ching chong

I saw Chinese people do a Chinese firedrill today.

It was pretty much the best thing ever.

heavy boots are caught up in the crowd

Uh oh... A new study is saying that flip flops are bad for feet. They cause you to walk differently and can eventually lead to assorted problems like tendonitis. That is unfortunate, because I live in flip flops and can't imagine ever wearing anything else. They're the only shoes that I can walk in all day and my feet never get sore.

Luckily the researchers were from Auburn, so I will discount their findings entirely.

a little afternoon delight

Probably a little more than you ever wanted to learn.



This is why the internet was invented.

hi i'm a douche and i approve this douchey message

Ermmm, wtf? Here's a clip of McCain on SNL that I saw tonight:



Seriously... I don't know what to make of it. Why was he on SNL at all? It's just a campaign ad thinly THINLY veiled in humor... maybe SNL has always offered itself as a platform to political candidates, the show is 13 years older than I am so what do I know. And besides that, everyone knows SNL isn't that funny to begin with, but even with that standard in mind it's pretty bad humor. He's uhh, making fun of how shitty his state is? Or what a bad job he's done as a senator? Cos I don't think highways and post offices fall under pork barrel expenditures. And I know he made a lot of fun of his age in the skit, so we're supposed to think actually he's not that old, but everytime I see him it makes me realize all over again how fucking old he is. He's FUCKING OLD.

Also, earlier in the show they had Fred Armisen in blackface to play Barack Obama. Complete with big fake ears. I mean, I guess they had to cos the only other black male on the cast right now is Kenan Thompson. Uhh... yeah.

i've got to admit it's getting better, a little better

If you haven't heard by now, the Supreme Court finally ruled, 5-4, that detainees at Guantanamo Bay - although to hell with semantics, they are PRISONERS - have the right to habeus corpus, i.e. a trial before an independent judge. Justice Kennedy wrote "The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times" and it's like, motherfuckin yeah they are! The Constitution wasn't designed to keep the peace in peaceful times, it was written in the years following a motherfucking war. Don't you think they maybe had wartime in mind? Those who give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither kinda shit? But no, Bush et al are all "We're in danger! The Constitution doesn't apply!" Fuck that shit. Thank you SCOTUS! All is not lost. Now please keep your slim liberal majority and do not overturn Roe v Wade. kthxbai

Also, Justice Scalia wrote in his dissenting opinion that this decision "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed." THEY'RE ALREADY BEING KILLED IN YOUR MOTHERFUCKING WAR. I fail to see how finally granting prisoners their legal RIGHTS - rights, not privileges, basic rights they have been denied for years - will have any role in increasing attacks against Americans. I only see how it could lead to a decrease. The Americans being killed at the moment are the ones who invaded a motherfucking sovereign country for no reason whatsoever. (Ok, it was actually the government that did that. The Americans being killed are their pawns. Is it too insensitive to write that?) Anyway, the point is, the "radical Islamists" he refers to are not going to hate us more because we're finally giving at least some lip service to fair legal rights. Actually the point is that his argument is so dumb I've been sitting here for 30 minutes trying to attack it and it's just too dumb to fathom, so I'm not even going to bother anymore. Suck it, Scalia.

do you realize?

K so tonight (I am writing this Tuesday night but am posting it later) I had a rather personal ancaro imparo moment, which holds truer to what I feel the spirit of ancaro imparo is more than the random facts I normally post do.

Although my parents have always said I can do or be whatever I want - lawyer, teacher, activist, homemaker, whatever strikes my fancy - I have never realized before that it is a rather female privilege. (Upper middle class educated female privilege, to be sure). I had never thought before about the pressures placed upon males from a relatively early age to be breadwinners. I've never once had the feeling or pressure that I would have to be the sole earner for my family. I've figured I would work and he would work, but never that I would have to go to school to get educated so I could get a good job to provide for a family. I've felt that I can do whatever I want, and I've joked about being poor and never making much money, because I have been raised with the privilege and the belief that I will never be able to make a substantial contribution to raising a family - which is both freeing and limiting. I've focused upon the limitations of being a woman, in terms of the career glass ceiling and wage discrepancies etc, but never upon the limitations of being a man and being expected to have a substantial salary. Male readers of this blog - have you ever felt that what you did wouldn't matter, because you would have a partner in raising a family, or have you always figured you would have to make a decent income? How many men are raised, not in the latter, but in the former environment? How many men go to school with zero career expectations upon them? I've only begun thinking about this tonight, and talking about it with a couple girls, so I don't have a male perspective on it at all. The more that I think about it, the more that I think it's rather odd that my family will invest $100,000+ in my education with zero real requirements upon me other than that I be happy and do something I enjoy. In a small way, that might make me more privileged than a male - although I will qualify that by saying there are a thousand other ways women are less privileged. And with that qualifier, do any of these male problems matter? Like, boohoo, someone actually thinks you're capable of being financially successful and supporting multiple people off of your own work. Because the more that I think about it, the more I feel kind of insulted that no one has ever held me to that standard.

And its just weird, because I typically consider myself a strong woman. But in the subconscious back of my mind, my life plan has always included the support of a male (if I were to raise a family, which I most likely will. Until that happens, I plan on being able to support myself). And any job that would enable me to support a family by myself would probably be outside of my ideals and what I would like to do with my life. So from a strong woman perspective, do I need to abandon the work I would most like to do so I could be the breadwinner? Continue on my merry path of do-whatever-the-fuck-you-wantdom and know that I'll have to have someone else be there to support that?

Heavy thoughts for a slow Tuesday night.

I don't expect any comprehensive answers. These are all double-edged sword type problems/conundrums and I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about this.

[Postscript] It is now Wednesday afternoon and I'm re-reading this before I post it. I'm not sure that what I've written is entirely clear and is probably more repetitive than anything, seeing as how I originally wrote it rather drunk and stoned at 2am. But instead of taking weeks to revise this until it makes sense I'm just going to throw it out there to try and start a dialogue, which could hopefully be more clarifying or illuminating than running in circles in my own head is.

houston we have a problem

Lesson for the day: Don't get into your car with a vague destination in mind without, in fact, knowing where that destination is. Otherwise you will end up an hour later outside the loop and missing a quarter tank of gas, on the phone with your dad yelling about how much of a retard you are, in fact, are.

This isn't the most amazing Ancaro Imparo fix, I admit. So here's a little more to go with the lesson: The famed Heights neighborhood is not, as you might think, a neighborhood. I was under the impression that it was a few quaint little streets, like the Village, but it's more the larger part of north Houston (NoHo, if you insist on being a douchebag). Basically the space between Memorial Parkway and 610? Which is apparently a rather large area.

Furthermore, the Heights (or at least the section I finally stumbled upon, West 19th between Heights Blvd and Shepherd) is not a cute little collection of affordable vintage-tastic shops. It is right in line with the overpriced designer crap at the Village. Perhaps one day I will be able to afford an 80$ tank top, but today is not that day. Nor is that day anywhere in the near future, so in this area at least this little brokeass Houston gal will be sticking to what she has already learned (Taxi Taxi!). And maybe that is the real lesson to get out of all of this.

what i can do for you

Fucking learning something every day, aren't we! Or every other week or so. Or whenever I get around to actually putting fingers to keyboard (is it sad that that's the new "pen to paper"?)

Like this: I was thinking recently about getting a new computer, and Dayna's about to get one soon too. So I went looking on the Rice website for a student discount cos I had some faint foggy memory that we get something somewhere (I mean, that 30,000$ has to pay for something other than just your professor's wrinkled khakis and filling Leebron's pool with 1$ bills.)

And look what I found! A whole page of discounted laptops, desktops, cell phones, printers, and other random tech stuff. Why don't they tell us about this stuff? Do they tell us about this stuff? Well now we all know! Now go forth and save 100$ on that 1500$ Macbook!