Fuck.
CNN says he was "shot to death." No, the wording is important here. This guy was assassinated. This man was one of very few late-term abortion providers in the United States - operations performed to save women's lives - and now he's dead. I've read about him a few times before on Feministe and elsewhere and I knew he was in danger, but it's still shocking when it actually happens.
I had two of them this morning: one in which my mother strangled a gray kitten and then I wept about it, and another in which I was trapped in a house with a creepy roommate who may have been a monster. I wandered the house, lost (my nightmares often involve me being trapped in a labyrinthine building that is impossible to navigate) but terrified of finding this person, and every time I did I was overcome with fright enough to teleport back to where I started: crouching under a dining table. My goal was to make it outside to the back yard (which was foggy and looked like a cemetery), and eventually I made it there but was still afraid of coming across the creepy roommate and starting over. I realized that he only appeared when I was most afraid he was going to, and that since I was unable to think of him without becoming afraid, all I had to do was actively disbelieve in his existence and he would never appear. Then I got confused about whether that meant he was only a figment of my imagination or whether he existed outside of my mind but my state of mind controlled his ability to appear to me. It wasn't a lucid dream, as I didn't know I was dreaming and I didn't have any control over what was going on, but I rarely have such complex and reflexive thoughts on my environment, my influence on it, and my own thoughts while I'm dreaming. Couldn't stop my mom from strangling that kitten, though. What the hell, mom?
After sewing that last dress that came out so well, I went to Jo-Ann today and used up most of my gift card on another dress pattern, a zipper, and 2.5 yards of fabric - a sturdy cotton twill in my favorite color, a medium grassy green.
I also want to sew another item for Evan and I asked him what he might like. A dress shirt, shorts, a dandy waistcoat? He said anything would be good.
The fabric.
The finished dress.
Cream lining and invisible zipper.
Me in it - nevermind the hint of armpit hair (and yes! Lydia, that is our "Cancer" poster you got us in the background and Janani, the beard poster you got us is in the kitchen).
I still have a $25 gift certificate for Jo-Ann Fabrics that I got from my birthday - I'll probably get a couple more patterns and some more fabric. Once I start buying fabric I can't stop. Someday I'd like to splurge on a nice dress form but right now I have no place to put one.
On Salon.
Clark-Flory:
"typically snarky tone" "Those types of, uh, vivid arguments" "rude-girl slang" "generous heaping of the F-word"
I can't tell if you're exaggerating the way she writes to dismiss her as someone who can't argue maturely or to sell her as some kind of cool, hip, young, totally radical riot grrl or something. Either way, it's weird.
"knows how to make feminism accessible to a young, apathetic audience"
I'd say that Feministing actually selects toward readers who aren't apathetic, as do her books.
"Her first book, "Full Frontal Feminism" featured"..."a butt-naked lady on the cover."
That book's cover only shows a bare stomach, so no.
"Valenti recently sparked controversy by announcing that she's getting married in the fall: Conservative columnist Kathryn Jean Lopez called her a "feminist bridezilla," while some feminists declared she was bowing to the patriarchy and being a traitor to gay rights."
Who?
Valenti:
"In terms of male virgins, I don't think they're affected nearly as much as women. As you said, male virgins are presented in this jokey way in U.S. culture -- you see them in a doofy movie and that's pretty much it."
Perhaps not nearly as much, but I think Valenti's underestimating the degree to which boys/men can be shamed for being virgins, as girls/women are shamed for NOT being virgins. I'll never be privy to everything that goes on among male-only circles of friends, but I'd imagine that there's pressure to have sex as well as teasing the guys who are seen as still being virgins, yes? For some dude-groups, not all.
"I think the way that they're most affected is in how they're taught to interact with women and to define themselves in oppositional terms. To be a man you just have to not be feminine -- don't be a girl, don't be a pussy, and don't be a sissy."
I don't disagree about how masculinity/femininity are often defined in "oppositional terms," but I think it's unfair to say that masculinity is the absence of femininity, as it would be unfair to say that femininity is the absence of masculinity. I tend to think of those things as things and not absences of other things (is Marxism an absence of capitalism?).
"What I find really fascinating is that in Africa and places outside the U.S. we call it female genital mutilation. But, because you pay $4,000 for it here, it's a designer vagina? It's ridiculous! It's just another way of fetishizing virginity and young vaginas."
Women get cosmetic genital surgery because they want their labia to look different, or they want their vagina tightened, or they want a new hymen put in so they can "be virginal" again or some other damned creepy thing. "Female genital mutilation" is when someone else cuts off your clitoris and other parts so you can never fully sexually function, in a procedure that is often done in unhygienic conditions without anesthetic (and without consent), to small children. It's fucking gross that you would downplay how terrible that is by saying it's like a grown woman getting elective surgery from a real surgeon. And female genital mutilation happens in this country, too.
What's with all le parkour in video games lately? I shouldn't say "lately" because, you know, Prince of Persia, but I mean Assassin's Creed came out in 2007 and Mirror's Edge a year later, and Ubisoft and EA DICE have announced sequels for both, respectively. And it looks like Ubisoft is doing it again with Beyond Good and Evil 2. I actually forgot a sequel was coming out - I have the first one and I liked it - but there's this Mysterious, Recently Leaked Footage purportedly from BG&E 2. Certainly looks like Jade, anyway. And it looks great.
Looking up the wiki page for BG&E 2, the detail that jumps out at me is that it was first announced by Ubisoft at a press conference in the Louvre. The Louvre! Fancy! France is a country that takes its video game industry seriously. Imagine Activision holding their press conferences in the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Mirror's Edge is frustrating, but I'm mostly enjoying Assassin's Creed. It takes me back to good old platforming days, the kind of gameplay I enjoy the best - I find the combat in both games to be a pain in the ass and I'd rather just run and climb and jump around.
It is interesting that as I'm currently expressing an interest in library science and archives, I keep meeting people who work in libraries or have friends who are archivists. I guess I just have to keep talking to people.
The sun is coming up and it's past 6 am. I've gotten myself into an ill-advised sleeping pattern, where I stay up until the sun's up and then sleep well into the afternoon. I'm going to have to train myself to go to bed at a normal time again.
Heard in the space of one hour in downtown Iowa City this Friday evening:
"Pepperoni nipples! Dinner plate nipples!"
"FUCK YOU, AARON!"
Talked to Mr. ******* from the library science program here. Good guy, smart, asked me good questions, got me thinking about things. I think he liked me well enough.
Postered for Best Of No Shame this morning, the show is tomorrow night.
What's with all the basketballs in the river? I walked downtown and crossed the Burlington St. bridge, where there's a dip in the water level because there's a dam there. At the bottom were four basketballs trapped in an eddy, swirling around a large chunk of Styrofoam. I crossed the same bridge three hours later and they were still there.
Evan and I going out for coffee in a few minutes. Tonight I'll see if I can design a mock up of a Best Of show program tonight and knock out a bunch tomorrow. I don't have to, but it would be nice.
