As the sun sinks slowly in the west we bid a fond farewell to Estrogen Month. And, to paraphrase Firesign Theater:

“Even now, yet, as scary night descends upon us, we can appreciate the wonders of blogs by women, as stimulating as man’s own triumphs!” [ITWABOTB] 

Thanks to EM meme-mama Elayne Riggs, and everyone who sent in links to their fave rave femblogs, a plethora of worthy women have been spotlighted this month. Estrogen for everybody!

She-Blogger Million BC

 

Posted: March 31st, 2005 under General.
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People do different things that enable them to unwind; to de-pressurize from whatever it is that’s pressuring them in their daily lives, be it job, relationship, home situation, health worries, whatever.

Some people knit. Some people jump on a treadmill. Some people make fudge. Some people play Quake. Some people masturbate to the Victoria’s Secret catalog. Some people drink a quart of scotch and pass out. Some people eat fudge, drink a quart of scotch and masturbate to the Victoria’s Secret catalog while running on the treadmill, then get sick and pass out after they bonk their head on the rim of the toilet. Hey, whatever works for you.

At one very stressful job I had several years ago, we had a table and chairs set up in a quiet corner of the department, and on the table were a big stack of coloring books and several boxes of crayons. Whenever you needed to take a break from a screaming client or an impossible deadline you could retreat to the coloring table for a while and just… color. Stay inside the lines if you wanted to, or scribble all over the page from edge to edge. Hey, whatever works for you.

For various reasons, my life happens to be a pressure cooker at the moment, and I often find myself in need of a de-stressing activity. My activity of choice is doctoring up old magazine ads and pulp magazine and paperback covers. Paintshop Pro and MS Paint are my coloring books and crayons.

I must have been under extreme pressure lately, because my output of ‘Tildified’ pictures has increased dramatically. I decided to share some of them with you here.

Just think of this post as a virtual refrigerator door where my mom has put my latest creations on display; (all held in place by magnets shaped like ladybugs and green peppers.)

My subject for all of March, in honor of Estrogen Month, has been women bloggers. Who are they? Where are they? What are they doing? What do they want? (Besides Kevin Drum’s head on a pike, that is. …Right next to Matt Yglesias‘.)

Elayne, Rox, Lauren, and Trish, among many others — this one’s for you:

Sheena-Blogger

The most excellent SB of Watermark and Blogging Blog informs that there is soon to be a public radio program about blogging and bloggers in her district of Blogistan out Montana way. She has put out a call for a cowgirl She-Blogger image to mark the occasion. I hear and obey, sister!

Calamity She-Blogger

Yikes. Bloodthirsty old bat, ain’t I. Must finish with something a little milder; a little gentler. Lull ‘em into complacency, I say….

No Cooties On Me

Posted: March 27th, 2005 under General.
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Yesterday I posted a bit about His Dark Materials, the highly-regarded trilogy of fantasy novels by British author Philip Pullman.

I don’t mean to say that there’s been no outcry at all in response to HDM’s very clear anti-church bias. Roman Catholics and adherents of other Christian denominations have had a thing or two to say in response to the books’ characterization of a parallel Earth’s dominant religion as a festering cesspit of cold, soulless, political machinations and bloody hypocrisy that makes the Torquemada-era Inquisition look like Woodstock.

I think an important distinction needs to be made about the Pullman novels. Rather than being anti-religion, as in anti-Christianity or anti- any other religion for that matter, I think Pullman’s theme is anti-church, or even more basic, anti- the authority of the church in whatever form it manifests itself.

A quote from Philip Pullman:

Some of the articles and talks I’ve written are to do with the subject of religion, which I think is a very interesting one. The religious impulse – which includes the sense of awe and mystery we feel when we look at the universe, the urge to find a meaning and a purpose in our lives, our sense of moral kinship with other human beings – is part of being human, and I value it. I’d be a damn fool not to.

But organised religion is quite another thing. The trouble is that all too often in human history, churches and priesthoods have set themselves up to rule people’s lives in the name of some invisible god (and they’re all invisible, because they don’t exist) – and done terrible damage. In the name of their god, they have burned, hanged, tortured, maimed, robbed, violated, and enslaved millions of their fellow-creatures, and done so with the happy conviction that they were doing the will of God, and they would go to Heaven for it.

That is the religion I hate, and I’m happy to be known as its enemy.

Posted: March 26th, 2005 under General.
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I don’t understand why the Harry Potter books continually stir up from some quarters hysterical accusations of promoting witchcraft, Satanism, and unsavory un-Christianitude, while another series of books, also extremely popular, similarly targeted at a young audience, and which clearly express an unmistakeable anti-religion theme, elicit comparatively miniscule murmurs of negative reaction. Why is that?

The books are The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass, which together form a trilogy titled His Dark Materials.

Author Philip Pullman has won numerous prizes for these books, including the Carnegie Medal, the Guardian Children’s Book Award, and (for The Amber Spyglass) the Whitbread Book of the Year Award - the first time in the history of that prize that it was given to a children’s book.

HDM has been adapted for the stage and has so far had two successful runs at London’s National Theatre.

There has been a BBC Radio 4 dramatisation in the past year or two, I don’t know the exact production date. This version is available on audio CD from the Beeb.

A film version of The Golden Compass has been announced for 2006, produced by New Line Cinema and already signing up some familiar names including LOTR producer Mark Ordesky.

The trilogy’s storyline examines themes including courage, love, free will, quantum mechanics, sin, the nature of God and the Church. There are strong echoes of Paradise Lost. Parallel worlds are slipped into and out of at a dizzying clip. War is declared against Heaven. The fate of the universe rests on the shoulders of two pre-adolescent children, the main protagonists Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry. Lyra and Will must ultimately make their way into the Underworld, where they will attempt to defy Death itself and lead the dead — ALL of the dead; the dead of all times –out of Limbo and into eternal freedom.

So how’dya like that for Easter weekend reading?

This is dark material indeed, and most likely will not be truly comprehensible to readers younger than mid-teens.

One of the best, most memorable characters — and what brought this book to mind today — is the heroic Iorek Byrnison, one of the panserbjorne, a race of sentient, armored polar bears, mercenaries, whose kingdom and ancestral home is the island of Svalbard in the far Arctic north.

More on this tomorrow.
…

Posted: March 25th, 2005 under General.
Comments: none

When pictures of polar bears show up in Yahoo News, I must go see them immediately. I cannot stay away. I try to stay out, but the inexorable pull of POLAR BEAR PHOTOS keeps pulling me back in. Polar bears speak to me. I have a serious polar bear jones. They’re, like, my totem animal, man.

Just look at this photo. Best Polar Bear Photo in … oh I dunno, probably weeks. This is Olinka and her three-month old cub Christine, who live in a zoo in Vienna. See Olinka’s world-weary, scraggly, tough old viz. Then look at toddler pup Christine: the bright shiny little new hopeful face; the bright shiny hopeful little eyes. Wow! The world is really keen, Ma!

I ache for ya, kid. Big virtual smooch to you, and to yer ma, and to polar bears everywhere. Yeah, I know they’re huge incredibly dangerous and unpredictable animals , and would rip your throat out as soon as look at you if you were ever to meet one face to face. They don’t give a shit about Coca- bleeping- Cola, either. Which is yet another reason why I love ‘em.

Posted: March 25th, 2005 under General.
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And the rest is history. Or, better make that urban myth. And shoddy journalism.

As for me, I worship at the altar of Digby. This is just one reason why. Props to Teresa Nielsen Hayden, too. A quote from Digby:

Despite the fact that Weise was evidently imitating an urban legend, I doubt very seriously that the press will report it that way or that the religious zealots will take the proper lesson from it. They are too busy trying to keep a dead woman’s body alive right now to notice this latest example of their horrible persecution at the hands of liberals, but they will eventually. They must continually gather evidence that liberals are satanically omnipotent or they lose their raison d’etre.

Working my way through the Mondo Bloggé, I see that Rox has the disturbing but cool finger/hands…fingers graphic header back
[I also worship at the altar of Rox; I'm a polytheist that way.]

And fellow Pogophile Wolcott points to a tremendous post about the glories of Walt Kelly’s Okefenokee denizens at Neddie Jingo, whose blog looks to be pretty tremendous too, at least at a cursory first glance. And here I thought I was the only one to see all the similarities between Pogo and the [legendary, beloved, so excruciatingly missed] Calvin and Hobbes.
Look at this drawing of Albert; now picture Hobbes sitting there. Awesome. I heart Bill Watterson. I heart Walt Kelly. I go Pogo.

Posted: March 24th, 2005 under General.
Comments: none

I wrote my letter, I quoted Lauren’s , I sent it to everybody on Majikthise’s list. Now we await some evidence of the blog-swarm’s effect. News at whenever. Please take part if you haven’t already.

This morning Avedon Carol rants the rant that speaks to me best:

Drudge, Hannity, O’Reilly, and Limbaugh spread falsehoods that come directly from the RNC. Jon Stewart does humorous commentary. Kos’ work is factual. Salon does straight reporting and commentary. These two sides are NOT the same.

I challenge you to back up your assertion that the left is engaged in a project similar to that of the right. The right’s objection to the mainstream media is that they DO sometimes carry the facts, even when the facts are undeniable - if those facts are not congenial to the right-wing message.

This is not the complaint that the left has about Big Media. We’ve had criticisms of Democrats, too, but those aren’t the criticisms you carry. You only seem interested in right-wing spin, and right-wing spin is never openly critical of the RNC.

See, I don’t have to read right-wing media to know what they’re talking about, because I know that within a matter of days anything they say will find its way to mainstream media. The reverse is not true.

quoting from post titled “Dumb Media”, at the Sideshow.

Posted: March 22nd, 2005 under General.
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I’d have to say that my mood tonight is about as dark as it’s ever been.

Ten dead in Red Lake.

Tom Delay, the humanoid manure spreader, spewing hypocrisy one obscene syllable after another.

For musical accompaniment to thoughts this bleak, I turn to the master nonpareil of cynicism, 1972 vintage Randy Newman.

God’s Song [That's Why I Love Mankind]

Cain slew Abel
Seth knew not why
For if the children of Israel
Were to multiply
Why must any of the children die?
So he asked the Lord
And the Lord said:

“Man means nothing
He means less to me
Than the lowliest cactus flower
Or the humblest yucca tree
He chases round this desert
Cause he thinks that’s where I’ll be

That’s why I love mankind.

I recoil in horror
From the foulness of thee
From the squalor and the filth
And the misery
How we laugh up here in heaven
At the prayers you offer me

That’s why I love mankind.”

The Christians and the Jews
Were having a jamboree
The Buddhists and the Hindus
Joined on satellite TV
They picked their four greatest priests
And they began to speak
They said:

“Lord, a plague is on the world
Lord, no man is free
The temples that we built to you
Have tumbled into the sea
Lord, if you won’t take care of us
Won’t you please please let us be?”

And the Lord said

And the Lord said

“I burn down your cities
How blind you must be
I take from you your children and you say
‘How blessed are we’
You all must be crazy
To put your faith in me

That’s why I love mankind

You really need me

That’s why I love mankind.”

Posted: March 21st, 2005 under General.
Comments: none

Work that smirk, Madame Secretary!

Posted: March 20th, 2005 under General.
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Rox is wondering when Michelle Malkin will enlist.

Since Ms. Malkin has recently used her blog to denounce the “New York Times’ bleeding heart profile of military deserters,” I’d like to know when she’ll start showing real support for the troops by joining up.

Wonder no longer, Rox. Turns out Michelle aka “the Mauler” is way ahead of you.

Posted: March 20th, 2005 under General.
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