Filed under: everyday, vegeterianism | Tags: animal rights, finger lickin, KFC, morrissey, murder, Pamela Anderson, PETA, science, squid, stupidity, Te Papa, vegeterianism
Two signs of immense stupidity for today, one is the “world’s largest eye” and the other is the “finger lickin’ campaign”. I also published than in the MA blog.
The later is apparently coming back, not that I noticed the first time, but this time I just could not ignore the huge poster ads on bus stops. while cycling by. That is from Falmer to Brighton and you can see there the impression of a chicken leg in a bloody backround. KFC, who did the ad, has a history of unethical treatment of animals and of cruelty when the Kentucky Fried Cruelty campaign launched some years ago, with Pamela Anderson as their animal rights activist and some lettuce over her bosom. I have difficulty in grasping the meaning of ethical in farming little birds who are captured and can’t fly, fed to death and then slaughtered and dismembered, their limbs sunk into pulp and fried. I really can’t locate where the ‘ethical’ could be placed in this chain of events, cause it seems to me that the problem in this process is not if the bird was happy during its life but the fact that you murder it.
I know I said this has become a journal of the dissertation progress but I cant ignore the cat on my head right now on a mission of intense cleaning the apparently unspeakable dirt of my hair. Writing about the cat can’t be less severe than posting her pictures on the web that revolutionary sam suggested I will end up doing a while ago. but I’ve come across some highly respectable bloggers doing it. I just have to write about the cat and her first time experience with catnip today. I actually spread a few seeds on a little rug i got for her scratching, just before the landlord finds out that she has practically destroyed the lousy cartpet he’s put all over the house. I thought she would get interested in the mat and she did, she loved it and sat on it, scratched it and put it all over her face. Then she moved around the house apparently a bit high cause she seemed reacting to noises that were really subtle and far. So I’m kind of wondering about the ethical implications of getting the cat high, plus her eyes really look crazy these last few hours, even after her nap. Anyway, i have to play with her now.
Filed under: dissertation, everyday, internet | Tags: blogging, depression, feminism, mental health
I have been looking for sef-narrating feminist blogs from people who experience mental illness but haven’t been particularly lucky, at least in the uk. The latest venture is the Crazy Like Us? blog. It came out of nectarine’s Because I miss my sisters blog who initially posted to see if there would be any interest in a feminist mental health blog. She got a lot of responses but the women who felt happy to contribute in the blog don’t write about mental healt in their own blog. I was actually expecting quite an extensive self-exposure in personal blogs, personal accounts of how women handle their sickness in their everyday life, stories about medication and doctors but I either don’t know how to search or women are reluctant to share this kind of experience and write all sorts of other less personal stuff in their blogs. To be sure, i am referring to feminist only blogs. I have managed to trace diaries of women (for example The secret life of a manic depressive) who suffer from bipolar (manic/depression) disorder or other stuff but they don’t think themselves as feminists but don’t necessarily come out as a feminist in their blog.
Filed under: dissertation, everyday, internet | Tags: about me pages, autobiography, blogging, dissertation, feminism
This is a dead period, non-productive because it is non-communicative. I am talking about the dissertation planning period, the before. Ιt entails an extensive diving into different materials which makes me feel a bit lost and small, in knowledge and thus sense of self. I have not planned this post and, as always, will not edit it afterwards. It has however a subject which is actually the implications of creating an ‘about me‘ page. This is a personal problematic that has underlied my publishing since I created it and may be formulating (itself) as an academic question. I’ve been reading Liz Stanley’s ‘From self-made women to women’s made selves: audit selves, simulation and surveillance in the rise of public woman’ in Cosslett et al. (eds) ‘feminism and autobiography’ (2000).
Writing the ‘me’ page has actually taken me a longer time than other posts. I wrote and deleted. Unable to define my readership but assuming they are not steady (except for a few people whom I know in my off-line life), I made a profile that rather resembles a CV for a -surely alternative- job. I define myself there in terms of my education and academic interests, in terms of my NOW rather than my THEN, of locality and interests. I provide a web-camera snapshot I myself took but not at the time I was writing the resume. I also give contact details. Even though this is a public profile which I obviously approve, it contains a whole lot of personal information which I only feel comfortable of giving because of the assumptions I have already done about my readership.
The new women’s social centre in Hackney, East London is one of the autonomous spaces in the area facing eviction so they’re having a support party this weekend. During the day the women will also be running some workshops at the space. visit their blog for the program.
Filed under: everyday | Tags: family, gender, girls, pink, stereotypes, stupidity, the guardian
There are two small girls in the park that my window faces, they are there every Saturday and they wear pink. Sometimes they are dressed alike, though not twins, but always with huge amounts of pink texture all over them. They play like crazy, they fall down, up and down the stairs, chasing the birds, they are fun to watch but the pink is disturbing. In the Guardian Family issue last Saturday(29.03.08), the front page says:’ Do you have a girl? Then read this’. I don’t have a girl(right now) but went on to read the article mostly as a media student. I was expecting something about how more clever girls are to boys and how they are over-achievers at school and some biology or genetics propaganda behind it. But not even close, not even that. ‘The tyranny of pink’ it was called, by Eleanor Bailey and its targeted to parents of little girls, whose world, apparently has inescapably turned pink. (more…)
