Archive for the 'Announcements' Category

Komen caves

“We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives.” — Komen press release

Crap, now they’ll be forgiven and everyone will go back to pinkness and plucky survivorship and mistaking shopping for philanthropy and looking the other way on the whole carcinogenic corporate partners thing.

UPDATE: Komen has in fact used the old Fake Cave Gambit, which I would have realized if I’d spent two more minutes thinking about that press release. Check this out.

Thanks @janeenlee.

Abandon ship!

You know how I was gonna do this big Facebook experiment? Well, my account got suspended because — here’s a shocker — Facebook is under the impression that Twisty Faster isn’t my real name. Evidently using a nom de bloggue is a capital offense. Unlike the captain of the Costa Concordia, the IBTP page went down with the ship. I’m afraid I was unwilling to administrate the page with my Earth name.

I suppose one of the jacknuts I banned ratted me out. I’ve had that account for over a year, but they only just now got around to kicking me out. Funny how they let that hilarious guy “Joe Ker” — obviously his real name — jizz all over my wall with his funny rape threats.

Apologies to everyone who took the time to friend me, and particularly to the We Blame the Patriarchy group blamers for their generous consideration.

I have to admit, though, I’d be lying if I said my obstreberal lobe wasn’t pulsating with relief. That lobe never did think Facebook was such a hot idea.

Well, I’ll be back later with a gripping post on why radical feminism and sex work advocacy are doomed to catfight in hell forever, but first I’m off to delete my Earthling Facebook account. Best to make a clean break.

Savage Death Spring

Some mental floss relating to blaming on Facebook:

1. Over the weekend members of the “I blame the patriarchy” Facebook group were kind enough to humor me by dismantling their group and remantling under the new moniker “We Blame the Patriarchy” (all of this mantling was made necessary by the inability to perform a simple name change on the FB platform). I requested this change to avoid confusion, since I kind of use the “I Blame the Patriarchy”/ Odd Lady avatar combo as my personal professional internet feminist online identity.

To join We Blame the Patriarchy, you have to have a Facebook identity. Then you just go to the group page and request to join. One of the several thousand admins will welcome you with open arms. I am told that this is a “closed” group, which if I understand correctly means that whatever you post there will not also show up all over the rest of Facebook.

Would that I could be more involved with this worthy group of blamers, but as you have undoubtedly perceived, I barely manage to post here once in a blue moon, and, as I’ll get to in a minute, I’ve got another little project on. Even so, I’ll look in whenever I can. I’ll be looking forward with particular interest to the results of their delightfully anarchic “everybody’s an admin” experiment.

2. All the above-mentioned activity reminded me that I am in charge of 2 other (abandoned) Facebook projects: the “official” I Blame the Patriarchy page, and the Twisty Faster entity.

In the beginning there was to be just the one patriarchy-blaming page, but FB wouldn’t let me do this without also signing up as a human. Not being particularly adept at this social media crap, I haven’t quite worked out how to streamline my process, but as it stands, anyone may post on the IBTP page, making a sort of perpetual open thread, and whatever I post will appear both there and on the Twisty Wall. And possibly on Twitter. I think. Who the hell knows, really.

Twisty-on-Facebook is a Savage Death Island No. 1 Science experiment. I mostly cast a jaundiced eye at the whole set-up, since being made into a product nauseates me, and the idea that Facebook is essentially a giant spy network nauseates me even more, and I am still further nauseated by the fact that everybody knows it’s a giant spy network yet they use the thing anyway.

Still, though I suspect it is pretty unlikely, it is possible that the pros might outweigh the cons. You know, the Arab Spring and a that. So the goal is to foment a Savage Death Spring in protest of global misogynist human rights violations. To that end I’ll be friending blamers left and right, and posting over there quasi-frequently for a while, while I collect the data and, in my spare time, ignite feminist revolt. I invite everyone who can bear Facebook to join me in friending Twisty and “liking” I Blame the Patriarchy.

Meanwhile, I look forward to hearing about the evils of Facebook in the comments.

Finally got that audio plug-in everyone’s been talking about

From the award-nominated album “The Touch-Ass Duo Sings the Way Out Club Hits 1990-1999.” The Whiskey I Drink by Fred Friction.

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Blamer starts something

Breaking news: blamer Cootie Twoshoes has started a blamer book club at Goodreads. I can but endorse such an endeavor.

Apparently what you do is, you go here, create a Goodreads account, and then get jiggy with it. Feminist literary critique is practically a lost art. I urge anyone who reads stuff to give it a try.

The Donkey Chronicles, Part 2

Certainly you are on the edge of your seat awaiting some sort of resolution to the Donkey Situation. Here’s the status report:

The donkeys’ owner has finally been located, thanks to the expert sleuthing of Sgt. Jimmy of the Cottonmouth County Sheriff’s Dept.

Daphne and Liriope, Donk InvadersCrappily, it turns out that the owner is Mr Classy from seven or eight ranches over. He is the irascible lying sumbitch who hates his neighbors, beats dogs, impales babies on pitchforks, welches on bets, drinks Miller Lite, goes to church, and eats at Cracker Barrel. He wants nothing to do with the donkeys. In fact, he’s been letting them roam free for years. Reports from ranches as far as 5 miles distant attest that these donkeys are quite the jetsetters. It’s gotten even worse since the drought. The creek that traverses all the ranches in this area has run dry, leaving a creekbed that livestock on the lam use as a sort of highway that runs for miles. These 3 donkeys are among the more notorious rogues.

Mr Classy tells Sgt. Jimmy that he is sick and tired of these donkeys, and that if he is forced to come and collect them from my place, he’ll just shoot’em.

I am now totally screwed, because although the urgency with which I require three feral donkeys is immeasurably slight, I obviously can’t send them back to that redneck dicksmoke and his cheap-ass shotgun. I mean, I jumped into 60 degree water to save that drowning jenny. It was a poignant, dramatic, and heartwarming episode that would have made an excellent feel-good segment on the local evening news. I can’t just send her off to be murdered after a thing like that, right?

So I tell Sgt Jimmy that I’ll forgive all the damages if Mr Classy will just sign the donkeys over to me. This is a pretty good deal for Mr Classy, since feral donkeys are worth quite a bit less than nothing in these days of drought and hay famine, and the damage caused by Daphne’s natatory episode, which I had intended to hit him up for, will amount to quite a pile.

So Sgt. Jimmy attempts to broker the deal, occasioning a call from Mrs Classy. She wants to know what time today I can come and get the donkeys. What do you mean, I say. Don’t I already have them? No, she says, they’re at her neighbor’s place, she can see them from the road. Sure enough. Since breakfast the donkeys have apparently traversed 3 miles of rough terrain and are now completely absent from El Rancho Deluxe.

This surprises me. It hadn’t dawned on me for some reason that the donkeys would decide to go back. Why would any donkey elect to abandon swimming pools and hay for a ranch with no swimming pools and hay? But it also drives home the realization that the three donkeys are in fact afflicted with a wanderlust woven so deeply within their mettle that even so magnetic a personality as my own is powerless against it. They’re tumbleweeds in the John Ford movie of life. “Babe, I gotta ramble” is their motto. “Don’t fence me in” is the theme song that plays during their fadeouts.

Which means I gotta fence them in.

I tell Mrs Classy that I’ll have to run some new fence before I can take custody, which should take a couple of weeks. This pisses off Mrs Classy. Since no promise of a future good deed goes unpunished, she delivers a brief but colorful monologue expressing her dissatisfaction with the time line. But what can I do?

So the anticlimax is that I still have not officially adopted 3 wild donkeys, and that the fence guy is coming out next week to take a look.

To be continued.

To whomever is missing 3 donkeys near Rattlesnake, TX

Donkey in the pool[UPDATE: Donkey mistook pool cover for solid ground, fell in, got trapped in deep end under pool cover. Had a hell of a time -- about an hour and a half -- getting her out. Her best friend paced on the sidelines the whole time in a sort of worried panic, hee-hawing more or less continuously. I'm sure you heard it over in Australia. My ears are still ringing. Couldn't get the trapped donkey to climb up the steps, because she's a donkey. Tried to bite me whenever I'd get close enough to toss a rope around her girth. Eventually she saw reason and climbed out on her own. She stood still for a second, then shook the water off, pooped in the pool, gave me the atomic stink-eye and trotted off into the night to rejoin her anxious troupe. If I end up keeping her I'm naming her after one of the Naiades. Possibly Daphne, who fended off Apollo by turning into a laurel tree, or Liriope, the mother of Narcissus.]

Three donkeys

I have your donkeys (not pictured: the third donkey).

Longhorn cow

Oh, and those 12 gaudy Texas longhorn cattle you bought so you could make like Ross Perot and keep your ag exemption in style? I have those, too (not pictured: 11 other ginormous cattle with 6′ racks). I will happily return them to you once you’ve reimbursed me for the damages.

Thank you.

Food channel

Alien pod

I offer you a love pod from my home world.

Foto by Stingray.

My heatstroke is your open thread

Avoid Heatstroke Drink Water

Blamer Service Announcement: Spinster HQ will be shutting down until the fucking temperature drops below 103F for a minimum of 2 days in a row. The heat from the computer monitor is melting my face. Which is neither here nor there, because I can’t write or speak anyway; as soon as a thought is formed in my brain it congeals into a puck of greasy guck that must be manually dislodged with forceps. If you are fortunate enough to be in possession of freely-surging grey matter, consider this an invitation to vituperate forthwith on the pet subject of your choice.

Photo: Hydration instructions on a sidewalk in East Austin.

I’ve gotten, like, 17 emails about this and so am filing an Intent to Post

Rest easy, outraged blamer. I have indeed heard of the PETA porn site and will be dashing off the usual bromides and choir-preaches as soon as time permits. In the meantime feel free to compose your own and post it here. Back in a flash (and by “flash” I mean “day or two”).