Blame It On The Bogey

I’ve written nothing for ages, mainly because I’m just so angry all the bloody time, I don’t know where to start to get a handle on this inchaote rage.

So this from Bad Mothers’ Club‘s ‘tantrums’ section cheered me up no end.

OK, I asked you nicely not to pick your nose in the shower because they STICK to the wall, the floor, and end up calcifying in a disgusting manner. You laughed because flicking bogies is, well, hilarious isn’t it? And you carried right on doing it. Well I’ve just carried out my threat to remove your nasal offerings with your own toothbrush. And I told you JUST after you’d brushed your teeth.

Not so fucking funny now is it bogey boy?

If only there were a political equivalent.

The Power Behind The Throne Blog

In the interest of prudency and knowing your enemy Jesus’ General has been doing a little wingnut talent-spotting:

A rising star in the GOP’s minor leagues

Diane Ensey
Rovian Republican
A-List Review

Dear Mrs. Ensey,

I’ve been following the recent scandal about how you created a blog so you could anonymously attack your husband’s city council opponent, Ron Bonlander. I was particularly impressed by your alleged fabrication of a report that Mr. Bonlander had been arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol. It might seem like a little thing now, but we Republicans respect mendacity, and I’m sure you’ll be asked to help the party lie about bigger things in the future. Who knows, maybe you’ll be tapped to provide the evidence that Iran was behind the California wildfires. I sure hope so. I think you deserve it.

More…

What a lovely specimen she sounds but she’s just one of many political spouses who have problems with boundaries.

When I asked a while back whether spouses should be on the ballot too I was writing with tongue partially-in-cheek: but Ensey was exactly the type of poltical spouse I had in mind,.Another Judy Giuliani, a political spouse who will stop at nothing to get her chosen lifemate elected so that she can play first lady – or alternatively so that she can later use her partner’s poll success and name-recognition as a stepping stone to her own Evitaesque ascendancy to office.

Diane Ensey has several web-based businesses and touts her services as an expert on blogs and blogging:

As a thwarted journalist, Diane was delighted to discover blogging at the 2005 BBS in Seattle. She currently blogs for Know More Media at A List Review and Do Real Time and is owner of Beyond Paper which helps business owners put the internet to work for their company. An active proponent of blogs and blogging, Diane runs workshops for ‘regular folks’, introducing them to blogs and the world of blogging. She lives in Yakima, WA.

She discovered blogging in 2005 and she’s an expert? Not expert enough to hide her sockpuppetry.

The logo blurb at Ensey’s ‘Beyond Paper’ proclaims that it’s ‘making the internet work for you!’. Um. It’s not working very well for her at the moment, is it?

A Small But Telling Bit of Fluff

Sorry about the current obsession with the Observer/Guardian, but I do think that a newspaper that has such a magisterial online presence and which prides itself on journalistic standards and objectivity is worth a closer look.

So when while reading the Observer women’s section yesterday I cane across this article from Kathryn Flett I couldn’t let it go:

I’m going on a man hunt
Get a job? A man? In these complex times, what’s an honest gold-digger to do

[…]

So a woman doesn’t need to be a hottie to land herself a millionaire, but if she wants to keep one she’ll need the same amount of self-belief and determination that some men channel into climbing the north face of the Eiger. Gold-digging will always be a slog, but if a woman’s idea of a romantic pay-off is signing a pre-nup then who am I to judge how the contemporary Becky Sharp spends her ‘working’ day?

Indeed, when the following refreshingly honest ad was posted on craigslist, you had to admire the pragmatism.

‘I’m tired of beating around the bush,’ the advertiser wrote. ‘I’m a spectacularly beautiful 25-year-old. I’m articulate and classy. I’m not from New York. I’m looking to get married to a guy who makes at least half a million a year. I know how that sounds, but a million a year is middle-class in New York City, so I don’t think I’m overreaching … I am interested in marriage only’, and then, sweetly, if optimistically, ‘hold your insults – I’m putting myself out there in an honest way’. They didn’t, of course.

Given there are fewer marriages every year, the usual gilt-edged security afforded the traditional gold-digger seems to be that much harder to acquire, so hey – why not tell it like it is?

More…

How oddlly familar.I thought. I know that story:

I Am Saying She’s A Golddigger

I came across this Craigslist-related morality play while idly googling for something else, as is often the way. Apparently this dating ad and the reply has been doing the email rounds on Wall St and I think it’s time it broke into the general population.

Craigslist Meets WallStreet…Classic
What a classic answer…..

THIS APPEARED ON CRAIG’S LIST

What am I doing wrong?

Okay, I’m tired of beating around the bush. I’m a beautiful (spectacularly beautiful) 25 year old girl. I’m articulate and classy.
I’m not from New York . I’m looking to get married to a guy who makes at least half a million a year. I know how that sounds, but keep in mind that a million a year is middle class in New York City, so I don’t think I’m overreaching at all.

[…]

In the immortal words of Chandler Bing, could they be any more shallow?

But on the other hand, there is something to be said for treating marriage like a contract, at least everone knows where the stand, or thinks they do. But it only works when both sides have more or less equal bargaining power, which patently isn’t the case here.

Still, there was a time when a girl had to rely on her father to do the bargaining when she was sold into marriage – I suppose it’s a step forward, of a kind, that now she gets to set the terms of the sale herself.

I wrote that back at the start of October. Now I’n not an idiot, I’m perfectly aware that print journalists mine the internet for stories and this article is most likely a amalgam of many sources. I’d be very surprised indeed if Flett had read my post. I’n not alleging plagiarism; but the trouble.is that Flett does present the storyi as though she had come across it herself on Craig’s Liist.

That she did I find highly doubtful. More likely is that the story’s been percolating around and through email lists and eventually ended up in her inbox, or she saw it on a blog. It’s been out there for a while now.

But it is deeply irritating to see her turning a quick buck on a piece of fluff built on other people’s unpaid work.

Flett saw a story online and used it to hang a saleable article on, presenting the story as her own whilst completely ignoring the original source. It may be typical journalistic sleight of hand to do this but for me it borders on the dishonest.

She also competely diregarded the enormous amount of discussion and commentary about what this story says about relations between men and women in today’s society, much of which has been taking place online .

She might’ve written about the way online debate is pushing the boundaries of discussion on gender relations, using the craigslist ad as a jumping-off point. Now that would have made a good artlcle. But no. Instead we got a bit of metropolitan fluff about Flett’s lovelife and her brushes with lucury, not omitting the obligatory allusion to Becky Sharp, that convenient literary shorthand for the archetypal mercenary female – which is what the Gurdian/Observer seems to think its female readers are, an army of forty-ish Becky Sharps interested in only what the most fashionable preschool, London address or wrinkle cream is.

Journalists are very fond of emphasising the differences between themselves and bloggers. They like to think that they have superior ethics. Bolllocks. The differences between bloggers and journalists are that a] bloggers acknowledge our sources with links, and b] bloggers don’t get paid for mining others’ work for material. Well, some do, but like journalists who do the same thing, they’re assholes.

Tampon And On And On…

Going to a Halloween party tonight and short of suitably unusual adornments? Then why not make a cute little tampon ghost, to hang from your ears or around your neck? .

Dip it down there if you dare, for added gruesome authenticity.

Because if there’s anything that squicks some men out, it’s periods. Those men must spend an awful lot of time feeling nauseous then. Menstruation is a fact of life: women can have up to five hundred periods in her lifetime of a length that can vary from 3 to 7 days or more. That’s a hell of a lot of tampons and a lot of detritus. Why not have fun with it? If you have a good ear for pitch, you could even make this surprisngly tuneful set of panpipes:,

A must for the planet-conscious, musical menstruator.

These nifty little projects and many more like them can be found at tamponcrafts.com. Fun for all the family.

I See You Baby, Shading That Ass

Wonder Woman then:

Via Pen-Elayne here’s comics editor and blogger Occasional Superheroine on why some modern comics should be classified as erotica, not comics.

T&A Superheroines pose in every panel in a manner than accentuates their chest or ass. They often are depicted on covers half-naked. T&A Superheroines are ostensibly “empowered” females, tough wimmens…but written mostly for the males in the audience.

[…]

But that genre needs to be recognized and called what it is — fantasy/soft-core erotica. It’s not about mainstream superheroines. It’s not for children. It’s not the norm. It’s specialized.

Exactly. It’s the same reason why I stopped reading comics aged about 14. I just got too irritated as female characters were reduced to identikit hair, breasts, buttocks and pudendae. Similarly I’ve never really developed a taste for manga (it’s the creepy eyes) or most genres of anime. I’ve tried but the the fetish for big breasted yet childlike women drives me away.

As if superheroines like Supergirl, Catwoman weren’t hypersexualised enough already, along comes the porn makeover.

Wonder Woman now:

But hey, each to their own. I just wish some comics fans would stop trying to dignify what’s a pefectly legitimate sub-genre in it’s own right, graphic art/erotica/adventure/porn (choose your own description), with canonical status and then expecting women who do like comics to accept that kind of objectification as literature.

Of course graphic novels and comics can be and are literature, but I do agree with OS and i’d take it further: that the portrayal of superheroines has gone a long way down the road towards violent porn and away from any resemblance at all to actual women, while still claiming to be all about empowering the chicks.

Some might call it empowerment: I call it wank material.

That’s fine. Wank away if the spirit moves you, who am I to crriticise? But if the industry admitted that that is what it is they’d lose a big chunk of their ‘respectable’ market.

I don’t suppose a lot of parents look twice at their kids’ comic collections, but if they did I suspect they’d be shocked and want it banned. ‘Twas ever thus; here’s a portion of the 1954 Comics Code:

  • Profanity, obscenity, smut, vulgarity, or words or symbols which have acquired undesirable meanings are forbidden.
  • Nudity in any form is prohibited, as is indecent or undue exposure.Suggestive and salacious illustration or suggestive posture is unacceptable.,/li>
  • Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities.
  • Illicit sex relations are neither to be hinted at nor portrayed. Violent love scenes as well as sexual abnormalities are unacceptable.,/li>
  • Seduction and rape shall never be shown or suggested.
  • Sex perversion or any inference to same is strictly forbidden.
  • Nudity with meretricious purpose and salacious postures shall not be permitted in the advertising of any product; clothed figures shall never be presented in such a way as to be offensive or contrary to good taste or morals.

I’d hate to be the killjoy who shut off teenage access to graphic adventure porn, better graphic than real if you ask me, no-one gets hurt. And I’m not suggesting a heavy-handed new Comics Code Censorship isn’t the way to go.

I suppose one way around the problem would be for comic illustrators and auithors to willingly model their female characters less on ‘roided-up S&M porn stars and more on actual women, albeit with amazing superpowers. I’m not holding my breath: women aren’t the market these comics are now aiming for. I just wish they’d admit it.