Damn, what a call--opening the second half with an onside kick? The Saints converted that bit of ballsiness into a touchdown, grabbed the momentum, and 30 minutes and several clutch plays later, grabbed the Lombardi Trophy. And, as my friend India pointed out, felt no need for Jesus shout-outs in the postgame interviews.
That was the good. The bad? The breathtaking misogyny in the commercials. Forget Tim Tebow and his mom; against the baseline set by GoDaddy.com, FloTV, and Bridgestone, Focus on the Family rated a giant meh. What knocked the Tebows completely off my radar? Oh look, here's Danica Patrick abandoning her last shred of dignity and getting into a strip-off, with the promise of additional unrated web content. Ah, here's Jim Nance saying that a guy who goes shopping with his girlfriend has lost his spine! Oh, here's a guy who gets conceived, grows up, gets a job, gets married, and sires a kid of his own--whew, he deserves a break after all that! And here's a guy who abandons his wife to a Road Warrior gang rather than give up his tires! Oh, look, men strike back! Because they're been so grievously put upon for the past couple of decades out of the last 160,000 years of anatomically modern human history!
Fuck. Oh, want to see them? Here.
In happier news, chocolate Chex + rice Chex + chocolate Cheerios + pretzel sticks + mini marshmallows + mini chocolate chips + butter + vanilla + NUTELLA = OMFG awesome snackies. Also, roasting thinly sliced cauliflower with olive oil, garlic, and rosemary results in some stunning crunchy/tender bits of FUCK YES CAULIFLOWER IS GOOD. Who knew? My mom always boiled it to death. I would have eaten a lot more of it without complaining if she'd roasted it instead.
Sunday, February 07, 2010
Never Mind Who Dat, What the Fuck Dat?
Friday, February 05, 2010
The Week in Sports
The WPS LA Sol fire sale Dispersal Draft took place yesterday. Oddly, despite usually sending out more Tweets per fan than any other professional sports league, the Twitterfeed was silent until it was all over, leaving dozens of people biting their nails wondering where Marta would land. She wound up going third, to the apparently named by an AYSO U-14 girls team that won the lottery Gold Pride, newly of the East Bay. Former Notre Dame and current women's national team stalwart holding midfielder Shannon Boxx was the first pick, going to St. Louis, which totally cleaned up by also adding Aya Miyama and Tina DiMartino; red hot Candian keeper Karina LeBlanc went to Philadelphia. My hometown Red Stars passed on veteran players, grabbing rookie Tarheel Casey Nogueira with pick #4, and with that decision hopefully both saved a lot of cash and (potentially) increased their anemic scoring output by a factor of maybe four. Of course, without Tarpley in the midfield any more, that's a lot of reliance on Megan Rapinoe's ability to remember she can pass the ball now instead of having to do it all on her own.
In baseball news, Big Z showed up early (!) to spring training, with a shiny new good attitude and svelte physique, both of which should asplode right on schedule the first time he walks three guys in a row and blows a two-run lead, which we'll peg at 'round about April 8.
And in other baseball news, this.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Admiral Mike Mullen. For. The. Win.
No additional comments from my end are necessary. Oh, except that John McCain is an awful, awful man.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
BOTL: Now with More Tebow, More Abstinence, More Kerfuffle
A laundry list of items, and the sun isn't even up yet.
The Daily Star ran an editorial the New York Times flung out on Sunday, which I missed at the time.
A letter sent to CBS by the Women's Media Center and other groups argues that the commercial "uses one family's story to dictate morality to the American public, and encourages young women to disregard medical advice, putting their lives at risk" - a lame attempt to portray the ad as life-threatening.
The would-be censors are on the wrong track.
Instead of trying to silence an opponent, advocates for allowing women to make their own decisions about whether to have a child should be using the Super Bowl spotlight to convey what their movement is all about: protecting the right of women like Pam Tebow to make their private reproductive choices.
The editorial notes that the Tebows' story is being brought to you by Focus on the Family, but conveniently omits the fact that FoF works tirelessly--with nearly bottomless funding from their adherents--to increasingly restrict women's rights to make choices about their pregnancies, with the ultimate goal of eliminating the choice of abortion altogether, as well as eliminating many forms of contraception as well. Pam Tebow ostensibly had a choice (although abortion for any reason has been illegal since 1930 in the Phillippines, where Tim was born, it's questionable whether she actually had the choice she claims to have made), and she's shilling the story of that choice on behalf of an organization that is committed to removing the same choice from other women. Nice job on nuance, NYT and Daily Star!
Next up, abstinence!
A new study shows for the first time that a sex-education class emphasizing abstinence only - ignoring moral implications of sexual activity - can reduce sexual activity by nearly a third in 12- and 13-year-olds compared with students who received no sex education.
"This study, in our view, is game-changing science," said Bill Albert, chief program officer at the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group based in Washington, D.C.
"It provides for the first time evidence that abstinence-only intervention helped young teens delay sexual activity."
The study reported here covered 600+ low-income African-American 12- and 13-year-olds in the Northeast, who were split into four groups who received different eight hour courses in 8th grade. The control group got generic healthy living, the first test group got abstinence-only, the second safe sex (excluding abstinence), and the third got a combination of safe sex and abstinence. Over the following two years, half the safe-sex kids reported sexual activity, while only a third of the abstinence-only kids did; the comprehensive group was in the middle.
Okay, so abstinence-only education was tops at keeping 12- and 13-year-olds from having sex before they turned 14 or 15. Fair enough. But is there a kicker?
None of the classes appeared to influence the use of condoms or other birth control when the students did have sex. The children thus remained at risk of pregnancy and venereal disease.
About 8.8 percent of participants in the comprehensive class reported activity with multiple partners, compared with 14.1 percent in the control group, indicating that the comprehensive class reduced the risk of disease. Neither diseases nor pregnancies were monitored, however.
Ding ding ding! Maybe abstinence should be hammered at the younger kids--this study certainly suggests it's an effective tactic--but I have to ask if 55 kids (33% of the control group) having sex at 14 with no understanding of contraception is really a preferable outcome to 86 kids having sex at 14 after at least having been taught about condoms. The difference is statistically significant, but in terms of actual lives, 55 and 86 are pretty much a wash. If anything, the study does make it horribly clear that a huge unresolved problem is how to convince kids to use the goddamn condoms and other contraception once they've learned about them. Too bad disease and pregnancy were not monitored; since those are the two conditions abstinence-only and comprehensive sex ed agree need to be minimized, those are the outcomes that would seem to be the most salient.
Oh, and on the teeny tiny kerfuffle of the NYT gays-aren't-monogamous story? A few commenters elsewhere have read my objections as being objections to open relationships and rational thinking about partnering, and possibly to gay men as well. No, no, no. Got no problem with people negotiating relationship parameters that work for them, and am not unaware of the high incidence of infidelity in hetero marriages and the problems that causes when couples don't write external affairs into their rules but go on to have them anyway. Nor do I think all gay partnerships must hew to the mythological Ozzie-and-Harriet model in order for us to have a chance at marriage equality; what works for me might not work for you, and that's fine. I just despair when I see glosses reported as science, particularly when I know exactly the kinds of bozos in my own state and possibly own family who will pounce on the pronouncement that half of all gay relationships incorporate non-monogamy and use it as the only justification they will ever need to keep voting against full civil rights for us and to keep throwing money at organizations that think we should all be executed, or jailed, or maybe just subjected to compulsory reparative therapy.
Monday, February 01, 2010
Friday, January 29, 2010
This Is Not Helping
Oh, for fuck's sake.
A study to be released next month is offering a rare glimpse inside gay relationships and reveals that monogamy is not a central feature for many. Some gay men and lesbians argue that, as a result, they have stronger, longer-lasting and more honest relationships. And while that may sound counterintuitive, some experts say boundary-challenging gay relationships represent an evolution in marriage — one that might point the way for the survival of the institution.
New research at San Francisco State University reveals just how common open relationships are among gay men and lesbians in the Bay Area. The Gay Couples Study has followed 556 male couples for three years — about 50 percent of those surveyed have sex outside their relationships, with the knowledge and approval of their partners.
Some key words/phrases here may be "male" and "Bay Area." But hey, NYT, don't let the fact that the dataset was drawn from male couples keep you from glossing the sample as "gay men and lesbians," and really, don't let "Bay Area" keep you from leading with the straight-from-Focus-on-the-Family-playbook assertion that monogamy just isn't in the cards for many gay couples across the board. And please don't go in depth about the percentage of hetero marriages that feature cheating by one spouse or the other, but do showcase one straight open-married couple as an illustration of how gay marriage may serve to spearhead a total revamping of all marriage with the innovation of everyone fucking other people--within the rules, of course.
“The combination of freedom and mutual understanding can foster a unique level of trust,” Mr. Quirk, of Oakland, said.
“The traditional American marriage is in crisis, and we need insight,” he said, citing the fresh perspective gay couples bring to matrimony. “If innovation in marriage is going to occur, it will be spearheaded by homosexual marriages.”
Open relationships are not exclusively a gay domain, of course. Deb and Marius are heterosexual, live in the East Bay and have an open marriage. She belongs to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and maintained her virginity until her wedding day at 34. But a few years later, when the relationship sputtered, both she and her husband, who does not belong to the church, began liaisons with others.
Fuck. Seriously? This is yet another example of why science--even lowly social science--shouldn't be reported by newspapers. Because Prop 8 types will blow right through the details of the study sample and the inclusion of anecdotes from a completely different population than that dealt with in the study and say see, just like we always told you: homos can't keep it in their pants, lesbians either probably, not that we're keeping score, and they're going to change marriage to mean we all have to let our wives fuck somebody else. Phenomenal stuff, that, with impeccable timing as Perry v. Schwarzenegger heads into closing arguments.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Not a Good Sign for Women's Pro Soccer
Last year's WPS regular-season champion LA Sol went tits-up 45 minutes ago, after last-gasp attempts to secure an investor fizzled. The 19 players on the roster will be up for grabs in a special draft for the remaining eight teams in the league a week from today, making it the first time in the history of forever that the planet's Player of the Year for four consecutive years (!) in any sport will be shunted into an expansion draft mere months after collecting her most recent trophy.
The Marta Fire Sale may be complicated somewhat by league rules limiting the number of international players on each roster; under current rules only St. Louis, Boston, and Washington have spots available, and of these three, Boston is up first in the first round, with Washington next. Which means Washington snap up Johanna Frisk and then take their pick of the non-Marta Boston roster. You heard it here first. I'll wait for Jordy to weigh in on who she wouldn't mind seeing head south if it means watching Marta team up with Kelly Smith on a week-to-week basis.
In other women's soccer news, I am watching the semifinals of the CONCACAF U-20 women's tournament and thinking nobody on these nations' senior national teams need to be watching their backs anytime soon. US-Costa Rica in particular has been bad touch-bad touch-foul for the entire first half.
And I do hope the remaining teams have their shit more in order than LA did.
