We Interrupt This Broadcast

I know you're here to make fun of newspapers, and I'm a let you finish. But first I gotta tell you we have the worst healthcare system OF ALL TIME.

Today, my wife's employer held a meeting to explain their new health benefits packages. They've got three: a high-deductible plan with an HSA, a "silver" PPO and a "gold" PPO.

We're on the Silver Plan. It's not great, but it does the job. We've got a $1200 family deductible, which we maxed out last year and are on track to do again. Her company chips in about $600 a month towards the "family" premiums, which is a mixed blessing. Since the federal government considers this taxable income (thanks, Defense Of Marriage Act!), she spends about $150 a month more for her premiums than the straight family man in the cubicle across the way. But whatever.

Anyway, they held a meeting today to explain that everything's going to be more expensive. Silver plan's going up by $80 a month. The family deductible is going up $500. Not sure how much the company's contribution to the silver plan is going up, but whatever that is, tack 25% of it on to whatever we pay out of pocket.

Upshot: a $2,000 pay cut for us, dangerously close to 10% of J's take-home pay.

Now, nobody at her job is happy with the new plans. But most people are switching to the HSA plan, if they haven't already, because it's much cheaper. Which, according to J, the company endeavored to explain.

Under DOMA (whee!), J can't legally pay any of my health expenses out of an HSA. Nor can she pay our daughter's, until her legal adoption goes through. (Hopefully soon. We just submitted affidavits to the court. Wheels of justice, etc.)

What does this mean? It means if we switch to the HSA plan, which has a $2300 family deductible, all of my (and my daughters') health expenses have to come 100% out of after-tax money until we max out the deductible. And of course, J will keep paying her premiums, plus an extra 25% of her company's contribution to the "family" plan. And the $60 a month that her employer kicks into the HSA can only legally be spent on J's healthcare, not the sprog's--ironically, since the two adults in the family have basically stopped going to the doctor because it's already too expensive.

As you know, women can't do math. I got through calculus OK, but this shite is hurting my tender women-brains. Anybody who has any opinions on which is the better bum deal for us is welcome to weigh in.

Emily Rooney Could Use Some Anger Management

Here are some things that women, despite their general reputation for meekness and milksoposity, occasionally do:

"...have violent revenge fantasies
...make disparaging comments about immigrants
...make cranky-old-guy comments about new things
...make sweeping generalizations about gender"

That's from a sharp-eyed reader commenting on Emily Rooney's strange, apoplectic rant about Balloon Boy on the WGBH website. For a Real Live News Reporter, she sounds kinda like one of those pajama-clad Internet crackpots we've been hearing about lately.

And there's this:

I actually have a fantasy that I'd like to make chicklets of Mayumi Heene's smile.

Oof.

Hat tip to Universal Hub.

Useless Reveal: Now With 50% More Gay

Remember the Useless Reveal? It's in the pages of this week's Phoenix. And it's wicked gay.

It’s just another Thursday night in South Boston.

Be calm, Reader, all is well. Or is it?

Local bars like the Boston Beer Garden and the Playwright are overstuffed with hard-drinking twenty- and thirtysomethings, mostly locals and the new crop of Southie transplants looking for a hookup.

In case you forgot what an ALTERNATIVE weekly we are, we threw some sex in.

The men are knuckling up to the bar, eyeing deals on pitchers of Miller Lite or Budweiser, scoping out prime real estate in front of a flat-screen TV to watch their favorite Boston sports team, and maybe even getting some love from one of the female hotties prancing around in skin-tight denim and low-cut halter tops.

More sex. More aimless verbiage. This is beginning to feel ominous.

The scene is similar at the Junction, another popular local watering hole. There’s a stench of beer and cologne in the air, pint glasses are being filled by the dozen, and the athletic attire that is the unofficial after-work uniform of the Southie male is everywhere in sight. But something seems off in this prototypical pub in the heart of historically xenophobic South Boston.

Uh-oh.

Maybe it’s this: almost every guy in the Junction tonight is gay.

KABLOOM! KABLAM! Mind: FUCKING BLOWN! IT CANNOT BEEEEEEEEE!

My Southie bawnanraised ex-girlfriend is going to have a goddamn field day with this.

Thanks to expert spotters Adam and Julia for finding this splendid specimen.

The Following Things Are For Men

Science fiction, engineering, know-how, design, coolness, lightning, thunder, beer, GM, America.

Whereas, in contrast, these things are for women:

Environmentalism, organics, food co-ops, that which is emo, Europe.

Thanks for clarifying that for us, Slate.

The Ardipithecus Chronicles: Special Women Edition

The NYT had a nice package this weekend on Ardipithecus ramidus, an astounding new Ethiopian hominid discovery. (Ardipithewhatzis? If this is news to you, you live under a rock and should get out more.)

Like the last big human-ancestor fossil find, Lucy, Ardi is a woman sort of hominid. (A womanid?) And you just don't get to be a big deal newspaper editor person without acquiring a deep, deep need to sling gratuitous puns, wisecracks and perky asides at every single female-type thing that passes within reach of your grasping inky paws. They had to go there.

Forget the high heels; her feet had no arches (Lucy’s did).

Was that really necessary?

Distaff Gator Slayers!

For real.

Gators, beware: There are predators stalking the swampland of the South, capable of bringing down creatures up to four times their weight. These menacing forces have bows in their hands. And occasionally in their hair.

Today's shot of breathless incredulity with an "OMG, girlz" chaser courtesy of Sports Illustrated.

Welcome To The Borg, Martha Coakley

When Globe reporter Matt Viser came a-calling on our esteemed A.G. the other day for a story about her U.S. Senate candidacy, she apparently told him to take a hike.

Coakley, the first woman to serve as Massachusetts attorney general, declined requests for an interview yesterday.

Well, if she thought that would stop Viser from writing a great fat Women Do story about her, she was sorely mistaken. "Powerful Women Line Up For Coakley," the article promises, and gets off to a rousing start with a quote from state Senate president Therese Murray:

“There’s just a real sense of excitement that she’s qualified and she’s got the whole package,’’ said Senate President Therese Murray. “Women have never been at this point in Massachusetts before for this office.’’

How true that is, President Murray. As a woman, I feel I am at a whole different point in Massachusetts today, thanks to Martha Coakley and her exciting package, for whom I have reserved the right not to vote, on account of I feel I need a little more information on the topic than the (admittedly well-sourced) rumor that she possesses certain ladybits.

As the story continues, it quickly rambles off into the meta-weeds with a lot of Globe-style handwringing from various commenters about whether or not it is proper for a woman, as a woman, to be campaigning for another woman qua woman and not qua office-seeker, despite or perhaps because of anyone's possession of ladybits, all the while firmly maintaining one's conviction that indeed Ms. Coakley is the best pol of any sex for the job, but unfortunately one's fellow voting-women are so dumb they have to be beat over the head with a giant vagina every November. Capiche?

Viser explains with less verbiage:

But much as Clinton did, Coakley faces a complex calculus. Her supporters and campaign aides want women voters, but they don’t want to be seen as courting them on gender alone.

Well, too bad, ladies of the Borg. Thanks to the Globe, now we all know you just want to get in our pants. Our hot, voting lady pants.

In other Women Borg news, Jezebel has a zippy little tirade today about media accounts of mean girls on both sides of the pond. A sample:

Anyway, according to these articles, women have some special bond through our giant shared vagina which means everything is automatically peaches and cream between all of us, and if someone is ever mean or nasty, this is to be ascribed to the entire gender.

I am not entirely sure I approve of the mixed metaphor, though there is a certain juicy felicitousness about it.

Patience Is A Virtue For Shooting Things Dead

Women: They're better at killing stuff in the woods. Increasingly. Exponentially, even. It must be because of their wise, gentle, patient, practical, all-knowing, compassionate, humble, superior Goddess-nature.

Jeanine Elias says women make good hunters because she believes they're more patient than men, and their expectations are lower.

"They don't have this idea of, 'I got to have this perfect rack on my wall,' " Elias said. "When I go hunting, I'm not looking for the perfect rack on a deer. I'm looking for meat."

Oh, the soft bigotry of lowered expectations. (I'm not sure that's relevant here. I just like saying it. It's the best thing that ever came out of Dubya's mouth by a long shot.)

How's this for a trend: Increasingly, I'm getting really bloody tired of all these backhanded compliments, all this noble-savage talk about women being superior at basically everything because of some trumped-up essential quality we are universally presumed to possess. And the sloppy use of the word "exponentially" in news reports. I'm getting tired of that, too.

Depart from us, NPR, we never knew ye.

Women Exacerbate Dairy Crisis

As you all know, unless you have been living under the proverbial rock these last twelve months, we are in the End Times--or, if not the End Times, perhaps their darling Victorian antechamber, where we will have a glass of sherry and have a look at some etchings before the butler arrives to usher us into the Apocalypse Proper. Odds are you've got it pretty bad. But unless you're a dairy farmer, it could be worse.

(I'm guessing you're not a dairy farmer, because if you are, you're probably not reading blogs about newspapers writing about women doing things. You're probably at your bank begging for a loan so you can buy hay to feed your cows so they'll make milk which you can sell to a giant monopoly that is currently under investigation by the Justice Department so you can maybe make back half of the money you spent on hay. Or you're at your 40-hour-a-week day job that you have so you can get health insurance, popping Ritalin so you can make it through the day and still get up at 4am to milk 100 goddamn cows. Or maybe you're out shooting your cows in the head.)

Being a dairy farmer? Not so hot right now. And it's about to get a lot worse, thanks to women. Women cows, that is.

The New York Times tells the tale for us citified types that haven't heard it yet. Since approximately the dawn of time, cows, like most animals, have been giving birth to male and female calves in roughly equal numbers. But a male calf on a dairy farm is, as Rip Torn might say, about as useful as a poopy-flavored lollipop. So a few years ago, Science gave the beleaguered dairy farmer marvelous new sperm sorting technology, ensuring that most calves born would be female.

Now farmers have a different problem: too much milk. And the first generation of bionic bovine fembots are about to hit the milk parlor, with a vengeance.

“Just as the industry starts to recover from these difficult times, we’re going to see these heifers enter the marketplace,” said Ray Souza, president of Western United Dairymen, which represents farmers who produce about 60 percent of the milk in California. “At the very worst it could certainly stop the recovery altogether and send us into another price recession.”

It's like the Chinese one-child policy, only with cows. Thanks a lot, Science.

for weak women.

who knew we've been sick all along? quelle horreur!



a brilliant find to kick off a female-forward week.

purchase print of original collage for $24 at the paper apartment (because women do become artists in allston)

Arrrrrr!

In honor of Talk Like A Pirate Day, please enjoy this Women Do Stuff At Sea story from the AP. It's pretty well-done--no grossly fruity verbiage or cutesiness, just the facts, ma'am. Its hero is Aysun Akbay, a 24-year-old Turkish third officer aboard the MV-Horizon 1, which has been hijacked by Somali pirates.

The pirates told Aysun that she could call her family when she wants because she is a woman, but Aysun calls us only when others get the chance to call their families too. She tells us not to worry," said her sister, Aysen.

A little old-fashioned, these pirates.