This week’s Open Thread is hosted by these hungry otters watching their keeper and hoping for food. This photo was snapped and shared by Valerie Hinojosa on flickr.
Please feel free to use this thread to natter about anything your heart desires. Is there anything great happening in your life? Anything you want to get off your chest? Reading a good book (or a bad one)? Anything in the news that you’d like to discuss? What have you created lately? Commiserations, felicitations, temptations, contemplations, speculations?
Categories: Life
Soggy here, innit? 
In memoriam: Diana Rigg 
Getting out the ‘yes’ 
100 books by women in 2016 
Hoyden About Town 
I apologise if I’ve misplaced this, but I have two things I’d like to share (if they haven’t popped up already).
Ellen DeGeneres has let the creators of a new line of lady pens (for ladies, at a higher lady-price) have it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eCyw3prIWhc
Also, Tracey Spicer’s written an excellent piece about the misogyny and related bullshit she has faced in her professional life. She did go for anatomical insults, but other than that, it’s golden!
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/and-heres-the-news-my-bums-got-nothing-to-do-with-the-story-20121025-28837.html
Good links, Perla! While we’re linking, Miranda Devine has taken out the golden GLORIA for uttering the most outrageous, ridiculous or ignorant comment about the LGBTI community over the past 12 months.
I’m doing some thinking out loud and would like to hear other people’s thoughts.
I noticed in some of the sexism discussion on eg Freethought Blogs that some UK folks argue that “cunt” isn’t sexist/misogynistic in the UK because it’s mainly used by men towards other men. But I was thinking, isn’t that much the same thing as men calling each other “sissies” or “playing like a girl” or similiar phrases that suggest the worst thing a man could be, is compared to a woman?
@Aqua – yes.
My favourite non-gendered insult is “nong” as in “ning nang nong where the cows go bong”.
This week I’ve been having a lot of success with homemade soy yoghurt, and found a great skirt at an op shop, but my girlfriend broke up with me and the good friends I’ve made games with for 2 years won a competition and are starting a company without me. So, a mixed bag of experiences.
Sorry to hear that The Amazing Kim. I like ‘nong’ too, by the way. Also ‘zoid’ which I tend to use to described my children when they are staring blank-faced at the TV.
I myself have spent the week alternating between sneezing a lot and stumbling about like a zombie on anti-histamines. Shocking hayfever season in Adelaide this spring.
Also, not sure whether to be pleased or depressed about this
Ellen DeGeneres has let the creators of a new line of lady pens (for ladies, at a higher lady-price) have it!
If you haven’t already, look up the reviews of these pens on Amazon, because they are things of beauty.
I like ‘jerk’ and even ‘jerkface’ as an insult when someone is acting badly. It has male masturbatory connotations though, so is still gendered I suppose.
Speaking of people at whom I would like to hurl insults, I had a really icky experience at a Victorian council polling place today.
Several ALP volunteers were breaking the rules about where they could stand, and the VEC official told them off. A few of them yelled at her, told her to fuck off, refused to move, etc etc. One guy walked up behind her and told her she was an idiot and didn’t know shit. Another spoke loudly at her, saying similar things, only a foot from her face (and he was tall enough that it looked a lot like looming).
The police came eventually, and the ALP volunteers moved, but moved back as soon as the police left.
This shit went on for the whole time I was there. The candidate being represented even turned up, and egged them on, saying that the VEC officials were feeling overpowered and shouldn’t be listened too.
Understandably, the official didn’t want to keep coming out to reprimand them (so I was told) for fear of escalated aggression.
The whole thing just made me sad, and angry, that people who are asking my vote would muck with the election process like that, and that even in positions of power women can’t be assured of safe spaces.
dd to that the scattered number of loudly racist voters (‘I’ll vote for the names I can pronounce’ and ‘no Aussies on the ballot!’), and I am just so tired.
*full disclosure: I am a member of the Greens, and was handing out for the Greens. There were no issues between our volunteers and the ALP volunteers though (there are very rarely problems between volunteers, in my experience).
Wow, brainfart.
I meant ‘over EMpowered’, not overpowered.
My explanation of “nong” is that it’s the noise you’d get if you rapped ‘em on the skull with a teaspoon. Nice and echo-ey.
I’m also fond of “nincompoop”.
I’ve found ‘twerp’ and ‘git’ rather satisfying of late, although I should remember ‘nong’ more often for the rotation. I also quite enjoy getting elaborately traditional/flowery e.g. ‘may the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits’ or ‘may a thousand pustules blister your buttocks’ or ‘you miserable mound of festering bile’.
In other election news – in the Sydney State seat by-election yesterday, the independent associated with Clover Moore won resoundingly. With a noticeable swing AGAINST the Liberal party, both overall and in just about every polling place.
Results here for those interested in the numbers.
Not sure if it’s a strategy backfire, an expression of dissatisfaction with the State government, or both.
(I’m actually not against having a law at State level – as is enshrined in the Constitution at Federal level – prohibiting someone from being the elected rep at more than one level. But I don’t really like the way it was done, and I’m unsure why the Libs thought they’d have a chance at the seat, especially in the circumstances.)
Interesting news, Jo.
In other news, expect a lot of US sites to be slow or experience outages today/tomorrow. It seems like a hella lot of US server banks/farms are battening down their hatches for Frankenstorm, and whatever their failsafe modes are is a lot slower than their normal modes.
going back into insult mode:
Just watching Jon Stewart doing a segment on Republican Candidate Said What About Rape Now? The reference to the GOP failing to identify the problems (it’s not that you broke the rules of Foetus Club (there is no Foetus Club)) was scorching.
This is a look my parents called “tharn”, which is a reference to Watership Down. The rabbits there considered tharn to be the look of a rabbit at night, “pinned” down by the headlights of an oncoming car.