hey everyone, i've got some GREAT links for you guys (or more specifically, gals) to check out. the first two are absolutely hilarious!!

a woman's guide on how to pee standing.
this site has ACTUAL information on how a woman can best achieve urinating while in a standing position. it also has tips if you need help on how to avoid spray and drips. i have got to give an excerpt:
"Janice writes... Well I’m in college and you’d be surprised to see how many college girls use men’s urinals. I personally find it boring to pee in regular stalls. Its much more exciting and daring to pee standing up at urinals. Any woman can pee standing up, facing a urinal, looking at the wall or whatever men look at. Down here in Texas at one of our stadiums, they are installing urinals for women in addition to the stalls. Usually there are long lines for the women’s bathroom. My friends Judy and Karen will sometimes stand at the urinal and see who can get the furthest arc. It works best when we are all drunk!"
yeah, it might sound like a joke, but this is a REAL site though with REAL directions and tips on how a woman can pee standing. and they have this hilarious picture of a woman standing next to a man at a urinal.

big bad chinese mama.
now this girl is HILARIOUS. i know i know, i keep using that word, but really, there's no other way to describe her. this site is like a spoof/parody/whatever on all those asian porn and mail-order bride sites out there. she purposely added her link to porn sites and went into porn chats to publicize her link. then when unsuspecting perverts click on her link, they get, well...this. you HAVE to take a look at her "harem." my favorite bride is mikki. ;D really, this girl is hysterical... "I fart and cough at the same time so that nobody can tell what came from where (because I am a real lady)....I give the finger liberally while driving through my neighborhood in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and tried to see if I could get it to catch on in Europe (but failed)."

okay, well onto some more semi-serious sites...

bamboo girl.
okay, i actually got the above two links from this site. she's got a really extensive page of links to asian-american/feminist sites, including the two above. i haven't gone through much of them yet, but the two above (big bad chinese mama and a woman's guide on how to pee standing) obviously caught my attention first. i read this really interesting article plus her reaction from her site. [ooh, it's kinda long, sorry.]

Michelle Kwan Headline Controversy Continues to Haunt Us
By Rene M. Astudillo,
Executive Director, Asian American Journalists Association

In 1998, American figure skater Tara Lipinski beat fellow American Michelle Kwan to capture the gold medal at the Nagano Winter Olympics. A headline announcing the upset victory on the MSNBC Web site read, "American Beats Out Kwan."

Four years later, in Salt Lake City, Kwan -- again favored to win gold -- loses out to fellow American Sarah Hughes and Russian skater Irina Slutskaya. History is repeated, and I’m not just talking gold medals. The day after the womens figure skating finals in Nagano, The Seattle Times sports page ran a controversial secondary headline on its lead story about the gold-medal skating performance of Sarah Hughes. It read, "American outshines Kwan, Slutskaya in skating surprise.

Prompted by numerous reader complaints that the heading implied that Michelle Kwan was not an American, The Seattle Times immediately issued an apology -- first on its web site, then in next day's edition of the paper about what it called a "misunderstanding."

The Times explained that the headline was in two parts, the main headline reading "Hughes good as gold." The apology went on to say that "...the writer was attempting to find another word for Hughes in order not to repeat her name in the second head." The apology further claims that the headline was written quickly on deadline.

Also on February 22, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a front-page story on the figure skating finals. In the jump page, staff writer John Crumpacker made reference to the 1998 Olympic competition by saying that, "And Kwan, who persevered for the past four years after losing out on the Olympic gold medal to American Tara Lipinski in Nagano, glumly settled for the bronze medal this time..."

I wrote a letter to the editor expressing concern about the implication in that statement that Kwan was not an American, just like the MSNBC headline implied in 1998. Admittedly and in hindsight, I missed the first reference to Kwan in the third paragraph of the news story. It said, "Skating after Hughes, the two favorites, American Michelle Kwan and Russian Irina Slutskaya..."

Chronicle assistant executive editor Narda Zacchino pointed out that "A careful reading of the story would make clear that the nationality of each skater is stated with the first identification of that skater, so that when Tara Lipinski is mentioned, we tell the readers that she is American, just as we told them earlier in the first references that Kwan is American and Sarah Hughes is American and Slutskaya is Russian."

By the rules of editing, the Chronicle did not err. But other readers and members of the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) saw an issue beyond editorial correctness. Hayley Sterling, former AAJA Washington, D.C. chapter president, says that "The fact that the line stood out for many of us, should be reason enough to make issue of it. I agree with another writer it wouldve been more accurate and informative and perhaps less confusing to some readers if the sentence read fellow-American Tara Lipinski."

Ti-Hua Chang of the AAJA New York chapter suggested that the Chronicle should be more sensitive to the previous flap with the MSNBC headline. "Given that history and context, SF Chronicle should have added one more word "fellow" to American Tara Lipinski.," Chang added.

Another Chronicle staffer, David de la Fuente maintains that " the phrase questioned is not a mistake of apparent omission (as would be the case if the story never mentioned Kwan being an American) or apparent commission (as was the case with the 1998 MSNBC headline...").

De la Fuente asserts further: "Michelle Kwan has been in the spotlight for several years now. She is not the fresh-faced and relatively unfamiliar newcomer she was in 1988, and I sincerely doubt that there are very many people who were interested enough in skating to a) read that article or b) watch that competition who did not know she is an American."

Agreed. But if so much controversy was generated by the San Francisco Chronicle story beyond just readers missing references to Kwan as American, there must be an issue here. If there are enough people complaining about inappropriate headlines such as the one ran by The Seattle Times and prompting an apology from a respected newspaper then we know readers get involved in what they read and writers and editors should be more sensitive to the things they print.

Part of AAJA's core mission is to be vigilant about fair and accurate coverage of Asian Americans and Asian American issues. The real issue here is not Michelle Kwan, but all Americans of different racial and ethnic heritage who have long been "tokenized" and who have historically been relegated to a "second-class" citizen status. Many Asian Americans have had this experience, including many of our own journalist-members. But we must also remember that there are thousands of other Asian American readers who don't care about editorial correctness and who constantly bear the insult and hurt caused by even the slightest suggestion or implication that they are less American than their fellow Americans.

wow, i totally didn't even know about this whole american michelle kwan thing. first time i ever heard about it. it just really surprises me that people would even (or still) view michelle kwan as a non-american. very disappointing...

anyway, check out this girl's links. she's got everything.

ucsd fmla (feminist majority leadership alliance).
and really, i couldn't end this long-enough blog without adding the newly launched ucsd fmla website. this page has some great links too. check out the britney underground one. pretty funny stuff. ooh, i'm so excited about some of the fmla events this month. the authors of this great young feminist book, "manifesta," are coming down to san diego to speak. and at the end of april, the california NOW (national organization for women) conference is going to be held in san diego. :)

okay, must do italian homework. will mercifully end this long blog now.