LINKING TIME Is Up In Your Baby-Maker

It is Blog for Choice day, hurrah! So all the Internet ladies get to write posts today about their shmushmortion hopes and dreams. This year's topic: What is your top pro-choice hope for President Obama and/or the new Congress?

My post is right here, duh. It is mostly about how I hope Obama will actually be (non-reluctantly, unapologetically) pro-choice. I dream small and/or big; honestly, when it comes to this topic, I can't even tell the difference any more.

Shark-Fu at Angry Black Bitch writes about if Roe were magic. It is not, sadly, and therefore does not fix everything, as she makes clear.

Cara at Feministe blows your mind with a post linking abortion rights to rape to "sexual rights" (my two favorite words, denoting my one favorite concept) in general. (Also, if you go alllll the way down to the bottom of this post, you will see that Obama has already granted one of my wishes! I take it back, you guys, he is totally going to drive us all to Chuck E. Cheese and give us an unlimited number of tokens with which to play skee-ball. He is the best.)

Melissa McEwan at Shakesville supports choice because she trusts women. Melissa McEwan is adorably optimistical and full of faith in the world, and makes me feel crusty and bitter on a more or less regular basis. I love that about her.

Ann Bartow at Feminist Law Professors uses her platform to broadcast Nancy Northrup's serious, well-thought-out, and totally plausible suggestions for promoting the cause of choice. This is why Ann Bartow is totally brilliant and people who quote her out of context in order to level unfounded accusations of P.U.M.A.-ism at her (ahem) need to actually, you know, read her blog.

Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon wonders what the overlap might be between anti-choice advocates and old white dudes who hate the ladies. (SPOILER: It is huge.)

Finally, Amanda Hess of The Sexist has spent the entire day covering the enormous anti-choice protest in Washington. So, to sum up: we are representing ourselves and making our presence felt and educating people as to our beliefs, using TECHNOLOGY and WORDS while INDOORS. They are wandering around D.C. freezing their asses off and screaming about how abortion is "Vietnam for women" or something. We have now conclusively proven which side is smarter. You know, in case you wondered.

Oh, and here's Barack almost wearing a t-shirt and/or running for President of Your Heart:

If I insist that he give all future press conferences whilst wearing this exact shirt no matter how smelly it gets or how many times the White House Puppy throws up on it, does that make me a single-issue voter? Or does it make me A CITIZEN WHO GETS INVOLVED?

Terrible Things to Do With Your Time

Well, well! It appears that I will have this particular weekend all to myself! There are so many ill-advised actions I could take within this two-day period. Which will I choose?

1) Comparing My Vagina to a Leathery Old Bag

This is the path taken by Paris Hilton, who quoth:

“I’ve only ever done it with a couple of people. People make up stories, but mostly I just kiss. I think it’s important to play hard to get. Nobody wants the fake Prada bag - they want the brand new bag that no one can get and is the most expensive. If you give it up to a guy he won’t respect you. He’ll want you much more if he can’t have you.”

Feministe points out the gross "my vagina, which is an object, is expensive; marriage is the credit card with which you may purchase it" connotations; however, I think it is far more egregious to coyly refer to your vag as A BAG, WHICH BY DEFINITION IS SOMETHING PEOPLE STICK OBJECTS AND/OR THEIR HANDS INTO. This is by far the sluttiest chastity metaphor I've ever read. Personally, my vagina is more like Sparks; maybe it's not all that great, but you'll miss it when it's gone. Also, it will turn your tongue orange. Strange, but true!

2) Having My Soul Devoured by an Undead Babymonster

The Baby Crazy, which is an ill that affects the American Woman Today, and which was recently explored on the factual news documentary program 30 Rock, can drive a woman to do strange and terrible things. Imagine really, really wanting a burrito, but instead of a burrito it is a massive life-long commitment that costs more than you make per year, every year, and also if you don't do everything exactly right in regard to the burrito it will go mad and start killing sex workers because they remind it of you. That is a lot of pressure! Pressure that can drive a woman Crazy enough to purchase terrifyingly dead-eyed "reborn" babies in lieu of actual fleshbabies, as The Sexist points out, in her chilling gallery of same. My favorite is Natasha, who looks (as a wise commenter points out) a lot like Hitler, and also like the zombie child from Dead Alive.

Childbirth: it's like this, but with your vagina.

3) Not Knowing What "Boner" Means

Hahahaha, I'LL JUST BET SHE WOULD. To be fair, Unnamed Fisherdude's Wife has been saying for a while that she wishes her husband would get a Boner, so imagine how thrilled she'll be when she finds out he's ordered this!

4) Listening to This, Then Being Morally Obliged to Burst Out with Random YAA HAAAAA WOOO Noises All Day Long Until I Have No Friends Left

Yep, I think this is what I'm going with. GODDAMITBABYOUKNOWIAINTLYINTOYA, IMONLYGONNATELLYAONETIMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHYYYYYYYYYYAHHHH!!!!!

Good Afternoon! I Am Your Fan.

In response to this comment thread, I have but three questions:

1: WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE.
2: WHY ARE YOU AWESOME.
3: HOW CAN I GET KIDNAPPED.

If I have omitted question marks from this series of questions, it is only to demonstrate that I AM SERIOUS ABOUT THIS YOU GUYS.

Anyway! I think it is nice to point out when people are awesome, because in my experience such people tend to go through life making things more rocking for everyone whilst sometimes secretly thinking, "is this awesome enough? Have I reached my true awesome potential? I doubt it. Perhaps I am not awesome! Not at all!"

You're wrong, awesome people. You are dead wrong. Here, I shall demonstrate, by posting several things about people of whom I am a fan. A fan... ON THE INTERNET!

Jacob A. Clifton writes about TV on the Internet. That is a very simple description of his career that in no way reflects the actual complexity and strangeness of his work. He might be of the most consistently surprising, audacious pop-culture critics working right now, and his work is worth tracking down even if you have no intention of watching the things he covers, which is a good thing for me in particular since our tastes (Gossip Girl, Battlestar Galactica, yes and yes; Farscape, really?) tend to be either perfectly on-point or wildly divergent: his work has less to do with recommending things than it does with subjecting them to rigorous, demanding analysis, which flies in the face of the received wisdom about what can or cannot be taken seriously, and which enumerates the many facets of a very specifically Cliftonian worldview. He has a different voice for every show he covers, but for accessible Clifton with lots of jokes you will maybe want to read his Gossip Girl stuff, although even that can go into weird ("Sent you a letter unto my home? To my wife, at the DUMBO loft where we make our primary residence? Where my children do even now bend and tremble with the extent of their mother's whoredom?") or mind-blowing ("we devalue, as a culture, those artifacts which are gendered specifically feminine") places. Advanced students should look into his Battlestar Galactica recaps, which are, to be blunt, some of the weirdest things being published today. Weird in a totally rewarding way, mind you! He will, for example, introduce each segment of an admittedly sub-par episode with a quote from a Stephen Crane poem, or conclude a piece with a lengthy meditation concerning redemption, forgiveness, perfection, Jungian psychology and God, which is notable both for being true and beautiful ("I think you have to look in the grossest, sweatiest, scariest angriest places to tease out any piece of God at all... I believe that only in fearless self-examination can we find understanding of others, much less the capability of loving them... Our hate, and what enrages it, tell us where we're small") and for being included in a review of a show about killer robots from space. Not bad, considering that all anyone else on that site does is to recount the plots of the TV shows in question while adding a few jokes.

Jacob A. Clifton writes about TV on the Internet, but Mindy Kaling is actually on both the TV and the Internet, seeing as how she plays Kelly Kapoor on The Office and also maintains this totally awesome blog about shopping entitled Things That I've Bought That I Love. It was recently redesigned, and I do not like it! I fear change, you guys. However, you have got to respect and love the blog that introduced the Sunday Morning Fantasy to the world, like so:

These underwear play an important role in my Sunday Morning Fantasy #27 (most women I know ages 21-31 have several dozen Sunday Morning Fantasies. I have discovered an extremely vulnerable and weirdly creative side of most women I know, that plan, cast, and set design how our Sunday mornings look in our futures. Like, somehow if a photographer where to surprise me at my house Sunday morning, I am doing something completely cool and photographable).

Sunday Morning Fantasy #27 looks like this: Park Slope, Brooklyn. I am reading the Times Book Review and eating granola and fruit in these underwear and a tank top at my kitchen table with Pharell, my boyfriend.

These have all been really lengthy, so let's just say: This Recording would not be even half of what it is without the tireless awesomeness of Molly Lambert. She is always original, never obvious, yet never obnoxious or contrarian just for the sake of it, either. That is a hard, hard line to walk, especially if you plan to be funny at all, and yet she does it. Go read what she writes now.



Then, there is Amanda Hess of The Sexist. If you have been reading this blog long enough, you know my deal with Amanda Hess of The Sexist, namely how she is who I want to be when I grow up and all, but I feel I would be remiss if I did not point out the fact that this piece is exquisite. Is it too much to ask that everything ever published (a) adhere to list format and (c) conclude with the phrase "vagina, baby?" I do not think it is! I think we all just have to TRY HARDER.** Let Amanda Hess of The Sexist lead the way!

* I keep getting suckered into these very pretentious conversations of the cocktail-party variety about New Media and Old Media and the relative merits of each, and while generally I take a pro-Internet stance (namely: it is not print, but text itself which is dying, or at least becoming the province of amateurs; however, this will not be achieved until some time after New Media kills Old Media and feasts on its corpse, because New Media has a greater capacity to adapt and incorporate new stuff) I also sympathize with the Old Media viewpoint, which causes me to only ever say the phrase "on the internet" with what I would like to believe is a comically menacing intonation, and (in my own mind) a fanfare of trumpets. However, it's pretty hard to convey all that in mere print, let alone... ON THE INTERNET!!!!!!!!! I guess I recommend caps lock?

**It could be a term of approval, or a cunning nom de plume (has vaginababy.blogspot.com been registered? If not, be aware that THIS DESCRIPTION FITS BASICALLY EVERYBODY, as in Macbeth) or even a c'est-la-vie-esque expression of life's eternal mystery, as in "this list of links is pretty disorganized and weird. What criteria did you use to select it?" "I dunno. Vagina, baby."

Linking Time: Had I a Tumblr, I Would Tumbl Thus

I do not, so let me say: I am so glad this blog exists. Also, its latest post. I'd always known that Modern Love was iffy, but seeing all of this at once? I mean, do you all remember the woman who complained that her (convicted rapist) boyfriend was too much of a pussy? ("I found it harder to love an emasculated boyfriend than one accused of rape." Oh, and also: "During sex, any sound I made alarmed him, and he’d recoil, so I learned to stay silent." FREAKSHOW FREAKSHOW FREAKSHOW.)

Anyway, Ashley "What the Hell Happened There" Cross and her rapey boyfriend aside (oh, OK, one more: "I believe he was a boy who endeavored for hours in the dark to express his drunken, fumbling desire in a way that, fair or not, ended up unraveling his life. I wish he had found me first." AUUUUGHHHHHHHHHHH) there is one portion of the post that, had I a Tumblr, I would Tumbl so:

perfectratio:

Due to my unshakable professionalism and/or the laws of human and/or Internet decency, I will restrict my comments to: well, that explains a lot.

Linking Time! Also: I Will Bring Shame Upon My Family

This morning, I woke up full of dread and shame. Bleary and haggard, I stumbled toward my computer screen.

"No," I muttered. "I didn't do that. I would never do that. I must have dreamed it."

But I was wrong. There, before my eyes, was a pale-blue Safari window, glowing with menace.

"Holy fuck," I said. "I just wrote 3,000 words about Valley of the Dolls."

On that note: it's Linking Time! My most favorite time of all! (Note: this is a lie. My most favorite time is actually Smoking Time, but I am going to give that up - again - in approximately 48 hours. I will be in Ohio, so you won't have to witness my Neely O'Hara-like withdrawal unless you are a member of my immediate family. If you are, well, sucks to be you, I guess!) Here are some people who are much better at blogging than I am:

Man Madness is the single greatest use of the Internet, whether or not you live in DC. Which is manlier - the FBI or the CIA? Place your bets now!

Mainstreaming feminism: it turns out that's a problem! This is because it allows Sarah Palin to cuddle and/or cash in on the movement like it's an adorable Downsy baby. Also, things only get absorbed into the mainstream if they're not that threatening in the first place, so feminism is selectively mainstreamed? And the good stuff about the movement then becomes invisible? See also: sex-positive movement, relationship of Sex & the City to.

You guys, the military is sad and scary. (Have you read Our Guys yet? If not, do it. Warning: it is the only book that ever made me vomit. Aside from Atlas Shrugged, I mean.)

Other things that are sad and scary include: violence against sex workers. The Good Guys trial reports are fascinating. It's like watching a really good procedural, except that Amanda Hess actually writes about strip club workers like they're people, instead of Symbols of Decadence and/or body-count increasing devices. Revolutionary!

Oh, hey, sheep people!

I read Emily Gould's blog. This rambling, ambivalent, occasionally mean, often sad piece - which touches on Emma Goldman,* "Song for Sharon," Prop 8, love, solitude, and that damn Beyonce song - is a good example of why I do that.

Some other people, who are funny and smart, are complaining about the Beyonce song, because they think it's kind of regressive, what with the forcing men to marry you and give you presents for sex and whatnot. Personally, I feel that the song's main theme ("don't be mad when you see that he want it / if you liked it, then you should have put a ring on it") is simply another way of saying, "if you were really that invested in our relationship, perhaps you could have made that clear BEFORE WE BROKE UP AND I STARTED MAKING OUT WITH OTHER PEOPLE," which is a sentiment for the ages.

Now that I'm defending Beyonce, I must also tell you that I read a Bukowski poem that I liked! What has become of my standards, I ask you?

* However, I must respectfully point out that quoting the Goldman piece without qualifying it is objectively kind of bonkers. People do this a lot! Often in Women's Studies classes! Goldman made quite a few points in that piece, many of which were specific to her day and age. For example, she writes that marriage may come about because of love, whereas love does not come about because of marriage, a point which is no longer even vaguely controversial, and which is the precise reason that people tend to live together before getting hitched. She also argues against compulsory marriage, marriage as the goal of a woman's life, and prohibitions against sex outside of marriage - and all of these pressures still exist, but are considerably less powerful now, given the fact that all but the most conservative people resist or ignore them. Goldman also speaks out against marriage as an economic arrangement while completely undervaluing the presence of women in the workplace. If you have no income of your own, you might have to stay with someone who treats you badly out of sheer financial necessity; if you have a job, an income, and savings, however, then you get to stay for precisely as long as the marriage meets your needs. (Hopefully it lasts forever, but, you know, things happen.) At the time Goldman wrote this piece - when you were expected to marry someone without sleeping with him, living with him, or even knowing him very well, and were also encouraged to give up your entire career once the wedding had taken place - some of what she had to say was smart and relevant, if overblown; now, however, people tend to quote the piece as a support for their vague "marriage-is-bad" arguments, which rest mostly on the fact that their parents were fucked up or their exes were mean and they're consequently scared of commitment. This is quite another thing. Anyway, end of post derailment.

Let's Hold Hands on the Internet - No, Not You, Aaron P. Taylor

So, one reason for my continuing frustration with Blogger (okay, Wordpress is better - there, I said it!) is that Google Analytics does not reliably keep track of the sites that link to one's blog. I would like to be able to thank (and link back to) the people who link to me. That is because linking is a nice thing to do, and it is also how blogs say hello to each other and make friends. Linking is like holding hands on the Internet.

(Oh, and speaking of linking: children are apparently performing brief, highly symbolic one-act plays about Obama. Children, when will you cease to amaze us all? Probably when you become adults. Angry, disappointed, cynical adults.)

Anyway! After an embarrassingly long amount of time, I have been able to sort through the "referrals" and have found out who the kindly linkers in question are.

• Row My Boat agrees that revisiting the leftist sexism of yore is lame, and deplores the resurrection of stirrup pants. For this reason, Row My Boat is awesome.
  
• Gender Goggles agrees that the main purpose of feminism is to provide detailed and lengthy movie reviews. (And to, you know, change stuff.) For this reason, Gender Goggles is awesome.
  
• There might have been a Stumbleupon.com link to me a while ago? I can't find it. For this reason, Stumbleupon.com is not awesome. Screw you, Stumbleupon.
  
• Amanda Hess of The Sexist agrees that Amanda Hess of The Sexist and I are possibly soulmates. For this reason, Amanda Hess of The Sexist is the most awesome of all.
  

And, finally, a link to frequent traffic-driver and rape-justifier Aaron P. Taylor and his... seduction manual.

Yes, Aaron P. Taylor apparently wrote a seduction manual. This is why I do it, people: because the "Aaron P. Taylor doing embarrassing shit on the Internet" beat is vastly underreported. The seduction manual is pointed to in the "Links" section of his blog (all of those links, I should point out, go to sites run by Aaron P. Taylor), it is available to download for the low, low price of $39.99, and it is entitled From "P.I.M.P." to "W.I.M.P." The NON-JUAN's Guide... TO LOSING THE GIRL OF YOUR DREAMS!!!!

This, as you can imagine, is something that Aaron P. Taylor knows a little bit about! Here are some of the topics he covers:

>> You find girls constantly telling you, "You're a Nice Guy," yet they won't date you!

Because you wrote a blog post about raping them!

>> You have lots of girl "friends," but no "girlfriend"!

Because you wrote a blog post about raping them!

>> You've left a message on a girl's answering machine, and she never calls you back!

Because she read your blog post about raping!

>> You had a girl tell you she wants a guy who's honest with her... but as soon as you tell her how you honestly feel about her, she no longer wants to be around you!

Because you told her you honestly felt that some women "deserve" a raping!

>> You can't understand why girls make dates with you, but cancel at the last minute!

Again: maybe the raping blog didn't help?

>> You've never kissed, touched, or been intimate with a girl... EVER!

Ha ha ha, I WOULD IMAGINE SO, A.P.T.

Anyway, after plunking down your $39.99, you will learn Aaron P. Taylor's top secret dating techniques, including this:

The TOP 5 EXCUSES girls give for not dating you - and how to act like they were never spoken

Ah, consent: so inessential to the dating process! Buyers, act now to take advantage of these hot dating tips. They're woman-tested and... well, not woman-approved, really, but who cares? Just follow them anyway!

This is an invaluable document. In fact, I'm thinking of sending a copy to Ian Sloane.

Oh. Oh, wait, no. That would be a terrible idea.