It’s a PSA: Casey Neistat got a ticket for not riding in the bike lane – which, btw, is NOT illegal – and decided to ride in the bike lane no matter what obstacles were in it with him.
Buster Keaton meets cycling: my kind of CR.
Neil Gaiman on Art, Work, & Happiness
This is for my wife, who loves Mr. Gaiman at least as much as I do.
This is my favorite bit:
People keep working in a freelance world because their work is good, they’re easy to get along with, & because they deliver the work on time. & You don’t even need all three. 2 out of 3 is fine:People will tolerate how unpleasant you are if your work is good & you deliver it on time.
People will forgive the lateness of your work if it’s is good & they like you.
& you don’t have to be as good as everyone else if you’re on time and it’s always a pleasure to hear from you.
Because it’s true.
Walker Watch
I’m not sure people are aware of this, but Scott Walker has been having people arrested for singing, or watching people sing, in the state capitol’s rotunda. This is the same place where all the protests happened a few years ago.
Here’s a guy who got arrested today, & yes, he is a firefighter.
The Solidarity Singalong started in March 2011 with the rallies that were staged protests against Walker’s union busting. It’s continued every day since them – at noon, usually with a couple of copies of lyrics for whomever wanted to sing along. Their supposed to get a permit as a group but they are not a group so much as they are people who show up to sing; who comes is pretty irregular, and no one is “in charge”. That is, there is no organization, no group in the legal sense, and so no one who can report how many people will show up on a day to day basis.
But of course that’s not the point. The point is that they’re singing in the rotunda of the capitol of Wisconsin because they should be allowed to.
On Vaccinations
I have a lot of friends with children, and I’m increasingly chagrined that my own peers are taking their political views on Big Pharma to a place that puts all of us at greater risk of dying of things we don’t have to die of.
So to explain how it all works, what “peer reviewed” means, and to comment on various “But — ” arguments, here’s this very good, clear article about what it all means, including links out about how places with low percentages of vaccination are getting the most diseases, and to this one about how herd immunity works.
That is all.
Gay Men Stay Gay….
… when they date trans men, that is.
Artist Bill Roundy wrote a comic about what it’s like to be a gay man who dates trans guys is actually pretty damned amusing.
<—– Here’s one snippet.
What we have learned: penis in vagina sex is not always straight/het sex. Genitals aren’t gender. Sometimes men have vaginas. Sometimes women don’t.
Anyway, read the whole thing — his frustration is in every frame but it should help clarify for a lot of people out there who don’t get it.
Gold.
8/20 UPDATE: “The storm of emotions going through us was incredible. And if we, accidentally, while congratulating each other, touched lips, excuse me. We think the whole fuss is more of a sick fantasy not grounded in anything.”
— Russian sprinter Kseniya Ryzhova, adamantly denying that the headline-grabbing kiss she shared with another female runner on the medal stand at the world championships in Moscow was a protest against Russia’s draconian anti-gay law.
(via Bilerico)
(Kseniya Ryzhova and Tatyana Firova were two of the Russian team who won the 4x400m relay in Moscow. When on the podium receiving
their medals they kissed, on the lips. It is assumed this is a protest against the recently passed anti gay laws.)
No More Gay/Trans Panic Defense?
I hope so. It’s a ridiculous idea. The American Bar Association has voted on it, with these stipulations:
The resolution passed by the ABA House of Delegates says that legislation should:
(a) [Require] courts in any criminal trial or proceeding, upon the request of a party, to instruct the jury not to let bias, sympathy, prejudice, or public opinion influence its decision about the victims, witnesses, or defendants based upon sexual orientation or gender identity; and
(b) [Specify] that neither a non-violent sexual advance, nor the discovery of a person’s sex or gender identity, constitutes legally adequate provocation to mitigate the crime of murder to manslaughter, or to mitigate the severity of any non-capital crime.
You can read the whole of it at the ABA site.
Mirror Images
My friend Miriam Hall recently wrote about her experience seeing herself in a mirror when she wasn’t expecting to. She didn’t like what she saw:
The mirror showed me my body—stout, short and plump. But what the mirror really showed me is something far deeper. It showed me how much I try and pretend that I don’t look like I do. The mirror showed me I am not who I think I am.
The whole article she’s written for Elephant – a guide to mindful life, as it calls itself – is, to my mind, more about seeing than feeling, seeing what is and not with a critical eye, just with a seeing one.
It made me think even more about my boobs post the other day and the ways we contextualize our own naked selves in ways that make us not right, less attractive, less whole.
There is a problem here, but it’s greater than the commodification of women’s bodies, or bodies in general. It’s more than seeing skinniness as health (when it often isn’t, at all, & is so often the opposite). It’s more than equating fatness to unhealthiness.
It’s more about the way we want to see bodies as objects, as things outside ourselves, not at the vessels we carry our souls in. I saw a few naked photos of myself, taken recently, and like Miriam, actually saw something I was pretending wasn’t there – all of the sadness of the past few years, the losses you all know about, & some you don’t, reflected in my posture and my body – in my everything, in my gestalt, for lack of a better word. And like a woman who might see her post pregnancy belly and post nursing breasts as what they are – vastly perfect because of what they’ve been and done and not because of how they look – I saw a body that had eaten so much emotion I couldn’t otherwise express.
So look at yourself, at your body. Not in the mirror, to see what needs fixing. Just glance at yourself in a mirror, in a shop window’s reflection, to see what’s there that you’re pretending isn’t. We only ever distract ourselves with weight loss and gain, muscle tone and beauty. There is so much more a body is and says than the stupidly limited vocabulary we choose for it.
Love’s Transformation
For anyone who has ever been in love…
… this one packs a wallop.
Boobs.
The other day I was poking around the internet for the answer to a particular question: whether or not wearing a bra at night keeps boobs safe from the forces of gravity. I started doing that very thing a few years ago with my older bras that are a little stretched out & so pretty comfy to sleep in.
The answer: the jury is out. There are very strong opinions on both sides. Some say bras in general are bad for boobs & actually cause them to sag. Others that bras are vital. Breastfeeding has been viewed as a culprit. It’s not. It’s actually the thickening and then thinning of milk ducts that causes women who have been pregnant and/or nursed to have less “bouncy” breasts. Weight loss and gain isn’t good for them either, if you needed yet another reason not to yo-yo diet.
So it’s pretty much surgery if you want higher boobs post pregnancy or weight loss/gain or just because you do. Of course you can and should work out your pecs, stand up straight, get fitted for the right bra (if you don’t believe the pervy French researcher) and – get this – squeeze your own breasts to potentially prevent both sagging and breast cancer.
But in the meantime, look at these breasts of regular people. I have to say that I looked at these photos more than once while I kept thinking about the breasts I am used to seeing – say the absurdly perfect rack of the brunette in the Robin Thicke video, for instance – and wondered about how often ANY of us see regular breasts.
Nudists do. Kinky folks in play spaces. Doctors. But most of us don’t really see the breasts of regular women on a day to day basis ,& that fact blew me away. Theoretically, it’s entirely possible for young women never to see anything but (1) their own breasts and (2) “famous” breasts (of movie stars, porn stars, etc.) That’s kinda fucked up.
Moreso, read what the women themselves say about their breasts: one woman with a really lovely pair wants them to face forward more. Another wishes she didn’t have stretch marks. Women with small breasts want bigger ones; women with larger breasts worry about sag. Asymmetry seems pretty routine. I kind of love that this one young woman lists everything that is “wrong” with them but still loves her own:
“I’m eighteen and have never been pregnant, but I come fully equipped with real flesh-and-blood breasts – my right is larger than my left, I have one inverted nipple, visible veins, stretchmarks from rapid adolescent development, even light downy fuzz covering the entire breasts. Whatever. I love them. They don’t belong to men, they don’t belong to society: they belong to me.” (bold added by me)
So the next time you think yours are imperfect, go look at some real women’s breasts – these are ones of women who have been pregnant – and remind yourself once again that we are, in fact, an uptight prudish culture – which means we don’t see other people naked casually – and that commodifies women’s bodies in ways that suck – which means we only see breasts that are selling products or entertainment.