Announcement

Sticking this at the top for those who may feel lost.

I will be blogging permanently at Pandagon. The fate of Mouse Words is still in the balance--for now I will be having mostly duplicate stuff at both blogs, which means that you can just blow off trying to comment on this Blogger piece of shit and direct your comments to Pandagon. I'm really excited about this opportunity to add ammunition to the "women bloggers question". Mostly I'm happy to have an opportunity to subvert the dominant link hierarchy from a blog that has a whole lot more readers than Mouse Words ever got.

Here's my introduction link.

Edited to add: Sorry for de-linking you, Ross. I thought your site was broken, but it was my button. I'll add you back.

Jesus hates a long distance runner

Well, I was going to write about the California state court's sudden bout of common sense that led them to overturn the anti-gay state laws, but I'm sure everyone has heard the news. Instead, since I have been deluged with requests to do so, I'm going to make fun of this article about why Jesus wept so see a woman kick a soccer ball.

For quite a long time, women resisted the feminist call to play sports, since they just weren’t interested like men were. But this didn't sit well with the feminists; they felt this was the fault of male oppression. In the name of “equality,” feminist leaders poked and prodded and pushed women to join the games, until women in droves finally succumbed to the pressure.

I know it's hard to see in this photo, but in the background, if you squint really hard, you can see the feminist overlords holding whips and sending secret messages to the US team not to try to make a break for it. What looks like faces of truimph in this picture, then, can actually be read as cries for help--no, don't make us accept that trophy! We want to be good Christian housewives. Please, no!

One of the trends in schools is the participation in sports by women; therefore it shouldn’t surprise us that so many Christian daughters today participate in sports. But is this really all that bad?

Of course it's bad. For one thing, there's evidence that girls who participate in school sports are less likely to fall pregnant during high school, which means they are less likely to be married off by the time they are 21 and set to the task of popping out pups until their bodies give like Jesus wants them to.

I propose that sports greatly hinders the development of godly, Biblical, feminine character. Parents today expend extraordinary amounts of time and energy taking their daughters from one sports event to another, week after week, even to the point where it exhausts the family and family resources. The fruits we see are that today’s Christian women are often ill-prepared to be Biblically obedient wives and mothers.

If a girl gets raised in a family that treats her and her interests as if they were important and worthy of time and resources as if she were a son, she'll grow up to be that woman who actually sits down at dinner to eat instead of hovering above her husband all night making sure he's satisfied before she dare sneak a bite in the corner of the room.

Even some of the traditionally more feminine sports like gymnastics and ice skating are now influencing women to be more masculine.

The Bible talks about women developing a quiet and gentle spirit; I think sports fosters anything but that. They instead develop a competitive and contentious spirit that will cause them to have great difficulty in their marriages.

Translation: she'll backtalk her husband and say unfeminine things like, "Oh dear, I don't think it's the best idea to go to the school board meeting and say that you want our kids to be taught that dinosaurs and humans lived together." That's the sort of thing that can cause a marriage to go sour fast.

Most men I know admire a woman who is reasonably healthy and fit; they are also attracted to a woman who is somewhat “soft” and cuddly. This does not mean she should be delicate like tissue paper; no, a woman should be reasonably strong, and the normal duties of life will make her that way.

You'll get all the exercise you need lifting a baby in and out of a crib. Since you understand that family resources don't go to females, you won't need much exercise since you won't be eating enough to get fat anyway.

Female athletes also sneer, wince, push, and fight just like the men. I notice these things all the time in pictures in our hometown newspaper. The sneers are most obvious; they make young women very unfeminine. The masculine uniforms and sweaty bodies aren’t very attractive, either.

Women aren't to sneer, wince, push or fight for fear of offending a husband; apparently men sneering and pushing women is perfectly alright. Sports are not sexually attractive to middle-aged ministers, and as we recall by the Sermon on the Eyeliner, Jesus exhorted young women to remember that their ability to turn on old farts was their ticket to heaven.

Of course, the problem is that while it's not sexually appealing to men to be an athlete, it's also way too sexually appealing to men.

"A telltale sign of paganism is nudity. Historically, a primary means for introducing nudity into a culture has been through athletic competition which emphasizes form, movement, and the prowess of the body.... Christians should be wary of any educational process or cultural event which justify nakedness on the grounds of athletic freedom...."

It shouldn’t be a secret that women’s sports promote immodest attire. The pressure to be immodest is just one more reason women should avoid sports, and in many cases we shouldn’t even watch women’s (and sometimes men’s) sport competitions. The Apostle Paul often referred to how athletes ran races “unencumbered” (i.e. nude), because of the Greek influence in sports during his day. Based on what Mr. Eldridge writes, the question of whether or not women should participate in sports should be easy to answer.

So many questions pop into my head all at once reading this. Women participate in sports nude? I guess by this guy's reckoning, clothes that don't encumber movement are overtly sexual and pagan nudism. Which does cause one to wonder how fundies can have sex or even take a shit without falling into Athena worship, seeing how both activities require a lot more nudity than gymnastics.

But all that is less important to me than the picture he uses to illustrate how women in sports are all man-tempting nekkid harlots.



If this sort of thing gets the juices running, then maybe we need more, not less porn, to desensitize men and make them suitable to be let out of their cages.

Cross posted at Pandagon.

Mouse is a punk rocker

Volsunga has a post up about one of the topics of endless fascination for youngish fans of the music--what is and isn't punk? Luckily, she's a smarty-pants and has insightful things to say. I probably don't, 'cause I was never really that good at convincing people that my enthusiasm for any strain of punk rock was any more profound than, "Fuck yeah!" I think, however, there is something to be said for that attitude.

The commodification of punk has been an irritant to the faithful since it first made its way over to England, if not before. It's just being pissy and ignorant, though, to take the simplistic view that treating punk rock as a commodity is Evil--all art is a commodity, and it's just a matter of who's got their hands on the controls. Or, even just if you like it, really. People who are enamored of "ironic" retro fashions, like I've been since I was a teenager, we might kid ourselves into thinking that because we're not feeding the current loathed beast that dictates trends and fashions that we are somehow making a statement or above it all somehow. Truth told, I just like certain older styles for aesthic reasons and while some friends of mine are irate to see retro fashions like full skirts and fitted waists coming back into style, I'm just happy that there's more clothes for me to buy and that everyone is looking so damn cute lately.

That doesn't mean I don't have my limits. For instance, I loathe clothing that is the modern equivalent of playing peasant--I will die before I pay $100 for a pair of jeans that are faded and torn. Fashions like that make mockery of people like me who have to work for a damn living and who buy our jeans brand new and dark indigo and wear the new ones out at night to look snappy and wear them on Saturday afternoons at the grocery store when they have holes and stains, not because we're making a statement so much as we don't see the point in throwing out something usable until there's a big hole in the ass.

That's what's so damn infuriating about the commodification--the trendy, inauthentic, money-grubbing commodification--of punk, or anything else for that matter. (Hip-hop has suffered the same fate of being run through a corporate commodification machine and then being sold back to the gullible at a huge profit margin.) It's inauthentic and therefore it's a mockery--Ashley Simpson wears a shirt that's supposed to look punk but costs more than I spend in a year on clothes and sings her shitty music for ungodly amounts of dough while I know people who may be geniuses that are couch-surfing and it seems like the corporate fucks are blowing raspberries at you , turning symbols that once had meaning for you into the same old crap that you were retaliating against in the first place.

The saddest thing is that they've caused us to eat our own. Pop punk styles are charting now, and that means that it's not cool anymore and you're embarrassed to like the music that you always liked before, that gave you joy. We're chasing our tails and it's time to stop, take a breath and remember that the most important thing is not if you're rebelling, but if you're simply being honest. I find myself wanting to dig deep and write about how my favorite band is something other than The Ramones, something more obscure, hipper somehow. But that would be a lie--The Ramones really are my favorite band, and yes, their music means something to me.

The music causes wall-building and debates about what is or isn't Punk, and while that's tiresome and stupid it is indicative of a certain passion that should be lauded. For instance, because of punk I was well-versed in the DIY aesthetic, and because of that blogging made immediate sense to me and that's why I jumped into it with two feet. A thoughtful approach to the philosophies behind it should be empowering, not frustrating. And of course, if you're empowered you feel that you are the person who decides what is and what is not, and so these debates become empty and meaningless. Who says what's Punk? Well, I do, that's who.

If you deny it, it only makes it worse

You Are Pride !
You're competitive about most things. And feel
compelled
to constantly assure yourself of your greatness.
But hey,
It's not all bad - maybe you are that good! You
generally
look presentable, and are well educated because you
wouldn't let
yourself be any other way. People are intimidated
of you though,
so try and tone it down a bit - after all nobody is
perfect.

Congratulations ... You are the 'Best Kept' of the
7 deadly sins!


?? Which Of The Seven Deadly Sins Are You ??
brought to you by Quizilla

From Trish Wilson.

Texans don't bite and David Brooks reveals the source of his neurotic fear of pussification

The swarms of the hip are beginning to crowd into my fair city even as the students have left for Spring Break. I expect the usual weirdness in dealing with those from out of town who suspect that Texans are abnormal, like this blogger who I found from BlogBites.

We really, really hope all those stories of Austin being "cool" and "hip" and, mostly, "liberal" are true -- we get scared of potential conflicts with Red Staters once we pass Pinole on 80. Can they see it in our eyes that we support same-sex marriage, universal healthcare and public transportation funding?

Ah yes, we are different from everyone else, but we actually don't bite. Even people who have different politics from the blue-staters (and Austinites generally don't) will not actually descend on you to rend you limb from limb, so no fear, gentle hipsters from out of state! The worst you have to worry about is that we will laugh at you because we have never fully managed to truly accomodate The Fashionable and we find people wearing carefully put together hip outfits to be sources of amusement. Seriously, one year we had a good five minute gut wrenching laugh at the expense of a poor Manhatten-dweller who wore a greasy black cowboy hat with the brim carefully curled up.

We'll have operatives on the ground for the duration, bringing you team coverage. Is Shiner Bock better than Anchor Steam? Can the Salt Lick stand toe-to-toe with Brother-In-Law's? Will their burritos have rice and beans? And if Paris Hilton and Gavin Newsom start making out in Union Square, and no one's there to blog about it, will they make a sound?

Answers: Yes; you won't eat there because The Salt Lick's not actually in Austin; yes and better than yours; and no, they actually implode on themselves.

Speaking of exaggerrated differences between different parts of America, David Brooks tipped off his readership to the reason behind his obsession with both red staters and reinstating the boot on women's necks--he's a big weakling who drinks decaf.

I could have guessed it anyway, but it’s always nice to hear a confirmation of one’s suspicions. Brooks is a wuss and he wants women, liberals and red staters to fix him. As someone who manages fit into all three categories, I don't know which of Brooks' expectations of people like me is most offensive--that we women should turn into dependent baby machines to make him feel manlier, that we liberals need to castigate ourselves for being cheese-eaters so that Brooks can have some company for his guilt-caused misery, or that we red-staters should mojo our gun-toting, cheap food-eating toughness over to Brooks so that he can briefly experience what it's like to be a real cowboy. Of course, monsters like me--independent women (bad) who are middle Americans (good) that voted for Kerry (bad)--may not actually seem possible in Brooks World. Perhaps I should write him a letter notifying him of my existence and see if that causes his head to explode.

For fuck's sake

The question of questions makes the big time. I am sorry I ate my breakfast already as my stomach is burbling. At least this article puts the blame squarely where it belongs--white men dominate the top run of the blogosphere because they like each other so damn much.

Let's all hope that the top rung white men can refrain from guilt-tripping themselves for a day after reading this before moving onto more important task of linking endlessly to each other.

On the personal side, because being female I have to de-politicize this blog with personal ruminations, the hours spent building my garden in the springtime sun have turned me into a painful ball of pink. Every year I forget that I am as pale and sensitive as I am, to the point where I wonder if I should have been a Victorian heroine dying of TB instead of a modern woman who actually gets some exercise, and every year I manage to get sunburned while it is still officially winter. But I have no cause to complain. Yesterday my mother called me from the hospital, where she is currently recovering from the mother of all gardening accidents. Yes, a rattlesnake bit her hand, through her gloves no less, while she was pulling weeds. Luckily, she is still with us and still had the energy to ask polite motherly questions about my life. She would deny it, but she really is a tough lady.

Apparently they don't razor the bite open and drain it anymore to treat snake bites. They have drugs called anti-venom now that they give you instead. I suggested to my mother that she embrace our new chemical millenium and use chemical weed killer in the future on her garden. I also suggested the manufactor should make a new Weed and Snake Killer especially designed for West Texas.

The finished product. This morning, this was all just grass. 

Porn and gardens

This review of the new Legs McNeil oral history, The Other Hollywood, is really interesting and makes me want to read the book. McNeil put together a really compelling history of the rise of New York punk with just interviews, and I'll bet that this book probably does live up to they hype. Hopefully, this will be the book that gets people past the partisan style debate about porn--it's great, fulfilling, fun/evil, exploitative and addictive. Interview both Nina Hartley and Linda Lovelace and get at the crux of the matter--like anything else in this world, different people have different opinions on it and one experience does not negate another.

One thing in this review really struck me as a reflection of what I always say about porn, or more specifically, about the misogyny in it--that it's a symptom of a larger social problem, not a cause. The review states that the book makes the case that Linda Lovelace was horribly abused by her husband and that everyone else stood around and ignored it. But also that they didn't ignore it because they approved, but for much more mundane reasons than that.

And here is where the exhaustive chronicling of "The Other Hollywood" becomes not just compelling but important: In the back-and-forth between the couple on the page, and with memories from other actors and crew members thrown in, it becomes clear that Lovelace might have indeed been rather flaky or dumb or, in Traynor's word, a "dingbat," but she was also so battered physically and emotionally that it is little wonder that she felt coerced. And because her co-workers saw her problem as a private matter, they stayed out of it.

It reminded me of how abuse is ignored in every other arena of life, how people view it as a "private" matter and stay out of it. Traynor would have beat his wife no matter what they did for a living, and the people around them would have ignored it regardless of what they did for a living. You can argue that the sexual nature of the work made the abuse and you could have a good case. But it's more important to see the abuse that occurs in porn not as a cause of the abuse in the rest of life, but as part of the fabric of the rest of our society. A symptom, not a cause.


Anyway, sorry about the lack of posting today. I spent most of the day not building a new Mouse Words, though progress is being made on that front, but actually engaged in the real world task of building my garden. This is the first non-rainy weekend we've had in awhile, so we took advantage. The Man of Mouse is handy as hell and he also managed to tear apart a spare bench we had and turn it into a 2 foot tall wall for a massive compost pile in the time it took me to bag five 30 gallon bags of leaves to toss into our brand new compost pile. We then tilled and partitioned off an 8X8 foot area for the garden, composted it, put a pathway in it and planted tomatoes and some herbs. More herbs will be planted during the spare moments in the week of SXSW.

Pictures of said garden to come.

Doh! Correction time

I am not good on calling out terrorist actions, am I? Yesterday, I expressed worry that the murder of that judge might be a terrorist attack, and I was wrong. And on the flip side, I wrote about the kid who went to jail for writing zombie stories earlier and guessed that his family was overreacting. Wrong again. Looks like the kid was lying.

However, Poole's teachers told police they had not assigned such a story or talked to him about it -- and had they seen it, they would have been obligated to report him to authorities.

And, as it turns out, Poole's writings include no brain-eating dead folks.

What they do contain, Winchester police Detective Steven Caudill testified yesterday, is evidence that he had tried to solicit seven fellow students to join him in a military organization called No Limited Soldiers.

Now, they may or may not be overreacting, but I'm actually inclined to agree with the authorities in the case now, because now we have evidence that this kid was lying to conceal what he really did. And the nature of the lie--one designed to maximize his own fame and manipulate and deceive well-meaning people--indicates that this kid might have exactly the sort of superiority complex that previous school shooters have.

Elayne Riggs has more.

Class and warfare

The Slactivist has a useful suggestion for resisting the current transfer of money from the poor and the middle class to the rich--strip down credit card ads on campus. The credit card companies want nothing more than to have the students paying off a lifetime's worth of debt by the time they graduate and it's sick. I know people who are in their mid-30s still trying to catch up with charges they rang up before they turned 21. That's all this bankruptcy bill is about, making sure that nothing even slows down the process of transferring the wealth of the nation from the hands of the many to the hands of the few and getting us on track to being feudal as soon as possible.

Avedon Carol wonders what the Bushies think they're going to live on once they have finished pillaging our nation's assets. I have been wondering the same thing myself for a long time now--exactly how do Bush and his cronies picture their goals for this country? I mean, even though I'm thinking they want what is essentially a feudal society with them as the landed gentry, they are foolish to think that's going to happen if Americans aren't producing anything we can pay up in entitlements. Of course, the entitlements won't be a direct payment, but through a system of supressed wages, cronyism, and usury, the end result will be the same if they manage to get everything they want. But the lack of actual production inside our borders seems to be problematic for that theory.

Yesterday I was standing in line at 7-11 and sort of idly looking at the green "Support Our Troops" wristbands and I noticed that the box they were in said, "Until they come home." Meaning, I guess, wear the band until the troops return. And it made me sad to think about all the people who have purchased one of these bands and earnestly wear them until certain loved ones return from Iraq. To wear such a thing is to have faith that the troops will be coming home soon, that there is an end in sight and that the Shrub has good intentions with his war and will see to it that there is an end. But odds are the plan on the BushCo table is that once they can take enough troops out of Iraq, they will just invade another country, most likely Iran. The troops, in other words, aren't coming home.

Then it hit me--it isn't quite the feudal societies of Europe that are the aimed-for ideal, but the Roman Empire. Little fucker probably thinks he's Caesar. They don't plan to live on the assets of Americans but on the assets of other countries. A country that produces nothing still produces bodies, however, and that's probably what BushCo is thinking will be the key to getting at the assets of other countries. Take away our actual production and turn us into a military machine.....

Granted, it was a crazy thought but now that it has its claws in me, I see evidence of the plan everywhere. For instance, the sudden surge of leglislative attempts to strip women of their reproductive rights--most people tend to think it's a sop to the religious right, but viewed from another angle, it could be the first baby steps towards redefining women as bodies to produce more soliders, an attitude that's common to completely militarized societies. (Nazis, Spartans, you name it.) The almost insane push to strip Americans of their ability to stabilize their personal fortunes? Well, if you're poor, you can always join the military, now can't you?

I realize on a certain level, I'm not saying anything new--the neocon obsession with military power is the primary characteristic. Still, I can honestly say that I never thought that there might be an overall plan to turn us into a more militaristic society than we ever could have imagined. But now that I think about it, yeah, I think that there's a belief that this could be the century of the American Empire and the neocon plan for the next generation is to turn them into cannon fodder.

Weekend show recommendations

Tonight at Room 710, we're going to see the Bulemics and then later on the Dicks. A full night of bands with names you don't want to use in front of your mother.

The Weirdos are also playing at Emo's. Oops! Scratch that. According to the site, they cancelled again. Fuckers. Anyway, that means you can get into Emo's for free and the Applicators and the Ends are playing, and they are always fun to see.

Tomorrow night Beerland has a good line-up--Kodiaks, This Damn Town, and Manikin. The last two I like a whole lot, so it's well worth going.

SXSW is coming up next week and I'm planning to blog it. We'll see how well that goes over with all the activity in my house, but the houseguest that's staying with us for a whole week is also a writer, so at least I have moral support in that.

Wombs don't have rights; too bad for that fleshy thing surrounding them

All sorts of bad news on the reproductive rights front. Minnesota has joined the fight to make the sluts pay and pay some more for getting out of line and thinking they have rights to their own bodies. The House is planning to move $2 million dollars from Planned Parenthood to places that will lie to women seeking abortions and humiliate them until they accept that bearing a baby and giving it away is their just punishment for touching a pee-pee. This quote from Feministing really gets to the root of the anti-abortion rights cause.

“They asked questions about Planned Parenthood's mission, how it counsels pregnant women who come to its clinics seeking abortions and how much state funding it gets...Rep. Tim Wilkin, R-Eagan, asked why more pregnant Planned Parenthood patients don't choose to have children and give them up for adoption.”

Rep. Wilkin thinks that women are just brood bitches and doesn't see why the fine people at Planned Parenthood don't agree. Every uterus that's working needs to be, if not for the family of the woman that owns the functioning uterus, then for the family with money that doesn't have possession of a functioning uterus.

Charlie Kilian sent me this story from The Kansas City Star about more abortion restrictions being put on women in Missouri.

The bill would require abortion doctors to obtain hospital privileges within 30 miles of their clinics to continue performing abortions. It also would redefine an abortion clinic as an "ambulatory surgical center" subject to state standards for surgery facilities.

The bill also would make it a felony for someone to accompany a minor across state lines to receive an abortion without a parent's permission.

Naturally, the bill, which is set up to make it harder for women who want abortions to get them, is being pushed as by a Republican who claims she's only trying to help women who want abortions.

Rep. Jane Cunningham, a St. Louis County Republican and sponsor of the legislation, said the bill would protect women by making abortion clinics safer.

Rep. Cunningham, you know what helps women who want abortions? Getting their fucking abortions. You're not being protected from what you really want to be protected from, which is being pregnant any longer, if the doctor who performs abortions gets shut down.

The bill also tries to make it harder for young women who can't get parental notification to cross state lines and get abortions there.

Cunningham filed the bill to crack down on Missouri minors who travel to the Hope Clinic in Granite City, Ill., to obtain abortions. Illinois does not require a minor to get parental consent for an abortion; Missouri requires one parent to approve.

"I think we have to keep young girls safe," Cunningham said. "These are Missouri children, and this is just closing a loophole."

Keeping girls safe means exposing girls who are afraid of a beatdown from daddy to having to tell him that they are pregnant. Those girls who won't risk it can safely go to a back alley abortionist or safely throw themselves down the stairs or safely have their boyfriends beat them until they miscarry. Cunningham can come over to my house and I'll show her what safe things I can do with a baseball bat to people who lie and claim to be helping the very people they are dying to hurt.

As Rad Geek explains:

This is no accident. They are coming for the young and desparate first; they are the easiest to go after. They have already created a byzantine system of explicit restrictions and burdensome regulations to create a limited class of authorized abortion providers and make the conditions of obtaining an authorized abortion from them as harrowing as possible.

Well, Jesus did say that the strong should devour the weak, that strength is the same thing as morality, didn't he?

Edited to add: Fred at Stone Court thinks that the murder of a judge today might be an anti-abortion terrorist act. I wouldn't be surprised--the laudatory attitude on the right wing fringe towards the killing of Judge Lefkow's husband and mother last week is just the sort of thing that inspires further terrorist acts. And while the causes--white supremacy and anti-abortion rights--are ostensibly different ones, they aren't really. For one thing, they are both about returning control to the dominant groups. For another, the attitude that women are just breeding machines locks in nicely with the obsession that white supremacists have with lineage, etc. Hell, the notion that women's rights are a direct threat to the survival of the white race is becoming a mainstream idea lately, with David Brooks hinting around the subject in his odes to natalism.

Update on that: It looks like it wasn't a terrorist killing, but a man on trial for rape who was trying to get away.

Friday Random Ten--"The Quiet Before SXSW" Edition

Yes, I'm still on Blogger. Apparently, I need more time. Here's our marching orders.

1) "I Believe to My Soul"--Ray Charles
2) "Be My Guru"--The Hoodoo Gurus
3) "Voodoo Lady"--Ween
4) "You're Gonna Miss Me"--13th Floor Elevators
5) "Rid of Me"--PJ Harvey
6) "Bermuda Triangle Shorts"--Man....or Astroman?
7) "God Only Knows"--Beach Boys
8) "Hey Hey Ha Ha"--Crazy Girls
9) "I Don't Want to Go to Chelsea"--Elvis Costello
10) "Hit It Run"--Run DMC

Only one of those is going to actually be at SXSW--Elvis Costello. I doubt a plebian like me will be able to get into that show, however.

Edited to add: Now there's a logo!

Max attacks the grass like a tiger after an antelope. 

Trying the "Desperate Housewives" thing again

Okay, this is the original article at PopMatters by Raphaël Costambeys-Kempczynski that inspired me to write this. He lives in England and watches "Desperate Housewives" and wonders a bit if this show means that American women are a bit crazy. (Answer: no more than anyone else.) He also has the misfortune to read Brent Bozell's idiotic call for boycotts against the advertisers on "Desperate Housewives" because the show doesn't promote conservative values enough, which is the only reason for television to exist in Bozell's mind. CZ doesn't get what Bozell's beef is--to him, the show is conservative, since the women on it don't really question the basic values system where women's role is to labor in the home without a paycheck.

Oh silly educated Europeans! In Bozell's world, anything that suggests that a housewife's life is anything but the pure bliss that can only come from ecstatically giving her entire self over in the service of others is man-hating feminist propaganda. This show in particular is blaphemous--it suggests that women occasionally feel that children are a burden, or that they even, and I know it sounds crazy but it's true, make jokes.

These wives and mothers hate their lives. "Ease up, you little vampire," says one as she breast-feeds. Her older boys are so nasty they run over ladies with shopping carts. The divorced housewife tells her 12-year-old daughter, "Tell me again why I fought for custody of you?" The girl says, "You were using me to hurt Dad." Mom kisses her on the forehead: "Oh, that's right."

Cracking jokes is the sort of non-feminine behavior that we surely don't need to be exposing Americans to in primetime. Bozell also has issues with female anger in its purer form.

Scary Bree accidentally gives onions to her onion-allergic husband Rex. He said, "I can't believe you tried to kill me." She casually replies, "Yes, well, I feel badly about that."

Bozell neglects to mention that the husband in question is cheating and asking for a divorce. I would be thinking murderous thoughts, too. Of course, I'm free to do so since I'm not beholden to think of my man as the head of me and god as the head of him. It's a little difficult, I imagine, to question your own head's decision to cheat and then run off.

Well, Bozell can bitch and call for boycotts all he wants, but I doubt the networks are going to care very much for his preferred programming "Contented Housewives", a show that follows four women around their homes as they prance around them with a baby in one arm and a feather duster in the other, humming hymnals in a contented voice. Oh, I know there'd be some excitement on church Sundays, when she has to calm an exasperated husband down--in fact, every time the husband shows his face, there's a chance for exciting emotions like frustration and anger! But I don't think the networks will buy it.

Frankly, I don't think the show has a political ax to grind. Overtly conservative shows like "Seventh Heaven" suck, so they couldn't go that route. And if the housewives were always questioning their position in life, it wouldn't be believable, since they had to have bought into the whole suburbia thing to be there in the first place. It's a soap opera that treads into satiric territory. I would say they skewer the right a lot more, but that comes with the territory of writing about the suburbs. It would ring hollow if everyone in the big houses in the 'burbs were a bunch of liberals.

Panda-blogging and something to wonder about

Well, my stint of Panda-blogging (as my RL friends called it) has come to an end. There were fewer lame cracks about how remarkable it is that three people can manage to blog while be-vagina-ed than I was afraid there would be and a lot more clever jokes about the same than I thought there would be. It was nice to work on software that works and it was fun to have co-bloggers, though I don’t know how I’d handle that in the long run, because I’d be all afraid that I was writing too much and shoving them to the side. It was not nice having to deal with a troll whose testicles apparently pulled up into his body at the mere thought of an explicitly feminist writer at such a large blog and tried to rectify his problems by harassing me. But I won’t dwell on that, because it was such a positive overall experience and I’m honored that Jesse asked me to do it.

One thing that really stuck out to me in reading comments over there from those on the right wing side of the culture war was that there’s this odd tendency of conservatives to assume that because they are on the side of the angels, that older accomplishments by progressives can be safely adopted by them. I don’t know how else to put it, but most of the right wingers over there seemed to think that this fight to deny someone their rights in this day and age has absolutely nothing to do with older fights for rights, which they admit were just battles. The cognitive dissonance must really be painful.

Can anyone explain to me how people who are against gay marriage now are so damn sure they would have been just dandy with interracial marriage had they lived 70 years ago? Do the people who adamantly oppose feminists striving for wage equality and other women’s rights really think that they would have been pro-suffrage in the day? Do those against affirmative action or pretty much anything the NAACP supports really think they would have been marching in Birmingham? If they’re full of shit, who do they think they’re fooling? If they actually believe their own horseshit, if they really don’t think they’d be calling black/white marriages “unnatural” the way they do same-sex marriages now, how do they manage to believe that without causing an aneurysm from their brain scurrying around concealing evidence of their own small-mindedness from themselves?

I’m open to all possible theories, if you can get Blogger’s comments to work for you.

Blogger hates me

Double goddamit! Blogger ate what I thought was a really clever post this morning on "Desperate Housewives". I'm sick of this shit. Tonight I'm going to start working on moving Mouse Words to a WordPress blog. Any advice is appreciated.

Fuck shit piss dammit motherfuckering stupid crap Blogger shit.