SPLATTER ZONE.

SUPERBOWL SUNDAY.

2012-02-10T00:00:00.000-08:00

Ok, listen kids. Two major big whoops about the halftime show that everyone seems to be shitting their proverbial pants over: MIA flipping the bird and the whole performance being a satanic ritual. To both things I would like to just say OH. FUCK. YEAH.

Ok, first things first. MIA gives the people of the US of A the finger. My first reaction was "that is so fucking cool!!!" and of course since I have the mentality of a toddler sometimes I assumed that everyone was on the same page.

oh, how wrong I was.

Pretty much everyone has deemed it an immature move. Pitchfork said it was a cheap shot, the FCC is fining all parties involved, both the NFL and NBC are scrambling, and even MIA apologized. What's even more fascinating is the amount of news sources that are referring to it as a "malfunction", hearkening back to the infamous Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction in which hopefully everyone remembers Jackson was entirely blamed for. In this repetition of semantics it is made clear that both of these women are not only blamed for offending america but at the same time treated as if they have zero control over their own bodies. Nice fucking double speak y'all.

Beyond that, some are taking the finger as a career move, as if we didn't know her name already. She was nominated for a godamn grammy people! Do you remember? That movie that was the underdog mainstream movie? Paper Planes? Ok? Alright? She is a household name. Not to mention, it's not like you could even look at this as a controversial move to only garner attention. MIA has been saying fuck you to the world forever. While the likes of Britney Spears and Lady Gaga are being touted as the next Madonna MIA is actually the closest thing to it. No really, look at it: rising up from an underground art scene, constantly pushing mainstream artistic boundaries, constantly pushing fashion boundaries, being smarter and more interesting then most interviewers they encounter, calling people on their shit, making videos that are banned by major media outlets... yeah, I think so.

What I'm trying to really say is that it kind of seems like MIA doesn't give a fuck about career moves and she doesn't give a fuck who she pisses off. Whatever.

I digress.

Second thing: apparently there was a 1,001 ways it was at least alluding to satanic rituals. Some explanation.

Oh, and then this?

FEMALE FURY

2012-02-04T11:52:00.000-08:00

The latest sensation on the Russian underground music scene talks
about its songs.

By Sergey Chernov
The St. Petersburg Times
Published: February 1, 2012 (Issue # 1693)

Pussy Riot, a feminist punk collective from Moscow whose members hide
their faces behind colored balaclavas, creates waves of protest
through its dissident songs and unsanctioned performances — which
culminated late last month in a brief unauthorized concert on Moscow’s
strictly guarded Red Square.

The group, which performed a freshly penned anti-Kremlin song called
“Putin Got Scared” (Putin Zassal) — complete with colored smoke bombs
and a purple feminist flag — was arrested and, after being held for
about five hours in a police precinct, two members were fined 500
rubles (around $17) each. The members were charged with holding an
unauthorized rally.

“Red Square is symbolically the main place of the country; we believe
that it is the place that should be occupied to achieve a real
political change, it’s the equivalent of Tahrir for Russia,” Pussy
Riot said in an email interview this week.

In an email, a member who calls herself Garadzha Matveyeva said that
the group answered the questions collectively — just as it writes its
songs.

For the Red Square performance, the group chose as its stage Lobnoye
Mesto — a 13-meter-long stone platform previously used for announcing
the tsar’s ukases — as a reference to the historic demonstration of
seven Soviet dissidents who came to the site with the slogan “For our
freedom and yours” to protest against the Soviet invasion of
Czechoslovakia on August 25, 1968. The dissidents subsequently spent
years in prisons, psychiatric asylums and in exile.

“We believe that the Soviet Union’s aggressive imperial politics are
similar in many ways to Putin’s course,” Pussy Riot said.

“The way the state treats its citizens hasn’t changed much since the
times of the U.S.S.R.; there is still paternalist supervision and
police control over people. Secondly, we always try to choose elevated
platforms — similar to a concert stage — so Lobnoye Mesto met our
needs in this sense.”

“Putin Got Scared” was inspired by the spontaneous, unsanctioned
protests against the rigged State Duma elections in December.

“The song was written in the aftermath of the Dec. 5 events and is
permeated with the radical mood of protest of that day, when after a
10,000-strong rally on Chistiye Prudy a number of protesters managed
to break through the OMON police cordons and around 1,000 marched
almost to the Kremlin itself,” the group said.

“The police were at a loss, they didn’t know what to do; they were
waiting for orders in astonishment and didn’t dare touch the
protesters. The orders to detain the demonstrators didn’t come until
the people had already reached the Kremlin, half an hour after the
march had begun. The authorities were frightened.

“The orders to bring armed troops to Moscow came immediately. Special
detachments were put on alert. It was clear that Putin had got
scared.”

Although the two authorized anti-fraud rallies that followed in
December drew more than 100,000 each, Pussy Riot believes that they
did not have as much of an effect as the unsanctioned protests.

“All the troops were taken out of Moscow on Dec. 10; when it became
clear that the opposition had made large concessions, Putin calmed
down, unfortunately,” the group said.

“As far as we can see, Putin is scared only of unsanctioned rallies.
That’s why we promote holding unauthorized protests in our songs. We
are not happy about what happens in the sphere of civic protests,
which have now turned into sanctioned rallies.

“The authorities will not get scared and make concessions because they
are rallies that they sanctioned themselves. On the contrary, such
rallies show that the authorities are allegedly tolerant toward
people, that they are ready to listen to them and provide them with
public platforms. But in reality, the authorities turn a deaf ear to
all the protesters’ demands and none of the claims set up at the
rallies have been fulfilled.”

Pussy Riot believes that more unsanctioned rallies will follow in view
of the upcoming presidential elections.

“It’s very likely that most radically-minded people will be isolated
(arrested, put in prison) — such as the Natsbols [members of the
oppositional Other Russia party] or [left-wing activist] Sergei
Udaltsov,” the group said.

“What happens after the elections depends on those tens of thousands
of people who come to sanctioned rallies and marches now; we hope that
the violations, fraud and falsifications that follow will force people
to take action not sanctioned by the authorities.”

According to the group, the song “Putin Got Scared” celebrates the
feminist capture of the Kremlin.

“It was cold on that day, it was a real Russian winter, and we and our
equipment got really cold,” Pussy Riot said.

“But this angered us even more, so the girls screamed so furiously
that the policemen were scared to come up to us at first.”

The video of the performance became an instant YouTube hit, while the
blog entry containing photos and links to the videos, lyrics and the
group’s commentary received more than 1,100 comments.

“As we saw from the responses to our video, many Russian citizens want
Putin to get scared once again and for a long time,” Pussy Riot said.

“The grassroots protest force is more radically-minded than official
rally organizers imagine. We believe that a large number of people are
ready to demonstrate without a sanction. People were happy to share
the quotes from our songs: ‘The time for a subversive clash has come,’
‘Live on Red Square / Show the freedom of civil anger.’”

The group — which features from three to eight performers — sees
itself as being “on the border between punk rock and contemporary
art.”

“Contemporary culture is characterized by diffusivity, mutual
influence and the interaction of different directions, the
intersection that leads to transgression,” Pussy Riot says.

“It’s possible to find features of 1990s Actionism in our
performances, while the motif of the closed face of the performer —
which has been used by many music bands such as Slipknot, Daft Punk or
Asian Women on the Telephone, for instance, is borrowed from
conceptual art where the tradition of not showing one’s face is
present.”

Pussy Riot officially formed in autumn 2011 when it played its first
gig in Otradnoye metro, performing the song “Clear Up the Pavement”
(Osvobodi Bruschatku). Complete with footage from performances at
other metro stations as well as on bus roofs and trolleybuses, the
video was released on Nov. 7, the anniversary of the 1917 Russian
Revolution.

According to the group, one of the events that led them to form Pussy
Riot was Putin and Medvedev’s announcement made to the United Russia
party congress on Sept. 25 that they would change posts in the
upcoming presidential elections due on March 4. The move has been
compared to castling in chess, when a rook and a king swap places. “We
don’t like this kind of chess,” Pussy Riot said.

Since then, Pussy Riot has held unsanctioned performances in boutiques
and at a fashion show as well as on the roof of a garage next to the
detention center where the imprisoned participants of anti-fraud
rallies were held. They unveiled a banner, lit flares and performed a
song called “Death to Prison, Freedom to Protest” and escaped without
being arrested.

The group cites American punk rock band Bikini Kill and its Riot Grrrl
movement as an inspiration, but says there are plenty of differences
between them and Bikini Kill.

“What we have in common is impudence, politically loaded lyrics, the
importance of feminist discourse, non-standard female image,” Pussy
Riot said.

“The difference is that Bikini Kill performed at specific music
venues, while we hold unsanctioned concerts. On the whole, Riot Grrrl
was closely linked to Western cultural institutions, whose equivalents
don’t exist in Russia.

Pussy Riot’s unsanctioned concerts are reminiscent of The Sex Pistols’
infamous boat concert, when the band rented a boat to premiere “God
Save the Queen” to spoof the Queen’s Silver Jubiliee in 1977, by
playing live on the Thames, passing Westminster Pier and the Houses of
Parliament.

“In this story with the Sex Pistols we find it odd that the boat was
rented by the band itself,” Pussy Riot said.

“It’s difficult to find an element of protest when you perform on a
boat that you have paid for; on the contrary, it’s a type of
commercial performance. There’s no connection to Pussy Riot in this,
because we didn’t rent and are not going to rent anything; we come and
take over platforms that don’t belong to us and use them for free.”

Although Pussy Riot conceals its faces and identities, the group
revealed that the members’ average age is 25 and they have a
background in music, theater, art — and mountain climbing. One member
works in the electronics industry.

“We are united by feminism, opposition to Putin’s regime and his
vertical of power, antiauthoritarianism and leftist ideas,” Pussy Riot
said.

“Some of us are anarchists, some have leftist liberal positions. We
would like horizontal political activity, self-organization and the
capability to be aware of oneself as an equal participant in civil
politics, to understand one’s rights and fight for them to develop.
Russian society lacks tolerance and lenience.

“We are concerned about the centralization of political life and all
the problems that stem from it. It’s obvious that a single center
can’t take the specifics of every region into consideration, that’s
why it’s important to develop regional self-governance.

“We are concerned about the educational reform that would make even
high school education a partly paid service, and health reform that
promotes such dubious things as an anti-abortion law. We don’t like
the lack of cultural institutions, and the fact that no conditions for
their development have been created. We are concerned about widespread
sexist thinking, which reduces the diversity of people’s lives to
sexual roles.”

According to the group, it would like to influence the cultural
situation that forms public consciousness.

“We alter the approach to specific particular subjects such as LGBT,
feminism and civic protest activity,” Pussy Riot said.

“Our motivation is ethical; we see that entire strata of population
find themselves under unjustified discriminatory pressure. For
instance, conservativeness dictates a definite role for a woman, which
is guaranteed by social mechanisms of encouragement and punishment.
This role doesn’t allow her to fulfill herself in another, alternative
way that doesn’t correspond to the ideals of classic femininity.”

Although Pussy Riot’s performances have been classified by the police
as “unsanctioned rallies,” the group said it was the counter-extremism
Center E, described as “Putin’s political police” that harasses it
most.

“Ordinary policemen are not as annoying and bothersome as Center E,”
the group said.

“Center E taps our telephones, breaks into our email and tries its
best to prevent our concerts.”

POP SECRET: PREGNANCE´

2012-02-02T09:47:00.000-08:00

I know this is a little after the fact, but whatever. Beyoncé already had her baby. There was a huge kerfuffle about the fact that an entire floor of a hospital was monopolized for this event and the five-day-old has already been featured in a Jay-Z song that has topped the charts. But lets take a moment to roll back to the actual pregnancy.

For the entire time (and even in the weeks after) Beyoncé was pregnant there were rampant conspiracy theories that in actuality she was not pregnant and really just using a surrogate. Proof ranged from footage of a “collapsing stomach” to theories that the reason they rented out the entire floor was to hide the fact that it wasn’t actually Beyoncé giving birth to claims that because there were bottles of champagne brought to the delivery room that obviously there was no way she could be pregnant.

Now, lets direct our attention to other famous ladies. Other famous ladies such as Jennifer Anniston, Jessica Simpson, Angelina Jolie, etc. who have a never ending stream of pregnancy rumors swirling around them. Where a baggy sweater could mean 5 months in and eating a large meal means three. Where not drinking at a fundraising gala means pregnant. Where gossip rags will claim a stars “boobs look pregnant”.

While tabloids obsessing over famous womens bodies is nothing new, the dispute as to whether a pregnancy is “real” or not is a pretty unusual one. Wanting to cover up a surrogate seems like a bizarre move, seeing as Hollywood types have been public about using a surrogate and have caught little flack for it. But beyond reasons behind using a surrogate/not using a surrogate/covering up a surrogate is a terrible new development. On top of the on-going battle of too fat/too thin we know have another concern troll war ranging of covering up a pregnancy or faking a pregnancy. And walking hand in hand with the court of public opinion of whether or not you are faking a pregnancy is the battle over reproductive rights. Not only can this be seen as another step deeper into the complete okness of commenting on every womens body but also a step deeper into the okness of everyone having a say on what you do reproductive-wise.

What this all comes down to is ye olde violation of privacy. Again, this is nothing new to the stars, talking about the contents of the uteruses you don't know is par for the course, but with this we have a new key into the reproductive choices of women we don't know. While the public might feel lied to in reality Beyoncé has no responsibility to tell us the truth because it's her body. And really, we don't have any right to know what's going on with her body. When the general public acts like we have an unalienable right to know the contents of someone elses uterus we are adding another support to the structure that strips women not only of their privacy but of control over their own bodies. With this development we have a whole new way to not only scrutinize other womens bodies but also a whole new way to invade other womens privacy.

LONG OVERDUE: Occupy Oakland diary for 10/29/11 (anti-brutality march)

2011-12-19T10:58:00.000-08:00

The Speak out against police brutality was followed by an anti-police brutality march. I had high hopes that the speak out would illustrate the fact that yes, the cops were brutal at the protests, but for a lot of people in Oakland police brutality is a daily reality. While I do live in a “bad neighborhood” I’m still a white kid and the cops are not going to harass me that much. If I go to a protest yes I will experience police brutality, but at the same time I can leave that protest whenever I want to. I could not go at all. While Scott Olsen has been martyred for being terribly injured due to police violence, and that night many spoke about the police violence that they endured while at the protests, the daily police violence that is experienced by the people of color in Oakland has been forgotten and left behind. While we march against privilege we are still leaving those voices stifled.

Afterwards there was a march. We ran up against riot cops at every turn. The same thing happened again and again. The “peace police” would line up in front of the line of cops, face the crowd and hold up peace signs, fighting with anyone who wanted to even get near the cops. Let me stop the story for a quick second to say FUCK THE PEACE POLICE. Is that even what they call themselves? I don’t know, it’s what we all seem to refer to them as. These are the people who have a habit of getting into screaming matches with protestors who err on the side of more aggressive confrontation. They have a tendency to engage in violence in the name of non-violence. I have never liked this faction of protesters. I’m fine with pacifists, or people who are non-violent and don’t push this belief onto others, but to me the peace police are using non-violence as a marketing tactic rather than an ideology. That their participation in non-violence is more about keeping a positive image in the eyes of the media rather than a deep belief. On this night, the fact that they faced the crowd with their demands for non-violence rather than the cops was incredibly condescending and smug. I was brought back to being a child and being told to use my inside voice, being told to have restaurant behavior. I understand non-violence and I agree with it a lot, but this was an anti-police brutality march, not a forum about peaceful protest. Don’t fucking face the protesters with your aggressive demands for non-violence, face the fucking main perpetrators of violence (the cops(duh)). For as long as I have been attending protest there is always one clear pattern, things don’t really get tense and violent until the cops show up. Every year in Olympia every fucking anti-choice person in Washington converges in Olympia to take over the capitol steps and condemn abortion. Every year we showed up to counter protest. Every year I had civil conversations with the other side. I would discuss easy and affordable access to birth control as a way to bring down the numbers of abortions with nuns for crissakes. It felt productive, it felt like the actual exchange of ideas rather than the hurling of insults. At some point in these counter protests the cops started showing up, and while things never escalated to violence, more insults were hurled across police lines, hatred built up inside of us and we got nowhere.

So every time we arrived at a row of cops the peace police would line up in front of them, facing the crowd and waving peace signs. The crowd would gather and chant “fuck the pigs”. Some people would fight with the peace police. Some people would try to make the march continue, to walk away from the cops. On several occasions that night I heard people yell “fuck the police! Just ignore them!” ignore them? Really? Like how in third grade when you got bullied and you are told to “ignore them”? Like when you get cat called on the street and you should just “ignore it”? Like they will stop? Like they will go away? Yes there is a lot of police brutality at this protests, yes it is wrong, it’s also really easy for a majority of white kids to spend a couple minutes chanting ”fuck the pigs” and then just decide to move on. I felt upset, I felt it was useless. A march against police brutality where we spent a lot of time “ignoring the cops” I didn’t get it. What’s the point? As we roamed the streets the chants changed from “who’s streets? our streets!” to “fuck the pigs” to “we are Scott Olsen”. We ended up heading down West Grand. Marches had taken this route before, traveling under the freeway and then back up San Pablo and back to the plaza. We shut down intersections temporarily here and there. As we headed down West Grand the chants went from “we are Scott Olsen to “we are Oscar Grant”. Instead of turning at San Pablo the march continued forward, at this point headed into West Oakland, a poor black neighborhood. I left. The whole thing felt futile and when it became clear that a group of white kids was about to march through a poor black neighborhood while chanting “we are Oscar Grant” I was disgusted. There has already been so little analysis of race in this movement that this was the most fucked thing I had witnessed. It was thoughtless. To make it worse I heard later that protesters were tagging the neighborhood. Really? What the fuck is wrong with you? So there’s going to be an anti-police brutality march that mainly concerns police brutality at protests and then we’re going to go into a neighborhood where police brutality is a daily reality and then invoke the name of a man who was shot in the back by a cop to condemn the violence used against you at a protest (yes these are both examples of police brutality but due to the habit of Occupy Oakland mainly referring to violence at protests when condemning police brutality and the lack of raising of awareness of the daily police violence that is experienced by so many Oakland residents I found this to be in poor taste)? And then trash the neighborhood? It was chaotic and uncoordinated. It was a disgusting demonstration of privilege within a movement that claims to be all about the abolition of privilege.

I made it back for the next nights general assembly which was for the most part a speak-out and vigil for Scott Olsen. For me this general assembly was another night of discouragement. The majority of speakers were Vets for Peace, and while they condemned the cops for their use of excessive violence and claiming “we’re just doing our job”, all I could think was, what the fuck did you do in Iraq? Because though you want peace now, though you have a better understanding of the war then we do, I’m pretty fucking sure you were “just doing your job” some point. I am putting my hopes on the general strike. I am hoping that it will feel like progress rather than a continuation of discouragement.

Just a thought.

2011-10-11T19:34:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been obsessing about the effect of mass media on underground movements - not only the classic effects of distortion, watering down and appropriation, but the weirdly validating effects of mass media on underground movements. In light of the book Girls to the Front by Sara Marcus the mass media has turned its eye back to the riot grrl movement and it makes me wonder, did riot grrl feel like a cohesive movement before the mainstream media started paying attention? has any other movement felt cohesive as it was occurring?

PAY ATTENTION

2011-10-08T14:36:00.000-07:00

To this.

ON STREET HARASSMENT

2011-10-02T11:03:00.000-07:00

I was walking up the street this morning to get a coffee, possibly a donut or whatever else when a car pulled up to me containing some random dude attempting to get my attention. I have a general rule that if someone is trying to get my attention but aren’t explicitly saying my name they most likely don’t know me therefore I don’t react at all. Not even a glance. Not even a twitch. Occasionally I try to find hope in humanity and I will actually give a strange man the time of day, though it almost always ends badly. The worst being the time I was trying to be nice to my neighbor and it ended in him groping me in my kitchen. But yes, occasionally I’ll give being nice to my fellow man a try and this was one of those times. He asked my name and I refused to tell him, asked if I lived in the neighbor and I said no (not true), asked where I was going and I vaguely said around the corner, asked if I wanted to smoke a joint and I said no, asked if I needed a ride and I said no, asked if he could buy me a drink and I said no, asked if I had a job and I said yes, asked what I did and I again vaguely answered “I do administrative work”. He then told me he was a photographer and wanted to shoot me some time.

Ok, really? Really? You’re going to spend all that time hitting on me and then act like you just innocently want to take my picture? Like you just wanna do business with me? Does that approach even work for you? Ever? I actually get this style of proposition a good amount. Strange men (as in strangers, not just weirdos) approach me and say they want to take my picture or have me sing for their band or whatever else only after they spend ten minutes making passes. I’ve gotten some business cards and actually taken the time out of my fucking day to look at some of these dudes’ websites and more often than not its mostly naked pictures of girls. The guy asked for my number as he started to get out of his car at which point I loudly said “ok bye!” and speed walked away as the dude continued to try to talk at me. I spent the rest of the walk glancing over my shoulder and taking a mega circuitous path home. If it wasn’t already painfully obvious from reading this it sucks to find yourself in this type of situation and be forced to be on guard simply because you happen to be a lady walking down the street.

It doesn’t matter what I wear, what time of the day it is, what neighborhood I’m in, if I’m walking by myself its pretty much guaranteed I will get harassed at some point and I am far from the minority in this type of thing. I have yet to meet a woman who doesn’t experience some form harassment on a regular basis. It ranges from “you make my dick so hard” to “girl, you got big legs!” to dudes literally attempting to grab my crotch as I walk past them in broad daylight. I’ve had people follow me for blocks trying to get my attention until I finally turn around and growl out a fuck off at which point they either look surprised and confused or suddenly the relentless adoration turns into a quick “fuck you, ugly bitch”.

Even when its merely words being bandied about it still manages to be just as terrifying as actually getting grabbed. I know enough women (myself included) who have been followed home or been assaulted, read and heard enough stories about women getting dragged into cars or behind bushes that having “hey baby” hurled at me from a car as it speeds by isn’t just some asshole yelling at me but very well could be some asshole either stalking me or physically assaulting me. Sometimes it begins and ends with stupid shit being whispered in your ear and sometimes it doesn’t. One night I was walking home when a van full of dudes pulled up to me and asked “how much?” I screeched “fuck off” at the top of my lungs while they continued to amble along beside me when all the sudden it occurred to me that I was on a desolate street. Alone. With a van full of men following me. I ran the rest of the way home. That is fucking bullshit. Or the time I was walking to work and someone grabbed my crotch, which resulted in a panic attack that ultimately forced me to leave work early? Fucking bullshit. The time I was being followed by somebody in a car to the point that I had to run and hide in a bush for 20 minutes until the dude quit circling the block? Fucking bullshit.

But really, harassment is just another one of the myriad things that work together in order to exert constant control over women. It is another thing that dampens our autonomy and steals away control over our own bodies. When we do demand to be left alone in an angry and loud way we either get written off for being a bitch or being hysterical. We are told to get a thicker skin, that we should enjoy it, they are just trying to compliment us. It creates a bullshit situation that says, “Oh, you got harassed/assaulted/raped? You shouldn’t have left your house.” We are told that simply because of our existence we are “asking for it”. Being in public either begins to feel too dangerous to bother or at least too bothersome to bother. Women become out of sight, out of mind.

Do men truly believe that saying lewd things to women in an attempt to compliment us is actually a compliment? Fuck if I know. That shit does not make sense to me. Has any woman ever had some random dude whisper, “I want to eat your pussy” on the way home from the grocery store and dropped everything just to fuck him? Or what, go on a date with him? I have never fucking heard of this happening. Not even as an urban legend. Yet, it continues.

So what is it then? A reminder of domination? Is it less about sex and more about control? It would be really cool to feel totally at ease whilst walking around alone. I truly believe that one of the reasons for the continued harassment of and violence against women in the world is because of our collective avoidance of fighting back. This is something that is taught since birth. An avoidance of being violent, a complacency in the face of an endangering threat is deeply ingrained in women the world over. Do not take this as me blaming women for the assaults against us. This is much more of a “I see no end in sight what can we do?”, a bit of “it doesn’t seem like anyone else is fixing this, now what?” I truly think that if street harassment were met with violence instead of fear it would probably dissipate pretty fucking quick. If harassing a woman on the street no longer meant an exercise of power over someone but instead meant you would get your ass beat? Pretty sure men would think twice about it.

FIGHT BACK

2011-08-17T19:06:00.000-07:00

Please read

POP SECRET: SMURFS, ETC.

2011-08-05T17:24:00.000-07:00

So, there is a new Smurfs movie coming at us. Some 3-D bullshit. Everyday I ride the bart and I keep seeing this one Smurfs ad. I couldn't find an example of it but all of these things demonstrate my point just fine. Consistently in every ad I can find all the smurfs have expressions ranging from happy to sad to angry to confused except for smurfette, who consistently has what I like to call is a "come hither" look.

I mean, really? Granted, in the original cartoon she's kind of ditzy and flirty, so maybe they're just being consistent? Either way it kind of reminds me of this:

It's a fucking piece of candy. A fucking cartoon. It seems the way to illustrate that this candy is a lady candy or that smurfette is a lady smurf is to make them sexy. To give them bedroom eyes and come hither poses. This is how to signify female with things that in a way lack gender. A piece of candy? A weird blue creature? These things aren't human so in a way they could get away with being genderless, by anthropomorphizing a piece of fucking candy a need for gender assignment is created, and while m&m's and smurfs who are assigned male gender seem to have a range of personalities, female m&m's and smurfs only get sexy. This causes a conflation of these two seperete ideas, sexy and female, to the point that they become interchangeable. Also interesting to note that in both of these cases we only get one female gender assignment in a world full of male gender assignments.

POP SECRET: TRACY MORGAN KRAMER'D?

2011-06-10T15:15:00.000-07:00

So apparently Tracy Morgan pulled a royal fuck up in Nashville the other night. While there is no video footage (as of this posting) audience members report:

several people walked out after Morgan said homosexuality was a choice because god doesn't make mistakes. Morgan also riffed that if his son ever told him he was gay, he would stab him to death.

The internet is abuzz with comparisons to this lovely incident featuring Michael Richards:

Yes. These things are fucked, no denying, no belittling. Fucked. And while the outcry over these moments could be heard around the world, while organizations condemned these actors and they in vane release public apologies for their wrong doings, the narcissist in me can only think, don't famous people talk to/about women like this all the fucking time?

where is the outcry over women being referred to casually as "bitch" in the mainstream media?

while this example doesn't fit the bill of "stand up comedian says some fucked up shit" it exists as an example of horribly sexist and abusive things being spouted forth towards a public audience with LITTLE OR NO BACKLASH AT ALL.

This is why. While I am definitely not trying to belittle the supreme fuckedness of racism and homophobia, the prevalence of unchecked sexism alive and well in the public sphere is astounding. Racism and homophobia are also thriving in the public sphere and slip by our radars on a regular basis. Public outcries over these types of things in general do not come often enough. However, racism and homophobia seem to be easier and more of a "sexy" issue to take up than sexism. It still takes bravery to call someone out on these things. What I mean is while calling someone a faggot or nigger on national TV is met with an outcry, calling a woman a bitch in this same forum seems to elicit a shrug and a muttered whatever. American culture is a rape culture. Everything from magazine ads to stand up comedy, whether simply representing a woman as a disembodied leg or casually and consistently referring to Sarah Palin as a dumb bitch (don't get me wrong, I do not like her, but the amount that it seems totally ok to casually refer to her as a bitch? fucked.) is a representation of not only how little women are respected but also how normalized it is to treat women as subhuman. Even the way women are talked about in major media outlets. All of these groups experience deeply embedded fuckedness at every turn. All of these groups experience harassment while trying to go about our daily lives. However, the language that is casually used and accepted by the greater general public when talking about and talking to women is mind blowing. We exist in culture that so deeply views women as below human decency that it becomes fucking par for the course. It's normal. It's been normalized for journalists to refer to women as bitches.

POP SECRET: WHO RUNS THE WORLD?

2011-05-25T21:51:00.000-07:00

When I first saw the new Beyonce video my gut reaction was dislike. It’s a breed of hollow feminism that doesn’t really mean much, and if anything is deeply damaging. Belting out girl power from the top of the hills doesn’t mean much. It’s feminism watered down to the point that it’s not even making a point or an arguement. It's not really a threat to the status quo at all, instead it’s the type of harmless girl power message that lulls ladies, women and girls into a false sense of power over our lives – something that we don’t have at all. I’m not trying to wallow in victimhood here but really, yelling girl power is nothing more than a marketing ploy. A over-arching theme of the song seems to be that the way women have, maintain and gain power is via our bodies. GREAT.

Here is someone who articulates this idea a little better than me. Watch:

POLY STYRENE REST IN PEACE.

2011-04-27T15:02:00.000-07:00

When I discovered punk I believe my very first albums were CD copies of Never Mind the Bullocks and Germ-Free Adolescents. To me X-Ray Spex was this perfect mix of punk thought and pop slickness. Accessable enough for my pop culture brain wash but dangerous enough to lead me to the edge of rebellion. Putting into words all my teenage freakouts along with simultaneously pushing me to a point of questioning the very forces that influenced and brought about those very teenage freakouts. In the interviews I could dig up with her I found another teenage girl that was angry about the same things and excited about the same things, someone who was possibly awkward socially like I was, shy but articulate, and could step on stage and be transformed into everything I ever wanted to be myself. She was at the same time someone I could relate to and someone i wanted to strive to be. Poly Styrene wrote lyrics that questioned beauty standards and corporations and identity, she paved the way for other POC lady punks, she did what she wanted when she wanted and overall has felt like a huge influence not only in my life but on the lives of all punks. I will be forever grateful.

As a women the GOP hates me.

2011-03-26T14:09:00.000-07:00

It’s really starting to feel like end times. If you haven’t noticed, the fucking GOP hatred of women has been ramping up in the past couple months. It ranges from the absurd to well… the absurd. The big ticket right now, which by the time you are reading this has most likely been voted on, is a piece of legislation that would entirely defund Planned Parenthood. We’ve all had the experience (or at least known someone who has) of having two dollars to our names and needing birth control/a pap smear/an abortion/medical attention/ whatever and relying on the fact that Planned Parenthood can provide us with those things on a sliding scale. The defunding of Planned Parenthood would (duh) hit poor women the hardest.
I know our collective dislike for authority has a tendency to manifest itself in a hands off approach a lot of the time. A refusal to work with the shitsystem. I get it, but at the same time I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, disengaging your voice makes the shit ring of the collective GOP’s voice seem even louder. The rallying cry from the GOP is to defund Planned Parenthood because they provide abortion – and I will get to the ridiculousness and hatred inherent in an anti-choice stance, but really to want defund Planned Parenthood because of the abortion card doesn’t make sense seeing as that is 3% of what they do. 3%! Three fucking percent. Oh, not to mention that the abortions provided by Planned Parenthood are not funded by federal money in the first fucking place. So, yes technically in a round about way but not really at all taking away federal funding from Planned Parenthood will make it harder for them to provide abortions, but with that fucking round about blow comes a loss of so many things: birth control, STD screenings, breast exams, pap smears, the list goes on. Oh, and if you didn’t know, a pap smear is a test for pre-cancerous cells – therefore women who can’t afford this simple screening stand the risk of dying of cervical cancer. The fact that there are people in the world who believe that women dying because they can’t afford a pap smear is better than federally funding an institution that also happens to provide abortions boggles my fucking mind and honestly should boggle everyones fucking mind. Though it’s real clear that this is about trying to limit access to abortion, the GOP is attempting to represent these cuts as a way to reduce the deficit. The fact that denying affordable and accessible health care to ladies, women and girls could somehow be deemed an area where funding could be cut again boggles my fucking and again should boggle everyones fucking mind.
And really, being anti-choice is the stupidest fucking thing on the planet. One in three women will have an abortion in their lifetime, this plants abortion firmly on the grounds of a normal medical procedure, something that is in fact an ordinary part of women's reproductive health care needs. Not to mention that it’s my fucking body. On top of that I really believe that anti-choicers are truly more interested in controlling women then saving fetuses. If they were really interested in ending abortions they should work to make birth control more accessible rather than less and on top of that make sex ed comprehensive rather than don’t do it because god will hate you or whatever. But really, I should be the only person in control of my uterus. Get the fuck out. For reals.
But guess what! The current flow of hatred towards women doesn’t end there, the war on women doesn’t end there. All that is only what is happening on a federal level. Recently, a bill in South Dakota would have made it legal to kill abortion providers, the wording has since been changed so it no longer legalizes murder but this was only done after a public outcry over it. Georgia introduced a bill that would reclassify “victims” as “accusers” for such heavily gendered crimes as rape, stalking, and domestic violence but not change the language for things like burglary or robbery. Already rape victims are continually discredited and in general not believed, this change in semantics would just further that trend. Oh, and Georgia doesn’t stop there. There is currently a bill working it’s way through the system in Georgia that would illegalize miscarriage, meaning that a women could be charged with murder for having a fucking miscarriage, even worse Georgia is not alone on this, as of this writing there is an identical bill in Utah that is only waiting on a governor signature to become fucking law there. Ohio is currently holding debates on a piece of legislation dubbed the heartbeat bill, which would make abortion illegal if there is a detectable fetal heartbeat. Heartbeats can be detectable as early as nine weeks, interestingly enough before a fetus even really has a heart or blood to pump through it, along with this lots of women don’t even know they are pregnant at nine weeks, thus essentially making abortion illegal. But, oh wait! It gets even better! Recently during debates on this bill a FUCKING FETUS WAS BROUGHT IN TO TESTIFY. I shit you not, something that doesn’t even possess a fucking mouth to speak with yet was brought in to testify in a fucking court of law. As in the court had a woman come in who was nine weeks pregnant to do a sonogram in court and demonstrate the fetal heartbeat at nine weeks (they couldn’t find it, apparently it’s really hard to find because, you know, it barely even exists at that point.)
Even just thinking about these things is a fucking nightmare but THESE THINGS ARE FUCKING REAL. Everything I just talked about is a fucking fact. Even more terrifying is that these things could become actual legislation, not just things that might become our daily reality… no, even worse these things are fast on their way to becoming our daily fucking reality. The defunding of Planned Parenthood already passed the house, that’s basically half way there. No more fucking around or being apathetic or even just taking shit for granted. While yr asleep at the wheel and rebelling against the US government by checking out and not participating the shit storm strikes even harder. The basic human right of having access to affordable basic health care is being taken away. This will result in women dying for no better reason than the republicans feel it’s better to fund fucking Nascar then provide health care for half the fucking population. As we fucking speak. Right now. This is why talking to your reps counts. This is why working to vote the reps that you want into the shit system counts. This is also why I hate the fucking government but I will not sit silently as they fucking get away with it.

UPDATE:

South Dakota has just signed a bill into law that not only requires a 72 hour waiting period (the longest of any state) but also requires women to go to PREGNANCY HELP CLINICS. If you didn’t already know pregnancy help clinics are those fake abortion clinics that spew out falsified information such as abortions cause breast cancer or abortions make you infertile. They instead coerce/pressure women into going through with their unwanted pregnancies.

Representatives and supporters of the bill are claiming that Planned Parenthood does not dispense enough information about choices but simply coerces women into getting abortions and that going to pregnancy help centers, centers which are well known for distributing scientifically false information, would be better at informing women of their choices.

This isn’t surprising coming from a state that has already tried twice to completely ban abortions and only has one clinic statewide that even performs abortions and even then they are only done once a week by doctors flown in from out of state.

Women should consider South Dakota a hostile state. This state hates women. This state does not believe women are worthy of making decisions regarding their own bodies. Even worse, the rest of the states are all moving in the same direction. It seems almost everyday that new absurd funding is introduced that not alone restricts women further and acts as though we lack the ability to make choices for ourselves but endangers the health of every women. The GOP is literally giving women a death sentence. Even things at a federal level, seem to be becoming increasingly hateful towards women.

I am so angry. I don't even know what to do.

A quick thought-

2010-12-15T00:22:00.000-08:00

So recently that thing I wrote about money and compliance with corporations and such got put up on Maximum RocknRolls blog (it was also in the mag) and I got a lot of feedback mainly consisting of "YOU ARE WRONG!!!!!!!!" and a lot of "well, what do you suggest we do?"

A similar thing happened when I wrote the critique of tom tom the editor contacted me and started treating me for a bit like I was the unified voice of the punk feminist underground.

In both of these instances (and in other random ones) people expect me to have answers and treat my opinion as fact (whether they think these "facts" are true or false.)

I can see why people may see my opinions as fact because I avoid saying things like "I think" or "I believe" - this habit is intentional, at some point in my ramblings on I noticed I was starting things with "I think" or "I feel" - basically discrediting my own opinions in a way - and decided it was bullshit.

As far as people expecting me to have all the answers or solutions- I really don't for the most part. The types of things I talk about are hideously complex and no one person should have the final say on it. My writing is basically a list of ideas and further questions that those ideas bring up.

As I've said before I'm just trying to get people talking. I have no desire to be the end all and be all of punk feminist thought. Nor should I be. Nor should anyone.

What's the current state of feminism in punk rock?

2010-12-06T23:42:00.000-08:00

please discuss.

This was on a blog that was part of an art project for SFMOMA a bit ago.

2010-11-28T20:41:00.000-08:00

Free the art.

I was at a punk show the other day and I was talking to another girl about this and that. She found out I worked at SFMOMA, and commented that the price of admission for the Frida Kahlo exhibit rendered the exhibit inaccessible to most people. I agreed, but added that they (the museum) had to pay the bills somehow and that the steep price of the Kahlo also in a way makes it more possible to have exhibits that aren’t blockbusters, things that are less popular, things that will turn people on who didn’t give a shit about the Kahlo. I’m bringing this up because I want to talk about accessibility and art, and by accessibility I am referring both to the idea of how much it costs to see art along with the idea of being intimidated by art.

These two ideas feed into each other. The fact that modern art costs money, both in admission to museums and the price to buy a piece of art, puts it on a pedestal of being something for the upper class. Because of this elevation the general public sees it as something above them, something to be consumed only by rich and/or “smart” people. This is totally detrimental to society as a whole. Along with the financial barrier, the lack of education is a problem too. Art is not an everyday thing in this country. It’s something that you supposedly can only learn and understand through an expensive education, and in public schools art classes and after school art education is swiftly disappearing due to budget cuts (why this country sees spending money on wars and bailouts more important than education is beyond me). Kids are cut off from another form of catharsis they could use, and then end up feeling like art is not for people like them.

So this creates this intimidating atmosphere around art, this feeling of “this isn’t for me” Ok, I don’t have an art education. This could possibly be bullshit, but it’s what I think. People feel that they have to understand modern art, like be able to translate the symbolism and references and have this deep analysis of a piece. If they can’t they are dumb and uncultured. I cannot count the times people have looked at me sadly and said, “I don’t get it” and walked away feeling sorry for themselves. Really, when people devote all their energy to the search for that intellectual reaction its just ruining the chance for a gut reaction to burst through. The term modern art encompasses so much, and there is so much there, and believing that since you don’t have an art education, or that because you don’t hang around artists or frequent openings that it can’t be something you do or that inspires you is a total lie.

Here are some ideas on that. Non-profits mostly run on donor money, trustee money, private funding in general. This thought would call for some slim times but would be so important in the end. Donors, use that money to lobby the government. Use it to lobby for free/affordable and accessible art education. Use it to make museums free and easily accessible. This may sound completely naïve and possibly way too hopeful, but if you give everyone access to education, access to enriching cultural institutions (like museums), access to many different forms of catharsis, everything and anything from painting to football, I think the amount of crime would drop, I think things just might get more efficient, people might be happier, feel more fulfilled with life, spend time with their family in museums rather than in front of the TV. Going to the Academy of Sciences wouldn’t be a special occasion, but where you enjoy spending your time most weekends. Everyone would learn more, higher education and access to all these things could be universal. Frustrations could be eased through getting them all out by playing basketball or spinning some clay or doing whatever makes you feel better. Everyone would have the same chance. And can you imagine the long long-term outcome? The variety of things coming at us? Can imagine what will happen with all this education and accessibility? A huge variation of new and different voices, from all walks of life, new and different ideas that you and I may have never thought of but that little girl who learned about color theory at her public school, maybe she’ll think of it.

PLEASE KEEP GOING INTO THE STREETS.

2010-11-06T12:54:00.000-07:00

AN OPEN LETTER.

2010-11-03T16:39:00.001-07:00

Dear punks-

I know that a lot of you don’t vote, and I understand and agree with most of yr reasons. Most politicians aren’t there for us and the shitsystem is corrupt and fucked. I know. I don’t want to participate in the shitsystem but it’s so big and so terrible that it’s hard to avoid.

Yesterday I voted – I have always voted, in fact when I turned 18 my mom let me skip school and we went to the polls together. I have always hated the idea of participating in the shitsystem, but at the same time its going to run with or without me, and if my semi-radical voice isn’t there it will continue to move further away from what I want/need my country to be.

I live in San Francisco. On the ballot this time around was prop L, also known as the sit/lie law. Basically it bands sitting or lying on sidewalks between 7am and 11pm. Not only does it target homeless people but it also pushes us further out of the streets and further back into our homes (if we are lucky enough to have them). It further allows police control of public spaces. We are letting them legislate us further towards a brave new world. Ironically this was created and pushed by Haight Ashbury businesses – the Haight now being a tourist trap full of fishermans wharf style businesses that rely on out of towners trying to grab a piece of the long over summer of love – the summer of love being a period of time in the Haight that came about exactly because of people congregating in the streets.

Prop L is one step closer to the disneyfication of our city. Instead of a mecca of weirdos and gays and artists and free thinkers our city is quickly becoming a place for rich white yuppies and tourists. We are becoming dulled out and homogenized and just another clean safe and sanitized place to buy shit. We’re becoming a big ol’ artisan wal-mart. The disenfranchised are getting pushed further underneath and out of the way and out of sight while big business continues to get their way more and more. I know that there are enough punks, weirdos, and generally people who have been fucked with just for existing to have shut prop L down. I also know that a lot of those people don’t participate because it feels so futile. I understand. But if you stop talking they have an easier time taking things away.

This is why I repeat again – punks while we search for ways to dismantle the shitsystem and work towards a different system and live our lives in the most fair and just ways possible, please keep one eye on the road.

Don’t let the bastards take away our streets.

xoxom.magic

ON SCREAMING

2010-10-28T16:32:00.000-07:00

I had been living with my parents (it happens to all of us) in the house I grew up in for about six months. I continued with all my creative pursuits, even under the ever-present gaze of mom-eye, who is well intentioned, but feeling like you’re constantly being watched, having someone asking questions and making constant suggestions kind of dampens it. I am being a total brat. I also watch a lot of Oprah with my mom. At some point my parents left me alone for a long weekend and I was excited to have the house to myself. Their car pulled away and I piled out all my instruments, recording devices and pedals into the hallway and started to record a bunch of vocal tracks. As I sat there screaming into the microphone in the quiet suburban home of my childhood, I started to wonder how far the sound traveled. Could people walking by hear it? Could the neighbors hear it? Would people think something was wrong? Like someone full getting murdered next-door? At the same time, all those questions arising seemed weird because my music is super angry for the most part, so it was weird and funny to realize I was worried that people would hear it and think of it as scared girl screaming, when in reality what I was doing was completely full of rage.

I closed all the doors to the hallway to make kind of a makeshift vocal booth, but also, it was the only place in the house I could think of that didn’t have a window or a wall that had the outside world on the other side. I didn’t want the neighbors to hear me scream. Just writing that sentence sounds creepy, but in the context of the songs it was completely different. The same thing happened while I was recording vocal tracks in the basement in my house in Olympia, I always made sure that if anyone was in the house they knew what I was doing, and I would time it so the likelihood of someone coming home in the middle of it was low, and I stuffed pillows into the windows to dampen whatever sounds escaped outside. But there were a couple times when I was alone in the basement screaming my face off in the middle of the night where I wondered if the bums who slept in our backyard could hear me, and what they thought.
All of this just made me start to think about the difference between fear and anger, and for me I was in a weird place where what I meant was one thing, what people saw me doing at shows was different, and if people could hear me recording, which would be basically screaming without the music context, you know, what they thought. It also makes a difference that I sound pretty obviously like a girl, and using something that can easily be misunderstood as a woman in the midst of total terror (me screaming) for purposes of entertainment (music), was and is a really creepy and fucked up idea. For me, in my head, it was and is all angry and aggressive, and it was weird to think about how anger and fear sounded the same, and it was really only the context that sorted it out.

Punk rock has always been host to women screeching or screaming, along with noise; think Oaxacan, better to see you with, Yoko Ono, Diamonda Galas, Babes in Toyland (who are more obviously in the context of anger, the rest of these examples stretching that context). Noise and experimental music usually spends more time stretching the idea of screaming, like figuring out what your vocal chords can do, or implementing it as just a sound rather than something attached to an emotional state. So I was thinking about how the female scream is typically seen as fear instead of anger, but in music, or at least the stuff I listen to, it tends to be more obviously angry, but the female scream in music can easily be translated as angry because of lyrical content. But even in the context of music, like when you’re standing there watching a band, the female scream can be disturbing, creepy, and scary. For example, when I was in the punks, which is a noise improve band with a lineup that morphed constantly for years, there were a good number of times where I was the only girl out of all the bands playing a show, or sometimes there would be like, one other girl either in my band or in another band. Not only was it kind of alienating and a bummer to be a minority in such a dude-aggressive atmosphere, but also it usually made me really angry that I was the only girl, but that’s kind of a different topic all together. When I found myself being the only girl on-stage I always made a point to have what I was doing to come off as strong and aggressive rather than passive, I would make a point of climbing upwards, onto an amp or whatever was around, to scream. I wanted to make sure I was above everyone in the room, so I had an aesthetic that was obviously not passive. I always made a point of doing that when I was in the girl minority because the aesthetic of an all dude band rocking out while I rolled on the floor and screamed was and is really gross to me. I’ve seen bands do that here and there and it just feels like a visual of rape (not to belittle or simplify rape at all, what I mean to say is the sound of a woman screaming over a ton of harsh noise coupled with a visual of a woman on her knees or laying on the ground with a bunch of dudes standing over her doing that rocking out herky jerky thing strikes me as an abstract rape scene). The times I’ve ended up watching that happen it’s double-creep at noise shows because they tend to be male dominated audience-wise too, and it always made me super uncomfortable, like a whole room is just watching a woman be assaulted, but it sounds really cool so its ok, right? Right. Not to say that the combo of lady screaming and dudes playing instruments never works. This is mainly about the aesthetic of it. It doesn’t seem as weird or uncomfortable on recordings, and it doesn’t seem as creepy when the female screaming is dominating the visual. For example, almost every time I’ve seen Mutators, which is two dudes and a lady screamer, the lead girl is nearly attacking the audience for the whole time and being really aggressive in general, and it’s just mind-blowing and powerful, or with magik markers, which has morphed into one lady and some dudes here and there, but Elisa always beams this total vibe of being the leader and having control over the entire situation.

At the same time, a group of girls screaming, or one girl screaming with a bunch of ladies playing instruments, always feels like an aural manifestation of community, especially when it turns into call and response, like with Mika Miko or New Bloods. But then again, these bands are more punk, and the shows I’ve been to tend to have way more ladies in the crowd, and it tends to be way more about community and supportiveness. All my dealings with noise, especially harsh noise, the shows tend to have more aggression in the air and bro’s drinking beer and telling fucked up jokes through their mega beards, I never felt like that arena was ever really supportive.
So now I’ve sat around and thought about context, and what really is the difference between fear and anger, and is there a biological difference, so of course I went and researched it. Not a lot of studies on the connections between screaming, context, and emotional states. I found one ancient book that tested some lobe of the brain, and it demonstrated that screaming out of fear and out of anger basically made the same party happen in yr. brain. I also looked into the history of screaming in music, reading about anything from the “cookie monster” singing style of metal to tuvan throat singing (which isn’t really screaming… but)

So we return to my own ponderings and opinions. I’m not saying that ladies should always keep themselves in check and make sure not to pull any passive screaming moves, ladies on stage in any form is important, and we should put as much energy as possible into pushing ourselves creatively rather than spending all our time trying to be PC or not passive or non-offensive or whatevs. However, I totally think it’s worth girl screamer time to take a moment and look at context and aesthetic and figure out what it means to us, and if that’s what we’re trying to convey. An example: there was this one time I was performing as Marissa Magic, and there was one song I didn’t play that had basically a chorus of just screaming, and at the end of the set my friend requested that I scream cuz I didn’t play that song, I did, and then talked to the crowd about how it was really weird to be just screaming in a skimpy outfit in front of a crowd of people. I also think that girl community and support within the noise scene would be cool. I’ve mumbled amongst other noise girls about it, and here and there there seems to be a comp (thanks marlo!) or a show dedicated to lady noise, but there should be more.

PRINT VS. THE INTERNET.

2010-09-26T11:42:00.000-07:00

Long ago (probably like a year or so ago) I was trying to write stuff that I planned to put together for my next zine. Slowly but surely, all the things I wrote and all the ideas that I intended to use for the zine ended up here. It's sad in a way, I like the idea of having something tangible, but at the same time I kind of like this better.

When I was writing stuff for endless bummer (the failed zine) I kept feeling like it was too much of my own voice, like the only thing coming across was the opinion of a middle class white girl - there was no challenge to my ideas, no reason for me to question or reevaluate them. It was feeling like arguing in a vacuum. Like a discussion with a void.

Though I really like the tangible/artifact aspects of print media, I really love the potential discussion times that can occur with blogs. One of my favorite posts here was the critique of tomtom magazine, not because it launched me into weird temporary obscure blog fame but because it had the most discussion, it had the most feedback, it had the most people listening and reacting to each other. This is what I was missing from writing zines.

recent column I wrote for MRR.

2010-09-16T23:30:00.000-07:00

Punk nostalgia is ridiculous. Punk puts so much emphasis in youth culture- functioning under the idea that the youth generation has the freshest and most original ideas – implying that once we pass the youth stage, as we age, we start taking more of a note of punk history; partly due to the natural gathering of information as we exist in the world, partly because as we age we become a facet of recent history; and because of this taking note we become nostalgic and stuck in “the good old days” or look even further back in history to times before us and romanticize and whimper about things not being as cool now as they were in a time when we didn’t exist. But do the youth really have the newest most revolutionary ideas? Aren’t they just as vulnerable to the allure of the voidoids and getting trapped in the mire of ripped off stooges riffs? Within the act of record and ephemera collecting and documentation of scenes is the exact downfall of punk. As we try to give our pasts validity by documenting our own punk histories while giving so much weight and idolization to the punks before us we create a culture of nostalgia rather than what punk should be – a culture of the new and undiscovered and radical and revolutionary. As we look back to punks past we morn the loss of cheap rent and easy disability checks instead of figuring out how to do with what we have. At the same time, imagining a world void of any historical documentations of cultures outside of the mainstream is fucking depressing. But as we attempt to document our own histories they begin to be noticed and of course therefore appropriated by the mainstream…

With the supposed current “resurgence” of riot grrl all we are getting now of that particular scene is a weird nostalgic portrait of riot grrl that romanticizes the shallow aspects such as fashion while concurrently demonizing the politics of riot grrl for catering to the white and middle class. This “resurgence” is mainly a media construct and completely skips and denies all of the positive amazing things that arose and exist because of riot grrl. All we get is this shallow image of an angry grrl in a mini skirt who is wrong or bad. again. It goes straight from image to shaming, something that the mainstream media does to all women all the fucking time. Image/shame. Second wave bra-burning straight to only being concerned with the liberation of white housewives? Forget abortion rights, title IX, etc…what about the virgin/whore dichotomy? Slut-shaming anyone?

So mainstream media once again picks up on riot grrl and tells you how to dress like Allison Wolfe or do your make-up like Kathi Wilcox. People start being like “remember the nineties? They were pretty rad! But riot grrls ACTUAL politics? ACTUAL thoughts? All wrong.” Again, reducing women to image (object) and then shaming them for their actual politics and thoughts rather than any type of critique, a complete lack of pointing out the good along with the bad. This is not a real picture. You think Ladyfest would have existed without riot grrl? Clitfest? Rock Camp for Girls? A lot of those grrls and queers that are in amazing bands now picked up guitars in the first place because they were finally told that not only they could but they should. Yes, there were flaws in riot grrl, but instead of writing it off why don’t we look at those flaws and figure out how to remedy them for the new revolution?

History is not something that should be repeated or romantized – we should learn from it. Maybe you’ve paid attention to my writing – maybe you haven’t – but the main kind of “write –off “ that I get about my writing is that it’s just some “riot grrl” stuff. One thing this brings up is that fact that that punk movement – riot grrl - was so integral to so many grrls and queers I know and it tends to be written off by the punk patriarchy, just like “oh the grrls are whining again” –first of all, fuck you – the reason I’m calling out this bullshit (sexism, racism, homophobia, etc. in the punk scene) is because it’s still true, it’s still fucking true – these things still need to be said and called out (and what kind of bullshit is that in and of itself? That these issues still exist?).

Another thing is the term riot grrl – don’t fucking call me that – I can see how what riot grrl did and what I do definitely has strong connections and that I most likely would not be thinking/writing/existing they way I do without it, but really, that term is 20 fucking years old. I don’t want to be known as the next Kathleen Hanna – I want to be marissa magic – I don’t want my band to be the next bikini kill - I want to be an entirely new thing and an entirely new revolution- not a re-hash. Riot grrl is so integral, I’m not saying I don’t want to be associated with riot grrl because it’s useless – quite the contrary – it’s just that it’s already been done. I don’t mean the work they were doing is done – just why are we repeating ourselves, why are we in a rut? That scene was amazing and important and I think it should be documented and remembered and critiqued – though it had faults it changed my life, most people I know feel the same. Same thing with punk in general - punk –a term that is NEARLY 50 YEARS OLD – it’s integeral to my life but I feel like we’ve got bogged down – too much talking about the good old days – how rent was cheap and you could actually live on general assistance and material things weren’t as important and drag queens and punks went to all the same things and we were all freaks together and all that romantiziced nostalgia - I love it and I’m not gonna trash my flipper record and it will have an influence on my current thoughts and actions but I have no interest in trying to re-create it – not interested and on top of that it’s not possible to re-create the 70s or the early 90s or whatever was your favorite era, it’s just not possible. The world is different and we’re different. The best thing anyone ever said to me was you have to do whatever you can with whatever you have RIGHT NOW. What do we have now? What needs to be said now? Now lets just fucking do it. Either you give it a new name or a new face – either you speed up chuck barry riffs and put on that old leather jacket and re-name it punk or you call it punk and trash the guitars and get a keyboard. We’ve become complacent, waiting for ownership of the right guitar or a legit show space or a way to go on tour without completely burning through all our money and fuck it. Can we change the world? Does that matter?

The point is is that documentation is ragingly important but also has so much potential to completely ruin us. I wanna know where I came from but I don’t want to completely be what I came from. I don’t wanna stay home and moan about how great things used to be. I want to look at history and look at the things that worked and figure out how to change and apply those things to now. I want to look at the flaws and the faults and to remedy and avoid those things. When all the positive aspects of a past movement are forgotten and denied I want to remember that they are wrong. When the past is romanticized and reduced to nostalgia I want to remember they are wrong

POP SECRET: THE RUNAWAYS

2010-09-06T14:22:00.000-07:00

So, I finally saw The Runaways movie.

I fucking loved it. Here are my thoughts:

Hollywood gives us fairytales. They give us fairytales of weird ugly men winning the hearts of beautiful young giggly girls. They give us fairytales of girls giving up their own dreams and goals in order to be with prince charming. They give us tales of ugly ducklings (i.e. girls with glasses) who magically transform into swans (i.e. girls without glasses). They give us fairytales of heroic action figures that never die and never do wrong. Sometimes we get biopics that highlight all the triumphs and hardships of some somebody, but really it's still the fairytale version of some somebodies life.

Whether the story is based on real life or not, it’s still totally fake. Which is why even though The Runaways movie is “based on fact” it’s still a fairytale. It’s still birthed from the loins of Hollywood. It’s still just as fake as any other movie coming from there. Going to a mainstream movie and expecting the truth is like eating carob as chocolate substitute. It’s just not and it never will be. If you take the basic heteronormative fairytale love story; girl meets boy, they fall in love, there is a complication, complication is resolved, boy and girl together happily ever after- and apply it to the runaways movie then it instantly turns into something truly radical. Think about it, the innocent (virginal) princess longing for prince charming is replaced by a moody rebellious lesbian; becoming a rockstar replaces falling in love with prince charming; the breaking up of The Runaways is the complication and Joan Jetts solo career stands in for the boy+girl happily ever after part.

The movie really managed to fuck with every Hollywood love story ever. Keep in mind, this is a review of the movie, completely denying the reality of The Runaways and only paying attention to what happens in the movie. Joan Jett dreams of rock stardom and she actually achieves it, mostly on her own accord. Cherie Currie, who was portrayed in the beginning as the misfit virginal blonde, the innocent princess, the ugly duckling, basically the character that traditionally gets the mega happy ever after didn’t get the mega happy ever after, she got the ok ending. In the end when she calls Joan at the radio show it isn’t portrayed as a pathetic turn of events, it’s just where her life has brought her. She thought she wanted that rebel rockstar life but she wasn’t cut out for the actuality of it. And that’s ok. In the end the moody rebel gets the fairytale ending, but instead of it being boys and marriage it’s guitars and a hit single. How fucking cool is that?

And even though Cherie doesn’t get the fairytale ending she still exists and she still figures out her life through relying on herself. The innocent princess walks away from a music career because she refuses to be abused. Cherie, who in the beginning yearns for the rockstar life and puts up a tough front realizes that’s not the life she wants and rebels by walking away from it. She grows into the tough facade by giving it up. Yes, it’s true that after she walks out of the studio in the movie she basically hit’s rock bottom but she does bounce out of it in the movie and continues on with her life according to her rules.

And though historically Kim Fowley is thought of as the creator and controller of The Runaways, and in the movie it seems like there was an attempt to portray him as so, it fails. In the movie he seems less like a genius svengali and more like a total cartoonish prick and in the end, THEY DIDN’T NEED HIM. In the end, THEY CONTROLLED THEIR OWN DESTINY. Whether it was walking out of a recording session or starting a solo career they were the ones with the real power. The girls were the ones with the real power.

Just the pure fact that the only male character with more than three lines of dialogue in the entire movie comes off as a total joke is amazing. He almost seems useless to the point of being a total burden. It’s like the entire point of having him in the movie is for nothing but comic relief. When you start looking at hollywood movies through the lens of the bechdel test or even just the general lens of feminism you realize/confirm the insane ways of hollywood movies. First of all, all the main characters are girls, second of all, their goals do not include men and the majority of their conversations don't even mention men (or love interests in general for that matter), third, the one dude in the picture is rendered useless. Really, for a hollywood movie it's basically unheard of.

And then theres the girls’ sexual awakening. All the talk of liking girls, teaching each other how to jack-off, fantasizing about ladies and then actual lesbian sex wasn’t presented to please the male gaze, it never came off as exploitive or gratuitous but instead was presented as just another aspect of their lives. It actually came off as the most truthful aspect of the movie. Most of the time lesbian action in hollywood movies is entirely constructed for the pleasure of a male audience rather than the pleasure of the actual characters.

In the end The Runaways is a movie about female desire. It’s a hollywood fairytale with elements that I actually relate to. I loved it.

WHAT WE DO IS SECRET???

2010-08-01T22:47:00.000-07:00

One of the most consistent things I hear in interviews with bands is “if money comes at us we won’t refuse it” or “I would like to live off the band... without compromising anything of course” as if money and fame is some crazy force that just plops into your lap suddenly. Something that you just start making because you exist on the planet and you play a guitar in public. Right? RIGHT? Even if this were to somehow just magically happen – getting a hunk of money for your music without compromising it at all, what does that mean then?

What it sets up is a lifestyle of living off of your music – a lifestyle that you then have to maintain, or find yourself wanting to maintain, somehow. So how to maintain it? This is the line where yr music ceases to be made for pure catharsis or pure passion or for the community or for the kids or whatever – it’s being made ultimately for a paycheck. Yeah, you might tell yourself/say it’s with the best intentions and that you are in no way compromising but ultimately you are trying to pay rent. You need that money to pay rent. You then have to produce a product that is at least more likely to make that money. Right?

How does this really benefit you? Once something works, some song you wrote gives you a little dough – is it fun/interesting/worthwhile to repeat yourself? Is this what you wanted to do? Why did you start the band in the first place? To make money or to get that out of you?

But more importantly how does this benefit the community? How does you paying yr rent benefit everyone? Instead of trying to make the next album of the year rating from pitchfork or hustling/promoting yr shit all day in order to stay in the limelight, in order to boost yr sales or whatever why not put that energy towards demanding universal healthcare? or volunteering at rock camp? or making music that is challenging and dangerous? something, whatever it is, that helps everyone around you? When it comes down to it, living off your art is giving into capitalism, giving into consumerism. You may be getting yr message out to kids, but really, in the end yr just producing a product to buy. I realize we exist in a capitalist society and it does cost money to be in a band, I’m not saying it’s possible or even logical to never accept money for being in a band – but when it becomes the main way to pay your personal bills you’ve put yrself in a weird space above your peers, you’ve alienated yrself from the community.

I read this book (Unmarketable by Anne Elizabeth Moore) that talked to artists who ended up doing art for corporate ad campaigns – their reasoning tended to be a lot of “I did it to be able to afford to move to new york” and "this allowed me to quit my day job and spend more time in the studio" and the like. This is selfish. This is aiding in the corporate appropriation of outside art – not to benefit the community at large but in order to benefit only you. No one else. This is not punk.

So where along the line does “selling out” occur?

I believe in ending up in a situation where all the sudden your band is making enough money to fully live off of – sometimes these things do just happen - but then what? It’s a slippery slope - Guaranteed that lifestyle of living off yr music “without compromising it” won’t last unless you make it last – meaning, altering what you do – even if it’s ever so slightly – in order to continue how you are existing; turning it into a situation where “not compromising yourself” ceases to be not altering what your music is but becomes about not altering your living situation; the fact that you don’t need a job and you can devote all yr time music.

But also even the moment you start seeing music as a career option some part of you begins to steer your art in that direction. Consciously or subconsciously there is an effort to make things commercially viable. There is a drive to be part of the shitsystem rather than dismantling it.

Fame and fortune seems to have become a real thing to aspire to in the punk community- an aspiration that no longer seems to eject you from the punk community. At some point selling out was a real uncool thing to do. I was talking to a friend who was saying that he was going to try to use his new found LA connections to get his friends a sitcom on cable television, his reasoning was then at least someone cool was making that money that is just waiting to be made. I understand this idea. Our society fucking runs on materialism and money and it's so huge and overwhelming and seemingly impossible to avoid, if somebodies going to get paid why can't it be my friends? I understand but I don't like it.

Accepting corporate sponsorship seems to have become totally acceptable too. Do you think you are somehow duping levis because you got those pants for free? By you wearing those fucking jeans levis is basically out zilch and they just earned a whole lot of street cred from you. You have become a walking ad campaign. On top of that there are only certain punks that have access to that free stuff. Not everyone is going to get a new free pair of shoes, people who have the right connections are going to get that free pair of shoes. It's not dumpster diving.

These things, especially free stuff from corporations, are extremely vague. There isn't really a clear line of what is/what isn't selling out. When it's ok to give in to corporate america/when it's not. What's ok/what's not. I was in a band that scammed a sponsorship from sparks. We would throw "warehouse parties" (punk shows in my basement) and sparks would give us entire flats of the stuff. We would charge at the door with the promise of free unlimited booze and then give all the money we made to the bands. We were paying bands $100+ for basement shows in Olympia. Unheard of. Did I feel like we were scamming sparks? yeah. And I fully realized that people would probably be buying it at the corner store and drinking it anyways. Did I still find it kind of questionable? yeah. So it benefited the community but still felt kind of bullshitty. I still felt like I was supporting sparks's corporate agenda in some way.

Is it important that what we do is secret? Does that still apply? Is it truly important to "not sell out" or is it just a romanticized lifestyle at this point? Should we look at punks getting paid as "well at least someone cool is getting paid"? Is it that the current shitsystem is so entirely unavoidable and we might as well participate?

FUCK CRAFT!... there I said it.

2010-07-29T13:41:00.000-07:00

It’s been a trend for awhile, but crafting continues to kind of bum me out. I like the idea of people making things for themselves – I mean the majority of my clothes are either made by yours truly or at least altered by yours truly. My mother and sister are avid knitters and crocheters. I like the idea of having that kind of connection to the things in your life (i.e. I like the dresses I’ve made for myself because I have a personal connection to them existing and they are exactly what I want, knowing and understanding where things come from) buuutttt….

Consumerisms-

I feel like making things for yrself and making things for friends quickly bleeds into selling things. Though I do like the idea of cottage industry and the idea of grrls taking control of their own finances by starting their own business that consists of products they made, consumerism in general creeps me the fuck out. It’s taking something that is supposed to be fucking with the current shitsystem and making it part of the shitsystem. Whats the point? Yr fabric might be organic and you might be paying yr workers a living wage but that’s still partcipating in the shitsystem rather than destroying it. It’s liberal capitalism (more on that later)

Origin-

So crafting is this thing that was kind of born out of giving women something to do. Basically, giving ladies busy work. Producing decorative things. Things that predominately have little or no use. Things that aren't too creative because they tend to rely on patterns. I like pretty things but it’s much more a case of what does this imply? That girls can only create things that are useless but aesthetically pleasing? In turn implying that ladies are technically useless but nice to look at? FUCK IT.

Indie boys play guitars = indie grrls make crafts-

This is my biggest problem with it. Basically my theory is is that punk(I’m kind of using this term to describe the non-mainstream culture in general)boys are encouraged to start a band, go on tour, record an album and such while punk grrls are encouraged to stay at home and knit a beer coozy. I’m saying it’s a given that boys start bands and grrls do crafts, it’s like, what you’re supposed to do. I think a lot of people don’t get why I get way more excited about grrls playing music than grrls making a potholder, and it’s because grrls are brought up in a system of thought that says they can’t play drums but they are supposed to make a scarf. Therefore, crafts being accepted as something to do with your time that’s non-mainstream and against the man seems kind of bullshit to me because that’s exactly what it really is. To me it’s kind of like punk grrls being sexy in a traditional way but claiming they are fucking with the status quo. They’re not. Sometimes intention doesn’t matter.

And I don’t feel like craft is really about saying “fuck stores, I’m making my own” I feel like it tends to be more on the “isn’t this cuuuuute” or the “this is what I do to keep myself busy” spectrum. So should crafting be recontextualized as a way of sticking it to the man? Though that would be rad, as long as it continues to be such a gendered activity recontextualizing craft into a form of rebellion effectively keeps grrls on the couch with some needle point rather than in the streets rioting.

2010-07-21T09:06:00.000-07:00

it scares the shit out of them and I hope it continues to scare the shit out of them.

AND I QUOTE.

2010-07-20T23:31:00.000-07:00

In a discussion with my good friend Nadia Buyse of movieparty fame we came upon a subject that we land on often: feminist politics in punk. I guess in reality this is a subject that I devote a lot of thought to. She asked again my opinion on why straight white punk boys seem to be for the most part completely apolitical, she being surrounded by the Portland variety, me the San Francisco. I haven’t spent a lot of time in Portland, I kind of hate the rampant culture of liberal capitalism there (more on this later), but what I gather from Nadia is that the dudes there sit around and talk about the bands they are in and the records they own. I get it, I do a lot of that too. In San Francisco on top of this culture of talking about yr band/record collection I get a lot of “but I’m just trying to ROCK AND ROLL” type attitude whenever anything slightly political or debate like comes into conversation.

The reasoning behind this general thought apathy is something I’ve theorized a lot about. This is what I said to Nadia (possibly not verbatim):

“I think it has something to do with when girls get active in punk, like when you go beyond just being a groupie, it's a political act in itself, so we're therefore entering the scene already politicized it’s normal to us and boys come out of the womb and are handed a guitar, they’ve never even had to think about it, and if and when they do think about these things it becomes pretty clear pretty quickly how much agency they have. The liberation of “other” populations involves the process of destroying that patriarchal power structure. Who wants to give up their power?

Officially quoting myself. And what?

LONG OVERDUE.

2010-06-30T21:08:00.000-07:00

A quick note on the oil spill in the gulf coast...

These are the things that result in people making money their highest
priority. The emergency shut off failed and it wasn't even a standard
one, it was a cheaper version. The fucking high muckety mucks at BP put
their paychecks and their advertising budgets at a higher priority than
the safety of their workers and the protection of the fragile land that
they make their millions off of. It is fucking despicable.

MOST. DEPRESSING. MOVIE. EVER.

2010-06-20T18:59:00.000-07:00

I went with my dad to see "Exit through the gift shop" which is the Banksy movie thats kind of about street art. In reality it's more about the corruption that power can bring, appropriation shitiness and herd mentality.

TOTAL SPOILER ALERT.

Basically how it goes is this french dude that films everything falls in with a bunch of street artists and begins filming them. At some point he meets the notorious banksy and begins to follow him around. Then all these street artists are like "wheres the film?" and figure out frenchy isn't really making a film, he's just filming. Banksy tells him to go make some street art and he'll make the film.

What results is Mr. Brainwash, or MBW for short. French dude came up with the moniker and then using all of his wealth (dudes rich) gets an army of kids to churn out a shit ton of street art bullshit for a gigantic art show spectacle thats really big business greed masquerading as underground revolution. It's basically the bumbling MBW bossing around a bunch of fresh out of art school kids to shit out the most derivative pop culture mash up bullshit ever. MBW capitalizes on high arts obsession with street art and sells all of his uncreative turds to a public hungry for a piece of what they are told is the newest "thing". They have interviews of people in line for the art opening drooling on about how revolutionary and rebellious MBW is along with art dealers showing off their collections and commenting that though they own an original Keith Haring they're "not a fan".

It's a total soup of appropriating outsider art and making it into consumer bullshit, the total stupidity and herd mentality of consumers, and watching an art form that is so politically charged deteriorate into a meaningless turd.

Not to say it's a bad movie, it's really good actually. It's just depressing to watch something documenting the watering down, sanitizing and selling of something that started out pretty anti all that rubbish, and then to watch the general public lap up all that squeaky clean slop while heralding it as really important and such.

oh, and BTW, it's a total hoax.

p.s. stay tuned for a talk on the use of street art/guerilla ad campaigns by corporations.

2010-06-18T11:22:00.000-07:00

HOLY FUCKING SHIT.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT.

APOCALYPSE TIME?

AAAANNNNNDDDDD RACIST.

2010-06-10T12:38:00.000-07:00

So, here's a forwarded e-mail I got the other day:

yeah.

So I get a good amount of e-mail forwards from my office mates. Most of them are dumb jokes that play on sexist stereotypes. Some of them are religious. Most of them I kind of shrug off, but this one was really fucked. I found the added "LOL this is funny..." even more disturbing. It's depressing to me that A. these kind of jokes exist in the first place exist and B. people think they are funny.

I wanted to just blow it off. I couldn't. In light of the rumblings in arizona this shit is terrifying to me. Terrifying.

To me it's one thing to get some e-mail forward reminding me that jesus loves me. That's nice that he does. Whatever. Harmless. A little awkward seeing as I'm not religious but harmless. Dumb jokes about sexist stereotypes. Dumb. I don't really get it, but whatever, I can see how some people think it's funny even though I find inane. But blatantly racist stuff? Stuff that is so loaded in todays political climate? Really? It boggles my mind that anyone sees it as entertaining, let alone entertaining enough to feel the need to share it with others.

It's like when SB1070 was first introduced. It made me think about how even though I think that those who are against gay marriage are evil ignorant assholes, I can see the argument, I think it's total bullshit but I can see how people are convinced into believing that, but the thought of believing that SB1070 made sense in even the slightest was appalling to me. Instead of I'm-gonna-be-an-ignorant-dick-and-deny-your-right-to-marry it's I'm-gonna-be-an-ignorant-dick-and-deny-your-right-to-FUCKING-LIVING-IN-THIS-COUNTRY. Your right to not be jailed. Your right to not be deported. And even now at this point, in light of things like this SB1070 has started to become something that I can see how people started believing in it through mass hysteria propaganda like this. You know, "We have to get them, they're KILLING INNOCENT CITIZENS!!!!" It's one thing to stir up racist mass hysteria to further your political agenda, but to yell "spic" from your car as you pass by a KID PAINTING A MURAL AT THEIR SCHOOL? And then for the school to lighten the skin color on the painting because it's TOO CONTROVERSIAL? FUCKING REALLY? REALLY. There are a lot of conservatives and retirees in arizona set in their racist ways sitting in their air conditioned homes saying "it's about time", but telling kids that these people are right and you should have lighter skin is ROYALLY FUCKED. Sometimes fucked culture is scarier than fucked politics.

MIA vs. LADY GAGA vs CHRISTINA AGUILERA

2010-05-28T00:28:00.000-07:00

It’s pretty fucked that the moment there is three talented women in the pop culture spotlight doing interesting and creative things that they must be pitted against each other. The media is all abuzz about who is more controversial? MIA or Lady Gaga? And Christina Aguilera is TOTALLY ripping off Lady Gaga? Right?

I realize that MIA talked shit on Lady Gaga in NME and this may sound like a stretch but, were her comments just contextualized in way that was negative? Could that have been more of a compliment? (cuz you know that MIA is fully aware of the fact that MIA is the shit, so saying someone sounds like her, eh?) And also, the fact that she’s saying that Lady G sounds more like her than she does – well that’s kind of Gaga’s point, isn’t it? Lady Gagas whole thing is appropriation and fucking with all these pop culture ideas and icons – she’s never denied it. Her music is secondary to the image and ideas she’s presenting, she’s stated this in interviews too – that her music is mostly about nothing and that it’s really more about an entire spectacle rather than top forty hits. Gaga wants to continue to have fame and fortune and popularity in order to continue to fund the spectacle, not necessarily to be a rock star. I’m sure it’s exciting and great to have a hit song on the radio but that’s not the point to her, the tour and the epic videos are the point. Letting fans know that they can be a part of pop culture and be total freaks and weirdos at the same time is the point. She’s giving theater nerds a real place on MTV and in mainstream popular culture. MIA on the other hand is fucking pissed and does not give a fuck. Her newest song, Born Free? It’s amazing and completely unexpected and a COMPLETE CAREER SUICIDE. The song is not accessible at all, having that song become a hit would be just as freaky as when “O Superman” became a hit. Top a fucked up song with an extremely violent video that will never be shown widely and you’ve got a one way ticket back to cult obscurity.

M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

MIA is not trying to fund a stage spectacle she’s trying to piss the world off and make us question shit. Not to say that image means nothing to MIA – image is definitely important to her and her style and videos have an extremely specific aesthetic – but they serve a different function. Gaga creates a situation of all these insane and obscure references coming at you at such speed and in turn you end up discovering new things because of it. MIA is trying to get you to question everything and be pissed off about shit that is fucked and to say exactly what is in your head. It sucks that MIA talked shit on Gaga – which is why I like to fantasize that the quote has been pulled out of context, I don’t understand why these women need to compete with each other when they are doing completely different things. Even if they were doing similar things, why is there such a media culture that turns every woman into some demanding diva star and that pits woman against each other? I like to think of things like MIAs shit talking as a product of shitty patriarchy rather than something she deeply believes.

Then there is the media attempts to bait Christina Aguilera and Lady Gaga into a fight. Totally lazy journalism. I mean really? Are we really that bland and dense that we see two blonde women singing pop songs that contain a lot of culture references and of course they are ripping the other off? It’s like a high school full of catty girls. They are both ripping off underground gay culture- something they have both been doing independently for a long time. Christina’s newest video is obviously more of a return to her Xtina phase and a nod to Madonna’s Erotica phase (I mean, remember MADONNA?) more than anything that has to do with Lady G.

I mean when Christina had her comeback performance at the VMA’s the main reaction was “I don’t know… she’s dressed like Lady Gaga…” I mean, really? Cuz she’s blonde and dressed kind of weird? It’s also interesting that someone is being accused of ripping someone off whose ENTIRE SHTICK is appropriation and cultural reference.

All this says to me is that the mainstream media is scared shitless of the idea of interesting, not totally puppet-type female pop stars ruling the airwaves. Just let it happen. Let these ladies go beyond cattiness and competition, don’t start shit that doesn’t exist. Let women be more than a dumb-acting walking virgin/whore complexes. Sheesh.

oh yeah, and then theres this.

OFFICE TIMES.

2010-05-24T19:54:00.000-07:00

I’ve written about this before – not necessarily here but in other forums. I have a pretty straight job. I do office work. I take the time to try to look normal (which I guess actually still I look like a punk.), I tell my co-workers intensely vague things about my personal life when they ask, try to avoid most conversations.

Anyways, I wanted to give a quick rundown of why I work, why I’m ok with working and why I have no desire to live off of my art.

I like having something to do with my time occasionally-
There have been two times in my life since I started working where I didn’t have a job for a significant period of time. Once when I was in college, and once when I lived off unemployment for six months. When I was in college I had somewhere I had to be and had deadlines and assignments and such so it was ok. I’m one of those people that works better when I have too much to do, I get pretty stagnant pretty fast when I have to entertain myself all day everyday. I also get incredibly depressed. Stop leaving my house. When I was living off of unemployment I filled my time in a major way. I went on two national tours, volunteered at an all-ages space and a welfare rights group and along with that I was doing a lot of organizing and activism work. I also felt really useless and depressed for a lot of these times. I realize it’s entirely a shitty social construct that no job = loser but, yeah, it’s pretty ingrained in me. I’m pretty happy with the place I’ve landed in. I work two and a half days a week, my job is relatively mindless and easy (yeah, I’m currently at work as I write this) and I make enough of an hourly wage to get by in San Francisco relatively comfortably. I’m tech savvy enough to where they wanna keep me around but also in general my job is easy enough where I can leave for big chunks of time and it’s not a huge deal. Having somewhere to be a couple times a week makes me feel responsible and allows me to pay for things without ringing up my parents. Its cool.

I don’t want my art to feel like a job-
Once the art you do turns into the way you make a living then you become dependent on your art being your living. A lot of my friends say stuff like “if it happens, that’s fine” or “as long as I don’t have to compromise” but if you somehow make money off of one record or one tour because “it just happened” doesn’t mean it’s going to continue to “just happen”, at some point to keep it sustainable you’ll have to pander in someway. Which also applies to the “as long as we’re not compromising” idea. Yeah, you may not be compromising at first but once you become dependent and used to the life of living off your art you’re going to end up doing things you don’t want to do in order to sustain that lifestyle. Seriously, no way around it. I also kind of feel like once that lure exists of living off your art you start to subconsciously do pandering shit anyway.

Keeping in touch with reality-
I work with totally normal people. They possibly voted for Bush, they talk openly about bible study, and if they even had an inkling of what I do with my spare time they would probably be completely bowled over. A lot of them are middle-aged women with grown children. A lot of them are immigrants. It’s interesting and useful to spend time with people like this. People who most likely are far closer to what the “average American” is than me. It’s interesting to hear their thoughts, opinions, things about their normal kids marrying off and reproducing, things like “I had a crazy weekend, we went to Costco”, people who go shopping regularly in malls, people who never try to avoid corporate chains and in actuality totally embrace them, people who rarely if ever question anything, people who encourage me to get a full time job because I could make more money, people who tell me I shouldn’t complain about unfair working conditions to my boss because I may get fired, people who are completely baffled by the fact that I do not own nor do I want to own a car. When punks and radicals completely cut themselves off from this world they end up in a bubble and fold over on themselves. They forget who the mainstream is and why they don’t want to be them and how to not be them. Or, normal people become a weird evil scary stereotype that isn’t an actual person. It’s always good to pay attention to how the other half functions and realize they are real and they exist.

And lastly:
Money is fucking evil-
Yeah, I basically see money as being the root of all evil, even with other things that are fucked up (organized religion, conservatives, beauty porn) it’s all pretty wrapped up in money. Therefore, I don’t really like to wrap that bullshit up with things that are satisfying to me. I’d rather just associate shitty money with my dumb job.

PRINCESS COMPLEX.

2010-05-22T10:52:00.000-07:00

You know how it is, the terror of dying alone, the belief that your soul mate exists and that fireworks will explode into the heavens the first time you lay eyes on him? That he WILL COME AND SAVE YOU?

This idea is fucking ridiculous (duh). The one doesn't exist. I know that. I still catch myself having that thought though. That someday my prince will come.

This idea is born out of a childhood of mainstream fairytale belief systems continuing through a smattering of rom-coms and continuing through every fucking piece of media that exists.

One day my prince will come... right? right? right?

And my parents were/are hippies. I grew up in a household with no processed foods, a lack of stringent gender roles, little to no TV watching... you know, hippies.

Yet I still have it, THE PRINCESS COMPLEX.

Let's look at the typical relationships one looks up to as a child/adolescent in american society and then as a teenaged punk.

So though my parents were hippies and the movies I watched obsessively as a child seem to be mainly about adult topics such as death, dying, murder and terrifying shit in general I still have seen and watched every disney princess movie a lot (which I would like to note contain plenty of death, dying, murder and terrifying shit in general). My favorite was Sleeping Beauty, the story of Aurora a beautiful young princess who gets cursed by an evil witch, touches a spinning wheel on her 16th birthday, falls into a deep sleep and is awakened by her betrothed. Anyway, back to the topic. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, Cinderella and so on all end up in fucked up situations due to the jealousy of some ugly spinster witch type lady(a fucking topic in and of itself) and are eventually saved by a handsome prince. This is the belief system thats repeated again and again and on top of that reinforced constantly.

As a teenaged punk it seemed like the straight relationships to aspire to were star-crossed lovers in incredibly dysfunctional relationships a'la Kurt and Courtney or Sid and Nancy. This demonstrates the manufactured idea that even though these people are fucked up and flawed they still find "THE ONE", right? It also has something to it that I find myself fantasizing about, you will find "the one" and it may be chaotic and violent and fucked up but IT'S TRUE LOVE. And you only get ONE TRUE LOVE. Right?

So what's formed in my head is this faraway fantasy that some boy will come and save me and I'll just know instantly and then our love will be violent and dysfunctional and obsessive and then we'll die.

The way to right this belief system in the world is painfully obvious but at the same time easier said then done. Reversing a lifetime of deeply ingrained beliefs is fucking laughable.

I read this book one time that was the autobiography of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. Dunbar-Ortiz is this rad radical feminist that in the midst of her most radical activism ended up in an abusive relationship. She was so ashamed at the fact that she was well known as a radical feminist and how could she end up in an abusive relationship, people like her don't end up in situations like that, right? That train of thought is completely understandable but at the same time a huge fucking bummer.

Not to put abusive relationships and fantasy romance in the same boat but my point is is that we can have a clear idea of who we are, what we stand for, and what we want in life but then still have these conflicting elements exist. It's fucked but it's understandable. It's OK. It's OK.

POP SECRET: RIHANNA PUTS IT IN THE BUTT.

2010-05-06T13:41:00.000-07:00

Totes about fucking dudes in the ass:

I mean, she humps a lions butt in the video for chrissakes.

pretty rad.

Keep It Simple, Stupid.

2010-04-30T14:29:00.000-07:00

Almost every straight boy I know is a Kiss fan. I don't get it. The songs are kind of hokey, Gene Simmons is easily one of the most sexist pieces of shit on earth. I was talking to a friend of mine (a Kiss fan) about the appeal of Kiss in the hopes that I might get a slight grasp on the hubbub. His short answer is that Kiss is the ultimate everyman band. Straight-forward riffs, straight-forward lyrics, and ANYONE can join the Kiss army.

OK.

So, anyone can join the Kiss army. And this gives the everyman a secret club to be a part of? Isn't that basically just glorified fandom that you have to pay membership fees to pay? I guess it's cool to be part of something but if being part of that club requires nothing but some cold hard cash, is it that cool to be part of that club? Does it make you different? Or is it more about being a part of a larger thing? My problem with saying that something (in this case, the band Kiss) is worthwhile when the main function of it is to keep you in the purgatory of fandom is that being just a fan means that you are little more than a consumer and possibly some free advertising for the band. Things that seem worthwhile to me, things that in my head make sense as being appealing to the everyman are things that you can fully participate in, not only participation in the fandom part but in the creation part. Bands that show me I can pick up a guitar and I can do it for myself are much more important and inspiring to me than bands that leave me holding my breath for the next time they roll through town or put out an album. Being a fan implies that you look up to someone/something, and the most exciting part of admiration is emulation, so what happens when someone from the Kiss army wants to BE KISS? With all the pomp and circumstance that those shows require - which I'm sure is no doubt mind-blowing to watch - the "everyman" has no chance of achieving that. The everyman is held down in a permanent position of fandom - fandom which is heavily reliant on consumerism. I mean, how much is the average Kiss ticket and how much does it cost to join the KISS army?

When the fan does attempt to step out of fandom and sets their sights on an impossible dream of pyrotechnics and arena shows, what happens? Does it ever work out? If you want to be KISS than their definition of success goes something like this: larger than life choreographed shows, reality television, groupies, stretch limos, more money than anyone on earth deserves or needs. Out of all the straight ahead rock and roll bands that populate the world there are only a few who achieve this level of international fame and money and groupies and whatever else that includes. Not only is that not really a feasible goal for the everyman, but once one has achieved this grade of "success" you are cut off from the world of the everyman. If you're playing arenas you are really far away from a blue collar job. So, if you are in a band that achieves that level of notoriety you are no longer a part of your main demographic.

But is that the point? Is it fully rooted in escapism? To me the ultimate catharsis is creating something of your own, so the vicarious fantasy life doesn't really work for me. Sure, fireworks are exhilarating, but after that, then what? Is that enough for the
everyman?

WHAT THE FUCK, ARIZONA?

2010-04-30T13:14:00.000-07:00

REALLY?

I MEAN, REALLY?

Malcolm Mclaren, R.I.P.?

2010-04-15T00:54:00.001-07:00

So he died last week. I'm seeing a good amount of stuff from fellow punks being like R.I.P.

AAAANNNNDDDD that he was such a good business man.

Number one, why are punks sitting around saying "he was a good businessman"? Fucking ew. Being known as a "good businessman" seems like the antithesis of punk to me.

Anyone? Anyone?

Honestly, I don't really give a fuck that this guy died. I mean bummer to the family and friends but the world didn't lose someone incredible. All the world lost was a sleazy business man that managed to keep himself in the context of punk. He was really outspoken about treating music as a commodity and pushing it further into that realm. He envisioned a world where you'd buy a cassingle along with a candy bar at the gas station. Record stores would no longer exist. Content didn't really matter as long as people were talking about it. The dude tried to launch a child porn magazine under the guise of a music/fashion magazine called chicken (for those of you not in the know chicken is slang for the prey of child predators.)

Yes, his style was influential. SEX and the Sex Pistols are hugely important. After a Beatles album one of my first records was the Sex Pistols. They were my gateway drug to punk. But the shock rock of the Sex Pistols was not rooted in trying to fuck with the status quo or starting a revolution. It was about creating a buzz. The Sex Pistols on the Thames during the silver jubilee is about as rebellious as Madonna and Britney Spears lip-locking on the MTV. It's the revolution marketing for and consumed by the consumer. It's not real. It's entirely cold and calculated. Yeah, the guy was a remarkable businessman and a marketing genius, but how does that matter to punk now? And why does he get accolades for sleazing his way to the top(or at least attempting to)? I don't see much to mourn.

So, Malcolm, thanks for the gateway drug?

POP SECRET: KINGS OF TAYLOR.

2010-04-03T11:55:00.001-07:00

The other night Cathy and Helen and I spent a good part of an evening listening to the same Kings of Leon song over and over again while watching Taylor Swift videos on mute to see which ones line up the best. This activity is both fascinating and exhilarating. Most pop music is pretty interchangeable, all the dramatic build-ups are basically in the same places within these three to four minute ditties. My favorite is the video for Taylor Swifts "fifteen" mashed up with the song "use somebody" by King of Leon. Watching this mash-up magically transforms a Taylor Swift video that's actually about her high-school best friend losing her virginity to a boy that soon dumps her making it so her friend has "nothing left to give", (because the only thing girls have to give to boys is their hymen, right?)into an epic tale of teenage lesbian romance. Just try it.
video:
and this is the song:

Notes on Taylor:
I really don't like Taylor Swift. I find it weird that she is no longer in high school, didn't really go to much high school, yet all of her songs have some reference to being in high school. Though she talks about how she wants her music to inspire girls and how she wants to be a positive female role model, for the most part when girls do appear in her songs they tend to be the enemy that's standing in between her and her "one true love". They're the bitchy snobby popular girl or the girl who stupidly (sluttishly) slept with a sweet talking high school boyfriend who then dumped her even though she gave him "everything she had". I think people consider her a good role-model because she is "sweet and innocent" and that's also kind of why I don't like her and exactly why I think she's a horrid role model. The media (and most likely her handlers) constantly put her in the context of being this wide eyed young naive innocent girl who is just waiting for her prince to come. Really? This combined with the whole twilight phenomenon does nothing but ingrain that glorious belief system that a boy will come and save you and without said mythical boyfriend you will die from loneliness/heartache(princess complex). Also the naive thing in general is kinda gross. It's just another way to have a dumb girl around. It's not bubbly/giggly dumb just more like "whaaaa?????" dumb. Taylor Swift, in reality, is not a naive innocent little girl. She's a 20-year-old that's been in the music biz since she was 14, pretty sure she knows something about something. Also, conventionally pretty girls putting on a pair of glasses and then they magically turn "unnatractive" is such bullshit.

notes on Kings of Leon:
I really don't like them. I really don't like popular alternative music. I don't really know a lot about them. However, sitting with Helen and Cathy watching the videos there was this thing I kept noticing. There are NO GIRLS in their videos. Ever. They even have a video that is intensely homoerotic (which is slightly unnerving seeing as they are all siblings). Usually rock and roll dudes in rock and roll videos have lots of hot chicks to shimmy and shake around them and make exagerated orgasm faces. They don't, which I found kind of fascinating given that they exist in this context of hunky rebel/rockstar and all of their songs are about girls. Even when visuals are supposed to appeal (be supposedly appealing) to straight girls they still have tons of ass and tittie. But no, Kings of Leon will sing about loving you all night long so hard but will only shimmy and shake themselves in the video. And isn't it interesting that dudes being sexy only with other dudes in the room and no ladies around equals homoerotic? ahhh.

And what do I do with these wooden sticks?

2010-03-30T00:03:00.000-07:00

I heard about Tom Tom magazine a bit ago and I was stoked. I’m always excited about ladies magazines that are made by non-corporate entities, and to focus on a field that is so male dominated? So rad! I envisioned grrls giving other grrls drumming advice and tips, gear reviews, maybe even some feminist analysis. I dreamed of a magazine that was glossy like pro magazines but filled with information and insights not normally seen in a mainstream publication, something that was entirely about grrls supporting grrls and breaking up the boys club of drumming. Recently Explode into Colors cruised through town armed with a stack of Tom Toms. Hanging out at the place EIC was crashing I spotted a couple copies on a coffee table and quietly swiped one to peruse. I sat back on the couch and began to flip through. Oh. It’s a fucking fashion magazine.

This fact blows my mind. It’s still completely baffling to me weeks later. Why is a magazine about grrl drummers a fucking fashion mag? Why is it NOT REALLY ABOUT DRUMMING? This screams three things to me: womens magazines are not marketable unless they are fashion mags; grrls may be able to play drums, they may know their craft, but above all they must “look good”; the only way to make something traditionally male appealing to women is to make it about “the look” rather than the technicals.

Not only was I bummed and dumbfounded but I was also completely insulted. I felt like I was being talked down to. Like, I can’t handle technical drum speak I can only really handle pretty pictures of grrl drummers. Not even pictures of grrl drummers playing drums, but rather grrls standing next drums… if a drum set even made it into the photo. Are drummers happy about this? Are they excited at the thought of stepping away from the drum throne covered in butt sweat, putting on a cute outfit and posing for a picture? Are there grrls out there excited about consuming this mag? Grrls who don’t really want to know about how to drum but rather HOW TO LOOK LIKE A DRUMMER? Are we/they just playing the “it’s better than nothing” game? Like, we have to have the fashion content to sell copies but at least the idea of being a female drummer is there? Again, who decided it was a good idea to put out a magazine about female drummers that’s NOT REALLY ABOUT DRUMMING?

Let’s look at these ideas:

- The only marketable type of womens magazine is essentially a fashion magazine.

Ok, I guess Tom Tom believes that the way to stay sustainable is to appeal to the masses. However, the reason so much editorial content in the majority of mainstream womens magazines is about fashion and beauty is because of a dependence on ad revenue. Advertising in mainstream media controls content. Read the beauty myth. I understand the attempt and want at staying sustainable, and the strategy of including fashion spreads in magazines with more general content in order to appeal to advertisers is a bummer but it makes sense. However, Tom Tom is a niche magazine, the advertising dollars they should be seeking out and relying on should come from music stores and drum brands and gear and maybe even some record labels, and I doubt that zildjan would be demanding a fashion spread, they are much more likely to be wanting a positive gear review. Advertising for designer labels and mabelline would not fit in this magazine anyway, and those advertisers would be the ones seeking out fashion spreads (highlighting their products, of course).

- grrls may be able to play drums, they may know their craft, but above all they must “look good”.

Basically, it is more important for grrls to look good then to know what they are doing. This reinforces everything I thought we were against. Is Tom Tom trying to say that even though we play this instrument that takes a lot of strength and sweat, we’re still cute little girls? Are they trying to fuck with the idea that drummers are only ugly dykes (an idea I honestly have never really heard before, I’m just trying to come up with explanations)? Is this an opportunity for lady drummers to step away from the kit and “be pretty”? Even with that analysis of an attempt to “break the stereotype” or giving grrls who spend so much time doing something tagged as masculine to “be feminine” I doubt the mass public sees or understand that, they see a womens fashion magazine… again. They understand that they are just a visual… again. Are the editors of this magazine attempting to appeal to the masses? Is this an attempt to fit into mainstream media? This is why it’s so disappointing to see a womens magazine made by women that basically continues to cater to mainstream values and the male gaze.

- the only way to make something traditionally male appealing to women is to make it about “the look” rather than the technicals.

Again, not only disappointing but also insulting. This kind of thing reeks of fashion spreads that yell “how to get that surfer style!” but completely lacks any guide to actually learning how to surf. No fucking around, aesthetic is a huge thing to me and I know it’s important to a lot of grrls, but really, is this all we are going to feed ourselves? I’m sure these ladies have rad aesthetic style but what about their drumming style? I mean, a fold out poster has potential to be awesome but an entire fashion spread? Pages and pages of pictures? Yes, dude drum mags do have a good amount of pictures of dude drummers, but a male drummer posing for a picture in a male centric magazine means an entirely different thing then a picture of a grrl drummer in a magazine about female drummers. Womens magazines have such a long history of boiling everything down to image that to see a magazine on a shelf that says “about female drummers” and have it again be little more then a few interviews and a lot of pictures, have it be basically like every other general womens magazine is really fucked up. To know that this product is being produced by my peers is even more upsetting, I mean, did you forget that we are trying to affect change?

One of the things that really appeals to me about women playing music is that it has a similar function to women playing sports. It gives grrls a community, encourages team work and most importantly physically demonstrates that your body has more uses than being pleasing to the male gaze, being a sex object or reproducing. It is something positive that we can do with our bodies that is ours. Producing a magazine that claims to be about female drummers, claims to be about having a use for our bodies beyond the male gaze, but then essentially turning female drummers into nothing but objects for the male gaze completely negates the idea that playing music is a positive use for our bodies that we have ownership of and is basically creating and aiding our own backlash.

Bummer.

p.s. see for yourself, check it out here.
p.p.s. oh, and the website manages to be way radder than the actual mag.

R.I.P. BRUCE ROEHRS

2010-03-18T11:28:00.000-07:00

Dear Bruce-
whenever you were around the Maxipad records would be blaring and you would be there to talk to. Though you never saw my band you always asked about us, always asked how I was and so on. If I was there to do reviews you'd always flip through my records letting me know which ones were "PUNK AS FUCK!!!!". You showed me how to turn on the speakers on the review stereos because "headphones are fucking bullshit". More than anything running into you always put a smile on my face.

you will be missed.

THUNDERS DOWN UNDERS.

2010-03-17T18:24:00.000-07:00

So recently I skipped town for about a month and went to Australia to hang around with punks and go to shows and museums and record shops and shit. Quick highlights:

-Singing GG Allins "Don't talk to me" with Straight Arrows in Sydney
We went to Good God which was a club in the back of a spanish restaurant in the city. It was beach party themed and we drank white wine and danced to garage surf tunes. Straight Arrows took the stage and me and Nic were dancing in the front. A couple days earlier we had been talking about Don't talk to me being a perfect pop song, and all the sudden the band was playing it! Somebody handed me the mic at the breakdown and it was really one of the most perfect moments ever. After the show Gary took me around to all the bars and porn theaters on oxford street. Woke up on Garys white leather couch with the TV on.

-Performing at the Dollhouse
Emily somehow managed to get me on this show. It was a night of performance art at a squat in Melbourne. There was weird dances, fashion shows featuring homemade dildos, films and then me. I sang a song and then took this digital recorder I had and sang the first lines of "Say a little prayer" and then handed to Emily who sang into it and passed it on. Then I took my camera and took a picture of Sean and handed the camera to him and then he took a picture and passed it on. Soon the whole room was singing together and clapping, it was real magical. Afterwords we did gabba aerobics for a bit and then left the party and went and dug through clothes donations left outside of a nearby op-shop.

-Karaoke in Sydney

When I arrived in Sydney I found out that Jack had gone to Big Day Out and his mum said he might not be back that night. I had been kind of bored in Melbourne and was worried that Sydney was shaping up to be the same. I went to wander the streets a bit and when I got back Jack was sitting on a couch eating frozen fruit. He said we were going to Angies to hang around with some people there. When we walked in I immediately locked eyes with Nic but nothing ended up happening the whole time I was there (bummer). We heard there were some kids at a karaoke place round the corner called the Ding Dong Dang so we headed over. We managed to convince the management that it was fine to have twenty people in a ten person room. We packed in a drank shit beer we snuck in, the karaoke songs would give you a score at the end. Within 6 hours of arriving in Sydney I found myself standing on a table in a room full of punks screaming along to Lady Gaga. Me and Jack sang Just Dance and got a score of 100%. Brutal.

-The Darwin room at the Melbourne Museum

The Melbourne Museum is pretty amazing in and of itself, but it also has a room called the Darwin Room, which is basically a huge white room filled with taxidermied animals. There are these touchscreens that as you pan them around the room it shows on the screen what you're looking at. When you touch the animals it brings up a shit ton of information about them including everything from thorough descriptions to videos to pictures to maps of habitats. Really fucking cool.

-Parsley Bay
On Australia day we piled into Garys van and headed to the beach. It was a mega hot day and I got a chance to wear my white BEER swimsuit which was exciting. Parsley Bay isn't really a beach, it's like a weird cove with sandstone and rocks and a lot of foliage. The other Marissa and I went and jumped off the dock into the water and floated on boogie boards for a bit. There was a plane flying around trailing a GIGANTIC (and I mean fucking HUGE) Australian flag, and the others kept on complaining that the place was packed, I guess normally it's pretty dead. After that we walked back to the van through the forest and drove along past all the other beaches, everyone yelling descriptions at me as we whizzed past them. We met up with Jack and decided to go back to the beach. We went to another one called coosville (I think). It had concrete sides like a big swimming pool that just went out into the bay. Gary gave me some goggles and we swam across to some rocks that fish are known to hang around. I swam down and saw some fish and then was completely exhausted.

-Ice Cream in St. Kilda
I went to St. Kilda with Emily and Sean. We walked around Luna Park and wandered the streets and ate ice cream. Good times.

-Nature reserve

Amy and Ben took Rachel, Shawn and me to some wineries to wine taste. We stopped to lunch and ate pies and traditional aussie snacks. We arrived at the nature reserve all abuzz. Bummer that we totally missed the birds of prey thing 9Ben was mega-bummed). There were a ton of birds. Bilbis (something that looks somewhere between a rat and a rabbit) are fucking ugly. We saw a Tasmanian devil and it kind of looked like a cute little teddy bear running in circles until the keeper tossed it a FUCKING RABBIT LEG which it commenced to EASILY CHOMP THROUGH THE BONES. Creepiest sound ever. I was trying to take a picture of the Koala but it would not look at me so I got a lot of shots of the back of it's head. OH! but a fucking highlight was when we were in the kangaroo area and a red kangaroo hopped right into my path. I sat and petted it for awhile which was magical and it was mega soft. We also saw some platypi which were wayyyyyy smaller then I expected.

oh, and that night we ate kangaroo for dinner. Totally delicious, but kind of sad and awkward too.

-barber shop, awkward snoresville, drag show + underpants

We went to go catch Southern Comfort when they were playing at a barbershop downtown. It's Harriets and Angies band and Jack drums for them. Detached double guitar melodies about summer and boys and beaches. So good. Afterwords we stopped by some yuppie bar with a live bongo player and Shogun went on and on about how fucked it was that the punks brought the american punk to a horrid spot like that. Later on we went to a dance night that was australia themed at a bar with tranny bartenders. They were playing australian hits that I didn't know and everyone else was nostalgic about. I sat with Nic and we nerded away about records and such. At some point I got bored and left. To get out of the bar you basically had to walk through a drag bar and as I passed through a skinny fag came bursting out of the smoking room and demanded to know where I had gotten my glasses, I told him San Francisco and he said he was modeling for an underwear contest in a minute and could he borrow them. I said I didn't know him and what would he do for me. He said he would buy me a drink so of course I obliged. He handed me a redbull and vodka and I handed him the glasses. One by one the gays took to the stage and stripped to their skivvies. My new friend didn't win.

-Movie day
Harriet works at an art house movie chain in Sydney so we decided to take a tour of the theaters and go see a couple films. First we went to Newtown which I guess is the kind of hipster area, to see the aborigine musical Bran Nue Dae. We dropped by some record shops and on our way to the theater we kept running into people who kept saying the movie was stupid and we shouldn't see it. We got some choc-tops, which was ice cream cones dipped in chocolate (I got rhubarb ice cream) and it was THE MOST DELICIOUS THING EVER. The movie was fun and had easily the most absurd ending I have ever seen. We bummed around the record shops a bit more and then headed downtown to catch The Road. We had a lot of time to kill so we sat by the harbor and gossiped. The movie was kind of predictable and macho and a pretty big downer after the fun Bran Nue Dae had been but whatever.

-Daniel Johnston in Sydney
We arrived at the tiny art gallery early because we knew there'd be a crowd and there was. We managed to fit our way inside and drink free beer and look at Daniel Johnston drawings and catch a set by The Legend during which everyone kept whispering things like "is that him?" and "why isn't he playing his own songs?" I caught up with Everett afterwords and he said they had thought about just pretending he was Daniel Johnston to see what happened. Daniel Johnston was supposed to play in the patio but then the kids at the gallery decided it was too much and had him play on the steps outside. He played two songs with no amplification and I've never really fancied Daniel Johnston but it was one of the most magical things ever.

a couple more things:
-pizza at bimbos
-Sydney aquarium
-mythic creatures exhibit
-victoria market with Amy
-grey daturas last show at the tote

DADFAG - Scenic Abuse

2009-12-18T11:47:00.000-08:00

I already reviewed this for maximum. But, I was listening to it this morning and realized that if I'm feeling kind of ok it gives me horrible anxiety but if I'm feeling horribly anxious it's really comforting. And then I wanna stay home all day and listen to it and paint pictures.

Dad Fag Live @ Huffin House in Oakland from Erin Allen on Vimeo.

interview

2009-11-18T10:35:00.000-08:00

ok, so I just had a second interview for some admin job for the government. I'm already working for the government, which for me working for the gov. means I don't get taken advantage of like in the private sector and I get paid a lot. Also the jobs tend to be surprisingly easy and flexible.

However, this interview this morning was TOTAL BULSH. I have never felt so harassed in a job interview. The guy was a condescending jerk in the first place. Then he asked what I did for hobbies, activism came up so of course feminism came up. THE GUY FUCKING QUESTIONED IT. He basically said that poverty, lack of childcare, lack of reproductive rights, street harassment and war among other things was JUST AS OPPRESSIVE TO MEN AS IT IS TO WOMEN.

FUCK YOU DUDE.

I can do this dumb temporary clerk job probably better than a lot of people. I am reliable, I have an insane work ethic, never miss a deadline. I'm fucking smart. I AM FUCKING VALUABLE. I get harassed on the street, if I were to have children I would most likely have to pay stupid amounts for childcare, my reproductive rights are getting chipped away at, on average I am probably getting paid less than you doing the same job. DON'T FUCKING CHUCKLE AND SHAKE YR. HEAD AT ME FUCKER.

I have radical politics. Not sure exactly how that effects my data entry skills, but you sure act like it makes me a misguided fool. Not sure why feminism even came up in a job interview for a temp admin job. Or why I had to debate my political stance IN A FUCKING JOB INTERVIEW.

He kept asking why I am a feminist, why was I so passionate about it?

You know why I'm a fucking feminist? BECAUSE OF FUCKING ASSHOLES LIKE YOU, DUDE.

not prolific.

2009-09-24T21:31:00.001-07:00

hahahahaha

R.I.P. LUX

2009-02-05T01:45:00.000-08:00

back to health

2008-11-12T19:07:00.000-08:00

So, a couple months ago I had to get a biopsy on my right breast. I have a lump and NEEDED to make sure it wasn't cancer.

Now I have a bill. It's for $1,034.38. And I am one of the lucky ones to have health insurance.

Doesn't matter. The insurance doesn't cover it.

I convinced myself it was simply a mix-up and spent half of the day on the phone today. Sadly, it's true. The insurance doesn't cover it.

I got off the phone and sobbed. It wasn't exactly stress, not exactly a moment of "how will I pay for this?". Much more, it was a moment of disgust and mourning. As I have probably stated before, I am middle class, my parents want to make sure that I am ok, they will probably help me with this. I am ok.

However, my insurance doesn't know I can fall back on my parents, the doctors who performed the biopsy have no idea that I can call my mom. I have a bill that if my parents were either not around or not financially stable, I would not be able to pay. At all. In anyway. So how about all those people who can't call mom? They can't make sure they don't have a deadly disease?

It is disgusting to me that something so vital and so needed for every woman everywhere - the basic human right to take care of ourselves, to know we aren't sick, to do something if we are sick, this right is not an option for so many. I do not understand how anyone who enforces this can sleep at night. How can I be charged so much just to take care of myself? I don't understand.

What's worse is the stress and the hoops one has to go through to take care of all this. Having just gone through the terrifying event of being tested for cancer via a huge fucking needle plunged deep inside of me, and now I have a thousand dollar bill to deal with. What if I had no one to call? What if I had cancer? Can you imagine being horribly sick and having to wrangle with going in circles with insurance companies and doctors? With trying to figure out how to pay a gigantic bill?

And they (insurance companies) are making so much fucking money.

This was not elective. This was not waking up and being like "it would be fun to get a biopsy!". This was not a choice. Getting a biopsy was something I NEEDED to do, something I HAD to do.

It is inhumane that something that is so vital to ones health costs so much.

FUCK YOU HEALTH INSURANCE. YOU ARE A PIECE OF SHIT.

R.I.P. Dee Dee Warwick

2008-10-22T11:46:00.000-07:00

By far the best version of this song...

Yoko, Anthem and Bikini Kill

2008-10-01T20:18:00.000-07:00

Recently I attended the MRR barbeque. As I do at potluck type of things at the maxipad I failed to bring any food but managed to totally gorge on DIY nachos, fake pigs in blankets and various other things.i met new kids and mingled and nerded out about girl punk with layla, then somewhere in all the nerdness and newness I found myself quiet in the corner listening to boys bro down about this or that obscure record. I was bummed because I only picked up on like a third of their references and didn’t feel like I had anything to add. After I left I dropped by a couple shows and eventually landed home, wasting time on the internet. There was a link in my inbox from Tobi to an article she wrote about dude scenes and yoko ono. It was so perfect. I was feeling bummed and discouraged by not keeping up with the MRR boys and the article was just a reminder that I shouldn’t be bummed about being a dork girl… I don’t know it makes more sense if you read the article.

http://www.bumpidee.com/yokoanthem.html

mom jacket?

2008-09-22T11:09:00.000-07:00

Kim Gordon started a new clothing line for "cool moms" called Mirror/Dash (after her side project with Thurston) and it's first "release" is a limited run jacket that's 400 FUCKING DOLLARS.

who the fuck are these cool moms you are referring to Kim?

I mean, I love Kim, and the jacket is cute, and I like the parallel of a "limited release record" and a "limited release jacket" and I'm sure it's handmade, but $400? I may not know a lot of moms, but really, I definitely don't know any that can afford that. I feel like it's a sign of complete disconnect with the real world, and beyond that it's just shitty. Even though I'm not really into birthing, it's a fact that the worst oppression you face as a women is met when you become a mother. Here's a excerpt from a piece by Tobi Vail about that:

Here are some facts to think about, share and discuss:

-33% of births were 'out of wedlock' in 2002 (U.S. Census), making 1/3 of moms single

-73% of American moms are in the workforce

-the wage gap between moms and non-moms is greater than the gap between men and women: 30 year old childless women earn 90% of what men earn, while 30 year old mothers earn 73% of what men earn

-1/4 of families with children under six earned less than $25,000 in 2001

-if both parents are working minimum wage jobs they will earn $21,400 a year

-according to one study, comprehensive childcare can cost $4,000-$10,000 per year, per child

-welfare reform requires women to work without childcare

-the U.S. is one of the only countries in the world that does not offer paid maternity leave

-most European countries offer paid leave for both parents

-California is the only state that offers paid maternity leave (as of 2004)

-right now parents are only guaranteed 12 weeks UNPAID maternity leave after the birth of a child, though they are allowed to keep whatever benefits their jobs may include- this is fairly a recent development provided by the FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act) that went into effect in 1993

-married couples with children account for less than 1/4 of households

-the number of single-mom families has increased by 25% since 1990

So, a lot of moms are single, a lot of moms have jobs, childcare is ridiculous, who's thinking about a $400 jacket? Kim Gordon is in a position where she has the option to do something really radical, like make affordable clothes for cool moms. Instead she made another thing that will be in a boutique that most moms will never set foot in because everything is too expensive. Not to mention all the pictures have the jacket being modeled by a skinny teenager.

It's like, she basically just made a coat for herself. Bummer.

notes on holiday.

2007-08-17T14:54:00.000-07:00

In Ireland I heard "Don't stop believing" constantly. In bars, on buses, corner stores, everywhere.

In Wales it was "Money for nothing".

I liked Wales better as a country, but I fucking hate Dire Straits.

who gives a fuck about the rolling stones?

2007-06-01T22:54:00.000-07:00

just watched "gimme shelter". Most exciting thing about it was Tina Turner singing "I've been loving you too long". electricity.

Chavez is taking steps to make Venezuela more socialist; it’s a good thing. Bush is sending troops to Iraq; it’s a bad thing

2007-01-27T12:02:00.000-08:00

First of all; here is an article I wrote about Venezuela.

Venezuelan women
Women are at a greater risk to be impoverished than their male counterparts. According to the United Nations (UN) 70% of women internationally live in poverty. This phenomenon has been referred to as the ‘feminization of poverty.’ Venezuela is taking steps toward empowering women economically and socially.
In 1998 Hugo Chavez was elected as Venezuelan president through a grassroots campaign. He had a platform of three main points: (i) to break the old political system of "puntofijismo", which was a formal agreement between the two main political parties to keep a two party system; (ii) to end corruption; and (iii) to alleviate poverty in Venezuela. To break down the old political system and spark the Bolivarian Revolution, Chavez presented the option of making a new constitution, which was entirely done by popular referendum. In order to alleviate poverty, he began using revenue from the nationalized oil company, PDVSA, to benefit the entire population of Venezuela.
In 1999 Chavez called a constitutional assembly that was chosen by popular referendum, in order to rewrite the constitution. Leaders from different women’s organizations from around the country formed the Constitutional Front of Women of the Fifth Republic Movement (FCMMVR), which educated and organized thousands of women, including housewives, former guerillas, professionals and other feminists to draft demands for the Constitution and to promote the candidacy of women to the Constitutional Assembly. They demanded a non-sexist constitution. They demanded that housework be recognized as valuable to the community, the country, and to the economy. They demanded that land be given out equally amongst the sexes. They also demanded representation in the government.
After picketing daily for over four months these demands were met for the most part. The new constitution was passed with more than 70% of the vote. It is written in a non-sexist language, referring to both the masculine and feminine for references to people, i.e. presidente y presidenta. It also includes many amendments concerning equal rights, domestic violence, and other things pertaining to the rights of women. According to Article 88 housework is now recognized as an economically productive activity, entitling housewives to social security benefits, even though this is in the constitution, Article 88 still needs legislation to put it into practice. In response to the demand that land be distributed equally amongst the sexes, Article 14 of the Land Act was implemented, which prioritizes woman-headed households for the redistribution of idle land to those ready to work it. Though the constitution is extremely progressive and legally makes women equal in society, laws and how day-to-day culture works differ greatly, however culture change does not occur over night. The elimination of machismo in Venezuelan society would require a major cultural shift, one step the constitution takes towards eliminating this machismo is Article 9 of the Law for Equal Opportunities for Women, which obliges the Education Ministry to “incorporate new teaching methods from preschool onwards, oriented to modify socio-cultural norms of the behavior of boys and girls”. This means that curriculum would change by eliminating hidden sexism (validated by society and culture) and instead strive to eradicate gender roles and destroying the gender status quo.
As for the demand for government representation of women, there have been a few obstacles. At first, Chavez did not appoint any women to his government. It wasn’t until 2000, two years into his term, that he appointed a number of women to cabinet positions and other important posts. Also, currently “[o]nly 12% of the deputies in the National Assembly are women while in Spain it is an equal 50/50 ratio,” remarks María del Mar Alvarez. The reversal of the Women’s Suffrage Law of 1997, which had a required a 30% minimum, is the cause of the drop in female representatives. In Venezuela, both pro- and anti-Chavez people are very upset that Chavez allowed this to happen. National Electoral Council (CNE) passed a resolution on April 1, 2005 that legally compels all political parties to run an equal number of men and women to any deliberating body. However, CNE has no legal mechanism to enforce this. To remedy this, the newly created "Unified Command of Women for Unity and Parity" processes complaints of excluded women and takes their cases before the Supreme Court of Justice.
Oil was nationalized in 1958 but the revenue was completely controlled by the oligarchy, or the ruling class. This meant that the people in control of the country were living off of and becoming rich off of oil revenue, while the rest of the country slipped into poverty. Chavez, under plan Bolivar, began to redirect this revenue into building and implementing social programs. A lot of the social programs are in the form of missions. Revenue also funds INAMUJER and BANMUJER, both programs designed to benefit and empower women.
Missions, which are basically social programs in Venezuela, are planned and organized by the communities they are in. There is mission Barrio Adentro, which provides free health care to impoverished neighborhoods along with preventative medical counseling; Mission Habitat, whose goal is to build housing for the poor along with making sure neighborhoods have access to other missions; Mission Mercal provides healthy organic food at discount prices to the poor; Mission Robinson, which uses volunteers to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic illiterate Venezuelans. As mentioned above, communities mainly control these missions, but actually the majority of the people doing organizing and stuff work are women, and this work is largely unpaid. This has led to these women being financially dependent on other people, whether it is their families or their husbands

“We are amidst a profound social transformation in which discrimination, prejudices, and the injustices against women are coming to the forefront. This revolution has recognized women as human beings. But we still are unable to say that we have eradicated discrimination against women in society or even in the minds of women. Discrimination is a phenomenon that has existed for centuries and it is impossible to eradicate within five years. Our values do not change overnight. However, Venezuelan women now know that this is revolution is for them too and they are beginning to wake up,” - Nora Casteñeda, the president of BANMUJER.

The Women’s Development Bank (Banco de la Mujer or BANMUJER) was created on March 8th, 2001, International Womens Day. BANMUJER is an attempt to empower women politically, economically and socially. It is based on the concept of a "popular economy," or, an economy that benefits everyone. The Bank offers two types or services: financial and non-financial. Financially, the bank provides low interest loans, known as micro-credits, in quantities between 500,000 to 1,000,000 bolivares (US $260-$520) to women. However, women cannot individually apply for loans, not only must women be in a group working together, they must also have some kind of business plan. By granting loans to groups of women rather than individuals the Bank is striving to defy capitalist ideas of individualism, and promoting solidarity within communities. Also, the bank offers financial and business advice, aiding women with coming up with business plans and then running successful businesses. BANMUJER does not operate on a branch system like most banks, but instead is made up of a network of supporters that visit 149 different areas weekly, going to the women rather then the women, who might not have access or ability to go to a bank. The Bolivarian Government and BANMUJER have put into action policies and programs that deal with subjects such as: women in poverty, education and training of women, healthcare, violence against women, the participation of women in politics, women’s human rights, and women and the economy. It also provides educational workshops on different topics such as health, politics, self-esteem and many other things. The workshops are also meant to encourage women to become further involved in politics and community planning. The Bank also tries to encourage illiterate women to get involved by directing them to Mission Robinson. BANMUJER is extremely revolutionary and important in terms of empowering women and helping them become independent, however, by industry standards, as an actual bank it’s a failure, seeing as 41.57% of credits loaned in the first year of were not repaid.

“The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela will only be an authentic democracy if we transform the home into a truly democratic unit.”
- María León, president of the National Institute for Women, former guerilla fighter

“Feminism is reaching the popular sectors,” explains María del Mar Alvarez, the National Defender of Women's Rights. “Usually, feminism caters to the upper and middle class and does not reach the popular sectors. INAMUJER is striving to include marginalized women in the feminist discourse”. In 2000, Chávez changed CONAMU (the National Council of Women) into the National Institute for Women (INAMUJER). INAMUJER does several different things. It has set up a free telephone hotline for victims of domestic violence, along with shelters such as Casa de Abrigo for victims of domestic violence and women who fear for their lives. Also, like BANMUJER, INAMUJER has workshops educating women about their political rights and how to defend them, along with reproductive rights and how to stop abuse against women. They also publish pamphlets detailing what’s in the new constitution and what it means, how to escape abusive relationships, reproductive health and other important topics. INAMUJER also tries to empower marginalized women into becoming involved in these organizations and in politics. INAMUJER also supervises and evaluates public policies directed towards women so as to make sure to uphold equal opportunities and that the National Assembly uses a non-sexist language in all legislation.
Even with all these huge steps further in the right direction, there are still huge steps back. For example, in 2000 a law was put into effect that gave police the power to detain domestic abusers for 72 hours, in order to give the victim (usually the wife or children) time to arrange for and go to a safe place. However, in 2005, Isaías Rodríguez, the attorney general of Venezuela, filed a petition asking the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court to strike down the legal provisions that permitted the detention of domestic abusers without charges, arguing that the 1999 constitution also states that no one shall be deprived of his or her liberty without a court order. Rodríguez now regrets this move, but before he could reverse the petition, the Constitutional Chamber ruled in favor of striking down the law by a five to two majority; the court’s male judges voted for the petition, and the females voted against.
Also, most of these steps forward involve laws and government programs, but how do you transform a society that is inherently sexist and macho? Article 9 as mentioned above is a major step, but that works towards a future of abolishing sexism. Currently, rape and violence towards women are huge problems. In the last week of May 2006 alone, 52 women reported being raped. The public prosecutor's office in Venezuela registered 36,000 domestic violence cases in 2005. By June 2006 48 women had already been killed by their abusers this year. On top of that, all these numbers represent reported cases only. More women are working, but as mentioned above it’s in informal sectors, such as house cleaning, selling things on the street, and other domestic work. This work offers no job security, low wages, no benefits and poor or dangerous working conditions. There are still tons of problems to tackle, and most of them can’t be “fixed” overnight, but Venezuela is slowly moving in the right direction.

Note the complete non-emphasis of Chavez.
The reason I barely mentioned Chavez is because I wanted to talk about the people of Venezuela, mainly the women. I wanted to demonstrate that Chavez started the ball rolling, but that the people of Venezuela are the ones that sustain that movement.
Chavez, now elected for a third newly six-year term (it used to be four), announced during an address to the nation his pledge to nationalize privately owned major Venezuelan power companies and telecoms. Theoretically, this is great, in actuality so far it’s amazing and hopefully it will continue to be; however this is where corruption could easily begin and the government could begin to fund only themselves on the revenue from these nationalized companies. Looking at past actions of Chavez, one of his first moves was to redirect funds coming from the already nationalized oil company away from top government and over to the people of Venezuela, using that money to start up and fund a myriad of social programs. However, Chavez also has a habit of giving himself increasingly more legislative power. In his recent address to the nation he also announced that he would be asking parliament to grant him more legislative power, which could be ting he start of a slippery slope towards dictatorship. But in general, the movement of Venezuela towards a more socialist government is awesome, and in an ideally world the U.S. would take note.

And on the U.S. note……

President bush has decided to send 20,000 more troops to Iraq, completely ignoring congress and the majority of the United States. Awesome. I’m kind of speechless. I’m not surprised but at the same time I’m in total disbelief.

I believe in violence, I’m not exactly a pacifist. This is just arrogance. Bush is stuck in the same ideology a lot of the world is in, if it’s not westernized, it’s wrong and bd. I’m like this too, I’m trying to get over the idea that if doesn’t resemble western feminism it’s wrong. So, I think everyone is in a similar situation, believing the western way is the way. But not everyone has the power the president has, even if everyone had that power, would we utilize it in this way? Being a powerful imperialistic mother country and invading and occupying other countries until they resemble the U.S.? Not everyone runs on the same ideas of order and working government. Bush is not only assuming western democracy is the only way, hes trying to force everyone to model after the US… how horrifying.

Not to say that I endorse dictatorships, not at all. But acting like the US is the silver bullet is ridiculous. Acting like our army is the right organization to teach others how to police their own people? What? Say it out loud, Iraq needs the US to teach it how to police and govern itself. What is this country? A fucking baby? And who died and made the U.S. it's parents? We're not even competent

YA DIG

2006-12-18T12:56:00.000-08:00

so pitchfork is calling MIA crazy.

cuz she first wrote about her recent experience in Liberia and then wrote about women never getting credit in hip-hop, you know only being known for shaking asses and then everyone hears about the men behind amazing records by women. Since it includes a dis on her ex-boyfriend it automatically turns into “oh she’s pissed cuz she got dumped”
And she got called crazy by one of the most respected underground music news sources.

Wait, do people still respect pitchfork?

I haven’t liked them since they basically copied the line-up for a politically charged non-profit bands against bush festival that happened 6 monthes before and had a lot of the same bands play their for profit “we’re pitchfork, we’re great” fest.
They wouldn’t even cover the bands against bush event, even though they were obviously interested in the bands.

BACK TO MIA.

The only thing you could really make fun of was the crappy grammar, but who really cares? It’s a document of rage.

Her main point is that mass media is a format created by old white men, and so other voices get fucked and distorted to fit that format and end up losing the message they were trying to convey.

Fuck it. Just read it.

P.S. oh, and fuck you pitchfork, yr. doing EXACTLY what she was talking about.

I was really excited, until I got to this quote.

2006-11-25T11:23:00.000-08:00

so there is a bunch of ladies in NMEs top 10 cool list
see:
The Cool List's top 10:

1. Beth Ditto (The Gossip)
2. Faris Rotter (The Horrors)
3. Lily Allen
4. Jarvis Cocker
5. Karen O (Yeah Yeah Yeahs)
6. Kieren Webster (The View)
7. Kate Jackson (The Long Blondes)
8. Gerard Way (My Chemical Romance)
9. Thom Yorke (Radiohead)
10. Lovefoxxx (CSS)

this is exciting.

this is what editor, Conor McNicholas, had to say "This year's Cool List is a testament to the raft of hugely talented women who have taken hold of the music scene in 2006.

"From Beth to Lily to Karen, they've brought new energy to a scene dominated by men. They're also living proof that you can still rock a crowd when you're wearing stilettos."

then I got bummed.

I mean, I like fashion. I like stillettos. I think everyone should wear what they want...

But it's annoying that it gets boiled down to this whole "good for a girl" thing or "even sex objects can entertain us beyond being a pretty face"

hold on, I have to think about this more.

yeah Neil Young

2006-04-18T12:11:00.000-07:00

Neil Young: 'Let's Impeach the President'

Rocker records protest album, 'Living with War'

Tuesday, April 18, 2006; Posted: 8:42 a.m. EDT (12:42 GMT)

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Veteran rocker Neil Young has recorded a protest album featuring an anti-Iraq war track with "a holy vow to never kill again" and a song titled "Let's Impeach the President," the singer said on Monday.

The 10-track set, called "Living with War," was recorded this month by a "power trio" -- electric guitar, bass and drums -- plus trumpet and a 100-member choir, the 60-year-old Canadian-born musician announced on his Web site. (Watch how many angry artists are putting their melody where their mouth is -- 4:09)

Young's longtime manager, Elliot Roberts, told Reuters the album, which has been the subject of Internet buzz for several days, will be played for executives at his label, Warner Music Group's Reprise Records, on Tuesday.

Reprise spokesman Bill Bentley said Young's latest effort, which he spent about three days recording, came as a surprise. "We didn't know he was making a record," Bentley said.

Young is the latest in a string of recording stars to take musical aim at U.S. President George W. Bush and his conduct of the war in the Iraq. Others have included Steve Earle, Willie Nelson and the Rolling Stones.

In a message crawl along the bottom of his Web site, www.neilyoung.com, Young drew parallels to two of the leading protest singers of the 1960s, saying of his new record: "I think it is a metal version of Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan ... metal folk protest?"

The crawl goes on to reveal the lyrics of the album's title track, with such lines as: "I raise my hand in peace ... I never bow to the laws of the thought police ... I take a holy vow ... to never kill again ...

"In the big hotels ... in the mosques and the doors of the old museum ... I take a holy vow ... to never kill again."

Roberts confirmed that a separate song on the album is titled "Let's Impeach the President."

According to some online reports, that song accuses Bush of "lying" and features a rap with the president's voice set against a choir singing "flip-flop."

Young's latest offering comes just seven months after the release of his last album, "Prairie Wind," which has sold about 450,000 U.S. copies as of last week, according to sales tracking service Nielsen SoundScan. Music from that album was featured in the recent concert film "Neil Young: Heart of Gold," directed by Jonathan Demme.

"Living with War" appears to bring Young full circle from a more pro-Bush administration stance he took in the months following the September 11 attacks.

Not long after recording the song "Let's Roll," a tribute to passengers who apparently fought back against hijackers on doomed United Airlines Flight 93 over Pennsylvania, Young came out publicly in support of the U.S. Patriot Act.

The legislation, which gave law enforcement authorities broad new powers aimed at bolstering the administration's war on terror, was harshly criticized by some as threatening civil liberties.

"Living with War" is hardly the first work by Young to take on the political establishment. As part of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, in 1970, Young wrote and recorded the song "Ohio," about the four Kent State University students killed by National Guard troops during an anti-Vietnam war rally.

Copyright 2006 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Read this interview.

2006-04-04T19:15:00.000-07:00

The Power of Thunder
>
>By Rose Aguilar, AlterNet. Posted April 4, 2006.
>
>
> Cecilia Fire Thunder, president of the South Dakota Ogala Sioux,
>takes on the state's repressive new abortion ban.
>
>Just two weeks after South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds signed the state's
>extreme abortion ban with no exceptions for rape and incest, Cecilia Fire
>Thunder, the first woman president of the Oglala Sioux tribe, made national
>headlines after saying she would personally set up a clinic on her tribe's
>land in South Dakota to preserve a woman's right to choose. There is
>currently only one clinic in the entire state of South Dakota that provides
>abortions, and its status, since the ban, is endangered.
>
>President Fire Thunder's decision to take the lead on this issue is nothing
>short of remarkable considering the number of challenges on the
>reservation. Almost half of all Native American women in South Dakota are
>poor, compared with approximately 10 percent of white women, according to
>the Institute for Women's Policy Research report on the Status of Women in
>South Dakota. Median annual earnings for women in South Dakota rank last in
>the nation. Furthermore, the unemployment rate on the reservation is 85
>percent and the life expectancy rate is 46 for men and 55 for women.
>
>But President Fire Thunder is a remarkable woman. Besides announcing plans
>for the clinic, she has continued to focus on the need to address rape as
>an issue for South Dakota women, particularly Native American women. One in
>six American women has been the victim of rape or attempted rape, according
>to the National Crime Victimization Survey. The average annual rate of rape
>and sexual assault among American Indians is three and a half times higher
>than the national average.
>
>Fire Thunder is one of the co-chairs of a new coalition called the South
>Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families. The group just announced a grassroots
>plan to contest the abortion ban on the November ballot. They have until
>June 19 to collect 16,728 signatures.
>
>AlterNet's Rose Aguilar spoke with President Fire Thunder about the clinic,
>abortion ban and challenges facing women who live in rural areas.
>
>Rose Aguilar: Tell me about the clinic you're planning to build.
>
>Cecilia Fire Thunder: The proposed clinic would be for all women because
>right now, if a woman needs an abortion, she needs to go all the way to
>Sioux Falls. This clinic would go beyond abortion and contraception. We're
>missing out on teaching our boys and men about what they need to do to
>avoid pregnancies.
>
>Rose Aguilar: I called the governor's office to find out what the penalty
>would be for women who have abortions if the law goes into effect, but
>haven't received a call back. If the law is upheld, will women be able to
>have legal abortions on your reservation?
>
>Fire Thunder: We don't know. We have five Indian lawyers working on this
>right now. When we go face to face with the South Dakota lawmakers, we'll
>be ready.
>
>Aguilar: You've made it a point to talk about rape in your interviews.
>While the abortion ban has received widespread attention, there's been
>little talk how this law would force a girl who'd been raped by a male
>relative to have his baby.
>
>Fire Thunder: We need to start talking about those issues. Americans should
>be outraged about the number of women who are raped in this country. We
>need to also speak out for women in places like Afghanistan and other
>war-torn areas where rape is happening. This is not new. Rape has always
>been a part of life. Unfortunately, the world is not always a safe place
>for women.
>
>Ultimately, this is a much bigger issue than just abortion. The women of
>America should be outraged that policies and decisions about their bodies
>are being made by male politicians and clergy. It's time for women to
>reclaim their bodies.
>
>Women in America have something that women in other parts of the world
>don't have. Women in this country don't appreciate their right to free
>speech. Women in America can be the voice of women around the world. This
>is a call to arms by women in the United States.
>
>Aguilar: And not only are the anti-choicers going after abortion, they're
>also going after birth control.
>
>Fire Thunder: Women should have access to contraception. No questions
>asked. Contraception is a solution. Why don't they (politicians) get it?
>
>Aguilar: Do the women on the reservation have access to contraception?
>
>Fire Thunder: We have Indian clinics on the reservation, so birth control
>is available, but it's not enough. We're going to go ahead with the clinic
>no matter what. If nothing else, we need to establish a place where women
>feel comfortable.
>
>Aguilar: How will you fund it?
>
>Fire Thunder: I'm not concerned about that. We'll get a lot of support. If
>it's meant to be, it'll happen. We pray a lot. We trust that there will be
>people who support it.
>
>Aguilar: How do these laws directly impact the poor women on the
>reservation?
>
>Women of color and poor women have always known that regardless of what
>happens, women with money will have access to abortion. Women with money
>will have access to contraception. No matter which way you cut it, it's
>always on the backs of poor women.
>
>An elder on my reservation said, "So they don't want you to have
>contraception or abortions after rape? Are they going to step up and take
>care of that baby?"
>
>Aguilar: Do you think the pro-choice movement does enough to reach out to
>poor women?
>
>Fire Thunder: Yes and no. For the most part, we have to empower ourselves.
>We're becoming much more politically astute, and we're getting a lot more
>young people involved. We love to get people riled up.
>
>Aguilar: Tell me about your reservation and the realities women living in
>rural areas face in this political climate.
>
>Fire Thunder: My reservation is 50 miles by 100 miles long. It's a large
>rural community of 40,000 people and 60 percent of our people speak our
>language. Half of our population is under 18.
>
>In a perfect world, if a woman is raped, she will call the police, and the
>police will take her to the emergency room. The emergency room will have
>components in place to help this woman, including the morning-after pill to
>prevent the pregnancy. In rural America, that doesn't happen. Many places
>in rural America do not know about the morning-after pill.
>
>On the reservation, we have to take a look at the high rates of alcohol and
>drug use. More often than not, young women who've been raped while under
>the influence will be blamed for being drunk. If someone is raped,
>especially out in the rural community, they may not report it. After three
>days, they've passed the cut-off point for taking the morning-after pill.
>
>How many babies are conceived during the act of violence? We don't know.
>
>Aguilar: Tell me about your background.
>
>Fire Thunder: I was born and raised on the reservation. Then I went to Los
>Angeles on a relocation program from 1963 to 1976. The program was the
>Eisenhower administration's solution to the "Indian problem." What they
>wanted to do was put us in cities and hope we would disappear. During the
>'70s, Los Angeles had the largest Indian population in the U.S.
>
>I eventually became a nurse and was able to provide for my two children. I
>returned to the reservation in 1987 and eventually worked for the state
>health department.
>
>Aguilar: And eventually became the first woman president of your tribe.
>
>Fire Thunder: Yes, it says a lot about my tribe. My job is to look after
>2.7 million acres of land. My job is to take care of the water. My
>responsibilities are not only about the two-legged, but the four-legged. I
>have to make sure we have an infrastructure in place, that our educational
>systems are working, that we have healthcare and that our people have
>enough food to eat.
>
>Right in my own backyard, I have great possibilities. We're very patriotic
>on my reservation, however, it's time to get out of Iraq. We need to let
>people make their own decisions about their future. As a woman and a
>mother, I personally don't want any more women to cry.
>
>Aguilar: Are many men from the reservation in Iraq and Afghanistan?
>
>Fire Thunder: You bet. We have hundreds of guys over there, and they
>volunteer to go. We just had a big funeral here last month. It was our
>first casualty.
>
>Aguilar: How old was he?
>
>Fire Thunder: He was 22. So many of our resources have been taken away from
>us to support that war. There's a huge groundswell of Americans that say
>enough is enough. It's time to get out of there.
>
>Aguilar: What are your plans from here?
>
>Fire Thunder: I'll continue pushing the envelope and exerting our
>sovereignty.
>
>A long time ago, we had medicines that were available to terminate a
>pregnancy. Women like my grandmother were medicine women, and they had it
>in their possession. So you look at every culture in the world, and there
>were ways we took care of ourselves. You didn't have people passing laws to
>control a woman's body.
>
>As a woman, it's my job to support women. It's my job to support my
>sisters.
>
>Rose Aguilar is a San Francisco-based journalist who recently returned from
>a six-month road trip through the so-called "red states." She is writing a
>book about her journey.

At the punk rock shoooooooowwwww

2006-02-24T22:08:00.000-08:00

I am at some teenage straight edge show. At first it was exciting, the place is packed with punk kids chanting SODA!SODA! and getting super excited about just circle pitting at a show. It's awesome. But for the last ten minutes all I hear is boys yelling "stank pussy!" over and over again, and I was already getting bummed about the dude factor. Are they kidding? Are the girls laughing? Are they comfortable?

what? I thought punk was safe for girls? I'm almost tempted to go out there and grab the mic and start lecturing. But I won't.

shows have always been a safe place for me. Whenever I see jocks or preppy girls at shows, I freak out. I watch them mock the whole thing. I'm not trying to be whiny, but shows are the safe place where you won't be harassed for dressing weird, and people know what the fuck bands yr. talking about. Anything that makes shows unsafe or uncomfortable really fucks with me. Breaks my heart and makes me want to scream.

The girls out there are called ugly by their peers and delinquents by authority figures, they go to shows to let that aggression out, and all they get is dudes telling them they're not good enough. FUCK THAT.

I wish I could figure out how to tell them to get pissed off and play in bands and make their own scene and... fuck I don't know.

shit's fucked and unfair.

and soon I won't even have the right to a safe and legal abortion.

WHY THE FUCK ARE WE RUNNING BACKWARDS? HOW CAN I STOP IT?