This morning President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Her acceptance speech follows.
Don't be fooled by the robes that I got
I'm still, I'm still
Sonia from the block
Used to have a little now I have a lot
But no matter where I go I know where I came from
(South South Bronx)
Projects to Princeton
So yeah I do it well
No wonder Barack loves me
I'm like brown Michelle
Second circuit New York City
Court of Appeals
And saved baseball for my public
Cause I keep it on the reals
Don't be fooled by the robes that I got
I'm still, I'm still
Sonia from the block
Used to have a little now I have a lot
But no matter where I go I know where I came from
(South South Bronx)
I'll be up in the Senate
Judiciary hearings
Pink tracksuit, low bun
And the fat hoop earrings
Singing tracks from West Side Story
Every stereotype
Boricua from the Bronx
That's what Supreme looks like
Don't be fooled by the robes that I got
I'm still, I'm still
Sonia from the block
Used to have a little now I have a lot
But no matter where I go I know where I came from
(South South Bronx)
President Obama's verse:
You want to block her confirmation, Jon Kyl from Arizona?
All the Mexicans in your Senate district
Think they'll still be votin for ya? (Na-ah)
Picked the first Latino, yeah you didn't think of that
Whip is playin checkers
Ha-haa! I'm playin chess
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Thursday, May 21, 2009
La Crise Plogxistentielle
The plog asks, Why do I exist? And I don't quite have an answer, although I suspect there is one out there somewhere. It's nothing new. Plogicide ideation is a weekly Clebilicious routine when not a daily one. The Statcounter numbers come in, enthusiasm flags, the "Delete This Blog" button beckons. I have to give it to the ploggie blunt: the world may not care, but the plog must go on! Why? I don't know! I just make unexplained demands like some banana republic dictator. Occasionally I am encouraging, too. There, there. Carry on, little plog. Carry on.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Beyoncé and the Impersonal Pronoun
No one can self-objectify quite like Beyoncé. (And when I use her name, please hear the Stephen Colbert pronunciation, fully engaging that accent aigu on the terminal "e": Bay-on-SAY.)
Let's begin, shall we, by attempting to unpack the nut graf of "Single Ladies":
Begin at the beginning. What is "it"? In its latter use, we might might expect the referent to be "finger." As, That poor girl. He should have put a ring on her finger. But this theory crumbles the moment we consider the pronoun's other roles, standing for the thing wanted (by another), and conditionally liked (by the narrator's former flame).
Is the finger metonymous, then, for the body? In such case, the full meaning becomes, If you liked this body, you should have put a ring on this finger, which stands for this body. The logic holds, but the implications are troubling. Is appreciation of a woman's physical assets adequate basis for marriage? Surely not. And yet, how much more dismaying if we suppose the word "it" in fact stands for the woman in her entirety--body, soul, mind, spirit.
For, what woman thinks of herself as "it"? Aha! you say, glimpsing the path down which I appear to intend to lead you, Perhaps a man could think of a woman as "it"!
The "it" in question.
And indeed, "Single Ladies" was created not by some jilted woman, but by R&B mastermind The Dream. (Perhaps tellingly, he co-wrote Mariah's "Touch My Body" as well). Like most Beyoncé lyrics, these were written by a stable of male songwriters, Beyoncé credited among them.
Men writing objectification tracks for women leads to strange distortions. For example, in Beyoncé's "Check On It," written, per usual, by a stable, the word "it," used as described above, appears 49 times. Here is the construction I find most bizarre:
While the lyrics evoke the body as a removed Other, they simultaneously conflate the body with the total woman. In one instance in the earwormish "Check On It," the word "me" is substituted for "it" (i.e. having said "check on it" eighteen thousand times, she throws in a "check on me"). Confirmation then, if any were needed, that Beyoncé herself--one supposes, body and soul--is "it".
When a man writes a song and a woman sings it, there is a certain synergistic fucked-up-edness. He can slip in offensive notions (woman="it") without voicing them himself. She voices these notions without giving the implied ownership thereof much thought. (See the related "ho cosigner" phenomenon.)
Beyoncé always strikes me as a childlike star, a sexpot never quite in possession of her sexuality. Hence she vixens it up throughout the "Single Ladies" video, but gigglingly disowns the whole bit at the end.
Feminist carping to the contrary, there is one way I don't mind: at least her work promotes the stubby-legged, long-waisted, back-stacked body type in which I share a stake. And hell yeah I can do the "Single Ladies" dance.
Let's begin, shall we, by attempting to unpack the nut graf of "Single Ladies":
Don't be mad when you see that he want it
If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it
Wuh-ho-ho, &tc
Begin at the beginning. What is "it"? In its latter use, we might might expect the referent to be "finger." As, That poor girl. He should have put a ring on her finger. But this theory crumbles the moment we consider the pronoun's other roles, standing for the thing wanted (by another), and conditionally liked (by the narrator's former flame).
Is the finger metonymous, then, for the body? In such case, the full meaning becomes, If you liked this body, you should have put a ring on this finger, which stands for this body. The logic holds, but the implications are troubling. Is appreciation of a woman's physical assets adequate basis for marriage? Surely not. And yet, how much more dismaying if we suppose the word "it" in fact stands for the woman in her entirety--body, soul, mind, spirit.
For, what woman thinks of herself as "it"? Aha! you say, glimpsing the path down which I appear to intend to lead you, Perhaps a man could think of a woman as "it"!
The "it" in question.
And indeed, "Single Ladies" was created not by some jilted woman, but by R&B mastermind The Dream. (Perhaps tellingly, he co-wrote Mariah's "Touch My Body" as well). Like most Beyoncé lyrics, these were written by a stable of male songwriters, Beyoncé credited among them.
Men writing objectification tracks for women leads to strange distortions. For example, in Beyoncé's "Check On It," written, per usual, by a stable, the word "it," used as described above, appears 49 times. Here is the construction I find most bizarre:
Does any woman think of her body as a removed Other like that? Wares to consciously ply? Here the direct referent appears to be the badonkadonk, metonymous again for the body whole.
You can look at it
Long as you don't grab it
If you don't go braggin
I'ma let you have it
While the lyrics evoke the body as a removed Other, they simultaneously conflate the body with the total woman. In one instance in the earwormish "Check On It," the word "me" is substituted for "it" (i.e. having said "check on it" eighteen thousand times, she throws in a "check on me"). Confirmation then, if any were needed, that Beyoncé herself--one supposes, body and soul--is "it".
When a man writes a song and a woman sings it, there is a certain synergistic fucked-up-edness. He can slip in offensive notions (woman="it") without voicing them himself. She voices these notions without giving the implied ownership thereof much thought. (See the related "ho cosigner" phenomenon.)
Beyoncé always strikes me as a childlike star, a sexpot never quite in possession of her sexuality. Hence she vixens it up throughout the "Single Ladies" video, but gigglingly disowns the whole bit at the end.
Feminist carping to the contrary, there is one way I don't mind: at least her work promotes the stubby-legged, long-waisted, back-stacked body type in which I share a stake. And hell yeah I can do the "Single Ladies" dance.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Paul Krugman Is Driving Me Insane
We get it, Krugman. You, with all your pre-recession Chicken Littling, were right. Must feel pre-tty fri-ckin sweet.
Oh, and thanks a lot, Nobel Committee. You've created a monster. Now everything he says, he says with the arrogance and the imprimatur of a *Nobel-prize winning* economist.
Ever since his ultimate vindication--the sky, and the Dow, have indeed fallen--Krug feels justified, if not downright giddy, shitting all over everything for all time. He has particular contempt for Bernanke's 'green shoots' comment, on which he rained disdain in two columns plus a blog post.
Green shoots? The phrase itself sickens Scroogeman, with its overtones of fresh hope and delicate vernal regrowth. Blech! Don't you just want to rip those shoots right out?
He has become the world's most cantankerous groundhog, scrambling back into his underground lair with joyous contempt. Winter will be here forEVAH HAhahaHA!
"Even in the Great Depression," he taunts in another post, "things didn't [Montgomery Burns fingers-tapping gesture] head down [moohoohahaha] all the time." Naturally this was on a week when things were looking up, and any buzz needed to be promptly smited.
If we do have Depression II, imagine what it will do for Krugman. On the one hand, the devastation of 25% unemployment. But on the other, he called it!
Oh, and thanks a lot, Nobel Committee. You've created a monster. Now everything he says, he says with the arrogance and the imprimatur of a *Nobel-prize winning* economist.
Ever since his ultimate vindication--the sky, and the Dow, have indeed fallen--Krug feels justified, if not downright giddy, shitting all over everything for all time. He has particular contempt for Bernanke's 'green shoots' comment, on which he rained disdain in two columns plus a blog post.
Green shoots? The phrase itself sickens Scroogeman, with its overtones of fresh hope and delicate vernal regrowth. Blech! Don't you just want to rip those shoots right out?
He has become the world's most cantankerous groundhog, scrambling back into his underground lair with joyous contempt. Winter will be here forEVAH HAhahaHA!
"Even in the Great Depression," he taunts in another post, "things didn't [Montgomery Burns fingers-tapping gesture] head down [moohoohahaha] all the time." Naturally this was on a week when things were looking up, and any buzz needed to be promptly smited.
If we do have Depression II, imagine what it will do for Krugman. On the one hand, the devastation of 25% unemployment. But on the other, he called it!
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
When Food Scraps Dream
I did not know an ad campaign could be endearing. One does not expect to gaze up at a billboard, enchanted. And the kinds of ads that purport to serve the public with positive messages are usually the most loathsome. So I can really appreciate the triumph that is:
This was the first ad I saw of the Alameda County Waste Management's Food Scrap Recycling campaign, and, as we say on Passover, it would have been enough. It came out around the time when a compost fairy visited every house in the land and left little green pails at the curb. (Free green pails! Eee! Talon hands!) In the early days, they were just warming us up to the idea of "recycling" food scraps. The scraps go in the pail, that they may someday become joyous sunflowers.
The old artichoke goes back to the farm. (Technically, I think its re-ordered molecules--sorry, I don't understand science--go to local gardens via the Davis Street Dump, but I quibble.) They went seasonal in October, which was more than awesome:
I regret that I never saw this versión en español in action: (If it wasn't on a bus shelter on Fruitvale or International Blvd, where was it?)
Aren't you glad to live, or don't you wish you lived, somewhere with ads for composting spent jack-o-lanterns that say "Qué te pasa, calabaza?"
The shitty economy is a boon to PSAs. No one can afford to rent that billboard space any more. So Waste Management can just churn out the quippy food scrap recycling ads with abandon. I do wonder why they don't call it composting. Does the word carry some stigma I'm unaware of? Sound too dirt-nasty? Or did they use the word "recycling" to make a quick link in the public brain from the gray bin to the green one?
Okay. Here's where they go advanced. So we get it about the banana peels and the corn husks. They go in the green pail, which then gets dumped into the green bin at the curb and gets turned into compost--or, to be coy, "goes to the farm." Now we are ready for some next-level ish: bring on the food-soiled paper products. Used paper coffee cups, for instance.
Or pizza boxes. For the coup de grace, Waste Management has even put out a custom pizza box, instructing its holder to place it in the green bin when the fun pizza times are through. I only know about the boxes because yesterday one such was stuffed, ironically, into my gray recycling bin. (Ooh: so close.)
This was the first ad I saw of the Alameda County Waste Management's Food Scrap Recycling campaign, and, as we say on Passover, it would have been enough. It came out around the time when a compost fairy visited every house in the land and left little green pails at the curb. (Free green pails! Eee! Talon hands!) In the early days, they were just warming us up to the idea of "recycling" food scraps. The scraps go in the pail, that they may someday become joyous sunflowers.
The old artichoke goes back to the farm. (Technically, I think its re-ordered molecules--sorry, I don't understand science--go to local gardens via the Davis Street Dump, but I quibble.) They went seasonal in October, which was more than awesome:
I regret that I never saw this versión en español in action: (If it wasn't on a bus shelter on Fruitvale or International Blvd, where was it?)
Aren't you glad to live, or don't you wish you lived, somewhere with ads for composting spent jack-o-lanterns that say "Qué te pasa, calabaza?"
The shitty economy is a boon to PSAs. No one can afford to rent that billboard space any more. So Waste Management can just churn out the quippy food scrap recycling ads with abandon. I do wonder why they don't call it composting. Does the word carry some stigma I'm unaware of? Sound too dirt-nasty? Or did they use the word "recycling" to make a quick link in the public brain from the gray bin to the green one?
Okay. Here's where they go advanced. So we get it about the banana peels and the corn husks. They go in the green pail, which then gets dumped into the green bin at the curb and gets turned into compost--or, to be coy, "goes to the farm." Now we are ready for some next-level ish: bring on the food-soiled paper products. Used paper coffee cups, for instance.
Or pizza boxes. For the coup de grace, Waste Management has even put out a custom pizza box, instructing its holder to place it in the green bin when the fun pizza times are through. I only know about the boxes because yesterday one such was stuffed, ironically, into my gray recycling bin. (Ooh: so close.)
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
In the Healing Waters of Nodrambama
Obama was like the jeans we tried on at the store in a skinnifying mirror and thought, wow, these jeans are perfect and will make me whole. Thus the inevitable flood of buyer's remorse when they were but jeans. The very finest, perhaps, but still: jeans. Working with what they've got. Incapable of miracles.
But perhaps now we are settling in. Obama has been through the wash a couple times and we are beginning to think he wears quite well after all. We still have our fat little gams and entrenched casino capitalism, but he is trying to show us our best national self--as we are now and as we could be.
Compare it to the Bush era and you'll realize what a warm bath this new political atmosphere is. We've been through quite an ordeal, and are not at all well, but we finally get to soak in Epsom salts and essential oils and begin the healing. It's that turning point in a cold when you know you're starting to get better and all you have to do is tend yourself, enjoy the hot soup and let healing proceed apace.
Our shoulders can finally fall from that tense position we had been holding them in since circa 2001, because, really: we are in good hands. We can be children dozing in the back seat as Barack and Michelle drive us home, soothed by the murmurs of their voices talking about grown-up things.
How's this for soothing:
We are still keyed up from Bush times, adapted to all the fussing and fighting. It can be hard to recognize the progress we've already made toward the promised land of No Drama: the stable good intentions, the reasoned decision-making. The economy has not gotten worse in a while. The White House lawn has a food garden. Gay marriage laws are quietly passing and in the current climate no one quite wants to be the bigot to object. The president does a bro handshake with Hugo Chavez and Fox wants to whip up a froth, but those days are done. Obama smiles with his big teeth, lets it blow over.
And the dangerous metaphor-mixing experiment is now complete.
But perhaps now we are settling in. Obama has been through the wash a couple times and we are beginning to think he wears quite well after all. We still have our fat little gams and entrenched casino capitalism, but he is trying to show us our best national self--as we are now and as we could be.
Compare it to the Bush era and you'll realize what a warm bath this new political atmosphere is. We've been through quite an ordeal, and are not at all well, but we finally get to soak in Epsom salts and essential oils and begin the healing. It's that turning point in a cold when you know you're starting to get better and all you have to do is tend yourself, enjoy the hot soup and let healing proceed apace.
Our shoulders can finally fall from that tense position we had been holding them in since circa 2001, because, really: we are in good hands. We can be children dozing in the back seat as Barack and Michelle drive us home, soothed by the murmurs of their voices talking about grown-up things.
How's this for soothing:
Mr. Obama has begun to sketch a vision of where he would like to drive the economy once this crisis is past. His goals include diminishing the consumerism that has long been the main source of growth in the United States, and encouraging more savings and investment. He would redistribute wealth toward the middle class and make the rest of the world less dependent on the American market for its prosperity. And he would seek a consensus recognizing that an activist government is an acceptable and necessary partner for a stable, market-based economy.
We are still keyed up from Bush times, adapted to all the fussing and fighting. It can be hard to recognize the progress we've already made toward the promised land of No Drama: the stable good intentions, the reasoned decision-making. The economy has not gotten worse in a while. The White House lawn has a food garden. Gay marriage laws are quietly passing and in the current climate no one quite wants to be the bigot to object. The president does a bro handshake with Hugo Chavez and Fox wants to whip up a froth, but those days are done. Obama smiles with his big teeth, lets it blow over.
And the dangerous metaphor-mixing experiment is now complete.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Ode to the Bitchy British Songbirds
Now I know you feel betrayed But it's been weeks since I got laid
This doesn't mean
I don't think you're a fool
-"Never Gonna Happen"
He left no time to regret
Kept his dick wet
With his same old safe bet
-"Back to Black"
Wrap it up cause I ain't
Carrying your embryo
-"Wait a Minute (Just a Touch)"
If you can imbue caustic, obscene lyrics like those above with easy charm, you must be a Bitchy British Songbird. These ladies can don fabulous earrings, deball a man, and write a fetching song about it on any given afternoon. They can also do the vulnerable vocal equivalent of languishing on the couch with an ice cream pint. That's range.
No matter how much of a laughingstock she becomes, I keep loving Amy Winehouse. When someone is willing to rip open her soul for my listening pleasure, I forgive just about anything. Hence I still want to set Amy up in a little hutch in the backyard with some fresh straw and clean water and care for her until she gets better. Sure it's irrational. But if you were off listening to Mary Wells and the Shangri-Las when the other little girls were on Tiffany and Debbie Gibson, hearing that Motowny girl group sound coming from a sassy, contemporary London Jewgirl is too much to resist. In interviews about her hypothetical next album, Winehouse has said it will be like Back to Black, "but with more ska." Which makes me want to cry, because I would like to hear that so very, very much, and its future existence is dubious.Not that I mind listening to Back to Black even yet more. The title track manages to chop and screw chipper Motown into the darkest of lamentations on love lost: We only said goodbye with words/I died a hundred times. (Of course she's talking about that fuckup Blake guy, but never you mind.) And "Wake Up Alone" is a slow jam straight out of the secret Kellerman's staff party in Dirty Dancing. She really croons on that one:
If I was my heart
I'd rather be restless
Second I stop the sleep catches up
And I'm--breathless
This ache in my chest
As my day is done now
The dark covers me
And I cannot run now
The sensational Estelle also harkens back to all my favorite old soul. But if Amy is widely known as cracked-out "Rehab" chick, the general listening public knows Estelle as just the popstar of "American Boy." Only marginally less of an underestimation. Her Shine album reminds me so much of Aretha's Sparkle that I have to wonder if the one-shimmery-word title thing is coincidental. The splendiferous "More Than Friends" samples the Queen of Soul version of "Bridge Over Troubled Waters," so it had me at hello. Then it overclosed with tender lyrics and Estelle's sultrily earthy rapping:Don't play me like a extraAnd the "American Boy" thing is no joke. Seems every big man on the American music campus wants to musically date Estelle. Her "(feat...)" stable includes John Legend, Kanye West, Wyclef and Sean Paul. And the latter sounds especially excited to introduce the two of them (Sean-a-Paul and ESTELLE!) at the beginning of the "Come Over" remix.
I got speaking roles
I am not that ho
I am so much more
Lily Allen's offerings remind me not of my old Motown tapes, but of driving out to Orange County for ska shows in high school. Her first hit "Smile" does, anyway. And come to think of it, I wish her new album, It's Not Me, It's You sounded more like "Smile" and less like microwave popcorn with fake butter. (You can say something mean like that to her, because she can dish it out, hence she can take it.) She may be lightweight, but she is just the perfect confection. A vanilla meringue, spiked with vodka.Brits are always better at using the language, and Londoners seem to specialize in rich, cussy slang. Why say "lots of diamonds" when you can say "fuckloads" like Lily? (Amy also enjoys nouns that employ the "fuck-" stem, as in, What kind of fuckery is this?) The BBS's use those dirty mouths to dress down men, which is a healthy tonic if you listen to fuckloads of misogynistic rap, as I do. There's nothing quite like Estelle's final blow at the end of "No Substitute Love": You need to grow a couple boy/You ain't bout nothin boy.
It's Not Me, It's You goes ahead and takes it there by having a song entitled "Fuck You." It's about a bigoted individual to whose racism and homophobia Lily Allen is saying "fuck you very much"--but you know that theme was an afterthought. The girl wanted to have a song called "Fuck You." And then she was like, well it would be too obvious if it was another of my deballing tracks, so I'll go in this unexpected political direction. She never tires of using her cherubic voice to say something demonic, and I haven't tired of it yet either. If and when I do tire, I'll write her a saccharine-toned grenade of self-esteem demolition. Because she can dish it out.
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