one of these things is not like the other...

so, if you're at your local grocery store and looking for some tampons, where would you go?

sometimes they're with the medicines and first aid, which sort of makes sense: they're related to bodily functions, and provide aid.
in some drugstores, they're near the condoms and lubes, which also makes sense: they're related to reproduction and make teenage boys giggle.
I've even noticed them near the diapers, which, yes, sort of makes sense, they're both absorbent, but is definitely a little weird...

but if you were at my local grocery, you would be wrong, wrong, wrong!! don't even check in health and beauty, because they're not there either. our aisle 15 should be renamed: WHERE THE WOMEN BELONG. or just put "Feminine Needs:" right there at the top. everyone knows ladies shop for household cleaners and laundry supplies. just let them stumble upon the unmentionables while they're at it...

seriously, the tampons are ACROSS FROM THE BLEACH and NEXT TO THE RAGS!!!

clubs

I really enjoy looking around at people's faces in a crowded club. When else will I have the opportunity to watch hundreds of relatively smart young people mouth "let's get retarded" in unison?

Biblical Stories--the morals

Sodom and Gomorrah:

Lot (nephew of Abraham) and his wife and two daughters are living in a town of sodomites.  G-d threatens to destroy the town.  Abraham asks G-d if he will save the town if there are 10 good men in it.  G-d, reluctantly agrees: 10 good men=no destruction.  Alas, all the men in the town are sodomites except Lot.  G-d, decides to destroy it but first sends two male angels to get Lot outta there.

Male angels get to Sodom, spend the night at Lot's house.  In the middle of the night, Lot and the angels awake to find the house surrounded by men demanding that Lot send his male house guests outside so they can have sex with them.  Lot refuses but offers his virgin daughters instead.  Towns people don't want virgin daughters!  Lot, wife, daughters and angels flee.

G-d says, don't look back.  Wife does, turns into a pillar of salt, Dead Sea is formed.

Lot and daughters escape to a cave.  Daughters, being, young, and very focused on reproduction, realize that in a cave with their dad they will never find a husband to impregnate them.  They get their dad drunk with wine and rape him in his sleep.  (question: how do you get wine in a cave?)

Lot and daughters are heroes. 

Moral: Consensual sodomy=BAD.  Offering your virgin daughters up to be raped by an angry, horny mob=GOOD.  Getting your dad drunk and raping him so you can bear his child=BETTER.

So today, I vetoed it.

George Bush vetoed the Torture Bill.
In this weeks' radio address he explained that"The main reason [the CIA program to detain and question key terrorist leaders] has been effective is that it allows the CIA to use specialized interrogation procedures to question a small number of the most dangerous terrorists under careful supervision. The bill Congress sent me would deprive the CIA of the authority to use these safe and lawful techniques."
The bill, S.1943, basically insists that all United States government agencies should adhere to the 19 interrogation methods that are outlined in the United States Army Field Manual [pdf]. It also aimed to prohibit the following actions:

1. Forcing an individual to be naked, perform sexual acts, or pose in a sexual manner
2. Placing a hood or sack over the head on an individual, or using or placing duct tape over the eyes of an individual
3. applying a beating, electric shock, burns or other forms of physical pain to an individual
4. subjecting an individual to the procedure known as 'waterboarding'
5. Subjecting an individual to threats or attack from a military working dog
6. Inducing hypothermia or heat injury on an individual
7. Conducting a mock execution of an individual
8. Depriving an individual of necessary food, water or medical care.

Presumably, these 8 items are the "safe and lawful" techniques Bush was referencing. While the "safe"ness and "lawful"ness of each of these items is dubious, the CIA's use of waterboarding and the present administration's refusal to classify it as torture have alarmed peace loving hippies and and members of the military alike.

Obviously, this veto is infuriating from a human rights perspective, and there are plenty of activists making that point. I would really just like to point out that this veto is annoying as shit and completely childish. This administration has asserted and added presidential powers that should not exist. Even though the military rigorously complied a manual for how to deal with enemy combatants, it is Gdubs who feels he is wise enough to decide who should and should not be tortured. And even though military experts defended and encouraged this bill, through this act of veto the president insists it is he who has the final say (guess who you gotta ask if you wanna waterboard someone.)

Just as offensive is the twisted logic that is used to justify this decision. Clearly, whoever wrote this speech assumed that whoever was listening had no powers of analysis and is completely nervous and paranoid. The rhetoric of fear and tone of impending doom in today's speech (the danger remains") is deplorable. And tired. The the kind of thoughtless allegiance it encourages is disgusting. Bush reasons that because the field guide is a public document, the "terrorists" can read up and become impervious to our interrogation methods, and therefore, secret methods are necessary. What it neglects to explain is that the field guide describes types of interrogation methods (eg. good cop/ bad cop) which are based on psychology and human dynamics and aren't necessarily things you can study for. Furthermore, it does not necessarily follow that terrorists wouldn't be able to prepare themselves for unknown physical torture. The biggest problem with this reasoning is the fact that physical torture notoriously yields false information and bad confessions.

Perhaps George Bush is depending on waterboarding and other methods of coercive torture because he once heard somewhere that "nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition !":

who is the ad wizard that came up with that one?

In case you don't pay attention to ads marketing toys to beoveralled little boys, the advertising geniuses over at Tonka Trucks recently came up with a real gem. And this one explains A LOT. Ready for it?

"Boys: They're just built different."

ohhh yeah. Boys have a penis and girls have a vagina and all that...

Seriously, i don't think this one really needs any of my commentary. Apparently I've been tuning this ad out, because i saw it for the first time today and Salon.com weighed in in October of last year. Yahoo! answers even has a page that asks "Is the commercial for tonka toys sexist?" Do we have to ask? I cant believe marketers have finally cut the bullshit and just said what we were all afraid that they were secretly thinking. And here i was hoping I was just a paranoid feminist.