A humble suggestion regarding nomenclature

 4 Responses »
Sep 032007
 

Amanda writes about the “ZOMG John Edwards is a trial lawyar!!!11!“ smearing, and unfortunately, as is so often the case, people are reduced to putting “tort reform” into quotes to make clear that the National Association of Manufacturers/Chamber of Commerce/DRI crowd isn’t about actually reforming the tort system. Yet it’s hard to find a good term, since ‘corporate welfare’ is both a mouthful and pretty broad, including as it does those who think government assistance is bad when given to an African-American single mother, but good when it’s given to a legal entity that trades on NASDAQ.

I would suggest the term McTools for these folks. “Tools”, obviously; the ones who aren’t actually corporate masters themselves are happy in their role as paid zealous advocate, in or out of the courtroom. The “Mc” because if they hadn’t invented a distorted version of the McDonald’s coffee-injury case, they’d have to invent it, being as they are friend to anything with “Inc.” after its name that is dedicated to making money, large multinational corporations being a favorite.

Hey, they didn’t get the public’s ire up about the ATLA to AAJ name change. Why not give them something else to cause another epic fit of monocle-clutching?

 Posted by mythago at 4:24 pm

One child too far

 3 Responses »
Sep 032007
 

Because we expect a little paranoia and overreaction from brand-new parents with brand-new babies. From a parent with two school-age children, you expect a little better than this:

Continue reading »

 Posted by mythago at 2:34 pm

More Context

 10 Responses »
Aug 182007
 

Dizzy writes an excellent post about dealing with “friends” (sadly, she left out the quotes) who think it’s their job to lecture us girls on how we shouldn’t be all angry and feminist-y, and how mean we are to men, and how if we were really, truly strong women we wouldn’t need all that strident feminist nonsense. tenacious snail follows up with her own thoughts. Both get comments in the idiotic-to-clueless range.

From my point of view, it’s really very simple: I’m not interested in “defending feminism,” soothing the hurt feelings of guys who are offended, deeply offended, that anyone would suggest they have male privilege, who confuse plain old traditionalist Cosmo Girl man-hating with feminism, or who want to dissect what “feminism” means and why it should really be “humanism”.

In other words, I’m a feminist. If you can’t deal with that, fuck off. Dying in the process is preferred, but optional.

I don’t mind if you hesitate to use the “f-word” for your own self. I don’t care if you like or dislike particular feminist organizations or writers; your opinions on NOW or Andrea Dworkin are not deal-breakers. But if you get pouty because It’s Not My Fault I Have A Penis; if you really believe women are pampered and spoiled and men always get the short end of the stick; if you think there is no such thing as male privilege; if you truly think that only weak women are victims of sexism, and then only at the hands of a tiny minority of men; if you think discussions of sexism are a personal insult to you…then I refer to, and incorporate by reference herein, the previous direction to fuck off.

Oh, and the above applies to women as well. If you preen at how much more special you are than all those silly girly-girls, if you are convinced that sexism is a myth invented by less-capable women because you’ve certainly never seen any of it, if you have ever used the phrase “vive le difference” in earnest, if you like the idea that your role in life is to have doors opened for you and your bills paid as your proper due for allowing someone to have sex with you…you, too, are offered VIP seating on a fast vessel that will take you back under your rock where you belong.

If you see yourself in the above, or if it merely hurts your little feelings, don’t bother commenting here. Don’t bother responding in real life, either. We’ll be much happier without each other.

 Posted by mythago at 9:51 pm

Higamus, hogamus

 6 Responses »
Aug 132007
 

While the New York Times patiently (and probably futilely) points out that men’s and women’s reports of their number of sex partners doesn’t match, John Scalzi has a much more elegant explanation.

Less amusing is the possibility that women aren’t counting nonconsensual sexual encounters, and men are. But this probably isn’t skewing the numbers to the point that, as in the article, one survey finds men reporting twice as many sex partners as women.

 Posted by mythago at 7:49 am

Pixel-Stained Technopeasants Make With The Free!

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Apr 232007
 

Oh, man. Where to begin.

The current-but-outgoing vice president of the SFWA wrote a barely-coherent tantrum about the evils of a) artists who give away their work FOR FREE!!! b) on THE INTERNET!!!!. Because it interferes with a good, old-fashioned, wood-chopping way of life where if you want to call people idiots, you have to hike uphill in the snow to do it, by cracky, without all this fancy bloggery.

Or something. I told you it was barely coherent.

Anyway, to mock his spittle-flecked insulting of other writers as ‘scabs’ and ‘pixel-stained technopeasants’ who dasn’t use a woodstove like He-Man Hendrix, Jo Walton has declared today International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day!

In honour of Dr Hendrix, I am declaring Monday 23rd April International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day. On this day, everyone who wants to should give away professional quality work online. It doesn’t matter if it’s a novel, a story or a poem, it doesn’t matter if it’s already been published or if it hasn’t, the point is it should be disseminated online to celebrate our technopeasanthood.

Jo will be posting links in comments. In the meantime, I offer my own non-professional-technopeasantry, in the form of a short story originally written for Subterranean’s “SF cliche” issue (edited by John Scalzi).

Continue reading »

 Posted by mythago at 12:53 am

Librarians Unclear on the Concept

 6 Responses »
Feb 182007
 

Librarians are generally the first line of defense against censorious idiots, but apparently they’re letting just anybody learn the Dewey Decimal System these days: there is outrage over a Newberry-award-winning book in which the main character overhears another character tell the story of his dog being bitten by a rattlesnake…in the scrotum.

Yes. There is outrage over use of the S Word.

The book has already been banned from school libraries in a handful of states in the South, the West and the Northeast, and librarians in other schools have indicated in the online debate that they may well follow suit. Indeed, the topic has dominated the discussion among librarians since the book was shipped to schools.

Full story of “let’s all fulfill the stereotype of librarians as pinched, glasses-wearing, dried-up old harridans” at the NYT. But the true jaw-dropping moment of idiocy comes from Dana Nilsson, a librarian in Durango, Colorado:

Ms. Nilsson, reached at Sunnyside Elementary School in Durango, Colo., said she had heard from dozens of librarians who agreed with her stance. “I don’t want to start an issue about censorship,” she said. “But you won’t find men’s genitalia in quality literature.”

You won’t find men’s genitalia in this book either, dumbass: the scrotum in question belongs to a dog.

 Posted by mythago at 10:33 am
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