Hey Jenny Slater.

Redhead Mondays: Amanda Righetti.

Mon, 20 May 2013 07:32:54 -0400

Redhead Mondays: Amanda Righetti.

"In the past twenty years, corporate profits have quadrupled while the corporate tax percent has..."

Wed, 15 May 2013 07:45:21 -0400

“In the past twenty years, corporate profits have quadrupled while the corporate tax percent has dropped by half. The payroll tax, paid by workers, has doubled. In effect, corporations have decided to let middle-class workers pay for national investments that have largely benefited businesses over the years. The greater part of basic research, especially for technology and health care, has been conducted with government money. Even today 60% of university research is government-supported. Corporations use highways and shipping lanes and airports to ship their products, the FAA and TSA and Coast Guard and Department of Transportation to safeguard them, a nationwide energy grid to power their factories, and communications towers and satellites to conduct online business.”

- Atlas Shrugged Off Taxes (via azspot)

This is why I get so mad when our so-called titans of industry threaten to “go Galt” and move to someplace where they won’t have to pay any taxes. You’ve ALREADY pretty much stopped paying taxes! The government you claim to hold in so much contempt is propping you up at every turn! And you’re STILL bitching!

I’ve had similar questions about “rice milk,”...

Wed, 15 May 2013 07:42:29 -0400

I’ve had similar questions about “rice milk,” whatever the hell that is. The first time I saw it in the grocery store, I asked Holly “How do you milk a rice?” and she laughed so hard she had to take a minute to compose herself.

Redhead Mondays: Tiffany Stenger.

Mon, 13 May 2013 07:32:07 -0400

Redhead Mondays: Tiffany Stenger.

Redhead Mondays: Rose Leslie.

Mon, 06 May 2013 07:26:44 -0400

Redhead Mondays: Rose Leslie.

Hey Jenny, I'm trying to read the classic Urban Meyer blog...how can I get access? Can you send it to me?

Sat, 04 May 2013 07:34:35 -0400

Public access has been restored. I made a lot of my Internet presence private while I was doing the job-search thing, but now that I’ve been hired, I guess I can make all that ish public and reveal to my new overlords what a horribly irresponsible decision they’ve made.

Seriously, why WOULDN’T I take financial advice from...

Sat, 04 May 2013 07:32:21 -0400

Seriously, why WOULDN’T I take financial advice from Wu-Tang? Not only do they have a hell of a lot more money than I’ve got, they’ve probably been smarter with it than I have.

lord have mercy on the middle-aged white christian man

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 08:01:00 -0400

If you’ve ever listened to one of his appearances on Paul Finebaum’s radio show, you already knew Tim Brando was pompous and staggeringly self-important, but if you haven’t, he was kind enough to remind all of us yesterday.

The tweet (since deleted) Bomani Jones RT’d above was blurted out in the course of a demi-rant about NBA player Jason Collins publicly announcing his homosexuality. The point Brando started out making was that he didn’t think Collins qualified as a “hero,” and while I don’t necessarily share that sentiment, I can kind of see where Brando was coming from. Everyone’s threshold for “hero” is different, and not everyone who demonstrates courage (which I think Collins clearly did) necessarily meets that threshold. If your minimum bar for hero status is saving someone’s life or risking one’s own, then Collins, while courageous, doesn’t quite qualify.

But then Brando had to go lay the self-pitying “being a Christian White male over 50 means nothing in today’s society” rap on us, and we saw the subtext of his disdain for Jason Collins. Once upon a time, old white guys completely and unequivocally ran the show in this country, but now non-Christians, women, African-Americans and even — gasp! — gay people are getting equal time, attention and credit. Oh, lordy, what’s a middle-aged white guy to do?

What Brando never bothered to explain is what being a white Christian male over 50 meant. (Probably because he didn’t feel like he should have to explain it, which is part of the problem.) More specifically, he didn’t explain why being a white Christian male over 50 should mean anything more than being, say, a 34-year-old gay black guy. Brando insisted over and over again he’s bigoted toward neither African-Americans nor gays, and I don’t doubt he sincerely thinks that. But if you’re gonna expel the amount of carbon dioxide Brando did to downplay the importance of Jason Collins’ public revelation, then turn right around and ask where’s your credit for being a white Christian family man, the obvious inference from that is that you think you deserve more credit than a guy such as Collins. I mean, it’s fine for African-Americans and non-Christians and gays to think they’re decent people, they just better not go around thinking they’re as special as us white guys are, right?

Again, Brando deleted the tweet later on that evening, so at least he wised up enough to recognize that that was a dumb thing to say out loud. Whether he realizes that it was a dumb sentiment to hold in the first place, though, is anyone’s guess. Having been exposed to Brando’s smug self-importance in the past, my guess is “no.” Sadly, he isn’t the first person on the list of entitled white guys who just don’t get it, and he’s far, far away from being the last.

Redhead Mondays: Deborah Ann Woll.

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 07:47:35 -0400

Redhead Mondays: Deborah Ann Woll.

ava-marx: newmilitant: anarcho-queer: House Republican’s...

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 07:25:31 -0400

ava-marx:

newmilitant:

anarcho-queer:

House Republican’s Propose To End 40 Hour Work Week Law

House Republicans have introduced a bill that would end the 40-hour work week, dismantling an important component of the Federal Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938 and hurting middle-class families across the country.

Sponsored by Rep. Martha Roby (AL), the dubiously-titled “Working Families Flexibility Act” (H.R. 1406) would remove the requirement that employers pay a cash premium for overtime work and instead allow them to offer employees compensatory time off. The effect would be an FLSA that is undermined of its only incentive against excessive hours and a cheaper way for employers to demand mandatory overtime.

Eileen Appelbaum, a senior economist with the Center for Economic Policy and Research, says the bill’s major effect would be to hurt workers, “likely increasing overtime hours for those who don’t want them and cutting pay for those who do.”

IAM International President Tom Buffenbarger wrote a letter to Congress encouraging them to vote against the bill.

“Employers can already work within the existing laws to allow workers adjusting work schedules around family needs without changing the 40-hour workweek,” Buffenbarger wrote. “‘Comp time’ proposals let the employer decide whether workers can use any accrued compensatory time. Additionally, nothing would prevent the employer from forcing workers to take time off individually or limiting whether workers can use the compensatory time at all if it is too burdensome to the work-load.”

The bill was referred to committee and could come to a vote in the House as early as next week.

The capitalists sure have become more brazen over the last couple decades.

I’m honestly shocked this didn’t happen sooner. Hell, even the most brazen queers can learn something from Republicans about absolutely not giving a fuck. There’s no way this will pass, but I bet within the next year or two we get a slightly watered down version that gets hailed as a great compromise.

Serious question: Why don’t conservative Republicans want ordinary people to make any money?

I mean, every time Obama (or any Democrat, really) proposes something that could have even a tangential effect on small businesses, they whip out the ol’ “You’re anti-business!” trope — companies won’t be able to hire more employees, they may have to lay off some of the ones they have, it’s going to hurt the economy, etc.

But now these same conservatives come along and propose this bill that basically says your employer can make you spend more time away from your family during the week but they don’t have to pay you any more. How does this help employees? How does taking money out of their pockets do anything positive for the American family or for the economy?

You don’t even have to be pro-union to be frustrated about what Martha Roby is trying to pull here. And to couch it in terms of adding “flexibility” for working families — the disingenuousness of it makes my skin crawl. This is an attempt to allow companies to work their employees harder and pay them less. Period. If you don’t understand why that would be a very bad thing not just for working families but for the entire country, I direct you here. And if after reading that you still don’t understand, then enjoy your Rolls-Royces and your champagne cellar. I don’t know what to tell you.

i'm the dude hired by a dude to ask other dudes for money

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 07:31:32 -0400

Fixing to start my new job in … about an hour, actually. Thus bringing an end to about a week-and-a-half between-jobs period where I could sit around the house, drink beer and watch Braves games in the middle of the day if that was what I wanted to do (and it frequently was).

I don’t know if “have beer fridge installed in my office” is something I want to bust out with my new boss on the first day, though. Maybe that’s a second-day, how-are-you-settling-in, gettin’-to-know-ya kind of conversation. You don’t want to rush a new working relationship.

Years ago, I remember thinking, “Man, it sure would be...

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 08:18:07 -0400

Years ago, I remember thinking, “Man, it sure would be awesome to be living in an intown Atlanta neighborhood with trees lining the streets, in one of those old renovated houses with a lot of character, with a sporty little car, a couple of dogs and a woman who loves me very much. Oh, and it would kick ass if it had an extra room I could use as my Lego room and put all my toys in there.”

Taking the dogs for a walk around Grant Park yesterday, I realized … we’ve achieved every last one of those things.

I feel like we as people, but specifically Americans, are conditioned to see everything as just a step to something else. You do well in high school so you can get into a good college. You do well in college so you can get a good job. You do well at that job so you can eventually move up to a better job. You buy a house so you can start building equity and take ownership of an asset, so you can eventually take that money and invest it and make more money, or use that money to buy a bigger and better house.

Only nobody tells you what the ultimate stopping point is supposed to be. And granted, it’s different for everyone, but the problem is our upwardly mobile, Horatio Alger, American-dreamin’ society sort of drills it into your skull that there is no stopping point. Somebody’s always going to have something nicer than you, so you need to go strive for that. Got a Volvo? Well, the dude down the street has a BMW. Got your BMW now? OK, great, but the dude down the street has a Porsche Panamera and now you’re kind of lusting after it a little bit, aren’t you? Go get that. Go want that thing. If you aren’t pursuing something better or nicer, people will think you’re lazy.

Now that we’re starting to get pretty well settled in here, and I start my new job tomorrow, I’ve made it my not-really-New-Year’s resolution to focus more on my enjoyment of what I have now than my desire to acquire any additional. Which is not to say that I won’t eventually seek to move up at my job, or make a big-ticket purchase here or there, but … I feel like Holly and I have been so incredibly blessed over the last few months that “What’s still missing from this?” is the exact wrong question to be asking. Instead of racking our brains for the exact situation or possession that would make things perfect, I’m resolving to spend a little more time marveling at just how close to perfect things already are — and the many blessings, circumstances and strokes of luck that brought us here.

Redhead Mondays salutes Jill St. John, a/k/a Tiffany Case in...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 08:05:05 -0400

Redhead Mondays salutes Jill St. John, a/k/a Tiffany Case in 1971’s “Diamonds Are Forever.”

Holly got me the complete box set of 007 Blu-Rays for Christmas, and we’d been going through them one by one in chronological order. “Diamonds” was the first one we watched in the new house after getting all the TVs and DVD players hooked up and whatnot. It’s not an objectively great film by any stretch, mind you — it’s almost as if they gauged the reaction to “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” with its dark subject matter and extremely downbeat ending, and just thought to themselves, “Ehhh … fuck it, guys, let’s just put some tits in this.”

But if you’re not expecting “OHMSS”/”Skyfall”-level cinematic merit and just want to see Connery camp it up in his last official go-round as Bond, it’s kind of a lot of fun. It was the series’ declaration that the ’70s had officially begun: a car chase on Fremont Street in Las Vegas with a Mach 1 Mustang on two wheels; a death-defying escape from a mobbed-up funeral parlor; and a circular fish tank bed in the honeymoon suite at the “Whyte House” hotel. So much 007 iconography packed into one film, for better or worse.

where they're setting the bar for 'liberator' these days

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 08:14:00 -0400

I realize that, as someone who’s spent the past week basically doing nothing but packing, moving and unpacking boxes, I’m way late to the party on this. But there’s something about the way Margaret Thatcher’s being remembered as a hero that just seems … well, naive at best, willfully dishonest at worst.

The Iron Lady, we’re told, was a “liberator.” Stood strong against the rolling tide of Communism. Was shoulder-to-shoulder with Reagan, that other anti-Communist crusader, to the point where their political legacies seem almost inseparable. Faced down the Soviets, helped set in motion the dominoes that toppled the Berlin Wall, made the world safe for freedom and democracy.

Well, as long as you were living in a Communist country. If you weren’t living under the Soviet sphere of influence, Thatcher’s definition of “freedom” stretched to the breaking point. If you lived in Chile, for example, “freedom” meant living under the watchful eye of Augusto Pinochet, who’d seized power in a military coup and used torture, labor camps and in some cases outright murder to keep his people in line. If you lived in Indonesia, “freedom” meant your leader was a dictator who oversaw the extermination of 100,000 East Timorese while misappropriating billions from the national treasury. If you were South African — well, a black South African — “freedom,” of course, was a brutal, anachronistic Apartheid regime Thatcher wanted no part in punishing, receiving their white-minority leaders at 10 Downing while slagging the African National Congress as “terrorists.”

I could do an entire daily blog picking out the truly horrible people and regimes Thatcher stood with as prime minister. Zia ul-Haq in Pakistan. Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. Take your pick of right-wing military dictators in South and Central America. And, of course, Saddam Hussein. You’ll find thousands of web hits for Thatcher “standing up” to Saddam and helping George Bush drive the Iraqis out of Kuwait, far fewer about the military aid she funneled his way in the decade leading up to Desert Storm.

In no sane world could someone with this record be called a defender of freedom. Yet that’s exactly what we call her, and why? Because all of those dictatorial allies and friends of hers were anti-Communist. That’s it. In the 1980s, that’s the only criterion you had to meet to be called an ally of Margaret Thatcher.

Of course, it’d be a lot easier to criticize her for this if the United States hadn’t taken basically the same tack for the entirety of the Reagan/Bush era. So many innocents dead, so many brutal regimes propped up for the sake of showing the commies they couldn’t just go into whichever country they wanted.

And while that mindset seems to be a relic of the Cold War at first glance, it still informs our political beliefs in 2013 here in the U.S., if not so much in Britain. What was the difference between the Warsaw Pact hegemony Reagan/Thatcher opposed and the right-wing dictatorships they approved of? The former was Communist, the latter wasn’t. In practical terms, that was a distinction without a difference, for the people of Chile, Indonesia, and (black) South Africa were just as restricted and brutalized as the people of Romania, Iran and the USSR. But at least they got free markets! They couldn’t criticize their leaders and they had to live in constant fear of being snatched off the street and taken to re-education camps, but at least they could earn a good capitalist living in the meantime!

You can see that attitude mirrored in the American Tea Party of the 21st century. They don’t want the Voting Rights Act extended; they don’t want anything to do with gay rights, much less gay marriage; they seem perfectly happy with cops in Arizona being able to demand to see your papers at routine traffic stops. They hardly complained at all when George W. Bush decimated the national treasury to pursue his ill-conceived war in Iraq, raised nary a voice in protest when Bush and Cheney implemented their secret torture program to gather intelligence nor when Obama continued it. All these obstacles to freedom and civil rights in this supposedly democratic country and not a word, but Obama starts talking about raising taxes on the wealthy and increasing regulations on corporations and ohhhh noooo the country has never seen such a ruthless dictator in its midst.

For Margaret Thatcher, “freedom” meant free markets, period, end of sentence, and any repression or torture you had to endure to enjoy those markets was just the price you paid for not being under Moscow’s thumb. Even today, there is a certain segment of the American electorate that is willing to endure just about any level of malfeasance, incompetence and curtailing of civil rights as long as you don’t do anything that could be construed as socialist. A quarter-century after Reagan supposedly won the Cold War, with Thatcher standing loyally by his side, we’re still lashing out at Communists — only without an existential threat like the Soviets on which to focus our energies, we’ve gone looking for them in our own country. And we’ve slapped on the blinders just as much now as Thatcher and Reagan did in the ’80s.

Someday maybe we’ll wise up and realize that the Venn diagram for “economic freedom” and “overall freedom” does not consist of a single circle. Someday maybe we’ll understand that true democracy is about more than just low taxes and the ability to open a corner fruit stand without having to comply with any sort of governmental regulations. But if the hagiography through which we still view Margaret Thatcher is any indication, it may still be a long time before we can snap our priorities back into order like that.

In the meantime, I wonder what Thatcher and Reagan would’ve made of a guy like Vladimir Putin and where he’s taken Russia since the USSR officially ceased to exist. Freedom of speech in Russia is barely any better than it was 50 years ago, what with opposition parties being dismantled and journalists being bumped off right and left; as far as the presidency and prime ministership are concerned, Russia remains very much a one-party state. But hey, the economy’s been improving by leaps and bounds and you can now buy a Chrysler from eight different dealers in Moscow alone — so who knows, maybe the Iron Lady and the “Gray Cardinal” (as Putin is sometimes called in Russia) would be the best of friends. Freedom’s a vague term, after all. I guess it all depends on which specific thing you want to be free to do.

Sorry for the radio silence over the past … couple weeks,...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 07:47:57 -0400

Sorry for the radio silence over the past … couple weeks, I guess it’d be now? Moving takes a lot out of you.

Considering that “Mad Men” has returned to us in the time that’s passed since my last post, it’s only fitting for Redhead Mondays to salute Christina Hendricks on here again.

party-wok: theavc: The USA Network may save Happy Endings from...

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 07:41:00 -0400

party-wok:

theavc:

The USA Network may save Happy Endings from the cruel hand of ABC. After all, the network does need something to offset all it’s quirk-based dramas.

I would be okay with this. Psych and Happy Endings on the same channel? Cool with me.

Of all the shows to move to Friday nights, which is the TV equivalent of hospice care or “We sent your kitty Fluffy to live on a farm.” You won’t stand up for this show, ABC, but you’ll hype the hell out of a reality show where B-listers do nothing but jump into a pool over and over again?

(That’s basically the celebrity equivalent of all the annoying shit my sister and I used to do at the public pool back when we were little. “Splash” should really be called “MOM. HEY MOM. WATCH THIS. MOM. HEY MOM. MOM. MOM.”)

Thank you, USA, for stepping in to save a show that — particularly with NBC slowly killing off all its shows I’d actually want to watch, Michael Corleone-style — is better and funnier than 99 percent of everything else on TV right now. ELISHA CUTHBERT, DON’T YOU WORRY. I’LL RIDE FOR YOU, GIRL.

i can't go to sleep, i can't shut my eyes

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 07:34:07 -0400

icarusing:

people who fall asleep quickly and easily make me so irrationally angry

like wow it must be so nice not to lie in bed for hours replaying every negative moment you’ve ever had in your entire life every single night

The last time I could count on sleeping all the way through the night and getting a good eight or nine hours was when I was just out of college. And I’m not even positive I could do it then.

For the last few years my standard M.O. has been to go to bed around 11, sleep a few hours, wake up around 3 or 4 a.m. for no reason, lay about, maybe read for a few minutes, and occasionally sneak in another hour of sleep-like substance until my body rouses itself awake once and for all at 6 or 6:30. So basically what we’re talking about is six hours of sleep on a good night.

My doctor prescribed me a month’s worth of Ambien — literally the first sleeping pill I’ve ever taken in my life — in the hopes of correcting these problems, sort of to trick my body into adjusting to a more normal (and more healthy) sleep cycle. In the week that I’ve been taking it, I haven’t woken up in the middle of the night, which has been really nice. But my body is still waking up at 5:30 or 6, even on the weekends when I don’t have anything I need to be getting up early for.

Is there such thing as a body being physically incapable of sleeping late? On the one hand, I kind of like getting up early because I can get started doing stuff, whether it’s working on writing projects or getting shit done around the house, that much earlier in the day. On the other hand, when I’ve stayed up late the night before and/or gone out drinking until 2 a.m., what the hell is my body doing rousing itself awake at 6? Body, don’t you know you’re just going to be collapsing into a heap by 2 in the afternoon if you do that?

Is this God’s way of telling me I’m supposed to take over my granddad’s farm when he dies?

To celebrate “Game of Thrones” coming back last...

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 07:59:09 -0400

To celebrate “Game of Thrones” coming back last night, here’s Esmé Bianco, a/k/a Ros, for Redhead Mondays.

shorterexcerpts: I’ll take one of each. Gonna commit this to...

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 08:40:13 -0400

shorterexcerpts:

I’ll take one of each.

Gonna commit this to memory, and I can’t promise you there won’t come a day between now and when I start my new job on May 1 that I knock out all nine in a single 24-hour period.

celesteboldlygoes: We’ve been laughing at this for the last 20...

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 07:35:20 -0400

celesteboldlygoes:

We’ve been laughing at this for the last 20 minutes.