Archive Page 2

FINALLY

Published May 4th, 2008 in Gardening. 6 Comments

love in a puff seedsFinally a nice sunny day on a weekend that dried out the dirt in the garden well enough to till it AND the time for me to get it done. It was an ambitious job, but in one day I managed to clean up last year’s ugly garden (it was bad), make Chef till it (because he’s a dude and that’s dude work, i.e. I’m lazy), hoe the thing out, and plant the veggies I picked up at the nursery. Only a few tears.

I’ve got all kinds of different tomatoes, a plot of herbs, a plot of lettuces, onions, and eggplants, green and yellow peppers, and if I have time tomorrow night (which I won’t) I’ll plant a few rows of corn from seed. I opted out of planting hot peppers again — the habaneros and jalapenos over-produce here and I can’t keep up with them — with the exception of cherry bombs, which I’ve planted every year since I started gardening. I finally decided to plant cucumbers for the first time since year one, partially because with my gallbladder/ulcer thing I’ve had to give up spicy foods and eat vegetarian, almost vegan, and I could suck up hummus and cukes with a straw for every meal. Ethan also got another watermelon plant, one Crimson Sweet, as his experiment in watermelon-ing last year was highly successful.

I also planted two rose bushes today, only because a coworker brought me roses from her garden last year and I was totally jealous. They’re the Double Knockout variety, hot pink, heavily petaled and pretty, and I can’t wait for them to start blooming.

AlliumLast year, a friend who works at a flower nursery gave me a wedding present of 150+ bulbs to plant in the yard, all kinds of unusual tulips, daffodils, and allium, and where the daffodil and tulips are either dead or beyond season, the allium threaten to bloom any day. Everyone remarks on the allium this time of year because they’re so whimsical-looking with the decadently long stalks and perfectly round, pom-pom flower at the tops of said stalks. They’ve started to break out of the pods and threaten to be more odd and beautiful than any other.

I’m also growing love-in-a-puff — a.k.a. balloon vine or frolitos — from seed, thanks to above-mentioned friend’s whimsies. They’re these delicate vines with little seed pods that look like paper lanterns, and inside each lantern are three perfect black seeds with little white hearts on each one. They’re ridiculously cute, and I can’t wait.

My Neck, My Back

Published May 3rd, 2008 in Feminism and Music. 2 Comments

Racialicious has a great post on the inanity of the new VH1 show Miss Rap Supreme, specifically on the pseudo-feminist goals of the show that fall short of actually making a feminist statement. On the episode featured in the post, the female rappers go up with a sixteen against Too Short, to whom I have admittedly undying affection. Racialicious writer Carmen Van Kerckhove notes,

It was a pretty clear illustration to me of how hard it is to counter a sexist attack. There are no words equivalent to “bitch” or “ho” or “pussy” to denigrate a man for his masculinity. The worst thing you can call a man is a woman (using misogynistic terms). Or a gay man (using homophobic terms).

This is true. But on occasion someone flips the paradigm in a way that isn’t explicitly feminist, say, but more than just a new take. Sometimes what I like best about hip hop is the underlying, implicit, call and answer — for example in this song, Khia, who just so also happens to be a contestant on Miss Rap Supreme, seems to be referencing Akinyele, Eazy E, and a bazillino other dudes in the rap game* who sing about the skills (or lack thereof) of a woman’s head-giving techniques [NSFW].

This isn’t meant to be a political criticism, by the way, but would someone revoke my feminist credentials for admitting that this was an anthem among friends for, like, three years?

_________
* Typing the words “in the rap game” feels really super-duper white.

And would it surprise you that I wrote about this very same topic three years ago?

Bad Dog

Published May 3rd, 2008 in Movies and Pets. 5 Comments

Fuck You, Gray Lady

Published May 2nd, 2008 in Indiana. 12 Comments

The NY Times posted this picture as the first in a series to accompany an article about Indiana voters:

Apparently people from Indiana are too dumb to read real newspapers and be offended by it.

Dickipedia

Published May 1st, 2008 in Bloggery, Humor and Pets. 0 Comments

New cat Fidelio will be listed here. Because he’s a dick.

UPDATE


Dick.

Some perspective on what is becoming a common theme: I was just in the basement listening to some music and folding laundry when suddenly a white flash flew by followed by a black flash and an honest to god fucking CAT FIGHT broke out at my feet, hair flying, awful yowling and screaming and hissing, and OMG. I broke it up by snatching up Doug and batting at Fidel under the stairs with a nearby broom, put Doug down on the stairs safely away from Fidel, when suddenly they shot upstairs and Fidel started at Doug again! He is currently experiencing time out in the bathroom.

Don’t Call Me Dude

Published May 1st, 2008 in Assholes and Movies. 5 Comments

Bonus to the kid who kept the camera on.

I wonder what it takes to get a police officer fired for unnecessary, ongoing brutality and abuse on a kid. For having a skateboard and calling him “dude.”

via unfogged

Because Our Voices Matter Too

Published April 29th, 2008 in Barack Obama, Election, Hillary Clinton, Indiana and Politics and News. 10 Comments

If you can’t get through an article about Indiana without mentioning a certain twenty-year-old sports movie, you aren’t qualified to write it.

Eugene Debs for President

One thing about Indiana is that it has a long history of competing ideas and interests. It’s not only the home of the KKK, but also of Eugene Debs, one of the founders of the International Labor Union and the Industrial Workers of the World. Indiana housed some of the first two utopian societies in the United States, had several integral stops on the Underground Railroad, and additionally boasts one of the internationally known centers for Quaker society. Reynolds, Indiana, a twenty minute drive north of my house, was chosen as the first BioTown in the United States thanks to it’s proximity to major biofuel sources. Indiana is heavily based in manufacturing, moreso than in agriculture, and as such is heavily unionized. Where Indiana was once largely a white state, the African-American and Latino populations are growing exponentially, and hell, within the last decade the university in my backyard hosted the largest number of foreign students in all of the United States. But somehow, whenever you see an outsider write about Indiana, what you read about is corn, religion, grand dragons, and basketball.

Which brings me to this Salon article.

Continue reading ‘Because Our Voices Matter Too’

Friday Random Ten - The One Day Unbearably Late Edition

Published April 26th, 2008 in Music. 0 Comments

1) Songs Ohia - Blue Chicago Moon
2) Pharcyde - Passin’ Me By
3) Buzzcocks - What Do I Get?
4) Money Mark - Radiate Nothing
5) PJ Harvey - 50 Foot Queenie
6) Lori Collins - Rock Boppin’ Baby
7) Roots Manuva - Evil Rabbit
8) Public Image Ltd - Imagine
9) The Roots - Act Too (Love of My Life)
10) Ill Bill - The Final Scene

And Bonus Video

The song that I will forever associate with the first time I hung out with Chef, alas no real video:

And from my favorite hip-hop group evah:

Exceptionally Dorky

Published April 26th, 2008 in The Tube. 3 Comments

I’ve been watching The L-Word from season one on DVD, and it’s alternately terrible and brilliant. As a series primarily about women, it definitely has its blind spots when it comes to race and class, things the writers and producers have tried to correct as the series goes on with little overall effect. But as I watch I find myself increasingly in love with Bette, Shane, Alice, and Papi, women who are sinfully beautiful and funny.

But every time an episode is over, the credits begin and I snicker. The casting director has the best name ever:

Pat McCorkle

Every time I see it I laugh a little.

Home: A Photo Essay

Published April 26th, 2008 in Suburbia. 4 Comments

A painfully incomplete photo essay, but whatever. (Including kitteh pics.)

Pablo, Seated on Bed

Continue reading ‘Home: A Photo Essay’

Recommended Reads through April 24th

Published April 25th, 2008 in Good Reads and Round Up. 1 Comment

What you should read since I’m not writing:

Dear White Feminists

Published April 24th, 2008 in Bloggery, Feminism and Racism. 10 Comments

The proper response to a call to end the erasure of women of color from the public sphere does not include silencing others, much less drowning out the voices of women of color who have a direct personal and professional stake in the discussion at hand with your righteous white feminist rage. At this point what I would like to see is less calling for the heads of others and instead a direct and genuine response and apology from the person that set all this off, from the purposeful silence to the purposeless assholery.

***

That being said.

You know, by blogging standards I guess I’m an old timer, but I do remember several years in the beginning of this mess where the biggest feminist blogger was a man (Barry at Amptoons) and the most irritating thing a blogger could do was to be Kevin Drum asking where the women bloggers were again (apologies to Kevin). There were numerous frustrations, flame wars, and divisions created that can still be seen throughout the liberal blogosphere, feminist or not, that resulted from women being ignored and looked over. Some of us banded together and worked our asses off to create visibility and bring traffic to smaller, newer blogs written by feminist-minded women, and in turn had a hand in building the feminist blogosphere that implodes today.

What I don’t get is how so many of us that were irritated by what often seemed like an intentional oversight are suddenly scandalized to be called out on our own biases, blindnesses, and lenses of privilege. Put your big girl panties on and take notice.

Next Entries »
« Previous Entries

Read More At

offsprung.jpg

Links