I don't really have anything intelligent to say about Twilight. But as always, Alyssa does. Read the whole thing:
I don't imagine that I was alone when I was young in wishing there was something magical about me - or in reading Talking to Dragons until it became dog-eared or keeping The Mists of Avalon perpetually on renewal at the library. What girl doesn't
wish she could discover some special attribute about herself that would
smooth her way through the demons of junior high school and
beyond--particularly if that something would get her noticed for the
first time by a boy or girl with special attributes of their own? But
earlier this week, when I stumbled over the Twilight finish line, reaching the final page of Breaking Dawn,
the series' last book, it seemed clear to me that even in my younger
days, Bella Swann would never have captured my imagination in the same
way Cimorene, or Juniper, or Wise Child, or Morgaine had, and still do.
Those heroines understand the joy of being loved by someone else. But
their stories make the case that being a witch, or a warrior, or a
queen--even without a king--might be better than an eternity as a
metaphorical princess in a metaphorical tower, no matter how much the
vampire company sparkles.
For starters, I'd somewhat dispute Tom's unspoken assumption that
Palin is liable to be looking at this decision through such a narrowly
rational prism. Was quitting the Alaska governorship -- particularly in
the sudden and disorganized way that Palin did it -- a decision
characteristic of someone who carefully ponders all the facts and
circumstances before jumping to a conclusion? Not hardly. Palin is
impulsive, impatient, ambitious, thrill-seeking: not the type of
politician to prudently wait for a better moment.
Add on to that painfully, painfully unself-aware. Thinking about Sarah Palin in 2012, makes me think back to being a kid when all your friends, after school, would pump your head up, in hopes of getting you to step to some big-ass Walbrook Junction kid, who'd failed eighth grade twice. You'd end up getting your feelings hurt--and your Starter snatched.
There are people pumping up Sarah's head, and she's just ig'nant to take the bait. She will run in 2012--and get destroyed in the primary. She needs to talk to Ziggy Sobtka. It all ends with her stranded up on one of those cans...
Is there serious evidence that political correctness led to Fort Hood? Is there real evidence that the military didn't look into Hassan for fear of offending Muslims? I'll gladly post that evidence, but right now, this is all I can find:
As a student, some who knew Nidal Malik Hasan said they saw clear
signs the young Army psychiatrist -- who authorities say went on a shooting spree
at Fort Hood that left 13 dead and 29 others wounded -- had no place in
the military. After arriving at Fort Hood, he was conflicted about what
to tell fellow Muslim soldiers about the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, alarming an Islamic community leader from whom he sought counsel.
"I
told him, `There's something wrong with you,'" Osman Danquah,
co-founder of the Islamic Community of Greater Killeen, told The
Associated Press on Saturday. "I didn't get the feeling he was talking
for himself, but something just didn't seem right."
Danquah assumed the military's chain of command
knew about Hasan's doubts, which had been known for more than a year to
classmates in a graduate military medical program. His fellow students
complained to the faculty about Hasan's "anti-American propaganda," but
said a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim student kept
officers from filing a formal written complaint.
I find that last graph really suspicious. It's not a quote, and I can't actually tell who said what. Please help me. Is there more to this?
...is Susan Mitchell's. This is one my all-time favorites, and if I had a daughter I'd give this to her right when she went on the pill. I'll give it to Samori as soon as voice starts deepening.
I no longer tremble.
Night after night I lie beside her. "Why is your forehead so cool and damp?" she asks. Her breasts are soft and dry as flour. The hand that brushes my head is feverish. At her touch I long for wet leaves, the slap of water against rocks.
"What are you thinking of?" she asks. How can I tell her I am thinking of the green skin shoved like wet pants behind the Directoire desk? Or tell her I am mortgaged to the hilt of my sword, to the leek-green tip of my soul? Someday I will drag her by her hair to the river--and what? Drown her? Show her the green flame of my self rising at her feet? But there's no more violence in her than in a fence or a gate.
"What are you thinking of? she whispers. I am staring into the garden. I am watching the moon wind its trail of golden slime around the oak, over the stone basin of the fountain. How can I tell her I am thinking that transformations are not forever?
On the basics of word-play, it's a beautiful poem. (It's displayed after the jump.) But on another a level it says so much about boredom. I mean, the dude is dreaming of mud...
...but a reader sent along the trailer to The Princess and The Frog. It's amazing how much shit has changed. Doesn't mean it's all changed. By as a kid who came up on 80s cartoons, it's shocking to see them doing this in New Orleans with black folks.
What Holder could not possibly answer for today was the claim that
his Justice Department ostensibly wants to help the terrorists. This is
hardly a new trope. But today offered a new twist: Holder was called
out for harboring just such terror-lovers as, well, himself. Grassley
demanded that Holder explain the presence in the solicitor general's
office of Neal Katyal, who represented Osama Bin Laden's driver at the
Supreme Court. Grassley used a smear from the New York Post (penned by the writer
who ridiculously claimed Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh believed
"Sharia law could apply to disputes in US courts") to demand that
Holder account for Jennifer Daskal as counsel in its National Security
Division, who allegedly wants terrorists to have more time to write
poetry. Grassley demanded that Holder produce a list of DoJ appointees
who have ever acted as lawyers for terror detainees.
Then John Kyl, R-Ariz., read from an editorial suggesting
that the reason these detainee trials have been so long delayed is all
the "leftist lawyers" who stalled the military commissions by
challenging them in the courts. Kyl noted many of those
lawyers--including Holder--work for the Justice Department despite the
fact that Holder's firm, Covington & Burling, "volunteered its
services to at least 18 of America's enemies in lawsuits they brought
against the American people." Remember in 2006 when the deputy
assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, Cully Stimson, had to resign
his position at the Pentagon for urging U.S. corporations to boycott
any law firm that defended terror suspects? Apparently those law firms
are still un-American, and anyone associated with them should be barred
from DoJ. (The subtext for much of this criticism, as Sen. Sheldon
Whitehouse, D-R.I., observed, is that all these lawyers are somehow in
it for the money.)
You read something like this, and as fucked up as this sounds, you start to doubt the actual intelligence of folks. If no one reps these people, the legal system fails. Right now, there's a woman, in North Carolina, who evidently tried to sell her kid into slavery. I hope she gets competent counsel. And then I hope the prosecutor kicks the shit out of her and puts her in jail for the rest of her life. Somehow--much like KSM--I think she's facing worse.
Seriously though, why even have a tribunal? Why not just shoot them all?
Read em and weep, folks. Last week really hurt. Dwayne is fucking running away with this one. Don't forget to get in you early pick for tonight's game.
Sticking with the theme, I find Community to be hit or miss--it has a kind above-average funny quality that's always there humming. From time to time you get an episode that goes further. I thought "Home Economics," for instance, was hilarious. But Community, with its rather diverse cast, also brought something else out for me--the notion of finally "getting past it."
TV takes it's share of hits for not having enough characters of color, but I think, over the past five years or so, they've done a decent job. Part of the problem is we want television to be better than us. Gawker has a piece up criticizing Hollywood for its lily-white male writing corps. I can't actually gauge the criticism, because I'm not familiar with what Hollywood is or isn't doing to attract a more representative group of writers.
But whenever I read that XX field isn't diverse enough, I don't so much doubt the truth of it, as I think the charge deeply underestimates exactly the price being exacted for white supremacy in this country, and the length of time for which it went unchecked. We're 50 years into a truly democratic, non white-supremacists America. Congratulations. But we we spent some 150 years in which the country's major institutions--its government, its business, its churches, its block associations, its military, its police force, its labor unions--in the main, aided and abetted white racism. There are certainly exceptions, but I tend to think that the long-term damage done is incalculable and has a lot to do with how we live today.
I'm reporting out a story now in which I had to talk with older black folks who'd grown up in an industrial city in the 40s and 50s. One of the things that comes through from them is that being smart and black, during that time, was really scary. I keep hearing these tales of black people with degrees in electrical engineering, who ended up working in the post office, driving cabs, or worse, running numbers. This is toward the end of Jim Crow, and after slavery, both of which did their best to exact a toll on uppity nigras, who though they were above their station. I don't think I would have made it past fourteen in that world.
I just want to say I was prepared to hate this show, but I love this show. It reminds me a lot of the Apatow formula, but without the whole "good woman civilizing immature man" trope. They're all immature on the show--just in different ways. Anyway, here's a clip from the second episode. It ain't suitable for work. But, that never stopped anybody.
When she was running for governor of Alaska in 2006, Sarah Palin
reportedly said that even if her then-14-year-old daughter were raped,
she would "choose life" and force her to bear a child. Comments like
that that have endeared the fiery Alaskan politician to most pro-life
voters, who lionized her for not aborting her Down's Syndrome baby. But
Trig isn't enough to protect Palin from a phalanx of anti-abortion
activists who plan to protest her appearance on Thursday to promote her
book in the conservative heartland of Indiana. Their reason? They think
she's not really pro-life.
For the Denver-based American Right to Life,
when it comes to abortion, Palin is as impure as any godless feminist.
"[H]er words and actions prove that she is officially pro-choice and
stands against the God-given right to life of the unborn," they write
in a new report. ARTL
members plan to educate reporters about Palin's many alleged failings
as a true believer, particularly her March nomination of a former
Planned Parenthood board member to the Alaska Supreme Court and her
refusal to call for a ban on the morning-after pill.
Stud gamer Evan Narcisse did this interview with Dragon Age developers Ray Muzyka and Greg Zezchuk. Here they are on doing the hard and necessary work of narrative:
You have to invest in the world, in the history of the world that a
player [n]ever gets to see. It's like an iceberg; it's there and has
weight, yet all the players see is this top part. But the top part
feels real because of the other stuff under the water. You have to
invest in a whole bunch of stuff to make that happen. You have to make
sure the characters comment on the world, the exploration, the combat
and interactions amongst themselves. You actually multiply the
possibility space of what you have to manage and test exponentially,
when you add a dimension like deeper story.
I had rather mundane, yet powerful, realization while reading this--these cats are writers, and that's why I love their games. One of the reasons why I don't spend much time fretting over newspapers--or even magazines--is that I've always been platform agnostic. From my days as a toddler digging the Last Poets and Gil Scott, through Rakim and Margaret Weiss, through Zora Hurston and Christopher Nolan, through David Levering Lewis and F. Scott Fitzgerald, through Jim Owsley to Christopher Priest, my mandate was the same--Tell me a story.
I never really worried much about the mechanisms or tools. I just wanted the writer to work for my trust, in his particular form. That notion of the iceberg which Muzyka offers is really the core of writing. It's what makes it so hard--all the extra work which no one ever sees--and also what makes your audience offer their trust.
I haven't seen the print edition of Newsweek, but according to Media Matters and Michelle Malkin (wow, there's a link you don't see here everyday) the cover is just one of three shots focusing on Sarah Palin's body. This is the image accompanying Christopher Hitchens' essay. You can read the Hitchens' piece (which I liked a great deal) and make of the pairing what you will.
From my humble vantage point, taken together, the focus on Sarah Palin's body is creepy, and yeah, sexist. I can't imagine them doing this with any male politician, no matter how devoid of ideas.
UPDATE: Wanted to give props to SapphireCate for the catch. And also promote this comment from Deborah, which says, what I could not:
The actual shot used in Runner's
World is one I can see dozens of sitting politicians or serious
business professionals doing. It seems very in line with that whole "we
must promote healthy living for our citizens, especially young people"
vibe. I could easily see GWB doing something like it, especially before
being president.
The photo of her by the flag is kind of awful, but I doubt she was
providing the artistic guidance. It seems very unfair to take a fitness
shot and use it to make a point about how unfit for office she is.
I'll say it again: the winking shot. In the debate. Use that one and
no one can cry sexism, because she pulled that starburst move in a
serious political forum.
They took a photo of her being non-political (promoting jogging) and
put it in a political context. They seem to have been hunting for a
shot of her being as sexy and unserious as possible, which this
meets--because you can see her legs in exercise wear, and because she
was talking about exercise to an exercise magazine. It's something I
can see Newsweek trying on Bachmann or Pelosi for a similar "is this
gal serious? No!" story, and it would be sexist. I don't see them doing
the same to a male politician to demonstrate that he must be unserious.
I'd love to hear Deborah's thoughts on the doll...
I think it's worth seeing the photo in its original context. Here's the shoot--where Palin took a variety of photos, in a variety of garments. And here's the piece. The photo in the shorts is just one of many. Here's Runner's World on the photos:
On the cover of this week's issue of Newsweek is a photo that was shot for the August 2009 issue of Runner's World, in which Sarah Palin was featured on the monthly "I'm a Runner" back page. Runner's World did not provide Newsweek with the image. Instead, it was provided to Newsweek by the photographer's stock agency, without Runner's World's knowledge or permission.
One more thing--I think if you're really concerned about equality, be that gender, ethnic, religious whatever, you have to come terms with the fact that this means equality even for individuals you don't much like. It means equality for people who you feel consciously exploit inequality for their own individual gain.
You don't get to infer that Juan Williams is a porch monkey because you disagree with him. You don't get to objectify Sarah Palin because you think she's an awful person. Not if you expect people to take your concerns seriously. I said this already, but it bears repeating--a principle applied only to people you like, mocks that principal. We don't raise these questions about gender for Sarah Palin's benefit--we do it for our own.
I've been looking this shot since yesterday, trying to get past initial impressions--those being that Sarah Palin has a legitimate grievance. But, for me at least, there really is no getting around it. The claim that two women were behind the cover means almost nothing to me. Newsweek editor Jon Meacham's defense isn't much better.
"We chose the most interesting image
available to us to illustrate the theme of the cover, which is what we
always try to do," Meacham said. "We apply the same test to photographs
of any public figure, male or female: does the image convey what we are
saying? That is a gender-neutral standard."
I don't really understand how Sarah Palin, in running gear, conveys either the headline, or the two stories. (I read both.) I've been trying to decide where gender fits here--Would they have done this to, say, Dan Quayle? John Edwards? I don't think that's knowable. I do think that this photo, used in this context, objectifies Sarah Palin. I get why she's pissed off. It feels like a cheap-shot.
But I can't recommend Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything enough. I was joking with Kenyatta the other day, saying I was going to title this post "Even Kenyatta Can Cook With This Book." Mercy stayed my hand. Kind of.
Anyway, I've mostly cooked from a weird mix--impromptu training garnered from my Dad, Cooks Illustrated, and Mastering The Art Of French Cooking. My Dad doesn't really use cookbooks, he just has a great eye. I've tried that and the results have been--in the main--disastrous. I don't have the touch, I need to measure. I like Cooks Illustrated and Mastering a lot, but they're best for people who don't really care about time. I mostly work from home, and have decided that putting some time into what you put in your body can't be wrong. But that's a decision made out of luxury
Bittman's recipes really tend to go a lot faster, without a no real drop-off in quality. So far I've done leg of lamb, cauliflower with anchovies, french fries and a cranberry walnut loaf. I've been really pleased with all of them. And I've discovered that I don't have to boil my potatoes for home fries--just cook them longer, and watch the heat. I'm sure some of the other recipes will be more intense. But if you're one of those people who's reads the cooking threads here, thought you wanted to cook, but have found yourself intimidated, cop Bittman's book. It's killer.
I know I'm late to this, but hey, I'm a professional amateur. May I be that for the rest of my days.
1.) Man go Mage, or don't go at all. That's what John Cole told me, and damn was he ever right. At the moment, I'm running a three mage, one warrior group--Me, Wynne, Morrigan and Alistair. I'm going for Shale as soon as I can.
2.) I just finished up with the tower and I have to say this is the best and worst game that I've played in a long, long time. It's the best because its ambition, again in terms of story-telling, is pretty incredible. I can't say much more, as we all aren't proceeding at the same pace, or even in the same way. I just want to say that Morrigan and Wynne actually feel real. It's the worst because I feel like the game doesn't break with convention enough. It's like they walked up to the cliff, and in several instances they took the leap, but in other instances they looked down and said, "Nah."
3.) Unquestionably, it's a great game, though--and one that I actually hope more women will play. I've actually had to split time with Kenyatta--she's rocking the female dwarf warrior--and she's really been sucked in. I've had to teach her some basics, like the mechanics of kiting, but beyond that she's doing great. Again though, I think the big hook for women gamers will be the story-telling, the sense of immersion, as opposed to straight blood and swordplay--though they'll like that too.
4.) Getting back to point two, I think my ideal RPG would dispense with this tank/healer foolishness and give all your characters some ability to heal. It also would dispense with the notion of grand events keyed by royalty. Like, maybe the grand events would be initiated by kings, by the story would be more bottom up with royalty at a remove from the actual heroes.
Apparently the White House is in a tiff because Melody Barnes said she supported gay marriage:
So when one of Obama's top advisers, Melody Barnes, suggested that she
personally supported gay marriage before a crowd at Boston College last
week, it could have been a minor story. But it became a bigger one when
the White House press office responded defensively, first insisting
that no such support for gay marriage had been offered and then not
signing off on the release of the video of Barnes's appearance until
the dead-news hours of Friday afternoon.
Leaving her position aside, this strikes me as an instance where things like "message discipline" get in the way of what makes sense. I would expect--indeed I would hope--that people in the Obama White House differ over a range of issues. And to the extent that they were asked their personal views, I'd like to see--from time to time--one of them say, "This is what I believe," and have the press office say something like "We have a range of opinions in the White House. This administration's position is XXX. But we believe intelligent debate is essential to governing." Or some such. Condie Rice differed with Bush over affirmative action. The world didn't end.
Yet Ms. Palin isn't as unpopular as John Edwards, and she has a higher
approval rating than Nancy Pelosi. As Hillary Clinton's career shows,
public perception changes over time. Ms. Palin remains highly popular
among Republicans (69% favorable). But the Democrats' striking
antipathy to the former governor--she has a 72% unfavorable rating among
them--drives down her overall approval.
Right. Because both Edwards and Pelosi will be running in 2014. And Hillary Clinton is president. Back over to Ezra:
The sole attraction to Palin -- aside, I guess, from a literal attraction to Palin -- is that she annoys liberals.
Word up. And allow me to expound. There are times, in this business, when I am incredibly aware that I'm the black dude in the room. One of those moments is whenever I hear conservative writers announcing that Sarah Palin has been persecuted, or that one of her virtues is that she annoys liberals. You see that sort of thing and it occurs to you that Palin
attachment, has little to do with Palin, and a lot to do with intellectual insecurity.
I feel like I've stepped into someone else's fight, like I'm watching
people who couldn't win the respect of their Harvard professors, or
couldn't cut it on the Yale debate team, exact a quixotic
revenge. It's in all the rhetoric--Palin represents "real America." Obama represents effete, Merlot-sipping braniac "elites."
But I'm from Baltimore. Howard University, too. I started with 20/20 and black and milds, then graduated to Heineken and Dutch masters.* I voted for Obama. What the fuck does a beer track/wine track mean to me? I can't call it. Where I'm from, we would tell you we were elite in a second. And ghetto too.
They're on two different subjects, but they're both really awesome. Here's Polwogy responding to a query as to whether the phrase "powerfully connected" is grammatically corrected:
Yes, I think a connection can be
powerful. I'd say the electrical connection between generator and
appliance is more powerful than a string that follows the same route.
Other than that, you're moving into realms of poetic license and
prescriptive versus descriptive grammar, etc. Which, to me, comes down
to context and the aim of communication. Take the split infinitive: For
generations we've been told that that's an abomination (prescriptive
grammar) but if you look at the actual usage in literary works, some
great writers have always done it (descriptive grammar). But to me,
more important is the impact. "To boldly go" versus "to go boldly" --
the former is far more bold-feeling than the latter. It may (or may
not) be incorrect English, but I would argue it is the more correct communication. In any case, if you want to open your SciFi show with an exciting promise of adventure, there's no comparison, right?
When you write a poem (or a New Yorker article) part of the point is
the words, to grab your attention and move you out of reading for
information into savoring the words and images. In that case, use all
the arresting and dislocating words you can -- while still conveying
the ideas you want to convey.
On the other hand, when I write a proposal to the National Science
Foundation, the last thing I want them to do is stumble over the words,
to get them out of the flow of logic, or give them any reason to doubt
my competence or communication skills. In that instance, I want the
language to be as quite as possible, if you know what I mean.
My philosophy is that the important part is communication -- getting
the idea, image or feeling from one person to another. Rules of
language are important facilitators to that -- if we didn't have
guidelines, nothing would get through. But when handled with care and
skill, breaking and/or bending the rules can sometimes be the best way
to get your message across, and I think that's far more important than
splitting an infinitive occasionally.
And, for those who didn't see, here's Darth Thulhu on Andrew and Sarah Palin:
Sully's mildly OCD about his
fixations, but the advantage of OCD is that one becomes very very
well-informed about every detail of one's compulsion. One retains the
whole timeline, and all the details; and before slotting in new data,
that data is relentlessly compared to each piece of existing data.
Palin had the misfortune of being someone Sully could project his
Thatcher OCD onto. His first posts about her , when little was known,
glowed with hope and optimistic spin that she might be a common sense
live-and-let-live fiscal conservative and social liberal. His early
love obviously wasn't starburst-related, it was hope that she was Young
Alaskan Maggie. Unfortunately for Palin, Sully digs and digs and digs
into the things he loves. Her hype was never built on solid
foundations, and he checked under the floorboards quickly, and stared
into the first of many dank flooded subbasements of horror.
And now he's hooked. What could have been an OCD of love and respect
tempered with stark disagreements and challenges (q.v. Obama) is now a
Cassandran compulsion to examine what others looking only at the
surface don't see, a mad prophet's need to make others listen before
it's too late, and an old school journalist's certainty that now they
can't accept anything from Palin without getting three pieces of
independent confirmation.
I'm taking lesson's from Alyssa on Howard's marching band:
I have to say that one of the real highlights for me was the trek
PostBourgie's Shani and I took out to Howard University, which turned
into us being let in for free to the Howard-Bethune-Cookman football
game. Now, Howard does not have much of a football team. But I am a
big fan of any brass band that can seriously rock Drake's "Best I Ever
Had." And the fact that Howard has not one, not two, but three dance
teams is seriously impressive. The gender politics of having a team of
dancers in skin-tight uniforms called the "Ooh La La Girls" can be
debated, for sure. But go-go sure makes up for some mediocre football
Heh the "Ooh La La Girls." Man, in my day, Howard's entire campus could haved called the "Oh La La Girls." Never in the history of creation have so many dimes assembled in one place, for one cause--driving Ta-Nehisi Coates out of his mind. A buddy of mine graduated, and came back a year later. I found him sitting on a bench on the outskirts of the yard. "I had to sit down man," he said. "You see all these women?" Yup. Like everyday.
Anyway, much as I loved HU's band, I always thought the lower-profile black schools were the ones that really brought the noise. It was my unscientific, unverified belief that the further South you went, and the smaller the HBCUs got, the more the band kicked ass. Anyway, check out the Mecca over at Alyssa's place.
Was in a livery cab with Kenyatta and the boy on Friday, headed to Londell's for jazz and dinner. Hot 97 was banging ODB joint after ODB joint, and it finally dawned on us that he'd died five years ago. Talk about feeling old. Can't believe it's been that long.
One of the most surreal events of my life was seeing him, in a press conference, with Damon Dash and Mariah Carey. ODB was fresh out a mental hospital, if I recall correctly. Either that or jail. Him and Mariah were, evidently, just really cool with each other. She came to support. She was shockingly beautiful in person. I say shocking because I instinctively downgrade the looks of anyone I see on television or on a magazine cover. But she was the truth in that respect. More beautiful in the flesh than on the screen.
Anyway, RIP Osiris. And yeah, Dirty is always NSFW.
Here's a piece no one cared about. Meh, whatever, probably the most enjoyable article I did during my stint at TIME. Premiered a month before I got laid-off. The nail in the coffin? Ya think?
Here's me going after Al. I didn't so much have a problem with him, as I had a problem with media acting like this dude was the go-to guy for everything black.
This was my first real story at time. I was writing for the Business section, a real change of direction for me. At any rate, it's about Wal-Mart's attempts to colonize the inner-city. As much as I enjoyed this piece, I mostly enjoyed going out to Chicago, which is a beautiful, beautiful city.
This a piece I did about the cops just outside our nation capitol, in Prince George's County, a few years back. I wanted to offer a counter to the dumb, conventional wisdom that if you paint your police force black, you could eradicate police brutality. In fact, Prince George's--one of the richest, blackest counties in the country--also had one of the most brutal police force's in the country.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
I'd love to hear Deborah's thoughts on the doll...