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Around the start of June I ran six and a half miles, the farthest I had ever run in my life (I think - I'm not sure at what mile mark my half-marathon became a walk-and-shuffle struggle).
Six days ago on Sunday, in the hours before I marched in the Pride Parade, I ran eight miles, by one-and-a-half miles the farthest I had ever run in my life.
This morning, for my thirtieth birthday, I set out to do ten miles. Having for no known reason Spinal Tap on the brain, I wound up going all the way to eleven.
Fuck aging.Current Mood: accomplished |
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I get a lot of questions about why I'm participating in Pride this year, and I've been wanting for a long time to put together this video illustrating that the reason is a profound duty to conscience:
If you like it, link it widely, and I apologize for the green splotches and sometimes difficult audio. Support open video formats, please!Current Mood: accomplished Current Music: My very first Internet video, naturally! |
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I recently watched The 15 Most Sexist Daytime Commercials. There are real stinkers in there but the one that got me thinking was #10:
"You probably never got a chance to see this commercial on television because A) it's foreign and B) it was banned. Thanks to the internet [sic] you won't miss the important message behind this spot: every time a father looks at his child, he sees a condom he wishes he'd bought."
You, and the authors of The 15 Most Sexist Daytime Commercials, might be surprised to learn that this commercial isn't sexist because it shows a man who became a father but doesn't enjoy the role.
It's sexist because it is open in communicating the message to men that it is okay to have second thoughts about parenting and to regret the choices they have made, knowing full well that nothing in our culture, not commercials, not blogs, hardly even the faintest whisper between friends ever sends the same message to women (who are just as likely to feel misfit in parenting): that they are understood, that they are okay, that they are not bad mothers or people and that there are others like them who despite loving their children with all their hearts wouldn't do it over if they had the chance, not in a million years.
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| » Enjoyable Blog: The Triumph Of Bullshit |
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I've been wanting to post about The Triumph Of Bullshit for a while now, but just haven't been able to put my finger on exactly what to say. It's not a perfect blog, but it's close: it's low-traffic (fewer than four posts daily), fairly high quality (fewer than one in ten posts, in my opinion, miss the mark and could be edited out), the content is mostly stuff you won't see elsewhere in your blogroll, embedded media almost always show properly in the RSS feed, and it's got a fairly important point to make: that in our society, for better or for worse, for good bullshit or for bad, bullshit has come to a unique position of dominance.
This video was what put me over the edge tonight. While it misses out on the distinction between East Carolina and West Carolina (what, you thought there were only North and South?) it goes into great depth on a very delicious, but perhaps bullshitty, subject. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) kmanista, my southern belle, this one goes out to you:
Aug. 7th, 2008 @ 01:12 am
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| » Worse than having nothing left at all. |
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Two weeks ago a seiche warning closed Chicago's beaches for the afternoon and evening of my-birthday-eve. It wasn't anything all that special, and I wouldn't be mentioning it to you but for one quote by a man whose beach plans with a friend we stymied:
"I guess we'll watch 'Hancock'," Edwards, Jr. said. "That's all we've got left."
Jul. 13th, 2008 @ 11:33 pm
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| » If you have information about the deal please drop me a line. |
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Alright, I have to know: what's the deal with people still wearing Michael Vick jerseys? It's not even football season! Is it that, having paid a great deal of money for their authentic licensed jersey, they want to damn well get some good wear out of it? Is it made of quality materials that keep the wearer comfortable in a wide range of weather? Are they Falcons fans who don't own any other gear? Do they want it known when they go out that people walking their dogs are not to allow their dogs to approach and/or sniff and/or lick them, and they're tired of having to tell people this after the fact?
Jul. 4th, 2008 @ 01:20 am
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| » Great Moments In Apartment Hunting |
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"Is the gas that I smell leaking into the bedroom included in the rent?"
Jun. 29th, 2008 @ 08:49 am
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| » World records, people |
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Jun. 28th, 2008 @ 08:33 am
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| » Coming soon to a real world near you |
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I was very impressed when seven years ago postgoodism introduced me to Animusic, a collection of computer-generated videos of instruments playing themselves. And I was reminded of Animusic when I saw this video of a toy robot that explores its world by banging on whatever it finds and seeing if it can make music out of it.
Jun. 27th, 2008 @ 09:18 pm
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| » Blasphemy Is Teh Funneh |
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LOLTheist has been a little weak lately, but I particularly enjoyed this one.
Jun. 25th, 2008 @ 09:18 am
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| » Two articles about demographics and culture that I enjoyed. |
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How Birthrate Is Turning Modern Conventional Warfare On Its Head provides a nice no-fear approach to the reality of our world's changing demographics. You've probably heard this truth with ominous music in the background on basic cable news: the world of the future will be populated by people physiologically like the people that are having the most procreative sex today, and those people are brown in color. What takes the fear away is something that today's young cosmopolitans have already experienced in their daily lives: the children of people who greatly procreate aren't mental and emotional copies of their parents; they're able to compare the lives of their parents to the lives of opportunity offered in low-birthrate liberal democracies and they pretty much choose the latter. Maybe in a four hundred years the brown people will be breeding below replacement and demographically fearing a flood of high-birthrate, weirdly-faithed purple immigrants.
Why The Gods Are Not Winning is much in the same vein but leaves the demographics mostly aside and just talks about the economic conditions under which religion prevails and wanes.
Neither one is terribly long. As usual, my enjoyment is not necessarily an endorsement nor an indication that I agree with everything written - I think the second article is far too optimistic, for example (I'd like to ask the authors why, if the church really does have so little influence in Poland the Polish people are still without legal abortion).
Jun. 18th, 2008 @ 05:19 pm
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| » I love rollerblading! |
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Jun. 15th, 2008 @ 08:24 pm
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