Image from the excellent lawyer-humor page BrainDen.com.

Via newly minted lawyer Jill Filipovic of Feministe turns up yet another one of those wretched, seemingly-beloved-to-lawyers anti-lawyer jokes — this one with a no-sex class twist.

“What rare thing do you get when you cross a feminist and an attorney?”

Answer: A lawyer who won’t screw you.

Read the quote in context here.

I believe congratulations are in order for passing the bar. Nice work, Jill.

So check out this page out of the current issue of Cosmopolitan magazine, posted by Alessia of Relationship Underarm Stick. Specifically, compare and contrast the feature title, “Fun Fearless Female” with the photo of feature profilee Anna Paquin.

Cosmo is the magazine of choice for critics of gender construction sites because it’s just an OSHA inspector’s enforcement nightmare. Everywhere you look there’s a serious health or safety violation. In her post Alessia ably dismantles the text of Cosmo’s perpetual gender enforcement, click here to see her take on that. I see a much simpler problem though.

In a standard magazine photo shoot hundreds of photos are typically taken using dozens of poses and, often, multiple settings, outfits, and lighting designs. From that photographic bounty a single image is selected that in the eyes of the editor best represents not only the individual being photographed but also the message of the accompanying article and, of course, the editorial stance of the entire publication.

So compare Paqun’s wary, tentative body language and facial expression to the title “Fun Fearless Female.” I’m not sure what the image communicates to Cosmo readers but if it showed up in, say, Details magazine I don’t think the caption would be about her having fun.

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I dunno. I probably would have passed it by if Paquin wasn’t the lead character, Sookie Stackhouse, in the HBO series True Blood, which is based on Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire series of novels I’ve been reading lately. I like the books because the character is so much the opposite of protagonists in other, outwardly similar books such as Twilight: capable, respected, sexual, and most importantly integratedly adult.

But as Punkass blogger Lisa KS said in comments on my earlier post

Yep, Twilight sucks butt and Charlaine Harris’s series is tons of fun. Whatever you do, don’t watch TrueBlood on HBO — all the things you listed that are great about the books, plus a few more, get completely annihilated in the series, to be replaced with a mixture of high-school romanticism and pointless titillation.

One of the nicest things about the Stackhouse character in the books is that while she’s female, and fearless considering her circumstances, and even occasionally fun (again considering her circumstances) she probably wouldn’t read Cosmo.

Oh yeah, and for the record I’m just starting book four, Dead to the World. The rest of the series so far, (#2 – Living Dead in Dallas, #3 – Club Dead) hasn’t been as consistent or thought-provoking as the original Dead Until Dark. But hey, they’re not that bad and besides I’ve got a cold. Plus a habit of compulsively reading book series to their bitter ends… which is just one more reason I tend to stick with non-fiction. :-)

Goose of Living In Outlaw Territory occasionally does the Recipe Tuesday meme. I happened to be on the market for something quick, easy, tasty, and kid-friendly so darned if I didn’t print her post (I don’t think I’ve ever printed anyone’s post before) and headed to the grocery store.

Here’s what I printed. I’m reposting it so that either makes it a Tuesday Recipe by proxy post, a bigger-than-140-character Twitter Retweet, or else just a darn good Tuesday night meal.

So sometimes I want enchiladas mole but I don’t want to spend forever wrapping the filling inside each tortilla and I certainly don’t want to haul out the spice grinder to hand make my mole. Perhaps that makes me lazy occasionally, so be it.

Here is what I do.

One jar mole paste, diluted with at least two cups water and blended over heat till simmering. This paste tends to want to stay thick so keep adding water if you need to.
15 corn tortillas (cut the sides off so they are rectangular)
Filling, such as-black beans and corn with minced peppers, zucchini, mushrooms and garlic or shredded chicken or pork or whatever you want.
Three cups grated cheese-chedder, monterey jack, queso fresco what have you

Saute up your filling
Spray a glass pan with cooking spray and lay down a layer of tortillas (about 5).
Add a layer of filling, cheese and mole sauce.
Repeat the top the layers with the last batch of tortillas and mole.

Bake at about 350 for 30 minutes.

She said it here.

For once my corner grocery let me down — no mole sauce of any kind — so I improvised my own impromptu enchilada sauce with a tub of fresh salsa and a can of tomato sauce.

Otherwise? Wowzie! Quick, easy, and very tasty. I grabbed an ear of fresh corn and some canned black beans, a little pork sausage, some onion and red bell pepper. A little sour cream on top after serving it up and… Mmmm-mmm!

The kids liked it too. Plus there’s enough left over for lunches tomorrow.

Or, as Goose put it “It’s dang good.”

On a whim, while looking for some uncharacteristic-for-me very light reading for the plane, I picked up a copy of Charlaine Harris’s Dead Until Dark, the first book in a non-gothic, non-Twilight vampire novel that’s the basis for the TV show True Blood. (I haven’t seen the show but two people in the airport bookstore said it’s not as good as the books.)

I haven’t read the Twilight series but I’ve read more than enough reviews to have a good idea what it’s about. And to suspect I wouldn’t care much for it. Harris’s book, on the other hand, while following almost the same template reads almost the opposite of what Twilight sounds like.

I don’t know if the author intends any of this but…

• The vampire doesn’t help the protagonist remain celibate. Quite the opposite.
• Rather than be physically harmed by sex with her vampire partner (it invigorates her and helps her heal faster) she’s socially harmed (and sometimes put at physical risk) for her association with him.
• Even though there are male and female vampires their power, social conventions, and ruthlessness towards humans — who till the recent development of synthetic blood were straight-up prey — things are even more patriarchal rather than less
• The exaggerated patriarchalism and paternalism of vampire society makes it easier for the reader to notice the “ordinary” patriarchy of contemporary human society.

• The protagonist uses many of the same skills to cope with vampire culture that she developed as an intelligent but lower-working class woman to negotiate conventional society

All that said she remains a part of her culture instead of particularly questioning it, being “too good” for it, or otherwise being angsty or alienated.

All that plus southern (north Louisiana) culture, murder mystery, family drama, and of course romance, danger and lust made it pretty delightful light summer or long-flight reading.

I’ve already read the second book (I stayed home with my son who’s come down what I rather pointedly hope is just a cold) and while I wasn’t as enamored of it I’ll read the next to see if I want to read the rest. But the first one was pretty good.