MacKenzie Philips....Sigh

After reading far too much on Mackenzie Phillips (especially this piece by Sady) I have this to add.

Are some people just missing the part of their brain chemistry that says, see that person, yes that person there, the one you sired, and cared for as a small child and supposedly still love and care for very much? Yes? You should NOT TOUCH THEM IN THE PANTS.

I understand that it’s difficult to shift your ideas about people you’ve felt a great affection for over the years (John Phillips) as a musician, and possibly as an ideal type of man. I get that you can be unwilling to give up the comfort that people gain from idealizing celebrities, when the real world seems so imperfect, so I don’t expect you to hate John Phillips for his actions, I don’t expect you to so easily change your feelings for him. What i expect you to do is admit that what he did was WRONG and rather MESSED-UP and that Mackenzie is a VICTIM in this situation who was ABUSED by one John Phillips. Whether you want to blame drugs, or mental illness, whether or not you can bear to hold him fully accountable in your mind, you must at least admit and accept that he abused her and it was wrong.

The idea that a daughter can consent to sexual relations with her father is so absurd I don’t know how it’s even considered. It’s such a complex dynamic in terms of power, responsibility, love and sexuality that my mind boggles at the very idea of it.

Consent implies willingness, not just a lack of objection. How this concept continues to escape people is beyond me.

Soy Is Making Your Kids Gay - THE HORROR!

John Rutz' Article in bold, interspersed with rant.


There's a slow poison out there that's severely damaging our children and threatening to tear apart our culture. The ironic part is, it's a "health food," one of our most popular.

That's not alarmist at ALL.

Now, I'm a health-food guy, a fanatic who seldom allows anything into his kitchen unless it's organic. I state my bias here just so you'll know I'm not anti-health food.

Sure. You're also an arrogant dick who uses the sub-heading "Exclusive Commentary" to title his tiny insignificant corner of the blogosphere.* I state my bias here just so you know I'm anti-arrogant dick.


The dangerous food I'm speaking of is soy. Soybean products are feminizing, and they're all over the place. You can hardly escape them anymore.

Yep, it's virtually IMPOSSIBLE to avoid products containing soy. I couldn't be arsed looking up reliable statistics so I just went to the supermarket, and REMARKABLY managed to fill a trolley with completely soy-free products. Even products free from the friendly forms Rutz' lists later in this articulate and informative prose.


I have nothing against an occasional soy snack. Soy is nutritious and contains lots of good things. Unfortunately, when you eat or drink a lot of soy stuff, you're also getting substantial quantities of estrogens.

OH NO, ESTROGENS!!!!!!!!!

Estrogens are female hormones. If you're a woman, you're flooding your system with a substance it can't handle in surplus.

INCORRECT, the female (and male) body has many ways of dealing with excess estrogen, and unsurprisingly, excess nearly everything.

If you're a man, you're suppressing your masculinity and stimulating your "female side," physically and mentally.

And I hate to be repetitive but

INCORRECT.
If you will, please envisage the scientist in me shrivel and die while the feminist bit of me simultaneously explodes in a shower of flesh bleeding flesh and righteous anger.

In fetal development, the default is being female.

Correct.

All humans (even in old age) tend toward femininity. The main thing that keeps men from diverging into the female pattern is testosterone, and testosterone is suppressed by an excess of estrogen.

We're wavering from the path of 'correct' here, but sure.


If you're a grownup, you're already developed, and you're able to fight off some of the damaging effects of soy. Babies aren't so fortunate. Research is now showing that when you feed your baby soy formula, you're giving him or her the equivalent of five birth control pills a day. A baby's endocrine system just can't cope with that kind of massive assault, so some damage is inevitable. At the extreme, the damage can be fatal.

No.
The correlation between the amounts of estrogen in birth control pills and soy is.........nowhere near that. not even close. Not even when calculated in the tiny, wizened mind of Rutz.
Also, birth control pills are not just pure estrogen. Nor does soy contain pure estrogen, or even estrogen. It's genistein, a phytoestrogen, which are produced by plants and mimic the action of estrogens at the body's estrogen receptors.

Shit, you mean that my hyperbolic claims are so badly researched and just completely fucking wrong that I couldn't even get the SUBJECT of my contention RIGHT? WHAT KIND OF IMBECILE AM I?

Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality.

If you would be so kind as to re-envisage the explosion of my poor, already fragmented, theoretical body.

That's why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today's rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products.

Whose blame? Did you say 'medical' blame? Oh, that must be the one, single, medical source you cited in your article. No? Not even one?

(Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because "I can't remember a time when I wasn't homosexual." No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can't remember a time when excess estrogen wasn't influencing them.

I don't have anything left to detonate, and so you may just weep quietly over the charred remains of my flesh.

Doctors used to hope soy would reduce hot flashes, prevent cancer and heart disease, and save millions in the Third World from starvation. That was before they knew much about long-term soy use. Now we know it's a classic example of a cure that's worse than the disease. For example, if your baby gets colic from cow's milk, do you switch him to soy milk? Don't even think about it. His phytoestrogen level will jump to 20 times normal. If he is a she, brace yourself for watching her reach menarche as young as seven, robbing her of years of childhood. If he is a boy, it's far worse: He may not reach puberty till much later than normal.

Oh look, he subtly and without explanation changed from the terminology of 'estrogen' to 'phytoestrogen.'
And you're right, it'd be far, far worse for a boy to develop later than a girl to develop earlier. That's an easy, uncomplicated, non-culture specific generalization to make.

Research in 2000 showed that a soy-based diet at any age can lead to a weak thyroid, which commonly produces heart problems and excess fat. Could this explain the dramatic increase in obesity today?

Yep. Today's obese western society can be solely attributed to the rise of soy-based products. It has nothing to do with poor education, fast food conglomerates or sedentary culture. It is definitely those following a soy-based diet that are contributing to the vast numbers of the obese in America, It's tofu, not frozen dinners that can be held responsible. Fucking hippies.


Recent research on rats shows testicular atrophy, infertility and uterus hypertrophy (enlargement). This helps explain the infertility epidemic and the sudden growth in fertility clinics. But alas, by the time a soy-damaged infant has grown to adulthood and wants to marry, it's too late to get fixed by a fertility clinic.

Worse, there's now scientific evidence that estrogen ingredients in soy products may be boosting the rapidly rising incidence of leukemia in children. In the latest year we have numbers for, new cases in the U.S. jumped 27 percent. In one year!

There's also a serious connection between soy and cancer in adults – especially breast cancer. That's why the governments of Israel, the UK, France and New Zealand are already cracking down hard on soy.

In sad contrast, 60 percent of the refined foods in U.S. supermarkets now contain soy. Worse, soy use may double in the next few years because (last I heard) the out-of-touch medicrats in the FDA hierarchy are considering allowing manufacturers of cereal, energy bars, fake milk, fake yogurt, etc., to claim that "soy prevents cancer." It doesn't.

WHERE? WHERE IS THIS RESEARCH?

And now we're talking about 'estrogen ingredients' whatever they are.

Leukemia and Estrogen are linked you say?
I took the liberty of asking Google:
Apparently they are - Oh wait, they're linked, but not as cause and effect. See for yourself. (An actual reference? OUTRAGEOUS.)

New Zealand is cracking down on Soy? Well THANK GOODNESS, we shall all be saved from the tofu-loving cancer weasels.

I am so glad that we have you John Rutz, to alert us to the FDA's conspiracy to give us all cancer, and provide us with such a well-researched expert contradiction to their naive contentions. "It doesn't." What a closer.

P.S.: Soy sauce is fine. Unlike soy milk, it's perfectly safe because it's fermented, which changes its molecular structure. Miso, natto and tempeh are also OK, but avoid tofu.

Glad we cleared that up.

If you google anything you will find conspiracy theories and fan sites.

I read a thoroughly non-comprehensive 18-20 articles about the 'dangers of soy' to decide if this guy was completely wrong as well as a douchebag, and I come to the following conclusion - sans references in keeping with Rutz' style:

Soy, like EVERY OTHER FOODSTUFF CONTAINING ANY FORM OF NUTRIENT, is bad for you in high quantities.

So don't eat 700g of pure soy product per day. Because that's about the level you need for it to do anything negative to you body, which in fact, will not be to FEMINIZE YOU.

I actually found more articles claiming that because geinstein acts on estrogen receptors, it prevents the uptake of human estrogen and in fact has the complete opposite effect. This may or may not be correct, but it makes a bit of sense.

And in my extreme medical wisdom I'd like to declare that even ingesting 7kg of tofu per day WONT MAKE YOU GAY.


*I just used the word blogosphere, shoot me.

Bush's Legacy of Fear

Crazy Tracy writes on life, the week Bush was re-elected for a second term.

I read this not long ago and was simultaneously saddened by the tragedy that was Bush's reign and hopeful of a future that begins with Obama.

In Aus, a little removed from the political climate of the US and the hype that surrounded Obama in the lead up to his election, I felt that really, it was a bit of an over-reaction. He's not perfect, he's still fairly conservative by most standards and well, I just couldn't get ecstatic about him. But when I read this, it really hit me - the wonderful change that he represents, the step forward Americans took when they voted for him, what his election means to so many people - those downtrodden, ignored and persecuted by Bush.


January 20, 2005

POMP(OUSNESS)

I joined that little "not one thin dime" Internet movement--the one where you protest the exorbitant cost of The Shrub's inauguration by not spending any money today. I've also had to ban TV because it seems every station in the free world feels it necessary to air every little fucking detail of this ass-lickin' prick's swearing in. It's true...I find it nearly impossible to be objective when it comes to this mother fucker. If he had any fucking class at all, he'd refuse to accept donations for parties and parades and balls (too bad he can't buy a set for himself) out of respect for our soldiers fighting and dying in Iraq. He'd not be so goddamned entitled and smug. He'd not blatantly disregard the humility so needed right now.

But he has no class...sans one. His. Right wing, God fearing, rich Christian white people.

I'm still so disillusioned with my country. Never before in my life have I felt so disenfranchised. Never before have I felt so like an orphan. There is no place in this country for me. There is no gentle, parental leader watching over me. There is no feeling of security or safety or acceptance. I constantly feel as if I'm about to be uprooted and sent to foster care, that my family will be torn apart, that my religion will be attacked, that my very livelihood will be threatened and destroyed. Gay, female, unmarried, Democrat...an outcast, a step-child tolerated because my existence is a reality that people must deal with, not because they want to, but because they have to.

I used to feel that it would be impossible to be sent away, to be corralled and cordoned off from society. I used to feel that what happened under Hitler's regime could NEVER, EVER, EVER happen here. I don't feel that way anymore. I feel scared. I feel exposed. I feel vulnerable. I have been engulfed of late with a feeling of absolute global disconnection. This is new to me on such a level. I have battled all my life with the feeling of separateness...on an intimate, personal scale (with my family, friends, partner). It is a feeling that I am just now getting adept at dealing with. But this thing...this large and looming fear of my country and the people who run it...well, it is sometimes enough to make me fear for my life. It may be dramatic, but so was the Holocaust. It was true nevertheless.

It used to be impossible to imagine, even when I considered that it had happened before, that they could one day come for me, take all my things, send my child away, strip me of my identity and crucify me for being who I am....but it's not hard to imagine anymore. As America becomes more and more fanatically religious, I become more and more of a threat to Her. I become the interloper, the thief, the rapist and the whore. I am the Jew. And George W. Bush, Jr and his regime are the SS.

Something so incredibly hard to believe is often not believed. They thought that about the Nazi Death Camps. "It's impossible! Who would allow that to happen? Who could do that? Why would the entire country go along with something like that? Somebody would stop it!" But it wasn't impossible. It was allowed to happen. Ordinary men did those things. And nobody stopped them for a very, very long time. Because we couldn't believe it was happening.

I would've believed it. I've seen evil. I've seen it fester and spawn. I've seen it move in casual ways through ordinary circles. The Shrub is always talking about "evil doers." He wants to find them. He wants to rid the world of their pestilence. All he really need do is look into the mirror.

I, for one, will not look at his face today. I cannot bear the smile. I cannot bear the cockiness. I cannot abide watching. I'll be in my room, in the corner, curled up in a fetal position with my hands over my eyes.

False Advertsing

There is a fat, blond American man on my TV, throwing around generally negative comments on consumerism and criticizing the greedy/power-hungry nature of mainstream politicians while wearing Ralph Lauren Polo.

I find this... somewhat contradictory.

Dr. Phil's Playground of Broken Dreams

The subject of Dr. Phil's show today is failed weddings - counseling poor folks who've been scarred by the shattering of their girl-hood dreams.

This particular female guest had an allergic reaction at her wedding, her face swelled up a little for her photos and she had to leave to go to the doctor so she didn't get to throw the bouquet.
And, horror of horrors, at least 20 people saw her looking ugly.

She cries on stage, a peachy blubbering mess who blames her husband for the ruinous state of their marriage which is all because he failed to tell her she looked ugly on her wedding day.

"Its really hard to get past" she sobs.

THAT IS INCORRECT.

Death of a child, war-like devastation of your home/country, loss of your legs.
These things are hard to get past.

Get some perspective you inane, petty whore.

Dr. Phil,
DO NOT GIVE THEM A FREE WEDDING RECEPTION BECAUSE SHE'S A WHINY SLUT. Find a Katrina victim and give them a kitchen.

Divorce, etc.

So there's this forum show on SBS, and today they filled the stand with 'under 20's' and asked them how messed up they are due to the their parents being separated/divorced.

Turns out the answer is:
Quite a lot thanks. P.S. I hate my parents.

There are a few major classifications:

1. Dad left when I was too little to remember, haven't really seen him since.
2. Dad left when I was [insert age] and since then its been shit to moderately shit and they communicate through me.
3. Dad left when I was [insert age] and it was fine then 10 years later I found out he was a cunt.

Some of my favorite situations:

'Everything was completely normal and fine, then one morning Dad just drove out of the driveway and Mum's new boyfriend drove in. BAM.
Didn't hear from dad for 6 years.'

'Dad's British and has always missed his family back home, One day he decided to go back to England so he sat us down and said goodbye (in a restaurant...) didn't see him for eight years. Turns out he lives in QLD and never even went back to England.'

'I change houses every Friday, week by week. I thought this didn't really affect me until I went on exchange in high school - my host family asked why I didnt unpack my whole bag and I realised I hadn't upacked my bag properly for eight years.'

'Well I used to see Dad a fair bit, but not since Mum left her partner for this Bikie guy and we moved to Melbourne.'

The extremely irritating and condescending host:
Sorry, your Mum's partner...so how many step-father-figures have you had since your Dad?'

'To be honest, I cant really remember - sorry Mum, if you're watching, but yeah, there've been men through the house constantly, sometimes only for a couple of nights and like, we'll go out for coffee together or whatever,but yeah, I cant really remember their names or anything...'
(Cheers for not being a slut mum.)

Stunned host:
'...so how...what was that like?'

'Well I don't really talk to anyone, cause my Mum's always looking for a new partner, and I don't see my Dad anymore and my sister is older and always out, so I just stay out a lot...which is a bit dangerous because we live in a rival gang area.'
Host:
'...'
'...uh...so who do you trust?"

'I trust myself.'

Two common threads:

'Being the messenger is shit, sometimes you get things wrong, or you forget and then your parents get angry at each other and its your fault...'

'You have to concentrate all the time to make sure you stick to the appropriate parent script - different things for Mum and Dad, and you have to be careful, because if you did something fun with your Dad then you can't come home and be like - oh we had so much fun - because you don't want your Mum to feel bad'

Host:
'That sounds like a lot to carry...that seems like a very strange thing to do.'

Kids (silently):
'Fuck off you condescending whore.'

Oldest Boy:
'Well it makes you grow up pretty quickly. You become good at observing things, you become good at lying, you become good at manipulating your parents into a peaceful situation. You have to be careful 110% of the time and you can't trust anything your parents say because you have to make judgments by combining two sides of a story all the time.'

Kids (every single one):
'Yep.'
Host (who's got nothing):
'...'

We did these things too and it strikes me now as incredibly dumb, the lengths we went to to protect our parents in each others eyes.

A girl:
'How much should they tell you? Well you want to know as much as you can about it, you know, but you don't want to know if like, if your Dad's abusing your Mum. But you want to know as much as you can...'

Host (who's got nothing again):
'...Okay, moving on.'

Something interesting one guy said and a few kids agreed with:

'Yeah, well, you have to say that it was the best thing to do, for them to separate, because that's what they want to hear - they want to think that they're doing the best thing for their kids so they can do what they want to do. So yeah, you tell them and they tell themselves that its better for them to separate than to stay together.'

A girl responded to this with the obviously more common situation in the room:

'Yeah but our house was always full of violence and screaming and stuff, and I'm glad they got divorced. BUT, when I was younger, I always wished we'd be one happy family.'

I distinctly remember wishing (on stars) that Mum and Dad would get back together when I was 7-10 yrs old.

An outspoken girl who is exactly like me seven years ago had this to say:

'But like, you were MARRIED, you shared a bed, a house, kids and your lives and now you can't even have a conversation?! You were in love and got married and now you can't even speak to them or see them in a car across the street? What is wrong with you!? Grow up!'

Now I understand the answers to those questions and I'm sure she will too in a couple of years.

I'm not sure there was a point to this re-hash, other than - young people say 'like' A LOT.
I was just surprised at how damaged the host thought these kids were, when they sound exactly like me and every other child of divorce I know.

A Film Review: Towelhead

A very good, very uncomfortably confronting film.

Another reason not to have kids: in case you EPICALLY FUCK THEM UP.

Lesson number 1: Talk to your kids about sex.
Lesson number 2: Don't be a racist fuck.

I'd like to force all the 'I'm-not-racist-I-just-think-Asians-are-taking-over-the-country/Arabs-are-terrorists' white, middle class folk to watch this film, maybe shoving painful, beautifully illustrated reality down their throats would wake them up to their own hypocrisy.

Unlikely.