What can I say, Saturdays have been strange around here for a while. Some of this stuff is old, some new, but all worth reading.
Bark/Bite had two good pieces inspired by the Super Bowl. It's worth reading them as a set. First, Ah, the Superbowl:
I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that a large portion, if not the majority, of my readers did not watch the Superbowl. Which means you did not see the ad that had me grinding my teeth and trying really hard not to swear at the TV in front of my children.
And then Do You Tell a Football What Time the Superbowl Starts?:
[...] this is bad enough when it results in married men acting like children. I'm not saying that all men do this, but I am saying that all men are exposed to strong pressure to do this. And in all seriousness, the more beer commercials they watch during sporting events, the more of this pressure they will feel.
UnwiredBen sent over this movie review of Ultraviolet by Marcus132:
I've seen movies before where I've said "they showed all of the best parts in the trailer." Ultraviolet is the first movie that ever made me say, "They showed all the best parts in the poster."
Dawn posted a great piece called Invisibility=White on her blog I am doing the best I can:
When my mother in law says this phrase “White people are crazy” this is what she means. White People are the dominant culture in the United States. They are the holders of nearly all the political, social and economic power in our society. They design and control our government, our schools, and our legal system. White people control most of the media outlets - radio, television, and newspaper and book publishers. White people have designed a total system that grants them implicit favors and privileges as they navigate these systems. Yet, they blatantly, as a group, deny this.
Though it's been a long time since I identified as a Christian, I found Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger on Slacktivist quite compelling:
The book was, of course, attacked as a redistributionist, socialist, Communist, even Stalinist manifesto. It was called a "guilt trip." It was endlessly attacked by rich Christians insisting that the "age of hunger" was not their fault.
This last was particularly odd. Sider wasn't saying that global poverty was their fault. He was saying it was their responsibility, and that it was their opportunity.
Binyavanga Wainaina published a great piece called How to Write About Africa in Granta. While you read it, if you're laughing, make sure you're also thinking:
Make sure you show how Africans have music and rhythm deep in their souls, and eat things no other humans eat. Do not mention rice and beef and wheat; monkey-brain is an African's cuisine of choice, along with goat, snake, worms and grubs and all manner of game meat. Make sure you show that you are able to eat such food without flinching, and describe how you learn to enjoy it - because you care.
I was confused when I started reading Why I am not a feminist on Creek Running North, but I stuck with it. You should too.
I see my name mentioned in more and more places in the feminist blog world as “one of the rare men who gets it.” This gratifies and depresses me, and confuses me not a little. I suspect that some of this is that privilege mentioned above, in which a man who says certain eminently sensible, obvious, just, and humane things about feminism and sexism gets more recognition than a woman who says the same things. I suspect some of it is that I love women, and no matter how you parse that you will likely be right. I suspect some of it is that I cannot imagine my freedom, my rights to be fully realized in any system that deprives others of those rights and that freedom, and women are systematically deprived of those rights and freedoms.
I am not a feminist.
Last, let me say that I have NO IDEA what combination of drugs produces the writing on the blog I'M ON YOUR COMPUTER. But The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony for Childs cracked me up. For half an hour.
Get this, imagine if you were just a Sweet Innocent Baby, nothing to read, saving up $$$ for your future so diligently but yet thinking "I wish there was some Book I could read to make time go faster until I grow up to be fucking ill".
You can tell that some of the commenters are trying too hard to be funny in the same style, and they're just not. But perhaps practice makes perfect.
And lastly, this one is good writing combined with cartoons, so there isn't much I can excerpt. But please do check out There is Life on Mars, which I found via this post at Arse Poetica.
You'll be glad you did.
