Our third edition of In the Path of Destruction live-blogging is up! This one takes us right up to the seconds before the eruption. Some of the things that happened will leave you sputtering. Some of it will leave you wishing for a TARDIS so you can get people the heck outta Dodge.
You all did a superb job identifying Ken’s poor molting blue jay in our last UFD extravaganza. I promised you a few more shots of it, and I have at last returned to the intertoobz to deliver.
That’s so sad, rather. It makes me wonder how ridiculous the feathered dinosaurs looked whilst they were molting. Continue reading “Bald Blue Jay!”
Arrgh, it be Talk Like a Pirate Day! And Pipa be clearing the vermin from the ship.
Aye, good dog!
That scurvy camera o’ mine will be walkin’ the plank for not catching the moment where Pipa bit the varmint’s butt on command. O’ course, might be it was my fault, so if it behaves, I’ll belay me own orders.
A bit ago, I put out a call for UFDs, and our Ken responded with some stunning photography. Even if you’re all like, “Oh, pfft, Dana, these are simplicity themselves!” you are still going to love them.
Here’s our first UFD. Ken manages to make it look lovely despite its poor bald head: Continue reading “Unidentified Flying Dinosaur: Midwest Moppets”
I hope you’re prepared for mountains of bullshit, my darlings. This week, our Christianist textbook Science of the Physical Creation is delivering enough to fertilize the entire Willamette Valley.
Right off, as we get into SPC’s explanation of mountains and volcanoes and earthquakes oh my, we see we’re in for a whole lotta Godtalk. They don’t start off talking about what mountains actually are, as you would expect one would in an earth science textbook. Instead, they wank on for a very long paragraph about how mountains existed before the Flood because Genesis 7:19-20 sez so, but maybe they weren’t all that “tall, steep, and rugged.” They say “the Bible seems to indicate” God remodeled during the Flood, and that is why we have deep ocean basins and really massive mountains.
Uh-huh.
Then, finally, they start talking about types of mountains. Continue reading “Adventures in Christianist Earth Science Education XVII: Wherein Mountains are Laid Low by Ignorance”
In this episode of “What Fuckery is Rape Culture Up to Now?” Tony takes on a victim-blaming assclown. Once you’re done with the article, please click his “Donate” link if you can spare some cash. He’s about $500 short for the month, with no employment prospects in sight. Let’s keep him fed, connected, and housed so he can continue delivering the deserved smackdowns.
And this one is really epic. Here’s the three paragraphs that everyone who’s ever told a potential or actual rape victim what they should do/should have done to avoid being raped needs to print these out in 100 point, bold font on contrasting paper, and tape them to several surfaces in the house, such as on the bathroom mirror and the television. They need to have people randomly pop in with a copy and read them aloud until the words are indelibly etched upon their brains.
What advice are women and girls supposed to take in order to protect themselves from being assaulted when they can be raped no matter what they’re wearing, their level of sobriety, their location, the amount of sex they’ve had, or the people they associate with? The reason none of that advice works to reduce the incidence of rape, or afford women and girls protection is because men who rape do so under all manner of circumstances. And again, that’s why *men* need to be targeted [by rape prevention campaigns].
I’m so sick of this script:
“Traditional marriage and religious liberty are under attack all across the nation,” writes former Harris County GOP Chair Jared Woodfill.
No, Jared and all the other crybaby cons. Not a bit of it. Traditional marriage is just being asked to share its sandbox with others. It gets to keep all its toys. It’s still got plenty of room to play. Nobody’s kicking sand in its eyes, or telling it to go home, or borrowing its bucket and shovel and not giving them back. If traditional marriage can’t play nicely with the other kids, that’s its problem, not theirs. It can learn to share the space, or go home to sulk, but nobody’s attacking it. Continue reading “Dear “Religious Liberty” Brigade: You’ve Lost. You’ve Always Lost”
We made it to the Snohomish Pumpkin Hurl and Medieval Faire! Alas, we didn’t have a chance to see Trebuchet, but we saw him launch his trebuchets, so that was something. Starspider and I were waiting for her funnel cake and missed the black powder cannon, but others in our party made it. We got kettle corn and the beef jerky I’ve been waiting for all year. Starspider let me nibble on her venison jerky, which was my first deer ever, and delicious, even though it’s like chowing down on Bambi’s mom. We saw the jousting, and I got to hang out with Paladin, who is one of my favorite horses, so that was most excellent. I will have pumpkin hurling awesomeness and some jousting excitement, despite my camera suddenly becoming old and crotchety and having trouble focusing, and being at a not-so-great angle. I managed to shoot lots of video and some really good still photos. Some of it has Mount Baker as the backdrop, which looks really amazeballs. You will love it.
But first, people, I have to post this epic photo of Eowyn and Sir Cedric. I think we have achieved peak cheesy-horse. Continue reading “Epic Cheesy Horse! Plus: What Ground Combat REALLY Looks Like”
Have I got a crocodile for you! Also a sweet glacial erratic! Funny Diva and I went out for a nice Thursday evening jaunt along the Burke-Gillman Trail. Since I had to bring pizza to S, we parked at Log Boom Park and took the trail towards Bothell, so that we wouldn’t have to hoof it all the way back to Ballinger Way with a pizza box.
On the way, we encountered a crocodile. Continue reading “Erratic Times on the Burke-Gillman Trail, Incl. a Mighty Bronze Croc”
Another day, another black man being roughed up by police for existing while black. Tony tells us the story, and he’s got some great questions at the end for those white folks who are all, “Don’t do anything wrong and you won’t have to worry!”
They say if we follow those easy to remember rules, then we won’t face extreme violence from police officers. Well, what handy-dandy tips do they have for us when we’re engaged in the same activities that everyone else does in the course of a day? When you’re minding your own business in public, where you have the right to be, and you’re walking, which you have the right to do, and you’re attacked by cops who think you look like this *other* black person they’re looking for and don’t even bother to ensure they have the right suspect? How do we avoid that? I mean since we’re talking about the steps white people think black people need to take to avoid cops choosing to use excessive force on us. Heaven forbid we talk about cops modifying their behavior so that they don’t brutalize black folk.
And, y’know, white folk who think black folk bring police violence on themselves: encouraging cops to use maximum force in every confrontation in which they feel the least bit uncomfy, or in which they want to assert their authority over a potential “thug” (y’know, someone not wearing a tailored suit and who happens to be an older straight white cis dude), or in which they feel disrespected, or in which they encountered the person they wished to talk to while they were having a bad day, or in which they had a shiny new baton or taser or gun, or… well, I shouldn’t have to continue painting you pictures, now, should I? If you encourage the cops to use force rather than non-violent, non-confrontational techniques to approach people they wish to talk to who are darker-hued, they’re going to start using those techniques on lighter and lighter people, until everyone is subject to unreasonable force by a militarized and highly belligerent gang of assholes with a badge and a taste for blood.
Well, my gosh, that’s actually already happening, isn’t it?
We are going to have to stop telling people of color how perfect they must be in order to survive an encounter with police unmolested, and start a revolution in policing. We need to take the military toys away from our cops, fire the racists and bigots and misogynists, fire the ones who put on the badge and the gun for the rush they get from their power, and train the remaining cops how to serve the public. We need a universal ethos of protect and serve. Not “protect and serve the rich white guys while fucking over the poor and the dark.” Not “protect our own police lives at all costs, even if that means taking the lives of an endless stream of unarmed people, and roughing up the ones we don’t kill.” We need police to value the lives of everyone in the community – yes, even the criminal ones. We need to imbue our police with a social service mentality rather than a siege one. Of course there will be times when they must use force, but that should be the last resort, not the first – and for any cops who think otherwise, we must be willing to kick them out of our police forces.
Otherwise, we will continue to see the use of force escalate, until no matter how rich you are, how famous, how talented, how innocently standing still doing absolutely nothing wrong, we will be at risk of assault or death at any moment from a police force that thinks of us all as vermin. Black folk already know what that regime is like. Ask them what sort of quality of life it offers.
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Tony is still looking for work, and could use help if you’ve got it to give. He just needs to raise $290 to make it through this month. If you’ve got a little to spare and would like to support his excellent blogging, you can donate here. If you’re in the market for mint-condition comics and DVDs, he’s also got an Ebay store where you can find some very sweet stuff. If you haven’t any filthy lucre to spare, signal boosting this request will help, too. Thank you, my darlings!
