The Breeders

This just in from Portland, ME: Women are capable of engaging in various artistic and cultural pursuits, even if they are also simultaneously performing functions common to all animal life forms, such as respiration, digestion and reproduction.

In other words: Moms Rock.

Salli Wason is a Portland mother of two precocious teenage daughters. She breeds her many bands as lovingly as her kids, having helped form Hatchetface, Man-Witch, and Hessian. She looks a bit like a biker chick, but not the kind who rides behind anybody.

When do we get to be people, Pinky?

Hegans

The Globe's latest "Most Clicked" bait: Men leave their own mark on veganism.

Taylor Wells, who owns the cafe and yoga enterprise with her hegan husband, Philippe, estimates that 10 to 15 percent of their customers are hegans. “We get men who come in who want to cleanse and feel good. We like to ease them into it. I think the word vegan gets a bad rap, it sounds very militant and angry,’’ says Wells.

Anything I might add would be utterly superfluous.

Anyway, I hear Bostonist is going to rip this thing a new one shortly.

Reporter Blows Entire Lifetime Allotment of Commas in One Go

I would like to call your attention to this story, "A woman surfaces in the Hudson River landscape."

Not because it's a Women Do, but because it's truly a stunning piece of work. It tacks back and forth between commas and em-dashes like a drunken mule on a pile of rocks.

Because of its locale, Cragsmoor — like Palenville — enjoyed an early period as an artists’ colony, with names like E. L. Henry, Frederick Dellenbaugh, George Inness, and, later on, Charles Courtney Curran bringing the attention of the nation to the raw beauty and majestic landscape that is literally perched atop Ordovician pebble soil — a distinctly different look and feel to the lay of the land than anywhere else in the Hudson Valley.

It has such an air of demented melancholy to it. If I were smarter, I would build a robot that could write like that and make it answer all my emails.

Women Die in Ignominy

Mary Daly died this week in a nursing home in Gardner.

If this is the first you've heard of Mary Daly, that's because they don't teach squat to the youth of today. And because the New York Times is run by stone-cold bitches.

Does it strike anyone else as odd that the last century's boldest, toughest, most ferociously crucified, most unapologetically singular feminist philosopher didn't get an obit in the Times yesterday? They can't really claim ignorance, seeing as how they still own the Boston Globe, which saw fit to inform us in an obit that, despite being a tad on the bland side, at least had the requisite heft for a Public Figure.

If you'd like to get an idea of what Mary Daly is to contemporary feminist thought and theology, I recommend you go to the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard and pay a respectful visit to the prize of the fossil room, the sea-going Jabberwock, Kronosaurus queenslandicus. Take along a copy of the February 26, 1996 issue of the New Yorker, in which Daly recounts her epic battles with Boston College, God and the all-pervasive patriarcho-industrial complex. "Sin Big," she urges us. Look at those teeth.

One wonders just what a lady has to do to get obitularimazised in the New York Times these days. Run a strip joint for her ass of a husband, maybe. Yep. That'd do it.

**UPDATE!** Oh, look here! Somebody dredged up a teensy little AP item!

**UPDATE UPDATE!** Haw. The AP item linked above just tripled in size while I was linking to it. Somebody's playing catch-up.

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.