Links and whining for your Tuesday

Sign reads: Local peaches on right! (Only a dullard could resist.)

~*~

Still recovering at home, against my will. I have assorted documentation and will therefore get paid anyway, so that is something. No thanks to anti-labor Republicans!

I have debated blogging over my current disaster. But the fact is, it's embarrassing. I'll let you all guess: What is the first sign of getting old? What happens to old ladies, like clockwork? If you guess right, I'll fess up. Pretty shoddy of me, since I like to think I am Big Disability Rights Advocate Womyn!!! Ha, well, I guess not when it's ME, and some rather predictable old-lady thing. But that's how it works, yes? You don't get to choose these things yourself.

Onward, with the linkage, and your required reading/listening.

Aunt B writes some awesomeness about country music. Pertinent quote:

My contention is and has always been that country music and urban music are the fun-house mirror reflections of each other–both share many of the same themes: deep pride in where one is from cut through with a strain of shame and anger about the circumstances one came from; a definition of manliness based in sexual prowess; a fascination with violence and guns; deep pride and anger about being outside of the mainstream; a definition of womanhood that is either based on very traditional notions of femininity or on being able to out-man the men; a love of vehicles; drinking; honoring tradition; and Mama.

And it’s no surprise to see them dancing around each other while very rarely crossing over. You can count the successful, respected white rappers on one hand, and use the other hand to count the successful, black country singers.

I bring all this up because I want to make a point about what country music means in terms of its racial focus and make-up. Country music is not usually “white” music. It’s traditionally specifically for white people who are outside of the mainstream, but who believe themselves to be some kind of bearer of Truth, some authentic experience unavailable to most folks, who are not “regular” folks.

In other words, it’s music of “regular” white people, but white folks who, in claiming regularity are claiming that in opposition to what most white folks have.

This kind of writing is why I am now addicted to Aunt B's blog!

Smirking Chimp reminds us: Think U.S. is moving far left? That terrain's not even close. And he explains why, too, which is the really depressing part.

Speaking of disability activism, check out Crip Chick's post on Sins Invalid, particularly the attractive and riveting Rodney Bell (first clip). Oh my!

When such people exist, why do they give reality TV shows to increasingly uninteresting, boring clones? I ask you: Where is Rodney's show????

The death of trans woman Duanna Johnson is being discussed by many bloggers, and will certainly be part of The International Transgender Day of Remembrance, November 20th.

If there is no event in your city, you could start your own. Here in the most conservative county in the USA, folks usually just meet over coffee and talk about books, blogs, and community--but that is something.

And it means, as always, passing the important knowledge on. And on.

Jill at Feministe points us to a fantastic article in THE ECONOMIST, about the dumbing down of the Republican party:

Many conservatives—particularly lower-income ones—are consumed with elemental fury about everything from immigration to liberal do-gooders. They take their opinions from talk-radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and the deeply unsubtle Sean Hannity. And they regard Mrs Palin’s apparent ignorance not as a problem but as a badge of honour.

Another reason is the degeneracy of the conservative intelligentsia itself, a modern-day version of the 1970s liberals it arose to do battle with: trapped in an ideological cocoon, defined by its outer fringes, ruled by dynasties and incapable of adjusting to a changed world. The movement has little to say about today’s pressing problems, such as global warming and the debacle in Iraq, and expends too much of its energy on xenophobia, homophobia and opposing stem-cell research.

Conservative intellectuals are also engaged in their own version of what Julian Benda dubbed la trahison des clercs, the treason of the learned. They have fallen into constructing cartoon images of “real Americans”, with their “volkish” wisdom and charming habit of dropping their “g”s. Mrs Palin was invented as a national political force by Beltway journalists from the Weekly Standard and the National Review who met her when they were on luxury cruises around Alaska, and then noisily championed her cause.

I wondered where they got her from. CRUISES! Well, this explains plenty.

And finally, POP FEMINIST gives a 70-minute interview about what it's like to grow up with a pornographer mother!

Hmph! Just when you think your childhood was the weirdest of em all, someone comes along and OUTDOES you.

~*~

During my endless convalescence, my (never that solid) sanity has been saved by streaming the wonderful RadioIO. (Although hearing the late Porter Wagoner's "The Rubber Room" was a rather bizarre experience.) I was inordinately pleased to hear Robin Trower's "Too Rolling Stoned" after about 30 years. If you are up for over 7 minutes of psychedelic gee-tar, blowing your little mind (and certainly, I have nowhere else to go, dunno about yourself!)--please check it out... if you can't dig the first minute, as Queen Emily might say, you are rubbish! :P

And if you rock out to the whole thing? Go, my child, and sin no more. You've been redeemed!

Robin Trower - Too Rolling Stoned