there are days where i'm pretty well convinced that my spirit animal is psyduck.

i'm pretty sure the Universe is trying to tell me to stop wasting time on the internet. i think the message finally got through. kind of sucks that i've had to be hounded off damn near every blog on the internet, save shakesville before the message got through, but there you are. if it's not obama vs clinton, it's the AM/seal press affair, and i'm sick of all the bullshit on both fucking sides and i am done. i'ma go read comic books. (not the Golden Age kind, i should specify.)

weirdly, though, the latter fight has made me understand a bit more clearly what people who don't yet understand how to see certain coded types of bullshit go through. it's also made me understand what it can be like to think you're having a discussion in good faith and then feel like you've just been pissed on. and it's made me understand why some people, rightly or wrongly, whether or not that pissing was in some sense deserved, just decide not to engage in the first place. and i'm disengaging. i will cede the feministe comments to the feminists who have decided they don't want to be feminists anymore, so they can remind each other of all the reasons to hate the inevitably racist white women while they moon over the inscrutable wisdom of those wise orientals. shrug.

the seniors this year are either extraordinarily crafty or extraordinarily incompetent. if it's the latter, which it probably is, prank's tonight.

nothing quite like a doctor's visit which involves being told 'hey, cheer up, at least it's not cancer!'

although he did have a point: it isn't cancer. so i will cheer up.

sigh

compare and contrast.

one thing this election season has done, at least, is finally knock out of my stupid head any desire i might have ever had to enter politics. or the media. or the field of social justice. because there's just no fucking point. can't be made better. not going to try. i'll find something else to do with my time.

we do what we must. because we can.

but there's no sense crying over every mistake
you just keep on trying til you run out of cake
and the Science gets done
and you make a neat gun
for the people who are still alive...

in other political news, a former aide to henry hyde is apparently now the one in charge of determining which politicians may legitimately have a D next to their names. guess i better correct my voter registration, because clearly i am Doing It Wrong. and so is around half of the democratic party, it would appear. except we aren't actually democrats now, so that doesn't count.

Tussle With Nusslel!

i knew what i was expecting when i opened the atrios comment thread. why did i open the atrios comment thread? because i am a stupid motherfucker, apparently.

i'm done, i think. if anyone wants a first-hand look at why i'm fucking sick of a certain species of obama supporter, those threads are a pretty good place to start. and, sadly, pretty typical.

so here it is then. (now i'm wearing my boots, which always guarantees a good showing.)

before i wrote the post appearing below this one, i was working on a response to martin and to nate, who left comments in the third post down. i had not said much in that post; mostly it was a link to a youtube video made in support of hillary clinton. i posted that video because, in a clumsy, heavy-handed, not-so-well-edited sort of way, it expressed some strange and hard-to-name feelings i've been having lately, watching the primaries play out. i didn't add much text to the link, in part because i still wasn't quite sure how to say what i wanted to say. what i did say, i suspect, was not very clear.

fortunately, an article has appeared in salon which does an excellent job of articulating that feeling, probably a better job than the video does, and certainly a better job than i did. if anyone's interested (and, again, particularly if they support obama), i'd recommend taking a look. this should not be read as some sort of condemnation of obama supporters. i am not an obama supporter, that's true. still, it is a critique of the campaign which i feel is valid, and since i do not want to see mccain elected, i humbly ask that interested parties read it.

i did not write the post which sparked the flame-war as a direct response to nate and martin, although timing (and my own word choice) likely made it appear that way, i see now, and i was so angry at the time that i'm not certain i made a clear distinction in my own head, myself. i was working on the actual response (which i invite both martin and nate to read, and to respond to, if they like, as it's posted now) in my head over the weekend, sorting out what i wanted to say, and when i sat down at a computer monday morning to write it, the first thing i happened across was the article i linked in that post. i was pissed, and i was scared, and i felt betrayed, both by obama himself and, following from that, his supporters.

i do think there is a link between the hard-to-explain feeling of sexist backlash and the remarks made at the Compassion Forum. i think, in a way, they come from the same place, and i will try to explain what i mean -- possibly after dinner tonight, but possibly not until after Writing Period. it was sloppy and careless of me to say, in the opening of the post, that what disturbed me about obama's comments at the forum was precisely the same thing that was disturbing me about the campaign, and it wasn't what i wanted to say, but i was, in fact, really really fucking damn angry at the time, and i did not stop to choose my words with care. i will try to be more precise in my phrasing the next time, and to keep separate topics which should be kept separate.

that said, i do still stand by the comments i've made. i think it would be helpful to talk about such things, and i think mike's proposal (in comments below) to move the conversation to neutral territory is a good one. i don't want the topic at hand to get lost in that separate conversation, though, and i am still interested in talking about the weird mechanics involved in this campaign, if others are too. i will try to post about what i mean, but rebecca traitster's article is probably a better one than i could write.

"compassion", they're calling it

here is what sexism has to do with supporting obama, kids. since apparently it's that fucking hard to understand. since apparently it's more important to court conservatives than to support liberals, when you're running as a democratic condender for the presidency. since apparently it's more important to assert the rights of the religious over the rights of ALL humans. since apparently women just aren't human yet. since apparently we can't call rape "rape", but must instead call it "certain situations [in which women] may not be able to protect themselves from having unprotected sex", because, i guess, actually calling a rape a rape would be divisive or something. since, apparently, under an obama administration, i would be expected to make health decisions with the assistance of "clergy". since, apparently, it's so important to affirm the "sacredness of sexuality" that people should expect to die for it.

you don't have to "turn over a rock" to find sexism and racism. it's crawling out in the open for all to see. always has been. i'm beginning to fear it always will be.

but fine. trample over progressive values on your Super Awesome Rainbow Funtime Jesus Unicorn Pony Ride to Unity. have an awesome goddamn time. be sure to blame the iraq war on me while you're at it. you should also probably assert i'm a racist, even though i'm not the one explaining that AIDS is a problem in kenya because of "certain behaviors", including that all-time favourite dogwhistle, "promiscuity". certainly it's not a crumbling, strife-torn social structure. certainly it's not a lack of access to condoms, caused in part by religious pearl-clutching over any health programme that doesn't stay abstinence-only. no, the problem is those kenyans are just too promiscuous, that's all!

i invite obama supporters to watch this. particularly the ones who tell me i only care about "identity politics".

COVERED IN BEES

oh hey so guess who has tickets to see eddie izzard tonight?