Monthly Archive for May, 2006

If only I were a caption-blogger.

You know those beer commercials that appeal to hairy-knuckled 18-to-34-year-old morons with the jolly idea that guys own whatever they penetrate? This Flux dude believes that I (along with fellow-blamer Hedonistic) “overreacted” to these “fairly innocent and clever” ads when I posted a couple of paragraphs about them a few weeks ago. Apparently my having satirized Boo-Yah Nation with a bunch of totally made-up shit about an obscure French historical figure with a finger stuck in a beer bottle amounts to an egregiously wasteful intellectual expenditure.

(Words cannot express the gratitude that washes over me when male persons express concern for the potential depletion of my mental reserves whenever I cast uncalled-for aspersions on “minor foolishness” like misogyny. Indeed, after having completed the arduous yet ultimately silly task of composing the aforementioned 150-word inflammatory lampoon, I had to lie down and stare blankly at the ceiling for two hours. Next time I’ll try to remember to laugh along with the funny sexist comedy-joke instead of getting so riled up I resort to inventing French history just for the hell of it. Think of the brainpower I’ll save! Maybe I can use it to clean toilets.)

Flux further speculates that I am “out of [my] mind,” intimates that because he has seen beer commercials that were even more sexist I shouldn’t be writing about this one, and declares that it is precisely my sort of irrational crap that gives the Rush Limbaughs of the world “grist for their ‘feminazi’ mills.”

Rather than risk further diminution of my loony Rush-baiting girl-brain, I’ll refrain from making fun of that tired old metaphor.

I hate to imagine what old Flux, regulator of female thought processes that he is, would say about the following hilarious excerpt from an indictment of the misogyno-homophobic Man-Eat-Meat Burger King commercials vs. patriarchy-approved Lean Cuisine ads. Nothing, probably, since it was written by a guy.

Contrary to Burger King’s celebration of men being revered for shoveling food into their mouths, Lean Cuisine molds women as such: a group of woman brag to each other about how shitty their dinner was last night.

“Last night I had a half bag of microwave popcorn.”

“I ate three leaves of lettuce.”

“I just ate right out of the cat’s litter box.”

But lo- the uppity one deigns to speak- “I had a delicious meal that actually tasted good.”

Astonished, she must then pacify her friends, ready to eviscerate her for her audacity. “Relax, girls! It was just a Lean Cuisine! A shitty frozen microwave dinner. I mean, Jesus, you don’t think I’d actually enjoy eating, would you?”

And then they all giggle and discuss the latest corset styles and what it would be like if they had the right to vote.

Today’s whole post, actually, was just an excuse to crib this bit.

[Gracias, Esme]

Motivated by a Majikthise post to get my giant brain off its Saturday movie-channel-watching keister and read in the Washington Post about the war—man, I hate reading about the war more than anything—I was sickened in the extreme by an article on what Lindsay is calling Iraq’s My Lai. The piece relates locals’ accounts of the massacre in cold blood of two dozen Iraqi civilians by US Marines last November. Seems a few of our boys sought vengeance with a door-to-door shooting spree in the town of Haditha after a roadside bomb killed one of their buds. Three families and a taxi-full of college students were murdered. Naturally a coverup ensued.

(The WaPo helpfully points out, as an aid to readers are slow to grasp the horrific extent of the pathos, perhaps because they are too distracted by the porn in the Victoria’s Secret sidebar ad, that the murdered civilians included women-and-children.)

Senseless massacres and their subsequent coverups are the ultimate and inexorable consequence of a social order founded on dominance. What other outcome could you possibly expect, when you take a bunch of uneducated teenage boys, tell them God is an American, women are fuckholes, and brown people are dirt, give them guns, and send them off to shoot people merely to gratify the vanity of imperialist godbag corporate hooligans?

The US military reportedly paid survivors between $1500 and $2500 for each dead family member. Go USA!

According to his press release, Norbizness is hosting The Dean Martin Mildly Popular Caption-Blogger Roast to celebrate his third anniversary as a mildly popular caption-blogger.

“Nor-who?” I asked Phil, my secretary.

After Phil explained that Norbizness is “you know, that guy who can’t stop using the word ‘pwn3d!!’,” I sent him some hookers and blow to mark the occasion.

Every morning the Twisty inbox is pretty well chockablock with news of the asinine, yet every morning there is at least one item so absurd, so irrational, so completely cracked, that when I read it the little shred of hope for humankind that sometimes manages to soothe my inflamed obstreperal lobe during the night instantly executes a clumsy swan dive off the deep end.

Which is exactly what happened when I read that, in preparation for a visit from the world’s premier pointy-hatted old homophobic misogynist, Poland has suddenly developed a passion for protecting the citizenry from the life-threatening hazards of ice cream. They will be banning sales of the dessert for the duration, citing “a danger to health.”

It seems that, in Poland, ice cream performs the bidding of Death’s Bright Angel by “go[ing] off.” Left to the imagination is the exact manner in which a frozen dessert is more susceptible to bacterial incursions than, say, a kielbasa.

And apparently nobody cares if ice cream kills people when the pope isn’t in town (nor does there appear to be any bureaucratic concern for what I would consider the more terrifying threat: that the pope might preach them to death).

But wait! There’s more! They’re also banning booze (although the pope himself will retain access to wine, praise Jesus), as well as TV ads for birth control, women’s underwear, and—you guessed it—tampons. Possibly the Poles fear the cosmic implosion that would theoretically take place if His Holiness and little wads of absorbent cotton (also known as ‘godbag anti-matter’) were to occupy the same point on the space-time continuum.

[Gracias, Anne]