humorlessbitch

No Way Out

2008-05-13T21:26:00.000-07:00

Hillary has internalized what most Democrats of her generation have internalized: They suspect that the majority is not with them, and so some quotient of discretion, fear, or plain deception is required if they are to advance their objectives.

Andrew Sullivan wrote these striking words late last year. The flailing, the jokes, the mad, red-faced finger-pointing of President Bill ... it's all here.

And so the less-adept ones seem deceptive, and the more-practiced ones, like Clinton, exhibit the plastic-ness and inauthenticity that still plague her candidacy. She’s hiding her true feelings. We know it, she knows we know it, and there is no way out of it.

The beauty of small sentences. Beauty and terror, I suppose ... depending on who you are.

Markets as Sick-Talk

2008-05-12T20:26:00.000-07:00

Timbuk2 is more than a bag. It's more than a brand. Timbuk2 is a bond. To its owner, a Timbuk2 bag is a dependable, everyday companion. We see fierce, emotional attachments form between Timbuk2 customers and their bags all the time. A well-worn Timbuk2 bag has a certain patina—the stains and scars of everyday urban adventures. Many Timbuk2 bags are worn daily for a decade, or more, accompanying the owner through all sorts of defining life events. True to our legend of ‘indestructibility’, it's not uncommon for a Timbuk2 bag to outlive jobs, personal relationships, even pets. This is the Tao of Timbuk2.

What a bunch of empty motherfuckers we must be ...

Hoosier Daddy

2008-05-07T00:12:00.000-07:00

It's in the comments list, folks. Always is.

We are determined hopemongers.

We are in it to win it.

We are people of all shapes, sizes, colors, persuasions.

We are believers.

We are dreamers.

We are parents.

We are brothers and sisters.

We are Americans.

We are humans.

So writes Mel from Montana. You got that? For all the crap that's come down, the Authentic trumps the faux, and for a while we can breathe again.

People Get Ready

2008-04-30T14:47:00.000-07:00

That Michelle. I was going to say, What a firecracker ... But she's so much more than that. Michelle is Authentic. And authenticity is so to be prized in this media-soaked day and age—I'm a writer, yet I find myself so in awe of this woman's qualities, I just fumble.

Who ever thought, in these cynical times, we'd have the privilege of seeing our own authentic concerns—the ones that speak to the genuine needs of the nation—not only represented in the public arena but embodied so beautifully, so well.

I'm watching the video I love most. Her hair is slicked back, her head wrapped in a shining black ribbon, she wears a black top and no apparent makeup. "The girls are looking forward to the Fair," she's saying. "We're going to buy ... stuff on a stick!" Laughter. Audience and viewer alike are drawn in by this pure face, so full of character. We've never seen anyone like her.

Her speeches are miraculous. They speak to the hearts and minds of people who, I imagine, sometimes find themselves surprised to embrace this new kind of woman. Powerful, genuine, who, because she tells the truth, cannot fumble. There is no pose. There is only the person, Michelle.

Secretly, it's Michelle I really want to see in the White House. First Lady. Can you imagine! It's hard, it would mean so many kinds of historic dreams come true. But I think we'd better prepare ourselves. Michelle and the girls, the First Family—and oh, yeah, that Obama guy she married, too

reblogged from Zo Blogs For Obama

And The Winner Is

2008-04-26T17:20:00.000-07:00

James Wolcott: " ... whatever one thinks of Bill Clinton, ranked No. 2 on the hall-of-shame list of America’s 'Five Most Broken Men' ... ”

There's a list? Damn, I missed this.

Sexual Harrassment By Blog

2008-04-18T15:52:00.000-07:00

The Bastardly [cute. real cute]: Remember Allison Stokke? I bet you do! Now she's a freshman at Cal Berkeley and doing well for their women's track team ... Here's her official Cal profile. Well, all we have is this one recent picture but no one will ever forget the first Allison picture that lit up inboxes ...

I don't know how to break it to you, guys ... but that thing in your pants? The one that leads you around like a pig with a ring in its nose?

Try and grasp this: it is of no interest. That's right! Zip! Nada!

In addition, there is nothing clever or funny about being assholes. Hard to believe, I know.

Mostly, besides being disgusted, we feel sorry for you. Horny guys, guys without women (clue) are thick on the ground. Plus of course what you are doing is harassment of another human being. Yes! Another person, like you! Only better.

Now, if you were to become men ...

Germaine Greer: Still At It

2008-04-09T01:53:00.000-07:00

Germaine Greer has a new book, Shakespeare's Wife, coming out any minute now. A long and interesting review in the New York Review of Books, where I seem to patch up my education nowadays (having little formal,) gives one a sense of the range of possibilities in life at that time, as well as how history is done. I find this sort of thing, readable scholarship, a relief. From? From the ever-floating body of, er, knowledge that is the Interwebs. Where one can read forever, find anything—yet who shall say what the core is? The canon. Canon in the sense of, say, polar opposite of bone stupid. Which seems to be having what must have been a long awaited field day, because anyone can blog about anything. The pity is that, in some atavistic reflex, we tend to assign some vague legitimacy to that which appears in print. Aha, but here the print is merely carefully arranged electrons, courtesy of your favorite blog service. It's all an illusion. Machine language tells the machine what to make of it so as to become, as they say, Human-Readable. I write it myself, albeit in a simple-minded way, every time I post with HTML, and I can tell you ... count on nothing. Wear your best tin-foil hat. Be careful out there.

No, in the end, it's books we want and need. Books and the Internet being in no way interchangeable. One is a "river of news" with stream of sewage running through it, the other the equal of a lake or still pond. (Water is such a lovely metaphor for Time.) The river, depending on its speed, requires a great deal of thrash and struggle to stay afloat; it is not the purpose of a river to stay in one place. Kudos go to the heroic, the well-muscled, to the winner (yawn) go the links. But a book is a pond, a lake, into whose waters one may dive, may explore the vast and wonderful world of thought and dream outside the diurnal pressure of time.

Ah, literature, Where there are no popularity contests as you read, no page rank. I don't know how the human mind develops, without this contemplative space. For in the act of reading, the mind makes the movie, submerged in the existential space of imagination. Imagination the very essence of the good.

The horror of fascist-state mind is freshly born in on us, just now. Whole great parts of the human experience—Not Allowed. Forbidden. It is forbidden to think, and in this foolish edict, the Chinese government grows within itself the seeds of its own helpless destruction. As does any fool—be it at the level of nations, be it at the level of ex-husbands—whose existence depends on a fantasy: the control of other people.

My fucking god, that this goes on and on and on. One wants to think that humankind progresses, over time. Fantasy, fallacy fascistic oppression, whatever you call it, the thing does not work. It cannot, nor can any amount of force make it so. The fruits of this wrong-headed view the same dreary harvest of death, lies, fear.

"Greer is often unnecessarily, stridently, and self-defensively combative She ends with a gratuitous insult to those whom she derides as 'the Shakespeare wallahs' who 'have succeeded in creating a Bard in their own likeness, that is to say, incapable of relating to women,' as if she herself were not a Shakespeare wallah. But this is an important book in the challenges that it poses to received opinion. It will have a permanent and beneficial effect on attempts to tell the story of Shakespeare's life."

Germaine Greer may well be strident and combative; it is only what one would expect, and possibly what is really meant is, She doesn't take any crap?

Or give a shit, for that matter, what you think? Poor man, poor Shakespeare wallah. Words can hurt, but when they are the stinging truth, only for a little while.

Here's Your Blog, Ma'am!

2008-04-03T03:15:00.000-07:00

Not even a good Rickroll, and is there such a thing? Well, yeah, I have dim memories of Rick Astley's rotation on MTV ... and was it any worse than Pat Benatar? The Thomson Twins? Men Without Hats? Or, wait, Dexie's Midnight Runners?

I know you're thinkin' Rock Me Amadeus, but you are wrong. Given enough time on YouTube, I could scrape the bottom of that barrel and curl your hair with what you once watched and thought hip. Tell the truth. You had the tiniest crush on Rick, pompadour and all. And who knows? He could be hugely famous today. Well, he is hugely famous today, but perhaps not in the way he once hoped.

Blogger April 1 Don’t limit yourself to “reverse chronological” publishing. Our advanced Google algorithms put your best content at the top of your blog. Even if your later work goes downhill your previous posts will still shine.

Now, this is where I first caught a hint. What could be less funny than Google. Ordinarily.

But one skims these things. Google issues forth new and oft mysterious features with the regularity of a rabbit giving birth, and the desire here, strange as it may seem, is to have a life.

No more template languages to mess with or sidebars to get right.

A prospect of Heaven that immediately spawned the thought, Gee, maybe they aren't kidding. My, but humans are weak.

Stop worrying about your PageRank or your search engine optimization. Post directly into Google search results for maximum visibility.

Post directly into Google search results. Oh, right. Even I, least hardiest of techies, couldn't overlook that one. But I bet there were a million SEO guys wiping drool off their shirts.

So here's the stinker part (I am assuming you didn't get nabbed.) That Pete.

We’ve put together a quick video tour to take you through the highlights of Google Weblogs. Check it out!

And I suggest you don't click that link.

So, they going to do this every year? Fashion jokes out of what we don't get as Blogger bloggers?

I'll be waiting for that simultaneous post-and-positioning.

Just like I am still waiting for last year's promised home delivery of all my digital content, printed out.

They even had photos, guys in brown uniforms, snappy a cheery salute ... Or am I dreaming still.

Larry, Sergey! The Pod Doors!

2008-04-01T16:48:00.001-07:00

Kiss It, He Said

2008-03-30T17:30:00.000-07:00

I don't know, Bill, but what if I had your past—and of course, as a woman, I never could—I'd be thinking seriously on shutting up right about now.

Which, I understand, would be the exact point where you really get started, but my god, has your presidential aura ever worn thin. That statesman thing? So over.

Once there was good feeling; I remember '92. What people like you don't understand is, That is capital you done spent.

All by your little self. Pissed away our goodwill.

Hitched her wagon to a low-rent star, poor Hillary did. Became, over the years, as women will, too much like her husband.

You can't skip over great chunks of trauma in the national life, dude, like they never even happened.

She worked so hard as a girl. Teaching, helping. Such a social conscience.

She's not going to make it, Bill, and in no small part, because of you.

footnote

You and Mark Penn. What are you, in cahoots?

And Then He Wishes, And Then He Waits

2008-03-26T16:02:00.000-07:00

For R. (you dead yet, honey?)

Not This Girl

2008-03-26T02:32:00.000-07:00

Women Settle for Mediocre Sex: "Not knowing why they feel so deflated after sex, women assume it's their fault or they just don't bring up the topic to their partner."

Yeah, right. Or how about the actual truth. How about some tips on telling your man he can't fuck worth shit. Tactfully. No such thing. Easier to suck it up the way women do with whatever's wrong, and no idea the price they're going to pay later on. Lies take it out of your hide. Lying out of fear, out of misguided compassion, or that terrible admixture of both.

How about let's back up a step. 1, How many men do you know (this one's for the gals out there) with a clue. Who like women's real bodies. To whom sex is one big juicy mutual act. To wit, if he won't go down, honey, he's curb material, and you're a fool if you don't start kickin.'

2? Don't think so. Not today. Don't want to start missing the man who did adore me—not the one I'd married. (Give me credit, the ex already languished curbside.)

Some other time. You learn, over the years, Truth, she is a sad but beautiful creature.

Dear Mr. Fantasy

2008-03-21T03:10:00.000-07:00

Dear TMN,

When we got the results of the Iowa caucus, I felt the things I was supposed to feel: excitement, vindication, enthusiasm, and fear. Fear of Mike Huckabee, primarily, but also fear that if the campaign a year ahead of us was to be between a black man from Chicago with a foreign name and a Baptist preacher from Arkansas, we may not have seen the end of the culture wars that have spoiled my young adulthood.

But there was another emotion present, more interesting than any of those: tremendous anxiety for myself. It was so disturbing that I didn’t tell my wife about it for several days. An unfamiliar anxiety, but not entirely remote. It was that night-before-the-S.A.T. anxiety. It was applying-to-college anxiety. It was first-real-job anxiety. Maybe even will-she-marry-me anxiety. In other words, it was stepping-off-into-maturity anxiety.

Barack Obama is one year younger than me. We are both almost baby boomers, but not. This isn’t the first time that someone our age has done something world-changing, but it’s the first time someone our age has done this.

You know what that test-taking anxiety really is, don’t you? I wasn’t afraid of a poor performance. I was terrified, in fact, that I would do well on the test.

I became an adult when I figured this out.

This is what an adult knows that a child doesn’t: A good performance on a test only assures the imminent arrival of other, much more difficult tests. I was scared of the S.A.T. because it promised college. I was anxious about college because it opened the possibility of a demanding career. I was terrified of a career because it meant that one day … I might have to decide the fate of my country.

You think I’m kidding? Maybe what I admire most about Barack Obama is his willingness to tell the truth. About himself, primarily, but also about us all. He uses words like “we,” he talks about “this moment in history,” not because those phrases make us comfortable, but because they are the truth.

I’ve got to decide if I’m ready for what I’m now certain is coming: the candidacy of Barack Obama. But don’t think such a wonderful event will solve anything or complete anything or even make the world a better place. We can talk about what it will mean to have the son of a Kenyan in the White House (and I will). We can talk about what it will mean that an interracial face will lead the world (and I will). But those aren’t the real issues, which is why Sen. Obama doesn’t speak about them so much himself.

The real issue is whether we’re all ready to grow up.

Growing up is not about power—it’s about sacrifice. It’s not about perfect faith—it’s about stumbling, incomplete faith. It’s really not about proceeding in airtight confidence of perfect righteousness—it’s about the completely absurd instinct that compromise and love of our fellows will somehow get us through.

I have spent a long time waiting for power and certainty to be conferred on me so that I might meet the challenges of my life. The news from that precinct has not been good. While I was busy wondering how to avoid being a citizen of this beautiful but terrified nation, we lashed out at the rest of the world, betraying everywhere our most sacred principles.

The news from other precincts, however, has been very good. Out of the crucible of this awful decade, a leader has emerged. Maybe Barack Obama is inexperienced and charismatic and full of the naive and unsupportable belief that America is still a great country and capable of great things, but I think I’m just inexperienced and charismatic and naive enough myself to support him with all my heart and soul.

And I will never call his vision of America—a nation innovative and undivided, a nation whose huge power can be wielded for the good of all nations—a fantasy. It is not a fantasy: It is what I pray for when I’m holding my wife and son. It is the true flag that I pledge allegiance to. And, from now on, it is how I will vote.

Sincerely,
Dan Barden

(Thank you for this, Dan Barden, whoever you are. Deeply: thank you.)

20 Minutes to Blow Your Mind

2008-03-14T17:17:00.000-07:00

Got twenty minutes? This ain't no ordinary tech talk. Empty yourself of all expectations, sit back and ... go.

Doing The Limbo Rock

2008-03-12T03:51:00.000-07:00

Out Of Iran Bloggers: Ben Carter, a former Halliburton-KBR water purification specialist, discusses discovering Halliburton was providing dangerously contaminated water to troops.

Video here. If you can bear it. Are made of sterner stuff than I—and believe me, at this point you are.

The bottom of the barrel? Oh it's way down there.

Et Tu, Geraldine?

2008-03-11T16:26:00.000-07:00

If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept ...

No I don't know where I got that, it's all over everywhere and you don't need the goddamn link anyway. I am so pissed.

You told me a few decades ago these women would turn out to be more than a disappointment, I would have jumped down your little sexist throat.

Course, the fact that Geraldine Ferraro happened to be very lucky to have been in her position—one that thrilled the bejesus out of us, I do recall that. You cannot imagine, if you are a man—or if you're one of the pups that do seem to becloud this Interwebs thing—what it was like. Sea after sea of male faces ... and for the first time, my god, there was a woman up there on the platform, running, as it were, for Vice President!

I think that was the moment that unlocked it, for America. The avalanche of feminine faces where the world had only seen men. Oh yes. The first female news anchors were an amazing sight. And we all gained authority. Why, it made me how I am today! (No remarks please.)

Sometimes this blog seems like nothing but questions. Why do people ... I'm sure there's a name for this, um, conversion reaction. (I didn't quite become a therapist. Is it obvious?) Where people cannot wait to accuse someone else of what they benefited from. Another goddamn sentence ending in a preposition. The world is going to hell, I tell you.

The good news: Intrade has Obama taking Hil and poor John McCain. Like I always say, Follow the money. This time, though, seems it just might have a happy ending.

Simply Irresistible

2008-03-09T18:59:00.000-07:00

Reuters: “Campaigning on Saturday, in Mississippi, the former president was quoted as saying his wife and Obama would be a dynamic duo, 'an almost unstoppable force.'”

Hm, yes. Especially since they will be running against a man in a (well-deserved) coma. (Has anyone the sense that John McCain wants to be President? Lusts after four years of epic work and nothing but hassle? I see the word Retirement writ large on his face.)

The question for today is, How screwed up are Hill and Billary—I mean, Bill and Hillary—really.

We're looking for signs of grace, folks. Humility. What have you done with that grotesque ambition of yours, and can a beast like that ever be whapped down to size. Does it happen.

Can Bill and Hil even conceive of themselves as vice-president of anything.

It's clear he was a spoiled-rotten kid, the kind who deploy their considerable charm and charisma in the interest of just plain survival. Has Bill gotten a grip on himself—or is he still in addiction's grip.

A glib little sentence, but no small question. For make no mistake, Monica-gate was total addict behavior. Something Bill Clinton absorbed at his mama's knee. The belief that people are objects, to be arranged at will. A deeply mechanistic view that cannot, by definition, ever approach the Moral, which is so Golden Rule: treat others as you would be treated. Far too fluid—and rather rules out that primary drive, to get.

My guess is that their lives, that family, are shot through with ordinary lies ... that they are nice folks, but are textbook Dysfunctional I mean, Where the fork are her tax returns? Things like that.

It's a Shakespearean drama, unfolding on the national stage. What does the woman do when the Unstoppable is not her queenly, entitled self, but this Dark Prince out of nowhere, with all this Honesty crap, and you really cannot grasp the attraction. And people are watching.

Hillary genuinely strikes me as a born Vice-President. Just saying.

Cry If I Want To

2008-03-05T21:52:00.000-08:00

“I certainly hope not, and if that is the dreary case, how the hell does she think she's going to keep Bill Clinton from horning in on everything (NPI.) Honestly, has the nation gone to sleep on ... oops, not my blog? 'KTHXBYE!”

... I was busily ranting away at Frank's place when I realized, tis only right, mete and just to confine one's rant to one's own blog. Especially when you exceed the comment box.

Based on the results of yesterday’s primaries we may yet see a former President as First Gentleman in the White House ...

Frank had writ (done wrote?) (writed?) and suddenly I was overcome, as if by fumes. So infuriating was the realization—and don't tell me America hasn't thought of this, although it is perfectly obvious it has not—Bill Clinton will no more stay out of the Oval Office than he successfully kept his pants zipped. (That sentence would be better in present tense, but it seemed crude; one does not really know. One did know, however—and however unwillingly—more about presidential ejaculatory matter and other grossities than we, as a nation, ever wanted.) (It stains.)

Did this not carve a deep enough rut in the national neocortex? Are not all, to a man and woman, sick to death of Bill Clinton and his close relations? (Oops, bad choice of words.) If the name Clinton be not anathema enough, take a gander, I dare you, at the worst, most devotedly unhip, glaringly 1995, clunky, unreadable excuse of a website ...

Do you know what youth for Hillary is called? (Hold your barf, please. We have bags.)

“Hillblazers.” That's right, and anyone under the age of twenty found clicking that link will be promptly sent into treatment. I have monitors.

When the great culture war of the Sixties was over ... oh, sigh. Same old rift, nay, same old ne'er-to-be-bridged chasm. Between, you got it, the normal and Teh Square.

Which is how she won Ohio.

(I wonder how the vote came down in Winesburg.)

Next up: Watch Barack Obama busta move.

Michelle Obama: Be not afraid

2008-02-26T13:34:00.001-08:00

Is It Over Yet?

2008-02-25T18:12:00.000-08:00

I don't watch TV news, I don't turn on the radio ... and still I am just so bloody sick of the Clintons as people. Well, and as politicians, too.

Leaflets, FCS. Hillary waving a fistful of leaflets, and accusing Obama of some kind of betrayal, completely a video bite. Seeing as how said leaflets were identical to her own, and not particularly interesting at that.

After her immense graciousness on Monday night. Took, what, forty-eight hours for that to wear off.

We all been wretched, we all been fools when the dream love walked out. Not going to tell you what I've done. But that's what campaign managers are for! Keep you from being foolish on national TV! What the hell are those people doing besides billing her astonishing amounts of money. Truly record-breaking amounts. I smell cross-purposes.

Latest foolishness, circulating this photo of Obama, on a visit to Kenya, wearing Kenyan dress and headwrap.

Oh my god, he's wearing a TURBAN, people! You know what TURBAN means!

The reason I don't watch TV news is because stupidity hurts, and political campaigns are stupidity bronzed.

Drudge : Clinton campaign manager Maggie Williams responds: ‘If Barack Obama's campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed.’

Doin' the double-smack, what, me, swift-boating?

Oh yeah. Way to win superdelegate hearts and minds.

Speaking of heads, mine hurts. Do campaigns have to be this way? Mr. Obama says no, and it's that as much as anything that attracts so many of us. To listen to Barak or Michelle speak is balm to the listening mind. Never mind they so cute to look at. I think my heart would just burst to see them on the stand, taking the oath.

Even with me being so epitome of white. Doesn't matter. It's been along time since that kind of excitement's been around. Since Jack Kennedy's campaign and election, to be exact.The excitement of, Something different's going to happen.

I think we are all excited over the idea of something different, something better, and I think the name of that excitement is Hope.

Freetards: Boom or Bust?

2008-02-21T22:25:00.000-08:00

That nice Doc Searls, I realized today with a slightly queasy sense of deja vu, is a radical of exactly the kind I used to know in Berkeley in the Sixties. Idealistic, passionately invested in an entirely imaginary group future, rather touchingly ignoring the nature of a capitalist society what has already et him and his Linux buddies and spit 'em back out.

Or, to put it another way (I could do these forever): Run 'em right over with the giant money truck, just like the rest of us, but the beauty (?) of Linux geeks is, They never even notice.

The Intention Economy will happen first with public media. This is the economy that will grow around customers' and users' actual intentions—rather than guesswork about those intentions, or efforts to capture or drive people's attention. As a result, the advertising boom will come to an end, simply because the supply side will know more about what the demand side wants, and will have better ways of relating to it. Advertising won't go away,and never will. But wasting money time and money with guesswork about what people might want will fade as a value system, simply because a system that starts the actual intentions of users and customers will be in place.

Tho I am guessing freetard is too harsh a word for someone like Doc. Since AFAIK Fake Steve made it up. (If he didn't, it's his now. See below.) Besides, does Richard Stallman take photos to die for? (Die over, apparently.)

Today FakeSteve rags on Woz again, nailing poor Woz (where's Kathy?) in his inimitable steel-marshmallow way, namaste.

Writers do that, they hand out justice without mercy, and don't give a fuck if they're “correct,” which is why the best of them, like Dan, are so often uncannily right.

Folks please read the entire article. It's a gem. Except the parts where Woz says the company has changed and we put too much emphasis on making products look cool. That part you can just skip right over.

Now, here's an item from Doc's list I agree with.

Brands and reputations will matter more than ever.

More's the pity.

How Can People Be So Stupid?

2008-02-21T00:23:00.000-08:00

Okay, maybe that isn't the line from that heartbreaking ballad in Hair. Maybe it is. Like I am under some obligation to google every detail this constantly-associating, hard-at-work mind spits out? Hey, this is the land beyond right and wrong!

Clever, wot? But them's the perks—and there ain't many, honey—of being a writer. The privilege of defining your own turf, which you had fucking better well do. Be you writer or woman. Swim out beyond the breaks.

So listen, you really want a president who has so much integrity, he can't discern right from wrong when it comes to a piece of ass? As my dearly beloved ex used to say?

Hell, no. We already had Billy-boy, and that was way-annoying enough. Besides (oh, right, Zo, like this matters) McCain has a pretty young wife, yes? Talk about stupid: when have I ever seen the ass-chaser who thought that one was enough.

Or perhaps this evening's chautauqua should be entitled: A Sex Addict? In The White House? Again?

So here's my beef with the New York Times: I don't like the style with which they pussyfoot. I believe it could be done better.

As his relationship with a female lobbyist underscores, John McCain’s confidence in his own integrity has sometimes seemed to blind him to potential conflicts of interest.

Talk about oxymorons. Jesus, I got whiplash.

Save Flickr!

2008-02-08T13:52:00.000-08:00

sfgate.com: “A suit filed in Santa Clara Superior Court on Feb. 1 accuses Yahoo's board of failing to look after shareholder interests. It centers on an offer Microsoft made to buy Yahoo last year, that the board rejected.

The suit alleges that Yahoo's directors voted against the merger so that they could continue to collect their lucrative positions, which paid $588,424 to $649,788 in 2006. In fact, the board should have gone through with the acquisition to maximize shareholder value, according to the complaint.”

You know what, Jer? (I may call you Jer, mayn't I?) I don't care how you manage to do it—just keep those Borg fuckers out of Flickr.

Anyone deny that they would trash it in a trice? No. That Flickr is one of the single great—what is it, certainly not just a web site, not just a photo share ...

Well no wonder the word eluded me: here this is the FIW (fucking inter webs) and yet, and yet ... Flickr is a place where art goes on.

Next thing you know, someone will invent blogging as art, and call it Writing.

Hating Hillary

2008-02-06T14:50:00.000-08:00

Frank writes on Listics: “Stanley Fish fishes around the Jason Horowitz article in GQ, but neither man can quite bring himself to call the Hillary hating what it is. Jason? Stanley? It’s MISOGYNY ... I am puzzled about how the topic of “hating Hillary Clinton” could be addressed without either writer (or their editors) making a single call-out regarding the misogyny and sexism that underlie so much of the vituperative ad feminam critiques.”

Way to go, Frank! And here I thought the only man who could really "get" what it's like, being on the receiving end, would have to be black.

Like Chuck D, who elaborates so well on John Lennon's somewhat prescient, “Women are the niggers of the world.”

Yessah boss, we is. We's mighty careful what we do, where we go, how we talk.

Remember, however low a man, there is always some one lower than he. Whom, as he wishes, he may treat like dirt, ignore like dirt, take for granted like the dirt beneath his feet.

If Hillary is elected, this will be more interesting than Obama drawing racists out of the woodword—they already been drawn. But the weird silence of men on the ugliness of misogyny, the horror feminae ... know any guy who speaks up on that?

Besides Frank?

The Few, The Proud

2008-02-06T01:31:00.000-08:00

It was just like the old days. People chaining themselves to things. Draping themselves with rolls of film. Okay, I forget the significance of the film, but it was raining buckets, do you hear me, buckets, when these brave souls heard the call of duty. When you chain yourself to something, remember: no lunch, no bathroom breaks. That's revolutionary commitment! Chairman Mao would be proud. Oh, wait, that whole Mao thing went belly up. Sorry, deja vue is a powerful thing. One of the last peace marches I remember going on was organized by the Viet Nam Day Committee. Everyone marched, families—I brought my children, and wore an itchy crocheted miniature skirt. The march was powerful in its quiet size; just massive, the street all people as far as you could see. Outside the Copper Penny (insert your own joke,) police from all over California stood in an unending, slowly moving line, rather like painting the Golden Gate Bridge. Who knew what these crazy hippies might freak out and do.

Yet we were just people, families—it had gone that far, the whole city was sick to death of a pointless War. Come together like that, I suppose we did out a powerful scare in law enforcement. I mean, so far we had been a thoroughly unpredictable bunch, inventing faster than socia context could keep up. The police, the Suits, the establishment all much like Great-Aunt Winifred when my father handed her the Roman Candle. "Mercy sakes! " she cried, as she ran about the yard, not knowing which way to point, "Mercy! Mercy!"

Mostly I find it—I don't know, is it sad or eminently laughable? I guess you had to be there. Once the Black Panthers armed themselves, those were serious, violent times, when both peace and justice seemed at hand.

Kudos to anyone who manages to find a radical act, really, never mind carry it out. The tree-sitters still sit, halting the University of California in its tracks. And the three brave souls who withstood a really tremendous downpour to chain themselves to the door of the Marine Officers Recruiting Station—there are three, look in the corner. Stand for what you believe in. Possibly even more courageous, the kind of courage so easily confused with the misbegotten impulse, stand when you seem a fool.

(formerly published as The Berkeley Three)