Open letter

Dear MySpace,

With all you're supposed to be doing for my internets, would it kill you to incorporate a login bar at the top of your page (like livejournal)? If I have to sign in to look at someone's pictures, put it on the same damn page. I don't use MySpace for anything else; I don't even have a real profile. Interface. Look into it.


(Also, if you could maybe figure out something where I didn't have to look at flashing neon backgrounds, listen to bad country/hip-hop or watch stupid videos, I'd be cool with it. Oh, and if my browser didn't crash one out of five times when I visit your site. That would be awesome too.

Hearts,

Sarah

Things you should read

In Michigan, Not Even the Dead are Safe
The Abstinence-Only Delusion
Squeezing Money from Iron
Still Can't Find Stupid Pretty White Girl; Still No One Cares
Bones of prehistoric camel found at Wal-Mart site
Pittsburghers are the best complainers...in song

Also, don't miss George Tenet ripping Cheney on 60 Minutes tonight, or Brady's Quinn's smug, smarmy mug looking pissed and bitchy all over ESPN. Cleveland is the best place for you, Brady.

sticky-icky

obligatory "the white stripes' new single is awesome" post.

The aptly-named "icky thump" (there is, indeed a lot of thump, in typical white stripes style. and it is, in fact icky, in that big-heavy-chords/a-little-bit-funky way) is all over the internets, and in a matter of time, it will be all over my mtv and radio too. The album, also called icky thump, comes out on june 19, but until then, you can download the single here (an XFM radio rip) or get it in much higher quality from iTunes for a measley 99 cents.

Detroit, represent. Will Jack White ever do something that I don't love? Signs point to no.

(also, apparently I can't figure out if I want to use capital letters or not. With any luck, that will resolve itself soon.)

Please note the renovations

New title, new look, news start on this here blog (uar? can I call it that? I might anyway.) Leave a comment if you're having issues viewing anything. Gray on black isn't hard for me to read, but I have eyes like a goddamn hawk.

Also, there's a nifty little article about pre-Iraq disinformation and its subsequent consequences over on Daily Kos. An excerpt:

So, the Office of Special Plans was whipped up in the Pentagon as an alternative branch of intelligence sure to generate the damn the facts, full speed ahead documents Bush and Cheney needed to get their war on. Feith, who had previously written an open letter to Bill Clinton calling for immediate war in Iraq, was only too happy to comply. He pulled out his editing pencil and struck down every point of evidence that contradicted the goal of going into Iraq.

Enjoy

see you later, innovator

arctic monkeys-brianstorm, as promised. this isn't them on jimmy kimmel, it's just the video. the dancers are pretty sweet.

the british are my favourite spellers

the arctic monkeys were just on jimmy kimmel, playing a song from their new album. favourite worst nightmare (note the british "u"). it was very cool and as soon as i find a youtube clip, i'll post it. it was very different from their first album, which i kind of liked but didn't rave about.

when a band releases a decent album or two, that are pretty generally well accepted, critically favored and moderately successful, there are two routes they can take. a band can: a) release a more poppy, palatable album that will probably make them more money or b) do something just a little weirder, a little cooler, a littler more evolutionary, that will make them a better band, but less successful. Please see: Weezer, Brand New, Radiohead, TV On the Radio, Jimmy Eat World (although I guess Clarity was their third album, and Radiohead didn't really hit their stride until Ok Computer either.)

back to the point. I suppose there is another route a band can take, which is to try to duplicate their first album and not really do anything. boring, but ok, i guess.

um, so this has been sarah's indie rock corner. we'll be back next week with how gun metaphors should be unilaterally banned for anyone wearing guy liner. (pete wentz, i am looking at you.)

I took all that I could, it was free

God damn it.

God damn it Hempfield.

This is what happens when a school board, drunk with power, commits to a $6 million dollar renovation and construction of a "field house" which I'm pretty sure we didn't need. Plus building a new stadium and instalilng astrotuff, all within the last ten years. For a football team that never wins.

That board isn't there any more, for the most part. They got ousted last year after firing a popular football coach. Again, football.

Now administrators want to cut funding for the arts and foreign language. Fewer classes, fewer teachers, less art.

I wouldn't give a damn, but I still have a small brother who has to survive his requisite four years in that suburban steel-and-razorwire shithole without losing his mind. If he's anything like me (and let's be honest, he is) he's going to need some way of coping with the bullshit that is high school. I could understand a modest arts cut, if the cut was unilateral— but no. No one is proposing cutting any funding or staff anywhere else, just arts and foreign language. That's stupid. Why single out the arts, just because educators are too narrow-minded to view them as anything but frivolity? I just wrote an outraged letter-I'm mailing it to the administration, the school board and the superintendent tonight.

Kids learn just as much in pottery class as they do in bio. Probably more, because they won't be sleeping through half of it.

seriously? a shrewdness?

something I wish I was in on: the naming of groups of animals.

I'm sure whoever came up with that was just all like "here's some random words. "pride" ok, that's what we're going to call lions now." some other pretty awesome ones.

apes-shrewdness
camel-flock
cobra-quiver
crow-murder
elk-gang
hippos-bloat
leopard-leap
mouse-mischeif
otter-romp
rattlesnake-rhumba
tiger-swift/ambush (this one is kind of scary)
toad-knot

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go feed a mischief of mice to my rhumba of rattlesnakes.

web comics

I like them.

Here are some things you may be interested in.

This is my favorite.
This one has lots of exclamation points.
This,
this
and this are pretty good too.
This one is kind of sad.
I periodically enjoy this, too.

Apparently, my fight song is based on a hymn called "Stand Up, Stand up for Jesus." Good call on that one.

Pretty please?

Dear Al,

Please run for President in '08. Give them the rope-a-dope. Let Hilary and Obama swing until they've got nothing left, and the enter the race. Please. You've been nominated for an Oscar and a Nobel Peace Prize. Your have become distinguished rather than creepy. You have always been against the war, ahead of the curve on the environment...and well, everything else. You've already WON a presidential election for God's sake. Also, you are tossing around an Earth beach ball with Richard Branson. You might even be (dare I say it?) cool.

Finally-we thought you were stiff and unrelateable in 2000. Then, we saw John Kerry. No one has ever botched a campaign so thoroughly. Please Al. Please. You can wait six months and raise mad bank over the Internets (you did invent them, after all) in like, a week.

And make Hilary your running mate. Gore/Clinton '08? Yes, please.

Oh God. Oh fuck.

I said I didn't care that much about this election-- then the returns started coming in. And here I sit, with 5 tabs open in Firefox (CNN's BlogParty, Cnn.com, Wonkette, The Huffington Post and Blogger) hitting refresh until my fingers bleed.

I guess I lied. My spirit's not broken. Now I remembered why I wanted to report on politics--the orgasmic rush of he-said, she-said, the high of election night. I thought I was off the stuff, but turns out I'm a political junkie for life.


Sidebar: Excellent work CNN. So many infographics, continuing to run the returns through commercial breaks, having an options where I can customize the races I want to watch on your homepage. ALSO- as of 8:58 things look good!

1:17 AM update- No more Santorum. Democratic house (and at least a much closer Senate). Female speaker of the house. Hopefully, chaos on Capitol Hill and Democrats taking on the state of things in manner that shows they have something resembling fortitude.

I seem to have discovered something

Oh hey. A blog. The place where I verbally masturbate onto a computer screen and you come and read it, then tell me what a clever girl I am. Because what I read, think and like is so goddamn important.

So, today is election day. I've already voted absentee, so I get to ignore all this hullabaloo with a send of self-righteous amusement. As I've been saying for the past few weeks, I used to be so political- there was a time when I would be hanging on every state and race in this election with bated breath. The way things turned out, however, was that my spirit was crumpled by the clusterfuck that was the 2000 election, and then when its disasterous (fake) results failed to right themselves in the 2004 election, I pretty much lost my faith in the public at large to ever make an informed, rational decision about who is qualified to lead this country and who is not. Do I want the Democrats to take the House? Absofuckinglutely, but if they don't, I will probably just throw up my hands and say "typical."

I suppose this is what comes with "growing up"- the realization that politics, in general are a crock. I used to campaign and feel really good about trying to make a difference, when the fact of the matter is that all campaigning is is trying to up one candidate or party's exposure. Elections aren't about ideals or issues, they're about whose team picked a better tie, who sweat less under the studio lights, whose smile looks better plastered across a four-foot-tall billboard. Now, I view politics as something individual and more global. I care about issues/things, not parties/people. If the Republicans were to come up with a comprehensive plan tomorrow for alternative energy and then immediately began putting it into motion, I would be behind it 100%.

I have my beliefs and personal concerns about our government-but I don't feel like anyone represents them fully except me. Thus the reason this election is only of moderate interest to me, rather than the earth-shattering event it was four years ago. I wonder if everyone in this generation feels like this-were two elections where we were told our votes mattered most, but ended meaning nothing at all, enough to break our collective backs with the weight of political futility?

I'd like to hope not. I'd like to hope that there are people out there with more zeal and optomism than me, less selfish, more dedicated. I'd like someone to rally behind, but I'm just not interested enough to be that person.

This is my boom stick

Creepy.

Now that the Necronomicon has been found, you know it's only a matter of time before someone records that garbage and unleashes an army of the undead on us all. I for one, will be purchasing a shotgun, brushing up on my neck-snapping skills and possibly calling Michigan native Bruce Campbell for a zombie-slaying consult.

Also

Everyone else is really dumb

Jokes about Polaks being stupid can suck it.

Reason #485,000 why most men should not talk about issues of gender

This is a story of men behaving badly in groups.

Excuses, excuses, excuses. In column on espn.com's Page 2, Jason Whitlock says that the Duke lacross rape incident ( Here if you have no idea what I'm talking about.) shouldn't be viewed through a racial filter, rather one of gender. If he would have just stopped there, we might have been okay. After all, rape is a male-on-female crime in a far larger proportion that it is a one-color-on-another-color crime.

However, Jason is a professional columnist and has somewhere around 1,000 words to back this statement up. Which he does, beautifully, with the classic argument that "boys will be boys" and that's why this is a crime of gender-not because men in society are raised to have little respect for women in general, and no respect for women who may happen to strip for a living, but because they just can't help themselves.

Some highlights:

Men behaving badly in groups -- especially under the influence of alcohol -- cuts across all social, economic and racial demographics.

I always have contended, somewhat jokingly, that there should be rules outlawing men from gathering in groups of three or more without a woman as chaperone or serious surveillance equipment. Whitlock's law: A man's intelligence, maturity and decision-making skills decrease as the number of men within earshot of his voice increases.

Whitlock's law is a product of a youth spent sucking on beer bongs and zig zags, hosting and attending bachelor parties, growing up on the barstools inside my father's tavern and planning debauchery and lewd behavior with teammates and friends of all races.

I can honestly say that I don't have a male friend who could avoid saying, "There go I but for the grace of God" when thinking about the Duke lacrosse players.

Disgusting, utter bullshit and excuses, excuses, excuses. You can't treat a woman like a human being because of some societal constructs associated with being male? You can't understand the word "no" because you're around your buddies?

Whitlock isn't all bad here-he does suggest an education program, but what he suggests "...what constitutes sexual harassment, sexual assault, the dangers of alcoholism and drugs, unwanted and unwed pregnancy, how to respectfully socialize with people outside your race, etc." isn't anything the average college freshman hasn't heard a million times before. The problem here lies much, much deeper, mostly with Whitlocks male community excuse and his contention that strippers deserve no respect, just because they happen to take their clothes off for a living. His contention that alcohol and "planning lewd behavior" from an early age in a whacked out form of "male-bonding" is an excuse for the way these snotty Duke brats treated that woman is incredibly misguided.

Bottom line: Teach men how to view a woman as a human being, not as something they can degrade, ridicule and control and then maybe we'll talk. Jason and I agree on one point however-boys aren't raised to become men, they're raised to become idiots and sexists and that's probably where the problem lies.

(Note-I know this does not apply to all men. I know several who are respectful and gracious and lovely. Please hold off on thinking me a crazy man-hater, because I'm not.)

Don't get it twisted

So, Cynthia McKinney. You know who she is right? The Georgia congresswoman (D, of course) who's playing a game of "who-assaulted-whom" with Capitol Hill police who claim they didn't recognize her when she tried to bypass security and enter the Capitol Building. (FYI- Members of the House do not have to go through the security rigamarole, but are asked to wear special Congress pins. McKinney was not wearing hers at the time of the incident.)

Capitol Hill police are seeking a warrant for her arrest, charges as yet undisclosed. She is crying racism/sexism. A picture, for reference.



I'm fairly certain her claims of racism are justified-if she was a white woman, or a white man for that matter, chances are Capitol Hill police wouldn't have given a second thought as to her validity as a member of Congress.

At any rate, Cynthia was on Wolf Blitzer last night. Some highlights.


BLITZER: … you were talking earlier about racial profiling, and that there was racism involved in stopping you for questioning because you weren’t wearing your congressional pin.
MCKINNEY: Now, Wolf, you know I didn’t say that, so, don’t twist my words. BLITZER: Well, tell us what you said.
MCKINNEY: Don’t even begin to twist my words.

Wolf-this woman tangled with Capitol police. She will not hesitate to lay the smack down on you.

BLITZER: When did you — when did you change your hairstyle?
MCKINNEY: In January of this year. But don’t you think it’s really frivolous? And, really, I — I can’t even describe — if the security of the House of Representatives of the United States is based on how members of Congress wear their hair, Wolf, I think this is really ridiculous.

The contention here is, that McKinney changed her hair from the braided style in the photo above to a more free-flowing, mini-fro kind of deal and police are claiming they didn't recognize her because of her hair. Which is outrageous This woman has been in Congress for 11 years. Her hair has been changed for several months. This is seriously ridiculous, but it doesn't change the fact that Cynthia McKinney is still a Grade-A badass.

Also-I'm not certain about this and have no way of confirming, but I think she may have been the Congress member who is shown saying "We would like to call on the Senate, but the Senate is absent." in Farenheit 9-11.

At any rate-Well played Cynthia. Well played, indeed.

I've seen the needle and the damage done

I can't believe this is still shock to people. Heroin was huge when I was in high school, and I'm sure it's still huge three years later. For that matter, drugs of any kind in Westmoreland County are ridiculously hard to get ahold of. You name it, I know someone who did it on a regular basis.

It's times like this when I'm reminded of what a totally different world Western Pennsylvania is. Weird, crazy things happen there-Confederate flags, people who know how to shoot guns, etc, etc, etc. None of that exists here and I've yet to determine if that's about location or culture or economics or just a weird anomaly.

Oh Westmoreland County. You are a strange beast.

Ri-goddamn-diculous

Sir, you are under arrest for being a jagoff.

Only in Pittsburgh. Pigeons beware.

This is the story of Johnny Rotten

So fucking punk rock.

Deconstruction of textual convention, gender and agency, implications of language and useage

Where is the job market for being a pretentious literary asshole? I would like to be a part of that.

However, I cannot just walk into an advising office and say "Hey, I'm an arrogant, academic jerk who likes books. What should I do with my life?"

But really, writing ridiculous analytical papers is my only marketable skill.