season of the bitch

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eyesee

Originally uploaded by seasonofthebitch

It’s way too early for me to talk sense. But I just took this and I liked it.

Which presidential candidate do you think was running that ad?

Nope, the other one. McCain. Running an ad in which he claims to have stood up to the president and led the fight on global warming. Yeah.

Political ads are just funny. Does anyone actually believe them? It seems so farfetched.

But I guess most of the world isn’t geeks like me.

Such a big geek that I blog from my blackberry while waiting for my car repair.

…But I think I agree with Scalia.

Of course, the very fact that I typed that sentence makes me question myself. I am by no stretch of the imagination a legal scholar, so I could well be missing something that my girl Ruth picked up on. I have a feeling that Scalia (and Thomas, though I hardly count him as autonomous) have different reasons and different imagined outcomes than I do here, but still.

It seems to me that if one is competent to stand trial this means one is competent to make decisions about one’s defense. That should include the right to represent oneself.

If the judge is concerned that a defendant may be incapable of doing so, shouldn’t they also be considered incapable of aiding in their own defense?

Of course, Scalia and his clone’s reasoning is probably more along the lines of the idea that if we let mentally ill people represent themselves, they’ll end up in jail faster. But what the heck. 

Life is just good, without a bunch of complications and crap, and you just have to stop and acknowledge that.

Post about MOCCA tomorrow. With art! (Not mine, I fail at drawing.)

I was reading Diablo Cody’s blog on MySpace the other day (complete with hangover, oh my!) and she was talking about being hated by strangers on the Internet for, well, pretty much everything she does these days.

That, plus being the press person hangin with the comic creators last weekend, and discussing with a very cool guy how he doesn’t like to read reviews–and agreeing with him. Hell, I take it personally when I get trolled, so I can’t imagine how it feels when someone rips a piece of creative work I put my soul into to shreds.

When I was writing reviews on a regular basis, I reserved most of my bile for people who were already famous. For one thing, I was a lot less likely to ruin their career if I said a band with a major label contract was shit, while if I said the same thing of a small, local, unsigned band trying to get a contract, I could kill their career. For another, if you’re willing to create something knowing you’re not going to make a lot of money at it, but you do it anyway because you just have to do it…well, I respect that even if the art you make isn’t something I like.

But even if you’re super-duper-amazingly famous, like, oh, say, Madonna, (link through Belle because she’s funnier than I am, by a long shot) I still think it’s silly to take potshots.

Critique the work if you must, but taking shots at the person?

Diablo Cody has been the topic of plenty o’hate in the Feminist Blogosphere of Doom lately–and by lately I mean ever since Juno hit theaters. Again, critiquing the movie is one thing, but ripping on her as a person–talking about how annoying she is, etc.–just strikes me as bitterness.

Woman hate, we’re full of it. And it’s sad to me when feminism becomes an excuse to tell other women that they’re too old, too young, too sexual, too pretty, too ugly, too inappropriate, or not women at all.

And when you’re just snarking on other women for the sake of snarking on them, whether it’s discounting another woman’s argument by saying she’s “unloveable” [sic] or complaining that celebrities “hurt us all” by looking so damn..good or something, well, how is that any different from saying they look bad and that hurts us? If any woman looking any way hurts us, well, we’d all better toughen up.

Or, as a wise woman pointed out elsewhere, if I have to spend all my time worrying that what I do might please a man in order to not do those things that might please a man, I’m still spending all my time thinking about what might please a man. I’m still giving up control. Giving up what I want because of what someone else might want.

Whereas Madonna might honestly just not give a fuck what you, or men, or anyone else thinks.

And I love Beyonce. And ScarJo (especially ScarJo–I have to love the girl who brought the hourglass shape back to prominence, and who covered Tom Waits songs with backup vocals by David Bowie).

But even if I didn’t, I’ve got better things to post about than slagging off other women because I don’t like the way they look, or talk, or dress. And if there’s one thing far more hurtful to other women than conventionally attractive people or people with a weird sense of humor, it’s women who talk about sisterhood while talking shite behind your back.

My feminism’s got room for Madonna and for Harriet McBryde Johnson، for Beyonce and Beth Ditto, for Scarlett Johansson and Hillary Clinton and Cynthia McKinney and all these brilliant women all over the blogosphere who have been told that they’re not proper feminists at some time or another. Or not proper women. Or just “annoying.”

We will get further if we stop worrying about who toes the line and start supporting each other’s choices and desires.

(like my tie-in there? thought so.)

flirting is awesome.

that is all.

If you want to disagree with me, awesome.

If you’re only trying to be disagreeable and you’re going to toss in personal insults along with fake names and such, I ain’t got time for that.

I’m adopting Bitch, Ph.D.’s comments policy: Comments are great. Obnoxious comments get deleted. Deal.

When people want extra credit for doing the things they’re supposed to do.

You want a cookie because you sent me a small part of the money you owe me? Nope. You think you’re special because you don’t use racial slurs? Not so much. You want to be patted on the head because you did your homework? Sorry. Want a medal for not cheating on your significant other? Screw that shit.

You don’t get a cookie for being a grown-up. It’s part of life. Get on with it and get over yourself. And if you somehow think you’re special for meeting these minimum requirements for existence, you need to wake up and look around, because there are a lot of people doing a hell of a lot more than you are.

I wrote a whole bunch of stuff in terrible handwriting on the bus ride home from NYC tonight.

But you’re going to have to wait, because in my inbox when I got home were two emails that made me a happy progressive:

Full Marriage Equality in California. Eat shit, Governator.

That is such a big deal that I almost feel guilty putting this second bit in there. But I must, as a good media-reform advocate:

Senate Stands Up To Media Consolidation.

I can go to sleep happy tonight. The world is a slightly better place today than it was yesterday. All my bitching can wait a day or two.