Monthly Archive for October, 2009

Heartwarming Nature Crap: Ants Baffle Aunt

Harvester ants
The ones with the wings are breeders.

Red harvester ants make crop circles that are, I kid you not, 6 or 8 or 1097 feet in diameter. They build’em right there in the middle of whatever lush little patch of prairie grass you happen to be strolling through, usually on the day you neglected to wear your anti-ant aunt boots. Not only do red harvester ants denude vast acreages, they construct gravel highways leading in and out of the crop circles that stretch for miles and miles (when you adjust for the size of the ant). In the exact center of the circle the ants put a hole, which is used to stage demonstrations of their much-admired work ethic. These demonstrations consist of swarming industriously in and out of the hole.

This so-called work ethic is not admired by me, I should clarify. A spinster aunt could no more swarm industriously in and out of holes than she could get a Bettie Page haircut, change her name to Cherry Smore, and write a book called A Christian Woman’s Right to Labiaplasty. One can only imagine the strain of all that tireless bustling. Ants are so workally ethical there doesn’t seem to be an ant equivalent of lounging indolently on a patio with a pitcher of margs. If I were a lot tinier, I’d counsel those ants to take a load off once in a while. Although the fundamentalist ant conservatives would probably run me out of the mound on a rail, and post rude pictures of me on the anternet, with my head photoshopped onto a grasshopper’s body or something.

Grasshopperhead

The harvester ant’s selfless, resolute, Aesopian diligence and flawless attendance record is admired by some outside the slothful spinster bum community. Busyworkists, Methodists, corporate middle-management dudes, and anti-margites, to name a few. Take, for example, my mother. A busyworkist, a Methodist, and an anti-margite, she could no more lounge indolently on a patio than she could give up pursing her lips and passive-aggressively disapproving of everything her offspring does.

Get well soon, Antoinette!

Word has just reached Spinster HQ that veteran blamer Antoinette Niebieszczanski is in medical lockup, nursing, as she says, “a sizeable blood clot in my right lung.” We are grateful, Antoinette, that the clot is not in your obstreperal lobe. While you cool your heels, here’s some more heartwarming nature crap. May the Blame be with you.

Skeleton
“S” is for “Sock it to that clot!”

Hugs, Twisty: moderated dude yearns to be heard on feminist blog

You know what sucks about the Internet? When Internet feminists don’t stop what they are doing right now and answer your question.

Alessandro Machi
dailypuma.com
Submitted on 2009/10/16 at 10:01pm on post Ways In Which The Internet Sucks

Ok, this is probably a stupid question, but please answer, anybody.

I’m assuming she has had breast augmentation. That is what I find controversial about the pic. Showing off an asset that not every woman can afford to purchase, nor wants to purchase, nor wants to be reminded of, that was not really earned but simply purchased with daddy’s money (who by the way apparently gets an interest free credit card account with AMEX), is tacky.

Bravado over a cosmetic procedure seems tacky no matter where on the body it occurs. Imagine a man showing off his washboard abs that he had surgically augmented. It would be kind of creepy, no?

So, if they are hers, and have not been augmented in any way, then it is what it is, whatever that is, but if they’ve been surgically augumented, then I put it in the tacky category.

Alessandro Machi
dailypuma.com
Submitted on 2009/10/16 at 11:39pm

Did my comment/question get deleted?
Did my comment/question get deleted?

Alessandro Machi
dailypuma.com
Submitted on 2009/10/16 at 11:42pm

yes, sonia, we wouldn’t want you to discuss anything that is not first approved of by the moderator.

This is freaky. Did the mod actually delete my question?

Alessandro Machi
dailypuma.com
Submitted on 2009/10/16 at 11:44pm

So instead of being able to post here and get feedback, I’ll instead have to delete your blog from DailyPUMA since you can’t let other’s share your forum, and have to do my article on it. This is pathetic. Rather than just ask a question here and not make a big deal about, I’ll instead only get feedback by posting on my own blog. If I’m being auto deleted everytime I post that is pathetic.

Alessandro Machi
dailypuma.com
Submitted on 2009/10/16 at 11:50pm

lol, you can add autodeleting someone’s comments without even knowing what they are. Usually putting links in a comment can result in the comment being put into hold onto the moderator sees it, but here I have not included any links. I am occasionally surprised at blogs that don’t seem to welcome new viewpoints. I emailed you, hopefully you can clear this up.

[email]
Alessandro Machi to me
Oct 17 (10 days ago)

Please let me know, I see my comment up for one brief moment as it was posted, then it just disappears. Is that an autofunction of your blog or something more sinister?

-Alessandro Machi

Dear Mr Machi,

Great news! You can breathe a sigh of relief! True, I ignored you for 10 days, but this egregious injustice is now corrected! I did not delete your “question”! In fact, I saved it, and your entire oeuvre, to share with the whole Blametariat! They are always so eager to welcome a dude’s “new viewpoints” on celebrity breast augmentation!

Unfortunately, responding to the question you are so anxious to have answered presents some difficulty. In your zeal to accuse Meghan McCain of having had a boob job, to pronounce this “tacky,” and to make assumptions about her character based on her father’s credit arrangements, you appear to have neglected to actually ask anything.

No, wait. Now I see it:

“Imagine a man showing off his washboard abs that he had surgically augmented. It would be kind of creepy, no?”

No wonder you are so persistent; your question is of vital importance. Like so many who have preceded you, you appeal to a heartwarming radical death islandist to seek validation for your opinion on the creepiness of imagining men with surgically enhanced washboard abs.

Furthermore, you intimate that, should I omit to give you the consideration you crave in this urgent matter of imagining washboard abs, it is your intention to exact revenge by removing my URL from your website.

In response, I can only tell you what I tell all the washboard- ab-imagining dudes who threaten me with asinine shit:

God your so handsome and exciting. So suave. So classy. A man of action yet Sensitive and Sophisticated. i can only imagine what a Turn-on it is when you show off your washboard abs. Where have you been all my life. Baby baby. Do you have a webcam. Here’s my number. Take me now.

Hugs,
Twisty

* * * * * * * *

Fun fact: one of Mr Machi’s many, many websites, ShareAmillion.com, proposes that someone (“candidates include sports celebrities or the wall street fund managers that make incredible amounts of millions on yearly basis” [sic]) should give him a million bucks, interest-free. He promises to give it back in five years. Meanwhile, he’ll use the money to fight “credit card battles” and pay his “monthly debts.” Quoth Machi, “I am an unpaid watchdog for the consumer when it comes to credit card company practices and procedures. In the future, I desire to figure out a way to become a paid credit card watchdog for the consumer.”

Ah, free money. Live the dream, bra.

Spinster aunt laughed out of town

Beware of the Blob

Beware of the Blob

See this mondo fungal blob? Well, hold onto your hats, because it is the self-same mondo fungal blob a photo of which I posted a few days ago. Back then, it struck me as one of a genus of mushroom known to fungus geeks as Agaricus. It struck me thus because, I am ashamed to admit, I didn’t bother to perform even the most rudimentary identification procedures. By which I mean: chopping it down and hacking it open with a machete to reveal the colony of merry little elves that typically reside within.

By now you will have surmised that my Agaricus was no Agaricus at all. This became painfully apparent when it matured and turned into the amorphous yellow blob pictured above, absent the characteristic tribe of elves.

Well, what the hell is it, then, you ask? Here at Spinster HQ we are now identifying the specimen as some species of Calvatia, a weird puffball-type dealio that is reportedly delicious when served with aerosol cheese and a $6 Vinho Verde, but I personally wouldn’t eat that thing with a ten-foot pole.

Crapulently, my revised identification comes too late for me to secure the lucrative keynote speaker gig at FungoCon 09.

O the ridicule I have endured. O the ignominy. Sure, it’s all well and good to observe an enormous excrescence of spores, snap a photo with the old camerafone, and declare to an audience of casual blog readers — who, let’s face it, only come around to see whether they can catch me in an antifeminist faux pas and couldn’t care less about heartwarming nature crap screw-ups — “check out this Agaricus!” And even Savage Death Islandists are likely to take the spinster aunt’s word for it, since spinster aunts (a) enjoy a close genetic relationship with mushrooms (the obstreperal lobe is composed of a pulsating spore mass) and (b) are globally renowned, award-nominated, rockstar fungusperts (now you know why we always get the best tables in restaurants). But my colleagues in the Cottonmouth County Mycological Society, a cut-throat gang of ne’er-do-wells if ever there was one, will never look upon me with the same adoring eyes again.

No post today, just this long-ass essay

Faithful readers know that, when it comes to feminists who struggle with their own internalized misogyny, the spinster aunt is forbearance itself. But I just have to say I am goddam astonished by some of the comments on the Meghan McCain post. And I’ve survived not only the Great Hummer Wars of Aught-Six, but also Fucktardgate, Concentration-Camp-As-A-Metaphor-For-Public-School-Gate, Foie Grasgate, and of course dear old Cuntalinagate, to name but a few, so when a blog comment astonishes me, that’s saying something.

If you’re one of the drive-by blamers who skips the comments section — perhaps because you justifiably fear encountering sentences that begin with lowercase letters — you have not been privy to the interesting result of a study I didn’t even know I was conducting. That is: something about McCain’s photo [click here for the backstory] induced some otherwise reasonable women — women who self-select as advanced patriarchy-blamers — to take their latent sexism out for a tiptoe through the tulips.

What gives?

Having analyzed the raw data, the Spinstitute for the Study of Feminine Odor’s preliminary findings are these: an acute sensitivity of the viewer to messages encoded in pornography has led to a sort of confusion, or unresolved conflict, between patriarchal mores concerning the implicit nature of women, and the antifeminist implications of femininity performed at or near pornographic levels.

In other words, a small subset of blamers — at times deploying rhetoric which is indistinguishable from that of Dude Nation — has apparently determined that McCain’s potential to benefit from her position on a pornulational continuum justifies sex-based castigation. That this castigation is ostensibly offered as a critique of patriarchy speaks to the confusion to which I previously alluded.

These findings were surprising, as I had more or less expected some more or less universal analysis from a radical feminist viewpoint, an analysis covering the social and political factors that form the armature of a matrix of femininity in which all women’s behavior — including wardrobe, grooming, and facial expression — is rigidly monitored and restricted.

Such are the vagaries of blaming.

Excerpts of some of these comments follow. Nearly all of these comments also contain mitigating “I also blame the patriarchy!” remarks, making for a bizarre juxtaposition of sublimated patriarchy-blaming and subconscious, knee-jerk misogyny. Click the handy links for full context.

– “[H]er breasts look really uncomfortably smashed together and up. it looks to me like she has big breasts for her frame and she was sitting around the apartment and thought they looked good in her new Wonderbra and decided to show off on Twitter a little bit.” [here]

– “Here’s the thing- of course the object of blame is the legions of twitter people, but we can’t just give McCain a “pass” on intent because she is female. This is a “sexy” picture. That she, of her own volition, posted. Tank top or no tank top, the facial expression and tilt of the head says it all. And there is NO POINT to the picture, no context whatsoever, no article that it illustrates- it is just a picture of Megan McCain. I can only think that she put the picture up because she happened to take it, happened to think it made her look pretty, and put it up because she wanted POSITIVE feedback from her friends, essentially, praise about how pretty she is.” [here]

– “Looks to me like the requisite lips out, head tilted downward but eyes up’ boob showin’ crap teenage girls post on myspace all day long. A joke, perhaps? Or just business as usual. How old is she anyway?” [here]

– “[H]ow is it not okay to comment on her breasts? all I was saying was this looks very uncomfortable. lighten up.” [here]

– “Liking the idea of McCain doing some chores around the joint. Whichever joint you like.” [here]

– “Megan [sic] has been making the rounds trying to start a career as important-to-listen-to commentator and editorialist on every show and outlet that would have her. This isn’t all about losing the shit at the sight of tatas. It is also about the counter-point of her spilling out of her top with her attempt to make a career as having more to offer than nepotism and requisite partriarchy-pleasing cute blondeness.” [here]

Well. These authors seem to be placing a pretty high premium on McCain’s intent. And they seem pretty comfortable in asserting an infallible familiarity with McCain’s innermost nature, for they have somehow divined this intent precisely. Maybe they have access to 8th-dimension vortex-portals through which they may mind-meld with Internet personalities. They assert, peering through their vortex-portals into the mind of Meghan McCain, not just that her intent was to titillate, but — and here is the critical jump — that this odious species of intent (slutism!) releases them from their oath of feminist solidarity.

You know how when a rapist is prosecuted, and the slutty intent of the victim is so acutely divined by the defense (’she didn’t fight back hard enough; she must have wanted it,’ etc) it may be used as a psychbomb to dehumanize her to the jury? It’s like that.

Or take women who post self-portraits on the Internet. Say we get our hands on one of those vortex-portals, so we know without a doubt that their intent is to titillate. Does it logically follow that they then desire a torrent of sex-based hate speech? Meanwhile, do even the feminists buy the whole women-are-masochists myth and just sit idly by while misogynists rip the titillators to shreds?

Anyway, intent, schmintent. I would urge the reader to recall how little intent has to do with anything. Particularly with the experience of the end user. The result is all that matters. Your boyfriend — if you haven’t taken my advice and dumped him yet — possibly loves you, but when he farts in bed and flaps the covers, who gives a flip about his intent? Do you not gag and think him a Philistine?

Which, before all you fart-flappers get lathered up, is my little metaphor for the metaphorical odor that metaphorically drifts, unbidden, from the condition of male privilege into the metaphorical nostrils of the oppressed.

The authors of the quoted remarks will no doubt complain that I have misinterpreted them, and protest that they really do blame the patriarchy. No doubt I have, and no doubt they do. I mock them not. Far from it. Their responses are understandable. As an Internet feminist who has long advocated that women cast a jaundiced eye upon sexual manipulation as a means to empowerfulness, I concur that it sucks torpedo-turds that antifeminist capitulators walk in our midst.

But.

I submit that there is a line between (a) a critical analysis of the performance of femininity and (b) personal attacks that intone the doctrine of Dude Nation. The whiff of “she asked for it” wafting from the subtext in these comments is fucking gnarly, and cannot be interpreted as anything other than the sacred writ of rape culture. It is impossible to read that stuff and not come to the conclusion that patriarchal standards have significantly contributed to this antipathy toward McCain (and her perceived manipulative bodaciosity) at the expense of discourse on the larger issue.

Which larger issue is this: women are the sex class, no exceptions.

“She asked for it” is not a legitimate argument for a sex-based beatdown, not in real life and most definitely not on Savage Death Island.

Savage Death Island, for those who are new, is my whimsical name for an imaginary post-revolutionary society in which women enjoy the same personal bodily sovereignty and human status as anybody else. Because you know what? The way things stand now, a female worm has more autonomy than a female human.

Spinster aunt discovers huge mushroom

Mushroom

Finally, a bulbous object worth talking about. Dig my ginormous whoppin Agaricus, baby.

Ways In Which the Internet Sucks

meghanmcc Savage Death Island is happy to launch a new feature. It’s the greatly anticipated Ways In Which the Internet Sucks feature!

We begin with a charming instance of Whataboutthemen?! appearing this morning on the Atlantic’s website. But first, the backstory:

Meghan McCain — Young Republican, internet columnist, “Colbert Report” guest, and daughter of John — posts a self-portrait on Twitpic.

A “twitpic,” I have discovered, is a photo with a short URL, suitable for tweeting.

McCain tweets this URL.

Uh-oh! In the self-twitpic, McCain has failed to completely disguise the fact that she has breasts. Her “tens of thousands of followers” retaliate for her public femaleness by loosing a torrent of abuse, a Public Shaming Action consistent with the Global Accords Governing Fair Use of Women. According to WSJ blog Dijits, McCain responds to the beatdown thusly:

“So I took a fun picture not thinking anything about what I was wearing but apparently anything other than a pantsuit I am a slut. [...] When I am alone in my apartment, I wear tank tops and sweat pants, I had no idea this makes me a ’slut’, I can’t even tell you how hurt I am.”

I will touch on the tragickal patriarchy-blaming implications of that statement in a moment. But first, the whataboutthemen Atlantic piece.

Appearing in a column called “Spatwatch,” with the classy and original headline “Meghan McCain’s Breasts Launch 1000 Ships,” is an account of two dudes who get into it on Twitter over McCain’s photograph. The dudes, if anyone gives a crap, are ABC correspondent Jake Tepper and some knob described as “conservative blogger Allahpundit.”

I don’t know about you, but whenever I see a blog with the word “pundit” in the title, I say to myself, “Jill, that’s one blog you can safely omit from your reading list with every expectation that your life will continue to be fun-filled and carefree.”

The substance — I use the term loosely — of the Tepper/Allahpundit tweetbroglio: Tepper chivalrously attempts to buck up the wounded McCain by instructing her on the intricacies of mob psychology, describing her detractors as “mean 9-year-olds.” Whereupon this Allahpundit dude goes apeshit, his temper flaring because he apparently interprets Tepper’s defense of McCain as a personal affront. The exchange progresses until both dudes have kissed and made up and are stroking each other’s pundits.

I mention this because, instead of discussing the sorry state of affairs that has compelled hordes of dickwads to deride McCain for having boobs, instead of deconstructing the larger, ultra-misogynist zeitgeist of the Internet, the “Spatwatch” piece completely ignores the actual story (i.e. “Woman punished by fans for appearing in public as human being”) in favor of showcasing the egos of a couple of Dude Nation losers.

Same shit, different day.

Meanwhile, observe McCain’s own rhetoric. She clearly knows the rules. Here she is after the shitstorm, commenting the double-standard that just slapped her upside the head.

[W]hen Rep. Aaron Schock or Rep. Jeff Flake post pictures of themselves without their suits on—and their shirts, for that matter—they are proclaimed “hotties.” But put me in a tank top and I am suddenly an embarrassment to the Republican Party and women everywhere.

She grasps that, as a member of the sex class, she exists continuously in a state of pre-porn. She understands that she is only allowed to wear tank tops when she is “alone in [her] apartment.” That’s because, in public, she will be judged by Dude Nation’s occupying forces and their collaborators, all of whom have exacting (but ever-fluctuating) standards with which members of the sex class, who ceaselessly walk a fine line between virgin and whore, must comply.

McCain’s mistake is in momentarily forgetting this detail and imagining herself to enjoy fully-human status.

When her scandalous tank top photo — you’d think it was a shot of a wide-open beaver with a crack pipe hanging out of it for all the attention it’s getting — makes national news, she quickly realizes her error, and — here the spinster butt sprouts a boil — issues an apology to her Twitter fans. She takes down the twitpic and contemplates deleting her Twitter account. She’s sorry if she “offended” anyone by publishing a likeness of her personal self in non-regulation Young Republican-wear.

She has, she says, “learned a valuable lesson about the Internet and the boundaries between personal and public use with social media.”

The lesson? Men don’t have boundaries.

Beatdown successful! Congratulations, Dudes!

Spinster aunt differentiates between “graphic violence” and “feminism”

Hey! Roger Ebert!

A Hollywood movie with a plot device involving a female assault victim “turning the tables in an extended sequence of graphic violence” is not a “feminist revenge picture.” It’s merely a revenge picture.

Yet another reason celebrities should be spurned by polite society until they can learn to stop doing stupid shit

1975 Women-in-prison flick directed by Jonathan Demme. Tagline reads "WHITE HOT DESIRES MELTING COLD PRISON STEEL!"
1975 Women-in-prison flick directed by Jonathan Demme. Tagline reads “WHITE HOT DESIRES MELTING COLD PRISON STEEL!” Originally uploaded at IMDB

Kate Harding thinks — and who but an asshole could disagree? — that it would be “superfun” to play a game called “Don’t Give Money To People Who Think Rapists Deserve Absolution, Sympathy, Freedom and Regular Public Tongue Baths.”

Harding alludes to a hypothetical boycott of the products blurped out by the burgeoning collective of rape-apologist celebrities who’ve lately been infesting the public square sporting “Free Roman Polanski” buttons. To the dismay of some of their more evolved fans, the gang includes pop-culture darlings whose public personae may have previously conveyed, when observed by the casual end-user, the [false] impression that they don’t support child rapists.

Who, you might ask, would be barbarian enough to form a chastity belt of solidarity around fugitive child rapist Roman Polanski?

A whole bunch of famous movie people, it turns out. Including Whoopi Goldberg, Jonathan Demme, Wim Wenders, David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, and Woody Allen. Oh, and Natalie Portman.

Wait! No! Not Whoopi, the affable Center Square who’s black enough to be hep, but not so black that she scares the honkys? Not Jonathan Demme, writer/director of Caged Heat (“Rape Riot and Revenge! White Hot Desires Melting Cold Prison Steel!”)? Not David Lynch, director of Eraserhead, beloved fanboy 16mm art-house ode to infanticide and male anxiety about jizz? Not Martin Scorsese, glamorizer of macho thugs, whose second most memorable character is a wise-cracking pre-teen hooker-with-a-heart-o-gold? Not Woody Allen, the sexullectual nebbish who likes to get bizzy with his step-children?

God, not Natalie Portman, photogenic girl?

It blows the lobe that total strangers (film stars, directors, “media personalities,” TV actors, et al) should transcend their 2-dimensional products to play active roles — enjoying varying degrees of symbololotry (no really, it’s a word!) — in the real lives of pop culture consumers. It blows the lobe, but the phenomenon (wherein civilians believe they have a sympathetic, unique rapport with their celebrities) supports a multi-zillion-dollar industry, a tragedy equal in scope only to the recent discovery that there is no more Cool Whip in the spinster fridge.

So, should a media personality’s insane views on bail-jumpin’ rapist Roman Polanski be a deal-breaker? Fuck yeah, they should. “Rape? It’s less important than Chinatown” is now part of their official pop narratives. Please. Like Chinatown is a sacred pile of Jesus-bones, or vital to the biosphere, or the cure for cancer or something. And even if it were, sending Polanski to the hoosegow would hardly eradicate his fucking beloved movie from the planet.

Dump the bastards!

What’s the deal with celebrities, anyway? Do they imagine the public are just maxi-pads with spending power, stuck to Hollywood’s underpants and happy to soak up what ever oozes out? Are they so bloated with self-regard that, when they aren’t giving each other awards on televised red carpets, they actually confuse their tight-knit cabal of overpaid ingenues, perverts, and 2-bit hams with a sort of Privy Council of the Divine? One that is imbued with sufficient power to override in their fans such ethical and just prejudices as “rape is a crime”? Or to subvert the justice system with their keen and considered legal analysis that Polanski, forced to live comfortably in Paris and make Oscar-winning films all these years, has “suffered enough”? Whoopi, a noted legal scholar, has famously observed that what Polanski did — i.e. drugging and sexually assaulting a pre-pubescent girl — wasn’t “rape rape.”

Possibly Whoopi views Polanski’s violent crime in this seriously fucked-up way because in Hollywood — patriarchy’s primary misogyny propaganda unit — rape is nothing but a plot device. An extremely popular plot device. In fact, it’s the principal motif in about 97.3% of films and TV shows. Ya gotta love the Hollywood “love-rape,” wherein the starlet demurs, so the hero gives her what she really wants (see Gone With the Wind for an Oscar-winning archetypal example). The love-rape is so popular that Hollywoodists apparently think nothing of its practice in real life. It’s completely normal for directors to invite “sophisticated” 13-year-old “Lolitas” into their homes by promising to photograph them for Vogue, but instead they dope’em up with liquor and ludes to facilitate “consensual sex.” That’s not rape. That’s entertainment!

Disappointed fans of rape-apologist celebrities might consider, once they’ve worked through their shock and bereavement, precisely what, in terms of philosophic value, is really offered by these people. I hypothesize that it is possible to live a stunningly adequate life without buying any Woody Allen at all, either Allen-as-concept (see “sexullectual nebbish,” above) or his sexist-ass films. Likewise, it shouldn’t be too difficult to eliminate both the essence and the filmography of Natalie Portman from the intellectual environment; few, if any, spinster aunts in good standing could even pick her out of an identity parade. Ditto all those other artistes. And if playing Kate Harding’s “Fuck You, Rape-Apologist Celebrities!” game means crossing Whoopi’s Sister Act II off my Netflix queue, well, that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

Celebrities are just mercenary pukers of pop culture artifacts.

Poetry Korner

If a blamer goes to the trouble of writing a blaming pome about a Dr Seuss character who hates hoes, I can go to the trouble of giving it its own page.

Untitled
by PandanCat

I’ll have no hoes! No, no, noes!
Hoes with clothes? No, no, noes!
Hoes at shows? No, no, noes!
Hoes with piercings in the nose and hoes with eyes for all the bros?
No, no, noes!
Hoes who ask for a rose and hoes where fem’nist theory grows?
No! No! Noes!
I’ll say it now before I go:
This bro will never love a ho!