In Russia, The Joke Laughs At You

I think this bit of racist crap Joel Stein published in Time is supposed to be funny.

Sadly, I am a humorless socialist who can't get the funny.

Oil Spill

I have not been blogging much about the Deepwater spill.  Too depressing.  Also, what is there to say?  We are fucked, and no one is doing much to fix it.  No one seems to know how to fix it, from what I can see.  And BP?  Well, BP seems to think if they can just keep the spin managed, like by shutting their executives up (by sending them to yacht races, I guess), for instance, or stopping the press from seeing just how bad the situation is, well, then the situation won't actually be that bad.

What sucks is that even with an administration that's supposed to be pro-environment, very little is being done.  I know, I know:  Obama:  Get Disappointed by Someone New.

Also:  What Fred says here (Scroll down -- not what he says about McChrystal, though, yeah, that too-- what he says about BP/drilling.)

Yay!

Rain, finally.  Maybe it will cool down some now?  Please?

Meanwhile my kid is gone to visit her grandparents and I am having separation anxiety.  I wander the abnormally silent house (abnormally clean house, too) wondering what to do with myself.  I probably ought to write something.  Maybe I will drink a nice rum mojito instead.

Thunder!

We've got thunder...please bring the rain!

Look!

A new book review by moi at Strange Horizons!

If There's a Weather God...

It's been a 100 degrees or over here all week.  Tonight the storms are supposed to hit (and by my migraine I believe it) and starting tomorrow the heat will break -- this is what the weather page says.

I wish there was a Weather God I could sacrifice something to.  (Yes, we are reading American Gods in my Mythology class.  Why do you ask?)

Oh, Yeah, Except...

...I promise Tony Hayward is not being sent to the benches without pay.

When you fuck up like this--destroying the entire Gulf of Mexico--it's not like fucking up as a bagboy at Wal-Mart or an adjunct at a university.  We had an adjunct who screwed up a few years ago, up the hill.  Had a crisis in his family, told his students just to take the rest of the semester off, he had to deal.  All right, that's bad.  But you know what happened to him?  He got fired, and he has not been able to find work in his field since.

When Tony Hayward fucks up, he gets his life back, and goes to yacht races, and is filthy rich forever.  The rest of us, and hundreds of thousands of people who were barely scraping by down there on the Gulf?  We're fucked forever, because he wanted BP to make what was essentially (in relation to what they were already making) a few nickels extra.

Tell me again how capitalism is such a splendid system, cause I want to hear that bullshit some more.

Read & Vote!

Crossed Genres' Flash Fiction contest is up & running.  Go, read, vote!  I won't say which is my favorite, though I will say it was a tough call.

You have to register to vote, but it's free & easy.  

Also!  Very soon my novel will start running at Crossed Genres.  So you want to get to know the site anyway.  You know you do.

They're Not Racist!

More Charming behavior from our fellow citizens: A Latino student in TX was mocked and tormented by his English teacher for wearing a jersey from a Mexican sports team. She pulled him up to the front of the class and delivered a long lecture about Mexicans, while repeatedly pointing at him -- Mexicans being the real racists, Mexicans always wanting handouts, and so on.

Hey, but at least she devivered her racist diatribe in a nice clear American accent!

Movie Review

I just watched Lord, Save Us From Your Followers on Netflix.  Worth watching.  The narrator is an Evangelical Xtian, but he's one of the good ones, and it's an honest & interesting look at the Religious-Cultural wars in America today.  (My favorite bit is a mock-game show where the Young Conservatives don't know anything about Liberal Elites, while the Liberal Elites wipe the floor with the Young Conservatives -- it's that cultural bubble they're kept in, yikes.)

Anyway, three parts funny, two parts appalling, five parts deeply interesting.  Have a look.

Ah, Bliss

This is the sort of heart-warming story I wish my students would hear more often.

Just to Cheer Us Up

Simon's Cat again!

Also this guy, Alex Day, who I have just discovered TNX to Unfogged, has posted a chapter by chapter summary of Twilight which is just cracking me up. 

And!  This comic, SMBC, which I discovered b/c Tree of Knowledge at Cheese&Responsibility can do links, which I cannot, is so fucking funny!  (I believe it is her fault I got hooked on QC, so she is why I am not writing that Chaucer paper I keep meaning to write.  I totally blame her.) 

And!  This blog!  I, Asshole.

God, I love the internets!

Feel free to mention your latest most cool of internet discoveries in the comments.

Well, Yeah...

See, at my kid's school they wouldn't let her mention any criticism of America -- they did a "study" of Columbus each year, only of course it wasn't a study at all, but a simple recitation of the buffed-up story that's been created around Columbus. The kid knows all the rest of the story (not, interestingly, from us, but from a big fat book she bought on her own, one of those books kids love, Ten Thousand Wicked Facts You Never Learned in History Class, some title like that, I was leafing through it the other day, it's appalling good on child labor and union-busting and what got eaten in the Middle Ages, too).



My point here, and I do have one, is violent determination of the Right in this country that America be beyond reproach -- that the Left are traitors because we dare to criticise our nation -- it would go down a deal better if the Right were not, while insisting it was evil to speak ill of the country, also destroying everything this nation stands for.



Not to mention the nation itself. Hell, doing their best to destroy the world.



All the while living in deep denial about it.



Because if they don't say it, it's not happening, apparently.

Hi! Guess Where I've Been?

The first summer semester (Summer I, as we call it) has started at my university.  I'm teaching a full load -- two classes, back to back, two and a half hours each, four days a week, with a daily office hour for each, for five weeks straight.  Then prep each night on top of that.  I'm teaching Mythology and the first half of Freshman Comp.

So that's where I've been.

See you in July, when I will get two days off before starting Summer II.

(Hey, but at least we can eat this summer!)