april fools, my ass.

One day I'm going to make up a horrible 1 April gone all wrong story and tell it to anyone who tries to play a prank on me. Like (this story is not true), when I was in college, my mom called me to tell me the cat was really sick and did I want to come home to say goodbye before they put her to sleep. And I thought, since it was 1 April, that it was a prank. So I didn't come home. And my cat died all alone, so these pranks make me remember this time when I was a shitty person. And then I'll cry, when I tell this story. And the prankster will feel shitty, too.

It'll be like counter-fools.

It's such a mean-spirited holiday. Okay, in the French tradition of sticking a fish picture on someone's back, it could be kindof harmlessly funny (in a very "we love Jerry Lewis" way). But people telling loved ones they're pregnant, fired, dying, won the lottery, whatever? That's just fucking with them. Of the lowest order

I choose, instead, to celebrate National Call Someone, Say "T.S. Eliot" and Hang Up Day. In which, in a nod to Joseph Heller and Prufrock, you call someone (or email anonymously) and say only "T.S. Eliot". It's funny. And not mean or emotionally exploitative.

read this article

There's an editorial posted on the main page of Bitch Magazine's website today that raises some interesting points about the way the word "choice" has changed our approach to women's rights.

She sites Rickie Solinger's book about abortion and adoption (which I read about half of before getting tired of what I perceived as whinyness about birth mothers' rights - not that they don't deserve them, just that she championed them in an irritating emotional way), which essentially argues that choice language is bad, because we don't really have free choice. Alternately, I guess we should use "rights", but that would limit what feminism was about, in my book. Rights implies having the legal right to do something. So? There are a lot of factors that would limit a person's real ability to exercise a right. I like choice.

But what I really wanted to point out from the article was a point I've made here before - namely, that not every choice you make (i.e. as a consumer) is inviolable and unquestionable just because you're a woman and a feminist.

i need shopping guidance.

I'm looking for a choice-friendly t-shirt to sport at the March for Choice/Women on April 25. Any suggestions? The perfect pro-choice march t-shirt just isn't falling in my lap here. I'd like something that's actually kinda cute and fitted, but with a message that might make you think "my god, does your t-shirt really say THAT". And preferably NOT something pink.

[ended up kinda cross-posted to WHB, with a list of resources for tasty feminist swag, none of it what I'm looking for.]

it's not a diet.

( lifestyle stuff, and my theory about how diet concepts make it harder for people to be healthier if they want. maybe boring. )

my imaginary magazine

What I'd do if I had boundless resources and ran a a magazine or a television network. From this week's We Have Brains question.