Shutdown Day

I have planned to make Saturdays "editorial day", but this week, I'm just pointing you to this one site...


http://www.shutdownday.org/

Here is a pretty darn good one to share...

POLITICS: How Much for That Baby in the Window?

Mar 22, 2007 22:00:00 GMT


File this one under "unlikely to become law--riiight?" Texas state Senator Dan Patrick (R, as if you needed to ask) plans to introduce a bill to, get this, pay women $500 for their babies. No, I am not shitting you.

The bill proposes to create an "Adoption Incentive Program" which would give

a $500 payment to each woman who is a resident of this state and a citizen of the United States who places a child for adoption rather than have an abortion.


Once you get over the "did they just say pay women for putting their children up for adoption?" shocker, the practical--and, sadly, probable--reasons this won't pass start to come into focus. Obviously--obviously--the state of Texas doesn't want to just throw money around! And certainly not to birth mothers. So the money is only for women who place babies for adoption instead of abortion. But how would you ensure that? Obviously women who put babies up for adoption are unreliable sorts--they might just lie and say that they had chosen adoption instead of abortion in order to get the money. So the bill goes on to declare that

The department may only distribute the application forms to abortion providers.


So you're pregnant, you decide you cannot keep this pregnancy, you make an appointment with an abortion provider and you show up and there's a parental consent law (if you're under 18) and a mandatory 24-hour waiting period just to make sure you've thought about this, missy, and now they're also going to try one last ditch oh, hey, but would you reconsider if we offered you $500?

Honey, $500 isn't even going to pay for the extra groceries you'll eat during a pregnancy. Let alone the prenatal care, if you're not insured or on Medicaid, or the cost of the birth.

Senator Patrick, would you agree to take care of a neighbor's dog for nine months for a measly $500? Where the fuck do you get the balls to offer women $500 to rent out their uteruses and sell their children?

Bitch_PhD is pleased to find that we've advanced beyond the era when Jonathan Swift wrote A Modest Proposal; at least now a boy or a girl before twelve years old is a salable commodity.

Cross-posted at Bitch Ph.D.

(Written by: Bitch_PhD)

A little something I found on myspace...

Last summer I watched Ira Glass from "This American Life" speak at Willamette University. He played part of an audiobook by David Sedaris and then read the FCC law and then the fines. Then he played the David Sedaris story again and counted on his fingers the number of FCC violations. Then he took out a calculator and multiplied that number the number of stations This American Life played on and explained how easy it is for the government to censor people.

The story contained not a single cuss word, drug reference, sex reference or really anything offensive. It was about using the bathroom at a friends house and someone before him didn't flush.

Anyways, I kinda liked this essay thingy...

Date: Mar 12, 2007 9:09 AM
Subject On Nudity
Body: On Nudity by Ryan Rogers (www.myspace.com/ryanrogersrizzo)

It was not too long ago that our country was gripped in panic and fear over something they saw on television. Something that happened accidentally (or perhaps purposefully) that gripped our country in fear. Congressional hearings were called. Massive fines were handed down. People were fired. It was bedlam. Parents were forced to contend with a horrible, overwhelming moral collapse of everything they had worked so hard to create. We were on the verge of anarchy.

Janet Jackson showed a nipple.

Yes, my friends, Janet Jackson, pop star and general gyrating flesh factory was performing with Justin Timberlake, and as if this were not embarrassing enough, had a part of her bodice removed during a choreographed dance number, exposing her right breast and nipple (I should say that she exposed her nipple, considering the bodice was already showing off a large portion of her breast already), not to mention perhaps the most tasteful and sexy nipple ring I have ever seen.

Of course, most of us know the rest of the story. Congressional hearings were, indeed, held, and massive fines were levied against the networks. Massive restructuring of the “allowed” images and words on the radio were put into law. Heck, even Howard Stern quit amid the turmoil. Parents were outraged. Family groups were outraged. Church leaders were outraged. And all this because of…a nipple.

Let’s put this in perspective. This was something that happened during the half-time show of the Super Bowl, a sport akin to Roman Gladiator bloodsports (but with padding), complete with perhaps the most violence allowed to be seen on Sunday afternoon television. Because after all, the violence is ok. But when the darkened nipple of a woman’s breast is exposed (the very same nipple which, if exposed on Justin Timberlake, would have been considered part of the act) the country is an uproar. Something tells me that our priorities are a little askew.

We live in a very unsafe and frightening time. People we know are getting killed, murdered, shot, tortured, or more. We fear for our lives. We fear for our children’s lives. We are afraid. So why is it that a film can be simply lauded with blood, gore, and violence, and television watchers seem to not balk at all (and perhaps enjoy it) but if a sexual, sensual or (good heavens) humanly anatomical image is on screen, we decry the decaying morality of our society.

It’s just a breast people. Many cultures seem to have very little issue with exposing the female breast. After all, it is beautiful. It is soft, sensual and aesthetically pleasing. It is part of the beautiful addition that gives a woman their heavenly curvaceous shape. Artists of the highest (and most religious) order have captured these breasts for centuries. They are not to be feared. And in a time of great turmoil in the world, shouldn’t we be far more sensitive to the violence that we constantly see, and far more lax and welcoming to the images of love and sensuality and beauty.
We are human beings. Just because we have chosen to drape ourselves in clothing does not mean that underneath this clothing we don’t all have the same beautiful parts (just in different colors, shapes, and proportions). So what’s to fear. Clearly Michelangelo did not fear the male penis when sculpting David. And heaven forbid I start to detail the famous authors that have paid great reverence for the human female form. It would take me all day.

I realize that we are the descendants of a puritanical legacy brought forward by our great ancestors, but perhaps it is time that she shake off the shackles of our ancestors and realize that our even greater human ancestors were not afraid of the human form. I am surrounded by art, sculpture, drawings, photography, all detailing this human form. The nipple, the breast, the penis, the vagina…these are not things to be feared, but celebrated. When a film tastefully presents these body parts, it is not obscenity, it is art. Heck, even if a film untastefully shows the female breast or the male penis, it is still not obscene. It’s just a body part. People do far more terrible, horrible, nightmarish things with their hands than they do with their sexual organs, yet we do not cover those up.

I am tired of the demonization of human body parts. Breasts are beautiful, and should be appreciated as such. Bodies in all their forms are poetry. The poetry of nature, and we should respect them as such. Nudity is not to be feared or frightened of. It is to be celebrated. And perhaps we would be in a far, far better place as humans if we spent more time worrying about the violence, hatred, and anger that is presented to us daily than the occasional viewing of a bare breast.

Opening this weekend update...3/11/2007

On friday I posted this... (see post directly below)



Since then I have worked 23 hours of 49 possible and I have pretty much cleaned up after the messes of 5250 people (that is only for the movie 300 alone, we were busy for the movies wild hogs and bridge to terbithia and amazing grace) the worst being a toss up of the discarded underwear in a handicapped stall in the mens restroom or the vomit on the floor in a showing of "wild hogs" that the customer never told any staff about so it was a pleasant surprise. I'm not too mad about the customer not telling any staff that they puked, I would be quite embarassed myself but I am the type of person to offer to help clean it up. Fortunately we have something that deodorizes and solidifies any liquid/chewed-up food so that problem was easily solved.

1 thing I noticed alot of this weekend was people taking there small children to see rated r movies. The last time I noticed alot of that was the movie "apocalypto". I don't really have an opinion on wherther small children should watch something like 300 or "apocalypto" but I do wonder if people even think about what their children will think of it. Considering I usually observe one small child a day freaking out and crying and their parents having to explain that "it's only a movie and the girl in 'bridge to terbithia' didn't really die", I just don't ever wanna have to explain to my kid the concept of war and violence to a small child untill I'm ready.

To play the devils advocate, I work in the box office and I oftentimes see fathers and sons going to the movies and the father always asks me "do you guys have any horror or war movies"? I always assume in my head that the father hasn't always been around that the father is trying to make up for it by taking his son to a movie that mom would never let him see. I imagine them planning to tell mom they watched something animated and a couple years too young for for them and mom totally buying it and the kid going to school and telling all his friends that he got to see a rated r movie in the theater and all his friends being wowed by his story about how the guy in "apocalypto" beheads people and then rolls the heads down the steps of the pyramid.

I then imagine the kid in a few years not even wanting to been seen in public with any member of his family and how dad won't be able to get his sons admiration by taking him to see a movie where people get dismembered. I think if I have children I will want them to stay 8 forever so I can still impress them by taking them to see die hard.

But I digress, I watched "Wild Hogs" and I think it will be worth a rent, I laughed out loud and wished I could fall asleep as I knew after that I had to clean up after thousands of people.