Sunday, June 23, 2013
Saturday, June 22, 2013
Saturday, June 08, 2013
ENTERTAINMENT - Why we started swearing
Four-letter words, expletives, obscenities, insults, curses and cusses—there are almost as many euphemisms for offensive language as there are swearwords. But why? How has bad language retained its emotional valence in an increasingly liberal and secular society? Why do people still cringe when someone drops an f-bomb in front of a grandmother, or, worse, a toddler? These questions form the basis for Melissa Mohr’s new book, Holy Shit: A Brief History of Swearing. Mohr traces the history of English swearing back to its Latinate roots, through the Middle Ages, Reformation and Victorian era in order to explain its modern-day instantiations.
CULTURE/SOCIETY - America's forgotten black cowboys
Like many people, Jim Austin - a college-educated, 45-year-old businessman - hadn't heard about the black presence in the Old West.
The discovery inspired him and his wife Gloria to set up the National Multicultural Western Heritage Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. It pays tribute to some of the forgotten black cowboys - men like Bill Pickett, a champion rodeo rider who invented bulldogging, a technique where he would jump from a horse on to a steer and take the animal down by biting on its lip.
Vincent Jacobs, now 80, battled racism as a rodeo rider in the 1950s
"The kids who are learning history in our schools are not being told the truth about they way the West was," says Austin.
"I bet you nine out of 10 people in this country think that cowboys were all white - as I did.
CULTURE/SOCIETY - The Gay Holocaust
In 1928 there was an estimated 1.2 million “out” homosexual men living in Germany. As Adolf Hitler rose in power, gay organizations were banned and scholarly books regarding homosexuality were burned. Hitler's racial state ideology branded homosexuals not only as "parasites" and degenerates, but as enemies of the state. In 1935, the Nazi government significantly expanded the criminalization of homosexuality.
Under the direction of SS head, police drew up "Pink Lists", and embarked on a vicious crackdown on homosexual men and women. Many were sent to mental hospitals, others were castrated by court order, and 100,000 of these men were sent to concentration camps.The pink triangle (now a symbol of Gay Pride) was placed on the prisoners to mark that they were homosexuals. An estimated 55,000 were executed.
Friday, June 07, 2013
HUMOR - Michele Bachmann Figures Why Not, IntroducesHomosexual-Beheading Bill
Saying that she’ll be gone soon anyway so she might as well, Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann introduced H.R. 259: The Homosexual Decapitation Act, which would give the United States government legal authority to behead any gay U.S. citizen.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/michele-bachmann-figures-why-not-introduces-homose,32641/
http://www.theonion.com/articles/michele-bachmann-figures-why-not-introduces-homose,32641/
Sunday, June 02, 2013
MY LIFE - Why I shouldn't be taken to church!
Sigh!
Okay, so I'm at my wife's church. Her parents are there. Me, my daughter, and her son are listening to her sing a hymn in her lovely operatic soprano on front of the whole church.
What happens right in the middle? Out of my pocket comes a loud trilling noise that sounds like a cartoon character tiptoeing, as the alarm, that I thought I put on silent, goes off for the whole church to hear!
Sigh!
Saturday, June 01, 2013
CULTURE/SOCIETY - I'm Biracial, and That Cheerios Ad Is a Big FuckingDeal. Trust Me.
(Oh my god! My daughter could have written this! - OMGeek)
I am biracial. My mom is black and my dad is white. My family often had the audacity to eat breakfast even though cereal was not being specifically marketed to us.
