So wrong . . . but so funny!

I just came across this recently and it has to be one of the funniest things I've seen in a while. It's the top 25 men who look like old lesbians.

As a monthly contributor to the Human Rights Campaign and a big supporter of GLBT and gender identity issues, I feel a little bad posting this link . . . but not bad enough to make me stop laughing.

On a "making Kara feel better" note, maybe recognizing and laughing at our stereotypes is one step in confronting them?

The Truth Is Out There . . . Again

I'm marking my calendar for July 25th, 2008. That's the day the new X-Files movie comes out. Double w00t!

I got the complete X-Files series box set from my parents for Christmas. So I'm going to try to make David watch all the episodes with me before the new movie comes out. (Well, maybe in seasons 8-9 only the episodes with David Duchovny.)

The X-Files was the first show in which I really become a member of a "fandom." I remember watching the first episode in the fall of 1993 in the lounge of my college dorm room my freshman year. Everyone was immediately mesmerized. We'd never seen anything like it on TV. It may seem odd now in the era of geeks ruling the world (including pop culture), but there really hadn't been any television show for us Generation X-ers. It combined our distrust of the government and love for sci-fi in one package. It also was the first show whose fans made significant use the internet. Discussion boards, usenet groups, fan fiction archives, mailing lists, etc. sprang up all over the place for every aspect of X-Files fandom. The now widely-used term "shipper" also originated in X-Files fandom. "Shippers" were the fans who supported Mulder and Scully as a romantic couple. (Now the term is used generically for support of any couple in any fandom. For example, I'm a Buffy/Angel shipper or a Veronica/Logan shipper.) There were monumental flame wars between the shipper and anti-shipper contingencies in X-Files fandom. The academic study of television also got a boost with books such as this one and this one being written about the show from a Cultural Studies perspective. Searching for "X-Files" in Google Scholar elicits 5930 hits with new papers being written all the time. (Once I ditch political science and do something cool like popular culture studies, maybe I'll even write a paper about the X-Files.)

Needless to say, I am incredibly excited about the new movie. The las time we saw Mulder, Scully and Co. on any screen was May 19th, 2002. A new reincarnation is long overdue.

Here's a really shaky copy of the X-Files movie preview. It was taken WonderCon in San Francisco this past weekend on a panel about the new movie. Unfortunately, the preview hasn't been released yet so this it for now. Enjoy.

Oscar Malaise

Am I the only person who thought the Oscars last night . . . well . . . to put it gently . . . sucked big monkey balls?!? We had some people over to watch the show. The company was enjoyable, but the show was horrible. Jon Steward was annoying, the jokes were mostly terrible (I thought the writers' strike was over), the montages were boring, and there was no one with some outrageous outfit on the red carpet. Where was this years' version of Jack Palance's one-armed push-up, the streaker behind David Niven, Roberto Benigni leaping over chairs to the stage, or even the kitschy/creepy dance number with Rob Lowe & Snow White . I mean, this was the 80th Academy Awards people! Do something different!

Supposedly, if the writers' strike would have continued, the Academy was going to go to it's "Plan B," which would have focused on historic clips from the past 80 years of film. That sounds so much better than the crap that actually aired! As my Mom pointed out today during our morning dissection of the Oscars, you have all these amazing actors in the audience. Show a clip of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and get Redford and Newman up there. Or Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty with a clip from Bonnie and Clyde. I'd much rather see that than dull production numbers of three songs from Enchanted.

Also, I thought each Best Picture nominee got their own mini-montage? Well this year they packed all five nominees into one lame segment. Remember host Billy Crystal's opening sequence where he superimposed himself into clips from all the Best Picture nominees? Funny, classic stuff. I remember watching the Oscars with my Mom when I was younger and always enjoying it. Sure their were cheezy musical numbers and long-winded acceptance speeches. But there was also hollywood glamor, award upsets, and poignant moments. Bring back those Oscars. please!

Embarrassing music on my iPod?

Do you have music on your iPod (or other mp3 player) that you would be embarrassed for your friends to find out about? This seems to be a common topic of geek culture blogs and forums. For example, here, here, here, and here. Since I'm a blogosphere newbie, I thought I'd get into the spirit and peruse my iPod for potentially embarrassing content. Oddly enough, there isn't that much that I would call "embarrassing." Some of it is a little silly once I explain why I downloaded it, though. Here's what I came up with:

- A 70s singer-songerwriter mix that includes a few songs that could be on a TV ad for soft rock classics, such as Gordon Lightfoot (If You Could Read My Mind), Jackson Browne (Running On Empty), Dan Fogelberg (Longer), and Michael Murphy (Wildfire). However, said mix regains some street cred for also including Harry Nilsson, Joan Baez, Cat Stevens, Neil Young, and Crosby, Stills & Nash.

- Styx "Babe" - I guess this is the only song that would fall under the label of "embarrassing." I don't know why but I love this song, and I also kind of like other Styx songs as well but I haven't had the nerve to download them . . . yet.

- Minnie Driver "King Without A Queen" - Actually a decent song but a little embarrassing since it's an actress.

- King Missle "Detachable Penis" - A silly song that was popular while I was in college.

- A few random songs I only downloaded because they appeared in an episode of Buffy or Angel (Has anyone ever even heard of the groups Epperley, Lolly, Vast, Psychic Rain, Collapsis, Louis Says, Darling Violetta, Lumrovia. My Vitriol, and 12 Volt Sex? I guess being in a TV show didn't make them famous.)

- The soundtrack to the Buffy musical episode "Once More With Feeling" (which I can totally sing along to)

- A couple of sound clips from actual episodes of Buffy. (My personal favorite is the Buffy/Angel talk at the end of "Amends.")

- Songs from John Doe's solo albums - I have these not because he was in X, one of the best early 80s rock bands, but because he played Liz's dad on Roswell

- Blind Melon - A remnant of the 90s grunge phenomenon that I can't bring myself to delete

- A hypnosis recoding for my fear of flying

- Christmas in the Stars - The Star Wars holiday album including one of my favorite songs when I was a kid "What do you get a wookie for Christmas when he already owns a comb?" (Okay, this isn't really embarrassing; it's actually kind of geek kitschy cool.)

- Kara's Flowers - I only bought it because the band had my name in it

- Bon Jovi, Slippery When Wet - I loved this album so much in jr. high. Doesn't everyone secretly have a copy?


And that's it. Nothing too bad, right? Maybe the most embarrassing thing of all is all the indie rock that I download to make myself feel hip. Of course, I'm writing this while hearing in the background my husband listening to a really bad techno remix of J.Lo's "Waiting for Tonight." Maybe I should nick his iPod (actually, it's a Zune) and see what musically embarrassments await me!

So what embarrassing music do you, my fair readers, have?

It should be an urban legend, but . . .

One of my all-time favorite lines from a movie is when the Heather Chandler character in the movie Heathers utters "Did you have a brain tumor for breakfast?" I was reading the Wikipedia entry on Heathers when I came across this weird pop culture factoid today. Apparently, the actress who played Heather Chandler, Kim Walker, actually died of a brain tumor.

When I first read it, I thought for sure it was a Hollywood urban legend along the lines of Paul from the Wonder Years being Marilyn Manson or Zack from Saved by the Bell being killed in a motorcycle accident. But I did a little googling, and it turns out it's true. Kim Walker really did die of a brain tumor in March of 2001. Can someone say irony?!? (And I mean the real kind of irony, not Alanis's fake kind of irony. Does that song drive anyone else crazy with it's misuse of the word irony?)

Who doesn't like making fun of white people?

I have a new favorite blog. It's called Stuff White People Like and it's frakking hilarious! Like much quality humor, it's partly tongue-in-check and partly true, while also making us a little uncomfortable by dealing with a topic like race. My favorite entries so far are: #47 Arts degrees, #44 Public radio, #62 Knowing what's best for poor people, #18 Awareness, #14 Having black friends, #25 David Sedaris, #49 Vintage, and #67 Standing still at concerts.

While this blog is definitely more along the lines of pop culture, there's an entire academic community devoted to the study of "Whiteness." It's all about the social construction of race, the apparent invisibility of ethnicity with white people, white privilege, etc. Pretty interesting stuff. Here is one of my favorite academic sites on the topic. While the Stuff White People Like blog is not explicitly connected to the Whiteness Studies movement, I see them both as part of the same larger agenda. Explicitly pointing out the things white people see as a regular part of their everyday lives helps us to understand how whiteness and white culture are equated with the "normal," average," "American." And starting a conversation on race in America with humor makes white people less defensive.

Or maybe the audience of the blog is just a bunch of white people who want to pat themselves on the back for how enlightened and "not like other white people" they are since they understand their white privilege. But no matter what, the blog is still damn funny!

Who are your friendly neighborhood felons

Here's an interesting website that came to my attention through Lifehacker. It's called FelonSpy and it purportedly shows you the name and location of convicted felons who life in your neighborhood. It's basically a mash-up of a variety of criminal databases, telephone directories, and google maps. Unfortunately, DC is not listed in the "state" drop-down box so I couldn't check up on felons in my neighborhood. However, I checked our new address in McLean, and it turns out we have an assulter, a couple child molesters, and a handful of stalkers in our neighborhood. Lovely.

I said "puportedly" before because lifehacker thinks it may be bogus. To add to that theory, I sent a message to the admin email address given on the "contact" page. (In the message I asked them if DC will be added anytime soon.) My message immediately bounced back as undeliverable. Very suspicious. Until it is proven bogus, though, Felonspy is an interesting 1-minute online diversion.

My other secret career aspiration

A few weeks ago I blogged about my secret dream career as a jet-set buyer of modern furniture. Most people who know me probably didn't find that surprising given my well-known love for modern furniture and design as well as travel. However, what many of my friends don't know is that I have a secret desire to be an archaeologist. I've subscribed to Archeology magazine for years. Everywhere I travel I make sure to check out all the sites of archaeological interest. I even have a tattoo of the Egyptian symbol the Eye of Horus. (I'm chalking that up to my love of archeology and not to being an silly, slightly inebriated 18 year old trying to be "alternative".)

I know this is a common dream career. What kid hasn't daydreamed about being Indian Jones and discovering lost temples in the jungle that harbor mystical secrets? What most people don't realize is what the day to day work of archeology is really like. It's not anywhere near as glamorous as movies and TV make it seem. It's basically a few months in the summer digging slowly and methodically in the dirt, while spending the rest of the year teaching and writing up your research. No facny Indiana Jones whips and running from boulder booby-traps. I know this because I spend a couple of weeks one summer volunteering on a dig in New Mexico through the Earthwatch Institute. Even with all my previous notions wiped away of what archeology entailed, I still absolutely loved it. After I left the Ph.D. program in political science at Ohio State (a topic of a future blog post), I even seriously considered applying to anthropology Ph.D. programs. Of course, I ended returning to political science at George Washington, but there's always that small voice in the back of my head that wonders if I made the right decision.

In any case, I still read a number of archeology websites and blogs. With the wonders of the internet you can now follow digs in real time. Some of my favorite online interactive digs include the Field Museum's Valley of Oaxaca project, Johns Hopkins University's work in Egypt, Jamestown, and a Late Bronze Age shipwreck in the Mediterranean. Archeology magazine also has a great listing of interactive digs online.

So what does everyone think? Should I ditch the political science Ph.D., get a graduate degree in archeology online, and start digging? Perhaps during breaks between digs I can peruse the local modern design and architecture.

Why I'm not celebrating Valentine's Day

The first reason I don't like Valentine's Day stems from bad childhood memories. When I was in elementary school in the early 1980s, kids didn't have to bring Valentine's Day cards for everyone in the class. None of those inclusionary, don't-hurt-anyone's-feelings ideas had become popular in schools yet. (Or maybe the just hadn't reached Catholic schools in Topeka, KS yet. We were always the last to get anything new.) Kids were allowed to bring Valentine's cards for only the people they liked. So basically Valentine's Day became yet another popularity ritual. The cool kids had a bag stuffed with cards and candy hearts. The uncool kids had a handful of cards from their handful of friends. I was always in the a latter category and it was no fun.

A small aside - the only way the popular kids could have gotten so many cards is if BOTH the cool and uncool kids were giving the cool kids cards. Why on earth did we do this?!? Did we think they would be are friends, like us more, or maybe even just smile at us in class if we handed them a cheap piece of paper that said "Be Mine" with a stale candy heart scotch taped to the back? And why did we always pander to these kids? The grade school social hierarchy takes all the kids to sustain it - the popular kids to be cool and the unpopular kids to keep supporting the idea that there are cool and uncool kids. And Valentine's Day was another piece that upheld this social construction.

So back on to the topic at hand. Even past grade school, I've never been into the whole Valentine's Day thing. In high school and college I was doing the whole anti-establishment, alternative thing, so getting into holidays "created by greeting card companies" didn't really fit with that image. As an adult, I went years never actually having a boyfriend on Valentine's Day. (I would, completely coincidentally, always break up with someone right beforehand or meet someone right afterwards.) The couple of times I was with someone, it was a long-distance relationship. It really wasn't until the first year I was with David (my now husband) that I thought about having a real Valentine's Day celebration.

Ultimately, though, I have continued to not celebrate Valentine's Day. David is not really a holiday, gift-exchanging, card-giving kind of person. (Ask anyone in his family - until I came along, they were lucky to get Christmas or birthday presents from him.) So couple that with my lingering bad memories of Valentine's Day, and you have the explanation for my non-celebration of Valentine's Day.

However, I did go to Whole Foods and buy some yummy food and desserts from their pre-made food counter. I also will open a bottle of wine. But it's certainly not because it's Valentine's Day. David and I are simply celebrating . . . the new episode of Lost tonight . . . or . . . ummm . . . how about the end of the writers strike . . . or the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Yeah, that's it. That Capone was a real cool guy.

Wearing the big scarlet "A" on my chest (and I don't mean the Hawthorne kind)

Okay, first off, let's get this out of the way. I'm an atheist. I don't believe in any kind of god or supernatural force at work in the universe. I put my trust in science, reason, and the philosophy of secular humanism. I totally respect everyone's right to believe whatever they want to, as long as they don't force their views on me. I guess this is my blogosphere version of "coming out."

Given that, on Sunday I attended an excellent talk at the D.C. branch of the Center for Inquiry on parenting for people who are not religious. (I would have said "atheists" instead of "not religious" but I'm discovering a lot of people prefer other labels, such as freethinkers, skeptics, secularists, etc. Also, a lot of agnostics may not completely reject the notion of a supernatural power but have many similar concerns as atheists. ) The talk featured Dale McGowan, a interesting and articulate guy in person and editor of a book called "Parenting Beyond Belief: Raising Caring, Ethical Kids Without Religion," as well as Nica Lalli. I learned a lot, took notes, and can't wait to read the book. Why did I go to such an event? There are a couple of reasons.

The first reason is the obvious one. David and I are starting to think about having kids in the next year or two. Since we're both non-believers (I don't mind the term "atheist" but David typically will say "agnostic" just so he doesn't have to get into arguments with people about his beliefs . . . or lack thereof), I've been thinking about the obstacles and special problems we'll face as parents in the U.S. not raising their kids with religion. How do you answer questions about death and mortality? How do you educate your children about religion and acquire a necessary "cultural literacy" in religion without indoctrinating them? How do you raise your kids to think for themselves and ultimately choose their own religious beliefs? And how do you explain to your children the hostility and discrimination they will sometimes face from others since their parents are atheists? These are all big questions that no one book can answer. However, it's nice to now know there's a community of people who have gone through these experiences themselves, and who I can learn from.

Second, I've been thinking a lot lately about finding an atheistic community in the DC area. Non-believers are a varied and individualistic bunch. We usually don't organize the way religious folks do. But since the publication of books by Sam Harris, Richard Dawson, and Christopher Hitchens, non-believers have started becoming more vocal and organized. I guess you could say many people are "coming out" as atheists. So I found a few local groups that I'm starting to check out. I'm going to try to attend meeting of the Secular Humanist Group of the Unitarian Univeralist congregation of Arlington. There's also a branch of the American Ethical Union in Northern Virginia that looks interesting. However, I really think the Center for Inquiry's local DC events seem the best match for me. An affiliated group of the Center for Inquiry, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, publishes one of my favorite magazines, the Skeptical Inquirer. It's focus is more on science and human reason than ethical issues.

I'll blog more about any future events of any of these groups that I go to. A gathering of self-proclaimed skeptics, freethinkers, and atheists is turn up some characters and interesting interactions.

A sobering encounter with my own mortality

I just had a scary, but ultimately beneficial experience yesterday. As many of your know (and by you I mean the few friends and family members who actually read this blog), I've been dealing with digestive system issues for a while now. Not to go into too many details, but I was tentatively diagnosed with IBS a couple of years ago. My doctor had mentioned about 6 months ago that I might want to consider getting a colonoscopy just to rule out some other stuff a lot worse than IBS (any of which was very, very unlikely). I finally got around to doing it a couple of weeks ago. I am so glad that I did it. If I wouldn't have had the procedure, I would have most likely developed colon cancer by the time I was 40.

See, when they did the colonoscopy, they found a polyp in my intestines. Having polyps before the age of 50 is very, very rare, so my doctor was surprised to say the least. However, right after the procedure he said he was almost certain it was the benign kind since I had no risk factors. (I'm basically the opposite of all the risk factors for colon polyps. Risk factors include: being older in age, male, African-American, smoking, eating a high-fat diet, and getting no exercise.) It was like a 1% chance it would be a problematic polyp. When I saw him for the results of the biopsy yesterday, though, he had some unexpected news - the polyp was pre-cancerous! In technical terms it is called an adenomatous polyp. It's pre-cancerous because these kind take 5-10 years for it to develop into cancer. Given I'm 32 now and it had been there for a couple of years, I probably would have developed colon cancer in my late 30s. As long as I get colonoscopies every 3 years for the rest of my life, though, I should be fine, as they remove the polyps during this procedure.

Since there is no reason why a reasonably healthy person in their 30s with no risk factors would ever get a colonoscopy, I actually have to thank all my stomach problems. If I wouldn't have had IBS then I never would have had this procedure and found this potentially life-threatening (and totally unrelated) condition.


So in honor of my not getting cancer in a few years, last night I consumed my three favorite things that trigger an IBS attack - alcohol, cheese, and chocolate. Yeah for IBS!

The giganitc bathtub is gone from our living room!

For over 6 months, we've had Kohler Sok tub sitting in the living room. No, it wasn't there so that we could fill it up with ice and put beer in it (a suggestion more than one person has made). We had originally bought it for our master bath renovations at our apartment. However, the back and forth with our co-op management over the renovation plans dragged on for almost a year, so the tub sat for months in the only room it could fit - the living room.

For the first week it was kind of amusing. David would lay in the bathtub and hide, call the dog's name, and then laugh when she got all confused and started barking. That's was only funny for a few days, though. After a short period of time it's become the constant thorn in my side. Every time I walked into our living room I would wince. And if we wanted to invite people over, I had to make sure I knew them really, really well. So the bathtub has seriously cut into our entertaining and, hence, seriously limited my social life (especially since I'm old and crotchety now and don't want to go out. You have to come to me.)

Since we bought the new house in December, the master bathroom plans at the apartment have been severely revised. Basically the plan now is do what's quickest, simplest, and at a reasonable cost. That doesn't include tearing down walls and expanding the bathroom to fit the gigantic Sok tub. Can I just mention what a cool tub is it? It has an inner layer that overflows into an outer shell, so you can fulfill your childhood fantasy of letting the bath water run over the sides of the tub. (Am I the only one who always wanted to do that?) And it's a spa tub, which means it's like a jacuzzi but with little air bubbles. As the Kohler website says: " Adding a playful element to this placid escape, unique portals release millions of effervescent bubbles. The captivating, champagne-like bubbles cling to the body and caress the skin."

Unfortunately, the tub won't fit in our new house either. So I listed the thing on Craigslist for about 80& of what we paid for it and waited. After a couple weeks I finally got a bite. It took four guys and two dollies to get it out of here, but finally it's gone. It was a bittersweet moment. No playful, effervescent champagne-like bubbles will be caressing my skin anytime soon. But at least I don't have a FREAKING BATHTUB IN MY LIVING ROOM anymore.

Anyone want to come over now?

If you were Carrie Fischer would you rather have an action figure modeled on your face be compared to a hot young actor or a chimp?

The 10 Star Wars Toys that Unintentionally Look Like Other Celebrities

This makes me hungry for some pancakes . . .

Here's my 2 minute time waster for the day. The best part is towards the end when Pancake Man's friend comes in, so keep watching until the end.



Do know what made me feel better after I realized I lost 5 minutes of my life to this clip (2 minutes to watch it plus 3 minutes to blog about it)? The guy who made it spent a hell of a lot more time making it. I hope it helps get him into film school.

Speaking of being a nerd . . .

If I any the free time and money this spring, the first thing I would do is go to LA in March. That way I could attend Paleyfest - 25th anniversary celebration of the Paley Center for Media. The Paley Center (formally the Museum of Television and Radio) regularly hosts panels and seminars on various TV shows, personalities and topics, both past and present. For the 25th anniversary celebration, one of the panels is a Buffy the Vampire Slayer reunion, with Joss Whedon and currently eight of the former cast members in attendance. I think I would officially go from being "nerd" to "super-nerd" if I actually went.

So does anyone want to go to LA with me on March 20th. Seriously. I'm not kidding. All I need is the smallest push and I am so there.

Just to make the offer appeal to a broader audience, there will also be panels on Mad Men, Chuck, Gossip Girl, Dirty Sexy Money, Pushing Daisies, Friday Night Lights, Damages, Dancing with the Stars, Judd Apatow, Tracy Ulman, and (I kid you not) the 1968 Elvis comeback special.

Is the pop culture "nerd" the modern "cool" kid?

I loved this article from the AV Club on contemporary pop culture obsessions that make you a big, fat nerd. While in the past outcasts recognized one another by quoting lines from Monty Python, modern geeks have a variety of options to choose from. Along with the classics like role playing games, Renaissance fairs and Star Trek, the 21st century nerd can also pledge their allegiance to MMORPG's like World of Warcraft, online social networking (facebook, myspace), fantasy sports leagues, and re-vamped versions of classic scifi TV shows a la Battlestar Gallactica and Dr. Who.

My own personal nerdiness pops up at #8 on the list. For anyone that doesn't know, I am a total devotee of all things Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy, Angel and Firefly for those of you who've lived under a rock for the past few years). I've been guilty of reading a lot of fanfic, watching episodes of his shows over and over, and dressing up as Buffy for Halloween. I'm currently reading the Buffy season 8 and Angel season 6 comic books. Within the world of fandom these are all pretty tame activities. One I make it to a convention dressed up in character I will have crossed over to the dark side.

One thing not discussed in the AV Club article, is how being a pop culture geek is now actually seen as "cool." The mere fact that a website like AV Club exists and runs articles about all these fandoms, I think, demonstrates how mainstream being into with some "geekish" pop culture topic has become. In some circles you're almost not considered cool if you don't obsess over every detail on a show like Lost or Heroes, or if you don't remember collecting all the variations of Luke Skywalker action figures that Mattel put out. (I personally was very proud of the three Boba Fett figures I had, since you could only get a Boba Fett by sending in three proofs of purchase from other Star Wars action figures.)

So when did being a nerd become cool? Did the nerds revolt and take over or have all the frat boys and cheerleaders just become us?