September 30, 2011

Canada's National Post Runs Homophobic Ad.

Newspapers do, in fact, pick and choose what political advertisements they run especially during elections.



The Author? Charles McVety.
A Canadian evangelical Christian leader. He has been the president of Canada Christian College in Toronto since 1993, and he is also the current president of Canada Family Action Coalition. He is perhaps best known for campaigning to repeal the law legalizing same-sex marriage in Canada.

Response from the public has been less than positive.





3D Projection on Building Better Than 97% of 3D Movies Released This Year.

September 29, 2011

Josh Krajcik, The Burrito Bastard, sings At Last by Etta James

"God has graciously enabled us..."


Someone put a poster up on the post near my apartment building. It is clearly addressed at the gluttony, torture, and lack of spirituality in our western society. While religion-heavy, I couldn't help but relate to a lot of what was written.


The interesting things you find in my neighbourhood...



Quigley, the movie about Gary Busey getting reincarnated as a dog.



“This movie is about God playing a trick on you, sending you back as a Pomeranian so you can make it work for your family. … This is an incredible transformation that Archie goes through… Well I got news for you. Gary Busey went through the same thing.”


“Dog Poop: Demons Outside God’s Periphery Ousting Odorous Popsicles."- something Busey said on set, probably.


September 18, 2011

A Message To Women From A Man: You Are Not “Crazy”.

 

"You’re so sensitive. You’re so emotional. You’re defensive. You’re overreacting. Calm down. Relax. Stop freaking out! You’re crazy! I was just joking, don’t you have a sense of humor? You’re so dramatic. Just get over it already! 

 

Sound familiar?
If you’re a woman, it probably does.
Do you ever hear any of these comments from your spouse, partner, boss, friends, colleagues, or relatives after you have expressed frustration, sadness, or anger about something they have done or said?
When someone says these things to you, it’s not an example of inconsiderate behavior. When your spouse shows up half an hour late to dinner without calling—that’s inconsiderate behavior. A remark intended to shut you down like, “Calm down, you’re overreacting,” after you just addressed someone else’s bad behavior, is emotional manipulation—pure and simple.

And this is the sort of emotional manipulation that feeds an epidemic in our country, an epidemic that defines women as crazy, irrational, overly sensitive, unhinged. This epidemic helps fuel the idea that women need only the slightest provocation to unleash their (crazy) emotions. It’s patently false and unfair.
I think it’s time to separate inconsiderate behavior from emotional manipulation and we need to use a word not found in our normal vocabulary.
I want to introduce a helpful term to identify these reactions: gaslighting.
Gaslighting is a term, often used by mental health professionals (I am not one), to describe manipulative behavior used to confuse people into thinking their reactions are so far off base that they’re crazy.
The term comes from the 1944 MGM film, Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman. Bergman’s husband in the film, played by Charles Boyer, wants to get his hands on her jewelry. He realizes he can accomplish this by having her certified as insane and hauled off to a mental institution. To pull of this task, he intentionally sets the gaslights in their home to flicker off and on, and every time Bergman’s character reacts to it, he tells her she’s just seeing things. In this setting, a gaslighter is someone who presents false information to alter the victim’s perception of him or herself.
Today, when the term is referenced, it’s usually because the perpetrator says things like, “You’re so stupid” or “No one will ever want you,” to the victim. This is an intentional, pre-meditated form of gaslighting, much like the actions of Charles Boyer’s character in Gaslight, where he strategically plots to confuse Ingrid Bergman’s character into believing herself unhinged.
The form of gaslighting I’m addressing is not always pre-mediated or intentional, which makes it worse, because it means all of us, especially women, have dealt with it at one time or another.
Those who engage in gaslighting create a reaction—whether it’s anger, frustration, sadness—in the person they are dealing with. Then, when that person reacts, the gaslighter makes them feel uncomfortable and insecure by behaving as if their feelings aren’t rational or normal.
My friend Anna (all names changed to protect privacy) is married to a man who feels it necessary to make random and unprompted comments about her weight. Whenever she gets upset or frustrated with his insensitive comments, he responds in the same, defeating way, “You’re so sensitive. I’m just joking.”
My friend Abbie works for a man who finds a way, almost daily, to unnecessarily to unnecessarily shoot down her performance and her work product. Comments like, “Can’t you do something right?” or “Why did I hire you?” are regular occurrences for her. Her boss has no problem firing people (he does it regularly), so you wouldn’t know that based on these comments, Abbie has worked for him for six years. But every time she stands up for herself and says, “It doesn’t help me when you say these things,” she gets the same reaction: “Relax; you’re overreacting.”
Abbie thinks her boss is just being a jerk in these moments, but the truth is, he is making those comments to manipulate her into thinking her reactions are out of whack. And it’s exactly that kind manipulation that has left her feeling guilty about being sensitive, and as a result, she has not left her job.
But gaslighting can be as simple as someone smiling and saying something like, “You’re so sensitive,” to somebody else. Such a comment may seem innocuous enough, but in that moment, the speaker is making a judgment about how someone else should feel.
While dealing with gaslighting isn’t a universal truth for women, we all certainly know plenty of women who encounter it at work, home, or in personal relationships.
And the act of gaslighting does not simply affect women who are not quite sure of themselves. Even vocal, confident, assertive women are vulnerable to gaslighting.
Why?
Because women bare the brunt of our neurosis. It is much easier for us to place our emotional burdens on the shoulders of our wives, our female friends, our girlfriends, our female employees, our female colleagues, than for us to impose them on the shoulders of men.
It’s a whole lot easier to emotionally manipulate someone who has been conditioned by our society to accept it. We continue to burden women because they don’t refuse our burdens as easily. It’s the ultimate cowardice.
Whether gaslighting is conscious or not, it produces the same result: it renders some women emotionally mute.
These women aren’t able to clearly express to their spouses that what is said or done to them is hurtful. They can’t tell their boss that his behavior is disrespectful and prevents them from doing their best work. They can’t tell their parents that, when they are being critical, they are doing more harm than good.
When these women receive any sort of push back to their reactions, they often brush it off by saying, “Forget it, it’s okay.”
That “forget it” isn’t just about dismissing a thought, it is about self-dismissal. It’s heartbreaking.
No wonder some women are unconsciously passive aggressive when expressing anger, sadness, or frustration. For years, they have been subjected to so much gaslighting that they can no longer express themselves in a way that feels authentic to them.
They say, “I’m sorry,” before giving their opinion. In an email or text message, they place a smiley face next to a serious question or concern, thereby reducing the impact of having to express their true feelings.
You know how it looks: “You’re late :)”
These are the same women who stay in relationships they don’t belong in, who don’t follow their dreams, who withdraw from the kind of life they want to live.
Since I have embarked on this feminist self-exploration in my life and in the lives of the women I know, this concept of women as “crazy” has really emerged as a major issue in society at large and an equally major frustration for the women in my life, in general.
From the way women are portrayed on reality shows, to how we condition boys and girls to see women, we have come to accept the idea that women are unbalanced, irrational individuals, especially in times of anger and frustration.
Just the other day, on a flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles, a flight attendant who had come to recognize me from my many trips asked me what I did for a living. When I told her that I write mainly about women, she immediately laughed and asked, “Oh, about how crazy we are?”
Her gut reaction to my work made me really depressed. While she made her response in jest, her question nonetheless makes visible a pattern of sexist commentary that travels through all facets of society on how men view women, which also greatly impacts how women may view themselves.
As far as I am concerned, the epidemic of gaslighting is part of the struggle against the obstacles of inequality that women constantly face. Acts of gaslighting steal their most powerful tool: their voice. This is something we do to women every day, in many different ways.
I don’t think this idea that women are “crazy,” is based in some sort of massive conspiracy. Rather, I believe it’s connected to the slow and steady drumbeat of women being undermined and dismissed, on a daily basis. And gaslighting is one of many reasons why we are dealing with this public construction of women as “crazy.”
I recognize that I’ve been guilty of gaslighting my women friends in the past (but never my male friends—surprise, surprise). It’s shameful, but I’m glad I realized that I did it on occasion and put a stop to it.
While I take total responsibility for my actions, I do believe that I, along with many men, am a byproduct of our conditioning. It’s about the general insight our conditioning gives us into admitting fault and exposing any emotion.
When we are discouraged in our youth and early adulthood from expressing emotion, it causes many of us to remain steadfast in our refusal to express regret when we see someone in pain from our actions.
When I was writing this piece, I was reminded of one of my favorite Gloria Steinem quotes, “The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.”
So for many of us, it’s first about unlearning how to flicker those gaslights and learning how to acknowledge and understand the feelings, opinions, and positions of the women in our lives.
But isn’t the issue of gaslighting ultimately about whether we are conditioned to believe that women’s opinions don’t hold as much weight as ours? That what women have to say, what they feel, isn’t quite as legitimate?"

Source:
http://thecurrentconscience.com/blog/2011/09/12/a-message-to-women-from-a-man-you-are-not-%E2%80%9Ccrazy%E2%80%9D/

(Thanks, Lindy!)

Because I Never Learn.


It's like I WANT another Republican to report me.
Again.
And get me kicked off facebook.
Again.

UPDATE:



Yes. Your world would be a much safer place for you and your children if the British actors all LEFT THE HOLLYWOOD MOVIE SETS THAT YOU COMPLAINED CANADA WAS STEALING FROM YOU DUE TO CHEAP LABOUR. Make up your mind- do you want people generating money in your country or do you want them to get the fuck out? I'm pretty sure they aren't stealing your screenplay writer job that you were driving for. These people make my teeth hurt. It is such blatant racism and bigotry shrouded in a cloak of bad political arguments.


The Urinals Heard Round The World.

http://jezebel.com/5841471/bar-features-hilarious-urinals-that-look-like-womens-mouths


I Celebrate Any Minor Milestone.


Over 100, 000 people have accidentally ended up at my page. I couldn't be more proud of Google right now. Thanks, Dude.

I Haven't Slept in 37 Hours.



And that may or may not have anything or everything to do with the fact that I have been watching this for over seven minutes.

Let's Go Fishing Vol. 73. NSFW



Even if he never caught a fish that day, it can be considered a success.

America- Sanitized for your Pleasure.

9/11 Was Clearly Caused By a Kid With a High Speed Internet Connection.


AMERICA! FLAGS! BABY JESUS! FREEDOM!

Twitter.


"Want to hear a secret? Almost every goddamned thing we do here is self-referential.

HEY LOOK AT WHAT I ATE OR DID OR SAW OR KNOW OR FEEL OR HATE. It’s all us pointing our fingers right at our own faces and asking everyone to look. Don’t kid yourself, everyone’s faces and everyone’s fingers. It’s why we’re here.

And know what else? DON’T APOLOGIZE FOR ANY OF IT. People are awesome. Even lame people. I’m here because I WANT to see people reference themselves.

Some people hate it when people... post a joke on twitter AND facebook. Like doing so CROSSES THE LINE that we for some stupid reason pretend isn’t running ten yards directly behind us with every post. Guess what, those people? Some of us write jokes and put them on the internet. It’s not the most noble of endeavors, but it’s the one we’ve chosen professionally and recreationally. So suck it.
Imagine you’re a photographer. You take a picture. You like that picture. But screw you if you show it to people in your living room THEN show that same picture to someone at work. Screw you right in the face for being so self-referential."

The John Blog

September 5, 2011

XKCD Nails It.



Joking aside, if money is your legacy you have probably done something wrong.
But this made me laugh. Hard.
Thanks, Amber.

September 1, 2011

Grandma has a Pagina.



That is the cutest word since Pig Newton.

The Bucky Larson BORN TO BE Flowchart. (An aside: this movie is sure to be terrible.)


Nintendo Console Guitar. I WANT.


Pretentious Dickhole Quote of the Day.


You’re a vegan. For your last meal would you go for a fatty steak or just some tempeh?

I’m not a true vegan. I dabble in sustainable fish and dawdle in the consumption of eggs. Steak doesn’t speak to me, and tempeh is so-so. I’ll savor a solitary apricot that’s been kissed by my baby.

-Anthony Keidis, Maxim.com August 2011