I struggled to contain myself.

What can you expect from a group with a song entitled “Sperm Receptacle“?

As I glanced around the crowd, women comprised at least half the attendance. In the first group to perform, The Crazy Monkeys, there are two women members. Even with this, they played mainly stereotypical female roles (ditsy girlfriend, girlfriend/wife who gets pregnant–whoops!, etc.).

There wasn’t much of substance in either performance.

Why not try some satirical work, or lampooning, of current political events instead of rehashing the same old bullshit from those who did it better, the first time around?

I’m so happy I didn’t pay for any of this shit.

I don’t think I can even finish the series now.

Throwing a psychic into the mix does not make the movie X-File-y. Why was it so disjointed? Why were they living together? All was forgiven?? And why was it so religious??

What the fuck.

So far I can only lodge two complaints:

• Scrolling is now required to add tags and assign categories

You can no longer rearrange the sections. Hopefully this feature will come back in future upgrades.

• A class attribute is specified when adding an image

Uploading is now spiffy and near seamless with an overlay:

But even selecting an alignment of ‘none’ inserts class="alignnone size-full wp-image-[#]".

Aside from these two minor complaints I’m enjoying the new WordPress. One wish I have for future versions is for the plugin page to be Ajaxed, so when I activate a plugin the entire page doesn’t have to reload. Check the WordPress Blog to read about all the changes.

Banned Books Week is September 29 through October 6. You can find an online catalogue of banned and challenged books at The Forbidden Library, either arranged by title or by author.

Or you can head over to your own public library. My city library has a display devoting several shelves to banned and challenged books. The Partner and I stopped in on Saturday, not knowing it was Banned Book Week at all, and I came across the display on our way to the counter.

I picked up Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden (1982). According to Wikipedia, in 1993 this book was banned by the Kansas City school system and was burned in protests. Students filed a First Amendment lawsuit, and the book was returned to the shelves in 1995.

I started the book that Saturday, only reading about 20 pages. I picked it up again this afternoon and have just finished it. It is the story of Liza and Annie, two 17-year-old gals who fall in love, told through the point-of-view of Liza.

Chad kept kidding me that I was in love, and asking with whom, and then Sally and Walt did, too, and after a while I didn’t even mind, because even if they had the wrong idea about it, they were right. Soon it wasn’t hard any more to say it—to myself, I mean, as well as over and over again to Annie—and to accept her saying it to me. We touched each other more easily—just kissed or held hands or hugged each other, though—nothing more than that. We didn’t really talk much about being gay; most of the time we just talked about ourselves. We were what seemed important then, not some label. (p. 118-9; emphasis in original).

It is an extremely moving story which brought me to tears many times.

I went downstairs to Dad’s encyclopedia and looked up HOMOSEXUALITY, but that didn’t tell me much about any of the things I felt. What struck me most, though, was that, in that whole long article, the word “love” wasn’t used even once. That made me mad; it was as if whoever wrote the article didn’t know that gay people actually love each other. The encyclopedia writers ought to talk to me, I thought as I went back to bed; I could tell them something about love. (p. 143).

Although listed in Young Adult, this book should be read by everybody, and I am extremely disappointed I didn’t learn of it years ago.

And in case you’re like me and usually out of the loop, on September 19th San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, a Republican, held a press conference in which he stood in solidarity and spoke out in support for gay marriage, a complete turn-around for him.

When I read that Kay was a poet it didn’t surprise me. The story is beautifully written from inside the heads and hearts of numerous characters seeking a reconciliation that already exists, if only they could get to it. The book reminded me a lot of Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson. Trumpet begins in the present and takes you to the past, and you travel like this for most of the book. I couldn’t help but get wrapped up in the lives and memories Kay created. The ending made me cry, not out of sadness but harmony.

When I go into our bedroom, the bed is just lying there. As if to say, it’s only me again. I keep expecting that some miracle could happen, that I could just come up the stairs and find Joss in bed waiting for me. Each time I come into this room the emptiness of it punches me in the stomach. There is something so repetitive about grief. First the stupid hope, then the violence of remembering. The hope, then the carpet from under your feet. If Joss had lived and I had died. If Joss had seen a doctor. If I had made Joss see a doctor. The same things spinning every day and night. Each night I’m afraid to sleep. I know Joss will find me. I know I will wake up and forget and then remember. (p. 95-6)

Pick it up when you get the chance.

I had heard about The Stepford Wives — had heard enough to at least get the cultural references whenever someone called Laura Bush a Stepford wife, but I never bothered with reading the book. I did see the 2004 movie version, which had an ending of the exact fucking opposite of the book.

The back of my copy reads

At once a masterpiece of psychological suspense and a savage commentary on a media-driven society that values the pursuit of youth and beauty at all costs, The Stepford Wives is a novel so frightening in its final implications that the title itself has earned a place in the American lexicon.

“Savage commentary on a media-driven society”, to me, speaks to a critical analysis of media culture, consumption, production, and marketing. While the book brand-name dropped a couple times, the only piece that I can loosely construe as being anywhere near ‘commentary’ on media is found on pages 42-3:

That’s what she was, Joanna felt suddenly. That’s what they all were, all the Stepford wives: actresses in commercials, pleased with detergents and floor wax, with cleansers, shampoos, and deodorants. Pretty actresses, big in the bosom but small in the talent, playing suburban housewives unconvincingly, too nicey-nice to be real. [emphasis in original]

What am I supposed to take away from this book? To never get married, and secondly, to never let a male partner join a “men’s association”, let alone watch commercials? Writing in 1972, perhaps I’m immune from whatever Levin was trying to get across to a woman audience at that time.

For all the cultural hype, I think it lacks full engagement.

Have you read it? What are your thoughts? Am I right to hate it as much as I did the movie?

The Partner came across Dufus while reading music reviews and we had a little listen. After searching our local shops and not finding a single CD, he contacted the artist and inquired about buying all of the albums. Seth Faergolzia was awesome and offered The Partner a deal.

I highly recommend purchasing an album or twelve. You can label Dufus anti-folk, or indie, but their sound is unique and un-pigeonholeable. I especially love “Wrinkle” off of Ball of Design. Give yourself some aural pleasure.

A growing number of Evangelical Christians believe there is a revival underway in America that requires Christian youth to assume leadership roles in advocating the causes of their religious movement. Jesus Camp follows a group of young children to Pastor Becky Fischer’s “Kids on Fire Summer Camp”, where kids are taught to become dedicated Christian soldiers in God’s army and are schooled in how to take back America for Christ. The film is a first-ever look into an intense training ground that recruits born-again Christian children to become an active part of America’s political future.

Here’s the trailer: It is no longer available.

And a “get it while you can” heads-up, here is the entire film in several parts on YouTube:
It is no longer available, due to copyright issues.

This film should be viewed, especially by those of us outside the Evangelical cult community — or those of us without children with whom we can journey to the Kids on Fire Summer Camp to see this stuff first-hand. Give copies to your family, friends, and neighbors.

Generally, the first realm of socialization for an individual is the family. Thus the film begins by taking the viewer into the homes and lives of several Evangelical families, most of which home-school their children. While Evangelical home-schooling is something worthy of investigation itself, this portion of the film is especially frightening — even for us non-educators — due to the amount of brainwashing and misinformation being passed on to these children under the guise of education.

For example, Levi’s mother can be seen using Exploring Creation with Physical Science, a textbook which “begins with a detailed discussion of the world around you and what makes it work. It will then take you out into the universe so that you may learn the majesty of God’s Creation”, from which she reads:

“One popular thing to do in American politics is to note that the summers in the United States over the past few years have been very warm. As a result, global warming must be real. What’s wrong with this reasoning?”

Levi replies, “It’s only gone up 0.6 degrees.”

His mother, apparently a climatologist, says, “Yeah, it’s not really a big problem, is it?”

The beginning scenes are not the worst, however, as we follow the families to their week at the summer camp. To say that these children are shamed, guilted, and otherwise emotionally beaten into religious submission would be a nice way of putting what we see happening on the screen. I cannot believe this shit is legal.

Children, according to Pastor Becky Fischer,

are so usable in Christianity. If you look at the world’s population, one-third of that 6.7 billion people are children under the age of fifteen. One-third. Where should we be putting our efforts? Where should we be putting our focus? I’ll tell you where our enemies are putting it: they’re putting it on the kids. They’re going into the schools — you go into Palestine, and I can take you to some websites that will absolutely shake you to your foundations, and show you photographs, of where they’re taking their kids to camps like we take our kids to bible camps, and they’re putting hand grenades in their hands, and they’re teaching them how to put on bomb belts, they’re teaching them how to use rifles, they’re teaching them how to use machine guns — it’s no wonder, with that kind of intense training and discipling, that those young people are ready to kill themselves for the cause of Islam. I wanna see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam. I wanna see them as radically laying down their lives for the gospel, as they are over in Pakistan, in Israel, and Palestine, and all those different places. You know, because we have — excuse me! — but we have the truth!

I think it’s time for a nation-wide intervention.

Your thoughts?

The following is an exchange between Vera and a detective.

Detective – So, how do you help them out?
Vera Drake – I help them start their bleeding again.
Detective – You help them to get rid of the baby? You perform an abortion. Is that right, Mrs. Drake? You perform abortions, don’t you?
Vera Drake – That’s not what I do, dear. That’s what you call it, but they need help. Who else they gonna turn to? They’ve got no one. I help them out.

Saying that I found this film emotionally moving would make it seem trite. My county library has three copies alone; I highly recommend giving it a view.

My thesis stands at roughly 30 pages and I’ve still got the concluding sections to write up into something resembling an actual research thesis worthy of gaining academic cred. The literature review kicks much ass, though. I’ve been trying to figure out how to present the data (i.e., frequency tables, histograms, etc.), which results are most significant/interesting, and once I figure that out the rest of the paper will flow smoothly (or at least it does in my imagination). This is to be done by the 27th, with a presentation by the 3rd of December.

So while I still feel a crunch, it’s not the stress-ridden, hives-inducing, hand-wringing, OMFG *headdesk* OMFG crunch of last week, but a more mellow “get this done so you’re again a pleasant person to live with” crunch.

In the middle of all this, I’ve got my second jury summons of the year to report to, a two-page advertising/media critique to write, and a final exam two weeks before finals week even friggin’ begins.

Such are my woes.

We’re leaving town tomorrow to spend this tofurkey holiday drunk (or in my case, crunk) on the demon liquor mixed with a little bit of tryptophan with family and friends. We’ll return when we’re sober.

I hope to have my life partially back by the 28th, but it’s due in full by the 5th.

In the meantime, check out this awesome mini-tripod I picked up a couple weeks ago from our local, family-owned Berry’s Camera Shop (which has a half-dead dotcom but a fully-functional eBay Store), a Giottos Q.pod:

You can see why I needed this.