She who does not suffer fools gladly.

Dan Quayle on Murphy Brown and some other stuff:

Ultimately, however, marriage is a moral issue that requires cultural consensus, and the use of social sanctions. Bearing babies irresponsibly is, simply, wrong. Failure to support children one has fathered is wrong. We must be unequivocal about this.

It doesn't help matters when prime time TV has Murphy Brown - a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid, professional woman - mocking the importance of a father, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another "lifestyle choice."




I designed this online, and am thinking of ordering it. I am, however, worried about its current cultural relevance.....



My Mom didn't really "believe" in feminism, or so she said when I was an overbearing adolescent and, like, wouldn't shut up about Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, but she believed in Murphy Brown, and that was sufficient for me. My dad, however, didn't believe in either, and many fights were had on Monday nights over whether to watch football or Murphy Brown, often culminating in me screaming, "We don't need you! Divorce him Mom! Divorce him!" But my parents had sex then (and still do? Mom, verify?), and so their whiny little brat insisting on divorce for "the principle of it" didn't really have too much effect on them.

I was persistent though, and eventually the problem was solved by purchasing a second television for my parent's room and shutting my Dad in there to do his testosterone-y football thing all by himself. Though really he was just in it for the attention because he ended up coming back into the living room for most of Murphy Brown just to add his own "This show is not even funny" commentary track....OR MAYBE BECAUSE HE WAS AFRAID OF MURPHY BROWN'S FEMINIST INFLUENCE ON US. I think I believe one explanation more than the other.

Lots of men were afraid of Murphy on the show. She was smart and sassy, also funny, but her funniness was never based on her gender (Ahem, Apaturd). Rather, she's funny because she is absurdly good at her job and no one else around can live up to it--literally. In an episode from the first season she's hardcore grilling a corrupt judge who midway through the interview falls silent. He's dead.

Being very susceptible to TV, I can say for certain that Murphy Brown inspired me to do the following things:

1.) Buy a power suit.

2.) Join the debate team.

3.) Feather my hair frequently.

4.) Want to become a reporter.

I probably would have tried to get pregnant and be a single mom too, but I was fugly, and couldn't get anyone to have sex with me. This, of course, does not mean Dan Quayle was right. It just means I am too impressionable.

My favorite description of Murphy Brown is from the show's bio on The Museum of Broadcast Communications website, and is as follows:

Smart, determined and difficult, she does not suffer fools gladly.

I'm hard-pressed to think of a female television character today with an eponymous tv show who does not suffer fools gladly. Definitely not her, or her, or her. Maybe she does. Oh wait, she's gone too.

Dear Americans,

We all 9-11. Every single 9-11, 9-11. Do we 9-11? Yes, 9-11. 9-11, 9-11 9-11! I was talking with my two children 9-11 9-11. 9-11 asked 9-11 9-11 9-11? I wanted to 9-11 9-11 9-11. If we all 9-11, then 9-11 9-11 9-11 9-11. It's no longer a 9-11, it's a 9-11. I hope 9-11 9-11 9-11. The country 9-11 is counting on 9-11 9-11 9-11. Thank you. And God bless 9-11.

Please donate $9.11.

Polar Wives, a working definition.

It dawned on me today when a Google search of "Polar Wife" brought up only the Craigslist ad I posted last week (below) among other material about bi-polar wives like "Bi-polar wife rips off man's penis-Ouch!", that perhaps I needed to further expound on the basic characteristics of said polar wife-- her derivations, her dreams, her sorted men, and her cold and unconventional lifestyle. I love women with unconventional lifestyles.

It's not that a polar wife couldn't rip off a man's penis-- it's just that there would be no "Ouch!"-- for these fur-clad vixens live in the very land their name gives away: The South Pole. I first learned about their existence from one of my college besties/hotties/roomies Dave who gets whisked away to all sorts of no-man's lands because of the potency of his scientific mind. He first went to The South Pole for two months during our senior year and has been back 2 or 3 times since for up to 6 months at a time. This is Dave in a tent in the South Pole, he's obviously practicing "science." That dude behind him is really amused and most likely thinking "I wonder if I can make this guy my polar wife?"



Though to be fair, as far as I've heard all polar wives are women. The Pole was once a bastion of dicks, but now the small population of 250 peeps is around 1/3 female. Men are born selfish, but in times of need they learn to share. Thus as Dave related he witnessed many scientists take a "polar wife" for the 6 winter months they were in Antartica. Not just any random woman, but the same woman year after year until they had something akin to a bonafide marriage. Not that they didn't have bonafide marriages back at home, they did. The Artic, though, is a different kind of puppy. It's so removed from the "real world" that real world rules don't apply. I get the impression that the philosophy behind it is pretty similar to 19th century European silk merchants taking exotic lovers in Japan, whilst their French wives, all played by Keira Knightley, are left with looks of stricken sadness and mad anorexia. If the world was just, they would have at least left their Western wives with some hamburgers.

My sympathies lie with the polar wives though, and ever since I heard of them I've had a small, but persistent thought that maybe someday I'd like to pack my bags and go join their ranks. To me, the "mistress" has always been the far more interesting role-- and 6 months of intense intimacy, near death hypothermic situations, constant cuddly sex, all under the exciting aura of scientific discovery, followed by six months off to order nightly takeout, write, pick boogers in the privacy of your own igloo, watch Murphy Brown reruns, and get back together occasionally with your boring Artic fill-in boyfriend, sounds like a wonderfully complex existence.


Also, someone needs to write a novel entitled "The Polar Wife" like right now, because that is an Oprah's Book Club title waiting to happen.

This blog is being taken over by email regurgitations

Sex Marmot: I need to take a polar wife, I think.

Beastdawg: you want to go to antarty?

Sex Marmot: If that’s what it takes, sure.

Beastdawg: I'm going to put an ad on Craislist for "One Polar Wife wanted. Winter months only. Very Loving Brooklyn Woman will make her feel like she is a year-round wife for a memorable four or five months."

This makes me LOLbarfinmypantz.

Picture courtesy of Sex Marmot.


So obviously if you've seen my profile, you know I'm like Facebook's biggest fan ever. I enjoy uploading pictures of my fun, fulfilling life for all to see as much as the next narcissistic drunken bitch does. I don't really see too much wrong with the TMInternet culture because 1.) There's perfectly valid entertainment value in perusing the wedding and live birth photo albums of a bunch of douchetards you only know from a 6 week trip to Israel you went on when you were like 12. What's more, it does not offend their (exhibitionist) sensibilities that you're scathingly judging them even though they've never spoken to you in person, only about you--and this was approximately 12 years ago when they told another pubescent Jewish peer that you "were fat and needed to shave your legs." (Disclaimer: Ummmm, the Bedoins don't sell Gillette razors in the DESERT, asswipe.) And 2.) Anyone who really thinks they're getting an honest view of life via a picture for the masses is an idiot. No one is having fun in pictures. Everyone is thinking, "Suck in!" and "that bitch better not be angling the camera under my chin."

That's why sneaky men taking pictures of actual life, like those naivetards who think it will be just so "wonderfully romantic" to snap a picture of you unawares during a really big life moment, are really fucking offensive. First of all, can you think of any time when a man armed with a camera, taking covert shots of someone has a positive connotation? It usually means there's a terrorist somewhere close, a Princess is about to get into a massive car crash, or Michael Jackson is snapping photos of the Kid's Special Olympics (for innocencezzzzz!). I wouldn't go as far as Slate did and argue that the act is unfeminist, but as an appearance-concerned woman, it's terrifying to imagine
a photographer stalking around, maybe getting shots of some mild finger-banging in a bar to preserve later for fond recollection. Do we not own our private sluttish (or significant) moments anymore? And why, WHY would you ever marry a man who has to photograph a picture of your surprised face so he can, "e-mail them to my whole family and all my co-workers." Could it be any more obvious that his mother will be sharing a bed with you after only two months of marriage?

Also either this is too smart for me to understand, or else it just doesn't MAKE ANY SENSE:

“I wanted to do the photos so that I could share that private moment with other people while keeping the actual moment itself private to us,” explained Mr. Norman.

Beastdawg: Gross-- did you read the Times style piece on lucid dreaming... more like WET dreaming. This is how it opens:

THE kiss you share with the exquisite stranger is electric, deep and seemingly endless — that is until you open an eye and see drool on your pillow. If only you could have slept long enough to consummate the seduction. Then again, you had no idea you were dreaming. Besides, you cannot control the nightly ride on the wings of your subconscious. Or can you?

Though I took a class on sleep (yeah, shut it) in college and we had to train ourselves to dream lucidly and one night I totally accomplished it-- I cast myself as Princess Leia in Star Wars and then made her hook up with Luke rather than Han. It was incestuous I suppose, but highly satisfying.


Sex Marmot: Grody! Would anyone ever use that technique for anything besides porno dreams? Science is working for porno dreamzzz?


Beastdawg: Doesn't it seem like science has been working exclusively on sex lately? Like there were all those men like hot women studies earlier....UM HELLOEEEZ IZ DER A CURE FOR CANCEER YETZ?!!! Also if you could lucid dream anything what would it be?

Sex Marmot: Um? I don’t know. Probably an X-Men adventure! You’re such a reporter! So LOL-cute.

Beastdawg: You're such an adolescent boy's wet dream. Now to further my investigation I must to find a teenage boy and ask him what he would lucid dream about--I BET he'll say "a girl who lucidly dreams about X-men."


Sex Marmot: When I was 11 I had an accidental semi-lucid dream where I was Rogue from the X-Men and I was flying around and I was so happy, and then I woke up and actually started crying. Real trauma. I guess I would be trying to correct that.

Beastdawg: Okay, I think we just got too intimate. Our friendship is over. I'll see you in your lucid dreams in which you try to be friends with me again.

Sex Marmot: Oh, fuck you.

Beastdawg: just kidding, that totes touched my gay heart.


Sex Marmot: Also, if I tried to re-friend you in my sleep, it wouldn’t be in lucid dreams, it would be on the astral plane DUH.

What prescient CEOs-- they couldn't have picked a better name for what would become their rather villainous greed-driven private security company: Blackwater. I mean I suppose it could have been Deathwater or Bloodwater, but the obviousness of those monikers takes all the fun out of the mere insinuation of evil, which is far more insidious and also makes it easier for the company to, like, land jobs and stuff. It's not that Blackwater's greed and mercilessness is an exception to the way most companies conduct their business, it's just that they have the added component of men in black suits with scary guns. Lots of them. In the worst places. At the worst times.

The company was formed in 1997 as a small group of overly militaristic men who could be hired out to help frightened rich men feel more at ease with their basic paranoia towards the rest of the population. Fine. But the Bush Administration in their not so subtle attempt to completely dismantle the service-providing role of the American government commissioned Blackwater for the two greatest disasters of the decade: Iraq and Katrina. For a cool $300 million Blackwater easily sent its employees into Fallouja without adequate armor, not to mention the stark absence of legal constraints. Blackwater men could shoot without rules, die without being counted in the official tally, and be held entirely unaccountable. It was a great deal for our government, though not so much a prize bargain for the misled Blackwater employees or the Iraqi people. Families of Blackwater employees killed in Iraq are suing the company:

More than 428 private contractors have been killed to date in Iraq, and US taxpayers are footing almost the entire compensation bill to their families. "This is a precedent-setting case," says Marc Miles, an attorney for the families. "Just like with tobacco litigation or gun litigation, once they lose that first case, they'd be fearful there would be other lawsuits to follow."

The families' two-year quest to hold those responsible accountable has taken them not to Falluja but to the sprawling Blackwater compound in North Carolina. As they tell it, after demanding answers about how the men ended up dead in Falluja that day and being stonewalled at every turn, they decided to conduct their own investigation. "Blackwater sent my son and the other three into Falluja knowing that there was a very good possibility this could happen," says Katy Helvenston, the mother of 38-year-old Scott Helvenston, whose charred body was hung from the Falluja bridge. "Iraqis physically did it, and it doesn't get any more horrible than what they did to my son, does it? But I hold Blackwater responsible one thousand percent."

In late 2004 the case caught the attention of the high-powered California trial lawyer Daniel Callahan, fresh from a record-setting $934 million jury decision in a corporate fraud case. On January 5, 2005, the families filed the lawsuit against Blackwater in Wake County, North Carolina. "What we have right now is something worse than the wild, wild west going on in Iraq," Callahan says. "Blackwater is able to operate over there in Iraq free from any oversight that would typically exist in a civilized society. As we expose Blackwater in this case, it will also expose the inefficient and corrupt system that exists over there."

The stories of Blackwater's presence in post-Katrina New Orleans are chilling as well--they were hired, however misguidedly, to aid the reconstruction process, to make New Orleanians feel more at ease. The city was a disaster-zone, not a war zone. But the Blackwater employees sent to New Orleans-- many fresh off the plane from Iraq-- treated the people of New Orleans in the same manner they're heavily trained to treat the "threat" in all their commissions: as potential enemies, not to be trusted, rather than victims of a horrific natural disaster.

About 150 heavily armed Blackwater troops dressed in full battle gear spread out into the chaos of New Orleans. Officially, the company boasted of its forces "join[ing] the hurricane relief effort." But its men on the ground told a different story.

Some patrolled the streets in SUVs with tinted windows and the Blackwater logo splashed on the back; others sped around the French Quarter in an unmarked car with no license plates. They congregated on the corner of St. James and Bourbon in front of a bar called 711, where Blackwater was establishing a makeshift headquarters. From the balcony above the bar, several Blackwater guys cleared out what had apparently been someone's apartment. They threw mattresses, clothes, shoes and other household items from the balcony to the street below. They draped an American flag from the balcony's railing. More than a dozen troops from the 82nd Airborne Division stood in formation on the street watching the action.

Armed men shuffled in and out of the building as a handful told stories of their past experiences in Iraq. "I worked the security detail of both Bremer and Negroponte," said one of the Blackwater guys, referring to the former head of the US occupation, L. Paul Bremer, and former US Ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte. Another complained, while talking on his cell phone, that he was getting only $350 a day plus his per diem. "When they told me New Orleans, I said, 'What country is that in?'" he said. He wore his company ID around his neck in a case with the phrase Operation Iraqi Freedom printed on it.

In an hourlong conversation I had with four Blackwater men, they characterized their work in New Orleans as "securing neighborhoods" and "confronting criminals." They all carried automatic assault weapons and had guns strapped to their legs. Their flak jackets were covered with pouches for extra ammunition.

Jeremy Scahill is responsible for the majority of the reporting on Blackwater since they were commissioned for the Iraq war. The book is brilliant, and I also babysat with Jeremy once and he's really nice (so you should read it, obvs).

Today, the Iraqi government announced that they would revoke Blackwater's permit to operate in Iraq and prosecute any foreign contractors who are found to have used excessive force. Some government has to put a stop to privatized vigilantism, and evidently it's not going to be ours.