Celebrating law firm diversity!!

One of these things is not like the other ones...


Oh, wait. Nope.

via The Deets

Hot Tub Time Machine trailer! (God, I love that name)

Ok, so I've been making fun of Hot Tub Time Machine for months (pretty much ever since I heard its name), but this trailer actually makes it look funny:



Let's hope it's not filled with the same misogynist humor in Judd Apatow's movies. Thankfully he's nowhere to be seen on the IMD page for HTTM. I have low hopes for it passing the Bechdel Test... but the world is far from perfect.

Thoughts?

Best. Mashup. Ever.

Something to amuse you for the weekend:



I can't stop giggling and it's strangely catching.

Pink and sparkly

A little excerpt from a chat I had with a friend of mine the other day:

me: ugh i got new deodorant the other day and all it does is bunch up in little clumps in my armpit

it looks like i rubbed feta cheese there

her: ew

deodorant is a wonderful invention, but formulas vary

me: yes

i have not found a winner yet

her: i refuse to buy one with sparkles

this limits my options

me: now i have to go check mine to see if it's sparkly

mine smells like citrus

her: haha

i had a brand, then they changed all their fragrances to sparkly packaging

now i'm a deodorant vagabond

me: yuck

ahah

no sparkles for me, but feta cheese side effects

her: ew

not what i would hope for my armpits

me: nope.

But I thought making products sparkly would show that they're for women! Can't we have more sparkly things so I know what to buy when I'm in the store? I guess I'm just going to have to rely on the pink products.

Needless to say, I've ended up with a lot of Pepto Bismal.

Sarah Haskins writing movie script about ... boyfriends??

I love me some Sarah Haskins as much as the next woman, but something about this doesn't sit right with me:

She might be Internet famous, but now Haskins is hoping to branch out. She recently sold a screenplay with her writing partner, a friend from college. It’s called Book Smart, and chronicles the two overachieving girls who realize in the middle of their senior year of high school that they don’t have boyfriends and haven’t had enough fun. They decide to put their minds to getting boyfriends by prom and “hilarity ensues,” says Haskins, adding that it just might be inspired by real life. “I'm not going to spoil the ending but you can see it in 2017.”

Really? Really? Come on, Haskins. Boyfriends are not instant equations to fun. Let's hope the script ends up as witty and self-reliant as Haskins' Target Women segments.

Target Women: Fashion is not political news edition

Humorously as always, Sarah Haskins takes on the ridiculous news coverage of Michelle Obama's sleeveless outfits.

What's that? Fashion is still not political news? You'd never have guessed.

Parts one, two and three.

Nellie McKay: "Mother of Pearl" and "If I Had You"

I'd say this is funny, but apparently I don't have a sense of humor.



Lyrics:
Feminists don't have a sense of humor
Feminists just want to be alone (boo-hoo)
Feminists spread vicious lies and rumor
They have a tumor on their funny bone

They say child molestation isn't funny
Rape and degradation's just a crime (lighten up, ladies)
Rampant prostitution, sex for money (what's wrong with that)
Can't these chicks do anything but whine

Dance break
Woo-hoo
(Take it off)

They say cheap objectification isn't witty, it's hot
Equal work and wages worth the fight (sing us a new one)
On demand abortion, every city (okay, but no gun control)
Won't these women ever get a life

Feminists don't have a sense of humor (poor Hilary)
Feminists and vegetarians
Feminists spread vicious lies and rumor
They're far too sensitive to ever be a ham
That's why these feminists just need to find a man

I'm Dennis Kucinich, and I approve this message

Klobuchar proves women politicans can be funny

Remember how women can't be funny? Well, Senator Amy Klobuchar's (D-MN) got something to say about that.

Writing her own jokes, she stole the evening at a Washington Press Club Foundation event a few weeks back. The whole thing is pretty funny - lots of cracks at the Democratic Party, but here's a few of the best ones:

I set an all-time US Senate record, and this is true, I raised $17,000 from ex-boyfriends. Speaker Pelosi, I may have the all-time record in the Senate, but I know in the House, that record is held by Barney Frank.

...

When I got here I made all kind of committee requests: finance or appropriations, commerce, foreign relations.

So somehow I got placed on the subcommittee on Oceans. I’m from Minnesota and I was placed on the subcommittee on Oceans!

It’s like being from Illinois, Rahm Emmanuel and being placed on Ethics.

I finally figured it out why Harry put me on Oceans for one reason: I can see Lake Superior from my porch.

...

But I love [Minnesota's] lakes. And it was great to take Barack Obama to campaign in Minnesota. Because with 10,000 lakes he had plenty of water to walk on.

So good... SO good. Read the whole thing here.

Funny Friday

Those dinosaurs are right, friends:


No ladies on the moon. How sexist.

Edit: Eeh, sorry how it doesn't fit! Try the link!

Couldn't be happier!

This someecards makes me so giggly and happy.

Kristen Schaal - still funny and still right

A little something funny before the weekend.

Failing at Irony and Alienating Your Allies: The Liberal Dude's Guide to Satire

So I open my blog reader and the Huffington Post. What do I have the pleasure to find?

Oh Christ, who's the genius behind this?

I know this might be rocket science to liberal dudez who think things like rape are funny, but this really tasteless and poor excuse for satire is not inducing anything but my gag reflex. You know you fail at irony when your art work is indecipherable from the message of those you intend to mock. While I was sleeping, someone decided that mocking the Republicans by depicting the Obamas with racist stereotypes was effective and funny. I can imagine a bunch of balding upper-class white dudes giving each other congratulatory back slaps around some editor's desk at The New Yorker, engaging in mutual masturbation inflation of their over large egos as their wit goes to press.

You know what's really funny? Mocking Nazis by walking around in public, in places where there may or may not be Jews, and acting and dressing in such a manner completely identical to Nazis. So what if you offend a few Jews along the way? Your completely nonsensical message must be conveyed in the manner you see fit, even if you offend a demographic that would otherwise be allies. I might be white, but even I know that the picturing of an afro-sporting woman in military fatigues is probably a dig at her deviant blackness and her radical opposition to white culture. Also, if you think drawing racist depictions of prominent political figures is funny, you might be racist.

The purpose of satire is to shock and inflame your opposition. If your illustration could be used as a poster for the far right and you are offending your political allies, then it's about time someone fired you.

Then again, I am not really surprised. Anyone remember this? :

That was a "liberal" blog, the DailyKos, really failing to understand the nuances of irony.

Heads up to white dudez: if you think the appropriate manner to object to bigots on the right is to be a leftist racist, on the name of "humor", kindly get the fuck out of my political party.

(Cross-posted)

"Post-Feminist Society" laughs at Marital Rape, Slavery

Cross-posted at XXBlaze

Here in our "post-feminism society", where genders are finally equal in every sense of the word (yes, that is sarcasm), we can comfortably laugh at female bondage and the antiquated notion that your wife is your property at MarryOurDaughter.com. Maybe I am just being a kill-joy, but I thought for something to be satire it required that the targeted audience, men who objectify women, could not view or say it without a shred of irony. I just think it is probably in bad taste to mock something that is not at all historical. Considering that Washington University just handed out an honorary degree to Phyllis Schlafly, the woman who supports marital rape, the view that marriage renders a woman the sexual property of her husband is alive and well even in the ever-praised bastion of gender equality, the Western world.

Eerily, the website reads more like a pedophile's shopping list than the lame attempt at satire it really is. From the profiles:

Katelyn F.
Age: 14
Location: Caribbean

Bride Price: $24,995

Our own Little Mermaid Katie Lynn swims like a fish and isn’t happy unless she’s getting wet! She got her SCUBA ticket at 12 and she can pull more than her weight as crew on any kind of boat or ship. She tells us she’s tired of dry land and that’s she’s looking for a husband who works on, by or in the water.

I suppose I have no sense of humor, being that I do not think that selling young girls into slavery to men is at all funny.

The testimonials, of course, sound familiar:

"Thank God for your site! Our daughter was really nervous walking down the aisle, but she seems okay now and the money we got let us keep our farm and even add on a few acres."

Because selling your daughters to keep afloat is nothing new to real people, in real places, right now:

"We were not so desperate before. Now I have to marry them younger. And all five of them will have to get married if the drought becomes worse. The bride price is 200,000 afghanis. His father came to our house to arrange it. The boy pays in installments. First he paid us 5,000 afghanis, which I used to buy food."

Accusations of shrill feminist aside, my definition of satire lies more along educational lines. Meaning, of course, that the purpose of satire is to educate people how utterly ridiculous the universal phenomenon of objectifying women really is. Piss poor attempts at being clever like the Marry Our Daughter website are, at best, getting a sick laugh out of female objectification without providing any relevant context. At worst, the site operates on the same wavelength as the ubiquitous rape joke, the headlining punch-line of every half-wit comic's cliche repertoire.

New rule: poking fun at stereotypes, especially anything resembling female objectification, is only funny if and only if sexist pigs cannot chuckle along without a shred of irony and self-reflection.

You can be funny AND Muslim

Muslimah Media Watch has an interview with two Muslimah stand-up comedians, Tissa Hami and Maysoon Zayid. It's a good interview and funny to boot.

An excerpt:

MMW: Is it your intent to “play ambassador” and represent Muslim women through your comedy? Do you seek to represent only your specific ethnic/nationality group or sect of Islam? Why or why not?

Maysoon: It is truly a dream of mine to do just that. I would love to have the opportunity to travel more widely and be a good will ambassador. I would love to be able to focus on the positive aspects of my faith, such as charity. I mean Maysoon’s Kids is such a huge part of my life, and the genesis of that charity was the concept of Zakat combined with inspiration from Oprah’s Christmas kindness program. That alone illustrates that I live with one foot in each world. That all being said, I’m an anarchist at heart; so I’d much rather be a goodwill ambassador for humanity at large, regardless of religion, ethnicity, or height. (I’ll probably just end up on General Hospital)

Tissa: I am a comedian. My intent is to be funny. I'm not out to represent anybody. The only person I represent is myself. If people can relate to what I say onstage – no matter their race, creed, or nationality – then that's great. If not, then that's okay too.

I've been surprised by the wide range of people who are able to relate to my jokes. When I first started out, I was afraid I might only appeal to other Iranian-Americans of my generation. What I've found is that many people relate to the 'fish out of water' story, so to speak. I had a white Christian woman from Texas tell me that she related to my joke about having people tell me to "go home", because when she first moved from Texas to the North, people would hear her accent and tell her to go back to where she came from. I had another woman who was the only Catholic in an all-Protestant town tell me that she related to my stories about being an outsider. So again, if people can relate to what I say, that's great.

They also have a post about Sabrina Jalees, another Muslim comic (hah, her website title is "Sabrina Jalees - if you don't like me, you're probably racist"). She often incorporates stereotypes about Muslim women into her act, which is both a positive and a negative. Duniya writes,

In fact, at times some of her jokes may further strengthen certain stereotypes. For instance, in joking about the Muslim arranged marriage process Sabrina wonders why the processes is appealing to men because they only see the picture of the potential mate - just the eyes. Additionally, when contrasting herself with the traditional Muslim woman she jokes about how she would never be asking to rub her husband's feet. Although jokes, these comments will further enhance the myth that most Muslim women wear the niqab and that Muslim women are subservient.

Overall, Jalees has toured with other Muslim comics and makes it loud and clear that Muslimahs can be just as funny as men, and Duniya makes the point that her jokes help create space for public discourse for Muslim women.

Personally, I think humor is one of the best way to break stereotypes and boundaries, and it looks like these three women are working hard to do just that. Plus they haven't sexually assaulted anyone on stage - good for them!

More on Johnny Vegas

Johnny Vegas update:

Apparently the comedian has threatened The Guardian with legal action over its article about his on-stage sexual assault. The original story by Mary O'Hara has been removed from the website, along with a follow up article also condemning Vegas. Apparently the UK has pretty strict libel laws, so there's a chance Vegas could make a libel case. Cara at The Curvature makes a good point that in everything she's read, there's no dispute over the assault itself, but over whether he penetrated the victim.

Does the guy have to be convicted of sexual assault before it's allowed to be identified as such? I know journalists have to be careful about describing supposed crimes, but O'Hara was in the audience. If she saw him sexually assault the girl, shouldn't she be able to say so? I don't really feel like using "allegedly" here works, because she witnessed it, along with everyone else in the club. I'm guessing the issue is with the fact that it was printed in a newspaper as opposed to her testifying in court or something.

Steve Bennett at Chortle, a UK comedy website, was at the gig and didn't perceive any molestation (at least from where he was sitting). He, at several points, tries to explain Vegas' behavior.

"The fact it was Johnny Vegas rather than another comic is important. This wasn’t a swaggering lothario using his charm to seduce a woman, but an overweight, desperate loser trying to do the same, and failing miserably. Again, that’s not enough to excuse him if the woman did feel assaulted, but it may explain his motivation."

Somehow I don't think being an "overweight, desperate loser" is credible motivation for sexually assaulting a person. If Vegas met the victim in a bar and sexually assaulted her there, it would still be considered sexual assault and his image as an "overweight, desperate loser" wouldn't be an excuse for his motivation.

Bennett makes a point that lots of people all over the internet (including me) have been discussing what occurred on stage. He says "offense is in the eye of the beholder" and that most people writing about what happened didn't actually see the show. While I think it's important to be knowledgeable on what is being discussed, such as seeing a movie before reviewing it, I do think people can, and should, speak out when a person's rights have been violated. After all, if no one in the audience who did see what happened stopped it or called it out as sexual assault, it's important that someone does.

"Until the young woman herself comes forward, we will never know whether Vegas did go too far, or whether she took it in the spirit it was intended...

The unavoidably conclusion is that, except from the woman herself, everyone there – let alone everyone who wasn’t - just doesn’t know whether Vegas strayed into the criminal."

Thoughts on this last part? I personally think it was a criminal act because he didn't obtain her consent. He can intend for it to be comedy, but that doesn't mean it's not sexual assault. As for if she wasn't offended by it, is it still sexual assault? I say yes. Often times victims are raped but don't identify it as such due to various reasons. Doesn't mean they weren't raped, though.

EDIT 5/12/08:

Here's a video of Vegas on Jonathon Ross' BCC talk show. It's from May 9 and Vegas talks a bit about the incident at the show, then quickly moves on to insulting other women. Lots of fun. It's the second half of the interview - Ross introduces the controversy a bit at the end of the first section, and actually makes some insightful comments about how Vegas' act is based on doing unpredictable things, and if someone has a reputation of being edgy, they have to keep doing more outrageous things to keep their rep. I wouldn't call sexually assaulting a woman on stage "edgy," however.

Thanks to Amberwolf for the link.

Grand Theft Auto 4 wants you to kill hookers to get your money back

I play video games obsessively. I was probably one of the first people in my area to own a Play Station 3. I have played Rock Band with friends until three in the morning many times. If you have no idea what I am talking about, you should get the game.

However, despite its popularity, I have never really liked the Grand Theft Auto series. I thought it was pretty boring, simply because I wasn't very good at the missions and shooting up cops and jumping off buildings eventually got old, although it was funny the first several times. My male gamer friends love the series, however. They like to claim that I am just being overly sensitive because all the main characters in Grand Theft Auto are male. Although, I loved Assassin's Creed, which was extremely violent and dominated by male characters. If I held my breath waiting for video games that feature women as something other than eye candy or damsels in distress I would have to throw out most of my game collection. At the end of the day, I just got to suck it up and ignore the sexism if I want to have any fun playing video games.

Nevertheless, I simply cannot condone the sexualized violence in Grand Theft Auto 4. One of my friends went to a preview party hosted by Rockstar Games. As is typical for the gaming world, the entire party was a big sausage fest with no women in sight other than the models hired to promote the game. He reported back to say that the highlight of GTA4 was the strip clubs and buying sex. Kind of gross, but that wouldn't make me outright dislike the game. What really stuck out was that you can kill the prostitutes to get your money back. According to that friend, he said what most guys that got to play the preview set up found most enthralling was paying for demeaning sex and then shooting the prostitutes and running them over with their car. "Because it's funny," he said, "and you can also get your money back."

Very classy. I especially like how the game tries to be political by developing these elaborate back stories for fast food workers and victims of the drug war to highlight those issues. However, no word on sexualized violence and the huge problem of violence against sex workers. You can just run them over afterwards to get your money back, it's not like they have a name or purpose other than sex and then dying. From the previews I have seen around the internet, it seems like Rockstar's newest contribution has no other purpose for the women in "Liberty City" other than sex and death. I really like that underlying message.

I'll go on the record saying that I like violent videogames. When most people moan and groan about how video games are corrupting the youth, I think they sound a bit dull. However, I really have to go with the fundies on this one. Sexualized violence and killing hookers is not cool. Thanks for enabling the elaborate joke socialization thinks violence against women is, Rockstar. I just don't think it's at all funny.

Props to Feministing and Samhita for pointing this out.

National Organization For Men

This cartoon is from Toothpaste For Dinner (click for larger image). Go ahead. Go to town on it. I think it's funny. Sad, but funny.

Via.