Monday, June 23, 2008

I don't like Mondays

The ever-intrepid Mr Daisy has just returned from HeroesCon in Charlotte this weekend, where he met up with these familiar folks. (Left: photo by Mr Daisy)

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For those of you concerned that I would go through my whole life with a redneck vehicle, rest assured, I just spent three hours at PEP BOYS getting my window fixed. As the southerners say, it weren't cheap.

I sat there trying to stay centered and calm, as my promised hour-long wait stretched into infinity, and Tim McGraw and Gretchen Wilson and The Young and the Restless (all broadcast simultaneously at 96 decibels for your listening pleasure) nearly did me in and gave me a roaring headache besides.

I tried to concentrate on my spiritually-enlightening reading, Qi Journal, but alas, it was just so weird and otherworldly in the context of noisy vehicle repair, retail-car parts, the intoxicating scent of rubber tires and the blasting of multiple jacked-up televisions and radios... I ended up putting the high-minded reading away, getting a Dr Pepper out of the vending machine (as you might know, this isn't like me) and settling in to watch some scenery-chewing actress get married to a much older fellow on The Young and the Restless. (I guess I shouldn't complain, soaps are the last place on TV to employ older actresses who actually look and play their advanced ages.)

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Some random Monday links:


GREAT NEWS! Convictions have been successfully overturned for 2 of the New Jersey 4, now known as the Newark 4. Terrain Dandridge and Renata Hill have finally had their bullshit convictions overturned, while the cases of Patreese Johnson and Venice Brown are still pending appeals. Kenyon Farrow speaks for many of us when he shouts HALLELUYAH! (I initially wrote about the case here.)

In local upstate South Carolina news: Clemson football player DeAndre McDaniel has been charged with assault in a domestic violence situation. McDaniel, 20, is charged with assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature. The warrant claims he beat and choked the 19-year-old female victim, name not released.

Only 16% of the electorate voted in our recent state primary. Really pitiful. Ted Christian's runoff election is tomorrow, and we are once again busting ass. But it's very difficult to determine who is actually voting (and therefore how to funnel our limited resources) when the target group is so small.

Have people decided that democracy doesn't work? Have they given up?

Fun link to me and another feminist blogger (named Abby) having an argument over "single-issue feminism" as recently described by the Washington Post's Linda Hirschman... at least, if Abby doesn't end up deleting the thread in a huff, which seems entirely likely. For more background, go here, here and here. My favorite excerpt in the now-infamous Hirschman article was when Sudy is described thusly:
After the Center for New Words's diverse and inclusive "Women, Action and the Media" conference this past April, the blogosphere erupted with charges and countercharges. Bloggers like "Sudy," a self-described "Filipina of mesmerizing volcanic eruptions," declared some of the conference's female subjects to be synthetic: "I . . . don't believe that simply putting a womyn's face where a man's face once was is going to solve our problems . . . by Real Womyn I am talking about womyn of color, incarcerated womyn, migrant womyn, womyn at the border, womyn gripped in violence, rape, and war."

What does Sudy's self-description have to do with her quote? Were any of the white bloggers described (in the article) by using the colorful words in their own profile? This seems like a handy-dandy way to make Sudy look even more exoticized, marginalized and out-of-place.

(((sigh)))

EDIT: I won't be replying again at Abby's, because I don't want her yanking the whole thread and I thought she would prefer to have the last word. But if anyone wants to continue discussion here, please feel free.

AND LAST BUT CERTAINLY NOT LEAST! To the guy who sent me the SC politics "news tip" via email, you used a lot of state-government lingo and I'm afraid I didn't get it. And what is this sooper-seekrit website you speak of, can anyone look at it or only state employees? WRITE BACK!

Sorry I am so slipshod in replying--I suppose I'll never be Pulitzer prize material.

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I don't like Mondays - Boomtown Rats

[via FoxyTunes / The Boomtown Rats]