Category Archives: creativity

Rape is Not A Joke

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Ever. Black or White.

Thanks to Michael Twitty for speaking out on rape.

He is speaking about slave rape, but the post is just as relevant to today.

I wish we had white men speaking out against Robin Thicke’s rape song “Blurred Lines”....but no….they’re actively promoting it….along with white women gushing over it.  Makes me want to throw up.

Here’s a piece on the controversy of Thicke and how others have not been held to the same standard.  It seems a little on the apologist side….a weird thing I’ve noticed with the Thicke crowd…”he really is for women’s rights”  and “you’re just not understanding the meaning of the lyrics…”  Oh, really?? What don’t I understand about “I’m going to give you something to tear your ass in two” or  “I’m gonna take a good girl….you know you want it” or “not many women can refuse this pimpin'”  or “do it like it hurt”  ??

I can tell you that I didn’t know about the others’ songs.  I don’t listen to rap.  The only way I knew about Thicke is because it’s being heavily promoted all over the place, from the web to TV.  I’m sure if the others were that heavily promoted, there would be some backlash.

Rape is not fun.  Rape is not a joke.  And making your money off of promoting rape is the lowest of the low.

The Monuments Men

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…is being brought to the big screen this December.

Here is a page that briefly explains who they were and what they did.

I was happy to discover they did not neglect Capt. Rose Valland.  When they called the operation  “Monuments Men”  , the name implies that there were only men helping the effort.  As with most of history, women’s contributions are ignored or downplayed, and unfortunately, that seems to have been the case for Rose, as well.  She died without acknowledgement of her enormous contribution to the success of the operation.  Why is that?

Why did I have to learn in college that if it were not for women gathering nuts, berries, and seeds, human beings would not have survived….because men were not that good at hunting, because at that time, there were no tools? I should have learned this in the history classes I took in elementary, middle, and high school.  Nope. 

Why are women’s contributions to history and to sustaining civilization not seen as important or consequential?  It would take nothing away from men’s contributions….so I’m at a loss to explain it.

More on my blog here.

Loeb putting millions into charter schools

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Sometimes I wish my hunches weren’t right, then I wouldn’t  have to see the workings of unethical toads like Daniel Loeb. (hat tip to Diane Ravitch).

Yep.  He’s a union buster.  And is putting millions towards destroying them and the public school system.

It’s clear to me with the new information that Loeb is a conservative who probably sees the movie industry as supporting liberals, and wants to destroy it.  He puts money into schools that seek to destroy the creative by micromanaging them,  so it’s not a big leap that he wants to destroy the creative in movies.   Just my guess.

Hedge funds create jobs?

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Um – hmmm…

These are just my first thoughts after a quick read~~

The title of the piece is written in a condescending way.  ” Just STFU and do your movies.”   Insulting.

The author brings up the two flops that Loeb complained about–and as George had stated, Loeb picks two flops and ignores the profitable movies. You can’t possibly think that you’re going to have hit after hit? Seriously? If one never takes a chance and puts stuff out there that may or may not do well at the box office, according to the public’s whim, then we’ll have what happened to the music industry. With the exception of Adele and the former Amy Winehouse, I can’t think of any new music that is being played on the radio that is worth a crap.

From the article:

But to be clear, and with job-creating growth in mind, if hedge funds didn’t exist we’d have to invent them

Um.. I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think hedge funds invested in the movie industry when it was created. Folks used this thing called “cash” to form the studios and then they had this great idea to make some films and then ask people to pay to see them. Hedge fund investors don’t invest until there is a business going already. And Hedge funds have been known to fail themselves.

I found a history of hedge funds in investopedia.

More from the article:

It’s not broadly understood this way, but hedge fund billionaire John Paulson not only saved jobs, but the billions he earned surely created new ones.

Seriously? Where are those jobs, because there are an awful lot of people out of work for all the jobs created by Hedge Funds. /snark

For taking these risks, hedge funds are not only masterful job creators, they’re also paradoxically masterful job savers for their intrepid style telling others where and where not to go with their capital.

I think I’m going to be sick.

Let me get this straight–they create jobs by telling investors not to invest in a company that might create 100 jobs because….Company A looks better than Company B because Company A is willing to go without a union shop and pay people minimum wage….am I correct…?

Or…how about this–if you follow the “short selling” link, you see this:

Selling short is the opposite of going long. That is, short sellers make money if the stock goes down in price.

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Read that again–short sellers make money if the stock goes down.  Now I’m wondering if Loeb is short selling….or if someone he knows is short selling Sony stock?  An associate?  A relative?  Since Loeb actually owns the stock, it doesn’t appear that he is short selling, since the broker technically owns the stock in a short sale.  Gah.  The whole thing sounds like a scam.

I used to invest in stock back in the day.  I took an investment class in college, and I did quite well investing in emerging telecommunications technology.    But this was at the beginning of the metamorphosis I was going through, and I began to question the whole scheme because of stuff like the above.  I knew that I could not invest in companies that did not use Fair Trade practices or those that ran sweat shops,  or companies like Monsanto, etc.  The decision came to stop investing after losing $4,000 in Lucent Technologies, which had “facts” and “figures” that made it appear to be a good investment.  Turns out that it was not. 

Telling Sony to spin off the entertainment portion of its business is not creating jobs. Sorry, try another line of defense of the doubletalk.

Mmmmm…Quesadillas

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Ali Does It Herself has this mouth watering recipe for Quesadillas.  I haven’t attempted to make any with the gluten free tortillas–the one  I did use literally tasted and looked like rubber. Blech.  I could technically use corn, but even with organic, I’m concerned about GMO cross contamination.

I had to laugh when she said she forgot her onions and burned them.  Oops.  Been there, done that.

Anyway, the recipe looks delicious.

PR Watch

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…has a few links up:

ALEC anniversary being celebrated in Chicago.  A few folks thought they’d drop by….

MOVIE SCREENING: On Wednesday, August 7, at 6 p.m. Common Cause, the Center for Media and Democracy, and others will host a screening of the Bill Moyers documentary the “United States of ALEC” followed by a panel discussion. The screening will be held at the University Center, 525 South State Street in Chicago.

RALLY: At noon on Thursday, August 8, a coalition of groups, spearheaded by the Chicago Federation of Labor, is calling on people to gather outside the ALEC conference at the Palmer House Hotel, located at 17 East Monroe Street for a march and rally. You can tell them you are coming here.

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ALEC, Big Oil, and Big Ag…

 

ALEC and low wages…

 

Public Television pulls funding for documentary on the Kochs…because the Kochs are million dollar contributors.   Selling their soul doesn’t come cheap, you know…

 

 

Searching for Soul Food…

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Michael Twitty has a link up to an article about the loss of soul food recipes…sadly, the history seems to be lost in Asheville.   I think the diet dictocrats that insisted margarine was “good” for us…have scared many people away from food with animal fat in it.  If you recall, the book Nourishing Traditions blows those myths away, along with the myth that raw milk is baaaad for you.  Just the opposite–the enzymes that are removed in the pasteurization process are beneficial.  Folks who have difficulty digesting milk products find that they have no difficulty with raw milk.  But if you want raw milk, you have to go about it in a clandestine way because the food nazis are out to make it illegal.

 

Teaching, for real…

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I think that everyone who proclaims to know how to teach and more importantly, knows what we need to *cough* fix education should be required to teach for an entire school year.  Absolutely.

…but then, the poor  kids they would be in charge of would lose an entire school year of education…and they’d be worse off than before.

Ash Cake and Other Slave Dishes

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Michael Twitty has this up on some of the food the slaves use to prepare.  When I think of the poor folk now, really, it’s not that far removed.  One can only do so much with food stamps, and as I’ve posted before, if you’re on a Celiac diet or try to eat organic/non-processed food, it is pretty damn difficult to stay in budget.

From my experience, I do know that all the stuff that they tell you is bad (which is wrong, btw), such as bacon, fatty pieces of meat, and the like, sure do make the cheap meat and vegetables taste oh-so-much better. There were times when I walked through the building in FW,  the aromas coming from apartments was soo good, I thought there should be some rule that if you make something that smells that good, you should have to share it with the rest of the building.  Heh.

I have to hand it to African American folk–there were some pretty darn good cooks in my building.  They used what little they had to make tasty meals.

And I learned something today–that there wasn’t segregation with the whites on plantations.  That is heartwarming to hear.  Good for them for not lumping all whites together and rejecting those that came around. Poor folk is poor folk, no matter.  It’s too bad that after the commonality of being poor is no longer there, that folks no longer feel that community togetherness.  Why?