Can You Feel It?

WHAT.  An earthquake in Canada felt in NYC?!  Nature never ceases to amaze, especially this year.

Check out this awesome form - fill it out if you felt the quake, or even if you didn't:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/dyfi/events/us/2010xwa7/us/form.en.enabled.html

Meme Time

I and some co-conspirators have decided, in honor of the World Cup, that we shall make vuvuzelas the new all-encompassing term, a la "smurf."  Join us, won't you?

Here are some examples to get you started:

Bartender, I'd like a vuvuzelas but can you make it with vodka instead of gin?

I'd call in sick but my boss will go completely vuvuzelas.

I think it's the integration of vuvuzelas that really made Bill T. Jones's choreography in Fela! Tony-worthy.

It's unbelievable - both Home Depot and Wal-mart are out of vuvuzelas - how am I supposed to finish this landscaping in time for the 4th of July?!

Go ahead, updated your Facebook status.

Boycott Hip Hop?

Oh man.  It's one thing to boycott gas stations when you don't have a car, but what about your favorite music?  Adolfo made an excellent point on Facebook today:

Why is it that Lil Wayne, Kanye West and other rappers who coined the phrase, "No Homo" get support from their record companies and fans when if ANYBODY made a song saying, "NO blacks, NO handicaps, NO women, etc" the media would come down on them like white on rice.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how bullshit it is when people who are not of a group don't actively support doing the right thing, as if it doesn't affect them.  I am crazy about gay rights even though I'm not gay because I am, however, a woman and black, and so I understand how vital it was for legal changes to happen before my time, and I think it was just as much men's/white people's responsibility to put those changes in motion.  These things bleed over too, and you never know when injustices that seemed far away might affect you directly.  We're all responsible for an equal, just world.  Kumba-f'ing-ya.

Boycott BP

I don't have a car so I don't think about this stuff as much, but I really hope those of you who do are boycotting BP and all the BP brands.

BP brands to boycott include Castrol, Arco, Aral, am/pm, Amoco, Wild Bean Cafe, and Safeway gas.

I'm proud to say that I drove around on an empty tank two weeks ago to avoid the Arco station.

Citizen Journalism Meets Seattle Stupidity

The internets are abuzz with this straight-outta-Seattle video of a cop acting questionably during a jaywalking pullover:



Though I can see why Anthony tipped me on it thinking I would go Politically Involved Minority Woman Apeshit, my first reaction is actually Former Seattlite Disgust.  In college, there was a tiny two-lane street that ran between the bookstore and the student center where we'd routinely get fined for jaywalking.  I wish I had a picture, it's completely ridiculous.  I still to this day, after ten years in jaywalkitoff NYC, get all apprehensive when crossing even on corners in the Pacific Northwest.  Way to be tough on crime Seattle!

The problem with this video to me is that a) we don't see what may have provoked the cop to get physical at all in the first place, and b) if a cop was trying to handcuff me or whatever, the last thing I would do is fight back because anyone with even a cursory knowledge of TV crime dramas knows you can get slapped with an assault of a police officer charge.  Also, where's his partner? 

But as I'm sure the comments on this coverage will support, this one's going to piss people off, on both sides.

Crap, I really hope that's not the cop I dated in college.

The Latest (but hardly new) Assault on Women

I don't know what's making me so particularly interested in feminist issues lately.  Well, yes I do: I'm female, and I have experienced nearly every benefit and drawback of being a woman in modern America.  Yes!  Free drinks, rides home, doors opened!  No!  Taken less seriously professionally, being scrutinized for personal choices, being called a bitch for behavior for which men are respected, even applauded!

But hats (heels) off to Debrahlee Lorenzana, who's catching everyone's shit in a big way.  This exact scenario happened to a friend of mine a few years ago (also in finance, hmm) - hotter than her coworkers, she gets blamed for her coworkers' reactions.  At first you're like, yeah, to have such problems... but it runs both ways. 

War Checklist

A great op-art from the Times: