Obama's Speech, Hope, and making stuff.

I used to have a shirt with this image on it. The shirt got absolutely tattered with frequent wear. Even now the message is a mantra with me. It's not my office, even though there's a computer and a couple of desks. It's my studio. It's where I make stuff. Sometimes it's knitting, sometimes sewing, occasionally a collage or sketch.

Most of the time, it's a blog post.

I think about this frequently as I hear the word "economy" talked about. The story of the hilariously failed job interview comes to mind, where the young woman, when asked why she wanted the job, said she loved to shop and since the office was close to the shopping district she could do more shopping.

Our economy has outsourced making things. Now we buy things. Proof that there is a problem: the proven-right prediction of a 2007 recession impelled our last President to suggest that we "go shopping".

This President isn't doing that.

What, shopping isn't gonna fix my world? Dang, I have to go SHOPPING for a t-shirt in protest!



I hope that as more and more of us lose our jobs and things seem as bleak as they do, that we are able to frame this time as an opportunity to give and make sacrifices, as citizens clearly did during World War II. But as I heard the new President's (yay!) speech yesterday, part of me despaired that we would instead fake ourselves out as we did during the energy crisis of the seventies. Jimmy Carter's "moral equivalence of war" over reducing energy consumption was derided (m.e.o.w. said Safire) but it was Carter who created a Department of Energy and even the concept of "energy policy." And Carter's presidency was a failure, they say.

I worry that we have given up the idea of "making stuff," when manufacturing is STILL such a critical part of our economy. Wouldn't it be nice if Obama was able to arrange for the Big Three auto makers to manufacture wind turbines, rather than WAIT five decades for the CHINESE to catch up with world demand, as we are now? Fuck.

Oh look, Obama's been President for one day, one hour, and forty-two minutes, and I get to say Fuck. Honeymoon's over! Ha ha ha lol!

Allow me to say I don't expect federal grants or bailouts for bloggers. Not in my lifetime. But writing for publication is making stuff, and those of us who do it are worthy of our hire.

In other words, don't ask me to blog for you Arianna, unless you are willing to put FOOD ON MY TABLE. Hit counts don't feed the three kids, Missy.

That said, apparently you're reading the blog of the Arianna Huffington of central Illinois. Blue Gal organized the party last night (and led the toast to the new President yay!) for Drinking Liberally/Move On in Springfield: it was a great turnout and lovely time had by all. And I can't remember another night where I had a third beer, ever. Thanks for coming out (and btw I learned last night that any time a blogger leaves her laptop to meet actual human beings that turns slacktivism not activism. Something Arianna figured out long ago.)

Reminder, Nablopomo is next month.

For those of you not writing a 50,000 word novel next month (don't get me started), you have an opportunity to commit to posting every day for 30 days in November.

I'll be doing that but that doesn't count because (unless I'm at the hospital with a broken ankle***) I post every day anyway. And write open threads and post music clubs at another little blog. And am a single mom of three kids. And manage to knit a sweater or so a year.

Not to make you feel guilty or anything, Fafblog. Yeah, you.

I also made the NaBloPoMo logo above...feel free to steal it.

***If I coulda trusted the EMT's to pack up my laptop for the hospital I woulda posted that day too.

This is why I blog every. single. day.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Ira Glass. via 43 Folders:

I don't need sex to keep my blogger pencil sharp.

I was chatting up a male blogger this week and he pointed out we women bloggers can get away with more than men. A guy who posts a wet t-shirt picture is a sexist pig. A woman blogger can post this:



And laugh (which I did).

The latest "controversy" over sexism in the blogosphere has to do with a pencil sharpener that looks like a submissive female taking a pencil up the nether regions.

Sorry you can't hear my eyes rolling from here.

Sure there is real harassment and sexism in society and specifically in the MSM and blogosphere as well. But most of what passes for same is frat boy claptrap, and is not a real threat to a real strong woman. Sometimes a pencil sharpener is to sharpen pencils, less often is it a deeply offensive political statement, and sometimes it's just absolutely stupid.

I'm actually more offended that the female's head is replaced by the handle than I am where the pencil goes.

And BLOGGERS who think it's a good idea to post a picture of a really stupid, and to some offensive, pencil sharpener? For those, we have a lolcat:

It's a woman/man thing. We wouldn't understand.

Seeing as I'm probably already on double-secret probation from certain concerned feminist blogger's collectives... for my panties, references to titty-fucking, not to mention my occasional admiration for things George Will has said, I might as well come clean and admit the rest.









1. I love the blog Hot Chicks with Douchebags, the sole purpose of which is to deride scenes like this:



Yes he is a douchebag. And yes, from the safety and comfort of your laptop screen*, the two young women have, as the auteur of HCwDB, Douchebag 1, would say, "poetic boobies of boobage poetry."

*In other words, you don't have to attempt conversation with them about YOUR latest post quoting George Will. Do. Not. Attempt.

I can only read HDwDB about once a week. Otherwise my sides hurt too badly. And you are either like me and applaud DB1's book deal as a victory for all of us, or you think it another end of civilization as we know it. Okay.

2. I'm addicted to the morning drive show Lex and Terry. Not only is it occasionally eye-rolling sexist (Drunk Bitch Friday is particularly unfunny on the face of it, I admit) it is a, (gag) ClearChannel product. And I can't get enough.

Lex and Terry are guys. They talk sports, and I don't know what they are talking about, and I absorb the testosterone like a sponge anyway. They give love advice to men and women. (And in a great irony, they seem to assume that all of their women callers are hot chicks and their men callers are douchebags, unless proven otherwise. Women callers who clearly use men or are otherwise treating fellow human beings poorly get called on it. Men callers who claim to be in monogamous relationships are told to behave like adults. It's very refreshing.)

Sue me. I can't get all uppity about two guys whose website has a countdown clock like this:



3. I love love love certain men's magazines.

Yeah Maxim (aka the magazine for guys who can only aspire to be douchebags) stays on the magazine rack unread. But given the choice between Mother Jones and Esquire, I pick the "Women We Love" issue every. single. time. Ditto for GQ. The November issue of Esquire is typically good, and not just for its profile of Dennis and Elizabeth Kucinich (which is not online, dang it). I love their section called "The Vocabulary": "Yeatsian pounce" is reading Yeats or other like poets to "warm the cockles of both her heart and her loins." Hardly something that would impress a "hot chick" but would a "brainy chick" if you did it right. And then there's "Yoko," who is this,



But is also:

(n.) nickname for any woman who is a major force in her husband's personal and public life, significantly shaping his image and career through force of will, personality, or a whole lot of red hair. Can be added to the last name for comedic effect: "Yoko Bryant," "Yoko Kucinich."

I like new words and stuff. I also like letters sections that have the cahones to run "Context-Free Highlights from Letters We're Not Running."

All of this brings me to two life experiences. I remember in 9th grade thinking I would go to Smith College (I was a legacy, my paternal grandmother was class of '20 and great aunt somewhere around there, too.) By tenth grade I realized that every friend I had was a boy. I didn't talk to girls at school very much at all. Ever. I did not apply to Smith.

I also remember when the National Museum of Women in the Arts opened several years ago. My mother, an artist and a fine one her own self, said she would not want to be included in such a project. She called it a ghetto.

Not gonna separate ourselves from the menfolk, is what it means. Take it, Patty Loveless:



There are lots of women's writing essays about male language power versus female language power. Ursula K. LeGuin's Bryn Mawr commencement address in 1986 is a classic example.

You came here to college to learn the language of power - to be empowered. If you want to succeed in business, government, law, engineering, science, education, the media, if you want to succeed, you have to be fluent in the language in which "success" is a meaningful word. ...

Is that what this is about though? That good funny writing based on politics and social commentary must somehow come from dominant paradigm (meaning male) language?

I don't think that's it.

It's true, dear reader, I do not know exactly where this essay is going, but I don't want it to turn into a 1980's graduate school paper: Blogs, Boobs, Brains and Bravery: Humor and Gender in Early 21st Century Electronic Media. Don't make me write what I wouldn't want to read. No, this essay is all about ME.

And yet someone (okay yeah a guy) told me recently that the appeal of my blog to male readers is that many men can't talk politics with their girlfriends and I'm a surrogate. Oh really?



I've been working on this post for about three days and as one friend told me, "Leonardo said art is never finished, only abandoned." So here. We'll continue this conversation in comments.