speaking of Xeroxing..Hillary closed the debate with:

"Whatever happens, we're going to be fine. I just hope that we'll be able to say the same thing about the American people."

When Edwards was still in the race, he closed another debate with:

"All of us will be fine", he said of himself and his rivals: "What's at stake is whether America is going to be fine."

Seems awfully similar, no?

articles about women starving themselves have ended up in the style section before, such as the one about the lemonade diet, which is a "cleanse" in which one only consumes salt water, laxative tea, and a lemonade/cayenne pepper/maple syrup mixture for three days. Oh and the one about the middle aged women who are anorexic.

i was under the impression that eating disorders are serious illnesses that should be taken seriously and can lead to death if left untreated. why this is not in the health section of the times, and is instead next to a photo of an emaciated young woman sporting a mohawk with the headline "fall fashion" is beyond me.

ooh that article brought back so many memories of rocking out to the likes of liz phair, tori amos, pj harvey, and ani difranco when i was in high school and an undergrad. dar williams and the indigo girls, come to think of it, were singers/songwriters that had a tremendous effect on me. liz phair, i think, deserves the most credit in terms of giving me more confidence about my feminist leanings early on.

this wave of nostalgia makes me feel either really sad, or really out of touch. i don't know that i can think of many female singers or songwriters today that are as widely played or distributed as the ladies in paragraph one. is it that i'm older and more cynical and little can impress me? are there MORE barriers to women in alternative/mainstream music today than in the 90s? or is the type of subject matter frequently tackled by phair et al passe? lilly allen, i think, is the first female artist i've heard in a while that touches the same nerve in me...any thoughts?

though well-intended in spirit, this proposed law can charitably described as laughable. in making this statement, i am relying on the assumption that french fashion magazines, like their american counter parts, feature editor-chosen photo shoots of dangerously skinny women and girls, are adorned with bold proclamations on their covers screaming promises of weight loss, and contain within them a predictable collection of adverts relying on equally frail waifs to sell every and any product imaginable. i am also wondering if film and television depicting equally thin women will too be charged with inciting anorexia.

what a confusing and conflicted message! purveyors of fashion, carry on. purveyors of information about attaining this highly unreasonable standard of beauty, go to jail!

the idea that modernization is inherently in conflict with "traditional" social mores and standards of behavior is an interesting one. within this framework is the assumption that "modern" societies behave in certain ways and have certain values. a closer look, however, reveals that "modernity" is a tricky and fluid concept.

for example, is the US "modern" even though there is no guarantee of health care, let alone habeus corpus? is France "modern" even though there was a recent ban on expression of religion (headscarves)? is Britain "modern" even though the archibishop of canterbury recently advocated the use of sharia law for britain's muslim populace? is Saudi Arabia, with its vast material wealth, "modern" even though women can't drive?

"modernity" is slippery, and although we have, in the west, been conditioned to believe that eceonomic development and human rights are both inextricable instances of modernity's footprints, in the rest of the world, this is not the case.

she was in a great documentary called The Corporation...i recommend it heartily.

working in offices, for me, was nothing short of soul sucking. i worked for an investment bank for two years and as a loan officer for three years before i figured that out. i can say with conviction that i really, really tried my hardest to do this middle/ upper-middle class office thing, to just accept the asinine rules of behavior that accompany office culture, and i couldn't do it.

i didn't understand why i couldn't, say, come in two hours late and leave two hours late so long as i got my work done. or why my smoker colleagues could spend fifteen minutes every two hours outside scuking on cancer sticks but i couldn't spend fifteen minutes every two hours outside taking a walk. i didn't understand why one colleague could have a picture of a shirtless convicted rapist as his screen saver (mike tyson) at all times but i couldn't wear a pro-choice button on casual fridays. i didn't understand that i wasn't supposed to think for myself, just put my head down and work until they said i could go home.

of course, there are people who work in fields and factories and brothels for far less than i was earning, and have a far worse experience. i know this. but this is a different footprint of the same problem--somehow, corporations don't serve us nowadays. we serve corporations. and it SUCKS.

i chose to go back to grad school, where i can think for myself and use bad words and decide when i want to do my work and how i want to do it so long as it gets done on time and done well. if that choice isn't available to you, well, cary is right. find something that you either love, or at the very least, can stand.

the problem isn't you. the problem is the system.