Ladies, this is for you.

Do not, under any circumstances, use the menz room.  Not only is it gross, but if you use it, big dudes with Asia Security will make a very serious face at you and tell you that you need to leave.  They will, on the other hand, let you wash your hands.  And they will probably agree that you were totally the only person to flush during the entire show.

John Parish and PJ Harvey were great.  PJ Harvey went down and danced with a bunch of punks who had hopped the rail to dance (and were, in fact, the only people moving in the entire ampitheater). 

You should also not run away from the beer stand without your beer because they are kind of uptight and will attempt to cut you off.  They will ignore all logic about being from Wisconsin!!!!

SO. 

In the spirit of actual, legitimate, serious fucking business, I am here to talk about sexualized, racialized violence against women.  The particular incident that sparked this was violence of the verbal sort.

Some dude from Philly randomly called my roommate, with a number he got from a so-called punk, and then referred to her "big tits," "fat ass," and "shiny red dot on her forehead."

All with an active and profoundly cruel peanut gallery of strangers laughing in the background. 

I don't know why so many WHITE people think it is okay to laugh at racism.  It's not like white people aren't in charge enough of racial matters.  I don't know why so many MEN think it is okay to laugh about violence against women.  It's not like men already lack the ability to determine whether or not a woman has been actually, you know, hurt. 

I don't know why ANYONE thinks that it is alright to laugh about a history of sexualized racist violence.  It's not like the entire history of the West is not one of slavery and/or colonialism.  I don't know what in the world has changed to make this move from a social issue that people should protest to being something that people can laugh at just because they are drunk.  I certainly don't know what kind of FRIEND would subject another human being to this kind of treatment. 

I do suspect that the mindset that enabled this is closely related to the mindset that encourages the poverty Olympics™, in which a bunch of white suburban kids decide that being poor, malnourished, and addled by various chemical dependencies is some kind of fucking sport to be enjoyed at will.  Honestly, I want all of the punk kids to stop and picture the very few people of color that they know---and then picture the routine, everyday acts of discrimination people of color face.  THEN tell me why this could ever be taken as a form of "humor."  I'd like the most "liberated" and/or "postmodern" view possible, ASAP PLZ.  HONESTLY.  Tell me why this is hilarious.

I want a detailed explanation of WHY it is that a certain line of thinking is not funny at all when directed towards a white woman who works with people of color in rural areas in Wisconsin becomes HILARIOUS when directed towards a brown woman by a white punk rock dude.  Does someone have a comic strip that I missed?  A memo, perhaps?  Some tl;dr explanation of just how funny said dude is?

Or is just being white, "leftist," and rebellious enough?

The following things are okay on the floor: dirty laundry, some amount of papers, and books.

This is not okay on the floor: HUMAN SHIT. Seriously.

Oh. And, NO the Salvos do not help out with the cost of your mail order bride's immigration.

Sweet Jesus.

PS. You should probably not come to the food pantry wasted at 12:20 pm on a Sunday. I don't know why the Sunday thing seems particularly bad, but it is and that was the whole point behind drunken Sunday Shenanigans, eh? At least we went to a proper watering hole.

I must thank Slate Magazine's Explainer Podcast for the title of this blog. 

So I'm at the very beginning of a 12 hour workday and I have no clue why I agreed to do this, given the fact that I knew I would not get any sleep whatsoever last night because I worked until 11 pm.  And I knew I had a pretty important birthday party to attend tonight.  It's gonna be a red bull kind of day.

And then I read a blog posted by Mike that you cannot link from myspace to the IWW website, because it gives you that messge telling you the link is spam and naughty like head lice or some such shit.  So you can try it here:

IWW.org

And I would urge you to message Myspace Help accordingly (surely this is a stupid error?) if you have thirty-forty seconds to spare.  Because it would appear that you can visit the RNC Welcoming Committee.  And it just seems to me that its kind of...well, random.