"I Do" - but she can't ...

Andrea Gibson is amazing.



Also amazing, (albeit in a different way)? That bigotry on this scale still exists. That in 2010, in so-called "developed" nations, some people are denied basic human rights. I say this as someone who knows a bit of history: in the not-too-distant future, the prejudice against same-sex/ intersex/ queer couples will look a lot like the bans on racial intermarriage does now - completely ludicrous, hurtful, despicable.

"My Gentle Alpaca"

Love the racial profiling of the bushes! Nice one!



Sad :(

Fighting the Princess Meme

I love you, Sarah Haskins.

my IQ - ani difranco

when I was four years old
they tried to test my I.Q.
they showed me a picture
of 3 oranges and a pear
they said,
which one is different?
it does not belong
they taught me different is wrong
but when I was 13 years old
I woke up one morning
thighs covered in blood
like a war
like a warning
that I live in a breakable takeable body
an ever-increasingly valuable body
that a woman had come in the night to replace me
deface me
see,
my body is borrowed
yeah, I got it on loan
for the time in between my mom and some maggots
I don't need anyone to hold me
I can hold my own
I got highways for stretchmarks
see where I've grown
I sing sometimes
like my life is at stake
'cause you're only as loud
as the noises you make
I'm learning to laugh as hard
as I can listen
'cause silence
is violence
in women and poor people
if more people were screaming then I could relax
but a good brain ain't diddley
if you don't have the facts
we live in a breakable takeable world
an ever available possible world
and we can make music
like we can make do
genius is in a back beat
backseat to nothing if you're dancing
especially something stupid
like I.Q.
for every lie I unlearn
I learn something new
I sing sometimes for the war that I fight
'cause every tool is a weapon -
if you hold it right.

Lapel

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: "I'm with you kid. Let's go."

Maya Angelou

I'm really glad that Edie Brickell

ended up with Paul Simon.

Good lyricists rock. Literally!

Silver Lining (Sorry, my fonts are ferkackt!)

I love Carol Ann Duffy! She has made poetry exciting, insistent, immediate. Here is her take on the air ash crisis:

SILVER LINING

Five miles up the hush and shush of ash,

Yet the sky is as clean as a white slate —

I could write my childhood there.

Selfish to sit in this garden, listening to the past

(A gentleman bee wooing its flower, a lawnmower)

When the grounded planes mean ruined plans,

Holidays on hold, sore absences at weddings, funerals ... wingless commerce.

But Britain’s birds sing in this spring

From Inverness to Liverpool, from Creith to Cardiff,

Oxford, Londontown, Land’s End to John O’Groats.

The music’s silent summons,

That Shakespeare heard and Edward Thomas and, briefly, us.

And for those who haven't read it, her rumination on DB's recent foot injury:

Achilles (for David Beckham)

Myth's river- where his mother dipped him, fished him, a slippery golden boyflowed on, his name on its lips. Without him, it was prophesised,

they would not take Troy.

Women hid him, concealed him in girls' sarongs; days of sweetmeats, spices, silver songs...

but when Odysseus came,

with an athlete's build, a sword and a shield, he followed him to the battlefield, the crowd's roar,

and it was sport, not war,

his charmed foot on the ball ...
but then his heel, his heel, his heel ...

Oracle!!!!!!!!!!!

Florence Et Machine

Last night, Shepherds Bush Empire.

Power, thy name is Florence.

Happy Birthday, Judy Reynolds!

I can't get you on the phone so here's a little song for my Judy, from your Barbra.



May all your days be happy. Shkoyakh! x

Frances "Baby" Gumm

Frances was only seven years old when she recorded this song in 1929.

You may know her by the stage name she later adopted: Judy Garland.

Thank You

Fuel

They were digging a new foundation in Manhattan
And they discovered a slave cemetery there
May their souls rest easy now that lynching is frowned upon
And we've moved on to the electric chair
And I wonder who's gonna be president
Tweedle Dumb or Tweedle Dumber?
And who's gonna have the big
Blockbuster box office
This summer
How 'bout we put up a wall
Between the houses and the highway
And then you can go your way
And I can go my way
Except all the radios agree with all the TVs
And all the magazines agree with all the radios
And I keep hearing that same damn song
Everywhere I go
Maybe I should put a bucket over my head
And a marshmallow in each ear
And stumble around for another dumb numb week
For another hum drum hit song to appear
People used to make records
As in a record of an event
The event of people
Playing music in a room
Now everything is cross-marketing
It's about sunglasses and shoes
Or guns or drugs
You choose
We got it rehashed
We got it half-assed
We're digging up all the graves
And we're spitting on the past
And we can choose between the colors
Of the lipstick on the whores
Cuz we know the difference
Between the font of twenty percent more
And the font of teriyaki
You tell me
How does that make you feel?
You tell me what's real
They say that alcoholics are always alcoholics
Even when they're dry as my lips for years
Even when they're stranded on a small desert island
With no place in two thousand miles to buy beer
And I wonder is he different
Is he different
Has he changed
What he's about
Or is he just a liar
With nothing to lie about
Am I headed for the same brick wall
Is there anything I can do
About anything at all
Except go back to that corner in Manhattan
And dig deeper
Dig deeper this time
Down beneath the impossible pain of our history
Beneath unknown bones
Beneath the bedrock of the mystery
Beneath the sewage system and the path train
Beneath the cobblestones and the water main
Beneath the traffic of friendships and street deals
Beneath the screeching of kamikaze cab wheels
Beneath everything I can think of to think about
Beneath it all
Beneath all get out
Beneath the good and the kind and the stupid and the cruel
Ther'es a fire that's just waiting for fuel

-- ANI DIFRANCO

Revisionist Hair Stories

Sarah Haskins = Smart

Hair Commercials = Dumb

............................

Would Sarah Haskins front a show like Jon Stewart's if she had a peenie?

Discuss.

Mrs Slocombe And The Power Of Pussy

Last week on Facefuck ... sorry... book, my friend E's status report had her between a rock and a rock. A mutual friend S offered her a hard place, saying he had a few to spare. I commented (as one does in these forums) that his response was "a bit Mrs Slocombe's pussy". S replied that some days everything feels like Mrs Slocombe's pussy.

I share this anecdote to illustrate the power of the collective reference point and a testimony to the talent of Mollie Sugden, who just passed away, yet whose characterisation was so potent as to remain a euphemism for innuendo decades after Are You Being Served? ended. Also as a little shout out to S, big brother of my good friend L, who shares a very similar pop-culture sensibility with me. I love how connections are made across people and communities for myriad reasons. One that tends to draw me to people is "the funny". So to S and all of you out there - in memory of the Marvellous Mollie - keep bringing it. And do put something funny in today's comment section if you feel so inclined, oh wondrous lurky stars.

xxx

Doctor D

Dr D, unlike your erstwhile Dr P, was a real doctor. A medical one, with the knowledge of the uppermost consultant and the heart of a saint, the bedside manner of a goddess, the integrity of nobody you will ever meet. She was an angel. She was too good to be true. And some days, it's hard to believe she ever was ...

She was born on this day in 1974. She was killed in a stupid car accident in 2004. She was the worst person to die, worst as far as confirming to an already cynical mind that there is no rhyme nor reason, no method to the madness, no steadying hand helping us along in a pretty, karmic fair-balanced way. There is no Grand Narrative justifying everything. That she died disproved everything faith-related. (My grandfather's Auschwitz days helped along in that regard, but, then again, that didn't happen directly to me. The ego is a powerful thing.)

I have suffered a few episodes of depression, of varying degrees of awfulness. (I am good now, and have been for several years.) But in those bleak times I did think at times, Why her? Why her and not me, when I am concealing myself behind curtained doonas and Xanax fogs, and she would be out there engaging, enjoying, doing, helping, being? It scares me writing this, it's not something I've ever articulated. But it feels safe to recall publicly with regard to her memory.

She was sooooooo amazing - to which all her many, many friends would attest. I wish beyond wishing that I was calling her now to wish her "Happy, happy, happy birthday, my beautiful, darling D!" instead of writing this horrible eulogy. I will never stop loving her and I continue to take inspiration from her life.


xxx

My First Birthday Present

No, not ever (how sad would that be?!) but of the year. Granted, my birthday isn't until next month, but that made it all the more unexpected an arrival and exciting to unwrap.

Thanks to preloved for the gorgeous necklace and earrings. I wear them today in honour of a most beeyootiful friendship.

xxx

Page By Post

En route to Rochelle Rochelle, who was the first to respond to the previous post, although it is unlikely that the page will have an adventure on par with a young girl's erotic journey from Milan to Minsk ...

Wanda Sykes For Next President?

I wouldn't want my kids getting into Dick Cheney's car either.

Not Just Another Hallmark Holiday

I love dismissing holidays that I think are just a big bag of shite. One of my favourite tricks used to involve telling my friends that St. Valentine was an anti-semite, right at the point they were gearing up to get all flowered/chocolated/majorly ripped off at candlelit dinner time. (Perverse I know, but amid all my worthy, caring, humanist qualities there is a palapable strain of - non-polymorphus - perversity. Forgive me, dear reader, for all those occasions ahead where it is bound to rear its fugly head .)

Now, where was I? asked the Tangetessa. Ah, yes, craptastic pre-printed dates for the diary. There are many. Do you know what's NOT one though? I'll give you a clue. It falls today in my native Australia (is native ok in that sense or have I just trashed post-colonial thinking in one fell swoop? Is one fell swoop ok?) and I think, the US.

Mother's Day.

And not just because I love, adore and venerate my mother, which I do, but because it didn't originate in a cauldron of commercialism via Disney and Coke (and origins are sooooo important to me as my marvellous Mr Plog is finding out. So far, so verboten: veil, white, the list goes on). Although a modern holiday (not to be confused with British Mothering Sunday, now also, confusingly, called Mother's Day, which dates to the 16th century), there was an earlier attempt to set this date by Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910), writer of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic". She was so moved by the horrors of war that in 1870 she took it upon herself to rally women together, across national lines, to oppose war. Her Mother's Day declaration follows:

Arise then ... women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts!

Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Tragically so timeless. We're so progressive, aren't we, that in the past 140 years we've reached the moon yet we can't halt this man-made (yep, I went there!) phenomenon. It's not to say that women in power would be all sugar and spice ("Hi! Have you met my friends Margaret and Golda?") but, um, it's worth trying, no?

This morning in London, where it is not Mother's Day, I happen to be going to a session on transnational feminism, part of a seminar organised by European Alternatives. It is described in the programme with the following:

Feminism has become increasingly recognised as a legitimate concern at the international level. At the same time, equality itself remains decidedly allusive in many sectors of life, sex trafficking and female abuse are still prevalent even in ‘Western’ states. What remains of the feminist project of the 60s and 70s, what are the implications of ‘postcolonial’ critiques of feminism, and what possibilities are there for a radical transnational and cosmopolitan feminism to arise?

Thinking about Julia Ward Howe on this day, thinking about all the mothers who have buried their children for a load of piss masking itself as ideology, I think the feminist project needs to be a lot broader. Let's stop war, sistahs! Let's gather together all the good men we know who aren't reflected in the dark halls of power, let's re-educate all those misguided menz and womenz who think gun play and nukular weapons are ok and let's make next Mother's Day and all the Mother's Days thereafter safer, happier, freer and better.

And may all of you mums have a great one this year. Shout out especially to mine and all the cool new ones, of all steps and shapes. I know it's not easy, you guys, but you're all amazing! xxx

Sarah Haskins Is My Homegirl

I love Sarah Haskins ... and so should you!



To all the funny ladies out there ... especially the one who last night taught me that quinoa is pronounced "key-noir" and reminded me again that nothing is off-limits as far as the funny is concerned ...