April 2012
33 posts
“I grew up absolutely hating milk. I would gag on it! Now when I drink their milk, maybe it tastes better to me because it’s freedom milk. It just has a little rebellious flavor in it. To me, it’s the new civil rights. It’s Rosa Parks.”
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Republican congressional candidate and raw-milk advocate Richard Mack, quoted in Dana Goodyear’s “Raw Deal: California Cracks Down on an Underground Gourmet Club” (The New Yorker, subscription-only)
In today’s contentious cultural climate, it can sometimes be difficult to decide whether you should compare yourself to Rosa Parks. I’ve devised a handy cheat sheet to help you make a sound decision. It comes in the form of a brief quiz, with only one question (answers below):
Should I compare myself to Rosa Parks? It depends. Are you:
a) Rosa Parks?
b) An advocate of legalization for raw milk, among whose proponents one can find “Raw Milk Freedom Riders—mothers who practice civil disobedience by crossing state lines with raw milk”?
c) Glenn Beck?
d) A poster on an bicycle forum responding to safety concerns from the cycling community in response to his practice of carrying a firearm while riding the Twin Cities’ bike trails?
e) A Boston city council member who is asked to step down following a string of felony convictions for corruption?
f) A Florida real-estate developer who faces what he considers unfair restrictions on his building plans?
g) Any person of privilege who, upon encountering adversity—real or perceived—during the advancement his or her agenda, appropriates the nearest convenient civil rights figure, movement, or metaphor?
h) Anyone besides Rosa Parks?
ANSWERS:
a) Yes; b) No; c) No; d) No; e) No. f) No. g) No. h) No.
(via thedependentclause)
i will merely add that we are the only animals to drink another animal’s milk. who first came up with idea of sucking a cow’s teat? seriously. we’re a demented species.
The 13 Most Useless Majors →
thedailybeast.com
- Fine Arts
- Drama and Theater Arts
- Film, Video, and Photographic Arts
- Commercial Art and Graphic Design
- Architecture
- Philosophy and Religious Studies
- English Literature and Language
- Journalism
- Anthropology and Archeology
- Hospitality Management
- Music
- History
- Political Science and Government
Top o’ the list, Ma!
Xperimental Theatre to close for bullshit reasons →
mndaily.com
For 15 years, the Xperimental Theatre has operated out of the black-box theater in Rarig Center, producing a season of free productions selected by a student-elected board of directors. All work at the X is completely student-created with minimal influence from faculty advisers.
the closing of this space makes me sad. i did my first play there. i was terrible. the play was terrible. but that’s a pretty great thing, actually. having the chance as a student to do a show, when i couldn’t buy my way onto a mainstage (i was already 26), was an important step for me.
worse than the tangible loss of freedom and space, is the loss of freedom and space to do new work. new plays. mainstages are bastions of shit. the tempest? fuck, let’s do that! again! wait … wait, but let’s set it in — wait for it — NEW YORK CITY! now this is NEW shakespeare. fuck. shakespeare can kiss the fattest part of my balls. ok, no … i was young once, too. shakes can write a motherfucking play. and i enjoy reading them. i don’t particularly — ok never — enjoy seeing them produced. and mainstages will always produce him. and that’s ok. it’s good, even. kids getting the chance to work on a classic is great for development. but the X … the X was a place to not do shakespeare. to not do albee, or miller, or even neil fucking labute. it was a place to do joe sophomore’s new script, or jane freshman’s staged interpretation of a william blake painting. it was anything, and didn’t have budgets and suits lording over it, either.
“It’s not about numbers. It’s about giving students the power every single year to create something for themselves.” hear here!
now read this bullshit: “I think what we are trying to make is an organization where participation is from people who actually care. It shouldn’t be people who are doing this because they have some extra time on their hands and this is all that they can find.”
whathefuck? that’s what college is. that’s what it’s there for. to try things. you want to go to a trade school, go man, but the UMTAD is part of a liberal arts college … and even engineers and math geeks can like art. haven’t you seen a second of television for the last 13 years? sorry alpha betas, the nerds won.
the board admits this isn’t about money. it has it. it’s so cheap to run it’s scary. and the work created there is free. this is just bloody stupid, and i cannot see a legit reason for it’s closing. boo to this. /rant
“The assault on Trayvon Martin’s character implicitly argues that he was expendable… the once-living price we “all” have to pay to be free in the exercise of our Second Amendment rights. It began almost immediately after he hit the pavement. They drug-tested him, but not the man who shot him. Now, we’ve got conservative “journalists” creepy-crawling through every aspect of his life to find some reason… well, to find some reason for what? That he was a kid who tweeted silly stuff, posted some silly stuff on Facebook, and once got suspended because he was found with a bag that may once have held marijuana? This is not a search for justice. It’s a search for an alibi, and it’s a search through some of the uglier aspects of American society to find the oldest, cheapest alibi of all — that the lives of black children are less important than the right of someone to pack heat, that the lives of black children must needs always take a back seat to fear, that black children in this country are bargaining chips, and not very valuable ones at that.”
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Travyon, the Court, and the Week of Expendable People (via rubyvroom)
painful and true.
