Gender and Nike Shox Cog

I know I should be used to blatantly stupid gender nonsense by now, but the two commercials that I just saw for Nike Shox Cogs just really pissed me off.

MALE RUNNER: side shot of guy running on treadmill with wilderness sort of landscape beyond the treadmill. An ostrich is running beside the guy, and he keeps increasing the speed on the treadmill cuz, of course, he wants to run faster than the ostrich. He is ahead, but just so. Thank goodness for Nike Shox Cog.

FEMALE RUNNER: front shot of woman running on treadmill with complete black backdrop behind her. Disembodied eyeballs on the backdrop fly forward towards her. She sees them and must run faster to keep away from the freaky scary evil eyeballs.

Let’s pretend that the front shot of the woman was required because the thing she was outrunning was behind her, rather than beside her as was the case for the male. I’ll pretend it had nothing to do with wanting to watch her b00bs bounce. But please God, women have to have Nike Shox Cog so that they can outrun evil? Women have to buy Nike Shox Cog because they are being terrorized while men are apparently just getting in touch with their animal instincts? If I had any Nike’s in the house, I would put them in the trash. I swear. I am so pissed off.

It may actually be worse too. The male runner is black. I didn’t pay enough attention to the background—was it supposed to be Africa? Is Nike saying something horrible about black men and animals that I don’t really want to think about? You know I’d tell myself that I’m overanalyzing but given the commercial with the woman, how can I believe that Nike isn’t the spawn of Satan?

If a person writes when the server is down does anyone read it?

So I’ve been waiting as patiently as a woman without her server can. It feels like it’s been at the very least 4 or 5 months. In reality, the server has only been AWOL since Wednesday afternoon. Fortunately, I had backups of the files I was actively revising on my laptops; so I can keep writing. I was lucky though. I had been uploading copies of the book chapters to tengrrl.com to transfer them from the work computer to the home computer.
Or you might say I was UNlucky since I don’t have that excuse to procrastinate. I figure I can use the “I’m so depressed that the server is down that I can’t write another word” excuse though if procrastination really needs to be accomplished.

I have actually been making progress. I’ve stopped moving paragraphs around in the first two sections, having finally figured out how they fit together and which parts go in which section. I’m into the 3rd chapter now. I fear it’s going to be the longest, and right now it feels impossibly so. I have 11 characteristics to work through. So far I have only one completed. Time to go back to characteristic two, I guess.

Current status
Pages: 20 of the needed 125 (16%)
Words: 4059

Straight, Gay or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited – New York Times

I just wanted to have an entry that said: “a team of psychologists directly measured genital arousal patterns.” If that’s not a euphemism, I don’t know what is.

Dear Blog: Today I Worked on My Book

The New York Times > Technology > Dear Blog: Today I Worked on My Book:

Okay, so it’s not really about me and the book; but it could be. That is if you count cutting and pasting things together 18hundred different ways instead of actually typing anything new writing.

“you can’t go back”

For children and technology

I’m certain that this Calvin and Hobbes comic fits into my children and technology collection :-)

Gay men would never be caught in something with popped collars, let alone fluorescent green polo shirts.

Greenlighters | MetaFilter

Exceptionally Productive

I’ve been quite busy getting work finished for our first ReadWriteThink content report of FY06. We added several Web sites to the Web Resources Gallery:

• Ohio Center for the Book
• Dickinson Electronic Archives
• NYPL Digital Gallery
• The Walt Whitman Archive
• Publishers’ Bindings Online 1815-1930: The Art of Books
• Newseum

I composed a lesson plan, which actually includes a List of Ten. The 9–12 lesson Star-Crossed Lovers Online: Romeo and Juliet for a Digital Age includes a list of Modern-Day Interpretation Projects (It’s a PDF). I plan to add it specifically to the Lists page, but I’m just listing it here for now. I have some additional ideas to add to the list of interpretation (e.g., create the cell phone address book of one of the characters, complete with icons and custom ringtones). There may be a second list of interpretations eventually. While the lesson plan uses Romeo and Juliet for the examples, I’ve written the Projects so that they use the word “text” rather than name the work that is involved—that way anyone can use them with any “older” text.

Tags: English language arts |
K12 instruction | lesson plan | Lists of Ten |
ReadWriteThink | Romeo and Juliet |