Fandango!'s topics - tribe.net

Salon Article: Jim Crow and the Indians

2007-03-09T15:49:41Z

I would have posted this in the ethnicity thread, but it was getting a bit long. Am I the only one who was completely ignorant to the fact that the Native Americans had African slaves? (Although apparently my History Channel-loving bf also had no idea).

im Crow and the Indians

"Freedmen," blacks whose ancestors were enslaved by Cherokee and other tribes, are suing to become tribal citizens. But the tribes say they are ineligible because they don't have Indian blood.

By Claudio Saunt

Feb. 21, 2006 | Last August in Tahlequah, Okla., Lucy Allen appeared before the Judicial Appeals Tribunal, a three-person court that hears constitutional questions in the Cherokee Nation. Allen is suing to become a Cherokee citizen. Born in Vinita, Okla., within the boundaries of the Cherokee Nation, she is far from your typical Indian wannabe. She has nothing in common with the Virginia town-and-country crowd who claim descent from Pocahontas, nor does she subscribe to the Shaman's Drum or share sweat lodges with New Agers who seek enlightenment and Kokopelli souvenirs in the Southwest.

Allen, 73 years old, is descended from African slaves who for generations lived in the Cherokee Nation and labored for Cherokee masters. She is attempting to overturn a 1987 Cherokee law that makes the descendants of these slaves ineligible for Cherokee citizenship. Depending on the Tribunal's forthcoming decision, her case could reverse years of legalized discrimination against freedmen, as men and women descended from Indian-owned slaves are collectively known today. Allen v. Ummerteskee could become the Cherokee Nation's own Brown v. Board of Education.

If Allen wins her case, the impact would be enormous. There are today about 250,000 Cherokee citizens, and by one conservative estimate, Allen v. Ummerteskee would overnight make 130,000 freedmen and their descendants eligible for citizenship. Although most of them long ago cut their ties to the Cherokee Nation, perhaps 38,000 interested persons could be expected to submit a citizenship application to the Cherokee registrar. A comparable situation in the United States would add 45 million citizens.

The potential impact on the tribal budget is less clear. Freedmen citizens would have access to healthcare through the Indian Health Service, tuition support for higher education, mortgage assistance, and other benefits. Most of these services are financed through the Cherokee Nation by the federal government on a need-based formula, so funding could be expected to rise accordingly. But fully 25 percent of the Cherokee national budget comes from other sources (gaming and other tribal enterprises), and this inelastic revenue would have to be shared by a larger population.

The neighboring Creek Nation also excludes its freedmen, and although a decision by Cherokee courts would have no legal consequences for the Creeks, it is difficult to imagine that they would not soon follow suit. So too might the Seminole Nation, which currently grants freedmen partial citizenship. And perhaps even the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations, whose rejection of the freedmen is longer standing and more deeply rooted, would eventually yield to the trend. All told, well over 300,000 freedmen could be affected. What this amounts to is that the Five Tribes -- or Five Civilized Tribes, as the Cherokees, Creeks, Seminoles, Choctaws and Chickasaws were called in the 19th century -- face a social revolution as powerful as America's in the civil rights era.

Not surprisingly, freedmen are driving the movement. In the last few years, they have founded the Descendants of Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes as well as a rival organization, the Freedmen Descendants of the Five Civilized Tribes. They hold monthly and annual meetings, and they daily discuss affairs on AfriGeneas.com in the African-Native American forum. One man, Napoleon Davis, even built a shrine to his freedmen ancestors, a cavernous concrete and wood museum inspired by the shape of a tepee. It sits in a field, just off South 74th Street in Muskogee, Okla.

They have also filed lawsuits. In addition to Allen, Marilyn Vann, a Cherokee freedwoman, is suing the Department of the Interior in federal court for allowing the Cherokee Nation to disenfranchise her. And freedmen Ron Graham and Fred Johnson are suing the Creek Nation in tribal court.

Graham recalls the moment he decided to dedicate himself to the freedmen cause. Several years ago, when he tried to file for citizenship, the registrar for the Creek Nation told him, "Your father wasn't Indian. He wasn't nothing but a slave." "That hurt me until today," Graham remembers. "When she told me that, oh boy, I was hurt," he recalls. Sylvia Davis and others have undertaken similar initiatives against the Seminole Nation.

Slavery and its legacy lie at the heart of the current unrest, as the discussants on AfriGeneas.com reveal. One writer charges a historian and citizen of the Seminole Nation, Susan A. Miller, with "Afri-phobism." Another invokes the "sordid, racist history" of the Five Tribes. A third accuses the Cherokee Nation of sponsoring "Apartheid in America."

Their frustration and anger has its roots in the early 19th century, when the Five Tribes adopted race slavery as their own. Although some slaves toiled on sprawling plantations while their masters relaxed on distant verandas, many others labored alongside their owners. Living and working in close quarters, they inevitably became family, marrying Indians and fathering or bearing their children. Intermarriage blurred racial boundaries and sometimes made it difficult to separate family slaves from family members. By the outbreak of the Civil War, the proportion of slaves in these nations ranged from a low of 10 percent in the Creek Nation to a high of 18 percent in the Chickasaw Nation. Numbering as many as 10,000, these slaves were freed by treaty with the United States in 1866. The same treaties stipulated that the Cherokees, Creeks and Seminoles adopt their ex-slaves as citizens. (The Choctaw and Chickasaw treaties had escape clauses that Indians invoked to avoid naturalizing their freedmen.)

Following the war, racism was widespread in the Five Tribes but never inspired the level of violence found in the Southern states. In fact, in the Cherokee, Creek and Seminole nations, ex-slaves served as legislators, judges and emissaries until the turn of the century, when the United States violated its treaty obligations and unilaterally dissolved the governments of the Five Tribes. Not until the 1970s were these nations formally reconstituted.

At that point, they ignored the 1866 treaties and expelled freedmen from their nations. The particulars differ from tribe to tribe. The Creeks did so by passing a new constitution in 1979. Buddy Cox, a close relative of the principal chief at the time, Claude Cox, frankly recalls that the motives for the disenfranchisement were racist. "Claude Cox did not have as much Creek blood as I have," Chester Adams, an elderly freedman, complained to me in 2000.

The Cherokees did so by law in the 1980s, largely to ensure the election of Ross O. Swimmer, later a high-level Reagan and Bush I appointee and now a special trustee for American Indians in Bush II's Department of the Interior. "They're entitled to some benefits, but not to register to vote," Swimmer said in 1983. "They're not members of the tribe by blood." But Marilyn Vann, one of the plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit against the Cherokees, argues that freedmen "paid their dues" by clearing fields and building houses for their masters. "Is this now the deal, now that they're no longer useful?" she asks. "It is repugnant to me."

The Seminoles took action in 2000, when it came time to distribute a $56 million payout from the federal government. They first tried to expel freedmen, and then, in 2003, after a failed fight with the Department of the Interior, denied them educational and social services. The 1866 treaties, says the Seminole scholar Susan A. Miller, were imposed by the United States and are "hardly ethical legal standards for us to be following."

Why are freedmen so interested in reclaiming their tribal citizenship? If you ask, they will say they want to recover what is theirs, to rectify an injustice. Few will speak about gaming money, healthcare or college scholarships, although these resources (scanty as they are in most tribes) surely drive some people, black and white, to pursue Indian citizenship.

Yet financial motivations are only a part of the story behind the freedmen lawsuits. Many freedmen have intensely personal motivations, rooted in memories of their parents and grandparents. They recall hearing their older relatives speak Cherokee, Creek or Seminole. Rudy Hutton, a Creek freedmen, remembered one such occasion when I met him a few years ago. During his father Pilot's final illness, Rudy drove him to the site of his childhood home in Huttonville, Okla., an all-black town that vanished long ago. Pilot began speaking Creek, although he always maintained he had forgotten the language. "Those SOBs at Okmulgee," Rudy says of the officers at the Creek capital, "they won't give you nothing unless you're a white guy."

Some older freedmen even remember attending stomp dances and Indian churches as small children. Even if now alienated from this part of their past, they know well that their families' roots are in the Cherokee, Creek or Seminole nations.

You do not have to dig too deeply to uncover these roots. I realized this in 1999, when I visited Henry Durant in Wetumka, Okla., a dusty crossroads of little more than 1,000 people about 70 miles due south of Tulsa. Durant, a former farm laborer and Negro League baseball player, then age 89, was raised by his grandfather, John Grayson. Grayson, who spoke Creek, was born a slave in the Creek Nation in 1852.

Depending on whom you ask, freedmen such as Hutton and Durant are either interlopers, with no real claim to tribal citizenship, or disowned kin, rejected because of the color of their skin. To liberal-minded Americans, the answer may appear obvious, but Indian officials say that the expulsion of freedmen isn't driven by racial bigotry. "It's not a matter of skin color, it's a matter of citizenship," said Mike Miller, a spokesman for the Cherokee Nation, during a disputed election in 2003. "If you don't have Indian blood, then you are not eligible for membership, regardless of what other ethnicity you may be."

But as it turns out, it is not so easy to determine who is an Indian. The Five Tribes rely on the Dawes rolls, a census produced by U.S. officials at the end of the 19th century. The census, named after Massachusetts Sen. Henry Dawes, is divided by tribe and further divided into Indians by blood and freedmen.

In theory, the by-blood rolls list Indians and others who had been adopted by the tribe, while the freedmen rolls list ex-slaves. With the exception of the Seminole Nation (which grants limited citizenship to freedmen), the Five Tribes restrict citizenship to individuals who have an ancestor on the Dawes by-blood rolls.

In many ways, these requirements for citizenship are generous, allowing thousands of people in California's sprawling suburbs and cul-de-sacs to file for citizenship even though some have only a single great-grandparent on the Dawes by-blood rolls. Other nations, by contrast, have a blood quantum requirement. You must be one-quarter Prairie Band Potawatomi to become a citizen of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, for example. A lone great-grandparent would not be enough to qualify.

Nevertheless, Lucy Allen, Marilyn Vann and thousands of others who can trace their ancestors to the Dawes freedmen rolls are out of luck, even if they are lifelong Oklahoma residents with closer ties to the Cherokee Nation than tribal citizens who live in other states. Today, one-third of the Cherokee Nation's 250,000 citizens live outside of Oklahoma. It is impossible to say how many freedmen live elsewhere, but when you travel Oklahoma's dirt and gravel roads, which partition the state into square-mile sections, you still encounter poor freedmen communities whose roots stretch back to the 19th century.

And at some traditional stomp dances, it is possible to find participants of various mixtures of Indian and African ancestry sharing the floor. Many people believe that freedmen have more connections to Africa than to the Five Tribes, Marilyn Vann observes, but they "know a lot more about a stomp dance, hog fry, and wild onion dinner than anything about Africa."

Critics of the current citizenship policy point out that it is foolish to tie citizenship to the Dawes by-blood rolls. Not only was there a good deal of marriage between Indians and their slaves, but confused U.S. officials sometimes distinguished between the two merely by skin color. The line of inquiry pursued by Dawes commissioners could be both comical and disturbing. When Liza Parker applied to the Creek Nation in 1902, they questioned a freedman about Parker's appearance:

Q. What is the color of Liza?

A. She -- there she is.

Q. What blood?

A. Well, she shows some mixed.

Q. Mixed with colored?

A. Yes sir.

Q. Right much so, isn't it?

A. Well --

Q. More colored than Indian, ain't it?

A. No sir; more Indian than it is colored, if I have the say so.

Her application was denied.

Genealogists have even uncovered instances of siblings appearing on different Dawes rolls. Today, their descendants are distinguished as Indians or freedmen merely because of the capricious decision of a government agent in 1900. Despite these inconsistencies, in Allen v. Ummerteskee, the Cherokee Nation stands by its policy of discrimination, arguing that it has sovereign immunity, that stare decisis should prevent the Judicial Appeals Tribunal from overturning established precedent, that as a sovereign nation it can define citizenship as it sees fit.

Advocates for freedmen counter that this legal position obscures a serious injustice: the Cherokee Nation appears to be perpetuating the badge of slavery and denying the right to vote "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude," thereby violating both the 13th and 15th amendments. Surely, they argue, such egregious violations of dearly held principles cannot exist in the heart of the United States.

Cherokees reject this argument. The discrimination against Allen exists not in the United States but in the Cherokee Nation, they rightly observe, where the U.S. Constitution has no bearing, except when Congress says otherwise.

Congress, in fact, could remedy the situation using its plenary power, or absolute and exclusive authority, over Indian nations. Established in the 1880s when the United States openly aspired to be a colonial empire, plenary power is rooted in the belief that white Americans have a moral obligation to civilize the world's darker races. Despite its objectionable origins, some scholars suggest that since Congress used plenary power to establish the Dawes Commission in the first place, it ought to use the same power to fix the mess it created a century ago.

Indian nations defend their sovereignty fiercely, however, and are understandably wary of even the slightest intrusion. When a regional officer with the Bureau of Indian Affairs asked the Cherokee Nation to explain why it barred freedmen from participating in a 2003 election, Principal Chief Chad Smith fired off an angry letter. "In this age of self-determination and self governance," he wrote, "I am shocked to find the contents and tone of your letter to be both patronizing and very paternalistic." If Congress wields its plenary power to extend tribal citizenship to freedmen, it would represent a frontal assault on Indian sovereignty.

To mount such an assault in the name of civil rights, using powers inherited from the golden age of colonialism, would be inconsistent, if not downright dishonest. History suggests that it would be safer to bet on the latter. When Congress broke up the Cherokees' communally owned land in the 1890s and distributed tracts to individual Cherokee citizens -- the better to teach them the value of private property -- freedmen received a share of the national domain along with everyone else. Because the land belonged to Indians, Congress was happy to offer freedmen the proverbial "forty acres and a mule"; it proved less generous when the land in question was owned by whites. Given this history, what right does Congress have to demand more of Indians today?

Moreover, by pitting African-Americans against Indians, Congress might even be accused of the bureaucratic equivalent of arming blacks to march against Indian towns, as colonists and federal officials did in the 18th and 19th centuries. (Completing the circle, colonists then paid Indians to hunt down fugitive slaves.)

The solution to this dilemma perhaps rests within the Cherokee Nation itself. Cherokee activist David Cornsilk, who drafted Allen's legal briefs, recognizes that Cherokees have a history of enslaving and segregating people of African descent. Yet he looks not to the United States for redress but to the Cherokee Nation. In a series of carefully crafted arguments in favor of enfranchising freedmen, Cornsilk invokes Cherokee history, Cherokee common law and the Cherokee Constitution.

The Cherokee tribal attorney, in his defense of the status quo, compares the Cherokee Nation to the United States in the Jim Crow era. "Social, economic, and moral changes" might allow for an eventual rethinking of legal precedent, he admits. "One has only to look at the evil of slavery and segregation and eventual Court reversals of some of the earlier oppressive decisions concerning the treatments of African Americans in the United States Courts. However, those changes have been made over time as the United States as a government, courts, and as the people changed."

But further inaction, Cornsilk argues, will only perpetuate injustice. "The racists in the United States and the Cherokee Nation have relied upon the passage of time, not to soften their views or accept as equals their Freedmen brothers and sisters," he observes, "but have instead calcified their resistance, passed oppressive laws and girded their forces against the citizenship rights of the black Cherokees."

"The sins of our dark past continue to haunt us," Cornsilk concludes, "and it is time for the Cherokee people to take the path we were intended and do what is right."

In the meantime, freedmen and Indians anxiously await a decision on Allen v. Ummerteskee. The Tribunal has considered and rejected other freedmen petitions in the past. What the future holds is anyone's guess.

posted in Fandango! - 1 reply

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!

2006-11-16T17:44:07Z

I can't believe I almost missed your birthday!!!!!!!!!!!

I hope you had a wonderful day........ know you are missed!!!!!!!!!

posted in Fandango! - 1 reply

So Um...

2006-11-14T22:06:23Z

It's all quiet in here and has been for quite sometime. I wonder where our moderator is and what's going on in the entertainment gossip arena because I'm not finding enough things to talk with the guys in the bar about with.

posted in Fandango! - 3 replies

Holy shit!!!

2006-10-20T17:35:18Z

Sean poofed!!!

posted in Fandango! - 3 replies

sigh...

2006-10-20T08:40:24Z

i really wish this administration would quit baring its teeth:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061018/ap_on_re_as/koreas_nuclear

posted in Fandango! - 3 replies

:-(

2006-10-20T02:51:08Z

T hasn't come out to play lately and now Sean is gone.......
*pout*

posted in Fandango! - 1 reply

I'm really missing

2006-10-05T02:46:58Z

Our Mod.........
T$ where are ya?

xoxoxox

posted in Fandango! - 11 replies

Weekend

2006-10-03T14:08:52Z

Any plans for the weekend?

The weather is supposed to be absolutely sublime here in the Twin Cities. Tomorrow I'll head to a state park to do some Fall photography.

posted in Fandango! - 18 replies

WTF of all WTFs

2006-10-03T02:40:30Z

This Mark Foley business is hilarious (and sick)... Dude's a congressman picking up young teens on the net.
What's your congress-person up to?

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/09/exclusive_the_s.html

They say he used the screen name Maf54 on these messages provided to ABC News.

Maf54: You in your boxers, too?
Teen: Nope, just got home. I had a college interview that went late.
Maf54: Well, strip down and get relaxed.

Another message:

Maf54: What ya wearing?
Teen: tshirt and shorts
Maf54: Love to slip them off of you.

And this one:

Maf54: Do I make you a little horny?
Teen: A little.
Maf54: Cool.

posted in Fandango! - 1 reply

geography lesson

2006-09-30T06:16:40Z

Now ya know...
http://www.3dvulva.com/

Hell, now I know.

posted in Fandango! - 16 replies

Pixies at the wineshop

2006-09-28T13:16:59Z

There are things that are made for Fall. Scarves. The color orange. Cameras. Notebooks. Tea. Football.
And there are things that we make for the Fall. Films like Igby Goes Down, Rushmore, The Royal Tannenbaums. To me, they scream Fall, with their tension and awkwardness.

Anyone who has spent time with me knows I am a big fan of the awkwardness - those moments just before we get real with one another; they are the best.

posted in Fandango! - 7 replies

WTF of the day or Just Because They're Anthropomorphically Cute

2006-09-20T18:38:06Z

This guy gets into a fight with a panda. After drinking 4 jugs of beer, he ends up in the panda's habitat because "they look like they get along with people."

As Jules said "Hey, sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie, but I'd never know ‘cause I wouldn't eat the filthy motherfucker"

Panda bites man, man bites him back
Associated Press
BEIJING - A drunken Chinese migrant worker jumped into a panda enclosure at the Beijing Zoo, was bitten by the bear and retaliated by chomping down on the animal's back, state media said Wednesday.

Zhang Xinyan, from the central province of Henan, drank four jugs of beer at a restaurant near the zoo before visiting Gu Gu the panda on Tuesday, the Beijing Morning Post said.

"He felt a sudden urge to touch the panda with his hand," and jumped into the enclosure, the newspaper said.

The panda, who was asleep, was startled and bit Zhang, 35, on the right leg, it said. Zhang got angry and kicked the panda, who then bit his other leg. A tussle ensued, the paper said.

"I bit the fellow in the back," Zhang was quoted as saying in the newspaper. "Its skin was quite thick."

Other tourists yelled for a zookeeper, who got the panda under control by spraying it with water, reports said. Zhang was hospitalized.

Newspaper photographs showed Zhang lying on a hospital bed with blood-soaked bandages and a seam of stitches running down his leg.

The Beijing Youth Daily quoted Zhang as saying that he had seen pandas on television and "they seemed to get along well with people."

"No one ever said they would bite people," Zhang said. "I just wanted to touch it. I was so dizzy from the beer. I don't remember much."

Ye Mingxia, a spokeswoman for the Beijing Zoo, confirmed the incident happened but would not give any details. She said Gu Gu was "healthy."

"We're not considering punishing him now," Ye said in a telephone interview. "He's suffered quite a bit of shock."

posted in Fandango! - 2 replies

Tom Cruise: A Man Misunderstood

2006-09-14T04:32:50Z

Here's the original post by Moby:
http://www.moby.com/journal/2006-09-07/baby_suri.html

are you kidding me?
putting your fucking CHILD on the cover of vanity fair?
are they out of their minds?
using a child as a p.r prop???
argh. question: what is more important, your ability to shepherd a child through
life and give it a healthy foundation for the hardships of existence, or using
it to get a vanity fair cover?
using children as p.r props does disgust me, i have to admit.
in the grand scheme of things fame pales in comparison to family and child-rearing.
i don't know tom cruise and katie holmes, but i really cannot for a second fathom
the mindset of parents who would sell pictures of their children and use their
children to get better press coverage.
i'm sorry, i try not to be too judgemental, but it's gross.
shouldn't children have to be cogniscent of what's actually going on before they're
being used by their parents to be on the cover of magazines?
not to sound too old fashioned, but if parenthood and infancy are not sacred in our culture, what is?
it just seems fucking grotesque to me, to use your newborn to get press coverage.
ugh.

moby

====================
And commentary by Dennis Romero:
http://www.dancemusic.blogspot.com/

"Using a child as a PR prop!" he huffs. (Tom should respond: "Moby, you don't know me." Or rather, "You don't know the history of PR props. I do").

posted in Fandango! - 5 replies

A little levity for a sad day.

2006-09-11T22:13:31Z

Weatherman + cockroach = hilarious.

http://dlisted.blogspot.com/2006/09/icymi-if-gay-al-was-weatherman.html

posted in Fandango! - 3 replies

Mocking Bush is my patriotic duty.

2006-09-08T20:18:17Z

I figured I would poke my head out of my work prison to post a little Salon goodnes for you guys.

How is everyone? Okay? Just because I am temporarily absent doesn't mean I love you all any less.

Mocking Bush is my patriotic duty

A comedian explains how cruel jokes about the president can stop terrorism.

By Bill Maher

Sept. 8, 2006 | New rule: Bad presidents happen to good people. Amid all the 9/11 anniversary talk about what will keep us safe, let me suggest that in a world turned hostile to America, the smartest message we can send to those beyond our shores is, "We're not with stupid." Therefore, I contend -- with all seriousness -- that ridiculing this president is now the most patriotic thing you can do. Let our allies and our enemies alike know that there's a whole swath of Americans desperate to distance themselves from Bush's foreign policies. And that's just Republicans running for reelection.

Now, of course, you're gonna say, "But Bill, ridiculing Bush is like shooting fish in a barrel," or, as Dick Cheney calls it, "hunting." Maybe, but right now it's important, because America is an easily misunderstood country these days -- a lot of the time it's hard to make out what we're saying over the bombs we're dropping.

But we are not all people who think putting a boot in your ass is the way to solve problems, because even allowing that my foot lodged in your ass would feel good, which I don't -- what then? OK, my boot is in your ass, but I can't get it out, so I'm not happy, and it's in you, so you're not happy -- there's no exit strategy.

Anyone who opposes the indefinite occupation of Iraq shouldn't be labeled an al-Qaida supporter. That's like saying that if I tell my exterminator that there are more efficient ways to rid the house of vermin than hitting them with a hammer, I'm "for the rats."

Questioning whether it still makes sense to keep troops under fire is supporting the troops. Asking for a plan supports the troops; asking when they'll be leaving supports the troops. Sitting around parsing the definition of "civil war" doesn't support the troops, it supports the president, and he's not a soldier, he just plays one on TV.

So yes, for the sake of homeland security, I ridicule the president -- but it gives me no pleasure to paint him as a dolt, a rube, a yokel on the world stage, a submental, three bricks shy of a load, a Gilligan unable to find his own ass with two hands. Or, as Sean Hannity calls it, "Reaganesque."

No, it pains me to say these things, because I know deep down George Bush has something extra -- a chromosome. Cruel? Perhaps, but it may just have saved lives. By doing the extra chromosome joke, I sent a message to a young Muslim man somewhere in the world who's on a slow burn about this country, and perhaps got him to think, "Maybe the people of America aren't so bad. Maybe it's just the rodeo clown who leads them. Maybe the people 'get it.'" We do, Achmed, we do!

And that's why making fun of the president keeps this country safe. The proof? I've been doing it nonstop for years, and there hasn't been another attack. Maybe the reason they haven't attacked us again is they figured we're already suffering enough.

If I could explain one thing about George W. Bush to the rest of the world it's this: We don't know what the hell he's saying either! Trust me, foreigners, there's nothing lost in translation, it's just as incoherent in the original English. Yes, we voted for him -- twice -- but that's because we're stupid, not because we're bad. Bush is just one of those things that are really popular for a few years and then almost overnight become completely embarrassing. You know, like leg warmers, or Hootie and the Blowfish, or white people going, "Oh no you di-int."

So while honoring the anniversary of September 2001, we must also never forget September 2000. That's the month when Gov. George W. Bush said, "I know that human beings and fish can coexist peacefully." If you don't believe me, you can look it up on both internets. The world changed on 9/11. He didn't. That's why we owe it to ourselves, and our children, to never stop pointing out that George W. Bush is a gruesome boob.

posted in Fandango! - 5 replies

One for the lads

2006-09-08T19:28:09Z

I had a great evening! How about you?

posted in Fandango! - 7 replies

Culture of youth

2006-08-28T08:05:17Z

I just Returned from Tallinn, Estonia this afternoon. It is a very nice city. Seeing the Russian/Soviet influenced architecture and all was very interesting. Culturally, its unique in that it appears to be built for young people. By that I mean its populated almost entirely by young, uber-cool, people who seemingly have nothing to do but look good. In spite of all that :) , a great evening was had. The food was Russian and it was delicious. The drink was vodka and those folks sure seem to enjoy it. Everyone was asking me why I don't drink. Two glasses of wine is not considered drinking :)

posted in Fandango! - 6 replies

Snarks on a Plane

2006-08-25T21:03:06Z

hit it yo.

http://allyoursnakesbelongtous.com/

posted in Fandango! - 0 replies

Brouhaha.

2006-08-24T22:51:00Z

Have you guys read/heard about this article? It is causing quite a stir amongst the bloggers and other lettered folk. Originally Forbes.com published Noer's article, and, presumably due to complaints, pulled it shortly thereafter. The article was then republished alongside a female's columnist's article, in a sort of weak attempt at appearing to be point/counterpoint.

Point: Don't Marry Career Women
By Michael Noer
How do women, careers and marriage mix? Not well, say social scientists.

Guys: A word of advice. Marry pretty women or ugly ones. Short ones or tall ones. Blondes or brunettes. Just, whatever you do, don't marry a woman with a career.

Why? Because if many social scientists are to be believed, you run a higher risk of having a rocky marriage. While everyone knows that marriage can be stressful, recent studies have found professional women are more likely to get divorced, more likely to cheat, less likely to have children, and, if they do have kids, they are more likely to be unhappy about it. A recent study in Social Forces, a research journal, found that women--even those with a "feminist" outlook--are happier when their husband is the primary breadwinner.

Not a happy conclusion, especially given that many men, particularly successful men, are attracted to women with similar goals and aspirations. And why not? After all, your typical career girl is well-educated, ambitious, informed and engaged. All seemingly good things, right? Sure…at least until you get married. Then, to put it bluntly, the more successful she is the more likely she is to grow dissatisfied with you. Sound familiar?

Many factors contribute to a stable marriage, including the marital status of your spouse's parents (folks with divorced parents are significantly more likely to get divorced themselves), age at first marriage, race, religious beliefs and socio-economic status. And, of course, many working women are indeed happily and fruitfully married--it's just that they are less likely to be so than non-working women. And that, statistically speaking, is the rub.

To be clear, we're not talking about a high-school dropout minding a cash register. For our purposes, a "career girl" has a university-level (or higher) education, works more than 35 hours a week outside the home and makes more than $30,000 a year.

If a host of studies are to be believed, marrying these women is asking for trouble. If they quit their jobs and stay home with the kids, they will be unhappy (Journal of Marriage and Family, 2003). They will be unhappy if they make more money than you do (Social Forces, 2006). You will be unhappy if they make more money than you do (Journal of Marriage and Family, 2001). You will be more likely to fall ill (American Journal of Sociology). Even your house will be dirtier (Institute for Social Research).

Why? Well, despite the fact that the link between work, women and divorce rates is complex and controversial, much of the reasoning is based on a lot of economic theory and a bit of common sense. In classic economics, a marriage is, at least in part, an exercise in labor specialization. Traditionally men have tended to do "market" or paid work outside the home and women have tended to do "non-market" or household work, including raising children. All of the work must get done by somebody, and this pairing, regardless of who is in the home and who is outside the home, accomplishes that goal. Nobel laureate Gary S. Becker argued that when the labor specialization in a marriage decreases--if, for example, both spouses have careers--the overall value of the marriage is lower for both partners because less of the total needed work is getting done, making life harder for both partners and divorce more likely. And, indeed, empirical studies have concluded just that.

In 2004, John H. Johnson examined data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and concluded that gender has a significant influence on the relationship between work hours and increases in the probability of divorce. Women's work hours consistently increase divorce, whereas increases in men's work hours often have no statistical effect. "I also find that the incidence in divorce is far higher in couples where both spouses are working than in couples where only one spouse is employed," Johnson says. A few other studies, which have focused on employment (as opposed to working hours) have concluded that working outside the home actually increases marital stability, at least when the marriage is a happy one. But even in these studies, wives' employment does correlate positively to divorce rates, when the marriage is of "low marital quality."

The other reason a career can hurt a marriage will be obvious to anyone who has seen their mate run off with a co-worker: When your spouse works outside the home, chances increase they'll meet someone they like more than you. "The work environment provides a host of potential partners," researcher Adrian J. Blow reported in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, "and individuals frequently find themselves spending a great deal of time with these individuals."

There's more: According to a wide-ranging review of the published literature, highly educated people are more likely to have had extra-marital sex (those with graduate degrees are 1.75 more likely to have cheated than those with high school diplomas.) Additionally, individuals who earn more than $30,000 a year are more likely to cheat.

And if the cheating leads to divorce, you're really in trouble. Divorce has been positively correlated with higher rates of alcoholism, clinical depression and suicide. Other studies have associated divorce with increased rates of cancer, stroke, and sexually-transmitted disease. Plus divorce is financially devastating. According to one recent study on "Marriage and Divorce's Impact on Wealth," published in The Journal of Sociology, divorced people see their overall net worth drop an average of 77%.

So why not just stay single? Because, academically speaking, a solid marriage has a host of benefits beyond just individual "happiness." There are broader social and health implications as well. According to a 2004 paper entitled "What Do Social Scientists Know About the Benefits of Marriage?" marriage is positively associated with "better outcomes for children under most circumstances," higher earnings for adult men, and "being married and being in a satisfying marriage are positively associated with health and negatively associated with mortality." In other words, a good marriage is associated with a higher income, a longer, healthier life and better-adjusted kids.

A word of caution, though: As with any social scientific study, it's important not to confuse correlation with causation. In other words, just because married folks are healthier than single people, it doesn't mean that marriage is causing the health gains. It could just be that healthier people are more likely to be married.

posted in Fandango! - 8 replies

Weird science

2006-08-24T20:35:37Z

Don't double bag it. This is pretty funny because these "guys", I presume, took this multiply condomed dildo thing pretty seriously.
http://www.myscienceproject.org/condoms.html

posted in Fandango! - 2 replies

Great, snakes on crack.

2006-08-19T12:03:18Z

I wish I was in the U.S. to see this film! Manohla Dargis writes a great review!

http://movies2.nytimes.com/2006/08/19/movies/19snak.html?8dpc

Naughty by nature or perhaps more by design, these snakes don’t just dart out of toilets; they also slide up bare legs and under dresses, moving in and out of more bodily orifices than the adult-film star Ron Jeremy did in his prime.

posted in Fandango! - 4 replies

Big WTF of the week.

2006-08-19T00:20:37Z

Well, the many people who thught the Ramseys had a hand in their daughter's death, myself included, stand corrected. And they found this guy in Thailand, so you know what he was up to. Fucker.

Karr says he loved JonBenet 'very much'

By JOCELYN GECKER, Associated Press Writer

BANGKOK, Thailand - The suspect in the slaying of JonBenet Ramsey said he loved the 6-year-old beauty queen "very much" and is "very sorry for what happened."

In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, John Mark Karr said that he contacted JonBenet's mother, Patsy, before she died of cancer in June to express his remorse for the killing.

"I conveyed to her many things, among them that I am so very sorry for what happened to JonBenet," Karr said as U.S. and Thai authorities escorted him from his Bangkok hotel, where he spent over an hour packing his belongings.

Karr said it was his understanding that Patsy Ramsey read letters that he sent to her. He said JonBenet's death was "an accident."

"It's very important for me that everyone knows that I love her very much and that her death was unintentional," said Karr, who sweated and stuttered occasionally as he spoke in a quiet voice.

Karr, 41, was arrested Wednesday, halfway around the world from Boulder, Colo., where JonBenet's body was found beaten and strangled in her parent's basement on Dec. 26, 1996.

He declined to disclose the nature of his supposed relationship to the Ramsey family, or how he may have known JonBenet.

Asked for details of how she died, Karr replied: "It would take several hours to describe — to describe that."

"There's no way I could be brief about it. It's a very involved series of events," said Karr, who speaks with a thick Southern accent. "It's very painful for me to talk about."

Earlier in the day, Karr spoke briefly to reporters after a news conference by American and Thai authorities.

"I was with JonBenet when she died," he told reporters. Asked if he was innocent, he said: "No."

Karr will be taken within the week to Colorado, where he will face charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping and child sexual assault, said Ann Hurst of the Department of
Homeland Security, one of several officials who accompanied the suspect back to his hotel.

In the run-up to Karr's arrest, U.S. authorities had rented rooms at The Blooms, the budget hotel where Karr was staying in a central Bangkok neighborhood of massage parlors and travel agencies catering to expatriates and sex tourists.

The hotel offers rooms for as little as three hours — for $8 — and monthly stays starting at $170.

Karr was staying on the top floor of the nine-story hotel in a small single room.

U.S. and Thai authorities wearing plastic gloves sorted through his possessions, which were wheeled away on a luggage rack, and included a laptop computer and two suitcases.

Dressed in a baggy turquoise polo shirt and khaki pants, Karr said that JonBenet's death was "not what it seems to be," though he declined to elaborate.

"In every way," he added, as authorities bundled him into a waiting vehicle. "It's not at all what it seems to be."

posted in Fandango! - 9 replies

What have you been listening too?

2006-08-18T17:00:57Z

Anything new or recently rediscovered?

Music has come back to me - connected the laptop to the stereo in my apartment. Listening to music without headphones is just great.

Been listening to Bilal for a few days now. Soul Sista and Slyde off 1st Born Second. Good stuff.

posted in Fandango! - 6 replies

Advice...

2006-08-18T06:20:51Z

...sought from my wise fellow Fandangoers. So, I will try to make a long story as short as possible, but basically, I have a good friend who has been caught in a trap for a while. She is smart and talented, but she is held back by something - laziness? Insecurity? I'm not really sure. For as long as I've known her, she goes through periods where she'll hang with a new group of friends 24/7, and is only interested in all thing pertaining to that group. Ineveitably it burns out, and suddenly her "best friends" are not even on speaking terms with her. This is in part due to the fact that she is semi-reliant on mooching, as she has not had a regular job for 4 or 5 years. She is my age, 26, and has started and dropped out of a few professional schools a few times since being unemployed. Most recently, her new group of friends (she also moved up to SF rather recently) are a bunch of bartenders, and so she was eschewing school, which she was exceling at, for partying until 5 in the morning. On Tuesdays. To compound everything, her mom, who to some degree is scraping by, is her sole monetary support.

When she is working, or being diligent, she is really working and being diligent - she's responsible, and there is no denying the fact that she is multi-talented, smart, and attractive. However, I am beginning to wonder if her life is always going to be moving towards or away from a bender at all times. Aside from just worrying about her in general, I must admit that I'm also annoyed on a personal level - whenever she has her new group of new best friends, I don't hear from her and my calls aren't returned. When there is a falling out, or she needs advice or a sympathetic ear, I hear from her. When I initially moved to SF, knowing, oh, about 4 people other than my boyfriend, despite numerous calls on my part, she didn't make actual plans to get together with me until a month and a half later. However, in one of the periods of not hearing from her, I get a frantic call from her one Saturday morning, and I drove her to the ER for a medical not-so-emergency.

Recently I just stopped calling. My last conversation with her ended with her hustling me off the phone because two of her new best friends were calling her nonstop while we were talking. Conversations before that usually consisted of her being obnoxiously drunk. The final straw was something that happened with my photo lady, who is getting married and mentioned to me that she still didn't have someone to do her hair for her wedding. I talked to my friend about it to see if she was interested and available for that date, she said she was, and I gave her info to my photo lady so that they could arrange the details. About a week later my photo lady writes me a casual e-mail saying that my friend had never called her back, and that she found someone else to do her hair. This made me seethe. It made me wonder if my friend had no interest or ambition at all.

Because I wasn't calling, my friend called me the other night and left a message. I didn't call back. My anger had subsided into apathy - she is an adult, she is my age, and she should be able to act accordingly. She called again a few days later and left a message. She called again this morning, and now sounds worried that I'm not calling her back. She wanted me to call or text her, just to let her know that I'm alright. I am going to text her, because, as lame as it is to say anything remotely serious over a text, I cannot muster a phone call for her right now. I suspect that I'm still rather pissed. Here is what I was going to write:

I’m fine, just really busy. You’re right, normally I do call - but right now I don’t really see the point. Normally I’m the one leaving messages that are not returned. I just think it’s silly for me to put any effort into our friendship when clearly I’m a third tier friend. I’m not mad, I’m just kind of over it right now.

I think it kind of sucks that you blew Melanie off for her wedding. I wish you would have just told me that you weren’t interested in doing it. I’ve been worried about you with the whole missing school/partying thing, but I’ve come to realize that you’re an adult, and that your choices are your choices. You are a multi-talented and intelligent person and I hope you see the value in that.

Let me know when you want to talk or hang for real.

Too harsh? What else to do? I think I've been tiptoeing around shit so as now to damage our friendship, but I think it's time to use the jackhammer.

posted in Fandango! - 3 replies

George Allen - Where to Begin?

2006-08-17T19:26:06Z

From Salon.com (and the video in question can be found here: http://www.salon.com/ent/video_dog/politics/2006/08/14/allen/index.html)

Stepping in "macaca"

With his Confederate-flag-draped past, Sen. George Allen is in trouble for using a term for monkeys -- and a racial slur elsewhere in the world -- to ridicule a dark-skinned man at a campaign rally.

By Michael Scherer

Aug. 16, 2006 | WASHINGTON -- On the campaign trail, Sen. George Allen can be a marvel to behold. He'll do nearly a half dozen stump speeches a day, shake a few hundred hands, and be ready for more. With his stiff boots and square sideburns, he comes off as easygoing. Down home. Macho. Red blooded. He tosses around the football and dips tobacco. The people love him in southern Virginia. He speaks their language.

He'll talk about the "real America," the one without homosexuals, movie moguls or Ivy League professors who want to ban guns and burn flags. He'll talk about an America where people have "values" and don't run away from the terrorists when the fighting gets tough. At his best, he begins to inhabit a symbolic fantasyland, becoming the lead cavalryman in a two-century-old culture war between North and South, city and countryside, the New York Times and the local church. He becomes a walking, talking American flag with a clear shot for the White House in 2008.

He is so good at it that he can get carried away. And like so many other talented people, he can sometimes lose control. That's when George Allen the senator is revealed as George Allen the man, the unruly jock who likes to act tough and intimidate -- maybe to a fault.

Last Friday, it all began innocently enough at another outdoor rally with a hundred or so people just a few miles from the Kentucky border. As is the habit of both campaigns, Allen's Democratic opponent, Jim Webb, had sent a 20-year-old volunteer named S.R. Sidarth to cover the campaign event with a camcorder. Sidarth, an Indian-American who was born and raised in Virginia, affirmed in an interview with Salon on Tuesday that he had introduced himself to Allen and his staff earlier last week. They all seemed to be getting along well, Sidarth thought at the time.

Then Allen took the microphone. "My friends, we are going to run this campaign on positive constructive ideas," Allen said, before pointing in the direction of Sidarth, who stood in the crowd, the only nonwhite person on the scene. "This fellow here, over here with the yellow shirt, Macaca, or whatever his name is: He's with my opponent. He's following us around everywhere."

In three syllables, ma-ca-ca, Allen burst a hole in his front-running Senate campaign, and possibly sank his chances for a 2008 run at the White House. He uttered sounds from another time and place. No one seemed to know what he meant. Was the senator speaking Latin? Did Sidarth have a funny middle name? Five days later, Allen, whose campaign did not return Salon's calls Tuesday, continued to plead ignorance about letting loose the utterance, as if he had suddenly been taken over by an evil spirit and spoken in tongues. "I don't know what it means," Allen said of the word in an interview with the Washington Post on Monday.

But those three syllables do not often come together by accident. In fact, George Allen may well have been the only one at the rally whose family background would have introduced him to the word "macaca."

Though he doesn't like to use it, the senator's full name is George F. Allen. He gets the middle initial from his grandfather, Felix Lumbrosso, a French-Italian who was incarcerated by the Nazis during World War II. Felix raised Allen's mother, Etty, in Tunisia, a French protectorate in North Africa. As a child, Allen's grandparents lived near the family home, and Etty spoke five languages around the house. Allen makes no secret of his heritage on the campaign trail. "I have my grandfather's bloodlines," he said at a recent swing through a suburb of Richmond. "My grandfather is French-Italian. I have about one-sixteenth Spanish in me."

In North Africa, the word "macaca," often spelled "macaco" or "macaque," is far more than a string of random syllables. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word dates back to the mid-1600s, as a Flemish approximation of the Bantu word for monkey in the Congo and southern Gabon. The word migrated north, taking on all the racist connotations that followed African colonization. By the early 1800s, Jacko Maccacco, a famous fighting monkey, could be found on display in Westminster Pit, a notorious London arena for dog fights. The word had entered the common vernacular, and it eventually became a racist shorthand for blacks.

Today, the word is used mainly by two groups of people: scientists studying African and Asian primates, and bullies looking to insult others for the color of their skin. An online dictionary of ethnic slurs lists "macaque" as a French and Belgian word for black North Africans. In the Oxford Spanish Dictionary, "macaco" and "macaca" carry the colloquial meaning of "little devil," "Chinaman" and "ugly person." Anthropologists who study Brazilian street slang have noted that the police will call the local kids "macaco," or monkey, in reference to their African heritage. Robin E. Sheriff, a professor at the University of New Hampshire, has written that the purpose of it is to demonstrate "interpersonal domination" and signal "the historically entrenched structures on which that domination is based."

Even though Allen maintains he had no idea what he was saying, he still managed some grudging remorse. "I do apologize if he's offended by that," Allen said of Sidarth, in Monday's interview with the Post. "That was no way the point." Allen's campaign manager, Dick Wadhams, initially argued that no apology was necessary, saying, somewhat absurdly, that Allen really meant to say "mohawk," in reference to Sidarth's hair. But "mohawk" doesn't sound much like "macaca." And Sidarth haircut does not resemble a mohawk. Sidarth, meanwhile, is still waiting for a personal phone call. "I think Sen. Allen owes it to me," he told Salon on Tuesday.

In a statement provided to CNN Tuesday, Allen admitted that he "made up a nickname for the cameraman," though he said it was "in no way intended to be racially derogatory" and reiterated that his comments "have been greatly misunderstood by members of the media."

To understand the full import of Allen's gaffe, it is worth taking another look at the video, which will live for eternity on the Internet and in political attack ads. It is not just a matter of what Allen says, but very much a matter of how he says it. He has singled out one member of the audience, a 20-year-old volunteer whose ethnicity already distinguishes him in a former bastion of the Confederacy. Allen is smiling. He is enjoying himself. It is exceedingly difficult to see Allen as doing anything other than connecting with the crowd by attempting to humiliate another human being -- to make him feel like an outsider, like he doesn't belong, like he will never belong. "Let's give a welcome to macaca, here," the senator crows. "Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia."

The performance strongly suggests Sheriff's definition of "interpersonal domination" at work. Allen is being a bully.

In an interview Tuesday, George Allen's youngest sister, Jennifer Richard, told Salon that both her mother and grandparents spoke multiple languages around the house when they were kids. "My mom speaks French to me. She spoke Arabic," Richard said. But she said she knew nothing about the word "macaca." Later in the day, she asked her mother, who she said also did not recognize the word.

But Allen's penchant for aggressive machismo and bullying are not isolated to that single example. He was known in college and high school as an alpha male jock, a football player who trucked in Confederate flags and cockiness. In 2000, Richard wrote a book, titled "Fifth Quarter," about her childhood relationship with her father, who was also named George Allen, a head coach of the Los Angeles Rams and later the Washington Redskins.

She says she remembers the family home to be "rough and tumble." "There was like an indoor football game going on at all times," she said. In an essay in Washingtonian magazine, Richard recalled one scene from her childhood when her mother ripped the phone from her father's hand to dress down a reporter. "A vaincre sans peril on triomphe sans gloire," Etty told the reporter. Translation: If one wins without danger, one triumphs without glory.

Richard's book also contained some cartoonish, though alarming, accounts of violence at the Allen home. Richard remembers George, her older brother and the future senator, dragging her up the stairs by her hair. She remembers George breaking his brother Gregory's collarbone. She remembers George throwing her brother Bruce through a sliding glass door. At one point in the book, which was marketed as nonfiction, she says George spoke about dentistry as a perfect profession, because he wanted to be paid to "make people suffer." Those anecdotes have dogged Allen as he tries to reintroduce himself to the American people, showing up recently in a scathing New Republic profile this spring.

On Tuesday, Richard said she no longer stood by the memories she had included in her book. The New Republic, she said, had used anecdotes that were taken out of context and that may not even be accurate. "The book is a dramatization," she explained. The dentist quote, for instance, was meant to be humorous, not sadistic. "This is a 16-year-old boy," she said, describing her brother at the time. George never broke his brother's collarbone, she now says. "I have been corrected by my mom and my brother Greg." She also disavowed her account, on page 43 of the book, that her brother George held her over the railing at Niagara Falls, instilling in her a fear of heights. "I think in a childhood realm I would have thought that that happened," Richard explained. "But as an adult I can't see the logistics of that happening."

Whatever the truth of George Allen's childhood, it is clear that he has been trying in recent years to turn over a new leaf in public. Ryan Lizza, the author of the New Republic piece, asked Allen about the Confederate flag pin he wore in his senior photo at a tony California high school. Allen responded by mentioning the funding he is seeking in Congress for historically black colleges. Lizza asked about Allen's initial opposition to Martin Luther King Day, the noose he once hung on a ficus tree in his law office, and Allen's support of a Confederate History and Heritage Month that did not mention slavery. Allen deflected all the questions, while hinting that he was a changed man. He said he recently went on a "civil rights pilgrimage." He cares about genocide. He recently passed an anti-lynching resolution.

This new person is the one Allen wants America to see. But it is far from clear if that is the person he is. Political scientist Larry Sabato, who remembers Allen as a tough-guy jock back when they were undergraduates at the University of Virginia, said he thinks the gaffe last week shows the real candidate. "In these unguarded moments, Allen does show his true self," said Sabato, who now teaches at the university. This sort of mistake, said Sabato, may not sink Allen's reelection chances this November, but it will certainly hamper any bid for the White House. "Republicans when they weigh their chances in 2008 are going to be increasingly hesitant about Allen. He comes with a lot of baggage that they don't need."

In the end, it doesn't matter how many fancy consultants or slick campaign ads a candidate pulls together. American democracy is still at its roots about meeting the people, shaking their hands, and submitting to endless interrogations from a hostile press. The system is designed to weed out the weak and the shifty. It is a system that undid Gary Hart in 1987, when he was caught with a 29-year-old blonde, Donna Rice, walking into his Washington townhouse amid rampant rumors of his infidelity. It is a system that may have unfairly broken Ed Muskie in 1972, when he appeared to cry at an outdoor rally before the New Hampshire primary as he denounced the right-wing Manchester Union Leader for printing slurs about him and his wife.

It is a system that Sen. George Allen, one of the most able campaigners of his generation, may not be able to survive. The video of him uttering a century-old slander tells us something. When you face the American people, sooner or later, they are going to figure out who you really are.

posted in Fandango! - 5 replies

Logging off

2006-08-17T16:03:03Z

Some of you may be aware that since the end of 2005 I've been on Sabbatical. One of the perks of being a university professor, sabbaticals give you the opportunity to refresh yourself and re-dedicate or recommit oneself to one's work or discipline. I've used mine for that and its been absolutely fantastic.

Living in Zurich has really helped to open my eyes in terms of how much happiness I could have in my day-to-day living. While on a two-week hiatus from my time in Europe, I spoke to the wife of a friend who had just had their second child. We've known each other for some seven years and she noticed how happy and at ease I appeared. She then suggested that one of the problems with us young, professional, Americans is that we try to do to much. We like too much, we want too much, and our minds and bodies have to deal with with the repercussions, including, but not limited to, an underlying stress or disconnectedness. It was something that occurred to me but she had given it a better name than I could have. Addition through subtraction; that we may be more through less.

As my return to the US approaches, I will be doing a bit of subtraction. One of these will be Tribe. I love this community and am very grateful for the people I've met. However, what I don't want or like is the sitting in front of a computer in the evenings or weekends. (I'm a computational scientist and spend a fair amount of time look at codes, data, images, etc.) I don't want the medium through which I engage to be electronic.

This note is meant to be an expression of my sincere gratitude and thanks for you and for this space. You may not be aware of it but you've made living in the midwest bearable.

(I will be here until Labor Day or so.)

posted in Fandango! - 15 replies

Bruno Kirby

2006-08-16T19:15:41Z

Dead at 57 years old.

I really enjoyed his performances. Especially in When Harry Met Sally. He was also great in Good Morning Vietnam. He sort of reminded me of Pig Vomit in the Howard Stern film.

posted in Fandango! - 1 reply

But Honey, they could SAVE YOUR LIFE!!!

2006-08-15T20:05:37Z

I know that Sean is not a fan of the titanic ta-ta's, but maybe a twist of fate might make him change his mind...

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/08/15/060815120717.q43mv5oi.html

posted in Fandango! - 0 replies

stuck in london...

2006-08-14T21:58:08Z

...i just wish i could have brought more MONEY!!!
ugh.

nice to be here though...
...instead of in the hulk of a blown up plane.

posted in Fandango! - 5 replies

Bizarre Love Triangle or The Rules

2006-08-10T19:50:15Z

In my last year of graduate school, my best friend Tom was in a "relationship" with a woman from Germany. She spent 9 months at SUNY Buffalo Law Schoo during which she and Tom were quite close.

She had what we termed the no panty rule. They could do everything that didn't involve the removal of her panties. This was because of her boyfriend, back in Hanover, whom she loved very much.

This week, Nerve has a nice little story on this very topic.
http://www.nerve.com/personalessays/rockwell/bizarrelovetriangle/printcopy.asp

posted in Fandango! - 6 replies

Too bizarre not to share.

2006-08-10T19:30:47Z

From Esquire:

What It Feels Like... To Have Two Vaginas

By Anonymous, 41, record-company executive

As told to Chris Nuttall-Smith

I didn't know anything was different about me until I was fifteen. I was having all sorts of pain—woman stuff—but I'd get it checked out, and they wouldn't find anything wrong. I guess the eighth doctor was more thorough. I remember I was lying there, and I heard her say, "Oops."

What I've got is a rare condition called didelphic uterus—two vaginas, two cervices, and two uteruses. I look completely normal from the outside, but there's a septum inside where everything branches into two. My doctor says I'm one in a million.

For a while I thought I was a total freak. I lost my virginity twice. The first time was when I was eighteen. Then I lost the other side two weeks later. To the same guy. You'd think I could have saved one of them for marriage.

When I was dating, I'd just say, "So I have a little something to tell you." I never got any other reaction except, "Oh, my God, that's so cool," because they'd want to have sex in both sides and see what it felt like. Apparently, the right side is, well, more normal. The left side is a lot smaller. But they're both tight. That's a plus. I've got two G-spots, too, so I've always appreciated men who were extra dexterous with their fingers. I get to have two orgasms at the same time.

I have to wear two tampons when I get my period. It was harder to get pregnant, too, because it's hard to know which side the egg is on. That, and I had to have a C-section when I had my first child recently. Every time I go in for a Pap smear, the doctor's like, "Do you mind if I call in a few people, 'cause you know we've all heard of this but we've never seen it." You get used to all the questions, and I'm not really shy about it. Every once in a while I'll tell a guy and he'll say, "No way! I have two penises!" That would be fantastic.

posted in Fandango! - 12 replies

A pound of fat.

2006-08-10T07:38:34Z

A new weight loss technique to keep on your table while eating...ew.

http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/001089.php

posted in Fandango! - 7 replies

The coolest

2006-08-09T19:47:45Z

http://snakesonaplane.varitalk.com

posted in Fandango! - 5 replies

FINALLY

2006-08-09T15:12:06Z

I saw Vendetta.........

I liked it.......

posted in Fandango! - 9 replies

Eeeks, cyclops!

2006-08-08T17:43:06Z

Cyclopian Child Born in Chennai

A one-eyed child suffering from a rare chromosomal disorder known as cyclopia was born in a hospital in Chennai earlier this week. The disorder occurs during pregnancy when the cells that constitute the forebrain fail to develop properly and fuse into a single eye. Instances of cyclopia are generally attributed to outside factors like ambient pollution, radiation, drugs and the introduction of other agents that can alter fetal development.

The pictures bare an eerie resemblance to images of Love Canal, a suburban community built on top of the most notorious toxic waste dump in New York State. While the small town was still populated, several children were born without eyes and cancer was hundreds of times the normal rate.

With waste burned openly in the streets, old MRI machines leaking radiation into local dumps, red alert toxic ratings for the city's air and water, and now one-eyed infants, Chennai is looking more like Love Canal every day.

(Photo originally from the Deccan Chronicle, sorry for the poor quality, they didin't post it online.)

8/7 UPDATE: I called Kasturba Gandhi Hospital for Women and Children to get more information about the child. Apparently it is now seven days old and they doctors believe that it may survive. They offered me a chance to see the child in person, and I may follow up this post with more information later this week.

*** Several people have noted in the comments that MRI machines do not leak radiation, this is true. The people of Chennai will have to find their pollutants from other sources.

To see the picture, click here:

http://www.scottcarneyonline.com/blog/2006/08/cyclopian-child-born-in-chennai.html

posted in Fandango! - 2 replies