Wacky Brits Blame Feminism

David Willetts, universities minister, blamed feminism for the lack of upward mobility for men. This senior minister insists working class men need to be given a more level playing field. Willetts is on the team working out a new social order. Sounds the same as the old social order to me. A Guardian writer exonerates Willetts: he wasn't actually blaming feminism, just pointing out a side effect. Not to be outdone by the men, Christine Odone writes that Willetts is wrong about how feminists are responsible for the plight of men. It's not so much that feminists have stolen their jobs, but feminists won't allow the fathers of their children to live in the house, and thus created a benefits program that rewards single mothers. Feminists would rather marry the state than a man. Feminists are a "scary lot." She yearns for the good ol' days of the feminism she supported. So convenient to write blithely about women teaching hatred, while simultaneously hating feminists, and then yearn for the support of those long-ago sisters she claims.

112th Congress and State Legislatures Repurposed

112th Congress has been busy, busy passing laws governing women's rights. The Indiana legislature just passed a law scripting doctors to lie to women. Abortion does not cause breast cancer, but what the hell? Florida has 18 pieces of legislation overseeing women's organs. I can't keep up with what the Michigan legislature is focused on, but I'm going to guess it's below my navel. Let's repurpose all this legislation, cut back on the paperwork, and streamline the legislative process. You've got a zipper, guys. Keep it zipped.

2010 Black List Movies

The Black List, movie-modern era, is screenplays that are ready to film, but for reasons undiscovered, have not been produced, completed or handed to distributors. LA Times claims a midlevel executive named Franklin Leonard polls his colleagues for the list. There are murky rules, multiple "like"(s), but many of the voters probably were the very folks who turned down the deal. Another site claims a guy in Leonardo DiCaprio's production company Appian Way came up the idea. Fine. We do not know who the 300 people surveyed for the 2010 list are. That colleagues, Hollywood, executives are keywords tells me these are men. I counted 75 movies on this list at slashfilms. Writers credited for the screenplays: 82 men (including one movie written by three) and ready?... 5 women. F-I-V-E. Katie Lovejoy, Jenni Ross, Carrie Evans, Megan Martin, Katie Wech. The guys wrote movies like "Your Bridesmaid is a Bitch," and "F*cking Jane Austen." Although Carrie Evans cowrote "Boy Scouts vs. Zombies," and Katie Welch wrote "Prom" so I'm making no judgment on the literary quality of these scenarios. But 75 movies and five women is a pitiful ratio. The most votes went to current event, fact-based, CIA-tinged yawns. Are we all in for reality film just like reality TV? Nobody has to make stuff up, revise a second act, or break a brain sweat at all. Coming to a theater near you. We can do better than this. I wish I knew how.

A Three Story Life

Script Frenzy started April 1. I am giving up pretending to write a screenplay, because I am busy pretending to write other stuff. This post title, for example, is a memoir of life here in the three story condo that I am currently not writing. On the top floor lives my brother Scott, surrounded by his movies and music. In the middle lives my Dad with his new leather powered double recliner and his hi def TV. I live in the basement with the art I love and the art I create. The dog lives on two floors, preferring the floor that momentarily houses the person with food. The dog is not allowed in the basement, because he yaps at will and scares the hell out of me. I am too finely tuned for yapping dogs. Some may call it high strung, but that's their story. For meals, communal gatherings, and MORC or healthcare meetings, we share a floor. On any given day, we share a brain. These three floors are squashed between other condos, stage left lives Marilyn; stage right, the Florida snowbirds who all smoke. We can smell when they've arrived for the summer. Marilyn and I share metaphysical beliefs, and a passion for reading and homemade cookies. Marilyn is teaching me meditation, which will be handy when the snowbird smokers arrive next door, because they are also loud. They bang. We don't know on what, but it involves them having to shout over the banging. So when they bang and shout, I will meditate. Hopefully I can learn it by Memorial Weekend, when the big shiny black Mercedes pulls into the lot.

Paul Simon Is So Beautiful

NPR shares a First Listen of Paul Simon's new offering So Beautiful Or So What. The entirety of this album is a dancing meditation. I will be happy to spend years changing my mind about which track is my favorite, and the ten songs will always be in company, as I want to experience all, one after the other; like a fine meal, a symphony, the seasons each year in Michigan, the unfolding story of any life. Simon is tuned serendipitously to life stages. It was a joy to have his music when I was in the new moon of my life, and more deeply joyous to share his music in the waning moon. Our class song in high school was "Old Friends" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water" was played at friends' funerals who left us too soon. My old friends will love this music from the universes they inhabit. Simon is transcendent, and on this anniversary of Martin Luther King's ascension, I say bless you and thank you to the songwriter and the peacemakers both.

How Effective Are MI Emergency Financial Managers?

Their mitts have been in Michigan cities for years. Highland Park had an emergency financial manager in 2001. Ramona Henderson-Parks reported December 14, 2001 that, as of 3 p.m. the Highland Park police department was dissolved. Wayne County Sheriff Dept. took over public safety. The city would issue municipal bonds to pay Wayne County. Pay attention here: the city would issue municipal bonds to pay for outsourcing public safety. Highland Park is in bad shape again in 2011. Mackinac Center (architects of the new Michigan EFM law) has Louis H. Schimmel on board. He is credited with being a municipal bond expert. He negotiated the sale of Pontiac State Bank to NBD in 1988 while employed by Pontiac State Bank. Pontiac is another Michigan city with an EFM in place, and the police department has just been dissolved. Schimmel was appointed under Public Act 72 as EFM, City of Ecorse in 1986. He privatized nearly all city services and negotiated "unique" union contracts. Did this help? In 2009 Ecorse got another EFM. Back to Schimmel: he was appointed EFM in the City of Hamtramck in November, 2000. Again, privatization and the list of think tank objectives were put in place. Did this help? City Manager Bill Cooper's plea to MI Treasury in November, 2010 to file bankruptcy was turned down later in Nov. This linked article keys the phrase "fiscal stabilization bond." City of Flint requested a $20 million FSB, approved in February, 2011. Note: bond issue. Note also that Flint is closing fire stations, and is looking at demoting 20 fire department employees, for a savings of $500,000. Flint's deficit is $17 million. City of Detroit requested a $250 million FSB in 2009. Legislation to raise the limit of FSBs to $250 million was passed in 2010. City of Detroit can maintain its municipal bond rating, and is back in the investment market. But in Hamtramck city manager Bill Cooper's letter requesting bankruptcy, he cites the City of Detroit stopping payment on its agreement for the GM plant as the reason for lack of revenue. But he insists the unions are the problem. And why is Louis Schimmel on the Legislative Council of Michigan web page? There's something here that seems off kilter. What is it? Cities that had services privatized to prevent deficits are back in deficit mode. Do emergency financial managers get performance reviews? Does the law prevent a serial unsuccessful EFM from getting another city to dissolve police, fire, school and any other union contracts? Or do failed EFMs just get kicked upstairs to a consulting job with state government?

Meditation for Beginners

My neighbor Marilyn is helping me to meditate. She is determined to show me it's not spooky. It's hard for me to sit still - I don't watch foreign movies because you have to sit down to keep up. So, I'm a rookie meditator, but I'm learning. Last night I used a Deepak Chopra guided meditation. Walk through a woods on a path to a lovely cottage [insert favorite architecture HERE], enter the cottage, open a door and walk down a stone stairway to a river. Someone will come in a boat to pick me up. I forget the rest, but I either turn into light, or the boat poler does, or the boater is the archetype I am living. So, I started on the path, entered the cottage, went down the stone steps to the cavern river. A little naked boy on a paddle board showed up {!}, took me by the hand, and back up the stairs, out the cottage, and toward a temple (pillars were involved) but inside the temple was a pine woods. I sat (unknown on what) and a huge creature flew in from stage right. I wanted it to be an eagle, but it wouldn't be. It was gigantic, shiny, not really feathered and definitely not pretty, with long claws and gnarly, long muscled legs. It began to preen. Under a wing it found a tiny egg. I held out my hand and the dragon/vulture/not eagle dropped the egg into it. I broke the egg precisely in half, and there was a starfish. Too big to have been in the egg, and it was moving - alive. That's it. We were out of meditation. What the heck was that? Marilyn said calmly "maybe you'll understand one day." Today I looked up starfish - I've never seen one in person alive, and when I searched, there was the story of the child throwing starfish back into the sea. The man who had come upon the child asked what was going on? "The tide is out and if the starfish stay here, they will die." The man said "but there are miles of beach and thousands of starfish. What impact can you have?" The child threw another starfish into the sea and said, smiling "I made a difference in that one's life."