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Sunday, November 22nd, 2009
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10:26 pm - Welcome to MY world...
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Check it out:
The "cat tower building lady"? I know her--I took improv classes with her at the the Comedy Shrine (she sent me the link). And no, I don't know if she actually has 22 cats.
current mood:  scared
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(comment on this)
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| Saturday, August 8th, 2009
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12:29 am - The voice of a generation (?)
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I found an old article on Wikinews: an interview with Billy West, best known for playing the voice of Stimpy (and later Ren), Philip J. Fry, and others.
It's perversely fascinating reading; it's also pretty weird. How many interviewers would ask a guy who got famous for talking about his "Stupomotron Helmet" a question like "Do you think we live in a fear based society?" But that's kind of why it's fascinating: the interviewer got carried away with his subject, and it makes for a very unguarded read.
current mood:  pensive
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(comment on this)
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| Sunday, July 19th, 2009
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1:42 pm - The last to know
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How ignorant can I sometimes be? Well, here's an example:
I've loved the song "Venus" by Shocking Blue for years, even before Bananarama had a hit cover in (has it really been that long?) 1986. They used to play it on the oldies station my Mom would listen to, and I dug it; ever since, I always noticed when it came on the radio. I had the sort of personal relationship you can get with a particular song--it always brings a smile to your face when you encounter it again. And this had been going on twenty years. There was just one thing I'd missed in that time...
I didn't realize until today that a singer was a woman:
Honestly, I didn't--I'd never seen a video, never thought to look up the band. I thought it was a high-pitched male voice, not a contralto.
current mood:  embarrassed
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(comment on this)
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12:11 am - And there's still more!!
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| Saturday, July 18th, 2009
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10:00 pm - Your moment of Zen
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| Monday, June 1st, 2009
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9:00 pm - Ganked from DMFA
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| Monday, May 25th, 2009
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9:39 pm - Ganked from Campion7
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8:49 pm - She Dreamed A Dream
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I was studying all this about Susan Boyle, and two thoughts occur to me:
- She undeniably has The Voice; and watching her bring down the house (and shut Simon up) brought a tear to even my jaundiced eye
- Every major media discussion of her makes a point of her "triumph" over her "ordinary appearance": phrases like "isn't attractive...ordinary...everywoman as opposed to an untouchable fantasy goddess...unprepossessing," and so on seed each article. And all of that, as it stacks up, seems to me rather pernicious.
If, whilst enjoying the heartwarming uplift of Susan's Cinderella story, you notice a queer aftertaste, perhaps you're recognizing that the hidden point of this narrative is we're supposed to think she's ugly. Physical attractiveness is just as important to her story as it is to Giselle Bundchen's. And if you find it a little disturbing to see that paraded as some sort of victory over prejudice, join the club.
BTW, I don't think this is Susan's fault; for the record, I don't even think she's ugly. But it's disturbing to notice such forces at work in pop culture.
current mood:  enraged
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(comment on this)
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| Monday, May 11th, 2009
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9:20 pm - From Snark ideas come Snark products...Snark!
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"What's your company called?"
"'Very Comfortable Sassy Pants and Modems, Yes.' It...doesn't really translate well into English."
current mood:  giddy
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(comment on this)
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| Monday, February 16th, 2009
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9:46 pm - Attack of the Fashionistas
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There was an article in the Live! section of today's Trib I found interesting.
Back in high school (middle school, too, come to think of it), I knew a girl. (Imagine that! No, really...) Because of the lexicographic similarity of our last names, we often ended up sitting near one another, which was about the only thing we had in common: in the landscape of high school social strata, we couldn't have been farther apart. She was into the whole teenage-suburbabnite-upper-middle-class-girl thing, while I was already incubating in nerd culture. Needless to say, we had little to say to each other.
Girl's gone and done well for herself, it would seem. Considering the Danielle I knew back then, this seems an entirely natural life trajectory for her.
You'd think I'm being snotty in reporting this, but to my surprise as well, I'm not. I find I don't have it in me to be contemptuous of Danielle; she found a way to be a success doing something she loves. How could I snub her for that? The girl's no fool--no fool could run a business in this economy, after all.
I could harrumph about the celebration of conspicuous consumption, but that finally seems too boring to be worth the effort. Consumption is the hydraulic fluid of the capitalist machinery, after all; and my own pleasures in buying new gadgetry at Fry's or wherever else is too similar for me to sneer at someone else's retail therapy.
Really, the only thing I can feel is a sort of gentle amusement. If the appeal of what she's doing with her life is entirely unfathomable to me, I'm certain she'd have much the same to say about mine. All I can do is raise my beer and offer a toast across the room to her success.
Well, that and comment on the pure freakish serendipity of it all: it was only on Saturday I finally (Finally! After all this time!) got onto Facebook, and happened to see her name whilst trolling the list of fellow graduates of my high school year. To then find the same person in the paper just two days later is one of those moments when you realize whoever runs the universe has a pretty weird sense of humor.
current mood:  quixotic
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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| Sunday, December 28th, 2008
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1:10 am - Nine kinds of awesome...
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| Thursday, November 13th, 2008
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9:58 pm - Programmer's Corner
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Description in the error log: "Abnormal sensitivity to unexpected input."
current mood:  bouncy
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(comment on this)
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| Thursday, October 16th, 2008
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9:46 pm
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Ganked from Riley's blog:
This is Your Nation on White Privilege
By Tim Wise / September 13, 2008
For those who still can't grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.
White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.
White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fuckin' redneck," like Bristol Palin's boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll "kick their fuckin' ass," and talk about how you like to "shoot shit" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.
White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.
White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don't all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you're "untested."
White privilege is being able to say that you support the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance because "if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it's good enough for me," and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the "under God" part wasn't added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.
White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.
White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was "Alaska first," and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she's being disrespectful.
White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you're being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college--you're somehow being mean, or even sexist.
White privilege is being able to convince white women who don't even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a "second look."
White privilege is being able to fire people who didn't support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.
White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God's punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you're just a good church-going Christian, but if you're black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you're an extremist who probably hates America.
White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a "trick question," while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O'Reilly means you're dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.
White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it a "light" burden.
And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren't sure about that whole "change" thing. Ya know, it's just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain
White privilege is, in short, the problem.
current mood:  determined
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(comment on this)
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9:44 pm - More Muppets...
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| Wednesday, October 15th, 2008
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5:09 pm - Nuggets 'O Wisdom
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Guilt: A way of feeling bad about about something gone wrong that distracts you from fixing it.
Shame: A way of feeling bad about enjoying something you think other people might disapprove of.
current mood:  contemplative
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(comment on this)
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| Tuesday, October 7th, 2008
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9:57 pm - Ahh, Muppety goodness...
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Ahhh, it's been years since I'd seen this little trinket...what I won't do to watch Kermit get apoplectic...
And while we're on Muppets, anybody who can tell me what this song is, I'll buy 'em lunch, cuz I can't place it:
current mood: bouncy
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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| Sunday, October 5th, 2008
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11:09 pm - Amen, sistah...
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| Friday, October 3rd, 2008
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9:36 pm - Ernö Rubik, you been pwned
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| Saturday, June 21st, 2008
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8:09 pm - Made of awesome
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From Sinfest:
Slicky: Hey 'Nique, wanna go see the new Devil Move with me?
Monique: What-Michael Bay has a new movie out?
Slicky: No, the other devil.
current mood:  refreshed
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, April 1st, 2008
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12:01 am - Too easily amused...
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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
waveform_delta's journal
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