Civil Sarcasm---A civil rights blog---

I’m switching hosts here.  The site will likely be unavailable for a day or two at the end of the week (likely Friday and Saturday).

My current host, Bihira, was great back when the only readers were L and a few other random friends.  $2.50 a month for more disk space and bandwidth than I could possibly use was great.  Now that I’m getting 60 unique visitors a day, cost isn’t quite as much a concern as quality.  I think we’re averaging about 75% uptime since July.  As someone who works in IT, I find that utterly unacceptable, and before anybody says otherwise, yes, I could do better, out of my basement.

So, bear with the growing pains for the next week; because by the end of next weekend, we’re looking at 99.9% uptime.

The Golden Compass review is still in the works; I’m opting to finish reading the book before I laud the cinematic awesomeness that was the movie, just so I can see what they ruined.

Once upon a time, in a land not exactly far away, people used to watch movies that starred more cigarettes than human beings.  The sexy actor/actress of the week would be seen puffing on a smokey stick of death, and looking sexy.  None of these movies suggested that cigarettes were harmful or addicting.  There were only sexy.  And that’s all you needed to know.

Over time it came out that perhaps these things weren’t so sexy after all.  At least, not 30 years down the road, when the smokers began to all look like Bea Arthur (regardless of gender) and sound like Al Pacino after a drinking binge.  And so people complained, companies got sued, and eventually cigarettes became occasional accessories to show inner turmoil or indicate that the smoker is a bad guy.

Instead, now actors and actresses drink.  Heavily.  Frequently.  All throughout the movie.  By all accounts, most of these characters are probably raging alcoholics.  Most of the time, this is glossed over.  Instead, constantly having a drink/bottle in hand is protrayed as being cool.  The characters are glorified; their habits excused.  Two recent box office examples:

Swing Vote, which L has already written about in depth, portrayed Kevin Costner as Bud (funny, the name of a beer); an alcoholic being taken care of by his obscenely young daughter.  For the first three quarters of the movie we see Bud drinking, passing out, drinking more, passing out more, and then drinking a little bit more, having a good time, and passing out.  Near the end of the movie he pours out a margarita he had been sipping on, then a few scenes later, instinctively grabs a beer, opens it, reconsiders, and puts it on the counter instead.  Two declined drinks.  Whoopdy-fucking-do.  Not exactly what I call reformed.

Next up, Hancock.  Hancock was another one of those movies that I knew in advance wouldn’t be good.  I didn’t think it would be bad; but I wasn’t expecting anything good.  I was more or less hoping to walk out of the theater and think “ah, that popcorn was delicious, and that film - passable.”

Instead, I was served up with 30 minutes of alcoholism, 30 minutes of pretend sobriety, a short foray into alcoholism which nearly resulted in Hancock dying (from bullets, not booze, saddly), and then some half-heartedly filmed conclusion.  Again, we go from seeing Hancock sleeping on a bench next to a box full of whiskey, to him being straight-edge.  Nowhere in between was there anything that remotely resembled dealing with his alcoholism.

Hancock and Swing Vote are just two recent examples.  I’m sure I could go back and review the hundreds of movies and TV shows I’ve seen in the last couple of years, and spot plenty more examples of glorified alcoholism.

Now, I’m not saying that drinking is bad, or that you shouldn’t do it.  Hell, I make a pretty mean frozen drink that’ll knock you on your ass before you think to ask me how much alcohol I put in it.  No, the problem here is that the risks and dangers aren’t acknowledged.  These men are shown as strong characters; role models in a roundabout way.  And by ignoring the fact that alcoholism is a serious health issue, Hollywood is implicitly suggesting that there’s nothing to worry about.

In reality, alcohol related deaths and crimes amongst college kids are on a rise - especially in my community - and an alarming number of high school students are taking up drinking (in 10 minutes of online research I found numbers stating anywhere from 43 to 87% of high school students have been drunk).

So, Hollywood.  Step up.  Pretty please?

I am absolutely loving the political scene at the moment.  Democrats are still arguing over Obama and Clinton, and now McCain has just turned the GOP on its head.  It’s absolutely hilarious watching Republican talking heads try  (and fail) to justify Palin as a VP pick.

I’m sure eventually they’ll get their talking points on her figured out, and things will cool down till November, but for now the political arena has turned into a fucking circus.  At this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised if in November we somehow accidentally elect George Clooney as president.

As CNN reported, Del Martin died today.

For those not in the know, she was a major activist for womens rights and gay rights.

I won’t repeat her Wikipedia article here, but she’s an incredibly fascinating and inspiring woman, and worth reading about.

I’d just like to quickly say that Kucinich kicked ass last night.  This is 6 minutes of awesome.

I’ll admit that I didn’t follow him (or his elf-like ears) much during the primaries, but if he was speaking like that the whole time, how the fuck did Obama/Clinton pull ahead?

Getting the trackback-link-thing from CNN the other day has caused a spike in traffic; and plenty of new spam.  So howdy to any new readers - human and bots alike I suppose.

Let’s talk about customer service.

Yesterday, at the asscrack of dawn (as defined by a 23 year old frequently hopped up on Red Bull - so, 10 AM) L and I went out to our local big box electronics retailers.  I was on a quest for an Acer Aspire One netbook, and she was seeking a TV stand.

Our first stop at Best Buy - where I had hoped to procure the One - resulted in us being told that they “couldn’t find” the laptops.  How you misplace a bunch of laptops is beyond me, but I suppose that’s why I don’t work in retail.  So they took my name and number, and promised a call, and on we went, to Circuit City, for a TV stand.  Which is where we encountered our first bit of institutionalized sexism for the day.

You know how when you’re in Circuit City or Best Buy, you’re being frequently approached by salespeople asking if you need help?  And, most of the time, you’re just there to get 1 simple thing, that you already know how to find on your own?  That’s kind of what our situation was like - we really didn’t need help oogling TV stands and reading price tags.

So, when I was approached by a salesperson asking if I needed any help, a simple “I’m good, thanks” sent him scurrying off to find his next victim customer.  I’m a man.  Don’t pressure me.  I could snap at any second, and go all manly on your ass.

When L was approached by a salesperson asking if she needed any help, she also declined, saying she was fine on her own.  But, being a fragile womanly type, the wise and gracious salesperson pressed on, asking what size she was looking for.  Again she stated that she was just looking.  So, finally, the salesperson, clearly trying to protect her from the horrors of shopping, informed her that when she was ready for help, he’d be there.

What the fuck.  No means no asshole.  That goes for shopping as well.

While there, I received a call from Best Buy.  They had found the laptops.  Hooray!  We rushed back there, where I got to witness two idiot salespeople completely misleading two young women about laptop purchasing; actually managing to convince one to pay Geek Squad several hundred dollars extra for various shit she didn’t need.

So, today’s “Fuck You” goes out to all the retail outlets that prey on women’s socially instilled submissiveness.

I didn’t bother to read too far into the rest of this article, partly because I’m not interested in a tabloid account of real life torture porn, and partly because by the second sentence of the article, they’ve already managed to blame the victims for their own death.

“Yet something as simple as a locked back door, or fiercer family dogs, might have turned Joseph Edward Duncan III away.”

Right.  People got killed because they had the gall to not have bloodthirsty dogs, or to lock their back door.  It had nothing to do with the fact that some dickbag wanted to kill them.

Stay classy CNN.

Holy media bias Batman!

The Telegraph ran a story a few days ago, detailing how 1 in 5 women “deliberately or inadvertently misidentified the father” when it came to paternity claims for Child Support.

Really.  Deliberately or inadvertently.  Intentionally or accidentally.  I’m not much into quantum physics, or the theoretical grey area in a boolean scenario, but, uh, I don’t think there is another way for women to have identified the wrong dad.  They either did it on purpose.  Or by mistake.

So, perhaps another way to describe the situation would’ve been “1 in 5 women misidentified the father.”  Or, better yet, not bother to run the article at all.  Because here’s what it’s doing:

1 - By inserting the word “deliberately” in there, they provide fuel to the MRA types who claim women are focused on money, and will lie, cheat, and steal to take the menz hard earned cash.  There was absolutely no reason to use the word deliberate in the context of this article (arguably if they had actual numbers about how many times it was deliberate it would’ve been more OK).

2 - The article inherently suggests that women are so skanky, they can’t keep track of their baby’s daddy.

3 - By even running the article at all they cast doubt on the child support system; a system that over (since not all cases were deliberate) 4 out of 5 partner-less mothers clearly need.

I wonder how many of the men could even identify the woman that he knocked up.  Oh, wait, that’s right, my bad, it’s OK for men to indiscriminately fuck women, without considering the consequences or potential future responsibilities.  Glad I caught that.  I might have had to surrender my Man Card or something.

Perveted homophobic dudes scored a victory today, whether they know it or not.  There will soon be one less publication on the shelves that they need to pointedly avert their eyes from to avoid being turned gay.

Here’s my question though:  Is this a sign that the prudish morals of Christian America are convincing more and more women that porn is bad (while essentially encouraging men to keep buying it up)?  Do more women than men realize that porn is not healthy, and thus avoid it?  Or are women just smarter than men, in that they realize that porn is freeley available on the webz, so there’s no reason to go into the local porn den and be uncomfortably oogled by the sweaty dude behind the counter?

Just saw this graph via a Digg link.  It’s from the Economic Research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.  That’s more than a little depressing.  It’s downright scary.

I’ll appease the skeptics here and assume that the graph is not adjusted for inflation.  Looking at some of the bumps here, and comparing the present dollar value to the dollar value of the time, we can better define some of those bumps.

The bump around 1920:  Let’s be generous and call that $5 billion.  Adjusted for inflation, that would be $54.7 billion now.

The even smaller spike around 1930:  Let’s call that one $2.5b.  Inflated, that’s $32.8 billion.

The largest spike before now, just before 1985 - let’s say that’s $10 billion.  The economy was doing pretty OK then, so with inflation, that’s a paltry $20.3 billion.

All of which would seem to indicate to my non-economist self that we have dug ourselves a pretty deep hole.

Super.