I take no joy…

in watching the administration that Eeeeeevil built continue to fall down like the nefarious house of cards it is. No matter how many of them run for the door with their tails tucked between their legs in an effort to distance themselves and/or atone, their actions will harmfully reverberate around the world for generations to come. Hard to find much joy in that.

Possible farm project for my retirement plan

This farm project just may help me fulfill a portion of my retirement plan. A few of them seem stoned out of their gourds. It’s either from the euphoria of farm work or something else they’ve grown. Don’t care. I’ll take it.

What’s the best part of the job? The women I work with.

What the hardest part of your job? The women I work with.

Yes! I love it!

It is kinda annoying that grown women are referred to as “girls”; I’m also not sure why they did a naked calendar. I’ll have to be sure to bring these things up if I ever get there. I think it looks like one hell of a good time.

My nana

The Garfield Conservatory, a gorgeous park here in Chicago, is currently home to a display of artwork by Niki de Saint Phalle. Here’s a slideshow.

Her women, called nanas (which I hear roughly translates to “chicks”) are very large, curved, and exultant. Her sculptures invite people to crawl into the bodies, to rub their many-textured skins, to settle in the womb of them  for a while and climb out grinning. She weren’t skeered.

I created my own nana using paper a few years back; I’ve carried her with me everywhere I’ve lived. She is not as cheerful and bright as Niki’s, but she is my nana. She was knocked down, but she has regrouped and is getting up.

We also have a fantastic globe installation happening on the lakefront. I do so lurve this town.

My ass may fall off

because I cannot stop shaking it every time I hear this women’s music.

I am soooooo late in discovering her, like years late, and once I did I feared that she was a pretty and tenacious prop being used by some industry mastermind who was cunning enough to put her out in front of his beats (isn’t it terrible that’s what came to my mind first?). 

I think I was wrong.

I heard Bucky Done Gun  playing in a shop downtown a while back and I asked the girl behind the counter, “What is that?!” She grinned and said “M.I.A”. I loved it but I chalked it up to being a single standout song within that infectious but oft misogynistic reggaton genre (which I love the sound of, too, but the songs my peeps have translated for me so far have made me glad, for the first time in my life, that I don’t understand Spanish). 

Anywho, her personal history is interesting as hell, she’s a visual as well as musical artist, and I am just digging her completely. I’m looking foward to pulling her lyrics apart a bit more to see what she really has got to say. I do have a tendency to get blinded by the beats. Case in point: Lipgloss, anyone? The stripped down beats are great, and the lyrics aren’t overtly harmful or anything, but I did not know whether to be highly alarmed or shrug my shoulders and applaud Lil Mama’s crotch grabbing in the video for that song - is she a misguided victim of our culture or is she owning it? Then there’s the fact that a girl her age has so. much. more. to say than crap about her lipgloss and boys chasing her, but I guess what she really has to say prolly wouldn’t have gotten her a record deal. Besides, I’m no purist, I am all for vapid music. Sometimes it’s fun as hell.

Oh and hey just so you know, I am hopelessly out of date with my musical preferences. I have not been keeping up with anybody; that whole industry is so f’ed up. I do know what I like, though, and I like M.I.A. I look forward to more from her. That being said, her bio in wikipedia talks about her possibly leaving the music industry. Sounds like she’s got other avenues of expression. A smart woman, indeed.

M.I.A. Sunshowers

Bite me, Crafty Mamas

I have decided to break up with the Crafty Mamas* meetup.

You know me, peeps. I aim for solidarity first, no matter how loopy the broad(s). But dammit, it’s not me, it’s them. Maybe they’re just in a selfish phase right now. Maybe I just love myself enough to let go. Be free, buttahfly *holding one ear and bending knees as I try to reach that painful Mariah high note*

Heh, for real, I am just not cool enough to be a part of that moms’ meetup. I don’t want to be. I love my inconsistencies and hypocrosies and imperfect perfection. I don’t need to bike my recycleables to the nearest green center in 100 degree heat or give birth using a stick clenched between my teeth as my only pain relief to feel cool. I feel cool already. That statement alone is a declaration of my geekdom, but you know what? I’m alright with that.

I tried to learn from you broads, I really tried. I just couldn’t drink the Kool-Aid. Fret not. You’re better off without the likes of me undermining your unarticulated but evident mission to convert one and all to your definition of what is right and good. I, too, am better off without you. Nobody can make one feel inferior without one’s permission, and you simply don’t have my permission.

P.S. Ina May should be read and pondered, not worshipped. Not everyone is so lucky in their body cooperating during pregnancy and labor. If I “had only had a midwife who believed in me”, my baby would be dead. I’ll take, wait, fuck that, I’ll celebrate the medication, induction procedures, and emergency surgery that made up our birth experience. It may not have happened the way I wanted, but all of it ultimately meant the survival of me and the light of my life. Thanks for your opinion, though. I plan to wipe myself with it after my next bowel movement.

P.P.S. That “sahm” group you were being derisive about is actually a great group of broads who don’t have a bad word to say about anybody.

P.P.P.S. I still maintain that mothers groups, whether formal or informal, in-person or virtual, are essential social supports worth pursuing and working within to keep them cooperative and vibrant. Oh no, they caaaaaaan’t take that awaaaaaaay from meeeeee!

*This name is (like) one they gave themselves. I am not labeling and dividing. You know I hate that. The actual group name has been changed to protect the non-suckaheads in it.

I am not often into blondes

but a few tried and trues do come to mind: Faith Ford (how great was she on Murphy Brown?), Lita Ford (The Runaways? Yes, please), Liz Phair (for obvious reasons) and ummmm, I know there are a few more rattling around in here somewhere…the thing is, blondes don’t usually turn my head, but when they do, they really do, and it is Big. Time. Stuff. Of course, they must have beaucoup attitude and a great big giant ol’ brain.

Anywho, this person has got my attention:

http://www.mothersactingup.org/maulive.html

Mother puts the ‘act’ in Acting Up

Boulder mother of three and co-founder of Mothers Acting Up, Beth Osnes, is putting on an act to get the children of the world protected and their needs prioritized. She will be presenting her one-woman show, (M)other, at the Dairy Center for the Arts (in Boulder, CO) on Sept. 7, 8, 13 & 14 at 8:00 p.m. This show explores what it just might take to get the people of one nation to authentically care about the children of other nations. The show’s opening describes a fictional program, called “Baby Swapping,” created by the United Nations to generate care for the world’s children. In this small limited pilot program, seven mothers from seven nations are required by their governments to swap their six month old babies for one month.What follows is an intimate look at one of these mother’s experience and her eventual realization of her interconnectedness with these other mothers, their children and their nations. The terrain of this drama is rich with intrigue, realizations and abundant hope. It offers a new perspective of our world through the eyes of a mother.

Wishing I was closer to Boulder. I want to see this show. Ms. Osnes, I am a Mother Acting Up.

P.S. You are officially on my list.

Check it out

I’ve added a news feed of women’s issues from the Human Rights Watch to my sidebar. Here’s the link if you want to do the same:

http://www.hrw.org/doc/?t=women_news_rss

God/dess bless, peeps.

The America I Believe In

Please consider signing this statement by Amnesty International if you are an American.

Excerpt from their message “The America I believe in…”

“Recently, the President signed the “Military Commissions Act of 2006″, disregarding America’s deep human rights tradition.  Now the administration can detain people indefinitely without charge or trial, and use evidence obtained by cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

We’re in a struggle for the soul of our nation. Amnesty International has launched a new campaign to restore our traditional American values of justice, rule of law, and human dignity.

Please join us to fight for the America we believe in, the America that leads the world on human rights. Be part of this campaign.  Restore ‘The America I Believe In.’ Start now by signing the pledge.”

Thanks, peeps. We have just got to figure this out together.

Meatballs

I like to watch movies from the seventies.

The women’s faces are rounded and their bodies are kind instead of angular and over-exercised in their quest to be triple threats. Stringent diets and plastic surgery have sculpted all of the interesting beauty away from our leading ladies. So many of them look like trannys to me; all that’s missing is the tell-tale adam’s apple.

Same goes for men in movies and on tv. They have retained their adam’s apples but not much else. Most often, they are hairless and chiseled replicas of one another. A guy like Bill Murray would have never made it to become such a big star in today’s tv and movie industries no matter how hilariously talented he is.  He kind of got grandfathered in since he hit it big back when quirks and offbeat features were allowable. These days, even our clowns are attractive (Stewart, Colbert, Carrell, etc).

It’s not that I mind a little eye candy. I just wish it didn’t seem like a requirement.

Huge amounts of honesty and support

are happening over here at Ask Moxie. So refreshing. It’s become a model online community, just through her compassionate responses and the activity in the comments section. Makes me happy.