Day: April 1, 2006

Art, Crankypantsing

Why I’m Not a Joiner

Shelly

A couple of years ago, I joined a Yahoo group for gluebooks. For those who don’t know what gluebooks are, they’re journals or artist books full of collage. The group started out as a low-key, fun bunch of people. Then, the moderator started getting cranky with lack of participation by lurkers.

I wasn’t a frequent participant, but I had been attempting to post at a frequency that was well within her guidelines. I say “attempting,” because she kept blocking my posts. On topic, perfectly civil and supportive posts, I might add. Hrmph. I sent her an e-mail, explaining that it was kinda hard for me to participate if half my messages were getting nuked. I never heard back from her.

About a month later, she went on another bender, this time stating that those who weren’t participating enough (like me) would be unsubscribed from the group. M’kaythen. I e-mailed her again, and again, was ignored.

Then, the kicker: she used one of my images for the group’s home page, but credited it to someone else. I e-mailed her to tell her that she’d mis-credited it. No biggie. It has happened on every art-related group I’ve ever belonged to. Normal, accepted practice is for the moderator to fix the problem and send a correction message to the group. Not this time, though. Nope. Instead of the usual week that images were left on that group’s home page, mine was yanked down that same day with no correction, no “oops” message to the group, and no explanation. What the fuck?!

At that point, I unsubscribed from the group. I’d heard enough about the moderator’s shitty behavior from others, that I decided it wasn’t worth it.

That’s all ancient history, but it explains why, when I recently ran across a gluebooks “lens” she’d created on Squidoo, I was gobsmacked to find that the Flickr snapshot was composed entirely of my artwork. HAW!

Crankypantsing, Ladybusiness, News & Politics

Free Whores

Shelly

Via Feministing, a letter from Republican Rep. Cynthia Davis on how only sluts use contraceptive. Obviously, that’s all sorts of wrong for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that her underlying premise–that single women who have sex are whores–sucks. But, what made me choke on my PB&J was this gem:

When I was listening to the debate last week I wondered what kind of man would want to enjoy free sex and then expect her to provide for her own contraceptives? These are the kind of men who want free whores. Any man who would be so low life as that does not deserve to have any woman love him. Smart women will stay away from men who use them and abuse them.

What on earth does that mean? Seriously. Does she not realize that married women, too, are generally left with the responsibility of providing contraception?  That’s an awfully broad brush she’s wielding.  And, what exactly is a free whore, anyway?

And then there’s her baffling statement that state provided birth control for single women will increase the birth rate. WTF? Yes, I realize that it’s incredibly immoral to be poor. I also realize that poor folks should be punished for their transgressions. And I also, too, double-plus-as-well realize that single women who have sex should be pilloried in the town square. After all, they’re whores, right? Um, no, they’re not. They’re human beings who have every bit as much right to have access to physical intimacy and decent health care as do UberMoral Rich Folks.

The answer is not to take away access to abortion, and then to take away access to the means to keep from becoming pregnant. Good grief! No, if people like Cynthia Davis actually cared about women and children and all that “family values” stuff that they like to rabbit on and on and on about, then they’d be looking for solutions that

  • Provide for the care of the people who are already here. That means none of that ridiculous “poor mothers don’t deserve welfare” crap. Of course they deserve welfare, and so do their kids. You can’t help people to become contributing members of society by taking away their access to adequate schooling, health care, nutrition, housing, etc.
  • They’d trust women to make their own choices about whether or not they want to become pregnant. Period. That means access to birth control and to abortions. Because, if you can’t trust a woman to make those sorts of decisions, you certainly can’t trust her to raise a child./li>

The entire letter can be found here. But, I warn ya’, it ain’t pretty. Aside from the hemorrhaging from her logic centers, the woman obviously did not learn grammar from Sister Dominica.

Uncategorized

Auntie Em! Auntie Em!

Shelly

We had the mother of all storms last night. Quite possibly the Auntie and Uncle, too. There was a severe thunderstorm warning and a tornado watch for our area, so I was expecting something gross to creep in, but I was unprepared for how bad it would be. At about 6:30, I went outside with the dog. I stood on the porch while she motored around the yard, and watched the puffy white clouds to the south. They were big and billowy and not at all harmful looking. Besides, they were moving away from me.

Then, I turned around to go back inside. (Cue the Eeevil Emperor’s theme song from Star Wars.) The shelf cloud (which looked not entirely unlike this) of the oncoming storm had crept up from the north and was silently advancing. Sweet fancy Jeebus! The wind had been howling, but it suddenly got very quiet. I ran inside, put on my shoes, and drove next door. Far better to be sucked up in a tornado if you have company, right?

So, I cut out UPC codes from bags of dog and cat food for my neighbor while we watched teevee. By the time Jeopardy was over, the worst of the storm had passed. It was super slow moving, though. I’ve never seen a storm creep along that slowly. Or move in such an odd direction. It came in from due north, and exited to due east. Very weird!

Anyway, we didn’t get a tornado. We did get front row seats to one of the most spectacular light shows EVAR, though. There were some ground strikes, but most of it was cloud-to-cloud. The latter were gorgeous. Portions of the clouds would glow red, yellow, blue, or green. There were also quite a few pulsing zaps of lightning that would dart around the cloud, like little tadpoles in water.

Some of the larger, more prolonged lightning strikes illuminated the mammatus clouds on the back side of the storm. I wish it had been light out, because I would’ve liked to’ve photographed them.

The show lasted over three hours. When I went to bed at 11pm, I could still see a thin band of clouds on the eastern horizon, lit up with pops and crackles of lightning.