Would You Like Some Breasts With Your Breasts?

Hogarth’s “Boys Peeping at Nature” shows us the world through the eyes of lads. The results are unsurprising:

Fondly,

M

Chile Student Protests Links, Background and Images–El Cacerolazo

If you’re lost as to what’s going on in Chile, I’m going to be writing a post for New APPS soon, but in the meantime, I’m posting useful links as I find them (updating periodically). The idea here is to provide a wide range of news sources to expose the range of responses in Chile. Links are not endorsements:

The Ministry of Education’s official site, which is currently down thanks to Anonymous. If you visit the site, you’ll find a hilarious cardboard .jpg version of it which Mineduc put up in the meantime. (After all, all you need for a Ministry of Education is a photo of what looks like, but isn’t, a functional site!)

@anonops has announced Operation #opchile for Saturday, Aug. 6, with targets including concertacion.cl, mineduc.cl, carabineros.cl, udi.cl, and cibercrimen.cl. You might want to check those periodically to see how they’re doing. As of this writing, udi.cl is down.

Back in the day

Overview of the 2006 student protests (Revolución de los pingüinos), involving penguin costumes, that gave rise to their “penguin” moniker which you might encounter in the course of reading up on this. [Wikipedia]

• The “Thriller” zombie-protest the students put on back in June 2011:

• Footage of June 16 protest in Chillán–around 4500 people (via portalnet):

August 4

Slideshows of the student protests on August 4 are available from La Cuarta here and here. A slideshow of the Plaza Italia encounters between carabineros and students on August 4 are here and here.

An English-language article (in the Santiago Times) on why the law requiring “permits” for marches is unconstitutional is here.

Minister Hinzpeter on why he won’t authorize more marches: “The time for marches, in our judgment, has run out.” http://t.co/CZUQ7gL

A beautifully written satire by a medical student on the University of Chile anatomizing the very particular character of Chilean impatience and pragmatism (that explains the cultural underpinnings of Hinzpeter’s “the time for marches has run out”—a pronouncement that has nothing to do with principles or issues). It’s here (in Spanish–El Mostrador).

An article on the new proposal by the new Minister of Education, Felipe Bulnes, with full copies of Joaquin Lavin’s G.A.N.E. plan and the new version at the bottom (The Clinic).

An explanation of why those government proposals fall short of what the students want is here.

A brief explanation of the privatization of education in Chile is here.

Here is a video of the students confronting a TVN journalist about the one-sidedness of news coverage of the protests. They object that a few vandals are getting all the coverage, and no one is actually talking to or interviewing the students. It’s a fascinating exchange (Spanish):

(via JAIDEFINICHON)

Here you’ll find footage of tear gas and “guanacos” clearing out public park–watch at the end when they direct a huge stream of teargas at a lone person walking on the sidewalk.

A truly Kafkaesque video wherein students outside the Metro explain to a reporter that they’re being turned away from the subway. Explanation offered: it has “collapsed.” Even as subway officials allow commuters who aren’t dressed in student uniforms through. (Obviously an effort to keep students from marching—by keeping ALL STUDENTS off the subway.)

Coverage of the “cacerolazos” on August 5 (emol).

President of the RN  Carlos Larraín’s declaration that “his hand will not be forced by a crew of useless subversives” (La Nacion).

Subsecretary Ubillo’s condemnation of the violence in the Plaza Italia, declaration that the Cacerolazo (pot-banging) protests are understandable (La Nacion).

Assessments of the damage to public property as a result of the protests: La Tercera. A slideshow of the damage at megaterra.cl is here.

Video of Jaime Gajardo, the President of the “Colegio de Profesores” announcing a new strike for Tuesday, August 9.

Hinzpeter’s response after the students rejected his warmed-over version of Lavin’s G.A.N.E. plan (La Segunda).

Here is the AnonOps video on #opchile:

s

Hola, lovers!

Lovely people visiting thanks to the fabulous Fug Girls: Salutations!

We’re tickled pink you’re here. Get comfy! Want some tea? If you’re feeling adventurous and want more, may we refer you to our “Best of Millicent and Carla Fran” section?

(We also write for Splitsider about funny ladies on TV before Bridesmaids,  at The Hairpin on Things Overheard When Colin Firth Got His Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and about 17th Century Boob-Wrangling Practices, and for The Awl about 17th century advice columns.)

Fondly,

M and CF

Wordy

Word whimsy for the weekend:

Migraine

Dear CF,

The summer never really showed up here. This morning I took the bus to work with an umbrella, one of my eighteen winter coats, and a migraine. I met with students. They’re kind, gentle, busy, and their share in our meetings involves trying not to let me know that they’re too busy for my class. My share is showing them how much busier they need to be to make it. That’s what summer school is.

I’m tired.

I don’t know where the migraines come from. Stress, exercise, lack of exercise, too much sleep, too much dopamine, not enough lipid in the blood. Menstrual cycles. Mood cycles. Low potassium. High blood pressure. Dehydration. Eating. Forgetting to eat. To say “I don’t know where the migraines come from” is such a stupidly obvious thing to say, but God, it’s awful. When I have a cold, I know it’s a virus. When my muscles are sore, I can decide whether to tear and build them or let them relapse. Cramps are fine. They’re here for a bit, then they’ll go away. When they’re particularly bad, I feel pleased that I’m not having that particular child. because I associate pain level with personality. But every migraine is different. Each one has its own snowflake fingerprint, and it always wears gloves.

Sometimes, like today, when I’m worn out from the feeling of being in one, I have an awful Eureka moment where I decide that art triggers the headaches. These days I’ve been getting them four days a week. Possible cause: I went and saw Anna Deveare Smith’s one-woman show Let Me Down Easy, built on a series of interviews she did with people who have or treat cancer or have somehow been caught up in the net of our health care. It was a show about death, and how we don’t think about it, and how the world is dealing with every single day. The luxury of not dealing with it cripples you by the time you leave. I left a broken tower of unearned health.

That was the same day I stayed up until 2:00 a.m. reading Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go.

In retrospect, it was a bad combination. Since then, I’ve been getting migraines almost daily.

Like I’ve said before, mine are mild, as migraines go. They’re not the awful nausea-inducing ones. I don’t get the auras. My vision gets a little lazy, but no spots, no passing out, no barfing. Just a reluctance for my brain to understand what my eyes are seeing. Sometimes (not always) my mouth tastes sweet. My muscles swell up, my sinuses get inflamed, and for the next few hours I can either shut down entirely and wake up periodically with a spike behind my eye, or I walk around in a shimmery puddle of hurt where it takes superhuman effort to look at someone and smile.

Smile, and suddenly I’m eight feet deeper in headache. Be a real friend to someone the way you do, you know, listening to them, feeling with them, and I’m eight hours deeper in headache. Paradise Lost measures the distance Satan and the rebel angels fall in units of time. (They fell nine days.) That’s the shift: eight feet deep for a smile, eight hours deep for a real talk.

It means it’s hard to be a good friend. I have so many good friends. I owe so many friendship debts. I’m always, always behind. And the more behind I get, the worse the headache will be.

Sometimes I avoid people because I don’t want a headache. I have the choice to feel good enough to work and think or be a good friend. They’re mutually exclusive. Sometimes I make the selfish choice.

I barely have enough for friends and teaching. I’m coming up short. And since I’ve got such a shallow supply of whatever that is—generosity? energy? soul? electrolytes? I don’t know what the word is for the thing that gets used up and brings the headaches on—I’ve cut out art.

I don’t listen to music, because it will make me feel things intensely, and give me a headache.

I don’t watch any new movies or television shows, because they will make me feel things intensely and give me a headache.

I don’t even read any new books anymore, because they will make me feel things intensely and give me headache.

Instead I rewatch and reread things so that I don’t need to deal with surprise. I read the internet, which won’t threaten that part of me. It’s all a variation on a theme I already know. So I spend my days always a little bored. And the hours trickle away and I’ve done nothing new, and experienced nothing that makes me really feel, and written nothing that makes me thrill, because I might start swelling up on the inside, and that headache might be the one that never stops. That’s what they feel like–they distort your sense of time and you feel like you’re going to have them forever.

I hate this.

Last night I watched Mary and Max. Have you seen it? It’s a claymation film. It won awards.

Today I had a headache.

I don’t know what to do.

Fondly,

M

If the Venus de Milo Had Arms

Here are some things she might do: