I love Joss Whedon

Yes, the creator of Buffy, Angel, Firefly, and Toy Story 2 has done it again. This morning, not only did I receive a writing tip e-mail about the first episode of Buffy and all of its greatness, I was greeted with this on my RSS reader. I don't normally post whole articles on this page, but Broadsheet wrapped up Whedon's blog so well...

"What is wrong with women?"

If you ask almighty geek/feminist icon Joss Whedon, you don't need to seek out exports from Kurdistan -- the ghastly cellphone videos of Dua Khalil's savage public execution, that is -- to see brutal misogyny up close. We've got Hollywood right here. "The trailer [for the controversial movie "Captivity"] resembles nothing so much as the CNN story on Dua Khalil," he writes at Whedonesque (a blog about him and his work where he occasionally posts). "Pretty much all you learn is that Elisha Cuthbert is beautiful, then kidnapped, inventively, repeatedly and horrifically tortured, and that the first thing she screams is 'I'm sorry.'"

Whedon does, of course, know the difference between fact and fiction. But in this passionate, moving, positively reeling -- and ultimately inspiring -- response to Dua Khalil's murder, he makes a strong, strong case for that Hollywood-Iraq continuum. "What is wrong with women?" he writes. "I mean wrong. Physically. Spiritually. Something unnatural, something destructive, something that needs to be corrected. How did more than half the people in the world come out incorrectly? ... I have yet to find a culture that doesn't buy into it. Women's inferiority -- in fact, their malevolence -- is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they're sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished ... And the logical extension of this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable."

Go read the rest. (Here's dessert.)

-- Lynn Harris

----

How can you not adore this talented, witty, socially-conscious feminist man? For those who are Whedon-ignorant, stop laughing at the name Buffy and get on it. High school as setting for personal as well as literal hell? How can you not adore it?

BCOO: Story Time

Oh, Meggin, I'm so sorry if you're reading this.

I did not like this book. Maybe I wasn't in the correct mindset for a young adult book, maybe I'm too cynical, but I wanted nothing more than to get through to the end. I didn't like the writing, I thought the story was disjointed, I thought the dialogue was forced.

That being said, the idea was certainly creative. A gothic library building houses a magnet school which teaches TBC: test-based curriculum (the setting for a pretty blatant condemnation of teaching to the test - while I agree with the sentiment, the execution was poor). Not only is the school located in the basement, it's haunted. By...uh...book people? It was never completely explained who was doing the haunting and why.

I don't want to spend too long on a book I don't like. I'm going for young again in my next book: Lord of the Flies, by William Golding.

New wallstrip - Molson Coors Brewing Company (mmm...beer)

Homer said it best.

BCOO: Bait and Switch and Brave New World

Oops. I got a little behind.

Bait and Switch, by Ehrenreich was a really interesting read. I fell in love with her after reading Nickel and Dimed, where she attempts to live on minimum wage as a waitress, a Wal-Mart employee, and a maid.

Bait and Switch did not disappoint. In this one, Ehrenreich goes undercover into the white collar world, discovering a new way to (not) get by in America. It's fascinating and entertaining.

And I finally read Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley.

Wow. I loved it, as I fully expected to. Everyone should read this (read 1984 first, though).

Not too much detail here, because I'm tired and it's been a little while since I've finished these. I'm reading a book now called Story Time by Edward Bloor. It's a young adult novel recommended by a friend. Should be good enough to tide me over before the next Harry Potter.

wallstrip: CYNO

The guy in the interview is hilarious. Adam and I went back and forth a bit on the interview script, and it looks like it turned out well. Of course, the casting didn't hurt - the guy made me laugh out loud at something I've read at least ten times.

Veto Man!

He uses his powers for evil, but he believes he is doing good. Is there anything more dangerous??? Find out, next week!

Bush warned Congress he would veto the Iraq spending bill and he did, no shocker there. But now he has a taste for it. He's veto-thirsty. Thursday, he let Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid know that he would veto ... well, basically anything that ensured women's rights to control their own bodies.

Bush wrote a two-page letter to the speaker and majority leader, threatening a veto against anything that (I'm not making this up) "allow[ed] taxpayer dollars to be used for the destruction of human life.” (my emphasis)
I think I'm just gonna let that sit there. Okay, I can't resist a little list of Bush's life destruction. Guantanamo prisoners, the Iraqis, illegal immigrants, Abu Ghraib prisoners (and other not-so-public camps that I'm sure exist), Joe Wilson and his wife, abstinence-educated children, creationism-educated children, UNeducated children, and, hey, what about those unwanted children and resentful women pushed into motherhood? They'll be flooding the streets if Bush has anything to do with it.

Can Veto Man get away with his hypocrisy? Will he keep telling women they can't make educated decisions by themselves regarding their own bodies? Will his evil spread to other countries when he vetoes a pending bill that would end a ban on DISCUSSING abortion at family planning clinics in developing nations? Keep your eyes on the skies. Wherever women are in need, Veto Man will be nearby to keep them that way.