Dogged Blog

New Media God: Stephen Colbert

I resisted as long as I could. His show hits some highs but is kind of uneven.  (Although "The Word" is well... word.)

But those days of resistance are over, futile as if he were the Borg Queen herself. Stephen Colbert has balls the size of all outdoors, and he faced a hostile and unamused crowd at the White House Correspondents Dinner last night and stabbed them in the heart over and over and over while they Did. Not. Laugh. (Although the most evil justice in America, Antonin Scalia, did laugh, which confused me terribly.)

But you will laugh, because you aren't the one he was stabbing and it was deliciously and rapturously funny. And I don't always think Colbert's jokes work. And given that the crowd was so cold (I mean, BUSH was sitting there, talk about a buzzkill), how he kept his mojo going is beyond me.

Crooks and Liars has video (thanks, Gina!). News Hounds ("We watch FOX so you don't have to") has commentary and more links. Democratic Underground has the complete transcript. And Dogged has a new Media God.

[Updated and more links]: Shakespeare's Sister gives Colbert an award for the size of his balls and raves and summarizes at Big Brass Blog, too:

Colbert was like a fucking pitbull who latched onto Bush’s jugular and proceeded to gnaw on it for 15 minutes, then turned on the press and slaughtered them, too. It was fucking unbelievable. It was brutal, painful to watch. No one was laughing, because it wasn’t funny. It was the fucking truth—and it was awesome.

Throughout the entire thing, he would periodically look evenly at Bush, holding his gaze and addressing him directly as “Mr. President.” Bush looked back at him with a face of stone (save for one time when Colbert flubbed a set-up). Standing in front of a room full of people who didn’t, couldn’t, laugh, letting them have it with everything he’s got, sweating bullets, Colbert would look dead at Bush and never blink. It was so brave.

And I had so much traffic coming in from a search for "Colbert" I had to check Technorati... "Colbert" and "Stephen Colbert" are currently their top searches. Snort.

And the mainstream media is still dismissing this and saying he bombed.

Searching

It's always fun to look at what search terms people are using to find my blog.

Mainstream political terms used to be big big big, but have dropped off a lot, both because I blog less about mainstream politics and because it's that awkward time in the election cycle when less is going on. But of course, my frequent digs at that asshole in the white house get big returns; my number one search term is ITMFA (Impeach the Motherfucker Already). Remind me to blog about that more, I love saying it.

As I discovered ever since I started blogging more about music and entertainment media, lots of folks are out there searching for "P!nk," "Dear Mr. President,"  "Queer as Folk," "Gale Harold," "Xena," "Brian and Justin," "Dixie Chicks," "Not Ready to Make Nice, "iPod," and the various titles of songs in my iPod Friday challenges. Those terms are currently bringing around one quarter of the traffic from search engines, maybe a bit more (not one quarter of the traffic to my blog itself - just of hits that come from search engine results. Most traffic to my blog doesn't have a referrer, which I think means it's coming from bookmarks and email links).

I tend to think those "entertainment" people aren't likely to become regular readers of my blog, although I know at least two that are commenting, so I could be wrong (bound to happen someday). After all, it's not like I don't actually love me some Xena and of course, no need to even ask how I feel about my iPod, I named a whole blog category after it. Those searching on "Gale Harold" won't be so happy, as all I ever do is comment on how the man cannot dance. But yes, yes, teh hawtness, I know, I know. Calm down. I even updated this post with a picture of your guy to make you happy.  (Is it only straight women who could think a man who can't dance could possibly be hot? And speaking of the ability to dance, it's amazing to me that NO ONE has ever found my blog searching on hip hop belly dancing.)

The names of my media gods are searched for a lot... Jon Stewart (genuflect when you say that name), Lara Logan, Helen Thomas. Lately I've noticed some searches for Mark Morford bringing traffic here; I hope this means he's becoming better known cuz he's my hero.

"Pit bull" brings a lot of hits here, and many searches that include "pit bull" in them. From the context I'd say nearly all these are responsible pit bull owners ... I'm not getting many "dogs fighting" type searches. That makes me happy, because I'm a big fan of the bull breeds and anything I can do to help the PR nightmare they are trapped in, I'm glad to do.

Osteosarcoma and amputation and three legged dogs ... I lost my dog Raven to this horrible cancer last summer, and her section of my blog gets a lot of traffic from people searching for information on it. Her story ended unhappily, but I hope that the people searching have better outcomes than we did.  I also get a number of hits to an article about her death, called "How Long Do Dogs Live?", from people searching for that phrase. While my article is not about the lifespan of the dog, but a tribute to Raven, I hope that they find something they might not have been looking for.

Dog terms in general are big... veterinarian, raw diet, training issues, "are dogs omnivores or carnivores?", "deerhounds." Also, a fair amount of hits from "puppy shots," "dog vaccinations," "rabies shots;" although I rarely write about those subjects here (much more so on my website, where "puppy shots" and "vaccinations" take turns being my number one search term), it seems a lot of people find my blog with those terms too.

And of course, my all time favorite searches, the ones on "Dogged Blog" and/or "Christie Keith." Since there's no money in this, I'll have to settle for fame.

So, if you have a blog or website and track your referrers, how do people find you on the search engines?

Just Kill Me

Like forty bazillion other bloggers, I linked last week to the video of P!nk singing "Dear Mr. President" on YouTube. For some reason I clicked over there again just now, and read this comment, posted 44 minutes ago (didn't see a way to link directly to the comment itself):

I am 65 years old and have seen a great deal in my lifetime, but I have never seen such stubborness and arrogance in a President until Bush. Pink is not on my list of preformers, but she tells the truth in this song and does it beautifully. Notice my screen name. It is imissmyson. Dear Mr. President, where are your daughters while you dare to send our children into harms way for greed? You are guilty of not being the Christian you claim to be.

If the song hadn't already gotten the tears going, that would have done it.

Guest Blogging at Big Gay Picture

The boys over at the Big Gay Picture had an estrogen shortage and I offered to lend a, er, hand, something like that anyway  ...  I'll be guest blogging there this month, please bookmark it and come visit several time a day and post lots of comments about how great I am. They posted a welcome here, but I do want to clarify I really didn't say I'd cut out his kidneys.

[Update:] I made my first post. I know you'll be shocked when you see what it's about.

When Politics and Fandom Collide

Archive of Big Gay Picture post

I thought it was fitting that just before I got here, there was a spurt of posts and comments about homophobia in Star Trek fandom. While I was not a Trekker - I've never been to a Trek convention despite having been able, in the eighth grade, to recite "The Trouble With Tribbles" by heart - I did experience fandom insanity once, in 1995 when I first watched (be still my heart) Xena: Warrior Princess. (Did anyone seriously think I was going to NOT find a way to use a photo of Xena and Gabrielle in my first post?)

Fandom is a strange little universe that those who aren't part of it can find hard to understand. In fact, back when I was a Xenite, many of the conventions of today's fandom didn't exist - for instance, the special dialect, littered with gratuitous exclamation!points, alternate spellings of words (teh hawtness!), onomatopoeic vocabulary (guh), and acronyms that even I, a professional editor, couldn't reason out and had to look up on Wikipedia (OTP, BFF). But one thing came into existence first in Trek fandom, blew up into a huge political battle in Xena fandom, and continues to rage today in fandoms all over the fandom!universe: the idea that Our Heroes might be queer.

Of course, some of our heroes ARE queer, indisputably so (what the fandom calls "canon"): Willow and Tara, excuse me, Willow/Tara, from Buffy: the Vampire Slayer, Brian/Justin from Queer as Folk. (In fandom, all sexual pairings are indicated by a slash - although if Xena/Gabrielle or Willow/Tara or Brian/Justin are teh hawtness, the original "slash" was Kirk/Spock and that one to me is just teh horror.) Along with anger that gay fans actually wanted to see gay people on Star Trek, was violent outrage at the existence of Kirk/Spock "slash" fiction. But if that was the first round of this fight, it reached its zenith with the war between texters and sub-texters in Xena fandom.

"Text" is the literal interpretation of what you see, fandom fundamentalism if you will. Xena and Gabrielle might be nekkid in the hot tub talking about whether or not that slippery thing under the water is the soap, but Nothing. Is. Going. On. "Sub-text" is the outrageous idea that when two women sleep in each other's arms next to the campfire every freaking night and repeatedly die for each other across even alternate times and universes, they might possibly also do the wild thing now and then.

I once interviewed Liz Friedman, the openly lesbian producer of Xena, and read other interviews with her and the writers, creators, and cast members of the show, including Lucy Lawless (Xena) and Renee O'Connor (Gabrielle), and there is no question at all that the sub-textual lesbian relationship between Xena and Gabrielle was deliberate. They have all acknowledged it, over and over again. But this didn't keep the anti-subtext crowd from getting ever more agitated over the suggestion that the gals are more than friends. Back in the day, the battles over this issue tore newsgroups, forums, and email lists apart. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that whole towns and villages were destroyed over it. It was ugly.

Just as it's hard to understand how a liberal Utopian world like the Star Trek universe could attract so many uptight, even conservative, fans, you have to wonder how an ass-kickingly feminist show like Xena could attract so many anti-gay fans, but it did. Statements along the lines that the thought of Xena and Gabrielle having sex made people sick do more than make me shake my head in bewilderment, they underscore the visceral nature of homophobia in our culture. These women felt we were taking their show away, something they treasured, by even suggesting that behind all that sub-textual smoke there was some real fire.

Were all the sub-texters lesbians? I don't think so, but most of them certainly were, as are most Willow/Tara fans (with a good sprinkling of gay men for both). Which brings us to what may be the single most unusual fandom on earth, that of Queer as Folk's Brian/Justin. Like Kirk/Spock slashers, Brian/Justin fans are almost exclusively straight women. Unlike Kirk/Spock slashers, Brian/Justin fans have actual footage of their heroes doing it. Over and over and over, in fact. And unlike with Xena, QAF's writers never heard of "subtext"; Brian/Justin fans have five years worth of fucking, right there in the canon. But when I first discovered straight woman Brian/Justin fandom in February, while trying to google out what happened in the not-yet-out-on-DVD fifth season of Queer as Folk, I was, to be honest, really grossed out. Let's face it: the bazillions of red state, red-necked, NASCAR-watching, beer guzzling straight men who get off on the thought of two women together doesn't exactly predispose me to warmth at the eroticization/romanticization of same-sex couplings by straight people. I mean, why weren't these fans off writing Donna/Josh fanfiction on the West Wing sites like all the other straight women?

While I can't answer that question, I did discover something about Brian/Justin straight women fans, and that is that politically, they are the most pro-gay straight people you'll ever meet other than maybe Gavin Newsom and P!nk. (Did anyone think I'd not find a way to get a mention of P!nk into my first post?) Perhaps they would phrase it more that "Any law or public policy that might interfere with teh hawtness is wrong," but either way, after I poked a stick at the fandom on my blog one day and got descended on by a swarm of angry Brian/Justin fans in my comments section, I learned how wrong a girl can be. Mea culpa. I still think fanfiction is teh horror - ALL fanfiction, including and perhaps most especially Xena/Gabrielle - but you Brian/Justin ladies are ok by me politically. (Why I thought conservative right wing Republicans would even be watching QAF in the first place is a good question, but then again, I still don't get why conservatives and homophobes are watching Trek or Xena, either.)

My personal revulsion at the thought of Kirk and Spock having sex at all, with each other or anyone else, precludes my making any kind of analysis of the political leanings of slash fic authors; I'll have to leave that to someone else.

Here, have some gratuitous Friday eye candy. Oh, teh hawtness.

It's Friday I Must Play With my iPod

Too bad for my strict "no cheating" rule on iPod Fridays .... because there's a song I really like and if it had come up in the shuffle,  I could have just sort of mentioned it in passing, off handedly, but now I have to actually come out and tell you, and it's horribly embarrassing because it's just.... well, it's by Rihanna, the world's best hip hop belly dancer. OK, the only one, but if there were a million, she'd be the best.

Her song " SOS" came out on iTunes this week (a mere, what, two months after it was released? iTunes so does not heart dance music), and for some reason (money?) she just redid the video for it for the Nike website. I didn't like the original video, kinda trampy and no belly dancing, but the Nike video is very very very good. Well, I really have no idea if the video is good or not, I haven't been able to take my eyes off the hip hop belly dancing. If that sort of thing appeals to you (and if not, what on earth is wrong with you?), you can find directions on how to look at the video here.

Now, back to the Friday challenge, stolen from Roxanne.

Set your MP3 player to randomly shuffle. List the first ten songs, NO CHEATING. Here's mine for today:

1. Mothers Talk (Remix) - Tears for Fears
2. Getting Away With It - Electronic
3. Ashes To Ashes - David Bowie       
4. Birthday Boy - Pet Shop Boys
5. Wasting My Time   - Kosheen
6. Dirty Old Town - Pogues            
7. Ray of Light (Club Mix)    - Madonna       
8. Dance Me To The End Of Love - Leonard Cohen
9. Cry So Easy (Acoustic) - Erasure   
10. Come Back from San Francisco - The Magnetic Fields

I also had to go to Berkeley for an editorial meeting at Bark on Wednesday, and on the way home I set my iPod to play all my songs in alphabetical order. I skipped several I wasn't in the mood to hear. It was a two hour and fifteen minute drive.

And when I got home I was still on the As. I'm starting to think Gina may be right that I'm taking this all way, way too far.

One Less Little Brown Dog

Sometimes I'm really sure I've written just about every kind of article, tribute, memorial, or post that can be written about a dog who has died, other than poetry and I don't do poetry.

Tonight all I want to say is we said goodbye to my cattle dog/Chessie mix Scarlett today, and she was the Smartest. Dog. Ever.

Gold Star for Cafe Press

Now and then I like to use my powers for good. Not often.

Cafe Press rocks. I bought a tshirt from one of their merchants and the catchy anti-Bush slogan on it was off-center. I emailed them, they emailed me back the next day telling me a replacement was on its way and to just keep the defective one. It was even a personal, well-written, and slightly witty letter.

Didn't anyone tell them you can't run a business that way?

Smart Medicine: An opinionated, unconventional, and somewhat cranky guide to finding excellent veterinary care for your dog

I posted this at Nancy Campbell RVT's Vet Techs blog, where I write mostly about veterinary drugs but sometimes things like this, too:

I’d like to make the radical suggestion that you select your veterinarian on the basis of how well they practice veterinary medicine. Because trust me – if you want easy parking, low cost, and a nice bedside manner, you can get it from just about anyone who likes pets. The thing you can only get from a vet is medical expertise.

More here.

Huh?

Cross-posted at Club Kingsnake.

Via WiredBlog from News.com:

For the last few years, a coalition of technology companies, academics and computer programmers has been trying to persuade Congress to scale back the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Now Congress is preparing to do precisely the opposite. A proposed copyright law seen by CNET News.com would expand the DMCA's restrictions on software that can bypass copy protections and grant federal police more wiretapping and enforcement powers.

What does this have to do with music?

From WiredBlog:

If you're feeling guilty about all the music you're downloading without paying for it, perhaps reading about new attempts to double down on the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) will help assuage that guilt. The "Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2006" includes some frightening expansions of current anti-piracy efforts, making it illegal to "make, import, export, obtain control of, or possess" anything that can be used to circumvent copyright protection. It also allows authorities to use wiretaps whenever copyright infringement is suspected (as opposed to in general, without permission?), doubles copyright-related prison terms, allows for the seizure and destruction of anything used for copyright infringement, and more.

From BoingBoing:

The new law would send you to prison for attempting to infringe copyright. It would make it even more illegal to own tools that could be used to remove copy-restrictions, like DVD-ripping software -- it could even bust Symantec for making software that removed the Sony rootkit malicious software that the company distributed with its CDs last year.

And why are they doing this? Back to WiredBlog:

According to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the problem is that the money made by infringing businesses is being used "quite frankly, to fund terrorism activities." Sure, buddy.

I'm trying to comprehend where the money comes in with peer to peer sharing .... but OK. Go delete Limewire from your computer right now or the terrorists win.