oh for fucks sake

dear eat pray love people:
there isn't a single person on the planet whose life wouldn't
drastically improve with enough money to take a year off from work to
travel around the world eating, meditating, and having sex. so until
you book, movie, or promotional tie ins come with enough money to do
that kindly fuck off.
namaste (as all the pretentious yoga hippies say)
RQ

--
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Willem de Kooning

An idea for the Prop 8 supporters

(WARNING: Snark Alert!)

Those poor, poor dears who supported Prop 8 must be in high dudgeon today, following that decision from the meanie judge in California. They're just trying to defend the sanctity of marriage from Teh Gays and the Eeeevil Libruls and such.

Gentle readers, I think I have an idea to soothe their rustled nerves and satisfy the Constitution at the same time. How's about we just cancel out the more than 1,000 particular legal rights that come along with a marriage license in this country?

Yup, that's right. Those sweet, holy people who claim it's just about the sanctity of marriage can put their money where their mouths are. Renounce all the legal rights that come with the white lace and promises, and bring it all back to where you say it is: the sanctity, the tradition, the godliness and all that. Give up the tax breaks, the rights of survivorship and inheritance, the thousand and one automatic legal presumptions and legs-up and bonus points you and yours get for inking the license.

Oh, not so much? Well, then, I guess it's not really about the sanctity--it IS about the rights that you think you deserve because you put a particular Tab A into another particular Slot B. And others whose blueprints don't work that way shouldn't have the same rights 'cause their blueprints are....icky.

So stuff your sanctity. Or go practice it peacefully, according to your own conscience, with my sincerest blessings. Or abandon it all, if you wish. It's entirely up to you. Just don't try to deny other people THEIR legal rights because YOU conflated your own moral squick with the legal privileges attached to a particular legal status.

whinging is for tuesdays

so i have a couple of posts i'd love to write but they can't be typed
on my phone with its crappy character limit. one's about how
evangelists are really no different from fetishists, but with worse
manners. the other is about how this new economic reality turns 15
years of experience into a minimum wage job,
but my phone is too small to express these things and im having a bit
of a strep thing going on, fever and achey and gross. so im gonna stay
curled up in bed and whine for awhile

--
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Willem de Kooning

movie reviews because the rest of the world bites

i watched towelhead last night ans had my socks blown off me. consider
this both a trigger and spoiler warning ...............
this maybe the only time i've ever seen the difference between a
girl's own sexual agency and rape clearly demonstrated. not to mention
the holy shit intersectionality warning batman of a brown girl being
sexualized early and responding to that attention after being made to
feel less than over and over again.
there was only one thing off about the movie, and that's the crunchy
granola hipster couple who rescue Jasira from all the adults in her
life who hurt her, but by that point i was just relieved to see any
adult act like a non douche. it prolly belongs in the horr-underful
movie genre, but you should go netflix it right now.
(someday when i have a compy and real internet access again i'll go
back to writing things that aren't pop cultural commentaries
constrained by the maximum characters my phone will let me type. in
the mean time, this is what you get)

--
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Willem de Kooning

a little light bitching

i love spy shows, spy novels, spy movies. i think you have to be super
smart to write good spy stuff, and if you're not that smart you should
stick to detective shows or hospital dramas. i don't enen mind some
cheese in my espionage. i watch burn notice. so i was excited to see
covert affairs. but omfg it couldn't be any worse. i am pretty sure
it's baywatch in bad polyester. the suspension of disbelief required
to watch that rollingball of flaming shit is so large that only
hallucinogenic drugs would serve. a jr civil servant who lives with
her sister can afford a pair of louboutains? she's the best in spy
school but can't employ a few self defense moves in a fight. and she
forgets to grab the intel? and an agency where half the staff are
under 30 the girl who hasn't finished training is the only one who
speaks russian and looks like a prostitute? and i haven't even started
on the blind sidekick stereotypes yet. this show is so bad it makes 2
and a half men look smart.

--
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Willem de Kooning

thought experiments

one of the biggest criticisms of radical lefty political theory is
that it only critiques the current system and doesn't offer solutions.
it's a solid criticism and part of the reason i spend so much time
playing what if in my head. Wonder and i have been bouncing around the
idea of pulling names out of a hat instead of having elections. i like
it. it gives oppressed groups better access to power and ends the
money train that is campaign financing. but......
it leaves a power vacuum that would immediately be filled by non
elected, non random civil servants. they would become the agenda
setters, and if you haven't figured it out yet, all the power lies in
the people who decide what issues are important. we need skilled civil
servants, especially if every few years we pick a whole new roster of
unskilled pols out of a hat, but how do you keep their power limited
to implementation of laws and not the creation of them? and would we
really want to choose our head of state out of a hat?

--
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Willem de Kooning

dear Switzerland

i was in switzerland a few years ago. we were driving back to dresden
after spending some time in the south of france. we stoppped in a
quaint little mountain town and i stretched my legs and smoked a
cigarrete while my partner went to look for a room. maybe it was my
black hair and olive skin, but as soon as he left me alone i felt the
climate change around me. the people on the street glared at me, a
woman with a baby carriage made a big show of zipping up the plastic
carriage cover and the unzipping it once she got past me. i've
travelled. i lived in a dodgy neighborhood for a decade. i've never
felt so unnerved by a place as i did in that little town. my partner
returned and i begged him to get me out of there, and then i made him
walk me to a bathroom in a pub. i never pull that shit. i've had a
deep lizzard brain kind of hate for switzerland ever since.
so it comes as no surprise to me that you all released a famous child
rapist. you are the country that i have been calling 'what facism
aspires to be'.

--
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Willem de Kooning