Recommended Viewing: Bad Romance (Suffragette Parody)

Both historical and pop cultural, a fantastic video, and a great reminder that your most powerful tools as a woman are your voice and your vote.

This November, and ever time you get the chance, stand up and be counted. 

Happy International Women's Day from Feminine Things!

UPDATE: Also, this post from Ann Friedman is pretty freaking Feministastic excellent, too!

Recommended Viewing: I Always Thought You Were Cool

This is for all the people I still love that populate the shadowy recess of my adolescent memories.

 

"This is a song with the same four chords
I use most of the time
when I've got something on my mind
and I don't want to squander the moment
trying to come up with a more complicated riff
to say what I want to say.

People were mean to you
but I always thought you were cool
clicking down the concrete hallways
in your spiked heels
back in high school.

It's good to be young but let's not kid ourselves,
it's better to pass on through those years and come out the other side with our hearts still beating
having stared down demons
come back breathing.

People were mean to you
but I always thought you were cool
clicking down the concrete hallways
in your spiked heels
back in high school.

You deserved better than you got
someone's got to say it sometime because it's true.

People should have told you you were awesome
instead of taking advantage of you
I hope you love you life like I love mine
I hope the painful memories only flex their power over you a little of the time.

We held on to hope of better days coming
and when we did, we were right.
I hope the people who did you wrong
have trouble sleeping at night.

People were mean to you
but I always thought you were cool
clicking down the concrete hallways
in your spiked heels
back in high school."

By the brilliant John Darnielle, who always knows what I want to say and seems to do it better than I ever could.

Recommended Viewing: Katy Perry's "Last Friday Night"

If you love the 80s/90s, you must watch.  So bust out that crimper and your 20 year-old bottle of Electric Youth, spray some on, and get ready to dance!Don't miss the credits! Hysterical!

Recommended Viewing: Born This Way: X-Men Parody

The "not being gay" line is a little weird, but the general idea is pretty funny, especially if you're an X-fan, which I am.

Thanks to my cousin Bethany for the link!

Recommended Viewing: Put a Bird On It (All the Seagull Ladies)

Dear Reader:  I give you "Put a Bird On It (All the Seagull Ladies), WHICH IS SO AMAZING I CAN ONLY WRITE IN ALL CAPS ZOMG!

Greatest "Single Ladies" Parody EVER!

Oh-oh-oh-oriel!
Don't say I'm like everybody else.
I'm strictly do it yourself...

Saddest part? Was unironically considering bird-related tattoos recently. FN1. It predates putting a bird on it, but now that it will be A THING, might have to wait on that one for another five to ten years.

Thanks to readers Kate & Jill for the link!

__________________________

FN1 It would be tattoo #2 after I get the one I've wanted since I was 17ish, but that is waiting for a particular accomplishment to be achieved. You'll know when. #2 is, yes, related to the Beatles song "Blackbird," which I personally associate with escaping domestic violence, and which is why I want the tattoo.

Recommended Viewing: Tim Minchin is hilarious.

Music + comedy = good stuff.

Thank is all.

Recommended Viewing: Vag Magazine

Dear feminist reader types:

YOU MUST GO WATCH VAG MAGAZINE IMMEDIATELY.

 It's so funny. If you've ever spent even fifteen minutes with a group of feminists, you will recognize some of this behavior -- and you will almost pee your pants with laughter!

Vag Magazine Episode 1: "Fumbling Toward Ecstasy" from Vag Magazine on Vimeo.

There are six episodes, but you should start with the first episode, above.

Thanks to feminist librarian for the recommendation!

Possibly the Weirdest and Greatest Thing Kirsten Dunst has EVER DONE.

Exam over. More Reviews Tomorrow.

What It's Like to Grow Up in Texas

Exam tomorrow. Preparing myself to choke like no one has choked in the history of the Oregon bar. To entertain you whilst I am away, I leave you with this clip from The Big Bang Theory. I don't normally watch the show, but was watching it tonight because my brain is fried and I was too tired to get off the couch to get the remote. This episode is great because Sheldon explains football, and why he knows anything about it, to his roommates. The pertinent part begins at the 1:15 minute mark. This is basically the same reason I know anything about football. The first time David took me to a game and I jumped up screaming "go, go, GO, GOOOO!" the first time there was a completed pass, he looked at me like I'd been possessed. I had to explain that no, that's just the Texan in me.

Sheldon: "I grew up in Texas. Football is ubiquitous in Texas. There's pro-football, college football, high school football, pee-wee football... In fact, every form of football except the original, European football. Which Texans believe to be a commie plot. If you're interested, I also know all about frying meat that isn't chicken as if it were chicken."

Not Perfume: Jay Smooth is a genius.

Look, here's the deal. I am VERY political in real life. VERY political. I'm one of those people who talks about oppression and privilege in real life so much that other people can find it, well, oppressive. (Pun intended.) But I do think about oppression and privilege ALL.THE.TIME. I can't watch the news, or read the paper, or look at the internet, or hell, watch one exceedingly bad episode of "Jersey Shore" in an attempt to figure out what the hell people are so enamored by (verdict? There's 45 minutes of my life I'll never get back and could have been spent reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Six Tales of the Jazz Age"), without thinking about racism, sexism, ageism, ablism, classism, our ability to define our own singular or layered identities, etc.

I grew up in what I consider to be, yes, an extremely and sometime intentionally ignorant environment filled with people who either ignored issues because it served their privilege to do so or who worked so damned hard every day of their lives to survive they did not have time to stop and worry about the socio-economic structures that kept them running on the hamster wheel. I recognize that being obsessed with privilege as a white, well-educated, young, married, childless, fully-able bodied American IS A PRIVILEGE itself, even if I also identify as a queer woman who survived domestic violence, homelessness, and poverty. I have had the room to make choices; I have made good ones. But I am reminded constantly about that other place I could be right now, that place -- literal and metaphorical -- where other members of my family reside permanently.

And frankly, I try like hell to keep it out of this blog because most of this thinking and thinking and not knowing how to change it makes me sad or angry, and I try really hard to keep this a positive place, focused on enjoying the art and beauty in a world that frequently does not make sense to me. But I just want to take moment here to say that I love Jay Smooth. He's funny. He's smart. He's thoughtful. He's articulate. And he makes me hopeful that I can figure out a way to harness my pain and grief and anger and concern to my creative impulses and make something that says something about the world and helps make things better someday.

So check him out.

Recommended Viewing: Guerrilla Handbell Strikeforce --- Hoooo!

I *love* guerrilla performance art, and this has to be one of best holidays performances I've seen.

Recommended viewing, reading, a note on shopping....

"Let us turn our thoughts today to Martin Luther King,
and recognize that there are ties between us.
All men and women living on the Earth,
ties of hope and love.
Sister and brotherhood
that we are bound together
in our desire to see the world
become a place in which our children
can grow free and strong..."

Basenotes is doing a random give away for subscribers to their youtube video feed. I've embedded the video below, but I recommend going to youtuvbe proper so you can enter the draw!



Also, I have added several new blogs to the blogroll, including SmellyBlog, Vetivresse: Nosing Around in Scent, Wine & Style , and Tea, Sympathy, and Perfume, as well as a great new shopping opportunity, Rei Rien. Like others, I'm wondering how I missed this site for so long and look forward to receiving my shipment of samples. It's surprisingly hard for me to find places to get samples of mainstream fragrances, so I really appreciate Rei Rien.

Also, in recommended viewing, may I point you to this testimony from April from Philip Spooner? Spooner, 86, spoke out in favor of marriage equality during hearings in Maine on gay marriage Apr. 22, but the remarks are no less timely for being six months old. The World War II vet, and father of four, says he didn't fight in World War II for his gay son to be treated as a second class citizen. When a member of the Greatest Generation talks about the sacrifices he and others made so that we could all share in equal rights, rights we currently deny to our fellow citizens, I think it says something profound about the civil rights fight going on in America today. November is historically a month spent thinking about elections and rights and voting. In that spirit, let our thoughts turn to Martin Luther King and the distance that still remains before us as we work to realize his dream of one America, a dream still being denied to too many people in too many ways.



"We are bound together
by the task that stands before us
and the road that lies ahead.
We are bound and we are bound.
There is a feeling like the clenching of a fist.
There is a hunger in the center of the chest.
There is a passage through the darkness and the mist,
and though the body sleeps the heart will never rest..."
- "Shed a Little Light," James Taylor

Recommended viewing: Vampires are in, make-up style

Apologies dear readers, for my sudden absence. I've been sick for a week now, but I'll be back with reviews tomorrow morning. In the interim, check out this video from the NYTimes on how to get "The Prada Vampire Look."