June 2013
39 posts
“In a district that is already under-resourced by 160 libraries, CPS is planning the elimination of countless librarians. In addition to Kennedy, the CTU has learned that Wacker Elementary School and Robeson, Alcott College Prep, South Shore, Hubbard and King College Prep high schools are all planning to eliminate librarian positions. At Nancy B. Jefferson Elementary School, the school has been unable to buy books or fulfill department orders for two years and will experience even more drastic supply and position cuts this coming school year. “The district spent $37 million less on textbooks in 2012 than in 2009 and has asked teachers for more than $100 million in concessions in each of the last four years via moves like mass layoffs, rescinded raises, and pension relief,” said CTU Policy Researcher and Budget Committee member Kurt Hilgendorf. “The wave of mass school closures that tore apart school communities was justified as a money-saving action, while at the same time, unproven “reform” efforts like new testing systems and constant administrative reorganizations receive more funding.”
—Daily Kos: Rahm Emanuel to impose massive school cuts; refuses to advocate for other accessible revenue (via himissjulie)
So disappointed in this city
“
I want to stress this again: In many, many parts of the country right now, if you want to go to see a movie in the theater and see a current movie about a woman — any story about any woman that isn’t a documentary or a cartoon — you can’t. You cannot. There are not any. You cannot take yourself to one, take your friend to one, take your daughter to one.
There are not any.
By far your best shot, numbers-wise, at finding one that’s at least even-handedly featuring a man and a woman is Before Midnight (on 891 screens) so I hope you like it. Because it’s pretty much that or a solid, impenetrable wall of movies about dudes.
Dudes in capes, dudes in cars, dudes in space, dudes drinking, dudes smoking, dudes doing magic tricks, dudes being funny, dudes being dramatic, dudes flying through the air, dudes blowing up, dudes getting killed, dudes saving and kissing women and children, and dudes glowering at each other.
Somebody asked me this morning what “the women” are going to do about this. I don’t know. I honestly am at the point where I have no idea what to do about it. Stop going to the movies? Boycott everything?
They put up Bridesmaids, we went. They put up Pitch Perfect, we went. They put up The Devil Wears Prada, which was in two-thousand-meryl-streeping-oh-six, and we went (and by “we,” I do not just mean women; I mean we, the humans), and all of it has led right here, right to this place. Right to the land of zippedy-doo-dah. You can apparently make an endless collection of high-priced action flops and everybody says “win some, lose some” and nobody decides that They Are Poison, but it feels like every “surprise success” about women is an anomaly and every failure is an abject lesson about how we really ought to just leave it all to The Rock.
” —At The Movies, The Women Are Gone : Monkey See : NPR
The whole article is fantastic, as is pretty much everything Linda Holmes writes.
(via kdhart)
The Hunger Games Series are, at the very least, LADY MOVIES THAT ARE HAPPENING!
(As is that other post-apocalyptic series set in Chicago.)
[Theme From] The Monkees
The Monkees
Seriously have this song stuck in my head instead of one of the 5 Monkees’ tunes I listened to every day last week?
Paper, Squared: An experiment →
papersquared.tumblr.com
OK, internets. Help me out. I want to try something.
There is way too much negative self-talk going on these days. I want us to do the opposite.
Tell me what you LOVE about your body. It can be one thing, it can be 20. You just have to be honest.
That’s rule number one. Rule number two is no…
Legs. I have this muscle on the back of my thighs and I love that muscle most of all.
“
To all those who don’t think the rape joke was a problem, or rape jokes are a problem.
I get it, you’re a decent guy. I can even believe it. You’ve never raped anybody. You would NEVER rape anybody. You’re upset that all these feminists are trying to accuse you of doing something or connect you to doing something that, as far as you’re concerned, you’ve never done and would never condone.
And they’ve told you about triggers, and PTSD, and how one in six women is a survivor, and you get it. You do. But you can’t let every time someone gets all upset get in the way of you having a good time, right?
So fine. If all those arguments aren’t going anything for you, let me tell you this. And I tell you this because I genuinely believe you mean it when you say you don’t want to hurt anybody, and you don’t see the harm, and that it’s important to you to do your best to be a decent and good person. And I genuinely believe you when you say you would never associate with a rapist and you think rape really is a very bad thing.
Because this is why I refuse to take rape jokes sitting down-
6% of college age men, slightly over 1 in 20, will admit to raping someone in anonymous surveys, as long as the word “rape” isn’t used in the description of the act.
6% of Penny Arcade’s target demographic will admit to actually being rapists when asked.
A lot of people accuse feminists of thinking that all men are rapists. That’s not true. But do you know who think all men are rapists?
Rapists do.
They really do. In psychological study, the profiling, the studies, it comes out again and again.
Virtually all rapists genuinely believe that all men rape, and other men just keep it hushed up better. And more, these people who really are rapists are constantly reaffirmed in their belief about the rest of mankind being rapists like them by things like rape jokes, that dismiss and normalize the idea of rape.
If one in twenty guys is a real and true rapist, and you have any amount of social activity with other guys like yourself, really cool guy, then it is almost a statistical certainty that one time hanging out with friends and their friends, playing Halo with a bunch of guys online, in a WoW guild, or elsewhere, you were talking to a rapist. Not your fault. You can’t tell a rapist apart any better than anyone else can. It’s not like they announce themselves.
But, here’s the thing. It’s very likely that in some of these interactions with these guys, at some point or another someone told a rape joke. You, decent guy that you are, understood that they didn’t mean it, and it was just a joke. And so you laughed.
And, decent guy who would never condone rape, who would step in and stop rape if he saw it, who understands that rape is awful and wrong and bad, when you laughed?
That rapist who was in the group with you, that rapist thought that you were on his side. That rapist knew that you were a rapist like him. And he felt validated, and he felt he was among his comrades.
You. The rapist’s comrade.
And if that doesn’t make you feel sick to your stomach, if that doesn’t make you want to throw up, if that doesn’t disturb you or bother you or make you feel like maybe you should at least consider not participating in that kind of humor anymore…
Well, maybe you aren’t as opposed to rapists as you claim.
” —Time-Machine (via a comment at shakesville.com)
Single greatest argument about this I have ever heard.
(via justintheallan)
All true.
(via chelseyesque)
Julie Jurgens: Chicago audiences are the worst →
juliejurgens.tumblr.com
Audiences at Chicago music venues, you are the worst.
When a performer indicates that he doesn’t appreciate you shouting at him every time there is a quiet moment, please shut the hell up.
I know you know all the words to the songs, but some of us paid $30/$50/$100 to hear the artist sing them,…
Agreed. I was so happy with the audience when we performed but so disgusted with the by the time Tork himself got onstage. I spent half the concert cringing. I thought he did a good job of handling it though.
