Rabbits, Blinkity

Woody Allen movies are excellent in many ways, but they irk me on a very profound level. Let's talk about it!

I recently had a discussion with a friend (Hi Steve!) about Allen's work and morality, or lack thereof. (Mostly vis-a-vis Roman Polanski and that whole stepdaughter thing.) The end result was, not wanting to be the sort of person who complains about things they don't watch, I agreed to make an attempt at some of his films. Thus, I was in the curious position of watching a Woody Allen film in entirety for the first time, while having previously read quite a bit of criticism about both him and his films, especially about to his supposed misogyny or lack thereof.

So I had assumptions. I expected a couple of possibilities. First, that the whole thing might be overblown, that his films would be at worst reasonably well made, original stories, which due to their tremendous influence would feel just a touch stale. Second, that they might be the worst sort of 1950s sexist and classist tripe, only considered worthwhile because that sort of thing tends to go over the heads of the (white, straight, male) critical establishment. Or most likely, some combination of both.
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There's a show on the USA network called Fairly Legal. It's about an arbitration negotiator, but that's not really important. Actually, the show is quite terrible; the plots are bizarrely artificial and usually contrived to demonstrate that, yes, the lead is the most gorgeous person in all of television. But it's still—for a certain mindset, anyway—well worth watching to see Sarah Shahi treat people like crap. (Or rather Shahi's character, to be fair, not that anybody actually cares to differentiate. It's "Sarah Shahi AS Tremendous Jerk"). If she want to get someone's attention, she'll whistle loudly or scream or break glass. Once per episode she'll dump a drink on somebody, or throw their cell phone into the harbor, or... you get the picture. She's completely unprofessional, and always late for everything. She periodically sets things on fire.

Sometimes this is vaguely justified, but usually? It's just not. And it's still fun to watch. We still want Kate to "win."

When it comes to entertainment, we love assholes. Our friends who run the USA network are particularly fond of them, of course (see also: In Plain Sight, Burn Notice, et al.) It's basically the whole point of House. 30 Rock's Jack Donaghy is made of asshole, and has basically no other redeeming qualities. Anything involving Gorden Ramsey is generally this. And you can't convince me that a substantial percentage of the inordinately large crowd watching American Idol, or now X-Factor, aren't there purely to watch Simon Cowell insult people in a British accent.

All this is a very complicated way to say that yes, Victoria Azarenka is a bit of a dick. In the very worst possible way. This doesn't mean you can't want her to win.
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Update: Here's the best thing you'll read all day on this subject

There's a trans theory concept called the "Cotton Ceiling." (Basically, it tries to explain why some, especially lesbian, women don't really see trans women as real women), Rad-fems don't like it, as one might expect. I'm not going to try and discuss the contents of that article, or the comments on it; I might do so later, but it's tricky and I'm only marginally qualified to talk about this.

I will link to someone who thinks it's all a big miscommunication. Others might suggest that the real issue is unsolvable: rad-fems will refuse to see trans women as women (or even, arguably, as people) regardless, while simultaneously refusing to really see trans men as men (which they're okay with, since women are generally beyond reproach). I don't really know the answer.

But I would like to make an observation. It's been made before, but it bears repeating: our culture is obsessed with penises, and this needs to stop.
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The Sport Illustrated swimsuit issue has caught a lot of criticism from feminist circles over the years, and with good reason. It might be the single most exploitive mainstream magazine feature in existence. In fact, I'd argue that it's worse that your run-of-the-mill porn magazine; at least porn is honest about what it is. The swimsuit issue takes a magazine which talks almost exclusively about men, for men, and once a year fills it with highly sexual pictures of women. It's sort of like an all-male country club saying, "okay, we'll allow female members, but only if they wear slinky dresses and serve us cocktails in heels."

By contrast, ESPN The Magazine's The Body Issue was supposed to be something completely different. For one things, it features an equal number of men and women. For another, it only features athletes. No "fashion models wearing swimwear in exotic locales" here (as per the Wikipedia SI swimsuit issue article). But it's not surprising that people are still concerned. After all, it's clearly made to capitalize on the appeal of naked people, and very attractive ones at that. Worse, it's one thing for models to pose for a magazine (who have already "sold out," as it were, to the patriarchy), but it's an entirely different thing for sportswomen—who in many cases are considered icons of female empowerment.

So, then, what is the result? Rather than just discuss the concept abstractly, I'm going to try and actually look at the photos and let them speak for themselves. We'll see what comes of it.
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This dog's been reading too much about online privacy. CC-BY-SA by Orin Zebest, modified.

Every few months, there's an article in a major publication decrying the lack of privacy online. And insisting that somebody Do Something About It™. For this month's edition, it's "Google knows too much about you" courtesy of CNN's Frida Ghitis. Did you know that Google changed their privacy policy? Turns out it's evil as ever.

The obvious, ethical, default setting should affirm that our private information belongs to us and nobody else -- not to Google, not to Facebook. We should call for laws that require them to change their terms of service so users have the option of giving or denying permission to them on holding personal data in storage.

Then again… Google and Facebook aren't public institutions. You don't actually have to use them; there are alternatives. Visiting somebody's website is sort of like visiting their house or place of business—yes, you have certain rights, but those rights simply don't extend to preventing others from putting up a security camera on their own property!

But there's a larger issue here. The Internet, as it turns out, is not a private place in the slightest. It should not be treated as such.
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Let me let you in on a little secret: nothing in life is free. And that includes charitable giving. This post was inspired by this commentor, who kindly informed everybody that all the blogging in the world was worth less than giving $2000 to the Against Malaria Foundation, because $2000 dollars to the AMF will keep a child in Africa from dying from malaria. Clearly, we should spend all of our spare time working for minimum wage jobs and giving the proceeds to charity,* and forget all about silly things like "reading" and "writing."
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Last night, a fine person going by the name of "@Dogcattlerancher" followed everybody who was following the Occupy Wall Street twitter account, including me. He had a few clever remarks listed, but was also bragging that he was going to get 300 followers in a hour. But it was clever enough I thought I'd follow him anyway. I wanted to see if he was actually paying attention, so I sent a nice remark in my favorite subspecies of internet slang congratulating him on his cleverness...
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She stares impassively across the net, bouncing a tennis ball thoughtfully. She throws the ball high - too high - up in the air, pauses for a moment, then throws all the power of her 6'3" frame against it with a tremendous sound. To no avail; the ball crashes into the net. "15-40" says the chair umpire. For a moment the player look furious, outraged that the ball would betray her - but only for a moment. She stands still. Her features flow back to calmness. She turns around and walks toward the backstop in stiff half-steps. As she stops to receive balls for possibly the last point in the set, she glances up to the crowd, her face a perfect mask. The cameras zoom in. And the world wonders: what on earth is going on in Maria Sharapova's mind?
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