hrmmm... foamy...

I got the catalogue, was looking forward to flipping through the pictures in a spare moment, and then someone pointed out the very bottom of the image. Where she is basking in white foam that covers her crotch.

Ew. That's nasty even without what it's referring to. Who wants dirty foamy stuff that's been expunged from the sea anywhere near their twat? Way to encourage infection and illness.

Never before have I been more struck that they are marketing more than underwear, and marketing it to more than women...

History lesson

Look what people learn in History!



Clearly I have some favorite themes.... Still can't resist pointing out the theme explicitly here though: look at how male-, Christian-, and white-centric our history is! ("A Brief History of Pretty Much Everything", indeed.) This is a glorious exemplification.

(Beautiful presentation, though -- I really have to applaud the artist at the same time I deride his/her teachers.)

so that word actually does imply those things you say it doesn't...

Sometimes I think the Washington Post prints bullshit just to get hits (read: ad revenue) from people saying, wow, that's crap/offensive/terribly inappropriate. (Wait, did I just say "sometimes"? I think I meant "often".)

Most recently, they had some asshat talking about why we should all use "retarded" as an insult, to you know, protect our right to free speech. Or something. His argument hit all the great topoi with barely a glancing blow at substance.

• Words mean different things! (so I might as well intend to offend you now!)
  
• Word meaning will evolve! (so I might as well intend to offend you now!)
• Offense is inevitable! (so I might as well intend to offend you now!)

He also gets the dumb-rhetorical-question prize. Rhetorical questions are the last refuge of the incompetent. Arguers use them in order to shift the burden of proof when they can't pull together a cogent argument.

• "Should certain groups of people, to the exclusion of others, be allowed to reclaim certain words?" (ummmm.... yes?)
• "So, if there are readily identifiable alternate meanings, what is the reason for censorship?" (ummmm.... it's not actually censorship when it's voluntary, and good people don't like to cause others pain?)

His thoughts about our liberties I didn't actually treat seriously until I went investigating for a photo of the man and found a bit more context (wanted to see if he was as white, stuck up and male as he sounded):

Restricting speech of any kind comes with a potential price -- needlessly institutionalized taboos, government censorship or abridged freedom of expression -- that we should be wary of paying.

(I ignored that point as soon as he followed it up with:

For example, stigmatizing the N-word has elicited new problems, including an overeagerness to detect insult where none is intended and the use of excessively harsh punishment against those who use the word wrongly.)

But looking deeper into it (and perhaps I'm looking so deeply that I'm reading in), I think he's trying (badly) to argue that restricting any speech, even voluntarily, enables small segments of the population to manipulate the rights of everyone, through claims of consensus and moral right. When I think just in terms of the MPAA,* I almost have to agree.

Except, somehow, I still can't get on board with phrases like "don't be so retarded" or "that's so gay" (examples from his op ed of dangerous-to-restrict speech). Those comments are designed to cause pain; they are tied intimately together with disgust; their effect is to make people even more uncomfortable for being who they are (and don't have a choice but to be), or for loving someone the speaker finds so distasteful.

The MPAA doesn't fall even close on that rubric.



* The better scene is the one where the filmmaker compares gay sex scenes and straight sex scenes. He uses examples of the same sex acts shot exactly the same way, and then provides the film ratings. It's MPAA gold, but apparently too gold to be available for free on the internets.

dick much?

This is so perfect:

(1:34:04 PM) DUDE: why lesbian bar?? 5 inches snow??
(1:34:15 PM) DUDE: r u lesbian
(1:34:18 PM) DUDE: ??
(1:44:33 PM) ME: yep
(1:48:44 PM) DUDE: oh ok
(1:55:49 PM) ***** DUDE LOGGED OFF *****

Can I lodge one more complaint?

I am staying at a nice hotel, and although I have ample reason to complain about other aspects of this trip (I hate travel), there's one in particular that leaped up and bit me when I retired to my room this evening.

There are 154 channels on the TV. So, it's the perfect opportunity to play the "count the representation!" game!!

Explicit marketing to majority groups:

• 31 channels marketed explicitly to men (Spike, ESPN x15, Big Ten x6, Speed, FSN x5, NFL, Golf, Sci Fi)
• 12 channels marketed explicitly to Christians (TBN, EWTN x2, Daystar, INSP, The Church Channel, FamilyNet, BYU TV, JCTV, The Word Network, World Harvest Television, Smile of a Child)
• 11 channels marketed explicitly to women (Lifetime x3, SoapNet, Home Shopping Network x2, E!, QVC x2, ShopNBC, Jewelry TV)

Explicit representation of minority groups:

• 3 channels marketed explicitly to people of color (BET, Telemundo, EWTN Espanol)

I couldn't identify any other group-specific targeting (with the exception of children, who had 8 channels but don't really have a sustained social identity as children).

IN SUM: 30% of programming available deliberately excludes minority groups. An additional 68% effectively ignores minority groups (the channels are "mainstream", i.e., straight white tacitly-Christian middle-income nuclear families). That means only 2% of the TV bulk remains to represent minority groups as something more than stereotypes.

(Psst! I think I see your value system showing!)


(Sideline: I more-than-half expected to see Logo on that 18-inch, two column, 8-pt font list, especially since I'm in one of the most-gay-friendly cities in the entire country. No dice. What would Logo be playing here, if it could play here, you ask? Would it be particularly offensive or even particularly gay friendly? No. It would be Buffy. And contrary to straight belief (and Joss's own beliefs), Buffy is not actually very supportive even of lesbians. Buffy is straight-up straight media. It doesn't even pose the threat of empowering teh gheys.)

Electronic Surveillance, v2.0

Not baited, but vindicated -- it has indeed come to pass!

The world's most powerful electronic surveillance organizations will join forces. NSA gets additional data on the cyber-attack against Google, to further strengthen its own information assurance activities, in exchange for sharing some of their lessons learned with Google. I can't fault that; there is positive benefit to both sides (though the pact is probably better for Google than for NSA).

It seems like a small thing to get so many words in the WaPo, though (two pages on). I get the impression it's ringing privacy nuts' bells all over the country.

I, of course, am one of them-there privacy nuts, and I've been tooting one particular horn for ages: there is no free lunch, so what pays for all those free and nifty Google services you use?

• Google has deeper access to information about you (more than digital trails of say, what you buy with your credit card: Google knows things like who you talk to, how often, and exactly about what; it knows where you live and where you go; it knows which stocks you own; it knows what kinds of porn you like.).
  
• Google is both allowed to and wants to collect directly on every US person who lives.
  
• Its motive is profit.
• It is right now building up a profile on you that includes every aspect about every facet of your life (so it can serve you appropriate ads) -- it doesn't have to show cause in order to collect on you.
  
• Most devastating, Google's isn't a purely passive collection system. You actively feed Google information about the most important aspects of your life -- and you actually have a choice.

NSA: paid by our taxes, to protect.
Google: paid by our information, to spy more thoroughly.

This is scary shit (says the woman with the Blogger account).