What animal are you?

Entertainingly, i’m either an otter or a lion or perhaps a baboon. I’d guess otter…

Now, the question that needs to be asked is does my results on this one surprise anyone? I didn’t think so….

Self-obsessed and self-possessed,you are a strong woman with a social conscience, who centers her life around her art. You pour your life experience and passion into your art, presenting ideas that resonate deep in the souls of others.
Take the “Which Empowered Female Artist Are You” Quiz

What are we celebrating on the Fourth of July?

In 1776 American colonists fought for freedom against a mighty empire, an act of self-determination we still celebrate on the Fourth of July. But we also use the Fourth to maintain a mythology about our role in the world that, while mostly true in 1776, is wholly false 226 years later.

In 2002, we are the empire.

As this holiday comes to a close, i am still asking the question that got me into so much trouble for so many years. Call me unpatriotic, call me a cynic, call me a psycho, but i still don’t get how we can stand up every year and celebrate our systematic oppression of people worldwide under the guise of independence and freedom. We are not free and we will not be free until all people are truly treated equally, respected as individuals and permitted to pursue their notion of happiness in a society of mutual respect. We will not be free until we tolerate everyone’s differences and respect their decisions and needs. We will not be free until we value others’ needs over our own. We will not be free until we stop raping, pillaging, bombing, massacring, hating, all under a flag with an artificial notion of liberation. We will not be free until we lay down our privileges and stand up for those for whom we’ve made life untolerable.

And until we truly try to seek freedom, i will continue to turn my back to the man who is not the president of me. And no matter how much i crave the beauty of fire, no pretty pyrotechnic explosion can convince me to stand falsely united under an oppressive flag or a colonialist pledge or participate in an event that flaunts a bomber plane.

we drove the car to the top of the parking ramp
on the 4th of july
we sat out on the hood with a couple of warm beers and watched the fireworks
explode in the sky
and there was an exodus of birds from the trees
but they didn’t know we were only pretending
and the people all looked up and looked pleased
and the birds flew around like the whole world was ending

No matter what your cause, i just don’t think that war is ever noble.

Oh boy. I’m not so sure what to think about “The Talented Mr. Hawley.”

It seems as though religious issues are the topic of the courts today.

In Florida, a Muslim woman’s drivers license was revoked because she refused to do a full facial photograph because it was against her religion. I’m sure she’s going to love the retinal scanners and digital finger prints… Ah, the poor Amish must hate us.

True to my heart, a San Francisco court ruled that the pledge of allegiance was a violation of separation of church and state. Do you realize how many times i had to sit in the hallway because i refused to recite that damn allegiance? And when i did, i made up my own versions that never appeased 6th grade teachers… “One nation, under beaurocracy with violence and hatred for all…”

[cypherpunk login for nytimes: c1ph3rpunk/c1ph3rpunk]

Tehehe. Reuters reports that a new British site has just opened, helping lesbians find sperm donors. Guess what it’s called? Man not included dot com.

Which Winona Are You?

Check out the random masturbation synonym generator

In NYTimes, there’s a nice little oped about our refusing to ratify an international women’s treaty that 169 other countries have ratified… Anyone wonder why we got kicked out of the human rights commission…

[cypherpunk login for nytimes: c1ph3rpunk/c1ph3rpunk]

Finally, some folks are seeing that instant messenger is just an open channel for surveillance and putting together encryption for it… Of course, those who are observing are not going to like that so very much…

Gays have officially assimilated, or at least they’ve turned very far right…

San Francisco Punks and yuppies. Are they really so different? … what would happen if two of this city’s most entrenched cultural archetypes-young bohemians and young capitalists-were to spend an afternoon together. And get drunk together. And maybe mix it up in, oh, a lighthearted little yuppie-punk smackdown-“dyed blond versus dyed black, Prada versus Ben Davis,” Would it improve civic relations? Would it build bridges?

[cypherpunk login for latimes: cypherpunk/cypherpunk]

Some teachers wanna teach math anyway possible… “Hector knocked up three girls in his gang. There are 27 girls in his gang. What is the exact percentage of the girls in the gang that Hector knocked up?”

And, as i continue to be anal about budgeting, the morning news has a nice little bit of advice…

One of my favorite parts of errol morris’ the thin blue line is that it lead to the uncovering of an innocent victim. The documentary was used to make people reconsider a legal case, eventually releasing from prison an innocent man. This case reminds me of the power of documentaries, in telling stories and creating social change. This is the same attitude that Cambridge Documentary Films has when it creates movies like Rape Is… to change the social attitude towards rape as a systematic tactic of power. Hell, this is the attitude that many documentarians have – tell real stories to make people reconsider social assumptions.

And then sometimes, the law gets involved… Apparently, HBO decided to air a documentary on a man who shared the drug ecstasy with his children. Horrified, it seems as though the police got involved and the man has been arrested for endangering his children (and not surprisingly, his ex-wife backed him). There’s something quite problematic to me about HBO doing a special that puts someone at risk with the law. Sure, what this man did might be illegal or problematic, but it was the documentary that got the police involved (not the testimony of the ex-wife who knew beforehand). I’d love to think that the documentarians were serving justice, but with the war on drugs the way it is, their actions are just propagating a truly fubared institution. I can’t help but wonder what the results of reality TV shows are – is everyone arrested for admitting their drug use, their illegal sex acts, their speeding? If someone comes out on TV and oral sex is illegal in their state, can they be arrested? Are they persecuting themselves? This seems like a very slippery slope…

[Afternote: a good friend of mine ran into similar problems when he was working at a newspaper… apparently, their paper got someone into trouble with the INS…]

i remember first hearing about the “be creative or die” research in response to a lot of stuff in japan, and then again when i came across the research on why gays are the best predictors of good cities to live in (and how gays & techies are a lot alike… tehehe). i’m always humored reading this kind of stuff, because it’s just predictive metrics, making a slice through two dimensions in habits to show commonalities… but it’s the same stuff that got the bell curve folks into a heap of trouble. statistics are just great – they show lots of fun things, and almost always those fun things are 100% accurate for what they’re showing… and then they get used to extrapolate and that’s when we all get into a bit of trouble…