Teresa Valdez Klein
361° of geekdom
Singer, Songwriter, Pianist. Also feminist, geek, subvertiser, thinker, doer. #music #tech #feminism #politics
TwitterFacebookFlickrYoutubeDon't you know I'm crazy for these cupcakes, cousin!?!?
At Owen's one-year birthday looking at the 108 cupcakes Angela baked. She's a goddess at frosting. :-)
Thank God Autumn is here!
Summer blazes direct with its demands of endless fun. It forces you outdoors with sheer, bright malice. The bees chafe the air from all angles. Summer is a migraine that starts behind your eyes and spreads into your soul. Summer is anxiety, an exhausted protest against time.
But in Autumn, life softens with the light. The trees accept their graying days with grace and erupt to fill the world with color. The air cools, the angry bees die away and the wind smells of promise. In Autumn, the world tastes delicious and I can feel my own heartbeat again.
SMACKDOWN: Feminism with a sense of humor vs. "The Bed Intruder Song"
When my boyfriend first sent me a link to the "Bed Intruder Song" about a month ago, I have to admit that I laughed - not exactly the most feminist response considering the subject matter.
In case you've been living under a rock for the past month - the "Bed Intruder Song" sprung from an attempted rape that happened in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Huntsville, AL. Kelly Dodson was sleeping in her bedroom with her little girl beside her when a man climbed into her window and tried to rape her. Her brother Antoine heard her screams and came to the rescue. Afterwards, he made an impassioned statement to a news crew from WAFF - the local NBC affiliate.
Then the folks from Auto-Tune the News applied their mad musical skills to the news report and the result has become an Internet phenomenon:
There's no doubt about it - Antoine Dodson has quite a personality! He's also a hero for rescuing his sister from the evil creep that tried to rape her. I hope he gets a television show - assuming he wants one - because I would pay good money to listen to him talk about paint drying. He's that engaging!
Humor aside, we live in a culture that despite all our advances in gender equity still apologizes for rape and rapists. So immediately after laughing at the video, I began to wonder what percentage of the population sharing in the humor were also thinking about the fact that this video stemmed from what was likely the worst night of Kelly Dodson's life. I wondered what percentage believe at some level that this video somehow makes rape funny.
The other thing that I found frustrating was that the early coverage focused mostly on Antoine and his story rather than on Kelly. Yes, Antoine is the star of the video - but Kelly was the one who was attacked. It seems that even now, stories about rape still focus on the men and their implied ownership of the bodies of the women in their lives, rather than on the women who survive and struggle with these experiences of assault and violation.
While I was pondering these issues, something really cool happened. The Auto-Tune the News team reached out to the Dodson family and cut a deal with them - a 50/50 split of the proceeds from selling an .mp3 of the song on iTunes. The song has been downloaded more than 30,000 times and even spawned a fashion line. Dodson recently told The Today Show that he's going to use the money to move his family somewhere safer.
Then, as the song grew in popularity, a host of tribute videos and covers sprung up. This is one of my favorites:
The more I watch this video, and all the other covers, the more that the song begins to feel like a protest song - a declaration that the community of decent people from every walk of life and corner of the planet will not tolerate rape. Perhaps we can translate this into a lasting statement about exploitation and rape of girls and women. So run and tell that, homeboy!
I still have to wonder whether Kelly Dodson feels like she is making the best of a bad situation or if deep down she just feels exploited. After all, her economic circumstances don't really leave her with much of a choice about whether to let her life become entertainment for millions of people. Perhaps this is a kind of rape in and of itself - a real moral gray area considering the opportunities this is creating for the Dodson family.
In the end, I hope that this situation works to their long-term benefit, and that they can translate the notoriety and financial opportunity into some meaningful help for Kelly and her little girl. Would a college education be too much to ask?
Maybe this is why people who believe President Obama is Muslim say they heard it "from the media"...
This nonsense has got to stop. Both the anti-Muslim sentiment and the notion that our President practices Islam are ludicrous. Both are based on little but prejudice and fear.
The Globe's editors ought to be ashamed.
Photos from @ectrapeze last night. Thanks @jason_preston & @moniguzman
What an amazing night! Can't wait to fly again. :-)
Almost caught a penny roll tonight at @ECTrapeze
We touched fingers on this one. This trick is SO hard to catch because instead of the standard three swings, you have five. It's not impossible - but much harder than any of the other tricks I've done, because it's very difficult to nail the timing precisely on that many swings.
So even though I didn't catch it, I'm pretty happy - especially considering that I only learned the trick for the first time today. It's probably among the most difficult front-end tricks you can do. Next time, I'll work on getting it in three swings to make it a bit easier for a catch.
Pretty soon I'll just have to start working on my swing so I can do tricks on the back end. (That sounds dirty.)
A couple more almost-catch videos if you care to watch the intricacies:
Maybe this is why I'm nuts...
On a day-to-day basis, too much digital stimulation can “take people who would be functioning O.K. and put them in a range where they’re not psychologically healthy.
Freedom is there to protect you from people who don't like you, not to protect you from things you don't like. via @jason_preston
I think we are losing our grip on the definition of freedom. Freedom has nothing to do with liking. We have to stop confusing the two...somebody somewhere doesn’t like what you’re doing and that’s not reason enough to demand you stop. Our own freedom is tightly wrapped in how much freedom we give others and like should have nothing to do with it.
Thanks Prestimus, for sharing.
There are bees all over my apartment, God HELP me!!!
I am typing this rant on my friend Audrea's computer because my entire apartment is completely filled with yellowjackets and I really, really need to vent.
I found the first one about a week ago - a big nasty yellowjacket sitting on my bedroom windowsill. I caught him in a wine glass and drowned him in the sink and thought nothing more of it. After all, every so often, every household has an unwanted intruder.
A couple of days later, I noticed another one sitting on my stove when I came home from work. My new next door neighbor was gentleman enough to kill it for me.
Then yesterday, I came home from work to find no fewer than five dead yellowjackets in various places all around my floor. It was at that point that I called my homeowners' association because clearly, we have a bee problem. This morning, I woke up to two more dead bees on my kitchen floor. I got a call from the HOA and they scheduled an exterminator to come out and figure out what the hell was going on.
Apparently, we have what the exterminator termed a "massive wall void nest" - the largest he'd ever seen - high up in a gap in the exterior wall of my unit that are crawling through the walls and finding their way into my unit and the unit above me. Strangely enough, my upstairs neighbor hasn't said anything to anyone, but there's no way she hasn't been having issues. The exterminator assured me this morning - as I was running out the door late for the first day of Gnomedex - that once he put poison on the nest, I would see no more bees in my unit.
Boy was he ever wrong.
When I came home from the conference this afternoon, I found them all over the place. There were three of them lying dead on my floor. A bunch more were swarming in and out from behind the drapes on my window. It's really freaking me out and making me miserable because there's nothing I'm more scared of than bees.
Right now, Audrea is making me popcorn and letting me blog on her computer. I don't think I could ask for a better friend.
