation of it is dead in the water, being gnawed upon by hungry Constitutional sharks. Read the rest of this entry »
I was feeling fairly well-disposed towards the world lately, but I’ve recently seem some things which have made me rather angry generally.
Specifically, PUMAs. Not the big cats, although I have my own beef with enormous felines (to whit: they want to eat me alive), but the disgruntled supporters of Hillary Clinton; the acronym is variously said to stand for People United Means Action or Party Unity My Ass.
Their initial claim was that because of the various electoral shenanigans and irregularities taking place in the Florida and Michigan primaries, HC had been done out of what was rightfully hers, and that she was unfairly robbed of the nomination. Robbed, I tells ya! Read the rest of this entry »
A Muslim cleric in Saudi Arabia has called on women to wear a full veil, or niqab, that reveals only one eye.
Sheikh Muhammad al-Habadan said showing both eyes encouraged women to use eye make-up to look seductive.
The question of how much of her face a woman should cover is a controversial topic in many Muslim societies.
The niqab is more common in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, but women in much of the Muslim Middle East wear a headscarf which covers only their hair.
Sheikh Habadan, an ultra-conservative cleric who is said to have wide influence among religious Saudis, was answering questions on the Muslim satellite channel al-Majd.
Just… what? For fuck’s sake! So much for religious morality.
I can’t wait for the Christian Right to jump all over this. You know, the same people who say that a woman’s place is in the home, that only men should be in charge. All that good stuff.
When will things turn around in Saudi Arabia and indeed the whole religious world?
Women are not wicked temptresses who are out to destroy the righteousness of innocent and virtuous men. They’re not the source of original sin or lust or whatever. They’re people.
I’m not usually one to advocate invading countries left, right and centre, but this pushes me towards it. And yet, we see no action by any Western governments in this regard.
And you know why? It’s black, stinky and powers cars.
There are some topics on the internet which arouse a lot of ferocious argument. They tend to be pretty obvious – people’s hot buttons are pretty consistent in most cases, whether on the net or off.
The subject of politics figures pretty highly, of course, as does religion, in all its aspects. As an example, the consistently-busiest tag categories on WordPress seem to be on politics, religion, atheism and similar. Read the rest of this entry »
You people ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Lottie made a post about the way that your routinely erase and negate the experiences and agency of domestic violence survivors by refusing to hear the whole story because it doesn’t fit your agenda.
Marcella Chester then replied to the post on her blog and at Feministe. Lottie replied in comments at both places, and we both noted that the passive-aggressive behaviour started with playing with her name.
And then comments along the lines of “Why are you blaming DV victims?” started. The 4th comment in the thread, in fact. Given that the first 3 were by Lottie and Marcella, it might as well be said to be the first.
Lottie’s response was to post about her own decades of suffering from DV, which was promptly ignored by everyone else involved in the thread, who were too intent on saying “Don’t blame the victim!” to notice an actual victim.
The worst thing about your behaviour today, though, is something else entirely
On the Shameless Self-Promotion Sunday thread. Lottie linked to three posts there: the domestic violence post, one about a boycott of McDonald’s and one about Internet trolling. She had made a post earlier about feminist language, but didn’t link to it in that thread.
It has received three times as many hits so far as the domestic violence post. It is not the top post on her blog and it was not linked to on Feministe.
Do you know what you’ve shown us today, Feministe readers? You’ve shown us that the issue of whether feminists use language to suppress dissent is more important to you than the story of a survivor of thirty years of domestic violence.
Way to show where your priorities are; way to show seriously you take your “advocacy” for DV victims, and yes, I did choose that word because Kyle Payne used it, and yes, I do hope it stings.
… that I have not blogged about I Am Legend. And you’d be entirely right to think so. Basically, I’ve not been in a mood to do fiction stuff this week. I know, deplorable lapse. I’ve kind of been busy, both with the move to our spanky new offices at work, and with other stuff.
In the meantime, ladies and gentlemen, Mr Conway Twitty:
Actually, while this is sometimes used as a joke on Family Guy to distract from when a plot point has become a little sticky, Conway Twitty actually had a long and well-respected career as a rock ‘n’ roll musician (in the late 50s and early 60s) and then country musician.
I think the above video really speaks more to his rock roots, but he was definitely a big player in the country scene – he made many appearances on Hee Haw, for example, sold a butt load of albums as a country musician and he dueted with Loretta Lynn. It doesn’t get much more country than that. I’ll probably obtain *coughillegaldownloadcough* an album or two this weekend.
In other non-news, I have also spent a disproportionate amount of time this week becoming addicted to the Order of The Stick, the link to which can now be found in my blogroll, under Toons. Anyone who’s ever played a tabletop RPG will recognise a lot of what’s in it, especially D&Ders, and it made me laugh like a big fool. Go and read it immediately, or fear my +1 mace!
Idiosyncratica. We will be announcing the new topic on the 15th July, for publication on the 1st August, with my choice of topic. No doubt Gary has already written his, using his prophetic magic. Wait, too much time spent reading OoTS. Anyway, that’s the date for the next exercise. All announcements will be done over there, although this week we’ve discussed who’ll be next and inaugurating new members. Anyone wishing to join the hippest, coolest, bestest and most interesting new group for readers and writers on the whole damn interwebs should come on over and join.
This week has also seen some shitflinging in the femisphere: Feministe has been allowing bullying in its comment threads when certain people (OK, me and Lottie) have said some things which were reasonable but unpopular. Many of the commenters over there seem to be suffering a raging case of the passive-aggressives, and apparently the administrators are far too in love with their blog popularity to do anything about it.
That may be a harsh assessment, but I think it’s a fair one. Passive-aggressive behaviour annoys me, mainly because it’s the kind of tactic my parents used on me for years as a vehicle for their emotional and mental abuse. It’s dishonest – if you have a problem, name it. Don’t hint around it.
He’s just been sentenced in the matter of sexually assaulting an unconscious female student, and apparently the State police are investigating him in regards to some child pornography found on his laptop. This has been shaping into a shitstorm of epic proportions; while the story has been around for some time (I first copped to it on Eleanor’s Trousers earlier in the year), it’s only become big following his sentencing, when a bunch of the bigger names in the feminist blog community have started to blog heavily about it, although notably the BIG names, such as Feministing, Pandagon and Alas have rather disgracefully failed to mention it at the time of writing. That being said, that it took the medium-sized bloggers a fair amount of time to notice, too; not exactly on the ball, either.
There’s been some juvenile shitslingingtowardsmale feminists, particularly Hugo Schwyzer, and frankly, it’s bullshit (even as much as I dislike him). The effect that this has on us is relevant too; nobody’s saying that we should ignore the fact that an innocent student was assaulted, and I’d call anyone out that even suggested it.
That said, we’re more or less all in possession of more than a handful of functioning brain cells, and we can discuss things in more than one dimension. None of us are stupid, we’re all adults, and we can bring up the fact that it fucks over a demographic within the feminist community without detracting from the main issue or turning it into a pissing contest. That being said, some peoplehave maintained an admirable and inclusive stance, and they need to be saluted for that.
Yeesh. That was a long old post. I bet you wish I’d stuck to the original plan and finished it after Conway Twitty, don’t you?
I think anyone who visits this blog regularly has by now realised that I am not a frequent blogger. It doesn’t come particularly easy for me, most of the time, and I often just don’t feel like I can be bothered to do it, if I’m honest.
And that leads me to feel a little guilty – which is ridiculous! I know that the Odd Blog isn’t XKCD or Feministing or Alas, A Blog. People aren’t waiting with bated breath for my latest pronouncements on whatever happens to interest me lately; I know some of you turn up whenever I post something (mainly because I have secret cameras installed in your houses), but I also know that you probably aren’t going to be riddled with sorrow if I don’t post anything for a week or two. Read the rest of this entry »
After Dunar’s recent unreasonable behaviour, which included throwing lightning bolts around like a mad bastard, this week’s round up is dedicated to the goddess Frige, who is much more reasonable and sweet-tempered than Dunar.
MichelleObamaWatch.com is keeping an eye on the media for the inevitable racism and misogyny directed towards Michelle Obama that will follow Barack Obama’s (presumptive) nomination (via Ms Andrist).
And finally, congratulations to Anxious Mofo, who’s been linked to by Conservapedia. I’m sure he’s honoured and inspired by their linkage; he shows his appreciation by deconstructing their feeble article on Atheism. Well worth a read.
Well, thanks for waiting. The Anti-Carnival of Douchebags and Arseholes, alternatively known as the dancing festival of wankbags, is finally here. You were all waiting, right?
Anyway, it’s divided into the two categories, with linkage and short explanations for why said person is being put there. After the fold is NSFW, unless you live in an exceptionally weird office. Read the rest of this entry »
Over the weekend, I developed some pain in my lower back. I was rather mystified, as I hadn’t done anything to injure it that I knew of, and it seemed to go away on Monday.
Tuesday saw it come back and be quite painful, and yesterday I was off work all day. It wasn’t a constant pain, but it would twinge and be excruciating, and it seemed to have extended into my right hip, as well. I managed to get up and get dressed, but I couldn’t make it even to the end of the street before it got too bad for me to handle, and so I spent the day at home, saying “Ow…” every so often and feeling self-pitying.
Luckily as it happens, on Tuesday I’d made an appointment with the doctor for today, and I managed to hobble up there this morning to see him.
Apparently the problem is in the Sacroiliac joint, and it is called Sacroiliac joint dysfunction. Basically, it’s a problem of movement where the spine joins the pelvis; it’s very common, usually remedies itself through movement and often comes from simply sleeping in a funny position.
There’s not much to be done about it in the short term except to swallow painkillers and attempt to maintain a normal range of movement. If it remains a persistent problem, I can visit a chiropractor (I would only ever visit a McTimoney’s practitioner, of which there is a school locally). For now, I just have to wait and hope it’ll work itself out.
He also gave me a huge prescription for cocodamol; while I can usually buy it over the counter, it’s also relatively expensive to do so. This way, I get my 200(!) pills for just the cost of a prescription charge, which is cool.
So, nothing to worry too hard about. On the negative side, I did forget to ask about getting a refill on my sleeping pills, even though I don’t use them that often. Oh, well. I can manage without. I have a few left.
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In other news, today is the last day for you to nominate douchebags and arseholes for the anti-carnival; I have a large number, which I will be whittling down to a small core of evil shitheadery for Friday.
Please feel free to nominate anyone who’s annoyed you lately.
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On the opposite end of the spectrum, here are your weekly recommendations in honour of Thor. Cosmodaddy has an interesting and well thought-out piece on his blog at the moment regarding the intersection of various conflicting rights and freedoms under the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation Regulations) Regulations 2007. Well worth a read.
Lottie has A Question of Ethics, in which she discusses the ethics of blogging about personal issues and problems in a truthful manner while using a pseudonym.
Gary talks about Hollywood woo and stupidity, illustrating exactly why Sharon Stone’s opinion on anything besides acting should not be taken seriously.
