when the status quo frustrates.

Bush: Don’t steal America’s soul; that’s my job!

Friday, April 28th, 2006

You just know Dubya’s the sort to misplace his class ring and accuse the maid of theft, firing her in a fit of holier-than-thou indignity only to find it the next day beside a powdery mirror-plate. You know this because he authorized an illegal intelligence leak then tried to blame it on the help. You know this because he dropped the ball on Katrina then hung FEMA and the NO/LA officials out to dry.

And you know this because, according to the AP, he’s blaming those who sing the national anthem in another language for stealing our “national soul.”

The national anthem should be sung in English — not Spanish — President Bush declared Friday, amid growing restlessness over whether to grant legal status to immigrants who are in the United States illegally.

“One of the important things here is that we not lose our national soul,” the president exclaimed.

You dirty, rotten, thieving, conniving, mincing, warmongering, hateful, spiteful, abusive, vindictive, moronic, evil racist hypocrite.

Which national soul are we threatening to lose? The one with no national language or no national religion? The one where individual rights are protected and governmental authority is properly checked? The one founded on opposition to imperialism?

Last I checked, only one person is responsible for the loss of whatever national “soul” we possess. Go look in the mirror. Not the one under the coke by your class ring, the other one.

I don’t believe in souls, Mr. President, but I do believe in bodies. Fortunately, thanks to your outstanding track record on the environment, you’re doing a number on America’s — nay, the world’s — outer layers, too. Better find another immigrant scapegoat quickly, though, or Greenland’s ice will be soaking your ankles before you can say “martians.”

28.04.2006 Bush is a cock 1 Comment

Get Yer Rock On

Friday, April 28th, 2006

lisa-simpson_sax.jpgAlthough this blog is probably supposed to feature punk music downloads with the name and all, I’m a hipster-esque weird-music sort of person that really, really likes to share. I suppose this makes me a bad sort of hipster-esque weird-music person since hipster-esque people hoard good bands and despise it when others discover bands they’ve known about since their first album. Because all albums past the first one are teh suck. Don says it best:

Don Lennon – My Favorite Rock Group

Nevertheless, I’ve fallen in love again with an artist I’ve listened to for a long while, who is now featured in a goddamned Diet Dr. Pepsi commercial (which is almost as bad as hearing the Rev. Horton Heat on a steak ad, but more forgivable than Iggy Pop selling out to a car company).

Meet Joe Tex. He’s nasty, he’s arguably sexist, he’s dirty. But he is also a precursor to rap music, even going so far as to describe his vocal stylings “rap” before rap became a musical force — plus it’s surprisingly danceable when turned up extra loud. Bonus, Marc, he’s from Tejas. The first track is a wink from his less conventional days, while the second is traditional but brilliant soul.

Joe Tex – You Said a Bad Word (make sure you get to the chorus)
Joe Tex – I Want To (Do Everything For You)

By the way, I like cover songs. All kinds of cover songs. Especially bizarre cover songs that make a ditty from The Simpsons sound legit.

Jens Lekman – Happy Birthday, Dear Friend Lisa!

And something extra twee this Friday, because twee is happy and Friday is happiness squared (if you doubt this next group’s tweeness, check out their website). Quite possibly the cutest song I’ve heard this year, Bunky uses climbing and falling trumpets along with an awkward yet pretty female voice to pull together what the cobags at Pitchfork Media accurately call “playful” music.

Bunky – Heartbunk

If you dare to download, dare to comment. Be a dear and tell me what you think of the music.

28.04.2006 Music No Comments

Spray your thoughts all over my face!

Friday, April 28th, 2006

Wingnut blogs have the best names. I jammed an “ass” in ours so we could try and be cool, but, honestly, we’re pretenders to the throne. We’re also markedly less cock-centric, instead choosing to focus on the buttocks, an equal-opportunity flab-patch.

Wearing the crown of Cockmaster is, of course, J*ff G*ldstein. Not only does he title his personal space “Protein Wisdom,” he tags it with a phrase the National Bastard Association celebrated as the “Most Jerkingest Off Tagline” of 2005: “Because not just _anybody_ can summarize the news.” Obviously, Jeff thinks his brains are in his nutsack and that his ejaculate carries forth what he’s learned to the mouths and anuses of the nation. I suppose that if you believed such things, it would be true that only those with wise balls could summarize anything. Sans sacks, women are clearly reduced to instinctive animals and should be kept in petting zoos and “protein” factories — they definitely shouldn’t be blogging. I wouldn’t read a llama’s blog; why would I read some chick’s?

[Check that. I would be all over a llama's blog. "Today: Bleated. Ate grass. Pooped. Tomorrow? Why, could be anything."]

Of course, the top contender for G*ldstein’s crown is the unmistakably gross “Balloon Juice.” Oh, wait, I’m sorry, to remove any doubt, he calls it “John Cole’s Balloon Juice.” Because I’d hate to think that maybe it wasn’t about his sperm. Unfortunately, my balls don’t float in the air, but if you’re smart enough, maybe they do. Maybe your sperm becomes just like helium, complete with voice modulation. Why, kids everywhere would be lining up to pump the fun-pipe.

Part of why I love these site names so much is because I get to imagine two homophobes running into each other in the office hallway and having conversations like this:
Tool 1: Hey Bob, did you get your dose of Protein Wisdom today?
Tool 2: You bet, Frank! Between that and all the Balloon Juice I’ve been taking in, I’m up to my eyeballs in knowledge!
[guffawing, shoulder-slapping, secret desires that go unspoken]

And _that_ will always make my day.

There are others, too — honestly-titled Joust the Facts (“Fighting back the truth with our purple swords!”), G*ldstein-worshipper Eject! Eject! Eject! (“Pull out to release the wisdom!”), even Wizbang (“Where we explosively urinate on your rights.”). The list goes on and on.

Someday perhaps the liberal blogosphere will catch up on cool names, but until then, would someone please hand me a towel? I think I just learned something.

28.04.2006 Punkass!, Wingnuts 1 Comment

Don’t call me a feminist, call me a…

Friday, April 28th, 2006

Fuck dictionary.com.

[fingers in ears]

Did the web collapse after I published that? No? Good.

Everyone’s favorite online reference tool defines a feminist as “A person whose beliefs and behavior are based on feminism” while defining feminism as “1. Belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.” and “2. The movement organized around this belief.”

Sounds tame enough, but to Twisty, them’s fighting words:

There are inner circles of class solidarity into which an outside “sympathizer” simply cannot tactfully incurse or reasonably expect to be invited. Raise money for causes? Sure. Vote for progressive legislation? Duh. Support the movement rather than pretend to sympathize, risk-free, with individuals? Word. But there comes a point at which one must be content to align oneself with the ideology, and then politely get the hell out their way.

Chris Clarke’s suiting up for battle, too. Twisty references his assertion of his non-feminism in which he surmised he could no more be a feminist for supporting their cause than he could a Chicana for supporting theirs.

Unsurprisingly, the Almighty Dictionary of 1s and 0s defines Chicana as “A Mexican-American woman or girl,” which is considerably more exclusive than a “person” who believes something.

Definitions of “feminist” akin to dictionary.com’s functionally reduce it to an intellectual or academic position that anyone can enjoy. It denegrates the idea that there’s a serious fight ongoing and that the battle scars from female oppression are real and deep, deep enough that those outside the subjugated population can only understand to a certain point. That’s part of what Chris and Twisty bring to the table, and I think they’re right.

The debates around this subject always seem to fall into are men/aren’t men see-saw slapfights. But what happens when Chris, Twisty, and friends finally win the good fight? We will have negated male inclusion into the category of “feminist,” but what does that make those of us who try to support the cause as much as we can? Can we call ourselves anything descriptive?

(more…)

28.04.2006 Feminism 6 Comments

Friday Random Ten – The Pink Unicornist Edition

Friday, April 28th, 2006

1) Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot – Bonnie and Clyde
2) The Meteors – 5 for Her, 3 for Him
3) L7 – Fuel My Fire (Am I allowed to say that this is the best metal band ever? They made it onto the VH1 metal countdown…)
4) Black Mountain – Heart of Snow
5) Man Man – 10 lb. Moustache (This would make a moustache ride very interesting.)
6) Too Short – Money in the Ghetto
7) Ohmega Watts – Mind Power
8) The Pixies – Bone Machine
9) David Essex – Rock On
10) Richard and Linda Thompson – Hard Luck Stories

Coming Up: Friday Random Downloads!

28.04.2006 Friday Random Ten 2 Comments

Wanting Pleasure, Living Poor, Spending Anyway

Thursday, April 27th, 2006

Nothing pisses off privileged folks like a poor person spending money on something that makes her happy.

Who am I to judge how a poor family spends their money? Being poor is not a lifestyle, it’s hard work.

It costs to be broke. Many people go to the bank to cash their checks. You put some money in savings, you open that account, and you cash your check for free. If you’re really lucky, you have direct deposit and don’t have to mess with the bank at all thanks to your debit card, checking account, and internet access.

But let’s take away your car (or just take away your gas money) and have you figure out how to get from your home to wherever you get your check cashed. Your check doesn’t get cashed at the bank, oh no. You probably have bad credit and can’t get a bank account, or you don’t have enough cash money to open up a bank account, so the only way to get your check cashed is to sign it over to somebody who will do it for you at their bank, or you go to a check cashing service. Most check cashing services charge around 4% of the total check to provide you with that service. Assuming you work a minimum wage, full time job, you make about $206 a week before taxes. A year’s income is roughly $10,700 before taxes. If you have to cash your checks at a check cashing service at 4% rather than a bank, you spend over one month’s income every year on simply getting access to your own money that you earned honestly at a full-time job.

We can find strong correllations between the poor and small time petty crime. Imagine you are a forty-year-old single mother and recovered alcoholic who was once arrested for a DUI. The crime happened ten years ago, hell, fifteen years ago. You were broke then and you’re broke now. You had to pay a $250 fine for the legal fees necessary to attend court, and you’ve been trying to pay them over time, but you were unable to pay them all. Over time, this legal fee accrues interest, and many years later you have a $3000 fine hanging over your head and you can’t get your license back until you’ve paid this fine. In the meantime, you’ve been driving to and from work without a license, to and from the grocery store without a license, to and from your kids’ school without a license, to and from social services without a license, because your town doesn’t have a public transit system and your family can’t help you out anymore. Your crime and sentence was a lifetime ago, but when you get pulled over fifteen years later for driving without a license, your car gets impounded, you get slapped with another fine and more legal fees, you’re out a car, and now you have to buy a new one and drive it too without a license because you have to support your family somehow.

The fun conservative game is to pick out people’s poor life decisions and find ways to hold them against the poor and blame them for little more than living in a society in which upward mobility is a fucking joke. Or as Amanda says:

[The myth of upward mobility is] an elaborate justification for the divine right of kings. You can tell who is most deserving by who is most rewarded and you reward the most deserving who you identify by the fact that they are the most rewarded. Simple, circular logic that has the side benefit of making it easy not to think about the state of the world much at all.

Poor single mom? Should have kept your legs closed. No insurance? Should have found a job with benefits. Want to file for bankruptcy? Shouldn’t have had the gumption to try and start your own small business.

Which brings me to my inspiration for writing this long-winded post.

(more…)

27.04.2006 Punkass! 72 Comments

Why Are Atheists So God Damned Angry?

Thursday, April 27th, 2006

The Daylight Atheist answers the major question in this article quite well:

I do not think that many religious people specifically intend to anger atheists, but Gellman must be aware that there are a great number of religious people who wake up each day thinking of new ways to evangelize, preach to, persuade and otherwise pester their neighbors, which works out to much the same thing. Personally I do my best to respond to conversion attempts with civility, but can an atheist really be blamed for feeling frustration and annoyance upon being bombarded with the same invasive and often obnoxious religious messages every day? In my experience, evangelical Christians frequently include in their message the implication or the outright assertion that nonbelievers are selfish, bitter, immoral, greedy, cold-hearted, closed-minded, deserving of God’s wrath, and so on. Surely it is not difficult to understand why the targets of such a message, atheists who are ordinary people just like everyone else, might feel offense at being told such things. Sometimes, we just want to be left alone to live our lives in peace.

And furthermore, we find some religious beliefs oppressive because they are oppressive. Again, there are a great many religious people who wake up each day thinking of new ways impose their narrow-minded, hateful, even theocratic views on society in general. Again, as Gellman must surely be aware, there is a loud, determined, and well-organized segment of society composed of religious people who think that I, as an atheist, should be compelled to pay tax money to support their evangelical programs and pay for maintaining their churches; who want to deny women the right to control their own bodies by banning birth control and outlawing abortion even in the cases of rape or incest; who want to censor and stifle science and replace it with thinly disguised religious dogma; who would rather see young adults get STDs than teach them how to protect themselves; who want to rape and despoil the planet and wage war on the grounds that Jesus is coming back soon anyway; and dozens more outrages that I could list. What is the appropriate response to these injustices if not anger?

Hear, hear!

I’m not an angry atheist, I’m an irritated and worried atheist. a) Worried that so many in power have created and maintained a culture based on oppression and fear and call it God’s love. b) Irritated because they want me to pay for it. Vice versa.

That and insisting that I’m angry when I’m not pisses me off.

27.04.2006 Godbaggery 2 Comments

Is Wes Anderson done imitating himself?

Thursday, April 27th, 2006

I hate this much less than anything else he’s done lately, and before you get too angry with me, just know you’re talking to a guy with a Rushmore poster above his couch.

(more…)

27.04.2006 Punkass!, Entertainment, Film 1 Comment

Wingnut Logic 101

Thursday, April 27th, 2006

Hello, friends. The 21st century has been mighty good to the wingnut population, and by this point, you’re probably wondering, “damn, how can I get me a piece of that sweet potato pie?”

Let’s be honest. If you want to avoid being jailed in the near future for thinking without Jesus’s permission, you’re going to have to give up this childish liberalism and start hating everyone but stupid manipulative rich white men. Seeing as how He made us (well, them) in His own image while also allowing puppies to be murdered and _anyone_ to get ass cancer only because a gal ate an apple, it does make sense that God is a stupid manipulative rich white man and thus we must love all like him.

Whoa, wait, did you catch it? I just used wingnut logic to make my point, and it kinda sounded good, too, huh?

Our doomed friends over at Crooks and Liars have the quicktime audio from Jerry Falwell blaming 9/11 on everyone who isn’t a stupid manipulative rich white man. If you want to watch fabulous wingnut logic at work, he’s the man to see:

JERRY FALWELL: And, I know that I’ll hear from them [the ACLU] for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this [9/11] because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way-all of them who have tried to secularize America – I point the finger in their face and say “you helped this happen.”

Sizzlin’! I may not be the Master like my dark lord Jerry Falwell, but if you want to quit trying so hard to help people and be tolerant, I think I can teach you wingnut logic in a few easy steps.

Note: Even those of you die-hard libs who just need to learn how to fake wingnut logic so you don’t get tacked up on a piece of wood for believing something different than the ruling class should take this quick and easy course.

(more…)

27.04.2006 Punkass!, Wingnuts 5 Comments

Uncle Sam wants me, but can he have me?

Wednesday, April 26th, 2006

Unintentionally, I suppose I’ve made this punkassbody(autonomy) week over here at punkassblog, at least as far as my posts are concerned. Seeing as how this is also our first week in existence, some folks are probably wondering if that’s all I intend to carp about. The answer: nyet. But I am enjoying myself, and the debates have been a blast, so I figured I would follow up on a promise I made and discuss the consription issue as it relates to my views on bodily coercion.

Caveat #1) I’m riffing here. This particular angle is not something set in stone, so I reserve the right to shuck and jive down the line.
Caveat #2) I don’t actually know whether I will consider conscription acceptable or unacceptable under the umbrella of “bodily autonomy over all else” by the end of the post. Should be fun to find out.
Caveat #3) I’m gonna geek out on philosophy crap, so if that isn’t your thing, please move onto the next post. And, again, I promise I won’t be like this all or even most of the time. I think.

Enter my lair to see where we wind up…

(more…)

26.04.2006 Bodily Autonomy, Military bullshit 3 Comments

Abortion Bans Are the New Black

Wednesday, April 26th, 2006

Louisiana decided it didn’t have enough to deal with, and decided to fuck over women who carry unplanned pregnancies. Just an extra kickback to the destitute while they twiddle their thumbs waiting for FEMA to do its fucking job.

The bill would allow abortions only to save the life of the mother. But Sen. Diana Bajoie, D-New Orleans, said she wanted to “make it more pro-life” by not allowing any exceptions.

Right. And women dying during childbirth? Totally pro-life. Been raped? Did Daddy touch your hoo-ha? Allow the state to violate you again. I’ll have you know, Jesus loves apartheid healthcare.

The “good” news? It only goes into effect if/when SCOTUS overturns Roe. Thanks for the favor, Louisiana! The women of America tip their uteri to you.

26.04.2006 Reproductive Rights No Comments

Git yer damn hands off my body, philosophically speaking

Wednesday, April 26th, 2006

Some folks still don’t understand the bodily autonomy issue.

I can’t make ‘em agree, I suppose, but I will do my best to make them understand. I asked Bluey to join me today, but he’s pissed he got accused of “not really addressing the issues” despite what he thought were some pretty solid efforts on that front. So I bought him a little bag of happy dust and decided I could handle this one myself.

Let’s start at the beginning, then we’ll get into reader Paul’s points.

(more…)

26.04.2006 Feminism, Reproductive Rights, Sex 51 Comments

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