Frank on Friday really should be several hours long. Unfortunately, the only time they do that is during "pledge week"--which means I am one of the few people looking forward to WNCW's fund drives. PLAY MORE FRANK! Today, they played Sting and Zappa doing "Murder by Numbers" together in a live performance, simply sublime. Frank kept referring to him as "Mr Sting" which was funny and oh so Zappaesque.
We miss you, man!
~*~
As I said earlier this week, the Occupy movement is under attack. Governor Haley (insert boos, catcalls, thumbs down, other rude gestures) cleared out Occupy Columbia from the Statehouse lawn, claiming protesters were urinating in the bushes. I wish I could have added my urine to the place, to express my dislike of our state government, as well as solidarity with the urinating Occupiers. Nineteen arrests.
First Amendment? What's that?
We need a lawyer to make the case that urine is a form of political protest. If you can artistically dip crucifixes in urine, it seems to me, you can pee on Haley's place of employment and claim that's political.
Alas, this is South Carolina, and we don't have any left-wing political lawyers here.
Hanging out on Twitter last night, I finally got a "pro life" reply to my question: If you make abortion illegal, where will you get the money to build all those new jails? If there have been (as they claim) 53 million murders since Roe v Wade, where will they send all of these murderers? That adds up to the populations of several major cities.
Woman who have an abortion should be put to death as soon as guilty gavel cones down. #prochoice is murder.
Silly me, asking about prisons!
I guess I should start asking, where will you get the money in the current economy to pay all those executioners? Or will they outsource that work, like they do call centers?
Pretty honest reply, though. At least the agenda is right out there: we looooove babies, but we don't care about the women who give birth to them and would prefer to kill them off.
Make no mistake, that is the agenda. And at least one of them is honest enough to say so.
I am told there is something... off... about the language of my post, according to one gentleman-commenter. I told him, it is likely because I use the language of his mother, rather than his friends.
And a story from the 70s gets translated into a story from NOW, and found weirdly wanting. Well, that was then and this is now, could be why. (I am very, very weary of today's standards being applied to the past. Yes, we all know better now, but that was not the point of the story.)
(sigh)
See, this is why I am so reluctant to guest-blog. HERE at DEAD AIR, yall know I am an old hippie, and I am not taken to task for calling someone ELSE a hippie. Jesus H.
If I recount a story from the 70s, some of yall can even REMEMBER the 70s. ;)
Anyway, speaking of old hippies, Frank on Friday to the rescue! What would I do without this show, centering me every Friday at noon?
This one contains one of those incomparable Zappa guitar solos... and of course, Frank's famous dissertation on the meaning of the apostrophe, containing today's blog post title. (It sure is!)
Like everyone else in the USA, I am presently bustling, rustling, hustling... and trying to dig out from under mounds of email (as well as real-life junk mail), Mr Daisy's comics and kitty detritus, to prepare for the holiday week coming up.
How is everything with you?
I have decided to run for County Council, as I mentioned here. I figure it can't hurt. I know for sure I will get at least a dozen votes!
Visit the Greenville Greens page on Facebook! And if you are in Greenville County, vote for me! (Don't worry, I'll be reminding you at least a million times before the election.)
Regarding that last point... I repeat, vote for me!
I am gonna be a grandma again! Am I old or what?
Very happy and very pleased. :)
~*~
And now, our musical accompaniment for this post.
I was gonna use the following video for Tuesday's alcoholism post, and then decided it was too irreverent... I went with Hank Williams instead. Today, feeling a bit irreverent, which I once again blame on Frank Zappa's ghost (listened to Frank on Friday, of course!)... thus, I now freely offer this irreverent look at junkiedom.
Observations:
1) Why on earth didn't they give Slash the Nobel prize for playing like that?
2) Axl appears rather fried, thus illustrating his familiarity with the subject matter.
Once again, listening to the ever-fabulous Frank On Friday...who gives me the courage to confront the right-wing bobbleheads running my state. Sometimes I wonder what he would say if he were still here. Frank Zappa, your country needs you.
Moving to Montana soon
Gonna be a dental floss tycoon
South Carolina. The first state to secede from the Union, sweet schoolchildren are frequently reminded!
(((fumes)))
Yes, our beleaguered state is still fucked, as previously written... the deadline for accepting the disputed $700 million is tonight, and Head Dick, Governor Mark Sanford, is still holding quite firm on not accepting it. A press conference/brawl ensues within mere minutes, down in Columbia, and as the infamous Texas Chainsaw Massacre trailer asked: Who will survive, and what will be left of them?
As Kia, commenting on my previous thread, stated: "Surely it's a sign of the apocalypse when Lindsey Graham is a voice of reason."
I couldn't have outlined the situation any better.
Frank, we need you man. Come back, come back...
~*~
I've been a busy little bee this week, but as always, managed to catch some interesting internetz action.
According to one estimate, 41,000 women in New York are at risk of being cut, or have already been subjected to genital cutting. This estimate is based on data from the 2000 census, so clearly more up-to-date information is needed.
Female genital cutting can range in severity from a harmless ritual pinprick to the complete surgical removal of the external genitals. These procedures can cause acute and chronic infections, loss of sexual sensitivity, difficult labor, and PTSD.
According to a lawyer quoted in the article, no one has ever been charged under New York's anti-FGM statute or its federal equivalent since the laws were enacted in the mid-nineties. The last state-level FGM outreach program in New York took place a decade ago.
Scary stuff.
And of course, before you can say FORESKIN, various obnoxious males show up and hijack the thread: WHAT ABOUT MALE CIRCUMCISION?!
((((reads post back))))
Well, what about it? That was not the TOPIC, assholes. Guys were not the subject. I realize this is disorienting for you, since GUYS ARE ALWAYS THE DAMN SUBJECT. (Of course, if Lindsay had issued a "no guy zone" statement on the thread, they would undoubtedly start screeching about that, too.) Lindsay writes:
Can we ever have a discussion of FGM without the neonatal anti-circumcision crowd hijacking it? This has happened about four times already, and I'm getting sick of it. I'm sympathetic to your position, but folks, please don't commandeer every single thread about female genital cutting. Have some perspective, here. You're cheapening your own cause by hijacking FGM discussions.
Yes, there exist variants of FGM that are roughly anatomically analogous to neonatal hospital circumcision--but they are more like points in logical space than health concerns. The main, pressing, public health problem of FGM is analogous to removing the entire penises of male adolescents (and, sometimes, turning the whole bleeding, unsterile mess inside out and stitching it back together).
There are extremely active forums for you to discuss the evils of neonatal foreskin docking. Please take your concerns there.
And did they? Ha, are you kidding?
As if on cue, typhonblue, a well-known and tedious internet-obsessive on the topic of MALE circumcision, shows up and starts preaching and monopolizing the subject on behalf of the poor oppressed men. (Because you know, men are just more important than women, and don't you forget it.) Even after being politely asked NOT TO.
Some people just don't have any decency; their basic sense of overweening entitlement and abject rudeness just take over everything.
Lindsay is far nicer and much more tolerant than I am.... if any of you assholes show up hijacking HERE, I will eat you for a nice little snack (burp). And I am in a rather contentious mood and kinda hungry, with all this calorie restriction... so bring it, you unsuspecting penis-obsessed pseudo-trolls!
Yum, yum!
~*~
Longish thread at Astarte's Circus, titled Be the President or Marry the President, brings up fascinating questions about whether being a First Lady is something to aspire to, in and of itself. Admittedly, I am rather clueless concerning some of the comments. I don't think Octo was criticizing Michelle Obama, per se, but questioning the whole First Lady cult...of which I am also periodically critical. But check out the thread and comments and see what you think.
Can we criticize the "First Lady culture" without also criticizing the woman who is First Lady? This echoes several old (and unresolved) feminist questions: can we criticize the housewife cult, the Playboy Bunny cult, the supermodel cult, etc etc without criticizing women who have personally made these choices? How to criticize the male-dominant culture, without hurting or disrespecting women within that culture?
It is like we don't quite have the language for what we are trying to say, and what we seek to do...
YES! Congratulations on your progressive politics, Hawkeyes!Alas, a blog, and Feministe are also presently discussing the ruling.
~*~
It's bloody embarrassing how many of my previous musical posts are missing their centerpiece. Warner Music Group, bad capitalists extraordinaire, have taken away so many of my YouTube presentations--they are as bad as WalMart for stealing neighborhood fun away.
Nonetheless, I plow onward... let's hope some brave tunes remain!
Meanwhile, here is the song I can't get off my mind/official earworm for this week, which also helpfully fits into our Hawk motif:
Greenville, facing southwest from Richardson Street.
It appears I will spend most of my day off haggling with stubborn insurance companies, so not much brilliance from me. President Obama, I tirelessly backed you, now if you would be so kind, please fix our dilapidated health care system? (At least I have WNCW's stellar radio broadcast, Frank on Friday, to keep me company... which of course is where today's blog post title is from.) My heart goes out to everyone else currently in Medical Insurance Hell, such as Renegade Evolution.
I haven't written about the AIG scandal, mostly because I don't really understand it very well. I am patently unable to rant and rave about things I don't fully get in the first place. I mostly end up scratching my poor little head. (I have a hard time even fathoming that kind of money.) However, I do see a similarity in the AIG bail-out fiasco and our health-care system dilemma: Nobody wants to reward AIG with millions of dollars for their mismanagement, and likewise, nobody wants to fund a health care system that has as many bloated items in their inventory as the Pentagon and its once-legendary hundred-dollar hammers. How can a single monthly prescription cost over $250? This is obscene. Who wants government to pay Big Pharm and support their continued robbery of the American people? Not me. I want the drug companies fleeced, not the government!
These are deep systemic problems, and they make my head hurt.
The son of the poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath has taken his own life, 46 years after his mother gassed herself while he slept.
Nicholas Hughes hanged himself at his home in Alaska after battling against depression for some time, his sister Frieda said yesterday.
He was 47, unmarried with no children of his own and had until recently been a professor of fisheries and ocean sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
What can you say?
~*~
Obama pissed me off yesterday, with his much-ballyhooed "online town meeting", as he impatiently and arrogantly waved away questions about marijuana legalization, which you know (duh!) might bail the economy out of this horrible mess. Obama seemed to find the question amusing, possibly flashing back to the days when he enjoyed a blunt or two himself.
But did he have to be so.... Amused with it? I'm sorry, I understand that it's marijuana, ha ha funny funny...but it was a serious question asked by a lot of people and I really think it deserved just as serious of an answer as the rest of them did [...] it was a JARRING difference from how he approached all the other questions. [...] I found the use of this particular question, and using it as a mechanism - an excuse to laugh off serious questions about the myriad of issues about pot - to be very disingenuous.
Obama's Pathetic Pot Answer. The chuckle suggests a man of his generation. The dismissiveness toward the question of ending Prohibition as both a good in itself and a form of tax revenue is, however, depressing. His answer was a non-answer. I'm tired of having the Prohibition issue treated as if it's trivial or a joke. It is neither. It is about freedom and it's deadly serious. As for your online audience, Mr president, have you forgotten who got you elected?
In other words: get a job, ya bunch of hippies. He couldn’t really have sounded any more condescending unless he’d thanked contributors, complete with air quotes, for their “groovy” questions. I’m sure the audience would have lapped it up.
Now, admittedly, the President might well be right about what legalization would do for the economy. Imagine all the out-of-work drug enforcement workers, prison guards and support staff, the mass suicides from correctional industry lobbyists, and the tens of thousands of newly released inmates thrust into an already terrible job market. But that’s hardly the point he was trying to make. Rather, he was aiming for laughs.
Selley's piece is titled Obama on the War on Drugs—status quo we can believe in, which also made my head hurt. (As we've always heard, the truth hurts.)
Direct hit, Chris.
~*~
To the astute but anonymous reader who asks me via email, why do I link so many people who won't link me back? Hmm, good question. Mostly, it's so I can have the links handy when I switch computers around...I can't have my bookmarks everywhere, and this is the next best thing. My blogroll is composed of people I enjoy reading, whether they like me or not. And I think it might compromise some people's reputations (I'm lookin at you, lefty atheists!) to include me on their blogrolls.
And then again, as I closely examine some of the blogrolls in question, I also believe only women under 50 are permitted. Or at least, no women over 50 are represented. We don't exist and are invisible.
That's probably why.
~*~
Miss Jackie is writing about IRON over at The Vegan Diet... check out her recipes, you animal rights purists! Particularly her wonderful Iron Booster Fruit Smoothie... I am allergic to bananas but I've found strawberries and blueberries work well. Also, here is a great liquid iron supplement from Floradix, but 1) it tastes like cherry rust and 2) it's expensive (but certainly, not as expensive as red meat) and 3) it only keeps about a month after opening (refrigerated), so you have to use it up fairly quickly. But you can add it to smoothies and the rust taste isn't as noticeable.
A small price to pay for not eating animals.
~*~
I loves you guys, and hope to be back here before this evening, depending on the cooperation of the aforementioned insurance companies. (Ha!)
Frank on Friday really should be several hours long. Unfortunately, the only time they do that is during "pledge week"--which means I am one of the few people looking forward to WNCW's fund drives. PLAY MORE FRANK! Today, they played Sting and Zappa doing "Murder by Numbers" together in a live performance, simply sublime. Frank kept referring to him as "Mr Sting" which was funny and oh so Zappaesque. 
