meme

Inspired by Dru Blood....

1. How tall are you barefoot?
5'9"

2. Have you ever smoked heroin?
No, but I did once smoke opium in college. (Don't ask. I don't remember. Really.)

3. Do you own a gun?
No.

4. Rehab?
No.

5. Do you get nervous before "meeting the parents"?
Dru Blood said, "I get nervous before meeting ANYONE." Same here.

6. What do you think of hot dogs?
Yuck. But a good bratwurst with dijon... I could enjoy that.

7. What's your favorite Christmas song?
"Thank you very much" (a song from the movie Scrooge, starring Albert Finney, which is simply the best Christmas movie and the perfect companion to It's a Wonderful Life)

8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning?
Dark roast coffee.

9. Do you do push-ups?
Why would I?

10. Have you ever done ecstacy?
Noooooo!

11. Are you vegan?
No. But some of my best friends are vegans.

12. Do you like painkillers?
When I am in pain, yes. But the dopey stuff messes me up.

13. What is your secret weapon to lure in the opposite sex potential lovers?
Based on experience, I'd say baggy sweats and dirty hair ... or a rather sad and pathetic personal ad on some matchmaking website. Overall, I think I scare people.

14. Do you own a knife?
How else would I cook?

15. Do you have A.D.D.?
It's rather silly to put this question so far down, isn't it?

16. Date Of Birth?
Obviously.

17. Top 3 thoughts at this exact moment:
I want to go home.
My blogs are being sadly neglected.
I'm glad I have this silly meme to blog, because I've had too much beer (see #18) to come up with something pithy on my own -- of course, this assumes that at some point I actually do come up with something pithy, but really, I'm under no illusions.

18. Name the last 3 things you have bought:
Beer.
Sushi.
Shoes.
When I look at that, I think, "Life is good!"

19. Name five drinks you regularly drink:
Coffee.
Wine.
Beer.
Water.
Orange (or grapefruit) juice.

20. What time did you wake up today?
6:15 a.m.

21. Current hair?
Straight on good days, stringy or frizzy on bad days. Brushing my shoulders. I like to think it's blonde, but in actual fact looks more like the color of dishwater.

22. Current worry?
Time. I really have so much to do, and it's all quite all of the sudden. I know I can do it, and I believe I can do it well, but time is the scarce resource.

23. Current hate?
The right-wing misogyny parade.

24. Favorite place to be?
Shoulder to shoulder, joined at the hip, with the one I love (if I were in love, that is).

25. Least favorite place to be?
Anywhere with fluorescent lights.

26. Where would you like to go?
Japan. Europe. I like to travel, but only if I can take the time and relax.

27. Do you own slippers?
Of course!

28. Where do you think you'll be in 10 yrs?
I have no friggin idea, but I'm sick of moving so hopefully it will at least be where I will have been 9 years from now.

29. Do you burn or tan?
First I reflect everything. Then I burn. With patience, I could tan, but tan for me would be sickly pale for most people.

30. Last thing you ate?
Sushi.

31. Would you be a pirate?
No. I get seasick.

32. Last time you had an alcoholic drink?
Right before I typed this sentence.

33. What songs do you sing in the shower?
"Singing in the Rain." No, not really. But there is this song a lounge singer sings in War of the Gargantuas (yes, that silly Japanese horror flick) this song, "The words get stuck in my throat," and I keep thinking, "The worms get stuck in my throat." I know, I'm kind of sick that way. I blame it on Saturday TV.

34. What did you fear was going to get you at night as a child?
Lobsters. They had live lobsters in a tank at the local grocery. My dad would take them out to scare me, so naturally I had nightmares about them.

35. What's in your pockets right now?
Nada.

36. Last thing that made you laugh?
I laugh all the time, but I never remember jokes, and when I'm stressed I tend to get too uptight and not laugh enough, and right now I don't remember laughing, really laughing, in quite some time. That really is sad, isn't it?

37. Best bed sheets you had as a child?
Clean ones. I thought flannel was pretty cool for a while, but I didn't like how they stuck to my pjs. And satin felt really neat the first time I felt them, but on hot nights (erm) they can get (um) sticky.

38. Worst injury you've ever had?
Most traumatic was breaking a toof. I had a concussion once, but I don't remember it much. When I broke my arm in high school, my dad didn't believe me and I had to wait over 18 hours before my parents finally took me to the ER.

40. How many TVs do you have in your house?
Two.

41. Who is your loudest friend?
If I said, she wouldn't be my friend any more.

42. Who is your most silent friend?
I tend to be the most silent.

43. Does someone have a crush on you?
Probably not. If so, he (or she?) has never said anything or shown any signs.

45. What is your favorite book?
I still have not found a book that moved me like The Grapes of Wrath.

46. What is your favorite candy?
Fudge!

47. What songs do/did you want played at your wedding?
Let's start with the wedding march. As Time Goes By. Whatever "our song" might be. Other than that, I really would not care, as long as it wasn't too much disco.

48. What song do you want played at your funeral?
I can't say I'd have much of an opinion on the subject at that point. Maybe "spring" from The Four Seasons.

49. What were you doing 12AM last night?
Sleeping.

50. Do you love the pain a tattoo brings?
Ask me after I've had one. (Does this relate to question 12?)

When I first wrote about this, about 9 or 10 hours after I'd see in it Booman Tribune, I'd held off at first because, in my end-of-day ennui, I couldn't find the source. Bright-eyed and anybody-but-Bushie-tailed the next morning, I posted it, thinking it would be just a little footnote in the blogaxy.

But then last night, Amanda, who came across the story via completely different sites (this in spite of our both being rather contrary and inconveniently non-party-line feminist bloggers, who are supposedly blinded in our "single issue" mindset, which only goes to show how only Pollyanna can presume to lead anything called "the netroots") coined (or picked up on) the perfect meme for this story: the turkey baster. And it caught on.

In this day and age, where progressives are met with hostility from the right, as well as by many who claim to be of "the left," it's kinda nice to have even a part-time blogging day lifted by seeing such an hysterical meme stick to radical conservative ambitions of female subjugation.

Let's hope this turkey-baster eugenics bill the Republicans are cooking up gets dumped where it belongs: in the doghouse November next. Meanwhile, may they roast in the heat of their misogyny and lose their stuffing.

Apparently the right-wingosphere is all a giggle over a new catch-phrase, "Stuck on stupid."

Personally I don't think that's a winner for them. After all, what are they asserting? That we shouldn't be stuck on all the stupid things the Bush administration is doing? They've been saying, "I'm with stupid" for years now. To complain about the press for focusing on his stupidity now, well, that really is stupid.

I can see the t-shirts now: A picture of our president with our new slogan. Maybe with a heart.

[Via The Heretik via Oliver Willis.]

After a tip from Pennywit, who had trouble visiting our humble pages from Panera Bread, I went to take a look at a website "content filtering service" that apparently has rated mediagirl.org as:

Category 1 - Violence/Hate/Racism

Isn't that interesting? I wonder, what does it take to get that rating? Not much, apparently -- especially since this site advocates no violence, and only speaks of it in terms of violent crime and violent wars, really has not addressed anything about racism, except for its pernicious persistence in our society, and has expressed hate only for hate.

Is this one new facet we'll see of "a better internet"? Helpful services that will wash the web of content that is uncomfortable for the masters?

But don't feel left out! You too can play the game! Find out your favorite website's rating and share it here!

Sorry, I already spoiled the fun for:

• Trish Wilson: Category 4 - Pornography
• The Goddess: Category 7 - Cult/Occult
• Booman Tribune: Category 14 - Arts/Entertainment
  Category 54 - Advertisement
• The Tattered Coat: Category 22 - Games

media girl gets a clue

Typical of me, I'm so behind the times, I was just oblivious of others who got the jolly pleasure of having their website censored.

• Conservative Eric of Classical Values got in on the fun by early February of last year. (I assume he's a conservative, as he immediately checked Instapundit's blogroll and found some 50+ sites, from left and right, were blocked by SonicWall. If I have mischaracterized Eric, my apologies.)
• Halleyscomet found not only his personal site was blocked, but financial pages of his company's website labeled as pornography. (No comment.)
• Technology site Walking Paper was branded as occult.
• Pipilo discovered that SonicWall was blocking all Buzznet sites.
  

  I asked one of the Panera employees about it and he said that it's a "Christian company" and they don't put up with things like swimsuits on the Internet. Oh my god. Are these people crazy? Are they worshipping the same God I know? Somehow I doubt it. Somehow I wonder if the employee really knows what he's talking about. It can't be true. I know the "Christian Right" sometimes goes a little overboard, but this is ridiculous.

• Scott Hagaman learned that Ektopos is "occult," too.
• RandomActOfKindness got a pornography rating. "Well, the ducks are naked I guess."
• Apparently vegetarianism is deemed too offensive as well: the Veg Blog was blocked.
• Chris Pirillo offers this:
  

  I've got readers out there who wanna see my disgusting pictures of hangnails and zits, and you're blocking them because you believe (and I quote) that this site contains "Adult/Mature Content." Uh huh. Well, then... might as well make it all official and post naked pictures of your CEO and lead programmers, eh?

  Interestingly, the Google Ads on that page pitch censoring programs to block pornography.

The wall against free speech

The filtering is also apparently used for political purposes, as noted in this From Now On article about censoring school district content for teachers:

The practice of unfairly blocking teachers (and students) from reading politically oriented materials came to this author's attention when a teacher from a school district in California e-mailed complaining about her district's filtering of an FNO Press journal and Web site criticizing NCLB (http://nochildleft.com).

The district and its filtering company allowed teachers to access and read the highly partisan marketing efforts and advocacy on behalf of NCLB issued by the outgoing Secretary of Education but blocked the reading of materials critical of NCLB. Even though the Department had been caught paying a journalist to promote its agendas and even though the Department has a very large PR budget advocating NCLB to parents, teachers and others through Web sites and press releases, the district and the filtering company, SonicWALL left the Department's blatant advocacy unfettered while blocking criticism of "No Child Left."

and notes:

SonicWALL invents the list of blocked sites. They decide who gets filtered. They do not explain their criteria and do not reveal which sites are blocked. Most clients could not thoughtfully select which sites to block if SonicWALL does not tell them. The default setting for blocking sites is determined by the company and the school district electing this filter is complicit.

Is that bread or a gag in your mouth?

In a comment on metrofreefi.com, Chuck Remmell reports that Panera blocks what it wants:

Do a search on "Panera SonicWALL" and you will find many people who have experienced Panera's site-blocking. It is because of this unnecessary censorship that I no longer go to Panera.

Below that, Greg Thomas comments:

Hello, I am a former Field Systems IT employee at Panera. Panera is a publicly held company, so there is no political agenda behind political site blocking. The reason they block POTENTIALLY questionable sites is because Panera is a family institution. The last thing any cafe manager wants is to deal with someone watching porn in the cafe. Yes, I know there are other ways to do that, but at least Panera makes an attempt to not provide another means to do so. Panera's free WiFi is unlike any other in the US, and is the largest free WiFi network in the world. It is provided via a Savvis network and is also one of the most reliable. It may block certain sites, but it is provided free. You want unfiltered access? Go pay for it.

Aside from the ridiculous notion that a publicly held company cannot have a political agenda -- I mean, what are all those lobbyists doing in Washington, anyway? -- he has a point, which is:

Whatcha gonna do abbowdit?!

The thing is, what's being censored are internet sites not owned by Panera being viewed on privately owned laptops people have with them. Or, as Tinfoil + Raccoon puts it:

Why in the world would a Panera, or any business that offers WiFi to individuals who are using their own machines, filter content in such a broad manner? A google search of panera sonicwall will reveal lots more grumblers. In fairness, WiFi is free at Panera--maybe they need to add employees who can make baguettes and configure crummy filtering software.

Censored where?

The Google hits on SonicWall also led to the Wikipedia entry on 'censorware':

Groups like The Censorware Project begun reverse-engineering the censorware software and decrypting the blacklists to figure out what kind of sites the software blocked. They discovered that such tools routinely block sites that are clearly outside what they claim to block, while also failing to block what they claim to.

The SonicWall page says:

At the core of SonicWALL CFS is a revolutionary content rating and caching architecture that rates and filters millions of URLs, IP addresses and Websites. When a network user makes a request, SonicWALL CFS checks the URL or Web site against its immense database. A rating is returned and permission is then granted or denied based on established access policies. Ratings for acceptable Web sites and URLs are cached within the SonicWALL appliance, enabling instantaneous compliance.

How that rating happens, they don't say. Their ratings categories page describes mediagirl.org's rating category as:

Anti-social websites that advocate or provide instructions for causing physical harm to people or property through use of weapons, explosives, pranks, or other types of violence.

and

Sites that advocate hostility or aggression toward an individual or group on the basis of race, religion, gender, nationality, ethnic origin, or other involuntary characteristics; sites which denigrate others on the basis of those characteristics or justify inequality on the basis of those characteristics; sites which purports to use scientific or other commonly accredited methods to justify said aggression, hostility or denigration.

Where they're getting this impression, I don't know. Perhaps a little troll whispered in their ear?

Inspired by The Heretik, who noted privatly "the burn in Blogylvania" is bringing on oy-ish feelings, I begin a personal meme: The Thursday Burn - Oy!. This idea may need some refinement, so if anyone takes this on, feel free to sample it, hack it, sweeten it, make it yours. But for now it's just a flat out expression of what's burning you this week in the blogozoid, with the "oy!" factor.

What really burns me this week is how all the shit is coming down about Roe, and nobody seems to notice. Sure, there's a lot of sensible concern on Booman, but not in the mainstream media, and not from many of the SCLB.

Perhaps most disappointing was the commentary this week from Hendrik Hertzberg writing in The New Yorker:

Many of the Democrats’ “powerful special interest allies,� notably in the abortion-rights movement, are raising alarms about Roe v. Wade. The core of the abortion ruling is not in immediate danger; even if O’Connor’s support becomes Roberts’s opposition, Roe will still command a majority of one. The truth, though, is that the next few years will be hard ones for reproductive freedom, especially among the red-state poor and young. Roe or no Roe, Roberts or no Roberts, a woman with money will be able to get a safe and legal abortion, even if she has to travel to another state to get one. But any Bush-appointed Justice, whatever his or her stand on Roe, is likely to endorse ever more restrictive state laws calculated to intimidate, inconvenience, or otherwise prevent young women who want or need abortions from getting them. If, after another couple of Bush appointments, the Court does strike down Roe, the result would, of course, be worse—abortion would be banned outright in a score of states—but the political energy in this seemingly endless national struggle would quickly pass from the pro-life to the pro-choice side. The more immediate dangers, from the moderate-to-liberal point of view, are in areas where O’Connor provided the fifth vote. If Roberts turns out to be as conservative as Bush’s rightmost supporters hope, then affirmative action, secularism, patients’ rights, and all manner of federal regulation from campaign-finance controls to environmental protection will be in serious trouble.

"More immediate dangers," Hendrik?! Oy vey!

In OurWord.org, Pseudo-Adrienne reports:

For seven years, the National Organization for Women has had a court-ordered injunction that protected patients and staff of women's clinics from anti-choice protestor violence--because I suppose violence, assault, hurling hateful slurs, bombings, shootings, stalking, threats, and vandalism are all apart of the misogynist "pro-life" dogma. This injunction was known as NOW v. Scheidler, and recently the Supreme Court agreed to review the case. And what is at stake is the safety and even the very lives of those who enter, exit, and work at women's clinics all across the country.

This seems to be getting pretty "immediate" to me. Oy vey, Hendrik! What are you thinking?!