Urbzen

I’m sorry I abandoned you for so long, Internet! See, a Very Important Thing happened last week, and that thing was teabagging. You might have heard about it. In any case, your editor was busy chronicling the insanitea (see what I did there?) over at Teablogging.net.

Honestly everything over at Teablogging is worth a look, for freedom, but here’s a sampling of some of our best work from the past few days:

Teabags Across America: The Day in Photos

Teabagged: The Morning After

Hitting all their historical marks

AmSpec: Scenes from the DC Tea Party

Grassroots!

Teabaggers: We want revolution so long as revolution will not get us into trouble (redux)

And my personal favorite: Michelle Malkin will disembowel you, just like she did to this pig

ALSO: Teablogging.net, a very important internet web site, has been featured on The Huffington Post, Wonkette, Talking Points Memo, Burnt Orange,The Daily Angry Liberal, ShortsandPants and RonPaulForums.com.

Regular Urbzen posting will resume Monday.

A few months ago, I posted here about the dangers I saw in the Amazon Kindle and the rise of digital publishing—namely that as we move our books and other media from a printed to a digital format, we increase the odds that they can be altered or even deleted without our consent and possibly without our knowledge.

It’s a bit of a paranoid thesis, but I think it moved closer to reality today when it was revealed that Amazon had “reclassified” a whole slew of books dealing with LGBT issues—from gay romances to academic works on the impact of homophobia to Heather has Two Mommies—as “adult” and thus removing them from some searches, sales rankings and bestseller lists on Amazon.com.

That Amazon chose to reclassify books with any sort of gay theme—be it academic, literary, or journalistic—but not those with much more explicit heterosexual content is blatantly homophobic and certainly worthy of discussion. But what I’m more concerned about is the creeping corporate control over the flow of information and ideas.

In a world of printed media, the consumer holds at least some of the power. Once a book is disseminated into bookstores, libraries and homes, it’s a herculean if not impossible task for a single entity—the executive suite at Amazon, say—to move, reclassify, alter or censor it in one fell swoop. As we’ve seen from Amazon, though, in a digital world, titles can be removed wholesale from searches, rankings, etc. quietly and overnight.

Given that, it’s not too big of a stretch to imagine a day when a handful of big-name sites like Amazon dominate the distribution of literature—on devices like the Kindle, they already do. Say these companies, for whatever reason, decide that a particular title—a political manifesto, maybe, or a book on radical Islam—isn’t “suitable” for their audience. What’s to stop them from quietly removing the offending title from search results, from rankings, or just taking it down altogether?

Of course, it’s always been up to retailers to decide which books to sell and which not to sell. But the digitization of books gives way to an unprecedented centralization; Instead of hundreds of thousands of bricks and mortar booksellers in America, there might be maybe three or four online outlets. Do we really want to trust to the discretion of a handful of corporations that kind of power over the flow of information?

It’s important to note that Amazon never announced this change. Much like the Facebook TOS changes that caused such a stir back in February, they just… did it. Quietly. So that a book that would have shown up in your search results on Friday would have been absent on Monday. No announcement, no opt-in, no empty space on the bookshelf, almost like it was never there.

When I started this blog back in the halcyon days of October 2008, my goal was simply to amass a small following, horrify my parents and possibly score some free shit. Now, after 100 posts, I have to say I’ve been amazed at the response and, more than anything, am completely blown away about how fucking awesome I am.

For a girl to achieve as much as I have as a political/humor blogger is truly a testament to you all and your willingness humor me as I pen feisty rants about serious topics that are clearly beyond the grasp of my hormonal ladybrain. More than anything, your support and generosity have taught me an important lesson that I hope to one day apply to my true calling as a faithful and obedient wife to a bright and powerful man.

In the meantime, keep checking back at Urbzen.com for your daily (?) dose of vice, virtue and, of course, sex jokes. And if you can’t get enough here, your lame ass should follow me on Twitter.

Love,

Stephanie

p.s.: If you are taking this post in any way seriously, you are a fucking idiot.

p.p.s.: See that subscription button to the right? CLICKY CLICKY.

In a move that has sent excited whispers through the halls of Congress, Representatives Eric “Big E” Cantor and Paul “R-Money” Ryan yesterday announced the formation of the Congressional Varsity Clique Caucus, an organization they say will focus on reining in government spending, promoting open markets, and picking up chicks.

The CVC will not include noted loser John Boehner, who, sources say, is a total poser who everybody only hangs out with because he has a totally sweet rec room and always buys the beer.

At the announcement during homeroom morning session, Cantor and Ryan outlined the group’s priorities, which include messing with freshmen, pantsing Boehner and ditching class to go to concerts.

In an interview with Urbzen.com, Ryan said the group was looking forward to getting to work and described the membership as “stoked.”

I am not comfortable with the photo in this Facebook ad.

Well, it looks like we’re getting a nice head start on the annual Week When Horrible Shit Always Happens. Fun! God I hate April.

To continue our theme from Friday’s ‘Women, Know Your Limits’ video, we turn to the Women’s Interest Lifestyle section of CNN.com, where we find this gem:

Plus, Michelle Obama knows just what to pack!! I think I’m getting the vapors.

I absolutely guarantee that this is the best two four minutes you will spend all day:

I don’t generally write much about “the sex” in this space, aside from the occasional Chuck Grassley/boobies joke, because, among other reasons, several of my colleagues—and, god knows, by this point, probably my mother—read this blog, so, really.

But my post last week about divorced comedian Steve Harvey’s book of so-called advice for single women, “Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man,” has raised a lot of issues about women, sex and dating that I’d really like to explore a bit further. If this is the sort of thing that makes you blush, well, I really don’t know what you’re doing on this blog in the first place, but you might want to wander on over to something a little more PG.

Anyhow. Several of the folks who commented on and emailed me about the post articulated my problem with Harvey and his philosophy better and more succinctly than I could.

Blogger/author Robin Monique kicks Harvey’s ass around the block and offers some of the soundest dating advice I’ve heard, well, ever:

When should I sleep with him? Answer: When you want to and not a moment before.

What if I sleep with him and then he stops calling? Your value is not determined by your vagina. He can’t see that? His loss. Keep it moving.

Don’t I lose my power when I sleep with a man? As long as you’ve got two feet and the good sense to leave a situation that’s not working for you, you always have power.

When should I let him go? When you find that you’re more often unhappy than happy in the relationship.

How do I avoid heartbreak? You can’t. It is a part of life. Trust that you’re strong enough to get through it.

See the pattern? Your greatest relationship is the one that you have with yourself (or your God if you’re religious/spiritual). Setting your relationship behaviors around arbitrary rules rather than your own natural tendencies will all but guarantee a lifetime of confusion, anger and heartbreak.

Meanwhile, commenter TheProblemWithCaring picks up on a largely unspoken racial dimension of Harvey’s argument that I completely missed (edited for length; read the original comment here):

It seems to me that Steve Harvey wrote this book to all the “good” single women of color out there, who seem to be lapping it up. From the church to beauty salon to the late night tearful debriefing sessions with sisters, mothers, aunts and friends on “What went wrong with Mr. Right;” the answer always is YOU GAVE UP THE COOCHIE TOO EARLY.

It’s never that the man is just emotionally unavailable, a misogynist with intimacy issues, a commitment-phobe, fucking your cousin, or just not that into you. It always comes down to When Did you Sleep with Him.

It would fly in the face of the paradigm for women of color to say “BUT HEY DIVORCED STEVE HARVEY. I AM A WOMAN, BUT I LIKE SEX TOO.” It’s easier for Oprah and others to accept it and try to claim power from their sub-status as women (i.e. Our pussies are magic! Men cannot resist!) instead of trying to assert real power. Personally, I think Black women could do a lot for themselves, their communities and the world if they stopped listening to little dicks like Steve Harvey and started telling Black men, Eat my pussy, fuck me right AND call me tomorrow, or fuck off and let me date your brother.

There were also a few critical comments (though not many, leading me to believe I have a very naughty readership) that made the reasonable point that in a situation where a woman is looking for a long-term relationship and a man is just looking for sex then, yeah, by having sex the woman does give up a lot of leverage.

But, if you’re looking for a ring or just a long-term serious relationship, then dating a man who is very openly NOT looking for those things is a losing proposition from the start. Far too many women—the Carrie Bradshaws of the world, let’s say—drive themselves to distraction trying to get men who aren’t interested in commitment to commit. It defies reason. If you’re looking for a Volvo, don’t go to the Ferrari dealership, okay?

But—and I think this might come as a surprise to Mr. Harvey—it works the other way too. Not every woman in the dating pool has back issues of Modern Bride stashed away in her closet. You might need to sit down for this, Steve, but here’s the truth: Not every woman you date wants to marry you. We are not even close to that into you. Seriously.

If you have a mother like mine, you’re familiar with the maxim that no man is going to buy the cow when he’s getting the milk for free. But here’s a thought: The cow is not for sale.

Ponder that.