You Make It Really Hard To NOT Point Out Your Blatant Racism

After Alabama passed HB56, their own version of Arizona's SB1070 (the "show me your papers" bill), it was roundly criticized as racist by those opposing it (as was Arizona's). Yet defenders of the bill(s) were quick to point out there was nothing racist about the bill(s); after all, the bill(s) don't make it illegal to be hispanic, they say, they only increase the attention paid to people who are in this country without legal documentation. Now, if it happens to target Hispanics more than any other group, they claim, well then maybe those darn Hispanics should keep their noses clean and stay out of trouble.

This is a classic racist ploy -- as long as you dress your racism up in neutral language, you always have plausible deniability. After all, there's no way to prove either HB56 or SB1070 were designed to harass and intimidate Hispanics. But in practice, it seems Hispanics continue to bear the brunt of these measures -- remember, about half of all undocumented immigrants in American hail from Europe, and yet somehow very few Europeans are being arrested or harassed under these statutes.

But sometimes events happen that just really pull the curtain back on all of these shenanigans. Events like when a German executive of Mercedes-Benz in the states for a meeting at one of the company's manufacturing plants near Tuscaloosa is arrested. The officer at the scene did what was required of him and brought in the executive to be detained while his immigration status was investigated.

So here's a perfect example for the it's-not-racist crowd: a white person, nay, a rich white person, was subjected to detention and search under this apparently not racist law. What a chance to trumpet the law as color-blind and status-blind! You see critics? It's not a tool to harass and intimidate (largely poor) people of color, it's applied to everyone!

And yet, their reaction could not have been farther than that. Rather than see this as one of the many examples they love of their law in action, a group of Republican representatives has already called for rewriting portions of HB56. Presumably to include the direction that even though this is not a racist law, it's not supposed to apply to white people...

Dear Police Brutality: Zing

This photo has caused quite a bit of shock lately to people who don't regularly follow issues in American policing (to those of us who do, it's neither surprising nor shocking). It's a member of the UC Davis campus police casually point-blank pepper-spraying a group of non-violent and non-confrontational demonstrators who had not left when told to disperse. I say it's not a surprise to people who follow such things because many police have gone on record already saying this is  standard procedure.

Amid calls that the officer, his superiors, and even the university president should be fired or step down over the incident, the internet has sprung to action to get a more immediate, if somewhat less satisfying, retribution on the officer responsible. His phone number and address are now widely-available public knowledge, and he's become an internet meme -- the casually pepper spray everything cop.

And while this is what it is -- fairly juvenile mocking of someone who arguably deserves it -- it shows one of the internet's greatest collective powers these days. While retribution of any meaningful kind will probably never come to this guy or those issuing the orders (police have such incredibly strong unions that firing them is nearly impossible), at least we can take comfort in the fact that this guy is now a world-wide punchline and poster boy for police abuse. And that's something...

Christmas is Coming

And I have found the only present I ever want. If you buy me this Whiskey dispensing machine, you officially win the abstract concept of "friendship" for now and all time:

The Happiest Person Ever Photographed

Jeffy Calls Meatballs "Meatbulbs"

Bill Keane, the creator of Family Circus, died this past week. Not to speak ill of the dead, but from a young age, I've always thought of him as one of the greatest con men to have ever existed. After all, he took one of the most bland and unoriginal creations ever and spun it into a life long job and million-dollar empire. Somehow he was able to keep getting paid in exchange for cranking out trite and repetitive comics of children pronouncing words wrong and their creepy grandfather spying on them from a heaven in which everyone inexplicably wears potato sacks and rope belts.

The small solace we can take in this travesty of a man making millions for being actively stupid while we work actual jobs for much lower pay is that it is both easy and fun to mock this shitty comic mercilessly. One of the best examples is the Nietzsche Family Circus, pictured above. But even better is this classic list of reviews of one of the Family Circus books. Coming from the era before Amazon tightly controlled the reviews and comments on its website, these little gems represent some of the earliest (and best) snarky destruction the web has become so good for.

At least Keane's survivors can take solace in the fact that these comics both seem to write themselves and people somehow keep reading them, so they will be wealthy for generations to come...

Ha, ha! Suckers!

As regular readers know, I'm a Ph.D. candidate in the tail end of my degree program. This means I'm supposed to start looking for a job. But applying for and interviewing for academic jobs is not like most jobs. It's like another job in and of itself in terms of the sheer volume of documents and proposals and whatnot they expect out of you.

Since it's such a big process, I decided to try it this year, just so I could learn how it was done when I went back and did it for real the next year. Well, somewhere along the way I must have learned it well enough, because I actually have a job interview. This was completely unexpected.

And while it's mostly terrifying, because I rarely if ever feel prepared for big life events, it's also pretty damn good news. So this is what Dog and I sounded like pretty much all morning after I got the e-mail inviting me out for an interview:

The Simpsons Predict Reality Again

As I've noted before, the Simpsons is quite adept at predicting the future. The ol' "life imitates art," if you will. Well, it turns out they've done it again.

As any Simpsons fan will know, there's a three-eyed fish (or multiple three-eyed fish, it's unclear) swimming the waters near the Springfield nuclear power plant. In one episode, Bart caught this fish, which Mr. Burns, in an hilariously apt take on standard pr practices, named Blinky and claimed he had an evolutionary advantage with his third eye.

Well, whether an actor portraying Charles Darwin will come forward an suggest this fish is somehow superior to others, but fishermen in Córdoba, Argentina have caught a three-eyed fish near a nuclear power plant.

This really leaves us no other option than to spend the rest of the day contemplating what other Simpsons episodes will soon come to pass...

Sigh...Long Break Again

Oh wonderful and intelligent blog readers, how I have failed you. This fall has been particularly busy as I attempt to start writing my dissertation, and as such, incredibly important things like blogging have fallen by the wayside. But I make this commitment to you dear readers -- there will now be pretty regular content on this here interwebs site.

As regular readers recall, last month was Healthy October. Having now mastered completely every form of healthy living, I turn to my scholastic endeavors with Studious November. Gone are late nights watching t.v. or playing video games. Gone too are weeknights spent with friends or doing anything remotely enjoyable. For if I am to finish this dissertation any time in the near future, I need to get back to working an absurd amount every day.

But on the plus side, all of this sitting frustrated at a computer will give me both the time and material to pump out regular blog posts again. So please, cancel your suicide plans and ignore your family, job, and all other appointments. This blog once again exists and demands your attention.

In the meantime, here is a picture of a literal Wall Street fat cat:

Them Wall Street Protests

Been super busy lately, so blogging has gone back down to the bottom of my priorities list. And I really feel like I should have posted something by now about the occupy movement, but such is life sometimes.

Though trust me, that will happen eventually, for now I don't have the time to say anything too insightful about it that hasn't already been said (though I will soon! I promise!), so instead I'm going to take the cheap cop-out and link to someone else writing about it instead.

Several versions of this kind of argument have been making the rounds of the facetubes and twitbooks and whatever else the kids are using these days, but I think this one stands out for being well-written and from a reputable source. That being said, I direct your attention to Four Charts That Explain What The Protestors Are Angry About.

Obviously you can go read the article yourself, but the gist of it is that while minimum wage and real incomes (inflation adjusted) for the bottom 40% have declined and barely risen, respectively, corporate profits have skyrocketed, and executive compensation and incomes for the top earners have experienced similar sharp growths.

While the income disparity angle is interesting enough, I think the corporate profits chart explains the problem even more succinctly. The wave of outsourcing and off-shoring in the 80s was justified by businesses as an attempt to stay afloat and keep pace in a hectic global market. And if that actually were the case, then asking for some concessions from workers would be a reasonable option. But since they were all actually seeing record profits...well, I don't mean to sound too cynical, but this may indicate that not only were these businesses maybe not being super truthful, they also were literally lining their pockets with money stolen from the pockets of workers.

And this is why people are angry.

Ryan Gosling Would Like To Discuss Feminist Theory With You

In today's hilarious tumblr round up, here's Feminist Ryan Gosling:

This Proves Pretty Much Everything I've Been Saying...

Headline from today's newspaper: With immunity ruled out, U.S. troops unlikely to stay in Iraq past 2011.

This is so blatantly ludicrous, I don't even know where to start. It's one of those crazy moments where the powers that be accidentally tell the truth, and for people like me, those moments are always simultaneously exhilarating (they're telling the truth! and I was right!) but yet completely depressing (shit! I was right about all the horrible things they're doing!).

For those who don't wan to read the article, the gist is that the Iraqi government, because of the many, many straight-up homicides, rapes, and other incredibly illegal and immoral actions of US soldiers and contractors, will no longer grant a blanket immunity to all US military personnel and instead will now prosecute them for illegal acts (crazy, I know). And now because the US military does not get to do whatever it wants whenever it wants wherever it wants, it's taking its ball and going home like the spoiled child it is.

This is also pretty concrete proof that the many problems and legal violations of the invasion were systemic, and not the fault of those classic "few bad apples." Because if only a "few bad apples" were breaking the law, you wouldn't really need blanket immunity from all prosecutions. Hell, if it truly were just a "few bad apples," wouldn't you want legal prosecution of them, to show how upstanding and law-abiding the rest of you are?

But maybe I'm being too cynical. Maybe no laws were ever broken by any military personnel or contractors. But if I'm wrong about this, I'd sure like to hear an explanation of why the refusal to extend immunity is the reason why they're finally packing up and going home, because I'm just not smart enough to figure out any other way those two things are connected...

To Whip It or Not To Whip It

As any long time reader of this blog will know, I am sucker for every possible type of graph, flow chart, venn diagram, or other such smart-ass way of graphically depicting things from pop culture.

So, for instance, if you're worried about whether Mothersbaugh and company would advise you to whip it or not, well, worry no more:

Announcing Healthy October

Part 5  in the Bottoming Out and Moving Onwards Series. Find Part 1 here, Part 2 here,  Part 3 here, and Part 4 here.

Pictured: Me?

It turns out that being depressed isn't particularly good for your health. I'm sure there's all sorts of scientific studies or some such thing that say this, but I'm sure it's more than obvious to anyone who's gone through a shitty point in their life, which would be pretty much everyone, I assume.

Anyway, as part of bottoming out in life this summer, I more-or-less abandoned every even semi-healthy activity there is. So little things like exercise and eating food that contains nutrients were replaced by drinking heavily, eating shitty fast food, sitting on my ass all day, and then some more heavy drinking. As such, I've gotten a little soft around the edges. And by "soft around the edges" I mean fat and lazy.

And while getting into shape and living healthily really aren't that hard, it is often hard to start doing them, mostly because living unhealthily and being fat are super duper easy.

After a few false starts, I've decided to arbitrarily pick the beginning of October as the time I would get serious about this, and take it super seriously for a month -- the month of healthy October. The idea being that if I take getting back into somewhat healthy habits really seriously for a month it will pretty much maintain itself after that.

So for the rest of this month, it's going to be making all my food at home, and mostly fruits and vegetables and all those sorts of things at that; knocking out the unhealthy snack foods completely; maintaining a regular exercise routine; and cutting back on the drinking. I figure, do all that for a month with strict discipline, and that's got to be good enough to get back into fighting shape.

The end of healthy October will be marked by Halloween, during which I will drink heavily and eat a lot of shitty food.

I Gots To Get Paid, Son

Man, has it really been nearly a month since I last blogged?

According to the records on this website, yes. Sorry about that.

But I have a damn good excuse, and this time it's not nearly as mopey -- I've been busy putting together job applications. And not just any job applications, but applications to get a real big boy professor job.

And not too surprisingly, before a university hires you to be a professor, they expect a lot of information from you. A lot.

Like upwards of 20 or so pages of essays, commentaries, past work, etc. And then, of course, writing samples and all sorts of other fun stuff on top of that.

So I've been doing little else but working on those things for the past few weeks. But I'm starting to see a scant amount of light at the end of the tunnel, telling me I must be getting close to finished with them. OF course, these are the kinds of things that are never actually finished, so I guess I mean I'm getting close to a place where I fine with other people reading them and judging me based on their contents.

With out getting into the inside baseball of academia, the kicker of this is that I'm fully expecting not to get any job offers from this group of applications. Hell, I'd be pretty surprised if I even got an interview out of it.

So really this is all just getting me some valuable life experience. Or something like that. And if there's one thing I've learned in my short time on this earth, it's that life experience usually involves something being a frustrating pain in the ass...

It Seems To Be a More-Or-Less Weekly Event

It sure does seem to be a regular event these days that some sort of righteously anti-gay politician or preacher is found buying meth and having gay sex in a public restroom, or hiring a gay prostitute to go on vacation with them, or employing some form of wide stance that only coincidentally appears exactly the same as gay code for anonymous sex in an airport bathroom.

But at this point, who can even keep track of these guys anymore? Hell, it's stopped even being that much of a surprise when one of these guys is accidentally out. It seems more like the burden of proof is now on homophobic politicians to prove they're not actually secretly gay.

Well, if you're having as much trouble keeping track of all of the hypocrites as I am, there's a handy new resource: gayhomophobe.com. It's a simple compendium of all known hypocritically anti-gay politicians who were either outed or admitted to their sexuality. It also features a nice running tally of the number of days since a prominent homophobe was embroiled in a gay sex scandal. You know, so you can accurately decide who won the Ted Haggard office pool.

No, They Certainly Don't

Here's the most entertaining tumblr I've found in a long time (occasionally NSFW): Boobs Don't Work That Way.

It's a nice little compendium of pretty much the biggest problem with comic books/anime. The representation of women in comic books is a lot like the problems I have with corporate sports as they exist today.

Because I enjoy both greatly. And like modern corporate sports, there's actually a lot more to comics than skeptics and the disinterested give them credit for. It's been years since Alan Moore and his ilk took comic books to the realm of respectable art, but many people still dismiss them as pulp or useless. So, much like I find myself when discussing sports with the educated elite that populate our nation's higher-learning institutions, I'm often stuck defending comic books to people who think they're at best a waste of time, at worst, some sort of blight on humanity.

But again like it is with major sports, there's some things about comics I just can't defend, the absurdly and aggressively sexist portrayal of pretty much all women in them (when they're even there) being foremost among them. And like most of the shitty things about modern sports, this incredible sexism is completely unnecessary and obnoxiously pointless, not to mention, giving them a bad name and an easy excuse for dismissal by those already inclined to ignore them.

I suppose that's a lesson of life though; there's really nothing you can support that doesn't have some obnoxious shit you have to apologize for...

Family Man or Incompetent Man-Child?

Part 4 in the Bottoming Out and Moving Onwards Series. Find Part 1 here, Part 2 here, and Part 3 here.

Traveling abroad is great for providing examples of socialization, because being in another culture lays bare how truly so many of our rather fundamental beliefs are essentially arbitrary. This is not to say that many of them aren't quite good ideas or ways of doing things, just that there are plenty of other great ideas and ways to accomplish things, and why you chose one over another is mostly dependent on the society you grew up in.

Take living with you parents, for example.

In the recent years, there's been a bunch of panicky articles about this in the American media; 20/30 somethings who had moved out of the house were moving back in because of the tough economy. The articles especially focused on college graduates who had to move back in with their parents after college because they couldn't find any work. I'm sure there was even some cutesy nickname attached to it, like re-nesters, or something like that. I don't care nearly enough to search for it.

Anyway, the point is that these people moving back in with their parents were not only seen as quite an abnormal development, they were seen as some sort of commentary on our society. Some posited them as a sign of how bad our recession is. Others claimed that kids today just refuse to grow up, what with their cartoons and their music and their invasions they just can't stop fighting and whatnot. But all of them saw this as an inherently negative or backward step for both these young adults and, more-or-less, the country.

Because we have a powerful cultural narrative in American about what it means to be an adult. And for the vast majority of people here, this means leaving the home at 18, probably getting a degree of some kind, buying a house, getting married, having kids, etc. But all of these latter steps are predicated on the idea that you've left your parents house.

Where I was overseas, the situation was the exact opposite. Many people only left their house when they got married, if they even left the house at all. And because of various cultural, religious, and economic restraints, younger sons and daughters may have to wait a long time to get married. Most people I met were prety surprised to learn I was no longer living with my parents at the tender young age of 28, what with the fact I was neither married nor had any children. Who cooked for me? How did I manage a household? Etc.

So really, this is just two versions of ways to do things, specifically where to live. Neither of them is inherently good or bad (they both have their upsides and downsides), but we tend to think the one we do is normal and that doing it another way is odd at the very least, horribly wrong at the worst.

It's also a good example of how understanding how a social process works in no way prevents you from being a part of it, whether you want to or not. So I know, for instance, that living with your parents or not is essentially an arbitrary cultural script, so it's not really anything to worry about it. But I live in this particular cultural context that says it's odd. So anytime it comes up that I lived with my parents for most of the summer, I'm quick to explain how it was a really unique circumstance, it wasn't for a long term, etc.

And that, of course, is if the subject is even brought up in the first place. Because even though I've never felt judged by anyone about this and they always understand (especially when I offer my now well-rehearsed explanation), I can still feel how out of step with the normal cultural script this is and feel pressured to explain why I've deviated.

Though of course now I'm living on my own again like a grown up, so I can just pretend it never happened...

Marvel At My Semi-Competent Adulthood

Part 3 in the Bottoming Out and Moving Onwards Series. Find Part 1 here and Part 2 here.


Blogging has been quite spare lately because the day has finally arrived -- by the end of this very day, I should be fully moved out of my mommy and daddy's house. So this past week has been a blur of packing and all the other mishegas that goes with moving.

While were I live likely has little to do with how successfully I put my life back together, there's definitely some psychological benefit to no longer doing something pretty widely regarding a marking you as a failure in life.

So by the next time you read this humble li'l blog, I'll be out living on my own, like a big boy...

What Football Team Do You Support?

I've apparently been on quite the flowchart kick lately, so here's yet another one. If you're lost on which NFL team you'd like to support in the upcoming season, here you go:

Back To School Time

Just in time for heading back to campus, might I present the 10 douchiest colleges in America.

I'm...proud?...to say there's 3 Big 10 schools on the list, making us by far the most well represented college conference.

Though this list has surprisingly little overlap with the top 10 party schools lists, which you assume would also draw in a significant amount of douche bags. Not to say I'm questioning the methodology or results of such a precise scientific endeavor, but it does seem a little suspect...

In 1992, I Could Have Reproduced This Poster From Memory

I grew up when professional wrestling was in its death throes, but wasn't the horrid wasteland it is today. Sure, the great regional leagues had all been picked clean by Vince McMahon and the like, but at least there were still fun and colorful characters, like fighting garbage men and angry barbers. Of course, there were some horrible racial stereotypes, but I assume that's still going on in wrestling and has really always been a mainstay of the sport.

But the reason I complain about wrestling today is not just the insidiously sexist/homophobic corporate clusterfuck nature of it, but the fact that all of the fun and mostly wholesome names and characters have been lost in favor of characters who are just aggressively dumb and sexist.

But via the always entertaining deadspin, here's a definitive taxonomy of professional wrestling names (click to enlarge):