"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.

Exit Signs

It strikes me that EXIT signs would look to a native speaker of Latin like red-lit signs that say "HE LEAVES".

David Foster Wallace
Infinite Jest

Equal Love Protest

And in my hometown too, nokh ...


From here.

The Person I've Felt The Most Closest To in the Whole Wide World ...

... was waiting in the queue for the gas chamber in Auschwitz when it was liberated in 1945.

That's gotta affect a psyche.

Sometimes I feel like my whole life is an overly rehearsed audition for a role I'm bound never to get in a capacity which will somehow offend various powerful minority groups.

"My Gentle Alpaca"

Love the racial profiling of the bushes! Nice one!



Sad :(

Fighting the Princess Meme

I love you, Sarah Haskins.

Cafe couture

I am blogging to you from one of my favourite cafes in this city -

The Breakfast Club in Hoxton

(although it was their Angel branch that got me hooked)

It is no coincidence that it is Antipodean of origin. We Austrazealanders just know how to make a good cuppa. Fact.

Though, in the interests of accurate journalism, it is not strictly speaking a coffee I am shlurping.

(NO JUDGING!!! It's summer in the city. This, like, never happens here.)

Also? You heard it here first: they are shooting something outside here with a Keira Knightley lookalike. Ooh la la!

A Rose By Any Other Name ...

So I may have a few new readers as I have been blog-pimping (ugh, hate the term - is blog-whoring any more feministe?) a bisl of late. The question of my nom de plume has arisen so here's a reminder from my very first post:

Why "Doctor"?

I was so goddamn SICK of being asked if I was a "Miss" or "Mrs." ... or even a "Ms."!!!!!!!!!!! IT'S 2009, PEOPLE!!!!! The title "Ms." came into being in order to REPLACE the Miss/Mrs binary, not to signify a third category of angry female because why the hell do over half the world's population have to identify their frigging marital status in their name? (Because we have vaginas?) So to avoid the whole mishegas, I got a Ph. D.

Why "Plog"?

Well, "Blog = Web + Log". As a Luddite all my thoughts originate with the Mighty Pen. Ergo, "Paper + Log = Plog". (And I'm normally so bad at maths!) Also "Plog" sounds like "Plod" which conjures up images of flat-footed, bumbling policemen (and although Law Enforcement is not my schtick, I am both flat-footed and bumbling).

So there y'have it, kinderlach. Although I have been thinking about coming out behind the cloak of anonymity lately. I mean I know the six of you who occasionally dip into this bog (NOT a typo) socially, and it's not like I've got some high-falutin' career to protect.

What do you think?

Loo-lit of the Month

Sexism in the City*: Eyns**

Those high- maintenance bitches!


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

*part of a new series of photographs that show sexism alive, well, and kicking off in the public sphere. Name. Rinse. Repeat. Shame.

** "one" in Yiddish. My instinct was to go Italian, ie, uno, duo, etc, but decided to give my poor, old, NOT DEAD mother tongue an airing instead.

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.

Doctor Plog is 13 minutes away

... from ushering in her thirty-sixth birthday alone, accompanied only by the 1955 film "Gentlemen Marry Brunettes" (it happened to be on, I'm not some crazy Havishamesque figure) and a bottle o' Baileys.

(Pah! I preferred the original. At least Jane Russell got to play smart!)

My Name is Barbara

I am in a pub, reviewing Nina Power's excellent "One Dimensional Woman" (seminal feminist text of the decade, in my humblinion) while D, T + P watch Uruguay v Holland and procrastinate over Thai order tsuris while the buttons on my aged Monsoon shirt keep popping open a la Barbara Windsor in the "Carry On" films.

Nice.

Lapel

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

Maya Angelou

Lazing on a Sunny Afternoooooon

The Kinks are one of my favourite bands. In the Beatles vs Stones binary, I vote for the Crouch End boys every time (and not only 'cos I'm hoping to join the 'hood).

Seeing Ray Davies was one of my life's highlights. True story.

Money for Gurnischt

Bizarrely I love the original. The intro fires me up like nothing else. And this version does it for me too. I am an unabashed fangrrl of quirky reimaginings.

Enjoy!

Cuban Brothers Do Radiohead

The Beauty of a One-Hit Wonder

... is that you don't have to stick around for the second song!

Even More of the Best.Glastonbury.Ever!

Still the Best.Glastonbury.Ever.

Best. Glastonbury. Ever!