Trans/plant/portation

Me and others around the ‘nets:

My latest post for GayYA.org is up—this week I write about intersectionality for better storytelling.

I Fry Mine in Butter ascended into heaven with the rapture last weekend. Fourteen months and 850 posts, we contributors are pretty proud of ourselves. The archives will be up for the forseeable future, folks, so go back and read anytime!

At Bitch, Jarrah Hodge looks at the proliferation of colonizing board games.

Finally, someone who’s not afraid of raising taxes. Of course, it’s Mother Jones.

Bill Peschel takes a refreshingly real look at lessons for writers. Apparently, we need to have more realistic egos.

The Nation wants to know why Black Americans are worse off than before President Obama took office.

My latest post is up at Bitch Magazine, on two election campaigns notable for the racist ads on one side and responses using women’s issues on the other. It’s so good to see such inventive uses of media in such glaring examples of fail.

Everyone who’s anyone is talking about the gay vs. straight preferences that people filled out over at OKCupid. Using their own server and love connection data, OKCupid looked at how straight and gay users behaved on the site, and what they say their interests are. It’s pretty interesting, at least for the first half of the post.

How to tackle poverty and family planning at once? The TED site has a talk from Mechai Veravaidya, who works on these issues for southeast Asia. He’s had notable success in Thailand.

An article in Salon tries to reorient blame for the foreclosure crisis on the free market, not the government. Hey, I thought we didn’t have an actual free market.

My newest guest blogging stint with Bitch Magazine resumes this week. I’ll be looking at the 2010 midterm elections: the good, the bad, and the loopy.

Snarky’s Machine posted a fun and wildly addictive game called Movie Equations, over on I Fry Mine in Butter. Take a stab at your own cinematic arithmetic.

This afternoon I’ll post a recap of last week’s Dexter season premiere. Spoilers from that episode will be all over the place.

Midweek, expect a new short story, and this time, it sticks like a glob of maple syrup to reality. I hope everyone enjoys it.

Supreme Court Justice Elana Kagan begins presiding with the other 8 justices tomorrow. She took her seat for the first time Friday in a formal ceremony during which no court cases transpired. But let’s get real, she’s going to have to recuse herself for a few of these cases.

Tomorrow I’ll post my review of the Mobile Chowdown V that Susanne and I attended last Friday night! In short, it was great!

On Monday I’ll post my review of Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation over on I Fry Mine in Butter. I’ll hold back for now on my opinions and reactions, save to say that this is not your mother’s transsexual.

The Good Wife starts its new season next week on CBS. I was enthralled with the series last year but annoyed by its cell phone cliffhanger. So I’m hoping we get past the wannabe love triangle and return to snappy courtroom drama. Besides, is anyone ever going to get picked over Chris Noth? Please.

I’m doing an experiment with Amazon’s direct digital publishing doohickey. Read: I’m releasing some flash fiction to see how the process works. Look for a link early in the week.

For some worthwhile reading of other good stuff, check out: Read More…

I’m on the road again today, so I’ve got no writing time, although I do have some posts coming up for tomorrow in various places. In the meantime:

• In the only good news I can remember reading from a major newspaper this year, Canada’s The Globe & Mail reports that world hunger is on the decline. Note that at nearly a billion people, it’s still way too high.
• How Colorado is a testing ground for abstinence-only education, over at RH Reality Check.
• With a number of special elections coming up in the Senate, TPM reminds us that some folks will be seated in November, not January. How this might affect us.
• Sarah Shourd is finally freed from Iranian prison. NPR (and everyone else) has an article.
• Really interesting piece on game shows and soaps in a post 9/11 world, over at Snarky’s Machine.

Enjoy the day, folks!

I’ve got a lot to do this Sunday, somehow, so until my next post tomorrow (and a podcast coming up), please see some other lovely things on the Web, and have a great end of weekend:

• There’s a great story by Cat Rambo over on the science fiction site Clarkesworld Magazine. I got to see Cat read a couple of weeks ago, and she was hilarious, not to mention talented. Definitely check out the comments after her piece.
• Matt Davis for Salon writes about how the black diaspora caused by Hurricane Katrina hasn’t really reconstituted back in New Orleans. The city is whiter and richer than before.
• Sara Reihani for Bitch asks us to please reconsider bossa nova as a musical styling we can enjoy.
• There’s no new treatment for delaying or stopping Alzheimer’s symptoms once they start, say the National Institutes of Health, to the New York Times.
• Endangered is the feeling of success when one has spent many minutes looking through the enormous Oxford English Dictionary, which is now going online-only.
• Forget the Beck rally in DC. Min Lee writes how 80,000 people in Hong Kong marched in protest against the bus shooting in the Philippines that left 8 people dead.
• Tension ratcheted up again as Iran withdrew its national assets from European banks, seeking to avoid expected sanctions for its nuclear program. From the Lebanese Daily Star.
• Oh, and Tony Blair wrote a memoir.

I recap some of my favorite summer-themed movies over at I Fry Mine in Butter. The good, the bad, and the ones with many teeth.

Over at Feminist Music Geek, Alyx Vesey looks at Veronica Mars, the would-be Buffy series from a few years ago.

For a link love within a link love, check out Bitch Magazine’s “On Our Radar” from this week. Very good articles from the blogosphere in there.

Tasha Fierce on her blog at Red Vinyl Shoes, looks at how President Obama is problematically deconstructed as a “half-white” man.

And for the iPad-obsessed, check out Gizmodo’s marathon review of apps.

Also find an amazing overview of teenage romance novels from long ago by the ever-talented Snarky’s Machine.

Read up and enjoy!

I’m hitting the road again, this time on my way to the greater Washington, DC metropolitan area, and just in time for DC Pride. So in the meantime, enjoy these other nuanced and flavorful writings:

Snarky’s Machine: She takes on Eat, Pray, Love, one of the most annoying memoirs I’ve had the opportunity to listen to while driving. I didn’t even make it past Italy. And the book was about food!

Tasha Fierce over at Red Vinyl Shoes sounds off with some skepticism about news coverage of this week’s primary elections, and I always love me some skepticism.

When I feel the need to laugh long and well, I check out Go Fug Yourself, introduced to me by the supreme English professor friend of mine in Walla Walla. She knows who she is, and you don’t need to know. Just chuckle at Helena Bonham Carter’s outfit!

S.E. Smith shares my same morbid fascination for Sarah Palin, deconstructing Palin’s brand of “feminism.” Whew! I’m glad she cleared that up for us.

Over on Bitch Magazine’s blog page, later today, will be my latest entry, also on Sarah Palin (and Carly Fiorina, and Helen Thomas), and Snarky’s latest cinematique. Enjoy!

Over on I Fry Mine in Butter, I ponder the strangulation of journalism:

What does it mean if cost-cutting winds up costing us quality reporting? If all we see are shots of Paris Hilton crying on her way to jail, reports about some celebrity’s rehab attempt, the fear-mongering that Mexican citizens are infiltrating our country? If swine flu, volcanic ash, doomsday earthquakes, political scandals, global warming, health care socialism, and rogue uranium crowd out the airwaves and news Web sites? What are we not hearing?

Archie’s comic, still in existence, features its first gay character:

I know some of you fellow Archie aficionados might be saying, “But Richard, isn’t Jughead kind of gay too?” And yes, you’d be right. Though the comics do sort of vacillate between a Forsyth P. Jones who is a rabid misogynist and a Jughead who is just sort of shy around girls, the Jughead Is Gay read is a respected one in certain Archie circles. But this Kevin character is the real deal. Like an actual homosexual who says it out loud.

Tasha Fierce’s tour de force about the dearth of black plus size models in the fashion industry:

A popular (white) misconception is that fat is more acceptable in the black community. This is patently untrue. Hip-hop culture is often pointed to when one is making this argument. If you watch any hip-hop music videos at all, it’s clear to see that the fat on the women featured is in specific places. Booty, hips, tits. As the inimitable Sir Mix-A-Lot stated, “When a girl walks in with an itty-bitty waist and a round thing [booty] in your face, you get sprung.” (emphasis supplied)

The Washington Post looks at who’s been behind the hilarious interviews with the teabaggers:

A quick look at the rest of New Left Media’s videos produces a trove of similar material — open-ended questions, attempts to drill down into activists’ thinking, and inclusion of answers that are … less than eloquent. Sometimes, the subjects acquit themselves well and give answers that simply don’t satisfy liberals. Other times, they’re made to look like fools.

Also, coming up soon, like later this week or early next week:

• Another interview with local restaurant owners in Walla Walla
• A recap of the very amusing Tranny Roadshow
• The next installment of Aliens on Parade
• Any and all chuckles from my contact with those intrepid literary agents

As Martha Stewart would say, good things!