carnival of feminists, issue #3.

hey, guess what? the carnival of feminists, issue #3 is up! and what's more, i'm actually in it*!

along with yours truly, there's lots of other great feminist fare. so go check it out! go, go now!

exclamation point overload!!!







*SisterCat, no cracks about me being the bearded lady. it's your birthday, so be nice.

happy birthday, SisterCat!

just in case you weren't aware, today marks the 24th anniversary of the glorious day my sister graced us with her presence in the world. this is a day of reverence and genuflection in the Cat household(s), so from Chicago i must sing SisterCat's birthday praises.

- she is funny - cramp-inducing, soda-spitting, giving-you-the-hiccups funny.
- she is the kind of pretty that has given her plenty of practice cutting men down with a look.
- because of said prettiness, she taught me much about carrying myself on the street to convey "don't fuck with me" via body language.
- she let me wear her clothes in college.
- she comes up with tasty drinks like sparkling water and cranberry juice for when she doesn't have wine in the house.
- she gives her opinion to you straight, with no bullshit and no filler.
- she did my makeup for the prom.
- she makes up songs about me.
- she is going to be my meal ticket someday - i'm going to devote 6 months of my life to following her around and documenting everything that she says and does, and then i'm going to write a best-selling novel with the results.

oh, and she's kinda like my best friend too.

so happy birthday, you ugly wench. i love you and miss you.

i know you are, but what am i?

poor babies. seems like the FDA doesn't like being told by the Government Accountability Office to, you know, act like an impartial government body instead of a pandering partisan lapdog:

In a statement, the FDA stood by its rejection [of over-the-counter sale of EC] and said the audit "mischaracterizes facts."

"We question the integrity of the investigative process that results in such partial conclusions," the agency said.

hold on.

the FDA is accusing someone of being unfairly partial? and that someone is...the GAO?

my brain is leaking out my ears a little.

mindless monday games.

so carrying on with today's theme of random postings, here is a little game. i'm again late to the blogging party on this one, but let's play anyway - google your first name and the word "needs" and see what you get.

a sampling*:

-Kate needs to be exposed for everything evil she has done.

-Kate needs to know where I am in my struggle and in my relationship with God.

-Kate needs to find him in order to do the deal.

-Kate Needs Your Help.

-Kate needs to go back to living in her car and working at the diner.

-Kate needs a kidney.

-Kate needs to be involved from the Sustainability side.

-Kate needs to smarten up a bit.

-Kate needs to open up to him more as a first step.

-Kate needs to continue to develop her skills in drawing valid interpretations from experimental data.

-Kate needs to do something — something meaningful.

-Kate needs to temper her aggression with some of her sister's placidity. (ha!)

-Kate needs to land in my backyard.

-Kate needs a break.

and finally...

- the last thing Kate needs is the stress of landing in the middle of an Unsolved Mysteries episode!



*the reason i know i'm late to the party on this one is that i get a ton of results that are other kates' blogs, also giving this google meme a try.

a little gem.

from amanda at pandagon:

Feminism is declared dead at least 3 or 4 times a year, making it the Freddy Krueger of social justice movements, absolutlely unkillable no matter what crap gets piled on it.

blog against racism day.

Chris Clarke has declared December 1st "Blog Against Racism" day. hop over there and check out the impetus for such a declaration, as well as some interesting points as to the nature of racism and the way we talk about it.

and if you have a blog, mark december 1st on your calendar...

you can't make this stuff up.

standing in line at walgreen's, i notice the following three items lined up next to each other on a shelf at the front of the store:

1. small boxes of condoms

2. small bottles of lube

3. pregnancy tests

i wish i had my camera with me.

if the next harry potter is this disturbing, i'm going to need some kind of medication.

so on friday night BoyCat and i watched Crash, and last night we went out with friends to see Capote. a real feel-good, happy fun time movie weekend. i would highly recommend both movies, but not together in a 24 hour time span. you might be driven to drink copious amounts of vodka and ramble about the state of humanity.

and seriously, harry potter better be a game of candyland next weekend, or i might not know what to do with myself.

oh, i know, it's not that bad (harry potter, that is). i don't read the books, so i am not nearly as invested in these characters as you book-readers (you know who you are). that bodes well for me, as i should be able to watch the next harry potter movie with interest, but without the peculiar sensation that i kinda can't breath.

on the way out of the theater last night, our friend remarked how during a culminating scene (i won't say anything particular here, as the movie really was great and you should go), she felt like she needed to remind herself to breath. i think it's rare when a movie can actually achieve that emotional state in a viewer, but this one did. Capote felt longer than its alleged hour and forty minutes running time, but the pacing fit with the narrative, which was (fittingly) about a book that took over six years to write. while i didn't necessarily sympathize with anyone in the movie (except maybe Catherine Keener as Harper Lee, who was great and understated and crucial), but by the time the movie began to move towards a close, i was seriously invested. it wasn't until the credits started rolling that i realized my body had been in some state of tension or another for the last half hour or so.

so between last night and Crash, i am drained. they sucked me dry. my threshold for emotional involvement today will be the Bears game and the travel section of the Sunday Tribune.

oh, and an update: i'm going to win $310 million on tuesday night. the ticket last week didn't work out, but this time i've got the right one. so seriously, get back to me about the presents. if i don't hear from you, then you're getting a Jaguar, as they never go out of style.

friday cat blogging, sentinel edition.

friday's not quite over yet, i got this one in under the wire!



this is CatCat's watchdog (watchcat?) position. she monitors the courtyard for any deviant bird life and/or squirrel activity. she takes this job very seriously, so don't make fun of her or you'll hurt her feelings.

kind of like the claw game, but the prize is destruction.

so i was just walking down Broadway to pick up some dry cleaning, and a giant bulldozer crane was demolishing an empty bank building (the bank had formerly been connected to a Dominick's grocery store, which mysteriously caught on a fire about 6 months ago and was subsequently demolished. apparently they're just now getting around to taking out said bank).

i guess i've never actually seen anything in the process of being demolished. i mean, i've seen footage of wrecking balls and bulldozers and explosion demolitions. but i've never seen a building being torn down in person. apparently many other people out and about on Broadway were in the same position, as i'd say at least a dozen people had just stopped in their tracks to watch. granted, it was sort of tough to miss, what with the mind-blowing noise and giant machinery swinging around, but i've never seen that many people on a city block just stop and watch something happen.

while i didn't actually stop to watch (on the company dime here, people, what kind of slacker do you think i am??), i have to admit it was pretty arresting. this bulldozer crane was just pulling up its giant claw, slamming it down into the building, and tugging out heaps of concrete and steel like it was nothing. it was just creating wreckage, with no hesitation or second thought.

in a way, it was great. in another way, it was disturbing. terrible beauty, you know?

i would think more about it, but there are spreadsheets to generate. nonprofitland waits for no (wo)man, especially when they're wasting time pondering the metaphor of bulldozed buildings.

your disturbing news of the day.

hello, your favorite ray of sunshine here, providing you with yet another reason that the world is going to hell in a handbasket:

"Army secret surfaces: Deadly chemicals at sea"

i know what you're thinking: the army? doing something clandestine and harmful to society? never! but it's true. i would recommend that you read at least the first page of this thing - it's seriously shocking - but since i know many of you won't (you lazy bitches), here's the nut of it:

The Army now admits in reports never before released that it secretly dumped 64 million pounds of nerve and mustard gas agent into the sea, along with 400,000 chemical-filled bombs, land mines and rockets and more than 500 tons of radioactive waste either tossed overboard or packed into the holds of scuttled vessels.

These weapons of mass destruction virtually ring the country, concealed off the coasts of at least 11 states: six on the East Coast, including New Jersey and Maryland, two on the Gulf Coast, and in California, Hawaii and Alaska. Few, if any, state officials have been informed of their existence.

yes, you read that right.

i just recently finished reading bill bryson's awesome book, A Short History of Nearly Everything. the book gave me a sense of a lot of things, if not a full understanding of much (no matter how hard i try, the most basic explanations of space-time still elude my comprehension). one of the senses that i now have is how ridiculously slim the odds are that we are even here as a human race. sometimes you tend to think of evolution as a straight line, that there was some sort of inevitability of all of us ending up here, walking around, drinking our starbucks and listening to our iPods. but that certainly wasn't inevitable - in fact, the dumb luck involved in our existence and survival is staggering.

another thing i learned from the book was how humans, in our rise to ascendancy as the dominant species around here, have done amazing amounts of damage to the planet in a relatively short amount of time. i don't want to get all tree-hugger on you, because you know that's not my style (and it would get sap all over my nice new cowlneck sweater). BUT - not being a staunch environmentalist myself, i had no idea the wanton havoc we've been wreaking upon pretty much every inhabitable surface of the planet (and then some, apparently, judging by the article above). of course, it remains to be seen whether this complete disregard for ecological balance will result in us snuffing ourselves out, or whether we'll do it via nuclear war, or whether a big giant asteroid will slam into the pacific one day and take care of it. or something else. who knows? all i hope is that i'm not around to see it...and that is one thing, at least, on which the odds are good.

women and children. and board members.

first of all, go read this article: "Right to Wife: Why does Judge Alito treat women like girls?"

the first paragraph kicks in the door:

Judge Alito, it's a pleasure to have you before our committee this morning. You're obviously an accomplished jurist, and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle speak very highly of you. I really have only one question for you, and it's my hope that you'll be able to put my mind, and the public's mind, at ease about it. What I'd like to know is, why do you think it's constitutional to treat a pregnant woman like a child?

yes! thank you. moving on.

i am all kinds of george costanza's father this morning. "serenity now!!" is it working? not really. nonprofitland always gets itself in a tizzy for the holiday season, and 2005 is proving to be no exception. there are appeal letters to send, proposals to write, media inquiries to field (funny, the media only tends to remember that there are homeless people when christmas is less than 60 days away), reports to file, board members to placate, and so on. there is so much more that i could bitch about in terms of nonprofitland, but i realize i have not exactly taken pains to hide my identity on this blog, so it would probably be wise to refrain. i don't think you could find this blog by googling my first and last name, but i don't want to find out the hard way by having my boss do it.

oh-kay. on that note, back to the appeal letters.

annoying things abound.

so. i have a friend who very generously put a bunch of his mp3s on a CD for me. a number of good albums, some stuff i had wanted, etc. it arrived today in the mail, and i excitedly sat down to load some new songs onto my iPod. 45 minutes later, i have completely given up, as iTunes has frozen twice and and refused my every attempt to transfer anything from the CD to either iTunes or the iPod.

enraging.

and. and. today i am walking into the grocery store, and there is a woman in front of me that is wearing a brown leather jacket, brown tights (not like stockings, like dark chocolate brown tights), brown shoes and...a black skirt.

gah. ack. ohmygod.

this was an almost unbelievable instance of the black/brown faux pas. i mean, sometimes people just get sloppy, carry a black bag while wearing brown shoes (i am an offender here, since i only have one bag!), or throw on brown shoes with black windpants to run to the corner store. but this - this was obviously a premeditated outfit situation. this woman got out of bed and consciously decided to wear three brown items of clothing and one black one.

after about 10 seconds, i realized my mouth was literally hanging open. i had to reach up and close it with my hand.

is this week over yet???

your wednesday one-liner.

as always, courtesty of Overheard in New York:

Chick: I make it a point never to run to public transportation. It's a rule that I live by.

--1 train

and to this i have to say, right on. i sprinted half a block for the fucking B line too many times in Boston, with a work bag and a gym bag and a coffee mug and lord knows what else flailing around. it should never be that important to get somewhere, even to work. and if it is - well then, they should be paying you more, so you can afford to drive every day.

ugh. the B line.

in dreams begin responsibilities.

i am tired. wicked tired. so tired that i forgot to put a period on the end of my last post's subject line.

but before i go to bed at this ridiculously early hour, i wanted to mention dreams and the subconscious. these topics have come up, in some form or another, in a number of conversations that i've had this week. i've been talking with MomCat about the idea of a collective unconscious, and whether there might be anything to that. i've been talking with friends about the dreams they've recently had that have been affecting them in some way or another.

i'm certain that i'm not the first person to have the revelation that "wow, dreams are interesting." what i like about considering dreams, though, is that it's never stagnant - you always have some new dreams to think about, some you forget, some that other people tell you about that remind you of ones you once had, etc. there are always weird connections to make, connotations to consider. i make no claims about understanding the true nature of dreams (was freud right? jung? what about miss cleo?), and that makes it hard to make any claims about what a certain dream might mean. but damn if it isn't interesting to try to figure out, right?

for instance, i dream a fair amount about my grandparents' old house. we spent a fair amount of time there as kids, so it's a locale and a landscape with which i'm viscerally familiar. my grandparents both died about ten years ago, and i've only driven by the house a few times since them, but it keeps popping up in my dreams. recently i dreamt (dreamed? dreamt? who cares, see "wicked tired" notation above), all in the same dream, that there was a business meeting and a college party at the house, and then an inspection of the trees on the property, and then at the end of the dream i realized the house was ringed with a garden of rotting vegetables.

strange? yes. hard to deconstruct? perhaps not. but it's fascinating to me that this one location keeps factoring into my dreams, especially since i tend to dream in unspecific locales, bizarro dream spaces where places and people are constantly shifting. but these particular dreams are very rooted there.

anyway. maybe some more on this later. this stuff also got me thinking tonight about what the scariest dream that i ever had was. i think there's actually two - i'll tell you about them later, when i'm not so tired and rambling.

but first, tell me about your scariest dream....

pharmacy follow-up

if you're curious about which pharmacies to support and which ones to avoid in light of the birth control brouhaha, check out this handy scorecard. they've gotten policy clarifications straight from the horses' mouths, and these are the results.

for your reading pleasure.

click over and see The Chemist for a fun fisking of dennis prager’s most recent offering to the wingnut gods. he doesn’t tear up the whole article, but that’s understandable, as i’m not sure how one does finish reading a prager article and keep his or her lunch down at the same time.

now i know that prager could easily be elected mayor of loonytown, and his archive of journalistic work is not the best place to go for a sense of what the average american thinks and feels (yeah, yeah, there is no “average american,” i know that too). but i am a masochist, and apparently many of other liberal bloggers are as well, because we seek this shit out. it’s like if you knew that down the street there was a dog with two heads. you’d go check it out once, just to verify its existence, and you’d say “holy fuck that’s really a dog with two heads.” then you’d go home and forget about it…for a day or two. and from there on out, you’d find excuses to walk by the house where to dog with two heads was chained in the yard every so often, because you need to re-affirm its existence. you just can’t wrap your brain around the fact that it actually exists, so you need to keep checking and re-checking, OCD style.

there is really no other excuse for why i consistently click on links to outrageous articles at townhall.com and the like.

on a saner note, i’d also recommend rebecca traister’s new article, “Yes, Maureen Dowd is Necessary” at salon.com. i’ve been slightly uncomfortable with the gleeful pile-on of vitriol and holier-than-thou sarcasm that has been heaped upon Dowd (i refuse to call her MoDo, that’s just ridiculous) since the excerpt of her book came out last week. traister kinda puts her finger on why – whenever someone evokes such an instant and intense reaction by so many people, they’ve touched a nerve somehow. the more strident we are in our denouncements, the more it seems we might be protesting too much.

and just so you all know, i plan on winning $225 million tonight in the illinois lottery. got the winning ticket right here. so, start deciding what kind of flamboyant and utterly superfluous gift you want from me once i’m filthy rich…

a drop in the bucket.

it might not be much, but it's a drop nonetheless. i'm sure you've heard this ridiculous noise about Target refusing to discipline its pharmacists who won't dispense Emergency Contraception because of "religious beliefs." well, fuck that Target. i am very sad that i won't be able to purchase your cheap and chic wares until you come to your senses, but sometimes these sacrifices must be made.

while you all might not be willing to take the drastic step of boycotting (or girlcotting, or personcotting, or what have you) the beloved low-price mecca that is Target, at the very least you can send them a nasty email. who doesn't like writing nasty emails, right? go to target.com, click on "contact us" at the bottom of the homepage, and then click on "target corporation information" to get to their comment form. you don't even need to give them anything other than an e-mail address.

so please, go forth and bitch Target out.

i don't even know what to title this.

did you know that ozzie guillen practices santeria?

holy shit.

chicago tribune sunday edition, you're rocking my world. it was way too early in the morning for the revelation that the manager of the (world champion) white sox periodically involves himself in animal sacrifice.

then again, it's the first world series victory for chicago in 88 years, so maybe he's onto something.

friday cat blogging, blurry hangover edition.

in my haste to drink vodka tonics and forget about the week, i forgot friday cat blogging! shameful. though i am not actually hungover, the picture is a little blurry, so i'll go with that theme. this is an old CatCat picture - taken a day or two after we got her, when she still slept under the table for protection.




newer CatCat pictures to come, eventually...at some point i'll try to catch her doing her spiderman act on the couch while chasing her tail. it's an elusive moment to document, but i will do my best.