Upon obliging son with iffy aim to clean up around the toilet seat: “If it comes out of your penis, it’s your problem, you deal with it.”

Add this to the file containing the trash can shaped outdoor fireplace for the rich jerk who wants to get his (aesthetically and aromatically pleasing) warm on in traditional homeless fashion.

Now, a club for rich people who want to smash shit. No really, that’s all it is. Pay a(n undisclosed) membership fee, choose the item of your vexation, get picked up in a limo, dress in fancy smash-stuff attire, and break shit.

Now I’m not going to begrudge someone getting their smash on. I do it to every “gift” (read object d’obligation) sent by a certain stalker. But I’m smashing tacky porcelain spoon rests, not grand fucking pianos. The waste alone is breath taking.

ETA I knew this idea wasn’t original. It’s part of the plot of The Last Word.

It. Was. Made. Of. Win.

I could stop there. But, I am wordy. There may be spoilers.

Hanna is, despite the modern trappings, a good, old-fashioned fairy tale along the lines of most orphan quest stories. There’s the tragically dead mother, the wicked step-mother (Cate Blanchett), the well-intentioned but somewhat inept father figure (Eric Bana) and the normal-ish adoptive family that gives the hero of the story a peek at how the rest of the world lives.

It also has some pretty fight scenes (oh fight porn, how do I love thee) and an evil government program. What it doesn’t have is a view of any of the female characters as sexy props. There was no “she’s sexy evil” or “she’s sexy prodigy” or “she’s sexy lit professor”. I found myself holding my breath, waiting for the busting cleavage/ slow-motion / gunshot scene (you’ve seen Angelina do this in every action flick she’s been in) and it never came. The women in the show weren’t asexual either. The road tripping,lit-professing, middle-aged mom (played by Olivia Williams!) has sex, embarrassing to her teenage daughter, but basic matrimonial sex. And Hanna has a couple of sweet teenage moments. But it’s all bleedingly normal and not pornified, meant to show the character’s humanity and not their breast implants. (Actually we don’t see anything but a rocking camper with the mom’s scene).

Joe Wright, I am officially on board as a fan. I liked Atonement. You’re version of Pride and Prejudice, while not Colin Firth wet-shirt awesome, was a nice way to spend an afternoon. But Hanna is incredible. Well done, sir.

Really. The side effects are interesting.

h/t to Renee

buy property, is the saying.

Or if you’re a completely amoral investment group*, put your money in the four horsemen (war, famine, pestilence and plague).

Kleptocrats be betting on our demise. Fuckers.

Note also that it is giant monoculture farming that turns long-held family farms into “subsistence” farmers at best and unemployed city-dwellers who no longer own their own means of production at worst.

* is there any other kind of investment group? They’re all economic vampires, even the “good” ones.

Moxy Fruvous, Canada’s knock off version of They Might Be Giants (I jest, I jest. Not really.) sings about kicking ass. Literally.

$350 a month to live in a shipping container in Iraq, work 12 hour days 7 days a week, and get raped by your boss.

Gross. Just fucking disgusting. Though I can’t say I am surprised.

h/t to Feminist Philosophers

It’s the cusp of the most patriotic of days here in the old USofA. Ugh. I’d be happier spending the weekend in another country (July 4th getting drunk in the alley behind the Pantheon was pretty damn awesome) but I have lovely friends and a hot boyfriend and a kick ass kid and vodka tonic makings. So (as a lovely friend once put it) let’s all celebrate Happy Inter-dependance Day!!!!

Sasha says “Fuck you” to uber-privileged feminists who say fuck you to low income women (full disclaimer, I briefly flirted the the New Agenda idea during the primary bull-shit, but there was a better choice than Palin in the election. Namely Cynthia McKinney, who I didn’t have to contort or subvert my beliefs to vote for).

Today marks the start of a mass hunger strike at California’s Pelican Bay prison over solitary confinement. Yes, we are still using that abysmal tactic. Yes it’s still torture. And it’s just as bad when it’s inflicted on (mostly) men of color as it is when it’s inflicted on Bradley Manning.

s.e. smith has a great post up at Tiger Beatdown on austerity in Greece vs. California. Part of me wonders if the urban planners of yesteryear specifically eliminated the town square from American life so that there would be less opportunity for mass protest. We don’t have a Tahrir Square here.

Social psychology is pretty damn cool, yo! Try reading these blogs for fun and entertainment. You Are Not So Smart and Tools for Changing the World

It’s Canada Day! Go give a Canadian a hard time about their lying meat. Canadian bacon- it’s really just ham. (Don’t really give Renee a hard time, she’s awesome.)

Now, since it is officially afternoon, I can drink a refreshing vodka tonic without being an alcoholic (though what is my excuse for drinking mimosas with brunch?)

The following gem was mined from my choice of in-flight entertainment, “Socialism: A Very Short Introduction” by Michael Newman*. It concerns an exchange between V.I. Lenin and Clara Zetkin, who was in charge of the Communist International Women’s Secretariat.

[S]oon after the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin admonished [Zetkin] for encouraging women members of the Communist Party to discuss sexual matters, rather than the fact that the ‘first state of proletarian dictatorship is battling with the counter-revolutionaries of the whole world.’ He thus told her, ‘I could not believe my ears’ when informed that ‘at the evenings arranged for reading and discussion with working women, sex and marriage problems came first.’

No matter what the movement, guess who gets to take a number and stand in the back of the line? You got it. If you answer “What have our male comrades ever done for us?” with “diddly fucking squat,” you win a coupon for your own liberation redeemable after the apocalypse.

To a man, they never get it. The vanishingly few who do (Arthur Silber comes to mind) have experienced marginalization, often in several dimensions, and have generalized from that experience, rather than concluding that Oppressions Can Be Ranked and Mine Comes First. The rest will bully, badger, nag, and blame you, but never treat your political aspirations as anything more than a girlish fit of pique.

________________

The book in question: Socialism: A Very Short Introduction