Only anarchists are pretty...

I'll keep it on the background while I work and read. I'm one of those cliches that mostly watches for the ads. This year, I'll be watching in particular for an ad starring a friend. And I will be pulling for the Saints. How can you not? In terms of pure story, a Saints win will be nothing short of inspiring.

But before the Super Bowl - I'm watching the Puppybowl! Truly the most fun thing to watch on Super Bowl Sunday.

So here's the problem with the whole Tim Tebow anti-abortion ad set to air during the Superbowl. It isn't the content of the ad. It isn't the Tebows telling their story (as was suggested by a anti-choicer on MSNBC yesterday). If they want to tell their story, of course they should. Shout it from the rooftops.

It IS the fact that, as CBS admits in the linked story above, CBS used to claim to have a policy that wouldn't allow political issue ads, and used that policy to refuse to air ads from MoveOn, the United Church of Christ, etc. (liberal organization ads). And now, all of the sudden, CBS says it has changed its policy, and will accept political ads. And the first ad just happens to be an anti-choice ad paid for by Focus on the Family (a conservative organization). You see the disconnect?

The quagmire that CBS finds itself in here is one of parity. When a network allows political ads, it needs to give equal time to both sides of an issue. It has to do that with election ads, so it should have to with so-called "softer" issue ads. Don't stop anyone from speaking (which is why I will not be signing any petitions to stop the ad), but let EVERYONE speak.

And check out this post for some interesting tidbits on the Tebows and their story. Hint: The whole story won't be in the commercial.

In related news...we have the Citizens United opinion. This opinion is staggering on so many levels. Not only does it give corporations free speech rights (How is a corporation a citizen? Can a corporation vote? Can it hold office? Well, not YET. Just give the Roberts court some time.), it kills any restrictions on corporate political spending, AND opens the door to foreign spending in U.S. elections (I'm going to figure that most people can clearly see why THAT'S a bad thing). Make no mistake, this fucks EVERYONE over, not just liberal organizations. Think the so-called populist tea partiers will be able to be heard above the roar of corporate interests? How about your average citizen? Not so much. Understand that now, for a citizen to have his or her voice heard, he or she will have to be a part of a corporation/association. But hey, you might be saying, this opinion didn't put any restrictions on individuals, it just lifted restrictions on corporations, so I can still say what I want. And to you I say, think about this. How do you get your voice heard in the halls of power? Access. And how do you get that access? By being loud enough and strident enough to get noticed. And how do you make yourself that loud? Publicity. And how do you get that publicity? Money. Money for ads, money for press conferences, money for large and organized events. Do you have that kind of money? I don't. Do you know who does have that kind of money? Corporations, and on a sometimes smaller scale, associations. And that is why the Citizens United decision hits each and every one of us. Now, someone out there is bound to say, well, corporations already do all the stuff you just talked about, they just had to be sneaky about it. To that I say, at least we had a platform on which to fight it. At least we were able to call it out and fight it when a line was crossed. Now, there's no line.

I updated my list of links on the left. Does anyone even look at them? No idea. At any rate, if you want to know the sites I visit nearly every day, there they are.

Your result for The "What Type of Intellectual are You?" Test...

The Bibliophile

You scored 27% empirical, 29% public, and 39% teaching-oriented

Take The "What Type of Intellectual are You?" Test at OkCupid

Uber-easy ways to donate to relief efforts in Haiti: Text YELE to 501501 (Wyclef's Haiti charity), text HAITI to 90999 (Red Cross). There are also more text-to-give organizations out there. If you want to give more traditionally, check out Charity Navigator's list of organizations to which to donate.

Beware the inhuman charity scammers out there. And a note to people who think it's OK to use mass destruction to scam folks out of money: Do us all a favor and just off yourselves. You add nothing to the human race but evil. (And you know what? Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson aren't much better. Take your hatefulness and inhumanity and shove it, guys.)

Hmmm...I don't know. I like to think I'm openminded, but there are things I just can't abide, musically: modern country music, shitty/misogynistic rap, sappy light rock. I can deal with friends liking that stuff if they also like other stuff, and if they're open to other types of music. But if someone's taste is strictly crap, what does that say about his or her appreciation of other art? Is he or she going to be the kind of person who thinks Precious Moments figurines are good things with which to decorate? Is he or she going to think a movie like The Transporter is excellent filmmaking? Is he or she going to only read Dan Brown novels and call them good writing? Bad taste in music usually means bad taste in other mediums. Let's just say you are unlikely to see me hanging out with a person who's into all the crap I just listed.

Hope it's been safe and easy so far.



As always, Neil Gaiman sums up my new year's wishes best.

This Christmas song is one of my absolute favorites. Put it on and turn it up. Long live glam rock! Merry Xmas Everybody!

In honor of Xmas, a repost of a classic.



Party on, Xmas revelers!

Is there really any question what my answer is on this? Snow, snow, snow! Check out this pic of a snowy White House, via WestWingReport:



How can you not want that for the holidays? Lovely.

Via this post over at Why Women Hate Men:

Owning a penis no more makes you a quality fuck than owning a wrench makes you a quality auto mechanic.

Initially, I turn inward. Self-examination to the point of ridiculousness is one of my totally "me" qualities. I write about whatever's bugging me, too, usually where no one else can read it. (Or I'll use it in a story - some of the best art comes from the worst times, eh?) But then, if something is still bothering me after all that introspection, I'll turn to family and close friends. I do have a rock-solid core of people on whom I can depend. Since that core is both close to home and far flung, we communicate in person, via phone, online, you name it.

Cold white snow, sunny blue skies...

Maybe I've always misunderstood this issue, but it seems to me that freezing yourself until the world comes up with a cure for aging/disease is utterly useless unless the world comes up with a cure for death. I mean, you have to be dead to be frozen, right? So injecting your dead, thawed body sometime in the future to try to "cure" it won't really do any good unless there's some sort of reanimation going on. And if there is...won't you just be a zombie or Frankenstein's monster or something? Not to rip on Walt Disney (yeah, I know, it's just a myth) or anything, but this whole concept of cryogenically freezing a person in order to cure him or her in the future has always seemed ridiculous to me.

For kiwi_grrl, who has requested that I keep the snow pics coming:





Down it comes tonight, coating the world in soft quiet.

It came down starting last night...



...and covered the world this morning.



I know people think I'm weird...but I love snow, and I love winter. Hurrah for December!

The fabulous Amanda Palmer recently posted about the news on her blog, asking, "how many of you follow the news, how much, and more importantly, WHERE? newspaper? online? tv news? radio? pacifica? huffpo? every day? once a week? more importantly….why?"

This is how I responded:

I follow the news pretty much daily, except I try to check out and relax on weekends. I tend to read liberal/lefty blogs (and follow their links to more mainstream media/newspapers), watch MSNBC, and when I feel I need a bit more of an objective view, I watch CNN and check out the CNN website. Finally, I subscribe to a (weekly, of course) magazine called The Week (http://www.theweek.com/). The Week is pretty awesome if you want to get an overview of all sorts of news and don't have time to read all the papers/magazines/websites/etc. It's sort of an aggregator. It gives the bare facts of a story, then gives snippets of how other papers/magazines/websites covered the story. I think you might dig it as a source should you decide to follow the news regularly. :)

Finally, as to why...there are a few reasons. One is that I like to feel connected, and like to look past my own experience to find out what's going on in the rest of the world. It feels less self-centered-American to try and know a little something about what the rest of the world finds important. My second reason is selfish: I like to know what's going on so I can have an opinion on it. I like discussion and debate, but I won't participate if I don't know enough about the issue to form an opinion. So I try to give myself a base of knowledge on the topics of the day. Finally, I guess I feel a need to bear witness. If we don't pay attention to the things happening in the world, good, bad, and ugly, then we run the risk of learning nothing from those things. And we run the risk of those people who've been affected by things/events/atrocities being forgotten. Those aren't things I want to risk.

How about you guys?

I give you...Puppet New Moon:



And if you haven't seen its predecessor, check out Twilight The Puppet Saga.

Both come from the mad genius of my old pal Spooky Dan.

Enjoy.