"I have always been drawn to the women who can arouse this kind of vitriol. The kind of hate that seems too big and billowing..."

"... to be directed at just one woman, the kind that seems like a person or an entire society is vomiting out all its misogyny onto one convenient scapegoat. At some point � after successive Joan of Arc and Courtney Love phases � I started to see this position of feminine abjectness as a kind of superpower. A position from which a woman could offend far more deeply than a man."

From "Yoko Ono and the Myth That Deserves to Die," by Lindsay Zoladz in New York Magazine. Another excerpt:

As one of the few women associated with New York�s avant-garde music scene and the �neo-Dada� Fluxus movement, Ono was by then used to being overshadowed by the more powerful and self-serious men around her. (�I wonder why men can get serious at all,� she mused in Grapefruit. �They have this delicate long thing hanging outside their bodies, which goes up and down by its own will.�)

The Michigan Liquor Control Commission violated Flying Dog Brewery's First Amendment rights.

Said the United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit.

The Commission had barred sales of the company's Raging Bitch brand on the ground that the label � a Ralph Steadman drawing that might be seen as suggesting that beer could make you drunk � was "detrimental to the health, safety or welfare of the general public."



ADDED: Here's the PDF of the opinion. I love judicial description: "The label for 'Raging Bitch' beer depicts a wild dog presenting human female genitalia as well as possessing semblances of human female breasts."A taste of the facts:

Flying Dog�s CEO, James Caruso... stated that the company chose the �edgy� name and label because it reflected the nature of the Belgian yeast used to make the beer, and it promoted the Flying Dog brand. Caruso also represented that his employees��many ladies working with Flying Dog��and female customers in bars where Flying Dog conducted market research loved the label and thought it was humorous....

Click for more �

Allen Ginsberg "greeted them wearing nothing but boxer shorts on his head and a do not disturb sign hung on his penis."

Them = George Harrison and Pattie Boyd and John and Cynthia Lennon. 

The Beatles winced at this and left shortly afterwards, Lennon hissing at Allen, �You don�t do that in front of the birds.� It was their loss....

"One voter decided to draw a detailed representation of a penis instead of a cross in my box on one ballot paper."

"Amazingly, because it was neatly drawn within the confines of the box the returning officer deemed it a valid vote. I'm not sure the artist meant it to count, but I am grateful. If I knew who it was, I would like to thank him (or her) personally."

Said Glyn Davies, who won the Welsh seat of Montgomeryshire.

Neatly drawn within the confines of the box... I love that. Gives new meaning to the old expression "Dick in a Box."

"Think of it this way: if none of us wore any clothes, then it would be the male genitalia sticking out visibly..."

"... while women�s would remain largely hidden. Maybe the entire point of formal attire to invert this possibility, to say, 'Yes, in nature, it is women who have mysterious hidden powers of creation, but once we get all dressed and civilized, it�s precisely the other way around.'"

The last paragraph of "Dickheads/The paradox of the necktie resolved," a Baffler article by David Graeber (with an excellent illustration).

Via Metafilter, where there are many comments, including:

Couldn�t we say that a tie is really a symbolic displacementof the penis, only an intellectualized penis, dangling not from one�s crotch but from one�s head?

Is this a comp lit undergrad class in 1986?

I see I have a neckties tag. I'll have to publish this post so I can click on it to see what the hell I've said about neckties over the past decade. Beyond this past decade, for the past half century, the most common insight into the necktie has been that it's a phallic symbol. But what I liked about Graeber's take was the seen-and-unseen angle � and seen and unseen is one of my all-time favorite tags.

ADDED: From the necktie-tagged archive. This is from a 2004 post about shopping for a suit at Brooks Brothers:
Click for more �

"Clean Reader � an e-reader app designed to ferret out, and block, profanity in novels and nonfiction..."

Anything wrong with that?

Blogger � and romance novel aficionado � Jennifer Porter has drawn up a rundown of the common replacements for words the app deems profanity. Among some of the noteworthies: from "whore" to "hussy," from "badass" to "tough" and, somewhat confusingly, from "vagina" to "bottom."

ADDED: "Chaucer used 'Belle Chose' (Pretty Thing) and 'Quondam' (Whatever) in The Canterbury Tales."

"A girl tries to prove her academic seriousness by writing in her application essay that rather than curtail a discussion with her French teacher, she urinated on herself."

"A boy tries to demonstrate his pluck in the face of adversity by writing that he�s undiscouraged by the fact that his genitalia are small."

From a book review titled "In 'Where You Go Is Not Who You�ll Be,' Frank Bruni Examines College Admissions Mania."

(You can the book here.)

"Nor did the researchers find any convincing correlation between a man�s foot size..."

"... and the length of his manhood."

(What about nose size? If they found a convincing correlation, people wouldn't get so many nose jobs... or maybe there would be nose enlargements, like breast enlargements.)