Superjenfu

Oh, New Cat.

A zookeeper packs a young seal for a beach trip at Seehundstation Norddeich, a rehab center for orphaned seal pups on the North Sea German coast. This youngster is about to be returned to the wild. (top)

Young seals, now strong enough to fend for the themselves, crawl out of their baskets and into the surf on a beach in the Islands of Juist near Norddeich, Germany. The pups were raised at a rehab center for about a year. They would have likely not survived had they not been rescued. (bottom)

PHOTO BY DAVID HECKER/GETTY IMAGES (via SF Gate)

History captures Harriet Tubman as one of America’s most fearless abolitionists, a woman who escaped slavery and devoted her life to helping others do the same, at great peril. Which sounds hilarious, history. Thanks for being so reliably dull with your “facts” and “respectful considerations of character.” Anyway, once again it’s up to Internet-based comedy to take the Harriet Tubmans of this world down a peg, which is just what Russell Simmons’ new YouTube channel, All Def Digital, proposed with its video “Harriet Tubman Sex Tape.” As its name suggests, the sketch—which debuted this week to commemorate ...

It’s the last week to check out my show at Trifecta Gallery in Las Vegas! See the work (and Edith Lebeau’s!) online at http://bit.ly/16TNVjq. Here are the kitties from the show.

She’s adorable!  

"Meet Hilda, the creation of illustrator Duane Bryers and pin-up art’s best kept secret. Voluptuous in all the right places, a little clumsy but not at all shy about her figure, Hilda was one of the only atypical plus-sized pin-up queens to grace the pages of American calendars from the 1950s up until the early 1980s, and achieved moderate notoriety in the 1960s."

You can follow these links to Hilda

here (info and pictures)

and

here (gallery)

discovered via facebook friends who are more in the know than I.

Starting later this month, authors will be able to start selling their Kurt Vonnegut-related fan fiction via Amazon’s Kindle Worlds format, so get that erotic mustache-tickling short story ready. The move comes as Amazon has announced a licensing partnership with RosettaBooks, the company that owns the likeness rights to most of Vonnegut’s work. Amazon already has a fan fiction agreement with the company that licenses Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and Vampire Diaries, as well as comic book publisher Valiant entertainment. While Amazon doesn’t really allow mature or sexual fan fiction to be distributed via its Kindle ...

There's a counter-intuitive notion taking hold out there that the George Zimmerman's case had nothing to do with Stand Your Ground. This argument is most explicitly made by Jacob Sullum in a column entitled, "Sorry, The George Zimmerman Case Still Has Nothing To Do With Stand Your Ground." Here's Sullum:The story that George Zimmerman told about his fight with Trayvon Martin, the one that yesterday persuaded a jury to acquit him of second-degree murder and manslaughter, never had anything to do with the right to stand your ground when attacked in a public place. Knocked down and pinned to the ground by Martin, Zimmerman would not have had an opportunity to escape as Martin hit him and knocked his head against the concrete. The initial decision not to arrest Zimmerman, former Sanford, Florida, Police Chief Bill Lee said last week (as paraphrased by CNN), "had nothing to do with Florida's controversial 'Stand Your Ground' law" because "from an investigative standpoint, it was purely a matter of self-defense." And as The New York Times explained last month, "Florida's Stand Your Ground law...has not been invoked in this case." The only context in which "stand your ground" was mentioned during the trial was as part of the prosecution's attempt to undermine Zimmerman's credibility by arguing that he lied when he told Fox News host Sean Hannity that he had not heard of the law until after the shooting. During his rebuttal on Friday, prosecutor John Guy declared, "This case is not about standing your ground." I think this is overly broad. It's very true that Zimmerman's narrative holds that he never had the opportunity to retreat, and thus SYG was not relevant to his specific defense. It is certainly not true that "the only context" in which SYG came up was from the prosecution. As I wrote yesterday, SYG is explicitly mentioned in the jury instructions:If George Zimmerman was not engaged in an unlawful activity and was attacked in any place where he had a right to be, he had no duty to retreat and had the right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he reasonably believed that it was necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.Sullum says how the jury instructions apply "to the facts of this case." But this is changing the argument. Bill Lee's decision to not arrest George Zimmerman also don't apply to the facts of this case. They apply to Sullum's stated argument--"The George Zimmerman Case Had Nothing To Do With Stand Your Ground."I do not mean to be pedantic here. The decision to not arrest George Zimmerman is critical in understanding why Trayvon Martin is a national cause célèbre and Justin Patterson is not. In looking at that decision, it is important to understand the changes enacted in Florida law in 2005, under SYG. Among those changes--making it very difficult to arrest someone who claims self-defense:776.032 Immunity from criminal prosecution and civil action for justifiable use of force.-- (1) A person who uses force as permitted in s. 776.012, s. 776.013, or s. 776.031 is justified in using such force and is immune from criminal prosecution and civil action for the use of such force, unless the person against whom force was used is a law enforcement officer, as defined in s. 943.10(14), who was acting in the performance of his or her official duties and the officer identified himself or herself in accordance with any applicable law or the person using force knew or reasonably should have known that the person was a law enforcement officer. As used in this subsection, the term "criminal prosecution" includes arresting, detaining in custody, and charging or prosecuting the defendant. (2) A law enforcement agency may use standard procedures for investigating the use of force as described in subsection (1), but the agency may not arrest the person for using force unless it determines that there is probable cause that the force that was used was unlawful.(3) The court shall award reasonable attorney's fees, court costs, compensation for loss of income, and all expenses incurred by the defendant in defense of any civil action brought by a plaintiff if the court finds that the defendant is immune from prosecution as provided in subsection (1).The language here is interesting. It says that making a claim of self-defense grants immunity from arrest. It then adds exception for probable cause, which is the standard by which police make an arrest anyway. It then finishes by noting that should the court find the that the claimant is immune to prosecution, they can recover from the state all expenses. I'm not clear on all of this because the language is so tangled. But my reading is that the pre-trial hearing is where such an immunity from from prosecution determination would be made. If immunity is found, then the state is on the hook for all the claimants bills. I don't see anything here that excludes people arguing that they could not retreat (like Zimmerman) from such a hearing. This language was added to Florida's law books in 2005, exactly at the time that Florida put codified "stand your ground." They were part of the same reform, and have always been understood to be as such--even by Stand Your Ground's proponents. :Marion Hammer, the NRA's Florida lobbyist, said the measure was needed to prevent authorities from harassing law-abiding people with unwarranted arrests. "The law was written very carefully and it means what it says: You have a right to protect yourself," she said...."There is nothing wrong with the law," she said. "Some of the state attorneys and law enforcement officers are complaining because they can't just go arrest everybody and sort it out later."Sullum criticizes Ben Jealous for inveighing against Stand Your Ground, but correctly invoking the set of laws by the name which they have long been known. It's very nice that Bill Lee now claims that the decision not to arrest George Zimmerman had nothing to do with SYG and its attendant reforms. But Bill Lee's statements today, must be weight against what the city of Sanford actually said at the time:"Zimmerman provided a statement claiming he acted in self defense, which at the time was supported by physical evidence and testimony," the letter, signed by Sanford City Manager Norton Bonaparte Jr., says. "By Florida Statute, law enforcement was PROHIBITED from making an arrest based on the facts and circumstances they had at the time." The killing of Trayvon Martin was not the first time law enforcement officials in Florida reached this conclusion:It took Hillsborough County deputies two days to arrest Trevor Dooley, the school bus driver accused of shooting and killing a Valrico Air Force veteran on a basketball court. The arrest on manslaughter charges may have been complicated by the state's "stand your ground" law, which allows the use of lethal force if a person feels threatened by another with great bodily harm. The law makes it more difficult to make arrests and prosecute assailants when there has been a fight. The thing to understand here is that Stand Your Ground laws do not exist in some segregated section of Florida's criminal code. They are not bracketed off from the rest of Florida's "standard" self-defense laws. Stand Your Ground laws are integral to the very meaning of self-defense in the state. I do not think you can argue that Zimmerman would have been convicted if not for Stand Your Ground. But you certainly can't argue that the law had "nothing" to do with this case. And you most certainly can argue that SYG reduced the chances of Zimmerman being arrested. If that arrest had happened we probably would not be talking about this case right now.MORE: Via Andrew, here is a juror directly (if mistakenly) citing Stand Your Ground as part of why they acquitted: COOPER: Because of the two options you had, second degree murder or manslaughter, you felt neither applied? JUROR: Right. Because of the heat of the moment and the Stand Your Ground. He had a right to defend himself. If he felt threatened that his life was going to be taken away from him or he was going to have bodily harm, he had a right. Again, it is simply not supportable to say that Stand Your Ground had "nothing" to do with this case.

Brittney Cooper was on an airplane when, out of the corner of her eye, she caught alarming words on her seatmate's phone. The fellow passenger was texting a message about Cooper's race and weight. Host Michel Martin talks to Cooper about what she did next, and what she was hoping to accomplish.

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I went out this morning for a quick run along La Seine. That was fun. There were very few people out, which made it easier. Paris is a city for strollers, not runners. In this small section of the city, everyone seems to be offering a variation on the phrase "And I wasn't even trying."

Women pedal their bikes up the streets, without helmets, in long white dresses; or they whizz past in pink daisy dukes and matching roller skates. Men wear orange pants and white linen shirts. They parler un petit peu then disappear around corners. When I next see them they are pushing porsches up St. Germain, top down, loving their lives. Couples sit next to each other in the cafes, watching the street. There are rows of them assembled as though in a spread from Vogue, or as a stylish display of manequins. Everyone smokes. They know what awaits them--grizzly death, orgies, in no particular order. 

I came home. I showered. I dressed. I walked across the way and bought some bread and milk. My wife brewed coffee. We had breakfast. Then a powerful fatigue came over me and I slept till noon. When I woke, my son was dressed. My wife was wearing a Great Gatsby tee-shirt, shades, earrings and jeans. Her hair was pulled back and blown out into big beautiful Afro. We walked out and headed for the RER. My son was bearing luggage. This is the last we'd see of him for six weeks. 

It was on the train that I realized I'd gone mad. I started studying French through the old FSI tapes and workbook. I then moved on to classes at Alliance Française. Next I hired a personal tutor. We would meet at a café in my neighborhood. Sometimes my son would stop by. I noticed he liked to linger around. One day he asked if he could be tutored in French. It struck me as weird, but I went with it. In June he did a two-week class--four hours a day. He stayed with my father. He woke up at 6 a.m. to get to class on time, and didn't get back until twelve hours later. He would eat dinner and then sleep like a construction worker. But he liked it. Now I was sending him off to an immersion sleep-away camp--Française tout les jours.

It is insane. I am trying to affect the aggression of my childhood home, the sense of constant unremitting challenge, sans the violence. A lot of us who come up hard revere the lessons we learned, even if they were rendered by the belt or boot. How do we pass those lessons on without subjecting our children to those forces? How do we toughen them for a world that will bring war to them, without subjecting them to abuse? My only answer is to put them in strange and different places, where no one cares that someone somewhere once told them they were smart. My only answer is try to mimic the style of learning I have experienced as an adult and adapt it for childhood.

But I am afraid for my beautiful brown boy. 

A few weeks ago I was sitting with my dad telling him how I had to crack down on my own son for some indiscretion. I told my dad that the one thing I wasn't prepared for about fatherhod was how much it hurt me to be the bad guy, how much i wanted to let him loose, how much I felt his pain whenever I challenged him. I felt it because I remembered my own days, and how much I hated being 12. I was shocked to see my dad nodding in agreement. My dad was an aggressive father. I didn't think he was joyous in his toughness, but it never occurred to me that he had to get himself up to challenge us. He never let us see that part of him. His rule was "Love your mother. Fear your father." And so he wore a mask. As it happens, I feared them both.

I told my son this story the day before we dropped him off. I told him that I would never force him to take up something he wasn't interested in (like piano). But once he declared his interests, there was no other way to be, except to push him to do it to death. How very un-Parisian. But I told him that pain in this life was inevitable, and that he could only choose whether it would be the pain of acting or the pain of being acted upon. C'est tout.

We signed in. He took a test. We saw his room and met his room-mate. We told him we loved him. And then we left.

"When I e-mail you," he said. "Be sure to e-mail back so that I know you're OK."

So that he knows that we are OK.

When we left my wife began to cry. On the train we talked about the madness of this all, that we--trifling and crazy--should be here right now. First you leave your block. Then you leave your neighborhood. Then you leave your high school. The your city, your college and, finally, your country. At every step you are leaving another world, and at every step you feel a warm gravity, a large love, pulling you back home. And you feel crazy for leaving. And you feel that it is preposterous to do this to yourself. And you wonder who would do this to a child.

Hey geeks! Only a few days left to get a copy of the new book! If you've ever wanted a signed version of one of the older books, this is also a way to do that. Thanks!

According to legend, two bandits once set out to fetch the grapes of the impossible quest,

thereby incurring the wrath of the gods who turned them into tantalizers fated to forever wandering amongst the vineyards.

Some say, mere mortals who dare to obtain the ambrosia of the vine are drawn off course by the beady-eyes of the bandits and left hopelessly squeeing the rest of their days.

“My girls and I are huge fans of your site – thanks for all you do to make the world a cuter place. This morning we found these two grape bandits hanging out on our arbor/fence. Hope you like the shots!” -Jennifer D.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Unusual Animals

BOOYA

Hello Hello from Marlys!

What is the difference between a drawing that contains cares and people and a story that contains cars and people?

Composition Notebook Drawings: Cars and People

Lynda Barry

Gov. Mike Pence has created the Indiana Office of Small Business and Entrepreneurship that he says will focus on consulting, specialty programming, and integrating universities, private businesses and government agencies.

Picture: Betsy Seeton/Solent News (via Pictures of the day: 27 June 2013 - Telegraph)

Paula Deen was born in Southwest Georgia, a portion of our country known for its rabid resistance to the civil rights advancements of the mid-20th century. It was in Southwest Georgia that Martin Luther King joined the Albany Movement. It was in Southwest Georgia that Shirley and Charles Sherrod fought nonviolently for the voting rights that were theirs by law. It was in Southwest Georgia that Shirley Sherrod's cousin, Bobby Hall, was lynched. It was in Southwest Georgia that Shirley Sherrod's father was shot down by a white man. This man was never punished.

A few months ago I was interviewing a gentleman who'd migrated up from the South in the 1930s. When I asked him why he'd left, he said he was looking for "protection of the law." It is crucial that we remember that the South, for black people, was not just the home of "Colored Only" water-fountains, but was a kind of perpetual anarchic terrorist state. There was no law.

For some reason we like to think that members of ruling class raised in such environs remain unaffected, that the brutality which the children witness does not, somehow, work on their morality, their character and bearing. Our forefathers knew better:

The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive either in his philanthropy or his self-love, for restraining the intemperance of passion towards his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present. But generally it is not sufficient.

The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to his worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances.

I confess myself refreshed to hear Paula Deen respond "Yes, of course," when asked if she used the word "nigger." We have conditioned ourselves with a kind of magic to believe that racism is a matter of kindness and prohibitive vocabulary -- as though a hatred of women can be reduced the use of the word "bitch." But what does a country which tolerates the terrorism of Southwest, Georgia expect? What does a country whose left wing's greatest policy achievement was made possible by an embrace of white supremacy really believe will happen to children raised in such times? What do we expect in a country where many find it entirely appropriate to wear the battle-flag of the republic of slavery?

Perhaps it expects that they will be savvy enough to not propose sambo burgers or plantation themed weddings. But this is an embarrassment at airs, not the actual truth. When you watch the video above, note the people cheering and laughing. For those without video, here is what was said:

Deen, talking at an event months before losing her job for using the "N-word," recounted how her great-grandfather was driven to suicide after his 30 slaves were set free.

"Between the death of his son and losing all the workers, he went out into his barn and shot himself because he couldn't deal with those kind of changes," Deen said at a New York Times event. Deen, owner of a restaurant empire, asserted the owner-slave relationship was more kinship than cruelty.

"Back then, black folk were such an integral part of our lives," said Deen. "They were like our family, and for that reason we didn't see ourselves as prejudiced."

She also called up an employee to join her onstage, noting that Hollis Johnson was "as black as this board" -- pointing to the dark backdrop behind her. "We can't see you standing in front of that dark board!" Deen quipped, drawing laughter from the audience.

At the same event, Deen at one point described race relations in the South as "pretty good." "We're all prejudiced against one thing or another," she added. "I think black people feel the same prejudice that white people feel."

Here is everything from Civil War hokum to black friend apologia to blatant racism. And people at a New York Times event are laughing along with it.

This morning, I showed this video to my wife. My wife is dark-skinned. My wife is from Chicago by way of Covington, Tennessee. The remark sent her right back to childhood. I suspect that the laughter in the crowd was a mix of discomfort, shock and ignorance. The ignorance is willful. We know what we want to know, and forget what discomfits us.

There is a secret at the core of our nation. And those who dare expose it must be condemned, must be shamed, must be driven from polite society. But the truth stalks us like bad credit. Paula Deen knows who you were last summer. And the summer before that.

This morning I was browsing the news as I do every morning and read about the following:

• The difficulties women have in academia if they choose to have children.
• Impending abortion legislation in Texas that will leave only 5 abortion clinics open.
• Nigella Lawson, being choked, in public, by her husband while no one did anything. Then, his mealy mouthed bullshit explanations. And then, some British politician making a crass joke on Twitter about where he would like to squeeze Nigella. And I mean, if that dude choked Nigella in PUBLIC, what the fuck is he doing in private? And also, NIGELLA is a goddess. Motherfucker better recognize. 
• Sexual assault in the military.
• More nonsense about women, writing, and children and frankly, all these discussions about women, fertility, and various professional fields really makes it seem like women are breeding livestock. Just putting that out there.
• All the movies are about men’s stories, basically.
• Sexism in publishing and J. Franzen being, well, J. Franzen.
• Issues of gender, seriousness, and journalism in magazines.

These issues are not equal on the scale of importance. There are innumerable issues, global issues for that matter, beyond this narrow selection of news that demand far more of our time and empathy. We all know that, though. We do. The world is terrible. Measuring the terrible is a pointless exercise. That’s not what this is about.

I was reading all these articles on my phone, still in bed, and honestly, I thought, “Why should I even bother getting out of bed?" I felt incredibly hopeless that in ways both great and small, the reach of misogyny is endless.

And I hate feeling this way because I have a good life. I’ve been through a fair amount of shit but I’m alive. I am loved. I paid my rent on time. I recognize my privilege and honestly, this plagues me a lot, like, girl, what are you angry about, really? Good should be good enough, right? But it’s never really about me, when I write about this stuff. Or if it is, I am the insignificant part. I know my place. 

And still, it feels like there’s not only a glass ceiling, but that women are, no matter what they do, trapped in a glass box. We can see what we want. We can see it clearly but we can’t quite hold it.

This isn’t complaining. This is, I think, coming to terms with impotence.This is being reminded, yet again, that feminism, flawed, fucked up feminism, it matters. It is exceedingly necessary, now more so than ever. Feminism is not something we can turn our backs on. We can’t be complacent with “good lives," particularly when so many women, the world over, can’t even dream of a good life.

I’m under no illusions about utopia. The world is never going to be ideal for everyone, neither for women nor men. I am not interested in an ideal world. Anything I’ve been through has, in its way, made me, well, me and I don’t want to change that. 

It is not illusory, though, to hope the world can get better in the small ways (publishing, movies, whatever) and the big ways (reproductive freedom) and the absolutely necessary ways (global freedom from gender-based violence and oppression). 

Today, I am frustrated.

Musta toonekurge õnnestub (vähemalt minul) näha üsna harva – musta ja valget koos aga veel harvem. Väga napilt jäi siit pildilt välja sookurg.
Must-toonekure paaride arv Eestis on 70-80 ringis ning paraku on see arv vähenev. Võrdluseks, et valge-toonekure arvukust hinnatakse meil 4000-5000 paari ringis. Väga haruldase linnuna on must-toonekurg asetatud kaitstavate linnuliikide I kategooriasse. Sinna kuuluvad ka kotkad.

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WOOH. Technically, there are some glitches in the early archives, so I don't actually know which comic this is. BUT, the longer I do this, the closer the large round numbers get to being correct.

Thanks for giving me the best job ever, geeks.

Female elephant seal scratching her head while another sleeps peacefully behind her on the beach in San Simeon, California

Photograph by Mike Gin(via Elephant Seal Picture — Animal Wallpaper — National Geographic Photo of the Day)