Here at the blog, I mean. Like, I can't help you if weird stuff happens at home. I suppose you could email me, and I'll try to help, or just listen, but really... I'm just talking about weird stuff here at the blog.

Tammy is moving me from Blogger to WP. All hell may break loose. Who the hell knows. As long as "Betty's" eyes don't start glowing red, there's nothing to be concerned about.

Labels: Blogging

Thanks to all of you for four wonderful years of Girl on the Right.

Labels: Blogging

Bloggers now have a legal defense fund against baseless suits from bored lawyers.

Thank you, Ezra. You are an inspiration. How it would be possible to lump you into the same profession as the likes of the Osgoode Four, Kinsella or Cherniak I do not know. We lucked out with you!

By the way, Warren: Saying "fuck you" to someone is still legal in this country, even if that person's feelings get hurt. No need to have me served over it.

Labels: Blogging, Human Rights, Legal Defense Fund, Warren Kinsella

Did you find what you were looking for? Why not drop me a line. If there's something you're looking for here, or at Still Stacy, or A Mom and her Blog, She Who Will Be Obeyed, or Not Exactly Rocket Science, perhaps I can help you find it.

Thanks!

PS - Send Money

Labels: Blogging

I blog for free, providing you with entertainment and insight (and often a whipping girl that you get to pooh-pooh on your own pages when I say something that doesn't conform with Canada's view of multiculturalism). CPAC is an integral part of that, where I get to rub shoulders with policy makers (and in the case of this year's CPAC, with presidential hopefuls as well as the current president). While I don't mind turfing out a couple of hundred a year for hosting etc., these little blog field trips are costly. Give a girl a hand, wouldja?

Thanks much. PayPal button is to your right.

Labels: Blogging, CPAC

I've had some strange searches lead to Girl on the Right: naked girl on a golf cart. armpit fetish, a variety of child porn requests (all of which were reported to cybertips.ca)... but this one takes the cake:

islamic explanation for doing sex with dead mother

Whoever ran this search (they were Canadian!) is one sick fucker. Just sayin'.

Labels: Blogging, Google, Islam

...still has mighty sharp thorns. None so sharp as those of Kathy Shaidle, even though she has retired Relapsed Catholic for something more descriptive of her physicality.

Five Feet of Fury

Labels: Blogging, Kathy Shaidle

When I saw the headline, I thought it was a joke. Alas, it isn't.

Left-leaning bloggers debate forming labor union

Apparently, they seem to think they're important enough, and matter enough, that they need a union. Little realizing that as bloggers, they are self-made and self employed, so the only ones they'd be protecting themselves against is... themselves.

Narcissism, thy name is Kos.

The effort is an extension of the blogosphere's growing power and presence, especially within the political realm, and for many, evokes memories of the early labor organization of freelance writers in the early 1980s.

Organizers hope a bloggers' labor group will not only showcase the growing professionalism of the Web-based writers, but also the importance of their roles in candidates' campaigns.

"I think people have just gotten to the point where people outside the blogosphere understand the value of what it is that we do on the progressive side," said Susie Madrak, the author of Suburban Guerilla blog, who is active in the union campaign. "And I think they feel a little more entitled to ask for something now."

But just what that something is may be hard to say.

Indeed. Hardly necessary.

Unsurprisingly, there's decidedly less support for a union movement among conservative bloggers.

Mark Noonan, an editor at Blogs for Bush and a senior writer at GOP Bloggers, said he worries that a blogger union would undermine the freewheeling nature of the blogosphere, regardless of its political composition.

"We just go out there and write what is on our mind, damn the critics," he said. "To make a union is to start to provide a firm structure for the blogosphere and that would merely make the blogosphere a junior-league (mainstream media). ... Get us a union and other 'professional' organizations and we'll start to be conformist and we'll start to be just another special interest."

But that's not how Kirsten Burgard sees it.

Sitting at a panel titled "A Union for Bloggers: It's Time to Organize" at this week's YearlyKos Convention for bloggers in Chicago, Illinois, Burgard said she'd welcome a chance to join a unionized blogging community.

"I sure would like to have that union bug on my Web site," said Burgard, a blogger who uses the moniker Bendy Girl.

Madrak hopes that regardless the form, the labor movement ultimately will help bloggers pay for medical bills. It's important, she said, because some bloggers can spend hours a day tethered to computers as they update their Web sites.

Yes, perhaps I can have them pay for my obesity drugs because I sit in front of the computer all day instead of walking the dog. What a load of bollocks.

Labels: Blogging

I never know what to get for Kathy. I can't buy her books - she has thousands of them and I just know I'd buy one she recently bought for herself. Same with DVDs. Frilly girly stuff is out, cause that's just not her style (though I often think I'd could find the perfect Kathy item in a vintage thrift shop).

And now, I finally know exactly what she wants for her blogaversary, and I have no idea how to set about getting it for her. So if some camel-fellating bearded despot has any idea, please see what you can do, ok?

Thanks.

Labels: Blogging, Islam, Kathy Shaidle

... but that still doesn't make me any more comfortable with this measure.

Cyber-bullies who plague internet chat rooms with obscene and insulting comments will be banned under the first national scheme to strip them of their anonymity.

People going online will be forced to provide their real names and social security numbers under a new law that makes internet portals responsible for policing message boards and weblogs.

The law has been introduced in South Korea, and is certain to be closely monitored by other countries where there is concern over online abuse.

The move, which is decried by some as an overly fierce infringement of online liberties, aims to curb the most damaging excesses of so-called "keyboard warriors" – people who concoct sex-scandals, fraud allegations and other libels that chiefly target figures in the public eye.

No thanks. As long as I'm not getting spammed, I'm pretty tolerant in my comments section. No death threats, no spam... other than that you can say what you want. I have rarely (very rarely) deleted or banned anyone. If you want to be an anonymous wank-stain, you're welcome to it.

Labels: Blogging, First Amendment, Tech

Sorry y'all. I have to take a few (more) days off. Too much going on in real life right now. Work stuff. Such is life.

Labels: Blogging

...read about those who can.

As y'all know, I've been doing quite a bit of running around lately, what with Hawaii closely followed by DC for the MilBlog conference. So while it seems I've been eternally on holiday (at least, that's how it seems to my boss), I'm actually quite burnt out.

So I'm curling up this weekend without the laptop, and reading. Mr. Right found me a book at Chapters called Boomsday by Christopher Buckley. About a blogger who suggests that we lighten the economic load by convincing baby boomers to commit suicide. Really the only way America can save Social Security.

Anyway, I love you and I bid you adieu. I have a pitcher of iced tea to make, and a couple of books to read (that have nothing to do with demographics or jihad).

Labels: Blogging, Books

Grab some mustard and head on over. I've made sandwiches.

Labels: Blogging

I have been receiving email complaints from my readers lately that they can't load the site. My stats are showing that you are no longer even trying, and for that I am sorry. In order to try to rectify this, I have temporarily removed the blogrolls and many of the linked images on the sidebars. I am told that this is helping. Let me know if you're still having problems.

In the meantime I will contact Blogrolling and ask them for advice.

Labels: Blogging

And a sunburn, which is astonishing, since I think we were only out of the car for about 45 non-consecutive minutes yesterday. My Charming Host(tm) took me on a whirlwind tour of more military installations than you can shake a stick at. It's like traveling with the band to do it this way - all-access backstage pass. I felt like a celebrity. There are zillions of pictures to sort through, and I'll only give you a few here and there. And of course some places were camera-restricted, which I wasn't about to argue with. Especially since yesterday was my unofficial tour. The official one with Public Affairs will be later in the week.

(may I just say that there is a downside to the tropics? as I write this, there are ants crawling all over me. yuck. at least they're harmless. but the roaches... don't get me started on them!)

For the time being, here's some random pics. I'll sort through what I have and do more detailed posts later on.


This is Ray. We met at the hotel fountain. You can see how friendly he is by the way he's waving for the camera.


The enormous flag at Camp Smith, flying half-mast (as were all flags on government property) in honor of those killed at Virginia Tech. Isn't it beautiful? I'm told that at sunset it's truly breathtaking.


On the beach, smiling despite my bloody foot (I had just cut it about 2 minutes earlier).


The famous USS Missouri. I will be touring her - and the Arizona Memorial - on Friday. I just added this pic today because my husband will love it.

The Charming Host(tm) took me to "MarineLand" at Kaneohoe Bay, but the weather was just turning inclement, so there was no eye candy to be had. It appears they don't let the more attractive ones out in the rain. Perhaps they melt or something. Sorry ladies; I'll keep trying.

And the day ended with some fabulous take-out Huli Huli chicken from Waimea.

Photos of the gorgeous Pali lookout and Pali National Park are up at Absinthe & Cookies, where I'm guest blogging this week.

Labels: Blogging, Hawaii, PACOM, Travel

I have a rather early flight tomorrow. In case you hadn't heard, I'm off to Hawaii! Tomorrow, since I will be in transit for the WHOLE. DAMN. DAY., EM Zanotti and Kathy Shaidle may pop by to amuse and delight you. If you ask nice, EM may give you the Friday Random Ten. Or make you waffles.

Labels: Blogging, PACOM, Travel

I, RightGirl (occasionally known to others as Wendy Sullivan), do hereby go on record as stating that I do not and will not subscribe to an arbitrary set of blogging rules. Guidelines, yes. Rules, no.

While I may be a conservative in many respects, I will not conform my writing (or your commenting) to meet the rules set out at Wikia. I prefer blogger anarchy to the repressed alternative. People chose to create and read blogs for the simple fact that the mainstream sources of information had become stifled by political correctness and various biases.

Before today, I had never heard of Tim O'Reilly. But whoever he is, he can kiss my fat anarchist ass. I'm sure he meant well, bringing this to the fore after the threats made on another blogger, but as I said at the time, suck it up. Police your own shit, if you can't, then get the hell out of the 'sphere.

Hat tip Kathy for bringing this nonsense to my attention.

Labels: Blogging

Not that y'all care or anything, but I have been irritating all my friends lately by waxing poetic about the most perfect pair of pajama pants evah that I bought at Old Navy on Monday. A bargain at $14.99, I bought them a size too large so they hang nicely over my ample posterior. Soooooft cotton. Black, with a pink rose on the left hip. I couldn't wait to get home today and slip out of my suit and into my wonderful pj pants. I think I may ask to be buried in them when I die.

So yes, it's true. I blog in pajamas.

Labels: Blogging, Clothes

I read last night of the "death threats" against blogger Kathy Sierra. I feel for her, as I've been the recipient of threats, too. There's a price of 72 virgins on my head for the first Muslim whackadoo that gets to me. I've also had to deal with the hairs on the back of my neck standing up from creepy dudes who troll the Internet looking for women to sicken. And I'm not alone.

But I'm also not an Internet coward. I'm not going to stop blogging, or even lay low. I report my threats to the authorities, I double-bolt the door, and I keep on blogging. I'm not the only one. Sure, it's mostly females that have to deal with the sexual deviants, but we're all open to some form of 'net intimidation. If you blog politics, or terror, or religion, or anything more powerful than knitting patterns, you will piss someone off, and maybe they will threaten you.

Because I'm a woman, I'm subjected to different kinds of threats and taunts. If I was a fat guy, I would be unremarkable. But because I'm a fat chick, my detractors would often prefer to point that out instead of arguing a real point. It's the easy way out, like calling someone nigger. It means you can't come up with anything better than that. I get comments about how I need to "get some", which is hilarious when you think of who we're talking about here!

Yet it doesn't deter me, and for the most part I don't complain about it. I don't bore you with details of my death threats, received on an almost weekly basis. It's really none of your concern how much time I spend talking to law enforcement, or complaining to my husband about how terribly terribly hard it is. I suck it up, and keep on blogging.

As much as I sympathize with her, it seems to me that all Kathy Sierra has succeeded in doing is making us all out to be a bunch of weak wallflowers. Everyone's talking about how horrible it all is. If you don't like blogging because it comes with side effects (like most addictive substances), then quit. But for heaven's sake, don't ruin it for the rest of us.

Am I the only one who thinks this is all leading to a book deal?

Labels: Blogging

For your blog-reading pleasure (and because there's no damn way I'm passing up this opportunity), RightGirl is heading off to the sunny beaches of Oahu in 28 1/2 days. How does this benefit you? Well, I'll be somewhat of a guest of the military establishment on the Island, including a very special tour of Camp Smith.

You see, for the past five years, all eyes have been on the Middle East in the War on Terror. How many of you are aware of the work that PACOM (Pacific Command) have been doing in places like the Philippines? How many of you are aware that we are facing an Islamic threat from there just as much as we are from the desert? And that the joint staff of PACOM are regularly sent to the Pacific Rim to clear out and rebuild areas? These guys should not be forgotten while - just like the Muslims are wanting - we're facing East.

You may ask "How did RightGirl get such a plum assignment?" The answer is simple: I'm RightGirl. I believe that if you don't ask, you don't get, and that a little chutzpah goes a long way. So I made arrangements with some very dear military friends of mine to fly out there. They said if I was willing to fly 5000 miles by myself just to talk about the Pacific Rim WoT (and get a tan), they'd take care of all the arrangements on the ground. So for the bargain price (well, sorta) of a plane ticket, I'm getting a week in Hawaii. Some days being me isn't all bad.

Labels: Blogging, PACOM, Travel, War on Terror

Evah.

Oh, and the post itself is good, too.

Labels: Blogging, Islam

John's mother passed away. Instead of grieving, he is celebrating her life with humor and love. This is by far the very best tribute to a mother I have ever read.

Labels: Blogging

I cannot even comprehend this woman's strength - even after having met her. Captain Ed is incredibly devoted to her care, and my thoughts and prayers are with them both until the new kidney is in.

Labels: Blogging

I have been trying to come to terms with a few things over the past few days. Ann Coulter's "faggot" remark at CPAC is one of them. I was there last year when she made the "raghead" comment, and I remember the outrage of everyone in the room, myself included. But how can I revile her for her cheap shots when I take so many of my own?

Yesterday, the arch-fiend Robert McClelland made a hard-core anti-semetic remark in the comments section of his Blahg:

When the State starts rounding up my Jewish neighbours, I’ll speak up.

Not me. People like Klownsella, Chernyuk and Smeagol the Jew have taught me it's not worth getting involved. When next they come for the Jews I doubt I'll even be able to muster up a "what a shame".

This caused both the left and right of the blogosphere to gasp in collective horror. Cherniak called for McClelland's head on a pike, and it was handed to him by the NDP. As disgusted as I was with Robert, I couldn't help but think of how last summer the Blogging Tories and the Conservative Party could have done the same to me. They didn't, but they could have. My views of Islam may be similar to what others are thinking, but most of them will never say it.

Just the other day I was defending people's rights to say whatever they please in the blogosphere. How could I condemn him? Yet, how could I not? So I emailed Kathy, who would prefer to give McCelland a soapbox to stand on while he proves what a filthy Jew-hater he is. Anti-semitism is rife on the left, and it needs to be exposed - so let Bobby Boy expose himself all over the place. Kathy was finally able to help me put into words the confusion I had been feeling over Coulter and McClelland:

They have a right to say anything they want and so do we. I wish she hadn't
said it at CPAC, but I also think that being sent to rehab for saying
faggot is worse than saying faggot -- and a leftist would think the
opposite of course.

My concern is that Jason the Hall Monitor and Co. on both sides are trying
to clean up the blogosphere and make it into something it isn't. It isn't a
newspaper or tv show. Swearing and nudity or whatever have their place (a
submarine, the walls of an art gallery) but aren't appropriate everywhere
(church, the super bowl half time show). Blogging is its own space where
certain rules don't apply. In my opinion as one of the pioneers who doesn't
like to see blogging being professionalized and sanitized.

So Robert can say what he wants on his blog, but Coulter should have been
more circumspect at CPAC. Then we say so. What I sense is something far
more insidious that anything Robert or Coulter can say and that is the
stuck up little twerps like Jason and Kinsella and their faux outrage over
other people's opinions and the not-far-off call for censorship.

A place for everything and everything in its place. I said something similar last year about Coulter. I thought that what people say in the privacy of their own homes with friends (or on their blogs) is one thing, but what they say to a room full of impressionable university students who will be leading us tomorrow (CPAC) is quite another.

So let McClelland spew his vitriol against the world's most persecuted religion, and let me attack their attackers. In the meantime, let's send Annie to finishing school.

Labels: Anti-Semitism, Blogging

I've been meaning to get to this story all week, and I do apologize for my slack blogging. Sometimes real life intervenes.

Last summer I wrote some things about Islam that people went totally nuts over. I was written up in the National Post as a bigot in an echo chamber - though the idea of an echo chamber was totally wrong, given the amount of people who were so vociferously disagreeing with me. I put up with incoherant commenting from people who either didn't know english, or who were too unintelligent and foaming to string words together properly. I dealt with an in-box full of death threats from all over the world. And I thought "So be it." I didn't expect the world to agree with me. I didn't expect a bunch of yes-men, even if this is my own private site. I could have switched off the comments or required registration. I could have put up a list of arbitrary rules that would have stifled my readers and visitors right to their own opinion.

So imagine how sad and disgusted I was earlier this week when I read that Dean Esmay had shut down discussion and criticism at his own site. I wasn't a regular reader of Dean's, so it didn't affect me very much. But one of my fellow Cotillion sisters, Jane, has bowed out. She isn't anti-Islamic the way I am, but she doesn't like being told that she can or can't write something a certain way if she so chooses. Dean's own wife, Rosemary, has walked away from his blog, because she does believe we are in a clash of civilizations, and will not be silenced by his arbitrary rules.

Dean is now effectively blogging to hear his own voice. He has told his commenters that they must either walk in lockstep or leave. I won't do that to you. There have only been a few people that I've needed to ban because they were sick bastards or they were threatening. I object strongly to many things about Islam, including categorizing it as a legitimate religion instead of a cult. You have the right to object to me.

Labels: Blogging, Islam

There's a blogger piss-up tonight, welcoming Damian Penny back to town.

Saturday, February 17th, 2007 on the second floor of The Fiddler's Green, located at 27 Wellesley Street East in downtown Toronto, just east of Yonge and across from the Wellesley subway station. Join us as Damian Penny makes his annual pilgrimage to the centre of the universe - everyone is welcome. No cover and nothing is provided (other than good conversation and the occasional prospect of a brawl) - pay your own damn way, deadbeat! See y'all there. People will start showing up at 8pm.

Labels: Blogging, Toronto

For 3 years, Girl on the Right has been educating and informing, making you laugh, making you cry, and making you mad. Happy Blogaversary to ME!



Another Blogday today: Potfry's The Nose on Your Face turns two! Congrats!

11:10PM: Emails have been coming in all day from well-wishers. So thanks to all the Ladies of the Cotillion, and Prowler (whoever you are, it's nice to know you're reading), and John and all the others.

Labels: Blogging, Personal

For the past week I've been watching the rise and fall of Amanda Marcotte as official blogger to the Edwards '08 Presidential Campaign with a mix of bemusement and snark. As of a couple of hours ago, it seems that she's been fired for her many venomous tirades over at Pandagon. Whatever. I can live with that. After all, it wasn't so very long ago that she was tearing a strip off of yours truly. Let's face facts here. If the Pope-hating, feminazi cooze was burning, I probably wouldn't piss on her. Nor would she return the favor. She thinks I'm a tool of "The Patriarchy". I think she's a tool. Suffice it to say we have our differences.

But may I just state for the record that I feel for her at this moment? (I qualify that statement by saying there's a part of me that believes this whole Edwards/Marcotte kerfuffle has been nothing but a cleverly orchestrated publicity stunt.) If what she's currently facing is the real deal, then I feel sorry for her. Think about it: both of us have been accused of preaching hate and of having potty mouths. Both of us are considered extremists - often by each other! The real difference is that she became a public entity representing another public entity, and I did not. I still sit here in my pajamas (or whatever we bloggers wear) and pearls, safe in my living room. She went out there and stood before America. And they stoned her for the witch (or is it neo-pagan these days) she is. Groovy. Score one for our side.

But damn! I would not want to be in her Birkenstocks for all the money in John Edwards' bank account! She has been ridiculed. She has been reamed by some top notch bloggers and pundits, which is totally fair. But it's also why I prefer to stay backstage in the political masquerade. I am very involved in local and federal politics where I live - but I could never be an official mouthpiece. I am too mouthy in my own right for that. And I know that the things I've said and done in the past would come back to haunt an innocent candidate. Frankly, I don't have the thick skin necessary to bring that down upon myself.

I know we've not seen the last of St. Amanda of the Leaky Vagina, and that she'll be doing the talk show circuit (possibly with a guest spot on The View) and milking this for all it's worth. But if this is what it takes to make it to the talk show circuit, I'm staying in my pajamas.

Labels: Blogging, Election 2008