So the Times Colonis ended up publishing my letter in full. It was so love to see the title in such a huge font. Here it is:
To Whom It May Concern:
As the main organizer of this year’s World Naked Bike Ride in Victoria, I was dismayed that, after 75 people biked naked all over the city for over an hour on Saturday, the only thing the Times Colonist published was a very derogatory letter. While I am sure there were spectators who are uncomfortable with the sight of the human body, the vast majority of the hundred and hundreds, if not thousands, of people who watched us go by were cheering, laughing, and giving us support. Many riders commented that they were surprised at how much joy we were spreading all around. We knew people would be shocked but we didn’t expect the extensive applause and encouragement that we received.
It is the view of the World Naked Bike Ride and myself that the human body is never something to be labeled disgusting. Children were actually on the ride this year, as with past years, and are generally uncomfortable with nudity only when adults let them know their bodies are something to be ashamed of. Legally in Victoria, women are allowed to go topless and public and nudity is illegal when it is lewd. We were not arrested because we were not harming anyone and were not sexual in our nakedness, much less lewd. Victoria is blessed with a Police force that cares when people are in danger and to channel their efforts into arresting peaceful citizens on a fun filled bike ride because a few individuals are uncomfortable with the sight of breasts is a misuse of the justice system.
Officially, the mandate of the World Naked Bike Ride is to raise awareness for the ridiculous obsession this country and others have with fossil fuel dependency. Of course, we do not have to be naked to do this, but it does help with exposure (sorry) and generally gets a lot of positive media attention. However, the vast majority of cyclists, while also caring about the planet, ride because it is simply the most fun you can have on a Saturday afternoon. I, personally, am not a naturalist (my passion for fashion hedges fetishism), and riding naked was never something I would have considered doing until I actually did it. But once one is without clothing, in public, speeding along, with everyone (except Mr. Schaefer) cheering for you, it’s so thrilling, and barriers start to break down. Suddenly something you thought was completely impossible is actually happening, and it’s honestly not that big a deal. It’s not as scary as in your dreams, and actually quite a lot of fun. Plus it’s undeniably hilarious, for those not aghast, as any Britt accustomed to the ancient tradition of streaking will tell you.
We spend so much time trying to get our bodies into specific shapes and look a certain way; there is so much shame and so many unhealthy attitudes surrounding human bodies, especially women’s, these days. I find it so encouraging and so liberating to see so many people accepting who they are, unashamed, and for cause! While some may find this form of self-acceptance and revelry intolerable, most bystanders were entertained and perhaps, hopefully, inspired.
Doing my part to keep Victoria beautiful,
~ Rebecca McMackin
I don't know why I think this is bloggable, but I do. I guess it falls under the rubric of normal boring blogs but oh welll.
Anyway, I just realized that about a year ago, I started being a verbal love whore. I tell everyone that I love them. This is new to me. Even my family. Also very new. The family part, I can thank my sister Meg for, as she lamented out lack of love and I set about to fix it along with others. But friends have no explination.
Perhaps, I just got to that point with my Canadian friends where we realize and recognize that specific emotion. Or maybe it's an age thing. I'm 28, maybe I'm just that much more aware of my own mortality and want to form stronger ties to the living?
Or maybe hippies just gush. Which I adore.
I have no idea. But if you have any thoughts, I would like to hear them.
My favorite Misfits song of all time is "some kind of hate." If you want to read into it, it's about how relationships are often all about both love and hate at the same time. Glen has the single best line of any song ever in it where he's talking about how sex is just watever and he says, "maggots in the eye alone will copulate."
Fucking brilliant.
But then my entimologist friend Marj pointed out that maggots in fact don't copulate, because they're the larval stage of flies, and only flies have sex.
So sad.
But it's still a great line. And I feel like we all need to give Glen all the props we can muster these days because of that video of him getting dropped like a bitch. Another friend Michael said that anytime anyone says Glen "got dropped like a bitch," his evil power is like "zzeeeuuoooppp" and goes down. And the man apparently lives in LA, so I think he needs all the evil power he can get.
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. "
-Robert A. Heinlein
I just watched a National Geographic documentary on Gorillas from the 70's, back when National Geographic actually got political. It was really funny though. They had all this footage of when the US and English societies were first exposed to this massive dark ape through pictures and even film from the 1920's. There were numerous horror films and of course King Kong.
If you know anything about gorillas, you know that they don't attack people unless they're being attacked, but all of the older pictures and footage were of course picturing these violent creatures. But what's more is that in most of them, they had the gorilla taking their women to have sex with them. AMAZING! HILLARIOUS! The white man's fear of huge black sex extends into the animal kingdom! They never said it in the documentary but it was obvious from the footage. This is such a pop psychology dissertation waiting to be written, if it hasn't already.
You have to think, 1920, women just got the right to vote. Jazz is luring white women in just about every major city into the heart of black neighborhoods. And suddenly everyone knows about an even BIGGER, even BLACKER creature, and all the movie people can think about is how it will take their white women.
Or who knows, maybe women were like "hmmmm...." You never know.
This article from the NYT reports on a study claiming men are attracted to women who are less powerful, smart, and gainfully employed. They keep falling for their secretaries and maids and such.
"The prospect for marriage increased by 35 percent for guys for each 16-point increase in I.Q.; for women, there is a 40 percent drop for each 16-point rise. "
The study likes to imagine it's all biological. They say it's because evolution has selected for men who like lesser females so that there's less of a risk of infidelity and they won't have to raise other men's children. Which is dubious at best. I seriously doubt we could find a correlation between powerful women and infidelity. Although it would be an interesting study.
I think a better sociobiological hypothesis would be male's subconscious desires to marry women who would raise offspring well rather than be their partner in crime. I consider this tragic but it seems to be a complete trend in my life that my smart male friends go out with hot dumb girls who don't make them think and might even suck in bed. I call this the "pet girl" scenario. And do the men care? no. Why? because they suck. And they also might be inclined that way biologically.
But that is only part of the picture. To deny there are social influences on a dynamic like this in a society like this would be absurd. American society was/is patriarchal, or at least there are impressions of it still floating around. And feminism was a huge ball buster for so many men. You could totally read this as a backlash. A retreat into cozier times and paradigms. You can see it on TV with all the fat ass dumb ass guys married to hot women who treat them like babies - the Homer scenario.
Also no one mentions that perhaps smarter women are choosing themselves not to marry. Maybe they consider their carreers before having kids. This seems like an obvious omition.
Although in reality, I totally understand it. I just don’t think a pet boy would entertain me for long enough to sustain a long term relationship. I guess it just means I have to date brilliant men....sigh....
Full article in "more"
January 13, 2005
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Men Just Want Mommy
By MAUREEN DOWD
ASHINGTON
A few years ago at a White House Correspondents' dinner, I met a very beautiful actress. Within moments, she blurted out: "I can't believe I'm 46 and not married. Men only want to marry their personal assistants or P.R. women."
I'd been noticing a trend along these lines, as famous and powerful men took up with the young women whose job it was to tend to them and care for them in some way: their secretaries, assistants, nannies, caterers, flight attendants, researchers and fact-checkers.
Women in staff support are the new sirens because, as a guy I know put it, they look upon the men they work for as "the moon, the sun and the stars." It's all about orbiting, serving and salaaming their Sun Gods.
In all those great Tracy/Hepburn movies more than a half-century ago, it was the snap and crackle of a romance between equals that was so exciting. Moviemakers these days seem far more interested in the soothing aura of romances between unequals.
In James Brooks's "Spanglish," Adam Sandler, as a Los Angeles chef, falls for his hot Mexican maid. The maid, who cleans up after Mr. Sandler without being able to speak English, is presented as the ideal woman. The wife, played by Téa Leoni, is repellent: a jangly, yakking, overachieving, overexercised, unfaithful, shallow she-monster who has just lost her job with a commercial design firm. Picture Faye Dunaway in "Network" if she'd had to stay home, or Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction" without the charm.
The same attraction of unequals animated Richard Curtis's "Love Actually," a 2003 holiday hit. The witty and sophisticated British prime minister, played by Hugh Grant, falls for the chubby girl who wheels the tea and scones into his office. A businessman married to the substantial Emma Thompson falls for his sultry secretary. A writer falls for his maid, who speaks only Portuguese.
(I wonder if the trend in making maids who don't speak English heroines is related to the trend of guys who like to watch Kelly Ripa in the morning with the sound turned off?)
Art is imitating life, turning women who seek equality into selfish narcissists and objects of rejection, rather than affection.
As John Schwartz of The New York Times wrote recently, "Men would rather marry their secretaries than their bosses, and evolution may be to blame."
A new study by psychology researchers at the University of Michigan, using college undergraduates, suggests that men going for long-term relationships would rather marry women in subordinate jobs than women who are supervisors.
As Dr. Stephanie Brown, the lead author of the study, summed it up for reporters: "Powerful women are at a disadvantage in the marriage market because men may prefer to marry less-accomplished women." Men think that women with important jobs are more likely to cheat on them.
"The hypothesis," Dr. Brown said, "is that there are evolutionary pressures on males to take steps to minimize the risk of raising offspring that are not their own." Women, by contrast, did not show a marked difference in their attraction to men who might work above or below them. And men did not show a preference when it came to one-night stands.
A second study, which was by researchers at four British universities and reported last week, suggested that smart men with demanding jobs would rather have old-fashioned wives, like their mums, than equals. The study found that a high I.Q. hampers a woman's chance to get married, while it is a plus for men. The prospect for marriage increased by 35 percent for guys for each 16-point increase in I.Q.; for women, there is a 40 percent drop for each 16-point rise.
So was the feminist movement some sort of cruel hoax? The more women achieve, the less desirable they are? Women want to be in a relationship with guys they can seriously talk to - unfortunately, a lot of those guys want to be in relationships with women they don't have to talk to.
I asked the actress and writer Carrie Fisher, on the East Coast to promote her novel "The Best Awful," who confirmed that women who challenge men are in trouble.
"I haven't dated in 12 million years," she said drily. "I gave up on dating powerful men because they wanted to date women in the service professions. So I decided to date guys in the service professions. But then I found out that kings want to be treated like kings, and consorts want to be treated like kings, too."
It is hysterical how people like to let you know they're in a relationship here. Ever so subtly, one solo person will slip in a "we." As in, "we loved that movie" or "yes, we have been to New Brunswick." With zero prior knowledge as to what or whom they could be referring. No no no, this is not the Royal "we," but rather, the Canadian way of letting you know they have pair bonded. These are the same people who will later refer to their "partner." They say it proudly. It is their job to shame you into oddity, least they tempt themselves with the world of options. No, they are a "we." They have successfully merged into one. Like a red dot on their Canadian foreheads, that "we" is a warning both to you and themselves.
"I am a we"
Literally attached.
Totally copped from Disinfo, but I'm linking to the *full* article, they just linked to the abstract. So there. It's just an interesting idea for anyone writing sci fi novels out there...Makes perfect sense too, the way that add agencies go about attempting to convince kids that their parents are stupid... And the inveitable desire for the government/corporations to role back minimum age requirements for employment...
"Our current concept of childhood is a relatively recent invention. Throughout most cultures throughout most of human history, individuals today referred to as "children" had the right to marry, serve in the army, and even act as the head of state....
...This situation is similar to the subordinate legal status women had to their husbands just a few generations ago. It is in effect a form of slavery, though under the supposed belief that this is in the best interest of those who are enslaved. It was only in 1920 that women finally gained the right to vote in the United States. Prior to this date, it was considered outrageous to propose that these "irrational creatures" could be trusted to have a say in governance."
I went to go see Laura Nader speak last night and am back in the Nader camp. She, being a world renowned anthropologist in her own right, only briefly touched on the pink elephant of her brother and the upcoming election. Of course I would vote for Kerry if I was in a swing state but in the end it does seem that all he does is put a smiley face on all of the things Bush is doing obviously. Kerry would also have a far better domestic agenda and stop, or slow, the funneling of money from the lower and middle classes upwards. But the international economic, political, and military practices of the US would continue with less international condemnation and attention than they would under Bush. Dr. Nader brought up the fact that over a million people died from the depleted uranium left over by Clinton’s bombing in Iraq, mostly children. Bush has yet to kill a million Iraqis, it’s just that he gets more attention and is a horrible diplomat.
Dr. Nader also talked about use of US economic and political restructuring as a modern form of plunder. The difference between Genghis Kahn and Bush is that Kahn didn’t feel like he had to justify anything, Bush uses law for that. But pretty much the gist is that we go in, and set up a system where all the wealth and resources of a country get funneled into the hands of a powerful few and out of the country into multinational corporations. It’s all perfectly “justified” under law, but that law exists to make people money.
Order 39 of Paul Bremer’s recent edicts (Hello colonialism) exists to encourage foreign investment, sets up a free market economy, privatizes many state run industries like parks and financial institutions, and then declares multinationals can remove 100% of their profits from the country until 2005, when his edicts *might* be able to be changed. That means no one, especially not Halliburton, has to pay taxes to the Iraqi people. Also, Order 17 grants immunity from Iraqi law to all members of the U.S.-led multinational force in Iraq, as well as to foreign contractors and diplomats. Order 57 establishes independent inspectors general in every Iraqi ministry who are authorized to conduct investigations, audits, evaluations, and other reviews. The Bremer-appointed inspectors serve five-year terms. He also made a committee to over see elections and can remove candidates they are not fond of.
A full list of Bremer’s edicts can be found here.
And an article from the Washington Post is here.
This is a great article by Naomi Klien from last year on the subject.
And here is a great article from the International Movement for a Just World (whoever they are).
“By a stroke of a pen, the American Governor of Occupied Iraq had transformed an economy which under the earlier Baathist Constitution had barred the privatization of vital State enterprises and prohibited foreigners from owning Iraqi firms, into an ultra capitalist economy which to all intents and purposes is designed to serve as an appendage of neo-liberal American capitalism. Though Order 39 is a violation of the Hague Regulations of 1907 and of international law, Washington has pushed ahead with the economic occupation of Iraq since that was one of the primary purposes behind the March 2003 invasion.”
Dr. Nader ended by saying that our country is very much in trouble and we are. She even appealed to Canada to help, which seemed horribly useless, but shows how grim the situation is. We have torture camps people! This is us, OUR country, WE are allowing our government to hold and torture prisoners outside of US borders and, therefore, the Geneva Convention. WE are planning to use MICROWAVE guns to nuke the skin of Iraqis as of next year (see below). I’m fucking telling you people, this system is getting out of control and right now it’s ravishing the world, but it’s only a few more years till the American people get restructured as well.
One very hopeful thing she had to say was that the NeoCons are really just a handful of very motivated and powerful people. Which is true. And it should give us hope that if we can become very motivated and powerful, we can change things too.
So now all of the above seems like an argument against Ralph and for Kerry. But I don’t think any of you are in swing states so really, there is no reason to vote for Kerry if you don’t want to. And please don’t think I am making the oversimplified argument of “they are both the same.” Kerry would do wonders for our international reputation and possibly keep our oh-so-fragile international law and human rights from falling to pieces. But things need to change fundamentally rather than just putting a nice face on it. The Republicans are nice and obvious with their pulling rights out of libraries and phony terror warnings on drugs from Canada (2 days after banning them for Medicare patients!). Kerry is not the man to change things. Ralph is sort of crazy and has no chance ever but at least he’s fighting the fight.
OK. END RANT.
An amazing quote from the the lovely voodoolulu:
"I spoke with a friend yesterday who happens to be an expert on suicide. He is writing a book on suicide. He confirmed something I had read years ago: the suicide rate is higher than the homicide rate in the US. Which means statistically you have a greater chance of killing yourself than of being killed by someone. "
I just read Notes from the Underground and have been thinking about suicide a lot. (not that anyone kills themselves in that book). But, my big realization is that I think people need to be given a reason to live or they will simply self destruct. Which makes sense from a social-darwinian perspective.
It seems like there are two types of suicide: revenge / reactionary suicide (like when your wife cheats and you write your last words on the wall in blood, or set yourself on fire outside the white house) and hopeless suicide. The latter *always* say "I have no reason to live." Far from Freud's Death Drive, I think humans will automatically kill themselves unless they are given explicit reasons not to. Reasons can be things we all take for granted, like the responsibility of going to work at Burger King every day, the knowledge that your mother would never be able to handle it, or giving life by watering your houseplants. I’ve never read it, but I would imagine that people without strong social bonds tend to kill themselves more often. I've also heard that people with cancer recover far better if they feel they have responsibilities to attend to.
Without a purpose, we jump off cliffs like we used to think lemmings did. Full body apoptosis. More self destruction that self sacrifice I guess, but still, weak links take care of themselves. Of course, someone could easily use the "not everyone" retort, but I think this theory covers a large enough percentage of the population to be significant.
In general (beware the tangent) I think responsibilities are a savior. The amount of choice in the life of the average american white girl can be suffocating and immobilizing. The social mobility of democracy and capitalism encourage us to find our purpose through profitable vocation, which, even if one succeeds, is rather superficial and trite compared to harvesting or sewing.
Sometimes it seems like life would be so much easier if I knew I was a coal miner’s daughter and knew I could count on spending my life in the dark and dying of black lung. Trying to figure out your purpose in life is a huge burden. (I know, you’re crying for me at this very moment). But it seems from here that in the past, one could just work as hard as they could on the path they were put on. Now we choose the path and spend so much time switching to other paths and wondering if we made the right decision.
We are taught to quest for power in this society. Climb up. That is what you should want, to succeed. But success is also such a burden. It's fucking hard work to tell someone else what to do! (I avoid it at all costs).
I'll never forget this dominatrix I met at Berkeley in 1999. She said that the vast majority of her clientele were all those guys who made massive fortunes when they were 25 in Silicon Valley before the bubble burst. Those men wanted to be dominated, treated like babies, chained to the wall, to *relieve* themselves of the burden of power, let her take it for a while.
Other societies, some Native American among them, feel that those who want power are the least deserving and trustworthy people to put in power. They look at power itself as an undesirable responsibility. Higher ups have to take on those positions because they would be best for it, not because they want to.
This has tons of implications for democracy. Rather than some slick guy sauntering in and wooing populations, trying to convince them he is going to vote for their interests so they should vote for him, the system should be designed so that communities pick members from within them, and tell that person what to say to speak for them directly. This, of course, is not my thought but has been written in the past. I don’t remember how that relates to suicide…But I think we need to work on making lives real again. I’m not even going to put quotes around the word real. Fie postmodernism!
The end.
You know how there are people you meet all over the world who look like each other? And not just certain characteristics, but the whole person? I notice this quite a bit and even have been keeping track of certain categories of people. Like people with wide eyes that always look too alert. Or certain groups of red-haired women: those with thick wastes, large breasts, and large lips as opposed to those with paler skin, thin noses and no lips. This latter group tends to have collies and cocker spaniels with red hair to match them.
So, what I’m wondering is, are these people related? Was there a time when they formed clans in villages in Europe? Or migrated together across Asia? When you came to a town a few thousand years ago, did everyone look exceptionally similar? Or is it simply the inevitable coincidences from combining physical characteristics randomly?
There are people who are very cool everywhere. Like those people who do the super hardcore stuff first such as getting their face tattooed. Then there are people who know those people are cool and admire them and secretly want to be them. And there are some of those people who really really want that hardcore cool status and are a little wacky. These people will sometimes simply move to a new place and adopt whatever aspect of cool they had dreamed of appropriating. There’s always a while there when they’re hard to distinguish from the genuinely hardcore people but little eye movements set them apart. It’s hardcore cool succession.
You know, I was just reading about spiders today and I just have to say thanks to whoever's idea it was to have digestion go on inside the human body. Many animals prefer to squirt or hack up digestive juices to break down food before they actually consume it and I just think it's fabulous that we do that inside ourselves and don't have to look at the process or eat it. Thanks.
Today I just learned about Xylem, the tissue type in plants that create a pathway for water. Aside from being totally beautiful, the Xylem are neat because their function is in being dead. They grow to be the right size and get to the right place, then die and hollow out so that water can pass through them. So that "maturity" for this tissue is actually death. Which is interesting, that something organic could serve it's purpose in life only when dead.
i woke up this morning and heard this on the news: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/19/international/middleeast/19CND-ISRA.html
i got into school and saw this on my homepage:
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040519/D82LPPNO0.html
i went through my emails and read this EXTREMELY important article:
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0420/perlstein.php
for some godforsaken reason i did a google search and came up with this:
http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/iraqis_tortured/
i don't know what to do anymore. i can't do my work. it just feels wrong.
my father suggested it would be more constructive to go down to florida or something and register people to vote rather than the RNC and fuck shit up. but i'm so angry. i feel like we owe it to the world. in montreal some guy had a shirt with an american flag that said, "a nation of sheep, lead by wolves." voting is so minimal. it's so useless and litterally the least anybody can do. part of me is insluted by the idea of working my ass off to register people to vote in a country that very well might opt to keep this murderous administration in power. how could i knock on a door and remain rational when this shit is going on and people might actually like it? you know last week the single most searched for thing on the internet was the video of that american getting his head chopped off. that's what people want to see. we're a nation of sick people. distracted and entertained. we prefer some one smiling and giving the thumbs up while simultaniously doing his best to destroy all non-corporate or religious aspects of government and bring about the rapture. people want positivity regardless of reality. even kerry can't decide if he's going to speak straight up or try to put a positive spin on everything. and this is how most people will vote, who is the nicest guy, who would i have over for dinner..and these people bitching about kerry, like it matters who kerry is! why even spend the energy to think about it? talk him up! send him your money and get his ass in office! canadians too, you think this isn't your problem? this is the ENTIRE world's problem at this point. wearing a t-shit, marching around in a circle, and feeling good about yourself does not cut it anymore. honestly, i don't think the RNC is that important. it's just a place to express some pent up shit. but i just don't know what else to do.
seriously, i feel hopeless and desperate. please send me an email to make me feel better. even if it's just to tel me you feel like this too and want to do soemthing.
i woke up this morning and heard this on the news: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/19/international/middleeast/19CND-ISRA.html
i got into school and saw this on my homepage:
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040519/D82LPPNO0.html
i went through my emails and read this EXTREMELY important article:
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0420/perlstein.php
for some godforsaken reason i did a google search and came up with this:
http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/iraqis_tortured/
i don't know what to do anymore. i can't do my work. it just feels wrong.
my father suggested it would be more constructive to go down to florida or something and register people to vote rather than the RNC and fuck shit up. but i'm so angry. i feel like we owe it to the world. in montreal some guy had a shirt with an american flag that said, "a nation of sheep, lead by wolves." voting is so minimal. it's so useless and litterally the least anybody can do. part of me is insluted by the idea of working my ass off to register people to vote in a country that very well might opt to keep this murderous administration in power. how could i knock on a door and remain rational when this shit is going on and people might actually like it? you know last week the single most searched for thing on the internet was the video of that american getting his head chopped off. that's what people want to see. we're a nation of sick people. distracted and entertained. we prefer some one smiling and giving the thumbs up while simultaniously doing his best to destroy all non-corporate or religious aspects of government and bring about the rapture. people want positivity regardless of reality. even kerry can't decide if he's going to speak straight up or try to put a positive spin on everything. and this is how most people will vote, who is the nicest guy, who would i have over for dinner..and these people bitching about kerry, like it matters who kerry is! why even spend the energy to think about it? talk him up! send him your money and get his ass in office! canadians too, you think this isn't your problem? this is the ENTIRE world's problem at this point. wearing a t-shit, marching around in a circle, and feeling good about yourself does not cut it anymore. honestly, i don't think the RNC is that important. it's just a place to express some pent up shit. but i just don't know what else to do.
seriously, i feel hopeless and desperate. please send me an email to make me feel better. even if it's just to tel me you feel like this too and want to do soemthing.
I just realized that I do not live life in the fast lane. I live life in the lane that does not check for oncoming traffic when merging into the fast lane.