final papers=lots of food, coffee and facebook updates

It's that time during the semester when i find myself updating my facebook status in 30 minute increments. yes, it's finals time.

In the spirit of procrastination, here's a bunch of random stuff:

1. Really cool/scary map of the unemployment rate since 2007.

2. A sex scene from True Blood (courtesy of desertDIVA)

3. A random quote from the paper I'm working on right now:

"[R]acial discourse is not simply about private speech acts or individualized modes of communication: It is also about contested histories, institutional relations of power, ideology, and the social gravity of effects. Racist discourses and expressions should alert us to the workings of power and the conditions that make particular forms of language possible and others seemingly impossible, as well as the modes of agency they produce and legitimate" -Henry A. Giroux

4. Another random quote (i love this article by jodi melamed, 2006):

"As historical articulations of race and capitalism have shifted--with white supremacy and colonial capitalism giving way to racial liberalism and transnational capitalism and, eventually, to neoliberal multiculturalism and globalization--race remains a procedure that justifies the nongeneralizability of capitalist wealth. Race continues to fuse technologies of racial domination with liberal freedoms to represent people who are exploited for or cut off from capitalist wealth as outsiders to liberal subjectivity for whom life can be disallowed to the point of death"

5. One thing on my birthday wish list: a stainless steel travel mug

6. I just finished off the ice cream.

7. is my favorite number.

8. I think snuggies are cool.

9. When I finish the semester, I'm going to continue the tradition I started and quit several yrs ago and compile a list of socially responsible gifts for kids. Unfortunately, it's usually a pretty short list.

10. My skin is so dry right now that I put on lotion and it burned. Not a good feeling.

11. and one last quote that I love:

"Women of color live in the dangerous intersections of gender and race. Within the mainstream antiviolence movement in the U.S., women of color who survive sexual or domestic abuse are often told that they must pit themselves against their communities, often portrayed stereotypically as violent, in order to being the healing process. Communities of color, meanwhile, often advocate that women keep silent about sexual and domestic violence in order to maintain a united front against racism... the analysis of and strategies for addressing gender violence have failed to address the manner in which gender violence is not simply a tool of patriarchal control, but also serves a s a tool of racism and colonialism. That is, colonial relationships are themselves gendered and sexualized" (Andrea Smith, 2005)