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?

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."

Jim Henson's Racist Babies PRESENTS: Where Are They Now?

For those familiar with the littlest Hitler, Adolf H. Campbell, who seems to exemplify the absolute worst case scenario for every adorable child you have secretly wanted to rescue from his terrifying parents after observing them in a grocery store and just knowing that whatever's going on there can't be any good, the question of whether you should name your child after a genocidal dictator and what the ramifications of that might be are obvious. (Answers: no, killing spree and/or lifelong virgin.) For those familiar with human evil as a whole, however, it also raises the question of whatever happened to those former child stars of white power, Prussian Blue. 

After extensive research, which comprised up to five seconds of heavy Googling, we have the answer: they became the off-brand, racist version of the Olsen twins. Observe!

 

Of course, one pair promotes a white nationalist ideology modeled on Nazism and works to exploit and strengthen an undercurrent of violent racism in American society, whereas the other pair is in a band called Prussian Blue. KIDDING. The Olsens never did anything worse than "Full House," and maybe murdering the Joker. Still, it's hard to say which pair is worse. (HINT: it is the racists.)  

UPDATE: Okay, so one thing I hate - apart from the racism - is when I write something and then immediately think, "that seemed easy; surely no-one has made that particular point before, but perhaps I'd better check...?" 

So, yes, okay, other people may have compared Prussian Blue to the Olsen Twins, but I'll bet none of those people have linked you to Prussian Blue Fan, a blog that appears to be maintained by Prussian Blue itself (themselves?) and contains photos of them hanging out at Natural History museums and getting ready for Homecoming that are somehow even more creepy than the band's official photos because the girls look so very normal and are not even wearing the Smiley Hitler t-shirts to signify that they are the Devil's own spawn. I, unlike those people, will link you to that blog. They don't love you like I love you. 

OMG my BFF Aaron P. Taylor!

You know: Aaron P. Taylor, who did not rape you (although he totally could have, and he thinks you deserved it), is a very sensitive guy. Aaron P. Taylor is an artist who did not rape you; an iconoclast who did not rape you; a thinker of thoughts about raping you (OR NOT), which he selflessly shares with the world. So imagine how hurt Aaron P. Taylor was when his silly little blog post about "How Not To Get a 'Deserved' Raping" got folks all in a huff! I mean, all of these mean Internet people - Jezebel, Shakesville, the Washington City Paper - kept linking to Aaron P. Taylor, and saying mean things about Aaron P. Taylor, and even (gasp!) commenting on Aaron P. Taylor's blog.

Look, Aaron P. Taylor is going to say this ONE TIME, so you all better listen up:

It’s stupid for any woman to believe that she can go through life teasing guy after guy after guy after guy, and not think that at least ONE of them might take what she thinks is a “joking” lil’ tease routine too seriously, to the point where he thinks she’s still “joking” when she says she really doesn’t want sex. If you’re constantly putting yourself in positions or situations where there’s a possibility of something like that happening, it’s only a matter of time before it might eventually happen.

See? Aaron P. Taylor thinks that women who get raped are stupid and bring it upon themselves! Why are people so upset about that? Aaron P. Taylor can't imagine!

Anyway, it's really rough on Aaron P. Taylor when you blog about him. So stop it, OK? Especially you two:

I wasn’t going to even do a rebuttal to this post… but then I found out that other blog sites have been re-posting this article and saying negative things about me personally. (To read some of these sites, you can click http://news.mensactivism.org/node/10802, or http://tigerbeatdown.blogspot.com/2008/10/andrew-p-taylor-did-not-rape-you-he.html [this one is pretty sarcastic, but kinda funny].)

Wha... wait a second. Did Aaron P. Taylor just say that I'm funny? Oh, my god, you guys, does this mean that we are destined to be friends... or possibly more? I can imagine running with Aaron P. Taylor through a field of daisies, holding his hand, sharing a cone of ice cream with him... I'd run my fingers through Aaron P. Taylor's pencil-thin douche beard and gaze tenderly into Aaron P. Taylor's non-lazy eye... and all the while, Aaron P. Taylor would be not raping me, unless I accidentally turned him on, in which case he'd pretty much have to... Aaron P. Taylor: imagine me and you! And you, and me! No matter how you toss the dice, it's meant to be!

IIIIII CAN'T SEE ME [BEING VIOLENTLY RAPED BY] NOBODY BUT [AARON P. TAYLOR] FOR ALL MY LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIFE!!!!

Ha ha ha, oh, we have fun, don't we? But wait: did I just made a joke about sex with Aaron P. Taylor? Because we all know that "joking" about sex with Aaron P. Taylor means that Aaron P. Taylor will later think you are "joking" when you decline to actually have sex with Aaron P. Taylor. So that means...

OH MY GOD HE'S COMING RUN RUN LOCK ALL THE DOORS AAAAAAAHHHHHH.

Aaron P. Taylor Did Not Rape You. He Deserves a Cookie!

Yes, it's true: if you are reading this, Aaron P. Taylor of UnCommoN SENSE ("a Blog on Deciphering the Enigma that is Life") probably did not rape you. (If he did: my apologies. You can put away the baking sheet now.) In fact, Aaron P. Taylor cares so much about rape, and your safety from it, that he put together a little blog post, entitled "Advice 4 Women: How Not to Get a 'Deserved' Raping."

Ha ha, well, too late for me, I guess! If only I'd found Aaron P. Taylor earlier. Aaron P. Taylor: WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE? That is what I would like to know!

Let's get down to business. Aaron P. Taylor - born on January 7, 1982, in Petersburg, VA, where he did not rape you - begins by laying down a little slice of the enigma that is his life, so as to decipher it. Here, he finds himself at a club in Atlanta, GA, where he has been living for the past several years while not raping you:

We got on the dance floor, and started dancing. At first it was no-touch dancing, with both of us dancing in front of each other doing the best two-steps we could. After the first dance session, she went away for a while, and I proceeded to continue dancing by myself.

A few minutes later, she came over again, and wanted to dance to another song. Once again, I agreed.

This time, though, the dancing she did was more suggestive...

The next time we danced, our faces were touching again. Me, being the guy I am, decided to go in for a light kiss. I puckered up my lips, tilted my head to the side, and…

BOOM! She turned her face and I got the cheek!

BOOM! Aaron P. Taylor got the cheek! POW! That girl did not want a sexing from Aaron P. Taylor! ZAP! Aaron P. Taylor is ugly! (Seriously, look at the picture. Is that a lazy eye?)

Anyway, Aaron P. Taylor, who graduated from Hampton University with a degree in Fine and Performing Arts that he earned by studying hard and not raping you, was inspired by this curious incident to write a little bit about what he could have done, had he not chosen to engage in the fine gentlemanly not-raping-you type of behavior which Aaron P. Taylor always strives to uphold:

Had I been a less-than-understanding guy (i.e., a forceful-type of guy who always “gets what he wants by any means necessary”), I could have just as easily forced a kiss on her, or worse - waited until after the club let out to follow her to her car, then followed her to her house. And, when she got out her car, I could have been right there ready to pounce on her, saying: “I think you owe me something, lady!!”

My goodness, Aaron P. Taylor! That is a very active and suspiciously detailed fantasy life you've got going on there! On the other hands, it is certainly nice that you are including these super helpful "Tips for the Rapey" in your anti-rape article: it shows that you don't take sides.

So, we've established that Aaron P. Taylor did not rape you, because Aaron P. Taylor is not a less-than-understanding guy. (He certainly understands how to stalk and rape someone! NOT THAT HE EVER WOULD.) Here are some other things that Aaron P. Taylor did not do:

• Aaron P. Taylor did not did not videotape himself throwing a puppy over a cliff while serving a term of military service; he also did not post the subsequent video on YouTube.
• Aaron P. Taylor did not commit the Zodiac murders; he also did not taunt various individuals with cryptic messages pertaining to said murders.
• Aaron P. Taylor did not start the popular internet practice of "Rick Rolling."
• Aaron P. Taylor did not conspire to conceal the location of Osama bin Laden following the attacks of 9/11.
• Aaron P. Taylor's favorite American Idol contestant was not Sanjaya; he was not moved to hysterical tears by Sanjaya's performances, and he did not vote for him repeatedly.
• Aaron P. Taylor did not boil a rabbit belonging to Michael Douglas following the end of their affair, thereby exposing his deep rage and mental instability; close examination reveals this to be a scene from the movie Fatal Attraction.
• Aaron P. Taylor was not present at the crucifixion of Jesus Christ; at the crucifixion, when given the choice to free one man, he did not shout "Barabbas! Give us Barabbas!"
• After substantial investigation, we have concluded that Aaron P. Taylor did not assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand, thereby triggering the first World War.

There are so many terrible things that Aaron P. Taylor has not done! Through not doing terrible things, he has gained the wisdom that comes with not doing them. Wisdom like this:

In short, ladies: if you don’t want a guy to rape you, don’t do stuff intentionally that you know will make him want to jump your bones. You may think doing these sorts of things is “cute” and “just being a girl,” but it’s dangerous, and can get you hurt. Teasing a guy with soft whispers, body groping, or any other type of enticing maneuver is wrong if you don’t plan on following through.

You heard him right, ladies: if you want to stay safe from Aaron P. Taylor, do not flirt with him, touch him, speak to him, or show him any kind of sexual or friendly attention, lest he be enticed, lose control, and accidentally follow you to a deserted location and give you a raping. What sound advice! I think we can all agree that no woman should ever interact with Aaron P. Taylor again for the rest of his life, can't we?

So, Aaron P. Taylor: thank you for your insight into why women should run away from you, shrieking in terror, whenever you approach. Were I not so busy getting a restraining order against you, I would most definitely give you a cookie.

[Via.]

"My children should not have to be taught that marriage is between two people who love each other."

Is Fundamentally Flawed the best single-issue blog ever? Science says yes! 

Satanic Incest Dinosaurs, or: How I Spent My Childhood

You know, we can spend all day talking about "recaps" versus "reviews," and adults reading YA lit, and nostalgia, and triviablogging, and whether those are good things or just a sign of how our generation has infantilized itself. OR - and this is the preferred option, here - we can just celebrate the fact that I was not making any of this up! 

I loved Christopher Pike's books when I was a pre-teen. I passed them around to all the girls that I knew, and they loved them, too. My mother was horrified. I was such a strong reader! Why was I wasting my intelligence? Were these books possibly Satanic? (Mom loves church. So much, Mom loves church. I'm actually thinking of handing out a brief pamphlet to everyone in my life to explain how I came to be, and it will read "CHURCH MOM + BOOZE DAD = THIS." The rest of it will just be pictures of naughty Catholic schoolgirls.) I didn't care. They were about sex, and death, and nobody was going to tell me anything about these subjects, so I had to find what I could.  

Most of my Christopher Pike memories concern reading in the backseat of a hot car, which paused periodically so that my brother could throw up (the boy had a legendarily bad relationship with motor transport; on long drives, we actually resorted to doping him until he fell asleep, so that he wouldn't leave a trail of spew everywhere we went). Something about the heat and the motion and the smell of puke made all of these memories feel hazy and indistinct, like fever dreams, and I could not ever be sure that I was remembering the books correctly. So it is actually reassuring, in many ways, to click through to a recap of Scavenger Hunt and read this: 

Cessy and Davey are actually part of an ancient race of dinosaurs that developed intelligence and found a way to gain immortality after surviving the dinosaur holocaust.

Yes! They were! Dinosaurs who fed on human sacrifice! They also re-animated a dude's dead best friend and disguised him as his teacher for purposes which remain unclear! They were also twins, and they made out! WITH EACH OTHER!!!!! God, I'm so glad I didn't just come up with this. 

There's actually a lot of incest in the Pike books, which I had mercifully forgotten. Also, lots of New Age stuff about ancient astronauts and interdimensional wisdom-bringing gurus (who are inevitably Indian, despite being interdimensional) and walk-ins. I was clicking around last night, and apparently it's kind of a big deal that no-one has ever seen a photo of Christopher Pike or learned anything about him, but I honestly think that, if he exists, he's one of those dudes who wears a quartz crystal around his neck and believes himself to be an alien. Which, if so, his higher wisdom would seem to be kind of incompatible with all the DIRTY TEEN SEX in his novels! 

Did you know that there is a Pike book (Die Softly) in which two cheerleaders have repeated threesomes with a quarterback and then kill him by forcing him to take cocaine? They tie him to a tree and shove it up his nose, I think! They are both super popular at school because they sell cocaine laced cookies at the bake sales. I blame this book for my long-held belief that (a) it was possible to take cocaine in cookie form, and (b) this was the only safe way to do it, because if you put it up your nose, you would instantly die. 

Anyway, I am thrilled to note that Like Pike will soon be covering Whisper of Death, which was the first Pike book I read, and is still in many ways my favorite. In Whisper of Death, a girl fools around with her boyfriend and quickly finds herself in need of a safe and legal abortion, but when she and her dude return from the clinic, they find that their pleasant bedroom community has been transformed into an eerie ghost town, from which there is no escape, and in which they (and the handful of randomly selected teenagers which comprise the town's entire population) have all been sentenced to die grisly coincidental deaths which mirror some unpopular chick's book of extremely violent fairy tales. This is because the unpopular chick died last year, because no-one liked her, and also she was reincarnated in the form of Abortion Chick's untimely fetus. I mean, damn, I sympathize, but don't you think people would have liked her better had she not been plotting to cut them in half via witchcraft? Anyway, the only way for the girl to save her friends is to travel back in time and die mid-abort. Because I guess having the witchcraft child wasn't an option. 

It occurs to me now that Whisper of Death was the first thing that got me and my friends talking about abortion. Yes, it was gory (the goriest Pike book I can remember, aside from Monster, in which space bacteria infested people's brains and made them into cannibals) but the thing that stuck with us was the pregnancy. It also occurs to me that we learned about abortion from a book which told us actually having one would sentence you to a deadly netherworld, but, you know. Sex ed is rarely perfect. 

Technology!

I'm currently familiarizing myself with the Blogger platform, and have come to realize that it provides no way to keep track of my blog's unique hits.

It does, however, have a "gadget" that can supply my blog with a new baby animal picture every day.

A new baby animal picture every day!

I think my choice is clear.