Here's 1800 bucks those charities won't get.

Every year in Madison, there's a "Brat Fest," with a local company selling bratwurst for charity. It's grown into a big event -- bands play and people leave work early to go buy brats and all -- and although I don't go myself and don't really like it and get sick of hearing about it, it's for a good cause and people enjoy it so I try not to hate it too much.

But this year, Brat Fest took $1800 from charities for no reason whatsoever. It seems that any group or person who wants to can pay to have the spotlights that shine on Wisconsin's Capitol turned a specific color -- say, pink to promote breast cancer awareness (and, really, aren't we all by now aware of that issue?) -- or any other color you want. All the person has to do is pay $1800 or so to make the overlays that turn the spotlights the color you want.

Enter Brat Fest, and screw the charities: Brat Fest is a charity festival that gets tons and tons and tons of free promotion; you literally cannot avoid hearing about it in the week before Memorial Day and over the Labor Day weekend. News crews stop by; radio DJs volunteer for it. Newspapers cover it. It's everywhere.

Brat Fest doesn't need more publicity. But that didn't stop the charity owners from shelling out $1800 to turn the Capitol dome yellow for two weeks.

Look, the turn-the-Capitol-a-color is a stupid thing already. How are we supposed to know that blue means "Help fight Child Abuse?" But turning the Capitol Dome yellow for Brat Fest is extra-stupid and hateful; it does nothing. It doesn't say Come to Brat Fest and it doesn't promote it in any way (and it kind of looks urine-colored, which may detract), and for those who say "Well, it got more news coverage so it's kind of like buying advertising," ... NO! Brat Fest already gets more coverage than it could possibly use. It can't be covered any more thoroughly.

What really happened is that the people who run Brat Fest decided that $1800 would be better spent on two weeks of yellow spotlights than on the charities that are supposed to benefit from the festival. Nice work, guys. I hope the orphans/battered wives/cancer survivors appreciate those spotlights.)

Looking for new posts? Find out why the delay here.

In related news, I intend to have my cats circulate a petition against highway expansion. (Cute! And Socially Responsible!)

I'm going to take a break from Lena Chen for a while (as I consider how to respond to her latest response) to provide you this latest person to hate. Shown in this picture (picture from The Wisconsin State Journal)...


Is young "Maggie Lee," who is pictured speaking to the Madison City Council last night (May 18). What is she talking about? Barbie collections? A playground in her neighborhood?

Both good guesses -- and both wrong. But if you said "Young Maggie Lee Is Reading Note Cards Prepared By Her Stupid Parents about a controversial hotel redevelopment project," give yourself an A+ today.

Maggie Lee read, in a stammering-too-cutesy voice, her parents thoughts about the redevelopment. I know they were her parents (not-too-coherent) thoughts because Young Maggie Lee is six years old. Which means that Young Maggie Lee has absolutely no idea what the project was about.

Maggie Lee was put up there by her worse-than-idiotic parents in what was obviously less a chance to stop the hotel project and more a desperate bid to snag Maggie Lee a spot on a Disney TV show (Sonny With A Chance Of Zoning Changes?).

I have no idea what this was supposed to accomplish, but I know what it did accomplish: it made Maggie Lee's parents look even dumber than they obviously already are -- and emphasized that if Maggie Lee grows up to be a productive citizen, it will be a miracle entirely unrelated to her parents.

____________________________________________________________________

Lena Chen has thrown down the gauntlet (and will probably sell her challenge as a 3-part series in Cosmo Girl.)

Yesterday's post about Lena Chen "rediscovering" some sort of morality for profit wasn't even a few hours old when I heard from Lena Chen, who took issue with me. Lena emailed me this:

___________________________________________________________
Saw your recent post and thought you might want to know that Slate completely mischaracterized both my personal life and the Rethinking Virginity conference. I'm not sure if you read the articles you cited in your piece, but they make it clear that I organized the conference on behalf of the Harvard College Queer Students & Allies, the undergraduate LGBTQ group of which I'm a board member.

This was not an event that I benefited from monetarily nor did I ask Slate to cover the event, though we invited campus and local media, such as The Boston Phoenix. Jessica Grose contacted me after she heard about the conference and wrote her piece largely about my personal life though none of the content of the conference had anything to do with that. Most of the event was aimed not at pushing abstinence (at all, for that matter) but aimed at incorporating queer perspectives into the conversation about sexuality.

If you could clarify to your readers that the conference was not aimed at promoting virginity -- or about me for that matter -- I would greatly appreciate it. And of course, if you have any further questions about the event, please feel free to get in touch. Cheers, Lena
_______________________________________________________

Before that email, I had skimmed some of Lena Chen's blog -- I'd never heard about her before reading the Slate piece at all -- and I'm not sure how Lena feels Slate mischaracterized her personal life. My impression of the blog was that it was a hodgepodge of photos of her dog, photos of her on vacation in skimpy clothing, recipes, and occasional stabs at sex talk. I didn't read anything in detail other than a few sentences in which she claimed someone had asked her boyfriend whether he was a rapper because he'd gotten an Asian girl, a story I immediately labeled as both false and stupid.

Lena doesn't say how Slate mischaracterized her personal life, though. But her claim that she did not benefit monetarily is misleading: she helped organize the conference for a group she's a member of -- and then posted about it, and was interviewed about it, and reposted about the interviews being all wrong, and then asked me to repost about the interviews being all wrong and my interviews being all wrong...

... and remember that Lena Chen is in this for profit. Everytime someone mentions Lena Chen her stock goes up and she stands to capitalize on it in some way - -the way those rock groups that play benefit concerts gain money from increaseds album or single sales. (The only rock group that doesn't cynically profit from nonprofits? Pink Floyd.)

Here's what I responded to Lena:

____________________________________________________________
I think you misunderstood both my point and Slate's. Slate's article was about how you (and other bloggers like you) could champion sex blogging and the libertine life; my own post made the all-too-real point that you are trend chasing -- in 2006 and 2007 you opened up your personal life as a sex blogger and openly hoped that doing so would get you book deals and publicity.

Now that appears not to have happened -- I'm not familiar with your personal employment or financial circumstances, although I did skim your blog yesterday -- and you (and other bloggers/writers mentioned in Slate) are publicly confessing that you've overshared and are regretting it and need to rethink your past positions. But to me, there's no difference between opening up your sex life for profit or opening up your "regretful new morality thoughts about sex" for profit.

While some might see this as an evolution of your thinking, I see it simply as an evolution of your JOB. Not that I mind people seeking a profit -- I practice law for profit, and I write for profit. What I mind is the idea that you are doing something revolutionary or worthwhile. You sold pictures and ideas of yourself naked and/or having sex for money; now you sell pictures of your recriminations for money.

How am I wrong about your motives? Glomming on to a cause for profit is not the same as promoting a new way of thinking. I'll continue to look over your blog and try to find evidence that supports you -- although I'm not a journalist and don't feel compelled to do so - -but if you can tell me why you think I"m misunderstanding your motives here, I'll consider that, too.

_____________________________________________________________

I'm not a journalist, by the way. I don't have to read Lena's no-doubt-boring-and-navel-gazelly article supporting whatever point she claims to be making. But I'll be fair:

Everything about Lena's life points to her decision to take whatever private thoughts or moments she's having, and to sell those private thoughts or moments for profit.

That's okay.

What's not okay is to pretend that you're not doing that, and that you have some higher cause. Prostitutes don't show up in misdemeanor court claiming they were striking a blow for women's rights, and Lena Chen should not be heard to claim that her flooding the internet with her sex talk and thereby destroying other careers for her is now a moral choice to rethink virginity.

It's not. But in fairness, Lena, if it's something more than that, show me the proof.

Quotent Quotables, Table of Contents

Jason Dufner is okay with losing, and that's why he lost.

NASCAR fans think drivers are athletes! Cute!

Back in the 70s, Chess was a MAN's sport.

Dan Patrick thinks that the Boston Celtics are going to revolt.

Tom Brady: kind of like Superman, only not really.

Radio announcers try to make the game seem more dramatic, but really?

Playoff losses hurt, as measured by someone who's obviously never been hurt.

How the NFL rules whether something's a catch or not.

Brett Favre= Saddam Hussein

Paul Pierce on how to play offense in the NBA.

John Isner doesn't like to win.

The Spanish beat the Dutch twice in one millenium.

John Daly knows how to warm up for a round of golf.

Mike Ditka demonstrates ESP.

Mike Greenberg has it both ways with rookie of the year vote.

Lena Chen & The Discovery Of New Morality: Coming soon to a bookshelf near you (for the right price.)

Recently, Slate asked the provocative (but dumb) question "Why is a former sex blogger rethinking virginity?"

The article then tries to conflate "a need for money and fame" into "an actual societal movement worth examining" by discussing how several women-who-used-sex-to-get-money-and-fame now realized that there's no longer much money, or fame, in that... so they're now not using sex to get those same things.

Put another way, Slate talked to people like Lena Chen, who started out trying to get rich and famous by talking about her sex life. Having not gotten rich and famous enough doing that, and having faced repercussions from people who thought it was, you know, slutty to post graphic sex pictures of herself, Lena Chen has now rediscovered money-grubbing attention grabbing.

Er... make that Lena Chen has now rediscovered virginity.

Lena now hosts, or sponsors, or something, a group intended to "make her lots of money while not being called slutty."

That's not what Chen says it's for, of course. Chen says her group is "aimed at challenging the heteronormative definitions of virginity and critiquing ar98w34uyakwjrefn.."

... sorry, I dozed off there and fell on my keyboard.

Chen backs up her position -- whatever position is hidden in academic gobbledygook -- by citing to herself.

No, I'm not kidding. Chen took issue with Slate's article (even though Slate's article does exactly what Chen wants, by providing her publicity in a non-slutty way), and said this:

_____________________________________________
The following articles dispute the validity of the Slate piece:
“Young Feminist Bashing: Rethinking Virginity Edition”, Shelby Knox, conference panelist, on her blog
“Everyone’s An Expert On Girls’ Sex Lives”, Tracy Clark-Flory on Salon
“A Different Take On ‘Rethinking Virginity’”, Lena Chen, event organizer, on Double X.
_______________________________________________

You can't go wrong citing yourself as an authority on why you're right, can you?

Look, Slate, and Lena Chen, for that matter: Lena Chen is no more interested in virginity, or sex, than Anne Heche was interested Ellen. People like Lena Chen used sex to try to get famous and rich -- and now that there are more famous slutty girls out there and Plan A didn't work, people like Lena Chen are using non-sex to get famous and rich. (See also: Lady GaGa.)

I don't hate her for wanting to be rich and famous. I don't hate her for using sex, or not having sex as her gimmick to be rich and famous.

I do hate her for pretending that there's some greater sociological reason that she's now promoting whatever fake social cause she claims to be into, and for pretending that she only just now realizes how important it is to this or that or the other thing.

People who want to promote social causes and do good with their lives don't do it in hopes of getting a 3-book deal. That's what Chen was looking for back when she was all about sex, and it's what she's looking for now, too. And when this doesn't work, watch for Chen to "discover" some new morals in herself that she didn't previously realize, and try to use those, too, to get rich.

You need a better stereo system. (Dude.)(I felt like that fit, there.)

It's easy to think that with mp3 players and all, there's no need for a good stereo system these days. After all, this isn't 1975 when you'd have a turntable and 8-track and those giant speakers; everything's small and self-contained nowadays.

But the fact that you can put 50,000 songs on an iPod doesn't mean you don't need a quality way to play them, and are you really getting that through your laptop speakers? Why not get yourself a decent system with some decent speakers and actually HEAR your music the way Radiohead wanted you to?

Or maybe you don't listen to Radiohead. Who knows? I don't really listen to them, either. But if you don't listen to Radiohead, then who DO you listen to? And wouldn't THEY want you to listen to their music on a good quality system? Yeah. I thought so.

The only cool prom dresses are those ones made of duct tape.

I'm pretty sure no teenagers read my blogs -- they're all too busy having identical hairstyles and no future -- but I would post this even if they did.

Teens, you are vapid and and shallow. And not qualified to work at Panera.

But we all knew that. What we didn't know was how vapid and shallow teens are, which is understandable because measuring teen stupidity is like trying to calculate the size of the universe: it's always expanding, at a prodigious rate.

The latest milestone hit in mindless teen idiocy: "Don't Copy My Dress" social networking sites.

The sites, described as "the creation of a few clever girls," are ...

Wait, did that say clever? Is there some little-known meaning of the word clever that I'm not familiar with? Because these sites aren't clever. They're dumb.

To teen girls: Pretending that wearing a mass-marketed dress you got off the rack at the mall makes you unique... and so unique that nobody should wear the same dress is mindless -- and especially so when you've spent 99.9% of your time trying to look exactly like everyone else.

Plus, the girls that actually put stuff on these sites are bitchy as heck.

People Before Pets, For Crying Out Loud! It's Not That Hard To Remember: People Before Pets.

Remember those two guys who felt their dog was more important than actual living human beings? Turns out they could have formed a club, a club for people without consciences.

The Consumerist reported that horrible "human beings" Josiah Allen and Erin Docking found a loveable stray dog while vacationing in Mexico. Apparently because a shot glass from "Hard Rock Puerta Vallarta" wouldn't be memorable enough, they decided to bring the dog home as a souvenir, getting him shots and preparing to pay freight charges to ship the puppy back to Seattle, or Detroit, or Canada, or wherever it is they were raised to have no regard for human dignity.

Then Delta Airlines lost the dog, resulting in the couple going public with how unhappy they were (because someone had denied them a momentary delight!) and news organizations from The Detroit News to CNN Headline News carrying the story.

As you consider whether the couple is just a whiny pair of spoiled kids, or actually selfish enough for a real hate, consider that this couple spent extra time and money and effort to try to bring a dog back from Mexico -- while ignoring the approximately 24 million Mexicans who live in poverty (not to mention the millions of Americans living in poverty.) For what these people have put into bringing a dog back from Mexico -- or not, in this case -- they could have probably fed a kid for a year.

Also: Wouldn't the dog be an illegal immigrant, taking jobs away from our American dogs?

Note: The selfish couple spent at least $176 trying to bring this dog back. There is a charity -- Child Aid -- whose mission is "to give children of the rural indigenous poor a fair chance in life." They help build libraries for poor people in central America, among other work. Imagine what $176 would do. I understand that Josiah and his girlfriend have been offered a pretty substantial contribution. Will they donate it to a worthy charity? Your guess is as good as mine. (My guess is no, because they're selfish people.)

I'm going to post my 2025 Mock Draft tomorrow.

Over the course of 3 days, from April 22 to April 24, 2010, the NFL did in three days what could probably be done in 1 hour: the teams selected their draft picks from this year's college class.

That's not why I'm hating people right now, though. I'm hating people right now because 3 days later, Sports Illustrated posted what might be the earliest ever mock draft -- for 2011.

Yep. Someone (Andrew Perloff, shown at right) at SI sat down and decided, before a single game is played -- either at the collegiate or pro level next year -- and before training camps are held, and before the players from this year's draft are signed -- what order they think college students will be drafted in next year.

What is the ($#(%&$ point of that? If that isn't the most pointless prediction ever, I don't know what might fill that slot. Speculating how college players will do, and how pro teams will finish, and who might retire and who might... oh, never mind.

Let me just put it this way: If we, as a society, have the time and money to pay someone to speculate like this, and we let them do it instead of demanding that something even a tiny bit useful be done, then we as a society might as well be taken over by the aliens Stephen Hawking fears in that joke he stole from Dane Cook. Because we as a society are dumb for allowing people to get away with year-in-advance mock drafts to be their job.

__________________________________

Claudius' path to the stars was lit by dreams, and painted in blood. Read Eclipse, available at Lulu.com
and on your Kindle.

I should, in fairness, mention that they also brought pictures drawn by 3rd graders.

I am not against charity.

But I am against stupidity.

So when I heard that the Haiti Medical Mission of Wisconsin, from Baraboo, had gone to Haiti, I thought "That's nice, helping out the Haitian Earthquake victims."

And then when I heard that the Haiti Medical Mission of Wisconsin, from Baraboo, had helped out Haitian earthquake victims by giving the autographed photos of Wisconsin Badger players I thought "Wait, what's that, now?"

I've never been in an earthquake. Or Haiti. So I'm going out on a limb by guessing that if the Haitians made a list of all the helpful things to bring them, Water, and medicine might be near the top, and Autographed pictures of a third-string tight-end on a Division I football team would be not even on the stupid list.

This will accomplish... nothing. Plus, it's not even proper Spanish.

The Phoenix Suns owner, Robert Sarvas, has announced that his team will wear Los Suns on its jerseys to "protest" the Arizona unconstitutional anti-immigration law.

That "protest" immediately took its place as the 1,732,233rd least effective protest -- ranking just below the time my grandma announced she wasn't going to shop at Walgreen's anymore.

The only thing that will be accomplished by the protest is to sell Los Suns jerseys to sports fans and protesters, making this a genius/hypocritical marketing move.

Also: The Suns in Spanish is Los Soles. Perhaps Sarvas could've asked one of his servants about that.

Gnus: Table of Contents

Baseball:

Stephen Strasburg's out. No, he's not. Maybe he is. Just buy a ticket.

Soccer Style:

Dung beetle opening ceremony at World Cup.

We Are Scientists made a world cup song.

Red Sea Buoys made a world cup song.

Football:

Big Ben "apologizes."

Albert Haynesworth didn't do nothin', gets $21 mil.

Legal updates: The Williamses, Plaxico's work release, and Michael Vick gets the facts right for the wrong case.

Fake Football:

Ahman Greens joins the UFL.

Tennis:

John Isner doesn't like to win.

Biking

Lance Armstrong No Longer Living Strong, Just Living.

Lacrosse:

The British are the only people who realize that saying you're a nation doesn't make you one.

Other Stuff?

Erin Andrews could only be doing better if Kanye interrupted her.

Erin Andrews not not talking about other women's stalkers.

I'm going to have to start a whole section just for dumb policing.

Stupidity and time-wasting by cops in Wisconsin aren't limited just to the City of Madison. The Town of Madison, wanting to get into the act, recently took $10,000 in state money and used it to post a plainclothes officer at an intersection. His assignment? To look into people's cars and see if they're wearing their seatbelts.

The Town Of Madison has some of Madison's most blighted areas and has 6 people on its "Most Wanted" list -- people wanted for sexual assault and reckless endangerment of safety. But most of the Town's "efforts" at "law enforcement" have been aimed at traffic- and seat-belt enforcement this year.

________________________________________________________________

All The People Who've Been Hated, In One Convenient List.

_________________________________________________________________

Claudius' path to the stars was marked in blood: Click here to read the chilling sci-fi novel Eclipse.

Although I don't like to wish harm on people, I really hope it was his relative in the ambulance.

This guy in the white truck:



Doesn't care if you live or die, so long as he gets to where he's going 3 seconds faster than he would have had he actually pulled over for the ambulance that passed us today on the Madison Beltline.

But he didn't pull over. I pulled over, and he swerved a little to his right, making the ambulance swerve around him, and then took advantage of my pulling over to pass me.

Note the lack of traffic around us. It wasn't busy, at all, on the road. He blocked the ambulance and ignored it because he's just that selfish.