Please tell me it’s because a rapist drew back a bloody stump and complained to 60 Minutes.

Every now and then, I get a wild hair and check my blog stats. It’s usually pretty much the same every time: a couple dozen new visitors a day plus a handful of loyal returning Rib readers (you know who you are, my friends - and several uppity unlinkables).¹

The keywords from whence people have found my blog range from amusing (”how do you pronounce friggatriskaidekaphobia”) to disturbing (”bat into women’s pussy”) to perplexing (”uppity baby stroller”).

Yesterday was a wild hair day so I bellied up to the Statcounter and found, to my surprise, that the Rib’s hits had spiked dramatically for the week. I checked again today and the trend continues. By the first week in May, I had as many hits as I had for the entire month of April.

Keyword log reveals that almost all of these recent visitors are finding my blog by searching for text or images of “anti rape condom” and “vagina dentata,” and have landed on this post.

I wrote my rant about Rapex when it was scheduled for mass production in April 2007. I didn’t follow the story to confirm whether that actually happened. Now for some reason, almost exactly a year later, buttloads of people are boning up² on this device.

WTF? Did it have a birthday party and forget to invite me? Is it now available over-the-counter like Zyrtec? Or at the pharmacy like a kind of creepy Plan B (”When you’re out of mace, there’s Rapex”)?

I conducted my own googlefest and found no recent news on the weenie whooper-chopper. I did, however, get to reread many idiotic complaints about it from critics. Most of them say, essentially:

“Rapex maims men! It’s too bad about the slut– er, victim and all, but what about the poor rapist? Didja ever think about him? Huh? Huh?!”

I have my own concerns about the so-called anti-rape device, but they sure as fuck aren’t about protecting a rapist’s precious wanker.

Anyway, if you know why everyone and their dog is recently reading up on Rapex, please comment.

Technorati Tags: Rapex

1. At least, you’re unlinkable as far as I know. If you read my blog and have one of your own, leave a comment for some link love! [↩]
2. Sorry… [↩]

Fred Thompson: Viva Viagra

Technorati Tags: Rachel Maddow, Fred Thompson

Racist Fucktards Is Us

OK, you’re probably really tired of pictures of plants by now, so I promise this is the last one for a while (barring the irresistable, like a 400-pound tomato in the garden or something). This is a hens-n-chicks I’ve had for a few years, and it keeps growing tentacles and stuff. I’m waiting for it to leap onto my face and deposit eggs in my mouth.

You may also wonder what’s with the disappearance of all the Deep Thoughts on my blog lately. Well, I’ll tell ya. I’ve been taking a break from the insanity for the past couple of weeks. Usually when shit gets me down, I just reach into my trusty Fucket Bucket, grab a piece of candy, and keep on blogging. But the other day I ran across something that made me crawl head-first into the Bucket and not want to come out.

Around about the last week of May, the writers of the blog Pandagon informed me that there are still some racist fucktards in the good Old South. I know, I know - like, duh. But it’s always hard to face racist fucktards, and even more so when some of them are children. You may have already heard about this, but in case you haven’t and don’t have the stomach to read the (excellent) blog post itself, here’s the gist:

Some black students in a high school in Jena, Louisiana decided to partake of the shade of a tree that grows in a part of the schoolyard traditionally claimed by the white students. The next day, a noose or three were hanging from said tree. The white kids who hung them were suspended for three days for “playing a prank.” Then some of the white kids got into fist-fights with some of the black kids. Within hours of one such fight, three black kids were arrested and charged with attempted second-degree murder. If convicted by their all-white jury, they face probable life imprisonment.

So the hoisting of nooses is a prank that gets three days, and the fist fight is attempted murder that gets life. Right.

The tendency when reading about atrocity is to shake one’s head and mutter, “How horrible. Those damn racist southern fucktards.” It’s a way of distancing, an attempt at self-protection which is ultimately quite delusional. As Lydia Bean, founding member of Friends of Justice, put it so well on their blog:

Many bloggers across the nation are clicking their tongues about Jena as a vestige of the old Jim Crow, and despairing that progressive politics could ever flourish there, in that muggy, exotic, backward place we call “The South”. What progressives don’t realize is that the South is Us. Repeat after me, progressives: The South is Us.

[There’s] nothing exotic about Jena, Louisiana, except that the white kids got away with hanging three nooses in the public school. The sad truth is that young black men are routinely demonized by police and prosecutors all over America. Our nation has set up a direct pipeline from high school to prison for young poor black men, so that we have more black men in prison than in college. And for the most part, nobody cares unless someone does something exotic like hang up a noose. Without the nooses, nobody would have cared if these young men had been prosecuted on bad evidence on a petty charge, and thrown away for life like so many of their generation.

Ouch.

The silver lining in all of this, I guess, is that due to the awesome power of this newfangled Information Highway the internet, this incident is getting a lot of really bad press which is reaching a lot of people, and maybe in the long run, it will help things get a little better.

Maybe the fact that this kind of slavery-era shit - black kids facing life sentences for fist-fighting with white kids - will make us realize that it’s our children that pay the price of adults’ hatred, and as their protectors we are obligated to climb out of our Fucket Buckets, step up to the plate and enact federal hate-crime legislation.

That’s what I’m gonna do. I’m all out of brandy truffles anyway.

Technorati Tags: Jena Louisiana, hate crimes, racism

Muthafuckin’ snakes on a plane…almost.

I am sure this is being blogged to death by B-movie watchers every where, but I just can’t resist:

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — Customs officers at Cairo’s airport have detained a man bound for Saudi Arabia who was trying to smuggle 700 live snakes on a plane, airport authorities said.

The officers were stunned when a passenger, identified as Yahia Rahim Tulba, told them his carryon bag contained live snakes after he was asked to open it.

Those crazy Egyptians!

As a “what was he thinking?” classic, this is rather awesome. Certainly better than the Samuel L. Jackson film this man no doubt secretly intended to imitate. That movie seriously did a Showgirls. That movie sucked so bad (”it’s a drama! no, it’s a comedy! no, it’s a horror flick! no, it’s a…”), I felt like I had just had the life sucked out of me like the Dread Pirate Roberts.

But like him, turned out I was only mostly dead. I still blame Kevin, though.

Technorati Tags: Snakes on a plane, bad movies

Vagina Dentata

No, this is not a circa 1950 artist’s rendering of a hi-rise of the future. This is a Rapex, billed as “the world’s 1st and only anti-rape condom.”

The Rapex product website doesn’t have much on it right now, but since the product has been out in South Africa since 2005, it does have a Wikipedia page.

The anti-rape female condom (aka anti-rape condom, intended brand name Rapex) was invented by Sonette Ehlers, a South African woman. It is intended to prevent rape by hooking onto an attacker’s penis, hurting and disabling him.

This is a great idea, in theory. But. I have a big, big but.

Critics of this device have called it “medieval, vengeful, horrible, and disgusting.” Kinda like rape. So whatever.

No, my problems with this condom are purely practical.

If I were a woman in South Africa, or any country where rape laws are weak, I would take one look at that toothy schlong-slicer thing and think, “Oh yeah - just what I need! A brand new way to get my ass kicked! Thanks a lot!”

The makers of Rapex think their design will prevent retaliation by razored rapists:

Should an attacker attempt vaginal rape, the penis would penetrate the latex and be hooked by the barbs, causing the attacker pain and (ideally) giving the victim time to escape.

Catch that? Ideally.

I can just see the disclaimer on the box: “Ideal conditions necesary for optimum usage; insufficient agony to the penis may cause severe beatings, murder, and/or honor killings.”

Also please note the assumption of vaginal rape, as if that’s the only option to a sexual predator. Once these slice-n-dicers become popular, I suspect so will forced sodomy.

The condom would remain attached to the attacker’s body and could be removed only surgically, which would alert hospital staff and police.

Which is fabulous, except that it assumes the police will actually give a shit. Rape is virtually unprosecuted in most third-world countries and still underprosecuted in the rest of the world. Laws and enforcement have always been biased against rape victims; how will a bunch of mutilated wankers change that?

And finally…what if I pop in my new condom and the damn thing breaks!? Ow ow ow ow ow.

I just don’t think ouchy-hoo-haa contraptions are the answer to the problem of rape. They’re long on instant gratification (at least for half of us) but short on long-term efficacy. A rape-free world is going to take boring, serious efforts like feminist consciousness-raising, retooled laws and enforcement, and education.

Most of all, women everywhere need to reclaim our unconditional right to equality and dignity. It takes guts, perseverance, and solidarity - not an easy row to hoe in any country. But until we do, no sci-fi vaginal cuisinart is going to end the violence against us.

Technorati Tags: Rapex, anti-rape condom, female condom, violence against women

Fuck It Bucket

For Christmas last year, I asked for and received Amy Sedaris’s tabletop book, I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence.

It’s pretty much what you’d expect from any book written by someone with her last name: completely insane, from the tips on how to be a good guest (”Never try to outdress the hostess unless you are the guest of honor or a transvestite”) to a savvy hostess (”When all is said and done, entertaining the grieving is not much different from normal entertaining, except for all the sobbing”).

Amy Sedaris is a righteous rib and her literary brainchild is defintely shortlisted for the Uppity Pulitzer. But the chapter that earns the Uppity Nobel Peace Prize is actually a contribution from her brother Paul-Not-David Sedaris:

The Fuck It Bucket.

How to make a fucket [sic] bucket: Get a 1 gallon paint pail, fill it with candy, write Fuck It Bucket on it. When shit gets you down, just say Fuck It, and eat some mother fuckin’ candy.

My Fuck It Bucket is seeing a lot of action these days.

There’s just too damn much bullshit going on. Everywhere, all the time. And the only rational, sane, intelligent, mature response to all the madness is: Fuck it.

I’m not talking embracing apathy here, although that certainly has its place (like about who is the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby. I can’t freaking believe that got so much press. Who the hell CARES, America? It’s not your fucking baby!).

No, I’m talking about a healthy letting go of those things that ordinary mortals simply cannot control. Which is to say, 99% of everything.

Too vague? OK, some examples:

Troubled college kid snaps and guns down handfuls of co-eds and teachers, reminding us once again how easy it is in this country to buy a gun and commit mass murder on a whim in a public place. How long will it be before I or someone I love meets the business end of a shot gun in a store, the post office, a street corner, or our own houses? Gotta live life, not fear it. Fuck it.

Our kids are inheriting quite the environmental mess, and all the new data indicate it’s global, inevitable and impossible to reverse within the next several generations. Appalled, I recycle, reuse, go green as much as I can (I’d recycle used Q-tips if I could), yet despite my efforts, a polar bear drowns every 24 hours. Every little bit helps, like tiny grains of sand that together make the beach. Fuck it.

The bloodbath rages on in Iraq, funded with my tax dollars; legislators pass bills that require a military exit strategy while the President of my country sticks out his lower lip, stamps his feet, and promises to veto what the majority of the country has clearly indicated they want. Damn it to hell - Iraq and Washington DC seem so far away. I voted, I write letters, I protest, I bad-mouth the religious Republican right at every opportunity. Fuck it.

Women’s right to choose is undermined on April 18 with the Supreme Court’s upholding of the “partial birth” abortion ban (despite the fact that there is no such thing as “partial birth” abortion). I can’t remember a time when abortion wasn’t legal, so the idea that it may be outlawed in my lifetime is shocking to me, nearly panic-inducing. Once again, I vote and write letters, I put my name on the “I had an abortion” list that Ms. Magazine published last year, I will blog until I the day I expire in support of women’s rights. Fuck it.

There’s a lot more where those come from, but you get the picture.

We all are responsible for our own little corner of the worlds. We do what we can to change the world, and if we do not, we have no right to bitch.

Occasionally, if the planets are aligned, our little corner will inspire others to fix up theirs in kinda the same way. Call it the ripple effect, if you want to mix metaphors.

But even if it doesn’t, we can’t worry about all that’s left undone. It will poison our lives, harden our hearts and shrivel our souls.

No, we just keep on living our lives, recycling our Q-tips, reviling the religious right stupid hypocritical lying bigoted asshats, and writing our ribby rants.

And stocking up on motherfuckin’ candy.

Technorati Tags: Amy Sedaris, Virginia Tech shootings, partial birth abortion ban, global warming, war in Iraq, fuck it bucket

Black day in Blacksburg

The other day I read a live-journal post by a University prof who asked, “Why are kids these days so stressed and anxious all the time?”

I wonder.

Technorati Tags: Virginia Tech shooting

Buff Bird

This just in from that trusted news source, Popbitch:

10,000 residents in Juneau, Alaska, lost power last
weekend after a bald eagle lugging a deer head
crashed into a power transmission system.

The eagle’s people could not be reached for comment.