feminist blogs

It’s not as adorable as the Daily Puppy, but I am hooked on Postcards from Yo Momma — mostly because it is exactly how my mom talks when she IMs me. There are always lots of exclamation points, and my mom is a huge fan of large blocks of text in one IM — she clearly has a series of questions she’s been meaning to ask me, and so she asks them all in one block. She also calls it “emailing,” and signs off with “Ok honey talk to you later! Love, mom.” It’s really cute.

My mom has yet to discover Gchat, but apparently some other moms on Postcards have figured it out. This one is my fave:

* me: Mom, did you watch the Sex and the City trailer?
* Mom: Oh Hi, can you see me right now? No where is it?
* me: hi! No, this is just instant messaging. I just sent the link to you, check your inbox
* Mom: ok, aren’t you impressed with me on chat!!!!!!!!!
* me: no, you are way too slow, stop typing and go watch the trailer
* Mom: Fine, is it goood?
* me: SO GOOD
* Mom: How did you type that back so FAST!
* me: Mom.
* Mom: OK I am going to go watch it now. bye bye
* me: no don’t go anywhere, just watch it and then tell me what you think
* Mom: ok
* Mom: I CAN”T WAIT!!!!!!!!WOW!!!!!YEAH!!!! when does it come out? It probably said, I am going to watch it again…
* me: May 30th
* Mom: I better get moving, talk to you soon, Love Mom
* me: get moving where? what do you have to do today? i’m the one who has to get back to my job, I have to go
* Mom: Work work work
* me: you’re ridic, lata playa
* Mom: Bye, Lata playa
* me: Mom don’t copy me
* Mom: Word

Thanks to Deanna for spreading the word about this amazing site.

ENJOY~




If there's a word to describe the way this ad. makes me feel, I haven't found it yet...

I don’t get the gay, gay gay Logo channel, but thanks to the power of the Internet, I was able to purchase and download their latest entry into the reality-dating show category: Transamerican Love Story, starring a trans woman and eight bachelors who vie for her heart. Before you slap your forehead, know that the setup is nothing like There’s Something About Miriam, a similar show where the entire “haw haw” gag was that the bachelors didn’t know the star was trans. The entire cast knows that Calpernia Addams is a transsexual, and they’re all up-front in the first episode about their own dating histories too. Interestingly, the cast is quite a mixed bag of sexual preferences and identities and experiences (or lack thereof) with trans women. Less interestingly, the guys are mostly a bunch of boring schlubs… but that sort of fits with the “frog prince meets princess” theme they keep subtly inserting.

(Some light spoilers coming up.) The most interesting thing about Transamerican Love Story is exactly how ordinary they’ve managed to succeed in making it. There are definitely more queers & trans people around than usual, and host Alec Mapa alone seems to be deliberately raising the gayness quotient of every episode by 300% percent. But as Addams said in an interview with ABC News, “When they actually see the show, they’re going to be surprised. They’re going to see a girl next door from the south living in L.A. and trying to date.” And that’s pretty much what the show is, more or less the same as “the Bachelorette,” but with a little bit of dealing with trans issues here and there–always getting an important mention, but never allowed to interfere too much. Heck, they threw the creepy “I only date pre-ops” car salesman, who used to have his own (failed) trans-porn site, off the show in the first episode. (And just when I was looking forward to being appalled by his fetishizing “best of both worlds” statements in a future episode…)

The “ordinary straight girl next door” at the center of all this is Calpernia Addams — who, it must be said, is far from your average “plucked off the casting couch” reality-show star. Although she’s certainly not a household name, she’s probably one of the most famous trans people in this country — first entering the spotlight in a brutally real tragedy, as the girlfriend of Private First Class Barry Winchell. Winchell was murdered by a fellow soldier in a fight originally sparked by the fact that he was dating Addams — a story later used for the film Soldier’s Girl. But wait, there’s more! Addams also wrote a book about her experiences, helped organize and performed in the landmark trans-inclusive Vagina Monologues in Los Angeles a few years back, and does activism and consulting related to media portrayals of trans people. And now she’s starring in a reality dating show.

I probably sound a little like a gushing fan. But what really won me over to liking Calpernia Addams was not her creative work or media activism. It wasn’t even the fact that she apparently named herself after Wednesday Addams’ great aunt, who was sentenced to dance naked in public for witchcraft–although that’s kind of awesome in its own right. No, it’s actually the fact that she cracks my shit up with stuff like this:

(hat-tip to Transadvocate)
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From the “why not start the shameless self-promotion early” department:

Devout Feministe readers may remember a post from a while back where I talked about becoming obsessed with drumming in the game Rock Band, where you and up to three of your friends sing into, strum or pound on little plastic instruments that make your television play awesome rock hits. Well, I went a little overboard… when I heard that the Virgin Megastores were having a Valentine’s Day Rock Band tournament, I decided I needed to put a band together.

The last time I competed in a tournament like this, I took second place for playing Guitar Hero II; that time, a bunch of my opposition in the middle of the tournament were obnoxious drunken guys who kept trying to intimidate me (or maybe they were just being idiots) by yelling about how they weren’t going to get beaten by a girl, how I really wanted to sleep with them, etc. etc. the usual. I destroyed them. So this time I thought, maybe we should have an all-girl band, hmm? Thus was born… Glittürminætor!

We only managed to practice together for one night, although our guitarist is my roommate (and a calendar pinup to boot) so we’ve had some practice playing in sync. So this is the weird part… we won the tournament. And came away with a bunch of prizes: a $500 gift certificate, another copy of Rock Band (which we inadvertently gave away to a random teenager), and a bunch of other random gizmos.
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I’m a day late on this, but TigTog is celebrating international kilt day. And it is glorious. Head over there and check it out.

Part 2

She chewed through my phone cord, so I’ve been without internet all day. I finally borrowed a phone cord from the neighbor.

She runs at the desk chair and takes a flying leap at the back of it, then proceeds to spin around in circles.

She has stopped sucking my ear, but now she likes to wake me up by licking my lips.

She sits on my head.

She chases toes.

She aggressively tries to steal pieces of pepperoni from my pizza.

She comes running whenever she hears water running, then tries to stick her face in the faucet. She watches me take showers, then sits in the drain to watch the water go away.

She got ahold of my headphones while they were still attached to the iPod, and was dragging them through the house.

She chewed through my fucking phone cord!

I love it. I want it. Thanks to Maria for the link.

“Drummer girls are hot.” It should almost be cliche now, or one would hope. There have been quite a few female drummer role models around for years now: Kate Shellenbach, Meg White, Claudia Gonson and the 9-year old Rachel Trachtenburg all spring to mind, not to mention the classic heartthrob that made me gasp “whoa…. she is sooooo coool” when I was 11:

I’d like to assume that the macho rock days are mostly gone, but it wasn’t too long ago that a percussion-pounding lady I used to date would constantly get stopped at the door because bouncers on the Lower East Side didn’t believe she was the drummer in a band with four guys. Sadly, I’m sure those attitudes still persist in some circles. So… I actually don’t have any exciting media links to share with you about women being stereotyped as bass players or otherwise dismissed in the music industry. I mostly wanted to talk about Rock Band, the fantasy make-believe land where I’ve been playing a lot of drums lately, and generally pretending to be Watts. (I looked it up, and Watts has no first name! Nice.)
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Apparently there was a bit of controversy–well ok, it was just one guy being a jerk–over my joy at getting some psych meds, as chronicled in this post. So, for the interests of full disclosure, I thought I’d let you all know the mind-bending blast I’ve been having, as my body gets used to the first few days of new drugs.

So, I’ve been prescribed prozac for depression and anxiety. It seems to have given me a dry mouth, nausea, and diarrhea, which has sent me running straight for the cannabis to counteract the effects of the prozac. So, the cure for the prozac is, well, pot. Which hey, lucky me.

And xanax, which believe it or not is considered fun by some people, who apparently actually will buy it at the street level. But I think you’d have to take several at a time, cuz this stuff doesn’t do anything exciting except make me woozy for about 10 minutes.

And ambien, because of previously discussed sleep issues.

So yeah, I’m defending to the death my right to take these medications that give me dry mouth, nausea, a full night’s sleep, and slight wooziness. I’m also defending my right to take the warfarin that keeps my blood from clotting, the cartia that is keeps my heart ticking, the amiodarone that keeps my heart ticking, and the toprol, which also keeps my heart ticking. Oh, and the diuretic that makes me pee every 5 minutes and makes my blood pressure drop til I feel like swooning (but keeps my legs and feet from swelling so much I can’t even wear shoes) and the potassium to replace what the diuretic leeches out of my system

And the weed, which makes it all bearable.

This video is great, and not just because it features my favorite Christmas song ever: